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If you want to find out what’s happening in a poor country, be sure to add -tourists to your Google News search.

“Canadian and Italian tourists feared kidnapped in Burkina Faso,” was the recent headline in the BBC, a day after clashes there claimed 46 lives. The BBC didn’t cover the clashes online, nor did they cover a terrorist attack there a few days prior, or the country’s trade deals with China. If the tragic events had happened in Europe though, the media would have been all over it.

We see similar scenarios with the recent media coverage of tourists robbed in Brazil (just as a president who is arguably more racist, sexist, and homophobic than Trump has taken power – yes, it’s possible), of a tourist murdered in Morocco, and the killings in a Mexican tourist resort.

From de-prioritizing the lives of locals in poor countries, to downplaying global inequality, racism, and condescension, the way Western news agencies do international news is deeply harmful. They judge other countries based on the assumption that US and European political and economic standards are the best and only way to do things, and that practice is leading to some seriously discriminatory and damaging outcomes.

As the news becomes increasingly corporatist, with agencies blurring the lines between native advertising and news stories and focusing on clicks over quality, there is little desire to examine this sort of malpractice, let alone rectify it.

A list of deliberate distortions the mainstream media makes about poor countries

1. News discourse is based on the assumption that the only way to do democracy, elections, and economics is the highly dysfunction two-party neoliberalism of the US and Europe. If countries stray from the West’s way of doing politics, or from “free” trade and privatization, they are labelled as tyrannies, dictatorships, regimes, and more. Though the news claims to be unbiased, there is a stark inconsistency in the terminology used for the West and for poor countries.

2. Media coverage of charity and aid from the US and Europe rests on the assumption that such “help” is desired, and that the US and Europe have something to offer poor countries, despite their responsibility for colonizing, looting, enforcing abusive debt repayment, and largely causing the poverty in the first place. The historic and economic context behind the poverty is rarely discussed, creating the impression that poverty has no cause.

3. Media agencies boycott news stories about what people in poor countries are doing, achieving, calling for, hoping for, or building. By omitting this sort of coverage, one gets the false impression that people in poor countries aren’t doing anything about their economic or political situations. That contributes to the myth perpetuated by charities that poor people are incapable and passive and need outside help.

4. Media analysis assumes that institutions in other countries work in the same way as those in the media’s home country. For example, that police and national guards should play the same role in Venezuela as they do in the US, and if they don’t, there is something wrong with them.

5. The media consistently boycotts experts from the actual poor country in question when it comes to quotes and interviews and analyzing what is going on there. Instead, experts are typically US or European white male academics who aren’t in, or have never set foot in the country they judge and opine on. This sort of boycott contributes to the stereotype about who an expert is and what they look like. Hypocritically, the media never invites qualified intellectuals in poor countries to pass judgment on the US or Europe.

6. Related to this, is the belief that poor countries are so simple and similar that a Western journalist can be parachuted in to one to cover a presidential election, for example. These journalists often don’t speak the local language, and don’t know how the local elections work (as I witnessed while covering numerous elections in Venezuela). The media also thinks it is acceptable to use locals to do all the networking work and on-the-ground grunt work as “fixers“, or worse, as unpaid “contacts”, while a Westerner gets the byline credit and much higher pay, for writing up that work.

7. US and European culture is portrayed as the default or norm, while everyone else’s culture is “exotic” or “colorful”. Further, the media usually thinks its enough to do the occasional photo gallery of such culture (ie a festival in India) for people to then have an understanding or insight into the ways of being and living of people in countries like India, with its 1.2 billion people.

8. The media’s errors regarding poverty extend to its default definition of it. It sees poverty as how much stuff people can buy, rather than, for example, access to culture, education, and healthcare. When covering other countries’ situations, it doesn’t include their perspective on what good living consists of.

9. Western mainstream media values the lives of people in rich countries more. People have to die in the thousands in a non-political tragedy in poor countries to get a similar amount of coverage as the death of a white Australian mountain climber in Indonesia.

10. The media brands itself as “neutral”, though it always takes the perspective of its home country or region. But when 1 billion people are hungry, we need the media to have a more global perspective.

11. And despite lauding itself as being objective and factual, accuracy is less important to the media when it comes to poor countries. Getting a president’s name wrong, the actual title of the head of state, or labeling community organizations as “terrorists” isn’t a big deal.

12. When something really huge happens in a poor country – like a tsunami and earthquake that kills 230,000 people, then the media is happy to exploit it for all the clicks they can get. Once the main drama has passed though, don’t expect too many follow-ups that analyze why earthquakes cause more damage in some countries than others, or the rebuilding and recovery needed.

13. Further, when the media does bestow to cover poorer countries, it usually needs to be in terms of a richer country. Stories about Mexico, for example, are more likely to get covered if Trump is in the headline. African countries are more likely to see the light of day when a famous Western actor deigns to visit.

14. Sometimes the media takes the position that poor countries are “too depressing” for readers. But if the reading is tough, imagine what its like to live it. We should be screaming about the worst injustices from our rooftops, not sidelining such injustice with pathetic excuses.

Causes and consequences of anti-poor country bias

Global racism, classism, and prioritizing profits are the key factors behind all these distortions. Stories about poor countries don’t appeal to advertisers, except for those promoting charities who typically victimize poor countries and simplify poverty because they want their donors to think that $1 a day makes the exploitation, wars, and debt go away.

Further, mainstream media has stopped seeing itself as an active force in the world that has a responsibility to inform people and to help them understand what is going on – if it ever did see itself that way. Instead of being a public service, the news is a commodity. As such, media companies understand that stories about first world events, white people, celebrities and the rich and powerful tend to get more clicks than those about the poor.

In addition, over the past decade with the smartphone becoming more accessible to more people, the media has shifted over to bite-size stories and easily and quickly digestible content that can be scan-read, then shared, in a few seconds or minutes. However, the key issues in poor countries aren’t bite size nor simple. They require context, and the media shies away from that – especially where worker rights, inequality, or historical injustice are concerned.

Finally, US media in particular loves individual stories of rags-to-riches and to perpetuate the myth that financial success is all about individuals working hard. Poor countries simply don’t fit into that narrative, so they get left out altogether.

The consequences of this selective and distorted media coverage are serious. What it ultimately does, is perpetuate the status quo; the racism, the dehumanizing of people who live in poor countries, the global inequality, and US and European cultural, economic, and violent dominance. That is, mainstream media coverage of poor countries is an active, and deliberate participation in the oppression of those countries.

The coverage ends up distorting how we understand global forces, culture, and history. It obstructs our ability to learn from other culture’s amazing lifestyles, literature traditions, philosophies, art and film techniques, and it fosters closed-minded adults. Such rich-country centric coverage also promotes unjustified arrogance in those countries, which in turn fosters blind spots to how damaging US and European foreign policy (ie wars) can be.

With high rates of homelessness, police impunity, racist attacks, consumerism, and more, countries like the US are in no position to be judging other countries. A healthy media landscape would instead see the news media as informational and educational rather than entertainment, and would prioritize local journalists and local experts.

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Tamara Pearson is a journalist who has been living in, and covering Latin America for the past 11 years. She is also the author of The Butterfly Prison, and can be found @pajaritaroja.

“This charming company operated a factory and camp at Auschwitz during the WW2. The UK and US governments are now allowing it to control global farming methods, GM crops, so-called ‘advanced technologies’ and pesticides.” – Rosemary Mason

Tireless campaigner and environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter to Werner Baumann, the chief executive of Bayer CropScience. It is in direct response to Bayer CropScience’s advertisement that was placed in Politico and the Farmers’ Guardian on 19/12/2018 which reads:

“Transparency creates trust. At Bayer, we embrace our responsibility to communicate how we assess our products’ safety — and we recognize that people around the world want more information around glyphosate. This month, we published more than 300 study summaries on the safety of glyphosate on our dedicated transparency website. “

Mason is scathing in her response and begins her letter by saying, “Bayer CropScience has never been transparent in its life.” She makes it clear to Baumann from the outset that she considers Bayer CropScience and Monsanto “criminal corporations.”

Her letter outlines a cocktail of corporate duplicity, cover-ups and criminality which the public and the environment are paying the price for, not least in terms of the effects of glyphosate.

She has sent her letter to various mainstream media outlets. I recently received it and have placed it here, so anyone can access it in its entirety. I urge everyone to read the letter and circulate it on social media.

Read the Open Letter to Bayer CropScience here.

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Three days of talks in Beijing ended Wednesday afternoon local time, details so far not released by either side.

Media reports are mixed. Increased Chinese purchases of US products and cutting import duties, reportedly offered, leave major differences between both countries unaddressed.

The NYT said

“Beijing hopes (concessions offered) will be enough to let President Trump declare victory and end the trade war between the two largest economies,” adding:

“(I)t will be hard to ensure that China sticks to its commitments. That could make it a tough sell in Washington.”

Trump’s trade hawks want much more, China unlikely to agree on their tough demands in follow-up talks.

They include curbing its aim to become a global economic, industrial, and technological powerhouse, challenging US dominance. Buying more soybeans, liquified natural gas, and other US products isn’t enough to resolve trade differences between both countries.

Neither side indicated a willingness to alter their basic positions so far. Nor is it likely ahead. The US wants China and all other countries subordinating their sovereignty to US interests – what China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and other nations reject.

Major Sino/US differences are too longstanding and far apart to be resolved in 90 days. According to analyst Vishnu Varathan,

“(e)ven if a (bilateral) deal is cobbled together, the more strident trade hawks in the White House and Trump may not sign off.”

China isn’t likely to agree to their unacceptable demands. Beijing has its own, including over unacceptable US export and investment curbs, notably on what Washington consider dual-use technology related to military applications.

The Wall Street Journal said both sides narrowed differences “on purchases of US goods and services and widening access to China’s markets, though the two sides are far from striking a deal.”

When officials call talks “constructive,” watch out. It usually means major issues are unresolved, indeed the case between the US and China. Clearly three days of talks involving lower-level officials on both sides left both countries world’s apart on issues mattering most.

The best to come out of talks in Beijing is agreement on continuing them in Washington later this month, involving top negotiators from both countries.

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin reportedly wants China to commit to buying $1.2 trillion of US goods and services over an unspecified period of time.

US trade representative Robert Lighthizer focuses mainly on structural issues, including China’s economic, industrial, and technological aims, subsidies to domestic companies, and protection for US intellectual property.

He may propose keeping US tariffs on Chinese goods in place, removing them only when Beijing meets Trump regime demands.

On Tuesday, a China Daily editorial said Beijing “made it clear that it will not seek a solution to the trade frictions by making unreasonable concessions, and any agreement has to involve give and take from both sides.”

China’s Global Times said three days of talks in Beijing made progress on some issues, “thorny (ones) such as economic policy changes…likely left for higher-level talks later.”

According to Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation research fellow Mei Xinyu, agreement on some issues are likely, “but let’s not be overly optimistic,” adding:

Trump and his negotiators “could walk back (from commitments made) as…before.” DLT wants a deal making it appear he got the best of things – similar to how he’s handling the southern border wall issue.

Talks in Beijing ended on a positive note, the toughest issues left unresolved. Reports indicated neither side changed their basic positions.

Major issues won’t be easily resolved, clearly not in 90 days.

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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.

It should be clear to anyone who is paying attention that the war on Syria is not based on humanitarian issues.

It should also be clear that the war is not a War on Terror, since the Western-supported terrorist forces that existed in Syria, dubbed “the largest terrorist army on earth”, is estimated to have numbered almost 500,000 terrorists at its peak.[1]

Equally transparent is National Security Advisor John Bolton’s warning to Syria against the use of chemical weapons.  Political commentator Sarah Abdallah summed up Bolton’s signal for a CW false flag with these words:

Yeah. With nearly all of Syria liberated from terrorists and US troops illegally present on Syrian soil finally preparing to leave, Assad’s just going to launch a chemical attack and trigger a NATO response.

This only makes sense in the minds of endless-war-fanatics like Bolton. https://t.co/htRCY4mh5N

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) January 7, 2019

So, can we expect another false flag attack?

Given what we already know about the White Helmets’ involvement in organ harvesting, kidnapping, thievery, fake news, staged rescues, and assorted terrorist activities[2], their anticipated involvement in preparations for yet another false flag attack is credible.

As Canadians we must demand an end to our government’s war on Syria. Canada should open its Embassy in Syria and resume diplomatic relations. Furthermore, Canada should leave NATO. And Canada must be held to account for the crimes that it has committed against the sovereign nation of Syria, and for the crimes that it continues to commit against the sovereign nation of Syria.

Normalized permanent warfare and support for terrorism is madness. To borrow a concept from How the US Creates “Sh*thole” Countries,[3] not only are we destroying countries as policy (i.e Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Syria and beyond), but in so-doing, we have already earned for ourselves permanent residency in the Sh*thole Hall of Infamy.

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

Notes

[1] Arabi Souri, “The Defeat of the Largest Terrorist Army on Earth.” Syria News, 7 January, 2019. (https://www.syrianews.cc/defeat-largest-terrorist-army/?fbclid=IwAR3YnnGDdPn_PEuqlyGc6xH7fnq1pA3Y7s645VraSuI0INW-jkhGNJKrLy4)Accessed 8 January, 2019.

[2] Mark Taliano, “Video: Who Are the White Helmets? Fake News and Staged Rescues/Canada’s beloved “humanitarian heroes”, the White Helmets.” Global Research, 26 December, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-who-are-the-white-helmets-fake-news-and-staged-rescues/5663906) Accessed 8 January, 2019. 

[3] Edited by Cynthia McKinney, How the US Creates “Sh*thole” Countries, Clarity Press, 2018.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

It is a common misconception that democracies do not start wars of aggression or carry out terrorist attacks. The historical facts for the period from 1945 to today show a completely different reality: time and again, democratic states in Europe and North America have participated in wars of aggression and terrorist attacks in the past 70 years.

There are so many cases that I am not able to list all of them here. As examples, I have selected three events from different decades:

• the illegal attack by the European democracies Britain and France on Egypt in 1956;
• the terrorist attack by the democracy France on Rainbow Warrior, a ship operated by the environmental organization Greenpeace in 1985;
• and the illegal attack by US President Donald Trump on Syria on April 7, 2017.

Because mass media, neither in the European nor the American democracies, openly address and criticize these crimes and because so far the responsible politicians have not been convicted by a court, a stubborn misconception persists in the populations of these aggressor states that democracies never start wars and also never use terror as a political instrument.

But the three examples mentioned show clearly:

Democracies, members of the NATO military alliance and with a veto power in the UN Security Council to protect themselves from condemnation, have repeatedly attacked other countries.

This is illegal. For the UN Charter of 1945, Article 2 (4), clearly states:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force..[..]

The Charter only allows the use of force if an attacked state defends itself or if the United Nations Security Council has approved the military strike. In all other cases, the UN prohibits war. Terrorist attacks are always prohibited.

The attack on Egypt in 1956

Egypt is a strategically important country because of the 160 kilometer long Suez Canal, opened in 1869. It plays a central role in supplying Europe with crude oil. The canal connects the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and saves ships from the Persian Gulf to Europe the detour around Africa. Today, the canal is plied daily by tankers bringing oil and liquefied natural gas to the European market.

For Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt as president in the 1950s, the Suez Canal was a hated symbol of European colonialism, because the long and narrow water-way through the Egyptian desert had been built by the French and thereafter became the private Suez Canal Company, jointly owned by France and the colonial power Great Britain.

Nasser pursued a nationalist policy of neutrality in the Cold War and cultivated cooperation with India and Yugoslavia, whose non-alignment he admired. In order to prevent Egypt from falling into the sphere of influence of the communist Soviet Union, the Americans and British, together with the World Bank, in 1955 promised Egypt a loan for the construction of a massive dam on the Nile near Aswan. The dam would allow Nasser to regulate the water masses of the Nile during the annual floods, for agricultural purposes and production of renewable hydropower for the industrialization of Egypt.

But in July 1956, US President Dwight Eisenhower changed his mind. After consulting with London and the World Bank, he said that Egypt was not creditworthy because Nasser recognized the People’s Republic of China and publicly had stated that he wanted to destroy Israel. Nasser became enraged and decided that the oil transit fees from the Suez Canal now needed to finance the construction of the planned Aswan High Dam. Therefore, on July 26, 1956 he nationalized the Suez Canal Company, to the horror of France and Britain.

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden was shocked, and feared that the Soviets would extend their sphere of influence. In April 1956, shortly before the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Eden had warned the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev with clear words:

“As far as oil is concerned, I have to bluntly tell you – we would fight for it … we could not live without oil and … we do not intend to be strangled.”

After nationalization, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles also insisted to the British and French foreign ministers that “a way had to be found to make Nasser disgorge” the canal (1).

Britain decided to use military resources to fight for the canal and access to Middle East oil. “The truth is that we are caught in a terrible dilemma,” noted British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in his diary:

“If we take strong action against Egypt, and as a result the canal is closed, the pipelines to the Levant are cut, the Persian Gulf revolts and oil production is stopped, then the U.K. and Western Europe have ‘had it’.”

But “if we suffer a diplomatic defeat; if Nasser gets away with it” – and the Middle East countries, in a ferment, ‘nationalize oil’ … we have equally ‘had it’. What then are we to do? It seems clear to me that we should take the only chance we have – to take strong action, and hope that thereby our friends in the Middle East will stand, our enemies fall, and the oil be saved – but it is a tremendous decision”(2).

As part of a conspiracy – by definition, a secret agreement between two or more people to reach a common goal – high-ranking representatives of Britain, France and Israel met in a villa in Sèvres, near Paris between October 22-24, 1956 to plan the top-secret Operation Musketeer.

Israeli soldiers waving at a French Air Force aircraft (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The British delegation was led by Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd, the French by Prime Minister Guy Mollet and the Israelis by Prime Minister Ben Gurion. The conspirators decided that Israel should attack Egypt and advance militarily through the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula to the Suez Canal. France and Britain would then give Nasser an unacceptable ultimatum, creating an excuse to militarily occupy the Suez Canal. The goal of the action was to gain control of the Suez Canal and, Israel hoped, overthrow Nasser.

Of course, the planned war was illegal, because it contradicted the prohibition of violence in the UN Charter, but the conspirators did not care about international law. On October 29, 1956, the Israeli army attacked Egypt right on schedule and occupied the Sinai Peninsula. Thereby Israel made itself guilty of the crime of aggression.

The US quickly realized that this was an illegal war of aggression, and on October 30th summoned the Security Council to a special session. US Ambassador Henry Lodge called for the “the immediate cessation of the military action of Israel in Egypt”. The Egyptian ambassador, Omar Loutfi, condemned the Israeli attack on his country with very sharp words. “Israeli troops have invaded Egyptian territory in various places,” this is an “extremely dangerous act of aggression” (3).

Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban did not deny that the Israeli army had attacked Egypt, but stressed that it was an act of self-defense. The French UN ambassador, as agreed, stood on the Israeli side. “Egyptian imperialism” is trying to control the area from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and aims at “the destruction of Israel”. Contrary to all legal obligations, Egypt also had seized a “water-way which is essential to the life of the nations.” (4)

Then, as agreed, France and Britain presented their unacceptable ultimatum, demanding that Egyptian and Israeli forces retreat to a distance of ten miles from the water-way and allow British and French troops to control strategic positions on the Suez Canal. Waiting only twelve hours for an answer, British Ambassador Sir Pierson Dixon warned that “British and French forces will intervene in whatever strength may be necessary to secure compliance” (4).

Of course, this ultimatum was unacceptable to Egypt. It served the European democracies France and Britain as an excuse to attack Egypt. This was of course illegal, because they did not have a mandate from the Security Council. The conspiracy that existed before the attack between the three countries remained a secret at that time and was exposed by historians only years later.

Damaged tank and vehicles, Sinai War, 1956. (Source: Public Domain)

“We have done everything in our power to lower tension in the Middle East”, British Ambassador Dixon protested, “and if tension has increased, it is because unhappily neither Israel nor its Arab neighbours have seen fit to listen to our advice and to that of our friends”. (5)

Ambassador Dixon concluded his mendacious speech by saying,

“I trust that the great majority of the members of the Council will agree that the action which the French Government and Her Majesty’s Government have taken is in the general interest and in the interest of security and peace.” (5).

The United States introduced a resolution in the UN Security Council condemning Israel’s attack on Egypt and calling for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Egypt. But the veto powers France and Great Britain voted against the resolution on October 30, 1956, which therefore failed. The UN Security Council was completely deadlocked.

The next day, October 31, the British and French began bombing Egyptian airfields. This was an illegal war of aggression that violated the UN Charter. President Nasser, surprised and infuriated by the attacks, decided to interrupt the flow of oil to Europe.

The same day British and French bombs fell on Egypt, Egyptian commandos sank dozens of ships filled with stones and cement in the approximately 300 meter wide Suez Canal. This blocked the canal for shipping. Because Syrian engineers at the same time sabotaged the oil pipelines through Syria on Nasser’s instructions, the flow of oil from the Middle East came to a standstill in November 1956, which worried Western Europe greatly.

The empty oil tankers leaving Europe for the Suez Canal cruised around cautiously in the Mediterranean, while the loaded tankers in the Red Sea waited idly. Nobody knew when Nasser would lift the blockade of the canal. And there was a heated internal struggle within NATO.

American President Eisenhower was furious with the joint British, French, and Israeli colonial adventure, for failing to have prearranged their conspiracy with Washington. He refused to help Europe by delivering oil across the Atlantic. And the Soviet Union too, under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, gave an ultimatum to the French and British to stop their war of aggression.

This sealed the defeat of the Europeans. On November 6, France and Great Britain ceased fire, and before Christmas all British and French soldiers had returned home. The Europeans were humiliated and lost their former dominant position in the region.

Nasser triumphed because he had managed to turn his military defeat into a political victory over two major European powers. The ships sunk by Nasser blocked the Suez Canal until spring of 1957, after which all damage was repaired and the canal was back to normal traffic. The Israeli forces withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula. Over the next few years, Nasser built the Aswan Dam with the help of thousands of Soviet engineers and architects. The prestige project was inaugurated in 1971.

The terrorist attack on a Greenpeace ship in 1985

When a democratic country like France carries out a terrorist attack abroad, it does so in secret and tries to cover its tracks. In order to carry out covert operations, democracies in Europe and North America use their intelligence services and military special units, because they are poorly monitored by parliament and the media. Many such covert operations are never revealed or remain secret for years.

The American foreign intelligence service CIA is notorious worldwide because it in 1953, together with the British secret service MI6, overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran; and in 1973, also the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile. Both operations were of course illegal.

The French foreign intelligence service is far less well-known than the CIA. Its name is Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) and is headquartered in Paris. The tasks of the DGSE consist of espionage and counterintelligence outside France. There are currently about 3,000 civilian employees and 1,500 military personnel working for this intelligence service. The DGSE is subordinate to the French Ministry of Defense.

France is a nuclear power and has repeatedly tested nuclear bombs in the South Pacific. This created protests from the environmentalists in the NGO Greenpeace. The most notorious of the French nuclear tests areas is the Mururoa Atoll. There, from 1966 to 1996, France detonated a total of 188 atomic bombs, of which 41 were in the atmosphere and 147 underground. It was only in 2000 that the French left Mururoa. The atoll is today a contaminated and restricted area, on which a lot of radioactive waste is stored.

Rainbow Warrior (CC BY-SA 2.0 fr)

To protest against these nuclear tests, Greenpeace sent the ship Rainbow Warrior to the South Pacific. This caused a worldwide sensation and annoyed the French socialist president François Mitterand, because the presence of Greenpeace prevented the continuation of the nuclear tests on Mururoa. Therefore, French democracy resorted to terror and sank the ship with a bomb.

The Greenpeace ship lay at anchor in the port of Auckland, New Zealand, when it was sunk shortly before midnight on July 10, 1985 by two explosive charges. The DGSE gave the action the telling name “Opération Satanique”, i.e. “The Satanic Operation”. This was clearly a terrorist attack on Greenpeace, carried out by the democratic state of France.

“The truth is: France organized this attack … Mitterrand gave the order,” said French journalist Edwy Plenel from the newspaper Le Monde. Plenel’s research helped uncover the previously secret operation and forced French Defense Minister Charles Hernu to resign (6).

In all, a dozen DGSE agents were involved in the operation. First, the yacht Ouvea brought the explosives to New Zealand. Two DGSE agents, Dominique Prieur and Alain Marfart, who arrived in New Zealand with false passports as the Swiss couple Turenge on their honeymoon, transported the explosives under cover of darkness in a van from the yacht through the harbor and brought it to a dinghy with a crew of three agents.

DGSE agent Gerard Royal steered the dinghy to the Greenpeace ship. 500 meters from the target, the DGSE combat dive team Jean-Luc Kister and Jean Cammas slipped into the water and fastened two limpet mines with timers under the waterline on the steel hull of the ship. After the two bombs exploded, the assassins immediately left the area with the dinghy.

The first bomb detonated at 23:48 and made the ship sink. Greenpeace captain and environmental activist Peter Willcox was aboard, sleeping in his bed. The detonation woke him up, whereupon the Greenpeace crew left the ship. “The ship sank in 45 seconds. We had trouble getting out of the ship in time,” Willcox later recalled.

Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira wanted to save his camera gear and the images he had taken, but was trapped in his cabin by the second bomb that detonated at 23:51. He drowned. “My father was killed,” says his daughter Marelle Pereira, who was then eight years old. For captain Peter Willcox it was clearly an assassination attempt (7).

Of course, the police immediately noticed the explosion in Auckland harbour. The two agents ashore, disguised as the Swiss couple Turenge, were arrested by local police. The New Zealand police asked Swiss authorities if the passports were real. Swiss authorities declared that they were counterfeits. The two DGSE agents Dominique Prieur and Alain Marfart were sentenced to 10 years in prison for manslaughter.

For historians like me, the demolition of the ship Greenpeace Warrior is a controversial field of research. Should we call the participating DGSE agents terrorists? No doubt it was a terrorist attack. For many years it was unknown who was behind the bombing and none of the bombers involved wanted to speak. The clarification of terrorist attacks by historians always takes many years.

Today we know the truth. DGSE agent Jean-Luc Kister broke his silence in 2015, exactly 30 years after the attack. He told New Zealand television:

“We didn’t intend to kill anybody….I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest regrets and apologies to Ms. Marelle Pereira and her family for the accidental death of Fernando Pereira. … I want to apologize also to Greenpeace members who were on board of the Rainbow Warrior. And I want to apologize to the people of New Zealand for the unfair, clandestine operation conducted in an allied, friendly and peaceful country. … this was order given at the highest level of the government … We were soldiers and had to obey orders. Now I am retired from the active service, and I want to obey to my consciousness. . It was wrong. It was a very wrong decision”(8).

Admiral Pierre Lacoste, director of the DGSE from 1982, had to resign after the scandal on September 12, 1985. But President François Mitterrand survived the Rainbow Warrior affair. He had been in office since 1981 and was a strong proponent of French nuclear testing. In 1995 he was succeeded by President Jacques Chirac. Mitterrand never admitted that he ordered the terrorist attack.

The question remains why the DGSE agents were ready to attack unarmed Greenpeace activists and sink their boat with two bombs. “We’ve been told that Greenpeace has been infiltrated by the KGB. That’s the explanation given to us,” recalls Jean-Luc Kister. This implicitly suggested that Moscow was fighting the French nuclear tests, which was not true.

Of course, France could have blown up the Greenpeace ship out in open seas. That would have been the safest option for the DGSE, because then hardly any traces would have been found. But then the whole Greenpeace crew would have died, and they did not want that. Therefore, the ship was blown up in harbour. With the first bomb, the DGSE wanted to force people off the ship, with the second bomb to sink the ship.

For me, as a historian, the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior by French intelligence is clearly a terrorist attack. Nevertheless, the agents involved do not want to be called terrorists and avoid the word. “Wasn’t this a terrorist act?” Jean-Luc Kister was asked. To which he replied:

“For us, it was a sabotage operation and no more”. Kister deeply regrets that an innocent civilian was killed. “My wife was shocked by the fact that somebody died in this operation, because before the operation, she didn’t know where I was. And a few years later, I get divorced, like many others.” (9).

The illegal attack on Syria 2017

When Donald Trump entered the White House as a new president in January 2017, critical observers wondered how long it would take for the democracy USA to bomb another country. Already on April 7,  2017, it was time. As Commander in Chief, Donald Trump attacked Syria:

Two American warships in the Mediterranean fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles made by the US armaments company Raytheon at the Syrian military air base al-Shayrat.

The American first strike weapons hit the targets defined by the White House at a speed of 800 kilometers (500 miles) per hour and flew over the Syrian territory at a low elevation of between 15-100 meters (50-330 feet) before striking and exploding.

Those who still cling to the mistaken belief that European or American democracies do not attack sovereign states, ignore contemporary history. Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, had begun bombing Syria in September 2014. But both Obama’s and Trump’s attacks on Syria are illegal because the US does not have a mandate from the UN Security Council.

As previously stated and explicitly illustrated in many examples in my book Illegal Wars (alas, not available in English. TN), the United Nations Charter only allows the use of force if an attacked state defends itself or the United Nations Security Council approves the military strike. Neither was the case here. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad had not bombed the US, so there was no case of self-defense. And the UN Security Council had given neither President Obama nor President Trump a mandate to bomb Syria (10).

“It has become embarrassing to be an American,” rued the American citizen Paul Craig Roberts self-critically in the spring of 2017. “Trump attacked Syria with US forces, thereby becoming a war criminal early in his regime,” were the clear words from Roberts.

Born in 1939, Roberts has personally experienced a great deal and served as the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury under Reagan.

Roberts knows that the UN Charter prohibits wars of aggression. He therefore criticizes President Bill Clinton for bombing Serbia in 1999 without a mandate from the UN; that President George Bush Jr. attacked Iraq in 2003, again without a mandate from the UN; that President Barack Obama bombed Syria in 2014; and that now Trump, the new president, violates international law.

“Our country has had four war criminal presidents in succession,” said Roberts in a sobering conclusion (11).

Because Russia fights alongside the Syrian army against the terrorist militia IS in Syria, Trump’s attack carries the danger of a direct confrontation between the nuclear powers USA and Russia. The Shayrat base illegally attacked by Trump also housed buildings for Russian soldiers and Russian military equipment.

Shortly before the attack, Washington informed the Russian military to make sure the American Tomahawks did not kill any Russian soldiers. Since the Russian air defense systems S-300 and S-400 are stationed in Syria, the indirect confrontation between the nuclear powers still poses a fire hazard and has similarities to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

“It is depressing that further damage will be done to the already broken relations between Russia and the US,” warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. And President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov strongly condemned the “aggression against a sovereign state” and the violation of the UN Charter (12).

Dieter Deiseroth, a former judge at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, Germany, also considers Trump’s attack on Syria to be very dangerous. The attack is illegal, Deiseroth points out, and “seriously violates the territorial integrity of the UN member state Syria.” According to the principle of self-defense enshrined in international law, Syria would now have the right to defend itself against the American attack together with its allies Russia and Iran.

“Syria had and still has the right to individual and collective self-defense against further US military actions of this kind, and could therefore also ask its allies – for example, Russia and Iran – for legal military support. It would then be about collective self-defense of these states against the US,” said Deiseroth.

This was “a highly explosive situation,” because a direct confrontation between the nuclear powers USA and Russia would have far-reaching consequences (13).

Two days before the attack on Syria, US Ambassador Nikki Haley announced the illegal military unilateral action with reference to an unsolved poison gas attack in Khan Sheikhun on April 4, 2017:

“When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” she warned (14).

But none of the 193 UN member states, including the US democracy, has this right to start a war of aggression. Whoever is behind the dastardly use of poison gas: This crime does not justify a breach of international law by the United States, and must be solved. Too recent are the war lies of President George Bush Jr., who justified his illegal war of aggression on Iraq in 2003 with reference to weapons of mass destruction.

Conclusion

It is time for citizens in the democracies of Europe and North America to openly discuss the global spiral of violence which we currently are in. Of course, not only democracies are driving this spiral of violence. But it seems important to me that we here talk openly about the Western share in this escalation.

The crimes of the NATO countries must be analyzed honestly, so that the necessary consequences can be drawn from them. The French and British illegal attack on Egypt in 1956, France’s illegal terrorist attack on the Greenpeace ship in 1985 and the American illegal attack on Syria in 2017 clearly demonstrate that democracies are also driving this spiral of violence.

Too often one is reminded of the saying: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

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Translated by Terje Maloy as Creative Commons 4.0 from Rubikon.

Daniele Ganser, dr. phil., is a Swiss historian specializing in contemporary history since 1945 and international politics. His research interests include peace research, geo-strategy, covert warfare, resource struggles and economic policy. He heads the Swiss Institute for Peace and Energy Research in Basel. He is especially known for his groundbreaking research on Gladio, NATO’s secret armies. 

Notes

(1) Daniel Yergin. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
(2) Ibid
(3) UN Security Council, 30 October 1956
(4) Ibid
(5) Ibid
(6) Edwy Plenel. Quoted in: French Secret Service Agents Who Led Fatal 1985 Bombing of Greenpeace Ship Breaks His Silence. Democracy Now, September 8, 2015
(7) Ibid
(8) Ibid
(9) Ibid
(10) Compare: Daniele Ganser: Illegal Wars.
(11) Paul Craig Roberts: A Government of Morons, April 15, 2017, http://www.paulcraigroberts.org
(12) Tages-Anzeiger, April 7, 2017
(13) Marcus Klöckner: interview with Dieter Deiseroth. NachDenkSeiten April 10, 2017
(14) Die Welt April 7, 2017

Claiming that prominent Chinese telecommunications company Huawei had violated US sanctions on Iran – Canada was requested to arrest and hand over Huawei Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was transferring planes in Vancouver.

The arrest was described even by the Washington Post as “unusual” in its article titled, “Arrest of Huawei executive triggers stock market turmoil and unsettles U.S.-China trade talks.”

The article would also claim:

Meng was arrested on a U.S. extradition warrant because Huawei is suspected of evading American sanctions on Iran, according to multiple news reports. U.S. prosecutors have been investigating since 2016 whether Huawei violated U.S. export and sanctions laws by shipping U.S.-origin products to Iran. 

The arrest, on the same day President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping met for dinner in Buenos Aires for trade and national-security talks, is being viewed in China as politically motivated.

And very clearly the move made against Huawei – along with a barrage of similar legal moves made to cripple rising Chinese companies competing against their waning US counterparts – is politically motivated – as are the sanctions the US has imposed on Iran in the first place.

Part of a Wider Pattern of Trying to Provoke, Humiliate China  

Reuters in an article titled, “U.S. probing Huawei for possible Iran sanctions violations: sources,” would lay out previous examples of US attempts to cripple China’s largest tech companies, claiming:

The probe of Huawei is similar to one that China’s ZTE Corp says is now threatening its survival.The United States last week banned American firms from selling parts and software to ZTE for seven years. Washington accused ZTE of violating an agreement on punishing employees after the company illegally shipped U.S. goods to Iran.

Nowhere on the websites of the US State Department, US Department of Treasury, or the US Justice Department is any information available regarding the alleged sanctions Huawei supposedly violated or how Huawei selling US technology to Iran allows the US to snatch Chinese citizens at Canadian airports.

China, for its part, has demanded the immediate release of Meng Wanzhou. Chinese state media portal, the Global Times in an article titled, “China urges release of Huawei executive,” would report:

Chinese officials are urging the US and Canada to clarify why Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive of Huawei Technologies, has been detained and to immediately release her, slamming the arrest as a violation of her rights. 

Experts said on Thursday that Meng’s detention is a move by the US to heat up the ongoing trade war between China and the US.

The sudden and so far unexplained arrest on the same day US President Donald Trump and other high-level US representatives met with their Chinese counterparts in Buenos Aires, Argentina fits into a larger pattern of politically-motivated coercion, intimidation, and provocations that has increasingly dominated the shape of US foreign policy.

Snatching Foreign Executives for Violating Criminally-Motivated Sanctions

The US sanctions against Iran themselves are transparently aimed at stripping Iran of its sovereignty and influence in the Middle East and transforming the nation into either a client state of US interests or a failed state allowing the US to springboard chaos and subversion into southern Russia and beyond.

The US has leveled a myriad of sanctions against Iran since 1979 in an attempt to cripple the nation’s economy and collapse Iran’s ruling political order.

US policymakers have openly and repeatedly admitted that Iran poses no actual security threat to the United States and that attempts to pursue regime change are aimed instead solely at enhancing Washington’s unwarranted influence in the Middle East. They also have openly conspired to frame Iran through a number of schemes to justify Washington’s agenda of regime change.

In a 2009 Brookings Institution report titled, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran,” US policymakers would conspire to offer Iran a peace deal they then planned to intentionally walk away from while accusing Tehran of having violated it.

The report would admit (emphasis added):

…any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.

That offer would eventually manifest itself as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the “Iran Nuclear Deal,” signed by China, France, Germany, the EU, Iran, Russia, the UK, and the US.

The deal stipulated that if Iran upheld commitments regarding its nuclear program, crippling US sanctions would be incrementally withdrawn.

Iran upheld its commitments, and sanctions were initially, incrementally withdrawn.

But just as US policymakers had conspired to do all along, unsubstantiated accusations were made by the US that Iran had violated the deal. The US would unilaterally withdraw from it and reinstate economic sanctions as well as secondary sanctions aimed at nations who still intended to trade with Iran.

The US also attempted to ratchet up tensions both in the form of US-sponsored political subversion and terrorism, and even threats of direct military conflict aimed at Tehran.

That the deal was proposed and signed during the administration of President Barack Obama and then upturned during Trump’s administration is a reminder of just how much unelected special interests – those that fund and direct think tanks like the Brookings Institution – dictate US foreign policy regardless of who sits in the White House.

Iran’s adherence to the JCPOA was such that the majority of the deal’s signatories have attempted to maintain the agreement despite America’s withdrawal – and put together economic workarounds for renewed and unjustified US sanctions. This has prompted more extreme measures from Washington – both against competitors like China and even allies across Europe.

Backfire: Setting a Dangerous Precedent 

If US sanctions against Iran are unjustified, then the arrest of those accused of violating them is also unjustified. It is one matter to impose unreasonable sanctions and attempt to enforce them among a nation’s own businesses and institutions – it is another to impose them upon other, sovereign nations.

The US and Canada – snatching a senior Chinese business executive – have set a dangerous precedent that will eventually backfire on the West. It is waning US economic, financial, and military power that has dragged out its confrontation with Iran for decades and allowed the rise of nations like China and the reemergence of nations like Russia upon the global stage.

While the US may calculate it can avoid serious consequences by snatching Chinese business executives today, this may not be the case in the near future as US power continues to wane globally.

By setting the precedent of snatching business leaders from other nations, the US and Canada have painted targets on the backs of their own corporate boards of directors, executives, bankers, and business leaders. They have done so in a game they are already losing, which prompted this latest episode of confrontation and provocation in the first place.

The hardliner approach Washington has taken not only endangers business between American enterprises still willing to work with companies and nations being targeted by America’s growing list of sanctioned nations and trade war opponents, it is now endangering their very safety as they travel the globe attempting to engage in business.

Even those corporations and financial institutions who shape US foreign policy including this hardliner approach may soon see themselves “snatched” after a precedent their own greed and provocations have set.

It is perhaps an irony that as the US attempts to tighten its grip on global hegemony, it finds itself increasingly isolated. Should the US fail to release Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou and make reparations for her mistreatment, a self-imposed travel ban in the form of fear of American executives being snatched and put on trial in foreign nations may emerge. Such is the fate of a nation leading a global order predicated on “might makes right” when it finds itself no longer “mightiest.”

While policymakers sell their agenda to the American public by citing a long and ever growing list of foreign enemies – in truth – Wall Street and Washington – along with their lust for power and wealth – constitute their own worst enemies.

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

Featured image is from NEO

Introduction

The US embraces a regime doomed to failure and threatens the world’s most dynamic economy. President Trump has lauded Brazil’s newly elected President Jair Bolsonaro and promises to promote close economic, political, social and cultural ties. In contrast the Trump regime is committed to dismantling China’s growth model, imposing harsh and pervasive sanctions, and promoting the division and fragmentation of greater China.

Washington’s choice of allies and enemies is based on a narrow conception of short-term advantage and strategic losses.

In this paper we will discuss the reasons why the US-Brazilian relation fits in with Washington’s pursuit for global domination and why Washington fears the dynamic growth and challenge of an independent and competitive China.

Brazil in Search of a Patron

Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro from day one, has announced a program to reverse  nearly a century of state directed economic growth.  He has announced the privatizationof the entirepublic sector, including the strategic finance, banking, minerals, infrastructure, transport, energy and manufacturing activities. Moreover, the sellout has prioritized the centrality of foreign multi-national corporations.  Previous authoritarian civilian and military regimes protected nationalized firms as part of tripartite alliances which included foreign, state and domestic private enterprises.

In contrast to previous elected civilian regimes which strived – not always successfully – to increase pensions, wages and living standards and recognized labor legislation, President Bolsonaro has promised to fire thousands of public sector employees, reduce pensions and increase retirement age while lowering salaries and wages in order to increase profits and lower costs to capitalists.

President Bolsonaro promises to reverse land reform, expell, arrest and assault peasant households in order to re-instate landlords and encourage foreign investors in their place. The deforestation of the Amazon and its handover to cattle barons and land speculators will include the seizure of millions of acres of indigenous land.

In foreign policy, the new Brazilian regime pledges to follow US policy on every strategic issue: Brazil supports Trump’s economic attacks on China, embraces Israel’s land grabs in the Middle East, (including moving its capital to Jerusalem), back US plots to boycott and policies to overthrow the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.  For the first time, Brazil has offered the Pentagon military bases, and military forces in any and all forthcoming invasions or wars.

The US celebration of President Bolsonaro’s gratuitous handovers of resources and wealth and surrender of sovereignty is celebrated in the pages of the Financial Times, the Washington Post and the New York Timeswho predict a period of growth, investment and recovery – if the regime has the ‘courage’ to impose its sellout.

As has occurred in numerous recent experiences with  right wing neo-liberal regime changes in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador,  financial page journalists and experts have allowed their ideological dogma to blind them to the eventual pitfalls and crises.

The Bolsonaro regime’s economic policies ignore the fact that they depend on agro-mineral exports to China and compete with US exports …Brazilian ago-business elites will resent the switch of trading partners..  They will oppose, defeat and undermine Bolsonaro’s anti-China campaign if he  dares to persists.

Foreign investors will takeover public enterprises but are not likely to expand production given the sharp reduction of employment, salaries and wages, as the consumer market declines.

Banks may make loans but demand high interest rates for high ‘risks’ especially as the government will face increased social opposition from trade unions and social movements, and greater violence from the militarization of society.

Bolsonaro lacks a majority in Congress who depend on the electoral support of millions of public employees, wage and salaried workers ,pensioners,and gender and racial  minorities. Congressional alliance will be difficult without corruption and compromises …Bolsonaro’s cabinet includes several key ministers who are under investigation for fraud and money laundering.  His anti-corruption rhetoric will evaporate in the face of judicial investigations and exposés.

Brazil is unlikely to provide any meaningful military forces for regional or international US military adventures.  The  military agreements with the US will carry little weight in the face of deep domestic turmoil.

Bolsanaro’s neo-liberal policies will deepen inequalities especially among the fifty million who have recently risen out of poverty.  The US embrace of Brazil will enrich Wall Street who will take the money and run, leaving the US facing the ire and rejection of their failed ally.

The US Confronts China

Unlike Brazil, China is not prepared to submit to economic plunder and to surrender its sovereignty.  China is following its own long-term strategy which focuses on developing the most advanced sectors of the economy – including cutting edge electronics and communication technology.

Chinese researchers already produce more patents and referred scientific articles than the US.  They graduate more engineers, advanced researchers and innovative scientists than the US based on high levels of state funding. China with an investment rate of over 44% in 2017, far surpasses the US. China has advanced, from low to high value added exports including electrical cars at competitive prices. For example, Chinese i-phones are outcompeting Apple in both price and quality.

China has opened its economy to US multi-national corporations in exchange for access to advanced technology, what Washington dubs as ‘forced’ seizures.

China has promoted multi-lateral trade and investment agreement ,including over sixty countries, in large-scale long-term infrastructure agreements throughout Asia and Africa.

Instead of following China’s economic example Washington whines of unfair trade, technological theft,  market restrictions and state constraints on private investments.

China offers long-term opportunities for Washington to upgrade its economic and social performance – if Washington recognized that Chinese competition is a positive incentive.   Instead of large-scale public investments in upgrading and promoting the export sector, Washington has turned to military threats, economic sanctions and tariffs which protect backward US industrial sectors.  Instead of negotiating for markets with an independent China, Washington embraces vassal regimes like Brazil’s under newly elected President Jair Bolsonaro who relies on US economic control and takeovers.

The US has an easy path to dominating Brazil for short-term gains – profits, markets and resources, but the Brazilian model is not viable or sustainable.  In contrast the US needs to negotiate, bargain and agree to reciprocal competitive agreements with China. The end result of cooperating with China would allow the US to learn and grow in a sustainable fashion.

Conclusion

Why has the US chosen the road of embracing a backward-looking Brazil rather than a future leader-nation?

Basically, the US is structurally embedded in a high militarized political system which is driven by the quest for world domination – ‘imperialism’. The US does not want tocompetewith an innovative China, it seeks to coerce China to dismantlethe institution, policies and priorities which make China great.

Washington demands that China surrender the relative autonomy of the state, increase US penetration of strategic sectors and rely on free market bankers and academics.  US economic policy is shaped by bankers,corrupt speculators and lobbyists for special regional interests, including regimes like Israel.  China’s economic policy is shaped by industrial interests, guided by the strategic goals of the central state authority capable and willing to arrest hundreds of top officials on the take.

The US cannot contain China’s upward trajectory with military encirclement – because Beijing’s economic strategy neutralizes US military bases and defeats tariff constraints through the diversification of major new trading deals. For example, China is negotiating with India to vastly increase imports of agricultural commodities, including rice, sugar, milk, soy beans meal and cotton.India currently has a major trade deficit with China especially machinery and industrial goods and is eager to replace US exporters  China has major trade and investment agreements throughout Southeast Asia, South Korea, Japan, Pakistan, Russia and Australia as well as Africa, Latin America (Brazil and Argentina) and the Middle East (Iran, Iraq and Israel).

The US has little leverage for ‘squeezing’ China, even in high tech sectors as China is less dependent on the US know-how.  Washington has secured agreements with China, increasing  exports of cars and entertainment; China can easily agree to enforce curbing so-called ‘property theft’ especially since it is no longer an important factor since most of China innovations are domestically created. Moreover, big business and Wall Street demand the Trump regime reach an open markets agreement with China and ignore its autarkic enemies.

Given China’s continued buoyant economy (6.5% GDP in 2018), its increased emphasis in expanding social services, the consumer market and easing of credit , Trump’s coercive tariff policies are doomed  and the military threats will only encourage China to expand and upgrade its military defense and superior space programs.

Whatever temporary and limited trade agreements emerge from US-China negotiations, the Trump regime will continue to pursue its  unipolar imperial agenda of embracing vassal regimes, like Brazil, and confronting China.

The future belongs to independent, innovative and competitive China not to vassal, militarized and submissive regimes like Brazil.

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The U.S. military state overthrows democratically-elected governments that it deems to be a threat to corporate interests.

“There is plenty of evidence that the United States is the most depraved and dangerous “meddler” in the affairs of other nations that history has ever known.”

Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer, but most of all he is an anti-imperialist and an author of three books. Kovalik’s first two books tackled the specific US war drives against Russia and Iran. His third installment, The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World, addresses the broad scope of US election meddling abroad. The book provides much needed political and ideological life support to an anti-war movement in the U.S that has been rendered nearly invisible to the naked eye.

The Plot to Control the World is as detailed in its critique of U.S. imperialism as it is concise. In just over 160 pages, Kovalik manages to analyze the various ways that the U.S. political and military apparatus interferes in the affairs of nations abroad to achieve global hegemony. He wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism, beginning appropriately with the U.S. imperialist occupations of Haiti and the Philippines at the end of the 19thcentury and beginning of the 20th. The U.S. would murder millions of Filipinos and send both nations into a spiral of violence, instability, and poverty that continues to this day. As Kovalik explains regarding Haiti, “While the specific, claimed justifications for [U.S.] intervention changed over time- e.g., opposing the end of slavery, enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, fighting Communism, fighting drugs, restoring law and order — the fact is that the interventions never stopped and the results for the Haitian people have been invariably disastrous.”

“Kovalik wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism.”

US expansionism has relied upon the ideology of American exceptionalism to silence criticism and weaken anti-war forces in the United States. American exceptionalism claims that the U.S. is a force for good in the world and completely justified in its wars of conquest draped in the cover of spreading “democracy and freedom” around the world. Kovalik challenges American exceptionalism by showing readers just how much damage that US expansionism and militarism has caused for nations and peoples in every region of the planet.Russia, Honduras, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Vietnam and many other nations have seen their societies devastated by U.S. “election meddling.” In Honduras, for example, a U.S.-backed coup of left-wing President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 made the nation one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, indigenous person, or trade-union/environmental activist. Thousands of Hondurans have been displaced, disappeared, or assassinated since the coup.

Another important aspect of The Plot to Control the World is its exposure of U.S hypocrisy surrounding the subject of “election meddling.” Since the end of the 2016 Presidential elections, the U.S. military, political, and media branches of the imperialist state have accused Russia of virtually implanting Donald Trump into the Oval office. The U.S. public has been fed a steady dose of anti-Russia talking points in an apparent effort on the part of the elites to beat the drums of war with the nuclear-armed state. No evidence has been presented to prove the conspiracy, as a recent National Public Radio (NPR) analysis states plainly. However, there is plenty of evidence that the United States is the most depraved and dangerous “meddler” in the affairs of other nations that history has ever known.

“The author shows readers just how much damage that US expansionism and militarism has caused for nations and peoples in every region of the planet.”

Just ask the much-vaunted Russians. Kovalik devotes an entire chapter to the 1996 Presidential election in Russia that re-elected the wildly unpopular Boris Yeltsin. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 began an era of “shock therapy” in the newly erected Russian Federation, a euphemism for the wholesale theft and transfer of socialized wealth into the hands of oligarchs and multinational corporations. Millions would perish in Russia from an early death due to the sudden loss of healthcare, housing, jobs, and other basic services. In 1996, President Bill Clinton ensured that Yeltsin maintained his near total grip on state power in Russia by providing the Russian President with a team of U.S. political consultants and over a billion dollars’ worth of IMF monies directly to the campaign. U.S. political and monetary support allowed Yeltsin to rig the election in his favor despite his dwindling popularity. Kovalik shows that if anyone should worry about election meddling, it should be the people of Russia and not the US elites that control Washington.

The Plot to Control the World takes readers into the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the CIA’s coup of revolutionary Patrice Lumumba continues to haunt the resource rich nation in the form of endless US-backed genocide. It travels to Guatemala, where the CIA overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz led to a U.S.-backed slaughter of a quarter million Guatemalans under the auspices of several military dictatorships. Kovalik shows us that the election of the fascistic Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil was no aberration, as the U.S. was primarily responsible for the rise in fascism in Brazilthrough its direct role in placing the nation under the control of a military dictatorship in 1964. The military dictatorship predated the CIA’s ouster of Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973, which handed the once socialist state to Augusto Pinochet’s murderous and repressive leadership.

“The mission is always the same: to destabilize independent nations that refuses to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.”

The entire skeleton of the U.S. military state is on full display in The Plot to Control the World. The U.S. military state utilizes an array of tools to overthrow democratically-elected governments that it deems to be a threat to corporate interests. These tools include the U.S. intelligence agencies, so-called Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as the National Endowment for Democracy, and the various branches of the military itself, to name a few. Regardless of the tools employed, the mission is always the same: to destabilize independent nations that refuses to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.Thus, while Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Vietnam may possess unique histories, their economic and political development has been shaped by the destructive interference of the United States.

Dan Kovalik is not likely to be reviewed in the New York Timesor other corporate outlets. That’s because Kovalik unapologetically speaks out against U.S. empire and all that upholds it. In doing so, Kovalik’s The Plot to Control the World walks in the footsteps of anti-imperialists such as Michael Parenti and William Blum. Blum, a former State Department employee, spent his post-State Department life providing humanity with knowledge about how US imperialism operates on the global stage. The New York Timeswasted no time in slandering Blum in their obituary . This showed the great lengths that the ruling elites will go to discredit, defame, and condemn critics of the military industrial complex and how important it is for those who oppose war let go of any expectation that the corporate media will cover Kovalik’s work or anyone else who speaks out against war.

“White supremacy is the biggest lie of all and is completely embedded in the ideology of American exceptionalism.”

With that said, one of the reasons that the left in the U.S. is so weak is because it has been numerically and politically isolated by the lies of the Empire. White supremacy is the biggest lie of all and is completely embedded in the ideology of American exceptionalism. Despite the ruthlessness of the austerity and incarceration regimes, many Americans continue to be convinced that the U.S. is the most exceptional nation in the world and do not balk when its military wages wars abroad at the expense of U.S. tax dollars and civilian lives. U.S. imperialism has made sure that Americans feel that they are special colonizers who see the victims of the U.S. military state as savages worthy of slaughter. The Plot to Control the World is based on a different premise: internationalism. The book links the struggle against US imperialism to the needs of the oppressed and working class living in the heart of empire, making it an essential read for those who are sick and tired of the prevailing narrative of American exceptionalism and want to be armed with knowledge that is essential toward changing it.

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Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the forthcoming book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News- From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing). He can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image is from BAR

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig said Sunday that President Donald Trump is a “national emergency.” 

Lessig’s comments came on the heels of Trump saying that he “may declare a national emergency” if Congress does not act to appropriate enough money for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Some congressional Democrats raised legality questions after Trump made the comment. Lessig was not pleased by the statement, either.

“Unfortunately, the reality is the statutes of the United States give the president an extraordinary amount of power, which we presumed would be exercised by a president with extraordinary judgment,” Lessig said. “And that is not the case right now so, constitutionally, he wouldn’t have the power to do what he claims he wants to do, but the question is, under these statutes whether he could create enough uncertainty to be able to dislodge the presumption, the very strong presumption, that building a wall on the border requires an act by Congress, which he’s just not going to get.”

“So what type of powers would he have if he were to declare a state of emergency?” the MSNBC anchor then asked.

“Well, the problem is that the man is using words that have no connection to reality. He says we have a national crisis, a national security crisis. A national emergency. I agree we have a national emergency,” Lessig added, “but the emergency is this president.”

“I think ultimately he has no constitutional authority to exercise the power to build this wall without Congress’ approval, and these statutes were certainly not written with the intent to give a man like Donald Trump the power that he’s now claiming but it’s not an efficient process to check him and that’s the uncertainty I think Congress now has to face,” he said.

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Jon Street is a news editor for Campus Reform. Six years ago, Jon cut his reporting teeth fresh out of college as an intern at Media Research Center’s CNSNews.com, where he interviewed multiple members of Congress and former presidential candidates. From there, he went on to complete a stint at Watchdog.org, where his exclusive, investigative work was picked up or cited by the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, National Review, and the Drudge Report, among others.

Featured image is from Campus Reform

I’m starting to wonder whether President Trump has any power over US foreign policy at all. Many people believe that the US president is just a figurehead, with actual foreign policy firmly in the hands of the deep state. Trump’s latest dramatic U-turn on pulling troops from Syria certainly feeds such theories.

When President Trump announced just a couple of weeks ago that the US was removing its troops from Syria and possibly reducing troops from Afghanistan, the neocons, the media, the military-industrial complex, and the left-wing “never-Trump” people were livid. They were silent when President Obama made the horrible decision to overthrow Assad in Syria and sent weapons to jihadists to do so. They never said a word when billions of dollars were committed to this immoral and dangerous “regime change” policy. They weren’t interested in the rule of law when President Obama thumbed his nose at Congress and sent troops into Syria.

But when President Trump declared the obvious – that ISIS was effectively defeated and that we had no business being in Syria – these above groups in unison declared that actually bringing US troops home was a “gift to Russia.” They said bringing US troops home would create instability in the regions they left. Well, is there any proof that occupation by US troops actually brings stability?

No sooner did President Trump announce our departure than his neocon advisors began walking his words back. First he had to endure a lunch with Sen. Lindsey Graham reading him the riot act, where, according to the Senator, Trump agreed to no timetables for departure. Then his National Security Advisor, John Bolton, and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, began to tell the world that President Trump’s statements on troop pullout were just empty words, not US policy.

While Syrian Christians newly liberated from the rule of US-backed extremists celebrated Christmas for the first time in years, John Bolton dusted off the old warning to Assad that the US would attack if he “again” gassed his people. With the Syrian president personally taking part in some of the Christmas celebrations, does anybody really believe he’d go back to his office and order a gas attack?

Bolton then claimed that the US would shift troops from Syria to Iraq to continue fighting ISIS and that the US fully backs Israeli airstrikes on Syrian territory. Did President Trump even agree to any of this?

Even worse, Secretary of State Pompeo is embarking on a Middle East tour where he will essentially tell leaders in the region that the US president is a liar. According to one State Department official quoted in a report on Sunday, Pompeo’s message to the Middle East will be, “Despite reports to the contrary and false narratives surrounding the Syria decision, we are not going anywhere. The secretary will reinforce that commitment to the region and our partners.”

Calling the US president’s actual words on Syria “false narratives”? How is this not insubordination?

Will President Trump stand by and watch this coup taking place under his nose? Does he realize how his credibility suffers when he boldly announces a US withdrawal and the does a U-turn days later? Has he noticed recent polls showing that the majority of the American people agree with him? Why is he so intimidated by the neocons?

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It starts with a presumption, makes its way through a discussion, and becomes a set, moulded stereotype: Africa is the continent of tin pot dictatorships, unstable leaderships, and coups.  Latin America, attuned to brigandage and frontier mentalities, is not far behind.  Such instances lend themselves to the inevitable opportunity to exploit the exception.  Gabon, ruled by the same family without interruption since 1967, is being stated as a possible example.

The news so far, if one dares trust it, suggests that a coup was put down in the African state with the loss of two lives.  Seven of the plotters were captured a mere five hours after they seized a radio station, during which Lieutenant Kelly Ondo Obiang broadcast a message claiming that President Ali Bongo’s New Year’s Eve message “reinforced doubts about the president’s ability to continue to carry out of the responsibilities of his office.”  Bongo, for his part, had seemed indisposed, suffering a stroke in October and slurring his words in a speech during a December 31 television appearance. 

As with other attempted coups, the plotters portrayed themselves as up-market planners in the Brutus mould.  They were killing Caesar to save Rome.  In this case, the men of the Patriotic Movement of the Defence and Security Forces of Gabon were keen to “restore democracy”.  The attempt was put down with some speed.  “The situation is under control,” came a government statement some hours after security forces regained control of the RTG state broadcasting headquarters.  Guy-Betrand Mapangou, true to the sort of form shown by a regime unmoved, insisted that, “The government is in place.  The institutions are in place.” 

The coup fascination may not be healthy but is nonetheless fascinatingly morbid.  Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne from the University of Central Florida and University of Kentucky cannot get enough of the business, and have compiled a register of failure.  These political scientists insist on defining coups as “illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive”.  But having to presumably stake some exceptional view to the field, the authors insist that those who go through with a coup have power for at least seven days.  (Why not six or eight?)

This cottage industry invariably produces much smoke but a conspicuous lack of fire.  In 2016, with the failed coup in Turkey unfolding, James McCarthy, writing for Wales Online, insisted on a guidebook approach, drawing from Thyne and Powell’s research.  They, according to McCarthy, “found there were 457 coup attempts between 1950 and 2010.  Of those, 227 were successful and 230 failed.”  Invariably, the Americas and Africa feature as the prominent zones of coups.

The BBC has felt free to run with a map featuring African states “with the highest number of coups since 1952,” a kind of morbid horror show of instability.  Sudan is a big league player in this regard with 14, followed by other states which seem to be in competition with each other (Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Benin and Nigeria come in with eight; Sierra Leone and Ghana sport ten).

Unmentioned in the show was the number of times conspirators, cabals and groups have been encouraged, courtesy of external powers, to sabotage fledgling democratic regimes and back counter-revolutionary agents.  As important as the coup plotters are the coup backers, often to be found in Washington and European policy planning departments and company boardrooms.  The story of stuttered, mutated revolutions in Africa and Latin America is very much one of externally directed coups as much as failed local experiments.   

The issue, as if it matters much, about whether a coup is, or is not happening, is a constant theme.  According to Powell,

“Coup leaders almost invariably deny their action was a coup in an effort to appear legitimate.”

This is banally leaden as an observation.  All coups must, by definition, be asserted as acts of dissimulation, and not savage, all extirpating revolutions.  To merely depose a leadership is, by definition, conservative.  In a modern state, decapitation might create some initial chaos but leaves the structure, for the most part, intact.  Coups often have the effect of shoring up the junta, in whatever form it takes.

The field of coup gazing also has a moral edge.  There are coups with supposedly good import, and those that are not.  Portugal’s “Carnation Revolution” ending the seemingly interminable rule of António de Oliveira Salazar, is cited as one example.  A coup might engender fertile grounds for a democratic movement, or suffer entropic decline before authoritarian reassertion.  A good coup, speculated the Washington Post, took place in Burkina Faso in 2015, with the end of Blaise Compaoré’s rule.  The same paper does note the rather banal qualifier: that “policymakers and academics should not get too excited about the allegedly positive consequences of coups in Africa.”  African armies, for instance, might propel democratic elections; they might just as well remain in power. 

Scholars such as Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way argue that multiparty elections in the aftermath of change can just be a front.  Democratic talk can be so much babble before manipulating strongmen.  “Competitive authoritarian regimes,” argue the authors, can entrench themselves.  All this seems beside the point in Gabon, a distant murmur to the academic discourse and policy ponderings that dazzle a good number of analysts.  The obvious point tends to be same: coups tend to be rooted in evolutionary orthodoxy rather than earth shattering revolution.  They are also often the work of unseen hands behind unstable thrones.  Identify those hands, and you may well have some answers. 

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

The prospective American peace deal, dubbed as the “deal of the century”, is to include that $250 billion be paid by Arab states in compensation for Jewish property left behind after the creation of Israel, Al-Wattan Voice said yesterday.

Reporting Israeli media, the news site said that the occupation government had valued Jewish property in the Arab states of Libya and Tunis to be worth $50 billion, while Jewish property in the entire region to be $250 billion.

According to Al-Wattan Voice, talling the cost of losses began one and half a years ago secretly in Morocco, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, in addition to Iran.

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The Jewish state gives chutzpah new meaning. It seeks $250 billion from seven Arab states and Iran in connection to its theft of historic Palestine – one of history’s great crimes.

It took 78% in 1948, the Palestinian Nakba, the remainder in June 1967, including the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, the UN-declared international city, illegally occupied by Israel, illegally declared its exclusive capital.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, set the tone during the Nakba for what followed, saying “(e)very attack has to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion” – forcefully eliminating resistance, assuring Israeli control over historic Palestine.

According to Israeli Hadashot TV news, Israel demands Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria Tunisia and Yemen correct what it calls a “historic injustice” – a colossal perversion of truth.

It’s reinventing history, blaming countries it attacked and other regional ones for its illegal 1948 and 1967 land grabs – demanding they compensate Jews for the loss of property, assets and other possessions they left behind in Arab countries because of war the Jewish state waged against neighboring ones.

What Ilan Pappe described as “the ethnic cleaning of Palestine in 1948,” Edward Said called its “holocaust,” saying:

“Every human calamity is different, but there is value in seeing analogies and perhaps hidden similarities.” He called Nazi extermination “the lowest point of (Jewish) collective existence.”

Occupied Palestinians “are as powerless as Jews were” under Hitler, devastated by “power used for evil purposes” subjugating them, denying their fundamental rights – compensation due to THEM from the Jewish state, NOT the other way around, NOT from countries harmed by Israeli high crimes, ongoing endlessly with full support and encouragement from the US and West.

Israel’s claim for $250 billion in compensation from other countries would be laughable if the high crimes leading to its creation and throughout its existence weren’t so serious – as pure evil as what Nazis did to Jews.

The Nakba was one of history’s great crimes, state terror on a massive scale against an entire population.

Israel’s 1948 war without mercy depopulated Palestinian cities, towns and villages, massacring innocent victims, raping their women, committing other atrocities – notably burning, bulldozing, blowing up, or stealing homes, property and other possessions, dispossessing around 800,000 Palestinians, preventing them from returning home.

Israel’s 1967 six-day war was planned “16 years in advance,” according to IDF general Mordechai Hod, saying “(w)e lived with the plan. We slept on the plan. We ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it.”

It was all about stealing the remaining 22% of historic Palestine not taken in 1948, including East Jerusalem.

It had nothing to do with self-defense to avoid annihilation, the falsified claim at the time – later debunked by PM Menachem Begin and IDF generals, admitting Israel faced no threats from Arab states.

General Haim Barlev later said

“(w)e were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility.”

The world community did nothing to intervene against Israeli aggression, nor at any time throughout the Jewish state’s existence.

Militarism, institutionalized racism, and apartheid rule define the state of Israel, its young (male and female) children indoctrinated to be warriors.

Militarized education begins in kindergarten, at home, and in all other aspects of society – the line between military and civil society blurred.

Children are taught to believe Palestinians must be subjugated, violence against them is OK, along with destroying their property and killing them – notions ingrained in developing minds before they’re able to understand how they’re manipulated.

They’re taught to believe Arabs are inferior and Palestinians are enemies, military service essential, wars and other forms of violence natural, peace unattainable.

The history of the Jewish state isn’t pretty. Over half a century of illegal occupation continues. Israel aims to steal all valued parts of Judea and Samaria.

Its plan calls for confining Palestinians in isolated cantons on worthless scrubland, militarized rule controlling virtually all aspects of their lives, endless war against them continuing without declaring it.

The world community remains dismissive about what’s been going on for decades. The lives, rights and welfare of millions of Palestinians don’t matter.

Israeli law demands any no-peace/peace deal with Palestinians must compensate the Jewish exodus from Arab countries as explained above.

Palestinians are the aggrieved, not Jews. They warrant major compensation for Israel’s theft of their homeland, private property, and other possessions – along with damages for loss of their fundamental rights, illegal occupation, and brutalized treatment.

For over half a century, Palestinians have endured institutionalized Israeli persecution with no power over their daily lives, along with virtually every imaginable form of indignity.

Living under brutalizing occupation, they face daily state terror, economic strangulation, collective punishment, denial of their fundamental rights affirmed under international law, arrest and imprisonment without just cause, torture, assassinations, bulldozing of their home, crops and orchards, along with daily assaults on their dignity for being Arabs in a Jewish state.

With no power to resist, they’re denied redress in international tribunals dismissive of their rights. Endless misery defines their daily lives.

THEY deserve compensation for over half a century of conflict, illegal occupation, dispossession, and forever immiseration, no end of it in sight – no justice unless and until their suffering ends, their fundamental rights restored.

The history of Occupied Palestine is the triumph of wrong over right, a festering injustice, an entire people harmed, no end to their suffering in sight, no interest in their rights and welfare by the world community.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli troops during a protest to show solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, Nabi Saleh, West Bank, April 21, 2017. (Flash90)

They set out early in the morning, men with axes, boys in tow and, for some, the odd girl champing at the bit.  The woods are some way from Bujanovac, but these columns of individuals resembled statues who have moved off their plinths, heading to the woods that call them with mesmerising force.  The groves seem to speak in this part of Europe, where the Serbs still commune with a spirit of past.  Industrialisation has yet to kill off this element, yet to estrange the citizens from the south from their magical ends. 

The woods have, historically, served as links between the finitely mortal and timeless supernatural, a manifestation with roots in the earth, deeply grown and burrowed, and leaves in the canopy, a link pointing to the heavens.  The Norse peoples worshiped Yggdrasil, a great, worldly ash tree cosmically sustaining the mortal and immortal, whatever the form.   

For the Slavs, the tree remains all central and bearing, the fecund creature that holds the seeds of all, the progenitor for the verdant world.  To down such a tree, or, in the tradition of the badnjak, to remove a sampling of oak covered in brown gold leafing, would require ceremonial preliminaries.  And so this cautionary note has survived, more in the context of communal gathering and pursuit, as it does on this day, the determined axemen of the village, fortified by wine and local brandy, making their way as if in a deep trance, towards the woods that call them with mesmerising calls.  There is a slow motion carnival feel to this, and this is topped by a horse plumed in red baubles, heading with a look of obedience, to the show.  To the woods, and there, you shall find yourself with a branch’s severance, a small tree’s beheading.

With the necessary badnjak samples gathered, religious authority is consulted.  At the local church in the village of Rakovac in the Preševo Valley, an area awash with mineral goodness from its waters, the priest is buzzing and busy, a man deluged with attention.  He is parachuted in to perform ceremonial duties after his previous counterpart committed adultery and fled for Austria with his new bride.  There, he keeps up a long Yugoslav mission of feeding other economies with the Gastarbeiter.    

Contributions are made as each oak tree is blessed with a dip and a splash, and the icon kissed, all taking place in the church yard and a Christmas freeze.  The line of oak carrying devotees forms like a living forest, moving slowly through snow and frozen mud.  The fire in the church yard burns as welcome and promise, and here, the Christian message is tagged to the pagan, a feat of neat historical reconstruction: the heat brought from burning the badnjak suggests the three shepherds warming the stable of Jesus’s birth. 

The music commences, wind meeting brass, the clarinet engaging the trumpet.  Vocal chords are exercised.  The procession to the village square commences with a noisy enthusiasm that drowns out the doubts of despair and dark thoughts.  Solemn celebration thatches with defiance. 

At the village gathering, evident hierarchies seem to take shape.  The in-crowd is to be found in proximity to the brandy, or rakija, cooking away in a capacious stove overseen by two men whose teeth have seen better days.  The outers, hugging a local convenience shop like frozen sparrows, gaze on with a slightly menacing look, though this is merely temporary and marked more by curiosity than anything else.  They bide their time and will, when the moment comes, commit to the ring dance that is bound to eventuate. 

There are old men, craggily faced and withered with memories and young men with short hair, some even shaved, with suspicions of the new age.  NATO, throbs the sentiment in this crowd, cannot be trusted over the mischief in Kosovo (the recent moves by that confused political entity to create its own army in defiance of the stationed troops from the alliance have released fears).  History remains a set of betrayals, missteps and misunderstandings, a vice that seemingly clamps on this region.  The next disaster is deemed as inevitable as the next tummy upset. 

The bonfire gathers momentum in the village centre, the primeval lusty flame that lights hope and shreds fears.  It is all fire in this region: fire in the woodstove that delivers the distinctly flavoured food of immense quantity while warming houses; fire in the church yard that acts like a beacon for the faithful; fire to dance around; fire as life.  The inferno is sovereign, governs the soul, dictates the process of communing.  It is elemental.  To gaze at this promethean flame in the home stove or in the village square as it rises to consume is to be alive and feel the veins warmed, to embrace something atavistic and deep; to know that you can endure what is to come despite the calamities that might be faced and, truth be known, to deny.

Children release eardrum creasing crackers with irritating enthusiasm, some casting them into the mother flame; flare guns are released, usually by those yet to reach puberty.  (Where the gun speaks, whatever form it takes, the conversation may prove violent.) Earlier in the day, live guns were fired, a stutter in the wintry air softened by the snow-capped earth and the vegetation creamy white from heavy falls.  While celebratory, these have a sinister undertone, a promise from Serbs to counterparts – the Albanians, for the most part – that they are up for a fight in the demographic and political struggle for this region. 

The rakija that heats in the stove overlooking the small centre in Rakovac – one can hardly call it a square, given the misshapen nature – is cooked for the masses, and the men who come to it are filled with its manna-giving properties.  The warming liquid is distributed in plastic cups, and are filled to their dripping brims.  The set of dances start to breakout, vigorous, energetic, even manic.   The gyration and jangling around the fire signals pagan tribute and affirmed living, for it is here, in this dance around the flames, that reassurance comes in abundance.  Then, a man of about forty raises a flaming sample of fireworks, an all glorious flare.  The entire audience is illuminated, faces in rapture. The fire, alive from the oak, continues to feed.

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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]

January the 1st 2019 marked the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Back in December 1958 the city of Santa Clara fell to the combined forces of Che Guevara, Cienfuegos, and Revolutionary Directorate (RD) rebels led by Comandantes Rolando Cubela, Juan (“El Mejicano”) Abrahantes, and William Alexander Morgan. Upon hearing the news of the defeat of his forces Batista left Cuba and flew to the Dominican Republic on 1 January 1959.

Since then the Cuban people have struggled to maintain their independence as allies came and went and enemies tried to reverse the revolution. In recent years President Obama attempted to normalise relations between Cuba and the United States (known as the Cuban Thaw) by reducing U.S. travel and remittances restrictions and reopening the U.S. embassy in Havana and the Cuban embassy in Washington. Obama even became the first U.S. President to visit Cuba since 1928.

However, since the election of Donald Trump many of these gains have been reversed.

Havana (October, 2018)

In November 2018 the US government reversed the positive changes brought in by Obama. The Trump government will disallow most individual visits and (as before Obama’s changes) Americans will have to travel in groups licensed for specific purposes. Most importantly Americans will be barred from staying in state-owned hotels, and frequenting state-owned restaurants and stores. The plan seems to be to starve the government of revenue while at the same time encouraging the growth of the private sector e.g. private accommodation and restaurants.

Havana (October, 2018)

A recent article noted:

“The Trump administration is adding new names to a list of Cuban tourist attractions that Americans are barred from visiting. The 26 names range from the new five-star Iberostar Grand Packard and Paseo del Prado hotels in Old Havana to modest shopping centers in beachside resorts far from the capital. All are barred because they are owned by Cuba’s military business conglomerate, GAESA.”

Santa Clara (October, 2018) Che Guevara Mausoleum

Adding to these difficulties is the existence of two operating currencies: the Cuban peso (CUP) and the Cuban convertible peso (CUC). The CUC is pegged to the dollar and is worth 25 times more than the CUP. One Cuban convertible peso (CUC) is about one Euro. Most Cuban citizens are paid in CUP but consumer goods are priced in CUC. While it was announced a few years ago that this system was going to end, it is still going strong.

Havana (October, 2018)

Disparity

It is a system that could cause major problems for the government. While most citizens are paid in CUP – 1000-2000 pesos (40-80 Euros) per month –  those working in the tourism sector can earn CUC. One can earn 30 CUC (30 Euros) driving a tourist from the airport to the centre of Old Havana or 20 CUC (20 Euros) a night in a private Airbnb room letting.  The local bars, restaurants and even supermarkets all use CUC. Cigar factory workers are paid in CUP, yet one Cohiba cigar could cost 10 CUC in the factory shop. On my recent trip there I asked the bar and restaurant staff in Havana for CUP notes (the three peso note carries a picture of Che Guevara) only to find them asking all their workmates if they had any CUP and eventually arriving back triumphantly with the requested notes and handing them to me as a gift, demonstrating the growing gap in the value of the two currencies.

Havana (October, 2018)

Damning evidence indicates he warrants indictment for bribery, breach of trust and fraud.

They’re civil crimes, minor ones compared to major wrongdoing he’s unaccountable for – namely, waging undeclared war on Palestinians throughout his tenure as prime minister.

Investigations into his wrongdoing showed he accepted about $1.1 million in illicit gifts from accused French fraudster Arnaud Mimran, Israeli billionaire Arnon Milchan and others.

He faces potential charges in so-called Cases 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 – the first on suspicion of inappropriately or illegally receiving lavish gifts from wealthy supporters, amounting to possible bribery.

The second case involves getting caught red-handed on tape, negotiating a quid pro quo with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes for more favorable broadsheet coverage in return for legislation prohibiting distribution of the free daily Israel Hayom, YA’s main competitor, owned by Netanyahu supporter Sheldon Adelson.

Case 4,000 alleges police suspect Walla news owner/controlling shareholder of Bezeq telecommunications company Shaul Elovitch ordered favorable coverage of Netanyahu on his news site in return for benefits arranged for Bezeq.

Walla news CEO Ilan Yeshua said he faced intense pressure to suppress negative news about Netanyahu, along with reporting positively about his wife Sara.

Last June, she was indicted on charges of systematic fraud, involving hundreds of thousands of shekels, illegally spent for lavish meals at the Netanyahu residence – courtesy of Israeli taxpayers.

She ordered residence staff to conceal violations of rules – so her actions “wo(uldn’t) be found out by the treasury and the office manager.” She falsely claimed unawareness of rules she breached.

She’s charged with using public funds for personal use, fraud and breach of trust. It runs in the Netanyahu crime family.

All along, the prime minister rejected accusations against him, claiming he did nothing wrong, despite evidence indicating otherwise.

He should have been indicted, prosecuted, and held accountable long ago. He’s a regional menace to Jews and non-Jews alike.

Claiming he had an important announcement to make on Monday, he used television airtime given him to lash out against police and Israel’s justice ministry, claiming the police probe into his actions was improperly conducted, accusing justice ministry officials of suppressing exculpatory facts.

A ministry spokesman responded, saying its probe was “conducted professionally and thoroughly. It is inappropriate for law enforcement authorities to relate to the investigative activities and the testimonies in the media, certainly not at this stage.”

On live television, making a spectacle of himself, he demanded the right to confront witnesses against him, expressing willingness to do it live on air.

“What are they afraid of? I’m not afraid, I have nothing to lose,” he roared, adding: “Let the public see everything, hear everything.”

A senior police official called his demand inappropriate, unrelated to the investigation into his affairs, adding:

“We are not talking about a specific incident at a given time, in a given place, or something similar to someone’s word versus somebody else’s word. A confrontation would not have changed the general picture in this case.”

Israeli attorney general Avichai Mandelblit should have indicted him long ago. Despite strong evidence against him, it’s unclear what he’ll do, especially with early elections called for April 9.

One thing has nothing to do with the other. Netanyahu announced the April date, believing he’ll be reelected, indicating a mandate to govern if things turns out this way, despite possible charges against him, and as a diversionary tactic to shift attention to the political process.

He could end up losing twice over, though nothing is sure at this point. It’s Mandelblit’s call. Acting before April risks being accused of influencing the election’s outcome.

A further delay could draw criticism for withholding vital information from voters. Netanyahu’s top aides turned state’s witnesses against him.

Labor Party chairman Avi Gabbay slammed him for using Israel’s Channel 10 as a platform for attacking the country’s law enforcement authorities, adding:

“Instead of dealing with the security of the residents of the south, the cost of living, or the collapse of the health system, Netanyahu is busy rescuing himself from the investigations.”

He called on leaders of other parties to refuse to be part of his coalition if Likud wins the largest number of Knesset seats. No single party in Israeli history ever won majority control, coalition partners needed to govern.

On Monday, Haaretz editors accused him of “go(ing) from bad to worse (for) attack(ing) the judicial system, lest the attorney general dare issue his decision on whether to prosecute him before the election.”

He fears indictment – subject to a hearing, giving him a chance to counter charges against him. “Claiming there will be nothing because there was nothing” isn’t good enough.

Nor is saying

“(y)ou don’t start a hearing before the elections if it isn’t completed before the elections.”

Former Supreme Court Justice Eliahu Mazza slammed him, saying

“(i)n my entire career I don’t recall such talk against the law enforcement authorities by anyone who wasn’t the head of a crime organization.”

Are his days in power numbered? Will he be indicted, damning evidence supporting charges against him? If charged, convicted, and sentenced will he avoid prison time?

He’s holding on for dear life to avoid prosecution and remain in office. Whatever unfolds ahead, he’ll remain unaccountable for apartheid ruthlessness, far more serious offenses than civil wrongdoing.

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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.

No Palácio de Vidro das Nações Unidas, em Nova York, há uma escultura de metal intitulada “O Bem Derrota o Mal”, representando São Jorge que trespassa um dragão com a sua lança. Foi doada pela URSS, em 1990, para celebrar o Tratado INF, estipulado com os Estados Unidos, em 1987, que eliminava os mísseis nucleares de curto e médio alcance (entre 500 e 5500 km) baseados em terra. O corpo do dragão é feito, de facto e simbolicamente, com pedaços de mísseis balísticos norte-americanos Pershing II (os primeiros instalados na Alemanha Ocidental) e de SS-20 soviéticos (os primeiros criados na URSS).

Mas, agora, o dragão nuclear, que na escultura está representado a agonizar, está a voltar à vida. Graças à Itália e, também, a outros países da União Europeia que, na Assembleia Geral das Nações Unidas, votaram contra a resolução apresentada pela Rússia sobre a “Preservação e cumprimento do Tratado INF”, rejeitada por 46 votos contra 43 e 78 abstenções. A União Europeia – da qual 21 dos 27 membros, fazem parte da NATO (como faz parte, a Grã-Bretanha, de saída da União Europeia) – está totalmente enfileirada com a posição da NATO, que, por sua vez, está totalmente alinhada com a do Estados Unidos.

Antes, a Administração Obama e, a seguir, a Administração Trump, acusaram a Rússia, sem nenhuma prova, de ter experimentado um míssil do tipo proibido e anunciaram a sua intenção de se retirar do Tratado INF. Simultaneamente, lançaram um programa para instalar, de novo, na Europa, mísseis nucleares apontados contra a Rússia, que também seriam colocados na região da Ásia-Pacífico, contra a China. O representante russo na ONU alertou que “isto constitui o início de uma corrida armamentista para todos os efeitos”. Por outras palavras, advertiu que, se os Estados Unidos instalassem, de novo, na Europa, mísseis nucleares orientados para a Rússia (como também estavam os mísseis de cruzeiro instalados em Comiso, na década de oitenta), a Rússia instalaria no seu território, outra vez, mísseis análogos apontados aos alvos na Europa (mas que não são capazes de alcançar os Estados Unidos).

Ignorando tudo isto, o representante da União Europeia na ONU, acusou a Rússia de minar o Tratado INF e anunciou o voto contra de todos os países da UE, porque “a resolução apresentada pela Rússia desvia do assunto que se está a discutir.” Portanto, em substância, a União Europeia deu luz verde à possível instalação de novos mísseis nucleares USA na Europa, incluindo na Itália.

Numa questão de tamanha importância, o Governo Conte, renunciando – como os anteriores – a exercer a soberania nacional, enfileirou-se com a União Europeia, que por sua vez, se alinhou com a NATO, sob comando USA. E da totalidade do arco político, não se ergueu uma única voz a pedir que fosse o Parlamento a decidir como votar na ONU. Nem no Parlamento se ergue nenhuma voz a exigir que a Itália observe o Tratado de Não-Proliferação, impondo aos USA a retirada do nosso território nacional, das bombas nucleares B61, e de não instalar, a partir da primeira metade de 2020, a nova e ainda mais perigosa B61-12. Assim, é novamente violado o princípio constitucional fundamental de que “a soberania pertence ao povo”. E, visto que o aparelho político-mediático mantém os italianos deliberadamente no escuro sobre estas questões de importância vital, é violado o direito à informação, no sentido não só de liberdade de informar, mas do direito de ser informado.

Ou se faz agora ou amanhã não haverá tempo para decidir: um míssil balístico de alcance intermédio, para atingir e destruir o alvo com a sua ogiva nuclear, necessita de 6 a 11 minutos.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 8 de Janeiro de 2019

UN Foto/Milton Grant

VIDEO (PandoraTV) :

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) applauds the Canadian media’s scrutiny of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) – Canada. On Friday, the CBC’s Evan Dyer published a thorough article exposing how the JNF-Canada is in contravention of both Canadian and international law through its financial support of the Israeli military and projects that dispossess Palestinians of their land. The JNF-Canada’s illicit activities have been an open secret for years, and CJPME is pleased to see mainstream Canadian media discussing the problem.

As Dyer points out in his article, Independent Jewish Voices Canada supporters launched a formal complaint against the JNF-Canada to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) in 2017. The complaint recognized the JNF used charitable donations to support a foreign military, in violation of Canada’s tax regulations for charities. The complaint furthermore highlighted the JNF’s complicity in Israel’s settler-colonial projects, which official Canadian foreign policy opposes and the UN has called a “flagrant violation” of international law (Dec. 2016). Indeed, the CRA states that an organization cannot be charitable if its activities run counter to public policy. CJPME points out that one of the complainants is Palestinian-Canadian Dr. Ismail Zayid, whose village was deliberately demolished and dispossessed by Israel in 1967 and has since been transformed by the JNF into “Canada Park” – a park that is located on occupied Palestinian territory.

Charity Intelligence – a Canadian not-for-profit organization – has been highly critical of the JNF’s financial management, accusing the organization of having zero financial transparency or accountability measures in place. CJPME recognizes that most supporters of the JNF likely do not assume their donations will be rerouted to fund a foreign military or used to advance an illegal military occupation. CJPME President Thomas Woodley commented,

“Canadians expect their donations to be used toward truly charitable endeavors, not toward the perpetuation of human suffering.”

For years, CJPME has called attention to the JNF-Canada’s involvement in Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians. The CBC’s exposé also demonstrates that numerous politicians from different governments have exhibited support for the JNF without giving proper scrutiny to the organization’s record. CJPME calls on Canadian politicians to cease support for JNF activities until the organization demonstrates accountability and a willingness to respect Canadian and international law.

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Presso il Palazzo di Vetro delle Nazioni Unite, a New York,  c’è una scultura metallica intitolata «il Bene sconfigge il Male», raffigurante San Giorgio che trafigge un drago con la sua lancia. Fu donata dall’Urss nel 1990 per celebrare il Trattato INF stipulato con gli Usa nel 1987, che eliminava i missili nucleari a gittata corta e intermedia (tra 500 e 5500 km) con base a terra. Il corpo del drago è infatti realizzato, simbolicamente, con pezzi di missili balistici statunitensi Pershing II (prima schierati in Germania Occidentale) e SS-20 sovietici (prima schierati in Urss).

Ora però il drago nucleare, che nella scultura è raffigurato agonizzante, sta tornando in vita. Grazie anche all’Italia e agli altri paesi dell’Unione europea che, all’Assemblea Generale delle Nazioni Unite, hanno votato contro  la risoluzione presentata dalla Russia sulla «Preservazione e osservanza del Trattato INF», respinta con 46 voti contro 43 e 78 astensioni.

L‘Unione europea – di cui 21 dei 27 membri fanno parte della NATO (come ne fa parte la Gran Bretagna in uscita dalla UE) – si è così totalmente uniformata alla posizione della NATO, che a sua volta si è totalmente uniformata a quella degli Stati uniti.

Prima l’amministrazione Obama, quindi l’amministrazione Trump hanno accusato la Russia, senza alcuna prova, di aver sperimentato un missile della categoria proibita e hanno annunciato l’intenzione di ritirarsi dal Trattato INF. Hanno contemporaneamente avviato un programma mirante a installare di nuovo in Europa contro la Russia missili nucleari, che sarebbero schierati anche nella regione Asia-Pacifico contro la Cina. Il rappresentante russo all’ONU ha avvertito che «ciò costituisce l’inizio di una corsa agli armamenti a tutti gli effetti». In altre parole ha avvertito che, se gli Usa installassero di nuovo in Europa missili nucleari puntati sulla Russia (come erano anche i cruise schierati a Comiso negli anni Ottanta), la Russia installerebbe di nuovo sul proprio territorio missili analoghi puntati su obiettivi in Europa (ma non in grado di raggiungere gli Stati uniti).

Ignorando tutto questo, il rappresentante Ue all’ONU ha accusato la Russia di minare il Trattato INF e ha annunciato il voto contrario di tutti i paesi dell’Unione perché «la risoluzione presentata dalla Russia devia dalla questione che si sta discutendo». Nella sostanza, quindi, l’Unione europea ha dato luce verde alla possibile installazione di nuovi missili nucleari Usa in Europa, Italia compresa.

Su una questione di tale importanza, il governo Conte, rinunciando come i precedenti a esercitare la sovranità nazionale, si è accodato alla UE che a sua volta si è accodata alla NATO sotto comando Usa. E dall’intero arco politico non si è levata una voce per richiedere che fosse il Parlamento a decidere come votare all’Onu.Né in Parlamento si leva alcuna voce per richiedere che l’Italia osservi il Trattato di non-proliferazione,imponendo agli Usa di rimuovere dal nostro territorio nazionale le bombe nucleari B61 e di non installarvi, a partire dalla prima metà del 2020, le nuove e ancora più pericolose B61-12. Viene così di nuovo violato il fondamentale principio costituzionale che «la sovranità appartiene al popolo». E poiché l’apparato politico-mediatico tiene gli italiani volutamente all’oscuro su tali questioni di vitale importanza, viene violato il diritto all’informazione, nel senso non solo di libertà di informare ma di diritto ad essere informati.

O si fa ora o domani non ci sarà tempo per decidere: un missile balistico a raggio intermedio, per raggiungere e distruggere l’obiettivo con la sua testata nucleare, impiega 6-11 minuti.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 8 gennaio 2019

ONU Foto / Milton Grant

VIDEO (PandoraTV) :

There were not 312,000 new jobs created in December.

Nevermind. Where does the Bureau of Labor Statistics tell us the jobs are.

Health care and social assistance together with leisure and hospitality account for 36% of the new jobs, with 40,000 new waitresses and bartenders. Retail trade (possible as December is the Christmas month) and administrative and waste services account for 16%. Over half of the new jobs are concentrated in lowly paid and part time sectors.

What about the jobs that people who go to college expect to get? A lot of MBAs are awarded. What of their prospects? In December 400 were hired for management of companies and enterprises. What about lawyers? Employment in legal services declined by 600 jobs. 1,400 people found jobs in architectural and engineering services. 2,200 in computer systems design and related services. These job categories accounted for 1% of the new jobs.

You get the picture. Even if the jobs the BLS claims are actually there, they are not the kind of jobs that bring upward mobility and encourage robust consumer spending. Today, short on discretionary income, most Americans have to use debt to finance their spending. An economy based on debt is a financialized economy.

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

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

“One also knows from his letters that nothing appeared more sacred to Van Gogh than work.” – John Berger, “Vincent Van Gogh,” Portraits

Ever since I was a young boy, I have wondered why people do the kinds of work they do.  I sensed early on that the economic system was a labyrinthine trap devised to imprison people in work they hated but needed for survival.  It seemed like common sense to a child when you simply looked and listened to the adults around you.  Karl Marx wasn’t necessary for understanding the nature of alienated labor; hearing adults declaim “Thank God It’s Friday” spoke volumes.

In my Bronx working class neighborhood I saw people streaming to the subway in the mornings for their rides “into the city” and their forlorn trundles home in the evenings. It depressed me.  Yet I knew the goal was to “make it” and move away as one moved “up,” something that many did.  I wondered why, when some people had options, they rarely considered the moral nature of the jobs they pursued.  And why did they not also consider the cost in life (time) lost in their occupations?  Were money, status, and security the deciding factors in their choices?  Was living reserved for weekends and vacations?

I gradually realized that some people, by dint of family encouragement and schooling, had opportunities that others never received.  For the unlucky ones, work would remain a life of toil and woe in which the search for meaning in their jobs was often elusive.  Studs Terkel, in the introduction to his wonderful book of interviews, Working: People Talk About What They Do all Day and How They Feel About What They Do, puts it this way:

This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence – to the spirit as well as to the body.  It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around.  It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.

Those words were confirmed for me when in the summer between high school and college I got a job through a relative’s auspices as a clerk for General Motors in Manhattan.  I dreaded taking it for the thought of being cooped up for the first time in an office building while a summer of my youth passed me by, but the money was too good to turn down (always the bait), and I wanted to save as much as possible for college spending money.  So I bought a summer suit and joined the long line of trudgers going to and fro, down and up and out of the underground, adjusting our eyes to the darkness and light.

It was a summer from hell. My boredom was so intense it felt like solitary confinement.  How, I kept wondering, can people do this?  Yet for me it was temporary; for the others it was a life sentence.  But if this were life, I thought, it was a living death.  All my co-workers looked forward to the mid-morning coffee wagon and lunch with a desperation so intense it was palpable.  And then, as the minutes ticked away to 5 P.M., the agitated twitching that proceeded the mad rush to the elevators seemed to synchronize with the clock’s movements.  We’re out of here!

On my last day, I was eating my lunch on a park bench in Central Park when a bird shit on my suit jacket.  The stain was apt, for I felt I had spent my days defiling my true self, and so I resolved never to spend another day of my life working in an office building in a suit for a pernicious corporation, a resolution I have kept.

“An angel is not far from someone who is sad,” says Vincent Van Gogh in the new film, At Eternity’s Gate. For some reason, recently hearing these words in the darkened theater where I was almost alone, brought me back to that summer and the sadness that hung around all the people that I worked with.  I hoped Van Gogh was right and an angel visited them from time to time. Most of them had no options.

The painter Julian Schnabel’s moving picture (moving on many levels since the film shakes and moves with its hand-held camera work and draws you into the act of drawing and painting that was Van Gogh’s work) is a meditation on work.  It asks the questions: What is work?  What is work for?  What is life for?  Why paint? What does it mean to live?  Why do you do what you do?  Are you living or are you dead?  What are you seeking through your work?

For Vincent the answer was simple: reality.  But reality is not given to us and is far from simple; we must create it in acts that penetrate the screens of clichés that wall us off from it.  As John Berger writes,

One is taught to oppose the real to the imaginary, as though the first were always at hand and the second, distant, far away.  This opposition is false.  Events are always to hand.  But the coherence of these events – which is what one means by reality – is an imaginative construction.  Reality always lies beyond – and this is as true for materialists as for idealists. For Plato, for Marx.  Reality, however one interprets it, lies beyond a screen of clichés.

These screens serve to protect the interests of the ruling classes, who devise ways to trap regular people from seeing the reality of their condition.  Yet while working can be a trap, it can also be a means of escape. For Vincent working was the way.  For him work was not a noun but a verb. He drew and he painted as he does in this film to “make people feel what it is to feel alive.”  To be alive is to act, to paint, to write.  He tells his friend Gauguin that there’s a reason it’s called the “act of painting, the “stroke of genius.”  For him painting is living and living is painting.

The actual paintings that he made are almost beside the point, as all creative artists know too well. It is the doing wherein living is found. The completed canvas, essay, or book are what is done.  They are nouns, still lifes, just as Van Gogh’s paintings have become commodities in the years since his death, dead things to be bought and sold by the rich in a culture of death where they can be hung in mausoleums isolated from the living. It is appropriate that the film ends with Vincent very still in his coffin as “viewers” pass him by and avidly now desire his paintings that encircle the room that they once rejected. The man has become a has-been and the funeral parlor the museum.

“Without painting I can’t live,” he says earlier.  He didn’t say without his paintings.

“God gave me the gift for painting,” he said.  “It’s the only gift he gave me.  I am a born painter.”  But his gift has begotten gifts that are still-births that do not circulate and live and breathe to encourage people to find work that will not, “by its very nature, [be] about violence,” as Terkel said. His works, like people, have become commodities, brands to be bought and sold in a world where the accumulation of wealth is accomplished by the infliction of pain, suffering, and death on untold numbers of victims, invisible victims that allow the wealthy to maintain their bad-faith innocence. This is often achieved in the veiled shadows of intermediaries such as stock brokers, tax consultants, and financial managers; in the liberal and conservative boardrooms of mega-corporations or law offices; and in the planning sessions of the world’s great museums. Like drone killings that distance the killers from their victims, this wealth accumulation allows the wealthy to pretend they are on the side of the angels.  It’s called success, and everyone is innocent as they sing, “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go.”

“It is not enough to tell me you worked hard to get your gold,” said Henry Thoreau, Van Gogh’s soul-mate. “So does the Devil work hard.”

A few years ago there was a major exhibit of Van Gogh’s nature paintings at the Clark Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts – “Van Gogh and Nature” – that aptly symbolized Van Gogh in his coffin.  The paintings were exhibited encased in ornate gold frames. Van Gogh in gold. Just perfect.  I am reminded of a scene in At Eternity’s Gatewhere Vincent and Gauguin are talking about the need for a creative revolution – what we sure as hell need – and the two friends stand side by side with backs to the camera and piss into the wind.

But pseudo-innocence dies hard.  Not long ago I was sitting in a breakfast room in a bed-and-breakfast in Houston, Texas, sipping coffee and musing myself awake.  Two men came in and the three of us got to talking.  As people like to say, they were nice guys.  Very pleasant and talkative, in Houston on business. Normal Americans.  Stressed.  Both were about fifty years old with wives and children.

One sold drugs for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies that is known for its very popular anti-depressant drug and its aggressive sales pitches.  He travelled a triangular route from Corpus Christi to Austin to Houston and back again, hawking his wares.  He spoke about his work as being very lucrative and posing no ethical dilemmas.  There were so many depressed people in need of his company’s drugs, he said, as if the causes of their depression had nothing to do with inequality and the sorry state of the country as the rich rip off everyone else.  I thought of recommending a book to him – Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How big pharma has corrupted health care by Peter Gotzsche – but held my tongue, appreciative as I was of the small but tasteful fare we were being served and not wishing to cause my companions dyspepsia.  This guy seemed to be trying to convince me of the ethical nature of the way he panned gold, while I kept thinking of that quote attributed to Mark Twain: “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

The other guy, originally from a small town in Nebraska and now living in Baton Rouge, was a former medevac helicopter pilot who had served in the 1^st Gulf War.  He worked in finance for an equally large oil company.  His attitude was a bit different, and he seemed sheepishly guilty about his work with this company as he told me how shocked he was the first time he saw so many oil, gas, and chemical plants lining the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and all the oil and chemicals being shipped down the river. So many toxins that reminded him of the toxic black smoke rising from all the bombed oil wells in Iraq.  Something about it all left him uneasy, but he too said he made a very good “living” and that his wife also worked for the oil company back home.

My childish thought recurred: when people have options, why do they not choose ethical work that makes the world more beautiful and just?  Why is money and so-called success always the goal?

Having seen At Eternity’s Gate, I now see what Van Gogh was trying to tell us and Julian Schnabel conveys through this moving picture.  I see why these two perfectly normal guys I was breaking bread with in Houston are unable to penetrate the screen that lies between them and reality.  They have never developed the imaginative tools to go beyond normal modes of perception and conception. Or perhaps they lack the faith to dare, to see the futility and violence in what they are working for and what their companies’ products are doing to the world.  They think of themselves as hard at work, travelling hither and yon, doing their calculations, “making their living,” and collecting their pay.  It’s their work that has a payoff in gold, but it’s not working in the sense that painting was for Vincent, a way beyond the screen.  They are mesmerized by the spectacle, as are so many Americans.  Their jobs are perfectly logical and allow them a feeling of calm and control.

But Vincent, responding to Gauguin, a former stock broker, when he urged him to paint slowly and methodically, said, “I need to be out of control. I don’t want to calm down.”  He knew that to be fully alive was to be vulnerable, to not hold back, to always be slipping away, and to be threatened with annihilation at any moment. When painting, he was intoxicated with a creative joy that belies the popular image of him as always depressed.  “I find joy in sorrow,” he said, echoing in a paradoxical way Albert Camus, who said, “I have always felt that I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.”   Both rebels, one in paint, the other in words: “I rebel: therefore we exist,” was how Camus put it, expressing the human solidarity that is fundamental to genuine work in our ephemeral world. Both nostalgic in the present for the future, creating freedom through vision and disclosing the way for others.

And although my breakfast companions felt safe in their calmness on this side of the screen, it was an illusion. The only really calm ones are corpses. And perhaps that’s why when you look around, as I did as a child, you see so many of the living dead carrying on as normal.

“I paint to stop thinking and feel I am a part of everything inside and outside me,” says Vincent, a self-described exile and pilgrim.

If we could make working a form of such painting, a path to human solidarity because a mode of rebelling, what a wonderful world it might be.

That, I believe, is what working is for.

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

Featured image is from Asia Society Report

This English version of the interview originally published in French by the independent online journal Le Vent Se Lève (LVSL) has been fully revised and complemented by Eric Toussaint. The original French version is available here.

Éric Toussaint has a PhD in Political Sciences and is spokesperson for the CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts). He coordinated the work of the Truth Committee on the Greek public debt which had been created by the President of the Greek Parliament Zoe Konstantopoùlou on 4 April 2015 and was shut down by the new president of the Greek Parliament on 12 November 2015. His latest book The Debt System. A History of Sovereign Debts and their Repudiation (Haymarket, 2019) discusses the several instances in history when debts were repudiated. This was one of the issues we talked about.

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LVSL – Do you consider that debt is not sufficiently covered in mainstream media? And if so, why do you think this is the case?

Éric Toussaint – It is often mentioned, but never in the sense in which the CADTM conceives of it. The discourse in mainstream media and by governments consists of repeating that there is too much public debt, too much public expenditure, that States must pay their debts and reduce their expenditure. With the CADTM, we are raising the questions of where those debts come from, whether the objectives for which debts were contracted were legitimate and whether they were contracted in a legal and legitimate manner. This is our approach, and yes, absolutely, this way of looking at things is not present in the mainstream media. They claim it is not related to their reality.

LVSL – Yes, you classify debts according to whether they are illegitimate and possibly odious. Can you tell us about the characteristics of these types of debts?

Image on the right: Alexandre Nahum Sack (1890 – 1955)

E.T.: First of all, a doctrine of odious debt was developed by Alexander Nahum Sack, a conservative Russian jurist and professor of Law at the University of Saint Petersburg under the Tsarist regime (Petrograd was the capital of the Russian Empire at the time). He developed the doctrine in reaction to the Soviets’ repudiation of debt in 1918. He was not in agreement, and went into exile in France and then began compiling a list of all claims involving sovereign debts between the end of the 18^th century and the 1920s. He studied the international arbitrations, the jurisprudence, the unilateral acts. Based on all that he created a doctrine of international law [1] that is partly applicable today. It establishes a general principle that holds that even in the case of a change of government, of regime, there is a continuity of international obligations.

Nevertheless, the doctrine includes one fundamental exception: the concept of odious debt, which is based on two criteria. The first criterion is fulfilled if it can be demonstrated that the debts claimed against a State were contracted against the interests of the population of that State. The second criterion is met if the lenders were aware of that fact or cannot demonstrate that it was impossible for them to know that these debts were contracted against the interests of the population. If these two criteria are met, then these debts contracted by a previous government are odious, and the new regime and the population cannot be required to repay them. For the CADTM, this doctrine has to be brought up to date because the concept of what is against the interests of a given population has evolved since the 1920s, simply because international law has evolved. That is true above all after the Second World War, when constraining legal instruments like the ICESCR (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) and the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) were put in place and make it possible to determine what is or is not in the interests of a population.

As for illegitimate debt, it can be defined in less constraining terms. Such debt is qualified as illegitimate beause it has been accumulated to promote the interests of privileged minorities and does not respect the general interest. For example, that is the case when public debt is contracted to bail out the major shareholders of banks, when in fact it is these same banks that are responsible for the economic stagnation resulting from a banking crisis. In that context, the debts accumulated since the banking crisis of 2007-2008 in countries like France and the USA are illegitimate debts. Research conducted by the CAC (Collectif pour un Audit Citoyen de la dette publique – Collective for a Citizen Audit of Public Debt) in fact determined that 59% of the debt claimed against France is illegitimate (see [in French] this article and this document). This debt mass corresponds in part to the banking bailout, but also to a whole series of fiscal gifts given to major corporations which do not conform to the principles of fiscal and social justice. Further, the Eurozone States’ refusal to finance state debt through the central bankand the marketing of that debt forces the States to pay higher interest rates than they would pay if they were able to get financing from the central bank. Therefore the amount of the accumulated debt resulting from that difference in interest rates should be deducted from the total.

LVSL – Regarding repudiation, how are debts repudiated? In your book you cite many examples of debt repudiation. Is there a continuity in the political contexts that encourage these repudiations?

E.T.: First of all, in general, a change of regime or government leads to the debt accumulated up to the time of the change being called into question. For example, in 1837 in the USA, there was a citizen rebellion in four States (Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and Michigan) that led to the overthrow of their governors, whom the people accused of corruption, of having made agreements with bankers to finance infrastructures that were never built. The new governors repudiated debts and the bankers affected by the repudiations brought suit in federal court. But they lost their case! It’s a very interesting one. The repudiation was the result of a citizen mobilisation and a denunciation of the behaviour of certain authorities by an outraged population who rebelled against repayment of these debts. The creditors were mainly British. Alexander Nahum Sack writes in this regard: “One of the main reasons justifying these repudiations was the squandering of the sums borrowed: they were usually borrowed to establish banks or build railways; but the banks failed and the railway lines were never built. These questionable operations were often the result of agreements between crooked members of the government and dishonest creditors.” (p. 158). Creditors who attempted to prosecute the States that had repudiated their debts in a US federal court had their suits thrown out. To justify its rejection of the actions, the Federal justice system used the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution of the USA, which stipulates that “The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.” Consequently this unilateral act of repudiation was a success. [2]

As another example, in Mexico, the government of president Benito Juárez – which was liberal in the 19^th-century sense, that is, it favoured separation of church and state and free, compulsory secular public education – was overthrown in 1858 by the French in league with the local Conservatives. They borrowed from French, Swiss and Mexican bankers to finance their illegal government. In 1861 when Benito Juárez returned to power with the support of the people, he repudiated the debts contracted by the Conservatives. In January 1862, the French government of Bonaparte declared war on Mexico under the pretext of obtaining repayment of the debt owed to the French bankers. A French expeditionary corps of 35,000 soldiers put the Austrian prince Maximilian I on the throne as Emperor of Mexico. But Benito Juárez returned to power once again, with popular support, and decided to repudiate the debts contracted by Maximilian of Austria’s regime between 1862 and 1867. The results were very positive for the country. All the major powers recognized the Benito Juárez regime and signed commercial agreements with it, including France after the fall of Bonaparte in 1870.

Finally, we can mention the Russian Revolution, where the population was opposed to the expenditures of the Tsarist regime and to the wars it waged. And when the Soviets took power in October 1917, one result was the adoption of decrees that first suspended repayment and then repudiated the debt. [3]

These are examples of acts that can be referred to as unilateral.

Image below: William H. Taft, president of United States of America (1909-1913).

Other examples of international intervention could be cited. In 1919, in Costa Rica, an anti-democratic regime was overthrown and there was a return to a democratic regime, associated with a decision by Costa Rica’s parliament to repudiate debts contracted by the previous regime. Faced with the threat of British intervention, Costa Rica requested neutral arbitration. The two countries agreed to designate the former President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the USA, William Howard Taft, as arbitrator, and the court ruled in favour of Costa Rica! It’s an interesting case in terms of jurisprudence, and it served as a reference for Alexander Sack, since he was an admirer of the USA. In fact Taft ruled that the debt claimed against Costa Rica by a British bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, was a debt accumulated by President Federico Tinoco for his personal benefit and against the interests of the population. The bank was not able to demonstrate that it did not know that the money was borrowed by Tinoco for purely personal ends. And above all, at no point in his ruling does Taft refer to the despotic nature of the Tinoco regime, and Sack applied that principle in his doctrine: he affirmed that the nature of the preceding regime is unimportant and that what matters in judging the debt is the use to which the borrowed money was put. And from my point of view this is fundamental, because for years there was an erroneous interpretation of Sack’s doctrine which limited the applicability of repudiation of odious debt to dictatorial regimes. Sack’s doctrine is based on the notion of a “regular government” of a given territory, a regime exercising real power, and whether it is legitimate or not is not the question. Sack defines a regular government as follows: “By a regular government is to be understood the supreme power that effectively exists within the limits of a given territory. Whether that government be monarchical (absolute or limited) or republican; whether it function by ‘the grace of God’ or ‘the will of the people’; whether it express ‘the will of the people’ or not, of all the people or only of some; whether it be legally established or not, etc., none of that is relevant to the problem we are concerned with.” (p. 6).

According to Sack, what are the two criteria that establish a debt as odious?

There is no doubt about Sack’s position: that a regime be despotic is not a sine qua non condition that makes debts odious and susceptible to repudiation. [4] According to Sack, all regular governments, whether despotic or democratic of some kind, may be accused of having agreed to odious debts.

What are the two criteria that establish a debt as odious? “Consequently, for a debt, regularly incurred by a regular government to be considered incontestably odious with all the consequences that follow, the following conditions must be fulfilled:

1. — The new government must prove and an international tribunal recognise that the following is established:
a) that the purpose which the former government wanted to cover by the debt in question was odious and clearly against the interests of the population of the whole or part of the territory, and
b) that the creditors, at the moment of the issuance of the loan, were aware of its odious purpose.
2. — once these two points are established, the burden of proof that the funds were used for the general or special needs of the State and were not of an odious character, would be upon the creditors.” (p. 170)

Sack clearly mentions the interests of the population, in particular in the context of a very specific case: the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. The treaty says that the debts contracted by Germany to colonise Poland cannot be claimed against Poland once it was restored to its existence as an independent State, since the debt was contracted precisely for the purpose of colonising Poland and is therefore counter to the interests of the Polish people. In the same treaty it is stated that the people of the former German territories in Africa (Namibia, Tanganyika, Cameroon, Togo, Ruanda-Urundi) cannot be held responsible for debts contracted by Germany to colonise those territories. Sack cites an extract of the reply that the Allies made to Germany, which was not inclined to accept forgiveness of the debt of its ex-colonies, because Germany would have to continue the repayments itself. The Allies replied: “The colonies should not bear any portion of the German debt, nor remain under any obligation to refund to Germany the expenses incurred by the Imperial administration of the protectorate. In fact, it would be unjust to burden the natives with expenditure which appears to have been incurred in Germany’s own interest(…).” [5]

This is where the notion of the interest of the people, which took on meaning beginning with that period, comes to the fore. The president of the USA at the time, Woodrow Wilson, published a declaration in January 1918 proclaiming the right of peoples to self-determination. According to that principle, a debt accumulated to colonise a given population calls the right of that people to self-determination into question.

This evolution of law justifies my position, which is that we should use the criteria Sack developed on the basis of jurisprudence, but also take into account the evolution of international law.

LVSL – How do you explain the fact that when dealing with economic history, in particular in universities, the issue of debt is rarely if ever mentioned?

ET: Yes, it’s never brought up, simply because it’s a taboo. That’s really quite astounding, when in fact it’s not only non-mainstream authors who write about debt. For example there are people like Kenneth Rogoff, who was chief economist at the IMF, and Carmen M. Reinhart, former Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director at the IMF and researcher at the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), who co-wrote a book called This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton University Press, 2009), in which they discuss the issue of sovereign debt in depth. There is extensive literature on debt from classical and neo-classical economists, but as you point out it’s rarely taught in the universities – in European universities in any case, despite its being a vital issue from a socio-economic and legal point of view. However it’s beginning to be taught in the Law faculties in American universities, for example by major figures like Mitu Gulati, who is a professor at Duke University, and Odette Lienau, an associate professor of Law at Cornell University, who has written a monograph entitled Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Politics, Reputation, and Legitimacy in Modern Finance. [6] But as public debt again becomes a central issue, the dinosaurs and conservatives in the universities will no longer be able to avoid debate on subjects such as odious debt, suspension of payment and debt repudiation.

Often disparaged and widely avoided or ignored in university courses, the doctrine of odious debt has nevertheless been the topic of hundreds of articles and dozens of specialised books by a range of experts. They include:
The United Nations International Law Commission, [7] the IMF, [8] the World Bank, [9] the UN Conference on Trade and Development, [10] the UN independent expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights, [11] Ecuador’s Commission for the full audit of public debt set up in 2007 by President Rafael Correa, [12] the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, now known as the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) [13] and the Greek Debt Truth Commission set up by the president of the Hellenic Parliament in 2015 [14] have published documents, taken a stand and organised seminars on the topic, as debts whose legitimacy and validity may be questioned are constantly under discussion in the field of international relations.

Recent academic publications on the subject include: Salomon, Margot E. Salomon and Robert Howse, « Odious Debt, Adverse Creditors, and the Democratic Ideal » (November 27, 2018), London School of Economics Legal Studies Working Paper No. 20/2018, available at SSRN ; Ilias Bantekas and Renaud Vivien, « The Odiousness of Greek Debt in Light of the Findings of the Debt Truth Committee » Vol. 22 European Law Journal (July 2016) 539 at 542 ; Ilias Bantekas, ‘The Right to Unilateral Denunciation of Odious, Illegal and Illegitimate Sovereign Debt’, in I. Bantekas and C. Lumina (eds.), Sovereign Debt and Human Rights (Oxford UP, 2018) 536-554; Pierre Pénet, “Rethinking Odious Debt” – Books & ideas 19 March 2018. ISSN : 2105-3030. Jeff King, The Doctrine of Odious Debt in International Law. A Restatement, University College London, 2016; Stephania Bonilla, Odious Debt: Law-and-Economics Perspectives, Gabler publishers, Wiesbaden, 2011; Michael Waibel, Sovereign Defaults before International Courts and Tribunals, University of Cambridge, 2013; Michael Waibel, Sovereign Defaults before International Courts and Tribunals, University of Cambridge, 2013; Odette Lienau, Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Politics, Reputation, and Legitimacy in Modern Finance, Harvard, 2014; Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Sabine Michalowski, “Ius Cogens, Transitional Justice and Other Trends of the Debate on Odious Debts: A Response to the World Bank Discussion Paper on Odious Debts” (2009-2010), Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 48.

In conclusion, the doctrine of odious debt is a robust one that has evolved and continues to evolve over time, and governments need to find the courage to organise, with the active participation of their citizens, an audit of debt in order to set in motion the process of repudiating debts identified as being odious.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Translated from French by Snake Arbusto

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

Notes

In the Mirror newspaper, an academic has raised an uncomfortable point – that such a high degree of social stress has been unleashed on the poor through Tory austerity policies where preventable death can be directly attributed. At TruePublica we have published articles by our media partners and contributors about this escalating crisis. The author of this research concludes that austerity – a Tory ideology, not an economic model is nothing else other than ‘social murder.’

The academic paper claims that Tory austerity has caused “social murder.” The damning Victorian-era phrase has been revived to describe years of benefit cuts, the benefit cap and ‘fit-for-work’ tests under the government since 2010. Demanding “fundamental change” in welfare policy, its author argues “violence” has been inflicted on the poor to “enrich a small elite”. The 21-page article appears in the journal Critical Social Policy and was written by Dr Chris Grover, head of the sociology department at Lancaster University.”

• Research claims there were an extra six suicides for every 10,000 work capability assessments, known as ‘fit-for-work’ tests
• Increasing numbers of people dying of malnutrition; and increasing numbers of homeless people are dying on the streets or in hostels
• The state is both the protector of working-class people from harm and the facilitator of social murder.
• Citing a rise in benefit sanctions and increased poverty, Dr Grover wrote: “Social security ‘austerity’ can be understood as structural violence.

The author of the report is Christopher Geoffrey Grover, Senior Lecturer, University of Lancaster

Abstract

Link to Grover’s research report 

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Featured image is from TP

Donald Trump is pursuing what appears to be a new business deal in the Dominican Republic despite pledging no new foreign deals – a deal which may be in violation of the U.S. Constitution

***

Essay by security expert Professor Zhang Wenmu gives a glimpse of China’s geostrategic outlook, from the ‘Western Pacific Chinese Sea’ to the far side of the moon

***

The top story of 2019 – and the years ahead – will continue to revolve around the myriad, dangerous permutations of the economic ascent of China, the resurgence of nuclear superpower Russia and the decline of the US’s global hegemony.

Two years ago, before the onset of the Trump administration, I sketched how the shadow play might proceed in the New Great Game in Eurasia.

Now the new game hits high gear; it’s the US against the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Diplomatic capers, tactical retreats, psychological, economic, cyber and even outer space duels, all enveloped in media hysteria, will continue to rule the news cycle. Be prepared for all shades of carping about authoritarian China, and its “malign” association with an “illiberal” Russian bogeyman bent on blasting the borders of Europe and “disrupting” the Middle East.

Relatively sound minds like the political scientist Joseph Nye will continue to lament the sun setting on the Western liberal “order,” without realizing that what was able to “secure and stabilize the world over the past seven decades” does not translate into a “strong consensus … defending, deepening and extending this system.” The Global South overwhelmingly begs to differ, arguing that the current “order” was manufactured and largely benefits only US interests.

Expect exceptionalists to operate in condescending overdrive, exhorting somewhat reluctant “allies” to help “constrain” if not contain China and “channel” – as in control – Beijing’s increasing global clout.

It’s a full-time job to “channel” China into finding its “right” place in a new world order. What does the Chinese intellectual elite really think about all this?

Never fight on two fronts

An unparalleled roadmap may be provided by Zhang Wenmu, national security strategy expert and professor at the Center of Strategic Studies of the University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Beijing, who wrote an essay published in August 2017 in the Chinese magazine Taipingyan Xuebao (Pacific magazine), that was translated recently into Italian by Rome-based geopolitical magazine Limes.

“Geopolitics” may be an Anglo invention, arguably by Sir Halford Mackinder, but it has been studied in China for centuries as, for instance, “geographic advantage” (xingsheng) or “historic geography” (lishi dili).

Wenmu introduces us to the concept of geopolitics as philosophy on the tip of a knife, but it’s mostly about philosophy, not the knife. If we want to use the knife we must use philosophy to know the limits of our power. Call it a Sino-equivalent of Nietzsche’s philosophizing with a hammer.

As a geopolitical analyst, Wenmu cannot but remind us that the trademark Roman or British empires’ ‘divide and rule’ is also a well-known tactic in China. For instance, in early 1972, Chairman Mao was quite ready to welcome Richard Nixon. Later, in July, Mao revealed his hand:

“One must profit from the conflict between two powers, that is our policy. But we must get closer to one of them and not fight on two fronts.”

He was referring to the split between China and the USSR.

Wenmu gets a real kick out of how Western geopolitics usually plays things wrong. He stresses how Halford Mackinder, the Englishman regarded as one of the founders of geostrategy, “influenced World War II and the subsequent decline of the British Empire,” noting how Mackinder died only five months before Partition between India and Pakistan in 1947.

He destroys George Kennan’s theory of the Cold War, “directly based on Mackinder’s thinking,” and how it led the US to fight in Korea and Vietnam, “accelerating its decline.”

Even Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security advisor, “saw the decline of the American empire,” as he died recently, in May 2017.

“In that moment, China and Russia gave life to a strategic collaboration always closer and invincible.” Wenmu is positively gleeful. “If Brzezinski was still alive, I think he would see the ‘great defeat’ of the Western world – the opposite of what he wrote.”

Why Tibet matters

Chinese geopolitics predictably pays close attention to the tension between sea powers and land powers. Wenmu notes how, in the Indian Ocean, the British Empire enjoyed more naval power compared to the Americans “because it occupied the homonymous continent. And because it dominated the seas, the United Kingdom also threatened the Russian Empire, which was a land power.”

Wenmu quotes from Alfred Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History on the reciprocal influence between control of the seas and control of the land. But, he adds:

“Mahan did not analyze this relation on a global level … Based on the priorities of the United States, he concentrated most of all on distant seas.”

Wenmu crucially stresses how the Pacific Ocean is the “obligatory passage of the Maritime Silk Road.” Even though China “developed its naval capacity much later, it enjoys [a] geographical advantage in relation to the UK and the US.” And with that, he brings us to the essential Tibet question.

One of Wenmu’s key points is how “the Tibetan plateau allows the People’s Republic to access the resources respectively of the Pacific Ocean to the east and those of the Indian Ocean in the west. If from the plateau we look at the American base in Diego Garcia [in the center of the Indian Ocean] we can’t have any doubts about the natural advantage of Chinese geopolitics.” The implication is that the UK and US must “consume a great deal of resources to cross the oceans and develop a chain of islands.”

Wenmu shows how the geography of the Tibetan plateau “links in a natural way the Tibetan region to the dominant power in the Chinese central plains” while it does “not link it to the countries in the South Asia subcontinent.” Thus Tibet should be considered as a “natural part of China.”

China is supported by the continental plaque, “which it controls along its coast,” and “possesses technology of medium and long-range missile attack,” guaranteeing it virtually a “great capacity of reaction in both oceans” with a “relatively powerful naval force.” And that’s how China, as Wenmu maps it, is able to compensate – “to a certain extent” – the technological gap relative to the West.

Wenmu’s most controversial point is that “the advantage that only China enjoys of linking to markets of two oceans crashes the myth of Western ‘naval power’ in the contemporary era and introduces a revolutionary vision; the People’s Republic is a great nation who possesses by nature the qualification of naval power.” We just need to compare “how industrial development allowed the West to navigate towards the Indian Ocean” while China “arrived on foot.”

Get Taiwan

President Obama was keen to exhort at every opportunity the status of the US as a “Pacific nation.” Imagine the US confronted by Wenmu’s description:

“The Western Pacific is linked to the national interests of the People’s Republic and is the starting point of the New Maritime Silk Road.”

In fact, Chairman Mao talked about it way back in 1959:

“One day, it does not matter when, the United States will have to retire from the rest of the world and will have to abandon the Western Pacific.”

Extrapolating from Mao, Wenmu elaborates on a “Western Pacific Chinese Sea” uniting the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. “We can use the formula ‘southern zone of the Western Pacific Chinese Sea’ to describe the part that falls under Chinese sovereignty.”

This suggests a combination of Chinese forces in the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea under a sole Western Pacific naval command.

It’s easy to see where all this is pointing: reunification with Taiwan.

Under such a system, as delineated by Wenmu, Taiwan “would return to the motherland,” China’s sovereignty over its coastline “would be legitimated” and at the same time “would not be excessively extended.”

Beijing’s supreme goal is to effectively move the “Chinese line of control” to the east of Taiwan. That reflects President Xi Jinping’s speech earlier this week, where he referred to Taiwan, for all practical purposes, as the great prize. Wenmu frames it as an environment “where Chinese nuclear submarines are able to counter-attack, the construction of aircraft carriers can progress and products made in continental China may be exported effectively.”

The barycenter of Asia

One of the most fascinating arguments in Wenmu’s essay is how he shows there’s always a natural proportion – a sort of ‘divine’ or ‘golden ratio’ between the three strategic powers in Eurasia: Europe, Central Asia and China.

Cue to a fast tour of the rise and fall of empires, with “history showing how in the main zone of the continent – between 30 and 60 degrees of north[ern] latitude – there can be only 2.5 strategic forces.” Which means one of the three major spaces always becomes fragmented.

In modern times it has been rare that one of the three powers “managed to expand to a 1.5 ratio.” Before, only the Tang empire and the Mongol empire came close. The British Empire, Tsarist Russia and the USSR “invaded Afghanistan and entered Central Asia, but success, when it happened, was short-lived.”

That paved the way to Wenmu’s clincher:

“The law of the aurea section [Latin for ‘golden’ section] as the base of strategic power in Eurasia helps us to understand the causes of alternate rise and decline of powers in the continent and to recognize the limits of expansion of Chinese power in Central Asia. To understand it is the premise of mature and successful diplomacy.”

Although this cannot be seriously depicted as a roadmap for “Chinese aggression,” Wenmu cannot help but direct another hit at Western geopolitical stalwart Mackinder:

“With his genius imagination, Mackinder advanced the wrong theory of the ‘geographic pivot’ because he did not consider this law.”

In a nutshell, China is key for the equilibrium of Eurasia.

“In Europe, the fragmented zone originates in the center, in Asia, it is around China. So that presents China as the natural barycenter of Asia.”

Dark side of the moon

It’s easy to imagine Wenmu’s essay provoking ballistic responses from proponents of the US National Security Strategy which labels China, as well as Russia, as a dangerous “revisionist power.”

Professional Sinophobes are even peddling the notion that a “failing China” might eventually “lash out” against the US. That’s a misreading of what Rear Admiral Luo Yuan said last month in Shenzhen:

“We now have Dong Feng-21D, Dong Feng-26 missiles. These are aircraft carrier killers. We attack and sink one of their aircraft carriers. Let them suffer 5,000 casualties. Attack and sink two carriers, casualties 10,000. Let’s see if the US is afraid or not?”

This is a statement of fact, not a threat. The Pentagon knows all there is to know about ‘carrier killer’ danger.

Beijing won’t stop with carrier killers, the rebranded Western Pacific and reunification with Taiwan. It is planning the first artificial intelligence (AI) colony on earth – a deep-sea base for unmanned submarine science and defense ops in the South China Sea.

The landing of the Chang’e 4 lunar probe on the far side of the moon could even be interpreted as the most extreme extension of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

These are all pieces in a massive puzzle bound to reinforce the grip of a new – Sinocentric – map of the world, already in use by the Chinese navy and published in 2013, not by accident the year when the New Silk Roads were announced in Astana and Jakarta.

Wenmu ends his essay stressing how “Chinese geopolitics must distance itself from the idea that ‘one cannot open his mouth without mentioning Ancient Greece’.” That’s a reference to a famous Mao speech of May 1941, when the Chairman criticized certain Marxist-Leninists who privileged Western history – of which Ancient Greece is the ultimate symbol – over Chinese history.

Thucydides trap? What trap?

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Trump Escalates Confrontation over Federal Shutdown

By Patrick Martin, January 08, 2019

With the partial shutdown of the federal government in its third week, and 800,000 workers facing the prospect of a payless payday Friday, President Trump has stepped up his campaign to spread fear and whip up bigotry against immigrants and refugees.

Crisis in Ukraine: Religious Schism and War

By Christopher Black, January 08, 2019

The signing of the Tomos or note of Autocephaly for the newly created Orthodox Church of Ukraine is not a church but a political act which may have catastrophic consequences for Ukraine.

As Trump Orders US Out of Afghanistan, Notorious CIA-Backed Units Will Remain

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, January 08, 2019

As the US military kills civilians in Syria and CIA-led Afghan forces continue to commit war crimes, it appears Trump is doing the right thing in pulling out military troops. But the CIA will remain and grow stronger after the US troops leave.

Bolton Threatens Syria: US Troop Withdrawal “On Hold”. Permanent US Military Base on Syria-Iraqi border

By Stephen Lendman, January 07, 2019

On Friday, a State Department official said “(w)e have no timeline for our military forces to withdraw from” the country. Delay may turn out to be not at all.

Trump’s “Anti-Terrorist Strike” in Yemen Serves Domestic and International Purposes

By Andrew Korybko, January 07, 2019

The world is safer now that there’s one less Al Qaeda terrorist inhabiting it, but Trump’s successful strike against USS Cole bomber Jamal al-Badawi in central Yemen also served several tangential domestic and international purposes, too.

US Secretary of State Pompeo Enlists Allies to ‘Return Democracy’ to Venezuela

By Ricardo Vaz, January 07, 2019

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with allies in a tour of Latin America this week, in which he talked about stepping up US-led efforts against Venezuela.

Afghanistan in Photos: When a US Strike Hits a Family Home

By Andrew Quilty, Abigail Fielding-Smith, and Jessica Purkiss, January 07, 2019

The doors of Emergency Hospital in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, swung open: Ehsanullah, 14, his face a swollen mess of flesh, was the first to be wheeled in.

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The signing of the Tomos or note of Autocephaly for the newly created Orthodox Church of Ukraine is not a church but a political act which may have catastrophic consequences for Ukraine.

So said the head of the Russian Federation Council’s international affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachev, on Saturday January 6, the day the document was issued.

“This is a new move towards destroying the unity of Orthodoxy, the consequences of which will be catastrophic, first of all for Ukraine itself and its people.”

One of the worst crises in the history of Christianity was the split between the Church centred in Rome and the Church centred in Constantinople, between the west and east regions of the old Roman Empire, that took place in the year 1054. Today, the NATO military alliance and its vassals in the Kiev regime in Ukraine have forced a further split within the Eastern or Orthodox Church by setting up a separate Orthodox church in Ukraine that rejects the age old authority of the Moscow Patriarchate with authority over the churches in Ukraine and purports to set up a separate Orthodox Church in Kiev.

This is not just a side issue in the Christian world or world politics. It is a key element of the NATO plan to use all forms of warfare in all realms of life to further their ambition of crushing the power of Russia. It is designed to engender hostility among the Slavic peoples, to reduce Russia’s prestige and Moscow’s reputation as the third Rome, to further divide the Ukrainian people against themselves and harden the artificial division between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. But to understand the new division we have to review some history.

The split or schism within the Christian church had many complex causes which neither I, nor the reader, have the patience to enter into. Some of the causes were theological, some cultural, others political. To avoid boring you I will provide only what is essential from the past to understand the present.

For centuries the emperors in control of the eastern Roman Empire based in Constantinople, favoured Rome’s supremacy in Church matters because they wanted to safeguard the universality of the Empire and their claims to Italy. The separation of the churches in the two parts of the Empire evolved gradually over the centuries and reflected the long rivalry between Latins and Greeks, between Rome and Constantinople. But the Roman popes steadily expanded their control across Europe along with their spiritual and temporal power that the authorities in the second city of the Empire resented and feared. The eastern Romans, who considered their emperor as an equal of the apostles, and who believed that matters of church doctrine could be resolved only through the Holy Ghost speaking through the Ecumenical Council, were shocked by the pope in Rome, who to them was just first among equals among all the church patriarchs, yet claimed he could formulate dogma and had spiritual and temporal supremacy over all the other churches and patriarchs; for in the early Church and for a long period, spiritual authority was deemed to be held equally between the patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Aleppo.

The major split took place in 1054 when the Normans attacked some cities in southern Italy, defeated the army sent to stop them, and detained the Roman pope who was furious that the emperor in Constantinople had not come to his rescue. The patriarch and the Emperor in Constantinople tried to smooth things over but tempers and insults flared and the papal legates visiting Constantinople for the purpose of resolving the dispute only inflamed matters and ended their mission by excommunicating the eastern patriarch who in turn anathematised them.

This sequence of events resulted in the lasting separation of the eastern and western churches. The split need never have occurred. More goodwill, less bigotry, cooler tempers could have resolved all the issues but, as is the case now, ill will prevailed. Though the split of 1054 was not complete, for there were attempts in the 13th and 15th centuries to cement the two churches back together and an another attempt in 1965 at the Ecumenical Council, the injury could not be healed, has long festered and now has begun to bleed once again, but this time within the eastern church itself and within the context of a threatened general war.

When the Turks took Constantinople in 1453 they permitted the Orthodox Christians to remain and it was Mehmet the Conqueror, acting as a Roman emperor, who designated a new Patriarch for the city. Today the Istanbul patriarch claims authority over the scattered Greek Orthodox churches in Western Europe, the Americas and Australia and the eastern orthodox churches in Russia, the Balkans, Greece, Asia and Africa, though he has very few adherents in modern Istanbul.

As Christianity spread further east, first Kiev then Moscow became the important centres of the Orthodox Church and set up their own patriarchates or divisions of the

Church. But, partly as a result of the Mongol invasions and other complicated events Moscow assumed a more authoritative and primary role resulting in the Patriarchate in Constantinople assigning the Moscow patriarchate with authority over the eastern churches, including Ukraine, in 1686. This has been the situation more or less up to the present.

But on October 15, 2018 the Russian Orthodox Church announced that it would break off all relations with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, the claimed leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, after he agreed on October 11, 2018, to the April request of Kiev leader Poroshenko, and his minions in the church in Kiev, to grant autocephaly, or self-governance, to what they are calling the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, not to be confused with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that does not recognize this action, the sole objective of which is to attempt to divide Ukrainians from the historical influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia.

Poroshenko who, along with NATO, backed this action, stated that this step “finally dispelled the imperial illusions and chauvinistic fantasies of Moscow.”

Ukraine currently has three Orthodox denominations, the largest of which is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. That branch remained subordinate to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and contains more than 12,000 parishes. This is a third of all parishes under the Russian Orthodox Church, and Ukraine contains some of the most symbolic ones, such as the monastery Kiev-Pechersk Lavra and its catacombs. The other two denominations are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, with 4,800 parishes, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, with 1,000 parishes, which adds to the confusion when trying to grasp what is going on here.

But Russia has long been unhappy with Constantinople’s first-among-equals status and has sought to challenge and erode its role since the Moscow patriarchate sees itself as the dominant bastion of Eastern Orthodoxy. The Russian Orthodox Church alone has more than 150 million followers, half of the world wide adherents and the two patriarchates also differ on some points of doctrine, with Constantinople seeking closer alignment with the Pope in Rome, while the number of Christians in Istanbul can no longer support the claim of that city’s Christian leader to be head of the eastern church.

After Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision, which he probably had no authority to make, Patriarch Filaret in Kiev stated that he would call a council of the leaders of the

Ukrainian Orthodox Church to choose a leader for this newly created church of Ukraine. The move marked the beginning of the establishment of an independent church in Ukraine, outside the control of Moscow and its patriarch, Kirill. It is also a self-serving decision because it serves to weaken the Russian Orthodox Church and strengthen the almost irrelevant Church in Constantinople that has long been under the sway of the NATO powers and serves their interests. It also is designed to destroy the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and force people to join this new church.

This has wider dimensions since Russian allies, Serbia and Belarus, already have backed the Moscow Patriarchate and condemned the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The split in the church may have other and more violent consequences arising from disputes over holy sites as several of Ukraine’s most holy sites and churches will be claimed by both the Russian and established Ukrainian churches and this upstart church. The Kiev Patriarchate has already laid claim to the famous 11th century Kiev Monastery of the Caves and the Holy Dormition Monastery in Pochayiv. Both sites are now controlled by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and could face protests and vandalism.

Poroshenko has said,

“If you see people who call for seizing Lavra or a monastery or church by force, you should know that they are Moscow’s agents. The Kremlin’s goal is to ignite a religious war in Ukraine.”

Vadym Novinskyi, an opposition bloc member of parliament, predicted a “civil war and clashes over property “in every village and every town.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated,

“If the developments spiral into abusive practices, of course, Russia will protect Orthodox Christians’ interests, just like Russia protects the interests of ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking population everywhere.”

There have already been reports of problems over the Christmas period.

It was reported in Tass that,

‘with deep indignation and disbelief that we have to inform the public that on December 9, 2018, the Ukrainian authorities prevented the incumbent head of the Donetsk and Marioupol Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Hilarion from crossing the disengagement line through the Novotroitskoye checkpoint to attend a scheduled prayer meeting”.

On December 26th Patriarch Kiril of Moscow and All Russia stated,

“that the creation of a new autocephalous church in Ukraine and the persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) could have dangerous consequences for the whole world.”

“I believe the developments in Ukraine will undoubtedly have very dangerous effects in the lives of many countries. What is happening in Ukraine can be used as a precedent. That means that everything, which ensured inter-religious peace, religious freedom and human rights will, in all likelihood, stop to be untouchable, particularly, if these values stand in the way of solving certain political problems.”

Already priests in Ukraine face persecution arising out of this development. Over the past few weeks, Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, has conducted searches in the Ovruch diocese in Ukraine’s Zhitomir Region. This resulted in 20 clerics of the UOC’s Rovno and Sarny dioceses being summoned for questioning. Searches were also conducted in the apartment of Metropolitan Paul, Abbot of Kiev Pechersk Lavra. According to the SBU, these police actions were part of a criminal case on inciting inter-confessional strife opened against him, but no doubt are meant to harass and intimidate. Some already face criminal charges.

The tensions being stoked within the Church and the broader society by Poroshenko and the NATO intelligence services will no doubt be used as fuel for the fire as Kiev ratchets up its military actions against the peoples of east Ukraine in the Donbass republics and can lead not only to arrests and detentions of religious leaders and their supporters but also assassinations of those opposing their maneuvers, for on top of all the other problems faced by Ukrainians has been placed the bloody thorn of religious persecution, a Christmas gift from NATO.

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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” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The line from James Mattis that seemed to stand out the most was “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”

Mattis spent the prior paragraphs of his resignation letter describing the threats of terrorism, the importance of US military alliances, and the perceived danger of Russia and China. He then dropped the subtly worded bombshell sentence, indicating that Trump did not share these views which are considered to be the standard perspective of the global situation by US mainstream media.

The Mattis resignation coincided with the announced withdrawal of US troops from Syria and Afghanistan. Mattis is reported to have disagreed with the President’s decision. Shortly after the resignation, Trump visited US troops in Iraq and infuriated the military by signing “Make America Great Again” hats and announcing, falsely, that he had increased the troop’s pay by 10%.

The mainstream of American politics went into overdrive denouncing Trump for “giving a huge gift to Putin” and “abandoning the women” of Afghanistan. US Senator Lindsey Graham said “The only reason they’re not dancing in the aisles in Tehran and ISIS camps is they don’t believe in dancing.” Those who are familiar with contemporary US history should realize that Trump seems to be in an increasingly dangerous position as he has apparently earned the scorn of the Pentagon brass.

The struggle between the elected President as “commander-in-chief” of the US military and its uniformed brass is quite longstanding. Abraham Lincoln famously fired General George McLellan with the historic rebuff “If General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it for a time.” Truman fired General Douglas Macarthur for threatening to drop atomic bombs on China without Presidential authorization.

The Pentagon and the Presidency

John F. Kennedy’s assassination can be widely interpreted in the context of a rivalry between the intelligence community and the Pentagon. Kennedy refused to send in the US military into Cuba after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion by exiled anti-Communists. Kennedy refused to escalate the Vietnam War and increasingly argued that the best way to defeat Communism was with a foreign policy of good will and charity.  After Kennedy’s assassination his successor, Lyndon Johnson, did indeed escalate the Vietnam War, and eventually resigned as the war became unpopular.

While Jimmy Carter’s presidency is remembered as an era of Peace, it was also an era in which the intelligence agencies had the upper hand. With the United States public still traumatized by the Vietnam War, Carter presented a liberal, nearly pacifist image. However, Carter called openly himself a student of Zbeignew Brzezinski, the mastermind anti-communist who worked with the CIA to foment protest among the eastern bloc intellegensia and pioneered the use of Wahabbi terrorists as proxy fighters in Afghanistan.

Carter was loved by Langley, but hated in the Pentagon. The US Senate blocked Carter from ratifying the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks 2 agreement of 1979, with retired Generals and military linked voices in the media denouncing him as “soft.” Carter was also accused of having “lost” Iran after the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The Pentagon loathed Carter’s soft-power approach and seemed almost unanimously behind Ronald Reagan who trounced him in the 1980 election. Reagan raised military spending. According to the Washington Post:

“Reagan came along and brought…. an infusion of money. Defense spending hit a peak of $456.5 billion in 1987 (in projected 2005 dollars), compared with $325.1 billion in 1980 and $339.6 million in 1981, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Most of the increase was for procurement and research and development programs. The procurement budget leapt to $147.3 billion from $71.2 billion in 1980.”

Trump: On The Outs With Both Intel & the Generals?

The mutual distrust between Trump and the intelligence agencies has been apparent from early on. The media largely credits intel agencies with the steady stream of leaks to the media. Trump’s speech to the CIA shortly after taking office was described by New Yorker magazine as a “vainglorious affront.”

Trump echoed the Pentagon’s mantra of “Peace Through Strength” on the campaign trail. He raised military spending, and even let the Pentagon utilize the largest non-nuclear explosive device, the infamous MOAB, in Afghanistan. Trump arranged for Saudi Arabia to increase its purchases from US military contractors.

In the old feud between intel agencies and the Pentagon, Trump seemed solidly with the Pentagon. But in December, a series of bizarre tweets criticizing US military spending were apparently foreshadowing the withdrawal of forces from Syria and Afghanistan. With Mattis out, and Trump’s Iraqi holiday visit widely criticized, it now appears Trump is on the outs with the US military.

One particular passage from Mattis resignation letter is striking:

“It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions – to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.”

This statement is loaded with hypocrisy and projection. Russia and China are rather loose and free societies compared to many US-aligned regimes such as Saudi Arabia or South Korea. Meanwhile, both Russia and China have been working to develop and eradicate poverty in neighboring countries. The Eurasian Economic Union and the One Belt, One Road initiative have involved massive spending by Russia and China to stabilize and raise living standards in nearby countries, not “promote their own interests” at their “expense.”

However, the structure of Mattis’ letter seems to indicate on some level that Trump does not agree with his assessment, and perhaps has another view of Russia and China and their role in the world.

This raises many questions, not just about what kind of conversations are taking place behind closed doors within the White House, but what the future of the current administration will be. After all, the US military and those who manufacture its weapons and tools are an extremely powerful constituency.

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Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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With the partial shutdown of the federal government in its third week, and 800,000 workers facing the prospect of a payless payday Friday, President Trump has stepped up his campaign to spread fear and whip up bigotry against immigrants and refugees.

The White House has requested time from the national television networks for a speech Tuesday night in which Trump is expected to make his case for the building of a wall along the US-Mexico border by portraying refugee families fleeing violence and poverty in Central America as terrorists and criminals. The three cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, and the four main broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, have all agreed to air the speech.

Trump administration spokesmen, effectively previewing the speech, fanned out on the Sunday network interview programs to press for the border wall, each parroting the flat-out lie that 4,000 terrorists were apprehended attempting to enter the country from Mexico last year.

The bogus character of this claim has been widely exposed. Even Fox News rebutted it, as interviewer Chris Wallace pointed out to White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders that 4,000 was the figure for everyone on government watch lists apprehended attempting to enter the country, most of them at airports, not the US-Mexico border.

NBC News reported that the actual number of such “terrorist” detentions at the US-Mexico border in the first half of 2018 was six people, not the thousands invoked by the White House as justification for a border wall.

On Sunday, the White House sent a formal request to the House of Representatives and the US Senate, seeking $5.6 billion for construction of the border wall as well as $800 million to house, feed and provide medical care for refugee families already in custody or expected to be imprisoned in the first nine months of 2019.

Trump administration representatives portrayed the $800 million as a “concession” to the new Democratic-controlled House, which has voted repeatedly to reopen the federal departments that are wholly or partially shut down, although each bill passed by the House has been blocked from consideration in the Republican-controlled Senate by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The implied threat in the negotiations is that if Trump does not get the $5.6 billion he is demanding for the wall, he will declare a state of national emergency, circumvent Congress and order the military to build the wall using funds already appropriated to the Pentagon. This would represent an unprecedented step in the direction of a presidential dictatorship.

The Democrats, for their part, are not opposing Trump’s fascistic vendetta against immigrants or the adoption of increasingly authoritarian forms of rule. They say next to nothing about Trump’s mass imprisonment of immigrant families and children, his deployment of troops to the border, the administration’s Gestapo-like workplace raids or its attack on the right to asylum. A year ago, they offered to support $25 billion to build the border wall in return for limited protection from deportation for so-called “dreamers”—undocumented immigrants brought into the US as children. Now they quibble over calling expanded border installations a “wall” or “fencing.”

While Trump appeals to his fascistic base to establish authoritarian forms of rule, the Democrats support the buildup of the powers of the military and intelligence agencies and an intensification of internet censorship.

As Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman pointed out in an analysis published in the New York Times over the weekend, a declaration of a state of national emergency would fall under the provisions of the 1976 National Emergencies Act, passed in the wake of the Watergate crisis to limit politically motivated assertions of presidential power.

Under this law, any such declaration could be voted on immediately by the House of Representatives, now under Democratic control. If the House voted to overturn it, the Senate would be required to vote with 15 days. The declaration would also be subject to review in the courts. In other words, far from settling the issue, the state of emergency declaration would escalate the political conflict within the US ruling elite to an unprecedented degree.

Tuesday is a crucial day in the shutdown, not just because of Trump’s scheduled speech or the return of Congress from a weekend recess, but because if no action is taken to restore funding, it will be too late to avoid a payless payday on January 11. Some 800,000 workers will receive nothing, about half of them on furlough, half compelled to work without pay.

Those designated as “essential” include most federal employees of agencies of police repression such as the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But it also includes 52,000 mostly low-paid workers at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), who conduct passenger and baggage screenings for air travel. Included as well are air traffic controllers and many other highly skilled workers.

A movement is developing among TSA workers, whose salaries average only $30,000 a year, to refuse to work without pay. Increasing numbers of TSA workers are calling in sick, an action that is entirely spontaneous and opposed by the union that supposedly represents them, the American Federation of Government Employees.

Press reports suggest that some of the largest airports have been hit, with 150 TSA screeners calling in sick at JFK Airport in New York City and an increase in sick calls at Dallas-Ft. Worth of 75 to 100 percent since Christmas.

Conditions are deteriorating in the national parks, where 16,000 out of 19,000 staff are furloughed, including most rangers and search-and-rescue crews. The Trump administration has chosen to keep the parks open anyway in an effort to minimize the shutdown’s effect on the public. In the course of this public relations exercise, at least seven people have died. Accidental deaths have been reported at Glen Canyon, Yosemite and Great Smoky Mountains national parks. The other four deaths were suicides.

If the shutdown extends into February, with further payless paydays in view on January 25 and February 8, there is certain to be growing support among federal workers for rejecting work without pay. The main federal employee unions have already filed lawsuits pointing out the obvious fact that compulsory labor without pay is a form slavery and in violation of the US Constitution. But the unions oppose any action by federal workers to actually defend their rights.

A shutdown into February would also directly threaten the survival of millions of families on food stamps, since the program is run by the Department of Agriculture, one of the departments affected by the shutdown, and that depends on annual appropriations from Congress. From the standpoint of the political sadists in the White House, however, plunging millions of working-class families into hunger is a welcome development, since they have long sought to destroy the program.

The largest union of commercial pilots, the Air Line Pilots Association, sent a letter to Trump urging him to bring an immediate end to the shutdown, warning that it was threatening “the safety, security, and efficiency of our national airspace system.” Besides TSA screeners and air traffic controllers, the Federal Aviation Administration also employs maintenance personnel and operates a school to train air traffic controllers, which has been closed, cutting off the flow of new personnel into the control towers, under conditions where thousands of controllers are reaching retirement age.

Reporters for the World Socialist Web Site spoke with workers in the Washington DC area about the impact of the shutdown, outside a station on the Washington Metro transit system.

“The situation is awful. The government shouldn’t be leveraging the pay of federal workers in order to build the border wall,” said Kathy, a municipal worker in the Washington suburbs.

Sharron, a metro transit worker, also expressed disgust.

“There are so many things wrong with holding up peoples’ pay over the wall,” she said. “Even if the government does end up with a wall, what’s it going to change? Nothing.”

“Everyone in this country is an immigrant,” Sharron added, rejecting the claim that immigrants are responsible for “stealing” American jobs.

“The situation is really frustrating,” said Lynn, a federal employee who is being forced to work without pay. “You’re not going to solve any problems by holding federal workers hostage. I have colleagues that can barely pay bills right now. They’re living check-to-check.

“I’ve been a federal worker for 35 years; my husband is retired from the Navy. At this point, neither of us wants our son to serve. The way things are, it is not encouraging to young adults to want to serve in any capacity for the government, whether that means as a teacher, a social worker or in the military.”

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The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today to prohibit nearly all uses of pesticides in areas designated as critical habitat for endangered species, including whooping cranes and Puget Sound orcas.

The petition calls for the federal agencies to use their authority under the Endangered Species Act to put in place measures to protect endangered wildlife from harmful pesticides. It comes after decades of intransigence by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has refused to comply with the legal mandates of the Endangered Species Act to protect the nation’s most imperiled species from highly toxic pesticides like chlorpyrifos and atrazine that are known to harm wildlife.

“Pesticides pose a devastating danger to endangered wildlife, from coast to coast,” said Lori Ann Burd, the Center’s environmental health director. “If the EPA isn’t going to do what’s needed to protect America’s endangered species from pesticides, federal wildlife agencies need to step in.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service and Fish and Wildlife Service have long recognized that pesticides pose extensive threats to endangered species. Recovery plans for 250 endangered species specifically identify pesticides as a known threat and obstacle to their recovery.

The EPA has approved about 1,100 pesticides. A December 2017 “biological opinion” study by the Fisheries Service for just three of them — chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon — found that they jeopardize the continued existence of Puget Sound killer whales and 37 different salmon and sturgeon species.

Yet the EPA has refused to implement a single on-the-ground conservation measure to protect any of those imperiled species.

Today’s petition asks the two federal wildlife agencies not to wait on the EPA but to initiate conservation measures like those found in the biological opinion, which include restricting pesticide use in critical habitat and creating spray buffers.

“The EPA’s track record on Endangered Species Act compliance for pesticides over the past 30 years is just abysmal,” said Burd, who sits on the EPA’s pesticide program federal advisory committee. “This is having the very real effect of pushing species closer to the edge of extinction. It’s quickly becoming a case of ‘now or never’ for species like the Fenders blue butterfly and California red-legged frog.”

Background

More than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the United States each year, causing acute and subacute harm to the plants and animals that rely on the fields, forests and waterways where the toxins end up.

In 2014 the Center entered into a legal settlement with the Fish and Wildlife Service under which the agency agreed to analyze the impacts of five organophosphate pesticides, including chlorpyrifos, on endangered species by Dec. 31, 2018.

But after Dow Chemical donated $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration, Trump political appointees made it a top priority to thwart the EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service from completing a biological opinion assessing the harms chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon pose to endangered wildlife.

In May 2017 the EPA informed its pesticide program federal advisory committee that it was about to release the draft biological opinion of the pesticides’ harms to protected species. But in fact it never released the document, and the agency now states it cannot provide even an estimated deadline for completion.

Public documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show both that the draft biological opinion was essentially completed in the spring of 2017 and that it determined these three pesticides jeopardize the continued existence of endangered species.

In recent years pesticides were specifically identified as threats that helped spur Endangered Species Act protection for four butterflies in 2014 (the Florida leafwing, Bartram’s hairstreak, Poweshiek skipperling and Dakota skipper); the rusty patched bumblebee in 2017; and a fish called the trispot darter, which was protected under the Act just a week ago.

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Featured image: Whooping crane photo by Brett Hartl, Center for Biological Diversity

Stand at a certain point along the dusty highway on the northern outskirts of Puerto Maldonado, a town in the Peruvian Amazon, and you’ll see trucks transporting huge quantities of wood regularly pulling up and stopping.

Sometimes there are as many as five or six trucks there, some carrying unprocessed logs, some sawn timber. The drivers, often with a wad of paperwork in one hand, climb down and potter off towards a nondescript regional government office.

This can happen all day, some days more than most, depending on the season. The wood is cut from logging concessions, indigenous communities and other harvest areas to the north – the heart of Peru’s great Madre de Dios region stretching all the way to Bolivia and Brazil. 

Widespread illegalities 

What the truck drivers are doing, there in a district called El Triunfo, is calling at a timber sector control post run by the regional government. They need to have their paperwork stamped by an official. Various exceptions aside, no wood in Peru should ever be transported unless it is accompanied by permits stating its point-of-origin, among other things.

At least, that’s the theory. But what if the permits have been falsified and the wood doesn’t really come from where they say it does? That means the wood is illegal and laundered: it appears to come from point A, perhaps a logging concession or indigenous community, when actually it comes from point B, C or D, such as a national park, communal reserve or a logging concession where no permission to log has been granted. 

For the last ten years, the only people consistently in a position to know if wood hasn’t come from where the transport permits say has been an independent government agency called the Organismo de Supervisión de los Recursos Forestales y de Fauna Silvestre (OSINFOR).

That is because OSINFOR inspectors, unlike anyone else, have regularly travelled into the Amazon to visit the harvest areas where the wood is purportedly extracted and to find the specific locations where each tree was standing, according to the Universal Transverse Mercator coordinates given in the harvest areas’ operating plans. How otherwise can you tell if the wood is really legal or not?

In making these inspections, OSINFOR has done more than anyone to expose the widespread illegalities and laundering that have dominated Peru’s timber sector for decades – and generated some powerful, well-organised and sometimes violent opposition.

Stripped of independence 

The statistics – up there on OSINFOR’s website for all to see – make for fascinating reading: thousands of inspections made, over 130,000 trees effectively “faked” in operating plans, and at least 2.5 million cubic metres of “unauthorised” wood identified.

Earlier this year it reported that 67 precent of the timber purportedly from the harvest areas that it inspected in 2016 and 2017 was “unauthorised” – down from a previous figure of almost 90 percent. 

The result of such impressive endeavours? To be stripped of its independence – so crucial to its effectiveness – by president Martin Vizcarra last month when he signed a Supreme Decree moving OSINFOR to the Ministry of Environment, following several years of such a threat knocking around.

This is arguably illegal under Peruvian law and violates the country’s so-called “Trade Promotion Agreement” (TPA) with the US, which states that OSINFOR must be “independent and separate.”

The timing couldn’t have been more ironic. 2018 marked the ten-year anniversary of OSINFOR becoming independent, and the Decree was emitted at the same time as the United Nations climate change talks were taking place in Poland. Earlier in the year, UN Climate Change’s first Annual Report stated that deforestation and forest degradation “account for approximately 17 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, more than the transport sector.”

Punitive measures 

No doubt about it, this has happened precisely because of what OSINFOR has been exposing. It is a major step back in protecting the Peruvian Amazon – the fourth biggest tropical forest worldwide after Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. 

But might Vizcarra et al backtrack? And how might the US respond? A statement by various organisations including the Environmental Investigation Agency and Global Witness – for whom I was working as a consultant until recently – is calling on “the Peruvian government to reconsider its decision and restore OSINFOR’s independence, while strengthening it in order to guarantee that no similar attempt will succeed in the future.”

Politicians in the US are making similar calls. Just before Christmas, six Democrats, including John Lewis and Richard Neal, wrote to the US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer urging him to “insist that this brazen, bad faith decision be reversed formally”, describing it as a “flagrant attack” on the US-Peru TPA.

According to the Associated Press on 4 January, Lighthizer has responded to Neal by calling the decision “unacceptable” and saying the US has “forcefully communicated” its position to Peru. This case, the AP claims, “could mark a first for the US in taking potential punitive measures against an international partner accused of violating environmental protections in a free trade deal.”

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David Hill is a freelance journalist focusing on human rights and environmental issues across Latin America.

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Politicians and pundits alike have roundly criticized Donald Trump for stating he will pull our troops out of Syria and cut US forces in Afghanistan by half. James Mattis immediately resigned as secretary of defense, writing in a letter to Trump, “you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

As the US military kills civilians in Syria and CIA-led Afghan forces continue to commit war crimes, it appears Trump is doing the right thing in pulling out military troops. But the CIA will remain and grow stronger after the US troops leave.

“[A]s American military forces are set to draw down, the role of the Central Intelligence Agency is only likely to grow in importance,” according to The New York Times.

On December 31, The Times described a CIA-sponsored Afghan strike force that operates “unconstrained by battlefield rules designed to protect civilians, conducting night raids, torture and killings with near impunity.” In the article, journalist Mujib Mashal cites an October 2018 United Nations report that raised concern about “consistent, credible accounts of intentional destruction of civilian property, illegal detention and other abuses.”

Mashal reports that the abuses by the CIA “are actively pushing people toward the Taliban” and when few US military troops remain, “the [CIA-led] strike forces are increasingly the way that a large number of rural Afghans experience the American presence.” Indeed, Mohibullah, whose relative was killed when his home was attacked by a strike force, told The Times he saw “no difference between the CIA-sponsored force and the Islamic State if the result was to be attacked with no warning.”

International Court: Reasonable Belief of US War Crimes in Afghanistan

Last fall, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, asked the court’s Pre-Trial Chamber to open a formal investigation into the possible commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by parties to the war in Afghanistan, including US persons.

Bensouda’s preliminary examination found “a reasonable basis to believe” that “war crimes of torture and ill-treatment” had been committed “by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, principally in the 2003-2004 period, although allegedly continuing in some cases until 2014.”

Bensouda noted these alleged crimes “were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals,” but rather “part of approved interrogation techniques in an attempt to extract ‘actionable intelligence’ from detainees.” She concluded there was “reason to believe” that crimes were “committed in the furtherance of a policy or policies … which would support US objectives in the conflict in Afghanistan.”

Like its predecessor, the Trump administration is adamant that US war criminals escape justice. In response to Bensouda’s referral, National Security Adviser John Bolton told the right-wing Federalist Society the United States would punish the ICC if it mounts a full investigation of Americans for war crimes committed in Afghanistan.

Trump issued a statement saying that in the event the ICC opens a formal investigation, he might negotiate “even more binding, bilateral agreements to prohibit nations from surrendering United States persons to the ICC.” Trump threatened to prohibit “ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the United States, sanction their funds in the United States financial system, and, prosecute them in the United States criminal system.” He would consider “taking steps in the United Nations Security Council to constrain the Court’s sweeping powers.”

But Bensouda will not be bowed. After Bolton’s speech, she stated that the ICC is “an independent and impartial judicial institution” based on the principle of complementarity, where the ICC will step in only if the accused’s home country does not. Bensouda added,

“The ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its work undeterred, in accordance with those principles and the overarching idea of the rule of law.”

Meanwhile, the ICC has received an astounding 1.7 million allegations of war crimes committed in Afghanistan during a three-month period ending in January 2018. Some accusations encompass entire villages.

The US Should Completely Withdraw From Afghanistan and Syria

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is one of the few Congress members who favor pulling US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan. She told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow,

“I think it is right to get our troops out of Syria ― and let me add, I think it’s right to get our troops out of Afghanistan.”

Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she disagrees with the “foreign policy establishment” position that US troops should “stay forever” in Afghanistan.

Robert D. Kaplan, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank, wrote in The New York Times that the United States should withdraw from Afghanistan.

“No other country in the world symbolizes the decline of the American empire as much as Afghanistan,” he opined. “There is virtually no possibility of a military victory over the Taliban and little chance of leaving behind a self-sustaining democracy — facts that Washington’s policy community has mostly been unable to accept … It is a vestigial limb of empire, and it is time to let it go.” While Kaplan writes, “it may soon be time to for the United States to get out of the country altogether,” he presumably includes CIA, as well as military, forces in that withdrawal.

Regardless of Trump’s motivation in pulling out of Syria, it is the correct decision, says international law scholar Richard Falk. But, he adds, Trump should also end the air strikes and use the money saved by terminating military operations to help Syria recover from the humanitarian disaster wrought by seven years of war.

Falk slammed “Mattis’ geopolitical hubris” for writing in his resignation letter that “the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world.” Falk wrote,

“Really. Such an opinion is not widely shared in most parts of the world. Many people and foreign leaders now worry far more about what the United States does than they do about China and Russia.”

The “near-universal condemnation by Democrats and Republicans alike” of Trump’s announcement that he will withdraw US forces from Syria “says less about Trump than it does about the US foreign policy establishment’s blinkered vision,” Columbia Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs wrote at Project Syndicate. Sachs disputes the notion that the United States has “been in Syria (or Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Libya, and elsewhere in the region) because of ISIS.” Sachs sees ISIS as “more a consequence than a cause of the US presence.”

Sachs disabuses us of the notion that the United States — from Obama to Trump — has sought to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for the purpose of bringing democracy to Syria, citing US support for the undemocratic Saudi Arabia. “The real purposes,” Sachs astutely notes, “have been US regional hegemony; and the real consequences have been disastrous.”

In a statement following Trump’s announcement, Veterans for Peace (VFP) lauded the goal of a total removal of US troops from Syria, hoping it would lead to the complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and the Saudi-led war in Yemen as well.

“It is high time to unwind all these tragic, failed and unnecessary wars of aggression, domination and plunder,” VFP stated. “It is time to turn a page in history and build a new world based on human rights, equality and mutual respect for all. We must build momentum toward real and lasting peace. Nothing less than the survival of human civilization is at stake.”

Indeed, the United States should withdraw all of its forces, including the CIA, from Afghanistan. All US troops should be removed from Syria and all bombing must end. And the US government should make reparations for the devastation it has wreaked in both of those countries.

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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 an advisory board member of Veterans for Peace. Her latest book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, was recently published in an updated second edition. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from CPL. ALEJANDRO PENA / US MARINE CORPS

More than 33,000 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are set to strike Thursday in what would be the largest walkout by educators in the US since last year’s statewide strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona. Like the previous struggles, the battle in the nation’s second largest school district centers on the fight by educators against the assault by both the Democratic and Republican parties on the right to public education.

Teachers are demanding pay raises, smaller class sizes and increased funding to hire more nurses, librarians, counselors and other critical support staff. They are also opposing the school authorities’ use of standardized tests to scapegoat teachers for educational problems caused by the defunding of education and the deterioration of social conditions. In Los Angeles, as in other school districts, the shutting down of “failing schools” has been used as the justification for a vast expansion of for-profit charter schools, which siphon off an estimated $600 million from LA public schools each year.

While last year’s statewide strikes largely pitted educators against Republican-led state governments, in Los Angeles teachers are fighting directly against the Democratic Party, which controls the school district and the local government, holds the governor’s seat, and wields a super-majority in both houses of the state legislature.

Students and teachers march in downtown LA last month (Source: WSWS)

While the teachers’ unions in California and nationally have falsely promoted the Democrats as allies of teachers and defenders of public education, the Democratic Party has proven to be just as ruthless an enemy as the Republican Party. Decades of bipartisan funding cuts have reduced California schools, once known as the best in the nation, to 43rd in the US in per-pupil spending.

The state is expecting a $15 billion budget surplus, but the new governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, has declared that any proposals for increased K-12 school funding will have to be “whittled down” because “we all” have to “live within in our means.” After a meeting with state Democrats, he told the Sacramento Bee last month, “We’re not going to deviate from being fiscally prudent”—a reference to his predecessor Jerry Brown’s austerity measures.

Yet both corporate-controlled parties have showered Silicon Valley and the entertainment and finance industries with endless tax cuts. California is home to the largest number of billionaires—144—in the nation.

The school district, headed by the multi-millionaire former investment banker Austin Beutner, has refused to budge. It is demanding that the paltry three percent raise it is offering be contingent on cutting the health care benefits of future teachers. School officials are also rejecting out-of-hand the teachers’ demands for increased school funding and hiring, and a curtailment of charter schools.

An article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times (Beutner is the newspaper’s former publisher and CEO), complained that teachers are demanding “more control over how money is spent at schools, how much time is given over to standardized testing and how space on district campuses is allocated to charter schools.” The article continued:

“District officials question whether such demands are proper bargaining topics and oppose them almost universally as interfering with their management of the school system.”

Beutner got his start in the privatization of public assets when he was tapped by the Clinton administration to head the State Department’s collaboration in the dismantling of state-owned property in the Soviet Union and its sell-off to criminal asset strippers. Backed by powerful corporate interests pushing for more for-profit charter schools, Beutner, a Democrat and former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, hopes to inflict a devastating defeat on the teachers and accelerate the privatization of public education.

In the face of this all-out assault, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), which is affiliated with both national teacher unions—the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—has kept teachers on the job without a new contract for a year-and-a-half, including months of state mediation and fact-finding. In so doing, the union ignored a near unanimous strike mandate by rank-and-file teachers.

In a last-ditch effort to prevent a walkout, UTLA officials are meeting with school authorities on Monday. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece Sunday, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl wrote:

“We will engage in whatever talks are possible before Jan. 10 to avert a strike. But for talks to be successful, the district needs to commit to improve public schools.”

This vague formula appears to invite the district to offer some cosmetic change in its position in order to block a strike.

If the UTLA is unable to prevent a strike, it plans to follow the pattern of the NEA and AFT in 2018 in West Virginia and other states where the unions worked to isolate the teachers and then cut deals with the political establishment that abandoned educators’ demands for substantial improvements in pay and school funding. The unions did everything they could to prevent the spread of strikes across the US and prevent the movement of educators from developing into a political confrontation with the Democratic Party.

Instead, they sought to channel the opposition of the teachers behind the campaign of the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections under the banner of “Remember in November.” The outright treachery of this policy is already becoming evident to the teachers in LA.

In his comment in the Times, Caputo-Pearl tried to boost illusions that teachers could achieve their aims by lobbying for increased funding from the Democrats in the state capital in Sacramento. The UTLA president also promoted a Democratic-backed initiative on the 2020 ballot that includes a modest increase in capital gains taxes.

The unions peddled the same illusions and lies last year in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, with the result that none of the supposed funding guarantees have been honored and no significant increase in school funding has occurred.

A court ruling by a federal judge over the weekend, which denied the district’s efforts to compel special education teachers to work during a strike, indicates that the state is looking to the union to quickly shut down a walkout before it can escalate into a broader movement of teachers and the working class more generally.

But that is exactly what is needed. If the LA teachers are to mount a serious fight, they must take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands through the formation of rank-and-file action committees in every school and community. These committees must formulate their own demands, including a 30 percent increase in wages, the reconversion of all charter schools to public schools and a vast increase in funding.

To conduct this fight, LA teachers must join their struggle with that of educators in Oakland and other school districts and fight for a statewide strike to defend the right to high quality public education. The fight of teachers must be linked to broader sections of workers as part of an assault on the fortunes of the super-rich and the fight for a radical redistribution of wealth to meet social needs.

Los Angeles educators who spoke to the WSWS Teacher Newsletter expressed their determination to fight. Lamisha, a school counselor in her fifth year with the district, said,

“I travel to an elementary school one day, a middle school another day, and a high school another day, and so on. Things are getting worse because of the social crisis, and we have no support.

“Everything is on a minimum level for maximum problems. We need more counselors who can work with kids with anger management and other problems. If a child is homeless, they’re experiencing trauma. How can they learn? We need to get to the root of the problems, and no one’s tackling that one.”

“The teachers have got to speak out now,” Barbara, a special education assistant since 1999, told the WSWS. “Almost everybody I know is working two jobs to make ends meet. The three percent they’re offering the teachers is nothing. It used to be that you’d automatically get a three percent raise, like a cost-of-living raise. Then you’d get a real raise on top of that. Even people working at In ‘n Out and McDonalds are getting better raises.”

Barbara, who is member of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, added,

“Our union has thrown us under the bus. We were told that if we attended the training in June, we would get an additional five percent in pay. That never happened. Our contract was violated. I don’t understand why we can’t go out in support of the teachers. All my local said we’re going to do is wear red. That’s all.”

“I have been teaching for over 25 years and every year teachers have been mandated to do more with less,” an LA teacher posted in the comment section of a local news outlet. “The evidence is in my classroom and in the school. The school grounds are unkempt, as you can see scuff marks, trash across the campus, dirty restrooms, dusty windows, because the district has downsized custodial staff. My kindergarten students and I sweep the room and pretend to ‘ice skate’ with baby wipes while listening to music to mop the room.

“Our library is neglected because we only have a librarian every other week and the library is closed the week she is not there. There are less resources and teachers are treated like children. We have to justify why we need a learning tool or why we need certain books to meet students’ needs. Many of us either swallow the cost and buy what we need or we just make do with what we have—which is not enough.

“Sometimes I think it’s a miracle I still try to engage my students despite all the obstacles I encounter every day. I enjoy teaching my students and I value them. That’s why I think the course we’re on as a district is not sustainable. I cannot continue to subsidize my students’ education and it’s getting harder and harder for me and my colleagues to pretend that everything is okay. It’s not. That’s why I’m willing to strike—so that my students and I get the respect we deserve.”

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This article was originally published by GR in November 2017.

For almost 2 decades, the US pursued a list of ‘enemy countries’ to confront, attack, weaken and overthrow. 

This imperial quest to overthrow ‘enemy countries’ operated at various levels of intensity, depending on two considerations:  the level of priority and the degree of vulnerability for a ‘regime change’ operation.

The criteria for determining an ‘enemy country’ and its place on the list of priority targets in the US quest for greater global dominance, as well as its vulnerability to a ‘successfully’ regime change will be the focus of this essay.

We will conclude by discussing the realistic perspectives of future imperial options.

Prioritizing US Adversaries

Imperial strategists consider military, economic and political criteria in identifying high priority adversaries.

The following are high on the US ‘enemy list’:

1) Russia, because of its military power, is a nuclear counterweight to US global domination.  It has a huge, well-equipped armed force with a European, Asian and Middle East presence.  Its global oil and gas resources shield it from US economic blackmail and its growing geo-political alliances limit US expansion.

2) China, because of its global economic power and the growing scope of its trade, investment and technological networks.  China’s growing defensive military capability, particularly with regard to protecting its interests in the South China Sea serve to counter US domination in Asia.

3) North Korea, because of its nuclear and ballistic missile capability, its fierce independent foreign policies and its strategic geo-political location, is seen as a threat to the US military bases in Asia and Washington’s regional allies and proxies.

4) Venezuela, because of its oil resources and socio-political policies, challenge the US centered neo-liberal model in Latin America.

5) Iran, because of its oil resources, political independence and geo-political alliances in the Middle East, challenge US, Israeli and Saudi Arabia domination of the region and present an independent alternative.

6) Syria, because of its strategic position in the Middle East, its secular nationalist ruling party and its alliances with Iran, Palestine, Iraq and Russia, is a counterweight to US-Israeli plans to balkanize the Middle East into warring ethno-tribal states.

US  Middle-level Adversaries :

1)  Cuba, because of its independent foreign policies and its alternative socio-economic system stands in contrast to the US-centered neo-liberal regimes in the Caribbean, Central and South America.

2) Lebanon, because of its strategic location on the Mediterranean and the coalition government’s power sharing arrangement with the political party, Hezbollah, which is increasingly influential in Lebanese civil society in part because of its militia’s proven capacity to protect Lebanese national sovereignty by expelling the invading Israeli army and helping to defeat the ISIS/al Queda mercenaries in neighboring Syria.

3) Yemen, because of its independent, nationalist Houthi-led movement opposed to the Saudi-imposed puppet government as well as its relations with Iran.

Low Level Adversaries

1) Bolivia, because of its independent foreign policy, support for the Chavista government in Venezuela and advocacy of a mixed economy;  mining wealth and  defense of indigenous people’s territorial claims.

2) Nicaragua, because of its independent foreign policy and criticism of US aggression toward Cuba and Venezuela.

US hostility to high priority adversaries is expressed through economic sanctions military encirclement, provocations and intense propaganda wars toward North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Syria.

Because of China’s powerful global market linkages, the US has applied few sanctions.  Instead, the US relies on military encirclement, separatist provocations and intense hostile propaganda when dealing with China.

Priority Adversaries, Low Vulnerability and Unreal Expectations

With the exception of Venezuela, Washington’s ‘high priority targets’ have limited strategic vulnerabilities. Venezuela is the most vulnerable because of its high dependence on oil revenues with its major refineries located in the US, and its high levels of indebtedness, verging on default.   In addition, there are the domestic opposition groups, all acting as US clients and Caracas’ growing isolation within Latin America due to orchestrated hostility by important US clients, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.

Iran is far less vulnerable: It is a strong strategic regional military power linked to neighboring countries and similar religious-nationalist movements.  Despite its dependence on oil exports, Iran has developed alternative markets, like China, free from US blackmail and is relatively safe from US or EU initiated creditor attacks.

North Korea, despite the crippling economic sanctions imposed on its regime and civilian population, has ‘the bomb’ as a deterrent to a US military attack and has shown no reluctance to defend itself.  Unlike Venezuela, neither Iran nor North Korea face significant internal attacks from US-funded or armed domestic opposition.

Russia has full military capacity – nuclear weapons, ICBM and a huge, well-trained armed force – to deter any direct US military threat.  Moscow is politically vulnerable to US-backed propaganda, opposition political parties and Western-funded NGO’s.  Russian oligarch-billionaires, linked to London and Wall Street, exercise some pressure against independent economic initiatives.

To a limited degree, US sanctions exploited Russia’s earlier dependence on Western markets, but since the imposition of draconian sanctions by the Obama regime, Moscow has effectively counteredWashington’s offensive by diversifying its markets to Asia and strengthening domestic self-reliance in its agriculture, industry and high technology.

China has a world-class economy and is on course to become the world’s economic leader.  Feeble threats to ‘sanction’ China have merely exposed Washington’s weakness rather intimidating Beijing.  China has countered US military provocations and threats by expanding its economic market power, increasing its strategic military capacity and shedding dependence on the dollar.

Washington’s high priority targets are not vulnerable to frontal attack: They retain or are increasing their domestic cohesion and economic networks, while upgrading their military capacity to impose completely unacceptable costs on the US for any direct assault.

As a result, the US leaders are forced to rely on incremental, peripheral and proxy attacks with limited results against its high priority adversaries.

Washington will tighten sanctions on North Korea and Venezuela, with dubious prospects of success in the former and a possible pyrrhic victory in the case of Caracas. Iran and Russia can easily overcome proxy interventions.  US allies, like Saudi Arabia and Israel, can badger, propagandize and rail the Persians, but their fears that an out-and-out war against Iran, could quickly destroy Riyadh and Tel Aviv forces them to work in tandem to induce the corrupt US political establishment to push for war over the objections of a war-weary US military and population. Saudi and Israelis can bomb and starve the populations of Yemen and Gaza, which lack any capacity to reply in kind, but Teheran is another matter.

The politicians and propagandists in Washington can blather about Russia’s interference in the US’s corrupt electoral theater and scuttle moves to improve diplomatic ties, but they cannot counter Russia’s growing influence in the Middle East and its expanding trade with Asia, especially China.

In summary, at the global level, the US ‘priority’ targets are unattainable and invulnerable.  In the midst of the on-going inter-elite dogfight within the US, it may be too much to hope for the emergence of any rational policymakers in Washington who could rethink strategic priorities and calibrate policies of mutual accommodation to fit in with global realities.

Medium and Low Priorities, Vulnerabilities and Expectations

Washington can intervene and perhaps inflict severe damage on middle and low priority countries.  However, there are several drawbacks to a full-scale attack.

Yemen, Cuba, Lebanon, Bolivia and Syria are not nations capable of shaping global political and economic alignments.  The most the US can secure in these vulnerable countries are destructive regime changes with massive loss of life, infrastructure and millions of desperate refugees . . . but at great political cost, with prolonged instability and with severe economic losses.

Yemen

The US can push for a total Saudi Royal victory over the starving, cholera-stricken people of Yemen.  But who benefits?  Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a palace upheaval and has no ability to exercise hegemony, despite hundreds of billions of  dollars of US/NATO arms, trainers and bases.  Colonial occupations are costly and yield few, if any, economic benefits, especially from a poor, geographically isolated devastated nation like Yemen.

Cuba

Cuba has a powerful highly professional military backed by a million-member militia.  They are capable of prolonged resistance and can count on international support.  A US invasion of Cuba would require a prolonged occupation and heavy losses.  Decades of economic sanctions haven’t worked and their re-imposition by Trump have not affected the key tourist growth sectors.

President Trump’s ‘symbolic hostility’ does not cut any ice with the major US agro-business groups, which saw Cuba as a market. Over half of the so-called ‘overseas Cubans’ now oppose direct US intervention.

US-funded NGOs can provide some marginal propaganda points but they cannot reverse popular support for Cuba’s mixed ‘socialized’ economy, its excellent public education and health care and its independent foreign policy.

Lebanon

A joint US-Saudi economic blockade and Israeli bombs can destabilize Lebanon.  However, a full-scale prolonged Israeli invasion will cost Jewish lives and foment domestic unrest.  Hezbollah has missiles to counter Israeli bombs.  The Saudi economic blockade will radicalize Lebanese nationalists, especially among the Shia and the Christian populations.  The Washington’s ‘invasion’ of Libya, which did not lose a single US soldier, demonstrates that destructive invasions result in long-term, continent-wide chaos.

A US-Israeli-Saudi war would totally destroy Lebanon but it will destabilize the region and exacerbate conflicts in neighboring countries – Syria, Iran and possibly Iraq.  And Europe will be flooded with millions more desperate refugees.

Syria

The US-Saudi proxy war in Syria suffered serious defeats and the loss of political assets.  Russia gained influence, bases and allies.  Syria retained its sovereignty and forged a battle-hardened national armed force.  Washington can sanction Syria, grab some bases in a few phony ‘Kurdish enclaves’ but it will not advance beyond a stalemate and will be widely viewed as an occupying invader.

Syria is vulnerable and continues to be a middle-range target on the US enemy list but it offers few prospects of advancing US imperial power, beyond some limited ties with an unstable Kurd enclave, susceptible to internecine warfare, and risking major Turkish retaliation.

Bolivia and Nicaragua

Bolivia and Nicaragua are minor irritants on the US enemy list. US regional policymakers recognize that neither country exercises global or even regional power.  Moreover, both regimes rejected radical politics in practice and co-exist with powerful and influential local oligarchs and international MNC’s linked to the US.

Their foreign policy critiques, which are mostly for domestic consumption, are neutralized by the near total US influence in the OAS and the major neo-liberal regimes in Latin America.  It appears that the US will accommodate these marginalized rhetorical adversaries rather than risk provoking any revival of radical nationalist or socialist mass movements erupting in La Paz or Managua.

Conclusion

A brief examination of Washington’s ‘list of enemies’ reveals that the limited chances of success even among vulnerable targets.  Clearly, in this evolving world power configuration, US money and markets will not alter the power equation.

US allies, like Saudi Arabia, spend enormous amounts of money attacking a devastated nation, but they destroy markets while losing wars.  Powerful adversaries, like China, Russia and Iran, are not vulnerable and offer the Pentagon few prospects of military conquest in the foreseeable future.

Sanctions, or economic wars have failed to subdue adversaries in North Korea, Russia, Cuba and Iran.  The ‘enemy list’ has cost the US prestige, money and markets – a very peculiar imperialist balance sheet.  Russia now exceeds the US in wheat production and exports.  Gone are the days when US agro-exports dominated world trade including trade with Moscow.

Enemy lists are easy to compose, but effective policies are difficult to implement against rivals with dynamic economies and powerful military preparedness.

The US would regain some of its credibility if it operated within the contexts of global realities and pursued a win-win agenda instead of remaining a consistent loser in a zero-sum game.

Rational leaders could negotiate reciprocal trade agreements with China, which would develop high tech, finance and agro-commercial ties with manufacturers and services.  Rational leaders could develop joint Middle East economic and peace agreements, recognizing the reality of a Russian-Iranian-Lebanese Hezbollah and Syrian alliance.

As it stands, Washington’s ‘enemy list’ continues to be composed and imposed by its own irrational leaders, pro-Israel maniacs and Russophobes in the Democratic Party – with no acknowledgement of current realities.

For Americans, the list of domestic enemies is long and well known, what we lack is a civilian political leadership to replace these serial mis-leaders.

Trump’s deployment of 80 military personnel to Gabon last week on the basis of preparing for a response to “violent protests” in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo might have been a ruse designed to cover up America’s complicity in the Gabonese coup attempt that just took place at the beginning of this week, which was actually an ingenious AFRICOM power grab in the strategic Gulf of Guinea that aims to give the US a base of operations from which to carve out an expanded “sphere of influence” for itself in the region irrespective if this regime change ploy succeeds or not.

Just a day after confirming the assassination of the USS Cole bomber in Yemen, Trump tried to score a second foreign policy success in yet another “Global South” nation, this time the Central African state of Gabon. The news just broke that some members of the country’s armed forces attempted to stage a coup against President Ali Bongo, who’s been recovering in Morocco over the last few months after suffering a stroke back in October, though the government claims that most of the conspirators have been arrested and that the “situation is under control”. Even though it appears as though the state succeeded in thwarting this plot, the US is still poised to geopolitical profit from it by manipulating the outcome to its AFRICOM favor.

Background Basics About Gabon

Bongo narrowly won reelection by less than 6,000 votes, which was used by the opposition as their excuse to torch their parliament in the historically peaceful country and bring it to the brink of Hybrid War chaos. The author wrote about the developing crisis at the time in his piece about “What’s Going On With The Hybrid War On Gabon”, in which some important domestic and foreign policy basics about the country were also described. Gabon had been ruled by the Bongo family since the President’s father took power in 1967, or in other words, 7 years after its independence. It had previously been regarded as one of France’s most prized neo-colonial “possessions” in the continent and was known to be very rich in natural resources, which is why it was an OPEC member from 1975-1995 before returning again in 2016, one year after it interestingly joined the Saudis’ “anti-terrorist coalition”.

It might sound strange to many that a majority-Christian nation on the Atlantic Coast of sub-Saharan Central Africa would join this Mideast-based military organization, but one of the reasons might be because Bongo is a member of Gabon’s Muslim minority and that he might have fallen sway to the Saudis’ “personal diplomacy” in wooing his country over to their side. Another complementary explanation could also simply be that Gabon had begun “rebalancing” its foreign policy during that time too, having transitioned from being a French neo-colonial “possession” to a more sovereignty-minded state following its post-Old Cold War partnership with China, though prudently understanding the need for a third strategic partner in order to maintain the best possible “balance” between Africa’s two most important non-regional countries during the opening stages of the New Cold War.

Apart from its energy, fishery, and forestry resources, Gabon is also very important for geostrategic reasons, too. As the author wrote in his previously mentioned piece when describing why France retains nearly 1,000 troops in this tiny country, “Paris is able to keep troops on standby for snap-response deployment to Central African hotspots such as the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Additionally, because of its location, Gabon provides France with a midway location between the two rising African powers of Nigeria and Angola, a position which Paris could leverage to maximum effect if need be.” Presciently, it was for the “official” purpose of responding to “violent demonstrations” that might break out in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (which is the world’s largest producer of cobalt) after its latest elections that Trump deployed 80 US troops there last week.

The Purpose Of The American Deployment

In hindsight, his signaling about these soldiers being in the Central African nation to supposedly respond to “violent demonstrations” in the DRC might have been nothing more than a ruse to cover up their role in trying to deter the same in Gabon following what is more than likely the AFRICOM-assisted coup attempt that just took place in the country. The true state of the situation still remains unclear, though it’s beginning to look like the government did indeed arrest most of the conspirators and that everything is now under control. Nevertheless, the domestic strife that Gabon experienced two and a half years ago during its last elections could have also been in the process of simmering over once more following rumors about Bongo’s health, which might have prompted the armed forces to preemptively act in the first place seeing as how the organizers declared their sympathy with the opposition supporters who were killed during those riots.

The presence of US soldiers on the superficially plausible pretense of preparing to evacuate Americans from the DRC in the event that the nearby conflict-prone country re-erupts into violence following the impending announcement of its election results might just have been to signal the US’ tacit support to the plotters and deter Bongo loyalists from reacting, the latter purpose of which seems to have failed. The US didn’t want to get too directly involved because it wagered that it could leverage its position in the country irrespective of the coup’s outcome. As such, this event is of supreme significance for AFRICOM because the US now has a reason to further embed itself in this strategically positioned country along the energy-rich Gulf of Guinea, which is also surrounded by several weak but similarly strategic states presided over by long-serving elderly leaders and each of which have recently experienced different degrees of domestic unrest.

To put it another way, the US deployment might have been ‘bait’ to encourage the coup plotters to go ahead with their attempt, after which the US could take advantage of its outcome one way or another in order to get Gabon to function as AFRICOM’s long-desired base in the continent. On the one hand, had the coup succeeded, then the US could have partnered with the “pariah” government that would have naturally been shunned by the African Union and most other international actors, helping it stabilize the domestic situation and resume a sense of “normality” as soon as possible. On the other, despite the apparent success of the government forces in quelling this coup, this dramatic incident might have shown the state that its domestic political tensions are still simmering and now affecting part of its “deep state” apparatus, thus necessitating the need for another security partner such as the US to maintain stability in case something like this happens again.

Either way, the US is poised to profit from what happened in order to pursue its regional agenda.

Here’s What Gabon Has Going For It

In The Middle Of All The Action:

Like it was mentioned earlier in pertinence to the author’s previously cited piece on Gabon, the country is in very close proximity to rising African Great Powers Nigeria and Angola, as well as the mineral-rich DRC. Furthermore, it’s also just a short distance away from the Central African Republic (CAR), which has taken on more importance over the past 12 months since Russia’s UNSC-approved “mercenary” intervention there, which forms the core component of Moscow’s “balancing” strategy in Africa. Given that France has all but lost CAR as a neo-imperial colony and could very well be in the process of losing Gabon too following the coup, it can be said that the “Scramble for Africa” that the author predicted would intensify this year is leading to profound geopolitical changes in the Central African region whereby the former extra-regional hegemon of France is being squeezed out by Russia, the US, and China.

Surrounded By Aging Leaders:

Another crucial point to keep in mind is that the surrounding countries of Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo (ROC), and Equatorial Guinea are led by aging leaders who have recently come under different forms of regime change pressure. The first-mentioned is led by Paul Biya (who has been in office for 36 consecutive years) and is unofficially in a state of civil war between the central government and the Anglophone region astride part of the Nigerian border, the second is led by Denis Nguesso (who has been in office for 34 non-consecutive years – 13 years and 21 years, with a 5-year interim break) and only recently reconsolidated peace in the restive southern Pool region outside the capital, while the last-mentioned is led by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (who has been in office for 39 years) and recently thwarted a mercenary-led coup attempt last year.

Hybrid War Staging Ground:

In terms of regional Hybrid War dynamics, Gabon is therefore the perfect place for the US to encourage and guide regime change movements all throughout Central Africa, ultimately carving out an exclusive “sphere of influence” for itself in the eastern Gulf of Guinea from which to exert further influence into the West, Central, and Southern African countries of Nigeria, DRC, and Angola if it’s successful in turning the country into AFRICOM’s base of operations on the continent. Should that happen, then the newly imposed authorities will probably justify this move on the basis of “balancing” even though it’ll obviously be pivoting towards the US and away from France, China, and Saudi Arabia. AFRICOM doesn’t even have to be formally invited into the country either for this to happen, the US just needs to keep its proverbial ‘foot in the door’ and the rest might ‘naturally’ follow.

Concluding Thoughts

The Gabonese coup attempt caught a lot of observers off guard, but in hindsight, the “writing was on the wall” the whole time and two important signals were sent beforehand that could have tipped people off about it. Bongo’s New Year’s address to the people, recorded from Morocco where he’s currently recovering from his October stroke, showed that he’s still somewhat physically incapacitated and unable to rule the country following his controversial razor-thin reelection in 2016 that represented almost a full half-century of dynastic rule by his family. The dispatch of 80 US troops there late last week on the pretense of preparing to respond to post-election violence in the nearby DRC was clearly a ruse because Gabon doesn’t even border the country in question, with it now looking that those soldiers’ very presence was designed to encourage the plotters and deter the state from reacting.

Although the latest reports suggest that the government has reestablished full control over the situation, the coup attempt in and of itself is still a success for American foreign policy irrespective of its outcome because the US is now poised to manipulate its result in order to advance its own interests. A “revolutionary government” would have been internationally shunned and fully dependent on the US, while the recovering state might see the US as an important security partner that plays a crucial role in its “balancing” strategy. In both cases, the deepening US-Gabonese relationship would amount more to a pivot than an evolution of the Central African state’s “balancing” act, as an embedding of the US’ military forces in the country will inevitably have regional repercussions.

While a comparatively prosperous and resource-rich country of approximately two million people is a strategic prize in and of itself for any Great Power to “capture” in the New Cold War’s “Scramble for Africa”, Gabon’s deeper significance lays in its geopolitical position in between the rising African Great Powers of Nigeria and Angola, its proximity to the conflict-prone DRC and CAR (where the US’ Chinese and Russian rivals are the predominant patrons of those states, respectively), and its location in the middle of three weaker countries under the leadership of aging presidents who have experienced varying degrees of domestic unrest lately. It’s too early to say whether the Gabonese coup attempt will be a game-changer or not, but it’s obvious that American strategists intend for it to be for the aforementioned reasons, which if successful in full or even part would signify the return of Africa to the US’ international focus.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from US Air Force

The prospect of Washington turning a page for peace in Syria is highly unlikely. Syria remains in the eye of the storm.

On Friday, a State Department official said “(w)e have no timeline for our military forces to withdraw from” the country. Delay may turn out to be not at all.

On Sunday, a senior Iraqi parliamentarian said

“(t)he  Americans have built a military base in Erbil (in) the Iraqi Kurdistan region to use…against Iraq’s neighboring countries, in particular Iran and Syria.”

Iraqi media said the Pentagon has 14 military bases in the country – along with a reported 18 in Syria. The US is highly unlikely to abandon them, especially ones considered most strategically important.

An earlier report indicated the Pentagon intends establishing a permanent base along the Iraqi border with Syria. Turkey reportedly established one or more military bases in northwestern Aleppo.

On Saturday, a senior Trump regime official said US forces may remain indefinitely at the (illegally established) al-Tanf base in southeastern Syria near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders.

On February 7, officials from countries comprising the so-called US Middle East war “coalition” will attend a conference in Washington to discuss what follows Trump’s Syria pullout announcement.

Whatever the disposition of US forces in Syria and everywhere else, its permanent war agenda remains unchanged.

Last summer, John Bolton warned Damascus, saying

“(j)ust so there’s no confusion here, if the Syrian (forces) use chemical weapons, we will respond very strongly, and they really ought to think about this a long time.”

Not a shred of evidence suggests government forces used Chemical Weapons (CWs) at any time throughout years of US-led naked aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic.

Plenty of evidence indisputably proves that US-supported terrorists used CWs many times, mainly against civilians, Damascus falsely blamed for their high crimes.

On Saturday, Bolton threatened Syria again, saying

“there is absolutely no change in the US position against the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime and absolutely no change in our position that any use of chemical weapons would be met by a very strong response, as we’ve done twice before.”

The Pentagon notoriously uses banned weapons in all its war theaters, flagrantly violating international laws time and again – including the Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention), the Nuremberg Principles, the UN Charter, Fourth Geneva, and numerous UN resolutions.

Banned US weapons include use of incendiary, cluster, and radiological munitions, biological and chemical agents, depleted uranium, and other toxins.

An earlier Pentagon statement said

“(a)s a matter of policy, (it) will not publicly discuss the use of specific weapons and munitions in operations.”

It lied claiming

“every weapons system in the US inventory undergoes a legal review to ensure the weapon complies with the Law of Armed Conflict.”

Since the near-extermination of Native Americans in expanding the nation “from sea to shining sea,” US forces used banned weapons, the same thing ongoing in all its active war theaters.

Claims otherwise are bald-faced lies, wanting its high crimes of war and against humanity concealed – including US support for ISIS and likeminded jihadists, along with their use of CWs, falsely blamed on Syrian forces.

On Saturday, Bolton arrived in Israel for talks with Netanyahu. He confirmed no timeline exists for withdrawing US forces from Syria.

Pentagon troops at al-Tanf are likely to stay, Israel pushing for this. On Friday, Netanyahu and Putin spoke, Israel reportedly afforded no concessions by Russia’s leader to continue aggressive aerial operations against Syria.

On Tuesday, Bolton will meet with Turkey’s Erdogan and other regime officials in Ankara, Syria a key topic to be discussed.

This week, he and Pompeo will be meeting with officials from various regional countries, including Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others – discussing US strategy following Trump’s pullout announcement.

A Final Comment

On Sunday, Bolton equivocated on the pullout of US forces from northern Syria, claiming withdrawal depends on a firm commitment by Turkey not to attack Kurds in the area, saying:

“Timetables or the timing of the withdrawal occurs as a result of the fulfillment of the conditions and the establishment of the circumstances that we want to see,” adding:

“It’s not the establishment of an arbitrary point for the withdrawal to take place as President Obama did in the Afghan situation…The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement.”

To withdraw or not to withdraw US forces from Syria may turn out to be more of the latter than the former – Trump U-turning like he’s done before.

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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.

War with China is on the drawing board of the Pentagon. China has responded to US threats and military deployments in the Indo-Pacific region. President Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to prepare for a possible war.

Addressing China’s Central Military Commission, Xi said

“(a)ll military units must correctly understand major national security and development trends, and strengthen their sense of unexpected hardship, crisis and battle.”

“The world is facing a period of major changes never seen in a century, and China is still in an important period of strategic opportunity for development.”

Xi ordered stepped up military training and exercises, saying China’s armed forces must “prepare for a comprehensive military struggle from a new starting point”, adding:

“Preparation for war and combat must be deepened to ensure an efficient response in times of emergency.”

Days earlier, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Daily editorial stressed there’s “no time for slackening in war preparation.”

Part of what’s going on is what Xi called his aim for “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan. Beijing considers the island state a breakaway province, reunification inevitable, by force if “democratic consultations” fail to “reach transitional arrangements for the peaceful development of cross-strait ties,” adding:

“Chinese don’t fight Chinese,” while saying his government “makes no promise to renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary means” for reunification, stressing no tolerance for “foreign intervention.”

“(O)ne country, two systems” is the way forward, he said, the approach adopted in reunification with Hong Kong and Macau.

Xi’s remarks followed enactment of the US Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA), discussed in a separate article – legislation authorizing funding for Washington’s imperial Indo/Pacific agenda, mainly by its military footprint in a part of the world not its own, the way it operates globally.

Retired PLA colonel Yue Gang said Xi’s remarks were in response to Sino/US geopolitical differences – too world’s apart to resolve, my comment, not his.

“China is increasing its military (preparedness) so that it has the best solutions for the worst outcomes, either related to the US or” Taiwan, he added.

According to military analyst Ni Lexiong, Xi’s remarks were “intended as a warning to those who sought to obstruct the mainland’s plans for the reunification of Taiwan,” notably the US.

China’s Global Times said Beijing “should expect more US provocations” ahead, adding “the country has sufficient power to make Washington pay an unbearable price if the US infringes on China, so as to form a powerful deterrent against the White House.”

China and Russia alone are able to challenge Washington’s aim for global dominance, especially united.

Military confrontation ahead may be inevitable, the ominous possibility of nuclear war assuring losers, not winners, if waged.

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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.

On December 13, the United States Senate made history with a vote invoking the 1973 War Powers Act to stop America’s military participation in, and support of, the unauthorized and immoral war against the desperate people in Yemen.

Never before had a vote of this nature passed the Senate. The measure passed with 56 senators voting in support and 41 voting against. It marked the first time the Senate has been able to put the breaks on our involvement in Yemen, a war that was never authorized by Congress, as is required by our Constitution.

Meanwhile, Speaker Paul Ryan went to extraordinary lengths to forestall a vote on a similar motion in the House of Representatives.

The history here is worth noting.

The 1973 War Powers Act was written to protect such motions from political shenanigans. However, in 2017, the leadership killed House Concurrent Resolution 81, using parliamentary trickery to table the motion without a vote. In November 2018, the House Rules Committee, controlled by Ryan and company, slipped a rule into the Wolf Protection Act to de-privilege H.Con.Res.138 so that a vote would again be thwarted. When the measure was brought up again in December, the Rules Committee inserted a rule on Res.142 into the farm bill, which again prevented Congress from voting on the issue.

Why so much effort on Capitol Hill to protect and perpetuate an illegal war that has brought the 14 million people of Yemen to the brink of starvation? Why so much support for enabling the Saudi government’s inhumane naval blockade and bombing campaign, which are intentionally designed to starve the Yemenis and prevent other supplies, particularly medicines, from coming into Yemen?

When queried, the typical supporter of this horror tells us we have to support the Saudis because they are “our friends.” But how can we call those who willfully perpetrate such unthinkable misery “our friends”? For many years, our political, military, and press leadership have intoned the “our friends” mantra. Why? Exactly who benefits from this so-called friendship?

Ben Freeman at the Center for International Policy’s Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative has identified many of the American firms that receive vast sums of money from the Saudis. This money is laundered through these firms and into the campaign coffers of our political leaders.

It is difficult to imagine how a country that has spent billions of dollars both around the world and in America supporting a virulently anti-American jihadist ideology can be considered a friend. Adherents of this ideology, Saudis, comprised the leadership, the funders, the operatives, and 15 of the 19 hijackers who attacked us on September 11, 2001, killing 3,000 Americans. Yet Riyadh has not stopped funding madrassas overseas that teach extremism (despite a recent pledge to do just that), enabling these schools to breed and train new terrorists for the last five decades. America’s leadership has turned a blind eye in order to continue to protect their money flow.

Our national leaders also tell us that selling weapons to the Kingdom gives us the benefit of jobs in our country. This is somewhat deceptive. To paraphrase TAC columnist Doug Bandow: we do have people working to make the weapons, but we do not fully benefit from the export of arms because we do not benefit from them here. Instead, the products are sent overseas, often at our expense.

Also, due to this shortsighted practice, our technology and resources end up in dangerous and unstable regions where our own weapons are often used against our troops. The arms bonanza also raises serious questions about arming a bunch of nations that are hospitable to terrorist organizations. What is in it for America besides large sums of money for lobbyists and politicians?

Laughably, the defense industry suggests that the price of weapons, planes, and services will cost the taxpayers less money to purchase if the Military Industrial Complex mass produces the equipment for export. They forget to point out in this fairy tale that U.S. troops often end up fighting the terrorist networks to which America provides those same military-grade weapons. That forces us to spend even more resources to protect our troops from our own weapons. This has cost American lives and trillions in taxpayer dollars since 2001.

Americans would fare much better if the defense industry charged taxpayers more per plane, precision missile, and bombs—and then kept our weapons and troops home to defend U.S. interests. We could forego the inevitable trench warfare that kills and injures U.S. soldiers and wastes treasure and instead rebuild America’s infrastructure.

And don’t think the American public would be averse to holding back such aid. In a poll commissioned by the Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy in 2017, 57 percent of those surveyed thought giving weapons and other military aid to Saudi Arabia was “counterproductive.”

The Saudis are good friends to those who benefit from their lobbying largesse and military contracts. But they’re not so good for the rest of us who have to pay the human, social, and financial costs, and suffer under a corrupted political process.

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George D. O’Neill, Jr., an artist, is the founder of The Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy and a board member of The American Ideas Institute, the parent of The American Conservative. He and his wife reside in Florida.

Featured image is from Almigdad Mojalli/Voice of America

A number of prominent Jewish-American leaders are funding covert, anonymous campaigns targeting pro-Palestinian student activists, The Forward has found. The Jewish daily newspaper, which has been publishing valuable information concerning the source of funding for these hyper-aggressive and shadowy groups – which spearhead coordinated hate campaigns against critics of the Zionist state – has uncovered the identities of those behind hidden social media accounts.

Community heads and prominent Jewish organisations with a carefully-crafted, respectable public profile have donated millions to fund secret projects targeting students and lecturers, the report has found. On a number of occasions, their blind support for Israel has seen them bankroll far-right and anti-Muslim hate groups.

The latest pro-Israeli group to be exposed by The Forward is the campaign targeting the pro-Palestinian campus network Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). SJP is said to be the most well-known advocate of the Palestinian cause on US campuses. It has been the target of a pro-Israel group known as SJP Uncovered, which anonymously attacks student activists affiliated with SJP across the country. With more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, SJP Uncovered has gone after pro-Palestinian students by maintaining a veil of anonymity that is said to be all-but impenetrable.

Until now, the source of funding for SJP Uncovered had been a mystery. The Forward has now been able to shed light on the organisation to reveal that the site is a secret project of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC), a Washington DC-based pro-Israel organisation tied to most mainstream funders and organisations in the Jewish community.

On its official website, the ICC says that its vision is to create a campus environment where “dialogue and ideas are freely exchanged about Israel”. Publicly, the ICC presents a respectable face typical of nearly all pro-Israeli groups, but privately it is funding one of the most aggressive and shadowy student groups responsible for hateful campaigns against critics of the Zionist state. The Forward revealed that the ICC paid over $1 million in the 2016/2017 fiscal year to SJP Uncovered, in that time also running vicious campaigns against students with the aid of political consulting firms.

Until around 2014, the ICC is said to have been a standard pro-Israel advocacy group receiving donations from the largest and most mainstream Jewish-American foundations. In 2015, its operations changed to “covert, anonymous campaigns targeting pro-Palestinian student activists, often with the help of top-tier paid professional political consultants,” according to the investigative report.

Describing the change in focus, one former pro-Israeli campus official said: “It was clear that the old way of doing business […] was not making the cut, and was not enough, and there was a totally new offensive approach to things.” He added:

The overall framing was [that] the pro-Israel community is no longer going to sit back and let things happen, they are going to go on the offense […] It was very clear that going on the offensive to them meant going after students and the organizations that were bringing BDS.

With the change in emphasis in 2015 towards more aggressive campaigns, the ICC began hiring paid political consultants – including opposition researchers – to work on campuses. It transformed itself into a cog in what is often described as Israel’s secret global war against pro-Palestinian activists, which is operated by a dedicated ministry in Tel Aviv known as the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Its main function is to spearhead Israel’s overt and covert efforts to smear the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that is modelled on the global campaign that helped end Apartheid in South Africa. In November, the Electronic Intifada published in full an undercover Al Jazeera documentary that revealed some of the ministry’s tactics. The documentary was censored, allegedly after Israel lobby pressure on Qatar, which funds Al Jazeera.

SJP Uncovered is one of many pro-Israel organisations to emerge from a new consensus within sections of the Jewish-American community. They believed that defeating the global BDS movement was a key priority, which could only be achieved through aggressive means. Such tactics, however, not only risked falling foul of the rules of respectable public institutions, it was bad for their image.  The solution for Zionist and pro-Israel groups, both in the US and Israel, was to adopt secretive and clandestine tactics against their targets in an effort to protect their reputation. One of the best known of these operations is the formerly-anonymous website Canary Mission, which posts political dossiers on college students. The site went live in 2015, and has since grown to include dossiers on thousands of students.

A series of Forward exposés in October revealed that a foundation controlled by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, a major Jewish charity with an annual budget of over $100 million, had donated $100,000 to the website, whose work has drawn comparisons to a McCarthyite blacklist. An Haaretz profile of the Canary Mission found that, for three years, the website had spread fear among undergraduate activists by posting more than a thousand political dossiers on student supporters of Palestinian rights. At the same time, the website had gone to great lengths to hide the digital and financial trail connecting it to its donors and staff. Registered through a secrecy service, the site had been untraceable until recently.

While the federation had assured that it was a “one-time grant” that would never happen again, the uncovering of a publicly respectable pro-Israel organisations giving funds to operate clandestine hate campaigns against pro-Palestinian activists triggered further investigations. The Canary Mission was just the tip of the iceberg, as tax filings seen by the magazine +972 showed that there was a pattern of systemic financing of radical right-wing and anti-Muslim groups.

Why was 2015 pivotal to this shift in strategy? Jewish leaders in the US, says Forward reporter Josh Nathan-Kazis, decided to spend significant communal resources attacking college students in that year because there was a coming-together of Israel’s spy culture and Jewish-American mega donors like Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban. Both felt that the work being carried out by mainstream Jewish organisations was unsatisfactory. Wanting to shift the entire tenor of the Jewish communal approach to fighting anti-Semitism and BDS, major Jewish organisations were called to a secret meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada.

During this 2015 meeting, there was a consensus for a push towards more aggressive responses to BDS. A new initiative, named after Jewish guerrilla warriors Maccabees, was formed. On its website, the Maccabee taskforce – which claims that the BDS movement is spreading anti-Semitism across the world – says it is “determined to help students combat this hate by bringing them the strategies and resources they need to tell the truth about Israel”.

Strategies developed by Israeli think tanks like the Reut Institute became the playbook for the aggressive tactics that is said to have come into maturity during that period. These tactics, Nathan-Kazis explains, called for pro-Israel advocates to “out, name and shame” harsh critics of Israel, and to “frame them […] as anti-peace, anti-Semitic, or dishonest purveyors of double standards”. They talked about “establishing a ‘price tag’” for attacks on Israel and “isolating” advocacy groups that attack Israel, while “organizing regular meetings of pro-Israel networks”.

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The world is safer now that there’s one less Al Qaeda terrorist inhabiting it, but Trump’s successful strike against USS Cole bomber Jamal al-Badawi in central Yemen also served several tangential domestic and international purposes, too.

The news just broke that Trump successfully took out USS Cole bomber Jamal al-Badawi after ordering a strike on the terrorist’s position in the mountainous Yemeni heartland, which is a cause for celebration among those who remember the attack that he masterminded in 2000. The world’s definitely much safer with one less Al Qaeda terrorist inhabiting it, but the President also accomplished a few other tangential domestic and international objectives through this assassination even if they weren’t part of the reason why he gave the go-ahead for this strike.

On the international front, Trump showed that the US is still very involved in the Yemeni conflict in spite of the criticism about it coming from some factions of his government in the aftermath of Khashoggi’s killing. Instead of directly aiding the Saudis with their aerial campaign, however, the US is now signaling that its involvement also has a crucial anti-terrorist component to it as well. Importantly, by striking deep in the Yemeni heartland, it’s also showing just how far its military reach extends and reminds everyone that it has intelligence on the ground capable of giving it an accurate idea of what’s happening there too.

There’s a chance that this terrorist’s location in his native country might be seized upon by Trump’s domestic “deep state” rivals and the Saudis’ international enemies to highlight the fact that Al Qaeda has experienced a resurgence in Yemen as a result of the Kingdom’s nearly four-year war on it, therefore adding further pressure on the President to distance himself from his allies. That said, Trump might also have an opportunity to retort that the 2000 USS Cole bombing preceded the country’s civil war by 15 years in an attempt to deflect one of the most popular criticisms of the Saudi campaign.

Either way, Jamal al-Badawi’s assassination brings an “exotic country” to the forefront of Americans’ attention amid the “controversial” government shutdown, potentially serving as a “convenient” distraction for Trump and also allowing him to reassure his people that their international security needs are still being attended do in spite of the budget crisis. This highly symbolic kill will surely be celebrated by both parties because there’s no way that even the Democrats can deny this “victory” to Trump, though they’ll probably try to downplay it for obvious reasons.

All told, Trump will assuredly attempt to leverage his successful anti-terrorist strike in Yemen to his international and domestic advantage to promote his reputation as being “tough on terror”, which can win him political points both at home and abroad, albeit for different reasons. This symbolic event probably won’t remain in the news for long, however, given the multitude of other more important events that are taking place around the world, but it’ll at least give him a temporary respite from the negative news cycle that he regularly has to deal with.

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

Starting from January 4th, the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out a series of airstrikes on terrorists’ positions in the Idlib de-escalation zone. The airstrikes targeted Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces in the towns of Darat Izza, Kafrnaha, Jamiat al-Rahal, Urum al-Kubra and the 111th Regiment base in the western Aleppo countryside.

HTS’ news network Iba’a said that the group responded by shelling positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the district of al-Rashidin in the outskirt of the city of Aleppo, claiming that 7 service members were killed, but pro-government sources doubted the claim.

On January 4th, a group of Turkish-backed militants defected and handed over their positions in the district of Jamiat al-Arman west of the city of Aleppo to HTS. After imposing control of Jamiet al-Arman, HTS advanced on the opposition-held part of the western Aleppo countryside and captured the towns of Sinkar, al-Hota and the 111th Regiment base. HTS also entered the town of A’wejel after reaching an agreement with the local council there.

On January 5th, HTS announced that its fighters had captured several battle tanks and armored vehicles while Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movements remnants were trying to smuggle them in the Turkish-occupied Afrin area.

Despite the support from the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL) and Syrian National Army (SNA), the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement in fact lost almost all of its positions to HTS in merely a few days of limited clashes. According to reports, the remaining members of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement are now fleeing the Idlib de-escalation zone to Afrin.

On January 5 and January 6, HTS continued attacks on Turkish-backed militant groups. HTS captured the towns of Deir Sim’an and Atarib in the opposition-held part of Aleppo province. Atarib was under the control of two Turkish-backed groups Thuwar al-Sham and Byariq al-Islam. As a result both Turkish-backed groups were dissolved.

This week, HTS will contribute steps in order to consolidate its recent gains and prepare for further expansion within the opposition-held area. If the NFL and the SNA fail to undertake real steps to stop this expansion, this will confirm that Turkey also failed to turn the myth of the “moderate armed opposition” into reality and the only capable “opposition force” is al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.

On January 4th, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) media wing released a video showing the on-going anti-ISIS operation in the Euphrates Valley. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which YPG is the core, are storming ISIS positions in the town of Ash-Shafah. On January 5, the SDF imposed control on the districts of al-Razazah, al-T’as, al-Ramtha, Marzuq, al-Sur and Hawi al-Sur inside the town. Despite that, SDF is yet to enter its southern part and the nearby areas of al-Muh and al-Basatin. ISIS still controls this area.

According to the SDF, US-led coalition warplanes supported the advance conducting 129 airstrikes on ISIS positions, vehicles and gatherings. As a result of the airstrikes and the clashes on the ground, more than 71 fighters of ISIS were reportedly killed.

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A truth about movements is, they move. They morph, evolve and move around a country or even around the globe. This occurs over months and often over years.

The US Occupy encampment era occurred ten months after the Arab Spring and six months after the Spanish Indignado movement – early versions of occupy. It started in New York and then spread across the United States and to other countries. It was a global revolt against the 1% that changed politics in the United States and continues to have impacts today.

The Yellow Vest (Gilets Jaunes) movement in France is having a major impact and gaining international attention, already spreading to other nations, with some nations like Egypt banning the sale of yellow vests to prevent the protest from spreading there. The movement is showing that disrupting business-as-usual gets results. Will it come to the United States? What form would it take here? What could spark the equivalent of the Yellow Vests in the US?

Social Movements Create Global Waves Of Protest

It is common for a protest to develop in one part of the world and move to another country. This is even more common in modern times as the economy has become globalized and communication across different countries has become easier.

The US revolution against Great Britain was part of the Age of Enlightenment, which questioned traditional authority and emphasized natural rights of life, liberty, and equality as well as sought self-government and religious freedom. The French Revolution followed 13 years after the US in 1789. It led to political changes in the UK, Germany and across Europe. This coincided with the Great Liberator, Simon Bolivar, freeing colonies from the Spanish Empire including Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru. They became independent and briefly united as a single nation.

The democratic revolutions of 1848, known as the Springtime of Peoples, were part of a widespread revolutionary period that impacted 50 nations in Europe, beginning in France and spreading without any evident coordination. The issues were about democratic and worker rights, as well as human rights and freedom of the press. It led to the abolition of serfdom in some nations and ended monarchy in Denmark. The French monarchy was replaced by a republic, constitutions were created, and empires were threatened by countries seeking sovereignty.

In the era of Decolonization of Africa and Asia, 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers. In Africa, a Pan-African Congress in 1945 demanded an end to colonization. There were widespread unrest and organized revolts in both Northern and sub-Saharan colonies. Protests, revolutions and sometimes peaceful transition ended the era of colonization.

The 1960s were an era of protest that peaked in 1968 around the world. Multiple issues came to the forefront including for labor rights and socialism, the feminist movement, protests against war and militarism, and against racism and environmental degradation. Protests occurred in the United States, Europe, the Soviet Bloc, Asia, and Latin America.

More recently, economic globalization and the Internet have accelerated global protests. An example of this is the anti-globalization movement itself. As corporations took control of trade agreements and began to write trade for transnational corporate profits, people around the world saw how this impacted their communities and fought back.

The Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, Mexico on January 1, 1994, was an uprising that coincided with the beginning of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Zapatista Army of National Liberation was an uprising by the indigenous, local population against being exploited by global trade. Their action was an inspiration to others and an anti-NAFTA movement developed in the United States, growing into an anti-globalization movement.

Join The No NAFTA-2 National Call-In Day On Tuesday, January 8.

The 1997 financial crisis in Southeast Asia, followed by the International Monetary Fund restructuring the debt in ways that brought austerity, led to protests across the region in Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand against economic globalization and the undue influence of transnational capital.

These combined into the Battle for Seattle in 1999 at the World Trade Organization meetings where 50,000 people from the US and around the world protested on the streets of Seattle for four days shutting down the meetings. This was a movement of movements moment that united many single-issue groups into a force too powerful for the elites to overcome. WTO meetingssince then have been met with mass protests as have IMF and other economic meetings. This evolved into making it very difficult to pass corporate trade agreements in the United States, e.g. the people stopped the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Trump will have difficulty getting NAFTA-2 approved. Join the campaign to stop Trump Trade’s NAFTA-2.

The Yellow Vest Movement

The French Yellow Vest movement is made up of working people who are protesting the unfair economy every Saturday.  The 8th “Act,” held this Saturday, was larger than expected as the government and media were claiming the movement was dying down over the holidays, despite the movement saying they were not over and were just getting started.

The movement began as a protest against a gasoline tax, but it quickly became evident that this was just the final straw against a series of policies that have made people economically insecure.  President Macron has aggressively pursued a neoliberal agenda on behalf of the wealthy, lowering their taxes while cutting social services.

Macron has responded with the elimination of the fuel tax, raising the minimum wage, and cutting taxes on pensioners, but they continue to call for the “president of the rich” to step down. Macron’s popularity is down into the twenties in polls, while a majority of French people want the Yellow Vest protests to continue. The movement is exposing contradictions in France that cannot be solved by the current economic and political systems.

Macron, while making concessions, has also called the protesters thugs and agitators. Police tactics have been aggressive and violent, in the face of mostly nonviolent protests. They arrested a Yellow Vest participant, Eric Drouet, who the media has labeled a “leader,” on flimsy charges of protesting without a permit, stoking more outrage. The media calls him a leader while saying the leaderless movement will fail because it lacks a leader. This reminds us of similar treatment during Occupy.

The movement has blown up political divides because there are people from the extreme left, extreme right and everywhere in-between participating. It includes young and old, male and female. It shows people uniting in a revolt over the unfair economic system and its impact on workers.  They are also calling for participatory democracy by demanding citizen initiatives where people can vote on legislation, firing political appointees or even changing the constitution if they gather enough signatures. The Yellow Vests are showing system-wide problems that require both the economic and political systems to change.

Source: Popular Resistance

Will ‘Yellow Vest’ Protests Come to the United States?

Many of the problems the French people suffer are also felt in the United States. The US economy has been designed for the wealthy for decades and billionaire President Trump-era policies have made that reality worse. People never fully recovered from the 2008 economic collapse when millions lost houses and jobs, got lower income and higher debt.

The globalized economy that has been designed for transnational corporations has not served the people in the United States well.  The fly-over states of the Midwest have been left hollowed out. Rural hospitals are closing as the economy disappears. In urban areas across the country, decades of neglect and lack of investment have created impoverished conditions. Racist and violent policing have been used to prevent rebellion and contain the unrest. People are struggling. Addiction and suicide rates are up. There is vast hopelessness and despair.

An economic collapse is on the horizon. As Alan Woods writes in New Year, New Crisis, “The question is not if it will happen, only when.” The US economy is dominated by Wall Street, which ended the year in crisis. Citigroup’s share price declined 30 percent from where it started the year, Goldman Sachs declined 35 percent, Morgan Stanley 24 percent, Bank of America 18 percent and JPMorgan had a 10% loss. Woods points to China’s economy slowing as is Germany’s and problems in other European nations all point to a global slow down, which those in power do not have tools to respond to as interest rates are already low and government debt is already high.

When the recession hits, the economic insecurity of the people will worsen. Like the people in France, the rich are getting obscenely richer and avoiding taxes by hiding billions offshore. And, the government is doing the opposite of what is needed, e.g. reducing taxes on the wealthy when there should be a millionaire’s tax of 70%, and blocking the Green New Deal.

And, when the economic crisis hits, people will blame Trump. Many voters supported him because he promised to break from a system that is designed to favor the wealthy. They will know from their own experience that he did the opposite. Stop Trumpism! will become an even louder rallying cry and a president whose popularity always hovered around 40% will find himself in polls at 30% or lower, as a presidential campaign kicks into high gear.

The economy is often the trigger event, as it was for Occupy, and we already know there are going to be mass teacher strikes in 2019, indeed plans to strike in LA are expected to escalate more broadly. The GM workers who lose their jobs when four US factories close could be facing losing their homes and have other economic stresses causing them to revolt. Congress refusing to take National Improved Medicare for All seriously when tens of thousands of people are dying every year simply because they are uninsured could light the spark.

People in the US might not be wearing yellow vests, but we know from other recent protest movements, people are willing to shut down streets and highways and stop business as usual. More may participate if a radicalizing moment ensues now that they have seen the model work in France.

There are many triggers that are likely to spark aggressive mass protests in 2019. Get ready.

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

The doors of Emergency Hospital in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, swung open: Ehsanullah, 14, his face a swollen mess of flesh, was the first to be wheeled in.

His younger brother Hedayat, 4, was next. He had deep wounds up and down both legs, a skull injury and a bubble of intestine was protruding from a small hole in his abdomen. Then came Noor Ahmad, 7, and Parwana, 9, whose face was spider-webbed with blood from a wound on the crown of her head. All arrived totally silent, muted by the shock. And still more kept coming.

Within a few minutes, 13 members of the same extended family had been admitted to the hospital – ten children, an elderly man, and two women, one of whom was pregnant.

They had been struck by munitions from an American aircraft as they sheltered in their house on November 24. Alongside the 13 injured, two members of the family had died at the scene – 15-year-old Esmatullah and his father Obaidullah.

Ehsanullah (14) arrived at the Out Patient Department missing one eye, while the other was ruptured and would later need to be removed. He had numerous other shell injuries from head to toe.Andrew Quilty

Parwana (9) who had a head and leg wound, and Malali (age unknown, background) wait to be treated in the Emergency Hospital Out Patient Department.Andrew Quilty

A nurse helps an extremely reluctant and in-pain Noor Ahmad (7) back into bed after an attempt to walk for the first time since suffering his injuries, in the female and children’s ward. Andrew Quilty

Just days later, US ordnance struck another building, with even greater civilian casualties – 23 people were killed, many of them children, in Helmand’s Garmsir District.

It raises questions about what the US is trying to achieve in Afghanistan especially since President Trump’s announcement that he is going to pull back half the American troops who are in country and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s resignation in protest against that policy change and the withdrawal of US forces from Syria.

Civilian casualties resulting from US military operations had declined significantly after measures were taken to stop them in 2009. This trend began to change after US airstrikes picked up pace again in 2015, and the last year has seen a particularly acute reversal of it.

New data shows that many of the most recent strikes appear to be hitting buildings, despite US rules placing significant restrictions on such strikes because of the risks to civilians.

The Bureau recently reported on how more than 60 buildings were destroyed by US airstrikes in Afghanistan in October (only the second month that target information had been released). This analysis came after a report that month from the UN mission in Afghanistan found the number of US strikes leading to civilian casualties had doubled.

The US military told the Bureau that the problem was that the Taliban were using civilians as human shields, and that it was often “difficult to discern” when non-combatants are inside buildings that fighters are firing from. It says the rules on targeting buildings have not been relaxed.

Seeing what these policies look like on the ground is hard to do – many attacks happen in highly contested areas. But the Bureau has been able to gather detailed evidence of an attack on a building, and its consequences for one family.

Hedayat, 4, is placed in a wheelchair before being wheeled to his mother in the female ward after he cried for her throughout the morning in the hospital’s sub-Intensive Care Unit.Andrew Quilty

Qarara and her son Hedayat recover in the female and children’s ward at Emergency Hospital.Andrew Quilty

Surgeons clean dead and damaged tissue from Ehsanullah’s wounds. They explained this was necessary on all traumatic war wounds in Afghanistan because of the highly contaminated environment and the likelihood of resulting infection.Andrew Quilty

Ehsanullah’s mother Qarara (50) and uncle Sardar Wali (30) inside Emergency hospital. Sardar Wali couldn’t tell Qarara that her son’s eyes had ruptured and that he would never see again.Andrew Quilty

The village of Loy Manda lies less than ten miles outside of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan’s restive Helmand province.

As Afghan government forces—with the help of the Americans—retook territory the Taliban had controlled since 2016, Loy Manda became the frontline. Afghan troops took up positions on the edge of the village in the lead-up to operations aimed at retaking it from the Taliban.

An Afghan army commander called Toryalai was stationed at a frontline checkpoint along the main road outside the village that day. He told the Bureau that he didn’t know a 20 vehicle strong convoy of Afghan and US Special Operations forces were travelling through the area until he heard the sound of it coming under fire.

On hearing the sound, the Ishaqzai family hurried inside their home and closed the doors. Soon after, two Taliban fighters ran into their yard from the street. Ehsanullah’s mother Qarara said that her husband, Obaidullah, begged them to leave. They did, she says, but only after taking some shots at the the passing convoy.

In another part of the village, Obaidullah’s nephew Saifullah was working at his pharmacy. He heard the distinctive second-long bursts from the Gatling Gun of an A-10, a fixed-wing aircraft used for close air-support by the US military in Afghanistan. Looking out, he could see dust and smoke rising above the trees from the direction of the house his family shared with his uncle Obaidullah’s family. He hurried over.

By the time Saifullah arrived at the family compound, two bodies were lying on the ground, their faces covered in scarves. It was Obaidullah and his 15-year-old cousin, Esmatullah. Their clothes were torn and bloody.

More than a dozen others, mostly children, screamed as the American soldiers bandaged the worst of their wounds. More than two hours passed before they arrived at Emergency.

In the days following the strike, the survivors rested in bed between surgeries and occasionally, outside in the hospital’s rose gardens.

Qarara, with a thatch of steel pins holding her shattered left leg together, had so many crying children throughout the hospital that they had to be brought to her in shifts, in wheelchairs, to be calmed.

When her eldest, Ehsanullah, was brought to her by his uncle Sardar Wali, the top half of his head was wrapped in thick bandages. One of his eyes had been torn out in the attack. The other had ruptured and would need to be surgically removed.

Sardar Wali couldn’t bring himself to tell Qarara that her son would never see again.

Ehsanullah lost one eye while the other was ruptured and had to be removed. He also had several leg and abdominal injuries. His uncle, Sardar Wali, sits and weeps beside him in the garden at Emergency hospital.Andrew Quilty

Rahmatullah (8) recovers in a ward at the hospital.Andrew Quilty

Ehsanullah and Rahmatullah spend time in the hospital’s garden with their uncle.Andrew Quilty

Hedayat with his sister Parwana and mother Qarara (foreground), in the sub-Intensive Care Unit. Qarara was often required at her childrens’ side to calm them.Andrew Quilty

The remaining members of Obaidullah’s family are still incredulous. Saifullah doesn’t understand how the Americans could not have realised they were hitting a family home, pointing to the fact that brightly coloured women’s clothes had been hung to dry on a line in the yard.

“We know US forces, accompanying their Afghan security partners, called in self-defence air support against a building from which the Taliban were shooting,” a US military spokesperson told the Bureau. “Too often the Taliban use civilians as hostages and human shields.”

Sardar Wali, Ehsanullah’s uncle, is angry at both sides. He told the Bureau that blame for the incident “belongs to both the Americans and the Taliban.”

After the Americans left the scene of the attack, friends and relatives of Obaidullah’s family, and several Taliban fighters, gathered at the house to clean up and assist with the dead.

A village elder, Haji Zahir, drew the scarves away from the two bodies still lying outside, asking them with bitter irony: “Did you fire on the Americans?”

Then he turned to the insurgents. “Look what you brought to us,” he said angrily. “This is your jihad?”

The Taliban, rifles slung over their shoulders, stood in silence.

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Featured image: The view from the Afghan National Army checkpoint, on the front-line between government and Taliban forces in eastern Loy Manda in Nad-i Ali District, Helmand Province, toward a house that was struck in an airstrike one week prior, on November 24, 2018.Andrew Quilty

When independent news outlets focus on 9/11, they are immediately branded by the mainstream media and so-called ‘fact-checkers’ as conspiracy theorists. The BBC makes this point precisely in a 2018 article that starts like this –

“On 11 September 2001, four passenger planes were hijacked by radical Islamist terrorists – almost 3,000 people were killed as the aircraft were flown into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Just hours after the collapse of New York’s Twin Towers, a conspiracy theory surfaced online which persists more than 16 years later.”

The entire article is dedicated to all the ‘conspiracy theories’ involved in 9/11 and makes a mockery of anyone or anything that questions the official government line. They even heavily mock the brother of one man killed in 9/11 and frankly, true or not, the BBC’s report itself is rather sickening to read.

And yet, here we are, all these years later and it’s hardly surprising the theories of a conspiracy continue.

A 2016 study from Chapman University in California, found more than half of the American people believe the government is concealing information about the 9/11 attacks. This is in part because, large sections of the official US government report were redacted for years – and is still missing to this day.

The big problem is that the government is withholding crucial evidence. And then there’s other evidence the state and mainstream media refuse to even consider.

Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist and former United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan. Roberts was an associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and has received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.

Roberts wrote this really interesting piece of information just a few days ago that the mainstream media has been completely silent about:

“Although the United States is allegedly a democracy with a rule of law, it has taken 17 years for public pressure to bring about the first grand jury investigation of 9/11. Based on the work of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth led by Richard Gage, first responder and pilots organizations, books by David Ray Griffin and others, and eyewitness testimony, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry has presented enough hard facts to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York to force his compliance with the provisions of federal law that require the convening of a federal grand jury to investigate for the first time the attacks of September 11, 2001. https://www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org

This puts the US Justice (sic) Department in an extraordinary position. There will be tremendous pressures on the US Attorney’s office to have the grand jury dismiss the evidence as an unpatriotic conspiracy theory or otherwise maneuver to discredit the evidence presented by the Lawyers’ Committee, or modify the official account without totally discrediting it.

“What the 9/11 truthers and the Lawyers’ Committee have achieved is the destruction of the designation of 9/11 skeptics as “conspiracy theorists.” No US Attorney would convene a grand jury on the basis of a conspiracy theory. Clearly, the evidence is compelling that has put the US Attorney in an unenviable position.”

If the Lawyers’ Committee and the 9/11 truthers trust the US Attorney to go entirely by the facts, little will come of the grand jury. If the United States had a rule of law, something as serious as 9/11 could not have gone for 17 years without investigation.”

Three weeks before Roberts’ made this statement a letter was published by Off-Guardian about a Huffington Post hit piece about an academic teaching journalism. Its first paragraph explains entirely its own position.

An academic teaching journalism students at one of the UK’s top universities has publicly supported long-discredited conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terror attack, HuffPost UK can reveal.

This entire article, like that of the BBC’s, vigorously attacks any individual or organisation that has the temerity to question the ‘official’ narrative on any major incident as offered up by the state, such as the Skripal poisonings, Syria’s chemical weapons, Iraq and Chilcot Report.

HuffPost even uses an unnamed former head of MI6 and an unnamed former Supreme Commander of Nato to dispel such challenges to this narrative and then attacks other sources of news such as RT as nothing more than Russian propaganda irrespective of the source. As a rule, TruePublica does not publish news sourced by RT but that does not make all of its content propaganda.

David Ray Griffin, a retired American professor and political writer who founded the Center for Process Studies which seeks to promote the common good by means of the relational approach found in process thought was the co-author of the book ‘9/11 Unmasked’ – part of the attack piece was centred on by the HuffPost hit piece.

The head of the 9/11 Consensus Panel, the other co-author, responded to the HuffPost.  For information, the goal of the Consensus Panel is to “provide a ready source of evidence-based research to any investigation that may be undertaken by the public, the media, academia, or any other investigative body or institution.”

That letter is as follows:

Jess Brammer, UK Huffington Post
Chris York, UK Huffington Post

Dear Ms. Brammar and Mr. York:

I was the head information specialist serving the Medical Health Officers of British Columbia, Canada, for 25 years.

Your attack piece on Professor Piers Robinson and on the scholarly work of Dr. David Ray Griffin is the least accurate and the lowest quality published article I have ever seen.

I have assisted Dr. Griffin with 10 of his investigative books into the events of 9/11. In 2011 we decided to create the international 9/11 Consensus Panel to review and evaluate the official claims relating to September 11, 2001. The Panel we formed has 23 members, including people from the fields of physics, chemistry, structural engineering, aeronautical engineering, piloting, airplane crash investigation, medicine, journalism, psychology, and religion (For the full list, see here).

In seeking a consensus methodology, I was advised by the former provincial epidemiologist of British Columbia to employ a leading model that is used in medicine to establish the best diagnostic and treatment evidence to guide the world’s doctors using medical consensus statements.

The Panel methodology has produced, seven years later, 51 refutations of the official claims, which were published as 911 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation in September, 2018.

Each Consensus Point, now a chapter in this book, was given three rounds of review and feedback by the Panel members. The panelists were blind to one another throughout the process, providing strictly uninfluenced individual feedback. Any Points that did not receive 85% approval by the third round were set aside.

The Honorary Members of the Panel include the late British (and longest-serving) parliamentarian Michael Meacher, the late evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, and the late Honorary President of the Italian Supreme Court, Ferdinando Imposimato.

The Huffington Post drastically lowered its standards to publish this hit piece, and what influenced it to do so is a question worth pursuing.

Yours truly

Elizabeth Woodworth, Co-author with Dr. David Ray Griffin
9/11 Unmasked

It is over 18 years now since the world-changing event of 9/11. One wonders when the information held by the American government, that continues to anger so many people affected by it will ever emerge.

However, one reason why such questions persist is precisely that of the actions of the US government itself. One should not forget those so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ that actually came true that continues to pour petrol on the flames of doubt.

For example, the American government killed thousands by poisoning alcohol to prove its point that alcohol was bad for the general public during prohibition. This was a ‘conspiracy theory’ that went on for decades – until it was proven to be true.

Then, you can take your pick of the lies government tells when it comes to starting wars – how about the lie the Saddam Hussain and Iraq had WMD ready to fire at Western targets. Total deaths exceeded 1 million. Yet another classic American lie was the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, as a pretext for escalating the country’s involvement in the Vietnam War that killed 60,000 American soldiers. Total deaths racked up 1.35 million, all based on a lie. That incident only came about because of an unintentional declassification of an NSA file in 2005.

Edward Snowden proved with his revelations in 2013 that the government was spying on everyone when the government had denied they had ever done so. It took a whistleblower to let us all know. The UK government has been found by the highest courts in the land to have broken numerous privacy and surveillance laws as a result of mass civilian surveillance systems.

Operation Mockingbird was a US government operation where journalists were paid to publish CIA propaganda, only uncovered by the Watergate scandal. It took a thief to unknowingly capture secret documents and recordings for the public to find out.

The list goes on and on – just as 9/11 will, so it will be interesting to see how the US Attorney, presented with evidence from so many prominent professionals will bury yet more 9/11 evidence. Don’t hold your breath though, the same questions will, no doubt, still be being asked in another 18 years time.

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Featured image is from TP

Bolivia and Uruguay have rejected interventionist declarations made by the Lima Group against the democratically elected government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

Bolivian President Evo Morales posted on Twitter on Saturday:

“Democracy is based upon peace, dialogue and self-determination of peoples.

“We praise the democratic government of Mexico for defending the principle of non-interventionism and declining to back the diplomatic conspiracy led by the United States through the ‘Lima Group’ against Venezuela.

“We regret resurgence of the ideology of racist supremacy (KKK), as a replica of xenophobia of the government of the United States.

“In the face of intolerance and discrimination, Indigenous peoples promote respect and integration.”

We praise the democratic government of Mexico for defending the principle of non-interventionism and declining to back the diplomatic conspiracy led by the US through the "Lima Group" against Venezuela. Democracy is based upon peace, dialogue and self-determination of peoples

— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) January 5, 2019

Uruguay’s Foreign Affairs Ministry also rejected the Lima Group‘s position.  President Tabare Vazquez said he would advocate for a “peaceful solution” based on “dialogue.”

On Friday, the Mexican government, led by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), refused to sign the joint declaration by the Lima Group, opting to maintain good diplomatic relations with Venezuela.

“Mexico firmly promotes dialogue with all involved parties to find peace and reconciliation, for which we reiterate our rejection of any initiative that includes measures that obstruct a dialogue to face the crisis in Venezuela,” an official statement issued by Mexico’s foreign ministry reads.

The Venezuelan government, through a statement of his Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza, warned against interventionism. Arreaza said he regrets that the members of the Lima Group “agreed to foster a coup in Venezuela” by “not recognizing the democratically elected government” after “receiving instructions from the U.S. government through a video conference.”

#Venezuela's Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza has released a statement warning against interventionism after several member countries of the so-called Lima Group declared the Venezuelan government of #NicolasMaduro "illegitimate." pic.twitter.com/51pqsTUjG6

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) January 5, 2019

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On September 30, 2018, a month after the U.S. and Mexico moved toward replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada joined to produce a new continental trade agreement. The new pact, as highlighted in the article below (written just after Canada signed on) focused especially on securing automotive jobs in the U.S. and Canada. The two governments celebrated the agreement, joined especially by the leadership of Unifor, representing Canadian autoworkers. The American autoworker’s union, the UAW, was more cautious and the Mexican government was relieved that the pressures to limit production in Mexico were restrained. Within weeks, General Motors (GM) dramatically confirmed the limits of the agreement, announcing the closure of four plants in the U.S. and the remaining GM facility in Oshawa.

Autoworkers in Canada and U.S. were furious with GM, yet the solutions proposed focused on identifying Mexico, with its low wages, as the problem. When NAFTA was being negotiated in the mid-1990s, the great promise to Mexico was that it would bring pervasive economic development, with rising wages and incomes that brought workers and farmers into the ‘middle class’. Mexico did receive a great deal of U.S. investment in certain sectors as a result of NAFTA, but as in the U.S. and Canada, the promises of free trade were overwhelmingly not fulfilled. Like working people to the North, neither the investments of private corporations, nor free trade pacts (which have been more about corporate freedoms and guarantees), nor the cynical policies and assurances of governments, brought Mexican workers richer lives and hopeful futures for their children.

The point for workers in all three countries is to escape the repeated false promises of recent  decades and keep our eye on the failures of our own economic and political elites. The challenge is to learn from the experience  of worsening insecurity and class inequality and – finally – to start addressing the larger, radical changes we will need to make at home and in our relationship to international capital if we want better lives.

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When Donald Trump declared the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to be “the worst deal” in American history (and the worst deal ever signed “by any country”), those who had themselves long opposed NAFTA found themselves in a bind. They could hardly side with Trump and be identified with the imperial nationalism of “America First” and Trump’s thinly disguised racism.

Concerns in Canada and Mexico that any new deal would surely be worse than NAFTA for their countries didn’t justify defending the trade deal they had earlier so roundly condemned. The position that any free-trade agreement should be opposed had some appeal, as resistance always does. But that in itself would still leave untouched the twin realities shaping our lives: the dominance of corporate economic and financial power within Canada and Canada’s extreme economic dependence on the USA.

Stymied by the limited options, the broad left – unions, social movements, those concerned with social justice, equality, and a substantive democracy – ended up being sidelined in this crucial debate. This stood in sharp contrast to the impressive mobilizations that had occurred in the lead-up to the 1989 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the precursor to NAFTA. Yet even then, the response of the left was too modest to deal with the new aggressiveness they faced. The ideological and organizational weakening of unions and social movements since then, and the lowering of expectations that followed, makes it all the harder to build an effective counter-movement today.

How to make sense of the present moment? Was the push to renegotiate NAFTA only about Trump playing to his base? Was Trump reacting to an alleged decline in the American empire? Was it about moving away from multilateral to bilateral agreements where U.S. strength weighs heavier? Is the narrowing of options that the renegotiation of NAFTA exposed just about free-trade agreements, or does it point to a more general characteristic of capitalism today?

It’s useful to begin by briefly reviewing what the renegotiation of NAFTA did and didn’t change. We then step back to consider some of the larger issues that any oppositional movement will have to address. We conclude with some observations on what an alternative orientation might entail.

Trumping NAFTA, Trumpeting the USMCA

After trashing NAFTA, Trump predictably proclaimed that its replacement, the USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement), was a “wonderful new deal … a historic transaction.” Trudeau chimed in that it would “create jobs and grow the middle class.” What did the USMCA actually change?

The focus on renegotiating NAFTA emerged out of Trump’s obsession with trade deficits. When NAFTA was first negotiated, Mexico had a small overall trade deficit with the U.S. This was transformed into the largest trade surplus with the U.S. of any country other than China. That surplus is almost entirely driven by Mexico’s emergence as a major global site of automotive production: of Mexico’s $71-billion surplus with the U.S. in 2017, $63-billion was in auto. Over and above automotive parts, Mexico has, since the start of NAFTA, received some 90% of new automotive capacity (Canada has actually seen its capacity decrease).

The flow of automotive products was consequently central to the renegotiation of NAFTA. The USMCA led to the following changes in automotive-sector trade.

1. The rules of origin (how much of an automobile’s content must be manufactured within North America to qualify for duty-free flow of vehicles and parts between the three countries) were increased from 62.5% to 75%.

The U.S. had called for 85%, but settled on 75%. Most of the assembly plants that operate under NAFTA (now USMCA) are close to the 75% target, and, though this may increase parts purchases in North America somewhat, it will not dramatically change industry employment numbers. Moreover, the additional content under this rule doesn’t have to be in the U.S.; it can locate in Mexico or Canada. The U.S. wanted, but did not get, a special provision that it alone should have a specific national content rule.

2. To qualify for USMCA, at least 40–45% of the content (varying for assembly and parts) must originate in facilities with average wages of over $16 per hour.

Intriguing as this is, it too will have minimal impact. In general, the vehicles Mexico ships to the U.S. already comply with 40% of the content being sourced in the U.S. and Canada, and thus already paying wages above that average. Moreover, no company is going to triple (or more) the wages they pay in Mexico when the penalty on cars coming into the U.S. is only 2.5%; they’ll just accept the penalty instead. And if they’re paying the penalty anyway, they may even reduce overall content in North America. The penalty on trucks (25%) is another matter. But by far, most of Mexico’s vehicle exports are cars, and the amount of U.S.-Canadian content in Mexican truck exports is generally significantly higher than cars and exceeds the 40% condition.

All this leaves aside the hypocrisy of the U.S. calling for stronger Mexican labour standards, even as it oversees the profound weakening of its own working class, and while, on the Canadian side, the new Ontario premier seems about to roll back even the minimal gains workers were about to get after decades of shameful mistreatment.

3. If the U.S. imposes restrictions on exports on grounds of national security, $2.6-million in annual car exports from Canada, as well as Mexico, would be excluded, and so would certain levels of parts exports from each country.

For Canada, this ceiling will not be biting. Trucks are excluded from any limit, and Canadian car exports could increase by some 45% relative to 2017 before the ceiling is reached – i.e., it is unlikely ever to happen. The ceiling on parts imports is also far above what Canada currently ships to the U.S. That ceiling is, however, relevant for Mexico, and may encourage a cap on new assembly plants there. The point is that after Mexico’s great auto boom, its main fear was that some of the past gains would be rolled back, so escaping that fate is considered by Mexico as a clear win.

Note that this clause legitimates the right of the U.S. to use the reason of “national security” to impose any trade restrictions it desires. This was also reinforced by the agreement not doing away with the “national security” tariffs imposed on steel and aluminum. (Trump had earlier indicated that if a replacement to NAFTA was reached, those tariffs could end, but this went the way of other Trump declarations.)

While auto was the defining issue, there were other noteworthy changes:

Chapter 19: This called for independent adjudicators to deal with conflicts of interpretation. The U.S. wanted to do away with this and leave adjudication to domestic laws. For Canada to accept a continuing vulnerability to American law would plainly mock the very idea of a supposedly “international” agreement. The U.S. eventually dropped this demand. Nevertheless, Trump’s arbitrariness with regard to trade serves as a warning that the U.S. always can, when it deems it necessary, “renegotiate” the rules. This suggests that corporations, particularly in the tightly integrated auto sector, may have a future defensive bias toward locating new investments in the U.S. rather than with its “partners.”

Chapter 11: This chapter applied an expanded version of the U.S. ‘regulatory takings’ doctrine to all of North America. It essentially allowed corporations the authority to sue states that introduced measures which not only directly but indirectly impacted on corporate property rights, including intangible property rights such as future profits (identifying this as a form of ‘taking’ or ‘expropriation’). This crass placing of private interests against the policies of elected governments was, surprisingly, removed from the new agreement in the U.S.-Canada talks. This was, however, not so much at the initiative of Canada but of the U.S. which, though very much concerned with the needs of capital in general did not itself want to be beholden to any particular corporation. Notably, for Mexico, Chapter 11 remains in force in energy and telecommunications, constraining Mexican policy in those sectors.

Dairy Market: The U.S. administration was adamant about opening up Canada’s dairy market. Canada had already made concessions on this through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the U.S. ended up stepping away from, and it was largely a foregone conclusion that Canada would make the same or, as it turned out, very slightly higher concessions in the USMCA. (Trudeau has promised to find ways to compensate farmers for this.)

Drug Patents: NAFTA had protected pharmaceutical patents for eight years. This was increased to ten years, meaning that generic drug makers can’t step in as early as before. This adds significant additional costs to individuals and puts greater pressure on negotiated drug plans and the healthcare system. In spite of the characterization of free-trade agreements as opening up competition, this change demonstrates the extent to which a higher priority has been protecting property rights.

New Side Agreements on Labour and the Environment: Free-trade agreements are based on minimizing the impact of “non-trade” social issues like labour and environmental standards. The erosion, since the NAFTA side agreements, of labour rights and environmental conditions should give us proof enough of how empty such clauses are.

The “China Clause”: Article 32.10 of the agreement provides that if a party to the agreement intends to negotiate a free-trade agreement with a “non-market” country (a designation any of the partners can make) it must first notify and gain the approval of the other parties. This clause is clearly intended to reference China, and highlights what may seem obvious: the U.S. right to veto any such discussions. (NAFTA had contingencies for such cases, so this article wasn’t technically necessary, but its imperial attitude toward both China and Canada carries important symbolic significance.)

Energy Proportionality: NAFTA and its precursor had put limits on Canada’s right, during an energy crisis, to divert oil exports normally going to the U.S. to other parts of Canada. This scandalous clause was removed. But in light of Canada’s strong desire for U.S. markets for its oil, and its political sensitivities to U.S. counter-reactions, this may not mean anything in practical terms. Even the petroleum industry, which had earlier been instrumental in bringing this clause into existence, now declared that the clause had “no impact” – that it “was never invoked and was never really needed.”

The USMCA added some other bells and whistles, but is far from being a game-changer in terms of dramatically shifting trade benefits to the U.S. This is not surprising; to truly “fix” the problem with Mexico would have meant radical steps that could overflow into undermining globalization, something Trump was loath to do. The U.S. deficit will persist, and there will not be a significant upsurge in the manufacturing jobs that Trump promised the American Midwest.

In short, the Canadian and Mexican governments are basically relieved that Trump didn’t carry through with his more extreme protectionist threats. The continental auto industry is pleased that its supply chains and assembly plants in Mexico will not be interrupted. Canadian autoworkers considered the agreement a “victory,” because the most threatening U.S. proposals faded away. U.S. workers saw some positives, but hardly a solution to their job concerns. Mexican workers had virtually no voice in the process. U.S. dairy farmers are marginally happier at the expense of their Canadian counterparts, and the drug companies are smiling. The wall to keep Mexican immigrants out of the U.S. was not mentioned.

The Bigger Context: Ten Observations

There are a number of broader issues that must be taken on board in thinking about and responding to free-trade agreements. We can’t elaborate on them here, but may present some summary observations. First, The main issue in these misnamed “trade agreements” has become the free flow of capital and the protection of business property rights. These agreements essentially give corporations internationally sanctioned constitutional guarantees against the possible actions of future elected governments. This, of course, includes access to supplies and markets for their investments, but as for tariffs, these have already fallen dramatically over the years: the trade-weighted average of U.S. tariffs is now in the order of 2%, a level dwarfed by shifts in exchange rates (the Canadian dollar, for example, has fallen by 12% from where it was a decade ago).

Second, repeated “discoveries” that the U.S. economy and U.S. empire are in decline are simply wrong. Working people may be suffering, but that is distinct from how American capitalism is doing. It’s not just that the U.S. economy is outperforming other developed countries and that U.S. corporations are doing incredibly well in terms of profits and continuing to extend their reach globally. Though the U.S. economy has certainly seen a great many jobs and sometimes entire economic sectors and regions laid waste, it has demonstrated a capacity to move upstream to dominate strategic high-tech manufacturing (aerospace, health sciences, pharma, nanotechnology, computer and communication systems), as well as the services so critical to the global economy (finance, engineering, accounting, legal, consulting, computer software, communication, and culture). Moreover, the U.S. remains, in spite of very significant setbacks, by far the prime military power in the world, while the U.S. state continues to act as the world’s central bank and the dollar remains the world’s principal currency.

Third, supporters of the thesis of inter-imperial rivalry have, since the 1960s, looked to Japan as the new rival of the American empire, later turning to Germany and Europe, and now identify China as the new challenger of American dominance. But both the profound global integration of capitalism and the resilience of the U.S. economy and state suggest powerfully that the contradictions in capitalism are not to be found in inter-imperial rivalry.

Fourth, China has neither the interest nor capacity to replace the role the U.S. plays in superintending global capitalism; its concern is rather with renegotiating its status within the hierarchy of global capitalism. Like other states, it is anxious that the U.S. act as a “responsible” global leader. Yet the Trump administration seems to have shifted American geopolitical concerns from Russia toward a new economic cold war with China. It will be interesting to see whether Trump’s aggressive imposition of high tariffs against China are a negotiating tactic to leverage China to open up its financial and high tech-sectors, thereby strengthening globalization, or part of a longer drive to push key U.S. companies out of China and thereby limit China’s technological expansion (in any case, those U.S. subsidiaries would in large part more likely move elsewhere in Asia rather than return those supply chains to the USA).

Fifth, the most relevant contradictions lie within the U.S. itself. Though the U.S., of course, derives great benefit from its international position, it also comes with burdens. Those burdens range from diverting critical resources from welfare-state expenditures to the military, to absorbing a disproportionate share of world exports when markets abroad falter, to losing jobs to Asia as corporations restructure globally, and include workers facing competitive pressures from low-wage competitors abroad. It is such burdens, particularly in periods of domestic austerity, that create the frustrations that were so instrumental to the rise of Trump and a committed far-right base. These internal contradictions have international repercussions, some of which may be unintended.

Sixth, there is a degree of relative independence behind the actions of the American president. Trump has given corporations massive tax breaks and delivered on deregulation, but is not necessarily following their bidding on trade. On the other hand, there are also limits on what an American president can do (his/her power is “relative”). As a columnist for the Wall Street Journal noted: “The new deal shows the limits to Mr. Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda and an underlying resilience to the existing order…. The resistance Mr. Trump encountered from Congress, business, his own advisers and U.S. trading partners circumscribed his leverage.”

Seventh, we need a more nuanced understanding of notions such as “neoliberalism,” “nationalism,” and “protectionism.” Neoliberalism is not about reducing the role of the state, but rather of the state deepening capitalist discipline and strengthening the weight of markets by shifting the balance of class forces toward increasing corporate profits – think of the state’s leading role in free trade, privatization, weakening unions. Adolph Reed has succinctly captured this notion by characterizing neoliberalism as capitalism without an effective working-class opposition.

As for nationalism, there is the nationalism of reproducing U.S. economic dominance, but there is also a left nationalism that challenges U.S. penetration and the restrictions on the capacity to pursue national goals of economic development and solidarity. The same goes for protectionism. Somehow, protecting the rights and property of corporations is called “free trade,” while protecting workers from the compulsion to compete for their jobs with lower-wage jurisdictions brings accusations of an unjustified and anti-social “protectionism.”

Eighth, we must be careful in supporting “sovereignty” in the abstract. It has, after all, been states themselves, as Leo Panitch has argued, that have been the main authors (rather than victims) of trade agreements like NAFTA. The loss of sovereignty we need to be worried about is not that of states per se, but of the popular ability to democratically improve our lives in the face of the introduction of “unchallengeable” rules.

Ninth, globalization also involves the movement of people. In this case, some argue that the free borders offered to corporations should be extended to “free borders” for people. This is not necessarily a good thing. For one, immigration is increasingly biased toward those with high education and assets (more than half of Canadian immigration is now directed to bringing in high-tech talent from Asia as opposed to desperate workers from Latin America). This means that immigration may involve a brain drain and resource shift from the global south to the richer countries; that is, it may aggravate inequalities between countries. Second, U.S. foreign policy, in which our own government is often complicit, has contributed to people being pushed out of their home communities rather than simply wanting to move abroad. Shouldn’t we therefore put as much energy into challenging those foreign policies as dealing with their consequences?

Can we ignore concerns about the impact of immigration on our social services without questioning why, even as the wealth of our country increases, social programs like health and education are cut independent of immigration? Can we really win the battle for completely open immigration, which tends to cause a backlash even from sympathetic Canadians, as opposed to regulating immigration in a way that is sympathetic to desperate refugees and supports a higher but planned level of immigration, as well as providing the services they need?

Tenth, justice is international, as must also be – for strategic reasons – the struggle. This, demands having the base at home to make “international solidarity” more than a well-meaning slogan. The painful truth is that we haven’t even built solidarity in our own countries between autoworkers and steelworkers, public- and private-sector workers, low-wage workers and those still lucky enough to have relatively decent, full-time jobs.

Conclusion

The outcome of the “Trump moment” is likely, for all its protectionist rhetoric, to end up further legitimatingfree trade. Already, many of those opposed to Trump have jumped on the bandwagon of free trade as the progressive alternative. This perversion has a lot to do with the inability of the left to place free trade into a larger context.

That larger framework involves twin constraints emphasized earlier as barriers to a fuller life and greater solidarity: our domestic dependence on the undemocratic decisions of private corporations and financial institutions, and our deep integration into the American empire. The latest free-trade agreement, like the earlier ones, consolidates both those dependencies. We can’t simply reject free-trade agreements unless it is also part of a larger strategy. What we confront and what must shape how we respond is both capitalism and Canada’s place within capitalism. Taking this on is certainly pie-in-the-sky as an imminent goal. But if we see it as a long-term necessity – one that we must start building toward now – it can give us new political life.

This requires speaking confidently about an orientation that sees our collective needs, especially but not only those linked to the fundamental threat to the environment, as only achievable through democratic planning, not markets. It means thinking in terms of production for use, not profits, and in terms of a society based on solidarity, not competition. And it involves replacing the fetish of exporting as much as we can with a bias, as Greg Albo has emphasized, for inward development, but with a place for planned international economic relations.

We live in an era of polarized options. The sober truth is that anything short of a truly radical agenda condemns us to floundering through defeats. The radical, in this sense, is not something beyond the realm, but something that has in fact become the only approach that is now practical.

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This article was originally published in Canadian Dimension Volume 52, Issue 3, Fall 2018.

“Your heart
is too small to hold
this many people”
— lyrics to a song of the Yellow Vests addressed to Macron

“I am not a seed of Chance
I, the moulder of the new life
I am a child of Need
and a mature child of Wrath…
…Listen to the voice of the winds
For thousands of years!
Inside my word
all humanity hurts…”
Kostas Varnalis (1884-1974), The Guide (Ο Οδηγητής) (*)

On the evening of 14 July 1789, the Duke de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt woke King Louis XVI to inform him about the storming of the Bastille.

“Why, is this a rebellion?” the King wondered.

“No Sir. It’s a revolution”, replied the Duke.

What is happening today in France is one of the most significant political developments on the European continent after the collapse of the Soviet Union almost thirty years ago.

It is one of the most radical, deepest and dynamic challenges to modern European capitalism in decades, both in terms of method – the direct, mass mobilisation of people, of the “masses”, their dramatic entry on to the stage of history – as well as in terms of the depth of the movement, as in its demands, which directly question the political and, implicitly but clearly, the social regime.(**). In particular, it is evenly spread throughout France, rather than being restricted to the capital.

If we wanted to find a revolutionary movement in Europe reassembling that of the Yellow Vests in terms of massiveness and depth we would probably have to look back to the period 1965-75 or, as a maximum, to 1985.

That is, we would look back to the general revolutionary strikes in France and Italy (1968-1969), the ‘Prague Spring’ (1968), the Carnation Revolution in Portugal (1974-1975), the Solidarity revolution in Poland (1979-1981) and, perhaps to a lesser extent, to the long, militant strike of British miners (1984-85).

These are all movements which, each one in its own way and despite the differences between them, have profoundly changed how we perceive the world. All were characterised by the same direct form of action, with millions of simple people directly participating, and by the fact that they all questioned the foundations of economic and social organisation and the power system in the countries in which they broke out. All these movements, without exception, were, in one way or another, accompanied by demands for the democratisation of society, self-management and direct participation of people.

The momentum of these movements was later halted by the capitulation of Mitterrand’s Socialists, the triumphs of Neo-liberalism in capitalist Europe (the Thatcher-Reagan-Friedman factor),the collapse of the Soviet regime and the “counter-revolutions” in Eastern Europe: “counter-revolutions” which, although advanced through “democratic” slogans, did not lead anywhere, but merely to the economic and political power changing hands from “socialist bureaucracies” to  quite authoritarian, oligarchic and sometimes clearly Mafiosi elites, masquerading as democratic governments – “social Darwinists” in the service of International Capital and the US.

The Yellow Vests now seem to be picking up in their own way from where the European movements of 1965-85 left off their core fundamental demands, and they are doing so in their attempt to respond to a policy of systematic destruction of French society and, even more so, of its lower and poorer strata.

They are doing it within the context of today’s European and global conditions, which differ substantially from those of that period, both in “subjective” and “objective” terms.

French and European crises and global economic crisis

The French revolution – the term ‘revolution’, we think, being more appropriate, because what is happening in France does not constitute simply a rebellion, as we will attempt to show later – is the direct product of the multifaceted, complex “European” crisis; a crisis which, in its turn, is the product and consequence of two factors: the deep economic crisis into which world capitalism entered in 2008, and the very way in which the European Union has been built and operates.

It is important to properly diagnose the root cause of the crisis,and the factors which provoked it, the global and the European one. Because if we assume that the whole problem is due to the Euro and the EU, ignoring the structural crisis of modern world capitalism, then we would come to the conclusion that all a country needs to do is to leave the EU, thereby solving all the problems. Of course, this does not mean that a given country should not attempt to leave the EU, if this is what is required for saving itself. But it means, however, that it must be aware that even by leaving, it will still be confronted by all the problems thrown up by the tremendous power that globalised capitalism and international finance have acquired.

Most criticisms of the EU, from various side, are correct. But this is not the main strategic problem. The main question is what is to be the European order of tomorrow and how to ensure that the order which shall be established after the EU will be better and not worse; what is the policy and strategy that, as of now, within the context of the existing EU, can serve better the purpose of creating a radically different and radically better European order tomorrow.

This is because a European country, in particular a medium-sized country such as France, may initiate a course of liberation from the bonds of globalised capitalism. But it will not beeasy for any country, even the strongest in Europe, to achieve this on its own in the long-term.

The international impact of the French revolutionary movement will be of crucial, vital significance, not only in the long-term, but also in short run, for both the movement itself and for the situation in all of Europe.

Any victory or defeat of the Yellow Vests movement depends heavily on its ability to expand and find immediate support in the rest of Europe.

On the other hand, the entire European situation will be directly and decisively affected by what will happen in the coming weeks and months in France.

However, we have not yet seen any of the forces which wish to self-identify as “radical leftist” in Europe -from the left-wing of Die Linke to the left-wing of the Labour Party-realising fully the significance of what is happening in France; adjusting their activity accordingly, giving absolute priority to the organisation of support to the French people, explaining to their people what is happening in France or even imitating the French movement through the initiation of campaigns in their countries, appropriate and adapted of course to the respective conditions they are facing in every country. We have not seen them attempting to create programmatically, politically and organisationally a united European front, not only of the radical left but also of all the forces that would be willing to commit sincerely to fighting the totalitarian dictatorship of financial capital in Europe.

What we mostly see are various groups, parties, and aspiring leaders ,the usual strangers to modesty, narcissist stars of “international radicalism and progress”, prominent “intellectuals of the Self-evident”, who, at a moment when one of the most significant revolutions in Europe in the last fifty years is unfolding, are making micro-political electoral calculations in view of the European elections; calculations which too shall prove to be irrelevant within the context of a Europe that continues to be shaken to its very foundations by its crisis.

A direct result itself of the 2008 global economic crisis, the European crisis has so far generated, before the current developments in France, the destruction and “betrayed revolt” of Greece, the Indignados and the Podemos in Spain, the left government in Portugal, the BREXIT vote, the surge of the radical right in Italy, the rise of AfD in Germany, the “clinical death” of the German Social Democratic and the French Socialist Party, the rise of Le Pen and Mélenchon in France.

However, the developments in France are now taking us to another level, because of twofactors of fundamental significance. The French people, having spent a number of decades hoping in vain for some improvement through the processes of elections and referenda, has now moved to the phase of direct, dynamic and mass mobilisation of the people. Secondly, the French movement is for the first time directly questioning the political and, indirectly but clearly, the social regime.

The financial oligarchy which is currently governing Europe together with its employees – the European politicians and bureaucrats – has no answer to the issues raised by the Greeks,  Spanish, British, Italians and, even more so, by the French now.

For this and for other reasons that we will explain, the French crisis is only the beginning of a course of events, which, of course, we cannot predict and prescribe; nor can we foresee where it will lead; however, we can say with certainty already from now that they will radically change Europe and the world.

The developments in France not only coincide with and partly reflect the continuing deep crisis of the EU, a crisis threatening its very existence. The developments are taking place, most probably, on the eve of a new exacerbation of the economic crisis of 2008,against which states now have much fewer means to use for defending themselves than in 2008.

And as if all this were not enough, at the international level we also note a rapid deterioration of all the significant global concerns, including the re-emergence of the risk of nuclear war and, most importantly, the near certainty over the end of human life through climatic change and environmental destruction; such defining issues require immediate radical measures that go far beyond the limitations and capabilities of the existing economic, social and international system.

Realism and Romanticism

The other day a friend, albeit in a well-meant and tactful way, accused me of a sort of “revolutionary romanticism”, referring to my most recent article about the developments in France. I will leave aside the fact that, as it soon transpired from our conversation, he was not aware of the most elementary information such as what are the main demands of the Yellow Vest movement; instead he perceived as real not what is really happening in France – of course for this the media is more to blame for not giving out all the information – but what he himself thought is likely to be happening!

Living in Greece he thought that in France, too, politicians could throw some “revolutionary buzzwords” just to gather votes, as it so often is the case with Greek politicians. So he was trying to interpret the French movement from the point of view of our current moral and intellectual misery, which is the result of our overwhelming defeat of 2015 and the way it has come about. It may also be that deep inside, he could find difficult, and even be annoyed by the comparison between the current grandeur of a revolting people with our own, now humiliated and defeated, miserable and servile, individual, social and national existence.

However, the important point is something different, and I told him so.  Romanticism is not to hope for the advancement of humans and people at the forefront of the historical process. They did it in the past and hence they can do it again in the future. Romanticism, even a potentially deadly illusion, is to bestow upon those who today govern the world, the ability to prevent the destruction of humanity!

Realistically speaking, the only chance that humanity has to save itself is to consciously take its own action to this effect and, indeed, to do so very quickly.

The May 1968 slogan “Imagination to the Power” is today the only viable realism. The “revolution”, in the meaning of a radical transformation of the dominant system, regardless of the way in which it may happen, is a precondition for the survival of humanity. This sort of thing is no longer taught by social and philosophical theories or by our morality; it is rather determined by the merciless clarity and accuracy of the mathematical and physics equations of climate science.

Besides, great revolutions often happen when no one expects them. And no one expects them, because when they happen a system is “completed”; it is, in a way, “closed”, having left no room for any “reform” or “self-correction”. The same factor that makes Revolutions seem impossible and even inconceivable is rendering them also unavoidable!

The global human consciousness owns this knowledge, despite the constant efforts of the dominant and possessors to erase it. This is the reason why we honour the memory of those who were “defeated” in history, of those who “lost”, such as Jesus Christ and Spartacus, and we pay no tribute to those who crucified them to protect and preserve the public order and the power of their time.

It is precisely at this moment, when the system has “closed”, does not allow any progress and is threatening with destruction, that the god of Necessity unearths from the depths of the souls of ordinary people, from the soul of the great “anonymous” crowd, the moral superior human qualities, namely the drive towards freedom and dignity, the expression of the mortal being’s need for meaning in his life.  It is then, at those privileged moments of history, that simple people, free from the usual burdens and hypocrisies of professional politicians and intellectuals, employ the superior brain functions of humans, reason and the imagination, in order to find solutions to the problems they encounter, as the French have been doing for nearly two months now.

All revolutions may look similar to each other, but each one is different. This one, the revolution that is now struggling to force its way out of its mother’s belly – the European crisis- has an incomparable advantage over the Great French Revolution of 1789 and over the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917.The people who revolted now have significantly higher intellectual weapons, more knowledge to rely upon than what was available to the sans-culottes and the Russian workers of the past revolutions. Moreover, they have the experience of the achievements, but also of the degeneration and tragedies that accompanied all the great revolutionary movements of history.

But it is impossible to cover such a subject in one article. In our next article, we will examine the way the French people were led to take the course they have, and the structure of their demands, at the centre of which is the question of popular sovereignty, the possibility of the people to exercise power or, at least, to be able to control in an effective way how state power is exercised.

The same fundamental question remains, albeit in a new form, presented, but not solved in a satisfactory way, by the Great French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and many other popular uprisings in Europe and the world.

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Notes

(*) This is an improvised translation by the author of a portion of a poem by Kostas Varnalis (1984-1974), one of the greatest poets and writers of modern Greece. A communist, a Marxist and a member of the resistance during the Nazi occupation of Greece, he was persecuted for his ideas.

(**) It is quite difficult to write an article about France addressed to people who are not living in France. The reason lies with the fact that Western Media doall that they can, indeed with a certain degree of success, in order to play down, distort and conceal the events in France and, most importantly, their significance. Their aim is to present them as some sort of the usual “social upheavals”, without highlighting the underlying causes which have driven the people of one of the most important countries in Europe to revolt against the political system in power.

During the military dictatorship in Greece, I was a schoolboy. I remember that the press at that time was full of propaganda, but, at the same time, it was publishing all the basic facts necessary to form an opinion. Through this censored press, controlled by the “black colonels”, Greeks nevertheless knew better what was happening in France during the May ’68 Revolution or with the Vietnam War, than they know now about social and political problems in other EU countries or about the reality of a dozen wars in the Middle East!

The “Empire of Finance” which controls the media and most “intellectuals”, the “Space of Ideas” in our societies, in a way that is unprecedented in the history of capitalism, has a vital interest in doing so, as it trembles at the prospect of the “French virus” spreading outside France, as happened in 1789, 1848 and 1968.

Besides, even if they wanted to transmit the real meaning of these processes, they wouldn’t be able to do it. Journalism follows democracy on the path to demise. In their efforts to control all information, they have isolated almost all journalists with the knowledge and critical thinking skills that are required to analyse and describe the meaning of a revolution such, as the one that now seems to be unfolding in France. Nowadays, it is often the case that the media do not even choose journalists of their own liking, asking instead political parties and financial lobbies to “accolade” these and appoint “journalists”.

The suffocating and total control of the sphere of ideas have led to the creation of a class of “political professionals”, intellectuals, scientists, advertisers and pollsters who have ended up believing their own propaganda and are now unable, to a large extent,to analyse what is happening in the real world, even if this is needed by the class of interests they serve. George Orwell has been proven right.

Perhaps this is why the French Le Monde decided to send 70 scientists across France on a quest to understand what’s going on in the country – probably the largest “press expedition” in history!

Featured image: Fuel tax protestors in France (Source: WSWS)

France’s yellow vests, coming together in informally organised groups, took just one month to challenge policies on taxation, education, transport and environment, and make the Macron government back down.

***

December 15, place de l’Opéra, Paris. Three yellow vests read out an address ‘to the French people and the president of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron’ saying:

‘This movement belongs to no one and to everyone. It gives voice to a people who for 40 years have been dispossessed of everything that enabled them to believe in their future and their greatness.’

The anger provoked by a fuel tax produced, within a month, a wider diagnosis of what ails society and democracy. Mass movements that bring together people with minimal organisation encourage rapid politicisation, which explains why ‘the people’ have discovered that they are ‘dispossessed of their future’ a year after electing as president a man who boasts he swept aside the two parties that alternated in power for 40 years.

Macron has come unstuck. As did previous wunderkinder just as young, smiling and modern: Laurent Fabius, Tony Blair, Matteo Renzi. The liberal bourgeoisie are hugely disappointed. His French presidential election win in 2017 — whether it was a miracle or a divine surprise — had given them hope that France had become a haven of tranquillity in a troubled West. When Macron was crowned (to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy), The Economist, that standard-bearer for the views of the international ruling class, put him on its front cover, grinning as he walked on water.

But the sea has swallowed up Macron, too sure of his own instincts and too contemptuous of other people’s economic plight. Social distress is generally only a backdrop to an election campaign, used to explain the choice of those who vote the wrong way. But when old angers build and new ones are stirred up without consideration for those enduring them, then, as the new interior minister Christophe Castaner put it (1), the ‘monster’ can spring out of its box. And then, anything becomes possible.

France’s amnesia about the history of the left explains why there have been so few comparisons between the yellow vest movement and the strikes of 1936, during the Popular Front, which prompted similar elite surprise at the workers’ living conditions and their demand to be treated with dignity. Philosopher and campaigner Simone Weil wrote: ‘All those who are strangers to this life of slavery are incapable of understanding what has proved decisive in this situation. In this movement it is not about this or that particular demand, however important … After always having submitted, endured everything, accepted everything in silence for months and years, it is about daring to straighten up, to stand up. To take your turn to speak’ (2).

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Mike Pompeo removes any doubt about the purpose of the administration’s Iran policy of regime change in all but name:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that “the sanctions on Iran have an ultimate goal” of “creating an outcome where the Iranian people could have better lives than they have today under this tyrannical regime”.

In other words, the sanctions are intended to create so much misery and upheaval that they cause the regime to collapse. That means there is nothing that the Iranian government could do short of abolishing its current political system that would satisfy the administration so that they would agree to lift the sanctions that they illegitimately reimposed last year. We know Iran’s government isn’t going to do that. Contrary to what Pompeo claims here, this wouldn’t lead to “an outcome where the Iranian people could have better lives.” It threatens to plunge their country into disorder if it “works,” and it promises economic ruin for tens of millions of people no matter what happens to the government. There is no realistic scenario where the Iranian people aren’t left worse off at the end than they were before the sanctions were reimposed.

We also know that the sanctions primarily harm the civilian population by ravaging their economy, impeding their ability to import basic goods, destroying their savings, driving up their cost of living, bankrupting their businesses, and taking away their jobs. Were it not for the reimposed sanctions, many Iranians would already be enjoying somewhat better lives as a result of foreign investment and trade following the successful negotiation of the JCPOA. Because of the sanctions, that prospect of a moderately better future has been cut off for many years to come. The idea that the people responsible for the Iran sanctions actually desire “better lives” for the population that they are strangling is a sick joke, and news outlets that don’t acknowledge the obvious contradiction between administration rhetoric and the effect that administration policies are having on the civilian population in Iran are failing in their reporting.

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Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with allies in a tour of Latin America this week, in which he talked about stepping up US-led efforts against Venezuela.

The Trump administration has been increasingly hostile towards the Caribbean nation, escalating sanctions and even threatening a military “option.”

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is due to start his second term on January 10, having won re-election on May 20, but Washington and several right-wing regional governments have refused to recognize the election and may look to further isolate Caracas in coming days. For its part, Venezuela has repeatedly denounced what it terms US-led destabilization efforts.

Tensions have likewise heightened with some of Venezuela’s Latin American neighbors, especially Brazil and Colombia, with flashpoints surrounding Venezuelan migration and an increased military presence along the shared borders.

Pompeo’s tour, which was also meant to address concerns about China’s growing presence in the region, started in Peru. Following a meeting with Peruvian Foreign Minister Nestor Bardales, the former CIA director stressed the need to “increase pressure” on the Venezuelan government.

Pompeo then flew to Brasilia for the inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro. In meetings with Brazil’s new president and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, he discussed joint efforts against the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Pompeo later told the press that he and his Brazilian allies shared a “deep desire to return democracy” to Venezuela.

A former army captain during Brazil’s military dictatorship, ultra-right Bolsonaro took office on January 1 following his election victory in October. In his first speech as president, he vowed to “value Judeo-Christian traditions” and that Brazil would be free from “socialism, a giant state and political correctness.”

Venezuela featured prominently in Bolsonaro’s electoral campaign, in which the politician repeatedly accused the center-left Workers Party of seeking to bring “Venezuela-style socialism” to Brazil. Most recently, Bolsonaro’s vice-president, retired general Hamilton Mourao, commented in December that a coup would take place in Venezuela and that Brazil would lead a “force for peace.”

Pompeo’s latest stop was the Colombian city of Cartagena, where he held a meeting and joint press conference with Colombian President Ivan Duque.

The US official stated that the discussions had centered on how to collaborate in order to help Venezuelans “recover their democratic heritage,” while adding that Colombia was a “natural leader” in these efforts.

Kurt Tidd, head of U.S. Southern Command meets with Colombian President-elect Ivan Duque in Doral, Fla., July 14. 2018. Photo | SOUTHCOM

For his part, Duque stated that “all countries that defend democracy should unite to reject Venezuela’s dictatorship,” adding that humanitarian assistance was required to deal with Venezuelans arriving in Colombia. According to UN figures, 2.6 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2015, with over 1 million heading to Colombia.

A protegé of former president Alvaro Uribe, Duque has repeatedly met with US officials to discuss efforts to increase pressure on Venezuela. Venezuela and Colombia do not have diplomatic relations since Duque refused to appoint an ambassador to Caracas after being elected in June 2018.

In addition, Bolsonaro and Duque reportedly held a phone conversation in which one of the topics was the need to cooperate in search of “solutions” to the Venezuela crisis.

In response, the Venezuelan government blasted Pompeo’s tour as another instance of US meddling in its internal affairs. In a Foreign Ministry communiqué released on Wednesday, the Venezuelan executive “categorically rejected Secretary Pompeo’s interventionist attitude.”

Caracas likewise slammed Pompeo’s meeting with Duque, denouncing US efforts to“subjugate the sovereignty and self-determination of the Venezuelan people” and warning against the possible use of Colombian territory to launch an aggression against Venezuela.

Venezuelan authorities also took aim at Duque’s controversial statement thanking the US for their “crucial” support for Colombia’s independence 200 years ago, despite historians having yet to corroborate this alleged historical detail.

President Maduro commented on the current state of Latin American relations during a recent interview with Ignacio Ramonet on state broadcaster VTV. Maduro claimed that right-wing projects in the region are “not viable,” and lamented that Bolsonaro was “handing Brazil over to US transnationals on a silver platter.”

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Ricardo Vaz is a writer and editor at Venezuelanalysis. His articles have appeared on Investig’Action, Monthly Review, Truthout, Counterpunch, and other alternative media.

Featured image: Colombian President Ivan Duque hosted US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Cartagena this week. (Colombian Presidency)

An explosive CBC expose Friday on the Jewish National Fund should be the beginning of the end for this powerful organization’s charitable status. But, unless the NDP differentiates itself from the Liberals and Conservatives by standing up for Canadian and international law while simultaneously opposing explicit racism, the JNF may simply ride out this short bout of bad publicity.

According to a story headlined “Canadian charity  used donations to fund projects linked to Israeli military”, the JNF has financed multiple projects for the Israeli military in direct contravention of Canada Revenue Agency rules for registered charities. The organization has also funded a number of projects supporting West Bank settlements, which Global Affairs Canada considers in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The story also revealed that the Canada Revenue Agency, under pressure from Independent Jewish Voices and other Palestine solidarity activists, began an audit of the state-subsidized charity last year.

After detailing the above, (which provoked hundreds of mostly angry comments from readers) the story notes that the “JNF has had strong relations with successive Conservative and Liberal governments.” The CBC published a picture of politicians congregated at the Prime Minister’s residence above the caption “Laureen Harper poses with JNF Gala honorees during a group visit to 24 Sussex Drive in 2015.”

But the JNF, like all good lobbyists, has hedged it political bets and the story could have noted that the social democratic opposition party was represented at this JNF gala as well and has dutifully supported the dubious “charity”. NDP MP Pat Martin spoke at the JNF event Harper organized to “recognize and thank the people that have helped to make JNF Canada what it is today.” In 2016 NDP foreign critic Hélène Laverdière participated in a JNF tree planting ceremony in Jerusalem with JNF World Chairman Danny Atar and a number of its other top officials. The president of the Windsor-Tecumseh Federal NDP riding association, Noah Tepperman, has been a director of JNF Windsor since 2004 and has funded the organization’s events in London, Ontario.

In 2015 Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath published an ad in a JNF Hamilton handbook and offered words of encouragement to its fundraiser while Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter planted a tree at a JNF garden in 2011. Manitoba NDP Premier Gary Doer was honoured at a 2006 JNF Negev Dinner in Winnipeg and cabinet minister Christine Melnick received the same honour in 2011. During a 2010 trip to Israel subsequent Manitoba NDP Premier Greg Selinger signed an accord with the JNF to jointly develop two bird conservation sites while water stewardship minister Melnick spoke at the opening ceremony for a park built in Jaffa by the JNF, Tel Aviv Foundation and Manitoba-Israel Shared Values Roundtable. (In 2017 Melnick won a B’nai Brith Zionist action figures prize for writing an article about a friend who helped conquer East Jerusalem and then later joined the JNF).

Besides NDP support for this dubious “charity”, the story ignored the JNF’s racist land-use policies. The JNF owns 13 per cent of Israel’s land, which was mostly taken from Palestinians forced from their homes by Zionist forces in 1947-1948. It discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis) who make up a fifth of the population. According to a UN report, JNF lands are “chartered to benefit Jews exclusively,” which has led to an “institutionalized form of discrimination.” Echoing the UN, a 2012 US State Department report detailing “institutional and societal discrimination” in Israel says JNF “statutes prohibit sale or lease of land to non-Jews.”

Indicative of its discrimination against the 20% of Israelis who aren’t Jewish, JNF Canada’s Twitter tag says it “is the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners — Jewish people everywhere.” Its parent organization in Israel — the Keren Kayemet LeYisrael — is even more open about its racism. Its website notes that “a survey  commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.” While such exclusionary land-use policies were made illegal in Canada seven decades ago, that’s the JNF’s raison d’être.

An organization that recently raised $25 million  for a Stephen Harper Bird Sanctuary, JNF Canada has been directly complicit in at least three important instances of Palestinian dispossession. In the late 1920s JNF Canada spearheaded a highly controversial land acquisition that drove a 1,000 person Bedouin community from land it had tilled for centuries and in the 1980s JNF–Canada helped finance an Israeli government campaign to “Judaize” the Galilee, the largely Arab northern region of Israel. Additionally, as the CBC mentioned, JNF-Canada build Canada Park on the remnants of three Palestinian villages Israel conquered in 1967.

A map the JNF shows to nine and ten-year-olds at Jewish day schools in Toronto encompasses the illegally occupied West Bank and Gaza, effectively denying Palestinians the right to a state on even 22 percent of their historic homeland. Similarly, the maps  on JNF Blue Boxes, which are used by kids to raise funds, distributed in recent years include the occupied West Bank. The first map on the Blue Box, designed in 1934, depicted  an area reaching from the Mediterranean into present-day Lebanon and Jordan.

The JNF is an openly racist organization that supports illegal settlements and the Israeli military. Many NDP activists understand this. The party’s MPs now have a choice: If they stand for justice and against all forms of racism, for the rule of international law and fairness in the Canadian tax system, they will speak up in Parliament to keep this story alive. The NDP needs to set itself apart from the Liberals and Conservatives by following up on the CBC’s revelations to demand the Canada Revenue Agency rescind the JNF’s charitable status.

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Featured image is from Middle East Monitor

RT: Kosovo wants to establish an army and has received several Humvee armoured vehicles from the USA. Although there was official NATO restraint, how much is the establishment of a Kosovo Army a fixed development?

Rio de Janeiro’s state governor Wilson Witzel – an ally of Brazil’s new President Jair Bolsonaro – is reported to have said that Brazil “needs its own Guantanamo”:

Brazil “needs its own Guantanamo” to lock up criminals, Rio de Janeiro’s state governor Wilson Witzel, an ally of new far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, said Thursday, referring to the US military base in Cuba used as an extraterritorial prison.

“We need to put terrorists in places where society is completely free of them,” Witzel said in a speech to police in the city of Rio.

The new governor, who took office this week as part of an electoral wave favoring far-right politicians that elevated Bolsonaro to the presidency, is given to making controversial statements.

For instance, just after being elected in October last year, he suggested police snipers could kill armed “criminals” — including anybody spotted carrying weapons, even if no-one was being threatened.

He and Bolsonaro have pledged to crack down on crime that is plaguing Brazil. The country in 2017 recorded nearly 64,000 murders.

With his Guantanamo comment, Witzel was referring to a US military base leased from Cuba where suspects from America’s “war on terror” launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001 are kept in a sort of detention limbo, without access to the US legal system.” (AFP)

Commenting, Maya Foa, Director of Reprieve, which represents men held in Guantanamo, said:

“Since it opened in 2002, Guantanamo has become a byword for injustice and gross violations of human rights. Nearly 17 years on, the US is still detaining forty men at the prison, having subjected them to prolonged torture. 31 of the men do not face charges and have no chance of a trial. The world is certainly not safer as a result of these injustices. It is shocking that President Bolsonaro’s allies are calling for Brazil to open its own version of this hell hole, and shows what toxic influence Guantanamo continues to have in the world. President Trump must close the prison at once.”

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Featured image is from Folha PE

A wide-scale Washington-driven aggression against Venezuela is underway, imperialist and anti-democratic at its core, and it has the full backing of the British government.  British meddling in Venezuela is packaged in human rights and democracy rhetoric, the same way it was in aggressions against Iraq, Libya and Syria, but behind it the real agenda is not hard to spot.

The British Foreign Office funds the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), a British government think tank, ‘dedicated to supporting democracy around the world’to work inside the Venezuelan parliament. The WFD claims it works to support the National Assembly’s ‘Modernisation Committee,’ and paints a picture of being unbiased, democratic and disinterested in party ideology

 “…Westminster Foundation for Democracy works with all political parties on the National Modernisation Committee in the National Assembly of Venezuela and the parliamentary staff that support it.”

However, the Modernisation Committee, is made up of members from the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), a coalition of members from right-wing opposition parties.  The MUD was created to challenge the Chavez government and the Bolivarian revolution.   It consists of First Justice, whose leader, Julio Borges, is living in self-exile in Colombia under the protection of the right-wing government of Ivan Duque, and is accused of authoring the assassination attempt on President Maduro in August last year.  It consists also of the far-right Popular Will party that has seen various members of its leadership arrested or self-exiled, accused of acts of terrorism carried out during violent protests against the government.  These are the parties assisted by the UK Foreign Office in Venezuela, deliberately engaged because they aim not just to undermine, but overthrow the Venezuelan government.  To explain its operations in the Venezuelan parliament, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy insinuates it is there to help mend the rift between the Venezuelan government and the people

“Following the 2015 Parliamentary elections in Venezuela, political polarisation increased and led to a deadlock that has eroded the public’s trust in politics during a time of deep economic crisis, hyperinflation and episodes of violence against the civil population.”

It then encourages the notion that it is working in collaboration with the government by claiming to work with all sides of the ‘political divide’

WFD works on a cross-party basis, seeking to engage all sides of the political divide while supporting democratic institutions in the country.

The WFD claims to do this in a number of ways

“…legislation, inclusion, representation, public budget, oversight and parliamentary administration. Implementation of recommendations for each area is currently underway.”

This would suggest that the elected government, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), accused by the Foreign Office of violent repressive activity against its own people, and a target of UK sanctions, has invited the Foreign Office into its heart to help produce its own legislation.

A look through the legislation by the National Assembly shows how unlikely this is. The National Assembly systematically and methodically produces documentation to attack the Maduro government almost on a weekly basis. This is because the National Assembly is in most part, made up of opposition seats won in the 2015 parliamentary elections.  Since 2016 it has had little power as it has been held in contempt of court for swearing in legislators under investigation for voter fraud.  A political gridlock followed, which resulted in Maduro invoking a Constituent Assembly in 2017 to produce a functioning legislative body, and a new constitution.  He did this in accordance with the 1999 Constitution,  announcing it would resolve violent anti-government protests by unifying all sections of society.  The opposition then boycotted the elections, claiming the invoking of a Constituent Assembly was illegal, despite advocating for one in 2014.  The opposition incited violent protests at polls during which a number of people died, including an election candidate.   Delegates were voted in and the Constituent Assembly was formed in what has been described by some as the mobilising of the population against rising fascism.

Therefore, the narrative that the British Foreign Office is supporting the Venezuelan government in mending rifts with its own people through legislation, or any other activity within the Venezuelan National Assembly, does not hold water.  It is more likely that the Foreign Office is working to enable right-wing parties and fascists to overthrow the Venezuelan government.  It is not known to what extent National Assembly documentation content is influenced by the Foreign Office, but a collaboration with such authors of anti-Maduro publications is a useful tool.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy’s credibility that it is helping to re-establish the trust between the Venezuelan government and its people, is dependent on the narrative that Venezuela has a failing democracy with corrupt elections.  To this end, the UK government has continued to discredit elections in Venezuela, backed by British mainstream media to drive the ‘rigged’ narrative, despite recognition by international inspecting bodies of fair and proper electoral practice. It has used this narrative as a pretext to further destabilise the country through sanctions, in alliance with the EU and the Trump administration, all stakeholders in a regime change in Venezuela.

To validate its role, Westminster Foundation for Democracy uses academic ‘experts on democracy’ to produce strategy frameworks for ‘fragile countries’ such as Venezuela. Rubber-stamping with Oxbridge insignia continues to be a practice for manufacturing approval for government intervention, whether it is through the self-promoting antics of theorists selling strategy for commercial reasons or the co-opting of the impressionable and idealistic young onto the fake human rights platforms of the British government and its US ally as they deliver democracy overseas. Such was the purpose of the visit by Luis Almagro, head of the Organisation of American States (OAS), to Oxford University last year.

President Nicolás Maduro is rigging an election in Venezuela. The BBC headline tells us that he “won”. Find out how to pull of this neat trick here, curtesy of @ForeignPolicy and our new book #howtoriganelection pic.twitter.com/4PJusDlf8Q

— Prof Nic Cheeseman (@Fromagehomme) May 21, 2018

Grateful for the invitation to @UniofOxford. Yesterday I had an insightful and engaging conversation with the faculty and students of the LatAm and Caribbean on the role of the @OAS_official in the ongoing political crises in the region. pic.twitter.com/ktTWVoLohG

— Luis Almagro (@Almagro_OEA2015) October 9, 2018

The OAS is heavily funded by the USand is considered by the Venezuelan government to be a mouthpiece for Washington.  The head of the OAS, Luis Almagro, is vehemently opposed to the Maduro government, and has supported US and EU sanctions. He has also given his support for a military coup in Venezuela.

But theWestminster Foundation for Democracy and establishment academic strategists are just a small part of the multimillion-pound military, business and intelligence machine that ‘innovates’ for democracy in Venezuela, much of which is connected through Chatham House.

It is theSister institute to the influential US foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where America’s imperialists and militarists network, and many US foreign policies are grown.  Chatham House has its own imperialists  and receives funds from the British Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Department of International Development, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence, demonstrating its value as a think tank tool for policymaking and intelligence matters.

Chatham House and the CFR attract the same calibre of imperialist.  While Richard Haass was advising Colin Powell going to war on Iraq in 2003, British chief advisor David Manning was doing the same for Tony Blair. Haass went on to become director of CFR while Manning is a senior advisor at Chatham House.  But as well as being a natural home for regime change strategists, these think thanks are where the oil, gas and weapons industries network, as  David Manning’s comments to Condoleeza Rice three months before the invasion of Iraq show

“It would be inappropriate for HMG [Her Majesty’s government] to enter into discussions about any future carve-up of the Iraqi oil industry. Nonetheless it is essential that our [British] companies are given access to a level playing field in this and other sectors.”

Manning went on to become a director of the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, that profited from the Iraq war. He also became the director of BG oil, taken over by Shell in 2016 in a multibillion-pound deal.

Ever better relations with Argentina and spoke today at Chatham House along with their Foreign Minister @jorgefaurie. Also Venezuela is collapsing, regional action desperately needed. https://t.co/iLCX4WgiZ8

— Sir Alan Duncan MP (@AlanDuncanMP) October 25, 2018

Tory MP Alan Duncan, who spoke at a closed meeting at Chatham House on Venezuela in October 2018, is another regime change tactician.  For years Duncan worked as a consultant in oil, with links to Vitol, a corporate member of Chatham House.  In 2011 Duncan’s oil contacts became useful in the overthrow of Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, when Duncan was Minister for the Department of International Development (DfID). The Guardian reported

“The government has admitted that the international development minister, Alan Duncan, took part in meetings between officials operating a Whitehall cell to control the Libyan oil market and Vitol – a company for which Duncan has previously acted as a consultant.”

“The “Libyan oil cell” involved a group of officials working in the Foreign Office since May waging a quiet campaign against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime by controlling the flow of oil in the country.”

Interviewed in 2016 at a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry on how the UK invasion led to a failed Libyan state, Duncan distanced himself from the operations in Libya and diminished his role. There was no mention of his involvement with a cell engineering passage of oil to jihadists, and the misery inflicted by the UK government on Libya was put down to staffing issues at the  Home Office and tribal wars, NATO’s military adventurism and funding of Islamist groups vying for power forgotten.  However, in 2011 the Telegraph described the transport of oil to jihadist ‘rebels’ as ‘vital’

“Supplies of diesel, petrol and fuel kept creaking power stations under rebel control from grinding to a halt and ultimately proved vital to efforts to overthrow Gadaffi. The trade was even more audacious because the rebels had no means of paying up front so Vitol agreed to provide it on credit.”

This suggests that Duncan’s role in regime change in Libya was more significant than suggested in the inquiry.  Now, as Minister for the Americas, Duncan has turned his attention to Venezuela.   Vitol,  meanwhile, under the chairmanship of Ian Taylor, Duncan’s friend and Tory sponsor, has been named in corruption cases in Venezuela and Brazil.

Through his Chatham House speech, Duncan has indicated his allegiances to oil networks remain firm,  music to the ears of Shell Oil,  looking to resolve its current problems in Venezuela

“We cannot talk about Venezuela without understanding the central role played by oil since the early 20th Century, I speak as a former oil trader myself.”

“The revival of the oil industry will be an essential element in any recovery, and I can imagine that British companies like Shell and BP, will want to be part of it.”

His comments take us back to the rape of Libya, but also to the planned carving up of Iraq. It is clear that Duncan would reprise his role; he has the connections, the resources, the knowledge and the experience in how to use oil networks to overthrow governments.  He has the British mainstream press behind him, as it was behind Cameron for the NATO bombing of Libya, providing fake human rights abuse narratives as shown in the Parliamentary inquiry report.

Duncan’s comments on sanctions against Venezuela make it clear that the UK will stick to this same strategy, as used in Iraq and Syria, where the catastrophic effects from sanctions have been seen.  No end of suffering through sanctions will deter the British government from its geopolitical goals. It has shown its commitment to back Washington’s goal to overthrow Maduro and destroy the Bolivarian revolution.  The UK’s refusal to return Venezuela’s gold, held at the Bank of England, a much-needed resource for the struggling Venezuelan economy, is further proof.

Meanwhile, unlike most concerned that a far-right president has come to power in Brazil, Duncan, so concerned about democracy in Venezuela, has welcomed Bolsonaro. In a recent meeting at the House of Commons, Duncan, in his role as Minister for the Americas, was asked

“What assessment he has made of potential risks to (a) democratic institutions, (b) the rule of law, (c) freedom of the press and (d) human rights in Brazil as a result of the election of Jair Bolsonaro as that country’s President.”

In answer, Duncan had seen no reason to make assessments

“Brazil is Latin America’s largest democracy. It has strong institutions to guarantee the rule of law, freedom of the press and human rights with the clear separation of powers protected by the constitution. This has not been changed by the election of Jair Bolsonaro. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

Met this morning with Latin American Ambassadors and Canadian High Commissioner. Followed by meeting with new Brazilian Ambassador. Broadly like-minded on the unfolding political and economic disaster in Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/5pvI28Uva0

— Sir Alan Duncan MP (@AlanDuncanMP) October 18, 2018

Duncan is likely to be engineering an alliance with Bolsonaro’s government, far-right ideology overlooked, with the aim of regime change in Venezuela.

As well as pushing sanctions, and pursuing diplomatic alliances, Duncan has also promoted the Lima Group as a mechanism for regional intervention. The Lima Group was created with the sole purpose of attacking the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly and is made up of a coalition of Washington’s Latin American allies.  It is a US asset with no legitimacy for interfering in the internal politics of an individual sovereign nation

“We are fully behind the Lima Group of countries in their efforts to seek a regional solution to the crisis.”

This is a strategy also promoted by Washinton via the CFR

“…there are some efforts the United States could make in a supporting role to the Lima Group. Colombia has called for a reconstruction plan for Venezuela; the United States should encourage a Latin American conference to develop that plan with clear U.S. commitments.”

Ironically, the recent spotlight on Duncan over FO funding of the Integrity Initiative designed to ‘counter Russian disinformation’ reveals the hypocrisy and fake agenda of the British government, that works to overthrow democratically elected governments while claiming it will not tolerate political interference on its own territory. Were the Venezuelan government to fund activities inside Westminster aimed at overthrowing Theresa May’s government, it would be viewed with outrage.  Yet the Foreign Office appears entitled in its plotting against Venezuela’s elected government.  This same culture of entitlement is apparent in the Integrity Initiative operations, where the discrediting of the democratically elected leader of British government opposition, is designed to undermine his threat to the British establishment.  These growing and more frequent attacks on democracy by Britain’s elite, expose a self-serving class and network who think they can carve up and profit from whatever group, land, or resource they feel entitled to, whatever the cost to any population, whether at home or in Venezuela.

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Sources

https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Venezuela-In-Exclusive-Interview-Expert-Explains-Constituent-Assembly-Process-20170917-0014.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-44187838 rigged elections

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Venezuela-Borges-Opposition-Leader-Behind-Failed-Assasination-Attempt-20181017-0035.html

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13491 popular will far right party

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13487 popular will violence

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12881 more pw violence

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13487 freddie guevara self-exiled

https://venezuelanalysis.com/files/attachments/%5Bsite-date-yyyy%5D/%5Bsite-date-mm%5D/general_electoral_accompaniment_report_may_2018.pdf

https://www.voanews.com/a/maduro-wins-venezuela-election/4402735.htmlus sanctions

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2018-11-09.189833.h&p=10179  Alan Duncan Venezuela sanctions

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13276 voting centers attacked national constituent assembly elections

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14118 rising fascism

https://www.rt.com/news/446809-integrity-initiative-third-leak-uk/

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13322 AN claim setting up ANC was a coup

https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Why-Does-Venezuela-Have-a-National-Constituent-Assembly–20170820-0021.html contempt of court

http://misionverdad.com/MV-IN-ENGLISH/why-does-venezuela-have-a-national-constituent-assemblycontempt of court

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/venezuelas-pro-government-assembly-moves-to-take-power-from-elected-congress/2017/08/18/9c6cd0a2-8416-11e7-9e7a-20fa8d7a0db6_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.53b91adb259e

http://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=S-020/17 almagro on venezuela

https://www.rt.com/uk/446695-labour-mp-statecraft-institute/

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/70 1999 Constitution

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13280 following the constituent assembly elections – what happened during elections and press reaction,

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/foreign-secretary-statement-on-venezuela condemned by uk foreign office despite being constitutionally legal and sovereign decision

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13096 announcement of constituent assembly

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‘The Decision Is Taken’: Brazil to Move Its Embassy to Jerusalem, Says Bolsonaro

By Middle East Eye, January 06, 2019

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has confirmed that the South American country will move its embassy to Jerusalem, following an earlier statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Brazil this week to attend the new Brazilian leader’s swearing-in.

Within Hours of Taking Office, “Trump of the Tropics” Starts Assault on the Amazon

By Andy Rowell, January 06, 2019

Within hours of taking office, the Trump of the Tropics, aka the new President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, launched an all-out assault against the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous communities yesterday, potentially paving the way for large scale deforestion by agricultural, mining and oil companies.

Japan to Push for WWII-Era Peace Treaty with Russia

By Telesur, January 06, 2019

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday he intends to move towards a World War II peace treaty with Russia during a summit in Russia later this month. The treaty has been hindered for decades by a territorial dispute.

Global Research New Hour: Global Economy, Geo-Politics, Militarization. The Most Significant Stories of 2018, Projections for 2019

By Michael Welch, Rick Rozoff, Andy Lee Roth, Dr. Jack Rasmus, and Dmitry Orlov, January 05, 2019

At the start of the year, we witnessed nuclear sabre-rattling between U.S. President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. There was the poisoning (and recovery) of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury UK, in which the Russian government was implicated.

Iraq Rejects Iran Sanctions and US Troop Presence

By Jim Carey, January 05, 2019

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali al-Hakim laid out the latest step on the path to independence for Baghdad from the US concerning sanctions on Iran by Washington.

Nicaragua and the Corruption, Co-optation of Human Rights

By Stephen Sefton, January 05, 2019

Like Venezuela previously, Nicaragua has been targeted by the US dominated Organization of American States using local US and European funded non-profit proxies inside Nicaragua and Western corporate dominated non-governmental organizations.

Has Trump Been Outmaneuvered on Syria Troop Withdrawal?

By Richard H. Black, January 04, 2019

Following the outcry after President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was pulling U.S. troops from Syria, it appears that Trump may be succumbing to political pressure.

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This writer just loves it when our USA mainstream (embedded in empire) media, and of course our Two Party/One Party politicians, rant and rave about dictators. They lash out at the preposterous comical assertions by the leaders of many countries, who win re-elections with 90% to 100% of the vote, that those nations are democracies. Shame on them! Shame on our nation’s corporate and political entities who keep trading (and financially aiding) those countries. These men (not too often women) who are quite honestly dictators, always make sure that there is little or no opposition to them. What cracks this writer up is when (so called) Socialist Bernie Sanders said “Hugo Chavez is just a dead Communist dictator.” Yet, Chavez won election and two re-elections as Venezuela’s president against formidable candidates. The last time being in 2012 when he won 55% to 45%. Is that what our empire’s lemmings would call a dictatorship?

Here’s the skinny on our so called democracy and ‘free elections’ in Amerika. The Fat Cats who are the wizards behind the OZ sure are shrewd. For close to a century they have made sure that their concoction AKA Two Party System stayed intact. Folks, anyone else just could not get through the door. The powerful money behind both of the empire’s parties just keeps on splashing out of the spigot! Any semblance of a third party movement is squashed before it can get legs! Or… one of the two parties (usually today’s Democrats) just co opts the new movement, and places it under its Big Tent. Finally, most elections, for president especially, sees a majority of the voting public (which is usually around 50% of eligible voters… why is that?) not voting for one candidate, but in reality voting against the other! Trump, to this writer’s way of thinking and logic, won because of the powerful backlash against Hillary Clinton. My joke has been that if the Democrats ran Donald Duck against Donald Trump they would have won!

So, bottom line is that we do have a dictatorship right here in good ole Amerika. It is a much more sophisticated one whereupon the suckers (we who actually vote) get to choose from as Ralph Nader labeled it: Twiddle Dum and Twiddle Dee! The Two Party/One Party con job will differ on certain issues like abortion, gay rights, Medicaid funding… gee I’m having difficulty finding more key issues… but never on what really matters to our survival as a republic: obscene military spending, overseas wars and occupations, Big Banks controlling everything, Amerikan corporations running roughshod on workers at home and abroad… and the piece de resistance: The notion that this corporate capitalist ‘free enterprise’ system really works for all. Mr. Trump may think of himself as a semi- dictator, but he is not! The powerful forces who even allowed someone with his ‘closet filled with skeletons’ to achieve our highest office, they call the shots. The last time someone stood up to them, or thought he surely had the ‘will of the masses’ behind him, wound up in a deadly ‘triangular crossfire’ in Dallas Texas.

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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, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from NEO

Increasing gasoline taxes drove the now aggrieved French Yellow Vest movement into the streets to protest the Macron government responding to climate change at the expense of the already economically struggling. Instead, we need to shape climate solutions to improve the lives and livelihoods of citizens. The good news is there are market fixes that are not carbon taxes to quickly and painlessly affect the supply and demand for fossil fuels.

Poorly thought out and imposed plans have negative consequences. You can screw anything up, both markets and planning—markets that do not include the cost of externalities become ecosphere destroying machines; planning that shifts the costs on those less able to pay without plans for countervailing payments or credits.

Far better is to approach stopping and reversing climate change within the context of social and economic justice. When you add yet another tax on already sky high European gasoline prices, this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Market means that are not just another imposition placed by the rich upon the poor, but are part of comprehensive pursuit of ecological and social justice must be our guide for the conduct of global ecological economic growth.

Ecological and social justice is not, in spirit or in fact, reduced to a redistribution of resources from rich to poor. It is much more an expression of a common local and global pursuit of both freedom and community as the interdependent basis for an ecological civilization. Ecological civilization as an expression of freedom and community, of democratic equality, not simply of markets, capitalist or otherwise. The economic and market means we consider here are meant to be viewed through the lens of freedom and community, of social and ecological justice.

Markets are supposed to be all about supply and demand determining price. Ideally, we would seamlessly decrease both the supply and demand for fossil fuels with efficient renewables replacing fossil fuels at lower prices. Thus, carbon emissions decline and prices decline.

The Magic Formula

The magic formula in this case is to mandate the 15 year phase out of all gasoline powered cars and phase in electric vehicles and hydrogen powered vehicles with an equivalent fuel cost of around $1.00 a gallon savings a typical driver $1,500 a year in fuel costs.

A fifteen thousand mile a year driver of a 30 mile per gallon gas car using four dollar a gallon gasoline would spend $2,000 a year for 500 gallons of gas. The electric vehicle would cost $500. An annual savings of $1500 plus additional savings from no oil changes and savings on gas engine repairs since electric motors are more reliable and suffer much less wear and tear than internal combustion engines.

Government and regulatory policy is not just to set the rules and stand back. Government also needs to:

• Support infrastructure development for EVs and Hydrogen fuel cells cars;
• Green bank low interest long term loans for charging infrastructure. Charging is an extremely lucrative local business to replace gas stations once a significant percentage of cars are electric. Making sure charging infrastructure is available is key.
• Training and retraining workers for jobs in electric/hydrogen vehicle/solar/ wind/charging industry.
• Government auctions off local charging infrastructure franchises for street charging just as it auctions off electro-magnetic spectrum with 50% guaranteed for local and cooperative ownership.
• Implement building codes and zoning that require ability to plug in electric vehicles to homes and businesses to both provide energy allowed by battery charge levels, and serve as storage grid back up for the grid;
• Tax credits on EVs and hydrogen cars focused on lower cost vehicles
• Requirements phased quickly in that classes of commercial vehicles such as taxis, zip cars, rental cars, self-driving cars must be EVs or hydrogen, tax credit for ride hailing service driver like Uber and Lyft to use EVs or hydrogen.
• Cap and escalating annual reduction in production of fossil fuels
• Import duties on fossil fuels by producers who have not implemented gasoline replacement ;
• Support of renewably powered public and mass transit to reduce need for and use of private cars including buses, mass transit, national high speed rail network as major infrastructure priority.

What’s needed is to accelerate the phase out of gasoline power vehicles with meeting 2030 carbon reduction targets in mind and government support of electric and hydrogen powered vehicle charging and fueling infrastructure. Electric charging will be a highly profitable activity. Its installation could be speeded up by auctioning of limited but non-exclusive franchises by government similar to the way cell phone spectrum is marketed. What makes sense to me is that charging be considered a semi-utility with government contracting on a bid basis to install and then to operate an electric car charging network. The batteries of EVs would also prove to be a crucial part of electric system storage.

Increasing the price at the pump from a carbon tax on gasoline drove Yellow Vest protestors into the streets against one more burden imposed upon economically struggling workers. Carbon taxes without a tax and dividend scheme, which I believe is unnecessary, is not the best way to pursue carbon reductions and social and ecological justice.

The carbon tax is an economically signaling means beloved by many economists that by raising prices of carbon impacted goods you will help the development of non-carbon replacements. In general when there are replacements for carbon impacted goods and services that are cheaper non-polluting replacements cap and replace rules, like those for electric vehicles are far superior,

Supply and demand measures can help lead the way toward an ecological transformation that emphasizes reducing consumer costs and putting money in people’s pockets. After all, if saving civilization from ecological collapse makes you money, what’s the problem of departing from fossil fuels beyond the desire of the fossil fuel empire to sell their global reserve to the last drop or at least until the moment of collapse in an overheated world.

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Roy Morrison builds solar farms. His next book is Global Ecological Economic Growth: How to Stop and Reverse Climate Change forthcoming in 2019.

President Donald Trump declared his right as president to unilaterally build a border wall on “national security” grounds during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden Friday. He spoke after a meeting with congressional leadership on the ongoing deadlock that has led to the partial government shutdown, now entering its third week.

“I may do it,” Trump told reporters. “We could call a national emergency and build it very quickly. That’s another way to do it. But if we can do it through a negotiated process, we’re giving that a shot.” He glibly declared that this wasn’t a “threat hanging over the Democrats,” insisting, “I’m allowed to do it.”

Such an action would be a flagrant violation of the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 7 reads in part: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…” Spending money appropriated to the Pentagon to build a wall on the US-Mexico border would be an impeachable offense, although whether the congressional Democrats would take such an action is doubtful.

Trump’s threat to take the action is effectively a threat of presidential dictatorship, since the Pentagon budget, already appropriated, would become a slush fund to pay for any repressive action demanded by his fascistic base, such as mass roundups of immigrants, the establishment of concentration camps to imprison them, and the deportation of millions of working people.

Trump also confirmed at the press briefing that he told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer earlier in the day that he was prepared to keep the government closed indefinitely until his demands of $5 billion in wall funds were met by the Democrats, who now hold a majority in the House of Representatives.

While Trump declared that the shutdown could last “months or even years” without a deal on congressional funding for a wall along the southern border, ABC News reported that sources in the administration confirmed that options are being considered to circumvent the legislative branch, including redirecting funds already appropriated to the Department of Defense.

A Department of Defense spokesman told ABC that the Pentagon is already “reviewing available authorities and funding mechanisms to identify options to enable border barrier construction.”

NBC News also reported that while options for building the wall without congressional approval have been raised within the administration previously, they are now being seriously considered.

“Depending on the severity of crisis, it’s always been an option. Now that things are getting worse, we are looking at how that could be operationalized and used to confront the crisis,” an anonymous official told NBC.

In an indication that the Trump’s threat to declare a state of emergency was not just an off-the-cuff remark, the White House sent each member of Congress a copy of a presentation on the supposed “invasion” of US borders by asylum seekers that DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tried to deliver to congressional leaders on Wednesday. Schumer and Pelosi declined to sit through the propaganda pitch, but Trump decided to bypass the congressional leaders and send it directly to the entire membership of Congress.

Last month Trump threatened to deploy the military to build the wall without congressional approval, tweeting,

“If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall.”

Trump has already deployed thousands of active-duty soldiers to the southern border to erect barriers, string razor wire and assist border patrol agents in the detention of immigrants. NPR reported Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security has requested thousands more troops to militarize 160 miles of the border in California and Arizona, a project which is expected to last through September. Trump’s initial deployment announced in October had been scheduled to expire this month.

Pelosi and Schumer made the trek to the White House Friday to press Trump to accept a deal that would fully reopen the government, provide funding for federal agencies not including the DHS through September, and then allow for a separate debate over funding for the wall. The Democrats have been seeking a climbdown by Trump, offering him $1.6 billion for “border security” but not a wall.

While Pelosi described the meeting as “contentious,” Trump claimed it had been “very productive,” though, when pressed by reporters, he refused to discuss if the Democrats had moved toward his position on the wall.

“I don’t want to get into that. I don’t want to put them [Pelosi and Schumer] in a position where they have to justify things to a lot of people they have to make happy,” Trump remarked.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell confirmed that staff-level talks over a resolution to the shutdown would continue through the weekend.

“The president agreed to designate his top people to sit down with all the leaders’ staffs this weekend to see if we could come up with an agreement to recommend back to us, to him and to the various leaders,” he told reporters.

During his Friday press conference, Trump absurdly claimed that most federal employees support the shutdown and the construction of a border wall because it would provide them with economic security:

“The safety net is having a strong border, because we’re going to be safe. I’m not talking economically but ultimately economically.”

Some 800,000 employees who have been furloughed or forced to work without pay will miss their first full paycheck January 11 if an agreement between Trump and the Democrats is not reached soon.

The Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Transportation have been shut down and most employees forced to stay home. The Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State have also been affected.

While the National Parks remain open, some 21,000 employees have been furloughed, meaning that trash has begun to pile up and that road and trail maintenance has been put off at parks across the country. Without any rangers on the job, local funding and volunteers have tried to keep popular spots such as the Statue of Liberty in New York and Joshua Tree National Park in California clean.

Meanwhile, those employees deemed “essential,” including Transportation Security Administration security officers, federal prison guards and border patrol agents, are being compelled to work without pay. Meteorologists employed by the National Weather Service as well as air traffic controllers are also required to report to work without pay. Late Friday, the TSA acknowledged that an increasing number of passenger screening workers were calling in sick rather than report to work without pay, but the agency said no flights had yet been disrupted.

The shutdown has resulted in the closure this week of the Smithsonian Institute’s 19 museums and the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell monument in Philadelphia have also been closed to the public. The closures have severely slowed business for small shops and restaurants around these areas, which cater to tourists and federal employees.

Native Americans who reside on one of the country’s many reservations have seen services funded by federal money guaranteed in treaties threatened or entirely cut off. Approximately 1.9 million American Indians and Alaskan Natives are affected. The New York Times reported that the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is spending $100,000 of its own funds to keep clinics and food pantries open. Without federal funding, roads have gone unplowed after snow storms across New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, trapping residents in their homes.

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Featured image: Border wall stretches for miles into the rolling landscape on the outskirts of Nogales, Arizona. This kind of fencing is impassable to most wingless wildlife. Photo by Rebecca Kessler for Mongabay.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has confirmed that the South American country will move its embassy to Jerusalem, following an earlier statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Brazil this week to attend the new Brazilian leader’s swearing-in.

“The decision is taken,” Bolsonaro said late on Thursday in an interview on Brazil’s SBT television, as reported by AFP.

“It’s only a matter of when it will be implemented,” he said.

The comment confirmed an earlier statement by Netanyahu, who said on Sunday that Bolsonaro said it was a matter of “when, not if” the Brazilian embassy would move to Jerusalem.

Brazil is following in the footsteps of the United States, which moved its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv last year, a move that caused a surge of anger among Palestinians.

Bolsonaro, a far-right former paratrooper intent on forging close ties with the US and Israel, said in early November he intended to go through with the embassy move.

He quickly reversed course, however, saying “it is not yet decided”, apparently responding to fears from Brazil’s powerful farming businesses that an embassy move could put at risk $1bn in meat exports to Arab markets.

But in his SBT interview, Bolsonaro minimised that risk, saying:

“A large part of the Arab world is aligned or aligning itself with the United States. The Palestinian issue is already overloading people in the Arab world for the most part.”

He said that “the only weighty voice speaking out against me is Iran”.

Some of the “more radical” Arab nations “might adopt some sort of sanction – I hope only economic ones – against us,” he added, without specifying which countries he was referring to.

Bolsonaro’s plans to move the embassy to Jerusalem would be a shift in Brazilian foreign policy, which has traditionally backed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Arab League had told Bolsonaro that moving the embassy would be a setback for relations with Arab countries, according to a letter seen by Reuters in December.

The decision is controversial because Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital while Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Most countries agree that Jerusalem’s status can only be defined through Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

So far, only the US and Guatemala have broken with that consensus by opening embassies in Jerusalem.

Paraguay backtracked on a decision last year to move its embassy, while Israel and the US have talked with Honduras about its embassy moving to Jerusalem.

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Featured image: Jair Bolsonaro holds an Israeli flag during the 26th March for Jesus in São Paulo, Brazil. Photo | Alexssandro Loyola