Global Research

On January 16, a suicide bombing attack hit the center of Manbij in the province of Aleppo. According to initial reports, over 25 people were killed  or injured in the attack, which also caused casualties among US service members. Minutes after the explosion, a coalition H-92 helicopter landed in Manbij for an evacuation operation.

Later the US military stressed that 2 US service members, a US Defense Department civilian employee and a contractor supporting the department were killed while “conducting a routine patrol” in the area. The names of those killed were not released immediately.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and revealed that it was carried out by a suicide bomber named “Abu Yasin al-Shami”. According to local sources, al-Shami blew himself up in front of a US-led coalition patrol outside the Prince Restaurant in the center of Manbij.

This was the first successful ISIS suicide attack aimed at US-led coalition forces in Syria. Previous attacks were mainly aimed at US-backed Kurdish fighters and locals cooperating with the coalition.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the Manbij attack “could be meant to dissuade the U.S. from leaving Syria”. The president added that he does not believe that the  attack will impact U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria because he saw “honorable Trump’s determination on this point.”

However, the full withdrawal of US forces from Syria still remains in question, especially after another bright media demonstration of the remaining ISIS influence in the country. Earlier it appeared that the US is going to continue its operations in Syrian airspace even when the troops are fully withdrawn.

On January 15, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that the US delegation led by National Security Advisor John Bolton conveyed to the Turkish side “an unofficial five-point document in which the United States confirms the withdrawal of its troops from Syria, the determination to continue the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group and Washington’s intention to maintain its presence in Syrian airspace as part of the coalition”.

The developing US withdrawal and a reported US-Turkish understanding on a safe zone in northern Syria also forced the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to adapt their approach towards Turkey.

The SDF claimed that it hopes to find an understanding with Turkey and promised to provide all necessary help to establish a “safe zone”. However, the group insisted that there should be international guarantees.

“We never posed any threat to neighboring countries, especially Turkey, we hope and look forward to reaching understandings and solutions which would ensure stability and safety in the border areas,” the SDF’s official statement said.

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Malaysians have over the past few hours been treated to a disgraceful display of mutual finger pointing and denial by the entities and individuals most culpable over 1MDB, as they seek to blame each other and get off the hook. It must not be allowed.

Both ex-PM Najib and his top bankers Goldman Sachs made hundreds of millions out of the thefts, but we are now being forced to witness their unbelievable attempts to seek scapegoats and avoid prosecution.

First up, the CEO of Goldman, who has launched his public pushback against the slew of cases, both civil and criminal, that have stacked up against the bank in New York and Kuala Lumpur.  He didn’t mince his words in citing the corruption of 1MDB and in particular its political boss Najib as being the responsible party during an ‘apology’ made ‘to the Malaysian people’:

“It’s very clear that the people of Malaysia were defrauded by many individuals, including the highest members of the prior government,” [Malaysiakini]

The highest member was ex-prime minister Najib.

This damning allegation by the head of the bank, which in the process acknowledges the fraud, lays the blame right at the door of their key client, who was both finance minister and prime minister and the sole signatory of 1MDB.

But, of course, Malaysia’s self-deluded and undeniably slippery ex-PM was right back on the case, despite the last shred of his cock and bull story about no money being stolen having just fallen away.  Off he went to the media with his own statement that Goldman should take responsibility for failing to protect 1MDB’s interests.

“We put up a system and it was there to take care of our interests. So if they failed, then they have to take responsibility because they were appointed and paid by 1MDB to take care of our interests,”

Not a word of his own responsibilities as the prime minister cum finance minister, who stuck his fingers firmly in both ears against the chorus of criticism and concern about the management of the fund over many years – threatening and imprisoning those who spoke out.

Whilst Malaysians were trying to digest that outrageous piece of cheek, Najib and his legal team took the matter to a whole new level, with an application to the court the very same afternoon to delay his trial for multiple thefts of public money ……. indefinitely!

Everyone knows that the trial of Najib and the zipping of his mouth is already long overdue.  The date was delayed well beyond reasonable limits, thanks to orchestrated hanky panky just after the election by his pet Chief Justice, who was still in position at the time.

However, players like Najib are used to the big stakes – outrageous demands, huge rewards, get out of jail cards all round.  This is the life he has lived, unlike the rest of us who are expected to abide by the normal principles of the law.

And in the same category of Najib, of course, are the world’s top bankers, those ‘Masters of the Universe’, who can cause havoc for the rest of us but expect to fly away from the scene of the catastrophe in their private jets unscathed i.e. the highest members of Goldman Sachs.

At the same time that he was apologising to those at the epicentre of Goldman’s latest shenanigans (following on from the likes of Libya, Greece and a swathe who lost their shirts during the last global financial crash) the new CEO David Solomon was moving to put the boot into those two of his relatively minor employees, on whom the bank plans to put the entire blame for the multi-billion dollar misappropriation.

It almost makes one feel sorry for ‘Dr’ Tim Leissner, the slick party-boy head of Goldman’s Southeast Asia division, who acted as the key conduit for Jho Low over 1MDB (in return for admitted kickbacks of a hundred million dollars).  Leissner’s sidekick, Roger Ng, who languishes in custody in KL subject to an extradition request from the US, is the other scapegoat being used by Goldman.

A major piece in today’s New York Times lays bare Goldman’s tactics placing the entire blame for the bank’s appalling negligence and criminal actions over 1MDB on these two employees.

“They sound like the ingredients of a pulpy thriller: Bigamy. Secret religious conversions. A doctorate from a mail-order diploma mill. Affairs with powerful women.

The sordid list — a mixture of facts, accusations and insinuations, packaged in a glossy slide show — represents the crux of a well-orchestrated campaign by Goldman Sachs to discredit one of its former partners and to minimize the Wall Street bank’s role in the looting of a big Malaysian investment fund.

In recent presentations to American regulators and law enforcement authorities, according to people familiar with their contents, Goldman executives and their lawyers have depicted Tim Leissner, a former top investment banker, as a master con man, someone so sneaky that even the retired military intelligence officers who work for the bank couldn’t sniff him out.

The scorched-earth tactics, especially against someone who had been a star banker, reflect just how worried Goldman is about the criminal investigations into its role in the theft of at least $2.7 billion from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, sovereign wealth fund.” [More in New York Times]

The problem is that you didn’t need to listen to all this after the event villification by Goldman Sachs to know something was wrong years ago with the bank’s bond deals with 1MDB and the record of its top Asia man, as any reader of Sarawak Report and the resulting publicity across Asia and the world can testify.

Goldman Sachs were receiving red light warnings from as early as 2013 that things were wrong, warnings that accelerated and magnified as the whole 1MDB scandal exploded in this blog from early 2015.

The moment Sarawak Report laid hands on one of the secretive power purchase bond deals in July 2013 we reported that there was clear evidence of fraud not least in the outrageous commissions that were charged. However, the Goldman hierachy and due dilligence teams, indeed the very top bosses, must have had access and indeed scrutinised all that documentation already.

CEO David Solomon may be trashing Tim Leissner’s bogus qualifications now, claiming that he was an arch deceptor, who even gulled the military intelligence men hired to check staff, however Sarawak Report – as a total outsider in the affair – was able to detect the none too subtle fact that a Phd from the University of Somerset was bogus, because no one has heard of the University of Somerset – it does not exist as a regulated institution.

Despite our publishing this glaring fact, it did not emerge until well into 2016 that Leissner had been put on leave and then sacked for improprieties that were at first said by the bank to have nothing to do with 1MDB.

What is clear is that the attraction of Leissner to Goldman Sachs was his access to some of Asia’s most corrupt politicians with whom the bank proved willing to do business. The present indictment by US prosecutors cites a culture at the bank that allowed Leissner to get around the facade of compliance structures in pushing through deals like 1MDB.

What’s more the same prosecutors say that Leissner in his plea deal has named others at the bank (his immediate boss Andrew Vella has already been put on leave) who helped and colluded with him over stealing money from 1MDB and bribing foreign officials in the process.

However, what ultimately damns Goldman Sachs’ handling of this whole affair was the bank’s failure to admit, take action or speak out about its failings over 1MDB until the moment that the Malaysian people took the matter into their own hands and ejected Najib Razak on May 9th last year.

Till that moment there were no admissions and no apologies from the bank. No reviews of the 1MDB bond deals, no further lay-offs, nothing. By that point the bank had to know, because the whole of Malaysia knew, that huge sums had gone missing from its bond deals, from which every senior Goldman executive had personally made fat bonuses. However, the bank did precisely nothing to address or admit the problem.

The reason was that Goldman Sachs had calculated like every other ‘expert’ on Malaysia that Najib would win GE14. There would never be enough popular power or sufficient popular anger to turf him out was the conventional wisdom and the bank banked on that, wrongly.

If Najib had won GE14 then of course Malaysia would continue today to be arguing that there was no money missing from 1MDB and no wrongdoing whatsoever and Goldman Sachs would doubtless have continued to keep quiet on the whole affair.

Critics would have been put to jail for spreading false news; Sarawak Report would have been ruined by a slew of fake libel cases spawned in the UK by inventive lawyers and who knows, maybe Tim Leissner might have been given his job back?

Najib and Goldman reckoned without Malaysian unity against corruption and now both the ex-PM and the entire bank, which is now being criminally prosecuted by the new Malaysian Attorney General and sued by Malaysia for US$7.5 billion in lost funds, should face the justice they deserve.

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All images in this article are from Sarawak Report

Italian soldiers on mission in Djibouti have offered sewing machines to the humanitarian organisation which aids the refugees in this tiny country in the Horn of Africa. It is situated in a strategic position on the most important commercial Asia-Europe route, at the mouth of the Red Sea, facing Yemen. Italy has a military base there, which, since 2012, “supplies logistical support for Italian military operations located in the area of the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden, the Somali Basin and the Indian Ocean”.

So in Djibouti, then, it would seem that the Italian military are not dealing exclusively with sewing machines.

In the exercise Barracuda 2018, which took place last November, chosen sharp-shooters from the Special Forces (whose headquarters are in Pisa) underwent training in all sorts of environmental conditions, including night operations, with the most sophisticated high-precision rifles which can centre the target at a distance of one or two kilometres. We do not know in which operations the Special Forces participated, since their missions are kept secret – however it is certain that they took place essentially in a multinational context under US command.

In Djibouti is situated Camp Lemonnier, the huge US base from which the Horn of Africa Joint Task Force has been operating since 2001. The Task Force is composed of 4,000 specialists in top secret missions, including targeted assassinations by commandos or killer drones, particularly in Yemen and Somalia. While aircraft and helicopters for these special operations take off from Camp Lemonnier, the drones have been concentrated at Chabelley airport, a dozen kilometres from the capital. New hangars are being built there, and the work has been handed by the Pentagon to a company from Catania which is already employed for the work taking place in Sigonella, the main drones base used by the USA and NATO for operations in Africa and the Greater Middle East.

There is also a Japanese and a French base in Djibouti, which house German and Spanish troops. A Chinese military base was added in 2017, the only one outside of its national territory. Apart from certain basic logistical functions, such as the housing of the crews of the military vessels that escort merchant ships, and warehouses for the storage of supplies, it represents a significant signal of the growing Chinese presence in Africa.

Source: PandoraTV

This is an essentially economic presence, to which the United States and other Western powers oppose a growing military presence. This accounts for the intensification of operations led by AfriCom (US Command for Africa), which has two important subordinate Commands in Italy – the US Army Africa, at the Ederle de Vicence barracks ; the US Naval Forces Europe-Africa, whose headquarters is at the Capodichino base in Naples, composed of the warships of the Sixth Fleet based in Gaeta.

In the same strategic infrastructure is another US base for armed drones, which is under construction in Agadez, Niger, where the Pentagon already uses air base 101 in Niamey for drones. This base serves for military operations that the USA has been leading for years, with France in the Sahel, especially in Mali, Niger and Chad. President Giuseppe Conte will be visiting the last two bases as from tomorrow.

These countries are amongst the poorest in the world, but very rich in prime materials – coltan, uranium, gold, oil and many others – exploited by transnational companies based in the USA and in France, who are increasingly afraid of the competition from Chinese companies who offer African countries much more favourable conditions.

The attempt to halt the Chinese economic advance by military means, in Africa and elsewhere, is beginning to fail. Probably even the sewing machines, donated to Djibouti by Italian soldiers for the refugees, are “made in China”.

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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated by Pete Kimberley.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from The National Interest

“Every family has someone outside.” Conversations about Nepal’s dysfunctional economy invariably lead to its four million citizens, mainly young men, working abroad. (Some say they number seven million– either way, a sizable slice in a population of 28 million.)

Those workers are migrants to Arab Gulf States, Malaysia and India. Their remittances, supporting millions of families at home, form the unhealthy backbone of Nepal’s economy.

One hardly gets beyond the alarming statistic when a culprit is identified –“The Arabs”. Maybe a suppressed guilt is behind Nepalis’ litany of hardships which “Arabs” and by implication Muslims inflict on their four million compatriots. “Look how Nepali workers are mistreated!” “Someone should protect them.” “Hundreds arrive home in boxes!” “No human rights there.”

With no check on exaggerations and misinformation, prejudice continues unabated.

There’s abundant sympathy for exploited countrymen, while any suggestion that conditions within Nepal could be responsible for the exodus is absent. Don’t overseas remittances actually help workers’ families? There’s no acknowledgment of the benefits of employment, anywhere. Consider how many businesses, from rental properties to food services, are sustained by families receiving remittances. Kathmandu has hundreds of low cost private schools enrolling children of overseas workers seeking a better chance for the next generation. Where are the anecdotes of returned workers investing what they’ve saved to lift themselves out of an otherwise hopeless cycle of poverty?

All we hear are stale, decades-old, stories of “Arab exploitation”, stories that help conceal Nepal’s failure to take more responsibility for its citizens. Let’s be honest: workers look overseas for redress because of hopeless conditions at home.

Is it time for me to speak up? Having worked in Nepal for so long, I am viewed as a Tibetan-speaking American ‘friend’, not Arab or Muslim. Taking up the matter, finally, is not about defending Arabs or Islam; it’s about questioning this nation’s policies that allow prejudice against Arab people to distract from its responsibilities. As a ‘friend’, I call on Nepal to admit some liability for its hapless citizens. This country refuses to address fundamental structural problems, its neglect of industry, its shoddy public schools that even poor families are abandoning, its lack of agricultural support programs, its avoidable reliance on foreign aid.

Much of what we read about Arab state policies is indefensible. Their excesses are embarrassing for many like me who share Arab heritage and faith. Visiting homes in the Middle East, I myself feel embarrassed seeing how some overseas employees are treated (however mild and however much in common with domestic workers’ treatment in USA).

How can anyone defend workers toiling in extreme weather conditions without proper rest, food, medical attention or protection from harm? How can one not demand action against abusive employers?

Fifteen years ago, with the collapse of an exploitative carpet manufacturing industry within Nepal(where nobody blamed Tibetan managers’ treatment of child laborers) Malaysia and Arab Gulf countries became a market for Nepal’s millions of jobless. Mainly young, poorly educated men, seeing overseas earnings as a solution to dim prospects at home, joined citizens from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan seeking work abroad. In desperation, they naively signed contracts that left them highly vulnerable and in debt.

Despite obstacles and fears, migrating is the easiest (sic) alternative to hopelessness at home. (This applies to educated Nepali professionals too.) Traveling to distant lands for work is an established pattern, with departures increasing by the month.

Ram is one of many who, working as drivers, cooks, carpenters, or plumbers earn as much as 150,000 Nepali rupees (about $1,500) monthly. A few expatiates operate cafes catering to other workers. After 3-4 years they return to Nepal and purchase a car to hire out, or they invest in a business, usually with relatives (also returned migrants). Few resume agricultural work however. Abandoned fields met Broughton Coburn revisiting a Gurung village after three decades; it’s a widespread phenomenon across Nepal, a result of villagers leaving for overseas. (Declining domestic production increases Nepal’s unhealthy reliance on imports too.)

Yet, speaking with returned workers, I don’t hear tales of despair. Indeed, they report they learned valuable work habits abroad and express pride in having bettered themselves. Past sufferings seem of less concern than the corruption they face at home when applying for licenses or finding an affordable school.

Migrants’ positive experience is unarguably not 100%. Some recount heartbreaking stories: they were beset by thieves who stole their savings (cash transported in backpacks); they fell ill, exhausted savings, and returned empty-handed. Some die overseas–from heart attacks, in labor accidents or other mishaps, their bodies shipped back to a family burdened by debt. Some women experienced sexual abuse by employers or brokers. (To address this Nepal passed a law prohibiting women from working in Arab counties.)

My colleagues, investigative journalist Devandra Bhattarai and filmmaker KesangTseten, were the first to report on the hardships of Nepal’s overseas workers and mistreatment by Arab employers. Perhaps because of their exposés, difficulties of migrant workers were widely publicized and some checks were instituted. But anecdotal accounts of “Arab” malfeasance still define the public’s view of Arabs and Muslims while Nepal itself avoids accountability for its people’s hardships.

“Hundreds return in boxes every month” is how one colleague opens a discussion of his country’s economy. My rejoinder about irresponsible government policies is met with silence.

Few Nepalis forget the fate of twelve citizens working in Iraq in 2004; all were executed after being held hostage by extremists opposing the U.S. invasion. The shock those killings created in Nepal led to anti-Muslim riots; for weeks Nepali Muslims (a long-established minority in the country) feared leaving their homes. The nation had known nothing as cruel, even during their recent civil war. That image of massacred Nepalis feeds persistent anti-Muslim feelings; it’s the prism through which they view any story about migrants’ hardships.

In contrast the public here retains its amnesia over the role of Nepali UN peacekeepers in the spread of cholera in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The cholera strain, traced to Nepal through Nepali peacekeepers stationed in Haiti, killed up to 9,000 and sickened tens of thousands. (When investigators confirmed the link, the United Nations denied victims compensation, while the Nepali press hardly covered the issue.)

Prejudice against Arabs festers despite more recent investigative work by a leading Nepali news outlet. The Nepali Times has taken a more sobering look into Nepal’s migration crisis: first is joblessness at home; second, the government neither assists farmers to increase their yields nor helps develop markets for farm produce; third, policy planning does not include supporting manufacturing which would train and employ Nepal’s least educated. Workers’ problems, it notes, begin with officials demanding bribes for permits; applicants are next confronted by fraudulent Nepali labor brokers. Then, Nepal’s embassies in Gulf States offer no help. The Nepali Times series also suggests that the government may seek to avoid unrest among jobless youths at home by encouraging their exodus.

Nepal’s lack of accountability is endemic. Its avoidance of any responsibility is actually bolstered by a lenient and loyal foreign donor base. China’s disregard of Nepali ineptitude, noted in my recent article, is matched by other countries and aid agencies. Examples of failed programs due to corruption and incompetence on Nepal’s side are abundant, and commonly overlooked. Perhaps overseas employment should therefore be viewed as Nepal’s singularly successful aid program.

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Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. She is the author of “Tibetan Frontier Families” and numerous articles on Tibet and Nepal, has been working in Nepal in recent weeks. Find her work at www.RadioTahrir.org. She was a longtime producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY.

Another US regime change undertaking is about to begin. Meanwhile, the Syrian misadventure will, hopefully, end soon and Bashar Al Assad’s enduring presence in Damascus is Washington’s failure writ large.

But that is not stopping the neoconservatives. Washington is beating the war drums again, this time in Latin America.

Venezuela, and its Bolivarian socialist revolution has long irked the United States. And, when on 10^th January the re-elected Nicolas Maduro was sworn-in for his second six-year term as President, US imperial vitriol was unleashed, unfettered.  The pomp and ceremony was attended by 94 international delegations — among them Russia and China — and the presidents of Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba, and too the celebrating crowds of Venezuelans. Obviously, neither Maduro nor Venezuela is isolated.

The US National Security Advisor, John Bolton, declared that Washington is not recognising President Maduro whose claim to power the US considers illegitimate. As has become the norm this decision was based on lies. Bolton claims the latter’s election was “not free, fair or credible” but the international Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America found it to be perfectly legitimate despite US meddling. The same tact is being voiced by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. For his part he promises that “the United States will work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country.”

Given the news blockade imposed on Venezuela there is no way mainstream media reporting on the country can be balanced and fair. With regard the 20^th May 2018 elections, mainstream media reported it as heavily rigged to favour Maduro, the dictator. However, former president Jimmy Carter whose Carter Centre has a Democracy Programme said,

“As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

If then a resounding victory over his opponent does not make Maduro the winner, what does? Over 60 per cent of a turnout of 46.02 per cent of eligible voters cast their votes for him. Even Donald Trump won the US presidency on a minority vote smaller than that commanded by Maduro. In today’s democracies, with the exception of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who can claim otherwise?

That it is mere pretext used to destabilise Venezuela further cannot be denied. A US-led economic war against Venezuela has been on-going. A financial blockade is already in place leaving the Venezuelan economy vastly weakened with inflation spiralling out of control. The blockade has crippled its oil industry, the country’s main foreign currency earner. All this to facilitate US multinational corporations like Exxon-Mobil. Meanwhile the people suffer. And yet, Nicolas Maduro is returned to power peacefully via the ballot box because his policies ensure that the ordinary Venezuelan is fed, schooled and employed: the CLAP Boxes programme distributes food boxes to households; there is free healthcare and education; and, wages are protected.

Unfortunately, regime change is already underway. The US is supporting a move by the leader of the National Assembly to step in as interim president. But the National Assembly is held in contempt by the country’s Supreme Court for swearing-in three deputies under investigation for election irregularities. And the former has been unwilling to accept the judgement until today, making all its actions null and void. Such a move by the US is nothing short of contemptuous. Furthermore, the needs of governance forced Maduro to convene another elected assembly, the National Constituent Assembly, a move provided for by the Venezuelan Constitution, meaning that democracy is alive and well.

In the meantime, the US ambassador to Germany is throwing his weight around, behaving as if he’s the colonial master, threatening German companies involved in the Nord Stream2 project with sanctions. Prior to this he openly supported the right wing, anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), to the point where he was accused by the German media of attempting a “regime change”. However, this interference is not new. Under President Obama America’s intelligence tapped into the personal phone calls of Chancellor Merkel.

If an ally is treated with scant respect, what more a government unwilling to acquiesce to Washington’s will?

However, the signals emanating from Washington, at the moment, are conflicting. President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria was vociferously attacked, not by a handful, but nearly everyone who matters in Washington including Bolton and Pompeo who were desperately trying to walk back that decision. And, if reports are to be believed the President has again reaffirmed his wish to withdraw from Syria thus negating his own advisors.

Several instances suggest that he is being actively subverted by his own administration and that the Democrats’ call for his impeachment could be bipartisan and is being stage-managed by the Deep State.

In Venezuela, however, he appears to be at one with them and has yet to repudiate the threats made by both Pompeo and Bolton to change the elected government in Caracas. This is true also with regard Ukraine where the failed regime, actively backed by the US, is acting as its proxy. The overt provocations against Russia, as in the recent Kerch Strait incident, is proof.

How does one explain Washington’s bizarre foreign policy, one that has resorted to nabbing individuals almost literally off the streets and holding them in detention, the latest being the Press TV anchorwoman and journalist Marzieh Hashemi? At the time of writing she has been held for some 48 hours with no reasons given.

A nuclear superpower going rogue is a frightening spectacle. What more when its chief executive appears to be finding it near impossible to assert his authority. And, not forgetting, too, the flagrant violations of international law by the US. Is the world helpless to defend itself against such unpredictable volatility?

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Askiah Adam is Executive Director of International Movement for a JUST World [JUST]. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The U.S. oil and gas industry has the potential to unleash the largest burst of new carbon emissions in the world through 2050, new research released today has found. Without action to curtail this unprecedented expansion of drilling from Texas to North Dakota to Pennsylvania and beyond, new U.S. oil and gas development could enable 120 billion tons of new carbon pollution – equivalent to the lifetime emissions of nearly 1,000 coal-fired power plants.

The findings come on the heels of the “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C” from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S.’s Fourth National Climate Assessment, which both detailed the intensifying human and economic toll of unchecked climate change. Previous research has shown that existing oil and gas fields and coal mines already contain enough carbon to push the world beyond the goals of the Paris Agreement. The permitting of new extraction projects and related infrastructure is completely out of synch with meeting climate targets, and also out of step with a massive movement of communities fighting the fossil fuel industry around the country.

“Our findings present an urgent and existential emergency for lawmakers in the United States at all levels of government. The oil and gas industry is expanding further and faster in the United States than in any other country at precisely the time when we must begin rapidly decarbonizing to prevent runaway climate disaster,” said Kelly Trout, report co-author and senior research analyst at Oil Change International. “We’re at this crisis point because of failing political decisions to allow unfettered fracking, permit a massive buildout of pipelines, lift the crude export ban, and subsidize a climate-wrecking industry with billions of taxpayer dollars. If U.S. leaders do not start saying ‘no’ to this industry and put policies in place for a managed decline of fossil fuel production, they could cripple the world’s chances of staving off climate catastrophe.”

Additional key findings of the report include:

• Between now and 2030, when climate scientists say global carbon emissions should be nearly halved, the U.S. is on track to account for 60% of the world’s projected growth in oil and gas production.
• Some 90% of U.S. drilling into new oil and gas reserves through 2050 would depend on fracking; nearly 60% of the carbon emissions enabled by new U.S. drilling would come from the epicenters of fracking – the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico and the Appalachian Basin across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio.
• The Permian Basin alone would exhaust some 10% of the entire world’s carbon budget (for 1.5°C of warming).
• U.S. coal mining should be phased out by 2030 or sooner if the world is to equitably achieve the Paris Agreement goals, which means at least 70% of the coal in existing U.S. mines should stay in the ground.

Co-author and Oil Change International senior research analyst Lorne Stockman stated,

“This administration and its fossil fuel backers portray climate change as a false choice between the economy and the environment. In reality, they favor an irresponsible and outdated fossil fuel sector over a clean energy sector that has proven it can deliver on jobs, economic growth, and reliable cheap energy. It is past time the United States led the transition needed to safeguard life on our planet by rejecting oil, gas, and coal. There is no more time to waste.”

The report defines a five-point checklist for what U.S. policymakers must do to show real climate leadership:

1. Ban new leases or permits for new fossil fuel exploration, production, and infrastructure;
2. Plan for the phase-out of existing fossil fuel projects in a way that prioritizes environmental justice;
3. End subsidies and other public finance for the fossil fuel industry;
4. Champion a Green New Deal that ensures a just transition to 100% renewable energy; and
5. Reject the influence of fossil fuel money over U.S. energy policy.

“This report should be a wake-up call for elected officials who consider themselves to be climate leaders. We need a complete overhaul of our economy with a Green New Deal, and that overhaul must include standing up to the fossil fuel industry in order to take us off this path of devastation for our climate and communities. Anything less than a full, swift, and just managed decline of fossil fuel production is too little, too late,” Trout said.

The report, entitled Drilling towards Disaster: Why U.S. oil and gas expansion is incompatible with climate limits, was researched and written by Oil Change International and is being released in partnership with the following organizations who have endorsed the findings of the report: Amazon Watch, BOLD Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, Friends of the Earth U.S., Food & Water Watch, Greenpeace USA, Hip Hop Caucus, Indigenous Environmental Network, Labor Network for Sustainability, Oil Change USA, Our Revolution, People’s Action, Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, Working Families Party, and 350.org.

The report can be found here.

Reactions from partners endorsing the report:

“This landmark report clearly lays out the grim reality of our addiction to fossil fuels. It’s a reality that Indigenous peoples have been saying for decades: that we are destroying the ecosystems of Mother Earth and placing countless lives at risk because of fossil fuels,” said Dallas Goldtooth, Keep it in the Ground Campaigner for the Indigenous Environmental Network. “It is time for all leaders to wake up! We must keep fossil fuels in the ground and justly transition our society to renewable, sustainable energy right now! The clock is ticking.”

“Addressing the climate crisis by only considering fossil fuel demand is fighting with one hand tied behind our back,” said Nicole Ghio, Senior Fossil Fuels Program Manager at Friends of the Earth. “To avert climate disaster, we need a Green New Deal that protects workers, empowers communities, and phases out all fossil fuels.”

“It’s clearer by the day that we’re drilling toward a climate catastrophe,” said Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Every new lease, permit and subsidy granted to this dirty industry pushes us closer to disaster. America’s oil and gas production is a carbon bomb we must defuse through a thoughtful phase-out and a just transition to clean energy.”

“This report confirms what our indigenous allies have known for decades: we must keep fossil fuels in the ground,” said Kevin Koenig, Climate and Energy Director at Amazon Watch. “We are already in a hole and we cannot afford to dig ourselves any deeper by continuing to expand oil and gas infrastructure – in the United States, the Amazon, or anywhere else. It’s past time for the United States to make a plan to get off fossil fuels altogether and this report provides a road map for policy makers to do just that, providing critical information to ensure sustainable communities and a healthy planet for generations to come.”

“To make the most impact on climate change we need to stop all oil, coal, and gas expansion, massively accelerate the growth of renewable energy, and support workers with a just transition to a sustainability-based economy and climate-impacted communities with a just recovery from extreme weather. To make this a reality, we have to hold corporate polluters and political leaders accountable for their role in putting us in harm’s way. Without stopping oil, coal, and gas expansion as soon as possible, though, we won’t get anywhere close to where we need to be to stave off the worst of climate change,” said Janet Redman, Greenpeace USA Climate and Energy Director.

“Right now, we’re on a sinking boat, and instead of just scooping water out, we must take immediate action to patch the hole where it’s gushing in,” said Patrick McCully, Climate and Energy Program Director at Rainforest Action Network. “This means we must put a full-stop to fossil fuel expansion, or we all sink into climate chaos. U.S. policymakers – as well as the private sector, like the Wall Street banks that are funding this extraction – must facilitate phasing out extraction while phasing in an equitable transition to renewable energy that supports communities and workers.”

“This latest report adds even more urgency to the need for a just transition off of fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy. To prevent the worst impacts of climate change, we must keep oil, coal, and gas in the ground,” said May Boeve, Executive Director, 350.org. “It’s time for public officials at every level to follow the lead of communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis and support bold climate policy.”

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Featured image is Creative Commons

Reports are circulating in the Pakistani press that the Russian company is interested in several power projects in the country, which could pave the way for Moscow to unofficially invest in CPEC without angering its Indian partners.

Many Pakistanis are excited by the news that Russian company Inter RAO Engineer is interested in several power projects in the country, potentially willing to commit the whopping sum of $2 billion worth of investments if their counterparts are receptive. While nothing has been officially confirmed, these reports are plausible enough given the fast-moving rapprochement between Russia and Pakistan over the past couple of years, which aims to establish a strategic partnership that the author coined with the catchphrase of “Rusi-Pakistani Yaar Yaar”.

It evidently appears as though Russia is diversifying its outreaches with Pakistan from their former Afghan-related anti-terrorist centricity to a more robust partnership that’s now taking on important energy dimensions. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Russia already committed to building the North-South gas pipeline and signed a memorandum of understanding for constructing a $10 billion offshore one between Iran, Pakistan, and possibly even India too one day. In a sense, it can be said that Russia’s “traditional diplomacy” with Pakistan evolved to “military diplomacy” and now “energy diplomacy”.

Attention should be paid to the latest report’s claims about how Inter RAO Engineering is supposedly interested in the proposed Mohmand Dam along the Swat River in the former mountainous Afghan-bordering region of what used to be called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) prior to its merger with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa last year. This is highly symbolic because the words “FATA” and “Swat” remind many Westerners of the country’s War on Terror during the mid-2000s, so it says a lot about the overall sub-region’s newfound stability that Russia would consider investing there.

Importantly, $2 billion worth of potential investments in Pakistan’s power industry would signal that Russia wants to get in on the country’s CPEC-related Chinese-driven construction boom but is doing so without openly attaching itself to the CPEC “brand” out of concern for its Indian partner’s political sensitivities. New Delhi is dead-set against CPEC because of its stance that the series of megaprojects transit through territory that India claims as its own per its maximalist approach to the Kashmir Conflict, and the renaissance of relations between it and Russia would be ruined if Moscow invested in CPEC.

That explains why Russia might reportedly be considering investing in CPEC without formally doing so, following the strategy that the author previously suggested in his piece last summer about “Creative Non-CPEC Marketing Strategies For Pakistan”. So long as Russia abstains from officially endorsing CPEC and attaching its investments to that “brand”, then its relations with India won’t suffer no matter how many billions of dollars it eventually pours into Pakistani projects. With that being the case, the latest reports are an encouraging sign of Russian intent and could portend more unofficial CPEC investments.

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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 Quartz

For years Israel denied allegations that it had a role in funding and weaponizing the anti-Assad insurgency in Syria, and more often military officials responded “no comment” even when confronted with overwhelming evidence of Israeli weapons documented in al-Qaeda linked insurgents’ hands, but this all changed in a new British Sunday Times interview with outgoing Israeli army commander Gadi Eisenkot, who has finally confirmed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) supplied weapons to rebels across the border “for self-defense,” and further perhaps more stunningly, has admitted to long waging an “invisible war in Syria” that involved “thousands of attacks”.

The interview constitutes the first time that any current top Israeli military or government official has fully acknowledged sending anything beyond “humanitarian supplies,” such as medical aid to Syrian militants seeking to topple the Assad government; and yet it still appears the country’s military chief is slow playing the confirmation, only acknowledging the IDF provided “light weapons” — even after years of reporting has definitively uncovered an expansive Israeli program to arm dozens of insurgent groups and pay their salaries, includingknown affiliates of al-Qaeda in Syria.

This comes after the Syrian government has for years accused Israel of partnering with the west and gulf countries, such as the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey of funding and weaponizing an al-Qaeda/ISIS insurgency as part of covert regime change operations aimed at Damascus and its allies Iran and Hezbollah. Since then, countries like Qatar have come forward to reveal just how vast their covert role in fueling the Syrian war really was, which we covered in our story, In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War.

The Sunday Times relates a key confession that comes out of Lt.-Gen Gadi Eisenkot’s explosive interview as follows:

Eisenkot acknowledged for the first time, however, that Israel had supplied rebel groups in the border area with light weapons “for self-defence”.

Israel was a hidden player on a crowded Syrian battlefield.

Eisenkot positively boasted in the interview that “We operated in an area controlled by the Russians, sometimes attacking targets a kilometre or two from Russian positions,” in order to strike at Iranian assets in Syria.

The rare “confession” of sorts comes at a moment the White House says it’s moving forward on President Trump’s previously announced US troop pullout from Syria, something which has rattled Israel’s leadership, which has argued that Iran will become entrenched near Israel’s border as a result. Eisenkot’s words appear a warning to Iran that Tel Aviv aims to maintain operational capability inside Syria.

On this point the IDF chief admitted to “thousands” of attacks inside Syria:

“We carried out thousands of attacks [in recent years] without taking responsibility and without asking for credit,” he told the Sunday Times.

Given that prior military officials have typically put this number at “hundreds”, often from 200 to 400, this is an astounding admission that confirms Israel and Syria have been in a de facto state of open war since the first acknowledged Israeli airstrikes began in 2013.

Commenting on a prior report, The Times of Israel, summarized the timeline of Israel’s support to the anti-Assad insurgency as follows:

Foreign Policy said that Israel’s support for the rebel groups began in 2013, funding groups in places such as Quneitra and Daraa. It ended this summer as the regime’s forces advanced and made increasing gains in southern Syria against rebels. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s troops regained control of the border area in July.

The Syrian army said in 2013 that it had seized Israeli weapons in rebel hands.

The report said Israel sent the rebel groups weapons that included assault rifles, machine guns, mortar launchers, and vehicles. It initially sent the rebels US-made M16 rifles that would not identify Jerusalem as the source, and later began supplying guns and ammo from an Iranian shipment to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group that Israel captured in 2009, according to Foreign Policy.

But a number of analysts have suggested Israeli support to the opposition began even closer to the start of the conflict.

A prior Wall Street Journal investigation found that this relationship involved weapons transfers, salary payments to anti-Assad fighters, and treatment of wounded jihadists in Israeli hospitals, the latter which was widely promoted in photo ops picturing Netanyahu himself greeting militants. As even former Acting Director of the CIA Michael Morell once directly told the Israeli public, Israel’s “dangerous game” in Syria consists in getting in bed with al-Qaeda in order to fight Shia Iran. 

Prior widely shared photo of Israeli soldiers speaking face to face with al-Qaeda fighters near the Israeli occupied Golan heights in Syria.

In recent years, multiple current and former Israeli defense officials have gone so far as to say that ISIS is ultimately preferable to Iran and Assad. For example, former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren in 2014 surprised the audience at Colorado’s Aspen Ideas Festival when he said in comments related to ISIS that,

“the lesser evil is the Sunnis over the Shias.” Oren, while articulating Israeli defense policy, fully acknowledged he thought ISIS was “the lesser evil.”

Likewise, for Netanyahu and other Israeli officials the chief concern was never the black clad death cult which filmed itself beheading Americans and burning people alive, but the possibility of, in the words of Henry Kissinger, “a Shia and pro-Iran territorial belt reaching from Tehran to Beirut” and establishment of “an Iranian radical empire.”

What is clear, and now finally settled for the historical record, is that for years Israeli concealed its “hidden hand” in the proxy war while feigning merely “humanitarian aid” — something now fully admitted by Israel’s top military commander. In other words the humanitarian smokescreen was cover for a full-on covert war on Damascus, as we and many other independent outlets have reported many times, and for years. Yet another past “conspiracy theory” becomes today’s incontrovertible fact.

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Featured image: IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (Source: Zero Hedge)

Crimea is essential to Russia strategically and economically, but speculation over Ankara helping to boost the US presence in the Black Sea is far-fetched given Turkey’s energy deals with Moscow

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A power struggle over the Black Sea between Russia and the US plus NATO has the potential to develop as a seminal plot of the 21st century New Great Game – alongside the current jostling for re-positioning in the Eastern Mediterranean.

By now it’s established the US and NATO are stepping up military pressure from Poland to Romania and Bulgaria all the way to Ukraine and east of the Black Sea, which seems, at least for the moment, relatively peaceful, just as Crimea’s return to Russia starts to be regarded, in realpolitik terms, as a fait accompli.

After a recent series of conversations with top analysts from Istanbul to Moscow, it’s possible to identify the main trends ahead.

Just as independent Turkish analysts like Professor Hasan Unal are alarmed at Ankara’s isolation in the Eastern Mediterranean energy sphere by an alliance of Greece, Cyprus and Israel, Washington’s military buildup in both Romania and Bulgaria is also identified as posing a threat to Turkey.

It’s under this perspective that Ankara’s obstinance in establishing a security “corridor” in northern Syria, east of the Euphrates river, and free from the YPG Kurds, should be examined. It’s a matter of policing at least one sensitive border.

Still, in the chessboard from Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, Turkey and Crimea, the specter of “foreign intervention” setting fire to the Intermarium – from the Baltics to the Black Sea – simply refuses to die.

‘Russian lake’?

By the end of the last glacial era, around 20,000 years ago, the Black Sea – separated from the Mediterranean by an isthmus – was just a shallow lake, much smaller in size than it is today.

The legendary journey of Jason and the Argonauts, before the Trojan war, followed the Argo ship to the farther shore of Pontus Euxinus (the ‘Black Sea’) to recover the Golden Fleece – the cure for all evils – from its location in Colchis (currently in Georgia).

In Ancient Greece, steeped in mythology, the Black Sea was routinely depicted as the boundary between the known world and terra incognita. But then it was “discovered” – like America many centuries later – to the point where it was configured as a “string of pearls” of Greek trading colonies linked to the Mediterranean.

The Black Sea is more than strategic, it’s crucial geopolitically. There has been a constant drive in modern Russian history to be active across maritime trade routes through the strategic straits – the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus and Kerch in Crimea – to warmer waters further south.

As I observed early last month in Sevastopol, Crimea is now a seriously built fortress – incorporating S-400 and Iskander-M missiles – capable of ensuring total Russian primacy all across the eastern Black Sea.

A visit to Crimea reveals how its genes are Russian, not Ukrainian. A case can be made that the very concept of Ukraine is relatively spurious, propelled by the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of the 19th century and especially before World War I to weaken Russia. Ukraine was part of Russia for 400 years, far longer than California and New Mexico have been part of the US.

Now compare the reconquest of Crimea by Russia, without firing a shot and validated by a democratic referendum, to the US “conquests” of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Moreover, I saw Crimea being rebuilt and on the way to prosperity, complete with Tatars voting with their feet to return; compare it to Ukraine, which is an IMF basket case.

Crimea is essential to Russia not only from a geostrategic but also an economic point of view, as it solidifies the Black Sea as a virtual “Russian lake”.

It’s immaterial that Turkish strategists may vehemently disagree, as well as US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker who, trying to seduce Turkey, dreams about increasing the US presence in the Black Sea, “whether on a bilateral basis or under EU auspices.”

Under this context, the building of the Turk Stream pipeline should be read as Ankara’s sharp response to the rampant Russophobia in Brussels.

Ankara has, in tandem, consistently shown it won’t shelve the acquisition of Russian S-400 missile systems because of American pressure. This has nothing to do with pretentions of neo-Ottomanism; it’s about Turkey’s energy and security priorities. Ankara now seems more than ready to live with a powerful Russian presence across the Black Sea.

It all comes down to Montreux

Not by accident the comings and goings on NATO’s eastern flank was a key theme at last summer’s biennial Atlanticist summit. After all, Russia, in the wake of reincorporating Crimea, denied access over the eastern Black Sea.

NATO, though, is a large mixed bag of geopolitical agendas. So, in the end, there’s no cohesive strategy to deal with the Black Sea, apart from a vague, rhetorical “support for Ukraine” and also vague exhortations for Turkey to assume its responsibilities.

But because Ankara’s priorities are in fact the Eastern Mediterranean and the Turkish-Syrian border, east of the Euphrates river, there’s no realistic horizon for NATO to come up with permanent Black Sea patrols disguised as a “freedom of navigation” scheme – as much as Kiev may beg for it.

What does remain very much in place is the guarantee of freedom of navigation in the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits controlled by Turkey, as sanctioned by the 1936 Montreux Convention.

The key vector, once again, is that the Black Sea links Europe with the Caucasus and allows Russia trade access to southern warm waters. We always need to go back to Catherine the Great, who incorporated Crimea into the empire in the 18th century after half a millennium of Tatar and then Ottoman rule, and then ordered the construction of a huge naval base for the Black Sea fleet.

By now some facts on the ground are more than established.

Next year the Black Sea fleet will be upgraded with an array of anti-ship missiles; protected by S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems; and supported by a new “permanent deployment” of Sukhoi SU-27s and SU-30s.

Far-fetched scenarios of the Turkish navy fighting the Russian Black Sea fleet will continue to be peddled by misinformed think tanks, oblivious to the inevitability of the Russia-Turkey energy partnership. Without Turkey, NATO is a cripple in the Black Sea region.

Intriguing developments such as a Viking Silk Road across the Intermarium won’t alter the fact that Poland, the Baltics and Romania will continue to clamor for “more NATO” in their areas to fight “Russian aggression”.

And it will be up to a new government in Kiev after the upcoming March elections to realize that any provocation designed to drag NATO into a Kerch Strait entanglement is doomed to failure.

Ancient Greek sailors had a deep fear of the Black Sea’s howling winds. As it now stands, call it the calm before a (Black Sea) storm.

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Top 10 Reasons Not to Love NATO

By David Swanson, January 17, 2019

NATO, like the United Nations, is an international institution that has something or other to do with war, but transferring the UN’s claimed authority to legalize a war to NATO has no support whatsoever in reality.

Okinawa Activists Petition White House to Stop Military Base Construction

By John Zangas, January 17, 2019

Peace activists are calling for the U.S. government to call off plans for a massive military construction project on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

3 Reasons to Pay Attention to the LA Teacher Strike

By Prof. Erin McHenry-Sorber, January 17, 2019

The Los Angeles strike involves 34,000 teachers. To compare, the statewide 2018 teacher strike in West Virginia – where I am researching teacher strikes and teacher shortages – involved about 20,000 teachers and affected approximately 270,000 students.

Martin Luther King Commemorations Take Place Amid Government Shutdown and Worsening Capitalist Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, January 17, 2019

Although U.S. involvement in World War II brought the country out of an economic slump through the conversion of industrial facilities to war production while millions were drafted into military service, racism and national oppression against African Americans remained, both inside and outside of the armed forces.

Europe on the Brink of Collapse?

By Peter Koenig, January 17, 2019

The European Union (EU), the conglomerate of vassals – Trump calls them irrelevant, and he doesn’t care what they think about him, they deserve to be collapsing.

A Planet in Crisis: The Heat’s on Us

By Dahr Jamail, January 17, 2019

For at least two decades, I’ve found my solace in the mountains. I lived in Alaska from 1996 to 2006 and more than a year of my life has been spent climbing on the glaciers of Denali and other peaks in the Alaska Range. Yet that was a bittersweet time for me as the dramatic impacts of climate change were quickly becoming apparent, including quickly receding glaciers and warmer winter temperatures.

Medical Consequences of Drone Attacks against Gaza: Amputation Injuries

By Hanne Heszlein-Lossius, Yahya Al-Borno, and et al., January 17, 2019

Little data exist to describe the use and medical consequences of drone strikes on civilian populations in war and conflict zones. Gaza is a landstrip within the Palestinian territories and the home of 2 million people.

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Featured image is from EcoWatch

Taking the art of fake news to new heights, a non-profit has circulated mock Washington Post issues near the White House, telling readers that President Donald Trump fled to Crimea on the back of women-led protests.

The New York Times loves NATO, but should you?

Judging by comments in social media and the real world, millions of people in the United States have gone from having little or no opinion on NATO, or from opposing NATO as the world’s biggest military force responsible for disastrous wars in places like Afghanistan (for Democrats) or Libya (for Republicans), to believing NATO to be a tremendous force for good in the world.

I believe this notion to be propped up by a series of misconceptions that stand in dire need of correction.

1. NATO is not a war-legalizing body, quite the opposite. NATO, like the United Nations, is an international institution that has something or other to do with war, but transferring the UN’s claimed authority to legalize a war to NATO has no support whatsoever in reality. The crime of attacking another nation maintains an absolutely unaltered legal status whether or not NATO is involved. Yet NATO is used within the U.S. and by other NATO members as cover to wage wars under the pretense that they are somehow more legal or acceptable. This misconception is not the only way in which NATO works against the rule of law. Placing a primarily-U.S. war under the banner of NATO also helps to prevent Congressional oversight of that war. Placing nuclear weapons in “non-nuclear” nations, in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, is also excused with the claim that the nations are NATO members (so what?). And NATO, of course, assigns nations the responsibility to go to war if other nations go to war — a responsibility that requires them to be prepared for war, with all the damage such preparation does.

2. NATO is not a defensive institution. According to the New York Times, NATO has “deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.” This is an article of faith, based on the unsubstantiated belief that Soviet and Russian aggression toward NATO members has existed for 70 years and that NATO has deterred it rather than provoked it. In violation of a promise made, NATO has expanded eastward, right up to the border of Russia, and installed missiles there. Russia has not done the reverse. The Soviet Union has, of course, ended. NATO has waged aggressive wars far from the North Atlantic, bombing Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. NATO has added a partnership with Colombia, abandoning all pretense of its purpose being in the North Atlantic. No NATO member has been attacked or credibly threatened with attack, apart from small-scale non-state blowback from NATO’s wars of aggression.

3. Trump is not trying to destroy NATO. Donald Trump, as a candidate and as U.S. President, has wondered aloud and even promised all kinds of things and, in many cases, the exact opposite as well. When it comes to actions, Trump has not taken any actions to limit or end or withdraw from NATO. He has demanded that NATO members buy more weapons, which is of course a horrible idea. Even in the realm of rhetoric, when European officials have discussed creating a European military, independent of the United States, Trump has replied by demanding that they instead support NATO.

4. If Trump were trying to destroy NATO, that would tell us nothing about NATO. Trump has claimed to want to destroy lots of things, good and bad. Should I support NAFTA or corporate media or the Cold War or the F35 or anything at all, simply because some negative comment about it escapes Trump’s mouth? Should I cheer for every abuse ever committed by the CIA or the FBI because they investigate Trump? Should I long for hostility between nuclear-armed governments because Democrats claim Trump is a Russian agent? When Trump defies Russia to expand NATO, or to withdraw from a disarmament treaty or from an agreement with Iran, or to ship weapons to Ukraine, or to try to block Russian energy deals in Europe, or to oppose Russian initiatives on banning cyber-war or weapons in space, should I cheer for such consistent defiance of Trump’s Russian master, and do so simply because Russia is, so implausibly, his so-inept master? Or should I form my own opinion of things, including of NATO?

5. Trump is not working for, and was not elected by, Russia. According to the New York Times, “Russia’s meddling in American elections and its efforts to prevent former satellite states from joining the alliance have aimed to weaken what it views as an enemy next door, the American officials said.” But are anonymous “American officials” really needed to acquire Russia’s openly expressed opinion that NATO is a threatening military alliance that has moved weapons and troops to states on Russia’s border? And has anyone produced the slightest documentation of the Russian government’s aims in an activity it has never admitted to, namely “meddling in American elections,” — an activity the United States has of course openly admitted to in regard to Russian elections? We have yet to see any evidence that Russia stole or otherwise acquired any of the Democratic Party emails that documented that party’s rigging of its primary elections in favor of Clinton over Sanders, or even any claim that the tiny amount of weird Facebook ads purchased by Russians could possibly have influenced the outcome of anything. Supposedly Trump is even serving Russia by demanding that Turkey not attack Kurds. But is using non-military means to discourage Turkish war-making necessarily the worst thing? Would it be if your favorite party or politician did it? If Trump encouraged a Turkish war, would that also be a bad thing because Trump did it, or would it be a bad thing for substantive reasons?

6. If Trump were elected by and working for Russia, that would tell us nothing about NATO. Imagine if Boris Yeltsin were indebted to the United States and ended the Soviet Union. Would that tell us whether ending the Soviet Union was a good thing, or whether the Soviet Union was obsolete for serious reasons? If Trump were a Russian pawn and began reversing all of his policies on Russia to match that status, including restoring his support for the INF Treaty and engaging in major disarmament negotiations, and we ended up with a world of dramatically reduced military spending and nuclear armaments, with the possibility of all dying in a nuclear apocalypse significantly lowered, would that too simply be a bad thing because Trump?

7. Russia is not a military threat to the world. That Russia would cheer NATO’s demise tells us nothing about whether we should cheer too. Numerous individuals and entities who indisputably helped to put Trump in the White House would dramatically oppose and others support NATO’s demise. We can’t go by their opinions either, since they don’t all agree. We really are obliged to think for ourselves. Russia is a heavily armed militarized nation that commits the crime of war not infrequently. Russia is a top weapons supplier to the world. All of that should be denounced for what it is, not because of who Russia is or who Trump is. But Russia spends a tiny fraction of what the United States does on militarism. Russia has been reducing its military spending each year, while the United States has been increasing its military spending. U.S. annual increases have sometimes exceeded Russia’s entire military budget. The United States has bombed nine nations in the past year, Russia one. The United States has troops in 175 nations, Russia in 3. Gallup and Pew find populations around the world viewing the United States, not Russia, as the top threat to peace in the world. Russia has asked to join NATO and the EU and been rejected, NATO members placing more value on Russia as an enemy. Anonymous U.S. military officials describe the current cold war as driven by weapons profits. Those profits are massive, and NATO now accounts for about three-quarters of military spending and weapons dealing on the globe.

8. Crimea has not been seized. According to the New York Times, “American national security officials believe that Russia has largely focused on undermining solidarity between the United States and Europe after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Its goal was to upend NATO, which Moscow views as a threat.” Again we have an anonymous claim as to a goal of a government in committing an action that never occurred. We can be fairly certain such things are simply made up. The vote by the people of Crimea to re-join Russia is commonly called the Seizure of Crimea. This infamous seizure is hard to grasp. It involved a grand total of zero casualties. The vote itself has never been re-done. In fact, to my knowledge, not a single believer in the Seizure of Crimea has ever advocated for re-doing the vote. Coincidentally, polling has repeatedly found the people of Crimea to be happy with their vote. I’ve not seen any written or oral statement from Russia threatening war or violence in Crimea. If the threat was implicit, there remains the problem of being unable to find Crimeans who say they felt threatened. (Although I have seen reports of discrimination against Tartars during the past 4 years.) If the vote was influenced by the implicit threat, there remains the problem that polls consistently get the same result. Of course, a U.S.-backed coup had just occurred in Kiev, meaning that Crimea — just like a Honduran immigrant — was voting to secede from a coup government, by no means an action consistently frowned upon by the United States.

9. NATO is not an engaged alternative to isolationism. The notion that supporting NATO is a way to cooperate with the world ignores superior non-deadly ways to cooperate with the world. A nonviolent, cooperative, treaty-joining, law-enforcing alternative to the imperialism-or-isolationism trap is no more difficult to think of or to act on than treating drug addiction or crime or poverty as reason to help people rather than to punish them. The opposite of bombing people is not ignoring them. The opposite of bombing people is embracing them. By the standards of the U.S. communications corporations Switzerland must be the most isolationist land because it doesn’t join in bombing anyone. The fact that it supports the rule of law and global cooperation, and hosts gatherings of nations seeking to work together is simply not relevant.

10. April 4 belongs to Martin Luther King, Jr., not militarism. War is a leading contributor to the growing global refugee and climate crises, the basis for the militarization of the police, a top cause of the erosion of civil liberties, and a catalyst for racism and bigotry. A growing coalition is calling for the abolition of NATO, the promotion of peace, the redirection of resources to human and environmental needs, and the demilitarization of our cultures. Instead of celebrating NATO’s 70^thanniversary, we’re celebrating peace on April 4, in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech against war on April 4, 1967, as well as his assassination on April 4, 1968.

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Featured image is from http://nousnatobases.org

The greatly intensified austerity that has been imposed in the UK since 2010 has been looked to with considerable approval by right wing imitators. Among countries that had developed a relatively adequate ‘welfare state’, the attack on social provision in the UK has been outstandingly severe. One of the key elements of this has been a drive to degrade social benefit systems. The central objective has not been, as is generally claimed, to save money but rather to ensure a level of desperation that drives people into low wage precarious work and depresses the level of real wages.

In Canada, where a federal system of government exists, most of the political decisions related to the undermining of social programmes are taken at the provincial level. It is worthwhile to compare the specific assault on income support in Ontario, the province with the largest economy and population, with the situation that has unfolded in the UK. Before doing this, however, I want to go a little deeper into why the architects of neoliberal austerity have placed such emphasis on reducing the adequacy of systems of income support that unemployed, poor and disabled people turn to.

Poor Law Roots

When the peasantry was being driven from the land in England, the Tudor authorities at first imagined that the anger of the dispossessed could be contained with large doses of state violence and intimidation. However, the jobless and homeless portion of the new working class created a public order problem that required a reluctant concession. This took the form of the Poor Laws and, as is still the case with modern income support systems, they were intended to maintain social stability while offering the least attractive alternative possible to the worst jobs on offer.

The 1834 New Poor Law articulated a principle of ‘less eligibility’ that has cast its shadow over benefit systems ever since. The terms and conditions of receiving relief, featuring the dreaded workhouse, would ensure that recipients would be worse off than the poorest workers. Modern benefit systems, with bureaucratic intrusion and moral policing replacing the workhouse, retain the guiding principle of less eligibility. The Ken Loach film, I, Daniel Blake demonstrates this very starkly.

It is often suggested that ‘austerity isn’t working’. In fact, in both the UK and Ontario, the degrading of benefit systems has produced startling results for employers, especially those paying the lowest wages. If benefit levels had not been driven down and made more punitive and precarious, it is hard to imagine how the proliferation of low wage precarious work could have been so successfully imposed.

Sluggish wage growth exists in all OECD countries but the UK’s long-term decline in real wage levels is especially stark. The numbers of people forced into precarious employment has shot up and the increase in workers forced to accept zero hour contracts has been dramatic. Changes in the level of exploitation and the expansion of the low wage sector have been comparably appalling in Ontario. In 1997, only one worker in forty was forced to accept a minimum wage job but, by 2015, that had increased to one worker in eight. By 2013, among workers in the densely populated Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas, barely half were in permanent full-time jobs.

Liberal War on the Poor

Until recently, when a hard-right Tory Government took office, the task of imposing austerity and reducing the adequacy of the social assistance system in Ontario was in the hands of a Liberal Government. As the dubiously progressive face of the neoliberal mainstream, the Liberals were somewhat circumspect in how they carried out the attack. Their task was made easier by the work of an earlier Thatcher-like Tory regime that held office from 1995 until 2003. Brutal cutbacks in the social assistance rates were an accomplished fact and the Liberals spent most of their fifteen years in office providing parsimonious increases below the rate of inflation while holding round after round of public consultations to keep alive the illusion that they would address a growing crisis of poverty and homelessness.

At the very end of the Liberal period, after so successfully reducing the adequacy of Ontario’s income support system and driving people into a mushrooming low wage sector, they concluded that the attack could be eased and they tactically shifted to the left. Under considerable pressure from a ‘Fight For $15 and Fairness Campaign’, they increased the minimum wage, announcing that it would rise to $15 in 2019, and introduced a series of measures to strengthen workers’ rights. They also announced a 3% increase in social assistance rates that, while inadequate, would be the first general increase that exceeded the rate of inflation since 1994. They also announced a series of modest but beneficial measures to improve the lives of people receiving benefits.

Tories Take Over

When the new Tory regime took office last June, there was no delay in moving towards a more ruthless and extreme form of war on the poor. The minimum wage increase was cancelled and the scheduled improvements in social assistance met the same fate. The Tories even cancelled the basic income pilot project that the Liberals were running. While many neoliberal thinkers look approvingly at the concept of basic income, the Ford Tories, as meat and potatoes reactionaries, had no interest in anything that smacked of reduced conditionality. The attitudes of former work and pensions secretary, Esther McVey, and her Ontario counterpart, Lisa MacLeod, on this social policy proposal are striking similar.

After killing off the impending reforms and cutting the 3% rate increase in half, the Ontario social services minister declared a review of the social assistance system. The results of this are predictably horrifying and chart directions that will be familiar to those in the UK who have experienced or resisted the Tory attack on social benefits under Cameron and May. MacLeod is very fond of the right wing cliche that ‘the best social programme is a job’. This is the key to the Ontario Tory approach to ‘welfare reform’. Having acted to preserve poverty wages, the plan is to refine the social assistance system as a means of forcing people into the worst jobs.

In the UK, the work capability assessment has been used to brutally and systematically deny benefits to disabled people. The Ontario Tories share the goal of ensuring that disability benefits are restricted massively so as to give disabled no option but to enter the job market. Their solution is to change radically the definition of disability. The Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) will now only be for those who can show that are permanently and severely impaired with no prospects of taking employment.

All others will be forced onto the ‘short term’ Ontario Works (OW) programme where they will be treated as job ready workers, regardless of their situation. At the same time, OW is to be reworked as a much more coercive supplier of low wage workers. Just as benefit sanctions and claimant commitments have been used to ensure people in the UK understand they must scramble for employment on the employers’ terms, the Ontario plan takes similar directions. ‘Placing a greater focus on outcomes’, people will ‘complete individual action plans’. Municipalities that function as delivery agents ‘will be held accountable for helping people achieve their goals’ (provided those goals include working for low pay with no rights and few supports). So directly is the refined system to work as a supplier for the most exploitative employers that the Tories are ‘launching a website, Ontario.ca/openforbusiness to make matching job seekers with businesses easier’. The vilest employers will know where to go for a supply of vulnerable workers who must accept employment on their terms or face loss of benefits and outright destitution.

A Working-Class Issue

Theresa May’s recent claim that austerity is over is exposed as a lie as communities in the UK experience the horrible effects of the roll out of Universal Credit. In Ontario, too, austerity and the degrading of benefit systems is a work in progress. What must be understood is that this attack doesn’t only impact the poorest people. It is a careful and ruthless strategy to increase the supply of super exploited workers and, in doing so, depress wages generally. The broad working-class movement has a stake in resisting this attack and defeating the austerity driven war on the poor.

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John Clarke is a writer and leading organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

Featured image: Anti-austerity protest in Manchester 2017. Photo: Jim Aindow.

Washington has moved to delegitimise democratically elected Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, with US Vice-President Mike Pence offering support to an opposition politician claiming to be the country’s real leader.

In a phone call to National Assembly speaker Juan Guaido, Mr Pence praised his “courageous leadership” and called on him to unite all opposition groups against Mr Maduro.

The National Assembly has no legitimate role in Venezuela since the establishment of the Constitutional Assembly, which was elected in August 2017 despite violent attacks from right-wing opposition groups seeking to stop people from voting.

However, following Mr Maduro’s inauguration last week, the body declared Mr Guaido to be the country’s “acting president” and refused to recognise Mr Maduro, despite him having won a second term of office last May with a thumping 67 per cent of the vote.

In a statement, Mr Pence branded Mr Maduro a “dictator with no legitimate claim to power who has oppressed the Venezuelan people for too long.”

He endorsed Mr Guaido’s claim to be interim president, which has also been recognised by the right-wing governments of Brazil, Chile and Colombia.

It is understood that Mr Guaido also has the support of the Organisation of American States, whose secretary-general Luis Almagro was recently expelled from the Frente Amplio party in his native Uruguay for backing intervention against Venezuela.

Mr Pence said that Washington would continue “to press for a full restoration of democracy” in the country.

The US has long sought regime change in Venezuela, implementing a raft of punitive sanctions and other measures. Last year it emerged that US President Donald Trump had given serious consideration to military intervention against Venezuela, including the possibility of a ground invasion to topple Mr Maduro.

Yesterday, the Washington Post published a column by Mr Guaido in which he accused Mr Maduro of being a dictator with links to drug trafficking and guerilla groups and demanded his overthrow.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the darling of liberals, has also branded Mr Maduro a dictator, refusing to recognise his presidency. However, at a university debate yesterday, he refused to answer questions about his support for far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Mr Maduro dismissed Mr Guaido, who was part of the protest movement that tried to topple his late predecessor Hugo Chavez, as “a usurper.”

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Featured image: Venezuela’s National Assembly speaker Juan Guaido (Source: Morning Star)

Peace activists are calling for the U.S. government to call off plans for a massive military construction project on the Japanese island of Okinawa. On January 7, a fourth generation Okinawan-American and local peace groups staged a demonstration and delivered a petition with 190,000 signatures to the White House. The petition calls for a halt of construction of a U.S. airbase at Ourawan Bay until a referendum can be held on February 24.

The airbase would build an airstrip by filling in Ourawan Bay with boulders and dirt. Two 5,000-foot runways are planned which will eventually house the ultra-advanced U.S. F-35 fighter jets and V-22 tiltrotor aircraft. The bay is a pristine tropical water paradise and home to many rare aquatic species, including the Dugong, an endangered rare marine mammal.

Construction over the bay began on December 18. The project has the backing of the mainland Japan Premier Shinzo Abe.

Opposition to Futenma airbase and its relocation from Ginowan to Henoco District on Ourawan Bay dates back several decades with nearly 80 percent of Okinawans opposed to it. The specifics of the plan call for building the airstrips at the edge of Schaub Marine Base, a base camp for Marine infantry units rotating between South Korea, Guam, Mainland Japan, and the U.S. West Coast.

There are 23 U.S. bases on Okinawa, taking up 20 percent of the Island land area. Okinawa compares as less than 1 percent of the land area of Japan but hosts 74 percent of the land area used by U.S. military forces in Japan and its islands. Okinawans believe they are saddled with an unfair responsibility for being tasked to yield far more land area by ratio than mainland Japan. Further, Okinawans host half of the 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan.

Environmentalists say the Dugong marine mammal feeds on lush beds of marine grass within Ourawan Bay, but the new airbase will further endanger its existence there. By filling the bay with rocks to build two runways and a mile-long sea wall, the base will bury the lush source of sea grass, the home of the Dugong and many other rare species.

Okinawa has been hampered by the presence of remnant U.S. base relics since World War II.

Okinawa: A Rich Cultural History

Okinawa Prefecture is the southern most part of Japan which was annexed in 1879. Before it was annexed it had already established an island culture and autonomous Kingdom of the Ryukyu government for several centuries. It was the central part of the 1,000-mile chain of the Ryukyu Islands before Japan annexed it.

The island saw almost total destruction in WWII during the battle of Okinawa as Marines landed and fought against Japanese soldiers. Almost 25% of its people were killed and every building was either destroyed or damaged. After the war Okinawa remained under U.S. administration until 1972. It was then given back to Japan’s control in March 1972, nearly 100 years after Japan annexed it. However, the U.S. maintained possession of a series of bases, including Futenma airbase.

Susumu Inamine, the Mayor of Nago, and Denny Tamaki vitisted the U.S. in 2014 to advocate for the removal of Futenma airbase and relocation of Henoco airfield to mainland Japan. Tamaki is no the Governor of Okinawa. Photo/John Zangas

During the 1970s and 80s, the population grew as did tensions with the U.S. over incidents of assaults by U.S. military personnel. Okinawans urged mainland Japan to relocate Futenma airbase to the mainland and reduce U.S. military presence. They grew increasingly impatient for U.S. bases to be closed and the land to be returned to them. Civil disobedience and resistance grew out of plans to relocate Futenma airbase to Ourawan Bay which was announced in 1995.

Long Battle of Resistance Against Futenma Airbase

The original plan was to move Futenma to Henoco by acquiring private property inland but not over Ourawan Bay. The early plan was part of a secret proposal in the 1960s (since declassified) by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara during President Kennedy’s administration. In the 1970s and early 1980s, this plan met opposition as Okinawans began to mobilize in opposition.

Once the second plan was publicized in 1995 to build the base over Ourawan Bay, Okinawans organized protests, sit-ins and day-long blockades outside Futenma and Schaub bases until police moved in. They have even launched water flotillas on Ourawan Bay as the Okinawa resistance took to kayaks in pitch battles with construction personnel.

The resistance was originally fighting to close the base. But once the relocation plan to move Futenma airstrip to Ourawan Bay was made public, the blockades of Schaub Marine Base near Henoko became more intense. And they have sustained a spirited resistance ever since. They have organized marches, voted only for local candidates opposed to the Henoko project, blocked base entrances and sent delegations to the U.S. to urge cancellation of construction plans. Mayor Susumu Inamine of the city of Nago and then Japanese Congressman Denny Tamaki visited the U.S. in 2014 to urge President Barack Obama to cancel the project but was unable to meet with him. Denny Tamaki was elected as Governor of Okinawa in 2018 on a platform to block Henoco base construction. Tamaki visited the U.S. again in 2018 to lobby for U.S. base closures.

Resistance Builds On Social Media

Robert Kajiwara, a fourth-generation Okinawan-American, organized the online petition which gained 190,000 signatures. A human rights activist and musician, he has worked to build international support to stop Henoco Base. He wrote lyrics about the struggle in Okinawa to the John Denver song “Country Roads.”

His lyrics resonated with Okinawans and attracted international support. He believes music is an effective way to reach people through emotions. It has also been his way of helping to gain support for his fellow islanders and pay back his grandparents for their support for his education in Hawaii.

He delivered the petition to the White House on Monday hoping to urge the Trump Administration to cancel the project. But he believes Americans also have an important stake in the new battle for Okinawa.

“There are a plethora of reasons why this base is bad for America, and I am trying to bring these reasons to their attention,” said Kajiwara. He says the project will also hurt Americans by costing much more money than previously estimated.

An analysis of military plans show the project has ballooned to $23 billion, more than 10 times the original cost estimated in 2013. It will also take five years longer to complete the Ourawan Bay fill and stabilization process that was previously estimated at 5 years. This is due to a discovery by civil engineers that Ourawan Bay contains sediments that are much more soft than previously thought. The ancient coral reef geology under the coastal water is not supported by the heavy loads of an airbase so the fill dirt project will take more time to reinforce, the report claimed. There is also the consideration of periodic earthquakes which could cause subsidence under the base and have to be remedied.

Kajiwara said there are many stories about the elderly protestors that have yet to be told, and he wants to help them share stories with the world. He spoke of two elderly protesters who were arrested and charged with felonies. He believes they were targeted because of successful organization efforts. “Hiroji Yamashiro and Hiroji Inaba are two of the most prominent leaders of the movement, and they were arrested and sentenced as felons for their protests. They recently filed an appeal, but their appeals were denied,” he said.

Dozens of elderly protesters are forcibly moved on a daily basis. Their resistance has taught the younger generations about non-violent protest and delayed the Henoco airbase project by two decades.

Okinawans block the highway leading to Henoco airbase. They have built a spirited resistance with elderly and youth. Photo/Robert Kajiwara

David Swanson, Director of World Beyond War, said that the people have the right to freedom from occupation by U.S. forces as well as the freedom of an environmentally safe home.

“Occupying Okinawa does something negative to the people of Okinawa. They are denied the freedom of not being the prime target of attack, the freedom not to have their water poisoned, and the freedom from massive environmental destruction,” he said.

One of the issues Okinawans must also contend with is polluted water from over 70 years of U.S. military operations. Water quality has been effected with fuel spills, fire drills from fire-retardant foam, grease and solvent and petroleum runoff from military operations.

Kajiwara is hopeful the base can be stopped even though construction began in Ourawan Bay a few weeks ago. He cites the tenacity of Okinawans, their love of each other and their concern for the environment as strengths.

“They have been fighting for decades, and they’re not going anywhere,” he said.

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Featured image: Okinawa activists protest outside of White House on January 7./Photo by Robert Kajiwara

The first mass teacher labor action of 2019 is unfolding in California as the United Teachers Los Angeles walked out for the first time in 30 years.

This strike, which began on Jan. 14, isn’t just important to people in Los Angeles. Here are three reasons the nation should pay attention.

1. The Los Angeles case is different

The Los Angeles strike stands out because of the size of the district.

With 640,000 students, and about 500,000 enrolled in the district’s public schools, Los Angeles represents the second largest school district in the United States. The only bigger district is New York City.

The Los Angeles strike involves 34,000 teachers. To compare, the statewide 2018 teacher strike in West Virginia – where I am researching teacher strikes and teacher shortages – involved about 20,000 teachers and affected approximately 270,000 students.

Also, the political context is different. When West Virginia teachers walked out of the classroom, they were battling a conservative state legislature in a largely rural, majority-white state. Los Angeles is urban, far more diverse, and located in a state that has voted mostly Democratic in presidential elections since 1992.

Los Angeles Unified School District’s student population is 73 percent Latino, 10.5 percent white, 8.2 percent black and 4.2 percent Asian. The district serves over 150,000 students whose first language is not English.

The situation for the Los Angeles teachers union is also different in several ways. For instance, it is engaged in an active fight against the rapid growth of charter schools. Los Angeles is home to the largest number of charter schools in the U.S. with 277.

Since 2008, the charter industry in Los Angeles has grown 287 percent. According to the Los Angeles teachers union, this is effectively siphoning US$550 million per year from the district’s traditional public schools.

The union argues that Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent, Austin Beutner, is a pro-charter school superintendent with no education experience.

The teachers union has proposed greater transparency and more accountability for Los Angeles charter schools and has called for an immediate cap on charter school growth in the school district. The district has provided no counter offer to these demands.

Teachers in Los Angeles have negotiated the current contract under dispute for over 20 months, and have been working without a contract for over a year. This is not uncommon. For example, teachers in Oakland, California, have been working without a contract for more than a year. And a recent contract resolution following a Pennsylvania school district strike came after teachers worked without a contract for three and a half years.

2. It’s not just about better pay

Like strikes in Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, Colorado and North Carolina, the Los Angeles teachers’ strike is essentially about greater investment in public education.

For the Los Angeles teachers, this includes a 6.5 percent salary increase to make up for what the union calls “stagnant wages.”

The average teacher makes almost 19 percent less in wages than comparable workers. In California, specifically, this figure is about 15 percent. Los Angeles teachers make between $50,000 and $80,000, but the cost of living in LA is so high that a two-bedroom apartment requires a six-figure income. This means many teachers have second or even third jobs.

But beyond wages, teachers have begun to demand a greater commitment to investment in public education from their governing bodies, either school boards or state legislatures.

In Oklahoma for example, striking teachers protested inadequate instructional materials, including outdated and deteriorating textbooks. And in Los Angeles, striking teachers are demanding, among other things, a reduction in classroom sizes, which can be up to 46 students in some classrooms based on their current contract. Teachers argue that the large class sizes make it difficult to meet the needs of their students.

They also want an increase in school nurses, librarians and counselors.

These issues get at the heart of student learning. Students need adequate supplies, individual teacher attention and access to mental health services, such as counselors, if they are expected to thrive in the classroom.

But the ability for public schools to provide for all of these instructional and social support needs has become increasingly difficult as states have continued to underfund their public education systems.

3. Los Angeles strike could spur other teacher strikes

The Los Angeles teachers strike suggests that the wave of teacher protests is not over.

Teacher strikes and work stoppages have been preceded by a nationwide teacher shortage that continues to grow across many states, which do not have enough certified math, special education, science, and in increasing cases, elementary teachers – to meet the needs of their students. In California 80 percent of districts reported a teacher shortage in the 2017 to 2018 school year. Teacher shortages are most often blamed on low teacher pay, one of the commonalities across teacher strikes.

These shortages are arguably exacerbated by an increase in the “teacher pay penalty,” the term used to describe disparities in teacher salary compared to professions requiring comparable levels of education.

At the same time teachers find themselves increasingly undervalued, most states are still funding their public education systems at levels below that of the 2008 recession. This includes California, which is ranked 41st nationwide in per pupil spending when adjusted for cost of living.

As long as public schools remain underfunded, the nation can expect to see more teacher strikes in other school districts and states in the near future.

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Prof. Erin McHenry-Sorber is Assistant Professor of Higher Education, West Virginia University.

Featured image: LA teachers on strike (Source: WSWS)

The situation in Syria evolves daily and sees two situations very closely linked to each other, with the US withdrawal from Syria and the consequent expansionist ambitions of Erdogan in Syria and the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) takeover in Idlib that frees the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Russian aviation to liberate the de-escalation zone.

Trump has promised to destroy Turkey economically if he attacks the Kurds, reinforcing his claim that Erdogan will not target the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) once the US withdraws from the area. One of the strongest accusations made against Trump’s withdrawal by his opponents is that no Middle Eastern force will ever trust the US again if they abandon the SDF to its fate, that is, to its annihilation at the hands of the Turkish army and its FSA proxies. This, however, is not possible; not so much because of Trump’s economic threats, but because of Damascus and Moscow being strongly opposed to any Turkish military action in the northeast of Syria.

This is a red line drawn by Putin and Assad, and the Turkish president likely understands the consequences of any wrong moves. It is no coincidence that he stated several times that he had no problems with the “Syrians or Syrian-Kurdish brothers”, and repeated that if the area under the SDF were to come under the control of Damascus, Turkey would have no need to intervene in Syria. Trump’s request that Ankara have a buffer zone of 20 kilometers separating the Kurdish and Turkish forces seems to complement the desire of Damascus and Moscow to avoid a clash between the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and the SDF.

The only party that seems to be secretly encouraging a clash between the SDF and Turkish forces is Israel, criticizing Ankara and singing the praises of the SDF, in order to try and accentuate the tensions between the two sides, though naturally without success. Israel’s continued raids in Syria, though almost constantly failing due to Syrian air defense, and the divide-and-rule policy used against Turkey and the SDF, show that Tel Aviv is now weakened and mostly irrelevant in the Syrian conflict.

In Idlib, the situation seems to be becoming less complicated and difficult to decipher. Russia, Iran and Syria had asked Erdogan to take control of the province through its “moderate jihadists”, sit down at the negotiating table, and resolve the matter through a diplomatic solution. Exactly the opposite happened. The HTS (formerly al-Nusra/al-Qaeda in Syria) has in recent weeks conquered practically the whole province of Idlib, with numerous forces linked to Turkey (Ahrar al-Sham and Nour al-Din al-Zenki) dissolving and merging into HTS. This development puts even more pressure on Erdogan, who is likely to see his influence in Idlib fade away permanently. Moreover, this evolution represents a unique opportunity for Damascus and Moscow to start operations in Idlib with the genuine justification of combating terrorism. It is a repeat of what happened in other de-escalation areas. Moscow and Damascus have repeatedly requested the moderates be separated from the terrorists, so as to approach the situation with a diplomatic negotiation.

In the absence of an effective division of combatants, all are considered terrorists, with the military option replacing the diplomatic. This remains the only feasible option to free the area from terrorists who are not willing to give back territory to the legitimate government in Damascus and are keeping civilians hostages. The Idlib province seems to have experienced the same playbook applied in other de-escalation zones, this time with a clear contrast between Turkey and Saudi Arabia that shows how the struggle between the two countries is much deeper than it appears. The reasons behind the Khashoggi case and the diplomatic confrontation between Qatar and Saudi Arabia were laid bare in the actions of the HTS in Idlib, which has taken control of all the areas previously held by Ankara’s proxies.

It remains to be seen whether Moscow and Damascus would like to encourage Erdogan to recover Idlib through its proxies, trying to encourage jihadists to fight each other as much as possible in order to lighten the task of the SAA, or whether they would prefer to press the advantage themselves and attack while the terrorist front is experiencing internal confusion.

In terms of occupied territory and accounts to be settled, two areas of great importance for the future of Syria remain unresolved, namely al-Tanf, occupied by US forces on the Syrian-Jordanian border, and the area in the north of Syria occupied by Turkish forces and their FSA proxies. It is too early to approach a solution militarily, it being easier for Damascus and Moscow to complete the work to free Syria from the remaining terrorists. Once this has been done, the presence of US or Turkish forces in Syria, whether directly or indirectly, would become all the more difficult to justify. Driving away the US and, above all, Turkey from Syrian territory will be the natural next step in the Syrian conflict.

This is an unequivocal sign that the war of aggression against Syria is winding up, and this can be observed by the opening of a series of new embassies in Damascus. Several countries — including Italy in the near future — will reopen their embassies in Syria to demonstrate that the war, even if not completely over, is effectively won by Damascus and her allies.

For this reason, several countries that were previously opposed to Damascus, like the United Arab Emirates, are understood to have some kind of contact with the government of Damascus. If they intend to become involved in the reconstruction process and any future investment, they will quite naturally need to re-establish diplomatic relations with Damascus. The Arab League is also looking to welcome Syria back into the fold.

Such are signs that Syria is returning to normality, without forgetting which and how many countries have conspired and acted directly against the Syrians for over seven years. An invitation to the Arab League or some embassy being reopened will not be enough to compensate for the damage done over years, but Assad does not preclude any option, and is in the meantime demonstrating to the Israelis, Saudis and the US Deep State that their war has failed and that even their most loyal allies are resuming diplomatic relations with Damascus, a double whammy against the neocons, Wahhabis and Zionists.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCF

Theresa May’s prime ministership remains one of torment, drawn out, and weakened daily.  But does it really matter?  If it is true to claim that people deserve the government they elect, then there is something madly representative of the debacle of May’s leadership, one where problems are sought for any possible solutions. 

Steering through the waters of Brexit has been a nigh impossible task rendered even more problematic by a stubborn myopia nursed by May.  She nurses dogmas incapable of learning new tricks.  Her latest Brexit plan, as it headed to inevitable defeat, would have rendered Britain bound to the EU in a manner more servile than any sovereign populist would have dreamed.  Benefits would have been shed; obligations would have persisted. While there is very little to recommend the views of the rabid Tory Eurosceptics, there is something in the idea that Britain would become a vassal state. 

As it transpired, May lost by a colossal margin, an indication that few could stomach her vision: 432 to 202, the worst defeat by a British administration in over a century.

“In all normal circumstances,” observed Robert Peston, that legendary pessimist of matters economic, “a Prime Minister would resign when suffering such a humiliation on their central policy – and a policy Theresa May herself said today would ‘set the future of this country for a generation’.”

Such is the nature of the climate: gross failure results in bare survival rather than inevitable annihilation.  Grand acts of quixotic behaviour are not richly punished but given reprieve before the next charge against windmills. So we are left with the idea of uncharted territory, suggesting, in the face of such chaos and uncertainty, a postponement of the departure date from the EU set for March 29.  The Article 50 period, in other words, would have to be extended, but this, again, implies a set of hypothetical variations and ponderings. 

For all that, May survived yet another no-confidence motion by 325 to 306, with Labor’s Jeremy Corbyn incapable of pushing the entire debacle to an election. Not even the Tories wished that upon their own leader, whom they have come to despise in ways verging on the pathological. Corbyn might well have called the May prime ministership a “zombie” administration, but he had failed to supply the necessary weapons to finish it off, prompting colleagues in the Commons to suggest a change of approach.   

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, advanced the proposition that the Labour leader had to alter “his position and come behind the ‘People’s Vote’ or he will just be seen, and will be, a handmaiden of Brexit.” 

Despite the failure, Corbyn had his own demands.  “The government must remove clearly, once and for all, the prospect of the catastrophe of a no-deal exit from the EU and all the chaos that would come as a result of that.”  The language of cross-party lines on discussing Brexit remain distant matters. 

As for the zombie representative-in-chief herself, the government would “continue to work to deliver on the solemn promise to the people of this country to deliver on the result of the referendum and leave the European Union”.  Same words, barely touched up – the May formulae remains incapable of changing form, incapable of elevation, but also seemingly incapable of perishing. 

Wednesday’s vote of survival after the calamity of her defeated proposals suggested a change in heart from May.  (Did she have any other choice?)  She ventured talks with various opposition party leaders, though various news outlets in the UK insisted that Corbyn had been ungenerous in snubbing the prime minister. Labour’s leadership remains sceptical at any advances from Downing Street.  As The Guardian editorialised on May’s proposed talks,

“It is a welcome shift in tone, but there is no indication from Mrs May’s record that she has the diplomatic skills required to make such a consultation fruitful.” 

This notable lack manifested in an obsession with “red lines”, a mad faith in a Brexit plan long rendered cadaverous. 

For the paper’s own worth, a new strategy of change focused on a customs union arrangement between Britain and the EU would “transform dialogue with Labour and pro-European Tories.”  Fine thing to suggest, but the darkness refuses to abate.  International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, for one, sees such a union as a way of ensuring that Britain will not have an independent trade policy.  The ship of apocalypse, whatever it might entail, remains on course.

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

It is easy to identify the ongoing and endless violence being inflicted on life on Earth. This ranges from the vast multiplicity of assaults inflicted on our children and the biosphere to the endless wars and other military violence as well as the grotesque exploitation of many peoples living in Africa, Asia and Central/South America. But for a (very incomplete) list of 40 points see ‘Reflections on 2018, Forecasting 2019’.

However, despite the obvious fact that it is human beings who are inflicting all of this violence, it is virtually impossible to get people to pay attention to this simple and incontrovertible fact and to ask why, precisely, are human beings behaving in such violent and destructive ways? And can we effectively address this cause?

Of course, one part of this problem is the existence of many competing ideas about what causes violence. For example, some ideologies attribute the cause to a particular structural manifestation of violence, such as patriarchy (which generates a gendered system of violence and exploitation) or capitalism (which generates a class system of violence and exploitation). However, none of these ideologies explains why humans participate in structures of violence and exploitation in the first place. Surely a person who was not violent and exploitative to begin with would reject such violent and exploitative structures out of hand and work to create nonviolent and egalitarian structures instead.

But most people really just accept the elite-promulgated delusion that humans are innately dysfunctional and violent and this must be contained and controlled by socialization processes, laws, legal systems, police forces and prisons or, in the international arena, by such measures as economic sanctions and military violence. It is a rare individual who perceives the blatant dysfunctionality and violence of socialization, laws, legal systems, police forces, prisons, economic sanctions and military violence, and how these institutions and their violence serve elite interests.

Hence, humans are trapped in a cycle of attempting to address the vast range of manifestations of violent human behaviour – the wars, the climate catastrophe, destruction of the environment, the economic exploitation of vast sectors of the human population (women, indigenous peoples, working peoples…), the military dictatorships and occupations – without knowing what, fundamentally, causes dysfunctional and violent human behaviours and draws many people to participate in (and benefit from) violence in whatever form it takes.

Well I, for one, find it boring to see the same manifestations of violence repeated endlessly because we do not understand or address the fundamental cause (and so even well-meaning efforts to address it in a variety of contexts are doomed to fail). How about you?

Moreover, I find it boring to listen to (or read about) people endlessly deluding themselves about the violence; that is, deluding themselves that it isn’t happening, ‘it was always like that’, ‘it isn’t as bad as it seems’, ‘nothing can be done’, ‘there is another explanation’, that I am ‘doing enough already’, and so on.

To illustrate the above let me write some more frequent examples of people deluding themselves about the cause. You may have heard delusions like these expressed yourself; you may know some of the many others.

1. ‘The child deserved the punishment.’
2. ‘She asked for it.’
3. Violence is innate: it is ‘in our nature’.
4. ‘War is inevitable.’
5. The people in Africa/Asia/Central/South America ‘have always been poor’.
6. ‘The weather hasn’t changed; it was like that when I was a child.’
7. ‘We can’t control Mother Nature.’
8. ‘Nature is abundant.’

Of course, the most common delusional state is the one in which most people are trapped: they are just not paying significant attention to critical issues and have no knowledge (and informed opinion) about them but allow themselves to be distracted from reality by the various elite channels used for doing so, such as the corporate media.

So why do most people delude themselves rather than carefully observe reality, seek out and analyze the evidence in relation to it, and then behave appropriately and powerfully in response?

Because they are (unconsciously) terrified.

‘Is that all?’ you might say. ‘Surely the explanation for dysfunctional (and violent) human behaviour is more complex than that! Besides, when people I observe doing the sorts of dysfunctional and violent behaviours you mention above, they don’t look frightened, let alone terrified.’

So let me explain why the explanation above – that most human beings live in delusion, behave dysfunctionally and violently, fail to observe and analyze reality and then behave powerfully in response to it, because they are terrified – is the complete explanation and why people who are utterly terrified don’t ‘look frightened’.

At the moment of birth, the human individual has a genetically-embedded potential to seek out and powerfully pursue their own unique destiny by progressively developing a complex set of capacities to observe and listen, to think and feel, to analyze and evaluate, to plan and strategize, and to behave with awareness and power in response to their own astute insight into reality and the guidance provided by their conscience.

However, rather than nurture this potential so that the child grows up deeply in touch with their conscience, sensing capacities, thoughts, feelings and other faculties necessary to seek out and powerfully travel their own unique path, the significant adults in the child’s life immediately start to ‘socialize’ (that is, terrorize) the child into conforming with culturally and socially-acceptable norms of thought and behaviour on the basis that one human is more-or-less identical with another (give or take some minor variations among races, languages….).

The idea that each human mind might be unique in the way that each body is unique (while conforming to a general pattern in relation to shape, height and other physical characteristics) never even occurs to anyone. The idea that their child could have the potential to be as creative, powerful and unique as Leonardo Da Vinci, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth, Albert Einstein, Mohandas K. Gandhi or Rosalind Franklin never enters the mind of the typical parent.

Instead, we parent and teach children to conform to an endless sequence of beliefs and behavioural norms on the basis that ‘one size fits all’ because we are literally (but unconsciously) terrified that our child might be ‘different’ or, horror of horrors, unique! And we reward most highly those individuals who do conform and can demonstrate their conformity by passing, often literally, the endless series of socially-approved tests, formal and otherwise, that we set. See, for example, ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

The last thing we want is an individual who fearlessly thinks, feels and behaves as they personally decide is best for themself, perhaps even because their conscience dictates. But when they do act out of their own volition, we punish them to ensure that behaviour that is generated by their unique ‘Self’ is, if possible, terrorized out of them.

Of course, there are ‘good reasons’ for doing this. If we want obedient students, soldiers, employees and citizens, it is the perfect formula. Terrorize the child when they are young and obedience to a set of parentally/socially-approved beliefs and behaviours is virtually guaranteed.

Equally importantly, by starting this onslaught against the child from the moment of birth, they will grow up utterly unaware of the fact that they were terrorized out of becoming their ‘True Self’ and seeking their own unique destiny so that they could be the slave of their society, performing some function, menial or even ‘professional’, after they have submitted to sufficient training. The slave who never questions their role is truly a slave. And that is what we want!

Equally importantly, the person who has fearfully surrendered their Self at the alter of physical survival cannot observe or listen to the fear expressed by anyone else, including their own children. So they simply ‘fail to notice’ it.

So what, exactly, do we do so that each human being’s individual Self is crushed and they are rendered too terrified, self-hating and powerless to pursue their own life path, to honestly observe and listen to their own children and to mindfully consider the state of our world and act powerfully in response?

We inflict enormous, ongoing violence on the child, starting immediately after their birth.

‘How?’ you might ask. ‘I don’t scream at or hit my child. And I never punish them.’

Well, if that is true, it is a good start.

But, unfortunately, it is far more complex than these obvious types of violence and, strange though it may seem, it is not just the ‘visible’ violence (such as hitting, screaming at and sexually abusing) that we normally label ‘violence’ that causes the main damage, although this is extremely damaging. The largest component of damage arises from the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family home and at school. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So what is ‘invisible’ violence? It is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, mothers, fathers, teachers and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (e.g. by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by their feelings (e.g. by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards themself, others and/or the Earth.

From the above, it should also now be apparent that punishment should never be used. ‘Punishment’, of course, is one of the words we use to obscure our awareness of the fact that we are using violence. Violence, even when we label it ‘punishment’, scares children and adults alike and cannot elicit a functional behavioural response. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

If someone behaves dysfunctionally, they need to be listened to, deeply, so that they can start to become consciously aware of the feelings (which will always include fear and, often, terror) that drove the dysfunctional behaviour in the first place. They then need to feel and express these feelings (including any anger) in a safe way. Only then will behavioural change in the direction of functionality be possible. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

‘But these adult behaviors you have described don’t seem that bad. Can the outcome be as disastrous as you claim?’ you might ask. The problem is that there are hundreds of these ‘ordinary’, everyday behaviors that destroy the Selfhood of the child. It is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and most children simply do not survive as Self-aware individuals. And why do we do this? As noted above, we do it so that each child will fit into our model of ‘the perfect citizen’: that is, obedient and hardworking student, reliable and pliant employee/soldier, and submissive law-abiding citizen.

Moreover, once we destroy the Selfhood of a child, it has many flow-on effects. For example, once you terrorize a child into accepting certain information about themself, other people or the state of the world, the child becomes unconsciously fearful of dealing with new information, especially if this information is contradictory to what they have been terrorized into believing. As a result, the child will unconsciously dismiss new information out of hand.

In short, the child has been terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning (or their learning capacity is seriously diminished by excluding any information that is not a simple extension of what they already ‘know’).

Fundamentally, the child is now incapable of carefully observing reality, analyzing the evidence in relation to that reality and responding strategically so that conflicts and problems are moved closer to resolution. That is, the child is now unconsciously trapped, believing and behaving precisely within the spectrum of socially-approved beliefs and behaviours that society terrorized them into accepting, no matter how dysfunctional and violent these beliefs and behaviours might be.

In industrialized countries, for example, this will invariably include overconsuming, which is standard (but highly dysfunctional and violent) behaviour, particularly given the current state of the biosphere. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

Responding Powerfully to Reality

So how do we nurture children to become the unique and powerful individual that is their birthright? Someone who is able to clearly identify what they need and what outcomes work for them, and who does not learn to progressively compromise themselves until there is nothing left of their unique identity. Someone, in short, who is so powerless, that they are incapable of considering themself, others and the state of the biosphere. Someone who lives in delusion.

Well, if you want a powerful child, you can read what is required in ‘My Promise to Children’.

If, after reading this ‘Promise’, you feel unable to nurture children properly, you might consider doing the healing necessary so that you can do so. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If you already feel free of the delusions that afflict most people and able to respond powerfully to the state  of our world, then consider joining those participating in the fifteen-year strategy outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’and signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

If you are powerful enough to campaign for change against one or more of the ongoing manifestations of violence in the world, consider doing so strategically so that you have maximum impact. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if none of the options I have offered immediately above appeals, ask yourself if you are serious about helping to end the violence or just deluding yourself like all of those people I described above.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

Featured image:  Julie Maas from Early Lessons, Moody Maine, Editions Gerald and Maas, 1992.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 and grew into maturity in the Deep South city of Atlanta, Georgia during the Great Depression of the 1930s and early 1940s.

Therefore King witnessed firsthand the racism and poverty which was synonymous with the United States.

Although U.S. involvement in World War II brought the country out of an economic slump through the conversion of industrial facilities to war production while millions were drafted into military service, racism and national oppression against African Americans remained, both inside and outside of the armed forces. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans were subjected to a segregated military where many were harassed by racist officers, denied adequate services and accommodations, along with unjust court martial proceedings, detentions and even executions without due process.

African Americans were encouraged to play a role within the military in the fight against Imperial Japan and fascism in Europe by both the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his supporters in the general population. Although Roosevelt’s New Deal programs in the first two terms of his administration provided assistance to displaced workers, distressed farmers and African Americans, there was never the passage of a federal Anti-Lynching Bill during this period of systematic racist terror. (See this)

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the right to a minimum wage and overtime for toiling in excess of 40 hours per week. However, there were exceptions to this rule which remain well into the second decade of the 21^st century, particularly for “tipped” employees in the so-called “hospitality” industry, where super-exploitation remains the order of the day.

King was admitted to the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) institution of Morehouse at the age of 15 in 1944. He would graduate four years later in 1948 at 19 years old. He attended graduate school at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania and later earned a Ph.D in Systematic Theology from Boston University in 1955 when he was only 26.

The Rise of a People’s Movement for Civil Rights and National Liberation

In the post-war period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the specter of the Cold War became dominant. The hostility towards the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China was coupled with attacks against the concepts of civil Rights and human rights. The National Liberation Movements sweeping Africa and Asia in the late 1940s and 1950s were seen by many within the U.S. ruling class as a major theater in Cold War politics. (See this)

This same notion was applicable to the struggle for civil rights and self-determination among African Americans. Roosevelt’s successor, President Harry S. Truman, commandeered the anti-communist hysteria while offering minor concessions in the areas of integrating the armed forces and token employment opportunities. Although Roosevelts’ widow Eleanor championed the passage of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights in 1948, she vigorously opposed the petition charging genocide against African Americans by the U.S. government which was submitted to the United Nations in 1951 by Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois and William L. Patterson. (See this)

After the 1954 Supreme Court decision declaring that separate but equal educational institutions were inherently unequal and unconstitutional along with the brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till and hundreds of other African Americans in the post-War era, the social atmosphere was set for the rise of a mass Civil Rights Movement.

In Montgomery, Alabama while King pastored the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a boycott of the buses erupted in early December 1955, sparked by labor and civil rights activist Mrs. Rosa L. Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man. The boycott lasted for an entire year when the federal courts upheld the rights of African Americans to ride municipal buses with the same rights as whites. (See this)

The formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, the birth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960 reinforced with the activities by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and other organizations, sparked mass mobilizations, further successful legal challenges and the passage of additional civil rights legislation in 1957, 1964, 1965 and 1968. Yet these reforms were inadequate in calming the quest for full equality and liberation by African Americans. (See this)

With the advent of the Pentagon war against the Vietnamese people in the early to mid-1960s, the progressive African American organizations took position in opposition to the genocidal onslaught in Southeast Asia. SNCC came out publically against the war in early 1966 and SCLC would follow a year later. These developments along with the outbreak of urban rebellions in over 100 cities between 1962 and 1968 ushered in a period of revolutionary resistance which Dr. King was responding to at the time of his assassination in April 1968. King was in Memphis demonstrating in solidarity with striking African American sanitation workers seeking a contract and labor recognition when he was struck down. Many believe until this day that his death was a direct result of the repressive policies of the U.S. government seeking to crush the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s. (See this)

King’s Legacy in the 21^st Century

In 2019 people in the U.S. are facing monumental challenges with the longest federal government shutdown in history, the continuing rise in racism and gender-based violence, the threat of another recession due to overproduction, the imposition of tariffs and intensification of labor practices, which is leading to an ever widening gap between the rich and poor. The Pentagon budget which Dr. King and others vigorously attacked in the late 1960s has grown exponentially resulting in hundreds of military bases across the world and the active engagement of U.S. troops in many geo-political regions throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America.

As Dr. King realized after 1966, there is no fundamental political differences between the Democratic and Republican parties. Both entities represent the capitalist class which perpetuates national oppression, class divisions and imperialism around the world.

The assassination of Dr. King and a host of other African American leaders during the 1960s such as Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, the isolation and imprisonment of hundreds of others and the destruction of people’s organizations, had a tremendous impact in stifling the historical trajectory of the revolutionary struggle. Today there are over two million people incarcerated in the U.S. with millions of others under law enforcement and judicial supervision. By no means can such a scenario constitute a democratic society where the rights of the working class and oppressed are protected and advanced.

Yet the struggle continues on several fronts. There is the escalating intolerance towards institutional discrimination and racist violence from the state. Labor activists are demanding a fair and living wage in the most marginalized sectors of the proletariat. In Los Angeles, 32,000 educators went out on strike on January 14 demanding higher wages, smaller class sizes and the overall improvement of working conditions.

Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike on January 14, 2019

Nevertheless, there is the need for independent political organization and action which unites the workers and oppressed into a fighting revolutionary party. This party must advance the cause for a socialist society where the capitalist relations of production are overthrown and equality and self-determination becomes embedded in the character of the state.

Detroit will once again be a center for commemorations of Dr. King and the civil rights struggle drawing upon the actual social justice and antiwar legacy of the 1960s. The 16^th Annual MLK Day Rally & March will be held outside of downtown this year in the North End section of a majority African American municipality which has been a focal point for failed neo-liberal policies on a domestic level resulting in massive dislocation through home foreclosures, water shutoffs, the destruction of public education and the impoverishment of the masses. (See this)

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks in Montgomery during bus boycott, January 1956

At St. Matthews & St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church beginning at Noon on Monday January 21, the federally-recognized holiday honoring Dr. King, labor and community activists will rally for a renewal of the struggle for liberation. The theme of the event will focus on the necessity to organize and mobilize the people for genuine equality and total freedom. Gail Walker, the executive director of the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) will be the keynote speaker.

This manifestation and others across the U.S. must serve as a rallying point to build a sustainable movement against the current administration along with the entire system of injustice and repression. Only the people united can bring about the change which is so desperately needed in the U.S. and across the planet.

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Featured image: Martin Luther King Jr. leads final demonstration on March 28, 1968 in Memphis

The first defense white paper released during the administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in deleted a phrase about the North Korean regime and military being the “enemy” of South Korea. The white paper placed new emphasis on South and North Korea pursuing military confidence-building, meaningful arms control and incremental arms reduction.

The 2018 Defense White Paper was published on Jan. 15 by South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense (MND).

“The Republic of Korea’s armed forces regard any forces that threaten and encroach upon our sovereignty, territory, people and assets as our enemies,” the defense white paper stated.

Referring to the threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles, the 2016 defense white paper published during the presidency of Park Geun-hye said that “as long as they remain threats, the parties responsible for those threats, namely the North Korean regime and armed forces, are our enemy,” but that language was dropped from the latest white paper.

The decision not to describe North Korea as an enemy in the white paper appears to reflect the improvement of inter-Korean relations and the relaxation of military tensions since last year.

“While inter-Korean relations have swung back and forth between the extremes of military confrontation on one side and reconciliation and cooperation on the other, the three inter-Korean summits and the first North Korea-US summit held in 2018 have created a new security environment aimed at denuclearization and the establishment of peace on the Korean Peninsula,” the white paper said by way of explanation.

The white paper stipulated that “North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula.” There was also a section about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities:

“North Korea is estimated to possess some 50kg of weapons-grade plutonium as well as a substantial amount of highly enriched uranium. The North also appears to have reached a considerable level of sophistication in its nuclear warhead miniaturization capability.”

A section that was added to the white paper states that “the foundation for establishing peace will be laid through the promotion of inter-Korean military confidence building and arms control.”

“Steps will be taken to ease military tensions and to build confidence between South and North Korea in order to create the conditions for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue and for establishing permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula. We will implement measures to guarantee military stability in connection with progress on inter-Korean exchange and cooperation projects and explore practical methods for arms control in line with progress toward building a peace regime and achieving denuclearization,” the white paper said.

Another new passage in the white paper said,

“The question of arms reduction will be discussed on a step-by-step basis depending on meaningful military confidence-building between South and North Korea during the process of building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”

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Yoo Kang-moon is senior staff writer of The Hankyoreh.

Featured image: South Korean President Moon Jae-in gives an address at the Ministry of National Defense on Dec. 20, 2018. (Hankyoreh archives)

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Saturday that the government under Venezuela’s recently re-inaugurated president Nicolas Maduro is “illegitimate”, and that “the United States will work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country.”

Pompeo’s remarks, which were echoed by Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, are interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is because Venezuela’s presidential election in May of last year (which incidentally was found to have been perfectly legitimate by the international Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America) was actively and aggressively meddled in by the US and its allies. The second is that while the US government is openly broadcasting its intention to keep interfering in Venezuela’s political system, it continues to scream bloody murder about alleged Russian interference in its own democratic process two years ago.

What is the difference between the behavior of the United States, which remains far and away the single worst offender in foreign election meddling on the planet, and what Russia is accused of having done in 2016? According to a comment made by former CIA Director James Woolsey last year, it’s that the US interferes in foreign democracies “for a very good cause.”

And that’s really the only argument that empire loyalists have going for them on this subject. The US is different because the US has moral authority. It’s okay for the US to continue to interfere in the political affairs of foreign nations while it would be an unforgivable and outrageous “act of war” for a nation like Russia to do the exact same thing, because the US is countering the interests of the Bad Guys while Russia is countering the interests of the Good Guys. Who decided who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are in this argument? The US.

This “What we do is good because we’re the Good Guys” faith-based doctrine was regurgitated with full-throated zealotry in a recent speech given by Pompeo in Cairo, in which he cited “America’s innate goodness” in making the absolutely ridiculous claim that “America is a force for good in the Middle East” which has been “absent too much” from the region previously. America’s nonstop deadly interventionism in the Middle East is “good”, because America is “innately good”.

America’s constant military interventionism, election interference and other nastiness are painted as Good Things done by Good Guys to fight the Bad Guys. The argument, when you boil it right down, is that if America wasn’t constantly starting wars, invading sovereign nations, staging coups, sponsoring proxy conflicts, arming terrorists, bombing civilians, torturing people, implementing starvation sanctions on impoverished populations, pointing nuclear weapons everywhere, spying on us all with a globe-spanning Orwellian surveillance network, interfering in foreign elections, and patrolling the skies with flying death robots, the Bad Guys might win.

Sort of makes you wonder who the Bad Guys really are, huh?

Things our foreign policies are not about:
* values
* freedom
* terrorism
* democracy
* human rights

Things our foreign policies are about:
* profit
* Wall Street
* Imperialism
* natural resources
* global economic dominance

— Lee Camp [Redacted] (@LeeCamp) December 30, 2018

The theme of Good Guys fighting Bad Guys resonates with a population that has been raised for generations on Hollywood films featuring a handsome action hero emerging victorious after a ninety-minute struggle and karate kicking an ugly villain off a cliff before kissing the pretty girl, but it doesn’t accurately reflect the reality we actually live in. Our world is dominated by extremely powerful people who are motivated not out of interest in good or evil but a drive toward power and profit which is completely disinterested in morality of any kind, and the empires they build for themselves have their foundations on the backs of ordinary people who are just trying to get by. The majority of those extremely powerful people either live in the United States or have formed alliances with US power structures, and all their agendas in Asia, South America, the Middle East and elsewhere have nothing to do with “protecting democracy” or being a “force of good”, and everything to do with amassing more power.

Even among those who recognize that the US-centralized empire isn’t a shining beacon of virtue in our world, the notion remains prevalent that if American power ceases to be a unipolar dominator then someone worse will take over the world. This fear-based mindset ultimately underlies all establishment manipulation and all educated support for it: the idea that someone needs to rule and dominate the world to prevent someone else from doing the same. But what are the fruits of this mindset? A corporatist Orwellian dystopia hurtling toward climate collapse if nuclear war doesn’t kill us all first.

We can’t keep doing this. We literally can’t; we’ll evolve beyond this fear-based dominator paradigm or we’ll all perish beneath its feet very soon. We are now in a position where our irrational fear of being invaded by China has pushed us to the brink of extinction, so it isn’t even a gamble to step off that train and try something else instead.

It is entirely possible that the US is capable of functioning like a normal nation and simply defending its own shores and sustaining itself without interfering in world affairs. It is entirely possible that the threat everyone imagines of some foreign power stepping in as the unipolar dominator should America vacate that role is the product of fearful imaginings with no bearing on reality and a fundamental misunderstanding of humanity. It is entirely possible that we are capable of creating a world where nobody dominates anybody, and no iron-fisted world leader of any kind is needed. Either way, the train we’re on is headed for a brick wall, so we’ve now got nothing to lose by stepping off.

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The new EU Copyright Directive is progressing at an alarming rate. This week, the EU is asking its member-states to approve new negotiating positions for the final language. Once they get it, they’re planning to hold a final vote before pushing this drastic, radical new law into 28 countries and 500,000,000 people.

While the majority of the rules in the new Directive are inoffensive updates to European copyright law, two parts of the Directive represent pose a dire threat to the global Internet:

• Article 11: A proposal to make platforms pay for linking to news sites by creating a non-waivable right to license any links from for-profit services (where those links include more than a word or two from the story or its headline). Article 11 fails to define “news sites,” “commercial platforms” and “links,” which invites 28 European nations to create 28 mutually exclusive, contradictory licensing regimes. Additionally, the fact that the “linking right” can’t be waived means that open-access, public-interest, nonprofit and Creative Commons news sites can’t opt out of the system.
• Article 13: A proposal to end the appearance of unlicensed copyrighted works on big user-generated content platforms, even for an instant. Initially, this included an explicit mandate to develop “filters” that would examine every social media posting by everyone in the world and check whether it matched entries in an open, crowdsourced database of supposedly copyrighted materials. In its current form, the rule says that filters “should be avoided” but does not explain how billions of social media posts, videos, audio files, and blog posts should be monitored for infringement without automated filtering systems.

Taken together, these two rules will subject huge swaths of online expression to interception and arbitrary censorship, and give the largest news companies in Europe the power to decide who can discuss and criticise their reporting, and undermining public-interest, open-access journalism.

The Directive is now in the hands of the European member-states. National ministers are going to decide whether or not Europe becomes a global exporter of censorship and surveillance. Your voice counts: when you contact your ministers, you are speaking as one citizen to another, in a national context, about issues of import to you and your neighbours. Your national government depends on your goodwill to win the votes to continue its mandate. This is a rare moment in European lawmaking when local connections from citizens matter more than well-funded, international corporations.

If you live in Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, Belgium, or Czechia:

Please contact your ministers to convey your concern about Article 13 and 11.

We’ve set up action pages to reach the right people, but you should tailor your message to describe who you are, and your worries. Your country has previously expressed concerns about Article 13 and 11, and may still oppose it.

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I’m standing atop Rush Hill on Alaska’s remote St. Paul Island. While only 665 feet high, it provides a 360-degree view of this tundra-covered, 13-mile-long, seven-mile-wide part of the Pribilof Islands. While the hood of my rain jacket flaps in the cold wind, I gaze in wonder at the silvery waters of the Bering Sea. The ever-present wind whips the surface into a chaos of whitecaps, scudding mist, and foam.

The ancient cinder cone I’m perched on reminds me that St. Paul, was, oh so long ago, one of the last places woolly mammoths could be found in North America. I’m here doing research for my book The End of Ice. And that, in turn, brings me back to the new reality in these far northern waters: as cold as they still are, human-caused climate disruption is warming them enough to threaten a possible collapse of the food web that sustains this island’s Unangan, its Aleut inhabitants, also known as “the people of the seal.” Given how deeply their culture is tied to a subsistence lifestyle coupled with the new reality that the numbers of fur seals, seabirds, and other marine life they hunt or fish are dwindling, how could this crisis not be affecting them?

While on St. Paul, I spoke with many tribal elders who told me stories about fewer fish and sea birds, harsher storms and warming temperatures, but what struck me most deeply were their accounts of plummeting fur seal populations. Seal mothers, they said, had to swim so much farther to find food for their pups that the babies were starving to death before they could make it back.

And the plight of those dramatically declining fur seals could well become the plight of the Unangan themselves, which in the decades to come, as climate turbulence increases, could very well become the plight of all of us.

During breeding season, three-quarters of the Northern Fur Seal population can be found on the Pribilof Islands. They can dive to depths of 600 feet searching for small fish and squid. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)

Just before flying to St. Paul, I met with Bruce Wright in Anchorage, Alaska. He’s a senior scientist with the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, has worked for the National Marine Fisheries Service, and was a section chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for 11 years.

“We’re not going to stop this train wreck,” he assures me grimly. “We are not even trying to slow down the production of CO2 [carbon dioxide], and there is already enough CO2 in the atmosphere.”

While describing the warming, ever more acidic waters around Alaska and the harm being caused to the marine food web, he recalled a moment approximately 250 million years ago when the oceans underwent similar changes and the planet experienced mass extinction events “driven by ocean acidity. The Permian mass extinction where 90% of the species were wiped out, that is what we are looking at now.”

I wrap up the interview with a heavy heart, place my laptop in my satchel, put on my jacket, and shake his hand. Knowing I’m about to fly to St. Paul, Wright has one final thing to tell me as he walks me out:

“The Pribilofs were the last place mammoths survived because there weren’t any people out there to hunt them. We’ve never experienced this, where we are headed. Maybe the islands will become a refuge for a population of humans.”

The Loss Upon Us

For at least two decades, I’ve found my solace in the mountains. I lived in Alaska from 1996 to 2006 and more than a year of my life has been spent climbing on the glaciers of Denali and other peaks in the Alaska Range. Yet that was a bittersweet time for me as the dramatic impacts of climate change were quickly becoming apparent, including quickly receding glaciers and warmer winter temperatures.

After years of war and then climate-change reporting, I regularly withdrew to the mountains to catch my breath. As I filled my lungs with alpine air, my heart would settle down and I could feel myself root back into the Earth.

The Gulkana Glacier in the Alaska Range, like most glaciers globally, is losing mass rapidly. Some experts predict that every alpine glacier in the world will be gone by 2100. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)

Later, my book research would take me back onto Denali’s fast-shrinking glaciers and also to Glacier National Park in Montana. There I met Dr. Dan Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist and director of the Climate Change in Mountain Ecosystems Project.

“This is an explosion,” he assured me, “a nuclear explosion of geologic change. This… exceeds the ability for normal adaptation. We’ve shoved it into overdrive and taken our hands off the wheel.”

Despite its name, the park he studies is essentially guaranteed not to have any active glaciers by 2030, only 11 years from now.

My research also took me to the University of Miami, Coral Gables, where I met the chair of the Department of Geological Science, Harold Wanless, an expert in sea-level rise.

I asked him what he would say to people who think we still have time to mitigate the impacts of runaway climate change.

“We can’t undo this,” he replied. “How are you going to cool down the ocean? We’re already there.”

As if to underscore the point, Wanless told me that, in the past, carbon dioxide had varied from roughly 180 to 280 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere as the Earth shifted from glacial to interglacial periods. Linked to this 100-ppm fluctuation was about a 100-foot change in sea level.

“Every 100-ppm CO2 increase in the atmosphere gives us 100 feet of sea level rise,” he told me. “This happened when we went in and out of the Ice Age.”

As I knew, since the industrial revolution began, atmospheric CO2 has already increased from 280 to 410 ppm.

“That’s 130 ppm in just the last 200 years,” I pointed out to him. “That’s 130 feet of sea level rise that’s already baked into Earth’s climate system.”

He looked at me and nodded grimly. I couldn’t help thinking of that as a nod goodbye to coastal cities from Miami to Shanghai.

In July 2017, I traveled to Camp 41 in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, part of a project founded four decades ago by Thomas Lovejoy, known to many as the “godfather of biodiversity.” While visiting him, I also met Vitek Jirinec, an ornithologist from the Czech Republic who had held 11 different wildlife positions from Alaska to Jamaica. In the process, he became all too well acquainted with the signs of biological collapse among the birds he was studying. He’d watched as some Amazon populations like that of the black-tailed leaftosser declined by 95%; he’d observed how mosquitoes in Hawaii were killing off native bird populations; he’d explored how saltwater intrusion into Alaska’s permafrost was changing bird habitats there.

His tone turned somber as we discussed his research and a note of anger slowly crept into his voice.

“The problem of animal and plant populations left marooned within various fragments [of their habitat] under circumstances that are untenable for the long term has begun showing up all over the land surface of the planet. The familiar questions recur: How many mountain gorillas inhabit the forested slopes of the Virunga volcanoes, along the shared borders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda? How many tigers live in the Sariska Tiger Reserve of northwestern India? How many are left? How long can they survive?”

As he continued, the anger in his voice became palpable, especially when he began discussing how “island biogeography” had come to the mainland and what was happening to animal populations marooned by human development on fragments of land in places like the Amazon.

“How many grizzly bears occupy the North Cascades ecosystem, a discrete patch of mountain forest along the northern border of the state of Washington? Not enough. How many European brown bears are there in Italy’s Abruzzo National Park? Not enough. How many Florida panthers in Big Cypress Swamp? Not enough. How many Asiatic lions in the Forest of Gir? Not enough… The world is broken in pieces now.”

“A Terrifying 12 Years”

In October 2018, 15 months after Jirinec’s words brought me to tears in the Amazon, the world’s leading climate scientists authored a report for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warning us that we have just a dozen years left to limit the catastrophic impacts of climate change. The gist of it is this: we’ve already warmed the planet one degree Celsius. If we fail to limit that warming process to 1.5 degrees, even a half-degree more than that will significantly worsen extreme heat, flooding, widespread droughts, and sea level increases, among other grim phenomena. The report has become a key talking point of political progressives in the U.S., who, like journalist and activist Naomi Klein, are now speaking of “a terrifying 12 years” left in which to cut fossil fuel emissions.

There is, however, a problem with even this approach. It assumes that the scientific conclusions in the IPCC report are completely sound. It’s well known, however, that there’s been a political element built into the IPCC’s scientific process, based on the urge to get as many countries as possible on board the Paris climate agreement and other attempts to rein in climate change. To do that, such reports tend to use the lowest common denominator in their projections, which makes their science overly conservative (that is, overly optimistic).

In addition, new data suggest that the possibility of political will coalescing across the planet to shift the global economy completely off fossil fuels in the reasonably near future is essentially a fantasy. And that’s even if we could remove enough of the hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 already in our overburdened atmosphere to make a difference (not to speak of the heat similarly already lodged in the oceans).

“It’s extraordinarily challenging to get to the 1.5 degree Celsius target and we are nowhere near on track to doing that,” Drew Shindell, a Duke University climate scientist and a co-author of the IPCC report, told the Guardian just weeks before it was released. “While it’s technically possible, it’s extremely improbable, absent a real sea change in the way we evaluate risk. We are nowhere near that.”

In fact, even best-case scenarios show us heading for at least a three-degree warming and, realistically speaking, we are undoubtedly on track for far worse than that by 2100, if not much sooner. Perhaps that’s why Shindell was so pessimistic.

For example, a study published in Nature magazine, also released in October, showed that over the last quarter-century, the oceans have absorbed 60% more heat annually than estimated in the 2014 IPCC report. The study underscored that the globe’s oceans have, in fact, already absorbed 93% of all the heat humans have added to the atmosphere, that the climate system’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases is far higher than thought and that planetary warming is far more advanced than had previously been grasped.

To give you an idea of how much heat the oceans have absorbed: if that heat had instead gone into the atmosphere, the global temperature would be 97 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it is today. For those who think that there are still 12 years left to change things, the question posed by Wanless seems painfully apt: How do we remove all the heat that’s already been absorbed by the oceans?

Two weeks after that Nature article came out, a study in Scientific Reports warned that the extinction of animal and plant species thanks to climate change could lead to a “domino effect” that might, in the end, annihilate life on the planet. It suggested that organisms will die out at increasingly rapid rates because they depend on other species that are also on their way out. It’s a process the study calls “co-extinction.” According to its authors, a five to six degree Celsius rise in average global temperatures might be enough to annihilate most of Earth’s living creatures.

To put this in perspective: just a two degree rise will leave dozens of the world’s coastal mega-cities flooded, thanks primarily to melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, as well as the thermal expansion of the oceans as they warm. There will be 32 times as many heat waves in India and nearly half a billion more people will suffer water scarcity. At three degrees, southern Europe will be in permanent drought and the area burned annually by wildfires in the U.S. will sextuple. These impacts, it’s worth noting, may already be baked into the system, even if every country that signed the Paris climate accord were to fully honor its commitments, which most of them are not currently doing.

At four degrees, global grain yields could drop by half, most likely resulting in annual worldwide food crises (along with far more war, general conflict, and migration than at present).

The International Energy Agency has already shown that maintaining our current fossil-fueled economic system would virtually guarantee a six-degree rise in the Earth’s temperature before 2050. To add insult to injury, a 2017 analysis from oil giants BP and Shell indicated that they expected the planet to be five degrees warmer by mid-century.

In late 2013, I wrote a piece for TomDispatch titled “Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice?” Even then, it was already clear enough that we were indeed heading off that cliff. More than five years later, a sober reading of the latest climate change science indicates that we are now genuinely in free fall.

The question is no longer whether or not we are going to fail, but how are we going to comport ourselves in the era of failure?

Listening While Saying Goodbye

It’s been estimated that between 150 and 200 plant, insect, bird, and mammal species are already going extinct every day. In other words, during the two and a half years I worked on my book 136,800 species may have gone extinct.

We have a finite amount of time left to coexist with significant parts of the biosphere, including glaciers, coral, and thousands of species of plants, animals, and insects. We’re going to have to learn how to say goodbye to them, part of which should involve doing everything we humanly can to save whatever is left, even knowing that the odds are stacked against us.

For me, my goodbyes will involve spending as much time as I can on the glaciers in Washington State’s Olympic National Park and North Cascades National Park near where I live, or far more modestly taking in the trees around my home on a daily basis. It’s unclear, after all, how much longer such forest areas are likely to remain fully intact. I often visit a small natural altar I’ve created amid a circle of cedar trees growing around a decomposing mother tree. In this magical spot, I grieve and express my gratitude for the life that is still here. I also go to listen.

Where do you go to listen? And what are you hearing?

For me, these days, it all begins and ends with doing my best to listen to the Earth, with trying my hardest to understand how best to serve, how to devote myself to doing everything possible for the planet, no matter the increasingly bleak prognosis for this time in human history.

Perhaps if we listen deeply enough and regularly enough, we ourselves will become the song this planet needs to hear.

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Dahr Jamail, a TomDispatch regular, is a recipient of numerous honors, including the Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism for his work in Iraq and the Izzy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Media in 2018. His newest book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption (The New Press), has just been published. He is also the author of Beyond the Green Zone and The Will to Resist. He is a staff reporter for Truthout.

Featured image: Orinthologist Vitek Jirinec at Camp 41. Some bird species in the Amazon have already declined by 95% since the 1980s. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)

I need not comment on the following social media post that was published on Christmas Eve. Tom Pride from Pride’s Purge asks the question: Which war-torn city in a third-world country was this man starving to death in? The answer – Birkenhead, England, Christmas Eve, 2018.

• 64-year-old severely disabled man found starving to death
• Thrown off Employment and Support Allowance to assist the disabled 18 months ago by ATOS
• Unable to use a toilet on own, feed himself or heat home
• 2 years ago ATOS forced to make a grovelling public apology for appalling service to disabled

This is the type of Britain we have become today – utterly heartless, lacking compassion and decency.

It was only two years ago that grovelling bosses from the heavily-criticised outsourcing giant were hauled before MPs to explain missed targets for carrying out vital assessments and deliberately denying vital benefits to some of the most vulnerable in society.

Last October was the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), as used by successive UK governments to restrict access to the long-term sickness and disability benefit known as the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Read our report published last July related to this article entitled: Killed by the State

Terry Craven is an Employment Law Advisor. This is from a Facebook post published on the 24th December that has had over 1,200 shares. I’ve checked it out and it appears to be completely legitimate.

“Please spare a thought for this 64-year-old severely disabled client of mine? Please share this post to see if we can garner a response from the Tories although, I doubt we will.

My client was thrown off ESA by ATOS 18 months ago. Since then, he has been expected to sign on. Obviously, he’s been sanctioned and forced to go hungry. So much so he weighs 6 stone. On Friday, not surprisingly he was at death’s door with pneumonia. Fortunately, I was able to get him into a hospital. Evidently, his left lung was full of fluid with his right not much better, he’s now on the mend.

He has been unable to heat or look after his home properly because his health has deteriorated which I suggest is obvious from the photographs. He lives in one room of his 3 bedroom house he rents from a private landlord. It is rat infested, he cannot use the toilet nor is he strong enough to put water in a kettle. He relies on bottled water. I am making efforts to have him rehoused in sheltered accommodation.

However, I think he may have to go into a nursing/residential home in the interim.

Birkenhead Benefits Centre has ignored my continuous pleas for help, the heartless bastards!

Well here’s wishing Maggie May, IDS, Esther McVey a very merry Christmas and Happy New Year. The one thing, which is certain is my client will not have one thanks to their evil, Dickensian policies. I hope they all rot in hell for the sickness, death and hunger the Tories have heaped on disabled people since 2010. My Christmas wish is for a general election and a Corbin/McDonald Government.”

In the image below, this gentleman’s weight is 42.4 kilos/6.6 stone. In the background an NHS nurse.

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This week’s Al Shabaab attack on a hotel and office complex in the Kenyan capital wasn’t the first time that the terrorists struck the comparatively prosperous East African country, but it more than likely won’t be the last since such attacks might become more common in the future due to the group’s exploitation of Somali nationalism and its possible employment as a Hybrid War proxy against China.

Kenya is reeling from the latest terrorist attack by Al Shaabab that killed at least 15 people in an upscale hotel and office complex in the capital, reminding everyone that the comparatively prosperous East African country still remains one of the Somalian-based group’s primary targets. While terrorism can never be justified or defended, some of its patterns can nevertheless be explained, and a deeper analysis of why Al Shabaab occasionally attacks Kenya reveals that the regional leader will probably remain in its crosshairs for years to come.

The most obvious reason why Al Shaabab says that they strike Kenya is because the country dispatched troops to Somalia as part of the AU’s AMISOM peacekeeping mission there that the group considers to be part of an international occupation. Terrorists all across the world are known to target countries on their home turf that deploy forces to combat them on theirs, and Kenya is of course no exception to this trend. In its defense, however, it believes that stability in the neighboring country is essential for ensuring its own, but there are also other reasons behind its participation in this campaign as well.

Most observers outside of the region who are unfamiliar with its ethno-cultural complexity don’t know that Kenya’s former Northeastern province (nowadays divided like the rest of the country into myriad counties following the promulgation of the new decentralized constitution in 2013) is mostly populated by ethnic Somalis and is claimed by their nationalists as part of Greater Somalia for historical reasons dating back to a controversial territorial delineation during the colonial period. Al Shabaab has attempted to exploit this nationalist narrative, hence why some terrorists think they are attacking “Kenyan occupiers” when they target civilians in other parts of the neighboring state.

This narrative is very dangerous because of just how appealing it could be, and given that the ethno-administrative issue of the majority-Somali former Northeastern province’s incorporation into Kenya instead of Somalia won’t be going away anytime soon because Nairobi considers the region to be an integral part of the country, it’s very likely that more misguided youth might be recruited in the future to carry out more terrorist attacks on this supposed basis. In addition, this sentiment could be weaponized and guided from abroad for Hybrid War purposes in order to “contain” China.

Kenya is one of China’s most important African partners and the People’s Republic just finished constructing part of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) megaproject between the largest East African port of Mombasa and Nairobi that Beijing hopes to one day extend to Uganda and possibly even beyond to the mineral-rich Congo. Furthermore, the port of Lamu – which serves as the terminal point of the Chinese-envisaged LAPSSET megaproject between Kenya, South Sudan, and Ethiopia – lies in extremely close proximity to the part of eastern Kenya claimed by Somalian nationalists and easily within Al Shabaab’s reach.

Bearing in mind the preexisting identity tensions that facilitate Hybrid War chaos within Kenya, as well as the US’ openly stated desire late last year to challenge China all across Africa, it wouldn’t be surprising if its intelligence services attempt to take advantage of Al Shabaab’s weaponized version of Somali nationalism in order to steer the group towards attacking Chinese Belt & Road megaprojects that have the long-term potential of strengthening the Kenyan state. As the modern-day “Scramble for Africa” shows no signs of abating and is poised to become a major factor in the New Cold War, this “dark scenario” certainly can’t be precluded.

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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 TimesLIVE

On January 11th the U.S. House of Representatives voted 411-1 for a bill that would force President Trump to nominate an anti-Semitism envoy, a position that has been vacant since he took office. The definition of anti-Semitism the position uses includes certain criticisms of Israel.

The bipartisan bill upgrades the current position of Anti-Semitism Envoy to an ambassador rank, which requires the job to be filled within 90 days.

The law states that the Special Envoy shall “serve as the primary advisor to, and coordinate efforts across, the U.S. government relating to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incitement in foreign countries.”

The bill, H.R.221- Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act, was sponsored by Rep. Christopher H. Smith [R-NJ-4] and has 87 co-sponsors. Smith’s largest campaign donor was NorPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee.

To become law the bill must next be passed by the Senate and then be signed by the president. If Trump vetoes it, Congress can override this through a two-thirds vote.

The position of anti-Semitism envoy was created in 2004 over the objections of the State Department, which said it wasn’t needed. It was urged by Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky, who had formulated a new definition of anti-Semitism that includes criticism of Israel.

Previous envoys before or after serving serving in the position worked for the Israel lobbying organization AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

The second envoy, Hannah Rosenthal, adopted the Sharansky definition of anti-Semitism for use by the State Department. This is part of an international campaign to insert the new Israel-centric definition in governments and other bodies around the world.

The Times of Israel reports that the impetus for the current bill was “Trump’s failure to pick someone for that opening over the last two years, despite frequent calls from Jewish groups.”

The lawmaker who voted against the bill was Republican Justin Amash from Michigan, a civil libertarian who is Chairman of the House Liberty Caucus.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), one of whose missions is to advocate for Israel, has been heavily promoting the legislation, which was first introduced last year. The ADL, which includes certain criticisms of Israel as “anti-Semitic,” has issued reports that there has been a “rise in anti-Semitism.”

Some have disputed the ADL numbers, since the ADL does not make public the incident reports on which it bases its claims, since some include actions or statements regarding Israel rather than bigotry, and since the widely publicized bomb threats against Jewish institutions turned out to be the work of a Jewish Israeli. Similarly, some reportedly “anti-Semitic” cemetery damage turned out to have been caused by neglect.

The new Congress has been quick to take up legislation promoted by the Israel lobby. The first Senate bill of 2019 is a composite bill that would give Israel billions of dollars and “combat” the campaign to boycott Israel over its human rights violations among its measures.

The anti-Semitism envoy legislation had been passed in the House in 2018 but did not come to a vote in the Senate. The Senate bill was introduced by Republican Marco Rubio (FL) with eight co-sponsors, seven of them Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren (MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Ron Wyden (OR).

The Times of Israel reports that ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt called on the Senate to “take up this bill in a timely manner.”

It is unclear when the bill will be re-introduced in the Senate. The current Israel bill S.1 has been blocked by Democrats over their battle with Trump and the government shutdown. The effort to bring that bill to a vote will resume on Monday.

The House anti-semitism envoy bill was expedited and voted on with little advance notice under a suspension of the rules procedure. The Senate could take a similar course of action.

Additional legislation regarding anti-Semitism may also be re-introduced at some point.

The Senate passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act unanimously in 2016, and it was reintroduced in both the Senate and the House last year.

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports: “The Act – pushed by AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of America – instructs the Department of Education’s Civil Rights office to follow ‘the definition of anti-Semitism set forth by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism of the Department of State in the Fact Sheet issued on June 8, 2010.’”

The bill has been held up over objections that it interferes with academic freedom and Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.

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Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. 

Featured image is from IAKB

Saudi Arabia, rolling dunes, endless desert, little rain. Northern China. Verdant hills, green fields and this time of year, heavy snow. Yet there is less water available in northern China per head of population than in Saudi Arabia.

With a fifth of the world’s population, China has about 7 per cent of the planet’s fresh water.

Even the quality of what is available is poor. Tap water is undrinkable without being filtered heavily. Industrial waste and the flow of pesticides from fields contribute massively to pollution. At least 10, 000 petrochemical plants dot the banks of the Yangtze River. China has about 88,000 reservoirs but at least 40 percent are in a poor condition.

Things are not much cleaner above ground. Massive strides have been taken too combat air pollution in northern China but it is still a cause for concern. The first two weeks of January have seen more polluted days, where levels of particulate matter 2.5 (often referred to as PM 2.5, because their diameter is 2.5 microns), exceed World Health Organization guidelines, than clear ones.  Correct, enough of the science. But PM2.5 levels are a main topic of conversation in Beijing. It is not uncommon for conversations in shops or the train queues to mention PM2.5 levels.

Some context. There are about 25,000 microns in an inch. In other words, they are small, about several thousand could fit on this full stop. They embed themselves in lungs causing a range of lingering respiratory problems that can be fatal.

Air pollution in China claims more lives than smoking. Outdoor air pollution in China causes about 1.2 million premature deaths a year, almost double the 750,000 early deaths caused by smoking.  Up to 200, the air quality index for China goes up in increments of 50 with 0-50 classified as excellent. I am writing this in Beijing with the index at 259, classified as heavily polluted.

China, the globe’s largest emitter, has installed more renewable energy capacity than any other country but it also opens a coal-fired power station every two weeks.

China is an ancient country getting older. The number of people over 60 is currently about 15 percent of the 1.3 billion population. This is expected to grow to nearly 500 million by mid century.

Then we deal with the 1:2:4 issue. Married workers often have to support a child, two parents and four grandparents. This means living with them in small flats but even if the main breadwinner works far from home, he or she, has to provide.

About half of China’s elderly live alone or with grandchildren as the parents have left to seek work. The Spring Festival in February, the largest movement of humans on the planet, will see many return home for their one visit a year.

So concerned are the authorities about the plight of the elderly that a law was passed in 2013 demanding that children visit their parents and not neglect them. That a country that prides itself on filial piety has to pass such a law indicates the seriousness the issue is treated with.

The climbing divorce rate in China means more elderly people are not being cared for by their families.

The rate has seen a marked increase over the last decade, driven largely by working women who feel empowered to start a new life. The government is trying to slow the trend, seeing it as a source of social instability.

Divorces rose rapidly from 1.8 per thousand persons in 2002 to 3.2 per thousand persons in 2017. And marriage rates have plunged. After peaking at 9.9 per thousand persons in 2013, the marriage rate in 2017 was only 7.7 per thousand persons.

“Have you divorced today?” has become a common joke between Chinese people. The issue is compounded by the fact that divorce in China condemns the elderly in-laws to an uncertain future.

Chinese New year starts on February 5. Ironically, this will be the year of the pig. Pork is the most popular dish and the health of the pig stock is of national strategic significance. But swine fever has cast a shadow.

China has approximately 700 million pigs but authorities have warned the country’s pork industry this month that covering up cases of African swine fever is a crime.

The animal husbandry and veterinary affairs bureau is stepping up investigations and increasing punishment concerning illegal activity in the pig industry, said a statement published on the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs website.

Deaths of pigs have to be reported and privately slaughtering and selling sick or dead pigs would be classified as a criminal offence, it said. Compensation of 1,200 yuan ($177) for each pig culled was sufficient incentive for farmers to report the disease, it added.

China is experiencing the worst outbreak of the disease ever, and it has confirmed about 100 cases of swine fever across 23 provinces (out of 34 provincial level administrative units) since August last year. The disease, for which there is no cure or vaccine, is deadly to pigs, although does not harm people.

China is a fascinating, incredible, colorful, safe and often frustrating country to live in. It has enjoyed turbo-charged growth not because it has cheated on trade deals, or pulled the wool over the eyes of the unsuspecting West. Its people work hard and are reaping the benefits of their labor. For many who travel home for the Spring Festival it will be the only break from work they have, including weekends.  Its universities are breaking new ground, especially in science and technology. Its streets are safe to walk on. But it does have problems, including pollution, care for the elderly and food safety.

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Tom Clifford is an Irish journalist based in China. 

Featured image is from GlobalMeatNews

Militants are preparing a new chemical attack in the Ma’aret al-Nu’man area in the province of Idlib, the Interfax news agency reported on January 15 citing an informed source.

According to the source, militants store toxic chemicals in several warehouses across Idlib province and the far northern part of Lattakia province.

The source stressed that Ajnad al-Caucasus, Jaish al-Izza and the Turkistan Islamic Party, all of which are linked to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, are preparing for a series of synchronized chemical attacks in the provinces of Lattakia, Idlib, Aleppo and Hama. According to the report, militants will use use shells and mortar mines as well as drones loaded with toxic materials.

The same report said that militants have shipped 500 liters of chemicals to the Abu al-Duhour and Helfaya areas in the Idlib de-escalation zone.

The source added that in December 2018, some 30 militants arrived in the Ariha area in Idlib province to make shells loaded with toxic chemicals. These militants reportedly receive assistance from foreign intelligence agencies. The very same militants were reportedly tasked with carrying out chemical attacks against civilians. These pre-planned incidents will then be used to accuse the Syrian Army of attacking civilians with chemical weapons.

A US military convoy consisting of about 100 vehicles has entered Syria from Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on January 15. According to the report, the column included multiple vehicles and logistic equipment for US-led coalition bases of  in the eastern Euphrates region.

This development comes amid growing uncertainty over the expeted withdrawal of US forces from Syria. In fact, the continued supply of military equipment to US-led coalition bases and Kurdish armed groups in northeastern Syria confirms that the alleged withdrawal is not going to take place in the immddiate future.

Meanwhile, the US and Turkey are negotiating the creation of a 32-km safe zone in northern Syria. According to reports, this zone could become part of a US-Turkish deal to prevent Ankara’s attack on US-backed Kurdish groups in the area.

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The fine 1960 film Inherit the Wind was more than just about the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee. Yes, it had as its focal point the law forbidding the teaching of evolution in schools. However, when one views this film, or reads the play it was developed from, one sees a doorway to totalitarianism. Added to that warning is the observation that many of us humans seem to need to be led. In the fictitious town of Hillsdale, Tennessee, the common folk were led by their religious leaders, who determined how they should not only act… but think. When the great statesman and Christian scholar, Mathew Harrison Brady, comes to town to lead the prosecution of the case, he surpasses even their pastor in influencing  minds. During the trial, Brady’s counterpart, attorney Henry Drummond for the defense, decides to put the right to think for oneself on the witness stand. The right to question authority, and yes, to dissent from it, is what was really on trial in that case.

Sadly, very few of our contemporaries, our neighbors and our political and media celebrities can see that America has become nothing more than a cartoon!  Politics, advertising and consumerism, blended in with so called news and information from our mainstream media, has led the majority of us by the nose. Look at the boob tube and instead of muting the volume when commercials come on, watch and listen to them. Do the same when the politicians stand before the microphone, or when the pundits and phony journalists speak. What you will observe is how they all treat you as if you were either an adolescent, perhaps 12 years old, or a senile elderly person. There is no real intellectual flow from these people at all. The commercials for products and services always allude to how everyone selling something to us really cares for us. Ditto for the politicians and the pundits: They all care about us and our families. They all care for our troops and the peoples of the countries that we are destroying with our superior military force. They tell you to place yellow ribbons and flags all over the yin yang and simply ignore the fact that this military empire is bankrupting us all!

So, we have two evils, masquerading as political parties, controlling our nation’s political system. Well, not really controlling; shall we say they are navigating it for the super rich? Who are these super rich? Well, all one needs to do is see who is benefiting despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of us are not. Follow the age old adage and ‘follow the money ‘. As many small businesses either fold up or cut labor and services, see which companies and individuals are doing well during these’ tough times for the many for the benefit of the few’. As the singer from the rock group Kansas declared, we working stiffs are becoming ‘Dust in the wind’.

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

 Theoretical vaccine-safety, theoretical vaccine-efficacy or the theoretical development of a “universal” influenza vaccine, have never been realized. Most of the “pie-in-the-sky” theories about a vaccination program’s capability of actually preventing infectious diseases (or cancers, for that matter) have been secretively invented and then promoted by the equally secretive propaganda departments of pharmaceutical corporations.

Lots of money can be made by buying and selling the shares of drug or vaccine-manufacturing or marketing companies that may, for example, only have a single promising new product “in the pipeline”! The corrupting influence of “filthy lucre” is especially true when the company holds the patent to the next new drug or vaccine. The medical products sector of Wall Street does whatever it has to do in order to maximize future profits. The pharmaceutical industry has to hide certain proprietary information that might forecast disaster if the product remains on the market long enough. Wall Street and Big Pharma are clever deceivers, and they know that physicians such as I, often fancying ourselves as being cunning investors, are also easily deceived by equally cunning propaganda that has a quasi-scientific flare to it.

A Little Knowledge is Indeed a Dangerous Thing

Please introduce yourself to America’s universal over-vaccination agendas and the astonishing rise in the incidence of such vaccine-related, “iatrogenic” disorders that are heavily- and falsely – advertised as either having “genetic” connections or of having “no known etiology”. The partial list of disorders in the following paragraphs are now known to be iatrogenic or autoimmunity-inducing (or both) and are usually related to the repeated injections of vaccines that contain the neurotoxic heavy metal mercury, the autoimmunity-inducing metal aluminum, live viruses, contaminants, other toxic vaccine ingredients and/or some combination of the above (especially when the vaccines are administered in un-tested-for-safety cocktails that are often given at one sitting!).

Because vaccine-induced diseases are rarely diagnosed and therefore not reported as iatrogenic by the physicians whose prescriptions caused the disorders, federal CDC or state Departments of Health statisticians will also not report them. Likewise, pathologists that do autopsies are usually also not equipped to diagnose fatal iatrogenic diseases – nor are they very inclined to do so.

Autism, Asperger’s, ADHD, Asthma, Allergies and ASIA – the “A’s” of Vaccine Toxicology

The following lists of potentially iatrogenic diseases (which mainly occur in the fully-vaccinated, by the way) include such vaccine-associated or vaccine-induced diseases that includes Autism, Asperger’s, ADHD, Asthma, Allergies and the fairly new, quite commonly-mis-diagnosed syndrome:ASIA(the “Autoimmune/inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants). The ASIA syndrome includes a large number of iatrogenic diseases that are caused by vaccine adjuvants and therefore commonly mis-diagnosed. One of the most important is the newly-recognized syndrome, the debilitating post-vaccination disorder called macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF).

In addition to those disorders above, there is also the following group of often iatrogenic, often prescription drug-induced, often vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders, including the following short list: multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, seizure disorders, peripheral neuropathy, Bell’s palsy, radiculopathy, encephalitis and various other encephalopathies, anaphylaxis, herpes zoster, optic neuritis, visual impairments, hearing disorders, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), near-SIDS, seizure disorders, the multitude of drug-induced toxicities commonly caused bystatin drugs, etc, etc.

And then there are the massive number of prescription drug-induced addictions, prescription drug-dependency disorders, the prescription drug-induced fatal or near-fatal over-doses and the later-developing drug- or vaccine-related developmental, behavioral, mental health, conduct or personality disorders, some of which are mentioned in the remainder of this article.

There are many honorable non-mainstream medical journals that do not forbid the publication of articles that honestly discuss the epidemic of iatrogenic disorders, including the ones mentioned in the above paragraphs. Mainstream medical journals generally accept unlimited amounts of Big Pharma advertising money, thus muzzling their editors when choosing which journal article submissions to publish. Hence there has been a lot of subtle censorship in mainstream medical journals that has disallowed the honest discussion that could have proven the iatrogenicity of the above disorders.

Physicians have been naïve pawns of the Big Pharma/Big Vaccine corporatocracy for most of the last century, and the greed-induced motivations of Big Pharma have developed and marketed as many profitable drugs and vaccines as they can. Sadly, we physicians have by and large not objected, partly because we have not been well enough informed.

Big Pharma benefits by having its vaccines and drugs rapidly patented and efficiently tested on lab animals (and then on human subjects) for safety and efficacy. The next steps include marketing approval by the FDA and then manufacturing the product as cheaply as possible (often in third world nations where labor is cheap). Since the CDC often has profitable connections to vaccines, they help push vaccine sales to the public.

If “all goes according to Big Pharma’s business plan” (in the case of Big Vaccine’s and the AAP’s infant vaccination agendas), every baby shot will be advertised as a savior of untold numbers of babies by grateful parents – until some of the tiny victims become seriously sickened by the inherently toxic ingredients that always have “synergistic” (not just “additive”) toxicities when administered in cocktails that are injected in three different sites at a single office visit. Every significant vaccine (or statin drug) “side effect” represents an iatrogenic symptom or actual illness, some of them becoming chronic illnesses or even causes of death.

Of course, if some alleged “universal” influenza vaccine is ever presented to the FDA for marketing approval, it won’t necessarily be because it is “universally-effective” (especially long-term), nor will it be approved because it has been proven to even be safe long-term. Vaccines are usually approved for marketing because certain statistical parameters will have been met. Those statistics will then be used as cunning marketing tools in order to convince providers to promote the new vaccine and to convince parents to insist that their babies get it according to the newest American Academy of Pediatrics vaccination schedule.

Both Big Pharma’s shareholders and Wall Street’s corporate investors demand that the “pipeline” contain as many potentially profitable drugs and vaccines as possible, no matter how unlikely it will be that there will be an actual health benefit to many of the recipients of the vaccines – or how likely it will be that there will be serious adverse effects. (Recall that there are over 250 new vaccines in Big Pharma’s vaccine pipeline with no mention by any health officials as to who among us will be expected to sit still long enough to allow even a tiny fraction of the 250 shots to be injected into our muscles.)

We easily propagandized, incurably hopeful consumers of corporate news providers (including us physicians) are too-easily misled by the for-profit, corporate-influenced, medical corporations that are fronted by seemingly all State Departments of Health.

”Just get Your Damn Shots” is Often the Simplistic Message

We physicians also tend to trust the Big Pharma-infiltrated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which owns dozens of vaccine-related patents from which they profit whenever their owned technology is utilized. There are many ulterior motives hidden in the CDC’s advertising campaigns. “Just get your damn shots” is often the message.

The CDC purchases from Big Pharma corporations and then resells to clinics and hospitals (and not pharmacies, I suppose) $4 billion dollar’s-worth of vaccines each year, so they don’t want any negative information broadcast that would negatively impact their future profitability.

As an example, influenza vaccine sales would be adversely affected if the media accurately reported the usual low incidence of actual vaccine-matched influenza outbreaks in ANY given year. Nor would the CDC be happy if the media accurately reported the usual mis-match between the strains of influenza that circulated “down under” 6 months earlier during Australia’s last flu season and the 3-4 influenza strains (out of over 100 possible strains) selected to be cultivated and marketed for North America’s flu season.

The CDC surely doesn’t want any information broadcast about the documented fact that only 20% of what is typically mis-diagnosed as “influenza” is actually true influenza at all, but only represents an assortment of other “influenza-like illnesses” for which there are no vaccines available.

There is a way to get some idea of the quasi-conspiracy that exists in order to get as many otherwise healthy people intramuscularly-injected with neurotoxic vaccines (starting with every innocent and immunologically-immature 6-month-old baby in America (not to mention every pregnant woman with a highly vulnerable fetus on board!!).

To get partly up to speed on the potential – and largely unreported – dangers of mass vaccination programs, please read my most recent Duty to Warn column that was just published in Duluth, Minnesota’s Reader magazine (January 11, 2019). The column has been re-published in any number of online journals around the world. (Read that column, as well as other related columns, here).

That Duty to Warn column tried to explain some of the many dangers of injecting cocktails of vaccines into immuno-compromised infants and children – particularly the totally unnecessary (neurotoxic and immunologically-toxic) aluminum-adjuvanted Hepatitis B vaccine that has been injected into innocent American newborns for decades. Many hospitals continue to inject Hepatitis B shots in every newborn infant within hours of birth – often before the baby’s health has been fully assessed – and often without parental consent or knowledge!! (A clear violation of medical ethics.)

Many American infants have been sickened or even killed by Hepatitis B shots. Besides being unnecessary in America, Hepatitis B vaccines used to contain the highly toxic preservative mercury. When mercury was finally acknowledged by the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) to be poisonous, it was quietly removed and the neurotoxic, frequently  over-stimulating, aluminum was added to many vaccines.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

The increasing numbers of vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders such as the recent epidemic of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus of childhood, can surely be attributed – at least partially – to the increasing numbers of autoimmunity-inducing, aluminum-containing vaccines that are being routinely injected into American babies, all on the basis of the propagandized message that vaccines are safe and effective (neither of which are true, especially when given in cocktails that have never been tested for safety or effectiveness, even in guinea pig labs).

For more related articles click here.

Gary G. Kohls, MD, Duluth, MN

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Dr Gary G. Kohls is a retired family physician from Duluth, MN, USA. Since his retirement from his holistic mental health practice he has been writing his weekly Duty to Warn column for the Duluth Reader, northeast Minnesota’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns, which are re-published around the world, deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s over-drugging and Big Vaccine’s over-vaccination agendas, as well as other movements that threaten human health, the environment, democracy, civility and the sustainability of all life on earth.  Many of his columns have been archived at a number of websites, including the following:

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; and

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

Sources

Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History – by Suzanne Humphries, MD and Roman Bystrianyk

Make an INFORMED Vaccine Decision: For the Health of Your Child (A Parent’s Guide to Childhood Vaccinations – by Mayer Eisenstein, MD, MPH with Neil Z. Miller

The Sanctity of Human Blood: Vaccination is not Immunization – by Tim O’Shea

Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy – by David Kirby

Leader of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham Abu Mohammad Al-Joulani declared his support to an expected Turkish military operation against Kurdish armed groups in northeastern Syria during an interview with Amjad Media on January 14.

He stressed that his group supports “the operation to liberate the eastern Euphrates”. He also rejected criticism from his militant counterparts that the recent Hayat Tahrir al-Sham expansion within the Idlib de-escalation zone opens a route for a Russian-backed military operation in the area. He recalled that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which just recently was the official branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, is an important part of the so-called “Syrian revolution” thus justifying its further actions.

Recently, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham de-facto established a full control of the most of the Idlib de-escalation zone by defeating the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation and forcing it to accept own rule across the area.

Now, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leadership is working to consolidate its gains in security and media spheres. Experts say that the main idea of Al-Joulani and his inner circle is to become an irreplaceable partner of the Turkish government in Idlib-related issues and this approach has worked so far.

On January 14, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlet Cavusoglu stressed that Turkey is doing what is required to maintain peace and prevent violations in the Idlib de-escalation zone. He even claimed that the Idlib de-escalation deal has been “successfully” implemented despite difficult conditions and that the Syrian government and the countries that support it are to blame if Idlib becomes “terrorist nest”.

Cavusoglu somehow forgot to mention that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is the internationally designated terrorist group, was excluded from the ceasefire regime established in the Idlib zone and is a legal target of military actions, which were expected to be undertaken in the framework of the deal. However, now it became clear that Turkey’s attempts to prevent the further military successes of the Damascus government in northwestern Syria openly contributed to the expansion of al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-like entities there.

Meanwhile, the political leadership of the Syrian Kurds was once again encouraged by harsh statements of US President Donald Trump towards Turkey and announced that it had paused talks with the Damascus government.

An official representative of the Syrian Kurds in Moscow, Rshad Bienaf, told the Russian media that there was a “dialogue”, but no results were achieved because the Damascus government is not ready to change the constitution in the favor to the so-called “democratic system” established in the US-occupied area of northeastern Syria.

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It is quite probable that India’s growing role in Central Asia via its US-approved Chabahar Corridor to the region will lead to increased competition with China there. But there is also the possibility that the two Asian Great Powers’ connectivity projects could pragmatically converge in this region. This will usher in the admittedly unlikely scenario of a Eurasian Renaissance if New Delhi breaks ranks with Washington due to irreconcilable economic disagreements stemming from Trump’s so-called ‘trade war’.

Central Asia, the focal point of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ‘Grand Chessboard’ is more relevant now than ever in the emerging Multipolar World Order with India set to challenge China for influence in this resource-rich space. The competition between the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative and the joint Indo-Japanese ‘Asia-Africa Growth Corridor’ connectivity projects is heating up after India secured a sanctions waiver from the US to expand its Iranian-based Chabahar Corridor into the region. It strongly suggests that the success of this initiative would advance America’s national security interests more than imposing the relevant sanctions on Iran. This observation pointedly speaks to the grand strategic significance that the US sees in facilitating India’s entry into Central Asia, even if Trump has to lessen the impact of his highly publicized anti-Iranian sanctions in order to have this happen.

The guiding notion behind this gambit is that the expected influx of Indian economic influence into Afghanistan and the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia could redirect regional trade routes away from China. This would allow New Delhi to cultivate its own local and national elite that have a financial stake in ensuring the success of India’s far-reaching American-assisted influence operation in this part of Eurasia. The US is willing to accept the residual economic and political benefits that Iran is slated to gain as a result of allowing its territory to be used for connecting India to the Central Asian region, wagering that it could nevertheless still be contained through the Damocles’ Sword of secondary sanctions if it gets out of hand. Furthermore, Iran’s deepening reliance on India as an anti-sanctions pressure valve enables America to indirectly influence its rival via Tehran’s relationship with its ally.

Acknowledging that the US is convinced (whether naively or not) that the pro-Iranian blowback that could result from this strategy is manageable, one can now proceed to analyzing the grander designs behind this approach. Washington understands that without India’s ‘economic intervention’ in the region, Central Asia will reliably remain under the influence of the multipolar great powers of Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey that comprise the Golden Ring. This is why the US is willing to sacrifice the ultimate impact of its promised anti-Iranian sanctions in the hopes that Tehran will agree to indirectly assist its plans in the region as an unofficial form of sanctions relief. This is not to suggest that Iran is knowingly conspiring with the US, but just that it has been pushed into the position where it believes that some of its interests are best served by collaborating with India on the American-approved Chabahar Corridor.

So long as Iran continues going along with this strategy, and there have thus far been no grounds to suspect that it would not, then it is inevitable that the regional countries’ growing economic relations with India will eventually lead to increased political relations with it. This could possibly be up to the point of breaking the de-facto Russian-Chinese condominium in Central Asia by introducing a so-called third force that could help its government balance between these two neighboring Great Powers. Russia no longer commands the economic influence that it once did in Central Asia. However, it can provide for the region’s security needs while China takes care of its economic ones. Viewed through a zero-sum perspective, this development would work out more to China’s relative detriment than anyone else’s. This is especially so when considering that Russia has excellent relations with India and is also inviting it to expand its investments in the Chinese-bordering Far East region. That is not to say that Russia is actively encouraging India to play a greater role in Central Asia, but just that it will flexibly adjust to this reality since it has no way of influencing this process one way or another.

One must bear in mind that the main artery of India’s connectivity investments in Iran is aimed at actualizing the North-South Transport Corridor for streamlining Russian-Indian trade via Iran and Azerbaijan. By dint of their geography, the two states that will probably see the most active competition between India and China are Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. For Afghanistan, Beijing previously suggested joint cooperation through the China-India-Plus-One format. Uzbekistan is an aspiring great power in its own right and eager to multi-align between the countries of the Golden Ring, India, and also the US. Interestingly enough, Pakistan is poised to play a role in all of this too.

There exists a realistic chance to expand CPEC into the region through three separate branches that could colloquially be called CPEC+, running from Gwadar to Chabahar and then up onwards, transiting via Afghanistan, and finally through Xinjiang in connecting Pakistan with its Babur-era civilizational cousins in Central Asia. The introduction of China’s all-weather ally Pakistan into the Central Asian competition could complement Beijing’s multipolar activities there and contribute to counteracting India’s influence, with the strategic consequence being that this landlocked region would then informally become part of the concept of greater South Asia. The impact of the Pakistani-Indian rivalry on Central Asia is impossible to predict in any precise terms, but it can broadly be forecast that it would remain within the non-kinetic sphere and restricted to economic, cultural, and informational dimensions.

Source: Economist

After all that has been analyzed thus far, it might seem like a fait accompli that India will soon flex its muscles as a disruptive force in Central Asia focused on shaking up the region’s affairs at the US’ balancing behest. But there still remains an unlikely possibility that an altogether different scenario might unfold which nevertheless cannot be discounted. The aforementioned analysis is premised on the presumption that India will remain one of the US’ top military-strategic allies this century, but in the off chance that irreconcilable economic disagreements over Trump’s so-called trade war push New Delhi to progressively distance itself from Washington in response, India could reverse some of the destabilizing effects that its entrance into Central Asia might otherwise have for the emerging multipolar world order.

To be clear, it would be altogether better for the Golden Ring if India did not play any role whatsoever in this construction of Central Asian Heartland. However, if it is inevitable that New Delhi will, then it is best for it to do so in coordination with Beijing through the China-India-Plus-One format that could potentially set the basis for merging their New Silk Road and ‘Asia-Africa Growth Corridor’ connectivity initiatives into a single developmental platform that could conceivably set the basis for a Eurasian Renaissance. Once again, it needs to be emphasized that it is extremely unlikely that this will happen because it would necessitate India having to defy the US’ presumably imposed primary and secondary sanctions against the Chabahar Corridor, but in the event that New Delhi garnered the political will to do so, then it could end up being a real game-changer.

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This article was originally published on Pakistan Politico.

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 Tehran Times

John Pilger, as foreign correspondent, covered Bangladesh’s Liberation War. His front-page report ‘Death of a Nation’ alerted the world to the life-and-death struggle of the Bengali people. He has been a war correspondent, author and documentary filmmaker who has won British journalism’s highest award twice.

For his documentary films, he has won an American Television Academy Award, an Emmy, and a British Academy Award given by the British Academy of Television Arts. He has received the United Nations Association Peace Prize and Gold Medal. His 1979 documentary, Cambodia Year Zero, is ranked by the British Film Institute as one of the 10 most important documentaries of the 20th century. He is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Heroes, A Secret Country, The New Rulers of the World, and Hidden Agendas. In an exclusive (electronic) interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, Pilger talks about his coverage of Bangladesh’s Liberation War, the state of journalism today, and the current political shifts happening in the West.

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Eresh Omar Jamal: In an article for The Guardian in 2008, you wrote that when you came to cover Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s wife Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib had asked you, “Why have you come when even crows are afraid to fly over our house?” But you didn’t write your answer. Can you share what it was?

John Pilger: I had spent much of 1971 based in Calcutta reporting on the seven million refugees coming from what was then East Pakistan. Their journey was along what we reporters called a “corridor of pain”. The previous year, I had witnessed the devastation caused by the great tidal wave that engulfed the unprotected Bay of Bengal. What had struck me was the lack of real concern by the government in Islamabad, which sent the army to impose martial law on the people of East Bengal.

Clockwise from top left; Martyred Intellectuals Memorial, Bangladesh Forces howitzer, Surrender of Pakistan to Indian and Bangladesh forces,^[1] the PNS Ghazi. (Source: CC BY-SA 3.0)

This was a dangerous corner of the world for ordinary people and dissenters from the colonial power that touched all their lives; it was also an inspirational place where, it was clear to me, a free Bangladesh was struggling to be born.

I like Bengali people; I admired their resilience and warmth and wit. In the summer of 1971, a young idealistic lawyer, Moudud Ahmed (who later rose to high office in Bangladesh), led me at night across the Radcliffe Line that divided India from East Pakistan. We marched behind an armed guide bearing a green and red Bangladeshi flag and we listened to people’s moving accounts of Pakistani atrocities and saw their destroyed villages.

My subsequent report in the London Daily Mirror and my colleague Eric Piper’s photographs provided substantial evidence that the Islamabad government was waging genocidal war in Bengal.

EOJ: Can you give an overall picture of what you saw happening in Bangladesh in 1971, and later when you came back to cover the Bangladesh famine of 1974?

JP: As we went from village to village, waiting for jet fighters to pass, the evidence was stark. Where there had been Hindu communities whose ethnic place in Muslim East Bengal had been delicately but peacefully maintained since Partition, there were now deserted ruins. Whenever the Punjabis attacked, it was the same pattern of massacre of Bengalis, Muslims and Hindus alike. In one village, people had been buried alive in mud. Now and then, in the midst of this misery, I heard the defiant words: “Joi Bangla!”

The years that followed liberation were extremely difficult. Bangladesh had been laid bare by war and the wilful denial of resources. I filmed the human consequence of a famine that ravaged the countryside and my reports asked why.

In Washington, Henry Kissinger, then President Nixon’s powerful Secretary of State, regarded Bangladesh as a “basket case”, which was an extreme ideological position that divided the world into “successful” and “failed states”. Remember the US then controlled most of the world’s food trade. To Washington, “failed states” were expendable, or places to dump surpluses; food shipments were used as a political weapon, literally to “zap” governments the US administration did not like.

Those countries that tried to assert their independence—for example, by voting against or abstaining from US motions in the UN—were denied food shipments and international agency support. The dilemmas faced by a new and troubled state such as Bangladesh were innumerable. I met Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and he wondered aloud whether or not democracy could survive in these conditions. Certainly, the recent election says it has not survived. The stuffing of ballot boxes and the deployment of armed thugs, and the brutal intimidation of opposition candidates, shame the liberation struggles and those who died in those epic times.

EOJ: Besides Bangladesh’s Liberation War, you have also covered wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and Nigeria. What roles can journalists and the media fulfil to help people who suffer because of wars?

JP: Journalists can help people by telling the truth, or by as much truth as they can find, and acting not as agents of governments, of power, but of people. That is real journalism. The rest is specious and false.

EOJ: You have been a journalist now for many decades. How has journalism changed during this time in your view?

JP: When I began as a journalist, especially as a foreign correspondent, the press in the UK was conservative and owned by powerful establishment forces, as it is now. But the difference compared to today is that there were spaces for independent journalism that dissented from the received wisdom of authority. That space has now all but closed and independent journalists have gone to the internet, or to a metaphoric underground. Bangladesh has a rich tradition of independent journalism; be sure you protect it.

EOJ: What are some of the biggest challenges and problems that currently exist within this profession, and what do you see as being the best solutions to them?

JP: The single biggest challenge is rescuing journalism from its deferential role as the stenographer of great power. The United States has constitutionally the freest press on earth, yet in practice it has a media obsequious to the formulas and deceptions of power. That is why the US was effectively given media approval to invade Iraq, and Libya, and Syria and dozens of other countries.

EOJ: For many years you have been a great supporter of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. How do you see them fitting into the current global media framework?

JP: WikiLeaks is possibly the most exciting development in journalism in my lifetime. As an investigative journalist, I have often had to rely on the courageous, principled acts of whistle-blowers. The truth about the Vietnam War was told when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. The truth about Iraq and Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia and many other flashpoints was told when WikiLeaks published the revelations of whistle-blowers.

When you consider that 100 percent of WikiLeaks leaks are authentic and accurate, you can understand the impact, as well as the fury generated among secretive powerful forces. Julian Assange is a political refugee in London for one reason only: WikiLeaks told the truth about the greatest crimes of the 21st century. He is not forgiven for that, and he should be supported by journalists and by people everywhere.

EOJ: Why do you think populism in America and Europe is on the rise all of a sudden?

JP: “Populism” is a pejorative media term. What we are seeing is a popular class revolt; people are fed up with the poverty, collapse in employment rights and insecurity that are engulfing their lives, caused by the extreme economic policies of their governments.

There are other contributing reasons, of course, but basically ordinary people in the West—especially the US, Britain, France, Greece and Italy—are seeing their precious gains fading away. That’s why the “Yellow Vests” in France have such widespread support. Also, a stampede of refugees from countries devastated by Western rapacious policies—such as Libya and Syria—have provided the scapegoats.

EOJ: Why do you think the liberal forces in those countries are being replaced by what are being described as elements of the far-right?

JP: Liberal forces are often to blame for the conditions that have given rise to the far-right. They have enabled the divisiveness. In the US, the Democratic Party has long betrayed ordinary people, whom Hillary Clinton abused as “deplorables”. Liberals in the West today are often class-obsessed behind a veneer of so-called “identity politics”. Ordinary people are waking up to that, or at least they are trying to.

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Is the US Planning to Wage War on Russia and China?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Bonnie Faulkner, January 16, 2019

First of all, that withdrawal in terms of US forces is trivial. The United States has operated in Syria by financing and supporting tens of thousands of jihadists with the support of Saudi Arabia and up to a certain point also Turkey, although Turkey has a different agenda.

Democratic Media: For the People, By the People

By Mark Taliano, January 15, 2019

Imagine paying your taxes thinking it is for the uplift of the community and country, only to find out it is for the uplift of the billionaire class … and ISIS/al Qaeda.

Benefiting Israel Tops US Congressional Agenda

By Philip Giraldi, January 15, 2019

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously was unaware that he was being filmed when he commented that “America is a thing you can move very easily, moved in the right direction.”

Entering a Major Regional Re-set – The Syria Outcome Will Haunt Those Who Started this War

By Alastair Crooke, January 15, 2019

The Middle East is metamorphosing. New fault-lines are emerging, yet Trump’s foreign policy ‘hawks’ still try to stage ‘old movies’ in a new ‘theatre’.

Trump, Bolton and the Syrian Confusion

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 15, 2019

His national security advisor, John Bolton, prefers a different message: the US will not leave north-eastern Syria till the militants of Islamic State are defeated and the Kurds protected.

The ‘Private Governments’ that Subjugate U.S. Workers

By Chris Hedges, January 15, 2019

Corporate dictatorships—which strip employees of fundamental constitutional rights, including free speech, and which increasingly rely on temp or contract employees who receive no benefits and have no job security—rule the lives of perhaps 80 percent of working Americans.

A New Narrative Control Firm Works to Destroy Alternative Media

By Caitlin Johnstone, January 14, 2019

A report seeded throughout the mainstream media by anonymous intelligence officials back in September claimed that US government workers in Cuba had suffered concussion-like brain damage after hearing strange noises in homes and hotels with the most likely culprit being “sophisticated microwaves or another type of electromagnetic weapon” from Russia.

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This article was originally posted on GR in November 2016.

William Blum was an important voice in the analysis of US foreign policy. His activism lives on.

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Louis XVI needed a revolution, Napoleon needed two historic military defeats, the Spanish Empire in the New World needed multiple revolutions, the Russian Czar needed a communist revolution, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires needed World War I, Nazi Germany needed World War II, Imperial Japan needed two atomic bombs, the Portuguese Empire in Africa needed a military coup at home, the Soviet Empire needed Mikhail Gorbachev … What will the American Empire need?

I don’t believe anyone will consciously launch World War III. The situation now is more like the eve of World War I, when great powers were armed and ready to go when an incident set things off. Ever since Gorbachev naively ended the Cold War, the hugely over-armed United States has been actively surrounding Russia with weapons systems, aggressive military exercises, NATO expansion. At the same time, in recent years the demonization of Vladimir Putin has reached war propaganda levels. Russians have every reason to believe that the United States is preparing for war against them, and are certain to take defensive measures. This mixture of excessive military preparations and propaganda against an “evil enemy” make it very easy for some trivial incident to blow it all up. – Diana Johnstone, author of “Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton”

In September 2013 President Obama stood before the United Nations General Assembly and declared, “I believe America is exceptional.” The following year at the UN, the president classified Russia as one of the three threats to the world along with the Islamic State and the ebola virus. On March 9, 2015 President Barack Obama declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.

Vladimir Putin, speaking at the UN in 2015, addressing the United States re its foreign policy: “Do you realize what you have done?”

Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
2. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
3. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
4. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
5. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.*
6. Plus … although not easily quantified … has been more involved in the practice of torture than any other country in the world … for over a century … not just performing the actual torture, but teaching it, providing the manuals, and furnishing the equipment.

*See chapter 18 of William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”

On October 28, 2016 Russia was voted off the UN Human Rights Council. At the same time Saudi Arabia won a second term, uncontested. Does anyone know George Orwell’s email address?

A million refugee from Washington’s warfare are currently over-running Europe. They’re running from Afghanistan and Iraq; from Libya and Somalia; from Syria and Pakistan.

Germany is taking in many Syrian refugees because of its World War Two guilt. What will the United States do in the future because of its guilt? But Americans are not raised to feel such guilt.

The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful. Vice-President Dick Cheney – West Point lecture, June 2002

Two flew over the cuckoo’s nest: “We are, as a matter of empirical fact and undeniable history, the greatest force for good the world has ever known. … security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military , economic, political, and diplomatic might.” – Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, “Why the world needs a powerful America” (2015)

State Department spokesperson Mark Toner: “Assad must go even if Syria goes with him.”

Many of the moves the Obama administration has made in terms of its Cuba policy are in lockstep with Bill Clinton’s, as expressed in the recommendations of a 1999 task force report from the Council on Foreign Relations. The report asserted that “no change in policy should have the primary effect of consolidating, or appearing to legitimize, the political status quo on the island.”

A successful American regime change operation in Syria would cut across definite interests of the Russian state. These include the likely use of Syria as a new pipeline route to bring gas from Qatar to the European market, thereby undercutting Gazprom, Russia’s largest corporation and biggest exporter. Assad’s refusal to consider such a route played no small role in Qatar’s pouring billions of dollars in arms and funds into the Syrian civil war on behalf of anti-Assad forces.

War with Russia will be nuclear. Washington has prepared for it. Washington has abandoned the ABM treaty, created what it thinks is an ABM shield, and changed its war doctrine to permit US nuclear first strike. All of this is obviously directed at Russia, and the Russian government knows it. How long will Russia sit there waiting for Washington’s first strike? – Paul Craig Roberts, 2014

Iran signed the nuclear accords with the United States earlier this year by agreeing to stop what it never was doing. Any Iranian nuclear ambition, real or imagined, is of course a result of American hostility towards Iran, and not the other way around.

If the European Union were an independent and rational government it would absolutely forbid any member country from stockpiling American nuclear weapons or hosting a US anti-ballistic missile site or any other military base anywhere close to Russia’s borders.

Full Spectrum Dominance, a term the Pentagon loves to use to refer to total control of the planet: land, sea, air, space, outer space and cyberspace. Can you imagine any other country speaking this way?

Henry Kissinger at the Paris Peace Talks, September 1970. “I refuse to believe that a little fourth rate power like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point.”

In 2010, WikiLeaks released a cable sent to US embassies by then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She wrote this: “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support for Al Qaeda, the Taliban, al Nusra and other terrorist groups … worldwide.” Surely this resulted in at least Washington’s much-favored weapon: sanctions of various kinds. It did not.

US General Barry McCaffrey, April 2015: “Because so far NATO’s reaction to Putin’s aggression has been to send a handful of forces to the Baltics to demonstrate ‘resolve,’ which has only convinced Putin that the alliance is either unable or unwilling to fight. So we had better change his calculus pretty soon, and contest Putin’s stated doctrine that he is willing to intervene militarily in other countries to ‘protect’ Russia-speaking people. For God’s sake, the last time we heard that was just before Hitler invaded the Sudetenland.”

No, my dear general, we heard that repeatedly in 1983 when the United States invaded the tiny nation of Grenada to protect and rescue hundreds of Americans who supposedly were in danger from the new leftist government. It was all a fraud, no more than an excuse to overthrow a government that that didn’t believe that the American Empire was God’s gift to humanity.

Since 1980, the United States has intervened in the affairs of fourteen Muslim countries, at worst invading or bombing them. They are (in chronological order) Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, Yemen, Pakistan, and now Syria.

How our never-ending mideast horror began: Radio Address of George W. Bush, September 28, 2002: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.” Yet … just six weeks before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice told CNN: “Let’s remember that his [Saddam’s] country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”

The fact is that there is more participation by the Cuban population in the running of their country than there is by the American population in the running of theirs. One important reason is the absence of the numerous private corporations which, in the United States, exert great influence over all aspects of life.

The U.S. is frantically surrounding China with military weapons, advanced aircraft, naval fleets and a multitude of military bases from Japan, South Korea and the Philippines through several nearby smaller Pacific islands to its new and enlarged base in Australia … The U.S. naval fleet, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines patrol China’s nearby waters. Warplanes, surveillance planes, drones and spying satellites cover the skies, creating a symbolic darkness at noon. (Jack A. Smith, “Hegemony Games: USA vs. PRC”, CounterPunch)

Crimea had never voluntarily left Russia. The USSR’s leader Nikita Khrushchev, a native of the region, had donated Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. Crimeans were always strongly opposed to that change and voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia after the US-induced Ukrainian coup in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin refers to the Ukrainian army as “NATO’s foreign legion”, which does not pursue Ukraine’s national interests. The United States, however, insists on labeling the Russian action in Crimea as an invasion.

Putin re Crimea/Ukraine: “Our western partners created the ‘Kosovo precedent’ with their own hands. In a situation absolutely the same as the one in Crimea they recognized Kosovo’s secession from Serbia legitimate while arguing that no permission from a country’s central authority for a unilateral declaration of independence is necessary… And the UN International Court of Justice agreed with those arguments. That’s what they said; that’s what they trumpeted all over the world and coerced everyone to accept – and now they are complaining about Crimea. Why is that?”

Paul Craig Roberts: “The absurdity of it all! Even a moron knows that if Russia is going to put tanks and troops into Ukraine, Russia will put in enough to do the job. The war would be over in a few days if not in a few hours. As Putin himself said some months ago, if the Russian military enters Ukraine, the news will not be the fate of Donetsk or Mauriupol, but the fall of Kiev and Lviv.”

In a major examination of US policy vis-à-vis China, published in March 2015, the authoritative Council on Foreign Relations bluntly declared that “there is no real prospect of building fundamental trust, ‘peaceful coexistence,’ ‘mutual understanding,’ a strategic partnership, or a ‘new type of major country relations’ between the United States and China.” The United States, the report declares, must, therefore, develop “the political will” and military capabilities “to deal with China to protect vital U.S. interests.”

John F. Kennedy changed the mission of the Latin American military from ‘hemispheric defense’ – an outdated relic of World War II – to ‘internal security,’ which means war against the domestic population. – Noam Chomsky

Cuban baseball players who are paid a million dollars to play for an American team are not “defectors”, a word which has a clear political connotation.

Boris Yeltsin was acceptable to American and Europeans because he was seen as a weak, pliable figure that allowed Western capital free rein in the newly opened Russian territory following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin’s era was also a time of rampant corruption by Russian oligarchs who were closely associated with Western capital. That corrosive culture came to a halt with the election of Vladimir Putin twice as president between 2000-2008, and again in 2012.

Many ISIS leaders were former Iraqi military officers who were imprisoned by American troops. The fight isn’t against ISIS, it’s against Assad; at the next level it isn’t against Assad, it’s against Putin; then, at the next level, it isn’t against Putin, it’s against the country most likely to stand in the way of US world domination, Russia. And it’s forever.

Connecting to the US-based Internet would mean channeling all of Cuba’s communications directly to the NSA.

George W. Bush has been living a comparatively quiet life in Texas, with a focus on his paintings. “I’m trying to leave something behind”, he said a couple of years ago. Yeah, right, George. We can stand up some of the paintings against the large piles of Iraqi dead bodies.

Seymour Hirsch: “America would be much better off, if, 30 years ago, we had let Russia continue its war in Afghanistan … The mistake was made by the Carter administration which was trying to stop the Russians from their invasion of Afghanistan. We’d be better off had we let the Russians beat the Taliban.” (Deutsche Welle, April 2, 2014 interview) We’d be even better off if we hadn’t overthrown the progressive, secular Afghan government, giving rise to the Taliban in the first place and inciting the Russians to intervene on their border lest the Soviet Islamic population was stirred up.

The former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in an interview in 1998 summed up exactly what the US thinks of the UN: “The UN plays a very important role. But if we don’t like it, we always have the option of following our own national security interests, which I assure you we will do if we don’t like what’s going on.” She is now a foreign-policy advisor to Hillary Clinton.

A leader taking his (or her) nation to war is as dysfunctional in the family of humankind as an abusive parent is in an individual family. – Suzy Kane

It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy … The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. – Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1992 to December 1996

Interventions are not against dictators but against those who try to distribute: not against Jiménez in Venezuela but Chávez, not against Somoza in Nicaragua but the Sandinistas, not against Batista in Cuba but Castro, not against Pinochet in Chile but Allende, not against Guatemala dictators but Arbenz, not against the shah in Iran but Mossadegh, etc. – Johan Galtung, Norwegian, principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies

No mention was made that Iraq’s Christians had been safe and sound under President Saddam Hussein – even privileged – until President George Bush invaded and destroyed Iraq. We can expect the same fate for Syria’s Christians if the protection of the Assad regime is torn away by the US-engineered uprising. We will then shed crocodile tears for Syria’s Christians. – Eric Margolis, 2014

Jewish Power is the capacity to silence the debate on Jewish Power. – Gilad Atzmon

We need a trial to judge all those who bear significant responsibility for the past century – the most murderous and ecologically destructive in human history. We could call it the war, air and fiscal crimes tribunal and we could put politicians and CEOs and major media owners in the dock with earphones like Eichmann and make them listen to the evidence of how they killed millions of people and almost murdered the planet and made most of us far more miserable than we needed to be. Of course, we wouldn’t have time to go after them one by one. We’d have to lump Wall Street investment bankers in one trial, the Council on Foreign Relations in another, and any remaining Harvard Business School or Yale Law graduates in a third. We don’t need this for retribution, only for edification. So there would be no capital punishment, but rather banishment to an overseas Nike factory with a vow of perpetual silence. – Sam Smith

I have come to think of the export of ‘democracy’ as the contemporary equivalent of what missionaries have always done in the interest of conquering and occupying the ‘uncivilized’ world on behalf of the powers that be. I have said that the ‘church’ invented the concept of conversion by any means, including torture and killing of course, as doing the victims a big favor, since it was in the interest of ‘saving’ their immortal souls. It is now called, ‘democratization’. – Rita Corriel

It is more or less impossible to commemorate the war dead without glorifying them, and it is impossible to glorify them without glorifying their wars. – Paul Craig Roberts

Tens of thousands of Los Angeles teachers and their supporters manned picket lines and marched downtown yesterday on the second day of the strike by 33,000 educators in America’s second largest school district. The walkout has generated widespread public support and growing calls for the spreading of the strike throughout California and more broadly.

For the second day in a row, as many as 50,000 strikers, parents and students converged on the city center, this time in front of the headquarters of the California Charter Schools Association. They were joined by 75 teachers who walked out at three charter schools operated by Accelerated Schools. Another 900 unionized charter school teachers have been kept on the job by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA).

There are growing calls by teachers throughout California and beyond for joint strike action. Teachers in Oakland are planning sickouts Friday to oppose threats by school officials to close one-third of the district’s schools, even as they expand privately run charter schools. Teachers in Denver, Colorado will be voting for strike action on January 19, and thousands of educators in Virginia are planning a mass rally in Richmond on January 28.

Striking Los Angeles teachers

Like they did during the teachers’ rebellions last year in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and other states, the leaders of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) are attempting to isolate teachers in Los Angeles and prevent the broadening of the strike across the state and the country. On the eve of the strike, AFT President Randi Weingarten, who is currently in Los Angeles, tweeted,

“This is not about a strike wave—this is a specific fight for the kids & public schools of LA.”

But Los Angeles teachers are not fighting a local fight. They are confronting powerful financial and political forces, including the Eli Broad Foundation, that are conducting a nation-wide conspiracy, with the backing of both corporate-controlled parties, to dismantle and privatize public education. That is why LA teachers cannot fight this battle alone.

To expand the strike and mobilize teachers and other workers across California, the US and internationally, teachers must take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the UTLA and the national teacher unions, which are allied with the very same Democratic Party politicians that have waged a decades-long war on public education in California and across the US.

The World Socialist Web Site Teacher Newsletter urges teachers to form rank-and-file strike committees in every school and community, democratically controlled and independent of the UTLA. These committees must demand full access to the behind-the-scenes negotiations being conducted by the UTLA, the school district and the mayor and governor’s office. Strike benefits, not loans from the union’s giant strike fund, must be paid to all teachers to sustain this historic fight.

In opposition to the UTLA’s craven abandonment of the teachers’ most critical demands, rank-and-file teachers should draw up their own set of demands, including a 30 percent pay raise, a cap on class sizes of 25 students, billions for the hiring of new nurses and staff, the ending of punitive testing for students and teachers, and the immediate reconversion of charter schools into public schools.

To fight for these demands, strike committees would call on all school bus drivers, custodians and cafeteria workers to defy the orders of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and walk out to shut down all LAUSD schools. At the same time, LA teachers and their supporters among workers throughout the city should extend their picket lines to the 244 privately run charter schools and call on their brothers and sisters to join their strike.

A call must go out to all teachers in Oakland and across the state to carry out a joint statewide strike and to teachers and all workers throughout the US, including locked out federal workers and autoworkers facing the shutdown of GM plants, to prepare a general strike to oppose government austerity and social inequality. At the same time appeals should be made to striking Mexican auto parts workers, Dutch teachers and other workers around the world coming into struggle.

Precious (center)

There is growing sentiment for such a fight. Precious, a young LA teacher, said,

“We need to have a statewide and nationwide strike wave. This affects the whole working class. Every teacher I know is working a second or a third job, whether it’s tutoring or something else, to make ends meet. We’re just trying to keep our heads above the water instead of being under it using a straw to breathe. There is more power in numbers, and this should be a nationwide and even a worldwide fight.”

“It doesn’t matter if we are in southern or northern California, or anywhere else, we’re fighting the same fight,” said Rosemary, an LA teacher with 27 years’ experience.

Retired teacher Mike added,

“When I started teaching in 1985, the UTLA used to fight principals that bullied teachers and tried to push them out. Now they have ‘teacher jails’ where older teachers close to getting a vested pension and health benefits are abused and over-supervised. This goes unopposed by the UTLA and their paid staff who tell teachers, ‘You have to follow the district’s rules.’ We used to have 43,000 teachers, and now we’re down to 33,000. This was done with the help of the UTLA.”

Teachers also denounced the refusal of the UTLA to pay strike benefits.

“They’ve been talking about a strike since 2017,” another teacher said. “We’ve been paying union dues, and there hasn’t been a strike for 30 years, so there should be money for us to strike. We should be getting $1,000 or $1,500 to help us pay our bills.

“Where did all this money go? The AFT president Randi Weingarten makes a half a million dollars a year. None of us are making that kind of money. Then the union is also giving millions to these politicians who say they are for us, but once they’re elected, they do nothing for us.”

In his Tuesday night Facebook address to teachers, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl placed all the onus for sustaining the strike entirely on teachers, saying it is their duty to picket every day “like it’s a work day.” He was silent on growing calls for a statewide and national strike and said nothing about providing teachers with strike pay.

Instead, Caputo-Pearl tried to impress teachers by saying the strike has received the support of four expected Democratic Party candidates for US president in 2020, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, California Senator Kamala Harris, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The UTLA president also said LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, another potential Democratic presidential candidate, had come to Tuesday’s downtown rally and was helping reinitiate negotiations with the school district. Caputo-Pearl said he was in discussions with the new Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom.

“If you have frustrations over how the schools have been run,” Caputo-Pearl told teachers, “take pride that we’re making history, and those who have power in this country are coming out in support of us.”

When it comes to strengthening the fight of LA teachers, the empty statements of support from these Democratic politicians add up to nothing. The Democratic Party exercises complete control over every level of government in Los Angeles and the state of California. No matter how many phony statements Sanders, Warren & Co. make about “progressive” Democrats, the fact is that their party has overseen the dismantling of public education in California. LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner is a Democrat and former official in the Clinton administration, and the Obama administration and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, spearheaded the assault on teachers and oversaw a vast expansion of charter schools.

The comments by Garcetti should be taken as a warning by teachers that the UTLA is preparing to sell out the strike.

“Rhetoric aside, when we look at what that distance is,” Garcetti said at a news conference Monday afternoon, “I truly do believe not a lot separates us materially. We have some policy issues to confront on things like charters, on things like how is LAUSD going to be reorganized under the new superintendent and what role will teachers play in that reorganization, but I really do know … they’re not talking very far away from each other, and that gives me the confidence we can get this done soon.”

In other words, the UTLA is seeking to see what role it can play in Beutner’s plan to “reorganize” the school district, and if the union can get greater access to the charter schools so it can get these miserably exploited teachers to pay union dues. This is the same role that the unions have played nationally, exemplified by the AFT’s slogan, “school reform with us, not against us.”

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Listen to the interview with Prof. Michel Chossudovsky below.

This is Guns and Butter.

“The Rand Corporation, on contract with the US Army, which commissioned a report examining a war with China. Now, this is called “War With China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.” The irony of this is that what they examined in this report is whether “we” could actually win a war on China.

Essentially, this is a simulation of a war between the United States and China and it comes up with the conclusion that we’re going to win it. That’s diabolical and it’s criminal. What has China done to the sovereignty of the United States?”

The study (published in 2015) entitled War with China: Thinking the Unthinkable was commissioned by the US Army. 

I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter, Michel Chossudovsky.

Today’s show: Is the US Planning to Wage War on Russia and China? Michael Chossudovsky is an economist and the Founder, Director and Editor of the Center for Research on Globalization, based in Montreal, Quebec. He is the author of 11 books including The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September Eleventh, America’s War on Terrorism and The Globalization of War: America’s Long War Against Humanity. Today we concentrate on the global military agenda, on the evolving restructure of geopolitical alliances, the Nuclear Posture Review, the purpose of the Manhattan Project, and the dangers of nuclear war.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Michel Chossudovsky, welcome again.

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: Delighted to be on Guns and Butter.

BONNIE FAULKNER: President Trump’s surprise announcement that the US is leaving Syria caught most people in and out of government by surprise and led to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Mattis. Two thousand US troops will be withdrawn from Syria. What is your assessment of this move?

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: First of all, that withdrawal in terms of US forces is trivial. The United States has operated in Syria by financing and supporting tens of thousands of jihadists with the support of Saudi Arabia and up to a certain point also Turkey, although Turkey has a different agenda. Within those jihadist forces you have covert, special forces from a number of Western countries.

I don’t view this necessarily as a major shift in the US foreign policy, but it’s also the result of the fact that the Russians are playing a key role, Turkey is playing its own role with a tacit alliance with Russia and Iran, and I think that what now the United States is doing is – it’s not a retreat necessarily, it’s a strategic withdrawal with a view eventually that its allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel, might play a more active role. And we see that Israel is actually involved in routine bombings of Syria.

BONNIE FAULKNER: You have long maintained that Israel’s defense forces are integrated into the US military command structure and as such do not act alone. Does this then mean that when the Israeli air force strikes Syria, as was done over Christmas, that the US has signed off on these attacks?

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: Well, if you look at the structure of military alliances and agreements reached both with NATO as well as with the Pentagon, Israel is a de facto member of NATO, not de jure but de facto. There was in fact an agreement signed way back. It was, I think, about 15 years ago.

Now, as far as air defense systems is concerned and major theater operations, Israel will never act on its own. It will act in terms of piecemeal military attacks, bombings and so on, but ultimately Israel is integrated into the US-NATO structure.

Historically, the United States has always used Israel as an outpost in the Middle East. We recall during the Bush administration that Dick Cheney intimated that maybe Israel would attack Iran on our behalf. In other words, he actually intimated they will do the dirty work for us but in effect, an attack on Iran cannot take place without the green light from the Pentagon.

I think that we’re at a very dangerous crossroads in our history because there’s an evolving situation in the Middle East. There’s a shift in alliances. There’s a global military agenda. Let’s bear in mind that since 2001 we have had a whole sequence of military operations, some of them conducted by US allies, but invariably Washington has been behind the wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and so on, and of course, Ukraine. So essentially what is unfolding in 2019 – in fact, it has been unfolding for a long period of time – is a global military agenda. It’s the globalization of war.

Coupled with this are military plans to attack Russia and China with nuclear weapons. Now, I mention this because these military plans are in the public domain. You can go and read them. The Rand Corporation has actually published its own plan, a few years back, and more recently we have another plan to that effect.

All this is, of course, coalescing and it’s coupled with trade wars, financial warfare sanctions. The nature of warfare has certainly progressed since the 1970s and ‘80s, and we have nonconventional forms of warfare. Some people call it hybrid warfare, where you destabilize a country by undermining its financial structure. That’s what’s happening in Venezuela. You manipulate the foreign exchange market and then Venezuelan bolivar collapses, triggering hyperinflation. That is something which has been on the drawing board of US foreign policy for years. But what I’m trying to emphasize is that there is a global military agenda. Of course, in addition to the wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan you have US war plans against China and Russia.

BONNIE FAULKNER: President Trump announced his decision to remove US troops from Syria shortly after having spoken twice to Turkish President Recep Erdogan. The mainstream news is reporting that Erdogan assured Trump that Turkey could finish off ISIS in Syria and that the US forces were “hindering” Turkey. Trump is reported to have said, “Okay. It’s all yours. We are done.” Of course, this reporting is based on the false narrative that the US was in Syria fighting ISIS. What do you think is behind Trump’s conversation with Erdogan?

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: You know, Erdogan has his own agenda and at the same time, Erdogan is sleeping with the enemy. In other words, they have now a coalition with Russia and Iran. In fact, these are cross-cutting coalitions. Turkey is a heavyweight in NATO. In terms of military might it’s the second largest, in terms of conventional forces, after the United States. And it’s allied, of course, to the United States. But then on the other hand, Turkey is opening up to Iran and Russia, and that is a situation which evolved after the failed coup against Erdogan a few years back. So there’s been a major shift in geopolitical relations.

But I think the United States realizes, first of all, that Turkey’s agenda in northern Syria is to fight the YPG, in other words, the Kurdistan separatist movement. I think that what they’re doing now is simply – well, because the YPG at one point was supported by the US, so you don’t want to have Turkey fighting your proxy forces. And as a result of that contradictory situation in northern Syria, the United States has decided to withdraw and let Turkey consolidate in northern Syria. As to whether that will occur is very uncertain because now the YPG, which previously had the support of the United States, is negotiating with the Damascus government and with the Russians.

BONNIE FAULKNER: As well, the president is saying that he wants to remove US troops from Afghanistan. What is the strategy behind withdrawing US troops from these countries? Do these announced troop withdrawals indicate a move away from war or rather the privatization of military actions via Blackwater and other private militias? What do you think?

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: First of all, as far as Afghanistan is concerned, this withdrawal, again, is not really a withdrawal; it’s a restructuring of the conflict. But what’s important to bear in mind is that the insurgency, which is led by the Taliban, is gaining ground and controls about 50% of the country.

The Russians have an interest in Afghanistan and, of course, so do the Chinese, which have a common border with Afghanistan and they also have significant economic interests in Afghanistan. But I don’t see, again, that the United States is actually going to withdraw.

We have to bear in mind that Afghanistan is a US-NATO agenda and we have to go back to 2001 to understand why. Well, some people forget that the United States went into Afghanistan essentially because Afghanistan attacked America on 11 September 2001. We don’t know that because that narrative was never actually portrayed by the media, but legally, the decision taken by NATO was that America had been attacked from abroad by a foreign power – which was absurd; there were no Afghani jetfighters in the skies of New York that day – and consequently under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty Collective Security Agreement an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all members of NATO, it’s an attack of self-defense. And then we go and attack Afghanistan some thousands of miles away, and that happens 28 days later. You don’t prepare a large-scale theater war in 28 days.

But people don’t remember why the United States actually invaded Afghanistan on the 7th of October 2001. It was in response to the 9/11 attacks and, of course, those 9/11 attacks were allegedly – I don’t want to get into a discussion on 9/11 – allegedly they were conducted by al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden. And it just so happens, of course, that in the course of the month of September and even early October, the Afghan government said, “If you want to negotiate the extradition of Osama bin Laden, we’re prepared to do so,” etc etc. Bush said, “No. We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Of course, they didn’t want to negotiate because that war was planned well in advance of September 11, 2001.

Now, bear in mind, what were the real reasons for invading Afghanistan? Well, Afghanistan is a geopolitical hub which links central Asia to south Asia. Historically, it’s occupied a very important position, but it also has tremendous resources. They’re the mineral riches. It’s one of the largest producers of lithium, which is used to make batteries. But more significantly, it produces approximately more than 90% of opium supplies to Western markets, of course, used to make grade 4 heroin. And that’s a multi-billion dollar undertaking.

It’s a war of conquest, so to speak. The US military controls the opium trade – incidentally, the production of opium in the course of that period has gone up about 30 times, and in turn, there’s tremendous mineral reserves. And then on the other hand, China’s involved, so that from the US point of view, Afghanistan is the hub that they want to keep under their control to keep the Chinese and the Russians out of that strategic hub in central Asia.

They’re failing, because the Chinese not only have significant mining interests in Afghanistan, they’re also in the process of building a road linking the two countries and so on.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Let’s talk about what you have referred to as the global military agenda and the structure of alliances in the Middle East. There has been a shift or rebalancing of geopolitical alliances. The situation seems fluid. What can be said about the alliance between Turkey, a NATO member, and Russia and Iran? This brings up the subject of an attack on Iran, which now does not seem probable at all.

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: First of all, let me address the issue of the broader military agenda. At present, we have several war theaters. The most important ones are, of course, Iraq, Syria – there’s still of course a US-NATO covert presence in Syria – Yemen is absolutely crucial. There’s a war in Yemen. Yemen is strategically located. It’s led by Saudi Arabia, which is acting on behalf of the United States. And then you have Somalia and of course Palestine and, as I mentioned earlier, the building up of NATO forces in Ukraine and the Black Sea Basin.

All of this is integrated into a more global military agenda with a regional command structure where the United States military has commands in different parts of the world. Central Command is for the Middle East, and then you have also the Pacific Command. China’s maritime borders are controlled by the US, or at least the US has a military presence in all these strategic waterways.

Now, that agenda, as you mentioned, in a sense is in a straightjacket because there are divisions within the Western military alliance. And not only Turkey, not only Turkey. There are different positions by the European members of the Atlantic Alliance. But the issue of Turkey is absolutely fundamental, because if Turkey has an alliance with Iran and Russia it’s going to be very difficult to wage a US-NATO led war on Iran.

At the same time, if we’re looking at alliances, which under present circumstances are exceedingly complex, we must underscore the fact that Turkey has also historically – and that goes back to the ‘90s – developed a very close relationship with Israel in the areas of both military and intelligence as well as joint military production. That alliance was in crisis at one point, but it’s still there.

And then there’s another element. Russia has established a relationship with Israel. There’s a large part of the Israeli population of Russian origin, and certainly that plays a role. But Vladimir Putin and Netanyahu have established a relationship. Some people view this as Russia sort of caving in to Israel against its Syrian ally, but I think it is part of a very carefully thought-out strategy of essentially creating weaknesses within the US-NATO structure. Because in a sense, Israel is also sleeping with the enemy, and there’s a bilateral relationship between Moscow and Tel Aviv, and that should be taken into account.

So we might way, yes, it is very difficult for the United States to wage war on Iran at this particular juncture because Turkey is sleeping with the enemy, and Israel is also sleeping with Turkey up to a point, which as well is sleeping with Iran and with Russia. So the structure of military alliances are not favorable to waging a US-NATO-Israel war on Iran.

We can learn from the lessons of history, particularly World War I, triple alliance, triple entente, that the structure of alliances played a very important role in the outbreak of war I. But here we are in the situation where we have cross-cutting alliances.

The Russians and the Chinese are very astute in that regard. They will establish alliances with the allies of the United States and this is a way also of undermining this military agenda, by making it very difficult on the part of Washington to actually wage a war – to wage a war on Iran. If NATO’s going to participate in that war they will have to have the endorsement of Turkey. So Turkey’s in bed with the enemy and Turkey’s also an ally of the United States and a member of NATO, and Israel is a firm ally of the United States but it also has some kind of joking relationship with Vladimir Putin. And all those things are part of a complex geopolitical structure.

And I should mention other things that are absolutely crucial. United States is losing its stranglehold in Pakistan and to some extent also in India. Why? Pakistan is now trading with China. It’s called the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, the CPEC. China’s investing in Pakistan. We’re talking about a nation of 150 million people.

Then, on the other hand, Pakistan and India are now full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is the equivalent of NATO for the Russians and the Chinese. Officially, it’s not a military alliance but de facto it is. It’s China, Russia, several of the former Soviet republics, and now India and Pakistan have joined.

What this means is that the conflict between Pakistan and India is no longer under the helm of Britain or the United States. The colonial legacy has in a sense been shoved aside, because under the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Pakistan and India, which are members of the SCO, would have to resolve the border differences within the framework of the SCO. And they signed that agreement. So we’ve got a very different configuration in south Asia. Pakistan is aligned with China increasingly, India is sort of in-between but India is also wanted to purchase the S400 air defense system from Russia.

At the same time, I should mention Saudi Arabia has also established links with Russia. They want to buy the S400 and I suspect that the Khashoggi affair is ultimately linked to the fact that the current regime in Saudi Arabia is seeking some rapprochement with Russia and this is something that the United States wants to undermine through regime change. But that’s another kind of analysis that we’d have to look at.

But there you are. And if you look at what’s happening broadly in Eurasia, with the extension of Chinese influence – Chinese influence is not only in the Asia Pacific region; it extends into Africa, and it extends in to countries which were former colonies of Western countries and all of a sudden, the Chinese come in and start building bridges and roads.

So that is the nature of this broader conflict; shift in alliances – very sophisticated shift in alliances and extensive powers of both Russia and China. I should say that Russian military technology is advancing very rapidly and in a very specific way which undermines the global military agenda and China is now leading, in terms of technology – for instance, telecommunications, China is the leader, let’s say in 5G – and the recent confrontation regarding Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, points precisely to that. It’s a very serious conflict in the area of trade and intellectual property.

The response of the United States is ultimately rather idiotic because it doesn’t really yield any concrete results in terms of rehabilitating US hegemony in certain fields of technology. The Chinese are way ahead.

BONNIE FAULKNER: What can we say about the geopolitical agenda of the United States, including President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the INF treaty? There are also supposed to be ongoing negotiations to extend the new START to reduce strategic weapons, which Trump called a bad deal.

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: This is, of course, very dangerous, because it ultimately points to the possibility of confrontation between nuclear powers. I think that we have to build our understanding of those occurrences by reviewing US nuclear doctrine from approximately 2001. That doctrine has changed and, in effect, the withdrawal from these treaties, from my standpoint, is simply an indication to the enemy that US nuclear doctrine is no longer based on what we called the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which prevailed during the Cold War era when that first agreement was signed with Gorbachev under the Bush Senior administration.

In 2001, the nuclear doctrine was totally revamped. When I say doctrine, it’s how you view nuclear weapons and their use. Now, previously, nuclear weapons were considered as the weapon of last resort and for defensive purposes and that you wouldn’t use them on a first strike basis. This was a doctrine which was adopted during the Cold War, because it was understood by both US as well as Soviet leaders that this would lead to a nuclear holocaust.

But they have since 2001 – and it was actually approved by the Senate in 2002 – they are pushing the so-called more usable, low-yield nuclear weapons which are called the B61. It’s the B61 and now it’s the B61-12, B61-11 and now B61-12 which has been developed, and that those more usable, low-yield are harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground, because they’re a bunker-buster bomb and so on.

It’s total nonsense from the scientific point of view. The fact of the matter is these more usable nuclear weapons have an explosive capacity between 1/3 and 12 times the Hiroshima bomb, and they’ve been recategorized as more or less as convention weapons. I recall that Senator Edward Kennedy at the time accused the Bush administration of blurring the line between conventional and strategic weapons. So these bombs now are considered as peace-making bombs, they’re not weapons of mass destruction, let’s go ahead and use them.

So it is extremely dangerous now because the US has embarked on a first-strike nuclear weapons doctrine including first strike against non-nuclear states, e.g., Iran, and that in fact, this first strike using the so-called mini-nukes could be used within the conventional war theater and, in fact, it doesn’t even require the approval of the commander in chief, namely Donald Trump.

So we’re in a situation which is extremely dangerous because the decision-makers do not realize and they don’t understand the impacts of nuclear weapons because the propaganda apparatus – the internal propaganda apparatus, which they read – points to these harmless low-yield weapons. But those low-yield weapons are nonetheless sufficient to unleash a third world war. I think the body of scientists involved in expertise on nuclear weapons will tell you that a nuclear war would be the end of humanity.

BONNIE FAULKNER: In your article “Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map” you write that “On March 1, 2018 President Vladimir Putin unveiled an array of advanced military technologies in response to renewed US threats to wipe the Russian Federation off the map as contained in Trump’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.” What does Trump’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review say?

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: You know, I think that the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review is really a red herring because it doesn’t say anything different form the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, and I know that a whole series of interpretations have come out on that 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. It simply reasserts the notion that this new generation of nuclear weapons – low-yield, more usable – is what is being put forth.

Now, what we must, of course, address is the fact that going back to the Obama administration there is currently a $1.2 trillion nuclear weapons production program. In other words, that is money going to the defense contractors. And obviously, these are the lobby groups. They get the money. Now, they’re getting the money for producing something which – first of all, the development of this new generation of nuclear weapons was actually decided at a secret meeting on Hiroshima Day, I believe it was in 2003, where the Pentagon and the private sector got together and it was the private sector, it was the defense contractors which designed a new program of nuclear weapons technology which would essentially feed their pockets. It was profit driven.

And distinct form the Russian program, which was a very carefully designed air defense system to avoid the first strike – they said, no, the first strike won’t work anymore. The whole initiative going back to the Reagan period with Star Wars and so on was to enact a weapons system which would enable knocking down Russia or China with a first strike without the danger of any kind of response from the enemy. And Putin as said, no, this you can’t do. You’re stuck.

The weapons industry are not really concerned about that issue because they’re getting the $1.2 trillion. Obama bears a heavy responsibility for having endorsed this program, but Trump has sort of pushed it up to 1.2. It used to be 1 trillion; now it’s 1.2 trillion.

Bear in mind that the defense budget, which was recently approved by the US Congress, is of the order of $750 billion a year. It is a very large percentage of federal tax revenues, which goes to building the war economy. And inevitably, building the war economy is one of the main sources – not the only one – of the collapse of bridges and roads and hospitals and schools and the whole impetus to privatize everything which was public. They don’t have money. The US public purse does not have the resources to fund those civilian projects and that is, of course, the guns and butter relationship, which is the key of your program. There’s nothing left for butter and that is something, of course, that we have to address.

The empire is undermining the republic, and that’s something which Julius Caesar understood. You don’t build an empire with a republic. But the republic is dead, and the devastation which is now occurring, the poverty in the United States, is in large part, not exclusively, but in large part the result of the shift between butter towards guns, in other words, the development of a whole military apparatus – not to mention the militarization of justice and law enforcement and so on.

BONNIE FAULKNER: With regard to the history of US nuclear development, the nuclear project, the US and the Soviet Union were allies during World War II while the Manhattan Project was underway in the US. What was the purpose of the Manhattan Project?

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: Let me put this in perspective, because today we are led to believe that nuclear weapons were developed to confront the enemies of World War II, which were, of course, Germany and Italy as far as the Axis is concerned, and then of course, in Asia it was Japan.

I have reviewed the history of nuclear war and nuclear weapons, and in fact, declassified documents confirm that the atomic bomb had been developed for use against the Soviet Union. Of course, it was used against Japan, but to what extent was that not simply a dress rehearsal for the broader development of the nuclear weapons program?

I think what is very revealing now is that, according to a secret document of the Pentagon dated September 15, 1945, the United States had envisaged blowing up the Soviet Union with a coordinated nuclear attack directed against major urban areas. Now people can go and consult that declassified document. It was declassified a few years back. But what is revealing is that on September 15, 1945, there was a plan to blow up something of the order of 66 major urban areas in the Soviet Union with a total of 204 atomic bombs. You can go and look at that plan.

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”, 204 Atomic Bombs against 66 Major Cities, US Nuclear Attack against USSR Planned During World War II 

What I’m saying is that this plan was released – it’s an internal document, obviously, but it’s there to consult and it’s very detailed. This plan was launched more or less six weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945, Nagasaki was bombed a few days later on August 9, 1945, and then six weeks later on September 15, 1945 the Pentagon released a plan to blow up 66 strategic targets, namely cities, in the Soviet Union with 204 atomic bombs. Then the question was, how do we organize the supply and production of these atomic bombs?

What this means, and I think it’s very, very important, is that while the Soviet Union and the United States were allies and they were allies on September 15, 1945 – and of course, they were allies as of 1941 fighting the Third Reich – that in fact, in the course of World War Ii there’s evidence that the United States had already planned to blow up the Soviet Union. That plan was published in September 15, 1945, and that predates the Cold War.

So we are led to believe that somehow there was an arms race that took place as a result of the Cold War. No. No. That’s wrong. The arms race occurred as a result of a secret plan dated September 1945, which had already been prepared during World War II against the Soviet Union when both countries were allies. That is, of course, diabolical but it means that we have to review our understanding. The Kremlin was aware of this plan to bomb 66 Soviet cities – and we published excerpts of this. The Pentagon estimated bomb requirements for the destruction of Russian strategic areas September 1945; Moscow, area of the city and square miles 110, number of bombs 6; Leningrad, 40 square miles, also 6; and so on and so forth. The larger urban areas were to be bombed with six atomic bombs and the smaller ones would be two or three or one. In all, virtually all the urban areas in the Soviet Union were targets.

BONNIE FAULKNER: In this article that you’ve written on the Manhattan Project, “Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map,” you write that, “Had the US decided not to develop nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union, the nuclear arms race would not have taken place.”

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: Absolutely. We wouldn’t have had nuclear weapons technology. That was a decision taken in 1939 to develop nuclear technology, allegedly because the Germans were actually involved in developing it. But there are indications that in fat Nazi Germany was not intent upon developing nuclear weapons. That’s another area of discussion, but actually Hitler was against it, for some ideological reason he was against it. But it’s unclear as to whether Germany would have been a target. There’s no evidence in that regard and on the other hand, there are no declassified documents that indicate that, to my knowledge. But on the other hand, there’s a declassified document that indicates that they wanted to blow up the Soviet Union.

Now, just a few years ago – and I think this is very important, just to give you a little bit the feeling of what happens behind closed doors but which is really known and documented – the Rand Corporation, on contract with the US Army – the Rand Corporation is a sort of semi-government independent research entity which acts on behalf of a US government entity. In this case it was the US Army which commissioned a report examining a war with China. Now this is called, “War with Chia: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.”

Now, the irony of this is that what they want to examine in this report is whether we could actually win a war on China. The conclusions are, and I’ll read a small segment: “Conflict could be decided by domestic, political, international and economic factors, all of which would favor the United States in a long, severe war against China.” Then they say, “Although a war would harm both economies, damage to China’s would be far worse. Because much of the western Pacific would become a war zone, China’s trade with the region and the rest of the world would decline substantially.” And third, “China’s loss of seaborn energy supplies would be especially damaging. A long conflict could expose China to internal political divisions” and then, of course, “Japan’s increased military activity in the region could have a considerable influence on military operations.” Essentially this is a simulation of a war between the United States and China and comes up with a conclusion that we’re going to win it. That’s diabolical and it’s criminal. What has China done to the sovereignty of the United States? It’s a hegemonic project to go in and blow up China.

Now, I say this, but at the same time, more recently there’s been another project which has been put forth which consists in waging a war against Russia and China and which is currently being discussed by the US Congress. So the United States is saying, “Yes, we have plans to wage war on these two countries,” and this is known and documented. Nobody in the media will actually say we shouldn’t do it, and nobody in the media will actually put forth an examination of what this kind of agenda would imply if it were carried out. Of course, it’s tied into Russiagate, it’s tied into the trade war with China, and so on.

BONNIE FAULKNER: What, then, is your view of 2019?

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: 2019 will have several countervailing processes. On the one hand, there is a protest movement developing in western Europe with the Yellow Vests, le gilets jaunes. My assessment is that that movement will be effective in as much as it also becomes an anti-war movement, a movement against NATO, because the impoverishment and the high levels of unemployment in the European Union are largely due to the militarization of their respective economies. Military spending there is taking a big chunk of the public purse on the one hand, and then you have the neo-liberal agenda. But a meaningful movement will have to integrate. It has to address these deadly macro-economic reforms which trigger poverty on the one hand and it has to address the fact that neo-liberalism and the global war economy are intricately related and that neo-liberalism creates the basis for funding the so-called defense industry. So that movement, I think, is certainly gaining impetus.

How will it unfold? I think we have to think in terms of grass-roots movements worldwide. And we have to think of grassroots movements within armed forces. It is a violation of the US Constitution to fight illegal wars. That is the oath that members of the armed forces take when they start, and I think within the armed forces there has to be also a concurrent movement, from the grassroots up, and through the governmental intelligence establishment. We’re not going to reverse the tide simply by having people protesting. Anti-war sentiment will not undermine this military agenda.

All sectors of society will have to join in and understand that a $1.2 trillion nuclear weapons program is ultimately the source of potential destruction leading to the unthinkable, which is the destruction of humanity. That has to be understood.

But how that grassroots movement will develop under present conditions is very uncertain, because people don’t have that understanding. At the same time as we know all these NGOs are funded by corporate foundations, we have color revolutions – dissent is funded and it’s manufactured. We have divisions within the left. We have segments of the left which are supporting the wars in Syria and so on.

The question is, how do we build a mass movement to undermine this imperial agenda, which is also generating poverty and despair throughout the world, but also in the core of the empire, namely the United States of America and of course western Europe, Canada and so on.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Michel Chossudovsky, thank you very much.

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: Delighted. I hope that we will undermine this agenda in some way.
I’ve been speaking with Michel Chossudovsky. Today’s show has been: Is the US Planning to Wage War on Russia and China? Michel Chossudovsky is the Founder, Director and Editor of the Center for Research on Globalization, based in Montreal, Quebec. The Global Research website, globalresearch.ca, publishes news articles, commentary, background research and analysis. Michel Chossudovsky is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September Eleventh, America’s War on Terrorism, The Globalization of War, and America’s Long War Against Humanity. Visit globalresearch.ca.
Guns and Butter is produced by Bonnie Faulkner, Yarrow Mahko and Tony Rango.

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Email us at [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter @gandbradio.

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You really shouldn’t be reading this… because a few months ago, I died. At least, temporarily. With a bit of luck, I came back.

Last August, while in the laundry room of my apartment building, my heart suddenly stopped and I collapsed. There was no medical rationale for this phenomenon. Like anyone, and perhaps even more than most, I have some medical issues. But none of them contributed to my cardiac arrest. My story isn’t uncommon–sudden cardiac arrest happens to 35,000 to 45,000 Canadians every year. It could happen to you.

It was sheer luck that my building’s superintendent was in the room. He called 911, and with guidance from the operator, performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on me. By doing  this, he bought extra time until paramedics arrived and used a defibrillator to jump-start my heart. Doing this saved my life.

That 911 operator had asked my superintendent if there was an automated external defibrillator (AED) in the building. He admitted there was not.

Had my apartment stocked an AED onsite (as it now does), my chance of survival would have been much higher. Many others are grieved annually because they didn’t have the luck I had.

After someone’s heart stops, each minute defibrillation is delayed their chance of survival drops by 7-10%. After just 12 minutes, an adult’s survival rate is less than 5%.

In New Brunswick, the provincial government requires land ambulances to respond to an urban emergency within 9 minutes, or up to 22 minutes for rural calls. They are expected to meet or exceed these times only 90% of the time. Response times of 12 minutes aren’t unusual.

If your heart were to stop, and there is any delay before someone finds you, calls 911, an ambulance is dispatched and travels to your location, your may not have a chance of survival.

That’s why it’s vital that AEDs become prevalent in our businesses, houses of worship, apartment buildings, and even our homes. AEDs are easy to use by anyone–they deliver clear voice prompts to guide their use and require minimal maintenance.

I’ll be honest; my unexpected experience was terrifying and not just for me. My friends and family were understandably horrified, especially since I was only 29 when this occurred. The board, volunteers, and other stakeholders in the registered charity I run, BullyingCanada, were shocked. It’s still hard for all of us to grapple with this–even six months later.

None of us imagined I might not be here tomorrow. We hadn’t yet done the succession planning required to ensure BullyingCanada will be around to provide support to the many tens of thousands of bullied Canadian youth who depend on us each year.

Life-saving AED technology is readily available and inexpensive, but it isn’t yet commonly stocked in all public places. Perhaps one deterrent is the $100 fee required to register an AED in the Ambulance New Brunswick registry. Why is there a cost to do so?

Unlike other provinces where this registry is publicly accessible and is programmed to alert emergency dispatchers to the location of the nearest AED, our provincial government has not implemented this. Besides, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are implementing software that alerts AED owners of nearby emergencies and requests they rush it over to the scene. This is easy and will no doubt save lives that would otherwise be lost needlessly.

My near-death experience was a big wake up call for me and those connected to me. I hope it is one for you as well. Join me in advocating for the broad implementation of AEDs–including common sense legislation requiring one in all public buildings–and a public, interactive registry.

One day, an AED might help keep your family complete, as it did with mine.

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This article was originally published by BullyingCanada.

Rob Benn-Frenette, O.N.B. lives with his husband in Fredericton, New Brunswick and is the co-founder and co-executive director of BullyingCanada, Canada’s national anti-bullying charity.

Support is growing in the United States for a Green New Deal. Though there are competing visions for what that looks like, essentially, a Green New Deal includes a rapid transition to a clean energy economy, a jobs program and a stronger social safety net.

We need a Green New Deal for many reasons, most obviously the climate crisis and growing economic insecurity. Each new climate report describes the severe consequences of climate change with increasing alarm and the window of opportunity for action is closing. At the same time, wealth inequality is also growing. Paul Bucheit writes that more than half of the population in the United States is suffering from poverty.

The Green New Deal provides an opportunity for transformational changes, not just reform, but changes that fundamentally solve the crises we face. This is the time to be pushing for a Green New Deal at all levels, in our towns and cities, states and nationally.

Hundreds gathered in San Francisco with the youth-led Sunrise Movement on Dec. 11. Peg Hunter / Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.

Growing support for the Green New Deal

The idea of a Green New Deal seems to have arisen in early 2007 when the Green New Deal Group started meeting to discuss it, specifically as a plan for the United Kingdom. They published their report in July 2008. In April 2009, the United Nations Environmental Program also issued a plan for a global Green New Deal.

In the United States, Barack Obama included a Green New Deal in his 2008 presidential campaign and conservative Thomas Friedman started talking about it in 2007. Howie Hawkins, a Green Party gubernatorial candidate in New York, campaigned on a Green New Deal starting in 2010. Listen to our interview with Hawkins about how we win the Green New Deal on Clearing the FOG. Jill Stein campaigned on it during her presidential runs in 2012 and 2016, as have many Green Party candidates.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), who ran for Congress as a Democrat and won in 2018, has made the Green New Deal a major priority. With the backing of the Sunrise Movement, AOC pushed for a congressional committee tasked with developing a Green New Deal and convinced dozens of members of Congress to support it. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sidelined that idea by creating a climate committee headed by Kathy Castor, which has no mandate to do anything and lacks  the power to write legislation and issue subpoenas. Now the Sunrise Movement is planning a tour to build support for the Green New Deal. At each stop they will provide organizing tools to make the Green New Deal a major issue in the 2020 election season.

This week, more than 600 organizations, mostly environmental groups, sent a letter to Congress calling on it to take climate change seriously and design a plan to end dependence on fossil fuels, a transition to 100% clean energy by 2035, create jobs and more. Indigenous leaders are also organizing to urge Congress to pass a Green New Deal that is “Indigenized,” meaning it prioritizes input from and the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples.

YALE UNIVERSITY
Survey data shows the strongest support for a Green New Deal among liberal Democrats.

Defining a transformative Green New Deal

The Green New Deal, as a tool to address climate change and economic insecurity, could be transformative in many ways or it could reinforce current systems. Our political system is inclined towards programs that do the latter, so it is critical that the movement for economic, racial and environmental justice and peace is clear about what we mean by a Green New Deal.

At the heart of the issue is capitalism, a root cause of many of the crises we face today. Capitalism drives growth at all costs including exploitation of people and the planet. It drives competition and individualism instead cooperation and community. It requires militarism as the strong arm for corporations to pillage other countries for their resources and militarized police to suppress dissent at home.

Capitalism was in crisis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when, like today, there was great inequality and a political system that catered to the wealthy. Progressive, populist, labor and socialist movements were pressing for significant changes. This came to a head in the depression when tens of thousands of Bonus Marchers occupied Washington DC during the summer of the 1932 presidential election demanding their bonus pay from World War I. The newly-elected President Roosevelt was forced to act, so he put reforms in place called the New Deal.

While the New Deal brought relief to many people through banking reform, Social Security, jobs programs and greater rights for workers, it was not transformative. Some argue that the New Deal was essential to save capitalism. It relieved suffering enough that dissent quieted but left the capitalist economic system intact. In the decades since the New Deal, monopolization, inequality, and exploitation have again increased with the added crises of climate change and environmental destruction.

This time around, we need a broad Green New Deal that changes the system so there is greater public ownership and democratization of the economy. It can also be used to address theft of wealth from Indigenous, black and brown communities. And it can set us on a path to end US imperialism in the least harmful manner.

Wayne Price discusses this in “A Green New Deal vs Revolutionary Eco-socialism.” He writes,

“…the capitalists’ wealth and power should be taken away from them (expropriated) by the self-organization of the working class and its allies. Capitalism should be replaced by a society which is decentralized and cooperative, producing for use rather than profit, democratically self-managed in the workplace and the community, and federated together from the local level to national and international levels.”

It is interesting that the Yellow Vest movement in France is also seeking transformative change from a representative government to one that uses greater participation through direct democracy. System change is needed to confront these economic and environmental crises. One alternative system gaining traction is ecosocialism which combines the insights of ecology with the necessity for worker’s rights and public control over the economy. We discussed ecosocialism with Victor Wallis, author of “Red Green Revolution: The politics and technology of ecosocialism,” on Clearing the FOG.

The Green Party divides the Green New Deal into four pillars: An economic bill of rights, a green transition, financial reform, and a functioning democracy. The economic bill of rights includes not only a job at a living wage for all who want it but also single payer healthcare, free college education, and affordable housing and utilities. The green transition to renewable energy sources includes building mass transit, “complete streets” that promote walking and biking, local food systems and clean manufacturing. Financial reform includes debt relief, public banks and breaking up the big banks. And the democracy section includes getting money out of politics, guaranteeing the right to vote, strengthening local democracy, democratizing the media and significant changes to the military. We would add to this prioritizing the involvement of Indigenous, black and brown communities. As Jon Olsen writes, ecosocialism is now part of the platform of the Green Party of the United States and has entered the political dialogue.

Join the Green Power Project national call on Thursday, January 17 at 8:00 pm Eastern to learn more about the Green New Deal. Click here for details.

Uniting to win the Green New Deal

Conditions are ripe for a Green New Deal. Wealth inequality continues to accelerate. As Lawrence Wittner describes, we have a new era of Robber Barons like the Waltons and Jeff Bezos who pay low wages and rake in millions in public subsidies for their new facilities. They use their economic power to influence lawmakers so laws are passed that increase rather than threaten their riches.

A new report shows that 40% of people in the United States have negative wealth; they are in debt. And another 20% have minimal wealth, meaning 60% of people in the US have virtually no assets. The report was focused on millennials finding they are less well off than previous generations.

Anthony DiMaggio, who wrote about the report, also found that the affluent are oblivious to the high degree of inequality in the United States and that without this understanding, they are unlikely to support policies that reduce inequality.

The Democratic Party is starting to get the message. With student loan debt at a record $1.465 trillion, twice the amount in 2009, candidates are starting to talk about this issue. Members of Congress in the House are planning to hold hearings on National Improved Medicare for All and increasing Social Security. Democratic voters strongly support these changes, so the Democrats are feeling compelled to appear to be taking action on them, though this could mostly be for show to keep people from leaving the party in the lead up to the 2020 elections.

To win a Green New Deal, which could include a stronger social safety net, we will need to unite as a movement of movements and make the demand impossible to ignore. Uniting across issues makes sense because the Green New Deal is broad, addressing multiple crises at once. And we will need to push issues that Democrats will not want to discuss, such as nationalization of industries, more democracy, and cuts to the military. Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report urges us to organize not just nationally but at the state level too by introducing plans for state Green New Deals.

We can work at many levels to build the demand for a Green New Deal. Talk to people in your community about it. Start local initiatives for clean energy, local food networks, protecting public schools and water systems, promoting cooperatives and more. Push your state and federal legislators too. This is an opportunity to unite in support of a bold new vision for our society.

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

Imagine joining the military thinking you’re fighting ISIS/al Qaeda, only to find out you’re supporting them.

Imagine paying your taxes thinking it is for the uplift of the community and country, only to find out it is for the uplift of the billionaire class … and ISIS/al Qaeda.

Imagine explaining to future generations that the government debt was incurred to support and sustain a diseconomy, bailouts to the billionaire class, and ISIS/al Qaeda.

And most Canadians –colonial media fairy tale believers that they are — think that Russia[1] is the enemy. Imagine that.

So, who is the enemy? We are the enemy. We are the countries waging wars of aggression and destroying countries and livelihoods and creating death and poverty and misery. Our governments and their agencies are doing this. None of this should be perceived as normal, but it is being normalized nonetheless.

Syria did not attack us. Venezuela is not attacking us. Iran is not a threat, and neither is Russia. Our governments and their agencies are fabricating all of these enemies so that we can destroy these countries and their peoples and steal their resources and control other countries and enrich oligarch classes and impoverish domestic[2] and foreign populations.

How did we arrive at this point where the Truth has been inverted and the Lie, which masquerades as the Truth, is widely accepted? Ubiquitous colonial media/criminal war propaganda has played a significant role.

There are alternatives to colonial media, but they are increasingly suppressed and censored. Shows such as Janice Kortkamp’s Syria: Face to Face, are not mainstream, but they should be. Evidence-based reporting should be front and center.

In the aforementioned show, Kortkamp details the West’s criminality – in terms of both domestic and international law – as it pursues its “Regime Change” war against Syria. She discusses the West’s support for terrorism in Syria (including support for ISIS), and she demonstrates how the West’s actions and inactions have created such misery and destruction in Syria.

Colonial media does none of this. It serves to advance imperial agendas as it obscures, denies, and negates evidence-based, on-the-ground realities of the war on Syria and beyond.

If shows like this were to displace colonial media, then we would have democratic media, for the people, by the people. And our actions would be guided by the truth, rather than by war propaganda, as is currently the case.

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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] Mark Taliano, “Socialism for the Rich.” Global Research, 17 August, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/socialism-for-the-rich/5650876) Accessed 14 January, 2019. 

[2] Paul Buchheit, “The Evidence Pours In: Poverty Getting Much Worse in America/

Poverty—and the stress of being poor—is killing people every single day.” Common Dreams, 5 November, 2018. (https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/05/evidence-pours-poverty-getting-much-worse-america?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork&fbclid=IwAR1GefJ7xaFQGFC94aiJerrel1Dk-O4OI1EYA0gNODWg5-WjYkUHo25sEFM) Accessed 14 January, 2019.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

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January 15th is a significant date in Nigerian history. On that day in 1966, a group of middle-ranking army officers staged a mutiny which overthrew the civilian government that had ruled Nigeria since it had been granted independence from Britain in October 1960. It began a concatenation of violence which led to a 30-month civil war that formally ended on January 15th 1970.

Tracing a line from 1966 to 1970 is clear enough: the mutiny which was led by officers drawn mainly from the Igbo ethnic group came to be viewed as an attempt to establish a form of ethnic hegemony over the rest of the country, a perspective which was consolidated by the Unification Decree announced by the Igbo Head of State, Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi in May 1966. The decree abolished Nigeria’s federal structure and created a unitary system of governance. The reactions came in the form of anti-Igbo pogroms in the Northern Region in May and September, as well as a counter-coup in July 1966 which led to the murders of Igbo army officers and soldiers. The frustration of peace efforts, notably that of the meeting in Aburi of members of the Supreme Military Council and Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military governor of the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region who disputed the legitimacy of the successors to Aguiyi-Ironsi, led to the secession of the Eastern Region and the creation of the Republic of Biafra in May 1967. This paved the way for the civil war which officially commenced on July 6th 1967.

But Nigeria’s drift towards regional and ethnic violence did not begin in 1966. A conglomerate state put together by imperial draughtsmen in the early part of the 20th century, the country was composed of over 250 ethnic groups who spoke over 500 different languages. The Northern Region was largely Islamic while the south, with its Western and Eastern regions (a Mid-West Region was carved out of the West), was largely Christianised. The south also led the north in terms of economic development and educational attainment. Thus, the stability of this artificially created multi-ethnic state was always certain to be tested.

The multiple elements of the Nigerian polity have often meant that a multiplicity of perspectives are in perpetual competition. For instance, the hegemony feared by sections of the country in the wake of the Igbo-dominated first coup was one effectively practised by the leaders of the Northern Region over the rest of the country. And violence related to the desire of the leaders of the North to ensure northern domination occurred in the Western Region as well as in the mainly Christian ‘Middle-Belt’ of the Northern Region. Corruption among the political elite, a fraudulent census, electoral fraud and trade union strikes created the requisite tinderbox which ultimately led to a bloody civil conflict.

Ojukwu’s declaration of independence was a measure undertaken with widespread support among the Igbos who dominated the Eastern Region. Most felt that they had been chased out of the federation and had been left with no alternative. The federal position enunciated by Gowon also resonated. If the Eastern Region was allowed to split from the rest of the federation, there was every reason to believe that Nigeria would chaotically splinter into smaller parts and that foreign powers would become involved in backing each of the warring entities.

The Biafran propaganda machinery driven by Mark Press, a Geneva-based public relations company, was skillful in setting out the grievances of the Igbos. The themes disseminated began by positing the rationale of the creation of Biafra as one that was predicated on the need for tribal emancipation. It also portrayed the Igbo cause as one based on a religious conflict between a feudal-minded Muslim leadership hell-bent on continuing the pre-colonial Sokoto Caliphate which intended to expand southwards, routing the animist and Christian peoples, until euphemistically, they would dip the Koran into the Atlantic Ocean. And as the war developed, Biafran propaganda utilised the images of starvation as a means of emphasising the claim that they were being purposefully subjected to a policy of genocide.

The evidence assembled appeared to back up the claims. The series of pogroms against Igbo civilians, the massacre of Igbo soldiers, the rise of northern Muslim soldiers to positions of military and political power, as well as the mass starvation symbolised by Kwashiorkor-afflicted children all offered strong corroborative evidence.

But this presented a one-sided and uncomplicated view.

Many of the minority groups within the Eastern Region, as well as in the Mid-West Region which was invaded by Biafran troops early in the war, did not want to live under what they perceived as Igbo domination. And many minority communities were subjected to brutal occupation by Biafran forces. The conflict was also not simply a case of Muslims waging a jihad against Christians. Many of the soldiers involved in the counter-coup of July 1966 were Christians from the Middle-Belt, and, indeed, the man who emerged as the Head of State after that coup, Gowon, was himself a Christian. Also the claim that the blockade mounted by the federal government was inflexible towards the idea of relief supplies being allowed into Biafran territory was not true. The federal side wanted such relief to pass through Nigeria while the Biafran government asserted their belief that such supplies would be tainted by poison deliberately introduced by the Nigerian side.

As military and civilian casualties mounted dissent arose within Biafran ranks. Some saw what some in the international community saw: that the starving millions were being used as part of a high-stakes political game through which the Biafran leadership hoped foreign military aid or even intervention would materialise. The leadership of Ojukwu was also seen as having a malign affect on the interests of his people. As Ralph Uwechue put it:

In Biafra, two wars were fought simultaneously. The first was for the survival of the (Igbos) as a race. The second was for the survival of Ojukwu’s leadership. Ojukwu’s error, which proved fatal for millions of (Igbos), was that he put the latter first.

Divisions within the Biafran military led to the development of two factions: the ‘Port Harcourt Militia’ and the ‘National Militia’. Internal sabotage, one fruit of this division, severely undermined morale, as well as the effort of national self-defence. The early memoirs of the likes of Uwechue and N.U. Akpan, as well as later ones by Alexander Madiebo laid bare the divisions existing within Biafra: the civil servant against the intellectual, the soldier against the mercenary, the Igbo against minority groups, and the ‘Nnewi clique’ against the others; a dynamic based on the allegation that Ojukwu promoted nepotism in regard to his Nnewi kinsmen.

Added to this was the gap in knowledge between the elites and the masses, with the latter being manipulated by a highly efficient propaganda machinery and according to Uwechue possessing “neither the facts nor the liberty to form an independent opinion” about the option of seeking a negotiated peace with the federal side.

The skillful use of propaganda by the Biafrans, which included the organising of relief concerts, the use of Igbo celebrities such as the writer Chinua Achebe and Dick Tiger, the world boxing champion, was successful to a good degree in projecting Igbo pleas for self-determination to a global audience. But decisive help from the major world powers save for an infusion of a limited amount of French arms in the later stages of the war, eluded them. They had been subjected to a blockade and encircled early in the war. While Gowon continued to insist that Biafra had to surrender unconditionally, Ojukwu attempted to rouse his people whose ill-equipped army began to increasingly rely on what would be contemporarily termed child soldiers. After much delay, Nigeria began a final offensive on December 23^rd1969, using the Third Infantry Division.

The end was soon in coming.

At a meeting of his cabinet held in Owerri on January 8th 1970, Ojukwu presented what he would describe as the “grim hopelessness of continued formal military resistance.”  He left Biafra soon after, claiming that he was going in search of a peaceful settlement. His deputy, Philip Effiong, previously a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Nigerian army, took over the reins of leadership and sued for peace. The surrender was arranged on the ground with Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo, the commander of the Third Infantry Division, and a formal ceremony of surrender took place before General Gowon at Dodan Barracks in Lagos. Dressed in civilian attire, Effiong made the following declaration:

I, Philip Effiong, do hereby declare: I give you not only my own personal assurances but also those of my fellow officers and colleagues and of the entire former Biafran people of our fullest cooperation and very sincere best wishes for the future.

It is my sincere hope the lessons of the bitter struggle have been well learned by everybody and I would like therefore to take this opportunity to say that I, Major-General Philip Effiong, officer administering the government of the Republic of Biafra, now wish to make the following declaration:

That we are firm, we are loyal Nigerian citizens and accept the authority of the federal military government of Nigeria.

That we accept the existing administrative and political structure of the Federation of Nigeria.

That any future constitutional arrangement will be worked out by representatives of the people of Nigeria.

That the Republic of Biafra hereby ceases to exist.

Ojukwu’s final statement as leader released through Mark Press to Reuters reiterated the claim that the there had been no alternative other than to have declared a Biafran state. He emphasised the valour of its people in fighting against tremendous odds while enduring enormous privations and criticised what he termed the “international conspiracy against the interest of the African”, which he felt had played the biggest part in Biafra’s demise.

That demise, it was feared in some quarters, would be accompanied by mass killings of Igbos. From the Vatican, the Pope was quick to call for concerted efforts to prevent “massacres of a defenceless population exhausted by hardship, hunger and the lack of everything.” Such fears, stoked by Biafran propaganda were repeatedly referred to by Ojukwu in his statement who wrote that the aim of the Nigerian government had been to “apply the final solution to the Biafran problem away from the glare of an inquisitive world”.

It did not happen.

Gowon’s post-war speech emphasised the need for national reconciliation via the rhetoric of “No Victor, No Vanquished”. It was a claim backed by the fact that no medals were awarded to federal soldiers. Some Igbo officers were reabsorbed into the Nigerian military as where civil servants. And Igbos gradually returned to the north and other parts of the country.

The reabsorption of Igbos has over the decades nonetheless been accompanied by claims of marginalisation. This has often centred on two main issues: the amount of money allocated for the development of states composed of Igbo majorities and the fact that no Igbo has been allowed to lead Nigeria in the period since the end of the war.

In recent times movements have been created that have called for the resurrection of a Biafran state, the most prominent being the now proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (Massob). But protests organised by these groups have been violently put down and their leaders hunted down by Nigeria’s security forces.

In July 2017, a specially convened meeting of Igbo leaders consisting of state governors, legislators, traditional and religious leaders issued a statement giving their “full support” to a “united Nigeria”. It was a gesture aimed at diffusing mounting tensions, but their call for a restructuring of the country in order to achieve a “just and equitable society” underlined the sense of grievance many feel decades after the civil war.

Renewed agitation for separation has also served to reopen fears among minority groups of the former Eastern Region who alarmed at the inclusion of their territories in various versions of maps of a new Biafran state felt compelled to issue statements of their own. For instance in July 2017 the Efik Leadership Foundation (EFL), after impliedly disavowing their previous incorporation into a historical entity known as Biafra, accused the leaders of Ipob of attempting “to annex or conscript us surreptitiously or use our people, land and territory as (the) basis for bargaining” an exit out of the federation.

Aside from the persistent and widespread misgivings of neighbouring minority groups are doubts over the historical existence of a kingdom of Biafra for which no records, archaeological or other, can be offered as evidence. There is no oral chronology identifying who its rulers were, no accounts as to how it was formed or of its system of laws.

Today, there appears to be a generational divide on pressing for a separate Biafran entity with much of the rhetoric coming from younger people with little or no memory of the civil war. And with other parts of the federation implacable in their resolve to maintain the territorial unity of Nigeria, the catastrophic failure of the war commenced over fifty years ago must serve as a cautionary note for those intent on pursuing the path of secession.

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Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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An “independent national institute founded by Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible,” would be the last place you would expect to find calls for continued war.

Yet the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is just the place to go for exactly that.

In a recent article appearing on the USIP website titled, “What Does the U.S. Troop Withdrawal Mean for Syria?,” USIP’s senior adviser for Syria would claim the recently announced US troop withdrawal from Syria would “undermine U.S. interests in Syria and the broader region.”

The article would claim:

A precipitous U.S. troop withdrawal will undermine critical U.S. interests in Syria. The U.S. troop presence serves as a key pre-condition for a newly invigorated U.S. Syria policy focused on the enduring defeat of ISIS, the withdrawal of Iran from Syria, and the rejuvenation of the Geneva Peace Process.

The USIP also claims:

…U.S. forces on the ground have also served as a key counterweight against Iran and Russia. In particular, this derivative benefit has countered further Iranian expansion into eastern Syria. Should the U.S. withdraw, Iran as well as Russia and the Assad regime will be well poised to exploit the vacuum that will be created.

In other words, the USIP insists that the end of America’s illegal occupation and military campaign inside of Syria – not authorized by Congress as per the US Constitution and in violation of international law as per the UN Charter – is unfavorable because it would allow the internationally recognized, sovereign government of Syria to reassert control over its own territory.

The USIP article also insists that a US troop withdrawal would deprive the US “of leverage to rejuvenate the Geneva Peace Process.” Or in other words – impair Washington’s ability to shape the face of the Syrian government emerging post-war.

The USIP never explains why Washington is owed this unwarranted authority over Syria’s internal political affairs.
The US Institute of “Peace,” also claimed as an undesirable implication of a US troop withdrawal – the possibility of Syria’s Kurds negotiating with Damascus – a key prerequisite for peace in Syria.

The article would complain:

The Kurds may decide they have no choice but to negotiate a deal with a regime, albeit on weaker terms than before.

Like the West’s extensive, industrial-scale human rights racket, the US Institute of Peace is merely another means of selling Washington’s agenda, couched behind nobler ideals – in this case – the notion of “peace.”

An article defending an illegal invasion and occupation, denying Syria its own sovereign right to protect the territorial integrity of its nation, and even citing negotiations between conflicting parties within Syria as contradictory to US interests – directly contradicts USIP’s supposed mission statement.

US Institute “of ” Peace as Opposed to an Institute “for” Peace 

Nothing about USIP’s article should come as a surprise. It has couched US regime change in Syria behind the notion of promoting “peace” for years. And before that, did so in Libya and numerous other US-led wars.

It was in 2012 that the USIP was busy preparing plans and even a constitution for what it had hoped was a soon-to-be divided and destroyed Syria in the same vein as Libya or Iraq was before it.

Foreign Policy in an article titled, “Inside the quiet effort to plan for a post-Assad Syria,” admitted:

For the last six months, 40 senior representatives of various Syrian opposition groups have been meeting quietly in Germany under the tutelage of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) to plan for how to set up a post-Assad Syrian government.

The project, which has not directly involved U.S. government officials but was partially funded by the State Department, is gaining increased relevance this month as the violence in Syria spirals out of control and hopes for a peaceful transition of power fade away. The leader of the project, USIP’s Steven Heydemann, an academic expert on Syria, has briefed administration officials on the plan, as well as foreign officials, including on the sidelines of the Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul last month.

Far from the USIP’s supposed mission of promoting peace, this project was instead conducted solely with Western-backed opposition groups. As the US State Department and Department of Defense along with intelligence agencies worked to violently overthrow the Syrian government, the USIP worked with opposition groups to develop plans to replace the sovereign government of Syria and overwrite its independent institutions with those dependent on and obedient to Washington.

The focus of the group’s effort is to develop concrete plans for the immediate aftermath of a regime collapse, to mitigate the risks of bureaucratic, security, and economic chaos. The project has also identified a few things can be done in advance to prepare for a post-Assad Syria.The article would admit:

Nowhere were efforts by the USIP to foster peace between the opposition and the Syrian government mentioned.

Regarding the USIP’s strategy of posing to be uninvolved in US-backed, armed regime change efforts, USIP’s Heydemann would even admit:

We have very purposely stayed away from contributing to the direct overthrow of the Assad regime. Our project is called ‘the day after.’ There are other groups working on the day before.

Another part of the illusion was pretending the USIP was independent of the US government itself. Foreign Policy would admit:

The absence of Obama administration officials at these meetings, even as observers, was deliberate. 

“This is a situation where too visible a U.S. role would have been deeply counterproductive. It would have given the Assad regime and elements of the opposition an excuse to delegitimize the process,” Heydemann said.

The US is most certainly involved in both efforts to topple the Syrian government and shape the government that emerges in the aftermath of the war – regardless of whether the US’ role in this is “visible” or not.

Despite the US government attempting to violently overthrow the Syrian government and preparing a client regime to take power in the aftermath – through the USIP’s efforts – USIP’s Heydemann himself admits attempts were made to make this less visible  – specifically because of how bad it not only looks, but how criminal it actually is.

While the US Institute of Peace may not be directly involved in the military aspects of US-backed armed proxy wars, it is playing a direct role in leveraging the violence – not to achieve peace – but to handle the administrative aspects of US military conquest, merely couched behind the notion of peace.

Whether it is preparing a client regime to take over in the aftermath of US military intervention, or making a case for perpetual and very illegal war – the US Institute of Peace is anything but – unless we are to understand “of” instead of “for” in the context of using the notion of peace to sell war and the objectives the US hopes to achieve by waging it – rather than any effort made toward achieving actual peace.

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

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously was unaware that he was being filmed when he commented that “America is a thing you can move very easily, moved in the right direction.” His predecessor Ariel Sharon was even more to the point when he reportedly said “Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that …don’t worry about American pressure; I tell you, we, the Jewish people, control America and the American people know it!”

If this were only chest thumping rhetoric one might just shrug and go about one’s business, but actions speak louder than words, even in the world of corrupt politicians, where nothing is ever as it seems to be. In the past year alone, the U.S. government has moved its Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, has stopped criticizing the Netanyahu government’s expansion of illegal settlements, and is reportedly currently contemplating recognizing as legal Israel’s illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights. All the moves were and are contrary to actual American interests.

Furthermore, Israel, a country having a European level standard of living to include free education and medical care, has received more than $250 billion in “aid” from Washington. It currently is receiving $3.8 billion yearly from the U.S. Treasury as a base figure guaranteed for ten years, with supplements for special projects and programs. Adding in trade arrangements favorable to Israel and the money it gets from American Jewish donors’ tax-exempt contributions, the real total per annum approaches and may even exceed $10 billion. Much of the donor money, including that from the Kushner Foundation, has gone to fund the illegal settlements on the West Bank in violation of U.S. law. And then there is the $2.7 billion given yearly to Egypt and Jordan, essentially bribes to maintain friendly relations with Israel.

The ultimate irony is that any aid to Israel is illegal in light of the fact that it has violated the Symington and Glenn amendments to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act due to its undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Both Congress and the White House have chosen to ignore that complication, one more demonstration of Jewish power in the United States. In truth, Ariel Sharon, if he was quoted correctly, had it right. Jewish Americans do control or at least exercise considerable influence over key sectors in the U.S. They are overwhelmingly disproportionately present on Wall Street, in the entertainment and news industries, in academia, in high value professions and in government at all levels. Their collective power both enriches and protects Israel at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer and genuine national interests. It also enables Israeli agents in the U.S., like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to avoid scrutiny and regulation under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.

Some federal government agencies exist largely to promote Israeli interests, most notably the Treasury Department’s Office for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which has only had Jewish Under Secretaries heading it since it was founded in 2004. It is currently run by Israeli Sigal Mandelker. The office has focused on punishing Iran, Israel’s principle enemy, throughout its existence.

Jewish power is most perniciously evident in U.S. foreign policy, where it has a strangle hold on relations between Washington and the Arab countries of the Middle East. Much of this leverage is derived from the fact that the principal donors to both the Democratic and Republican parties – Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson — are both Jews having very strong ties to Israel. Saban is an Israeli and Adelson may have Israeli citizenship. With both parties more than willing to act on behalf of Israel, the United States has engaged in a number of wars that serve no national interest and which have, on the contrary, brought with them devastating consequences, including the rise of new terrorist groups.

To be sure, many American Jews are not convinced by the love affair with Israel, but they are hard to hear amidst the cacophony coming from the Jewish oligarchs and hundreds of pro-Israel organizations that are constantly singing the praises of Netanyahu and his kleptocratic regime. For many young Jews in particular, it is difficult to empathize with a country that deploys army snipers to shoot thousands of unarmed demonstrators or a government that engages in starvation policies and the arrests, beatings and killings of children. Not to mention a governing system that believes that only Jewish citizens have full rights.

The Jewish oligarchs who manipulate the politicians do so with money, though one should in no way minimize the essential mendacity of the politicians themselves who are willing to sell out the interests of their country in exchange for thirty pieces of silver. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is not one of the brightest bulbs in congress, is a prime example of a legislator who has been bought and paid for by Israeli interests in the form of campaign donations from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and vulture capitalist Paul Singer.

Rubio’s speech last week supporting Senate bill S.1 for 2019, which he sponsored, was remarkable and should serve as primary evidence for anyone who really wonders why we have a Senate at all. The bill itself should also be read in toto to learn the details of what largesse we give to Israel in exchange for absolutely nothing in return. To put it succinctly, Rubio is all about protecting and nurturing Israel, which he sees as a good move since he has aspirations to become president. S.1 was, notably, the first Senate bill to be considered in 2019 after what once upon a time used to be referred to as the Christmas Recess. The full title of S.1 is the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019, which might be considered a bit of a fraud as it has nothing to do with the United States and is really all about giving Israel money and anything else it might desire, to include destroying the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that has targeted Israel’s apartheid. Rubio openly has admitted that the bill was crafted to help Israel and during his speech he registered his opposition to the impending pullout of U.S. troops from Syria because it would, according to him, “endanger” the Jewish state. Apart from that, the half hour presentation incorporated some remarkable oratory explaining S.1 including:

First of all, let me tell you what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t outlaw BDS. if you’re an American company and you want to boycott or divest from Israel, it doesn’t make it illegal. It doesn’t stop you from doing it. The only thing it says is if there is some city or county or state in this country who wants to support Israel, they have a right to say we are not going to buy services or goods from any company that’s boycotting or divesting from Israel. That’s all it does. It gives cities and counties like these 26 states the opportunity to have their elected officials who respond to the people of those states or cities or counties that elected them to make a decision that they are not going to do business with people who don’t do business with Israel and boycott Israel. In essence, it allows us to boycott the boycotters.

It would be difficult to find a more stupid justification for S.1 than that provided by Rubio. He does not understand that the “state” at all levels is supposed to be politically neutral in terms of providing government services. It is not supposed to retaliate against someone for views they hold, particularly, as in this case, when it involves opposition to the policies of a foreign government that many consider to be guilty of crimes against humanity. Rubio clearly believes that you can exercise free speech but government can then punish you by taking away your livelihood or denying you services that you are entitled to if you do not agree with it on an issue that ultimately has nothing to do with the United States. The ACLU has addressed the issue succinctly, arguing that “Public officials cannot use the power of public office to punish views they don’t agree with. That’s the kind of authoritarian power our Constitution is meant to protect against.”

In any event, the Senate bill failed in two tries last week with a vote of 56 in favor and 45 against followed by a 53 to 43 tally, with 60 votes being needed to advance for a final vote. It was supported by every Republican senator, but never fear, S.1 will surely pass when the government shutdown ends and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, himself a beneficiary of generous pro-Israel PAC donations, brings it up again for yet another vote. The Democrats who voted against S.1 to embarrass President Trump and protest the shutdown included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Ben Cardin who are unrestrained champions of Israel due to both their ethnic and religious ties. Schumer has described himself as Israel’s “shomer” or protector in the Senate while Cardin has been a key player in advancing any and all pro-Israel legislation. They and most other Democrats will support the bill as they are in thrall to Israel as much as are the Republicans.

Over at the U.S. House of Representatives there was also early action on behalf of Israel. H.R.221- Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act “To amend the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956 to monitor and combat anti-Semitism globally, and for other purposes” passed by a margin of 411 to 1 in a mere twelve minutes with only congressman Justin Amash voting “nay.” The bill, which was being pushed by the Israel Lobby, compels President Trump to name an anti-Semitism Special Envoy with Ambassadorial rank to “serve as the primary advisor to, and coordinate efforts across, the U.S. government relating to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incitement in foreign countries.” Criticism of Israel is considered to be anti-Semitism.

Another recent and related story reveals the power of Israel and its friends as reflected by their ability to force potential dissidents to fall in line. Senator Rand Paul, a critic of foreign aid in general, rightly received praise for his willingness to step up and block approval of last year’s aid package for Israel. But even there he waffled, his office putting out a statement

“While I’m not for foreign aid in general, if we are going to send aid to Israel it should be limited in time and scope so we aren’t doing it forever, and it should be paid for by cutting the aid to people who hate Israel and America.”

Apparently Rand Paul believes that the people who hate Israel and America constitute an identifiable group receiving billions of U.S. Treasury dollars.

Senator Paul has also been involved in the current anti-BDS legislation declaring in an op-ed, that the bill would be damaging to first amendment rights. However, he did not back up his words with action, having voted both times in favor of S.1, and he also felt it necessary to preface his op-ed remarks with the usual sucking up to the Jewish state: “I am not in favor of boycotting Israel. Israel has been a good ally. I have traveled to Israel, and it was one of the best and most meaningful trips I have taken with my family. Standing at the Western Wall was special and powerful. Visiting old Jerusalem was incredible, and sailing on the sea of Galilee while a double rainbow glowed above us is something I will never forget. Israel is truly a unique and special place.”

It is disgraceful that the legislature of the United States of America in the midst of a government shutdown is giving first priority to bills granting billions of dollars-worth of benefits to Israel while also appointing an anti-Semitism Czar to interfere with the domestic politics of foreign nations. It is shameful that an American Senator should find himself compelled, if he wants to survive politically, to grovel before a domestic lobby representing a foreign nation. Still worse is the compulsion to apologize to that nation even while honorably critiquing legislation that would do significant damage to freedom of speech in America.

Rand Paul also knows perfectly well, as does every senator, that Israel is not and has never been an “ally” in any real sense and has instead used its considerable political power to corrupt America’s political culture and to entangle the United States in a series of unwinnable and inhumane wars in the Middle East. It is certainly his right to personally refuse to support BDS, but he surely understands that effective nonviolent pressure directed against Israel might well be the only way to deliver even a modicum of justice to the Palestinians. Senator Rand Paul clearly does not care about the Palestinians or about Washington’s misadventures in the Middle East when his more compelling need as an ambitious politician is to placate the powerful Jews who, as Ariel Sharon put it, “control America.” How disappointing. Is there anyone left standing who will actually defend the interests of the American people?

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

A study released last month by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, supports the view that mainstream U.S. newspapers consistently portray Palestine in a more negative light than Israel, privilege Israeli sources, and omit key facts helpful to understanding the Israeli occupation, including those expressed by Palestinian sources.

The largest of its kind, the study is based on a sentiment and n-gram analysis of nearly a hundred thousand headlines in five mainstream newspapers dating back to 1967. The newspapers are the top five U.S. dailies, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.

Headlines spanning five decades were put into two datasets, one comprising 17,492 Palestinian-centric headlines, and another comprising 82,102 Israeli-centric headlines. Using Natural Language Processing techniques, authors of the study assessed the degree to which the sentiment of the headlines could be classified as positive, negative, or neutral. They also examined the frequency of using certain words that evoke a particular view or perception.

Key findings of the study are:

• Since 1967, use of the word “occupation” has declined by 85% in the Israeli dataset of headlines, and by 65% in the Palestinian dataset;
• Since 1967, mentions of Palestinian refugees have declined by an overall 93%;
• Israeli sources are nearly 250% more likely to be quoted as Palestinians;
• The number of headlines centering Israel were published four times more than those centering Palestine;
• Words connoting violence such as “terror” appear three times as much as the word “occupation” in the Palestinian dataset;
• Explicit recognition that Israeli settlements and settlers are illegal rarely appears in both datasets;
• Since 1967, mentions of “East Jerusalem,” distinguishing that part of the city occupied by Israel in 1967 from the rest of the city, appeared only a total of 132 times;
• The Los Angeles Times has portrayed Palestinians most negatively, followed by The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and lastly The New York Times;
• Coverage of the conflict has reduced dramatically in the second half of the fifty-year period.

While a number of analyses examining how some news outlets have covered the conflict were published in recent years, they were limited to particular events, such as the First Intifada or Operation Cast Lead. The latest study, authored by Usaid Siddiqui and Owais Zaheer, provides a much broader vantage point.

“We wanted to examine this issue in a much larger timeframe. I think it helps us understand different patterns in the coverage across time, and gives us a lot more information that people cannot simply dismiss or deny,” Siddiqui said.

“The role of the news in framing and rendering the subjects of stories is a powerful influencer in agenda-setting and constructing narratives,” Zaheer said.

The relationship between the news and politics, as well as the resultant narratives, has been the subject of a plethora of literature. As Hayden White noted in his 1980 work for Critical Inquiry, “narrative in general, from the folk tale to the novel, from annals to the fully realized ‘history,’ has to do with the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally, authority.”

Four years later, in “Permission to Narrate,” Edward Said pointed out that even as Palestinians were supported by the legality, legitimacy, and authority of international law, resolutions, and consensus, which is the case until this day, U.S. policymakers and media outlets simply refused to “make connections, draw conclusions, [and] state the simple facts.” This refusal remains a mainstay of U.S. media and politics, including a rejection of the central truth that the Palestinian narrative “stems directly from the story of their existence in and displacement from Palestine.”

But, “facts require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain and circulate them,” Said added, and in the U.S. “where Israeli propaganda seems to lead a life of its own,” the facts do not fit the narrative newspapers like those examined in the study have propagated.

Nearly thirty-five years since Said’s seminal work, the numbers revealed in the study unambiguously support his view with a quantitative edge, showing a consistent and systematic bias against Palestinians. It is consistent because it spans five decades, and systematic because the coverage has repeatedly responded to the need of Israel to justify its occupation as it metastasized over the years. For instance, assessing the frequency of certain words per decade, the study found correlations with the stated policy goals of both Israel and the U.S. There was a similar decline of mentions of the occupation, Palestinian refugees, and East Jerusalem, in addition to the portrayal of Palestinians in a negative light, in line with U.S.-Israeli policy goals.

One of the most glaring omissions committed by the newspapers analyzed in the study can be deduced from the dramatic decline of coverage since 1993, when Palestinians and Israelis initiated the now-defunct peace process. According to the study, “between 1967 and 1992, there were an average of 1,200 headlines” covering both datasets, “while only 700 on average in the period since.” This decline can be reasonably attributed to how U.S. newspapers have since presented Israelis and Palestinians: as equals engaged in negotiations, often portrayed in the media using the “both sides” frame. But this frame “deprives readers of context” that is central to understanding the occupation, the study notes. There are two side, one is an occupying power, Israel, and the other languishes as its occupied subject, Palestine. The notion of a “process” between “both sides” has only served to obscure the reality that there is no peace.

Another evident obfuscation concerns the siege of Gaza. Now in its 11^th year, the blockade of the Gaza Strip earned low mentions in either datasets of the headlines examined in the study. Meanwhile, use of the word “Hamas” is among the top ten words used in the Palestinian-centric headlines, even though the Islamic movement was only founded in 1987. This obfuscation of the situation in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas has governed for little over a decade, often led readers to associate the besieged territory with terrorism and violence.

In addition to lobbying efforts by pro-Israel partisans, recent shifts in U.S. policy toward Palestine can also be traced to the biased coverage and evident omissions the study confirms. Whether it is the attempt to dismantle the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), or the tacit recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital by relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, these policy shifts have been informed by the consistent omission of the facts in U.S. newspapers.

“It’s not just the Trump administration. We do not see a deeper push back on issues like UNRWA because coverage of Palestinian refugees has been systematically censored,” Zaheer said.

Broadcast media in the U.S. is also guilty of efforts to omit Palestinian voices.

In one instance, during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, examining only a sliver of the 51-days assault (June 29 and July 10), CNN broadcasted 28 appearances of Israeli public officials and laymen, while granting nearly 40% less appearances to Palestinians officials and laymen, a total of 16 appearances. The blatantly disproportionate coverage caused a controversy at the time, prompting CNN to release a statement insisting its coverage was fair. Explaining this imbalance, author and former journalist Marda Dunsky told PolitiFact that it was caused by an “accessibility issue”: advocates of Palestinian perspectives are neither readily available nor have the capacity to navigate the U.S. media landscape.

Forward to November 2018: Marc Lamont Hill, a Temple University professor and former CNN commentator, spoke at a United Nations event commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. In his remarks, Hill urged the international community to “free Palestine, from the river to sea,” referring to historic Palestine. Taking the remark out of context, pro-Israel organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned Hill as an anti-Semite. The ensuing campaign by the ADL led CNN to cave under pressure and to respond by firing Hill, one of its popular commentators.

In the aftermath of Hill’s incident, another media personality shared the story of his firing from CNN International on Twitter: Ahmed Shihab Eldin. In 2015, Shihab Eldin was about to travel to Atlanta, the home of CNNI’s headquarters. But, before arriving, Shihab Eldin received a call from the Director of Programming who had hired him:

“the higher ups have weighed in… and we have to rescind our offer,” the Director told Shihab Eldin. “The closest answer I could get on record after a lengthy meeting was [that] I was ‘politically exposed,’ whether it was my Palestinian origins or my fact-based writings that criticized the Israeli gov [sic] in the past,” Shihab Eldin said on Twitter.

Considering the study findings, what the firing of Hill and Shihab Eldin reveals is that the issue is hardly a matter of accessibility, whether in broadcast or print news. The truth, as Said observed, is that when an honest criticism of Israel is expressed, the result can be catastrophic.

“One small index is the fact that the Anti-Defamation League in America and the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee have each published books identifying Israel’s ‘enemies’ and implying tactics for police or vigilante action,” he added in “Permission to Narrate.”

Such tactics have grown more vicious over the past thirty years, with Canary Mission, a website dedicated to portraying advocates of Palestinian rights as anti-Semites, as the latest iteration. As Siddiqui said,

“calling colonialism or occupation by their own names is something out of bounds for many news outlets.”

But the tide seems to be turning. Last week, Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American Congresswoman was inaugurated into the 116^th Congress. Tlaib is among an emerging progressive contingent that has challenged the long-established rules of the media and politics game regarding Israel. She has endorsed BDS and will lead a congressional trip for newly sworn-in members to Palestine, countering the trip traditionally offered by AIPAC. Appearing in a traditional Palestinian Thobe, Tlaib was sworn into Congress amidst a wide-reaching campaign on social media celebrating her Palestinian heritage and culture. As researcher and activist Hanna Alshaikh noted,

“while the Palestinian-American community, [and Palestinians broadly have] historically been rendered invisible or pushed to the sidelines, Tlaib has pushed back, proudly entering the halls of Congress.”

The growth of the Palestine solidarity movement, the election of Tlaib, and the numerous resources available to the newspapers examined in the study beg the question whether these and other news outlets will continue to tarnish their record by their evident disregard of the Palestinian narrative, and the facts about Palestine.

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Featured image is from Palestine Square

Os soldados italianos, em missão no Djibuti, doaram algumas máquinas de costura à organização humanitária que ajuda os refugiados neste pequeno país do Corno de África, situado em posição estratégica e localizado na rota comercial fundamental da Ásia-Europa, até à embocadura do Mar Vermelho, em frente ao Iémen. Aqui a Itália tem a sua própria base militar que, desde 2012, “fornece apoio logístico às operações militares italianas que se desenvolvem na região do Corno de África, no Golfo de Aden, na bacia da Somália e no Oceano Índico”. Portanto, no Djibuti, os militares italianos não se ocupam, apenas, de máquinas de costura.

No exercício Barracuda 2018, realizado aqui, em Novembro passado, os atiradores escolhidos das Forças Especiais (cujo comando está em Pisa) treinaram em condições ambientais diversas, mesmo de noite, com armas de precisão altamente sofisticadas, capazes focar o objectivo a 1 ou 2 km de distância. Não se sabe em que operações militares as Forças Especiais irão participar, visto que as suas missões são secretas; no entanto, é certo que elas ocorrem principalmente num âmbito  multinacional, sob comando USA. Em Djibouti, existe  Camp Lemonnier, a maior base USA na qual opera, desde 2001, a Task Force Conjunta – Corno de África, composta por 4.000 especialistas em missões altamente secretas, incluindo assassinatos por meio de comandos ou drones assassinos, em particular, no Iémen e na Somália. Enquanto os aviões e os helicópteros para as operações especiais partem de Camp Lemonnier, os drones têm estado concentrados no aeroporto Chabelley, a uma dezena de quilómetros da capital. Aqui estão a erguer-se outros hangares, cuja construção foi confiada pelo Pentágono a uma empresa de Catania, já contratada para outros trabalhos em Sigonella, a base principal dos drones USA/NATO para as operações em África e no Médio Oriente.

No Djibuti há também uma base japonesa e uma francesa, que abrigam tropas alemãs e espanholas. A estas foi adicionada, em 2017, uma base militar chinesa, a única fora do seu território nacional. Apesar de ter um objectivo logístico fundamental, como pousada para as tripulações dos navios militares que escoltam os navios mercantes e como depósito de suprimentos, ela representa um sinal significativo da crescente presença chinesa, em África. Presença essencialmente económica, à qual os Estados Unidos e outras potências ocidentais se opõem, contrapondo com uma presença militar crescente. Daí a intensificação das operações conduzidas pelo Comando África, que tem, em Itália, dois comandos subordinados importantes: o U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, no quartel de Ederle, em Vicenza; as  Forças Navais Europa-África (Forças Navais USA para a Europa e a África), cujo quartel general fica na base de Capodichino, em Nápoles, formada pelos navios de guerra da Sexta Frota, baseados em Gaeta.

No mesmo quadro estratégico, existe outra base norte-americana de drones armados, que está a ser construída em Agadez, no Níger, que o Pentágono já usa para drones – a base aérea 101, em Niamey. Presta assistência às operações militares que os USA têm realizado há anos, juntamente com a França, na África do Sahel, especialmente no Mali, no Níger e no Chade. A estes dois últimos, chega amanhã o Presidente do Conselho, G. Conte. Estão entre os países mais pobres do mundo, mas riquíssimos em matérias-primas – coltan, urânio, ouro, petróleo e muitas outras – explorados pelas multinacionais americanas e francesas que, cada vez mais, temem a concorrência das empresas chinesas, que oferecem condições muito mais favoráveis aos países africanos.

A tentativa de impedir o avanço económico chinês, através de intervenções militares em África e noutros lugares, está a fracassar. Provavelmente, até as máquinas de costura doadas em Djibuti, pelos militares italianos aos refugiados, são «made in China».

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Il «grande gioco» delle basi in Africa, L’Arte della guerra

il manifesto, 15 de Janeiro de 2019

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

VIDEO (PandoraTV) : (subtítulos em português)

I militari italiani in missione a Gibuti hanno donato alcune macchine da cucire all’organizzazione umanitaria che assiste i rifugiati in questo piccolo paese del Corno d’Africa, situato in posizione strategica sulla fondamentale rotta commerciale Asia-Europa all’imboccatura del Mar Rosso di fronte allo Yemen. Qui l’Italia ha una propria base militare che, dal 2012, «fornisce supporto logistico alle operazioni militari italiane che si svolgono nell’area del Corno d’Africa, Golfo di Aden, bacino somalo, Oceano Indiano». A Gibuti i militari italiani non si occupano, quindi, solo di macchine da cucire.

Nell’esercitazione Barracuda 2018, svoltasi qui lo scorso novembre, i tiratori scelti delle Forze speciali (il cui comando è a Pisa) si sono addestrati, in diverse condizioni ambientali anche di notte, con i più sofisticati fucili di precisione capaci di centrare l’obiettivo a 1-2 km di distanza. Non si sa a quali operazioni militari partecipino le Forze speciali, poiché le loro missioni sono segrete; è comunque certo che esse si svolgono prevalentemente in ambito multinazionale sotto comando Usa. A Gibuti c’è Camp Lemonnier, la grande base USA da cui opera dal 2001 la Task Force Congiunta – Corno d’Africa, composta da 4000 specialisti in missioni altamente segrete, tra cui uccisioni mirate per mezzo di commandos o droni killer in particolare nello Yemen e in Somalia. Mentre gli aerei e gli elicotteri per le operazioni speciali decollano da Camp Lemonnier, i droni sono stati concentrati nell’aeroporto Chabelley, a una decina di chilometri dalla capitale. Qui si stanno realizzando altri hangar, la cui costruzione è stata affidata dal Pentagono a una azienda di Catania già impiegata in lavori a Sigonella, principale base dei droni USA/NATO per operazioni in Africa e Medioriente.

A Gibuti ci sono anche una base giapponese e una francese,  che ospita truppe tedesche e spagnole. A queste si è aggiunta nel 2017 una base militare cinese, l’unica fuori dal suo territorio nazionale. Pur avendo un fondamentale scopo logistico, quale foresteria degli equipaggi delle navi militari che scortano i mercantili e quale magazzino per i rifornimenti, essa rappresenta un significativo segnale della crescente presenza cinese in Africa. Presenza essenzialmente economica, a cui gli Stati uniti e le altre potenze occidentali contrappongono una crescente presenza militare. Da qui l’intensificarsi delle operazioni condotte dal Comando Africa, che ha in Italia due importanti comandi subordinati: lo U.S. Army Africa (Esercito USA per l’Africa), alla caserma Ederle di Vicenza; le U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa (Forze navali USA per l’Europa e l’Africa), il cui quartier generale è nella base di Capodichino a Napoli, formate dalle navi da guerra della Sesta Flotta basata a Gaeta.

Nello stesso quadro strategico rientra un’altra base USA di droni armati, che si sta costruendo ad Agadez in Niger, dove il Pentagono già usa per i droni la base aerea 101 a Niamey. Essa serve alle operazioni militari che gli USA conducono da anni, insieme alla Francia, nell’Africa del Sahel, soprattutto in Mali, Niger e Ciad. Paesi tra i più poveri del mondo, ma ricchissimi di materie prime – coltan, uranio, oro, petrolio e molte altre – sfruttate da multinazionali statunitensi e francesi che sempre più temono la concorrenza delle società cinesi, le quali offrono ai paesi africani condizioni molto più favorevoli.

Il tentativo di fermare con strumenti militari, in Africa e altrove, l’avanzata economica cinese sta fallendo. Probabilmente anche le macchine da cucire, donate a Gibuti dai militari italiani ai profughi, sono  «made in China».

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 15 gennaio 2019

VIDEO (PANDORATV) :

The Middle East is metamorphosing. New fault-lines are emerging, yet Trump’s foreign policy ‘hawks’ still try to stage ‘old movies’ in a new ‘theatre’.

The ‘old movie’ is for the US to ‘stand up’ Sunni, Arab states, and lead them towards confronting ‘bad actor’ Iran. ‘Team Bolton’ is reverting back to the old 1996 Clean Break script – as if nothing has changed. State Department officials have been briefing that Secretary Pompeo’s address in Cairo on Thursday was “ slated to tell his audience (although he may not name the former president), that Obama misled the people of the Middle East about the true source of terrorism, including what contributed to the rise of the Islamic State. Pompeo will insist that Iran, a country Obama tried to engage, is the real terrorist culprit. The speech’s drafts also have Pompeo suggesting that Iran could learn from the Saudis about human rights, and the rule of law.”

Well, at least that speech should raise a chuckle around the region. In practice however, the regional fault-line has moved on: It is no longer so much Iran. GCC States have a new agenda, and are now far more concerned to contain Turkey, and to put a halt to Turkish influence spreading throughout the Levant. GCC states fear that President Erdogan, given the emotional and psychological wave of antipathy unleashed by the Khashoggi murder, may be mobilising newly re-energised Muslim Brotherhood, Gulf networks. The aim being to leverage present Gulf economic woes, and the general hollowing out of any broader GCC ‘vision’, in order to undercut the rigid Gulf ‘Arab system’ (tribal monarchy). The Brotherhood favours a soft Islamist reform of the Gulf monarchies – along lines, such as that once advocated by Jamal Khashoggi.

Turkey’s leadership in any case is convinced that it was the UAE (MbZ specifically) that was the author behind the Kurdish buffer being constructed, and mini-state ‘plot’ against Turkey – in conjunction with Israel and the US. Understandably, Gulf states now fear possible Turkish retribution for their weaponising of Kurdish aspirations in this way.

And Turkey is seen (by GCC States) as already working in close co-ordination with fellow Muslim Brotherhood patron and GCC member, Qatar, to divide the collapsing Council. This prefigures a new round to the MB versus Saudi Wahhabism spat for the soul of Sunni Islam.

GGC states therefore, are hoping to stand-up a ‘front’ to balance Turkey in the Levant. And to this end, they are trying to recruit President Assad back into the Arab fold (which is to say, into the Arab League), and to have him act, jointly with them, as an Arab counter to Turkey.

The point here is obvious: President Assad is closely allied to Iran – and so is Moscow and Turkey. To be fashionably Iranophobic – as Pompeo might wish the GCC to be – simply would spoil the GCC’s anti-Turkey ‘play’. Syria indeed may be (justly) skeptical of Turkey’s actions and intent in Syria, but from President Assad’s perspective, Iran and Russia are absolutely crucial to the managing of an erratic Turkey. Turkey does represent an existential Syrian concern. And trying to lever President Assad – or Lebanon or Turkey – away from Iran, would be absurd. It won’t happen. And the GCC states have enough nous to understand this now (after their stinging defeat in Syria). The Gulf anti-Iranian stance has had ‘the burner’ turned sharply down, (except when their need is to stroke US feathers).

They can see clearly that the Master of Ceremonies in the Levant – putting together the new regional ‘order’ – is not Mr Bolton, but Moscow, with Tehran (and occasionally Ankara), playing their equal part ‘from behind the curtain’.

Presumably, America’s intelligence services know, (and Gulf states certainly are aware), that in any case, Iranian forces are almost all gone from Syria (though of course Syria’s ‘Iranian connection’ remains as firm, as ever) – even as Pompeo and Israel say the precisely the opposite: that they are pushing-back hard at the ‘threatening’ Iranian military ‘footprint’ in Syria. Few in the region will believe it.

The second notable emerging regional fault line then, evidently is the one that is opening between Turkey and the US and Israel. Turkey ‘gets it’: Erdogan ‘gets it’ very clearly: that Washington now deeply distrusts him, suspects that Turkey is accelerating into Moscow and Beijing’s orbit, and that DC would be happy to see him gone – and a more NATO-friendly leader installed in his stead.

And it must be clear to Washington too ‘why’ Turkey would be heading ‘East’. Erdogan precisely needs Russia and Iran to act as MCs to moderate his difficult relations with Damascus for the future. Erdogan needs Russia and Iran even more, to broker a suitable political solution to the Kurds in Syria. He needs China too, to support his economy.

And Erdogan is fully aware that Israel (more than Gulf States) still hankers after the old Ben Gurion ideal of an ethnic Kurdish state – allied with Israel, and sitting atop major oil resources – to be inserted at the very pivot to south-west and central Asia: And at Turkey’s vulnerable underbelly.

The Israeli’s articulated their support for a Kurdish state quite plainly at the time of Barzani’s failed independence initiative in Iraq. But Erdogan simply, unmistakably, has said to this ‘never’ (to Bolton, this week). Nonetheless, Ankara still needs Russian and Iranian collaboration to allow Bolton to ‘climb down his tree’ of a Kurdish mini-state in Syria. He needs Russia to broker a Syrian-led buffer, vice an American-Kurdish tourniquet, strapped around his southern border.

It is unlikely however, that despite the real threat that America’s arming of the Kurds poses to Turkey, that Erdogan really wants to invade Syria – though he threatens it – and though John Bolton’s ‘conditions’ may end by leaving Turkey no option, but to do it. Since, for sure, Erdogan understands that a messy Turkish invasion of Syria would send the delicately balanced Turkish Lire into free-fall.

Still … Turkey, Syria, Iran and Russia now all want America gone from Syria. And for a moment, it seemed it might proceed smoothly after Trump had acquiesced to Erdogan’s arguments, during their celebrated telephone call. But then – Senator Lindsay Graham demurred (against the backdrop of massed howls of anguish issuing from the Beltway foreign policy think-tanks). Bolton did the walk-back, by making US withdrawal from Syria contingent on conditions (ones seemingly designed not to be met) and not tied any specific timeline. President Erdogan was not amused.

It should be obvious now that we are entering a major regional re-set: The US is leaving Syria. Bolton’s attempted withdrawal-reversal has been rebuffed. And the US, in any event, forfeited the confidence of the Kurds in consequence to the original Trump statement. The Kurds now are orientated toward Damascus and Russia is mediating a settlement.

It may take a while, but the US is going. Kurdish forces (other than those linked with the PKK) are likely to be assimilated into the Syrian army, and the ‘buffer’ will not be directed against Turkey, but will be a mix of Syrian army and Kurdish elements – under Syrian command – but whose overall conduct towards Turkey will be invigilated by Russia. And the Syrian army will, in due time, clear Idlib from a resurgent al-Qaida (HTS).

The Arab states are returning to their embassies in Damascus – partly out of fear that the whipsaw of American policy, its radical polarisation, and its proclivity to be wholly or partially ‘walked-back’ by the Deep State – might leave the Gulf unexpectedly ‘orphaned’ at any time. In effect, the GCC states are ‘hedging’ against this risk by trying to reconnect a bifurcated Arab sphere, and to give it a new ‘purpose’ and credibility – as a balance against Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood (Syria’s old nemesis).

And yet – there remains still another layer to this calculus, as described by veteran Middle East journalist, Elijah Magnier:

“Indeed the Levant is returning to the centre of Middle East and world attention in a stronger position than in 2011. Syria has advanced precision missiles that can hit any building in Israel. Assad also has an air defence system he would have never dreamed of before 2011 – thanks to Israel’s continuous violation of its airspace, and its defiance of Russian authority. Hezbollah has constructed bases for its long and medium range precision missiles in the mountains and has created a bond with Syria that it could never have established – if not for the war. Iran has established a strategic brotherhood with Syria, thanks to its role in defeating the regime change plan.

NATO’s support for the growth of ISIS has created a bond between Syria and Iraq that no Muslim or Baathist link could ever have created: Iraq has a “carte blanche” to bomb ISIS locations in Syria without the consent of the Syrian leadership, and the Iraqi security forces can walk into Syria anytime they see fit to fight ISIS. The anti-Israel axis has never been stronger than it is today. That is the result of 2011-2018 war imposed on Syria”.

Yes. This is the third of the newly emergent fault-lines: that of Israel on the one hand, and the emerging reality in the Syrian north, on the other – a shadow that has returned to haunt the original instigators of the ‘war’ to undermine Syria. PM Netanyahu since has put all the Israeli eggs into the Trump family ‘basket’. It was Netanyahu’s relationship with Trump which was presented in Israel as being the true ‘Deal of the Century’ (and not the Palestinian one). Yet when Bibi complained forcefully about US withdrawal from Syria (leaving Syria vulnerable, Netanyahu asserts, to an Iranian insertion of smart missiles), Trump nonchalantly replied that the US gives Israel $ 4.5 billion per year – “You’ll be all right”, Trump riposted.

It was seen in Israel as an extraordinary slap to the PM’s face. But Israelis cannot avoid, but to acknowledge, some responsibility for creating precisely the circumstances of which they now loudly complain.

Bottom line: Things have not gone according to plan: America is not shaping the new Levantine ‘order’ – Moscow is. And Israel’s continual, blatant disregard of Russia’s own interests in the Levant, firstly infuriated, and finally has provoked the Russian high command into declaring the northern Middle East a putative no-fly zone for Israel. This represents a major strategic reversal for Netanyahu (and the US).

And finally, it is this repeating pattern of statements being made by the US President on foreign policy that are then almost casually contradicted, or ‘conditioned’, by some or other part of the US bureaucracy, that poses to the region (and beyond) the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. The pattern clearly is one of an isolated President, with officials emptying his statements of executive authority (until subsequently endorsed, or denied, by the US bureaucracy). It is making Trump almost irrelevant (in terms of the setting of foreign policy).

Is this then a stealth process – knowingly contrived – incrementally to remove Trump from power? A hollowing out of his Presidential prerogatives (leaving him only as a disruptive Twitterer) – achieved, without all the disruption and mess, of formally removing him from office? We shall see.

And what next? Well, as Simon Henderson observes, no one is sure – everyone is left wondering:

“What’s up with Secretary Pompeo’s extended tour of the Middle East? The short answer is that he is trying to sell/explain President Trump’s “we are leaving Syria” policy to America’s friends … Amman, Jordan; Cairo, Egypt; Manama, Bahrain; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE); Doha, Qatar; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Muscat, Oman; Kuwait City, Kuwait. Wow, even with his own jet and no immigration hassles, that’s an exhausting itinerary … The fact that there now are eight stops in eight days, probably reflects the amount of explaining that needs to be done.”

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Alastair Crooke is former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

Featured image is from SCF

It’s a messy, though typical picture.  US President Donald Trump wants to pull out forces in Syria.  When announced in December, jaws drooped and sharp intakes of breath were registered through the Washington establishment.  Members of the military industrial complex were none too pleased.  The President had seemingly made his case clear: US blood and treasure will not be further drawn upon to right the conflicts of the Middle East. 

His national security advisor, John Bolton, prefers a different message: the US will not leave north-eastern Syria till the militants of Islamic State are defeated and the Kurds protected.  If this was a message of intended confusion, it has worked.  The media vultures are confused as to what carrion to feed upon. The US imperial lobby is finding the whole affair disruptive and disturbing.  Washington’s allies attempt to read the differences between policy-by-tweet and policy by representation.

Trump’s pre-New Year announcement suggested speediness, a rapid removal of US forces supposedly indispensable in Making America Great Again.  Once made, US troops were to leave in a matter of weeks – or so went a certain wisdom.  “They’re all coming back, and they’re coming back now,” ventured the president.  But Bolton suggested otherwise.  US personnel, he suggested, would remain in al-Tanf to counter Iranian influence.  Timetables could be left to the talking heads. 

A change of heart also came from the White House, with Trump asserting that,

“We won’t be finally pulled out until ISIS is gone.” 

To reporters, he adopted a familiar stance in ever shifting sands: promising to do something meant doing something different.

“We are pulling back in Syria.  We’re going to be removing our troops.  I never said we’re doing it that quickly.”

On Sunday, Trump delivered another streaky note on Twitter, thereby adding another lace of confusion.

“Starting the long overdue pullout from Syria while hitting the little remaining ISIS territorial caliphate hard, and from many directions.” 

Starting the long overdue pullout from Syria while hitting the little remaining ISIS territorial caliphate hard, and from many directions. Will attack again from existing nearby base if it reforms. Will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds. Create 20 mile safe zone….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2019

Last Thursday, information on the withdrawal of some US military ground equipment from Syria was noted.  On Friday, Col. Sean Ryan, spokesman for the US-led coalition in Syria, issued a statement claiming that the coalition had “begun the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria” leaving little by way of details.  In Trumpland, the scanty detail often prevails over the substantive. 

US strategy in the Middle East has tended to revolve around setting up figures for the fall while inflicting the fall of others.  The Kurds have tended to find themselves in that role, encouraged and prompted to take up arms against their various oppressors, only to find themselves left to the slaughter in the subsequent geopolitical dramas of the region.  The promise by Great Britain and France at the conclusion of World War I that a Kurdish state be chalked out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire never materialised.  In the crude machinations of international relations, they have remained, as Joost Hiltermann describes them, the “expendable” ones. 

Bolton is keen not to make that same mistake, which is exactly why he risks doing so.  The great enemy of the Kurds on this occasion remains a prickly US ally, Turkey. 

“We don’t think the Turks ought to undertake military action that’s not fully coordinated with the agreed to by the United States”.   

Trump, similarly, suggested in a direct call with the Turkish president that the Turkish economy would be devastated “economically if they hit Kurds.”  In a statement from White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders,

“The President expressed the desire to work together to address Turkey’s security concerns in northeast Syria while stressing the importance to the United States that Turkey does not mistreat the Kurds and other Syrian Democratic Forces with whom we have fought to defeat ISIS.”   

Bolton’s credibility in pursuing that agenda seemed to crumble in Ankara before a notable snubbing by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on January 8.  The national security advisor had to make do with a meeting with Erdoğan’s senior advisor, Ibrahim Kalin. Bolton was not one the Turkish leader particularly wanted to see in light of his comments that Turkey not harm members of the Kurdish Syrian militias in the aftermath of the US withdrawal.  Such views also fly in the face of Turkey’s self-appointed role as an agent of influence in the region.  An absent Washington is simply too good a chance to press home the advantage, and Ankara is bound to capitalise. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not fare much better in his regional whistle-stops in Egypt Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf states.  In Cairo, Pompeo denied that there was any “contradiction whatsoever” about Trump’s position on withdrawal. 

“I think everyone understands what the United States is doing.” 

If not everyone, then at the very least, “the senior leaders in their governments”.  Very good of them.

The views of American functionaries have not necessarily meant much in the righteous intent of other powers, but Bolton is nonetheless happy to pen his name to this mast.  He wishes for the Kurds to hold firm, avoid the temptation of seeking another sponsor who just might do a better job. 

“I think they know,” suggested Bolton, “who their friends are.”  (Bolt is more than nudging here, making sure the Russians or the Assad regime are avoided in any future security arrangements that might supply a shield for the Kurds.)

Daft, can be Bolton, who sees himself as a true appraiser of the international relations system when he is disabled by presumption.  The Turks may, in time, hand Washington another bloody lesson of retribution showing that basic, keen hatreds in historical dramas are far more significant than sophisticated notions of self-interest.  The presence of US troops in Syria will no doubt be reclassified, withdrawal by which any other name would be as confusing.  The Kurds will have to chew over their options with the sort of caution nursed by a history of promise followed by abandonment.  Be wary of the expendable ones.

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

Featured image is from NEO

Corporate dictatorships—which strip employees of fundamental constitutional rights, including free speech, and which increasingly rely on temp or contract employees who receive no benefits and have no job security—rule the lives of perhaps 80 percent of working Americans.

These corporations, with little or no oversight, surveil and monitor their workforces. They conduct random drug testing, impose punishing quotas and targets, routinely engage in wage theft, injure workers and then refuse to make compensation, and ignore reports of sexual harassment, assault and rape. They use managerial harassment, psychological manipulation—including the pseudo-science of positive psychology—and intimidation to ensure obedience.

They fire workers for expressing leftist political opinions on social media or at public events during their off-hours. They terminate those who file complaints or publicly voice criticism about working conditions. They thwart attempts to organize unions, callously dismiss older workers and impose “non-compete” contract clauses, meaning that if workers leave they are unable to use their skills and human capital to work for other employers in the same industry. Nearly half of all technical professions now require workers to sign non-compete clauses, and this practice has spread to low-wage jobs including those in hair salons and restaurants.

The lower the wages the more abusive the conditions. Workers in the food and hotel industries, agriculture, construction, domestic service, call centers, the garment industry, warehouses, retail sales, lawn service, prisons, and health and elder care suffer the most. Walmart, for example, which employs nearly 1 percent of the U.S. labor force (1.4 million workers), prohibits casual conversation, which it describes as “time theft.” The food industry giant Tyson prevents its workers from taking toilet breaks, causing many to urinate on themselves; as a result, some workers must wear diapers. The older, itinerant workers that Amazon often employs are subjected to grueling 12-hour shifts in which the company electronically monitors every action to make sure hourly quotas are met.

Some Amazon workers walk for miles on concrete floors each shift and repeatedly get down on their hands and knees to perform their jobs. They frequently suffer crippling injuries. The company makes injured employees, whom it fires, sign releases saying the injuries are not work-related. Two-thirds of workers in low-wage industries are victims of wage theft, losing an amount estimated to be as high as $50 billion a year. From 4 million to 14 million American workers, under threat of wage cuts, plant shutdowns or dismissal, have been pressured by their employers to support pro-corporate political candidates and causes.

The corporations that in effect rule the lives of American workers constitute what University of Michigan philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson refers to as “private governments.”

These “workplace governments,” she writes, are “dictatorships, in which bosses govern in ways that are largely unaccountable to those who are governed. They don’t merely govern workers: they dominate them.”

These corporations have the legal authority, she writes, “to regulate workers’ off-hour lives as well—their political activities, speech, choice of sexual partner, use of recreational drugs, alcohol, smoking, and exercise. Because most employers exercise this off-hours authority irregularly, and without warning, most workers are unaware of how sweeping it is.”

“If the U.S. government imposed such regulations on us, we would rightly protest that our constitutional rights were being violated,” Anderson writes in her book “Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It).” “But American workers have no such rights against their bosses. Even speaking out against such constraints can get them fired. So most keep silent.”

Once workers sign contracts they essentially cede their rights as citizens to the corporations, except the few rights guaranteed by law, for the duration of the contracts.

“Employers’ authority over workers,” Anderson writes, “outside of collective bargaining and a few other contexts, such as university professors’ tenure, is sweeping, arbitrary, and unaccountable—not subject to notice, process, or appeal. The state has established the constitution of the government of the workplace; it is a form of private government.”

These corporations, by law, can “impose a far more minute, exacting, and sweeping regulation of employees than democratic states do in any domain outside of prisons and the military.”

These myriad corporate dictatorships, or private governments, ensure American workers are docile and compliant as the superstructure of the corporate state cements into place a species of corporate totalitarianism. The ruling ideology of neoliberalism and libertarianism, used to justify the corporate domination and social inequality that afflict us, sells itself as the protector of freedom and liberty. It does this by subterfuge. It claims workers have the freedom to enter into employment contracts and terminate them, while ignoring the near-total suspension of rights during the period of employment. It pretends that workers and corporations function as independent and autonomous sellers and buyers, with workers selling their labor freely and corporate owners buying this labor.

This neoliberal economic model, however, is defective. The relationship between the corporation and the worker is not the same as the relationship between a self-employed baker, for example, and his customers. The self-employed baker and those who buy the bread appeal to mutual self-interest in the exchange.

“The buyer is not an inferior, begging for a favor,” Anderson writes. “Equally importantly, the buyer is not a superior who is entitled to order the butcher, the brewer, or the baker to hand over the fruits of his labor. Buyers must address themselves to the other’s interests. The parties each undertake the exchange with their dignity, their standing, and their personal independence affirmed by the other. This is a model of social relations between free and equal persons.” (Emphasis by the author.)

Once a worker is bonded to a corporation, however, he or she instantly loses this dignity, standing and personal independence, especially if the job is temporary, entry-level or menial. Relations are no longer free and equal.

“When workers sell their labor to an employer, they have to hand themselves over to their boss, who then gets to order them around,” Anderson writes. “The labor contract, instead of leaving the seller free as before, puts the seller under the authority of their boss.”

The worker either fulfills the demands of management, which he or she has little ability to question or formulate, or is reprimanded, demoted, sanctioned or fired. The corporate manager wields total authority over the worker.

“The performance of the contract embodies a profound asymmetry in whose interests count,” Anderson writes, “henceforth, the worker will be required to toil under conditions that pay no regard to his interests, and every regard for the capitalist’s profits.”

Neoliberalism posits that the choice is between a free market and state control, whereas, as Anderson writes, “most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government.” Neoliberalism argues that the essence of freedom is free enterprise, while never addressing workers’ surrender of basic freedoms. Neoliberalism holds out the promise, which has not been true since before the Industrial Revolution, that workers can become self-employed if they are hardworking and innovative. We all have the ability to achieve economic independence or become industry leaders if we draw on our inner resources, according to the neoliberal mantra, one popularized by mass culture. The neoliberal ideologues’ solution to the cannibalization of the economy is to call for fostering a nation of entrepreneurs. This is a con. Corporations and their lobbyists write the laws and the legislation, creating a two-tiered legal system in which poverty is criminalized and we are controlled, taxed and punished. The corporate oligarchs, however, live in a world where monopoly, fraud and other financial wrongdoing are legal or rarely punished and taxes are minimal or nonexistent. Among the population, only a tiny percentage—most of whom come from inherited wealth and have been groomed in elitist, plutocratic universities and institutions—dominate the corporate hierarchy. Public discourse, controlled by corporate power, ignores this one-sided power arrangement. It cannot address a problem it refuses to acknowledge. Subjugation is freedom.

Anderson calls this corporate economic system communist—that’s communist with a small “c”—because these private governments “own all the nonlabor means of production in the society it governs. It organizes production by means of central planning. The form of the government is a dictatorship. In some cases, the dictator is appointed by an oligarchy. In other cases, the dictator is self-appointed.” Private governments, their sanctioning powers lacking the state’s ability to imprison or execute (although they often have internal security forces with the power to arrest), ensure compliance by using wholesale surveillance and the threats of demotion and exile, plus the potential rewards of salary raises and promotions. Also, there usually is a steady barrage of company propaganda.

“We have the language of fairness and distributive justice to talk about low wages and inadequate benefits, we know how to talk about the Fight for $15, whatever side of this issue you are on,” Anderson writes. “But we don’t have good ways to talk about the way bosses rule workers’ lives.”

American workers have never achieved the array of rights won by workers in other industrialized countries. At the height of union representation in 1954, only 28.3 percent of American workers were union members. This number has fallen to 11.1 percent, with only 6.6 percent of private-sector workers belonging to unions. Wages have for decades declined or been stagnant. Half of all U.S. workers make less than $29,000 a year, effectively putting their families in poverty.

Workers, lacking unions and the ability to pressure management through collective bargaining, have no say in their working conditions. If they choose to leave abusive employment, where do they go? The inequalities and the workers’ loss of liberty and agency are embedded within the corporate structure. It is impossible, as Anderson warns, to build a free, democratic society dominated by private governments. As these private governments merge into the superstructure of the corporate state we are cementing into place an unassailable corporate tyranny. It is a race against time. Our remaining freedoms are being rapidly extinguished. These omnipotent dictatorships must be destroyed, and they will only be destroyed by sustained popular protest such as we see in the streets of Paris. Otherwise, we will be shackled in 21st-century chains.

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Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Featured image is from Mr. Fish/Truthdig

The Guardian’s Tom Phillips’ article Venezuela Crisis Takes Deadly Toll on Buckling Health System (January 06, 2019) is more good news for US psychopaths, such as Trump, Bolton and Pompeo. Children are dying in Venezuela. Sanctions are working!

Tom is becoming the Luke Harding of Venezuela. Luke…err, Tom blames all of Venezuela’s problems on president Nicolas Maduro. Tom has piled on, repeating the Washington Consensus vilifying Maduro……that is what “repeaters” do.

If Maduro is illegally and violently removed from office, what will come after? Probably chaos, since there is no united opposition. Chaos is what the US desires, because chaos gives the US an excuse for interventions. A dysfunctional opposition then gives the US the power to be the kingmaker. The US has a self-proclaimed “right” to intervene anywhere, anytime in Latin America, according to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and the 1904 “Big Stick” Roosevelt corollary.

As a rule, US doctrines do not become internationally laws, and instead usually violate international law. Doctrines are just a “wish-list” of US foreign policy. The main US foreign policy objective is to promote US corporate exploitation of foreign countries.

If the US gets its way in Venezuela, then Venezuela will be ruled by oligarchs, dictators or the military—or a confabulation of the three natural allies. The Venezuelan people overwhelmingly rejected the 40-years of oligarchy, when they elected Hugo Chavez in 1998. Chavez ran for election on a socialist platform. The US has been trying to overthrow Chavez’s socialist movement from the first moment Chavez took office.

In 2002 Bush backed a failed coup. Trump and his cronies have been planning another coup. This just in from Tom Phillips January 11^th: Juan Guaido of the opposition is calling for an international intervention and a military coup. An illegal violent regime change is very likely soon.

After Chavez died of cancer at the age of 58 in 2013, his vice president Nicolás Maduro constitutionally assumed his office. Maduro has been struggling to continue Chavez’s socialist programs for the poor. Maduro is no Chavez, but he is trying to carry on Chavez’s legacy. Maduro was reelected to his second term in 2018.

Maduro faces many economic problems, much of them stemming from the collapsing international oil price in 2015. There are good reasons to believe that the collapse in oil prices was a US-Saudi conspiracy, since the economic victims were Russia and Venezuela, two of the countries the US is trying to regime change. Oil is 95% of Venezuela’s revenue from exports, and 25% of its GDP.

The other major problem for Maduro is that on top of collapsing oil prices the US imposed crushing economic sanctions. Tom’s article unwittingly exposes the lie that the sanctions were targeted, and not intended as collective punishment of the people. Children are dying! Instead of using dead children as propaganda props, economic sanctions should be immediately suspended, and foreign aid sent to save the lives of these innocent victims. Tom did not mention that in the article. All he had for the dead children was crocodile tears.

The US is stomping on Venezuela’s neck, trying to kill socialism. And vengefully killing Venezuelan kids. (Just a few weeks ago, Pompeo mocked Iran, saying ….”if you want your people to eat”). The US is stomping its boot on the neck of socialism throughout Latin America, after years of a “pink tide” of elected progressive governments. It is working, as progressive governments in Latin America are becoming extinct.

Critics of Chavez and Maduro claim that socialism never works. It worked just fine under Chavez, as people were lifted out of poverty. Inequality declined dramatically. Critics blame Chavez and now Maduro for “overspending” on the poor.

As the US rebounds from one economic crisis to another, one bank bailout to the next, it is obvious to those that can see: Capitalism does not work. The US with its hyper-neoliberalism is 25^th on the UN Human Development Index, adjusted for inequality. The US has its own healthcare crisis of 45,000 people dying every year because they cannot afford healthcare. Many of them children, Tom!

Sad how the critics never blame a country’s economic problems on over spending for US weapons, concentration of wealth in a few wealthy families, or austerity for the people because of crooked debt-imposed austerity by the IMF. The poor are expendable for oligarchs North and South. US healthcare and needed infrastructure suffer from overspending on the military and wars.

Socialism, even a democratic one is a dirty word to the US, because socialist governments use their country’s natural resources, and state-owned enterprises for the benefit of the people. US corporations want those resources, privatized state-owned enterprises, and to have poor people as a source of cheap labor. The driver of US foreign policy is what corporations want.

US foreign policy and US corporate exploitation in Latin America increases poverty there. The poor and indigenous people have their land stolen out from under them, and paramilitary death squads enforce their removal. Large land owners, resource corporations and monocrop plantations for export move in, often they are US corporations.

US welcoming committee for asylum seekers on the southern border. (Photo by the White House)

Unfair trade agreements allow the import of cheap US agricultural products. Cheap agricultural products, such as corn, is highly subsidized by US taxpayers, corporate welfare to agribusiness. Indigenous small farmers cannot compete with the dumped US imports. They are driven out of business and off their farms. With nowhere else to go, the poor and dispossessed migrate to the city where they are exploited as wage-slaves. Because the poor are vulnerable, they are easy targets for extortion from criminal gangs……while corrupt police look the other way.

Ironically, the poor fleeing for their lives, seeking protection and an opportunity to earn a subsistence wage head in the direction of their abuser……to the USA. That is why the US is experiencing a sharp increase in people from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador seeking political asylum.

Trump and his xenophobic racist supporters want the US to turn asylum seekers away. They want the US to be a “gated community”, as Trump put it. When other countries such as Venezuela want to be a “gated community” and keep out US corporations and unfair trade from exploiting them, then the US sends in the jackals.

In the old days the US “opened” foreign “gated communities” with gunboats, and admitted that the purpose was commercial interests. At one time or another, over the past 200 years the US has invaded almost every Latin American and Caribbean country; some of them multiple times. US invasions haven’t been for democracy. They have been for commercial reasons, and the source of wealth for those that became elite families.

William Allen Rogers’s 1904 cartoon recreates the Big Stick Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt as an episode in Gulliver’s Travels……(Wikipedia)

Today foreign holdouts from the neoliberal Washington Consensus are “opened” by the CIA, Special Forces, mercenaries, terrorists, local collaborators, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, and other government-private NGOs. NGOs do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly to sow discontent, opposition and violence.

The US uses psychological warfare and propaganda to “open” closed foreign countries. The US uses threats, bribes, political isolation, economic sanctions and the constant reminder that “all options are on the table”. The mainstream media, such as the Guardian (British, but very much part of this fetid media conspiracy) are complicit by keeping up a steady drumbeat of propaganda.

The US always presents its aggression as being out of concern for democracy, human rights, or because the US is being threatened by some small country, like Cuba, Bolivia, or Venezuela. Absurdity and blatant cowardice do not exist in the minds of US policymakers or their media stenographers: The US multiforce attack on puny Grenada (with a population smaller than a single neighborhood in Brooklyn, and with no actual armed forces of any kind) was hailed as a victory for US arms, and made into a “hero” movie by Clint Eastwood.—Ed) And quite typically, Pompeo just gave a delusional lying speech in Cairo that the US is a force for good, and he praised the bloody military-coup dictator Sisi. Mentioning commercial interests, greedy banks and the military-industrial-complex is considered uncouth, even though it is the truth behind US foreign policy.

The mainstream media is a vital player and collaborator in preparing the domestic audience for US wars of aggression, interventions, and regime changes. Mockingbirds, such as Tom Phillips, members of a compliant media, can only be described charitably as “useful idiots” in advancing the US agenda, when not outright hidden collaborators. The mainstream media such as the Guardian creates a circus-like atmosphere of a crisis. They sell the public that “something has to be done”.

After a US invasion the mainstream media again provides the cover story. When all the lies come out as they did about the Iraq War, then the media sticks its head in the sand and denies any responsibility. But in all cases, when the media acts as a propagandist for war, then they have blood on their hands too. They are first-degree accomplices to grave international crimes for which people were hanged under Nuremberg tribunal statutes.

US imperialism, neocolonialism, resource exploitation, imposed austerity, unfair trade, and the US monopolizing of the international financial system have destroyed millions of people’s lives. Trump says he does not hate US victims. Like a lot of US Americans, he just does not care. The US has no empathy for its victims, but cries crocodile tears for the alleged victims of US enemies. It is the syndrome that Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky referred to as “Worthy and Unworthy Victims”.

As Paul Jay of The Real News Network put it, for Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer, and Tony Soprano, the US is like the mafia: “it’s not personal, it’s just business”.

The Guardian used to challenge the Washington Consensus. It used to inform, instead of misinform. As the Guardian was publishing the Snowden Files the GCHQ cracked down. They smashed the Guardian’s computers, as well as freedom of the press. The Guardian said it obliged as a symbolic act. The “symbolic act” was the Guardian caving in to the GCHQ. Afterwards there was an exodus of many courageous editors and real journalists from the Guardian. This vile act —which the rest of the media did nothing to rescind—happened in a nation that has long boasted of being one of the world’s most stable democracies. The “new” Guardian is not just a pale version of its former progressive self; it is a toxic zombie bent in most cases to do the bidding of the empire.

Tom Phillips is the Guardian’s Latin America mockingbird for Washington’s neocons who are trying to destroy Venezuela, and stamp out socialism in Latin America. It is not a question of pro-Maduro or against-Maduro. It is about the integrity and professionalism of journalism.

Tom Phillips, Luke Harding and the Guardian are enablers of US regime change projects, from Russia, Iran, and North Korea to Venezuela. They have abandoned their responsibility to the public and freedom. Tom’s anti-Maduro articles are appearing almost daily. Here is another one on January 9^th: Venezuela’s Neighbours Turn Up Heat as Nicolás Maduro Begins Second Term; (the Guardian left out the adjective “rightwing” and “murderous” in neighbours).

Anyway, in Tom’s “unfriendly neighbours” article he quotes generously from the rightwing Lima Group. The Lima Group was formed in 2017 for the specific purpose of ousting Maduro and socialism. Washington’s fingerprints are all over the Lima Group. As Tom repeated, the Lima Group voted on January 4^th to put crushing regional sanctions on Venezuela……more children will die……and declared Maduro’s democratic election illegitimate.

Before the Lima Group voted, which the US is not a member of, the CIA directo…err, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a video presentation to the group. Pompeo’s message of “carrots” for those voting correctly, and “sticks” for those voting incorrectly was clear. How shameful to see the US bully its tiny neighbors, and watch them humiliate themselves.

The Lima Group’s members are Argentina, Brazil, Canada (?), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. Most of the members of the Lima Group are disqualified from judging anybody else, because of their own miserable records on democracy and human rights. Most of the members of the group are rightwing governments. Leftwing governments were left out purposely, except by accident. Canada should not even be a member. The Lima Group is for the most part mafia states, and they are doing the enforcement work for their USA godfather.

The US has 79 military bases in Latin America. The supposed purpose of these US bases in Latin America is to counter the threats of:

“Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia; the struggle against drug trafficking; regional and transnational criminal networks; the greater presence of China, Russia, and Iran in Latin America and the Caribbean; disaster response (remember the “aid” given Haiti after the earthquake); as well as the role assigned to security forces in every country in terms of internal, regional, and international order.”

What a bunch of crapola. Tiny Cuba with 10 million people is a threat? Venezuela with a military budget of $6 billion is a threat? Bolivia with 11 million people, a military budget of $659 million, and its mild-mannered president Evo Morales, the first Indigenous Native president……he is a threat? The aid to Haiti that went into the Clinton Foundation, and never reached the people? Ridiculous!

As with all US foreign policy, the real reason for US military foreign bases is to promote the interests of US corporations, prop up global neoliberalism. As General Smedley Butler said in his little classic, “War is a Racket”:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Bussiness, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903……Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.”

In the 100 years since Butler’s book was written, nothing has changed about US foreign policy and US interventions. It is still a money-making racket for the rich, corporations, banks, oligarchs, and their servants. Nothing has changed (if anyhting, it’s gotten worse) because its true fountainhead, the dynamics and culture of capitalism, remain at the helm of the American nation.

The Lima Group, Tom Phillips, and the Guardian are the servants of warmongers that Butler wrote about. They scramble for the crumbs of war profiteers. They eat well enough, if they can stomach the taste of blood.

With the exception of Costa Rica’s center-left Carlos Alvarado Quesada and Mexico’s historically elected left-wing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known affectionately as AMLO), the members of the Lima Group are Washington stooges, right-wing governments, and dictatorships. Canada shouldn’t even be in the group, much less vote, because of its extensive, environmentally destructive, and exploitative mining activities in Latin America. Not to mention that Canada by no stretch of the imagination can qualify as “Latin American.” Period.

Mexico was the only country to vote not to go along with the Washington consensus of the Lima Group. He sided with the international principles of non-intervention, sovereignty, self-determination, and respect for the internal affairs of other countries.

Lopez Obrador is courageous. It is up to the Venezuelan people to determine their own destiny without illegal economic sanctions, threats and subversion by outsiders. Obrador also stood up to Trump on the humanitarian crisis that the US has created on the US southern border.

Obrador is calling on the US for “reparations” (i.e. US investment) to make amends for its neoliberal-neocon exploitation and invasions. US exploitation has been a driver of poverty in Central America. Obrador has hinted that if the US will not invest to create jobs in Central America, then he might turn to the Chinese. Obrador’s “bad behavior” is pushing the US envelope. We should all cheer and pray for him, because he is putting himself in the crosshairs of Washington’s jackals.

As for Tom Phillips, his articles further shred his integrity and credibility. His article on “Venezuela’s neighbours” mostly just quoted the Lima Group. In other words, Tom is a stenographer, and the Guardian regurgitates it.

The US purposely creates chaos and crisis as an excuse for intervention. That is what the US is doing to Venezuela. US regime change artists and their mockingbirds in the media never consider what might come after. They really don’t care about the people, except as props for regime change. If and when Maduro’s socialist government falls, then Venezuela will be turned over to rightwing oligarchs, whom will do Washington’s bidding.

Venezuelans can then say “Hello” to neoliberalism, privatization, ExxonMobil, austerity, and neglected social programs. And, “Good-bye” to state-owned enterprises, universal healthcare, free education, and a voice speaking up for the poor.

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This article was originally published on The Greanville Post.

David William Pear, currently serving as a senior contributing editor, is a progressive columnist writing on economic, political and social issues. He is also a regular columnist and commenter on OpedNews. His articles have been published by The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Russia Insider, Pravda and many other progressive publications.  

Featured image: Chávez with fellow South American presidents Néstor Kirchner of Argentina and Lula da Silva of Brazil. [Wikipedia]

Governments around the world have been fighting counterfeiters for several centuries. Eventually, the combined efforts of law enforcement agencies, banknote printing and minting works led to the fact that cost of fake money was high for most of the 20th century. Then, the complexity of the process and the severity of punishment prevented counterfeiting from becoming a truly popular criminal industry. The volume of production of counterfeit money never reached the levels of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Nevertheless, the world experienced a new surge of interest to forgery of money at the end of the 20th century. The spread of affordable office equipment made printing fake money easier. Accordingly, the number of counterfeiters also increased. For instance, the US Secret Service stated in its annual 2017 report that over $73 million in counterfeit U.S. currency were prevented from circulation. The constant threat from counterfeiters has become the main, but not the only reason why states have to constantly think about increasing the degree of protection of banknotes. Now, it’s also about reputation of the world’s leading powers and blocs. For example, the dollar and the euro are fighting not only for the status of the world’s main reserve currency, but also for the name of the most reliable money in all respects.

Banknotes of both currencies, both dollar and euro, are literally stuffed with security features. For instance, the $100 banknote bears a 3D security ribbon and a portrait watermark. It’s printed by raising printing method, and has additional security features that can be checked with special devices.  In turn, the € 100 bill has a similar level of protection. Also, there’s a couple of common characteristics. Both banknotes are printed on paper and with special ink.

In fact, the banknote ink and paper are one of the key elements in the security printing process. You may not realize it, but a genuine banknote feels right and shows true colors. Thomas Savare, CEO of French security printing company Oberthur Fiduciaire, explains: “Banknote paper is very specific one, only used for banknotes, and manufactured by extremely niche suppliers who will only sell to recognized banknote printers (state printers or private printers). The same goes for the ink, which is made exclusively for banknote printing. The ink is resistant and has integrated security features, to be long lasting. The entire supply chain is dedicated to this industry and that’s a large part of the security of a banknote.” 

Watermarking is also one of the most popular and reliable methods of protecting bills. Despite the fact that it has been in use for a long time, security printers and central banks are in no hurry to trade it for anything else. The watermark has already become a customary way of identifying the authenticity of a bill without special equipment.

Modern watermarking may be old as a concept, but not as a technique. It constantly evolves and becomes more complex. In particular, a new generation of watermarks has been developed by VHP Security Paper, a recently acquired subsidiary of Oberthur Fiduciaire:

“VHP Security has been developing new technology watermarks for some time and its Pixel watermark, released just a few years ago, has already been selected by ten countries and features on more than 30 billion banknotes. The technology creates bright areas in the watermark, making it easy to identify and authenticate and more difficult to counterfeit,” says Thomas Savare.

Furthermore, the traceability of the entire supply chain has become a priority. The banks are demanding in this matter and being certified by the European Central Bank and being able to guarantee the confidentiality and security of the entire process, including through strict standards (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001), is now an essential and central asset for Oberthur Fiduciaire.

In general, forgery of money is a costly affair now. The workflow has become much more complicated than just a few dozen years ago. Modern security printers own unique technologies that are impossible to reproduce without special equipment, materials and set of skills. Authentication methods have become more complex for manufacturers to print, but, on the other hand, they still remain simple for end users.

The cost of counterfeit banknotes increases every year. Already now, the proportion of fake money in circulation is negligible compared to the total money supply. The ECB says:

“Some 331,000 counterfeit euro banknotes were withdrawn from circulation in the first half of 2017, a decrease compared with the second half of 2016. The likelihood of receiving a counterfeit is thus very slight.”

Counterfeit money in its traditional sense is clearly in decline at the beginning of the 21st century. Now, it looks more like sports or an entertainment for talented loners, rather than a huge branch of the shadow business. In the past, paper money was faked the most when paper replaced metal. Now paper money is gradually getting out of circulation, yielding to non-cash payments, and this means that a new type of counterfeiters hides among hackers and other cybercriminals.

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William Harrison is currently a doctoral student in global economics and international relations. His main fields of interest are new technologies, globalization, security and the environment.

Featured image is from Creative Commons

Prior to the 2018 midterm election, I speculated a Democrat-controlled House would result in hearings targeting “hate groups,” that is to say anybody on the “right” who challenges official narratives, otherwise known as “conspiracy theories.” 

“Rep. Bennie Thompson, an African American lawmaker from Mississippi, is in charge of the House Homeland Security Committee,” reports McClatchy. “Thompson intends to hold hearings to spotlight what experts say is a growth of deadly right wing extremism in America, even if the hearings could feature members of white supremacist groups.”

Thompson said his aim is to change the dialogue and find a balance in a U.S. domestic terrorism strategy that he believes has focused too heavily on the threat of homegrown Muslim terrorism and too little the rise of far right, white nationalist, and anti-Semitic groups.

The corporate propaganda media has done a fair job of conflating “white supremacy” and political thought the government wants to silence and shutdown.

The McClatchy article follows this line and links the “trend” of antigovernment activism to Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  That event has served as a touchstone for over two decades, primarily thanks to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has made a cottage industry out of hyping “rightwing hate” (unacceptable political thought) and the threat of violence (for the state, the two are inseparable). 

McClatchy and the corporate media have attached “rightwing extremism” to a number of violent incidents that have more to do with disturbed individuals than ideology. 

A recent spate of deadly incidents—including the shooting deaths of 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October, the February 2018 shooting deaths of 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and the August 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—have given Thompson and other congressional Democrats anecdotal evidence about the extreme right.

The Obama administration, continuing the work of the Bush administration, had the Department of Homeland Security produce a paper on the supposed threat posed by “rightwing extremists,” who are by the state’s definition terrorists on par (or worse than) al-Qaeda and its follow-up act, the Islamic State. Republicans, at the time a majority in the House, lambasted the paper and accused the Obama administration of overreach. Then DHS boss Janet Napolitano went into damage control mode. 

Napolitano apologized for the report. But the political backlash led DHS to halt work on tracking violent far right extremism, according to Daryl Johnson, the report’s author.

But now the House is in the hands of the Democrats and they want blood following the election of Donald Trump and the rise of the so-called Alt-right, or New Right. 

Under Republican control from 2011 until last week, the House Homeland Security Committee repeatedly rejected calls by Thompson and Democrats for specific probes of domestic far right activities. Some Republicans now are wary that Thompson’s probe would be conducted with a partisan eye.

“Congress and the White House has looked at terrorism through the lens of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The House Homeland Security Committee, established after those attacks, largely has focused on the foreign threat or potential danger posed by U.S. residents becoming radicalized by foreign terrorist groups.

That emphasis will change under the Democrats. The new terrorists are “homegrown” and include nationalists (shorthand for racist), constitutionalists, and libertarians. There will be hearings and possible show trials in the months ahead. 

The DHS will finally arrive at its final destination—a national secret police focused on political activism challenging the ruling elite and their contrived political arrangement. 

Thompson said his aim is to change the dialogue and find a balance in a U.S. domestic terrorism strategy that he believes has focused too heavily on the threat of homegrown Muslim terrorism and too little the rise of far right, white nationalist, and anti-Semitic groups.

In order to be classified as antisemitic, a group or an individual only need criticize Israel and its incestuous relationship with the ruling elite and its political operatives, in particular the neocon faction. 

Thoughtcrime—opposition to the state and its policies—will not be tolerated by the political class. Democrats want to make sure another Donald Trump will not sit in the White House. In order to do this, they have to go after high profile individuals and groups, hold show trials, and continue the work of deplatforming “deplorables” and their “hate,” in other words, free speech. 

Finally, a word of warning to the “far-left.” If you wander outside the parameters set by Democrats and their “progressive” foundations, you will also be attacked and undermined by the state, especially if you oppose Bush’s wars, which became Obama’s wars and now Trump’s. 

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

“In my little town/ I grew up believing/God keeps his eye on us all.” – Simon and Garfunkel, My Little Town

Hello my old friends Paul and Art, I’m just sitting here chilling out in the silent darkness of a late night spinning some discs and thinking your song is great but even great songs age as do we all and so I want to tell you that as a NYC born and bred boy like you guys who moved out to the country some years ago that in my little town many young people grew up not believing that God keeps his eye on us all because they grew up not believing in God, and even many of their parents, baby-boomer believers in hands-off parenting and meditation and yoga weekends didn’t keep an eye on them, not at all, since the parents thought of themselves as super cool and so the kids were allowed to fend for themselves in a most culturally liberal life-style way, and then, when the kids got confused and screwed up and did various drugs, especially a lot of pot following on the Ritalin they were given for their “disabilities” and the anti-depression meds that fell out of the families’ medicine cabinets and of course booze, and I guess I should add some heroin and the other shit that’s around – man, it’s crazy – the parents were dumbfounded and couldn’t understand what went wrong and why their kids, even as they aged, were still kids like they the parents were, caught in a stream of lostness, an existential despair unaware of its despair, to quote my old friend Soren, so they lived in a haze of smoke and mirrors and that darkness you guys sang about where they suffered from socially-induced attention deficit disorder and floated in a culture of cultural self-awareness and eclectic New-Ageism feasting on organic food and nostalgia for penny candy and days at summer camp even as the town they settled in became an up-scaled high-tech movie set for millionaires in which the cool people could mingle with cooler people as the celebrities came and went and the out-of-towners all dressed in black like walking shades, they brought their money from Wall St. and high tech and financial institutions and the little town acquired a reputation as the hippest coolest place to visit and move to especially after 9/11 even before the town went to pot and allowed multiple “recreational” pot stores to open in its small space and the lines of the desperadoes waiting for their legal fixes wound round and round and all the heads were spinning and dizzy with dreams of mashed potatoes and brownies unlike mom used to make but the money kept pouring in and the press went wild with popular stories of weed and more weed, and the true believers in this enormous and shattering breakthrough of legal pot and brilliant entrepreneurial instant millionaires that would end their chronic pains and everyone would be dreamily happy and relaxed as they awaited redemption at the hands of the latest liberal avatar of Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama to ride to the rescue and save the country and ease all the pain caused by Mr. Pumpkin Head and his ilk, like what would be better, man, if you know what I mean, but there’s something a little weird with all this crazy excitement about getting high legally and paying for what you can grow, but I guess the town likes the tax revenue but I’m thinking what’s happened to old-fashioned DIY Yankee initiative and cool stuff like that in a town where the American Revolution was fought to allow the rich to build their McMansions and buy up the land to raise llamas and place Buddha statues and even their own little churches on and stuff like that, but maybe I’m starting to get off topic a bit here so I should probably stop now while I’m ahead and on a high note about revolution and making the world safe for weed which should be the goal even though I’m not so sure aging hippies and their hipster kids will know how to use the stuff responsibly and stay off the road to ruin and avoid accidents while high and just chill out like I’m sure the USA will do once we get rid of the orange man and vote with my little town to return a Democrat to the White House so we can assume our responsibility to protect all those countries threatened by madmen like Gaddafi and Assad and maybe even do something about that demon Putin that will allow us little town folks to feel safe, as once again God and the NSA keep their eyes on us all even while we are getting high which is our god given right as god fearing americans and we return to the old values that we all shared before we went down the New Jersey Turnpike looking for America, guys, Kathy ain’t the only one sleeping and your singer not the only one lost if you get my drift.

Here’s to chilling,

EJ

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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 peterpilt.org

The Western Mainstream Media’s infowar about the true state of the anti-terrorist situation in Xinjiang failed after a group of diplomats and journalists were unprecedentedly allowed to visit some of the education and job-training facilities in the strategically located province, after which the weaponized narrative was tweaked to become one of “China buying off Pakistan’s silence”, which dishonestly portrays the Muslim Great Power’s pious leader as a religious hypocrite and dangerously risks provoking terrorist attacks against him and his government.   

2018 was predominantly characterized by four main stories for Pakistan – the rise of Imran Khan as Pakistan’s latest Prime Minister; the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan’s (TLP) anti-blasphemy protests and subsequently seditious calls for acts of terrorism against the state; the Hybrid War on CPEC that peaked near the end of the year with the Karachi & Chabahar attacks and the first-mentioned mastermind’s assassination in Afghanistan; and the creeping awareness of the Western Mainstream Media’s infowar narrative about China’s alleged treatment of the Uighur in Xinjiang. It’s therefore not surprising that all four of them are still relevant at the beginning of 2019, but there are worrying signs that hostile perception managers are attempting to weave them together as part of a renewed destabilization campaign against Pakistan.

The Hybrid War on CPEC received an unexpected setback after one of the so-called “Balochistan Liberation Army’s” (BLA) top terrorists was assassinated in Afghanistan right before the New Year, which occurred just a few weeks before China’s unpreceded diplomatic and journalistic opening in Xinjiang when it recently allowed members of both professional communities to visit some of its education and job-training facilities that it constructed there as part of its anti-terrorist operations in the strategically located province. Beijing even announced that UN officials are welcome to travel to the region as well, provided of course that they follow the proper procedures and don’t interfere in the country’s domestic affairs. These two developments are the reason why the weaponized narratives that were unleashed against both countries are now being tweaked.

Recognizing that the BLA terrorists were dealt a mighty blow by the recent assassination of one of their leaders and the growing popularity of Dr. Jumma Marri Khan’s Overseas Pakistani Baloch Unity (OPBU) that peacefully reintegrates wayward overseas Baloch into Pakistani society, and realizing that the world is becoming aware of the fact that the scandalous stories about China’s treatment of the Uighur in Xinjiang are fake news, the forces that are hostile to both multipolar Great Powers are scrambling to adapt their infowar techniques to these changed conditions. It’s with this situational context in mind that one should approach the latest claims coming from the popular American-based financial and business news site Business Insider, which just published a very inaccurate portrayal of Pakistani-Chinese relations.

In an article titled “Pakistan abruptly stopped calling out China’s mass oppression of Muslims. Critics say Beijing bought its silence”, one of the outlet’s news reporters attempted to make the case that China paid Pakistan off so that it wouldn’t use its influence in the larger international Muslim community (“Ummah”) to rally its co-confessionals against Beijing’s alleged mistreatment of the Uighur. The author drew attention to a widely publicized fake news report that the country’s Federal Minister for Religious Affairs supposedly brought this topic up in a critical way when meeting with the Chinese Ambassador last September. Both officials later denied the media’s reports about their talks, but the damage was already done because few people who heard the fake news were made aware of their response.

The writer then tried to make it seem like PM Khan was sidestepping the Uighur issue after reminding her audience about Chinese support for Pakistan’s economy, with her innuendo being that “Beijing bought its silence”. She then quotes two people to press home this point, the second of whom is Peter Irwin, who’s described as a “project manager” at the so-called “World Uyghur Congress” (WUC). Unbeknownst to her audience and conspicuously left out of her report, that man functions as a spokesman for an organization that many in China and beyond believe to be the political wing ofthe so-called “Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement” (ETIM) which was designated as a terrorist group by the UN in 2002. This makes it very disturbing that his words were included by the author in the article’s title.

After declaring that China was “buying the silence of Pakistan”, Irwin goes on to say that “he knows he simply needs to keep his mouth shut”, concluding that “someone like Khan has a very good idea of the balance of power in their relationship with China.” This dangerously insinuates that PM Khan and his government are being paid to stay silent about the plight of Muslims, which would make them religious hypocrites if it was true and accordingly paint them as targets of Takfiri terrorists (i.e. those who target alleged “infidels”/”apostates”). Dolkun Isa, the WUC leader who China regards as a terrorist, recently slammed Muslim countries for not supporting him, so it might be that Irwin was tasked by his boss to weaponize this narrative against Pakistan and PM Khan personally.

This is exceptionally dangerous in the Pakistani context because leaders of the TLP opposition party were arrested late last year on charges of sedition and terrorism after they called on their supporters to commits acts of violence against state officials on the purported basis that they were violating fundamentalist Islamic tenets following the Supreme Court’s acquittal of a Christian woman who was previously convicted of blasphemy during a high-profile case. Some of the group’s most religiously extremist sympathizers inside of Pakistan and abroad might interpret Irwin’s hypocrite/infidel/apostate insinuation that he just spread on the globally famous Business Insider information outlet about the pious Prime Minister as a “call to action”, just like Isa might have planned to happen all along as punishment for Pakistan’s refusal to support his narrative.

The WUC-ETIM’s intention seems to be to rekindle the Hybrid War on CPEC by expanding it beyond its now-contained Baloch “nationalist”-driven acts of terrorism to become an “Ummah”-wide militant jihad against the Pakistani state for its position towards China’s alleged treatment of the Uighurs, which is increasingly being revealed to have been the proper one all along after Beijing’s recent diplomatic and journalistic opening in the province debunked the last year’s worth of fake news about this emotive issue. It’s precisely because it turned out that Pakistan was right all along, and its refusal to fall for this infowar narrative doomed the plans to organize an “Ummah”-wide militant jihad against China, that it’s now being targeted through this desperate HybridWar scenario.

No one should automatically assume that Business Insider is knowingly acting as an instrument of Hybrid War against Pakistan, and it might just be a coincidence that its news reporter decided to obtain exclusive comments on this topic from an individual representing an organization that Beijing regards as a political front for a UN-designated terrorist group (which she didn’t inform her audience of), but the outlet’s irresponsibly inaccurate portrayal of the country’s relations with China nevertheless advances the aforementioned scenario regardless of its original intent. A globally renowned US-based information platform is openly being used by what many consider to be a terrorist-connected organization to spread its dangerously false innuendo that PM Khan is a hypocrite/infidel/apostate who was paid off by China to remain silent about the supposed plight of fellow Muslims, and that’s extremely alarming.

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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.

The frenzied, hysterical Russia narrative being promoted day in and day out by western mass media has had two of its major stories ripped to shreds in the last three days.

A report seeded throughout the mainstream media by anonymous intelligence officials back in September claimed that US government workers in Cuba had suffered concussion-like brain damage after hearing strange noises in homes and hotels with the most likely culprit being “sophisticated microwaves or another type of electromagnetic weapon” from Russia.

A recording of one such highly sophisticated attack was analyzed by scientists and turned out to be the mating call of the male indies short-tailed cricket. Neurologists and other brain specialists have challenged the claim that any US government workers suffered any neurological damage of any kind, saying test results on the alleged victims were misinterpreted. The actual story, when stripped of hyperventilating Russia panic, is that some government workers heard some crickets in Cuba.

Another report which dominated news headlines all of yesterday claimed that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort (the same Paul Manafort who the Guardian falsely claimed met with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy) had shared polling data with a Russian associate and asked him to pass it along to Oleg Deripaska, who is often labeled a “Russian oligarch” by western media.

The polling data was mostly public already, and the rest was just more polling information shared in the spring of 2016, but Deripaska’s involvement had Russiagaters burning the midnight oil with breathless excitement. Talking Points Memo‘s Josh Marshall went so far as to publish an article titled “The ‘Collusion’ Debate Ended Last Night”, substantiating his click-generating headline with the claim that “What’s crystal clear is that the transfer to Kilimnik came with explicit instructions to give the information to Deripaska. And that’s enough.”

Except Manafort didn’t give any explicit instructions to share the polling data with Deripaska, but with two Ukrainian oligarchs (who are denying it). The New York Times was forced to print this embarrassing correction to the story it broke, adding in the process that Manafort’s motivation was likely not collusion, but money.

Aw, shucks. Well at least the new names are also complicated and Slavic, so readers can still draw their preferred sinister inferences https://t.co/1NPNC5EN4m pic.twitter.com/P2dhAN8eQg

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 9, 2019

These are just the latest in a long, ongoing pattern of terrible mass media debacles as reporters eager to demonstrate their unquestioning fealty to the US-centralized empire fall all over themselves to report any story that makes Russia look bad without practicing due diligence. The only voices who have been questioning the establishment Russia narrative that is being fed to mass media outlets by secretive government agencies have been those which the mass media refuses to platform. Alternative media outlets are the only major platforms for dissent from the authorized narratives of the plutocrat-owned political/media class.

Imagine, then, how disastrous it would be if these last strongholds of skepticism and holding power to account were removed from the media landscape. Well, that’s exactly what a shady organization called NewsGuard is trying to do, with some success already.

A new report by journalist Whitney Webb for MintPress News details how NewsGuard is working to hide and demonetize alternative media outlets like MintPress, marketing itself directly to tech companies, social media platforms, libraries and schools. NewsGuard is led by some of the most virulently pro-imperialist individuals in America, and its agenda to shore up narrative control for the ruling power establishment is clear.

EXCLUSIVE: As Newsguard’s project advances, it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States. @_whitneywebbhttps://t.co/ftH6QnVlDn

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) January 9, 2019

The product which NewsGuard markets to the general public is a browser plugin which advises online media consumers whether a news media outlet is trustworthy or untrustworthy based on a formula with a very pro-establishment bias which sees outlets like Fox News and the US propaganda outlet Voice of America getting trustworthy ratings while outlets like RT get very low ratings for trustworthiness. This plugin dominates the bulk of what comes up when you start researching NewsGuard, but circulating a plugin which individual internet users can voluntarily download to help their rulers control their minds is not one of the more nefarious agendas being pursued by this company. The full MintPress article gives a thorough breakdown of the yucky things NewsGuard has its fingers in, but here’s a summary of five of its more disturbing revelations:

1. The company has created a service called BrandGuard, billed as a “brand safety tool aimed at helping advertisers keep their brands off of unreliable news and information sites while giving them the assurance they need to support thousands of Green-rated [i.e., Newsguard-approved] news and information sites, big and small.” Popularizing the use of this service will attack the advertising revenue of unapproved alternative media outlets which run ads. NewsGuard is aggressively marketing this service to “ad tech firms, leading agencies, and major advertisers”.

2. NewsGuard’s advisory board reads like the fellowships list of a neocon think tank, and indeed one of its CEOs, Louis Gordon Crovitz, is a Council on Foreign Relations member who has worked with the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation. Members of the advisory board include George W Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, deep intelligence community insider Michael Hayden, and the Obama administration’s Richard Stengel, who once publicly supported the need for domestic propaganda in the US. All of these men have appeared in influential think tanks geared toward putting a public smiley face on sociopathic warmongering agendas.

At a Council on Foreign Relations forum about "fake news," former Editor at Time Magazine Richard Stengel directly states that he supports the use of propaganda on American citizens – then shuts the session down when challenged about how propaganda is used against the third world pic.twitter.com/ClAT5POv7G

— William Craddick (@williamcraddick) May 11, 2018

3. Despite one of its criteria for trustworthy sources being whether or not they are transparent about their funding, the specifics of NewsGuard’s financing is kept secret.

4. NewsGuard is also planning to get its news-ranking system integrated into social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, pursuing a partnership which will make pro-establishment media consumption a part of your experience at those sites regardless of whether or not you download a NewsGuard app or plugin.

5. NewsGuard markets itself to state governments in order to get its plugin installed in all of that state’s public schools and libraries to keep internet users from consuming unauthorized narratives. It has already succeeded in accomplishing this in the state of Hawaii, with all of its library branches now running the NewsGuard plugin.

Really excited to see NewsGuard now built into the latest beta of Edge on iOS 👍👍. Smart service. There's also an extension for Edge on Windows 10. pic.twitter.com/Pqq9diNR8F

— Daniel Rubino (@Daniel_Rubino) January 4, 2019

We may be absolutely certain that NewsGuard will continue giving a positive, trustworthy ranking to the New York Times no matter how many spectacular flubs it makes in its coverage of the establishment Russia narrative, because the agenda to popularize anti-Russia narratives lines up perfectly with the neoconservative, government agency-serving agendas of the powers behind NewsGuard. Any attempt to advance the hegemony of the US-centralized power establishment will be rewarded by its lackeys, and any skepticism of it will be punished.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Ruling power’s desire to regulate people’s access to information is so desperate that it has become as clumsy and ham-fisted as a teenager pawing at his date in the back seat of a car, and it feels about as enjoyable. They’re barely even concealing their desire to control our minds anymore, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to wake everyone up to their manipulations. We need to use every inch of our ability to communicate with each other before it gets shut down for good.

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The White House’s national security team asked the Pentagon to provide it with options for striking Iran, after a group aligned with Tehran fired mortars in September into an area in Baghdad that is home to the US embassy, a US newspaper reported.

The request by the National Security Council (NSC), which is led by John Bolton, sparked deep concern among Pentagon and State Department officials, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday, citing current and former US officials.

“It definitely rattled people,” one former senior US administration official told the WSJ.

“People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.”

The Pentagon complied with the request, but it is not known whether the options for an Iran strike were also provided to the White House or if President Donald Trump knew about it.

The decision to consider striking Iran was prompted by an incident in early September, in which three mortars were fired into a diplomatic quarter in Baghdad.

The shells landed in an open lot and no one was hurt.

Two days later, unidentified fighters fired three rockets that hit close to the US consulate in the southern city of Basra but caused no serious damage.

NSC spokesman Garrett Marquis said in a statement on Sunday that “the NSC coordinates policy and provides the president with options to anticipate and respond to a variety of threats” and it will continue to consider “the full range of options” after the attacks in Basra and Baghdad.

Former US officials said it was unnerving that the NSC asked for such far-reaching military options in response to attacks that caused little damage and no injuries.

‘Act of war’

As a think tank scholar and Fox News commentator, Bolton often urged Washington to attack Iran, including in a 2015 New York Times op-ed titled: “To stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran.”

Relations between Tehran and Washington are highly fraught following Trump’s decision in May to withdraw from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and to reimpose sanctions, including on Iran’s vital oil sector.

In September, Bolton, who worked hard on the withdrawal from the treaty, warned Tehran that there would be “hell to pay” if Iran threatened the US or its allies.

In the same month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also stated the US was willing to target Iran for the actions of its allies in Iraq.

“Iran will be held accountable for those incidents,” he said in a 21 September interview with CNN.

“Even militarily?” asked CNN’s Elise Labott.

“They’re going to be held accountable,” Pompeo replied. “If they’re responsible for the arming and training of these militias, we’re going to go to the source.”

Alongside the requests in regards to Iran, the NSC asked the Pentagon to provide the White House with options to respond with strikes in Iraq and Syria as well, according to people familiar with the talks, the WSJ said.

In one meeting, Bolton’s then deputy Mira Ricardel, who was forced out of her job in November after a feud with First Lady Melania Trump, described the attacks in Iraq as “an act of war” and said the US had to respond decisively, according to one person familiar with the meeting.

‘Anti-Iran circus’

On Sunday, Iran’s foreign ministry summoned a senior Polish diplomat in protest at Poland jointly hosting a global summit with the US focused on the Middle East, particularly Iran, state news agency IRNA reported.

Pompeo said on Friday that the summit, to be held in Warsaw on 13-14 February, would focus on stability and security in the Middle East, including on the “important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabilising influence”.

Pompeo told Fox News that dozens of countries would attend the summit which would aim to “build out the global coalition” opposed to Iranian policies in the region.

Poland’s charge d’affaires was told that Iran saw the decision to host the meeting as a “hostile act against Iran” and was warned that Tehran could reciprocate, IRNA added.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described the summit as a “desperate anti-Iran circus”.

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Two-step solution:

1) End the Government Shutdown;
2) A (YES or NO) National Referendum on allocating a budget for a border Wall

Everyone agrees that if a contractor is hired for a certain job, they have to do that job according to the agreed contract. The U.S. President and Congress have been elected as government servants to work for the American people. This is a very simple contract. However, our elected servants are not getting along with each other these days and have decided to shutdown the government.

A government shutdown was never mentioned as an option when these ladies and gentlemen were making all of their grand promises during their election campaign. The American people are now facing the dilemma whereby their elected servants are asking them to work without pay for an unforeseen amount of time!

These government servants are representing two major factions – Democrats and Republicans. These two wealthy factions (which represent the interest of the 1%) have no solution and only are able to complain against their opponents. This means both factions are too incompetent to run a smooth government.

The American people’s tax money funds all budgets for the government. Now that the two complaining factions (Democrats and Republicans) don’t talk to each other, the American people have the responsibility to intervene and bring an end to this destructive and hurtful behavior by the so-called “leaders”. For a family who survives “pay check to pay check”, this situation is TERRORIZING. Therefore without any delay, we need to end the government shutdown and prepare a referendum.

Let’s solve this problem democratically. If the majority of American people want to allocate some of their tax money to build a wall, then let’s do it and if they don’t, then the priority of the government should be on creating a healthcare, education and jobs for all. The referendum on the question of the wall would be a YES or NO referendum. However, there should not be any delay in ending the government shutdown. Everybody should be back at work with full pay before the referendum takes place.

There have been many articles and corporate media talk shows regarding the question of a border wall and government shutdown from all sides. All cards are already on the table “face up”! President Trump is first and foremost leading his Fascistic minded Republicans to build a wall around democratic rights. He is threatening the American Democracy and is signaling a totalitarian style of governing by fabricating a “National Emergency”. He wants to be the sole decision maker that dictates the will of the nation! His opposition is not able to offer a better perspective. Actually Democrats fundamentally share the same views but without Trump himself!

It is time to look at all problems on a global scale. Today the American working people share the same pain and anxiety about the future of their families as do French or Indian workers or any other toilers around the world.

However, the American working people are the main force that is able to end all disastrous and unnecessary wars and prevent new wars that the Trump Administration (through Mr. Pompeo and Bolton) are stirring up these days. The American working people are a powerful force that can bring a meaningful change and peace around the world.

The 2019 government shutdown is a test for the American people to save this country from tyranny and dictatorship or endure the consequences.

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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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