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“China’s Nightmare”: B-2 Stealth Bombers Deployed to Hawaii, “On Watch” 24/7

By Zero Hedge, January 14, 2019

The US Air Force is putting China on notice as it announced Friday a new deployment of three B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to Hawaii for training in the Pacific.

Video: Netanyahu Claims “Depots Full of Iranian Weapons” Destroyed in Syria

By South Front, January 14, 2019

According to reports, Israeli warplanes, coming from the direction of Galilee, fired several missiles at a depot in the Damascus International Airport.

William Barr’s Confirmation as New US Attorney General. Does Trump have a Plan or Was He Duped by the Deep State?

By Larry Chin, January 14, 2019

Was Trump duped by Deep State enemies, who have placed another predator into his administration with the power to destroy his presidency?

Anger Among Iraqi Kurds as Syria Adds Masrour Barzani to Terror List

By Adnan Abu Zeed, January 14, 2019

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was quick to respond, releasing a statement Dec. 31 saying authorities were dismissing the matter as “ludicrous” because “[the list] is issued by a chauvinistic, oppressive regime that has been an adversary to the Kurdish people and has supported the terrorists in order to remain in power.”

Trump, The Manchurian Candidate: “Conspiracy” to Destabilize the Trump Presidency. Regime Change in America

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 13, 2019

In early January 2017, we had predicted an unprecedented constitutional crisis characterized by a coordinated and carefully planned operation to destabilize the Trump presidency involving several stages, both before and after his inauguration.

Walls or Roads

By Prof. James Petras, January 13, 2019

Contrary to the US mania for Wall building on the Mexican border blocking refugees, President Xi Jinping has allocated $900 billion dollars for roads and infrastructures to open China, and extend links with South and Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe.

Reckless Path to Nuclear Weapons Leaves Us Looking Over the Edge

By Shane Quinn, January 12, 2019

After two years of analysis and inquiries, Roosevelt formally established America’s nuclear program on 19 January 1942, called the Manhattan Project – with a final $2 billion budget supporting it ($36 billion today) and employing over 130,000 people.

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Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

NAFTA had been in effect for just a few months when Ruben Ruiz got a job at the Itapsa factory in Mexico City in the summer of 1994. Itapsa made auto brakes for Echlin, a U.S. manufacturer later bought out by the huge Dana Aftermarket Group. In the factory, asbestos dust from brake parts coated machines and people alike. Ruiz had hardly begun his first shift when a machine malfunctioned, cutting four fingers from the hand of the man operating it.

It seemed clear to Ruiz that things were very wrong, so he went to a meeting to talk about organizing a union. When Itapsa managers got wind of the effort, they began firing the organizers. Nevertheless, many of the workers joined STIMAHCS, an independent democratic union of metalworkers.

Itapsa workers filed a petition for an election, but then discovered that they already had a “union” – a unit of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). They’d never seen the union contract – in essence, a “protection contract,” which insulates the company from labour unrest.

The plant’s HR manager told Ruiz that Echlin management in the U.S. said any worker organizing an independent union should be immediately fired. “He told me my name was on a list of those people,” Ruiz recounted, “and I was discharged right there.”

Nevertheless, there was a vote, in September 1997, to decide which union workers wanted. But before the election, a state police agent drove a car filled with rifles into the plant. Two busloads of strangers arrived, armed with clubs and copper rods.

During the voting, workers were escorted by CTM functionaries past the club and rifle-wielding strangers. Some workers were forcibly kept in a part of the factory to keep them from voting. At the polling station, employees were asked aloud which union they favored, in front of management and CTM representatives.

STIMAHCS tried to get the election canceled. But the government body administering it, the Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JCA), went ahead, even after thugs roughed up one of the independent union’s organizers. Predictably, STIMAHCS lost.

Business Unions in Mexico

For 20 years the Itapsa election has been a symbol of all that’s gone wrong with Mexico’s labour law, which provides protection on paper for workers seeking to organize but which has been routinely undermined by a succession of governments bent on using a low-wage workforce to attract foreign investment. Dana Corporation was just one beneficiary – Itapsa has been the norm, not the exception.

In 2015, thousands of farm workers struck U.S. growers in Baja California. Instead of recognizing their new independent union, however, growers signed protection contracts with the CTM, which were certified by the local JCA. Strikers were blacklisted. Later that year workers tried to register an independent union in four Juarez factories. Some 120 workers making ink cartridges for Lexmark were fired, as were another 170 at ADC Commscope, and many more at Foxconn and Eaton.

The labour board declined to reinstate the fired workers in Juarez and Baja – following the pattern it had set at Itapsa two decades earlier. Indeed, the JNCs have been key to the defeat of workers’ attempts to form democratic unions, invariably protecting employers and corporate-friendly unions.

No More Protection Contracts

The new Mexican government, headed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), says that’s all over. Deputy Secretary of Labour in the new administration, Alfredo Dominguez Marrufo, promises that,

“after all these struggles, we can finally get rid of the protection contract system. We can make our unions democratic, choose our own leaders and negotiate our own contracts. This government will defend the freedom of workers to organize. That right has existed in theory, but we’ve had a structure making it impossible. This will change.”

That could have a big impact on political life in Mexico, where corporate union leaders have had an inside track to political power and corruption. It could change the dominating role U.S. corporations have played in the Mexican economy, and affect relations between workers in both countries. Most of all, it would raise a standard of living for workers that López Obrador has called “among the lowest on the planet.” In his speech to the Mexican Congress during his December 1 inauguration, the new president charged that 36 years of neoliberal economic reforms had lowered the purchasing power of Mexico’s minimum wage by 60 per cent. Today, on the border, that wage comes to a little above $4 per day.

According to University of California Professor Harley Shaiken,

“The Mexican government created an investment climate that depends on a vast number of low wage-earners. This climate gets all the government’s attention, while the consumer climate – the ability of people to buy what they produce – is sacrificed.”

Protecting corporations from demands for higher wages has made Mexico a profitable place to do business. Big auto companies, the world’s major garment manufacturers, the global high tech electronic assemblers – all built huge plants to take advantage of Mexico’s neoliberal economic policies, starting more than two decades before the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

That wild-west climate for investors produced more than low wages, however. Between 1988 and 1992, 163 Juarez children were born with anencephaly – without brains – an extremely rare disorder. Health critics charged that the defects were due to exposure to toxic chemicals in the factories or their toxic discharges. The Chilpancingo colonia below the mesa in Tijuana where the battery plant of Metales y Derivados was located experienced the same plague.

As the companies came south, the people came north.

“During the neoliberal period [which he defines as the last 36 years, or six Mexican presidencies] we became the second country in the world with the highest migration,” López Obrador charged. “They live and work in the United States, 24 million Mexicans [Mexico’s population in 2017 was 129.2 million] … They are sending $30-billion a year to their families … the greatest social benefit we receive from abroad.”

In his six-year campaign for office, in which he spoke in practically every sizeable town in the country, López Obrador repeated what he later told the Congress – that only development “to combat poverty and marginalization as has never been done in history” would provide an alternative to migration.

“We will put aside the neoliberal hypocrisy,” he announced. “Those born poor will not be condemned to die poor … We want migration to be optional, not mandatory, [to make Mexicans] happy where they were born, where their family members, their customs and their cultures are.”

Criticizing Neoliberal Articles of Faith

In his speech, López Obrador criticized two other neoliberal articles of faith – that privatization of the state-owned section of the Mexican economy would lead to economic growth, and that pro-corporate changes in its labour law would create jobs and higher incomes.

Starting before NAFTA was passed, Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari rammed through the Congress changes in the Constitution’s guarantees of land reform, to make private land ownership easier. Many of the communal lands (ejidos), created in previous decades, were dissolved and their lands sold to investors. Farmers became wage workers on land they’d previously owned. Subsequent land reforms led to granting foreign mining companies concessions on over a third of Mexico’s territory, allowing them to develop operations even in the face of local opposition.

Prices on basic goods were decontrolled, and government subsidies on food were cut back or ended altogether. In 1998, the government dissolved CONASUPO, a system of state-run stores selling basic foodstuffs like tortillas and milk at subsidized low prices. At the same time, price supports for small corn growers were also ended. As NAFTA allowed U.S. corporations to flood the Mexican market with cheap subsidized imported corn, millions of farmers were displaced, no longer able to sell their corn at a price that paid for growing it.

“Mexico is the origin of corn, that blessed plant,” López Obrador noted bitterly, “and now we are the nation that imports the most corn in the world.”

He announced that a CONASUPO-like subsidized food production and distribution system would be reestablished.

Privatization marked a 180 degree change in the direction of Mexican economic policy. After its 1910-20 Revolution, nationalists believed that to be truly independent Mexico had to ensure its resources were controlled by Mexicans and used for their benefit. The route to this control was nationalization, to stop the transfer of wealth out of the country and to set up an internal market, in which what was produced in Mexico would be sold there as well.

Mexico therefore guaranteed rights to workers that U.S. unions and workers could only dream of. Severance pay was mandatory and workers had a right to profit-sharing. During legal strikes, companies had to shut their doors until the dispute was resolved. On paper, the government acknowledged the right of all people to education and housing.

In return, however, Mexican unions gave up autonomy and control of their own affairs. The government registered unions, and oversaw their internal processes and choice of leaders. It never tolerated independent action by workers and unions outside its political structure. When the government changed its basic economic policy, using low wages to attract foreign investment, and producing for the U.S. market instead of for Mexico, the government could and did punish resistance severely.

Under Presidents Salinas de Gortari and Zedillo (1988-2000) privatization reforms became a whirlwind. Among the companies and industries affected were the Aeromexico airline, the telephone company, the petrochemical industry dependent on the state-run oil company, the Sicartsa steel mill, the railroad network, many Mexican mines, and the operation of the country’s ports.

The leader of the union at Aeromexico was imprisoned after he refused to accept the company’s privatization and the layoff of thousands of workers. The head of one of the largest sections of the union for employees of the social security system, IMSS, also spent months in jail in 1995 for denouncing government plans to privatize the enormous federal pension and healthcare agency.

In 1991 the Mexican army took over the port of Veracruz, disbanded the longshore union, and installed three private contractors to load and unload ships. Hourly wages of Veracruz longshoremen fell from about $7.00 to $1.00, even as productivity rose from 18 to over 40 shipping containers handled per hour.

When the Sicartsa steel mill was privatized in 1992, wages were cut in half, and 1500 of the mill’s 5000 workers were laid off. They were then rehired as temporary labour under 28-day contracts.

The Mexican government sold the Cananea and Nacozari copper mines, among the world’s largest, to German Larrea’s Grupo Mexico at a fraction of their book value. In 1997 Larrea bought the 4052-mile Pacific North railroad, in partnership with Pennsylvania-based Union Pacific. Workers throughout northern Mexico mounted a series of rolling wildcat strikes over cuts in its workforce of 13,000 by more than half. They lost.

Thirteen Mexican financiers became billionaires during the Salinas administration, and Larrea was one of them. Grupo Mexico forced Cananea’s miners’ union to go on strike in 2009, a conflict that is still unresolved. After 65 miners were entombed by an explosion in Grupo Mexico’s Pasta de Conchos coal mine in 2006, the union’s president Napoleón Gómez Urrutia was forced into exile in Canada. He’d accused Larrea of “industrial homicide” for giving up rescue efforts after only three days. This October, Gómez Urrutia was elected Senator in Sonora on the Morena ticket (López Obrador’s party-in-formation), and finally returned from Canada to take office.

The harshest privatization came in 2009, when President Felipe Calderon dissolved the state-owned Power and Light Company of central Mexico. In firing all its 44,000 workers, Calderon hoped to destroy one of Mexico’s oldest and most democratic unions, the Mexican Electrical Workers (Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas – SME). The company’s operations were folded into the Federal Electricity Commission. Private electrical generation was already permitted by Salinas and Zedillo, and López Obrador’s immediate predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, had set up plans for private power sale to consumers. Meanwhile, the Federal Electricity Commission itself was slated for elimination. Peña Nieto pushed a Constitutional reform through Congress to reverse the guarantee of national ownership of both the oil and electrical industries.

Far from increasing productivity and investment, however, “the damage caused to the national energy sector during neoliberalism is so serious,” López Obrador charged, “that we are not only the oil country that imports the most gasoline in the world, but we are now buying crude oil to supply the only six refineries that barely survive.”

Humberto Montes de Oca, foreign secretary of the SME union, says,

“The country is bankrupt. Before we can redistribute wealth we have to recover it. We know the banks will act against reversing the energy reform along with the others. We will all have to participate in order to defend any changes this new government tries to make.”

The SME has established a cooperative and has regained control of seven power generation stations, along with other property that formerly belonged to the old company.

“The hallmark of neoliberalism is corruption,” López Obrador charged. “Privatization has been synonymous with corruption in Mexico … The robbery of the goods of the people and the riches of the nation has been a modus operandi … In the last three decades the highest authorities have dedicated themselves to giving concessions to the territory and transferring companies and public goods, even functions of the state, to national and foreign individuals … The government will no longer facilitate looting, and will no longer be a committee in the service of a rapacious minority.”

To date, only one economic reform enacted by López Obrador’s predecessors has been repealed outright: the education reform that mandated standardized testing for students and testing and firing of teachers themselves. Mexico’s teachers have a long history of resistance and radical politics. More than 100 teachers in the state of Oaxaca alone were killed during their struggle over control of their union, and in defense of the indigenous communities in which they lived. Years of massive teacher strikes against the government’s education reform eventually led to a massacre in Nochixtlan in June 2016, in which nine people were gunned down by federal and state police.

Striking teachers march through downtown Mexico City to protest the pro-corporate education reform, which President Lopez Obrador has promised to repeal.

The disappearance and murder of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa training school in September 2014 was also an indirect product of the corporate education reform program. Their school had a reputation for turning out radical teachers, as do many rural training schools like it, and their students came from some of the poorest families in the countryside.

Claudio X. González Guajardo, cofounder of the Televisa Foundation and the Mexicanos Primeros corporate education reform lobby, called such public schools “a swarm of politics and shouting.” He demanded the government replace them with private institutions. Following López Obrador’s speech to the Congress, Gonzalez tweeted, Trump-style, “AMLO – Against the free market, against the energy reform, a retrograde, statist, interventionist, stagnant vision. The markets will react negatively. It will go very badly with us, very badly. A shame.”

In his address, López Obrador had promised,

“The so-called education reform will be canceled, the right to free education will be established in Article 3 of the Constitution at all levels of schooling, and the government will never again offend teachers. The disappearance of Ayotzinapa’s youth will be thoroughly investigated; the truth will be known and those responsible will be punished.”

In meetings with the democratic teachers caucus he also promised free elections in their union, the largest in Latin America. Eliminating the authoritarian group that has held power in the union for decades could shift the balance between the left and right in Mexico’s institutional politics.

Reforming Mexico’s Labour Laws

Despite the move against education reform, most Mexican unions do not expect the new government to reverse the privatizations that have already taken place, at least not for the first three years of López Obrador’s six-year term. Instead, they have concentrated on winning a basic reform of Mexico’s labour law, which has changed radically during the past two decades.

In May 2000, the World Bank made a series of recommendations to the Mexican administration, “An Integral Agenda of Development for the New Era.” The bank recommended rewriting Mexico’s Constitution and Federal Labour Law by eliminating its requirements that companies give workers permanent status after 90 days, limit part time work and abide by the 40-hour week, pay severance when they lay workers off and negotiate over the closure of factories. The bank called for ending the law’s ban on strikebreaking, and its guarantees of job training, healthcare and housing.

The recommendations were so extreme that even some employers condemned them. President Vicente Fox (2000 to 2006) embraced the proposal, but it failed to pass the Congress. After further attempts, however, President Felipe Calderon (2006 to 2012) did get a similar reform adopted in 2012. It allows companies to outsource, or subcontract, jobs, which was previously banned. It allows part time and temporary work and pay by the hour rather than the day. Workers now can be terminated without cause for their first six months on the job.

Arturo Alcalde, one of Mexico’s most respected labour lawyer and past president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, called the reforms “an open invitation to employers, and a road to a paradise of firings.” As he predicted, subcontracting proliferated with disastrous results. In just one instance, Grupo Mexico replaced strikers at the Cananea mine by contracting out their jobs. Inexperienced replacements died in mine accidents, and allowed a huge spill of toxic mine tailings into the Sonora River, contaminating communities and sickening residents.

According to Benedicto Martinez, co-president of the Authentic Labour Front, the union federation to which STIMAHCS belongs,

“The motivation of the government, assisted by corporate unions, was to encourage the layoff of longtime employees, who could be replaced by subcontracted workers. There are companies now where all the workers are subcontracted, who have no employees of their own at all. The conditions are very low, just slightly above the legal minimum, and sometimes below.”

Last year, under pressure from the European Union, which sought a free-trade agreement with Mexico, the Peña Nieto administration had to agree to reform some of the pro-corporate labour practices. The government was forced to ratify Convention 98 of the International Labour Organization (ILO), guaranteeing freedom of association (something the United States has not done). Peña Nieto then got the Mexican Congress to pass a Constitutional reform, embodying these changes. Corporate unions like the CTM, clearly feeling threatened by the reform, introduced their own legislation in 2017 to nullify its effect. They couldn’t get it passed, however, as it became evident that López Obrador would be elected the next president.

In Martinez’ eyes, the Constitutional reform is “the most advanced proposal that you could imagine. It includes union democracy, and the disappearance of the Conciliation and Arbitration Boards, which have always been complicit with the bosses and the corporate unions. In some states a union contract is treated like a state secret, that no one is allowed to see.”

Martinez believes the reform was the fruit of many years of groups like his fighting the government.

“It was like talking to a wall,” he recalls. “We were accused of being traitors to the country, because we organized international pressure with unions all over the world, denouncing the practices here in Mexico.”

Domingues Marrufo, López Obrador’s Deputy Labour Secretary, agrees.

“If it were not for that support from the [U.S. and Canadian] United Steelworkers and other unions, it would have been impossible to achieve the Constitutional reform.”

But changing the Constitution does not change the particular laws that govern labour activity. Implementing legislation must be passed to define rights and procedures, and set up the structure for enforcing the reform. After López Obrador won the election in July, but before he took office in December, Mexican unions and labour lawyers set up a discussion group, the Citizens Labour Observatory, and debated how far the new changes should go.

Some wanted to undo Calderon’s 2012 reform completely, by reversing, for instance, the reform laws that now allow subcontracting and temporary employment. In the end, though, the consensus among the democratic unions was to limit the proposal to the implementing legislation that gives workers the right to vote for the union and union leaders of their choice, and to approve their contracts. It was clear this was López Obrador’s favored choice. As Mexico City Mayor in 2000 he had appointed another dean of Mexican labour lawyers, Jesus Campos Linas, as head of the city’s labour board. Campos Linas then made public an estimated 70-80,000 protection contracts whose contents had never been released to the workers they covered.

Two days before Christmas, deputies from López Obrador’s Morena Party-in-formation introduced their labour reform bill into the Chamber of Deputies. It will abolish the JCAs and substitute an independent system of labour tribunals. Unions will be independent of the government and business, and leaders must be elected by a majority of the workers. Union contracts will be public, and must be ratified by the majority of the workers in a free and secret vote.

Sweeping though it will be, the new labour law is just a beginning. On taking office, López Obrador appointed Maria Luisa Alcalde the new Labour Secretary. She is a former legislator, daughter of labour lawyer Arturo Alcalde , and at 31 the youngest person in AMLO’s cabinet.

“She is very clear that the democratization of the unions will create a new situation and our society will have a much better chance to raise living standards,” Dominguez says. But, he warned, “We aren’t accustomed to organizing ourselves. We’re used to waiting for some powerful person to come from above to help us.”

And while waiting for unions and workers to use the new law, the government is still faced with many legacy strikes and fights inherited from 36 years of neoliberal administrations. The telecommunications reform, for instance, mandated the breakup of TelMex, the old telephone monopoly sold to billionaire Carlos Slim. In February it is set to be divided in two, a move the telephone workers union bitterly opposes. They are threatening to strike if it isn’t stopped.

In the mid-1990s the telefonistas, together with the Authentic Labour Front (FAT) and two other unions, formed the National Union of Workers, an independent labour federation. They supported López Obrador very strongly.

“Our corporate elite had to respond to the fact that the vast majority of Mexicans voted for him, and were unable to use their electoral fraud strategy to deny him victory, as they had in the past,” says Victor Enrique Fabela, vice-president of the union.

But he doesn’t believe that López Obrador will simply do what unions ask, pointing out that the new president invited Carlos Slim to hear his inaugural speech to the Congress, an invitation not extended to the union’s general secretary, Francisco Hernandez Juarez. Further, long term operating concessions have been renewed for Televisa and TeleAzteca, two media giants with a record of rightwing politics.

“We have to be critical,” he cautioned, “while understanding that we have to support the direction AMLO is moving.”

The strike in Cananea has yet to be settled, and in Nacozari, two of the world’s largest copper mines, the miners’ union was forced out by previous JCA decisions favoring the CTM and Grupo Mexico. The communities on the Rio Sonora are still suffering the health effects of the toxic spill, three years later. And on November 29 at the giant PKC wire harness plant in Ciudad Acuña, just two days before López Obrador was sworn in, CTM thugs marched into the facility, shouting “Mineros Afuera!” [Miners’ Union Out!] as workers were about to vote on the miners’ union as their representative. They overturned ballot boxes, the election was canceled, and the miners say its representatives were beaten.

“We all want a change,” charged Moises Acuña, the miners’ political secretary. “We have a chance to move forward now, and we have to use it.” Meanwhile, a new federation of independent unions in the auto industry has also been formed, and plans to fight with the CTM over the right to negotiate contracts with the industry’s giants.

In dealing with the workers’ upsurge and the emergence of new unions, however, López Obrador’s government faces a complex situation. The JCAs will disappear and the new tribunals will be formed. But there are no judges yet, and they won’t be in place for the first three years. The tribunals have to be funded, and judges and personnel trained in administering a completely new law.

“But during that time, in order to represent workers and negotiate, a union still has to be certified by the authorities,” Martinez says. “There must be some way to ensure that the workers have approved this union, and this approval must take place before any negotiation begins. Plus, who are the inspectors now responsible for investigating the outsourcing, to make sure it’s legal? We need an army of them, and there’s no money to hire them.”

Despite the institutional challenges, Dominguez believes that the time has arrived when Mexican workers may be able to reshape their nation. “Today many workers live in poverty, on one or two dollars a day. This is the fundamental problem. But we’re not just fighting for an economic goal, not just for decent wages, but for the revitalization of the democratic life of workers, of our unions and the organizations we belong to.”

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In der Nähe des Glaspalastes der Vereinten Nationen in New York befindet sich eine metallische Skulptur mit dem Titel “Evil Defeated by Good” [Das Böse vom Guten besiegt], die den Heiligen Georg darstellt, der einen Drachen mit seiner Lanze durchbohrt. Sie wurde 1990 von der UdSSR gestiftet, um den 1987 mit den USA geschlossenen INF-Vertrag zu feiern, der landgestützte Kurz- und Mittelstreckenraketen (der Reichweite von 500 bis 5.000 km) verbietet. Symbolisch ist der Körper des Drachens tatsächlich aus Stücken von US Pershing-2 ballistischen Raketen (ursprünglich aus Westdeutschland) und sowjetischen SS-20-Raketen (ursprünglich aus der UdSSR) hergestellt.

Aber der Atomdrache, der in der Skulptur als sterbend dargestellt ist, wird nun wiedergeboren. Dank Italien und anderer Länder der Europäischen Union, die in der Generalversammlung der Vereinten Nationen gegen die von Russland vorgelegte Resolution zur “Erhaltung und Umsetzung des INF-Vertrags” gestimmt haben, die 46 zu 43 bei 78 Enthaltungen abgelehnt wurde.

Die Europäische Union – von der 21 ihrer 27 Mitglieder der NATO angehören (einschließlich des Vereinigten Königreichs, das gerade die EU verlässt) – hat damit eine einheitliche Haltung gegenüber der Position der NATO eingenommen, die wiederum eine einheitliche Haltung gegenüber den Vereinigten Staaten eingenommen hat.

Zuerst die Obama-Regierung, gefolgt von der Trump-Regierung, hat Russland ohne jeden Beweis beschuldigt, mit einer Rakete aus der verbotenen Kategorie zu experimentieren, und ihre Absicht angekündigt, sich aus dem INF-Vertrag zurückzuziehen. Gleichzeitig haben sie ein Programm zur Erneuerung der Aufstellung von Atomraketen in Europa zum Schutz vor Russland gestartet, während andere auch im asiatisch-pazifischen Raum gegen China stationiert sein werden.

Der russische Vertreter bei den Vereinten Nationen hat gewarnt, dass “dies den Beginn eines ausgewachsenen Wettrüstens darstellt”. Mit anderen Worten, er warnte, dass, wenn die Vereinigten Staaten wieder Atomraketen in Europa installieren sollten, die auf Russland gerichtet sind (wie die Cruise Missiles in Comiso in den 80er Jahren), Russland wieder ähnliche Waffen auf seinem eigenen Territorium installieren würde, die auf Ziele in Europa gerichtet sind (aber die USA nicht erreichen könnten).

Unter Missachtung all dessen beschuldigte der EU-Vertreter bei der UNO Russland, den INF-Vertrag sabotiert zu haben, und kündigte die Oppositionsabstimmung aller Länder der Union an, weil “die von Russland vorgelegte Resolution die zur Debatte stehende Frage vermeidet”. Im Grunde hat die Europäische Union daher grünes Licht für die mögliche Aufstellung  neuer US-Raketen in Europa, einschließlich Italien, gegeben.

In einer so wichtigen Frage hat die Regierung Conte, wie ihre Vorgänger, die Ausübung der nationalen Souveränität aufgegeben und sich der EU angeschlossen, die ihrerseits die Position der NATO unter dem Kommando der USA übernommen hat. Und über den gesamten politischen Bogen hinweg wurde keine einzige Stimme erhoben, um zu fordern, dass das Parlament über die Abstimmung in der UNO entscheidet. Und ebenso wurde im Parlament keine Stimme erhoben, um Italien aufzufordern, den Atomwaffensperrvertrag einzuhalten, der vorsieht, dass die USA ihre Atombomben B61 aus unserem Staatsgebiet abziehen und auch darauf verzichten müssen, hier ab dem ersten Halbjahr 2020 die neuen und noch gefährlicheren B61-12 zu aufzustellen.

Dies ist also ein neuer Verstoß gegen das grundlegende Verfassungsprinzip, dass “die Souveränität dem Volk gehört”. Und da der politisch-mediale Apparat die Italiener in Unkenntnis dieser so wichtigen Fragen wiegt, ist er auch eine Verletzung unseres Rechts auf Information, nicht nur im Sinne der Freiheit zu informieren, sondern auch des Rechts darauf, informiert zu werden.

Wir müssen dies jetzt tun, sonst bleibt morgen keine Zeit für eine Entscheidung – eine Mittelstreckenrakete kann ihr Ziel mit ihrem Atomsprengkopf in 6 bis 11 Minuten erreichen und zerstören.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Übersetzung aus dem Englischen: K.R.

Quelle: il manifesto (Italien)

VIDEO (PandoraTV) :

The US Air Force is putting China on notice as it announced Friday a new deployment of three B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to Hawaii for training in the Pacific. The nuclear-capable aircraft departed Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, and touched down at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, along with 200 support personnel airmen, as part of a U.S Strategic Command-led Bomber Task Force mission. 

One defense analyst recently called the increase in B-2 bomber deployments to Hawaii “China’s nightmare, and something Beijing should get use to.”

 “Deploying to Hawaii enables us to showcase to a large American and international audience that the B-2 is on watch 24 hours a day, seven days a week ready to protect our country and its allies,” military spokesman Lt. Col. Joshua Dorr said in a statement.

Though a Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs press release did not expressly mention China, Beijing has reacted aggressively to a number of routine US long-range flyovers in the Pacific and South China Sea regions over the past year, including “close call” incidents involving Chinese intercept attempts of US vessels passing through what China claims as its own territorial waters. “Its presence in the Hawaiian Islands stands as a testament to enhanced regional security,” the US military statement continued.

The Air Force statement further touted the B-2’s ability to “penetrate an enemy’s most sophisticated defenses,” as well as “put at risk their most valuable targets” due to its “low-observable, or stealth, characteristics”. The statement continued, “This training is crucial to maintaining our regional interoperability. It affords us the opportunity to work with our allies in joint exercises and validates our always-ready global strike capability.”

Previously, B-2 bombers were operational in Guam in support of regional allies at a moment of escalating tensions between North Korea and the US in 2017 over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

A B-2 Spirit bomber lands at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, on Jan. 10, 2019. Image source: USAF, Senior Airman Thomas Barley

Crucially, though this latest deployment is being described as “routine” it is only the second time the B-2 Spirits have been sent to Hawaii, and in the largest numbers, after an initial training run in the Pacific in October. At the time Maj. Gen. Stephen Williams, the director of air and cyberspace operations at the Pacific Air Forces headquarters, noted the bombers “helped ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific” — language frequently used by US officials in response to China’s condemnations of the recent uptick of American operational activity near southeast Asia.

As recently as December Chinese officials issued threats against what was described as American military “meddling in China’s affairs”. For example Dai Xu –  President of the Institute of Marine Safety and Cooperation, and a PLA Air Force Colonel Commandant, recently stated:

“If the U.S. warships break into Chinese waters again, I suggest that two warships should be sent: one to stop it, and another one to ram it… In our territorial waters, we won’t allow US warships to create disturbance.”

“The US keeps meddling in China’s affairs, so why can’t China go to areas like Hawaii where the US is dominant,” he added. Xu was referring to the frequent Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) conducted by the United States in the South China Sea.

Regarding the new B-2 deployment to Hawaii, it will be interesting to see just how close the advanced nuclear-capable stealth bombers come to airspace in which Beijing has issued prior threats to US planes. Last August, for example, a US Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance plane flying over the regionally disputed Spratley Islands in the South China Sea was told “Leave immediately and keep out to avoid any misunderstanding” in a series of radio communicated warnings from the Chinese military. China has also told US allied forces like the armed forces of the Philippines, “Leave immediately or you will pay”.

The dramatic inflight recording of China’s warnings during an early August 2018 incident below (starts at :50 mark):

"Leave immediately": A US Navy plane, with CNN aboard the flight, is warned over the South China Sea https://t.co/wEnvxKrGro pic.twitter.com/UB5MPX1gJj

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 10, 2018

In response to the belligerent Chinese radio communications to “leave immediately” the US crew cited that the plane was conducting lawful activities over international territory. Under international law, a country’s airspace is considered to be 12 nautical miles distant from the coastline of the nation. But Beijing has of late laid claim to more and more territory surrounding its controversial string of man-made artificial islands, and claiming further the skies above as sovereign Chinese airspace, which the US has refused to recognize.

But considering the Northrop Grumman built B-2 stealth bomber is by design extremely difficult to detect by radar, allowing it to penetrate sophisticated enemy anti-air defenses, Beijing will have to find it first.

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One of the new Democratic House majority’s top priorities is so-called campaign finance reform legislation. Contrary to the claims of its supporters, campaign finance reform legislation does not limit the influence of powerful special interests. Instead, it violates the First Amendment and burdens those seeking real change in government.

Early on January 12, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out an airstrike on Syria. According to reports, Israeli warplanes, coming from the direction of Galilee, fired several missiles at a depot in the Damascus International Airport. The Syrian Air Defense Forces reportedly intercepted at least 8 of them.

Following the airstrike, Israeli warplanes were seen flying at high speed and low altitude over the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.

On January 13, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the IAF had targeted several “Iranian depots full of Iranian weapons in the Damascus International Airport”.

This incident was the second Israeli attack on Syria within a few weeks. On December 25, Israeli warplanes targeted several military positions around the Syrian capital. While Israeli sources claimed that the positions were being used by Iranian forces only, the airstrikes injured several Syrian service members.

During the weekend, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) held a military exercise involving battle tanks in the Hatay province bordering the Syrian province of Idlib. TAF units were deployed in Hatay’s Yayladagi region.

Meanwhile, Jaysh al-Ahrar, a part of the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL) coalition, has handed over Taftanaz airbase in the eastern Idlib countryside to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda).

According to the available information, this step was a part of a surrender agreement which the NFL accepted few days ago. The Turkish-backed group will also have to hand over all of its heavy weapons in Idlib to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham soon.

The Taftanaz airbase was one of the key NFL strong points in this part of the Idlib de-escalation zone. The surrender of this point to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham just another indication that the terrorist group is the main “armed opposition force” in this part of Syria.

At the late hours of January 12, a unit of the Syrian Military Intelligence carried out a security operation in the town of Ayn Firkha in the southern governorate of al-Quneitra. Two suspects, Khalid Diab and Ali Diab, were arrested during the operation. Some Syrian opposition activists claimed that Syrian agents killed a civilian also. However, the pro-opposition Orient TV said that the agents shoot and injured a third suspect.

Such operations are usually carried out against members of terrorist groups, like ISIS and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), or against local operatives of the Israeli intelligence. Prior to its liberation in 2018, Ayn Firkha and many other towns in southern Syria were full of members of terrorist groups and Israeli spies, according to pro-government sources.

Last month, the Syrian intelligence neutralized prominent al-Qaeda commander Ayad al-Tubasi while he was plotting to re-launch an insurgency in southern Syria. In different periods, the infamous terrorist was member of Jabhat al-Nusra and Horas al-Din.

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William Barr’s confirmation to become Attorney General will take place January 15-16, 2019.  This article was originally published on December 12, 2018. The serious questions raised in the piece remain completely unanswered.

Read the author’s previous article on this topic.

Why was Barr chosen, given his shocking and deeply criminal/cover-up kingpin background?

Was Trump duped by Deep State enemies, who have placed another predator into his administration with the power to destroy his presidency? Or has Trump co-opted and turned Barr, in the hopes that Barr will do Trump’s bidding? Why would Barr ever turn against his own Deep State cronies?

Does Trump have a plan? With Barr in place, is Trump signaling to his enemies that “I now own the Deep State”? Or is Barr the Deep State’s ultimate and final weapon against Trump, who remains surrounded by Bush/Clinton “swamp creatures” such as National Security Adviser John Bolton, who is one of Barr’s many fellow Iran-Contra co-conspirators, Vice President Mike Pence (who is in ideal position for a coup against Trump, and remains very cozy with the Clintons, dozens of Obama appointees that remain in place, and Republican “Never Trumpers”, all of whom continue to undermine Trump.

Pay careful attention to the confirmation “hearings”. How many of the senators “questioning” Barr are themselves connected to the Bush/Clinton era criminal operations that Barr supervised as George H.W. Bush’s attorney general?

Will anyone in Washington, or in the CIA asset-filled mainstream media, dare bring up Iran-Contra? Will anyone dare detail Barr’s corruption, and his longstanding ties to the Bush/Clinton network? What about the fact that Barr is best friends with Robert Mueller?

Even the alternative media, including the whistleblowing research-intensive pro-Trump anon community, has been virtually silent on Barr, despite the fact that his criminal history is glaringly obvious, lurid, and begging to be exposed.

Rumors abound that slippery Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave the Justice Department following Barr’s likely confirmation. This further clears the way for Barr to seize the power to determine the fate of the Mueller probe, the John Huber (Inspector General) report, FISAgate, Clinton emails, Uranium One, and other key investigations.

William Barr could well determine the course of the political war between President Donald Trump and his enemies, and decide  the fate of Donald Trump’s presidency itself.

Read the author’s previous article on this topic.

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US forces came to Syria, Iraq, elsewhere in the region, and virtually everywhere else worldwide to stay. Bolton and Pompeo made similar comments on Syria, indicating no timeline for withdrawal.

US forces will stay indefinitely – on the phony pretext of combatting the scourge of ISIS Washington created and supports, along with protecting Kurds in northern parts of the country the US doesn’t give a hoot about.

They’re used as US proxy forces, to be abandoned when no longer needed. Pompeo saying “America will not retreat until the terror fight is over” is code language for permanent occupation where US forces are deployed, notably in the Middle East.

On Friday, Turkish defense minister Hulusi Akar said preparations are continuing “intensely” for attacking Kurdish YPG fighters in northern Syria, adding:

Ankara is determined to combat them wherever they’re located, while pretending opposition to jihadists in Syria the Erdogan regime supports.

The country faces no cross-border terrorist threats from Syria or Iraq. No “terrorist corridor” exists along its southern border with these countries.

Last week, Erdogan said he’ll order a cross-border incursion into Syria “very soon” to combat YPG fighters and ISIS he earlier supported and likely still does.

SouthFront reported that Turkish-backed Jaysh al-Ahrar Salafi jihadists “handed over (the) Taftanaz airbase in the eastern Idlib countryside (and its heavy weapons) to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” – al-Nusra terrorists, more evidence of Erdogan’s support for jihadists he claims to oppose.

Pompeo vowed to “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria, indicating US aggression in the country will continue endlessly, including terror-bombing of vital infrastructure, continuing to massacre civilians on the phony pretext of combatting ISIS.

It’s unclear how many US troops are in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon is highly secretive. Virtually all its public statements lack credibility.

According to the Arabic-language al-Maaloumeh news website, over 20,000 US troops are based in al-Anbar, Erbil and Kirkuk, Iraq. The Pentagon earlier claimed 5,200, another 2,000 in Syria, the true numbers likely multiples greater.

According to the Military Times (MT), quarterly Pentagon reports on numbers of troops serving overseas ceased including data on Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

“The Defense Department has also now scrubbed years worth of the previous quarterly reports from the website,” MT added.

Declared troop strength abroad by countries is highly suspect. Scrubbing previously reported data has nothing to do with protecting the safety military personnel in certain countries, as the Pentagon claimed – everything to do with secrecy and lack of transparency.

A 20,000-US force contingent in Iraq would indicate the country is the Pentagon’s main platform for regional wars. Bordering Syria means US troops can move cross-border between both countries, depending on what missions are ordered.

Trump’s unannounced December trip to Iraq was shrouded in secrecy, landing at a US airbase, not Baghdad, visiting Pentagon forces, not puppet Iraqi officials.

Pompeo flew to Iraq on a military plane, his visit and DLT’s indicating the country is US-occupied territory – whatever the numbers of US troops there.

Reportedly, the Pentagon is reinforcing its military bases in Syria’s northeastern Aleppo and Raqqa provinces – more evidence of Washington’s intention to stay in the country.

Claims otherwise appear to be head-fake deception. The US doesn’t wage wars to quit or deploy troops abroad to pull out.

Previous articles explained that thousands more US forces were deployed to Iraq’s Kirkuk province, new US bases being built in the country and neighboring Syria.

Hundreds of US truckloads of weapons, munitions, and equipment were sent to Pentagon bases in Deir Ezzor, Syria.

Bolton, Pompeo, and Pentagon Joint Chiefs oppose Trump’s pullout announcement. US forces are in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere to stay indefinitely, not leave.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

National Security Advisor John Bolton is making the rounds in the Middle East to try and salvage what’s left of the long-standing plan to balkanize Syria and overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in the wake of President Trump’s announced troop withdrawal.

What began as a political Hail Mary for Trump has morphed into a foreign policy quagmire for Bolton and the bloody-minded neoconservatives he is the tip of the spear for.

Bolton first met fellow war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to announce their conditions under which US troops would leave Syria. The big sticking point was getting the Turks to guarantee the safety of the Kurdish militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), that have been the US proxy forces in securing that part of Syria east of the Euphrates river for future plans vis-à-vis Iraq and Iran.

His condition for the US’s withdrawal from Syria is just another impossible demand placed on Turkey, who can no more guarantee the Kurds’ survival than Russia could implement the Minsk II agreement in Ukraine.

This is yet another big lie neocons like Bolton have been parroting since Trump’s announcement. They are desperate to convince us their mission in Syria is a humanitarian one. The Kurds are their casus belli of the day, dressed up for the liberal interventionist left to rally around.

Since Trump’s announcement we have been saturated with the idea that the Turks will come in and slaughter every Kurd in Syria if the US pulls out. This is something Pompeo was taken to task for by Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy who said Pompeo exhibited a “worrying lack of knowledge” about the situation in Syria, since Turkey houses currently over 300,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees from the fighting the US fomented.

It is a continuation of the thoroughly debunked and false narrative that Assad is a butcher, Putin is only there for the gas pipelines and America is actually fighting ISIS.

ISIS, the very terrorists we armed to overthrow Assad in the first place.

We’re there for humanitarian reasons, the same way we’re supporting the Saudi war in Yemen, maintaining a no-fly zone over the border crossing at Al-Tanf while the people who live there starve.

And all John Bolton can think or care about is Great Powers theory and how to destroy the Heartland as defined by Makinder a century ago.

In their desperation to hold onto the dregs of their strategic position, something that the pro-Syrian coalition is degrading daily, Bolton, Pompeo and Netanyahu have now turned to the Kurds who know the US doesn’t care about them to justify more regional chaos.

If they thought otherwise the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political arm of the YPG, wouldn’t be negotiating with the Assad government.

Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Syrian Special Envoy James Jeffrey, neocons and Israeli-Firsters all, have been furiously trying to drum up support for a permanent partitioning of Syria that has been described by those who have seen the plan as “Sykes-Picot on acid.”

As Moon of Alabama points out, Trump has been against this plan from the beginning. Surprisingly enough, so has the Pentagon. Bolton and Pompeo’s plan is so daft, so obviously being pushed by forces outside of the White House itself, that even the Washington Post had to admit to the Pentagon’s resistance to it.

Bolton’s Iran plan never really took effect at the Pentagon, where officials were not officially tasked with any new mission in addition to the operation against the Islamic State. Military officials likewise viewed Iran’s expansion into Syria as problematic, but they were skeptical about the lack of a clear legal justification that would be required for offensive military action against Iranian-backed forces.

It’s obvious that Bolton and Pompeo both are trying to tie Trump’s hands by issuing public statements that contradict what they know of his wishes. They have routinely gone out and contravened him on many issues, overstating our goals or putting forth policy statements which Trump then does not back up.

And the problem is that Trump isn’t against the Syria operation on principle. He couldn’t possibly do that, since he doesn’t have any. No, Trump doesn’t see the return on investment for America. And so, in his balance-sheet-focused mind Syria is a drain and therefore the troops can come home.

He’ll use other means, like sanctions and threats to allies, to get Iran to do what he wants, which is to try and secure a Middle East safe for Israel by dismantling Iran’s position in central Asia.

But, that’s as much a fantasy as Bolton’s psychedelic Skyes-Picot plan. Because it is pretty obvious to anyone observing this situation that the Pro-Syrian coalition – Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and China – are simply running a game of attrition against the Boltons and the Pompeos as well as Netanyahu.

The solution is coming into focus. Turkey can’t make good on its promises to Russia over the situation in Idleb, nullifying the agreement between them since the de-militarized zone has failed.

Israel cannot effectively strike Syria anymore and has to resort to cowardly attacks using civilians as human shields. And the US can no longer maintain its position in al-Hasakah and Deir Ezzor if the SDF wishes them gone.

Somehow, John Bolton thinks that 2000 men cannot only carve out a permanent US-backed Kurdistan with Turkey’s acceptance along its border with Syria, force all Iranian troops and support from Syria and overthrow Assad and that constitutes a winning hand to go a’negotiating with.

Bolton went around the Middle East looking for takers and found only Israel while everyone else looked at him like, “Buddy, the 70’s are over.” His moustache is as outdated as his view of America’s role in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, Trump is in no position politically to fire him.

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Tom Luongo is an independent political and economic analyst based in North Florida, USA

Featured image is from SCF

Writing from another country I remember the Americans I’m supposed to forget, those forced into the lives that made them prisoners or simply targets of law enforcement programs. Some are religious people, Christians and Muslims. Many were Black Panthers. Some were and are radicals. Most are Americans.

All cared for their communities and people. They were condemned by society at large. Under the FBI’s COINTELPRO activists in the Sixties and Seventies political and community movements but particularly the Black Panthers were targeted and hunted and engaged in fire-fights by law enforcement. Any police casualty brought charges of murder in court. How many community leaders were convicted for killing a police person? And yet through many years have maintained their innocence despite the mechanism which increases the chance for parole if a crime is confessed and regretted. One reason I don’t forget them is because I don’t really believe they’re guilty. Here are updates for some political prisoners in the U.S.. ⁽¹⁾

Among U.S. political prisoners with the roots of imprisonment in the last century, is Rap Brown (Hubert Gerold Brown), known today as Imam Jamil Al-Amin. As a young leader he was pissed, acerbic and unafraid. His late speeches are devout, eloquent, historically wise, American, concerned with the survival of his people, and religiously humble. His rhetoric frightened U.S. law enforcement since the 1960’s. Convicted of murdering a police person (a crime confessed to by someone else with accuracy, three times – then recanted), maintaining his own innocence Al-Amin was sentenced in 2002 to life imprisonment without parole. Placed in a maximum security prison and principally in solitary confinement far from friends, supporters, family for years, he was transferred to Eastern U.S. prisons for medical treatment with several medical conditions which the prison system was slow to diagnose and treat. He was found to have a rare form of blood cancer. His writings are suppressed. He’s not permitted interviews.⁽²⁾ With 16 years in prison, currently an appeal of his conviction slowly makes its way through appeals court. I think he’s silenced because he’s a wise man. Wasted by his country yet of deep human value he continues to frighten the establishment because he provides a bridge of peace between Islam and Christianity. When the struggle becomes conscious then we understand that we don’t have an option. Struggle is the price you pay for your soul. We all doing life without parole.   – Imam Jamil Al-Amin

Abu Hamza al-Masri, born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa in Egypt, is a British Imam with a reputation for hating people he considers enemies of Islam. He was extradited to the U.S. to face trial in a Manhattan court not too far from the former World Trade Center(s), for alleged war related crimes in Yemen, Afghanistan and Oregon. At his trial the jury wasn’t allowed to hear substantial evidence of his work for M-15 British Intelligence. Allegations against him were not based on any violence he committed but on his alleged responsibility for crimes; most of the evidence presented was his words, sermons, statements, opinions, feelings, his freedom of expression.⁽³⁾ He wasn’t found guilty of hate speech but of 11 counts of terrorism, and he is serving a life-without-parole sentence in the U.S. supermax prison, ADX Florence Colorado, essentially in solitary confinement, in “a cage like cell.” Since apparently the conditions of his incarceration violate human rights law prohibitions against torture and degrading treatment,⁽⁴⁾ contravening the conditions of his extradition from Europe to the U.S., the Imam has appealed for removal to prison in Great Britain. He is blind and missing both hands which were lost in an explosion when he was younger (British media have continually referred to him as “the Hook”). With diabetes and psoriasis as well, under U.S. prison conditions at ADX Florence the stumps of his arms become continually infected.

An American, a Robert F. Wagner High School and Brooklyn College graduate who earned his M.A. in international relations in London, Fahad Hashmi, as a Muslim was targeted for association with radical friends and was extradited from England to New York, held in solitary for three years before trial, was threatened with a 70 year sentence for storing a friend’s luggage which held clothing for Al-Quaeda, and was sentenced on a plea bargain to 15 years which he is serving at ADX Florence, the supermax facility. Relying on technicalities and the prisoner’s innocence, the prosecution and imprisonment of Fahad Hashmi affirmed American law but betrayed American justice.

In 2018 Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom) was denied parole for the 9th time. According to Jericho New York he “was convicted of the 1971 murders of two New York City police officers, a crime for which he accepted responsibility and demonstrated remorse. During his 47 years in prison, Jalil earned two college degrees and served as a counselor, teacher and role model for other incarcerated people. Jalil is a rehabilitated individual who poses no risk to the community. He will be appealing this very disappointing decision.”⁽⁵⁾

Held for 22 years in solitary confinement in 2016 former Black Panther Russell “Maroon” Shoatz won through a legal action against Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections his reprieve from continual solitary confinement, as well as $99,000; his case commenced in 1973 protested the prison’s cruel and unusual punishment. The United Nations Special rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez noted the conditions of Shoatz’s imprisonment as outside a civilized norm.

Dr. Mutulu Shakur (Jeral Wayne Williams) once of the Black Liberation Army (Black Panthers) was sentenced in 1988 to sixty years on RICO conspiracy charges and for bank robberies which involved deaths of guards and police. Led to believe he would be released Feb. 10, 2016 due to laws in force at the time, he wasn’t released and was given a parole hearing for Dec.16, 2016, his 8th. Parole was denied. The government is suspected of psychologically tormenting the well-respected Dr. Shakur so that he might confess to masterminding the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur. In March 2018 Mutulu Shakur filed suit against the federal government for his release alleging violation of his First Amendment Rights (principally his free speech) by the Parole Board as the reason for denying his release. ⁽⁶⁾

Arrested in April 1985, according to Wikipedia Thomas William Manning is expected to complete his current prison term in 2020, at which point he is to begin his next prison term of 80 years for another set of charges including the murder of a New Jersey police officer. Manning was convicted of shooting back after the officer emptied his gun at Manning and his group of families. The inhumanity of the sentencing was always intended to render the prisoner without hope. Attempts to trash and humiliate Tom Manning, American, a Vietnam veteran, and each of the Ohio Seven (“United Freedom Front”, “Sam Melville Brigade”) suggests the bitter hostility of the system to white working class people if they assert both socialism and a brotherhood of black and white. In prison Manning has held to uncompromised anti-racist, American truths strongly, constantly, with hope, paintings and words. In 2006 a show of his artwork was canceled by a timorous University of Maine. ⁽⁷⁾

Jaan Laaman, also of the “Ohio Seven” (“United Freedom Front”, “Sam Melville Brigade”), is serving a 53 year prison term, following a 45 year prison term. Both by court action and example he has become known as an advocate for rights of freedom of expression for prisoners, in 1977 winning his State Supreme Court case against the New Hampshire State Prison to receive his reading materials which is said to have opened prisoner education programs through New Hampshire. He is a founder of the website 4strugglemag.org, an outlet for prison writing. On March 21, 2017, he was placed in solitary confinement for violating communications protocols (issuing of statements which apparently the prison system did not favour). He’s also threatened with transfer to a CMU (Communications Management Unit) to completely segregate his communications from the outside world.⁽⁸⁾

The histories of John Africa’s movement and Mumia Abu-Jamal have been interwoven from the start in the tragedies which took people of faith from their lives and community, where the children of some were shot by police, where community workers and pragmatic idealists were ground up by the system’s violence. From one perspective they were falsely accused honest people, put in jail under insufferable sentences to silence them about the crimes committed against John Africa’s “family” by the Philadelphia police. The best known witness Mumia Abu-Jamal who reported on the police bombing of the MOVE residence by Philadelphia police was subsequently charged with murder of a police officer and placed on death row. The injustices of his charges and trials, and courts and judges and incarcerations and threats of death against all of them are a grocery list of white racism to keep the black community in line, and Mumia Abu-Jamal’s history is mythic in his survival over death row, beating his medical death sentence beating the silence imposed on him, to become one of the best known writers and revolutionary writers-from-prison in history. Under a ruling Dec. 28, 2018 by Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge, Leon Tucker, Mumia Abu-Jamal is finally granted an opportunity to argue for his freedom in a retrial. Judge Tucker found that the judge who presided over Abu-Jamal’s previous and thought to be final appeal should have recused himsef. ⁽⁹⁾ A day later six cartons of materials thought to be related to Mumia’s case were discovered in the Philadelphia D.A.’s storage room. After assessment and if necessary these may provide Abu-Jamal’s lawyers with leverage for additional appeals.⁽¹⁰⁾

Mike Africa of the MOVE 9 was finally released on parole Oct. 23, 2018. One of nine MOVE members convicted to 30 years imprisonment for the killing of one police officer who died of a single bullet wound in a police storming of the MOVE home; MOVE members were generally without arms and living under a peaceful ethic and it was always possible that the police officer was killed in the storm of gunfire from his fellow officers. Historically, the severity of the sentencing seems to have been an attempt to silence witnessing of the many police crimes in the Philadelphia Police’s handling of John Africa’s community group.

Compared to others here the Kings Bay Plowshares are up against comparatively short sentences for comparatively harmless actions. The religious basis of their protest against the full power of nuclear militarized America is also problematic, in that they were arrested because they chose to confront the government, rather than through the government’s need to oppress them. For nearly half a century the Plowshares movement has broken the security of Nuclear submarines, missile silos and facilities to hammer on nuclear weapons, beating swords into plowshares. Their symbolic acts of faith are like prayer a worship of something stronger and more sacred than the weapons of mass destruction and as a group its members have, without injuring others been sent to prison for months to several years at a time. They’re a help to the anti-prison movement in that they’re innocent of crimes against other people and yet are condemned and treated as criminal. At their King’s Bay Florida action April 4, 2018 having presented their passion play for Christ carrying real hammers, real blood amid real nuclear weapons they were arrested with a sign quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,” and began their long tedious journey through a court system challenging the faith of those in the court system. Once a decision is made concerning the “religious freedom motions” (the defendants were allowed the opportunity to present the court with the religious motivation for their actions as pleas for dismissal), the case could be dismissed or a trial date set before the end of January.⁽¹¹⁾

In 2003 Dr. Rafil Dhafir was taken from his medical practice in upstate New York and sentenced to 22 years, not for any alleged violence but for sending medical supplies to the children of Iraq, victims of the U.S. and Coalition bombing campaigns. He was born in Iraq. His attempts to alleviate the suffering of the children there by supplying medicines, was in no way wrong though through misuse and misapplication of the law was made illegal. Medical supplies were wrongly embargoed. Dr. Dhafir as a Muslim, was referred to as a suspected terrorist by New York’s Governor Pataki . To avoid his appearance as a humanitarian the FBI also prosecuted him for medicare fraud and money laundering. Dr. Dhafir donated over a million dollars of his own for medical supplies to children. When a petition for Executive Clemency was prepared for him he refused to ask for mercy as a criminal because he committed no crime. Under Federal guidelines Dr. Dhafir is eligible because of his age for release since he has served at least 10 years (16 years in February) but his release requires the warden’s approval; that hasn’t happened. Katherine Hughes followed the injustices of Dr. Dhafir’s arrest, trial and conviction.⁽¹²⁾ She quotes Dennis Halliday who resigned as chief of the UN’s Humanitarian Aid program in Iraq, 1997-98, because he found the sanctions against Iraq, genocide. Of Dr. Dhafir he said, “I am stunned by the conviction of this humanitarian, especially as the US State Department breached its own sanctions to the tune of $10 billion. The policy of sanctions against Iraq undermined not only the UN’s own charter, but the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention as well.” Dr. Dhafir was obeying humanitarian law. By denying medical supplies to a civilian population it had decimated, the U.S. was violating the Convention on Genocide. Dr. Dhafir was placed in prison because he was innocent, and because the U.S. legal system has been denying its people the use of the Nuremberg defense, the citizen’s need to counter his or her country’s acts of genocide.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui suffered a very strange conviction by a New York City jury which found her guilty of attempting to assault and murder the U.S. military personnel who were holding her prisoner in Afghanistan. As their prisoner Ms. Siddiqui was shot by them in the stomach. Tried in New York the young mother of three was peculiarly sentenced by a New York City judge to 86 years in prison. Currently the Government of Pakistan is attempting to counter this madness by seeking her return to serve the rest of her sentence in her own country. There is evidence that she has been additionally damaged in U.S. government custody. She was able to complain of physical abuse and sexual abuse at the hands of prison officials in Texas, to Pakistan’s consul general. She accused male prison staff of urinating on things belonging to her. The gratuitous severe abuse of Ms. Siddiqui by U.S. authorities is not traditionally American and may be a psyops program to dehumanize Muslims, women or both, preparing the public for greater indecencies.

Ramiro “Ramsey” Muñiz, an Hispanic community leader who ran for Governor of Texas for the Raza Unida Party in 1972 and 1974, was multiply arrested in 1994 on what seemed to be manufactured drug charges and was sentenced to life without parole. The Raza Unida Party was hurt badly and may have been the government’s target when it incapacitated Muñiz. He and his wife have always asserted his innocence and lobbied many years for his pardon and release. Now ill, on Dec. 10, 2018 he was released from Lexington Federal Medical Center (Kentucky) “on compassionate grounds under federal supervision.”⁽¹³⁾

Juvenal Ovidio Ricardo Palmera Pineda (whose nom de guerre is Simón Trinidad) was extradited to the U.S. when captured as a rebel FARC leader in Colombia. A Colombian professor and peace strategist, accounts of U.S. government trials against him reveal juries that wouldn’t convict him, numerous mistrials and one confused conviction for holding 3 Americans hostage (in a war zone controlled by FARC forces) for which he was sentenced to sixty years. Wikipedia reports that he’s held in the ADX Florence Colorado supermax prison in solitary confinement. Colombia’s civil war is officially at peace. He’s a prisoner of war after the war is over, If released and deported he would face multiple charges under the current Colombian government.

Anayibe Rojas Valderrama of FARC with the war name,”Sonia,” was captured in Colombia in 2004, and extradited by the Americans to face drug charges. She was convicted on drug charges Feb. 20, 2007 in Washington D.C. to serve a sentence of 16 years. After serving 11 she was released on good behaviour and deported to Colombia last August where she was immediately charged with money laundering.⁽¹⁴⁾

On May 17, 2017, Oscar López Rivera was released from prison by President Obama. The Puerto Rican nationalist had served 55 years in U.S. prisons.

Initially eligible for parole in 1998 but denied parole ten times, Robert Seth Hayes was finally granted parole July 24, 2018, after 45 years in prison.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Night’s Lantern.

Notes

1. My most recent essay updating American political prisoners appeared in 2016: “The torture of U.S. political prisoners: some updates” (2016), nightslantern.ca].

2. “The unofficial gag order of Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown): 16 years in prison, still not allowed to speak,” Obaid H. Siddiqui, June 30, 2018, SF BayView.

3. “Abu Hamza found guilty of 11 terrorism charges,” Karen McVeigh, May 20, 2014, The Guardian.

4. “Hate preacher Abu Hamza: US prison is too tough,” Callum Adams, Dec. 17, 2017, The telegraph.

5. “Jalil Muntaqim Denied Parole Once Again!” Current. https://jerichony.org/.

6. “Tupac’s Father, Mutulu Shakur , files Lawsuit against the U.S. Government for Illegally Holding Him in Prison,” Sha Be Allah, March 29, 2018, thesource.com.

7. A background note: in the 1970’s Manning and his group which included several Vietnam veterans, worked out of an alternative bookstore in Portland Maine, community organizing, caring for prisoners and their families, antiwar and anti-racist. Portland police discovered a death squad in police ranks with the intention of disappearing the group. The bookstore was broken into, an employee raped, and they were under continuing threat from the KKK.

8. “Political prisoner Jaan Laaman is still being held in segregation,” staff, May 25, 2017, 4strugglemag.

9. “Judge: Mumia Abu-Jamal can reargue appeal in 1981 Philly police slaying,” Bobby Allyn, Dec. 28, 2018, WhyY News.

10. “A Potentially Tectonic Event Shakes up the Mumia Abu-Jamal Case,” Dave Lindorff, Jan. 11, 2019, Counterpunch.

11. “Update on the Kings Bay Plowshares,” Dec 27, 2018 / “Legal Update,” Bill Quigley, Nov. 19, 2018, The Nuclear Resister.

12. “Is this Fairness? Is this Justice? Post-9/11 Muslim Charity Prosecution,” Katherine Hughes, Sept. 20, 2014, Truthout. Her website DhafirTrial is recommended.

13. “Hispanic activist Ramsey Muniz free after 24 years in prison,” AP, Jan. 9, 2019, KRISTV.COM.

14. “No Peace in Colombia as ex-FARC Guerrilla Sonia Awaits Release From US Prison,” W.T. Whitney, July 30, 2018, counterpunch; “Tras ser deportada a Colombia, alias “Sonia” será procesada por lavado de activos,” Judicial, Sept. 25, 2018, El Espectador.

Featured image is from the author

Is there such a plane of blissful, balanced information, deliberated and debated upon?  No.  Governments mangle; corporations distort.  Interest groups tinker.  Wars must be sold; deception must be perpetrated.  Inconsistencies must be removed.  There will be success, measured in small doses; failure, dispatched in grand servings. 

The nature of news, hollow as it is, is to fill the next segment for the next release, a promiscuous delivery, an amoral ejaculate.  The notion a complicated world can somehow be compressed into a press release, a brief, an observation, is sinister and defeating.   

The believers in an objective, balanced news platform are there.  Grants are forked out for such romantic notions as news with integrity, directed to increase “trust in news”, which is tantamount to putting your trust in an institution which has been placed on the mortician’s table.  The Trump era has seen a spike in such funding, but it belies a fundamental misconception about what news is. 

Funny, then, that the environment should now be so neatly split: the Russians (always) seen to distort from a central programme, while no one else does.  The Kremlin manipulates feeble minds; virtuous powers do not.  The most powerful nation on the planet claims to be free of this, the same country that boasts cable news networks and demagoguery on the airwaves that have a distinct allergy against anything resembling balanced reporting, many backed by vast funding mechanisms for political projects overseas.  Britain, faded yet still nostalgically imperial, remains pure with the BBC, known as the Beeb, a sort of immaculate conception of news that purportedly survives manipulation.  Other deliverers of news through state channels also worship the idol of balance – Australia’s ABC, for one, asserts that role.

We are the left with a distinct, and ongoing polarisation, where Russia, a country relatively less influential than other powers in terms of heft and demography, has become a perceived monster wielding the influence of a behemoth on the course of history.  Shades and shadows assume the proportions of flesh and meat.  The fact that the largest country on the planet has interests, paranoias and insecurities other countries share is not deemed relevant but a danger.  Russia must be deemed the exception, the grand perversion, a modern beast in need of containment.

Terry Thompson of the University of Maryland supplies readers with a delightfully binary reading, because the forested world of politics is, supposedly, easy to hive off and cultivate.  The woods will be ignored, and small, selective gardens nurtured.  The United States has been indifferent, even weak, before the Kremlin’s cheek and prodding ways, or so goes this line of thinking.  The time for change is nigh, and the freemen and women of the US imperium must take note.  A hoodwinked US will arise, and learn from those states who have suffered from Moscow’s designs! 

“After years of anaemic responses to Russian influence efforts, official US government policy now includes taking action to combat disinformation campaigns sponsored by Russia or other countries.”

In this intoxicated atmosphere comes the Scottish based Integrity Initiative, a “partnership of several independent institutions led by the Institute of Statecraft.  This international public programme was set up in 2015 to counter disinformation and other forms of malign influence being conducted by states and sub-state actors seeking to interfere in democratic processes and to undermine public confidence in national political institutions.”  

This low level clerk depiction is all good, a procedurally dull initiative designed to harden the mettle of debate against those who sneer and seek to discredit certain institutions.  Democracy is often the victim of such paper clip fillers and grant seekers.  Then comes the nub of the matter: the political thrust of this entire exercise.  Where did the Integrity Initiative get its pennies?  Moral citizens, perhaps?  Bookworms with deep pockets?

That political thrust was revealed, we are told, by a hack.  It came from the devil incarnate, those bear like fangs sharpened on the Russian steppes.  “It is of course a matter of deep regret,” came a statement from the group in November, “that Integrity Initiative documents have been stolen and posted online, still more so that, in breach of any defensible practice, Russian state propaganda outlets have published or re-published a large number of names and contact details.”  Transparency is a damn bugger, but forced transparency for outfits claiming that no one else practices it is an upending terror.

The revelations were striking on a few fronts.  Britain’s Labor Party had been a target, with the group’s Twitter account used to heap upon its leader, Jeremy Corbyn.  But more to the point, it blew the lid off the notion of pristine, exalted partiality.  Funding, it transpired, had been obtained, and in abundance, from that most self-interested of bodies, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  In effect, monies had been supplied to the Initiative via a government body to attack the opposition, not exactly a very democratic practice. 

On December 3 lasts year, Sir Alan Duncan, in response to a question from Chris Williamson, the member for Derby North, claimed that the FCO had funded the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative to the tune of £296,500 in the financial year 2017/8.  That amount has ballooned for the current financial year to the tune of £1,196,000.  “Such funding furthers our commitment to producing important work to counter disinformation and other malign influence.”  Russian practitioners could hardly have said it better themselves.  

The technique here remains dog-eared: discredit the hackers as criminal and sidestep the implications of the content revealed. 

“We note,” claimed the initiative, “both the attempts by Russian state propaganda outlets to amplify the volume of this leak; and the suggestion by a major Anonymous-linked Twitter account that the Kremlin subverted the banner of Anonymous to disguise their responsibility for it.”

In December, the group, as did Duncan, reiterated the notion that it was a “non-partisan programme of The Institute for Statecraft, a non-partisan charity which promotes good governance.”  On no occasion had the group “engaged in party political activity and would never take up a party-political stance.”  Charming in such insistence, if somewhat disingenuous: any statement with a political target is, by definition, political activity.  Not so for the Initiative, which claims that the FCO’s funding merely reflected “their appreciation of the importance of the threat, and a wish to support civil society programmes seeking to rebuild the ability of democratic societies to resist large scale, malicious disinformation and influence campaigns.” 

The very idea of insisting on information that corrects disinformation must, by definition, be politically oriented.  It has a target, and objective.  The world is wrong, at least according to one version, so right it.  We know it, and others do not.  The implication is inescapable.

An example of a journalist outed by the hack is illustrative.  He fell from Olympus.  He thought he was all fair and high, a prince of objectivity.  James Ball, somewhat slighted by the exposures stemming from the Integrity Initiative documents, described the Kremlin’s approach to managing the message in The Guardian as follows:

“Russia’s information manipulation strategies are many and varied, and far more sophisticated than simply pushing out pro-Putin messages. It uses a mix of Russian-owned media outlets, most notably RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik, sympathetic talking heads, social media ‘bot’ accounts and state-sponsored hackers to influence western politics and media coverage.”  

To deny the existence of such media management strategies would simply be silly.  But equally daft is the suggestion that journalism run through the corporate mill in the United States, or through media conglomerates in Europe, identifies some miraculous golden mean of objective fairness.  Ditto numerous governments, who have a deep interest in selling a particular story within, and without their jurisdiction.  Respective messages are doing a dance, and governments the world over are attempting to influence the course of discussion.  They are the self-appointed bulwark against “post-truth”, a nonsense term that has assumed the very thing it seeks to combat.  

Ball falls into the trap of heralding the virtues of free speech and media only to then find fault with them.  Even he doesn’t entirely these tendencies.  Russia, he argues, simulated a “virus that turns its host’s immune system against itself” using an “information strategy… turning free media and free speech against its own society.”  And what of it?  Surely, models of information parry and thrust can drive the bad out with the good, or is there, underlying these criticisms, the latent suggestion that free society harbours the imbecilic and destructive? As with any wading into these murky waters, the danger is that none of these catalytic engagements seeks free speech, merely a managed deployment of spears analogous to battle.  The amoral terrain of the Cold War re-appears, and behind many interlocutors lies the funding of a state.

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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]

Syria’s Combat Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Commission released Dec. 29 a list containing the names of 615 individuals and 105 entities. Notably, the list included the name of Masrour Barzani, the eldest son of former Kurdistan Region President and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) Massoud Barzani. Masrour Barzani heads the Kurdistan Region Security Council and has been nominated to be premier of the new government.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was quick to respond, releasing a statement Dec. 31 saying authorities were dismissing the matter as “ludicrous” because “[the list] is issued by a chauvinistic, oppressive regime that has been an adversary to the Kurdish people and has supported the terrorists in order to remain in power.” The statement accused the Syrian regime of “using internationally prohibited weapons against its own civilian people” as well.

Meanwhile, KDP Vice President Bashar al-Kiki released a statement the same day demanding the “removal of Masrour Barzani’s name from the Syrian terror list.” He told Al-Monitor in a phone call,

“Our [demand] has been relayed to the Syrian authorities,” adding, “They should rectify this mistake and lift [Masrour Barzani’s] name from the list.”

Regarding any future actions to be taken against Syria’s decision, Kiki said,

“The [KRG] demands a formal apology by the Syrian government to the Iraqi state and the region.”

Kiki said the KRG sees Syria’s actions as damaging relations between Iraq and Syria.

Kiki cited “political goals related to the Kurds’ situation in Syria” as the motive behind Syria’s decision, and he expressed his support for the legitimate rights and demands of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

“The Syrian decision is incompatible with the war waged by the region and regional forces on terror since Masrour Barzani was one of the most prominent names to fight the Islamic State [IS],” Kiki stressed.

Syria’s and Iraq’s Kurds are standing in solidarity with Masrour Barzani against Syria’s decision. Writer Farouq Haji Mustafa said in his Jan. 10 opinion article in Middle East Online,

“Syria’s decision comes at a time when Masrour Barzani is getting ready to chair Kurdistan’s government, a step that [received] a warm welcome from global, regional and Iraqi parties.”

Mustafa asked in his op-ed:

“What Kurdish entities have been categorized as a terror group that received support and finance from Masrour?”

However, Syrian parliament member Mahmoud Joukhdar reportedly claims to have evidence against Masrour Barzani. In statements to the media Jan. 4, Joukhdar accused both Massoud and Masrour Barzani of “committing crimes in northeast Syria by supporting armed Kurds with finance and weaponry.” Joukhdar said his country reserves the right to prosecute Masrour Barzani on the domestic and international stage.

However, legal expert and former Judge Tareq Harb told Al-Monitor,

“It’s not possible to label Masrour Barzani as a terrorist in the sense established in the terminologies of Security Council resolutions or the 2005 Iraqi Anti-Terrorism Law, which defines terrorism as ‘every criminal act committed by an individual or an organized group that targeted an individual or a group of individuals or groups or official or unofficial institutions and caused damage to public or private properties, with the aim to disturb the peace, stability, and national unity …’ — which doesn’t apply to the case of [Masrour Barzani].”

According to Article 1, Paragraph 2 of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism of 1937, which was established in Geneva under the now-dissolved League of Nations, the term “acts of terrorism” was defined as “criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons, or a group of persons or the general public.”

It is worth noting that at the time of this writing there are no Iraqi Kurdish parties or entities on terrorist lists.

But what if Syria’s list is taken seriously? Ali al-Tamimi, also a former judge, said it is not that simple.

“Even in cases where the name of an individual is added to the UN’s lists of designated terrorist groups or those of other states, it doesn’t hold any legal weight,” Tamimi told Al-Monitor. “[That is,] unless a law or resolution was passed by the Iraqi judiciary or Kurdistan’s judiciary validating that list,” he added.

“The Iraqi government should address the Syrian government formally,” Tamimi said. “In any case, Iraq is not bound to extradite Masrour or anyone else for the matter based on those lists, unless he was wanted by another state through Interpol. Even in this case, Iraq can refuse to surrender him should the state wish to do so.”

Political analyst and writer Kathem al-Haj of Al-Hadaf Network for Political and Media Analysis spoke to Al-Monitor and stressed “the existence of political implications to the Syrian list rooted in [Masrour Barzani’s] involvement in the Syrian situation.” Haj cited Article 7 of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution:

“The state shall undertake to combat terrorism in all its forms, and shall work to protect its territories from being a base, pathway or field for terrorist activities.”

He also cited Article 8, which says,

“Iraq shall observe the principles of good neighborliness, adhere to the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other states.”

“Masrour Barzani should adhere to Iraq’s Constitution and laws,” Haj said, adding, “[He should also] not take any position in support of any religious or ethnic group in another state, because this is prohibited according to the law.

Haj said,

“Iraqi Kurdistan should inquire as to the reason why [Masrour Barzani’s] name was put on Syria’s list for terrorist entities through the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and move forward by sticking to legal measure mechanisms through formal channels.”

But it seems that the central government, judging from the response by Baghdad and Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, remains unconcerned by the Syrian list. Meanwhile, the Iraqi Kurdistan government has limited its response to the one statement made to the media and merely a handful of condemnations.

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Adnan Abu Zeed is an Iraqi author and journalist. He holds a degree in engineering technology from Iraq and a degree in media techniques from the Netherlands. 

Featured image is from Kurdistan24

There are moments that define a politician. There are legacies that they leave. But the reality of high office is often so different from the easy promises of opposition.

As a poster boy politician, who entered office promising a new type of politics, Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, embodied fresh hope for many who wanted a distinctive difference from the toxic politics of his nefarious neighbour further south.

And one of those issues he promised a brighter future on is Indigenous Rights.

Trudeau is full of fine words and promises, for example, saying last year:

“Our government is working in partnership with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples to advance meaningful reconciliation and build a future where Indigenous peoples succeed and prosper.”

But Trudeau’s actions have not lived up to his fine rhetoric. For most of last year he was embroiled in a bitter and expensive controversy about the Kinder Morgan tar sands pipeline (see here  for more info).

And this year has not got off to a better start for him either. In early January 2019, there has been a major confrontation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and First Nations about the building of yet more fossil fuel infrastructure: a $6.2 billion gas natural gas pipeline by TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink. The pipeline is due to transport fracked natural gas from northeastern B.C. some 670 kilometres to the coast where an LNG Canada facility is due to be built too.

Indeed Trudeau has another crisis on his hands and once again his administration seems to be siding with oil and gas. His political legacy is on the line once more.

As the Globe and Mail reported this week:

“On a forestry road south of Houston, B.C., members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation are running checkpoints to oppose a pipeline being built on their traditional territory… Activity at the two camps – Unist’ot’en, which has been around since 2010, and Gidimt’en, which was built late last year and is named after one of the five clans – had been escalating after a B.C. Supreme Court ruling in December giving the builders of the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline an injunction so they could use the road unimpeded.”

Members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation argue that they were never consulted about the pipeline and that it violates their constitutional rights.

The Wet’suwet’en clans “have rejected the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline because this is our home. Our medicines, our berries, our food, the animals, our water, our culture are all here since time immemorial. We are obligated to protect our ways of life for our babies unborn.”

And this week the authorities responded with brute force and ignorance again. As the Washington Post noted:

“The pictures emerging from the scene of an anti-pipeline action in British Columbia could not be more off-brand for Justin Trudeau.”

Whereas Trudeau is all spin and shine, the images from earlier in the week were the opposite. The RCMP “used excessive and brutal force” to enter one of the fortified checkpoints where the Wet’suwet’en First Nation were blocking the workers from gaining entry onto their protected and unceded land.

Although they knew the Police were coming, they were taken aback by state brutality. As a spokesperson for The Unist’ot’en camp said:

“We expected a large response, we did not expect a military level invasion where our unarmed women and elders were faced with automatic weapons and bulldozers.”

Some fourteen people were arrested. Reacting to footage of tactics by the RCMP, author and activist Naomi Klein tweeted “a shameful day for Canada, which has marketed itself as a progressive leader on climate and Indigenous rights.”

Klein added that this was all “for a gas pipeline that is entirely incompatible with a safe climate.”

A shameful day for Canada, which has marketed itself as a progressive leader on climate and Indigenous rights. It has just invaded unceded Wet'suwet'en territory and arrested land defenders, all for a gas pipeline that is entirely incompatible with a safe climate. https://t.co/RpSy3fLg3H

— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) January 8, 2019

On Tuesday, there were over 60 protests in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en in Canada and around the world. According to rally organizers,

“We oppose the use of legal injunctions, police forces, and criminalizing state tactics against the Wet’suwet’en asserting their own laws on their own lands. This is a historic moment when the federal and provincial governments can choose to follow their stated principles of reconciliation, or respond by perpetuating colonial theft and violence in Canada.”

Events are now moving fast. There are press reports in the last twenty four hours that the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have struck a “tentative” deal with the RCMP on a compromise that allows Coastal GasLink through to start preconstruction on the pipeline. In return, the RCMP will not again raid the camp or enter the Unist’ot’en lodge without an invitation.

Yesterday, Trudeau had what was described as a fiery exchange with Tilly, a First Nations woman regarding his Government’s handling of the protest, at a town hall meeting in BC.

Tilly asked what he was going to do “to stop oppressing and holding our people under your colonisation?” She continued: “When are you going to give us our rights back?”

Trudeau replied:

“Canada has a long and terrible history in regard to Indigenous Peoples. We have consistently failed as a country to live up to the spirit and intent of the original treaties. We have not treated indigenous peoples as partners and stewards of this land. We have marginalised., behaved in paternalistic, colonialist ways that has lacked respect for First Peoples’ as stewards of the land. We have much to apologise for and much to work forward on together in respect.”

Trudeau went on to say that his government was making “significant improvement in self-governance and new relationships in support that is moving in the right direction.”

When further confronted by Tilly, he replied that he understood the

“anger and the passion you have to protect your land. I absolutely respect that. I can understand your impatience. I understand your frustration.”

He added:

“We will work together to resolve these issues”.

Many people might consider these fine words based on empty deeds after the last week.

Indeed, at the meeting another member of the public shouted:

“You’re getting people arrested”, before adding “You’re a liar and a weak leader. What do you tell your children?”

Meanwhile, the Wet’suwet’en also maintain that the “Hereditary Chiefs have by absolutely no means agreed to let the Coastal GasLink pipeline tear through our traditional territories.”

They contend that they see through the Government’s “attempts to further colonial violence and remove us from our territories. We remain undeterred, unafraid, and unceded” and add that “This fight is far from over.”

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Featured image is from Michael Toledano/Twitter

Germany and France are set to forge a pact aligning their defense, diplomatic and economic policies in an unprecedented “twinning” pact “regarded as a prototype for the future of the European Union,” according to The Times‘ Oliver Moody.  

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will sign the “Aachen treaty” later this month which will govern a coordinated diplomatic front as well as joint actions on peacekeeping missions.

What’s more – areas on both sides of the Franco-German border will be encouraged to establish “Eurodistricts” in which both countries would merge water, electricity and public transport networks.

Berlin and Paris will offer cash to incentivise these cross-border areas, which could involve shared hospitals, joint business schemes or environmental projects. Some officials regard these experiments as a petri dish for the integration of the EU. –The Times

No word on whether France will accept half of Germany’s refugees.

Additionally, both countries will lobby for Berlin to receive a permanent seat on the United Nations security council, where France already sits with the United States, China, Russia and Britain. Berlin was elected to the council as a non-permanent member last June.

France and Germany will also coordinate policy positions ahead of pivotal EU summits in order to make the bloc a “more decisive power on the world stage.” In short – the treaty will solidify the two countries’ commitments to “the values of multilateralism at a time when the global liberal order is under threat,” writes Moody.

The two countries will hold “regular consultations on all levels before major European meetings, and take care to establish common positions and issue joint statements,” according to the agreement, and will “stand up for a strong and effective common foreign and defence policy, and strengthen and deepen the economic and currency union.”

Both President Macron and Mrs Merkel have expressed frustration at the rise of populism and nationalism, and at Europe’s dithering in the face of problems such as climate change and mass migration.

On New Year’s Eve Mrs Merkel declared that Germany would “stand up and fight” for multilateralism and was ready to assume more responsibility in the world. A year ago diplomats from the countries began negotiating an agreement in the spirit of the 1963 Élysée treaty that formally set aside centuries of mutual hostility and set up the Franco-German alliance that has dominated the European project since. The brief document will be signed on January 22 in Aachen, the ancient German spa city near the borders with Belgium and the Netherlands. It is meant to be ratified by the two national parliaments that same day. –The Times

The new pact will advance Macron’s desire to use Franco-German solidarity to become more assertive as a global power, and will lay the groundwork for Franco-German defense acting as a “political steering group” on the security council. The two countries will also exchange diplomats and civil servants on a frequent basis, while ministers from one country will regularly sit in on the other’s cabinet meetings, according to The Times.

Militarily, the treaty aims to form a “common culture and common deployments” in overseas engagements.

A possible template for this arrangement is the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali, a former French colony that was partly overrun by rebellious Tuareg tribes and Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda in early 2012.

While France bore the brunt of the fighting, the German armed forces have since supplied one of the largest non-African contingents, and some 370 German troops remain there today. –The Times

In Merkel’s new year’s address, the German chancellor said that hte concept of international cooperation was “coming under pressure,” and that her country must “stand up for and fight more strongly for our convictions,” while taking on “more responsibility for our own interests.” She also talked up a multilateral approach to international affairs, and that Germany would push for “global solutions.”

Trouble in EU paradise?

Some EU member nations are suspicious of the Aachen treaty, with concerns over the bloc’s two most powerful economies creating “a juggernaut capable of crushing dissent beneath its wheels.”

Meanwhile, Berlin’s potential permanent UN security council seat will surely rub some in Brussels the wrong way – and has been sharply condemned by parties on both ends of the ideological spectrum.

Alternative for Germany leader Alexander Gauland, for example, has described the pact as an “erosion of our national sovereignty.” In France, conservative leader Marine le Pen said it was an “unbalanced” decree from Germany.

Surely this will calm down the Yellow Vest movement.

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A new Politico/Morning Consult poll has found that there is much more support for ongoing military occupations among Democrats surveyed than Republicans.

To the question “As you may know, President Trump ordered an immediate withdrawal of more than 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria. Based on what you know, do you support or oppose President Trump’s decision?”, 29 percent of Democrats responded either “Somewhat support” or “Strongly support”, while 50 percent responded either “Somewhat oppose” or “Strongly oppose”. Republicans asked the same question responded with 73 percent either somewhat or strongly supporting and only 17 percent either somewhat or strongly opposing.

Those surveyed were also asked the question “As you may know, President Trump ordered the start of a reduction of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, with about half of the approximately 14,000 U.S. troops there set to begin returning home in the near future. Based on what you know, do you support or oppose President Trump’s decision?” Forty percent of Democrats responded as either “Somewhat support” or “strongly support”, with 41 percent either somewhat or strongly opposing. Seventy-six percent of Republicans, in contrast, responded as either somewhat or strongly supporting Trump’s decision, while only 15 percent oppose it to any extent.

These results will be truly shocking and astonishing to anyone who has been in a coma since the Bush administration. For anyone who has been paying attention since then, however, especially for the last two years, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Depressing that 30%+ fewer Democrats than Republicans support withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan. (See thread). A clear byproduct of two years of Clockwork Orange-style indoctrination by MSNBC’s wall to wall lineup of spooks & neocons selling war thru partisan identity. https://t.co/K1yevED6lH

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 10, 2019

This didn’t happen by itself, and it didn’t happen by accident. American liberals didn’t just spontaneously start thinking endless military occupations of sovereign nations is a great idea yesterday, nor have they always been so unquestioningly supportive of the agendas of the US war machine. No, Democrats support the unconscionable bloodbaths that their government is inflicting around the world because they have been deliberately, methodically paced into that belief structure by an intensive mass media propaganda campaign.

The anti-war Democrat, after Barack Obama was elected on a pro-peace platform in 2008, went into an eight-year hibernation during which they gaslit themselves into ignoring or forgiving their president’s expansion of George W Bush’s wars, aided by a corporate media which marginalized, justified, and often outright ignored Obama’s horrifying military expansionism. Then in 2016 they were forced to gaslight themselves even further to justify their support for a fiendishly hawkish candidate who spearheaded the destruction of Libya, who facilitated the Iraq invasion, who was shockingly hawkish toward Russia, and who cited Henry Kissinger as a personal role model for foreign policy. I recall many online debates with Clinton fans in the lead up to the 2016 election who found themselves arguing that the Iraq invasion wasn’t that bad in order to justify their position.

After Clinton managed to botch the most winnable election of all time, mainstream liberal America was plunged into a panic that has been fueled at every turn by the plutocratic mass media, which have seized upon unthinking cultish anti-Trumpism to advance the cause of US military interventionism even further with campaigns like the sanctification of John McCain and the rehabilitation of George W Bush. Trump is constantly attacked as being too soft on Moscow despite having already dangerously escalated a new cold war against Russia which some experts are saying is more dangerous than the one the world miraculously survived. Trump’s occasional positive impulses, like the agenda to withdraw US troops from Syria and Afghanistan, are painted as weakness and foolishness by the intelligence veterans who now comprise so much of corporate liberal media punditry. And their audience laps it up because by now mainstream liberals have been trained to have far more interest in opposing Trump than in opposing war.

And how sick is that? Obviously Trump has advanced a lot of toxic agendas which need to be ferociously opposed, but how warped does your mind have to be to make a religion out of that opposition which is so all-consuming that it eclipses even the natural impulse to avoid inflicting death and destruction upon your fellow man? How viciously has the psyche of American liberals been brutalized with mass media psyops to drive them into this psychotic, twisted reality tunnel?

There was one group in the aforementioned survey which was not nearly as affected by the propaganda as armchair liberals. To the statement “The U.S. has been engaged in too many military conflicts in places such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan for too long, and should prioritize getting Americans out of harm’s way,” military households responded 54 percent that this statement aligns with their view. Turns out when it’s your own family’s blood and limbs on the line, people are a lot less willing to commit to endless violence. Sixty percent of Republicans agreed with this statement, while only 41 percent of Democrats did.

Could these statistics have something to do with the fact that younger veterans are statistically much more likely to be Republicans than Democrats? Is it possible that a major reason Trump beat Hillary Clinton, and a major reason Republicans are now far less bloodthirsty than Democrats, is because mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers are tired of flag-draped coffins being shipped home containing bodies which were ripped apart for no legitimate reason in senseless military entanglements on the other side of the world? Seems likely. And it also seems likely that the mass media propaganda machine is having a harder time steering people toward war once they’ve personally tasted its true cost.

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A bombshell domestic spy scandal has been unfolding in Britain, after hacked internal communications exposed a covert UK state military-intelligence psychological warfare operation targeting its own citizens and political figures in allied NATO countries under the cover of fighting “Russian disinformation.”

The leaked documents revealed a secret network of spies, prominent journalists and think-tanks colluding under the umbrella of a group called “Integrity Initiative” to shape domestic opinion—and to smear political opponents of the right-wing Tory government, including the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

To read complete article on the Grayzone Project, click here

Until now, this Integrity Initiative domestic spy scandal has been ignored in the American media, perhaps because it has mostly involved British names. But it is clear that the influence operation has already been activated in the US. Hacked documents reveal that the Integrity Initiative is cultivating powerful allies inside the State Department, top DC think tanks, the FBI and the DHS.

The Integrity Initiative has spelled out plans to expand its network across the US, meddling in American politics and recruiting “a new generation of Russia watchers” behind the false guise of a non-partisan charity. Moreover, the group has hired one of the most notorious American “perception management” specialists, John Rendon, to train its clusters of pundits and cultivate relationships with the media.

Back in the UK, Member of Parliament Chris Williamson has clamored for an investigation into the Integrity Initiative’s abuse of public money.

The Integrity Initiative story is just growing and growing. Many are rightly outraged that this Tory government could fund a political smear unit.

Questions need to be answered. Share this video on Facebook to make that happen. https://t.co/MGepaIEfGw

— Chris Williamson MP #GTTO (@DerbyChrisW) December 14, 2018

In a recent editorial, Williamson drew a direct parallel between the group’s collaboration with journalists and surreptitious payments the CIA made to reporters during the Cold War.

“These tactics resemble those deployed by the CIA in Operation Mockingbird that was launched at the height of the cold war in the early 1950s. Its aims included using the mainstream news media as a propaganda tool,” Williamson wrote.

“They manipulated the news agenda by recruiting leading journalists to write stories with the express purpose of influencing public opinion in a particular way,” the Labour parliamentarian continued. “Now it seems the British Establishment have dusted off the CIA’s old playbook and is intent on giving it another outing on this side of the Atlantic.”

Unmasking a British military-intelligence smear machine

The existence of the Integrity Initiative was virtually unknown until this November, when the email servers of a previously obscure British think tank called the Institute for Statecraft were hacked, prompting allegations of Russian intrusion. When the group’s internal documents appeared at a website hosted by Anonymous Europe, the public learned of a covert propaganda network seed-funded to the tune of over $2 million dollars by the Tory-controlled UK Foreign Office, and run largely by military-intelligence officers.

Through a series of cash inducements, off the record briefings and all-day conferences, the Integrity Initiative has sought to organize journalists across the West into an international echo chamber hyping up the supposed threat of Russian disinformation—and to defame politicians and journalists critical of this new Cold War campaign.

A bid for funding submitted by the Integrity Initiative in 2017 to the British Ministry of Defense promised to deliver a “tougher stance on Russia” by arranging for “more information published in the media on the threat of Russian active measures.”

The Integrity Initiative has also worked through its fronts in the media to smear political figures perceived as a threat to its militaristic agenda. Its targets have included a Spanish Department of Homeland Security appointee, Pedro Banos, whose nomination was scuttled thanks a media blitz it secretly orchestrated; Jeremy Corbyn, whom the outfit and its media cutouts painted as a useful idiot of Russia; and a Scottish member of parliament, Neil Findlay, whom one of its closest media allies accused of adopting “Kremlin messaging” for daring to protest the official visit of the far-right Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy — the founder of two neo-Nazi parties and author of a white nationalist memoir, “View From The Right.”

These smear campaigns and many more surreptitiously orchestrated by the Integrity Initiative offer a disturbing preview of the reactionary politics it plans to inject into an already toxic American political environment.

To read complete article on the Grayzone Project, click here

 

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery, which will be published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Killing Gaza and Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie. Blumenthal founded the Grayzone Project in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

Mark Ames is the co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd on Patreon.

All images in this article are from Grayzone Project unless otherwise stated

“Our millennial history will help us”. Between street mosaics, archaeological assets to be restored, photovoltaic energy for reconstruction, and agriculture that calls for peace

Finding a place in the Guinness for making the largest wall mosaic in the world with recycled materials deserves vivid eco-artistic compliments. But here is the real world record: the Syrian “architects” of this 720 square meter work in the Mezzeh district of Damascus have done everything in the middle of war. In damascene streets, after 2013, seven long mosaics, a kaleidoscope of colors, fantasy and hope, were born among so many war explosions. Pieces of tiles, broken cups, bottles, tubes, bicycle wheels, electronic metal parts, keys and nails: gathered here and there and brought as a gift from citizens.

Participated art.

Image on the right: Artist Moaffak Makhoul

“In the difficult conditions facing the city, we wanted to offer a smile and show the love of the Syrians for life, creativity and art. The work started in October 2013 and in January 2014 we had finished” explains the artist Moaffak Makhoul, coordinator of the Guiness mosaic. T-shirt and black trousers, he guides us in the library of Damascus museum for the education showing around. “These books were recovered from schools that were evacuated before the arrival of armed groups who occupied them, in Muhadamya, Ghouta, Daraya”.

Outside the silence of the library, the noisy and intense traffic causes one question: How do the Syrians keep their cars after seven years of war that have caused inflation and impoverishment?

The young agronomist Dima Hassan – who is a bit our Virgilio, in Syria … – does not have a car and lives modestly with her salary, which with the devaluation of the Syrian lira equals 30 euros, but she tries this answer: «Or have relatives abroad, or do three jobs, a situation now common here, or are depleting the savings they had before the war.” Some people are exasperated in traffic jams and make jokes about the subway project: “A project which is twenty years old; is it so hard to dig? You could entrust the work to the terrorists of Jaysh al-Islam and to the other mercenaries who in a few years, in the eastern Ghouta area, were able to dug miles of tunnels to secure supplies in weapons and materials! ”

The mosaic of the Guinness (ph. Marinella Correggia) 

In front of the art school Abdel Hader, close to the library, the two artist sisters Rajab and Safa Wabi look at a high wall decorated in relief. «We started, with several students, the street art in 2011, at the same time as the crisis that then resulted in the war. And we did not stop even when above our heads were raining mortars that came from areas outside Damascus in the hands of armed groups”, says the sister, while the other continues, stretching his arm to a nearby building: “There a missile fell. Working on the street, we did not really have any shelter! But our work magnetically attracted many people, adults and children, and this helped us.”

They are approached by two little doves, in small and brown – may be they are the damascene version of our pigeons. The artists indicate the sand and cement doves on the top of the wall: “We have put them as a symbol of peace”.

Two little doves in Damascus (ph. Marinella Correggia) 

A peace that is not yet in Syria, where many fronts have closed but others are still opened. Certainly in the areas most affected by the conflict, instead of the mosaics there are rubble. For the post-war reconstruction, a titanic work, it is estimated a cost of 470 billion dollars. The machine has already started up with the rehabilitation of public utility buildings and private housings, preceded by the removal of the rubble. The foundation of the Aga Khan is already supporting the restoration of the historical architectural heritage, starting from the huge suq of Aleppo and other monuments of the Old City.

Good news is that the huge amount of rubble will be partly recycled. “The Chinese companies are already at work, in addition to the Syrian government machine”, assures a Syrian translator who previously studied and lived in Spain and decided to return to his country in 2014, at the height of the crisis.

This kind of “reuse” makes the pair with a small but significant project in Aleppo. The group of Christian Marist blue volunteers, among the many rehabilitation projects, has one called Heart Made, which practices up-cycling without calling it that, as one of the project managers explains, Leyla Antaki: «We resort to stock of unsold stock over time and transform them by giving them a second life. We take the models on the internet, adapting them to local tastes. Then with the cutouts, sleeves, jeans we make big and small bags, bags that we decorate. In short, it is about avoiding textile waste, learning perfection in work and making beautiful things »

On the huge challenge of the reconstruction, the question is: who will pay to put the country back on its feet? Who will earn? Joan, a student from Damascus whose father is from the Afrin area, hit by the bombing of the Turks, is drastic: “I really hope it does not become a business for the usual ones who first bring ruin and then earn on us… I say that Western countries, Turkey, the Gulf monarchs should compensate the Syrian people! They have fomented a war by proxy, they supported jihadist mercenaries … ». The damages are much higher than the estimated economic figure show. Because the loss of human lives is priceless, and also the historical architectural and archaeological heritage cannot be refunded.

The war has upset the methodical and often obscure work of archaeologists, restorers and officials. Occupied sites, warehouses of looted artefacts, damaged museums, threats to the life of the personnel. In one of the large laboratory rooms of the National Archaeological Museum of Damascus, cluttered with crates of artifacts, Rima Hawan, director of the restoration department, indicates pieces of statues from Palmira (Tadmor), a World Heritage Site that for ten months straddles 2015 and 2016 was besieged by the self-styled Islamic State (Isis, which in the Arab world is called Daesh, in a derogatory sense): “The situation was absolutely emergency”. It was feared the total destruction of the site, in front of images proudly spread by Daesh, with the beheadings of statues and not only: the archaeologist Khaled al Asaad, after a life in Palmira to take care of the site, paid with his life – slaughtered the August 18, 2015 at age 83 – the refusal to reveal the places were the most precious stuff had been hidden to escape the fury.

The director of the Palmira museum Khalil Hariri managed to escape at the last moment, but lost a brother and a cousin as well as several friends. It is located in the museum of Damascus to follow the restoration projects of some statues taken away in time and in a fortunate way: “The terrorists took us by surprise with their advance. Everything seemed to be stronger than us, in those days. In addition to terror, we had a very strong memory of the looting of Iraq’s historical heritage in 2003 during the Anglo-American invasion… But we managed with difficulty and danger to evacuate numerous artifacts, a sort of mission impossible» before the arrival of the devils.

Some employees are engaged, in large registers and at the computer, in the meticulous verification of the artifacts. Najma is among the restorers who worked in Palmyra after the escape of Daesh: “There are works totally destroyed, others we are trying to recover, here we work above all on the faces.” Kawtar and Hiba brush a monk statue. Who has helped you in these years of isolation, een under economic sanctions, did you always have the necessary materials available? Rima smiles cautiously: “Archaeologists are a world community. The experts with whom we worked to study the immense Syrian heritage, have been concretely close to us.»

Image below: Khalil Hariri, museum director (ph. Marinella Correggia)

Among the areas of crisis there has been for years the National Museum of Aleppo, the one that seems guarded by the huge Hittite statues of dark basalt, the spirited eyes. In July 2016, when it was hit by several missiles and mortar shells fired by armed groups who controlled the Eastern part of the city, most of the collection was already safe. Hariri states that, in the emergence of those years, with the country divided into areas of influence among armed groups, “the Directorate for Antiquities had lost contact with two realities: Idlib, still controlled by Qaedist groups; and Raqqa».

Raqqa: a toponym that for years has evoked terror since, in 2014, the city became the «capital of the caliphate» of the Islamic State. The city museum was rich in finds from various eras, up to prehistoric times. The Directorate had stored most of the collections in a series of buildings near the fortification of the Abbasid period at Heraqla, 7.5 kilometers to the museum. But already in March 2013, the Caliphate looted the warehouses and many pieces, mosaics, terracotta and plaster, the result of decades of excavation missions, left the country through the accomplice Turkey, destination the international market of finds. After all, pieces from Palmira were found for sale in London, one of the most important antiques markets… Anyhow the employees managed to evacuate or hide some of the transportable materials, and then recover three full crates found in Tabqa. ISIS had arrived to place explosive charges near the museum. This is a common destiny at about 300 sites of historical relevance. The war really is an angry elephant in a crystal shop.

Let’s go back to the archaeological museum in Damascus. In the courtyard, among artifacts and trees, a small group of workers with orange jackets and helmets are installing a photovoltaic lamp. Interesting union between past and modern.

A union which is normal as well as desirable for Mahmoud Alawadi, the manager of the company Htm Power solution: “Photovoltaics and archaeological heritage are both key elements of our future. The millennia of history will help us to rebuild. I think that the civilization of force that have staged certain states on our skin should oppose the force of civilization.”  Moreover, his deputy director of the company is Slava Abdo, who studied archeology and is full of futuristic enthusiasm: “Syria is the lady of the Sun. The sun is always there, solar energy is our future and must have the greatest attention”.

And solar thermal and photovoltaic can be seen around. Here and there, on the roofs of Aleppo and even in Kafarbatna in the eastern Ghouta on the buildings left standing, and in the urban and extra-urban streets to make traffic lights, street lamps, antennas work; up to the torches distributed in the centers for displaced persons. With the war, the supply of electricity and consequently the water supply itself became a problem. Renewable energies represent a solution, very convenient, says Slava, “If you calculate the costs for a diesel generator that compensates for the lack of electricity from thermal power stations, and compare them with those of panels that then work for 24 years …”

The costs of planting of solar energy can discourage, but the reconstruction of Syria can be a good opportunity, Slava continues: “Photovoltaics are good for every place, in homes, streets, farms, industries … Not only can they be equipped with reconstructed buildings, but they can be a great resource in the same work of reconstruction” And what about the production on the panels, which had started to be made in Syria before the war? “Currently, the cost-benefit ratio makes us prefer to import from China, but in two years we expect to have our own factory here,” concludes Slava while she puts her foot on a platform that lights up. Alawadi proudly displays the operation of photovoltaic water pumps, which are very useful in agriculture.

Apricot producer/seller in Kafarbatna, June 2018

Agriculture: in the land of the fertile crescent, the primary sector has a history of many millennia behind it. The Italian geneticist Salvatore Ceccarelli, with the international organization Icarda – International Institute for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas – has worked extensively in the country with farmers, improving participatory traditional cereals (those cultivated for centuries and centuries), so as to obtain mixtures of varieties capable of responding to environmental and water crises. Mixtures now grown in various countries including Italy.

And in Syria? Here, after the drought that has hit hard since 2008, seven years of war have seriously damaged food production, due to population displacements and clashes that have also involved rural areas and disrupted supply chains and transport.

For this reason it was a small miracle, in a day of end of May, to see the beautiful color of apricots emerge from a box on a farmer’s bike in Mleha, East Ghouta, a region near Damascus that was in the eye of the war tornado. The fruits cost 300 Syrian pounds per kilogram: before the war the apricots price was within everyone’s reach, but now it is for a few, seen the lowering of wages. Exquisite fruit, a set of delicate flavors. The apricot tree, originally from China, seems to have found the elective homeland in Syria and Turkey. Kobol el arb (“before the war”), the inhabitants of the capital used to go on a trip to the Ghouta at the time of flowering. And they looked forward to the short season of apricot, an expression that is also a way of saying to indicate something fleeting. At the time of the Mamluks, to listen to the Egyptian traveler El Badri, the scholars would put themselves in… leave, leaving chairs and books to gorge the fruit. Which in Syria has inspired a true art of conservation and transformation. “After all, in Argentina we have the apricots called Damascus and now I understand why” says the actress Susana Oviedo, who is visiting Syria.

What place will the primary sector have in the reconstruction of the country? And will the announced government plan for rural women really work? Here is a potential recipient: a food producer of Katana, in her yellow hat and bright blue scarf, arrives every day with a bus in the capital to sell her food. Her place is under one of the mosaics.
Agri-culture is culture, after all.

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This article was originally published on L’Ordine.LaProvincia

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“For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? In what hopes? That the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, will suffer conciliatory remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success?” – Ayi Kwei Armah, from the book “Two Thousand Seasons”

The champagne bottles were popping at the U.N. for the pledging session’s success – $5 billion, $10 billion pledged for the future. Whose future? What Haitians in Haiti need is a hoe, a tractor, some lifting equipment, so they might not have to use their bare hands to dig out the corpses still under the rubble over three months after the earthquake. Just a hoe, a tractor – we’ll do the work.

But no, the Internationals are going to give us $5 billion later. Be happy. Wait for it as you die inside because your daughter, son, wife, mother, father, cousin and friends are still dead under the rubble and no one will help you lift up the cement blocks and steel cables so you might bury them.

Yep, you have no food, no water, no medical treatment, no job to go to, no shelter today, but don’t worry. The Washington Post assures you, “The international community pledged $5.3 billion for earthquake-shattered Haiti over the next two years, launching an ambitious effort not just to rebuild the hemisphere’s poorest nation but also to transform it into a modern state.” (“$5.3 billion pledged over 2 years at U.N. conference for Haiti reconstruction.”)

For $5.3 to $10 billion in earthquake reconstruction funds not yet collected, the Preval government “agreed” that an Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (HRIC), composed of 13 foreigners and seven Haitians, will approve disbursements for rebuilding projects. The World Bank will hold collected donor funds and distribute said funds to “Haiti” rebuilding projects it deems worthy. Then, another group of non-Haitians will supervise the Haitian government’s implementation of the projects the World Bank strategists think worthy.

So, while the United States, the largest shareholder in the World Bank, openly secures its domination of Haiti, tramples on Haitian sovereignty with the added benefit of having the out that the Haitian government – not them, not their NGOs – failed in its implementation of projects.

While that little understanding was being thoroughly fastened down at the U.N. donor meeting, right then at Fort National, Haiti, the people are just walking over corpses and digging on the spot they find them to bury them. Others are burning the remains they find so that the stench and airborne disease won’t kill the living.

But don’t worry. Remember, Papa and Mama Clinton care, the U.N. cares, Preval cares because at the U.N. donor session, the $5.3 billion amount “exceeded by more than $1 billion the goal set ahead of a conference co-sponsored by the United Nations and the U.S. government. In all, countries, development banks and nongovernmental groups pledged nearly $10 billion for Haiti in years to come,” reports the Washington Post.

In years to come …

What is needed now is to finish extracting and burying the remaining dead, nurture the living, find a job to survive, get shelter from the elements and coming rains and hurricanes, medical treatment, food, water and get rid of the foreign experts who say their country is financing the Haitian government budget and therefore they are the ones to represent the people of Haiti. Meanwhile Sen. Dodd of Connecticut and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are not going to these rulers of Haiti for the failure of the so-called Haitian government but asking for more foreigners like them to take charge despite the Internationals’ six-year dismal failures in Haiti.

Besides, what can the people under water-logged tarps and tents do with the abstract $5.3 billion pledged by these Internationals? A backhoe, tractor, some seeds to plant food and fruit trees, some electricity, in-Haiti production of all daily necessities, shelter, sanitation, a wheelchair, a prosthetic limb to replace the one cut off by the quake’s ravages, a safe place to live, food, running water, antibiotics, some compassion and a living wage job to keep one from thinking about the loss of one’s everything would be helpful. Like now, perchance? Using not foreign resources, but Haiti’s gold, petrol, iridium, uranium, bauxite, limestone and the expertise of Haitians from the U.S., Canada, France, Latin America or the Caribbean who are willing to VOLUNTEER their time and transfer their skills to native Haitians for the nation’s good – to build Haitian capacity, not NGO capacity in Haiti.

But alas, the West dreams of riding the world economic recession and political dangers for themselves on the backs of Haiti’s dead to the tune of the $5.3, $10 billion do-gooder image they’ve siphoned off for themselves. Officialdom’s policymakers dream of doing more of what they’ve done in Haiti these last nightmarish six years and of using the earthquake windfalls to build tourist enclaves and waterfront casinos in Site Soley and Fort National and throwing out the Black Haitian majority as was done in New Orleans.

So why bother against these dreams of the BlackBerry-smartphone contingent? Against the NGOs’ useless waste of money, their setting up projects where no Haitians participate, justifying their jobs by holding meetings upon meetings with the people in the camps but with no follow-up except their trophy reports, press releases and conferences to show direct connection to justify their existence?

Ignoring Haiti’s natural resources

Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and a consortium of well-known Haitian figures, such as Reginald Boulos, worked on a document concerning the economic future of Haiti. The text does not explore the amazing opportunities offered by the exploitation of Haiti’s mining and oil resources, nor does it mentioned any of the serious studies done on the subject. Instead, it presents agriculture as the main alternative to resolve Haiti’s problems.

By ignoring the question of Haiti’s natural resources, it is as if the message was: There will be looting, pillage. But we will give you a little piece of bread.

Haiti has oil, iridium, uranium, copper, coal, limestone, the purest marble and, in terms of its gold, “10 million dollars have been invested by CFI (the World Bank private sector) in relationship with the IMF for a project worth billions of dollars.” Where is this information measured, factored into these U.N./U.S.-sponsored reconstruction plans and U.N. donor media shows?

Why must Haiti import fuel from the Dominican Republic – and thus the U.S. – instead of domestically producing its own energy? Where are the plans for using green and alternative energy – Haiti’s natural assets – its dry, un-arable, unusable lands for growing Jathropa for biofuel production; its wind, sea, sun, rivers for ocean heat pumps, solar cookers and panels, hydro-electric, geothermal and for coal energy, which Haiti has in abundance instead of Haiti sending hundreds of millions overseas to BUY fuel?

What’s so new about this International Haiti Plan if it’s not about food sovereignty so the people won’t need foreign big-pharmaceutical “supplements” and vaccines on empty, not to mention aching stomachs from drinking foul water.

According to Lane Wood, who heads a campaign for long-term clean water projects in Haiti, “A U.N. report released in March of 2010 said that dirty water kills more people each year than all forms of violence combined – including war. According to the WHO (World Health Organization), of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90 percent are children under 5 years old … (and) 80 percent of all disease is caused by lack of basic sanitation and lack of clean water. There are 4,500 kids that die every day because of the lack of basic sanitation and water … simple diseases like diarrhea.”

But, he said, there are some less obvious impacts of drinking dirty water. For example, dirty water can undermine other humanitarian efforts that money and effort have been poured into, like efforts to control AIDS/HIV in Africa. “They’re going home, they’re taking their medicine with bacteria-filled water, and their bodies are not absorbing the medicine.”

What’s new if this Clinton Haiti Reconstruction Plan is still about dependency – that is, using fertile land not for feeding the ill and starving people but for exporting coffee, avocado, mangoes (for Coca Cola), et al … and continuing to IMPORT food, to import fuel, “medicine” and foreign charity workers – and not about system-wide domestically produced food, clean running water, domestically generated fuel, jobs, education, health care and serious investment in sanitation and communication infrastructure and the energy to support these to help the masses connect into the global economy and have a non-mediated but sovereign voice?

U.S. foreign aid for Haiti is money raised to employ its own corporations, nationals and as funds for buying its own products and dumping them into Haiti – vaccines, seeds, fertilizer, nutritional supplements, pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides, Arkansas rice and food products, imported fuel, and ready-to-eat-meals et al … Why?

The watchword in U.S./Euro imperial geopolitics is pursuing interests, not principles of humane co-existence, charity not solidarity. Haiti is not the poorest country. It’s the most exploited country.

Like always, we’re mostly on our own. Just different Haitians are dying, in jail and being abused and tear-gassed by the U.N. Oceans of our blood have poured and watered the soil upon which Haiti stands.

The Haiti-Cuba health care proposal

For a good example of what real humanitarian help looks like, examine the proposal outlined in the Statement of the Cuban Foreign Minister at the U.N. Donors Meeting on Haiti .

Below we post the Haiti-Cuba proposal for building health care in Haiti that considers the needs of the poorest of the poor, Haiti’s realities and is without the unseemly large budget and consumerish waste of the cork-popping champagne fanfare of the U.N./Papa-Mama Clinton media show and pledging session that just took place at the U.N. Donor Conference. It is worthy of all our support.

If only this Haiti-Cuba health care proposal that’s made with the cooperation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and other countries and humanitarian organizations could be brought into application without the U.S./Euro policymakers’ interference and use of their egotistical NGOs and mercenary military contractors to block it! If only their inhumanity and vulgarity could be held in abeyance while heart sore human beings, living under water-logged tents, old cardboard and wet sheets, people with damaged and inflamed limbs, some also tear-gassed by the U.N. for protesting their conditions – if only their inhumanity and vulgarity could be held in abeyance as Haiti tries to recover from the ravages of the U.S./Euro neoliberalism and despotism that exacerbated a 7.0 earthquake so that it took the lives of over 300,000! (See “How did the Red Cross spend $106 Million Dollars in Haiti?”)

Who in Haiti and in the Diaspora is not soul-tired of the unrelenting U.S./Euro resource war on Haiti masking as humanitarian aid? The Independence Debt Haiti constantly has to pay. (See “The Haitian struggle, the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet.”)

“Haiti has paid its dues,” says Harry Fouche, HLLN Relief Delegation and a former counsul general for Haiti. “Quebec, Paris, Washington owe, not foreign aid to Haiti, but a debt to Haiti,” Fouche insists.

All that’s been taken from Haiti far from slakes insatiable egos, their passion for domination, cultural hegemony, patriarchy, racism and avarice. False charity, false benevolence, false “bringing security to Haiti” doesn’t veil officialdom’s market share impositions and resource wars on independent Black Haiti. Not even barely.

This Cuban proposal for health care ought to be brought into application. Really. And if Haiti’s majority had any say, if Haiti had any sovereignty, if the law, the good, the decent and moral had any teeth in these trying times, there’s no doubt it would be. But the foreigners and their Haitian Blan peyi making more than $500 a day in Haiti from donation funds pilfered from the pain they’ve caused, exacerbated and made worse through their rule in Haiti are not embarrassed at all.

They make more than $500 a day in Haiti happily proclaiming it’s kosher for Haitians to make 38 cents an hour. And through their self-serving defamation and denigration of Haiti’s Black people and always “evil government” or officials, these modern day slave-making Gran Blan, of all the classes and races, make Haiti’s suffering so ordinary, so natural, so explainable, even they don’t see their own vulgarity.

The day these insatiable vampires in Haiti accept to level the social and economic hierarchies they’ve imposed on Black Haiti, especially on Black Haitian women, and come to “help” for the same 38 cents per hour salary their policymakers deem good enough for Haitians is the day the majority in Haiti shall take any of them seriously. Until then, the Haitian Revolution shall continue. Liberty or death.

The souls gone shall add to our strength to continue until we’ve stopped or tied up the Bafyòti (black collaborator), Mundele (white colonist/imperialist) and all their Ndoki (evil forces). “E, e, Mbomba, e, e! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki” is the Bwa Kayiman exhortation that signaled the start of the Haitian Revolution.

In the last six years since Bush’s bicentennial regime change and since the tyrannical NGO industry and U.S./Euro market privateers took over Haiti, what has worked to assuage the vivid ills inflicted on the poor is the direct help Haitians have provided to each other and the Diaspora remittances. Other than that, with some small exceptions from a few small human rights organizations, Haitians may count on the Cuban doctors whose services do not strip them of their sovereignty, equality, humanity and dignity.

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This article was originally published on San Francisco Bay View.

Marguerite Laurent – or Ezili Danto – award winning playwright, performance poet, dancer, actor and activist attorney born in Port au Prince, Haiti, founded and chairs the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, supporting and working cooperatively with Haitian freedom fighters and grassroots organizations promoting the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Visit her at www.margueritelaurent.com, www.ezilidanto.com or www.open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto. See also “Ezili Dantò’s Re-memberment for the Quake Victims and HLLN Delegation Mobilizing Haiti-led Relief/Rebuilding” and “Haiti Women Noticeably Absent at U.N. Donor Conference.”

Featured image is from SFBV

History is told by Walls and Roads which have marked significant turning points in the relation between peoples and states.

We will discuss the story behind two walls and one road and the circumstances which surround them and their consequences.

The Berlin Wall

In the aftermath of World War II, Europe was divided between East and West.  On one side the Soviet Union (SU) and its Communist allies and on the other the United States and its Capitalist partners.

The Soviets faced a formidable task in rebuilding their sector having lost tens of millions of soldiers and civilians and facing great scarcities of resources without aid from the wealthy West.  North America sought to roll-back the post war agreements and proceeded to subvert the East by promising higher living standards, greater cultural and personal freedom.  The East resorted to greater control and sacrifice in order to reconstruct their economies.  The unequal contest between East and West in terms of personal consumption was contested by the more radical social investments in national public health, educational and social programs.

The West succeeded in attracting professionals, skilled workers and important cultural figures by offering attractive economic and individual incentive which the East could not or would not match.

In order to contain the ‘brain drain’ the East adopted repressive measures including building what was later referred to as the Berlin Wall.  Despite physical obstacles Easterners fled across and under the Wall.

When the East succumbed to pressure and internal opposition, the economy was taken over by the capitalist West which incorporated most of their factories and workers under control by private foreign capitalists.  Hundreds of thousands of workers in the East suffered unemployment and loss of social welfare and millions moved to western countries.

The former Eastern countries were annexed into the Western military alliance (NATO) and were incorporated into US wars in the Balkans, the Middle East and Southern Asia.

The end of the Wall strengthened the US military and increased the wealth of the European Union.  The Soviet Union disintegrated, and Russia was impoverished, and its economy pillaged for over a decade.  Eventually Russia recovered and regained its sovereignty, independence and its status as a world power.

The US Wall:  Mexico and Central America

The mass migration of Central Americans and Mexicans was directly linked to two essential factors:

1. NAFTA and the US intervention in the civil wars in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.

The US coup in Guatemala in 1954, Washington’s massive million dollar a dayinterventionin the El Salvador revolution and the 3 decades of Pentagon support for the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and the military coups in Honduras resulted in the killing of over 400,000 Central Americans while over 2 million Central Americans were uprooted, tortured, jailed and forced to flee across the Mexican – US border.

The flood of refugees, products of US imperial wars’, crossed into the US seeking safety and employment.  The US refused humanitarian assistance; hundreds of thousands were denied entry or were expelled.

In Central America, Washington backed the military and oligarchies which controlled the land, evicted farmers and denied land to the returning peasants.

The US responded by expanding the border police and immigration security forces, seizing and expelling tens of thousands of hard working refugees.  Walls were built along the Mexican frontier, to prevent refugees from crossing the border, condemning them to violence and misery.

2. NAFTA

Millions of Mexican peasants were displaced by the NAFTA agreement which promoted US agro-exports which undercut Mexican staples. NAFTA undermined US industrial workers as multi-nationals sought low wages.

Bankrupted farmers in Mexico sought to cross the border.

They were later joined by tens of thousands of Mexicans who fled from the drug cartels which were protected by US allies among the corrupt Mexican politicians, police and army.  The drug cartels reaped tens of billions of dollars by laundering their drug profits in the leading New York, Miami and Los Angeles banks.  The Wall kept Mexican workers out while the US government allowed drug money in– to flow to US bankers which profit from the drug laundering.

The conflict in the US between the two parties is an argument over the methods of denying the refugees entry– “walls” versus “barriers”– but not over US bank laundering and NAFTA.  The US   Wall protects profiteering and punishes its victim by keeping them out.

China’s Belt and Road: Opening Borders

Contrary to the US mania for Wall building on the Mexican border blocking refugees, President Xi Jinping has allocated $900 billion dollars for roads and infrastructures to open China, and extend links with South and Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe. China is building sea ports, roads, airports — opening trade, and increasing the flow of labor to markets and investments.

China does not face refugees fleeing from US invasions as is the case of the Central Americans.  Nor are Chinese agricultural exports displacing farmers, as is the case of Mexicans bankrupted by NAFTA.

China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) promotes regional and international integration – in contrast to US imposed disintegration of Central American linkages.  China promotes free trade agreements with its Asian partners in opposition to US protectionist tariffs and walls.

China’s OBOR policy is based on promoting the upgrading of underdevelopedcountries in order to complement the marketing of China’s advanced technological exports.

Conclusion

Walls are built by the US to constrain the fallout from its Central American wars and unequal trade agreements with Mexico. The Soviet Wall was constructed to protect its backward, uncompetitive economy.

China needs infrastructure, breaking walls, to facilitate the flow of goods and services across borders and incorporating labor, not arresting and expelling it.

The Walls reflect backward and regressive policies; global Roads and Belts link countries to peaceful and productive global integration.

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

Frei Betto (Carlos Alberto Libânio Christo) was born in 1944 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He began his political engagement as Catholic student and was imprisoned by the military regime that seized power in 1964 and ruled until 1985. I interviewed him first in 1986 after the publication of his book of interviews Fidel and Religion. This is the first of two interviews given in December 2018 after the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil.[1]

Dr. T. P. Wilkinson: When we met in 1986, the Brazilian military regime was considered at an end and elected government was to be restored. 32 years later a man has been elected who claims allegiance to the military regime. He is quoted saying the military should have tortured less and killed more. You were imprisoned under that regime. Could you briefly sketch the developments in Brazil since 1986 as you saw them? Has Brazil returned to military-style rule, if not actual dictatorship?

Frei Betto: The Brazilian military dictatorship began in 1964 and ended in 1985. The civil society of our country has made important accomplishments since then: a new constitution approved in 1988, called the “Civilian Constitution”; social movements of national scale, like the CUT (Unique Workers Central), the MST (Landless Workers Movement), the CMP (Popular Movements Central) and the MTST (Homeless Movement Workers).

We elect five and a half presidential terms, led by progressive politicians: Fernando Henrique Cardoso (two terms, 1995-1998 and 1999-2002), Lula (2003-2006 and 2007-2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011-2014 and 2015-2016, when it was ended in a leadership coup by vice president Michel Temer). In this period, from 1995 until 2016, Brazil made significant advances in the social sphere, with a reduction of inequality and the inclusion of thousands of families that previously lived in misery and poverty. Only under the Lula government, 36 million people found social inclusion.

TPW: In the 1980s there were several prominent people in the Church who were identified with democratic ideals, peace and justice, for example Cardinal Arns in Sao Paulo– and as whom I met later Archbishop Dennis Hurley in Durban. There were also ecumenical movements pursuing justice in Brazil and South Africa. However it seems that once the military dictatorship was ended and the apartheid government replaced by the ANC, the Church lost its profile and many of those people associated with the struggles left the stage. Is there still an active Church-based movement in Brazil and where is it now? What challenges does it face?

FB: It is necessary to understand that the end of the dictatorship in Brazil coincided with the election of John Paul II, followed by Benedict XVI. There were 34 years of conservative pontificates that did not support the line of the CEB (basic church communities) and the theology of liberation. This opened space for the evangelical churches with their conservative profile.

There still exists at the base a church that is alive and combative, but without prominent figures like Cardinal Arns and Dom Pedro Casaldáliga. Fortunately with Pope Francis this progressive pastoral work resumes. The canonisation of Monsignor Oscar Romero was very important for the recognition of the Church of liberation and the poor. And it is very active in Brazil and Latin America with feminist theology, indigenous theology, black theology and eco-theology.

TPW: In 1986, there was still a Soviet Union, a GDR, and “competition” in Europe to demonstrate the “best” social-economic system for the majority of citizens. By 1990, all that was gone. Two years ago Fidel Castro died. It is putting it mildly to say the world has changed since 1986. It has been argued that the Soviet Union actually contributed little to social-economic justice in the rest of the world, despite claims to the contrary. However since its demise there appears to be no limit to the expansion and aggressivity of the “Western” system. Unrestricted capitalism has “won”. It would appear that there is no longer a vision of what a just world could look like capable of providing orientation, especially on a global scale. You are certainly critical but not a pessimist. Where do you see the potential for social justice in future? What obstacles do you consider most important to overcome?

FB: Socialism had the merit of forcing the rich world to concede more rights to workers. Without the communist “threat”, there would have been no welfare state in Western Europe. Now, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, capitalism no longer needs rings because it does not lose its fingers… It has changed its productive phase for one of speculation and, as Piketty demonstrates, concentrates ever more profits into fewer hands.[2]

This gaping inequality has a limit, which is the desperation of the poor, like the waves of refugees flooding into the world of the rich and the demonstrations here in France, the yellow vests. It is an illusion of the rich to think that they can have an island of prosperity surrounded by misery and suffering.

Seven centuries before Christ, the prophet Isaíah already preached that peace can only exist with the fruits of justice. And we can add today: there will never be peace as a simple balance of weapons.

TPW: Your interviews with Castro revealed a remarkable man quite different from the personality depicted or caricatured since the Cuban Revolution succeeded in 1959. Anyone who followed his writing and speeches, even after retirement, could see that your portrait was accurate and sincere. The survival of the Cuban Revolution after the fall of the Soviet Union could be seen as proof that it was not a “Soviet creation” but a genuinely Cuban phenomenon, like Castro himself. In fact Cuba managed, despite US policy, to support social-economic change in Latin America, esp. in cooperation with Chavez in Venezuela. How do you see Cuba today, esp. in relation to its Latin American neighbours?

FB: Cuba resists despite all pressure from the White House. Today, all Latin American countries support Cuban sovereignty and vote in the UN, with the support of more than 170 countries, for the suspension of the blockade. For Cuba’s economy, so damaged by the isolation the country has been condemned to, relations with the progressive governments of Latin America and the world are very important. However, Venezuela faces a serious economic crisis. And Brazil—starting in January—will be governed by a fascist party allied with the US policy of preserving the blockade. Fortunately Mexico now has a progressive government that can strengthen ties of solidarity with Cuba, especially by absorbing Cuban doctors who have been expelled from Brazil.[3]

TPW: Venezuela has been under a kind of siege since Chavez became president that is at least as challenging as the US embargo of Cuba. Now Brazil has a president who has announced a very aggressive attitude toward the government in Caracas. Venezuela is not as radical as Cuba was. Chavez and Castro were sometimes presented as if they were a pair, both with very personalistic leadership styles. Have you formed a view of the situation in Venezuela, a direct neighbour of Brazil? Sometime around 1962 the US initiated activities that culminated in the 1964 military coup in Brazil under the pretext that Goulart would align Brazil with Cuba and the Soviet Union– something to prevent. Do you see an international context to the recent presidential election results– esp. given the vitriolic statements made about Venezuela by the new president and the intense conflict between the US and both Russia and China– part of the so-called BRICS group?

FB: I think tensions between US and both China and Russia will worsen. The Cold War is back. And Latin America is the target of this conflict. The countries of the Continent know that they cannot go on without the import of their products by China. And they fear Trump’s protectionist measures. So my assessment is that this reheating of the Cold War will be favorable to the Latin American economy.

TPW: You are described among other places on the website of the Dominican Order in Germany as a “political activist”.[4] One could say that the Dominican order, the OP, was founded as an “activist” order. Not everyone would agree that the order’s history of activism has been very positive– esp. those familiar with the history of the Inquisition. Did your activism grow out of your vocation or do you believe your choice to become a Dominican was shaped by an at least latent desire to “preach”, to be an activist? How do you see your activism as a Dominican and the contradictions of the order’s role in history?

FB: The Dominican Order, like our families, has its side of light and its side of darkness. There is no chemically pure institution. In 800 years of history, the Order had the sad page of the Inquisition, but is also proud to have had among its friars Thomas Aquinas, Savonarola, Giordano Bruno, Fra Angelico, Master Eckhart, Vitoria, Tomaso de Campanella, Bartolomé de las Casas and Father Lebret.

I entered the Dominicans because of my admiration for their presence in Brazil, along with the indigenous movement, the student movement and popular movements. I did not know that I am inscribed in the annals of the German Dominicans as a “political activist.” This honors me very much, because it puts me next to another political activist, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus did not die of hepatitis in bed, but like so many political prisoners in Latin America: he was arrested, tortured, tried by two political powers and sentenced to death on the cross. I thank God for being a disciple of this political prisoner who, within Caesar’s reign, announced another possible kingdom, that of God.

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Notes

[1] Translation assisted by Prof Dr Francisco Topa, Universidade de Porto

[2] Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century(2013)

[3] In the wake of his election, Jair Bolsonaro demanded that several thousand Cuban physicians employed in parts of the Brazil with little or no medical care would have to leave the country if the Cuban government did not comply with his demands that full wages be paid in Brazil and that families be permitted to move to Brazil with the seconded medical personnel. The Cuban government rejected this attempt by Brazil to extract Cuban medical professionals and deprive Cuba of the income agreed under the Dilmar (PT) government in return for Cuba’s medical mission. See “Cuba to pull doctors out of Brazil after President-elect Bolsonaro comments”, The Guardian, 14 November 2018.

[4] www.dominikanerorden.de

There used to be a pair of beautiful swings for children, not far from an old rural temple in Mie Prefecture, where I used to frequently powerwalk, when searching for inspiration for my novels. Two years ago, I noticed that the swings had gotten rusty, abandoned, and unkempt. Yesterday, I spotted a yellow ribbon, encircling and therefore closing the structure down. It appears that the decision had already been made to get rid of the playground, irreversibly.

One day earlier, I observed an old homeless man sleeping right under a big sign which was advertising a cluster of luxury eateries at the lavish Nagoya train station.

And in the city of Yokkaichi, which counts some 350,000 inhabitants, almost all but very few bus lines had disappeared. What had also disappeared was an elegant and unique, shining zodiac, which used to be engraved into the marble promenade right in front of the Kintetsu Line train station, the very center of the city. The fast ferry across the bay, connecting Yokkaichi with Centrair International Airport that serves Nagoya and in fact almost the entire area of Central Japan, stopped operating, as the municipal subsidies dried up. Now people have to drive some seventy kilometers, all around the bay, burning fuel and paying exuberant highway tolls and airport parking fees, to make it to their flight. What used to constitute public spaces, or even just rice fields, is rapidly being converted into depressing parking lots. It is happening in Central Japan, but also as far southwest as the city of Nagasaki, and as north as Nemuro.

Homeless man at Nagoya station

Homeless people are everywhere. Cars (Japan now has more cars per capita than the United States) are rotting in the middle of rice fields and at the edges of once pristine forests, as they lose value rapidly, and it costs a lot of money to get rid of them properly. Entire rural villages are being depopulated, in fact turning into ghost towns. There is rust, bad planning and an acute lack of anything public, all over the country.

Japan is in decay. For many years, it was possible, with half-closed eyes, to ignore it, as the country was due to inertia hanging on to the top spot of the richest nations on Earth. But not anymore: the deterioration is now just too visible.

The decay is not as drastic as one can observe in some parts of France, the United States, or the UK. But decay it is. The optimistic, heady days of nation-building are over. The Automobile industry and other corporations are literally cannibalizing the country, dictating its lifestyle. In smaller cities, motorists do not yield on pedestrian crossings anymore. Cars are prioritized by urban planners, and some urban planners are paid, bribery by the car industry. Many areas can now only be reached by cars. There are hardly any public exercise machines, and almost no new parks. Japan, which prides itself on producing some of the most refined food, is now fully overwhelmed by several chains of convenience stores, which are full of unhealthy foodstuff.

For generations, people were sacrificing their lives in order to build a prosperous, powerful and socially balanced Japan. Now, there is no doubt that the citizens are there mainly to support powerful corporations or in short: big business. Japanese used to have its own and distinct model, but now the lifestyle is not too different from one that could be observed in North America or Europe. For the second time in its history, Japan has been forced to ‘open to the world’ (read: to Western interests and to the global capitalist economy), and to accept the concepts that used to be thoroughly alien to the Asian culture. The consequences were quick to arrive, and in summary, they have been thoroughly disastrous.

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After WWII, Japan had to accept occupation. The Constitution was written by the US. Defeated but determined to rebuild and join the ranks of the richest countries on earth, Japan began collaborating with the West, first supporting the brutal invasion to Korea (the so-called “Korean War”). It totally gave up on its independence, fully surrendering its foreign policy, which gradually became indistinct from that of the United States in particular, and the West in general. The mass media has been, since the end of the war to now, controlled and censored by the regime in Tokyo. Major Japanese newspapers, as well as the Japanese national broadcaster NHK, would never dare to broadcast or publish any important international news, unless at least one major US or British mainstream media outlet had set the tone and example of how the story should be covered by the mass media in the ‘client’ states. In this respect, the Japanese media is not different from its counterparts in countries such as Indonesia or Kenya. Japan is also definitely not a ‘democracy’, if ‘democracy’ simply means the rule of the people. Traditionally, Japanese people used to live mainly in order to serve the nation, which was perhaps not such a bad concept. It used to work, at least for the majority. However, now, they are expected to sacrifice their lives solely for the profits of corporations.

People in Japan do not rebel, even when they are robbed by their rulers. They are shockingly submissive.

Japan is not only in decay. It tries to spread its failure like an epidemy. It is actually spreading, and glorifying its submissive, subservient foreign and domestic policies. Through scholarships, it is continuously indoctrinating, and effectively intellectually castrating tens of thousands of willing students from the poor Southeast Asian nations, and other parts of the world.

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In the meantime, China, which is literally ‘next door’, is leading in scientific research, in urban planning, and in social policies. With ‘Ecological Civilization’ now part of its Constitution, it is way ahead of Japan in developing alternative sources of energy, public transportation, as well as organic food production. By 2020, there will be no more pockets of extreme poverty on the entire huge territory of China.

And in China, it is all done under the red Communist banners, which the Japanese public has been taught to despise and reject.

Tremendous Chinese determination, zeal, genius and socialist spirit are evidently superior, compared to the sclerotic, conservative and revanchist spirit of modern Japan and of its handlers in the West.The contrast is truly shocking and very clearly detectable even with unarmed eyes.

And on the international stage: while Japanese corporations are plundering entire countries, and corrupting governments, China is helping to put entire continents back on their feet, using good old Communist internationalist ideals. The West does its best to smear China and its great efforts, and Japan is doing the same, even inventing new insults, but the truth is more and more difficult to hide. One speaks to Africans, and he or she finds out quickly what goes on. One travels to China, and everything becomes even clearer. Unless one is paid very well not to see.

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Instead of learning and deciding to totally change its economic and social system, Japan is turning into a sore loser. It hates China for succeeding under its independent policies, and under its Communist placards. It hates China for building new and beautiful cities designed for the people. It hates China even for doing its best to save the environment, as well as the countryside. And it hates China for being fully independent, politically and socially, even academically.

China tried ‘playing’ footsies with the Western academia, but the game almost turned deadly, leading to ideological infiltration and the near collapse of China’s intellectual independence. But at least the danger was identified, and the Western subversion was quickly stopped, just 5 minutes to Midnight so to speak; before it was too late.

In Japan, submission and collaboration with the Western global imperialist regime is worn as some code of honor. Japanese graduates of various US and UK universities frame their university diplomas and hang them on the wall, as if they’d symbolize great proof of their success, instead of collaboration with the system which is ruining almost entire planet.

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I remember, some fifteen years ago, Chinese tourists would stand on the bullet train platforms all over Japan, with their cameras ready, dreaming. When train would pass, they’d sigh.

Now, China has the most extensive and the fastest bullet train network in the world. Their trains are also more comfortable and incomparably cheaper than the Japanese or French ones; priced so everyone can afford to travel.

Chinese women used to eye, sadly, the offerings of Japanese department stores. iPhones were what the middle class was dreaming of possessing. Now Chinese visitors to Japan are dressed as elegantly as the locals, iPhones are not considered a luxury, and actually, Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers are now producing better phones than Apple.

I also remember how impressed Chinese tourists to Japan were with the modern architecture, international concert halls, and elegant cafes and boutiques.

Now, the cultural life of Beijing and Shanghai is incomparably richer than that of Tokyo or Osaka. Modern architecture in China is much more impressive, and there are innovations in both the urban and rural life of China, that are still far from being implemented in Japan.

While public playgrounds in Japan are being abandoned or converted into parking lots, China is building new parks, huge and small, recovering river and lake areas, turning them into public spaces.

Abandoned houses – South Mie

Instead of omnipresent Japanese advertisements, China is placing witty and educative cartoons speaking about socialist virtues, solidarity, compassion and equality, at many arteries, even at the metro trains. Ecological civilization is ‘advertised’ basically everywhere.

Japanese people are increasingly gloomy, but in China, confident smiles are seen at each and every step.

China is rising. It is unstoppable. Not because its economic growth (government is actually not interested in it, too much, anymore), but because the quality of life of the Chinese citizens is going steadily up.

And that is all that really matters, isn’t it? We can clearly improve the life of people under a tolerant, modern Communist system. As long as people smile, as long they are educated, healthy and happy, we are clearly winning!

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Some individuals are still chasing those magic images of pristine Japanese forests and lakes. Yes, they are still there, if you search very hard. Tea rooms and trees, lovely creeks. But you have to work very hard, you have to edit and search for the perfect shots, as Japanese cities and countryside are dotted with rotten cars and weird metal beams, with unkempt public spaces, with ugly electric wires hanging everywhere. As long as money can be saved, as long as there is profit, anything goes.

No more public spaces, just parking lots

Japanese people find it hard to formulate their feelings on the subject. But in summary: they feel frustrated that the country they used to occupy and torture, is doing much better than their own. To Japanese imperialists, the Chinese were simply ‘sub-humans’. It is never pronounced, but Japan has only been respecting Western culture and Western power. And now, the Chinese ‘sub-humans’ are exploring the bottoms of the oceans, building airplanes, running the fastest trains on earth, and making wonderful art films. And they are set on liberating the oppressed world, through its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, and through other incredible ideas.

And what is Japan doing? Selfies and video games, idiotic meaningless nihilist cartoons, brainless social media, an enormous avalanche of uninventive pornography, of decorative ‘arts’, pop music and mass-produced cars. Its people are depressed. I have three decades of history with Japan, I know it intimately, still love it; love many things about it, but I also clearly see that it is changing, in fact collapsing. And it is refusing to admit it, and to change.

I work with China, because I love where it is going. I like its modern Communist model (I was never a great supporter of the “Gang of Four”and their cult and glorification of poverty) – let all Chinese people be rich soon, and let the entire oppressed world be wealthy as well!

But that is not what Japan wants. For some time, it felt ‘unique’. It was the only rich Asian country. The only Asian country allowed to be rich, by the West. During apartheid, in South Africa, the Japanese people were defined as “honorary whites”. It is because they had embraced Western culture. Because they opted to plunder the world, together with the Europeans and North Americans, instead of helping the subjugated nations. In many ways, it was a form of political and moral prostitution, but it paid well; extremely well, so its morality was simply not discussed.

Now China is getting ahead simply because of its courage, hard work, the genius of its people, and all this, under the wise leadership of the Communist Party and its central planning. Precisely under things that the Japanese people were brainwashed into hating.

This is frustrating. It is scary. So, all that submission, humiliation and bowing to the empire was for nothing? In the end, it is China, it is Communism which will win, and which will be doing the greatest service to humanity.

Yes, Japan is frustrated. These days, polls speak of some 80% of the Japanese disliking the Chinese.

As I interact with people from all corners of Japan, I am getting convinced that the Japanese public subconsciously feels that, for decades, it has been betting on the ‘wrong horse’. It is too proud to verbalize it. It is too scared to fully reflect on it. But life in Japan, at least for many, is clearly becoming meaningless, gloomy and depressing. And there is no revolution on the horizon, as the country was successfully de-politicized.

China is building, inventing, struggling and marching forward, confidently, surrounded by friends, but independently.

Japan is tied up and restrained. It cannot move. It doesn’t even know how to move, how to resist, anymore.

And that is why Japan hates China!

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

All images in this article are from the author

IAN SINCLAIR reveals the hidden history of the BBC’s relationship with the secret state, suppression of ‘subversives’ and support for military intervention overseas

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Last month Ritula Shah presented a BBC World Service discussion programme entitled Is “Fake News” A Threat To Democracy?

Predictably the debate focused on Russian attempts to influence Western populations and political systems.

Asked whether the US has been involved in similar activities, Dr Kathleen Bailey, a senior figure in the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the 1980s, was dismissive:

“We [the US] certainly do not have a budget, bureaucracy or intellectual commitment to doing that kind of thing.”

Carl Miller, the research director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, also played down the West’s activities:

“I think Western countries do do less of this as a kind of tool of foreign policy than autocracies.”

“Read real journalism” — presumably BBC journalism — was one of the guest’s suggestions for countering Fake News.

Putting this self-serving and self-congratulatory narrative to one side, it is worth considering the BBC’s, and particularly the BBC World Service’s, own relationship to the British government’s own propaganda.

“Directly funded by government [the Foreign Office], rather than the licence fee” the World Service is “deeply embedded in the foreign policy, security and intelligence apparatus of the British state,” Dr Tom Mills notes in his must-read 2016 book The BBC: Myth of a Public Service.

In particular, the BBC had a very close relationship to the Information Research Department (IRD) — “a Foreign Office propaganda outfit which sought especially to foster anti-communist sentiments on the left,” explains Mills, a Lecturer in Sociology and Policy at Aston University.

Set up in 1948, the IRD “was one of the largest and best-funded sections of the Foreign Office until it was discreetly shut down in 1977 on the orders of [then foreign secretary] David Owen,” investigative journalist Ian Cobain reported in the Guardian in July 2018.

A 1963 Foreign Office review of IRD sets out the work of the covert unit:

“The primary aim is unattributable propaganda through IRD outlets — eg in the press, the political parties … and a number of societies.”

Focusing on the Soviet Union and its supposed influence around the world, “IRD material poured into the BBC and was directed to news desks, talks writers and different specialist correspondents,” according to Paul Lashmar and James Oliver in Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, their 1998 history of the clandestine organisation.

The programming of the BBC’s Overseas Service (which would change its name to the World Service in 1965) “was developed in close consultation with the Foreign Office and its information departments,” they highlight.

The BBC “were seemingly quite content to be directed by the FO [Foreign Office] as to how to deal with Middle Eastern personalities, and enquired whether it was desirable for them ‘to deal in a more or less bare-fisted manner with any of the leading statesmen (or their principle spokesmen)’,” notes Simon Collier in his 2013 PhD thesis on IRD and British foreign policy.

Infamously, the BBC played a key role in the US-British assisted overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1953, with the signal for the coup to begin arranged with the BBC.

That day the corporation began its Persian language news broadcast not with the usual “it is now midnight in London,” but instead with “it is now exactly midnight,” reveals historian Mark Curtis in his 2003 book Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World.

When it came to nuclear war, the BBC was similarly careful about what was broadcast, effectively banning the dramatised documentary film War Game in 1965 (even though it had originally commissioned it).

Discussing the film’s depiction of a nuclear attack on Britain, the chairman of the BBC wrote to the cabinet secretary arguing that the “showing of the film on television might well have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent.”

Though formally concerned with foreign influence, IRD also took a close interest in British domestic politics, including in the Northern Ireland conflict, as well as carrying out campaigns against people they suspected were communists and trade unionists.

For example, writing in the Guardian last year Cobain reported:

“Senior figures in Harold Wilson’s Labour government plotted to use a secret Foreign Office propaganda unit [IRD] to smear a number of left-wing trade union leaders,” including Jack Jones, the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union.

In the same report Cobain highlights a letter the BBC director-general wrote to IRD in 1974 asking for a briefing on “subversives” working in broadcasting.

This, it seems likely, was a complement to the wider political vetting the BBC undertook, with the help of MI5, between the 1930s and 1985.

Communists and members of the Socialist Workers Party and Militant Tendency were barred from key positions at the BBC, or denied promotion if they were already working for the corporation, according to a memo from 1984, with an image resembling a Christmas tree added to the personnel files of individuals under suspicion.

It is important to understand the relationship between the BBC and IRD and the wider British state was kept deliberately vague, a quintessential British fudge of formal and informal connections and influence.

“Many of the executives of the BBC had gone to the same public schools, and inevitably Oxbridge, with their Foreign Office colleagues,” note Lashmar and Oliver.

“Both were part of the establishment, attending the same gentlemen’s clubs and having an implicit understanding of what constituted the national interest.”

Cutting through this fog, Mills provides a concise summary:

“During the Cold War period the BBC was … distributing propaganda material in close co-operation with the British state.”

However, he is keen to highlight that though “there is a temptation to view all this as merely a feature of the Cold War … there is no good reason to think that there is not still significant collusion.”

He quotes Dr Emma Briant, who notes in her 2015 book Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism that the BBC director-general receives direct briefings from the British intelligence services “on the right line to take on whether something is in the national and operational interest to broadcast.”

Indeed, out of all the British broadcasters’ coverage of the Iraq war, the BBC was revealed to be the most sympathetic to the government, according to a 2003 study led by Professor Justin Lewis from Cardiff University’s School of Journalism.

Defending the BBC’s reporting in a letter to prime minister Tony Blair in 2003, then BBC director-general Greg Dyke noted he had “set up a committee … which insisted that we had to find a balanced audience for programmes like Question Time at a time when it was very hard to find supporters of the war willing to come on.”

The same committee “when faced with a massive bias against the war among phone-in callers, decided to increase the number of phone lines so that pro-war listeners had a better chance of getting through and getting onto the programmes,” Dyke explained.

This “was done in an attempt to ensure our coverage was balanced,” Dyke wrote, apparently with a straight face.

Moreover, academic studies on issues such as the Israel-Palestine conflict and the financial crisis shows the BBC has tended to reflect “the ideas and interests of elite groups, and marginalised alternative and oppositional perspectives,” to quote Mills on the BBC’s overall journalistic output.

Turning to contemporary politics, in 2016 Sir Michael Lyons, the former chair of the BBC Trust, raised concerns about the corporation’s coverage of new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“I can understand why people are worried about whether some of the most senior editorial voices in the BBC have lost their impartiality on this,” he noted.

As is often the case, a careful reading of Establishment sources can provide illumination about what is really going on.

Concerned about the government’s proposed cuts to the World Service, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee highlighted the propaganda role of the BBC in 2014: “We believe that it would not be in the interests of the UK for the BBC to lose sight of the priorities of the FCO, which relies upon the World Service as an instrument of ‘soft power’.”

Fake news indeed.

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Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair

Featured image is from Morning Star

The media has a new bit of speculation that fits neatly into the flagging Russiagate narrative. It concerns Paul Whelan, a high school graduate Marine Corps dishonorable discharge, who is currently working in corporate security for a Michigan-based auto parts manufacturer. Whelan, who lives alone, is self-taught in Russian and has engaged in tourist travel to the country a number of times. He was reportedly arrested late last month in Moscow while ostensibly attending a friend’s wedding and charged with espionage. Forty-eight year-old Whelan is clearly an odd duck and is notable for having four passports – Great Britain, Ireland, Canada and that of the United States.

Press coverage of the incident has nearly unanimously decided that the spying charge against Whelan is phony and that he is being held as bait to arrange for an exchange with Maria Butina, who is in jail in Virginia after being charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Russian government and engaging in conspiracy. The media and the usual pundits base their conclusion on absolutely no evidence whatsoever apart from their conviction that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a bad man who would do almost anything to irritate the United States and overthrow its system of government. Oddly, the press watchdogs fail to note how the current federal government is doing a damned fine job destroying itself without any assistance from the Kremlin. If Putin really wanted to damage the US, he would be best advised to leave it alone and let Congress and the White House do the heavy lifting for him.

Unlike the mainstream media, I rather expect that the charges against Whelan could be more-or-less correct, though not in the way the press has framed the story, which is that Whelan is such a flawed character that he could not possibly meet the requirements to be working for any sophisticated spy organization. The New York Times in its coverage of the story interviewed several former CIA officers who had served in Russia, but asked the wrong questions. The reporter wanted to know if Whelan could possibly be an employee of US intelligence. The ex-Agency officers replied “no” because of his criminal record while a Marine and other oddities in his career, which included some marginal involvement with low-level law enforcement.

The former spooks were correct to state that Whelan would not pass the security hurdles for employment as a staff officer, but there is also a whole other level of possible engagement with the Agency, DIA or JSOC – cooperating as one of the sources which intelligence organizations recruit and run to collect information. The flawed but nevertheless useful Whelan would be a perfect target for recruitment as an intelligence source, referred to in the business as “agents.”

Unusually for a foreigner, Whelan has a social media account on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, which is quite likely how he came to the attention of CIA or the Pentagon. And The New York Times, interestingly, describes his friends on the site as “men with some sort of connection to academies run by the Russian Navy, the Defense Ministry or the Civil Aviation Authority.” That alone would be enough to generate considerable interest in American intelligence circles as sources with that kind of access are hard to find.

And the details of Whelan’s arrest, if true, are completely consistent with how a low- to mid-level source might be run and used by a US government case officer. According to Russian accounts published in Rosbalt, a news agency close to the Kremlin, an unidentified intelligence source revealed that Whelan was trying to recruit a Russian citizen to obtain classified information regarding employees at various government agencies when he was caught in flagrante. He was arrested five minutes later in what was clearly a sting operation after having received a USB stick that included a list of all of the employees that he apparently had requested.

It may turn out that Paul Whelan is completely innocent and is merely a pawn in a tit-for-tat chess game being played by Washington and Moscow. If so, it is to be hoped that he will be proven innocent and released, but no one should rule out his having been recruited and exploited by a US government agency. Spying is not a game. It is a dangerous business, with serious consequences for those who are caught.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Detroit Free Press

“We’re not going to stop this train wreck. We are not even trying to slow down the production of CO2, and there is already enough CO2 in the atmosphere. We are going to see the consequences, and they will be significant.” – Bruce Wright, senior scientist with the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association. Quoted in The End of Ice [1]

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The battle to protect human civilization and life on this planet from the ravages of global warming has taken on a renewed urgency following the October 8th release of a stunning report from the world’s greatest authority on the state of the climate.

The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C was approved by the revered Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on October 6 in Incheon, Republic of Korea, just weeks in advance of last December’s Katowice Climate Change Conference. [2] Among other dire warnings, the report concluded that:

• The global mean surface temperature of Earth has increased 0.87°C during the period from 1850-1900 to 2006-2015.
• ocean acidification and changes to carbonate chemistry stemming from the absorption of 30% of anthropocentrically produced carbon dioxide are unprecedented for at least the last 65 million years.
• the probability of extreme drought, precipitation deficits, and risks associated with water availability in some regions increase dramatically with the internationally agreed upon limit of 2°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels versus the more ambitious target of 1.5 °C.
• Overshooting the 1.5 °C target would pose large risks for natural and human systems because some of those risks could be long-lasting and irreversible, such as the loss of some ecosystems.
• ecosystems such as kelp forests and coral reefs that are relatively less able to move are projected to experience high rates of mortality and loss. For example, multiple lines of evidence indicate that the majority (70–90%) of warm water (tropical) coral reefs that exist today will disappear even if global warming is constrained to 1.5°C.
• Ecosystem services from Earth’s oceans will be compromised due to 1.5°C warming and changes to ocean chemistry (e.g. acidification, hypoxia and dead zones) with more pronounced affects beyind 1.5°C of warming.
• Projections overwhelmingly indicate that restricting global temperature rise to 1.5 °C would require a 40-50% reduction below 2010 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. [3]

While it has been pointed out that a thermonuclear war would likely have even more devastating impacts on life on Earth, at least humans have the power to decide not to use nuclear weapons. In the case of climate change, we are told that once critical thresholds have been crossed, no human actions, no matter how valiant and self-sacrificing, will be enough to prevent runaway warming.

On a week when youth around the planet are mobilizing strikes for ‘climate action,’ the Global Research News Hour highlights the major indicators of a natural world in crisis due to global warming.

In the first half hour, following a short report on a local (Winnipeg) youth activist event, University of Ottawa based climate systems scientist Paul Beckwith outlines some of the more worrying signs that even the October 2018 IPCC Special Report on Climate Change failed to adequately address, he looks at the threats to the polar ice caps and the role they play in regulating familiar weather patterns, and he assesses some of what needs to be done to avoid multiple ‘tipping points’, and a ‘Hothouse Earth’ scenario.

In our second half hour, mountaineer, independent journalist, former Iraq War correspondent, and Truthout staff writer Dahr Jamail navigates listeners through The End of Ice, his recently published book on climate change. His latest publication is a tour through various locations around the globe from Mount Denali in Alaska to Florida, to the Amazon Rainforest and marks the changes climate cbange have already made and projects to the changes yet to come.

Paul Beckwith is a physicist, engineer, and part-time professor at the University of Ottawa. His research focus is on Abrupt Climate System Change. He has an archive of Youtube videos in which he shares the most up to date information on the climate threat. His website is paulbeckwith.net.

Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). He is also the co-author with William Rivers Pitt of The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible (Truthout, 2014). Jamail is recipient of the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards. Dahr Jamail is also the author of the recently published book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption (The New Press, set for release January 15, 2019.) He lives and works in Washington State.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 244)

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

1. Dahr Jamail (January 2019), p. 73, ‘The End of Oil: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption’, The New Press, New York, NY
2. https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/
3. Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 °C, Chapter 3: Impacts of 1.5°C  of Global Warming on Natural and Human Systems, pg. 177-181; https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/11/SR15_Chapter3_Low_Res.pdf

An alarming piece of legislation is about to enter into force in India next month mandating that social media platforms such as Facebook remove “unlawful content” such as posts that affect the “sovereignty and integrity of India”, meaning that this law could easily be abused by New Delhi to demand that the internationally recognized Pakistani map be banned because it contradicts India’s maximalist claims to Kashmir.

The Information-Communication Technology (ICT) Revolution of the past few decades has resulted in social media becoming a regular part of most people’s daily lives, with billions of people checking their accounts daily (sometimes across several platforms) and coming into contact with an unquantifiable amount of information from countless sources. One of the unintended consequences of this development is that social media has been exploited by various forces in order to further agendas that might be illegal in certain countries, such as spreading terrorist propaganda or fake news hoaxes. It therefore makes sense that states would want to legislate the activities that occur on these transnational foreign-based platforms in lieu of restricting their citizens’ access to the sites on which so much of their social lives have become dependent.

Banning The Map 

There’s nothing wrong with that in principle so long as internationally agreed-upon norms are used as the basis by which governments decree that Facebook and other social media platforms should censor certain content, but the controversy arises when countries demand that these companies enforce legislation that infringes on the freedom of speech of other people elsewhere. India, the self-proclaimed “world’s largest democracy”, is about to implement a law next month mandating that “unlawful” content be scrubbed from social media, which as Reuters reports also includes materials that affect the “sovereignty and integrity” of the country. While this might be a seemingly legitimate concern for any country, it can actually be abused by India to pressure Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and others to ban the internationally recognized Pakistani map.

Source: Lonely Planet

The reasoning behind this fear is that India’s maximalist claims to Kashmir have led to New Delhi refusing to recognize that the Pakistani region of Gilgit-Baltistan is under Islamabad’s writ, ergo why India’s official map includes this territory as part of that country and not its neighbor’s despite New Delhi exercising no sway whatsoever over it or its people. India, however, is on track to become the world’s most populous country sometime in the next decade and is accordingly one of the most sought-after markets for any social media company, which is why they might bend to New Delhi’s will and consider removing content from their platforms that the country deems to be “illegal”, such as the internationally recognized map of Pakistan.

The Catch-22

Nevertheless, most of the world’s social media giants are based in the US, so this implies that Americans (including those of Pakistani descent who share the internationally recognized map of their homeland) would have the responsible expression of their freedom of speech curtailed on behalf of a foreign government for politically subjective reasons that differ from their own government’s official position on this issue, a scenario that’s bound to send shockwaves through the country and become a political controversy sooner than later. The larger question being raised is the extent to which national governments can compel foreign internet companies to censor content shared by users outside of the state in question for reasons that don’t objectively constitute “national security” concerns.

Furthermore, it can’t be overlooked that very populous states such as India (which are prized by these companies for their enormous market potential) have a disproportionate advantage in this sense than their smaller- and medium-sized counterparts because they could restrict their citizens from accessing these platforms in response to those companies refusing to abide by their national legislation mandating the censorship of certain content such as the internationally recognized Pakistani map in the event that those laws are abused for political purposes. Pure financial motivations might therefore lead to social media companies “compromising” on their “values” but inadvertently violating the legislation of the country in which they’re based, thus creating a classic Catch-22 situation.

Brainstorming A Solution

It’s difficult to figure out what the perfect solution could be to this dilemma because it’s unrealistic for social media companies to censor materials based on the country of origin and not through any universal standards because Indian users could just go to Pakistani pages in order to view the “banned content”, though declining to comply with New Delhi’s demands could lead to serious financial consequences for the company. For all intents and purposes, Facebook and other companies’ responses to the possible abuse of India’s forthcoming legislation will therefore set a precedent when it comes to other governments’ partnerships with these platforms for notional “security” reasons because this very concept itself could be subjectively interpreted to infringe on the legitimate rights of users abroad to responsibly express themselves.

Instead of passively reacting to the possible censorship of their internationally recognized map from social media because of Indian pressure, it might be prudent for Pakistanis to begin raising the issue of freedom of speech on these platforms in as many high-level public fora as possible, potentially even going as far as doing so in an official capacity. Facebook and other companies should make formal statements about whether they’d remove the Pakistani map from their sites if India deemed it an “illegal” violation of its “sovereignty and integrity” following the imposition of its national legislation next month which could be abused for this purpose. In addition, it should be asked whether they’d do the same when it comes to images representing the Kashmiri cause.

Concluding Thoughts

By becoming the unexpected champion of responsibly expressed free speech on social media, Pakistan and its people would also be showing the world just how vibrant their democracy really is. It would powerfully contradict the Western world’s weaponized misperception of their country as a “third-world religious dictatorship” and prove that it’s actually a freely developing society in which tens of millions of people are actively engaged in social media and concerned about transnational internet companies censoring their national map and images coming from the Indian side of the UN-recognized Kashmir Conflict. There’s no doubt that states have the right to ask Facebook and others to remove universally acknowledged terrorist content, but they shouldn’t abuse this to censor “politically inconvenient” content like India might be poised to do.

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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.

At least five British soldiers were killed in a rocket attack by ISIS in the village of al-Shaafah in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, al-Watan newspaper reported on January 9. Several more soldiers were reportedly injured in the incident. They were airlifted to a hospital in Hasakah.

If this were confirmed, this would be the second incident including casualties among British forces deployed in Syria in several days. On January 6, 2 British Special Forces soldiers were injured in an ISIS attack, also in Deir Ezzor province.

On January 7, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also recalled Washington’s contribution to the war on ISIS in Syria and Iraq by claiming that the US had eliminated 99% of ISIS’ Caliphate.

“We’ve taken down 99 percent of the caliphate. Ninety-nine percent of the caliphate. That should be the first sentence in every story. Right? Everybody agree?” Pompeo told reporters as he was leaving for his Middle East round. “Anybody dispute the facts? This has been an enormously successful campaign,” he added.

It’s hard to deny that the US-led coalition was forced to react to the Russian military operation in Syria by intensifying its own anti-ISIS campaign in the country. However, it remains unclear how Washington was able to eliminate 99% of the ISIS’ Caliphate by limiting its operations against the terrorist group to Iraq and northeastern Syria only.

After ten days of clashes, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL) reached a ceasefire putting an end to this round of escalation in the Idlib de-escalation zone.

The agreement was likely reached after Turkish mediation. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu even claimed that

“Ankara has taken the necessary steps to stop these [HTS] attacks”.

Under the agreement, which was signed by both groups at the early hours of January 10, all the areas controlled by the NFL will be ruled by HTS’ Salvation Government. The deal boosts further the already strong positions of HTS in northwestern Syria.

Meanwhile, the Turkish-backed Syrian Free Police (FSP) announced that it had suspended the work in all of its centers through the opposition-held part of northwestern Syria until a “further notice” due to “new circumstances.”

In its official statement, the FSP also said that will hand over all of its centers to the local authorities in each area and will distribute its remaining funds among its personnel. These procedures suggest that the FSP may never resume its work.

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On Friday, partial shutdown entered its 21st day, matching the longest previous one in 1995-96. Unlike then, there are no signs of imminent resolution.

Both sides of the aisle share blame for what’s going on. Things could go on much longer. Trump, most Republicans, and undemocratic Dems are dug in for the long haul over who’ll blink first.

Continued sturm und drang by both right wings of war party rule is all about seeking political advantage – unrelated to national security or a crisis along America’s southern border with Mexico.

What’s making daily headlines ignores vital issues affecting the great majority of Americans, along with a permanent US state of war on humanity.

It’s supported by both sides of the aisle, solidly for policies benefitting privileged interests exclusively at the expense of most others.

Conditions are worsening over time, not improving – whether Republicans or Dems control things. Instead of informing the public about what’s going on, major media suppress what’s most important.

While Rome burns, as the saying goes, they fiddle. Here are some top-featured Friday headlines:

NYT: “White House Considers Using Storm Aid Funds as a Way to Pay for the Border Wall”

Washington Post: “Trump eyes Army for building wall as he mulls emergency declaration”

Wall Street Journal: “White House Aides Explore Alternative Ways to Pay for Border Wall”

AP News: “Trump closer to declaring emergency; 800,000 won’t get paid”

Reuters: “As US shutdown nears record length, Trump weighs declaring emergency”

Fox News: “Trump says he has ‘absolute right to declare a national emergency’ in Fox News interview”

CNN: “The government is STILL shut down”

The White House website falsely headlined “The Crisis at the Southern Border Is Too Urgent to Ignore”

On Thursday, Trump perpetuated the myth about criminal gangs pouring into America through its southern border, “targeting unaccompanied minors for recruitment…smuggl(ing) firearms, weaponry, and other dangerous materials into the United States.”

Drugs trafficking is more facilitated than deterred by the US, entering the country through all its borders – from South and Central America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Since at least the early 1950s, there’s been a global CIA/illicit drug connection – involving the agency, major banks laundering dirty money, underworld figures, along with others in business and government.

US occupation of Afghanistan made the country the world’s leading opium producer, used to make heroin – after the Taliban eliminated most opium cultivation in the 1990s.

Before heading to America’s southern border for a PR photo-op stunt on Thursday, Trump perpetuated the myth about a national security crisis along the US border with Mexico.

In his January 8 Oval Office address, he falsely claimed NAFTA 2.0 will fund his wall indirectly. Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach called his claim “ludicrous,” stressing:

It’s “unclear if the deal will be enacted, and, if it is, the text does not include border wall funding directly nor would it generate new government revenue indirectly given that it cuts the very few remaining tariffs, not raises them,” adding:

“All imports into the United States from Mexico have been duty free for more than a decade, meaning that NAFTA trade does not generate money from Mexican importers for US government coffers and nothing in the NAFTA 2.0 changes that.”

“(I)t’s obvious that trying to connect NAFTA to funding for his wall decreases the likelihood Congress passes the revised NAFTA, even if Trump’s NAFTA-wall-funding claims are entirely without merit.”

On Thursday, Trump repeated the Big Lie about Mexico to pay for his wall, falsely claiming “(t)hey are paying for it (indirectly) with” NAFTA 2.0 that Congress may reject.

He’s “not prepared to” declare a national emergency, “(b)ut if I have to, I will,” he roared. “I have no doubt about it. I will” – claiming he has a legal right to do it.

The Supreme Court will likely have final say if he goes this far over nothing, over a political crisis unrelated to national security or conditions along the US southern border.

What’s been going on for many years is over deeply impoverished and repressed people – refugees and asylum seekers of the wrong race and ethnicity, fleeing intolerable conditions at home in nations run by despotic regimes the US supports.

If partial shutdown continues on Saturday, what seems certain, it’ll be the longest in US history – neither side willing to compromise so far, both sides seeking political advantage over the other.

What’s going on is one of countless examples of America’s deplorable state – an increasingly repressive plutocracy, not a democracy, waging endless war on humanity at home and abroad.

A Final Comment

Trump wants $5.7 billion for southern border wall funding. A previous article explained the following: Russia’s 37-mile fence, separating Crimea from Ukraine, cost less than $3 million.

At an equivalent cost-per-mile along the near-2,000 mile US/Mexico border, a similar barrier could be built for about $150 million.

It’s a tiny fraction of what Trump wants. Russia’s fence includes “an intricate system of (visible and hidden) alarm sensors,” night-vision security cameras, a video feed, and an alarm when anyone approaches a detection zone along its entire length – followed by an audible warning, according to Russia’s Border Service.

Russian efficiency and effectiveness are notable compared to notorious US waste, fraud and abuse, countless trillions of dollars wasted, much of it earmarked for advancing the nation’s imperium.

America’s FY 2018 federal budget exceeds $3.3 trillion, $5.7 billion a drop in the ocean. What matters is what US funding is spent for.

Discretionary spending is largely for militarism, endless wars, and corporate handouts – at the expense of vital homeland needs gone begging, further proof of a nation ill-serving its people.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Debbie Nathan

It is everywhere. In a few years, it has metastasized like a cancer, on all continents. Its fervent proponents and ill-informed supporters call it populism or nationalism. In the Italy, Germany, or Spain of the 1930s, however, this ideology of exclusion and fear, defined by a hatred of the other, together with a tyrannical executive power, was called by its proper name: fascism. Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany and Franco in Spain were the bloodthirsty tenors of capitalism’s symphony orchestra, singing the deadly opera quietly conducted by the military-industrial complex. When the fascism-induced collective psychosis was put to an end in 1945 by Russia and the Western allies, between 68 and 80 million people had been slaughtered worldwide.

MAGA is America Uber Alles

The disease, expressed by the term Deutschland Uber Alles (Germany above all else), was also contagious. It has been repackaged under the thinly concealed Make America — or Italy, Austria, Hungary, Brazil, or Israel — Great Again. The doctrine of one country above all else is, in reality, the best way to justify the tyranny of the State against its own population. Constant threats, external or internal, mostly fabricated and hugely amplified by subservient media, keep societies on edge and make people tolerate or, even worse, embrace an omnipresent security apparatus, either military or police. Fascist regimes always blur the line between military and police. Why not, indeed, be able to deploy your military against your own citizens if you have brainwashed them with the notion of lurking internal enemies? After all, fear and paranoia are the most powerful vectors of the global Orwellian empire we live in.

Source: Banksy

The nexus of fascism and capitalism

The neofascists have draped themselves in the flag of populism and nationalism and therefore have disingenuously convinced their supporters that they are the champions of a fight against globalism, elitism, and the corruption of the neoliberal political system. They are, however, fierce proponents of dog-eat-dog capitalism and its abject systematic exploitation of labor. Fascists enthusiastically support the global military-industrial complex as well as capitalism’s senseless exploitation of resources through mining and deforestation. For fascists, just as for capitalists, wealth must be concentrated in fewer hands, and money may circulate across borders without constraint while ordinary people may not.

There is indeed nothing new under the sun. If industrialists today profit from wars on both sides of conflicts, giant US companies such as Ford and General Motors did the same in the build up to and even during World War II. Historian Bradford Snell wrote, more than 20 years ago, that “the Nazis could not have invaded Poland and Russia without GM.” The cozy relationship of Ford and GM with the Nazi regime went back to the early 1930s. Henry Ford himself was a Nazi supporter, and Hitler was a fan of the automaker. The two companies, Ford and GM, credited themselves with being “the arsenal of democracy” by transforming their production lines for US military purposes, but they were also, openly at least until 1942, the arsenal of fascism.

The same apparent schizophrenia is at play today. Just like Ford and GM were complicit with the Nazis, global capitalism, driven by the merchants of death of the military-industrial complex, is profiting from war crimes by, for example, selling a massive amount of weapons to the Islamo-fascist regime of Saudi Arabia, which is currently committing crimes against humanity by killing thousands of civilians and starving the entire population of Yemen. These war crimes are committed with weapons made in the USA, the UK and France, in the respective order of the volumes sold to the Saudis. France has a liberal and pseudo human-rights champion as its leader in the person of Macron. Nevertheless the booming French military-industrial  complex sells 7 billion Euros worth of weapons per year. India, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are the top buyers of death made in France: a criminal industry that employs more than 200,000 people.

Fascists have built mental walls of hatred

Source: Banksy

The likes of Trump, Salvini, Kurz, Orban and Bolsonaro were elected largely on the false premise and racist notion of culture wars and clash of civilizations: the mythical threat that, in an already multi-ethnic world, immigrants, the outsiders often with darker skins or another religion, represent an existential peril for host countries. The neofascists have risen by building mental walls of hatred in fortress Europe and fortress America. The worldwide proliferation of neofascism constitutes a new form of ideological globalization, and global capitalism is banking on it. For example, once it became obvious that Bolsonaro would be elected president of Brazil, the country’s stock market rose by 13 percent in two weeks while all the major international markets fell. During World War II the fascist axis powers were Germany, Italy, and Japan. Now they are the US, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Brazil, and India to some extent. All of it has the curious blessings of the mighty little State of Israel and the large money bags called the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

Geopolitical conundrum

The global rise of fascism will change a landscape already on shaky ground. Trump’s National Security adviser, John Bolton, has already set the agenda and put in the neofascist crosshair Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, which he called the “troika of tyranny.” Naturally, Bolton counts on the new fascist regional helpers of US imperialism, Colombia and Brazil, to enforce a revived full-blown Monroe Doctrine.  In Europe, neofascists have risen to power in Hungary and the coalition governments of Italy and Austria. Their ideological comrades in Germany, Poland, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands have not risen to power, but their political clout is quickly growing. This rise of the neofascists, combined with the UK’s Brexit, is jeopardizing the European Union. In these developments, Steve Bannon of the US is playing the part of a fascism ideologue and black-clad eminence grise.

The Russians, for their part, have developed a dangerously cozy relationship with today’s European fascists, as if the history of World War II has not taught them anything about fascism.  The pact of non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the USSR, signed in August 1939, not only allowed Hitler to unleash his killing spree on the West, but also did not prevent the German army from launching an attack two years later on the USSR. Stalin’s strategic mistake resulted eventually in the deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens. In the current context, it seems that a potential dismantlement of the EU is one of the only geopolitical goals that Russia and the US can agree on. As an example, the Russians as well as the US’ Bannon like and promote Italy’s powerful Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, a rising star of European neofascism and a euro-skeptic whose motto is: “Make Europe Great Again!”

Gott Mit Uns (God with us)

“Gott Mit Uns,” in raised letters around an eagle and swastika, was the inscription that adorned the German army’s belt buckles during World War II. If there is a God, his power certainly did not much help the soldiers of the Third Reich! That being said, there is definitely a religious track in the rise of global fascism. In the US and in Brazil, the vote of the evangelical Christians was a primary factor in the elections of Trump and Bolsonaro. “Born-again” Christian fundamentalists in the US are mainly concentrated in the formerly Confederate Southern states of the Civil War. These evangelical fundamentalist communities largely reject evolution, secularism, and the reality that climate change is man-made. Many in these communities believe that the US should be a Christian state. These Christian fundamentalists are the most reliable voting block for Trump, just as they were for George W. Bush. Well-funded far-Right fundamentalist think tanks like The Heritage Foundation have been pulling the strings in the background since the early 1970s.

Brazil’s Bosonaro was raised a Catholic, but he became, in what could be viewed as a cynical political calculus, a “born-again” evangelical. The evangelical voting block arguably gave him the edge on his opponent during the country’s October 2018 presidential election. Meanwhile, in what they see as fortress Europe, the European fascists have embraced their so-called Christian heritage, and they fuel anti-Islam sentiments, blurring the line between racism and religious intolerance. In Israel, under what can be called PM Netanyahu’s Judeo-fascism, Palestinians are dehumanized and persecuted, as the Jews were in Europe’s pogroms. In Saudi Arabia, the Islamo-fascist Mohamed bin-Salman does the same by painting Iran’s Shiites as heretics and terrorists. In India, PM Modi, who is considered by many Indian Muslims to be a Hindu-fascist, is also using religion to create conflicts and justify massive military spending. In brief, religious fundamentalists of all stripes are today the neofascists’ best assets to manipulate people and turn them, often violently, against each other.

Fascism’s unbearable ecological footprint

In the mold of Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil, neofascists are by-and-large climate change deniers, or “skeptics,” as they prefer. After all, the Lord or Allah knows best and holds the key to their destinies. For the rest of us, who do not expect God to have an extra planet Earth in his back pocket, the rise of global fascism offers a grimmer prospect for  humanity’s survival. Under the jackboots of the global fascism stormtroopers, the little that is left of our shattered ecosystem will meet its final solution. Bolsonaro could engineer a tabula rasa in the Amazon, which is considered the lung of the earth, due to its capacity to absorb CO2. The super-rich who control global capitalism will give carte blanche to their fascist surrogates to grow and use a massive military-police apparatus to repress the billions of climate change refugees and victims of ecological collapse. Despite their assumptions and planning, discretely run by the Pentagon based on climate change becoming a national security issue, climate change will be capitalism’s end game. All the gold and diamonds in the world will not stop the storms or shield the atmosphere from the deadly rays of a blazing sun.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: News Junkie Post.

Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the archives of Torbak Hopper

US diplomats and military officials failed to present any specific details to their Turkish counterparts about Washington’s plans to withdraw its forces from northern Syria during National Security Adviser John Bolton‘s visit to Ankara on Tuesday, Middle East Eye has learned.

Turkish officials had been expecting Bolton and his entourage to bring with them draft plans for the withdrawal of about 2,000 soldiers deployed as part of the US-led campaign against Islamic State (IS) militants following US President Donald Trump‘s announcement last month of his intention to pull them out of Syria.

But the US delegation instead delivered what Turkish officials described as a “non-paper”, an unofficial diplomatic note listing a country’s position on certain matters which is open for discussion.

The five-point document proposed a negotiated solution addressing Turkish security concerns about the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish militia which Ankara accuses of links to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) but which has played a leading role as a US ally in the ground campaign against IS.

It also reiterated that the US withdrawal would be “deliberate and orderly”, but US officials did not present any operational information or discuss a timetable or post-pullout planning, a Turkish official told MEE, speaking on condition of anonymity due to government protocol.

Those in attendance with Bolton during the two-hour meeting at the presidential palace included General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking officer in the US military and the principal military adviser to Trump and senior officials, and James Jeffrey, the US special envoy to the anti-IS coalition.

Turkish officials attending the talks were led by Ibrahim Kalin, the spokesperson for the Turkish presidency.

Concerns for YPG

Their main message, the Turkish official said, was to stress their concerns for the safety of YPG fighters following the US withdrawal.

Turkey already has forces on the ground in rebel-held areas west of the Euphrates river in northern Syria, where it considers Kurdish militias a security threat to its southern border. It has threatened to launch operations across the Euphrates into areas currently under the control of the YPG and its allies.

A senior Trump administration official briefed on objectives outlined at the meeting, speaking to MEE, confirmed that five conditions were delivered to Turkish officials.

Firstly, the US reiterated that the withdrawal of its anti-IS forces in northeastern Syria would happen in a deliberate, orderly and strong manner.

Secondly, the US, in the non-paper, committed itself to defeating the remnants of IS and continuing to damage IS targets throughout the withdrawal period.

While IS fighters have been ousted from the major towns and cities they once held, fighting between US-backed forces and IS militants has continued in the Middle Euphrates River Valley with the US continuing to launch regular air strikes in support of allied forces.

“As the president has stated, the US will maintain whatever capability is necessary for operations needed to prevent IS’s resurgence,” the administration official said.

Thirdly, the US declared that it wants a negotiated solution to Turkish security concerns with regard to the YPG.

The official said:

“The US will cooperate with Turkey and other coalition members on continuing [anti-IS] operations and de-conflicting the airspace over northeast Syria. The United States opposes any mistreatment of opposition forces who fought with the US against IS.”

Withdrawal of Iran-backed forces

Fourthly, the official also made clear that the US would pursue the withdrawal of Iranian-backed forces from Syria and a political solution in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has drawn heavily on Iranian military support, including units of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and Iran-backed Hezbollah militia fighters, during the country’s eight-year civil war.

“The US is not withdrawing from the base at al-Tanf at this time,” the official said, referring to the only US military site in southern Syria that currently provides a refuge for some Free Syrian Army opposition forces and refugees.

The base, which is close to the Iraqi and Jordanian borders, is considered as a significant leverage against pro-Assad and Iranian forces in the area.

Finally, the US made clear that the release of captured IS militants – described as “foreign terrorists” by the US official – held by the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces is “unacceptable”. An appropriate disposition of those prisoners is a top priority, the official said.

SDF leaders threatened in recent weeks to release these prisoners because, they said, they were understaffed and due to the threat of possible Turkish attacks in the north.

A source with knowledge of the talks said Turkish officials, in the meeting in Ankara, agreed not to conduct military operations against YPG targets while US forces remained in Syria, but repeated Ankara’s position that the YPG is a terrorist organisation which Ankara had every right to expel from its borders.

But Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Turkey’s NTV television on Thursday that it could still launch an offensive if the US delayed its withdrawal with “ridiculous excuses”.

“We are determined on the field and at the table… We will decide on its timing and we will not receive permission from anyone,” said Cavusoglu.

The source also said Bolton had inquired about the state of negotiations between Turkey and Russia over the post-US withdrawal. In response, Turkish officials declined to reveal the particulars of their diplomatic conversations.

120 days

Turkish officials expect that the withdrawal will take place in 120 days, and during this time, according to the source, US officials need to show some goodwill to satisfy Turkish concerns.

This is why Turkish officials urged their counterparts to uphold the already agreed Manbij roadmap and quickly remove YPG elements from Manbij and its military council accordingly. Otherwise, they said, Syrian government or allied Russian forces could take the control of the town.

Russian military police have already started to patrol the area near Manbij town, Russian state media reported on Wednesday.

Following the meeting at the presidential complex, Dunford separately met Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar and his Turkish counterpart General Yasar Guler.

Both Turkish and American statements about the discussion between the military leaders specifically focused on the need to quickly implement the remaining components of the Manbij roadmap.

Murat Yesiltas, the director of security studies at the Ankara-based SETA thinktank, said Manbij could be the first area where progress towards a wider resolution could be made.

“There is an understanding between Turkey and Russia about Manbij as well,” he said.

There are other signs in the Turkish media suggesting that an agreement on Manbij is likely.

Proposed tomb move

Hasan Basri Yalcin, a columnist for the Turkish government-aligned Sabah newspaper, wrote on Sunday that Turkey should push for a military operation in which the historic Suleyman Shah tomb could be moved back to its original location near Manbij.

The tomb, which is considered as a Turkish enclave according to a treaty between Syria and Turkey, was moved from the eastern bank of the Euphrates river to the Turkish border near the Syrian city of Kobani in 2015.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, continued to send mixed signals about its withdrawal plans on Wednesday.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated that Trump’s decision was clear and that Turkish threats against Syrian Kurds would not stop the pull out.

Asked in Erbil if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s pushback on the protection of the Kurds puts the withdrawal at risk, Pompeo told reporters:

“No. We’re having conversations with them even as we speak about how we will effectuate this in a way that protects our forces.

“It’s important that we do everything we can to make sure that those folks that fought with us are protected and Erdogan has made commitments, he understands that,” Pompeo added, according to Reuters.

“Turkish officials don’t want to do anything that can backfire and push Trump to reverse his decision to withdraw,” Yesiltas said.

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Featured image is from Kurdistan24

Or perhaps one should say, buried or revived?  Because for the mass of ordinary people, far from the political, financial, media centers of power in Paris, democracy is already moribund, and their movement is an effort to save it.  Ever since Margaret Thatcher decreed that “there is no alternative”, Western economic policy is made by technocrats for the benefit of financial markets, claiming that such benefits will trickle down to the populace.  The trickle has largely dried up, and people are tired of having their needs and wishes totally ignored by an elite who “know best”.

President Emmanuel Macron’s New Year’s Eve address to the nation made it perfectly clear that after one unconvincing stab at throwing a few crumbs to the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protest movement, he has determined to get tough.

France is entering a period of turmoil.  The situation is very complex, but here are a few points to help grasp what this is all about.

The Methods 

The Yellow Vests gather in conspicuous places where they can be seen: the Champs-Elysées in Paris, main squares in other cities towns, and the numerous traffic circles on the edge of small towns.  Unlike traditional demonstrations, the Paris marches were very loose and spontaneous, people just walking around and talking to each other, with no leaders and no speeches.

The absence of leaders is inherent in the movement.  All politicians, even friendly ones, are mistrusted and no one is looking for a new leader.

People are organizing their own meetings to develop their lists of grievances and demands.

In the village of Commercy, Lorraine, a half hour drive from Domrémy where Jeanne d’Arc was born, inhabitants gather to read their proclamation. Six of them read in turns, a paragraph each, making it quite clear that they want no leaders, no special spokesperson.  They sometimes stumble over a word, they are not used to speaking in public like the TV talking heads.  Their “Second appeal of the Gilets Jaunes de Commercy invites others to come to Commercy on January 26-27 for an “assembly of assemblies”.

The Demands 

The people who first went out in the streets wearing Yellow Vests last November 17 were ostensibly protesting against a hike in gasoline and diesel taxes that would hit people in rural France the hardest.  Obsessed with favoring “world cities”, the French government has taken one measure after another at the expense of small towns and villages and the people who live there. That was just the last straw.  The movement rapidly moved on to the basic issue: the right of the people to have a say in measures taken that affect their lives. Democracy, in a word.

For decades, parties of the left and of the right, whatever their campaign speeches, once in office pursue policies dictated by “the markets”. For this reason, people have lost confidence in all parties and all politicians and are demanding new ways to get their wishes heard.

The fuel tax was soon forgotten as the list of demands grew longer. Critics of the movement note that achieving so many demands is quite impossible. It’s no use paying attention to popular demands, because the silly people ask for everything and its opposite.

That objection is answered by what has quickly emerged as the single overriding demand of the movement: the Citizens’ Initiative Referendum (CIR).

The Referendum

This demand illustrates the good sense of the movement.  Rather than making a “must” list, the GJ merely ask that the people be allowed to choose, and the referendum is the way to choose. The demand is for a certain number of signatories – perhaps 700,000, perhaps more – to gain the right to call a referendum on an issue of their choice. The right to a CIR exists in Switzerland, Italy and California.  The idea horrifies all those whose profession it is to know best.  If the people vote, they will vote for all sorts of absurd things, the better-knowers observe with a shudder.

A modest teacher in a junior college in Marseilles, Etienne Chouard, has been developing for decades ideas on how to organize direct democracy, with the referendum at its center.  His hour has come with the Yellow Vests.  He insists that a referendum must always be held after a long debate and time for reflection, to avoid emotional spur-of-the-moment decisions. Such a referendum requires honest, independent media which are not all owned by special interests.  It requires making sure that politicians who make the laws follow the popular will expressed in the referendum.  All this suggests the need for a people’s constitutional convention.

The referendum is a bitter point in France, a powerful silent underlying cause of the whole Gilets Jaunes movement.  In 2005, President Chirac (unwisely from his point of view) called for a popular referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, certain it would be approved. The political class, with a few exceptions, went into full rhetoric, claiming a prosperous future as a new world power under the new Constitution and warning that otherwise Europe might be plunged back into World Wars I and II. However, ordinary citizens organized an extraordinary movement of popular self-education, as groups met to pour through the daunting legalistic documents, elucidating what they meant and what they implied. On May 29, 2005, with a turnout of 68%, the French voted 55% to reject the Constitution. Only Paris voted heavily in favor.

Three years later, the National Assembly – that is, politicians off all parties – voted to adopt virtually the same text, which in 2009 became the Treaty of Lisbon.

That blow to the clearly expressed popular will produced such disillusion that many backed helplessly away from politics. Now they are coming back.

The Violence

From the start, the government has reacted with violence, in an apparent desire to provoke responding violence in order to condemn the movement as violent.

An army of police, dressed like robots, have surrounded and blocked groups of peaceful Yellow Vests, drowning them in clouds of teargas and firing flash balls directly at protesters, seriously wounding hundreds (no official figures).  A number of people have lost an eye or a hand.  The government has nothing to say about this.

On the third Saturday of protest, this army of police was unable to stop – or under orders to allow – a large number of hoodlums or Black Blocs (who knows?) infiltrate the movement and smash property, vandalize shops, set fire to trash cans and parked cars, providing the world media with images proving that the Yellow Vests are dangerously violent.

Despite all this provocation, the Gilets Jaunes have remained remarkably calm and determined. But there are bound to be a few people who lose their tempers and try to fight back.

The Boxer

On the 8^th Saturday, January 5, a squad of plexiglass-protected police were violently attacking Gilets Jaunes on a bridge over the Seine when a big guy lost his temper, emerged from the crowd and went on the attack. With his fists, he beat down one policeman and caused the others to retreat.  This amazing scene was filmed.  You could see Yellow Vests trying to hold him back, but Rambo was unstoppable.

It turned out that this was Christophe Dettinger, a French Rom, former light heavyweight boxing champion of France.  His nickname is “the Gypsy of Massy”.  He got away from the scene, but made a video before turning himself in.  “I reacted badly”, he said, when he saw police attacking women and other defenseless people. He urged the movement to go ahead peacefully.

Dettinger faces seven years in prison. Within a day, his defense fund had gathered 116,433 euros.  The government shut it down – on what legal pretext I don’t know. Now a petition circulates on his behalf.

The Slander

In his New Year’s Eve address, Macron patronizingly scolded his people telling them that “you can’t work less and earn more” – as if they all aspired to spending their lives lounging on a yacht and watching stock prices rise and fall.

Then he issued his declaration of war:

“These days I have seen unthinkable things and heard the unacceptable.” Apparently alluding to the few opposition politicians who dare sympathize with the protesters, he chastised those who pretend to “speak for the people”, but are only the “spokesmen for a hateful mob going after elected representatives, police, journalists, Jews, foreigners and homosexuals. It is simply the negation of France.”

The Gilets Jaunes haven’t been “going after” anybody.  The police have been “going after” them. People have indeed spoken up vigorously against camera crews of channels that systematically distort the movement.

Not a word has been heard from the movement against foreigners or homosexuals.

The key word is Jews.

Qui veut noyer son chien l’accuse de la rage. (French proverb).

As the French saying goes, whoever wants to drown his dog claims he has rabies. Today whoever wants to ruin a career, take vengeance on a rival, disgrace an individual or destroy a movement accuses her, him, or it of antisemitism.

So, faced with a rising democratic movement, playing the “antisemitism” card was inevitable.  It was almost a sure thing statistically.  In almost any random batch of hundreds of thousands of people, you might find one or two who have something negative to say about a Jew. That’ll do it.  The media hawks are on the outlook.  The slightest incident can be used to suggest that the real motive of the movement is to revive the Holocaust.

This gently ironic little song, performed on one of France’s traffic circles, contrasts the “nice” establishment with the “bad” ordinary folk. It is a huge hit on YouTube.  It gives the tone of the movement. Les Gentils et les Méchants.

It didn’t take long for this merry number to be accused of antisemitism. Why?  Because it was ironically dedicated to two of the very most virulent critics of the Gilets Jaunes: May ’68 star Daniel Cohn-Bendit and old “new philosopher” Bernard-Henri Lévy. The new generation can’t stand them. But wait, they happen to be Jewish. Aha! Anti-Semitism!

The Repression 

Faced with what government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux described as “agitators” and “insurrectionists” who want to “overthrow the government”, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced a new “law to better protect the right to demonstrate”.  Its main measure: heavily punish organizers of a demonstration whose time and place have not had official approval.

In fact, the police had already arrested 33-year-old truck driver Eric Drouet for organizing a small candle ceremony in honor of the movement’s casualties.  There have been many other arrests, with no information coming out about them. (Incidentally, over the holidays, hoodlums in the banlieues of several cities carried out their ritual burning of parked cars, with no particular publicity or crackdown. Those were cars of working class people who need them to go to work, not the precious cars in the rich section of Paris whose destruction caused such scandal.)

On January 7, Luc Ferry, a “philosopher” and former Minister of Youth, Education and Research, gave a radio interview on the very respectable Radio Classique in which he declared: “The police are not given the means to end this violence. It’s unbearable. Listen, frankly, when you see guys kick a poor policemen when he’s down, that’s enough! Let them use their arms once and for all, basta! […] As I recall, we have the world’s fourth army, capable of putting an end to this garbage.”

Ferry called on Macron to make a coalition with the Republicans in order to push through his “reforms”.

Last month, in a column against the Citizens’ Initiative Referendum, Ferry wrote that “the current disparaging of experts and criticism of elitism is the worst calamity of our times.”

The Antifa

Wherever people gather, Antifa groups may pursue their indiscriminate search to root out “fascists”. In Bordeaux last Saturday, Yellow Vests had to fight off an attack by Antifa.

It is now completely clear (as indeed it always has been) that the self-styled “Antifascists” are the watch dogs of the status quo.  In their tireless search for “fascists”, the Antifa attack anything that moves.  In effect, they protect stagnation. And curiously enough, Antifa violence is tolerated by the same State and the same police who insult, attack and arrest more peaceful demonstrators. In short, the Antifa are the storm troopers of the current system.

The Media

Be skeptical. At least in France, mainstream media are solidly on the side of “order”, meaning Macron, and foreign media tend to echo what national media write and say.  Also, as a general rule, when it comes to France, the Anglophone media often get it wrong.

The End

It is not in sight.  This may not be a revolution, but it is a revelation of the real nature of “the system”.  Power lies with a technocracy in the service of “the Markets”, meaning the power of finance capital.  This technocracy aspires to remake human society, our own societies and those all over the planet, in the interests of a certain capitalism.  It uses economic sanctions, overwhelming propaganda and military force (NATO) in a “globalization” project that shapes people’s lives without their consent.  Macron is the very embodiment of this system.  He was chosen by that famous elite to carry through the measures dictated by “the Markets”, enforced by the European Union. He cannot give in.  But now that people are awake to what is going on, they won’t stop either.  For all the lamented decline in the school system, the French people today are as well-educated and reasonable as any population can be expected to be.  If they are incapable of democracy, then democracy is impossible.

To be continued…

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Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at [email protected].  Diana Johnstone is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization  (CRG). 

In a stunning turn of events, on Dec. 28th six previously undisclosed boxes of files labeled Mumia were “discovered” in an abandoned furniture closet at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office on 3 South Penn Square.

On January 3rd Nancy Kavanaugh, Assistant DA, notified the Common Pleas court and Abu-Jamal’s attorneys.

This dramatic turn of events has come in the wake of hearings lasting over two years during which the Court demanded full disclosure from the DA.  Frustrated by the lack of compliance with his orders, and patently obvious obstruction, Judge Tucker required that he personally review all of the previously disclosed MAJ boxes in his chambers. It was only after Tucker’s intervention that relevant material, on which the new appeal was won, was unearthed.

The new material/boxes discovered on 12/28, the day after the Tucker order granting Mumia relief in the Common Pleas court, could hold missing smoking gun evidence.  Or they could just be copies of already turned over information.

What is clear is that this development calls into question the ability of the DA to comply with the requirements of due process and a fair hearing.  It also provides a moral, if not a legal reason, for the District Attorney to not oppose the reinstatement of all of Mumia’s direct state appeal rights.

District Attorney Larry Krassner is facing a January 27th court deadline to appeal Tucker’s order.  If he appeals there could be years of delay before Mumia can challenge his criminal conviction.

It is also worthy to note that the six boxes appear old, circa 2000 or before. All but one had Mumia’s name and were labeled in such a way (18/29, 24/29, 29/29 etc.) as to suggest that they are part of a larger set.

As a P.I. I immediately thought about other dramatic historical examples regarding revelations of hidden evidence.  When key evidence suddenly materializes in a garage (Hurricane Carter), a purposely long forgotten evidence locker (Guildford 4) and now in a furniture closet (Mumia Abu-Jamal).

While there could be nothing in the boxes of importance, and the court could ignore the sanctions it should impose, make no mistake, there is a vast array of withheld, suppressed, and manufactured evidence in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.  For a detailed explanation of the errors in his case see Manufacturing Guilt by Stephen Vittoria.

Until this latest ruling, the Common Pleas court in Philadelphia has been complicit in suppressing key police corruption, prosecutorial misconduct and evidence of Mumia’s innocence.  Abu-Jamal v. Commonwealth of PA has it all: lost or forgotten ballistics tests, witness recantations, exposure of false confessions, and photographic proof of crime scene tampering.

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Congress refuses to enact legislation containing the nearly $6 billion that Donald Trump is demanding for an unnecessary wall on the southern US border. In response, Trump is considering whether to declare a national emergency, take money Congress has appropriated for other purposes, and divert it to build his wall. But under US law, the president cannot usurp the spending power the Constitution grants only to Congress.

Desperate to appease his right-wing base and Fox News pundits, Trump backed off his commitment to sign a bill that would have reopened the government that has been shuttered for 20 days. Although Congress unanimously supported that bill, Trump is stubbornly holding out for money to build his wall, continuing to hold the American people hostage. One quarter of the federal workforce has not been paid, airline safety is imperiled, the Food and Drug Administration is postponing food safety inspections and national parks are being desecrated while Trump plays wall politics.

The Youngstown Test for Presidential Power

Trump would be on shaky ground if he were to declare a national emergency and divert funds to build his wall. During the Korean War, President Harry Truman invoked national security to seize the steel mills in order to avoid a union strike that would have shut them down. Truman claimed authority to maintain steel production in support of the war effort. But the Supreme Court ruled that Truman had overstepped his authority. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the high court held that the seizure was not supported by the Constitution or any US law.

Justice William O. Douglas wrote in his concurring opinion that the president cannot usurp Congress’s spending power to approve money to pay for the taking of the steel mill’s private property.

The three-pronged test set forth in Justice Robert Jackson’s concurring opinion (paraphrased in italics below with quotes from Jackson) is the premier framework for analyzing the limits of presidential power:

First, when the president acts with express or implied authority of Congress, his power is at its greatest.

Congress has not appropriated $5.7 billion to build Trump’s wall. If he were to declare a national emergency to fund the wall, Trump would not be acting with the authority of Congress.

Second, in the absence of a grant or prohibition by Congress, the president can rely only on his own powers. He acts in a “zone of twilight” where he and Congress may have concurrent authority or their distribution of power remains uncertain. “In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.”

Trump cannot lawfully invoke the National Emergencies Act of 1976. In the event of a national emergency, that act allows the executive branch to divert funds that have not been “obligated” and use them for construction projects that are “necessary to support” the military.

Although Trump has sent thousands of troops to the southern border, ostensibly to help Customs and Border Protection deal with asylum applicants, the use of the military to enforce domestic law is prohibited by the Posse Comitatus Act. Any attempt by Trump to declare an emergency in order to justify diverting funds for his wall to help the military enforce immigration law would violate the Posse Comitatus Act.

Third, when the president seeks to circumvent the expressed or implied will of Congress, “his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter.” Presidential claim to such power “must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.”

In the Appropriations Clause, the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to authorize expenditures of federal funds. Congress has specifically considered and refused to appropriate the $5.7 billion Trump is demanding for his border wall.

​Congress will not appropriate money for the wall, so Trump would be circumventing the will of Congress were he to declare a national emergency to fund it. Trump would be invoking a crisis of his own making to justify the declaration of an emergency. Under US law, Trump cannot successfully declare a national emergency to evade the Constitution’s separation of powers mandate. The founders put three separate co-equal branches of government into the Constitution to check and balance each other.

Trump Created the Humanitarian Crisis He Decries

Trump’s policies of separating families and caging children, and attempts to limit the right of refugees to apply for asylum have created a humanitarian crisis.

Yet, in his nine-minute Oval Office speech Trump tried to stoke fear by painting a picture of murderous, drug-running, “illegal” hordes to justify his wall, invoking “a crisis of the heart, and a crisis of the soul.”

But, as Peter Baker wrote in The New York Times,

Migrant border crossings have been declining for nearly two decades. The majority of heroin enters the United States through legal ports of entry, not through open areas of the border. And the State Department said in a recent report that there is ‘no credible evidence’ that terrorist groups had sent operatives to enter the United States through Mexico.

At least two migrant children, 8-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo and 7-year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin, have died in the custody of Customs and Border Protection since Trump began his war on refugees.

“There is no national security crisis — thousands of would-be immigrants seeking asylum do not constitute an invading army,” wrote the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times. “And while there is a humanitarian crisis, it’s one Trump could solve himself by expanding the nation’s capacity to handle asylum requests rather than forcing migrants to spend weeks in squalid camps near ports of entry.”

The crisis Trump has created demonstrates that it is he who has no heart and soul. “He’s trying to restrict every form of legal immigration there is in the United States,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “He’s fighting against family reunification, he’s fighting against the diversity visa lottery, he’s fighting against almost every way that people can actually legally enter this country, forcing them to become undocumented. And then he’s trying to attack their undocumented status.”

If Trump tries to declare a national emergency to build a wall with billions of dollars Congress has refused to appropriate, the courts should put an immediate halt to his illegal and cynical political stunt.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

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

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

A Turkish court has sentenced journalist Pelin Ünker to 13 months’ imprisonment for her participation in reporting the Panama Papers, a massive leak of documents from the tax-evasion enablers Mossack-Fonseca.

Ünker published the true (and undisputed) facts about former Binali Yıldırım and his sons, whose ownership of Maltese companies was revealed in the leaks. Despite the truth of the matter, Ünker was convicted of “defamation and insult.”

Ünker is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The ICIJ’s director, Gerard Ryle, condemned Ünker’s jail sentence of 13 months, as the latest in a long series of attacks on free speech in Turkey.

“This unjust ruling is about silencing fair and accurate reporting. Nothing more,” Ryle said. “ICIJ commends Pelin Ünker’s brave and truthful investigative reporting and it condemns this latest assault on journalistic freedom under Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic rule.”

In 2015, Pioneer Natural Resources filed a report with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the shale drilling and fracking company said that it was “drilling the most productive wells in the Eagle Ford Shale” in Texas.

That made the company a major player in what local trade papers were calling “arguably the largest single economic event in Texas history,” as drillers pumped more than a billion barrels of fossil fuels from the Eagle Ford.

Its Eagle Ford wells, Pioneer’s filing said, were massive finds, with each well able to deliver an average of roughly 1.3 million barrels of oil and other fossil fuels over their lifetimes.

Three years later, The Wall Street Journal checked the numbers, investigating how those massive wells are turning out for Pioneer.

Turns out, not so well. And Pioneer is not alone.

Those 1.3 million-barrel wells, the Journal reported, “now appear to be on a pace to produce about 482,000 barrels” apiece — a little over a third of what Pioneer told investors they could deliver.

In Texas’ famed Permian Basin, now the nation’s most productive shale oil field, where Pioneer predicted 960,000 barrels from each of its shale wells in 2015, the Journal concluded that those “wells are now on track to produce about 720,000 barrels” each.

Not only are the wells already drying up at a much faster rate than the company predicted, according to the Journal’s investigative report, but Pioneer’s projections require oil to flow for at least 50 years after the well was drilled and fracked — a projection experts told the Journal would be “extremely optimistic.”

Fracking every one of those wells required a vast amount of chemicals, sand, and water. In Karnes County, Texas, one of the two Eagle Ford counties where Pioneer concentrated its drilling in 2015, the average round of fracking that year drank up roughly 143,000 barrels of water per well.

Dry Creek Water Station near Sanderson in West Texas, looking very dry. Credit: Brant Kelly, CC BY 2.0

A Billion Missing Barrels

And while Pioneer has become one of the most active drillers in the Permian, it’s hardly alone in booking projections that the Journal found were dubious.

“Two-thirds of projections made by the fracking companies between 2014 and 2017 in America’s four hottest drilling regions appear to have been overly optimistic, according to the analysis of some 16,000 wells operated by 29 of the biggest producers in oil basins in Texas and North Dakota,” it reported. “Collectively, the companies that made projections are on track to pump nearly 10 percent less oil and gas than they forecast for those areas, according to the analysis of data from Rystad Energy AS, an energy consulting firm.”

“That is the equivalent of almost one billion barrels of oil and gas over 30 years,” the Journal added, “worth more than $30 billion at current prices.”

The problems the Journal focused on will be familiar to those who’ve turned a critical eye to shale reserves in the past: The most productive areas, or “sweet spots,” are smaller than first expected and companies predicted that wells would dry up slower than they have. DeSmog launched its latest series covering shale’s financial woes in April 2018 and our coverage extends back over a half-decade.

For the Journal, the take-aways were financial. “So far, investors have largely lost money,” the newspaper pointed out, adding that a review of 29 drillers showed companies have spent $112 billion more than they earned from drilling in the past decade. “Since 2008, an index of U.S. oil and gas companies has fallen 43 percent, while the S&P 500 index has more than doubled in that time, including dividends.”

The industry’s defenders argue that spending money now to make money later is simply how business works — this year’s “losses” are actually investments in future profits.

But because shale drilling is relatively new, even the experts are left guessing about how much oil will be flowing from the wells 10, 20, or 30 years after fracking — and investors have become frustrated as shale drillers have largely failed to turn the corner and start racking up profits instead of continuing to operate in the red.

A natural gas flare in West Texas, near Midland. In 2018 the price of natural gas in the Permian fell below zero. Credit: © Laura Evangelisto

“The industry’s only hope of paying off debt and rewarding equity investors is for oil prices to rise high enough for long enough that they can generate consistent cash flow without breaking the bank on capex [capital expenditures],” said Clark Williams-Derry, director of energy finance at the Sightline Institute.

“But they’ll have real problems — sweet spots are getting depleted, wells are declining faster than they’d hoped, pipelines are still constrained causing deep discounts in some markets, co-produced gas is close to worthless, and any sustained rebound will boost the cost for drilling services (i.e., higher prices mean higher costs).”

“Plus,” he added, “investors need to worry about long-term cleanup costs.”

Calling in the Experts

And the pressure on the experts charged with preparing oil and gas production estimates for drillers is enormous. As the first shale wells get older and more production history rolls in, engineers have developed models they say can make better predictions — but the Journal suggested those tools haven’t been widely adopted.

“Why aren’t we doing this?” one engineer demanded repeatedly after John Lee, one of the most prominent reserves experts in the U.S., gave a talk in Houston in July about making more accurate shale projections.

“‘Because we own stock,’ replied another engineer, sparking laughter,” the Journal reported.

The Journal’s reporting frequently cited Rystad Energy, an independent oil and gas consulting firm, as the source of more conservative projections — but, as DeSmog has previously reported, Rystad isn’t the only large independent firm to find troubling indications that shale wells are on track to produce only a fraction of their “proved” reserves.

Wood Mackenzie, another major oil consulting firm, studied the Permian’s Wolfcamp shale, where early projections predicted that production from a five-year-old well should be declining at a rate of 5 to 10 percent. Those wells, the firm found, are actually declining by roughly 15 percent a year — a significantly larger drop than expected and an ominous sign for any companies projecting wells can last 50 years.

Things are looking a little drier than expected for the future of fracked wells in Texas. Credit: Francesco Ungaro from Pexels

And fracking giant Schlumberger — which like Halliburton specializes in performing hydraulic fracturing jobs on wells other companies drill — has begun calling attention to a problem with much more immediate impacts: The sweet spots are getting too crowded.

For years, the industry has said that it can minimize impacts by drilling multiple wells from the same well pad — but in parts of the Permian, wells drilled later on or near existing well pads have proved roughly 30 percent less productive compared to the first well drilled.

“[T]he well-established market consensus that the Permian can continue to provide 1.5 million barrels per day of annual production growth for the foreseeable future is starting to be called into question,” Schlumberger’s CEO Paal Kibsgaard said in an October 2018 earnings call. “At present, our industry has yet to understand how reservoir conditions and well productivity change as we continue to pump billions of gallons of water and billions of pounds of sand into the ground each year.”

Kibsgaard warned that similar problems are beginning to show up in the Eagle Ford as well.

The Long-Term Costs of a Boom and a Bust

Karnes County is still the most active part of the Eagle Ford, with 562 drilling permits issued last year. After a heady oilfield boom, oil prices plunged in 2015 and 2016, leading to the layoffs of thousands of workers and royalty checks drying up. This past year, drilling has re-emerged, albeit at a slower pace.

“It’s not a boom, but there’s a resurgence here in the Eagle Ford,” Rick Saldana, an energy company superintendent told the Houston Chronicle in October.

Investors have faced a rocky ride. Sanchez Energy, the Eagle Ford’s third largest driller, has now been warned twice by the New York Stock Exchange that it will be de-listed if its stock price, now at roughly $0.26 a share, doesn’t soon rise above $1.

What's so weird about the energy world is that stories like this and the wsj piece about the myth of the $50 breakeven (https://t.co/bg1gkrq9Sa) seem to live in a parallel world from all the bullish pieces about ever-soaring US production. Why? https://t.co/QSIjUc5cHV

— Bethany McLean (@bethanymac12) December 6, 2018

But other impacts of the boom and bust cycle run deeper.

In nearby Dilley, Texas, a former oilfield man-camp, built to house Eagle Ford workers, was turned into the “the South Texas Family Residential Center” in December 2014 by a private prison company. It’s now the nation’s largest immigration detention center for families, housing up to 2,400 people, half of them children.

And while over the past decade, Wall Street and other investors poured billions into fracking — the Journal tallied $112 billion more spent than earned from production at 29 major drillers — the U.S. more broadly has failed to seriously invest in a rapid transition away from climate-changing fossil fuels.

That leaves the U.S. at risk of being left behind as the rest of the world focuses its efforts to innovate on renewable energy prospects that don’t dry up like oil wells. Bethany McLean, a financial journalist famous for first breaking the Enron story, recently told Fortune about conversations she’d had with major private equity investors as she researched her new book Saudi America.

“They are all trying to figure out when we’ll be able to see the end of the oil age, because as soon as that happens, the price of oil will go into secular decline (as it did with coal),” she said. “Other countries, namely China, are frantically investing in renewables. For us to crow about our oil wealth, and not focus on renewables, is for us to miss the opportunity to be leaders in the world as it’s going to be.”

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Featured image: Oil wells in West Texas outside Midland. Credit: © Laura Evangelisto

When Sir Richard Dearlove was Head of MI6, the Blairites adored him as he approved the lying Dossier on Iraqi WMD which led to wars, invasion, the death of millions and the destabilisation which continues to wreck the entire Middle East. Now, as he writes to Tory constituency chairman advocating the hardest of hard Brexits, had they any capacity for self-reflection the Blairites would probably be thinking it was after all not such a great move of Tony to appoint the hardest of hard right nutters to head our overseas intelligence service.

In my last post, I noted how evidence against me was actually manufactured when I opposed the policy of torture and extraordinary rendition. I have explained ad nauseam that, having been in a senior position in the FCO at the time, I know that Blair’s dossier on Weapons of Mass Destruction was a tissue of deliberate lies, and not just an honest mistake; furthermore it is impossible to read the Chilcot report without coming to that conclusion.

The UK has security services which operate dishonestly and illegally. Interestingly, I cannot say that they are currently out of the control of the UK government; the evidence is rather they are willing to engage in every dirty and dishonest trick at the behest of corrupt politicians like Blair.

Dearlove regularly features in the media shilling for maximum Cold War. His letter yesterday on the dangers of intelligence and security co-operation with the EU, as undermining NATO and the UK/US/Five Eyes intelligence arrangements, is simply barking mad. There is no evidence of this whatsoever. He makes no attempt to describe the mechanism by which the dire consequences he predicts will follow. Amusingly enough, although those consequences are dire to Dearlove, to me they are extremely desirable. If I thought that May’s withdrawal agreement would undermine NATO and the CIA, I would be out on the streets campaigning for it.

But there is a very serious point. There is something very wrong indeed with the UK security services, which are most certainly not a force for freedom or justice. That MI6 can be headed by as extreme a figure as Dearlove, underlines the threat that the security services pose to any progressive movement in politics.

If Scotland becomes independent, it must not mirror the repressive UK security services. Furthermore it must be very chary indeed of employing anybody currently working for the UK security services. If Jeremy Corbyn comes to power in Westminster, he will never achieve any of his objectives in restoring a basic level of social justice and equality to society in England and Wales, without revolutionary change in major institutions including the security services.

My own view on Brexit is that the best deal for England and Wales would be EEA and customs union, essentially the Norway option. It seems that the Labour leadership have essentially got that right, but are making a complete pig’s ear of articulating it, presumably because of their desire not to antagonise their anti-immigrant voters.

Scotland demonstrably has a strong and strengthening pro-EU majority and this is the logical time for Scotland to move to Independence, with the assurance of strong international support. I trust the Scottish government is finally going to move decisively in that direction inside the next month.

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Street artist Pascal Boyart created the work, based on Eugene Delacroix’s monumental canvass “Liberty Leading the People”, which glorified the revolution of July 1830 in which the people of Paris drove King Charles X from power.

The mural can be found on a wall opposite the Cent Quatre, a public cultural centre in Paris, on rue d’Aubervilliers.

Boyart told AFP that the mural in the working-class 19th arrondissement of northern Paris was to show his support for the anti-government protests which have shaken France since November.

It has the rebelling people of Paris wearing high-visibility jackets just like those worn by the “yellow vests” demonstrators, whose movement began as a revolt in rural France over increased fuel taxes.

#StreetArt treasure hunt in Paris with a #Bitcoin puzzle
For the 10th birthday of the genesis block, I painted this frescoe in Paris with a 0,26btc ($1000) puzzle in it.
Here's the public key: 1NqPwPp7hEXZ3Atj77Ue11xAEMmXqAXwrQ Thanks to @alistairmilne for sponsoring this 🙏 pic.twitter.com/F7aIkxmp6t

— Pascal Boyart (@pascalboyart) January 7, 2019

“The (Delacroix) painting is one of the best known in the world, and I wanted to use its theme for what is happening now,” Boyart said.

“Art has always been a means of expression for all political movements,” said the 30-year-old painter, who signs his works “PBOY”.

Paris-based Boyart is well-known for his murals denouncing the world of high finance and the banks, which he blames for the discontent in France.

He has also added a “bitcoin puzzle” to the work, and said the person who finds the key will win 1,000 euros ($1,145).

One of Boyart’s previous works shows Delacroix — who used to feature on the old French franc banknotes — setting fire to a 100-euro note.

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Featured image is from Mediapart

Britain does produce an annual state of the nation report other than one referring to social mobility. The Social Mobility Commission’s 2017 report (see link below) starts with the words: “Britain is a deeply divided nation.” Their report is interesting this year as it ventures more broadly into areas such as education, employability and housing prospects of people living in each of England’s 324 local authority areas. The index highlights where people from disadvantaged backgrounds are most and least likely to make social progress.

“It has become obvious that the scale of the problem extends well beyond the bottom decile in society or the few thousand youngsters who miss out on a top university. There is a fracture line running deep through our labour and housing markets and our education system. Those on the wrong side of this divide are losing out and falling behind.”

The report also describes the country’s “lamentable social mobility track record.” Some of the statistics provided in the their report are dire.

However, their report does not focus on how the bottom 50 per cent are fairing overall with a government whose political policies are ideologically focused at benefitting those at the top end of society (See footnote re: neoliberal capitalism). This report is a first attempt to bring together statistics to show how those policies are really affecting one half of society in some way.

Wealth in Gt. Britain

The official GDP figures for 2018 have not yet been published. In 2017, GDP was £2.04 trillion and is expected to rise to approximately (+/-) £2.3 trillion in 2018.

The ONS has not reported on overall wealth in Britain since 2016 as reports are published every two years. As of their last figures, the aggregate total net wealth of all households in Great Britain was £12.8 trillion in July 2014 to June 2016, up 15% from the July 2012 to June 2014 figure of £11.1 trillion. Total aggregate debt of all households in Great Britain was £1.23 trillion in July 2014 to June 2016.

Britain is ranked the fifth wealthiest nation in the world ranked by overall GDP. In 2018, its economy grew 1.79 per cent. However, according to the IMF Britain will fall to 7th place overall by 2023 with France and India taking 5th and 6th place respectively.

Today the value of property in the UK stands at over £5 trillion – nearly 60% of the UK’s entire net wealth – up from just a little over £1 trillion in 1995.

The UK’s gross pension liability across workplace and state provision grew by £1trn in five years, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Private sector defined benefit liabilities were estimated at £2trn. The total liability hit £7.6trn at the end of 2015, the ONS said, up from £6.6trn in 2010. The total included an estimated £4trn of unfunded liabilities linked to the UK’s state pension – equal to over 210% of GDP.

Today’s population has built up £7.6trn in pension promises but has only set aside about a third of that amount to pay for them. Other unfunded public sector pension liabilities – including provision for teachers and National Health Service staff – totalled £917bn.

Household Debt

A TUC report published just last week said that “Britain’s household debt mountain has reached a new peak, with UK homes now owing an average of £15,385 (not including mortgage debt) to credit card firms, banks and other lenders.” Just as problematic is another statistic though. The level of unsecured debt as a share of household income is now not just 30.4%, the highest level it has ever been at but it is well above the £286bn peak in 2008 before the financial crisis.

In March, it was reported that a quarter of British adults have no money saved at all.

Deprivation

Nearly 4 million adults in the UK have been forced to use food banks due to ”shocking” levels of deprivation. New figures were revealed for the first time in mid-2018 where one in 14 Britons has had to use a food bank, with similar numbers also forced to skip meals and borrow money as austerity measures leave them “penniless with nowhere to turn.” This is a rise of 13 per cent in just one year. In addition, one million people have decreased the portion size of their child’s meal due to financial constraints. Other statistics are just as depressing; nearly half (47 per cent) had lacked basic toiletries, 46 per cent were lacking suitable clothing and 42 per cent having to go without heating. One in five destitute people reported lacking lighting at home.

Just as we turn into 2019, MPs are urging the government to appoint a minister for hunger in the UK to tackle the growing problem of food insecurity.

Working Poverty, Child Poverty

Contrary to what we are all told about having the lowest unemployment in Britain for decades, the reality is not what it seems.

The number of workers (those actually employed) entering poverty is actually rising faster than employment itself.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that one in eight adults in the economy is now classified as working poor. Their results were published just last month.

A new unit called the Social Metrics Commission, an independent body bringing together poverty specialists from across the political spectrum found just a few months back that in Britain, there are now 14 million people living in poverty.

Within that number 4.5 million are children, which represents an astonishing 33 per cent of kids in the UK.

The only reason this new body was set up was because the government abolished any official measures in 2015. It was Iain Duncan Smith and George Osborne who abolished these important statistics just prior to the tax credit cuts in the same year. Half a million more children have become trapped in poverty over the past five years from working families.

Energy and Food Poverty

The privatisation of life’s most basic services is also driving poverty. For instance, the gap between the cost of energy and what people can afford rose by 9% in 2018. The proportion of households living in fuel poverty in 2016 rose for the second year in a row to 11.1%, or around 2.55m homes and today continues to drive excess deaths and widening poverty. Price caps that the government have proposed don’t work if income falls in real terms, and they most certainly don’t work when it took the government 18 months to implement them. Fuel poverty leaves a stark choice for millions – warmth or food.

Human Rights News published an analysis from UNICEF that found that whilst the UK is one of the richest countries in the world, it has some of the highest rates of childhood food insecurity in all of Europe. This shocking situation has been linked in part to austerity-related tax and welfare changes.

UN rapporteur Philip Alston’s hard-hitting report on poverty in November confirmed the same and concluded that austerity, universal credit and gaping holes in the social security safety net were the main driving factors behind poverty.

Homelessness

There is no national body that officially calculates a figure for how many people are actually homeless across the UK.

The latest figures published by the charity Crisis showed that last year 57,890 households were accepted as homeless in England. In Scotland, 34,100 applications were assessed as homeless and in Wales 9,210 households were threatened with homelessness.

In Britain, there is also no official body that counts the number of homeless people who die on the streets of Britain due to being homeless. However, new statistics reveal that on average, homeless people die at just 47 years old. People sleeping on the street are almost 17 times more likely to have been victims of violence.  Homeless people are over nine times more likely to take their own life than the general population.

After steady increases since 2010, these deaths are being investigated by our media partner The Bureau of Investigative Journalism who found nearly 500 deaths as a direct result of homelessness. Rough sleeping has risen by 169 per cent since 2010.

Analysis from housing charity Shelter suggests that 320,000 people were recorded as homeless in Britain. The report was published in November 2018.  It is a rise of 13,000, or 4%, on last year’s figures and equivalent to 36 new people becoming homeless every day. London has the highest rate of homelessness, but it is growing fastest in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, and north-west England, the analysis says.

Housing Crisis

Fundamental to society is being able to get decent shelter. Groundbreaking research by Heriot-Watt University, published in May it says England has a backlog of 3.91 million homes, meaning 340,000 new homes need to be built each year until 2031. Catherine Ryder, head of policy at the National Housing Federation described the situation as a “real emergency.” Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis, said the findings were “stark and shocking”, adding: “Right now across England, councils are desperately struggling to find homeless people somewhere to live.” There are nearly 1.2 million families on waiting lists for a council or social home where 27 per cent have waited more than five years.

Social Care

In late 2017 the social care crisis came into sharp focus. The first study of its kind found that the squeeze on public finances since 2010 is linked to nearly 120,000 excess deaths in England, with the over 60s and care home residents bearing the brunt, published in the online journal BMJ Open. The critical factor in these figures are changes in nurse numbers, say the researchers, who warn that there could be an additional toll of up to 100 deaths every single day from now on if nothing substantial changes. And real term spend on social care has fallen by 1.19 per cent every year since 2010, despite a significant projected increase in the numbers of over 85s–those most likely to need social care–from 1.6 million in 2015 to 1.8 million in 2020, say the researchers. And every £10 drop in spend per head on social care was associated with five extra care home deaths per 100,000 of the population, the analysis showed.

Public Services

During 2018, The National Audit Office examined the financial statements of 937 local health authorities, councils, police and local fire bodies which are responsible for about £154bn of net revenue spending every year. The auditor’s report concludes that the number of local bodies with very serious financial weaknesses increased from 170 (18%) in 2015-16 to 208 (22%) in 2017-18. The report adds the NHS and NHS Foundation Trusts, which found an even worse situation where financial weeknesses jumped from 29% to 38% across the same period.

Public Finances

The publication of an International Monetary Fund report in October 2018 was definitely cause for concern.  It found that the UK’s public finances were among the weakest in the world after the 2008 financial crash.

The IMF report said a health check on the wealth of 31 nations discovered that almost £1tn had been wiped off the wealth of the UK’s public sector – equivalent to 50% of GDP. This placed Britain in the second weakest position overall, with only Portugal in a worse state. The IMF identified the cause of this weakness and said the bailout of UK banks and the growth of Britain’s public sector pension liabilities were significant factors in the UK’s low ranking.

To make matters worse, the UK has privatised and done more to sell off public assets and consequently reduced its income from assets that could offset demands on the public purse.

Non–central bank public financial corporation liabilities went from zero in 2007 just before the bank led crisis to 189% of GDP in 2008, with similar falls in financial assets.

Wages and Savings

Average pay in Britain for full-time, permanent employment was recorded at £28,677. But average pay means nothing when Britain’s highest-paid boss is earning £5m a week and average pay for an FTSE100 CEO is £77,000 a week.

Wages in inflation-adjusted terms are no higher today than they were in 2005. This has caused a substantial fall in the standard of living for many. Over the past 10 years, productivity growth was the weakest since modern records began and appear to be the slowest since the early 1820s when Britain was emerging from the Napoleonic wars, the Office for National Statistics estimates. Today, people simply don’t have the money to do the things they could do just 20 years ago.

Sky high monthly outgoings emerged as the main reasons for one-quarter of adults in Britain not having a single penny of savings in case something goes wrong. Additionally, the study also found one in 10 adults over the age of 55 don’t have a penny put away either for their future. 54 per cent of the average Brit’s income goes on essential living costs like rent or a mortgage, bills and food.

Statistics from a 2016 Inequality Trust report – nothing positive has changed, except if you’re in the top 10%. In that one category, average pay increased 5.9 per cent.

Inequality

In our report, The Truth About Poverty, originally published two years ago, even we were astonished at just how inequality had gripped society. The UK is now one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.

At that time, we reported that the average pay of the 90%, (by stripping out all earnings of the top 10%, including the 1% and 0.1% groups) leaves an annual income of just £12,969. Nothing has changed much except if you happen to be in the top 10 per cent category where pay increased by nearly 6 per cent.

According to Inequality Trust – the richest 10% of households hold 45% of all wealth. The poorest 50%, by contrast, own just 8.7%. An average household in the South East has almost twice (183%) the amount of wealth of an average household in Scotland. Out of the 30 OECD countries in the LIS data set, published by Inequality Trust, the UK is the seventh most unequal and is the fourth most unequal in Europe.

Education

Growing Up North, published in May 2018 by the Children’s Commissioner highlighted the complex relationships between life chances and education, wealth, health, labour markets and family aspirations. Its conclusions were that school leavers in London and the south-east are at least 57% more likely to go to a top-third university than anyone from the north.

A study by Newcastle city council shows how, between 2015 and 2016, councils in the northeast of England had funding cut by 7.8 per cent, compared with cuts of 3.4 per cent in the wealthier southeast.

Just 34% of disadvantaged children in the north of England overall get five GCSEs A*-C, including English and maths, compared with 48% of similar pupils in London.

Just one northern council area in terms of educational attainment makes it to the top 20: Trafford in Greater Manchester.

An OECD report shows that almost twice as much is spent per student at university level than is spent on pupils in either primary or secondary school. This is, of course, due to university fees being paid by students and not the state.

In terms of educational global ranking, Britain sits at 15th place. However, the latest statistics available are from the PISA OECD report published in 2015 with prior collated data. The next report is due sometime in 2019.

Next Generation

To accompany the fall in wages, parents are also worried about their children being able to get on in life. UK millennials have suffered a significant decline in living standard improvements compared with the previous generation, setting them apart from most other developed countries, according to research from the Resolution Foundation think-tank.

The report, published in the FT said that UK millennials — those born since 1981 — saw a deterioration in most measures of living standards following a long postwar period in which each generation enjoyed significantly better living standards than the one before.

Conclusion

The state of the nation is laid bare in all of these statistics. For all but those who are affluent and have future prospects, it’s about falling wages, rising debt, deprivation, poverty, societal meltdown and dramatically worsening public finances and liabilities along with worries for the next generation that nothing will change in future. It has led to frustration, anger and social division. It should be noted that there is no report produced in Britain that calculates the percentage of people or households that are collectively affected by the statistics in this report. Approximately half of all households in Britain receive benefits or are dependent on benefits of some kind.

On becoming PM of Britain, Theresa May spoke of the “burning injustices” of British society, and her heart seemingly went out to the “ordinary working-class families” who “just about manage”. Standing in front of No 10, she promised that “the government I lead will not be driven by the interests of the privileged few but by yours.”

It was also clear that the Conservative governments of David Cameron and Theresa May were well aware of the disaster that had unfolded after the financial crisis which created a crisis of daily life for almost one half of society. Austerity was their answer. None of the key performance areas in terms of Britain’s overall well-being is getting better.

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Notes

Neoliberal Ideology.

Neoliberal capitalism is an economic theory that was simplified in its terminology so everyone could understand it. ‘Trickle down economics’ was what it promised.

Capitalism is an economic practice. Neoliberalism is a philosophy about how societies in which that practice capitalism should be managed. It would have worked in Britain if, like all things in life, it was carried out in moderation. But it wasn’t. This report demonstrates how this form of capitalism is now creating huge societal problems.

There is no disputing that neoliberalism brought us the financial crisis, which still lingers menacingly a decade after the banks inflicted societal havoc.  The offshoring of corporate and individual wealth has been astonishing given what we now know from leaks and whistleblowers. An environmental disaster is looming, and the rise of populism and extreme identity politics is deeply rooted in the ideology of individualism that pits the have’s against have not’s.

Neoliberalism sees intense competition as the sole defining characteristic of human relations. Consumerism, driven by free-market forces is its beating heart. The privatisation of state assets is one of its worst attributes because not all services like health and public transport or water are profitable without escalating prices and/or reducing the cost of delivery.

This four-decade-long experiment by a political, social and financial elite has left Britain with a legacy of epidemics that includes substantial rises in self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Added to that are structural public service failures such as all the crisis we now see around us in health, education, housing, poverty and the like. None of these failures reaches the ruling elite who design and deliver them to everyone else. The problem is that wider society is afflicted by these failures in much bigger volumes than we recognise because they are rarely, if ever, reported collectively.

Social Mobility Commision 2017 Report – pdf 178 pages HERE

All images in this article are from TP

The Middle East is of essential importance to the world. It serves as a center for the world’s energy balance and for the transit of goods through the Suez. It harbors the Holy City of three world religions. It is a center of extreme and deadlocked conflicts. Some of the states are internally unstable, even though in general they are extremely militarized. One of the countries is a nuclear power, and several of them have mighty armies and are among the biggest purchasers of weapons in the world. Regional powers in most parts of the world have a stable “zone of influence/control” around themselves, at least in three out of four directions, but in the Middle East antagonistic powers are clustered. Non-state violence and terrorism proliferates and extends out to other parts of the world, including the EU, Russia and the US. The populations are young, dynamic, highly politicized and generally well-educated, often tending to be unruly. And as passive protests in the region are often suppressed, substantial groups can be prone to violence. The number and types of conflicts are numerous with land claiming, multiple ethnic and religious divisions, social tensions, youth unemployment, gender and class divisions. Moreover, all the major powers of the world are projecting military or economic power into the region.

Structures

The Middle East is here defined as a core region rounded by Egypt, the Levant, Turkey, Iran and the Arab Peninsula. Since Turkey is actively projecting power into the Middle East, it is included as a part of the region for analytical purposes.

When making a future study, it is important to look for some long-term structures, to get a clearer focus on the variables. Thus, we see that the Middle East, as here defined, has crystallized into two parts: A North, consisting of Turkey, Iran, and Syria with Russia’s input, and including Iraq which is becoming increasingly self-conscious in its balanced cooperation with two antagonists: Iran and the US. The US works with Kurdish provinces in this North, but generally, the US position in the North is weak and tends to weaken further. A South has a strong US-supported axis of Israel and Saudi Arabia at its core, with Egypt being largely dependent upon these two. Saudi Arabia also projects power towards Kuwait and the other states of the Arab Peninsula. Contested grounds are Lebanon, Qatar, Yemen, Gaza, and the West Bank, as well as pockets of Sunni insurgents in Syria and Iraq.

Some areas will change in less obvious ways, more gradually. Turkey is rather successfully defining a self-conscious new and very independent geopolitical position for itself. Turkey must be expected to continue on this path for 10–15 years. Israel has a very strong internal dynamic, which withstands a lot of pressure. The pressure on Israel has a high chance of increasing externally, and internally Israel’s economy and demography will be shaped by two facts: The Jewish population is less fertile than the Arab population in both Israel, Gaza, and the West bank, and emigration of Jews exceeds the immigration. Jewish emigration is expected to increase due to external pressures, and though efforts are undertaken to attract more Jews from Europe, this dynamic will take a lot of economic power and brains away from Israel. However, Israel with its current political construction, is expected to withstand these pressures for at least another 15 years more. Yemen is expected to be in constant deep trouble. Gaza is expected to continue as today, or even worse. The West Bank may continue as it is today or destabilize into a “Gaza-situation.” The Gulf states of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman are with a relatively high degree of probability expected to continue their existing path. The futures of Bahrain and Qatar, however, depend highly on developments in Saudi Arabia.

Vectors of power dynamics are especially strong from Saudi Arabia. Today, Egypt depends on Saudi Arabian money for stability, and Egypt is a key member of the Saudi led “Arab Response Force”, by some called “Arab NATO”. Yemen, at the Bab el-Mandeb strait and close to the Asir region (one of the last to be included into Saudi Arabia after an uneasy treaty with Yemen, 1934), has always been strategic for Saudi Arabia. Bahrain’s kingdom depends on external military support, and Qatar can potentially be invaded by Saudi Arabia. Jordan’s king ruling over a 2/3 Palestinian population needs Saudi money and is pressed by Saudi power. Palestinians also need Saudi money. Saudi Arabia projects power through Sunni groups into western Iraq and into eastern Syria and Idlib. Israel and Saudi Arabia work together. Also vectors of power are strong from Iran with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and potentially Bahrain and Qatar. And vectors of power a very strong from Turkey into northern Syria and northern Iraq. The USA works military especially through Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but with cooperation also in Iraq and with Kurds in Iraq and Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. Russia works together with especially Turkey, Iran and Syria. These power vectors may change in connection with internal issues in some countries, notably Saudi Arabia.

Islam is not going to be the constant which many experts expect. Islam has been abused as ideology among extreme groups, all of whom may destabilize a country or even hold isolated territory for a few years, but none of these will ever permanently rule a functioning state. In political turnovers, Islam tends to develop into a more pragmatic direction after entering power in a state working with an educated population and the outside world. We saw that in Iran after the Revolution. We see pragmatic Islam in Turkey. We saw the Muslim Brotherhood as quite pragmatic, when shortly in power in Egypt. We may thus expect that even if Saudi Arabia should experience a more religious system-change. The subsequent turn to a more pragmatic Islam, once carrying the burden of political responsibility, will also apply there. For the sake of this argument, though out of scope of this analysis, it might be added, that even should the Taliban return to power in Afghanistan, Taliban would this time also be forced to evolve into a much more pragmatic (though perhaps not directly “liberal”) direction.

It is relevant to divide the further analysis into groups of scenarios: “improvement,” “deterioration” in socio-economic conditions, and geographically looking respectively at the “North” and the “South.” This creates 4 scenarios. And due to the pivotal role of Saudi power projection, it is practical to start with area where Saudi Arabia is located, that is, the “South.”

The South

We speak here of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar. With possible implications into the “North”: Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

Saudi Arabia is pivotal for the whole region and is unstable at the same time. The current path is pointing to an ever more oppressive system, concentrating power and stagnant wealth into the hands of a very small group. Such system will become ever more toxic to the outside world, will mostly deal in “oil and weapons”, and will not succeed in diversifying the economy away from oil. Such a path may be prone to wars. The duration of such a system will depend on the oil prices. If oil-prices go up, due to long-term instabilities or some “peak-oil” strain in meeting the future global demand for oil, such a system may survive for 15 years. Alternatively, the political family-system can be thoroughly “reengineered” (with US involvement) which can result in a more “liberal” and very successful path. Alternatively, oppression can lead to a takeover by a group of high-ranking military-cleric key-persons, leading to a more religious system, which once in power, after an initial period may even end up being more pragmatic flexible than today.

Egypt is a very young country with a rather well-educated, politically active, restless, and disenfranchised youth with few employment opportunities. According to the international sources, the level of political oppression in Egypt today is at extraordinary high levels. The previous system under Mubarak was a military government in civilian clothes, and it broke down. Muslim Brotherhood government was democratically elected but rejected by the USA, which engineered a return to exactly the same system, which had already broken down once under Mubarak. Basically, nothing has changed, except for bigger use of force. The situation in Egypt is therefore largely unstable. A big stream of US-Israeli ‘force-instruments’ in the form of weapons, under-cover operations and military/police training, and of Saudi Arabian money continually flow to uphold “stability” in Egypt. If this inflow stops due to political change in Saudi Arabia, or in the USA (isolationistic mood), the situation in Egypt may ignite. But even if the existing “inflow” of ‘force-instruments’ continues, is not enough to maintain stability of the political system in the long run. Popular actions against the political system may next time not be as peaceful as with the case of the Tahrir Square, but armed and very violent. The long trend of widespread armed attacks in Egypt, especially in Sinai, may be just the precursor for a much bigger change. Egypt is on its way with economic reforms, and the IMF has a very positive outlook on improving Egypt’s economy – if substantial growth materializes and turns into a long-term social-economic improvement for the majority, Egypt could in 10-15 years develop into either a more ‘liberal’ democracy, or a new democratic leadership by the Muslim Brotherhood. But if the beautiful IMF prognoses should disappoint, or not benefit the majority, Egypt with soon 100+ million young, restless inhabitants might break-down in a chaos similar to Libya and Syria.

The North

Iran will in all cases continue with the basic structure of its existing political system. But whether the system hardens or develops in a more open direction will widely depend on exterior conditions. Sanctions have (nearly) never been able to force a political change, and US sanctions will be counter-acted by the rest of the world economy. Should US sanctions, however, against expectations become effective, they may lower the living conditions of ordinary Iranians. An air war including US occupation of strips of land along the coast near the Strait of Hormuz is possible, and with Iran’s capabilities, such a war would mean diminished oil deliveries from the Persian Gulf for a very long time, possibly half a year, easily triggering a world economic crisis. A wider US land war is not foreseeable, because such a war in Iran would be much bigger than the war in Iraq, which the US could not manage. A “black swan” possibility is, if the USA abandons its stark enmity against Iran, and Israel then decides “on its own” to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities with nuclear-tipped missiles, letting the USA “clean-up-the-mess” which will follow. Such an action would create a very unfavorable global response towards Israel.

Prospects for key actors

Israel will not enjoy better conditions in its neighborhood than today. Any change in political conditions in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan would be a step down for Israel, no matter which direction such a change would take. If Egypt and Jordan descend into chaos, that would create two enormous “gaza-like” neighbors. Saudi Arabia and Egypt would only become advanced liberal economies, if the current regimes changed, bringing the populations closer to power, and all these populations are less friendly to Israel than their current governments are. Situation is similar for Syria. If no reconstruction takes place, and Syria continues as chaos, it will become a “gaza-like” neighbor. If Syria is properly reconstructed, it will become a strong, unfriendly neighbor to Israel. Israel cannot really win here. There are no signs that Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank will change in the next 10-15 years, and this will only increase the Palestinian pressure on Israel. Emigration out of Israel will therefore tend to increase, and the attractiveness of moving to Israel will diminish – the emigration is already larger than the immigration. If the US and European interests in supporting Israel in the next 10-15 years diminish even slightly, this will only add to Israel’s problems.

The US similarly will over the next 10-15 years probably not face better conditions in the Middle East, than we witness today. Israel, the key US ally in the region, though basically maintaining a status-quo, will rather become relatively weakened than strengthened. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are next in close ties to the US in the region: both countries face a very uncertain political future. Any change in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan will only be for worse for the US. Iran will continue as it is – the US may “contain” Iran with sanctions, but the US cannot change Iran’s nature, not with sanctions, not even with an (air) war. Iraq will over time become even more independent of the US, especially if Sunni insurgencies are put down, and Kurdistan stabilizes. In Syria, the US has only lost. The future of Syria will be shaped by Russia and Iran, in cooperation with Turkey – and if they manage this task well, they have great chances to succeed, even against US interests.

Russia made a high-stake gamble by intervening in Syria – and won. Russia already had friendly relations with Iran and followed up by very intelligently (and surprisingly) creating a good working relationship with Turkey. Russia’s gain in the Middle East will be long-term, as long as Russia can continue good working relations with Turkey and Iran. It is now up to Russia to take the lead in designing and managing Syria’s stabilization, political administration and reconstruction with investments from international investors, including Asia and the EU.

Asia – China, India and two great and successful Asian Muslim countries Malaysia and Indonesia may see great business opportunities by participating in Syria’s reconstruction. This, however, requires Russia’s successful lead in the process. Good working relations especially between Russia and the dynamic economies of China and India can be a major platform to get this started on.

The EU for security-reasons simply cannot afford Syria to stay in chaos, generating terrorism and refugees into Europe. The EU can therefore – with or even against the good will of EU governments – be more or less forced to participate in Syria’s reconstruction. Especially, if Russia shows she can manage that process orderly together with Iran and Turkey, and probably China in the role as a leading investor. France (militarily) and Germany (economically) can hence enter as leading partners together with Russia in Syria. All provided, of course, that Russia demonstrates ability to start this process up in a practical and at least somehow acceptable way for the EU.

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This article was originally published on Russian Council.

Karsten Riise, Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School, University degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from University of Copenhagen

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

The narrative has suddenly sprung up that Russia is supposedly planning to meddle in “Israel’s” upcoming elections to support the incumbent, but this is nothing more than an attempt by the most pro-American factions of “Israeli” society and its “deep state” to undermine Netanyahu by replicating the Democrats’ “Russiagate” conspiracy against Trump.

The latest news in Russian-“Israeli” relations isn’t that the two are on the “brink of war” like Alt-Media ridiculously imagines them to be all the time but that the Mainstream Media is now asserting equally ludicrous conspiracy theories such as the claim that Russia is planning to meddle in “Israel’s” upcoming elections. This isn’t just the invention of some “imaginative” observers “wishfully thinking” that it’ll come to pass like is the case with Alt-Media, but is an official narrative being pushed by part of “Israeli” society and its “deep state”, representing an actual example of Hybrid War being waged by them on their own people.

To elaborate, the head of “Israel’s” “Shin Bet” security service Nadav Argaman warned on Monday that an unspecified country was planning to interfere in April’s early elections, which was soon thereafter followed up by the leader of the left-wing opposition party Meretz thundering that “we demand that the security forces ensure that Putin doesn’t steal the elections for his friend, the tyrant Bibi”. It’s evident that there are those in “Israel” who feel very uncomfortable about President Putin’s close friendship with Netanyahu, and while some of it might be because of partisan political reasons, there are also deeper strategic influences at play.

Although it’s taboo to acknowledge in Alt-Media, “Israel’s” permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) are divided between pro-American and pro-Russian factions at this moment, or more broadly, between those who have a stake in preserving the previous US-led world order as much as possible and those who are in favor of progressively reforming it in partnership with the Great Powers pioneering the emerging Multipolar World Order. This fault line became obvious in late 2018 after China’s impending management of the strategic Haifa port became a hyper-politicized “national security” issue, for example, but it precedes that event by a few years.

As it currently stands, Netanyahu is the champion of “Israel’s” multipolar “rebalancing act” while his political and “deep state” foes seem to be more aligned with the US, ergo the weaponized infowar being waged upon voters by fearmongering that Russia is going to meddle in “Israel’s” election in order to support President Putin’s good friend. The close comradery between the two leaders and the past three years of Mainstream Media preconditioning about Russia’s alleged interference in all sorts of elections across the world makes this a somewhat believable narrative to the uneducated masses.

That said, the “Israeli” public is comparatively better educated than most others and it’s unclear whether they’ll fall for the “Russiagate” conspiracy that’s being manufactured ahead of their elections in order to discredit Netanyahu. There are plenty of reasons why “Israelis” might not vote to reelect their second-longest-serving Prime Minister in history, but the strategic alliance that he clinched with Russia probably isn’t among the most prominent of them, let alone an issue that most voters probably even care about. If anything, that alliance ensures “Israeli” interests more than anything that the US has done for them in recent years.

It’s because of just how much Netanyahu has “rebalanced” “Israeli” foreign policy away from its previous dependence on the US and more towards Russia that the pro-American faction of his society and “deep state” are so strongly against him and are desperately trying to undercut his reelection prospects by spinning the fake news story about Russian meddling on his behalf. Therefore, the importance of the upcoming elections in the international sense is that they’ll determine whether “Israel” stays the course in its multipolar strategic alliance with Russia or if it reverts back to being the US’ junior partner.

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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 Oriental Review

Secret negotiations are ongoing in Moscow and Damascus between representatives of the Syrian Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Russian officials concerning the fate of Kurdish militants in Syria. The Kurdish delegation is hoping that Russia – and not the US – will adopt the role of guarantor of their safety and is trying to gain a few more concessions to reduce their losses when the Syrian government forces regains complete control of al-Hasaka province in Northeast Syria. 

This will happen only when the US establishment finally decides to pull out its last soldier and ends its occupation of al-Hasaka. PKK representatives have offered a “road map” meant to include promises of protection, the sharing of wealth and the security of borders with Turkey. The US is trying to offload responsibility for the Kurds’s safety onto Turkey, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rebuffed US requests to offer this kind of protection to his PKK enemies in Syria. Erdogan is evidently putting his strategic-commercial alliance with Russia ahead of his turbulent NATO alliance with the USA.

The Kurdish militant group known variously asYPG, the People’s Protection Units, and the PKK (Syrian branch) is convinced the time has come to climb off the US’s shoulders onto Russian ones since Washington has decided to drop them off the Turkish cliff. Nevertheless, Syrian officials are also determined to give no concessions to the Kurds notwithstanding the Russian mediation with Damascus.

The militants Kurds of Syria have only now begun to realise how vulnerable their position is: they are weaker than ever due to the US decision to withdraw and the naïve requests – formulated by both US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton – for Ankara to offer protection to its sworn enemies. It looks like officials in Washington have no plans for the Kurds. Indeed, while the US is expressing concern about the Kurds it would like somebody else to look after them. The US shows little appreciation for the sacrifices made by YPG militants – who have acted as human shields for the American forces during their time in al-Hasaka province in northeast Syria – and the thousands of casualties they have suffered. Even worse, Trump laughed about Kurdish fighting capabilities by sarcastically saying the Kurds “fight better when we fight with them and when we send 30 F-18’s in front of them”.

So the Kurds have finally learned their lesson and would like to be part of the Syrian state. They have seen the world watching – impotently, unwilling to intervene against Turkey – the exodus of hundreds of thousands from Afrin. They have heard Trump’s decision to abandon them. With his departure their dream of Rojava, the long awaited Kurdish state, evaporates.

For Damascus, had Turkey occupied the north of Syria, it would have been possible to exert diplomatic and international leverage on Ankara to force its departure from Syrian territory. At the same time, it would have been almost impossible for the Syrian government to force an early departure of the US forces had these established themselves in Afrin or al-Hasaka, offering a platform for Israel to use the Levant by benefitting from American infrastructure in the area.

President Bashar al-Assad has said to the Russian negotiators that

“Syria belongs to all Syrians and the Kurds are part of Syria. Therefore they should not enjoy more or fewer rights than any other citizens. They will be given identities but are not entitled to any special concessions”.

Moreover, Assad has agreed not to consider the Kurds as traitors despite their protection of the US occupation forces. He has insisted that the only force operating on the national territory be the one belonging to the Syrian army under the control of the central government.

The Kurds welcomed the Syrian army in the area still under their control. Turkey has accepted to keep its forces and those of its Syrian proxies away from Manbij as long as the Kurdish militants are disarmed. Russia proposed and obtained the withdrawal of the Kurdish forces, re-establishing its observation posts, patrolling west of Manbij. Erdogan still hopes to reach a deal over North Syria during his forthcoming meeting with President Putin, expected sometime in January. The presence of thousands of Syrian jihadists and armed proxies at the gates of Manbij is further weakening the Kurdish negotiation position. They have no other place to seek refuge but in Damascus.

President Erdogan has managed to keep a balance between his relationships with Moscow and Washington even if his choices in Syria seem already made. Russia offers a stable durable and equal economic and strategic partnership with Turkey whereas the US has no consistent friends at all, only common interests. Moreover, the US forces have armed the Kurdish militants, the enemies of Turkey, where Russia will agree to disarm them and put an end to their military power. Trump’s apparent willingness to revoke any deal (the Iranian nuclear agreement) or give up on his allies (the Kurds) is helping to push Turkey into Russia’s arms.

If the US agrees to donate the weapons it has equipped the Kurds with, this arsenal will happily end up in the Syrian army inventory. If not, the Kurds will be vulnerable to the 1500 remaining ISIS fighters on the Euphrates river, particularly if the US disarms the Kurds and pulls out before the arrival of the Syrian army. The forces of Damascus and their allies have eliminated tens of thousands of ISIS militants in various cities, villages and in the Syrian steppe, and this without the benefit of 30 US F-18’s. The end of ISIS control of Syrian territory will be a game-changer in the Levant even if its “hit and run” insurgency will not disappear so easily. The dream of establishing an “Islamic State” in the Levant and Mesopotamia is, like “Rojava”, an unachievable and abandoned objective.

The US says it will remain around the al-Tanf crossing between Iraq and Syria. The establishment’s excuse for this presence has been to stop the Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut bridge. Iran has been supplying Syria with weapons for over seven years of intensive multi-front continuous war. It has supplied Hezbollah with weapons and finance from 1982 until now. The US presence may disturb a possible railway or land road between Iran and Lebanon but cannot disrupt the established supply of weapons. The cost of air or sea shipment is indeed higher but so too are the costs of a prolonged US presence at al-Tanf, in the middle of the Syrian-Iraqi desert. The US is trying to gain time in Syria: in fact it is just wasting it.

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As was to be expected, the announcement that the US was withdrawing troops from Syria has served to provoke numerous reactions in the Middle East and beyond. Following the removal of Mattis, Pompey and Bolton embarked on a whirlwind Middle Eastern tour of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Kuwait to reassure regional allies.

The idea of withdrawing US troops from Syria was based on Trump wishing to fulfil one of his most important electoral promises. Trump knows that he needs to demonstrate to his electoral base that he has kept the most significant promises he made during his 2016 election campaign in order to have any chance of being reelected in 2020. People voted for change, and that includes preventing new wars and getting out of the ones the US is already embroiled in, especially in the Middle East.

If Trump betrays his constituents by not delivering on his campaign promises, then he would simply be like any other politician who, upon being elected, soon forgets about those who put him in office. Trump is aware that such a perception would cost him the possibility of a second term.

We live in a time where Western elites completely ignore the consequences of their actions, manipulate information, lie to their citizens and spread fake news. While we may not always believe what Trumps says in his bombastic remarks, we can rest assured that MSNBC/CNN are even less reliable in terms of facts and unbiased news. Keeping oneself correctly informed is a difficult and demanding task, involving the constant comparison and weighing up of a lot of different sources and constantly researching and learning through the process. Most people do not have the time for this and usually do not care, preferring to rely instead on the mainstream media. This obviously exposes such people to manipulation, lies and distorted facts, clouding the truth and making it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fake. Alternative media — the real media — are riding to the rescue, but the overhauling process will require a full generation or even two.

This is why it little matters whether the wall will really built or whether it will only start to be built as a PR stunt or whether it even makes sense in the first place to build it or not. Democrats watching MSNBC/CNN will agree that it is a dumb idea and should not be funded. Republicans watching Fox News will call it a brilliant idea and demand a government shutdown (as Trumps is doing) to force the Democrats to concede. The point is that Democrats or Trump supporters, feeding on news sources based on propaganda and lies, will only have their respective biases confirmed without the need for any real debate.

What is important for us to understand is how Trump operates in order to gain the support of his base. That is what guides him in domestic, foreign and economic affairs. In the case of the wall, Trump’s battle is against the Democrats, and the actions he has taken to fight his opponents is by using the government shutdown to provide himself with a win-win outcome. If the Democrats fund the wall, they lose in the eyes of their voters, as Trump ends up getting his wall. If the Democrats do not fund the wall, Trump will blame them and point to the government shutdown to demonstrate how he valiantly struggled against the Democrats in an effort to keep his promises.

The same is the case with the economic warfare employing the US dollar and imposing tariffs and duties on allies and enemies alike. MSNBC/CNN will tell you that this is damaging the American economy. The Democrats will say that it is a failed strategy, without admitting that they hate Trump’s “economic war” because it undermines US dollar hegemony and thereby their ability to prosecute the neoliberal imperialism to which they are so addicted.

Fox News, on the other hand, will spin the news to show how Trump is battling against Xi Jinping and China in the interests of American farmers. Self-proclaimed experts will go on about the success of the White House’s economic strategy, declaring it a brilliant idea. Trump voters will enjoy the coverage of Fox News and accordingly praise the “commercial war”. Democrats will love the coverage of MSNBC/CNN and will worry about how various policies will either restore or further diminish US global leadership.

The announcement of the withdrawal from Syria follows the same logic as the examples given above. Trump announced the withdrawal only in order to keep an electoral promise. The entire Washington foreign-policy establishment is opposed to Trump’s decision. The purpose of the announcement was to convey to his voters a simple but clear message: I am trying to do what I promised you, but I have everyone against me in Washington as well as in the media.

The same logic is employed with the government shutdown in order to fund the wall. Whenever Democrats, Republicans or talking heads condemn Trump’s withdrawal from Syria/Afghanistan, his effort to build the wall, his imposition of tariffs and duties, his sanctions on Iran, they reinforce the beliefs of Trump’s supporters, showing that Trump is really trying to keep his promises in the face of tremendous opposition.

Every time they bash him they provide free advertisement for Trump and his political line, and this has been going on from the first time he announced he would run in the primaries in 2015. It is a win-win situation for him, even if he does not really build the wall, pull out of Syria, or effectively reduce the trade imbalance between China and the US. If he succeeds, he can declare that he has kept his promises. If he fails, then he can lay be blame squarely at the feet of his political opponents. People elected him on the basis of his words and promises. If he can demonstrate that he at least tried to keep his promises (even if he never actually does), then that should be enough to give him a second term.

Trump understands very well how the media works and how much Washington detests him. He does not want to change the status quo and revolutionize Washington. He does not want to openly challenge the foreign-policy establishment by following a realist-isolationist policy. That was what he said in 2015/16 during the campaign trail, but his presidency has been much different from what he promised, especially in foreign policy. Nevertheless, Trump seeks re-election, and he cannot entirely break with the Washington establishment if he hopes to succeed. Indeed in 2016 he demonstrated this by appointing a staff of generals whose credo over the span of several decades has been that of American exceptionalism, the governing religion of Washington. He used the military to protect himself from the media-intelligence community, shielding himself with four generals (Kelly, McMaster, Mattis and Flynn), in the full knowledge that none of them would support a realist-isolationist policy.

For this reason, the ructions that have followed the announcement of the withdrawal from Syria are part of normal US political theater, such as was the case with the resignation/dismissal of Mattis. It is no surprise that the deep state immediately dispatched Bolton and Pompey to sooth the concerns of dozens of US allies, in particular Israel and the Arab states. It was a PR exercise to reassure them of the real intentions of the US in the area (i.e., enduring imperialism).

In practice, it makes little difference whether the US has 2,000 or 200 men in Syria. They will not be able to change the course of the war of aggression against Damascus in their favor. It is therefore not surprising that Bolton was not fired for publicly contradicting Trump on the question of withdrawing troops from Syria. Such contradictions play in Trump’s favor. His supporters will say that Trump is so anti-establishment that even his closest collaborators are against him.

If Trump were to fire Bolton as he did Mattis, none of his faithful voters will remember the ill-considered choice to appoint him in the first place, and will be struck instead by Trump’s determination to stick to his guns and rid himself of internal saboteurs who stand in the way of his electoral mandate. As long as Trump, in our scenario, were not to name someone worse than Bolton, the imperialist wheel will continue to turn.

Just look at North Korea as an example. Trump threatened to destroy Pyongyang, even knowing the US could not really do so. Then he meet with Kim, did an epic PR exercise that presented Trump as solving a major international problem that had eluded all his predecessors. After conveying this triumph to his base, he simply forgot all about Kim, Pyongyang and Seoul. In the meantime, the two Koreas are nonetheless speaking, advancing reconciliation and preparing for historical changes. As for Trump, he has already moved on, North Korea no longer holding his interest, the drama having served its purpose for a certain time but no longer being of relevance. (This, thankfully, is to the benefit of the Korean people.)

It seems the same playbook is being employed in Syria. Trump announced the withdrawal, while leaving a few hundred soldiers behind who continue to be unable to change the situation on the ground; Bolton and Pompeo are dispatched to reassure allies/financiers, though Trump cannot wait to forget about Syria, proclaiming the falsehood that US, under his leadership, defeated ISIS (thereby fulfilling one of his electoral promises).

As I wrote following Trump’s election, The Donald’s victory only served to accelerate the transition to a multipolar world, as we saw in the first two years of his presidency, with Trump’s focus on his base translating into a perennial electoral campaign that uses all the tools at his disposal (domestic, foreign, economic, financial, and currency policy). This creates distrust and concern amongst historical allies and pushes Washington’s enemies closer together, serving in the process to smooth out any tensions that may have hitherto existed between these countries.

Just think of the Astana format of Turkey, Iran and Russia concerning Syria, Inter-Korean talks in Asia, a peace treaty to be signed between Russia and Japan, Indian-Iranian cooperation on trade in oil, a European stance against Iranian and Russian sanctions, and, to top it off, coordination between the Russians and the Chinese on almost everything. All this is in the name of opposing US imperialist policies or trying to directly score a political win against Donald Trump and his policies.

Trump’s enemies have learned to ignore US decisions, which have now become irrelevant in certain parts of the globe. America’s historical allies cling hopefully to the words of Bolton and Pompeo, well aware that the US will not soon change their basic neoliberal and imperialist approach towards the world. Nevertheless, Washington is losing military and economic influence due to the transition into a multipolar world order, where power is shared among multiple countries (China, Russia, Iran, India). The unipolar moment is over and is not coming back, especially not with Donald Trump as president. And that is a good thing for the rest of the world.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

Featured image is from SCF

Most speak of floods in the age of climate change, when the cooked and the roasted take precedence over the snowed in and the freezing, and the parliaments of lost islands shall be convened in the sea.  Comparatively cruel fates should never be entertained, but the difference here is worth noting.  Flooded islands lost to the rise of sea levels; submerged hopes done by the relentless pounding of storms and water; destroyed civilisations drowned by the supposed folly of the human species.  These take a privileged if morbid position in the discussion on environmental catastrophe and climate change.   

The more neglected aspect of modern discussion is the ice factor, and with that, its attendant literature.  The chill produces its own mental states, a specific way of seeing.  Away from the humidity and the heat, from the tropical sighs and the going-troppo sense of the heat lies another form of threat, beauty and appreciation.  Call it ice, cold, the freeze.  

History is replete with its minor and major ice ages, its cold snaps that do last beyond the minor calculations of a meteorologist.  Cold, in short, makes history, altering the course of wars and civilisations.  The Little Ice Age (sometime between the 16^th to 19^th centuries) features as political weaponry and historical debate, a period that managed to fill diaries and scripts with concern and speculation about glacial doom or imminent redemption for the human species. 

Predictions and assessments become matters of concern and conjecture.  Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Centre suggested last September that the sun’s inactivity could lead to the lowering of temperatures of the thermosphere (a layering of the earth’s atmosphere at some 300 miles above the surface).  “High above the Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy.  If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”  This led, erroneously, to the suggestion that a “grim ‘mini Ice Age’,” would make its presence felt.

“The ‘imminent mini ice age’ myth,” writes environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli with tired resignation for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “rears its ugly head in the conservative media like clockwork every year or two.” 

From the solidity of ice, its image of hardened bodies, snow bitten parts and paralysis, comes that poetic, if overly sentimentalised spin-off: snow.  Snow remains a source of poetic reflection, a linguistic and cultural house of richness.  The Danish author, Peter Høeg, delved into the theme of snow as the backdrop to understanding a crime in Smilla’s Sense of Snow.  Snow acts as the illustrative vehicle and device. 

“I think more highly of snow and ice than love,” reflects the protagonist, Smilla Jaspersen.  “I have a good relationship with ice.” 

Ice is a measure of existence: it comes in the form of field ice, frazil ice, pancake and porridge.  Inuit terms for snow become a matter of interest: qanik covers large flakes; apuhiniq frozen drifts.  To understand snow and its forms is to understand life.

Today, in the southern Balkans, a captured miniature of the Ottoman Empire past, the scene is replete with soft colours on the horizon, a glazed blue reminiscent of porcelain and pale eyed beauties, as the light gradually fails. The distant blue itself has layers: tenderly soft to the eye to heavy dark; the paleness fades to solemn colours on the lower horizon.  The sun has been banished, but its rays remain stubborn reminders, coming through to play and tease out the last light of the day.      

The snow has been caking, posting its presence on window sills, pavements, cars.  Dirt and mud has been blissfully hidden, ugliness brushed and layered like a model’s makeup.  Snow’s softness belies an utter terror; its crystal dimension hiding the fundamentally dangerous nature of its accumulation.  Cars must be dug out of the clutch of the freeze.  Ditches are hidden, drains covered.  Public transport has been affected; the passengers await for buses that may arrive, at some point.  (The emphasis here is on some, rather than point.)  Time assertions are an irrelevance here, in the land where Romani, Serb and Albanian meet, and the domain of the freeze takes precedence over all. 

The snow that falls today suggests, paradoxically, comfort and warmth.  Provided the body has a suitable layering of warmth for the body, the flakes, falling vertically, is at a stalemate.  It does not steal warmth, but nor does the body necessarily win out against it.  It cannot get through to the skin; it acts as a soft cover, falling and sliding off effortlessly.   There is none of the savage biting that comes with a skin searing blizzard, nor a deep, bone chill that comes with the brittle inducing conditions of a shock freeze.  This is snow on the slow kill, a seductive crystallising blanketing that seduces the walker into grand exhibitions of dancing ritual, of gallivanting in feathery ice and attempting to puncture layers of immaculate, cream coverage.  

Animals must cope, and so they do.  Sparrows gather together in strings of feathers and flesh across branches iced and weighed down by snow.  Chaffinches seem to bleed their colours into the bare vegetation now carpeted by white.  Stray cats seek shelter; dogs, the same.  These snow levels do not necessarily kill in the same way as certain freezing conditions do, and can create layers of protection for the more enterprising.  Nature, being nature, deals a blow to the rest, and the retreating cold reveals the bodies of those failing to find suitable shelter.

Humans must also cope.  Rounds are made to homes isolated, their occupants caged – in Bujanovac, favours are done, though these are self-serving.  Bills must still be paid, even in the midst of catastrophe, and men make their rounds to gather payment.  (How helpful.)  The elderly must not be forgotten as units of payment for the state craving its pennies – the utilities providers shall have their pound of flesh.  For some, reserves are running out, and humanitarian assistance is sought.  Snow kisses the young who play in it but condemns the aged who would prefer a warmer fate.  The craving for spring is palpable.    

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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]

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Soon after the social media “purge” of independent media sites and pages this past October, a top neoconservative insider — Jamie Fly — was caught stating that the mass deletion of anti-establishment and anti-war pages on Facebook and Twitter was “just the beginning” of a concerted effort by the U.S. government and powerful corporations to silence online dissent within the United States and beyond.

While a few, relatively uneventful months in the online news sphere have come and gone since Fly made this ominous warning, it appears that the neoconservatives and other standard bearers of the military-industrial complex and the U.S. oligarchy are now poised to let loose their latest digital offensive against independent media outlets that seek to expose wrongdoing in both the private and public sectors.

As MintPress News Editor-in-Chief Mnar Muhawesh recently wrote, MintPress was informed that it was under review by an organization called Newsguard Technologies, which described itself to MintPress as simply a “news rating agency” and asked Muhawesh to comment on a series of allegations, several of which were blatantly untrue. However, further examination of this organization reveals that it is funded by and deeply connected to the U.S. government, neo-conservatives, and powerful monied interests, all of whom have been working overtime since the 2016 election to silence dissent to American forever-wars and corporate-led oligarchy.

More troubling still, Newsguard — by virtue of its deep connections to government and Silicon Valley — is lobbying to have its rankings of news sites installed by default on computers in U.S. public libraries, schools, and universities as well as on all smartphones and computers sold in the United States.

In other words, 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. Worse still, if its efforts to quash dissenting voices in the U.S. are successful, Newsguard promises that its next move will be to take its system global.

Red light, green light . . .

Newsguard has received considerable attention in the mainstream media of late, having been the subject of a slew of articles in the Washington Post, the Hill, the Boston Globe, Politico, Bloomberg, Wired, and many others just over the past few months. Those articles portray Newsguard as using “old-school journalism” to fight “fake news” through its reliance on nine criteria allegedly intended to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to online news.

Newsguard separates sites it deems worthy and sites it considers unreliable by using a color-coded rating — green, yellow, or red — and more detailed “nutrition labels” regarding a site’s credibility or lack thereof. Rankings are created by Newsguard’s team of “trained analysts.” The color-coding system may remind some readers of the color-coded terror threat-level warning system that was created after 9/11, making it worth noting that Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security who oversaw the implementation of that system under George W. Bush, is on Newsguard’s advisory board.

Newsguard gives Fox News high marks for accuracy.

As Newsguard releases a new rating of a site, that rating automatically spreads to all computers that have installed its news ranking browser plug-in. That plug-in is currently available for free for the most commonly used internet browsers. NewsGuard directly markets the browser plug-in to libraries, schools and internet users in general.

According to its website, Newsguard has rated more than 2,000 news and information sites. However, it plans to take its ranking efforts much farther by eventually reviewing “the 7,500 most-read news and information websites in the U.S.—about 98 percent of news and information people read and share online” in the United States in English.

A recent Gallup study, which was supported and funded by Newsguard as well as the Knight Foundation (itself a major investor in Newsguard), stated that a green rating increased users likelihood to share and read content while a red rating decreased that likelihood. Specifically, it found 63 percent would be less likely to share news stories from red-rated websites, and 56 percent would be more likely to share news from green-rated websites, though the fact that Newsguard and one of its top investors funded the poll makes it necessary to take these findings with a grain of salt.

However, some of the rankings Newsguard itself has publicized show that it is manifestly uninterested in fighting “misinformation.” How else to explain the fact that the Washington Post and CNN both received high scores even though both have written stories or made statements that later proved to be entirely false? For example, CNN falsely claimed in 2016 that it was illegal for Americans to read WikiLeaks releases and illegally colluded with the DNC to craft presidential debate questions.

In addition, in 2017, CNN published a fake story that a Russian bank linked to a close ally of President Donald Trump was under Senate investigation. That same year, CNN was forced to retract a report that the Trump campaign had been tipped off early about WikiLeaks documents damaging to Hillary Clinton when it later learned the alert was about material already publicly available.

The Washington Post, whose $600 million conflict of interest with the CIA goes unnoted by Newsguard, has also published false stories since the 2016 election, including one article that falsely claimed that “Russian hackers” had tapped into Vermont’s electrical grid. It was later found that the grid itself was never breached and the “hack” was only an isolated laptop with a minor malware problem. Yet, such acts of journalistic malpractice are apparently of little concern to Newsguard when those committing such acts are big-name corporate media outlets.

Can you distinguish between propaganda and a free press? NewsGuard can help. #medialiteracywk #KnowYourNews pic.twitter.com/yp2Hs76eBk

— NewsGuard (@NewsGuardRating) November 6, 2018

Furthermore, Newsguard gives a high rating to Voice of America, the U.S. state-funded media outlet, even though its former acting associate director said that the outlet produces “fluff journalism” and despite the fact that it was recently reformed to “provide news that supports our [U.S.] national security objectives.” However, RT receives a low “red” rating for being funded by the Russian government and for “raising doubts about other countries and their institutions” (i.e., including reporting critical of the institutions and governments of the U.S. and its allies).

Keeping the conversation safe for the corporatocracy

Newsguard describes itself as an organization dedicated to “restoring trust and accountability” and using “journalism to fight false news, misinformation and disinformation.” While it repeatedly claims on its website that its employees “have no political axes to grind” and “care deeply about reliable journalism’s pivotal role in democracy,” a quick look at its co-founders, top funders and advisory board make it clear that Newsguard is aimed at curbing voices that hold the powerful — in both government and the private sector — to account.

Newsguard is the latest venture to result from the partnership between Steven Brill and Louis Gordon Crovitz, who currently serve as co-CEOs of the group. Brill is a long-time journalist —  published in TIME and The New Yorker, among others — who most recently founded the Yale Journalism Initiative, which aims to encourage Yale students who “aspire to contribute to democracy in the United States and around the world” to become journalists at top U.S. and international media organizations. He first teamed up with Crovitz in 2009 to create Journalism Online, which sought to make the online presence of top American newspapers and other publishers profitable, and was also the CEO of the company that partnered up with the TSA to offer “registered” travelers the ability to move more quickly through airport security — for a price, of course.

While Brill’s past does not in itself raise red flags, Crovitz — his partner in founding Journalism Online, then Press+, and now Newsguard — is the last person one would expect to find promoting any legitimate effort to “restore trust and accountability” in journalism. In the early 1980s. Crovitz held a number of positions at Dow Jones and at the Wall Street Journal, eventually becoming executive vice president of the former and the publisher of the latter before both were sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2007. He is also a board member of Business Insider, which has received over $30 million from Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in recent years.

In addition to being a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Crovitz proudly notes in his bio, available on Newsguard’s website, that he has been an “editor or contributor to books published by the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.” Though many MintPress readers are likely familiar with these two institutions, for those who are not, it is worth pointing out that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is one of the most influential neoconservative think tanks in the country and its “scholars,” directors and fellows have included neoconservative figures like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton and Frederick Kagan.

During the George W. Bush administration, AEI was instrumental in promoting the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq and has since advocated for militaristic solutions to U.S. foreign policy objectives and the expansion of the U.S.’ military empire as well as the “War on Terror.” During the Bush years, AEI was also closely associated with the now defunct and controversial neoconservative organization known as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which presciently called, four years before 9/11, for a “new Pearl Harbor” as needed to rally support behind American military adventurism.

The Heritage Foundation, like AEI, was also supportive of the war in Iraq and has pushed for the expansion of the War on Terror and U.S. missile defense and military empire. Its corporate donors over the years have included Procter & Gamble, Chase Manhattan Bank, Dow Chemical, and Exxon Mobil, among others.

Crovitz’s associations with AEI and the Heritage Foundation, as well as his ties to Wall Street and the upper echelons of corporate media, are enough to make any thinking person question his commitment to being a fair watchdog of “legitimate journalism.” Yet, beyond his innumerable connections to neoconservatives and powerful monied interest, Crovitz has repeatedly been accused of inserting misinformation into his Wall Street Journal columns, with groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation accusing him of “repeatedly getting his facts wrong” on NSA surveillance and other issues. Some of the blatant falsehoods that have appeared in Crovitz’s work have never been corrected, even when his own sources called him out for misinformation.

For example, in a WSJ opinion piece that was written by Crovitz in 2012, Crovitz was accused of making “fantastically false claims” about the history of the internet by the very people he had cited to support those claims.

As TechDirt wrote at the time:

Almost everyone he [Crovitz] sourced or credited to support his argument that the internet was invented entirely privately at Xerox PARC and when Vint Cerf helped create TCP/IP, has spoken out to say he’s wrong. And that list includes both Vint Cerf, himself, and Xerox. Other sources, including Robert Taylor (who was there when the internet was invented) and Michael Hiltzik, have rejected Crovitz’s spinning of their own stories.”

The oligarch team’s deep bench

While Brill and Crovitz’s connections alone should be enough cause for alarm, a cursory examination of Newsguard’s advisory board makes it clear that Newsguard was created to serve the interests of American oligarchy. Chief among Newsguard’s advisors are Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush and Ret. General Michael Hayden, a former CIA director, a former NSA director and principal at the Chertoff Group, a security consultancy seeking to “advise corporate clients and governments, including foreign governments” on security matters that was co-founded by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who also currently serves as the board chairman of major weapons manufacturer BAE systems.

Another Newsguard advisor of note is Richard Stengel, former editor of Time magazine, a “distinguished fellow” at the Atlantic Council and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy under President Barack Obama. At a panel discussion hosted last May by the Council on Foreign Relations, Stengel described his past position at the State Department as “chief propagandist” and also stated that he is “not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

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

Other Newsguard advisors include Don Baer, former White House communications director and advisor to Bill Clinton and current chairman of both PBS and the influential PR firm Burson Cohn & Wolfe as well as Elise Jordan, former communications director for the National Security Council and former speech-writer for Condoleezza Rice, as well as the widow of slain journalist Michael Hastings — who was writing an exposé on former CIA director John Brennan at the time of his suspicious death.

A look at Newguard’s investors further illustrates the multifarious connections between this organization and the American political and corporate elite. While Brill and Crovitz themselves are the company’s top investors, one of Newsguard’s most important investors is the Publicis Groupe. Publicis is the third largest global communications company in the world, with more than 80,000 employees in over 100 countries and an annual revenue of over €9.6 billion ($10.98 billion) in 2017. It is no stranger to controversy, as one of its subsidiaries, Qorvis, recently came under fire for exploiting U.S. veterans at the behest of the Saudi government and also helped the Saudi government to “whitewash” its human rights record and its genocidal war in Yemen after receiving $6 million from the Gulf Kingdom in 2017.

Furthermore, given its size and influence, it is unsurprising that the Publicis Groupe counts many powerful corporations and governments among its clientele. Some of its top clients in 2018 included pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer and Bayer/Monsanto as well as Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, McDonalds, Kraft Heinz, Burger King, and the governments of Australia and Saudi Arabia. Given its influential role in funding Newsguard, it is reasonable to point out the potential conflict of interest posed by the fact that sites that accurately report on Publicis’ powerful clients — but generate bad publicity — could be targeted for such reports in Newsguard’s ranking.

In addition to the Publicis Groupe, another major investor in Newsguard is the Blue Haven Initiative, which is the venture capital “impact investment” fund of the wealthy Pritzker family — one of the top 10 wealthiest families in the U.S., best known as the owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain and for being the second largest financial contributors to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Other top investors include John McCarter, a long-time executive at U.S. government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, as well as Thomas Glocer, former CEO of Reuters and a member of the boards of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., financial behemoth Morgan Stanley, and the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a member of the Atlantic Council’s International Advisory Board.

Through these investors, Newsguard managed to raise $6 million to begin its ranking efforts in March of 2018. Newsguard’s actual revenues and financing, however, have not been disclosed despite the fact that it requires the sites it ranks to disclose their funding. In a display of pure hypocrisy, Newsguard’s United States Securities and Exchange Commission Form D — which was filed March 5, 2018 — states that the company “declined to disclose” the size of its total revenue.

Why give folks a choice?

While even a quick glance at its advisory board alone would be enough for many Americans to decline to install Newsguard’s browser extension on their devices, the danger of Newsguard is the fact that it is diligently working to make the adoption of its app involuntary. Indeed, if voluntary adoption of Newsguard’s app were the case, there would likely be little cause for concern, given that its website attracts barely more than 300 visits per month and its social-media following is relatively small, with just over 2,000 Twitter followers and barely 500 Facebook likes at the time of this article’s publication.

To illustrate its slip-it-under-the-radar strategy, Newsguard has gone directly to state governments to push its browser extension onto entire state public library systems, even though its website suggests that individual public libraries are welcome to install the extension if they so choose. The first state to install Newsguard on all of its public library computers across its 51 branches was the state of Hawaii — which was the first to partner with Newsguard’s “news literacy initiative,” just last month.

Aloha, Hawaiian libraries! The state has added the NewsGuard extension to the computers patrons use in all its public libraries. Thanks to #Microsoft for sponsoring news literacy. https://t.co/nVoJ7xNbAS

— NewsGuard (@NewsGuardRating) December 17, 2018

According to local media, Newsguard “now works with library systems representing public libraries across the country, and is also partnering with middle schools, high schools, universities, and educational organizations to support their news literacy efforts,” suggesting that these Newsguard services targeting libraries and schools are soon to become a compulsory component of the American library and education system, despite Newsguard’s glaring conflicts of interest with massive multinational corporations and powerful government power-brokers.

Notably, Newsguard has a powerful partner that has allowed it to start finding its way into public library and school computers throughout the country. As part of its new “Defending Democracy” initiative, Microsoft announced last August that it would be partnering with Newsguard to actively market the company’s ranking app and other services to libraries and schools throughout the country. Microsoft’s press release regarding the partnership states that Newsguard “will empower voters by providing them with high-quality information about the integrity and transparency of online news sites.”

Since then, Microsoft has now added the Newsguard app as a built-in feature of Microsoft Edge, its browser for iOS and Android mobile devices, and is unlikely to stop there. Indeed, as a recent report in favor of Microsoft’s partnership with Newsguard noted, “we could hope that this new partnership will allow Microsoft to add NewsGuard to Edge on Windows 10 [operating system for computers] as well.”

Newsguard, for its part, seems confident that its app will soon be added by default to all mobile devices. On its website, the organization notes that“NewsGuard will be available on mobile devices when the digital platforms such as social media sites and search engines or mobile operating systems add our ratings and Nutrition Labels directly.” This shows that Newsguard isn’t expecting its rating systems to be offered as a downloadable application for mobile devices but something that social media sites like Facebook, search engines like Google, and mobile device operating systems that are dominated by Apple and Google will “directly” integrate into nearly every smartphone and tablet sold in the United States.

A Boston Globe article on Newsguard from this past October makes this plan even more clear. The Globe wrote at the time:

Microsoft has already agreed to make NewsGuard a built-in feature in future products, and [Newsguard co-CEO] Brill said he’s in talks with other online titans. The goal is to have NewsGuard running by default on our computers and phones whenever we scan the Web fornews.”

This eventuality is made all the more likely given the fact that, in addition to Microsoft, Newsguard is also closely connected to Google, as Google has been a partner of the Publicis Groupe since 2014, when the two massive companies joined Condé Nast to create a new marketing service called La Maison that is “focused on producing engaging content for marketers in the luxury space.” Given Google’s power in the digital sphere as the dominant search engine, the creator of the Android mobile operating system, and the owner of YouTube, its partnership with Publicis means that Newsguard’s rating system will soon see itself being promoted by yet another of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies.

Furthermore, there is an effort underway to integrate Newsguard into social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, as Newsguard was launched, co-CEO Brill stated that he planned to sell the company’s ratings of news sites to Facebook and Twitter. Last March, Brill told CNN that “We’re asking them [Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google] to pay a fraction of what they pay their P.R. people and their lobbyists to talk about the problem.”

On Wednesday, Gallup released a poll that will likely be used as a major selling point to social media giants. The poll — funded by Newsguard and the Knight Foundation, which is a top investor in Newsguard and has recently funded a series of Gallup polls relating to online news — seems to have been created with the intention of manufacturing consent for the integration of Newsguard with top social media sites.

This is because the promoted findings from the study are as follows:“89% of users of social media sites and 83% overall want social media sites and search engines to integrate NewsGuard ratings and reviews into their news feeds and search results” and “69% would trust social media and search companies more if they took the simple step of including NewsGuard in their products.” However, a disclaimer at the end of the poll states that the results, which were based on the responses of 706 people each of whom received $2 to participate, “may not be reflective of attitudes of the broader U.S adult population.”

With trust at Facebook nose-diving and Facebook’s censorship of independent media already well underway, the findings of this poll could well be used to justify its integration into Facebook’s platform. The connections of both Newsguard and Facebook to the Atlantic Council make this seem a given.

Financial censorship

Another Newsguard service shows that this organization is also seeking to harm independent media financially by targeting online revenue. Through a service called “Brandguard,” which it describes 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.”

At the time the service was announced last November, Newsguard co-CEO Brill stated that the company was “in discussions with the ad tech firms, leading agencies, and major advertisers” eager to adopt a blacklist of news sites deemed “unreliable” by Newsguard. This is unsurprising given the leading role of the Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s largest advertising and PR firms, has in funding Newsguard. As a consequence, it seems likely that many, if not all, of Publicis’ client companies will choose to adopt this blacklist to help crush many of the news sites that are unafraid to hold them accountable.

It is also important to note here that Google’s connection to Publicis and thus Newsguard could spell trouble for independent news pages that rely on Google Adsense for some or all of their ad-based revenue. Google Adsense has long been targeting sites like MintPress by demonetizing articles for information or photographs it deemed controversial, including demonetizing one article for including a photo showing U.S. soldiers involved in torturing Iraqi detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

Since then, Google — a U.S. military contractor — has repeatedly tried to shutter ad access to MintPress articles that involve reporting that is critical of U.S. empire and military expansion. One article that has been repeatedly flagged by Google details how many African-Americans have questioned whether the Women’s March has aided or harmed the advancement of African-Americans in the United States. Google has repeatedly claimed that the article, which was written by African-American author and former Washington Post bureau chief Jon Jeter, contains “dangerous content.”

Given Google’s already established practice of targeting factual reporting it deemed controversial through Adsense, Brandguard will likely offer the tech giant just the excuse it needs to cut off sites like MintPress, and other pages equally critical of empire, altogether.

An action plan for the genuine protection of journalism

Though it is just getting started, Newsguard’s plan to insert its app into every device and major social-media network is a threat to any news site that regularly publishes information that rubs any of Newsguard’s investors, partners or advisors the wrong way. Given its plan to rank the English-language U.S. news sites that account for 98 percent of U.S. digital news consumption, Newsguard’s agenda is of the utmost concern to every independent media page active in the United States and beyond — given Newsguard’s promise to take its project global.

By linking up with former CIA and NSA directors, Silicon Valley Giants, and massive PR firms working for some of the most controversial governments and corporations in the world, Newsguard has betrayed the fact that it is not actually seeking to “restore trust and accountability” in journalism, but to “restore trust and accountability” in news outlets that protect the existing power structure and help shield the corporate-led oligarchy and military-industrial complex from criticism.

Not only is it trying to tank the reputations of independent media through its biased ranking system, Newsguard is also seeking to attack these alternative voices financially and by slipping its ranking system by default onto all computers and phones sold in the U.S.

However, Newsguard and it agenda of guarding the establishment from criticism can be stopped. By supporting independent media and unplugging from social media sites committed to censorship, like Facebook and Twitter, we can strengthen the independent media community and keep it afloat despite the unprecedented nature of these attacks on free speech and watchdog journalism.

Beyond that, a key way to keep Newsguard and those behind it on their toes is to hold them to account by pointing out their clear conflicts of interest and hypocrisy and by derailing the narrative they are carefully crafting that Newsguard is “non-partisan,” “trustworthy,” and true guardians against the scourge of “fake news.”

While this report has sought to be a starting point for such work, anyone concerned about Newsguard and its connections to the war machine and corrupt corporations should feel encouraged to point out the organization’s own conflicts of interests and shady connections via its Twitter and Facebook pages and the feedback section on Newsguard’s website. The best way to defeat this new tool of the neocons is to put them on notice and to continue to expose Newsguard as a guardian of empire, not a guardian of journalism.

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

Featured image is from Activist Post

On January 9, Ahrar al-Sham groups in northwestern Hama surrendered and dissolved themselves under pressure from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda), according to local sources. Thus, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) imposed full control over the towns of al-Ankawi and Habit.

Ahrar al-Sham is the core of a Turkish-backed coalition of militant groups known as the National Front for Liberation (NFL). However, neither other NFL factions nor Turkey intervened to support Ahrar al-Sham during the incident in northwestern Hama.

According to pro-opposition media, the defeated Ahrar al-Sham members will get an opportunity to withdraw to the region of Afrin after they hand over their heavy weapons to HTS.

The current focus of HTS attention is southern Idlib, in particular the town of Maarrat al-Nu’man, which is still in the hands of the NFL.

Last week, another Turkish-backed group, Nour al-Din al-Zrenki also suffered a defeat at the hands of HTS and lost all of its areas in western Aleppo.

The collapse of the so-called “moderate opposition” under HTS pressure caused a hysteria among pro-militant media activists and media outlets, which are now blaming Turkey and Russia for the current situation. According to this very theory, Ankara and Moscow allowed the HTS expansion in order to justify the resumption of anti-terrorist operations in the Idlib de-escalation zone area.

These rumors are fueled by the recent movements of Russian forces in the demilitarized zone near Idlib province. According to reports, Russian forces withdrew from their observation post in the town of Abu Dali in the government-held part of the northern Hama countryside to the nearby town of Tulaysiyah on January 9. Earlier, Russian troops started establishing a new military post in the Salba hill south of the town of Hayalin in northwestern Hama.

Some opposition activists described these movements as indicating Russian preparations for a military operation in Idlib.

On January 9, Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar held a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu. According to statements from the sides, they discussed the recent developments in the Idlib de-escalation zone as well as other regional security issues.

Meanwhile, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have once again captured the village of Ash-Shafah in the Euphrates Valley from ISIS, according to pro-Kurdish sources. Now, the SDF is reportedly advancing on ISIS positions in the nearby village of Albu Badran.

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Turkey’s Daily Sabah broadsheet believes a soft coup is ongoing to oust Trump. It’s been brewing since his triumph over Hillary and inauguration in January 2017 – my view, not the newspaper’s.

Last year, I said pro-Hillary dark forces and other anti-Trump coup plotters keep throwing endless amounts of dirt against the wall, hoping enough sticks to oust him or undermine his presidency if removal efforts fail.

Things aren’t getting easier for him. Special council Mueller’s Russiagate witch hunt continues – despite discovering no evidence of Kremlin US election meddling nor an improper or illegal Trump connection to Russia.

Controlling the House, the undemocratic Dems plan investigations into Trump’s affairs, likely to continue to harass him for the wrong reasons, ignoring what’s most important – US policies both right wings of the nation’s war party agree on, along with serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people.

Once Mueller’s probe ends and a report is issued, House impeachment of Trump may follow – a likely futile effort to remove him from office with Republicans controlling the Senate.

The Constitution’s Article I, Section 2 empowers House members to impeach a sitting president, Senate members with sole power to try them – a two-thirds super-majority required to convict, what’s highly unlikely with Republicans controlling the upper house.

Article II, Section 4 states

“(t)he President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Trump is culpable for lots of wrongdoing, not the above unlawful actions, other than Nuremberg-level crimes of war and against humanity – offenses no US officials ever faced, the vast majority in Congress as culpable as the executive.

Trump’s sex life and payments to paramours aren’t impeachable offenses. By email, Law Professor Francis Boyle mocked the notion of attacking him this way, saying:

“The United States House of Representatives solemnly impeached President Clinton over a bl*wj*b and lying about (it).”

“That is the standard for  impeachment by the US House of Representatives: a bl*wj*b. A fortiori then the House Democrats  can solemnly impeach President Trump for having real sex with a porn star and a playboy bunny and paying them hush money over it.”

“Of course, that will make the United States of America once again the laughing stock of the world. But we are already that now under President Trump.”

In Ankara, John Bolton got a rude awakening. President Erdogan snubbed him for saying withdrawal of US forces from Syria is conditional on defeating ISIS (the US supports) and protecting Syrian Kurds.

The US doesn’t give a hoot about them, YPG fighters used as a proxy force, Kurds to be betrayed when no longer needed, the way Washington always operates, never to be trusted.

Erdogan slammed Bolton, saying he made a “grave mistake,” adding “(i)t is not possible for us to swallow (Bolton’s) message…”

It pleased Netanyahu and angered Erdogan, Bolton saying

“(w)e don’t think the Turks ought to undertake military action that’s not fully coordinated with and agreed to by the United States, at a minimum so they don’t endanger our troops.”

The Daily Sabah said

“(i)t was probably a bad idea for Bolton to go rogue and try to impose conditions on the United States withdrawal from Syria.”

Erdogan also criticized what he characterized as “(d)ifferent voices…emerging from different segments of the (Trump) administration.”

The Daily Sabah stressed that “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate (his) agenda” – Trump more a figurehead than head of state.

Dems are using his demand for a border wall as another way to weaken him. Partial government shutdown continues in its 20th day with no signs of resolution.

On Wednesday, Trump walked out of a meeting with Dem leaders Pelosi and Schumer, tweeting:

“Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!”

Schumer accused Trump of staging “a temper tantrum because he couldn’t get his way.” What’s going on has nothing to do with whether to build or not to build a wall along America’s southern border with Mexico.

It has everything to do with political bickering. For Dems, it’s about weakening Trump, wanting him ousted or replaced by one of their own in 2020 elections.

There’s nothing pretty about the way Washington operates, the agenda of both right wings of duopoly governance harming ordinary people everywhere.

They both share blame for endless wars on humanity, neoliberal harshness, police state toughness, and increasing totalitarian rule.

That’s the deplorable state of America today, things worsening, not improving – Washington’s criminal class responsible for what’s going on.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Near the United Nations Glass Palace in New York, there is a metallic sculpture entitled “Evil Defeated by Good”, representing Saint George transfixing a dragon with his lance. It was donated by the USSR in 1990 to celebrate the INF Treaty concluded with the USA in 1987, which banned land-based short- and mid-range nuclear missiles (a reach of between 500 and 5,000 km). Symbolically, the body of the dragon is in fact made with pieces of US Pershing-2 ballistic missiles (originally based in West Germany) and Soviet SS-20 missiles (originally based in the USSR).

But the nuclear dragon, which in the sculpture is shown as dying, is now being reborn. Thanks to Italy and other countries of the European Union, which, at the United Nations General Assembly, voted against the resolution presented by Russia on the “Preservation and Implementation of the INF Treaty”, rejected by 46 to 43 with 78 abstentions.

The European Union – of which 21 of its 27 members are part of NATO (including the United Kingdom, which is currently leaving the EU) – has thus taken a uniform stance with the position of NATO, which in turn has taken a uniform stance with that of the United States.

Source: PandoraTV

The Obama administration first, followed by the Trump administration, have accused Russia, without any proof, of experimenting with a missile from the forbidden category, and have announced their intention of withdrawing from the INF Treaty. At the same time, they have launched a programme aimed at renewing the installation of nuclear missiles in Europe to guard against Russia, while others will also be based in the Asia-Pacific region against China.

The Russian representative at the UN has warned that “this constitutes the beginning of a full-blown arms race”. In other words, he warned that if the United States should once again install in Europe nuclear missiles pointed at Russia (as were the Cruise missiles based in Comiso in the 1980’s), Russia would once again install, on its own territory, similar weapons pointed at targets in Europe (but which would be unable to reach the USA).

Ignoring all that, the EU representative at the UN accused Russia of sabotaging the INF Treaty, and announced the opposition vote by all the countries of the Union because “the resolution presented by Russia avoids the question under discussion”.

Essentially, therefore, the European Union has given the green light to the possible installation of new US missiles in Europe, including Italy.

On a question of this importance, the Conte government, like its predecessors, has abandoned the exercise of national sovereignty and aligned itself with the EU, which, has in turn adopted the position of NATO, under US command. And across the entire political arc, not one voice has been raised to request that it should be the Parliament which decides how to vote at the UNO. And similarly, no voice has been raised in Parliament to request that Italy observe the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires that the USA must withdraw its B61 nuclear bombs from our national territory, and must also abstain from installing here, as from the first half of 2020, the new and even more dangerous B61-12’s.

So this is a new violation of the fundamental constitutional principle that “sovereignty belongs to the people”. And since the politico-media apparatus swaddles Italians in the ignorance of these questions of such vital importance, it is also a violation of our right to information, not only in the sense of the freedom to inform, but also the right to be informed.

We must do this now, or else tomorrow there will be no time to decide – a mid-range ballistic missile can reach and destroy its target with its nuclear warhead in between 6 and 11 minutes.

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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.

If you read anything today, read Whitney Webb’s “How a NeoCon-Backed ‘Fact Checker’ Plans to Wage War on Independent Media.” The article breaks down Newsguard Technologies, an organization dedicated to censoring news and information outside the orbit of official propaganda. 

The article is truly alarming. It reveals how the government, neocons, the Council on Foreign Relations, large corporations, and Silicon Valley are conspiring to seriously limit your access to information on mobile devices, computer browsers, and social media. 

According to Webb’s research, Microsoft may incorporate Newsguard tech in the browser of an upcoming version of its operating system, which is used by 1.5 billion people around the world. No word if Apple plans to do the same. 

From deplatforming to demonetization, the state and its corporate partners are deadly serious about removing any high profile news from the internet that dispels or challenges its propaganda.  

Of course, it would be far easier to simply remove offending websites and social media platforms from internet domain servers—immediately sending all disfavored content down the memory hole—but under the rubric of soft fascism (as spelled out by Bertram Gross), this approach is eschewed in favor of incremental behind the scenes efforts and a propaganda effort that sells us the fairy tale alternative media is driven by evil Russians (who also flip elections), under the direction of the “New Hitler”, Vladimir Putin. 

A decade ago, I predicted the state and corporations (the essence of fascism, otherwise known as corporatism) would move to kill alternative media. I was wrong about the timeline, as the state often moves in glacial fashion. 

It may be another two or three years, but eventually they will manage to wipe out most alternative media, or media that does not follow official narratives. This doesn’t mean every media outlet or blog at odds with the state will be expunged, only those with high traffic and demonstrable influence. 

Little guys like me will probably be allowed to continue, although it is possible Google and the corporate search engines will not return results on those websites and blogs. 

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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.

US Senator Marco Rubio poses as a representative of Florida Republicans, but in truth he represents the interests of Israel. He is sponsor of legislation that punishes Americans who boycott Israel as their way of protesting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. That Rubio is doing his best to dismantle what little is left of the First Amendment doesn’t seem to bother Florida voters or the presstitute media, who are no longer protective of the First Amendment.

Yesterday (January 9, 2019) the legislation failed to pass the Senate, because Democrats blocked it. But not really. The Democrats are not opposed to the bill. Indeed, the senators of both parties are too well paid in campaign contributions by the Israel Lobby to vote against anything that Israel wants. Moreover, they know that if they do, the money and the media support in their next election will flow to their opponent. The reason the Democrats blocked the passage of the bill is that they are making a point that no legislation will pass until President Trump gives in on the issue of The Wall and signs the necessary money bill to reopen the government.

Every 18 months the US government hands over to Israel enough money to build Trump’s wall. Israel had no hesitation in using Americans’ money to build its wall, which keeps Palestinians out of Palestine. It is OK with the US Congress for Americans to finance Israel’s construction of a wall that keeps a people out of their own country, but it is not OK for Trump to use American money to keep illegal immigrants out of the United States.

How much more plain can it be? The US Congress represents Israel, not Americans. The US Congress will even destroy the US Constitution for Israel. And the United States is called a democracy?

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

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

Featured image is from rouzer.house.gov

Three sturdy trekkers step out of a van and hoist top-heavy blue, green and orange rucksacks onto their backs. The two young women and a man then set off on foot, headed to one of Kathmandu’s numerous backpackers’ hotels. I ask where they’ve arrived from; “Langtang”, replies one of the women and hurries on. (Langtang is a rugged, remote valley north of the capital popular with hikers). The trio is likely booked at a Chinese lodge in Nepal’s newly designated “Chinatown”. That’s a crowded strip of shops, hotels and cafes in Thamel, the low-end tourist quarter of the Nepalese capital.

Those three young trippers, all Chinese, are part of an international community enjoying the rigors and glamour of Himalayan hiking. Fitted in climbing boots and North Face jackets, they’re hardly distinguishable from thousands of foreigners striding through Nepal’s middle hills to glimpse the spectacular peaks beyond. Although, it’s doubtful if they reflect on the other side of this seemingly impenetrable stretch of the world’s highest mountains. There, after all, lays the Tibetan province of China, their homeland!

These tourists, along with (Chinese) Tibetans, most of them pilgrims, fly into Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport with other foreign visitors. Their flights originate in Chinese cities however, among them Chengdu, Kunming, and Zhengzhou. With numbers increasing annually, China is reportedly now Nepal’s second largest source of tourists. (China is Nepal’s second largest trade partner, too.) Yet these sightseers represent a minor, although personal, aspect of an established Chinese presence in Nepal.

Chinese are also visible in Kathmandu’s business quarter. Here, enterprising agents search out products for export to China. It’s not uncommon to see visitors from Shanghai or Shenzhen negotiating with pashmina shawl wholesalers and jewelry outlets, with dealers in handcrafted wood, silver and brassware, and with distributors of exotic teas and cosmetics.

Hotels catering to Chinese trekkers seem to be wholly Chinese- operated. Some ask how that’s possible given Nepal’s law against foreign ownership; although silent local partnerships are a common arrangement for foreign businesses here.

Nepali shopkeepers find it increasingly hard to complete when Chinese operators pay above market rates. However, one hears few criticisms of the Chinese presence, certainly nothing comparable to hostility directed at Indian business interests.

India and Nepal have a long and checkered relationship– mainly positive. Nepal’s recently ousted line of monarchs originated in India. And Hinduism, Nepal’s dominant religion, is either indistinguishable from Indian Hinduism or is a fusion of Indian and ancient Nepali traditions.

Being landlocked and without a manufacturing base Nepal became increasingly dependent on India– specifically on Indian imports. Its southern neighbor with whom it shares an almost porous border (of 1,088 miles) is Nepal’s main source of electricity, fossil fuels and virtually all manufactured goods as well as fresh produce. This is facilitated by decades of Indian aid for the construction of roads and transmission lines linking the two countries. India has long been the gateway into and out of Nepal.

Politically, India is a kind of mentor. Nepali opposition figures depended on India’s protection during periods of exile; once in power, newly elected leaders customarily make an inaugural visit to India for sanction and support. Nepal accepts its huge trade deficit with India and its cultural and political dominance as inevitable. But how long can this last?

The danger of their imbalance was manifest three years ago when India subjected Nepal to a mean-spirited economic boycott. That happened on the heels of the traumatic 2015 earthquake. In support of the Madeshi people (a Nepali population who inhabit the southern border regions) with their strong cultural and economic affinity, India effectively sanctioned a punishing trade ban on the Nepalese. Anti-Indian feeling generated during that six-month period is still palpable, perhaps one reason Nepal would welcome a cross Himalayan rail route from China.

Tibetans await flight from Kathmandu Airpot (Source: author)

Chinese economic interests in Nepal are not new and not confined to tourism. In recent years Chinese goods– phones, an array of electrical and other household items, and clothing and fresh fruits, most entering by air—have become ubiquitous. Chinese products at prices competitive with Indian goods are everywhere, in village and city. But for China to become a real alternative to India, a land corridor is essential.

For years we’ve heard rumors of a China-Nepal railway route. Today it’s a possibility— forged through Himalayan rock and glacier –and is discussed in practical terms. Consisting primarily of bridges and tunnels blasted through the Himalayas from Tibet, it would meet roads approaching the northern frontier from the south. Given China’s engineering successes domestically and advances in its global Belt and Road Initiative, this project is a real option (where Nepal would invest nothing). Thus far China seems tolerant of Nepal’s engineering incapacities and rampant corruption that undermined past construction projects. A December 2018 review of China’s economic interest in Nepal suggests rising investments in construction, transportation and tourism. Since 2013, it notes, “there have been 229 contracts signed between Chinese companies and Nepal, valued at $3.32 billion with $1.88 billion already closed.”

Nepal sees China increasingly as an alternative to Indian domination. Chinese earthquake support was substantial yet low-key; residents still recall the quiet deliberation with which Chinese medical teams worked. This is addition to quake-damaged road repairs and temple reconstruction by China.

Source: Online

As a major center of living Buddhism, a home to tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees created by China’s harsh anti-religious policies, Nepali’s view of China was very negative in the past. That has clearly changed. The number of Tibetan pilgrims from China is rising, while other Chinese visitors show genuine interest in Nepal’s Buddhist institutions. Increasing numbers of Chinese are evident touring the sacred Buddhist shrines of Bauddhanath and Swayambunath in Kathmandu Valley. And it’s reported that Chinese students attend lectures in Buddhism delivered by Tibetan abbots at monasteries there. We should not be surprised if Han Chinese will be found among acolytes taking vows and donning the red robes of Tibetan monk-hood.

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This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

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.

Featured image: Three Chinese trekkers in Kathmandu. Photo: Barbara Nimri Aziz.

On December 20, 2018, President Donald Trump signed H.R. 1918, the Nicaragua Human Rights and Anticorruption Act of 2018. It was introduced by Miami based, ardent anti-socialist Congresswomen Ros-Lehtinen (image below) in the House of Representatives on April 20, 2017 as the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act (NICA) of 2017. Its short title was ramped-up to remove some of the irony of its passage, given the United States own abysmal electoral system, since the official title remains “to oppose loans at international financial institutions for the Government of Nicaragua unless the Government of Nicaragua is taking effective steps to hold free, fair, and transparent elections, and for other purposes.” The law as listed in the December 11^th Congressional Record now recites a litany of slanderous unsubstantiated allegations voiced by Washington funded and/or controlled Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s), “human rights” organizations and news media outlets. Yet, the standard Nicaragua is held to and is in compliance with is actually violated routinely in the U.S.

Before elaborating on the irony mentioned above and in the article’s title, it’s first necessary to outline: some of President Ortega’s accomplishments; how Washington’s ruling elite perceives them; and lastly, why Washington’s efforts against President Ortega failed to install its coup, just like it did in the 1980’s under the Reagan administration. Then, it will be clear how poorly Trump and the U.S. fair in comparison to New York state-sized socialist Nicaragua.

However, this irony might not be obvious at first due to the virtual news blackout on any information supportive of President Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government. While this is to be expected in mainstream corporate news media, it remains disconcerting to see in alternative news media. The unfortunate reality is that many alt-news outlets have been infiltrated and compromised by the power of neoliberal funding, if not actual CIA operatives. As such, the burden remains squarely on the reader to always be analytical and question each piece of written work. Perhaps alt-news media is reasonable on some issues; however, most are not when it comes to Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) states and viable socialist models.

Even Venezuela’s own Telesur has mostly ignored Nicaragua despite Venezuela being its staunch political ally. Instead of featuring breaking news articles about Nicaragua in its prominent Latin American news section, it merely and occasionally lists supportive articles in its less publicized Opinion section. Telesur even omitted the U.S. attempted coup in Nicaragua in its 2018 recap of The Top 10 Stories from Latin America Witnessed in 2018.

In the United States, respected supposedly alt-news media outlets such as Democracy Now have been damningly interventionist in their coverage of Syria and Libya as well as Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba, the “Troika of Tyranny” as called by U.S. security advisor, John Bolton. While the situation in Nicaragua today is virtually the same as when the Reagan administration unleashed the illegal Contra force upon it, what’s changed is that alt-media has failed to properly inform its base, and also it isolates its given targets with repetitive fake and contradictory news stories. In the case of President Ortega, he isn’t socialist enough; then conversely, he is considered a threat to private enterprise – when none of this has any foundation in truth. The sad result is that the NICA act passed unanimously in the Senate. Consider how similar the words and policies issued by Trump are to those of former President Reagan and how Reagan, a vastly more popular President, was still opposed by Senators and Congresspersons as well as the left. Both Trump and Reagan called impoverished and tiny Nicaragua, a “threat to National Security” and imposed devastating financial sanctions against it, and have funded violent opposition to overthrow its government.

President Daniel Ortega Accomplishments Vs. Washington’s Ruling Elite’s Perception

As a steadfast defender of the impoverished and working class through democratic socialist programs and progressive non-aligned geopolitical and economic relations, Washington’s ruling elite is no fan, to say the least, of President Daniel Ortega. So the fact that he won over 72% of the vote in 2016 remains hotly contested by their lackeys located in Nicaragua and Miami, as President Ortega directly thwarts the progress of their oppressive worldwide neoliberal agenda.

Similarly irksome to its ruling elite is the fact that Washington’s own IMF and World Bank sang President Ortega’s praises as recent as 2018 and noted his successful world-class renewable energy accomplishments. Equally troubling to Washington’s ruling elite is the fact that under President Ortega’s stewardship the people of Nicaragua enjoy: the lowest murder rate in Central America; unprecedented public healthcare and education, and a national police force it can trust and rely upon – since it is founded on the admirable principles of community policing. To the frustration of Washington’s ruling elite, President Ortega’s success in fighting the drug cartels and keeping them out of Nicaragua is also exemplary in a region otherwise plagued by narcotics, weapons, human trafficking and inexplicable violence.

So when all the money in Washington could not ruin President Ortega’s electoral victory, despite its slanderous campaign of lies on mainstream and alt-news & social media through its front organizations such as NED and USAID, and its fascist Opus Dei shills disguised as clergy, Washington then paid, armed and trained foreign drug cartel thugs and local criminals to impersonate student protestors. If Washington’s mercenaries weren’t deadly violent, the contrast between the news media’s photos of them and its captions about them would be comical – as Rambo type men with forearms the size of tree trunks, shown shooting weapons in trained fighting stances, frequently accompanied headlines that read: “Peaceful Student Protestors.”

Starting on April 18, 2018, Washington’s mercenaries infiltrated protests over modest changes to its social security system. Then, their thugs set up roadblocks, and shot-up and firebombed public facilities, and news media stations. Additionally, they intimidated, raped and killed Nicaragua’s police officers, government workers, journalists and Sandinista supporters, as well as peasants and misplaced tourists.

After a few months of siege, local peasants dusted off their guns – that dated back to the overthrow of the U.S. puppet dictator Anastasio Somoza and Washington’s Contras – and fought alongside Nicaragua’s police officers. Collectively they drove out Washington’s 2018 brand of mercenaries. Washington didn’t anticipate the peasant’s participation. They believed President Ortega could be goaded into using his military to remove their mercenaries and thereby give the U.S. a pretext to invade Nicaragua. What Washington and its ruling elite never understand is that it is really difficult to install a coup in a country where the sitting President remains popular and every slanderous remark is ultimately revealed as a blatant lie. Washington’s strategy is to blame President Ortega for victims of its own mercenaries, and to defend its murderous thugs as “political prisoners” through its financially captive human rights and regional organizations. Then, Washington uses these lies to justify the passage of the NICA act – because even the most contemptible U.S. politician has trouble with the irony of this act being signed by Trump, a sitting president that lost the popular vote.

Trump, Electoral Freedom, Repressed Dissent, Imprisonment & Torture in the U.S.

For not only did Trump lose the popular vote, but also he lost it via massive voter suppression against people of color, and the gerrymandering of electoral districts that favor republican candidates.

“According to David Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, Hillary Clinton won a total of 65,844,610 votes – 48.2 percent – compared with Trump’s 62,979,636 votes – 46.1 percent. Other candidates took 7,804,213 ballots, or about 5.7 percent of the popular vote.”

Considering the above referenced results, where is the international outrage on Trump’s presidency and that of the U.S. electoral system? Why isn’t the rest of the world blocking the United States funding until it takes effective steps to hold free, fair, and transparent elections? Could it be that Trump, despite all his embarrassing lies and faults, does the bidding of the ruling elite and is thus protected? He has in fact delivered massive tax cuts to the wealthy and neutered all federal oversight agencies charged with monitoring the elites’ industry & finance as well as gutted agencies charged with protecting public lands and health.

The U.S government has violated many protections afforded its citizens in its Bill of Rights, by virtue of the Patriot Act and its prison system. Under the Patriot Act, protections against surveillance and unreasonable search and seizure are waived. Incarceration can be indeterminate and without charge, as long as there is suspicion of something. And with 2.3 million prisoners, the United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceration rate. It can be argued convincingly that the death penalty and living conditions in prisons constitute cruel and inhuman punishment. Added to the number of prisoners are 41,000 immigrants in detention centers.

Consider that the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011 makes it easier for the U.S. government to criminalize protest. It is a federal offense, punishable by up to 10 years in prison to enter or remain in an area designated as restricted (such as a tar sands pipeline on indigenous land) or to protest anywhere the Secret Service might be guarding someone. In 2013, its military was empowered to attack its citizens through changes in the rules of engagement under the Posse Comitatus Act. Further, its military practices war games against its civilians and acknowledges in its reports that due to the failings of capitalism it is only a matter of time before civil unrest erupts over: scarce resources (i.e. food, water and energy); disparities in wealth and power; collapsing financial systems; climate change and natural disasters.

Accordingly, when politicians cease to be representative and the government is held captive by an oligarchy, then the political system must be abolished as represented in the Declaration of Independence which reads as follows:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Presently Trump has shut down the United States government and, without winning the popular vote, he has no mandate. Perhaps it’s time for U.S. citizens to exercise their constitutional rights? Could this be the real concern of its ruling elite that its own citizens may become emboldened by the progressive policies of President Daniel Ortega and the fearlessness of Nicaragua’s citizens, and that they too might pick up their dusty weapons and use them to remove the elite and their lackeys from power? Probably not, this would first require U.S. citizens turn off Netflix, put down their beer can, slice of pizza and joint. It seems U.S. Americans are happy to remain lost in a sea of amusements until prison doors slam shut directly behind them. Only, then will it be too late?

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This article was originally published on tortillaconsal.com

Lauren Smith has a BA in Politics, Economics and Society from SUNY at Old Westbury and an MPA in International Development Administration from New York University. Her historical fiction novel based on Nicaragua’s 1979 revolution is due out in 2019.

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In Pictures: The Largest Strike in History Is Happening in India Right Now

By Ben Cowles, January 09, 2019

Around 150 million people began a two-day general strike in India today against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anti-Labour and anti-trade union policies in India.

A Majority of Americans Do Not Believe the Official 9/11 Story

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, January 09, 2019

The media has NEVER EXAMINED the evidence or explained the analysis provided by scientists, architects, engineers, pilots, and the first responders who experienced the explosions of the World Trade Center twin towers.

Everything the Western Mainstream Media Outlets Get Wrong When Covering Poor Countries

By Tamara Pearson, January 09, 2019

From de-prioritizing the lives of locals in poor countries, to downplaying global inequality, racism, and condescension, the way Western news agencies do international news is deeply harmful.

GM Crops, Pesticides, Corporate Duplicity: Bayer Has Never Been Transparent in Its Life!

By Colin Todhunter, January 09, 2019

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

The War on Syria: Are the White Helmets preparing another Chemical Weapons False Flag?

By Mark Taliano, January 09, 2019

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

War Criminals at Large

By Dr. Daniele Ganser, January 09, 2019

The historical facts for the period from 1945 to today show a completely different reality: time and again, democratic states in Europe and North America have participated in wars of aggression and terrorist attacks in the past 70 years.

President Trump’s Losing Strategy: Embracing Bolsonoro’s Brazil and Confronting China

By Prof. James Petras, January 09, 2019

The US embraces a regime doomed to failure and threatens the world’s most dynamic economy. President Trump has lauded Brazil’s newly elected President Jair Bolsonaro and promises to promote close economic, political, social and cultural ties.

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Ankara has asked the US to hand over 16 of its military bases in northern Syria to Turkey or to local authorities in the region after the U.S. withdraws, presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın said on January 8 after discussions with U.S. officials.

“We are pleased with Trump’s decision for withdrawal [from Syria], but it needs to be clarified as to what kind of structure will be left behind, what will happen to the heavy weapons that have been deployed, the fate of American military bases and logistics centers. In this meeting we discussed these in detail,” Kalın stressed.

He added that the US withdrawal should not allow “new opportunities for terrorist organizations or other elements, including the PYD/YPG.”

Earlier, Ankara repeatedly vowed that the US has to collect the weapons and equipment, which they had supplied to Kurdish armed groups in Syria. However, this demand as well as the transfer of US infrastructure to Turkey seems unrealistic.

These statements are a public part of the ongoing negotiations between Turkey and the US over the situation in northern Syria, primarly in Manbij. Similar negotiations are now ongoing between the Russian-Iranian-Syrian alliance and Turkey as well as between the alliance and Kurdish armed groups. However, the sides have achieved no significant progress thus far. This can be tracked by monitoring the current areas of the Syrian Army and Russian military police deployment near Manbij. They still only control several positions west of the town. If they withdraw, this would mean that the Kurdish leadership has once again rejected all proposals from Damascus and its allies. If  they enter Manbij or expand their control near it, this would show progress.

In the Idlib de-escalation zone, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has captured several new areas from Turkish-backed factions in northwestern Hama and southern Idlib establishing control of about a dozen of villages.

Meanwhile, pro-government forces have repelled several fresh infiltration attempts by militant groups in northern Hama, in the area close to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-held area. Attacks were carried out from the directions of al-Latamina, Mourek and Ma’arkiba. According to Syrian state media, militants have suffered significant casualties and failed to capture any positions.

Syrian state-run media reports on ceasefire violations by militant groups operating in the Idlib de-escalation zone on a constant basis. In turn, the “opposition” also accuses the Damascus government of violating the ceasefire.

However, this situation could change in the nearest future in the event of further Hayat Tahrir al-Sham expansion in southern Idlib. If the terrorist group consolidates its gains and expands areas under its control across the de-escalation zone, the situation in the demilitarized zone near the province of Idlib will likely deteriorate further. This development would undermine all the previous efforts of Damascus, Russia, Iran and Turkey to de-escalate the situation in this part of the country.

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Sixty years ago Canada did not break diplomatic relations with Cuba while the OAS expelled Cuba from the organization after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Today the OAS remains firm with its mandate of no interference while Canada is leading an illegitimate splinter of OAS countries, self-anointed as Lima Group, to push for regime change in Venezuela. That is irresponsible and dangerous.

At this time sixty years ago Cuba had just won its revolution through a popular uprising that overthrew a dictator. Two years later in 1961 the US masterminded a false flag invasion of Cuba that failed. Later, in 1962 the Organization of American States (OAS) turned against Cuba and expelled it from the organization isolating the country until 2009 when the OAS invited Cuba to join again. Cuba declined. The US has maintained a progressively squeezing unilateral trade and financial blockade on the island since 1960.

Since that January 1, 1959 Canada has taken mostly an independent stance on Cuba and has maintained diplomatic and commercial relationships with the country. Even today when the US government places Cuba as a member of the “troika of tyranny” together with Nicaragua and Venezuela, the Canadian government is practicing a formal association with the Cuban government still overtly declared socialist. It may well be in order to protect the extensive interests built over time without the competition of US businesses. But that is a different topic.

Today in a different socialist revolution in Venezuela we have a reversed situation.

Hugo Chavez has won the presidency of Venezuela through democratic ballots in 1999, as current president Nicolas Maduro did in 2013. All 25 elections at different levels in the last twenty years have been democratic and constitutional with participation of opposition parties. This is an undeniable truth despite misinformation from the compromised media and governments.

Unlike its past position towards Cuba, the OAS has repeatedly refused to condemn Venezuela even under the strongest pressure from Washington. The organization has seen fit to abide by the OAS Charter of 1948 that in Article 19, Chapter IV states:

“No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements.”

Breaking that explicit mandate and contrary to its independent position with respect to Cuba sixty years ago, Ottawa has been instrumental in the creation of the so-called Lima Group with the sole mission of regime change in Venezuela.

For the record it has to be emphasized that the “Lima Group” is not an international organization. It’s just an ad hoc group of governments with no other purpose than to promotes the overthrow of the legitimate Maduro government.

Permanent Council to consider Situation in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Source: OAS)

In that context its latest declaration that calls to not recognize Maduro’s presidency beginning with the inauguration ceremony on January 10, and to impose various other forms of “punishment”, cannot to be taken as a formal resolution issued by an established international body like the OAS or the UN. Unfortunately, the Venezuelan opposition conveniently chooses to take it that way. For example, the self appointed members of the “Supreme Court of Justice” in exile issued their own call to “recognize the Lima Group resolution.” That is extremely misleading, irresponsible and dangerous.

The “Lima Group” of 13 governments (out of 33 OAS member States), signatories of the declaration (Argentina, Brasil, Canadá, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru y Saint Lucia), is totally illegitimate in its pretension to be an international body. The group wants to achieve outside the OAS what it could not achieve within the OAS. Ultimately, it will have to be held accountable as the foreign ideological instigator of any violence that might occur in Venezuela.

Despite the above necessary explanation of a clear international illegal act that tramples on the sovereignty of another country, it is important to broaden the perspective of the situation by highlighting two points. First of all, the Mexican government, although member of the “Lima Group”, has not endorsed its document. More sensibly, it justified its abstention by requesting that an open dialogue be established with the government of Venezuela instead of imposing isolation and threats. Mexico was another country that maintained diplomatic relations with Cuba 60 years ago. It seems to be more consistent than Canada.

Secondly, by a reported count, it appears that the majority of countries in the world will accept the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro’s presidency and will recognize his government for the next six years. In fact, a few heads of State may even attend the inauguration ceremony on January 10 in Caracas.

In concluding however, not for one second anybody should expect that the elected president of Venezuela, or of any other country for that matter, must be declared legitimate by any foreign State. That privilege belongs only to the six million 244 thousand Venezuelans, representing 32% of the total number of people with the right to vote, with more than 4 million votes ahead of the candidate who came in second, and with a voter participation of 48%. By all accounts Venezuelans have chosen their president democratically for the next six years. That is the meaning of self-determination.

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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014).

Marking up the Arc de Triomphe, smashing the face of the Marianne statue, a symbol of the French state, and trashing private property along the Champs-Elysees will be considered minor incidents if the Yellow Vests pull off their next move—an organized run on the banks. 

According to activist Tahz San, the aim of the latest protest is to “scare this (French) state completely legally and without any violence, yet more effectively than ever expected.” 

The Associated Press reports Gilets Jaunes activists “hope the move will force the government to listen to their demands, notably their call for more direct democracy through the implementation of popular votes that allow citizens to propose new laws.”

Instead of listening to the demands of a majority of the French people—polls show around 80% support for the movement—the state will roll out the military and pass a draconian law criminalizing organized protest. 

On Tuesday, the BBC reported:

Speaking on French TV channel TF1, Prime Minister Philippe said the government would support a “new law punishing those who do not respect the requirement to declare [protests], those who take part in unauthorized demonstrations and those who arrive at demonstrations wearing face masks”.

Moreover, the French state will ban activists—described as “known troublemakers”—from participating in demonstrations. In order to make identifying and singling out these activists more easy, the government will also outlaw face masks. 

Bloomberg:

The protesters will face tougher penalties for taking part in undeclared demonstrations, covering their faces, and would be required to pay for the damage they cause, Philippe said on France’s TF1 television. More than 80,000 police officers will be mobilized nationwide for an expected fresh round of protests next Saturday, he said.

Budget Minister Gerald Darmanin urged the state to exercise “ultra-severity” against French citizens opposed to being fleeced and ignored. 

For a former French minister, the only appropriate response by the state is murder. Luc Ferry has called for police to shoot and kill protesters attacking police. 

Violence and murder are a reflexive response by the state when its authority is challenged and other tactics—for instance, demonizing protesters as either right or left extremists—fail to put an end to protests. 

Nothing short of a police state will work to discourage further protests. The French government has plenty of experience along these lines, having declared a state of emergency on numerous occasions, most recently in 2015 after a series of terrorist attacks in Paris. France first implemented an état d’urgence in 1955 during the Algerian war. The law resulted in house arrests, censorship, searches, curfew, restrictions on public gatherings, and forbidding people from entering a defined area. 

Shutting down protests, arresting activists, and even murdering them will not put an end to the Gilets Jaunes movement.

The French elite apparently suffer from amnesia. In the 1700s, the average French citizen spent half his or her wages on bread, thus leading to deadly bread riots and eventually the fall of the Bastille. The French ruling class, the monarchy, faced the guillotine in response to its neglect and parasitical behavior. 

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from WSWS

The massage of Chairman Kim Jong-un‘s 2019 New Year speech was mainly addressed to the people of North Korea; he was telling his people the need for constructing a “New Socialism” that can allow North Korea to survive and prosper, even if the current peace process does not fully succeed.

The “New Socialism” is protected by the Juche philosophy, enforced by the principles of egalitarian distribution of wealth and income. and made more efficient by harmonious relation between the free market et the government-run economy.

The speech is divided into three themes: the economic system based on the new socialism, North South relations and the nuclear issue.

Of these three themes, the most important one is about the new socialism which takes up as much as 70% of the speech. The part dealing with the North-South relations represents about 10% leaving remaining 20% for the issues of denuclearization

1. New Socialism

In the mind of Chairman Kim, the new socialism must be embodied into the economic system. The new economic system is a system which is capable of providing, for the people, equal opportunity to participate in economic activities andequal benefits of economic development. The most important basis of the new socialism is the Juche philosophy which stresses the absolute importance of self reliance in thought and self sufficiency in economic matters. In fact, up to now, one of the most significant factors responsible for the survival of the North Korean regime, despite the terrible sanctions, has been the Juche philosophy.

Chairman Kim Jong-un announced in his speech the basic approach to the development of the major sectors of the economy including the primary sector, the manufacturing sector and the service industry represented by the tourist industry. Chairman Kim tells the people what to do and how to do in order to improve the productivity and the creativity of each sector.

Another important element of his new socialism is the balance between the free market economy and the government-run economy. In the new socialism, the free market is allowed but it should be in harmony with the government-run (Party-run) economy. However, the speech is not clear on the demarcation line between the two regimes; this is one of the major challenges of the new socialism.

Chairman Kim seems to be aware of the fact that without honesty, competence and strong devotion, the new socialism cannot succeed. He specifically mentions what he expects form his government and party officials. He warns against the abuse of power conferred to the government institutions and officials. He provides an important space in his speech for the danger of bureaucracy and the damaging effect of corruption.

He is keenly aware of what has happened in the South. The conservative government’s abuse of power and corruption has led to the worst case of wealth and income inequality, which is now threatening the very growth of the South Korean economy.

In his speech, Chairman Kim is saying that the raison d’être of the new socialism is the happiness of the people. He is saying that the whole system is for the people and run by the people. This point is repeated countless times in Chairman’s speech.

However, the whole system should be managed under the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). Here, Chairman Kim’s doctrine is a departure from his father’s and grandfather’s position; these two leaders were above the party.

Nevertheless, Chairman Kim makes efforts to show that his new socialism does respect his ancestors’ vision of the society; his vision of the future is in harmony with the aspiration of the past. This is symbolically shown in the selection of the speech site and his manner of delivering the speech.

He delivered his speech in an office where the pictures of his father and grandfather were behind and above his armchair where he was sitting. These pictures represented the past which Chairman Kim Jong-un cherishes and respects.

The manner of delivering the speech was also an important aspect of Chairman’s speech. He tried to show his readiness to accept a new model of leadership away from his ancestors’ authoritarian leadership; he wanted to show that he is not above the Party; he wanted to show that he can lead his people like any other leaders of the civilized world. It is not by chance that he was wearing a Western suit with a simple tie; he read down the text with no applause.

Chairman Kim Jong-un tries to show the harmony between the past and the future. In the past, the North Korean socialism was represented by kimilsungisme and kimjongilism; this doctrine had three ingredients: Juche philosophy, egalitarian distribution of wealth and income and Confucian value. Under Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, the Confucian value was very important; the leader was conceived as benevolent Confucian father and the people must obey the leader like Confucian son or daughter. In the new socialism (kimjongunism), the Confucian value seems to be replaced, partly, by the authority of the Workers’ Party

2. North-South Relations

The part of Chairman Kim’s speech reserved for the North-South relations is small but the message is clear. The fate of the Korean race and the Korean peninsula is entirely determined by Koreans in the North and the South and no interventions of outside forces are tolerated in the matter of determining the future of the Korean peninsula.

Some of the media of the West seem to take this as narrow-minded nationalism and even possible factor of making cracks in the Seoul-Washington alliance. I believe that it is more than natural that Koreans decide themselves their own future. If the Seoul-Washington alliance is damaged because of this nationalism, the alliance is not worthwhile.

The second massage related to the North-South relations is that the North has been doing its best to create peace and common prosperity. Through the three North-South summits, a firm mutual commitment for peace and mutual prosperity has been made. Above all, by virtue of the Military Agreement of September 2018, wide military buffer zones were established; in these zones, no military exercises are allowed. The military liaison offices have been established; the DMZ has been demilitarized. These measures are telling the world that there will be no more war on the Korean peninsula.

These messages have an important implication for Washington’s Korea policies. South Korea has sent a non-equivocal message to Washington that the US should think twice before attacking North Korea. Even though the war-time military control is in the hands of Washington, it could be difficult to mobilize the South Korean forces in time of war against North Korea without the consent of the South Korean government; it is unlikely that Seoul would give such consent.

Thus, the North-South military agreement would compel Washington to reconsider its military strategy for the Korean peninsula.

Chairman Kim’s speech touches another important part of the North-South relations. It is the economic relations. One thing is clear; Pyongyang desperately needs economic development, for the very survival of the regime depends on it. South Korea also needs very badly the development of the North Korean economy.

The economy of South Korea has shown deep malaise in recent years. Obviously many factors explain this trend, but the basic reason is the conservative government’s 58 years of pro-Chaebol and pro-export policies that have inevitably led to the Chaebols-government collusion, which, in turn, has produced the culture of corruption. Once the corruption culture is settled in, the fair trade, the creativity and the productivity of the economy are hard to maintain. The result is clear; the culture of corruption hurts severely the international competitiveness of Chaebols and South Korea. The internal mismanagement of business, the wasteful horizontal expansion of companies and the illegal corporative activities of Chaebols are also significant factor of weakening competitiveness of the Korea economy.

What is more damaging is the shrinking trickling-down effects of Chaebols’ business on job creation. Chaebols enjoy almost unlimited privileges given by the government and get the lion share of financial and human resources allocation, but they create only 15% of jobs.

Chaebols exports create fewer jobs because of automation of the production of goods exported on the one hand and, on the other hand, the increasing use of imported parts used for the production of goods exported. Moreover, the pro-Chaebol and pro-export policy has alienated the small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) resulting in dangerously unequal income distribution in favour of Chaebols. Remember this. The SMEs represent 99.9% of the total number of enterprises and 85% of jobs. Decreasing income of SME workers worsens the income distribution.

It is now common knowledge that the good way to revitalize the South Korean economy is to participate actively in the process of the economic development of the North Korea. The combination of the South’s money and technology with the North’s immense natural resources ad low-cost well disciplined labour force would surely open a way to the rapid development of the North’s economy and, at the same time, the revival of the dynamism of the South’s economy.

In his speech, Chairman Kim expressed the ideas of reopening the Gaesung Industrial Complex and Mt. Keumgang-San tourist resorts. These two establishments are the proof of the legitimacy, the creativity and the productivity of North-South cooperation; they show that economic benefice can overcome ideological divide.

The essence of Chairman’s speech regarding the North-South relations is this. The North-South cooperation is vital not only for the peace process but also for common economic interest; it will continue regardless of the outcome of Washington-Pyongyang negotiations.

3. Denuclearization 

Regarding the issue of denuclearization, Chairman Kim delivered the following messages.

First, he has officially declared, through his own voice, in front of the world, that he is ready for “complete denuclearisation”. It is the first time that he declared himself his pledge for FFVD (Final Fully Verified Denuclearization); this is a clear manifestation of Kim’s sincere commitment for denuclearization.

Second, he promised the four “Nos” regarding nuclear weapons: “No Production”, “No Use”, “No Tests” and “No Proliferation”. In fact, these pledges constitute a moratorium on the existing nuclear weapons.

Chairman Kim did not mention anything about the disposal of the existing nuclear weapons. This is the matter to be negotiated with Washington.

Third, Chairman Kim is ready to meet President Trump any time to produce an outcome that would be welcomed by the international community. This means that he has something that would meet Washington’s demand.

But, there is still deep mistrust between Pyongyang and Washington; this is not surprising; after all, they have been enemies for 70 years. Washington seems suspicious about Pyongyang as Pyongyang mistrusts Washington.

What Washington wants is pre-FFVD and post- compensation (lifting of sanctions) But what Pyongyang desires is sequential simultaneous gives-and-takes which means gradual FFVD matched by gradual compensations. In this way, the mutual mistrust can be dissipated. As long as Washington insists on its previous position, Pyongyang will not go; the whole process may end.

Fourth, this is important. Chairman Kim says that, if President Trump does not fulfill the Singapore agreement, he will go “May way”. There are various interpretations of this statement. There are some who are saying that North Korea might resume nuclear testing and missile launching. But this is absurd; after all, Kim promised the four Nos.

Hence, there must be some other hidden meaning. There are two possible scenarios.

First, North Korea will go to China asking it to lift the sanctions. This could, of course, increase the Sino-US tension, but, given the commercial war and technology battle, China might increase its economic cooperation with North Korea even risking secondary sanctions against it. Chairman Kim’s visit to Beijing on January 7 might provide a chance to discuss possible alternative means to bring peace on the Korean peninsula..

Second, Chairman Kim is telling the North Korean people to be ready to build a new socialist country, even if the peace process with Washington fails. Here is what he said:

“Our country can march forward and build our socialism suitable to our needs through the determination and the efforts of our people; we can do this without any external aid.”

What comes out of Chairman Kim’s speech is this. North Korea is ready for FFVD but it cannot go any further, unless Washington trusts Pyongyang and provides rewards which are acceptable to Chairman Kim and his people.

It is hoped that the coming Washington-Pyongyang Summit will be able to write the last page of the Cold War.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is co-director of the East Asia Observatory (OAE), the Study Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM), University of Quebec -Montreal Campus (UQAM) He is a Research Associate of the Centre  for Research on Globalization.

New year occasions, given the pleasant fiction it entails, are times to change.  Resolutions are made by that delightful species Homo sapiens, hope packaged for quick delivery to those who promise change.  The weak will become stronger; the strong will show humility.  The venal, well, they just might change. 

Human nature suggests the opposite, and 2019 has begun with an unsurprisingly consistent thud from the White House.  The House Democrats have barricaded themselves on one side; President Donald Trump mans the opposing positions.  A partial government shutdown has been in effect for almost three weeks.  But the new year tidings have merely made the president more insistent.  He demands $5.7 billion to construct a steel barrier as part of the border fortifications along the US-Mexico border, and reminds Democrats that they did, in 2006, vote for a physical barrier of 1,120 km.  Overall, he insists this is small beer, as Mexico will fund the wall through a rejigged North American Free Trade Agreement.  Mexican officials and politicians beg to differ, as they always have.

In his January 8 address, the president insisted on a “growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border” (growth of a crisis is a common Trump theme).  That particular “southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl.  Every week 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border.”

Source: The New York Times

For Trump, selective culling and trimming is essential to any message that winds its way to the public sphere that can be dared called a forum.  He edits texts, perceptions and accounts to oblivion, putting in place his distinct variation.  Where there is something minor, there is bound to be a catastrophe.  Where there is a calamity, it is bound to be distinctly minor. 

This was his view on the use of emergency powers as described by Adam Smith, the sort he hopes to use in dealing with getting funds to resolve his Mexican problem, thereby ending the “humanitarian” and “security” crisis.  Doing so would enable him to access sources otherwise frozen by the current shut down. 

“Congressman Adam Smith, the new Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, just stated, ‘Yes, there is a provision in law that says a president can declare an emergency.  It’s been done a number of times.’”   

That tweet is, as is the Trump method, right and wrong, and even he hopes to make sure that the work is best done through Congress.  Smith did tell ABC News’s This Week that emergency powers were available to be invoked.  But, as ever, the qualifying statement follows. “In this case, I think the president would be wide open to a court challenge saying, ‘Where is the emergency?’  You have to establish that in order to do this.’”  Those words to George Stephanopoulos have managed to make their way into the ether of forgetting, as is the Trump way.

Political emergencies tend to be confections and propagations, puffed realities advanced by demagogues and figures of desperation.  The issue of a Mexican emergency on the border has always been far-fetched, but last Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was insisting that there were 4,000 suspected or known terrorists who had been caught attempting to enter freedom’s land, with Mexico being the “most vulnerable point of entry”.  Such a statement implied that Mexico was playing its own irresponsible part in ensuing this vulnerability to prosper.  A qualifier was subsequently made by White House advisor Kellyanne Conway: the figures used in rather cavalier fashion by Sanders had been from 2017 for the whole set of attempted entrants.

Trump has some latitude in redirecting military funds by a declaration of a formal emergency under the National Emergencies Act of 1976.  The threshold is surprisingly low, a more than generous nod towards executive flexibility in determining what might constitute a state of sufficient disturbance.  What matters from Trump’s perspective is showing how the border wall would fit into the category of a military fortification.  While his judgment might well be challenged in court, the issue of standing for any opponents will be problematic. 

Trump has been attempting to make his own crusted resolutions, which seem very much like those made in 2018.  For man quick to disturb and disrupt, he remains painfully, and sometime ineffectively, consistent.  Even he found the issue of giving his January 8 address a bit of a bore, and did his boring best to remind us why he feels the Democrats should throw their lot in to assist the wall project.    

Opponents should now know that the way through the man’s heart is to anticipate the proffering of a promise that can only be made by giving the impression that his wishes will be satisfied, only to then adjust the outcome.  Pretend, and let the rest go.  But politics in the Trump era remains, for the moment, ruled by a classic misapprehension: that the tweet is not only the message, but the whole message, to be attacked for its facts, presumed or otherwise.  Treat it seriously at your own peril.  As things stand after the January 8 speech, the words of Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan are as accurate as any: “Nobody convinced anybody.”   

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

The Central Bank of Russia has moved further away from reliance on the US dollar and has axed its share in the country’s foreign reserves to a historic low, transferring about $100 billion into euro, Japanese yen and Chinese yuan.

Justin Trudeau likes making high-minded sounding statements that make him seem progressive but change little. The Prime Minister’s declaration marking “Haiti’s Independence Day” was an attempt of the sort, which actually demonstrates incredible ignorance, even antipathy, towards the struggle against slavery.

In his statement commemorating 215 years of Haitian Independence, the Prime Minister failed to mention slavery, Haiti’s revolution and how that country was born of maybe the greatest example of liberation in the history of humanity. From the grips of the most barbaric form of plantation economy, the largely African-born slaves delivered a massive blow to slavery, colonialism and white supremacy.

Before the 1791 revolt the French colony of Saint Domingue was home to 450,000 people in bondage. At its peak in the 1750s the ‘Pearl of the Antilles’ provided as much as 50 per cent  of France’s GNP. Super profits were made from using African slaves to produce sugar, cocoa, coffee, cotton, tobacco, indigo and other commodities.

The slaves put a stop to that with a merciless struggle that took advantage of divisions between ‘big white’ land/slave owners, racially empowered though poorer ‘small whites’ and a substantial ‘mulatto’ land/slave owning class. The revolt rippled through the region and compelled the post-French Revolution government in Paris to abolish slavery in its Caribbean colonies. Between 1791 and 1804 ‘Haitians’ would defeat tens of thousands of French, British and Spanish troops (Washington backed France financially), leading to the world’s first and only successful large-scale slave revolution. The first nation of free people in the Americas, Haiti established a slave-free state 60 years before the USA’s emancipation proclamation. (It wasn’t until after this proclamation ending slavery that the US recognized Haiti’s independence.)

The Haitian Revolution’s geopolitical effects were immense. It stimulated the Louisiana Purchase and London’s 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The revolutionary state also provided important support to South American independence movements.

Canada’s rulers at the time opposed the slave revolt. In a bid to crush the ex-slaves before their example spread to the English colonies, British forces invaded Haiti in 1793. Halifax, which housed Britain’s primary naval base in North America, played its part in London’s efforts to capture one of the world’s richest colonies (for the slave owners). Much of the Halifax-based squadron arrived on the shores of the West Indies in 1793, and many of the ships that set sail to the Caribbean at this time were assembled in the town’s naval yard. Additionally, a dozen Nova Scotia privateers captured at least 57 enemy vessels in the West Indies between 1793 and 1805. “Essential tools of war until the rise of large steam navies”, the privateers also wanted to protect the British Atlantic colonies’ lucrative Caribbean market decimated by French privateers. For a half-century Nova Scotia and Newfoundland generated great wealth selling cheap, high-protein cod to keep millions of “enslaved people working 16 hours a day”.

A number of prominent Canadian-born (or based) individuals fought to capture and re-establish slavery in the French colonies. Dubbed the “Father of the Canadian Crown”, Prince Edward Duke of Kent departed for the West Indies aboard a Halifax gunboat in 1793. As a Major General, he led forces that captured Guadalupe, St. Lucia and Martinique. Today, many streets and monuments across the country honour a man understood to have first applied the term “Canadian” to both the English and French inhabitants of Upper and Lower Canada.

Other “Canadians” played a part in Britain’s effort to corner the lucrative Caribbean slave plantations. Born into a prominent Québec military family, Charles Michel Salaberry “was part  of successful invasions of Saint-Dominique [Haiti], Guadeloupe and Martinique.” A number of monuments commemorate Salaberry, including the city in Québec named Salaberry-de-Valleyfield.

To commemorate Haitian independence the Secretary General of the Caribbean Community, Irwin LaRocque, also released a statement. Unlike Trudeau, LaRocque “congratulated” Haiti and described the day as “a timely reminder of the historic importance of the Haitian Revolution and its continued significance as a symbol of triumph over adversity in the quest for liberty, equality and control of national destiny.”

Trudeau should have said something similar and acknowledged Canadians’ role in the slave trade and crimes against the free people of Haiti.

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France is at a crossroad. A fairly benign bread-and-butter protest has turned into a major popular dissent putting in question France’s political system. It is new, unheard of, and because we live in the digital age, with immediate communication, the world is not only watching, but there is a contagious factor to it, which in the Anglo-Saxon world is called “Yellow Vests Movement”. In what could be a healthy contagion of a social yellow fever of dissent, this polymorphic movement has already spread to 25 countries and counting. In the immediate vicinity of France, of course, in countries such as Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, but also while not clearly identified as Gilets Jaunes chapters in Hungary, Bulgaria and Serbia. It has reached the Middle East with activities in Israel and Iraq, and the Americas with startup movements, still trying to structure themselves, in the United States and Canada. Is this explosion of dissent merely some short lived copycat effects or is a deeper systemic change in process or, in another word, the catalyst of a historical paradigm shift in real time. France is, for now, the main social battle ground, and critical test of the movement.

The Gilets Jaunes protesters have faced brutal police repression from the Macron administration. The “Macronie”, as some Gilets Jaunes say with humor, has not reacted to what the French mainstream media call “les casseurs” violent actions to diffuse the crisis, but instead has decided to used brutal force which was met by the condemnations of human rights organization such as Amnesty International. Eleven Gilets Jaunes have died so far, and more than 250 have been seriously injured, often crippled for life from the excessive use of rubber bullets and explosive tear gas grenades. This never seen before level of police brutality, not condemned by France’s mainstream media, is utterly shameful in the country that invented the principle of universal human rights declared in June 1793 regardless of race, religion and gender.

The route of police brutality, specifically ordered by the state, has had a reverse effect, and ,in return, has radicalized some Gilets Jaunes elements. An important question must be raised in term of the fine line that could be further crossed by the French administration: what level of state violence against its own citizens is acceptable before turning a democracy into an authoritarian regime? In other words, at what critical point a democracy mutate into a dictatorship? Prescient British author Aldous Huxley probably said it better than anyone else in his book “Brave New World” published in 1931.

“The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would be basically a prison without walls……it would essentially be a system of slavery where through consumption and entertainment the slaves would love their servitude”

Nasty “Brave New World”, indeed, with the brutal globalization of governing corporate elites and their respective political servants, media sycophants, other proxies and finally their mercenaries. This cannibalistic global capitalism has failed populations worldwide, and brought a lot of people to the condition of modern day slaves. Slavery or feudalism was always the ideal social structure for capitalists, that is before the so called industrial revolution of the mid 1800s. Exploitative and industrial it was, but certainly not revolutionary in any shape or form. In fact, one can argue that the systematic exploitation of labor, even child labor in coal mines, was one of the worst kind of historical regression in human history, and in essence similar to the one of Africans brought to the Americas by Europeans in this despicable crime against humanity.

The perversity of it all is mind bugling. Take the United States, for example, which often describes itself as “leader of the free world” or in the words of Ronald Reagan a “shinning city upon a hill”, it was in reality built on two deadly sins, two horrendous crimes: the genocide of native populations, which is still “celebrated” at Thanksgiving, and of course the very peculiar and lucrative institution that was slavery. Now a day, everyone talks about Fake News, what about talking about fake history.

One should be cautiously optimistic, because what has become a stand off between the power of the French state apparatus, and some of its citizens is very much in flux. But that said, the Gilets Jaunes movement, still in its infancy, has already brought hope worldwide to the poor, the oppressed, the ones that have been forgotten and even discarded by the world ruling elites like insignificant human garbage. Hope for a better tomorrow in a very harsh world, hope for empathy against a system built on selfishness and pure greed. At heart, and let’s hope it stays that way and doesn’t mutate in its spirit, the Gilets Jaunes are the foot soldiers of inclusion, to reclaim for everyone a sense of community and brotherhood, fighting against the perversity of a criminal world order that is taking humanity through immense sufferings towards the final precipice of extinction.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: News Junkie Post.

Gilbert Mercier is the author of “The Orwellian Empire“.

All images in this article are from Patrice Calatayu.