At home, Saudi Arabia’s media trumpeted Mohammed bin Salman’s meetings with world leaders, tweeting pictures of his encounters, which also included the presidents of South Korea, Mexico, and South Africa.
However, Western leaders appeared to avoid the crown prince during the family photo at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires – after almost two months of global outrage at the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The only Arab leader there, the prince stood rather isolated at the end of the line, at times looking uncertain and nervous.
Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri kept the prince hanging on when it came to finding time to talk.
During an informal conversation on the sidelines of the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron was overheard admonishing Mohammed, saying he “never listened”, while the crown prince tried to assure him that “it’s OK”. French officials later said the men were discussing the killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and the war in Yemen.
Similarly, British Prime Minister Theresa May opted to focus on those two topics, rather than economics and trade as her country struggles with the uncertainty of Brexit, the UK’s departure from the European Union. May insisted Riyadh needed “to build confidence that such a deplorable incident could not happen again”, referring to the Saudi team sent to Turkey to murder Khashoggi.
The message Prince Mohammed probably took home from the G20 summit was that illiberal democratic, authoritarian and autocratic leaders were happy to do business with the kingdom and the crown prince despite persistent assertions that he ordered the killing.
Trump and western Europe’s leaders appeared to play to public opinion but do nothing to threaten their relations with the kingdom. The US president also chose not to have a formal meeting with Prince Mohammed’s foremost detractor, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The crown prince may also have been heartened that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, which Saudi Arabia had a diplomatic row with earlier this year, was the only leader to raise the Khashoggi issue during the G20’s formal proceedings.
Other US allies made clear the kingdom’s financial largesse and willingness to guarantee the flow of oil would go a long way to ensure they would choose realism above principle.
The Saudi Press Agency reported after Mohammed’s meeting with Modi that the crown prince pledged to meet India’s oil and petroleum product needs.
But the prince is not out of the woods yet. The kingdom, eager to project itself as a regional and world power, has suffered significant damage to its reputation which will take time and hard work to repair.
Just how hard depends on whether the US Congress decides to sanction Riyadh, if the Europeans will follow suit, and on Turkey successfully pushing for an international investigation into the killing.
“We have never seen Khashoggi’s murder as a political issue,” Erdogan told a news conference in Buenos Aires. “For Turkey, the incident is and will remain a flagrant murder within the Islamic world. International public opinion will not be satisfied until all those responsible for his death are revealed.”
He described Saudi Arabia’s response to the killing as “unbelievable”.
Yemenis queuing up to get their daily bread rations from a food aid distribution centre in Sanaa, Yemen, on November 28, 2018. Photo: Xinhua
Prince Mohammed’s case was not helped by the leak of a CIA report saying he sent 11 messages to Saud al-Qahtani – a former close aide – at the time Khashoggi was killed. However, the intelligence agency admitted it lacked direct evidence of the crown prince “issuing a kill order”.
Qahtani has been accused of overseeing the killing and been fired from his position as Mohammed’s adviser and information tsar. He has also been sanctioned by Washington.
The CIA claims Prince Mohammed told associates in August 2017 they “could possibly lure [Khashoggi] outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements” if the Washington Post columnist refused to return to the kingdom from the US.
Nevertheless, the G20 summit suggests Prince Mohammed and the kingdom may have taken their first step towards putting the Khashoggi affair behind them. Even if US lawmakers slap sanctions on the kingdom, the prince is likely to remain secure in his position as king-in-waiting.
Keeping Khashoggi in the headlines will prove increasingly difficult as it seems much of the world has signalled that it is moving on.
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As expected, the report primarily focuses on Russian influence, since other influence from the EU and the US cannot be considered any sort of influence, especially not bad. It also primarily focuses on Ukraine.
In the section dubbed “Security Assistance in the Short and Medium Terms,” the situation in the Sea of Azov is highlighted.
“Russia is currently occupying and militarizing Ukrainian Crimea, conducting a simmering, hybrid war in the Donbas, and obstructing Ukrainian shipping in the Sea of Azov.”
Furthermore, the section looked at the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008, claiming that Russian “peacekeeper in South Ossetia periodically move the line of demarcation farther into Georgia.”
The US and NATO provided training to both Ukraine and Georgia. And under the Donald Trump administration, the US, “at long last” provided Javelin missiles to both countries.
Furthermore, the US may and should also consult with Georgia and Ukraine for further military assistance, according to the report.
“It would also be useful for the United States and the EU to consider a proactive use of sanctions to deter further Kremlin aggression. To date, sanctions have been used to punish the Kremlin for past sins, but they also can be used to discourage further aggression.” Giving as an example, that the Kremlin “keeps taking more territory in the Donbass,” despite the ceasefire. Also, despite that even the OSCE doubts that there are signs of Russian participation in the region.
Furthermore, the report also presents a suggestion on fighting “Russian aggression and provocations” in the Sea of Azov.
“The United States and the EU should also look closely at Kremlin provocations in the Sea of Azov, and consider an appropriate response. Perhaps it should not permit Russian ships sailing from ports in the Sea of Azov to call at European and US ports, so long as Moscow is obstructing Ukrainian shipping there.”
What is the EU going to do about the illegal Russian blockade of the international Sea of Azov? Instant action is called for! @FedericaMog@JunckerEU@eucopresident
Everything suggests that Russia slowly takes one step after the other to block the Azov Sea off from Ukraine & international shipping. The West & NATO should react sharply before it is too late. https://t.co/kZMn2XTEls
Chief foreign affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov tweeted that aside from the “practical risks” which might arise from US ships rushing into the kerfuffle, it would also be “illegal without Russian permission.”
Practical risks aside, it would be illegal without Russian permission according to the 2003 treaty between Russia and Ukraine that declared Azov to be “internal waters” and only guaranteed freedom of navigation for RUS and UKR military vessels. https://t.co/CjTOyfcmethttps://t.co/VKxbcACZOc
By the end of the day, not one single US official has said a word against Russia's aggression in Ukraine. That can only mean that they were strictly ordered by POTUS not to do so. Why is POTUS supporting Russian aggression in Ukraine?!
Leonid Ragozin, formerly of Lonely Planet and BBC also pitched in his opinion on the matter and the Atlantic Council’s support of “democratic values.”
Side show? I thought Western support of Ukraine was about democratic values, not geopolitical machinations. I very genuinely did. https://t.co/eQXHNNSkS5
“Secretary Pompeo and Foreign Minister Klimkin reiterated that cooperation between the United States and Ukraine is based on common interests and shared values, including support for democracy, economic freedom and prosperity, sovereignty and territorial integrity, energy security, and respect for human rights and the rule of law.”
Furthermore, it appears that a “provocation by Russia” was expected in one way or another, as it becomes somewhat apparent from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s press release.
“The United States condemned Russia’s aggressive actions against international shipping transiting the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait to Ukrainian ports. Both sides underscored that Russia’s aggressive activities in the Sea of Azov have brought new security, economic, social, and environmental threats to the entire Azov-Black Sea region.”
With all of these preemptive reports and warnings against “Russian provocations” it appears that it would not be surprising if there was an attempt at a coordinated effort to cause an incident by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. However, judging by US, NATO and EU reactions so far, Poroshenko may have listened to a wrong adviser from his wing, as the play appeared to be botched.
Luckily, no Ukrainian or Russian ships were sunk, and nobody lost their life. Barring some injuries, the incident failed to lead to a very large scandal, despite hyper-measures undertaken by Ukraine in the face of martial law.
It would make sense that Poroshenko expected the ships would likely be destroyed, judging by the Su-30 claims of November 27th. However, it appeared that the Russians decided to surprisingly not be as “aggressive” as expected.
To create some perspective – imagine if a Syrian warship somehow entered “Israeli territorial waters” – unsurprisingly that ship would more than likely be immediately destroyed, no questions asked. And the whirlwind in mainstream media and the rhetoric from the US, NATO and EU would most likely be much calmer than in the Ukraine-Russia scenario.
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In Hitler’s goals to attain Germanic dominion of the planet, he enjoyed some of his most triumphant days secured away at the vast, virtually unheard of Wolf’s Lair. The complex was known in the German tongue as Wolfsschanze. Hitler had inserted “Wolf” into the title of many of his military headquarters, as it was a self-appointed nickname.
Situated over 400 miles from Berlin in East Prussia, Hitler arrived at the Wolf’s Lair for the first occasion during late evening of 23 June 1941. The advanced time was not an issue. From the days of Hitler’s “struggle” beginning in the early 1920s, he had developed a habit of remaining active until the small hours, often present in rowdy beer halls, and rising as late as noon.
On the night of 23 June 1941, the dictator was again in no mood for bed rest; his form was in fact jubilant as remarkable news filtered through from the Eastern Front. Less than 48 hours after the invasion began, German armies were smashing through the first bewildered Soviet lines, and had already reached the USSR republics of Lithuania, Belarus and the Ukraine.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’s most trusted military companion, also travelled eastwards to join his leader at the new Wolf’s Lair. As Operation Barbarossa rolled mercilessly along, Keitel’s disposition remained pensive and austere. It was the 58-year-old Keitel, almost standing alone in isolation, who had warned Hitler not to attack the Soviet Union.
Conservative and cautious by nature, Keitel detected the unmistakable sense of danger in the air. He was convinced that assaulting a landmass as great as the USSR – with its numerous complications – would be a task too much, even for the apparently unstoppable Wehrmacht. Due to Keitel’s reputation as a willing pawn of Hitler, he was held in poor esteem by an array of German generals and field marshals.
Yet Keitel’s military career had dated to the year 1901, and he possessed a distinguished record, claiming honours for bravery during the First World War while rising through the ranks. Keitel’s demeanour was that of a charming and approachable officer, educated in the old-fashioned virtues of the Prussian military establishment. Keitel possessed strong organizational and literary skills, but lacked the insubordinate, resolute nature to challenge Hitler directly.
Keitel had said later,
“It isn’t right to be obedient only when things go well; it is much harder to be a good, obedient soldier when things go badly and times are hard. Obedience and faith at such time is a virtue”.
His subservience would inevitably lead to a complicity in some of the Nazis’ atrocious crimes.
Unlike Keitel, the great majority of German military leaders firmly supported Hitler’s decision to attack Russia, believing the conflict would last around two months with Stalin’s expected ousting and death. The Nazi war chiefs’ unrealistic confidence swayed Hitler, who believed the Red Army would fold like a pack of cards. By mid-1941 Hitler had still to assume personal command of men in the field, and he unavoidably lacked the required knowledge and expertise.
Meanwhile, on the same evening that Hitler first entered the Wolf’s Lair (23 June 1941), one of the largest tank engagements in military history was starting. It was called the Battle of Brody: A near forgotten clash in north-western Ukraine between 750 panzers and 3,500 Soviet tanks, stretching across the cities of Brody, Dubno and Lutsk. About 350 miles northwards Hitler was in tune to proceedings from the Wolf’s Lair, and awaiting further stunning reports. They would come.
Despite the Nazis being outnumbered by more than four to one during the Battle of Brody, their panzers bludgeoned a way to victory by 30 June 1941. The Germans destroyed many hundreds of Soviet tanks, while meting out 65,000 casualties upon the Red Army. For mile after mile, this section of north-western Ukraine was strewn with dead bodies and horses, shattered Soviet armoured vehicles along with battered heavy weaponry.
The triumph around Brody consolidated vital German gains on the Ukraine’s western boundaries. It was also an indication of the ferocity of Hitler’s troops, as they unleashed what would be the bloodiest invasion of all time.
Also on the night Hitler became acquainted with the Wolf’s Lair, the Battle of Raseiniai was under way in western Lithuania; it was another critical early meeting between around 240 panzers and 750 Soviet tanks. Outmatched by three to one, the Germans were again victorious in the face of seemingly daunting odds. By 27 June 1941, they had destroyed over 700 of the Soviets’ 750 tanks near Raseiniai, a medieval Lithuanian town. The Luftwaffe also provided telling air support when it was needed.
Further south Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, had easily been captured on 24 June 1941 and Kaunas, the country’s second largest city, capitulated that day too. Germany’s Army Group North, under Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb, was now positioned 600 miles from Moscow; yet his key objective was to seize the major Russian city of Leningrad closer to the north.
As a Blitzkrieg easily overcame Red Army resistance in Lithuania, an onlooking Hitler had been situated a mere 90 miles from the Lithuanian border at his Wolf’s Lair. In Hitler’s choice of headquarters across Europe, it was his desire to be as near the fighting as conceivably possible. Previously, as the Battle of France commenced (10 May–25 June 1940), Hitler’s compound, the Wolf’s Ravine (Wolfsschlucht), was erected in the Belgian village of Brûly-de-Pesche.
While the Nazi leader oversaw France’s swift and humiliating defeat, he became a resident for over two weeks at this Belgian hamlet. Brûly-de-Pesche is only five miles from the French northern frontier, and Paris was within comfortable driving distance.
Choice of location for the Wolf’s Lair was painstakingly assessed; in late 1940, construction began in the ancient and mysterious Masurian woods, near a small Prussian town called Rastenburg. The Wolf’s Lair was clear of urban centres and primary roads, while its entire complex covered 2.5 square miles. It was safeguarded by three security zones, and disguised by extensive netting that cleverly mimicked leaf cover when viewed from above.
Otto Skorzeny, the SS commando, wrote that
“I was ordered to the Wolfsschanze [Wolf’s Lair] nine times and also flew over it; it was so very well camouflaged from air attack that one could only see trees. The guarded access roads snaked through the forest, in such a way that I would have been unable to give the exact location of the Führer headquarters”.
Regardless of Hitler’s growing fears and precautions, not one bomb was dropped on the Wolf’s Lair, while his private secretary Traudl Junge later revealed “there was never more than a single aircraft hovering over the forest”. This is despite the fact that Hitler spent over 800 days immersed there.
As Germany’s victories mounted, the prevailing mood at the Wolf’s Lair became increasingly euphoric. At the end of June 1941, German forces had claimed a significant success when capturing Minsk, the sprawling capital of Belarus. By 11 July 1941, the Wehrmacht had conquered vast regions of Belarus, a state rivalling the size of Great Britain.
In doing so, the Nazis inflicted almost 420,000 casualties on Soviet divisions around the Belarusian capital, while the invaders lost only 12,000 men by comparison.
During fighting near Minsk, the Red Army further saw 4,800 of its tanks eliminated and up to 1,700 aircraft destroyed, while the Germans were shorn of just 100 panzers and 275 airplanes. The scale of victory is put into even sharper perspective when considering the Wehrmacht had a combined total of about 3,500 panzers, and little more than 2,000 warplanes.
While July 1941 proceeded, German infantrymen were pouring forward onto the very borders of Russia, taking the town of Ostrov on 4 July, in north-west Russia – followed, on 8 July, by their capturing Pskov 30 miles further north.
From the small city of Pskov, Moscow lay but 450 miles further east. As the world looked on in wonder, including the Americans and British, it seemed an eventuality the Nazis would cover these last few hundred miles, and overwhelm the Russian capital.
By 10 July 1941, the 13th Panzer Division (of Army Group South) had advanced to the Irpin River, just over 10 miles from Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine – a country with a rich agricultural base that would help sustain Germany’s foot soldiers. Yet it would not be for another nine weeks until Kiev itself fell, with the surrendering of almost 700,000 Soviet troops.
In the meantime, due to the incredible progression and devastation wrought, it was perhaps not surprising that on 8 July 1941 a boastful Hitler was telling propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, “The war in the east was in the main already won”. Hitler was simply echoing the views of his commanders.
As early as 3 July 1941 the 57-year-old Franz Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff, had written in his diary,
“So it’s really not saying too much, if I claim that the campaign against Russia has been won in 14 days”.
The experienced Halder was surely letting himself get carried away. In the autumn of 1942 Halder would be sacked by Hitler, due to their ongoing disagreements over Russian fighting capacity, with the dictator saying to him,
“We now need National Socialist ardour rather than professional ability to settle matters in the East. Obviously, I cannot expect this of you”.
Hitler replaced Halder with General Kurt Zeitzler, who was thought to be a genius in his ability to manoeuvre large formations across battlefields, and perceive danger. It was expected that Zeitzler would finally move German armies to where Hitler wanted them to go.
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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: OKH commander Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch and Hitler study maps during the early days of Hitler’s Russian Campaign
From the moment Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was sworn in as president of Mexico, the presidential house known as ‘Los Pinos’ was opened to the public as a museum and art gallery as a sign of the new government’s austerity.
“I won’t live in Los Pinos,’ said Lopez Obrador during his swearing-in ceremony at the Congress. “That residency was opened to the public today and it will be part of the Chapultepec Forest. It will turn into one of the biggest spaces in the world for art and culture.”
Hundreds of Mexicans have visited the house since then, taking pictures and selfies in one of the most reserved political places in the country, home to the previous 14 presidents. Enrique Peña Nieto left the house a week before leaving the presidency, receiving the King of Spain Felipe VI as his last guest.
Built in 1856, Los Pinos wasn’t always the presidential residency. The massive complex of buildings was owned by Dr. Jose Pablo Martinez del Rio, of one of Mexico’s richest families, before being expropriated by the post-Mexican Revolution government of Venustiano Carranza.
When President Lazaro Cardenas took office in 1934, he decided to change his residency to Los Pinos, after the Michoacan garden in which he fell in love with his wife, because he wanted the Chapultepec Palace to be opened to the public as a museum.
Before Cardenas changed its name to Los Pinos, the residency was known as ‘La Hormiga’ (The Ant), because it was the smallest of Martinez’s properties. As new presidents arrived, they ordered the construction of additional houses within the complex to fit their own taste, lifestyle or political affiliation. Presidents of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) used to live in the ‘Miguel Aleman’ house, while those from the National Action Party (PAN) chose the ‘Las Cabañas’ construction.
As a result, there are now four houses in the complex, besides gardens, squares, halls, pools and other sports facilities, with a constructed space of 56,000 square meters: an area 14 times bigger than the White House.
Now, a giant floral arrangement outside reads “People of Mexico, welcome to Los Pinos.” In the presidential office there’s a sign with the names of the three previous presidents and the legend “We received it this way.” Many of the halls, saloons and rooms are empty, but others still house some furniture. The portraits of the presidents are still there, drawing the occasional insult from visitors.
Supporters of Lopez Obrador and other curious people approached its opened gates in earnest. Some of them walked into the buildings, but others gathered at one of the gardens to watch Lopez Obrador’s ceremony on a screen. When he was formally sworn in, they chanted: “It was possible! It was possible!”
Meanwhile, Lopez Obrador went to the National Palace in the center of Mexico City to have lunch with world leaders and other guests, who would be able to taste traditional delicacies such as Huitlacoche, Zapote and many corn derivatives.
Outside, at the Zocalo square, thousands of supporters are enjoying the “AMLOFest, inauguration party.
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It takes only a spark, from a lightning or human ignition, to start a fire, but it involves high temperatures, a period of drought, a build-up of dry vegetation and strong winds to start a bush fire, such as is devastating Queensland and recently California. When all these factors combine firestorms ensue, enhanced by strong winds from the hot interior of the continent, overwhelming the desiccated bush and human habitats. This is the face of global warming, which on the continents has reached an average of 1.5oC (see this).
An overview of the cost of extreme weather events for the first half of 2018 (Figure 1A), prior to the California wildfires, estimates the cost as US $33billion. Some 3,000 people lost their lives in natural disasters during this period. The NatCatSERVICE database registered 430 relevant natural disasters in the first half of 2018, more than the long-term average (250) and the previous year (380). The rise in floods correlates with the rise in global temperatures (Figure 1B).
Figure 1A. The rise in extreme weather events 1980 – 2018. Munich Re-insurance (Source)
Figure 1B. Extreme weather events on the rise. (Source)
In 2018 widespread wildfires spread over multiple continents, including north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden, near the Barents Sea, Siberia, in British Columbia and California – where the most extensive fire on record destroyed largest areas in its modern history. Table 1.1 indicates the severity of the 2018 wildfires around the world:
An independent report in 2012 from the International study the human and economic costs of climate change (DARA) linked direct and indirect[1] 250,000 deaths worldwide to climate change each year [see this and this] and is estimated to cost between $US 2-4 billion/year by 2030 [see this].
California: The 2018 California wildfires burnt the largest amount of acreage recorded in a fire season, as of 30.11.2018, causing $2.975 billion in damages, including $1.366 billion in fire suppression costs, becoming the largest complex fire in the state’s history. On August 4, 2018, a national disaster was declared in Northern California, due to the extensive wildfires burning. In November 2018, strong winds caused another round of large, destructive fires to erupt across the state, killing at least 88 and destroying more than 18,000 structures, becoming both California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire on record (see this).
Figure 2. California fires October-November 2018 (Sources: A, B, C and D.)
Queensland: As these lines are written the news from the Queensland wildfires read: “There is no immediate relief in sight for Queensland’s bushfire crisis as extreme heatwave conditions continue to grip the state on the first day of summer and a cyclone threat looms. Wildfires have raged across central Queensland this week and 110 are still burning throughout the state. That number could grow as heatwave spreads to the state’s south east corner in coming days with possible storms with damaging winds.” (See this)
B. BOM – Queensland and Northern Territory, 3-day heat wave forecast from 1.12.2018 (See this)
C. Frequency of extreme weather events, Australia 1915-2017 (See this)
D. Australia warming trend since 1910 consistent with surrounding oceans (See this)
With the continuing rise in global carbon emissions and temperatures, the fate of the world’s forests due to fires and logging is in doubt (see this and this). The correlation between the rise in catastrophic bush fires in California, Queensland and other parts of the world (Figure 1A) emphasizes the dangerous course the world is undertaking. The introduction of lumps of coal to parliament would hardly help (see this), nor would the opening of new coal mines in heat scorched Queensland where Adani has just announced the opening of a new coal mine (see this).
There is no planet B.
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Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and Paleo-climate science, Australia National University (ANU) School of Anthropology and Archaeology, ANU Planetary Science Institute, ANU Climate Change Institute, Honorary Associate Professor, Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, University of Queensland. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
One month to the day after President Kennedy’s assassination, the Washington Post published an article by former president Harry Truman.
I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
Truman had envisioned the CIA as an impartial information and intelligence collector from “every available source.”
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what’s worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department “treatment” or interpretations.
I wanted and needed the information in its “natural raw” state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.
Truman found, to his dismay, that the CIA had ranged far afield.
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
The article appeared in the Washington Post’s morning edition, but not the evening edition.
Truman reveals two naive assumptions. He thought a government agency could be apolitical and objective. Further, he believed the CIA’s role could be limited to information gathering and analysis, eschewing “cloak and dagger operations.” The timing and tone of the letter may have been hints that Truman thought the CIA was involved in Kennedy’s assassination. If he did, he also realized an ex-president couldn’t state his suspicions without troublesome consequences.
Even the man who signed the CIA into law had to stay in the shadows, the CIA’s preferred operating venue. The CIA had become the exact opposite of what Truman envisioned and what its enabling legislation specified. Within a few years after its inauguration in 1947, it was neck-deep in global cloak and dagger and pushing agenda-driven, slanted information and outright disinformation not just within the government, but through the media to the American people.
The CIA lies with astonishing proficiency. It has made an art form of “plausible deniability.” Like glimpsing an octopus in murky waters, you know it’s there, but it shoots enough black ink to obscure its movements. Murk and black ink make it impossible for anyone on the outside to determine exactly what it does or has done. Insiders, even the director, are often kept in the dark.
For those on the trail of CIA and the other intelligence agencies’ lies and skullduggery, the agencies give ground glacially and only when they have to. What concessions they make often embody multiple layers of back-up lies. It can take years for an official admission—the CIA didn’t officially confess its involvement in the 1953 coup that deposed Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddeq until 2013—and even then details are usually not forthcoming. Many of the so-called exposés of the intelligence agencies are in effect spook-written for propaganda or damage control.
The intelligence agencies monitor virtually everything we do. They have tentacles reaching into every aspect of contemporary society, exercising control in pervasive but mostly unknown ways. Yet, every so often some idiot writes an op-ed or bloviates on TV, bemoaning the lack of trust the majority of Americans have in “their” government and wondering why. The wonder is that anyone still trusts the government.
The intelligence agency fog both obscures and corrodes. An ever increasing number of Americans believe that a shadowy Deep State pulls the strings. Most major stories since World War II—Korea, Vietnam, Kennedy’s assassination, foreign coups, the 1960s student unrest, civil rights agitation, and civic disorder, Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9/11, domestic surveillance, and many more—have intelligence angles. However, determining what those angles are plunges you into the miasma perpetuated by the agencies and their media accomplices.
The intelligence agencies and captive media’s secrecy, disinformation, and lies make it futile to mount a straightforward attack against them. It’s like attacking a citadel surrounded by swamps and bogs that afford no footing, making advance impossible. Their deadliest operation has been against the truth. In a political forum, how does one challenge an adversary who controls most of the information necessary to discredit, and ultimately reform or eliminate that adversary?
You don’t fight where your opponent wants you to fight. What the intelligence apparatus fears most is a battle of ideas. Intelligence, the military, and the reserve currency are essential component of the US’s confederated global empire. During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump questioned a few empire totems and incurred the intelligence leadership’s wrath, demonstrating how sensitive and vulnerable they are on this front. The transparent flimsiness of their Russiagate concoction further illustrates the befuddlement. Questions are out in the open and are usually based on facts within the public domain. They move the battle from the murk to the light, unfamiliar and unwelcome terrain.
The US government, like Oceania, switches enemies as necessary. That validates military and intelligence; lasting peace would be intolerable. After World War II the enemy was the USSR and communism, which persisted until the Soviet collapse in 1991. The 9/11 tragedy offered up a new enemy, Islamic terrorism.
Seventeen years later, after a disastrous run of US interventions in the Middle East and Northern Africa and the rout of Sunni jihadists in Syria by the combined forces of the Syrian government, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, it’s clear that Islamic terrorism is no longer a threat that stirs the paranoia necessary to feed big military and intelligence budgets. For all the money they’ve spent, intelligence has done a terrible job of either anticipating terrorist strikes or defeating them in counterinsurgency warfare
So switch the enemy again, now it’s Russia and China. The best insight the intelligence community could offer about those two is that they’ve grown stronger by doing the opposite of the US. For the most part they’ve stayed in their own neighborhoods. They accept that they’re constituents, albeit important ones, of a multipolar global order. Although they’ll use big sticks to protect their interests, carrots like the Belt and Road Initiative further their influence much better than the US’s bullets and bombs.
If the intelligence complex truly cared about the country, they might go public with the observation that the empire is going broke. However, raising awareness of this dire threat—as opposed to standard intelligence bogeymen—might prompt reexamination of intelligence and military budgets and the foreign policy that supports them. Insolvency will strangle the US’s exorbitantly expensive interventionism. It will be the first real curb on the intelligence complex since World War II, but don’t except any proactive measures beforehand from those charged with foreseeing the future.
Conspiracy theories, a term popularized by the CIA to denigrate Warren Commission skeptics, are often proved correct. However, trying to determine the truth behind intelligence agency conspiracies is a time and energy-consuming task, usually producing much frustration and little illumination. Instead, as Caitlin Johnstone recently observed, we’re better off fighting on moral and philosophical grounds the intelligence complex and the rest of the government’s depredations that are in plain sight.
Attack the intellectual foundations of empire and you attack the whole rickety edifice, including intelligence, that supports it. Tell the truth and you threaten those who deal in lies. Champion sanity and logic and you challenge the insane irrationality of the powers that be. They are daunting tasks, but less daunting than trying to excavate and clean the intelligence sewer.
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After less than two years, France’s youngest President, Emanuel Macron, has become the de facto leader of Europe but the object of violence at home.
Having spent a total of thirty-odd years living and working in France, I am only too familiar with its government’s high-handedness vis a vis its peoples’ incomes. Recently, in an effort to set an example for the rest of the world when it comes to combatting climate change, which he has publicly championed, Macron decided to raise the tax on fuel at home, as a way of ‘nudging’ (as in Obama’s advisor Cass Sunstein’s social theory) the public into purchasing non-polluting but more expensive electric cars.
In a country where social benefits form the bedrock of family budgets, that turned out to be a major blunder: with no trade union coordination, thousands of French people are shouting ‘Non’! What makes this crisis more challenging than others is precisely the fact that it has no leaders: the usually fractious French are, for once, of one mind.
Shouting Macron Must Go, an enraged crowd tore up paving stones and looted high end shops on the Champs-Elysées, site of the Republic’s carefully choreographed parades, and leading to the Arc de Triomphe dedicated to France’s fallen. These actions have nothing in common with the plethora of carefully choreographed demonstrations that have been part of French public life after the storming of the Bastille in 1789.
At the G-20, Macron was forced to momentarily ditch his ‘Jupiter’ persona for that of Louis XVI, whose Queen, Marie Antoinette, was said to have advised her starving people to eat cake if they had no bread — before both were guillotined. Macron has been trying to steer the leaders of the most developed countries toward climate sanity, while teaming up with Angela Merkel to bring Europe into a tighter Union. As citizens in yellow vests rampaged at home, he stated from the safety of Buenos Aires (with admirable calm, it must be said) that ‘No merited discontent justifies violence’. We’ll see where that gets him back in Paris.
Meanwhile, the standoff in the Kerch Straight between Russia and Ukraine illustrated once again the unpardonable ignorance (given the existence of Google and its maps), of the American media (Time actually reporting that Russia had invaded the Black Sea, which in fact is its home lake), while anchors ratcheted up the case against Donald Trump for having aspired to build a tower in Moscow at a time when Russia was ‘invading Ukraine’ and ‘taking over Crimea’. While ‘the little Emperor’ struggles to keep his crown, the American president is accused ex post facto of having allowed ‘the Kremlin’ to gather ‘kompromat’ on him, to be used at a time of its choosing.
As Europe struggles to retain its enviable standard of living, the United States falls back on its demons: fear of the Other. The founding documents currently invoked (as has happened periodically for over two hundred years) warn of the ability of foreigners to affect America’s destiny. Anchored in the war against the British Monarchy, it was soon extended to Papal worshippers, and gradually, even as the country gathered in people from across the planet, to those still ‘over there’. Only by being ‘over here’ may individuals lay claim to acceptance.
As Mexico installs its long-awaited progressive President, Macron’s crown wobbles, while the American businessman turned president is accused ex post facto of consorting with the enemy.
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Born in Phila, Deena Stryker spent most of her adolescent and adult years in Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, her latest being Cuba, Diary of A Revolution.
In September, President Trump announced he would declassify pertinent documents relating to the Russian Collusion investigation. Four days later, he cancelled this order because two allies, believed to be England and Australia, had requested the documents remain classified. Recently, Trump has once again said he is “very seriously” thinking about declassifying the files.
The documents in question include 21 pages of the FBI’s original FISA Court application to surveil former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page. In addition, notes from the FBI’s interviews “used in the FISA applications, notes of interviews with Bruce Ohr, the DOJ official who served as a back channel to Steele, and FBI and DOJ emails which are believed to show that evidence was withheld from the FISA court in its applications to spy on Page” were part of the request.
According to the Telegraph, MI6 officials are warning that the release of these documents would “undermine intelligence gathering” operations. The Telegraph’s Ben Riley-Smith claims to have interviewed twelve sources in both the US and the UK for his article. Here are some of the highlights. Italics, mine.
The row comes as UK intelligence agencies are increasingly dragged into a heated and partisan battle in Washington DC over the origins of the Russian investigation. Where did it start?
Mr. Trump’s allies and former advisers are raising questions about the UK’s role in the start of the probe, given many of the key figures and meetings were located in Britain. True.
However, a result of the attack line is that Britain’s spy agencies are being included in claims of “deep state” opposition to Mr Trump. It risks inflaming UK-US tensions at a time when Britain wants to deepen ties with America as it leaves the European Union. Not our problem. You should have thought of this long before now.
British spy chiefs have “genuine concern” about sources being exposed if classified parts of the wiretap request were made public, according to figures familiar with discussions.
“It boils down to the exposure of people”, said one US intelligence official, adding: “We don’t want to reveal sources and methods.” US intelligence shares the concerns of the UK. This has been the main talking point of Democrats in Congress from the beginning.
Another said Britain feared setting a dangerous “precedent” which could make people less likely to share information, knowing that it could one day become public. The exoneration of President Trump is far more important. Again, the British intelligence community should have thought about this before getting involved.
The current row is deemed so politically sensitive that staff at the British embassy in Washington DC have been barred from discussing it with journalists. They shouldn’t be discussing it with the press anyway.
One former British official warned that many of the attacks seem to originate from right-wing internet forums, such as 4chan. The claims must be treated with suspicion given they are often cited without hard evidence and bring a political benefit to the White House. This is propaganda.
GCHQ, Britain’s secret listening post, issued a rare on-record statement last year denying a suggestion quoted by Sean Spicer, then the White House press secretary, that it had helped wiretap Trump Towers. A GCHQ spokesman called the claim “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous”. Do they honestly think we believe them?
Tony Blair, the former prime minister, also had to publicly deny a suggestion he told Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, that UK intelligence agencies may have been involved in surveillance of the Trump campaign.
Riley-Smith included one lone source, one of Trump’s former advisors, who said: “You know the Brits are up to their neck.” And regarding the FISA Court application, he said “I think that stuff is going to implicate MI5 and MI6 in a bunch of activities they don’t want to be implicated in, along with FBI, counter-terrorism and the CIA.”
It appears the Brits “doth protest too much.” Why are they so concerned about transparency if they have nothing to hide? Most of the above statements sound as if they had been uttered by Adam Schiff himself.
The documents must be declassified with or without British approval. Former British intelligence official Christopher Steele, the author of the bogus Trump dossier, stands at the center of the whole story. His compilation of unsubstantiated allegations was cited as the basis for the FBI’s FISA court application to spy on Carter Page and for subsequent renewals. The application was released earlier this year in heavily redacted form. Republicans are now calling for an unredacted copy.
Also involved in this intrigue was Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic with reportedly high level connections to the Russian government. Mifsud, who is now missing and presumed dead, allegedly informed low level Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos then famously shared this information with then-Australian ambassador Alexander Downer in a London bar in May 2016. Two months later, when the FBI received word of this encounter, they immediately opened their counterintelligence investigation of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Papadopoulos and others believe that Downer, who has previous connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton, was part of a British intelligence conspiracy to discredit the US president.
Moreover, University of Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper was paid by the FBI for his role as a secret informant in their investigation of Trump.
Since much of the action began on British soil and many of the key figures in this fairy tale are either British citizens or individuals who spend a lot of time in the UK, country, it’s necessary to question the role of UK and even Australian intelligence agencies.
For far too long, Republicans have been reduced to reading the tea leaves while Mueller, Democrats and their pawns, the mainstream media, and now the Brits seek to obstruct the truth. It’s time for some transparency.
British opposition should not be a consideration in Trump’s decision whether or not to declassify the material. Trump needn’t worry about the consequences to people who have never passed up an opportunity to mock him. Although it might have improved Republican fortunes if these documents had been released prior to the midterms, their release at any time will be welcome.
The President of the United States has been held hostage by a sham investigation, the outcome of which could alter the course of history. If the release of classified documents reveals information that proves embarrassing to either Britain or Australia, their discomfort pales in comparison to the damage the FBI’s original counterintelligence probe and the subsequent Mueller investigation have inflicted on Trump’s presidency over the past two years. Please release the documents President Trump.
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December 2nd, 2018 by African Centre for Biodiversity
Tanzanian civil society organisations (CSOs) welcome the decision of the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Mathew Mtigumwe, to bring an immediate stop to all ongoing GM field trials taking place in the country. These are under the auspices of the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project which includes Monsanto, the Gates Foundation and national research centres. This decision has since been verified by the newly appointed Minister of Agriculture, Japheth Hasunga in latest media reports.
In a report issued by the Ministry, the Permanent Secretary ordered, with immediate effect, the cessation of all field trial operations and the destruction of all “the remnants” of the trials at the Makutupora Centre in Dodoma, where trials were taking place. This decision has come after the Tanzania Agriculture Research Institute (TARI) released the results of the trials without the necessary authorisation, when it invited certain members of the public, including the well-known pro GM lobbyist, Mark Lynas, to witness how ‘well’ the GM crops were performing. TARI also hosted a recent excursion to the trial site by the Parliamentary Committee on Food and Agriculture.
Unauthorised access to trial sites indicates collusion between biotech lobbyists and GM researchers paid by the Gates Foundation and others. Mark Lynas’s unethical social media hype uses Tanzania’s smallholder farmers in an instrumentalist way as a means to justify the introduction of GMO crops in the country, claiming that Tanzanians are poor and hungry. The statements of the pro-GM scientists have not yet been corroborated by the Ministry of Agriculture or related institutions such as the Tanzania Official Seed Certification Institute (TOSCI).
The biotech machinery both in Tanzania and elsewhere has supported a well-funded media campaign to spread pro GM propaganda and to push for the adoption of GM maize in the country, despite the questionable benefits for smallholder farmers. They have consistently made unsubstantiated claims about the GM varieties, including superior drought tolerance and resistance to fall army worm. In a media report ‘New push in pipeline for acceptance of GMO seed’, GMO trials were hailed as a “success” with the Director General of TARI claiming that ‘GMO seeds are a solution to the longstanding problems of pest invasions in farms across Tanzania’. These unsubstantiated claims were made on the effectiveness of the insect resistant Bt trait -MON 810 – that was ‘donated’ to WEMA countries even though it has been phased out in South Africa due to massive and widespread insect resistance.
That the claims are unsubstantiated was confirmed by the recent decision of South African biosafety authorities to reject Monsanto’s application for commercial release of its triple stacked GM drought tolerant maize, MON 87460 x MON 89034 x NK 603. The decision was made on the grounds that the field trial data insufficiently demonstrated the claimed drought and insect resistant efficacy of the GM event. MON 87460 is currently being field trialed in Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique where the WEMA project is also active. The decision to stop the trials is another blow to the WEMA project following so soon after the South African decision.
Farmers’ organisations including Mtandao wa Vikundi vya Wakulima Tanzania (MVIWATA), the national smallholder farmers’ organisation, other CSOs, academics from the University of Dar es Salaam and members of the scientific community and the public within and outside the country, have openly criticized the WEMA project and the GM trials taking place in Tanzania. In a recent letter to a local newspaper, MVIWATA strongly expressed the view that “farmers have called for our government not to allow GMOs to be used in the country for obvious reasons that neither farmers nor the nation shall benefit from GMOs”.
Organisations have condemned threats by local scientists, who are paid by WEMA, to push for further revisions of the country’s biosafety regulations. The aim of proposed revisions is to change from strict liability to fault based provisions to allow the commercial release of the GM crops once the trials were completed. Strict liability means that whoever introduces GMOs into the environment is directly legally responsible for any damage, injury or loss caused. Fault-based provisions mean that the fault or negligence of whoever introduces a GMO will first have to be proven.
According to Janet Maro from Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT)
“the move by the Permanent Secretary comes at a critical time when almost all media houses are publishing the pro biotech propaganda about the successes of the field trials without a shred of solid research data to back up their claims. We call upon the Permanent Secretary to encourage researchers to carry out farmer-centered research aimed at addressing current pressing challenges and to explore using locally available solutions to ensure sustainability and wider adoption of locally researched practices and technologies.”
Dr. Richard Mbunda a food sovereignty researcher and lecturer from the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam also supported the view, recently writing an open letter to the President questioning the deployment of GM technology in the country.
Sabrina Masinjila, Tanzania-based research and advocacy officer at the African Centre for Biodiversity says,
“we hope that this decision will help the government rethink investments when it comes to agricultural research. Rather than spending huge amounts of scarce public resources on failed and discredited GM technology, we should focus on strengthening existing research institutions, and support participatory farmer research on seed systems aimed at strengthening seed, food and national sovereignty.”
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This video talks about crimes committed against Hutu, before, during and after the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda.
Talking about (and/or seeking Justice for) these crimes should not be considered as neither an act nor an attempt to deny, minimise, defend, vindicate or conceal the genocide committed against Tutsi in 1994.
On the contrary, considering all crimes committed against all Rwandans in the 1990s is the only way towards genuine and sustainable reconciliation among Rwandans.
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I spoke to Sean Gervasi on several occasions prior to his untimely death in June 1996. His incisive understanding of the process of breakup of Yugoslavia, not to mention its cruel aftermath was far-reaching. According to Gary Wilson, “Gervasi saw the breakup of Yugoslavia as an extension of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the first step in a NATO takeover of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He became active in exposing the role of external powers, particularly the U.S. and German governments, in fomenting the civil war in the Balkans.”
With foresight Gervasi predicted the geopolitics of the post-Cold War era. The breakup of Yugoslavia laid the basis for NATO intervention in the Kosovo war in 1999, which in turn was followed by the enlargement of NATO and the conduct of US-NATO wars and military interventions in the Middle East.
Michel Chossudovsky, December 02, 2018
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Interview with Professor Sean Gervasi, Institute of International and Economic Problems, Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
Recorded on February 24th, 1993
Harold Channer (HC): Good evening and welcome very, very much to the conversation. We’re pleased to welcome to the program Sean Gervasi. He is a professor and academic who is concerned with economics and particularly with what is relevant to what we want to talk about tonight. He has just returned from a long stay in in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and knows something of that situation. Sean Gervasi, welcome very, very much to the conversation, and back to New York. Before we go into some detail about what in the world is going on in terms of the Balkans, from your experience there, maybe share a little bit of your own background. You did some economics, you’re interested in economics.
Sean Gervasi (SG): Well, I’m basically an economist. I studied in Europe, came back to graduate school at Cornell, went into the federal government, resigned.
HC: And the Balkans… you had some reason to be concerned with that area particularly in some of your early life experience and so on?
SG: Well, I’d lived a long time in the Mediterranean. My father had been a diplomat posted in the Mediterranean and he covered a number of countries there for quite a long time after the war, so I was living in the Med, and I know a fair amount about Yugoslavia. I’m particularly interested in American foreign policy, the economic aspects of that, and so when things started getting really out of hand about a year ago, some old friends of mine whom I had known in the UN very well and who are Yugoslavian, and diplomats, spoke to me and enticed me to come over to the Institute for a week or ten days. Out of that I became a research professor in Belgrade.
HC: Yes, you’re research professor at the Institute for the Study of Economic and Political Problems.
SG: Right. It’s the Institute for International Politics, so it’s concerned primarily with understanding the international aspects of Yugoslavia’s position and it’s really been the premier research institute in Yugoslavia since 1948 or so when it was founded. It was very large, with a very substantial staff which has now been cut in about half. It’s still about 60 to 70 people, but it’s the equivalent of a major think tank in the United States, obviously without the connections and power that those have, although many members of the government, the federal government primarily, have gone in and out of the institute and government, and back and forth.
HC: And that’s a long-standing institution.
SG: It was founded in 1948, right after the war with Tito and so forth, and it’s interesting that they tack on the end economic problems. Problems they have in the Balkans.
HC: That is for certain and what a vantage point it has been for you. Now we’re taping on February 24th, 1993, and you’ve been there…
SG: Well, I went to the institute in all this. I was appointed in all this, and I’ve been in and out… I’ve been back to the states three times, but I’ve spent a good bit of time there over the last six, seven months.
HC: And as you said, things began to come apart, as you put it, about a year ago. Maybe you could set the stage for us here because the Balkans in modern history have been a pivot point for world developments. After all the First World War started there. There’s been a clash of cultures. Maybe you could give us a little of that historical development, of the crucial nature, and the geopolitical crucial nature of that that particular region. Fill in the general audience.
SG: Well, actually it’s the crucial geopolitical nature of the region which really explains the founding of Yugoslavia in the beginning in 1918 as a state to unite the South Slav nations, the republic of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes. Yugoslavia is in a very unique position in some respects because it’s been a focus of struggle between, for a long time, the Habsburg Empire on the one hand, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. And it’s a focus therefore of European interest because it really represented the demarcation line between the Eastern Empire and the West in some sense, and that demarcation line moved up and down the Balkan Peninsula wildly according to the various struggles which were going on between the 13th century and the 19th century, and it was really with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Habsburg Empire, in 1918, as a result of the First World War, that a vacuum was created in a sense in that area and the Western countries, the entente, really wanted to see a solid political entity there in order to guard against—don’t forget this is shortly after the Soviet revolution—in order to guard against a very traditional Russian Soviet expansionism into the Mediterranean.
HC: This is even following the First World War.
SG: I think that Yugoslavia was envisioned by the Allies at that time as a kind of bulwark against the expansion of the Russian Revolution, the Soviet revolution, into the Balkans.
HC: And the Yugo of Yugoslavia, does that mean unity, or does it have a literal translation? [Yug =South]
SG: It was the union of the Slavs.
HC: That was literally what the word means, and it brought together, prior to that, those ethnic identities, which in various ways are being asserted so obviously now, go way back.
SG: Bosnian, that’s a rather artificial conception. It’s not an ethnic concept at all. The ethnic groups in the area are historically the three South Slavic ethnicities, if you like, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, the second and the third being traditionally under the influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Catholic, the former [Serbs] being much closer to Russia and Orthodox, but there are a very large number of significant minorities mixed in there, significant numbers of them too: Hungarians, Albanians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and then there are even other peoples there.*
HC: The Montenegrins, and so forth, these would be subcategories of these three main groups?
SG: No. Well, the Montenegrins really are very closely related to the Serbs, but the Albanians are not at all, neither are the Hungarians, and the Macedonians are more complicated. They are Slavs, but they’ve also, being in the southern part of that area, lived for centuries under a strong Turkish influence.
HC: Yes, indeed.
SG: And there is a significant Muslim population in Macedonia, as there is, of course, in Serbia and the province of Kosovo where the Muslims are Albanian.
HC: Yeah, and then you have Skopje to the south.
SG: It’s the capital of Macedonia.
HC: That’s Macedonia there, and that’s not been in the news until now, and let’s hope that it does not become news, but in any event, there’s this clash of these entities there after the First World War, and then there’s also been a considerable German interest.
SG: Well, there’s been a historic German interest in the area. The Germans have always, particularly the South Germans, the Bavarians, have always looked with some possible cupidity on Croatia and on Slovenia. The Austrians have very close relations with Slovenia. Of course Germany, for a time, absorbed Austria. They’re very close culturally, ethnically etc. And Germany, of course, has always been interested in, particularly, the domination of Central Europe. This is an issue that goes way back to the Bismarck Empire and possibly one might also say that Germany has been interested in having access to the Mediterranean through gaining entry into the Adriatic via Croatia. That’s not insignificant.
HC: Yeah, and the Baghdad railway.
SG: The Berlin to Baghdad railway. I forget actually where exactly that passed through. It must have passed through…
HC: But that is interesting. We want to talk some about Mr. Kohl’s [German chancellor 1982-1998] role in the more modern experience with… But maybe we could pursue this historical development a little bit here. There was then, of course, the growth of Nazi Germany and there was the expansion, and they moved in. The First World War obviously started at Sarajevo with the assassination of the Archduke. But bringing it up into the more modern experience, the Balkans was an area where the Nazi forces actually experienced considerable difficulty with guerrillas. It held out and fought them and they never were really able to assert themselves, as powerful as they were, on the ground against some of those guerrilla forces. Or am I off-base on that?
SG: No, that’s absolutely right. The Second World War was a very important experience in the Balkans, especially in Yugoslavia. The Germans created a puppet state in Croatia which was called the Independent Croatian State. This was very large. It included all of Dalmatia, almost all of what is presently Croatia and Bosnia as well, so it was a very large area. That was the area which they occupied. The Italians were given a piece of Montenegro, and had some activities in other parts.
HC: When would they have done that?
SG: 1941, when the Germans invaded in 1941. They created this independent Croatian state, and this is extremely important in understanding the present because the Independent Croatian State included large numbers of Serbs, firstly, and as Croatia and Bosnia today do, they include probably in excess of two million Serbs living in Bosnia, what is now Bosnia, and what is now Croatia. They were also in those areas at that time. In fact, there were probably proportionately more of them, but the important thing to remember about the Independent Croatian State, which is remembered very sharply and bitterly today, is that it was a clerical fascist state, and as a clerical fascist state, it pursued quite savage policies toward the minorities, towards Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. And in fact I think there’s a lot of historical evidence, and certainly it’s taken for granted in the Balkans, that under the Nazis the Germans in fact gave the responsibility to Pavelić, the head of the Independent Croatian State, for carrying out a part of the Holocaust which included the elimination of a large part of the Serb population. It was a very deliberate racist, genocidal policy.
HC: Directed at the Serbs.
SG: Directed at the Serbs, the Jews and the Gypsies, and it’s been recognized after the war by the United Nations as a policy of genocide. Now in that situation at that time, in a number of camps, primarily a camp called Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia, very large numbers of Serbs perished and very large numbers of Serbs perished when the Ustashe, the fascist military cadre, attacked Serb villages and pretty horrible atrocities were carried out. Now there’s a lot of controversy, obviously, over precisely how many people were killed, but the range of estimates I can give you, which is generally accepted—except, of course, by the present Croatian president—is between 300,000 and a million Serbs were exterminated at that time.
HC: Good Lord! And this was done in the name of… was there a racist component at the time as there would have been against the Jews?
SG: Absolutely. It was exactly what was directed against the Jews.
HC: And yet the Croats were Slavs, so the direction against the Serbians was something other than geopolitical demonizing. It was an ethnic or racist argumentation, and yet the Croats themselves were Salvs. Why was the Aryan appeal able to find fertile ground among the Croatians?
SG: It was the clerical element which generated the difference between the two. The difference between people who had lived under the Catholic Church for a very long time and people who remained in the Serbian Orthodox Church.
HC: And the underpinning of Bosnian or Muslim was there all along? What was the attitude of the Croats toward those Muslims who were…
SG: That’s an important point.
HC: The Ottoman influence.
SG: It’s important to understand that these Muslims are ethnically Slavs. The Muslims in Bosnia and in other parts of Yugoslavia are people who are the descendants of those Slavs forcibly converted when the areas in which they lived were under Ottoman occupation. Under the Ottomans, the Slavs were, of course, seen as lesser folk, and they were persecuted, discriminated against, and, in fact, very often in danger of their lives. They were very heavily taxed, and there was a lot of resistance to the Ottoman occupation.
So ferocious was—and it’s very famous in literature—the Ottoman occupation that large numbers of Slavs did, in fact, convert to Islam, but, as it were, in a more formalistic sense. So today, for instance, in Bosnia and other parts of Yugoslavia you have Muslims who are ethnically Slavs, blond-haired, blue-eyed, very tall etcetera, but who are in a cultural sense still formally Muslims—by the way many of them are not at all very religious—they’re very modern for Muslims—but they regard themselves as Muslims in some sense. And, of course, as Yugoslavia began to break up, and even before that, there was a great deal of pressure put on Muslims in places like that to become more Islamic. Now one important point, I think, to remember about the experience of the independent Croatian state during the Second World War was that as it included a significant number of Bosnian Muslims at that time, Muslims of Slavic origin but descendants of converted Slavs, again, those people were enlisted in, frankly, the genocidal war which was waged against other populations there. And, in fact, the Muslims formed the primary elements of two SS divisions in Bosnia, and that is one of the bitter memories which Bosnian Serbs have of that epoch: that that the Muslim population actively participated with the Croatian Ustashe in the genocidal attacks which took place against gypsies, Jews and Serbs.
HC: Who at that time was, in a certain sense, if that’s the right term, backing them?
SG: Well, the Nazis. As you know, Serbia was totally occupied by the Nazis. There were at that time, essentially, two quite different groups of Serbs resisting that situation.
HC: Tito being one.
SG: There were first of all Tito’s partisans who were made up of all the Slavic nationalities and including some Muslims, I believe—Serbs Croats and Slovenes. The partisans were primarily a multi-ethnic group and obviously ideologically unique and not at all ideologically diverse, but ideologically coherent around the idea of a future struggle for communism in the future Yugoslavia.
HC: You would tie it to the Soviet Union?
SG: Oh, they were. They had political relationships with the Soviet Union, but the primary military backers I would say at that time, perhaps not the primary military backers of the partisans, were the Allies.
HC: I was thinking in terms of ideology.
SG: Oh, not ideologically. We supported Tito. But there was another Serbian group at the time that needs to be remembered because today it’s a bit on the rise and that is the royalist Serbians calling themselves Chetniks [SP] which refers to the old resistance fighters against the Turks. The Chetniks and the partisans both fought the Nazis, but they also fought each other, so the Second World War is a pretty hellish scene in Yugoslavia in the sense that there was triangular warfare going on.
HC: And the resistance that the Nazis and the Croat patriots experienced was persistent and consistent and well-remembered in the minds of many of the Western Europeans who had experience in that Second World War. There was a real major force that was launched against these invasions.
SG: The partisans, particularly the partisans in Bosnia, really pinned down a large number of German divisions and fought them to a standstill. There is no doubt about that. That was probably the most significant military opposition against the Nazi occupation.
HC: You would think that might be well remembered by military advisers even as we sit and talk now.
SG: Oh, absolutely. There are many British intelligence officers, one of whom died recently, a man named Lise [correct spelling uknown], a man who wrote about British relations with Tito. He was very much against them. He and a number of people like Fitzroy MacLean and _____ Davidson who was an MI-6 officer in Yugoslavia during the wars, who is now a very famous writer. All of these people are fully familiar with the intensity of that conflict and it’s triangular character.
HC: And then there’s building up among the people who inhabit that area these historical and even contemporary, relatively contemporary, experiences of deep animosity and hatred among the people who make it up, which might help account for the incredible chaos that seems to be emerging.
SG: Well, I would emphasize the very precise words you use: “help account” because that’s only part of it. In fact, I would say that one of the remarkable things about the period from 1945 until quite recently in 1990, until 1989 perhaps, is that these ancient antagonisms were very much attenuated, I would say. Some people like to say repressed. There’s no doubt that Tito was an enormously successful leader in this sense. Under the slogan of brotherhood and unity he succeeded really in composing… I would not say eliminating… but he succeeded in composing the accumulated historical antagonisms between the various groups in Yugoslavia, and he and the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist League built what is surely one of the most successful federated states in the history of the 20th century, far more successful in some respects than the Soviet Union was. I would have said it was a model of federalism in many respects…
HC: Of federalism, not confederalism?
SG: Of federalism. I’m not correcting you. I want to make the distinction because from the time of Tito’s death, actually before, from the time of the 1974 Constitution when there were clearly tendencies, possibly fostered already from outside, towards a much looser federation, from the time of that constitution when, by the way, all of the republics of Yugoslavia were already declared sovereign. That’s the sense in which you can already say that there’s a tendency to confederalism in Yugoslavia from the adoption of the 1974 Constitution. The 1974 constitution was already loosening up. There’s just no doubt about it.
HC: Following the Second World War Tito emerged and you had Mr. Churchill with his Iron Curtain, but Yugoslavia which was a nominally socialist, communist aligned country but was unique to the rule that Mr. Tito was able to have a window, in a certain sense, on the West.
SG: More than a window I’d like to say. I think something needs to be said about that.
HC: But he also had a link to the communists.
SG: Ideologically, Tito of course had very close links historically with the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet Union, and in 1945 the Yugoslavs established a communist state, but I think Stalin did not regard Tito as a very good communist.
HC: I would think he had reason not to. He had an independent streak.
SG: Tito was a very strong person, and very independent, and the Yugoslavs are very, very independent. The Yugoslavs are very, very independent people. Under the pressure of the Soviet Union they began to wind down joint enterprises with the Soviet Union in the late 40s. They brought about the withdrawal of Russian military advisers, which, by the way, had been with the partisans as well as British officers and some Americans, I think. And then there was an interesting event in 1949. Mr. John Foster Dulles secretly flew to the island of Brioni in the Adriatic and met with Marshal Tito and offered him not just a window but a very large foot in the door. Foster Dulles offered Tito a kind of tacit alliance with the United States to stand against possible Soviet expansionism in the Balkans. And as a matter of fact, there was a tacit and a secret alliance between Yugoslavia after, say, the early 1950s, from the early 1950s, and the United States, in particular in the framework of NATO. There are very large bases which were to be activated in the event of a conflagration between the major powers in Yugoslavia—secret bases like…
HC: In….[INDISTINCT]
SG: Oh, no. Much more serious stuff than that: a major underground military air base in Croatia. There were other bases…
HC: This is in the 1970s?
SG: No, this is from the 1950s. Yugoslavia undertook actual military obligations within the context of a NATO confrontation with the Soviet Union. For instance, the Yugoslav forces undertook the obligation to block the movement of Soviet forces into southern Italy from Hungary. There were very specific engagements which were undertaken. Now, in return the Yugoslavs received enormous military assistance from the United States, from NATO, but really 90 percent of that military assistance was from the US. Yugolsav officers were trained in the United States. Yugoslavia received enormous technical assistance in its aircraft industry, in its military industry. That assistance enabled the creation of a very powerful, very modern military force in Yugoslavia, and of course that was a NATO asset.
HC: And those forces were under the command of the Yugoslavs and of Mr. Tito?
SG: But in the event of a confrontation between East and West, they were to participate in military actions aimed at the Soviet Union.
HC: Now what was the role of the Soviet Union in terms of the support, say militarily, or the logistics, or the internal logistics to the East in terms of military support. How do we begin to understand whence came the weapons that are being utilized in the Balkans now?
SG: Today?
HC: It seems, from our perception, to be overwhelmingly in the hands of the Serbian forces, that they seemed to be very, very well-armed. What were the realities of that, and what has been historically the tie to the Soviet Union in terms of arms and the arms that do appear and are there in the Balkans?
SG: Well, let me start by saying that Yugoslavia saw between 1945 and 1981-82 a quite a remarkable transformation really. It became an industrial state, an industrialized country, not fully industrialized, still with a minority of its population working the land, but nonetheless as a semi-modern industrialized state. There is a widespread view that the exclusive area of industrialization was Croatia and Slovenia, but it’s not true. Let me just give you an example. One of the most modern industries in Yugoslavia is the arms industry. It’s very large, by the way. I think it probably was in the beginning of the 1980s or the mid-80s perhaps the fifth largest arms industry in the world—exporter, sorry, I should correct myself a very, very significant exporter of military equipment and arms.
HC: And manufacturer?
SG: And manufacturer. Absolutely.
HC: Manufacturer of small arms?
SG: No, no. Really, the Yugoslavs manufacture everything from tanks to sophisticated electronics for and avionics.
HC: Let me ask you a naïve question that I should have had right at the beginning. What population are we talking about?
SG: In Yugoslavia? 25 million.
HC: And they had built up industry, one of which was an arms industry.
SG: Right now it’s important to remember that after the building tensions, if you like, with the Soviet Union, the Yugoslavs removed their arms industry and concentrated it where? In Bosnia. Seventy percent of this very modern arms industry is in Bosnia today and was in Bosnia when Mr. Izetbegović declared the independence of his republic in April 1992, April of last year. Now, most of the areas which are occupied by the Muslims are areas which have large portions of that 70% of the Yugoslav arms industry.
HC: What percentage would you say? You’ve brought this point up. It’s new to me. What percentage of the arms that are there, in terms of the fighting on the ground, or in the air, had been sourced domestically?
SG: The vast majority was produced domestically, some of the stuff under license. For instance, the Yugoslavs produced Soviet T52s etc., but they produced their own versions of the 72 called M84. They produced that themselves. My recollection is that it was the 5th largest arms exporter at a certain stage, maybe the mid-80s. I could be wrong, maybe sixth. It’s a significant producer of modern arms and equipment.
HC: Apart from that then if we were to look at that, and you said we had armed the partisans in the Second World War, and there had been this ideological tie to Soviet Union, communism. There was this quasi-tie to NATO. There were ties back to Moscow and so forth, and I’m just in a certain sense curious as to those that were not domestically produced and what has been the reality of supply lines and externally generated materials that would support a war?
SG: In the present conflict?
HC: Leading up to and within the present conflict.
SG: There are two principal external sources of arms in the Yugoslav conflicts today. There are two conflicts, essentially, one between Croatia and the Serbian populations of Croatia and Bosnia, and one between, on the one hand, Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, and a part of the Croat army in place in Bosnia, and the army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia, which includes 35,000 regulars, perhaps 40,000, and 35,000 irregular troops. And they’re roughly matched in size. The Croatian army has between 45,000 and 50,000 men and weapons inside Bosnia today. That’s something that’s not much talked about.
HC: These are regulars?
SG: Oh, those are regular members. Those are are brigades of the regular Croatian army.
HC: And they would have been part of an overall Yugoslav force that would have been there previously.
SG: Right. No, they weren’t there previously. These troops are…
HC: Because there had been a Yugoslav military presence and established order…
SG: That withdrew from Bosnia in the spring of 1992.
HC: To where?
SG: To Yugoslavia. Some of the people who might have been stationed in Bosnia in the Yugoslav army before that might have withdrawn to Croatia. Many Croatian officers, for instance, left the Yugoslav Army with the outbreak of the wars in Croatia in the spring of 1991 a year previously. They were then integrated into the Croatian army. Now it’s that army which actually invaded Bosnia last year.
HC: You had said earlier there were two sources.
SG: Two sources, primary external sources of arms today. One is Germany. Germany, for instance, is perhaps this week completing the delivery of two squadrons of MIG-21s to Croatia. It has provided military advisors and weapons of many kinds, more light weapons, I think. There are rumors about German leopard tanks being used in Bosnia. They haven’t been confirmed so far as I know, but there’s no doubt that the Germans had a very large hand in equipping and preparing the Croatian army in the end of 1990 in the beginning of 1991.
HC: And those links would have gone back through time?
SG: The political relationship. I would say that Mr. Kohl’s recognition of the seceding republics is without any doubt what precipitated the wars in Yugoslavia. It didn’t start them, but it turned them into major international conflicts. The other source of arms going into Bosnia today is a pipeline from the major Islamic countries, Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, who are obviously competing against each other for influence in the Bosnian Muslim region.
HC: Is that reaching significant dimensions?
SG: It’s not insignificant. The number of volunteers, I don’t think, is really very large—maybe four or five hundred in Bosnia now—but it’s not insignificant and the arms are becoming significant and the military advisers—by the way, I forgot to mention that the Turks are very, very important in this great power game that’s going on.
HC: And there’s great feeling among a good deal of the Muslim world as they see, as we have seen, a great deal of…
SG: What seems to be the persecution of the Muslims?
HC: … what seems to be the persecution of the Muslims by an overwhelmingly powerful Serbian force that has been able to exert itself. Well, you’re aware of the Western press and perhaps you see things differently.
SG: Well it’s very difficult to be on the spot, and you have to look at all of this stuff very carefully. Let me remind you about the incubator incident in Kuwait. Let me remind you about the fact that there’s a vast official propaganda mechanism at work in every major Western country which emanates from the government, which organizes mass propaganda campaigns. Look, there’s a part of the directorate of operations of the Central Intelligence Agency that deals with these things and hundreds of people are employed. Similarly, in the United States Information Agency, similarly, in parts of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. So let’s start from the fact that official propaganda is a fact and that there are massive mechanisms for organizing that. The question at issue here is when we look at what we have seen in the media in the West during the last year and a half as far as you Yugoslavia, or whatever you wish to call the various parts of it, is concerned, are we dealing with honest, objective reporting, or are we dealing with, to very large extent officially inspired and indeed fabricated propaganda?
HC: All right. Officially inspired propaganda on the part of whom?
SG: Primarily on the part of Germany I would say. The Germans have a very great interest in this situation. Let me just sketch that very briefly. At the end of the 1980s, as you know, the communist regimes in Eastern Europe were really disintegrating, under various kinds of pressure.
HC: And in the centrifugal forces that are exerting themselves in Yugoslavia there is a relationship between that fact and the fact that there is difficulty emerging in Yugoslavia.
SG: Well, yes and no. Let’s just start with the fact that this was a fact at the end of the eighties, all right? Now, in 1989 Germany was reunified. That made Germany far and away the most powerful country in continental Europe. Now we also have to remember that Germany at the time—and this was particularly accentuated by the process of unification—had already experienced, as the United States and France and Britain and Italy and other Western countries have, long years of economic dislocation, slowing of economic growth, rising of unemployment. Germany today has more than ten and a half percent unemployment.
HC: They’re absorbing East Germans.
SG: Well, they had a high unemployment before they absorbed East Germany. Eastern Germany has created an absolute economic cataclysm for Western Europe because of the manner in which it sought to be absorbed.
HC: You don’t think they’ll get their act together?
SG: Absolutely out of the question. Well, it depends on what you mean. Economically there’s no way in which they can make it viable, but that’s an economic question we can look at. That’s another hour’s discussion. So, we have the disintegration of the Eastern European regimes. By the way, the death of Tito was in 1980, which is a not insignificant date and an important factor contributing to this situation. We have long years of economic stagnation and dislocation in the West. By the way, that was transmitted to Yugoslavia through the reductions in trade, reductions in investment, reductions in immigrant remittances etc., so that Yugoslavia through the 1970s was affected by the economic crisis in the West which deepened and deepened, you know, from 1972 to 1973. When West Germany absorbed Eastern Germany, that economic difficulty was really greatly enhanced. We then saw… actually it had begun well before that… a rise of a new kind of nationalism in Germany which hasn’t been seen there in a long time. And if you look at the German debates which have been going on for some time now, they are fairly hair-raising. German academics, historians etc. are really debating anew how bad Hitler was. That’s the tenor of the debate. There’s a very large revisionist debate going on in Germany which has been accompanied by and, I think, has facilitated the rise of nationalism. And we have also the rise of the right-wing extremist groups. By the way, I have to remind you…
HC: Skinheads and whatnot?
SG: Like Deutsche Alternativa—these groups which are essentially street combat groups, but they’re financed through the electoral system because when you create a political party in Germany, you get subsidies from the electoral system in order to field your candidates.
HC: You think these street ruffians and people doing fire bombings of immigrants and shouting “auslander aus” and so forth are supported by the government officially?
SG: That’s a complicated question.
HC: Is it disaffected individuals who are lashing out?
SG: No, it’s much more systematic than that. They’re supported by important figures in industry, and they are supported by people in the government in very discreet ways, obviously, but just to give you an example: There are two deputy directors of the Federal Ministry of Defense in the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Germany, an enormously important department in Germany, who are actually members of revanchist eastern parties, particularly Sudeten Deutsche parties, which…
In any case, these connections exist, but most important of all of these things is that Germany began consciously rebuilding its cultural and economic links into Central and Eastern Europe systematically, and South Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia has always been one of the areas which has been in, historically, German imperial sights. And with the reunification of Germany, and the rise of nationalism, and all that that’s been accompanied by, we have seen a definite clearly defined, traceable German effort to resume its dominance in Central Europe, particularly East Central Europe. That is, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the Czechs for instance maintain that the Germans played a critical role in precipitating the schism in Czechoslovakia, the separation of Slovakia. And there’s very good reason for believing that. I mean the Germans, don’t forget, had historic ties to the Slovaks. They did, in Slovakia during the Second World War, very much what they did in the independent Croatian state. It wasn’t quite as horrible, but there were Slovak fascists. The Germans supported them. There was a Nazi puppet state in Slovakia etc. What I’m saying is that a lot of the of the ugliness that we saw in the 1930s and the 1920s in Western Europe and in Germany, in particular, really is resuming.
HC: That’s very, very worrying.
SG: But it is an important element here in understanding what’s happened in Yugoslavia because the Germans really helped to precipitate that. They helped to precipitate the war between Croatia and Yugoslavia, the secession of Croatia, and they have armed, assisted, advised etc., guided the new version of the independent Croatian state under Mr. Tudjman.
HC: And do you think that the hand of Germany… I wonder if you could put this in perspective for us. This last year or so, the Serbian activity was a reaction to that?
SG: OK. Serbia. Let’s go over…
HC: We’ve had people like George Shultz and ex-president Reagan—all sorts of people at the very highest authority in this country condemn what we see on television. People are talking now about the Bosnians who have suffered. Today as you and I talk on February 24, they’re airlifting and air dropping supplies into Bosnia, for the suffering Bosnian people. And in the minds of the American people, the Serbian forces have been a ruthless and aggressive force that ought to be confronted. They are even talking about the use of air power against Belgrade.
SG: There’s no doubt that we are…
HC: And what is the reality, as far as you see, of all of these which you obviously can see, which is the perception that is felt by many of the leadership and much of the general society in this country. And we feel frustrated that we’re not able to go in because our military advisors tell us we’ll get ourselves into another Vietnam quagmire and we mustn’t enter militarily. And do you think we might? And what do you think about some of these questions that are so much in the in the thinking of the American people now?
SG: I think it’s important…
HC: Put some of that in perspective for us.
SG: I think it’s important to come to the situation today, to the Vance Owen plan (Mach II), the version generated by the Clinton administration, the new proposals to go into Bosnia, the position of the United States military. But the background… let’s just say something about that. There is a conflict in Bosnia, a major conflict in Bosnia, just as there is in Croatia between Serbs and Croatians. Both of those conflicts were precipitated by a very simple fact: the secession of these states from Yugoslavia without attention to regulating the status of Serbs in Croatia and in Bosnia. This is a very serious question because of the historical background which I mentioned—the independent Croatian state and the genocide conducted against various populations, the Serbs in particular between 1941 and 1945. At the time that Croatia declared its independence in June of 1991, there were 750,000 Serbs living in parts of the Krajina, as they’re called, which by the way is the geopolitical heart of Croatia. There were 1,300,000 or 1,400,000 Serbs living in Bosnia at the time that Bosnian independence was declared in April of last year. These secessions took place in a manner which raised the historic fears, historically justified fears, of the Serbian populations of these areas that they would be the target of genocidal persecutions again. Why? When Mr. Tudjman became the president of Croatia and declared its independence, he passed legislation which purged Serbs from government service, changed property rights of Serbs living in Croatia, mandated the purge of Serbs from the universities, the media etc. in the name of democratization, but nonetheless. And he began this, and in addition right-wing extremists in Croatia carried out military attacks on Serbian communities. And the Serbs resisted. That’s how the war in Croatia began. That’s why the Yugoslav army intervened in Croatia. Now again, remember that the Muslims in Bosnia sought to create, stated so, still do—it’s a very important issue which is denied in this country—a fundamentalist Islamic state in the middle of Europe, and that also ignored the historic rights of Serbs to be considered an equivalent nationality as they had been before Croatian secession in Croatia, with equal rights to other members of the population, and as they saw it, this exposed them once again to the threat of genocidal persecution.
HC: Where would this Muslim oriented entity be?
SG: In Bosnia.
HC: In the whole of Bosnia?
SG: Yes, the secession of Bosnia took place when the Muslim population of Bosnia was 44% of the total and a minority. By the way, that’s against the constitution of the Bosnian Republic itself—secession without the consensus of the three principal nationality groups is against the Bosnian Republic’s own constitution in 1992. So all of these things that were done were totally illegal. The illegalities in themselves frightened the Serbs. The determination of the Croatians to discriminate against and to leave the Serb populations out of equivalent consideration constitutionally, as happened in Bosnia, really began to raise all these old fears. And the Serbs reacted. The Serbs reacted by saying, “OK, we will ourselves choose to secede as a Serbian nationality in Bosnia, in Croatia, from these independent republics and become members of Yugoslavia and accede to membership of Yugoslavia.” That’s really what they would like to see. This whole thing, by the way, could be settled very simply.
HC: How?
SG: By according to the Serbian populations of these republics the same rights and privileges, the same property rights etc. as belong, according to their constitutions, to all other citizens. What has happened with the Croatian and the Bosnian secessions is that mono-ethnicity has been declared as the only right and proper basis for self-determination, but this is complete balderdash. Its historical nonsense. It’s legal nonsense, and frankly it’s only because it serves the strategic interests of outside powers, powers not part of that region, that this has been tolerated, and that around this a whole series of myths have been created which create the impression which you were describing a few minutes ago.
HC: And which is a very widespread one here. It makes one think a little bit of Cyprus where the Turks and the Greeks had fought so vociferously and then they divided the island into two groups.
SG: It doesn’t make any sense economically.
HC: It doesn’t make any sense economically, but it [division of Cyprus] did make sense because they were killing each other and fighting over these ancient animosities, and there are some attempts now to try and divide the people in the area of Yugoslavia into groups because there’s a sense that these groups simply cannot get along together…
SG: Well, let me raise the further irony.
HC: … unless there’s this overpowering force of unity, a Tito or something to hold them together.
SG: Well, I think that’s a false perception. There has been a very great effort to work at the stimulation of nationalist tendencies in order to fragment Yugoslav…
HC: Nationalist tendencies in this case being Yugoslav?
SG: No. Croatian, Slovenian secessionism, Bosnian secessionism, Muslim fundamentalism. All of these, including Albanian secessionism, all of these nationalities have been appealed to, to some extent—financed, cosseted, assisted, directed by outside powers—in order to bring about the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
HC: Well, we have it not only in Yugoslavia. We have it in all kinds of places in the world. You mentioned Czechoslovakia. We have Tajikistan. We have it in Kurdistan and all sorts of entities, and ethnic entities on the subcontinent of India. We have it in Africa. We have it all over the place—these ethnic groups which are asserting themselves as nations which had previously been part of a nation. There was unity, but there seems to be ethnicity, and I’m not sure exactly what we mean by that, this is a whole other program, and this is becoming the basis of political sovereignty in the minds of many.
SG: Well, you see the problem is…
HC: We see this centrifugal force, which is exerting itself on a worldwide scale, and one wonders how many nation states—we don’t say ethnic states—but the ethnicity seems to become the basis of political sovereignty in the modern world.
SG: This is impossible.
HC: It becomes economically unworkable, but I just wonder if…
SG: Apart from the economics…
HC: … it’s not just in Yugoslavia that it’s exerting itself.
SG: I understand that, but let’s look at the example of Yugoslavia. Apart from the economics, obviously the secessions have shattered Yugoslavian infrastructure totally, destroyed the linkages between industries across markets etc. It’s an economic catastrophe for the secessionists. But then there is a further paradox, a very, very bitter irony, actually, which, I would say, for simple geostrategic convenience, various powers, including the United States and Germany in particular… by the way resisted for a very long time by the Netherlands and France and Great Britain behind the scenes. They fought bitterly to prevent Germany from doing what it did inside the European community. While these powers decry the impossibility of holding a nation of many ethnicities like Yugoslavia together, what they are doing is creating mini-republics with the same ethnic contradictions and puzzles. Bosnia is not a state with an 80 percent or 85 or 90 percent Muslim population. There is only 44 percent.
HC: This is going to compound the problem.
SG: Right. So the problem here is… and the same is true of Croatia. It has an enormous Serbian population. There is no way in the world that you can draw a map of Yugoslavia which will contain a really large majority of any individual ethnic group. It’s just not possible.
HC: We only have about two minutes left. What about the Vance Owen plan? Could you just sum it up now? What’s going to happen there?
SG: Well, it’s clear that there’s a strong desire on the part of some US politicians to involve the United States in this war, or at the very least to prolong it. Prolonging this war serves a very important strategic American purpose which is it’s totally disrupting the European continent at a critical moment when it’s trying to move towards political integration. That’s a very important consequence. Germany, Italy and other European countries have suffered tremendously from sanctions [against what remains of Yugoslavia], but there’s a very great danger here that the so-called minor military assistance to these so-called humanitarian efforts can explode into a major conflict, and the Yugoslavs are now telling the United States behind the scenes that they really are risking a major conflagration which could place them in the same situation that the Germans found themselves in when they tried to occupy the country in the Second World War.
HC: Yes, that’s why there’s so much concern. We could talk for hours. Thank you. Sean Gervasi has filled us in very, very admirably.
Note: The transcript has been altered here to reflect what must have been the intended meaning. In the interview, Professor Gervasi said, “… Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, the first and the third being traditionally under the influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Catholic, the latter being much closer to Russia and Orthodox.” It is the Serbs who have Orthodox heritage, and the Croats and Slovenes who have Catholic heritage. Professor Gervasi probably meant to say, “… Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, the second and the third being traditionally under the influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Catholic, the former being much closer to Russia and Orthodox.”
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“To remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant.” ― John Berger, Ways of Seeing
This November 22nd marked fifty-five years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Perhaps no other major incident in U.S. history has generated more uncertainty and skepticism towards its official account than his Dallas killing in 1963. A 2013 Gallup poll showed that a clear majority of Americans still doubt the Warren Commission’s determination that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone as the accused sniper, with many suspecting that others in government and organized crime were involved in a secret plot to kill the president. Although its etymological origins can be traced back further, as a cultural phenomenon the notion of belief in so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ is widely attributed to a surge in distrust of government and media institutions that followed JFK’s murder. Perhaps its only rival would be September 11th, which surveys have similarly indicated a trend of doubt towards the 9/11 Commission Report’s version of events leading up to the attacks in 2001. In other words, most people believe in a major conspiracy theory — yet they generally remain a mark of disgrace and public ridicule.
At no point in time have conspiracy theories been as stigmatized as in the wake of the 2016 U.S. election. Incidentally, what is classified as such is no longer consigned to the societal fringe or ever been more popular. It is alleged that the spreading of “fake news” on social media, featuring debunked viral conspiracies like Pizzagate, was what tipped the voting scales in Donald Trump’s favor. Or was it the very real conspiracy revealed in leaked emails published by WikiLeaks that the Democratic National Committee rigged the party primary for Hillary Clinton? We’re supposed to consider that fake news too, apparently. Regardless, what is consistently never addressed is the reasons why people turn to unofficial narratives because it would require the media to address its own negligence to hold those in power to account.
An examination of the media‘s systemic failure would draw attention to its actual role in society as a tool of mass persuasion on behalf of the ruling elite. Perhaps if the official doctrines of the over-staged Warren and 9/11 Commission Reports were not treated as articles of faith, people wouldn’t be suspicious of a rogue shadow government hidden behind such obvious dog-and-pony shows. If there is no incriminating evidence in the JFK files, why on earth is the public forbidden to see them half a century later? Instead, it is the working class who are demonized for expressing the human need to grasp the social totality denied by a corporate-controlled media that performs the opposite of its expected function. They are left with no choice but to fill in the enormous blanks left gaping by a press in service of the status quo and a government with no transparency. It is always the people who are blamed for the media’s failure to do its job.
Screengrab from The Guardian
The same can be said across the pond or for the West in general. Look no further than a recent article in British newspaper The Guardian alleging that “60% of Britons believe in conspiracy theories.” Its definition of ‘conspiracy’ is so broad that it doesn’t simply refer to beliefs about UFOs or the moon landing, but a general distrust of institutions, official narratives and authority figures in any form. The article then conflates Brexit voters who hold anti-immigrant views with anyone polled who believes that “the world is run by a secret global cabal of people who control events together”, and then almost comically states “the most widespread conspiracy belief in the UK, shared by 44% of people, was that ‘even though we live in what’s called a democracy, a few people will always run things in this country anyway.’” That is to say, The Guardian regards a view generally held by most rational people with an accurate understanding of life under capitalism as a ‘conspiracy’ belief equivalent to racism.The article even concludes that “distrust of company bosses”, a feeling unsurprisingly held by three-fourths of those surveyed, falls under the label of a conspiracy view. Yes, clearly anyone who doesn’t love their oppressors is in equal standing with bigots who want to leave the EU. The world’s self declared ‘leading liberal voice’ is a guardian of power, indeed.
The term ‘conspiracy theory’ itself is a weapon. Its use is so ubiquitous that it automatically implies unconvincing improbability and worthiness of dismissal. How and when did it come to be so widely dispersed in the cultural lexicon? In the 1970s, the CIA had been the subject of numerous scandals with disclosures about its activities ranging from meddling in the affairs of sovereign countries to administering mind-control experiments on citizens in MK-ULTRA. The revelations about its clandestine influence on the press was yet another divulgence. It turns out that a likely possibility for the genesis of the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ and its far-reaching dissemination was revealed in an important 1976 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by The New York Times in CIA Document 1035–960. The dispatch showed that by the late 1960s, the spy agency was so worried about pervasive skepticism toward the Warren Commission ruling that it issued a bulletin to its elite liaisons in the press to quell subversion. Entitled “Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report”, the communique encouraged the fourth estate to discredit doubters by spreading propaganda. It specifically employed the term while stressing the need to rein in dissenting opinion among journalists and the public:
“Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries.”
Whether or not the specific document’s usage of the label is directly attributable to its subsequent omnipresence in the cultural vocabulary is beside the point. It was yet another example of the CIA’s efforts to engineer public opinion with media bias and disinformation, ordering its recruits to “employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.” Only on occasion does an event like the Kennedy assassination occur where the deep state’s savage nature is glimpsed by the public at large, if only for a brief moment. Such instances require a counterintelligence response if the majority is to stay plugged into the matrix.
The unpleasant truth is that the 35th U.S. President became so despised by the most right-wing and militarist elements in the intelligence apparatus — provoked by his perceived treachery in diplomacy toward Cuba and placation of the Soviet Union following the foreign policy disasters of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs and apparent desire to deescalate the war in Vietnam — that they most likely removed him in a coup. The extent to which Kennedy was sincere in those efforts is another matter, although it was confirmed in declassified documents last year that he had rejected the proposed Operation Northwoods which would have carried out ‘false flag’ bombings in Miami to be blamed on Fidel Castro which shockingly made it all the way up the chain of command past the Joint Chiefs of Staff for approval. Why is it outlandish for people to suspect they could have done something similar on 9/11?
For Americans to learn the ugly facts behind JFK’s murder, plausibly located in the more than 15,000 documents still concealed from public view, would destroy the foundations of the national security state and the establishment it safeguards. It is on this basis that for more than half a century, corporate-owned media has stifled the multitude of admissions about the assassination brought to light, even when they’ve come from Hollywood movies. What we are witnessing today in the Russiagate fiasco with the “fake news” PSY-OP is an updated version of the CIA’s enlistment of the media following the JFK assassination to orchestrate public opinion which made the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ a universal pejorative.
Coincidentally, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Breuer satellite location in New York is the exhibition Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy. The show covers more than fifty-years of artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, collage, video and installations addressing a variety of themes ranging from secret torture at CIA black-sites to COINTELPRO to Henry Kissinger’s role in ‘the first 9/11’, the September 1973 coup in Chile which ousted Salvador Allende and installed Augusto Pinochet and Milton Friedman’s Chicago Boys. There are many provocative pieces in the show, such as a Calder-like sculpture of Iraqi oil fields exploring imperialism to an abstract painting suggesting that the WTC towers could have been destroyed by controlled demolition using planted super-thermite explosives.
The timing of such an exposition immediately prompts curiosity. One would assume that the Met was capitalizing on the unprecedented popularity of conspiracies with the “fake news” phenomenon surrounding the Trump presidency, but apparently the lead curator conceived of the show concept a decade prior. Nevertheless, for one of the biggest and wealthiest museums in the world founded by robber barons to permit such a showcase still required a selling point which came in the form of its marketability to satisfy the public’s palate for kitsch. Leaving that aside, however, the content of the exhibit is admittedly of bona fide quality, featuring everything from Black Panther graphic designer Emory Douglas to the late conceptual artist Mike Kelley.
The Kennedy assassination is featured heavily as a spectral motif and the first pieces visitors encounter are two striking neon-colored paintings of Lee Harvey Oswald and his assassin, Jack Ruby, by New York-based artist Wayne Gonzales which sets an ominous tone. Although the individual works of the inspired show are of high caliber, its main shortcoming is the sensationalized presentation. Despite seemingly authentic intentions, it inevitably institutionalizes the idea that when two-thirds of Americans reject the official story of a Kennedy assassination or 9/11, it is ultimately still just a ‘conspiracy.’ Although the exhibit itself is not as culpable as the surrounding cultural context in which it has appeared, it ultimately reifies that what is construed as hypothetical and imaginary conjecture (in the case of the JFK assassination a legitimate consensus) only merits attention as something tacky or niche to be appreciated ironically.
This is particularly advantageous to the establishment at the present moment which is relentlessly selling the naïve idea that we are now living in a “post-truth” era, as if prior to the Trump administration we were in a glory age of ‘truth.’ In order for art to portray such subject matter and be given a platform, it cannot avoid being allocated as novelty of unrefined taste by such a powerful institution. A podcast interview with the gallery curators revealed that one of the artists featured in the show, Hans Haacke, had to earn their trust as he was hesitant to participate in the show because he didn’t wish his work “to be associated with fiction.” Perhaps for related reasons, the curators refreshingly chose to omit the term ‘theory’ from the title while providing a thorough investigation of such themes by artists which reveal what they describe as “conspiracies that turned out not be theories at all, but truths.”
While everyone is aware of the intimate relationship between the art world and the ultra-wealthy benefactors of its museums, less familiar is its history with the CIA. As part of its psychological warfare during the Cold War, the agency spent millions promoting Modern Art , particularly the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, a fact only briefly mentioned by the gallery text of the exhibit. The CIA saw the aesthetic individualism and free form style of Abstract Expressionism as emblematic of Western values of ‘freedom of expression’ in antithesis to the socialist realism of the Soviet Union. The CIA provided covert financial support through the establishment of phony foundations with innocuous names that secretly subsidized exhibitions. The primary front organization was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) whose leading operative was CIA officer Thomas Braden. Braden was even selected as the executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York by Nelson Rockefeller as he oversaw the CIA’s hush-hush cultural activities in the CCF. He would later go on to become a columnist and co-host of CNN’s Crossfire.
Image on the right: Tom Braden, CIA spy and MoMA executive secretary.
The CIA did not just work stringently to relegate leeriness of its activities under a catch-all misnomer at the low brow level. The Congress for Cultural Freedom’s ideological weaponry even extended to the level of high intellectual theory for its gatekeeping. The CCF and other front groups like the Farfield Foundation secretly sponsored literary magazines such as Commentary and The Paris Review as an effort to redirect the sympathies of the non-communist left in the West away from the Soviet Union toward liberal democracy. Another literary publication that received undercover sponsoring from the CCF was the British-based Encounter magazine, founded by the essayist and intellectual Irving Kristol who later became the “godfather of neo-conservatism” and real life father of ultra-hawk pundit Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard. During the 1930s, as a college student Irving Kristol was a member of the New York Intellectuals, a group of Jewish literary critics and writers who mostly were Trotskyists that embraced left-wing politics but were staunchly opposed to the Soviet Union under Stalin. These included prominent figures such as Isaiah Berlin, Irving Howe and Hannah Arendt who overtime moved to the center and became liberals, or in the case of Kristol eventually further to arch-conservatism.
The intellectual voyage from Trotskyism to neoconservatism was a common thread throughout the 20th century, from David Horowitz to the late Christopher Hitchens. Irving Kristol and his intellectual circle were funded by the CIA in order to influence the political leanings of their cohorts in the European left to move toward liberal democracy and away from communism which fractured the left as a whole. To great effect, this split coalitions between social democratic and communist parties across Europe. If European leftists weren’t swayed by the CIA-sponsored intelligentsia, they were likely discouraged from holding any remaining Soviet sympathies by the ‘false flag’ terrorist attacks carried out during Operation Gladio in NATO-member countries by recruited fascist paramilitaries which were falsely blamed on communist organizations to tarnish their reputations.
Along with the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, the consequences of the CIA’s clandestine activities from the arts to the intelligentsia can be seen in the dominant pseudo-left of today which has further degenerated into excessive preoccupation with toothless reformism and fetishization of gender and race-based identity politics. If the current generation of resolute Marxists are looking to place blame for the dominance of incrementalist politics emphasizing gradual change through existing institutions that has infected the entire left, they shouldn’t be shocked to learn much of it lands on the world’s most powerful spy agency during the Cold War. The CIA wasn’t just in the business of overthrowing democratic leaders of third world nations for Western business interests but equally engaged in cloak-and-dagger cultural operations which successfully altered the focus of leftist politics away from transformative anti-capitalist positions toward centrist liberal stances. To this day, the reverberations of these PSY-OPs can be felt in the contemporary left’s neglect and obfuscation of issues like imperialism and the class struggle. Without knowing this history, one can only have a vague understanding of how the left came to be what it is at present. The military-intelligence complex’s manipulation of the art world is incontrovertible fact, not a fanciful story, and it was just one element of a larger cultural campaign to splinter the Western left.
As the exhibit aptly points out, often what are designated as conspiracy theories in bygone times become indisputable facts years later. If there is now an abundant market for misinformation online exploiting the appetite of a public disillusioned by establishment media in desperate search of an alternative, the presstitutes only have themselves to blame. Claims on the right-wing margins about school shootings being hoaxes will never even begin to approach the irreparable damage done by every major news outlet in the country selling the lies of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction to go to war in Iraq, not just to the millions of human lives lost but the trust of the masses in the mass media orthodoxy. The same can be said about their unwillingness to truly investigate the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. Following the 2016 election, the censorship campaign by social network giants against alternative media under the banner of stopping the spread of “fake news” can be seen as confirmation of the effectiveness of real independent journalism and it’s growing audience. Otherwise, it would not provoke such suppression. This development can either disenchant those hungry for the truth or be interpreted as a positive sign for the future, that people are starting to resist drinking the kool-aid— for now let’s choose the latter.
Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy is on view at the Met Breuer until January 6th, 2019.
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Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His work has appeared in publications such as The Greanville Post, Global Research, OffGuardian, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Signs of the Times, and more. Read him on Medium. Max may be reached at [email protected]
“They are fleeing a crisis. They are fleeing catastrophe. One in which not only is it almost impossible for people to economically survive, it’s increasingly difficult to just physically survive and not be subject to some kind of violence….The root of the problem is the crisis in Honduras, and Canada has played a central role in supporting the military government in Honduras.” – Tyler Shipley, from this week’s interview
Thousands have been fleeing high levels of violence in the Central American country which has persisted since the 2009 coup d’etat of then President Manuel Zelaya. Grinding poverty, intimidation, corruption, narco-trafficking and political violence have been plaguing communities in Honduras. The country of nine and a quarter million people is now bleeding waves of refugees as their only recourse to a catastrophe.
While there has been plenty of debate about the appropriate response to the migrant caravan, and brought on in part by President Trump’s fear-mongering, there has been relatively little attention to the role played by the United States and Canada in generating the social crisis that led to the exodus. Both those countries played a role in enabling and legitimizing the overthrow of a democratically elected government, and its replacement with a military dictatorship, all in the name of keeping Honduras profitable for foreign business interests. [1][2]
On this week’s Global Research News Hour, we take a closer look at some of the dynamics influencing and impacting the Central American migrants, what the future may hold, and how the situation may be remediated.
In the first half hour, guest Tyler Shipley, author of Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras, outlines the ways in which Canada and Canadian business interests has supported and enabled the very violent living conditions in Honduras from which migrants are fleeing.
In our second half hour, independent writer and photojournalist José Luis Granados Ceja reports on his observations of the migrant from his time with them in late October. He describes the narco-trafficking and other dangers the migrants have confronted during their 4000 kilometre journey, his thoughts about the November 25th attack by US border agents, and what he anticipates as a leftist politician, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, assumes the presidency of Mexico on December 1st.
(transcript provided below.)
Tyler Shipley is professor of culture, society, and commerce at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. He is also an associate fellow with the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC). His latest book, Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras (2017) is available from the publisher Between the Lines.
José Luis Granados Ceja, is an independent writer and photojournalist based in Mexico City. He previously worked as a staff writer for Telesur and has contributed to the Two Row Times among other outlets. He has also worked in radio as a host and producer, and currently works on a freelance basis.
Transcript – Interview with José Luis Granados Ceja, November 29, 2018
Part One
Global Research: José Luis Granados Ceja is an independent writer and photojournalist based in Mexico City. He previously worked as a staff writer for Telesur and has contributed to the Two Row Times among other outlets. He has also worked in radio and as a host and producer and currently works on a freelance basis. José escorted the caravan from the Mexico-Guatemala border to the city of Tapachula in Chiapas and had a chance to speak with several of the participants in the migrant caravan. It’s great to have you on the program José thanks for making the time to speak with us.
José Luis Granados Ceja: I’m very happy to be here.
GR: Could you talk, first of all, about the encounter at the Mexico Guatemala border at the Ciudad Hidalgo port of entry, the border crossing there? What were the challenges facing the caravan at that point?
JLGC: Yeah. The group that I was able to meet with was actually amongst the first wave of migrants coming from Central America into Mexico in order to continue the journey north to where many intend to go, which is the United States. And, well, this is a difficult journey all along the way. It starts out in, you know, most people are coming from Honduras but there were also people from El Salvador and Nicaragua and Guatemala, and it’s a journey that is actually mostly done on foot. Occasionally people do give them rides, or are able to secure some transportation, but for the most part it’s on foot in very hot weather, and with very little resources to speak of. And so what you’re seeing is an exodus of people who are fleeing a very difficult situation.
I’m going to mostly talk about Honduras because the vast majority of people are coming from Honduras. It’s a country that is experiencing a lot of political and economic turmoil, and in order to kind of put things into context, in 2009 there was a coup d’etat in Honduras which ousted a left reformer by the name of Manuel Zelaya, and since then, there has been effectively a dictatorship, there have been elections but they’ve been rather dubious.
The last one in particular was very questionable, and so the regime in charge in Honduras that is ruling for a very small elite, to the detriment of most people. And so that’s why people are choosing to flee Honduras and endure this journey.
In terms of the actual difficulties of the journey, is that, while apart from the difficulty of having to do such a long trip on foot, is also that during those days there was still not a lot of direction coming from the Mexican government. We were still under the government of President Pena Nieto from the PRI party. It seemed like there was a lot of confused signals.
What ultimately, what ended happening was that when they got to the border, they were met by a closed gate, and were then, when they tried to cross the first gate from Guatemala and then reach the second gate which is on the actual Mexican side of the border, they were met with repression, with teargas, and so, once that settled down, the border was effectively closed to them, most people decided to cross on very makeshift rafts, and where they were then they gathered in Ciudad Hidalgo where they were received by civil society organizations.
You know, I spoke with some people who were attending to the migrants there, and they talked about the exhaustion that many were suffering, you know from the heat, some people had received some confusion as a result of the repression, just to kind of give you an idea.
And so that was just the beginning, and so they still had all of Mexico left to cross which again is a very difficult and a very dangerous Journey. Mexico has a problem with security, and there are areas where the State is not very present, and in those areas it’s often here and you do hear cases of migrants being forcibly disappeared by organized crime. Then all of that to get to Tijuana which I think we can get to in a minute.
GR:Well could you then first of all talk about some of the stories that you heard from the migrants? Are there are a couple of illustrative stories that you can share that will help them understand what these people are going through on their 4000-kilometre journey?
JLGC:Yeah, there’s a couple ones that I think really kind of paint a clear picture. One, I remember speaking to a young man, when we were talking about this exodus, and he out it very plainly, he’s like “we’re not migrating, we’re fleeing.” They are running for their lives. Another young man that I spoke to lifted up his shirt and he showed me the very still very visible scars on his body. They were a result of some thieves who were trying to take his bicycle and shot him 10 times. He barely survived that episode.
It gives you an idea of the level of violence that crime employs in Central America. That use, you know, for – to steal something, that, you know, how much value can a bicycle really have? So it gives you an idea just how bad things are, and migrants told me that they feel very hopeless because, so on the one hand they have organized crime groups asking ..through extortion basically, to contribute fees for protection, and on the other side they have police who are similarly squeezing them for bribes. And so even if let’s say someone is able to put together a business, they quickly find out that everything that they are making goes to either organized crime or to corruption. And so, it’s very difficult for people to feel like there’s an exit.
One final anecdote that I wanted to share, that I think also helps people understand the desperation, is that, so we have a change of government happening this Saturday December 1st, and the President-Elect, Andres Manuel López Obrador, said that he was interested in offering work visas for people from Central America who were fleeing violence so that they could find asylum here inside of Mexico.
And I asked a woman, a mother of three, why she decided to join this caravan and not wait, because at that point it was only a couple of months before there would be changes in government, perhaps a government that maybe would be more friendly towards the needs of migrants, and without a moment’s hesitation, she said immediately, “I can’t wait because my babies will die of hunger.” So that’s how desperate people are feeling, and that I think helps understand.
The other part being that they feel that there isn’t a political solution to their problem either. Last year there was election, the one-year anniversary of those contested elections just passed this week in Honduras and people talked about how they took to the streets to protest, that they tried to do things the right way, quote unquote, of agitating, of protesting, of even going out and voting and pursuing a change of government through the democratic institutions of their country, and that too was denied to them, so all of that combined I think is also really why we’re seeing the numbers are people fleeing Central America.
GR: And, of course, one aspect is the fact that there is safety in numbers, relative safety in numbers. These people are facing major threats you just hinted at the disappearances and the organized crime and the cartels and so on. Could you elaborate a little more on the, some of those threats that you’re familiar with?
JLGC: Yeah, most of the people that I spoke to actually said that they had every intention of leaving their country and heading towards the United States. It was when they heard about this caravan that they decided to join and leave in that moment. And that’s precisely it, because there is safety in numbers. And it’s also a more feasible way of actually doing it.
So when you travel alone, generally you do it through the help of what we call coyotajes and for lack of a precise translation, basically human smugglers. And they charge upwards of $7,000 US. That is an amount of money that most people from Central America will never be able to actually save up. It’s an absurd amount of money. I mean it’s a lot of money to people who earn dollars, so it makes it very difficult for them to make it, and without the help of coyotajes you run the risk of taking the wrong route, of being exposed to organized crime groups, of perhaps trying to cross the desert from Mexico into the United States which is also a very dangerous thing.
So, there is. There’s strength in numbers when you move together, and it also makes, sends a political message. You know, it’s easy to ignore groups of a couple dozen, or a handful of people, but when thousands of people are moving together, well then, the State institutions inside of Mexico, civil society organizations, the world, I guess, ends up paying more attention to their situation. I think that’s also important because, you know, what it means to mobilization of resources and attention, but unfortunately in some cases a negative attention as we’ve seen as well in the United States.
GR: Could you speak to… You also mention the extreme heat that people had to cope with. What kinds of health emergencies is the caravan confronting, and how are they – are people coping with these health emergencies?
JLGC:It’s hard for me to describe just how difficult it is. I’ve merely accompanied them from the border to the city Tapachula, and walking, it’s about 4 hours. But by the second hour, exhaustion was really setting in, I was pouring water on my head just to stave off heat stroke, and most people, because they’re people of modest means, are travelling with the clothes on the back and the shoes that they happen to have at that moment. Some people were walking in sandals or in plastic shoes, and so you wuold see people move off to the side of the road and try to attend to the blisters on their feet, or…
And also, I think one of the things that was really emotional to see was, at the very beginning of the walk, so they start early try to take advantage of the cooler air in the morning, is that the children are quite happy and they’re playing and they’re running around with other kids, but even the first hour, definitely by the second and then onwards, you can tell that they are becoming very exhausted, and it’s really taking a toll on them.
And there’s been some misconception saying that it’s mostly young men…there are a lot of families that are travelling with very young children. There’s even been babies that have been born along the journey. And there isn’t that much services available for them.
You know…groups like The Red Cross, that I witnessed being on site, are there, they hand out water, and they provide kind of first aid, but for the more complicated situations, or health situations that arise, there isn’t that much support for them. Fortunately, when they arrived in Mexico City, Mexico City is obviously wealthier and has more resources at its disposal, they set up kind of like a tent city inside an old sports complex, and there they were able to receive medical attention, doctors were able to be on hand and try to address some of the issues that have been developing along the way.
GR: I noticed that there was in Mexico City, yeah, you mentioned the people who had, they managed to find some safe haven in Mexico City. I wonder if, briefly, you might be familiar with, it was reported earlier this month about a hundred of the migrants had been kidnapped in Pueblo State on their way to Veracruz, could you provide our listeners with some details about that, how that situation arose and how it became resolved?
JLGC: So when they got to the state of Veracruz, they actually were in negotiations with the local state government there in order to get some transportation on buses from the state of Veracruz to Mexico City. Ultimately that kind of support didn’t come through, and people wanted to continue on their journey. And so they started walking. And often when they’re walking, there are good Samaritans who stop and offer to give them rides, but it seems like what happened in this instance is that someone affiliated with an organized crime group offered them transportation but was actually interested in forcibly disappearing them.
It’s a phenomenon that is actually unfortunately all too common for the people who are travelling from Central America through Mexico, where they’re scooped up, they’re used effectively as slave labour in order to, for the means for the ends of the organized crime groups. It’s been difficult to ascertain exactly what happened with this group in particular because, you know, they didn’t have cell phones, if they did, they were likely seized by those that kidnapped them.
And it’s been difficult to also even know the names of the people who are missing, right? Because this is all in many ways an improvised affair, and so there isn’t like a list of people who are travelling as part of the caravan, it’s difficult to know. So who might have been disappeared, the family members are back in Central America, it’s difficult for them to try to make a petition to the State to try to figure out what happened to their relatives. And so, it’s a consequence of the lack of resources, unfortunately.
Although there has been tremendous help that’s been given to them by Mexican civil society, I think in many ways, the lack of transportation that had been promised to them led to this situation. And that’s why you’ve seen so many of the migrant groups advocating for more assistance from the Mexican federal government for their journey, just for questions like that, like safety, maybe having some police accompanying them as much as possible.
GR: Okay so you just mentioned that there was, there has been support from the Mexican population. Unfortunately, some of it is sort of an exploitative kind of help. What can you tell us about the overall balance of both support and opposition towards the migrants?
JLGC: Yeah it’s difficult for me to say with any kind of certainty exactly, you know, what percentage. I haven’t seen any kind of opinion surveys done on that. I will say that when we were walking from the border to Tapachula, it was really impressive to see that people would literally come rushing, running out of their homes in order to offer people, you know, the food that they had in their pantry or whatever water bottles they happened to have in their home. I remember even seeing some people who are apologizing for not having more to offer.
And, you know, the state of Chiapas is also the poorest state in the Mexican Federation, so people who have very little are really interested in giving the little that they have in order to support because, I think as a country, we’re a country that is also, a country that has a lot of people who leave for economic and security reasons. So I think there is a lot of sympathy, for the most part, from Mexican society, for those who are enduring this journey. They know that… they likely have relatives who’ve also had to go to the other side as we say here in Mexico.
But I think it’s also important to say that there is racism and xenophobia inside Mexico. We’ve seen displays of that, especially in Tijuana recently with, there was a couple of weeks ago a protest against the migrant caravan, and we saw the mayor of Tijuana make some very troubling statements against the presence of the migrants in that city. I think in some ways, it’s been exaggerated, I don’t mean to play it down, I don’t want to deny that racism and xenophobia exist inside Mexico and that needs to be confronted, but that rally for example, at some point it seems that there are more reporters than there were people demonstrating.
Ultimately, it was less than 500 people, but none the less they are very vocal, and if you look on social media there’s also a lot of statements coming from people opposed to the caravan. So there is a mix, but, for the most part, I think even you see groups that have been supporting the migrants. This is a new thing, migrants have been travelling through Mexico to reach the United States for decades and so there’s a lot of organizations that have been working with migrants providing shelter along the way, resources and support.
Intermission
Part Two
GR:We’re speaking with José Luis Granados Ceja, independent writer and photojournalist based in Mexico City. He’s been following the migrant caravan. José, I wanted you to maybe give us, maybe from your perspective, given what you know about the physical and mental health and trials of the migrant caravan, what’s been going through your mind, having heard about the US border agents firing tear gas at the migrants, in Tijuana near the San Ysidro border crossing? And the other challenges like the protest you just mentioned.
JLGC:Yeah, you know seeking asylum, as I mentioned at the beginning people are fleeing, they’re not exaggerated. I think some people try to paint a picture that the migrants are economic migrants, they’re just seeking a better life. But they really are fleeing. There are no jobs, there’s very little hope of change in their countries of origin, and seeking asylum is something that is recognized by both domestic and international law throughout North America – we’re talking Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
And so they have a right to seek safety. And it’s really disappointing that people who are fleeing, people who are fleeing danger, are then met with repression. Right? Instead, I would hope that people, that governments, that officials would receive them with open arms, with some compassion, understanding that nobody decides to take this long journey without feeling like they have probably no other choice.
And so when you sees scenes like we saw with the tear gas, and then the photos – worse still I think, in some ways, the attempt to justify that, and I don’t think anything can justify that. And also, kind of going to the root of the problem, that desperation that you see people crossing irregularly these border points, is produced by the policies of, in this case the United States government, which actually is deliberately trying to slow the process. So in order to make that asylum claim, you actually have to set foot inside the United States and present yourself to an official and make the asylum, and then you have a hearing, and well, etc etc.
So what the US actually has been doing as a means of dissuading people from coming, is making that wait-list extremely long. So even before the caravan got there we were talking about thousands of people who were waiting on the Mexican side of the border in order to be able to set foot, because they only let in about 40 to 50 people in the morning and then another 40 to 50 in the evening. So we’re talking about a very small number of people being processed on a daily basis. And everybody else having to wait. And so that’s that desperation of being in makeshift camps without proper sanitation, without proper access to food and water, you know it makes it so that people feel very frustrated at their circumstance, you know? If the policies were different, that they actually instead of sending troops and barbed wire they sent officials who were able to process things, their claims faster than you wouldn’t see these kinds of clashes happening on the border.
GR: Now, this weekend, Saturday December 1st, a new leftist president, Andres Manuel López Obrador , as you mentioned earlier, is taking power in Mexico. He’s promised humane treatment for the migrants, and his incoming interior minister, Olga Sánchez Cordero had fielded the idea of granting 1 million work visas to Central Americans. At the same time there’s a domestic unrest over the migrant issue a long-term, and it could also cause some difficulty and relations with the Trump Administration. So in your view, to what extent will the incoming Obrador Administration be a game-changer for Central American migrants seeking asylum?
JLGC: I think if they follow through on that promise to offer visas and asylum or even residency for people from Central America inside Mexico, that could be pretty significant, right? Not – while most people want to reach the United States, I also spoke with many who said specifically that if they were offered asylum inside Mexico that they would happily take it and live and work here. And so that would be pretty important. The challenge I think facing the incoming López Obrador Administration is that there’s a lot of things that are just totally out of control. Mainly the issue that I just touched on previously about the inability for people to actually get into the United States and make their asylum claim.
And so there was a proposal that was floated, and then it seemed like there are still negotiations happening, but basically what the Trump Administration is seeking is that people who are seeking asylum in the United States wait inside Mexico. And you know there are issues with that proposal, I’m not an expert on these kinds of topics so I’ll leave that to somebody else, but what I will say is that the de facto situation now is that people are waiting on the Mexican side of the border in order to cross and make their asylum claim.
And so that is the challenge of the Mexican government is what to do with these camps that are only growing. I don’t think these kinds of caravans are going to stop anytime soon and so we’re going to have more and more people who are arriving to these makeshift camps who are just, frankly, they are not adequate for people to stay months at a time. Like I mentioned there was the wait-list was already long and that was before the caravan even got there. So now we have over 6,000 new people who arrived to the border region, the US Mexico border region, who are now waiting to cross to be to make their asylum claim. That’s not a sustainable situation.
So if they’re able to figure out a way for them to be able to live and work inside Mexico while they wait for the opportunity to go inside the United States to make their asylum claim, I think that would be far more dignified for the asylum seekers because otherwise, you know, there’s waits of an hour, two hours just for a plate of rice and beans right now, right? That doesn’t seem like the kind of situation we want to have happening on the border right now.
And then the other the other kind of point of view, even in the last month or so, there’s been at least 11,000 people deported – Central Americans deported from Mexico back to Central America – so the other policy change that one would like to see from this administration, I think would be dropping that enforcement, that heavy enforcement that we’re seeing. So instead of so many deportations because we know that’s the other kind of policy in the United States is basically in a way shifting their border down further south to Mexico-Guatemala, so stopping migrants from ever even coming close to the US border, right? So that would be a positive step forward if we see a reduction in using enforcement and deportation as a means of stopping people from migrating.
GR: Okay, finally José, do you have any advice or recommendations for listeners who wish to try to ameliorate the situation for the migrants?
JLGC: Migration is generally caused because people feeling like they don’t have any other options in their countries – their home countries or their countries of origin, and that’s essentially a political consideration. The poverty in Central America is the way it is, I think in many ways because of foreign policy by the United States and Canada that has, for example, to speak to Canada, Canada was one of the major forces that helped consolidate the coup d’etat in Honduras.
There were negotiations between Canadian officials and the interim government, and then the following government in Honduras trying to facilitate it, because, as we know, in Canada there are a lot of mining companies that are headquartered – mining companies that have interests throughout Central America and Honduras and particular. And so you see Canada as, you know in its diplomatic means, actually undermining the possibility of economic improvement in countries like Honduras, which then further provokes more migration and exodus of people.
I would always say that the number one thing is to challenge the foreign policy of your country, in this case Canada, but also United States, and to pressure representatives, in Canada your MPs, to pursue a more humanitarian policy in Central America.
Just to add a little point, right, like one of the things that the López Obrador administration has talked about really put the emphasis on, which I think is a correct course of action, is attending to the root causes of migration. Making it so that people who do choose to migrate are really doing it because they want to, but otherwise people have, should have the economic reality so that they can stay in their countries of origin where their families are, where their culture is.
I myself emigrated from Mexico with my family to North America when I was very young, and it’s a difficult process. Immigration can be a beautiful thing, and it can really enrich countries, but it’s also, it’s difficult on migrants themselves to come to a new country, so they don’t have to, if they feel like they have a prosperity at home, then I think that’s… everybody wins in that circumstance.
GR: José, thank you so much for your time and thanks for sharing your insights with our listeners.
JLGC: Thank you very much for having me.
GR: We’ve been speaking with Mexico City-based independent journalist, José Luis Granados Ceja.
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Notes:
Sarah Kinosian (Dec 7, 2017), ‘Crisis of Honduras democracy has roots in US tacit support for 2009 coup’, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/07/crisis-of-honduras-democracy-has-roots-in-us-tacit-support-for-2009-coup
CNN would have been under special pressure to fire Hill because he is a prominent African-American intellectual with a following in his own community, and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (the propaganda arm of the Likud government) is worried about the boycott and sanctions movement spreading among American minorities who might sympathize with the oppressed Palestinians.
In his speech, Hill carefully explained all the ways in which Israeli Apartheid practices (my word, not his) devastate the basic human rights of the 5 million Palestinians living under Occupation. Not only are the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are of Palestinian heritage second class citizens (and, increasingly, third class citizens), but those kept under the jackboot of the Israeli military in the Palestinian West Bank and in Gaza are kept stateless and without even the right to have rights.
These crimes, epochal and unparalleled in our own time, are being committed by Binyamin Netanyahu and his henchmen in plain sight, violating every principle of agreed-upon international law in the post-1945 period. (I say unparalleled because I know of no other government on earth in the 21st century deliberately keeping millions of persons stateless and depriving them of citizenship. Some countries give minorities a citizenship many of the latter do not want, but they still do have a passport and property rights). Israel occupied the Palestinian West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 and refuses to relinquish them or grant citizenship to the inhabitants, ensuring they remain in the twilight zone of statelessness. They are by far the largest stateless population in the world, (Undocumented migrants are not stateless since they have citizenship in their home country). The Nazis made Jews stateless as a prelude to the Holocaust.
One way that the Israeli right wing gets away with these atrocities is to use techniques of blackballing, smearing, and propaganda to marginalize any voices they don’t like. Jewish American mainstream organizations like the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco secretly have created web sites and techniques for getting people fired or blocking their career advancement if they aren’t on board with Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank. Canary Mission is even now targeting our undergraduate students, hoping to blight their lives for taking a stand for justice. I do not believe it is too much to say that Canary Mission is evil.
Pro-Israel bigots in the United States who freely speak about Arabs as “animals” or speak of “filthy Arabs” suddenly develop a saintly halo and accuse anyone who points to Netanyahu’s systematic dispossession of the Palestinians of being an anti-Semite. And they’ve been remarkably successful in marginalizing anyone who takes them on. They connive at unelecting congressmen and -women, they block appointments to the Federal government, and organize massive letter-writing campaigns to news outlets to pressure them into firing and blackballing journalists or changing the way they speak about Israeli colonizing activities. (The organization “CAMERA” targets journalists in particular).
This success is not because “Jews” are “powerful.” First of all, only a minority of Jewish Americans sympathize with the far right politics of the Likud Party. Jon Stewart used to complain tongue in cheek that if Jews were so powerful he ought to have been able to get off basic cable and have a network show.
The success is because right wing white people are so powerful, and many of them still have a latent belief in the goodness of colonialism and in the White Man’s Burden. Melanie McAlister argued brilliantly that for right wing Christian whites in the United States, the Israeli domination of the Palestinians is a symbolic reenactment of the Vietnam War, in which this time the “white people” (as they characterize themselves) win instead of losing. I.e., Israel functions as did those old Rambo movies. I was shocked to discover that my opposition to Bush’s Iraq War and critique of it as neo-colonialism was offensive to the Northeast power elite because they supported the war and apparently couldn’t deal with their unfaced assumption of racial superiority over Iraqis.
On the other side, a Christian Zionist such as Rick Santorum is paid to go on CNN and say things like, “If they want to negotiate with Israelis, and all the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. There is no ‘Palestinian.’ This is Israeli land.”
That is all right in White America, but substitute Palestinians for Israelis and vice versa in Santorum’s vile quote and imagine what would happen to someone who said *that* on t.v.
Hill was raked over the coals by the bigoted and racist Israel lobbies for saying this:
“we have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires. And that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
You will notice that Palestine, i.e. the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza (the Green parts), stretches from the river to the sea:
Source: Informed Comment
It is interrupted by Israeli territory in between, of course.
Dishonest propagandists accused Hill of using the language of Hamas, which rejects Israel and has said, “Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north.” But you’ll note that Hill did not say anything about north to south.
Hill admittedly does not think a two-state solution is any longer plausible. But what he was calling for was for the people living in the Occupied territories to be full citizens, and to have these citizenship rights pertain to everyone living between the river and the sea. He did not say anything about Israelis not having equal rights.
It is not a firing offense to ask for Palestinians living between the river and the sea to enjoy the full rights of citizenship. In fact, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres pledged exactly that. Rabin shook Yasser Arafat’s and Bill Clinton’s hand over it on the White House lawn. Rabin was later assassinated by the sort of person now howling for Hill’s blood. Rabin’s vision of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution may well be impossible. That outcome has been engineered by Netanyahu and his thugs. But whatever the diplomacy, it cannot be allowed to keep Palestinians stateless and virtually without secure rights forever.
Hill was also slammed for urging Palestinian activism to oppose the Occupation. One of the standard Israeli propaganda techniques is to equate any resistance to their frankly fascist techniques of social control imposed on the colonized Palestinians with “terrorism.” There is nothing new or strange about this. The British in India considered Gandhi a terrorist. Of course the colonial state views opposition as terrorism.
That same dishonest columnist at The Forward managed to reconfigure Hill’s activism as violence. The fact is that international law recognizes the right of occupied peoples to mount even violent resistance to occupation militaries. But that isn’t what Hill was calling for. And then, any violence is then twisted around as violence toward civilians. And there you have it. Terrorism.
The golden magic circle of Hasbara (Zionist propaganda) gives us: resistance= violence= terrorism.
The only thing the Palestinians and their sympathizers can do to make Zionists happy is to bend over and allow themselves to be royally screwed– or better yet, allow themselves to be deported from their homeland of millennia at the hands of the Russian and Polish immigrants.
The Likudniks don’t actually want nonviolent resistance. That prospect horrifies them since they can’t do a magic circle number on it. When Mubarak Awad tried to start a center for Palestinian nonviolent resistance on the West Bank, the Israeli government illegally expelled him from his own home. One of the reasons the Israeli army is just shooting down unarmed Palestinians in cold blood inside Gaza is that they want to create the image of a violent confrontation where there is none (the marches have not involved clashes with the Israeli army).
CNN does a criminally negligent job of covering Palestine, giving us little better than Israeli propaganda. For the most part, it shapes the presentation of the story by simply ignoring it. But it also shapes the story with a systematically biased language intended to demonize the Palestinians and exonerate Israeli crimes against humanity.
Last March when Palestinians imprisoned in the open air concentration camp of Gaza by the Israeli army, navy and air force– and blockaded from key commodities– began marching to draw attention to their imprisonment, the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his officer corps decided to deal with these protests by shooting down unarmed protesters, many of them women and children, with live fire, on the Gaza side of the border. Using live ammunition on protesters is a war crime. All the civilized countries in the world should have withdrawn their ambassadors and slapped severe economic sanctions on the Netanyahu regime in response.
CNN’s reporting on one of the first such Israeli crimes? “Gaza: 17 Palestinians killed in confrontations with Israeli forces – CNN”. That makes it sound as though the dead Palestinians had come over to the Israeli side of the border and attacked Israeli “forces” (Israel has an army, let us call it an army). But there is a problem with this framing. Those shot down were on the Gaza side of the border and there has been no direct physical encounter with Israeli troops. The dozens of Palestinians shot down in cold blood and the hundreds shot and injured in these demonstrations since March have largely gone unreported at CNN. Otherwise there’d be a segment every Friday afternoon.
In the first six months of the ongoing weekly rallies, Mezan reported that “150 Palestinians have been killed in the demonstrations. At least 10,000 others have been injured, including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists. Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition…”
Amnesty International notes that many of the injuries inflicted on the protesters are to lower limbs and that:
“According to military experts as well as a forensic pathologist who reviewed photographs of injuries obtained by Amnesty International, many of the wounds observed by doctors in Gaza are consistent with those caused by high-velocity Israeli-manufactured Tavor rifles using 5.56mm military ammunition. Other wounds bear the hallmarks of US-manufactured M24 Remington sniper rifles shooting 7.62mm hunting ammunition, which expand and mushroom inside the body.
The nature of these injuries shows that Israeli soldiers are using high-velocity military weapons designed to cause maximum harm to Palestinian protesters who do not pose an imminent threat to them. These apparently deliberate attempts to kill and maim are deeply disturbing, not to mention completely illegal. Some of these cases appear to amount to wilful killing, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime.”
Again, the weekly carnage committed by the Israeli army in direct violation of the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of Occupied populations and in direct violation of the 2002 Rome Statute that created the International Court of Justice, is not covered by CNN. If you got your news from that source, you would not know anything is going on in Gaza.
Nor does CNN cover the tripling of Israeli squatter colonies on Palestinian land in the Palestinian West Bank during the Trump administration, nor the daily acts of violence, sabotage and usurpation committed by Israelis squatting on Palestinian land against Palestinians in their own homes.
If Netanyahu could shut the UN up, he would. His minions have shut up Marc Lamont Hill, a brave voice for freedom and human rights in our time who will now be replaced by the Rick Santorums.
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More than ever, Global Research needs your support. Our task as an independent media is to “Battle the Lie”.
“Lying” in mainstream journalism has become the “new normal”: mainstream journalists are pressured to comply. Some journalists refuse.
Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.
While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.
New START limits the US and Russia each to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed strategic delivery vehicles. Effective since 2011, the agreement covers a 10-year period until February 2021 with the possibility of a five-year extension.
The Trump administration today approved five permits that allow harm to whales, dolphins and other animals so companies can search for oil off the Atlantic Coast using loud seismic airgun blasts.
They ignored Riyadh’s genocidal war in Yemen (in cahoots with the US, UAE and other countries), pretending horrendous Saudi domestic human rights abuses and cross-border atrocities are a non-issue.
On November 28, sixty-three U.S. Senators voted in favor of holding a floor debate on a resolution calling for an end to direct U.S. Armed Forces involvement in the Saudi-UAE coalition-led war on Yemen.
Fifty-eight years ago, a car-bomb exploded in Washington killing Chile’s ex-Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an act of state terrorism that the CIA and its director George H.W. Bush tried to cover up, Robert Parry reported on Sept. 23, 2000.
The United Nations Universal Children’s Day– 20 November – has come and gone – and nothing has changed. No action that would now protect children any more than before, no move even by the UN to call on nations at war to take special care to protect children – if for nothing else but the fact that children are our planets future.
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The Carmichael mine being pursued in the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland is a dinosaur before its creation. On paper, it is hefty – to be some five times the size of Sydney harbour, the largest in Australia and one of the largest on the planet. Six open cut and five underground mines covering some 30 kilometres are proposed, a gargantuan epic. The coal itself would be transported through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and World Heritage Area, and would feature a rail line subsidised by the money of Australian taxpayers.
Even before the initial steps are taken, its realisation is doomed to obsolescent indulgence and environmental wearing. It has been endorsed by a bribed political class best represented by Liberal senator Matt Canavan, who sees Adani through tinted glasses as a “little Aussie batter”; it is run by an unelected plutocratic one. This venture has seen Australian politicians, protoplasmic and spineless, do deals with a company run by a billionaire in a way that sneers at democracy and mocks the common citizenry.
The Adani group, run by its persistent Chairman Gautam Adani, has worked out what political figures want to hear and how far it can go, even in the face of mounting opposition. His closeness to the halls of power has been noted: influential be he who has the ear of the Indian Prime Minister, Nahendra Modi.
How divisive the Carmichael project is between Australia’s morally flexible politicians and a growing body of disaffected citizenry can be gathered from the open letter to the Adani Group from some 90 notable Australians that was submitted in the first part of last year. The list was impressively eclectic: authors such as Richard Flanagan and Tim Winton; investment banker Mark Burrows; and former Australian test cricket captains Ian and Greg Chappell. (“The thought,” Ian Chappell ruefully, “that this could affect the relationship, hopefully that’ll get through.”)
The text of the note was simple enough.
“We are writing to respectfully ask you to abandon the Adani Group’s proposal in Queensland’s Galilee Basin… Pollution from burning coal was the single biggest driver of global warming, threatening life in Australia, India and all over the world.”
That same year, the British medical journal The Lancet deemed the Adani mine project a “public health disaster” though Australian authorities remain indifferent to recommendations that independent health assessments be conducted on the impact of the mine. In very tangible ways, air pollution arising from the burning of coal is a global killer. Australia’s menacing own contribution to this casualty list comes in at around three thousand a year; in India, the list, according to a 2013 study by the Mumbai-based Conservation Action Trust, is an eye-popping 115,000.
“I didn’t expect the mortality figures per year,” remarked Debi Goenka, executive trustee of the Conservation Action Trust, “to be so high.”
The trends in energy generation and resources are against fossil fuels, and even the banks have heeded this, refusing to supply a credit line to the company. But Adani knows a gullible audience when he sees one. Like a sadhu aware of a westerner’s amenability to mysticism, the chairman and his worthies say the rights things, and encourage the appropriate response from the ruling classes they are wooing. The company feeds them the fodder and rose water they wish to hear, and massages them into appreciative stances. The campaign by the Indian company has been so comprehensive as to include decision makers from every level of government that might be connected with the mine.
Adani, not to be deterred by delays of some six years, has suggested that it will pursue a different model, though this remains vague. Extravagance is being reined in, supposedly trimmed and slimmed: targets will be cut by three-quarters, and the company has now promised to finance the project itself.
“We will now,” claimed Adani Mining CEO Lucas Dow this week, “be developing a smaller open-cut mine comparable to many other Queensland coal mines and will ramp up production over time.”
Nothing this company says should ever be taken at face value. Exaggeration and myth making is central to its platform. Slyly, the company’s Australian operation is also given a deceptive wrapping; a visit to the company’s website will see information on Adani’s efforts to “become the leading supplier of renewable energy in Australia.”
Dow has become a missionary of sorts, repeatedly telling Queenslanders that the project can only mean jobs, and more jobs. Astrological projections more in league with tarot card reading are used. Last November, Dow, in a media statement, was brimming with optimism over those “indirect jobs” that would be created in Rockhampton, Townsville, Mackay and the Isaac region.
“Economic modelling, such as that used by the Queensland Resources Council in its annual resources industry economic impact report, show that each direct job in the industry in Queensland supports another four and a half jobs in related industries and businesses, therefore we can expect to see more than 7,000 jobs created by the initial ramp up of the Carmichael project.”
Not merely does the Carmichael mine smack of a crude obsolescence before the first lumps of coal are mined; it is bound to take a wrecking ball to any emissions reduction strategy Australia might intend pursuing. (Matters are already half-hearted as they are in Canberra, poisoned by a fractious energy lobby and ill-gotten gains stakeholders.) Professor Andrew Stock of the Climate Council has explained that once coal begins being burned, Australia’s “total emissions” are set to double, nothing less than an act of “environmental vandalism”. Work on the mine will also contribute to such despoliation: the clearing of 20,200 hectares of land will add to the climate chance quotient; the Great Artesian Basin’s groundwater system will also be affected.
Another graphic projection is also being suggested. For the duration of its projected 60 year lifespan, as epidemiologist Fiona Stanley reminds us, Adani’s venture will produce as much carbon as all of Australia’s current coal fired power stations combined. All this, even as the Indian state promises to phase out thermal coal imports, rendering the Adani coal project a white, if vandalising elephant. The only difference now is that the elephant proposed is somewhat smaller in scale and size.
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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]
Mission Essential is a government contractor, which primarily serves intelligence and military clients. It began as the US government’s leading provider of translation and interpretation services.
Source: Linked Screenshot
The preemptive job advert was posted on November 16th and seeks “linguist candidates who speak Ukrainian to provide foreign language interpretation and translation services to support classified Contingency Operations in support of the U.S. Military in Ukraine.”
The advert also requires candidates to be able to fit in the local culture and customs, in addition to “the ability to deal inconspicuously with local populace if necessary.” Which simply means that the interpreter needs to be able to hide the fact that he is not a Ukrainian citizen, at least partly.
Unsurprisingly, the individual needs to be able to serve in a combat zone “if necessary,” in addition to being able to “live, work, and travel in harsh environments, to include living and working in temporary facilities as mission dictates.”
Considering repeated claims by the US leadership that the US is not involved in the Ukraine conflict, the vacancy posting is an operational security failure by Mission Essential. Most other vacancies posted by the company are for analysts and various linguistical and project management positions, almost predominantly in different military facilities in the US.
It is quite possible that these specialists would assist US military personnel deployed in or near the “combat zones” in Ukraine – i.e. Eastern Ukraine, and as it was expected since as early as November 16th – the Sea of Azov.
This is another piece that reinforces the notion that the “provocation by Russia” in the Sea of Azov was somehow premeditated.
However, it also appears that, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s plans appeared to, at least partially, backfire. “Partially,” because he managed to instate martial law and make another step in his attempts to postpone elections in 2019, thus “democratically” holding on to power and not allowing the Ukrainian citizens to vote and most likely elect his rival and favored presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko.
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US Senator Tom Cotton and Congresswoman Liz Cheney have introduced a bill that prevents extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia or the Stopping Russia Nuclear Aggression Act. It says “Under no circumstances should the United States agree to extend the New START Treaty beyond the current expiration in 2021 without drastic improvements to the deeply flawed deal.” The bill includes the provision of Russia’s agreement to verifiably reduce its stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons. It also stipulates that the new weapons mentioned in the President Putin’s famous speech in March must be included into the count.
New START limits the US and Russia each to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed strategic delivery vehicles. Effective since 2011, the agreement covers a 10-year period until February 2021 with the possibility of a five-year extension. So far, the talks on extending the agreement have not been kicked off to the dismay of many arms control wonks.
President Donald Trumphas announced his intention to jettison the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty citing Russia’s alleged “violation” and the “threat” supposedly coming from China. Decried by the president last year, New START may be next up on the chopping block. He does not like anything done during President Obama’s tenure. The other option is an analog of the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which limited deployed warheads without verification provisions. According to Andrea Thompson, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, the future of New Start depends on Moscow’s readiness to limit the new strategic systems President Putin mentioned in his famous speech in March.
It’s important to note that there are no Russian violations to blame for a US decision not to extend the treaty or pull out from it. President Trump will have to substantiate the reasons for another preemptive treaty withdrawal after the intention to pull out from the INF Treaty was announced. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly expressed interest in extending New START, although Moscow has concerns about the US removing nuclear weapons launchers from accountability under the agreement.
What’s wrong with the bill and why is it important to address the pertinent problems before it goes to the appropriate committees?
First, the tactical weapons in Russia’s inventory have nothing to do with strategic nuclear forces (SNF). Cruise missiles and nuclear-powered torpedoes are not part of any international agreement. There is no precedent of including them into the SNF agenda. The sea-based tactical nuclear weapons have been covered by presidential nuclear initiatives (PNIs). Tactical nukes have always been a separate subject. No treaty covers them. The condition of including them into strategic nuclear reduction talks is unacceptable. If the bill becomes law, no strategic arms agreement will be possible ever.
Now about the new weapons the Russian president told about. The Sarmat ICBM is replacing the Voevoda silo-based system, which is covered by New START. It does not add to the existing potential. The Kh-101 air-to surface missile has no relation to the treaty – it’s neither a strategic weapon nor a delivery means. The same way the Avangard glide vehicle does not breach New START when installed on the Sarmat or a carrier that does not fall into the category of heavy missiles. This system is neither a bomber, nor a ballistic missile. In theory, some of the weapons in question can be included into the agenda but it depends on Russia’s goodwill.
The overall deterioration of the relations between Russia and the US may provoke lawmakers into backing any anti-Russian bill. Adopting such an approach means shooting oneself into the foot.
When the bill goes to the floor, congressmen should remember two things. First, New START is not only about numbers. It includes the exchange of valuable information, which is hard to get by other means, and the unique and very reliable verification procedures. Second, with no SNF agreement in place, the world would have nothing to prevent an unfettered arms race. Another option is extending New START to buy time for thorough discussions on another treaty to replace it. But in this case they will have to say no the Cotton-Cheney-introduced bill.
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Andrei Akulov is a retired colonel, Moscow-based expert on international security issues.
In a talk which garnered little attention, one of the Deep State’s prime operatives, National Security Advisor John Bolton, cautioned of the enormous and escalating US debt. Speaking before the Alexander Hamilton Society, Bolton warned that current US debt levels and public obligations posed an “economic threat” to the nation’s security:
It is a fact that when your national debt gets to the level ours is, that it constitutes an economic threat to the society. And that kind of threat ultimately has a national security consequence for it.*
What was most surprising about Bolton’s talk was that there has been little reaction to it from the financial press, the markets themselves, or political commentators. While the equity markets have been in the midst of a sell off, it has not been due (as of yet) to US deficits, currently in excess of $1trillion annually. Instead, the slide has been the result of fears over increase in interest rates and the continued trade tensions with China.
While Bolton’s warning about the debt is self-serving, it is accurate in the sense that the US Empire which, in part, he directs is ultimately dependent on the strength of the economy. “National security” is not threatened by a debt crisis which would mean a compromised dollar, but such an event would limit what the US could do globally. Real national security is defense of the homeland and border control – non intervention abroad.
War mongers like Bolton are fearful that a debt crisis would necessitate a decline in US power overseas. America is fast approaching what took place with the British Empire after its insane involvement in the two World Wars and its own creation of a domestic welfare state which exhausted the nation and led to the displacement of the British pound as the “world’s reserve currency.”
The US-led wars in the Middle East have been estimated by a recent Brown University study to have cost in the neighborhood of $4 trillion.** Despite this squandering of national treasure and candidate Trump calling the Iraq War a “disaster,” as president, Trump increased “defense” spending for FY 2019 to $716 billion.***
US Military Bases Around the World
Profligate US spending and debt creation has, no doubt, been noticed by those outside of the Empire. It is probably why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been so hesitant to take any serious action against the numerous provocations that the US has taken around the globe and against Russian interests directly. The wily Putin probably figures that an implosion of US financial markets would eventually limit America’s ability to foment mayhem and havoc internationally.
The Trump Administration’s latest bellicose act, engineered by – you guessed it – John Bolton, has been the withdrawal from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (INF). The treaty, signed in 1987, was a landmark achievement of the Reagan Administration which de-escalated tensions between the two super powers and kept a lid on a costly arms buildup that neither can afford.
The next financial downturn will certainly dwarf the 2008 crisis, the latter of which nearly brought down the entire financial system. The next one will be far worse and will last considerably longer since nothing has been resolved from the first crisis. The only thing that has occurred has been the creation of more debt, not only in the US, but by all Western nation states.
Under current ideological conditions, a change in US foreign policy to non-intervention is unlikely. Public opinion is decidedly pro-military after years of indoctrination and propaganda by the press, government, academia, and the media. It will take a fall in America’s economic power, specifically the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which will ultimately bring down the empire that has neocons like John Bolton concerned.
Unfortunately, until that time, the US will continue its rampaging ways. The day of reckoning, however, appears to be fast approaching and instead of a defeat on the field of battle, the US Empire will collapse under a mountain of debt. It would be more than fitting that such a scenario should play itself out which would thus begin the very necessary retribution process that may, at least in a small sense, compensate those who have suffered and died from America’s murderous foreign policy.
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Notes
*Tyler Durden, “John Bolton Warns National Debt Is An ‘Economic Threat’ To The US Security.” Zero Hedge. 01 November 2018.
**Jason Ditz, “Study: US Wars Cost $4 Trillion, Killed 259,000.” Antiwar. 29 June 2019.
***Military Benefits, “2019 Defense Budget Signed byTrump.” Military Benefits. September, 2018.
December 2nd, 2018 by Center For Biological Diversity
The Trump administration today approved five permits that allow harm to whales, dolphins and other animals so companies can search for oil off the Atlantic Coast using loud seismic airgun blasts. Allowing these exploration activities from Delaware to Florida is the first step toward opening the Atlantic to new oil drilling, as the administration proposed in January.
“The Trump administration is giving the oil industry permission to launch a brutal sonic assault on North Atlantic right whales and other wildlife,” said Kristen Monsell, ocean program legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These airgun blasts will injure and kill marine animals, and are the gateway to opening the East Coast to offshore drilling and toxic oil spills. We’ll fight to protect endangered right whales from these deafening blasts and the drilling and spilling that could come next.”
The announcement comes following the death of at least 20 endangered North Atlantic right whales since April 2017, and years of population decline. Scientists estimate that the population now contains only 411 animals.
The permits allow the firing of seismic airguns from ships every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day, for weeks at a time, at a noise level that would rupture a human eardrum. More than 220 municipalities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts have formally opposed oil and gas drilling and seismic airgun blasting.
Shortly before leaving office, the Obama administration denied these seismic applications, partly because of their harmful impact on right whales and other marine mammals. But in May 2017, the Trump administration revoked that denial and announced it was reconsidering the permits.
“It’s just so sad to see whales and dolphins acoustically attacked in the search for oil we shouldn’t be drilling anyway,” Monsell said. “We need to protect the Atlantic, not let industry destroy it.”
In 2015, 75 scientists found that opening the Atlantic Ocean to seismic airgun exploration “poses an unacceptable risk of serious harm to marine life.” The scientists also warned of “significant, long-lasting, and widespread” harm to fish and marine mammal populations should the blasting proceed.
The seismic blasts, which can reach more than 250 decibels, can cause hearing loss in marine mammals, disturb essential behaviors such as feeding and breeding over vast distances, mask communications between individual whales and dolphins, and reduce catch rates of commercial fish.
Today’s approvals were issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to Spectrum Geo Inc., TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company, ION GeoVentures, WesternGeco, LLC and CGG.
The companies also need permits from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
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Featured image is from Center for Biological Diversity
Global Research pays its respects to former president George Herbert Walker Bush who passed away in Houston at age 94.
At this juncture, it is important to address his unspoken political legacy.
Below is author Larry Chin’s September 2016 article together with a historical perspective and update.
Author’s update as of December 2, 2018
The atrocities and crimes of the Bush family, headed by George Herbert Walker Bush, are unspeakable and unimaginable in depravity and scale.
Decades of war, war crimes, and treason.
Global narcotics trafficking, money laundering, fraud and financial looting.
Mass murder, assassination; the extermination of political enemies and whistleblowers.
The absolute criminalization of military and intelligence agencies, and the corruption of entire governments, across all political parties.
Devastation and violence in every corner of the planet, from the killing fields of Asia to the Middle East and Latin America, to the United States itself.
The institutionalization of terrorism, criminal cover-up and The Big Lie.
George Herbert Walker Bush was one of the greatest architects of suffering the world has ever known. His New World Order, a criminal empire that continues to poison and corrupt; its tentacles still oppressing to this very moment, as you read this.
Do not mourn George Herbert Walker Bush. Mourn his victims. Mourn what has been lost. Mourn what has been destroyed. Mourn what he took. Mourn the “thousand points of light” that he snuffed out.
Let historical truth fully expose who and what the Bush family are, and what they have done. Let the mainstream corporate media’s desperate attempt to sanitize the Bush record utterly fail.
President Donald Trump promises to Drain the Swamp. George Herbert Walker Bush, his family, and his legion of associates do not merely epitomize the Swamp. They are the Swamp. They are the Deep State. Here is what the Bush family thinks of Trump. Trump must continue to deliver on this promise.
The following article was published in September 2016. Now over two years later, its case remains intact.
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At a spring 2016 Republican debate attended by the Bushes, George H.W. “Poppy” Bush, looked directly at Donald Trump and gave him the “throat slit” gesture. The Bushes want the Clintons back in the White House.
“Poppy” trusted them with Arkansas in the 1980s, and with the White House in the 1990s, and he can trust them with the marching orders again. A Hillary Clinton presidency guarantees that all the things that the New World Order wants done will continue to get done.
The Clintons and Bushes have been criminal partners for more than 30 years. They and their colleagues have dominated the American government, the military-intelligence apparatus, the judicial system, the financial markets, and the banks. Their friends dominate the corporate media and Hollywood—the shapers of The Big Lie.
The endless repeated cycles and recycles of Bushes and Clintons, the endless presence of Bush/Clinton operatives in all positions of power is by design. The administrations of Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been a continuum, a line of succession, over which George H.W. Bush’s New World Order compatriots (including Henry Kissinger, the Rockefellers, and the Rothschilds) ultimately call the shots in relation to their political appointees, in all matters of importance. Most of Washington and much of the world, answers to them.
Iran-Contra: the family business
There would be no Clinton “dynasty” without the Iran-Contra.
Originally coined “Iran-Contra” (in reference to illegal arms sales to Iran in exchange for American hostages in Lebanon and arms to the Contra “freedom fighters” in Nicaragua), the moniker hides the fact that it became a vast and permanent criminal business and political machine that went far beyond then-current political concerns.
In The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider , Al Martin describes the Iran-Contra Enterprise that a vast operation that included (and was not limited to) drugs, weapons, terrorism, war, money laundering, criminal banking and securities fraud, currency fraud, real estate fraud, insurance fraud, blackmail, extortion, and political corruption that involved countless Washington politicians of both Republican and Democratic parties.
Martin:
“Iran-Contra itself is a euphemism for the outrageous fraud perpetrated by government criminals for profit and control. Offhandedly, this inaccurate term entered history as shorthand for the public scandals of illicit arms sales to Iran coupled with illicit weapons deals for Nicaragua. The real story, however, is much more complex…When George Bush, [CIA Director] Bill Casey and Oliver North initiated their plan of government-sanctioned fraud and drug smuggling, they envisioned using 500 men to raise $35 billion….they ended up using about 5,000 operatives and making over $35 billion.” In addition, the operation became “a government within a government, comprising some thirty to forty thousand people the American government turns to, when it wishes certain illegal covert operations to be extant pursuant to a political objective” with George [H.W.] Bush “at the top of the pyramid”.
Most of the operation’s insiders and whistleblowers place George H.W.Bush as one of its top architects, if not its commander. It was carried out by CIA operatives close to Bush since his CIA directorship and even stretching back to the Bay of Pigs. These included Oliver North, Ted Shackley, Edwin Wilson, Felix Rodriguez, and others. Iran-Contra was a replication of the CIA’s Golden Triangle drug trafficking in Southeast Asia (operations also connected to Bush) but on a larger scale and sophistication, greater complexity, and far-reaching impact that remains palpable to this day.
In George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Webster Tarpley wrote that,
“many once-classified documents have come to light, which suggest that Bush organized and supervised many, or most, of the criminal aspects of the Iran-Contra adventures.”
Tarpley further points out that George H.W. Bush created new structures (“special situation group”, “terror incident working group” etc.) within the Reagan administration—and that
“all of these structures revolved around [creating] the secret command role of the then-Vice President, George Bush…The Bush apparatus, within and behind the government, was formed to carry out covert policies: to make war when the constitutional government had decided not to make war; to support enemies of the nation (terrorists and drug runners) who are the friends and agents of the secret government.”
This suggests that George H.W.Bush (who prior to his appointment as Vice President headed the CIA) not only ran Iran-Contra, but much of the Reagan presidency. Then-White House press secretary James Baker said in 1981,
“Bush is functioning much like a co-president. George is involved in all the national security stuff because of his special background as CIA director. All the budget working groups, he was there, the economic working groups, the Cabinet meetings. He is included in almost all the meetings.”
Hundreds of insiders, witnesses and investigators have blown the lid off of the Iran-Contra Enterprise in exhaustive fashion. These include the investigations of:
Mike Ruppert (From The Wilderness, Crossing the Rubicon), Al Martin (The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider), Gary Webb (Dark Alliance), Rodney Stich (Defrauding America, Drugging America), Terry Reed (Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA), Stew Webb (and here), Dois “Chip” Tatum (The Tatum Chronicles) (summarized here), Pete Brewton (The Mafia, the CIA and George Bush) and Daniel Hopsicker (Barry & The Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History), among others. The accounts of Barry Seal, Edward Cutolo, Albert Carone, Bradley Ayers, Tosh Plumley, Bill Tyree, Gunther Russbacher, Celerino Castillo, Michael Levine, Trenton Parker, Russell Bowen, Richard Brenneke, Larry Nichols, William Duncan, Russell Welch and dozens more implicate the Bushes, the Clintons and the CIA.
As described by Mike Ruppert,
“it stood, and still stands today, isolated and immune from the operating principles of democracy. It is autonomous and it operates through self-funding via narcotics and weapons trafficking. To quote [former CIA director] William Casey it is ‘a completely self-funding, off-the-shelf operation.’ It, in fact, dictates a substantial portion of this country’s foreign, economic and military policy from a place not accessible to the will of a free people properly armed with facts.”
CIA deep cover agent pilot Chip Tatum, a key Iran-Contra player who flew drugs into Mena and Little Rock in Arkansas, worked alongside CIA pilot and drug smuggler Barry Seal. Seal was one of the central operatives, whose CIA career and work in Mena are detailed in Daniel Hopsicker’s Barry & The Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History. It is believed that Seal was subsequently murdered by the Medellin Cartel, on the order of Oliver North and the Bushes, to prevent him from testifying about his activities. Before he was killed, Seal provided Tatum a list of Iran-Contra “Boss Hogs” who controlled the drug trade. The Pegasus File summaries Tatum’s activities, and features the “Boss Hog” list. George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton feature prominently.
Arkansas
Then-Governor Bill Clinton managed the Arkansas operation in conjunction with the Bushes, Oliver North, Barry Seal and other deep cover operatives. Hillary Clinton was also a key player.
From Rodney Stich’s Drugging America:
“Mena became famous in the 1980s for the arms and drugs shipping through this western Arkansas airport by the CIA and other government agencies. It involved Oliver North, Vice President and then President George Bush, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and others who became involved in covert activities…My CIA sources indicate that the profits from drug sales far exceeded what was needed for these [black] operations. They report that most of the profits are hidden in offshore financial institutions, and much of these funds come back in well-disguised forms and corporations, acquiring properties and businesses of all types…My CIA contacts described Bush’s heavy involvement in Central American operations in which drug trafficking constituted a major role.”
Mena, Arkansas was the key transit points for cocaine coming into the United States from Central America, and weapons going the other way. The Rose Law Firm, of which Hillary Clinton and Webster Hubbell were senior partners, negotiated contracts for the CIA in Mena, Arkansas, and helped set up numerous fraudulent CIA fronts for cocaine and weapons transit. The very structure of the Arkansas state government was altered to accommodate the Enterprise. The Clinton-created Arkansas Development and Financing Authority engaged in money laundering on a mass scale.
The operation was byzantine, a network of connected government agencies, subsidiaries, and shell companies and corporations can be seen in the diagram provided by whistleblower Stew Webb:
Quoting the congressional testimony of Internal Revenue Service Agent William Duncan, who spent several years investigating drug-related activities in Arkansas under the Clintons and their operatives:
“…the Mena Arkansas Airport was on important hub-waypoint for transshipment for drugs, weapons. The evidence details a bizarre mixture of drug smuggling, gun running, money laundering and covert operations by Barry Seal, his associates, and both employees and contract operatives of the United States Intelligence Services. The testimony reveals a scheme whereby massive amounts of cocaine were smuggled into the State of Arkansas.”
Far from staying background, Clinton liked direct involvement. CIA asset and Air Force veteran Terry Reed described his experience in Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA. Reed trained Contra pilots at the Mena and Nella airports in Arkansas, and worked with Seal. According to Mike Ruppert in Crossing the Rubicon,
“[Reed’s] chief threat to the CIA and the American political establishment was that he could connect the Clintons, the CIA, Oliver North, Bill Casey and the drug running through the Mena, Arkansas, Intermountain Airport all into one package.”
In his book, Reed describes a meeting held in an ammunition bunker outside of Little Rock attended by Bill Clinton, CIA operative (and Bush associate) Felix Rodriguez, and Clinton Security Chief Raymond Young.
Iran-Contra’s whistleblowers, and investigators (many of whom are mentioned above) have been threatened, discredited, kidnapped, jailed, and some, such as Barry Seal, murdered.
The Clintons have gone to great lengths, (e.g Vince Foster), to maintain their cover-up of their CIA Arkansas operation. And George H.W. Bush famously and laughably insisted that he was “out of the loop”. This, even as the passage of time, increasingly available evidence, and the damning testimonies of his own former operatives have amply placed him as Iran-Contra’s boss. In the words of former CIA agent Phillip Agee,
“Bush was up to his neck in illegal drug running on behalf of the Contras.”
All attempts to prosecute were largely unsuccessful—blocked, stalled, or given a “limited hangout” treatment. As written by Mike Ruppert, one of many Iran-Contra whistleblowers, in Crossing the Rubicon:
“Iran-Contra was effectively ‘managed’ by Lee Hamilton in the House [of Representatives] and John Kerry (among others) in the Senate throughout the late 1980s to conceal the greatest crimes of the era, crimes committed by a litany of well-known government operatives.”
Kerry would go on to become the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, and is now the Secretary of State.
The Clintons’ collaboration with the Bushes and the CIA made possible their rise to prominence. Their entry to the Washington was the reward and payoff for their fine service in Arkansas from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Cathy O’Brien (author of Trance Formation of America) claims to have witnessed and overheard meetings as far back as the early 1980s in which George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton planned to pass the White House between the two of them, and between their respective political clans, thereby maintaining the New World Order for the long term.
Iran-Contra as blueprint
The Iran-Contra Enterprise’s overseers, criminal associates and beneficiaries, to this day, remain at large, with most enjoying massive illegally-obtained wealth, privilege, and highest political and corporate positions. The imperial positions of the Bush and Clinton clans exemplify this.
The operation, in essence, evolved and metastasized into ever-more modern and sophisticated incarnation with even more global reach. New names, new banks, new drugs, new wars, same blueprint. It is not a “deep state” or a “shadow state” but a Criminal State that operates “in broad daylight”. It is the playbook of the New World Order. It is globalization at its finest.
The world is in flames. Corruption is rampant. The CIA is more powerful than ever. Terrorism, drugs and weapons flow freely through more geostrategic hot spots than ever. This is a “golden age for drug trafficking”. All of it can be traced back to Iran-Contra, the Bushes, and the Clintons.
The ultimate con that has been played on the world has been the illusion of a political system; of political parties and a democracy. In fact, the world is ruled by a criminal apparatus disguised as a political system. This apparatus serves no purpose except the continuation of itself. It exists to protect and expand a vast racketeering operation that has enjoyed control and power for generations.
Permanent criminal state, endless revolving door
A smooth line of succession, generation after generation, passing power and profits as seamlessly as possible through time is imperative. A Hillary Clinton presidency ensures this.
Every occupant since JFK has been a criminal insider, beginning with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, both of whom were likely involved with the Kennedy assassinations and willing beneficiaries of the wars and crimes that followed.
“Poppy” Bush was the real power behind the Ronald Reagan administration, while the actor fronted for it. From Bush himself, the “charming” and then unknown Clintons took on the role, which was passed back to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, then back to the so-called neoliberals (Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, etc.), and on and on.
Elections are rigged. “Contestants” are chosen based on propaganda purposes. Those deemed the most effective actor for any given period are chosen in advance. The consistent trick has been to stack the deck with figures who are unified behind the most important New World Order agendas, posing as opponents. George H.W. Bush versus Bill Clinton was a lie. George W. Bush versus John (Skull and Bones) Kerry was a lie. Barack Obama versus John McCain and Mitt Romney, the same. Those who were not fully on board, such as Al Gore, were dealt with and removed.
This kind of clever and successful charade was what the Obama campaign was about in 2008 and again in 2012. But even the most fervent and delusional Obama fans today know and feel that it was a fraud. There was no “change”. Obama, the obedient and malleable corporatist, was given a limited puppet role. The New World Order was careful to place Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in charge of foreign policy, and a right-wing Republican opposition to prevent any independent action on Obama’s part. The 2007 financial collapse by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration and its banksters not secured major loot for the Bush syndicate, but ensured that Obama would be saddled with a weak economy.
Despite the fact that the Obama administrations have faithfully continued and expanded the Bush-Cheney agenda, Obama has been abused by his Bush-Clinton handlers anyway. The Bushes and Clintons are racists. The Clintons in particular hate the Obamas, and the Obama-Clinton working relationship has been frosty since Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 nomination to Obama.
The ideal plan for 2016 was to stack the deck again, with another fake contest, this time between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Unfortunately for the Bushes, Donald Trump is enormously popular, and his campaign attacks on all three Bush plants (Jeb, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) were effective. So tarnished is the Bush name as a public product that Jeb was forced to withdraw his bid, despite huge elite backing. Thus, the George H.W. Bush throat cut gesture aimed at Trump.
This leaves Hillary Clinton, who has aggressively sought the world’s highest public office for her entire life. She is hell-bent on getting it. She is fully supported by all of the leading neocon fascists, the Saudi royal family, Netanyahu, the CIA, and Wall Street, and all of the empire’s overseas criminal partners.
Power and perversion
What even knowledgeable outside observers might perceive about the Bushes and Clintons, the truth is more brutal. This brutality is the threat that a Bush-endorsed Hillary Clinton White House promises.
Leading members of the Criminal State are genuine psychopaths and sociopaths. Their violence and perversion is not simply private “dirty laundry”, but sickness that manifests in public action, with worldwide impact.
Cathy O’Brien (author of Trance Formation of America) is another whistleblower who has spoken out about her unfortunate personal experience with the CIA, the Bushes and the Clintons in Mena.
(O’Brien, who continues to speak out about her experience and CIA psychological operations, was allegedly rescued by former CIA operative Mark Phillips. It is not known if Phillips remains her handler, and if her story is being used as a limited hangout. Barbara Hartwell has also exposed the same criminality and more, from the perspective of a former CIA operative of rank.)
Whistleblower Stew Webb has fought the Bush-Clinton machine for decades, and his work helped break the S&L, HUD, and Denver Airport scandals, and major aspects of Iran-Contra.
Hillary Clinton: wolf in wolf’s clothing
Hillary Clinton is not a progressive, but a neocon war criminal of the highest order. Among her closest friends and allies are Henry Kissinger, John McCain, and the Bushes, with Daddy Bush as her godfather.
Contrary to her manufactured image, she is not a populist liberal, and is the opposite of a motherly or sisterly figure who cares about children and the disadvantaged and the poor. She is a racist and a pathological liar. One can make a strong argument that she, not Bill, has been the criminal brains of the Clinton apparatus.
The entire Clinton image is a lie, one of the countless frauds played on the American masses. Former Clinton insiders such as Larry Nichols attest to it.
Hillary Clinton’s mental instability, anger, re well known to those who have worked in the Clinton administrations in Arkansas as well as in the White House, and in more recent tenures as New York senator and Secretary of State. These include former Secret Service Agent Gary Byrne and many others.
Following her criminal CIA activities in Arkansas to her co-management of the Clinton White House tenure, Hillary became New York senator. As senator, she facilitated the Bush/New World Order agenda faithfully. Hillary Clinton supported Bush-Cheney’s Patriot Act and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
After a failed 2008 presidential bid that exposed her viciousness, Hillary Clinton joined the team of Bush/New World Order figures who served as the handlers of front man-puppet Obama. As suggested by probes into Clinton’s emails, and evidence from Wikileaks, the Hillary Clinton State Department ran foreign policy as its own shadow government apparatus, likely beyond the control of Obama, and engaged in illegal activities over all objections from the Obama faction. The discussion about whether or not Clinton followed “correct security procedures” is a red herring and distraction: Hillary Clinton ran her own secret foreign policy cell, with her own communications network.
The Clinton Foundation is a criminal apparatus, a classic secret call that exemplifies the kind of activity upon which the Clintons and Bushes thrive. Its business includes CIA black ops, the funding of terrorists (ISIS), the destabilization of nations, war provocations, extra-judicial political assassinations, currency fraud, money laundering, and treason.
Clinton’s CIA Benghazi operation was directly out of the Iran-Contra playbook: a covert arms deal funnelling weapons to vetted anti-Assad Syrian terrorist groups and Al-Qaeda.
Terrorists? Arms? Dead people? Cover-up? Treason? Hillary Clinton says:
It was Hillary Clinton whose actions helped install a puppet government integrated by Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, towards a full-blown war with Russia. The vicious Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, has played a key role in these crimes. Nuland is likely to be tapped for a cabinet position in a Hillary Clinton administration.
Leader of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Party SvobodaOleh Tyahnybok (Left) with Victoria Nuland, Former PM of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk
Hillary Clinton famously claimed that she is under attack from a “vast right-wing conspiracy”. In truth, Hillary Clinton is a right-wing conspiracy.
A campaign of fraud
The New World Order’s insistence on a Hillary Clinton presidency is desperate. She is reviled and even disliked among Democrats. Even actress Susan Sarandon has given up on her. Clinton and the Democratic National Committee destroyed the Bernie Sanders campaign with blatant fraud.
An elaborate cover-up continues to attempt to deny the fact that Clinton has been gravely ill for many years, likely suffering from likely neurological damage, possibly Parkinson’s disease (unconfirmed) , and a host of other problems. She is escorted by a Secret Service handler, a full medical team and vans full of hospital equipment (including anti-seizure devices). The cover-up is unconvincing. Yet Hillary Clinton is still trotted out as the Establishment choice.
If she is forced to quit her campaign, the Clinton-Bush crime syndicate will concoct another way to anoint another approved stooge or puppet to replace her—be it the neocon Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, or even Michelle Obama. But the Bushes want Hillary, and it is Hillary the world will get.
The silencing and suspected murder (alleged, yet to be fully investigated) of current and former insiders, whistleblowers and investigators continues to add up stretching back to the 1990s, which is topped in notoriety by the mysterious murder of Clinton insider Vince Foster during the Bill Clinton presidency. In recent months, Seth Rich, Joe Montano, Shawn Lucas, and John Ashe each died under suspicious circumstances. Each possessed information exposing criminal activities of Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic National Committee.
Trump: threat or compromised noise maker?
Is Donald Trump in any way a viable alternative to Bush-Clinton? He has offered relatively little in the way of specifics, along with many ideas that are divisive and as dangerous as some of Clinton’s.
Nevertheless, Trump represents a threat if some of his public statements on the big issues are in any way genuine, and as long as he uses the campaign as a bully pulpit for these views. Trump takes issue with the course of the current war, and supports negotiations with Russia. He has dared mention some of the past Clinton and Bush crimes, and is reportedly supported by a large number of military flag officers and intelligence operatives who oppose Clinton-Bush. Many of the Republicans hate him, and the Bush faction wants him gone.
It is not clear if Trump is simply another short-term distraction like Ross Perot, one that the criminal syndicate will ultimately corral and control through bribery or physical threat. Perot was a serious presidential challenger in 1992, until he and his family were threatened. Perot withdrew. Mike Ruppert, who worked on the Perot campaign. In Crossing the Rubicon, he wrote
“ I was greatly disappointed by Perot’s sudden withdrawal…which I later concluded had to do with assuring a Clinton victory. It was only later that pieces fell together for me which suggested that Perot had led us all on a wild goose chase in a campaign that he never intended to win.”
Bill Clinton was to take the reins from the Bushes in that fake election.
When will the Bush-Clinton enforcers convince Trump to bend to the will of the syndicate? Has this already taken place? The Bush throat-cut gesture suggests that a friendly deal will not be made. But Trump is a businessman.
Trump’s choice of Mike Pence as vice presidential running mate should crush all hope for those who believe that a Trump White House would be free of the Bush poison. Pence is a super conservative neocon, who has supported all things Bush. He supported the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, is pro-torture (opposes the closing of Guantanamo Bay), and supports war in the Middle East. He supported the toppling of Libya, and thanked Hillary Clinton for doing it. He supports globalization and free trade agreements, supported NAFTA and CAFTA. He is a corporatist who opposes banking and campaign finance reforms, who praised the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that made “corporations people”. (i.e. corporate personhood)
If indeed Pence is Trump’s designated handler and control agent, that is the end of the idea of Trump as an agent of change.
End game
The next president will likely be a criminal, in a long line of criminals, or a puppet that is controlled by these same criminal forces. There is no way that the New World Order will permit a government that is not crawling with its own members, infested with Bush and Clinton operatives.
This is a virtual certainty, barring a total revolution that sees all members of the New World Order removed from power and punished, the CIA and other criminal entities shut down, an international cease fire, and an end to all wars.
Elections are Fake
Humanity faces an unprecedented crisis with little effective means to stop what is coming. There are no elections: votes do not and will not count. Elections are fake, and this one is no different. Elections are digitally hacked, rigged, and scripted, rigged the way they have for decades. There is no real choice in this charade anyway. One candidate is clearly and emphatically criminal. The other is not trustworthy and may be compromised.
This is the most dangerous hour the world has faced. This is end game, with the future of the planet at risk.
The final moves on the “Grand Chessboard” are before us: all of the Middle East and Central Asia, the world’s last reserves of oil, are in play, Syria is on the edge, Russia is under attack, and nuclear holocaust is a terrifying possibility. War with Russia and China are no longer “unthinkable”, but being planned in earnest.
A Hillary Clinton White House guarantees war, and a triumph for the Criminal State.
Stopping or at least slowing down the New World Order criminal machine is the urgent priority. The resistance must therefore be expressed by other means.
It will require creative and devastating work on behalf of Wikileaks and others who possess damning information to bypass the Bush-Clinton propaganda organs, directly to the minds of people. Even then, will people care? Will they understand?
Let us recall the words of John F. Kennedy from a tragically prescient 1961 speech that helped trigger his own murder:
“The word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society, and we are, as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, secret oaths and secret proceedings. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy, that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence. It depends on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice.
“It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined, and its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no secret revealed.
“I am asking your help in the tremendous task of information and alerting the American people.”
Federal regulators have turned a blind eye to the massive risks of using mercury as the propellant in thousands of communication satellites slated for launch in the next few years, according to a complaint filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The complaint charges that unregulated orbital mercury emissions could reverse global progress in reducing mercury in the environment.
The complaint concerns a plan by an American company, Apollo Fusion, to use elemental mercury as a propellant in thrusters for satellites to be launched by communications companies taking advantage of the coming boom in satellite “mega-constellations” designed to provide global Internet broadband service starting in 2019. Under these plans, the approximately 1,500 satellites currently orbiting the planet will soon be increased nearly ten-fold.
Due to its high density, mercury is an excellent propellant. Apollo Fusion has developed thrusters using liquid mercury as the onboard propulsion to maintain altitude and adjust orbits. The liquid mercury is vaporized into a gas, ionized, and accelerated out of the thruster. Those mercury atoms will then drift down through the stratosphere to the earth’s surface, mostly onto the world’s oceans.
“Using mercury as a satellite propellant is a cosmically bad idea,” stated PEER Staff Counsel Kevin Bell, noting that while relatively cheap, commercial use of mercury is increasingly avoided due to its major adverse environmental effects. “Unfortunately, the FCC is focused solely on the satellite payload and bandwidth while ignoring the emissions and downstream consequences of what is launched.”
The complaint takes FCC to task for its decision to let satellite operators self-certify their technology will have no significant impact on human health or the environment, a practice contrary to federal law and treaty obligations. Currently, the FCC only examines satellite payload and its electromagnetic frequency. By contrast, U.S. law requires any federal agency to assess the full environmental impact of its actions.
Mercury is a potent bio-accumulative neurotoxin. A global treaty, The Minamata Convention, obligates its 128 signatories to take steps to reduce mercury releases. The U.S. was the first signatory. However, large-scale orbital discharge of mercury could reverse planetary progress in reducing mercury emissions. In addition, a launch pad explosion of a satellite carrying liquid mercury would, among other problems, severely contaminate the local area under a cloud of mercury mist.
“Federal regulators need to take steps now to prevent this nightmare scenario,” Bell added, pointing out that mercury emissions in low orbit are effectively equivalent to mercury emissions from a powerplant. “The U.S. has both treaty and moral obligations to prevent this eco-catastrophe from occurring.”
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Speech by Dr. Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus of Geology, Western Washington State University. This was delivered to the Washington State Senate – Energy, Environment & Telecommunications Committee on March 26, 2013.
He points out ‘scientific’ points – which question that the thesis that all ‘climate change’ is ‘man-made’.
“Despite no global warming in 10 years and recording setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century.
The IPCC computer models have predicted global warming which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy and water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly.” Don Easterbrook (excerpt from article below)
December 1st, 2018 by The Palestinian Information Center
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) overwhelmingly adopted on Friday evening five resolutions in support of Palestine and a sixth one on the Golan Heights.
The first resolution, titled Jerusalem, was adopted by the UNGA by a recorded vote of 148 in favor to 11 against with 14 abstentions.
The resolution reiterates that any actions by Israel to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem are illegal and therefore null and void. It also stresses the need for the parties to observe calm and restraint and to refrain from provocative actions and calls for respect for the historic status quo at Jerusalem’s holy places.
It also rejects the recent relocation by the United States of its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
The second resolution was related to the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. It called for exerting all efforts to promote the right to self‑determination of Palestinians and supporting the achievement of an end to Israeli occupation.
The third resolution, which was adopted by a recorded vote of 156 in favour to 8 against with 12 abstention, called for a final peace settlement to the Palestinian issue.
The fourth of those texts titled “Special information programme on the question of Palestine of the Department of Public Information of the Secretariat” would have the Assembly request the Department disseminate information on all the activities of the United Nations system relating to the question of Palestine and peace efforts.
The fifth one, titled “Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat”, called on the Division to continue to monitor developments relevant to the question of Palestine.
Commenting on the voting, Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN Riyad Mansour said that
“by voting in favor of the five resolutions, the international community affirms its support of our national cause, despite the efforts made by the US administration in international forums to resist this.”
The UNGA also adopted a sixth resolution on the occupied Syrian Golan, demanding the withdrawal of Israel from all of the territory and affirming Syria’s sovereignty over it, in line with the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council.
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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) is literally trying to buy Indian Prime Minister Modi off by getting him to ditch his country’s energy imports from Iran in exchange for billions of dollars of Saudi investment, and there’s a plausible possibility that this subtly American-backed strategy could succeed.
Indian Prime Minister Modi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) met in Buenos Aires right before the beginning of the G20 Summit there, where the two world leaders discussed various forms of cooperation with one another. Reuters reported that MBS “would soon be finalizing an initial investment in India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, a quasi-sovereign wealth fund, to help accelerate the building of ports, highways and other projects”, and the outlet also quoted Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale as saying that
“The crown prince also referred to future projects for investments, in sectors such as tech, energy and farm.”
If the Crown Prince’s plans succeed, then they could catalyze far-reaching geopolitical consequences for India’s relations with Iran.
MBS is basically trying to buy Modi off by getting him to ditch his country’s energy imports from Iran in exchange for billions of dollars of Saudi investment, with the tech and agricultural spheres being extra strategic for sweetening the deal, especially at this specific moment in time. Modi is running for reelection in May 2019 so everything that he does up until then should be seen in this domestic political context. Accordingly, Saudi investments in India’s tech industry would promote Modi’s much-touted “Digital India” initiative, while analogous commitments to the country’s agricultural industry could ease some of the growing grassroots resistance to the ruling BJP by the ever-restless farmers’ 263 million voting bloc. Taken together, MBS could be the secret to Modi’s reelection.
None of this is coming without any strings attached or being pursued in the interests of advancing both countries’ vision of so-called “multi-alignment” because MBS would expect India to curtail and ultimately stop its imports of Iranian energy, replacing them with Saudi resources per a strategy subtly backed by the US. It should be remembered that the US waived anti-Iranian sanctions on India for purchasing these resources and also conducting trade along the Chabahar Corridor to Afghanistan and Central Asia, though knowing what just transpired between MBS and Modi, it can be interpreted in hindsight that America might have been buying time for its Saudi “frenemies” to make India a “deal that it can’t refuse”, especially in the sensitive context of the South Asian state’s upcoming elections.
There’s a plausible possibility that India will go along with this scheme in order to advance its leadership’s own self-interests, but also because of the masterful coordination between “bad cop” America and “good cop” Saudi Arabia, both of which have the shared goal of gradually weaning India off of Iranian energy imports without risking its domestic destabilization as a result of skyrocketing prices or other unintended consequences. The Kingdom’s investment carrot perfectly complement’s Trump’s sanctions stick, but the success of this tacitly anti-Iranian tag team maneuver could understandably raise suspicions of India’s long-term strategic intent in Tehran. It’s already disturbing enough for Iran that India is now allied with “Israel”, but succumbing to the Wahhabi Kingdom’s connivances might be the final straw.
Unlike Saudi Arabia’s promised investment in CPEC which is premised on the win-win paradigm of simultaneously enhancing its relations with Iran’s Chinese and Pakistani partners, its potential investments in India are basically a big bribe to Modi to get him to distance himself from the Islamic Republic, first in the energy sense and potentially even when it comes to commercial connectivity with Central Asia via the Chabahar Corridor. This latter objective might be at variance with the US’ own, but it could possibly be pulled off if Iranian suspicions of Indian intent set off a chain reaction of developments that inadvertently strengthen the Golden Ring of multipolar Great Powers by making it politically impossible for Tehran to continue cooperating with New Delhi on this project.
Unexpectedly, Saudi Arabia’s anti-Iranian bribe to India might therefore unwittingly end up being to its rival’s geopolitical benefit, especially if Tehran intensifies its strategic partnership with Islamabad in response to Riyadh’s relations with New Delhi prompting Modi to curtail his country’s import of Iranian resources with a wink and a nod from Washington. With India possibly being kept out of the Golden Ring’s Central Asian Heartland after Iran reconsiders the wisdom of facilitating its entry into this region through the Chabahar Corridor following New Delhi’s possibly forthcoming decision to decrease its energy imports from the Islamic Republic, Eurasian stability could more solidly be assured, so in a sense, there are indeed some multipolar proponents who might silently hope that Modi accepts MBS’ bribe and all that it entails.
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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.
There are about 15,000 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) terrorists in the province of Idlib and Russia is ready to provide the Syrian government with help to eliminate them, Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian presidential envoy for Syria, announced during a press conference on the sidelines of the Astana talks on November 29.
Meanwhile, reports are appearing that radical militants have been amassing forces and deploying missiles as part of the preparation for a confrontation with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the demilitarized zone.
On November 29, there was another notable armed confrontation between the SAA and the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL) in northern Hama. NFL units attacked SAA positions near Karnaz but were forced to withdraw under intense artillery fire. The area near the Christian town of Mahardah is also point of constant clashes between the SAA and various militant groups.
The entire concept of the Idlib demilitarized zone has appeared to be flawed. On the one hand, Ankara is preventing the SAA from launching an advance on Idlib to deliver a devastating blow to the terrorists. On the other hand, Turkey and its proxies have done nothing to eliminate al-Qaeda and its allies within the deconfliction area.
From its turn, Syria, Iran and Russia have kept a wait-and-see stance and attempted to propel a settlement of the Idlib issue through the existing military diplomatic channels. The problem of this approach that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and similar groups have used the gained time to regroup and resupply their forces. Now, the terrorists are more capable of countering a possible SAA advance than a few months ago.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continue their low-intensity advance on ISIS positions in the Hajin pocket. No progress on the ground has been achieved recently, but the US-led coalition bombed an ISIS prison, where SDF members captured by ISIS were held.
The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq released a video to confirm the incident. A notable number of SDF members was captured by the terrorist group during its large counter-attack against the SDF in early November.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister as well as Defense Minister, Foreign Minister and Health Minister of the “only democracy” in the Middle East, declared that “the best answer to anti-Semitism is the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces”. These remarks were made in response to a CNN poll, which showed that more than 28% of Europeans believe that anti-Jewish sentiments in their countries are mostly fueled by the actions of the Israeli leadership itself.
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Until five years ago, Fethullah Gülen and Turkey’s President Erdogan were allies who supported each other. Both use Islam as the basis for their doctrine, which made them ideologically different from the revolutionary secularist statesman Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the new Republic of Turkey in 1923.
That said, historically, the two Islamic orientations of Erdogan and Gülen were at odds with each other. The Gülen-inspired Hizmet (“service”) movement assumes and practices a Sufi version of Islam open to dialogue with other religions and believes in bottom-up change through education. Conversely, Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AK) Party embraced political Islam mostly adopted from the early Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, believing in top-to-bottom change, which they effectuated by usurping authority and forcing people to change through the state powers.
In 2011, Erdogan founded the AK Party; in the following year’s election the Party won a relative majority and Erdogan became the Prime Minister. His commitment to make Turkey a model of Islamic democracy coupled with economic development and socio-political reforms earned him overwhelming support of the Turkish people, including the followers of Gülen.
During the following seven years, he first focused on inclusive economic development to meet the dire needs of the poor and less educated constituency, which comprises nearly half of the Turkish population. As economic development was underway, he embarked on social and democratic reforms, including the subordination of the military to civilian authority and recognition of minority rights, including those of Turkish Kurds. His ability to deliver on these critical fronts allowed him to consolidate his power and move to the next phase to promote his Islamic agenda.
These initial reforms created a high level of confidence and trust in the AK Party rule among Turkish people together with the Hizmet movement, believing that the AK Party would rein in corruption and institute democratic reforms that were denied by previous Turkish governments.
For Erdogan, as he himself stated, ‘democracy is like a train; once you reach your destination you get off.’ His best cover was the continuing membership negotiations with the EU, albeit there was no prospect that Turkey would become an EU member state, nor was he negotiating in good faith as that would be inconsistent with his Islamic agenda.
Conversely, the Hizmet movement has no formal structure, no visible organization, and no official membership, yet it has grown into the world’s biggest Muslim network. Hizmet is dedicated to promoting development projects and education for the common good. Gülen’s supporters maintain that they simply work together in a loosely affiliated alliance inspired by the message of Mr. Gülen.
Since his self-imposed exile in 1999, Gülen has built up an impressive business empire. “His network of media outlets in Turkey and abroad had become increasingly powerful; his schools were grooming the next generation… his banks facilitated the movement and transfer of funds…where some countries’ financial affairs are governed by Islamic principles”, reported Deutsche Welle. Despite Erdogan’s crackdown on Gülen’s finances, thousands of businesses in and outside Turkey, as well as hundreds of thousands of followers, continue to contribute handsomely to the financing of Hizmet.
Fethullah Gülen left Turkey in 1999 at a time when he was under investigation for undermining the government, which at that point was still firmly under the control of Turkey’s secular elite and backed up by the military. In 2000, he was found guilty, in absentia, of scheming to overthrow the government, by embedding civil servants in various governmental offices – an indictment which he vehemently denies that would come back to haunt him later under Erdogan.
Prior to 1999, Gulen operated within a constitutionally secular Turkey, and his followers have for the past four decades spread throughout Turkey’s institutions. His advocates call him the ‘guru of moderate Islam’, marked by his humanitarianism while he was promoting his ideology through a network of high-achieving schools in Turkey and in about 140 countries. Whereas Gülen educated the youth with sciences and foreign languages, Erdogan was not as keen about education which mirrors his base, largely comprised of the poor and less educated.
Erdogan never trusted Gülen, but initially decided to cooperate with him in order to gain the support of his followers. But once he solidified his base and gradually assumed dictatorial powers through constitutional amendments, he was then in a position to do away with his rivals – chief among them Gülen – to realize his long-awaited “Caliphate” dream while resurrecting elements of the Ottoman Empire.
Erdogan’s intentions were to exert influence on governments around the world, especially in Africa and Central Asia, to close Gülen-affiliated schools in their countries. “When we look at Erdogan’s own statements and the documents unearthed in recent years, we can easily say that Erdogan has never liked… Gülen”, says Sitki Ozcan, a US-based reporter for Zaman Amerika.
Aydogan Vatandas, an investigative journalist from Turkey, says that the main reason that the leadership of the Gülen movement failed to see Erdogan’s real ambitions was due to their belief that subordinating the military to civilian authority and limiting the influence of the judiciary would not have a dramatic adverse effect on Turkish democracy. “It was wrong to believe that weakening these institutions would lead to the emergence of a democracy.” According to him, Erdogan has already consolidated his power to reshape the society, which led to the entire cleansing of the Gülen movement from Turkish society.
Since the failed military coup in July 2016, nearly 445,000 people have been the subject of legal proceedings on bogus charges of membership in the Gülen movement, including judges, teachers, police officers, and journalists, while snatching over 100 alleged members of the Gülen movement from other countries.
Nazmi Ulus, the Gülen movement’s representative in Kosovo, said that although the movement maintains their schools (Mehmet Akif Colleges) and is sustaining their activities, they no longer feel safe anymore, especially in light of Erdogan’s kidnapping of six Turks living in Kosovo in March. “Considering the people of Kosovo, yes we can say we are safe, but again considering the self-assertion… and also the ability [of Erdogan to blackmail and]… operate in the region, it is impossible to say yes, we are safe”.
Although Erdogan was able to nearly destroy the Hizmet movement in Turkey, hundreds of thousands of followers are still fully but quietly entrenched in private and government institutions and are well-embedded in scores of countries, including the US, which are beyond his reach.
The rivalry between Erdogan and Gülen suggests that despite Erdogan’s efforts to decimate the Hizmet movement, he will end up on the losing side. The majority of the Turkish population has suffered greatly from his purges and gross human rights abuses; coupled with an alarming deterioration of the economy, he has become increasingly unpopular.
Unlike Erdogan, to whom history will not be kind, however, Fethullah Gülen enjoys a non-elected position and will remain deeply revered by his followers as long as he lives and beyond. His socially-oriented Islamic philosophy and humanitarian services will certainly outlive Erdogan’s political Islam, which may well diminish once he leaves the political scene.
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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. [email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com
Arbana Xharra authored a series of investigative reports on religious extremists and Turkey’s Islamic agenda operating in the Balkans. She has won numerous awards for her reporting, and was a 2015 recipient of the International Women of Courage Award from the US State Department.
It was to be expected. Some G20 leaders treated Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) like nothing happened in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate on October 2.
They ignored Riyadh’s genocidal war in Yemen (in cahoots with the US, UAE and other countries), pretending horrendous Saudi domestic human rights abuses and cross-border atrocities are a non-issue.
Various world leaders met with MBS on the G20’s sidelines and/or greeted him publicly one-on-one – including Trump, Vladimir Putin, Britain’s Theresa May, France’s Emmanuel Macron, China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in, Mexico’s Enrique Nieto, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, and perhaps others – eager for Saudi oil, investments, and purchases of what they’re eager to sell the Saudis.
Putin’s public greeting of MBS was a disturbing moment, nothing to be proud of, warranting harsh criticism and disdain.
Some, maybe most, world leaders in Buenos Aires tried distancing themselves publicly from MBS.
For them, he’s an unwelcome skunk at G20 garden party proceedings, sidelined for the family photo, standing at its far edge, who’d be willing to stand next to him, exiting the stage without shaking hands or talking with other leaders when taken.
Publicly he stayed largely on the periphery, most leaders likely uncomfortable about being photographed near him, let alone shaking hands and chatting amiably with a universally reviled despot.
Vladimir Putin greeted him warmly, caught on camera smiling with a high-five. Sputnik News said their public exchange “st(ole) the show at the G20…the video of their greeting going viral” online.
RT reported on the unsettling exchange, adding “(a)s the leaders were lining up for a traditional ‘family photo’, Trump was seen walking towards Putin – but at the last possible moment, the feed was cut to a closer shot of a different group.”
“The wide shot was back a few moments later, when Trump was already in his spot further down the line.”
Source: France 24
In greeting MBS on Friday, Putin opted for diplomatic graciousness instead of going out of his way to avoid him, the right thing to do, a ruthless tyrant, unaccountable for egregious high crimes – ongoing in Yemen, Syria, domestically and elsewhere while G20 leaders schmoozed in Buenos Aires.
France’s Macron acted like Putin and Trump, caught on camera chatting amiably with MBS, others likely doing it more discretely.
Realpolitik took precedence over honor and high-mindedness the way it most always does, disturbing scenes caught on camera indelibly etched in my mind, many others likely viewing them with disdain.
Ordering Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was a drop in the ocean compared to MBS’ Nuremberg-level crimes in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere in the region, its support for ISIS and likeminded jihadists, along with notorious domestic human and civil rights abuses – horrific enough to make many world leaders blush.
MBS is the Arab world’s most ruthless tyrant, not an issue for Putin, Macron, Trump, and others, greeting him like a close friend, an ordinary guy, far from it.
Other leaders were more circumspect, at least publicly, keeping their distance, cordiality with MBS on camera avoided.
Behind the scenes it’s another matter for some, meetings held with the crown prince – unannounced or made known in advance.
He was sidelined at the official family photo, largely ignored when taken, leaving the scene without shaking hands or other exchanges with G20 leaders.
Putin, Macron, Trump, and perhaps several other G20 leaders acted otherwise, caught on camera greeting MBS warmly, a figure to be shunned, rebuked, and held accountable for his high crimes.
Russia largely refrained from criticizing Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi’s murder, Sergey Lavrov saying:
“It is essential to complete the investigation as soon as possible. We note that the Saudi authorities are carrying out this investigation and note that they are cooperating with the Turkish authorities. We will wait for the final verdict to be delivered.”
Putin earlier said he lacked information about the murder, adding he won’t alter bilateral relations with the kingdom over it. Reportedly he met privately with MBS on Saturday.
The kingdom repeatedly lied about Khashoggi’s murder before admitting responsibility for what happened.
Claiming MBS had nothing to do with it was and remains a bald-faced lie. Riyadh investigating itself assures whitewash and coverup, convenient patsies to take the fall for his crime.
For Russia, the US, UK, France, and other countries, continuing dirty business as usual with the kingdom overrides all else.
Trump, Putin, and other G20 leaders refused to demand MBS be held accountable for his high crimes – Nuremberg-level ones far worse than Khashoggi’s murder.
As the saying goes, when lying with dogs, you get fleas. Treating war criminals like law-abiding figures shares guilt with their high crimes.
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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.”
Akhtar, a political scientist and self-confessed left-wing activist, documents the development of political power in Pakistan that with the military dictatorship in the 1980s of General Zia ul-Haq ended an era of more liberal and left-wing politics and put the country on a path of right-wing religious ultra-conservatism from which it has yet to deviate. In tracking that development, Akhtar’s book makes a significant contribution by focussing not only on its ideological but also its economic aspects as well as the religious right’s appeal to urban shopkeepers and traders. He projects the religious right as a vehicle for subordinate classes to access the state and claim a stake in status quo politics.
Akhtar’s contribution with this book is also his analysis of the waning of counter-hegemonic and transformative politics in Pakistan. Akhtar notes that the perceived benefits of carving out a stake in a patronage-based system far outstrip the cost and risk of efforts to transform the system. It is that cost-benefit analysis that has given Pakistan politics resilience and undergird a system in which religion is the ultimate source of legitimacy at the expense of any opposition to class and state power. In looking at how subordinate classes cope through the politics of common sense, Akhtar’s book represents a significant and innovative addition to the study not only of Pakistan but of an era in which religious, nationalist and populist forces are on the rise.
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On November 28, sixty-three U.S. Senators voted in favor of holding a floor debate on a resolution calling for an end to direct U.S. Armed Forces involvement in the Saudi-UAE coalition-led war on Yemen. Describing the vote as a rebuke to Saudi Arabia and the Trump Administration, AP reported on Senate dissatisfaction over the administration’s response to Saudi Arabia’s brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi last month. Just before the Senate vote, Secretary of State Mike Pompeocalled current objections to U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia “Capitol Hill caterwauling and media pile-on.”
The “caterwaul” on Capitol Hill reflects years of determined effort by grassroots groups to end U.S. involvement in war on Yemen, fed by mounting international outrage at the last three years of war that have caused the deaths of an estimated 85,000 Yemeni children under age five.
When children waste away to literally nothing while fourteen million people endure conflict-driven famine, a hue and cry—yes, a caterwaul —most certainly should be raised, worldwide.
How might we understand what it would mean in the United States for fourteen million people in our country to starve? You would have to combine the populations of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and imagine these cities empty of all but the painfully and slowly dying, to get a glimpse into the suffering in Yemen, where one of every two personsfaces starvation.
Antiwar activists have persistently challenged elected representatives to acknowledge and end the horrible consequences of modern warfare in Yemen where entire neighborhoods have been bombed, displacing millions of people; daily aerial attacks have directly targeted Yemen’s infrastructure, preventing delivery of food, safe water, fuel, and funds. The war crushes people through aerial bombing and on-the-ground fighting as well as an insidious economic war.
Yemenis are strangled by import restrictions and blockades, causing non-payment of government salaries, inflation, job losses, and declining or disappearing incomes. Even when food is available, ordinary Yemenis cannot afford it.
Starvation is being used as a weapon of war—by Saudi Arabia, by the United Arab Emirates, and by the superpower patrons including the United States that arm and manipulate both countries.
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During the thirteen years of economic sanctions against Iraq— those years between the Gulf War and the devastating U.S.-led “Shock and Awe” war that followed—I joined U.S. and U.K. activists traveling to Iraq in public defiance of the economic sanctions.
We aimed to resist U.S.- and U.K.-driven policies that weakened the Iraqi regime’s opposition more than they weakened Saddam Hussein. Ostensibly democratic leaders were ready to achieve their aims by brutally sacrificing children under age five. The children died first by the hundreds, then by the thousands and eventually by the hundreds of thousands. Sitting in a Baghdad pediatric ward, I heard a delegation member, a young nurse from the U.K., begin to absorb the cruelty inflicted on mothers and children.
“I think I understand,” murmured Martin Thomas, “It’s a death row for infants.”
Children gasped their last breaths while their parents suffered a pile-up of anguish, wave after wave. We should remain haunted by those children’s short lives.
The Iraq children died amid an eerie and menacing silence on the part of mainstream media and most elected U.S. officials. No caterwauling was heard on Capitol Hill. But, worldwide, people began to know that children were paying the price of abysmally failed policies, and millions of people opposed the 2003 Shock and Awe war.
Still the abusive and greedy policies continue. The U.S. and its allies built up permanent warfare states to secure consistent exploitation of resources outside their own territories.
During and after the Arab Spring, numerous Yemenis resisted dangerously unfair austerity measures that the Gulf Cooperation Council and the U.S. insisted they must accept. Professor Isa Blumi, who notes that generations of Yemeni fighters have refused to acquiesce to foreign invasion and intervention, presents evidence that Saudi Arabia and the UAE now orchestrate war on Yemen to advance their own financial interests.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, Blumi states that although Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman wants to author an IPO (Initial Public Offering), for the Saudi state oil company, Aramco, no major investors would likely participate. Investment firms know the Saudis pay cash for their imports, including billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry, because they are depleting resources within their own territory. This, in part, explains the desperate efforts to take over Yemen’s offshore oil reserves and other strategic assets.
Recent polls indicate that most Americans don’t favor U.S. war on Yemen. Surely, our security is not enhanced if the U.S. continues to structure its foreign policy on fear, prejudice, greed, and overwhelming military force. The movements that pressured the U.S. Senate to reject current U.S. foreign policy regarding Saudi Arabia and its war on Yemen will continue raising voices. Collectively, we’ll work toward raising the lament, pressuring the media and civil society to insist that slaughtering children will never solve problems.
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Kathy Kelly is Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
CNN reports last week that: “The Trump administration is set to accuse Iran of violating the international treaty that bars the use of chemical weapons.
The White House notified lawmakers on Friday that it would declare Iran is violating the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention because it has kept the equipment and facilities needed to produce them, not because it is actively making or using such weapons.
Two senior US officials tell CNN that the charge will not trigger immediate penalties, but could be used as justification to file claims against Iran with international organizations going forward.”
P News Washington also reports that the announcement:
“is part of the administration’s effort to isolate Iran after withdrawing from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal in May and earlier this month re-imposing all U.S. sanctions that had been eased under the accord. President Donald Trump and his top national security aides have vowed to impose a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran to force it to halt destabilizing activities in the Middle East and beyond.”
For those of you that have read the newspapers and watched the horrors of America’s middle east slaughter, this comes straight out of the standard Washington regime change playbook.
Like Iraq and Syria before it, first comes the outraged human rights violations rhetoric we have become so used to, then the debilitating sanctions and international “pariah status” afforded to them – absolutely free of charge. For the final push comes unfounded chemical attack claims, a charge now being formally prepped and set in motion against Tehran by America and the West.
We have heard all this before, haven’t we? There is no doubt that Iran is attempting to assert itself in the Middle East. There should be no doubt it has used some terrible strategies and tactics in its aims to do so, but still, don’t most countries do that?
After the AP first revealed a week ago that the U.S. is set to accuse Iran of violating international bans on chemical weapons, an American diplomat has told the global chemical weapons agency in The Hague that Tehran has not declared all of its chemical weapons capabilities.
In Britain, we had the highly publicised Chilcot report. Sir John Chilcotsaid (rather charitably):
“We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.”
The report criticised the way in which Tony Blair made the case for Britain to go to war. It was a false case, based on lies and the deception that Iraq had chemical weapons. It did not.
For ravaged, riven, destroyed Iraq, the Chilcot report did nothing. Lessons were not learned. We then enthusiastically engaged in Syria and in cold blood, willfully attacked Libya. Since then, British foreign policy and diplomacy in such matters has all but been destroyed by the Brexit debate.
Tony Blair, aided by the security services (on both sides of the Atlantic) and a totally complaint mainstream media took Britain into a catastrophic war which later led to the unleashing of al-Qaeda and Islamic State and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians along the way. It also led to slaughter on the streets of Britain – our compensation being the crushing of civil liberties and a 360-degree surveillance state in the name of ‘national security’.
The Chilcot report also said Blair presented a dossier to the House of Commons that did not support his claim that Iraq had a growing programme of chemical and biological weapons. In other words, Blair lied. The action of the security services and compliance of the so-called ‘free-press’ were just as guilty of this maniacal cry for the culling of the innocent.
The population of Iraq is about 38 million. America’s attack was a human catastrophe, can you imagine what the same attack would look like with Iran’s population of 82 million who posses a real army and defences. It would literally be a bloodbath.
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The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
Fifty-eight years ago, a car-bomb exploded in Washington killing Chile’s ex-Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an act of state terrorism that the CIA and its director George H.W. Bush tried to cover up, Robert Parry reported on Sept. 23, 2000.
In early fall of 1976, after a Chilean government assassin had killed a Chilean dissident and an American woman with a car bomb in Washington, D.C., George H.W. Bush’s CIA leaked a false report clearing Chile’s military dictatorship and pointing the FBI in the wrong direction.
The bogus CIA assessment, spread through Newsweek magazine and other U.S. media outlets, was planted despite CIA’s now admitted awareness at the time that Chile was participating in Operation Condor, a cross-border campaign targeting political dissidents, and the CIA’s own suspicions that the Chilean junta was behind the terrorist bombing in Washington.
In a 21-page report to Congress on Sept. 18, 2000, the CIA officially acknowledged for the first time that the mastermind of the terrorist attack, Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, was a paid asset of the CIA.
The CIA report was issued almost 24 years to the day after the murders of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and American co-worker Ronni Moffitt, who died on Sept. 21, 1976, when a remote-controlled bomb ripped apart Letelier’s car as they drove down Massachusetts Avenue, a stately section of Washington known as Embassy Row.
In the report, the CIA also acknowledged publicly for the first time that it consulted Contreras in October 1976 about the Letelier assassination. The report added that the CIA was aware of the alleged Chilean government role in the murders and included that suspicion in an internal cable the same month.
“CIA’s first intelligence report containing this allegation was dated 6 October 1976,” a little more than two weeks after the bombing, the CIA disclosed.
Nevertheless, the CIA – then under CIA Director George H.W. Bush – leaked for public consumption an assessment clearing the Chilean government’s feared intelligence service, DINA, which was then run by Contreras.
Image on the right: Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, murdered when right-wing terrorists blew up his car in Washington on Sept. 21, 1976. (Wikipedia)
Relying on the word of Bush’s CIA, Newsweek reported that “the Chilean secret police were not involved” in the Letelier assassination. “The [Central Intelligence] agency reached its decision because the bomb was too crude to be the work of experts and because the murder, coming while Chile’s rulers were wooing U.S. support, could only damage the Santiago regime.” [Newsweek, Oct. 11, 1976]
Bush, who later became the 41st president of the United States (and is the father of the 43rd president), has never explained his role in putting out the false cover story that diverted attention away from the real terrorists. Nor has Bush explained what he knew about the Chilean intelligence operation in the weeks before Letelier and Moffitt were killed.
Dodging Disclosure
As a Newsweek correspondent in 1988, a dozen years after the Letelier bombing, when the elder Bush was running for president, I prepared a detailed story about Bush’s handling of the Letelier case.
The draft story included the first account from U.S. intelligence sources that Contreras was a CIA asset in the mid-1970s. I also learned that the CIA had consulted Contreras about the Letelier assassination, information that the CIA then would not confirm.
The sources told me that the CIA sent its Santiago station chief, Wiley Gilstrap, to talk with Contreras after the bombing. Gilstrap then cabled back to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Contreras’s assurances that the Chilean government was not involved. Contreras told Gilstrap that the most likely killers were communists who wanted to make a martyr out of Letelier.
My story draft also described how Bush’s CIA had been forewarned in 1976 about DINA’s secret plans to send agents, including the assassin Michael Townley, into the United States on false passports.
Image below: Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in a meeting at the White House on Feb. 12, 1981. (Reagan Library)
Upon learning of this strange mission, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, George Landau, cabled Bush about Chile’s claim that Townley and another agent were traveling to CIA headquarters for a meeting with Bush’s deputy, Vernon Walters. Landau also forwarded copies of the false passports to the CIA.
Walters cabled back that he was unaware of any scheduled appointment with these Chilean agents. Landau immediately canceled the visas, but Townley simply altered his plans and continued on his way to the United States. After arriving, he enlisted some right-wing Cuban-Americans in the Letelier plot and went to Washington to plant the bomb under Letelier’s car.
The CIA has never explained what action it took, if any, after receiving Landau’s warning. A natural follow-up would have been to contact DINA and ask what was afoot or whether a message about the trip had been misdirected. The CIA report in 2000 made no mention of these aspects of the case.
After the assassination, Bush promised the CIA’s full cooperation in tracking down the Letelier-Moffitt killers. But instead the CIA took contrary actions, such as planting the false exoneration and withholding evidence that would have implicated the Chilean junta.
“Nothing the agency gave us helped us to break this case,” said federal prosecutor Eugene Propper in a 1988 interview for the story I was drafting for Newsweek. The CIA never volunteered Ambassador Landau’s cable about the suspicious DINA mission nor copies of the fake passports that included a photo of Townley, the chief assassin. Nor did Bush’s CIA divulge its knowledge of the existence of Operation Condor.
FBI agents in Washington and Latin America broke the case two years later. They discovered Operation Condor on their own and tracked the assassination back to Townley and his accomplices in the United States.
In 1988, as then-Vice President Bush was citing his CIA work as an important part of his government experience, I submitted questions to him asking about his actions in the days before and after the Letelier bombing. Bush’s chief of staff, Craig Fuller, wrote back, saying Bush “will have no comment on the specific issues raised in your letter.”
As it turned out, the Bush campaign had little to fear from my discoveries. When I submitted my story draft – with its exclusive account of Contreras’s role as a CIA asset – Newsweek’s editors refused to run the story. Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas told me that Editor Maynard Parker even had accused me of being “out to get Bush.”
The CIA’s Admission
Twenty-four years after the Letelier assassination and 12 years after Newsweek killed the first account of the Contreras-CIA relationship, the CIA admitted that it had paid Contreras as an intelligence asset and consulted with him about the Letelier assassination.
Still, in the sketchy report in 2000, the spy agency sought to portray itself as more victim than accomplice. According to the report, the CIA was internally critical of Contreras’s human rights abuses and skeptical about his credibility. The CIA said its skepticism predates the spy agency’s contact with him about the Letelier-Moffitt murders.
“The relationship, while correct, was not cordial and smooth, particularly as evidence of Contreras’ role in human rights abuses emerged,” the CIA reported. “In December 1974, the CIA concluded that Contreras was not going to improve his human rights performance. …
“By April 1975, intelligence reporting showed that Contreras was the principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Junta, but an interagency committee [within the Ford administration] directed the CIA to continue its relationship with Contreras.”
The CIA report added that “a one-time payment was given to Contreras” in 1975, a time frame when the CIA was first hearing about Operation Condor, a cross-border program run by South America’s military dictatorships to hunt down dissidents living in other countries.
“CIA sought from Contreras information regarding evidence that emerged in 1975 of a formal Southern Cone cooperative intelligence effort – ‘Operation Condor’ – building on informal cooperation in tracking and, in at least a few cases, killing political opponents. By October 1976, there was sufficient information that the CIA decided to approach Contreras on the matter. Contreras confirmed Condor’s existence as an intelligence-sharing network but denied that it had a role in extra-judicial killings.”
Also, in October 1976, the CIA said it “worked out” how it would assist the FBI in its investigation of the Letelier assassination, which had occurred the previous month. The spy agency’s report offered no details of what it did, however. The report added only that Contreras was already a murder suspect by fall 1976.
“At that time, Contreras’ possible role in the Letelier assassination became an issue,” the CIA’s report said. “By the end of 1976, contacts with Contreras were very infrequent.”
Even though the CIA came to recognize the likelihood that DINA was behind the Letelier assassination, there never was any indication that Bush’s CIA sought to correct the false impression created by its leaks to the news media asserting DINA’s innocence.
Image on the right: Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Reagan Library)
After Bush left the CIA with Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977, the spy agency distanced itself from Contreras, the new report said.
“During 1977, CIA met with Contreras about half a dozen times; three of those contacts were to request information on the Letelier assassination,” the CIA report said.
“On 3 November 1977, Contreras was transferred to a function unrelated to intelligence so the CIA severed all contact with him,” the report added. “After a short struggle to retain power, Contreras resigned from the Army in 1978. In the interim, CIA gathered specific, detailed intelligence reporting concerning Contreras’ involvement in ordering the Letelier assassination.”
Remaining Mysteries
Though the CIA report in 2000 contained the first official admission of a relationship with Contreras, it shed no light on the actions of Bush and his deputy, Walters, in the days before and after the Letelier assassination. It also offered no explanation why Bush’s CIA planted false information in the American press clearing Chile’s military dictatorship.
While providing the 21-page summary on its relationship with Chile’s military dictatorship, the CIA refused to release documents from a quarter century earlier on the grounds that the disclosures might jeopardize the CIA’s “sources and methods.” The refusal came in the face of President Bill Clinton’s specific order to release as much information as possible.
Perhaps the CIA was playing for time. With CIA headquarters officially named the George Bush Center for Intelligence and with veterans of the Reagan-Bush years still dominating the CIA’s hierarchy, the spy agency might have hoped that the election of Texas Gov. George W. Bush would free it from demands to open up records to the American people.
For his part, former President George H.W. Bush declared his intent to take a more active role in campaigning for his son’s election. In Florida on Sept. 22, 2000, Bush said he was “absolutely convinced” that if his son is elected president, “we will restore the respect, honor and decency that the White House deserves.”
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The late investigative reporter Robert Parry, the founding editor of Consortium News, broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. His last book, America’s Stolen Narrative, can be obtained in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
When evaluating the behavior of a sociopath, what constitutes success and failure can prove quite challenging. The US wars against Syria and Iraq were largely failures, as Washington failed to oust Assad and also failed to install a puppet government in Baghdad, which is now allied with Iran. The destruction of Yugoslavia was a resounding success, as the country was balkanized according to plan, the Serbs vilified, and liberal opinion was enthusiastically in favor of the “humanitarian intervention.”
It is conceivable that the Pentagon would regard the interventions in Afghanistan and Libya as a success, as throwing Libya into chaos, while maintaining a state of protracted civil war in Afghanistan could have been part of a deliberate strategy. What we can be certain of, is that the complete and utter loss of any moral credibility, coupled with the anger and de-dollarization that this has instigated, threaten the Empire, which is resorting to greater acts of violence and barbarism in order to retain hegemony.
In the never-ending quest for enemies, making Russia an antagonist is fraught with tremendous peril. Indeed, if the demonization of Putin follows the demonization of Milošević, Osama bin Laden (good for bombing almost any country), Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad the United States and Russia may very well be engaged in a hot war at some point in the not too distant future. Is the unthinkable soon to be a reality?
In an article in The National Interest titled “America and Russia: Back to Basics,” Graham Allison writes,
“However demonic, however destructive, however devious, however deserving of being strangled Russia is, the brute fact is that we cannot kill this bastard without committing suicide.”
That a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government could express such a crude hatred of Russians, is indicative of a virulent Russophobia that has become institutionalized, and is being relentlessly fomented by both academia and the mass media. That Poroshenko, when speaking of the Ukrainian army victory that drove the anti-fascist forces from Slovyansk, could refer to them as “gangs of animals” underscores the fact that when it comes to Russia neoliberals, neocons, and neo-Nazis are all marching to the tune of the same drummer.
The revival of Nazism in Eastern Europe, and to a lesser extent Europe generally, serves the interests of the Empire, as Nazis exist first and foremost not to kill Jews per se, but to invade Russia. This revival of Nazism also constitutes a war on the past, as monuments honoring the Soviet victory over fascism are defaced, such as the monument to Red Army general Nikolai Vatutin, who liberated Kiev from the Nazis.
A monument to the obliterated Polish village of Huta Pieniacka in Lviv, which was destroyed by Ukrainian fascist collaborators during the Second World War, has not only been defaced, but destroyed beyond repair. The monument served as a memorial to the nine hundred Poles that lost their lives, with many residents being burnt alive in their homes and inside a Catholic church. In what is nothing short of a satanic image, only two stone blocks remain, one of which has been painted with the colors of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army flag, together with SS Bolts, an emblem popular with the SS. Now nothing remains of the town except this unconscionable desecration and the howling of the winds.
Following the Washington-backed Maidan coup, Petro Symonenko, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, denounced the criminal behavior of the Banderites and was physically attacked in the middle of the Rada. Indeed, the West has not only supported a resurgence of Nazism in Ukraine, but also in the Baltics, as marches held by Latvian SS veterans, previously outlawed during the Soviet Union, have become commonplace.
Russophobe extraordinaire Hillary Clinton has gone so far as to compare the reunification of Crimea and Russia with the Nazi annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland. Unlike sophisticated Americans who know what real democracy is, Crimeans now enjoy free medical care, having returned to their ancestral homeland. An impressive new terminal in the Simferopol Airport, an enormous new mosque currently under construction in Simferopol for the Crimean Tatars (allegedly suffering terrible persecution following “the annexation”), and an extraordinary new nineteen kilometer bridge across the Kerch Strait that has connected the Crimean Peninsula with the Krasnodar Region of mainland Russia, are just a few of the other chilling horrors wrought by this brutal military occupation.
Young people in Western Ukraine are being brainwashed to hate Russians in a manner reminiscent of the Hitler Youth, while children in the Donbass walk to and from school hoping that they won’t get killed by shelling from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As children in the Donbass are ethnic Russians and regarded as subhuman, both by the Banderite regime and enlightened Western liberals, all is forgiven. For the brave Anna Tuv and many other Donbass residents, the deadly shells met their mark, killing and maiming loved ones.
Ominously, NATO drills on Russia’s western border have become increasingly menacing in size and scope. As Sergei Shoigu, Defense Minister of the Russian Federation, has pointed out,
“NATO’s military activity near our borders has reached an unprecedented level since the Cold War.”
The decision on the part of the Trump administration to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), signed by Gorbachev and Reagan in 1987, and which banned short-range and intermediate-range nuclear missiles, has destroyed what was left of the Kremlin’s trust in Washington. This follows the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002 – also done unilaterally and despite Russian protests – and which was likewise a lynchpin for maintaining global security. The INF formerly gave Russians a certain peace of mind, knowing that if an ICBM were launched from the US, it would take approximately thirty minutes to reach Russia, giving them time to evaluate whether the perceived threat were real or imagined, and allowing for a window with which to respond accordingly. Without the INF, a nuclear warhead launched from Poland or Romania could reach a major Russian city in a fraction of the time. Moreover, this also places Europe at risk of a retaliatory strike. Clearly, abolishing these treaties has dramatically heightened tensions and will unleash an arms race.
As Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of Russia’s National Defense Magazine, and other Russian analysts have noted, Washington appears to no longer be cognizant of the nuclear winter and mutually assured destruction that would unequivocally follow a nuclear war. Russians also see through the lies of American diplomats, who have repeatedly attempted to deceive Moscow, arguing that abrogation of the ABM and INF treaties are a necessary countermeasure to contain security threats from Iran, China, and North Korea. In an article on The Heritage Foundation website titled “Trump Right to Consider Pulling Out of INF Treaty,” the author writes that, “As challenges arise in the Pacific involving China and potentially North Korea, the INF Treaty prevents the United States from being able to freely develop and deploy our military capabilities to the fullest extent possible in support of our national security interests.” Some Russian analysts, such as socialist Semyon Bagdasarov, have argued that Russia should stop turning the other cheek and use her military to liberate Ukraine from the Banderite regime.
Furthermore, the idea that the Russian elite is concerned with who is elected president of the United States is an erroneous one, for as Putin has noted, they are acutely aware of the fact that US foreign policies remain unchanged regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House. This underscores the fact that Russiagate is a lamentable and pitiful hoax.
Despite the mass media’s hysterical Russophobia and hatred of Putin, the fact is that the “annexation of Crimea” and the Russian military intervention in Syria, were both done legally and in accordance with the will of the people. This is in contrast with the endless chain of bloody US interventions, which have resulted in the destruction of so many countries over the past fifty years that it is difficult to keep track of all of them.
During the Cold War relations between Moscow and Washington were fraught with considerably less suspicion and hostility than they are today. Following the Salisbury attacks, the remarks of the British Defense Secretary, Gavin Williamson, that “Russia should go away and should shut up” would have been unthinkable during the Cold War, where certain norms of etiquette and diplomatic language were observed. This more respectful and professional state of relations between the two superpowers helped prevent a nuclear exchange on more than one occasion. With tensions between Washington and Moscow having reached unprecedented heights, the potential for deadly miscommunications that were formerly averted without incident, may not be resolved so peacefully in the future. In “Crazed US Presstitutes Drive The World To Nuclear War,” Paul Craig Roberts writes:
Humanity has on numerous occasions narrowly missed nuclear Armageddon. Each time it was averted by military officers, both American and Soviet, who understood that the relations between the US and the Soviet Union were not that strained. Today this situation has been radically altered by the corrupt American media, Democratic Party, and military/security complex, who, acting in behalf of Hillary’s political interest and the greed of the armaments industry, have demonized Russia and her president to the extent that malfunctioning warning systems or a temper tantrum of a crazed politician are likely to result in a fatal launch.
As tensions mount, the mainstream press, instead of attempting to report objectively on US-Russia relations, has resorted to greater and greater manifestations of Russophobia. In an article in The Huffington Post, by David Wood, titled “This is How The Next World War Starts,” the author writes,
“By now, it is widely recognized that Russia is waging a campaign of covert political manipulation across the United States, Europe and the Middle East, fueling fears of a second Cold War.”
This is “widely recognized” by who? By our mass media sycophants that will write any Russophobic nonsense to please their corporate masters, apparently. Moreover, the second Cold War began with Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. It is also irrefutable that this new Cold War is infinitely more dangerous than the first.
Russians are growing increasingly exasperated with the relentless vilification of their country by the Western elites and mass media. From blaming the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on Russia before an investigation had even begun, to the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats, to the demonization of Michael Flynn for meeting with the Russian ambassador and advocating for detente, to the propaganda associated with the Salisbury poisonings, to the ludicrous accusations that Russia hacked the election, to blaming Russia for the carnage in Syria and Ukraine, Russians are increasingly of the opinion that their country is being targeted for an attack by the West, and their language – usually respectful and diplomatic – is beginning to reflect this. In an interview with Der Spiegel, the head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, cautioned that “Russia will never again fight on its own territory.” He also had this to say about the relentless saber rattling emanating from the West:
This chatter that we intend to attack the Baltics is idiotic. Why is NATO stationing weapons and equipment there? Imagine what would happen to them in the case of a crisis. The help offered by NATO is not symbolic help for the Baltic states. It is a provocation. If NATO initiates an encroachment — against a nuclear power like ourselves — it will be punished.
The latest NPR also states that the US will invest in building low-yield nuclear weapons. In an article in Slate titled “Nuclear Posturing,” by Fred Kaplan, the author writes,
“Some of these weapons are said to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons—either because they’re mounted on planes or missiles that carry both types and because, in some cases, they’re much less powerful than most nukes—thus making the escalation to nuclear war more seamless and possibly more tempting.”
If Hitler and Napoleon were unable to conquer Russia, with Russians in a state of disarray and poor military readiness, what would be the result of a NATO attack on a united Russia armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons? Moreover, much has been said of the China-Russia alliance, but the reality is that even if Russia were isolated and friendless, a NATO attack on the Russian Federation would still pose a real danger of nuclear war.
In an article in Time titled “It All Looks as if the World is Preparing for War,” Mikhail Gorbachev writes of the rising tensions between NATO and Russia:
“More troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers are being brought to Europe. NATO and Russian forces and weapons that used to be deployed at a distance are now placed closer to each other, as if to shoot point-blank.”
Indeed, Gorbachev was given assurances that NATO would not expand in exchange for the reunification of Germany, and not only has this promise been egregiously violated, but the West has repeatedly accused Moscow of provocations, as if they were somehow to blame for moving Russia closer to NATO and not the other way around. As Paul Craig Roberts writes in “Washington Is Destroying The World,” published in 2014:
In 1999 President Bill Clinton made a liar of the administration of President George H.W. Bush. The corrupt Clinton brought Poland, Hungary, and the newly formed Czech Republic into NATO. President George W. Bush also made a liar out of his father, George H.W. Bush, and his father’s trusted Secretary of State, James Baker. “Dubya,” as the fool and drunkard is known, brought Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania into NATO in 2004. The corrupt and hopeless Obama regime added Albania and Croatia in 2009. In other words, over the past 21 years three two-term US presidents have taught Moscow that the word of the US government is worthless.
Andrey Belousov, the deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Nonproliferation and Arms Control, said at the UN last month,
“At a recent meeting, the US stated that Russia is preparing for war. Yes, Russia is preparing for war, I can confirm it.”
“The aggressor must know that retribution is inevitable, that it will be destroyed.”
During the 2018 annual address to the Federal Assembly, Putin unveiled a number of advanced new weapons that the Russian military industrial complex has developed to counter the relentless pressure being brought to bear by Washington and its vassals, including a hypersonic missile which can attain a speed of Mach 20, and an underwater drone that is capable of traveling at great velocity and depths. These weapons are more advanced than anything currently in the possession of NATO, and there are presently no known defensive systems which could repel them.
Relations between Washington and Moscow are fraught with particular tension in Ukraine, regarded by many Russians as a brotherly nation, the Baltics, and Syria where the two superpowers are jockeying for control over Syrian airspace. In each of these three theaters, a miscommunication or a rogue fighter pilot could easily ignite a spark that could unleash a third world war. In an alarming development, Russian military officials have also determined that the drone attack on the Russian Khmeimim airbase in Syria last January, was coordinated from a US Poseidon reconnaissance plane.
Considering some of the threatening remarks emanating from Washington, one can’t help but wonder if the American ruling establishment has become so delusional that they have actually forgotten that Russia has nuclear weapons. Commenting on the Russian military intervention that saved Syria from being overrun by US-backed death squads, John Kirby said that Russia will continue to send troops home in body bags. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has gone so far as to threaten Russia with a military blockade, an act of war. Perhaps confusing Russia with Iraq, the US ambassador to Nato, Kay Bailey Hutchison, recently threatened to “take out” Russian missiles that Washington has claimed, despite a lack of evidence, to be in violation of the INF agreement. This anti-Russian hysteria is undeniably good for the profits of the military industrial complex. It also bolsters the power of NATO, which in turn allows the Pentagon to keep European countries, who might otherwise start to wander off and do their own thing, on a short leash.
Is it possible to restore reason and morality to our countrymen, mired for so long in insouciance, mindlessness and apathy? How are we to reign in this crazed war horse that is driving us inexorably, frenetically, and insatiably towards the apocalypse?
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David Penner‘s articles on politics and health care have appeared in Dissident Voice, CounterPunch, Russia Insider and KevinMD. Also a photographer and native New Yorker, he is the author of three books: Faces of The New Economy, Faces of Manhattan Island, and Manhattan Pairs. He can be reached at [email protected].
November 30th, 2018 by Corporate Europe Observatory
The gas industry is currently hyping so-called ‘renewable gas’ and its low-carbon potential. But the industry hype does not live up to reality: this newfound enthusiasm for renewable gas is really an attempt to paint the gas industry green. The result of falling for this dangerous distraction will be to keep all kinds of gas, particularly fossil gas, on the energy menu, and help the industry stave off being rendered obsolete by more climate-friendly renewable energy and electrification.
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for deep and urgent emissions cuts if we are to keep average global temperature rise below 1.5°c, which governments signed up to under the Paris Agreement. So can the gas industry, whose primary product is fossil fuels – the very thing driving climate change – really be part of the solution?
While industry sees renewable gas as their ticket to addressing climate change while keeping their business model – and their gas infrastructure – intact, the reality is not so clear. If created from truly sustainable, renewable sources, the gases industry claims it can create (hydrogen from excess renewable electricity or biomethane from sustainably-sourced biomass), would still be in incredibly short supply even by 2050. Moreover, producing biomethane unsustainably could lead to the same land-grabs and competition with food crops seen when the EU tried to stimulate biofuel production. So while small potential quantities of renewable gas may be suitable for a few hard-to-decarbonise industrial activities or for local heat and electricity generation, they will fall far short of projected 2050 gas demand.
Gas companies are fully aware of this. In reality industry’s core vision is about pumping fossil gas for the foreseeable future, with some small renewable gas capacity giving them a cover of sustainability. Also included under the umbrella of supposed sustainability is what industry calls ‘decarbonised’ or ‘low-carbon’ gas, which is fossil gas that in the future will possibly – through unproven, experimental and extremely expensive technology – have its CO2 emissions captured (known as carbon capture and storage technology).
For all its green talk, the gas industry’s basic plan is to continue extracting and transporting fossil gas, building new infrastructure and transferring large sums of public money into corporate wallets in the process, rather than making the urgent shift in energy infrastructure now. This spells disaster not just for the climate, but also for communities and ecosystems all along the gas supply chain. So-called ‘renewable’ gas and its ‘low-carbon’ bedfellows are therefore a dangerous distraction, a false solution engineered by the gas industry to keep itself in business but utterly inconsistent with the “rapid and far-reaching transition” demanded by the IPCC.
The gas industry is not going to plan for its own demise, which makes it imperative that governments do so, and in a way that protects workers.
Summary of the myths about so-called ‘renewable’ gas
1 It’s convenient for industry to talk about renewable gas alongside green, clean, decarbonised, low-carbon, or just plain ‘natural’ gas, mixing definitions. This hides the true impact and also sneaks fossil gas under the ‘renewable’ label. Truly renewable gas is hydrogen from excess renewable electricity or locally produced and small-scale biogas made from sustainable biomass.
2 Industry’s version of renewable gas is unlikely to be carbon neutral when you examine how it’s actually produced, and could even drive deforestation and land-grabbing.
3 The potential for sustainable renewable gas production in the EU is a fraction of what industry claims. It will never substitute current fossil gas use, and is estimated to meet just seven per cent of today’s gas demand by 2050.
4 Industry claims any non-renewable gas demand will be ‘decarbonised’ in the future, but the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology needed is still not technically or commercially available.
5 In search for new markets the gas industry is pushing for (renewable) gas to be used in transport. But transport is electrifying, and this unnecessary push has been labelled “an unrealistic attempt to greenwash the use of gas”.
6 Europe is unlikely to sustainably produce significant quantities of renewable gas, so despite industry claims, it will not provide energy security. Either the EU keeps its neocolonial mantle and imports it instead of fossil gas or, more likely, imports more fossil gas claiming to be able to decarbonise it.
7 Developing renewable and decarbonised gases is expensive, despite industry promises of savings. And if they turn out to be a dangerous distraction that slows efforts to tackle climate change, the EU’s current bill of €14bn per year to deal with its impacts will rise dramatically – paid for by taxpayers, not the gas industry.
This article was first published by Global Research in November 2014. Today Libya as a Nation State has been destroyed by US-NATO.
What do you think of when you hear the name Colonel Gaddafi? Tyrant? Dictator? Terrorist? Well, a national citizen of Libya may disagree but we want you to decide.
For 41 years until his demise in October 2011, Muammar Gaddafi did some truly amazing things for his country and repeatedly tried to unite and empower the whole of Africa.
So despite what you’ve heard on the radio, seen in the media or on the TV, Gaddafi did some powerful things that are not characteristic of a “vicious dictator” as portrayed by the western media.
Here are ten things Gaddafi did for Libya that you may not know about…
1. In Libya a home is considered a natural human right
In Gaddafi’s Green Book it states: ”The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others”. Gaddafi’s Green Book is the formal leader’s political philosophy, it was first published in 1975 and was intended reading for all Libyans even being included in the national curriculum.
2. Education and medical treatment were all free
Under Gaddafi, Libya could boast one of the best healthcare services in the Middle East and Africa. Also if a Libyan citizen could not access the desired educational course or correct medical treatment in Libya they were funded to go abroad.
3. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project
The largest irrigation system in the world also known as the great manmade river was designed to make water readily available to all Libyan’s across the entire country. It was funded by the Gaddafi government and it said that Gaddafi himself called it ”the eighth wonder of the world”.
4. It was free to start a farming business
If any Libyan wanted to start a farm they were given a house, farm land and live stock and seeds all free of charge.
5. A bursary was given to mothers with newborn babies
When a Libyan woman gave birth she was given 5000 (US dollars) for herself and the child.
6. Electricity was free
Electricity was free in Libya meaning absolutely no electric bills!
7. Cheap petrol
During Gaddafi’s reign the price of petrol in Libya was as low as 0.14 (US dollars) per litre.
8. Gaddafi raised the level of education
Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans were literate. This figure was brought up to 87% with 25% earning university degrees.
9. Libya had It’s own state bank
Libya had its own State bank, which provided loans to citizens at zero percent interest by law and they had no external debt.
10. The gold dinar
Before the fall of Tripoli and his untimely demise, Gaddafi was trying to introduce a single African currency linked to gold. Following in the foot steps of the late great pioneer Marcus Garvey who first coined the term ”United States of Africa”. Gaddafi wanted to introduce and only trade in the African gold Dinar – a move which would have thrown the world economy into chaos.
The Dinar was widely opposed by the ‘elite’ of today’s society and who could blame them. African nations would have finally had the power to bring itself out of debt and poverty and only trade in this precious commodity. They would have been able to finally say ‘no’ to external exploitation and charge whatever they felt suitable for precious resources. It has been said that the gold Dinar was the real reason for the NATO led rebellion, in a bid to oust the outspoken leader.
So, was Muammar Gaddafi a Terrorist?
Few can answer this question fairly, but if anyone can, it’s a Libyan citizen who has lived under his reign? Whatever the case, it seems rather apparent that he did some positive things for his country despite the infamous notoriety surrounding his name. And that’s something you should try to remember when judging in future.
This quirky video documentary spells out an interesting, if rather different, story from the one we think we know.
“In 1986 a US law was passed that protected vaccine maker’s from ever being sued in a a regular court regardless of how many babies or children were injured of killed from the aluminum, mercury (aka Thimerosal), formaldehyde, aborted fetal cells, deadly peanut byproducts, cells of pigs, cows, monkeys, dogs, insects, MSG (monosodium glutamate), ether and other toxins that make up normal vaccines. At that time 1 in 10,000 children had Autism. Children went from 7 vaccines to more than 70. Today as many as 1 in 25 boys over age 12 has autism-which is really a term to hide the real condition: vaccine-induced encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and 1 in 5 high school kids have ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, epilepsy, asthma, diabetes and cancer has gone sky high. No vaccine is ever looked at for its ability to cause cancer-surely not the combination of vaccines and cancer is now the leading cause of death ion little children. There is a federal Vaccine court that has paid 3.3 BILLION dollars to families bright enough to learn the system and were able to prove that the autism was from the vaccines.” — Shelley Tzorfas, author of Recovering Autism, ADHD, & Special Needs
Over the several decades since I really started studying vaccine issues in some depth – much too late for many of my vulnerable patients – I have come to see through the pervasive Big Pharma/Big Vaccine/Big Medicine propaganda that falsely and repeatedly asserted that all vaccines are safe, effective and necessary for the public health.
I have come to understand that my academic professors at the University of Minnesota Medical School that taught us naïve students about the alleged safety and alleged efficacy of mass vaccination campaigns had also been mis-taught by their own professors who probably only knew the historical myths about Jenner, cowpox and smallpox and the early myths about Salk and Sabin and their often failed, even disastrous experiments with polio vaccines
I suspect also that by the mid-1960s my professors were increasingly coming under the corrupting influence of the pharmaceutical industry and their Wall Street cronies that were recognizing the enormous corporate profits to be made by selling more and more dependency-inducing and increasingly expensive, patentable, synthetic drugs and vaccines. In fairness to my now-deceased professors, there were far fewer drugs and only a miniscule number of toxic vaccines available back then (1964 – 1968).
I last practiced family medicine in an under-served area of rural Minnesota about 20 years ago. Since then I have had more time and energy to understand how and why the academic doctors that wrote my med school text books also emphasized to us students – without corroborating evidence –that vaccines were always safe and effective. These textbook authors had also likely developed significant, undeclared conflicts of interest with the industries that provided the propaganda that made us easily-bamboozled student doctors into devoted life-long prescribers of their drugs and vaccines.
Of course, nothing was taught to us back then about the multiple toxic ingredients that are in every vaccine dose or the lack of proof of efficacy when cocktails of several combinations of vaccines (or drugs) are injected simultaneously into the tiny muscles of our infant and toddler-age patients. But students, particularly medical students, aren’t known for questioning authority, especially if the authorities are esteemed and renowned (albeit often arrogant) professors. Most of us students weren’t aware that most of our professors had never suffered through the trials of being a self-employed, primary-care physician that had to deal with normal members of the community.
These academics didn’t explain to us med students (and perhaps they didn’t understand it themselves) that the intentionally-deceptive “relative risk” statistics (as opposed to the more honest “absolute/actual risks”) came from Big Pharma’s statisticians and that those statistics consistently, intentionally and fraudulently over-rated the effectiveness and safety of their products. (Those products included not just their vaccines but also their dependency-inducing prescription drugs that frequently caused serious withdrawal effects that made stopping them both hard to do AND hazardous).
So we naive future teachers of our equally naïve – and easily bamboozleable – future patients have all been brainwashed into trusting the untrustworthy Big Pharma cartel and their “authoritative” propaganda that was so good for business. Most people tend to be obedient to the orders of authoritative folks and physicians and their patients are no different.
And then, after we students finally finished our internships or residency programs, we were employed by various for-profit private medical practices, and we found out that our clinics could make a lot of money getting parents to bring their previously well babies in for their “well-baby exams” and their obligatory, periodic cocktails of “well-baby shots”. It didn’t occur to us rookie physicians at the time that the clinics made far less money than the vaccine makers and marketers did. We just went on guiltlessly and happily doing what we had learned in school – and we rarely questioned anything that we had been taught.
But most seriously, we students were never taught much immunology or even the basic science of how vaccines actually “work” while we were in med school. I myself only started trying to fully understand the little that I had been taught about vaccines after a close relative started having neurological issues after his 4 month well baby shots. (He was eventually diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome). It was only then that I finally started listening to and trusting the many anguished and justifiably distraught and angry parents whose vaccine-sickened or vaccine-killed children had unequivocally been neurologically damaged by their baby shots.
After hearing of the multitude of vaccine-damaged children, I have become more and more outraged over the fact that many of the parents – whose children and lives had been permanently devastated by vaccine injuries – have actually been fired from the previously-trusted medical practices whose vaccines had injured their children.
The science of vaccine-induced neurotoxicity is actually quite understandable, even for laypeople – if they were ever taught the principles. It might even be easier for laypeople to learn than for indoctrinated physicians! I include a few of the principles in the last half of this column.
For example, it is easy for anybody to understand that until the year 2000, the highly neurotoxic mercury, in the form of Thimerosal, was commonly used in many vaccines as a preservative that was included in order to prevent bacterial overgrowth in the commonly-used, rubber-stoppered multiple-dose vials. Mercury is the 2ndmost neurotoxic substance on the planet – right behind the highly radioactive element plutonium – and there is no known safe dose! The CDC, the AAP, the AMA and the media are correct in their admonitions to parents of children to have the kids avoid eating fish that might contain mercury but are to be condemned when they refuse to say anything about the mercury in vaccines. Mercury is still used in multidose influenza vaccine vials but, according to sources inside Big Pharma, trace amounts of it are still being found in other multidose, non-live virus vaccines as well.
In addition, solid microparticles of the known neurotoxic metal aluminum are used in many vaccines as an adjuvant. Particulate aluminum compounds are known to exaggerate immune responses when incubated with the intended viral particles in the vaccine solutions. The number of antibodies produced in response to an aluminum-containing vaccine are orders of magnitude greater than can be achieved with a vaccine that has no aluminum in it. Again, just like mercury, there is no known safe dose of aluminum when it is injected intramuscularly.
In addition, any of the live (albeit allegedly “attenuated”) measles viruses that are in the MMR vaccines are known to be capable of causing low-grade viral encephalitis or non-infectious encephalopathies that are diagnosed as brain disorders such as learning disorders, autism, Asperger’s disorder, ADHD, behavioral disorders, chronic headaches, epilepsy, allergies, asthma, narcolepsy, speech delays, low IQs, etc.
Vaccine-induced diseases are all, of course, “iatrogenic” disorders which are defined as “caused by doctors, doctor-prescribed drugs, vaccines or surgery”. It is to be expected that any industry will try to downplay the toxic effects of its products in order to avoid legal liability and Big Medicine and Big Pharma are no different.
How many things could possibly go wrong when even a highly-skilled nurse tries to inject cocktails of liquids containing a multitude of potentially toxic synthetic chemicals into the tiny muscles of a neurologically-vulnerable infant. Failing to hit tiny muscles of an infant with a needle has to be fairly common in average medical clinics and probably accounts for the significant variability of vaccine efficacy that has frequently been found in pharmaceutical industry-sponsored studies.
But the Big Pharma cartels, the Big Medicine professional trade associations, the Big Pharma lobbyists and the Big Pharma-subsidized mainstream media voices easily out-spend, out-advertise and out-shout those of us who are trying to warn about the many dangers of the toxic substances that are in most vaccines.
One of the major reasons why vaccines may actually do more harm than good can be understood if one understands that true immunity can only occur if both of the two essential aspects of immunity occur together.
Cellular/mucosal Immunity and Serological/humoral Immunity
Long-lasting or permanent immunity to any infectious disease is not achievable with vaccinations. Permanent immunity is ONLY achieved if there is exposure to – and at least a subclinical infection from – a wild-type virus or bacteria! Indeed, vaccinations can only cause short-lasting, partial immunity – hence the need for periodic booster shots for most vaccines to even achieve partial immunity. There are two essential realities that must go together if a person is to obtain full and long-lasting immunity to any infectious disease.
These two essential factors are
1) cellular (aka mucosal) immunity, which only occurs if and when the nasal or respiratory mucosa (or bowel mucosa) is exposed to a virus or bacteria (which never happens with an intramuscularly injectable vaccine!) and
2) serological (aka humeral) immunity, which only occurs when the mucosal barrier is breached by the viral or bacterial antigen and the antigen gets into the bloodstream and comes in contact with the immunoglobulin-producing white blood cells.
Thus intramuscular vaccinations can never induce cellular immunity, which may be the most important factor in human immune systems. In addition, intramuscular vaccinations cannot be expected to induce normal serological immunity because infectious diseases are never caused by intramuscular exposure. Any immunological effect will thus be of uncertain strength and duration.
In addition, the intramuscularly-injected aluminum-adjuvanted vaccine or protein or DNA fragments are readily engulfed by phagocytes in the muscle and are capable of easily entering the central nervous system/brain (CNS) through the semi-permeable blood-brain barrier (which is more common in infants and children that adults)! Thus the brain can be poisoned with live viruses or toxic substances such as aluminum or mercury.
The aluminum adjuvant is also known to form immune-stimulating fragments that can cause a hyper-immune response and therefore vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders, an increasingly common cause of chronic disorders in childhood.
Why most physicians and patients have become so thoroughly convinced that vaccinations are effective is not just because of the massive propaganda from Big Pharma and Big Medicine that repeatedly supports that notion, but also because of the relative rarity of the infectious diseases that the vaccines allegedly prevent. See the list below for a multitude of examples regarding that reality.
As just one example of the uselessness of vaccinating all pediatric patients with, for example, a mumps vaccine, is the fact that in the United States, only 6,000 cases of mumps were reported annually in recent years, most cases of which were in vaccinated individuals, which equates to the exceedingly rare incidence of 3 cases per 100,000 population! And yet the CDC and the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) mandate several doses of the live mumps virus-containing MMR vaccine for every pre-school child in America. Which means that for every child partially protected from the benign parotid gland infection there will be tens of thousands of children that will be unnecessarily vaccinated. Those patients will receive no benefit, will have to pay the substantial fees, will be unnecessarily exposed to the many toxic ingredients of the vaccine and will be at risk of developing a vaccine-induced autoimmune disorder that could last a life-time.
A second example is the aluminum-adjuvanted Pneumovax shot and the fact that as few as 2 cases of invasive pneumococcal pneumonia occur annually in the US per 100,000 population. That means that 99.99% of the patients getting the Pneumovax shot will get no benefit but will also be at risk of suffering the considerable adverse effects from the neurotoxic aluminum. In addition, there are many strains of pneumococcal bacteria that are not targeted in the vaccine.
Other examples abound (see further below).
Would any rational person, whose physician did his duty and fully informed his patient about the risks (as physicians are supposed to do), accept the expense and the risks of being injected with aluminum-containing vaccines if the risk of getting pneumococcal pneumonia was so extremely low?
Here are some sobering statistics that should give pause to anybody considering exposing themselves to unnecessary toxins for little or no benefit.
Commonly-mandated Childhood Vaccines and the Incidence of the Diseases they are Supposed to Prevent
DTaP: Diphtheria is non-existent in the US population
DTaP: Tetanus is rare in the US population
DTaP
Pertussis (Bordetella pertussis – aka “whooping cough”) has an incidence of 55.2 cases per 100,000 infants less than 12 months of age; (98.2 cases per 100,000 6 month-old infants or younger).
The incidence of pertussis has actually been gradually increasing since the early 1980s. A total of 25,827 cases was reported in 2004, the largest number since 1959. The reasons for the increase are not clear. A total of 27,550 pertussis cases and 27 pertussis-related deaths were reported in 2010. Case counts for 2012 have surpassed 2010, with 48,277 pertussis cases, with 13 deaths in infants (provisional).
During 2001–2003, the highest average annual pertussis incidence was among infants younger than 1 year of age (55.2 cases per 100,000 population), and particularly among children younger than 6 months of age (98.2 per 100,000 population). In 2002, 24% of all reported cases were in this age group. However, in recent years, adolescents (11–18 years of age) and adults (19 years and older) have accounted for an increasing proportion of cases. During 2001–2003, the annual incidence of pertussis among persons aged 10–19 years increased from 5.5 per 100,000 in 2001, to 6.7 per 100,000 in 2002, and 10.9 per 100,000 in 2003.
Hepatitis B
Hepatitis B vaccine is a synthetic, non-infectious vaccine. The incidence of Hepatitis B is 2.1 cases per 100,000 population. The vaccine used to contain thimerosal (mercury) as a preservativeand now contains aluminum as an adjuvant.
Based on data from CDC, the incidence of acute hepatitis B in the United States has declined steadily since the late 1980s. Between 1987 and 2004, the incidence of acute hepatitis B was recently reported by the CDC to be 2.1 per 100,000(6,212 cases reported).
Pneumovax
As few as 2 cases of invasive pneumococcal pneumonia occur annually per 100,000 population. It contains an aluminum adjuvant.
CDC reported dramatic declines in invasive pneumococcal disease among children less than 5 years old. Overall, invasive pneumococcal disease decreased from 100 cases per 100,000 people in 1998 to 9 cases per 100,000 in 2015. Invasive pneumococcal disease caused by the 13 serotypes covered by PCV13 decreased from 91 cases per 100,000 people in 1998 to 2 cases per 100,000people in 2015.
Hemophilus influenza b (Hib) vaccine
The incidence of Hib infection is as low as 0.08 cases per 100,000 in children younger than 5 years of age.
In the United States, Hib disease is uncommon. In 2015, the incidence of invasive Hib disease was 0.08 cases per 100,000 in children younger than 5 years of age. It occurs primarily in under-immunized children and in infants too young to have completed the primary immunization series.
In 2015, the incidence of non-b H. influenzae invasive disease was 1.3 per 100,000 in children younger than 5 years of age.
Non-typeable H. influenzae, for which there is no vaccine, now causes the majority of invasive H. influenzae disease in all age groups. In 2015, the incidence of invasive non-typeable H. influenzae disease was 7 cases per 100,000 in children younger than 5 years of age and 2 cases per 100,000 in adults 65 years of age and older.
MMR (Measles)
The MMR vaccine contains live (although allegedly attenuated) viruses and therefore contains no mercury. In the US, the incidence of measles is approximately 2 cases per million population.
The incidence of measles has remained below one case per million since 1997, except in 2014, when 667 measles cases were reported, representing a reported incidence of 2.08 cases per million.
MMR (Mumps)
In the US, the incidence of mumps is less than 3 cases per 100,000 population.
In the United States, approximately 6,000 cases of mumps were reported annually in recent years (3 cases per 100,000 population).
MMR (Rubella)
In the US, the incidence of rubella (German measles) is less than 0.5 cases per 100,000 population.
The largest annual number of cases of rubella in the United States was in 1969, when 58 cases were reported per 100,000 population. In 1983, fewer than 1,000 cases per year were reported in the United States (less than 0.5 cases per 100,000 population).
Varicella (Chicken Pox)
The chicken pox vaccine is a live virus vaccine. The incidence of wild-type chicken pox is highly variable and not reportable.
Influenza
Flu viruses have 100 – 200 different strains and therefore influenza has an unpredictable and variable incidence. 80% of what is commonly diagnosed as “vaccine-preventable” influenza is actually “Influenza-Like Illnesses” (ILI) for which there is no vaccine. The commonly over-promoted annual influenza vaccines that come in multiple-dose vials contain the neurotoxic preservative mercury (thimerosal).
Neurotoxic aluminum adjuvants hyper-stimulate immune responses to whatever protein molecules (look up the critically important concept of “Molecular Mimicry”) come to be attached, explaining the large number of vaccine-induced autoimmune (hyperimmune) disorders that are increasingly occurring in fully-vaccinated populations.
Aluminum adjuvants are used in the following vaccines:
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Dr. Kohls is a retired family physician from Duluth, MN, USA. Since his retirement from his holistic mental health practice he has been writing his weekly Duty to Warn column for the Duluth Reader, northeast Minnesota’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns, which are re-published around the world, deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s over-drugging and Big Vaccine’s over-vaccination agendas, as well as other movements that threaten human health, the environment, democracy, civility and the sustainability of all life on earth. Many of his columns have been archived at a number of websites, including
“So for Halliburton’s 100-year anniversary wish, let’s wish its stock tanks and that its guilty are remembered, held accountable, and that justice is ultimately served.”
When it comes to the ruling elite’s corporate plunder and crimes against humanity, the U.S. national memory’s short and no one, not even its political henchmen, assume blame or suffer real consequences: take Halliburton and former chief executive and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney for example.
Not only did Cheney plan and justify the invasion, occupation and pilferage of Iraq’s oil, gold bars and national museum treasures under treasonous false pretenses, but its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR Inc.), overcharged the U.S. taxpayer to a tune of more than US$2 billion due to collusion engendered by sole source contracting methods and shoddy accounting procedures.
It’s even forgotten that Cheney received a US$34 million payout from Halliburton when he joined the Vice President ticket in 2000, in advance of his unscrupulous maneuvers, according to news commentator, Chris Matthews; because on November 5th 2018, in celebration of its 100-year anniversary, its chief executives rang the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) opening bell.
Sadly, as a nation, the U.S. doesn’t recall Cheney’s lies, or his role in planning the contemptible “Shock and Awe” saturation bombing campaign that destroyed a sovereign nation, which posed no threat to the United States, and left the world’s cradle of civilization in ruins. Conveniently, it doesn’t recall the over 500,000 deaths from war-related causes, as reported by the Huffington Post in its 2017 updated article; nor does it recall that obliterating Iraq’s government created a sociopolitical vacuum that enabled the exponential growth of the CIA’s unique brand of Islamofascism and its resulting terrorism, which has culminated in war-torn Syria and Yemen.
Iraq’s only “crime” against the United States, if you want to call it that, was being hogtied by Washington’s sanctions and embargo against it – in what can only be called a Catch 22 situation. Iraq couldn’t do business with U.S. corporations not because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to, but because the U.S. government effectively barred Iraq from doing so. This Catch 22 situation is presently being repeated in Venezuela and Iran in advance of its planned invasion and occupation.
Then there is the cost of war itself: according to The Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University,
“The wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq (the war in Pakistan refers to U.S. counterterrorism efforts there, such as drone strikes and other efforts against al Qaeda) cost US$4.4 trillion. Included in the cost are: direct Congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; increases in the homeland security budget; interest payments on direct war borrowing; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future obligations for veterans’ care. By 2053, interest payments on the debt alone could reach over US$7 trillion.”
Keep in mind that the U.S. taxpayer directly subsidizes the profits of the military industrial complex, and oil & gas industries. Yet, no U.S. protests against Halliburton are found in the media later than 2007. And, there are no organized disinvestment campaigns of record.
So Wall Street celebrates Halliburton’s 100-year anniversary with a clear conscience, because no one has graffitied it’s large four column wide sign or is disinvested from its stock. The nation only recalls, according to IBTimes, in their 2013 article on Iraq war contracts, that Halliburton’s subsidiary, KBR, had the most: KBR’s war contracts totaled US$39.5 billion in just a decade.
Other than the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, which found Cheney and President Bush et al guilty of war crimes in absentia for the illegal invasion of Iraq, there remains no lasting acknowledgment in the U.S. consciousness of Cheney’s evil doings. Cheney had recent book deals and continues to ramble on with speaking engagements. He was scheduled by Cornell University to issue a keynote address as recent as May 2018. In short, the ruling elite protects those engaged in their dirty work until they prove unnecessary. In this regard, consider the fact that Saddam Hussein was a former CIA asset and a good corporate customer – as the weapons of mass destruction (WMD), he once possessed, were sold to him by the U.S. and Britain. However, according to the former United Nations (UN) chief weapon inspector, Scott Ritter, the UN destroyed Iraq’s stockpiles after the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991)—well before the 2003 invasion. This report was ignored because it contradicted the prevailing narrative that justified the invasion, occupation and looting of Iraq.
Just as the ruling elite engineered Saddam Hussein rise to power when he was useful, they ensured Cheney’s political ascent, and the success of his campaign against Iraq. To illustrate the persuasive power of the oil & gas industry in politics, note that according to Open Secrets.org, oil & gas lobbyists spent over US$175M in 2009 (Obama’s first year in office). Of that amount, ExxonMobil spent the most at US$27.4M and Chevron Corp., in second place, spent US$20.8 million. For the record, ExxonMobil and Chevron are successors of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. Prior to President Obama & Vice President Biden, the Oil & Gas Industry lobbyists spent approximately half that amount at $86.5M in 2007. Thus, Bush & Cheney represented a 50 percent savings for oil & gas lobbyists.
When seeking to “out” the elite, keep in mind that the Rockefeller clan describe themselves “as ExxonMobil’s longest continuous shareholders”. In Iraq, ExxonMobil has a 60 percent share of a US$50 billion market contract developing the 9-billion-barrels southern West Qurna Phase I field, and ExxonMobil is expanding its oil & gas holdings into the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the country’s north.
Within this context, the enemy is not a corporate office, an oilrig, pipeline or refinery; it’s the ruling elite that own and control the means of production. If people of conscience don’t hold them accountable for their crimes, they will continue to commit them in countries such as Venezuela and Iran, which are presently locked in their sights. While henchmen change, the ruling elite remains. Why should the U.S. allow its military and secret service to be pimped out as corporate stooges and glorified security guards?
Imperialism is insatiable and fascism expedient. The time to hold the ruling elite accountable is now before another invasion and occupation is executed against a fake enemy that just so happens to coincidentally have a large desirable oil reserve. Let’s follow Iceland’s lead and seek the prosecution of white-collar criminals that hide behind a facade of corporate stock holdings now, before its too late and they strike again in Venezuela and Iran.
So for Halliburton’s 100-year anniversary wish, let’s wish its stock tanks and that its guilty are remembered, held accountable, and that justice is ultimately served.
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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.
The United States attacked Iraq in the Gulf War in 1990, followed by years of US bombing of Iraq. Then, in 2003, the US invaded and conquered Iraq in the Iraq War. Since then, many US troops have been stationed in Iraq, along with a huge contingent of US government employees and contractors from a variety of agencies, seeking to mold the country to US wishes. Still, 28 years since all this began (and longer since the previous US assistance for the Iraq government it later overthrew), the US House of Representatives approved on Tuesday a bill titled the Preventing Destabilization of Iraq Act (HR 4591).
The only way this bill title would make sense given the long history of massive US intervention failing to improve the situation in Iraq is if the bill required the end of US intervention. Instead, the bill seeks more intervention.
In particular, the Preventing Destabilization of Iraq Act calls on the US president to impose sanctions on any foreign people he determines knowingly commit “a significant act of violence that has the direct purpose or effect of — (1) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; (2) undermining the democratic process in Iraq; or (3) undermining significantly efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.” Further, the bill charges the US Secretary of State to determine if listed individuals should be sanctioned and if people connected to certain organizations should be considered terrorists or sanctioned. In other words, the bill calls for ramping up proven destructive policies for reshaping Iraq.
Also included in the bill is a call for action that would help push for escalating the US government’s destabilization project in Iran. The bill says the Secretary of State “shall annually establish, maintain, and publish a list of armed groups, militias, or proxy forces in Iraq receiving logistical, military, or financial assistance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps or over which Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps exerts any form of control or influence.” Thus, claims of Iran’s intervention in its neighboring country can be used to build the case for massive intervention in Iran, up to invasion and conquest of Iran, by a nation thousands of miles away. Not to worry, 28 years from now, the US Congress can approve a Preventing Destabilization of Iran Act.
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Featured image is from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. US-installed Ukrainian putschist leader, in cahoot with US and UK Russophobes, staged last Sunday’s anti-Russia provocation in the Black Sea’s Kerch Strait, Russian waters.
Entering them without permission violates Articles 19 and 21 of the UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – an indisputable breach of international law, along with violating 2003 Russia/Ukraine treaty-defined rules, relating to Kerch Strait freedom of navigation rights and obligations.
Requesting and receiving permission to sail through the strait is required, Russian waters between the Crimean Republic and Russian Federation mainland.
Putin said there were “clear signs of a provocation prepared in advance” by Kiev…“a pretext to impose martial law in the country” for domestic political purposes.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blasted Kiev, calling Sunday’s action “a deliberate provocation. I don’t have any doubts that some of our Western partners (sic) knew about it, or even participated in planning it. This is why all of this is not accidental.”
She’s right about Western involvement, most likely US and UK hardliners.
Hours earlier Thursday, Putin’s meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires was confirmed.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced what the White House confirmed, saying talks will focus on “bilateral relations, on matters of strategic security and disarmament, and on regional conflicts” – namely Syria and Ukraine, adding:
“We don’t have to agree on all issues, which is probably impossible, but we need to talk. It’s in the interests of not only our two countries, it’s in the interests of the whole world.”
The meeting was scheduled for around noon on Saturday, December 1, at the Buenos Aires Park Hyatt, Peskov saying it would “last about an hour.”
No longer. It’s cancelled. An hour after Trump on Thursday said it’s a “very good time” to meet with Putin in Argentina, he tweeted:
“Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting in Argentina with President Vladimir Putin. I look forward to a meaningful summit again as soon as this situation is resolved!”
Peskov wasn’t informed of the change, he said, adding the cancellation will give Putin more time to meet with other world leaders.
Russophobes succeeded in cancelling the planned meeting by both leaders at the G20 to discuss vital issues, going all-out to prevent improved bilateral relations.
Trump’s key meeting is with China’s Xi Jinping. A possible trade war showdown looms. Reportedly, a joint press conference and statement won’t follow their discussion, each nation issuing its own, Trump likely to comment via Twitter.
According to Hong Kong-based Lawrence Lau, both leaders are likely to declare a temporary truce in the form of a “framework agreement,” details to follow later.
China policy analyst Eleanor Olcott disagreed, saying
“hopes for this meeting providing an off-ramp for the trade conflict should not be overstated.”
Major bilateral differences “cannot be solved over” dinner. It’s unclear how long their meeting will last or precisely what will be discussed.
Months of talks produced no breakthroughs. A previous article said perhaps the best to hope for is a reprieve so further talks on major unresolved issues can continue in the new year.
Trump blew it by caving to neocon hardliners, unacceptably agreeing to snub Putin in Argentina after both leaders agreed to meet.
Anything close to insulting Xi a similar way would turn this year’s G20 into a disastrous fiasco, his hubris and arrogance on display before key world leaders.
It would be more evidence that he can never be trusted, what’s already well known, along with his geopolitical incompetence.
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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.”
Russia would have obviously preferred that the Kerch Strait Crisis with Ukraine never happened, but since it did, Moscow’s wasting no time in taking advantage of the highly publicized defense of its maritime borders in the Black Sea to promote a similar policy towards its sovereign waters in the Arctic Ocean, though the US might contest some of Russia’s claims there in the future under the pretext of promoting the so-called “freedom of navigation” principle.
Sputnik reported on Friday that Russia will implement a policy from 2019 onwards requiring all foreign military vessels to seek its approval before transiting through its territorial waters when utilizing the Northern Sea Route between Western and Eastern Eurasia. This is a sensible strategy for safeguarding the country’s sovereignty, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Kerch Strait Crisis with Ukraine, which can be seen in hindsight as having spurred the Kremlin to make this announcement. In fact, while Russia would have obviously preferred for the Black Sea incident to have never happened, it’s wasting no time in using it as the reason for rolling out a more robust policy for unambiguously defending its maritime interests in the Arctic Ocean, which are set to become more important than ever in the coming years as the gradual melting of sea ice there opens up access to what has historically been called the Northeast Passage.
Looking at the map, it may not seem like that big of a deal for Russia to declare that foreign military vessels can’t transit through its territorial waters without receiving prior approval since the shortest geographic route from the American-shared Bering Strait to the European gateway of the Norwegian Sea goes directly through the North Pole, but it must be remembered that this part of the Arctic Ocean will probably still remain frozen for years to come.
source: Wikipedia
This means that all vessels traversing this route will more than likely have to pass through Russia’s internationally recognized maritime territory at some point or another in order to continue their voyage across the northern reaches of the Eastern Hemisphere, hence the applicability of the promulgated policy in having Moscow act as the geopolitical gatekeeper of this connectivity corridor. It’s within Russia’s sovereign right to do so, and after the Kerch Crisis, there aren’t any questions about its commitment to defending its territorial interests.
Accepting this, the US and its allies are highly unlikely to attempt to test Russia’s fortitude in this respect, although the scenario of course can’t ever be precluded. Nevertheless, it’s much more likely that Russia will grant the privilege of military passage to warships from its Chinese and Indian partners, seeking to strike a “balance” between both of them as it facilitates their use of the Northern Sea Route, especially in the event that they’re traversing it en route to ports of call in Europe. Even if they aren’t, each of them are investing in different energy extraction projects in the region, so it might serve domestic political purposes in both Great Powers to occasionally dispatch their ships on friendly visits to their Russian partner’s Arctic ports. While the US would probably welcome India’s presence there, its allied Mainstream Media outlets across the world will probably fearmonger about China’s.
Moving out of the infowar realm and into the sphere of tangible geopolitics, however, the US might actually be cooking up a scheme to challenge Russia’s Arctic claims, albeit those which aren’t yet internationally recognized by the UN. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Russia claims a broad swath of the Arctic Ocean by virtue of the Siberian-originating underwater Lomonosov Ridge that extends all the way up to the North Pole, which Moscow believes makes the surrounding waters its sovereign territory per the clauses contained in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It’s already submitted an application to the global body to hear its case and eventually rule on whether to recognize it, which could then possibly put this massive stretch of the sea under Russia’s military protection per its recently promulgated policy of requiring advance notification from foreign warships before they traverse through its territory.
As Arctic ice melts ever more with the passing of time, it’ll inevitably get to the point where the waters beyond Russia’s present maritime territory there become navigable during at least some months of the year, thereby opening up the theoretical possibility of foreign warships sailing through them. Thus, it’s important for Russia to assert control over as much of this waterway as possible in order to prevent hostile forces from encroaching too close to its coast, to say nothing of the economic incentive that it and its competitors have to mine this resource-rich region and correspondingly protect their investments there. The problem, however, is that the US isn’t a party to UNCLOS, and while de-facto recognizing most of its authority, still “officially” doesn’t abide by this framework and believes that it has the “exceptional” right to sail its warships wherever it pleases, hence one of the publicly stated reasons why it’s provoking China in the South China Sea.
It therefore wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to predict that the US might one day militarily challenge Russia’s UNCLOS claim to large parts of the Arctic Ocean, doing so on the basis that it doesn’t regard those waters as being under Moscow’s control and wanting to promote the so-called “freedom of navigation” principle there as its “plausible” pretext for “justifying” this provocative move. The reader should keep in mind that this scenario is still years away from possibly transpiring because those maritime areas are still largely frozen and will probably remain so for a while to come, meaning that it wouldn’t be realistic for the US to even seriously contemplate this until then. Nevertheless, if there’s any “silver lining” to emerge from the Kerch Crisis, it’s that Russia proved that it will resolutely defend its sovereign maritime interests, so explicitly expanding this policy to the Arctic Ocean might give the US cause to consider whether it’s worth poking the Russian Bear there.
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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.
In an astounding case of media negligence, U.S. news media are failing to tell Americans that Congress is about to enact legislation for the largest military aid package to a foreign country in U.S. history.
This aid package would likely be of interest to Americans, many of whom are cutting back their own personal spending.
The package is $38 billion to Israel over the next ten years, which amounts to $7,230 per minute to Israel, or $120 per second, and equals about $23,000 for each Jewish Israeli family of four. A stack of 38 billion one-dollar bills would reach ten times higher than the International Space Station as it orbits the earth.
And that’s the minimum – the amount of aid will likely go up in future years.
The package was originally negotiated by the Obama administration in 2016 as a “memorandum of understanding (MOU),” which is is an agreement between two parties that is not legally binding.
The current legislation cements a version of that package into law – and this version is even more beneficial to Israel. Among other things, it makes the $38 billion a floor rather than a ceiling as the MOU had directed.
While U.S. media did report on the MOU two years ago, we could not find a single mainstream news report informing Americans about this new, even more extravagant version – and that it is about to become law, if constituents do not rise up in opposition.
And many Americans likely would oppose the legislation, if they knew about it. Surveys show that 60 percent of Americans feel the U.S. already gives Israel too much money. Many oppose Israel over its systemic human rights violations.
While U.S. media are inexplicably ignoring this massive aid legislation, Israeli media and Jewish publications are covering it regularly, and Israel lobbying organizations are calling on their members to support it. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, reportedly pioneered the legislation.
The Legislation
The current aid package is divided between two bills. The first part – $5.5 billion over 10 years – is in the 2019 military spending bill, which was passed earlier this year.
While there were many news reports on the Pentagon spending bill, it appears that none of the reports mentioned the billions of dollars to Israel. PBS did an in-depth examination of the bill, and while it included a discussion of aid to Ukraine, it failed to mention aid to Israel – which is over ten times higher. .
The current aid bill has been in process for many months and has passed through several stages.
It was introduced last March and passed by the Senate in August; an even stronger version was passed by the House in September, and now that version is back in the Senate. Yet, U.S. news media seem to have failed to report on any of these actions.
Rand Paul Places Block
Last week, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) placed a hold on the bill, which means that he may filibuster against it if the bill goes to a vote. In all likelihood it will, given that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has received over $1.5 million from pro-Israel campaign donors, and given that pro-Israel donors often dominate U.S. politicians (recent leaked video footage shows Israel lobby manipulation first hand).
AIPAC has reportedly issued an action alert to its members to pressure Senator Paul to end his historic effort against aid to Israel, and has placed Facebook ads targeting him. Paul has issued a statement in response and says he will introduce an amendment in the coming days.
Somehow, U.S. media have so far missed both this extraordinary action by an American Senator and the orchestrated pressure against him, but Israeli media are covering it thoroughly.
In other words, Israelis know about the $38 billion legislation, Israeli partisans in the U.S. know about it and are pressuring Congress to pass it, but the large majority of American taxpayers whose money will be given to Israel have no idea that the legislation is even before Congress.
Perks and Problems
The bill gives Israel a number of additional perks of various types. For example, Section 108 authorizes Israel to export arms it receives from the U.S., even though this violates U.S. law and may well cost American jobs.
The bill also requires NASA work to with the Israel Space Agency, despite accusations of Israeli espionage against the U.S. In 2015 a Caltech scientist revealed that the Chair of Israel’s National Committee for Space Research had illegally acquired classified U.S. information. The alleged espionage and theft largely took place at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a top NASA research and development center. This was also largely ignored by mainstream media.
The Israel aid legislation is problematic on a number of grounds, among them:
(1) It would fund Israeli violations of international law and human rights abuses, causing tragedy in the region and hostility to the U.S.
It would violate the Leahy Law, which prohibits aid to countries guilty of human rights violations.
In addition, in the past, Israel has used U.S. aid in ways that repeatedly violated the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), which prohibits re-export of U.S.-origin defense and dual-use technology. Israel has also been charged with using U.S. weaponry illegally.
Agencies report that the 11-year Israeli blockade and ongoing attacks on Gaza have caused 95% of the young people surveyed to have deep psychological distress; medical institutions and medical supplies are inadequate, and children are suffering malnutrition, anemia, and stunted growth. Israeli forces have killed 23 Palestinians this month alone, many of them taking part in unarmed demonstrations; Palestinian resistance fighters have killed one Israeli soldier. (Source: If Americans Knew Blog)
If Rand Paul does filibuster against the aid, perhaps there will be some news coverage at that point, at least in his home state of Kentucky.
But whether or not the general American public is told about it, there is no doubt that Israelis and Israel partisans will continue to learn of Paul’s action. Watch for negative news reports about Paul in the coming weeks and months – quite likely from across the political spectrum.
Free Beacon, a rightwing pro-Israel website, reports that Paul “has had multiple confrontations with the pro-Israel community over the years as result of his views. Paul has sought to hold up U.S. aid to Israel multiple times over the years, creating friction between him and top U.S. pro-Israel lobbying shops.”
Wolf Blitzer, who lived in Israel for many years and used to work for the Israel lobby, recently ranted against Paul during an interview on a different matter. Such animosity against a U.S. Senator considered “the last obstacle” to Israel’s latest money grab is unlikely to diminish.
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Ontario’s recently elected Tory government, headed by right wing populist, Doug Ford, did not wait very long to incorporate into its reactionary agenda, an attack on the province’s social assistance system and those living in poverty. Though their election platform had been astoundingly sparse when it came to details and no warning was given of an intended war on the poor, in July, Ford’s Social Services Minister, Lisa MacLeod, announced that a hundred day review of the province’s social assistance system would be undertaken. To set the stamp on the Tory brand of ‘welfare reform’ MacLeod informed us that a scheduled increase of 3% in social assistance rates would be cut in half, that a series of modest improvements in the delivery system would be jettisoned and that 4,000 people who had been accepted onto the basic income pilot would now be cut adrift as the experiment was cancelled.
On November 22, MacLeod announced the results of the review process. Generally speaking, while some voices of serious concern have been raised, the brutal nature of the Tory measures has not yet been widely appreciated. One comment on the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) Facebook page suggested that “Harris did far worse.” Actually, the reference to the attack on the poor that was carried by the Tory government of Mike Harris in 1995 puts things into clear focus. Harris, exploiting the fact that the Liberal and New Democratic Party (NDP) governments that preceded his regime had been happy to leave a system of social assistance in place that imposed legislated poverty, had three major objectives when it came to degrading income support in Ontario.
Firstly, he wanted to drastically reduce the adequacy of social assistance rates. This he did by implementing a 21.6% cut and by freezing benefits for the next eight years. The Liberals who followed him provided increases below the rate of inflation and so, more than 20 years after Harris slashed them, benefits levels are so low that a major reduction is hardly necessary.
Harris also eliminated the relatively secure and more adequate benefit system for single parent families. After 1995, they were treated as job seekers on the lowest benefit levels. This measure, along with the 21.6% cut, was highly successful in terms of the key Tory objective or forcing people to scramble for the lowest paying jobs on offer. Finally, however, the architects of the Harris measures also hoped to reconfigure the system so as to establish a regime of precise coercion when it came to driving people into the low wage sector.
The tools available in the 1990s were more limited than today and Harris was not as successful as he and his co-thinkers would have hoped. His efforts to establish a system of workfare forced labour were not spectacularly rewarded and pointed to the need for an alternative approach to coercing the poor into the worst forms of employment. Harris did create an Ontario Works (OW) benefit system that included a requirement for recipients to sign a “participation agreement.” This can certainly be intrusive and punitive but there is room to develop far more refined tools that can be used to supply the most unscrupulous employers. Doug Ford’s new Poor Laws are focused on opening up just such a pathway to super exploitation of the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers.
Doug Ford Poor Laws
MacLeod’s announcement of the results of the Tory review failed to set off enough alarm bells for several reasons. Firstly, as previously stated, the present round of Tory regression does not have to involve the driving down of benefit levels because that job has already been taken care of. Hence, the kind of shock that the deep cut Harris made in 1995 has been avoided. Secondly, many of the details of the plan have yet to be revealed as the process of implementation unfolds over the next year and a half. The backgrounder that MacLeod’s Ministry issued is hardly a voluminous document. Finally, she was careful to talk the language of “compassion” and to speak of “wrap around services” that would provide poor people with “dignity.” However, there are some important clues that enable us to discern what is really going on here.
MacLeod is fond of throwing out that old right wing cliché that ‘the best social program is a job.’ With this remark, she points us to an understanding of how the Doug Ford Poor Laws relate to the basic agenda of the Tory government. They are all fond of telling us that ‘Ontario is Open for Business.’ Their whole agenda of austerity and social cutbacks speaks to just what they mean by this. Their cancellation of a planned increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour and the revoking of a series of substantial improvements in the rights of low paid workers drives it home. Their elimination of proactive workplace inspections to detect wage theft and other abuses could not make it more clear. The Tories intend to open Ontario for business by ensuring that exploiters have an entirely free hand. In this regard, the adequacy or otherwise of the province’s income support system is a decisive question for them. Put bluntly, they are working to create a cheap labour army and their social assistance system must provide a supply of conscripts.
The work of degrading income support systems has gone much further on an international scale than it had when Harris was doing his work. The cutting edge austerity measures in the UK, including the infamous work capability assessment that has been used to declare even profoundly disabled people ‘fit to work,’ have caused huge hardship and vast injustices and the rolling out of the Universal Credit system there is taking things further than ever in this regard.
Taking their cue from the UK war on the poor and disabled people, the Ontario Tories are focusing on two fronts of attack. Firstly, they will redefine disability to bring it in line with federal standards. This will mean that a standard will apply that requires someone to show they have profound and long-term impairments and almost no chance of working. This would exclude many who might today be eligible for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). It is a horribly regressive move that will mean that peoples’ disabilities will be disregarded on a huge scale. The Tories say that those presently on ODSP will be ‘grandparented’ and will not be subject to the new definition. However, as the review process that many are subjected to performs its work, there is reason to fear that this pledge may not be worth much.
The second major attack and the one that has not really been widely appreciated, is how much further the Ford system will go in dragooning people into the worst jobs. Their pretence at proving a ‘helping hand’ is quite without credibility. Even their pledge to improve the situation with regard to allowing people to retain a portion of their earned incomes collapses under scrutiny, as the data prepared by Jennefer Laidley from the Income Support Advocacy Centre shows.
Given the nature of this government, what should we make of “placing a greater focus on outcomes?” The backgrounder makes clear that “People receiving Ontario Works will complete individual action plans” that will require them to seek low wage employment with sufficient zeal on pain of loss of benefits. The intention is very clearly to intensify the coercive element. “Locally responsive outcome driven service delivery models” will be developed, and “Municipalities will be held accountable for helping people achieve their goals” (provided those goals include working for low pay with no rights and few supports).
Perhaps most chillingly of all, the process of “Incentivizing people on Ontario Works to find jobs” will include “Launching a website, Ontario.ca/openforbusiness to make matching job seekers with businesses easier.” The most vile employers will know where to go for a supply of vulnerable workers who must accept employment on their terms or face loss of benefits and outright destitution.
A Workers’ Issue
Ford’s efforts to supply the low wage precarious work sector with powerless workers, taken to the level of forcing many more disabled people to participate in the scramble for highly exploitative jobs, are, indeed, appalling and disgraceful. However, the social benefits system, along with the minimum wage, constitute a base on which the whole wage structure rests. The war on the poor is only a component part of an attack on the broader working class. Ontario can’t be opened for business on such terms. We must be ready to mount a united fight back against the Ford Government and its agenda of greed and exploitation.
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At a time when apprehensions about low-quality food entering the country post Brexit are rising, the Times reports that Michael Gove, the environment secretary has announced that “Britain will lead an agricultural revolution with the use of gene editing”.
In July, after hearing scientific evidence that gene editing “causes many profound mutations and DNA damage”, the European Court of Justice ruled that food resulting from genome editing would be regarded as genetically modified, which is outlawed in Europe.
The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) is underwhelmed
Disregarding this science-based evidence, Gove pledged, at yesterday’s CLA meeting in Westminster, that scientists and farmers would be freed from this European court ruling. The first report seen however, makes no reference to this exciting prospect, whatsoever.
Genome editing, or genome engineering is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted, modified or replaced in a specific location in the genome (genetic material) of a living organism, unlike early genetic engineering techniques that randomly insert genetic material into a host genome.
Support from vested interests
Scientists in the industry, like the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, funded by the government’s Department of Business believe that the technique will lead to crops and animals with higher yields, resistance to disease and the ability to cope with the effects of climate change.
Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the Soil Association, urged the government to keep the UK aligned with the European court:
“Scientific research has long shown that these new gene-editing technologies give rise to similar uncertainties and risks as GM always has. We have always been clear that these new plant breeding techniques are GMOs [genetically modified organisms] and therefore are banned in organic farming and food”.
Bloomberg reports that under the Trump administration, gene-edited foods don’t need to be labelled or regulated and that Zach Luttrell, a principal at industry consultant StraightRow LLC, sees gene-editing as a way to continue lowering costs.
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In the mid 1950’s I was a teen, the cold war was at its peak and I subscribed to Pravda, The Russian newspaper to learn about propaganda. That turned out to be good training for understanding the news today. As the western media increasingly demonize Putin, this biography is timely.
The New Tsar is by Steven Lee Myers, a New York Times journalist with a master’s degree from the University of Reading who spent more than 7 years in Russia as a correspondent. He was there to see the emergence of Putin as he was becoming arguably the most powerful man on earth. The biggest surprise from the book, is that Putin does not emerge as the villain he’s being increasingly characterized as in the west today.
He doesn’t emerge as perfect either! He comes across as petulant, aloof, cool and distant as a person, as a husband and as a father but he comes across more often as normal. The book follows Putin from his boyhood and school years through university, his law degree, starting his career and up to 2016.
He was born in Leningrad in 1952, his parents were working class, dad had been wounded in the second war, mom was a factory worker. Meyer doesn’t elaborate on the horror of the Stalin years (1941-1953) when literally millions of Russians were killed. He provides a few details from World War II like how a grenade almost killed Putin’s father but at the same time saved his life. Because of his injuries he was not sent back to the front lines and thus escaped the almost certain death of his fellow soldiers. Nor does Meyer mention the fact that the Soviet Union, not the west, paid the larger price to defeat the Germans. They lost over eight million people (the US lost just over four hundred thousand, Canada forty two thousand). After the war millions of dollars in compensation were paid by Germany to the Soviet Union and nothing to the western nations. This fact confirms how everyone at that time saw who had paid the higher price to defeat Germany. This was the world in which Putin was raised.
As a child, and he was a small one, he was not doing well in school until he was enrolled in martial arts. Then his marks went up, his disdain for drinking and smoking increased and he started to succeed.
When he was twenty (1972) his mother won a new car in a lottery and like many a doting mother gave it to her son. This is the type of normalcy that Meyers writes about, like the fact he’s a dog lover and married an airline stewardess. Putin graduated with a degree in law in 1975 and went to work for the KGB, a dream that he had had since he was a teenager. (The letters KGB are for the Russian Committee for State Security, Russia’s equivalent to the CIA.)
Putin began as a junior KGB officer during the Brezhnev era when life was improving for the people; the gross domestic product was expanding and people were living better. However good times were followed in the later seventies by a ten-year decline in manufacturing and an era of stagnation.
In 1991 the nation of the Soviet Union collapsed and was replaced by the Russian Federation of Independent States. In the same years, neo-liberal economic ideas were dominating the west and the new country, with no experience with free market economics, fell victim to them. They were convinced by Wall Street brokers and the International Monetary fund that they should embrace the trendy shock therapy of austerity to put their economy on a sound footing. Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine explains what happened; in 1989, before shock therapy 2 million Russians lived in poverty. By the mid-nineties 74 million were living below the poverty line. By the late nineties 80% of farms had gone bankrupt, seventy thousand state factories had closed and a new wealthy class of millionaires was emerging.
Advice from global capitalists on what the new Russian Federation should do was used to rape the newly emerging naïve nation. Today, the speed at which new Russian millionaires emerge is slowing down. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs remain as the nations major deal makers.
In 2000 Putin was elected President. He was 48 and new to international political economics and had a political and economic mess to deal with. If he had known that the IMF and global brokers served only the wealthy, he would have been better prepared.
The simple fact that 96 billionaires (billionaires, not millionaires) emerged in the 18 years since the new nation emerged, signifies something was very wrong! That’s hardly enough time to honestly earn a million much less a billion. It was apparently enough time to swindle it.
Meyer’s does not even hint that Putin has benefited financially as President. Nor was there evidence in the ‘panama papers’ account that he benefited as was bandied about a few years ago. The New York Times sums up Meyers view of Putin; ‘Putin simply feels that he’s the last one standing between order and chaos.’ The New York Times assessment sounds more like that for a patriot than an oligarch. Putin’s own people give him an 80% approval rating.
So, the question that follows as the reader of old Russian propaganda is, if Putin is not evil personified what is the reason that image has been created and promoted here?
Qui bono? Who Benefits?
Certainly, western arms manufacturers who milk every chance to create arms spending, they benefit. A new cold war would suite them well. Since it’s creation in 1949 NATO has continued the cold war as it has encircled Russia moving closer and closer with nuclear armed missiles. Without the Russian enemy, NATO has no purpose. As Eisenhower pointed out decades ago, it is the military/industrial estate that benefits, and to that we can now also add the western stock markets. Today I believe Putin has a better grasp of this.
Meyers has written an excellent readable, detailed picture of Vladimir Putin that contrasts with the current efforts to demonize him. The book is worth a read.
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In late November 2018, students, led by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) at the University of Leeds, immediately mobilized to demonstrate as soon as they found out that Zionist war propagandist, Mark Regev, was visiting campus to speak. Regev has had an illustrious career in advocacy for Israeli escalation of ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, and ‘Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) murderous wars against the Palestinians, especially in Gaza in recent years.
There were a sizable number of students, there was potency of our loud vocal chords disruptively shouting incessantly, and of our specific chants, speeches, and indictments or Zionist terror and racism that Regev embodies. The amalgamation of our chants, stories by dispossessed Palestinians, drumming and dance of unshakeable resistance of our peaceful, non-violent protest – all figuratively rocked the building where Mark Regev was speaking, and haunted him throughout his visit, and throughout whatever settler-colonial genocidal rhetoric he was vomiting anyways.
But it is pivotal to understand why Regev was suddenly parachuted to the University of Leeds. Just days before his visit, the University of Leeds became the first university in the UK to divest from Israeli apartheid: an undoubtedly huge victory to celebrate.
What has been happening with regard to global Palestinian solidarity is not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination. Now global in scope and impact, the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has generated an awareness of the ‘wretched of the earth’ conditions of Palestinians under Zionist occupation. In short, for the first time, our side, the side of justice and liberation from settler colonialism – with its effective BDS campaign – can no longer be silenced by the global Zionist machinery of propaganda.
A sober, even cautiously optimistic, analysis of the current situation does not in any way demonstrate indifference to the fact that Israeli terror has continued unabated for more than a decade against Palestinians, Lebanese, and other Arabs. But there are several factors why Israel’s legitimacy is increasingly only limited to Washington, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Cairo.
BDS and the international Palestine solidarity campaign have been consistently highlighting the sheer inhumane conditions that Palestinians undergo under Zionist occupation, and the gratuitous wars Israel launches whenever it fancies. This campaign, similar to that waged as part of the international solidarity movement against the white minority Apartheid regime in South Africa, compelled international actors, businesses, and ultimately states to halt all forms of engagement with such a racist regime – though, as expected the US and Israel remained the last steadfast supporters of the Apartheid regime.
However, it’s important to remember that the African National Congress (ANC) and the United Democratic Front (UDF), as well as other broad layers of the South African anti-apartheid struggle, did have one significant advantage: their oppressors, the small minority of white South Africans, never really had any intention of exterminating the local black population. Even if they wanted to, it would have been tough considering the black population’s absolute majority.
Rather, the intention was to ruthlessly exploit them, keep them ghettoized in bantustans, and maintain them in conditions of enslavement and subordination to service a life of privilege for South African whites.
South Africa was one form of settler colonialism, by first the Dutch, and then the British. The Zionist one in Palestine unfolds a bit differently. Israeli Jews never recognized even the presence of any indigenous Palestinian Arabs in the land they were coming to conquer, and if some were inconveniently there – they were to be ‘transferred,’ i.e., ethnically cleansed. Zionists who emigrated to Palestine have had every intention to seize all of its land and to live completely separate from what Israeli officials have called ‘vermin’ and ‘cockroaches,’ i.e. Palestinian Arabs.
It is precisely for this reason that Israel feels no compunction in criminally pounding Gaza repeatedly over the past few years, or Lebanon in 2006. Zionist settlers, unlike South African whites, have absolutely no need for Palestinians to exist as human beings – and therefore would relish the idea of total ethnic cleansing or even genocide – as of course other settler-colonial states (such as the US) have done.
In such abysmal conditions on the ground in occupied Palestine, how can we continue to dream and give hope to our Palestinian sisters and brothers? The first factor is that the global Palestine solidarity movement has never been stronger, including its central component of BDS. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Western liberals who for many years have had a soft spot for ‘democratic, civilized’ Israel to ignore how fanatically rightwing both the Israeli government and society have become. Hence, the morality of blindly supporting such a state in whatever murderous campaign it unleashes has finally shaken the conscience of many who were unflinching supporters of Israel in the past. This includes an increasing number of global Jewry. Norman Finkelstein documents this significant shift in his, “This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences in the Invasion of Gaza.”
But there’s a second reason why Zionist paranoia-schizophrenia is reaching new levels. It began in 2006 when Israel invaded Lebanon, thinking the IDF would just ravage the place and eliminate Hezbullah as if it’s some little isolated ant colony. The notion that Hezbullah is some alien, separate entity that can be isolated from the wider population of Southern Lebanon was shown to be demonstrably false, and very painful for the Zionist invaders. The impact on Israelis was not just a military one, but, more importantly, a deeply psychological one. Despite inflicting horrendous levels of civilian and infrastructural damage to Lebanon, Lebanese resistance fighters made Israeli soldiers flee in desperation for their lives, retreating back toward the Israeli side of the border.
This was unprecedented. The Arabs had been led to believe just one story, based on the indoctrination they had been subject to by their respective cowardly autocrats who, post-1967, always out-competed each other in servility to Zionism and Western hegemony: the Zionist entity was invincible, and had crushed our multiple armies in every war – hence, resistance is futile.
Source: Occupy Pal TV
Well, a people’s resistance movement in Lebanon just proved the opposite in 2006. And despite the blockade and bombardment of Gaza, Gazans have demonstrated what can only be called a prophetic heroism: their resistance remains as steadfast as ever, despite unspeakable suffering.
It is, nevertheless, important to take stock of wider geopolitical shifts, dangers, and realignments taking place that will certainly impact the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
Hence, how can we evaluate the ongoing repression and resistance in Palestine in light of broader transformations taking place regionally and globally. These larger issues will necessarily confront those striving against the cruelties and barbarism against Palestinians, Kashmiris, the Rohingyas, blacks and immigrants in the US – the list goes on and on.
At the heart of this discussion is ascertaining whether we truly carry the capacity to break through the rigid parameters of the hegemonic social and political imaginaries that have sustained a world order marked by savage coloniality – even as the West is confronting a welcome development for the rest of the world: the Wests’ ‘de-centering.’ In brief, can we dispel with impoverished discourses of the ‘geo-culture’ of the last few barbaric Eurocentric centuries, the ones that have been responsible for the current oppressive impasse from Palestine to Brazil, and broaden our imaginary potential to conceive of meaningful decolonial alternatives.
The Palestine solidarity movement, and the global justice and anti-war movement generally, need not shy away from beginning to map out the coordinates of what counter-hegemonic tendencies and forces deserve our unconditional solidarity, our not uncritical, but certainly comradely, support. How can our struggles forge an innovative non-Eurocentric grammar of politics, which renders both the essential geopolitical analysis, but more fundamentally, interrogates the epistemological foundations of recurring patterns of violent hierarchies and power relations that mark ongoing global coloniality.
Returning to Palestine and the Middle East, how can we obtain a serious geopolitical assessment, so that there is greater clarity for a trajectory of ongoing and future resistance?
What can we conclude from what we have been observing in Palestine and the region? Two essential points stand out. One is that the conventional Westphalian-colonial state system has seen its most disastrous results in the Middle East. The maddeningly constructed colonial boundaries, the erection of pliant Arab autocracies, and most catastrophically of all, the planting of the settler-colonial state of Israel to be the linchpin of Western hegemony in the region – is the artificial political landscape that was established in the region in the early 20th century, intended for the sole purpose to service Western hegemony. Western interventions and wars, particularly by Washington, have turned a horrible situation into an ongoing nightmare of suffering, from Gaza to the Yemen.
The second point may be the most analytically instructive to understand the current political predicament we confront. Three pivotal moments of the new century, i.e., the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and the Saudi war against the Yemen in 2015, epitomize, despite the enormous human toll that these wars of unadulterated aggression have taken, the growing weakness of Imperial-Zionist control over the Middle East, not its strength.
These are not the decisions of sober ‘adults in the room’ enacting realpolitik, as bad enough as that has been in the past. We have now entered the phase where the emperor can see clearly that he has no clothes, and he and his minions (Israel, the House of Saud, the UAE, Egypt) will go to any length to reverse their declining fortunes. There is no other way possible to explain how in our ‘modern, civilized, human rights’ age, that the routine daily slaughter of Yemenis and Gazans have become normalized and the ‘international community’ can’t lift a finger to stop it – and of course several Western countries are directly complicit in these festivals of slaughter relished by the House of Saud and its Zionist soulmates.
What these bringing of ‘hell on earth’ policies of these reactionary regimes really signify are their last gasps to maintain control, someway, somehow, even by annihilation. They are all ‘wounded tigers’ whose heyday of domination is now long past.
This ‘wounded tiger’ syndrome afflicts the US, the House of Saud, and the Zionist state. They all know that they have lost any moral legitimacy they might have deceived some sections of global opinion to grant them in the past. For the US, it’s the multiple invasions, drone attacks, torture camps and Guantanomo and Abu Ghraib imprisonment photos – culminating in an openly racist authoritarian psychopath elected as leader of the ‘free world’. For Israel, it’s the repeated pounding of a defenseless, starving population of Gaza. The world is witnessing Israel – its mouthpiece being the murderous charlatan, Bibi Netanyahu – displaying absolute indifference to any attempt to call out is brazen and continuous violation of virtually every tenet of international humanitarian law, not to mention war crimes that by now have been normalized. And for Saudi Arabia, it has been the fact that the wealthiest country in the Arab world has now been pulverizing the poorest one, i.e. Yemen, causing one of the most grotesque human tragedies of our time. The result is an epidemic of cholera outbreak and mass starvation. Nevertheless, though the US-supported UAE-Saudi butchery of the Yemenis has been continuing for three years, it has taken the reckless behavior of Clown Prince ‘Bone Saw’ Salman (or MBS) to finally raise some eyebrows. MBS propagandists in love with the ‘reformer’ have shifting gears to seeing him as unreasonably lashing out at his royal competitors and even mild critics, in gruesome ways that are now raising serious doubts in Washington about his reliability, stability, predictability.
At this point in time, it is so patently obvious which forces of reaction want to hinder the possibility of any decolonial and counterhegemonic possibilities of resistance and liberation. On the one hand, global Zionism is ludicrously centering campaigns of social justice everywhere within the framework of their pernicious Islamophobia. This is why Iran/Muslims/Middle Easterners can be connected to Central American immigrants, collaboration with ‘rogue’ states like Venezuela, etc.
But his Islamophobia has now become the central plank of American permanent war doctrine. Parting from more quotidian definitions and explanations of the term, Islamophobia is fundamentally about restricting the sovereignty, autonomy, and political agency of the larger ‘Islamicate’: Muslim-influenced areas stretching from Java to Mindanao, Southern Thailand, Java, Tashkent, Palermo, Timbuktu, Granada, to Chicago, Toronto, Leeds, and so on. Islamophobia at the present juncture is the intolerance for how transnational Muslims really are and always have been. There is no ‘West’ – a permanently shifting social construction over time and space – that has ever been without Islam.
Such Islamophobia only accepts ‘good Muslims,’ kept on permanent probation, who demonstrate a ‘moderation’ that enables and facilitates all of the contours of ongoing global imperial penetration of Islamicate societies and the Global South. .
In the past, ‘peripheral’ (peripheral to the Middle East) nations like Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey were useful imperial satraps for this hegemonic project that kept Empire and Zionism on top, with its petro-Arab quislings at their service.
But Iran stopped playing that game since its Islamic Revolution of 1979, and Turkey and Pakistan find themselves in very different geopolitical alignments, though still unclear, from the very clearly defined ones of the Cold War.
Not just in Palestine or in Kashmir, but throughout Muslimistan, there is undoubtedly a central question that haunts the Islamicate every minute of our lives: how can one of the one of most venal, satanic even, regimes on the planet be the ‘Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,’ and what does this say about the ‘state of the ummah (community of global Muslims),’ and more importantly, the planetary colonial political economy whose ‘great powers’ prop up this dismal state of affairs.
It must be stated emphatically: colonialism, Zionism, and the House of Saud – all working in tandem of course – have been the biggest plagues unto Islamicate societies in the modern period. All of them remain. Any decolonial possibilities, any genuine pluriversality, and any response from Muslim and the social majorities of all faiths under conditions of neo-colonialism, must begin with the demand for autonomy and sovereignty for their societies. Muslims must recognize that no significant rupture in the political grammar of their tripartite gang of oppressors will occur without completely annihilating all three.
Coming back to our powerful protest against the bloodthirsty Mark Regev (image on the left) at the University of Leeds, we insisted to remind everyone that Palestine remains a symbol of resistance of the oppressed for liberation everywhere. We rejected the common infantile refrain of Zionists that the Palestine solidarity movement is ‘singling out Israel’ – since, roughly, a hundred percent of us also firmly believe the tyranny of the House of Saud and other Arab autocracies who have enabled Zionist occupation, along with Empire – should also be targeted for their support for Zionist occupation and slaughter, as well as their own crimes and wars.
We had no confusion in making these linkages between movements of the oppressed (for some reason, only Zionists get confused by it – and then ask us why we are confused by it!). Within the domain of Islamicate, it is becoming abundantly clear that the majority of the global ummah (community of Believers) is making the connections, and is enraged about the very obvious political degeneration and violence in front of their very eyes. The issue of Zionist brutality against the Palestinians was fairly well understood. But only recently has much of the Muslim world discovered the extent to which the House of Saud (we especially have MBS to thank for this), along with its friends in Abu Dhabi and Cairo (and the battalions of Blackwater-style private mercenaries they’ve hired) – have collaborated to ensure Imperial-Zionist supremacy over the region.
There is no doubt that the ‘masters of the universe’ and their comprador elites in the Muslim world are taking cognizance of this mass righteous rage by ordinary Muslims as well as by the social majorities of the Global South. That is precisely why regimes like the Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt are becoming more ruthless in their repression and atrocities – in order to crush the rumblings of resistance to tyranny emerging everywhere.
The purpose of these client petro-monarchies of the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, has always been to sustain the fundamentally exploitative, dictatorial, and neo-colonial relationship under which ordinary Muslims and others from the Global South are coerced to live, somehow survive, or most likely, suffer painful deaths.
Such an assessment would make any decent human be averse to being anywhere near the House of Saud or the House of Zionism. If I was not a Muslim, I know that I would certainly not think twice about ever stepping foot inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabi unless it was to assist a movement likely to succeed in its overthrow! We can – and should – address the important question of the mandatory pilgrimage for Muslims, the Hajj, and what possibilities exist to boycott, occupy, internationalize the Holy sites, etc. – somehow avoiding a penny going to the coffers of the dungeon chambers of the House of Saud. More important and immediately, how do we devise strategies to protect and preserve its sanctity from the pharaohs that run the place!
Of course, the Transcendent rarely has good endings for pharaohs anyways! That should infuse some hope in our ongoing struggles and resistance to the aforementioned pillars of violent domination in the Middle East.
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Junaid S. Ahmad is Co-Founder of SUSTAIN – Stop US Tax-Funded Aid to Israel Now; Co-Founder of Al-Awda Virginia – The Palestine Right of Return Committee; Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) Member and PhD Candidate in Decolonial Thought, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds; Secretary-General, International Movement for a Just World (JUST) – Kuala Lumpur; Research Fellow, Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) – Istanbul; Director of the Center for Global Studies and Faculty of Advanced Studies; University of Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore, Pakistan.
Featured image is from Leeds Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Why do Donald Trump and the CIA disagree about the recent killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Turkey?
The CIA concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, personally ordered the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi. In an extraordinary statement for a U.S. president, Trump disputed the CIA findings. He saids it didn’t matter if MBS—as the Saudi ruler is known—was or was not involved in the Khashoggi killing, and that U.S.-Saudi relations are “spectacular.”
Trump’s statement reflects his narrow cultivation of business relations with MBS, while the CIA’s announcement reflects the view that that MBS has become a liability for the U.S. ruling class as a whole. The spy agency, which has deep ties to Saudi intelligence, fears that bin Salman’s reckless and impulsive actions could jeopardize the security of the whole Saudi ruling clique, endangering U.S. ruling class interests in Saudi Arabia and the entire Middle East.
For decades, Saudi Arabia has been one of the most strategic and valuable U.S. client states, and the CIA wants to keep it that way. Support for Saudi Arabia is completely bi-partisan. This partnership is drenched in blood, oil and deceit.
A review of U.S.-Saudi ties shows that Saudi Arabia anchors the U.S. empire in the Middle East. The kingdom, with the greatest oil reserves in the world, is a source of fabulous wealth for U.S. oil companies. The Saudis use their oil capacity to raise and lower world prices to further U.S. foreign policy aims. In the 1980s, for example, Ronald Reagan, got the Saudis to flood the market with oil to reduce the world price as part of an economic war against the Soviet Union.
The kingdom willingly uses religion as a cover for imperialism’s aims, exporting thousands of schools, mosques, and other centers that preach intolerance and recruit jihadists for U.S. wars. It allows the U.S. to invade other Arab countries from its territory and has funded covert CIA actions on three continents. It is treated like a cash cow for U.S. corporations and banks. It uses its vast stash of petrodollars to buy billions of dollars in Pentagon weapons at inflated prices, as well as other high-price U.S. products and services.
The country is ruled as the personal fiefdom of one family, the al-Sauds. The government is one of the most repressive and misogynistic in the world. There is no parliament or legislature. The first elections, and then only on a municipal level, took place in 2005, 73 years after the country was formed. Women were only allowed to vote in 2015. These incontestable facts go unmentioned by U.S. officials, Democrats and Republican alike.
While Washington claims to be a protector of human rights abroad, the Pentagon has pledged to send in troops if a mass movement tries to overthrow the Saudi regime.
A country birthed by imperialism
Britain and France emerged victorious after World War I. They carved Western Asia into more than 20 countries, drawing borders to weaken and dismember Arab and other indigenous national groups, and to facilitate imperialist domination.
That’s when Saudi Arabia was created. Its rulers, the al Saud and the Wahhabi families and followers merged into a political-religious alliance. The Saudi Arabia we know was established 1932, when the Saudis agreed to stop harassing other British protectorates, and to accept Britain’s definition of their borders.
Saudi Arabia’s rulers were among the first far-right Islamists assisted by imperialism. They set up an absolute monarchy and theocracy. The only constitution was the Koran as interpreted by the royal family. Slavery was legal until 1962.
Wahhabism, a form of Islam aggressively intolerant of other currents of that faith, and in opposition to secular governments, bwecame the state religion. Saudi Arabia’s control of the most important sites in Islam—Mecca and Medina– gave it prestige it had not earned in the Muslim world.
Enter U.S. oil companies and the Pentagon
In 1933, the kingdom granted Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) exclusive oil drilling rights. Huge oil reserves were discovered in 1938, promoting the formation of ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company) by Standard Oil and 3 other U.S. partners that later became Texaco, Exxon, and Mobil.
Image on the right: Exxon’s own research in the 1980s indicated that without major reductions in fossil fuel combustion, “[t]here are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.” (Photo: Luc B / Flickr)
Saudi Arabia would soon be the country with the world’s largest known oil reserves. It would be the greatest oil producer in the world. And U.S. companies were pumping it.
Diplomatic recognition soon followed. In 1943, President Roosevelt declared the security of Saudi Arabia a “vital interest” of the United States. The U.S. opened an embassy in the country the next year.
The Pentagon soon arrived to secure the oil. In 1950, the U.S. established the Sixth Naval Fleet as a permanent military presence in the Mediterranean. In 1951, after signing the Mutual Defense Agreement, the U.S. began arming the Saudi government and training its military.
Since World War II, the U.S. empire has been built on controlling the oil flowing from the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia was the linchpin of this control.
Waging holy war for Washington: ‘Our faith and your iron’
Following World War II, a wave of militancy and nationalism swept the Arab world. Mass secular movements in Algeria and Iraq overthrew colonial puppets. South Yemen declared itself socialist. The Egyptian and Syrian people deposed imperialist client rule. Many of the new progressive regimes and liberation struggles were aided by the Soviet Union
The thinking of U.S. policymakers was, as Rachel Bronson puts it,
“that religion could be a tool to staunch the expansion of godless communism.”
Saudi rulers happily complied. The founder of modern Saudi Arabia told U.S. Minister to Saudi Arabia, Colonel William A. Eddy, “Our faith and your iron.”
Arab anti-imperialism was especially inflamed by the 1948 destruction of Palestine and the creation of Israel. To undercut this, the Eisenhower administration set out to increase the renown of King Saud, making him ‘the senior partner of the Arab team.”
A State Department memo documents expectations that the Saudis would redirect Arab anger from Israel to the Soviet Union:
“The President said he thought we should do everything possible to stress the “holy war” aspect. [Secretary of State] Dulles commented that if the Arabs have a “holy war” they would want it to be against Israel. The President recalled, however, that Saud, after his visit here, had called on all Arabs to oppose Communism.”
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Saudis gave shelter to extremists seeking to topple nationalist governments. The kingdom started funding a network of schools and mosques that recruited jihadists for the CIA in Soviet republics with Muslim populations, and in poor Muslim countries in Asia and Africa. This included “facilitating contacts between the CIA and religious pilgrims visiting Mecca.”
The oil weapon
Some members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have advocated using oil as a weapon to force Israel to give up Palestinian land. Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer of OPEC, has staunchly opposed this. While calling for “separating oil from politics,” the kingdom has repeatedly raised and lowered world oil prices to advance U.S. foreign policy.
There have been exceptions. To maintain credibility among the Arab world, Saudi Arabia joined the OPEC oil embargos against the U.S. and other governments supporting Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. The 1967 embargo lacked OPEC consensus and was not effective. Saudi Arabia agreed to join the 1973 embargo only after the U.S. promised $2.2 billion in emergency military aid to Israel, giving it an advantage in the fighting.
The 1973 oil embargo did not cause international shortages, as many oil producers didn’t honor it. However, U.S. companies used the embargo to hold back oil supplies, raise prices, and increase profits. Occidental Petroleum’s 1973 earnings were 665 percent higher than those the year before. By the end of 1974, Exxon Corporation moved to the top of the Fortune 500 list. Four other oil companies—Texaco, Mobil, Standard Oil of California and Gulf—joined Exxon in the top seven rankings.
In 1970, the Saudis organized the “Safari Club,” a coalition of governments that conducted covert operations in Africa after the U.S. Congress restrained CIA actions. It sent arms to Somalia and helped coordinate attacks on Ethiopia, which was then aligned with the Soviet Union. It funded UNITA, a proxy of the South African apartheid government fighting in Angola.
More recently, the Saudi government likely drove down oil prices in 2014 in order to weaken the Russian and Iranian economies as punishment for supporting the Syrian government.
However, the U.S. ruling class has had it both ways with Saudi Arabia several times. While the country is a key client state of the U.S., the Saudis have also served as convenience scapegoats. When energy costs spike, causing considerable hardship among U.S. working-class families, for instance, the U.S. rulers hypocritically and suddenly start talking about the Saudi royal family, its thousands of princes, their gold bathtubs, and other extremes paid for by petrodollars.
Manufacturing a Sunni-Shia rift
In 1979, a mass revolutionary upsurge in Iran overthrew the Shah, a hated U.S.-backed dictator, establishing the Islamic Republic of Iran. The new government nationalized Iran’s huge oil reserves. That same year, an armed band of Sunni fundamentalists denounced the Saudi royal family and seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, taking tens of thousands of religious pilgrims hostage. Hundreds of hostages were killed in the retaking of the mosque. Both events shook the Saudi rulers to their core. They responded by diverting attention to Iran. They began a religious campaign against Shia Iran, claiming they were enemies of Sunni Islam. They upped funding for Sunni jihadists worldwide, encouraging them to hate other strains of Islam, other religions, and secularism.
There was no significant conflict between Sunnis and Shias in the modern era. Saudi rulers fomented it in an attempt to turn Sunnis against the Iranian revolution. Since then, all national liberation struggles or groups fighting for some degree of independence that have Shia members have been falsely labeled as agents of Iran. These include Hezbollah–viewed by Arab progressives as the central force in the national liberation movement of Lebanon–the amalgam of forces fighting Saudi domination in Yemen, and oppressed Shia minorities in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis bought out the ARAMCO oil company in 1980. But this did not make Saudi Arabia independent. The oil was still controlled by U.S. companies, especially ExxonMobil, through their ownership of oil pumping and other technology, oil tanker fleets, storage facilities, etc.
Funding the Mujahideen and the Contras
In 1978, the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan took control of the country in a coup. It promoted land distribution and built hospitals, road, and schools in one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world. It did this with the help of the Soviet Union. The new government banned forced marriages and gave women the right to right to vote. Revolutionary Council member Anahita Ratebzad gave the new government’s view in a New Kabul Times editorial (May 28, 1978).
“Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country … Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention.”
Seeking to overthrow the Soviet-aligned government, the U.S. covertly supported rural tribes that were opposed to the recent social changes, especially women’s rights and secularism. The groups attacked the new rural schools and killed women teachers. In 1979, the Soviet Union sent in troops to support the government.
From 1979-89 the Saudi kingdom recruited reactionary mujahideen forces and financed them to the tune of $3 billion. The CIA formally matched the Saudi funding.
In 1984, when the Reagan administration sought help with its secret plan to fund Contra militias and death squads in Nicaragua, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. pledged $1 million a month. Saudi Arabia spent a total of $32 million supporting the Contras. The contributions continued even after Congress cut off funding to the them.
U.S. would stop an internal revolution
In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinbergersaid that the U.S. would not let the Saudi government be overthrown, and that it would send troops to defend the Saudi regime if necessary:
“We would not stand by, in the event of Saudi requests, as we did before with Iran, and allow a government that had been totally unfriendly to the United States and to the Free World to take over.” The U.S. would intervene “if there should be anything that resembled an internal revolution in Saudi Arabia, and we think that’s very remote.”
This is a regime that allows no human rights or freedom of speech; where virtually all the work was done by migrants who are super-exploited and have no chance of becoming citizens; where all women are considered legal minors and require an appointed male ‘guardian’ to supervise them and give permission for getting married, obtaining a passport, traveling, enrolling in a school; where in some court cases, a women’s testimony is worth half as much as man’s.
Saudi Arabia, 9/11, and extremism
Decades of funding extremist centers to recruit shock troops for CIA wars helped create radical Islamist groupings and individuals. Al-Qaeda’s founder, Osama Bin Laden, is a prime example. He was a Saudi citizen and a key recruiter of Saudi fighters to Afghanistan.
Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 1, 2001 were Saudi nationals. One might think that if the Pentagon were to retaliate against any country for the 9/11attack, it would be Saudi Arabia. Not so. While it took a few months to sort things out, the upshot was tighter security ties between Washington and Riyadh.
Instead, Washington sent troops to Afghanistan ostensibly to force the Taliban government to turn over Bin Laden, who was seeking shelter there (even though the Taliban offered to surrender Bin Laden). Ironically, another reason cited was to protect Afghani women from the Taliban that Washington installed. Many believe, however, that a more pressing reason for Wall Street and the Pentagon was that the Taliban government would not permit the U.S. to build gas and oil pipelines through Afghanistan to bring oil from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.
In 2010,Wikileaks published secret Saudi diplomatic cables revealing that the Saudis had the dubious distinction of being the ”most significant” source of funding for Sunni terrorist groups (like al Qaeda) worldwide.
Other published cables confirm how the the Saudis cynically use religious shrines in their control. Jihadists soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims. They then set up front companies to launder and receive money from government-sanctioned charities.
In 2013, under operation Timber Sycamore, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. partnered to fund, arm, and train jihadists in Syria.
The wars on Iraq
As the Soviet Union neared collapse, the Pentagon took aim at governments in the Middle East that weren’t fully under its thumb. Iraq was the first target. When Kuwait waged economic war against Iraq, including the use of slant drilling technology to penetrate the border and steal Iraqi oil, the Iraqi government sent troops into Kuwait. This was the pretext for the U.S. to form an imperialist coalition to invade Iraq. The Saudis officially requested the U.S to send in troops. The Pentagon stationed 500,000 soldiers in the kingdom, and used Saudi soil as a base to invade Iraq, and later to enforce sanctions and a no-fly zone.
The Sept. 11 attack served as a pretext to invade Iraq in 2003. The corporate media whipped up a hysteria that Saddam Hussein bore responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, even though the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda were on opposite ends of the Middle East political spectrum, had no relations, and did not cooperate. U.S. and British leaders fabricated “evidence” that Iraq had developed nuclear weapons and posed an imminent threat to the world.
Once again, Saudi Arabia proved essential. U.S. coordinated attacks on Iraq out of the Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, where some 10,000 troops were stationed. U.S. Special Operations Forces operated out of the country, which tapped into oil reserves to stabilize oil prices.
Subsidizing the U.S. arms industry
For decades, the Saudis have bought large amounts of U.S. weaponry at inflated prices. These purchases peaked under the Obama administration when Saudi Arabia agreed to spend over $110 billion on U.S. weapons, aircraft, helicopters, and air-defense missiles. This made it the largest purchase of U.S. arms in history. These weapons are not for defense. The purchases are far more than is needed for any purpose for a country with 22 million people. In effect, the Saudis are subsidizing the U.S. arms industry. Most of the military equipment sits in the desert.
Of course, the arms are used when needed. When the people of neighboring Bahrain rose up against a backward and repressive regime and Saudi ally in 2011, the Saudi military rode across sovereign borders on U.S. tanks and crushed the uprising. There was no outcry from Washington.
Waging genocide in Yemen
Additionally, in 2015 Saudi Arabia started a war to dominate Yemen. The war is currently at a stalemate, with the Saudi bombings and blockade responsible for a cholera epidemic, indiscriminate civilian deaths, and starvation, in what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Tens of thousands of children have died from disease and starvation. The war is waged with U.S. arms. U.S. advisers provide intelligence and training on the ground. Until this month, U.S. planes were refueling the Saudi planes bombing Yemen.
The U.S. has also been conducting its own operations within Yemen as part of the so-called “war on terror.” These operations include drone warfare, raids, and assassinations.
The Saudi rulers clam that the conflict in Yemen in a Sunni-Shia one. But Saudi Arabia didn’t think twice in the 1960s about backing Shiite royalist rebels in Yemen–the grandparents of today’s Houthis–against Sunni troops from Egypt supporting a progressive Yemini government.
A cash cow for U.S. corporations
Saudi Arabia continues to be a cash cow milked by U.S. businesses. The kingdom bought $20 billion in U.S. products last year, from Boeing planes to Ford cars. It recently signed a $15 billion deal with General Electric for goods and services, and put $20 billion into an investment fund run by the Blackstone Group.
U.S. banks love Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has paid $1.1 billion to western banks in fees since 2010. And truly giant bank fees are in the offing for JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, who are working with ARAMCO to take that company public.
U.S. universities and corporations grease the wheels for these giant business deals by training the kingdom’s managers and politicians, and promoting mutual interests. Many Saudi rulers begin their careers working for U.S. banks and businesses. Fahad al-Mubarak, who governed the central bank from 2011-2016 was previously chairman of Morgan Stanley in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Ministers, include those of finance and petroleum, got their degrees in the U.S.
The kingmakers in this oil-rich country have always been the princes of Wall Street. And the only god worshiped by the U.S.-Saudi unholy alliance is the almighty dollar.
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Featured image: President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump join King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, and the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Sunday, May 21, 2017, to participate in the inaugural opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
That time of the year. Student evaluations are being gathered by the data crunchers. Participation rates are being noted. Attitudes and responses are mapped. The vulnerable, insecure instructor, fearing an execution squad via email, looks apprehensively at comments in the attached folder that will, in all likelihood, devastate rather than reward. “Too much teaching matter”; “Too heavy in content”; “Too many books.” Then come the other comments from those who seem challenged rather than worn down; excited rather than dulled. These are few and far between: the modern student is estranged from instructor and teaching. Not a brave new world, this, but an ignorant, cowardly one.
The student evaluation, ostensibly designed to gather opinions of students about a taught course, is a surprisingly old device. Some specialists in the field of education, rather bravely, identify instances of this in Antioch during the time of Socrates and instances during the medieval period. But it took modern mass education to transform the exercise into a feast of administrative joy.
“the establishment of external quality assurance bodies (particularly in the UK and in Australia), and the ever-increasing requirement for quality assurance and public accountability, has seen a shift in the use of evaluation systems including their use for performance funding, evidencing promotions and teaching awards”.
Student evaluations, the non-teaching bureaucrat’s response to teaching and learning, create a mutually complicit distortion. A false economy of expectations is generated even as they degrade the institution of learning, which should not be confused with the learning institution. (Institutions actually have no interest, as such, in teaching, merely happy customers.) It turns the student into commodity and paying consumer, units of measurement rather than sentient beings interested in learning. The instructor is also given the impression that these matter, adjusting method, approach and content. Decline is assured.
Both instructor and pupil are left with an impression by the vast, bloated bureaucracies of universities that such evaluation forms are indispensable to tailor appropriate courses for student needs. But universities remain backward in this regard, having limited tools in educational analytics and text mining. Student comments, in other words, are hard to synthesise in a meaningful way.
This leads to something of a paradox. In this illusory world, corruption proves inevitable. Impressions are everything, and in the evaluation process, the instructor and student have an uncomfortable face off. The student must be satisfied that the product delivered is up to snuff. The instructor, desperate to stay in the good books of brute management and brown nose the appropriate promotion committees, puts on a good show of pampering and coddling. Appropriate behaviour, not talent, is the order of the day.
The most pernicious element of this outcome is, by far, grade inflation.
“Students,” assertsNancy Bunge in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “give better evaluations to people who grade them more generously.”
Absurd spectacles are thereby generated, including twin tower sets of academic performances that eschew anything to do with failure (students as consumers cannot fail, as such); everybody finds themselves in the distinction or high distinction band, a statistical improbability. Be wary, go the ingratiating types at course evaluation committees, of “bell curves” – they apparently do not exist as an accurate reflection of a student’s skill set.
The result is a mutually enforcing process of mediocrity and decline. The instructor tries to please, and in so doing, insists that the student does less. Students feel more estranged and engage less. Participation rates fall.
The untaxed mind is a dangerous thing, and students, unaware of this process, insist on possessing a level of prowess and learning that is the equal of the instructor. This is not discouraged by the administrative apparatchiks of various committees who make it their business to soil decent syllabi with dumbed down efforts such as “workshops” and “group work”. (The modern student supposedly has a limited, social media concentration span.) To them, the individual thinker – student or instructor – is a sworn enemy and must be stomped into an oblivion of faecal drudgery.
There is ample evidence, diligently ignored by university management, suggesting how the introduction of such surveys has been, not merely corrupting but disastrous for the groves of academe. Take, for instance, gender bias, which has a marked way of intruding into the exercise. Clayton N. Tatro found in a 1995 analysis of 537 male and female student questionnaires that both the gender of the instructor and the relevant grade “were significant predictors of evaluations”. Broadly speaking, the female students gave higher rating evaluations that their male counterparts. Female instructors did better in the evaluation scores than their male peers. Female instructors also did better in their scores with female respondents.
Learning is a process of perennial discomfort, not constant reassurance. The pinprick of awareness is far better than the smothering pillow. Genuine learning is meant to shatter models and presumptions, propelling the mind into enlightened, new domains. The student evaluation form is the enemy of the process, a stifling effect that disempowers all even as it claims to enhance quality.
Where to, then, with evaluating teaching? There is something to be said about the element of risk: there will always be good and bad teachers, and that very experience of being taught by individuals as varying as the pedestrian reader of lecture notes or the charming raconteur of learned anecdotes should be part of the pedagogical quest. From such variety grows resilience, something that customer satisfaction cannot tolerate.
Education specialists, administrators and those who staff that fairly meaningless body known as Learning and Teaching, cannot leave the instructing process alone. For them, some form of evaluation exercise must exist to placate the gods of funding and quality assurance pen pushers.
What then, to be done? Geoff Schneider, in a study considering the links between student evaluations, grade inflation and teaching, puts it this way, though he does so with a kind of blinkered optimism.
“In order to improve the quality of teaching, it is important for universities to develop a system for evaluating teaching that emphasizes (and rewards) the degree of challenge and learning that occurs in courses.”
Snow balls suffering an unenviable fate in hell comes to mind.
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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]
Ukrainian military ships have violated Russian restrictions in the Sea of Azov and Articles 19 and 21 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Ukrainian Navy crossed the Russian sea border and entered a closed area of Russian territorial waters. Clearly, Washington was behind this as Ukraine would not undertake such a provocation on its own. Here is an accurate explanation of the event.
The Russian Navy detained the Ukrainian ships. Of course, the Western media will blame “Russian aggression.” Washington and its presstitutes are doing everything they can to make impossible Trump’s expressed goal of normal relations with Russia. NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu quickly aligned NATO with Ukraine:
“NATO fully supports Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity, including its navigation rights in its territorial waters.”
The US military/security complex prefers the risk of nuclear war to any diminution of its $1,000 billion annual budget, a completely unnecessary sum that is destined to grow as the media, in line with the military/security complex, continue to demonize both Russia and Putin and to never question the obvious orchestrations that are used to portray Russia as a threat.
The Russian government’s response to Ukraine’s provocation and violation of law was to call an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, as if anything would come off this. Washington pays such a large percentage of the UN budget, that few countries will side against Washington. As President Trump’s crazed UN ambassador Nikki Haley said, “we take names.”
From all evidence, the Russian government still, despite all indications to the contrary, believes that presenting a non-threatening posture to the West, which appeals to law and not to arms, is effective in discrediting Western charges of aggression against Russia. If only it were true, but no sooner than a high Russian official announced that, despite the overwhelming elections for independence from Kiev in the breakway Russian provinces of Ukraine, Russia would not recognize the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk than “the Ukrainian army opened massive artillery fire on Sunday, shelling residential areas of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.” See this.
By trusting that there is a rule of law in the West, the Russian government is digging Russia’s grave while it allows Washington’s Ukrainian Nazis to murder Russian people. The Russian government is discrediting itself by trusting US vassals, such as Germany, to enforce the Minsk agreement and, despite all evidence to the contrary, believing that there is a rule of law in the West. Russia continues, year after year, to appeal to this non-existent entity called the Western Rule of Law.
This policy reassures the Zionist Neoconservatives who rule Washington’s foreign policy that Russia is incapable of defending its interests.
The Putin government seems to think that in order to prove that it is democratic, it must tolerate every Russian traitor in the name of free speech. See this.
This makes Russia an easy mark for Washington to destabilize. We see it already in Putin’s falling approval ratings in Russia. The Russian government permits US-financed Russian newspapers and NGO organizations to beat up the Russian government on a daily basis. Decades of American propaganda have convinced many in the world that Washington’s friendship is the key to success. The Russian Atlanticist Integrationists believe that Putin stands in the way of this friendship.
China is also an easy mark. The Chinese government permits Chinese students to study in the US from whence they return brainwashed by US propaganda and become Washington’s Fifth Column in China.
It sometimes seems that Russia and China are more focused on gaining wealth than they are on national survival. It is extraordinary that these two governments are still constrained in their independence and remain dependent on the US dollar and Western financial systems for clearances of their international trade.
As Washington controls the explanations, surviving Washington’s hegemony is proving to be a challenge for both countries.
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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.
A recent Telegraph investigation (paywall) revealed that senior MPs and peers, including many ministers, have given access to Parliament to spouses involved in lobbying for companies and campaign groups. Karen Bradley, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and Sir Kevin Barron, the chairman of the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee (Telegraph, ‘sleaze watchdog’), are among 900 parliamentarians whose partners hold “spouse passes” entitling them to around-the-clock access to the Palace of Westminster despite their work for organisations that lobby MPs and ministers over policies and funding.
They note that in recent years politics in the UK has been plagued by corruption scandals and public trust in politicians is plunging.
These scandals have exposed serious fault lines in the UK political system, and have raised particular concerns over the following:
The regime for parliamentary expenses
Lobbying of politicians by those who can apparently buy access that influences legislation spending priorities or policy decisions;
The revolving door between government and resources-resources-business;
Political party funding; and
Oversight regimes.
They explain that the problem lies when it happens behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny. It can lead politicians in office to steer away from good government. Their decisions can benefit those who fund them. The public interest comes second. Special interests, backed by money, may sway decision-making and undermine democracy.
Opaque lobbying practices backed up by extensive funds at the disposal of interest groups can lead to undue, unfair influence in policies – creating risks for political corruption and undermining public trust in decision-making institutions. We can attribute this factor, in part, to the crisis of confidence in politics we have seen unravel in the UK in recent years, resulting in apathy and low voter turnouts.
TI-UK believes regulation needs to address both those who seek to influence inappropriately and those who are being lobbied:
Money should not be a distorting factor in forming policy or gaining access to decision makers.
Lobbying on any particular issue or decision should be visible and have an audit trail.
Such information should be presented in a manner that is accessible and comparable for the public, media and civil society to scrutinise.
The report on UK corruption by TI-UK revealed that the British public perceive political parties to be the most corrupt sector in the UK and parliament to be the third most corrupt. It concludes there is a danger that the public will cease to regard decisions made by government and parliament as legitimate and fair; this represents a serious threat to British democracy and ultimately, to the rule of law.
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It is widely rumored that, with sealed indictments pending in the US, Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Assange may be imminently forced to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy which has provided him safe refuge since 2012.
However, after a recent visit to Ecuador, US vice president Mike Pence (representing the Cabal) reached an agreement with the Moreno government acknowledging that forcibly expelling Assange was politically untenable. One can only imagine that if such an expulsion comes to pass, it would likely result in a riot in the streets of London or that drugging Assange and smuggling him out in the middle of the night, under cover of a dark moon would equally result in forceful public demonstrations as well as worldwide condemnation. The Ecuadorians informed Pence they would rather make life inside the Embassy difficult and unsustainable, thereby encouraging Assange to voluntarily vacate the premises. Lots of Luck with that!
There is no way to know if an indictment will be personally served on Assange. For Assange to simply walk out the door and into the arms of a waiting extradition order to the US is indefensible as Assange is facing specious charges of “espionage” for daring to protect free-thinking whistleblowers by publishing their documents that exposed crimes and corruption at the highest levels of the US Government and political system. The distinction is crucial in that Assange did not steal documents but published documents provided to him just as the New York Times and other national newspapers have done for decades. It will be positively riveting to watch the Trump Administration attempt to indict the NYT, the Washington Post and/or the LA Times for publishing what Wikileaks published.
Enter The Cabal: that deeply embedded, nameless/faceless unelected entity which dictates public policy although they have no public support whatsoever. In agreeing with Moreno, the Cabal has already blinked in the tacit admission that Assange controls the narrative. They are cowardly perpetrators of a simulated reality of war, devastation and poverty and highly vulnerable to an aroused, angry public. It is the Cabal that had the most to lose if Assange was allowed to continue documenting the corrupt, unscrupulous behavior of its toadies.
Not to be confused with the Deep State, although we cannot be certain of where the overlap between these synonymous bastions of criminal malevolence begin and end; yet it is apparent that both control enormous factions of the US government from a dark sinister pit of wickedness; owing their existence to and total dependence on an unworthy claque of self-identified MSM “journalists” who willingly dance on the Empire’s thin ice of righteousness.
It is that collapsing Empire and political structure that have been most accurately depicted in many of the Wikileaks exposes that has stirred the Establishment to vociferously pursue prosecution of Assange. The Democratic party is especially incensed that the Podesta/DNC emails were part of a treasure trove perhaps provided by DNC staffer Seth Rich who was murdered twelve days before the Wikileaks release.
Some Wikileaks contributions that provided the public with unclassified information that should have already been public include:
Clinton Foundation received Millions of dollars from the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both major funders of Islamic terrorists;
Secretary of State HRC then approved an $80 billion weapon sale to the Saudis with which they began the war in Yemen in earnest;
Goldman Sachs paid HRC $675,000 for one speech;
Secretary of State HRC was the architect for the disastrous war in Libya leading to chaos in Europe;
Vault 7 revelations that the CIA had developed a program to metadata a hack by adding ‘fingerprints’ to ‘prove’ that some other foreign agency had committed the hack.
Ergo, you can see the need to hoodwink the public into believing that Assange is a threat to democracy, an unconstitutional criminal responsible for the 2016 loss of HRC in cahoots with the equally criminal Russian president, Vladimir Putin. It is the work of a poorly contrived fabrication that does not stand up to serious scrutiny – at question is whether the American public, well known for its political apathy and one dimensional thinking, will recognize truth even if they have to gag on it.
There is, however, an undeniable paradigm shift at play here dissolving whatever form, structure or institution no longer represents the public’s best interest. The scandals at the FBI and Department of Justice are but one example of “Deep State” corruption as its very existence remained in the shadows until the 2016 election. It has now been publicly outed as more than speculation and can be viewed as an active appendage of the Cabal. It is difficult to know how deeply buried the Deep State layers go or how far out of reach the country’s make-believe electeds are, many of whom function as consigliere to the Cabal.
Despite the current strategy of denying Assange access to necessary medical care and his legal team, contact with his family and friends as well as removal of all outside world contact through the web and regular daily meals, my money is on Assange to stay the course. Through the integrity he has established himself to be a truth seeker and man of peace who, to his credit, has attracted the same enemies as JFK. His continued resistance, although it appears ‘the resistance’ is absent from an opportunity to truly resist, will do much to encourage another wiseass heroic individual who dares to expose the details of American war crimes. Despite best efforts by the Cabal, my guess is that against overwhelming odds, he will prevail and he will persevere, he will dig deep and find the inner grit as he has done since 2012 to defy the all powerful who inhabit dark places.
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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The United Nations Universal Children’s Day– 20 November – has come and gone – and nothing has changed. No action that would now protect children any more than before, no move even by the UN to call on nations at war to take special care to protect children – if for nothing else but the fact that children are our planets future. They are the standard bearer of human generations to come – and of our civilization as a whole, if we don’t run it into the ground. Yet, children are among the most vulnerable, discriminated and abjectly exploited and abused species within human kind.
The culture of greed and instant profit has no space for children, for their rights, for their up-bringing within a frame of human rights, fair education, access to shelter and health services everywhere. For much of our western society, children are a nuisance, at best, a tool for cheap labor, especially when the west outsources its production processes to poor developing countries, mostly in Asia and Central America, so poor that they cannot enforce laws against child labor – all to maximize corporate profits.
Otherwise the western driven killing and war machine indiscriminately slaughters children, by famine, by drones, by bombs, by disease – by abuse. Collateral damage? I doubt it. Children could be protected, even in illegal wars. But eradicating by death and poverty entire generations in nations the west intends to subdue has a purpose: rebuilding of these nations will not take place under the watch of educated children, grown adults, who would most likely oppose their ‘hangmen’, those that have destroyed their homes and families, their villages and towns, their schools and hospital, their drinking water supply systems – leaving them to the plight of cholera and other diseases brought about by lack of hygiene and sanitation. So, in the interest of the empire and its puppet allies, children’s calamities and crimes on them are at best under reported – in most cases nobody even cares.
Look at Syria. The poison gas attacks instigated by US and NATO forces, carried out by their proxies ISIS and Saudi Arabia, to blame them on President Bashar al Assad, were directed at children for greater public relations impact – further helped by the fake heroes, the White Helmets. Can you imagine! (I’m sure you can) – children have to be poisoned and killed by western forces who want to topple the Syrian Assad regime to put their puppet in Assad’s place, so that they can control the country and eventually the region. Yes, children are sacrificed – a huge crime against humanity – to commit another horrendous international crime – forcefully change a democratically elected regime. That’s what the west does and is – and probably always was for the last 2000 years.
Take the situation of Yemen, where for the last 3 ½ years the network of the world’s biggest mafia killer scheme, led by Saudi Arabia, as the patsy and foreign money funnel aiding the United States and her allies in crime, the UK, France, Spain, several of the Gulf States, until recently also Germany, and many more – has killed by bombs, starvation and cholera induced by willingly destroyed water supply and sanitation systems, maybe hundreds of thousands of children.
According to Safe the Children, some 85,000 children below 5 years of age may have already died from famine; mind you, a purposefully induced famine, as Saudi and Gulf forces destroyed and blocked the port of Hodeida, where about 80% – 90% of imported food enters the country. The most vulnerable ones, as with every man-made disaster, are children and women.
Already a year ago, the UN warned that the cholera outbreak in Yemen is the fasted spreading cholera epidemic since records began and that it will affect at least a million people, including at least 600,000 children. A year later – how many of them have died? Extreme food shortages, destroyed shelters and hospitals, lack of medication, as medicine is also blocked at the points of import, have reduced children’s natural immune systems even further.
Imagine the suffering caused not just to the children, but to their parents, families, communities – what the west is doing is beyond words. Its beyond crime; and all those ‘leaders’ (sic) responsible will most likely never face a criminal court, as they are controlling all the major justice systems in the world. Though, no justice could make good for the killing and misery, but at least it could demonstrate that universal crime – as is the war on Yemen and many others fought for greed and power – is not tolerated with impunity.
UNHCR – the UN refugee agency reports that worldwide some 70 million refugees are on the move or in refugee camps. This figure does not include a large number of unreported cases, perhaps up to a third more. Most of the refugees are generated in the Middle East by western initiated wars; wars for greed, for natural resources, for controlling a geopolitically and strategically important region – on the seemingly ‘unstoppable’ way to full power world dominance.
At least two thirds of the refugees are children – no health care, no education, no suitable shelter, or none at all, malnourished-to-starving, raped, abused, enslaved – you name it.
Where do all these children go? What is their future? – There will be societies – Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan – missing a full generation. The countries are suffering a gap in educated people. This wanton gap will likely prevent rebuilding and developing their nations according to their sovereign rights. These countries are easier to control, subdue and enslave.
Just imagine, many of the lost children pass under the radar of human statistics, ignored, many of them are totally abandoned, no parents, no family, nobody to care for them, nobody to love them – they may quietly die – die in the gutters, unknown, anonymous. We – the brutal west – let them.
And the UN-declared Children’s Day has come and gone – and nothing has changed, Nothing will change as long as the west is devastating indiscriminately countries, cities, villages for sheer greed. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan — never were threatening the United States, nor Israel, of course. But they have resources the west covets, or they are geopolitically of strategic importance – for step by bloody step advancing towards world hegemony.
According to the UN, about 300 million children around the world do not go to school. Again, the unreported figure is possibly double or higher, especially including those that attend school only sporadically. Many of the children are abducted, sold into slavery, prostitution, imprisoned for medical testing – and for use in orgies of blood thirsty secret societies, their organs harvested and traded by mafia type organizations. Organ trading allegations are levied against Israel’s armed forces killing thousands of children in Israel’s open prison and extermination camp, called Gaza; and against Ukraine’s Kiev Nazi Government.
Did you know, 60% of all children in Gaza are mutilated and amputated as a result of Israel’s war against the Palestine population? And the world looks on, not daring to protest and stand up against this criminal nation – God’s chosen people.
In the UK, 1 of 4 children live in poverty. In the US, 60million children go to bed hungry – every night. As I write these lines, at the US-Mexican border refugee children and their mothers are being shot at with teargas canons by US police and military forces, to prevent them from entering Mr. Trump’s Holy Land, the Great United States of America.
The former UN Secretary General, Koffi Annan, winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, referring to the horrific siege on Aleppo and calling for international action to stop the war, he said, “The assault on Aleppo is an assault on the whole world. When hospitals, schools and homes are bombed indiscriminately, killing and maiming hundreds of innocent children, these are acts that constitute an attack on our shared, fundamental human values. Our collective cry for action must be heard, and acted upon, by all those engaged in this dreadful war.”
But, how could the world of today be described better than by Caitlin Johnstone in her recent poem “Welcome to Planet Earth”, where she says, “Welcome to Planet Earth…… where children who do not know how to live, teach their children how to live; where children pray for miracles, using minds that are made of miracles; with clasped hands that are made of miracles; where children wander in search of God, upon feet that are made of God, looking with eyes that are made of God.”
Where have all the children gone?
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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21stCentury; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image is from Hugh Macleod / IRIN/Creative Commons
It is welcome that finally there has been a little pushback, including from leading journalists, to the Guardian’s long-running vilification of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.
Reporter Luke Harding’s latest article, claiming that Donald Trump’s disgraced former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly visited Assange in Ecuador’s embassy in London on three occasions, is so full of holes that even hardened opponents of Assange in the corporate media are struggling to stand by it.
Faced with the backlash, the Guardian quickly – and very quietly – rowed back its initial certainty that its story was based on verified facts. Instead, it amended the text, without acknowledging it had done so, to attribute the claims to unnamed, and uncheckable, “sources”.
The propaganda function of the piece is patent. It is intended to provide evidence for long-standing allegations that Assange conspired with Trump, and Trump’s supposed backers in the Kremlin, to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.
The Guardian’s latest story provides a supposedly stronger foundation for an existing narrative: that Assange and Wikileaks knowingly published emails hacked by Russia from the Democratic party’s servers. In truth, there is no public evidence that the emails were hacked, or that Russia was involved. Central actors have suggested instead that the emails were leaked from within the Democratic party.
Nonetheless, this unverified allegation has been aggressively exploited by the Democratic leadership because it shifts attention away both from its failure to mount an effective electoral challenge to Trump and from the damaging contents of the emails. These show that party bureaucrats sought to rig the primaries to make sure Clinton’s challenger for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, lost.
To underscore the intended effect of the Guardian’s new claims, Harding even throws in a casual and unsubstantiated reference to “Russians” joining Manafort in supposedly meeting Assange.
Manafort has denied the Guardian’s claims, while Assange has threatened to sue the Guardian for libel.
‘Responsible for Trump’
The emotional impact of the Guardian story is to suggest that Assange is responsible for four years or more of Trump rule. But more significantly, it bolsters the otherwise risible claim that Assange is not a publisher – and thereby entitled to the protections of a free press, as enjoyed by the Guardian or the New York Times – but the head of an organisation engaged in espionage for a foreign power.
The intention is to deeply discredit Assange, and by extension the Wikileaks organisation, in the eyes of right-thinking liberals. That, in turn, will make it much easier to silence Assange and the vital cause he represents: the use of new media to hold to account the old, corporate media and political elites through the imposition of far greater transparency.
The Guardian story will prepare public opinion for the moment when Ecuador’s rightwing government under President Lenin Moreno forces Assange out of the embassy, having already withdrawn most of his rights to use digital media.
It will soften opposition when the UK moves to arrest Assange on self-serving bail violation charges and extradites him to the US. And it will pave the way for the US legal system to lock Assange up for a very long time.
For the best part of a decade, any claims by Assange’s supporters that avoiding this fate was the reason Assange originally sought asylum in the embassy was ridiculed by corporate journalists, not least at the Guardian.
Even when a United Nations panel of experts in international law ruled in 2016 that Assange was being arbitrarily – and unlawfully – detained by the UK, Guardian writers led efforts to discredit the UN report. See here and here.
Now Assange and his supporters have been proved right once again. An administrative error this month revealed that the US justice department had secretly filed criminal charges against Assange.
Heavy surveillance
The problem for the Guardian, which should have been obvious to its editors from the outset, is that any visits by Manafort would be easily verifiable without relying on unnamed “sources”.
Glenn Greenwald is far from alone in noting that London is possibly the most surveilled city in the world, with CCTV cameras everywhere. The environs of the Ecuadorian embassy are monitored especially heavily, with continuous filming by the UK and Ecuadorian authorities and most likely by the US and other actors with an interest in Assange’s fate.
The idea that Manafort or “Russians” could have wandered into the embassy to meet Assange even once without their trail, entry and meeting being intimately scrutinised and recorded is simply preposterous.
According to Greenwald:
“If Paul Manafort … visited Assange at the Embassy, there would be ample amounts of video and other photographic proof demonstrating that this happened. The Guardian provides none of that.”
Former British ambassador Craig Murray also points out the extensive security checks insisted on by the embassy to which any visitor to Assange must submit. Any visits by Manafort would have been logged.
In fact, the Guardian obtained the embassy’s logs in May, and has never made any mention of either Manafort or “Russians” being identified in them. It did not refer to the logs in its latest story.
Murray:
“The problem with this latest fabrication is that [Ecuador’s President] Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these ‘Russians’ are in the visitor logs … What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort? Furthermore it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security – would not know the identity of these alleged ‘Russians’.”
No fact-checking
It is worth noting it should be vitally important for a serious publication like the Guardian to ensure its claims are unassailably true – both because Assange’s personal fate rests on their veracity, and because, even more importantly, a fundamental right, the freedom of the press, is at stake.
Given this, one would have expected the Guardian’s editors to have insisted on the most stringent checks imaginable before going to press with Harding’s story. At a very minimum, they should have sought out a response from Assange and Manafort before publication. Neither precaution was taken.
I worked for the Guardian for a number of years, and know well the layers of checks that any highly sensitive story has to go through before publication. In that lengthy process, a variety of commissioning editors, lawyers, backbench editors and the editor herself, Kath Viner, would normally insist on cuts to anything that could not be rigorously defended and corroborated.
And yet this piece seems to have been casually waved through, given a green light even though its profound shortcomings were evident to a range of well-placed analysts and journalists from the outset.
That at the very least hints that the Guardian thought they had “insurance” on this story. And the only people who could have promised that kind of insurance are the security and intelligence services – presumably of Britain, the United States and / or Ecuador.
It appears the Guardian has simply taken this story, provided by spooks, at face value. Even if it later turns out that Manafort did visit Assange, the Guardian clearly had no compelling evidence for its claims when it published them. That is profoundly irresponsible journalism – fake news – that should be of the gravest concern to readers.
A pattern, not an aberration
Despite all this, even analysts critical of the Guardian’s behaviour have shown a glaring failure to understand that its latest coverage represents not an aberration by the paper but decisively fits with a pattern.
Glenn Greenwald, who once had an influential column in the Guardian until an apparent, though unacknowledged, falling out with his employer over the Edward Snowden revelations, wrote a series of baffling observations about the Guardian’s latest story.
First, he suggested it was simply evidence of the Guardian’s long-standing (and well-documented) hostility towards Assange.
“The Guardian, an otherwise solid and reliable paper, has such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him.”
It was also apparently evidence of the paper’s clickbait tendencies:
“They [Guardian editors] knew that publishing this story would cause partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news outlets would hyperventilate over it, and that they’d reap the rewards regardless of whether the story turned out to be true or false.”
And finally, in a bizarre tweet, Greenwald opined, “I hope the story [maligning Assange] turns out true” – apparently because maintenance of the Guardian’s reputation is more important than Assange’s fate and the right of journalists to dig up embarrassing secrets without fear of being imprisoned.
I think the Guardian is an important paper with great journalists. I hope the story turns out true. But the skepticism over this story is very widespread, including among Assange's most devoted haters, because it's so sketchy. If Manafort went there, there's video. Let's see it.
What this misses is that the Guardian’s attacks on Assange are not exceptional or motivated solely by personal animosity. They are entirely predictable and systematic. Rather than being the reason for the Guardian violating basic journalistic standards and ethics, the paper’s hatred of Assange is a symptom of a deeper malaise in the Guardian and the wider corporate media.
Even aside from its decade-long campaign against Assange, the Guardian is far from “solid and reliable”, as Greenwald claims. It has been at the forefront of the relentless, and unhinged, attacks on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for prioritising the rights of Palestinians over Israel’s right to continue its belligerent occupation. Over the past three years, the Guardian has injected credibility into the Israel lobby’s desperate efforts to tar Corbyn as an anti-semite. See here, here and here.
Similarly, the Guardian worked tirelessly to promote Clinton and undermine Sanders in the 2016 Democratic nomination process – another reason the paper has been so assiduous in promoting the idea that Assange, aided by Russia, was determined to promote Trump over Clinton for the presidency.
The Guardian’s coverage of Latin America, especially of populist leftwing governments that have rebelled against traditional and oppressive US hegemony in the region, has long grated with analysts and experts. Its especial venom has been reserved for leftwing figures like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, democratically elected but official enemies of the US, rather than the region’s rightwing authoritarians beloved of Washington.
The Guardian has been vocal in the so-called “fake news” hysteria, decrying the influence of social media, the only place where leftwing dissidents have managed to find a small foothold to promote their politics and counter the corporate media narrative.
The Guardian has painted social media chiefly as a platform overrun by Russian trolls, arguing that this should justify ever-tighter restrictions that have so far curbed critical voices of the dissident left more than the right.
Heroes of the neoliberal order
Equally, the Guardian has made clear who its true heroes are. Certainly not Corbyn or Assange, who threaten to disrupt the entrenched neoliberal order that is hurtling us towards climate breakdown and economic collapse.
Its pages, however, are readily available to the latest effort to prop up the status quo from Tony Blair, the man who led Britain, on false pretences, into the largest crime against humanity in living memory – the attack on Iraq.
That “humanitarian intervention” cost the lives of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and created a vacuum that destabilised much of the Middle East, sucked in Islamic jihadists like al-Qaeda and ISIS, and contributed to the migrant crisis in Europe that has fuelled the resurgence of the far-right. None of that is discussed in the Guardian or considered grounds for disqualifying Blair as an arbiter of what is good for Britain and the world’s future.
The Guardian also has an especial soft spot for blogger Elliot Higgins, who, aided by the Guardian, has shot to unlikely prominence as a self-styled “weapons expert”. Like Luke Harding, Higgins invariably seems ready to echo whatever the British and American security services need verifying “independently”.
Higgins and his well-staffed website Bellingcat have taken on for themselves the role of arbiters of truth on many foreign affairs issues, taking a prominent role in advocating for narratives that promote US and NATO hegemony while demonising Russia, especially in highly contested arenas such as Syria.
That clear partisanship should be no surprise, given that Higgins now enjoys an “academic” position at, and funding from, the Atlantic Council, a high-level, Washington-based think-tank founded to drum up support for NATO and justify its imperialist agenda.
Improbably, the Guardian has adopted Higgins as the poster-boy for a supposed citizen journalism it has sought to undermine as “fake news” whenever it occurs on social media without the endorsement of state-backed organisations.
The truth is that the Guardian has not erred in this latest story attacking Assange, or in its much longer-running campaign to vilify him. With this story, it has done what it regularly does when supposedly vital western foreign policy interests are at stake – it simply regurgitates an elite-serving, western narrative.
Its job is to shore up a consensus on the left for attacks on leading threats to the existing, neoliberal order: whether they are a platform like Wikileaks promoting whistle-blowing against a corrupt western elite; or a politician like Jeremy Corbyn seeking to break apart the status quo on the rapacious financial industries or Israel-Palestine; or a radical leader like Hugo Chavez who threatened to overturn a damaging and exploitative US dominance of “America’s backyard”; or social media dissidents who have started to chip away at the elite-friendly narratives of corporate media, including the Guardian.
The Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred of evidence. It did what it is designed to do.
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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
For last ten months, the world has been watching at times with hope, sometimes with doubt and often even fear. There have been three inter-Korea summits and one US-North Korea summit. But we see no peace on the Land of Morning Calm.
The Pyong-chang Olympics was marked by the warm and passionate embrace between the same people separated for seventy years. The icy ideological differences melted away.
In Pyongyang, in April, the world sang with North Korean and South Korean singers: “The Spring of peace has come; let us meet, in Seoul, in the Autumn and harvest the peace”.
The Autumn had gone and the Winter has arrived. Yet, there is no peace! Why?
The answer to this question lies in different objectives pursued by those who are directly involved in and affected by the peace process. By and large, there are two groups, one for peace and the other against it. The former includes South Korea’s Moon government and its supporters, North Korea and Trump, while the latter is comprised of the conservative pro-Japanese South Korean elites, the Japanese conservatives represented by Abe and Washington hawkish oligarchy composed of military-security- intelligence-defence industries, MSID oligarchy (the oligarchy).
Proponents of peace
Let us begin with North Korea. It is true that, Pyongyang is not easy to dialogue with it partly because of its seven decades of isolation, constant military threats and terrible economic sanctions which had made it to mistrust others. But, one thing is certain; Kim Jong-un wants peace and decent living standard so that he can give his 25 million a decent life.
Many tend to think that he is ruthless dictator just like his father and grand-father. But he is different; his mother was wise enough to make him to spend childhood as an ordinary child and receive education in Europe. He was sincere when he abandoned his “Byung-jin” policy (parallel development of military might and economic development) and adopted “economy first” policy.
He knows that he cannot develop the economy without peace and to have peace he has to end the relation of hostility with the U.S. He is ready to abandon his nuclear arsenal in exchange of a peace treaty, end of economic sanctions and normal diplomatic relations like any other normal countries.
In fact, the North thinks that it has done enough to show its sincere desire for peace. It has destroyed five nuclear test tunnels; it decommissioned major missile launch sites; it has returned the remains of US soldiers killed or missing during the Korean War; it has collaborated with Moon Jae-in for the removal of guard posts and disarming of guards at the DMZ; it has signed with South Korea for the creation of wide buffer zones of no military exercises along the border line.
Moon Jae-in government of South Korea wants peace for its own reasons.
Image on the right: South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un embrace each other after releasing a joint statement at the truce village of Panmunjeom, Friday. / Korea Summit Press Pool
First, the Korean people had been, for last five thousand years, one single ethnic group with one culture and one language. As Moon Jae-in said in front of 150,000 North Koreans in September: “We have been united for five thousand years, but separated for 70 years.” There is a strong nationalistic feeling among the majority of Koreans for becoming once again one nation, one people and one culture.
Second, Korea finds itself once again as small “shrimp” that can be caught between and crushed by big powers (whales) in war. The current China-US Thucydides trap is conceived by many South Korean opinion leaders as a real threat to the Korean peninsula. Korea reunited would have a population of 80 million inhabitants, much greater military might and much larger economy so that it would be able to minimize, if not avoid, the collateral damage of the Thucydides trap.
Third, the sustained economic cooperation with North Korea could be perhaps the only way out of the current economic challenge which Moon must overcome. For years, the South’s GDP has grown at less than 3%; the rate of increase in the value of exports has been declining ever since 2011.
In July of 2018, the value of export of ships fell, compared to the same period of 2017, by 60%, while that of cars, by more than 7%. These two groups of products represent more than a third of the value of Seoul’s export of goods. For the time being, the export of semi-conductors and other electronic products is doing reasonably well, but in the medium run, it may face serious challenge by Chinese products.
The crux of the matter is the loss of the Chaebols’ international competitiveness combined with the powerlessness of SMEs; thus there is big hole in which the Korean economy is trapped
Such poor performance of the Korean economy is largely attributable to decades of pro-Chaebol policy, business-politics collusion and wide spread corruption of the conservative establishment.
In the mean time, the small-and medium-enterprises (SMEs) which represent 99.9% of the total number of firms generating 85% of jobs have not been able to perform as the center of the South Korean economy. To put it bluntly, the danger of the Korean economy is its long-run stagnation.
The only way out is economic cooperation with North Korea. The combination of the South’s technology, capital and vast trade network with well educated, low cost and well disciplined labour and 9 trillion dollar worth of natural resources of the North could be the best bet, perhaps only way, for South Korean economy to keep growing.
The highly effective and lucrative North-South cooperation has shown its virtue for years in the Gaesung Industrial Complex (GIC) where more than one hundred South Korea firms have been producing labour-intensive and capital intensive products by working with several thousand North Korean workers whose wage rate was one-tenth of South Korean wage rate.
Unfortunately, Park Geun-hye, now serving 33 year prison term, closed it three years ago, perhaps to please Washington, even though Washington did not ask for it. Now, Moon’s government is trying hard to reopen it.
To sum up, South Korea’s desire to unite two Koreans is motivated by healthy nationalism, the survival from the Sino-American conflict and economic survival.
It appears, at times, that Trump seems to be sincere in pursuing peace on the Korean peninsula. But why? What are his real goals?
We can think of three goals. One is his search for glory of having done something that Obama or George W. Bush could not do. The second is the use of North Korean issue for his political agenda. The third goal is, may be, his strategy of converting North Korea into the utmost forefront defence line against Chinese domination in the region.
What is then the relative importance of these goals? It is more than possible that his political agenda come first followed by the glory seeking. As for the third goal, being a rare breed of businessman, he may not be keen on playing with empire building foreign policy.
If these assumptions are true, then the peace process will go at least two more years. It is quite possible that he will give what Kim Jong-un wants, at least a part of it, a few months before the next presidential election. If he wins, he may get four more years of power and, at the same time, the glory of the Nobel Prize.
Here we are; we see the motivation of peace-seeking of two Koreas and Trump’s Washington. But nagging question is:”Are they good and strong enough to win over the anti-peace group?”
Anti-peace groups
The anti-peace groups include the South Korean conservative military-security-intelligence-defence industry (MSID) oligarchy, the American MSID oligarchy, and the Japanese conservatives led by Shinzo Abe.
The desire of the Korean oligarchy to maintain tension and hostility in the Korean peninsula is as strong, if not more so, as that of the American counterpart. One thing sure is that they have ruled South Korea for last 60 years by six presidents including Park Geun-hye. Of the six presidents, one was chased out by students, one was assassinated by his CIA director, while the remaining four were or are condemned for imprisonment because of corruption and abuse of power.
One may wonder how come they have been ruling the country so long and maximize the oligarchy’s interest at the expense of public interests.
They have been able to stay in power by brutally oppressing voices of opposition in the name of national security against threat by the North.
As for the Washington oligarchy, it has been able to increase the defence budget and boost the sale of military equipments to Seoul.
Thus, both oligarchies across the Pacific Ocean have been benefitting from the manufactured tension and they have been doing their best to kill the peace process.
Image below is from Black Agenda Report
The strategy of the oligarchies rests on two manufactured truths: “North Korea is threat to South Korea and the United States”, and hence, “it cannot be trusted”. The whole scheme of demonizing North Korea is based on these two “truths”.
It may be true that North Korea could threat South Korea with its nuclear bombs, but South Korea could be also a threat to the North with its nuclear umbrella coverage and superior conventional fire power.
To be frank, as for the North’s threat to the U.S. I wonder how many people with least common sense believe this. North Korea has been consistent all these years in that it has nuclear weapons only for defensive reasons.
Nevertheless, suppose that Kim Jong-un is stupid enough to attack the U.S territory. But the obvious fact is that the Kim’s nuclear ICBM cannot go through the US air defence net. If the American air defence net cannot find and destroy the missiles in advance, it could be an incredible waste of $700 billion of the US defence dollars. We must not forget that the defence budget of North Korea is far less than $10 billion.
At any rate, the assumption of the North’s being threat provides a logical justification of mistrust. Since North Korea is a threat and cannot be trusted, it must be punished. There are three ways of punishing North Korea: war, military exercises, and sanctions.
What the oligarchies want is the creation of the climate of tension, danger and fear facilitating the rule of conservative political regime and sales of arms. By virtue of these methods of punishing North Korea, the South Korean oligarchy has been able to rule for sixty years and enrich themselves through weapon trades and resulting dark money.
Now, we come to the question of guessing which of the pro-peace and anti-peace groups will win. The combined effort of the Moon’s liberal government, the North’s need for economic development and, especially, Trump’s strong positioning for peace might suggest that sooner or later, the peace will be smiling in the Korean peninsula, sanctions will no more seen and the whole of the peninsula will be able to enjoy peaceful and decent living.
But being realistic, we must not underestimate the strength of the anti-peace oligarchy supported by well funded think-tank establishments. In South Korea, the oligarchy has been relatively quiet for last year and half since the liberal Moon regime took over the power. But the deep-rooted and well funded conservative force is striking back to destabilize Moon’s regime.
The South Korean oligarchy has been forced to lay low after their leader Park Geun-hye was impeached and put into 33year prison life. But, the oligarchy led by big corporations is not dead; on the contrary, it is suspected to have unlimited money hidden away and it can fund anti-Moon and anti-peace campaign.
The oligarchy is deploying the following tactics. First, the main opposition party, Han-gook-dang, main benefactor of the corrupted government of Park Geun-hye, is doing every possible thing to discredit Moon’s government.
Second, there are groups of conservative elements led by a doubtful Christian church who are manufacturing every day tons of fake news to warn against fabricated threats from the North.
Third, some of the right-wing intellectuals including university professors are frightening the people by telling that North Korea still plan to unify the peninsula under the Red Flag.
Fourth, it is possible that the slump of the Korea economy is due to deliberate cut in investments by some large corporations so that Moon’s government be blamed for it.
Fifth, main stream media led by the three powerful traditional newspapers, Chosen, Joong-ang and Dong-ah (Cho-Joong-Dong) publish, often without proof, events and stories designed to convince the people that North Korea is not trust worthy.
Finally, the opposition party which is surely very close to the oligarchy does not hide disappointment with Trump’s peace gesture. In fact, its former leader did not conceal his harsh criticism of Trump.
What the anti-peace Korean conservatives are trying now is to get back the power in two years by discrediting the liberal government and restore the tension which has been beneficial to them.
It is hard to predict the outcome of oligarchy’s anti-peace tactics, but one should not underestimate the force of anti-peace funds.
Money talks! Money is persuasive!
There is another variable that seems to affect the peace process. The victory of the Democrats in the U.S. Congress may affect whole dynamics of the peace dialogue.
It may have double effects. On the one hand, it could speed up the process; Trump might speed up the dialogue before the Democrats organize themselves to launch effective anti-Trump movement. The Pompeo-Kim Yong-chul meeting may take place soon.
On the other hand, one may have to wait two more years until the next presidential election before trump offers some “rewards” to Kim Jong-un.
There is another event which has something to do with Democrats’ victory. A few weeks ago, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a satellite image of 13 missile test sites. This report has raised a storm of controversy.
The hidden purpose of the report seems to show once again that North Korea is a still a threat and cannot be trusted. The 13 missile test sites appeared to be active suggesting that North Korea has not stopped its missile program. In other words, Pyongyang has betrayed the Singapore agreement and, hence, it is futile to continue negotiations with Kim Jong-un.
This was the message which the report tried to convey to the world’s public. The New York Times and CNN went beyond what the report intended to accomplish; these two media went as far as saying that Trump was cheated by Kim Jong-un; Trump was played by Kim. On the basis of this media report, General Barry McCaffrey would have told NBC:
“In the sort term, North Korea is the most consequential threat to the US national security…They have nuclear weapons, they have delivery system, they are not going to denuclearize”. (NBC: November 12, 2018)
Senator Edward Markey (Democrat) of Massachusetts is quoted to have said that Trump is played by Kim Jong-un and, hence, the second Trump-Kim Summit should not take place. (The Nation:November 16, 2018)
It is rather difficult to understand such emotional reactions, for what the satellite image has sown has little to do with the Singapore agreement.
As Professor Viping Narang of MIT is quoted to have said (The Nation: November 16, 2018) that Kim Jong-un has never offered to stop producing ballistic missiles. Similarly Leon Sigal, former member of the Times Boar is quoted to have said in 38 Norththat there was no agreement prohibiting the deployment of missiles by Pyongyang. There are many other experts who make similar observations.
There are many other North Korea watchers who are puzzled by what David E. Sager has written in the Times (November 12). There are several things which make CSIS’s report questionable.
For one thing, the 13 sites are for short-range or medium-range missiles; these missiles were not the target of the Singapore agreement.
Second, the report warns that the sites were concealed. The Blue House and the White House have known about these sites for long time.
Third, the image was taken in March this year, eight months before the Singapore Summit.
What bothers me is this. Why the report, now, in the first place? Why such offensive interpretation of the report by the Times? I am sure that the chief author of the report, Victor Cha knew that what the image has shown was not the violation of the Singapore agreement; after all, he is one of the well known Korea watchers.
What worries Cha appears to b the possibility that Trump is going to accept a bad deal. He would have said: “North Korea gives a single test site and dismantle a few other things in exchange of a peace agreement”. (The Nation:November 16, 2018) This seems to be a severe underestimation of Trump’s ability to negotiate.
In South Korea where he came from, Cha is known to be most notorious anti-North Korea and anti-peace person. But, to understand Cha, we must know the nature of his employer, the CSIS. This Center is perhaps one of the most amply funded think tank establishments. Funds come from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, L-3, Rockwell, General Atomics, Booz Allen, Hamilton, Japanese Mitsubishi heavy Industries, South Korean Samsung Electronics, Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd. (The Nation: November 16, 2018)
These are the major players in the production of arms and they have major stake in the peace process in Korea. South Korea has been for decades the most lucrative market for these big players. The global integration of Korean firms is so complete that the Korea-US military cooperation has become a big business.
In 2016, the CSIS organized a meeting. At the opening speech, John Hamre, CEO of CSIS said : “We’ve been military partners for 70 years, we are now going to be business partners in a very new way”. (The Nation: November 16, 2018)
These firms are the core of the oligarchy, which might gain nothing by denuclearization, end of the Korean War and peace on the Korean peninsula. On the contrary, they will lose greatly by the peace process for two reasons. They will lose by selling less military equipment to Seoul; they will get less of illegal and immoral money related to arms transactions.
It is not necessarily by chance that the CSIS came out with the report right after the return of the Democrats to the Congress. It is more than possible that the oligarchy and the Democrats ganged up to destroy Trump and his Korea policy. The CSIS report, the Times’ interpretation of the report and various media voices may be first salvo of fight against the peace efforts on the Korean peninsula.
There are already some pessimistic voices about the denuclearization and the peace treaty on the Korean peninsula; it is indeed possible that the peace may not come this time.
But I like to say this.
First, the North-South tension is no longer possible because of the inter-Korea summits agreements and their swift implementation. The oligarchies should accept this and look for other means of exploiting the Korean peninsula; for example, making profit by joining the North’s economic development.
Second, it is about the time that the few rich and powerful stop destroying the poor people in North Korea; they have suffered enough from the 70 years of threats, sanctions, hunger and despair.
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Professor Joseph H. Chung is co-director of the East Asia Observatory (OAE) of the Study Center for Integration and Globalisation (CEIM), Quebec University (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Last night, the Syrian Air Defense Forces (SADF) shot down several unidentified aerial objects over the district of al-Kiswah south of Damascus, according to the state-run media.
Local sources told SouthFront that the SADF had also engaged targets over Damascus and Quneitra. The recently supplied S-300 air defense system was not employed.
Pro-Israeli and pro-militant sources claimed that the Israeli Air Force had successfully destroyed multiple “Iranian” targets near Damascus.
The Israeli military has not commented on the incident itself, but said that reports regarding an Israeli aircraft or an airborne Israeli target having been hit by the SADF are false.
The situation is developing.
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Now that November 11 and the official “remembering” of our “heroes”, their “bravery” and “greatness” is over, it is a good time to take a deeper, more critical look at Canada’s participation in wars.
While on Remembrance Day we are told to “thank a soldier for your freedoms” and the commemorations talk about “defending democracy”, the reality of wars’ connections to colonialism, imperialism, and oppression are ignored.
A Global Newsstory about Nova Scotia university students visiting Canadian World War II soldiers’ graves in West Africa highlights the matter. The report ignored that The Gambia, where the Canadians were buried, was a British colony at the time and that Canadian forces legitimated European rule in Africa during the country’s only ‘morally justifiable’ war.
(Nazi expansionism’s threat to British interests, not opposition to fascism or anti-Semitism, led Ottawa to battle but WWII was ultimately justifiable.)
During the Second World War Canadians fought by land, sea and air in colonial Africa. Describing a support mission in 1943 a Hamilton Spectator headline noted: “Canada Supplied 29 Ships and 3000 of Her Sailors for North African Action”. Many Canadian fighter pilots also operated over the continent. “During the Second World War,” notes Canadian African studies scholar Douglas Anglin, “considerable numbers of Canadian airmen served in R.A.F. [Royal Air Force] squadrons in various parts of the continent, particularly North Africa.” More than a half-dozen Canadian pilots defended the important Royal Air Force base at Takoradi, Ghana, and others traveled there to follow the West African Reinforcement Route, which delivered thousands of fighter planes to the Middle East and North African theatre of the war.
After Germany invaded France part of the French government relocated to the south. The Vichy regime continued to control France’s colonies during WWII. In a bid to prod Philippe Pétain’s regime to re-enter the war alongside the Allies, Canadian diplomat Pierre Dupuy visited on three occasions between 1940 and 1941. Describing Dupuy’s mission and the thinking in Ottawa at the time, Robin Gendron notes, “for the Canadian government as for the Allies in general, the colonies had no separate existence outside of France. In practical terms, the colonies were France.” Later in the war Prime Minister Mackenzie King expressed a similar opinion regarding Britain’s colonies. “In December 1942,” Gendron reports, “King informed the British Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs that colonial policy must remain the responsibility of the colonial powers, and he reiterated this position in late 1944 when the British government asked for Canada’s input on the latest proposals for the postwar settlement of colonial issues.”
Without Canada’s major contribution to WWII Britain and France may not have held their African colonies. And during World War I, which is the origin of Remembrance Day, Canadians helped the British, French and Belgians expand their colonial possessions in Africa. As I detail in Canada and Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, Canada was modestly involved in two African theatres of WWI.
In the lead-up to the Great War hundreds of Canadians, usually trained at Kingston’s Royal Military College, fought to help Britain (and the Belgian King) conquer various parts of the continent. Canadians led military expeditions, built rail lines and surveyed colonial borders across the continent in the late 1800s and early 1900s. More significantly, four hundred Canadians traveled halfway across the world to beat back anti-colonial resistance in the Sudan in 1884-85 while a decade and a half later thousands more fought in defence of British imperial interests in the southern part of the continent.
If we are going to learn anything from history, Remembrance Day commemorations should include discussion of Canadian military support for European colonialism in Africa and elsewhere. To really understand war and its causes, we must take a look at its victims as well as its victors.
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In 2016, Presidential candidate Donald Trump said “Wikileaks, I love Wikileaks” as U.S. President, Trump recently said “I don’t know anything about him. Really. I don’t know much about him. I really don’t.” It’s clear that the Trump administration with its CIA Director Mike Pompeo leading the charge want to prosecute or even murder WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. On April 13, 2017, Pompeo spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) based in Washington, D.C. and said the following:
WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service and has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It’s time to call our WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year our intelligence community determined that Russian military intelligence, the GRU, had used WikiLeaks to release data of U.S. victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks
Both Democrats and Republicans along with the American mainstream media want Wikileaks founder Julian Assange either behind bars or dead as Fox News contributor Bob Beckel expressed during a Fox News panel discussion several years ago on what should be done to Julian Assange when he said to “illegally shoot the son of a bitch.”According to The Associated Press (AP) earlier this month:
In a divided Washington, few causes have as much bipartisan support as prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Many Democrats seethed when the radical transparency activist humiliated Hillary Clinton by publishing the content of her campaign chairman’s inbox. Most Republicans haven’t forgiven Assange for his publication of U.S. military and intelligence secrets. Much of the American media establishment holds him in contempt as well
However, the article did mention the concerns about free speech in the U.S. regarding certain activist groups:
But academics, civil rights lawyers and journalism groups worry that an attempt to put Assange behind bars could damage constitutional free speech protections, with repercussions for newsrooms covering national security across the United States.
“This isn’t about Julian Assange, this is about the First Amendment and press freedom,” said Elizabeth Goitein, who co-directs the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center in New York. “You can’t support First Amendment freedoms and still support the government chipping away at those freedoms of people you don’t like”
The Republicans have a score to settle with Assange for releasing close to 400,000 classified Iraq war documents which was the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history. The Iraq war documents exposed torture, rape and numerous murders by the U.S. backed Iraqi police, soldiers and even death squads. Whistleblower and U.S. Army veteran Chelsea Manning also gave documents to WikiLeaks which included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike titled Collateral Murder that involved the murder of a number of innocent civilians including two Iraqi war correspondents who worked for Reuters Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Iraqi children were also wounded in the attack. Another batch of documents mentioned the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan killing between 86 to 147 Afghan civilians by a U.S. airstrike on May 4, 2009, in the village of Granai in Farah Province, south of Herat, Afghanistan. Manning’s documents became to be known as the ‘Iraq War Logs’ and ‘Afghan War Diary.’
The Democrats have a hatred towards Julian Assange as well for releasing numerous cables regarding Hillary Clinton from her involvement in the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya to prevent a Gold-Backed Currency in Africa proposed by Gaddafi to the Democratic National Convention undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign so that Clinton can win the nomination for the Democratic Party in 2016.
In 2012, the Obama administration declared WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an enemy of the state, forcing Assange to seek asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid arrest and the extradition to the U.S. The bottom line is that Julian Assange is a wanted man by the establishment in Washington and they will do whatever it takes to get him in their custody. Would he get a fair trial? No. because Julian Assange can expose a lot more on Washington if he were to have a fair trial.
Meet Ecuador’s President, Lenin Moreno
Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno turned out to be another U.S. puppet in the making. Moreno was a member of Raphael Correa’s government for several years and as Vice President for six years. Moreno then became a UN Special Envoy for Disabilities. Correa’s political party, Alianza Pais nominated Moreno as its candidate in the 2017 presidential elections. Moreno even called Correa the best president Ecuador ever had during his campaign trail. However, once elected, Moreno became another Latin American puppet President for Washington.
In 2017, Venezuela’s Telesur reported that the Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa criticized his former Vice-President Lenin Moreno calling him a “traitor.” According to the Telesur “Former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, denounced his Alianza Pais successor Lenin Moreno as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Correa supported Vice President Jorge Glas who was accused of corruption at the time. Moreno suspended Glas as his Vice President and in December of 2017, Glas was sentenced to six years in prison by a Criminal Tribunal of the National Court of Justice for allegedly receiving over $13.5 million in bribes in the Odebrecht scandal known as Operation Car Wash, a Brazilian money laundering investigation at the state-controlled oil company Petrobras in Brazil. Executives from Petrobas allegedly accepted bribes in return for awarding contracts to construction firms. Glas was accused of receiving bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in return for government contracts. According to Telesur:
In an interview with CNN Español following President Moreno’s decision to place Vice President Jorge Glas in pre-trial detention to face corruption accusations, Correa called the charges against Glas “a vulgar political persecution” that is the same thing “they used in Brazil against Dilma,” referring to the ousting of Brazil’s elected president, Dilma Rousseff on the basis of corruption charges in a move many called an “institutional coup.”
He defended the Vice President, saying that the accusations are without evidence. “Glas is a person that does not steal or allow theft, but for this one makes enemies,” he said
With that said, not only Moreno targeted Correa’s political allies, he went after Correa himself. The Telesur report stated that “Underscoring the abrupt shift that Moreno took after assuming office, Correa said “I went from being the ‘eternal president’ to the ‘corrupt,’” referring to Lenin’s praising words at the inauguration dubbing Correa Ecuador’s “eternal president.” and that “Correa also criticized Moreno’s upcoming consultation, which he said had the ultimate aim of preventing Correa from returning to power by eliminating indefinite presidential reelections through constitutional changes.”
On July 27th, in regards to Assange, Reuters reported when Moreno was in Madrid, Spain, where he clearly stated what he thought about Assange:
Moreno said any eviction of Assange from the embassy had to be carried out correctly and through dialogue, but he displayed no sympathy for Assange’s political agenda as a leaker of confidential documents.
“I have never been in favor of Mr Assange’s activity,” Moreno said at an event in Madrid
What Moreno said is a Code Phrase for “I am with you America!” Moreno is also removing officials who opposed handing over Assange to U.S. authorities such as Ecuador’s London ambassador Carlos Abad Ortiz according to rt.com:
“WikiLeaks tweeted that Abad, appointed to the office under President Rafael Correa, was the last diplomat the long-term self-exiled editor knew in the embassy. “All diplomats known to Assange have now been transferred away from the embassy,” the whistleblowing site claimed.
This new and sudden twist in the Assange saga has been met with concern by his supporters, with some suggesting that Moreno is doing Washington’s bidding by removing people who might have stood by Assange and opposed his potential handover to the British police – which is expected to bring about a swift extradition to the US. The dismissal has been called “a silent pro-US coup”
What is also disappointing regarding Moreno’s betrayal of truth and justice is his support for the private media in Ecuador. According to a Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) article by Joe Emersberger ‘Western Media Hail Ecuador’s Cynical President Moreno’ wrote:
How can Moreno get away (so far) with his post-election about face? By quickly turning on Correa, he immediately won over Ecuador’s big private media, and quickly made changes to public media so that it provided negligible opposition to his right turn. For example, Moreno promptly put a former editor of the right-wing newspaper El Comercio in charge of the government-run El Telegrafo. The results were obvious during a January 21 TV interview broadcast across the country, in which journalists from two right-wing networks and a third from public media interviewed Moreno
Another article written by Joe Emersberger for Counterpunch.org explained how Correa battled the opposition and the oligarchs when it came to the media wars:
Correa correctly identified the private media as his most formidable enemy and he battled it openly and relentlessly. In any capitalist country, but especially one ravaged by centuries of extreme inequality like Ecuador, if you aren’t battling the private media then you aren’t battling oligarchs, corruption or injustice. It really is that simple. Much has been made by his critics of media regulations passed by his government, and some of them can be validly criticized on free speech grounds. However, the tactic his rivals in Ecuador most despised was his weekly TV show. It was one of the ways Correa expanded government media to counterbalance the corporate media. Contrary to what some people have claimed or disingenuously implied, Correa’s show was never broadcast on every TV station and anyone who didn’t want to watch it simply had to change the channel. The more viewers his show attracted over time, the crazier the objections against it became – including claims that the show was a financial burden on the country
Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno is another patsy who is following in the footsteps of other Latin American leaders who maintain America’s backyard.
Wow! Another Fake Story: Trump’s Former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort met with Assange in 2013, 2015 and 2016
The Guardian published a story based on Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort meeting Assange on separate occasions titled ‘Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy, sources say.’ The article began with:
Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told. Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House
Of course, CNN jumped on the Guardian’s bandwagon with their own report just published on November 27th titled ‘Guardian: Manafort met with Julian Assange around the time he joined Trump Campaign’ about Paul Manafort’s alleged meeting with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy:
Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, secretly met several times with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, including around the time he was made a top figure in the Trump campaign, The Guardian reported Tuesday.
Citing a “well-placed source,” The Guardian reported that Manafort met with Assange around March 2016, just months before WikiLeaks released Democratic emails believed to be stolen by Russian intelligence officers
Wow! It’s amazing how CNN and the U.K.’s own The Guardian still push the Russian hacking hoax without providing any evidence that Russia steered the election in favor of candidate Donald Trump. At the same time, The Guardianmade itself a contender for producing one of the top fake news stories of 2018 (although I am pretty certain that they and others such as CNN will publish a handful of fake stories before the year’s end!). You just got to love the way CNN and The Guardian cite a “well-placed source” for this information on Paul Manafort’s alleged meeting with Assange. According to the CNN article:
“WikiLeaks denied the report shortly after it was published.
“Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper’s reputation. @wikileaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange”
Paul Manafort also denied the accusations when he said that “This story is totally false and deliberately libelous,” Manafort said “I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him.”
It is most likely that The Guardian won’t accept that million dollar challenge from WikiLeaks because it’s a lie. Another fabricated story. Where was this information when the DNC and the mainstream media was investigating the Russian collusion hoax for the past 2 years? Now out of the blue sky, an unnamed source has this information. The mainstream media including The Guardian is sinking faster than ever before and for good reason.
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“Russian missiles are a danger” – the alarm was sounded by the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with Maurizio Caprara published in the Corriere della Sera*, three days before the “incident” in the Sea of Azov which added fuel to the already incandescent tension with Russia. “There are no new missiles in Europe. But there are Russian missiles, yes”, began Stoltenberg, ignoring two facts.
First: as from March 2020, the United States will begin to deploy in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Holland (where B-61 nuclear bombs are already based), and probably also in other European countries, the first nuclear bomb with precision guidance in their arsenal, the B61-12. Its function is primarily anti-Russian. This new bomb is designed with penetrating capacity, enabling it to explode underground in order to destroy the central command bunkers with its first strike. How would the United States react if Russia deployed nuclear bombs in Mexico, right next to their territory? Since Italy and the other countries, violating the non-proliferation Treaty, are allowing the USA to use its bases, as well as its pilots and planes, for the deployment of nuclear weapons, Europe will be exposed to a greater risk as the first line of the growing confrontation with Russia.
Second: a new US missile system was installed in Romania in 2016, and another similar system is currently being built in Poland. The same missile system is installed on four warships which, based by the US Navy in the Spanish port of Rota, sail the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea close to Russian territory. The land-based installations, like the ships, are equipped with Lockheed Martin Mk41 vertical launchers, which – as specified by the manufacturer himself – are able to launch “missiles for all missions: either SM-3’s as defence against ballistic missiles, or long-range Tomahawks to attack land-based objective”. The latter can also be loaded with a nuclear warhead. Since it is unable to check which missiles are actually loaded into the launchers parked at the frontier with Russia, Moscow supposes that there are also nuclear attack missiles, in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which forbids the installation of intermediate- and short-range missiles on land bases.
On the contrary, Stoltenberg accuses Russia of violating the INF Treaty, and sends out a warning:
“We can not allow the Treaties to be violated without punishment”.
In 2014, the Obama administration accused Russia, without providing the slightest proof, of having tested a Cruise missile (SSC-8) from a category forbidden by the Treaty, announcing that “the United States are considering the deployment of land-based missiles in Europe”, in other words, the abandon of the INF Treaty. This plan, supported by the European allies of NATO, was confirmed by the Trump administration: in the fiscal year of 2018, Congress authorised the financing of a programme of research and development for a Cruise missile to be launched from a mobile platform.
Nuclear missiles of the Euromissile type, deployed by the USA in Europe during the 1980’s and eliminated by the INF Treaty, are capable of hitting Russia, while similar nuclear missiles deployed in Russia can hit Europe but not the USA. Stoltenberg himself, referring to the SSC-8’s that Russia had deployed on its own territory, declared that they are capable of reaching most of Europe, but not the United States. This is how the United States defends Europe.
And in this grotesque affirmation by Stoltenberg, who attributes to Russia “the highly perilous idea of limited nuclear conflict”, he warns:
“All atomic weapons are dangerous, but those which can lower the threshold for use are especially so”.
This is exactly the warning sounded by US military and scientific experts about the B61-12’s which are on the verge of being deployed in Europe:
“Low-powered, more accurate nuclear weapons increase the temptation of using them, even to using them first instead of as a retaliation”.
Why is the Corriere della Sera not going to interview them?
Source: PandoraTV
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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.
Translated by Pete Kimberley
Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Note
*The Corriere della Sera is a historical Italian daily newspaper, founded in Milan in 1876. Published by RCS MediaGroup, it is the most important Italian daily in terms of distribution and the number of readers.
Last week, I came across something I didn’t think I would ever see. But in hindsight, it shouldn’t have surprised me: one of the country’s leading left publications, The Nation, rebuking New York art museums and galleries for showcasing critical perspectives on official narratives of major events — or what we’ve come to know as “conspiracy theories” ever since the media’s embrace of the CIA campaign in the 1960s to discredit critics of the Warren Commission.
Zachary Small, a young “arts journalist” and “theatremaker,” purports to be writing art criticism, but his overarching point is a purely political one: Art institutions should not legitimize, intentionally or unintentionally, anything considered by the mainstream to be “conspiracy theory.” Doing so, he argues, “mutes the destabilizing and degrading effects of conspiracy on democracy.”
Small is not entirely opposed to the idea of “Everything Is Connected.” His complaint, rather, is against the show’s combining of pieces that “take an investigative approach,” documenting things like “the very real existence of government-sanctioned torture and money laundering,” with works of “artistic interpretation” that “revel in the passion of discontent” or that “glorify the notion that the September 11 attacks were an inside job.” (The latter are the paintings of Sue Williams, one of which shows the Twin Towers with the word “nano-thermite,” somewhat smudged out, hovering almost playfully above them.) Small insists that this mix “helps mollify the viewer toward conspiracy.”
But who decides what is “very real” versus “conspiracy” toward which the viewermust not be mollified? Perhaps that line is not so sharply defined for curators Douglas Eklund and Ian Alteveer, who apparently want to nudge viewers to be more skeptical of official narratives. In the final moment of the show’s video preview, Eklund affirms: “I would like to bring back the idea of art as a way of jolting people to get rid of their preconceived notions and to hopefully question more.”
Instead of probing his own preconceived notions about the topics explored in the art, Small berates Eklund and Alteveer for believing “there is value in scavenging through the most contested chapters of American history to find plausible alternatives to today’s hard truths.” In Small’s view of the world, it seems, everything he believes is “hard truth.” Everything he doesn’t believe is “conspiracy theory.”
The blinding effect and harsh consequences of Small’s immovable boundary between truth and falsehood are on full display in the second part of his piece for The Nation, which turns into a diatribe against Fredric Riskin and his installation “9/11: The Collapse of Conscience.” The primary target of Small’s attack is Riskin’s contention that the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and Building 7 collapsed not because of the airplane crashes, but from controlled demolition.
Partway into his assault, Small lays bare his extreme lack of knowledge about the science of the World Trade Center’s destruction when he alleges that Riskin “baldly ignores the available evidence, produced by MIT’s Civil Engineering Department less than a month after the attack.” Small goes on to call the omission of this evidence “purposefully irresponsible.”
In fact, the article by MIT professor Thomas Eagar and his research assistant, Christopher Musso, was positing a theory of the Twin Towers’ collapse that was in vogue in the first year after 9/11 but that official investigators would rule out by 2004. Eagar was hypothesizing that the “weak points . . . were the angle clips that held the floor joists between the columns on the perimeter wall and the core structure.” “As the joists . . . gave way and the outer box columns began to bow outward,” Eagar speculated, “the floors above them also fell.”
The government’s present-day explanation, though just as devoid of evidentiary support, is diametrically contrary to Eagar’s scenario. Today, the story goes that the angle clips connecting the floors and columns did not fail. Consequently, the floor trusses, sagging from the heat of the fires, pulled the perimeter columns inward — not outward — until they buckled. The failure of one wall of columns then caused the other columns to fail. The top section of each tower then fell straight down and completely destroyed the lower 60 and 90 stories of intact structure, respectively. (Never mind that the South Tower’s top section actually tips away from the rest of the structure before spontaneously disintegrating into a midair fireworks display of pulverized concrete and steel projectiles.)
Besides providing an outdated theory and a few corrections to some common misconceptions — indeed, jet fuel fires cannot burn hot enough to melt steel and steel doesn’t need to melt in order for structural failures to occur — Eagar’s article offers little substance compared with today’s large body of literature about the World Trade Center’s destruction. If Small had done any meaningful research on the subject, he surely would not have presented Eagar’s article as the totality of “available evidence.” Nor would he have implied that all of the available evidence, or even a sufficient amount of evidence to draw any conclusions, could be produced less than a month after the event. This notion flies in the face of forensic investigation principles.
Nevertheless, Small is unrestrained in his criticism of Riskin, accusing him of “pseudo-scientific observations” that devolve into “vengeful incoherence.” On the evidence of his scant research, Small is probably unaware (or he chooses to omit) that each of the statements included in Riskin’s three panels on the World Trade Center’s destruction — while delivered in Riskin’s own idiosyncratic, poetic style — echoes the arguments made by thousands of architects, engineers, and scientists.
“Building 7 . . . goes limp in a free-fall descent with pyroclastic flows of dust. Free-fall is impossible for a naturally collapsing building. It becomes the only steel structured skyscraper in the world to ever collapse due to fire.” Support for Riskin’s claims, most of which are undisputed factual observations, can be found in 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out, World Trade Center 7, Part 5, and in several peer-reviewed papers, including “The collapse of WTC 7: A re-examination of the ‘simple analysis’ approach” in the Challenge Journal of Structural Mechanics. (Fredric Riskin, 9/11 The Collapse of Conscience, 20″ X 27”, Panel 24 of 43, Printed on kozo-backed Gampi using pigment inks. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY.)
“A structure collapsing upon itself, floor by floor, is not the path of least resistance. How is it the towers didn’t simply snap and fall like a tree struck by lightening? Instead, they pulverized.” Support for Riskin’s claims can be found in 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out, World Trade Center Twin Towers, Part 3 and Part 5, and in several peer-reviewed papers, including “Some Misunderstandings Related to WTC Collapse Analysis” in the International Journal of Protective Structures. (Fredric Riskin, 9/11 The Collapse of Conscience, 20″ X 27”, Panel 23 of 43, Printed on kozo-backed Gampi using pigment inks. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY.)
When Small is not ineptly attempting to impugn the scientific validity of Riskin’s exposition, he is leveling gratuitous insults at so-called “conspiracy theorists,” a pejorative meant to degrade and dehumanize its target. As if artwork about 9/11 should not be shown on 9/11, Small blasts the Feldman Gallery for launching its show on the September 11th anniversary, likening the day to “Christmas for conspiracy theorists.” I would like to know what is Christmas-like about a father or a brother calling out for justice on the anniversary of their loved one’s murder.
Sadly for the state of our understanding of what actually took place on 9/11 — a day that almost any Nation reader will agree was used to launch a series of unjustified and disastrous wars that continue to this day — Small is not The Nation’s first writer to spew such vitriol at those who question the official narrative of that seminal event. In a 2006 diatribe, “The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts,” the late Alexander Cockburn made several remarkable statements wholly negating “the available evidence.” The most notable of those was his certain declaration that “People inside who survived the collapse didn’t hear a series of explosions.”
Cockburn posed as being well-versed on the claims of the 9/11 Truth Movement. But evidently he did not read, or he chose to ignore, the paper published two weeks earlier by Graeme MacQueen, a retired professor of Religious Studies and Peace Studies at McMaster University in Canada, titled “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers.”
Based on his methodical analysis of transcribed testimonies from 503 members of the New York Fire Department (FDNY), which were made public in 2005 after The New York Timessued the City of New York for their release (no, not all of the evidence could be produced in less than a month), MacQueen found that 118 out of the 503 FDNY personnel interviewed “perceived, or thought they perceived, explosions that brought down the Towers.” Still, it’s not difficult to imagine Cockburn reading these oral histories and proceeding to lecture first responders like Captain Karin DeShore on how the phenomena she witnessed were not explosions taking down the World Trade Center. DeShore recounted in her interview:
“Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.”
The irony is that Cockburn and now Small are guilty of the very thing they seem to be crusading against: people drawing conclusions about world-changing events based more on their biases than on careful evaluation of evidence — what amounts to the ultimate act of hypocrisy for journalists.
Of course, Cockburn and Small are far from the only journalists guilty of this ultimate act of hypocrisy. The New York Timespublished its review of “Everything Is Connected” one day after The Nation’s review was published. More measured and positive in his assessment, Timeswriter Jason Farago reserves his only stridently negative criticism for the aforementioned piece by Sue Williams. It comes as no surprise that he brandishes the same demeaning contempt:
“And sometimes the artists here edge too close to the nutcases’ side for comfort. Sue Williams has recently painted churning, color-saturated works evoking the destruction of the World Trade Center; I bridled at one canvas’s inclusion of the word ‘nanothermite,’ an explosive often mentioned by conspiracy theorists who doubt that planes felled the twin towers.”
It is telling that of all the topics covered in the exhibition, the word “nano-thermite” — an incendiary found in large quantities in the World Trade Center dust, as documented in a 2008 peer-reviewed academic paper and corroborated by the presence of previously molten iron spheres, by “Swiss cheese” steel members, by numerous eyewitness accounts of molten metal, and by liquid metal seen pouring out of the South Tower — is what causes Farago to bridle and resort to epithets like “nutcase” and “conspiracy theorist.” I would wager that Farago has not bothered to investigate why so-called “conspiracy theorists” believe that nano-thermite was used in the World Trade Center’s destruction.
To their immense credit, curators Douglas Eklund and Ian Alteveer refrain almost entirely from using the terms “conspiracy theorist” and even “conspiracy theory” throughout their exhibit. And herein lies the fundamental source of Small’s and Farago’s disgust: Sue Williams’ pieces about 9/11 are featured in a show whose subtitle is “Art and Conspiracy,” not “Art and Conspiracy Theory.” The exhibit’s introductory placard eschews the term “conspiracy theory” in favor of praiseful commentary. The curators write that even the “fantastical works” on display “unearth uncomfortable truths” and that “the exhibition reveals, not coincidentally, conspiracies that turned out not to be theories at all, but truths.”
Zachary Small asserts that the Met Breuer and the Feldman Gallery are “whetting their audience’s appetite for distrust, disdain, and disaffection,” thus feeding “conspiracy theories” that destabilize and degrade our democracy. I assert these developments that Small is concerned about are fed not by the actions of the Met Breuer and the Feldman Gallery, but by the cataclysmic political crimes of the past half century and the refusal of news outlets like The Nation to help expose them.
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„Russische Raketen sind eine Gefahr“ – der Alarm wurde vom NATO-Generalsekretär Jens Stoltenberg in einem Interview mit Maurizio Caprara ausgelöst, das im Corriere della Seradrei Tage vor dem „Vorfall“ im Asowschen Meer veröffentlicht wurde, und noch Öl in das Feuer der ohnehin glühenden Spannung mit Russland goss [1]. „Es gibt keine neuen Raketen in Europa. Aber es gibt russische Raketen, ja“, begann Stoltenberg und ignorierte zwei Tatsachen.
Erstens: Ab März 2020 werden die Vereinigten Staaten damit beginnen, in Italien, Deutschland, Belgien und den Niederlanden (wo die Atombomben B-61 bereits stationiert sind) und wahrscheinlich auch in anderen europäischen Ländern die erste Atombombe mit präziser Führung in ihrem Arsenal, die B61-12, einzusetzen. Ihre Funktion ist in erster Linie antirussisch. Diese neue Bombe ist mit einer Durchschlagskraft ausgestattet, die es ihr ermöglicht, unter der Erde zu explodieren, um die zentralen Kommandobunker bei ihrem ersten Angriff zu zerstören. Wie würden die Vereinigten Staaten reagieren, wenn Russland Atombomben in Mexiko, direkt neben ihrem Territorium, einsetzen würde? Da Italien und die anderen Länder, die gegen den Atomwaffensperrvertrag verstoßen, den USA erlauben, ihre Stützpunkte sowie ihre Piloten und Flugzeuge für den Einsatz von Atomwaffen zu nutzen, wird Europa als die vorderste Linie der wachsenden Konfrontation mit Russland einem größeren Risiko ausgesetzt sein.
Zweitens: 2016 wurde in Rumänien ein neues US-Raketensystem installiert, und ein weiteres ähnliches System wird derzeit in Polen gebaut. Das gleiche Raketensystem ist auf vier Kriegsschiffen installiert, die von der US-Marine im spanischen Hafen Rota aus das Schwarze Meer und die Ostsee in der Nähe von Russland befahren. Die landgestützten Anlagen sind, wie die Schiffe, mit Lockheed Martin Mk41 Senkrechtstartern ausgestattet, die – wie vom Hersteller selbst angegeben – in der Lage sind, „Raketen für alle Missionen zu starten: entweder SM-3s zur Verteidigung gegen ballistische Raketen oder Langstrecken-Tomahawks zur Bekämpfung landgestützter Ziele“. Letztere können auch mit einem Atomsprengkopf beladen werden. Da nicht überprüfen werden kann, welche Raketen tatsächlich in die an der Grenze zu Russland abgestellten Trägerraketen geladen werden, geht Moskau davon aus, dass es auch nukleare Angriffsraketen gibt, was gegen den Vertrag über mittlere Kernwaffen verstößt, der die Aufstellung von Mittel- und Kurzstreckenraketen auf Landstützpunkten verbietet.
Im Gegensatz hierzu, wirft Stoltenberg Russland vor, gegen den INF-Vertrag verstoßen zu haben, und sendet eine Warnung aus: „Wir dürfen nicht zulassen, dass die Verträge ohne Strafe verletzt werden“.
Im Jahr 2014 beschuldigte die Obama-Regierung Russland, ohne den geringsten Beweis dafür zu erbringen, eine Marschrakete (SSC-8) aus einer durch den Vertrag verbotenen Kategorie getestet zu haben, und kündigte an, dass „die Vereinigten Staaten den Einsatz von Bodenraketen in Europa erwägen“, mit anderen Worten, die Aufhebung des INF-Vertrags. Dieser von den europäischen Verbündeten der NATO unterstützte Plan wurde von der Trump-Regierung bestätigt: Im Geschäftsjahr 2018 genehmigte der Kongress die Finanzierung eines Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprogramms für einen Marschflugkörper, der von einer mobilen Plattform gestartet werden soll. Nuklearraketen vom Typ Euromissile, die von den USA in den 80er Jahren in Europa eingesetzt und durch den INF-Vertrag beseitigt wurden, können Russland treffen, während ähnliche Nuklearraketen, die in Russland eingesetzt werden, Europa, nicht aber die USA treffen können. Stoltenberg selbst erklärte unter Bezugnahme auf die SSC-8, die Russland auf seinem eigenen Territorium eingesetzt hatte, dass sie in der Lage seien, „den größten Teil Europas, aber nicht die Vereinigten Staaten zu erreichen“. Auf diese Art „verteidigen“ die Vereinigten Staaten Europa.
Und in dieser grotesken Bekräftigung von Stoltenberg, der Russland „die höchst gefährliche Idee eines begrenzten Atomkonflikts“ zuschreibt, warnt er: „Alle Atomwaffen sind gefährlich, aber diejenigen, die die Schwelle für den Einsatz senken können, sind es besonders“. Genau das ist die Warnung US-amerikanischer Militär- und Wissenschaftsexperten vor den B61-12, die kurz davor stehen, in Europa eingesetzt zu werden: „Niedrigere, genauere Atomwaffen erhöhen die Versuchung, sie zu benutzen, sie sogar zuerst zu verwenden anstatt als Gegenschlag“.
Warum befragt der Corriere della Sera die nicht?
Der Corriere della Sera ist eine historische italienische Tageszeitung, die 1876 in Mailand gegründet wurde. Sie wird von der RCS MediaGroup herausgegeben und ist die wichtigste italienische Tageszeitung in Bezug auf Verbreitung und Leserzahl.
![Exxon's own research in the 1980s indicated that without major reductions in fossil fuel combustion, "[t]here are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered." (Photo: Luc B / Flickr)](https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/exxon_.jpg)
