Global Research

Fidel Castro and Michel Chossudovsky, Havana 2010

This article was first published on August 13, 2016

In the words of Albert Einstein,  “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” And that in so few words describes Fidel Castro’s contribution to the future of humanity.  Fidel’s message is of particular relevance in relation to the “fake news” campaign directed against the independent media.

Author’s Introduction

The dangers of a Third World War are looming. Nuclear war is “on the table”.  “I want the Iranians to know that if  I’m the president, we will attack Iran ….we will obliterate them.”  says presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. 

The outright criminalization of politics. How do we instil sanity and honesty in US foreign policy. 

How do we reverse the tide, how do we dismantle the US-led military agenda?

America’s global war of conquest is supported by a vast propaganda apparatus including the Western mainstream media, segments of the online “alternative media”, the corporate foundations, the elite universities and the establishment thinks tanks. 

War is upheld as a peace-making endeavor. When war becomes peace, the lie becomes the truth. There is no turning backwards. 

 Without war propaganda, the legitimacy of the US-NATO war would collapse like a house of cards.  

War is a criminal undertaking. What is required is to break that legitimacy, to criminalize war through a global counter-propaganda campaign. The lies and  fabrications which provide legitimacy to America’s “humanitarian wars” must be fully revealed. 

In this regard, Fidel’s  “Battle of Ideas” opens up an important avenue. It serves to break a political consensus, it reveals the twisted nature of science and the social sciences, namely the inability of knowledge and analysis to provide an understanding of the true nature of an unfolding “New World Order” predicated on the destruction of representative government and the de facto criminalization of politics. 

The Battle of Ideas consists in confronting the war criminals in high office, breaking the US-led consensus in favor of war, changing the mindset of hundreds of millions of people, abolishing nuclear weapons and ultimately changing the course of world history.

The media, intellectuals, scientists and politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the unspoken truth, namely that the US-NATO led war destroys humanity.

When war is upheld as a humanitarian endeavor,  the judicial system is criminalized, the entire international legal system is turned upside down: pacifism and the antiwar movement are criminalized. Opposing the war becomes a criminal act. Meanwhile, the war criminals in high office have ordered a witch hunt against those who challenge their authority.

The Big Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.

It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.

It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.

It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.

It destroys both nationalism and internationalism.

Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.

This profit driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.

Let us reverse the tide.

Challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.

Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade.

Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.

Bring home the troops.

Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.

This is our task, in towns and villages across the land, nationally and internationally: Counter-propaganda for peace.

The following text is the English version of  the Preface of the Spanish edition of my book,  The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity, launched in Managua, Nicaragua. June 2016.  

Michel Chossudovsky, August 13, 2016

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Counter-propaganda as an “Instrument of Peace”. Fidel Castro and the “Battle of Ideas”: The Dangers of Nuclear War

English version of the Preface to the Spanish Edition,

published in Managua, Nicaragua and Mexico City, Mexico

By Michel Chossudovsky

This book is dedicated to Fidel Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution, whose practice and teachings have been the source of inspiration to grassroots revolutionary movements throughout the World. 

Fidel’s understanding of US imperialism, his writings on neoliberalism and global warfare are of crucial importance in the social struggle against the capitalist World Order including the articulation of people’s movements at national and international levels.  

In our 2010 “Conversations” (see Chapter II), Fidel focussed on the “Battle of Ideas”. He defined the role of concepts and knowledge as a powerful instrument of revolutionary change. While the “Battle of Ideas” emerged in Cuba at an earlier period, Fidel’s recent analysis focusses on the dangers of a Third World War and how to prevent it from occurring.

In the case of a Third World War, Fidel quite rightly pointed out:

“There would be ‘collateral damage’, as the American political leaders always affirm, to justify the deaths of innocent people. In a nuclear war, the ‘collateral damage’ would be the life of all humanity”. 

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For me, Fidel’s formulation had a profound significance. Following our meeting in Havana and upon returning to Canada, I started digging through piles of articles and US military documents on  America’s post 9/11 “pre-emptive” nuclear doctrine, which consists in using nukes for “self-defence” with “minimum collateral damage”: an absurd and diabolical proposal, which in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity. In the following year (2011),  I completed my book on this subject entitled: Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War. 

Fidel Castro in focussing on the “collateral damage” associated with nuclear war had uncovered the “building block” of post-cold war imperialism. The Cold War concepts of “Mutually Assured Destruction” and “Deterrence” not to mention the US-Soviet Union communications “hotline” had been scrapped.

Is nuclear war part of a US policy agenda? Is it on the drawing-board of the Pentagon? The answer is a resounding Yes. Nukes are upheld as “peace-making bombs”. For Hillary Clinton in her 2016 election campaign, the use of nukes against Russia and the Middle East is “on the table”. they are also contemplated for use on a pre-emptive basis against non-nuclear states.

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The Globalization of War

The Pentagon uses the concept of “the long war” to describe what is tantamount to “a war without borders”. In the broader context of World geopolitics, Fidel upholds the “Battle of Ideas” as a means of confronting a powerful propaganda apparatus, precisely with a view to reversing the tide of global warfare which includes the “pre-emptive” first strike use of nuclear weapons.

The Battle of Ideas consists in confronting the war criminals in high office, breaking the US-led consensus in favor of war, changing the mindset of hundreds of millions of people, abolishing nuclear weapons and ultimately changing the course of world history.

The Sources of Propaganda

The structures of propaganda include the Western mainstream media, the establishment thinks tanks and research institutes whose “science” increasingly serves dominant corporate interests including the military industrial complex, Wall Street, the Anglo-american oil companies and Big Pharma.

A related form of propaganda emanates from America’s science laboratories on contract to the Pentagon, the objective of which is to provide a “human face” to  America’s so-called “defense contractors” (weapons producers).  According to “scientific opinion”, US advanced weapons systems are “instruments of peace”. Only America’s enemies produce Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD): Mini-nukes with an explosive capacity of one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb are described in official military documents as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”.

Erasing the History of Socialism 

Academic historians are entrusted with the rewriting of colonial and imperial history. The crimes of empire are soon forgotten. America’s wars of conquest are casually described as “civil wars”. America’s “war on terrorism” is described as a humanitarian undertaking.

In turn, university social scientists both in teaching and research increasingly uphold “globalization” as an avenue of economic and social progress, as the “solution” rather than the “cause” of the Worldwide crisis.

This propaganda exercise also consists in erasing the history of socialism as well as eradicating from our collective memory the numerous nationalist movements and social struggles against US imperialism:  Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Palestine, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Tanzania, Chile, Grenada, Algeria, South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, Afghanistan, Libya, …and many more…. the list is long.

“Economic Science” 

In economics, abstract models totally divorced from reality are used to analyze reality.

Students must conform to the tenets of macro-economic theory and mathematical model building.

Economic theory ignores the reality of economics. Its abstract “pure theory” formulations constitute a pseudo-science which provides de facto legitimacy to the neoliberal monetary policies imposed by corrupt Western governments, on behalf of powerful banking institutions.

Realities are turned upside down. The neoliberal consensus prevails. Drastic austerity measures coupled with the “free market” under IMF auspices are upheld as a means to generating economic growth and alleviating poverty. Ultimately what is at stake is that science, knowledge and analysis have been moulded and manipulated to such an extent that an understanding of the “real world” is no longer possible.

It is in this context that the “Battle of Ideas” opens up an important avenue. It serves to break a political consensus, it reveals the twisted nature of science and the social sciences, namely the inability of knowledge and analysis to provide an understanding of the true nature of an unfolding “New World Order” predicated on the destruction of representative government and the de facto criminalization of politics.

My understanding of the “Battle of Ideas” is that it seeks to reveal and uphold the Truth. It  targets the fake science and knowledge practiced by establishment researchers, journalists, scientists, historians and social scientists.

In the present day and age, critical analysis is indelibly threatened:  most Western intellectuals by conforming to a broad “politically correct” consensus, are tacitly supportive of the capitalist world order. This is crucial because the “authority” of knowledge and understanding which these establishment intellectuals convey ultimately  trickles down to the grassroots of society and shapes the perceptions of the broader public.

That “authority” emanating from those who “think on behalf of the ruling elites” must be broken as a means to ultimately breaking the ruling elites. The consensus which provides legitimacy to a corrupt economic and social system must be broken.

In contrast, the role of the committed intellectual —invariably blacklisted by the Western media— consists in refuting and ultimately breaking that “politically correct” consensus: what this requires is an all out “Battle of Ideas” against media disinformation, war propaganda, think tank research and establishment scholarship.

Some people on the Left will say: what we need is to formulate an alternative paradigm, i.e.  “Another World is Possible”.  Let us be clear: we are not dealing with an ideological battle between conflicting paradigms or World views. An abstract blueprint of an “Alternative” discussed at a World Forum will not in itself lead to fundamental changes in the capitalist World order.  Proposing a “new paradigm” in the abstract removed from an understanding of how the existing social, political and economic system actually functions will not result in meaningful change.

What is required are social movements which rely on a detailed understanding (through research and empirical analysis) of the functioning of contemporary capitalism, its complex economic and social system. And that analytical understanding cannot remain solely within the sphere of intellectual debate, It must be embodied within a mass movement, it must constitute the basis for strategic action against the corporate elites.

Social and economic research must so to speak be “democratized”, namely the workings of this system have to be understood by the grassroots social movements. Ideas are thereby integrated into the revolutionary praxis of class struggle. And that can only be effectively accomplished once the neoliberal propaganda apparatus is broken.

Theory and Practice 

Concepts and analysis are never formulated in the abstract. The relationship between concepts and the concrete social realities of class struggle is fundamental. (This relationship is the essence of Marxian analysis which is often misunderstood). Concepts are built from a detailed investigation of the New World Order, its global financial system, its real economy, its institutions, its extensive military and intelligence apparatus, its historical evolution and how it impacts on fundamental economic and social relations and more fundamentally on people’s lives.

Theory cannot under any circumstances override this complex reality. Reality does not conform to theory. Quite the opposite: theory, namely conceptualization, emanates from reality. Ideas in support of a revolutionary process are not abstract theoretical concepts.  Theoretical formulations are derived from empirical analysis, through a detailed understanding of real life, of the conditions of poverty and despair affecting large sectors of the World population.

This dialectical relationship between theory and reality defines the revolutionary role of  the intellectual committed to ultimately breaking the neoliberal consensus.

Manipulating the Class Struggle: Neoliberalism Creates Social Divisions

The imposition of neoliberalism feeds on divisiveness, it encourages the creation of divisions within political parties and organizations opposed to the neoliberal consensus. The underlying strategy of the Neocons is not to crush the protest movement but to create a variety of separate protest movements which do not threaten the capitalist world order. It is in this regard that protest (supported and financed by elite foundations) becomes a ritual of dissent which accepts the legitimacy of those who are the object of the protest.

In an era marked by “humanitarian wars”, “color revolutions” and regime change, various “left” opposition coalitions have emerged.  Yet at the same time many of these social movements supported by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been highjacked. They are co-opted and financed by corporate foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, et al). The latter are not only controlled by powerful financial conglomerates, they also have links to US intelligence.

Despite the setbacks of recent years including US led wars in the Middle East, coups d’état, insurgencies, State supported terrorism, economic sanctions, regime change,… the class struggle must indelibly prevail. For it to succeed, however, the inner workings of global capitalism must be understood: And that is where the “battle of ideas” comes in.

Conceptualization and analysis of economic and social realities are to be combined with the formulation of strategies and revolutionary praxis with a view to disarming the capitalist World Order.

But that cannot be achieved when “progressive leaders”, “left intellectuals” and anti-war activists  are coopted by elite foundations. The ploy is to infiltrate people’s organizations, selectively handpick civil society leaders “whom we can trust” and integrate them into a “dialogue”, make them feel that they are “progressives” acting on behalf of their grassroots, but make them act in a way which serves the interests of the corporate establishment.

Global Capitalism 

What is ultimately at stake are the structures and institutional base of global capitalism which are characterized by fraud, money laundering, corruption and co-optation. The latter not only permeate the corporate establishment, they also characterize the “opposition” organizations coopted and financed by elite foundations.

The “Battle of Ideas” questions the legitimacy of government decision-makers in high office; concurrently it reveals the criminal nature of the State and more specifically of US foreign policy. In turn the latter are sustained by the criminalization of international law.

The ultimate objective is to to reverse the dominant imperial ideology, which upholds “humanitarian wars” as peacemaking undertakings and which upholds austerity measures, low wages, bankruptcies, privatization and the repeal of social programs as an “economic solution”.

The underlying institutional fabric of global capitalism —political as well as economic— is sustained by a vast intelligence and propaganda apparatus.  And that is what has to be broken.

Ultimately honesty, solidarity and commitment combined with carefully formulated strategies and “analysis” are the driving forces behind a genuine class struggle.

In the words of Albert Einstein,  “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” And that in so few words describes Fidel Castro’s contribution to the future of humanity:

“We don’t need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, because our commitment is to peace and fraternity among all human beings who live on this planet.” (Fidel Castro Ruz, “Brother Obama”, Grannma, March 27,  2016, Message to Barack Obama upon his visit to Cuba)

Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, Quebec, May 2016

Directly from Global Research Publishers:

During an interview with BBC Persia, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States will starve millions of Iranians to death if the country’s leadership doesn’t bend to its will. 

Pompeo said Iran’s “leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat.” 

This is siege warfare. It is illegal under the Geneva Conventions, in particular the protocol relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Article 53: Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited). 

But then neocons don’t do international law. 

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser and a neocon’s neocon, recently said the US will “use any means necessary” to push back against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its commitment to punish war crimes. Bolton warned the US will sanction and arrest individuals investigating war crimes and the torture of detainees, the latter conducted by “patriots,” according to Bolton. He added that frustrating prosecution of war crimes “remains one of my proudest achievements.” 

In 2002, the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and China refused to sign the ICC’s founding document, thus indicating they would continue to use siege warfare, famine, torture, ethnic cleansing, rape, and wholesale murder of innocent civilians. 

For more than 70 years, Israel has shot, bombed, and ethnically cleansed Palestinian Arabs. Saudi Arabia has produced the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory as it continues to viciously attack Yemen with the help of the United States. China continues its “strike hard” campaign against Uyghur opposition, the ethnic cleansing of Tibetan monastics, and the expansion of its laogai forced labor camps (where consumer goods are manufactured and then sold to Walmart shopping Americans). 

A normal, non-psychopathic person would undoubtedly recoil at the thought of Iranian children starving, but then we’re talking about neocons responsible for the engineered murder of 1.5 million Iraqis, including 500,000 children under the Bush-Clinton sanctions regime. 

Hillary Clinton isn’t considered a card-carrying neocon, yet she stands shoulder to shoulder with Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Bolton when it comes to killing recalcitrant Arabs, Muslims, and other enemies of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and prevent what the late Zbigniew Brzezinski described as vassals and barbarians coming together in organized resistance to neoliberal geostrategy of domination and exploitation. 

Mike Pompeo’s psychopathic ultimatum was not widely covered by the corporate media. The apathy and intellectual laziness of the American people make genocide, siege warfare, starvation, and other crimes against humanity possible, mostly due to incessant lies and distortions produced by a corporate media acting as a propaganda ministry for the war state.  

There has not been a viable—or even visible—antiwar movement since the days of George W. Bush, thanks in large part of the political voodoo of Barack Obama and his CFR, Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg insiders, basically the same folks now calling the shots for the geopolitical ignoramus, Donald Trump. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

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Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, November 2018.

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Since March of 2015 the United States has engineered and guided a genocidal war against the people of Yemen.

Daily bombing operations by the Saudi Arabian-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has killed tens of thousands of people, injured and sickened hundreds of thousands more and created the worse humanitarian crisis in the world.

At present Yemen is facing famine due to the targeting of hospitals, schools and neighborhoods in an effort to break the will of the people to resist this military onslaught. The strategic port at Hodeida is a key element in the campaign waged by the Saudi-GCC coalition to starve the Yemini population into submission.

Nonetheless, the U.S. and British-backed forces are nowhere nearer to defeating the Ansurallah-led coalition which has seized huge swaths of territory in the north, central and southern regions of the country, the most underdeveloped and impoverished in the entire West Asia. A renewed battle launched by the Saudi-allied militias to take control of Hodeida has failed amid stiff resistance by the Popular Committees committed to defending this important outlet for essential goods flowing into the country.

Even after the call for a ceasefire by the administration of President Donald Trump and the British Prime Minister Theresa May, the attacks by the Saudi-GCC coalition have escalated. Such a course of action raises serious questions about the sincerity of the appeal for the resumption of United Nations brokered talks to end the horrendous war. 

It should be reiterated that the warplanes, ordnances, refueling technology and diplomatic cover provided by Washington and London have been essential in the Saudi-GCC war against Yemen since 2015. Successive U.S. administrations and British governments continue to supply arms to the Saudi monarchy and its cohorts in the region. 

The apparent premeditated killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Turkey has highlighted the links between Washington and Riyadh. The response to the killing of Khashoggi by the Trump administration has been cautious and muted. 

Perhaps in an effort to deflect attention away from the implicit guilt of Washington, the Trump administration called for a cessation of hostilities and the beginning of efforts to end the war which has regional implications. The political reasoning of the U.S. for their sponsoring of the genocidal onslaught in Yemen is based upon allegations that the Ansurallah movement is supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This imperialist rationale is aimed at containing the influence of Tehran which is a major threat to the hegemony of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), both of whom are staunch participants in the broader designs for total western hegemony in the region. The inability to dislodge the Ansurallah and the Popular Committees exposes the obvious limitations of such an approach therefore emboldening resistance forces seeking a genuine independent and sovereign existence for the people of West Asia and beyond.

An article published by Press TV on November 7 based upon a speech delivered by Ansurallah leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi says:

“The US role in the military operations against our nation is pivotal. All fiendish plots against Yemen are hatched by the US, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Traitors just struggle to carry them out on the ground. Washington is speaking of peace at the same time that it is directing the Yemen war. Traitors are operating under the auspices of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and executing their orders.”

This same speech by al-Houthi points directly at the role of the U.S. noting that those “allies” of Saudi Arabia are viewed as mere pawns in the process. The Ansurallah leader claimed that the desire by Washington to reap profits from the sale of weapons to Riyadh is the driving force in the war.

Al-Houthi is quoted as emphasizing that:

“The United States has managed to reap tremendous financial gains, including arms deals, from the Saudi-led aggression on Yemen. Washington is supporting the Riyadh regime to be able to stand [on] its feet. It is also managing the violent and criminal role of Saudi Arabia. The recent uptick in attacks on Yemen comes as a number of (Persian) Gulf littoral states, notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are warming their relations with the Zionist regime (of Israel).”

Genocidal War Brings Yemen to the Brink of Famine

The character of the Yemen war as represented by the deliberate targeting of civilians many of whom are internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees impacted by wars throughout the region is largely being hidden from the people of the U.S. and Britain. In many cases reports on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen fail to mention the daily bombings and ground operations notwithstanding the supply of arms and other forms of assistance by the imperialists.

Assessments by the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator Mark Lowcock conveys that three-quarters of the people in Yemen, a nation of over 28 million, are in dire need of food, healthcare, medicines, potable water and housing. This same agency is predicting that the country could be the scene of the worst famine witnessed anywhere in the world in generations.

A cholera epidemic has sickened over one million people since 2017. Official figures published by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate that approximately 2,500 have died from this disease which is contracted through the consumption of contaminated drinking water. 

Bombing and ground operations around Hodeida port has hampered the ability of healthcare facilities to provide emergency services. This siege of the port on the Red Sea represents the entry point for 85% of the food supplies imported into the country.

In a statement released on November 8 by Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, the WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, the humanitarian specialist provides details on the current situation around the port city of Hodeida. The attempts of the Saudi-GCC coalition to dislodge the Popular Committees from the area have further endangered 2.4 million people living and working there.

Dr. Al-Mandhari in his statement said:

“The current violence in Al Hudaydah (Hodeida) is placing tens of thousands of already vulnerable people at risk, and preventing WHO from reaching them with the help they urgently need. The violence, now in close proximity to the area hospitals, is affecting the movement and safety of health staff, patients and ambulances, as well as the functionality of health facilities, leaving hundreds without access to treatment…. The people of Yemen are victims of this tragic, man-made crisis. Many have died due to the violence, some directly but most as the result of restricted access to health care, causing deaths that are normally preventable.” (See this)

Post-Elections Context for U.S. Foreign Policy in Yemen

Worldwide attention has been focused on the November 6 midterm elections in the U.S. which resulted in the Republican Party losing its majority in the House of Representatives and at the same time gaining several seats within the Senate, increasing its dominance over this legislative wing of the Congress. A split government will intensify the existing struggle over the domestic policies governing the country in the realms of immigration, healthcare, race relations and environmental regulations, etc.

Nonetheless, there have been virtually no differences related to foreign policy questions among the Democrats and the Republicans. The current phase of the war against Yemen began under the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama. There was no serious attempt to end the war in 2015-2016, therefore the Trump administration inherited the situation and has continued the attempts to defeat the Ansurallah and its allies within the Popular Committees. 

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders earlier in 2018 sought to pass a resolution calling for an end to direct military support for Saudi-GCC war. This effort failed and there are no clear signals as to whether the incoming 2019 Democratic majority House will even debate the current military assistance provided to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are controlled by the U.S. ruling class. Even though the two groupings have different constituencies within the population, decisions related to war and peace has continued to favor the militarization of the society.

Resources allocated for imperialist wars abroad and state repression domestically could be utilized for the rebuilding of the cities, suburbs and rural areas of the U.S. Tens of millions remain in poverty as the gap between rich and poor widens.

These issues will only be resolved through a fundamental shift in the control of economic and political institutions in the U.S. Until the government is forced by the people to end its wasteful and genocidal war machine the world will continue to experience instability and dislocation.   

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

On 4th November, 2018, Christine Assange, mother of Julian Assange, made a deeply moving video public  appeal to  save the life of her son Julian.  

Julian Assange is Editor in Chief of Wikileaks. Because of Wikileaks reporting of acts during US/NATO’s illegal wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., and the highlighting of corruption by USA/CIA and Corporate powers, and continuing his fight in disclosing the links between the private corporations and government agencies, Julian Assange has been threatened by high profile USA citizens, and a Grand Jury has been set up in America to try Julian Assange and Wikileaks, for their publications.  For this he is being persecuted and deprived of his right to liberty, basic human rights etc., Six years ago Julian Assange, aware of these extradition plans of America, sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy, in London, where he remains.  Julian Assange is now six years within the Ecuadorian Embassy, and has now been detained WITHOUT CHARGES for eight years.

In her appeal for her sons life, Christine Assange says he is in immediate critical danger.  He is now all alone, sick, cut off from all contacts including computer phone mail  and being persecuted in the heart of London. Ms. Assange says‚

‘for the past six years the UK Gov. has refused his request for basic health care, fresh air, sunshine for vitamin D, access to proper medical and dental care. As a result his health has seriously deteriorated.  Doctors  have said the detention conditions are life threatening. In 2016 after in-depth investigations the UN ruled that Julians legal and human rights had been violated on multiple occasions and that he has been illegally detained in 2010 and they ordered his immediate release, safe passage and compensation. The UK Gov has refused to abide by this UN decision’.   

When US Vice President Mike Pence visited Ecuador several months ago, behind scenes, Ecuador done a deal with US to have Julian Assange extradited for life to USA prison. Ecuador are trying to make this acceptable by saying that the US has agreed not to kill him. Now its a propaganda war with the US and UK to reduce his support enough to get away with  it politically. The UK/US extradition act means he could be held in Guantanamo Prison and face torture, 45 years indefinite detention and/or death penalty.

Currently there is a court case in Ecuador fighting the threats to violate his asylum given by the previous President of Ecuador.   There are strict protocol set down by the Ecuadorian Embassy regarding visitors and to date Julian has not managed to have visitors for many months now.

The Ecuadorian Embassy has admitted formal restrictions on Julian Assange  and he is gagged from saying anything about politics, foreign policy human rights abuses, in fact anything critical about any country in the world.

This is political persecution of Julian Assange by high level people and it is punishment for exposing high level corruption when he was editor of Wikileaks.

Christine Assange has appealed to save her sons life, and her appeal deserves an immediate response by us all and the Parties responsible. Mr. Assange is not asking for special treatment, he simply insists that the UK applies standard laws and procedures to him. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s opinion confirmed Mr. Assange’s right to liberty and right to protection. A text between Ecuador and the United Kingdom guaranteeing Assange  would not be extradited to the USA,would provide an immediate resolution to the continued illegal and arbitrary detention of Mr. Assange.

Mr. Assange is an Australian Citizen and the Australian Government have a moral and legal responsibility to renew his passport and facilitate his  safe return to  his own country, should he wish to do so. Julian Assange deserves all our admiration and gratitude for his courage and bravery in truth-telling. He is an inspiration to us all, together with his colleagues at Wikileaks, who are paying a high price for informing the public and upholding our right to know when Governments’ violate human rights and international laws.

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In the moral version of human history – expressed in the Quran, Bible, and Torah – corruption is considered the worst reckless impulse that caused men to fall from grace. It was the betrayal of trust and loyalty for purely selfish gains.

From that perspective, the root cause of corruption is individual moral shutdown, derailment or deficiency. On the other hand, modern-day scrutiny of corruption zooms in on institutions and good governance – professional and technocratic excellence and adherence to policies and procedures.

Much of this article will be dealing with the latter perspective, though no lasting solution to corruption can be found without considering the individual aspect. This could be the reason why corruption is scandalously ever-present in every aspect of the Somali government.

Harmonized Contradictions

Ironically, if a “Corruption Hall of Shame” were inaugurated, the majority of the top 10 list would be Muslim rulers representing nations ranking high in natural resources. Somalia would be leading the list as it has the past decade. This is the direct result of a culture of impunity and a lack of anti-corruption teachings.

However, you would not have heard this from the former UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Somalia Michael Keating. In his briefing to the Security Council last month, he said that Somalia has “a government with a compelling reform agenda anchored in strong partnership between President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre.” He continued by telling the Council members that “its centerpiece is to make the country creditworthy and accountable as a step to gain full sovereignty, reduce dependency and attract both public and private investments. IMF benchmarks are being met … and debt relief is closer.”

Well, of course. Somalia’s politicians are ready for more loans and dodgy deals such as Soma Oil and Gas, whose former Executive Director for Africa is the country’s current prime minister. Never mind the glaring conflict of interests.

Being instituted a few months after Somalia emerged out of its “transitional period” in 2012, the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) was established as a central bank of the donor funds and to facilitate the reconciliation process. However, UNSOM gradually morphed into the carrot-dangler that lures all across the political spectrum, the gatekeeper of the political process, and the legitimizer of any selected new government through corruption as long as it does not challenge certain dubious deals such as Soma Oil and Gas and the massive IMF and World Bank debts.

Incidentally, the United Kingdom is Somalia’s penholder at the Security Council. In other words, the U.K. has the most powerful role in all Somalia related issues. It has the exclusive authority to draft resolutions and frame any debate on the country. All three UNSOM leaders were British (guerilla) diplomats, though the latest has South African citizenship.

If I was not blunt enough in the past, let me try again. The international apparatus that was set up to “fix Somalia” is the main hoax for keeping it perpetually broken. As long as there are corrupt or pitifully credulous Somali politicians who are eager to legitimize the current system for their personal gains the nation will remain at the mercy of international and local predators.

As long as there are corrupt or pitifully credulous Somali politicians who are eager to legitimize the current system for their personal gains, the schizophrenia – journey toward sovereignty – will continue and the nation will remain at the mercy of international and local predators.

On Scale

In a 2013 article titled The Corruption Tango I wrote: “While robust functioning of all governmental institutions and policies of checks and balances are crucial to fighting corruption, the most crucial is the branch that enforces such policies.” Five years later, there is not an iota of improvement towards that end. The courts remain scandalously corrupt. Cash, clan, and connections are still the three most popular currencies in Somalia. Yet the current government audaciously claims it is committed to ending corruption.

Can a government that came to power through a manifestly corrupt process of purchasing votes through dark money “eradicate that sick mentality,” as Prime Minster Khayre said in 2017? Of course not, but it can manage perceptions and put on a good show for public relations.

Selective Enforcement and Co-option

Unlike its predecessor, the current government has a clever plan for distraction. They routinely carry out public prosecutions of petty corruption cases with media fanfare and public trumpet blasts while turning a blind eye to various shady deals that involve top officials within the government.

A few mega “corporations” practically own the entire country. Over the past two decades, these companies, especially those in the telecommunication business who are granted exclusive right to use the official gateway and country code without paying licensing fees or taxes, have been investing in keeping business as usual. It is an open secret how these mega companies co-opt key political actors by bringing them on board as stakeholders or through kickbacks to ensure their silence. Meanwhile, the old lady selling tomatoes under the scorching sun is routinely harassed by the municipality to pay her “public service” dues.

This widely accepted, flagrantly unjust clan-based system, known as the 4.5 system, remains the most potent force that maintains the culture of corruption and impunity in Somalia. Certain clans are guaranteed high ministerial positions. Once inside, these ministers are expected to suck as much as they can for their respective clans, themselves or both. Nepotism continues to be the most common practice in all branches of the government.

#Somalia 4.5 system isn't z real problem. It's z Orwellian mindset that "All (clans) are equal, but some (clans) are more equal than others"

— Abukar Arman (@Abukar_Arman) April 2, 2016

Defusing Scrutiny

Like the previous governments, the current administration facilitates key Members of Parliament and their family members with foreign medical services, scholarships for their children, and armored vehicles for protection.

Certain elements within the international community not only tolerate this corruption but also cultivate the right environment for it. Selected Somalian ministers may be granted easy access to funds for this or that project, or may be invited to some of those never-ending conferences in foreign cities. In return, these key individuals give those in the international community priceless cover, a patronage system, and a code of silence that sustains a two-way system of corruption.

Most of the Somalian ministers are members of the parliament, and the government is aggressively using whatever is in its disposal to co-opt the parliament. Only days after President Farmajo returned from his Qatar state visit in May, his office or the executive branch offered the Somali parliamentarians a deal none of them could refuse: an early vacation or recess and $5,000 cash per MP – so much for checks and balances.

These actions are to neutralize a restless parliament bent on advancing a “no confidence” motion to oust the current prime minister, whose long affiliation with the predatory Soma Oil and Gas and his draconian policies to silence opposition groups reached a breaking point.

You probably got the hunch now as to why a provisional constitution that fails to address key issues such as the national border has been the law of the land since 2012, why “constitutional reform” conferences are being held almost bi-monthly, and why the Constitutional Court and an Independent Reconciliation Commission are not established.

Corruption does not only erode public trust or causes division and malice. It squanders scarce resources and thus creates an existential threat. Impunity opens the gate for a culture of self-destruction (politically, economically, socially, and spiritually). Therefore, institutional tolerance of a culture of corruption is corruption.

Corruption is dangerous as it directly undermines security by making infiltration and intelligence compromise an easy endeavor. Terrorists have been going through checkpoints and security barricades very easily to reach their soft targets.

When it comes to corruption, there is no such thing as “bottom top” reform. There is only “top bottom.” Both the parliament and the executive branch are well aware of where to start if and when they become serious about fighting corruption. But knowing what kind of funky business it is in, the government remains too thin-skinned when it comes to scrutiny or criticism.

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This article was also published on The Globe Post.

Abukar Arman is a political analyst, writer, and former Somalia Special Envoy to the U.S. Contact him @Abukar_Arman

According to Cold War notion of strategic stability, deterrence will prevail if both countries have second strike capability due to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Likewise, deterrence will be fragile if only one state has second strike capability.

The Indian Ocean is a global common and is named after India in geographical sense but New Delhi has lately started self-believing that this Middle Eastern cum Afro-Asian oceanic expanse is India’s backyard. India is the first South Asian littoral State that is introducing nuclear weapons into this Ocean. Like India nuclearized South Asia in 1974, the onus of provoking a response in the Indian Ocean rests with it.

The pursuit and maintenance of nuclear capability has been important for India to project its power, to revise global order and increase its influence and prestige not only in South Asia but also the Indian Ocean rim and beyond. In November 2017, India deployed its second Arihant-class SSBN, the Arighat. Currently, India is also constructing two more Arihant-class submarines. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has also dedicated GSAT-7 satellite which is used by Indian Navy as a multi-band military communications satellite. Aside from India’s second operational nuclear-powered submarine, it has 13 diesel-electric ones, among which about half are in service. Such Indian ambitions, growing economic and industrial and naval capabilities coupled with canisterization and MIRVing of missiles pose serious challenges not only for Pakistan’s maritime, energy and economic security but also for its conventional and strategic capabilities.

India started gaining experience of operating leased Russian nuclear powered submarines in 1980s. A sea-based nuclear strike force is a route to an assured second-strike capability beyond South Asia. New Delhi will be able to project its strategic capability globally. Major Powers which presently, do not take India as a threat might have a plan B if India shifts to its so called non-alignment policy to version 3.0.

In 2003, India revised its 1999 nuclear doctrine. The draft doctrine of 2003 relied on the principals of No First Use (NFU), Massive Retaliation, and Credible Minimum Deterrence (CMD). Having officially adopted a posture of no first use and assured retaliation, India considered it essential to acquire a capacity for continuous at-sea nuclear deterrence (CASD) to ensure the survivability of its nuclear second-strike capability. Recently, a debate has evolved on the possibility of shift in Indian nuclear doctrine. As India terms its sea-based leg of the nuclear triad as a critical enabler of doctrine of No-First-Use. The potential change in No-First Use policy and adopting the First Use doctrine does not hold logic in this paradigm.

India portrays that it faces a security trilemma due to two-front challenges in terms of security (One being China, other being Pakistan). Furthermore, by camouflaging behind South Asian Naval Nuclear Trilemma, India has plans to continue to enlarge and modernize its SSBN fleet due to alleged threat from China. Such Indian motivations and perceptions vis-à-vis China do not hold ground as Indian military program started before Chinese nuclear tests which were conducted in 1964. In 1963, Homi Bhabha who is considered the father of Indian Nuclear Program wrote to Prime Minister Nehru stating that the Chinese nuclear test will be of no military significance and Chinese possession of a few bombs will not make any difference to the military situation. Also, even when China possesses only 250 nuclear weapons, India has the capability and capacity to produce approximately 2600 nuclear weapons. This capability, if acquired and goes unchecked by the major powers, does not hold ground vis-à-vis regional ambitions. This shows Indian ambitions to opt for blue water navy and global hegemonic ambitions which may pose a serious security threats in future to the U.S. and Russia alike.

India, China and Pakistan security calculus cannot be seen in isolation from the role of the U.S. in the region. U.S. considers India as a major defence partner, providing it a bigger role in the Asia-Pacific. The Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) between U.S. and India, coupled with Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) which permits both India and the U.S. military forces to use each other’s bases and other infrastructure, can antagonize China and affect the Balance of Power in the region. Therefore, this situation can be termed as India, China Pakistan, U.S. Nuclear Quadrangle.

Like Pakistan reluctantly responded to nuclearization of South Asia in 1974, Islamabad has started taking restrained and minimal measures to ensure deterrence stability in the IOR. Pakistan’s navy at present operates five French diesel-electric submarines: three purchased in the 1990s and two dating from the late 1970s. In May 2012, Pakistan established its Naval Strategic Force Command (NSFC) which is the custodian of Pakistan’s sea-based developing capability to strengthen its CMD and maintain strategic stability in the region. In November 2016, Pakistan established a Very Low Frequency (VLF) communication facility that provides a secure military communication link, hence, enhancing the flexibility and reach of operations including the use of submarines. Pakistan also has developed Babur III SLCM (450 Km range).

The completion of nuclear triad by India and its naval nuclear modernization can persuade it to use non-violent compellence against Pakistan in the future. This strategy can include a naval blockade. Thus, the nuclearization of Indian Ocean by India can give it more offensive edge, prompting possibilities of coercive nuclear escalation between India and Pakistan in case of a conflict.

To stabilize deterrence, both adversaries should have an assured second strike capability. India has an unfair advantage of lead time in developing the capability and also has access to foreign technologies. Therefore, it is logical for Pakistan should also take minimal measures to stabilize deterrence.

To end with, it is imperative to address the security issues between India and Pakistan which will be reverberated due to emerging Indian maritime nuclear capabilities. It is high time to reconcile India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence with arms control.

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Anum A Khan is a Senior Research Fellow at Strategic Vision Institute (SVI), Islamabad, and a PhD Scholar at Defense and Strategic Studies Department (DSS), Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad.

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Citizens’ Petition to Lift All Sanctions Against Venezuela Is Rejected by Canadian Parliament

By Nino Pagliccia, November 09, 2018

While Canada chooses to speak of the “dire human rights and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela” – where there is none – it ignores, condones and rather endorses Saudi Arabia in the making of one of the worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen. That is the most vicious double standard that a “democratic” country can demonstrate.

None Dare Call It Victory: Analysis of US 2018 Elections

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, November 09, 2018

The failure of Democratic Party leaders’ 2018 strategy to deliver as promised last night should also raise some serious questions about its strategy going forward for 2020. That strategy focused on running women and a few veterans in suburban districts and targeting the independent voter—a Suburbia Strategy—i.e. an approach apparently abandoning the 2008 successful Democratic strategy of targeting millennials, blacks and latinos, and union workers who since 2012 have been steadily reducing their support for Democrats.

Nicaragua and the U.S. Neo-fascist Offensive

By Fabián Escalante Font, November 09, 2018

A police force and army (both formed in the liberation war against the empire) have together provided security for citizens and have systematically combated drug trafficking and gangs in the region. The security they offer doesn’t exist in any other country in the area nor probably in other regions of the continent.

5G Corporate Grail. Microwave Radiation

By Joyce Nelson, November 09, 2018

There’s a lot of hype about 5G, the fifth-generation wireless technology that is being rolled out in various “5G test beds” in major cities including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, New York, and Los Angeles. But it’s hard to see why we should be excited. Proponents talk about the facilitation of driverless vehicles and car-to-car “talk,” better Virtual Reality equipment, and, of course, “The Internet of Things” (IoT) – the holy grail of Big Tech that is just vague enough to sound sort of promising.

What is the Significance of the Reopening of the UAE Embassy in Damascus. Syria’s “Pivot” towards “Reconciliation” with Saudi Arabia?

By Andrew Korybko, November 08, 2018

It would be foolish to believe that the uber-wealthy UAE needs war-torn Syria more than the reverse, so the reported reopening of the Emirati Embassy more than likely signals a significant change in policy on Damascus’ behalf and not Abu Dhabi’s, the ramifications of which could be far-reaching for the entire region and especially Iran.

The CIA’s Latest Greatest Failure

By Philip Giraldi, November 08, 2018

Government agencies that are skilled at invading nearly everyone’s privacy worldwide are sometimes totally inept at keeping their own internal communications secure. The problem is particularly acute for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which must maintain secure contact with thousands of foreign agents scattered all over the world.

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On November 8, the Syrian Special Forces freed all hostages, who had been captured by ISIS in eastern al-Suwayda and then held in eastern Homs, the Syrian state media reported. According to the report, the operation took place in the area of Hamimah east of Palmyra, where Syrian troops eliminated a group of ISIS terrorists and feed the hostages.

The SANA provided no further details. However, Syrian pro-government activists believe that Russia Special Forces may have played own role in the operation.

ISIS captured civilians in a brutal attack on the government-held area on July 25. Since then, the Damascus government had been struggling to rescue the hostages and even attempted to strike a deal on this issue with the terrorist group in October. However, only 6 civilians were saved this way. The military option appeared to be more effective.

Earlier this week, troops of the Russian Special Operations Forces reportedly arrived to the eastern part of al-Suwayda province in order to support the Syrian Army operation against ISIS in the al-Safa area.

A day earlier, Syrian pro-government sources reported that the elite 4th Division had been redeployed from northwestern Syria to positions around al-Safa. Several heavy rocket launchers were also deployed near the ISIS-held area. A source in the Syrian Army told SouthFront that government troops are preparing to launch a new attack on ISIS in al-Safa in the nearest future.

Since late July, the army has carried out several attempts to eliminate the ISIS pocket in the area, but a part of the pocket has remained in ISIS hands. Now, when the hostages are freed and the Russian military advisers are deployed ISIS is in much more complicated situation.

On November 8, the US-led coalition repelled an ISIS attempt to attack its military garrison near the al-Tanak oil field in the province of Deir Ezzor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. The coalition reportedly eliminated over 20 ISIS members and 7 vehicles.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) also deployed additional troops to boost  security in the area.

Previously, the SDF recaptured a number of positions which it had lost to ISIS near the Hajin pocket in the Euphrates Valley. However, the situation in the area remains tense because the SDF is conducting no offensive operations against ISIS there now. The reason is Turkish strikes on SDF positions as well as Ankara’s threats to kick off a large-scale military operation against the Kurdish-dominated group in northern Syria.

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We’ve been warning about this moment since the first day TruePublica went online. We said that the government would eventually take the biometric data of every single citizen living in Britain and use it for nefarious reasons.  DNA, fingerprint, face, and even voice data will be included. But that’s not all.

The excuse to be used, as ever, will be national security or terrorism, despite the huge fall in fatalities from terrorism and terror-related incidents since the 1970s.

Apart from crime-fighting, the Home Office also proposes in its long-awaited report that it will use the centralized database for vetting migrants on the streets and borders of Britain.

Not for the first time, civil rights groups argue that systems such as face recognition is faulty, dubiously legal, and collected without public consent. The outcry over Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the EU referendum should, if nothing else, confirm that bulk data collection, used without either public debate or a legal basis is emphatically against our civil liberties.

However, the legality of the creation of a centralised biometric database will not stop a government who have been repeatedly caught breaking the law when it comes to privacy and data collection. Police, immigration, and passport agencies already collect DNA, face, and fingerprint data. On the latter, police forces across Britain now have fingerprint scanners on the streets of Britain with officers providing no more than a promise that fingerprint data taken will be erased if the person stopped is innocent of any crime.

The government’s face database already has 12.5 million people – or so it has admitted to. The Home Office, embroiled in all sorts of privacy and surveillance legal cases caused a scandal last April when an official said it would simply be too expensive to remove innocent people from its criminal face databases of mugshots.

Without proper, enforcible regulation that can be fully scrutinised by civil society, there are many opportunities for the misuse of biometric data. It means nothing when the Home Office says its collection of biometric data will be “lawful,” when it is found by the highest courts in both Britain and the EU of breaking basic surveillance and data protection laws. And what laws there are, remain deliberately ambiguous on how they will ethically collect, store, or share biometric data.

Without any obstacles put in its way, the Home Office has essentially granted itself the right to end anonymity of any type to all the people of Britain.

Big Brother Watch recently released a report detailing a staggering 90% false positive rate for its face recognition systems and then went on to describe the Home Office defence of these systems – “misleading, incompetent and authoritarian.”

The fact that on Remembrance Sunday 2017, the Metropolitan Police used automated facial recognition to find so-called ‘fixated individuals’ – people not suspected of any crime, but who might be suffering mental health issues, should be a wake-up call for us all.

TruePublica has just reported on one local authority in Thurrock using databases and algorithms to deliver public services. More particularly it is surveilling its own systems and citizens to pinpoint and target certain families, vulnerable people, the homeless and anti-social behaviour. The system is called a “predictive modelling platform” and was only revealed through a freedom of information request by a local journalist.

Council data from housing, education, social care, benefits and debt all contribute to the creation of a profile that is used to predict whether a person is at risk or what services is provided. The profiles then assign people a score that indicates whether they need attention from social services. That risk score is stored in a centre where identifiable details are replaced with artificial ones, a process known as pseudonymised data.

The warning we gave was that it wouldn’t be that long when all citizens will be given such scores by local councils, local authorities, the police and various other government agencies. The speed of implementation has surprised even us though. One should not forget that there are 78 high profile government agencies and a further 401 public bodies closely associated with them.

To be fair to Thurrock council the system has become so embedded within their social services system that it is responsible for 100 per cent of referrals to the Troubled Family programme, a government-led scheme aimed at early social work intervention. The council also claims it has an 80 per cent success rate in predicting children who are at risk and should enter safeguarding. It does not say how the system failed the other 20 per cent or how it affected them.

However, there is a dark side to this. TruePublica warned two years ago that social scoring systems were on the way. We wrote in 2016 and then again in early 2017 as a result of an in-depth report by Civil Society Futures regarding a new wave of surveillance:

“Citizens are increasingly categorised and profiled according to data assemblages, for example through data scores or by social credit scores, as developed in China. The purpose of such scores is to predict future behaviour and allocate resources and eligibility for services (or punishment) accordingly. In other words, rules will be set for citizens to live by through data and algorithms.”

The government is now building, without debate such a system for all of its agencies to access and input. Once complete the next step will be to ‘manage’ population behaviour through social credit scores.

Current common forms of biometric data collection include – fingerprint templates, iris and retina templates, voiceprint, 2D or 3D facial structure map, hand and/or finger geometry map, vein recognition template, gait analysis map, blood DNA profiles, behavioural biometric profiles and others.

These days gathering biometric data generally requires the cooperation (or coercion) of the subject: for your iris to get into a database, you have to let someone take a close-up photograph of your eyeball. That is no longer the case. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA have perfected a camera that can take rapid-fire, database-quality iris scans of every person in a crowd from a distance of 10 meters. Consent is not required otherwise the technology would be worthless if it did.

In the meantime, biometric data will not be secure. It never can be, especially in the hands of the government. That’s because the hacking industry, already costing a mind-blowing $1.6 trillion annually across the world is expected to reach $2.1 trillion in just 3 months time. That’s the sum spent fighting off cyber-crime, not the sum spent of conducting it.

Identity theft directly affected 174,523 individuals in Britain last year – an increase of 125 per cent in little more than ten years. The authorities have simply been unable to stop this inescapable rise. Recent research has found that fraudsters operating on the dark web can buy a person’s entire identity, everything, the lot, for just £820. At that point your bank accounts are emptied, credit cards maxxed out – the horrendous list goes on. £4.6 billion was stolen in cyber-crime from Brits last year.

Would a new form of identity theft develop with biometric data added to the armoury of criminals?

At the very least, the government should restrict the collation of different types of biometric data into a single database. And it should certainly require that all biometric data be stored in the most secure manner possible. Currently, it is not proposing either as the database will be available to thousands of governments workers and hundreds of technology contractors.

And how easy is that theft going to be? Edward Snowden, a third-party contractor for the NSA stole 58,000 files from GCHQ sitting at his desk in Hawaii and then calmly flew off to Moscow for protection against the USA/UK. If GCHQ can have such sensitive information so easily stolen, that they claim is of national security, what guarantees can the government give that your biometric data will be safe? The short answer – is they can’t.

BigBrotherWatch Director Silkie Carlo said:

“The Government’s biometrics strategy is a major disappointment. After five years of waiting, it reads like a late piece of homework with a remarkable lack of any strategy.

While Big Brother Watch and others are doing serious work to analyse the rights impact of the growing use of biometrics, the Home Office appears to lack either the will or competence to take the issues seriously. For a government that is building some of the biggest biometric databases in the world, this is alarming.

Meanwhile, the Met today is surveilling Londoners with facial recognition cameras that they have no legal basis to even use. The situation is disastrously out of control.”

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Featured image is from TP.

The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, an authority completely outside Ukraine, on Oct. 11 stripped away the canonical authority of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church—Moscow Patriarchate (MP), sparking a crisis with Russia.

The 1030-year old church is headed by Patriarch Kirill in Russia and the Russian church responded by severing ties to the Istanbul patriarch. Tensions have now been raised even further in the crisis between Ukraine and Russia that erupted after the U.S.-backed 2014 coup in Kiev that overthrew an elected president who tilted towards Moscow.

In Washington, the events were reported in The Washington Post as part of Ukraine’s struggle to “withdraw from Moscow’s control.” In Europe, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini made the sober warning in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard that the religious interference in Ukraine could provoke a war.

Bartholomew’s action is seen as a first step to giving full autonomy, known as “autocephaly” in the Orthodox faith, to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kiev Patriarchate (KP), a heretical split-off that was created only in 1992 just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence.

The KP church is headed by a self-styled leader named Mikhail Denisenko, who goes by the name Patriach Filaret. He is a defrocked former bishop in the Moscow Patriarchate of Ukraine.

The MP’s lineage goes back to the tenth century Christian conversion of all the people of Kievan Rus, the proto-state that was precursor to the nations of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Its authority in Ukraine was established in 1686 by the same Constantinople Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Bartholomew reversed his seat’s own 332-year-old decision. While the Ecumenical Patriarch is known as “the first among equals,” among Orthodoxy’s 14 autocephalic churches, he has no authority to rule over them. Unlike Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy has no single church authority that can impose decisions over all the others.

The 14 churches are supposed to be independent of governments. But in Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, the anti-Russian president installed after the coup, and other government forces, are using the ruling to further erode Russian influence.

Members of the Moscow church in Ukraine have already been the targets of violent assaults by thugs trying to disrupt worship services, and such conflict is being fueled by politicians’ rhetoric.

In October, when Constantinople lifted Denisenko’s ex-communication, Poroshenko called the decision “a victory of good over evil, light over darkness.” He also said that recognition of the renegade Ukraine church would mean severing all links to Orthodox Russia and its “Moscow demons,” reported gazeta.ru.

Bartholomew’s decision didn’t come out of thin air, and the geopolitical implications are clear: breaking Russia’s ties to the Ukrainian people. This was demanded by Poroshenko, and supported by Denisenko, whose church has never been recognized by the 14 other churches.

On Oct. 31, Denisenko made his view clear in a statement to RFE/RL. “We will be striving to have a single Orthodox Church in Ukraine and to make sure that the Russian [Orthodox] Church is not hiding under the Ukrainian name while, in essence, it is Russian,” he said.

Moscow Responds

“Constantinople’s decision is aimed at destroying unity,” Kirill explained, as reported in Russian language media.

“We can’t accept it. That is why our Holy Synod took the decision to stop eucharistic communication with the Constantinople Patriarchate.” He added that the attack against the Orthodox in Ukraine “was having not only a political, but also a mystical dimension.”

He called for faithfulness to the canonical church, the Moscow Patriarchate, and says he’s “ready to go anywhere and talk to anyone” to prevent the schism among the Orthodox inside Ukraine and remove barriers separating the faithful in the two countries.

The break in eucharistic communication means that the priests of the two patriarchates won’t be able to hold church services together.

While Western media have played the break as an aggressive act by Moscow, the reality is more complex. The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest congregation among the approximately 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Kirill went to Istanbul to meet the Ecumenical Patriarch in August to try to avert any actions that would harm the unity.

Metropolitan Hilarion, chief spokesman on questions of schism and unity for the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, explained, “For a church with more than 1000 years of history and ancient monasteries of some 500 to 900 years of age, the perspective of merging with some unrecognized entities, formed 20 years ago, is unacceptable.”

On October 31, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to the action against the Ukrainian church in remarks to the World Congress of Russian Compatriots, an organization uniting people of Russian origin from all over the world.

“Politicking in such a sensitive sphere as religion has always led to grave consequences, first and foremost for the people who got involved in this politicking,” he said. He also referenced a “war” on Russian historical monuments by some forces in Ukraine.

Washington’s Hand

In the past year, discussions were held by U.S. officials with Poroshenko and Denisenko. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell met with Denisenko in September. Then on Oct. 17, a press release in the name of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for religion in Ukraine to be “without outside interference.”

That statement came four days after Bartholomew recognized the breakaway Ukrainian church.

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Dmitry Babich is a multilingual Russian journalist and political commentator. Born in 1970 in Moscow, graduated from Moscow State University (department of journalism) in 1992. Dmitri worked for Russian newspapers, such as Komsomolskaya Pravda and The Moscow News (as the head of the foreign department). Dmitri covered the Chechen war as a television reporter for TV6 channel from 1995 to 1997. Since 2003 he has worked for RIA Novosti, RT, and Russia Profile. Dmitry is a frequent guest on the BBC, Al Jazeera, Sky News and Press TV. 

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons.

Most of us know little about John Maynard Keynes and although he lived a century ago, he continues to affect our lives. This book about him is written in a style that is as formal as the hyphenated name of the author is stuffy! Yet, the book is a delight to read. Extensive research helps to reveal a complex interesting and dedicated person. It’s a timely book because the economics of Keynes have once again become favorable after some decades of being disparaged and ignored.

Most of us have heard of Keynes and his economics. What we don’t know is much about the man, about the thinking behind the ideas, how they became popular, got into favor, were rejected for decades, then reborn. Milton Freedman’s flawed ideas replaced Keynes for decades; until the economic collapse of 2008 and then Keynes was resurrected into favor again. Throughout, we have known little about the life, the character and the values of the man.

Let’s start with the basics; he was born in 1883 into an upper middle-class English family in Cambridge. Both of his parents were Cambridge graduates. His dad, like Adam Smith a century before him, lectured in both economics and moral philosophy. Mom was active in the local community eventually becoming the Mayor of Cambridge in 1932 when she was 70. Keynes was raised with a belief nurtured by society at that time, that a career in the civil service was a good and honorable profession.  That image of the decency, honor and usefulness of civil service work has been much maligned in recent decades, but that was he aspired to do. Thus, the first of the seven lives ascribed to him in the book’s title; the altruist!

His second life was as that of a boy prodigy. He did his upper school at Eton, an old private residential school and then on to King’s College Cambridge. For both he received scholarships. He graduated with a BA in mathematics in 1902 and stayed around campus for two more years, debating and studying philosophy and taking some economics lectures. In 1905 he passed the civil service exams. For a while he worked both in the Government and in Cambridge alternating his time between the government’s India office in London … to working on campus on probability theory. In the First War, the government called on him for help planning the financing for it.

This led to his third live, that as an official. He joined the Treasury in 1915 where he managed Britain’s credit arrangements during the war. For this he was awarded honours by the king and sent as the Treasuries representative to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. This experience, he summarized in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace in which he rightly predicted that the unfair economic penalties imposed on Germany would create the pressure for World War Two.

With this publication, he was starting to live his forth life, as a public figure. In the chapter ‘Public Man’, Davenport-Hines adds his explanation of his task as author; he sought to delineate ‘Keynes’s frame of mind as an economist; his disposition, his reactions to events, his partisan loyalties, his second thoughts and the inducements that he offered as he tried to educate opinion and alter policy.’ Keynes for his part embraced his public role and sought to use his reputation to change public opinion to views he thought were correct.

Keynes kept his fifth role just under the radar; lover. The book has a lot of detail on a lot of lovers over the years, primarily male. There was so much detail in the manuscript that the publisher asked the author to amend it and include a little less sex, a request authors today don’t usually get! In the end Keynes met and married a Russian ballerina, Lydia Lopokova and they stayed together for life.

Life number six was as a connoisseur which was so apt for a Cambridge based person. There, there was a culture shared by the biographer; life was based on the Aristotelian ideal in which people worked to live, not lived to work! Keynes thought the pursuit of money was a sickness. Instead he opted for and lived a more balanced life; he collected books and art; he enjoyed and supported opera, theatre and ballet.

The last of the seven lives was as an envoy, a diplomat and ambassador for Britain, a role that grew from his minor bit in the first World War and became increasingly meaningful. In March of 1946 he attended his last function which was on Wilmington Island, Savannah where details on the establishment of the International Monetary Fund were being worked out. Although at the height of his powers it did not go his way (as Bretton Woods earlier had not gone his way). His way was to create a universally agreeable international fund; the United States had the power, had different self-serving plans and prevailed.

Davenport-Hines sums up Keynes life; ‘…no economist had left such footprints on policy. He was peerless in developing technical theory, explaining it to doubters and apply in it to practical business. He had, too, done more than anyone to secure state funding for the arts …. (and) in doing so, he had upheld civilized values in a decade of lowest barbarism. ‘

Keynes views steadily lost popularity to the ideas of Friedrich Hayek in the nineteen sixties, the Chicago School of economics and Milton Friedman in the seventies and eighties, and then to the much-eulogized practices of Alan Greenspan who took center stage for almost twenty years ending in 2006. In 2008 the house of cards the three of them created, collapsed.

It was this crash that brought a resurgence of interest in John Maynard Keynes and indeed of Karl Marx!

The most significant economic lesson for us from Keynes is that the unregulated free market is not stable. Not only that, but worse; when it goes into recession, its natural tendency is to stay there. Without public action, it will not recover. Thus, to fix this built in weakness of capitalisms, government intervention is essential; spend in recession and tax that spending back in good times. Keynes believed in balanced budgets but balanced in the longer run.

It is essential for the government to intervene in the economy. Keynes taught us why. The years 2007 and 2008, if we paid attention; proved it. Keynes dedicated himself to the common good, the welfare of everyone and he felt our economic system should do the same. That is not a common thought in the world of today.

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This article was originally published on An Insider’s Memoir.

The US, UK, and French governments are behind millions of people starving in Yemen because they are “supporting this war,” an Oxfam representative told RT, urging London to stop beefing up Saudi Arabia’s military.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, approved passing a bill into law that allows execution of Palestinian prisoners, Hebrew-language news sites reported on Monday.Netanyahu reportedly gave the green light, on Sunday, to members of his Likud policitical party to support the law on the execution of Palestinian prisoners, a law introduced in 2017 by the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which is headed by the Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. 

At the time, Lieberman said that the bill would be a powerful deterrent to Palestinians,

“We must not allow terrorists to know that after a murder they have committed, they will sit in prison, enjoy the conditions and may be released in the future.”

Despite that Israel currently has a law allowing death penalty, it has not been carried out since 1962 when the Jewish state executed Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann.However, the current law allows Israeli military courts to only hand down the death penalty if a panel of three judges impose a unanimous decision.The proposed bill would remove this condition which would allow Israeli civilian and military courts to carry out executions against Palestinians convicted of murder. In addition, it would require military courts to carry out executions by a majority of only two judges instead of full consensus by all judges.

Many Palestinian politicians and human rights activists have already denounced the bill and expressed concern that it will give Israel “legal cover to target Palestinians,” and argued that although it does not define a specific group, it is “intended mainly for the Palestinian people.”The controversial bill had previously passed its preliminary vote in January with 52 votes in favor and 49 opposing.

According to prisoners rights group Addameer, currently there are 5,640 Palestinian prisoners currently being held in Israeli prisons, of whom 465 are in administrative detention, 53 are female prisoners, 270 are child prisoners, and 50 are under the age of 16.

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Featured image is from Ma’an News Agency.

There are certain rules you need to follow as a journalist if you are going to demonstrate to your editors, and the media owners who employ you, that you can be trusted.

For example, if you write about US-Iran relations, you need to ensure that your history book starts in 1979. That was the year Iranian students started a 444-day occupation of the US embassy in Tehran. This was the event that ‘led to four decades of mutual hostility’, according to BBC News. On no account should you dwell on the CIA-led coup in 1953 that overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian leader, Mohammad Mossadegh. Even better if you just omit any mention of this.

You should definitely not quote Noam Chomsky who said in 2013 that:

‘the crucial fact about Iran, which we should begin with, is that for the past 60 years, not a day has passed in which the U.S. has not been torturing Iranians.’ (Our emphasis)

As Chomsky notes, the US (with UK support) installed the Shah, a brutal dictator, described by Amnesty International as one of the worst, most extreme torturers in the world, year after year. That ordinary Iranians might harbour some kind of grievance towards Uncle Sam as a result should not be prominent in ‘responsible’ journalism. Nor should you note, as Chomsky does, that:

‘When he [the Shah] was overthrown in 1979, the U.S. almost immediately turned to supporting Saddam Hussein in an assault against Iran, which killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians, used extensive use of chemical weapons. Of course, at the same time, Saddam attacked his Kurdish population with horrible chemical weapons attacks. The U.S. supported all of that.’

As a ‘good’ journalist, you should refrain from referring to the US as the world’s most dangerous rogue state, or by making any Chomskyan comparison between the US and the Mafia:

‘We’re back to the Mafia principle. In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders. That conflicts with the Mafia doctrine, by which the world is pretty much ruled. Credibility must be maintained. The godfather cannot permit independence and successful defiances, in the case of Cuba. So, Iran has to be punished for that.’

As a reliable journalist, there is also no need to dwell on the shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 over the Persian Gulf by the US warship Vincennes on July 3, 1988. All 290 people on board the plane were killed, including 66 children. President Ronald Reagan excused the mass killing as ‘a proper defensive action’. Vice-President George H.W. Bush said: ‘I will never apologize for the United States — I don’t care what the facts are. … I’m not an apologize-for America kind of guy.’

The US has never forgiven Iran for its endless ‘defiance’ in trying to shirk off Washington’s impositions. Harsh and punitive sanctions on Iran, that had been removed under the 2015 nuclear deal, have now been restored by President Donald Trump. Trump has also decided to pull out of the INF, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, with Russia. This is the landmark nuclear arms pact signed in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

But ‘balanced’ journalism need not focus on the enhanced threat of nuclear war, or the diplomatic options that the US has ignored or trampled upon. Instead, journalism is to be shaped by the narrative framework that it is the US that is behaving responsibly, and that Iran is the gravest threat to world peace. Thus, BBC News reports that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has:

‘warned that the US will exert “relentless” pressure on Iran unless it changes its “revolutionary course”.’

BBC News adds:

‘Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani earlier struck a defiant tone, saying the country will “continue selling oil”.

‘”We will proudly break the sanctions,” he told economic officials.’

Good reporters know that Official Enemies resisting US imperialism must always be described as ‘defiant’. But the term is rarely, if ever, applied to the imperial power implementing oppressive measures.

BBC News dutifully reported Pompeo’s comments:

‘The Iranian regime has a choice: it can either do a 180-degree turn from its outlaw course of action and act like a normal country, or it can see its economy crumble.’

A good reporter knows not to critically appraise, far less ridicule, the idea that the US is an exemplar of ‘a normal country’, rather than being an outlaw state that outrageously threatens to make another country’s economy ‘crumble’ for refusing to obey US orders.

Don’t Talk About The Israel Lobby

Another rule of corporate journalism is to downplay the influence of the Israel lobby in British politics; or just pretend it doesn’t exist. Moreover, you can boost your credentials by reporting from within the skewed, pro-Israel narrative that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong campaigner against racism, has succumbed to antisemitism. Even better if you can somehow link him to a horrific event, such as the recent murder of eleven worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a far-right white supremacist. That’s what Christina Patterson, a newspaper columnist, did on Sky News. She said:

‘I have to say in our own country, the Labour party has had a very heavy shadow of antisemitism hanging over it for much of this year… I know that Jeremy Corbyn and his colleagues have tried to say that it’s not a problem.’

This was a blatant smear.

If you work for BBC News, it is especially important that stories have an appropriate headline and narrative framework: namely, one that promotes Israel’s perspective and also obscures the agency involved when Palestinians have been killed by Israelis. Thus, a story about three young Palestinians, aged 13 and 14, killed in an Israeli air attack should be titled:

‘Gaza youths “killed planting bomb”‘

And definitely not:

‘Israel kills three Palestinian children’

Otherwise, you – or more likely your superiors – are likely to receive a phone call from the Israeli embassy in London. As a senior BBC News producer once told Professor Greg Philo of the Glasgow Media Group:

‘We wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis’.

This helps keep journalists in line.

It is also important not to watch, far less report, one recent film the Israel lobby doesn’t want the public to see. Titled, ‘The Lobby – USA’, it is a four-part undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into Israel’s covert influence in the United States. The film was completed in October 2017. However, it was not shown after Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate that funds Al Jazeera, ‘came under intense Israel lobby pressure not to air the film.’ The Electronic Intifada website has obtained a copy of the film and has now published the episodes.

In Britain, an Al Jazeera undercover sting operation on key members of the Israel lobby last year revealed a £1 million plot by the Israeli government to undermine Corbyn. It’s best to look the other way, however, if you are an aspiring journalist in the ‘mainstream’. In particular, if you work for BBC News or the Guardian, you certainly do not wish to draw attention to a recent report by the Media Reform Coalition (MRC) about inaccuracies and distortions in media coverage of antisemitism and the Labour Party. The BBC and the Guardian were among the worst offenders.

Over one month after the damning report was published, Guardian editor Katharine Viner has still said nothing in public about it (as far as we are aware), despite being prompted by us, and many others, more than once. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not a single person at the Guardian has so much as mentioned it; including those columnists, notably Owen Jones and George Monbiot, the public is encouraged to regard as fearless radicals. Justin Schlosberg, the lead author of the report, has now published an open letter to the Guardian readers’ editor on behalf of the MRC. He wrote:

‘Both before and since publishing our research, which raised serious concerns about the Guardian‘s coverage of antisemitism within the Labour Party, we have made strident efforts to engage in constructive dialogue with both editorial and public affairs staff. Unfortunately, these efforts do not appear to have born any fruit to date. There has also been no reporting or commenting on our research, despite the significant public debate and controversy that it sparked. We nevertheless continue to hope and expect that a reflexive and considered response to the evidence will be forthcoming.’

Respected media academics – including Robert McChesney, Greg Philo, James Curran, David Miller and many others – are clear that the MRC report on coverage of antisemitism and Labour is serious and requires addressing:

‘It is imperative that news institutions — especially the BBC and those newspapers who pride themselves on fair and accurate reporting — answer to these findings. It is not enough to simply dismiss the research on the basis of presumed bias without engaging constructively with the research, including the notably cautious approach adopted by the researchers.’

The statement continued:

‘Silence or blanket dismissal will only speak volumes about the widely sensed malaise in our free press and public service media. A functioning democracy depends on a functioning fourth estate.’

The academics’ statement went unheeded by the ‘mainstream’ media; thus highlighting the dearth of a functioning fourth estate, and the grievous lack of a functioning democracy.

Attack Julian Assange

As a ‘mainstream’ journalist, you also need to ensure that you treat WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange with the requisite amount of contempt and ridicule. Thus, ‘impartial’ BBC News featured a story on its website titled, ‘Julian Assange given feline ultimatum by Ecuador’. Assange, the BBC said, had:

‘been given a set of house rules at the Ecuadorean embassy in London that include cleaning his bathroom and taking better care of his cat.’

The original version of the article even included a fake quote, ‘Save water, don’t shower’, from a parody Julian Assange Twitter account; possibly a symptom of an over-eager BBC reporter trying to make Assange look as ridiculous as possible.

In similar vein, The Times ran a piece titled, ‘Clean up after your cat or else, Ecuadorian embassy tells Julian Assange’, followed later by another article with the flippant headline, ‘Ecuadorian Embassy tires of Julian Assange’s kickabouts and skateboarding’. The Express went with ‘Feline fine? Assange’s cat needs Embassy assistance’ (October 17, 2018; article not found online). The Guardian, which benefited from an earlier collaboration with WikiLeaks and Assange, published a flippant piece titled, ‘How to get rid of an unwanted housemate’ which chuckled:

‘The Ecuadorians are fed up with their longtime lodger, Julian Assange. But many of us have had a nightmare flatmate. Here’s how to get them to leave.’

By contrast, Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, doing actual journalism, wrote:

‘While the media focused on Julian Assange’s cat rather than his continuing arbitrary detention, evidence shows that Britain worked hard to force his extradition to Sweden where Assange feared he could then be turned over to the U.S.’

Maurizi pointed out that Sweden dropped its investigation in May 2017, after Swedish prosecutors had questioned Assange in London, as he had always asked. She added:

‘Although the Swedish probe was ultimately terminated, Assange remains confined. No matter that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention established that the WikiLeaks founder has been arbitrarily detained since 2010, and that he should be freed and compensated. The UK, which encourages other states to respect international law, doesn’t care about the decision by this UN body whose opinions are respected by the European Court of Human Rights. After trying to appeal the UN decision and losing the appeal, Britain is simply ignoring it. There is no end in sight to Assange’s arbitrary detention.’

Real journalists would be hugely concerned by the implications of someone publishing details of war crimes and corruption being targeted by a state and threatened with extradition and long-term imprisonment. But, as the Canadian writer Joe Emersberger says, the ‘Assange case shows support for free speech depends on who’s talking’.

Independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone notes that what ’empire loyalists’ in corporate media ‘are really saying when they bash Julian Assange’ is that they can be trusted to protect establishment interests. Of course, it is all the easier to attack Assange knowing that he has essentially been silenced in the Ecuadorean embassy. He is also at serious risk of deteriorating health if he is unable to leave the embassy soon without the risk of being extradited to the US.

At the time of writing, he still apparently has no access to the internet. His mother, Christine Assange, has just issued an urgent and impassioned plea to raise awareness of his plight:

‘This is not a drill. This is an emergency. The life of my son…is in immediate and critical danger.’

She adds that:

‘A new, impossible, inhumane set of rules and protocols was implemented at the embassy to torture him to such a point that he will break and be forced to leave.’

She warns that if her son leaves the embassy, he will be extradited to the US, given a ‘show trial’, face detention ‘in Guantanamo Bay, 45 years in a maximum-security prison, or even the death penalty.’

Meanwhile, as Johnstone adds, the message sent out by would-be careerists smearing and laughing at Assange is:

‘Hey! Look at me! You can count on me to advance whatever narratives get passed down from on high! I’ll cheer on all the wars! I’ll play up the misdeeds of our great nation’s rivals and ignore the misdeeds of our allies! […] I will be a reliable mouthpiece of the ruling class regardless of who is elected in our fake elections to our fake official government. […] I understand what you want me to do without your explicitly telling me to do it. […] Look, I’m even joining in the dog pile against a political prisoner who can’t defend himself.’

Soft-Pedal Fascism

Another rule to abide by as a corporate journalist is to worship the global economy, excusing or even acclaiming the rise of extreme right-wing politicians because that leads to possible gains for big business. As Alan MacLeod, of the Glasgow University Media Group, observed in a recent piece for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, the financial press cheered the election of a fascist president in Brazil:

‘Jair Bolsonaro was an army officer during Brazil’s fascist military dictatorship (1964–85), which he defends, maintaining that its only error was not killing enough people.’

He is set to apply ‘shock therapy’ to Brazil, initiating ‘a fire sale of state assets and an opening up of the country’s vast natural resources for foreign exploitation’, including the Amazon. Moreover, he has threatened to unleash a wave of violence on the working class, minorities and the left.

Bolsonaro stood against the centre-left Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad. International markets, and therefore the financial press, clearly wanted Bolsonaro to win, observes MacLeod. Socialism is never popular with business and financial elites, after all.

MacLeod notes that Bolsonaro was elected with just 55.5 per cent of the vote after former leftist President Lula da Silva, by far the most popular candidate, had been jailed and barred from running on highly questionable charges. After being elected, Bolsonaro brazenly appointed the prosecutor who jailed Lula as Justice Minister in the new Brazilian government.

The Financial Times reported that the markets were ‘cheering’ Bolsonaro’s lead in the presidential race. The FT also noted surging stocks in weapons companies and a boost to the general economy as Bolsonaro’s performance ‘heartened investors.’

MacLeod concluded:

‘When it comes to opportunities for profits, all else is forgotten. After all, fascism is big business.’

Of course, a ‘real’ journalist would never say something like that.

An opinion piece on the business-oriented Bloomberg website proclaimed:

‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro Completes a U.S. Sweep of South America.’

Adding:

‘Other than Venezuela — and only for as long as Maduro holds on — the continent is now U.S.-friendly.’

The piece was written by James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former military commander of NATO.

As journalist Ben Norton summed up via Twitter:

‘I repeat for the umpteenth time: capitalism and imperialism infinitely prefer fascism over socialism. Capitalist imperialism wholeheartedly embraces fascists, while murdering socialists. This ex-commander of U.S. Southern Command is bragging about this.’

‘Responsible’ journalism means providing a regular, amplified outlet for imperial-friendly ‘analysis’. As Jonathan Cook pointed out recently, Bolsonaro is ‘a monster engineered by our media’. In other words, in much the same way that the corporate media facilitated the rise of Donald Trump to become US president.

Bury UK Responsibility for Yemen’s Nightmare

There are always exceptions to the rules. Patrick Cockburn, a long-time foreign correspondent with The Independent, is an example of a journalist who questions established ‘truths’. For almost two years, the corporate media have cited a UN figure of 10,000 Yemenis who have been killed in the US-and UK-backed Saudi war. Recently, Cockburn pointed out that this figure grossly downplays the real, catastrophic death toll which is likely in the range 70,000-80,000.

Cockburn interviewed Andrea Carboni, a researcher with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). This is an independent group formerly associated with the University of Sussex. Carboni is focusing attention on the real casualty level in Yemen. He estimates the number killed between January 2016 and October 2018 to be 56,000 civilians and combatants. When he completes his research, Carboni told Cockburn that he expects to find a total of between 70,000 and 80,000 victims who have died since the start of the Saudi-led assault in the Yemen civil war in March 2015.

Cockburn adds:

‘The number is increasing by more than 2,000 per month as fighting intensifies around the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. It does not include those dying of malnutrition, or diseases such as cholera.’

In fact, figures from UNICEF and Save the Children show that between January 2016 and November 2017, at least 113,000 Yemeni children died from preventable causes; mostly disease and malnutrition.

In an interview with Ben Norton on The Real News Network, Cockburn points out that, despite the horrendous scale of this suffering, it is being given minimal news coverage:

‘It’s horrific. And you know, it’s not- a point, actually, that the UN was making recently, I don’t think got picked up very much, was, you know, that famines are pretty uncommon. You know, there was a famine in Somalia some years ago. There was another smaller one in South Sudan. But a famine like this, as big as this, this is very uncommon. I mean, it’s entirely manmade. And one could say it’s been taking place in view of the whole world. But actually it isn’t, because the news of it isn’t being reported.’

Cockburn also highlights a study by Professor Martha Mundy, titled ‘Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial Bombardment and Food War’, concluding that the Saudi-led bombing campaign, which is supported by the US and the UK, deliberately targeted food production and storage facilities. (See also our media alert, ‘Yemen Vote – The Responsibility To Protect Profits’).

As a well-established veteran reporter of impressive credentials, Cockburn can report such uncomfortable truths without suffering career oblivion. But woe betide any young journalist trying to make their way in the ‘mainstream’ who tries to do likewise. Instead, they should follow the example of Patrick Wintour, the Guardian‘s diplomatic editor, who performs contortions to provide a fictitious ‘balance’ in a recent piece on Yemen. Wintour refers to mere ‘claims’ that the UK ‘is siding too much with the Saudis’. The Orwellian language continues with the description of Saudi Arabia as a ‘defence partner’ of Britain.

The sub-heading under the main title of Wintour’s article gives prominence to the perspective of the UK Defence Secretary:

‘Jeremy Hunt says cessation of hostilities could “alleviate suffering” of Yemeni people.’

As the historian and foreign policy analyst Mark Curtis observed via Twitter:

‘This sub-heading is a microcosm of what a joke the Guardian is. After over 3 yrs of UK govt’s total backing of mass murder in Yemen, the paper has the temerity to equate UK policy with easing humanitarian suffering. The state could not ask for more.’

Aspiring journalists should take note of the state-corporate requirement to bury the bloody reality of ‘defence’ and the huge profits that must be protected.

Curtis also recently highlighted an admission by the Ministry of Defence that has seemingly gone under the radar of the corporate media:

‘Oh, so Saudi pilots *are* being trained at RAF Valley in Wales (Anglesey). https://bit.ly/2qiNkrN’

It would also not do for those hoping for a career in journalism to examine the daily contortions and sleight-of-hand pronouncements emanating daily from government departments. Thank goodness, then, for Curtis who regularly highlights the distasteful deceits that are churned out by the UK state.

We tweeted BBC News about the buried truth that the UK is training Saudi pilots, even as Saudi Arabia commits war crimes in Yemen:

‘Hello @BBCNews. Perhaps you could devote a decent amount of coverage to this? Or would you rather keep the public in the dark about the extent of UK government complicity in #Yemen’s nightmare?’

As ever, the BBC did not respond.

In short, being a reliable ‘mainstream’ journalist entails a number of basic rules including: propagating the myth that ‘we’ are the good guys; conforming to the requirements of wealth and power; keeping one’s head down and never challenging authority in any deep or sustained way; and refraining from any public discussion about these rules.

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Justin Trudeau used an apology for Canada’s historical rejection of Jewish refugees during World War II to condemn the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian human rights.

The Canadian prime minister apologised in the House of Commons on Wednesday for Canada’s decision to turn away a ship carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees in 1939.

More than 250 of the passengers were later killed in Nazi death camps after the MS St Louis was forced to return to Europe, historians have estimated. Canada and other countries in the Western Hemisphere declined to let the refugees in.

“We apologise to the 907 German Jews aboard the St Louis, as well as their families,” Trudeau said. “We are sorry for the callousness of Canada’s response. We are sorry for not apologising sooner.”

The prime minister then pivoted away from the historical episode to condemn anti-Semitism in the world today — and that’s when he linked anti-Jewish racism with the Palestinian-led BDS movement.

Launched by 170 Palestinian civil society groups in 2005, BDS seeks to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories, ensure equal rights for Palestinian citizens of the state and allow the return of Palestinian refugees.

“Anti-Semitism is far too present. Jewish students still feel unwelcomed and uncomfortable on some of our colleges and university campuses because of BDS-related intimidation,” Trudeau said.

“And out of our entire community of nations, it is Israel whose right to exist is most widely and wrongly questioned.”

BDS organisers reject charges of anti-Semitism and argue that Israel’s supporters aim to stifle the debate about Palestinian human rights by conflating legitimate criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Jewish hatred.

Strong ties to Israel

Canada has maintained strong ties to Israel for decades, but the countries’ relationship deepened under previous Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.

Aside from a few measures, such as pledging funds for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Trudeau’s Liberals have largely stayed in line with their Conservative predecessors.

On 31 October, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, was in Israel, where she met with President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“This is a great friendship between Israel and Canada. It’s one that is based on similar values and our commitment to democracy and freedom and liberty and the rule of law and all the good things that I think characterise our two countries,” Netanyahu said during Freeland’s visit.

The BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses. As a @McGillU alum, I’m disappointed. #EnoughIsEnough

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) March 13, 2015

In 2016, the Liberals backed a symbolic parliamentary resolution condemning BDS, “given [that] Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations”.

That motion called on Canada to condemn “any and all attempts by Canadian organisations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement”.

A year earlier, before he was elected prime minister, Trudeau said he was “disappointed” that a BDS motion was passed at his alma mater, Montreal’s McGill University.

“The BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses,” he tweeted.

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There’s been a lot of talk about how Russia’s decision to sell S-400s to India might negatively affect its incipient partnership with Pakistan, but such speculation reveals an improper understanding of these two Great Powers’ developing relations that recalls the outdated zero-sum mentality of the Old Cold War.

Russia’s decision to sell S-400s to India was met with concern by some Pakistani observers who worried that it might affect their country’s incipient partnership with Moscow, though this was later revealed to have been nothing more than speculation after the latest developments in their relations that occurred after that event.

The joint anti-terrorist drills between the two Great Powers took place as planned, and their militaries later agreed to strengthen cooperation between their navies in early November. Around the same time, their two Prime Ministers met one another in China, where PM Khan invited his Russian counterpart Medvedev to visit Pakistan sometime in the future. Although it’s unclear when or even whether this will happen, an opportune moment would be if the memorandum of understanding on Rosneft’s possible construction of a $10 billion pipeline linking Iran, Pakistan, and India leads to anything tangible in this regard.

Seeing as how Russian-Pakistani relations clearly weren’t affected by Moscow’s S-400 agreement with New Delhi, the question naturally arises about why some people were worried in the first place. It can’t be known for sure, but it’s very likely that those observers inaccurately perceived this partnership through the outdated zero-sum lense of the Old Cold War when such a move would have undoubtedly caused a problem in their relations. The times have changed since then, however, and China’s win-win vision is the order of the day all across Eurasia. Russia and Pakistan understand that their relations with one another are strictly bilateral and aren’t aimed at any third party, even if others interpret them that way. This means that Pakistan accepts that Russian-Indian relations are independent of Islamabad’s ties with Moscow, just as Pakistani-American relations don’t have anything to do with Russia.

Having clarified that, Russia nevertheless agreed to sell India a formidable missile defense system that could upset the balance of power in South Asia, potentially to the point of imbuing India with enough confidence to undertake more aggressive conventional measures against Pakistan because of the expectation (whether correctly or not) that it’s capable of protecting itself from its adversary’s most likely responses. This might dangerously bring the region to the brink of war if that trend isn’t responsibly dealt with before then, though the fact remains that many Pakistani military analysts have remained calm and insisted that their country can still counter the S-400s through MIRVs (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles), cruise missiles, and the nuclear triad. Another factor to keep in mind is that Russia’s “military diplomacy” with India is encouraging an intensification of China’s own with Pakistan through the sale of state-of-the-art drones in response to the S-400s.

In their own way, Russian and Chinese arms shipments are retaining the balance of power in South Asia and attempting to control the disruptive influence that American exports are poised to have there in the coming future. For example, India has gradually reduced its purchase of Russian arms to the point that it was granted a waiver from the Trump Administration’s CAATSA sanctions for its S-400 deal because of its compliance with what the US mandated in its National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 in this respect. The US, “Israel”, and France have been chipping away at Russia’s previous market dominance in this sphere, which is why it’s so important for Russia to retain whatever influence it still can in India through big-ticket military deals like the S-400. Similarly, China commands a lot of influence in Pakistan through its own arms exports there, suggesting that any future Pakistani-Indian conflict might be a Chinese-American proxy war.

Interestingly, however, Russia is the only Great Power capable of “balancing” between both South Asian states, seeing as how there’s enormous potential for it to increase its weapons shipments to Pakistan to both financially but also strategically compensate for its progressive loss of market share in India. Seeing as how the S-400 deal was successfully signed, India wouldn’t have any serious grounds to suspect any “double-dealing” on Russia’s part if it pragmatically sells other sorts of military equipment to Pakistan in the future. In fact, military ties are expanding between Russia and Pakistan as their initial anti-terrorist cooperation slowly evolves and begins to take on conventional dimensions. More work can certainly be done in this sphere, but that’s precisely why it’s being prioritized at the moment, albeit at a pace that’s comfortable enough for both parties.  All told, it’s expected that Russian-Pakistan ties will strengthen after Moscow’s sale of S-400s to India, and that this will contribute to strategically stabilizing South Asia.

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This article was originally published on Dispatch News Desk.

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.

Last November 27 of 2017 Alan Freeman who is a Canadian economist co-director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group [1] based at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, initiated an E-Petition to the Government of Canada. The petition was about lifting all sanctions against Venezuela.

E-Petitions are a novel method that allows any citizen to circulate electronically and introduce a petition to the government provided the petition is sponsored by a Member of Parliament. In this case the sponsoring MP was Robert-Falcon Ouellette of the Liberal Party. [2]

The following is the full text of the petition:

“Whereas:

• On September 22, 2017, the Government of Canada imposed new sanctions against Venezuela, Venezuelan officials, and other individuals under the Special Economic Measures Act in violation of the sovereignty of Venezuela;
• Such sanctions impede dialogue and peace-building in Venezuela and in the region more generally;
• These sanctions impede the normal operation of Venezuela’s duly constituted political processes including elections;
• The Government of Canada has supported the U.S. government’s sanctions against Venezuela
• The Government of Canada has met with, supported, and continues to echo the demands of Venezuela’s violent anti-government opposition;
• The Government of Canada refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Venezuela’s democratically elected government and falsely refers to it as dictatorial; and
• The government of Canada seeks to promote foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Venezuela.

We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to immediately lift all sanctions against Venezuela, Venezuelan officials, and other individuals, retract all statements in support of US sanctions against Venezuela, immediately cease its support for the efforts of the US and other right wing governments in the Organization of American States (OAS) that violate the sovereignty and self-determination of another member-state and immediately cease all intervention against Venezuela.”

The petition was circulated over a period of four months and I personally signed it together with 581 other Canadians. The relatively low number of signatures should not be interpreted as a reflection on the relevance of, and support for the petition, but rather on the novel electronic process used. Any petition introduced in Parliament should be valued by its relevance and content. 

The petition was presented to the House of Commons on September 24, 2018 (Petition No. 421-02649) and the Government response was tabled on November 6, 2018 (Sessional Paper No. 8545-421-02) [3]

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, who has been a vocal opponent to the Venezuelan government, signed the Canadian government response. Therefore it was not a surprise to read the same old ideologically motivated arguments against the petition.

Canadians find it quite disturbing that the response would start with a worn out statement such as “The promotion of democracy and democratic governance, as well as human rights and the rule of law, lie at the heart of Canada’s values and foreign policy.” This comes precisely at a time when Canadian foreign policy is being openly questioned for Canada’s sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia that is conducting indiscriminate bombings of Yemen. [4] The UN reported that 14 million Yemenis face imminent big famine and the consequent death by starvation of thousands of children. Canada is regarded as being complicit in those crimes.

While Canada chooses to speak of the “dire human rights and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela” – where there is none – it ignores, condones and rather endorses Saudi Arabia in the making of one of the worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen. That is the most vicious double standard that a “democratic” country can demonstrate.

Many of the arguments in the response to the petition have been questioned and rejected in a long-standing rebuttal to the government’s position on Venezuela in other venues.

For instance, Canada continues “condemning” the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), that it claims was “established in contravention of the Venezuelan constitution.” That is a blatant lie. We (Canadians) have often stated that Venezuela has acted in its full constitutional right (Article 348 of the Constitution) to establish the ANC, which has achieved the major accomplishment of ending the violence promoted by some foreign-endorsed opposition groups, and is today democratically proceeding with its mandate according to reports. [5]

Likewise Canadians have strongly objected to the absurd serious accusation by the government of Canada against Venezuela of “crimes against humanity”. The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has taken the unprecedented action of signing a letter to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) last September 26 requesting an investigation. We can only state again the hypocritical double standard vis-à-vis Canada’s reported involvement in serious crimes in the Middle East.

Finally, confronted by the uncompromising politically motivated position of the Canadian government, Canadians are actively organizing and are not showing any signs of giving up on their request “to immediately lift all sanctions against Venezuela” and “immediately cease all intervention against Venezuela.”

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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” http://www.cubasolidarityincanada.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] https://geopoliticaleconomy.org

[2] http://www.ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members/Robert-Falcon-Ouellette(89466) 

[3] http://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/ePetitions/Responses/421/e-1353/421-02649_GAC_E.pdf

[4] https://thevarsity.ca/2018/09/10/yemeni-community-stages-protest-against-canadas-arms-deal-with-saudi-arabia/

[5] https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14138

For months, the leadership of the Democratic Party hyped the message that a ‘blue wave’ was on its way that would politically engulf Trump and reverse his policies. Well, the wave washed up on shore on November 6, 2018, but Trump barely got his feet wet.

The failure of Democratic Party leaders’ 2018 strategy to deliver as promised last night should also raise some serious questions about its strategy going forward for 2020. That strategy focused on running women and a few veterans in suburban districts and targeting the independent voter—a Suburbia Strategy—i.e. an approach apparently abandoning the 2008 successful Democratic strategy of targeting millennials, blacks and latinos, and union workers who since 2012 have been steadily reducing their support for Democrats. But the Dems believe their new Suburbia Strategy works. As former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, declared to the media on November 6 after polls closed, the Dems had just won “a great victory”. But was it ‘great’? Or even a ‘victory’?

And is the Suburbia Strategy targeting women and independents in the ‘burbs a formula for winning anything but a couple dozen or so toss up, suburban House districts in off year elections? If not, what is—given the Democrat Party’s abandonment of strategies that once were successful?

If one listens to the talking heads of pro-Democratic media like MSNBC or anti-Trump CNN, they echoed Pelosi in believing the answer is ‘yes’. The message was the Dems won big time. Center-left periodicals like The Nation magazine declared “We Won!”. Even Democracy Now reported it was an “Historic Midterm”. More mainstream liberal media, like the Washington Post, editorialized the election gave the Dems in 2020 “a path to victory”. Ditto similar spin from the New York Times.

A closer analysis, however, shows if the Dems repeat and run their suburbia-women-independents strategy again two years from now it will be a path to defeat in 2020. And if they then lose again and do not stop Trump again two years from now– for they certainly did not stop Trump this stop around as they promised—it will likely be their end as a major party contender in national politics in the 2020s.

None Dare Call It Victory

True, the Dems won the US House of Representatives, but not by any historic margin. Not like they lost it in 2010. The average historical turnover of House seats in midterms for decades has been about 30. That’s probably the upper limit of what Dems will win in 2018, give or take a few more yet to be decided seats by late vote tallies. And it may be less than 30. A net swing of 30 in the House is just an average recovery of seats for the out party in midterms. That’s not an historic sweep or blue wave by any means. Trump won’t lose sleep over that.

But he will stay up late now tweeting a clear victory for his team in the Senate, where results for 2018 will soon prove strategically devastating for the Dems. Historically in midterm elections the out party is able to swing its way a net gain on average of 4 seats in the Senate. But the Democrats lost four seats, not gained them. That’s an historic defeat. In the Senate, the blue wave predicted to roll in was replaced by the red tide that continued to roll out.

Sad to say, the Dems’ Suburbia Strategy has failed to put any dent into the Trump machine, which deepened its hold on red states America, even if the Dems chipped away at its ragged edge here and there. And that failure has consequences. Here’s just some:

• With the Senate now even more firmly behind Trump, with a majority of 54 Republicans, any possibility of impeachment of Trump by the House is out of the question. Moreover, Trump will now likely get to select a third conservative, pro-business Supreme Court judge. And with a 54 majority, he could nominate Genghis Khan and the ‘in his pocket’ Senate would vote him up.
• A locked in Senate majority also means that Mitch McConnell will now go even more aggressive attacking social security, Medicare, education spending than he’s already signaled. And watch for an even larger flood of highly conservative, mid-level federal court appointments than those that have already been pushed through Congress.
• The Democrats’ Senate debacle will not only solidify the big handouts to businesses and investors in tax cuts and deregulation under Trump’s first two years, but will mean a Senate now firmly in the hands of Republicans and Trump willing to undertake renewed attacks on abortion rights, on immigrants, and workers’ rights for another two years.
• Another immediate consequence is that Trump’s 2018 $4t trillion tax cuts for investors, businesses, and the wealthiest 1% and his sweeping deregulation of business are now firmly entrenched for at least another six years. It’s not surprising that the US stock market surged 545 pts. on November 7, the day after the elections. Investors and the wealthy now know the Trump windfall tax that boosted their profits and capital gains by 20%-25%, and his deregulation policies that lowered costs even more, are now baked in long term.

While Trump’s Republicans expanded their control of the Senate throughout nearly all the rest of ‘red America’, by unseating Democrat Senators in Indiana, Missouri, Florida, and North Dakota, they retained control of strategic governorships in Georgia, Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere. The Republican red state governorships are strategic for several reasons: first, because Florida and Ohio are key swing states in presidential elections. They are also states that have been notorious in the past for manipulating election outcomes (Florida 2000), Ohio (2004) and suppressing voters’ right. Like Florida and Ohio before, in 2018 Georgia appears to be leading the way in voter suppression, as is North Dakota where potentially 30,000 Native Americans’ voting rights were restricted. Both states have been identified for weeks as having undertaken voter suppression measures.

Moreover, Republicans will likely win the governorship in Georgia, where votes are still being contested in a narrow result. And should they win, it will be only because Georgia’s Republican governor candidate, Brian Kemp, as the standing Secretary of State in charge of elections, personally engineered the voter suppression on his own behalf.

Another swing state, North Carolina, also notorious for voter suppression initiatives, has now just passed a ballot measure to allow its legislature to restrict voters rights still further. The Trump voter suppression offensive remains thus well intact and continues to expand its footprint in anticipation of 2020 elections.

What should worry Democrats for 2020 is that all these swing states with long standing voter suppression and gerrymandering histories—i.e. Florida, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina (add Texas as well)—will remain in the hands of Trump Republican governors come the 2020 elections.

• The Senate and strategic Governorship wins for Trump will now embolden red state right wing radicals to become even more aggressive and organized. Bannon and his billionaire buddies—the Mercers, Adelsons, et. al.—will see to that.
• Not the least significant consequence of the questionable Democratic victory is that Trump is now, in a way, in a stronger position to deal with the Mueller investigation.

He fired his Justice Dept. Secretary, Jeff Sessions, the day after the elections, replacing him with yet another ‘yes man’, Whitaker. Rod Rosenstein, the second in charge at the Department and liaison with Mueller, may likely be next pushed out. That leaves Mueller out on a limb—unless he moves the investigation to the House under the Democrats before getting fired himself. But that shift would make the Mueller investigation look like a partisan Democratic investigation.

• And no one should expect the House Democrats now to seriously pursue Trump impeachment.

The House has authority to raise impeachment but the Senate must conduct the impeachment trial, and that’s just not going to happen now with 54 solid Republican Senators and Trump knows it. So the Dems in the House won’t even try to raise impeachment on the House floor. They’ll do a PR campaign for the media from the perch of House Committee hearings. No matter what Trump does from here on out, no matter what House committee hearings turn up in his tax returns (which will not be shared with the public), and no matter what Mueller reports out, it will all be a ‘smoke and mirrors’ offensive to stop Trump by Pelosi and her Dems in the US House of Representatives.

The Pelosi-Trump Bipartisan ‘Lovefest’

Further mitigating against any Democratic moves against Trump in the House is what appears to be an emerging ‘love fest’ between Trump and Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi repeatedly emphasized in her statement to the press on November 6,, the Democrat party leadership is going to go big on bipartisanship (again!). She signaled to Trump a desire for bipartisanship several times. Trump quickly responded to the overture by calling Pelosi, praising her publicly, and then tweeting that she should be the Speaker of the House now that the Dems have taken it back.

So Obama era Democrat Party bipartisanship is back, and we know what that produced: Obama continually held out the bipartisan offer, the Republican dog continually bit his hand. Mitch McConnell refused and turned down offers to compromise again and again. The result was a failure of an economic recovery for all but bankers and investors. Obama’s 2008 coalition and base thereafter dribbled away and then disappeared altogether in 2016. The Obama 2008 coalition of youth, latinos, blacks and union labor dissolved as fast as it was formed. The result of that was not only the debacle of 2016, but the subsequent conservative conquest of the Supreme Court and virtually the entire federal judiciary under Trump, an across the board wipeout of decades of business regulations, a $4 trillion tax windfall for business, investors and wealthy households, a total retreat on climate change, and a descent into a nasty political culture of emerging ‘white nationalism’ and increasing social violence and polarization. It all began with Obama’s naïve bipartisanship that we now see Democrat Party leaders like Pelosi (and no doubt the corporate moneybags on the DNC) attempting to resurrect once again.

Bipartisanship is a political indicator of a party no longer convinced of its own ability to lead and forge a new direction. Contrast the results of Democratic Party bipartisanship from Obama to Pelosi with Republican party rejection of anything bipartisan. Who prevailed proposing bipartisanship? Who won rejecting it? Yet, here we go again with Obama-like bipartisanship being offered by Pelosi. It will be a set-up for Democratic failure in 2020, just as it was after 2008.

Here’s my prediction why:

A bipartisan approach by the Democrat House will result in Dems getting the short end of the legislative stick once again. Policy areas where Pelosi-Trump may agree include

• infrastructure spending,
• limits on prescription drug price gouging by big Pharma companies,
• token 5% tax cuts for median income family households,
• paid family leave

But Pelosi legislative proposals will then run into a wall of opposition in Mitch McConnell’s Senate that will demand significant cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Housing, Education and other programs as a condition of Senate support for passage of their proposals. In addition, to get something passed, the Pelosi Dems will have to agree to watered down versions of their proposals as well. They’ll then get outmaneuvered in House-Senate conference committee, agreeing to the watered down proposals and the least publicly obvious and onerous of McConnell’s cuts to social programs—i.e. just to get something passed. If they don’t agree to McConnell’s compromises, they will appear to be voting against their own proposals. Either way, the Dems again will look ineffective again to their base, as they had throughout 2008-16. They will have walked into the bipartisan trap, and Trump-McConnell will slam the door behind them in 2020.

But we’ve seen that story before—under Jimmy Carter after 1978, in Bill Clinton’s second term, and during Obama’s first.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Jack Rasmus.

Dr. Jack Rasmus is author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump’, by Clarity Press, 2019, and ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression, Clarity Press, August 2017. He hosts the Alternative Visions radio show on the Progressive Radio Network and blogs at jackrasmus.com. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. His video, radio and interviews are available for download at his website, http://kyklosproductions.com

In April of the current year, media headlines pointed to a ‘revolution’ breaking out in Nicaragua against the Sandinista Front government headed by Commander Daniel Ortega. Until then, and for 11 years, the government of that country, legitimately chosen in elections supervised by regional organizations, had carried out wide-ranging programs for reducing residual poverty, poor health, and illiteracy and also implemented many social programs that benefited rural and urban populations. Highways, roads, aqueducts, and an expansive electrical system were constructed. A solid social front, with the participation of unions, private companies, and the state, managed the economic and political interrelations among such programs. Benefits for the poor and marginalized sectors of the country were prioritized.

A police force and army (both formed in the liberation war against the empire) have together provided security for citizens and have systematically combated drug trafficking and gangs in the region. The security they offer doesn’t exist in any other country in the area nor probably in other regions of the continent.

Highlights of these years of the Sandinista government include diversity of political and religious tendencies and freedom of speech and assembly as evidenced by the country’s numerous television, radio and newspaper media outlets. All political currents receiving votes are represented in the National Assembly. Over that time they’ve contributed to the balance that is necessary for achieving sustained economic development. That shows up now with a GDP growing at a four percent annual rate.

Nicaragua’s original sin was to have achieved a Revolution and then to have defended it vigorously. The United States and local reactionaries wouldn’t ever forget that. At the end of the last century a dramatic and terrible war devastated that country, one with only 3.5 million inhabitants at that time. The cost was 55,000 deaths, tens of thousands of wounded, and destruction of the country’s socio-economic infrastructure. Then three liberal governments ruined the economy and stole even the keys. The FSLN won the elections of 2006 and Daniel became president. The counterrevolutionaries backed off, but remained in their hideouts waiting for whatever opportunity.

The empire for its part was working away in secret. For several years the CIA and its “legal” arm, the International Agency for Development (USAID), were training cadres and organizing groups inside the various dissident sectors in Nicaraguan society. The object was to attack, discredit and defeat the Sandinista government. They were working through organizations like National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Freedom House, Heritage Foundation, and the Albert Einstein Institute. They wanted to show the world and particularly our America that being revolutionary is a venal sin. Similarly, acting on behalf of masses of people is a crime against humanity.

In April the Nicaraguan government, facing demands from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) joined with private companies and labor unions to negotiate reforms to society security. The IMF was proposing to raise the retirement age in a population whose life expectancy hardly reached 70 years. The FMI also wanted to increase contributions from workers and employers, drastically reduce pensions for retired people, and eliminate social programs.

Negotiation led by the government and with the participation of private enterprise and unions was difficult, so much so that Nicaragua received a lot of help from international organizations. But still there was a real threat. Finally, thanks to skillful negotiation, the government and IMF agreed not to change the retirement age and to adjust contributions to social security. So workers would have to contribute 7 percent of their wages to social security, up from the current 6.25 percent. Businesses would contribute 22.5 percent, up from 19 percent. And retired people would lose five percent of their pensions to cover medical expenses. The government would compensate them by providing monetary bonds for their benefit.

A little afterwards, after a decree on this had been released, disturbances broke out. They were concentrated at first in universities and teaching centers, many of them private ones where subversives were waiting. On realizing how things were going, the government annulled the decree and expressed willingness to negotiate an alternative agreement inasmuch as the earlier one had been imposed through FMI pressure on the negotiations. Nicaragua receives important financing from international organizations having to do with electricity, water, health care, education etc. The country could have lost all this inasmuch as the FMI exerts a decisive influence over those entities.

It was at that point that disturbances broke out. The CIA and its acolytes from the USAID were prepared. With help from counterrevolutionaries and encouraged by the media, and with skillful manipulation by social networks, the rioting extended rapidly across the country like an epidemic. The police reacted to the circumstances according to their mission. The initial confrontations worsened once homemade weapons and conventional ones showed up in the rioters’ hands. As if following a master-plan, they began to install “blockages” across highways and other access roads throughout the country in order to bring down its economy.

Strangely, the opposition’s demands were never about immediately taking power away from the established authorities, but instead were about refusing to wait until 2019 to hold presidential elections. That requires some thinking: an observer might ask, “Why would that be?” There’s only one reason: the counterrevolution wasn’t prepared to take power. Moreover, those involved wanted to wear down government authorities and discredit them. They lacked program, cohesion, and leaders capable of governing.

At that point the government appealed to the Catholic Church to mediate as “guarantor and witness” on the assumption that its leaders would be acting in good faith. The first meeting with the participation of Daniel and his colleagues was on May 23. It turned into a media show assembled under the complicit eye of the Church hierarchy. Strange young people, dour businessmen, and renegades from way back fell upon the government delegation in a monumental provocation. President Daniel had to endure insults of all kinds. But with his well known presence of mind he rode out the storm and made sure in the following days that the negotiations wouldn’t fail. The government’s proposal that the barriers be taken down, which was essential for replenishing supplies, was accepted. And likewise the opposition’s demand for the police to be withdrawn in all localities was agreed to. The police forces had been accused of abuses, which, by the way, was a claim quite unprecedented and unheard-of.

The government went along with such a demand in an attempt to avoid confrontation. Also it was confident that the Church with its supposed moral authority together with its allies would react positively. They were thinking that Church authorities also desired a peaceful resolution of the manufactured conflict, which was something that didn’t happen. Confrontations escalated just as the counterrevolutionary “general staff” had expected.

Let us imagine for a moment what it means to take away the police in whatever city in the midst of overflowing passions stimulated by all the media and social networks. Confrontations mushroomed and multiplied. Gangs working for the opposition and for their own interests inserted themselves in the streets and at the barricades. The outcome was predictable. Victims accumulated on both sides, either murdered or wounded.

There were killings of militants and police, attacks on public buildings and government or Sandinista radio stations, dances of death by hot-heads on top of the “trees of life,” (1) men burned alive with their pleas being “uploaded” to social networks, and finally a society in chaos. All the while, “opposition” agitators howled for help, playing the part of victims. With rifles in their hands and shooting right and left, they invoked the OAS, the United Nations, the “Lima Group,” and all the international organizations. Raising their “cry to heaven,” they expressed outrage and demanded punishment for Nicaraguan leaders. Today, of course, they look on with indifference at the humanitarian crisis associated with the exodus of Hondurans pursuing the “American Dream.”

The atmosphere around their barricades was that of the 1980s war. Money fell into already overfilled hands for the buying of mercenaries and for killing and kidnapping police, or Sandinistas, or anyone looking suspicious. I don’t remember having seen or lived through such dramatic circumstances within the heart of a noble, friendly, warm, cordial people.

Once the authorities realized the Church was no neutral party, no guarantor of anything, and realized too that several churches were now counterrevolutionary headquarters and that the opposition was working toward a soft coup against the state, they reacted. They took back the streets and imposed order, arresting the main leaders and the terrorists. These were turned over to the courts. This was all done within the existing legal framework and without the army having to leave its barracks.

Slowly the streets returned to normal, and in massive demonstrations Sandinista supporters backed their government and its leaders.

The Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy emerged out of the roar of confrontation and smoke from gunfire. It was composed of the main opposition groups and headed by the Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) and leaders of the Catholic Church. Little groups formed in its wake at the last moment, among them the April 19 Movement, the anti [inter-oceanic] canal activists, and others. What was astonishing was that for the first time in the history of humanity, rich people and their bishops claimed to be leading a “people’s revolution.” What a paradox!

Having carefully investigated these events, North American journalist Max Blumenthal had this to say about U.S. interventions:

“Since the unrest began, the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) has taken measures to conceal the names of the groups it funds in Nicaragua on the grounds that they could face reprisals from the government. But the main recipients of backing from Washington were already well known in the country.

“Hagamos Democracia, or Let’s Make Democracy, is the largest recipient of NED funding, reaping over $525,000 in grants since 2014. The group’s president, Luciano Garcia, who oversees a network of reporters and activists, has declared that Ortega has turned Nicaragua into a ‘failed state’ and demanded his immediate resignation.

“The Managua-based Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP) has received at least $260,000 from the NED since 2014. The grants have been earmarked to support the IEEPP’s work in training activists on ‘encouraging debate and generating information on security and violence.’ The funding has also covered efforts to monitor the ‘increased presence of Russia and China in the region,’ an obvious priority for Washington.

“As soon as the violent protests against Ortega were ignited, IEEPP director Felix Mariadiaga brought his agenda out into the open. A former World Economic Forum Young Global Leader educated at Yale and Harvard, Mariadaga was hailed by La Prensa for having “sweated, bled and cried alongside the young students who have led the protests in Nicaragua that continue from April until the end of May.”

“Asked by La Prensa if there was any way out of the violence without regime change, Mariadaga was blunt: ‘I can not imagine a way out at this moment that does not include a transition to democracy without Daniel Ortega.’”

In the wake of their failures, the opposition and its operatives created a new organization, “Blue and White for National Unity.” The name perhaps honors the unity the CIA created in the 1980s with UNO (The National Opposition Union), which was the organization opposing Sandinistas in that era. This time they are claiming to unite all opposition groups in forming a rear guard for the Civic Alliance. But in view of the latter’s class composition and its “revolutionary” plans, some discomfort is very likely.

This history looks a lot like the soft corps orchestrated by the CIA, NED, and their associates in Eastern European countries after the Soviet collapse. Organizations with similar slogans and operating under cover brought down governments in that region. But this still unresolved episode in Nicaragua will be different. Nicaraguans are a combative people with traditions of struggle. They don’t allow themselves to be easily fooled and they did overthrow one of the continent’s oldest dictatorships. They are armed with the thinking and examples of Augusto C. Sandino and Carlos Fonseca.

As an epilogue for these lines, we’ll use testimony from an adversary of the Sandinistas who reveals what goes on inside the coup-plotting groups.

“I am from the San Juan district in Jinotepe municipality and am a student of FAREM [University] in Carazo. Along with several friends and comrades I joined the protests of April 19 in Jinotepe. These protests were against the reforms to social security that the Sandinista Government was carrying out. They affect us and all other Nicaraguans […] All the time on social networks, we were making up attacks by the police, by the Sandinista Youth group, even saying that they kidnapped us students in order to have us issue a repudiation and express hatred toward people in the government. We too wanted to build support and backing from the population. At the same time we said we wouldn’t continue with this campaign of lies and that we would publicize our own struggle, but they kept on with the lies […]

“The hiring of gangs from the barrios generated much controversy. Many of us were opposed. We did so because they let the gangs watch over the barricades at night. That led to robberies and kidnappings like the seizing of the two transit police. But what certainly bothered us the most was to know that there were people who were financing the pay for these gangs. Where did that money come from? […] Their entering San Jose Colegio (St. Joseph’s College) was the tipping point. When the sisters handed over the College supposedly for protection from attacks, no one foresaw the disaster this would become.

“Their action allowed for more bums and more thugs to come in and that led to more violence. We also criticized all that and declared that this wasn’t the objective when we began on April 19. […] It was regrettable to see how drugs and alcohol were circulating at night at San Jose and regrettable too to observe the stealing amongst ourselves, and fights with real punching over a drink, over an order, or for anything else.

“Today I decided to make this public denunciation for a simple reason […] It pains me to see the harm they brought to Jinotepe, to see how they beat up our friends just because they thought differently, to see how they gave drugs to kids, to see how they plundered government institutions that attend to our own people, to see dead people in the streets of our Jinotepe […] When was this going to end? In my own memory I don’t recall seeing people with AK47s and every kind of weapon and saying they want to kill a police officer.

“I ask for pardon and am repenting, and I know that God will bring more calm to Jinotepe and to Nicaragua – the calm that we all had and that a few of them had snatched away from us.”

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This article was originally published in Spanish on La Pupila Insomne.

Translated by W. T. Whitney Jr.

Fabian Escalante became head of Cuba’s Department of State Security in 1976 and afterwards was a senior official in the Interior Ministry. He is currently director of the Cuban Security Studies Center. He is an authority on CIA activities against Cuba. He has also undertaken research on the JFK assassination.

Note

1. The “Trees of Life” are “enormous metallic structures” that celebrate the Sandinista movement. Constructed by the current government, they are located in public spaces in Managua.  Opposition protestors targeted them beginning in April, 2018.

There’s a lot of hype about #5G, the fifth-generation wireless technology that is being rolled out in various “5G test beds” in major cities including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, New York, and Los Angeles. But it’s hard to see why we should be excited. Proponents talk about the facilitation of driverless vehicles and car-to-car “talk,” better Virtual Reality equipment, and, of course, “The Internet of Things” (IoT) – the holy grail of Big Tech that is just vague enough to sound sort of promising.

But when it comes to specifics, there seems to be a lot of hot air in the IoT bag.

For example, in March 2018, Canada’s Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains, while pumping $400 million into 5G test beds, reportedly “gushed” about IoT applications, including “refrigerators that monitor food levels and automatically order fresh groceries.”

Then there is the 5G proponent who enthused to CBC News (March 19, 2018) about “augmented reality headsets” being replaced by “a pair of normal looking glasses,” which everyone would be wearing in 10 years. Those glasses would “automatically recognize everyone you meet, and possibly be able to overlay their name in your field of vision, along with a link to their online profile.”

Apparently, the future human will be too brain-addled to make a grocery list or remember the names of acquaintances… which may not be the image that 5G proponents are hoping for.

“There are thousands of published studies that show that even low levels of microwave radiation do cause a biological effect.”

Amidst all the #5G hype, it’s rare to find a blunt statement like this one from Eluxe Magazine’s Jody McCutcheon: “Until now mobile broadband networks have been designed to meet the needs of people. But 5G has been created with machines’ needs in mind, offering low-latency, high-efficiency data transfer…. We humans won’t notice the difference [in data transfer speeds], but it will permit machines to achieve near-seamless communication. Which in itself may open a whole Pandora’s box of trouble for us – and our planet.”

Box of trouble

Many scientists would say that box of trouble has already been opened by earlier wireless technologies, which emit health-endangering electromagnetic radiation. As Josh del Sol Beaulieu, creator of the documentary Take Back Your Power, told me by email, “There are literally thousands of published studies that show that even low levels of microwave radiation do cause a biological effect.”

In fact, in March of this year, the scientific peer review of a landmark US National Toxicology Program study on mobile phone radiation and health found that there is “clear evidence” that radiation from mobile phones causes cancer – specifically, a heart tissue cancer in rats, and “some evidence” of cancer in the brain and adrenal glands.

“One key player has not been swayed by all this wireless-friendly research: the insurance industry…. ‘Why would we want to do that?’ one executive asked with a chuckle before pointing to more than two dozen lawsuits outstanding against wireless companies demanding a total of $1.9 billion in damages.”

But as Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie reported in The Guardian (July 14, 2018), “Not one major news organization in the US or Europe reported this scientific news.” They attribute that silence to the power of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) and the whole wireless industry, which for decades “has been orchestrating a global PR campaign aimed at misleading not only journalists, but also consumers and policymakers about the actual science concerning mobile phone radiation.”

They have used the same “doubt-creation” strategy used by the tobacco industry and the oil industry: fund friendly research to make it seem like the scientific community is truly divided on issues like smoking or climate change.

But, as Hertsgaard and Dowie note, “One key player has not been swayed by all this wireless-friendly research: the insurance industry.” In their reporting for the story, they found “not a single insurance company that would sell a product-liability policy that covered mobile phone radiation. ‘Why would we want to do that?’ one executive asked with a chuckle before pointing to more than two dozen lawsuits outstanding against wireless companies demanding a total of $1.9 billion in damages.”

Massive experiment

Recently, 236 radiation-research scientists from around the world have signed a petition charging that 5G will be “massively increasing” the general population’s radiation exposure. And it’s not just humans that are endangered by this.

Dr. Joel Moskowitz, a University of California-Berkeley public health professor, told the UK’s Daily Mail (May 29, 2018) that the deployment of 5G “constitutes a massive experiment on the health of all species.”

In order to facilitate faster data-transfer speeds, 5G will utilize millimeter waves (MMWs), smaller waves accessed through a higher frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum not previously used by the telecom industry. These smaller waves cannot travel far, nor can they penetrate many types of materials. So this means that there will need to be millions of “small cell towers” (about the size of a refrigerator) close together – within a few feet of one another on every street.

Dr. Moskowitz warns that these millimeter waves can affect the eyes, the testes, the skin, the nervous system, and the sweat glands.

Eluxe Magazine’s Jody McCutcheon states that the higher-frequency MMW bands “give off the same dose of radiation as airport scanners. The effects of this radiation on public health have yet to undergo the rigours of long-term testing.”

Adding to the dangers to the planet, 5G infrastructure will depend on the deployment of thousands of satellites propelled into orbit by hydrocarbon rocket engines, contributing to atmospheric pollution.

An Oct. 27, 2016 article in The Ecologist titled “Wireless pollution ‘out of control’ as corporate race for 5G gears up” states: “The long-term, ecological implications of our new, anthropogenic radiation are not known. But peer-reviewed studies revealing harm to birds, tadpoles, trees, other plants, insects, rodents and livestock, offer clues.”

Given that he called 5G “a massive experiment on the health of all species,” I asked Dr. Moskowitz whether the mainstream media had expressed interest in this perspective. He replied by email,

“Although I have been interviewed hundreds of times by journalists since 2009 about cell phone health effects, there has been little interest in 5G,” with only three publications in the past two years showing interest in the new technology’s health effects.

When asked why there is such a rush to deploy 5G, Dr. Moskowitz responded that the telecom companies in the US “have convinced policymakers and the public that we are in a global race with China and other countries to deploy this new technology, and that we won’t reap the economic benefits unless we are the first to deploy.” As well, the industry claims that we need 5G for the Internet of Things and to “improve broadband internet access in rural areas,” although such claims are “arguable.”

Josh del Sol Beaulieu told me that the rush into 5G is because of “corporate profit – ‘tens of billions of dollars of economic activity’ as stated very clearly by former FCC [US Federal Communications Commission] frontman Tom Wheeler in 2016.”

Beaulieu refers to the fact that surveillance is becoming big business. “If the data harvested unlawfully from ‘smart’ meters will be worth much more than residential electricity, than what will the unparalleled amount of ‘user data’ harvested by ultra-invasive 5G technology be worth?” Beaulieu also mentions the fact that 5G “emits the same frequencies that are used in crowd control weapons” developed by the Pentagon.

Gadgets & climate change

People are becoming aware of the “dirty” side to their gadgets: the horrendous conditions of the coltan miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the mounting e-waste; the social and personal implications of our addictions to these devices. More recently, the connection to climate change has been revealed.

As tech site Gizmodo has explained,

“The Internet works because every network is connected, somehow, to every other. Where do those connections physically happen? More than anywhere else in America, the answer is ‘Ashburn’ [Virginia].”

This location is one of many data-hubs in that state where, as U.S. News put it,

“Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, hundreds of thousands of servers here rapidly transmit E-mails, process Internet search queries, safeguard classified data, handle online financial transactions, and store videos and medical records. And suck up megawatts.”

Calling these massive data servers “energy hogs,” U.S. News noted that they’re located in Virginia because that state has “the country’s cheapest electricity rates.” Indeed, The Guardian reported (July 17, 2018) that “70% of the world’s online traffic” is routed through just one county in Virginia, with such server farms “set to soon have a bigger carbon footprint than the entire aviation industry.” The article  points out the IT industry is predicted to account for 14% of the world’s total carbon emissions by 2040, with the Internet of Things adding greatly to that number.

But now the push is on in the US for these energy hogs to use “clean energy.” (Is that why the Trudeau Liberal government is planning to build 118 hydroelectric dams in the coming years?)

Beaulieu suggests we educate our city councillors to resist the 5G build-out. Others recommend staying wired, and refusing to buy any “smart” appliances. With the Canadian government poised to auction off more of the electromagnetic spectrum to the telecom industry, we can also remember that the spectrum is part of the Commons. We should all have a say in this.

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This article was originally published on Watershed Sentinel.

Joyce Nelson’s seventh book, Bypassing Dystopia: Hope-filled challenges to corporate rule, has been nominated for the 2018 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. It is the sequel to Beyond Banksters (both published by Watershed Sentinel Books).

Featured image is from Alan Levine CC, cropped from original

Bolsonaro disse que a Constituição é o único norte da democracia na manhã desta terça-feira (6) em Brasília, em sessão solene no Congresso Nacional em homenagem aos 30 anos da Constituição.

“Na topografia, existem três nortes, o da quadrícula, o verdadeiro e o magnético. Na democracia só um norte, é o da nossa Constituição”, disse o presidente eleito do Brasil em 28 de outubro após criminosa campanha que, retratando perfeitamente o histórico deste político corrupto, ineficiente e acentuadamente truculento, feriu e assassinou centenas de cidadãos inocentes.

Inflada por Bolsonaro, que se eleito prometia ser ainda mais cruel que a ditadura militar brasileira (1964-1985) condenada por todos os organismos internacionais por crimes de lesa-humanidade, a campanha do presidente eleito ainda foi ilegal e impunemente financiada por empresas privadas, inclusive para a ilegal e impune difusão de notícias falsas, decisiva para o resultado final.

Enquanto somos levados a refletir inevitavelmente se o canalha Bolsonaro sofre de bipolaridade, de excesso de cinismo ou das duas coisas, o “juiz” Sergio Moro, outro proeminente cara-de-pau deste patético picadeiro nacional, aceitou o convite para ser ministro da “Justiça” tupiniquim: ele mesmo havia afirmado, em tempos nao muito distantes, que jamais ingressaria a politica pois isso fatalmente colocaría em xeque a Operação Lava Jato perante a sociedade, e sua propria isenção como (lave-se a boca) “juiz”. Pois ai esta!

Ou sera mais uma tatica de confundir a sociedade, o que prevaleceu na campanhaa presidencial de Bolsonaro: dizer algo efervescente, posteriormente desmentir acusando tratar-se de noticia falsa, para mais tarde afirmar o mesmo e de maneira ainda pior?

O mundo político, incluindo este farsante sistema de “justica” brasileiro, definitivamente e pautado pelo oportunismo mais baixo – quanto mais cinico, melhor!

A tempo: nao era a “Justiça” brasileira, alegremente aplaudida pela canalhada da grande midia e por uma sociedade altamente imbecilizada, que fazia uma completa “faxina contra a corrupção” no Brasil?

Quanta mediocridade! Tem sido um verdadeiro festival da estupidez o cenario politico brasileiro, que nunca foi nenhuma grande coisa – longe disso.

Apenas uma coisa pode salvar o Brasil: o povo em peso, fincando o pé nas ruas em todo o Pais. Tenha-se certeza: eles tremem! Incluindo essa mal-acabada versao tupiniquim de xerife, Jair Bolsonaro que se enriqueceu em um sistema político no qual, em quase 30 anos, teve apenas dois projetos de sua autoria aprovados no Parlamento carioca.

Acendam uma vela para a ignorancia no Brasil!

Edu Montesanti

Foto : Sergio Moro

Mark Twain AKA Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) best known for his literary works like Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, was also a man with deep rooted empathy for any underclass containing people of color. Few readers of his works realize that he was also a staunch opponent of imperialism, having been president of the Anti Imperialist League from 1901 to his death in 1910. Twain wrote about the treatment of the Chinese in San Francisco during the Civil War when he was a newspaper reporter. In 1865 he astonished many passersby, even those who fought for the abolition of slavery years earlier, when he chose to walk arm in arm through the San Francisco streets with the editor of the recently established Afro American newspaper, the Elevator. Of course, one of his most famous quotes was on his definition of politics:

“To protect us from the crooks and scoundrels”.

He also said something that resonates so strongly today:

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really believe it.”

We just had a mid-term election that broke the record for both voter turnout and money spent, a real conundrum to say the least. The Two Party/One Party ‘food fight’ did have one added caveat, something that got this writer to actually do something I never do, and that was to vote across the board in my state of Florida for all Democrats.

Why? Well, as Bob Dylan sang so profoundly: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Sadly, the ‘wind’ has been one filled with Fascist and even Neo Nazi elements, with such an exclamation point right here in the ‘Sunshine State’. One guy, the sitting Governor, has such a tainted past as a businessman that many felt he should have more easily been indicted than to be even running for office years ago. The other guy, a congressman running for Governor, had an electoral machine behind him with intentions of getting him from the Governor’s mansion to the White House in 2024. Running against an Afro American mayor of Tallahassee, his campaign supporters’ infamous robo calls played what many would call ‘Jungle music’ along with a voice that could be construed as that of a ‘Ghetto black man’. Between that and the fear card of an ‘evil caravan’ getting closer seemed to push some perhaps who maybe would have sat this one out, to get off their duffs and go and vote. After all, those good and decent taxpaying Floridians needed  to be protected  from the diabolical black and brown undesirables.

One could only imagine how Mark Twain would have reacted to all of the above… and much more; That being the utter war mongering foreign policies of ALL of our recent presidents, including this latest tool of empire. He would have been out there ‘front and center’ protesting our nation’s illegal and immoral excursions into Panama, The Balkans, Iraq 1, Iraq 2, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. Twain said it all in this quote of his:

“I have read carefully the treaty of Paris [between the United States and Spain], and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem…. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”
(New York Herald, 15 October 1900)

Though this writer did the unimaginable, by my principles, of casting votes for the Democrats this time around… never again! For, they now control the House, and perhaps in 2020 the Senate and even the White House, but what will change on the issue that Mark Twain devoted his later years to: Imperialism?

We know that even progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and now Ms. Ocasio Cortez, remain silent on

• A) obscene military spending,
• B) 1000 foreign bases worldwide,
• C) our destruction of Libya and aid to the jihadists in Syria, causing millions of refugees spilling into Europe and elsewhere;
• D) NATO’s planned encirclement of Russia and the diversion by the Russian election tampering hoax and
• E) Israel’s continued fascist like treatment of Palestinians. Thus, the only hope to finally see Amerika become America is for tens, even hundreds of millions of working stiffs nationwide, to realize that imperialist and ultra militarist foreign policy bleeds our economy and  destroys our nation’s moral compass. Mark Twain knew that over 100 years ago. Why not us?

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

Com a vitória de Jair Bolsonaro nas eleições presidenciais do Brasil no fim de semana, os fatalistas das elites ocidentais estão de novo em cena. O seu sucesso, como o de Donald Trump, confirmou um preconceito de longa data: que não se pode confiar nas pessoas; que, quando têm poder, estas comportam-se como uma multidão impulsionada por desejos primitivos; que as massas encardidas ameaçam agora derrubar os pilares da civilização que foram cuidadosamente levantados.

Os guardiões do status quo recusaram aprender a lição com a eleição de Trump, e assim acontecerá com Bolsonaro. Em vez de empregarem as faculdades intelectuais que eles reivindicam como sendo exclusivamente suas, os “analistas” e “especialistas” ocidentais, estão novamente a desviar o olhar daquilo que pudesse ajudá-los a entender o que levou as nossas supostas democracias aos lugares sombrios habitados pelos novos demagogos. Em vez disso, como sempre, a culpa está a ser diretamente enfocada nas redes sociais.

As redes sociais e as notícias falsas são aparentemente as razões pelas quais Bolsonaro ganhou nas urnas. Sem os guardiões no local para limitar o acesso à “imprensa livre” – em si o brinquedo de bilionários e corporações globais, com marcas e resultados para proteger – a plebe supostamente foi liberada para dar expressão ao seu fanatismo inato.

Aqui está Simon Jenkins, um veterano guardião britânico – ex-editor do The Times de Londres que agora escreve uma coluna no The Guardian – pontificando a Bolsonaro:

“A lição para os defensores da democracia aberta é manifesta. Os seus valores não podem ser tomados como garantidos. Quando o debate não é mais realizado através da mídia regulada, tribunais e instituições, a política reverterá aos padrões da populaça. As redes sociais – outrora aclamada como agente de concórdia global – tornou-se num fornecedor de falsidades, raiva e ódio. Os seus algoritmos polarizam a opinião. Sua pseudo-informação leva os argumentos aos extremos “.

Este é agora o consenso paradigmático da mídia corporativa, seja nas suas encarnações de direita ou no lado liberal-esquerdo do espectro, como no The Guardian. As pessoas são estúpidas e precisamos ser protegidos dos seus instintos básicos. As redes sociais, afirmam, desencadearam o id da humanidade.

Vendendo a plutocracia

Há um elemento de verdade no argumento de Jenkins, mesmo que não seja o pretendido. As redes sociais libertaram de facto as pessoas comuns. Pela primeira vez na história moderna, estas não eram simplesmente os recipientes de informação oficial sancionada. Não eram apenas os ouvintes dos seus superiores, poderiam responder de volta – e nem sempre com tanta deferência quanto a classe da mídia esperaria.

Agarrando-se aos seus antigos privilégios, Jenkins e os seus, estão nervosos e com motivo. Eles têm muito a perder.

Mas isso significa também que eles estão longe de ser observadores desapaixonados da cena política atual. Eles investiram profundamente no status quo, nas estruturas de poder existentes que os mantiveram como cortesãos bem pagos das corporações que dominam o planeta.

Bolsonaro, como Trump, não é uma ruptura da atual ordem neoliberal; ele é uma intensificação ou escalada dos seus piores impulsos. Ele é a sua conclusão lógica.

Os plutocratas que comandam as nossas sociedades precisam de figuras de proa, atrás das quais podem ocultar seu poder incompreensível. Até agora, eles preferiam os vendedores mais astutos, aqueles que podiam vender guerras como uma intervenção humanitária, em vez de exercícios baseados no lucro, na morte e na destruição; o saque insustentável dos recursos naturais como crescimento económico; a enorme acumulação de riqueza, escondida em paraísos fiscais, como o resultado justo de um mercado livre; os resgates financiados pelos contribuintes comuns para conter as crises económicas que eles haviam arquitetado, como austeridade necessária; e assim por diante.

Falinhas mansas como Barack Obama ou Hillary Clinton, eram os vendedores favoritos, especialmente numa época em que as elites haviam nos convencido com recurso a um argumento interesseiro: que identidades baseadas no tom de pele ou género importavam muito mais do que classe. Era o dividir para governar mascarado de empoderamento. A polarização agora lamentada por Jenkins foi, na verdade, alimentada e racionalizada pela própria mídia corporativa a qual ele serve tão fielmente.

Medo do efeito dominó

Está na hora de despertar: a ordem neoliberal está a morrer.

Apesar da sua professada preocupação, os plutocratas e seus porta-vozes da mídia preferem muito mais um populista de extrema direita como Trump ou Bolsonaro a um líder populista da genuína esquerda. Preferem as divisões sociais alimentadas por neo-fascistas como Bolsonaro, divisões que protegem a sua riqueza e privilégio, do que a mensagem unificadora de um socialista que queira restringir o privilégio de classe, a base real do poder da elite.

A verdadeira esquerda – seja no Brasil, na Venezuela, na Grã-Bretanha ou nos EUA – não controla a polícia ou os militares, o setor financeiro, as indústrias de petróleo, os fabricantes de armas ou a mídia corporativa. Foram essas mesmas indústrias e instituições que abriram caminho para o poder de Bolsonaro no Brasil, Viktor Orban na Hungria e Trump nos EUA.

Lula

Ex-líderes socialistas como o brasileiro Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ou Hugo Chavez na Venezuela estavam condenados ao fracasso não tanto por causa das suas falhas como indivíduos, mas porque poderosos interesses rejeitavam o seu direito de governar. Esses socialistas nunca tiveram controle sobre as principais alavancas do poder, os recursos-chave. Os seus esforços foram sabotados – de dentro e de fora – desde o primeiro momento em que foram eleitos.

As elites locais da América Latina estão amarradas umbilicalmente às elites americanas, que por sua vez estão determinadas em garantir que qualquer experimento socialista no seu “quintal” fracasse – como uma forma de evitar um temido efeito dominó, que poderia plantar a semente do socialismo perto de casa.

A mídia, as elites financeiras, as forças armadas nunca estiveram ao serviço dos governos socialistas que lutam por reformar a América Latina. O mundo corporativo não tem interesse em construir moradias adequadas no lugar de favelas ou em tirar as massas do tipo de pobreza que alimenta os gangues do narcotráfico que Bolsonaro diz que vai esmagar com mais violência.

Bolsonaro não enfrentará nenhum dos obstáculos institucionais que Lula da Silva ou Chávez precisaram superar. Ninguém no poder ficará no seu caminho quando estabelecer as suas “reformas”. Ninguém vai impedi-lo de sacar a riqueza do Brasil para os seus amigos corporativos. Como no Chile de Pinochet, Bolsonaro pode ter a certeza de que o seu tipo de neofascismo viverá em harmonia com o neoliberalismo.

Sistema Imunológico

Se se quiser entender a profundidade do auto-engano de Jenkins e outros guardiões da mídia, basta contrastar a ascensão política de Bolsonaro à de Jeremy Corbyn, o modesto líder social-democrata do Partido Trabalhista britânico.

Aqueles que tal como Jenkins lamentam o papel das redes sociais – para eles significa que você, o público – ao promover líderes como Bolsonaro representa também o coro da mídia que feriu Corbyn dia após dia, golpe a golpe, por três anos – desde que acidentalmente este conseguiu passar pelas protecções levantadas por burocratas do partido para manter alguém como ele afastado do poder.

O suposto jornal liberal The Guardian tem liderado esse ataque. Tal como a mídia de direita, demonstrou a sua absoluta determinação em deter Corbyn a todo custo, usando qualquer pretexto.

Dias depois da eleição de Corbyn para a liderança do partido trabalhista, o jornal The Times – a voz do establishment britânico – publicou um artigo citando um general, o qual recusou mencionar o nome, alertando para o facto de que os comandantes do exército britânico haviam concordado em sabotar o governo de Corbyn. O general insinuou fortemente que poderia haver de antemão, um golpe militar .

Não é suposto chegarmos ao ponto em que tais ameaças – romper a fachada da democracia ocidental – precisem ser implementadas. As nossas democracias do faz de conta foram criadas com sistemas imunológicos cujas defesas são agrupadas muito antes para eliminar uma ameaça como Corbyn.

Uma vez que Corbyn se aproximou do poder, a mídia corporativa de direita foi forçada a implantar a tropologia padrão usada contra um líder de esquerda: que era incompetente, antipatriótico, até traidor.

Mas, assim como o corpo humano tem células imunes diferentes para aumentar as suas hipóteses de sucesso, a mídia corporativa tem agentes de esquerda faux-liberal como o _The Guardian_ para complementar as defesas da direita. O The Guardian procurou ferir Corbyn através da política de identidade, o Calcanhar de Aquiles da esquerda moderna.

Um fluxo interminável de crises fabricadas sobre o anti-semitismo pretendia corroer a reputação que Corbyn acumulara ao longo de décadas pelo seu trabalho anti-racista.

Política de corte e queima

Por que o Corbyn é tão perigoso? Porque ele apoia o direito dos trabalhadores a uma vida digna, porque se recusa a aceitar o poder das corporações, porque sugere que uma maneira diferente de organizar as nossas sociedades é possível. É um programa modesto, até mesmo tímido, o que articula, mas mesmo assim é radical demais, seja para a classe plutocrática que nos domina, seja para a mídia corporativa que a serve como braço da propaganda.

A verdade ignorada por Jenkins e esses estenógrafos corporativos é que, se se continuar a sabotar os programas de um Chávez, um Lula da Silva, um Corbyn ou um Bernie Sanders, então ganha-se um Bolsonaro, um Trump, um Orban.

Não é que as massas sejam uma ameaça à democracia. É, antes, que uma proporção crescente dos eleitores entende que uma elite corporativa global manipulou o sistema para acumular riquezas cada vez maiores.

Não são as redes sociais que polarizam as nossas sociedades. É, antes, a determinação das elites em saquear o planeta até que este não tenha mais recursos para extrair, que alimentou o ressentimento e destruiu a esperança.

Não são as notícias falsas que estão a soltar os instintos básicos das classes mais baixas. Pelo contrário, é a frustração daqueles que acham que a mudança é impossível, que ninguém no poder está a ouvir ou se importa.

As redes sociais deram poder às pessoas comuns. Mostrou-lhes que não podem confiar nos seus líderes, que o poder supera a justiça, que o enriquecimento da elite precisa da sua pobreza. As pessoas concluíram que, se os ricos podem empreender políticas de corte e queima contra o planeta, nosso único refúgio, as pessoas podem empreender políticas de corte e queima contra a elite global.

Estarão escolhendo sabiamente ao eleger um Trump ou um Bolsonaro? Não. Mas os guardiões liberais do status quo não estão em posição de julgá-las.

Durante décadas, todas as partes da mídia corporativa ajudaram a minar uma esquerda genuína que poderia oferecer soluções reais, que poderia ter assumido e derrotado a direita, que poderia ter oferecido uma bússola moral a um público confuso, desesperado e desiludido.

Jenkins quer dar um sermão às massas sobre suas escolhas depravadas enquanto ele e o seu jornal, as afastam de qualquer político que se preocupa com o seu bem-estar, que luta por uma sociedade mais justa, que prioriza reparar o que se encontra danificado.

As elites ocidentais irão condenar Bolsonaro na esperança desesperada e cínica de reforçar as suas credenciais como guardiões da ordem moral supostamente existente. Mas foram eles que o criaram. Bolsonaro é o monstro deles.

Jonathan Cook

Artigo publicado originalmente em Global Research em 1 de Novembro, 2018

With Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Israel Finds Another Natural Partner on the Far-right

Tradução: Plutocracia.com

Jonathan Cook ganhou o Prémio Especial Martha Gellhorn de Jornalismo. Seus livros incluem “Israel e o choque de civilizações: Iraque, Irão e o plano para refazer o Oriente Médio” (Pluto Press) e “Palestina Desaparecendo: as experiências de Israel em desespero humano” (Zed Books). Seu site é www.jonathan-cook.net. Ele é um colaborador frequente da Global Research.

On Friday, November 9th, members of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War will be holding an information picket outside the CBC offices during the James St. North “Art Crawl.”

This informational picket will challenge the CBC’s unrelentingly favourable coverage of the Syrian White Helmets, in particular their resettlement in Canada by the Trudeau government.

Unbeknownst to many, “White Helmets” routinely appear in public in Syria alongside the terrorist groups in which they are embedded, primarily Al Qaeda.

where: CBC Hamilton, 118 James Street North

when: this Friday, November 9, 7 to 8:30 pm during the monthly Art Crawl

special instructions: Rain showers predicted. Please dress appropriately

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On November 3, the Saudi-UAE-led coalition kicked off a new large-scale military operation to capture the port city of al-Hudaydah from the Houthis and their allies. Prior to that the coalition had concentrated several tens of thousands of troops and a few thousands of various military equipment on frontlines near the city.

Additionally, coalition warplanes started a massive bombing campaign pounding Houthi positions as well as the city’s infrastructure.

Using their advantage in manpower, military equipment and firepower, coalition forces had reached the eastern, western and southern entrances of al-Hudaydah by November 8. However, coalition-led troops were not able to capture the al-Hudaydah airport, which remains a key strongpoint fr the Houthis.

According to Sky News Arabia, over 70 Houthi fighters and commanders have been killed since the start of the offensive. Pro-Houthi sources say that about 200 coalition fighters were killed and up to 300 were injured during the same period. Additionally, the Houthis reportedly destroyed up to 20 vehicles.

It’s interesting to note that Brigadier General Yahya Sari, a spokesman of the Yemeni Armed Forces, which are allied with the Houthis, stated that the coalition advance to capture al-Hudaydah had been repelled. However, this is a kind of wishful thinking given the current situation.

The coalition front east of the city is overstretched and vulnerable to attacks. Nonetheless, al-Hudaydah is at least partly encircled and while coalition forces maintain their positions east and southwest of the city, they pose a significant threat to the Houthis and can develop their advance further.

If the coalition were to capture al-Hudaydah, it would be the first major coalition success since the start of the year. The port city is a key logistical hub allowing the government to supply the Houthi-controlled area with food and medicine as well as other supplies.

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Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli commentator, writing in Yedioth Ahronoth in May (in Hebrew), set out, unambiguously, the ‘deal’ behind Trump’s Middle East policy: In the wake of the US exit from JCPOA [which occurred on 8 May], Trump, Barnea wrote, will threaten a rain of ‘fire and fury’ onto Tehran … whilst Putin is expected to restrain Iran from attacking Israel using Syrian territory, thus leaving Netanyahu free to set new ‘rules of the game’ by which the Israel may attack and destroy Iranian forces anywhere in Syria (and not just in the border area, as earlier agreed) when it wishes, without fear of retaliation.

This represented one level to the Netanyahu strategy: Iranian restraint, plus Russian acquiescence to coordinated Israeli air operations over Syria.

 “There is only one thing that isn’t clear [concerning this deal]”, a senior Israeli Defence official closest to Netanyahu, told Ben Caspit, “that is, who works for whom? Does Netanyahu work for Trump, or is President Trump at the service of Netanyahu … From the outside … it looks like the two men are perfectly in sync. From the inside, this seems even more so: This kind of cooperation … sometimes makes it seem as if they are actually just one single, large office”.

There has been, from the outset, a second level, too: This entire ‘inverted pyramid’ of Middle East engineering had, as its single point of departure, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). It was Jared Kushner, the Washington Post reports, who

“championed Mohammed as a reformer poised to usher the ultraconservative, oil-rich monarchy into modernity. Kushner privately argued for months, last year, that Mohammed would be key to crafting a Middle East peace plan, and that with the prince’s blessing, much of the Arab world would follow”.

It was Kushner, the Post continued,

“who pushed his father-in-law to make his first foreign trip as president to Riyadh, against objections from then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – and warnings from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis”.

Well, now MbS has, in one form or another, been implicated in the Khashoggi murder.  Bruce Riedel of Brookings, a longtime Saudi observer and former senior CIA & US defence official, notes, “for the first time in 50 years, the kingdom has become a force for instability” (rather than stability in the region), and suggests that there is an element  of ‘buyer’s remorse’ now evident in parts of Washington.

The ‘seamless office process’ to which the Israeli official referred with Caspit, is known as ‘stovepiping’, which is when a foreign state’s policy advocacy and intelligence are passed straight to a President’s ear – omitting official Washington from the ‘loop’; by-passing any US oversight; and removing the opportunity for officials to advise on its content.  Well, this has now resulted in the Khashoggi strategic blunder. And this, of course, comes in the wake of earlier strategic ‘mistakes’: the Yemen war, the siege of Qatar, the Hariri abduction, the Ritz-Carlton princely shakedowns.

To remedy this lacuna, an ‘uncle’ (Prince Ahmad bin Abdel Aziz) has been dispatched from exile in the West to Riyadh (with security guarantees from the US and UK intelligences services) to bring order into these unruly affairs, and to institute some checks and balances into the MbS coterie of advisers, so as to prevent further impetuous ‘mistakes’.  It seems too, that the US Congress wants the Yemen war, which Prince Ahmad consistently has opposed (as he opposed MbS elevation as Crown Prince), stopped. (General Mattis has called for a ceasefire within 30 days.) It is a step toward repairing the Kingdom’s image.

MbS remains – for now – as Crown Prince. President Sisi and Prime Minister Netanyahu both have expressed their support for MbS and “as U.S. officials contemplate a more robust response [to the Khashoggi killing], Kushner has emphasized the importance of the U.S.-Saudi alliance in the region”, the Washington Post reports. MbS’ Uncle (who as a son of King Abdel Aziz, under the traditional succession system, would be himself in line for the throne), no doubt hopes to try to undo some of the damage done to the standing of the al-Saud family, and to that of the Kingdom.  Will he succeed?  Will MbS accede now to Ahmad unscrambling the very centralisation of power that made MbS so many enemies, in the first place, to achieve it?  Has the al-Saud family the will, or are they too disconcerted by events?

And might President Erdogan throw more wrenches into this delicate process by further leaking evidence Turkey has, if Washington does not attend sufficiently to his demands.  Erdogan seems ready to pitch for the return of Ottoman leadership for the Sunni world, and likely still holds some high-value cards up his sleeve (such as intercepts of phone calls between the murder cell and Riyadh).  These cards though are devaluing as the news cycle shifts to the US mid-terms.

Time will tell, but it is this nexus of uncertain dynamics to which Bruce Reidel refers, when he talks of ‘instability’ in Saudi Arabia.  The question posed here, though, is how might these events affect Netanyahu’s and MbS’ ‘war’ on Iran?

May 2018 now seems a distant era.  Trump is still the same ‘Trump’, but Putin is not the same Putin. The Russian Defence Establishment has weighed in with their President to express their displeasure at Israeli air strikes on Syria – purportedly targeting Iranian forces in Syria.  The Russian Defence Ministry too, has enveloped Syria in a belt of missiles and electronic disabling systems across the Syrian airspace. Politically, the situation has changed too: Germany and France have joined the Astana Process for Syria. Europe wants Syrian refugees to return home, and that translates into Europe demanding stability in Syria. Some Gulf States too, have tentatively begun normalising with the Syrian state.

The Americans are still in Syria; but a newly invigorated Erdogan (after the release of the US pastor, and with all the Khashoggi cards, produced by Turkish intelligence, in his pocket), intends to crush the Kurdish project in north and eastern Syria, espoused by Israel and the US.  MbS, who was funding this project, on behalf of US and Israel, will cease his involvement (as a part of the demands made by Erdogan over the Khashoggi murder). Washington too wants the Yemen war, which was intended to serve as Iran’s ‘quagmire’, to end forthwith.  And Washington wants the attrition of Qatar to stop, too.

These represent major unravelings of the Netanyahu project for the Middle East, but most significant are two further setbacks: namely, the loss of Netanyahu’s and MbS’ stovepipe to Trump, via Jared Kushner, by-passing all America’s own system of ‘checks and balances’.  The Kushner ‘stovepipe’ neither forewarned Washington of coming ‘mistakes’, nor was Kushner able to prevent them. Both Congress and the Intelligences Services of the US and UK are already elbowing into these affairs.  They are not MbS fans.  It is no secret that Prince Mohamed bin Naif was their man (he is still under ‘palace arrest’).

Trump will still hope to continue his ‘Iran project’ and his Deal of the Century between Israel and the Palestinians (led nominally by Saudi Arabia herding together the Sunni world, behind it).  Trump does not seek war with Iran, but rather is convinced of a popular uprising in Iran that will topple the state.

And the second setback is that Prince Ahmad’s clear objective must be other than this – instability in, or conflict with, Iran.  His is to restore the family’s standing, and to recoup something of its leadership credentials in the Sunni world, which has been shredded by the war in Yemen – and is now under direct neo-Ottoman challenge from Turkey.  The al-Saud family, one may surmise, will have no appetite to replace one disastrous and costly war (Yemen), with another – an even greater conflict, with its large and powerful neighbor, Iran.  It makes no sense now.  Perhaps this is why we see signs of Israel rushing to hurry Arab state normalisation – even absent any amelioration for the Palestinians.

Nehum Barnea presciently noted in his May article in Yediot Ahoronot: “Trump could have declared a US withdrawal [from the JCPOA], and made do with that. But under the influence of Netanyahu and of his new team, he chose to go one step further. The economic sanctions on Iran will be much tighter, beyond what they were, before the nuclear agreement was signed. “Hit them in their pockets”, Netanyahu advised Trump: “if you hit them in their pockets, they will choke; and when they choke, they will throw out the ayatollahs””.

This was another bit of ‘stovepiped’ advice passed directly to the US President.  His officials might have warned him that it was fantasy.  There is no example of sanctions alone having toppled a state; and whilst the US can use its claim of judicial hegemony as an enforcement mechanism, the US has effectively isolated itself in sanctioning Iran: Europe wants no further insecurity. It wants no more refugees heading to Europe. Was it Trump’s tough stance that brought Jong Un to the table?  Or, perhaps contrarily, might Jong Un have seen a meeting with Trump simply as the price that he had to pay in order to advance Korean re-unification?  Was Trump warned that Iran would suffer economic pain, but that it would nonetheless persevere, in spite of sanctions? No – well, that’s the problem inherent in listening principally to ‘stovepipes’.

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Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

The Grand Egyptian Museum is calling for the return of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt, according to director of the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) Dr. Tarek Tawfik, after being displayed in the British Museum for more than 200 years.

“It would be great to have the Rosetta Stone back in Egypt but this is something that will still need a lot of discussion and co-operation,” Dr Tawfik told the Evening Standard.

The ancient slab, which is engraved in three languages and single-handedly unlocked the secrets of the hieroglyphs, and hence the entire Egyptian civilisation, has created tension between Cairo and London for some time now. It’s engraved with an identical message in Ancient Greek, Demotic and Egyptian hieroglyphs, which is what allowed 19^th century scholars to decipher it into hieroglyphs. It was found by French soldiers in 1799 in a Nile-delta town called Rosetta (hence the name), as they were rebuilding a fort during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt.

Napoleon was interested in arts, culture, and history, so he took along a group of scholars with him to Egypt and told them to seize all important cultural artifacts. After defeating Napoleon’s army in Egypt, British soldiers stole the piece and transferred it to the British Museum, and it’s been the most visited-object there since.

The handwriting was on the wall since Jeff Sessions recused himself from Robert Mueller’s Russiagate probe in March 2017, along with other issues relating to phony accusations of Russian US election meddling.

Mueller never should have been appointed special counsel in the first place. it was a witch-hunt. No evidence indicates meddling by Russia or any other countries in America’s political process.

Since May 17, 2017 (for nearly 18 months), Mueller found no evidence supporting phony accusations of Russian US election meddling because none exists.

Nor did House and Senate probes fare better – begun in January 2017. Months earlier, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes issued a statement, saying:

“After more than a year, the committee has finished its Russia investigation and will now work on completing our report.”

“We’re dealing in facts, and we found no evidence of collusion.”

House Intelligence Committee head of its probe into alleged Russian US election meddling Michael Conaway said his panel “found no evidence (of Kremlin) collusion, coordination or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians.” 

The same goes the Senate probe, no evidence proving Trump team collusion with Russia or Kremlin meddling in the US electoral process.

On Wednesday by letter to Trump, Sessions said

“(a)t your request, I am submitting my resignation.”

His tenure was rocky from the start – just a matter of time before his departure, rumors about it around for many months.

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted the following:

“We are pleased to announce that Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice Matthew Whitaker, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country well….”

“….We thank Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service, and wish him well! A permanent replacement will be nominated at a later date.”

A Justice Department spokesman said Whitaker will be in charge of “all (DOJ) matters,” including Mueller’s probe, empowered to shut it down if he wishes. 

In August 2017, he tweeted:

“Note to Trump’s lawyer: Do not cooperate with Mueller lynch mob.”

“(I)t will be very difficult to ever see evidence discovered by #Mueller grand jury investigation.”

Separately he said:

“Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing,” adding: 

“If he were to continue to investigate (Trump’s) financial relationships without a broadened scope in his appointment, then this would raise serious concerns that the special counsel’s investigation was a mere witch hunt.”

Weeks before the above remarks he said:

“I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment and that the attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”

On Wednesday, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said the following in response to Sessions’ sacking, saying:

“I hope transparency and rooting out corruption and abuse becomes the focus of any new Attorney General. President Trump has been terribly victimized by Justice Department and FBI corruption.” 

“The Justice Department was a black hole in terms of transparency. It covered up institutional misconduct and, unbelievably, went out of its way to defend misconduct by Hillary Clinton and other Obama administration officials.”

“Now that President Trump has removed AG Sessions and appointed Mr. Whitaker as Acting Attorney General, I hope the new DOJ leadership ends the abusive Mueller investigation and finally does a serious prosecution of Clinton’s email crimes and other misconduct.”

Will Whitaker end Mueller’s witch hunt?

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

It would be foolish to believe that the uber-wealthy UAE needs war-torn Syria more than the reverse, so the reported reopening of the Emirati Embassy more than likely signals a significant change in policy on Damascus’ behalf and not Abu Dhabi’s, the ramifications of which could be far-reaching for the entire region and especially Iran.

Planning A Pivot

Al-Masdar Al-‘Arabi (“The Arab Source”, also known as AMN), an Alt-Media website that basically functions as an unofficial outlet for the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) or at least a faction of it, dropped a bombshell report on Wednesday about how the planned reopening of the Emirati Embassy in Damascus is part of Syria’s reconciliation with that country and its GCC allies in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Considering how close AMN is regarded as being to some of the people in Syria’s military-intelligence community (which forms part of its “deep state”), this exclusive information shouldn’t be treated lightly, nor as “disinformation” from an “unfriendly source”. Rather, there’s every reason to believe the report and analyze the far-reaching regional ramifications that it could have if this actually comes to pass. So as not to be accused of misportraying its contents, here’s the entirety of what AMN revealed to the world on Wednesday:

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Syrian Arab Republic are working through back channels via the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to reach a political reconciliation, a source in Damascus said on Wednesday. According to the source, the Syrian government has been in discussions with the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia regarding political reconciliation. The source said that the Syrian government and the Gulf nations have been in discussion about the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence in the region and their need to defeat their ideology. The first step in this reconciliation was the reopening of the UAE embassy in Damascus after closing more than six years ago. When asked about Syria’s relationship with Iran, the source said that the Persian Gulf nation was not involved in the talks. With the war winding down in Syria, Damascus is hoping for the Arab League to lift their suspension and resume efforts to champion the peace settlement.”

What’s particularly interesting about this report is that it specifically alleges that Iran wasn’t involved in these talks, suggesting that this might have been done truly independently of Syria’s military ally and representative of a sort of pivot at its perceived (key word) strategic expense. After all, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are infamously bombing Iran’s “kindred spirits” in Yemen and Riyadh even dispatched an emergency military force to Bahrain in 2011 to quell an uprising by Iran’s fellow co-confessionals there, so entering into talks with this overtly anti-Iranian alliance would understandably perturb Tehran. That said, it’s Syria’s sovereign right to conduct its diplomacy however it feels fit to pragmatically advance its national interests, and “rebalancing” towards the GCC wouldn’t be surprising when bearing in mind that Damascus used to be particularly close to the bloc before 2011. In fact, President Assad even received the prestigious “Order of King Abdulaziz” in 2009 that was also bestowed upon Putin, Obama, and Trump.

Required Reading

Before going any further, it’s very likely that the typical Alt-Media consumer is totally taken aback by what AMN reported because of how heavily they were indoctrinated over the years into believing simplistic dogma about International Relations, such as the supposed impossibility of Damascus ever entering into a rapprochement with some of the very same countries that were responsible for the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria in the first place, let alone at the perceived (key word) strategic expense of its Iranian ally that solidly stood by its side this entire time. The fact of the matter is that global affairs are infinitely more complex than how they’re usually presented to the masses, especially by websites that stay in business by catering to their readers’ wishful thinking and earning advertising revenue from their repeated visits, to say nothing of the donations that they receive from people who are basically paying to keep their preferred “echo chamber” a “safe space”.

For those who are interested in getting a grip on the nitty-gritty strategic details of what’s really been going on in Syria over the past year, the author strongly recommends reading or at least skimming through three of his most recent analyses:

• “Chaos Theory, Hybrid War, And The Future Of Syria”
• “Strategic Assessment Of The War On Syria In Fall 2018: Idlib & The Northeast”
• “Russia’s Reshaping Syria’s “Deep State” In Its Own Image”

The main idea being conveyed is that Syria is truly at a political crossroads right now that’s much more profound than how many have portrayed it. Although the kinetic (military) phase of the country’s conflict is drawing to a close, the non-kinetic (political) one is rapidly heating up as all sides compete to influence the ongoing constitutional reform process that will determine “the rules of the game” for decades. The three most important points of contention are the post-Daesh rivalry between “Israel” and Iran in the Arab Republic, the enormous task of funding the country’s reconstruction, and the question of “decentralization”, all of which are currently being managed through Russia’s adroit “balancing” act between all players but which nevertheless need a definite solution one way or the other as soon as possible. The present state of affairs cannot carry on indefinitely, so Syria’s possible pivot to the GCC might be Damascus’ envisioned way out of this dangerous impasse.

“Inconvenient” Context

It’s not popular to say, but Syria cannot realistically continue to rely on Iran’s military assistance forever. As a sovereign state, Syria naturally wants to reacquire the ability to ensure its own security with minimal foreign assistance, and Iran’s military intervention there at the democratically elected and legitimate government’s request has pretty much already fulfilled its official anti-terrorist purposes. That’s also why AMN recently reported that the SAA is preparing to discharge thousands of troops who performed more than five years of service “as the military attempts to shift to post-war Syria, which will rely more on police units and less on infantry and armored personnel.” That’s understandable for both practical “peacekeeping” reasons and the very likely possibility that Iranian funds to the SAA are expected to dry up after the US’ reimposed sanctions begin to affect its target’s economy, so it’s better to begin the decommissioning process now while there’s still time to execute it in an organized fashion.

Another point to keep in mind is that “Israel” ramped up its rhetoric against Syria over the past week by threatening to strike it once again on the alleged basis that the IRGC and Hezbollah are carrying out activities there against its “national” interests (e.g. building missile factories, etc.), even going as far as hinting that it would attack the S-300s if they target its jets irrespective if Russian servicemen are present at the time. As “politically incorrect” as it is to say, Russia and “Israel” are still allies even in spite of the tragic spy plane incident that transpired in mid-September, as proven by their continued military coordination with one another, ongoing free trade talks with the Eurasian Union, and even Russia finalizing an agreement to allow “Israelis” to adopt its children (a privilege that it wouldn’t ever grant to a “hostile” entity). It’s therefore inconceivable that Russia would stand in “Israel’s” way the next time that it chooses to bomb Syria on its alleged anti-Iranian and -Hezbollah pretexts and escalate regional tensions, so Moscow’s preferred “solution” is obviously to “encourage” Syria to remove those said pretexts.

President Putin’s unofficial peace plan for Syria aims to have Damascus request the “phased withdrawal” of Iranian and Hezbollah forces from the country on the “face-saving” basis that they’re leaving as heroes following the successful conclusion of their anti-terrorist mission, which would satisfy “Israel’s” “security concerns” and could also see Russia’s new Saudi and Emirati partners moving in to “fill the void”. The GCC’s leaders might also importantly provide much-needed reconstruction aid to the country that Iran is incapable of granting, and Russia could have even clinched a deal with the UAE to play a more important role in its Soviet-era “sphere of influence” over South Yemen in exchange for facilitating the Emirates’ entry into Syria and possibly getting Damascus to “decentralize” control over the Gulf-influenced Northeast. Furthermore, as noted in AMN’s original report, the GCC might help Syria eliminate the last ideological remnants of the Turkish-backed Muslim Brotherhood, which is in their collective interests.

Concluding Thoughts

While the reopening of an embassy might not ordinarily seem like much, the case of the UAE’s plan to reportedly do just that in Damascus is actually much more important than the casual observer might think, particularly after the Syrian “deep state”-connected AMN revealed that this might be the opening stage of a much larger pivot to the GCC countries. While appearing at first glance to be against Iran’s interests, the opposite might be true if one accepts that Tehran cannot continue indefinitely funding its military mission to the Arab Republic under the US’ sanctions pressure and that its post-Daesh presence there is “provoking” Russia’s ”Israeli” ally to escalate the situation to the point of possibly reversing all the stabilizing gains that were made in the country over the past three years. The argument can be made that it’s better for Syria to request Iran’s “phased withdrawal” under the “face-saving” pretext of leaving as heroes than to bear the consequences of keeping its forces in the country after their original mission has been completed.

Iran cannot afford the military and economic costs of fighting a lopsided proxy war with “Israel” in Syria even if it serves the political purpose of temporarily distracting its population from the predicted worsening of their living conditions throughout the course of the US’ reimposed sanctions regime, nor does Damascus even want this conflict to take place on its territory precisely at the point when so much has been achieved over the past few years and a so-called “political solution” is finally within sight. Syria isn’t “betraying” Iran because the two already signed a military deal over the summer and will continue to cooperate in a “normal” capacity, but it’s just that Damascus might have reached the conclusion that the reconstruction assistance that it could obtain from the GCC is worth downscaling that specific facet of its strategic partnership with the Islamic Republic if it was already proving to be “troublesome” as it is. Simply put, this potentially Russian-brokered pivot might save Iran money, lead to a windfall of aid for Syria, and enduringly “stabilize” the situation.

There are also multisided “balancing” strategies at play here too, provided that Syria does indeed pivot towards the GCC like AMN suggested. Just as Russia is proving itself to be a masterful “balancer” in bringing together and managing a diverse set of actors in ways that always work out to its own benefit, so too might Syria be following in its main “patron state’s” pioneering footsteps by seeking to emulate this Hyper-Realist interests-driven “balancing” strategy. Damascus would be diversifying its international partnerships beyond its erstwhile binary “dependence” on Moscow and Tehran, following the former’s lead in downscaling the military dimension of its ties with the latter in order to court generous reconstruction aid from the GCC and position itself to more effectively counter the Turkish-backed Muslim Brotherhood’s influence that still remains in the country. By its very nature, and being careful not to present this as being anti-Iranian in any shape of form, this pivot would open up plenty of post-war strategic options for Syria and is probably why it’s being pursued.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from Al-Masdar News.

As it pursues its war with US-backed Kurdish-nationalist organizations, the Turkish government is threatening an outright military occupation of large parts of Syria that could provoke war with Syria and a direct clash with US forces.

On Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced joint patrols by US forces and Kurdish-led militias as “unacceptable.” Speaking to reporters in Ankara, he said:

“Not only can we not accept (the joint patrols), such a development will cause serious problems at the border.”

This came after Turkey shelled positions of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Zor Magar region east of the Euphrates River and the town of Tal Abyad starting on October 28, killing at least 10 Kurdish fighters. Two days earlier, Erdogan had delivered a “final warning” to Syrian Kurdish fighters to retreat. He also warned that Turkey’s next target would be positions of the People’s Protection Units (YPG, a Kurdish force that is the key component of the SDF) east of the Euphrates.

On October 30, as shelling continued, Erdogan stepped up threats to invade Syria to attack the US-backed Kurdish forces:

“We are going to destroy the terrorist organization… preparations and plans have been completed. We’ve made our plans and programs, and initiated it in the previous days. We will come down on the terrorist organization’s neck with more extensive, effective operations. We could arrive suddenly one night.”

This provoked an angry warning from Washington on October 31. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said:

“Unilateral military strikes into northwest Syria by any party, particularly as American personnel may be present or in the vicinity, are of great concern to us … Coordination and consultation between the United States and Turkey on issues of security concern is a better approach.”

Ankara, however, is determined to crush the YPG, which it views as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Turkish Kurdish separatist movement against which it has waged a bloody counter insurgency campaign for more than 30 years. Ankara also fears Kurdish autonomy in Syria, worried it will provoke demands for Kurdish autonomy in eastern Turkey.

In an apparent attempt to placate Ankara, Washington announced on Tuesday that it would place bounties on the heads of three PKK leaders. Visiting Turkey, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Palmer announced that the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is offering money for information leading to the capture of the PKK officials. The bounties are $5 million for Murat Karayilan, $4 million for Cemil Bayik and $3 million for Duran Kalkan.

But Ambassador James Jeffrey, the US special representative for Syria engagement, said Washington did not see the YPG and PKK as the same entity. He declared:

“For us, the PKK is a terrorist organization. We are not of the same opinion on the YPG. We ensure that the YPG operates as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] in a way that does not pose a threat to Turkey.”

Turkish presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin rebuffed the US initiative, saying Ankara would treat it “with caution” and demanding that Washington sever all ties with the YPG.

Turkey’s ever-deeper involvement in the bloodshed across the region is the product of Erdogan’s decision to support the proxy war for regime change launched by the NATO imperialist powers in Syria in 2011.

As the WSWS previously noted:

“All Erdogan’s calculations were upended by the intensification of the war and of the class struggle in the Middle East. In 2013, amid growing working class anger against Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammad Mursi and social protests in Turkey centred in Gezi Park, the imperialist powers backed an army coup that toppled Mursi. As the Islamic State (IS) militia grew in Syria and invaded Iraq, moreover, they turned to the use of Kurdish nationalist groups as their proxies against IS.

“Erdogan could not adapt himself to these sudden, violent shifts in imperialist war policy, and Ankara’s imperialist allies rapidly came to see him not as a ‘strategic partner,’ but as an unreliable one.”

After Russia intervened militarily to prevent NATO-backed Islamist militias from overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish jets shot down a Russian jet over Syria in November 2015, with US support. After Russia escalated its military posture in response and threatened economic sanctions in retaliation against Turkey, however, Ankara tacked back toward Russia and China. Ankara turned first to China and then Russia for an air defence system, while its relations with the Obama administration and its European allies rapidly deteriorated.

In July 2016, a section of Turkey’s military, encouraged by Washington and Berlin, launched an abortive putsch out of NATO’s Incirlik air base, aiming to murder Erdogan and carry out regime change in Turkey.

Erdogan responded to the coup by stepping up the war against the Kurds and imposing a state of emergency, seeking to strangle all political opposition. Ankara also maneuvered closer to Moscow and Tehran, setting up talks in Astana for a “solution” to the Syria war. And Erdogan ordered the Turkish army to launch its own invasions of Syria, “Operation Euphrates Shield” (in August 2016) and “Operation Olive Branch” (in January 2018), directed against the YPG.

The brief warming of US-Turkish relations that followed the gruesome state murder on October 2 of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul appears to have quickly ended. Ankara clearly saw the investigation of the Khashoggi assassination as a means of promoting Turkish interests in relation to Riyadh and Washington. It had shared tense relations with both the Saudi regime and US imperialism, including over the Saudi blockade of Qatar, a key Turkish ally, and the US alliance with the YPG in Syria.

Erdogan sought to improve relations with Washington by investigating the killing of Khashoggi, who worked extensively for US publications, including the Washington Post. Ankara also released US pastor Andrew Brunson, whom it had accused of helping prepare the 2016 coup. But Washington soon dropped the Khashoggi murder, focusing instead on strategies for intensifying the war in Syria.

Ankara is responding by moving closer to the European powers and seeking to exploit their growing differences with Washington. It joined a new mechanism with Germany, France and Russia to work out a peace deal in Syria acceptable to the European imperialist powers. An inconclusive October 27 Istanbul summit on Syria, hosted by Erdogan, was attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russia President Vladimir Putin.

After the summit, they called for a new Syrian constitution to be drafted before the end of this year, “paving the way for free and fair elections,” according to a joint statement.

Visiting Tokyo on Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also criticized US sanctions against Iran, which have been the subject of escalating conflict between Washington and the European powers.

“While we were asking (for) an exemption from the United States, we have also been very frank with them that cornering Iran is not wise,” he said. “Turkey is against sanctions, we don’t believe any results can be achieved through the sanctions.”

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Government agencies that are skilled at invading nearly everyone’s privacy worldwide are sometimes totally inept at keeping their own internal communications secure. The problem is particularly acute for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which must maintain secure contact with thousands of foreign agents scattered all over the world. By secure contact one means being able to provide specific targeting to the agents and received in return detailed information that responds to what is being sought without any third party being able to intercept or interpret what is being shared.

Communicating is the most vulnerable element in any foreign agent operation, particularly as counter-intelligence services commit major resources to cracking the systems used to link an agent in the field with his case officer or handler, who might be in the same country under diplomatic cover but just as easily might be in another nearby country or halfway around the world.

Various media reports have lately been detailing a catastrophic communications security failure by CIA that took place between 2007 and 2013. In simple terms, what took place was this: the Agency developed a method of covertly communicating with its agents through the internet that involved sites which enabled two way communications that were believed to be both secure and efficient. It presumably operated like social media sites where you have to log in, provide a password and then are able to send and receive messages. It almost certainly had some level of encryption built into it and there may have been several layers of passwords and/or questions that the user had to answer to gain access.

Once developed, the system, which was originally intended only for occasional low-level use, was then deployed to handle nearly all the CIA’s agent communications worldwide, including a number of key countries targeted by Washington, to include Iran and China. Each country had a separate site and the sites themselves were set up under innocuous business or social cover arrangements which presumably would have made them of no interest to prowling counterintelligence services.

What exactly went wrong is not completely clear, but the mechanism was discovered by Iranian counterintelligence, possibly employing information provided by a double agent. The Iranians determined what kind of indicators and components the CIA site had and then went on a Google search to find other similar sites. They then watched their site as well as the others, noting both their activity and their idiosyncrasies, and were presumably were able to penetrate the site directed against them. At some point, they passed what they had learned on to the Chinese and possibly others.

The Chinese expanded on the Iranian work by breaking through the firewall in their country’s site and getting into the entire system. It was possible to identify all the CIA agents in China. More than two dozen were arrested, tortured and killed and a like number were found and executed in Iran, though some were warned by CIA and were able to escape.

Agents in other countries were also exfiltrated as a security measure because it was not known to what extent the information on the system had been compromised and shared. The damage is still being assessed, but one thing that is known is that the United States knew little or nothing about what was going on in China and Iran at a critical time when negotiations over nuclear programs and North Korea were taking place.

The internet communications system was used so extensively because it was easy to use. When it eventually crashed, fully 70% of CIA communications with agents were potentially compromised. Ironically, a CIA contractor had, in 2008, warned that the internet system had major flaws that could be exploited. He was fired for his pains.

Secret communications to protect spies are as old as the Greeks and Romans, who used codes and substitution ciphers. The leap into internet communications by the CIA demonstrated that no system is infallible. The CIA got lazy and did not do its homework when setting up communications plans with agents. The reality is that running agents in a hostile foreign country is more an art than a science. You communicate with a spy in a way that fits in with his lifestyle so as not to arouse suspicion. He or she might be able to take phone calls, or receive letters with invisible writing. They might have the privacy to do burst communications from a computer to a satellite. Or they might prefer to use the old-fashioned methods — to include chalk marks signaling dead drops, brush passes and encrypted communications using one-time pads. CIA, which lost many of its skilled spies post 9/11 after it went crazy over electronics, drones and paramilitary operations, will now have to relearn Basic Espionage 101. It will not be easy and will take years to do if it is even possible. Some might argue, perhaps, that the world would be a better and safer place if it is not done at all.

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Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The UAE is going to reopen its embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus within the upcoming two weeks, diplomatic sources told the Lebanon news outlet Debate on November 5.

The Lebanese news outlet didn’t provide further information on the matter. However, several Syrian pro-government sources confirmed on November 7 that the Abu Dhabi embassy in Damascus is undergoing maintenance.

Two months ago, the Lebanese al-Akhbar newspaper revealed that Mohammed bin Hamad al-Shamsi, a deputy director of the UAE’s Supreme Council for National Security, visited Damascus and met with General Mohammed Dib Zaitoun, head of the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate. The two officials reportedly discussed the possible reopening of the UAE embassy in the Syrian capital.

Prior to the thousands of UAE-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters in central and southern Syria joined the reconciliation process. The step was encouraged by Syrian opposition figures close to Abu Dhabi.

According to several Syria and Lebanese sources, many Arab countries, besides the UAE, are planning to reopen their embassies in Syria in the near future. This shows that Syria may began to regain its diplomatic position in the region.

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Last week, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the US embargo against Cuba. A total of 189 member-nations said Cuba did not deserve this embargo, which began in 1961 and has continued unabated to this day. Only two countries – the United States and Israel – voted against the motion. No country abstained.

Cuba’s minister for foreign affairs, Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla, has said the US embargo has cost the small socialist island state upwards of US$933.678 billion, with the losses in the past year amounting to $4.3 billion (twice the amount of foreign direct investment into the island). This embargo, Rodríguez Parrilla said as he put the resolution forward, is an “act of genocide” against Cuba and its people.

The Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement – both important groupings of the Global South – as well as regional groupings from Africa to Latin America backed the resolution. China’s representative to the UN, Ma Zhaoxu, made the case that the US embargo on Cuba prevented the island from meeting its obligations to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Last year, the United States strengthened the embargo with an attack on the tourism sector (83 hotels were placed on the banned list). It is likely that President Donald Trump’s administration will deepen its assault on Cuba.

Threats by the United States did not convert the vote of otherwise reliable US allies. Each year since 1992 a resolution of this kind has come before the UN General Assembly. Each year the world has overwhelmingly voted against the US embargo. This year was no different.

World worried about the United States

You don’t need a Pew poll to know which way the world thinks.

But it is useful. Last month, Pew Research Center released a poll that looked at the image of Donald Trump and the United States in 25 countries around the world. In most countries, neither Trump nor the United States come off well. Seventy percent of the populations in these countries have no confidence in Trump. The same proportion of people believe that the United States does not take the interests of other countries into consideration when moving policies forward. This is evident with the US embargo on Cuba.

Neither the people of Canada nor Mexico – the closest neighbors of the United States – have a favorable view of either Trump or the United States. Only Israel, which voted with the United States over the embargo on Cuba, has a high opinion of Trump and of the US.

Beyond the Pew poll, it is evident from the atmosphere in the United Nations that the countries of the world – even close US allies – fear US policy on a number of issues. Cuba is a canary in the coal mine. But even clearer is the US policy of ramping up sanctions against Iran.

World does not want to strangle Iran

At the debate over the US embargo on Cuba, Iran’s representative to the UN, Gholamali Khoshroo, detailed how the US had withdrawn from several international agreements and how it had failed to implement UN Security Council resolutions that it did not like.

Behind Khoshroo’s comments lay the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal agreed upon by Iran and the UN Security Council members, the United Nations and the European Union. This deal was sanctified by a Security Council resolution. Trump’s unilateral move to scuttle the nuclear deal and the return of sanctions against Iran this week replicates, Khoshroo intimated, the long-standing and unpopular sanctions against Cuba. The United States, he said, should “sincerely apologize” to the people of Cuba and Iran.

As the new US sanctions regime went into place against Iran, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Ankara, “US sanctions on Iran are wrong. For us, they are steps aimed at unbalancing the world. We don’t want to live in an imperialist world.”

Erdogan is not alone here. Even countries with close ties to the United States, such as India and Japan, are against the sanctions. They may not use words like “imperialist,” but their actions clearly bristle at the heavy-handedness of the US government when it comes to its use of instruments such as financial sanctions.

It was clear that China was never going to honor the new US sanctions on Iran. Nor were Turkey and Iraq, and nor were the three large economies of Asia that rely on Iranian oil (India, Japan and South Korea). No wonder the United States gave these countries waivers to the sanctions.

Some countries, including India and Japan, have been discussing the need for an alternative financial system so that they can do trade with countries that are sanctioned by the United States. They do not believe that the US should be allowed to suffocate world trade through its control over banking systems and through the world’s reliance on the dollar. Pressure to build alternatives no longer comes from the margins; it comes from Tokyo and New Delhi, from Frankfurt and Seoul.

One major casualty of the US sanctions on Iran will be Afghanistan, already ripped apart by almost two decades of war. Afghanistan relies on Iranian oil and, during this year, non-oil trade rose by 30%. India’s project to help build a port in Chabahar is linked to opening new land routes into Afghanistan.

Just as the US sanctions went into place against Iran, Ahmad Reshad Popal, director general of Afghanistan’s Customs Department, opened the Farah crossing to Iranian goods – a snub to US policy. Even Afghanistan, virtually under US occupation, cannot abide by the US policy on Iran. Nor even can the NATO troops in Afghanistan, whose trucks are fueled in part by Iranian oil.

World does not want ‘Iraq war’ in Latin America

George W Bush used the term “axis of evil” to lump together Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Of the three, the US was only able to go to war against Iraq, in 2003. Pressure for regime change in North Korea was held back by its nuclear-weapons program, while pressure for regime change in Iran continues.

Donald Trump has now come up with a new term – “troika of tyranny,” which comprises Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In Miami, Trump’s close adviser John Bolton gave a speech where he inaugurated this term.

He spoke of the right-wing turn in Latin America and the isolation – as far as he was concerned – of socialist governments. Bolton celebrated the election of men such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Ivan Duque in Colombia, men who he said were committed to “free-market principles and open, transparent, and accountable governance.” No mention here of the grotesque views of Bolsonaro or the militarism of both men.

Bolton called the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela “strongmen.” But there is no more “clownish, pitiful” figure – to borrow from Bolton – than Bolsonaro, no more authoritarian heads of government than Bolsonaro, Duque and Trump. Duque has taken Colombia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a sign that the Colombian military will now answer more to Washington than to the Colombian people.

In his speech, Bolton threatened the governments in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Trump’s administration, he said, “is taking direct action against all three regimes” – “direct action” a key phrase here.

Such actions against these countries are not new.

The United States invaded Cuba in 1898 and held it as a virtual colony until the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Pressure on the Cuban Revolution intensified by 1961, with the US forcing an embargo on the island, attempting an invasion of the country and attempting to assassinate the leadership of the revolution.

US marines entered Nicaragua in 1909 and occupied the country until 1933. When the marines left, the national liberation forces under Augusto César Sandino attempted to free the country. Sandino was assassinated, and a US-backed dictatorship by the Somoza family ruled the country until 1979. That year, the Sandinistas – named after Sandino – overthrew the dictatorship. In response, the US funded the Contras (short form for counter-revolutionary forces), who prosecuted a bloody war against the small country.

Ever since Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela, the US has tried to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution that he inaugurated. A failed coup in 2002 was followed up by various forms of intimidation and sanctions. In 2015, US president Barack Obama declared that Venezuela was an “extraordinary threat to US security” and slapped sanctions on the country. It is this policy that Trump has since continued.

Itchy fingers in the Trump administration are eager to start a shooting war somewhere in Latin America – either Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuela. The appetite for this is not there in the United Nations. Nor is it shared in Latin America. But that has never stopped the United States.

Disregard for world opinion as well as the opinion of the US citizenry defines the US government. Thirty-six million people around the world, half a million of them in New York City, protested on February 15, 2003, in an attempt to prevent the US war on Iraq. George W Bush did not pay attention to them. Nor will Trump.

Last August, Trump asked his advisers why the US couldn’t just invade Venezuela. The next day, on August 11, 2017, he said he was considering the “military option” for Venezuela. At a private dinner with four Latin American allies, Trump asked if they wanted the US to invade Venezuela. Each of them said no.

Not sure if their opinions count.

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Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons.

Recente estudo encomendado pela organização Avaaz à IDEA Big Data, tratou de responder de maneira empírica por que a lista de gritantes contradições entre eleitores de Jair Bolsonaro é tragicomicamente interminável, prevalecendo a raivosa irracionalidade: 98,21% dos eleitores do capitão da reserva tiveram contato com notícias falsas durante o pleito, dos quais 89,77% acreditam que são verdadeiros os boatos.

Realizada entre 26 e 29 de outubro, a pesquisa foi realizada com 1.491 pessoas em todo o País. “As fake news devem ter tido uma influência muito grande no resultado das eleições, porque as histórias tiveram alcance absurdo”, disse o coordenador de campanhas da Avaaz, Diego Casaes em entrevista ao jornal Folha de S.Paulo.

Vale ressaltar que, em geral, as notícias falsas que inundaram impunemente o “País da faxina moral através do combate a corrupção” (e os eleitores do Bolsonaro também acreditam raivosamente nisso) em nada foram criativas a ponto de se necessitar um mínimo uso da inteligência para perceber a falsidade no conteúdo das “notícias”. Por exemplo, que Fernando Haddad, quando ministro da Educação, havia distribuído nas creches mamadeiras com bico em forma de pênis aos pequeninos brasileiros.

Se supreende algumas almas que o destino do Brasil tenha sido decidido por mentiras tão “mal-criadas”, a ponto de colocar no Palácio do Planalto um indivíduo do nível intelectual e moral sofrível como o de Bolsonaro, outro empirismo explica o “fenômeno de patologia política destas proporçôes”, nas recentes palavras do sociólogo Michäel Löwy em entrevista a este autor, que representa a eleição do presidenciável de extrema-direita apostando na excessiva ignorância da Nação geral.

Nas provas internacionais do Pisa que avaliam habilidades em leitura, matemática e ciências, realizadas a cada três anos, o Brasil que historicamente ocupa os últimos lugares mundiais em termos de desempenho dos alunos, tem despencado ainda mais.

Nos exames de 2015, entre 70 países participantes o Brasil ficou na 63ª posição em ciências, na 59ª em leitura e na 66ª colocação em matemática. A amostra brasileira contou com 23.141 estudantes de 841 escolas, que representam uma cobertura de 73% dos estudantes de 15 anos.

Se não bastasse mais esta vergonha internacional, 4,38% dos alunos brasileiros ficaram abaixo até do nível mais baixo no qual a OCDE determina habilidades esperadas para os estudantes em ciências. Em leitura e matemática, esse índice foi de 7,06% e 43,74%, respectivamente. 61% não terminaram primeira parte do Pisa; entre finlandeses, são 6%, e entre colombianos, 18%.

Diante disso, era de se esperar que vencesse o pleito presidencial um professor universitário, economista, advogado, filosofo e cientista político, ou um milico brucutu “convidado a se retirar” do Exército depois de ter tentado explodir bombas nas dependências de sua intrituição, por questões salariais ao mesmo tempo que ameaçava de morte uma jornalista, e mandava espancar o colega que panfletava em favor da esposa candidata à vereança carioca?

Enfim, em nome da religião, de Deus, dos bons costumes, da liberdade e da moral, 57 milhões de seres que em geral nem sequer são capazes de localizar a Venezuela no mapa, elegeram tudo aquilo que condenam – falsamente, no outro.

O profundo estado de dormência intelectual e a hipocrisia não pemitem enxergar-se no espelho – o que vale, igualmente, aos petistas: a provinha do Pisa, mencionada mais acima, deu-se em 2015… Quando era proibido apontar o catastrófico nível educacional e a despolitizacao brasileira argumentando que, logo, dar-se-ia com os burros do poder n’água, sob também raivoso e agressivo patrulhamento petista. Alguém se lembra de todo o forte vento semeado pelos, então, donos do poder?

O Brasil colhe suas justas tempestades hoje. Não se poderia esperar outra coisa de nossa gente. Tanto quanto apenas um perfeito idiota pode esperar democracia, liberdade e estabilidade de um regime Bolsonaro, candidato que se elegeu presidente sob discurso contra um sistema o qual ele mesmo integra há quase 30 anos como parlamentar, em cujo largo período foi capaz de aprovar apenas dois projetos de sua autoria.

Edu Montesanti

Imagem :istoe.com.br

The disturbing reality is when things change electorally in America, they remain the same.

Dirty business as usual always wins, the underlying reality of Tuesday’s midterm voting like all earlier “elections.”

Mark Twain was right saying: “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”

Social justice champion Emma Goldman explained US “elections” the same way, saying:

“If voting changed anything, it would be illegal.”

Ordinary people have no say over how they’re governed. America is a democracy in name only, the nation’s founders assuring things would be run by and for privileged interests exclusively.

The first US Supreme Court chief justice John Jay arrogantly said America should be run by the people who own it. The nation’s second president John Adams said the rich, well born and able alone should rule.

The notion of “Equal Justice Under Law” adorning the Supreme Court’s west facade is just a meaningless figure of speech – the way things have been in America from inception.

Political and judicial fairness don’t exist. Things are polar opposite under one-party rule with two money-controlled extremist right wings.

Independents are shut out. Dominant media are in cahoots with a hugely debauched system – self-serving governance by America’s privileged class, pretending to be otherwise.

The rights, needs, and welfare of ordinary people don’t matter. They’re consistently disserved and betrayed by Republicans and Dems alike.

Democratic values and egalitarian principles exist in name only. Executive, congressional, and judicial officials systematically lie, connive, and pretty much do what they please for their own self-interest.

With rare exceptions, they’re unprincipled and deferential to powerful monied interests alone.

It’s the longstanding American way. A previous article explained the results of Tuesday election as follows:

The only thing possibly positive about the outcome is if Dems retake one or both houses, they could block some of Trump’s most extremist policies – for political, not ideological, reasons only.

Both extremist wings of US duopoly governance are in lockstep on issues mattering most – notably the nation’s imperial agenda, its endless preemptive wars of aggression, supporting corporate empowerment, and cracking down hard on legitimate resistance for equity and justice denied ordinary people.

The main difference between Republicans and Dems is rhetorical, not ideological.

No matter how often ordinary Americans are manipulated and betrayed, they’re easy marks to be duped again because they’re ill-informed and dis-informed by major media.

They’re victims of the fabricated official narrative and state-sponsored propaganda fed them by dominant print and electronic media.

They reflect what the late Gore Vidal and Studs Terkel called the United States of amnesia, public betrayal on vital issues passing through their collective consciousness like water through a sieve – understanding something today, erased from their memory later on.

For what it’s worth, below are the likely results of Tuesday “elections,” some races too close to call:

Undemocratic Dems are projected to retake control of the House with a 229 – 206 majority. (CNN estimated Dems winning 238 seats.)

Republicans are projected to retain Senate control by a 53 – 47 margin, gaining two seats over their pre-election 51 – 49 advantage. (CNN estimated a 52 – 48 GOP margin of victory.)

The only certainty about what’s ahead once the 116th Congress is sworn into office on January 3, 2019 is no change whatever in how America is governed on issues mattering most.

Same old, same old will continue like it always does. Americans believing otherwise will learn soon enough how they were duped again – like every time before.

Today’s America is the United States of I Don’t Care for its least privileged citizens and residents.

Federal, state, and local governance dismissively ignores what they care about most.

That’s what governance in America is all about – a fantasy democracy, not the real thing.

The only solution is nonviolent revolution for constructive change – achievable no other way, never through the ballot box assuring continuity, the way it’s been throughout US history.

A Final Comment

Former Massachusetts governor, GOP 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney defeated Dem Jenny Wilson to succeed retiring Senator Orrin Hatch in Utah.

Some observers believe he’ll be more a Trump antagonist than supporter, during the 2016 campaign, saying:

“I’m going to do everything within the normal political bounds to make sure we don’t nominate Donald Trump. I think he’d be terribly unfit for office. He doesn’t have the temperament to be president.”

Based on his record as Massachusetts governor and alliance with GOP politics, he’ll surely go along with the dirty system like the vast majority in Congress.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Davis Vanguard

Thankfully, the “most important election in recent memory” is over and the results have turned out as expected.

Democrats now control the House. Republicans picked up a couple seats in the Senate. Trump’s agenda will tread water. He will spend most of his time fending off Democrat attacks. Empty-headed ideological turf battles between the two sides of the one-sided political system will continue. Gridlock will be the state of the nation.

Gridlock is the only positive thing to come out of this midterm election. It means the state will have a more difficult time carving up our liberties and imposing a batch of new nanny state laws. Democrats in the House will send legislation to the Senate where it will be nixed by Republicans or sent back hash marked. Bitter intramural squabbles and theatrical pugilism will be the order of the day. Legislation interruptus is the preferable outcome.

But there is one thing the party with two heads and one cyclopic eye have in common—war never-ending. 

Both Democrats and Republicans love war. It’s a yuge profit point for sociopaths and full-blown psychopaths in the death merchant industry and their playmates on Wall Street and in the Too Big to Fail international banks. The bribery coffers of the political class runneth over.

Excluding exceptions such as Tulsi Gabbard and Rand Paul, Congress is almost entirely in support of war never-ending. Trump the election campaign noninterventionist has threatened Iran, China, and Russia with sanctions—polite-speak for informal declarations of war—and all three are now preparing for what will be the final conflict.

This aspect—both “parties” supporting aggression and undeclared and illegal wars—make the results of the 2018 midterm election irrelevant. Rainbow intersectionality will be less than insignificant after the thermo-nukes leave their assorted bays and silos. 

But never mind few are talking about this. The American people are sufficiently brainwashed by years of incessant propaganda—and the nonstop accretion of social programming through “entertainment” media—and although they are disturbed by the slow-motion disappearing act of the middle class and the unaffordable care act, they continue to buy into the designated enemy farce, as demonstrated by the willingness to believe Vlad the Destroyer in Moscow will eviscerate “democracy,” which is nothing of the sort. 

We are now reaching the boiling point, both socially and economically. After the shiny asset bubbles turn fully toxic and implode, the political class will steer a teetering and unhinged nation into a final war nobody wants—except of course the hubristic sociopaths who tell us every couple years they have our best interests at heart as they kiss babies and perform the customary photo-ops and town halls. 

I’m told if I truly want out of this madhouse of distorted mirrors we absurdly call representative democracy, I will need leave the country and find comfort abroad. 

But even if I could afford to uproot my family and head to foreign destination, this would not protect us from a nuclear winter following an atomic firestorm. 

I sincerely worry about this, even if my neighbors do not. Maybe this can be avoided, although probably not. The only way this insanity will be prevented is by an uprising of the people—unlikely considering the degree of brainwashing, indoctrination, and apathy—or by a foreign army invading and occupying the country, which is improbable considering the size of the United States. 

For now, we’re stuck with the status quo—rule by a corporatist fascist elite (real fascists, not the pretend kind imagined by Antifa) that is working its way toward the endgame—a one world government and currency. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Ahead of Tuesday midterms, investigative journalist Greg Palast said illegal voter purges went on in a number of states – including Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska and Nevada.

“I have never seen anything like it in 18 years,” he said, referring to the way Florida and the presidency were stolen for Bush/Cheney in 2000, depriving Al Gore of the state and election he won.

Black and Latino Americans are most vulnerable to be illegally purged from voter rolls in many states. Palast sued Georgia’s GOP Secretary of State/gubernatorial aspirant Brian Kemp in federal court, saying:

He “cancel(led) half a million people off the voter rolls…given…no notice that they’ve been (illegally) removed.”

Similar shenanigans are commonplace in many other states, the party in power purging registered voters likely to support opposition candidates.

On Monday, Trump and AG Jeff Sessions warned about voter fraud on Tuesday, DLT tweeting:

“Law Enforcement has been strongly notified to watch closely for any ILLEGAL VOTING which may take place in Tuesday’s Election (or Early Voting). Anyone caught will be subject to the Maximum Criminal Penalties allowed by law,” separately roaring:

“All you have to do is go around, take a look at what’s happened over the years, and you’ll see. There are a lot of people…that try and get in illegally and actually vote illegally. So we just want to let them know that there will be prosecutions at the highest level.”

Evidence of people willfully voting illegally is nonexistent. Plenty of evidence shows voter fraud by illegal purges, other dirty tricks to disenfranchise US citizens, and unfair laws, including felony disenfranchisement.

The 14th Amendment permits it “for participation in rebellion, or other crim(inal)” acts. States alone decide, a way to strip large numbers of Blacks and Latinos from voter rolls – millions of Americans denied enfranchisement this way.

Federal legislation prohibiting this injustice doesn’t exist. Nearly all US states prohibit prison inmates from voting, Maine and Vermont the two exceptions.

In Hunter v. Underwood (1985), the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama’s disenfranchisement for felony conviction law, saying it violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause for its “racially discriminatory impact.”

That’s what voter roll purges and other disenfranchisement tactics are all about – to advantage candidates benefitting from fewer eligible people of color.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was supposed to curb discriminatory practices. It prohibits states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure (that may) deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”

It also established federal enforcement procedures. Most often it doesn’t matter. No national standards exist. States choose their own electoral procedures, enabling discriminatory exclusion.

.have been around since last year, China and Iran facing similar accusations – evidence backing claims not cited because none exist.

On Monday, Reuters falsely said

“Russian actors believed to be connected to the government have been actively involved in spreading divisive content and promoting extreme themes in the run-up to Tuesday’s US mid-term elections, but they are working harder to hide their tracks, according to government investigators, academics and security firms.”

No evidence was cited like every time before. Without it, accusations are baseless.

What possible benefit could Russia, China, Iran, or any other countries hope to gain by trying to influence the electoral outcome of America’s one-party rule with two extremist right wings – taking turns controlling Congress and the White House?

No further elaboration is needed. The only election shenanigans going on are generated internally, not from abroad.

The above information explained some of it. Much more goes on. Past elections were rife with fraud as far back as 1824.

It’s commonplace at the federal, state and local levels – today accomplished with electronic ease.

The notion of electoral democracy and governance serving everyone equitably in America is pure illusion.

Money power runs things, assuring privileged interests are served exclusively. Both wings of one-party rule assure it.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Many observers are wondering why the US issued a sanctions waiver for the Indian-built port of Chabahar in southeastern Iran and the railroad project that’s supposed to one day extend from it to Afghanistan, but the reason is that America sees this curious “Lead From Behind” arrangement as one of its last chances to retain its long-term influence in the landlocked country.

For as tough as the US promised that its reimposition of sanctions on Iran would be, it unsurprisingly went soft when it came to the issue of the Indian-built port of Chabahar in the southeastern part of the Islamic Republic. The State Department confirmed earlier this week that the US granted a sanctions waiver for this project, which simultaneously drew attention not only to the project’s significance, but also the special nature of the American-Indian Strategic Partnership if Washington thought it important enough to preserve at the expense of undermining its sanctions regime against Iran. The reason for this is that the US understands the long-term strategic ramifications of redirecting Afghanistan’s international trade away from Pakistan (and increasingly China) and towards the rest of the world market via the access that it obtains through Chabahar, which is why the railroad that’s supposed to branch off from this port to the landlocked country is also excluded from the sanctions regime.

Between A Rock And A Hard Place

The US isn’t just losing influence in Afghanistan on the military front after the Taliban’s recent spree of gains across the country, but also on the economic one as well after China’s recent inroads there, which America worries could soon have political consequences if Beijing succeeds in establishing new patronage networks with the internationally recognized Kabul elite. This could in turn make it less likely that the US can keep Kabul and the Taliban from striking a deal, especially one at its expense, which is why there’s such an interest in ensuring that America can still retain its control over Afghanistan’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”). Suitcases full of cash aren’t sustainable, whereas the clinching of privileged business deals with China are, hence why the US had to urgently streamline a solution and realized that it was forced to rely on its newfound Indian ally.

No reasonable comparison can be made between China’s ability to exert influence in Afghanistan and India’s, but the two BRICS “frenemies” nevertheless did agree to cooperate in jointly training its diplomats. There’s also the possibility that they’ll pool their infrastructure resources together in turning the country into a shining example of the “China-India-Plus-One” framework that they unveiled before this summer’s BRICS Summit, thereby putting an end to the competition between the New Silk Road and the “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor”. On the surface, all of this should be appalling to America because of how much it risks undercutting its strategic ambitions in Afghanistan, but Washington is clearly wagering that mutual suspicions will persist between China and India which will in turn make the railroad a feasible opportunity for indirectly exerting influence through its South Asian “Lead From Behind” partner.

Keeping India In Line

Iran will obviously receive some residual knock-on benefits from being the transit country facilitating Indian-Afghan trade (which, to remember, is intended to function as a more sustainable means of ‘buying off’ Kabul’s “deep state” than suitcases full of cash in the face of China’s New Silk Road competition), but the US is willing to turn a blind eye to that because of how comparatively insignificant those profits will be. After all, the US could always sanction individual Indian or Afghan companies that trade with Iran across this route instead of keeping their economic activities on a strictly bilateral basis (apart from paying transit dues and other unavoidable expenses that go into the country’s coffers), so the plan is at least conceptually viable and doesn’t necessarily subvert the spirit of Trump’s sanctions policy against the Islamic Republic.

It needs to be emphasized that the US is engaging in long-term strategic planning that won’t yield immediate dividends, but that it’s undertaking this approach because of the high level of trust that it’s established with India since the election of PM Modi in 2014. The US now regards India as a strategic partner, one which is indispensable to “containing” China, even though India itself is playing a “double game”  by working closer with China over the past few months through a cunning strategy that it regards as “balancing” (officially described as “multialignment” in its official parlance). There’s always the chance that India could disappoint the US, but that’s unlikely since it needs access to the US marketplace to continue its growth and is deathly afraid (whether rightly or wrongly) of having its domestic industries swamped by Chinese imports if it pivots towards the New Silk Road.

A Reason To Rethink The Hybrid War On CPEC

Pakistan and Iran are on the same page regarding the role that third-party actors have in provoking occasional border problems between them through these means, so considering the increasingly strategic importance that both countries attach to their relations with one another, it follows that Tehran’s interests would be best served by leveraging its influence over the Chabahar Corridor to ensure security in the transnational Baloch space. This is the only scenario in which Pakistan could partially benefit from the Chabahar Corridor, so it’s incumbent on those in Islamabad to do everything that they can to encourage their Tehran counterparts to take every step in that direction. The US and India have obvious reasons for wanting to continue their Hybrid War on CPEC, but the argument can be made that their support of Baloch terrorism to this end runs an unacceptably high risk of blowback that could scuttle their joint plans for Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia.

Concluding Thoughts

The prima facie impression is that the US must have had some reason or another for waiving its sanctions against Chabahar, but cohesive explanations for why this is have been far and few between. It sounds absurd that the US’ interests in Afghanistan are furthered by Iran of all countries and especially at this specific point in time, but that’s the reality as it presently exists. To be clear, Iran isn’t intentionally assisting the US with anything, but its hosting of the Indian-built Chabahar Corridor to Afghanistan could be instrumentalized by Washington through its strategic partnership with New Delhi to advance the US’ grand strategic interests. On the other hand, however, Iran isn’t a completely passive bystander to this process either, and could at the very least work directly with its Indian partner to ensure that neither it nor the US continue their destabilization of Balochistan through the Hybrid War on CPEC because of the blowback that it could cause for the Chabahar Corridor.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from CC BY-SA 4.0.

It appears that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has crossed all lines of decency, if there were ever any.

In the eyes of many in the West, it crossed them not because it has been brutally killing tens of thousands of innocent people in Yemen, not even because it keeps sponsoring terrorists in Syria, (and in fact all over the world), often on behalf of the West. And not even because it is trying to turn its neighboring country, Qatar, from a peninsula into an island.

The crimes against humanity committed by Saudi Arabia are piling up, but the hermit kingdom (it is so hermit that it does not even issue tourist visas, in order to avoid scrutiny) is not facing any sanctions or embargos, with some exceptions like Germany. These are some of the most barbaric crimes committed in modern history, anywhere and by anyone. Executing and then quartering people, amputating their limbs, torturing, bombing civilians.

But for years and decades, all this mattered nothing. Saudi Arabia served faithfully both big business and the political interests of the United Kingdom first, and of the West in general later. That of course includes Israel, with which the House of Saud shares almost a grotesque hatred towards Shi’a Islam.

And so, no atrocities have been publicly discussed, at least not in the Western mass media or by the European and the US governments, while weapons, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, have been arriving into the KSA, and the oil, that dark sticky curse, kept flowing out.

Was Riyadh enjoying total impunity? Definitely! 

But all this may soon stop, because of a one single man, Mr. Jamal Khashoggi or more precisely, because of his alleged tragic, terrifying death behind the walls of the Saudi Consulate in the city of Istanbul.

According to the Turkish authorities, quoted by The New York Times on October 11, 2018:

“Fifteen Saudi agents arrived on two charter flights on Oct. 2, the day Mr. Khashoggi disappeared.”

Supposedly, they brutally murdered Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen, and then they used sawmills to severe his legs and arms from the body.

All this, while Mr. Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancé, Hatice Cengiz, was waiting for him on a bench, in front of the consulate. He went in, in order to take care of the paperwork required to marry her. But he never came back.

Now the Turkish nation is indignant.

Ten years ago, even one year ago, everything would have been, most likely, hushed up. As all mass murders committed by the Saudis all over the world were always hushed up. As was hushed up the information about the Saudi royal family smuggling drugs from Lebanon, using their private jets – narcotics that are clouding senses and are therefore used in combat zones and during terrorist attacks.

But now, this is the end of 2018. And Turkey is not ready to tolerate an atrocity by an increasingly hostile country; an atrocity committed in the middle of its largest city. For quite some time, Turkey and the KSA are not chums, anymore. Turkish military forces were already deployed to Qatar several months ago, in order to face the Saudi army and to protect the small (although also not benign) Gulf State from possible attack and imminent destruction. In the meantime, Turkey is getting closer and closer to Iran, an archenemy of Saudi Arabia, Israel and US.

It has to be pointed out that, Mr. Khashoggi is not just some common Saudi citizen – he is a prominent critic of the Saudi regime, but most importantly, in the eyes of the empire, a correspondent for The Washington Post. Critic but not an ‘outsider’. And some say, he was perhaps too close to some Western intelligence agencies.

Therefore, his death, if it is, after all, death, could not be ignored, no matter how much the West would like the story to disappear from the headlines.

President Trump remained silent for some time, then he became “concerned”, and finally Washington began indicating that it could even take some actions against its second closest ally in the Middle East. The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been ‘cultivated’ both by Washington and other Western powers, but now he may actually fall from grace. Is he going to end up as Shah Pahlavi of Iran? Not now, but soon, or at least ‘at some point’? Are the days of the House of Saud numbered? Perhaps not yet. But Washington has track record of getting rid of its ‘uncomfortable allies.

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The Washington Post, in its editorial “Trump’s embrace emboldened Saudi Crown Prince’, snapped at both the ‘Saudi regime’ (finally that derogatory word, ‘regime’ has been used against the House of Saud) and the US administration:

“Two years ago it would have been inconceivable that the rulers of Saudi Arabia, a close US ally, would be suspected of abducting or killing a critic who lived in Washington and regularly wrote for the Post – or that they would dare to stage such operation in Turkey, another US ally and a NATO member. That the regime now stands accused by Turkish government sources of murdering Jamal Khashoggi, one of the foremost Saudi journalists, in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate could be attributed in part to the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s 33-year-old de facto ruler, who has proved as ruthless as he is ambitious. But it also may reflect the influence President Donald Trump, who has encouraged the Crown Prince to believe – wrongly, we trust – that even his most lawless ventures will have the support of the United States.”

“Wrongly, we trust?” But Saudi Arabia and its might are almost exclusively based on its collaboration with the global Western ‘regime’ imposed on the Middle East and on the entire world, first by Europe and the UK in particular, and lately by the United States.

All terror that the KSA has been spreading all over the region, but also Central Asia, Asia Pacific, and parts of Africa, has been encouraged, sponsored or at least approved in Washington, London, even Tel Aviv.

The Saudis helped to destroy the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and then the socialist and progressive Afghanistan itself. They fought Communism and all left-wing governments in the Muslim world, on behalf of the West. They still do.

Now both the West and the KSA are inter-dependent. The Saudis are selling oil and buying weapons, signing ‘monumental’ defense contracts with the US companies, such as Lockheed Martin. They are also ‘investing’ into various political figures in Washington.

The current alleged murder of a journalist triggered an unusual wave of soul-searching in the Western media. It is half-hearted soul searching, but it is there, nevertheless. On October 2018, the Huffington Post wrote:

“By directing billions of dollars of Saudi money into the U.S. for decades, Riyadh’s ruling family has won the support of small but powerful circles of influential Americans and courted wider public acceptance through corporate ties and philanthropy. It’s been a solid investment for a regime that relies heavily on Washington for its security but can’t make the same claims to shared values or history as other American allies like Britain. For years, spending in ways beneficial to the U.S. ― both stateside and abroad, such as its funding Islamist fighters in Afghanistan to combat the Soviet Union ― has effectively been an insurance policy for Saudi Arabia.”

It means that the White House will most likely do its best not to sever relationships with Riyadh. There may be, and most likely will be, some heated exchange of words, but hardly some robust reaction, unless all this tense situation ‘provokes’ yet another ‘irrational’ move on the part of the Saudis.

The report by Huffington Post pointed out that:

“One of the few traditions in American diplomacy that Trump has embraced wholeheartedly is describing weapons sales as jobs programs. The president has repeatedly said Khashoggi’s fate should not disturb the $110 billion package of arms that Trump says he got the Saudis to buy to support American industry. (Many of the deals were actually struck under Obama, and a large part of the total he’s describing is still in the form of vague statements of intent.)

Keen to keep things on track with the Saudis, arms producers often work in concert with Saudi Arabia’s army of Washington lobbyists, congressional sources say.”

This is where the Western reporting stops short of telling the whole truth, and from putting things into perspective. Nobody from the mainstream media shouts: ‘There is basically no independent foreign policy of Riyadh!’

Yes, oil buys weapons that are ‘giving jobs to men and women working in the US and UK factories’, and then these weapons are used to murder men, women and children in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere; they threaten Iran, Qatar and several other countries. Oil and Western support also help to recruit terrorists for the perpetual wars desired by the West, and they also help to build thousands of lavish mosques and to convert tens of millions of people in Southeast Asia, Africa and elsewhere to Wahhabism, which is an extreme, Saudi-UK religious dogma. (My book “Exposing Lies of the Empire”. contains important chapter on this topic – “The West Manufacturing Muslim Monsters: Who Should Be Blamed for Muslim Terrorism”).

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Despite what many in the West think, there is hardly any love for Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. The KSA is sometimes supported, out of ignorance, commercial interests, or religious zeal, by such far-away Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, but as a rule, not by those who live ‘in the region’.

Many if not most in the Arab countries have already had enough of Saudi arrogance and bullying, by such monstrous acts like the war against Yemen, or implanting/supporting terrorists in Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere, or by recent the de facto kidnapping of the Lebanese Head of State, by moral hypocrisy and by turning holy Muslim sites into business ventures with vulgar commercialism all around them, and the clear segregation of the rich and poor.

Many Arabs hold Saudi Arabia responsible for turning an essentially socialist and egalitarian religion into what it has become now, of course with the determined support from the West, which desires to have an obedient and rituals-oriented population all over the Muslim world, in order to control it better, while plundering, without any opposition, its natural resources. Saudi Arabia is a country with some of the greatest disparities on earth: with some of the richest elites on one hand, and widespread misery all around the entire territory. It is an ‘unloved country’, but until now, it has been ‘respected’. Mainly out of fear.

Now, the entire world is watching. Those who were indignant in silence are beginning to speak out.

Few days ago, an Indonesian maid was mercilessly executed in the KSA. Years ago, she killed her tormentor, her old ‘a patron’ who was attempting to rape her, on many occasions. But that was not reported on the front pages. After all, she was ‘just a maid’; a poor woman from a poor country.

All of us, writers and journalists all over the world, are hoping that Mr. Khashoggi (no matter what his track record was so far) is alive, somewhere, and that one day soon he will be freed. However, with each new day, the chances that it will happen are slimmer and slimmer. Now even Saudi officials admit that he was murdered.

If he was killed by Saudi agents, Mr. Khashoggi’s death may soon fully change both his country and the rest of the Middle East. He always hoped for at least some changes in his country. But most likely, he never imagined that he would have to pay the ultimate piece for them.

This time, the Saudi rulers hoped for a breeze, which would disperse the smell of blood. They may now inherit the tempest.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

Featured image is from Newsjizz.

Trump and over 60 other world leaders will be in Paris over the weekend to attend an event commemorating the end of World War I a century ago, during which time the American leader is expected to have important sideline discussions with his Russian and Turkish counterparts. The occasion comes at a convenient time given the urgent need that Presidents Putin and Erdogan have to talk with Trump.

Concerning American-Russian relations, the Kremlin is very concerned about the US’ planned withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which it claims will upset the strategic nuclear balance between the two, while American-Turkish relations are undergoing an incipient rapprochement after the release of a jailed pastor who was accused of espionage and the beginning of joint military patrols in the north Syrian town of Manbij.

At the same time, Russian-Turkish relations are better than at any period in history, and the two countries cooperate real closely in Syria and on the Turkish Stream gas pipeline to Europe. They also have a shared interest in presenting a united front against the US’ reimposition of sanctions against Iran, which directly affects both of them because of the deep level of economic cooperation that they each have with the Islamic Republic. Another important point of convergence between them that’s relevant to the US is their leading roles in the Astana peace process, which America has increasingly begun to politicize by previously threatening to tighten sanctions against Syria in response to what it feels is a lack of tangible progress on this front. Just like with Iran, the shadow of so-called “secondary sanctions” also looms large in this regard.

Therefore, as it stands, the following tasks have been set: President Putin wants to figure out what happens after the INF is scrapped and also prepare the itinerary for his much larger official summit with Trump during the G20; President Erdogan wants to continue Turkey’s rapprochement with the US; both multipolar Great Powers want to present a united front vis-à-vis Iran and Syria; while Trump will probably want to continue dealing with them on a bilateral basis in order to more effectively “divide and rule” Eurasia by possibly trying to cut deals with each of them to that effect. For as tricky as this diplomatic “balancing” act might sound, it’s a positive omen that the reason for their larger gathering is to commemorate the end of World War I, which will hopefully imbue each of them with a positive spirit that makes it easier to reach pragmatic working agreements.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

The UK Ministry of Defence announced on 21 September the establishment of yet another British spy agency, an amalgam of military and security service professionals designed to wage cyberwar against terrorists, Russia and organised crime. The new agency will have upwards of 2000 staff (the size MI5 was when I worked there in the 1990s,  not so inconsiderable). I have been asked for a number of interviews about this and here are my thoughts in long form.

The UK already has a plethora of spy agencies:

• MI5 – the UK domestic Security Service, largely countering terrorism and espionage;
• MI6 – the Secret Intelligence Service, tasked with gaining intelligence abroad;
• GCHQ – the government electronic surveillance agency and best buds with the US NSA;
• National Cyber Security Centre – an offshoot that protects the UK against cyber attacks, both state and criminal;
• NCA – the National Crime Agency, mainly investigating organised crime;
• not to mention the police and Customs capabilities.

To provide American context, MI6 equates to the CIA, GCHQ and the NCSC equate to the NSA, and the NCA to the FBI. Which rather begs the question of where exactly MI5 fits into the modern scheme – or is it just an anachronistic and undemocratic throw-back, a typically British historical muddle, or perhaps the UK’s very own Stasi?

So why the new and expensive agency at a time of national financial uncertainty?

Of course, I acknowledge the fact that the UK deserves to retain a comprehensive and impressive defence capability, provided it is used for that purpose rather than illegal, needless wars based on spurious political reasons that cost innocent lives. Every country has the right and the need to protect itself, and the cybers are the newly-defined battle lines.

Moreover, it might be overly simplistic to suggest that this is just more empire-building on the part of the thrusting and ambitious young Secretary of State for Defence, Gavin Williamson. Perhaps he really does believe that the UK military needs augmenting after years of cuts, as the former Deputy Chairman of the UK Conservative Party and er, well-known military expert, Lord Ashcroft, wrote in the Daily Mail. But why a whole new intelligence agency at huge cost? Surely all the existing agencies should already be able to provide adequate defence?

Additionally, by singling out Russia as the hostile, aggressor state, when for years the West has also been bewailing Chinese/Iranian/North Korean et al hacking, smacks to me of political opportunism in the wake of “Russiagate”, the Skripals, and Russia’s successful intervention in Syria.

Those of a cynical bent among us might see this as politically expedient to create the eternal Emmanuel Goldstein enemy to justify the ever-metastasising military-security complex. But, hey, that is a big tranche of the British, and potentially the post-Brexit, British economy.

The UK intelligence agencies are there to protect “national security and the economic well-being of the state”. So I do have some fundamental ethical and security concerns based on recent Western history. If the new organisation is to go on the cyber offensive what, precisely does that mean – war, unforeseen blowback, or what?

If we go by what the USA has been exposed as doing over the last couple of decades, partly from NSA whistleblowers including Bill Binney, Tom Drake and Edward Snowden, and partly from CIA and NSA leaks into the public domain, a cyber offensive capability involves stockpiling zero-day hacks, back doors built into the internet monopolies, weaponised malware such as STUXNET (now out there, mutating in the wild), and the egregious breaking of national laws and international protocols.

To discuss these points in reverse order: among so many other revelations, in 2013 Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ had cracked Belgacom, the Belgian national telecommunications network – that of an ally; he also revealed that the USA had spied on the German Chancellor’s private phone, as well as many other German officials and journalists; that GCHQ had been prostituting itself to the NSA to do dirty work on its behalf in return for $100 million; and that most big internet companies had colluded with allowing the NSA access to their networks via a programme called PRISM. Only last month, the EU also accused the UK of hacking the Brexit negotiations.

Last year Wikileaks reported on the Vault 7 disclosures – a cache of CIA cyberweapons it had been stockpiling. It is worth reading what Wikileaks had to say about this, analysing the full horror of how vulnerable such a stockpile makes “we, the people”, vulnerable to criminal hacking.

Also, two years ago a huge tranche of similarly hoarded NSA weapons was acquired by a criminal organisation called the Shadow Brokers, who initially tried to sell them on the dark web to the highest bidder but then released them into the wild. The catastrophic crash of NHS computers in the UK last year was because one of these cyber weapons, Wannacry, fell into the wrong criminal hands. How much more is out there, available to criminals and terrorists?

The last two examples will, I hope, expose just how vulnerable such caches of cyber weapons and vulnerabilities can be if not properly secured. And, as we have seen, even the most secret of organisations cannot guarantee this. To use the American vernacular, they can come back and bite you in the ass.

And the earlier NSA whistleblowers, including Bill Binney and Tom Drake, exposed just how easy it is for the spooks to manipulate national law to suit their own agenda, with warrant-less wiretapping, breaches of the US constitution, and massive and needless overspend on predatory snooping systems such as TRAILBLAZER.

Indeed, we had the same thing in the UK when Theresa May succeeded in finally ramming through the invidious Investigatory Powers Act (IPA 2016). When she presented it to parliament as Home Secretary, she implied that it was legalising what GCHQ has previously been doing illegally since 2001, and extend their powers to include bulk metadata hacking, bulk dataset hacking and bulk hacking of all our computers and phones, all without meaningful government oversight.

Other countries such as Russia and China have passed similar surveillance legislation, claiming as a precedent the UK’s IPA as justification for what are claimed by the West to be egregious privacy crackdowns.

The remit of the UK spooks is to protect “national security” (whatever that means, as we still await a legal definition) and the economic well-being of the state. I have said this many times over the years – the UK intelligence community is already the most legally protected and least accountable of that of any other Western democracy. So, with all these agencies and all these draconian laws already at their disposal, I am somewhat perplexed about the perceived need for yet another costly intelligence organisation to go on the offensive. What do they want? Outright war?

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Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for MI5, the UK Security Service, who resigned in the late 1990s to help blow the whistle on the spies’ incompetence and crimes. She has a rare perspective both on the inner workings of governments, intelligence agencies, the media, and digital rights, as well as the wider implications for the need for increased openness and accountability in both public and private sectors.

Featured image is from TruePublica.

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Is Kissing a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” a “Terrorist Act”?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 07, 2018

When George W. Bush respectfully kisses King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, does this mean that Dubya could –by some stretch of the imagination– be considered a “suspected terrorist”, who should never have been elected president of the United States of America?

“Flashpoint for War”: U.S. and Japan Plan Military Response to Chinese Incursions of Disputed Islands

By Zero Hedge, November 07, 2018

Things are again rapidly heating up in the East China Sea amidst already heightened tensions in a region where Washington is increasingly asserting the right of navigation in international waters against broad Chinese claims and seeking to defend the territorial possessions of its allies.

Photo of Brazil President-Elect Bolsonaro’s Sons Wearing Israel’s IDF and Mossad Shirts Goes Viral

By Randi Nord, November 07, 2018

A photo of Bolsonaro’s sons donning shirts depicting logos of Israel’s Mossad spy agency and “Israeli Defense Forces” (military) has gone viral, highlighting how Bolsonaro will normalize ethno-fascism as seen in Apartheid Israel that could stretch from the Americas to the Middle East and beyond.

The West Is Failing Julian Assange

By Stefania Maurizi, November 07, 2018

This lack of cooperation from the UK authorities – which can be reasonably interpreted as a deliberate effort to make Assange feel helpless, to break him down, so he’ll step out of the embassy and they can arrest him – has helped create this Catch-22 situation, with Ecuador attempting various options to find a solution, like giving Assange diplomatic status so he can leave the embassy protected by diplomatic immunity.

Trump’s Project of a Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), An “Arab NATO-like Alliance” to Confront Iran

By Dr. Elias Akleh, November 07, 2018

While the USA and the Gulf States have enlisted, trained and armed all the terrorist groups that have been destroying Syria and Yemen during the last decade, they accused Iran of a state sponsorship of terrorism. The facts on the ground show clearly that Iran has been fighting and defeating terrorist groups and protecting Syrian cities first and eventually the whole region.

Cell Phone Radiation Leads to Cancer, Says U.S. NTP in Final Report

By Microwave News, November 07, 2018

The NTP found what it calls “clear evidence” that two different types of cell phone signals, GSM and CDMA, increased the incidence of malignant tumors in the hearts of male rats over the course of the two-year study. Higher incidences of brain and adrenal tumors were also seen, but those associations were judged to be somewhat weaker.

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Update as of November 8, 2018:

Each year the Royal British Legion has to work harder to promote the fundraising ‘poppy campaign’.  Poppy sellers on the streets become fewer and older, and while people will donate to help support veterans and families who have lost members in our frequent wars, they are not so keen on wearing the poppies.

In 2014 a lot of noise and publicity was generated by Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan to ‘celebrate’ the centenary of the outbreak of World War I – noise which, by the following year, had mostly been forgotten.

In 2017 giant red poppies appeared, fastened to lampposts, telegraph poles and anywhere else they could be displayed.  There were streets full of them.  Some people liked them but many found them ugly, ‘in your face’ and confrontational.

This year, being the centenary of the end of WWI, our streets, churchyards and public spaces are being dominated by black metal ‘Silent Soldier’ silhouettes, with the message ‘Lest We Forget’.  They are unsettling, make people feel uneasy and are not universally liked – some have been vandalised or stolen, and at least one place refused to install one.

And as for the message Lest We Forget, the Legion is still forgetting its initial aim: to prevent further sacrifice by reminding the nation of the human cost of war and to work actively for peace.  They have forgotten that WWI was ‘the war to end all wars’.

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In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

From In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae, May 1915

It was that time of year again, when sellers of poppies knock at the door and veterans line the streets of the local town with collecting tins and trays of fake red flowers sold in aid of the Royal British Legion; a time when, if you don’t buy or wear a poppy you would be made to feel ‘unpatriotic’.  But times they are a-changing.

The ‘Remembrance’ poppy grew out of WWI and became a symbol for that dire and catastrophic war.  Catastrophic, that is, for those British men who died (725,000) leaving widows and orphans behind, or the 1.75 million wounded, half of whom were permanently disabled and unable to work or support their dependents.  The British Legion was formed by an ex-serviceman who, realising that the government was unable or unwilling to do anything to support those who had suffered fighting the politicians’ war, decided to act.  They took the poppy (of In Flanders Fields fame) as their symbol and it was first worn at Armistice Day ceremonies in 1921.

Selling the poppy is a way of raising funds and the Legion (it only gained its ‘Royal’ status in 1971) still supports ex-servicemen and/or their families.  But, to quote the RBL’s website: ‘When the Legion’s leaders looked around them in 1921, not only did they see a gigantic task in front of them looking after those who had suffered in the recent war, they also sought to prevent further sacrifice by reminding the nation of the human cost of war and to work actively for peace.

There’s precious little evidence of the Legion or anyone connected to the military seeking to prevent further ‘sacrifice’.  ‘Reminding the nation of the human cost of war’ is sanitised by the language used – the ‘glorious dead’, the ‘heroes’ who sacrificed themselves.  What noble, clean and tidy images those words create!  Sadness and grief there might be, but no honest retelling or reliving of the true cost will be part of the many ceremonies at war memorials across the land.

And ‘working actively for peace’ has always been absent.  That got left to the wearers of the white ‘Peace’ poppies.  The white poppies grew out of the desire of the widows, mothers, sisters, daughters and fiancées who had lost men to the war to promote the message ‘Never Again’.  WWI had been so truly apocalyptic that we should learn the lesson and never tread the road to war again.  Except, of course, that not many years later we were all embroiled in WW2.

Although the RBL has no official policy on the white poppy it is still highly disliked and regarded with suspicion by military people, particularly some veterans.  The Canadian Legion however is ‘staunchly opposed ‘ and has even taken legal action against stores selling them.  Some years ago a peace-campaigning acquaintance told me she had been refused entry to Westminster until she removed her white poppy.  “And what about those people?” she asked, pointing to the red-poppy-wearing individuals filing through the security checks.  Her question was unanswered.

The Poppies that were once worn just on Armistice Day (it became known as Remembrance Day after WW2) creep onto the streets earlier and earlier, with buyers expected to wear them from the moment of purchase, and stay visible for some days after November 11.  This year the RBL Poppy Appeal began with the launch of their official song, a very mawkish The Call, performed by the Poppy Girls, and a pop concert at RAF Northolt, where ‘Thousands of service personnel and their families will wear their poppies with pride during the concert…’.  This took place on October 24^th, weeks before Armistice Day.  Three and a half weeks of hard sell, not to remember the dead but to support the military.

The message ‘Never Forget’ has become ‘look to the future’.  A Legion press release contained a photo of four children with giant poppies.  Printed on the T-shirts of three of them were the words ‘Future Soldier’.  How tasteless and tacky is that?  And Prince William’s wife Kate put a glittering final touch to a black evening dress with a crystal red poppy, a present from the Legion.  Poppies that sparkle are in vogue this year it seems.  Another year or two and poppies will be like the flower in a clown’s lapel – the touch of a hidden button and it will either spin or squirt water at you.

Except that, over the last year or two, I’ve seen fewer poppies being worn while the conversation in the media about how relevant the wearing of poppies is becomes more strident.  And in the build up to next year’s centenary of the outbreak of WWI the pro-military lobby becomes more visible.  We must wear poppies to support ‘our boys’ still bravely doing battle in Afghanistan.

Defending the poppy on the BBC’s Moral Maze, Helen Hill, the Legion’s Head of Remembrance, claimed that ‘there were 40 million poppies on the streets’.  Really?  That would mean that four out of every five people, from tiny babies to most elderly and infirm, would be sporting the things.  And they are not.  Travelling up to London by train on Remembrance Sunday I noticed that, where a few years ago most of the passengers would be wearing poppies, this year 25% at most were wearing them.

The less people wear poppies, the louder the accusations of lack of ‘patriotism’ become.  But as Robert Fisk, whose father fought in WWI, asked, ‘How come this obscene fashion appendage – inspired by a pro-war poem, for God’s sake, which demands yet further human sacrifice – still adorns the jackets and blouses of the Great and the Good?’  Knowing his WWI history rather better than most politicians, he has refused to wear a poppy for some time ‘Is there not,’ he wrote, ‘ some better way to remember this monstrous crime against humanity?’

Those who refuse to wear them are pilloried and subject to abuse.  The University of London Student Union faced threats of violence and accusations of “disloyal and unpatriotic bullying” – all because the Union had taken the decision that, while individual students could make their own choice, the Union would not be sending a representative to the Remembrance ceremony.  Comedian David Mitchell, in a rant about “twinkly” poppies that glamorise war, made the point that those who appear in public wear poppies primarily to avoid disapproval.  It makes the poppy meaningless.

A Shropshire Methodist minister, Patricia Jackson, caused uproar when she said she would not wear a red poppy while conducting the Remembrance service.  She said the red poppy ‘advocates war’.  ITV news presenter Charlene White was blitzed with racist abuse for deciding not to wear a poppy on air.  Former journalist Ian Birrel, about to appear on a television news show, was asked  more that once if he would wear a poppy.  He refused.  He believes that ‘there is something wrong with enforced displays of patriotism and public grief.’

He also had this to say: ‘…it remains baffling why decent treatment of soldiers and sailors needed to be subject to legislation rather than standard practice. And the welfare state is supposed to provide support for anyone who needs it. Now the proceeds of fines on banks are being passed to military charities, while firms and councils are being pressured to provide special help for service personnel.’  He has a point.  There should be no need for a charity like the Legion but successive governments have found the long term costs of their wars unaffordable.

Also taking part in the Moral Maze discussion on the modern meaning of the poppy and Remembrance was British ex-SAS soldier, Ben Griffin.  More than anyone on the panel he knew the horrors of war firsthand and he was scathing about the modern Remembrance Day ceremonies.  ‘We have stopped remembering,’ he said.  When asked to justify that statement (his inquisitors being very pro-Remembrance) he said that we don’t remember what war is really like.  We dress it up in rites that talk about ‘the fallen’.  ‘Soldiers don’t fall,’ he added brutally, ‘they get their heads blown off, get burnt alive or riddled with bullets.  There is no true remembrance’, he said again.  If there were, we’d maybe stop fighting wars.

His hero was Harry Patch who was, when he died in August 2009, the last surviving soldier who served in the trenches.  Harry Patch – who said that ‘War is organised murder’.  Harry Patch – who, arriving at the Front, made a pact with his friend that they would not kill anyone.  He didn’t want a ‘state’ funeral, nor yet a military one.  To the despair of some of his peace campaigning friends he pretty well got both.  As Britain had not long pulled out of Iraq and was ratcheting up casualties in Afghanistan, the government’s desire to promote the military and its ongoing ‘sacrifice’ for the country over-ruled sensitivity.

Ben Griffin was right.  There is no real remembrance because we do not remember the true nature of war.  In fact we go out of our way to avoid remembering it.  We spend a minute or two remembering the heroes, the glorious dead, the fallen, those who gave their lives, our boys who sacrificed themselves for freedom, for democracy, for our country, for…. what?  But, because our wars are not fought here on our own precious inviolate soil, we do not remember the terror, the screams, the blood, the noise and the mindless violence of war.  We comfortably leave that to the armies we send abroad.  We do not remember the mangled bodies with faces half-shot away and guts spilling over the ground.  We do not remember soldiers with limbs blown off as their lives soak away into foreign soil along with their blood.  We do not remember those made mad by war, who live on our streets and fill the prisons and shelters for the homeless with their nightmares.  Nor, standing in front of our war memorials, do we remember the countless hundreds of thousands that we, the British, have slaughtered in our wars. Like those 40 million poppies that were supposed to be out on the streets but somehow were not to be seen, the dead are invisible.

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2012 Article published by Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, republished by AEA911Truth and Global Research in October 2018

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Popular Mechanics (PM) next turns to the issue of the plane impacts and fire damage and their roles in the WTC event.

Though PM acknowledges that the fires in the buildings could not have become hot enough to melt steel, the magazine nonetheless rehashes the argument from other defenders of the official story—namely, that the steel did not need to melt to cause collapse. According to PM, the steel only had to be weakened by the fires just enough to cause collapse.

PM argues that “When the planes hit the buildings and plowed into their centers, a large section of the exterior load-bearing columns as well as some crucial core columns were severed” (pg. 37-38). Though this may be true, the collapse of the Towers appears to have actually started at floors that had minimal structural damage.¹

PM also discusses the theory from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that “the impact stripped fireproofing insulation from the trusses that supported 80,000 square feet of floor space” (pg. 38).

This assertion, however, is greatly flawed, as noted by UL whistleblower Kevin Ryan:

[NIST’s] test for fireproofing loss, never inserted in the draft reports, involved shooting a total of fifteen rounds from a shotgun at non-representative [structural steel] samples. . . . [I]t’s not hard to see that these tests actually disproved their findings. One reason is that there is no evidence that a Boeing 767 could transform into any number of shotgun blasts. Nearly 100,000 blasts would be needed based on NIST’s own damage estimates, and these would have to be directed in a very symmetrical fashion to strip the columns and floors from all sides. However, it is much more likely that the aircraft debris was a distribution of sizes from very large chunks to a few smaller ones, and that it was directed asymmetrically.²

Ryan’s assertion that “. . . aircraft debris was a distribution of sizes from very large chunks to a few smaller ones” is well grounded, as photographs show that large portions of the planes exited the Towers, and eyewitnesses who escaped from the Towers reported seeing intact portions of the plane in the building.³

PM next goes on to discuss NIST’s assertions that the fires in the buildings were sufficient to weaken the steel to the failure point. However, NIST’s own tests show no evidence of this. While PMasserts in their book that “[steel] loses roughly 50 percent of its strength at approximately 600 degrees Celsius (1,100 Fahrenheit)” (pg. 38), NIST cites no evidence that the steel in the Towers sustained temperatures anywhere near this range. The highest temperatures NIST estimated for the steel samples was only 250 °C (482 °F), according to the metallographic paint tests they performed on WTC core column specimens.⁴

PM attempts to make a case that the combination of the aircraft impacts and the ensuing fires were sufficient to cause both of the structures to collapse.

Conspiracy theorists point to other high-rise fires, such as the one in 1991 at the 38-story Meridian Plaza hotel in Philadelphia, as proof that fire alone cannot bring down a skyscraper. And, in a sense, they are right: Fire alone did not bring down the towers (pg. 40).

It is important to note that the term “conspiracy theorists” is a derogatory term used here to discredit the forensic evidence of controlled demolition brought forward by technical professionals. The experts at AE911Truth do not speculate on possible theories regarding who brought down the WTC skyscrapers.

In the case of Building 7, the NIST report tells us that structural damage played no role in initiating the collapse of the building, and that its collapse was due to “normal office fires.”⁵ One then has to wonder why PM does not consider the 9/11 Truth Movement “in a sense right” about Building 7.

But that aside, it is important to quantify how the structural damage played a role in the collapse of the Towers. We previously noted that the collapse of the Towers started on floors with less damage than other floors. In the case of the North Tower, the collapse started at the 98th floor,⁶ which had the least amount of structural damage out of all the damaged floors.⁷ Not only that, but the upper section of the North Tower started to collapse on the side of the building opposite to where the plane impacted.

Impact zone of the North Tower (shown from the north side)

Initiation of collapse of the North Tower (shown form the south side)

But PM notes other issues regarding the Towers’ collapses, quoting structural engineer Jon Magnusson as saying:

[T]he impact struck out sprinklers and fireproofing, and the fire elevated the temperature of steel. Then you start to weaken the steel by heating it up (pg. 40).

As we have already seen, NIST has not provided evidence that demonstrates that the fires were hot enough to cause structural failure and collapse — nor that the fireproofing was widely dislodged. As for the sprinklers being “knocked out,” NIST doubts that the sprinklers would have done much to fight the fires.⁸

PM provides the One Meridian Plaza building as an example that members of the 9/11 Truth Movement cite to demonstrate that fires have never brought down a steel-framed high-rise, but they provide very little information on the specifics of the incident. The One Meridian Plaza building burned for 18 hours over eight floors. This is a vastly more severe fire than the fires that would have existed in the Towers. (Remember that NIST acknowledges that the jet fuel was burned up after only about 10 minutes.) What’s more, the Meridian building was also constructed similarly to the Twin Towers and Building 7, having a core and perimeter “tube within a tube” columnar structural system.⁹ This was also the case for the First Interstate Bank, a 62-story building in California, which burned for nearly four hours but did not collapse.¹⁰

Melted Steel

PM next addresses physics professor Dr. Steven Jones’ findings regarding molten metal in the debris at Ground Zero, which Jones calls evidence of melted steel and/or iron. To counter his contention, PM’s asserts that the fires in the debris piles cooked the steel and other metals to the point where they melted. They quote Jon Magnusson as saying:

When we’re talking about the debris pile and the insulating effect, the fires down there are completely different than the factors [affecting the steel] in the building (pg. 41).

However, the idea that the molten metal could have somehow formed in the debris afterwards is actually addressed in Jones’ paper:

Notice that the molten metal (probably not steel alone; see discussion below) was flowing down in the rubble pile early on; so it is not the case that the molten metal pools formed due to subterranean fires after the collapses.¹¹

PM provides no technical analysis in their book to show that the fires could have become hot enough to melt steel in the debris piles. The temperatures that existed in the debris piles were vastly hotter than what any sort of natural fire could have produced. In fact, the temperatures were evidently high enough:

• To form Fe-O-S eutectic (with ~50 Mol % sulfur) in steel [1,000 °C (1,832 °F)]
• To melt aluminosilicates (spherule formation) [1,450 °C (2,652 °F)]
• To melt iron (III) oxide (spherule formation) [1,565 °C (2,849 °F)]
• To vaporize lead [1,740 °C (3,164 °F)]
• To melt molybdenum (spherule formation) [2,623 °C (4,753 °F)]
• To vaporize aluminosilicates [2,760 °C (5,000 °F)]¹²
• To melt concrete [1,760 °C (3,200 °F]

The conditions at Ground Zero simply could not have produced these types of temperatures.¹³However, the extreme heat in the piles is indeed consistent with thermitic reactions.¹⁴

In PM’s next attempt to undermine the case for molten metal in the debris, they cite the analysis of Alan Pense, a professor of metallurgical engineering at Lehigh University. They quote Pense saying:

The photographs shown to support melting steel are, to me, either unconvincing . . . or show materials that appear to be other than steel. One of these photos appears to me to be mostly of glass with unmelted steel rods in it. Glass melts at much lower temperatures than steel (pg. 41).

First off, it is not clear from this statement which photograph Pense is referring to, though it’s likely the popular “crane shot.”

Regardless of whether the obvious molten material shown above is molten steel, iron, or even glass, its color indicates temperatures exceeding 2,300°F. The jet fuel and office fires in the Twin Towers never reached such temperatures.

Second, we have already seen that there were metals that were either melted or evaporated at temperatures well above the melting point of steel and iron. Third, even if the crane photo did show molten glass, it would still need to have been heated to extremely high temperatures, since glass does not begin to give off any visible light until it approaches temperatures of 2240 ºF.¹⁵

PM next takes issue with Steven Jones’ claim that the molten metal can be accounted for by incendiaries that could have been used to destroy the buildings. They counter this claim by quoting Controlled Demolition, Inc. president Mark Loizeaux as saying the explosives used in demolitions do not produce molten metal, noting that the heat from the explosives would not last long. While this may be true for conventional explosives, the use of thermate and nanothermite based devices could certainly account for the molten metal. Molten iron is the main byproduct of a thermite reaction, and the reaction can produce extreme heat that lasts longer than conventional explosives. Nanothermite is a very high tech variation of thermite, and could account for all of these phenomena.¹⁶

In fact, both the USGS and RJ Lee, an environmental consulting firm, found ubiquitous, previously-molten iron microspheres in all of the WTC dust samples. These, like the thermite, can only be the result of temperatures reaching 2,800°F. Up to 6% of some of the dust samples recovered in the nearby skyscraper, the Deutsche Bank building, are composed of these iron spheres — most of which are only the size of the diameter of a human hair.

It is quite evident that PM has failed to explain away the extreme heat and molten metal that clearly existed at Ground Zero. They have also failed to show the temperatures inside the buildings were sufficient to cause collapse.

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Notes

¹ See: http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/FentonWTCInitiationFloors.pdf

² Quoted from: What is 9/11 Truth? — The First Steps, by Kevin Ryan, pg. 2-3 http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Article_1_Ryan5.pdf

³ See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRwNJmQw1MY

⁴ See: http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html#exaggeration

⁵ “The debris from WTC 1 caused structural damage to the southwest region of WTC 7—severing seven exterior columns—but this structural damage did not initiate the collapse. The fires initiated by the debris, rather than the structural damage that resulted from the impacts, initiated the building’s collapse after the fires grew and spread to the northeast region after several hours.” Quoted from: http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/faqs_wtc7.cfm

⁶ According to NIST NCSTAR 1, pg. 87: “First exterior sign of downward movement of building at floor 98.”

⁷ Although it is true that the NIST report never specifically states that the 98th floor was the least damaged, the information provided in their report clearly demonstrates this. The 98th floor had only five perimeter columns severed, and one need only look through the table provided in NCSTAR 1-2, pg. 205 to see that NIST does not list floor 98 as having any of its core columns severed.

⁸ “Even if the automatic sprinklers had been operational, the sprinkler systems—which were installed in accordance with the prevailing fire safety code—were designed to suppress a fire that covered as much as 1,500 square feet on a given floor. This amount of coverage is capable of controlling almost all fires that are likely to occur in an office building. On Sept. 11, 2001, the jet-fuel ignited fires quickly spread over most of the 40,000 square feet on several floors in each tower. This created infernos that could not have been suppressed even by an undamaged sprinkler system, much less one that had been appreciably degraded.” Quoted from: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_faqs_082006.cfm

⁹ See: http://www.iklimnet.com/hotelfires/meridienplaza.html

¹⁰ See: http://www.iklimnet.com/hotelfires/big_fires1.html

¹¹ Quoted from: Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse? by Dr. Steven Jones, pg. 5 http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf

¹² See: http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf

¹³ For a detailed discussion of the high temperatures at Ground Zero, see:
http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dreger/GroundZeroHeat2008_07_10.pdf

¹⁴ See: http://www.springerlink.com/content/f67q6272583h86n4/

¹⁵ See: http://wiki.naturalfrequency.com/wiki/Colour_temperature

¹⁶ A detailed explanation of aluminothermic technology is given here:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/theories/thermitetech.html

All images in this article are from ae911truth.org

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On Friday October 26, 2018, Dr. Hassan Diab’s decade-long ordeal was prolonged yet further, as the French Court of Appeal delayed once again a decision on the prosecution’s appeal in Hassan’s case. Instead of upholding the decision of the French investigating judges who found powerful evidence of Hassan’s innocence and dismissed all allegations against him, the Court of Appeal ordered a review of the handwriting analysis report that led to Hassan’s wrongful extradition in 2014.

Initially, in 2008, French authorities submitted two handwriting analysis reports to get Hassan extradited. After the defense provided evidence to the court in Canada showing that these reports were based on documents that were not even written by Hassan, and as the extradition case was collapsing, lawyers from Canada’s Department of Justice wrote to French authorities urging them to produce another handwriting analysis report.

Several months later, the lawyers from Canada’s Department of Justice announced that they were withdrawing the previous two handwriting analysis reports against Hassan and filing a third, replacement report. Five world-renowned handwriting experts from Britain, Canada, Switzerland and the Unites States testified that this third handwriting analysis report is biased, totally flawed, and utterly unreliable, and that an objective analysis points away from Hassan. The Canadian extradition judge described the report as “illogical”, “problematic” “confusing”, and “suspect”. However, given the low threshold of evidence in extradition, the judge decided to commit Hassan to extradition based almost entirely on this discredited report.

Now, seven years later, the French Court of Appeal has decided to order another review of the third handwriting analysis report. In the meantime, Hassan and his family continue to face uncertainty even though the French investigative judges found that there is overwhelming and consistent evidence of Hassan’s innocence, including multiple fingerprint and palm print analyses that exclude him.

Reacting to the delay, Hassan remarked,

“They don’t want to admit they made a mistake. And I have this feeling they want to keep going… Eleven years and still, with all the evidence and everything, it’s just a way of saying, ‘We don’t want to admit our mistake.’ That’s the message.”

Don Bayne, Hassan’s lawyer in Canada, said,

“There are pressures in France, obviously some of them political, to keep this case going to satisfy some of the public outrage that has been generated.”

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Featured image is from The Canadian Press.

I have never managed fully to understand the mechanism by which the media and political class decide when to leave a fact, a glaringly obvious and vital fact, completely excluded from public debate. That process of exclusion is a psychological, not an organisational, phenomenon but extremely effective.

Brexit continues to dominate mainstream political discussion, and the Northern Ireland border issue remains at the centre of current negotiations, forced there by the London government’s reneging on the agreement it signed almost a year ago. But there is a secret here, hidden in plain sight, the glaring fact driving the entire process, but which the media somehow never mention.

For the Tory right, the destruction of the Anglo Irish Agreement is a major goal to be achieved through Brexit. In this, they are in secret communion with their friends in the DUP.

Consider the 58 page paper by one Michael Gove, entitled The Price of Peace, published in 2000 by the Tories’ leading “think tank” the Centre for Policy Studies.

Gove argues the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement and the Anglo Irish Agreement should be annulled. And Gove concludes:

Ulster’s future lies, ultimately, either as a Province of the United Kingdom or a united Ireland. Attempts to fudge or finesse that truth only create an ambiguity which those who profit by violence will seek to exploit. Therefore, the best guarantee for stability is the assertion by the Westminster Government that it will defend, with all vigour, the right of the democratic majority in Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom. Ulster could then be governed with an Assembly elected on the same basis as Wales, and an administration constituted in the same way. Minority rights should be protected by the same legal apparatus which exists across the UK. The legislative framework which has guaranteed the rights and freedoms of Roman Catholics and ethnic minorities in Liverpool and London should apply equally in Belfast and Belleek…

In such circumstances, resolute security action, the use of existing antiterrorist legislation and the careful application of intelligence could reduce the IRA to operating as it did in the fifties and sixties. Combining such security measures with a political determination not to allow Ulster’s constitutional status to be altered by force of arms would rob the republicans of hope. It can be done. But does any Government have the will?

Gove gets to this position through a statement of root and branch opposition to the Good Friday Agreement motivated by a classic Tory rejection of any role for the state in seeking to enhance social justice, and of affirmation that the rights of the “majority community” to rule must not be limited or mitigated. Gove objects to every measure of the Good Friday Agreement, including promotion of Catholic recruitment into the RUC, support for the Irish language, state support for businesses, prisoner releases and changes to the oath of allegiance to the United Kingdom.

It [The Good Friday Agreement] enshrines a vision of human rights which privileges contending minorities at the expense of the democratic majority. It supplants the notion of independent citizens with one of competing client groups. It offers social and economic rights: “positive rights” which legitimise a growing role for bureaucratic agencies in the re-distribution of resources, the running of companies, the regulation of civic life and the exercise of personal choice. It turns the police force into a political plaything whose legitimacy depends on familiarity with fashionable social theories and precise ethnic composition and not effectiveness in maintaining order. It uproots justice from its traditions and makes it politically contentious. It demeans traditional expressions of British national identity. And it privileges those who wish to refashion or deconstruct that identity.

This view of Northern Ireland is shared by Gove’s colleagues in the European Reform Group. They may have accepted it was politically not possible to roll back the Good Friday Agreement in the last couple of decades, but Brexit and a hard border fundamentally undermines the Anglo-Irish Agreement and changes their whole calculation.

It is not possible to understand the current state of play in Brexit negotiations, without understanding that those effectively driving the Tory Party position do not view a hard border with Ireland as undesirable. They view it as a vital achievement en route to rolling back power sharing and all the affirmative measures which brought peace to Northern Ireland, in an affirmation of the glory and power of unionism.

It is no accident that Northern Ireland is the rock on which Brexit has foundered. It is considered Tory strategy about which, by that psychological mechanism I will never understand, the mainstream media has chosen not to tell you.

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Things are again rapidly heating up in the East China Sea amidst already heightened tensions in a region where Washington is increasingly asserting the right of navigation in international waters against broad Chinese claims and seeking to defend the territorial possessions of its allies. 

According to a bombshell new Reuters report the tiny and rocky Senkaku Islands which lie between northern Taiwan and the Japanese home islands are “rapidly turning into a flashpoint for war”. Alarmingly, Japanese government sources have been quoted as saying Tokyo and the United States are drawing up an operations plan for an allied military response to Chinese threats to the disputed Senkaku Islands.

From nearly the start of his entering the White House, President Trump has said he’s committed to upholding Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty signed the post-war years of the mid-20th century:

“We are committed to the security of Japan and all areas under its administrative control and to further strengthening our very crucial alliance,”Trump had promised from the first official reception of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe back in February 2017, and since consistently maintained.

Japanese government sources have told regional media that the joint plan of response with the United States involves “how to respond in the event of an emergency on or around the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea” — which is set to be completed by next march, according to the statements.

Beijing claims the islands as part of its historical inheritance — as it does neighbouring Taiwan, despite failing to seize the protectorate during the Chinese Civil War.

Taiwan, however, was a Japanese protectorate before World War II.

It’s a messy historical scenario, thought resolved through United Nations conventions and treaties established after the conflict. — Reuters/news.com.au

The Japan Times reports that

“The plan being drawn up assumes such emergencies as armed Chinese fishermen landing on the islands, and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces needing to be mobilized after the situation exceeds the capacity of the police to respond.”

The situation is now taking on a greater urgency as both the US and Japan participate in the two nations’ largest ever join war games, which involves the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier. The exercise, called Keen Sword began on Monday and is set to run through Thursday, and involved a combined force of 57,000 sailors, airmen and marines — with Japan contributing 47,000 of those military personnel. Canadian warships are also involved in the exercises.

Japan is seeking greater direct commitment and resolve on the part of the United States to defend its territorial claims against Chinese encroachment, which Japan says is already beginning to happen through informal provocative raids of fishing boats organized by Beijing.

Reuters reports that “ongoing aggressive incursions by Chinese fishing boats — organised as a state militia — and a freshly militarized coast guard has seen tensions in the East China Sea flare.” And the report further confirms: “The plan being drawn up assumes such emergencies as armed Chinese fishermen landing on the islands, and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces needing to be mobilized after the situation exceeds the capacity of the police to respond.”

Right now nearly 100K US, allied, & partner-nation military pers are conducting exercises #TridentJuncture & #KeenSword: each involving ~50K troops, dozens of ships, & 100s of aircraft across Europe and the Pacific. #GlobalReach #AnyWhere #AnyTime #WeAreNATO #PacificPartnerships pic.twitter.com/DqIeAszjmJ

— William Seely (@william_seely) November 2, 2018

Though the United States has in the past expressed deep reluctance on outright defending claims to the Japan-administered islands (indicating it will take no official position on the issue), which China calls the Diaoyu, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces says the focus of talks with the US has involved how to incorporate the US military’s strike capabilities in any potential Chinese invasion of the Senkaku Islands scenario.

One Japanese military analyst was quoted as saying:

“Given that military organizations always need to assume the worst possible situation, it is natural for the two countries to work on this kind of plan against China.”

The two already have a framework for such talks based on recently created 2015 defense guidelines known ans the Bilateral Planning Mechanism, or BPM. It stipulates the US and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will “conduct bilateral operations to counter ground attacks against Japan by ground, air, maritime, or amphibious forces”. Currently there’s a similar contingency plan in place for a potential emergency threat on the Korean peninsula.

Between now and the spring – when the plan is set to be finalized and agreed upon – China will likely ramp up its incursions on the islands, or just seize them altogether before US commitments can be firmed up, in which case the great unknown will be whether the United States actually steps up to come to Japan’s aid while risking war with China — something that up until now has been carefully avoided.

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Featured image: The Senkaku Islands, historically claimed by both Japan and China. All images in this article are from Zero Hedge.

Image Trump and Pelosi, December 2017

Conservative Fox News gave the House to the Democrats 90 minutes before the closing of the polls in California. Thus telling the Republican voters that the game was over, their vote is futile. This was unprecedented. Not even CNN dared to do that.

Under whose influence Is Fox? What motivated this decision?

Furthermore, Nancy Pelosi, in her first speech as the winner of the House, gives a speech that seems like a copy-caricature of the Trump program and slogans, including “War against the Washington Swamp,” and stressing the need for bipartisanship.

Politico, November 7, 2018

Congratulating Pelosi, Trump echoed back making the least expected statement: He said he is ready (now that he really controls the elected Republican congressmen) to give additional Republican votes to Pelosi in order to make sure she is elected leader of the House, even if a part of the Democrats oppose her.

The key programmatic points stated by the winning (and shaking) Pelosi were:

• Health insurance for everybody
• and a vast plan to rebuild the country’s obsolete infrastructures.

This would guarantee not only a solid base to restart the REAL economy (as opposed to the nexus of speculative and financial gains) but also a lot of well paying jobs, jobs, jobs.

Now, let’s reflect for a moment regarding the 2016 November elections and the short period before the unchaining of the so-called Deep State agenda Trump.

Before the firing of General Flynn, before Russiagate’s Robert Mueller  & Co. Wasn’t that what the Trump people were trying to do, namely a bipartisan coalition to carry out a program of reconstruction without any desire for wars and free market pirates?

This included good relations with Russia and also a modus vivendi with Syria and President Assad.

One Democrat (Tulsi Gabbard), it was reported in November 2016, was to become the UN ambassador instead of the bloody NeoCon Bushite, Nikki Haley.

In the wake of the 2016 November presidential elections, Rep Tulsi Gabbard met Donald Trump in New York at the Trump Towers:

According to the official, the 35-year-old Hawaii congresswoman is being looked as a candidate for secretary of state, secretary of defense or United Nations ambassador. If selected, Gabbard will be the first woman as well as the youngest pick for Trump’s Cabinet.

The Trump transition source said that their sit-down was a “terrific meeting” and that the Trump team sees her as very impressive. (ABC News, Nov 21, 2016)

Of course, the Deep State corporate money flowed, like gasoline, to inflame violent groups and a series of political gang/countergangs tricks that scared and froze into obedience the “normal” Democrats that could have taken a different road.

This was the purpose, even before the targeting of the Republicans. The “Republicans,” in Congress, despite having been elected by the Trump wave, were still in large part loyal to the Bush machine.

Forgetting for a moment the fog of war and the induced adrenaline: Is it possible now [with regard to US foreign Policy] to imagine a bipartisan Trump agenda? Like the one that was supposed to start in the Spring of 2017 and which was blatantly interrupted by the Deep State cabal?

Just a week after far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in Brazil’s presidential election, the consequences of fascism and support for apartheid and ethno-nationalism rising to power are already coming to fruition.

A photo of Bolsonaro’s sons donning shirts depicting logos of Israel’s Mossad spy agency and “Israeli Defense Forces” (military) has gone viral, highlighting how Bolsonaro will normalize ethno-fascism as seen in Apartheid Israel that could stretch from the Americas to the Middle East and beyond.

On the left is Carlos Bolsonaro, a member Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Chamber who affiliates with the right-wing Social Christian Party. It’s no surprise that Carlos would sport a shirt in support of the Mossad; Israel’s vast intelligence agency is used to attack and silence Palestinian activists at home and abroad, and is also believed to be behind several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

This is a photo of Brazil’s new president Jair Bolsonaro’s two sons wearing IDF and Mossad shirts. Israel has become a symbol for authoritarianism around the world https://t.co/QgRTyRafBr

— Mairav Zonszein (@MairavZ) November 4, 2018

In September during the lead-up to the election, Carlos Bolsonaro sparked outrage after sharing a post on Instagram defending the Brazil military dictatorship’s cruelest methods of torture, the so-called “macaw’s perch.” The excruciating technique involved placing a bar over the victim’s biceps and behind the knees which are then bound to the ankles. The macaw’s perch aims to inflict intense musculoskeletal and joint pain as well as psychological torture.

He quickly retracted the image while, echoing the words of Trump, claiming the controversy was “fake news” meant to smear his family prior to the presidential election.

During the same month, Carlos Bolsonaro took to Instagram once again to post a photo depicting a bloodied man suffocating from torture while bound in a plastic bag. The image was interpreted as a threat toward women and others who stand against right-wing candidates like his father.

Carlos Bolsonaro posted this image on his Instagram Story, widely interpreted as a threat toward women and others who stand against right-wing candidates like his father.

Alongside Carlos in the tweeted photo is his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, a member of the Chamber of Deputies and prominent political figure affiliated with the far-right Social Liberal Party that his father Jair Bolsonaro also represents.

In the photo, Eduardo dons a t-shirt bearing the insignia of the Israeli military in what can only be interpreted as an endorsement of the violence used against Palestinian civilians. During a speech to Congress in 2017, Eduardo doubled down on previous statements defending the 1964 military dictatorship and their use of torture.

Eduardo is fond of using fashion to display his love for torture and right-wing violence. He’s also been spotted wearing a shirt depicting a cartoon photo of Colonel Brilhante Ustra who, prior to his death, stood accused of the death of 60 people and the torture of countless others, including former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, during his tenure under the military dictatorship.

Their father, President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, boasted on the campaign trail that he would like to strengthen ties with the Israeli regime.

In fact, Bolsonaro plans to follow U.S. President Donald Trump’s lead in relocating the Brazilian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a city which Palestinians consider their holy city of al-Quds. Bolsonaro has also announced plans to close the Palestinian embassy in Brazil.

Highlighting the growing ties between fascist regimes around the globe, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his plans to attend Bolsonaro’s inauguration in January. Netanyahu wasted no time sending congratulatory messages to Bolsonaro following the latter’s election victory.

A senior Israeli diplomat, quoted by Haaretz, stated that with Bolsonaro in charge, “Brazil will now be colored in blue and white” — a reference to the colors of Israel’s national flag. This could not be further from what’s already happening in Brazil.

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Randi Nord is a MintPress News staff writer. She is also co-founder of Geopolitics Alert where she covers U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East with a special focus on Yemen.

Featured image: Bolsonaro’s sons don shirts depicting logos of Israel’s Mossad spy agency and “Israeli Defense Forces.” Photo | Twitter 

Let’s start with the cat. You never would have thought one of these beloved felines would play a crucial role in the Julian Assange case, would you? And yet look at the latest press coverage. The mainstream media’s headlines weren’t about a man who has been confined to a tiny building in the heart of Europe for the last six years with no end insight, they were about orders from Quito to feed his cat. There you have a man who is at serious risk of being arrested by the UK authorities, extradited to the U.S. and prosecuted for his publications. A man who has been cut off from any human contact, with the exception of his lawyers, and whose health is seriously declining due to prolonged confinement without even an hour outdoors. Considering this framework, wasn’t there anything more serious to cover than the cat?

But there’s a story to be told behind Assange’s cat. One of the last times I was allowed to visit Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, before the current government of Lenin Moreno cut off all his social and professional contacts, I asked the founder of WikiLeaks whether his cat had ever tried to escape from the embassy given that, unlike his human companion, he can easily sneak out of the building without the risk of being arrested by Scotland Yard.

Assange didn’t take my question with the lightness with which it was intended, quite the opposite, he became a bit emotional and told me that when the cat was small, it had in fact made some attempts to escape from the building, but as it had grown, it had become so accustomed to confinement that whenever Assange had tried to give the cat to some close friends so the animal could enjoy its freedom, it showed fear of wide open spaces. Confinement has a deep impact on the behavior and health of all creatures, animal and human.

Strength

I have worked as a WikiLeaks media partner for the last nine years, and over these nine years I have met Assange many, many times, but only once did I meet him as a free man: that was back in September 2010, the very same day the Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for allegations of rape. Initially he was under house arrest with an electronic bracelet around his ankle, then he entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19, 2012. Since then he has remained buried in that tiny embassy: a depressing building, very small, with no sunlight, no fresh air, no hour outdoors. In my country, Italy, even mafia bosses who strangled a child and dissolved his corpse in a barrel of acid enjoy an hour outdoors. Assange doesn’t.

In these last eight years, I have never heard Julian Assange complain even once: at least in my presence, he has always reacted to the enormous stress he has been under with strength and whenever I have contacted his mother, Christine Assange, she has never wished to discuss the details of her personal feelings and concerns about the conditions of her son.

But for all his strength, this harsh situation is seriously undermining Assange’s physical and mental health. In an op-ed in The Guardian last January , three respected physicians, Sondra S. Crosby, Chris Chisholm and Sean Love, tried to draw attention to this problem, yet nothing has changed. Assange remains buried in the embassy in extremely precarious conditions due to the complete lack of cooperation from the UK authorities which have always refused to offer him safe passage to enjoy his asylum in Ecuador.

This lack of cooperation from the UK authorities – which can be reasonably interpreted as a deliberate effort to make Assange feel helpless, to break him down, so he’ll step out of the embassy and they can arrest him – has helped create this Catch-22 situation, with Ecuador attempting various options to find a solution, like giving Assange diplomatic status so he can leave the embassy protected by diplomatic immunity. But at the end of the day there is very little a small country like Ecuador can do, and with Lenin Moreno in power, Ecuador’s interest in protecting Assange seems to be fading to the extent that Ecuador is considering stripping Assange of his Ecuadorian citizenship, one of the most important shields protecting the WikiLeaks founder from extradition to the U.S..

The UK’s Special Interest?

Having spent the last 3 years fighting in four jurisdictions – Sweden, the UK, Australia and the U.S. – to access the full documentation on the Assange and WikiLeaks case under FOIA, I have acquired a few documents which leave no doubt as to the role played by UK authorities in contributing to create the legal and diplomatic quagmire which is keeping Assange confined to the embassy. Why have the UK authorities done this? What special interest, if any, do they have in the Assange case?

I mention a “special interest” because documents reveal that from the very beginning of the Swedish case, the UK authorities advised the Swedish prosecutors against the only investigative strategy that could have led to a quick solution of the preliminary investigation against Assange: questioning the WikiLeaks founder in London rather than extraditing him to Stockholm. It was this decision to insist on extradition at all costs that led the Australian to take refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, fighting tooth and nail, convinced that if extradited to Sweden he could end up extradited to the U.S.

Documents reveal that the UK authorities referred to the Assange case as not an ordinary one from the very beginning.

“Please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request,” they wrote on January 13, 2011 to the Swedish prosecutors.

A few months later, a UK official added:

“I do not believe anything like this has ever happened, either in terms of speed or in the informal nature of the procedures. I suppose this case never ceases to amaze.”

What is special about this case? And why did the UK authorities keep insisting on extradition at all costs?

At some point even the Swedish prosecutors seemed to express doubts about the legal strategy advocated by their UK counterpart. Emails between UK and Swedish authorities I have obtained under FOIA show that in 2013 Sweden was ready to withdraw the European Arrest Warrant in light of the judicial and diplomatic paralysis the request for extradition had created. But the UK did not agree with lifting the arrest warrant: the legal case dragged on for another four years, when finally on the May 19, 2017, Sweden dropped its investigation after Swedish prosecutors had questioned Assange in London, as he had always asked.

Although the Swedish probe was ultimately terminated, Assange remains confined. No matter that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention established that the WikiLeaks founder has been arbitrarily detained since 2010, and that he should be freed and compensated. The UK, which encourages other states to respect international law, doesn’t care about the decision by this UN body whose opinions are respected by the European Court of Human Rights. After trying to appeal the UN decision and losing the appeal, Britain is simply ignoring it. There is no end in sight to Assange’s arbitrary detention.

Silence and Suspicion

There are two more suspicious elements: the fact that the UK authorities destroyed the emails regarding the Assange case, as they admitted in my litigation before the UK Tribunal, and the fact that they have always refused to provide me with any information as to whether they have communicated with the U.S. authorities on the Assange case, because they sustain that confirming or denying it would tip Assange off as to the existence or non of an extradition request from the U.S..

If there is or will be an extradition request from the U.S., the UK authorities want to be able to extradite Julian Assange for his publications just like any other criminal.

The risk of an editor or publisher being extradited for his publications should raise red flags and public debate in our democratic societies, yet we don’t see any debate at all.

Julian Assange’s situation is very precarious. His living conditions within the embassy have become unsustainable, and his friends speak as if there is no hope: “When the U.S. gets Julian”, they say, as if it is a foregone conclusion that the U.S. will get him and no journalist, no media, no NGO, no press association will do anything to prevent it.

In the last six years that Assange has been languishing in the embassy, not a single major Western media has dared to say: we shouldn’t keep an individual confined with no end in sight. This treatment of Julian Assange by the UK – and, more in general, by the West – is not only inhumane, but counterproductive.

In these years, the Russian state-funded network RT has continued to cover the Assange case intensely. It isn’t hard to understand why Russia is so ecstatic about the Assange case. The case provides Russia with the evidence to affirm that while the West is always preaching freedom of the press and aggressive journalism, it in fact crushes journalists and journalistic sources who expose state abuse at the highest levels. Chelsea Manning spent seven years in prison, Edward Snowden was forced to leave his country and seek asylum in Russia, Julian Assange has spent the last six years confined to a tiny building and in seriously deteriorating health. It’s time to stop this persecution.

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Stefania Maurizi works for the Italian daily La Repubblica as an investigative journalist, after ten years working for the Italian newsmagazine l’Espresso. She has worked on all WikiLeaks releases of secret documents, and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden files about Italy. She has also interviewed A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, revealed the condolence payment agreement between the US government and the family of the Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto killed in a US drone strike, and investigated the harsh working conditions of Pakistani workers in a major Italian garment factory in Karachi. She has started a multi-jurisdictional FOIA litigation effort to defend the right of the press to access the full set of documents on the Julian Assange and WikiLeaks case. She authored two books: Dossier WikiLeaks. Segreti Italiani and Una Bomba, Dieci Storie, the latter translated into Japanese. She can be reached at [email protected]

All images in this article are from Consortiumnews.

Barack Obama’s decision to give Shell permission to drill for potential oil reserves in the Arctic undermined his legacy as the American president who took climate change seriously.

The public outcry as he comes to the end of his second and final term in the White House was hoarse with disappointment because of the audacious promises he made when first running for office: that he would challenge coal, oil and gas monopolies and deliver international climate deals.

Obama did warn during his first presidential address that it would be an uphill struggle and, over the coming weeks, the American electorate will have to assess how far they have really come. Had ExxonMobil and the Koch oil billionaires successfully tamed the man who was supposed to be the most powerful in the world?

Oil Money

The future president was a virtual unknown when he announced his election campaign in February 2007 in Springfield, Illinois. The Hawaii-born Harvard Law School graduate had been a community organiser in Chicago and a civil rights attorney.

The Senator was also among the few American legislators who had not (yet) received millions in funding from coal, oil and gas companies trying to spread their bets by funding both Democrat and Republican politicians who might get in the way of their drilling and refining.

“I don’t take money from oil companies,” Obama boasted at the beginning of 2008.

This was technically true, but oil money did bleed into his campaign.

According to FactCheck.org he received $213,000 from oil and gas workers and their spouses. This included $66,000 from employees of the most well-known oil majors, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP.

In fact, the company formally known as British Petroleum and its employees had donated $77,051 to Obama during his time at the Senate and as a presidential hopeful. The total given to federal candidates exceeded $3.5 million in the two decades before his election.

By the end of the race, $916,162 was piped to Obama by the oil and gas industry, according to the OpenSecrets website. His Republican rival, John McCain, was awash with oil money – raising $2,666,842 from the industry.

Epochal Threat

During the campaign, Obama raised $745 million and spent $730 million, so the oil money was a drop in the ocean and seemingly not enough to buy his silence.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, the future president described climate change as the “epochal, manmade threat to the planet.” Later he alerted Americans to the potential of “a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands”.

In October 2007, he supported a climate change bill and was calling for a graduated cap on carbon dioxide emissions and an auction to sell ‘pollution credits’.

“No business will be allowed to emit any greenhouse gas for free,” he asserted boldly.

A campaign advert, run in March 2008 in Pennsylvania and Indiana, signalled war against the monopoly of the American oil companies. Obama warned about over-reliance on foreign imports and championed energy independence, praising alternative fuels.

He said:

“Since the gas lines of the 70s, Democrats and Republicans have talked about energy independence, but nothing’s changed – except now Exxon’s making $40 billion a year, and we’re paying $3.50 for gas.

“I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore. They’ll pay a penalty on windfall profits. We’ll invest in alternative energy, create jobs and free ourselves from foreign oil.”

ExxonMobil Candidate

Steve Coll, in his brilliant biography of an oil behemoth, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, provides a dramatic account of how Obama attacked oil while out on the stump, challenging the most powerful vested interests in the world. Coll notes that Obama “spoke most pointedly about ExxonMobil…”

Obama said at an early primary debate:

“It’s not going to be easy to have a sensible energy policy in this country. ExxonMobil made $11billion last quarter. They’re not going to give up those profits easily.”

And he told a rally in North Carolina:

“Think about that: at a time when we’re fighting two wars, when millions of Americans can’t afford their medical bills or their tuition bills, when we’re paying more than four dollars for a gallon of gas, the man who rails against government spending wants to spend $1.2billion on a tax break for ExxonMobil. That isn’t just irresponsible. It’s outrageous!”

As voters went to the polls his attack on the energy industry began to crescendo. In August 2008, he announced at the Austintown-Fitch High School:

“For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time.”

He attacked George W. Bush for his reliance on oil, and the fact that gas prices for drivers had exploded.

“They had a plan,” he said. “Problem was it was the oil company plan. It was the gas company plan. We need a people plan! And that’s why I’m running for president.

Yes we can

“The oil companies have placed their bet on Senator McCain, and if he wins, they will continue to cash in while our families and our economy suffer and our future is put in jeopardy.”

And he was not joking. At the same time, he was promising that the US would produce enough clean energy to end Middle East oil imports within a decade.

The oil companies certainly took the threat very seriously. One senior ExxonMobil executive told Coll: “We were like a candidate. Both parties were mentioning us by name… we were a candidate and we clearly knew that we were not electable.”

Now a decade has passed, with emissions still rising, will Obama supporters be able look back on the hope and the mania and say, “Yes, We Did”?

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Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

Featured image is from The Ecologist.

Cuba is writing a new constitution, part of a lengthy process of political change that can be traced to the 6th Congress of the Communist Party in 2011. The Congress approved a document known as the “lineamientos,” a detailed domestic policy blueprint that opened certain sectors of the economy to market dynamics and “change[d] the structure of employment, reduce[d] inflated payrolls and increase[d] work in the non-state sector.” The plan was to close State enterprises if they don’t generate a profit, with the private sector absorbing laid-off workers. To date less than a quarter of the “lineamientos” have been implemented, reflecting a slow and careful process of change.

In 2016, the 7th Party Congress approved the “conceptualizacion,” a theoretical outline for economic reform, with particular emphasis on social property and the role of the socialist State. The “conceptualizacion” provided the theoretical framework for the new constitution. In June 2017, the National Assembly of People’s Power established a commission charged with preparing a first draft of the new Constitution. The Party Central Committee reviewed the draft proposal in June of this year, then passed it to the National Assembly for approval in July. Copies of the proposed constitution went on sale the first week of August for the equivalent of about US 4 cents, the cost of a local newspaper. Free copies are available on the internet. The comment period is from Aug 13 to Nov 15, after which a referendum is expected early next year.

The comment period includes public events organized, in part, by the seven mass organizations – Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the Federation of Cuban Women, the National Association of Small Farmers, the Cuban Workers’ Federation, the University Student Federation, the Pre-university Student Federation, and the Cuban Writers and Artists Association. Few Cubans are not members of at least one mass organization, and many are members of more than one. More than 135,000 consultations led by 7,600 pairs of trained facilitators will take place across the island and will include some Cuban communities in other countries.

Leading militants in the Communist Party of Cuba were responsible for the first draft of the Constitution. The Party and its youth sector, the Young Communist League, include about a fifth of the population over the age of 16, which indicates broad participation by the most politically active sector of the population. In evaluating the role of the Communist Party, both in the constitutional process and politics as a whole, it is important for folks from the US to draw a clear distinction with the Democratic and Republican parties, where membership can imply as little as a $25 annual donation or a designation on an electoral form. Members of the Communist Party must apply for membership, be recognized for their civic participation, attend regular meetings, and maintain an exemplary moral standing in their community. The current Constitution recognizes the Communist Party as the “leading force of society and of the state,” and the new constitution will almost certainly maintain this role as a vanguard party.

Historical context

In general, countries do not take lightly the writing of a new constitution – and Cuba is no exception. There are several reasons for this bold move. The current moment is characterized by a transition of political power from the “historic generation,” which fought and won the 1959 revolution, to a new generation, connected to the world via internet and accustomed to free education and healthcare, guaranteed employment, subsidized food and public transportation, and affordable, if scarce, housing. Raul Castro is almost certain to be the last of his generation to be President or head of the Cuban Communist Party. The transition to a new leadership, without the revolutionary credentials, moral authority, or history of socialist struggle, presents a series of challenges.

Theoretical and practical foundations

Cuba is built on seven fundamental principles outlined in the “conceptualizacion”:

• Sovereignty of the nation
• Popular base of the Communist Party
• Universal commitment to social welfare
• Cuban values, with Jose Marti as perhaps the most important referent
• Active engagement by socialist civil society
• Limited controlled engagement in global commerce
• Strong international relations, particularly in the global South and Latin America

Equity is a central element of Cuban socialist values. This was a relatively uncontentious question in the early years of the revolution when Cuba’s constantly growing economy could depend on fair trade prices for nickel, tropical fruits and other exports, plus affordable energy sources and manufactured goods via the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). But with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1990, COMECON ceased functioning – literally overnight – leaving Cuba with serious economic challenges. In the early 1990s, the economy went into recession, known as the “Special Period in times of peace.” The GNP contracted by more than a third and there were widespread shortages of food and fuel, yet the Cuban people remained committed to the socialist project.

Source: The Bullet

Cuba adopted a series of economic policies meant to deal with the crisis in the short to medium term, including rapid expansion of the tourist industry financed, in part, by foreign investment, development of biotech, temporary export of human capital mainly in the form of medical professionals, and reforms in the agricultural sector to improve self-sufficiency. The results were impressive for such a poor country. From 1995 through 2008, the island nation experienced some of the highest GDP growth in the western hemisphere. In 2000, Venezuela and Cuba signed an agreement that provided 115,000 barrels of petroleum per day in exchange for the work of thousands of Cuban doctors in areas of Venezuela that were severely underserved in terms of health care. Due to recent unrest in Venezuela, by 2016 oil shipments dropped to 42,000 barrels per day.

Economic results in Cuba have been less stellar since 2009 with an average annual growth just under 2%. This isn’t bad for an economy under constant threat from the internationalized US embargo, but it is hardly sufficient to recover from the devastation of the early 1990s. Without robust economic growth, socialist equity ends up being defined by the distribution of pain rather than plenty.

Closely linked to equity is the question of exploitation, which is central to a Marxist reading of society. Marx’s labor theory of value is essentially a definition of exploitation as a social condition in which one person steals the labor of another to accumulate individual wealth. The 1976 Constitution prohibits Cubans from “procur[ing] income derived from exploitation of the work of others.” Cubans face a challenging question in moving toward limited private enterprise while maintaining a socialist understanding of wealth accumulation as a collective process that should be for the benefit of the entire society.

This leaves Cuba with a fundamental theoretical/practical problem – is socialism constructed primarily (or at least in the final instance) on the development of an abundant material foundation by whatever means, or primarily on the socialist consciousness of the population? In the final analysis, Marx was a materialist (though as a consummate dialectician, he clearly recognized a dynamic relationship between materialism and idealism), while both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara advocated the centrality of socialist consciousness. Cuba tends to emphasize central planning with limited market openings and development of culture, education, and foundational concepts like equity and socialist consciousness. By comparison, the Chinese Communist Party is taking the road of “socialist modernization” or “market Marxism.”

Each model offers a distinct understanding of work and, in particular, how to discipline labor to efficiently produce the abundance that can serve as the foundation of a socialist society in transition to communism. The market mechanism in combination with private ownership of the means of production yields a disciplined labor force through the threat of poverty (or starvation in the worst of cases), whereas socialist consciousness depends on the collective will of workers to contribute according to their abilities and take according to their needs (or according to their contributions – depending on the level of social development). Using brute production as a measure, the market mechanism has often been more effective at creating abundant surpluses, though certainly not at distributing those surpluses equitably. However, there is no reason central planning cannot be as efficient as market mechanisms. Given the development of new computer models, central planning may prove to be more efficient by avoiding the widely recognized excesses and herd mentality of private economic actors, and the regular crises that are inherent to capitalism.

Cuba clearly recognizes the importance of labor discipline and the production of sufficient surplus to satisfy an increasingly globally linked population. In 2007, in his first major speech as President, Raul Castro focused on economics. A Cuban worker receives a salary, Raul said, that “is clearly insufficient to satisfy all necessities, and hence has practically stopped fulfilling the role of assuring the socialist principle of ‘from each working according to his capacity and to each according to his work’.” That failure brings “social indiscipline” – read petty theft and black market activity to make ends meet – that is “difficult to eradicate.” In 2010, Raul Castro addressed the other side of the coin when he announced layoffs of thousands of government workers and limited privatization of parts of the economy: “We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working.” Free education and healthcare can be internalized in two contradictory and irreconcilable ways – as rights without accompanying responsibilities, or as the result of collective struggle. The first is a product of individualism, the second of collective political consciousness. With increasingly easy access to Hollywood films, US television, and other sources of capitalist propaganda, it’s not hard to understand the challenges involved in developing collective consciousness.

Segmentation of the economy into tourist sectors, where workers have easy access to hard currency, and State sectors, in which salaries are paid in Cuban pesos, makes the challenge even greater. Laborers in the tourist sector can often earn as much in one day as State laborers earn in a month. While promotion of the tourist sector was important for economic recovery after the demise of the Soviet Union, it came with a price in terms of decreasing equity and socialist commitment. This is part of the challenge for the new Constitution.

Given the impact of the US embargo and the existence of counter-revolutionaries in south Florida intent on returning Cuba to a purely capitalist path, unbridled “market Marxism” may not be an option for socialist Cuba. The US embargo began in 1962, inspired by a State Department official who proposed “a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the [Castro] government.” The embargo is nothing short of a recipe for capitalist counter-revolution. Over the past six decades, the cost to Cuba has been about US$130 billion in today’s dollars. For a country with a current annual GDP of less than US$90 billion, the impact is substantial.

With a huge land mass and a fifth of the world’s population, China is building an efficient market economy with a mandate to avoid “social tension” (ie, class conflict). Given an island with 11 million people only 90 miles from Florida, is this even an option for Cuban socialism? China is concerned mainly with containing internal class conflict, whereas, a priori, Cuba must concern itself with class conflict initiated from the US. While Cuba is in the process of moving carefully into some market mechanisms, the heights of the economy will remain centrally planned and controlled. In China, “market Marxism” is grounded in social unity, foreign investment, and increased trade characterized by a robust integration with global markets. With the US embargo in place, these are not realistic options for Cuba. Cuba’s understanding of a Marxist/Leninist system is grounded in class struggle, sustainability, closely controlled foreign investment, a nationalist private sector, and international solidarity, particularly in Latin America. The new constitution will outline the legal framework required for limited markets while confirming the socialist nature of the State and the leading role of the Communist Party. As Raul Castro reminded during the 7th Party Congress, “We cannot ignore the influence of powerful foreign forces who call for the empowerment of non-state forces to try to create agents of change in hopes of ending the revolution and socialism in Cuba.”

Provisions of the new constitution

In economic terms, the new constitution will provide legal foundations for private businesses and their ability (limited) to contract wage labor, plus the right to own private property. Already, new regulations for private enterprises are scheduled to take effect in December. According to William LeoGrande, an academic based at American University, “they have two broad purposes: to enable the state to capture a greater share of the revenue that private businesses generate, while also minimizing illegal behavior and protecting public safety; and to limit the growth of individual businesses in order to prevent the accumulation of wealth and property.” The new regulations will crack down on tax evasion and black market transactions that have become rampant in the private sector, while also providing a solid legal foundation for legitimate enterprises.

The new Constitution will legalize same-sex marriage, reflecting a cultural change generations in the making. For more than a decade, Raul Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro-Espin, has assumed a leadership role in promoting LGBTQ rights as head of the State-sponsored National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX). Where once revolutionary governments sent LGBTQ people to re-education camps, now the State, along with NGOs and community-based organizations, are leading a society-wide re-education campaign that lends credence to the importance of education in consciousness raising. Mariela said, “Before, there was prejudice against talking about these things. Eleven years ago we started holding seminars about homophobia and transphobia. And that helped to pave the way for dialogue among the population.” Newly appointed President Miguel Diaz-Canel was an early supporter in Villa Clara Province where he mobilized Party resources and his own political clout to support an LGBTQ cultural center, the first of its kind in Cuba.

The Constitution will restructure the State in important ways. The new positions of Prime Minister and provincial Governors will handle the day-to-day administration of State policies, while the President will be in charge of strategic development and the overall direction of the country. Similar to parliamentary systems or the US Electoral College, the President will be elected by the National Assembly rather than direct popular vote. The Prime Minister will be nominated to a five-year term by the President and approved by the National Assembly. There will likely be a third President overseeing both the National Assembly and the Council of State. The National Assembly meets only twice a year under normal circumstances, while the Council of State is in permanent session and is responsible for many of the executive functions of the State. In general, the idea is to separate long-term strategic planning and policy development from direct implementation, thereby establishing results-based accountability.

The new constitution will likely be in place sometime next year.

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Tom Hansen, of the Autonomous University of Social Movements, is the International Education Director of the Mexico Solidarity Network. From 1988 to 1997 Tom was the Director of Pastors for Peace. From 1987 to 1988 he organized the first national material aid caravan to Latin America as National Coordinator of the Veterans Peace Convoy to Nicaragua. He has a doctorate in rural development from the UAM-Xochimilco in Mexico City.

The Democratic Party won control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections on November 6, gaining more than the 23 seats required for a majority. With many House races too close to call or with large numbers of votes still uncounted, particularly in states like California and Washington, which provide for voting by mail, the five television networks projected a Democratic victory with a gain of 30 seats or more.

The Republican Party retained control of the US Senate, gaining several seats in states where President Trump campaigned heavily against Democratic incumbents. It is noteworthy that Democratic senators who capitulated most cravenly to Trump’s vicious persecution of immigrants—Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Claire McCaskill in Missouri—lost their races by wide margins. Republicans also captured Senate seats in North Dakota and Florida, with seats in Montana, Nevada and Arizona undecided as of this writing.

The Democrats made some gains in state governorships, where the Republicans held 26 of the 36 statehouses. Democratic candidates won Republican-held governorships in Illinois, Maine and Michigan, and defeated the most right-wing anti-immigrant Republican, Kris Kobach, in Kansas, usually a Republican state, as well as the two-term governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, notorious for his assault on workers’ rights. But Republicans won the two most hotly contested races in large states—Ohio and Florida. The Georgia race could end up sufficiently close to go to a run-off. Among the biggest states, the Democrats retained control of New York, Pennsylvania and California, while the Republicans held Texas.

Winning control of the House in no way means a shift to left on the part of the Democratic Party. On the contrary, prominent Democrats have been at pains to declare their desire for bipartisan collaboration with the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Senate.

A victory celebration saw the geriatric leadership of the House Democrats take their bows, with some difficulty, before the television cameras: 78-year-old Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, likely to become the next speaker of the House; 79-year-old Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip, in line to become the next majority leader; and 78-year-old James Clyburn, the deputy minority whip, in line to become the next majority whip.

Pelosi made a series of vague promises, beginning with “restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration,” and “stopping the assault on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act” and on people with pre-existing medical conditions. She listed a series of issues on which back-channel discussions have already begun with the Trump White House, including prescription drug prices and infrastructure.

She concluded her remarks with a paean to bipartisan cooperation, declaring, “We’ve all had enough of division,” and claiming that “unity for our country” would be the main goal of the new Democratic-controlled House.

She said not a word about the racist campaign against immigrants and refugees that was Trump’s focus in the closing days of the election campaign, or the nationalistic and militaristic character of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. On the latter point, she pledged the Democrats to “honoring the men and women of our military who guarantee our freedom.”

Trump reportedly called Pelosi shortly after her victory statement to congratulate her and discuss future relations between the White House and the Democratic-controlled House.

There are two additional factors, besides the public assurances of the leadership, that underlie the further shift to the right by the Democratic Party. The vast majority of the Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats were in suburban districts with higher incomes and higher education levels than the average. Only a handful were seats in predominantly working class or low-income areas.

Equally significant is the background of many of the Democratic candidates who won Republican seats. A large number are drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus. The World Socialist Web Site has described them as “CIA Democrats.”

Winning seats (as of this writing) were at least nine such candidates, including two former CIA operatives, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan; former military officers Max Rose in New York, Mikie Sherill in New Jersey, Chrissy Houlahan and Connor Lamb in Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria in Virginia, and Jason Crow in Colorado; and former State Department official Tom Malinowski in New Jersey, with several other races still to be decided.

These candidates will bring into the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives the direct influence of the military-intelligence apparatus, ensuring that one of the main areas of activity in the next Congress will be Democratic Party pressure for an even more aggressive foreign policy towards Russia, Syria, Iran and other targets of American imperialism.

The election results set the stage for a further shift to the right in the whole structure of official politics, regardless of the broader shift to the left among working people and young people.

The Democratic Party ran on a right-wing, pro-capitalist program, offering no significant improvements in jobs, living standards and social benefits for the working class, and it began seeking an accommodation with Trump even before its victory in the House of Representatives was projected.

The Republican Party will move even further to the right, bound even more tightly to Trump, who seeks to lay the basis for a personalist, authoritarian movement of a fascistic character. His domination of the party will only increase.

There is massive popular opposition to the right-wing policies of the Trump administration, particularly its attacks on democratic rights and its racist vilification of immigrants and refugees. But within the framework of two equally right-wing, corporate-controlled parties, and with the Democratic Party demanding a more aggressive foreign policy and massive internet censorship, this opposition could find only extremely limited expression in the heavier election turnout, particularly among young people and, in some states, among minority voters.

Perhaps the only unalloyed expression of these popular sentiments came in the Florida referendum on a state constitutional amendment to abolish Florida’s policy of imposing lifetime disenfranchisement on anyone with a felony conviction, which deprives 1.4 million Florida residents of the right to vote, nearly half of them African-American. This constitutional amendment passed by a margin of 64 percent to 36 percent, clearing the 60 percent mark required for passage.