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President Donald Trump has announced his intent to nominate retired general John Abizaid as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, marking the end of a nearly two-year vacancy, the White House said.  

As America’s longest-serving Central Command chief, Abizaid oversaw the Iraq War from 2003 to 2007. The West Point graduate, who according to The New York Times twice declined the diplomatic post, will now be competing with a longstanding backchannel between Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Abizaid, who is of Lebanese descent and speaks Arabic, will bring an experienced hand to the relationship with Riyadh at a volatile time.

The bet by Kushner, a real estate developer, on Saudi Arabia’s brash young crown prince, has come under intense scrutiny following the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

In the wake of the killing, initially brushed off as a disappearance by the Saudis, Turkey leaked a string of gruesome pieces of evidence suggesting otherwise and played an audio recording of the murder to the head of the CIA.

In the recording, a member of the Saudi hit squad says, “tell your boss,” the NYT reported Monday, citing US intelligence officials pointing to the crown prince as the presumed boss who could have ordered such an act inside a Saudi diplomatic mission.

The Saudis, who were forced to admit to the murder, have nonetheless maintained that the crown prince had no knowledge of the incident.

The murder, a sloppy attempt at a coverup, and Turkish ascendence to renewed regional leadership have hurt US efforts to isolate rival Iran. After threatening that not one liter of Iranian oil would be sold after the imposition of sanctions on November 5, the US was compelled to grant waivers to a number of countries — including Turkey.

The Saudi crown prince, promoted as the lynchpin of a grand new Middle East strategy by Kushner, has since had to lean heavily on his father’s influence to ride out the crisis and calm allies. The king and his heir recently wrapped up a domestic tour seemingly aimed at presenting a united front.

Trump’s appointment of a seasoned military man and Council on Foreign Relations member as envoy to Saudi Arabia after a 22-month vacancy may signal a shift — at least officially — away from the Kushner-MBS bromance.

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With Damascus and its allies firmly in control of Syria’s largest cities and the vast majority of Syrian territory west of the Euphrates – not only has the US-led proxy war against the nation failed – with Russian and Iranian forces involved indefinitely – the return of additional territory under Damascus’ control seems all but inevitable.

However, the US still holds territory east of the Euphrates, and – as American policymakers like to gloat – much of Syria’s oil wealth falls within this territory illegally occupied by US troops.

There is also the northern city of Idlib and surrounding countryside – the future of which is still nebulous due to the presence of Turkish forces and Ankara’s ever-shifting agenda and alliances.

Each side involved in the proxy war has pursued a number of policies – diplomatic, political, and military in nature – to strengthen their positions before the war finally concludes.

For Damascus, Russia, and Iran – decisive military victories across western Syria have served as the central pillar of Syria’s victory over the foreign-backed militancy. Diplomatic efforts both within Syrian borders and beyond them continue and also play a significant role in ending the war in all of Syria’s favor – even including many groups involved in opposing the government now being offered amnesty and reconciliation.

The United States – stretched by global wars of aggression, decades-long military occupations, and significantly diminished geopolitical clout – finds itself depending more on political ploys than producing any meaningful military or diplomatic leverage.

Staged chemical weapon attacks and increasingly absurd and equally baseless accusations of human rights violations now stand in where American military might once stood.

The repetitive nature of such ploys feeds into a circular process that both exposes Washington’s impotence and serves to exasperate it. Despite this – Washington and its many functionaries across political, diplomatic, and information spheres – continue feeding into this process. Thus, while the US still has forces in Syria, and continuously seeks to not only sabotage peace in Syria – but infect Iran with the same strain of proxy war – patient persistence by Damascus and its allies will see to Washington’s complete failure both in Syria and the wider Middle East.

Seeking Humanitarian Leverage 

As America’s proxy war in Syria continues to unravel, Washington continues to seek what leverage it can. This includes headlines flooding news cycles attempting to blame the bloodshed in Syria on the current government headed by President Bashar al Assad, and depicting Damascus as ruled by a “brutal regime.” Washington hopes to poison the Syrian government’s image to the point that any political settlement involving President Assad’s continued rule is unthinkable.

Yet, with each ploy, the US and its allies simply reaffirm that not only was the opposition in Syria manufactured abroad as was the war they helped trigger in 2011, so too is the humanitarian component of America’s pretext for remaining involved in Syria.

The Independent’s article, “The brutality of the Syrian regime must be told,” is an apt example of this.

The article is written by Amina Khoulani – founder of “Families for Freedom” – one of many UK-based fronts posing as human rights advocacy groups – but is in reality just one of many components in the West’s propaganda war against Syria.

Families for Freedom’s website admits it is “supported” by Women Now for Development, Dawlaty, and The Syrian Campaign (PDF) – all in turn funded by Western corporate-funded foundations and the very Western governments who conspired to overthrow the Syrian government and were complicit in arming and funding militants sent into Syria to do so.

The article attempts to rewrite the history of the Syrian conflict, claiming that Khoulani and her family were merely peaceful activists and that by 2012, the Syrian military was rounding up her family and friends, and bombing cities to stop protests.

Khoulani claims:

Before the civil war in Syria started, I lived in a small city called Darayya on the outskirts of Damascus, with my husband, children and other close family.

I worked as a history teacher in a high school in the centre of Damascus, which I loved. And I was an activist with a huge passion for the protection of human rights. I always knew that Syria was controlled by an oppressive, brutal regime. Long before the uprising in 2011 the people of Syria had no human rights, no freedom of expression, and there was certainly no democracy in the country.

Forced disappearances and detentions had been the norm since the days of Hafez Assad, who ruled before his son Bashar took over in July 2000.

She would also claim:

On 20 August 2012 the Darayya massacre started. It lasted for six days. It was just after the Eid holiday. The regime blocked the access and exit routes to the city. It was then that the bombing started. They used mortars, missiles, all types of bombs – they didn’t care where they targeted.

In reality – even by the US State Department’s own admission – terrorist organizations like Jabhat Al Nusra were already active in every major Syrian city – including Khoulani’s – by the end of 2011. Syrian forces were not rounding up peaceful activists and bombing protesters – they were fighting armed terrorists and arresting those providing them material support.

The abuse of human rights advocacy illustrated by Khoulani’s propaganda campaign served a central role in the Syrian war since it began in 2011. By Washington’s own admissions, the proxy war against Syria was planned long before 2011, with militant groups groomed, armed, and funded as early as 2007. The 2011 “Arab Spring” was likewise planned and prepared for years before it finally “sprung.”

The protests merely served as a smokescreen for the start of foreign-sponsored armed subversion.

Claims of human rights abuses were used as a pretext by the US and its NATO allies to invade and destroy Libya that same year. A similar and what Washington had hoped would be a swift  repeat of the Libyan war was aimed at Syria. Many of the Western-armed militants who fought in Libya were even transferred to Syria, entering via Turkey and participated in the seizure of Idlib and much of Aleppo.

In essence, it was the United States and its allies who committed premeditated crimes against humanity – engineering a destructive war that has consumed all of Libya and much of Syria since 2011. Through the use of the West’s still potent media monopolies – public perception is still being shaped to believe that the victims of Washington’s serial acts of armed aggression are actually the perpetrators – that governments fighting backed against foreign-sponsored armed extremists are “brutal dictatorships” and terrorist organizations and those supporting them are “activists” and “freedom fighters.”

Articles like Khoulani’s appearing in the Independent seek still to shape public perception, to wring whatever leverage still remains from an otherwise tired, battered, and abused “humanitarian” pretext.

By continuing to expose these “human rights advocates,” who funds them, and to what end, it may be possible to protect the legitimacy of genuine human rights concerns and how the former poses as the greatest danger to the latter.

For the Syrian conflict, as it reaches its conclusion we can expect the US to continue rolling out political ploys particularly in the form of propaganda couched behind “humanitarian concerns.” Barring any drastic and risky military escalation – the US has few other cards left. Its “humanitarian” card is unlikely to wrest concessions in Washington’s favor and the continued, repetitive abuse of this card only further undermines this ploy elsewhere it is used by American policymakers.

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

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It appears increasingly likely Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Assange will wind up in the clutches of the U.S. government.

It’s hardly surprising, given that in ten years’ time, Wikileaks published more classified information than all other media combined. It exposed human rights abuses, government spying, torture, and war crimes on an unprecedented scale.

WikiLeaks put government, corporations and even the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA and other intel agencies on notice that they could no longer count on operating in secret.

It created a trove of primary source material that serious journalists and researchers will mine for years to come. Its publications are accessible to readers who prefer primary sources to mostly mediated news.

Wikileaks so infuriates the USA’s most violent, corrupt, and criminal institutions that Hillary Clinton half-jokingly suggested drone-bombing Assange. Other U.S. politicians called for his execution by other means.

California’s 28th District Congressman Adam Schiff, who became the chair of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats reclaimed the House, said he would speak to Assange “when he is in U.S. custody, not before.”

Schiff is a vociferous and supremely self-righteous leader of the Democratic Party’s “Resistance,” which sullies the name of the underground movement formed in France during World War II to fight Nazi Germany’s occupying forces and the collaborationist Vichy government.

The “Resistance” tolerates only one truth and one loyalty: Russia is the enemy, interfering in Syria, the Ukraine and even U.S. elections. Russia elected Trump with Wikileaks’ help, it says. Russia dares to position missiles on its own borders, it says, to respond to NATO’s missiles on the other side. The U.S. must build more missiles, more drones, more nuclear weapons, and every other sort of weapon to defend the European world against Russia and its ally China.

Moral and Racial Superiority

Moral and racial superiority entitles the U.S. to occupy the world with military bases, ringing any nation that challenges its hegemony with military aircraft, battleships, assault vehicles, and military surveillance. Moral and racial superiority entitles its spy state agencies to shut down access to information deviating from its narratives and therefore to arrest and extradite Julian Assange.

The Republican Party shares the same supremely intolerant nature as the Democrats, but differentiates itself by insisting that, although Russia is the enemy, Donald Trump did not collude with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election.

The Republicans also want to silence the founder of Wikileaks and find a way to shut the organization down. Trump’s former CIA director, and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has called Wikileaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” and vowed to hunt Assange down.

Has Time Run Out?

Assange has been an asylee in Ecuador’s London Embassy for more than six years—since August 2012. Ecuador and the UK, however, are no closer to an agreement that would allow him safe passage out of the embassy. In a recent video conference, #Unity4J organizer Suzie Dawson said she fears Assange and those working to free him are running out of time:

“Right now time is not on our side. And I had someone today complaining because they want us to do a big, big action day march. When you do those types of actions it takes two or three months to organize. You need to have an organizing committee, you need to wallpaper the town, you need to have one date that you do it on, you need to do a ton of advertising. You need to get all the unions and various other organizations to sign on board, and then you have this one action day.

“Well, there’s a couple of problems with that. First of all, I don’t think we have three months right now. If we schedule a February giant march in support of Julian, I honestly don’t think we have until February. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that the actions we take in the short term, in the next days and weeks, will buy us that much time for Julian, but I don’t see it.”

CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who spent two years in prison for exposing the agency’s official use of torture, said if Assange walks out of the embassy without a guarantee of safe passage, he will be extradited to the U.S. in chains:

“We all know why the British have that embassy ringed. It’s to snatch him and to turn him over to the United States. If that happens, the CIA and the FBI are both going to be on that plane and they’re both going to be at least attempting to interrogate him all the way back home. They will bring him back to the United States in chains because that’s what they do.“

Dawson feels the FBI and CIA will interrogate and torture Assange to try to obtain information that would allow them to bring Wikileaks down. She has no doubt he’s been preparing for this eventuality for years. She believes he will have made sure the organization has adopted security codes and measures he himself doesn’t know and therefore can’t reveal—even if he’s tortured.

“They want to know about security files for example. They want to know about the inner processes and workings of Wikileaks. They want access to the knowledge that’s inside Julian’s brain. And they will torture him. And they will interrogate him in order to attempt to get that.

“Now I trust Julian to be smart enough to have made sure that even he doesn’t possess a lot of that knowledge. In my personal opinion, Julian has spent years planning for these various eventualities, but it won’t stop them from trying.”

Dawson aded intelligence agencies are eager to punish him: “At the end of the day they want to punish him for outing their corruption and their crimes. They’ve been waiting eight years to do it, and they will be rubbing their hands together with glee at the prospect of the UK detaining him and extraditing him to the USA.”

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Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected]. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from WSWS

November 6 was a day in which people across the United States and indeed the world were watching for some indications of the future political prospects for the leading capitalist state.

It had been predicted that the House of Representatives would be lost by the Republicans to the Democrats. This was the outcome of the elections where Democrats could pick up approximately 40 seats outperforming the party of President Donald Trump.

Trump played down the loss of the House and emphasized that the Senate would remain under Republican control. Nonetheless, there is a major shake-up in the cabinet of the Trump administration with the immediate departure of Attorney General Jeff Sessions with more ousters being imminent. 

A large number of women, national oppressed people and younger politicians ran for public office while a significant number were elected. The results of the elections were in part due to the higher than normal turnout of voters for a midterm poll. 

With these new faces in Congress and the Senate it still remains to be seen what actual impact this will have on the overall political atmosphere prevailing in the U.S. Trump, whose 2016 campaign is still under investigation by a special counsel, continues his right wing, neo-fascist posture and agenda aimed at stoking fears of African Americans, Latinx people, Middle Easterners, immigrants, LGBTQ communities and anyone who does not agree with the policies of the current administration.

A series of high profile racial and political incidents occurred leading up to the midterms. 14 packages containing what appeared to be pipe bombs were addressed to two former Democratic presidents, a previous Secretary of State, a famous actor, the Manhattan building of Cable News Network (CNN), among others, with a return address containing the name of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

On October 24 a white racist shot to death two African American seniors at a Kroger supermarket in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky. Just minutes before this same assailant unsuccessfully attempted to gain entry into an African American church. Some three days later, another domestic terrorist entered the Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill district of Pittsburgh and killed 11 Jewish worshippers. 

Both gunmen were imbued with hatred for various sectors of the population in the U.S. and internationally. Trump through his campaign rallies across the country has agitated for stricter immigration laws even sending thousands of troops to the southern border with Mexico. The president’s attitude towards African Americans, particularly women, has been expressed through his derogatory statements to journalists who were merely asking him critical questions about domestic issues.

The culmination of these violent acts and inflammatory rhetoric has created a socially tense atmosphere in the U.S. Although the official unemployment rate has declined sharply over the last two years (3.7%), a significant number of working families are continuing to suffer from poverty and economic marginalization. The ruling class is growing wealthier at the expense of the majority while a burgeoning federal budget deficit threatens the future stability of the country.

Voter Suppression, Institutional Racism and the Legacy of Slavery

Two gubernatorial and one senatorial race in the states of Georgia and Florida have become a focal point for millions throughout the country and the world. Democratic State Representative Stacey Abrams has refused to concede to former Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp in Georgia where a narrow margin separates the contenders.

The Abrams campaign has objected to documented evidence of voter suppression targeting mainly African Americans and naturalized citizens. Abrams is demanding that all votes be counted, strongly believing that the gap between her and Kemp would deny him 50% of the vote necessitating a runoff election in early December. Kemp has already resigned as Secretary of State claiming victory and setting up a transition team.

An article by Khushbu Shah published in the Guardian on November 10 states that:

“In the three months leading up to election day more than 85,000 voters were purged from rolls under Kemp. During 2017 668,000 voters were purged, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Of those 2017 numbers, investigative reporter Greg Palast told Salon, 200,000 people left the state, died or moved out their district, making them legitimate cancellations. However, through litigation, he got the entire purge list. ’Of the 400,000 who supposedly moved, our experts will tell a court that 340,134 never moved – wrongly purged,’ Palast told the Guardian, saying people had been purged for not voting in an election or two.” 

Such a high degree of irregularity within the Secretary of State’s office should have prompted a Justice Department investigation. However, considering that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was fired from the Trump administration the day after the midterm elections, has been accused of being a racist for many years, it is not surprising that no administration intervention on the side of the disenfranchised has been forthcoming. In fact Trump has sided with the Republican candidates in Georgia and Florida, where similar charges have been made. 

 This same Guardian report continues noting:

“Furthermore from 2012 to 2016, 1.5 million voters were purged – more than 10% of all voters – from records, according to a 2018 report from the Brennan Center for Justice. In comparison, 750,000 were purged from 2008 to 2012…. On the first day of early voting a bus full of African American senior citizens on their way to a voting center were turned back. Organizers called it ‘live voter suppression.’…  The Guardian witnessed long lines in various parts of metro Atlanta, where the majority of counties lean Democrat. MIT’s Election Performance Index for 2016 suggested Georgia ranked 49th out of 50 for wait times to vote.”

Similar developments occurred in the state of Florida where African American Mayor of Tallahassee Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate for Governor, is in another undecided race against Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis. Voter suppression is a perennial systemic problem in Florida as well. 

In 2000 the presidential race between Democratic Vice President Al Gore and Republican Governor George Bush, Jr. was decided in Florida after a 5-4 Supreme Court decision ordered the state election commissions to stop counting the votes, giving the election to the Republican candidate. Broward County became a focal point of the 2000 election and this center of Democratic African American voters is once again being targeted for disruption by the right wing supporters of the Republican Party.

Carol Anderson of the Guardian wrote on November 14 saying:

“Florida is, once again, in an election debacle that is straining the bonds of credibility and democracy. Governor Rick Scott has actually called in the state police to investigate ‘voter fraud’ (none was found), then ordered the voting machines impounded in Broward county, all to protect his precarious lead in the US Senate race. A judge, however, emphatically blocked that last command.”

A referendum was passed in Florida on November 6 which restored the right to vote to 1.4 million people denied the franchise as a result of previous felony convictions. Nonetheless, these potential voters could not cast their ballots in the midterms. The recounts for Governor and the Senate will intensify the struggle generating more animosity from the right wing towards African Americans and other national minorities.

Impact on Domestic and Foreign Policy

Even with a majority Democratic House of Representatives the question remains as to which course the party will take as it relates to domestic and international affairs. Many Democratic politicians and their allies within the corporate media have focused attention on allegations of Russian governmental interference in the 2016 presidential elections which brought Trump to the White House. 

Yet this preoccupation with Russia’s influence and the U.S. electorate completely neglects the political bankruptcy of the Democratic campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During the administration of President Barack Obama the militarist policies of U.S. imperialism continued in full force leading to an escalation of Pentagon and NATO troops in Afghanistan; the destruction of the North African state of Libya in 2011, the most prosperous nation on the continent, resulting in the brutal assassination of Pan-Africanist leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi; an initiation of a counter-revolutionary war aimed at toppling the legitimate government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad which fueled the crises of migration and displacement, the worst since the conclusion of World War II, triggering the advent of neo-fascist regimes in Eastern Europe and the threat of the breaking up of the European Union (EU).   

On a domestic level after the ascendancy of Obama in 2008, the following midterm elections in 2010 saw a major swing to the right in both the Congress and the Senate. By 2014, the Democrats had loss both the House and Senate along with numerous state legislative bodies and governorships. 

During the period of 2009 through 2016, African Americans were subjected to greater levels of state violence and socio-economic depravation spawning rebellions in Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee and Charlotte. There was the proliferation of racist organizations while the Democratic Party seemed helpless in countering the reactionary trend. 

The struggle for voting rights among African Americans extends back to the years following the Civil War (1861-1865). The defeat of Black Reconstruction after 1876 and extending through the remaining decades of the 19^th century returned African Americans to conditions reminiscent of enslavement where state governments enacted segregation laws which were reinforced by a penal system which constitutionally within the framework of the 13^th Amendment coupled with local laws could in fact subject detainees to involuntary servitude.

An enslavement policy in the state of Colorado was overturned by the voters in the midterms shining a light on this practice as it exists in the 21^st century. Nevertheless, the prison system whose inmates are disproportionately African Americans, Latinx and poor is not being dismantled. 

How will the incoming Democratic Congress address these fundamental questions? Are they even capable of such a challenge considering that the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican parties represents the ruling capitalist class.

The political rights of African Americans must be defended as a principle within the concept of universal suffrage. Nonetheless, the genuine democratic aspirations of the nationally oppressed in the U.S. and their right to self-determination cannot be realized under the racist capitalist system. The capitalist system was built on the enslavement of African people and the extermination of the Indigenous nations in North America. Consequently, a revolutionary reconstruction of the contemporary dispensation must overturn the material basis for this centuries-long national oppression and economic exploitation in order that a truly democratic system comes into existence. 

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

Judging from the mainstream media, Israel was not a major issue in the midterm election but it sure did come up a lot when candidates for office were wooing Jewish or Evangelical voters. To cite only one example, Florida Congressman Ron DeSantis criticized his opponent Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum during their gubernatorial race for receiving support from the Dream Defenders, a group favoring Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and giving a speech welcoming members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to his city. DeSantis claimed in a video clip that “I can find anti-Semites around him, but it’s almost like ‘we don’t want to discuss that.’”

DeSantis, who sponsored the 2013 Palestinian Accountability Act which called for the withholding of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until it recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, charged that Gillum would not be a “friend” of Israel. In 2017, he co-founded the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, saying

“Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, as we share common national interests and possess similar national values. Israel is not the problem in the Middle East; it is the solution to many of the problems that bedevil the region. American policy must ensure that Israel emerges victorious against those who deny or threaten her existence.”

Earlier this year, DeSantis drafted a proposal calling on the U.S. to recognize Syria’s Golan Heights as an ‘integral part’ of the State of Israel.

DeSantis boasted about his presence in Jerusalem when the U.S. Embassy was moved to that city in May and has promised as governor to visit Israel’s illegal settlements on the West Bank, which he refers to by the preferred Israeli usage as “Judea and Samaria.” He threatens critics that “If you boycott Israel, the state of Florida will boycott you.”

One might note at a minimum that for Ron DeSantis and ambitious slimeballs like him it is all about Israel due to their own political self-interest, with nothing actually in the mix for either Florida or the United States. The uninformed public buys into the narrative because it doesn’t know any better thanks to the media’s heavy slant in favor of Israel, allowing uncritical support for the Jewish state to continue under the radar unchallenged. DeSantis, a former U.S. Navy lawyer, has demonstrated that he reveres Israel even more than his former comrades in arms. In his congressional district there are a number of survivors of the U.S.S. Liberty, which was attacked in international waters by Israel on June 8, 1967, killing 34 crewmen and injuring 171 more. They report that DeSantis has been completely unsympathetic to their requests that a commission of inquiry finally be convened to determine what actually happened on that day.

In fact, Americans have never had the option of voting on the “special relationship” that Israel enjoys with the United States as no Congressman would dare run against it lest they be smeared in the media and find themselves running against an extraordinarily well funded opponent benefitting from large donations coming from out of state sources. The list of prominent politicians “taken down” by Israel is lengthy, and includes Cynthia McKinney, Adlai Stevenson III, Paul Findley, Chuck Percy, William Fulbright, Roger Jepsen, and Pete McCloskey.

It is particularly ironic that as the midterm campaigns were drawing to a close there appeared some serious investigative journalism that demonstrates precisely how Israel and Jewish groups corrupt the political process in America to provide virtually unlimited support for anything and everything that the despicable Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang of war criminals seek to do. How the process has succeeded is best illustrated by the current Israeli government’s policy of “mowing the grass” in Gaza where it is using army snipers to kill unarmed Palestinian protesters. Washington not only does not protest against the in-your-face war crime, it aids and abets it with U.S. Ambassador David Friedman justifying the military response as measured and appropriate.

Another area where Washington chooses to look the other way is regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal, believed to consist of two hundred warheads. Under U.S. law, any country that has an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal cannot obtain American-made weapons and cannot received aid of any type. Congress and the White House pretend that the Israeli nuclear arsenal does not exist, in spite of the fact that the Israelis themselves have more than once implicitly acknowledged it and instead of cutting aid to Israel have instead increased it. It is currently $3.8 billion per year guaranteed for the next ten years, with extra money also available if needed. No other country benefits from such largesse and gives in return so little.

To be sure, the groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, which appeared in 2007, pulled no punches in describing how the Israel Lobby operates in the United States. It also made clear that the relationship with Israel serves no United States national interest whatsoever and exists solely because of the corruption of the political system and the media by principally Jewish individuals and groups that are dedicated to that task.

While acknowledging the great debt to Walt and Mearsheimer, it is one thing to read about something in a book and quite another thing to see it live, which is what the new evidence of Israeli interference consists of. Several years ago, the Qatari news service al-Jazeera commissioned two investigations. The first was on the activities of the Israeli Lobby in Britain and the second was on the lobby in the United States. The material consisted largely of meetings with members of Israel’s active lobby that were secretly filmed by journalists who were pretending to be supporters and who eventually managed to penetrate some of the organizations that were most active in promoting Israel’s interests.

The British expose, in two parts, aired in January, and was based on discussions and interviews that took place between June and November 2017. It demonstrated how the Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to “take down” parliamentarians and government ministers who were considered to be critical of the Jewish State. It also revealed how the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs).

The secret recording revealed how an Israeli Embassy diplomat/spy named Shai Masot connived with a senior civil servant to get rid of Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan, regarded as a supporter of an independent Palestinian state. To Masot’s additional query “Can I give you some MPs that I would suggest you would take down?” the civil servant suggested “…if you look hard enough, I’m sure there is something that they’re trying to hide…a little scandal maybe.” Another alleged pro-Arab member of Parliament Crispin Blunt was also identified and confirmed to be on a “hit list.”

It was also learned that Masot had been secretly subsidizing and advising two ostensibly independent groups, the parliamentary Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). Masot did, however, express concern that Israel’s control over incoming parliamentarians was not quite what it used to be:

“For years, every MP that joined the parliament joined the LFI. They’re not doing that any more in the Labour Party. CFI, they’re doing it automatically. All the 14 new MPs who got elected in the last elections did it automatically.”

The documentary was initially a sensation in Britain but then, predictably, it went away as Israel’s loyal host of media scriveners took charge. Masot was recalled to Israel and Prime Minister Teresa May, as good a friend to Jewish money and power as one is likely to find, decided to do nothing. Her characteristically toothless reaction to the suggestion that her government officials might be removed by the clandestine activity of a foreign country was:

“The Israeli ambassador has apologized…the U.K. has a strong relationship with Israel and we consider the matter closed.”

The four-part series by al-Jazeera on the Lobby in the U.S. was meanwhile temporarily spiked because the Qatari government was seeking to obtain the mediation of prominent American Jews to pressure the White House to help resolve its outstanding conflict with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The documentary has remained in limbo but in the past two weeks it has surfaced and is now available. Its undercover investigative journalist, a British Jew named Tony Kleinfeld, quickly charmed his way into the inner circle of Israel’s supporters where he discovered a network of organizations that act as fronts for the Israeli government. Their activities include spying on supporters of Palestinian rights and disrupting demonstrations, with a particular focus on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which Israel has particularly targeted. They also resorted to tactics like smearing critics by generating false accusations of sexual and personal misconduct, all of which was coordinated by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. The ministry’s director general is Sima Vaknin-Gil, a former senior officer with Israel’s military intelligence, and is staff consists mostly of former spies drawn from Israel’s various security agencies.

Later, Kleinfeld became involved with The Israel Project, which is a U.S. based Israeli government backed propaganda organ that claims to be “a non-partisan American educational organization dedicated to informing the media and public conversation about Israel and the Middle East.”

In a recorded conversation, Project employee Jordan Schachtel, explained the objectives and extent of a secret Facebook operation.

“We’re putting together a lot of pro-Israel media through various social media channels that aren’t The Israel Project’s channels. So we have a lot of side projects that we are trying to influence the public debate with. That’s why it’s a secretive thing, because we don’t want people to know that these side projects are associated with The Israel Project.”

In another episode, the Israel on Campus Coalition’s Jacob Baime, who claimed to have a $2 million budget, described coordinating with the Israeli government, with an approach “modeled on General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq…copied a lot from that strategy that has been working really well for us, actually” using “offensive information operations.” Baime described putting “up some anonymous website” along with targeted Facebook ads so that critics “either shut down or they spend time responding to it and investigating it, which is time they can’t spend attacking Israel. It’s psychological warfare, it drives them crazy.”

Kleinfeld also met with other groups. Foundation for Defense of Democracies was revealed as yet another agent of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, its directors meeting regularly with Israeli Embassy staff in Washington. In spite of that the Treasury Department has not compelled it to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). It is also registered with the IRS as a tax exempt 501(c)3 “charity.” Indeed, no Jewish organization active on behalf of Israel has ever had to register under FARA and most are classified as tax exempt charities or educational foundations. Interestingly, however, the FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer lamented in his recorded conversation with Kleinfeld that “anti-Semitism as a smear is not what is used to be.”

In another bizarre episode, Kleinfeld visited the neocon dominated Hoover Institute in California where he participated in a demonstration together with a group of bored young conservative think tankers compelled by their professors to protest against a Students for Justice in Palestine conference. The think tank fellows admit that they were “astroturfing” – rent-a-crowd activism to make a small demonstration appear much larger.

Another segment includes Israeli Lobby financier Adam Milstein, who is reported to be the principal funder of Canary Mission, which has targeted some 1,900 students and academics in its profiles since 2015, smearing them as “racist,” “anti-American” and “anti-Semitic.” Jacob Baime, executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, boasts in the film that “Canary Mission is highly, highly effective to the extent that we monitor the Students for Justice in Palestine and their allies.”

In his recording, Milstein also talks about the need to “investigate” and “expose” critics of Israel, who Milstein claims are anti-Semites, as well as “anti-Christian” and “anti-freedom” activists who “terrorize us.” His foundation also funds numerous anti-Palestinian organizations, including the Israel on Campus Coalition, StandWithUs, CAMERA, the AMCHA Initiative and the FDD. Milstein also funds and is chairman of the board of the Israeli-American Council. An Israeli-born California based real estate developer, Milstein reportedly served time in federal prison after a 2009 conviction for tax evasion.

An Israeli spy at the University of California at Davis, Julia Reifkind also described to Kleinfeld how the system worked at the campus level. She used multiple fake Facebook accounts to monitor the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine. “I follow all the SJP accounts. I have some fake names. My name is Jay Bernard or something. It just sounds like an old white guy, which was the plan. I join all these groups.” The information she obtained was then passed on to her contact in the Embassy for forwarding on to Israel to be entered into their data base of enemies.

So, Israel was engaging in interfering in legitimate political activity and also generating fake news on the social media in both 2016 and 2018, the same accusation that has been leveled against Moscow, but Special Counsel Robert Mueller seems curiously uninterested. And beyond the al-Jazeera revelations, there is also the evidence that it was Israel that sought favors from the incoming Trump Administration in 2016, not Russia. So who was actually corrupting whom?

And then there are the more overt Israeli front groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with its $100 million annual budget and 200 employees, as well as the other special arrangements to pander to Israel and the powerful American Jews who have made it their mission to use the U.S. government as a mechanism to protect and nurture Israel. Last week in Los Angeles $60 million was raised by Hollywood’s finest for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), “Their Job is to Look After Israel. Ours is to Look After Them,” the website proclaims. Last month, an additional $32 million was raised for the IDF in New York City. Donations are tax exempt, to support the armed forces of a country that is currently engaged in war crimes and that has a secret nuclear arsenal.

So, Israel was technically speaking not running in the 2018 election, but it was very much in the race. Jewish Democrats are already boasting how the presence of a couple of Israel critics in the House, who will be “reeducated” on the Middle East, will make no difference, that the party will be solid for the Jewish state with more Jewish congressmen than ever before. Indeed, the “special relationship” bond will be stronger than ever. Five committee chairmanships in the House of Representatives will be in the hands of passionate Israel firsters, including Adam Schiff at the Intelligence Committee and Eliot Engel at Foreign Affairs. On the Republican side, the House is already 100% in Israel’s pocket. And as part of the White House team we have John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Donald Trump’s Ambassador to Israel David Friedman expressed the dual loyalty phenomenon best in a recent speech. The United States is his “country of citizenship” but Israel is the country he “loves so much.”

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

We bring to the attention of Global Research Readers this incisive article by Philip Giraldi on the absence of an anti-war movement in the US.

The collapse of the anti-war movement  occurred in the wake of the invasion of Iraq.

One of the key reasons for the collapse of the peace movement is that virtually the entire mosaic of so-called progressive movements and NGOS is funded (with some exceptions) directly or indirectly by corporate foundations (Open Society Foundation, MacArthur, Ford, Rockefeller, et al) which indelibly support what is euphemistically called US foreign policy, i.e. America’s global military agenda which is portrayed as a “peace making undertaking” with a view to protecting the National Security of America and its allies. 

In recent years, major protest movements in the US, the EU and internationally are generously funded. The limits of dissent are set by their corporate sponsors.

Who funds the World Social Forum (WSF), #Occupy Wall Street, Democracy Now, #Black Lives Matter, Human Rights Watch, MoveOn, Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, Code Pink. etc. 

The idea is to retain the mosaic to prevent the emergence of a mass movement, ie. the “do it yourself” approach of constituent organizations, e.g. under the umbrella of the World Social Forum. In a bitter irony the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement was in a sense funded by Wall Street. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, November 15, 2018

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The United States of America has no peace movement even though the country has been mired in unwinnable wars since 2001 and opinion polls suggest that there is only lukewarm support among the public for what is taking place in Afghanistan and Syria. This is in part due to the fact that today’s corporate media virtually functions as a branch of government, which some might refer to as the Ministry of Lies, and it is disinclined to report on just how dystopic American foreign and national security policy has become. This leaves the public in the dark and allows the continued worldwide blundering by the US military to fly under the radar.

The irony is that America’s last three presidents quite plausibly can be regarded as having their margins of victory attributed to a peace vote. George W. Bush promised a more moderate foreign policy in his 2000 campaign, Obama pledged to undo much of the harsh response to 9/11 promulgated by Bush, and Donald Trump was seen as the less warlike candidate when compared to Hillary Clinton. So the public wants less war but the politicians’ promises to deliver have been little more than campaign chatter, meaning that the United States continues to be locked into the same cycle of seeking change through force of arms.

Just last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to a BBC journalist and said Iran must do what Washington demands “if they want their people to eat.” Pompeo’s comments should have shocked the public, but they were not widely reported. If Pompeo spoke for the Administration, that means that Washington is now ready, willing and often able to starve civilians and deny them medicines as a foreign policy tool. Iran is now on the receiving end, but the US has also been supporting similar action by the Saudi Arabians in Yemen, which has resulted in widespread starvation, particularly among children. The current policy recalls former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s infamous comment that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to sanctions had been “worth it.”

Source: SCF

It is hard to believe that most Americans support Pompeo. To be sure, there are a number of groups in the United States that have the word “peace” or “antiwar” somewhere in their titles. Most would describe themselves as “progressive,” wherein lies the problem in pulling together a more broadly-based coalition that would make America’s warfare state a key target in the national election in 2020. Progressives, or, as they used to be called, liberals, are not like everyone else. Some commentators observing their antics describe them scathingly as “social justice warriors” or SJWs. That means that they have a mandate to oppose all the evils in the world, to include racism, sexism, limits on immigration and capitalism to name only a few. War is somewhere on the list but nowhere near the top.

SJWs have no comfort zone for dealing with anyone who does not fully buy into their blueprint for global rejuvenation. This means in turn that the antiwar movement, such as it is, is fragmented into a gaggle of groups with grievances that have little ability to establish cohesion with other organizations that might agree completely with their worldview. Folks like me, who are socially and politically conservative but antiwar, do not fit well with their priorities and would prefer to focus on the wars, but that option is not on offer without accepting a lot of sanctimonious garbage.

A recent email from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights illustrates precisely what is wrong. I would support the group based on my concern for justice for the Palestinians but have no interest in its ridiculous stereotyping of who is the enemy, i.e. the omnipresent evil “white supremacists” who are also male, Gentile and heterosexual. The email begins:

“In the past week, white supremacist gunmen murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and two Black people in Louisville, and Trump announced his intention to try to erase trans, non-binary, and intersex folks… Our struggles for justice are inextricably linked: rejecting white supremacy means rejecting antisemitism, anti-Black racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression. This is especially important knowing that many, many people carry overlapping identities and thus are marginalized at the intersection of overlapping oppressions.”

Yes, I know, it is impossible to understand what she is going on about unless one is educated in the progressive codewords. And also yes, the text could have been written by Monty Python. After that introduction the email goes on to provide some resources to “expand [one’s] knowledge,” including this gem:

“Palestine as a Queer Struggle (video)
This webinar with Nada Elia, Falastine Dwikat, and Izzy Mustafa covers the intersecting struggles against heteropatriarchy and Zionism. With Trump’s most recent attack on trans, non-binary, and intersex folks, it’s imperative that we understand the importance of standing with queer and trans people in the US and in Palestine as they face multiple layers of oppression.” 

As war, in this case the slaughter of the Palestinians by the Jewish state, is the ultimate evil and it brings with it many other forms of suffering, it would seemingly not be asking too much to worry about it as a first priority before getting into the “multiple layers of oppression” that seem to bother lefties so much. But, alas, they cannot jettison that baggage and for that reason many “normal” people who want the wars to stop will not be participating in their protests. It’s a shame really, as joining together and fighting to stop the next war is well worth doing for every human being on this planet.

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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.

Featured image is from Popular Resistance

American behemoths such as Google, Facebook and other transnational corporations are now so big that ethics plays second fiddle to profit and legislators feel somehow emasculated to act in the public interest. Revolving doors obviously plays a role in the cesspit of modern day politics. These transnationals are breaking all the rules where anarchy by the rich and powerful is endemic to civil society.

While all attention is turned on the constitutional and political crisis Britain faces with Brexit, Britain’s mainstream media misses another important story. For Google, it is a good time to bury bad news.

Western governments and supportive media go along with the deception, part of the diabolical plan to let Israel get away with mass murder and much more.

Since creation of the Jewish state, Palestinians have endured virtually every form of indignity, degradation, and crime against humanity imaginable. The world community consistently fails to hold Israel accountable for crimes against humanity.

Occupied Palestine is an isolated prison, besieged/densely populated Gaza the world’s largest open-air one. An entire population is being suffocated out of existence – a process Francis Boyle and Ilan Pappe call slow-motion genocide, ongoing for decades.

There’s not a sign of relief for one of the world’s most aggrieved people. Israeli viciousness is unrelenting.

Overnight Sunday and Monday into Tuesday, Israeli violence is the latest example of its undeclared war on Gaza. When Palestinians legally respond in self-defense, they’re falsely accused of terrorism.

The US and other Western countries support Israeli high crimes, calling them self-defense. Virtually defenseless Palestinians throughout the Territories are up against nuclear armed and dangerous Israel, its military one of the world’s most formidable, especially its sophisticated airpower.

The Trump regime is more one-sided for Israel than any of its predecessors, contemptuous of fundamental Palestinian rights.

Through its embassy in Israel, Canada expressed “full solidarity” with the Jewish state – demanding “Hamas…immediately stop targeting civilians,” ignoring IDF terror-bombing.

It’s been more intense than any time since Israeli aggression on Gaza in summer 2014, civilians always harmed most. The Jewish state considers them legitimate targets – even infants, young children, women, the elderly and infirm.

They’ve been killed, dozens wounded in Israel’s latest state terror attacks on the Strip. Palestinian media reported that aerial attacks and ground shelling continued ferociously overnight Monday.

Israeli warplanes targeted a college in Tal al-Hawa, a Gaza City hotel, leveling the five-story structure to the ground and damaging surrounding buildings, the Al-Aqsa TV station struck to silence its reporting about the carnage, as well as at least six multi-story buildings, and numerous other sites.

When Gazans responded to Israel’s hostile overnight Sunday commando raid, killing seven Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades members of Hamas’ armed wing, ferocious Israeli terror-bombing began – intensified when Gazans fired a reported 300 crude homemade rockets at Israeli territory.

An Israeli bus and apartment building were struck, one person reported killed, several others injured. Israel bears full responsibility for what’s going on like all previous times when violence erupted.

The vast majority of Palestinian rockets land harmlessly, some intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. Many don’t explode on impact.

Direct hits on Israelis or structures are rare. Rockets are short-range and imprecise – polar opposite massive Israeli air and ground firepower. Its warplanes and ground-to-ground IDF missiles use laser guidance to strike targets with precision.

Israel’s medical service said 23 Israelis were treated for light injuries from shrapnel and smoke inhalation. Two others were critically wounded, one person killed.

On Tuesday, the Netanyahu regime’s security cabinet will meet to plot its next move, intense violence likely to continue.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ignored Israeli aggression, urging the Jewish state and Palestinians “to exercise maximum restraint,” pretending both sides are equally matched, a shameful remark like many times before, showing dismissiveness toward long-suffering Gazans.

EU envoy to Israel Emanuele Giaufret was just as contemptuous, demanding a halt to “indiscriminate” rocket fire on Israel – ignoring IDF terror-bombing and ground shelling.

Netanyahu’s deputy minister/former Israeli envoy to Washington Michael Oren said

“(w)e expect the world to stand with us.”

IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis said reservists are being ordered to active duty, calling them “vital forces, and if needed we’ll expand that” – perhaps indicating escalated conflict ahead.

Separately, the Netanyahu regime said it’s not discussing a possible ceasefire. Once Netanyahu security cabinet members meet, more information will likely follow on what’s coming next.

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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.

While we must always hold on to hope, true peace can only be achieved through awareness and action. According to Professor Peter Dale Scott: “The future of our threatened world urgently requires the strengthening of a global public opinion, to resist and overcome the wrongdoings of oppressive local powers.”

In a “post-truth” world, where the lie has become the truth, who can you trust? Unlike many other news sites, we encourage you to gather your world view from a diverse array of authors and form your own conclusions. In the spirit of truth and critical analysis of World events, please consider making a contribution to Global Research.  The more we stand together, the stronger we’ll be.

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Dear Readers,

More than ever, Global Research needs your support. Our task as an independent media is to “Battle the Lie”.

“Lying” in mainstream journalism has become the “new normal”: mainstream journalists are pressured to comply. Some journalists refuse.

Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.

While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.

Consider Making a Donation to Global Research

When the Lie becomes the Truth, there is no turning backwards. 

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What’s Mike Pence Talking About? The US and China Are Already in a Cold War!

By Andrew Korybko, November 14, 2018

Pence seemed to shock many observers who were taken aback by his ominous warning about an imminent “all-out cold war” between the US & China, but most people are either feigning surprise or truly haven’t been following the course of bilateral relations between these Great Powers close enough to understand that this is nothing more than a belatedly blunt statement of fact.

Telling NRA #ThisIsOurLane: Doctors’ Photos Show Blood-Soaked Reality of America’s Gun Madness

By Julia Conley, November 14, 2018

Offering visual proof that emergency room doctors are some of the United States’ top experts on the daily impact of insufficient gun regulations in communities across the country, physicians are sharing images of the blood and gore they regularly face when treating gunshot wounds.

Israel to Police European Coastlines: Protecting the Continent from Refugees?

By Peter Koenig, November 14, 2018

EU citizens are being brainwashed with neoliberal lie-propaganda into believing that they are living in the heart of democracy – that they are free and protected by police and military, 24/7. 

Escalation of Israeli Attacks against Gaza: Global Solidarity Campaign with the Palestinian People

By Salah Abdelati, November 14, 2018

Let us urgently work together in the biggest global solidarity campaign with the Palestinian people against the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip, in order to boycott, alienate and hold accountable the Israeli occupation.

Video: The World War I Conspiracy

By James Corbett, November 14, 2018

What was World War One about? How did it start? Who won? And what did they win?

Now, 100 years after those final shots rang out, these questions still puzzle historians and laymen alike.

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Too often, we are overwhelmed with woeful tales, painful memoirs and worn analyses of Arab/Muslim women. Most depictions, whether we’re besieged in a war, or if we’re just trying to get by making small advances like women anywhere, we are invariably portrayed as hapless victims. We’re in need of succor, or reform, or rescue.

Writings by our own talented authors are popular if they reveal  exploitations or despairs or escapes. These feed enlightened sisters abroad who may feel better about themselves when they can pity others.

So I approach announcements of new releases—both these are from North Africa—with some apprehension. After screening the productions under review here, my fear dissolves.

Tunisia (through the films of Moufida Tlatli) and Egypt are highly regarded in the film world. Particularly Egypt with its glorious history of filmmaking and its distinguished line of actors proves its mettle in “Youm el-Setat” (A Day for Woman). This playful drama about serious issues becomes heartwarming and totally engaging in the hands of director Kamla Abu Zeki.

Three love stories and women’s eternal search for fulfillness is the focus of “Youm el-Setat”. The plot evolves around a neighborhood pool where a day a week is allocated for girls and ladies. Azza who initially appears simpleminded takes the first plunge. Eventually the whole neighborhood follows her and together they assert their solidarity and their rights. Scenes of their celebratory escapades are delightful; pool frolicking along with street encounters immerses us in that Cairo neighborhood. The story rises above place and religion, beyond covered or uncovered heads. Emerging romances threaded within this drama could happen anywhere.

Young Azza, it turns out, is not so simpleminded. She’s just naturally liberated! She’s attracts others with her naive joyfulness. Samiya too is a free-thinking woman from the moment we meet her although neighbors initially view her as a sassy whore. Her humor and honesty explode into courage and passion when, finally, she approaches Ahmed, a longtime sweetheart—both are by then middle-aged—to consummate their love. Laila, a forlorn young widow, belatedly joins others in the pool and awakens. Finally she can respond to the tenderness of the likable guy who as pool manager had launched this day for women. (A day for women becomes the ‘time for women’.)

It’s a film to swim along with.

“El Jaida” (The Jailer) by Tunisian director and actor Selma Baccar takes an altogether different approach to oppression and women’s determination to be free of patriarchal domination. In contrast with the Egyptian film, “El Jaida” is humorless. The lives of these Tunisian women seem irredeemable. Although defiant, they are an unhappy lot. The injustices they face are manifest in the family, but the story points elsewhere. Drawing on Tunisian historical experience, the film underscores how gender relations and politics intersect.

The story largely takes place in the 1950s when across the region the anti-colonial movement erupts. The story begins with a well-to-do housewife confronting her husband’s infidelity, then finds herself confined with others in jail. Initially adversaries, after learning each other’s stories, the women come together. While outside the prison’s walls, the nationalist movement to end French rule is gaining strength. The story abruptly shifts 50 years ahead to 2017. The occupiers are gone; so is the dictator. Baja, the film’s main character, has become a member of Tunisia’s new parliament where we find her reading the newly promulgated code establishing women’s equal rights in Tunisian law.

Both films premier in coming weeks at the New York Diaspora International Film Festival. For more than 25 years, ADIFF has been introducing to American audiences a taste of the extraordinary film making talent at work beyond American shores.

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Barbara Nimri Aziz is a veteran anthropologist and radio journalist, also author of Heir to A Silent Song: Two Rebel Women of Nepal, published by Tribhuvan University, Nepal, and available through Barnes and Noble in the USA. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Children living in the Gaza Strip are experiencing unusually high rates of nightmares and are showing increasing signs of psychosocial deterioration as a result of the violent response to the Gaza protests, just over a month since they began.

56 per cent of Palestinian children surveyed by Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in March were suffering from traumatic nightmares. When repeating the survey preliminary findings indicate an increase to 60 per cent, a month into the Great Return March demonstrations during which more than 38 Palestinian protestors have been killed, including 4 children and 2 journalists. More than 6,400 Palestinians have been injured, including at least 530 children, many of whom are left with amputated limbs and permanent disabilities.

Principals from 20 schools interviewed by NRC reported a rise in symptoms of post-traumatic stress in children, including fears, anxiety, stress and nightmares. School principals attributed high levels of post-traumatic stress and low concentration at school to the violent response to the demonstrations. The principals ranked increased psychosocial support in schools as their top need right now.

“The continuous violence children witness in Gaza is disastrous for their mental well-being. A girl of 11 years has lived her whole life under blockade or siege, and seen three wars with massive loss of life and housing,” said NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland. “Now children are again faced with the horrifying prospect of losing family and friends, as many are killed and injured every week.”

NRC provides psychosocial support to children and training for teachers through its Better Learning Programme (BLP), developed in partnership with University of Tromsø in Norway. Part of the programme involves screening schoolchildren for nightmares, which are one of the most pertinent signs of psychological deterioration. The activities include training children to do breathing exercises and drawing their dreams.

“For the children we work with, the nightmares continue for months and years after the violence that causes them,” said Jon-Håkon Schultz, Professor in Educational Psychology at the University of Tromsø in Norway who has participated in the implementation of the BLP programme in Gaza since 2012.

He underlines that these nightmares are traumatic nightmares where the child wake up in fear.

“The current crisis also brings back previous trauma and is a direct threat to the children’s mental health and their development.”

NRC’s education programme coordinator in Gaza, Asa’d Ashour, said:

Children having nightmares are growing more impatient in school and unhappier with their lives, and they are unable to concentrate in class.”

Reham Qudaih, 14, was showing remarkable improvements in dealing with the trauma of the 2014 war on Gaza until her father was shot in the leg during the demonstrations. She is now having daily nightmares in which she dreams that her father is dead or had his leg amputated.

The widow of Jehad Abo Jamous – killed at the demonstrations – told NRC how her 4 children are waking up crying and screaming at night.

“They feel disconnected from everything and refuse to eat or drink,” Ghadeer said.

Mohammed Ayoub, 14, was getting psychosocial support through NRC’s programme in schools when he was killed at the demonstrations.

The sheer force being used against unarmed civilians has also alarmed doctors in Gaza’s hospitals who are receiving increasing numbers of people with bullet wounds, torn muscles and smashed bones.

Egeland said:

“We call on all protests to remain non-violent. Israel must stop the use of excessive and lethal force against protestors, and hold to account those responsible for use of such force.”

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Featured image is from Norwegian Refugee Council

Pence’s ominous warning about an imminent “all-out cold war” between the US & China is only newsworthy because it bluntly, albeit belatedly, states the obvious.

Pence seemed to shock many observers who were taken aback by his ominous warning about an imminent “all-out cold war” between the US & China, but most people are either feigning surprise or truly haven’t been following the course of bilateral relations between these Great Powers close enough to understand that this is nothing more than a belatedly blunt statement of fact.

The US is keenly aware that China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) is the single-greatest long-term threat to its global hegemonic position because of its potential to redirect trade routes away from the West and to the People’s Republic, thereby catalyzing a chain reaction of full-spectrum paradigm changes that will in turn accelerate the emerging Multipolar World Order. 

The Liberal-Globalist faction of the American permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) struggled to respond to this challenge and are sometimes accused of seeking an “accommodation” with China to “responsibility facilitate” this global systemic transition, while the Nationalist faction led by Trump and his ilk are strongly opposed to this trend and are pushing back against it with all their might.

This has seen the US utilize tariffs, sanctions, infowars, Hybrid Wars, the “Lead From Behind” stratagem, and conventional military means (e.g. patrolling the South China Sea) to push back against China’s gradual gains in a bid to retain and ultimately expand its hegemonic leadership. Seeing as how the US’ methods fall short of a direct kinetic response against China (“hot war”), the present state of affairs between the two is the textbook definition of a “cold war”, albeit one that occasionally flares up in third-party states or non-national domains (e.g. the financial and currency sectors) as a result of this multifaceted hybrid campaign.

Considering the objective reality of International Relations as it presently exists and the most likely trajectory that it’s expected to continue along for the indefinite future, Pence is simply preconditioning the global masses for a more overt intensification of the aforesaid processes that will make it impossible to ignore the ongoing New Cold War between the US and China over the fate of the world order.

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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 People’s Defense Forces (HPG), a military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), claimed that it had attacked 6 military bases in the southern Turkish provinces of Hakkari and Sirnak on November 9 and November 10. The HPG stated that 17 Turkish soldiers were killed and 32 others were wounded as a result of the attack. 8 soldiers are also missing, according to the HPG.

It should be noted that early on November 10 that the PKK also carried out an attack on several targets inside and south of the capital of Sirnak province with seven armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to Turkish sources, the UAVs failed to reach their targets due to technical failures and possible jamming by the Turkish military.

The province of Sirnak borders both northern Syria and Iraq. An interesting thing is that the recent PKK attacks confirm multiple Turkish statements that Kurdish armed groups operating in these areas, mostly the People’s Protection Units (YPG), pose a direct threat to the Turkish national security.

On November 13, 4 members of YPG-affiliated security forces were killed in the northern Syrian town of Manbij. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack via its news agency Amaq.

Manbij as well as the YPG-held areas east of the Euphrates River have been repeatedly described by Turkish leadership as a target of the upcoming anti-YPG operation. In late October, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) delivered several strikes on YPG positions near the town of Kobani and deployed additional troops and equipment in southern Turksih provinces bordering the YPG-held area.

In November, Saif Abu Bakr, Military Chief of the Turkish-backed militant group Hamza Division, declared that members of his group are ready to participate in a large-scale operation against the YPG east of the Euphrates.

The YPG is the core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The US support to the SDF is the reason of constant tensions between Ankara and Washington. For example, on November 12, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu slammed the US “double-faced policy” towards Turkey addressing the continued US support to Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria. He also said that the US receives 20% of the YPG revenue from the oil fields seized in the war-torn country.

If the US continues its political and military support to the YPG and the group will consolidate its power over the Arab areas captured in northeastern Syria setting a foothold for further PKK attacks on targets in southern Turkey, the Ankara-Washington relations will likely deteriorate further.

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Note: This article contains graphic images that some readers may find disturbing.

Offering visual proof that emergency room doctors are some of the United States’ top experts on the daily impact of insufficient gun regulations in communities across the country, physicians are sharing images of the blood and gore they regularly face when treating gunshot wounds.

Doctors first began posting the photos last week, shortly after the NRA criticized the medical community for pushing for legislative solutions to gun violence—suggesting that physicians are somehow less qualified than a lobbying organization to comment on a public health crisis that sent 700,000 Americans to emergency rooms over the course of a decade.

“Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane,” the NRA tweeted.

Using the hashtag #ThisIsOurLane, doctors from all over the country posted photos of bloody hospital scrubs and operating rooms, showing the gruesome consequences of the NRA’s refusal to back even broadly popular gun control reforms like universal background checks.

First patient, first day of residency: gunshot wound to the head. Tried saving him as his mother cried into my shoulder pleading for us to save him. He didn’t make it. He wasn’t the last one either. #ThisISMyLane #ThisISOurLane #NRA pic.twitter.com/n820f6LvQq

— Brent McCaleb, MD (@brentmccaleb) November 12, 2018

Good morning! Just a reminder @NRA : #ThisISMyLane #ThisISOurLane . She didn’t make it. pic.twitter.com/LMnev4bylF

— Stephanie Bonne (@scrubbedin) November 10, 2018

Here's hoping that the .@NRA and .@AnnCoulter realize that this is the reality we face. We seek solutions, and we won't quit because lives depend on it. Help us with #bulletholecontrol. Join us. #ThisIsOurLane #TraumaShoes #TraumaSurgery @EAST_TRAUMA @traumadoctors @DocsDemand pic.twitter.com/Zwb7KrjKef

— Julius Cheng, MD MPH (@ChengJD_MD) November 11, 2018

#ThisISMyLane #ThisISOurLane @NRA @DocsDemand @MomsDemand This is what the floor looked like after his chest tube for his giant hemothorax. He locked eyes with me and pleaded, "Doc, don't let me die." Enough is enough. pic.twitter.com/phPfUs4Tnx

— Doc (@drscubs) November 10, 2018

Can’t post a patient photo…. so this is a selfie.

This is what it looks like to #stayinmylane. @NRA @JosephSakran pic.twitter.com/bVPtXH9oXn

— Dave Morris (@traumadmo) November 10, 2018

Doctors also signed a letter condemning the NRA’s tweet and imploring the group to either step aside or join them in fighting the gun violence epidemic.

“It is long past time for us to acknowledge the epidemic is real, devastating, and has root causes that can be addressed to assuage the damage. We must ALL come together to find meaningful solutions to this very American problem,” wrote the physicians. “Our research efforts have been curtailed by your lobbying efforts to Congress…We extend our invitation for you to collaborate with us to find workable, effective strategies to diminish the death toll from suicide, homicide, domestic violence, and unintentional shootings for the thousands of Americans who will one day find themselves on the wrong side of a barrel of a gun.”

The photos and letter were posted in support of Dr. Judy Melinek, whose response to the NRA’s tweet last week went viral.

Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly? This isn’t just my lane. It’s my fucking highway. https://t.co/48S9UIFaV2

— Judy Melinek M.D. (@drjudymelinek) November 9, 2018

While the photos are disturbing to look at, some gun control advocates have argued that showing the horrific reality of the 67,000 gunshot wounds, 32,000 gun deaths that happen annually in the U.S. is a necessary step toward enacting far-reaching reforms.

Filmmaker and activist Michael Moore predicted that if photos of the crime scene at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 26 people including 20 first-graders were killed in a mass shooting in 2012, had been leaked to the public, Americans would no longer tolerate the NRA’s control over lawmakers who fail to take action to curb gun violence.

“When the American people see what bullets from an assault rifle fired at close range do to a little child’s body, that’s the day the jig will be up for the NRA,” Moore said. “It will be the day the debate on gun control will come to an end. There will be nothing left to argue over. It will just be over. And every sane American will demand action.”

In an interview with the Huffington Post last year, trauma surgeon Dr. Amy Goldberg agreed, saying,

“As a country, we lost our teachable moment” when Americans moved on after mourning Sandy Hook from a distance.

“The country won’t be ready for it, but that’s what needs to happen,” Goldberg said of the release of autopsy photos of gunshot victims. “That’s the only chance at all for this to ever be reversed.”

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Featured image: The aftermath of an operation on a gunshot wound victim at a Boston hospital. (Photo: via Twitter/Chris Bennett, MD)

This sounds like a bad joke. It ain’t. Its real. One fascist government helps another fascist government. Yes, I have written about fascism invading the west before – warning that the European Union (non-union) is being gradually, but ever faster turned into a fascist dictatorship under the guise of democratic protection of ‘Democracy’; and this by her unelected European Commission (EC) leaders (sic).

EU citizens are being brainwashed with neoliberal lie-propaganda into believing that they are living in the heart of democracy – that they are free and protected by police and military, 24/7. 

Indeed, such protection can be seen at almost every street corner in France’s major cities; France, the country that had the audacity to make the permanent state of emergency part of her Constitution. And others are dutifully following Macron’s example.

No wonder, EU member country governments have all been ‘put in place’ by fake elections, with the help of Cambridge Analytica and other social media tricks, by now well-known around the globe – and even the myriad MSM (mainstream media). It would be a strange coincidence, if practically all of the heads of EU states are following either neoliberal or neonazi doctrines. In any case, the difference are a few details. Most obvious neonazis are depicted with the denigrating term of populists, disregarding the fact that a populist is someone who is liked by the people. Wouldn’t that be democracy? 

The PM of Hungary, Victor Orbàn, and Poland’s far-right Andrzej Duda, fall into this category and soon Italy’s government, basically led by the far right, deputy PM, Matteo Salvini, who calls the shots in Italy, to the detriment of the Five-Star lead party, will follow suit. Everybody who refuses to bend to Brussels’ rules is a ‘populist’. It’s that simple. And it’s no coincidence.

Back to the head-story: An Israeli private military contractor, Elbit Systems Ltd, has been awarded a contract by the so-called EU, to Monitor European shores, as reported by the Palestine Chronicle. Israel’s private defense contractor has “won” a 68 million dollars two-year contract, renewable by another two years, to survey the Mediterranean Sea and most of European coastlines and to report to Brussels and the countries’ authorities. Universal surveillance and fascism are on the march – and running ever faster.

This ‘bidding process’ was for sure not an open competition. This was ‘one fascist hand washing the hand of another fascist. Yes, that’s as bad as we have become in Europe. And the populace has no clue, because they are comfortably seeing their freedom, their civil rights, their human rights, being eroded, ‘floated’ away, under the pretext of national security – and of course their own, the people’s security. – That’s what a few ‘false flag’ terrorist attacks can achieve – people scream for help, for police protection. The more the better. And who is better suited than a fascist state to respond to that call of desperation – to fulfill that fake role of protector?

Israel is known for having armed the Ukraine government which is integrated by Neo-Nazis. Israel’s purpose of policing the European coastlines is to prevent Palestine Gaza prisoners from escaping their horrible, horrible fate. Two million Palestinians need to be forcefully kept locked into this open-air concentration camp, being tortured, bombed, starved and finally killed. That’s what Zionist-Israel is all about. Mind you, that is not at all an anti-Semitic statement. There are millions of Israelis who disagree with this fascist policy. But they are being shut-up, they have no right to speak out – plus they are, like Europeans, constantly drip-by-steady-drip indoctrinated by lies, falsehoods and deceptions – that Palestinians are a danger for the survival of Israel. 

This is simply NOT TRUE. It is a flagrant lie – a lie sustained by the United States, whose interest is permanent conflict in the Middle East to control the Middle East’s rich resources – and Israel is an important ally – more than an ally. Thanks to Israel’s and AIPAC’s (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the strongest Washington lobby) endless flow of money to Washington’s politicians – Israel, as the paymaster of political campaigns of both parties of the US-One-Party system – calls the shots.

By Israel, is meant Zionist-led Israel, not the common people who want nothing more than peace and a friendly and harmonious relationship with Palestine; Israelis who are aware that they are actually camping on Palestine land – Israelis, who have not been blinded by those who have since 70 years purposefully distorted history, altered schoolbooks and pretend that this Holy Land is theirs, rather than a piece of land of mutual ownership, to be shared equally and with equal rights.

These Israelis, the vast majority, are not targeted with this article, or with the accusation of being fascists. It’s their dictator leadership, those who are in lock-step with the neofascist Trump Administration – and, well, those who call the shots in Washington, in all the so-called thinktanks (sic) that make US foreign policy. Neoliberal, cum neonazi Israel wants to eradicate Palestine, Iran, Syria, but they are in bed with the murderous Saudis – with the killers of tens of thousands of Yemeni children, with the brutal murderers of the entire Yemeni population through famine, destruction of water supply and sanitation systems, of lack-of-hygiene induced cholera and a myriad of other diseases.

Israel’s private defense contractor announced having won this monstrous surveillance contract, with the EU Maritime Safety Agency. They will patrol the Mediterranean Sea and Europe’s coastlines with drones and inform Europe’s authorities of ‘irregularities’, of refugee ships, of last-hope vessels carrying desperate people, escaping from western created misery in their lands. And Palestinian refugees are on the rise. They can no longer stand their abject fate under Israeli’s inescapable rules governing the Gaza Extermination Camp. Yes, that’s what Gaza has become. They seek refuge in Europe, paradoxically, they go to their hangman seeking shelter. But where else to go?  

So, these unmanned Israeli military aircraft will automatically signal the defense forces of Israel to intercept any attempt of escaping Palestinians – to bring them back to Gaza, to their open torture chamber, and – with for sure – further punishment to follow. – Gaza’s terror conditions have become the utter “normality” seen from the western populace, especially Europeans. They will just watch Palestinians being slaughtered into fear of escaping from their open-air prison, called Gaza. –

This past weekend’s latest Gaza military incursion, instigated by Israel’s War Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, a neonazi hawk of the worst kind, followed obviously by a Hamas response – which then triggered what was planned from the very beginning – Israeli batteries of rockets launched from Ashkelon and mass bombing of what’s left of the ruins called Gaza. – did you know that a large percentage of children in Gaza have amputated limbs? – What a future, even if peace was to break out one day. 

All the while Netanyahu conveniently was celebrating the Hypocrisy of the Century – the end of WWI with a bunch of hypocrites like him, Netanyahu – except for Putin, whose attendance of this fake celebration and naval-gazing I don’t understand. 

That’s what the west has become, or as renowned author and journalist Andre Vltchek, would say, they have colonized, enslaved and raped Asia, Africa and Latin America for at least a thousand years – why would you expect them to change? They have gotten away with murder for so long – why would they change?

Today, they continue with different, more sophisticated methods – its financial slavehood. It’s the epitome of shameless criminal neo-colonialism. The “two to four- year contract” of Israel’s defense contractor serves as a mere proxy for EU’s terror, inhumanity and lack of compassion. Mind you, the United States is just the heritage of Europeans migrated across the Atlantic.

The company, Elbit Systems Ltd, will provide European Union countries with maritime unmanned aircraft patrol services and in theory with nothing more -which is, of course, a flagrant lie. They will ex-contractually confiscate refugee boats, as miserably rickety as they may be, contributing to more refugee deaths. By September 2018, UNHCR, Mediterranean refugee transfers have been deadlier than ever this year, having reached more than 1,600 so far.

“Rocket News” reports, “in October, Israeli companies signed purchase agreements with the United Nations for the provision of water and security service to UN forces in Africa. Israel also “won” [quotes by author] a $777 million contract for the supply of India’s missile defenses, as well as [Israel] being revealed as a lead exporter of tools for spying on civilians being used by dictatorships or authoritarian governments around the world.”

Rocket News continues,

“Such deals and multi-million-dollar contracts over a variety of regions are seen as not only a benefit to the Israeli economy but also [as proof for] the reliability of its [Israel’s] services and the subsequent potential increase of its international credibility.”

According to the Western media, whatever Zionist-Israel does, the Chosen People, it’s for the good of Mother Earth. How long will it take until the populace inhabiting Mother Earth wakes up, screaming for fear and agony, bringing an end to this farce.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. 

Featured image is from Armada International

This election was the meanest, dirtiest and most disgraceful in my lifetime, and it will have consequences. Even before the results began to be reported on late Tuesday night, we already knew who the losers were going to be; the American people and our political culture. The damage done by President Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric will be with us for a generation.

While Trump’s advisers had urged him to focus on the good news about the economy during the last few weeks of the election, he opted instead to preach a message of fear. His target was the “caravan” of refugees coming northward from Guatemala, hoping to find refuge from the violence and poverty of their homeland.

Reporters covering the rag-tag group of refugees found them largely to be mothers with their children and boys and girls in their early teens. In Trump’s speeches, however, they became more ominous “dangerous violent gang-members” with some “Middle Easterners” thrown in for good measure. They were “invaders” and the effort to enter our country was portrayed as an act of war. And so the president announced that he was sending troops to protect the border. As he continued to hype the threat posed by the “invasion”, the number of troops being sent increased from 2,000 to 5,000 to 15,000.

For three weeks Trump crisscrossed the country, speaking in rally after rally to mobilise his supporters to vote for Republican candidates. He warned of dire consequences if the Democrats won: He might be impeached, the country would be overrun by dangerous immigrants, the economy would collapse — despite the fact that the recovery and massive job creation began during former president Barack Obama’s term — and we would be less safe and taxed more. And by the way, should Democrats win, they will act violently against those who oppose them. The central message was always fear.

To drive this home, Trump’s team produced a TV ad that featured a frightening foul-mouthed rant by a convicted serial killer who committed his crimes while in the US illegally. The ad continued with footage of Latin Americans storming an unidentified fence. The message was clear: “These are the violent people Democrats want to let into our country. Be afraid, very afraid.”

The problem with the ad was that the killer in question had been deported by former president Bill Clinton, and had stolen his way back into the country and committed his crimes during George W. Bush administration. It was not the dishonesty of the ad, however, it was its overt racist appeal that caused the networks, including Trump’s favourite Fox News, to refuse to run it. Media executives called the ad the “most racist ad ever put forward by a campaign”.

To some extent, the appeal to fear worked. Despite some of the more bizarre and flagrantly distorted claims that Trump made during his post-election press conference, that people really like him, the election was a victory of historic proportions, that his polling numbers among black voters are great, etc., one observation that he made was true. His intervention during the last few weeks of the campaign did make a difference in boosting a few Republicans to victory.

Until Trump’s tour, the energy of this election was on the Democratic side. Trump’s appeal to fear and his dire warnings about the country being overrun by dangerous foreigners, and the violence and economic disaster that would accompany a Democratic victory, succeeded in energising Republican voters. But it did so at a cost to our democracy.

The final results of this election are still somewhat uncertain, as there are a few key races that are too close to call. Despite that, as it stands right now, it is clear that Democrats did well. They flipped the Congress from 235 Republicans and 193 Democrats to a Democratic-controlled body with 230 Democrats and 205 Republicans. Seven governorships changed from Republican to Democrat. And in down-ballot state legislative contests, Democrats added almost 300 seats to their ranks. Only in the US Senate, did the Republicans make slight gains, possibly adding two to their ranks.

Beyond the vote tallies and the final determination of who won and lost, my concern is that after two years of Trump and his behaviour in the final weeks of the campaign, the country is more polarised than ever. Looking at election day exit polls, what comes through is that while there are issue differences that separate Republicans and Democrats, more to the point are the splits between the two parties that appear to be driven more by demographics than by ideas.

On the Democratic side are young people, the college educated — especially women — and minority communities. Voting Republican are middle-aged, less educated working-class whites, gun owners and white “born-again Christians”. It is as if we have become two distinct tribes at war.

In fairness, the attacks in this war have been largely coming from one side. For decades now, Republicans have directed their messaging to white voters by stoking fears of blacks, Latinos, Muslims and Arabs. They have issued ominous warnings about drugs and crime, violence and immigration using code words to associate all of these with the above mentioned groups.

In response, Democrats have pushed back defending the groups under attack, mobilising them to vote for Democrats and offering reasoned policy prescriptions to address the issues. What Democrats have not done is develop a sustained national outreach campaign directed at the white working-class voters courted by Trump and the GOP. By abandoning them and focusing, at times almost exclusively on “their voters”, Democrats have left the white working class to Trump, indirectly contributing to the tribal war that defines our political culture.

Because I have no hope that in its current incarnation, we can expect the GOP to change, it is incumbent on Democrats to work to bridge the divides that have become so pronounced in the era of Trump. They will not have to stop doing anything. They will only need to pay attention to a substantial group of voters, whose economic and cultural insecurity and fear of the “other” have been exploited by Republicans. Not only will this “politics of addition” help Democrats win more elections, it will also contribute to healing the divide and making America governable again.

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James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute. 

The Elysee Palace protocol was implacable. Nobody in Paris would be allowed to steal the spotlight away from the host, President Emmanuel Macron, during the 100^th anniversary of Armistice Day marking the end of World War I.

After all, Macron was investing all his political capital as he visited multiple World War I battlefields while warning against the rise of nationalism and a surge in right-wing populism across the West. He was careful to always place the emphasis on praising “patriotism.”

A battle of ideas now rages across Europe, epitomized by the clash between the globalist Macron and populism icon Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister. Salvini abhors the Brussels system. Macron is stepping up his defense of a “sovereign Europe.”

And much to the horror of the US establishment, Macron proposes a real “European army” capable of autonomous self-defense side by side with a “real security dialogue with Russia.”

Yet all these “strategic autonomy” ideals collapse when you must share the stage, live, with the undisputed stars of the global show: President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin.

Source: Charlotte Observer

So the optics in Paris were not exactly of a Yalta 2.0 conference. There were no holds barred to keep Trump and Putin apart. Seating arrangements featured, from left to right, Trump, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron, his wife Brigitte and Putin. Neither Trump nor Putin, for different reasons, took part in a “walking in the rain” stunt evoking peace.

And yet they connected. Sir Peter Cosgrove, the governor general of Australia, confirmed that Trump and Putin, at a working lunch, had a “lively and friendly” conversation for at least half an hour.

No one better than Putin himself to reveal, even indirectly, what they really talked about. Three themes are absolutely key.

On the Macron-proposed, non-NATO European army:

“Europe is … a powerful economic union and it is only natural that they want to be independent and … sovereign in the field of defense and security.”

On the consequences of such an army: It would be “a positive process” that would “strengthen the multipolar world.” On top of it, Russia’s position “is aligned with that of France.”

On relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Washington:

 “It is not us who are going to withdraw from the INF Treaty. It is the Americans who plan to do that.”

Putin added that Moscow has not scheduled military drills near NATO borders as an attempt to appease an already tense situation. Yet Russia has “no issue with” NATO drills and expects at least a measure of dialogue in the near future.

Enter the Avangard

Vast sectors of the US Deep State are in denial, but Putin may have been able to impress on Trump the necessity of serious dialogue due to an absolutely key vector: the Avangard.

The Avangard is a Russian hypersonic glide vehicle capable of flying over Mach 20 –  24,700km/h, or 4 miles per second – and one of the game-changing Russian weapons Putin announced at his ground-breaking March 1 speech.

The Avangard has been in the production assembly line since the summer of 2018, and is due to become operational in the southern Urals by the end of next year or early 2019.

In the near future, the Avangard may be launched by the formidable  Sarmat RS-28 intercontinental ballistic missile and reach Washington in a mere 15 minutes, flying in a cloud of plasma “like a meteorite” – even if the launch is from Russian territory. Serial production of Sarmat ICBMs starts in 2021.

The Avangard simply cannot be intercepted by any existing system on the planet – and the US knows it. Here is General John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command:

 “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”

Iran as the new Serbia?

I wish I had been in Paris – my home in Europe – to follow these concentric World War I–related plots live. But it was no less fascinating to follow them from Islamabad, where I am now, back from the northern part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The British Empire used 1.5 million to 2 million Indian colonial subjects to fight, and die, for empire in that war. Quite a few were Punjabis, from what is now Pakistan.

As for the future, Trump is certainly aware of Russia’s hypersonic breakthroughs. Trump and Putin also talked about Syria, and might have touched on Iran, although no one at the working lunch leaked anything about it.

Assuming the dialogue continues at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires at the end of November, Putin might be able to impress on Trump that just as Serbia catalyzed a chain of events that led great powers to sleepwalk into World War I, the same could happen with Iran leading to the terrifying prospect of World War III.

Team Trump’s obsession on strangling Iran into economic submission is a no-go, even for the Macron-Merkel-led European Union. On top of it, the Russia-China strategic partnership simply won’t allow any funny – reckless – games to be played against a crucial node of Eurasia integration.

Putin won’t even need to go hypersonic to make his case to Trump.

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For someone who has written extensively on the dangers of nationalism, the following may come as a surprise. However, I believe we should make a distinction between the types of nationalism that are resurfacing in the world today, and more importantly, rather than unilaterally bashing them for their otherwise nefarious effects, we should approach these nationalisms through a careful investigation of the historical causes that led to their reemergence. 

Not so long ago, I was engaged in a Facebook debate (as more of us unfortunately seem to be) regarding the title of a Guardian editorial which, in view of the increasingly anti-liberal measures taken by Hungary’s notorious prime-minister, univocally called for this country, which “is making a mockery of EU values” to be “kicked out” of the European Union. [1]

As others have claimed before me, what I argued was that such a move (coming ironically in the thick of Brexit!) would not only feed into the hands of populism, but it would endanger the critically fragile communication between defenders of the said “European values” and those in support of “authoritarianism,” a convenient umbrella term increasingly used today to describe the figure of the ‘Easterner’ in contrast to which the sine-qua-non upheld belief in the superiority of Western democracy, with its infallible resonance, is being reinforced. 

The sound of The Guardian’s call to arms in the name of democracy vis-à-vis Hungary made me somewhat curious, and, after cursorily browsing the headlines of major Western newspapers, I arrived at the conclusion that in both news, opinion editorials, and reportages, the West’s attitude toward the East in general, whether that is the East of Europe or the far(ther) East, comes across as unabashedly condescending.

Whether couched in sarcasm, as in the case of The Economist,[2] or downright demonization as in the case of the numerous op-eds ridiculing China in The New York Times, a recent barrage of accusations directed by various Western media outlets toward the “backlash” in the East is not only winning the West definite enemies all around the world, but it reveals the  fundamental insularity of Western politics that may come at high cost for the stability of world peace.

This is not the place to give history lessons, but it would be a mistake to believe that the colonial gap (and I mean to include here the gap between the postcolonial as well as the post-socialist world and the West), has been in any way “closed,” either following the ludicrous “end of history” argument, or the intervening 30 years of postsocialist democracy. In these circumstances, semantics is not something to be taken lightly, particularly when it comes to intercultural dialogue, and, as the past has plentifully shown, the media can help deepen or clarify the oftentimes disoriented course of politics (as well as the misguided course of politicians).

By taking for granted the “Easterner’s” identity as somehow… identical to its own, the West fails to understand what in this new bipolar context seems to reemerge as “The Other.” More importantly, what is critical to understand in this fraught Western-Eastern dialogue, which many are starting to tout as “Cold War II,” is that the tone in which the “democratic” West speaks to the “autocratic” East eerily resembles that of the recent colonial past.

Let’s not forget in this sensitive context neither the self-proclaimed Western superiority over the rest of the world, nor the highly propagandist language of the Cold War (this time on the Western side), which developed not so much in response to the threatening emergence of Eastern socialism, but was a continuation of the patronizing attitude that characterized over five centuries of colonialism, an attitude that appears to be far from passé vis-à-vis both the postcolonial and the postsocialist worlds.

I am not defending either authoritarianism or nationalism. Nor am I saying that threats to authoritarian governments promoting fascist practices such as the Hungarian and the Polish are out of place, as long as they are indeed defending democratic values. I am merely pointing out that what increasingly fills the pages of Western media is not a language of dialogue but a type of self-defending narcissism which, unfortunately, is blindly reinforcing the superiority of the Western position.

Are we to discount as primitive, in the context of this attitude toward them, the reaction – the backlash even – of some “Eastern” patriarchal figures like Putin, Orban or Xi? Nationalism has been, since its very emergence in the romantic 19^th century, essentially a reactive, defensive move meant not so much to “protect” traditional ways of life, as to defend local elites from being displaced from their privileged positions in the local hierarchy of power. And if the West doesn’t understand that, then it doesn’t understand anything. For it is this very hierarchy that has been pushed down the throats of Eastern governments – in the image of Western superiority – econo-political as well as cultural – for at least five centuries.

Should the “East” be dictatorial, by all means, let’s be vociferous about it! But in the meantime, let us not forget that the West may appear to the “Other” just as authoritarian as the East is currently being perceived by the Western imagination. Furthermore, let us not forget that Hungary – to return to our original example – was at one point both “colonizer” and “oppressed nation,” [3] and, as a culture that has lost its status as an imperial power, it is in no way different, after all, from Britain, or the United States, for that matter. It is quite clear that the reemerging conflict between the East and the West is, indeed, as most of the media claims, one between former and current “great powers.” But in that case, shouldn’t resentment become a de facto common ground between these former “have beens,” both “Eastern” and “Western,” and, who knows, maybe even a starting point for the emergence of a semblance of dialogue?  

Promoting fascism is one thing and demonizing based on perceived threats – as in the case of China – is another. I believe it is important to realize that as well-intended as the West might be, its “liberal” mediatic practices might not be apprehended in the same manner in New York, Budapest, or Beijing. Headlines advocating radical measures may be taken for threats in places, and not for the conventional jargon of exalted journalism, which, more often than not, they are. Following interpretation, this kind of language, when “translated” elsewhere, will in fact reference nothing but old Western superiority. And instead of perpetuating this new arms’ race of misunderstandings between East and West, which can be nothing but a premonition of uglier things to come, let us slow down and do our basic research on the historical, social, and political backgrounds of the people whose older and wiser brothers we have been posing to be for at least a few hypocritical centuries now.

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Notes

[1] First Thoughts piece published in The Guardian on June 22, 2018 by Owen Jones: “Hungary is making a mockery of ‘EU values’. It’s time to kick it out.”

[2] See for instance the unsigned report on the Putin-Xi Jinping meeting in “Brother enemy: The realities of life in Russia’s far east” published in this year’s September 15th edition of The Economist.

[3] I refer, of course, to the dual role that the kingdom of Hungary played in the Austro-Hungarian Empire until its disintegration in 1918 (the year celebrated all over Eastern Europe this November/December as the birth of national states), as well as to its status as member of the “Soviet bloc” in the second half of the twentieth century. 

As the deadliest wild-fires ever to hit California continue to rage, an estimated 31 people are known to have died, with over 200 still missing. Some 250,000 have been forced to flee their homes. Over 100,000 acres of land has been burnt, including luxury homes in Malibu.

As California once again reels from the fires, many are warning this is climate change in action.

The town of Paradise in Northern California, home to 23,000 people, has effectively been destroyed by what is known as the “Camp Fire”, and is now described as a ghost town. The grim headline in the Guardian said: “Only bones and fragments”.

At one stage the fire that engulfed Paradise travelled 11 miles in 11 hours or 80 acres a minute. One fire-fighter who had been involved in trying to put out the blaze, observed: “It’s devastation, total devastation, it’s pretty incredible something like this occurred,” “We’ve gone through lots of wildfire over the years, this is the worst I’ve seen personally.”

The mayor of Paradise, Jody Jones, told the BBC:

“Most of the residential [area] is gone. I would say 90%. I had an opportunity to go up there and take a look for myself. Just about everyone I know lost their home.”

Yesterday, Governor Brown wrote to President Donald Tump, stating that the community of Paradise was “forever changed”, noting that

“every resident of Paradise will inevitably have lost their home or had a family member or loved one who had lost their home”.

Brown went on to add that

“November 2018 has been exceptionally dry” but the “fire weather conditions in Southern California are expected to worsen”.

Indeed, in the south of California, near Los Angeles, the other major fire known as the Woolsey fire remains only 10% contained and has burned more than 87,000 acres in three days.

Brown has also made the link between climate change and the fires:  He declared:

“This is not the new normal, this is the new abnormal. The chickens are coming home to roost, this is real here.”

Los Angeles fire chief, Daryl Osby, also made the link:

“The fact of the matter is if you look at the state of California, climate challenge is happening statewide,” Osby said, adding that “it is going to be here for the foreseeable future”.

The statistics speak fo themselves: As Carbonbrief have noted:

“In California, 14 of the 20 largest wildfires on record have occurred over the past 15 years. At the same time, the western US has experienced some of its warmest temperatures on record, with 10 of the past 15 years among the 15 warmest years on record, based on temperature records from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”

As an article in Wired warns:

“This is what a climate change reckoning looks like  … The consequence is fires of unprecedented, almost unimaginable scale.”

But there is one person who, as usual, seems not to have grasped the reality of the situation at all. Trump’s response has been widely criticised as being typically ill-informed: Yesterday, he tweeted:

“With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!”

With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2018

Musician Neil Young, who lost him home in the blaze, was one of many to criticse Trump’s response:

“Imagine a leader who defies science, saying these solutions shouldn’t be part of his decision-making on our behalf. Imagine a leader who cares more for his own, convenient option than he does for the people he leads. Imagine an unfit leader. Now imagine a fit one.”

He was not the only one to criticise Trump:

“His comments are reckless and insulting to the firefighters and people being affected,” added Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

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Featured image is from the US Forest Service

Chronicles of Disasters Foretold

On August 4, 2014, the dam holding toxic waste from the Mount Polley copper and gold mine in the Cariboo region of British Columbia (BC) collapsed. More than 24 million cubic metres of metals-laden fine sand and water were spilled from the breached dam, creating the largest environmental disaster in Canada’s mining history. The spill flooded Polley Lake and flowed into Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake. Land, water systems and salmon habitat were destroyed. The Northern Secwepemc people, on whose territory the mine was located, lost land, livelihoods and traditional uses integrally linked to the land.

On November 5, 2015, the Fundão tailings dam, an even larger reservoir of mine waste, collapsed at the Samarco iron mine in Mariana, Brazil. More than 32 million cubic metres of toxic tailings were spilled into the 853-kilometre-long Rio Doce (Sweet River in English) causing a tsunami-like wave of toxic muck that rapidly made its way through the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo and out to the Atlantic coast. The Rio Doce basin is home to 3.2 million people.

The Samarco mine disaster is the largest in Latin American history. Nineteen people lost their lives, three nearby communities were buried and more than 1,200 people were left homeless. Communities located even hundreds of kilometres from the mine site lost their lands, crops, livestock, fishing livelihoods and water access. These included an Indigenous community of 400 Krenak people living on the remaining 4,000 hectares of their traditional land on the bank of the Rio Doce.

The village of Bento Rodrigues after the disaster. (Source: CC BY 2.0)

Canada and Brazil may appear to represent such markedly different jurisdictions that a meaningful comparison seems unlikely: Canada is understood as a rich, “developed,” politically stable nation in the Global North, while Brazil is located in the poorer, “developing” Global South, popularly understood to be endemically corrupt and politically unstable. Yet a closer look at the mining disasters at Mount Polley and Mariana immediately reveals remarkable similarities, not only in the contexts and circumstances leading up to the breaches but also in the corporate, governmental and civil society responses afterwards.

The Enormity of Tailings Ponds

Despite their name, tailings ponds are often more like lakes – many square kilometres in size, held in by dams that may be 40 to more than 100 metres high.

“Tailings” refers to the chemical-laden waste rock left behind from the processing of ore: in milling and separating ore from marketable minerals, a huge quantity of waste rock is ground to the consistency of sand and ends up mixed with a tremendous amount of water into a “slurry,” which is then piped into a tailings pond. The solids settle to the bottom of the pond and also form “tailings beaches” that become an important buffer between a pond’s embankment (waste rock set up to hold in solids) and the water. A dam at the outer perimeter of the embankment then serves as a failsafe when water levels rise – though over time, and without proper maintenance, dams may be weakened by erosion, crack and then fail, as was the case with Mount Polley and Mariana.

When the overfilled Mount Polley tailings dam failed, mining waste that included arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium and phosphorus, among other substances spilled into the surrounding forest and lakes. And when Samarco’s Fundão dam collapsed, waves of toxic muck buried three communities, partially damaged many others – killing 19 people and leaving hundreds homeless – and devastated the surrounding region and major waterways before making their way to the Atlantic Ocean.

A Tale of Two Breaches

In both cases, the mining companies had enjoyed a decade of rising mineral prices, during which they pursued aggressive expansion, sought more relaxed licensing and regulatory procedures, and quickly built more and bigger tailings ponds in order to capitalize on the boom. When the boom ended and commodity prices plummeted, both companies took measures to maintain their profit levels that included cost-cutting, reducing maintenance and inspections, filling tailings ponds beyond their designated capacities and ignoring warnings, recommendations and known structural flaws.

The corporate owners of both mines – Imperial Metals, owner the Mount Polley Mining Corporation, and Vale and BHP Billiton, joint owners of Samarco Mining – enjoyed close relationships with major political parties and government officials. The mining industry in both jurisdictions pressured governments to adopt their agenda on licensing, environmental safety and third-party inspections. And the companies in question donated generously to political parties, thereby giving elected officials a financial interest – and, since electoral campaigns are expensive, a political interest – in promoting the mining sector and prioritizing the needs of industry.

In each jurisdiction, governments streamlined review and approval processes, reduced oversight and eased regulatory requirements for energy and mining corporations (among others).

At the same time, in both Brazil and Canada, mining law and common operational practices carried vestiges of the countries’ histories of colonial occupation and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Indeed, at both Mount Polley and Mariana the mining companies impacted territories with Indigenous land claims, where spills would disproportionately impact Indigenous populations that, for practical and spiritual reasons, depended on the land, water and ecosystems in the surrounding areas.

Disasters Foretold

The Mount Polley and Mariana dam spills should be understood as symbols of the unregulated power of transnational corporations.

At both sites, numerous warnings about the security of the dams were ignored and mining companies were allowed to go ahead with production despite serious risks. In the case of Mount Polley, a 2010 inspection report identified problems including a crack in the perimeter wall of the dam that had gone unreported, broken instruments for measuring water pressure, and a failure to develop adequate tailings beaches. A 2011 review also pointed out glaring omissions in the Mount Polley Mining Corporation’s assessment of the potential impact of a discharge of wastewater, and the Corporation’s failure to develop a detailed monitoring or emergency plan.

Despite this, after the dam collapse, Imperial Metals president Brian Kynoch was widely cited as saying, “If you asked me two weeks ago if this could have happened, I would have said it couldn’t.”

In the case of Mariana, a 2012 inspection into the possibility of unauthorized alterations to the Fundão dam identified a partial rupture that presented a severe structural risk and required more repairs than were being undertaken. In 2014, the same inspector also recommended the installation of additional instruments to measure water pressure (piezometers), but no such thing was done.

Further, like the Mount Polley Mining Corporation, Samarco Mining also failed to prepare for potential emergencies. A plan for monitoring and emergency procedures had been drawn up in 2009 – including a dam monitoring protocol, warning systems and emergency evacuation drills – but then iron prices fell, the company sought to cut costs and the plans were shelved. As a result, there was no advance warning when the Fundão dam collapsed, even for communities hit by toxic muck 14 hours after the breach.

At both mines, the companies’ failure to act on warnings and prepare for possible disasters point to an alarming corporate practice of putting production and profit ahead of safety considerations. It also raises serious questions about governments’ ability to challenge the power and impunity of the global mining industry, and its willingness to govern in a manner that actively protects the environment and the rights of its citizens – economic, social, cultural, Indigenous and universal human rights.

Moving Forward

After scrutinizing the events leading up to the breaches, it would seem that they are, indeed, chronicles of disasters foretold – with more in the offing.

A study of more than 40 years of tailings incidents (conducted for AMEC Earth and Environmental) suggested that the frequency of incidents can be expected to increase in the 24 to 36 months after market booms. And a report from the panel investigating the Mount Polley incident found that “if the inventory of active tailings dams in the province remains unchanged, and performance in the future reflects that in the past, then on average there will be two failures every 10 years and six every 30.”

This is not to mention the chilling fact that only seven months after the Mount Polley disaster, long before investigations into the disaster had concluded, Imperial Metals applied for a permit to restart the mine. Similarly, an application for the reopening of Samarco was filed before assessments of damages were complete, and while clean up and reparations were still underway.

Clearly, fundamental challenges still lie ahead in tackling the mining industry’s current power and impunity. Some of these challenges are being addressed by Indigenous leaders, social movements, NGOs and institutions such as churches, unions and universities, which have been critiquing mining company behaviour, supporting the emergency relief needs and compensation claims of those who lost lands and livelihoods because of the breaches, and producing numerous public policy recommendations. In Canada, the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre called for a Judicial Inquiry on BC mining regulation, for which an urgent need was established in the March 2017 study the Centre prepared for the Fair Mining Collaborative. The Centre’s call portrayed a provincial mine regulatory system in a “state of profound dysfunction.”¹ Amnesty International’s study of rights violations linked to Mt. Polley also called for a public inquiry and release of information from impact studies. At the international level, the UN Environment Programme carried out a “Rapid Response Assessment” focused on mine tailings storage, with Mariana photos on the cover and a Mt. Polley case study in the contents.² UNEP made detailed recommendations on better tailings management that give priority to safety and called for the establishment of a UN Environment stakeholder forum on tailings dam regulation.

However, we must also address the context of “regulatory capture,“ which occurs when regulation, or the carrying out of regulatory oversight by a government body, is directed or unduly influenced by the private industry subject to regulation. The process of capture involves not only lobbying, political contributions and “revolving doors” between government and corporate leaders, but also the advancement of a narrative that blurs the distinction between corporate interests and what is genuinely in the public interest.

The BC government has recently taken important steps in three key areas. First, it has committed to implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Second, the government introduced a ban on corporate and union political donations, which cuts off the large stream of money flowing to political parties from mining and other extractive industry groups. And third, the government has undertaken a review of the model that allows resource companies to hire “qualified professionals” to review proposed projects instead of public officials. Whether the mining industry’s power and the problem of regulatory capture in BC are significantly curbed remains to be seen. Notably, the government has been silent on a central recommendation from the Auditor General of BC stemming from an investigation into the government’s compliance and enforcement activities in the mining sector: to address the conflict of interest inherent in a model where the same government body (the Ministry of Energy and Mines) is tasked with both promoting mining and regulating it. To date, there is no independent compliance and enforcement agency for mining – and lobbying activities by the mining industry continue without limitation. If regulatory capture continues, who will speak for workers and communities, for land, rivers and the salmon? The challenge now is ultimately one of political will.

Author’s note: This report was first published jointly by the Corporate Mapping Project, CCPA–BC Office, PoEMAS (Grupo Política, Economia, Mineração, Ambiente e Sociedade) from Brazil and the Wilderness Committee. The paper is part of the CMP research and public engagement initiative investigating the power of the fossil fuel industry. The CMP is jointly led by the University of Victoria, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC and Saskatchewan Offices and the Parkland Institute. This research was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

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Let us urgently work together in the biggest global solidarity campaign with the Palestinian people against the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip, in order to boycott, alienate and hold accountable the Israeli occupation.

Dearest Comrades, Brothers and Sisters, and the free people of the world,

The Israeli Occupation forces has escalated its attacks on Gaza Strip in a very dangerous manner and started attacking civilian buildings, media buildings, and other buildings  killing until now 3 people and creating a state of war against The Palestinian people in Gaza Strip, this has happened today after Israeli occupation special forces sneaked last night into Khan Younis under the cover of fighter planes which attacked several areas killing seven people and creating a lot of devastations in the area.

Friends and Comrades, we urge you, along with the rest of the international community, and all its institutions including regional ones, and the various civil society organizations, to send urgent calls for justice to the Palestinian People and support their struggle against the Israeli occupation and work in line with your responsibility as actors in this issue.

We urge you to hold Israel legally accountable in both individual and a collective context, to immediately stop the aggression and war crimes on Gaza Strip and create the necessary pressure to force Israel to abide by the international law, specially the Geneva convention of 1947, we also urge you to work in collation to alienate Israel via boycotting the Israeli military occupation. We urge you to collectively work on a global solidarity campaign, the biggest of its kind, to expose the Israeli military occupation and hold it accountable for the crimes it is committing against the Palestinian People.

The continued international silence and the lack of accountability gives the Israeli military occupation impunity and encourages it to commit more atrocities and massacres.

Dearest friends:

We as a people under occupation, and under the control of an apartheid state, are being exposed without any protections. We urge you to take to the streets, and to hold nonstop protest as we do, we need you to raise your voice against the Israeli violations that are inflicted on the Palestinian people. We urge you to demand an end to the occupation and the aggression, and to shout against injustice.

We urge you to take a stand against the double standard of the governments who are backing the last occupation in history, and to urge them to commit to their legal and ethical obligations towards protecting civilians in Palestine. We need your solidarity with us and we need it today, and every day, to help us stop the occupation’s crimes and its continued aggression.

We urge you for a serious movement and a continuous solidarity actions towards a just struggle for justice, dignity and freedom. Finally, we hope that you commit yourself to this call today as individuals and/or organizations, and to do so with urgency, as tomorrow maybe too late.

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Salah Abdelati is one of the coordinators of the Great March of Return and its legal representative.

A crescent moon (a symbol of Islamism) designed like a stylised hemisphere which, flanked by a star and the words “for/with Libya”, represents a world which “wants to be on Libya’s side” – this is the logo of the “Conference for Libya” organised by the Italian government, a fact illustrated by the three-coloured flag in the lower section of the crescent moon/hemisphere.

The International Conference is taking place on 12-13 November in Palermo, on the island of Sicily, which only seven years ago was the principal base from which NATO, under US command, launched its war to demolish the State of Libya. The war was prepared by financing and arming certain tribal sectors and Islamist groups in Libya which were hostile to the government of Tripoli, and by infiltrating special forces into the country, among whom were thousands of Qatari commandos camouflaged as “Libyan rebels”. Then, in March 2011, the US and  NATO aero-naval attack was launched – it lasted seven months. The aviation flew 30,000 missions, of which 10,000 were attack missions, and used more than 40,000 bombs and missiles.

By the will of a vast political group stretching from left to right, Italy also took part in the  war, not only by deploying its aviation and its navy, but also by offering the USA and NATO the use of seven air bases  – Trapani, Sigonella, Pantelleria, Gioia del Colle, Amendola, Decimomannu and Aviano.

With this war in 2011, NATO demolished the State of Libya, situated on the Southern shore of the Mediterraean facing Italy, a State which had achieved – admittedly with certain notable internal disparities – “high levels of economic growth and human development” (as the World Bank itself declared in 2010), “superior to that of the other African countries”. The proof of this is that almost two million immigrants, most of them Africans, had found work in Libya. At the same time, using its own sovereign treasury, Libya had made possible the development in Africa of independent economic organisations and an African currency.

As the emails from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prove, the USA and France came to an agreement to block, at whatever the cost, Kadhafi’s plan to create an African currency, an alternative to the dollar and the CFA Franc imposed by France on 14 African ex-colonies.

Source: PandoraTV

After the demolition of the State and the murder of Mouamar Kadhafi, in the chaotic situation which followed, a vicious fight began, both internal and international, to share out the loot – the enormous oil and natural gas reserves; the immense underground Nubian reserves of  fossil water; this white gold, in perspective more valuable than the black gold; the Libyan territory itself, of primary geostrategic importance; the sovereign treasure, approximately 150 billion dollars invested overseas by the Libyan State, and “frozen” in 2011 in the most important European and US banks, or in other words – stolen.

For example, of the 16 billion Euros of Libyan wealth blocked by the Euroclear Bank in Belgium and Luxembourg, more than 10 billion have disappeared. “Since 2013”, according to the RTBF (RadioTelevision Francophone Belge – “hundreds of millions of Euros, taken from this treasure, were sent to Libya to finance the civil war which triggered a serious migrant crisis”.

Many African immigrants in Libya were imprisoned and tortured by Islamic militias. Now in the hands of traffickers and international manipulators, Libya became the main land of transit for a chaotic migratory flood, which, each year in the Mediterranean caused more victims than NATO bombs in 2011.

We cannot keep silent, as even the organisers of the counter-summit in Palermo did – the truth is that at the origins of this human tragedy are the wars waged by the USA and  NATO which, seven years ago, demolished an entire State in Africa.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

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

What was World War One about? How did it start? Who won? And what did they win?

Now, 100 years after those final shots rang out, these questions still puzzle historians and laymen alike.

But as we shall see, this confusion is not a happenstance of history, but the wool that has been pulled over our eyes to stop us from seeing what WWI really was.

This is the story of WWI that you didn’t read in the history books. This is The WWI Conspiracy.

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The US National Archives contains the records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. These were American casualties, men from families just like yours and mine.

The human costs of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the war. Over the following years, additions to the list have brought the total past 58,200.

As you read this, Donald Trump, his son-in-law and their coterie of advisors are currently planning an attack on Iran, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Israel, after first deliberately and openly bankrupting the Iranian oil industry by the imposition of crippling trading sanctions. All this in direct violation of the will of the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, Russia and China etc..

That conflict will require American troops, probably over 100,000, to invade and then install an army of occupation in Tehran. Hundreds of thousands will likely die on either side as the US-Saudi-Israeli armed forces attack an innocent nation of over 80,000 civilians in a likely precursor to WW3.

It won’t be until the funeral caskets start to arrive back at US air bases in Glendale, Tampa, Great Falls and Montgomery that the nation will wake up to the horrendous disaster that the Trump family White House will have initiated at the behest of the odious Saudi-Israel alliance against Iran.

But it will, by then, be far too late for the American and Iranian bereaved and grieving families in Illinois, Teheran, Ohio, Isfahan, Alaska, Mashhad and Arizona.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is a political analyst from the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Jerusalem Post

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) issued a declaration restating its commitment to the unity of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean through political agreement and integration, after a meeting in Nicaragua.

The ALBA-TCP reaffirmed its commitment to finding the path toward independence and sovereignty, as stated in the final declaration of the XVII meeting of the Political Council of ALBA-TCP. They reject any form of interventionism and colonialism in the region, and issued an alert about the rise of the far-right wing around the world and the region, which has both strengthened and been strengthened by said interventionism.

Latin America and the Caribbean was declared a Peace Zone in 2014, and based on that ALBA said,

“We reaffirm the need to strengthen unity in the diversity of our region, through political coordination and integration, as well as the defense of our sovereignty and self-determination.”

“We alert the international community about the advance of far-right political systems at the international level, and especially in Our America. This advance could mean an increase in aggressions against the progressive peoples and governments of the region. The ALBA-TCP will be attentive to the defense of the peoples of our region.”

The Latin American region has been, basically, divided into those countries backing U.S. foreign policy and countries who repudiate it to continue fighting for self-determination in the region. The second group has been more and more under pressure in the past few years by a number of forces. Primarily, by the so-called Lima Group, an ad-hoc group created in August 2017, known for its anti-Venezuela stance and alignment with U.S. foreign policy. Additionally by the change of political orientation of Ecuador, that nowadays has had a tighter relationship with the U.S. since the visit of Vice President Mike Pence to Ecuador in June. The elections of far-right politicians Sebastian Piñera as president of Chile in 2017, and of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil (the biggest country in the region) in October 2018 are also worrisome.

“We denounce the current imperial strategy of disarticulation against Latin American and Caribbean integration processes, which have technically paralyzed them. This paralysis only benefits the Empire and the historical enemies of Latin American and Caribbean integration,” the ALBA ministers stated.

In April, as Bolivia was taking on the pro-tempore presidency of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru, six of the international body’s 12 member states, crafted a letter to Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Huanacuni announcing their “temporary” withdrawal. The countries adduced their withdrawals to a lack of direction and leadership as justification for their decision, but political analysts in the region argue that the timing reveals, above-mentioned, ideological reasons rather than concerns over Unasur’s administrative and operational challenges, as wrote Valerie Carmel.

Through a public and coordinated attack against Unasur and other integration mechanisms, the U.S.-oriented right-wing entities are campaigning against those left-leaning governments remaining in the region who are resisting the return of U.S. dominance and its interventionist approach.

The final declaration also denounces the imperialist strategy to dismantle the integration processes in Our America.

“We urge the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean to preserve the progress made to integration in the region over the last decades. The strengthening of regional solidarity is the best response to threats of an interventionist nature that threaten the sovereignty of our peoples.”

The affirmation on strengthening a region based on self-determination is also based on the rejection of “the attempts by the US government administration to resuscitate the unfortunate Monroe Doctrine, unacceptable political justification of interventionism, and imperialist domination in our region.”

The ALBA countries rejected colonialist and imperialist interventionism led by the U.S., and adopted by some in the region. For example the unprecedented expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to Latin America via Colombia. In May, then-President Juan Manuel Santos announced that Colombia would become part of NATO, the first Latin American country, categorized as a “global partner.”

“We express our concern about the most recent announcements about the increase of the presence and cooperation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with some countries of our Latin America and the Caribbean, which is a potential threat to peace and security.”

Several political analysts, including Bolivian President Evo Morales, have warned about possible military invasions in the region, the most likely against Venezuela.

“We condemn the covert invasion of the United States government, who are sending a Pentagon ship to Colombia under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid’ for our Venezuelan brothers,” stated Morales in August.

“We reject the systematic and interventionist actions of the secretary general of the OAS, and of some of the countries that intend to attack the sovereignty, self-determination and constitutional order of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and other countries in which their people have decided to govern themselves without guardianship of any kind, which would result in the destabilization of the region.”

The ALBA-TCP ministers highlighted the importance of the alliance, to counteract the persistent attacks against the region and those movements rejecting interventionism.

“We declare that our Alliance has more validity than ever, we have been strengthened by the most recent attacks of the Empire and its allies. Far from betraying us, they strengthen us and encourage us to continue fighting in the name of the dignity of our peoples.”

The stood out to support the governments and people of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and the Caribbean region that have bravely resisted the aforementioned attacks. At the same time the proclaimed “the construction of a new international order; fair, equitable and inclusive, where there are no empires or hegemonies and relations between States are based on respect for the peoples and institutions chosen by them and the diverse cultures that coexist in the world.”

The declaration concludes by expressing “that the ALBA-TCP has demonstrated that another world is possible on the basis of union, trust, respect between peoples, through educational, cultural, social and economic missions, among other initiatives.” And announcing the XVI Summit of Heads of State and Government of ALBA-TCP, on Dec. 14, 2018 in Havana, Cuba.

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In these recent weeks my fellow social scientists have been saying that it would be necessary to refound Brazilian social science to explain the growth of fascism in Brazil. The surprise is due in particular to the adhesion of impoverished masses, blacks, women and homosexuals to this project, exactly the sectors that are already attacked discursively by this movement and that would suffer more strongly with a fascist government.

The Bolsonaro victory in the second round of presidential and governors linked him in major states of Brazil surprised many of them. The surprise was even greater due to the fascist electoral tsunami already in the first round occurs one week after the huge feminist demonstrations of the “Ele Não” (“He No”) and the fascist victory in the second round occur after the growth of the leftist electoral mobilizations.

An analysis of the demonstrations of “Ele Não” alone would require a lengthy and in-depth article, but I outline some comments, given its importance to the topic in  discussion. The “Ele Não” is part of successive, explosive and recurring mass demonstrations that have occurred in Brazil since the 1980s: the ‘Direct Elections Now!’, the general strikes, ‘Out Collor!’, The March of One Hundred Thousand in Brasilia for ‘Out FHC!’ and the demonstrations of 2013. However, since the latter, five years ago, including them, there is no organized working class and organized popular sectors as significant participants.

And if ‘Ele Não’ was progressive in relation to the feminist empowerment, it had important weaknesses that explain much about the current political-social scenario. They were focused on the struggle against chauvinism, but they were not linked to the general class struggles and even against the background of fascism. This suggests that fascism with a more ‘modern’ appearance, which is at least not overtly sexist, would result in the absence of antifascist mass mobilizations, since even the other sectors of struggle against oppression, such as homosexuals and blacks, do not have the capacity to mobilize in the same way. And this is not impossible. As will be shown, fascism must build enemies, but the only obligatory one, since it is the central and cause of its existence, is the organized working class and the left.

Clear examples of this more ‘modern’ version of fascism have already occurred in Europe, such as Alice Weidel, the lesbian leader of the German fascist party AfD or the deceased leader of the Austrian neofascist Freedom Party, Jörg Haider, gay too, to stay in only two of the most famous examples. In addition, the mobilizations turned out to be cathartic explosions, not materializing in concrete organization for the future.

Ele Não Protest. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I do not think, however, that it is necessary to recreate anything in Brazilian social science, no more than the creativity normally required for the scientific task. What is needed is to deepen the study of fascism, understand its historical significance, as well as the structural and conjunctural factors that enable its enormous growth in Brazil and around the world. We can not restrict ourselves to the surface of the Brazilian political process, and we must also seek the new correlation of forces between classes in Brazilian society. Mainly, we need to get out of analyzes that are fixed in fascism appearance, and understand its nature, its essence. I am writing this article as a first contribution in this sense, which will need to be deepened, including by the collective debate. We always think better collectively than in isolation.

What is the essence of fascism?

Here we can have the help of Marxist analyzes, which have already produced much material on the subject. One definition that would synthesize the debate is that fascism is the regime of the most reactionary sectors of the bourgeoisie, which uses methods of civil war to destroy workers’ democracy and working class organizations. If it is true that we need to distinguish fascism-as-movement from fascism-as-regime (Dos Santos, 1978; Villaverde Cabral, 1982, among others), this occurs primarily because the former is essentially a petty bourgeois movement, a movement of the middle classes, and the second is a bourgeois system of the big capital, especially financial. This passage from one to the other is the product of two realities.

The first is that the petty bourgeoisie, or in the broader sense – because it includes sectors of the proletarian aristocracy and small-scale bourgeois sectors – the middle classes are not an essential class of capitalism, they do not represent the central poles in struggle. Therefore they are not capable of directing capitalism like the bourgeoisie, nor can they propose a superior social alternative, like the proletariat. Consequently, can join at certain times the proletarian project, when it shows strength and is in advance, or the bourgeois counter-revolution, when this is stronger and assertive. When it tries to elaborate its own project, it produces a pastiche, which amalgamates fragments of bourgeois and proletarian programs, and even pre-capitalist remnants, forming a bizarre composition. As fascism-as-movement has to devise a program, and the maximum it achieves is this inconsequential bizarre, and while regime is based on methods of civil war, it is always and essentially irrationalist. It makes the cult of strength, death and war, dwell in the supernatural. Fascism rejects the rationalist, enlightened, and humanist values that were characteristic of rising capitalism and periods of growth – although these values are increasingly becoming in reality in a praise of technique and bureaucracy, as well as the defense of humanism became mere hypocritical discourse to justify external interventions and profitable internal philanthropies. Fascism denies even the scientific achievements that contradict to its irrationalist worldview, coming to the fringes of madness, such as the current defense of many of them of the “Theory” of the Flat Earth, the denial of the Holocaust or the claim that Nazism was leftist. Conspiracy theories are also one of the favorite pastimes of fascists.

That is why fascism can assume a nationalist economic discourse and even defense of autarky at a time, and currently defend ultraneoliberal and anti-nationalist programs; can use an anti-capitalist rhetoric at one time, and at another be the open defender of capitalism; can be racist in general, as was Nazism, or admit blacks, including leaders such as Abdias do Nascimento and João Cândido, who were members of Brazilian integralism; may be anti-Semitic, as many have been in the past and some still are, or cease to be and become Islamophobes and even defenders of Israel; can assume an imperialist, expansionist discourse, as in the 1930s and 1940s, or a State of Counter-Insurgency, aimed at the internal enemy, such as Latin American military dictatorships since the 1960s… Fascism takes shape and appropriates parts of a society’s trends at a given time, including hatred of sectors that are already tending to be oppressed at every juncture. That is why the followers of the Brazilian Fascist presidential candidate elected Sunday are confused when they take the form by the content and, when they see the name of National Socialist German Workers’ Party, they believe that the Nazism was of left, when in truth the Nazism only parasitized the appearance of communism in order to reach workers at a time when communism had influence in Germany and Europe in general. But Nazism, as any scholar or even a well-informed citizen will know, is the opposite of communism, is its mortal enemy. Nazism, by using the term socialism, uses a hypocritical propaganda expedient. In the context of the mass democracies and socialist rise of the early twentieth century, some of the counterrevolutionary regimes had to mimic the revolutionary demonstrations. For example, “the movement in Germany is essentially analogous to Italian. It is a mass movement, whose leaders use and abuse of socialist demagogy. This is necessary for the creation of the mass movement” (Mandel, 1976, 1986). Here is valid the phrase of François de La Rochefoucauld: “Hypocrisy is a homage that vice pays to virtue”.

Even in its form of organization, fascism can vary in relation to the mobilization component. In countries where mass politics was or is present, fascism as a movement assumes mobilizing forms such as emulation. In countries where this does not occur, this characteristic is smaller, as in the case of Portuguese fascism or Spanish fascism (this one because of its origin and military support), where it can rely simply on silent mass support in societies where the policy is not publicly active. What does not make the weight of this support less strong and overwhelming for opponents, because it leaves the hands free for the dictatorial regime to act without worries. Let us recall the Portuguese case, where silently many were part of the network of informants of the infamous PIDE / DGS.

Perhaps it is when there is the mobilizing element more clearly that one can note the greatest difference between the two phases, between fascism-as-movement and fascism-as-regime. The mobilization in both takes place under the rule of a strict hierarchy, and not as a free, creative and participative activity, but as its opposite, as it intends to suppress freedom and carry out the demobilization of the active sectors of society:

“It is the intensely mobilizing nature of fascism. It has already been convincingly argued by Organski, for example, that such mobilization, more episodic and instrumental than animated by any long-term strategy, even before the seizure of power, is transformed, after the seizure of power, in mere ritual of ratification, without any impact on the decision-making process at State level. Moreover, such mobilization is strictly political in nature and has as its objective and limit the social demobilization of the proletariat, which itself had a strategy and aimed at transforming bourgeois society. In our opinion, these are indeed the objective and the limit of fascist mobilization. And I can not refrain from quoting the wise words of Samuel Barnes in this regard: ‘Some systems of totalitarian mobilization emerge as a reaction against other structures of mobilization. Such systems are indeed much more negative than ideological, and although they have a formal pseudo-ideology, it is not a guide to action, and is taken seriously only by the young, the ignorant, and the university students.’ [Italics in the original.]” (Villaverde Cabral, 1982, p.7-8).

Even these demonstrations become more ritualized. This is so because the aim of the fascists when in government is to restrict freedom, to undo the advances, which in itself mean restrictions. Therefore, for these the external constraints – even external to the State – to their field of action are smaller. History shows that, at least in the medium term, the reduction of freedom is always simpler, because it counts mainly on generalized apathy and inertia, unlike the expansion of freedom, which demands conscious activity and energetic action. The inertia forces act to strengthen the retraction of freedom. Even though external constraints may determine how this restriction of freedom manifests itself.

The other motive for the conversion of movement to the regime is the acceptance of fascism, from a certain moment, by the bourgeoisie. Usually, the bourgeoisie does not adopt fascism as the main means. However, there is no place where fascism came to power without having the economic support of the big capital heavyweights and without the collaboration of the bourgeois parties – whether conservatives or liberals. In fact, the normal way, the conventional way of passing to fascism was the internal conversion of the regime, based on a process of deepening the State of Exception, which at one point leads to a qualitative leap forward for fascism. This was the case in Germany and Italy, for example, within and through democratic structures. In Portugal there were several internal crises in the parliamentarianism of the First Republic, the growth of centralization with the ‘New Republic’ of Sidónio Pais, then the coup of May 28, 1926 and the National Dictatorship (1926-1933) and finally an openly fascist regime with Salazar and the Estado Novo (New State), from 1933. Among the most important cases the great exception was the Franco regime, which was an open break with the institutions from the start, in a military coup, but also occurred in Pinochet’s Chile. This regressive and phased path to the Fascist State shows how it is not only the working class that bets on processes without rupture: this, in its evolution, first seeks reforms, until only the path of revolution remains; already the bourgeoisie bet first on reactionary measures, until adopting the counterrevolutionary regime of fascism. This refers to Brazil, where the bourgeoisie invested initially in an institutional coup, with the manipulation and politicization of the fight against corruption – which is also typical of fascism, the discourse of “moral regeneration of the nation”, although they are in practice corrupt to the soul – and the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the imposition of Michel Temer, only to advance with the support of the fascist candidate elected, to deepen the reaction. Collaborates in the process the inability of the traditional representatives of the bourgeoisie to presents themselves as capables agents to fulfill this task, such as the Geraldo Alckmin’s political failure.

However, the bourgeoisie only bets on fascism in the last instance, not because it is preferentially democratic, since it has never been and still is not. The French Revolution is mentioned very much, but this only reached the radicality that it had therefore the process was carried to the limits of the possible by the popular masses, not following the desires of the bourgeoisie. This class preferred a moderate and conciliatory English model. Liberal democracy would be today, were it not for socialist and workers mobilizations, a censitary democracy, as it was in the early nineteenth century. It would be just a regime of men of possession, citizens with goods (note the echo with the current ‘good citizen’). It would be a plutocracy (government of the rich) without masks. The liberal democracy had to include women, blacks, and workers in general because of the struggles of the poor from below versus the rich from above. It was only for this reason that the class dictatorship did not take the form of a democratic regime openly of the rich and an open dictatorship against the workers. The universalization of suffrage did not materialize the fears of the bourgeoisie of losing control, since this class managed to bring sectors of the popular classes leaderships (social-democracy) into its field. However, if the threat of suffrage were real, the bourgeoisie would seek to suppress it universally, as it has in many countries at many times. Liberal democracy allows an intraelites circulation, between capitalists fractions, which calms the tensions between them, at least in general, and for this reason is to some extent useful. But more than that: one can not resort to methods of open warfare permanently, as this would weaken the hegemony of the ruling class itself. That is why fascism is to be “moderately consumed” by the bourgeoisie, only from time to time.

And here I come to another important conclusion, which will explain much of the growth of fascism in Brazil and in the world in the last period: liberalism and fascism are not antagonistic. On the contrary. Fascism is the continuation of liberalism by other means, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, who asserted that “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. This perception is already indicated in the excellent work of João Bernardo, Labyrinths of fascism (Labirintos do Fascismo, in the original), with which I do not agree in its entirety, but which brings important elements to be reflected. He states in this book that

“It is from here that we can analyze the specific forms of organization that fascists have implanted in their militias, in their parties and in their unions, in which the absence of any capacity of initiative of the base corresponded to its fragmentation and its reduction to the individuals, ensuring the undisputed prevalence of hierarchies. Likewise, in festivals and parades […] each individual was no more than an extra, as a mirror of the general model, multiplying all of them, to the infinite, this singular image, while the choreography of the whole was organized in function of the central and exclusive figure of the chief. This was one of the aspects in which fascism was closer to liberals than to conservatives. Indeed, for the conservatives the people constituted an organic totality, irreducible to the sum of identical individualities that constitute the mass. It was the liberal model of the citizen – the individual consumer of the economy or the individual who is the elector of politics – who presided over the fascist notion of the masses.” (Bernardo, 2003, p.28-29)

The bourgeoisie, as an exploiting class, must defend the hierarchy, as all regimes of exploitation of the past have done. However, due to the nature of the capitalist regime, such as the market that hides behind its appearance of free competition space of economic units a brutal concentration of wealth in huge and increasingly gigantic monopolies, the capitalist state hides the real hierarchy of society, the inequality, in the form of an apparent “citizen” equality. As pointed out by Nicos Poulantzas (2007, p.358-359), “The real structure of the relations of production – separation of the direct producer and the means of production – leads to a prodigious socialization of the labor process. This isolation, an overdetermined but real effect, is experienced by agents in the manner of competition and leads to the concealment, for those agents, of their relations as class relations”. This engenders a process of individualization that materializes in the ideological dissolution of class organization and its replacement by the individualism of citizenship. What does on the one hand suppose that “[…] State represents the general interest, the general will and the political unity of the people and the nation” (Poulantzas, 2007, p.361). We are thus “in the presence of the institutional normative set of political democracy [I would add, bourgeois] [Italics in the original]” (Poulantzas, 2007, p.361).

Normally, this individualistic political form coexists with the existence of economic and political class organizations. If working-class organizations advance, they can replace the Capitalist State and build a new Proletarian State, a socialist democracy. This occurred in many countries throughout the twentieth century, having retreated as part of the international class struggle at the end of the last century and to the beginning of this century. On the other hand, when it advances the dissolution of the organization of the workers, of the people’s power bodies, we approach the fascism, which aims precisely the destruction of all proletarian democracy, including their parties and trade unions. In this process, clear action, with methods of civil war, ends by breaking the ideological shell of the capitalist democratic regime, showing in the light the insides of the capitalist regime, its plutocratic and hierarchical character.

Fascism aims to convert the working class in mass because “the popular masses are based on their existence as masses in the disorganization of the working class. The loss of sociological consciousness of the working class and its reduction to a merely economic entity is characterized, on the political plane, by a conversion of the class into masses. This was one of the basic objectives of fascism” (Bernardo, 2003, p.28). This dilution on masses needs an ideological support, which is the nation. Not the nation in its historical and material substance, but in its ideal abstraction. For this reason, fascism, even when it has anti-nationalist programs, such as the current Brazilian fascism, resorts to the shadow of nationalism, to that part of the dissolution of differences – the opposite of the reality of almost all nations – in particular the dissolution of the element of otherness that affirms the classist character, that is to say, communism, or the immediate substitute of organizer of the working class, even the social-democracy. And as a solvent for the internal differences of nations, he appeals to a “regenerating” politician, a charismatic leader who would be the personification of the model of nation (even if in reality they are all the abject examples of depravity, sadism, and corruption).

For this reason, liberalism, and its contemporary radicalized version, the neoliberalism, are always the antechamber of fascism, pioneers of it. By its economic and social policy, neoliberalism destroys in practice the social and economic fabric of the countries, leading to the brutal expansion of social inequality, popular misery and generalized violence, which leads to the spread of existential anguish and uncertainty, which, in turn, opens space for all forms of obscurantism and irrationalism. Fear is the cradle of fascism, it is the sea in which it navigates, it is the north of its compass. It is not by chance that the current austerity policies in Europe have stimulated the advance of fascist forces.

Women protest Bolsonaro in Brasília, Brazil. (Source: Arthur S Costa/Shutterstock)

However, it is by their ideology of extremist individualism that neoliberalism paves the way for the fascist hordes. As one of the greatest apostles of this secular religion, Margaret Thatcher, said “[…] there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families”. In this individualized society there is no solidarity, but it is a world of total competition, with a morality that admits any behavior for ascension and survival, the world of winners and losers. Violence in social competition is becoming more and more the cult of violence as a way of life. Brutality is valued. It is the time when the greatest mass sports entertainment is the UFC, and in which there is the universal generalization of the Brazilian Law of Gérson (“I like to take advantage in everything, right?”) And the “Brazilian way” (“Jeitinho brasileiro”). There is no collective struggle, but the struggle of individuals against individuals for social ascension, with increasingly limited posts available.

Fascism is the radicalized tendency of neoliberalism, which in turn belongs to the nature of the bourgeoisie in the current stage of systemic decadence when it has no restrictions imposed by workers’ organizations. In Marx’s view, Bonapartism in the nineteenth century was a catastrophic equilibrium of the class struggle, since it is a balance between working class and bourgeois power organizations paralyzed by the inability to fight, by the exhaustion (and impossibility in that historical moment of ascension of capitalism for a passage to socialism). The truth is that liberal democracy is a precarious reality, a balance by the active assertion of bourgeois and proletarian organizations, a fact that was especially marked in the central countries in the three decades after World War II. This was mainly due to the presence of a strong international socialist camp. The correlation of forces can not be understood solely and exclusively at the national level, but by international influence.

When it is possible for the bourgeoisie to advance, disorganizing the working class, what starts as a active liberalism or neoliberalism ends up becoming, if not strongly opposed, fascism. And the bourgeoisie needs to attack the living and working conditions of the workers, in order to increase the surplus value and try to counteract this tendency, due to the law of tendency to the fall of the rate of profit derived from the normal capitalist operation itself. To do so, it must precisely dismantle the resistance of the workers. This is a particularly severe need when the margins are further reduced during the B phases of the Kondratiev cycles, times of descent, and expands exponentially in the troubled periods of decadence of the cycle of a hegemonic power.

What we have witnessed since the beginning of the eighties in the world is the imposition of neoliberalism, which serves fundamentally to transfer wealth to the financial sector and thus generate a massive and structural unemployment that destroys with the organizations of the working class. This, coupled with the setback produced by the end of the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies – irresponsibly celebrated by sectors of the left – has enabled an uncontrolled advance of fascist tendencies.

This dynamics having appeared after the counter-revolutions in Eastern Europe and runs counter to the discourse of liberals and of the historical revisionists who claim that fascism is a response to revolutionary danger. On the contrary. Fascism was only able to emerge and thrive where the revolution had already been defeated, as in Germany, after the defeat of the revolutionary cycle of 1918-23, or in Italy, after the defeat of the Biennio Rosso of 1919-1920, to remain only in the most known examples. Even in the fascist coups against revolutionary processes, as in the case of Spain and Chile, their victories were only possible due to the dubiousness and lukewarmness of their leaders, who froze the revolutionary advance and, therefore, led them to the defeat, which opened the way for the fascist offensive. The Spanish Republic did not advance to solve the problems of nationalities, did not make the agrarian reform widespread, did not liberate Morocco, etc; Salvador Allende clung to the limits of bourgeois institutionality and did not advance to socialism, despite his important reforms. Where the march of the revolution progressed, as in Russia of 1917, the fascist attempt of Kornilov is defeated, as well as the White Army in the civil war. A defeat of the Russian Revolution would have led inescapably to fascism immediately or almost immediately. That is why those who affirm that fascism can not win in present-day Brazil because there is no revolutionary danger, either they do not know the lessons of the past or they act ideologically oriented, like the revisionist historians when dealing with the fascisms of the Interwar period (on this I suggest reading the brilliant answer of the recently deceased Italian Marxist, Domenico Losurdo, in his book War and Revolution).

Let us also remember that fascism has coexisted normally with the liberal economy. Nazism had at the head of its economic policy, during much of its government, an orthodox liberal, Hjalmar Schacht. This only contradicted with practical measures the economic principles that he defended to remove, as he affirms in his memoirs, ‘the communist danger’ (Schacht, 1999). Symptomatically, his Helferich Plan will be studied by Gustavo Franco and will be the inspiration for the Real Plan, which paves the way for the deep neoliberal shock of the FHC years in Brazil. It will be Gustavo Franco, former president of the Central Bank, former party member of the PSDB, leader of the Millenium Institute (ultraneoliberal) and current party member of Novo (also ultraneoliberal), who prefaces the Brazilian edition of the memories of the Hitler’s economist. Who is also founder of the Millenium Institute is Paulo Guedes, current economic mentor of the Brazilian fascist elected president and his possible Minister of Finance. It is also the bridge between Brazilian fascism and the fascist experience that not only better combined with neoliberalism, but inaugurated the neoliberal offensive, the dictatorship of Pinochet (1974-1990). This is not surprising, because to impose neoliberal shock in a highly mobilized and progressive advance society is only possible with the use of fascism. Paulo Guedes taught during a period of this dictatorship at the University of Chile. He has a PhD from the University of Chicago, which has formed not only important ultraneoliberais, as Milton Friedman, as provided economic advisors to Pinochet, the famous Chicago Boys.

In Brazil, fascistization will begin to tread its path with the defeat of the Petrobras workers’ strike in 1995, at the beginning of the FHC government, which allowed the beginning of a violent neoliberal program. Not even the Social Democratic governments of the PT reversed this process, because they did not interfere with the neoliberal economic foundations, even if benefiting from a favorable international environment. Its distributive policy, although accessory and extremely important, such as Bolsa Família (‘Family Financial Support’), did not break with the liberal logic, since it did not go through the strengthening of working-class organizations, but reinforced the citizen’s dynamic, that is, focused on strengthening the rights of isolated individuals, although with some demands at the household level, such as the attendance of children in schools. In addressing this does not mean that we do not know or deny the importance of the program. Although limited in resources, it helped to rescue millions of misery and generated a positive impact on the economy. Unlike the Bolsa Banqueiro (‘Bankers Financial Support’) of debt interest and financial transfers, which generates the enrichment of a very small minority, and have no positive return to the economy, on the contrary, it has done deleterious things. It should be noted that, by failing to carry out a government policy that essentially went through the strengthening of working-class organizations, the PT produced a curious situation: within the neoliberal ideological hegemony, the gains that large portions of the population obtained in their governments were subsequently seen not as a product of that time, but of the individual effort of these workers and petty bourgeoisie. Obviously, they struggled, but without the created environment they would not have been able to go that far.

However, this process of building neoliberal hegemony and fascistization was not only the product of initiatives from the State but was supported by the private organizations of the bourgeoisie and its ideological apparatus, such as the media monopolies. The main organization to educate the generations of young people that will grow in the nineties will be Rede Globo. See the character of programs aimed at these audiences, such as the soap opera Malhação (‘Work Out’), which for many years presented an entire neo-liberal, individualistic and competitive, immoral conception. He was also helped by the Abril group, which publishes among others the weekly magazine Veja, where we again find the shadow of Paulo Guedes, who invested in Abril Educação (April Education), of the Civita brothers.

This fascistization of the Brazilian masses is the differential in relation to the military dictatorship (1964-1985), when the State was then fascist, of a counter-insurgent type, but failed to disseminate a fascist culture. And an element that facilitated this process was the growth of the sects conventionally called evangelicals, but which are mainly neo-Pentecostal. These mainly occupied the void left among the poorest by the almost complete destruction of Liberation Theology during the ultra-reactionary papacy of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. One must understand the differential of these sects for traditional Protestant churches, as well as for other churches and religions, such as Judaism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Hinduism and African origin religions, for example. These have pre-capitalist origins or, at the most as traditional Protestants, emerged in the transition to capitalism, so they have contradictions with capitalism, having watched over time the emergence of progressive branches. Neo-Pentecostalism, however, arises already in the period of capitalist decadence in the 1960s and 1970s in the great imperialist power of our time, the United States. Neo-Pentecostalism is the religion of imperialism: it brings together at the same time a Theology of Prosperity and a defense of economic and social individualism with movements of dilution of individuals in large masses; has markedly irrationalist practices, such as curandeirism, glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”), prophecies, spiritual battle, with the direct “confrontation” of the demons, and a world replete and directly dominated by the influence of supernatural beings, besides a strong conservative moralist discourse. As one notes, it is also clearly the only religion intrinsically fascist. Its organizational structure reproduces fascist structures such as the charismatic leader, the strong hierarchy and the total domination of the leader, and even the formation of militias such as the “Gladiators of the Altar” of one of the largest and most powerful sects, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (IURD)). Like fascism, it also establishes relations with the lumpenproletariat and there are several indications pointed by the press of connections with the underworld of the crime. And it is in the use of the mass media, and relying on the connivance of the State, that they have been penetrating and occupying governments, creating one of the largest parliamentary group. With a fundamentalist view of Christianity, they distil hatred against homosexuals, feminists, and against any traces of modernity, particularly against labor unions and the left (although part of the social democracy has cohabited for a while with these sects). Considering that it initially spread among more impoverished sectors – currently reaching the middle class – it incorporated some characteristics, realizing a doctrinal syncretism with the religions of African origin, in particular by the incorporation of animist elements. However, because of its fascist dynamics, it does not accept to live with difference, and it comes to demonize and persecute, even violently, these religions, and by extension, it attacks all black, popular and slums (favelas) cultures. In this way, also assumes racist connotations and serves the dismantling of popular organizations in these communities. It is not by chance that the IURD and its broadcaster, the Record, embarked on the fascist campaign.

On the other hand, neoliberal hegemony will have results even on the dynamics of the opposition to neoliberalism. From the nineties, faced with the backsliding of class organizations, and supported by an ideological offensive emanating from the United States, the left begins to migrate from the class debate, and even from the class struggle to fight against oppression, to an identitarian position, neoliberal, to fight against oppression. It also migrates from the assertion of world class position to a “citizen” (liberal) position, and as a belated echo of Eurocommunism, bluring the difference between liberal democracy and worker democracy, and diluting everything in the defense of a democracy – without a class definition – as an universal value, trying to hide its adhesion as the left wing of neoliberalism and the regime. The liberal way of debating oppression, in addition to selling false illusions of overcoming the various oppressions within capitalism, is individualist, biologizing, irrationalist in some cases, and it becomes an instrument of disorganization of working-class organizations. It divides the exploited and oppressed and explodes reality into multiple fragmented identities, leaving aside the identity that unified them, exactly that of exploited and oppressed, the class identity. It is the era of postmodernism, the “end of the great narratives”, everything becomes discourse, semantic battles. Many of these movements are clearly opposed to the left and create an irrationalist environment favorable to fascism, because they lead the political dispute to the field that Brazilian fascism wants to dispute, the customs and morality. The liberalized left can not offer a unitary identity that brings together all the struggles of oppression by marrying them with the anti-capitalist, classist struggle. It finds itself disarmed in the face of the extreme right-wing, militarist and fundamentalist nationalist identity –  although essentially anti-nationalist – that unifies all Brazilian fascism.

In view of this whole process, we still have to answer some central questions about the current fascist process: who in the Brazilian ruling class supports fascism and why? To do this we must understand the dynamics of the economy and the composition of the dominant class and its hegemonic fractions: we have moved from a coalition led by the industrial sector, supported by the financial sector and seconded by the agribusiness sector (modern name for the old colonels and landowners), to a coalition dominated by the financial and agribusiness sectors, backed by the industrial sector. This composition results in a regression in the national productive forces and an increasingly dependent insertion of the country into the world market.

The agricultural giant is based on a predatory and superexploratory structure of a deeply unequal character, incapable of generating income that sustains the rise in the consumption level of the masses (which would have positive effects on the other economic sectors). A glimpse of the latest Agricultural Census (2006) reveals the continuity of these patterns: small-scale agriculture accounted for 80% of the properties, employing three-quarters of the rural labor force, but representing only 25% of agricultural land, while livestock area and monocultures of soya, cane and corn accounted for 60% of the planted areas. Agriculture has served to waste and deplete our water potential and reduce important sources of wealth in times of biotechnology, which is our biodiversity, threatened by the irrational and criminal expansion of the agricultural frontier.

The weight of this sector grows while the industrial sector has seen its share of GDP shrink since its peak in 1985 (21.6%), and the denationalization of the strategic sectors deepens, where the Embraer sale was just another sad chapter (defended by the fascist team). The weight of the primary sector led Brazil to associate itself with the Chinese power almost exclusively for agricultural and mineral exports, in a typically semicolonial dynamic, in spite of the enormous demand of industrialized products by that country. This process, in turn, obviously weakens the working class, because it reduces its vanguard, the industrial working class.

One of the development blockers is the banking concentration: in 2016, the four largest banks (Caixa, BB, Bradesco and Itaú) concentrated 79% of the national credit market and deposits and 73% of financial system assets, according to the Central Bank. In addition, the dynamics of governmental assistance to the international and national financial sector, which feeds the expansion of domestic and foreign debt to generate profits, undermines national development and allows for the expenditure of interest and debt repayments in 2015 to swallow 42.43 % of the Union’s General Budget. This is where the large portion of the financial sector is.

This deindustrialization process is even more perverse, since it aggravates the already serious limits to the policies of redistribution of income and social concessions. The governments of the PT, without facing with the economic fundamentals of this process, were able, during the years of growth, to distribute a minority, but still important, wealth. However, this is not in line with the economic crisis, and especially with the plans of the new (old) dominant bloc. Progressive reforms have become unfeasible and overexploitation becomes the only way, ultimately, to Brazilian dependent capitalism, which the Marxist Theory of Dependence already affirmed, but it is necessary to make new leaps, brutal leaps at the level of super-exploitation. The country takes on features that are more and more similar to Brazil of the Old Republic (1889-1930). However, making history recede in a century necessitates a Herculean effort. An adjustment of this only becomes possible with the use of force, only becomes possible with a method of civil war, only becomes possible with fascism. It is impossible to impose this level of regression on social rights and the living and working conditions of the Brazilian working class without completely destroying any kind of organization of this class.

And this is how the PT ends up being sunk by these forces. This despite the fact that this party has assumed, during the period of redemocratization, in particular since the 1990s, the role of the left wing support of the liberal democratic regime. This was supported by a left leg, trade union-political, the PT, and a right leg, industrial-financial (increasingly the second), the PSDB. This was possible within an active balance of forces. This was broken by the process of structural economic regression. The PT was able, within a policy of conciliation, within the framework of a favorable international environment, to recover the credibility of the Brazilian liberal democracy after the discredit that it had fallen following the nefarious neoliberal shock of the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB). The PT made even concessions to the bourgeoisie, such as a regressive pension reform and the law of outsourcing, it reached in the first case peripherals organized sectors for PT bases, the civil servants, and in the second case, the unorganized sectors, more precarious, which escape the traditional bureaucratic structure of the trade union movement. But when demanded by the new bourgeois dominant block agrarian-financial to take deeper measures, such as the anti-labor reform, approved later by Temer, PT could not do it. This law reversed labor legislation at the pre-CLT level (1943). By then, PT had lost the support of large sectors of the working class and middle classes because adopted an austerity neoliberal economic policy, and for not having done the measures demanded by the bourgeoisie, lost the support of the dominant sectors.

This new dominant block was then betting on the institutional destruction of the PT, within the framework of the order. However, as it did not face resistance to its offensive by the working class, resulting from the confusion that had arisen with the 2016 coup in the main leaders of the class, and these were already unaccustomed to the role of mobilizers – having acted in the opposite direction for more than a decade – the dominant bloc continues to advance against the PT, the left and all working-class organizations. This is where they find, eager to carry out the task, the fascist candidate and his followers. With contradictions, with the passage of time, the totality of the dominant sectors embark on their candidacy, abandoning the more traditional politicians and their parties. In this process the PSDB will be reduced almost to dust, ceasing to be a national party – even though it has never been national in the political-programmatic sense, as it has always reflected the interests of the international capital – and will survive as a party of local powers in particular in São Paulo. Another characteristic that brings us closer to the period we live in when we return to the Old Republic: weakened by fascist forces, the PSDB is becoming more and more a Republican Paulista Party (PRP).

The hegemony of this new rentier-latifundium block can also be noticed culturally, when the direction of the cultural production, in particular musical, is reversed, and instead of leaving Rio de Janeiro and the country’s coast to the interior, it is dominated by the sertanejo style (not national, but a bastardized version of the American country) toward the coast. One sees the agrarian cult, of the latifundia, including in the Globo advertising campaign, which affirmed that “Agro is POP”, that “Agro is good”.

The class hatred of the Brazilian elites and the middle classes, these historically the mass base of fascism, serves this ongoing process. It is a selective hatred, which two years ago I tried to explain in an article (Ferreira, 2016, n.p.):

“Why does the middle class – with notable and rare exceptions – hate so much? Hates Lula, hates the PT, hates the labor unions, and hates the left (by confusing it all with the PT)? The exercise of explanation can not go by his speech, which as in 1964, only dresses with the costume of anti-corruption struggle. After all, corruption was not born with the PT, nor did it reach its pinnacles under its governments. The pots that beat against Dilma were silent even in the face of repeated denunciations that hit as a stake the heart of the coup government of Temer, including the shadowy figure who heads it. The silence reigns […]. Punished pots and sensitive ears are grateful, but democracy is not. In fact, this bias of pot-banging is historical.

If we count only the period of democratization and on the issue of corruption, which were the hitting pots when the scandal of precious stones smuggling or the scandals about the concessions of radios and TVs in the Sarney government? Where were they when the young people took to the streets against Collor? When the workers fought the scandalous and corrupt PSDB privatizations that gave national wealth to foreign corporate pirates who, instead of cannons used rotten coins and privileged contacts? Where were they in the SIVAM scandal? Where were the pots, which remained unharmed, when in a parliamentary coup the rules were changed in the middle of the game, with the purchase of the amendment of the reelection of FHC? Or in the maxi-devaluation, electoral maxi-estelionato? Or in the BANESTADO scandal? Where were them when the Tremsalão or the Mafia of the Merenda scandals?

The selective hatred needs to be explained. And, this explanation lies in what is the current Brazilian middle class and its position in Brazilian society. Its position is fundamentally defined by its intermediate location between the extreme classes of Brazilian society, being squeezed between a small monopolistic bourgeoisie of great wealth and very high income and a proletarian, subproletarian and lumpenproletarian mass, of the countryside and of the cities, completely miserable. But stating that they are in an intermediate position does not mean that they are equidistant between the top and the bottom. Do not. […]the Brazilian inequality is so great that the middle class, by not seeing the elite above, believes in the top of the pyramid, believes itself elite. […] the middle class sees as a threat to itself any threat to the elite. Since it can no longer differentiate itself from the masses by property, the middle class begins to differentiate itself, as a way of diminishing its fear of social decadence, by consumption. Therein lies the root of the “goumertization” of everything, of the refusal to travel in airplanes with popular sectors, and of the elitist hatred of popular culture. Therein lies the source of their fierce reactionaryism and their rejection of social democratization. The middle class will defend the order that guarantees inequality and differentiation. Therein lies the root of the hatred of the middle class.”

This fascist base is also augmented by the faithful followers of fascist evangelical sects, and even other popular sectors, who erroneously see the PT as the sole responsible for all evils, displacing their just hatred for the effects that the long neoliberal hegemony has produced in the country, against the left, against modern sociability, against the progressive sectors. This is how the oppressed masses become followers of the oppressors and become disorganized as a class and organized as a mass by fascism to hate the oppressed. The progressive mask under which the deep country and the reaction were hidden in recent years fell and revealed the abject fascist face.

The fascistization process that we witness would be on course winning or being defeated the fascist candidate. The result would only define the form of this fascistization: in the first case, it would follow the Italian/German route, in the second case, the Spanish/Chilean route. What is certain is that the expectations of a large part of the Brazilian left to electorally reverse fascism were and remain vain. When the process of fascistization takes place, however the apparent form may remain democratic, it will be just that, appearance. What exists is indeed a civil war. The Brazilian tragedy is that, so far, only one side has entered the field to fight: and it is not the side of workers and progress.

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Carlos Serrano Ferreira is Head of the Department of Latin American Studies at the Institute for Innovative Development (Институт Инновационного Развитияm, Moscow), vice-coordinator and researcher at the Laboratory of Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony Studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (LEHC – UFRJ) and PhD candidate in Political Science at the Institute of Social and Political Sciences (ISCSP) of the University of Lisbon.

Sources

Bernardo, João. (2003) Labirintos do fascismo. Na encruzilhada da ordem e da revolta. Porto: João Bernardo e Edições Afrontamento.

Dos Santos, Theotonio. (1978). Socialismo o fascismo. El nuevo carácter de la dependencia y el dilema latinoamericano. México, D.F.: Edicol.

Ferreira, Carlos Serrano. (2016). O ódio e a classe média. Available in: https://www.brasil247.com/pt/colunistas/geral/271244/O-%C3%B3dio-e-a-classe-m%C3%A9dia.htm.

Mandel, Ernest. (1976). Sobre o fascismo. Lisboa: Antídoto.

Poulantzas, Nicos. (2007). Poder político y clases sociales en el Estado capitalista. México, D.F.: Siglo XXI.

Schacht, Hjalmar. (1999). Setenta e seis anos de minha vida. São Paulo: Editora 34.

Villaverde Cabral, Manuel. (1982). O fascismo português em perspectiva comparada. Lisboa: A regra do Jogo Edições.

Featured image is from Ghana Live TV

Last week, on September 26, Canada and five Latin American countries referred Venezuela to the International Criminal Court, citing “numerous, credible reports alleging the commission of serious international crimes.” 

The announcement comes after several years of heavy US critique of the Maduro government. Sanctions imposed by Canada, the United States and the European Union in 2017 and 2018 represent a new level of pressure. Among many harsh words for the Venezuelan government, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has labelled its behaviour as “anti-democratic.”

While much attention is being paid to questions around democracy and human rights, the oil factor is being left out of the discussion. Venezuela happens to have its petroleum under state (not private) control, a source of animosity in Washington. Venezuela has used its oil wealth to relieve poverty and improve the health and education of its citizens — policies labelled socialist in the United States. The 2014 plunge in oil prices wreaked havoc with the Venezuelan budget. (It did the same in Alberta.)

Venezuela is a petro-state. It has the world’s largest oil reserves. Other oil-producing nations — Iraq, Libya and Iran — have come into Western cross-hairs in recent decades, with drastic consequences. In each instance, Western governments have identified democracy and human rights as a reason for intervention without mentioning petroleum. Venezuela is part of a bigger picture — the rivalry for control of the world’s oil and natural gas.

I describe this petroleum game in my new book, Oil and World Politics, and show how it is played by global and regional countries, each using whatever tools, allies and organizations offer advantage. The aim is to achieve gains in power, wealth or politics. The reality is: oil and geopolitics are inseparable.

Venezuela is a case in point. To address two years of governmental paralysis, President Nicolas Maduro established a Constituent National Assembly in 2017, which called an election to select new representatives. The working class and poor voted in huge numbers. The opposition — representing the business elite, well-to-do and media owners — boycotted the election, held violent rallies and called for strikes.

Washington sided with the opposition by imposing sanctions on officials, including Maduro himself. It also imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela’s banking and oil sectors. The United States claimed the measures were designed to “deny the Maduro dictatorship a critical source of financing to maintain its illegitimate rule.” When Maduro won Venezuela’s 2018 election in May, Western countries added more sanctions.

Historically, Venezuela has been a major source of US oil imports, but sanctions affect Venezuela’s ability to produce and export oil. The latest US sanctions prohibit US institutions from dealing in new debt or equity issued by Venezuela or its national oil company PDVSA, and from making dividend payments to the Venezuelan government. These measures impact PDVSA’s American refining and marketing subsidiary CITGO, preventing it from remitting a billion dollars or so annually. Lack of foreign exchange has impeded PDVSA from importing spare parts for maintenance. Further, sanctions make the financing of oil exports difficult.

The Venezuelan economy appears in free fall. Maduro blames “supremacist policies” of the United States and “economic war” by the country’s opposition. He has introduced monetary reform to avoid the US dollar in oil transactions. China and Russia have befriended Venezuela, extending loans in exchange for oil.

Senior US officials have advocated regime change. US President Donald Trump has threatened military intervention. Since the days of President Hugo Chávez, the United States has disliked Venezuela’s preference for its national oil company. It favours privatization worldwide. Although Venezuela allows foreign oil companies to operate under contractual arrangements, ownership of resources remains with Venezuela.

Washington facilitated a failed coup to unseat Chávez in 2002. It denies participation in a failed drone attack on Maduro in 2018, though it has worked closely with opposition leaders before and since and supported them financially through its National Endowment for Democracy. Are the threats and sanctions solely about Venezuela’s governance? Other countries with democracy deficits are ignored.

Venezuela and Canada have both differences and commonalities. Venezuela regards oil as its national patrimony. Canada follows US approaches to petroleum policy, having abandoned its National Energy Program. Much of Venezuela’s oil production comprises heavy oil and bitumen from the Orinoco river basin. Two-thirds of Canada’s oil production comes from the Alberta oil sands, mostly bitumen. Both countries must send such oil to specialized refineries for upgrading before it is refined into useful products. Since refineries with this multi-billion dollar equipment exist primarily in the United States, Canada and Venezuela are in competition for US refineries.

Bitumen is viscous like molasses and must be diluted with high-quality light oil to enable shipment by sea or pipeline. Bitumen is also high in sulphur and contaminants. Both the nature of bitumen and the need for upgrading lower its value. When world oil prices exceeded US$100 per barrel a decade ago, companies flocked to Alberta’s oil sands with strong support from the Canadian government.

Recently, international companies have been divesting from the oil sands and investing in lower-cost resources elsewhere. The world is awash in crude oil and world prices are much lower. Prices are lower still for bitumen, given its quality. Canadian-based firms remain entrenched, but oil sands operations have failed to generate expected profits.

In 2018, Canadian exports to US refineries exceeded those of Venezuela for the first time. With more expansion of oil sands planned, actions to limit Venezuelan exports benefit Canada. Sanctions on Venezuela (Iran too) have helped tighten the global oil market and bolster prices, to Canada’s and Alberta’s benefit.

Wars for resources are illegal under the UN charter. Yet since 9/11, numerous countries with a petroleum connection have experienced conflict. Some — like Iraq, Libya, Iran and Venezuela — have petroleum resources. Others — like Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine — have a strategic location for pipelines. A few countries — like Somalia and Yemen — border strategic sea routes. All these countries are caught up in rivalry among the United States, Russia and China.

What’s going on internationally remains largely hidden because of its complexity and the management of public perception. Sanctions against Venezuela are part of a US global push for energy dominance. It draws other countries in through organizations such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Its plans are to thwart Russia, a major oil and gas-producing country, and contain China, which gets most of its oil from the Middle East.

Russia and China have joined together strategically to promote new financial organizations as alternatives to the IMF and World Bank, challenging US dominance. Their mutual trade has expanded and they are cooperating diplomatically, economically and militarily. The two countries are trading in rubles and yuan, avoiding use of the US dollar.

Motivations are often complex and difficult to decipher. Yet Canada is collaborating with the US in sanctions on Venezuela, Iran and Russia, all oil-producing countries. Canada is also active in the Lima Group, the 14 OAS members exploring a solution in Venezuela. The Venezuelan opposition supports the group.

Canada’s focus on Venezuela’s internal affairs follows the pattern of Western arguments used against other oil-producing countries. The OAS charter stipulates “no state or group of states has the right to intervene … in the internal or external affairs of any other state.” Sanctions are a form of intervention, reducing Venezuela’s ability to produce and export oil. Is Canada playing the petroleum game too? How the sanctions will affect democracy is uncertain, but they are already benefiting Canadian oil.

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This article was originally published on Opencanada.org.

John Foster is an international petroleum economist and author.

The Trump Administration announced on August 31, 2018 that it was ceasing all US contributions to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), rejecting what it termed “an irredeemably flawed operation.” [1]

UNRWA provides education, healthcare, job training, and limited food aid for millions of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, the majority of whom are descendants of those Israel forcibly displaced from their homes in historic Palestine in 1948, in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba (catastrophe). [2] Unlike most UN agencies, the entirety of UNRWA’s operational budget comes from voluntary contributions by member states. The US has historically been UNRWA’s biggest donor, last year providing about one-quarter of its $1.24 billion budget. The US refusal to contribute is therefore potentially catastrophic for its recipients.

The Trump administration’s decision to cease funding UNRWA in part reflects its general reluctance to shoulder what US governments have traditionally seen as their responsibility to support international institutions, often citing unfair burden sharing. The State Department announcement of the cessation complained about “the very disproportionate share of the burden of UNRWA’s costs that we had assumed for many years.” Other countries have, in fact, stepped forward to fill in much of the shortfall: A September 27 meeting of foreign ministers of Jordan, Sweden, Turkey, Japan and Germany, as well as representatives of the European Union, produced pledges of $122 million in support. [3] A day later, a letter signed by 112 Democratic Party representatives urged the administration to reverse this decision because of its “disastrous consequences.” [4]

Yet while Trump’s rejection of “globalism” [5] and the Administration’s particular hostility to refugees provides context for its actions against UNRWA, this decision has a more specific target: The attack on UNWRA is part of a full-spectrum assault on the Palestinian people’s political claims and its capacity to engage in politics undertaken by the Trump administration since entering office in 2016.

While the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is reportedly developing a Middle East peace plan, dubbed the “deal of the century,” the administration has spent most of its time trying to preempt negotiations by imposing “resolutions” to final status issues such as Jerusalem—reflected in its decision to move the US embassy to the contested city—and now in the attack on the livelihood and status of Palestinian refugees, as well as weaponizing financial aid to coerce the Palestinians into negotiations on the basis of compliance with the US and Israel’s demands.

Financial aid to Palestinians has long played an important role in the self-presentation of the US as a broker of “peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. The US, of course, has never been a neutral party, always declaring its undying support for Israel and rarely challenging any Israeli actions. But aiding Palestinians provided some cover for its claim of concern for “both parties.”

The Trump administration has ended this veneer. In addition to its termination of funds for UNRWA, the Administration has also blocked USAID funding to the Palestinian Authority, halted aid to Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem, and ended support for programs involving Palestinians under the Conflict Management and Mitigation grant program. The only funding stream that has not been cut is money to support Palestinian security operations. [6]

But the specific attack on UNWRA also reveals a deeper target. Although UNRWA is an international organization, rather than a Palestinian body, the Trump administration’s targeting of its operations reflects its significance for Palestinians, which exceeds the services provided, as important as these are. Palestinian refugees have long viewed the existence of UNRWA as an acknowledgment of international responsibility to address their plight. At the same time, they have also worried that this plight might be viewed as a merely humanitarian concern, rather than a fundamentally political issue which demands redress. As early as 1949, refugees expressed concern that “the Palestine affair is no longer a matter of liberating a country. It has degenerated into a humiliating problem—that of feeding and sheltering refugees.” [7] Refugees’ need for assistance was a consequence, they have insisted, of a massive injustice done to them—the 1948 displacement of most of Palestine’s native population, their dispossession of their property, and the dissolution of a Palestinian polity. Addressing their needs requires redressing this injustice through recognition of their right of return enshrined in UN Resolution 194.

It is the Palestinian refugees’ demand for recognition, rights, and a political resolution to the injustice of their century-long dispossession at the hands of Israel, therefore, that is the ultimate target of the Administration’s decision to revoke funding for UNRWA. If Palestinians were willing to be passive recipients of aid, making no demands, and having no collective expectations, the Administration’s appetite to spend money would no doubt be greater.

Disappearing Palestinian Refugees

The US termination of UNRWA funding has nothing to with the quality of its services. When the State department announced the cessation of US funding, UNRWA’s spokesperson responded with surprise and dismay, noting the US had, as recently as December 2017, “acknowledged the successful, dedicated and professional management of the Agency.” [8]UNRWA noted that rather than being “irredeemably flawed,” its schools, health clinics, and emergency assistance program “have a proven track record in creating one of the most successful human development processes and results in the Middle East.”

Rather, the “flaw” that drove the Trump administration to this decision resides in the actual recipients of UNRWA programs–Palestinian refugees—and, more specifically, who can be counted as a Palestinian refugee, and thus, who can be entitled to international aid and political recognition.

The State Department’s announcement to cease UNRWA aid focused its ire specifically on what it claimed to be the “endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries.” This contemptuous language about “an expanding community” of refugee beneficiaries reflects years of efforts by right-wing pro-Israel organizations such as the Middle East Forum to dissolve the Palestinian refugee category in order to remove the Palestinian refugee issue from political discussion. [9] In line with right-wing Israeli government positions, these organizations have sought to impose the unique requirement on UNRWA that refugee status should be denied to descendants of the displaced, resulting in several Congressional resolutions demanding the State Department limit its count of Palestinian refugees to only those who were displaced in 1948. Previous administrations have rejected this demand. The aim of narrowing the refugee category to the far smaller number of now elderly refugees is to make the refugee problem disappear as the nakba generation—those who were driven out of their homes in 1948–passes away.

In an American version of the common Israeli tactic of “shooting and crying,” immediately after decrying the fact that UNRWA provides services to later generations of refugees, the State Department announcement stated that “we are very mindful of and deeply concerned regarding the impact upon innocent Palestinians, especially school children.” Blame for this harmful impact is pinned on “the failure of UNRWA and key members of the regional and international donor community to reform and reset the UNRWA way of doing business.”

Congressional insistence that the State Department redefine a Palestine refugee, and ultimately dissolve the category altogether, and now State Department insistence that UNRWA do so, both fail to acknowledge that this decision is not in the hands of either the US government or UNRWA. Rather, UNRWA’s existence, its mandate, and its constituency are authorized—and are regularly re-authorized—by the UN General Assembly. And, unlike in the Security Council, the United States does not have veto power there.

Nevertheless, emboldened by the Trump administration moves, the outgoing mayor of Jerusalem has announced his intention to remove UNRWA from the city. Saying “the US decision has created a rare opportunity to replace UNRWA’s services with the services of the Jerusalem Municipality” he declared that “we are putting an end to the lie of the ‘Palestinian refugee problem’.” [10]

Refusing Palestinian Political Claims

The longstanding efforts by Israel and its backers, now joined by the Trump administration, to re-define and ultimately dissolve the category of Palestinian refugees correctly recognizes the political importance of the refugee category. And those who want to support both Palestinian refugee assistance and their demands should not shy away from recognizing its political importance either.

Responding to the real danger that humanitarian frameworks would come to replace political recognition and resolution, for decades Palestinian refugees have insisted on the ultimately political nature of their condition and the need for a political solution. They have done so in moments of great crisis, as when, in the near aftermath of the nakba, refugees repeatedly undertook rations strikes to protest both the quality of the food and the failure of political resolution. In one strike, in Ein el Hilwe camp in Lebanon, refugees carried signs that decried “the deplorable conditions in which they had been left and the fact that their problem had not been settled. They reaffirmed their determination to remain on strike until death or the settlement of their problem and their return to their homes.”

Refugees have not shied away from putting their political claims to UNRWA. On the occasion of a 1961 visit by UNRWA’s commissioner-general to Jordan, refugees highlighted two issues as the most urgent. The first was water: “This is a basic necessity. For the last few years we have been enduring much suffering for the lack of water at the camp, particularly in the summer…We therefore ask you to comply with this request of ours as soon as possible.” The second urgent request was “that you should inform the United Nations that we will never be able to forget our dear homeland, no matter how long we shall have to endure this miserable condition. We shall not accept any substitute for our homeland, nor relinquish it for any bribe.” Need and right, personal survival and national liberation, were identified here as equally vital demands. [11]

Palestinians have insisted that meeting their needs is both a political obligation of the international community and an acknowledgment of Palestinian national claims. As a humanitarian organization, with significant limits in mandate and in capacity, UNRWA has never been able to respond to these claims in a manner Palestinians find satisfactory. But the fact that Palestinians continue to press claims—and use humanitarian idioms, instruments, and institutions to do so—has long made UNRWA a target of attack by Palestinians’ enemies.

Thus, the Trump administration’s cessation of contributions to UNRWA is intended precisely to put the multiple aims of Palestinian refugee politics—which are undeniably in tension—into outright conflict. By fully embracing the Israeli position that financial assistance to Palestinian refugees is a political threat to be terminated, the administration’s attack on UNRWA is an attack on Palestinian political claims (most directly the refugees’ right of return enshrined in international law) and on the Palestinian capacity to engage in politics. If people’s children cannot attend school, if they cannot receive medical care, then perhaps they will give up on their political efforts to seek redress.

As politically resilient as Palestinians have been over their decades of displacement, this threat is not an idle one. Faced with numerous barriers to connection across the multiple places where Palestinian live, with communities in Gaza and Syria confronting acute crises, with other populations experiencing chronic deprivation, and in the absence of a political leadership up to the task of confronting these diverse and difficult conditions, Palestinian political community is arguably at one of its lowest points since 1948.

It is true that, as the State Department cessation announcement states, “Palestinians, wherever they live, deserve better than an endlessly crisis-driven service provision model. They deserve to be able to plan for the future.” The Trump Administration and the Israeli government, however, envision planning as acquiescence, and seek to dictate what that future will be.

The reinstatement of UNRWA funding is a matter of vital importance—not only as a humanitarian gesture, or for reasons of regional stability, as the Democratic congressional letter puts it—but as a rejection of this refusal of Palestinian politics—their political claims and the capacity to advocate for themselves. One can be cognizant of the negative effects of humanitarian aid on Palestinian lives, as well as of the criticism refugees have directed at UNRWA, and also reject the Administration’s attack on Palestinians through its targeting of UNRWA. Palestinians have been able to hold multiple positions and pursue multiple aims, at the same time, and so should those who support them.

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Notes

[1] State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert, “On U.S Assistance to UNRWA,” US State Department Press Statement, August 31, 2018.

[2] People displaced in 1967 [nazihin], and their descendants, receive some assistance from UNRWA, but the Agency’s refugee category is limited to people, and their descendants, displaced in 1948 [laji’in].

[3] UNRWA, “Ministerial Meeting on UNRWA Raises Remarkable US $122 Million,” September 28, 2018.

[4] Congress of the United States, “Letter to State Department,” September 28, 2018.

[5] “DealBook Briefing: Trump Rails Against Globalism,” The New York Times, September 26, 2018.

[6] Recently enacted legislation which makes recipients of US-aid vulnerable to suit in US courts could make it impossible for the Palestinian Authority to continue to accept these funds.

[7] International Federation of Red Cross Societies archive, file A-0410-1. “Visit to the South Lebanon Camps.”

[8] Sami Mshasha, “Urgent UNRWA Statement,” UNRWA, September 1, 2018.

[9] The Washington Project, Middle East Forum, 2017.

[10] Al Jazeera News Agencies, “Jerusalem to remove UNRWA to ‘end lie of Palestine refugees’,” Al Jazeera, October 4, 2018.

[11] Ilana Feldman, Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018).

Nothing illustrates the cynical and deceitful nature of Western “journalism” better than the recent, apparent US-Saudi fallout in the wake of the alleged death of Washington Post Saudi correspondent, Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi allegedly disappeared and has been reported killed at the hands of Saudi consulate staff in Istanbul, Turkey. Of course, the US, UK, EU, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are among the most dubious actors in modern geopolitics. Ascertaining the truth regarding the events surrounding Khashoggi may ultimately turn out to be an insurmountable task.

But the various narratives and reactions of Western political and media circles still provides us insight into the true character of Western international relations including extreme hypocrisy regarding human rights, the use and abuse of Western media platforms to selectively cover events around the globe to favor Western interests, and the ultimate fate that awaits other US “allies.”

The New York Times Suddenly Notices “Overlooked” Yemen War

The New York Times in a series of social media posts and articles seems to suddenly notice the long list of atrocities Saudi Arabia is responsible for – including the ongoing war in Yemen. In a social media post published on Twitter, the New York Times would claim:

The Khashoggi crisis has called attention to a largely overlooked Saudi-led war in Yemen. On a rare trip to the front line, New York Times journalists found Yemenis fighting and dying in a war that has gone nowhere.

Of course, it is impossible that a newspaper as large, as prominent, as well-known and well-funded as the New York Times simply “overlooked” the “Saudi-led war in Yemen.”

It was the systematic and concerted cover up by the Western media regarding the war – which began in 2015 – that provided Saudi Arabia the impunity with which it executed the war.

It is only political motivations in Washington now, that require newspapers like the New York Times to suddenly “notice” the war – but only partially. The New York Times would publish a recent article titled, “This is the front line of Saudi Arabia’s invisible war,” claiming:

The Saudi-led war in Yemen has ground on for more than three years, killing thousands of civilians and creating what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. But it took the crisis over the apparent murder of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate two weeks ago for the world to take notice.

Saudi Arabia’s brash young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, under scrutiny over the Khashoggi case, now faces a fresh reckoning for his ruthless prosecution of the war in Yemen — yet another foreign policy debacle for Saudi Arabia, and a catastrophe for the Arab world’s poorest country.

Nowhere in the New York Times’ piece is a single, even oblique mention made of the US role in the war. However – in fact – the war is being fought with US-made warplanes, refueled by US Air Force-crewed aerial refueling aircraft, dropping US-built ordnance on targets selected by US intelligence agencies, with the help of US special forces on the ground directly assisting Saudi forces.

Worst of all, it was the New York Times itself that admitted to all of these facts. In its May 2018 article titled, “Army Special Forces Secretly Help Saudis Combat Threat From Yemen Rebels,” the New York Times would admit:

For years, the American military has sought to distance itself from a brutal civil war in Yemen, where Saudi-led forces are battling rebels who pose no direct threat to the United States. 

But late last year, a team of about a dozen Green Berets arrived on Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen, in a continuing escalation of America’s secret wars.

The article would also admit:

Details of the Green Beret operation, which has not been previously disclosed, were provided to The New York Times by United States officials and European diplomats.

They appear to contradict Pentagon statements that American military assistance to the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen is limited to aircraft refueling, logistics and general intelligence sharing. 

And indeed, the war in Yemen is not a “Saudi-led war,” it is in fact just one of America’s many “secret wars.”  It is secret specifically because of the complicity of newspapers like the New York Times, only now cynically and dishonestly reporting on the Yemen war as part of a concerted campaign aimed at decoupling US culpability and leaving it entirely with Riyadh.

For years before the Khashoggi incident, the New York Times and others were more than content with burying and spinning news about Yemen, or not covering it at all.

US Media Pretends to Only Now Notice Saudi Atrocities, Omits US Role Underwriting Them

The Western media demonstrates its absolute contempt for the intelligence of its collective audience. Their sudden concern and feigned outrage aimed at Saudi Arabia tenuously papers over decades of Saudi atrocities both inside Saudi Arabia itself, and across the world through its key role in state sponsored terrorism.

A remarkable admission was made in the pages of the Washington Post in a March 2018 article titled, “Saudi prince denies Kushner is ‘in his pocket’.”

The article would quote Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, stating (emphasis added):

Asked about the Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism, the austere faith that is dominant in the kingdom and that some have accused of being a source of global terrorism, Mohammed said that investments in mosques and madrassas overseas were rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union.

While the article claims “successive Saudi governments lost track of the effort” and that funding is now provided by “Saudi-based “foundations,”” this is not true.

There are no “successive governments” in Saudi Arabia. The nation since its founding has been run by a single family – the House of Saud.

And while Saudi-based foundations may be the conduit through which Wahhabism is organized, funded, and directed, it most certainly is done at the behest of Riyadh in a process fully underwritten by Washington.

Among Washington’s other “secret wars” are Libya and Syria where terrorists recruited, radicalized, trained, funded, and armed through US-Saudi funded Wahhabism were unleashed on the battlefield.

Amid these two conflicts, newspapers like the New York Times worked overtime providing them with public exposure – seeking to sell to the public greater and more direct Western military intervention. In Libya, these efforts resulted in a NATO-led air campaign that eventually toppled the Libyan government and plunged the nation into years of infighting, terrorism, slavery, and enduring dysfunction that persists today.

In Syria, the gambit fell short when Russia intervened at the request of Damascus, effectively blocking a similar NATO-led Libya-style air campaign. Russian warplanes targeted NATO supply routes out of Turkey feeding terrorist organizations operating inside Syrian territory, and ultimately turned the tide of the war.

And just as the US and Saudi Arabia used terrorist organizations in Libya and Syria to fight their proxy wars, an AP investigation revealed they were doing likewise in Yemen.

The AP article titled, “AP Investigation: US allies, al-Qaida battle rebels in Yemen,” would report (emphasis added):

Again and again over the past two years, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States has claimed it won decisive victories that drove al-Qaida militants from their strongholds across Yemen and shattered their ability to attack the West. 

Here’s what the victors did not disclose: many of their conquests came without firing a shot.

That’s because the coalition cut secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself.

Thus, the Western media has always been and is still fully aware of the true nature of Saudi Arabia’s decades-long geopolitical trajectory – as it was the West and more specifically the US and UK who helped launch it in the first place. And it was the Western media who all along helped spin it on its way.

Western Media’s Deceit on full Display 

The deceitful and intelligence-insulting narratives now being peddled by papers like the New York Times and others are unacceptable. If Riyadh falls, so too must those in Washington and London who built Riyadh up and walked with it – bloody hand-in-bloody hand – every step of the way.

Attempts to decouple Western culpability from Saudi atrocities is an illustration of the immense duplicity and impropriety of Western political and media circles. But it is also a warning to the rest of Washington and London’s “allies”- like the current regime in Ukraine – who believe their relationship and complicity with, as well as their obedience to the West affords them inexhaustible impunity.

It does not.

The West picks weak, dependent, and dysfunctional political, military, and economic partners specifically because their very nature serves as the perfect check to keep them under control and if need be, to dispose of expediently.

What’s Really Behind the Khashoggi Fallout? 

For now, it is unclear whether the fallout between the US and Saudi Arabia is real or imagined. The US and Turkey may be using Saudi Arabia to expunge their responsibility for their joint support of global terrorism alongside Riyadh, or perhaps to preemptively decouple from Riyadh ahead of a planned “Saudi” provocation against Iran.

Or Riyadh may have refused requests made by Washington and is now being pressured to reverse its decision.

So far, absent are the sort of aggressive steps taken when Washington faces a real enemy it seeks to inflict damage upon. Unlike with Russia when baseless accusations were made regarding election interference, the downing of MH-17, or the entire Skripal affair – there are no sanctions being discussed regarding Riydah. Weapons and US military support still flow to Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen continues unabated, all while the US military continues providing Riyadh with defacto protection with its forces scattered across the Middle East.

Until these facts on the ground change, we may simply be witnessing geopolitical theater where Saudi Arabia is elected to play the “villain” and absorbs responsibility for years, if not decades of atrocities jointly committed with its Anglo-American sponsors. By doing so, the US can save face and leave Riyadh with the broken pieces of their collective and ill-conceived regional and global policies. Only time will tell.

One fact we can be certain of is that neither the US nor Saudi Arabia can be relied on for the truth. If the truth surrounding Khashoggi’s fate ever does emerge, it will not be from the Western or Saudi media nor from representatives of their respective capitals.

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

Featured image is from NEO.

Back in 1972, near the end of the Vietnam War, I was living in San Francisco, and my friend ex-Sgt. Van Dale Todd, a combat veteran of the 101st Airborne, lived next door in the same building, an old Victorian house out on 29th Street. Sometimes Van would take a notion to hit the wall which separated our apartments with his fist and shout, “Who the fuck would join the Marine Corps?”

I’d yell back, “Airborne sucks!”

“The Marine Corps sucks!” Van’d shout.

“Only two things come out of the sky,” I’d yell back again. “Bird shit and fools!”

That was how we said good morning to each other. It was our ritualized greeting.

We didn’t set out to live next door to each other; it just happened. One day I discovered that someone had moved into the adjacent apartment and had pasted a peace sign on his door. A day or two later I encountered him on the landing. He was a tall, powerful-looking guy, about 22 years old, with shoulder-length hair and wearing a combat fatigue jacket, similar to mine. He introduced himself as “Van.” In the course of the conversation we found that we were both ex-GIs and also, coincidentally, members of the same veterans’ anti-war organization.

Van glanced at my door. “You need a peace sign there,” he observed. He produced one from his pack and pasted it up. “There,” he said, nodding with the satisfaction of seeing a job properly done, “We’re going to be a peace family here in this building.”

During the weeks that followed, we saw each other almost every day. We attended antiwar rallies together and once even got arrested together. Van told me about his experiences in “Nam,” the killing he’d seen and participated in, the stress and the widespread drug use among GIs. “I got this medal for killing two people,” he told me, showing me his bronze star, “and when I did it I was high on opium.”

Although I’d spent four years in the USMC, I was never in Vietnam. I was both fascinated and also slightly horrified at Van’s stories. That was before I ever heard the term “post-traumatic stress disorder,” but it was clear that Van had brought some of that violence back with him.

One day he got in a fight with his cat. I heard a terrible racket in Van’s apartment and, on going over to see what it was all about, I found that Van was about to whip the kitty with his belt. “The cat’s shit was weak!” he told me angrily, meaning that the poor animal had done something to displease him.

I intervened, telling him that if he wasn’t going to be kind to his pet, I’d take the animal away from him. It was a plea rather than a threat. Van was a big man who could easily have broken me in half had he wished to, but he relented, took the animal gently in his arms and said, “I love my cat.”

Van did love his cat. One side of him was kind, gentle, loving and caring. But there was also that violent part, seething just below the surface.

On the corner was a small grocery run by a guy who seemed to go out of his way to be rude to his customers. One day I was in there to get a newspaper, and the owner gave me a bad time, so after that I avoided the shop. But Van sometimes went in there, apparently just to hassle with the guy. On one occasion that I heard of later, the shopkeeper threatened Van with a baseball bat. But Van didn’t back off. Instead, he told the guy, “You put that thing away or I’ll wrap it around your neck!” The guy put the bat away.

One day, while waiting for the J-Church streetcar, I happened to notice that a sheet of plywood had been placed over one of the store windows. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but a couple years latter a mutual friend told me that he and Van had been walking past the store late one night when Van found a brick laying on the sidewalk. So he picked it up and put it through the window of the nasty shop owner.

That was Van. There was a capricious side to him, sometimes innocently playful, sometimes dangerously violent. Nevertheless, he hated violence, having experienced so much of it in Vietnam. “I killed seven people in Vietnam,” he told me. “I killed a mother who was crying because her children were all dead.”

He told me these stories remorsefully, blaming himself for having enjoyed warfare. “I loved combat,” he told me many times, shaking his head. “I was so sick I loved to kill.”

Van had once believed in the Vietnam War, and he was a guy who’d fight for what he believed in. He’d enlisted in the Army, volunteered for the paratroopers, and asked to be assigned to Vietnam. He spent seventeen months in combat with the 101st Airborne in 1969 and 1970. After returning from Vietnam, however, he had a complete change of heart, and joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and took part in peace marches.

Van didn’t want another GI sent to Nam because he knew that would be one more person coming back traumatized. “I don’t want my little brother Sam, or anybody’s little brother, to go and see what I saw or do what I did.” Perhaps the thing that horrified Van most was to discover that violence and killing could be enjoyable.

Nevertheless, Van was not really political, or maybe I should say he wasn’t much given to theories or analysis. When I tried to explain to him what U.S. corporations were doing around the world, and how the military was used to defend them, he would say, “What you have is an intellectual, philosophical view.”

“How can you say that?” I objected.

“You weren’t in Nam,” he would say, as he had said time and again. “You don’t know what it’s like to see your buddies die in front of you.”

It was clear that Van had experienced things that were truly, truly horrifying, and that’s the way it was. What could I say? My experiences had been quite different from Van’s. I’d spent four years in the peacetime USMC, and after that had traveled and lived in many countries of Europe and Asia, talking with people from those different places. One person who’d made a major impression on me was a Frenchman who’d fought in Algeria. Others were Japanese activists who opposed their country’s military alliance with the US. I’d talked with Israeli kibbutzniks as well as with Palestinians living in the West Bank. I’d listened to them and considered their viewpoints, just as I was now listening to Van, and from all that, I’d drawn my conclusions. Nevertheless, both of us, Van and I, each in his own way, had come to oppose the war in Vietnam, and were in the same antiwar veterans group.

Our Bay Area chapter had done several actions, and at this time we were planning another. On April 17, 1972, Van and I were part of a group of sixteen ex-GIs who occupied an Air Force recruiting office to protest the war. After three hours’ occupation, Federal Marshals broke the door down and arrested us. We spent the night in jail and were bailed out the next day.

On April 21, we went back to court for a preliminary appearance and got our first look at Judge Lloyd Burke. Judge Burke sat there, just leaning on his elbow and looking bored, like an old railroad engineer gazing at the scenery along the spur he’s been chugging up and down for the last twenty years. The charge was “disorderly conduct,” and, using the pretext that it was a “minor offense,” the judge refused us a trial by jury. When our attorney pointed out that trial by jury was a constitutional right, stated in the Sixth, Seventh and Fourteenth Amendments, Judge Burke just said, “Overruled,” without even lifting his chin off his elbow, and then he set our trial dates.

To Van, it was a heavy shock. About all he could say when we got home was, “The Man just doesn’t give a shit about us!” He was referring to Judge Burke.

“Did you expect him to?” I said, a bit surprised at Van’s remark.

At first he didn’t respond. “No, I guess not,” he said at last.

I was also disappointed, but, having fewer illusions about the nature of the system, I was less surprised. “Judge Burke’s a cog of the war machine,” I said. “He was obviously assigned to our case for the purpose of putting some quasi-legal façade on a very dubious process. The reason for denying us a jury trial is that he doesn’t want to take any chances on our getting acquitted.”

Our veterans group had done a similar action some four months earlier. On that occasion we’d occupied the offices of the South Vietnamese Consulate. That had resulted in a month-long jury trial which had ended in a verdict of ‘not guilty.’ So this time the powers that be apparently decided to sidestep the jury process. Perhaps Van understood my explanation, but he seemed unable to accept it. He sat there for a long time with a vacant look in his eyes.

Van probably did expect the judge to care about us. Van still believed very deeply in something he called “America.” In Van’s “America,” there was still something left of that romantic, mythical age when you could just walk into the White House and talk with the President and tell him the problem. Van saw public officials as people who listen — which sometimes they do on rare occasions, but not quite as often as Van seemed to think.

Five of our group, including Van and myself, went on trial a week later in the courtroom of a different judge, Judge Robert Schnacke. This judge didn’t lean on his elbow, but he did reaffirm the decision to deny us our constitutional right to trial by jury, then, at the end of a two-hour session, found us all guilty.

The irony was that trial by jury is one of the most fundamental American rights which Van had supposedly fought to defend. Although it has often been wrongfully denied, as it was in our case, the right to trial by jury is an ancient principle of English and American law which existed before the U.S. Constitution was written, and even before the Thirteen Colonies were founded. It goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215 A.D., and even before.

Before sentencing we were each allowed to say a few words. Van, wearing all his medals on his fatigue jacket, stood up and began: “I was a machine gunner . . .” He told of the horrors he’d seen and even committed himself, and of his buddies he’d seen die. He told the judge that the government just had to stop sending American GIs to Vietnam. Judge Schnacke nodded as though listening. But he sentenced each of us to 30 days and fined us each $50. (We eventually paid the $50 but didn’t go to jail.)

Judges Burke and Schnacke were both former prosecutors. As judges they did their job as functionaries of the same system that sends American GIs abroad to kill or be killed in defense of U.S. corporate strategy. But to Van there was no such thing as a “system” — just America. These judges represented the America he believed in, and the experience of being denied his rights devastated him. From then on, he acted like a person utterly lost. He became so lonely that he dropped by my apartment five or ten times a day, sometimes even at one or two in the morning.

Van was something of a “doper,” and occasionally I’d seen him stoned. But after appearing before those judges, he was getting stoned much of the time, as well as drunk. I’d never seen him inebriated before that. Two small glasses of wine had been his limit. But after the trial, he’d often put away half a gallon in a day. The overnight change in him was phenomenal. His war memories bothered him more and more, and he’d talk about people he’d seen killed. “Do you know what it’s like to see your buddies die?” he’d keep saying, “Do you know what it’s like to kill a mother who’s crying because her children are all dead?”

A couple of weeks passed like this. Then, on May 18th, on his 23rd birthday, around midnight, he pounded on my door, shouting “I want to show you something!” When I opened the door I could see he was terribly upset, really angry, apparently in a violent mood. He demanded that I go with him to his place and see whatever it was that he wanted to show me. Van was not a person I cared to argue with when he was that angry; I was frightened and obediently accompanied him.

“I killed seven people in Nam,” Van was saying as we entered his apartment. “I can’t live with it any more!” He went to a drawer, took out a bottle of bright red pills and swallowed all of them in front of me.

Although I’d once rescued his cat from his anger, that evening I was afraid to grab the pills or do anything to stop him. Not knowing what else to do or say, I told him to sit down and take it easy. He did, and within minutes, passed out, still talking about his Vietnam memories. “I killed a woman who was crying because her children were all dead. … You don’t know what it’s like to see your buddies die.”

I went for help and got him to a hospital where he died a week later without ever regaining consciousness. I later learned that the red pills he’d overdosed on were Seconal, a type of sleeping pill. People also told me, “When somebody O.D.s on downers, you never want to let them sit down. You gotta keep them walking.”

In a diary we found after his death, he’d written: “Vietnam left me so alone. Why or how could I take the life of a human? Why was killing humans fun? Can God forgive me?”

We gave him a veteran’s antiwar funeral, with maybe thirty veterans from around the Bay Area, wearing military fatigue jackets. We buried him in his combat uniform with his service medals and his VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) button. While five veterans and the wife of a veteran carried out the coffin, everybody lined up in two rows and gave Van a clenched-fist salute.

On returning home that afternoon, I went into the vacant apartment where Van had lived until so recently. “Airborne sucks!” I called out. Van’s things were gone; the place was empty now. It was an emptiness that left room for my voice to echo back and forth between the walls. I tried again, louder than before, “Only two things come out of the sky!” Again, there was an echo, a louder echo, but still only of my own voice. There was only the echo and the creaking of wooden floorboards under my feet in that old Victorian house.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Daniel’s Free Speech Zone.

Daniel Borgström spent four years in the Marine Corps (1959-1963); later he took part in the antiwar movement of the Vietnam Era, and today is a member of Veterans for Peace.

His website & email are http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/ and [email protected]

All images in this article are from the author.

French President Emmanuel Macron invited Donald Trump and 60 heads of State to attend a “Peace Forum” in Paris on November 11-13. It was  preceded one day earlier by a ceremony at the Place des Invalides to pay tribute to the millions of people who died in the First World War or, stated more accurately, the first great inter-imperialist bloodbath.

Special tribute was paid to the generals who led their soldiers to slaughter from 1914 to 1918, including Maréchal Philippe Pétain, who Macron described as a “great soldier” despite his subsequent “fateful choices” — a reference to Pétain’s close collaboration with Hitler and the Nazis during World War II.

“Who are they kidding?” read a statement by Jeunesse Révolution (Revolution Youth). It continued:

“Trump is the man who ordered all NATO member countries to increase the war budgets to 2% of GDP, or about 40 billion euros for France. Of course, Emmanuel Macron, our king without a crown, did not object. 

“And yet … With 40 billion euros, governments could have built hospitals, schools, and childcare centers, and created living-wage jobs for young people. But no, no, no. Workers are being asked to tighten their belts more and more for wars that are not their wars; they are the capitalists’ wars. Hence the attacks throughout France on retirement pensions, the dismantling of the national Single-Payer healthcare system, and the destruction of public education, while the capitalist class continues to reap more and more profits.”

Jeunesse Révolution issued a united-front “Call to Demonstrate on November 11 Against Trump’s Presence in Paris.” Hundreds and hundreds of working class youth endorsed this call and are building this demonstration. But none of the main organizations to which the call was addressed [see initial call below] responded to the call to mobilize in the broadest unity against the warmakers.

Toward the end of October, the Democratic Independent Workers Party of France (POID) and Jeunesse Révolution learned that a number of “collectives” had issued a call to rally on November 11 at the Place de la République. Their call was not endorsable, but the POID and Jeunesse Révolution were considering participating in that gathering separately under their own banners and with their own demands. 

That thinking changed, however, on November 6, when the POID and Jeunesse Révolution learned that a so-called “Coordinating Committee of the Syrian Revolution in Paris” had been invited to join the rally on November 11 at the Place de la République.

The “Coordinating Committee of the Syrian Revolution in Paris” had stated that they would be joining the rally to call upon “Member States of the United Nations Security Council to assume their responsibility for the implementation of the Security Council’s resolutions on Syria, starting with the establishment of a Transitional Governing Body.”

The POID and Jeunesse Révolution explained that they could not demonstrate against the war policies of Trump and Macron’s … alongside supporters of Trump’s and Macron’s war and intervention in Syria. The call for a “Transitional Governing Body” is exactly what Trump and Macron are calling for; it is what they are seeking to impose on Syria through their military intervention — an intervention that since 2011 has driven 12 million Syrians from their homes and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

 Under these conditions, the POID and Jeunesse Révolution explained that they had no choice but to call their own separate demonstration at Place Gambetta at 2:30 pm on Sunday, November 11 with the following slogans:

• Solidarity with workers and youth in the United States!
• Immediate withdrawal of all French and U.S. troops from the countries where they are stationed!
• Immediate halt to all threats of military intervention!
• Solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to a nation!
• Welcome all refugees fleeing war and misery!
• Down with war! Down with exploitation!

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Note

[1] Trump traveled to France for the 100th anniversary celebrations, but he notified Macron only two days earlier that he would not join Macron, Merkel (Germany), Guterrez (Portugal) , Erdogan (Turkey), Putin (Russia) and all the other so-called “voices for peace” at the November 11-13 Paris Peace Forum.

On November 5 yet another US soldier was killed by a member of Afghanistan’s military forces, as the country continues to be wracked by violence in its seventeenth year of war.

Donald Rumsfeld was US Secretary for Defence from 2001 to 2006 under President George W Bush. They, along with other psychotic figures such as Vice-President Dick Cheney, were responsible for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and their legacy is apparent in many spheres, one of which is the drug production bonanza in Afghanistan.

In August 2004 NBC News reported Secretary Rumsfeld as declaring

“The danger a large drug trade poses in Afghanistan is too serious to ignore. The inevitable result is to corrupt the government and way of life, and that would be most unfortunate.” He issued the warning that “It is increasingly clear to the international community that to address the drug problem here is important for the people of Afghanistan.”

Rumsfeld, for once during his catastrophic years as chief war-maker, was absolutely right, and his pronouncement about likely danger and impending corruption was spot on. The US invasion and subsequent operations led to Afghanistan becoming the fourth most dangerous and fourth most corrupt country in the world.

The “drug problem” to which he referred has expanded rapidly over the years. It is destroying Afghanistan. It is a main reason for the place being ungovernable.

opium 2016

It’s all very well to blame Afghans for growing poppies and producing opium and heroin, but what they are doing is meeting international demand.

After all, there would be no drug industry in Afghanistan if there wasn’t a welcoming market in the drug-loving prosperous West — although it has to be noted that only about four per cent of its massive narcotics production ends up in the US, which gets most of its heroin from South America.

Mr John Sopko, the US Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), has just produced his latest quarterly report for the US Congress in which he observes that

“From 2002 through September 2018, the United States has committed an average of more than $1.5 million a day to help the Afghan government combat narcotics. Despite this, 2017 poppy cultivation is more than four times that reported by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime for 2002, the first full year of US intervention in Afghanistan,” so there is small wonder that the country is “the largest source of street heroin in Europe and Canada.”

Mr Sopko observed that efforts to combat drugs “have cost US taxpayers more than $8 billion since 2002, yet Afghanistan’s opium crisis is worse than ever,” and the increase in the area and quantity of poppy cultivation has been impressive and depressing.

Washington is well aware of the shattering effects of Afghan drug production, but the SIGAR writes that

“counternarcotics seems to have fallen completely off the US agenda. The State Department’s new ‘Integrated Country Strategy’ for Afghanistan no longer includes counternarcotics as a priority, but instead subsumes the issue into general operations. Meanwhile, the US military says it has no counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan, and USAID says it will not plan, design, or implement new programs to address opium-poppy cultivation.”

It is amazing that “The US military says it has no counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan.”

What happened to the campaign against drug processing that began in November 2017 when “US and Afghan forces launched a series of attacks on narcotics laboratories in southern Afghanistan”?

The massive aerial bombardment of ten drug-processing laboratories included strikes by some Afghan air force Tucano aircraft, but the main assault was by the US Air Force which for the first time in Afghanistan used its F-22 Raptor aircraft, flown from the United Arab Emirates. B-52 strategic nuclear bombers based in Qatar attacked targets, and F-16s joined in from the Bagram base near Kabul. The operation also involved KC-10 and KC-135 refuellers, every surveillance means that could be deployed, and command and control aircraft. This was a major — and very expensive — operation.

The commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, US General John Nicholson, told a news conference

“We hit the labs where they turned poppy into heroin. We hit their storage facilities where they kept their final products, where they stockpiled their money and their command and control.”

Not only that, but

“The strikes that were prosecuted last night will continue… This is going to be steady pressure that’s going to stay up and we are not going to let up.”

He said “the Drug Enforcement Administration estimates there are 400 to 500 opium laboratories across Afghanistan”. So after that first attack in November 2017 there were ten down and about 400 to go.

But SIGAR tells us in October 2018 that “the US military says it has no counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan.” Why?

There is nobody better placed to explain this than Mr Sopko, who had already observed that the Pentagon’s airstrike campaign against drug laboratories might not have the intended effect, as its “longer-term impact on narcotics remains uncertain.” Not only this, but “there is also the risk that air strikes could result in civilian deaths, alienate rural populations, and strengthen the insurgency.”

He was right on the button, because, as reported by The Washington Post, in January to June 2018 the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan “documented 353 civilian casualties, including 149 deaths, from airstrikes, a 52 percent increase from the same period in 2017.”

There is no doubt that these casualties alienate the rural population, given the example of one strike in July 2018 when the New York Times wrote that

“Fourteen members of a family, including three small children, were killed when an American airstrike destroyed their home, several Afghan officials confirmed on [July 20]. In what has become a familiar litany, particularly in Taliban-dominated Kunduz Province, Afghan and American officials had initially denied that any civilians had been killed in the strike . . . claiming the victims were Taliban fighters. Then 11 bodies belonging to women and children appeared at the hospital in Kunduz City, about four miles from the site of the attack in Chardara District. The Taliban do not have women fighters and the children were very young.”

Time after time the US-NATO and Afghan authorities “initially deny” that there have been civilian deaths or casualties caused by airstrikes and are then found to be disguising the truth because there can be no denial of facts when shrapnel-ridden bodies of little children are laid out on the ground. Such absurd statements play right into the hands of the militants and, in the predictive words of the SIGAR, “strengthen the insurgency.”

This might explain why the massive and much-publicised air campaign against opium-processing facilities has been abandoned. But what happens now?

The US State Department and the Pentagon were told by experts that the narcotics problem was immense. For example, in a speech at Georgetown University in 2014 the SIGAR said: “By every conceivable metric, we’ve failed. Production and cultivation are up, interdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is up, and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan.”

Nothing has changed since then. The 2017 aerial blitz failed utterly, as have so many plans and operations to attempt to reduce narcotics production, and the US-NATO military alliance in Afghanistan continues to flounder in a quagmire of insurgency. The drug catastrophe is plain for all to see, and after seventeen years of war and expenditure of eight billion dollars the illegal narcotics industry is thriving.

Can this be indicative of the general level of competence of the US Department of State and the Pentagon? Can they get anything right?

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Quote from Mohamed Abdi, NRC’s country director in Yemen:

“Hodeidah is at risk of being obliterated. We warned the international community that an offensive on the city was coming, and it has. We warned that the violence would see another half a million people flee their homes, and it did.

“We are now warning that by allowing this to go on, parties to the conflict and their international backers will be responsible for the death, injury and suffering of millions of people.

“The humanitarian cost of this war is almost $3 billion this year alone but the cost to humanity completely inestimable. Senseless attacks on civilians, evidence of a starving population and desperate pleas from humanitarian witnesses have done little more than elicit condolences from an international community that could have stepped on the brakes long ago. The lack of action from the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular, is utterly unconscionable.”

Latest updates:

• Eight days into a renewed offensive on Hodeidah city, civilians are reporting relentless airstrikes, low-flying jets and Apache helicopters, mortars and missiles on the outskirts of the town and within 5km of the nation’s main port.
• At least 18 civilians were killed and another 17 injured by airstrikes, artillery shelling and landmines in Hodeidah and Hajjah governorates on Wednesday this week alone, following several days of massive strikes and shelling on farms, factories, trucks, houses and markets across the governorates.
• Reports from earlier in the week that Ansarallah fighters have taken up position on the rooftop of a hospital on Hodeidah city’s outskirts were followed today by reports of three airstrikes on the facility, damaging hospital buildings and prompting its evacuation, placing patients at critical risk.
• As of the last week of October, the International Organisation for Migration had recorded more than 545,000 people have fled their homes since 1 June this year, equating to almost 3,700 each day. Of this population, 83% come from Hodeidah governorate and a further 14% from Hajjah to the north of Hodeidah.
• There is now only one viable overland route from Hodeidah city to Sana’a, and a very high risk that further aerial or land attacks on roads or bridges could sever access roads between the cities entirely, cutting the last remaining supply route for food, fuel and medicine to many of the estimated 20 million Yemenis who depend on imports through Hodeidah to meet their basic needs.
• Five main roads in Hodeidah governorate have now been closed or cut off by fighting, and a further two highly restricted.
• Humanitarian organisations continue to experience obstructions to the delivery of critical aid to people in dire need across Hodeidah, Hajjah and other severely-affected governorates, including cholera-prevention activities.
• Humanitarian agencies continue to be denied visas for international staff and experience innumerable obstacles obtaining approval from authorities to travel and deliver aid within Yemen, even when providing lifesaving services, limiting our ability to reach people in desperate need.
• The Survival Minimum Expenditure Basket (SMEB), accounting for food, water, hygiene and cooking fuel needs was revised to YER 73,000 (USD 104) per month last week, reflecting increased costs of more than 40% since July this year.
  Inflation on the price of essential items, combined with the rapid depreciation of the Yemeni riyal and lack of access to income are among the key factors driving Yemen’s worsening hunger crisis.
• The International Bank of Yemen recorded an exchange rate of 680 yesterday, an appreciation of 8% since the end of October, but still a dramatic devaluation from the rate of 215 at which the riyal traded before the crisis.

Facts:

• An estimated 3.3 million people lived in Hodeidah governorate before June 2018, 600,000 in Hodeidah city. Some 29.3 million people live in Yemen.
• Yemen depends on imports for around 90 per cent of its food needs. Of this, between 70 and 80 per cent of all imports have historically come through Hodeidah Port. Further disruption to imports or overland supply routes risks severing the lifeline for up to 22 million Yemenis.
• 12 million Yemenis are now at imminent risk of famine and more than 16 million without access to safe water, exposing them to increased risk of infectious diseases, such as cholera.
• NRC continues to operate across nine governorates in Yemen, delivering assistance with food, safe water, shelter, education and legal aid to people displaced by violence.

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Featured image: Hassan (5) holding his younger sister Ratif (3 months). (Source: SmugMug)

Washington has interests, not allies. China and Russia are rivals, not partners.

After Beijing cancelled last month’s high-level security talks with Trump regime officials, Pompeo and Mattis met with China’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office director Yang Jiechi and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe in Washington.

Despite both countries putting a brave face on the meeting, no breakthroughs were achieved on major issues.

Pompeo lied saying the US  “seeks a constructive, results-oriented relationship with China grounded in fairness, reciprocity, and respect” – code language for demanding Beijing observe US rules, abandoning its sovereign rights when they conflict with Washington’s.

Pompeo was less than candid claiming talks were “incredibly productive,” adding the US “is not pursuing a Cold War or containment policy with China.”

“Rather, we want to ensure that China acts responsibly and fairly in support of security and prosperity of each of our two countries.”

Director Yang made similar remarks, calling Friday’s dialogue “candid, constructive, and productive” – despite major unresolved political, economic and military differences between both countries.

Reflecting Beijing’s views, China’s Global Times called Friday discussions “frank, constructive and result-oriented,” adding:

“Although China and the US lack mutual trust, they were able to speak frankly… Rarely under the current circumstances have both sides expressed such constructive attitudes.”

Trump and China’s Xi Jinping will meet on the sidelines of the November 30/December 1 Buenos Aires, Argentina G20 summit. US escalated tensions won’t be easily eased, despite positive diplomatic language on Friday.

Trump regime-initiated trade war shows no signs of abating. Ten percent tariffs on around $200 billion worth of Chinese products will be increased to 25% on January 1 as things now stand – Beijing certain to retaliate strongly.

Trump unacceptably accused China of meddling in America’s midterm elections, no evidence cited because none exists.

In response to Beijing’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems and Su-35 combat aircraft, the Trump regime unilaterally imposed illegal sanctions on the country.

Along with surrounding China with US military bases, Pentagon warships provocatively sail near its sovereign territory, including through the Taiwan Straits – on the phony pretext of freedom of navigation rights, risking naval confrontation between both countries.

Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province, eventually to be reunited with the mainland. China’s leadership considers US arms sales to Taiwan’s military a hostile act.

Months earlier, China’s Defense Minister Wei told Mattis the People’s Liberation Army will “firmly defend national sovereignty, security and developmental interest.”

Washington under Republicans an undemocratic Dems is hostile to Beijing’s growing influence and economic development – notably its “Made in China 2025” strategy,  seeking to advance key sectors of its economy to world-class status.

It conflicts with Trump’s “America first” agenda, along with the longstanding US aim to dominate all other countries politically, economically and militarily.

Russia already surpassed America as the world’s dominant military power, its super-weapons more advanced than Pentagon ones.

China is heading toward becoming the world’s leading economy in the years ahead. Reality doesn’t go down well in Washington, slipping as other nations advance – notably China and Russia, the world’s leading sovereign independent nations.

Beijing rejects US demands to demilitarize artificial islands it built in the South China Sea – done for defense, not offense, the way Washington operates.

Regular dialogue is the only thing positive about Friday’s bilateral meeting and earlier ones – so far preventing military confrontation. For how long remains unknown.

The agendas of both countries are world’s apart. Mutual trust is absent for good reason. Washington repeatedly says one thing and does another, why it can never be trusted.

Pompeo and Mattis rejected China’s warning to stop provocative US naval warship incursions close to its territory, a major dispute between both countries.

In late October, Xi Jinping ordered Chinese military commanders involved in monitoring Taiwan and the South China Sea to “prepare for war” – fearing possible US aggression.

At the same time, Defense Minister Wei vowed that Beijing won’t cede “a single inch” of its sovereign territory.

US hostility toward China and Russia risks possible military confrontation with one or both countries by accident of design.

Their powerful thermonuclear arsenals and long-range delivery systems could end life on earth if used in combat – the risk humanity faces because of Washington’s belligerent agenda.

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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.

Washington’s behavior following Trump’s signing of the Singapore Summit Agreement with Kim Jong-un must be described as schizophrenic.  The Singapore Summit agreement states:

1. “The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. “The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”

The DPRK has already fulfilled point “4.” Of the Singapore Summit, and repatriated POW/MIA remains to the USA.  It is fulfilling point “3.”, which requires “complete denuclearization of the  Korean Peninsula:  

It has ceased testing weapons, and on May 25, 2018 destroyed its major test-site, Punggye-ri. 

By contrast, the United States persistence in maintaining punitive and ultimately genocidal sanctions against the DPRK reached the savage extreme on October 17, 2018, when it was announced in The New York Times  that

“The Trump administration has barred American aid workers from going to North Korea…Barring aid workers from traveling affects humanitarian programs in North Korea, including efforts to alleviate tuberculosis and provide medical training and farming assistance.  ‘People are suffering,’said Robert King, a former American special envoy for human rights in North Korea.  ‘Ít’s not the same as limiting luxury goods for the elite or reducing access to military goods.   The idea of focusing effort and time on limiting humanitarian services strikes me as being totally counterproductive.’” 

“’The potential life-threatening consequences of this policy are far-reaching,’ said Keith Luse, spokesperson for these US humanitarian aid groups.”

Whether a manifestation of dangerous insanity, or vicious bad faith, Washington’s recent prohibition on humanitarian aid to the DPRK is a cynical violation of articles 1 and 2 of the Singapore Summit Agreement committing the US and the DPRK to establish new US-DPRK relations building peace and prosperity, and building a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. 

Washington’s infamous ban on humanitarian aid to the DPRK will be condemned by history and by every civilized state and organization, and should have been condemned by the United Nations Secretary-General.  The ban on humanitarian aid to the DPRK is a sadistic act of war, targeting the most vulnerable civilians of North Korea, and consigning them to slow and agonizing deaths that could have been prevented or mitigated.

And, together with Washington’s refusal to sign a peace treaty, this exacerbation of the sixty-five year  US effort to destroy the socialist government of the DPRK, it would be preposterous to expect the DPRK to divulge one iota of its defensive capability.  The purpose of this ban on humanitarian aid is one and one only:  to demoralize and break the heroic spirit of the most sophisticated and advanced, and possibly the only remaining socialist country on earth.  Washington has zero interest in the human rights of the people of the DPRK;   if there were a scintilla of truth to Washington’s incessant droning on and on about human rights, this ban could not possibly have been passed under any circumstances.

According to UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock,   “sanctions are exacerbating humanitarian problems.” Reuters reported:

“The UN had to stop nutrition support for kindergartens in North Korea in November, due to the lack of funding.  Its $111 million ‘2018 Needs and Priorities Plan’ is nearly 90 percent under-funded.”  “A ban on the shipment of any metal objects, from health diagnostic instrments to spoons to nail clippers, makes it nearly impossible to deliver even basic healthcare to North Korea…Farm machines, greenhouses and ambulances, meanwhile, are sitting idle without spare parts.”

Compellingly stated by an official of a large humanitarian NGO, “For humanitarian organizations the Sanctions are ‘Death by a Thousand Cuts.’

According to Christine Hong, Associate Professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, 

“In point of fact, when you sanction things like fuel…fertilizer..or things that have any sort of dual-use capacity—things like plastic tubes that are used for IV fluid, you’re harming ordinary people.  This harm is not an inadvertent side effect of sanctions; it’s the deliberate impact of sanctions meant to destabilize a society..’’ The goal is to get the general population so restive that they rise up against the leadership of the society.  That is the sinister logic of sanctions.’” 

Truthout.org quotes Hong stating that

“sanctions are not a soft alternative to war, nor are they aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary North Korean people.  Rather, she calls sanctions against North Korea ‘an explicit part of US war policy’ dating back to the earliest days of the Korean War.’  “Part of the legacy of the US’s bombing campaign on North Korea are the 420,000 bombs dropped on Pyongyang in what historian and professor Bruce Cumings called a ‘bombing holocaust.’  ‘Historians routinely say 4 million, some even say 5 million North Koreans were killled in that war.  Seventy percent are understood to be civilians.   That’s not a clean war.  It’s a profoundly dirty war.  If there is to be normalization of relations between the US and DPRK, sanctions have to go by the wayside.’”

The UN Security Council sanctions are a cancer defiling the reputation of the UN and every member state supporting these genocidal resolutions.  The complicity of the UN Security Council is encouraging and enabling the US to  indulge its most pathological tendencies and its interest in exterminating a brave and remarkably advanced socialist people in Asia, (and one cannot exclude racism from the US agenda).

However, it is also at the United Nations that the masks are torn off, and the voting record of the US and the DPRK in the First Committee and throughout the UN General Assembly Committees reveals who is the menace to world peace and survival, and who genuinely seeks a nuclear-weapon free world of peace and security, democracy and development.

On October 23, DPRK Ambassador Kim Song stated to the UN Fourth Committee On Agenda Item 53  “International Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space”:

“The DPRK maintains independent and self-reliant character in the development and use of outer space and ensures that space development be oriented towards the peaceful purpose of developing the country’s economy and improving the people’s living standard.  It is noteworthy that more than 280 valuable dissertations were presented on the DPRK’s achievements and experiences of application in the areas of manufacturing and control engineering of an artificial satellite at the ‘Outer Space Science and Technology Seminar-2017’ held in Pyongyang in the period from 28 November to 1 December, 2017….”

“It is a due right of a UN member state, to say nothing of a state party to the Outer Space Treaty, to take part in the international exchanges and cooperation for peaceful use of outer space.  This year, the DPRK’s outer space experts were invited to the international outer space conferences organized by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) in such countries as Austria, Pakistan and Russia.  However, they were not able to attend to any of them due to the opposition by the 1718 Committee of the UNGA (the Sanctions committee).  This is a flagrant violation of our legitimate right as well as open disregard for the international outer space-related laws of the UN Charter.  My delegation protests in strong terms against the outrageous and immoral behavior of the 1718 committee that stubbornly denies our peaceful satellite launches, and went to the extreme of rejecting our space experts’ engagement in the international scientific exchanges.  We also express our regret at the irresponsible attitude of the UNOOSA which fails to take any appropriate measures while admitting the improper nature of such behavior.”

It is therefore now imperative to examine the voting record of the US and the DPRK, a record which reveals which states are a threat to international peace and security, and which states support global human development,  and world peace.

First Committee  (Disarmament)  Voting:

Resolution A/C.173/L.3  99 (a) WHOLE  “Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space.”

181 nations voted “Yes,” in support of this Resolution, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, China and Russia.  2 States voted “No,” opposing this resolution, including the United States and Israel.

Resolution A/C.1/73/L50  99 ©  WHOLE  “Further Practical Measures for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (DECISION)”:

127 States voted “Yes,” in support of this Resolution, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, China and Russia.  3 States voted “No,” opposing this resolution, including the United States, Ukraine and Israel.

Resolution A/C.1/73/L.51 99 (b)  WHOLE  “No First Placement of Weapons in Outer Space.”

129 States voted “Yes,” in support of this Resolution, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, China and Russia.  12 States voted “No,” opposing this resolution, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Georgia, Israel, Latvia, Poland

Resolution A/C.1/73/L.44 102 (b) WHOLE  “Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Nuclear Weapons”

120 States voted “Yes,” in support of this Resolution, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  50 States voted “No,” opposing this resolution,  including the United States, Latvia, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, etc.,

Resolution A/C.1/73/L.46 101 (mm)  PP.9  “Universal Declaration on the Achievement of a Nuclear-Weapon-Free-World” 

137 States voted “Yes” in support of this Resolution, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  Three states voted “No,” opposing this resolution, including the United States.

Resolution A/C.1/73/L.12 101 (cc)  WHOLE  “Effects of the Use of Armaments and Ammunitions Containing Depleted Uranium” 

140 States voted “Yes” in support of this Resolution, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  4 States voted “No,” opposing this Resolution, including the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom.

This voting record confirms, unequivocally, which countries want peace and which countries menace global peace and stability.

On October 9, Ambassador Kim Song of the DPRK addressed the Second Committee (Economic Development): 

“The present realistic situation in which the socio-economic development is hindered by widespread ongoing conflicts, escalation of tensions and instability shows vividly how it is important to ensure peaceful environment for development and prosperity common to all humanity…Amidst the situation of easing tensions and peace prevailing on Korean peninsula, our people are waging a decisive struggle to build a civilized powerful nation and achieve the SDGs with great motive force of self-reliance and self-development and the might of modern science and technology, upholding the strategic line of concentrating all efforts on the socialist economic construction ….the effort of the DPRK for peace and development makes great contribution to ensure peace and security not only in Korean peninsula, but also in the region, and help bring about the development and prosperity for the common good to all humanity.  …Nevertheless, the right of existence and development of our people are severely infringed.  The delivery of humanitarian assistance materials such as essential medicines, x-ray diagnosis equipments as well as even sports items which are utmost in necessity for our citizens, children and women are prohibited in the pretext of implementation of the UN Security Council’s “sanctions resolutions’ against the DPRK.”

The statement of DPRK Ambassador Kim Song at the Third Committee on October 26 must be quoted here, as the Third Committee, with the most blatant hypocrisy, and outrageous irresponsibiliity has adopted those infamous “country-specific resolutions” which slander and defame any country the US, the UK want to destroy and plunder.  These “country-specific” resolutions are extremely dangerous engines of propaganda fabricated by the West, and are used to manipulate the Security Council to authorize murderous sanctions resolutions and military interventions which have destroyed some of the most progressive governments in the Middle East, and are attempting to eviscerate the government of the DPRK.

Ambassador Song stated at the Third Committee:

“The prevailing reality shows that egregious human rights abuses result without any exception from those places where national sovereignty is trampled down and social inequality is rampant.  It stands clear testimony to the situation of human rights violations where innocent people are killed bare-handed in Iraq, Syria, Libya and occupied Arab territories and discriminatory practices pervade in Western countries.  The root cause is attributable to some Western countries that pursue ulterior purposes in an attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the independent countries and seek regime change, while abusing the promotion and protection of human rights as an instrument of political and economic pressure…..Those same countries that advocate promotion and protection of human rights block the delivery of humanitarian aid supplies including the medicines and X-ray equipment which are badly needed for our people, children and women and even the sports equipment and materials under the pretext of the ‘sanctions resolutions’ of the UN Security Council against the DPRK, thereby gravely violating the rights to existence and development of our people.   We demand that the inhumane and barbarous UN Security Council’s ‘sanctions resolutions’ should be lifted immediately as required by evolving present era and international relations.

Investment in health and education are given highest priority in socialist DPRK.  I was there in May, 2017, and I witnessed the superlative level of free health care and education.  Subsequent sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council have probably destroyed much of that admirable social system.  By contrast, in the United States, and I quote the late Mrs. Evelyn Lauder, who stated at a meeting of “Power Couples” at the 92 Street “Y’ in New York, shortly before her death from cancer:

“In the United States we pay 30 million dollars yearly to a basket ball player, but we pay only 30 thousand dollars yearly to a teacher.  I think that is shameful!” 

So spoke the honest Mrs. Evelyn Lauder at a conference I attended several years ago.  Today,  on September 24, 2018, a Time Magazine cover article stated:  “I have a master’s degree, 16 years of experience, work two extra jobs and donate blood plasma to pay the bills.  I’M A TEACHER IN AMERICA.”  Hope Brown, Woodford County High School, Versaille, Kentucky.

Last week I received a letter from “City Meals on Wheels” stating: 

“There are 2.5 million elderly Americans who go to bed hungry….  A recent study conducted in partnership with Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging found that 67 per cent of the seniors we serve are over 80 years old.  Fifty-seven percent live alone.  THEY ARE ALSO VERY POOR.  More than one third of the seniors we serve live below the poverty level!!!!!”

This is the capitalist paradise President Trump promised the DPRK if they abandon socialism and adopt capitalism.  A brief walk through midtown Manhattan, from 42 Street and Sixth Avenue toward Seventh Avenue reveals homeless and shattered human beings sleeping in the gutters and living in the streets.  Exiting Grand Central Terminal at Lexington Avenue, at 7AM,  reveals long lines of homeless people sleeping in the streets.  White New Yorkers, Black New Yorkers, Hispanic New Yorkers.  This is the capitalist paradise the DPRK can aspire to if it relinquishes its defenses and grovels before the one percent who control more than 50 percent of the wealth of this planet.  I doubt the DPRK is so stupid.  But the capitalist West will never stop trying to force them to their knees.

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

Featured image is from The Unz Review.

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A recent USAID audit report found that some of its humanitarian programs for war-torn Syria and Iraq might have assisted terrorist groups. The assistance in question amounts to nearly $700 million.

“We are a Christian city here, we need peace, no more bloodshed. Stop killing our babies” a Mhardeh resident told me on the 9th September when I entered this Christian town on the border with Idlib province, an area dominated by the terrorist group, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, the rebranding of Nusra Front, Al Qaeda in Syria.

Mhardeh is a Christian town of around 22,000 inhabitants to the north of the province of Hama in Syria. On September 7th 2018 a massacre was committed by the armed groups encamped between two and five kilometers from the town in the province of Idlib. At 6pm on the Friday evening, these U.S Coalition proxies, deemed “moderate rebels” by western media, fired 9 Grad missiles into residential areas of this densely populated town. According to reports from the volunteer National Defence Forces (NDF), six of those ground-launched Grad missiles contained internationally banned cluster munitions.

The NDF informed me that it was an Al Qaeda-affiliated group, Jaish Al Izza that had carried out the attack in September. This is an armed group previously financed and supported by the U.S and is representative of the extremism that threatens the towns that border their areas of control.  This attack came in from the north of Muhardeh from the northern Hama countryside of Ltamenah and neighbouring areas in Idlib.

Earlier this year, before the September massacre, I met with residents of Mhardeh. Dr Firas Habib is a general surgeon from Mhardeh who has also pioneered research into the prevention of breast cancer at Aleppo University. Dr Habib told me that, since 2013, Jaish Al Izza and Nusra Front or HTS have fired almost 9000 mortars. The town has suffered more than 80 martyrs with hundreds more being terribly injured, many children. The terrorists deliberately target hospitals, schools and residential areas.

“They want to drive us out but we will never leave our land. Only 500 civilians have deserted Mhardeh since the beginning of the crisis.” Dr Habib told me.

Dr Habib told me that Mhardeh still has two operational hospitals which are supplied by the Syrian Ministry of Health despite the punishing economic sanctions imposed upon Syria by the U.S alliance in an attempt to weaken the Syrian state by collectively punishing the Syrian people.

Despite the ravages of war and siege by the terrorist factions, Dr Habib is proud of their authentic civil society projects that include – Help the Aged, Mhardeh Orphanage, recycling, tree planting, help for the physically handicapped and factory work training schemes for women whose husbands, sons or family providers have been martyred in the conflict. He wanted to be very clear that “these are genuine Syrian civil society programs, not those fake campaigns that are funded by the West in the terrorist held areas, financed by the West and serving only the West.”

Dr Habib also praised the Syrian government for maintaining electricity supply to Mhardeh, despite the terrorist groups systematically targeting the local power station on a number of occasions in an attempt to plunge Mhardeh into darkness. A darkness that would make it easier for the terrorist groups to draw closer to the town defences and threaten residents. As Tom Wescott reported for Middle East Eye in September 2018:

“Steam pours from the chimneys of a nearby electrical sub-station, one of the most fiercely-contested local facilities, which changed hands multiple times, repeatedly plunging Mhardeh into darkness for weeks on end. During a 14-day occupation, rebels graffitied the premises with mottos including: ‘We don’t need the electricity of Assad, the light of Islam is enough for us.’“

Dr Habib recounted a little of the history of the terrorist attacks upon his town:

“In March 2017, the armed groups cut the road to Hama. We had five martyrs in one week from their subsequent mortar attacks. We still have our bags packed today, ready to flee if we have to. We were so afraid at this point. We were surrounded in the North, East, South and partially to the West. During the East Idlib campaign to liberate these areas, we were targeted mercilessly with daily mortar attacks and threats of invasion.

“In 2014 a series of terrorist suicide cars massacred 25 students in Mhardeh. In March 2016, my uncle’s son killed the driver of a suicide car carrying 5T of explosives. He was killed but he prevented a massacre. He was a hero, all the soldiers in the Syrian Arab Army are heroes – if they did not exist, the terrorists would be here now, where we are sitting. We all stand with the SAA and we are proud of their sacrifices for our country and our protection.”

Mhardeh women’s volleyball team during practice in the sports hall. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The Mhardeh described by Dr Habib is a thriving, self-sufficient community that has fiercely defied the extremist threats and attacks. The Mhardeh basketball club was established in 1971. In 2010 they reached the 10th stage of the Syrian League. There are 17 clubs and 170 basketball players in Syria. In 2008 Mhardeh set up the volleyball club. There are now 60 volleyball players in Mhardeh. The womens volleyball team won the Syrian national championships in 2015 and 2016 captained by Lilianne Deeb. I met with this extraordinary group of young women and their coaches during this visit to the remarkable town of Mhardeh.

The Mhardeh women’s volleyball team. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Dr Habib left me with one message for people in the West:

“Please work to stop spreading the fire of this conflict, stop adding fuel to the flames that threaten to consume us all. If you dont, nobody will win, all Syrians will lose, the whole world will lose. We deserve to be left alone and to live in peace”.

Terrorist Cluster Munitions Target Civilians Prior to Idlib Ceasefire

Just one of the dozens of cluster bomblets strewn around residential areas of Mhardeh after the terrorist attack on 7th September 2018. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The Mhardeh I visited on the 9th of September was a town in shock. Many of the cluster bomblets had not exploded on impact and were still strewn in gardens, school playgrounds and in the streets. I was in the garden of one of the homes that had been targeted, with a member of the NDF, when he pointed to a bomblet nestled in the earth, beneath a shrub. He called the Russian bomb squad who were working to safely detonate more than 25 deadly bomblets in the town after the attack. They arrived and a young man in uniform picked the bomblet up by its red ribbon and carried it to nearby waste ground. I was able to follow and film as he followed the procedures to destroy the explosive. We ran to take cover as he lit the touch wire and placed the hissing projectile on the ground. After a few minutes the bomblet exploded safely away from civilian areas.

On the 9th of September the death toll stood at 9, by the 19th of September that number had risen to 13 as a number of the victims died from their terrible injuries inflicted by these destructive weapons that should never be used against civilian targets. International law is disregarded on so many levels in Syria, by the regime change alliance of the U.S, U.K and other NATO member states alongside the Gulf States, Turkey and Israel. Perhaps this violation of international law by their terrorist proxies in Syria should not surprise us. For the civilians in Mhardeh, the bloodshed was indescribable and the trauma will affect them for a long time into the future.

I was invited into the home of Simon Al-Wakil, the commander of the NDF in Mhardeh. The NDF in Mhardeh was formed in 2011 when the town first came under attack. Al-Wakil was adamant that they did not want armed conflict to escalate, they tried to reach out to the armed factions and to foster dialogue. He swiftly came to the conclusion that this was not a real “revolution”.

“There was no desire to negotiate or to hear what we were saying. We told them if they wanted to attack the Syrian government they should go to Damascus and leave us in peace but when we saw that they had no intention of allowing us to live in peace, we realised that this was a fake revolution.”

Then began the campaign of terror by the armed groups – the siege of the town, the shelling of residential areas, mining of roads and kidnapping of civilians, all familiar tactics used by the Western-backed armed gangs that have roamed across much of Syria. More recently, SAA allied liberation campaigns and Syrian/Russian-brokered Amnesty and Reconciliation deals  have driven the majority of the remaining extremist groups into Idlib where they brace themselves for a final showdown with the Syrian-led forces.

Image on the right: Mhardeh volunteer National Defence Forces on the frontlines with Idlib, occupied by HTS (Al Qaeda rebrand) and assorted extremist groups. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Early on in the conflict in Mhardeh there was little SAA presence and a need to form a volunteer defence force made up of young men from the town, over the age of 18. These young men from all walks of life took up arms under the leadership of Commander Al-Wakil who had formerly been the head of a local construction company. Now the NDF comprises more than 250 fighters who defend a clearly defined territory bordering the Idlib front lines. They are reinforced by SAA units and according to Al-Wakil, are able to call up thousands more volunteers if needed if and when the official order comes to advance upon Idlib.

Image on the left: Commander Simon Al-Wakil shows me the x-ray of the terrorist sniper bullet that lodged in his neck. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Al-Wakil has been injured many times in the conflict. He is a larger than life character, tall, well built and with an easily provoked, warm laugh. He proudly showed us an x-ray of a terrorist sniper bullet that had lodged itself in his neck.

We visited the windswept and vulnerable frontlines that overlook the Idlib terrorist strongholds, visible to the naked eye from the hilltop defended by impressive missile launchers. We arrived just as the artillery team prepared to fire one of the big guns at a target they had located – a Jaish Al-Izza position about 2 km away. The deafening blast reverberated around the sandbank defences and buildings that lined the road up to the frontlines. It was a successful hit judging by the cheers that went up as the plume of smoke appeared on the horizon. “We should withdraw,” Al-Wakil said cheerfully, “in case they fire back.”

Al Wakil told me that the gun that had been fired had a range of 23 km and they have cameras monitoring the movements of the terrorists.  When they spot any hostile activity they will take preventative action. However, the NDF must follow the political decisions and if there is a ceasefire, this will be respected. In the last two days, the armed groups had clearly broken the “ceasefire”, “therefore these defensive measures are acceptable,” Al Wakil told me.

“We never target civilians of course, the civilians are not a part of this hostility.”

The artillery team prepare to fire a missile into Jaish Al Izza-controlled territory in Idlib. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The Horrific Aftermath of the Attack

The “New Life” Hospital – Al Hayat Jadid – is a private hospital in Mhardeh that received the majority of the victims of the terrorist cluster munition attack on the 7th September. I met Dr Rami Hassoun who was exhausted and still shocked by the severity of the injuries he had seen:

“These were really critical cases, it is hard to even describe the wounds, they were some of the worst I have ever seen during this war. One person we received died the next day, their wounds were so bad and were immediately infected. We couldn’t save them. It was a massacre, that is the only way to describe what happened.”

Hadi Abdullah is the General Director of the hospital, he told me:

“The terrorists only ever attack civilian neighbourhoods, never military targets. Why? Children were playing in the street and they deserve to die? Why? The armed groups always attack during our Christian celebrations. Friday, we were celebrating the birth of the Virgin Mary and they murdered our children! Where is the ‘peace and democracy’ in this? All of the groups attack us, Nusra Front, Free Syrian Army, Ahrar Al Sham, Jaish Al Izza – there is no difference between them.”

Image on the right: 15 year old Ibrahim Fares lying on life support after shrapnel had passed through his brain. He died a few days after my visit. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The doctors took me to see three of the victims who were fighting to recover from their terrible wounds. Luis Sisi was the first I saw, both his legs were in traction, his face and torso were covered in jagged, deep shrapnel wounds. I have seen the effects of war many times, but these injuries were devastating. Luis was barely conscious and did not respond as the doctors and nurses discussed his progress next to his bed.

15 year old Ibrahim Fares lay on the bed in the adjoining room. He was on life support. The shrapnel had passed through his brain and doctors told me they were not hopeful for his recovery. Ibrahim died a few days after my visit.

Daher Lammoth, a Syrian living in Bulgaria but from Mhardeh told me:

“Ibrahim’s father Elyas Fares has problems with his back. He was my neighbour. He was a very nice, calm guy, always smiling. He was an electrician and he works next to my home. He dreamed to have a son for such a long time. Elyas did not deserve that. Ibrahim was a lovely son to him.”

Image on the left: Ibrahim Fares before the terrorist attack on the 7th September 2018 in Mhardeh. (Photo: Facebook)

Luis’ mother, Anisa Zayod,  was in a separate ward surrounded by her family who were gathered around Anisa as she struggled to survive the damage done to her body. The doctor showed me the wound in her stomach, the shrapnel had sheared through her intestine and the resulting infection was proving tenacious. Anisa was visibly wracked with fever and pain, barely conscious, she died a few days later. She was 65 years old.

Shadi Yousef Shehda lost his three children, his wife and his mother in the Mhardeh massacre. His entire family were wiped out in a matter of hours. Shadi was working in his shop when news reached him of the tragedy. He rushed home to find his entire world had been destroyed in this attack.

Shadi’s mother Afifeh, his wife Rama, his eldest daughter Maria, six-year-old son, Fadi and his two-year-old daughter Stefani had been “sliced to pieces” by the missiles that had been launched by the Western-backed terrorist groups.

Shadi Yousef Shehda shows a photo of his wife, three young children and mother, all killed in a missile attack on their Mhardeh home. Sep 7, 2018. (Photo: Eva Bartlett)

Independent journalist, Eva Bartlett met with Shadi on the 11th September and she wrote:

“They were martyred just after they took a bath,” Shadi said, pointing to each dead child’s robe, then to their drawings pinned on the wardrobe above, then pointing out the cupboard with his eldest daughter’s drawing, and the toys laid out on a sofa on along wall. He pointed out every detail, lifting each of their backpacks and saying whom they had belonged to.

“The family were strong believers and went regularly to church, he told me, repeating again and again how his eldest daughter and son went to church, prayed; how she always wrote, ‘Jesus is love, God is love;’ and how, some days before they were murdered, his son Fadi wanted to take a photo with the church father.”

I also met with Shadi on the 14th September when I returned to Mhardeh to pay my respects to the families of all the martyrs during their grieving period. I entered the same open courtyard in front of his home that had been targeted by mortar/rocket fire three times previously. One attack had happened when his wife and children were at home. The rocket had landed on the tiles in front of where we were sitting but had not exploded. This time his wife and children escaped injury but now they were gone.

Shadi with his family celebrating Fadi’s sixth birthday two days before they were all martyred by the terrorist attack. (Photo: Shadi’s Facebook page)

Shadi sat next to me and showed me the same photos he had showed Bartlett including heart-shattering images of his children’s broken, mutilated bodies immediately after the attack. He seemed transfixed by the photos, his right leg in spasm, jerking backwards and forwards as if the grief could only escape through his reflexes. Surrounded by mourning relatives and community representatives, Shadi seemed to be locked into an inner world of pain and grief.

Shadi asked me why people in the West do nothing to stop the suffering in Syria and in Mhardeh. “Why do they allow our children to die? What did our children do to them? Our loss and pain is indescribable”

I had no real answer.

Paying My Respects to the Families of Martyrs Killed by Western Imperialism

On the 14th September I arrived in Mhardeh in the early evening to meet with the families of martyrs and to pay my respects. I passed from house to house and sat with the families of the martyrs. I did not visit these people as a journalist but as a human being sharing in their loss and pain. I did not want to intrude upon their tears and agony but I wanted to stand in solidarity with their suffering. Nevertheless each family expressed anger at the inaction of the West and demanded to know why people had stood silent for 8 years while Syrian Christians were being slaughtered by terrorists financed and armed by Western governments who claimed to support the Syrian people.

Image on the right: The photo of 14-year-old Ilias Djerba shown to me by his grandmother. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The grandmother of 14 year old Ilias Djbera held my hand as she wept for the loss of her grandson. She showed me his photograph, stroked his face in the photo with her trembling hands. Through her sobs she told me:

“He was so beautiful, now he is dead. He was polite and gentle. Look at him, look at him, look how beautiful he is.”

Ilias’ mother told me that he had been planning to travel to Sweden to join his father and uncle. They were just waiting for the paperwork to be processed. She told me:

“Ilias had ambitions to finish his study in Sweden. I lost my soul. Our children are our soul, why should they be murdered? They are killed every day by the missiles from the terrorist groups. The Western media says we are the criminals and they hide the truth about the reality in Syria. We have been here for thousands of years and we have never bothered anyone, living in this peaceful country.”

I asked Ilias’ mother if she could pass a message to people in the West, this is what she told me:

“First I would like to ask them to come to Syria and to see the truth. The media confuses everything, makes us criminals and the terrorists the good people. It is the opposite. All the terrorist groups in Idlib are terrorists, not ‘moderates’. Despite all these attacks, we will stay in this land, we believe in our President, our Army, we will stay in this land forever. The Syrian Arab Army are defending their people, so is our President. Our sons are the SAA, we are all the Syrian people.”

Image on the left: Photo of 62-year-old Anwar Nahas hanging on the wall of his house. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Mari Hella, the wife of 62 year-old Anwar Nahas told me that her husband had gone to help the children hit by the first rocket that landed close to their home. As he stepped out of the door, a second rocket slammed into the house and killed him. She told me:

“We ask all the people over the world to stop killing our children, our people. We love our country and we will never leave, we will stand by this country forever.”

Image on the right: The coffin of 13 year-old Selena Saloum with her school bag perched on top. (Photo: Tweet by Kevork Almassian)

Ayman Saloum is the father of Lin 4.5 years-old and Selina 13 years-old. He told me his daughters had gone to the shop for their school books, they were killed immediately when the first rocket landed. Through his grief he passed this message on:

“My message – they are children, what responsibility do they have? None. We need this war to finish, we need to return to the peace and security that we had before this war started. We are optimistic but people need to understand, we believe in our leadership, in our Army. Only they will return this country to peace and stability. In our prayers, as Christians, we support our Army, our President and our country.”

Image on the left: Photo of Amira Karim Zarov, 21 years old martyred in the terrorist attacks on Mhardeh 7/9/2018

The mother of 21 year old Amira Karim Zarov, a student in the 3rd year of University told me:

“She is so beautiful, polite, clever, smart. All the beauty in this world was in her character. We lose her, we lose her, we lose her by these attacks. They targeted children, innocent people. They killed our children. Why!?

“Please stop killing us. We love peace, the terrorist groups tried to destroy the beauty of our society. Stop eight years of devastation and destruction that destroyed everything in this town. Please stop, enough targeting of innocent civilians. We have had eight years of being targeted by these terrorist groups, its too much. You must stop these attacks against the Syrian people.“

The final visit I made that night was to the family of 65-year-old Anisa Zayod. They remembered seeing me in the hospital when their mother was still battling to stay alive. Mikhail Sali was the husband of Anisa’s daughter and he spoke good english. He was adamant that his message should be spread far and wide.

“The matter is clear. Syria was a peaceful country before. We had everything we needed. Once Europe and America started to corrupt our country, they created division and war. They created the enemies of our government. They created ISIS. They cover them from one side and attack them from the other, but it is their creation.

“This union of the U.K, the U.S and Europe are attacking Syria for their own benefit not for our benefit. We don’t need these countries. Let them leave us alone, we can manage our own affairs. These people, these terrorists cannot survive in a lawful country so they are trying to destroy our country. People are dying for nothing, honest people, innocent people.

“We are in danger all the time from mortars and rockets. Let the people in the West tell their governments to remove their hand from our country, we don’t want them to control us like animals, we are human beings. We have a government, a good system, a good President, a good way of life. We don’t want this war, we want the terrorists to go back to the countries that created them, armed them, supported them. My President and my government are ready and capable of defending this country.

“The terrorists threaten us every day. They send us videos taunting us. Recently they have told us they will attack us with chemical weapons. We live with this threat, our children live with this threat, enough, please it’s enough.”

The funeral of the martyrs in Mhardeh. (Photo: Mhardeh Facebook page)

The people of Syria are effectively under siege by the West, their client states in the Gulf and Israel, and they are being creep-annexed by these states and Turkey. They are under constant threat of attack from the invading Western proxies that comprise some of the most battle-hardened brutally sectarian militants and terrorists the world has ever witnessed.

The Syrian people demand peace, they demand to be released from the threat of Western “democracy” that has broken the heart of almost every family in Syria and left many destitute, displaced,penniless and grief-stricken. The Christian town of Mhardeh lies at the borders of this Idlib nest of terror that has been incubated in Turkey, financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, but is the Frankenstein of the West – they ask us to help them lift our government’s hands from their country. It is the least we can do to support the courage of these people who have refused to submit to the pressure of economic, media and military terrorism during an eight year imperialist “humanitarian”-intervention-war.

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This article was originally published on UK Column.

Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team. 

Iran is Israel’s main regional rival – yet poses no threat to the Jewish state or any others.

For decades, Israeli regimes urged Washington to wage war on Iran, wanting its main regional rival and all others eliminated.

The infamous 1982 Oded Yinon document titled “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” explained Israel’s agenda in clear, unambiguous detail – a regional divide and conquer strategy, needing US involvement to work.

The scheme was likely updated several times, the objective unchanged, including a greater Israel through a redrawn Middle East map.

To survive, the Jewish state believes it must dominate the region and become a world power.

Achieving its objective requires partitioning Arab nations into smaller ones along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellite client states.

Israel’s 1967 Six Day War, seizing the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Syria’s Golan, and Lebanese territory followed the plan.

So did its aggression on Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, and 2006, along with occupying the country’s south up to the Litani River, remaining for 18 years until withdrawing in May 2000.

It still illegally holds the Ghajar Lebanese village bordering Golan, along with Sheba Farms, a 14-square mile water-rich area near Syria’s Golan.

The late Israel Shahak said longstanding Israeli plans for regional control follow German “geopolitical ideas (from) 1890 – 1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe.”

Yinon called all Arab states east of Israel “riddled with inner conflicts.” The Saudi and other Gulf states are “built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil.”

Jordan is in reality Palestine, Amman the same as Nablus, other regional Arab states similar, he said.

Since its 1979 revolution, Iran above all other regional states is Israel’s main target for elimination.

A dubious Israeli/Saudi alliance wants the Islamic Republic destroyed, falsely portraying the country as a regional threat.

Netanyahu repeatedly lies about an Iranian nuclear weapons program. None exists. The Jewish state is the only regional armed and dangerous nuclear power, along with maintaining banned chemical, biological and other terror weapons.

In November 2017, former Obama regime secretary of state John Kerry said Israel, the Saudis and Egypt pushed Obama to bomb Iran before the JCPOA nuclear deal was concluded.

Netanyahu was “genuinely agitating toward action,” Kerry stressed, Israel wanting US help to advance its hegemonic agenda.

After eliminating Iraq as a regional rival, Syria was supposed to be next, isolating Iran, followed by a similar scheme to topple its government.

Things didn’t go as planned. Russia’s intervention to help Damascus combat US-supported terrorism turned virtually certain defeat into likely eventual triumph.

Perhaps it’s why Trump pulled out of the JCPOA and imposed what his regime called the toughest ever sanctions on the country – unlikely to succeed as intended because of world community opposition.

Israeli and US hardliners are looking for ways to provoke Iran into something perhaps leading to direct confrontation, a way to blame the Islamic Republic for actions taken against it.

False flags and similar provocations are longstanding US ways for launching wars.

On Sunday, the NYT said “(t)op Saudi intelligence officials close to crown prince Mohammad bin Salman” were involved in a 2017 plot to assassinate kingdom enemies – Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani on their target list.

Attempting or succeeding to kill him would no doubt provoke Iranian retaliation, perhaps used as a pretext for military confrontation – possible full scale war, what Israel and the Saudi have long wanted.

If Iran retaliates against either country militarily, Washington would likely be drawn in to protect its allies, regimes in Rihadh and Tel Aviv achieving their long sought aims.

Israel, the Saudis and Washington want Iran’s economy sabotaged – what toughest ever US sanctions are all about.

Solemani is heavily involved in helping Syria and Iraq combat US-supported ISIS and other terrorists – in an advisory capacity.

The Trump regime’s Iran Action Group is all about plotting regime change.

If sanctions and other destabilizing efforts fail like every time before for nearly 40 years, is US aggression next – Israel achieving what it’s long sought, mindless of how war on Iran could affect the entire region.

If Russia intervenes as in Syria, direct confrontation with Washington could follow, risking possible global war with nukes, the ultimate nightmare scenario.

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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.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who declared “sunny ways” were back after the last election, continues to waffle on what is to be done about the Khashoggi killing in Turkey by the Saudi Arabians.  The problem is being “investigated” and more consultation is to be held.  The real problem as presented by CBC news tonight (Monday, November 12, 2018) is the combination of possible loss of jobs in London, Ontario, and the large penalty stated to be one billion dollars for an abrogation of the contract to sell hundreds of armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. The sales contract is “secret” and thus most of the details will never be known, other than the cost of $15 billion (Canadian) and the penalty.

The CBC had some of their usual pundits expressing their opinions on the subject.  Charles Adler, a strong right wing advocate came out strongly on the moral case, indicating that regardless of the state of the contract to sell many hundreds of weapons to the Saudis, Canada should simply say no deal.

Opposing that moral view, pundit Tim Powers presented the argument, “it’s about business and politics.”  Yes, it certainly is, as Trudeau waffles and Conservative opposition leader Andrew Scheer dodges the question (it was a Harper Conservative deal finalized in 2014).  Powers big question does not even consider Yemen, as he wonders “who would be punished here?” in reference to the supposed 3 thousand jobs at stake in London, Ontario.  He reiterates later, “Why should we punish the people of London, Ontario?”

Those poor people of London, Ontario, for whom life will go on, work will continue as the contracting company is not just producing for this one sale.  Sure wouldn’t want to stop killing Yemen citizens in order to protect Canadian workers who are in little if any danger from anything.

Seeing as how Mr. Powers is so concerned about money and job losses, perhaps we need to see the contract through another perspective.  Deaths in Yemen were officially 10 thousand two years ago, and the fighting has only become more violent, with more deaths from disease and starvation.  The final tally could easily be 100 thousand deaths – and current deaths are estimated as high as 50 thousand so that figure is within easy reach.  If we apply the one billion penalty Canada must pay for cancelling the contract, it works out that each Yemeni death is worth $10,000 in order to maintain the contract.

So what will it be Canada?  Taking the correct moral stance as indicated by Charles Adler, or should we avoid the penalty and kill more Yemenis in order to save $10,000 a head?  Although putting a price on each head for the cancellation of the sale is rather crass, it is even more brutal to think Canada is reaping a war crimes profit of $14.7 billion dollars in order to support Saudi killing in Yemen.  At that price, we will have earned $50 thousand per Yemeni head, plus the 10 thousand for not abrogating the deal, for a total head toll of $60 thousand – pretty good hunting, eh?

Real moral leaders, real peacekeepers, we support Saudi war crimes, and support the Saudi dictatorial theocracy that also supports ISIS and al-Qaeda.  Way to go Canada, eh!

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

On November 10^th, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) announced that its special forces attacked a position of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the Turkman mount in Northern Lattakia. The terrorist group claimed that 10 Syrian soldiers were killed.

Earlier on the same day, the group claimed that its special forces killed 18 Syrian soldiers and 7 Russian service members during an attack of an “operations room” of the SAA in the village of al-Tarbi’a in the northern Hama countryside.

Omar al-Mahmoud, an HTS military commander told the group’s news network Iba’a that the attack was a response to an SAA attack on a position of Jaysh al-Izza on the previous day. The attack reportedly left more than 23 Jaysh al-Izza fighters and commanders dead. The casualties were confirmed by the militant group. In both cases, HTS claims were not confirmed by any vide or photo evidence.

On November 11, sporadic clashes  between militants and the SAA continued in northern Hama and northern Lattakia.

Newly released satellite images on November 9^th revealed that Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian coastal governorate of Lattakia is currently hosting 24 aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces. Eight Su-24, six Su-34, four Su-35 warplanes, an A-50 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) plane, an Il-38 maritime patrol and anti-submarine plane, an IL-20 signal intelligence plane, an Il-76 cargo plane, an An-26 transport plane and an An-74 cargo plane were spotted on the images.

In October satellite images revealed that Russian forces were building eighteen hardened aircraft shelters in order to defend aircraft for possible rocket and UAV attacks.

On November 10^th, SAA artillery and rocket launchers shelled ISIS fortifications in the area of al-Safa. The shelling was reportedly the most violent since the beginning of the army operation in the area two months ago. According to a source deployed on the ground, the shelling is part of ongoing preparations to launch a new ground attack on the terrorist group positions around al-Safa.

Also, an ISIS fighter who was captured by the SAA during the operation to save hostages captured in al-Suwayda revealed that the terrorist group’s cell in al-Safa is receiving direct military support from a US-led coalition base in the border area of al-Tanaf.

On November 9^th, Mustafa Bali, the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) press center claimed that SDF members and US troops participated in an “airborne operation” to capture a “prominent ISIS leader” in the province of Raqqah. No additional information was provided.

In March 2017, the US-led coalition employed its troops to carry out an airborne assault to capture the Tabqah dam from ISIS while SDF units were approaching the nearby town of Tabqah, the Tabqah airport and the dam itself from several directions. Then, the SDF was also claiming that its fighters were actively participated in the operation. However, in fact, it appeared that most of the work was done by US-led coalition troops.

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It’s not often that US Government officials are honest when they talk about our foreign policy. The unprovoked 2003 attack on Iraq was called a “liberation.” The 2011 US-led destruction of Libya was a “humanitarian intervention.” And so on.

So, in a way, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was refreshingly honest last week when, speaking about newly-imposed US sanctions, he told the BBC that the Iranian leadership “has to make a decision that they want their people to eat.” It was an honest admission that new US sanctions are designed to starve Iranians unless the Iranian leadership accepts US demands.

His statement also reveals the lengths to which the neocons are willing to go to get their “regime change” in Iran. Just like then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said it was “worth it” that half a million Iraqi children died because of our sanctions on that country, Pompeo is letting us know that a few million dead Iranians is also “worth it” if the government in Tehran can be overthrown.

The US Secretary of State has demanded that Iran “act like a normal country” or the US would continue its pressure until Iran’s economy crumbles. How twisted is US foreign policy that Washington considers it “normal” to impose sanctions specifically designed to make life miserable – or worse – for civilians!

Is it normal to threaten millions of people with starvation if their leaders refuse to bow down to US demands? Is the neoconservative obsession with regime change “normal” behavior? Is training and arming al-Qaeda in Syria to overthrow Assad “normal” behavior? If so, then perhaps Washington’s neocons have a point. As Iran is not imposing sanctions, is not invading its neighbors, is not threatening to starve millions of Americans unless Washington is “regime-changed,” perhaps Iran is not acting “normal.”

So what is normal?

The continued Saudi genocide in Yemen does not bother Washington a bit. In fact, Saudi aggression in Yemen is viewed as just another opportunity to strike out at Iran. By making phony claims that Yemen’s Houthis are “Iran-backed,” the US government justifies literally handing the Saudis the bombs to drop on Yemeni school busses while claiming it is fighting Iranian-backed terrorism! Is that “normal”?

Millions of Yemenis face starvation after three years of Saudi attacks have destroyed the economy and a Saudi blockade prohibits aid from reaching the suffering victims, but Secretary Pompeo recently blamed Yemeni starvation on, you guessed it: Iran!

And in a shocking display of cynicism, the US government is reportedly considering listing Yemen’s Houthis as a “terrorist” organization for the “crime” of fighting back against Saudi (and US) aggression. Labeling the Yemeni resistance a “terrorist” organization would effectively “legalize” the ongoing Saudi destruction of Yemen, as it could be justified as just another battle in the “war on terror.” It would also falsely identify the real culprits in the Yemen tragedy as Iran, which is repeatedly and falsely called the “number one sponsor of terrorism” by Pompeo and the rest of the Trump Administration neocons.

So yes, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told one wicked truth last week. But before he demands that countries like Iran start acting “normal” or face starvation, perhaps he should look in the mirror. Are Pompeo and the neocons “normal”? I don’t think so.

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Featured image is from The Anti-Media

In the contemporary world, western imperialist propagandists, particularly journalists and editors of the mass media, have resorted to perverting everyday concepts and the language of politics.

The use and abuse of the language of politics has served to blame victims and to justify imperial aggressors. The consequences are multiple, both in legitimizing war crimes and economic plunder, as well as neutralizing domestic opposition.

We will proceed by identifying the key terminology which furthers imperial aggression. We will then describe the economic and political objectives of linguistic imperialism.

We will conclude by examining the political/cultural alternatives.

Critique of Concepts:  Nationalism and Populism 

The most abused and obfuscated concept in the modern imperial lexicon is ‘populism’.

In its original meaning ‘populism’ referred to mass movements composed of exploited workers.  Popular movements fought oligarchical bankers and media moguls.

At the turn of the 19^th and the early decades of the 20^th century, populists formed powerful political movements and electoral parties  in the US, Canada, Russia and Western Europe.

By the mid 20^th century, populist parties and movements multiplied, and in some cases, came to power in Asia and Latin America.  Populist movements gained mass support in Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Mexico.  In the United States populist parties and movement represented farmers who fought railroad monopolies, bankers and corrupt political bosses.  Their objective was to secure fair market prices for transport , moderate interest rates from banks and honest elections, free of corruption by political bosses.Populists elected several governors,scores of mayors and several state legislaturers.

 In Latin America, populist parties in Peru (APRA) fought for indigenous rights, opposing   neo-colonial and oligarchical rule.In Argentina, Brazil and Mexico populist parties led by Juan Peron, Getulio Vargas and Lazaro Cardenas fought and secured workers’ rights, and national ownership of essential resources (especially the oil fields).  They successfully launched national industrialization programs.

Similar developments took place in China, the Philippines, Indo-China and India.  Nationalism and populism were the twin motors of independence and social justice.

Nationalism was based on ending imperial domination and recovering national cultural values free from colonial impositions. By the turn of the 21^st century with the rise and advance of post-colonial regimes, the western imperial powers sought to denigrate the movements and parties which questioned their legitimacy.

No longer could the imperial powers rely on the ideology of beneficent empires (“the white mans’ burden”).  Nor could they claim that foreign capital exploitation and pillage were serving ‘nation-building’.

Imperial ideology resorted to distorting and reverting the positive concepts associated with liberation struggles into their opposite.  Instead they associated populism with oppressive and authoritarian doctrines of regressive regimes.

Populism was emptied of its original emancipatory content and replaced by, and associated with reactionary, racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, fascist ideology.

Any and all popular mass movements, independent of their socio-economic content, were painted with the same regressive content.  Likewise, nationalism was linked with  neo-fascists who expelled minorities and migrants.

As a corollary the imperial ideologies presented US and European empire builders as inclusive upholders of democratic values who fought against ‘nationalists’.

The Use and Abuse of Populism and Nationalism

The principal enemies of ‘populism’ are staunch western neo-liberal ruling classes and their venomous scribes in the Financial Times, New York Times; the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Anti-populism in defense of ‘western democratic values’ serves as pseudo-progressive propaganda in favor of imperialism.  The anti-populist rhetoric amalgamates rightists and leftists, chauvinists and defenders of national independence.

The purpose was to justify  US and EU multiple imperial wars and coups throughout Asia, the Middle East, North and East Africa and Latin America.

While the ‘virtuous’ anti populist and anti-nationalist rabble-rousing media, condemn the populists they promote and defend murderous western wars and coups in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Honduras, Somalia, South Sudan, Venezuela and the Ukraine.

‘Anti-nationalism’ serves to disarm pro-independence critics of imperialism and to ‘legitimize’ western leaders.  Media ideologues attacked rightists, ‘nationalists’, who attack immigrants but obfuscated the fact that the immigrants were victims of western imperial military invasions.

Rightist domestic nationalists and neo-liberal imperialists reflect two-sides of the same coin. One excited the nationalist passions of the masses, the other proceeded to satisfy the voracious appetite for capitalist profits.

Anti-populism and nationalism, were the driving force of neo-liberal elites which exploits the domestic workforce  and attacks social welfare and workplace democracy. They portrayed popular social movements as versions of ‘populism to be condemned as enemies of free-markets and free elections.

Nationalists opposed to imperial wars are denigrated as authoritarian enemies of western security, globalization and democratic values.

Conclusion

US and EU imperialism face adversaries from within and without.  Domestic opposition has turned against costly wars and financial profiteering and has turned in favor of greater welfare.

In desperate need for a new ideological defense, the western powers have fabricated new enemies, labeled ‘populists’, a disguise for supporting economic oligarchs.  The western elites seek to undermine anti-imperialists by lumping them with far-right nationalists.  

The ideologists of western imperialism have other propaganda tools.  National independence militants are equated with ‘terrorists’.  Russian defenders of secure borders are described as authoritarian expansionists. China’s international economic networks are dubbed  ‘colonial debts collectors’.

The mass media’s drum beat is necessary to obfuscate reality.  The US and EU have nearly 200 overseas military bases throughout the world.  China has a tiny base in East Africa.

The US has a string of military bases surrounding China.  Beijing lacks a single overseas military base surrounding the US.

While western colonial and neo-colonial elites plunder Asia, Africa and Latin America, China finances infrastructure, invests in productive enterprises and does not operate military bases to intervene in Third World countries.

The US and Europe hijack progressive concepts like populists and invert their meaning, into regressive reactionary movements, parties and personalities.

Pro-imperial colonialist racist labels are pinned on ‘nationalists’ many of whom are defenders of national sovereignty and oppose imperial hegemony.  Political language at the service of empire is no virtue!

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

The Gaza Strip is on the brink of a large-scale Israeli military intervention.

The current round of escalation started on November 11 when a covert unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) opened fire at a patrol of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing, in the town of Khan Yunis inside the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) supported the retreating IDF unit by airstrikes. At least 7 Palestinians, including Nur Barake, a deputy commander of an elite unit of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and a lieutenant colonel of the IDF were killed in the clashes. Another IDF service member was injured.

In response to the raid, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades launched at least 17 projectiles at Israeli targets east of Gaza. 3 of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome. The IDF described the Palestinian retaliation as an act of the terror and claimed that its covert operation in Gaza was not aimed at killing or abducting anybody, but “to strengthen Israeli security”.

The incident triggered a mass hysteria within Israeli media and political leadership, with multiple reports and statements calling for a wider military action against Hamas. Over the past few weeks, the IDF has concentrated a notable ground force, including battle tanks and other military equipment, near the Gaza contact line amid similar statements from top Israeli officials calling for an invasion in Gaza.

In the evening, of November 12, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades kicked off a new round of rocket strikes on Israeli targets by launching at least 80 projectiles. The IDF responded by a massive airstrike on the Gaza Strip. In the framework of this effort, the IDF intentionally destroyed the building of the Al-Aqsa TV network to undermine the Palestinian media capabilities in the conflict.

By November 13 morning, Palestinian armed groups have launched over 370 rockets at different targets across Israel, including some on the coast of the Dead Sea. They avoided to strike the most populated areas in central Israel, but warned that if the IDF continues its actions they can do this. Additionally, a unit of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades also targeted an IDF bus with anti-tank guided missile.

According to the IDF, about 100 of 370 rockets were intercepted. Meanwhile, the IDF has continued its massive strikes on Gaza claiming that up to 100 military targets have been destroyed so far.

The IDF is actively deploying additional troops and battle tanks near Gaza and if the situation continues to escalate the ground operation may be launched in the nearest future.

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“The M5S (5 Star Movement) divided about the Sicilian maxi-radar”, headlined the Corriere della Sera, thereby spreading a maxi fake news – not about the directorate of the 5 Star Movement,  which, after having won an electoral consensus with the “No MUOS” in Sicily, is now backing off  – but about the very object of the dispute.

By defining the MUOS station in Niscemi as a “maxi-radar”, they are fooling public opinion into believing that it is an Earth-bound electronic scanning device, and therefore defensive. But on the contrary, the MUOS  (Mobile User Objective System) is a new satellite communications system which extends the offensive capacity of the United States to the whole planet.

The system, developed by Lockheed Martin for the US Navy, is composed of an initial configuration of four satellites (plus one in reserve) in a geo-stationary orbit, and linked to four terrestrial stations – two in the United States (Hawaï and Virginia), one in Sicily and one in Australia. The four stations are linked by a network of terrestrial and submarine fibre-optic cables (the station in Niscemi is connected directly to the station in Virginia).

The MUOS, which is already in function, will become fully operational in the summer of 2019, attaining a capacity 16 times superior to that of the preceding systems. It will simultaneously transmit ultra-high frequency coded messages of vocal, video and data material. So submarines and warships, fighter-bombers and drones, military vehicles and on-the-ground units of the US and their  allies, will thus be linked to a single command network of control and communications under the orders of the Pentagon, while they are operating anywhere in the world, including the polar regions.

So the MUOS  station in Niscemi is not a “Sicilian maxi-radar” which guards the island, but an essential element of the planetary war machine of the United States.

The same role is being played by the other main US and NATO bases in Italy. The Naval Air Station  Sigonella, a few kilometres from Niscemi, is the base for the launching of military operations  mainly in the Middle East and Africa, carried out by special forces and drones.

The JTAGS (Joint Tactical Ground Station), a US satellite station of the “antimissile shield” deployed at Sigonella – one of the five with global reach (the others are situated in the United States, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Japan) – serves not only for anti-missile defence, but also for attack operations commanded from advance positions.

The Joint Allied Force Command in Lago Patria (Naples), is under the orders of a US admiral who simultaneously commands the US Naval Forces in Europe (with the Sixth Fleet based at Gaeta in the Lazio) and the US Naval Forces for Africa, whose headquarters are at Naples-Capodichino.

Camp Darby, the largest US arsenal outside of the homeland, supplies the US and allied forces for their wars in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

The US 173rd Airborne Brigade based in Vicenza, operates in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe.

The bases at Aviano and Ghedi – sites of the deployment of US and Italian fighters under US command, and equipped with B61 nuclear bombs, which, as from 2020 will be replaced by B61-12’s – are an integral part of the Pentagon’s nuclear strategy.

Incidentally, do Luigi Di Maio and the other leaders of M5S [1] remember that they took a solemn engagement with the ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) to ensure that Italy adheres to the UN Treaty, thus liberating Italy from US nuclear weapons?

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

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

Note

[1] The 5 Stars Movement is, along with the League, a government party, in which Luigi Di Maio is Vice-President of the Council of Ministers.

The ZOA, Bolton’s enthusiastic sponsor, led the campaign to remove former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster from his post after railing against McMaster’s “anti-Israel” positions, most notably his support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal.

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) recently awarded U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton the “Defender of Israel Award” during its annual awards dinner, which took place in New York on Sunday night.

Other awardees included U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as well as Fox News television host Mark Levin. Both Grenell and Levin are close to Bolton, with the former having served as Bolton’s spokesman and the latter having worked closely with Bolton at the Department of Justice in the Reagan administration.

Though Bolton has received several awards from the Israel lobby in the past, due to his fervent promotion of Zionism and Israeli government policy, this more recent award is notable, as the ZOA is largely responsible for Bolton’s appointment as National Security Adviser within the Trump administration.

Indeed, beginning in August 2017, the ZOA – under the leadership of its president, Morton Klein –led the campaign to remove former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster from his post after railing against McMaster’s “anti-Israel” positions, most notably his support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal.

However, McMaster had also earned the ire of American Zionists for allegedly referring to Israel as an “occupying power” and acknowledging the existence of Palestine — as Zionists at ZOA and like-minded organizations support a revisionist history of the creation of the Israeli state that asserts that Palestine as a state never existed prior to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

Leaked emails reported on by MintPress earlier this year revealed that ZOA’s campaign to remove McMaster soon won the support of Trump’s top political donor, Zionist billionaire Sheldon Adelson. It was later revealed that Adelson had been instrumental in placing Bolton in the position McMaster vacated, as Bolton had long been a confidant of the politically influential casino magnate and Adelson had previously lobbied Trump – then president-elect – to include Bolton in his cabinet.

Bolton has not disappointed his sponsors

Since his appointment in April, Bolton has promoted and helped bring to fruition policies long supported by Adelson and the ZOA – which Adelson helps fund – as well as related groups. Under Bolton’s influence, President Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA and imposed harsh sanctions against Iran, which disproportionately affect Iranian civilians. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently stated that Iranian leaders would need to fall in line if “they want their people to eat,” underscoring the fact that the Iranian people are by and large the target of the U.S. sanctions targeting Iran.

In addition, Bolton has also used his role as National Security Adviser to advocate for other troubling policies in the Middle East to the benefit of Israel, such as the continuation and expansion of the U.S.’ occupation of around 30 percent of Syrian territory.

Bolton announced in July that the U.S. would maintain its military presence in Syria until the “Iranian menace was wiped off the map.” Bolton’s announcement became administration policy just two months later in September. However, just days before Bolton took over for McMaster, Trump had announced that he wanted to remove U.S. troops from Syria “very quickly.”

Ultimately, Bolton’s recent award from the Adelson-backed ZOA for “defending Israel” is the result of events that ZOA itself helped made possible. Now that Bolton – who they helped install into power – has helped bring about the very policies they had hoped he would manifest, ZOA has granted him a “prestigious” award. Perhaps it is only fitting that he receive such thanks for the service to Zionism he was installed to provide. Indeed, it is a cause and ideology that Bolton has repeatedly supported – often at the expense of U.S. government interests and even U.S. national security.

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Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

Featured image: Pictured left to right: Joseph Frager, Alan Dershowitz, and John Bolton at the 2018 Zionist Organization of America awards. Photo | ZOA

Last night, the Woolsey fire burned the contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), a former nuclear and rocket engine testing site. Footage from local television showed flames surrounding rocket test stands, and the fire’s progress through to Oak Park indicates that much of the toxic site burned.

A statement released by the California Dept. of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) said that its staff,

“do not believe the fire has caused any releases of hazardous materials that would pose a risk to people exposed to the smoke.”

The statement failed to assuage community concerns given DTSC’s longtime pattern of misinformation about SSFL’s contamination and its repeated broken promises to clean it up.

“We can’t trust anything that DTSC says,” said West Hills resident Melissa Bumstead, whose young daughter has twice survived leukemia that she blames on SSFL and who has mapped 50 other cases of rare pediatric cancers near the site. Bumstead organized a group called “Parents vs. SSFL” and launched a Change.org petition demanding full cleanup of SSFL that has been signed by over 410,000 people. “DTSC repeatedly minimizes risk from SSFL and has broken every promise it ever made about the SSFL cleanup. Communities throughout the state have also been failed by DTSC. The public has no confidence in this troubled agency,” said Bumstead.

Nuclear reactor accidents, including a famous partial meltdown, tens of thousands of rocket engine tests, and sloppy environmental practices have left SSFL polluted with widespread radioactive and chemical contamination. Government-funded studies indicate increased cancers for offsite populations associated with proximity to the site, and that contamination migrates offsite over EPA levels of concern. In 2010, DTSC signed agreements with the Department of Energy and NASA that committed them to clean up all detectable contamination in their operational areas by 2017. DTSC also in 2010 committed to require Boeing, which owns most of the site, to cleanup to comparable standards. But the cleanup has not yet begun, and DTSC is currently considering proposals that will leave much, if not all, of SSFL’s contamination on site permanently.

Dr. Robert Dodge, President of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, shares the community’s concerns.

“We know what substances are on the site and how hazardous they are. We’re talking about incredibly dangerous radionuclides and toxic chemicals such a trichloroethylene, perchlorate, dioxins and heavy metals. These toxic materials are in SSFL’s soil and vegetation, and when it burns and becomes airborne in smoke and ash, there is real possibility of heightened exposure for area residents.”

Dodge said protective measures recommended during any fire, such as staying indoors and wearing protective face masks, are even more important given the risks associated with SSFL’s contamination. Community members are organizing a campaign on social media to demand that DTSC release a public statement revealing the potential risks of exposure to SSFL contamination related to the fire.

But for residents such as Bumstead, worries will remain until SSFL is fully cleaned up.

“When I look at that fire, all I see is other parents’ future heartache,” said Bumstead, “And what I feel is anger that if the DTSC had kept its word, we wouldn’t have these concerns, because the site would be cleaned up by now.”

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Featured image is from Los Angeles Daily News

A senior Iraqi politician says the Iraqi parliament will discuss the withdrawal of US forces from the country amid rising unease at Washington’s meddling in Baghdad’s internal affairs. 

MP Ahmad al-Assadi, the leader of the Iraqi Construction Alliance, said the lawmakers will step up their demand that the Iraqi government force US troops to leave the country, Arabic-language Arabi21 online newspaper reported.

Calls for the withdrawal of US troops began during the last legislature, but lawmakers are now seeking a “clear timetable” for a pullout, he said.

The US, enlisting some of its Western allies, began deploying troops to the Arab country in 2014 under the pretext of fighting Daesh terrorists who were defeated in Iraq last year.

Al-Assadi said,

“After the big victory against these gangs [Daesh], the Iraqi government has the right to review the need for American forces on Iraqi soil.”

He said the push for the withdrawal of US forces will double once the new parliament is sworn in, where lawmakers will allow the presence of foreign military advisers and trainers based on the requirements specified by state authorities.

The US has maintained a military presence in Iraq since 2003 when Washington invaded the country under the pretext of destroying weapons of mass destruction which were never found. The invasion plunged Iraq into chaos and led to the rise of terrorist groups.

More than one million Iraqis have been killed because of the US invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

In August, thousands of Iraqis took to the streets in Baghdad to condemn US meddling in the Arab country’s domestic affairs amid debates over the make-up of a new government.

Earlier this month, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry hit out at the US for dictating how the country should deal with neighboring Iran.

Iraq’s former prime minister and leader of the al-Wataniya faction in parliament Ayad Allawi warned earlier this month that the new US sanctions on Iran would deeply impact the Iraqi economy.

Allawi said like the Iraqi government and other political leaders, he was opposed to unilateral US sanctions on the Islamic Republic, Iraq’s al-Maluma news agency reported.

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President Donald J. Trump has been engaged with berating human caravans, a spectacle that might have been odd in another era.  At first instance, it all seems fundamentally anachronistic, a sort of history in reverse.  It was, after all, the caravan packed with invasive pioneers that gave the United States its distinct frontier identity, moving with relentless, exterminating purpose in ultimately closing it.

On October 19, some 7,000 Central American migrants, mostly from Honduras and Guatemala, made an attempt to cross the bridge between Guatemala and Mexico. “Una necesidad nos obliga,” came the justification of a 20-year old man to the Washington Post.  The ultimate destination for most: the United States.

Such a necessity does not merely apply to states in social and political decay.  Honduras has historically been an eviscerated client state, its politics those of a marionette of Washington’s interests.  In similar fashion, Guatemala continues to bleed before the preying involvement of Washington in its history.  The US-owned United Fruit Company craved gangsters for capitalism, and the Central Intelligence Agency obliged in protecting its assets, assisting the overthrow of the Arbenz administration in 1954.

The Mexican authorities made various attempts to repel the human stream with violent though modest success.  With the November mid-term elections looming, this small group became electoral dynamite for Trump.  It gave him a chance to militarise matters, announcing the deployment of 5,200 troops to the US-Mexico border.  (Some 5,600 have currently taken their positions.)

The language of General Terrence John O’Shaughnessy, in describing the proposed plan, resembled a description of an armed operation against an elevated enemy.

“Our concept of operations is to flow in our military assets with a priority to build up southern Texas, and then Arizona, and then California.”

In the words of the previous US president, Barack Obama,

“They’re telling us the single most grave threat to America is a bunch of poor, impoverished, broke, hungry refugees a thousand miles away.”

Film director Spike Lee, presenting his latest effort, BlacKkKlansman, at the Los Cabos International Film Festival in Mexico, was even more unvarnished.

“Agent Orange was on the campaign trail for his fellow gangsters and stirring his base by saying the migrant caravan was his invasion.”

If there is something that tickles and engages the populist sentiment, Trump is up for it.  His “base”, as it were, is up for rocking, chilling and entertaining.  Obama might accuse Trump of being a fan of the “political stunt”, but that is the essence of this administration, a sequence of aggravated rehearsals that have distracted when needed and enraged when required.

Some of these ploys have gone beyond the category of temporary fancy.  Senior policy advisor Stephen Miller had demonstrated that policies of indignation can have purchase at chance moments.  While Trump is always bound to claim copyright over such ideas, it was Miller who proved influential in sketching the selective Muslim ban and the head-scratching policy of separating children from parents at the border.  Immigration is being larded with further, stifling regulations with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirming that a mere 30,000 refugees for resettlement will be accepted by the US in 2019.

Such cruel exercises are the stuff of modern reactionary politics, notably from governments wishing to remove the clammy hand of international law upon them.  Refugees, the outsiders, the marginalised, are ideal fodder to mince and grind.  It is the language of Australian Prime Minister John Howard who, in the federal elections of 2001, insisted that the island continent would become an impregnable fortress against the undesirables coming by sea.  He illustrated this fact by deploying, much in the Trump manner, soldiers against refugees stranded at sea in August 2001.  “We simply cannot allow a situation to develop where Australia is seen around the world as a country of easy destination.”  Given Australia’s lethal natural barriers, the remarks were as incongruous as they were fictional.

It was a policy twinned with the feather brained notion, ruthlessly exploited, that terrorist operatives might sneak their way to Australia on leaky vessels, avoiding more salubrious options.  As Australia’s defence minister Peter Reith brazenly asserted at that time, such boat arrivals “can be a pipeline for terrorists to come in and use your country as a staging post for terrorist activities”.  Howard himself added taste to the fear: “you don’t know whether they have terrorist links or not,” he suggested rather casually to Brisbane’s Courier Mail.

Trump would have approved of such laxity, having himself claimed, with an approach immune to evidence, that there might well be “unknown Middle Easterners” heading to the US in these migrant caravans.  When probed on the matter by CNN’s now bedevilled Jim Acosta, Trump twisted slightly. “There’s no proof of anything but they could very well be.”

Trump’s language of the demonised caravan is also the language of a host of European leaders who have decided to dust off chauvinistic sentiments long held in the archive and ignore any central, humanitarian approach to refugees.  At work here is a species of depraved transatlantic consensus on cruelty propelled by strongman bullying.  Hungary’s Viktor Orbán fantasises about Muslim hordes in an Ottoman invasion redux, a positioning that elevates himself as defender of the West against Islam and the dark forces of the barbaric East. “We don’t see these people as Muslim refugees,” he snorted in an interview with Bild in January this year.  “We see them as Muslim invaders.”

Other states contemplate a further entrenched, barbed wire approach, finding much value in shirking or adjusting the refugee resettlement quota.  Poland can add itself to Hungary in that regard, with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stating his position plainly to Radio Poland in January that “we will not be allowing migrants from the Middle East and North Africa to enter Poland.”  Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are not far behind.

Like his Australian and several European counterparts, Trump has deployed the instruments of violence and demonization against refugees with a degree of commitment and, it must not be forgotten, success.  It also supplies a fitful reminder how criticising him for doing so remains a more difficult exercise, given the number of states which have gotten a cold regarding refugees.  A certain villainy against humanity has taken hold.

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

Featured image is from The Japan Times

If you’ve been following the travails of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange recently, you’ll know that moves are afoot by the US and Ecuadorian governments to try and draw a line under this eight year standoff. What’s essential to know about this situation is the very point which our bought-and-paid-for corrupt mainstream media industry are not telling us – that Assange is caught at a crossroads in the history, holding the line for real press freedom. Whichever way this story goes will be a defining moment for the concept of the Fourth Estate.

Rather disingenuously, US officials are repeatedly referring to WikiLeaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence service” (as if saying it enough times will make it real). Like most statements coming out of the mouth of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, this too is a bold-faced lie. US officials, along with their legion of constitutional lawyers, know very well that Wikileaks is in fact a publisher, which means the organization falls squarely under basic press freedom protections. What the corrupt wing of US Establishment and its syndicate partners are cynically attempting to do is to rewrite the law, effectively amputating a key provision of their own constitution. To allow such an affront to America’s founding principles to stand unchallenged will surely hasten the demise of the United States as a Constitutional Republic, and aid it steadily along the path of an embryonic fascist technocracy were any dissent or challenge to the authority of the state is no longer allowed, much less protected by prima facie law.

It’s beyond ironic that WikiLeaks’ former fan Donald Trump could now be weapons-free to prosecute Julian Assange for exposing among other things, US war crimes in Iraq. Naturally, the media are aloof to this development. Based on their own laissez-faire treatment of this important issue, it would appear that CNN and other apologists at the New York Times and the Washington Post, are more than happy to nudge America and Europe further down this dystopian path. Anyone with a hint of sobriety on this issue will have already noticed how the increasingly cozy ‘working relationship’ between media corporations and the state (and deep state) are indicative of the res publica embodied in the orthodox definition of fascism as corporatism as first illustrated at Mussolini’s concept of “corporativismo,” a syndicate of corporate monopolies facilitating the merger of state and corporate interests, each working in unison towards mutual corporate outcomes, and at the expense of the public interest. In this way, the US media are the real fascist enablers in today’s America.

Besides the obvious issue of the freedom of the press to publish, it all comes down to this fundamental question asking by US State Dept. whistleblower Peter Van Buren this past summer:

[A]t what point does the right of the people to know outweigh the right of the government to keep information from view?

There’s another important realpolitik point to consider here. It would appear that Julian Assange also holds key to the infamous DNC email scandal, which is a foundational pillar propping-up the Establishment’s disjointed #Russiagate narrative. Assange has openly stated that the DNC emails were in fact leaked and not ‘hacked by the Russians’ as the mainstream pundits dutifully repeat ad nauseam. His testimony might help prove that the DNC was not ‘hacked by the Russians and given to Assange’ as the US media incessantly repeat as an a priori assumption. For this reason, the vaunted Mueller investigation has purposely not asked either Assange nor his associate Craig Murray who has made no secret of this, to speak or provide an affidavit regarding this important detail in the story. To do so would likely upend the entire two-year charade of the “Special Counsel” in search of that unicorn called Russian Collusion. More than that, it could effectively delegitimize and collapse a large section of the US political and media power structure, although this seems to already be happening as their house of cards continues to fold under the cumulative weight of decades of lies and malfeasance.

Meanwhile, dubious mainstream media outlets like CNN are seizing every opportunity to virtue signal about the ‘free press under attack,’ supposedly via Trump’s ongoing spat with CNN’s self-promoting reporter Jim Acosta, and Trump’s comments that dishonest media outlets are an “enemy of the people.” Trump’s bombast aside, CNN and their ilk should know that when a news organization promotes fake dossiers as articles of fact, or is trafficking politically-motivated lies and suppositions on a daily basis, misinforming the public, obfuscating hard facts on Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Iran in order to promote illegal wars – then their wing of the “free press” no longer serves the interests of the public, and therefore can rightly be regarded as malignant. We can contrast this with WikiLeaks who has provided nothing less than hard facts and data for over a decade. The irony for the legacy media is, by denying and covering for their own corrupt nature and institutional malaise, they are only hastening their own inevitable demise. Any thinking person gets it, and yet it’s almost comical to watch media operatives pretend as if they are selfless champions of free speech and expression. The idea of it is simply beyond the pale now.

Through all the milieux, the media have conveniently omitted Assange’s grave plight from their news cycles, and are instead running a long campaign to demonize and criminalize him, apparently in revenge to their belief that Assange and Wikileaks are responsible for the failing presidential run of Democrat Hillary Clinton and Trump’s surprise victory over their pre-annointed candidate. This aspect alone speaks volumes of the petty and myopic mindset which dominates the western corporate media at present. It’s pretty clear that CNN and others members of the media syndicate either have no concept of the what the Fourth Estate really means in constitutional terms, or they do know this perfectly well and are still choosing to side with mutual interests of state and corporation. Either way, it’s a very disturbing state of affairs.

Onlookers should be under no illusion as to what is at stake. It is not out of the realm of possibility then to speculate that the US Establishment or its allies, would lay a scheme to remove Assange from the equation. Last week, Julian’s mother, Christine Assange, issued the following warning and plea for help for her son who is being arbitrarily detained for 7 years now in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Listen:

Despite the willful ignorance and obfuscation of this story by CNN and the mainstream gaggle, there are some mainline publications are at least beginning to acknowledge the gravity of his exigent predicament, although it’s still far from adequate considering the severity of the situation.

The Economist reports…

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. But it looks as if the Trump administration really is going after WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, the self-styled transparency campaigner who runs it from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been holed up for five years evading extradition to Sweden to face a rape allegation.

As a candidate, Donald Trump said he loved WikiLeaks for helping his campaign by publishing embarrassing e-mails from the Democratic National Committee, hacked by the Russians. Now he is in the White House, he views leaks less indulgently. On April 20th the attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, declared that the arrest of Mr Assange had become “a priority”. He added: “We are going to step up our efforts, and are already stepping up our efforts, on all leaks.” The Department of Justice is said to be preparing charges against Mr Assange.

In a speech made a few days before Mr Sessions’s announcement, the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, excoriated WikiLeaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”. Mr Pompeo’s wrath had been incurred after the release by Mr Assange’s outfit of information about some of the CIA’s surveillance tools. Mr Pompeo, like his boss, had previously been a WikiLeaks fan, regularly tweeting its revelations last summer to attack Hillary Clinton…

Continue this passage at The Economist

All of this leads us back to the initial categorical imperative. It is right to allow the US Establishment use the Assange case in order to rewrite freedom of the press laws in the West? It’s possible that they may not have to, as they will simply achieve this by fiat, under a regime of state intimidation which will effectively hang over the Assange narrative should they achieve their goal of incarcerating him in an US federal penitentiary, or God forbid any tragic outcome which might befall him by way of his current predicament.

Know that anyone could be (and have in the past been) Julian Assange; any publisher, any journalist, any writer, any poet, any professor, any artist, or any citizen. In that sense, we are all Julian Assange.

For these reasons, we should all be concerned with the plight of Julian Assange, and should speak out now in support of his own human rights. In doing so, you’ll also be advancing the right to free speech and press freedom.

That is, the right to publish and be damned.

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Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting in the Middle East including work in Syria and Iraq.

Featured image is from 21st CW.

Russian oil exporters are pressuring Western commodity traders to pay for Russian crude in euros and not dollars as Washington prepares more sanctions for the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Moscow, Reuters reported last week, citing as many as seven industry sources.

While it may have come as a surprise to the traders, who, Reuters said, were not too happy about it, the Russian companies’ move was to be expected as the Trump administration pursues a foreign policy where sanctions feature prominently. This approach, however, could undermine the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the global oil trade currency.

Early indications of this undermining became evident this spring, when Russia and Iran launched an oil-for-goods exchange program seeking to eliminate bilateral payments in U.S. dollars and plan to keep it going for five years. The sanction buddies discussed this sort of agreement earlier, back in 2014, when Iran was still under Western sanctions. Even after the notorious nuclear deal was reached, the two countries decided to go ahead with their barter deal, and the preliminary agreement was reached last year. According to it, Russia would receive 100,000 bpd of Iranian crude in exchange for US$45 billion worth of Russian goods.

In March, Iran banned purchase orders denominated in U.S. dollars and said that any merchant using dollars in their orders will not be allowed to conduct the import trade. A month later, Tehran announced that it will publish all its official financial reports in euros instead of dollars in a bid to encourage a switch to euros from dollars among state agencies and businesses.

Now, Russia’s biggest oil producers are renegotiating oil delivery contracts with commodity traders, and three of them, Rosneft, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz, have raised traders’ hackles by insisting they, the traders, commit to paying penalties beginning next year if U.S. sanctions disrupt sales and as a result the buyers fail to make payments. Also, there are discussions about using euros and other currencies instead of dollars to ensure payments are not disrupted.

It would make perfect sense for the seller of any commodity to ensure that they receive payment for their commodity. In an environment of sanctions, looking for ways around them is the only logical behavior. And Russia and Iran are not alone in this drive to distance themselves from the dollar.

Venezuela, for one, has bet on digital currency as a way of skirting Washington sanctions that have added to the pressure created by the 2014 oil price crash and years of PDVSA mismanagement—both factors which have plunged the Venezuelan economy into a possibly irrecoverable crisis. Just today, crypto media reported that Caracas would present its cryptocurrency, the Petro, to OPEC as a unit of account for oil trading next year. “We will use Petro in OPEC as a solid and reliable currency to market our crude in the world,” Finance Minister Manuel Quevedo said.

China is also openly promoting its currency for oil trade and all trade. The internationalization of the yuan is part of the New Silk Road initiative of President Xi and given China’s level of oil consumption, oil trade is a big part of this internationalization. Earlier this year, China launched its long-awaited yuan-denominated oil futures contract. While the general trading public remains cautious about buying into it, some have forecast that the yuan will eventually replace the greenback as the global oil currency. And it could be joined by the euro as long as the European Union survives in the long term. After all, Russia and Iran are among the biggest oil exporters globally. That’s a lot of barrels that might be soon traded in euro and not dollars.

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Irina is a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

The world’s oceans are rapidly becoming unrecognizable as impacts from human activity strip them of marine life, according to a report published in the journal Current Biology.

In fact, just 13% of the world’s oceans have intact marine ecosystems, while the rest have been plundered and degraded.

The majority of healthy ocean space, meanwhile, exists in the high seas, outside of national marine protected areas. As a result, these sections are vulnerable to being exploited, making the creation of international treaties to protect the oceans all the more urgent, according to the Guardian. The goods news is that the United Nations is spearheading an effort to comprehensively protect the high seas later this year.

“We were astonished by just how little marine wilderness remains,” Kendall Jones, lead author of the report, told the Guardian. “The ocean is immense, covering over 70% of our planet, but we’ve managed to significantly impact almost all of this vast ecosystem.”

Oceans are being harmed in a variety of ways.

Climate change is causing global ocean temperatures to rise, changing how fish species migrate, affecting how animals reproduce, causing coral reefs to die, and unleashing dangerous pathogens.

The world’s oceans are also absorbing much of the excess carbon dioxide being produced by human activity, which causes waters to become more acidic and inhospitable to marine life.

The global fishing industry is overexploiting fish populations, and killing various species unintended for capture such as dolphins, sharks, and whales.

The authors of the report argue that countries must stop subsidizing high seas fishing, which costs $4 billion annually, to allow marine creatures to flourish in these areas.

The report also urges countries to protect the Arctic, which is rapidly becoming accessible to fishing vessels. A proposal to create the largest marine sanctuaries in the world in the Arctic is currently underway.

Industrial pollution from farms, factories, and boats fills marine environments with harmful chemicals, while plastic pollution is turning large sections of ocean into hazardous obstacle courses, the report notes.

Source: Jedimentat44/Flickr

On this front, the UN recommends that countries expand marine protected areas and curb the release of plastic and other forms of pollution into waters.

In recent years, fighting plastic pollution has become a rallying point for environmentalists and more than 60 countries have so far taken action to reduce plastic production.

Reversing the overall decline of the oceans, however, will be challenging, according to the report.

Source: California Artificial Reef Enhancement

Beyond establishing international treaties, regulating the fishing industry, and reducing pollution, countries have to mitigate climate change, which may pose the biggest long-term risk.

Failing to do so, according to the authors, could be catastrophic.

“Beyond just valuing nature for nature’s sake, having these large intact seascapes that function in a way that they always have done is really important for the Earth,” Jones told the Guardian. They maintain the ecological processes that are how the climate and Earth system function – [without them] you can start seeing big knock-on effects with drastic and unforeseen consequences.”

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I wasn’t closely following the midterm elections campaign, but the results seemed to be about as expected for Donald Trump and the Republicans. With some races still undecided, the Democrats will apparently pick up close to 35 House seats, giving them solid control, and also a half-dozen governorships, while losing at least a couple of Senate seats. These overall Democratic gains seem roughly what might be expected for the first midterm after a Republican presidential victory, but nothing at all like the “blue wave” that had seemed possible a few months earlier, before the bitter public battle over the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination greatly re-energized the Republican base.

Perhaps the loss of the House may actually prove to be a mixed blessing for Trump. Democrats will achieve control of all the investigative committees and their accusations and subpoenas will make Trump’s life even more miserable than it was before, while surely removing any chance that significant elements of Trump’s remaining agenda will ever be enacted. However, although Trump had reached the presidency by advocating a radical populist-nationalist agenda, he has hardly governed in those terms. For his first two years in office, he sunk nearly all his political capital into enacting huge tax cuts for the rich, wholesale Wall Street deregulation, large increases in military spending, and an extremely pro-Israel foreign policy—exactly the sort of policies near-and-dear to the establishment conservative candidates whom he had crushed in the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, his jilted grassroots supporters have had to settle for some radical rhetoric and a regular barrage of outrageous Tweets rather than anything more substantive. With Republicans in full control of Congress, finding excuses for this widespread betrayal was quite difficult, but now that the Democrats have taken the House, Trump’s apologists can more easily shift the blame over to them.

Meanwhile, a considerably stronger Republican Senate will certainly ease the way for Trump’s future court nominees, especially if another Supreme Court vacancy occurs, and there will be little chance of any difficult Kavanaugh battles. However, here once again, Trump’s supposed radicalism has merely been rhetorical. Kavanaugh and nearly all of his other nominees have been very mainstream Republican choices, carefully vetted by the Federalist Society and other conservative establishment groups, and they would probably have been near the top of the list if Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio were sitting in the Oval Office.

Both Trump’s supporters and his opponents claim that his presidency represents a drastic break from Republican business-as-usual, and surely that was the hope of many of the Americans who voted for him in 2016, but the actual reality often seems rather different.

Although the net election results were not particularly bad for the Republicans, the implications of several state races seem extremely worrisome. The highest profile senate race was in Texas, and Trump may have narrowly dodged a bullet. Among our largest states, Texas ranks as by far the most solidly Republican, and therefore it serves as the central lynchpin of every Republican presidential campaign. The GOP has won every major statewide race for more than twenty years, but despite such seemingly huge advantages, incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz faced a very difficult reelection race against a young border-area Congressman named Beto O’Rourke, who drew enormous enthusiasm and an ocean of local and national funding.

I was actually in Texas just a couple of days before the vote, speaking at a Ron Paul-related conference in the Houston area, and although most of the libertarian-leaning attendees thought that Cruz would probably win, they all agreed with the national media that it would probably be close. Cruz’s final victory margin of less than three points confirmed this verdict.

But if things had gone differently, and O’Rourke had squeaked out a narrow win, our national politics would have been immediately transformed. Any Republican able to win California has a near-lock on the White House, and the same is true for any Democrat able to carry Texas, especially if the latter is a young and attractive Kennedyesque liberal, fluent in Spanish and probably very popular with the large Latino populations of other important states such as Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. I strongly suspect that a freshman Sen. O’Rourke (R-Texas) would have been offered the 2020 Democratic nomination almost by acclamation, and barring unexpected personal or national developments, would have been a strong favorite in that race against Trump or any other Republican. Rep. O’Rourke raised an astonishing $70 million in nationwide donations, and surely many of his contributors were dreaming of similar possibilities. A shift of just a point and a half, and in twenty-four months he probably would have been our next president. But it was not to be.

Still, the very close nature of the race does not bode well for long-term Republican control over what has certainly become one of their must-win states. O’Rourke may have been an especially attractive candidate and Cruz has often described as unlikeable, but a small margin of victory drawn entirely from the older and whiter portion of the Texas electorate reinforces the growing GOP fear that changing demographics are inevitably shifting Texas toward the Democrats.

These negative indications were even stronger in the high-profile gubernatorial races in Florida and Georgia, each narrowly won by a right-wing white Republican who faced a left-wing black Democrat. In the past a matches along such racial and ideological lines in Southern states would have been expected to produce a blowout GOP victories, but this year the margin was less than two points in Georgia and less than one in Florida. These surprisingly strong showings by the two black Democrats came despite the considerable personal baggage each had carried, with the Florida candidate under possible investigation in a local corruption scandal and the one in Georgia owing over $50,000 in unpaid federal income taxes. Normally, these would have been exactly the sort of factors that provided a racially-suspicious white electorate a convenient sort of “psychological deniability,” allowing them to vote for the white candidate with a clear conscience.

Although Florida was traditionally a swing state, Georgia had been solidly Republican for many years, at least on the federal level, supporting the Republican presidential candidate in six of the last seven elections, with only fellow Southerner Bill Clinton carrying it by a whisker in 1992. Both Georgia senators had been Republican since 2005, as had been most of the Congressional delegation for over two decades, along with every current statewide officeholder. Georgia had elected some prominent Democrats in the not too distant distant past, but these had always been white moderates of the Southern variety. In a society whose politics was still substantially divided along racial lines, electing a vocal left-liberal black as governor might have seemed almost unthinkable, but it came within a couple of points of happening.

The apparent Democratic victory in a close Arizona Senate race represents another severe warning sign to the Republicans. With the sole exception of 1996, that state had backed the Republican presidential ticket without fail in every national election since 1960 and both senators had been Republican since 1995, with the Congressional delegation generally skewing in that same direction for the last half century. Yet a Democrat now seems to have won an open Senate seat, something that had last happened in 1976.

The obvious factor driving the political realignments in both Georgia and Arizona are the long-term demographic trends, especially the rapid growth of the local Hispanic population. When combined with harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric by Republicans at both the national and the local levels, the result may eventually prove lethal to GOP prospects in both those states. And indeed I had predicted exactly these developments back in 2011:

Now consider the likely political future of a state such as Arizona, ground zero of the most recent national anti-immigrant backlash by nervous whites. A severe recession and rapidly changing demographics had alarmed Arizona voters, many of them elderly retirees from elsewhere, leaving them vulnerable to wild rumors of a huge immigrant crime wave, including beheadings and kidnappings, almost all of which was complete nonsense. As a result, harsh anti-immigrant measures were passed into law, and their mostly Republican supporters won sweeping victories among an electorate that is today roughly 80 percent white.

But buried near the bottom of a single one of the innumerable New York Times articles analyzing Arizona politics was the seemingly minor and irrelevant fact that almost half of all Arizona schoolchildren are now Hispanic. Meanwhile, according to Census data, over 80 percent of Arizonans aged 65 or older are white. A decade or more from now it seems likely that Arizona whites and Hispanics will enjoy perfectly good relations, and the former will have long since forgotten their current “immigrant scare.” But the latter will still remember it, and the once mighty Arizona Republican Party will be set on the road to oblivion.

Even in a rock-solid Deep South Republican state like Georgia, Hispanics have now grown into a remarkable 10 percent of the population, up from almost nothing in the early 1990s, and represent an even larger share of younger Georgians. So unless the local Republican Party can somehow greatly enhance its appeal to the 30 percent of Georgians who are black, the current wave of anti-immigrant legislation may prove highly problematical ten or 20 years down the road.

This pattern of immigration-driven demographic shifts producing a sharp but temporary backlash among conservative voters, later followed by the political collapse of the local Republican Party is hardly new to me. I first suggested this strong possibility for my own native state of California over twenty-five years ago, and I have subsequently published numerous articles and columns outlining the political dynamics both before, during, and after these political situations have occurred.

Although many of my pieces were published in leading conservative outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, and often were widely discussed and even endorsed in elite Republican circles, the immediate political pressures in the opposite direction have invariably been too strong. As a direct consequence, the once mighty California Republican Party has steadily declined into irrelevancy, most recently dropping below 25% of the electorate. For many years now, all statewide offices have been held by Democrats, who also now hold a super-majority in the State Legislature, while there is a reasonable chance that after all the races are decided, the size of the GOP Congressional delegation will have fallen to single digits.

I think my entire analysis of these political dynamics whether in California or nationally has held up very well, and I would scarcely change a single word I had previously written. Therefore, I see no reason to repeat myself at great length. Instead, I urge those so interested to read a couple of my past articles that cover the subject in considerable detail, and then decide for themselves whether in hindsight my analysis seems to have been correct.

Obviously, racial politics in America currently revolves around the positions taken by the Trump Administration. For foreign policy reasons, I had strongly favored Trump both in the primary and in the general election, but I hardly regarded him as a thoughtful vessel for the positions he claimed to espouse. To put it bluntly, he struck me much like a highly-opinionated construction worker, angrily spouting off on politics in his local neighborhood bar, being right on some matters and wrong on others, but with none of his views based upon any deep understanding of the issues. I suspect that even many of Trump’s strongest supporters have gradually come around to a similar appraisal of their idol.

This is nowhere better illustrated than in the issue of immigration, which surely won Trump the Republican nomination and played a major role in his unexpected general election victory. From the very beginning, his entirely wrong-headed approach to this highly contentious topic seems almost perfectly calculated to be both ineffective and severely damaging to his supposed goals.

A strong case can be made that American immigration levels have been far too high for many years and should be sharply reduced, and such a change would also greatly slow the ongoing demographic transformation that has so agitated large portions of the white American majority. But in this regard, Trump’s overwhelming focus on illegal immigration makes absolutely no sense at all. If we exclude a relatively small portion of the most highly-skilled legal immigrants, the remainder are probably not all that different in their characteristics from their undocumented counterparts, and indeed individuals may often shift back and forth between these two categories over time, as illegals gain green cards or legals remain here after their temporary visas expire. The ubiquitous rhetorical focus on illegal immigrants seems mostly due to a mixture of “political correctness” and political demagoguery, supplemented by sheer ignorance.

According to most estimates, the size of America’s undocumented population has been almost entirely stagnant since the Housing Meltdown wrecked employment in the construction industry, while net legal immigration has still regularly been running at a million or more a year. Therefore, it seems likely that nearly all net immigration over the last decade or so has been of the legal variety.

These simple facts apparently escape some of the loudest voices on the subject. For example, a year or so ago I happened to listen to the podcast of a leading Alt-Right personality, a prominent Trump supporter who claimed he made illegal immigration his central political focus. When asked why he generally ignored legal immigration, he answered that the numbers in that category were just too low to much matter. With such inspired leadership, the collapse of the Alt-Right movement hardly surprised me.

The signature issue of Trump’s populist campaign was to a build a wall across our Mexican border aimed at blocking the flow of illegal immigrants, and many of Trump’s supporters have become bitter at his total failure to achieve even a shred of that promise. But as I’ve frequently pointed out, the whole idea makes absolutely no sense at all. Suppose that Trump had built his wall, standing 700 feet tall and fronted by land-mines and self-firing machine-guns. If (say) 95% of our immigrants come across the border legally, how would such a wall have had any real impact on that flow? Policies based upon a total ignorance of the facts are unlikely to be successful.

Trump launched his longshot presidential bid with a denunciation of the “rapists and killers” swarming across our border with Mexico, and not long afterward his campaign caught fire when the national media went into a feeding frenzy about the fatal shooting of a young white woman named Kathryn Steinle by a much-deported Mexican national living in San Francisco. Safeguarding America from the rampaging hordes of illegals has been a central theme of the Trump Administration and its supporters, so much so that he even closed the recent midterm Congressional campaign with a highly controversial television spot featuring an illegal immigrant convicted of killing two sheriffs’ deputies in 2014.

However, this widespread notion of immigrant criminality is almost entirely false. All available evidence indicates that immigrants, legal or illegal, Hispanic or otherwise, have crime rates not all that much different from native-born white Americans of the same age and gender, and often somewhat lower. I demonstrated this important result almost a decade ago, and all the subsequent information has confirmed this finding. This reality is hardly difficult to notice in our daily lives. When I first moved to Palo Alto a quarter century ago, neighboring East Palo Alto had the highest per capita murder rate in America, but after a vast wave of immigrant Hispanics transformed its demographics, the homicide rate fell by some 97%.

Many of the regular commenters on my webzine are zealous anti-immigrant activists, and whenever the national media focuses on the arrest of an illegal immigrant for a violent offence, they cite the case as confirming the dangers of immigrant criminality, with the Iowa rape and murder of Mollie Tibbetts a few months ago being the most recent example. However, this sort of anecdotal reasoning is entirely innumerate.

Most experts believe that there are roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in America, with some activists often claiming that the figure is far higher; meanwhile, there are over 15,000 annual homicides. Despite these huge numbers, I suspect that the number of ordinary middle-class whites killed by illegals is almost infinitesimal, probably no more than 10 per year if we exclude wives stabbing husbands and rival drug-dealers shooting each other. Energetic right-wing websites such as Breitbart and the Daily Stormer eagerly scan the news media in hopes of locating any stories of immigrant killings, and I’ve challenged those commenters to mine the archives of those publications in order to disprove my totals, but none of them have ever succeeded in doing so. Indeed, I suspect that killings of whites by illegal immigrants often generate national headlines partly because they are so exceptionally rare, and that the average white American is about as likely to be killed by lightning as murdered by an illegal. For a candidate to win the presidency based on a platform of lightning-abatement is hardly the mark of a serious country.

Ironically enough, even the details of San Francisco killing that so greatly boosted Trump’s fledgling campaign turned out to be very different than was widely imagined. Although most of Trump’s followers probably had the impression that the homicide had been committed by a hardened Latino criminal, perhaps a gang-banger driven by anti-white hatred, the facts that eventually came out at the trial were something else entirely. The culprit had been a disoriented homeless man, here illegally, who had apparently found a gun while picking through the trash. When he casually waved it around in a foolish and reckless manner, it suddenly discharged, with the bullet striking the pavement a dozen feet from where he sat, then ricocheting to fatally wound the unfortunate victim standing a hundred feet distant. Based on these unlikely circumstances, the tragedy seems much closer to being a lighting-strike than a typical street-killing.

Trump’s final pre-election remarks, claiming that he possessed the legal right to issue an Executive Order abolishing our traditional birthright citizenship provisions seemed especially ridiculous, though wildly popular within his right-wing base. Automatic U.S. citizenship for all children born here, regardless of the legal status of their parents, has been settled constitutional law for well over a century, and nearly all legal experts have held that it was guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, as later confirmed by a 19th century Supreme Court ruling. In the last decade or two, a tiny handful of lawyers have claimed this policy could actually be overturned by Congressional legislation rather than Constitutional Amendment, but prior to Trump, no one had claimed the President had the ability to strip millions of Americans of their citizenship merely by Executive Tweet.

To my eye, the legal case for the Fourteenth Amendment birthright provision seems extremely strong and those who dispute it are doing so on very dubious grounds, clearly motivated for ideological reasons. But given my lack of legal training, I would raise a different point. From the late 19th century onward, many, many millions of children have been born to illegal immigrants in this country, and all of them were always considered automatic U.S. citizens, without a single person having ever disputed that matter until quite recently. It’s not that the courts ruled that the children were citizens—it’s that across a century or so, no one had even questioned the matter enough to try to bring it before a judge, nor had any politician or opinion columnist ever raised a doubt. So opponents of birthright citizenship are clearly proposing a rather astonishing legal innovation, one which certainly would have surprised several past generations of Americans.

Now admittedly, such innovations have become somewhat more common in recent American jurisprudence. For example, as far as I know, no one in the entire history of the world had ever raised the notion of Gay Marriage until just a couple of decades ago, yet we recently discovered that our Founding Fathers had fortuitously guaranteed a right to Gay Marriage in the U.S. Constitution, where it lay undetected for more than two centuries until the time was ripe. Thus, Constitutional principles are obviously far more malleable than they might once have seemed.

Still, the practicalities of Trump’s sudden legal revolution seem quite considerable. For example, over the last century legal immigration from South of the border has been fairly low while the number of Hispanic citizens has increased by well over 40 million. Thus, it seems likely that tens of millions of these Latinos ultimately derive their citizenship from those disputed birthright provisions, and presumably some millions of white and Asian citizens would also fall into that same category. Since the legal territory is so completely uncharted, perhaps Trump believes his authority in this matter is retroactive, and for a president to strip perhaps 30 million Americans of their current citizenship with a single Tweet would certainly demonstrate the awesome power of Twitter.

In many ways, the failings of the Trump Administration illustrate the difficulties of that a superpower faces when it is run by a bar-stool political philosopher guided by his personal echo-chamber.

Twenty or more years ago I would have been extremely concerned about all these racially-charged political controversies involving immigration, and throughout the 1990s such issues were my central focus. But these days, I view these loud national media battles with detachment or irritation rather than anything more serious. The main reason is the recent trajectory of California, and not merely because it is my home state.

Whites had historically been minorities in a couple of small American states such as Hawaii and New Mexico, but for most of the twentieth century gigantic California had ranked as our whitest large state. Then, within a single generation it underwent one of the greatest demographic shifts in human history, rapidly becoming one of the least white. During the 1990s California whites suddenly discovered that they had become a shrinking minority of their own state’s population, but they still remained a large super-majority of the California electorate. The resulting mismatch between population and political power was a major factor in the extremely bitter Immigration Wars of that period, about which I have written at considerable length.

Although immigration issues elsewhere were only slightly visible at that time, they totally dominated California issues, with potentially disastrous consequences. Under the wrong circumstances, our politics could have devolved into an escalating cycle of bitter hostility between two large blocs, with roughly half our population consisting of native-born whites and the other half of non-whites from a recent immigrant background. Due to factors of citizenship and age, the former would have held the overwhelming majority of political power and might have been tempted to use those considerable levers to block the rise of the latter, otherwise almost inevitable due to its demographic momentum.

Back then, California represented even a larger portion of our national population than it does today, being comparable to the combined total of Texas and New York, the next two states, and as home to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, it was the long-recognized pace-setter for the country. If such a sunny and hopeful state had suddenly become embroiled in an endless cycle of racial political conflict between whites and immigrants much like the traditional black-white divides of the Deep South, that could easily have easily set the pattern nationwide.

Some especially unfortunate social policies potentially magnified this risk. Historically, the leading source of national ethnic division has usually been along the lines of language, and California seemed especially vulnerable in this regard. Almost everywhere in the world, immigrant children are taught the national language of their new country, and this had always been the case in our own schools as well. But for totally bizarre and inexplicable reasons, America had gradually abandoned this sensible policy for Hispanic immigrants. California was the national center of this newly created system of Spanish-almost-only instruction, misnamed “bilingual education,” with up to 70% of Latino children spending at least some of their school years in those classes, and as a result often failing to properly achieve English literacy. If our country’s largest and most important state had become sharply divided along lines of ethnicity and language, a national disaster with separatist overtones might have become a realistic possibility, especially as the pattern of immigrant relations in other states began following the dominant California model.

Fortunately, despite the very serious risks this national calamity was narrowly averted, partly through the hard work of many individuals, partly through luck, and partly through the sheer political incompetence of the California Republican Party, which Gov. Pete Wilson had opportunistically positioned as the standard-bearer of the anti-immigrant cause. Although demagoguery often produces strong short-term advantages, the California Republicans instead quickly fell into a sharp decline that has continued almost unabated to the present day, with California soon becoming a one-party Democratic state.

California’s transformed political landscape may be illustrated by a single example. In late 1994, I was a top featured speaker at a 70,000 person anti-Prop. 187 rally held in Los Angeles, the largest pro-immigrant protest in American history. The event had been organized by a local immigrant rights activist named Juan Jose Guttierez and his young Latino assistant then just a couple of years out of college, while apparently receiving little support from any of the state’s rather timorous Hispanic elected officials.

A few years later, that young assistant, Kevin de Leon, went into politics himself. Gradually rising through the ranks, he most recently served as President of the State Senate and this November received over 45% of the vote in his unsuccessful challenge to 85-year-old incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had held public office almost longer than her challenger had been alive. As I’ve sometimes joked with journalists over the years, De Leon seems to have done much better politically over the last 25 years than either Gov. Wilson or the California Republican Party.

Partly because the California Republicans failed so quickly in their political attempt to capitalize upon anti-immigration sentiment, almost no lasting damage was done to relations between whites and non-white immigrants, which soon returned to the quite amicable state the two groups had previously enjoyed. Indeed, within a decade anti-immigrant sentiments had faded to insignificant levels even within the overwhelmingly white and conservative Republican rump party, let alone the heavily non-white Democrats. A few years ago, I discussed this fortunate political outcome at great length.

One important factor assisting this rapid ethnic reconciliation was my own successful 1998 campaign to dismantle the failed “bilingual education” system by ballot initiative. My measure required that all young children be taught English in the public schools, and it passed in a huge landslide despite being publicly opposed by nearly every established political element in the state and massively outspent on advertising. Although for obvious reasons, almost all immigrant families had always wanted their children taught English, many deeply suspicious whites had long remained unaware of this, instead fearing that Hispanics preferred Spanish-language schools. But once the huge media coverage surrounding the initiative drove home the true facts, many sources of tension between immigrants and the native-born faded away. I think the ultimate outcome for California society is best illustrated by an amusing AT&T radio advertisement that ran across the state a couple of years ago.

Since California had always been the center of America’s bilingual education movement, the elimination of those programs set them on the road to oblivion elsewhere as well, especially once the New York Times, the New Republic, and the rest of the mainstream media documented the tremendous success of these educational reforms and the strong support they attracted within the immigrant community.

For decades, those disastrous bilingual programs had greatly impacted the education of many millions of Hispanic students, looming very large on the national political stage, but their collapse and disappearance was so rapid and complete that I suspect few younger Americans today are even aware that they had ever existed. I’m also unsure whether the younger generation of immigrant Californians are more than vaguely aware of the ferocious political battles that roiled the state throughout the 1990s.

Since such a substantial fraction of America’s Hispanic and immigrant populations reside in California, their excellent relations with their fellow white and native-born Americans serves as a very positive model for the rest of the country. Trump had made immigration concerns a central element of his 2016 campaign, but that theme fell totally flat in America’s most heavily immigrant state, with white Californians supporting Trump at a rate 20-25 points lower than whites in the rest of the country. Indeed, if the entire white national electorate had voted like its Golden State counterpart, Trump would have lost all fifty states, mostly by huge landslides, suffering by far the greatest electoral disaster in American history. All the Trump-hating pundits would have spent Election Night laughing and saying “I told you so!”

These California sentiments hardly seem unique. Texas is our second largest state and has been following a demographic trajectory similar to that of California, with whites having fallen into minority status, soon to be passed by a rapidly growing Hispanic population. But although Texas is as strongly conservative as California is liberal, whites and Hispanics seem to get along just as well, and the enthusiastic support of the latter for O’Rourke against his Spanish-surnamed opponent hardly suggests any deep ethnic chauvinism. Florida, New York, and Illinois also contain very large concentrations of Hispanics and immigrants, who once again apparently enjoy quite good relations with their white neighbors. With such a large fraction of our immigrant population living in states displaying such negligible levels of nativist rancor, the likelihood that today’s immigration controversy at the national level will produce any long-lasting negative consequences seems very low to me.

Most observers would agree that for many years America’s highest-ranking political figure of fervent anti-immigration sentiments has been Jeff Sessions of Alabama, first as a senator and more recently as Trump’s Attorney-General. But few seem to have noted the oddity that Sessions has lived his entire life in a state containing just a sliver of immigrants or Hispanics, strongly suggesting that his entire knowledge of that complex subject comes from secondary sources, perhaps those having a sharp ideological bias. Would we really tend to trust the expertise of a political leader from lily-white Vermont when it came to sorting out the difficult black-white relations of a Deep South state such as Mississippi?

A few months ago someone pointed me to a lengthy piece in the Sunday New York Times by Richard Kahlenberg, a moderate liberal who has spent the last twenty years at the Century Foundation. Kahlenberg argued that bridging our country’s enormously deep ethnic and ideological divide desperately required a Robert Kennedy-type figure, who had demonstrated a remarkable unifying ability a half-century ago before his presidential campaign was tragically cut short by an assassin’s bullet. But although I liked the piece, I pointed out that California’s political situation was quite different, having absolutely no political divide that required any bridging. Our state’s politics had become extremely bland and boring, and I cited a good article describing the heated race for state Attorney General, in which the angry charges and counter-charges were so dull and perfunctory that one’s eyes would glaze over.

In the last couple of years, American society has been experiencing a long series of bizarre Chinese Cultural Revolution-style protestsagainst long-honored figures of our past, now denounced as “racist symbols,” with buildings renamed and leftist mobs attacking public statues. Although monuments associated with the Confederacy have been the primary targets, these attacks have often extended outside the South and even former presidents such as Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and William McKinley have sometimes become targets, along with the author of the Star-Spangled Banner and the founder of modern gynecology. As an extreme example, the losing black gubernatorial candidate in Georgia had called for the Isis-like destruction of the gigantic Stone Mountain Memorial, a national monument featured on a 1970 U.S. postage stamp.

Ultra-liberal California has hardly been free of such copy-cat protests, with a handful of obscure memorials to Robert E. Lee or other Confederate figures targeted and removed, along with a statue or two honoring Christopher Columbus. In Palo Alto, a zealously-PC Swedish immigrant launched a successful campaign to rename two of Palo Alto’s middle schools because they honored top academic figures of a century ago known to have advocated eugenics, even though exactly similar charges could be leveled against most other prominent American intellectuals of that same era.

But although California was seized from Mexico during a controversial 19th century war, there have been absolutely no reports of any protests aimed at the various statues and monuments honoring the leaders associated with that military action or the state’s subsequent American leadership. Ironically enough, several high-profile controversies have instead targeted symbols of California’s Mexican past, especially Father Junipero Serra, the recently-sainted founder of Spanish California. Denounced by leftists for his alleged cruelty to the Indians, Serra has had his name removed from various Stanford University buildings. Meanwhile, California’s numerous and prominent Hispanic officials would surely ridicule and condemn any such similar attacks against the state’s past Anglo-Saxon heritage.

In recent years, despondent white activists have sometimes bemoaned that America’s racial transformation has become irreversible and that our once overwhelmingly white country is inevitably headed for a Brazilian future, with the enormous crime, corruption, and political disorder that such a society entails. But I am very skeptical of these claims. Over the last half-century, California’s white European population has fallen from almost 85% of the total down to little more than 30%, far below that of Brazil, yet none of those terrible social ills seem anywhere to be found. Our ultra-liberal state legislature recently banned plastic straws for environmental reasons, but such nonsense seems more typical of Burlington, VT than the bloody favela politics of the Sao Paolo ghettos.

One widespread problem is that most of us draw our knowledge of the outside world from the media, and the picture of reality imparted by the conservative commentators of FoxNews is usually just as distorted and unrealistic as that of their liberal mainstream media counterparts. Back in January, the legislature established California as a “sanctuary state,” enacting various laws to shield illegal immigrants from threat of federal deportation. President Trump immediately denounced this policy in the strongest possible terms, warning that the horrifying levels of resulting immigrant crime would surely bring the state to its knees. But when a Hannitycorrespondent interviewed local Californians about that supposedly very controversial new policy, she was chagrined to discover that nearly all of them casually supported it.

More recently, the Sacramento Bee ran a rather amusing political cartoon that seems to correctly describe the divergence between actual life in California and how matters are portrayed on FoxNews.

Jack Ohman cartoon, The Sacramento Bee: California is a riot!

Obviously, those ideologically committed to a different perspective will treat my claims with extreme skepticism. But they should carefully consider some supporting evidence.

Consider that blogger Steve Sailer is a California native who moved back to live in his hometown of Los Angeles around twenty years ago. While he was growing up, that city was among the whitest in America, but for the last couple of decades the population has been half Hispanic, with white Europeans probably constituting no more than 20% of the total. Racially- or ideologically-charged topics are his primary focus, especially those connected with politics. But although his posts regularly deal with all sorts of national controversies, in recent years he has only very rarely written anything about Los Angeles politics or California issues in general. Indeed, someone reading his blog over the last decade would have remained almost entirely unaware of the many hard-fought state and city election campaigns that had spent so many hundreds of millions dollars on advertising that blankets the airwaves all around his own home. The obvious reason for his remarkable silence is that nearly all those political candidates and campaigns were so bland and boring that there was almost never anything interesting to say about them. These days, Los Angeles is just not a very “exciting” city to live in or write about. By contrast, Brazil is an extremely “exciting” country, and if he were living there, his blog would surely be overwhelmed with local stories.

Oddly enough, both Los Angeles and California had experienced far more such negative “excitement” decades ago, when both were still overwhelmingly white. Although Southern California had widely been considered a true American paradise in the 1950s and early 1960s, several tumultuous decades soon followed, encompassing the Watts Riots, the two hundred or so racial Zebra killings in San Francisco and statewide, the Manson murders, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the extremely high urban crime rates from the 1980s onward, the LA Riots, and the bitter racial turmoil of the 1990s. Throughout most of the second half of the twentieth century, our state was notorious for its bizarre and often dangerous politics, with the 1978 killing of a San Francisco-area Congressman in the huge Jonestown Massacre followed just a week later by the assassination of the mayor of that same city at the hands of a conservative former supervisor. Yet as whites became a much smaller share of the population, all this turmoil and controversy seemed to fade away, a trend exactly contrary to what fearful white activists might have normally predicted.

Admittedly, many of the examples mentioned above, such as the deadly urban riots and the Zebra killings, were directly associated with the state’s black population. But California had always had by far the smallest black population of any large state, and that fraction has dropped by less than a percentage point in the last fifty years. So black demographic changes cannot be responsible. However, today 60% of the state population is neither black nor white, and perhaps this majority has had a salutary buffering effect on the local version of America’s eternal black-white racial conflict.

California still has very serious long-term problems far beyond the deadly wildfires currently ravaging portions of the state, but few of these seem related to bitter racial or ideological conflicts. Probably the leading concern is the extremely high cost of housing, and once these huge living expenses are properly considered, the state’s resulting poverty rate is among the worst in the country. The post-Cold War era of the early 1990s saw the disappearance of Southern California’s huge aerospace industry, which had traditionally been the largest source of well-paying middle class jobs, and although the current Tech Boom—or perhaps Tech Bubble—has created enormous wealth, nearly all of that has been concentrated within a sliver of the population, giving California one of America’s most unequal income distributions. Some of these poverty problems are being gradually alleviated by the 2015 enactment of a huge rise in the statewide Minimum Wage, which will reach $15 per hour by 2023, a political movement that I’m proud to have substantially fostered, but the impact is a gradual one.

It seems undeniable that most of these major California problems are closely connected to the doubling of the state’s population since the late 1960s, and nearly all of that huge increase was due to very heavy foreign immigration. Such rapid population growth naturally benefits Capital at the expense of Labor, so the resulting changes have both raised housing costs and lowered worker wages. There has also been a sharp reduction in the quality of life as more and more residents have been pushed out into the less desirable portions of the state, such as the smoggy Inland Empire of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which often require horrific traffic commutes to Los Angeles area jobs. Even the recent spate of wildfires may not be entirely unconnected since suburban growth puts more areas at risk and state water problems have been exacerbated by increased consumption. But most of these same problems would have occurred if the many millions of newcomers had been white rather than Hispanic or Asian.

The affluent and extremely pleasant California lifestyle of the post-war era was widely recognized across America, and that magnetic lure produced the early stages of the state’s very rapid population growth. But more recently, the ill effects of congested traffic, terrible housing options, and stiff job competition at the lower end had greatly reduced state’s attractions. Growth has sharply fallen, though this is partly because continuing inflows of immigrants have been partially matched by a simultaneous outflow of existing residents.

Obviously, at some point a combination of severe overcrowding, unaffordable housing, and general worker impoverishment will sufficiently reduce the attractions of our society that the continuing inflow of immigrants will fall to merely a trickle. But this hardly seems the most desirable solution to our problems, whether in California or in other states moving along the same trajectory. Meanwhile, our deadlocked Congress has failed to enact any significant immigration legislation in 28 years, and the extremely rancorous relations between the Trump White House and newly Democratic House hardly suggest that anything will soon change. As a consequence, both Trump and Obama have been forced to issue Executive Orders of an extremely dubious legal nature, whether granting temporary protected status to illegal immigrant “Dreamers” or now promising to automatically reject all refugee claims along our Southern border. The gap between pro- and anti-immigration forces seems absolutely unbridgeable and likely to continue indefinitely, even though both sides remain extremely dissatisfied with the status quo.

However, as I argued a couple of years ago, the widespread belief that our immigration problems are insoluble is based on a very serious misunderstanding of the contending elements involved. Both the media and the political participants regard the conflict as being waged between two sides, but that is mistaken. There are actually three political factions: pro-immigrant Democrats, pro-immigration Republicans, and anti-immigration Republicans. All the unsuccessful Congressional efforts of the last couple of decades involved an alliance of the first two groups failing to overcome the opposition of the third, and with Trump having enormously increased the power of that last faction, there is no prospect for any change in that situation.

But careful consideration will reveal that the major goals of the first and third groups—pro-immigrant Democrats and anti-immigration Republicans—are actually not directly in conflict, and if they formed a political alliance, they could easily formulate legislation acceptable to both that might stand have an excellent chance of passing both houses of Congress and being signed into law by the President. Although I published my analysis of this solution several weeks before Trump’s upset 2016 victory, I think that it is just as correct and relevant today, and perhaps even more so given that November election results have produced a divided Congress, closing the door on other options.

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British author and social commentator H.G. Wells may have coined the expression that originally popularized World War I as The War that Will End War, as his book, based on articles written during that vast military conflict, was titled. In any case, in one version or another, the expression was one of the most common catchphrases of the Great War of 1914-1918 and has survived as an expression, often used with a grimace of sarcasm, ever since.

As we commemorate the passing of the 100^th anniversary of the armistice ending ‘the war to end war’, one can only marvel at how wrong humans can be sometimes. Not content with the violence inflicted during World War I, humans used the twentieth century to systematically decimate human and other life as violence and war raged across the planet with an increasingly massive and sophisticated armory. In fact, by mid-century, in a tribute to their technological ingenuity and psychological dysfunctionality, humans had invented a weapon that could destroy life on Earth.

And by the beginning of the 21^st century, humans were living in the era of perpetual war against life – see 

‘Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds’ and ‘Living Planet Report 2018: Aiming Higher’ – with war also the largest contributor to the climate catastrophe: ‘Not only is the Pentagon the single largest industrial consumer of fossil fuels, but fighter jets, destroyers, tanks and other weapons systems emit highly toxic, carbon-intensive emissions, not to mention the greenhouse gases that are released from the detonation of bombs. How quickly the world forgot the toxic legacy of Saddam Hussein’s oil fires!’ See ‘War and Climate Change: Time to Connect the Dots’.

So advanced is our war against life that human extinction is now imminent. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

Resisting war historically

Of course, the failure to end war has not been the outcome of lack of effort. And while there have been many efforts focused on ending a particular war, efforts directed at ending a particular aspect of war (such as the use of a type of weapon), and efforts aimed at preventing a type of war (such as ‘aggressive war’ or nuclear war), there have also been ongoing efforts to achieve ‘the holy grail’: to end war itself.

These attempts have included ongoing grassroots mobilization by anti-war organizations spawned by World War I (such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom founded in 1915 and War Resisters’ International founded in 1921) and many equivalents since that time, official attempts to outlaw war such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact that outlawed war in 1928 but has been ignored ever since – see League of Nations ‘Treaty Series’ vol. XCIV, 1929, p. 63 – and institutional efforts to prevent it, particularly by establishment of the League of Nations in 1920 and its successor the United Nations in 1945, both also readily ignored or manipulated.

Separately from the above, however, there has been a long history of nonviolent activism to end wars and this has been conducted by individuals and groups all over the world. Undoubtedly the most effective anti-war movement in history was that undertaken in response to the US war against Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Inspired and supported by the nonviolent resistance of the civilian population, and building on the long history of resistance to war within the military – see, for example, The Soldiers’ Strikes of 1919 – there was widespread nonviolent resistance undertaken by US troops and conscripts to end the US war against Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 1968 until it ended in 1975.

If you like, you can read detailed descriptions of the systematic and ongoing resistance (nonviolent and otherwise) within the US military, in many forms, which progressively incapacitated the US Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force during the last years of the war, forcing the US out of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. See Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War and Self-Destruction: The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army during the Vietnam Era with a summary of the first book in ‘Antiwar Resistance Within the Military During the Vietnam War’ and a review of it in ‘The soldiers’ revolt in Vietnam: Rebellion in the ranks’.

For a documentary account of the conscientious objection by more than half a million US conscripts to military service in South East Asia during this period, which overwhelmed the legal system making prosecutions beyond a token few impossible and, combined with soldier resistance and civilian efforts, forced Presidents Johnson and Nixon to curtail plans to escalate the war and make plans to end it, see the forthcoming film The Boys Who Said NO!

Reanalysing the Cause of War to Reorient our Resistance

So, if we are to use this 100^th anniversary to renew our struggle to end war and to work effectively to achieve that purpose, then clearly we need to reassess our analysis of the cause(s) of war so that we understand the problem more precisely, and then use this revised analysis to guide the development and implementation of a strategy that addresses the cause(s). Of course, I am not suggesting that ending war will be easy, even with a sound analysis and a comprehensive strategy. But at least it will be feasible.

Before proceeding, I would like to record my own passion for this subject. I lost two great uncles to World War I: Tom Farrell was killed in action at Gallipoli and Les Burrowes was a victim of ‘shell shock’ – later labeled post-traumatic stress disorder – after being wounded in action three times at Gallipoli and then dying prematurely some years after the war.

My father served in World War II as a coastwatcher and both of his brothers, including his twin, were killed. I am named after my father’s older brother. Bob died when the Japanese POW ship Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by the USS Sturgeon on 1 July 1942. 1,053 Australian POWs died that night. And my father’s twin, Tom, died when his Beaufort Bomber was shot down on 14 December 1943 killing the entire crew.

So my childhood is dotted with memories of occasional commemorations of war which, for me, always ended with the same question: Why? But not just ‘why war?’ Given other manifestations of violence I observed around the world during my childhood, including exploitation of peoples in Africa, Asia and Central/South America as well as destruction of the environment, the deeper question was always my focus: ‘Why violence?’

Well, despite considerable research over three decades, I was never content with any version of the answer to this question that I found. Consequently, 14 years in seclusion with Anita McKone ‘taking our own minds apart’ finally gave me the answer I wanted. In ugly detail. If you would like to read this answer, which explains the unrelenting ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that adults inflict on children and the enormous lifetime damage (including the legacy of unconscious fear, self hatred and powerlessness) that this causes, you can do so in ‘Why Violence?’ with our process described in ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Needless to say, understanding a problem makes developing a strategy to address it far easier (which does not mean that the problem is easy to resolve). However, it is also the case that violence has many manifestations – notably including war, violence against huge sectors of the human population in various contexts (ranging from violence against women and indigenous peoples to military occupations and dictatorships), economic exploitation and destruction of the biosphere – and tackling each of these effectively requires its own sophisticated nonviolent strategy.

This is partly because certain manifestations of violence are structural – see ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’ – or cultural – see ‘Cultural Violence’ – as Professor Johan Galtung describes these terms, and they originated long ago and have been recreated and ‘built-in’ over successive centuries.

However, it is important to understand that the nature of any given structure or cultural symbol/process reflects the psychology of those who create and/or maintain it. That is, it is dysfunctionalized human beings who create and maintain dysfunctional (that is, violent and/or exploitative) structures and cultures.

So, for example, while the origin of capitalism can be explained in terms of the development of economic structures and processes that took place over preceding centuries (in a particular socio-political-legal setting), fundamentally the exploitative nature of capitalism is a direct outcome of the badly damaged psychology of those men who progressively created it and now those men (and some women) who maintain it, expand it and primarily benefit from the manner in which it exploits most others.

And if those men and women were not psychologically damaged by the violence they suffered during childhood, then they would devote their efforts to creating egalitarian economic structures and processes that benefited everyone equally and nurtured the biosphere. In short, a human being who is psychologically whole regards the idea of killing or exploiting a fellow human being as deplorable. This is not a moral stance. It is a psychological outcome for the child who is parented lovingly: such parenting produces compassionate identification with others (and, in fact, everything that lives and the biosphere as a whole).

The same reasoning applies to the institution of war particularly as it has evolved and is now conducted by western nations, led by the US, and their allies such as Israel. War is a method of conducting conflict. It has a great many components including elites who promote war-for-profit by using various channels such as ‘think tanks’, the corporate media, government propaganda and education systems to call for and ‘justify’ it, political processes to order it, legal processes to defend it (including against those who take nonviolent action against it), military command, control and communication structures to plan and implement it, corporations employing a labor force to manufacture weapons and other hardware to be used in it, military personnel to deploy and fire the weapons, and citizens willing to pay taxes (or too scared to resist doing so) to finance it.

But at every level of the institution of war, and despite vast advances in peace, conflict and nonviolence theory and practice during the past 60 years, it requires individuals who were terrorized during their childhood into believing that killing fellow human beings is an appropriate way to deal with conflict (or, a variation, that killing human beings is a reasonable way to earn a wage or make a profit). And because they are so psychologically damaged and now deeply embedded within the institution of war, consideration of alternatives to violence is only tokenistically contemplated, if at all (with occasional exceptions by those whose conscience survived the childhood violence they suffered). If you like, you can read a little more about how childhood violence creates insane individuals who perpetuate violence and war in articles such as ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ but there is plenty more on that website.

In essence, if most human beings were not so psychologically damaged by the violence inflicted on them during childhood (leaving them unconsciously terrified, self-hating and powerless), there would be a mass uprising against the barbarity of war: the large-scale industrial slaughter of people like you.

So what are we to do?

Well, if we consider war as an outcome not of political and economic differences manifesting as military violence but, fundamentally, as an outcome of psychological dysfunctionality preventing intelligent resolution of conflict, then our strategy for ending war can acquire a sophistication it must otherwise lack. Put simply, by understanding the psychological roots of violence we can develop and implement a strategy that intelligently addresses these, both in the short and medium terms.

So how do we tackle, strategically, the interrelated set of problems that constitute the institution of war?

If your primary interest is focusing on war itself, check out the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel which simply illustrates the 12-point strategic framework necessary to conduct an effective nonviolent campaign and then consider the basic list of 35 strategic goals necessary to end war. Choose one or a few goals appropriate to your circumstances and conduct a strategically-oriented nonviolent campaign, as explained on the same website, to achieve those goals.

If you are concerned that you need some form of military defense against those who might attack your country, it is actually strategically superior to use a strategy of nonviolent defense, which is explained in detail in The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach and presented more simply in Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. In fact, this strategic framework can be used to plan and implement a nonviolent strategy to defend against a foreign invading power or a political/military coup, to liberate your country from a dictatorship or a foreign occupation, or to defeat a genocidal assault.

As an aside, if your preferred focus is the climate catastrophe, some other assault on the biosphere or a social justice campaign of any kind, the Nonviolent Strategy website will assist you to develop a comprehensive and focused strategy.

When conducting any campaign, keep in mind a clear understanding of ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’ and remember the distinction between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’. By keeping these points in mind, your campaign (including each of your tactics) will be focused for strategic impact.

If your interest in ending war is more focused on undermining it at its source, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ and nisteling, whenever appropriate, to children too. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

This will mean that any children in your life are supported, at least by you, to become self-loving and powerful individuals who are immune to the seductions and indoctrination of those who advocate and make war while developing the capacity to pursue life-enhancing behavioral options when dealing with conflict.

If parenting children in this manner feels beyond you, consider allowing yourself the time to heal from the violence that you have suffered throughout your life. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

And don’t forget: while depending on our psychological dysfunctionality to accept, finance and conduct war as a means of dealing with conflict, at its most mundane level, war is a conflict over resources, particularly fossil fuels, strategic minerals and fresh water, and it is our consumption of these, in all of those products (such as meat and cars) and services (like airline flights) that we buy, that fuels the wars conducted in our name while also destroying the biosphere in various other ways. (If you want to understand the psychological origin of this obsession with material goods, see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.) In short, there is no point deluding ourselves that we can subvert this violent world order without substantially reducing our consumption on all fronts.

So another way you can have strategic impact in undermining the institution of war (and capitalism), while slowing destruction of the biosphere, is to join those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. The Flame Tree Project outlines a simple plan for people to progressively reduce their consumption, by at least 80%, involving both energy and resources of every kind – water, household energy, transport fuels, metals, meat, paper and plastic – while dramatically expanding their individual and community self-reliance in 16 areas.

You might also be interested in signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ where the names of many people who are working to end war (and other violence) are already listed.

Ending war is not impossible. Far from it, in fact. But it is going to take a phenomenal amount of intelligent strategic effort, courage and commitment.

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

The US-waged war in Viet Nam was not an aberration, but one of hundreds of examples in a long pattern of brutal exploitation. A quick review of the empirical record reveals close to 600 overt military interventions by the US into dozens of countries since 1798, almost 400 since the end of World War II alone, and thousands of covert interventions since 1947. This history overwhelms any rhetoric about the United States as a beacon of freedom and democracy, committed to promoting domestic and global equal justice under law. These interventions have assured de facto subsidies for US American interests, regulated global markets on our terms, and provided us with access to cheap or free labor and to raw materials. Millions of people around the globe have been murdered with virtual impunity as a result of our interventions in a pattern that illustrates what Noam Chomsky calls the “Fifth Freedom”-the freedom to rob and exploit. This freedom is ultimately protected with use of force when a country or movement seeks to protect or advance the domestic needs and desires of its members or citizens for political freedom or economic wellbeing.

This book provides an invaluable tool for today’s activists, however they may be similarly shocked into wakefulness- whether by war, economic dispossession, or loss of the freedom to dissent.

Reviews

This gripping and carefully documented record of the US wars in Indochina, interlaced with vivid and tragic personal experiences,  provides a unique and invaluable perspective on some of the most awful crimes of the postwar years. NOAM CHOMSKY – Professor Emeritus MIT, Linguist, Public Intellectual – Author of Dozens of Books on U.S. Foreign Policy.

S. Brian Willson has a way of synthesizing information that gets right to the heart of the matter, deepening our understanding of the culturally embedded myths that perpetuate our nation’s violent behavior. By providing the historical context for our involvement in Viet Nam, Willson pulls back a curtain on U.S. imperialism that cannot easily be closed again. MARTIN SHEEN – Actor & Activist

Our country badly needs more truth telling. Brian Willson tells the truth about the Vietnam War and about the sordid US history of lies, war and empire: and he writes as one who courageously put his body on the line for these truths. A MUST READ for all of us. The alternative is ever more dangerous perpetual wars. DANIEL ELLSBERG – Revealed: The Pentagon Papers – Author of: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of A Nuclear War Planner and Many Other Books

Few people really understood the terror imposed upon innocent people by the US policies and Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Central America.  Brian Willson, a lawyer and a scholar did and does. Not only has he given his body for his beliefs but he has penned an extremely important book complete with insights and history that make it imperative reading for every American citizen. I highly recommend it. HELEN CALDICOTT – Pediatrician, Long-time Anti-Nuclear Activist and Author of Many Anti-Nuclear Books

Click here to order.

Since the end of Israel’s 2014 military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, which lasted 51 days, the besieged coastal territory has been the scene of endless armed incursions. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, injured or maimed when a truce is supposed to be in place. Endless efforts mediated by regional countries have tried to put pressure on Israel and the Palestinian resistance factions to abide by the terms of the truce to provide some calm in one of the most volatile regions in the world.

However, the atmosphere enveloping the 2 million people in Gaza this week is similar to that which existed just before the outbreak of Israel’s 2012 and 2014 offensives. Israel decided to violate the terms of the Egyptian-brokered deal and send in an undercover unit to assassinate a leading Hamas commander. The surprise attack was discovered and thwarted by resistance fighters, several of whom were killed when the Israeli forces called in air support to cover their withdrawal. A senior Israeli officer was also killed, and one was wounded. It is suspected that the Israelis were attempting to provoke the resistance and show that Israel has the upper hand. Usama Hamdan, a Hamas official living in exile, said that the operation was to show that the Israeli army is capable of hitting at any time. Along with other Palestinian factions, he insisted, Hamas will not sit idly by.

“We said before that we will meet calm with calm, and fire with fire,” he added.

What’s more, according to some analysts, Israel wanted to strike a blow against Hamas by killing important military commanders and destroying facilities and sites. This was important for the Israelis before agreeing to any deal that might see the lifting of the 12-year siege on Gaza and a prisoner swap releasing Palestinian political prisoners from Israel’s jails in exchange for soldiers captured in 2014, alive or dead.

The Palestinians have thus witnessed the most dangerous military escalation in over 4 years. They are bracing themselves for more, and a possible major offensive. Over forty Israeli air strikes have been carried out so far across the enclave, destroying several residential buildings and the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV facility, as well as Al-Amal Hotel. It’s clear that Israel has managed to gather a bank of targets over the years through its non-stop surveillance.

The response of the resistance factions was quick to come, with more than 250 home-made projectiles fired from Gaza into Israel in retaliation for the killing of fighters and civilians. Israel’s “Iron Dome System” was in action, intercepting the “rockets” before they could land.

Officers have called repeatedly in recent years for the restoration of the Israel Defence Forces’ “deterrence power”, but the tone has become harsher this time following the retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza. This coincided with the airing of footage showing a military vehicle targeted by an anti-tank missile across the border east of Gaza, in which the high ranking Israeli officer was killed and another injured. This was a blow to the IDF’s prestige, as scores of its soldiers were within range. Had the resistance really wanted to seek revenge it would have been a rare opportunity to do so, but it was clearly a message that the Palestinians can also start and end the game while dictating terms.

At the time of writing, at least three Palestinian civilians have been killed and scores injured by the Israeli air strikes and artillery bombardment, not to mention the panic caused among the population, especially the children. There are no fortified bunkers in Gaza in which they can seek shelter, and it is one of the most densely populated areas in the world; not for nothing is it known as the world’s largest open air prison. The Palestinians have no warplanes, tanks, naval gunships or heavy artillery to defend themselves against Israel’s army, navy and air force equipped with the latest technology and weapons.

As the military situation continuous to deteriorate, a joint operations room has been formed by the resistance groups to coordinate their response. Threats and warnings have been made by both sides. Israel can spread terror, kill on a massive scale and cause untold destruction, but cannot guarantee that it can destroy the spirit in the “capital of resistance“; the Palestinians in Gaza, meanwhile, have nothing to lose.

Palestinians carry the dead body of Hussein Fathi al-Raqab (28), who was killed by Israeli forces in “Great March of Return” demonstrations, Gaza on 6 October, 2018 [Ashraf Amra /Anadolu Agency] 

Conditions are unbearable, which explains why young, unarmed people have been taking part in the Great March of Return protests along the nominal Gaza-Israel border for 33 weeks in a row since 31 March when Palestinians marked Land Day. Over 190 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli snipers, including journalist, paramedics and even food and drink vendors. The protestors are armed with slingshots and incendiary kites and balloons. The protests were planned following US President Donald Trump’s move in December last year to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. They are a real headache for Israel due to them becoming a war of attrition which is extremely costly. The Israeli government is willing to reach agreement with Hamas on its own terms and conditions, but this is rejected by the movement’s political and armed wings and the other resistance factions. This explains Israel’s frustration, hence the latest targeted assassination operation and bombardment of Gaza.

Hamas’s main rival, Fatah, has condemned the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. A Fatah spokesman in the territory, Atef Abu Saif, described them as “barbaric” and a continuation of Israel’s crimes. Abu Saif stressed that such offensives will not break the will of the Palestinian people. As the de facto government in Gaza, Hamas has been at loggerheads with the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Ramallah for the past 12 years. Abu Saif’s statement, though, is evidence that the Palestinians are united in the face of Israel’s indiscriminate attacks; there is no room for recriminations, and all differences are put aside.

What is important now is to protect the internal front and be careful of rumours that are intended to weaken the morale of the people in Gaza. The Strip has been used by Israel for years as a “laboratory” to field test new ammunition and weapons on unarmed civilians and their infrastructure. Gaza’s Palestinian residents don’t deserve this; they are tired of urging the international community and the UN to intervene and put an end to their suffering, humiliation, fear and isolation. Action is needed now to prevent another major Israeli offensive that we are all expecting.

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Featured image: Smoke billows rises following Israeli air strikes targeting Gaza City on 13 November, 2018. [Ashraf Amra/Apaimages]

In case you missed it, US efforts to prolong the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis in Yemen continue to succeed spectacularly. US military support enables the Saudi coalition to continue to bomb markets, docks, mosques, hospitals, school buses, weddings and funerals, and other civilian targets with impunity. The Saudis’ Yemeni enemy, the Houthi rebels, have no effective air defenses. On March 26, 2015, with the blessing and tactical support of the Obama administration, Saudi Arabia and its allies launched an illegal, genocidal, aggressive war on Houthi-controlled Yemen. Yemen was – and is – in the midst of a civil war in which the long-oppressed Houthis overthrew the “legitimate” government that the US and others had imposed on Yemen. Since March 2015, the US and the Saudi coalition have subjected Yemen to daily war crimes, not only killing civilians but destroying non-military targets of all sorts, causing a form of biological warfare with a cholera plague, as well as massive famine for more than half the country’s 25 million people. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) head said on September 27: “Yemen is a disaster and I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel right now.” Yemen was not a significant issue in the American election, even as the Trump administration sanctioned and supported military escalation that heightened the suffering of millions (and that has already killed tens of thousands). 

At the US State Department, on November 7, the press briefing focused on the ideological basis for punishing Iran for continuing to abide by the nuclear agreement that the US pulled out of (still joined by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China). The US blames Iran for Yemen, too, with little persuasive or significant evidence to support the propaganda bias. Eventually in the briefing there was a question about Yemen, and the exchange with State Department spokesman Robert Palladino went like this (edited, with emphasis added):

QUESTION: Yemen?

MR PALLADINO: Yemen? Let’s go to Yemen in the back, please.

QUESTION: The fighting around Hodedah [the Yemeni port critical to supplying food to the region’s poorest country that was a food importer before being attacked] seems to be picking up with – and UNICEF and MSF and all these aid groups who are saying children are at risk at these hospitals. And I wonder what’s happened to the U.S. call for a ceasefire.

MR PALLADINO: The – well, I would start by saying we closely are following the developments that are taking place in Hodedah. As the Secretary said, we’ve been urging all parties to come to the table, and to recognize that there’s no military victory that can be achieved in Yemen. And we continue to call for a cessation of hostilities and for all parties to support United Nations Special Envoy Martin Griffiths in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict.

QUESTION: So have there been any phone calls?…

MR PALLADINO: We are in daily contact with the special envoy….

QUESTION: Would you call on the Saudi coalition to halt this offensive that they seem to now be bearing down on in Hodedah?

MR PALLADINO: We’ve called for a cessation of hostilities…. Please, next question….

QUESTION: Have you had a miscommunication then, with the Saud-led coalition, that they’re now beginning this offensive?

MR PALLADINO: – our assessment remains the same….

QUESTION: – to put a finer point on that, I mean, did the coalition – the Saudi coalition that the U.S. supports coordinate with or tell you in advance that they were going to increase fighting around Hudaydah or did they just ignore the Secretary’s call?

MR PALLADINO: We’ve been clear with Saudi, Emirati, and Yemeni [government-in-exile] officials at every level that the destruction of critical infrastructure or destruction of the delivery of vital (inaudible) aid and commercial goods is unacceptable, and we are in close contact with our partners.

QUESTION: Just to follow up on that, because you’re not really answering the question, I mean, the Secretary of State issued a very explicit statement with the Secretary of Defense saying it was time for this to end and it’s not ending. Do you see that as a slap in the face, and what are you going to do about it?

MR PALLADINO: … We continue to call for a cessation of hostilities. That is a cessation of hostilities and vigorous resumption of a political track. That is the way forward. That’s how we are going to ease this humanitarian crisis. The United States’ message remains we need to end this conflict and replace this conflict with compromise, and that’s all I have on this topic for today.

Within the context of pervasive American deceit regarding Yemen, spokesman Palladino probably allows for some technical truths to appear. Yes, after the US called for a ceasefire, the Saudis escalated their bombing of humanitarian targets. The Saudis may or may not have consulted with the US, but the Trump administration has no stomach for criticizing this bloodshed any more than it actively objects to the gutting of Jamal Khashoggi.

According to Palladino, “the destruction of critical infrastructure or destruction of the delivery of vital (inaudible) aid and commercial goods is unacceptable,” which seems to be a statement of law and decency acceptable to any humane observer. Palladino implies the lie that these crimes against humanity are unacceptable to the US, but he doesn’t actually say that. Clearly, having spent years enabling the Saudis in committing war crimes, the US finds the destruction of Yemen quite acceptable. That’s what Palladino really means when he says the US is “closely following the developments,” in the hope that Yemeni carnage can somehow persuade the Iranians to trust us.

OK, what about that US call for a ceasefire, why isn’t that working?

On October 31, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke about Yemen at the US Institute of Peace with presumably unconscious irony. Mattis said, self-contradictorily and revealingly:

We’ve got to move toward a peace effort here, and you can’t say we’re going to do it sometime in the future. We need to be doing this in the next 30 days. We’ve admired this problem for long enough down there. 

Later the same day, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement:

The time is now for the cessation of hostilities…. Substantive consultations under the UN Special Envoy must commence this November in a third country…. It is time to end this conflict, replace conflict with compromise, and allow the Yemeni people to heal through peace and reconstruction.

There was nary a tweet from the president in all this. Can one presume anything from that? In September, Pompeo certified to Congress, over the objections of staff, that the Saudis and their allies were doing their darnedest to reduce civilian casualties and the US should continue to support them. This was before the Saudi escalation on Hodedah. There is no credible evidence anywhere that the US is serious about doing anything to end the murder of Yemenis. Pompeo proposed that the ceasefire start with the Houthis ending their not very effective rocket attacks on Saudi Arabia. That’s the way the US deals with aggressive war in the 21st century: support the aggressor and demand that the victim stop resisting. And the Trump administration is even considering labeling the Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization, presumably following a logic that would have made the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto resistance into terrorists. Bad faith has no limits.

Both Mattis and Pompeo tried to appear as if they were taking immediate action, while in the next breath putting off any action for the near future. The supposed ceasefire has now receded toward 2019 as the UN’s Yemen envoy bows to the reality of US inaction and Saudi escalation.

If the US were actually serious about peace and humanitarian aid for Yemen, the US could exercise leadership in the UN Security Council to force a peace process. The US could unilaterally take immediate and forceful actions to stop the war. Pompeo could rescind the bad joke of certifying the Saudis as conscientious and responsible. That might not be enough, so Mattis could disengage the US military from the genocidal bombing campaign. Without US support – including cluster bombs and other ordnance – the Saudi aggression would falter if not fail. Rather than act rationally, Pompeo and Mattis chose to posture and preen in a charade of peace-loving rhetoric.

Well, their hollow performance was on Halloween after all, and that was perhaps the point. This was high-level US dishonesty, a shabby trick-or-treat deceit. It’s all trick for Yemen and endless treats for the Saudis. And for its lack of trouble, the US gets more and more blood on its hands.

Late on Friday, November 9, the US and Saudis announced that – at some unstated future time – the US will stop refueling Saudi bombers attacking Yemen. This is a cynical charade that will do nothing to reduce the bloodbath in Yemen, but may fool the gullible in the US that protest works.

First of all, with US help, the Saudis have developed their own mid-air refueling capability. The cessation of US refueling will have zero impact on Saudi war-making capacity.

The US will continue to support the Saudi targeting program. The US will continue to provide the Saudis with military intelligence. The US will continue to supply the Saudis with weapons and ordnance, including cluster bombs (designed to kill people and most effective against civilians). The US will continue to support the Saudi naval blockade, a primary cause of hunger and famine in Yemen (as intended). None of these or other elements of US participation in this illegal, genocidal war are addressed in Defense Secretary Mattis’s expertly opaque and misleading statement:

The U.S. and the coalition are planning to collaborate on building up legitimate Yemeni forces to defend the Yemeni people, secure their country’s borders, and contribute to counter al-Qaida and ISIS efforts in Yemen and the region.

The US and the coalition are the main attackers of most of the Yemeni people. The best defense for the Yemeni people is for the attackers to stop attacking, since the Yemenis remain well within their own borders. The only part of Yemen under actual Yemeni control is the northwest, where the native Houthis have governed since 2014. Southeastern Yemen is titularly under the control of the “legitimate” Yemeni government (based in Riyadh), but is effectively under a military dictatorship run by the United Arab Emirates. Eastern Yemen, which is thinly populated, is under fragmentary control of multiple forces, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, whose fortunes have been greatly enhanced by the US-Saudi obsession with preventing the Houthis from controlling their own country.

Mattis is trying to put rouge on a monster and call it beautiful. US policy in Yemen continues to be based on profound lies with no moral justification. Oh look, Mattis seems to say, we’re washing our hands of refueling bombers committing war crimes. Even in its narrow truth, this does nothing to support life or peace, and US hands remain drenched in blood.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Reader Supported News.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Featured image is from The Wire