Global Research

Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front (October 2, 2018)

China’s growth rate remains impressive, even if on the decline. The country’s continuing economic gains owe much to the Chinese state’s (1) still considerable ability to direct the activity of critical economic enterprises and sectors such as finance, (2) commitment to policies of economic expansion, and (3) flexibility in economic strategy. It appears that China’s leaders view their recently adopted One Belt, One Road Initiative as key to the country’s future economic vitality. However, there are reasons to believe that this strategy is seriously flawed, with working people, including in China, destined to pay a high price for its shortcomings.

Chinese growth trends downward

China grew rapidly over the decades of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s with production and investment increasingly powered by the country’s growing integration into regional cross-border production networks. By 2002 China had become the world’s biggest recipient of foreign direct investment and by 2009 it had overtaken Germany to become the world’s biggest exporter. Not surprisingly, the Great Recession and the decline in world trade that followed represented a major challenge to the county’s export-oriented growth strategy.

The government’s response was to counter the effects of declining external demand with a major investment program financed by massive money creation and low interest rates. Investment as a share of GDP rose to an all-time high of 48 percent in December 2011 and remains at over 44 percent of GDP.

But, despite the government’s efforts, growth steadily declined, from 10.6% in 2010 to 6.7% in 2016, before registering an increase of 6.9% in 2017. See the chart below. Current predictions are for a further decline in 2018.

Beginning in 2012, the Chinese government began promoting the idea of a “new normal”—centered around a target rate of growth of 6.5%. The government claimed that the benefits of this new normal growth rate would include greater stability and a more domestically-oriented growth process that would benefit Chinese workers.

However, in contrast to its rhetoric, the state continued to pursue a high grow rate by promoting a massive state-supported construction boom tied to a policy of expanded urbanization. New roads, railways, airports, shopping centers, and apartment complexes were built.

As might be expected, such a big construction push has left the country with excess facilities and infrastructure, highlighted by a growing number of ghost towns.  As the South China Morning Post describes:

Six skyscrapers overlooking a huge, man-made lake once seemed like a dazzling illustration of a city’s ambition, the transformation of desert on the edge of Ordos in Inner Mongolia into a gleaming residential and commercial complex to help secure its future prosperity.

At noon on a cold winter’s day the reality seemed rather different.

Only a handful of people could be seen entering or exiting the buildings, with hardly a trace of activity in the 42-storey skyscrapers.

The complex opened five years ago, but just three of its buildings have been sold to the city government and another is occupied by its developer, a bank and an energy company. The remaining two are empty–gates blocked and dust piled on the ground.

Ordos, however, was just one project in China’s rush to urbanize. The nation used more cement in the three years from 2011 to 2013 than the United States used in the entire 20th century. . . .

Other mostly empty ghost towns can be found across China, including the Yujiapu financial district in Tianjin, the Chenggong district in Kunming in Yunnan and Yingkou in Liaoning province.

This building boom was financed by a rapid increase in debt, creating repayment concerns. Corporate debt in particular soared, as shown below, but local government and household debt also grew substantially.

The boom also caused several industries to dramatically increase their scale of production, creating serious overcapacity problems. As the researcher Xin Zhang points out:

Over the past decade, scholars and government officials have held a stable consensus that “nine traditional industries” in China are most severely exposed to the excess capacity problem: steel, cement, plate glass, electrolytic aluminium, coal, ship-building, solar energy, wind energy and petrochemical. All of these nine sectors are related to energy, infrastructural construction and real estate development, reflecting the nature of a heavily investment-driven economy for China.

Not surprisingly, this situation has also led to a significant decline in economy-wide rates of return. According to Xin Zhang:

despite strong overall growth performance, the capital return rate of the Chinese economy has started to be on a sharp decline recently. Although the results vary by different estimation methods, research in and outside China points out a recent downward trend. For example, two economists show that all through the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, the capital return rate of the Chinese economy had been relatively stable at about 0.22, much higher than the U.S. counterpart. However, since the mid-1990s, the capital return rate experienced more ups and downs, until the dramatic drop to about 0.14 in 2013. Since then, the return to capital within Chinese economy has decreased even further, creating the phenomenon of a “capital glut”.

In other words, it was becoming increasingly unlikely that the Chinese state could stabilize growth pursuing its existing strategy. In fact, it appears that many wealthy Chinese have decided that their best play is to move their money out of the country. A China Economic Review article highlights this development:

Since 2015, the specter of capital flight has been haunting the Chinese economy. In that year, faced with the threat of a currency devaluation and an aggressive anti-corruption campaign, investors and savers began moving their wealth out of China. The outflow was so large that the central bank was forced to spend more than $1 trillion of its foreign exchange reserves to defend the exchange rate.

The Chinese government was eventually able to dam up the flow of capital out of its borders by imposing strict capital controls, and China’s balance of payments, exchange rate and foreign currency reserves have all stabilized. But even the largest dam cannot stop the rain; it can only keep water from flowing further downstream. There are now several signs that the conditions that originally led to the first massive wave of capital flight have returned. The strength of China’s capital controls might soon be put to the test.

Chinese leaders were not blind to the mounting economic difficulties. Limits to domestic construction were apparent, as was the danger that unused buildings and factories coupled with excess capacity in key industries could easily trigger widespread defaults on the part of borrowers and threaten the stability of the financial sector. Growing labor activism on the part of workers struggling with low salaries and dangerous working conditions added to their concern.

However, despite earlier voiced support for the notion of a “new normal” growth tied to slower but more worker-friendly and domestically-oriented economic activity, the party leadership appears to have chosen a new strategy, one that seeks to maintain the existing growth process by expanding it beyond China’s national borders: its One Belt and One Road Initiative.

The One Belt, One Road Initiative

Xi Jinping was elected President by the National People’s Congress in 2013. And soon after his election, he announced his support for perhaps the world’s largest economic project, the One Belt, One Road Initiative (BRI). However, it was not until 2015, after consultations between various commissions and Ministries, that an action plan was published and the state aggressively moved forward with the initiative.

The initial aim of the BRI was to link China with 70 other countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. There are two parts to the initial BRI vision: The “Belt”, which seeks to recreate the old Silk Road land trade route, and the “Road,” which is not actually a road, but a series of ports creating a sea-based trade route spanning several oceans. The initiative was to be given form through a number of separate but linked investments in large-scale gas and oil pipelines, roads, railroads, and ports as well as connecting “economic corridors.” Although there is no official BRI map, the following provides an illustration of its proposed territorial reach.

One reason that there is yet no official BRI map is that the initiative has continued to evolve. In addition to infrastructure it now includes efforts at “financial integration,” “cooperation in science and technology,”, “cultural and academic exchanges,” and the establishment of trade “cooperation mechanisms.”

Moreover, its geographic focus has also expanded. For example, in September 2018, Venezuela announced that the country “will now join China’s ambitious New Silk Road commercial plan which is allegedly worth U.S. $900 billion.” Venezuela follows Uruguay, which was the first South American country to receive BRI funds.

Xi’s initiative did not come out of the blue. As noted above, Chinese economic growth had become ever more reliant on foreign investment and exports. And, in support of the process, the Chinese government had used its own foreign investment and loans to secure markets and the raw materials needed to support its export activity. In fact, Chinese official aid to developing countries in 2010 and 2011 surpassed the value of all World Bank loans to these countries. China’s leading role in the creation of the BRICs New Development Bank, Asia Infrastructural Investment Bank and the proposed Shanghai Cooperation Organization Bank demonstrates the importance Chinese leaders place on having a more active role in shaping regional and international economic activity.

But, the BRI, if one is to take Chinese state pronouncements at their word, appears to have the highest priority of all these efforts and in fact serves as the “umbrella project” for all of China’s growing external initiatives. In brief, the BRI appears to represent nothing less than an attempt to solve China’s problems of overcapacity and surplus capital, declining trade opportunities, growing debt, and falling rates of profit through a geographic expansion of China’s economic activity and processes.

Sadly this effort to sustain the basic core of the existing Chinese growth model is far from worker friendly. The same year that the BRI action plan was published, the Chinese government began a massive crackdown on labor activism. For example, in 2015 the government launched an unprecedented crackdown on several worker-centers operating in the southern part of the country, placing a number of its worker-activists in detention centers. This move coincided with renewed repression of the work of worker-friendly journalists and activist lawyers. The Financial Times noted that these actions may well represent “the harshest crackdown against organized labor by the Chinese authorities in two decades.”

And attacks against workers and those who support them continue. A case in point: in August of this year, police in riot gear broke into a house in Huizhou occupied by recent graduates from some of China’s top universities who had come to the city to support worker organizing efforts. Some 50 people were detained; 14 remain in custody or under house arrest.A flawed strategy

To achieve its aims, the BRI has largely involved the promotion of projects that mandate the use of Chinese enterprises and workers, are financed by loans that host countries must repay, and either by necessity or design lead to direct Chinese ownership of strategic infrastructure. For example, the Center for Strategic Studies recently calculated that approximately 90% of Belt and Road projects are being built by Chinese companies.

While BRI investments might temporarily help sustain key Chinese industries suffering from overcapacity, absorb surplus capital, and boost enterprise profit margins, they are unlikely to serve as a permanent fix for China’s growing economic challenges; they will only push off the day of reckoning.

One reason for this negative view is that in the rush to generate projects, many are not financially viable. Andreea Brinza, writing in Foreign Policy, illustrates this problem with an examination of European railway projects:

If one image has come to define the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s ambitious, amorphous project of overseas investment, it’s the railway. Every few months or so, the media praises a new line that will supposedly connect a Chinese city with a European capital. Today it’s Budapest. Yesterday it was London. They are the newest additions to China’s iron network of transcontinental railway routes spanning Eurasia. But the vast majority of these routes are economically pointless, unlikely to operate at a profit, and driven far more by political need than market demand. . . .

Chongqing-Duisburg, Yiwu-London, Yiwu-Madrid, Zhengzhou-Hamburg, Suzhou-Warsaw, and Xi’an-Budapest are among the more than 40 routes that now connect China with Europe. Yet out of all these, only Chongqing-Duisburg, connecting China with Germany, was created out of a genuine market need. The other routes are political creations by Beijing to nourish its relations with European states like Poland, Hungary, and Britain.

The Chongqing-Duisburg route has been described as a benchmark for the “Belt,” the part of the project that crosses Eurasia by land. (The “Road” is a series of nominally linked ports with little coherence.) But paradoxically enough, the Chongqing-Duisburg route was created before Chinese President Xi Jinping announced what has become his flagship project, then “One Belt, One Road” and now the BRI. It was an existing route reused and redeveloped by Hewlett-Packard and launched in 2011 to halve the time it took for the computing firm’s laptops to reach Europe from China by sea. . . .

Unlike the HP route, in which trains arrived in Europe full of laptops and other gadgets, the containers on the new routes come to Europe full of low-tech Chinese products—but they leave empty, as there’s little worth transporting by rail that Chinese consumers want. With only half the route effectively being used, the whole trip often loses money. For Chinese companies that export toys, home products, or decorations, the maritime route is far more profitable, because it comes at half the price tag even though it’s slower.

The Europe-China railroads are unproductive not only because of the transportation price, as each container needs to be insulated to withstand huge temperature differences, but also because Russia has imposed a ban on both the import and the transport of European food through its territory. Food is one of the product categories that can actually turn a profit on a Europe-China land run—without it, filling China-bound containers isn’t an easy job. For example, it took more than three months to refill and resend to China a train that came to London from Yiwu, although the route was heavily promoted by both a British government desperate for post-Brexit trade and a Chinese one determined to talk up the BRI.

Today, most of the BRI’s rail routes function only thanks to Chinese government subsidies. The average subsidy per trip for a 20-foot container is between $3,500 and $4,000, depending on the local government. For example, Chinese cities like Wuhan and Zhengzhou offer almost $30 million in subsidies every year to cargo companies. Thanks to this financial assistance, Chinese and Western companies can pay a more affordable price per container. Without subsidies, it would cost around $9,000 to send a 20-foot container by railway, compared with $5,000 after subsidies. Although the Chinese government is losing money on each trip, it plans to increase the yearly number of trips from around 1,900 in 2016 to 5,000 cargo trains in 2020.

Another reason to doubt the viability of the BRI is that a growing number of countries are becoming reluctant to participate because it means that they will have to borrow funds for projects that may or may not benefit the country and/or generate the foreign exchange necessary to repay the loans. As a result, the actual value of projects is far less than reported in the media. Thomas S. Eder and Jacob Mardell make this point in their discussion of BRI activities with 16 Central and Eastern European countries (the 16+1):

Numbers on Chinese investment connected to the Belt and Road Initiative tend to be inflated and misleading. Only a fraction of the reported sums is connected to actual infrastructure projects on the ground. And most of the projects that are underway are financed by Chinese loans, exposing debt-ridden governments to additional risks. . . .

Depending on the source, BRI is called either a 900 billion USD or an up to 8 trillion USD global initiative. Yet only a fraction of the lower number is backed up by actual projects on the ground. BRI investments in 16+1 countries are similarly plagued by confusion over figures and a tendency towards inflation.

Media reports often arrive at their figures for the sum of “deals announced” by collating planned projects based on vague Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) and expressions of interest by Chinese companies. Many parties share an interest to push Belt and Road-related figures upwards: local officials in BRI target countries like to impress constituencies, journalists like to capture readers, and Chinese officials are keen to cultivate the hype surrounding BRI.

The Banja Luka–Mlinište Highway in Bosnia Herzegovina, for example, is strongly associated with 16+1 investment. Sinohydro signed a preliminary agreement on implementing the project in 2014, for 1.4 billion USD, and this figure was then widely reported in English-language media. Four years later, though, final approval for an Export-Import Bank loan financing the highway section was still pending. This highway is actually one of the projects emerging in the region that we have fairly good information on, but the preliminary nature of the agreement is not reflected in media reports on the project.

Also in 2014, China Huadian signed an agreement on the construction of a 500MW power station in Romania, reportedly for 1 billion USD. Talks faltered, appeared to resume in 2017, and there has been no progress reported since. It is unclear whether and when this project will materialize, but it is the sort of “deal” counted by those totting up the value of Chinese investment in 16+1 countries. An even larger figure–1.3 billion–was reported in connection with Kolubara B, though it was later claimed that a cooperation agreement with Italian company Edison had already been signed, three years prior to the expression of interest by Sinomach.

Another important point is that Chinese “investment” in the region–and this very clearly emerges from the MERICS database–often refers to concessional loans from Chinese policy banks. This is financing that needs to be paid back, with interest, whether the project delivers commensurate economic benefits or not.

As with Belt and Road projects elsewhere in the world, loans made by Beijing to CEE countries create potential for financial instability. Smaller countries, which might lack the institutional capacity to assess agreements (such as risks associated with currency fluctuation), are particularly vulnerable.

The Bar-Boljare motorway in Montenegro illustrates this point. It is being built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) with an 809 million EUR loan from Exim Bank. The IMF claims that, without construction of the highway, Montenegro’s debt would have declined to 59% of GDP, rather than rising to 78% of GDP in 2019. It warns that continued construction of the highway “would again endanger debt sustainability.”

The motorway is typical of many BRI projects in that it is being built by a Chinese state-owned company, using mostly Chinese workers and materials, and with a loan that the Montenegrin government must pay back, but which a Chinese policy bank will earn interest on. On top of this, Chinese contractors working on the highway are exempt from paying VAT or customs duties on imported materials.

Because of these investment requirements, many countries are either canceling or scaling back their BRI projects. The South China Morning Post recently reportedthat the Malaysian government decided to:

Cancel two China-financed mega projects in the country, the US$20 billion East Coast Rail Link and two gas pipeline projects worth US$2.3 billion. Malaysian Prime Minister said his country could not afford those projects and they were not needed at the moment. . . .

Indeed, Mahathir’s decision is just the latest setback for the plan, as politicians and economists in an increasing number of countries that once courted Chinese investments have now publicly expressed fears that some of the projects are too costly and would saddle them with too much debt.

Myanmar is, as Reuters reports, one of those countries:

Myanmar has scaled back plans for a Chinese-backed port on its western coast, sharply reducing the cost of the project after concerns it could leave the Southeast Asian nation heavily indebted, a top government official and an advisor told Reuters.

The initial $7.3 billion price tag on the Kyauk Pyu deepwater port, on the western tip of Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine state, set off alarm bells due to reports of troubled Chinese-backed projects in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, the official and the advisor said.

Deputy Finance Minister Set Aung, who was appointed to lead project negotiations in May, told Reuters the “project size has been tremendously scaled down”.

The revised cost would be “around $1.3 billion, something that’s much more plausible for Myanmar’s use”, said Sean Turnell, economic advisor to Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

A third reason for doubting the viability of the BRI to solve Chinese economic problems is the building political blowback from China’s growing ownership position of key infrastructure that is either the result of, or built into, the terms of its BRI investment activity. An example of the former outcome: the Sri Lankan government was forced to hand over the strategic port of Hambantota to China on a 99-year lease after it could not repay its more than $8 billion in loans from Chinese firms.

Unfortunately, Africa offers many examples of both outcomes, as described in a policy brief survey of China-Africa BRI activities:

In BRI projects, Chinese SOEs overseas are moving away from ‘turnkey’ engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) projects, towards longer term Chinese participation as managers and stakeholders in running projects. China Merchants Holding, which constructed the new multipurpose port and industrial zone complex in Djibouti, is also a stakeholder and will be jointly managing the zone, in a consortium with Djiboutian port authorities, for ten years. Likewise, SOE contractors for new standard gauge railway projects in Ethiopia and Kenya will also be tasked with railway maintenance and operations for five to ten years after construction is completed. . . .

Beyond transportation, the BRI is spurring expansion of digital infrastructure through an “information silk road”. This is an extension of the ‘going out’ of China’s telecommunications companies, including private mobile giants Huawei and ZTE, who have constructed a number of telecommunications infrastructure projects in Africa, but also the expansion of large SOEs such as China Telecoms. China Telecoms has established a new data center in Djibouti that will connect it to the company’s other regional hubs in Asia, Europe, and to China, and potentially facilitate the development of submarine fibre cable networks in East Africa. . . .

Countries linked to the BRI, including Morocco, Egypt, and Ethiopia, have also been singled out [as] ‘industrial cooperation demonstration and pioneering countries’ and ‘priority partners for production capacity cooperation countries’; these countries have seen a rapid expansion of Chinese-built industrial zones, presaging not only greater trade but also industrial investment from China. . . .

However, the rapid expansion in infrastructure credit that the BRI offers also brings significant risks. Many of these large infrastructure projects are supported through debt -based finance, raising questions over African economies’ rising debt levels and its sustainability. For resource-rich economies, low commodity values have strained government revenues and precipitated exchange rate crises—both of which constrain a government’s ability to repay external borrowing.

In Tanzania, the BRI-associated Bagamoyo Deepwater Port was suspended by the government in 2016 due to lack of funds. The port was originally a joint investment between Tanzanian and Chinese partners China Merchants Holding, which would construct the port and road infrastructure, along with a special economic zone. While project construction has continued, funding constraints have meant that the government has had to forego its equity stake. This represents a case where African governments may risk losing ownership of projects, as well as the long-term revenues they bring.

Adding to political tensions is the fact that many BRI projects “displace or disrupt existing communities or sensitive ecological areas.” It is no wonder that China has seen a rapid growth in the number of private security companies that serve Chinese companies participating in BRI projects. In the words of the Asia Times, these firms are:

Described as China’s ‘Private Army.’ Fueled by growing demand from domestic companies involved in the multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, independent security groups are expanding in the country.

In 2013, there were 4,000-registered firms, employing more than 4.3 million personnel. By 2017, the figure had jumped to 5,000 with staff numbers hovering around the five-million mark.

What lies ahead?

The reasons highlighted above make it highly unlikely that the BRI will significantly improve Chinese long-term economic prospects. Thus, it seems likely that Chinese growth will continue to decline, leading to new internal tensions as the government’s response to the BRI’s limitations will likely include new efforts to constrain labor activism and repress wages. Hopefully, the strength of Chinese resistance to this repression will create the space for meaningful public discussion of new options that truly are responsive to majority needs.

Twelve years ago this month, WikiLeaks began publishing government secrets that the world public might otherwise never have known. What it has revealed about state duplicity, human rights abuses and corruption goes beyond anything published in the world’s “mainstream” media. 

After over six months of being cut off from outside world, on 14 October Ecuador has partly restored Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s communications with the outside world from its London embassy where the founder has been living for over six years.

The treatment – real and threatened – meted out to Assange by the US and UK governments contrasts sharply with the service Wikileaks has done their publics in revealing the nature of elite power, as shown in the following snapshot of Wikileaks’ revelations about British foreign policy in the Middle East.

Conniving with the Saudis

Whitehall’s special relationship with Riyadh is exposed in an extraordinary cable from 2013 highlighting how Britain conducted secret vote-trading deals with Saudi Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN human rights council. Britain initiated the secret negotiations by asking Saudi Arabia for its support.

The Wikileaks releases also shed details on Whitehall’s fawning relationship with Washington. A 2008 cable, for example, shows then shadow foreign secretary William Hague telling the US embassy that the British “want a pro-American regime. We need it. The world needs it.”

A cable the following year shows the lengths to which Whitehall goes to defend the special relationship from public scrutiny. Just as the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War was beginning in 2009, Whitehall promised Washington that it had “put measures in place to protect your interests”.

American influence

It is not known what this protection amounted to, but no US officials were called to give evidence to Chilcot in public. The inquiry was also refused permission to publish letters between former US President George W Bush and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair written in the run-up to the war.

Also in 2009, then prime minister Gordon Brown raised the prospect of reducing the number of British nuclear-armed Trident submarines from four to three, a policy opposed in Washington. However, Julian Miller, an official in the UK’s Cabinet Office, privately assured US officials that his government “would consult with the US regarding future developments concerning the Trident deterrent to assure there would be ‘no daylight’ between the US and UK”. The idea that British decision-making on Trident is truly independent of the US is undermined by this cable.

Image: US troops leave their base in Tikrit, Iraq, on 21 November 2003 (AFP)

The Wikileaks cables are rife with examples of British government duplicity of the kind I’ve extensively come across in my own research on UK declassified files. In advance of the British-NATO bombing campaign in Libya in March 2011, for example, the British government pretended that its aim was to prevent Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s attacks on civilians and not to overthrow him.

However, Wikileaks files released in 2016 as part of its Hillary Clinton archive show William Burns, then the US deputy secretary of state, having talked with foreign secretary William Hague about a “post-Qaddafi” Libya. This was more than three weeks before military operations began. The intention was clearly to overthrow Gaddafi, and the UN resolution about protecting civilians was simply window dressing.

Deception over Diego Garcia

Another case of British duplicity concerns Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which is now a major US base for intervention in the Middle East. The UK has long fought to prevent Chagos islanders from returning to their homeland after forcibly removing them in the 1960s.

A secret 2009 cable shows that a particular ruse concocted by Whitehall to promote this was the establishment of a “marine reserve” around the islands. A senior Foreign Office official told the US that the “former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve”.

A week before the “marine reserve” proposal was made to the US in May 2009, then UK foreign secretary David Miliband was also conniving with the US, apparently to deceive the public. A cable reveals Miliband helping the US to sidestep a ban on cluster bombs and keep the weapons at US bases on UK soil, despite Britain signing the international treaty banning the weapons the previous year.

Miliband approved a loophole created by diplomats to allow US cluster bombs to remain on UK soil and was part of discussions on how the loophole would help avert a debate in parliament that could have “complicated or muddied” the issue. Critically, the same cable also revealed that the US was storing cluster munitions on ships based at Diego Garcia.

Spying on the UK

Cables show the US spying on the Foreign Office, collecting information on British ministers. Soon after the appointment of Ivan Lewis as a junior foreign minister in 2009, US officials were briefing the office of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about rumours that he was depressed and had a reputation as a bully, and on “the state of his marriage”.

Washington was also shown to have been spying on the UK mission to the UN, along with other members of the Security Council and the UN Secretary General.

In addition, Wikileaks cables reveal that journalists and the public are considered legitimate targets of UK intelligence operations. In October 2009, Joint Services Publication 440, a 2,400-page restricted document written in 2001 by the Ministry of Defence, was leaked. Somewhat ironically, it contained instructions for the security services on how to avoid leaks of information by hackers, journalists, and foreign spies.

The document refers to investigative journalists as “threats” alongside subversive and terrorist organisations, noting that “the ‘enemy’ is unwelcome publicity of any kind, and through any medium”.

Britain’s GCHQ is also revealed to have spied on Wikileaks itself – and its readers. One classified GCHQ document from 2012 shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly collect the IP addresses of visitors to the Wikileaks site in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines such as Google.

Championing free media

The British government is punishing Assange for the service that Wikileaks has performed. It is ignoring a UN ruling that he is being held in “arbitrary detention” at the Ecuadorian embassy, while failing, illegally, to ensure his health needs are met. Whitehall is also refusing to offer diplomatic assurances that Assange will not be extradited to the US – the only reason he remains in the embassy.

Image: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks to the media from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London on 19 May 2017 (AFP)

Smear campaigns have portrayed Assange as a sexual predator or a Russian agent, often in the same media that have benefitted from covering Wikileaks’ releases.

Many journalists and activists who are perfectly aware of the fake news in some Western media outlets, and of the smear campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, are ignoring or even colluding in the more vicious smearing of Assange.

More journalists need to champion the service Wikileaks performs and argue for what is at stake for a free media in the right to expose state secrets.

– Mark Curtis is a historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam.

 

In September, IMF staff visited Ukraine to discuss the next tranche of its $17.5 billion loan programme, first approved in March 2014 (see Observer Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Winter 2016). As no funds have been received from the IMF since April 2017 and Ukraine’s debt obligations are expected to peak between 2018-2020, “alarm bells” have started ringing about Ukraine’s ability to meet rigid IMF conditionality and service its growing debt, according to news agency Reuters.

The negotiations have been put under increased pressure since the Ukrainian government extended its special obligations for its national oil company Naftogaz in August. This would require it to sell gas to intermediaries at reduced prices, thereby further delaying meeting IMF conditionality under its current loan programme to increase gas prices, according to Ukrainian UA|TV.With an election due to take place next year and IMF-mandated fuel price hikes facing strong public opposition, the recent experiences of protests against IMF-demanded policies in Jordan, Haiti and elsewhere highlight the government’s delicate position (see Observer Summer 2018).

The current loan programme has already decreased energy consumption in Ukraine by 30 per cent, significantly diminishing living standards across the country, as reported by women’s rights organisations to the UN Human Rights Council in May last year (see Observer Summer 2017). Considering that one third of IMF arrangements between 2006 and 2015 contained structural conditionality pertaining to energy price subsidies, in his most recent report on the IMF, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, called on the IMF to “embrace a politically and socially sustainable social protection policy” to address the harmful impacts of energy subsidy reforms, rather than see this “largely as a question of marketing”, by emphasising “communication strategies, sequencing and ‘depoliticization’ as solutions” (see Observer Summer 2018).

IMF myopic on corruption

While IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde kept up pressure to increase energy prices by calling the subsidy reforms “critical to allow the completion of the pending review under Ukraine’s IMF-supported program” in a July statement, she also commended Ukraine for adopting the law on the High Anti-Corruption Court. The adoption of the law was another high-profile loan conditionality, that the Fund claimed, “will contribute to delivering the accountability and justice that the people of Ukraine demand of their public officials.” Its adoption was preceded by the fulfilment of another IMF loan condition; namely that the government pass a law aimed at speeding up the privatisation of more than 3,000 state-owned companies, which was adoptedby Ukrainian lawmakers in January according to Reuters.

In a statement following his visit to Ukraine in May, the UN independent expert on foreign debt and human rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, speaking about IMF loan conditions relating to corruption, underlined that, “fighting corruption requires a holistic approach which covers not only investigations and sanctions but also a proper regulation to minimise the economic incentives to become corrupt”. He went on to say that “most of my interlocutors seem to share the perspective that moving from over-regulation to deregulation would undoubtedly foster economic growth and prevent corruption. However, I disagree with this view. Comparative experiences show that private actors require effective regulation also, in particular to ensure human rights compliance.” He continued, “This is only achievable with robust legislation and independent public institutions that prevent market abuses, ensure the rule of law and tackle economic and social inequality in order to promote inclusive sustainable growth.”

In April, the IMF unveiled a new framework for “enhanced” engagement on corruption and governance issues, prompting London-based NGO Transparency International to call on the IMF to consistently address spill-over risks of gaps in anti-money laundering frameworks. The IMF and World Bank’s ‘good governance agendas’ have long been criticised for missing the significant role their own policies play in growing global corruption by pushing rapid privatisation of public enterprises, thus eroding state capacity for good governance (see Update 18). Nick Hildyard with London-based civil society organisation The Corner House commented that, “The IMF casts corruption as a pathology exclusively of the public sector. The definition thus renders ‘uncorrupt’ (and legal) a range of corrupting (or potentially corrupting) forms of power mongering – not least those fermented by the IMF’s own privatisation programmes.”

Declaring that “there is a new strategic reality out there,” President Donald Trump’s hardline national security advisor John Bolton announced during a visit to Moscow earlier this week that the United States would be withdrawing from the 31-year-old Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. “This was a Cold War bilateral ballistic missile-related treaty,” Bolton said, “in a multi-polar ballistic missile world.”

“It is the American position that Russia is in violation,” Bolton told reporters after a 90-minute meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Russia’s position is that they aren’t. So one has to ask how to ask the Russians to come back into compliance with something they don’t think they’re violating.”

Left unsaid by Bolton was the fact that the Russians have been asking the U.S. to provide evidence to substantiate its allegations of Russian noncompliance, something it so far has not done. “The Americans have failed to provide hard facts to substantiate their accusations,” a Kremlin spokesperson noted last Decemberafter a U.S. delegation was briefed NATO on the allegations. “They just cannot provide them, because such evidence essentially does not exist.”

Bolton’s declaration mirrored an earlier statement by Trump announcing that “I’m terminating the agreement because [the Russians] violated the agreement.” When asked if his comments were meant as a threat to Putin, Trump responded, “It’s a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game. You can’t do that. You can’t play that game on me.”

Trump appears to have surrendered to the anti-arms control philosophy of John Bolton, who views such agreements as unduly restricting American power. (Bolton was also behind the 2001 decision by President George W. Bush to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an act the Russians viewed as inherently destabilizing.) By involving China, which was not a signatory to the INF Treaty, into the mix, the president appears to be engaging in a crude negotiating gambit designed to shore up a weak case for leaving the 1987 arms control agreement by playing on previous Russian sensitivities about Chinese nuclear capabilities.

In 2007, Putin had threatened to withdraw from the INF Treaty because of these reasons. “We are speaking about the plans of a number of neighboring countries developing short- and mid-range missile systems,” Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, said at the time, citing China, India and Pakistan. “While our two countries [the U.S. and Russia] are bound by the provisions of the INF treaty there will be a certain imbalance in the region.”

Although unspoken, both Bolton and Trump appear to be trying to drive a wedge between Russia and China. They’re doing so as those two nations are coming together to craft a joint response to what they view as American overreach on trade and international security. While the Russian concerns over Chinese INF capabilities might have held true a decade ago, that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.

“The Chinese missile program is not related to the INF problem,” Konstantin Sivkov, a member of the Russian Academy of Missile and Ammunition Sciences, recently observed. “China has always had medium-range missiles, because it did not enter into a bilateral treaty with the United States on medium and shorter-range missiles.” America’s speculations about Chinese missiles are “just an excuse” to withdraw from the INF Treaty, the Russian arms control expert charged.

Moreover, China doesn’t seem to be taking the bait. Yang Chengjun, a Chinese missile expert, observed that the U.S. decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty would have a “negative” impact on China’s national security, noting that Beijing “would have to push ahead with the modest development of medium-range missiles” in response. These weapons would be fielded to counter any American build-up in the region, and as such would not necessarily be seen by Russia as representing a threat.

Any student of the INF Treaty knows that the issue of Russia’s national security posture vis-à-vis China was understood fully when the then-USSR signed on to the agreement. During the negotiations surrounding INF in the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviets had sought to retain an INF capability in Asia as part of its Chinese deterrence posture. Indeed, the Soviet insistence on keeping such a force was one of the main reasons behind the “zero option” put forward by the U.S. in 1982, where a total ban on INF-capable weapons was proposed. The U.S. knew that the total elimination of INF systems was a poison pill that Russia simply would not swallow, thereby dooming future negotiations.

Mikhail Gorbachev turned the tables on the Americans in 1986, when he embraced the “zero option” and called upon the U.S. to enter into an agreement that banned INF-capable weapons. For the Soviet Union, eliminating the threat to its national security posed by American INF weapons based in Europe was far more important than retaining a limited nuclear deterrence option against China.

The deployment of Pershing II missiles to Europe in the fall of 1983 left the Soviet leadership concerned that the U.S. was seeking to acquire a viable nuclear first-strike capability against the Soviet Union. The Soviets increased their intelligence collection efforts against U.S. targets to be able to detect in advance any U.S./NATO first-strike attack, as well as a “launch on detection” plan to counter any such attack.

In November 1983, when the U.S. conducted a full-scale rehearsal for nuclear war in Europe, code-named Able Archer 83, Soviet intelligence interpreted the exercise preparations for the real thing. As a result, Soviet strategic nuclear forces were put on full alert, needing only an order from then-general secretary Yuri Andropov to launch.

The Soviet system had just undergone a stress test of sorts in September 1983, when malfunctioning early warning satellites indicated that the U.S. had launched five Minuteman 3 Intercontinental missiles toward the Soviet Union. Only the actions of the Soviet duty officer, who correctly identified the warning as a false alarm, prevented a possible nuclear retaliatory strike.

A similar false alarm, this time in 1995, underscored the danger of hair-trigger alert status when it comes to nuclear weapons—the launch of a Norwegian research rocket was interpreted by Russian radar technicians as being a solo U.S. nuclear missile intended to disrupt Russian defenses by means of an electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear air burst. Russia’s president at the time, Boris Yeltsin, ordered the Russian nuclear codes to be prepared for an immediate Russian counter-strike, and was on the verge of ordering the launch when Russian analysts determined the real purpose of the rocket, and the crisis passed.

The Europeans had initially balked at the idea of deploying American INF weapons on their territory, fearful that the weapons would be little more than targets for a Soviet nuclear attack, resulting in the destruction of Europe while the United States remained unharmed. To alleviate European concerns, the U.S. agreed to integrate its INF systems with its overall strategic nuclear deterrence posture, meaning that the employment of INF nuclear weapons would trigger an automatic strategic nuclear response. This approach was designed to increase the deterrence value of the INF weapons, since there would be no “localized” nuclear war. But it also meant that given the reduced flight times associated with European-based INF systems, each side would be on a hair-trigger alert, with little or no margin for error. It was the suicidal nature of this arrangement that helped propel Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan to sign the INF Treaty on December 8, 1987.

This history seems to be lost on both Trump and Bolton. Moreover, the recent deployment of the Mk-41 Universal Launch System, also known as Aegis Ashore, in Romania and Poland as part of a NATO ballistic missile shield only increases the danger of inadvertent conflict. Currently configured to fire the SM-3 surface-to-air missile, the Mk-41 is also capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles which, if launched in a ground configuration, would represent a violation of the INF Treaty. The U.S. Congress has authorized $58 billion in FY 2018 to fund development of an INF system, the leading candidate for which is a converted Tomahawk.

If the U.S. were ever to make use of the Mk-41 in an anti-missile configuration, the Russians would have seconds to decide if they were being attacked by nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Putin, in a recent speech delivered in Sochi, publicly stated that the Russian nuclear posture operated under the concept of “launch on warning,” meaning once a U.S. or NATO missile strike was detected, Russia would immediately respond with the totality of its nuclear arsenal to annihilate the attacking parties. “We would be victims of an aggression and would get to heaven as martyrs,” Putin said. Those who attacked Russia would “just die and not even have time to repent.”

“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” Trump noted when he announced his decision to leave the INF Treaty, adding “we have a tremendous amount of money to play with our military.” Nuclear deterrence isn’t a game—it is, as Putin noted, a matter of life and death, where one split second miscalculation can destroy entire nations, if not the world. One can only hope that the one-time real estate mogul turned president can figure this out before it is too late; declaring bankruptcy in nuclear conflict is not an option.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War.

A US Poseidon-8 reconnaissance plane operated 13 unmanned aerial vehicles that attacked Russia’s Hmeymim airbase in Syria on January 6, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Alexander Fomin said at a plenary session of the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on security on October 25.

“Thirteen UAVs moved according to common combat battle deployment, operated by a single crew. During all this time the American Poseidon-8 reconnaissance plane patrolled the Mediterranean Sea area for eight hours,” Colonel General Alexander stated adding that when the UAVs faced Russian “electronic warfare screen, they moved away to some distance, received the corresponding orders and began to be operated out of space and receiving help in finding the so-called holes through which they started penetrating.”

Despite this, seven UAVs were downed, and control over six drones was gained through electronic warfare systems.

Colonel General Fomin also emphasized that it’s needed “to put an end to the provision of money, weapons, equipment and various substances to terrorists, including chemical ingredients used during the so-called chemical attacks that are later blamed on the Syrian government.” He noted that most of these tools and means were produced in foreign countries, particularly NATO member states.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman vowed that Israel “will not accept any restrictions” on Israeli freedom of operation in Syria. Liberman commented on the recent reports by Israeli media that Russia wants to reshape the format of the Moscow-Tel-Aviv contacts and demands Israel to provide earlier warning of strikes.

After the incident with the Russian IL-20 military plane in Syria, Moscow already noted that Israel ignores the existing hot-line agreement and provides a false and untimely info on its actions in the war-torn country. The Russian Defense Ministry openly pointed out that the IL-20 plane was downed by Syrian air defense fire because of “hostile actions” of Israel. In response, Russia supplied S-300 systems to the Syrian military.

This week Israel’s ImageSat International has released a group of satellite images alleging that the deployment site of the Syrian S-300 system is located near the village of Masyaf in the province of Hama.

The situation remains tense in the Idlib demilitarization zone where militant groups continue shelling targets in the government–held area. The situation is especially complicated in the countryside of Aleppo where the Syrian Army is even forced to carry out active retaliatory strikes.

A mystery surrounds Tesla. His contributions, which were great and many, have descended into obscurity. Why?

Nikola Tesla, a Serbian scientist born in Croatia, was a humanitarian, a US patriot, and yes, an unbridled genius, though he has often been personified as the quintessential mad scientist. Perhaps his only real misdeed was being born ahead of his time.

Tesla’s idea was to be able to provide power equally to all people on Earth. At this time there are 2 to 3 billion people on this planet that can’t go home at night and turn on the lights. The people that can’t are living in poverty.

Tesla saw that there was a division between the haves and the have-nots. And he was determined to make electrical power equally available to all people on this planet… as a gift.

This is the story of the man that time forgot and the US government which did no justice to him.

First published in May 2018, this is part of our series on the unaccounted for $21 Trillion in taxpayer money. As unbelievable and absurd as that sounds, the actual total of unaccounted for money at the Pentagon is most likely significantly more than $21 trillion. The First ever “full-scope audit” of the Pentagon is presently underway. Read the first report from this series here.

*

According to the Department of Defense Inspector General and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, $21 Trillion in Taxpayer Funding Is Unaccounted For.

To help people comprehend the scale of this, $1 Trillion is $1000 Billion. This means that $21,000 Billion in taxpayer money has gone missing.

The European Parliament has asked yesterday (25 October) for an immediate embargo on the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, hence sanctioning the Kingdom of rogue Saudi Arabia which is joining the United States and Israel as the main purveyor of crime throughout the Middle East and the world. France still said they will apply sanctions only if it is proven that Riyadh was indeed involved in the killing of the controversial Saudi journalist. Madame Merkel at least days ago said that Germany would no longer supply the Saudis with arms – as a result of the heinous crime committed on Jamal Khashoggi.

No doubt, it was a horrible murder that took place in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, with Jamal Khashoggi’s body possibly sawed to pieces, and according to latest accounts, buried in the Consulate’s backyard. And all that now admitted, executed by order of Riyadh. To soften the blow, for business purposes, some European countries would like to argue that it may not have been a premeditated assassination, but possibly a mortal “accident”, which would of course change the premises and lessen the punishment – and weapon sales could continue. It’s all business anyway.

Europe has no morals, no ethics no nothing. Europe, represented by Brussels, and in Brussels by the non-elected European Commission (EC), for all practical purposes is a mere nest of worms, or translated into humans, a nest of white-collar criminals, politicians, business people and largely a brainwashed populace of nearly 500 million. There are some exceptions within the population and fortunately their pool of ‘awakened’ is gently growing.

Even Switzerland, a neutral country according to her Constitution, not a member of the EU, but a staunch adherent to the (non-) European Union through more than 110 bi-and multilateral contracts, it was revealed yesterday, is assisting in Saudi Arabia converting the Swiss built (civilian) Pilatus helicopter into a ferocious war machine. Pilatus has always had that reputation of its controversial convertibility and was particularly known within Switzerland for that reason – but now, they surpass the limit of the tolerable, by helping the criminal and warmonger Saudis to mount a flying war machine in their, the Saudi’s, country – totally against Swiss law and against the Swiss Constitution, but fully tolerated by the Swiss Government.

Back to the real issue: It took the horrendous murder of a famous Saudi-critical and Saudi-national journalist, for the Europeans to react – and that, mind you, grudgingly. They’d rather follow Donald Trump’s line, why lose 110 billion dollars-worth of arms sales to the Saudis, for the murder of a journalist. – After all, business is business. Everything else is a farce.

For three and half years, the Saudi’s have waged a horrendous war on Yemen. They have slaughtered tens of thousands of Yemenis – according to the UN Human Rights Commission more than 50,000 children died by Saudi air raids with UK supplied bombs, and US supplied war planes – through lack of sanitation and drinking water induced diseases, like cholera – and an even worse crime, through extreme famine, the worst famine in recent history – as per UNICEF / WHO – imposed by force, as the Saudi’s with the consent of the European allies closed down all ports of entry, including the moist important Red Sea Port of Hodeida.

The European, along with the US, have been more than complicit in this crime against humanity – in these horrendous war crimes. Imagine one day a Nuremberg-type Court against war crimes committed in the last 70 years, not one of the western leaders, still alive, would be spared. That’s what we – in the west – have become. A nest of war criminals – war criminals for sheer greed. They invented a neoliberal, everything goes market doctrine system, where no rules no ethics no morals count – just money, profit and more profit. Any method of maximizing profit – war and war industry – is good and accepted. And the  west with its fiat money made of hot air, is imposing this nefarious, destructive system everywhere, by force and regime change if voluntary acceptance is not in the cards.

And we, the people, have become complicit in it, as we are living in luxury and comfort, and couldn’t care less what our leaders (sic-sic) are doing to the rest of the world, to the so-called lesser humans, who live in squalor as refugees, their homes and towns destroyed, bombed to ashes, no schools, no hospitals, and to a large extent no food – yes about 70 million-plus refugees are everyday on the move, most of them from the west-destroyed Middle-East. Why should we worry? We live well. To the contrary, these refugees they could steal our jobs. Let them not invade our luxury havens. Rather keep bombing their countries into rubble.

Yemen, strategically highly sought-for, should, of course, not be governed by the Houthis, a socialist-leaning group of revolutionary Muslims which is part of the Shia Zaidi, a branch of the Shia Imamiya of Iran. They finally became sick and tired of the decades-long Washington manipulation of their government. And who better than the stooges of Saudi Arabia to do the dirty job for Washington? – And, yes, they don’t have to do it alone. Weapon supplies come from all over Europe, mainly the UK, and France, also Spain, and for a while also from Germany – and well, neutral Switzerland.

No matter that tens of thousands of children are killed, that according to the Human Rights Commission, up to 22 million Yemenis (out of about 30 million population), are in danger of severe famine, and that includes at least 8 million children – children who have for the most part no more access to schools, health services and food – an entire generation or more without education, a well-planned and premeditated gap in society, as is the case in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. By killing and depriving children of basic needs, the west is creating a widening gap of educated people, of people that can and would otherwise fight for their countries, for their societies. But – they are gone. That makes it so much easier for the west just to take over – their strategic position, their natural resources and suck empty the social safety funds accumulated by their labor force.

Isn’t that a thought for the illustrious populace who live in western luxury, to lean back in their fauteuils and think about? – What if, one day the tables are reversed – and we, the west would face justice? – Is anybody in the west bold and realistic enough to see such a picture? – And as we see these days – history is advancing in giant steps. It’s the 21^stCentury – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has more than made inroads in our society. And what if – if those that we consider inferior and our enemies, are in fact a few steps ahead of us in AI science – and could reverse the picture rather rapidly?

And while we wonder why Saudi-slaughtered Yemenis does not raise a fuss in the western media, but the Saudi killing of a journalist does, all-the-while our linear IMF provided projections increase western GDP by fantastic numbers by 2030, irrespective of the 20% unemployment thanks to AI, that some predict – all these contradictory figures are unimportant, while we can make a killing from killing Yemeni children. But it takes the Khashoggi killing that might stop – if only temporarily, and if only we are lucky – the Saudi war machine. The population of Yemen is unimportant. Why?

Why does it take the assassination of a journalist – granted, a horrendous and grisly murder by his own country’s government – no matter how controversial Jamal Khashoggi was, he has been writing for our western MSM, for the truth tellers, such as the Washington post and the NYTimes. That may have helped making him more important than 50,000 slaughtered and maimed Yemeni children – more important in the sense that only through his abject murder, the European – maybe – will react and ‘sanction’ the Saudis.

But even that is not sure – as the Transatlantic Master Trump, has many trumps up his sleeve, that he may offer or coerce the EU puppets into following his heinous example and spare Riyadh from any punishment, especially as far as weapons are concerned. After all its business. Dead children are just that, dead Yemenis, a generation less to worry about.

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.

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Brazil will elect its new President on 28 October 2018. Since the judicial-parliamentary coup that removed elected President Dilma Rousseff, of the Workers’ Party (PT), the new administration (led by her former Vice-President, Michel Temer) has advanced its agenda of neoliberal ‘reforms’. The economic crisis has continued unabated, and the campaign for the destruction of the PT has intensified, leading to the imprisonment of former President and PT founder Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.¹

Finally, the Armed Forces have increasingly intervened in political life, particularly through the occupation of peripheral areas in Rio de Janeiro. Their close articulation with the Judiciary is encapsulated in the appointment of General Fernando Azevedo e Silva as ‘advisor’ to the President of the Supreme Court, and in statements that would be scandalous in less turbulent times, such as the thinly-disguised demand for Lula’s incarceration issued by Army Commander General Eduardo Villas Boas.

The co-ordinated shift of public institutions toward an exceptionally excluding variety of neoliberalism was challenged by attempts to rebuild the left through Lula’s campaign for the presidency and, in particular, through his convoy around the country in early 2018, which led to his steep rise in the opinion polls.

Given the likelihood that the coup against Dilma Rousseff would end in Lula’s victory at the polls, it is not surprising that the cancellation of the elections was mooted. However, this would not be necessary. The coup plotters managed to sentence Lula to more than twelve years in prison despite the lack of evidence and, subsequently, to bar his candidacy, in a blatant demonstration of lawfare against him and his party. The escalating conflict between a radicalizing ‘alliance of privilege’ in power, and the attempted responses by the PT and the left, consolidated Lula’s position not only as the unquestioned leader of the democratic camp but, also, as the most talented leader in Brazilian political history. In contrast, a string of anonymous figures and insignificant personalities took turns leading the alliance of privilege.

The Coup: Authoritarian and Antidemocratic

The coup was, then, closely associated with a grave loss of representativeness of the main political actors, and an increasingly bitter dispute between the powers of the Republic. The consequence was the leakage of legitimacy toward individuals, especially ‘avenging’ judges standing up against corruption. The Army is the only institution that has managed to avoid the miasma of illegitimacy, which has given recent developments a strongly authoritarian and antidemocratic trend. In short, one of the peculiarities of the rise of neoliberal authoritarianism in Brazil is the absence of strong leadership, solid parties and organized movements around right-wing nationalist programs: the Brazilian coup is a social force independent of the individuals supposedly in positions of command.

Examples include the destruction of Aécio Neves, who kicked off the coup by recklessly challenging the outcome of the 2014 elections, the imprisonment of former Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha, who launched the impeachment process, the implosion of Geraldo Alckmin’s presidential candidacy in 2018 (the man who had everything to be the candidate of capital-in-general but captured less than 5% of the vote), the ruin of a long list of Temer’s advisors, and the implosion the main centre-right parties, the PSDB and the PMDB.

The coup has escaped the control of its creators, and they were consumed in the flames that they had stoked. The incineration of traditional center-right forces fertilized the ground for the candidacy of the far-right extremist Jair Bolsonaro (not by coincidence a retired Army captain) – something that until a few weeks before the election seemed even more unlikely than the triumph of Donald Trump in the USA. However, when contrasted with his tropical twin, Trump offers an example of mental stability, political moderation and personal refinement.

Examination of the unfolding of the political crisis in Brazil suggests a tragedy in four acts, briefly described below.

The Global Context

The world is going through a mounting tide of authoritarian neoliberalism, as the outcome of three converging processes: the crisis of economies, political systems and institutions of representation after the global financial crisis that started in 2007; the decomposition of neoliberal democracies, and the kidnapping of mass discontent by the far right.

The diffusion of neoliberalism has eliminated millions of skilled jobs, especially in the advanced capitalist economies, as entire professions either disappeared or were exported to cheaper countries. Around the world, employment opportunities in the public sector have declined because of privatizations and the contraction of state agencies and state-owned enterprises; employment stability has declined, and wages, labour relations and living conditions have tended to deteriorate. The informal workers have suffered severe losses, both directly and through the declining availability of opportunities for stable employment. In turn, formal workers are afraid that their jobs may be exported while, at the same time, they must endure increasingly stressful and precarious work. Similar pressures are felt by an indebted, impoverished, anxious, and increasingly vulnerable middle class. Around the world, the remnants of previously privileged social strata lament their inability to secure better material circumstances for their offspring. The political counterpart of these economic processes is that, under neoliberalism, the workers tend to become increasingly divided, disorganized, and politically impotent. Their political influence has declined almost inexorably.

The transformation of social structures, institutions and laws has also tended to evacuate the political sphere across participation, representativeness and legitimacy, making the ‘losers’ increasingly unable to resist neoliberalism, and even to conceptualize alternatives to this system of accumulation.² These processes help to explain the worldwide decline of left-wing parties, their supporting organizations, trade unions, and other forms of collective representation. While this has supported the consolidation of neoliberalism, it has also promoted mass disengagement from conventional politics, created powerful tendencies toward apathy and anomie, and undermined the ideological hegemony and political legitimacy of neoliberalism: with the erosion of the credibility of traditional parties, leaders and organizations, the institutional paths to dissent have contracted sharply.

Large social groups are aware of their losses under neoliberalism and, increasingly, distrust the ‘democratic’ institutions that systematically support the reproduction of neoliberalism and bypass their dissatisfactions. These groups are systematically led by right-wing politicians and the mainstream media to blame ‘the other’ for the disasters inflicted by neoliberalism – especially the poor, immigrants, foreign countries, and minority religions.

The rise of authoritarian neoliberalism has been compared to the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s but, despite important similarities, these processes are fundamentally distinct. In particular, authoritarian leaders in Austria, Egypt, Hungary, India, Italy, Poland, Russia, Thailand, Turkey and elsewhere took power not through street clashes between their militias and a strong communist movement, but by means of political tricks, expensive publicity, modern technologies, planned agitation and brute force. They seek to impose a radically neoliberal programme justified by a conservative and nationalist discourse. This is not a policy drawing upon mass organization, but the ploy of ambitious swindlers, power-hungry demagogues, and political illusionists exploiting the fractures in the neoliberal order.

The paradox of authoritarian neoliberalism is that it promotes the personalization of politics through ‘spectacular’ (often fleeting) leaders, operating in the absence of intermediary institutions (parties, trade unions, social movements and, ultimately, the law), and who are strongly committed both to neoliberalism and to the expansion of their own personal power. Interestingly, these leaders promote economic programmes that harm their own political base, as they promote radicalized forms of globalization and financialization that increase further the power of the neoliberal elite. Society is divided even more deeply, wages fall, taxes becomes more regressive, social protections are eroded, economies become more unbalanced, and poverty tends to grow. Mass frustration intensifies, fueling an unfocused discontent: authoritarian neoliberalism is intrinsically unstable, and it creates conditions supporting the rise of contemporary forms of fascism.³

From the Politics of Alliances to the Rise of the Far Right

The political history of Brazil in the last 15 years can be read off from the power struggles between clashing alliances. Between 1999 and 2005, Lula and the PT built an ‘alliance of losers’, including groups having in common only the experience of losses under neoliberalism. They included the urban and rural unionized working class, especially the skilled manual and office workers, the lower ranks of the civil service and sectors of the professional middle class; large segments of the informal working class; several prominent capitalists, especially among the internal bourgeoisie; and right-wing oligarchs, landowners, and local politicians from impoverished regions.

Between 2005 and 2013, Lula and Dilma Rousseff led an ‘alliance of winners’, including those groups that had won the most during the PT administrations; in particular, the internal bourgeoisie, most formal sector workers, and large segments of the informal working class. In contrast with the alliance of losers, the alliance of winners has a narrower top, due to the loss of support from the internationalized bourgeoisie, the mainstream media and the middle class, and a massively larger base, especially among the informal workers.

The Rousseff administration recomposed its base of support and, between 2013-14, relied on a ‘progressive alliance’ including mainly the organized formal workers, a large mass of disorganized working poor, and leftist groups organized into parties, social movements and NGOs. Once again, the alliance had narrowed at the top and widened at the base. This was sufficient to secure Rousseff’s re-election in 2014, but the disorganized support of the poor would prove to be unable to sustain her in power. The following years were marked by the weakening and erosion of the progressive alliance, culminating in the impeachment of the president when her mass support had become extremely low.

In contrast, the opposition has clustered around a growing ‘neoliberal alliance’ or an elite-led ‘alliance of privilege’. It includes the internationalized bourgeoisie, the vast majority of the urban middle class and small and mid-sized entrepreneurs, the mainstream media and sections of the informal workers, many of them having benefitted greatly during the PT governments, and clustered around ultra-conservative evangelical sects. The capture of the Executive by the alliance of privilege, with the support of a large mass of the poor, was part of a process of demolition of democracy, seeking to destroy any political space by which the majority could control any part of the state, or any tool of public policy.

The Improbable Rise of Jair Bolsonaro

Five years of political tensions and degradation of democracy culminated in the 2018 presidential elections. The electoral process revolved around the confrontation between two political phenomena of great historical significance. On the one hand, the extraordinary political talent of Lula, who, even from jail, managed to put together an alternative candidate and outsmart his potential competitors in the center-left, paving the way for Fernando Haddad’s exponential growth in opinion polls.

However, Lula’s political acumen was unable to stem the tide of a far right mass movement led by an obscure Deputy who emerged far ahead in the first round of the elections. Despite frequent comparisons with U.S. President Donald Trump (who had a successful career on TV, if not in business), Jair Bolsonaro stands out for having failed at everything he tried to do before the elections, whether as a military officer (frustrated career), terrorist (amateur) or Federal Deputy (ineffective). Despite this history of fiascos, Bolsonaro made enormous gains, both among capital – desperate for any viable alternative to the PT – and among the workers (especially the informal working class), who flocked to Bolsonaro in the millions during the campaign.

Mass support for the incompetent fascist was supported by four platforms: the fight against corruption (the traditional way in which the right gains mass traction in Brazil, for example, in 1954, 1960, 1989 and 2013); conservative moralism (pushed by the evangelical churches); the claim that ‘security’ can be achieved through state-sponsored violence (which resonates strongly in a country with over 60,000 murders per year, in addition to tens of thousands of other violent crimes), and a neoliberal economic discourse centred on slashing a (presumably corrupt) state, that is parasitical upon the ‘honest’ citizens. The rupture of the progressive alliance and the haemorrhage of poor voters toward Bolsonaro is the Brazilian version of the process of consolidation of an electoral majority for authoritarian neoliberalism in other countries.

Defeating the PT and overthrowing Dilma Rousseff were, then, part of a wider process of displacement of the political center of gravity in Brazil upwards (within the social pyramid), and to the right (in terms of the political spectrum). These shifts have created, for the first time in more than half a century, a far-right mass movement with broad penetration in society. This not only drained the potential support for the PT candidate, but also led to the implosion of the traditional center-right parties, which were devastated by the rise of Jair Bolsonaro. Political chaos has seized the country.

The Impasse

In the short term, the Brazilian political impasse implies that the administration to be inaugurated in 2019 will be inevitably unstable, and over time, the 1988 Constitution is likely to become unviable, leading to the disintegration of democracy.

Any elected president would have serious difficulties governing with a sluggish economy, a hostile Congress, an overly autonomous Judiciary making a habit of trespassing into the other republican powers, excited Armed Forces, and a Constitutional amendment setting a ceiling on fiscal expenditures for the next 20 years (which will slowly throttle public administration). At the level of popular mobilization, since 2013 the streets are no longer the monopoly of the left; they now include large masses on the far right, surrounded by a violent fringe.

A centre-left president would find a state in worse situation than Lula found it in 2003, because of the institutionalization of the neoliberal reforms imposed by the Temer administration. These constraints would make it difficult to govern without a constitutional reform; however, a constituent assembly would inevitably be dominated by the right, which would seek to impose an even worse Constitution than the current one: the left is discredited, disorganized, and institutionally immobilized.

A far-right president, with no experience of government, without the support of a stable party structure, and unprepared in every way, will have to confront History: Presidents Janio Quadros and Fernando Collor were also elected by elite alliances that had traded common sense for a victory at the polls; both administrations were cut short.

In a decentralized political system, authoritarian leaders face grave difficulties to govern, regardless of their legitimacy or social basis. Further, the ‘coalition presidentialism’ instituted by the Brazilian Constitution demands continuous negotiations in Congress, always running the risk of breaking the law, especially when the President has few reliable allies at the top, or is being challenged by a mass opposition.

In addition to these broad principles, the 2018 elections have led to five specific lessons. First, the political centre of gravity in Brazil has shifted to the right. From the south to the centre-west, passing through the prosperous south-east, the right-wing electorate has achieved a solid majority. Given the importance of these regions, the left is electorally hemmed in. Second, Bolsonaro’s rise derives from the combination of class hatred in a society bearing huge scars from centuries of slavery, recent right-wing insurrections, and transparent U.S.-led intervention in the Brazilian political process. Third, since 2013, Brazilian politics has been defined by a convergence of dissatisfactions that has consolidated a neoliberal alliance around an economic and political programme that is economically excluding and destructive of citizenship.

Fourth, the Brazilian right is deeply divided. While the left, in defensive mode, can unite under Lula’s shadow, the right – surprisingly, given its hegemony over the institutions of the state and its ability to overthrow Dilma Rousseff – cannot generate leaders worthy of note, nor unify around its own programme of radical neoliberal reforms. Its traditional political parties are imploding, leaving in power a rabble of inexperienced, inept, idiosyncratic, and reactionary politicians.

Fifth, the worst economic contraction recorded in Brazil’s history and the most severe political impasse in the past century have degraded profoundly Brazilian democracy, and made it impossible for any plausible composition of political forces to stabilize the system of accumulation. The tendency, then, is for these impasses to be resolved by extra-constitutional means. This will be an inglorious end to a democratic experiment that has marked two generations, and that achieved unquestionable successes. Unfortunately, it has proved impossible to resolve the conflict between neoliberalism and democracy in Brazil, inside the political arena built in the transition after the military dictatorship. •

I am grateful to Tanaya Jagtiani and Lecio Morais for their valuable contributions to this piece. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. Noam Chomsky correctly described Lula as “the most prominent political prisoner in the world” (accessed 16 October 2018).
2. See M. Boffo, B. Fine and A. Saad-Filho, “Neoliberal Capitalism: The Authoritarian Turn,” Socialist Register 2019, pp.247-270.
3. “Neoliberalism … has helped create the conditions for the re-emergence of the far-right whilst, at the same time, the far-right has focused on attacking what it sees as the symptoms of neoliberalism through racializing its social, political and economic effects … It is not then that neoliberalism causesracism in the sense that racism is an organic dimension of it, but rather that neoliberalism is grounded on a collective socio-economic insecurity that helps facilitate a revival of pre-existing racialized imaginaries of solidarity” (N. Davidson and R. Saull, “Neoliberalism and the Far-Right: A Contradictory Embrace,” Critical Sociology, 43(4-5), 2017, pp.715-716.

       Bankers, agro-business elites, commercial mega owners, manufacturing, real estate and insurance bosses and their financial advisers, elite members of the ‘ruling class’, have launched a full-scale attack on private and public wage and salary workers,and small and medium size entrepreneurs (the members of the ‘popular classes’).  The attack has targeted income ,pensions, medical plans, workplace conditions, job security, rents, mortgages, educational costs, taxation,undermining   family and household cohesion.

     Big business has weakened or abolished political and social organizations which challenge the distribution of income and profits and influence the rates of workplace output.  In brief the ruling classes have intensified  exploitation and oppression through the ‘class struggle’ from above.

       We will proceed by identifying the means, methods and socio-political conditions which have advanced the class struggle from above and, conversely, reversed and weakened the class struggle from below.

Historical Context

          The class struggle is the major determinant of the advances and regression of the interests of the capitalist class.  Following the Second World War, the popular classes experienced steady advances in income, living standards, and work place representation. However by the last decade of the 20^th century the balance of power between the ruling and popular classes began to shift ,as a new ‘neo-liberal’ development paradigm became prevalent.

      First and foremost, the state ceased to negotiate and conciliate relations between rulers and the working class:  the state concentrated on de-regulating the economy, reducing corporate taxes, and eliminating labor’s role in politics and the division of profits and income.

        The concentration of state power and income was not uncontested and was not uniform in all regions and countries.  Moreover, counter-cyclical trends, reflecting shifts in the balance of the class struggle precluded a linear process.  In Europe, the Nordic and Western European countries’ ruling classes advanced privatization of public enterprises,  reduced social welfare costs and benefits, and pillaged overseas resources but were unable to break the state funded welfare system.  In Latin America the advance and regression of the power, income and welfare of the popular class, correlated with the outcome of the class and state struggle.

      The United States witnessed the ruling class take full control of the state, the workplace and distribution of social expenditures.

     In brief, by the end of the 20^th century, the ruling class advanced in assuming a dominant role in the class struggle.

      Nevertheless, the class struggle from below retained its presence, and in some places, namely in Latin America, the popular classes were able to secure a share of state power – at least temporarily.

Popular Power:  Contesting the Class Struggle from Above

      Latin America is a prime example of the uneven trajectory of the class struggle.

      Between the end of World War Two and the late 1940’s, the popular classes were able to secure democratic rights, populist reforms and social organization.  Guatemala, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela were among the leading examples.  By the early 1950’s with the onset of the US imperialist ‘cold war’, in collaboration with the regional ruling classes launched a violent class war from above, which took the form of military coups in Guatemala, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil.  The populist class struggle was defeated by the US backed military- business  rulers who, temporarily imposed US agro-mineral export economies.

      The 1950’s were the ‘golden epoch’ for the advance of US multi-nationals and  Pentagon designed regional military alliances.  But the class struggle from below rose again and found expression in the growth of a progressive national populist industrializing coalition,and the successful Cuban  socialist regime and its followers in  revolutionary social movements in the rest of Latin America throughout  the 1960’s.

      The revolutionary popular class insurgency of the early 1960’s was countered by the ruling class seizure of power backed by military-US led coups  between 1964-1976  which demolished the regimes and institutions of  the popular classes in Brazil (1964), Bolivia (1970), Chile (1973), Argentina (1976) , Peru (1973) and elsewhere.

Pinochet Military Junta, Chile 1973

     Economic crises of the early 1980s reduced the role of the military and led to a ‘negotiated transition’ in which the ruling class advanced a neo-liberal agenda in exchange for electoral participation under military and US tutelage.

      Lacking direct military rule, the ruling class struggle succeeded in muting the  popular class struggle by co-opting the center-left political elites.  The ruling class did not or could not establish hegemony over the popular classes even as they proceeded with their neo-liberal agenda.

          With the advent of the 21^st century a new cycle in the class struggle from below burst forth.  Three events intersected:  the global crises of 2000 triggered regional financial crashes, which in turn led to a collapse of industries and mass unemployment, which intensified mass direct action and the ouster of the neo-liberal regimes.  Throughout the first decade  of the 21^stcentury, neo-liberalism was in retreat.  The popular class struggle and the rise of social movements displaced the neo-liberal regimes but was incapable of replacing the ruling classes.  Instead hybrid center-left electoral regimes took power.

     The new power configuration incorporated popular social movements, center-left parties and neo-liberal business elites.  Over the next decade the cross-class alliance advanced largely because of the commodity boom which financed welfare programs, increased employment, implemented poverty reduction programs and expanded  investments in infrastructure.  Post-neoliberal regimes co-opted the leaders of the popular classes, replaced ruling class political elites but did  not displace the strategic structural positions of the business ruling class..

      The upsurge of the popular class struggle was contained and confined by the center-left political elite, while the ruling class marked time, making business deals to secure lucrative state contracts via bribes to the ruling center-left allied with the conservative political elite .

      The end of the commodity boom, forced the center-left to curtail its social welfare and infrastructure programs  and fractured the  alliance between big business leaders  and center-left political elites.  The ensuing economic recession facilitated the return of the neo-liberal political elite to power.

     The big business ruling class learned their lessons from their previous experience with weak and conciliating neo-liberal regimes.  They sought authoritarian and, if possible rabble rousing political leaders, who could dismantle the popular organizations, and gutted popular welfare programs and democratic institutions, which previously blocked the consolidation of the neo-liberal New Order.

The Neo-Liberal  New Order

      The neo-liberal “New Order” differed substantially from the past in several significant features.

      First neo-liberal programs under the New Order were based on highly repressive leaders – they did not merely depend on ‘market discipline’ and state promoted programs.  Authoritarian political regimes established a framework to finance, protect and promote the consolidation of neo-liberal systemic changes.

     Secondly, political ascendancy of the New Order relied on a coalition of ruling class elites, conservative upper middle-class property and professional groups and downwardly mobile lower middle classes fearful of personal and economic insecurity and the breakdown of the old social order.

      Thirdly, the New Order was led by a demagogic leadership that called on  direct political intervention, by  retired and active military and police officials backed by armed landowner militia , lumpen street fighters ( private gangsters) willing to intimidate leftist workers, landless peasants and unemployed trade unionists.

     Fourthly the New Order elites mobilized the mass base of religious fundamentalists by targeting ‘marginal groups’(gays, people of color, feminists,immigrants etc) who were portrayed as enemies of  the family,nation and religion.

      Fifthly ,the New Order deflected popular discontent to leftist corruption,immorality and impotence to combat crime in the streets.

       The New Order is built on perpetuating neo-liberal ruling elites by destroying the political,social and economic institutions and rules of the previous electoral order(‘democracy’).

In a word , big business led class struggle from above was not interested in free market ‘reforms’, the want it all-power ,profits,and privilege-without obligations,regulations or constrains.

The Future of the Neo-Liberal “New Order”

     The  authoritarian New Order has gained powerful patrons in rulers like US Presidents Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.  They have neo-liberal allies in Argentina, Central America , Europe , Asia and the Middle East.  They have embraced a powerful message of political-military bullying of traditional allies , economic warfare against dynamic competitors and a glorified vision of national grandeur to its mass followers.

      Initially, the business elites prosper,  the stock markets rise, taxes are  lowered and state subsidies fuel euphoria and hopes among the masses that ‘their turn is next’.  Profits and  police state ‘law and order’, link the business elite with the affluent middle class.

      The combative popular classes are demoralized and disoriented by failed leaders and the retreat of social movements and trade unions from the  class struggle

      In contrast the international alliance of the authoritarian big business neo-liberals has a vision of globel , regional and national power.

     However sustaining their advance is conditional on dynamic economic growth and overcoming cyclical economic crises; on subverting class struggle from below; on finding substitute adversaries, as older ones lose thru mystifying appeals.

      The corruption of upwardly mobile middle-class rabble rousers will disillusion their voluntary followers. Arbitrary  police and military repression usually extends to extortion and intimidation beyond the drug slums to the middle and working-class neighborhoods.

      The authoritarian New Order usually begins to decline through ‘internal rot’ – uber- profiteering and flagrant abuse of work.

      The rightist rhetoric turns against itself as its followers engage in invidious distinctions.  The ruling class looks to shed its authoritarian shock troops and replace them with technocrats., free marketeers and malleable bourgeois politicians.  The left and center-left looks to attract a new generation of followers in the street protests and seeks to form alliances with readily available opportunist politicians.  A new political cycle takes shape – but will a new popular class struggle emerge?

Elements responsible for both incidents had a specific objective in mind.

In his important book on the anthrax attacks, titled “The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy,” Graeme MacQueen connected the incidents to 9/11.

Falsely blamed on Muslim jihadists and their backers, the incidents were used to launch Washington’s global war OF terror, not on it.

They unjustifiably justified passage of the police state USA Patriot Act, trampling on the Bill of Rights.

The legislation was written, on the shelf, ready to go long before 9/11 – awaiting a pretext to introduce and enact what no free society would tolerate.

The measure changed 15 US laws – for the first time creating the crime of domestic terrorism, defined as “acts dangerous to human life.”

Henceforth, anti-war/global justice demonstrations, environmental or animal rights activism, civil disobedience, resisting tyranny, and dissent of any kind may be called “domestic terrorism.”

Other police state laws, presidential executive orders, national security and homeland security presidential directives, along other freedom-destroying actions followed – notably joint House/Senate Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).

It launched endless US-led wars of aggression, smashing one country after another, wanting their governments replaced by pro-Western puppet rule – 17 years later continuing with no end of them in prospect.

Graeme made a compelling case, connecting the anthrax attacks to 9/11 – both state-sponsored, both transformational, most Americans none the wiser about how they were deceived. The deception continues to the present.

The mail bombs also likely had a specific purpose, unexplained by major media – sent only to Trump critics, including Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, John Brennan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Maxine Waters, George Soros, CNN, and actor Robert De Niro.

None exploded. No one was hurt. Like 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, they aimed to transfix the nation on what happened, create alarm, and sow fear.

The earlier incidents aimed to launch US forever wars and destroy fundamental civil liberties.

The mail bombs were likely all about influencing the upcoming November 6 midterm elections, undemocratic Dem dark forces likely behind them, hoping the incident translates into winning back House and/or Senate control – wanting elements connected to or supporting Trump blamed for what happened.

James Fetzer explained the mail bombs stunt as follows, saying they suspiciously “turn(ed) up in the US mail delivered within close proximity of one another to prominent Democrats,” adding:

They appear “to be a desperate stunt by the Democrats to gain sympathy and trash Trump before the midterm elections, which are going very badly for them.”

“Liberal extremists have made horrific threats against the president in the past…Madonna shared her dreams of ‘blowing up the White House’ and comedian Kathy Griffin has held (what simulated) the severed head of Donald Trump.”

Relentless Trump bashing throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and since he took office by Dems and major media (notably the NYT, CIA-connected Washington Post and CNN) makes it appear that the mail bomb incident was a “ ‘false flag’ political event” connected to the November midterms?

On Thursday, NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd said “I have this fear that it could be some Russian operation,” adding the mail bombs incident “is dividing us.”

The phony accusation is related to Hillary Clinton and other prominent Dems, falsely accusing Trump of “collusion” and “ties with the Kremlin,” despite not a shred of evidence suggesting it.

Reuters reported that the design of the mail bombs sent resemble similar ones distributed in propaganda material by ISIS and al-Qaeda. Neither group claimed responsibility for sending them.

Saying “political violence ha(s) no place in the United States,” along with calling for unity in the wake of the mail bombs incident harming no one, Trump ignored Washington’s war on humanity at home and abroad.

His regime escalated what it inherited from the Clintons, Bush/Cheney and Obama.

Endless US wars of aggression he decried while campaigning rage. Extreme US hostility toward Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and other sovereign independent states risk greater imperial madness than already.

Major media transfixing the nation on the mail bombs political stunt diverts attention from what’s most important to report.

Fake bombs hurt no one. Real ones massacre countless numbers of civilians and others in all US war theaters.

The carnage continues daily, largely unreported, most Americans mindless about what’s going on.

Their attention is diverted to bread and circuses, along with incidents like fake mail bombs, intended to scare and likely achieve a political aim, not cause harm.

That’s how manipulating the public mind works.

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.

“Regrettably, though, the idea of the benevolent autocrat, the just dictator, is being revived in the Arab world.“ Jamal Khashoggi (1958-2018), Saudi Arabian journalist, a permanent resident of the United States and a Washington Post Global Opinions contributing columnist, assassinated by the Saudi government of Mohammed bin Salman (1985- ), in Istanbul, Turkey, on Tues. Oct. 2, 2018. (In a keynote speech at a conference in April 2018 organized by the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver and the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington D.C.)

“They [The Saudis] had a very bad original concept, it was carried out poorly, and the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups. (…) Very simple, bad deal; should never have been thought of. Somebody really messed up. And they had the worst cover-up ever. And where it should have stopped is at the deal standpoint.

Whoever thought of that idea [of assassinating Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi], I think, is in big trouble, and they should be in big trouble.” Donald Trump (1946- ), current American President, (statement made to reporters, on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in the Oval Office)

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher.

***

As a politician, Donald Trump is the image of the United States government, which attempts to maintain the American military-industrial complex. He needs “enemies”. He seems to need “enemies” to establish his own political identity and to possibly deflect attention from his own flaws. He has no adversaries; he has “enemies”, whom he brands “enemies of the people”.

This is not a trivial matter because this is a totalitarian rhetoric. Indeed, some violent, oppressive and fascist dictators and demagogues have been known to use the epithet in the past. We think of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in Nazi Germany, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) and Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) in the old USSR. Their aim: to stir up political hate and to delegitimize their “enemies” and anybody who dared to criticize their totalitarian governments. Mind you, those were bona fide dictators. That Donald Trump casually uses violent political rhetoric to delegitimize his opponents should be a source of concern for anyone who values democracy.

Donald Trump has called the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, an “enemy”, going so far as accusing her of being crooked, without advancing any evidence for such a serious accusation. He has also called the free press and journalists his “enemies”. He brands them as “fake news media”. He has often attacked athletes and Hollywood stars in the same manner, and he has insulted scores of others. Trump has bullied everybody else, including the Fed Chairman who should have politely told him that his reckless pro-cyclical economic policies are politically motivated and are contrary to good economic management.

That politician Donald Trump can get away with such rowdy and incoherent behavior is most astonishing. At the United Nations, in September, he was openly laughed at, and he has become a source of derision and fear around the world. His blind supporters do not see that, but the world does.

In a true democracy, leaders do not vie for absolute power for themselves or their family, and do not consider those who run for office in free elections as being “enemies”, but as legitimate opponents. Calling political adversaries who advance different political proposals “enemies” is the language of dictators and autocrats.

On the other hand, President Donald Trump seems to have a penchant, if not an open admiration, for autocrats and totalitarian leaders in other countries. For example, he has professed to be an admirer of communist China President-for-life Xi Jinping, going as far as publicly joking that this was “great” and that “maybe, we’ll have to give that a shot some day!” Donald Trump has also been cozy with North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un, with Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with Philippines dictator-to-be Rodrigo Duerte and with other similar junta autocrats or tyrants while turninga blind eye to their records of brutality and oppression. The world is now witnessing this with astonishment, because it is a throwback to the 1930s, when many democracies were replaced by dictatorships.

Donald Trump’s Special Relationship with the murderous regime of Saudi Arabia Prince Mohammed bin Salman

However, nothing beats the efforts Donald Trump made to jump to the defense of the Saudi government and to cover up the assassination and dismemberment (with a bone saw) of Saudi journalist and U.S. permanent resident Jamal Khashoggi. That odious crime was carried out by a Saudi 15-man kill commando in the Saudi Arabia Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018. Initially, Trump said that he talked to Prince Mohammed bin Salman who assured him that “he had not given the order” for Khashoggi’s assassination, even though some of the killers were members of his entourage and were his bodyguards. Then, Trump went out of his way to say “he believed” bin Salman’s denials, as if an alleged killer would admit such a barbarous crime!

When the Saudi government came up with the most outlandish fabrication that the journalist had died in a “fistfight” with a 15-man kill commando who had come from Saudi Arabia to assassinate him, Trump declared that the Saudi claims were “credible”, even though the entire world met such claims with derision. Indeed, it defies logic and common sense that in a totalitarian religious state like Saudi Arabia, paid agents of the government would take it upon themselves to assassinate and dismember a known critique of the regime, and do that in a foreign country, without an explicit go ahead from the very top.

However, when the dismembered parts of the journalist’s body were found in the garden of the Saudi consul general’s home in Istanbul, and when the Turkish government declared that it had evidence that Khashoggi’s assassination inside the Saudi Consulate was premeditated and carefully planned, and that “from the person who gave the order, to the person who carried it out, they must all be brought to account”, Trump’s attempt to cover up bin Salman’s crime became untenable.

Then, Trump stated that the killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul was “a bad deal” (sic) and that “someone really messed up.” He went on to announce cosmetic “sanctions” against the members of the killing commando, but without mentioning the higher-ups who ordered the killing and especially, without implicating the alleged culprit, Mohammed bin Salman.

Donald Trump seems to place emphasis on the way the Saudis have “botched” the crime, not that they had “committed” the crime in the first place. Some say that Donald Trump is an amoral and immoral person, being unable to rely on any personal ethics to distinguish right from wrong, in order to assess a situation. This could be a vivid example.

Conclusion

As days go by and President Donald Trump reels from crisis to crisis, my assessment of the man from day one stands, i.e. that ruthless businessman Trump’s imperial presidency is “a threat to American democracy and an agent of chaos in the world”.

 

Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, and of  “The New American Empire”, and the recently published book, in French « La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018 ».

Dr. Tremblay’s site: http://rodriguetremblay100.blogspot.com/

Rodrigue Tremblay is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

As pressure continues to mount over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Washington and London are weighing their next moves

As Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) comes under increasing pressure over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, policymakers in Washington and London have one overriding priority: to preserve the House of Saud, a military and economic ally in which they have invested so much. Yet, if Mohammed bin Salman cannot be retained, the UK and US will likely work to ensure some face-saving transfer of power to one of his relatives.It has already been reported that members of the ruling family have begun discussing the possibility of replacing the crown prince. But there is also a little-known precedent for a Western role in the removal of a Saudi leader.

Promoting a palace coup

Declassified British files show that Britain previously covertly supported a palace coup in Saudi Arabia involving Mohammed bin Salman’s forebears in the House of Saud. The coup occurred as long ago as 1964, but has eerie echoes to the present. It helped then Crown Prince Faisal oust his older brother King Saud, who had ruled since 1953 and was backed by the British to preserve the House of Saud.

Faisal, like bin Salman now, had by the late 1950s become the real force in Saudi Arabia and was running the government. But in December 1963, King Saud attempted to reassert his power by deploying troops and guns outside his palace in Riyadh. A tense standoff with forces loyal to Faisal continued into 1964, when Saud demanded that Faisal dismiss two of his ministers and replace them with the king’s sons.

Britain backed the 1964 palace coup for a particular reason: it viewed King Saud as incompetent and opposed to introducing the political reforms necessary to keep the House of Saud from being overthrown

However, crucial support for Faisal was provided by the National Guard, the then 20,000-strong body responsible for protecting the royal family. The commander of the National Guard at the time was Prince Abdullah, who would later become king until his death in 2015, when he was succeeded by his half-brother, King Salman – the father of Mohammed bin Salman.

Who was the force then behind the Saudi Arabian National Guard? Then, as now, it was Britain, which had a military mission in the country following a Saudi request in 1963. The declassified files show that two British advisers to the National Guard, Brigadier Kenneth Timbrell and Colonel Nigel Bromage, drew up plans on Abdullah’s express wish for the “protection of Faisal”, “defence of the regime”, “occupation of certain points” and “denial of the radio station to all but those supported by the National Guard”.

These British plans ensured Faisal’s personal protection, with the aim of ensuring that full power would be transferred to him, which duly occurred when Saud was forced to abdicate.

Preserving the House of Saud

Britain backed the 1964 palace coup for a particular reason: It viewed King Saud as incompetent and opposed to introducing the political reforms necessary to keep the House of Saud from being overthrown. Frank Brenchley, the charge d’affaires in the British embassy in Jeddah, wrote that “the sands of time have steadily been running out for the Saudi regime”, the major factor then being the nationalist revolution in neighbouring Yemen and the intervention of Egyptian troops there, which challenged Saudi authority in Arabia.

Brenchley noted that, in contrast to Saud, “Faisal knows that he must bring about reforms quickly if the regime is to survive. Hampered everywhere by a lack of trained administrators, he is struggling to speed evolution in order to avert revolution”.

British training of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), including arms exports to it, was greatly expanded after 1964. Today, Britain has dozens of military personnel advising the SANG and a major project helping it with “communications”. The SANG’s role remains overwhelmingly focused on promoting “internal security” – that is, preserving the House of Saud.

The US has an even bigger training and “modernisation” programme for the SANG – worth $4bn – and is now more likely to play a similar role to that of Britain in 1964.

Echoes in Yemen

What also has echoes from the past is that in the mid-1960s, Britain was conniving with the Saudis in a war in Yemen that was as brutal as the present one. A popular coup in September 1962 by republican forces deposed the imam, Muhammad al-Badr, who had been in power for a week after the death of his father, a feudal autocrat who had ruled since 1948. The imam’s forces took to the hills and declared an insurgency, while Britain and Saudi Arabia soon began a covert war to support them that lasted throughout the 1960s.

The British establishment’s fear was that the popular republican government in Yemen, backed by Nasser’s Egypt, would threaten the House of Saud and spread to the other British-controlled feudal sheikhdoms in Arabia. By the time the war fizzled out in 1969, the death toll might have been up to 200,000. Then, as now, human lives were seen as insignificant to London and Riyadh when compared with high policy.

The British-backed palace coup in 1964 also reinforced the role of Wahhabist ideology in the country. In March 1964, the Saudi religious leadership (the ulema) issued a fatwa sanctioning the transfer of power to Faisal as being based on sharia law; two days later, King Saud abdicated.

Reflecting on the coup, then British Ambassador Colin Crowe noted that “what may also be serious in the long-term” about the transfer of power to Faisal, “is the bringing of the ulemainto the picture, and they may exact a price for their support”. His comments proved prescient as the alliance between Wahhabism and the House of Saud would go on to promote extremism, involving the backing of terrorist forces, in various places around the world.

The friend and ally

The British government has condemned Khashoggi’s killing and supports an investigation. But it is still referring to Riyadh as a “friend and ally” and emphasising its “important strategic partnership” involving the military and trade. But how likely is it that a Saudi leader with blood on his hands can really keep up the pretence to the Western public that things are improving in the region?

London and Washington will need a revolution in their thinking to become part of the solution rather than remaining part of the problem

London and Washington may end up preferring a repeat of 1964: to put another “Saudi” in power. Yet, much better for Saudis and the world would be something altogether different, as recently argued by Madawi Al-Rasheed: allowing people the experience of participating in government and decision-making, including freedom of speech, in a gradual transformation of Saudi Arabia into a democratic system.

In this, London and Washington will need a revolution in their thinking to become part of the solution rather than remaining part of the problem.

– Mark Curtis is a historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam. Mark Curtis is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Photo: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh on 23 October 2018 (AFP)

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

The US Defense Department is expected to approve as early as next week the deployment of 800 to 1,000 active duty troops, mostly from the Army and Air Force, to the US-Mexico border, according to Trump administration officials.

While media reports indicated that details have not been finalized, this is the most concrete indication so far that the Pentagon plans to deploy troops domestically against the “caravan” of thousands of Central American migrants, mostly families with women and children that are currently crossing Mexico and seeking to reach the US.

The comments made by the US officials and media commenters sought to minimize the significance of the deployment, stating that the troops will be composed of engineers, aviation support, doctors and lawyers. Troops can still carry arms, CNN cites a military official, but “solely for self-defense.”

However, the unofficial announcement comes exactly one week after Trump first threatened to “call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!” He called the caravan an “onslaught” and said that the impoverished workers and peasants are “hardened criminals,” while making unfounded and racist claims that “Middle-Easterners” have joined it.

On Thursday morning, Trump restated his threat to deploy the military on Twitter, calling it a “National Emergency” and adding, “They will be stopped!” The previous night at a rally in Wisconsin he said the military was “all set” to be sent against the migrants.

Such a move would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the armed forces from carrying out domestic law-enforcement activities, excluding the National Guard. While US officials speaking to CNN denied that troops would deal directly with the caravan, a myriad of provocations can be construed to justify their direct intervention, which could turn into a massacre of unarmed workers and children on the basis of “self-defense.”

Last weekend, at the Guatemala-Mexico border, about 400 Mexican antiriot police began an assault against the migrants by tackling and shooting tear-gas canisters against the defenseless families seeking to cross the bridge toward the port of entry. Some migrants responded by throwing rocks, sandals and other objects, which led to an even more aggressive attack by the police.

While not confirming the deployment, Captain Bill Speaks, spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, wrote in an email to Military Timesthat the Department of Defense will “ensure the safety and security of the CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] personnel involved in border security operations.”

The troops are expected to join the 2,100 National Guardsmen already deployed across the US-Mexico border in late May.

The move is bound up with Trump’s efforts to exploit the caravan to ramp up nationalist and xenophobic sentiments ahead of the November 6 midterm elections in the United States.

The caravan has become a massive demonstration of workers. As they marched into Mexico, the 7,000-strong caravan chanted “Migrants are not criminals! We are international workers!” Mexican workers and peasants have warmly welcomed them with food, supplies and lifts.

The domestic deployment of the military against immigrants is a serious warning to the entire working class in the United States and internationally, immigrant or native-born alike. The ruling class is ready to respond to any defiance to the foundations of capitalist rule by proclaiming a “national emergency” and employing deadly repression.

As the Pentagon escalates its military confrontations against its main geopolitical rivals, the US ruling class is preparing to suppress all political dissent. The domestic deployment of troops is a precedent for waging total war against rivals abroad and social opposition at home.

On Tuesday, US Vice President Mike Pence told the media that the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, had assured him that the caravan was being “organized by leftist organizations and financed by Venezuela,” which Trump has referred to repeatedly as “socialist.” Such arguments seek to characterize the migrants as a “foreign invasion” to create a ready-made pretext for a violent attack against the migrants.

The Mexican and Guatemalan authorities have also deployed their militaries to stop the caravan. The Guatemalan government reported that it has sent back about 4,000 Honduran migrants. It placed military personnel and barbed wire at the main highway into the country from Honduras, at Agua Caliente. However, about 2.500 Hondurans who crossed into Guatemala on Tuesday successfully repelled the Guatemalan police and military officials who were requesting documentation and seeking to make arrests. According to the Guatemalan Prensa Libre, they simply marched forward as a group.

The current Central American caravan across southern Mexico and Guatemala is estimated at 14,000 migrants, according to the Mexican El Universal, with additional contingents planned. The main body leading the caravan yesterday left the town of Mapastepec in the Mexican state of Chiapas, about 95 miles from the Guatemalan border.

The migrants are at least 1,000 miles from the US border. There can be long pauses to regroup as the caravan faces the efforts of Mexican authorities to divide, detain and deport the migrants. It is therefore uncertain when it will reach the US and how large it will be.

The fascistic policy of the Trump administration builds on measures previously supported and implemented by the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, which presided over more deportations than any other. While Trump has taken these policies to a new level, the parallels of both administrations include family separations, the deployment of the National Guard to the border, the expansion of surveillance and physical barriers at the border, the deportation of minors, and the buildup and use of the Mexican armed forces as an extension of the US border patrol.

Policies such as the separation and prolonged detention of migrant families violate US and international law, constituting torture and crimes against humanity. Moreover, the attempted deportation of a Salvadoran mother and daughter in August in the middle of an ongoing hearing demonstrates the sheer lawlessness with which the government is carrying out its policies.

Trump’s threat to force migrants to apply for asylum in Mexico before reaching the US is another breach of US and international law.

The response of the Democratic Party to Trump’s onslaught against immigrants was characterized by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who told Democratic candidates this month that insisting on criticizing Trump’s anti-immigrant policies was a “waste of energy.” Even after Trump’s threats against the caravan, Democratic leaders kept accusing Trump for “changing the topic.”

The Democrats have instead focused their electoral appeals on stoking militarism and anti-Russia hysteria to portray Trump as “too soft” on Russia. In addition to seeking to compel Trump to adopt a more aggressive stance against Russia, this campaign has been used to attack basic democratic rights, including through internet censorship.

Democratic legislators have led an offensive for pressuring the Ecuadorian government to hand over WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, calling him a “threat to global security,” while seeking to incriminate him as an actor in the supposed Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

Without WikiLeaks, Americans and the world would not know the extent of the lies and US cover-up of the Honduran military coup of June 28, 2009 that installed a regime even more pliant to US demands and further worsened the social crisis behind the mass migration.

After the coup in 2009, the State Department insisted to the press that it did not know “who did what to whom.” However, a cable released by WikiLeaks dated July 24, 2009 from the US embassy in Honduras and sent to the Obama’s White House and Hillary Clinton’s State Department explores legalistic rationalizations “for a solution” to justify the overthrow. It concludes that the event “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup” and that the “Forced Removal [of President Manuel Zelaya] by Military was Clearly Illegal.”

The months and years that followed saw a dramatic intensification of the use of death squads and the military to repress social opposition against the coup and the resultant wave of corporate tax cuts, tax exemptions, cuts to environmental and labor regulations, and corrupt concessions that chiefly favored US and local corporations. A 2014 report by the US think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research measuring the impact of the overthrow found that poverty had increased 13.2 percent and extreme poverty 26.3 percent in the first two years after the military coup.

Frequent oil spills, GMO seeds, chemical, and other toxins poison planet earth worldwide – humanity’s survival threatened by ecocide or nuclear war.

BP’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill was considered the world’s most disastrous marine incident of its kind.

Millions of barrels of toxic hydrocarbons devastated large parts of the gulf, harming its sea life and ecology, along with causing a healthcare crisis for countless numbers of offshore residents in affected states.

Another little reported Gulf of Mexico oil spill may be worse, ongoing for 14 years, millions of barrels of toxic oil leaked, an estimated 700 barrels more leaking daily, no end of leakage in prospect.

EcoWatch said Taylor Energy Company’s Platform 23051 sank in Gulf of Mexico waters from a mudslide caused by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004.

It’s been leaking oil daily from then to now, explaining:

Up to 29,400 gallons “of oil per day spews from multiple wells around the platform, according to a recent government-commissioned study,” adding:

“This environmental horror story is amplified as the Trump administration plans to open up US coastal waters to offshore drilling and as hurricanes are predicted to become more destructive due to climate change.”

In December 2017, environmental watchdog Sky Truth estimated the cumulative spill to that time at up to nearly four million barrels of crude, saying the following:

“The Taylor Energy site perfectly captures the dysfunction of offshore oil development: In 2004, an underwater mudslide caused by Hurricane Ivan toppled one of the company’s platforms and buried the damaged wells attached to it on the seafloor.  Reports of oil on the surface at the site of the wreckage followed shortly after and a secretive clean-up effort ensued,”

adding:

By 2011, only nine of 25 damaged wells were found and plugged. Crude oil continues leaking from the site. A Greenpeace statement said “(t)his oil leak could last 100 years.”

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said if left unchecked, leakage could continue for decades until oil in the underground reservoir is depleted.

For six years, Taylor Energy failed to report the spill. Environmental groups discovered it. Initially the company lied, claiming leakage of only two barrels daily. It’s hundreds of times this amount.

EcoWatch said Taylor Energy “spent hundreds of millions trying to stop the leak. (It’s hard) capping the affected wells that are deep underwater and buried beneath 100 feet of mud.”

The company “mostly ceased to exist…president William Pecue…its last remaining employee.”

In 2008, the firm was “sold to a joint venture of South Korean companies,” the same year a $666 million trust was established for cleanup, a failed undertaking so far.

The so-called “Taylor leak” is located around 10 miles of Louisiana’s coast. Sky Truth president John Amos said it’s another “great example of what I call a dirty little secret in plain sight.”

Green Economic Institute founding fellow/health and environmental issues journalist Oliver Tickell said “(t)he company and the American regulators managed to keep the entire incident pretty quiet” for years, adding:

“It’s one of those long-running accidents, which is less exciting from a reporting point of view.”

“But, over the course of 14 years, with as many as 700 barrels a day being leaked into the Gulf, it adds up to being of the same kind of order as (the 2010) Deepwater Horizon spillage.”

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.

The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi now seems very likely to prompt Congress to impose some sanctions on the Saudi government, and it may finally act to end the active US role in the Saudi-UAE war on Yemen.  

Perhaps more significantly, some senior Democratic Party figures in Congress have called forthe first serious reconsideration of the whole US-Saudi “special relationship”, citing the need for fundamental changes in the relationship.   

A political cover

Such a critical reappraisal is long overdue. For decades the United States has been providing political-diplomatic cover for Saudi policies that have caused far more disastrous consequences for the United States and for the entire Middle East than any of the countries that Washington has designated as “adversaries”.

More than any other American ally, the way Saudi Arabia operates is completely at odds with the values the US professes to champion and embody. The Saudi ruling elite is not only proudly anti-democratic but upholds an extreme interpretation of Islam that has made it the primary source of violence and instability in the Middle East over the past decade.

The US alliance with Saudi Arabia must be understood not in terms of normal geopolitical interest but in terms of the bureaucratic interests of the CIA and the Pentagon

The main rationale for maintaining a “special relationship” with such an unsavoury regime has long been that the Saudis have assured “access” to oil at affordable prices. Many in the US political and national security elites have continued to embrace that argument, but fundamental changes in the global economics of oil – and especially the rise of the shale oil industry in the United States – have ended that former Saudi role in regulating the global oil market.

The world’s demand for oil has receded dramatically since 2014, creating a severe budget deficit problem for Saudi Arabia. As a result, the Saudis are afraid that any cut in production would cause the Kingdom to lose market share and benefit their competitors.

The new case for the US-Saudi alliance is that Saudi Arabia is the regional counterweight to Iranian expansion. But the recklessly aggressive Saudi behaviour in Syria and Yemen has done far more to benefit al-Qaeda, destabilise the region and harm US interests than to counter Iranian influence – real or imagined.

Heavy costs

The glaring contradiction between the supposed benefits of an alliance with the House of Saud and the actual heavy costs associated with it goes back to the US-Saudi collaboration between 1979 and 1988, supporting Afghan fighters against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In 1979, a Saudi national, Osama bin Laden, moved to Afghanistan to join the fighters and support them logistically and financially. In 1988, he founded al-Qaeda.

The Saudi regime’s fear of bin Laden’s popularity among its citizenry prompted it to cover up the reality of al-Qaeda terrorism, even after it struck inside Saudi Arabia itself. But more importantly, the US government tolerated that Saudi cover-up of terrorism.

In November 1995, four veterans of the Saudi jihadist force in Afghanistan with ties to bin Laden bombed the office of the program manager of the Saudi National Guard, which the US military was training, killing six American servicemen and wounding 42. That should have signaled a crisis in the alliance, but nothing happened.

Then came the bombing of Khobar Towers in june 1996, which killed 19 Americans and wounded 372. FBI Director Louis Freeh, the man in charge of the US investigation of the bombing, quickly accepted then Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar’s position that Iran was behind the bombing and ruled out any investigation of the bin Laden organisation. CIA Director George Tenet supported that decision.

The recklessly aggressive Saudi behaviour in Syria and Yemen has done far more to benefit al-Qaeda, destabilise the region and harm US interests than to counter Iranian influence – real or imagined

A former FBI official involved in the investigation revealed to this writer that when the FBI arrived at the scene to investigate the bombing in Saudi Arabia, they found the Saudi government was bulldozing the crime scene. And US intelligence intercepted secret orders from the Saudi interior ministry to provincial officials to obstruct the investigation.

Bin Laden actually confirmed his network’s responsibility for the bombing in two interviews he gave to the London-based newspaper Al Quds al Arabi in October and November 1996. The leadership of the FBI and CIA nevertheless supported the Saudi regime’s claim that it was an Iranian operation, thus effectively protecting the al-Qaeda network in the Kingdom. Two terror bombings that should have ended the “special relationship” thus gave al-Qaeda the opportunity to strike successfully on 9/11.

Covert operations

Even after the 9/11 attacks, Saudi Arabia remained the leading source of funding for al-Qaeda, as Hillary Clinton noted in a classified 2009 paper. And as the US treasury department concluded in 2008, the Saudi government was still not taking steps to halt such funding, despite the Americans urging them to.

The Obama administration gave the alliance with the Kingdom new importance by responding to pressure from its Saudi allies – as well as Turkey and Qatar – with a CIA programme to support the supply of arms to opposition forces in Syria. It was a covert US operation managed by the CIA but funded by the Saudi government – an arrangement that revived a familiar pattern of past Saudi-CIA collaboration.

For the CIA, the payoff was the freedom to carry out an operation that was “off the books” in terms of funding.

But the cost to the interest of US in halting terrorism and to the stability of the Middle East as a whole were enormous. Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its closest allies got a large share of the weapons, because the supposedly “moderate” forces were militarily dependent on Nusra.

Image: Osama Bin Laden (L) and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud (R) (AFP)

And the new threat to the regime of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad eventually provoked both Iranian and Russian military intervention, which the Obama administration should have anticipated from the start but didn’t. The end result of the US-Saudi operation was to wreck Syrian society for the foreseeable future and to give an al-Qaeda affiliate a political-military foothold in Syria.

A rare opportunity

Then in March 2015, the Obama administration signed on to another Saudi scheme – a Saudi-UAE air war to destroy the Iran-aligned Houthi forces in Yemen and restore a Saudi-backed government. The Obama administration not only gave its approval to the war in advance but then provided diplomatic cover for Saudi policies of preventing food and other humanitarian goods from reaching the civilian population.

The result has been a humanitarian catastrophe. Yemen’s ability to function as a society will be compromised as long as the war continues.

The US alliance with Saudi Arabia must be understood not in terms of normal geopolitical interest but in terms of the bureaucratic interests of the CIA and the Pentagon, which have dovetailed well with those of the House of Saud.

Although US officials would not disclose the amount of the Saudi contribution to the CIA’s covert programme to arm and train Syrian opposition forces, the total effort cost “several billion dollars”, according to New York Times sources.

For its part, the Pentagon and its arms contractor allies have already gotten contracts worth $14.5bn with the promise of $110 bn to come – depending on US compliance with Saudi interests. Equally important, it has gotten access to a naval facility in Bahrain (officially designated as “a major non-NATO ally” in 2002) over which the Saudis hold sway and which the Saudi regime will now certainly threaten to terminate if the US puts too much pressure on it.

Those interests have been sufficient to keep the two powerful national security institutions committed to the alliance. In the wake of the grisly Khashoggi murder and the likelihood of a Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, however, a rare opportunity has arisen for Congress to act independently of those institutions and impose restrictions on ties with the Saudis that have wrought primarily terrorism and ruin in the Middle East.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Photo: Trump holds a chart of weapon sales as he welcomes Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office, 20 March, 2018 (Reuters)

Canada’s paper of record pulled another layer off the rotting onion of propaganda obscuring the Rwandan tragedy. But, the Globe and Mail has so far remained unwilling to challenge prominent Canadians who’ve crafted the fairy tale serving Africa’s most ruthless dictator.

Two weeks ago a front-page Globe article added to an abundance of evidence suggesting Paul Kagame’s RPF shot down the plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana, which sparked the mass killings of spring 1994. “New information supports claims Kagame forces were involved in assassination that sparked Rwandan genocide”, noted the headline. The Globe all but confirmed that the surface-to-air missiles used to assassinate the Rwandan and Burundian Hutu presidents came from Uganda, which backed the RPF’s bid to conquer its smaller neighbour. (A few thousand exiled Tutsi Ugandan troops, including the deputy minister  of defence, “deserted” to invade Rwanda in 1990.) The new revelations strengthens those who argue that responsibility for the mass killings in spring 1994 largely rests with the Ugandan/RPF aggressors and their US/British/Canadian backers.

Despite publishing multiple stories over the past two years questioning the dominant narrative, the Globe has largely ignored the Canadians that shaped this Kagame-friendly storyline. I’ve written a number of articles detailing Roméo Dallaire’s important role in this sordid affair, but another widely regarded Canadian has offered significant ideological support to Kagame’s crimes in Rwanda and the Congo.

As Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF in the late 1990s Stephen Lewis was appointed to a Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events. Reportedly instigated by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and partly funded by Canada, the Organization of African Unity’s 2000 report, “The Preventable Genocide”, was largely written by Lewis recruit Gerald Caplan, who was dubbed Lewis’ “close friend and alter ego of nearly 50 years.”

While paying lip service to the complex interplay of ethnic, class and regional politics, as well as international pressures, that spurred the “Rwandan Genocide”, the 300-page report is premised on the unsubstantiated claim there was a high level plan by the Hutu government to kill all Tutsi. It ignores the overwhelming logic and evidence pointing to the RPF as the culprit in shooting down the plane carrying President Habyarimana and much of the army high command, which sparked the mass killings of spring 1994.

The report also rationalizes Rwanda’s repeated invasions of the Congo, including a 1,500 km march to topple the Mobutu regime in Kinshasa and subsequent re-invasion after the government it installed expelled Rwandan troops. That led to millions of deaths during an eight-country war between 1998 and 2003.

In a Democracy Now interview concerning the 2000 Eminent Personalities report Lewis mentioned “evidence of major human rights violations on the part of the present [Kagame] government of Rwanda, particularly post-genocide in the Kivus and in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” But, he immediately justified the slaughter, which surpassed Rwanda’s 1994 casualty toll. “Now, let me say that the [Eminent Personalities] panel understands that until Rwanda’s borders are secure, there will always be these depredations. And another terrible failure of the international community was the failure to disarm the refugee camps in the then-Zaire, because it was an invitation to the génocidaires to continue to attack Rwanda from the base within the now- Congo. So we know that has to be resolved. That’s still what’s plaguing the whole Great Lakes region.”

An alternative explanation of “what’s plaguing the whole Great Lakes region” is US/UK/Canada backed Ugandan/RPF belligerence, which began with their invasion of Rwanda in 1990 and continued with their 1996, 1998 and subsequent invasions of the Congo. “An unprecedented 600-page investigation by the UN high commissioner for human rights”, reported a 2010 Guardian story, found Rwanda responsible for “crimes against humanity, war crimes, or even genocide” in the Congo.

Fifteen years after the mass killing in Rwanda in 1994 Lewis was still repeating Kagame’s rationale for unleashing mayhem in the Congo. In 2009 he told a Washington D.C. audience that “just yesterday morning up to two thousand Rwandan troops crossed into the Eastern Region of the Congo to hunt down, it is said, the Hutu génocidaires.”

A year earlier Lewis blamed Rwandan Hutu militias for the violence in Eastern Congo. “What’s happening in eastern Congo is the continuation of the genocide in Rwanda … The Hutu militias that sought refuge in Congo in 1994, attracted by its wealth, are perpetrating rape, mutilation, cannibalism with impunity from world opinion.”

In 2009 the Rwanda News Agency described Lewis as “a very close friend to President Paul Kagame.” And for good reason. Lewis’ has sought to muzzle any questioning of the “RPF and U.S.-U.K.-Canadian party line” on the tragedy of 1994. In 2014 he signed an open letter condemning the BBC documentary Rwanda’s Untold Story. The 1,266 word public letter refers to the BBC’s “genocide denial”, “genocide deniers” or “deniers” at least13 times. Notwithstanding Lewis and his co-signers’ smears, which gave Kagame cover to ban the BBC’s Kinyarwanda station, Rwanda the Untold Story includes interviews with a former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), a former high-ranking member of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda and a number of former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) associates of Kagame. In “The Kagame-Power Lobby’s Dishonest Attack on the BBC 2’s Documentary on Rwanda”, Edward S. Herman and David Peterson write: “[Lewis, Gerald Caplan, Romeo Dallaire et al.’s] cry of the immorality of ‘genocide denial’ provides a dishonest cover for Paul Kagame’s crimes in 1994 and for his even larger crimes in Zaire-DRC [Congo]. … [The letter signees are] apologists for Kagame Power, who now and in years past have served as intellectual enforcers of an RPF and U.S.-U.K.-Canadian party line.”

Recipient of 37 honorary degrees from Canadian universities, Lewis has been dubbed a “spokesperson for Africa” and “one of the greatest Canadians ever”. On Africa no Canadian is more revered than Lewis. While he’s widely viewed as a champion of the continent, Lewis has backed Africa’s most bloodstained ruler.

It is now time for the Globe and Mail to peel back another layer of the rotting onion of propaganda and investigate Canadian connections to crimes against humanity in Rwanda, Congo and the wider Great Lakes region of Africa.

-European parliament has renewed calls for an arms embargo against Saudi forces

-Saudi-led bombardment has inflicted a humanitarian catastrophe on Yemen

-UK has licensed almost £5 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since Yemen war began in March 2015

Earlier today, members of the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reaffirm its call for a European-wide embargo against Saudi Arabia, and a political solution to the ongoing conflict in Yemen. The Parliament originally voted to support an arms embargo on February 25, 2016.

The vote is not legally binding, but it sends a strong message to member states that have continued to arm Saudi Arabia despite the humanitarian crisis that has been inflicted on Yemen.

The vote follows recent pledges from the German government to review arms sales to the Saudi regime. Over recent weeks there has also been u-turn from the Spanish government, which in September promised to block the sale of missiles to Saudi Arabia, before reversing its position days later.

UK government statistics show that since the bombing of Yemen began in 2015, the UK has licensed £4.7 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, including:

£2.7 billion worth of ML10 licences (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)

£1.9 billion worth of ML4 licences (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

“We are always being told that the European Union stands for human rights, equality and democracy, but European governments have poured billions of pounds worth of arms into one of the worst war zones in the world. These arms sales have had deadly consequences.

The Saudi-led war and blockade has created a terrible humanitarian crisis, and European governments, including the UK, have supported it from day one. Theresa May and other key leaders must end their support for the Saudi regime and its terrible bombardment.”

When the Tories were elected to govern Ontario this past June, it was a day that many were both dreading and expecting.

The Ontario government has finally unveiled their legislation that would repeal the gains workers made from Bill 148. In an emergency action coordinated by the $15 and Fairness campaign, 500 workers were out in the streets of Toronto yesterday evening, to send a message to Premier Ford that the actions he and his party have taken to repeal Bill 148 has betrayed workers across the province.

The Bill freezes the minimum wage at $14 and only indexes it to inflation beginning in October 2020.

The ten personal emergency leave (PEL) days, two of which are paid, becomes 8 PEL days that are proscriptive (3 for sickness, 3 for family emergency, 2 for bereavement). None of those PEL days are paid. The requirement for workers to provide doctor’s notes in order to take these emergency leave days have returned. For workplaces with over 50 employees, these measures are worse than what existed before Bill 148.

“Doctors and nurses are busy enough without the additional task of writing sick notes, which will cost taxpayers hundreds of dollars,” says Dr. Kate Hayman, emergency doctor involved in the Decent Work and Health Network. “Let’s call this policy what it is. It’s bad for workers, and it’s bad for the health of every Ontarian. From a government that promised to listen to doctors and end hallway medicine, I expected better.”

The 3 hour pay guarantee for on call and shift work for workers not called in, or for shifts cancelled within 48 hours is among the long list of gains made that will no longer come into effect January 1, 2019.

Equal pay for equal work for part-time, casual, contract, and temp workers has also been scrapped, with the equal pay for equal work provision reverting back to gender equity provisions, rather than for the type of work done. Further, workers will no longer have the provision that put the onus on the employer to prove that workers are not employees in order to prevent job misclassification.

Rules that lowered the threshold of union cards needed to be signed to get employee lists, sector-specific card check, and sector-specific protections against contract flipping has also been eliminated.

Impacts on Workers

Given the estimated inflation rate between January 2018, the last increase in the minimum wage and October 2020, workers will be looking at a real wage cut of $0.80 to $1.00 by the time indexing comes into effect.

Molaka Barbin is one of the many food service industry workers that was counting on the planned increase to the minimum wage. “The $15 and Fairness campaign is good for us. $15 is good for us, and good for everyone. Now, I feel very sad. Everywhere, prices are increasing.”

Scrapping paid PEL days will keep workers going to work, even if they’re sick – which will undoubtedly harm public health and put further strain on our public health system. Mandating reasons for each set of PEL days requires workers to jump through more hoops to get them approved, which further adds to the stress that workers and their families will have to deal with. Nadira Bedum, a Toronto based $15 and Fairness organizer said:

“Not only me, but my community – Regent Park is disappointed. When I talked to workers yesterday, they were shocked. 2 paid sick days allows workers who are sick, whose kids are sick to stay home without any stress. Now, there’s no choice for workers.”

The scrapping of equal pay for equal work provisions in Bill 148 sends a message to employers to continue to attack the most vulnerable workers who are not in full-time employment. Since proving job classification is no longer on the onus of the employer, an increase in misclassification is expected, especially since it’s unlikely for the government to increase workplace inspections.

While Bill 148 did not grant card check in all workplaces, it was still a step forward. Rolling back these changes will have a negative effect on union density, with studies showing that union organizing increased significantly in Ontario when the Bob Rae NDP government introduced card check. Once the Harris government came into power and reversed that legislation, organizing decreased significantly.

Contract flipping, which has been used to break unions, (most notably at Pearson Airport) has long been an issue when it comes to backdoors to union busting. Now with the repeal of provisions preventing it, the government is explicitly sending a message to businesses that it is okay. Under the new legislation, contract flipping will increase and intensify.

What This Means for Unions

Ford’s decision to repeal major sections of Bill 148 is a clear attack on workers, and on unions who will face increasingly difficult organizing conditions, making it harder to gain new members.

“The attacks on unions are unforgivable. It is only through unions that people have the ability to organize and fight back. This is unethical and absolutely goes against any of the teachings Ford professes to support.” said Reverend Dr. Cheri DiNovo.

The key issue moving forward is how unions will respond. The lessons of the Harris years should be obvious. Solely focusing on electoral politics will not work. Labour’s response to Ford’s anti-worker agenda will require mobilizing and deep organizing in communities. The work that the Fight for $15 and Fairness campaign has done in communities has accomplished huge gains for workers and made Bill 148 a reality.

“The determination of the people that make this movement never fail to inspire me. We sent a clear message that if this government thinks workers are going to go quietly, we’ve got another plan for them,” said Pam Frache, coordinator of the $15 and Fairness campaign. “Everything we’re doing right now is about laying the foundation for resistance yet to come. We’re going to keep fighting, keep mobilizing and keep speaking out – and we’re going to win.”

But with such a hostile government, the tactics will have to become more confrontational in order to leverage the pressure needed to make Ford and the Tories retreat. There were several missed opportunities in the fightback against Harris where the government looked like it was going to reverse course, but the pressure was throttled in favour of negotiation and electoralism. Now, we must learn from our past mistakes and build a broad and militant front in order to protect what we have already gained. Without that we won’t be able to make gains in the future.

“The threat is on the table at Queen’s Park. They are threatening poverty wages for the foreseeable future for the most vulnerable workers in the province. They’re threatening paid sick days, which has real life consequences. We’re still asking for Doug Ford to stand up to the big business lobbyists, and to stand with the people.” •

This article first published on the Rank and File website.

It was balmy and breezy by the bench where I sat outside a public library east of Atlanta, Georgia, brooding about the state of the world.  It seemed like the end times, and I had just attended a fire and brimstone sermon, not perused the mainstream and alternative press. I had just spent a few hours on the internet, noting so many articles that announced that the world as we know it was coming to an end, or maybe just the world. 

The American Empire was collapsing, the U.S.A. was a failed state, climate change would soon destroy the world if nuclear war didn’t do it first, etc.  Many of these articles were predicting that soon the elites who run the U.S. would be getting their comeuppance because of hubris and overreach and, like the Roman Empire, the die had been cast and disaster was on the horizon.  Such prognostications were appearing in publications that covered the political spectrum.  All of it was fear-inducing, notwithstanding one’s political beliefs.  Left, right, and center had reasons to be depressed or elated by the claims, depending on one’s politics and existential reality.  And, need I surmise, the writers of these jeremiads were probably writing from a position of personal privilege, not scrounging for their next meal.

And it was a beautiful mid-October day.  The benches by the adjacent church were full of homeless people, their meagre belongings arrayed at their feet.  The susurrant sound of the leaves of the sycamore tree that formed a sacred canopy above me was lulling me to sleep.  In my half-asleep state, I, a northerner, was dreaming I was a Georgian civilian hiding behind the enemy’s lines, those lines being General Sherman’s Union Army’s artillery that was arrayed a few miles to my west and was shelling Atlanta.  And in this reverie I was also aware that, as I wouldn’t have been in 1864, that Sherman would soon leave Atlanta and lead his troops on the savage “march to the sea” that would earn him the appellation as the American father of total warfare that would become America’s tactic from World War I until the present day, a form of warfare that has brought apocalyptic death and destruction to millions around the globe.  Lost and frightened in this half-dreaming state with my eyes closed, I was startled by a thud and dim awareness of a shadow to my left. 

Awakening, I saw that a homeless man had sat next to me. We said hello.  “Sorry to give you a fright,” he said, “but all the benches by the church are taken.”  We got to talking.  He told me that he had been homeless for almost two years, that he had originally been from Indiana, where he had graduated from the University of Indiana, and that when he was laid off he was unable to pay his mortgage and had lost his small house.  He looked to be in his late thirties, with a scruffy beard and a very tired face.  His name was Paul.

Among his tattered belongings, I was surprised to see an old paperback copy of a book sticking out of a side pocket of one of his bags.  I knew the title – Raids on the Unspeakable – by the anti-war Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, who died in a very mysterious manner in Bangkok, Thailand fifty years ago this December 10.  Merton’s death was the third that year of prominent and influential anti-war fighters:  Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy having earlier been assassinated by forces of the American national security state.  Nineteen sixty-eight had been a very bad year for peace and peace-makers.  It was a year of endless war and strife, a time when everything seemed to be collapsing.  And here we are.

Paul told me he had picked the book out of a box of books that had been set out for garbage pickup.  He said he had read a few of the essays and one in particular had struck him.  It is called “Rain and the Rhinoceros.”  I knew and loved the essay and was startled by the serendipity of our meeting.  He said the reason the essay struck home to him was because he had grown up on a farm in Indiana and had spent much of his youth outdoors.  He loved the natural world, and his mother and grandmother had early introduced him to the “Hoosier Poet,” James Whitcomb Reilly, whose poems he had memorized.  He proceeded to recite a stanza from one of them for me, as I, mesmerized, watched his expressive face light up. 

Oh! the old swimmin’-hole! When I last saw the place,

The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face;

The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot

Whare the old divin’-log lays sunk and fergot.

And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be—

But never again will theyr shade shelter me!

And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul,

And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin’-hole.

Then his face grew dark again, tired and forlorn.  He said that when he lost his home, the last piece of mail he opened was his water bill, and it was sky high.  He thought it appropriate that since he couldn’t afford a home, he couldn’t afford water, the water of life that should be free.  And that’s what so resonated for him in the Merton essay.  Merton’s opening paragraph, which he opened to show me, goes like this:

Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By “they” I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.

“When they will sell you even your rain,” he said sadly.  “They sold me a bill of goods.  The American dream!  What a bad joke, here I am, a college graduate, not a drunk or drug addict, and I’m living in a tent in the woods in a ravine by a golf course.  Some nights I think they make it rain on me for fun, as if to say: here’s your free water, you loser.”

He asked about me, and I told him who I was and why I was there.  I mentioned the end-of-the-world articles I had been reading earlier, realizing as I did that I was saying a dumb thing to this this poor guy whose world was in tatters already.

Then he taught me this, as if he were Socrates asking questions.  I paraphrase:

If you were Merton’s “they,” those who rule the American Empire and your oppressed subjects were restless and awakening to their plight, what message would you want to convey to keep the peons from rebelling?  What strategies, short of direct violence, would be most effective in rendering even the relatively well-off middle class passive and docile?  What, in other words, is the most effective form of social control, outside economic exploitation and fear of penury, in a putative democracy when all the controlling institutions have lost the trust of most of the population?

Then, without skipping a beat, he answered his own questions.  You would, he said, tell them that the sky is falling, the empire is collapsing, that the rich rulers are going to get theirs when the system collapses on itself and that this is in the process of happening right now.  So sit back and watch the show as it closes down.  The end is near.

Then he said he had to go.  Lunch was being served at the nearby soup kitchen and if you didn’t get there early, they sometimes ran out of food. 

As he walked away, I thought of my vast ignorance and the society of illusions and delusions that I was living in, a constant streaming theater of the absurd.  I wanted to cry for this man and all people, even myself, as he disappeared around the corner.  He seemed to carry his loneliness in the old backpack that weighed him down.  As he turned the corner, he looked back and waved, a smile on his face.  I felt overcome, and when I recovered my bearings, I noticed he had left the book on the bench.  But by then he was long gone.  I opened it to a page that was dog-eared, and read these words of Merton, another solitary man in the woods, his solitude a choice, not, like Paul, an imposed necessity, at least the living arrangement part:

It is in the desert of loneliness and emptiness that the fear of death and the need for self-affirmation are seen to be illusory. When this is faced, then anguish is not necessarily overcome, but it can be accepted and understood. Thus, in the heart of anguish are found the gifts of peace and understanding: not simply in personal illumination and liberation, but by commitment and empathy, for the contemplative must assume the universal anguish and the inescapable condition of mortal man. The solitary, far from enclosing himself in himself, becomes every man. He dwells in the solitude, the poverty, the indigence of every man.

Next to this paragraph was the word “Paul,” written in blue ink.

It was such an achingly beautiful day.  I got up and left the book on the bench, as I too walked away, after writing “Ed” in black ink next to Paul’s blue. 

We are all bruised, aren’t we?  But often times those bruised the most have the most to give. 

This is Paul’s gift.

Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

This analysis is made by Pentapostagma Enimerosis and translated exclusively for SouthFront

As Turkey escalates in the Eastern Mediterranean the real question is how determined Greece is to respond.

Greece is confronting a huge diplomatic and military dilemma after Turkey sent a seismic vessel to the eastern Mediterranean to allegedly explore the existence of natural gas deposits.

The vessel began investigating on Tuesday night (16.10.2018) before withdrawing temporarily after the Greek Navy sent a strict radio alert.

After the incident, Turkey sent three frigates and two patrol ships there to protect the movements of their own seismographic ship.

Turkey, however, seems to be pushing tension by sending Barbaros Hayreddin Pasa vessel to explore in an area that includes part of the continental shelf of Greece.

If Barbaros returns to Greek waters, however, Athens will face a dilemma: either issue another radio alert or increase its naval presence in the region to reach strategic balance.

Such a move could, however, scale the situation dangerously, something that would have undefined implications.

Greece is willing to avoid the second option, as it could fuel a sensitive area in which foreign naval warships, including US and Russian ships, are powered.

Diplomatic and military tensions between Greece and Turkey increased sharply this year, as Ankara pursued the arrest and imprisonment of two Greek soldiers.

A few days ago, Turkey issued a NAVTEX announcing that it was planning to investigate the existence of natural gas within and around the exclusive economic zone of Cyprus.

The tensions rose on Thursday (18.10.2018) when the Turkish media announced that there was an “incident” between Barbaros and the Greek frigate “Nikiforos”. The incident was denied by the Greek headquarters and Turkey was accused for spreading propagandistic news.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry, for its part, announced that Turkey exercised its sovereign rights to investigate the existence of natural gas, while underlining that the Greek sovereignty in the region is unrealistic and detrimental to bilateral relations and regional stability.

This in itself constitutes the creation of a dangerous situation that may turn into a “military confrontation” in the Mediterranean.

ExxonMobil is gearing up to investigate the existence of natural gas deposits in Cyprus, a move that could further exacerbate tensions between Washington, Ankara and Athens.

Diplomatic relations between Turkey and the United States have also deteriorated considerably this year due to continued US support to the Kurds in Syria, the subsequent Turkish invasion of the north, and the imprisonment of Pastor Andrew Brunson and other Americans with allegations of involvement in terrorist organizations.

A few days ago, on 20.10.2018, the turkish press has publicly announced that the new UAV surveillance aircraft has been tested and completed and its radius is now 200 km.

This translates immediately that all the disputed areas of the Cypriot and most of the Greek EEZ are within the range and are now targets of Turkish UAVs.

The Turks want to control the movements of Greek ships in the area at any moment, as well as the presence of one or two Greek submarines operating in the Mediterranean, which are one of Greece’s most important leverages against the Turkish Navy.

According to the Turkish website Meteksan Defense, it is reported that the C-Band Data Link System has been developed to provide communication between the Turkish UAVs and their ground control stations over 200 kilometers.

The system can be used in UAVs flying at high, medium and low altitudes, and will be used to transmit the data in live time for uninterrupted and, in particular, making in-time decisions during a crisis.

This means that in the area of ​​the current crisis in the Mediterranean, we will soon see Turkish UAVs, which will “comb” the whole region while they will also provide extremely valuable information to Ankara.

However, there has been a great deal of concern in the Greek general staff for dealing with the threat from unmanned aircraft used by the Turkish Armed Forces in the Eastern Aegean and Thrace.

The latest achievement of the Turkish defense industry is the UCAV AKINCI, which was developed by Baykar Company and is scheduled to carry out its first flight in 2019 and will enter into a wartime operation in 2020.

This is the new truly important upgrade to Turkey’s intelligence gathering area, with the presence of unmanned aircraft, which with the current available technology offer the ability to monitor and track targets of interest, not only within the Greek FIR but also within the National Airspace (LRU).

The main advantage of all these UAVs is that they are unmanned, so there is no reason to lose staff if they reach dangerous targets and they provide extremely valuable information in real time.

In case of any possible Turkish operation, many of our military units in the islands and Evros and now in Cyprus will become “targets” of Turkish unmanned aircrafts.

Meanwhile, within the boundaries of the Greek continental shelf, the frigate of the Hellenic Navy continues to travel, overseeing the Turkish research vessel Barbaros.

According to information from sources in Nicosia, there is calm in the area despite the provocative presence and behavior of the Turkish Navy and seismic vessel, while Barbaros seems to be outside the boundaries of the Greek continental shelf.

But the Turks are estimated to have just measured international reactions in the past few days, and after the CN-235 spy planes are preparing to send a UAV with a clear mission to continue monitoring Greek military personnel and submarine units.

This powerful book argues that the human species is at a tipping point when it is forced to choose between a New World Order fascist government committed to rapid depopulation or a world of peace and justice.

Hellyer demonstrates that God is alive, well and everywhere, and that humanity’s choice is between the Dark and the Light. To follow the Light means giving up atomic weapons, replacing the oil economy with clean zero-point energy developed by Americans in the 1960s, having governments create 34 percent of all new money for public purposes rather than borrowing it from the 62 elite banking families, a reconciliation of the two main branches of Islam, and a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to bring peace to the Middle East.

Finally it will be necessary for all countries, races, and faiths, especially young people, to forgive past atrocities and work together in common purpose to save the heritage they have in common.

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Hope Restored: An Autobiography by Paul Hellyer: My Life and Views on Canada, the U.S., the World & the Universe

Author: Paul Hellyer

Publisher: Trine Day (September 24, 2018)

ISBN-10: 9781634241847

ISBN-13: 978-1634241847

Click here to order.

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The oldest Serbian Publishing House – Serbian Literary Cooperative – has recently promoted the book “1244 – A Key to Peace in Europe”, authored by Živadin Jovanović, a former foreign minister of Yugoslavia (1998–2000). The book was presented to the audience and the media by Mr. Dragan Lakićević, Editor-in-Chief of the Serbian Literary Cooperative, Prof. Milo Lompar, Ambassador Dragomir Vučićević (retired), and Author. 

The book is a collection of the author’s articles, interviews and public speeches related to the Autonomous Serbian Province of Kosovo and Metohija which have been published of the past 20 years (from 1997 through September 2018. The book (890 pages) comprises 5 Chapters: The Time of Terrorism, The Time of Aggression, The Time of Illusions, The Time of Waking up, and The Documents.  The reviewers are Academician Vlado Strugar, Prof. Dr. Milo Lompar, and Prof. Čedomir Štrbac and the editors Ambassador Dragomir Vučićević (retired) and the writer Dragan Lakićević. The publishers: The Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, and the Serbian Literary Cooperative.

According to Professor Milo Lompar the book reflects continuity of the author’s views on statehood and national interests of Serbia and the Serbian people, readily recognizable in his decades-long career in diplomacy and in his public engagements. Author’s continuous advocacy for the full respect of the basic International Law Principles and UN Security Council Resolution 1244 in resolving the problem of the Serbian Province of Kosovo and Metohija reflects both – his understanding of the long-term and current importance of Kosovo and Metohija, not only for Serbia and the Serbian people, but also for the peace and stability in the Balkans and Europe. With over 1.300 Serbian medieval monuments, headquarters of the Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarchy – Kosovo and Metohija is deeply interwoven in the state, national, cultural and religious identity – considers professor Lompar. He concluded that the book of Mr. Živadin Jovanović reaffirms the statehood roots and tradition of the Serbian nation re-established in XIX century as well as the right to equality and self governance of all citizens and national communities living in the Provence regardless of their nationality or religion. He particularly  praised high documentary value of the book as its special feature.

Speaking about the author’s key theses, Ambassador Dragomir Vučićević singled out the need for Serbia to dedicate much more reflection on herself and her long-term interests, and to a lesser extent on the current expectations by the international stakeholders, since the latter, in their positioning vis-à-vis Serbia, are guided solely by their own geopolitical interests.

Serbia should adhere to the fundamental principles of the international law and the UN SC resolutions, regardless of who may or may not find it suitable, and develop balanced relations with all international actors, particularly with proven, long term friends who did not partake in NATO aggression and have not recognized the ensuing illegal, unilateral secession. Vučićević also highlighted the author’s thesis that Serbia needs the European Union only to the extent the European Union needs Serbia, and that EU membership is a legitimate goal insofar as it is not conditioned to surrendering her sovereignty and territorial integrity.

A just and durable solution for Kosovo and Metohija is only possible on the basis of observing the principles enshrined in the UN Charter, the OSCE Final Act (1975), UNSC Resolution 1244 (1999) and the Constitution of Serbia. Attempts to impose on Serbia solutions which legalize violations of the basic principles of International Law and of European Security and Cooperation as well as UN SC resolutions would pave the way to the spreading of instability and the build-up of conflict potential in the Balkans and in Europe – warned Vučićević.

The author recalled that UN SC Resolution 1244 (1999) was the outcome of extremely difficult two-month negotiations under Russian mediation, while the NATO aggression was unfolding. According to him, it is quite improbable that present day narrow and closed Brussels’ negotiations format would produce balanced, just, and sustainable solution to Kosovo and Metohija problem. If the West was unable to end the NATO War in 1999 without the key role of Russia (Victor Chernomirdin) how realistic is now, 20 years after, to resolve the issue of the status of Kosovo and Metohija being the main consequence of that war, keeping Russia outside of the whole process! Is Russia of Putin today less relevant, less capacitated for peaceful solution of international problems, including problem of Kosovo and Metohija?! Or to put it differently,  is the West stronger, dominant player in the global and European arena today than it was in 1999!?  Jovanovic added that UN SC Resolution 1244 (1999) comprises the positions and interests of all key actors in European and global relations, Russia and China included.

Taking that this was true back in 1999 — at the peak of dominance of the unipolar world order – it follows that today, under the backdrop of multipolar global relations, this is no less than imperative. A bid to resolve it within an EU-only format reveals intention to exclude Russia and China and to resort to blackmailing in order to impose geopolitical interests of the West, namely, the EU and NATO. Acceptance of such attempts would go against the global trends, and would result in further destabilization of relations in the Balkans and in Europe rather than in introducing a balanced and sustainable solution. 

Jovanović recalled of the coming 80^th anniversary of the Munich Agreement on Sudetenland ostensibly to ‘protect’ the rights of the German national minority and ‘save’ the peace in Europe. We all know who took part in, and who was intentionally excluded from, this ‘agreeing’ and what was the outcome of this ‘comprehensive legally binding agreement’ of 30 September 1938 – warned Jovanović. 

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History teaches that wars are inevitable. They are genetically ingrained into the human mind – as well as the rest of the Animal Kingdom. The use of violence and belligerence to get what one wants, starts as early as childhood among siblings, later on in the school yard and then progresses to become more innovative, nasty and evil right into ripe old age. Selfish “Want” is the source of all belligerence and, hence, wars.

Probably because of their slightly more advanced cognizant abilities, humans have always tried to curb their inherent belligerence, especially as they evolved from Hunter-Gatherers to a primitive sedentary state and thence to early villages, city states and eventually to kingdoms and empires. They tested and applied various forms of kin/clan relationship rules, religious constraints and guidelines, and lastly state laws that were designed by kings or, thereafter, the elites. But none of these attempts worked, and wars continued unfettered. In fact, they became more vicious, bloody and devastating as new inventions were diverted to military use; bronze weapons, chariots, catapults, Greek-fire, longbows, gunpowder, aircrafts, nuclear energy, lasers, space travel, etc.

What are Treaties?

Humans tried to control wars by treaties, alliances and truces, but they were all fake and, hence, short term in nature. They were never worth the paper they were written on – or the handshake that sealed them. History contains many more abrogated or reneged-on treaties than what we have seen in the past couple of years – or are likely to see in the near future.

The issue is not treaties, which are basically a camouflage to hide the present unreadiness or incapability of a potential aggressor to grab what he wants and, hence, both signatories use them to buy time. The problem is the unbridled “Want” – the lusting over others’ assets, be they land, natural resources, markets, know-how, political control, etc. In short, the desire for regional or global hegemony and control is irresistible, but always ends, and badly at that!

The problem becomes much bigger when “Want” and selfish desires are manifested by the mighty and powerful, for they cannot be reined in. The mighty are able to ignore with impunity international laws and norms, international institutions or tribunals and can unilaterally decide justifications for their aggression on those weaker than them. This aggression can take various forms such as destructive kinetic wars, sanctions, embargoes, interference in others’ internal affairs, choking of economies, instigating civil unrest and civil wars – All to satisfy their insatiable “Want”, which is then sloppily disguised intellectually as geopolitical strategies and national security needs.

Nuclear Weapons Treaties

George Friedman, of Geopolitical Futures (ex-Stratfor), wrote on October 22, 2018 that nuclear treaties are of little value because the real deterrent to nuclear war is the fear of the human devastation it would bring upon the warring parties themselves and, incidentally, the whole world.

If this argument is a prelude to justify the US administration’s intent to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) between the USA and the USSR (Russia), then it needs reexamination as it seems skewed towards a predetermined conclusion; mainly that there is no harm in abrogating the INF treaty and the world should not react negatively towards the US for increasing the risk of human destruction. However, its logic may also be used to vindicate the desire of many countries to own nuclear weapons, which contradicts and undermines the decades-old hysterically rigid policy of non-proliferation (which has caused at least two wars; Libya and Iraq and is now threatening Iran and North Korea). The likely answer to such a demand may be premised on the haughty assumption that all the non-nuclear countries of the world are run by unreliable people, who cannot be trusted to understand the risks and outcomes of using A-bombs (Hiroshima & Nagasaki?). A double-edged example is cited by the article about “crazy” Mao Zedong (the great Chinese leader) threatening the world with annihilation up and until he got his own nukes, whence he immediately ceased all threats.

While we agree that treaties do not prevent wars – but only delay them – we do think that treaties which limit the development of evermore sophisticated weapons and restrict their geographic deployment can rein-in the ever-growing destructive power of new weapons entering the arena. At the least, such treaties may buy the sourly needed time till the issue of selfish “Want” is addressed in world international relations, if it ever is.

Treaties and Economics

However, a more salient aspect to treaties is economics (Not addressed by the strategist). All wars are expensive and, at the end of the line, when an aggressor runs out of new territory or victims to usurp, he usually collapses from the sheer weight of costs. History is full of examples of the dire end of bankrupt mighty empires. Presently, the world economy is drowning in record debt and no country is immune to budgetary runaway expenses and deficits, let alone to contemplate embarking on a new expensive arms-race. And for what end? The mighty already have enough nuclear bombs to destroy the world many times over, adding more is not likely to dramatically tip the scale in any party’s favor, at least in the medium to longer term. It would certainly be bonanza for the weapons manufacturers and suppliers, but the truth of the matter is that they would be a lot better off diverting their military expenditures towards their social and economic development.

The Real Solution

The real problem boils down to the issue of the selfish “Want”. While it cannot be erased from the human psyche, it can be controlled and mitigated by collective counter action. Just as a solitary single Buffalo or Gnu can easily succumb to a lion, their joint effort to stand their ground and retaliate usually results in the death or injury of the lion and calling off the attack.

Does humanity have the intelligence and wherewithal to find a way to control geopolitical “Want” and lust? We may need to wipe the slate clean and invent an entirely new set of rules of interaction between nations. Otherwise, all will soon be lost, no matter who wins the battle.

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Marwan Salamah is a Kuwaiti economic consultant and publishes articles on his blog: marsalpost.com 

The Turkish government is continuing attempts to convince the international audience that the situation in the Idlib demilitarized zone is under control and that militant groups are fulfilling the terms of the agreement.

Initially on October 8, Turkish state media claimed that all militant groups had withdrawn their heavy weapons and fulfilled obligations within the framework of the deal. Nonetheless, by October 15, after multiple violations of the ceasefire regime, it had appeared that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical militant groups had kept their weapons and members in the area. In order to propel the peaceful effort foward. Ankara and Moscow expanded the timeframe for the full implementation of the agreement further.

On October 24, Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar came with a new statement claiming that a large number of heavy weapons and radical militants were cleared from the 15-20 km demilitarized zone. “Turkey will never allow a terror corridor to be established in its south,” he said adding that he will discuss deconfliction agreement issues with his Russian counterpart on October 27.

The only problem is that on the same day militants carried out a large rocket and mortar attack on the districts of al-Shahba, al-Zahra, Halab al-Jadidah and Adhamiyah in Aleppo city. At least ten civilians were injured in the attack carried out from the northwestern countryside of the city, which is a part of the demilitarized zone.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) responded to the attack by targeting militant positions in Kafr Hamrah, Dahrat Abd Rabh, al-Salat, al-Zahra and al-Leramoun with artillery strikes.

Meanwhile in the Euphrates Valley, ISIS units attacked positions of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) around the villages of al-Susah and Hajin. According to the ISIS-linked news agency Amaq, 14 SDF members were killed, 4 others injured and 3 captured in the attacks. The same report added that ISIS captured a bulldozer.

According to pro-SDF sources, the SDF repelled all attacks killing 51 ISIS members. While there are no doubts as to the SDF advantage in firepower and manpower over ISIS, it still remains unclear how the group backed up by US-led coalition airpower has not been able to eliminate the Hajin pocket so far if reports about the hundreds of killed ISIS members claimed by it are true.

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Jamie Fly, a former high-ranking Bush era neocon, believes you shouldn’t have the right to post on social media.

“Fly went on to complain that ‘all you need is an email’ to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites’ accessibility to members of the general public. He predicted a long struggle on a global scale to fix the situation, and pointed out that to do so would require constant vigilance,” write Jeb Sprague and Max Blumenthal. 

This attitude shouldn’t come as a surprise. Neocons believe they are a special breed, the chosen few of an intellectual crème de la crème, and the rest of us are merely bread and circus spectators on the sidelines as they forge our collective history (and increasingly possible ruin). 

Fly is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. He “served” in the National Security Council and the Defense Department during the Bush presidency. He also worked at the Claremont Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. Fly tutored presumptive presidential candidate Marco Rubio on foreign policy and he is the former director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a staunch neocon advocacy group founded by arch neocons William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Dan Senor. 

He is now a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund, an organization funded by the US government and NATO. The German Marshall Fund organized the Alliance for Securing Democracy and its Hamilton 68 effort to destroy alternative media under the false (and largely debunked) claim it is a cutout for Russia and Vladimir Putin who are, we are reminded daily, dedicated to destroying democracy and taking down the exceptional and indispensable nation. 

Jamie Fly and his coconspirators Laura Rosenberger and J.M. Berger know the Russians aren’t responsible for thousands of alternate media websites and social media accounts. They know this phenomenon, which began with the birth of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, is homespun and has absolutely nothing to do with Russia. It is their mission to make sure the establishment is free to promulgate its lies and war propaganda without counterbalance and the interruption of truth. 

These folks are digital book burners on par with Nazis who burned books in Berlin on the Opernplatz in May of 1933. Like the Nazis, they want to silence those who counter the narrative. For the Nazis, the targets were communists, socialists, anarchists, and all who opposed fascism, while our new book burners—liquidators of heresy against the ruling elite—are focused on groups and individuals challenging the lies and half-truths of the state regardless of ideology.

For the elite, populism and nationalism represent a twin threat to the emerging globalist scheme of a one-world government and currency directed by a cadre of unelected bureaucrats and ideologues. 

Donald Trump portrayed himself as a patriot and nationalist—Make America Great Again—however after the election the same old crowd of CFR operatives, Goldman Sachs alumni, and hardcore neocons staffed his administration, thus making the realization of his campaign promises virtually impossible. 

The ruling elite, their functionaries and proxies have declared war on “alternative facts,” that is to say information contrary and even hostile to the narrative. While it is true the corporate media has lost some influence, it still projects a powerful influence on public opinion, especially in the current highly polarized political climate.

For instance, it is now assumed a Trump supporter send bombs to Democrats, and this has become a trending topic on social media. There is zero evidence a Trump supporter had anything to do with this incident, and yet the hashtag “MAGABomber” has gone viral on social media, demonstrating how easily it is to sell lies and fabrications to a polarized public. 

Fly and his digital book burning associates will not stop until the last vestiges of the alternative media are wiped out. This process is underway now with a number of popular alternative media websites losing significant traffic following removal from social media. 

As Mr. Fly says, this is only the beginning. They will not stop until the challenge is defeated and the digital information landscape is once again completely in control of the psychopaths at the top and their well-paid minions pushing the idiotic lie that Putin and the Russians are responsible. 

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Beacon Global Strategies.

The cold-blooded killing of the journalist Khashoggi, however gruesome, pales compared to the brutality and gross human rights violations Saudi Arabia is committing in Yemen. The Saudis are deliberately preventing food and medicine from reaching areas where children are dying from starvation or disease. Their indiscriminate bombings are killing thousands of innocent men, women, and children, leaving whole communities in ruin. The saddest part of this unfolding tragedy is that the US and other Western powers are supplying the Saudis with the weapons they need to massacre the Yemenites, who are trapped in this proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran (which neither can win), and the Yemenites will continue to pay with their blood.

The butchering of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is but a manifestation of how vicious and cold-blooded the Saudis can be. Western governments must remember that silencing a journalist by slicing him to pieces is not only an assault on the freedom of the press, but an assault on us all as human beings. This brings us back to the merciless war in Yemen that defies any logic.

Since 2015, the Saudis have led a coalition of mostly Arab states to fight in Yemen’s civil war, backing the ousted government against the Houthi rebels—a Shia-affiliated group with the full support of Iran. The following statistics are not mere numbers. One has to graphically imagine what is actually happening to the multitude of Yemenites to grasp the magnitude of a war that has shattered a nation to the ground.

Out of a total population of 28 million people, 22 million are in need of humanitarian aid. Nearly 5.2 million children are starving to death, and nearly one million are believed to be infected with cholera. Over 8 million people are facing famine, and 2 million are displaced and deprived of basic needs.

Anyone who has followed the nature of this proxy war and its long and short-term implications will attest that this is not a winnable war. After 3.5 years, neither the Saudis nor the Iranians have made any significant progress, and there are no indications that either could gain the upper hand any time in the foreseeable future.

Sunni Saudi Arabia is determined not to allow Iran to have any foothold in the Arabian Peninsula; that includes Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia to the south. Shiite Iran is determined to expand its regional influence, and has seized the opportunity in the conflict between the Houthis and the recognized government to interject itself on behalf of the Houthis.

Sadly and tragically, both governments have badly miscalculated each other’s resolve, except that the Saudis, who have a higher stake in any final outcome, adopted a no-holds-barred strategy in its execution of the merciless war.

If left to their own devices, Saudi Arabia and Iran will continue to fight, as neither has reached a point of exhaustion and no outside power, including the United Nations, has been moved enough by the human disaster, which is devouring a whole country, to act. The world is still looking on with pathetic silence.

The Trump administration, which views Iran as the greatest threat to the region’s stability and has concerns over its nuclear ambitions, is probably the only power broker that can end this conflict. The human catastrophe being inflicted on Yemen may well provide the US the opportunity to change the dynamic of multiple conflicts in the region by taking a new initiative that can achieve four significant objectives:

First, it will bring to an end the calamitous war in Yemen and save the lives of millions of Yemenites, many of whom will otherwise perish if the war continues for another two or three years. The Saudis, whose reputation has been badly tainted by the gruesome murder of Khashoggi, been severely criticized by the international community, and knowing that they cannot win this war, will have little choice but to embrace the US’ initiative. Moreover, the Saudis are heavily dependent both politically and militarily on the US, which they cannot forsake at any price.

Second, Iran is fully aware of the fact that the Trump administration, regardless of the Khashoggi episode, will not abandon Saudi Arabia as long as the kingdom continues to cooperate. Iran too is not oblivious to the fact that it cannot win this costly war, and its prospect to obtain a permanent foothold in the Arabian Peninsula is very slim. It may well opt to cut its losses, especially if it believes that its cooperation may well help lift US sanctions in conjunction with a revised nuclear deal with the US.

Third, regardless of Iran’s public refusal to renegotiate the Iran deal, the US sanctions are becoming increasingly painful and the public is showing growing frustration in the way their government is addressing their economic hardship. Those in the Trump administration who are entertaining the illusion that the public outcry resulting from crippling sanctions could precipitate a regime change in Iran should also disabuse themselves of this wishful thinking. The Iranian government is there to stay, as it continues to enjoy the full support of the military and is more than capable of dealing with any public unrest by whatever ruthless means necessary.

Fourth, ending the war in Yemen and mending relations with Iran will have major positive implications on the entire region. The prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace will dramatically improve, as the Saudis will continue to bring Israel ever close to the Arab states; it will dramatically change the nature of the Iran-Israel conflict should a modified nuclear deal be struck between the US and Tehran; and it could also accelerate the ending of the civil war in Syria.

Some may think that what I am suggesting here amounts to nothing but a pipedream. I beg to differ. Iran and Saudi Arabia are permanent fixtures in the Middle East and must sooner or later learn to share a region that has not been dominated by either country. Sunnis and Shiites have coexisted for millennia, and have no choice but to continue to coexist.

Neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia can become the region’s hegemon. They can fight in proxy wars in Syria and Yemen for a hundred years, but in the end neither can gain the upper hand—not now and perhaps not ever.

It is time for Muslims to stop killing each other. The lesson from Yemen should leave an indelible mark on the psyche of every Saudi and Iranian that the way out of their morass in Yemen is reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. Trump, who can turn on a dime, may well be in a unique position to make it happen.

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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. [email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com

Featured image is from Julien Harneis/Flickr.

In the late 1960’s my wife and I shared an eclectic circle of friends in London Ontario that included business colleagues, social workers, artists, university professors, hippies and students. We were starting a family and I was on the fringe of politics having volunteered to do fundraising and served on the public Library and Art Gallery Boards.

The hippie era was at its peak. Throughout North America, there was an active drug subculture that was at odds with the law. The enforcement tactics of the police in both the United States and Canada at the time were crude and unnecessarily alienating young people. Police were infiltrating hippie groups to search out drug use and this created paranoia.

Our friends who worked at the Addiction Research Foundation told us of the negative effect this was having on kids who were becoming fearful of police because the police were using spies and entrapment. A mantra at the time was, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty”.

Pierre Trudeau personified the period, as had John F. Kennedy a decade earlier, and he was elected Prime Minister in 1968. Trudeau’s charisma encouraged change, and this encouraged us.

In 1969, I established The Legalize Marijuana Committee with the sole purpose of lobbying the federal government for saner laws and became its spokesperson. We assumed that the government wanted feedback – probably even needed it – to discuss changing the law. We were right, and the government confirmed that in several ways.

First, they confirmed it by inviting us to meet with the federal Minister of Health and Welfare. Off we went to Ottawa. Only our immediate family knew where we were going or where we were staying.

We booked the cheapest room in the Chateau Laurier Hotel. When we checked in, the bellhop took us to the penthouse suite! It was a corner on the top floor of the hotel with outstanding views on two sides, four king size beds, a living room with several sofas and a kitchen area. Someone, it seems, had upgraded the room and paid the difference – this was the second bit of feedback that someone appreciated our efforts. (When we checked out, we paid the economy rate. Again, nothing was said.)

Within a few minutes, a reporter called the hotel room telling us that someone had released our itinerary to the press as the reporters started calling – the government was leaving nothing to chance, they wanted the publicity.

The Minister’s office was on the top floor of an office building in Ottawa, a short walk from both the hotel and the Parliament buildings. We arrived a few minutes early to a modest reception area with about six others waiting. They didn’t hear us introduce ourselves. As we listened, it was clear from the conversations that they were journalists who were there because of us. “I wonder who these guys are” … “I see nothing wrong with it … I smoke the occasional joint” … “good luck to them!”

Soon we were asked to go in, and reporters fidgeted as they realized they had missed a chance to scoop a first interview. We were taken to a more private waiting room before John Munro, an energetic, chain-smoking Minister of Health and Welfare, welcomed us into his inner office. Several sofas circled a large coffee table and on the table was a file folder about eight inches thick, too deep to close. When Munro noticed it was sitting open he immediately closed it and put an ash tray on top.

We had sent him one letter and a small brochure, yet he had a file on us eight inches thick. Later, as I thought about the file, our hotel upgrade, and our schedule being released, I recalled that we had a break-in in our home a few weeks earlier. The break-in was a non-event; it would have been unnoticed except someone had broken the cheap lock on the only file cabinet in the house. Nothing was taken but in hindsight, I believe it must have been the Royal Canadian Mounted Police doing a routine report on someone about to meet a government minister on a contentious topic.

The government was using our group to float a trial balloon alerting the world that they were thinking of changing drug laws. After a few minutes, the press was invited in. About twenty journalists filled the office for about half an hour of Q and A. Then one of the journalists asked if we would agree to go to the Press Club on Parliament Hill where we met another thirty or so print journalists. An hour or so later we were taken to the media studio for TV and radio interviews by another dozen journalists.

Later the same year the Trudeau government took a step towards changing drug laws by establishing a Royal Commission (Royal Commissions are a big deal in Canada, like a Presidential Commission in the United States); The Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs which stated in its title that the Government saw this as a civil rights and medical issue, not a criminal one.

The government appointed Gerald LeDain, a lawyer and Dean of Canada’s prestigious Osgoode Hall law school to head the commission which began with a public hearing on Oct. 26, 1969. For their opening day, they invited two organizations to appear: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and our group, the Legalize Marijuana Committee. Each group presented a brief and the next day’s newspaper had a lead story on the hearing including two photos: one of the Commissionaire of the RCMP, and the other, me. (My mother wrote to the paper to get a copy of the photo, “… before my son goes to jail” as she stated!)

The official report recommended the repeal of laws against possession of cannabis and the prohibition of cultivation for personal use. One of the commissionaires went further, recommending a policy of legal distribution. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government ignored the report; I suspect it was because the government to our south opposed it.

Now, 48 years later, we have legalized marijuana in Canada.

The Economics of marijuana

At the heart of illegal drug distribution is pyramid selling. Mary Kay thrives on it but whether to sell cosmetics or illegal drugs, anyone can be hired and hire any number of sub-dealers. Everyone gets a cut, and the profit margins are high enough in cosmetic sales to award the occasional pink Cadillac. Profit margins for drugs are higher because they are illegal and the market more dangerous. The vehicles tend to be bigger, and black, and usually with tinted windows.

In 2003, I was a member of a Social Action Committee that was studying the ‘War On Drugs’ and supported a progressive resolution on Alternatives. I was invited to attend a national conference, and to prepare for it I updated myself on some 30 years of changes. I learned how much larger and more dangerous the illegal drug market had become.

At the conference I met Judge Jim Gray from the Superior Court in Southern California, who told me about how teenagers in his California town could get crack cocaine easier than beer, because, as he said, beer was legal and controlled. Privately, he told me how much he respected Judge Le Dain and the work he had done with the Canadian Commission.

How big is the illegal drug market? One answer can be found in the Caribbean.

The Cayman Islands: swimming in money

Grand Cayman Island is the largest of three Cayman Islands miles just south of Cuba. It’s a tropical paradise, where you can swim with stingrays in North Sound or take a submarine ride along the coral reef cliff on the south.

It’s about an hour or so by plane south of Miami, about two hours north of Columbia and two hours east of Mexico – therefore, central to two drug producing nations and the huge drug consuming market of the United States. Politically the islands are British Overseas Territories. They are not independent, not a country, and not truly British. They occupy a small area, one-quarter the size of New York City (102 vs. 468 sq. miles) with a small population of 57,000 people.

Over half of those people live in George Town, on Grand Cayman, and this tiny town is the fifth-largest banking center^[1] in the world. There are 279 banks and 260 of them do no banking in the Caymans. With the Caymans’ unusual political structure, laws get strange and enforcement stranger. Drug lords can take a day trip to the Caymans, do some banking, avoid all taxes and be home for dinner. Money laundering and tax avoidance are reasons the Caymans have become one of the world’s largest banking centers.

Those who think that the war on drugs has been a failure have misunderstood its purpose. It has made illegal drugs more profitable making billions of dollars for those in the market; it has fueled a private prison industry in the U.S., made money for the banks and has been used to politically control nations. Was it intended to control drugs? Or, was it to make them more profitable? Follow the money!

Now under Trudeau the second, Canada is making some progress as it fumbles towards making an unregulated distribution system meet some standards of the corporate marketplace. I’m proud to have played a small part.

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This article is based on part of chapter 3 in the book An Insider’s Memoir which is available at www.aninsidersmemoir.com or on Amazon.

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With 92 percent counted, far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is slated to become the next president of Brazil.

Bolsonaro obtained 55.6 percent of the vote, against PT candidate Fernando Haddad who received 44.3 percent.

Reports yet to be confirmed that up to thirty percent of the voters either refused, cancelled their vote or abstained.

An atmosphere of social confusion and division prevails in Brazil.

There are no reports of electoral fraud.

 

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“Not even the military dictatorship defended an ideology which is so openly fascist like Bolsonaro does today. He does not care about being compared to Hitler,” Michael Löwy.

“It is difficult to explain the emergence of a phenomenon best described as pathological politics on a large scale” according to French-Brazilian sociologist Michael Löwy, in an interview when asked about Jair Bolsonaro’s ascension, Brazil’s presidential candidate whose great-grandfather was a Nazi soldier.

A former lawmaker that delivered just two bills across almost three decades, as a presidential candidate now Bolsonaro promises, among many other fascist “policies” layered in a total lack of project to the country as he refuses to debate, to make the “police free to kill” without any investigation. 

The candidate of the Liberal Social Party (PSL, totally in favor of privatizations, and deeply nationalist) who leads the polls, has once said that a civil war is the only solution for Brazil. Bolsonaro often attacks his opponents with much violence, especially leftists and homosexuals promising a “zero tolerance” against them once he is elected, which includes torture and assassination. 

Not surprisingly, the nation is living a growth of violence on the eve of the second round of the election.

‘Enigmas’ Flying Over the South-American Giant

In June of 2013, Brazil lived its social “Spring”: another sociological “enigma”: hardly explained and analyzed: it was very similar to others all over the world whose multitudes did not know exactly why and how they suddenly took to the streets (as teleSUR showed interviewing Brazilian citizens at the time).

Movements which have developed around the world, coopted by the mainstream media – locally and internationally distorting facts, or not putting news in context: the minimization of the rule of law hurting civil liberties, increasing repression, corruption, and foreign influence.

Filled with hate, resentment, discrimination, and violence including by State police forces, sometimes infiltrated among people: even those protests, an important part to overthrow the then-President Dilma Rousseff three years later and to boost Bolsonaro, were a consequence of dark winds blowing from the offshore against the South-American giant. 

“The stranger, of course, is not the fascist preaching of an individual, but the adhesion of a large part of the electorate to these ideas,” observed the sociologist based in Paris. 

“The spectacular success of Bolsonaro is something that still needs to be explained,” stated Löwy as he astonishingly mentioned that the former captain army does not care about being compared to Adolf Hitler – Bolsonaro also praised the Nazi as a great strategist, saying he would have enlisted in Hitler’s Army.

In retribution, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, has manifested his enthusiastic support to Bolsonaro: “Sounds like us.” Inside his country, Bolsonaro’s supporters are in general on the same level, of course.

In the Information Age, there is no international conspiracy that both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden cannot bring to light.

Chaos State 

The Brazilian Economist Ladislau Dowbor in an interview with the author said that by supporting Bolsonaro, the oligarchy once again in Brazil’s history “prefers to bury the country than to acknowledge the mistakes.”

The fragility of the democratic institutions have been aggravated since President Dilma Rousseff was impeached, in August of 2016. “There is not much mystery about what is happening in Brazil. This is the good old fight for social surplus”, the specialist says.

Talking to sociologist Löwy, three important factors could have contributed to Bolsonaro’s ascension leading to the   possibility of a Brazilian police State: 

• Politics is socially discredited; 
• The long vacuum left by the main opposition to the Workers’ Party (PT), the Brazilian Social-Democratic Party (PSDB) through a lack of political proposals, and moral crisis (largely hidden by the mainstream media, and the Brazilian “Justice”); 
•  An international scenario which, under U.S. President Donald Trump, favors far-right wing politicians.

The specialist agreed, adding some more points: 

“The social impact of crime in Brazil; leading sectors of society opting for violent repression as the only solution; the hatred of certain social strata to PT, leading them to support the ‘totally destruction of the party’; the strong political influence of conservative evangelicals; and the hostility to democracy of important sectors of the ruling classes.” 

Challenging the Local and International Elites

Economist Dowbor pointed out some of the contradictions of the PT years:

“Family Allowance [a national program that helped lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty, and remove the country from the U.N. World Hunger Map], which reached 50 million poor people, cost about 30 billion reais [about U$D 8 billion]. In comparison, in 2015 the payment of interest on the public debt was 500 billion reais [about U$D 134 billion]”.

Dowbor also recalled that in 2012, Dilma decided to contain interest rates: 

“From that moment, a war started. Many account holders left private banks such as Itaú, Bradesco and Santander, taking refuge in the public banks.

“As of 2013 there is no more government in Brazil, only boycotts [by the Congress], and [public] protests enthusiastically inflated by the media. Dilma was impeached without any crime, Lula is imprisoned without any proven guilt.”

According to Löwy:

“The coup against Dilma is explained by the oligarchy’s desire – agribusiness, entrepreneurs, financial capital, rentiers – to end the long PT realm, despite the willingness of the center-left governments to negotiate agreements, and make numerous concessions [in favor of the oligarchy].

“The oligarchy, in the new economic situation created by the crisis, no longer wanted to negotiate anything, and was not content with concessions: it wanted to directly govern, and fully put into practice its anti-popular neoliberal program.

“At first, thanks to the media and corruption scandals also involving PT leaders, an important part of the population seemed to accept the arguments of the coup.”

The sociologist also pointed out that Temer’s “solution” on behalf of the local oligarchy, had devastating consequences including:

“The aggravation of the socio-economic crisis, the deeply anti-popular measures of the Temer administration, corruption scandals against several members of his government and his parliamentary base, and above all with the growth of unemployment, poverty and social inequality.” 

In an international context, Lula and Dilma highlighted the cooperation South-South, supported Venezuela and strengthened the BRICS. 

All this, intolerable to the local oligarchy and the Washington regime, which historically fights democracy in the region through boycotts, coups, and assassinations.

‘Phenomenon’ Made in U.S.A.

In July of 2013, less than a month after the “Brazilian Spring” had started, the national paper O Globo published a series of reports denouncing US espionage directed against Brazil. Quoting former CIA staff Edward Snowden,  Brazil was  the Latin American country most spied upon  in the 2000’s, leading up to the impeachment of Dilma.

The mainstream media (including The New York Times), well-known by its conservative and pro-elites biases, praised “Brazil’s Spring” and its vague “purpose”: like Bolsonaro’s today it was based on the rhetoric, “we are against everything.” 

The local media performance was then very similar to that on the eve of the 1964 military coup, with a tendency towards a new authoritarianism within the Armed Forces.  

Largely promoted by fake profiles on Facebook, these protests were the result of foreign support and influence, In this regard, the  movements which have led to massive protests in the last years, such as Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement) and Vem pra Rua (Take to the Streets), are funded by US billionaires.

Threats of a  coup d’Etat emanating from the highest levels of the military hierarchy in recent years especially since Dilma won her second term in 2014, were followed by Marielle Franco’s murder (mocked by many conservatives, who falsely fight corruption and violence in Brazil), which coincided with the militarization of Rio: since the first days of the intervention, the military is giving out magazines to children with a cover that shows a red monster (the “red danger”) trying to attack a white-skinned, blond-haired boy, protected by the military.

The Brazilian “Justice”, historically pro-upper class and corrupt, has been trained by Washington which also funds, via  the State Department, the travel of Brazilian judges and prosecutors to the US according to cables recently released by WikiLeaks. These include judge Sergio Moro, responsible for Lula’s imprisonment; Moro has a longstanding background of corruption.  

Marielle’s assassination itself has not been clarified, though the evidence points to a state crime as Bolsonaro freely commits, without any punishment, several electoral crimes, such as: 

• Spreading fake news;
• illegal use of social media;
• Indiscriminately funded by private companies, getting private funding for his campaign, not permitted by the Brazilian electoral law, since 2016;
• his well-known incitement of violence against those he opposes,
• praising the crimes against humanity committed by the military dictatorship (1964-1985).

The Brazilian “Justice” system has been too strict in fighting corruption, arbitrarily condemning some parts at the same time it is now, in the Bolsonaro scandal, totally silent: how to explain that?

Moreover Brazil’s “Justice” (supported by Washington) has persecuted leftist journalists, human rights activists, social movements and academics. And this expanded unabated since the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.

Under the “no ideology” discourse promoted by the mainstream media and “politicians” like Bolsonaro, Brazilians have been forbidden to think.

The impossibility of dialogue, the spread of violence and the worship of his image, raw materials of fascism, are resources on which Jair Bolsonaro relies upon. He has promised a constitutional breakup. So it has been easy for Bolsonaro’s campaign, which prevails through demagogy and irrationality, to use hate and fear as a political instruments coupled with propaganda slogans which completely distort reality:

• Fear of the PT as the icon of the Great Satan, the origin of all the problems (“We have to strafe PT militants”);
• Fear of the local “red danger” (“Dictatorship’s big mistake was torturing without killing”).
• Fear of Venezuela (“One of my first measures, will be the invasion of Venezuela”).
• In his hysteria against leftists, followed by reactionary movements and the local society as a whole, Bolsonaro has said that anyone less than the former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a rightist of PSDB, should be killed as a “communist.”
• Fear of homosexuals (“I’d rather my son to die in an accident, than to appear with a mustache guy”).
• Fear of women (“A woman has to receive lower wages [than the man], because she can get pregnant”).
• Fear of black people [“They (negroes descendant from slaves, from “Quilombola” community in Brazil) do nothing! I do not think are useful neither to procreate”).
• Fear of all “immoralities” threatening religion and family – solution: killing immoral people, in the name of God and good customs.
• Fear of real problems like violence to be “resolved”, as Bolsonaro and his followers often rampage, “arming people, and authorizing policemen to indiscriminately kill.” [similar to President Duterte in the Philippines?]
• Fear of the economic crisis to be resolved by “privatizing everything.”
• Fear of corruption authorizing the “Justice” to put itself against Brazil’s “enemies”, or even closing every institution linked to justice in the country.
• Fear of democracy [“He (Adolf Hitler) was a great strategist: annihilated his enemies as everyone does when at war; I would have enlisted in Hitler’s Army”).

As fear increasingly permeates Brazilian society, Bolsonaro’s campaign is based on a total absence of rational thought and critical political analysis.

Any similarity to nazi-fascism “policies”, that takes advantage of fear and hate, of an enemy, generally nonexistent, to force people to abandon their liberties in the name of the common good and security?

• Democratic institutions have been totally destroyed by fascist influences in Brazil, who openly break the law without any embarrassment and excess of aggressiveness, as if they (including judges, public prosecutors, policemen and even public workers) were the owners of the state and a blatantly corrupt power. 
• The nation has been delivered to the hands of the worst bandits.

A totally demoralized “Justice” system: this weekend, Federal Member of Parliament Elect Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the messianic candidate, threatened the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) saying that “a soldier and a corporal are enough to close the institution,” after calls for an investigation to bar the popular right-wing candidate from the presidential race, and from politics for the next eight years due to spreading fake news along with Brazilian big companies.

All this, under the world’s sheriff silence: so where is now Uncle Sam, to advocate for democracy in Latin America?

Though the Brazilian culture is deeply colonized, elitist and reactionary, deeply discriminatory (Brazil was the last American country to abolish slavery) which, of course, favors authoritarianism in politics and in social relations in general, there is not any phenomenon to be sociologically understood from the many coups against democracy in the South-American country; the most recent assassin puppet terrifying the Brazilian long nightmare is called Jair Bolsonaro, who saluted the U.S. flag in a trip to the US in October of 2017. 

None of this can be understood without considering the international scenario and the process of US political meddling.

Tragedy Just Starting?

Löwy sees military intervention as a real danger:

“For the first time since the end of the military dictatorship, generals begin to intervene in political life for example by threatening judges, if they free Lula.”

Brazil’s Superior War College in Rio, which has been the object of indoctrination by the Pentagon, calls for a gradual  militarization of politics.  

The Brazilian military has for many years embraced America’s national security doctrine:

 combating the enemy, starting by the internal one – a communist, the poor, the [leftist] subversive. 

Brazil’s “justice” system, including the Public Ministry, follows this pattern, which helped this sector to work side by side with the military dictatorship, torturing and murdering. 

In the case of a Haddad victory, Michael Lowy points to the danger of a “parliamentary coup,” modelled of what happened to then-President Joao Goulart in 1964. The objective was  “to weaken the President’s power”.

“The Parliament in Brazil is a caricature of democracy, entirely dominated by the Bullets (military, police, paramilitary), Bull (agribusiness), Bible (conservative evangelical)” and Banks lobby in Congress,” he says.

“The oligarchy, which controls the Assembly, has lost all presidential elections since 2002, hence the possible ‘parliamentary’ coup against the presidency,” added the sociologist.

Both Lowy and Dowbor agree that if Bolsonaro is elected president, a chaotic situation will unfold whereby prevailing neoliberal policies (as promised by the far-right candidate), will be multiplied by several times. 

“Bolsonaro’s election would be an immense disaster for the country, for democracy, for the Brazilian people,” pointed out the sociologist who says his popularity is an icon of the hate that marks the Brazilian society.

Fleeing from debates, Bolsonaro both reflects his aversion to political dialogue.

The former army captain and his running mate, General Antonio Hamilton Mourao, have threatened a de facto military coup if they are elected next October 28.

Another troubling scenario is considered, in the case of PT victory of Fernando Haddad (image on the left), Bolsonaro has said he would not accept the result of his opponent. Brazil seems like a dead-end country…

The imperialist tactic in Brazil is clearcut: fomenting social divisions, generating extreme poverty and violence – to justify a hardline policy.  

The State against its citizens, and the citizens against themselves tragically is the most accurate way of describing today’s Brazil, left by Michel Temer – the commencement of a historic tragedy in Brazil?

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In a stark reversal from its position just days earlier, the Trump administration is expected to allow Iran to remain connected to the SWIFT banking system the Washington Examiner reports, in what amounts to a major concession to European allies who have been pressuring senior U.S. officials to keep this key lifeline to the Islamic Republic open.

As recently as this weekend, Reuters reported that in order to further isolate Iran from the global financial community, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said that the U.S. Treasury was in negotiations with the Belgian-based financial messaging service SWIFT which intermediates the bulk of the world’s cross-border dollar-denominated transactions, on disconnecting Iran from the network. Washington has been pressuring SWIFT to cut Iran from the system as it did in 2012 before the nuclear deal.

The latest reversal comes as a result of ‘ongoing talks between top U.S. officials and European allies “who have been pressuring the Trump administration to take a softer line on Tehran” ahead of the Nov. 4 implementation of new sanctions on Iran.

The unexpected move has been met with “frustration” by Iran hawks both on Capitol Hill and elsewhere who have argued that SWIFT continues to provide Iran with a critical financial lifeline which it is using to fund terrorist operations across the region despite its ailing economy. Yet despite opposition from the “hawks”, Iran will remain connected to the SWIFT system

As reported previously, Trump has been under pressure for months from European allies to keep Iran connected to SWIFT, despite fierce opposition to the move among some inside the administration and many legislative allies on Capitol Hill.

In the past months, as European allies pressured the Trump administration to take a softer line with Iran, SWIFT has emerged as a key sticking point. While the Trump administration had vowed to choke off Iran’s financial routes, senior officials appear to have softened that stance in the face of European pressure.

In August, Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called in August for a system that was an alternative to SWIFT and would allow “financial independence” from Washington, that would possibly keep the nuclear agreement with Iran alive.

Meanwhile, as Europe scores a diplomatic victory, the internal battle over Iran’s access to SWIFT – which has been brewing for months – will likely remain at the forefront ahead of the implementation of new sanctions next month due to opposition by the Israelis and others who aim to see Iran completely iced out of the international banking system.

“The Europeans are clowning the Americans,” said one source familiar with the recent discussions between American and foreign officials. “They sold [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin on this idea that keeping Iran on SWIFT will generate intelligence—the word they keep using is ‘leads’—and Mnuchin is now echoing Obama talking points about how sanctioning some banks is enough.”

In addition to criticism from within the neocon community, Trump’s reversal is also odd in that it contrasts with what Steven Mnuchin said as recently as a few days ago: as we reported on Sunday, he said that the administration is working to prevent sanctioned transactions from taking place via SWIFT.

“I can assure you our objective is to make sure that sanctioned transactions do not occur whether it’s through SWIFT or any other mechanism,” he told Reuters. “Our focus is to make sure that the sanctions are enforced.”

While Mnuchin would not offer details on the nature of U.S. talks with SWIFT leaders, he vowed the administration would “quickly” identify banks that can continue conducting transactions under the rubric of humanitarian aid to Iran.

“We want to get to the right outcome, which is cutting off transactions,” Mnuchin said.

Separately, a Treasury Department spokesman told the Free Beacon the administration will closely police the body’s activities to ensure that no sanctioned Iranian entities can use it.

“Treasury has made it very clear that we will continue to cut off bad Iranian actors, including designated banks, from accessing the international financial system in a number of different ways,” the official explained. “We will also take action against those attempting to conduct prohibited transactions with sanctioned Iranian entities regardless of the mechanisms used.”

The latest statement from Mnuchin and other Treasury Department officials, however, has not assuaged fears and some of the biggest hawks demand a fullblown crackdown. Mark Dubowitz, a sanctions expert and chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has pushed hard for crippling sanctions on Iran, told the Free Beacon that Iran must be fully iced out from SWIFT, as was done with North Korea recently as a result of its rogue nuclear program.

“Recently SWIFT’s board of directors wisely expelled designated North Korean banks without EU direction; they would be wise to do the same thing against banks used by the Islamic Republic of Iran to finance its dangerous and destructive activities,” Dubowitz said. “The SWIFT board backed by the U.S. Treasury Department should preserve the integrity of the global financial system; allowing bad banks to stay on SWIFT to threaten the integrity of that system is bad practice and bad policy.”

While the US decides whether or not to implement full sanctions on Iran, the possibility remains that Tehran may opt for an alternative currency transfer system being currently developed by Russia, and one which according to unconfirmed reports has also seen tentative participation interest by Europe. Should Trump engage in a full lockdown, that may be just the catalyst that prompts Europe to join the “Russian version” of SWIFT, thereby further eroding the dollar’s “weaponized” influence around the globe.

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This October, Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of hundreds of users, including many alternative media outlets maintained by American users. Among those wiped out in the coordinated purge were popular sites that scrutinized police brutality and U.S. interventionism, like The Free Thought Project, Anti-Media, and Cop Block, along with the pages of journalists like Rachel Blevins.

Facebook claimed that these pages had “broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.” However, sites like The Free Thought Project were verified by Facebook and widely recognized as legitimate sources of news and opinion. John Vibes, an independent reporter who contributed to Free Thought, accused Facebook of “favoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices.”

In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge — and promised more takedowns in the near future.

“Russia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,” remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by the U.S. government and NATO. “They can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.”

Fly went on to complain that “all you need is an email” to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites’ accessibility to members of the general public. He predicted a long struggle on a global scale to fix the situation, and pointed out that to do so would require constant vigilance.

Fly made these stunning comments to Jeb Sprague, who is a visiting faculty member in sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and co-author of this article. The two spoke during a lunch break at a conference on Asian security organized by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, Germany.

In the tweet below, Fly is the third person from the left who appears seated at the table.

A rare opportunity to discuss Asian security in Berlin, with an excellent group of experts from the region @SWPBerlin pic.twitter.com/Ogdc9d5BVK

— Garima Mohan (@GarimaMo) October 15, 2018

The remarks by Fly — “we are just starting to push back” — seemed to confirm the worst fears of the alternative online media community. If he was to be believed, the latest purge was motivated by politics, not spam prevention, and was driven by powerful interests hostile to dissident views, particularly where American state violence is concerned.

Jamie Fly, rise of a neocon cadre

Jamie Fly is an influential foreign policy hardliner who has spent the last year lobbying for the censorship of “fringe views” on social media. Over the years, he has advocated for a military assault on Iran, a regime change war on Syria, and hiking military spending to unprecedented levels. He is the embodiment of a neoconservative cadre.

Like so many second-generation neocons, Fly entered government by burrowing into mid-level positions in George W. Bush’s National Security Council and Department of Defense.

In 2009, he was appointed director of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a rebranded version of Bill Kristol’s Project for a New American Century, or PNAC. The latter outfit was an umbrella group of neoconservative activists that first made the case for an invasion of Iraq as part of a wider project of regime change in countries that resisted Washington’s sphere of influence.

By 2011, Fly was advancing the next phase in PNAC’s blueprint by clamoring for military strikes on Iran. “More diplomacy is not an adequate response,” he argued. A year later, Fly urged the US to “expand its list of targets beyond the [Iranian] nuclear program to key command and control elements of the Republican Guard and the intelligence ministry, and facilities associated with other key government officials.”

Fly soon found his way into the senate office of Marco Rubio, a neoconservative pet project, assuming a role as his top foreign policy advisor. Amongst other interventionist initiatives, Rubio has taken the lead in promoting harsh economic sanctions targeting Venezuela, even advocating for a U.S. military assault on the country. When Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign floundered amid a mass revolt of the Republican Party’s middle American base against the party establishment, Fly was forced to cast about for new opportunities.

He found them in the paranoid atmosphere of Russiagate that formed soon after Donald Trump’s shock election victory.

PropOrNot sparks the alternative media panic

A journalistic insider’s account of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Shattered, revealed that “in the days after the election, Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss.” Her top advisers were summoned the following day, according to the book, “to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up … Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

Less than three weeks after Clinton’s defeat, the Washington Post’s Craig Timberg published a dubiously sourced report headlined, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news.’” The article hyped up a McCarthyite effort by a shadowy, anonymously run organization called PropOrNot to blacklist some 200 American media outlets as Russian “online propaganda.”

The alternative media outfits on the PropOrNot blacklist included some of those recently purged by Facebook and Twitter, such as The Free Thought Project and Anti-Media. Among the criteria PropOrNot identified as signs of Russian propaganda were “Support for policies like Brexit, and the breakup of the EU and Eurozone” and “Opposition to Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Syrian resistance to Assad.” PropOrNot called for “formal investigations by the U.S. government” into the outlets it had blacklisted.

According to Craig Timberg, the Washington Post correspondent who uncritically promoted the media suppression initiative, Propornot was established by “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.” Timberg quoted a figure associated with the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, Andrew Weisburd, and cited a report he wrote with his colleague, Clint Watts, on Russian meddling.

Timberg’s piece on PropOrNot was promoted widely by former top Clinton staffers and celebrated by ex-Obama White House aide Dan Pfeiffer as “the biggest story in the world.” But after a wave of stinging criticism, including in the pages of the New Yorker, the article was amended with an editor’s note stating, “The [Washington] Post… does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet.”

PropOrNot had been seemingly exposed as a McCarthyite sham, but the concept behind it — exposing online American media outlets as vehicles for Kremlin “active measures” — continued to flourish.

The birth of the Russian bot tracker — with U.S. government money

By August, a new, and seemingly related initiative appeared out of the blue, this time with backing from a bipartisan coalition of Democratic foreign policy hands and neocon Never Trumpers in Washington. Called the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), the outfit aimed to expose how supposed Russian Twitter bots were infecting American political discourse with divisive narratives. It featured a daily “Hamilton 68” online dashboard that highlighted the supposed bot activity with easily digestible charts. Conveniently, the site avoided naming any of the digital Kremlin influence accounts it claimed to be tracking.

The initiative was immediately endorsed by John Podesta, the founder of the Democratic Party think tank the Center for American Progress, and former chief of staff of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Julia Ioffe, the Atlantic’s chief Russiagate correspondent, promoted the bot tracker as “a very cool tool.”

Unlike PropOrNot, the ASD was sponsored by one of the most respected think tanks in Washington, the German Marshall Fund, which had been founded in 1972 to nurture the special relationship between the US and what was then West Germany.

The German Marshall Fund is substantially funded by Western governments, and largely reflects their foreign-policy interests. Its top two financial sponsors, at more than $1 million per year each, are the U.S. government’s soft-power arm the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the German Foreign Office (known in German as the Auswärtiges Amt). The U.S. State Department also provides more than half a million dollars per year, as do the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the foreign affairs ministries of Sweden and Norway. It likewise receives at least a quarter of a million dollars per year from NATO.

The US government and NATO are top donors to the German Marshall Fund (Source: Grayzone Project)

Though the German Marshall Fund did not name the donors that specifically sponsored its Alliance for Securing Democracy initiative, it hosts a who’s who of bipartisan national-security hardliners on the ASD’s advisory council, providing the endeavor with the patina of credibility. They range from neocon movement icon Bill Kristol to former Clinton foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan and ex-CIA director Michael Morell.

Jamie Fly, a German Marshall Fund fellow and Asia specialist, emerged as one of the most prolific promoters of the new Russian bot tracker in the media. Together with Laura Rosenberger, a former foreign policy aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Fly appeared in a series of interviews and co-authored several op-eds emphasizing the need for a massive social media crackdown.

During a March 2018 interview on C-Span, Fly complained that “Russian accounts” were “trying to promote certain messages, amplify certain content, raise fringe views, pit Americans against each other, and we need to deal with this ongoing problem and find ways through the government, through tech companies, through broader society to tackle this issue.”

Yet few of the sites on PropOrNot’s blacklist, and none of the alternative sites that were erased in the recent Facebook purge that Fly and his colleagues take apparent credit for, were Russian accounts. Perhaps the only infraction they could have been accused of was publishing views that Fly and his cohorts saw as “fringe.”

What’s more, the ASD has been forced to admit that the mass of Twitter accounts it initially identified as “Russian bots” were not necessarily bots — and may not have been Russian either.

“I’m not convinced on this bot thing”

A November 2017 investigation by Max Blumenthal, a co-author of this article, found that the ASD’s Hamilton 68 dashboard was the creation of “a collection of cranks, counterterror retreads, online harassers and paranoiacs operating with support from some of the most prominent figures operating within the American national security apparatus.”

These figures included the same George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security fellows — Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts — that were cited as experts in the Washington Post’s article promoting PropOrNot.

Weisburd, who has been described as one of the brains behind the Hamilton 68 dashboard, once maintained a one-man, anti-Palestinian web monitoring initiative that specialized in doxxing left-wing activists, Muslims and anyone he considered “anti-American.” More recently, he has taken to Twitter to spout off murderous and homophobic fantasies about Glenn Greenwald, the editor of the Intercept — a publication the ASD flagged without explanation as a vehicle for Russian influence operations.

Watts, for his part, has testified before Congress on several occasions to call on the government to “quell information rebellions” with censorious measures including “nutritional labels” for online media. He has received fawning publicity from corporate media and been rewarded with a contributor role for NBC on the basis of his supposed expertise in ferreting out Russian disinformation.

Clint Watts has urged Congress to “quell information rebellions”

 

However, under questioning during a public event by Grayzone contributor Ilias Stathatos, Watts admitted that substantial parts of his testimony were false, and refused to provide evidence to support some of his most colorful claims about malicious Russian bot activity.

In a separate interview with Buzzfeed, Watts appeared to completely disown the Hamilton 68 bot tracker as a legitimate tool. “I’m not convinced on this bot thing,” Watts confessed. He even called the narrative that he helped manufacture “overdone,” and admitted that the accounts Hamilton 68 tracked were not necessarily directed by Russian intelligence actors.

“We don’t even think they’re all commanded in Russia — at all. We think some of them are legitimately passionate people that are just really into promoting Russia,” Watts conceded.

But these stunning admissions did little to slow the momentum of the coming purge.

Enter the Atlantic Council

In his conversation with Sprague, the German Marshall Fund’s Fly stated that he was working with the Atlantic Council in the campaign to purge alternative media from social media platforms like Facebook.

The Atlantic Council is another Washington-based think tank that serves as a gathering point for neoconservatives and liberal interventionists pushing military aggression around the globe. It is funded by NATO and repressive, US-allied governments including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Turkey, as well as by Ukrainian oligarchs like Victor Pynchuk.

This May, Facebook announced a partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) to “identify, expose, and explain disinformation during elections around the world.”

The Atlantic Council’s DFRLab is notorious for its zealous conflation of legitimate online dissent with illicit Russian activity, embracing the same tactics as PropOrNot and the ASD.

Ben Nimmo, a DFRLab fellow who has built his reputation on flushing out online Kremlin influence networks, embarked on an embarrassing witch hunt this year that saw him misidentify several living, breathing individuals as Russian bots or Kremlin “influence accounts.” Nimmo’s victims included Mariam Susli, a well-known Syrian-Australian social media personality, the famed Ukrainian concert pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a British pensioner named Ian Shilling.

In an interview with Sky News, Shilling delivered a memorable tirade against his accusers.

“I have no Kremlin contacts whatsoever; I do not know any Russians, I have no contact with the Russian government or anything to do with them,” he exclaimed. “I am an ordinary British citizen who happens to do research on the current neocon wars which are going on in Syria at this very moment.”

With the latest Facebook and Twitter purges, ordinary citizens like Shilling are being targeted in the open, and without apology. The mass deletions of alternative media accounts illustrate how national security hardliners from the German Marshall Fund and Atlantic Council (and whoever was behind PropOrNot) have instrumentalized the manufactured panic around Russian interference to generate public support for a wider campaign of media censorship.

In his conversation in Berlin with Sprague, Fly noted with apparent approval that, “Trump is now pointing to Chinese interference in the 2018 election.” As the mantra of foreign interference expands to a new adversarial power, the clampdown on voices of dissent in online media is almost certain to intensify.

As Fly promised, “This is just the beginning.”

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

Jeb Sprague is a visiting faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of “Globalizing the Caribbean: Political economy, social change, and the transnational capitalist class” (Temple University Press, 2019), “Paramilitarism and the assault on democracy in Haiti” (Monthly Review Press, 2012), and is the editor of “Globalization and transnational capitalism in Asia and Oceania” (Routledge, 2016). He is a co-founder of the Network for the Critical Studies of Global Capitalism.

Six mail bombs were sent to prominent Democrats and critics of President Trump, it was reported on Wednesday. None of the devices exploded and no one was injured, but the attacks dominated the US media and caused widespread alarm, including redoubled screening of mail to all political and corporate offices and a vast mobilization of police and security forces in New York City, Washington and elsewhere.

Whatever the source of the mail bombs, which, as of this writing, remains uncertain, the attack on top Democratic Party leaders and CNN’s New York offices only two weeks before the midterm elections is a sharp warning of the explosive political tensions in the United States, which will only escalate as the economic and social crisis deepens and mass struggles of the working class develop.

The alert over alleged terrorism also led to the first live-action use of the emergency takeover of cell phone text messaging by the police authorities, under a program tested for the first time only last month. Warnings to stay away from the Time Warner building in midtown Manhattan, the home of CNN’s New York center, were blasted out to cell phones within a certain GPS radius of the building, followed some hours later by a second text giving an all-clear.

The first mailed bomb was delivered Monday to the home of billionaire George Soros in the town of Bedford, New York, in suburban Westchester County. Soros was not at home and the aide who collected the mail thought the package suspicious, placed it in a wooded area and called the police. The bomb squad detonated the package, which apparently contained a pipe bomb filled with explosive black powder.

Late Tuesday and early Wednesday, suspicious packages were detected by the Secret Service in mail addressed to the homes of former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 election. Both packages were set aside and never reached their targets.

Another mail bomb addressed to Representative Maxine Waters of California was caught during screening at a postal facility in the Los Angeles area on Wednesday. Again, the package was never taken to the office of the congresswoman.

Two more packages did come closer to reaching potential targets. A mail bomb sent to former Attorney General Eric Holder was improperly addressed and sent back Wednesday by the postal service to the return address written on the package, which was the Florida office of Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former chair of the Democratic National Committee. The package was actually opened in the mail room of her Sunrise, Florida office, but did not explode.

The sixth mail bomb was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan in care of CNN’s New York offices in Manhattan. Brennan is now a highly paid commentator for another network, NBC, and has never worked for CNN. That package reached the CNN mail room inside the Time Warner building, where it was opened but again did not explode. The building was then evacuated.

According to CNN, a seventh mail bomb may have been sent to former Vice President Joe Biden prior to the mailing to Soros, but was detected and disposed of before it could be recognized as the beginning of a series of such attacks.

FBI and police officials involved in the investigation into the mail bombs told the media that the packages addressed to Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Soros, Waters and Holder all appeared to have come from the same source. The bombs were of similar construction, simple but powerful enough to kill or maim.

They were mailed in similar envelopes, and the return address of Representative Wasserman Schultz was used on all of them. No information has yet been made public about the triggering devices and why the bombs failed to explode in the two instances when the packages were opened.

The list of targets is one that could have been drawn up based on any Trump campaign rally of the past three years, where all seven have been vilified and threatened, most notoriously Clinton, the subject of incessant chants of “lock her up.” Trump has singled out Waters among the nearly 200 Democrats in the House of Representatives, unleashing a stream of racist abuse depicting her as a “low IQ person” because she has advocated his impeachment.

Soros has been regularly demonized, both by Trump and, in openly anti-Semitic terms, by fascistic supporters like Breitbart News, because he is a Jewish billionaire who finances the Democratic Party and many liberal groups. Most recently, Trump suggested that he was financing the caravan of Central American immigrants now traveling north through Mexico.

As for Brennan, Trump revoked his security clearance during the summer after the former CIA director publicly denounced his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki as an act of treason.

Certain aspects of the mailing suggest that the bombs may have been the work of an amateur. For example, the names of Brennan and Wasserman Schultz were misspelled, the Brennan bomb was mailed to CNN rather than NBC, the Holder bomb went to the wrong address and was sent back by the postal service. It is also of note that of the seven apparent targets—including Wasserman Schultz—three were African American and two were Jewish.

Trump accorded the mail bombs only three words of condemnation in his daily tweet storm, and then delivered a grudging statement at a previously scheduled White House event in which he did not mention any of the targets of the mail bombs by name.

At a campaign rally Wednesday evening in Wisconsin, he continued his denunciations of the media.

“The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories,” he said. “They’ve got to stop.”

The Democratic Party and the pro-Democratic elements in the corporate media were eager to put the blame on Trump’s violent rhetoric for stirring up violence on the part of his supporters. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement saying Trump’s words condemning the attacks “ring hollow until he reverses his statements that condone acts of violence.” They continued,

“Time and time again, the president has condoned physical violence and divided Americans with his words and his actions.”

CNN Chairman Jeff Zucker also weighed in.

“There is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media,” he said in a statement.

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The Turkish account of the murder of Khashoggi given by President Erdogan is true, in every detail. Audio and video evidence exists and has been widely shared with world intelligence agencies, including the US, UK, Russia and Germany, and others which have a relationship with Turkey or are seen as influential. That is why, despite their desperate desire to do so, no Western country has been able to maintain support for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. I have not seen the video from inside the consulate, but have been shown stills which may be from a video. The most important thing to say is that they are not from a fixed position camera and appear at first sight consistent with the idea they are taken by a device brought in by the victim. I was only shown them briefly. I have not heard the audio recording.

There are many things to learn from the gruesome murder other than the justified outrage at the event itself. It opens a window on the truly horrible world of the extremely powerful and wealthy.

The first thing to say is that the current Saudi explanation, that this was an intended interrogation and abduction gone wrong, though untrue, does have one thing going for it. It is their regular practice. The Saudis have for years been abducting dissidents abroad and returning them to the Kingdom to be secretly killed. The BBC World Service often contains little pockets of decent journalism not reflected in its main news outlets, and here from August 2017 is a little noticed piece on the abduction and “disappearance” of three other senior Saudis between 2015-17. Interestingly, while the piece was updated this month, it was not to include the obvious link to the Khashoggi case.

The key point is that European authorities turned a completely blind eye to the abductions in that BBC report, even when performed on European soil and involving physical force. The Saudi regime was really doing very little different in the Khashoggi case. In fact, inside Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi was a less senior and important figure than those other three abducted then killed, about whom nobody kicked up any fuss, even though the truth was readily available. Mohammed Bin Salman appears to have made two important miscalculations: he misread Erdogan and he underestimated the difference which Khashoggi’s position as a Washington Post journalist made to political pressure on Western governments.

Khashoggi should not himself be whitewashed. He had a long term professional association with the Saudi security services which put him on the side of prolific torturers and killers for decades. That does not in any sense justify his killing. But it is right to be deeply sceptical of the democratic credentials of Saudis who were in with the regime and have become vocal for freedom and democracy only after being marginalised by Mohammed Bin Salman’s ruthless consolidation of power (which built on a pre-existing trend).

The same scepticism is true many times over when related to CIA Director Gina Haspel, who personally supervised torture in the CIA torture and extraordinary rendition programme. Haspel was sent urgently to Ankara by Donald Trump to attempt to deflect Erdogan from any direct accusation of Mohammed Bin Salman in his speech yesterday. MBS’ embrace of de facto alliance with Israel, in pursuit of his fanatic hatred of Shia Muslims, is the cornerstone of Trump’s Middle East policy.

Haspel’s brief was very simple. She took with her intercept intelligence that purportedly shows massive senior level corruption in the Istanbul Kanal project, and suggested that Erdogan may not find it a good idea if intelligence agencies started to make public all the information they hold.

Whether Erdogan held back in his speech yesterday as a result of Haspel’s intervention I do not know. Erdogan may be keeping cards up his sleeve for his own purpose, particularly relating to intercepts of phone and Skype calls from the killers direct to MBS’ office. I have an account of Haspel’s brief from a reliable source, but have not been updated on who she then met, or what the Turks said to her. It does seem very probable, from Trump’s shift in position this morning to indicate MBS may be involved, that Haspel was convinced the Turks have further strong evidence and may well use it.

Meantime, the British government maintains throughout that, whatever else happens, British factories will continue to supply bombs to Saudi Arabia to massacre children on school buses and untold numbers of other civilians. Many Tory politicians remain personally in Saudi pockets, with former Defence Minister Michael Fallon revealed today as being amongst them.

It is of course extraordinary that Saudi war crimes in Yemen, its military suppression of democracy in Bahrain, its frequent executions of dissidents, human rights defenders, and Shia religious figures, even its arrests of feminists, have had little impact in the West. But the horrible murder of Khashoggi has caught the public imagination and forced western politicians to at least pretend to want to do something about the Saudis whose wealth they crave. I expect any sanctions will be smoke and mirrors.

Mohammed Bin Salman is no fool, and he realises that to punish members of his personal security detail who were just following his orders, would put him in the position of Caligula and the Praetorian Guard, and not tend to his long term safety. Possibly people will be reassigned, or there will be brief imprisonments till nobody is looking. If I were a dissident or Shia in Saudi Arabia who bore any kind of physical resemblance to any of the party of murderers, I would get out very quick.

With every sympathy for his horrible murder, Khashoggi and his history as a functionary of the brutal Saudi regime should not be whitewashed. Mohammed Bin Salman is directly responsible for his murder, and if there is finally international understanding that he is a dangerous psychopath, that is a good thing. You will forgive me for saying that I explained this back in March whilst the entire mainstream media, awash with Saudi PR cash, was praising him as a great reformer. For the Americans to deploy Gina Haspel gives us a welcome reminder that they are in absolutely no position to moralise. Whatever comes of this will not be “justice”. The truth the leads can reveal is much wider than the narrow question of the murder incident, as I hope this article sketches out. That the fallout derails to some extent the murder machine in Yemen is profoundly to be hoped.

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Dictionary.com is an online dictionary and encyclopedia. It has, according to online tracking company SimilarWeb, nearly 50million monthly visitors. They are ranked the 454th most visited website in America.

Dictionary.com asked its American website visitors a simple question.

What Is The State Of The Country In 5 Words?

The headline for this piece was: “We asked people what they thought the state of the country was … their answers may surprise you.”

And the result of the state of America in five words … in no particular order.

• hostile
• contentious
• opinionated
• divided
• bewildered

I’m not sure about you, but this did indeed surprise me. I am encouraged that there is, what looks like, a high degree of awareness by Americans of how America is currently performing both domestically and internationally.

The basic description with Dictionary.com of these words, in order, are:

• Characterised by antagonism
• Argumentative and quarrelsome
• Obstinate and conceited
• Disunited
• Confused

I think many would agree from outside America that those words and descriptions do indeed illustrate the sentiment of the state of America, not forgetting that these very words were the ones used by Americans themselves and no-one else.

You might think that President Trump’s fairly chaotic and adversarial leadership style had something to do with this.

And yet, according to The Hill – President Trump‘s approval rating before the November elections has jumped to a higher level than former President Obama’s ahead of the 2010 midterms.

The one thing that could be said is that Trump has at least re-engaged voters.

“The new NBC/WSJ poll found voters more energized than they have been for years, with 72 per cent of Democrats telling pollsters they are very interested in the upcoming election and 68 per cent of Republicans said the same.”

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

It is the time of monsters. The organic crisis of the old neoliberal project has also brought forth the rise of a new radical right. Yet these monsters are quite different from one another: we have strong men like Trump, Kurz and Macron – political entrepreneurs shaping a new authoritarianism from positions of governance. Theresa May and Boris Johnson act quite similar, with less success, but unlike the others they are established representatives of authoritarian elite right-wing conservatism. They all share an anti-establishment discourse, although they have strong capital factions backing them.

The authoritarian-nationalistic regimes in Poland and Hungary (or Turkey) are distinct, and are in turn different from the radical right like the Front National, Geert Wilders’s PVV or the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the Austrian FPÖ and Italy’s Lega – both operating from a position of government. Very different from them, in turn, is the Five Star Movement. How can we understand these formations’ differences and commonalities? This question must be addressed to identify specific tactics and counter-strategies in the concrete countries (see Wiegel 2018).

Here, I will try to tease out a more fundamental question: how can we understand the reasons behind the rise of the radical right? Many different explanations exist, most of which are valuable in explaining certain aspects. But they exist in parallel at best, sometimes even in conflict with one another. So is there a specific relation that we could flesh out theoretically?

Beyond empirical detail, only a few attempts at systematic and subject-orientated research have been undertaken. Rarely are these conducted with recourse to or for the further refinement of critical theory. Of course, the phenomenon is extremely heterogeneous and highly dynamic and thus eludes simple explanation. It must be seen in the framework of a crisis and concrete transformation of the mode of production and living. Why has this phenomenon gained so much importance now, and not ten years ago? In fact, it was already there. I will thus seek to elaborate the concept of a generalized culture of insecurity, including highly distinct but intertwined dimensions in the context of an organic crisis of the old neoliberal project – insecurity in the field of work, family, territory and homeland, one’s own perspectives and history, gender identity or mode of living.

The following will draw on a research project conducted with the University of Stendal, a small town in eastern Germany and former stronghold of Die Linke that has now become a bastion of the AfD. We also draw on our experience from the hundreds of door-to-door conversations and our pilot project in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Although the Alternative für Deutschland is certainly not a workers’ party, when we look at its constituency and electorate it appears they receive a significant degree of support from workers and poor people. The French sociologist Didier Eribon calls this electoral decision an “act of self-defence” – to have a voice, to be heard in political discourse even when it is only a “negative self-affirmation.” This is true of our experience, as well. Betrayed by Social Democracy and disappointed by the powerlessness of the left, they turn to a new powerful narrative: the defence of hard-working men, of our nation, our culture, against the Other – Islam, refugees, globalization, gays and lesbians, the moralizing ’68 elite in government, etc.

This phenomenon is nothing new and well-documented. But why has it gained such momentum? Explanations often pose the dilemma of: is it the social question, or racism? In the words of Stuart Hall, we can say that “the problem is not if economic structures are relevant for racial divisions, but how they are connected” (Hall 1980, 92). He continues: “It is not the question if people make racist ascriptions, but what are the specific conditions under which racism become socially decisive and historically effective” (129).

A Culture of Insecurity

1989 marked an historical rupture that began with the crisis of Fordism in East and West 20 years before. This was a moment of generalized neoliberalism, with shock therapies in Eastern Europe and deindustrialization with social subsidies in eastern Germany. The east was a field of experimentation for neoliberal flexibilization and precarization, but was also the moment of phasing out the remains of West German and Western European Fordism.

The result was a widespread culture of insecurity – emblematic were the workfare programs all over Europe and the USA and the Agenda 2010 in Germany, which dismantled the old unemployment security system. The goal was to establish the largest precarious low-wage sector in Western Europe. The fear of falling was not limited to those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but spread to the established so-called middle classes, who knew the safety net was fraying while experiencing a rapid intensification of work, flexibilization, and fluid structures of protection. The fear was used to produce “compliant workers,” as Klaus Dörre (2005) puts it.¹

The implicit social contract – promising recognition and social security in exchange for hard work – was unilaterally broken. While unions were unable to oppose this development, frustration and anger often was directed toward groups assumed to be under less pressure, performing less and taking money from the state – the unemployed, people receiving social assistance, refugees.

As I said, this reaction was not particularly true for the lowest class segments, but rather emanated from the middle – those who had something to lose, who see themselves as the productive core of society. Even when they were able to maintain or even improve their social position and status, this came at the price of increased workloads, unrestricted working hours, and exhaustive flexibility requirements.²

Oliver Nachtwey (2016) found a brilliant metaphor for the situation: the image of a moving escalator going downward. One is not intended to stand still – one must struggle to avoid going downward, while moving upward proves even more exhausting. Only a few manage to take the escalator to the top. But the upper segments of society are closed off; the rich live in a world of their own.

Beyond the dramatic increase in inequality, hard divisions of respectability (not only small distinctions) were drawn: the bourgeois class produced popular images legitimizing the authoritarian education of the unemployed, migrants and other subaltern groups, pushing for a conscious class distinction from the under-performers. The parts of the working class which have something to lose draw a line against those further below, denying them respectability as well. The fear of not being respectable – the fear of falling and failing – produced a feeling of guilt leading to self-loathing directed against weaker groups and individuals: a revaluation of the self through the devaluation of others. The most effective forms of this are classism, racism, and sexism.

Beyond precarization, however, more dimensions are at the root of a culture of insecurity, and all are interconnected. A brief overview:

a) The Crisis of Male Subjectivity:

New forms of male individuality could not be generalized in neoliberalism – “emotional intelligence,” self-reflexivity, cooperative and communicative capabilities, gender equality, anti-sexist discourse and so on. In contrast, many feel a kind of feminization of work requirements as well as in family relations and child care, up to feeling forced to eat less meat. On the labour market, they experience women as fierce competition, while losing their role as family breadwinners and feeling the gender hierarchy at home has been turned upside down. Entire male-dominated sectors of the economy, often bound to a certain exploitation of nature, are threatened – from mining to automobile manufacturing. This challenges certain habits of skilled male labour, already under pressure from permanent technological requirements of re-qualification and further education. This leads to experiences of being incapable of meeting requirements – incurring a certain nostalgia for the good old notions of family, clear gender roles and male work habits. This might be a reason why men of a certain age are particularly likely to vote for the radical right and why anti-genderism is so central for them.

b) The Crisis of Female Subjectivity:

Promises of emancipation through integration into the labour market encountered several “glass ceilings”: the pay gap, omnipresent requirements of being flexible incompatible with family life – even with a more or less equal distribution of care work or delegation to others, often illegalized migrants – the new family models (Gabriele Winker) are not working, not only because of increased requirements on the job, but also because of new aspirations concerning (quality) time with children and life partners (but also to meet the competitive pressures on children within educational institutions, concerning one’s own fitness, etc.). Out of this stress between increased requirements and own aspirations, some develop a nostalgia for old family models – exaggerating the value of motherhood, especially where these new experiences meet with conservative values. This may be a reason why women vote for a radical right which is so anti-feminist – after all, liberal feminism rarely addresses these needs and problems, particularly for woman of the popular classes.

There are other dimensions as well, but we lack the space to delve into them. I will simply name them:

c) Insecurity due to certain kinds of lifestyles growing outdated, losing their claim to what is culturally “normal.” Old milieus dissolve and new modern, diverse, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and multi-lingual lifestyles seem to dominate media and advertising. The world and experience of skilled workers is no longer the standard – it becomes unsettled, proletarianized. Being sensitive to gender, ecologically responsible, accepting of gay and queer people, using a non-discriminatory language etc. – all of these are perceived as “political correctness” directed against persistent but outdated habits. This often meets with pre-existing prejudice and may revert into aggressive denial and intolerance.

d) Insecurity due to “external threats”: experiencing the demise of social infrastructures (especially schools, public transport, public administration and police, public security in general), particularly in certain regions, causes real social problems but is not traced back to the roots of neoliberal reform, instead falsely associated with assumed external causes like “migration into our social systems,” ”’kanakization’ of our schools,” “parallel societies,” migrant delinquency or Islamism, even terrorism, but also job insecurity because of multinational corporations, European reforms, or competition through labour migration. This often links up with pre-existing racial prejudice, which becomes increasingly important for individuals against this backdrop.

e) Insecurity through discharged democratic institutions and organized irresponsibility: who decides on new requirements, what kinds of life experiences and identities are still represented, where do I have a voice in family decisions, in living my own identity, in transnational production chains or in despotic low-wage relations? Economic imperialism is eating away at individual responsibility. One cannot direct demands toward a super-powerful globalized market. Politics seems to have deprived itself of power vis-à-vis the market and detached itself from the people, even become corrupt. Democracy is becoming a play without any real actors. This may often be articulated mistakenly, but the experience is real: feeling helpless and powerless, without control of one’s conditions of life. This reverts into “anger without a target” (Detje et al. 2013), and to an “extreme fatalism” (Haug 1993, 229): “You can do nothing about it.”

The point is: when the various dimensions come together, this can condense into a state of panic (Balibar/Wallerstein 1990, 271). The radical right is mobilizing and fuelling a “moral panic” (Demirović 2018, 29). This way, they encourage the subaltern to disconnect their feelings from efforts to understand the reasons behind their predicament and translate them directly into resentment, racism, coldness, and denial of solidarity instead. The reward is attention and false grief from above: “We have understood, and we take your worries and concerns seriously,” etc. (32).

Bizarre Everyday Consciousness and Right-Wing Populism

Most of the time, however, we encounter a bizarre form of everyday consciousness (Gramsci), not a coherent and closed view of the world, but what W.F.Haug calls “proto-ideological material” (Haug 1993, 52), meaning impulses and elements of feeling and thinking which are not yet ideologically determined. The impulse of discontent and anger is not in itself ideological. This depends on how it articulates itself or is articulated along with other elements. Thus, discontent can be translated into solidarity and horizontal practices of association from below, or revert into hierarchical forms, depreciating and excluding the Other.

If we seek to understand the rise of the radical right, it is less about right-wing attitudes in the population (as can be found in polls for the last 20 years or so) than it is about how these loose, proto-ideological impulses, feelings, forms of thinking, desires and aspirations – often in contradiction to one another – are integrated into a political project, giving them a coherent articulation. This explains why right-wing attitudes may decline in the polls, while the right-wing agenda continues to rise in the public eye.

This is not a mono-causal process: proto-ideological material is formed and processed in constant discourses in various ideological apparatuses such as the media and political parties, but also in schools, on the shop floor, in associations or in the family. At the same time, social individuals appropriate political discourses in the sense of active subjectivation, adapting them to their respective conditions in order to gain at least a “restrictive capacity to act” (Holzkamp 1987). The question is “how the social individuals integrate themselves in to the existing structures (and discourses), thereby shaping their own subjectivity” (F.Haug 1983, 16). But we also have to ask why leftist or solidary discourses are less effective than elsewhere, for instance in Spain or Greece (see Candeias and Völpel 2013).

Especially when the experience of solidarity is lacking or disappointed, this opens a window of opportunity for the radical right. When the experience of solidary practice or the prospect for their possible success is absent, this may lead to stubborn dissidence, as represented also by the radical right: their dissidence at the same time defends the status quo of existing social relations, the “good old past,” while questioning them partially. There is a dominant feeling of “extreme fatalism,” very aware of its powerlessness against “those at the top,” re-enacting a rebellious gesture, combined with an “extreme voluntarism” (Haug 1993, 229) against the weaker social groups at “the bottom and outside,” very aware that they face little danger of being sanctioned for that. This attitude is in “opposition to the ruling bloc in power,” but is “dangerous” only where the foundation of capitalist rule is not concerned (222). The radical right enables social individuals a “nonconformist conformism” (Thomas Barfuss): an attitude of resistance toward the ruling power bloc, at the same time requesting (in a form of interpellation) for their action to depreciate and actively exclude “the Other” – migrants, those “unwilling to work,” the “toxic ‘68er,s” feminists, etc. This can be experienced as stabilizing a restrictive capacity to act under heightened conditions of insecurity.

The new authoritarianism could be read as an “attempt to build a coalition with parts of the petit bourgeoisie and the working class from the side of the bourgeois class, without the need to make concessions. It works like a short circuit between the forces of the bourgeoisie and the subaltern” (Demirović 2018, 34). In doing so, this does not lead to a simple rejection of democracy, but to its reactionary re-making – an illiberal democracy – a plebiscitary strategy, dividing and mobilizing along the lines of racism, nationalism, religion, sex and gender, or form of exploitation of nature, “reproducing and disarranging the bizarre everyday consciousness, converting into neurotic subjectivities” (ibid).

Their form of mobilizing is connected to an imagined self-empowerment of the subaltern, based on the promise of taking back control. Once the different proto-ideological elements are articulated in a coherent way, it is much more difficult to re-articulate them in a different manner.

New Relations of Representation

Against the backdrop of this culture of insecurity, modernized radical right parties – the ugly siblings of neoliberalism – could be established in many European countries over the last 20 years. In Germany, they vanished time and again, but authoritarian or racist attitudes spread nevertheless. With the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland, one could say the country reverted to the European norm (Opratko 2016). Its appearance led to a complete shift of the whole political and ideological spectrum toward the right, creating a new relation of representation (Demirović 2018, 28). The previous “anger without a target” found a representative to articulate this anger – not in the sense of simple expression of that anger, but in a specific coherent and increasingly radical way.

The AfD began with the dream of a return to the Deutschmark and a strong national, one could almost say “imagined economy.” The rise could not have been consolidated with the critique of the Euro alone, however. The clear class character of the project, created by angry neoliberal professors looking with arrogance and disdain at the subaltern, would have been too obvious.

Only taking up and intensifying the anti-migration, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, homophobic and anti-liberal discourse strategically directed against all minorities enabled the party to invert popular discord into popular compliance – against its own class composition concerning its constituency and leadership (cf. Hall 1982, 114). Polemics against “migration into our social security systems” and turning the social question into an ethnic question proved particularly effective (Wiegel 2014, 83).

Insofar as the ethno-nationalist and social wings of the party are becoming more influential (in the workplace as well), their notion of “exclusive solidarity” (Dörre 2005) could broaden their appeal in sections of the working class. It does not seem to matter that the party advocates for the most radical neoliberal reforms at the same time. In fact, they play with ambiguity, relativizing truth. This is one of their most effective strategies. They have succeeded in re-articulating the populist agenda and asserting right-wing hegemony in public discourse.

Most of the other parties are taking up this agenda, always with a shift to the right – even the media, and talk shows in particular. Now, it would seem, people can say whatever they want in public. An astonishing symbol was the last German government crisis between Horst Seehofer, Minister of the Interior and head of the right-wing Bavarian CSU (the sister party of the ruling CDU), and Chancellor Angela Merkel. It revolved around closed detention centres and how to send back refugees, completely ignoring the mass carnage in the Mediterranean. The radical right has set the agenda and are “on the hunt,” as Alexander Gauland, head of the AfD, said. Only a few weeks later, we watched huge crowds of Neo-Nazis parade through the small city of Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt), giving open Hitler salutes and chasing people of colour through the streets, with a small number of police units unable and unwilling to stop the mob (while any leftist or anti-fascist activity is confronted with huge numbers of militarized anti-terror units). The head of the secret service (the so-called “Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution”), Hans-Georg Maaßen, denied the incidents and implied that media coverage and film footage had been “fake news.” Following extensive public outcry, this prompted another government crisis with Seehofer backing Maaßen, while Merkel and her coalition partner SPD demanded his demotion. In the end, Maaßen was removed from his position but only to become state secretary for internal security and cyber security. The crisis is still smouldering and the established parties are losing popularity, pushing more people toward frustration and toward the anti-elite course of the AfD.

The radical right’s strategy is combined with an open hostility toward parliamentarism and its democratic procedures, while using the parliament as a stage. Of course, post-democracy already began under neoliberalism, but now it approaches a rupture with democratic procedures – starting with Berlusconi, then Orbán, Trump, etc. The radical right, one could say, is doing the legwork for a new authoritarian project.

Attempts are ongoing to assert political control over jurisdiction (in Poland, Hungary, the USA, Turkey) and constrain freedom of the press, or at least disparage them as “lying press” while deploying fake news and “alternative facts,” often combined with a vulgar historical revisionism. The rights of minorities, women, unions, and science are at least questioned. A violent language becomes normal, affirming and relativizing physical violence, enforcing security discourses and repressive apparatuses. Expanding the range of acceptable language is expanding the space for maliciousness from open hatred to real individual violence. I think these are clear tendencies of what in German is called Faschisierung: not fascist regimes, but clear tendencies against a democratic and solidary mode of living.

Racism from Below as Reactionary Self-Empowerment and Expansion of One’s Capacity to Act

The production and combating of “the Other” plays a central role here.

The tremendous heterogeneity of the subaltern classes could serve as a fruitful foundation for solidarity in plurality, but of course could also be the foundation for strategically dividing the class. This is especially done by integrating factions of the class into a hegemonic project. Forms of chauvinism, racism, sexism, and classism in the everyday consciousness – as well as the distinction of certain professions from others, different modes of consumption and lifestyle – are useful elements to expand minor differences into real divisions.

A common pattern is to compensate one’s own (real or feared) social decline by depreciating others, because the feeling of dignity and individual social position is a relative one always in comparison to others. To allocate someone else a lower position makes one feel that they not at the bottom of the social hierarchy, maybe they still part of the middle class, part of a nation – in the German case, a successful export leader and football world champion (the latter may be weakened after the last World Cup, where Germany was knocked out in the first round).

Racism and nationalism were always present, but remained in a subaltern position in most people’s minds, emerging to the fore from time to time but not systematically. That they gained so much importance is also a symptom of the lack of effective class struggle (Balibar/Wallerstein 1990, 259). In the moment of this generalization of a culture of insecurity and crisis of the old neoliberal project, the articulation of the proto-ideological elements changes: what was marginal or less important takes on a central position in the ideological structure, becomes a point of condensation.

The ruling class seeks to divide the subaltern classes via integration into a hegemonic project. This is not a mere ideological phenomenon, but includes the realization of material interests: because of power relations and a strong workers’ movement, class compromise in Fordism was broadly inclusive, although it also produced an exterior and exhibited a patriarchal and paternalistic structure. In neoliberalism, the basis of class compromise was much smaller, more and more reduced to high-tech specialists and the core workforce in production. Export-nationalism, purchased at the dear price of austerity and wage restraint, still guarantees a highly contested degree of participation for a certain part of the working class. This kind of class compromise has high costs entailing subordination, increased flexibilization, tightened performance requirements, etc. This kind of class compromise with less and less concessions mobilizes tremendous fears of tailing to keep up in this universal “war of every one against everyone” (Hobbes, as cited by Haug 1993, 228).

This becomes evident with the constant burden of increasing contributions to social insurance and higher taxes, combined with declining benefits and crumbling social infrastructure – first due to German reunification, rising unemployment, the costs of the EU, and then the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees. The so-called middle classes and high performers are burdened more and more (so the story goes), while the real reasons – the dramatic re-distribution of wealth in favour of capital and the rich – are not discussed. One cannot do anything about it – otherwise they would have turned their anger against the ruling power bloc to offer at least a small portion of the economic success as part of the class compromise, albeit in a very subaltern position.

The feeling of bearing the burden grows even more when faced with heightened competition on the labour market, in housing, for access to high-quality social services, especially child care and schools, and for public space. Although the actual cause might be permanent neoliberal restructuring, some fear that with the arrival of so many refugees there will be even less left for them.

These unreasonable demands should also apply to the Other even more so, up to denying them individual and social rights. The higher the perceived pressure is, the harsher the break with solidarity vis-à-vis social groups outside the class compromise. Even a portion of those excluded, the poor, desperately want to be part of that compromise, struggling for recognition, adopting the images and forms of social exclusion against their own group to mark a distinction from them.

If it is true that racist ideology is primarily an ideology of those segments of those in-between classes – not only in the sense of ascending or descending class segments, but concerning “active negation of class solidarity,” as Balibar/Wallerstein put it (1990, 263) – then we could understand the radical right as a class alliance between descending segments of skilled labour, endangered segments of the working class that developed into a petit bourgeoisie defending their small residential property and consumptive status, between ascending individualistic high performers, family businesses under pressure from globalization, bourgeois intellectuals lacking recognition or experiencing marginalization in institutions. Concerning the descending class factions, one can speak of manifest or threatened social declassification (see Kahrs 2018), while the ascending segments and class factions are engaged in the struggle over the recomposition of the power bloc.

The mix of heightened requirements and unreasonable demands, experiences of declassification, insecurity, attempts to stabilize the self via imaginary communities (Benedict Anderson), racism and other forms of depreciating Others add up to a radical right articulation of initially independent phenomena. “The racial stigma and class hatred” against those below in the social hierarchy coincide with the category of migration (Balibar/Wallerstein 1990, 249). “Insofar as they project their fears and resentments, their desperation and defiance onto the strangers, they not only fight competition, as it is said, but they try to distance themselves from their own exploitation. They hate themselves as proletarians or as humans, in danger of falling into the mill of proletarianization.” (258) A constant interplay and entanglement of “class-racism” and “ethnic racism” (ibid) against the ones below and outside. The interpellation of racism (or anti-Semitism) “instantly operates like directing a magnet onto loose iron filings,” rearranging the whole political field – after which it becomes possible to “organize a populism from the right, that is to say an authoritarian constitution of Volk” (an ethnic unity of the people) (Haug 1993, 222).

Against this backdrop we can understand the growing significance of racism, chauvinism, nationalism, etc. as creating a more coherent everyday consciousness as active inscription of individuals into an ideological project from the right. This is connected with a transition from a latent to openly racist mode of living.

This is not a seduction by pied pipers of the far right, but an active subjectivation enabling a reactionary self-empowerment and expansion of one’s capacity to act. This may help to understand why the question of migration advanced as a central social line of conflict, inverting the hierarchical conflict between capital and class into a horizontal conflict between class factions in and outside of the class compromise.

The problem? The left cannot win on this terrain. We need to shift it.

Connective Class Politics from Door to Door

Thus, back to the manifold dimensions of a generalized culture of insecurity in times of an organic crisis of the neoliberal project, with uncertainty at work, in family relations, neighbourhoods and whole regions, future prospects, one’s own history, identity, gender or mode of living. This pervasive insecurity is the basis for subjective strategies to confront the situation, which in absence of experiences with solidarity receive an ideological supply from the right to win back control.

But one can link up from the left on the same basis. Most people do not have a closed view of the world, but a bizarre everyday consciousness in which conflicting impulses coexist. We have to be aware that it is much more difficult to win people back once they become part of a radical right project, seeking to lend coherence to their everyday consciousness with a radical right view of the world and a racist mode of living. But many are aware that the radical right will not solve their everyday problems of manifold insecurity, and feel discomfort and a guilty consciousness with the right. Die Linke lost 400,000 voters to the AfD in the last elections. We want them back. So, how to connect with them from the left?

This has been a focus of the debate around new connective class politics (cf. Luxemburg Special Issue, 2017) in recent years, i.e. a class politics reaching beyond the usual suspects (Candeias 2017), developing and experimenting with new concrete projects. This sometimes means simple things that seem so difficult: knocking on doors in disadvantaged neighbourhoods all over Germany (and especially in the left’s former strongholds), taking lessons from Greece and Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Great Britain and the USA (cf. Steckner 2017a, Pieschke 2016). We need patience and endurance to build active relations. We have to listen, debate, organize local meetings centred around everyday problems such as neighbourhood rent policies or struggles in and for health and child care services. We have to come back and try again. It was often a surprising experience for both sides: first to be approached at all, and then to have a political conversation focused on everyday problems.

We sent hundreds of militants to knock on doors all over Germany. Our activists of course encountered resentment and racism, even among people leaning to the left. Nevertheless: most of the time, a conversation was possible. Frequently, people responded the question of what has to happen for their situation to progress with “Asylanten” – a derogatory term for asylum seekers – “must go!”

“Okay, but was your situation better before the refugees came – or do you expect it will be better when they are gone?”

“No! I know that this will not change, even with the AfD…”

People then started to talk about their own problems: that they have three kids, receive social assistance but are not able to pay the rent or buy enough food or a birthday present for their kids, and so on. Less political correctness and more listening and taking experiences seriously – without denying one’s political point of view.

Other studies confirm our findings: according to a recent study documenting a door-knocking project across more than 500 doors in Germany and France (Hillje 2018), the first things people would like to change if they were in power were: “higher minimum wages, universal basic income, and more assistance to single mothers” (15f).

The same study concluded that “when people talk about politics in their own words, fear of Islam, Euroscepticism, the ‘lying media’ or an emphasis on national identity doesn’t play a major role.” They do not even have anything against migrants, at least it is not a major point, but the feeling that politics follows the wrong priorities, is not serving their needs, especially in disadvantaged regions or neighbourhoods.

As discussed above, they do not necessarily believe that the AfD or Front National could really solve their problems (Hillje 2018, 10). This was also true for our conversations: voting for the radical right is more an expression of the desperate wish to be heard and have politics focused on everyday needs. We interviewed a middle-aged man who always voted for the left. After years of disappointment, he voted for the AfD. When we talked he was already sceptical that this would change anything for the better. We invited him to a longer interview. After a while we called again, he joined the local organizing initiative and will vote for the left again. This is not an isolated case. This is an opportunity for the left: to proceed from solidary forms of working together on social problems in the neighbourhood, building structures of mutual solidarity (see Candeias and Völpel 2013). This is what we are trying to develop and spread across the party, and to support movements doing similar things.

From this common ground on social issues, we can work on questions like racism and sexism as they are modified and reduced in significance to an initially reactionary capacity to act. However, we cannot stop there, as this leads to a silent toleration of these ideologies. Rather we have to work on this, with continuous training and political education, but moreover by organizing space for experiences of solidarity irrespective of one’s migrant background. Experience with refugees as part of organizing projects in the neighbourhoods is crucial. Moreover, it is at least as important to support the self-organization of migrants and refugees. How to do all this can be learned, requiring systematic training so people lose the fear of approaching the Other.

At the moment, we think it is the only and most promising way to win back those segments of the popular classes we have lost over the years – not only those who voted for the AfD, but the even larger number of people who do not vote at all (cf. Candeias 2015, Schäfer et al. 2013a, 2015).

Decisive is whether everyday experience is shaped by practical solidarity or by competition and isolation. It is not impossible that a successive practice of solidarity could be more attractive than the imagined self-empowerment of the radical right, without any solution for people’s everyday problems. It is about a “generalized capacity to act” (Klaus Holzkamp) on the path toward a common and solidary disposition about our own conditions of life – “taking back control,” but “for the many, not the few.”

A “helpless antifascism” (Haug) focusing too much on the radical right and its agenda, rushing from one counter-demonstration to another, defensively concedes the chosen terrain of struggle. We have to develop our own agenda and shift the terrain with concrete organizing around everyday social problems with connective class politics, focused not only on the antagonist from above and from the radical right, but creating its own broader basis for a lived solidarity for all (cf. Candeias 2017).

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Mario Candeias is the director of the Institute for Critical Social Analysis and editor of the review LuXemburg.

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• Demirović, Alex, 2018: Autoritärer Populismus als neoliberale Krisenbewältigungsstrategie, in: Prokla190, 27–42
• Detje, Richard, Wolfgang Menz, Sarah Nies u. Dieter Sauer, 2011: Ohnmacht und Wut, in: LuxemburgH.2, 52-61, www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/ohnmacht-und-wut/
• Dörre, Klaus, 2005: Prekarität. Eine arbeitspolitische Herausforderung, in: WSI-Mitteilungen 5, 250–58
• Falkner, Thomas, u. Horst Kahrs, 2018: Deutungsmuster zum Erfolg der AfD bei der Bundestagswahl 2017 – ein Bericht zu neueren empirischen Studien, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Berlin
• Hall, Stuart, 1982: Popular-demokratischer und autoritärer Populismus, in: Neue soziale Bewegungen und Marxismus, Argument-Sonderheft 78, Berlin
• ––, 1980: ‚Rasse‘, Artikulation und Gesellschaften mit struktureller Dominante, in: ibid., Rassismus und kulturelle Identität, Ausgew. Schriften, Bd. 2, 89-136, Hamburg 1994
• Haug, Frigga, 1983: Sexualisierung der Körper (1991), Berlin/Hamburg
• Haug, Wolfgang Fritz, 1993: Elemente einer Theorie des Ideologischen, Berlin/Hamburg
• Hillje, Johannes, 2018: Rückkehr zu den politisch Verlassenen. Studie rechtspopulistischen Hochburgen in Deutschland und Frankreich.
• Hilmer, Richard, Bettina Kohlrausch, Rita Müller-Hiller u. Jérémy Gagné, 2017: Einstellungen und soziale Lebenslage. Eine Spurensuche nach Gründen für rechtspopulistische Orientierung, auch unter Gewerkschaftsmitgliedern, Working Paper Forschungsförderung der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung Nr. 44, August
• Holzkamp, Klaus, 1987: ›Grundkonzepte der Kritischen Psychologie‹, in: AG Gewerkschaftliche Schulung und Lehrerfortbildung (Hg.), Wi(e)der die Anpassung, Soltau 1987a, 13-19; www.kritische-psychologie.de
• Kahrs, Horst, 2018: Versuche, uns und anderen die rechtspopulistische Dynamik
• in Deutschland zu erklären, in: M.Candeias (Ed.), Rechtspopulismus, radikale Rechte, Faschisierung,Berlin, 16-32
• Luxemburg Special Edition, 2017: New Class Politics, with Mario Candeias, Bernd Riexinger, Barbara Fried, Anne Steckner, Alex Demirović, Bernd Röttger a. Markus Wissen, October, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/lux/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/LUX-Special-New-Class-Politics-E-Paper.pdf
• Nachtwey, Oliver, 2017: Die Abstiegsgesellschaft, Frankfurt/M
• Opratko, Benjamin, 2016: Mit der AfD kommt Deutschland in der Normalität an, in: Huffington Post v. 3.02.2016, huffingtonpost.de/benjamin-opratko/afd-deutschland-osterreich_b_9148352.html
• Pieschke, Miriam, 2016: Vom kurzen Flirt zur langfristigen Beziehung. Organisierung im Kiez als transformatorisches Projekt, in: Luxemburg, H.2, 108-13, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/vom-kurzen-flirt-zur-langfristigen-beziehung
• PSUREG, Projekt Subjekt- und hegemonietheoretische Untersuchung des Rechtspopulismus & Entfaltung emanzipatorischer Gegenmacht, 2018: Reaktionär, rassistisch, rechts: Die Entwicklung der AfD in Sachsen-Anhalt und Stendal, RLS-Studie, rosalux.de/publikation/id/38891/reaktionaer-rassistisch-rechts/
• Reimer, Katrin, 2011: Kritische politische Bildung gegen Rechtsextremismus und die Bedeutung unterschiedlicher Konzepte zu Rassismus und Diversity. Ein subjektwissenschaftlicher Orientierungsversuch in Theorie- und Praxiswidersprüchen, Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft und Psychologie der Freien Universität Berlin, Berlin, d-nb.info/102635840X/34
• Schäfer, Armin, Robert Vehrkamp u. Jérémie Gagné, 2013: Prekäre Wahlen. Milieus und soziale Selektivität der Wahlbeteiligung bei der Bundestagswahl 2013; unter: wahlbeteiligung2013.de
• ––, u. Sigrid Roßteutscher, 2015: Räumliche Unterschiede der Wahlbeteiligung bei der Bundestagswahl 2013: Die soziale Topografie der Nichtwahl; in: K.-R.Korte (Hg.): Die Bundestagswahl 2013, Wiesbaden, 99-118
• Steckner, Anne, 2017a: „Die Asys müssen weg!“ Warum die Linke mit den Leuten reden sollte, statt über sie, in LuXemburg 1/2017, 74–81.
• ––, 2017b: Auswertung der bundesweiten Haustürbefragungen, Bereich Strategie und Grundsatzfragen, DIE LINKE, Juli
• Wiegel, Gerd, 2014: Rechts der Union. Wie die AfD den Spagat zwischen Eliteprojekt und Rechtspopulismus versucht, in: LuXemburg 1/2012, 82–87
• ––, 2018: Die modernisierte radikale Rechte in Europa. Ausprägungen und Varianten, in: M. Candeias (Ed.), Rechtspopulismus, radikale Rechte, Faschisierung, Berlin, 5-15.

Notes

1. In their analysis of different quantitative studies on the reasons for the rise of right-wing populism, Falkner and Kahrs summarize that “the majority of ‘worried people’ consider themselves as ‘middle class’, between the top and bottom” (2018, 18).
2. Hilmer and Kohlrausch et al. summarize in their socio-economic quantitative study: “Not so much real deprivation, but a combination of perceived descent in the past and fear of descent in the future lead to the phenomenon that people vote for the Alternative für Deutschland or take it into consideration. …predominantly, they are not in a financially precarious situation, but have a feeling of being unprotected from crisis in the future” (2017, 33).

Featured image is from The Bullet.

Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the futures predicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. He wrote:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” 

Niel Postman’s book, “Amusing Ourselves To Death; or Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business” (1985), had its origins at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where Postman was invited to join a panel discussing George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Postman said that our present situation was better predicted by Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Today, he maintained it is not fear that bars us from truth. Instead, truth is drowned in distractions and the pursuit of pleasure, by the public’s addiction to amusement.

Postman sees television as the modern equivalent of Huxley’s pleasure-inducing drug, soma, and he maintains that that television, as a medium, is intrinsically superficial and unable to discuss serious issues. Looking at television as it is today, one must agree with him.

The wealth and power of the establishment

The media are a battleground where reformers struggle for attention, but are defeated with great regularity by the wealth and power of the establishment. This is a tragedy because today there is an urgent need to make public opinion aware of the serious problems facing civilization, and the steps that are needed to solve these problems. The mass media could potentially be a great force for public education, but in general their role is not only unhelpful – it is often negative. War and conflict are blatantly advertised by television and newspapers.

Newspapers and war

There is a true story about the powerful newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst that illustrates the relationship between the mass media and the institution of war: When an explosion sank the American warship USS Maine in the harbor of Havana, Hearst anticipated (and desired) that the incident would lead to war between the United States and Spain. He therefore sent his best illustrator, Fredrick Remington, to Havana to produce drawings of the scene. After a few days in Havana, Remington cabled to Hearst, “All’s quiet here. There will be no war.”

Hearst cabled back, “You supply the pictures. I’ll supply the war.” Hearst was true to his words. His newspapers inflamed American public opinion to such an extent that the Spanish-American War became inevitable. During the course of the war, Hearst sold many newspapers, and Remington many drawings. From this story one might almost conclude that newspapers thrive on war, while war thrives on newspapers.

Before the advent of widely-read newspapers, European wars tended to be fought by mercenary soldiers, recruited from the lowest ranks of society, and motivated by financial considerations. The emotions of the population were not aroused by such limited and decorous wars. However, the French Revolution and the power of newspapers changed this situation, and war became a total phenomenon that involved emotions. The media were able to mobilize on a huge scale the communal defense mechanism that Konrad Lorenz called “militant enthusiasm” – self-sacrifice for the defense of the tribe. It did not escape the notice of politicians that control of the media is the key to political power in the modern world. For example, Hitler was extremely conscious of the force of propaganda, and it became one of his favorite instruments for exerting power.

With the advent of radio and television, the influence of the mass media became still greater. Today, state-controlled or money-controlled newspapers, radio and television are widely used by the power elite to manipulate public opinion. This is true in most countries of the world, even in those that pride themselves on allowing freedom of speech. For example, during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the official version of events was broadcast by CNN, and criticism of the invasion was almost absent from their transmissions.

The mass media and our present crisis

Today we are faced with the task of creating a new global ethic in which loyalty to family, religion and nation will be supplemented by a higher loyalty to humanity as a whole. In case of conflicts, loyalty to humanity as a whole must take precedence. In addition, our present culture of violence must be replaced by a culture of peace. To achieve these essential goals, we urgently need the cooperation of the mass media.

The predicament of humanity today has been called “a race between education and catastrophe”: Human emotions have not changed much during the last 40,000 years. Human nature still contains an element of tribalism to which nationalistic politicians successfully appeal. The completely sovereign nation-state is still the basis of our global political system. The danger in this situation is due to the fact that modern science has given the human race incredibly destructive weapons. Because of these weapons, the tribal tendencies in human nature and the politically fragmented structure of our world have both become dangerous anachronisms.

After the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Albert Einstein said,

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophes.”

We have to learn to think in a new way.

Will we learn this in time to prevent disaster?

When we consider the almost miraculous power of our modern electronic media, we can be optimistic. Cannot our marvelous global communication network be used to change anachronistic ways of thought and anachronistic social and political institutions in time, so that the system will not self-destruct as science and technology revolutionize our world? If they were properly used, our instantaneous global communications could give us hope.

The success of our species is built on cultural evolution, the central element of which is cooperation. Thus human nature has two sides, tribal emotions are present, but they are balanced by the human genius for cooperation. The case of Scandinavia – once war-torn, now cooperative – shows that education is able to bring out either the kind and cooperative side of human nature, or the xenophobic and violent side. Which of these shall it be? It is up to our educational systems to decide, and the mass media are an extremely important part of education. Hence the great responsibility that is now in the hands of the media.

How do the mass media fulfill this life-or-death responsibility? Do they give us insight? No, they give us pop music. Do they give us an understanding of the sweep of evolution and history? No, they give us sport. Do they give us an understanding of need for strengthening the United Nations, and the ways that it could be strengthened? No, they give us sit-coms and soap operas. Do they give us unbiased news? No, they give us news that has been edited to conform with the interests of the military-industrial complex and other powerful lobbys. Do they present us with the need for a just system of international law that acts on individuals? On the whole, the subject is neglected. Do they tell of of the essentially genocidal nature of nuclear weapons, and the urgent need for their complete abolition? No, they give us programs about gardening and making food.

A consumer who subscribes to the “package” of broadcasts sold by a cable company can often search through all 100 or so channels without finding a single program that offers insight into the various problems that are facing the world today. What the viewer finds instead is a mixture of pro-establishment propaganda and entertainment. Meanwhile the neglected global problems are becoming progressively more severe. In general, the mass media behave as though their role is to prevent the peoples of the world from joining hands and working to change the world and to save it from thermonuclear and environmental catastrophes. The television viewer sits slumped in a chair, passive, isolated, disempowered and stupefied. The future of the world hangs in the balance, the fate of children and grandchildren hang in the balance, but the television viewer feels no impulse to work actively to change the world or to save it. The Roman emperors gave their people bread and circuses to numb them into political inactivity. The modern mass media seem to be playing a similar role.

Our duty to future generations

The future of human civilization is endangered both by the threat of themonuclear war and by the threat of catastrophic climate change. It is not only humans that are threatened, but also the other organisms with which we share the gift of life. We must also consider the threat of a global famine of extremely large proportions, when the end of the fossil fuel era, combined with the effects of climate change, reduce our ability to support a growing global population.

We live at a critical moment of history. Our duty to future generations is clear: We must achieve a steady-state economic system. We must restore democracy in our own countries when it has been replaced by oligarchy. We must decrease economic inequality both between nations and within nations. We must break the power of corporate greed. We must leave fossil fuels in the ground. We must stabilize and ultimately reduce the global population. We must eliminate the institution of war; and we must develop new ethics to match our advanced technology, ethics in which narrow selfishness, short-sightedness and nationalism will be replaced by loyalty to humanity as a whole, combined with respect for nature.

Inaction is not an option. We have to act with courage and dedication, even if the odds are against success, because the stakes are so high.

The mass media could mobilize us to action, but they have failed in their duty.

Our educational systems could also wake us up and make us act, but they too has failed us. The battle to save the earth from human greed and folly has to be fought in the alternative media.

The alternative media, and all who work with them deserve both our gratitude and our financial support. They alone, can correct the distorted and incomplete picture of the world that we obtain from the mass media. They alone can show us the path to a future in which our children, grandchildren, and all future generations can survive.

A book discussing the importance of alternative media can be freely downloaded and circulated from this address.

More freely downloadable books and articles on  other global problems can be found on this link.

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The announcement that “Trump breaks the historic nuclear treaty with Moscow” – the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) – was no surprise. Now, however, it is official. To understand the scope of this act, we should review the historical context from which the INF Treaty was born.

The president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, and the president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, signed the INF in Washington, on Dec. 8, 1987, after having agreed on it the year before at the Reykjavik, Iceland, summit. According to the INF, the United States undertook to eliminate the “Euromissiles”: the Pershing 2 ballistic missiles, deployed in Western Germany, and the land-based cruise missiles, deployed in Britain, Italy, Western Germany, Belgium and Holland. The Soviet Union committed to eliminating the SS-20 ballistic missiles, deployed on its territory.

The INF Treaty established not only a ceiling to the deployment of a specific category of nuclear missiles, but the elimination of all missiles in that category: By 1991 a total of 2,692 were eliminated. The limitation of the Treaty was that it eliminated short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles launched from land, but not those launched from sea and air. Nevertheless, the INF Treaty was a first step on the road to real nuclear disarmament.

This important result was essentially due to the “disarmament offensive” launched by the Soviet Union of Gorbachev: On Jan. 15, 1986, the Soviet Union had proposed not only to eliminate Soviet and U.S. mid-range missiles, but to implement a comprehensive three-stage programme to ban nuclear weapons by the year 2000. This project remained on paper because Washington took advantage of the crisis and the disintegration of the rival superpower to increase its strategic superiority, including its nuclear superiority. The United States thus remained the only superpower on the world stage.

It is no coincidence that Washington only called the INF Treaty into question when the United States saw its strategic advantage over Russia, China and other powers diminish. In 2014, the Obama administration accused Russia, without presenting any evidence, of having experimented with a cruise missile of the category prohibited by the Treaty. The administration announced that “the United States is considering the deployment of ground-based missiles in Europe,” that is, the abandonment of the INF Treaty [1 see this].

The Trump administration subsequently confirmed this plan: In fiscal year 2018, Congress authorised the financing of a research and development project for a cruise missile launched from the ground by a mobile platform on the road.

NATO’s European members support the plan. At the recent North Atlantic Council meeting held at the level of Ministers of Defense, Elizabeth Trenta (of the Five-Star Movement) represented Italy. There Trenta said that “the INF Treaty is in danger because of the actions of Russia,” which she accused of deploying “a destabilizing missile system, which poses a serious risk to our security.

Moscow denies that this missile system violates the INF Treaty and, in turn, accuses Washington of having installed in Poland and Romania launch ramps of interceptor missiles (those of the “shield”), which can be used to launch cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.

According to reports leaked by the administration, the United States is preparing to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles launched from the ground not only in Europe against Russia, but also in the Pacific and Asia against China.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by John Catalinotto

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

Russia is accused, without substance, proof, nor evidence of a Salisbury poisoning saga; a saga played out, in almost boring repetition, by Prime Minister May and her Cabinet, supported by Trump, Merkel, et al with sanctions, and the expelling of diplomats. No true investigation, no true reporting, contradicting stories; and the mainstream media in tow.

Where are the Skripals today – ‘hidden away’ for life. Prime Minister May will not reveal that information. Reports suggested they will be given new identities and shipped to Canada, or was that America?

Have they, the Skripals, been allowed to have their say as to the (factual) events of that day that lead to their collapse in a park in Salisbury.  No. The British Government’s lies, cover-up, and contradictory stories continue unquestioned, except by the alternative media.

The Saudi Arabians, the “towel-heads”, in cold-blood, murder (in what looks like to be a set-up) a journalist, one of their own citizens, in their Embassy in Istanbul  –  evidence suggest that Khashoggi was still alive when they (the “towel-head” murderers) commenced dismembering his body. Will the true story be told.  Perhaps the Saudis (Trump, the CIA) will make public the recordings of the unfolding events in Khashoggi death.  Will we get the true story   –  doubtful. 

Yes, we have read much about the two cases of the Skripals and Khashoggi, for me to repeat the detail in this article.

The relevance is, we have two events, both very different;  but, in hypocrisy, the same. 

Where are the sanctions against Saudi Arabia? Where are the politicians in Britain, Germany, Canada, France, America, the world over – standing up and calling for sanctions against the Saudis, and expelling diplomats; calling for justice, calling for the truth?

Oh, yes, those multimillion dollar military armament contracts with the “towel-heads”; so that the world’s biggest supporter of terrorism, and one of the  biggest destructors in the Middle East, can continue their unchecked, and supported (by the likes of America, Britain, France and Germany), “activities” without question. Does Yemen, ring a bell, for just one example?

When it comes to Britain, Canada, France, Germany and America – it is all about political policies which give to their corporate backers, and the “war machine” (George Bush and Cheney, and their mates, invented the ‘war on terror’, which allowed the creation of the “war machine”); and the Saudis are most certainly wrapped up in that “war machine” – and let us not forget the Israelis. 

The “towel-heads” get away with murder, literally; and will do so time and time again. But, will there be action by the Western World? Who has who, in their pockets?

Our Western world leaders stink of filth – the filth for which the “towel-heads” have been, and are known, for their murderous activities for decades. 

The ridiculous contradictions in the treatment, by the politicians, in the Skripal and Khashoggi cases, are for sure a proof of the hypocrisy by those controlling our political world today.

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Gordon J. Brigsley is a professional, with a passion to see the wrongs of the world analysed and shared with those who have an enquiring mind, and (hopefully) those who can be enlightened through accurate and honest reporting.  Gordon can be contacted at [email protected]

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey is unprecedented in its audacity. The response from Washington and the Canadian government is to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia, weapons that are being used by the Saudis in their destruction of the Yemeni population. The Russian response, if the report I saw was not fake news, is to sell the Saudis the S-400 air defense system. See this.

What we can conclude from this is that armament profits take precedence over murder and genocide.

Genocide is what is going on in Yemen. I heard a report today on NPR that Yemeni are dying from starvation and from a cholera epidemic that has resulted from the Saudi destruction of the infrastructure in Yemen. The aid worker giving the report was obviously sincere and upset, but had difficulty connecting the high death rate to the Washington-sponsored war, blaming instead a 20% devaluation of the Yemen currency that raised food prices out of the reach of most Yemeni. She said that the solution to the crisis was to stabilize the currency!

It is difficult to understand why in the Western media and among Western politicians there is so much demonization of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, China, and Russia. It is not these demonized countries that are murdering people in their embassies, conducting wars of aggression (war crimes under the Nuremburg Standard), and embargoing food and medical supplies to the populations that are being bombed. These crimes are being done by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States and its NATO vassals.

Obviously, the Yemeni, like the Palestinians, don’t count. Their slaughter doesn’t cause a moral ripple in the West.

Putin might be giving Washington tit for tat by horning in on Washington’s armaments customers, but the decision to sell the Saudis the S-400 is a strategic blunder. Saudi Arabia is a sponsor of the war against Syria, in whose defense Russian lives and treasure have been spent. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is an enemy of Iran. Iran is an ally of Russia in the defense of Syria, and a country whose stability is essential to Russia’s stability. Perhaps even more important, the minute the Saudis get their hands on the S-400 they will hand it over to Washington, and experts will figure out how to defeat it, thus negating Russia’s investment in the weapon and its advantage. The decision to sell the S-400 to the Saudis convinces Washington that Putin and his government are clueless, babes in the woods to be easily run over.

In my opinion, the worst aspect of the S-400 sale is that it erases the moral edge that Putin has gained for Russia over the murderous and ever-threatening West. Now we have Russia putting profits above the Russian government’s professed respect for the rule of law and moral behavior.

An even more immoral and irresponsible development is President Trump’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty. The only reason for Trump’s Zionist Neoconservative National Security Advisor to orchestrate this withdrawal is to threaten Russia. Intermediate range missiles cannot reach the US. Russian ones could reach Europe, and US ones placed in Europe on Russia’s border can comprise a first-strike nuclear attack on Russia that has no warning and is indefensible.

President Putin has complained for years, and warned of the consequences, of Washington establishing ABM missile sites in Poland and Romania under cover that their purpose is to protect Europe from Iranian missile attack. Putin has pointed out repeatedly that these missile sites can easily, without anyone knowing, be converted into a nuclear cruise missile attack posture against Russia. Yet, the crazed US National Security Advisor claims, illogically, that it is the Russians, who have nothing to gain from violating the treaty, who are cheating.

Europe has no capability whatsoever of being a military threat to Russia except as launching posts for Washington. If it were not for Washington’s aggression toward Russia, Europe would face no Russian threat.

The reason President Reagan negotiated the INF Treaty with Gorbachev was to reduce the Soviet perception of the US as a threat. Reagan wanted the end of the Cold War and nuclear disarmament. Reagan hated nuclear weapons. By Reagan’s time in office, no one with any intelligence any longer believed that the Red Army intended to overrun Europe. The problem was different. The problem was to get rid of nuclear weapons that are capable, if used, of winning no war but of destroying life on planet Earth. Reagan understood this completely.

Unfortunately, this understanding has been lost in Washington.

If the INF Treaty is abandoned, it is impossible for Russia to tolerate any missile bases near its borders as these bases could be first-strike nuclear weapons against which Russia has no defense. The European countries sufficiently stupid to host these bases will be on a hair-trigger with the Russian military. Just one false signal, and nuclear war begins.

Trump’s intention to normalize relations with Russia has been defeated by CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, the Democratic Party, the US liberal/progressive/left, and the presstitute media—CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Fox News, BBC, Washington Post, etc.

We will all die, because the American Establishment lied through its teeth nonstop.

We can conclude from the acceptance of Saudi crimes and Western indifference to Washington’s withdrawal from the NFL Treaty that morality takes a back seat to material interest. We can also conclude that evil has achieved dominance over good, with the consequences that avarice and lawlessness will escalate their destruction of truth, peoples, and life on earth.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

US Marines disembarked from convertibles and helicopters from the amphibious attack ship “Iwo Jima”, and “secured” Keflavik airport in Iceland, where Poseidon P-8A aircraft had arrived from Sigonella to take part in the hunt for enemy submarines. That was the start, on 17 October, of the NATO exercise Trident Juncture 2018, whose principal phase will be taking place from 25 October to 7 November in Central and Eastern Norway, in the areas adjacent to the North Atlantic (as far as Iceland) and the Baltic Sea (including the airspace of Sweden and Finland).

The armed forces of the 29 member states of NATO will be taking part, plus those of their two partners, Sweden and Finland. Total deployment – approximately 50,000 men, 65 major ships, 250 aircraft, 10,000 tanks and other military vehicles. If they were lined up, one element behind the other, they would create a column 92 kilometres long.

The commander of the exercise, one of the largest of the last few years, is Admiral James Foggo. Nominated by the Pentagon, like his predecessors, he is the commander of the Allied Joint Force Command (JFC) whose headquarters is in Lago Patria (Naples), the US Naval Forces in Europe, and the US Naval Forces for Africa, whose headquarters is in Naples Capodichino. The Admiral is commanding Trident Juncture 2018 from the “Mount Whitney”, the flagship of the Sixth Fleet, transferred from Gaeta to the North Atlantic – a floating headquarters which is connected to the Pentagon’s global command and control network, including the Muos di Niscemi station in Sicily.

This confirms the importance of these US and NATO command centres and bases in Italy, not only for the Mediterranean, but also for the whole “area of responsibility” of the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, who is always a US General, currently Curtis Scaparrotti, nominated by the President of the United States. Since 2002, this geostrategic area “has been extended in order to cover all NATO operations, independent of their geographical situation”.

The official objective of Trident Juncture 2018 is to “ensure that NATO forces are ready to respond to any form of aggression wherever it may occur”.

But it’s enough to glance at the map to realise that this major war exercise is focused in only one direction – towards the East, against Russia.

Admiral Foggo claims that the “Fourth Battle of the Atlantic” has already begun, after the battles of the two World Wars against German U-boats, and that of the Cold War against Soviet submarines: it is now being waged against Russia, the new “aggressive maritime power”, whose “increasingly sophisticated submarines threaten NATO’s capacity to maintain maritime control of the North Atlantic, and consequently, the lines of maritime communication between the United States and Europe”. Turning the facts on their head, the Admiral claims that Russia “defies the presence of the United States and NATO” not only in the Atlantic, but also in the “Baltic and the Black Seas”, in other words the seas which border European Russia.

Thus we discover the other finality of Trident Juncture 2018 – it’s a massive psyop (psychological operation) aimed at reinforcing the idea that Europe is under the threat of an increasingly aggressive Russia.

In Sweden, a NATO partner country, 4.8 million families were handed a survival manual explaining how to prepare for war, by storing reserves of food and other essential goods, learning how to behave when the signals of alert are sounded to warn of the Russian attack. So NATO is preparing to swallow up even Sweden, an old “neutral” state.

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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.

My editor at Natural History Magazine once remarked how, whenever their cover features a bear, sales rise. A koala bear, a young panda, a sunbathing polar bear or a menacing American grizzly; it doesn’t matter. People like bears.

Occasional attacks on humans and the aversion of many people to any form of wildlife hunting notwithstanding, bears are irresistible. However vulnerable we may be, humans can’t shake our unparalleled attraction to these bulky, really quite graceless creatures. 

We are smitten not only by pictures of bears; we’re enthralled by the sight of live bears. Whether on two legs grabbing berries or bounding across meadows on all fours, bears in the wild are especially mesmerizing; more than deer who, although not necessarily faster than bears, quickly disappear into the foliage. Our ursine creatures seem to prefer open spaces, even during daylight hours. A spectacle for any passerby. 

I’m talking personally only about black bears here; they’re the ones I encounter in my neighborhood. 

This year we’ve seen more than usual wandering close to our homes. And we don’t live in Montana or Alaska where grizzlies roam. I’m in upstate New York, hardly two hours drive from New York City with its all-night sidewalk cafes and 24-hour home deliveries!

My Catskill neighborhood proudly identifies itself as trout country. But our bears are not here to catch fish. Fields and forests are their habitant. Our bears are all black, usually not more than 300 pounds (they can go up to 500). And frankly, they’re common. They are often sauntering from yard to yard in search of food; or they’re simply curious, appearing to be in no hurry at all. The wildlife service says our region has abundant natural food sources for bears. But I suspect that the growing number of apiaries cultivated by retirees who moved here from the city draw bears into our villages. Last spring one was shot by a neighbor while it ravaged his dozen beehives.   

Do you know bears have their very own adjective? Ursine. Cool. And their own candies — gummy bears. Rather pricey varieties too. Commercial spin-offs exploiting our affection for bears are legendary. And they’ll continue. Nearby in Pennsylvania, for example, bears are a lure for the Milford annual film festival. (No bear films; only the wooden sculpture outside the theater is as close as a bear gets to that event.)

 

Bear hunting is reportedly important to our economy. It’s part of the state’s tourism pitch, promoted by the Department of Environmental Conservation. The 2018 hunting season is still underway; in 2017 though, 1,420 New York black bears were killed, with the heaviest harvest in counties around me: 151 in Delaware; 147 in Sullivan; and (closer to NYC) 167 in Ulster County. This, out of an estimated state population of 6,000-8,000. Nationwide, black bears number around 900,000, a population that is increasing annually.

Anecdotally, from sightings around my own neighborhood, black bears seem plentiful. In August a mid-size ursine creature with a long neck trotted casually along the riverfront of four coterminous family lawns; two days later a mother and three cubs had to be chased off a nearby porch. On a morning walk last month I initially took the black, furry creature sauntering down the middle of the road ahead of me to be a lost dog. It seemed unconcerned about whom it might encounter. “His mother mustn’t be far away; keep your distance”, I cautioned myself. Earlier in the season a big adult followed by a smaller bear scampered across the road in front of me towards an open meadow. My most memorable sighting occurred at midday when I was on the highway en route home from the city; I slowed to watch a huge black animal followed by two smaller ones galloping towards me. They crossed two highway lanes, the grass strip between, then two more lanes onto the verge above me. It must have been autumn because their black coats glistened in the sun, and under their fur, their fat-laden shoulders and haunches shook as they leapt along. 

There must be many bears roaming around at nighttime here; I often see fresh bear scat in the grass, easy to distinguish from what deer leave. “A bear’s presence is easy to determine”, a longtime resident instructed; “its droppings emit an overpowering stink”.  

I am reminded how fondly we regard our bears when I and friends pause in our local library to admire a photo just posted. It’s a family of four bears—local inhabitants. A surge of envy overtook us when the owner of the pictures identified the three cubs as same ones she photographed last May when they were hardly larger than puppies.

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This article was originally published on the author’s webpage: www.radiotahrir.org.

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.

All images in this article are from the author.

The Heritage Foundation came forward on September 20, 2018 to set the rules for Haiti’s PetroCaribe investigation and protests.  Most Haitians are delighted about any audit of the corrupt government that was foisted on them by the fraudulent presidential and legislative 2015-2016 elections. So no one asks where a private United States conservative think tank got the authority to demand a probe into a bilateral deal between Haiti and Venezuela, or to proscribe how Haitians conduct their protests.

This move by the Heritage Foundation came two months after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended a hike in Haiti’s gas prices. This rise in fuel cost was like throwing fire on gasoline, because it was simultaneous with violent protests and popular demands for an audit into the PetroCaribe funds. Until 2016, the generous PetroCaribe deal had allowed Haiti to pay 60 percent of market price for oil bought from Venezuela and delay paying the rest for more than 25 years at 1 percent interest. This program was unwelcome by the US because it allowed occupied Haiti a modicum of financial independence: it kept the price of fuel low while saving the country an average of over $200 million a year, presumably to finance social programs and construction projects.

When the July 2018 protests got out of hand, pundits declared that Haiti’s government would fall. But how could a government fall that was not standing in the first place? The main problem was that even rich Haitians like Reginald Boulos suffered from the violence. So somebody was punished: namely, the Prime Minister, Jack Guy Lafontant, who resigned. In effect, one set of installed crooks was replaced by another. Funds from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), World Bank, and IMF have been stolen by Haitian officials for many years, but they appear to interest no one. About $9.5 billion of earthquake reconstruction funds disappeared in three years from Clinton’s I-HRC, but that is also forgotten.

The sudden acute interest in the PetroCaribe funds, which amount to about $1.7 billion that were mostly embezzled over eight years but apparently not noticed until now, is all the more fascinating because it coincides with a grab of Haiti’s electric grid, attempts to extract mining concessions from Haitian officials, and importantly, efforts to garner Haiti’s support for an intervention of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Venezuela that would surely lead to massive bloodshed, followed by another acronym United Nations peacekeeping operation.

Curiously, the July protests were repeated on October 17 peacefully and with only male protestors between 16 and 30 years old. Are we to believe that women, who traditionally head most Haitian families, are uninterested in government fraud and less peaceful? I can certainly think of one Haitian institution that can quickly assemble as many as 16,000 young men…. But let us put aside these observations for a moment and pretend that all the protests are legitimate. If so, then it is reasonable to assume that, while angry Haitians were burning tires and hitting the pavement, the Heritage Foundation and its branch, Transparency International, were at a table making demands from the cornered Haitian crooks. Would they sign away Haiti’s electric grid and mining rights, implicate Venezuelan officials in the corruption, and join the move to condemn Venezuela’s elections if threatened with prison? The answer is a definite yes.

Corrupt or not, the downfall of Venezuela would be a tragedy for all Latin America and the Caribbean. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: when you march, make sure you know who is representing you inside in the negotiations, else you might discover too late that you were working against your own best interests.

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Dady Chery is the author of “We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation.”

The New York Times has produced an astonishing editorial, “Nikki Haley will be missed,” on the resignation of America’s United Nations ambassador.

It is comparable in some ways to the whitewash afforded to the hideous warmonger and self-promoting liar Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on his death in August. The oleaginous Haley eulogy has to be read to appreciate how low America’s self-described newspaper of record has sunk. According to the Times, Haley, a “moderate Republican,” . . . “could talk bluntly” while also proving to be a “practitioner of multilateral diplomacy” who played “constructive roles” and also served as “a pragmatic envoy who could explain the president to a world confused by the chaos in Washington.”

Given that kind of effusive language it would have been interesting to see what the Times came up with to support all the praise. Actually, the bits of her bio cited do little to support the narrative. It is claimed that she “protected some of the American investment in the United Nations against the most drastic budget cuts sought by the White House, while also working to reform the United Nations bureaucracy” for which there is no clear evidence.

The editorial also claims that she maintained some independence from the president on relations with Russia, Venezuela, and other matters, though her degree of separation can certainly be questioned, as she was often the one leading the charge using threats directed against foreign governments and their policies. She has also been the seemingly dedicated advocate of nearly continuous pro-Israel positions, ranging from using the UN to disarm Hezbollah in Lebanon, to also including blocking any investigation of the Israeli army’s slaughter of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza. In addition, she led the effort to cut funds going to the agency providing critical food and medical assistance to millions of Palestinian refugees.

Haley has consistently taken a hard line against Iran, aggressively supporting Trump’s abrogation of the agreement to control its nuclear weapons, and she has ominously warned that Washington will be “taking names” of countries that don’t support its agenda in the Middle East, to include moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and American military engagement in Syria.

Admittedly, going after the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is a bit of low-hanging fruit, as the position seems to attract individuals who like to vent their dissatisfaction with the world while also providing one remedy, namely that everyone should follow the American lead on all things. Former ambassadors include Madeline Albright, John Bolton, and Samantha Power, making it measurably more difficult to rank Haley as the worst ambassador of all time. But there are some firsts associated with Haley. She was the first ambassador to witness an American president being laughed at during the annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly, a response that the Times attributes solely to a decline in America’s international standing under Trump, ignoring completely the impact of Haley’s threatening language and demeanor.

On balance, Haley did nothing to enhance American security and only succeeded in pandering to certain powerful constituencies within the United States, to include the neoconservatives in the media and the Israel lobby. Praise of her on her impending departure from the UN is suggestive of whom exactly she managed to please while she was in office. The ubiquitous neocon-in-chief Bill Kristol, who now hangs his hat at the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Emergency Committee for Israel, has long been promoting Haley for president. One leading member of Kristol’s neocon chorus, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tweeted

“Thank you [Nikki Haley] for your remarkable service. We look forward to welcoming you back to public service as president of the United States.”

Dubowitz is a Canadian and it would be nice if he could be deported to a remote Internet-free spot on Baffin Island where he can cease interfering in American politics.

Haley was also praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Twitter social media platform,

“I would like to thank Ambassador [Nikki Haley], who led the uncompromising struggle against hypocrisy at the UN, and on behalf of the truth and justice of our country. Best of luck!”

The Israeli army itself had nice things to say, tweeting

“Thank you [Nikki Haley] for your service in the UN and unwavering support for Israel and the truth. The soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces salute you!”

Angry responses to the IDF tweet observed “‘Unwavering support’ aka, blind allegiance. You love her for the reasons the rest of us despise her. She left the Human Rights Council, pulled the U.S. out of the Iran deal, slashed funds to UNRWA, moved embassy to Jerusalem, and was exaggerated in her support for the IDF when they abuse Palestinian human rights.”

Like many others in the foreign policy establishment, Haley is all about Israel because she understands that leaning that way provides instant access to money and plenty of positive press coverage, including in The New York Times. She has declared that Washington was “locked and loaded,” prepared to exercise lethal military options against Syria and its Russian and Iranian allies, seen as enemies by Israel. Immediately upon taking office at the United Nations she complained that “nowhere has the UN’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel” and vowed that the “days of Israel bashing are over.” Not surprisingly, she was greeted by rounds of applause and cheering when she spoke at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March, saying, “When I come to AIPAC I am with friends.”

Haley’s embrace of Israeli points of view is unrelenting and serves no American interest. If she were a recruited agent of influence for the Israeli Mossad she could not be more cooperative than she apparently is voluntarily. In February 2017, she blocked the appointment of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to a diplomatic position at the United Nations because he is a Palestinian. In a congressional hearing she was asked about the decision: “Is it this administration’s position that support for Israel and support for the appointment of a well-qualified individual of Palestinian nationality to an appointment at the UN are mutually exclusive?” Haley responded yes, that the administration is “supporting Israel” by blocking every Palestinian.

Haley is surrounded by neocons. Her speechwriter is Jessica Gavora, who is the wife of the leading neoconservative journalist Jonah Goldberg. A profoundly ignorant Haley apparently also has bits and pieces of her own foreign policy apart from Israel, which makes her particularly dangerous. She has declared that Russia “is not, will not be our friend” and has described the Russians as having their hands covered with the blood of Syrian children.

So it’s Israel all the way for Haley, and we are likely to see her again in 2020 in spite of her pledge to Trump that she would both support and not run against him. The Jewish publication Forwardrecently published a speculative article suggesting that if she were to run for president a majority of American Jews might well vote for her, turning the Jewish community from solidly Democratic Party Blue to Republican Red. It would be the first time that a majority of Jews voted for a national GOP candidate. Though a great victory for Israel, it would also be a disaster for the United States if she were elected, like a proudly ignorant Sarah Palin on steroids. That outcome does not seem to bother the editors at Forward one bit, unfortunately.

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This article was originally published on American Free Press.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from American Free Press.

At the age of 10 I was sent as a scholarship student to a boarding school for the uber-rich in Massachusetts. I lived among the wealthiest Americans for the next eight years. I listened to their prejudices and saw their cloying sense of entitlement. They insisted they were privileged and wealthy because they were smarter and more talented. They had a sneering disdain for those ranked below them in material and social status, even the merely rich. Most of the uber-rich lacked the capacity for empathy and compassion. They formed elite cliques that hazed, bullied and taunted any nonconformist who defied or did not fit into their self-adulatory universe.

It was impossible to build a friendship with most of the sons of the uber-rich. Friendship for them was defined by “what’s in it for me?” They were surrounded from the moment they came out of the womb by people catering to their desires and needs. They were incapable of reaching out to others in distress—whatever petty whim or problem they had at the moment dominated their universe and took precedence over the suffering of others, even those within their own families. They knew only how to take. They could not give. They were deformed and deeply unhappy people in the grip of an unquenchable narcissism.

It is essential to understand the pathologies of the uber-rich. They have seized total political power. These pathologies inform Donald Trump, his children, the Brett Kavanaughs, and the billionaires who run his administration. The uber-rich cannot see the world from anyone’s perspective but their own. People around them, including the women whom entitled men prey upon, are objects designed to gratify momentary lusts or be manipulated. The uber-rich are almost always amoral. Right. Wrong. Truth. Lies. Justice. Injustice. These concepts are beyond them. Whatever benefits or pleases them is good. What does not must be destroyed.

The pathology of the uber-rich is what permits Trump and his callow son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to conspire with de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, another product of unrestrained entitlement and nepotism, to cover up the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom I worked with in the Middle East. The uber-rich spend their lives protected by their inherited wealth, the power it wields and an army of enablers, including other members of the fraternity of the uber-rich, along with their lawyers and publicists. There are almost never any consequences for their failures, abuses, mistreatment of others and crimes. This is why the Saudi crown prince and Kushner have bonded. They are the homunculi the uber-rich routinely spawn.

The rule of the uber-rich, for this reason, is terrifying. They know no limits. They have never abided by the norms of society and never will. We pay taxes—they don’t. We work hard to get into an elite university or get a job—they don’t. We have to pay for our failures—they don’t. We are prosecuted for our crimes—they are not.

The uber-rich live in an artificial bubble, a land called Richistan, a place of Frankenmansions and private jets, cut off from our reality. Wealth, I saw, not only perpetuates itself but is used to monopolize the new opportunities for wealth creation. Social mobility for the poor and the working class is largely a myth. The uber-rich practice the ultimate form of affirmative action, catapulting white, male mediocrities like Trump, Kushner and George W. Bush into elite schools that groom the plutocracy for positions of power. The uber-rich are never forced to grow up. They are often infantilized for life, squalling for what they want and almost always getting it. And this makes them very, very dangerous.

Political theorists, from Aristotle and Karl Marx to Sheldon Wolin, have warned against the rule of the uber-rich. Once the uber-rich take over, Aristotle writes, the only options are tyranny and revolution. They do not know how to nurture or build. They know only how to feed their bottomless greed. It’s a funny thing about the uber-rich: No matter how many billions they possess, they never have enough. They are the Hungry Ghosts of Buddhism. They seek, through the accumulation of power, money and objects, an unachievable happiness. This life of endless desire often ends badly, with the uber-rich estranged from their spouses and children, bereft of genuine friends. And when they are gone, as Charles Dickens wrote in “A Christmas Carol,” most people are glad to be rid of them.

C. Wright Mills in “The Power Elite,” one of the finest studies of the pathologies of the uber-rich, wrote:

They exploited national resources, waged economic wars among themselves, entered into combinations, made private capital out of the public domain, and used any and every method to achieve their ends. They made agreements with railroads for rebates; they purchased newspapers and bought editors; they killed off competing and independent businesses and employed lawyers of skill and statesmen of repute to sustain their rights and secure their privileges. There is something demonic about these lords of creation; it is not merely rhetoric to call them robber barons.

Corporate capitalism, which has destroyed our democracy, has given unchecked power to the uber-rich. And once we understand the pathologies of these oligarchic elites, it is easy to chart our future. The state apparatus the uber-rich controls now exclusively serves their interests. They are deaf to the cries of the dispossessed. They empower those institutions that keep us oppressed—the security and surveillance systems of domestic control, militarized police, Homeland Security and the military—and gut or degrade those institutions or programs that blunt social, economic and political inequality, among them public education, health care, welfare, Social Security, an equitable tax system, food stamps, public transportation and infrastructure, and the courts. The uber-rich extract greater and greater sums of money from those they steadily impoverish. And when citizens object or resist, they crush or kill them.

The uber-rich care inordinately about their image. They are obsessed with looking at themselves. They are the center of their own universe. They go to great lengths and expense to create fictional personas replete with nonexistent virtues and attributes. This is why the uber-rich carry out acts of well-publicized philanthropy. Philanthropy allows the uber-rich to engage in moral fragmentation. They ignore the moral squalor of their lives, often defined by the kind of degeneracy and debauchery the uber-rich insist is the curse of the poor, to present themselves through small acts of charity as caring and beneficent. Those who puncture this image, as Khashoggi did with Salman, are especially despised. And this is why Trump, like all the uber-rich, sees a critical press as the enemy. It is why Trump’s and Kushner’s eagerness to conspire to help cover up Khashoggi’s murder is ominous. Trump’s incitements to his supporters, who see in him the omnipotence they lack and yearn to achieve, to carry out acts of violence against his critics are only a few steps removed from the crown prince’s thugs dismembering Khashoggi with a bone saw. And if you think Trump is joking when he suggests the press should be dealt with violently you understand nothing about the uber-rich. He will do what he can get away with, even murder. He, like most of the uber-rich, is devoid of a conscience.

The more enlightened uber-rich, the East Hamptons and Upper East Side uber-rich, a realm in which Ivanka and Jared once cavorted, look at the president as gauche and vulgar. But this distinction is one of style, not substance. Donald Trump may be an embarrassment to the well-heeled Harvard and Princeton graduates at Goldman Sachs, but he serves the uber-rich as assiduously as Barack Obama and the Democratic Party do. This is why the Obamas, like the Clintons, have been inducted into the pantheon of the uber-rich. It is why Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump were close friends. They come from the same caste.

There is no force within ruling institutions that will halt the pillage by the uber-rich of the nation and the ecosystem. The uber-rich have nothing to fear from the corporate-controlled media, the elected officials they bankroll or the judicial system they have seized. The universities are pathetic corporation appendages. They silence or banish intellectual critics who upset major donors by challenging the reigning ideology of neoliberalism, which was formulated by the uber-rich to restore class power. The uber-rich have destroyed popular movements, including labor unions, along with democratic mechanisms for reform that once allowed working people to pit power against power. The world is now their playground.

In “The Postmodern Condition” the philosopher Jean-François Lyotardpainted a picture of the future neoliberal order as one in which “the temporary contract” supplants “permanent institutions in the professional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family and international domains, as well as in political affairs.” This temporal relationship to people, things, institutions and the natural world ensures collective self-annihilation. Nothing for the uber-rich has an intrinsic value. Human beings, social institutions and the natural world are commodities to exploit for personal gain until exhaustion or collapse. The common good, like the consent of the governed, is a dead concept. This temporal relationship embodies the fundamental pathology of the uber-rich.

The uber-rich, as Karl Polanyi wrote, celebrate the worst kind of freedom—the freedom “to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom to keep technological inventions from being used for public benefit, or the freedom to profit from public calamities secretly engineered for private advantage.” At the same time, as Polanyi noted, the uber-rich make war on the “freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose one’s own job.”

The dark pathologies of the uber-rich, lionized by mass culture and mass media, have become our own. We have ingested their poison. We have been taught by the uber-rich to celebrate the bad freedoms and denigrate the good ones. Look at any Trump rally. Watch any reality television show. Examine the state of our planet. We will repudiate these pathologies and organize to force the uber-rich from power or they will transform us into what they already consider us to be—the help.

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Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Featured image is from Mr. Fish/Truthdig.

During the past several months the situation around Syrian Kurdistan remains tense. The protests of the locals from the city of Manbij in Aleppo province against the actions of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are occurring on a regular basis.

Last week Asayish, the Kurdish local police forces arrested more than 50 civilians who had been protesting against the closure of the Arab schools and forced mobilization to the side of SDF in Manbij. In fact, the presence of the Kurdish militia in this region is illegal, as in mid-June 2018, the United States and Turkey agreed on a complete withdrawal of the Kurdish formations from the area to reduce the tensions.

It is worth noting that the illegal practices of Kurds are also underway in other cities in northeastern Syria both in Raqqa and Hasakah provinces. Under the pretext of fighting sleeping cells of ISIS, Asayish security service personnel burned down some glossary stores in Suwaidan Jazira village, whose owners had refused to pay taxes in favour of the Kurds. The meetings of locals, which broke out in response to this outrage, were dispersed with the use of weapons. During the action, several people were killed, including women and children.

At the same time, according to the local activists, the arrests of local authorities participating in the Syrian governmental local council elections from settlement of al-Khatuniyyah in Raqqa province have become more frequent.

In addition to the Kurds, Turkey is another party that is involved in destabilizing northeastern Syria. Turkey’s President during his visit to the U.S. announced the creation of a number of safe zones within Syria to include the east of the Euphrates River as it happened with Idlib province. The noticeable increase of the Turkish presence near the border with the Syrian province of Hasakah speaks in favour of the seriousness of Ankara’s decision.

It is also noteworthy that the Kurdish militia backed by the international coalition stopped combating ISIS terrorists that call into question the desirability of their presence in the region. Thus, on October 13, 2018, the jihadists attacked the refugee camp in the area of Al-Bahra resulting in the capture of 700 civilians.

The U.S. policy can explain such behaviour of the Kurds towards the local population. First, the American leadership announced its intention to leave the country after the defeat of ISIS terrorists, and now Washington intends to stay in the country for an indefinite period. Mostly, this kind of actions provokes the anarchy from Kurds, since they understand the presence of Western patrons let them to feel unpunished.

The expansion of Turkish influence will not bring stability to the region. However, Erdogan’s intention can be understood, as he is not ready for any growth of Kurdish influence as well as granting them any political rights. Unfortunately, he also rejected the option of giving them cultural autonomy.

Finally, if Erdogan begins to implement what he claimed, and the Kurds in turn with the patronage of the Americans continue to create chaos and feel their impunity, it may lead to a new confrontation in the region between them, the United States and Turkey that will adversely affect the course of the Syrian conflict.

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The apparent murder of Saudi Arabian dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a shocking crime that merits the international attention it has received, but nonetheless it is impossible not to wonder why the death of a single person receives vastly more coverage than ongoing Saudi atrocities in Yemen.

Is it that a dramatic story involving a single personality is easier to grasp than a war fought over complex political and ethnic issues, or does the differing levels of attention signal that Mr. Khashoggi has achieved the status of an honorary westerner while the tens of thousands dead in Yemen represent a distant “other”? Some combination of both of these are likely at work, and that he is a fellow journalist makes his fate all the more compelling for reporters and editors. Geopolitical considerations are certainly at play here, with the towering hypocrisy of the Trump administration on full display, a hypocrisy that stands out even in the dismal history of U.S. government policies toward Saudi Arabia.

President Donald Trump’s transparent attempts to exonerate Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, by “speculating” that “rouge agents” might be behind Mr. Khashoggi’s demise inside the consulate is beyond laughable, or would be if the issue weren’t so serious. Billions of dollars of arms sales are at stake (not to mention a reliable supply of oil), so minor trifles like human rights or cold-blooded murder can be swept aside. Whatever evidence the Turkish government possesses has not been made public, and it would seem the most likely reason is because Ankara has bugged the Saudi consulate. If so, a sensitive matter that the Turkish government would rather evade.

The thuggish behavior of the crown prince has to be laid partially at the doorstep of the White House because President Trump has heartedly embraced him, giving the green light to Saudi Arabia’s bottomless contempt for human rights. We might even speculate that President Trump wishes he could do away with opponents as firmly as the crown prince. And never mind the atrocities the United States (along with Britain and France) facilitate in its all-out support of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen — what is human life (especially the lives of “others”) when profits are at stake?

A blind child carries a dove at a protest against the attack on the al-Nour Center for the Blind in Sana’a, Yemen, on January 10, 2016. Students say neither the school, nor themselves, have taken any side in the war. (photo by Almigdad Mojalli/VOA)

By any standard, the conduct of the war in Yemen is inhumane. Nobody knows how many people have died as a result of the fighting, although the independent group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) estimates that almost 50,000 people were killed from January 2016 to July 2018. Implying a much higher total, Save the Children estimates that at least 50,000 children died in 2017 alone, or about 130 per day. The charity further estimated that almost 400,000 children will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs offers this sobering assessment:

“An alarming 22.2 million people in Yemen need some kind of humanitarian or protection assistance, an estimated 17.8 million are food insecure — 8.4 million people are severely food insecure and at risk of starvation — 16 million lack access to safe water and sanitation, and 16.4 million lack access to adequate healthcare. Needs across the country have increased steadily, with 11.3 million who are in acute need — an increase of more than one million people in acute need of humanitarian assistance to survive.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council reports that Saudi-led “coalition air strikes have caused most direct civilian casualties. The airstrikes have hit residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, detention facilities, civilian boats and even medical facilities.” Both sides are reported by the council to forcibly conscript children between the ages of 11 and 17 to fight.

A study written for the World Peace Foundation, The Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial bombardment and food war, by Martha Mundy reports that “From August 2015 there appears a shift from military and governmental to civilian and economic targets, including water and transport infrastructure, food production and distribution, roads and transport, schools, cultural monuments, clinics and hospitals, and houses, fields and flocks.”

To what end are these atrocities committed? Professor Mundy writes:

“While the US and UK back their Coalition allies unfailingly in their wider political and strategic objectives, the two major Arab actors in the Coalition, Saudi Arabia and the [United Arab] Emirates, have different economic priorities in the war. That of Saudi Arabia is oil wealth, including preventing a united Yemen’s use of its own oil revenues, and developing a new pipeline through Yemen to the Indian Ocean; that of the Emirates is control over seaports, for trade, tourism and fish wealth. The attack on al-Hudayda [a major port] explicitly aims to complete the economic war militarily. That the immense suffering of Yemen’s people has still not brought surrender by those in Sanʾa [the Yemeni capital] does not give credibility to the tactic of further hunger and disease. Yet for the Coalition, as a senior Saʿudi diplomat responded (off the record) to a question about threatened starvation: ‘Once we control them, we will feed them.’ ”

Yemen is highly dependent on food imports, and the blockades of its ports have put Yemenis at risk of famine. Professor Mundy draws this conclusion:

“If one places the damage to the resources of food producers (farmers, herders, and fishers) alongside the targeting of food processing, storage and transport in urban areas and the wider economic war, there is strong evidence that Coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in the areas under the control of Sanʾa. … [F]rom the autumn of 2016, economic war has compounded physical destruction to create a mass failure in basic livelihoods. Deliberate destruction of family farming and artisanal fishing is a war crime.”

There is little coverage of this ongoing humanitarian disaster in the corporate media. Why are millions of lives almost an afterthought while one privileged life merits such intense attention? Again, the fate of Mr. Khashoggi and the spotlight it shines on Saudi practices merit the widespread commendation it has attracted. But why such indifference to millions of others? Where is our humanity?

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Richard Horton’s note in an October 2015 issue of The Lancet was cautiously optimistic.  It described the launch of Doctors for Climate Change Action, led by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference COP21.  The initiative had arisen from a statement endorsed by a range of medical and international health organisations (some 69 in all), specifically emphasising that ancient obligation for a doctor to protect the health of patients and their communities.  But, as if to add a more cautionary tale of improvement, the 2015 Lancet Commission also concluded that the response to climate change would, in all likelihood, be “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21^st century”.

A more sombre note tends to prevail in such assessments.  The RACP has itself made the observation that,

“Unchecked, climate change threatens to worsen food and water shortages, change the risk of climate-sensitive diseases, and increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.  This is likely to have serious consequences for public health and wellbeing.” 

In recent years, the link to a rise in temperatures has been associated with specific medical events, such as the transmission of infectious diseases.  The Lancet notes one example specific to mosquitoes and their increasingly energised role:

“Vectorial capacity of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus has increased since 1990, with tangible effects – notably the doubling of cases of dengue fever every decade since 1990.” 

Mona Sarfarty, director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, could only be gloomy at this month’s International Panel on Climate Change report, releasing a statement rich with claims.

“As a physician, I know that climate change is already harming the health of Americans.  Doctors and medical professionals see it daily in our offices, including the effects of extreme weather events like Hurricane Florence to droughts, smoke from large wildfires, spreading Lyme disease, and worsened asthma.”  

What, then, to be done?  The RACP’s November 2016 position statement outlines a set of canonical objectives still deemed profane by climate change sceptics, notably those coal deep: a decrease in fossil fuel combustion in the generating of energy and transport; a reduction of fossil fuel extraction; decreasing emissions from food production and agriculture; and the improvement of emergency efficiency in homes and buildings.  Not exactly scurrilous stuff, but highly offensive to fossil fuel fiends. 

The Morrison Government, hived off from such concerns, is more focused on immediate, existential goals.  Its own electoral survival, shakily built on the reduction of energy costs to pacify a disgruntled electorate, has featured a degree of bullying on the part of the prime minister towards energy companies.  Energy retailers, Morrison warns, must drastically reduce prices from January 1 or face the intrusive burdens of regulation.  The considerations of the planet, and the health of its inhabitants, have been put aside, a point made clear in the Australian government’s response to the IPCC findings.   

The note of the report is one of manageable mitigation, shot through with a measured fatalism: “Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. While admitting that, “Some impacts may be long-lasting and irreversible, such as the loss of some ecosystems (high confidence)” stabilising temperatures at 1.5ºC would at least draw a ring around the catastrophe.

“The avoided climate change impacts on sustainable development, eradication of poverty and reducing inequalities would be greater if global warming were limited to 1.5ºC rather than 2ºC, if mitigation and adaptation synergies were maximised while trade-offs are minimised (high confidence).” 

For the Morrison government, these words, admittedly technical and dry, are the stuff another galaxy, pressed to the outer reaches of the cosmos.  The IPCC report did not, according to the prime minister, “provide recommendations to Australia”, leaving his government to pursue policies to “ensure electricity prices are lower”.   

Fossil fuel lobbyists and advocates were comforted by this retreat from environmental reality. 

“There is a role,” insisted former Coalition energy minister and Queensland Resources Council chief Ian Macfarlane, “for high-quality Australian coal and it’s compatible with meeting Paris emissions reduction targets.” 

An interesting omission on emissions here is that the richer the quality of coal, the more concentrated the carbon.  Poorer quality brown coal, curiously enough, is less of a culprit.  But Macfarlane wants it both ways, if not all ways.  “Our economy depends on the coal industry, and we can have both a strong coal industry and reduce carbon emissions.” 

Such dismissive, a deluding behaviour, has been seen to be nothing short of “contemptuous” by a group of Australian health experts, whose Thursday letter in The Lancet suggests a disregard for “any duty of care regarding the future wellbeing of Australians and our immediate neighbours”.  

The signatories, including Nobel Laureates Peter Doherty and Tilman Ruff, suggested that, like “other established historical harms to human health [such as tobacco], narrow vested interests must be countered to bring about fundamental change in the consumption of coal and other fossil fuels.”  They urge the adoption of a “call to action”, including the phasing out of existing coal-fired power stations, a “commitment to no new or expanded coal mines and no new coal-fired power stations” and the removal of “all subsidies to fossil fuel industries”. 

A damp lettuce response came from the near invisible federal environment minister, Melissa Price, who insists that the Morrison government remains aware of the IPCC findings.  This same minister, when asked about what she is doing in her portfolio, persists in praising the blessings of the good divinity that is coal, a spectacle as curious as a wolf at a sheep convention.  “We have consistently stated that the IPCC is a trusted source of scientific advice that we will continue to take into account on climate policy.”  To account, it would seem, is to ignore; to acknowledge is to dismiss.

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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]

There’s virtually no doubt that Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal abduction and murder.

No lower level regime officials would dare order elimination of a prominent figure within or outside kingdom borders without his authorization – how all despotic states operate.

Trump, Pompeo and Bolton failed to blame king Salman or MBS for the incident. The secretary of state and Treasury secretary Mnuchin schmoozed with them in Riyadh, clearly showing US/Saudi relations remain solid. Khashoggi’s murder did nothing to alter the longstanding alliance.

On Tuesday, Trump stopped short of blaming MBS for the incident, saying

“(w)hoever thought of (killing Khashoggi), I think is in big trouble.”

“Somebody really messed up. And they had the worst coverup ever…There should have never been an execution or a cover-up because it should have never happened. It was a total fiasco.”

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Trump said he won’t suspend or end lucrative US contracts with the kingdom in response to the incident, mainly arms sales.

He’s convinced King Salman didn’t know about the killing in advance. Asked about likely MBS responsibility for what happened, for the first time he suggested it’s possible saying:

“Well, the prince is running things over there more so at this stage. He’s running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him.”

He spoke to MBS by phone, saying:

“My first question to him was, ‘Did you know anything about it in terms of the initial planning?’”

MBS replied no.

“I said, ‘Where did it start?’ And he said it started at lower levels.”

Asked if he believed the crown prince’s denial, DLT said

“I want to believe them. I really want to believe them.”

At the same time, his accusing Riyadh of a “coverup” flies in the face of its public remarks since Khashoggi’s October 2 disappearance, showing everything its officials said were bald-faced lies, including comments by its foreign minister days earlier.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said 21 Saudis will have their US visas revoked. Pompeo said targeted individuals include “those in the intelligence services, the royal court, the foreign ministry, and other Saudi ministries,” naming no names, adding:

“These penalties will not be the last word on this matter from the United States. We will continue to explore additional measures to hold those responsible accountable” – short of holding MBS responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.

Separately in addressing Turkey’s parliament on Tuesday, President Erdogan sounded like Trump, saying

“Saudi authorities have taken an important step confirming the killing, and now we ask Saudi authorities to work hard to reveal the names of those involved, from the bottom to the top” in what he called premeditated “savage murder.”

Erdogan wants to avoid a rupture in relations with Riyadh and the West. He allowed revelations about Khashoggi’s abduction and murder to drip out.

He’s likely seeking economic and financial concessions from MBS in return for not telling all he knows, what’s most damning, including likely intercepted phone calls and other audio evidence showing his direct involvement in what happened.

His Tuesday remarks were less than fully candid, failing to deliver the “naked truth” as promised, only information about Khashoggi’s elimination already known – earlier reported by Western, Turkish and other media.

The world community and human rights groups slammed one fabricated Saudi explanation about what happened after another – from for two weeks claiming he left the consulate unharmed, to a fist fight/brawl in the consulate resulting in his death, to his “strangulation” in the facility, to kingdom foreign minister al-Jubeir calling the killing a “grave mistake,” claiming no MBS involvement in the incident, adding:

“He was killed in the consulate. We don’t know in terms of details how. We don’t know where the body is. We are determined to uncover every stone.”

“We are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder. We are not an authoritarian government. We are a monarchy.” Khashoggi’s murder was an “aberration.”

Al-Jubeir was the first high-level Saudi official to comment publicly on the incident, shielding MBS from responsibly.

There was nothing aberrant about a ruthless regime’s action, ruling with an iron fist, notorious for public whippings and beheadings, imprisoning kingdom critics, and countless other horrendous human rights abuses throughout its existence.

Western and most other countries turned a blind eye to them until now over one incident, largely silent about others, including Riyadh’s alliance with Washington’s imperial wars and support for regional terrorist groups.

Ahead of Erdogan’s Tuesday address, Mike Pence and CIA director Gina Haspel went to Turkey on the pretext of aiding the investigation into Khashoggi’s murder.

They’re real purpose for coming was likely to convince Erdogan not to reveal all he knows, mostly about virtually certain MBS direct involvement in what happened.

Reportedly audio evidence showed Khashoggi was murdered in about seven minutes shortly after arriving in the Saudi consulate, his body dismembered inside the facility, according to an unnamed Turkish source, adding:

His body was dragged from the consul general’s office onto a table in his adjacent study. Consulate personnel uninvolved in the killing heard his screams. The consul was ordered out of the room where Khashoggi was killed and dismembered.

US sanctions, if imposed on Saudi officials, will likely exclude king Salman, MBS, and other key kingdom figures.

Trump regime hardliners want nothing interfering in longstanding US/Saudi dirty business as usual.

Khashoggi’s murder changes nothing in the bilateral relationship – nor with the West and most other countries, including Russia and China.

Representatives from both countries are attending Riyadh’s ongoing Davos in the desert investment conference.

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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.

The West’s human rights racket has once again mobilized – this time supposedly in support of China’s Uyghur minority centered primarily in the nation’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, China.

Headlines and reports have been published claiming that up to a million mostly Uyghurs have been detained in what the West is claiming are “internment camps.” As others have pointed out, it is impossible to independently verify these claims as no evidence is provided and organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Uyghur-specific organizations like the World Uyghur Congress lack all credibility and have been repeatedly exposed leveraging rights advocacy to advance the agenda of Western special interests.

Articles like the BBC’s, “China Uighurs: One million held in political camps, UN told,” claim (emphasis added):

Human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have submitted reports to the UN committee documenting claims of mass imprisonment, in camps where inmates are forced to swear loyalty to China’s President Xi Jinping. 

The World Uyghur Congress said in its report that detainees are held indefinitely without charge, and forced to shout Communist Party slogans.

Nowhere in the BBC’s article is evidence presented to verify these claims. The BBC also fails to mention that groups like the World Uyghur Congress are funded by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and has an office in Washington D.C. The NED is a US front dedicated specifically to political meddling worldwide and has played a role in US-backed regime change everywhere from South America and Eastern Europe to Africa and all across Asia.

The Trump administration has nominated a former Monsanto employee to run the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Aurelia Skipwith has been at the Department of the Interior since April 2017 and has helped oversee virtually every effort to dismantle protections for wildlife, national parks and monuments.

“Aurelia Skipwith has been working in the Trump administration all along to end protections for billions of migratory birds, gut endangered species safeguards and eviscerate national monuments,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Skipwith will always put the interests of her old boss Monsanto and other polluters ahead of America’s wildlife and help the most anti-environmental administration in history do even more damage.”

Under current U.S. law, the president cannot appoint a person to run the Fish and Wildlife Service unless the person is “by reason of scientific education and experience, knowledgeable in the principles of fisheries and wildlife management.” Skipwith’s nomination breaks with decades of tradition from presidential administrations of both parties in that she has neither education nor experience in fisheries and wildlife management.

“Skipwith is utterly unqualified to run the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Hartl. “Putting unqualified ideological fanatics into positions of power continues to be the Trump administration’s game plan. These people have utterly no compunction or shame about destroying the very agencies they’re being appointed to lead.”

During Skipwith’s tenure the Fish and Wildlife Service has repeatedly put the interests of the pesticide industry ahead of imperiled wildlife. In the spring of 2017, the Service scrapped the first nationwide biological reviews that assessed the impacts of pesticides on endangered species. In August it reversed a 2014 decision prohibiting bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically modified, pesticide-resistant crops on national wildlife refuges.

Skipwith has also overseen the national park system in her current position and was instrumental in the agency’s sham review of the national monument system that enabled Trump to illegally eliminate Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

“The Senate should ask Skipwith hard questions about her tenure at the Service, because confirming her would be a travesty for our nation’s wildlife,” said Hartl.

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John Bolton’s two-day trip, meeting Putin, Sergey Lavrov, and other top Russian officials, did nothing to soften US hostility toward the country.

Bilateral relations continue deteriorating, not improving. Nothing in prospect suggests positive change.

On Tuesday, Putin and Bolton met for 90 minutes, agreeing that dialogue between both sides is needed, despite irreconcilable differences on major issues.

Putin urged arranging another meeting with Trump, saying

“it would be useful to offer direct dialogue with the president of the United States, first of all, on the sidelines of upcoming international events, say, in Paris.”

He referred to the upcoming 100th commemoration of WW I’s end on November 11. Commenting on the aftermath of his July 16 Helsinki summit talks with Trump, he said:

“(W)e are sometimes surprised to see the United States take absolutely unprovoked steps towards Russia that we cannot regard as friendly. We even refrain from retaliation practically to any move of yours. Yet all this goes on and on.”

It includes multiple rounds of illegal US sanctions, numerous false accusations against Russia, proof absent every time because none exists, both countries on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict, and the latest shoe to drop with Trump’s announced landmark INF Treaty pullout – falsely claiming Russian breaches, ignoring clear US ones.

Following Bolton’s meeting with Putin, he said

“(w)e discussed our continuing concern with Russian meddling in elections, and why it was particularly harmful to Russian-American relations, without producing anything for them in return,” adding:

“(W)e we had lengthy conversations about arms control issues, the new strategic landscape and the president’s decision on the INF treaty” –

His “discussion (with) Putin covered the whole range of issues differing in certain respects, depending on who we were speaking with from the Russian side.”

“As President Putin said in the opening of the meeting today…it would be useful to continue direct dialogue with (Trump), primarily on the fields of international events that will take place in the near future.”

Claiming both sides suggested ways to improve relations ignored Washington’s unbending hostility toward Russia.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bolton intends speaking with US NATO and Asian allies about Trump’s announced INF Treaty pullout, DLT saying the US will build up its nuclear arsenal.

Asked if he was threatening Russia, he said

“(i)t’s a threat to whoever you want. It includes China, and it includes Russia and whoever wants to play that game. You can’t play that game on me.”

The “game” is unilaterally initiated by Washington, forcing other nations to respond in self-defense.

Will a hugely dangerous arms race will follow his INF pullout, creating greater international insecurity and instability than already?

The NYT said Bolton “rejected Russian entreaties on Tuesday to remain committed to (the INF) treaty.”

Wanting to militarize more than already and further advance its belligerent imperial agenda is what pulling out of the JCPOA and INF Treaty is all about.

Greater US aggression is likely coming instead of stepping back from the brink, Iran a likely target, maybe Venezuela for control over its world’s largest oil reserves, and North Korea if denuclearization talks fail.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from VOA News.

The US’ decision to revoke the visas of 21 Saudis who it claims are responsible for dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing and possibly impose Magnitsky Act sanctions against them proves that Saudi Arabia isn’t exactly the “American puppet” that many people had previously thought that it was if Washington is willing to punish its so-called “ally” in such a humiliating way, but this realization also risks shattering the worldview that many in the Alt-Media Community worked for years to reinforce.

Analysis is an art, and just like any other, its practitioners’ final product is rarely perfect. This understanding is more apt than ever when it comes to deciphering the ins and outs of contemporary Saudi geostrategy amidst the paradigm-changing shifts that have thus far characterized the emerging Multipolar World Order. It had hitherto been taken for granted that Saudi Arabia is an “American puppet”, and truth be told, the author himself also firmly believed that it was as recently as a few years ago, and with good reason. Saudi Arabia has a history of siding with the US and behaving as its “cat’s paw” in the region, especially whenever its destabilizing activities can be argued to have had even the most remote anti-Iranian purposes. Saudi Arabia is also extremely close to the US’ top ally “Israel”, so it follows that these three powers are strategically inseparable given their many overlapping interests.

The Kingdom’s Geostrategic Recalculations

That much is certainly true, except that Saudi Arabia has drastically “rebalanced” its foreign policy priorities over the past year and is no longer as solidly in the unipolar camp as it once was. A lot of this has to do with its game-changing rapprochement with Russia and also its newfound Silk Road relations with China. See author’s previous articles:

• “Why Is China Choosing To Partner With Israel And Saudi Arabia?”
• “Is Saudi Arabia’s Grand Strategy Shifting?”
• “There’s a Simple Reason Why Iran Isn’t in BRICS – Saudi Arabia”
• “Russia’s Poised To Reap The Rewards Of The West’s Fallout With Saudi Arabia”

These developments were largely suppressed by both the Mainstream Media and its Alt-Media counterparts, each for their own reasons though nevertheless because they both felt uncomfortable. The first-mentioned was uneasy with the pace and scope of the Saudis’ geostrategic shift, while the latter considered it “politically incorrect” because it contradicts the “Resistance’s” (Iran’s) interests.

Backstabbing MBS

Now, however, it’s indisputable that the US isn’t on as excellent terms with Saudi Arabia anymore as many had assumed that it would always remain, given how Pompeo announced that 21 Saudis who he claimed were behind the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi will have their visas revoked and might even be subject to infamous Magnitsky Act sanctions that had previously been implemented against Russians. This unprecedented move is meant to signal to the world that there’s a serious rift emerging between the US and Saudi Arabia, or at least elements of the American “deep state” hostile to Trump and the ruling faction of the Wahhabi Kingdom like the author suggested in his previous piece titled “Khashoggi Mystery: Rogue Killers Or Rogue Royals?” About that, it’s increasingly looking like Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) might have been informed of Khashoggi’s interrogation as it was happening but didn’t have advance knowledge of it, nor authorized his assassination.

Moving beyond the unverifiable speculation, the point to focus on in this piece is that the US thought it fitting to humiliate the Saudis by revoking the visas of 21 of them and then threatening the possible imposition of forthcoming Magnitsky Act sanctions. This should leave no doubt as to the US’ displeasure with Saudi Arabia since it wouldn’t have otherwise punished it in such a public manner had it any serious concern for the Kingdom’s sensitivities. This profound lack of respect certainly isn’t lost on Riyadh, which now has more than enough reasons to accelerate its movement towards multipolarity, but just like with its earlier outreaches to Russia and China, it’s very likely that Mainstream Media and Alt-Media will continue to remain in denial about this development. “Old habits die hard”, as the saying goes, and nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to the long-standing presumption that Saudi Arabia will always be an “American puppet”.

Alt-Standards For Alt-Media

The Alt-Media Community is particularly insufferable when it comes to its incessant spewing of this discredited narrative, driven as it mostly is by a desire to virtue signal loyalty to the Saudis’ Iranian enemies who exert disproportionate influence over this informational sphere. Instead of maturely recognizing the reality of what the US’ threatened Magnitsky Act sanctions against Saudi Arabia geostrategically entail, there’s nothing but hypocritical gloating over the fact that the Kingdom is now on the brink of being betrayed by its American “ally”. Not only that, but many of the same folks who vehemently oppose the Saudis’ beheading policy are braying for blood and hoping that heads will literally roll as a result of Khashoggi’s killing. It’s understandable that years of Saudi-led destabilization operations in the Mideast would result in such schadenfreude, but inexplicable that emotions would trump reason when it comes to making accurate political analyses about this situation.

It’s illogical that sincere multipolar supporters would be against the US sanctioning Russia and Iran but support it doing the same to Saudi Arabia because this implies an unstated belief that America is at least partially the “arbiter” of “justice” across the world. The sentiments of the so-called “silent majority” on any given issue rarely have any influence on the course of International Relations so it doesn’t really matter how delusional some people might remain as they celebrate the US’ backstabbing of Saudi Arabia, though it’s nevertheless important to call out blatant hypocrisy for principle’s sake. Furthermore, exposing the alt-standards that Alt-Media applies to certain significant issues such as this one can explain why many of the analyses that emerge from this Community are so inaccurate in reflecting the reality of the situation. Most people will never openly say so, but the reason is largely attributable to “Israel”, though not in the way that some might think.

The Issue Of “Israel’s” Strategic Independence

Perhaps the most important pillar of Alt-Media Dogma is the blind belief that “Israel” and the US are one in the same and that there aren’t ever any strategic disagreements between them whatsoever. Just like with Saudi Arabia and the US, however, this may no longer be the case like it once was, and opening the proverbial can of worms over the Kingdom’s actual closeness or lack thereof nowadays to the US naturally leads to one questioning the true state of American-“Israeli” relations too, which is probably the most “politically incorrect” taboo that there ever could be in the Alt-Media Community. The groupthink that’s been vigorously maintained by generations of gatekeepers in this informational sphere is that “Israel” and the US always see eye-to-eye on everything, and that the rare public disagreements between them such as over the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal during the Obama era are just carefully choreographed perception management operations designed to deceive the world.

For as much as many might want to believe that this is the case for whatever their reasons may be, it isn’t, and “Israel’s” newfound joint protectorate status with the US and Russia over this summer proves it. So too does Russia passively facilitating“Israel’s” 200+ bombings of Syria over the past 18 months before the September mid-air tragedy, prior to which the two were strategic partners due to President Putin’s philo-Semitism and never-ending praise of the self-proclaimed “Jewish State” over his past 18 years in office.  In addition, it appears as though last month’s incident off the Syrian coast won’t have any real effect on their relationship after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov cleared the air on this a few weeks ago. Another powerful point is that “Israel” is poised to join the Silk Road in open defiance of the US, further proving its strategic independence.

Shattering The Alt-Worldview

There will undoubtedly remain some who refuse to recognize these “inconvenient facts” and will continue to concoct the most convoluted conspiracy theories to explain how the US and “Israel” are supposedly working hand-in-hand against Russia & China even though Presidents Putin & Xi appear to be more than eager to play along with this scheme probably due to their mastery of “5D chess”, but such narratives are discredited in the real world because they don’t reflect what’s really happening on the ground. Many in Alt-Media, however, have staked their entire reputations on perpetuating this storyline despite the plethora of evidence against it, but instead of maturely modifying their worldview in light of recent developments and more accurately portraying the paradigm-changing dynamics of the day, they’re instead much more prone to doing everything within their power to distract their audiences from ever thinking about this, ergo the main motivation that they have in covering up the incipient Saudi-American split.

Recognizing the growing strategic and “deep state” divergences between Saudi Arabia and the US would naturally lead to one wondering what’s really going on with “Israel” and the US too, but this is absolutely forbidden by the Alt-Media Community’s gatekeepers because it runs the risk of complicating their oversimplified narrative of Russia being an “anti-Zionist crusader state” and “Israel” functioning as the US’ “puppet” no matter what, neither of which are true. The Alt-Worldview is therefore at risk of being shattered because of this since its gatekeepers never responsibly educated their audience about the nuances of Russia’s “balancing” act, which could have avoided the current crisis that the Community is about to be plunged into as it becomes ever more impossible to sweep all of this under the rug. Unfortunately, like it was earlier remarked, emotions have a tendency of influencing Alt-Media’s analyses more so than reason, which cumulatively led to an outright Alt-Reality being constructed with time.

Concluding Thoughts

Saudi Arabia still shares many strategic commonalities with the US and has a documented history of acting as its regional proxy, but the two Great Powers are in the midst of their worst-ever diplomatic disagreement after America revoked the visas of 21 Saudi citizens and humiliatingly threatened to unprecedentedly impose Magnitsky Act sanctions against them. It’s impossible at this point in time to seriously assert that Riyadh and Washington are on the same page with one another in the manner that they previously had been because otherwise the US wouldn’t have disrespected Saudi Arabia in such a high-profile way. Having said that, there are powerful forces in the Alt-Media Community desperate to suppress this realization because of how much it risks undermining their prevailing dogma, especially in the sense that it might get people to question whether “Israel” is really as close to the US as they were led to believe after undeniable proof emerged of its strategic cooperation with Russia and China.

Accepting these geostrategic truths isn’t akin to “whitewashing” Saudi Arabia and “Israel” or “smearing” Russia and China because of their very close relations with the aforementioned pair, but is simply acknowledgment of the state of affairs as they presently exist at this specific moment in the emerging Multipolar World Order. Nor, for that matter, is any of this intended to suppress the activist voices within the Alt-Media Community who feel very strongly about voicing their views on Saudi Arabia and “Israel”, since the purpose of this analysis isn’t to replace one “politically correct” gatekeeping dogma with another, but rather to encourage free thinking within the Community after liberating its members with knowledge about the actual relations between these four players and the US. It’s ultimately up to each and every individual to make normative judgements about this if they so choose, just as it’s their choice whether to remain in denial of these facts or maturely accept them for what they are.

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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 FT reports that David Lidington, Mrs May’s de facto deputy, has briefed the cabinet that under a no-deal Brexit, the Dover-Calais route could be running at only 12-25% of its normal capacity for up to six months.

“Whatever we do at our end, the French could cause chaos if they carry out checks at their end,” said one government official. “Dover-Calais would be the obvious pinch point. The French would say they were only applying the rules.”

This would force Britain to seek alternative ways of bringing in “critical supplies”.

Chris Grayling, transport secretary, has discussed with government colleagues the possibility of chartering ships, or space in ships, to bring supplies into other British ports, thus avoiding the Dover-Calais bottleneck.

Government officials say they do not expect to have to use legal powers to requisition ships, although with only five months to go until Brexit on March 29, there is little time to charter ships on the open market.

According to the FT’s George Parker and James Blitz this move was greeted with disbelief at a stormy meeting of Theresa May’s cabinet on Tuesday. The prime minister announced there would now be a weekly cabinet discussion on preparations for Brexit, whether under a deal or no-deal scenario. If Britain left the EU under World Trade Organization rules, the UK and EU would be in different customs jurisdictions and would be expected to carry out checks on trade across the English Channel.

Some 30% of all Britain’s food requirements are met from imports from other EU countries; Dover is a key port of entry, with over 2.5m heavy goods vehicles passing through the port each year.

Pauline Bastidon (sic), head of European policy at the Freight Transport Association, said:

“We are open to all kinds of ideas about how to keep supplies flowing in a no deal Brexit. But it’s hard to see where the extra ships would quickly be found. Nor can I see how other UK ports could possibly handle the huge volumes currently going through the Dover strait.”

The Times adds: Dover handles more than 2.5 million lorries a year and has no capacity to hold trucks waiting for advanced customs clearance. Other UK ports do have that capacity and could be used to take some Dover traffic. And, reassuringly:

“Ministers say that disruption would also damage EU companies and that there would be political pressure from member states for the European Commission to mitigate the most damaging aspects of a breakdown in talks”.

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Troops of the US-led coalition have been clashing with Turkish-backed militants near the Syrian city of Manbij, currently controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), according to a video, which appeared online this week.

Commenting on the incident to Kurdistan 24, spokesman for the US-led coalition Colonel Sean Ryan admitted that coalition forces “received gunfire from undisclosed persons and returned fire” on October 15, but avoided pointing the finger on Turkish proxy forces. Colonel Ryan added that the incident occured during a joint patrol of the coalition and the Manbij Military Council (MMC). Pro-Kurdish sources were more outspoken putting the blame on Turkish-backed forces and saying that the incident took place near the village of Bughaz.

The MMC is a local entity linked to the SDF. It was established in order to hide the large presence of Kurdish militias in the area. The main reason is that Turkey, a NATO member state and a key US partner in the region, sees Kurdish militias as terrorists and as a major threat to Turkish national security. Washington is employing a wide range of measures, including the rebranding of US-backed Kurdish armed factions, in order to avoid further escalation with Ankara. Nonetheless, US-Turkish tensions over the so-called Kurdish issue remain high. October 15-like incidents are just further confirmation of the deep contradictions between the sides.

Earlier this month, reports from both Kurdish and Turkish sources appeared that the US had started a new round of build up in northwestern Syria, which is occupied by the SDF with its help. Washington reportedly sent an additional batch of weapons and armoured vehicles to SDF units deployed near Manbij and expanded the number of US-led coalition outposts there. These developments came in response to repeated statements by Turkish President Recep Erdogan claiming that his country would kick off a military operation to expel Kurdish armed groups from the area near Manbij and from northern Syria in general.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) resumed artillery strikes on ISIS positions in the area of al-Safa in southern Syria. After the release of six hostages, the terrorist groups sabotaged further talks on the fate of the remaining civilians trapped in its area. So now, the SAA is employing a military option to force ISIS to release over a dozen civilians.

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Does the US Deep State really want to provoke a thermonuclear world war with Russia, China and Iran at the same time? The recklessness and confusion of US policies provoking major crises on every side certainly suggests so. Yet the truth may be even more terrifying.

The dangers of nuclear war and global conflict should literally be regarded as suicidal and insane. Yet the policies being repeatedly urged on President Donald Trump by Democrats and Republicans in both chambers of Congress, the hysterical and delusional mainstream US media and even the top defense and national security officials Trump has himself appointed seem to allow for no other conclusion.

On September 4, Trump, who won his shock election victory two years ago campaigning on a policy of pulling back from needless confrontations and conflicts around the world, threatened to launch a full-scale military invasion of Syria even if that meant clashes with Russian and Iranian forces too.

Second, that same day, the Pentagon gave two Russia warships directly to the chaotic, ferociously anti-Russian government of Ukraine for potential use against Russia.

Third, the very next day, September 5, US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke suggested a military blockade against Russia as a serious option to cut off Moscow’s booming oil and natural gas exports to Western Europe.

Fourth, On October 2, US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison, a former United States senator threatened a preemptive nuclear strike against Russian missiles deployed in their own country.

Should Russia’s alleged new system become operational, Hutchison told reporters,

“At that point, we would be looking at the capability to take out a missile that could hit any of our [European allied] countries. Countermeasures would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation.”

Hutchison then tried to backtrack on the threat but the term “take out” she used to describe possible US unilateral action against the alleged missiles cannot plausibly be interpreted as other than a threat of direct military action.

Fifth, in November, scathing new sanctions aimed at crippling Russia’s ability to carry out financial transactions around the world will go into effect. They have already been passed virtually unanimously by both chambers of Congress with veto-proof majorities and with the hate-crazed support of the mainstream media.

Judged in isolation, these measures – eagerly egged on and supported by Theresa May’s craven government in the United Kingdom – amount to criminal irresponsibility for the survival of the entire world.

But there is even more: Sixth, not content with being obsessed with provoking a full-scale thermonuclear war with Russia, a country whose leadership and people have repeatedly proven their abhorrence of such a prospect, the United States is simultaneously provoking full scale conflict with China – its largest debtor and most important trading partner, and with Iran.

US military officials have told CNN that the US Navy wanted to send warships and aircraft through the South China Sea in November to send a message to Beijing. One has to wonder exactly what message they truly have in mind.

And on October 4, Vice President Mike Pence issued a blunt warning to China that the US would not back down from what it sees as Chinese threats and attempts at intimidation.

To add to the chaos, Trump is now also blundering into a full-scale diplomatic row with Saudi Arabia following the bizarre and obscene murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, ironically a leading figure in urging the disruptive and revolutionary US policies that have brought chaos and misery to the peoples of the Middle East throughout this century.

Trump and his irresponsible son-in-law Jared Kushner have only themselves to blame for witlessly giving Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) a free hand in the first place. But already, the Saudis are threatening to boost global oil prices to $200 or even $400 per barrel if the US government and Congress are themselves reckless enough to condemn or sanction them in response to the murder of Khashoggi.

Such threats, if carried out, would certainly provoke a global economic crisis. But it first victim would inevitably be the government of Saudi Arabia, which is already dangerously fiscally vulnerable precisely because of MBS’s own disastrous economic policies.

The only rational explanation for this combination of aggressive, chaotic confrontational actions and policies in every direction is that Washington policymakers are determined to destroy their own country and take down the world with them. But the true explanation is even more terrifying: They quite simply do not realize what they are doing.

Before World War II, British politician Winston Churchill called for a full-scale military alliance with the Soviet Union as the only realistic way to deter the catastrophe of a Second World War and the conquest of Europe by Nazi Germany.

Instead, Churchill saw a stupid, ignorant, irresponsible British national leadership complacently allowing Europe to descend into chaos and destruction.

To explain the coming doom he saw so clearly, Churchill in Parliament quoted a long forgotten 1890 verse by the Irish editor and wit Edwin James Milliken about a terrible train disaster

“The pace is hot, and the points are near,
“And Sleep hath deadened the driver’s ear;
“And signals flash through the night in vain.
“Death is in charge of the clattering train!”

The same judgment should be made of US policymaking today. In the White House, the Department of Defense the State Department, both houses of Congress and the great institutions of the US media, the story is the same. No sane and responsible person is in control any more.

Death is in charge of the clattering train.

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During his 24 years as a senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Times and United Press International, Martin Sieff reported from more than 70 nations and covered 12 wars. He has specialized in US and global economic issues.

Featured image is from SCF.

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The Khashoggi Crisis: A Blessing in Disguise for Pakistan’s Imran Khan

By James M. Dorsey, October 24, 2018

In talks with King Salman and the crown prince, Saudi Arabia promised to deposit US$3 billion in Pakistan’s central bank as balance of payments support and to defer up to US$3 billion in payments for oil imports for a year.

Brazil – Bolsonaro Towards a Military Dictatorship – Worse Than 80 Years Ago

By Peter Koenig, October 24, 2018

The usual propaganda of deceit from the right has infiltrated every election in the last 5-10 years, starting with the sophisticated internet and propaganda fraud invented by Oxford Analytica (OA), which is largely believed having brought Trump to the White House, Macri to the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, Macron to the Elysée in Paris and Mme. Merkel for the fourth time to the German Federal Chanceller’s office in Berlin – among others.

Israel Invokes Its “Fight for Survival” as It Descends into a Racist State

By Miko Peled, October 24, 2018

Israel’s former Chief Justice Aharon Barak stated in a recent lecturethat “what happened in Germany [the rise of the Nazis] can happen here [in Israel].” He went on to say that a regime that does not respect the separation of powers or human rights cannot be called democratic. This statement brought about a swift, furious response via Twitter from Education Minister Naftali Bennet, claiming that what the Judge said was a “total lie” and that it is wrong to compare what he calls “Israel’s fight for survival in its own land” with the Nazi persecution of Jews.

Can We Canonize Khashoggi? And, for the Love of God, Why?

By J. Michael Springmann, October 24, 2018

What?  Since Jamal Khashoggi‘s mysterious October 2 disappearance from the Saudi Istanbul consulate, news media have been obsessed with the man.

What Is It About Bears?

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, October 24, 2018

Bear hunting is reportedly important to our economy. It’s part of the state’s tourism pitch, promoted by the Department of Environmental Conservation. The 2018 hunting season is still underway; in 2017 though, 1,420 New York black bears were killed, with the heaviest harvest in counties around me: 151 in Delaware; 147 in Sullivan; and (closer to NYC) 167 in Ulster County. This, out of an estimated state population of 6,000-8,000. Nationwide, black bears number around 900,000, a population that is increasing annually.

Western Media Attacks Critics of the White Helmets. The New McCarthyism

By Rick Sterling, October 24, 2018

The October 16 issue of NY Review of Books has an article by Janine di Giovani titled “Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets”. The article exemplifies how western media promotes the White Helmets uncritically and attacks those who challenge the myth.  

The September crisis over Idlib was brought to a conclusion by the Russian Turkish agreement to create a partially demilitarised border strip. This should have been implemented by 16 October but hasn’t. 

Idlib

Some armed groups have pulled back their heavy weapons from the 15-20 km wide 250 km long strip but others haven’t, while the groups internationally categorised as terrorist, including Hayat Tahrir Ash Sham (HTS), Hurras Ad Deen, and the Turkmenistan militia, have not vacated the area as the Turks promised. Russia was supposed to be allowed into the area to monitor but isn’t. In blatant violation of the ceasefire some of the groups are shelling neighbouring government-controlled areas including the outskirts of Aleppo and northern Lattakia.

The Turks claim all is well. The Russians, putting a brave face on a very unsatisfactory situation, call for patience. The reality appears to be that the Russians don’t think the Syrian government forces are strong enough to overcome the approximately 90,000 jihadi fighters in Idlib, many dug in in areas of difficult terrain, and all promised air cover by the US if Assad advances.

It has barely been noticed that the US has moved the goalposts on what it gives itself permission to do in Syria. The new US envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, a former diplomat emerging from that neocon haven, the Washington Institute for the Near East Policy, stated explicitly recently that the US no longer felt itself bound to bomb Syria only if Asad used chemical weapons: henceforth the US would bomb ‘if Asad advances. Period’. (In such an eventuality it would be interesting to see how the British government went about following suit, although it is worth noting that its much contested legal opinion which was offered in April (attached) would startlingly licence the government to bomb under any circumstances whatever as long as it claimed to be acting for humanitarian reasons.)

Some claim that the standoff and emergence of an effectively separate entity in the North could force the Syrian government to make concessions at the negotiating table. This is wishful thinking. The Syrian government would never regard recovery of a lost province as a fair price for surrendering power. That being the case what we are witnessing appears to be the beginning of the emergence of a safe haven for terrorists under the guardianship of the Turks and the air umbrella of the Western powers: a replay of US/Saudi support for the Taliban in the days when removing the Russians from Afghanistan seemed like a good idea.

The North East

The dismemberment of Syria continues also in the North East (Al Hasakeh province and part of Deir Ez Zor province) which is under the joint control of the Kurdish-dominated SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) and the US. Here too the US recently moved the goalposts virtually unnoticed, Secretary of Defence Mattis declaring that the purpose of the US forces’ presence was to combat Iran, which has no presence whatever in the North East. The US barely even pretends now that the purpose is to defeat the lingering remnants of ISIS, a task which the Syrian forces could handle easily if they were allowed to enter the parts of Deir Ez Zor and Hasakeh provinces where ISIS lurks effectively under US protection. The US plan appears to be to condition the withdrawal of the US presence on the withdrawal of that of the limited number of Iranian military advisers in Syria and of the rather larger number of Iranian–funded militia forces, considered essential to its security by the Syrian government. As many have pointed out this is a recipe for another open-ended US commitment to a military presence in the Middle East.

When the US-led coalition does move against ISIS remnants it is careless of civilian casualties: 62 civilians were killed this week in an air strike on two villages in Deir Ez Zor. This being the conveniently anonymous ‘coalition’ we have no way of knowing if the RAF was involved.

Hopes had been aroused that the US might pull out because of the costliness of propping up local civilian services, which for Trump is anathema. The arrival of 100 million dollars from Saudi Arabia in the Pentagon’s bank account last week (totally unconnected of course with the current predicament of Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman) may have upset the Turks, unhappy to see another  Kurdish statelet emerging, but it has eased the financial burden of de facto US occupation.

Al Tanf

The US had given some hints that it might be willing to draw back from the Al Tanf enclave it controls with UK military support near the apex of the Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi borders. Displaced persons started to go home from the jihadi-infested Rukban camp which lies within the Al Tanf perimeter. The Syrian government is offering to facilitate more returns but will not acquiesce in US control over sovereign Syrian territory. Hopes of US departure appear to have been dashed, however, as it becomes clearer that the new US strategy for Syria requires the US to keep its all its assets in Syria, however vulnerable they would be in the event of major conflict, and however much they complicate the humanitarian situation, as potential bargaining chips to force the Syrian government to make concessions in terms of relinquishing Iranian military protection, preparatory to a reinvigorated Geneva negotiating process with a weakened Asad which would deliver the yearned for ‘transition’ away from him.

Return of refugees and reconstruction

With most territory clawed back and fighting now virtually on pause, the Syrian government is working hard to resettle the internally displaced and encourage the return of refugees. Syria’s enemies have discouraged return but many Syrians have voted with their feet: 50,000 have already returned from Lebanon in 2018. Much has been made by those enemies of Law 10 which required property owners to register their claims, an essential step before large scale reconstruction of heavily damaged districts could proceed and new housing be allocated. This was disingenuously portrayed as a land grab by the government. Reports suggest that registration has been put on hold.

Funds for reconstruction remain elusive. The Western powers continue to block any international development assistance as long as the holy grail of ‘transition’ has not been attained.

Meanwhile ordinary Syrians continue to groan under the handicaps of sanctions and government red tape.

Israel

Israel’s mis- step in causing the shooting down of a Russian plane has been heavily punished. Syria has now taken delivery of several Russian S-300 anti-aircraft systems, as well as aircraft communication jamming equipment. As a result Israel, which carried out over 200 air raids on Syria before the incident, has not carried out a single one since, possibly pending delivery by the US of more stealth fighter bombers. The US has categorised Russia’s delivery of the new (defensive) systems as ‘destabilising’ ….

Farewell Staffan de Mistura

The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has announced his intention to step down in November, citing ‘personal reasons’. His great achievement in the eyes of Western powers was to keep the Geneva process alive when it was clearly moribund. Without Geneva they would lose the commitment to ‘transition’ which Russia conceded in a moment of great weakness in 2014. The Geneva process has been void of significance, however, for years. The besuited opposition representatives who attend the Geneva discussions are transparently stooges of the Western and Gulf powers and have absolutely no influence over the Islamist battalions, who have not the slightest interest in the refining the constitution or sharing power and who listen only to Turkey, which controls their logistics. The only meaningful negotiation takes place between Turkey and Russia.

White Helmets

The government declined to answer Baroness Cox’s parliamentary question as to their plans for receiving White Helmets who fled Syria via Israel in July, citing the protection needs of this particularly ‘vulnerable’ category of refugee, only to leak details via the Daily Telegraph a few days later. It transpires that the country can look forward to receiving 28 of these ‘heroes’ with their families.  Meanwhile a White Helmets local leader who remained behind, giving the lie to those who claimed they would all be rounded up, told a Western journalist that half of the evacuees were not White Helmets at all but jihadis masquerading as such.

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Peter Ford was a British Ambassador to Syria; he is now an important, independent commentator on the dirty war.