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The President of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska recently signaled his support for Vucic’s plan to partition Kosovo, but while he may try to clothe his arguments in pragmatism, Dodik is really only concerned with promoting his own interests.
The name Milodrad Dodik is one that usually inspires a sense of pride in many Serbs, seeing as how he’s generally regarded as their most patriotic representative anywhere in the region, but it could soon lead to an empty feeling of disappointment if people take the time to reflect on the self-interested reasons behind his support for Vucic’s Kosovo partition plan. The President of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska originally entered into office as a somewhat Western-friendly politician but soon adroitly shed this image in response to changing political circumstances, eventually emerging as an anti-imperial champion in the Balkans. His rhetoric and actions were all the more attractive to Serbs because he never shied away from calling things out for what they were and therefore seemed to be unrestrained by the chains of “political correctness” that exposed their own leaders as American quislings.
His reputation is hard-earned and deserves to be respected, but sadly Dodik is at risk of losing the goodwill that he engendered among all patriotic Serbs after some of his latest comments on Kosovo.
In response to Vucic’s partition plan, he declared that
“If we come to a position to talk about it, I am ready to gather all the state and national factors of the Serbs, including us from the Republika Srpska, and to seriously put that topic on the agenda. All points of view should be put forward for and against, without emotions and calculations. After all, there are not even permanent borders here.”
On the surface, this seems to be linked to his other statement to have Republika Srpska seek the same UN status as Kosovo if the latter ever obtains universal recognition, which is being portrayed by some as a pragmatic position to take to what might be Belgrade’s inevitable surrender of its historic territory. There might be more to it than just that, however, and dwelling upon it might change how people view Dodik.
In connection with this, the reader should be made aware of one of Dodik’s other recent statements on the matter, which hypocritically embodies the emotional viewpoint that he previously denounced. He fear mongered about a reunified Serbia by telling Serbs that “In order to obtain international recognition of your government , you would have to give Albanians 30 percent of the seats in Parliament, the position of the prime minister, parliament speaker or president. You would have to introduce their language in the parliament. If anyone thinks we can do that, let’s push for it.” His disturbing insinuation is that Serbs and Albanians cannot peacefully coexist with one another, thus suggesting an endless cycle of partitions within Serbia proper to cede territory from the state’s eponymous majority ethnicity to any growing population of minority groups within its borders and specifically residing near an international frontier.
Some Kosovo Serbs responded to Dodik’s doomy scenario by rhetorically asking why a much smaller percentage of Serbs in Bosnia can thrive but those in a reunited Serbia apparently wouldn’t be able to.
It’s clear that Dodik is a political opportunistic and will stop at nothing to support the people who he’s been entrusted to rule over, which is commendable but needs to be contextualized because this is only the population of Republika Srpska and not all Serbs like some may have thought. Were it the latter, then he could never reconcile himself with signaling any level of support for Vucic’s partition plan, especially because of the high risk that it entails for catalyzing a chain reaction of border changes in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia and the Republic of Macedonia. The first-mentioned might temporarily be advantageous for Dodik – or at least the optics of him flirting with it could be – but dangerously backfire if Croatia leads the so-called “international (NATO-backed) community” in “restoring Bosnia’s territorial integrity”, while the latter would pave the way for the formalization of “GreaterAlbania”.
Both of these outcomes are detrimental to Serbian interests and can’t be challenged without sparking another regional war, which is why Dodik’s support of the Kosovo partition plot is far from “pragmatic”.
Even in the so-called “best-case” scenario where these disastrous eventualities don’t come to pass (or at least not immediately), there’s a chance that Serbia proper might eventually fragment into “decentralized” regions as a result of the centrifugal processes that would once again be unleashed in the Balkans, which could thus encourage the long-term (key word) development of a “clannish” mentality among the Serbs that wouldn’t be out of place in Albania. This might be personally desirable for Dodik, however, because he could project himself as the most powerful “(war?)lord” of the most stable Serbian “fiefdom” in his people’s remaining transnational cultural space. Relatedly, this formerly Western-friendly politician might have even been swayed by assurances from his “old (former?) friends” that the US wouldn’t object to the eventual integration of this Serbian-populated areas of the Balkans as part of Timothy Less’ “master plan” for the region.
It’s highly unlikely that the US would ever keep its word in this regard if it did indeed use this as a carrot for convincing Dodik to back Vucic’s partition plans, but that might have been lost on this leader who looks to be following in the 1990s footsteps of Belarus’ Lukashenko. This post-Soviet politician believed that he could rule a forthcoming “union state” with Russia if the two parties successfully merged because of how utterly inept Yeltsin was. It’s not a coincidence, then, that Lukashenko effectively halted all progress in this direction since Putin’s entrance into office because he realized that his dreams were now unattainable. Dodik, however, thinks that his own might still be within reach, though unlike Lukashenko, he’s being tempted with the chance (but crucially, no guarantee) of this happening so long as he lends his support to Vucic’s partition plan.
Should this be the case, then that would be an epic error of judgement if there ever was one because Dodik is sacrificing his respectable reputation in pursuit of an unachievable and self-interested dream.
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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.
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The U.S. wants to sabotage the inter-Korean dialogue. The U.S. is waging a war against peace. These are few of the highlights in the presentation shared by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky on “U.S. Aggression and Militarization in Korea and Pacific” on March 6, 2018 at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) in Manila.
The “Forum on Militarism and War in Asia and the Pacific” was sponsored by the Philippines Chapter of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS-Phils), the Philippines-Korea Solidarity Committee, the PUP Office of Academic Affairs, College of Political Science and Public Administration, College of Social Science and Development, and also attended by students from the University of the Philippines in Manila.
More than 400 students packed the Manila Room of the PUP Hasmin campus.
Watch a short segment of the presentation below. (4′.58″)
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Turkey is also feeling America’s wrath over the continued detention of an American Protestant Pastor Andrew Brunson by Ankara over charges that he was connected to the coup plotters of 2016, which were allegedly directed by Fetullah Gulen, a Muslim religious leader, who now resides in Pennsylvania. Donald Trump has made the detention the centerpiece of his Turkish policy, introducing sanctions and tariffs that have led in part to a collapse of the Turkish lira and a run on the banking system which could easily lead to default and grave damage to European banks that hold a large party of the country’s debt.
The Israeli Occupation is once again testing a strange new and unknown weapons on civilians protesting the illegal siege on Gaza, at the separation barrier fence last Friday.
By maintaining an ISIS pocket in the territory it occupies, the U.S. can continue to justify its illegal presence in the country for the long-term, ultimately substituting Iran for ISIS as its new regional boogeyman.
The Washington correspondent of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Amir Tibon, headlined on the night of Tuesday, August 14, “Trump Administration Wants to See a Gaza Cease-fire ‘With or Without the Palestinian Authority’,” and he reported that, “The Trump administration wants to see a long-term cease-fire in Gaza, with or without the support of the Palestinian Authority, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council told Haaretz on Monday.”
This is a region of East Africa which has been deeply fractured due to the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism since the 19th century. The area has been a focal point for interventions by the United States along with other NATO governments.
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On August 16, militant groups operating in western Syria declared the villages of Banes, Birnah, al-Ottomania, Hwair al-Eis, Tell Bajir, Judiydah, Zummar and Jizrea in southwestern Aleppo part of a “military zone” and ordered civilians to leave the area within 48 hours.
Additionally, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and the Turkistan Islamic party had sent reinforcements to southwestern Aleppo.
Local sources link these developments to the ongoing preparations of militant groups to fend off a possible advance of the Syrian Arab Army on their areas in western Syria.
Meanwhile, four units of the Russian-backed 5th Assault Corps – the Assad Shield, the Mahardah Forces, the ISIS Hunters and the Ba’ath battalions – were deployed in the northern countryside of Hama. Earlier, at least four convoys of the Tiger Forces, including battle tanks and artillery pieces, arrived in the same area.
Pro-militant sources also reported that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have continued striking positions of the opposition in northern Hama and southern Idlib.
While Turkey is actively working to prevent a possible SAA advance in the area, the situation on the ground is clearly leading to a military escalation.
In the desert area at the administrative border between al-Suwayda and Rif Dimashq, the SAA further advanced on positions of the ISIS cells in the al-Safa area. Government troops captured a few positions southwest of Ardh Safa and advanced on Ardh al-Banat, Durs and Shir Tur al-Hawiyah.
On August 16, the Iraqi Air Force announced that its F-16 warplanes had carried out another airstrike on ISIS in Syria. According to the statement, the airstrike targeted an ISIS operations room killing and injuring ISIS fighters and spies, who were preparing to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iraq.
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John Lennon was a prolific songwriter, along with his compatriots The Beatles. His wonderful metaphor, from their great ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ (1968 White Album), still resonates today in this crazy violence infected US empire:
When I hold you in my arms
and feel my finger on your trigger
I know nobody can do me no harm
because ‘Happiness is a warm gun’
Bang Bang shoot shoot!’
Many listeners, this writer included, originally felt it was purely a sexual reference. Now, years later, I can see the metaphor of mixing the sexual with the symbolism of gun violence. Regardless of what John Lennon intended to express, as Ed Norton from the Honeymooners episode stated: “Maybe the phrase fits Ralph?” Too many of our fellow citizens are ‘Packing guns’, mostly legally.
How in the hell many of them get these ‘Concealed Weapon’ permits is beyond me. In most instances, like the one in Clearwater, Florida recently, the shooter, 48 year old white male Michael Drejka, was in no way involved in any sort of self defense mode for fear of robbery… as is the reason why so many get these permits, as business protections. Drejka, who was known to act like a throwback to the famous Seinfeld ‘Soup Nazi’ character, in this case was behaving as the ‘Handicapped Parking Nazi’.
The Afro – American lady sitting in the illegally parked car in a handicap space with her five year old son was waiting for her boyfriend to return to the car. Drejka came upon her and got into an argument with her about their car being parked in the space. Her boyfriend, 28 year old Afro- American Markeis McGlockton, saw the scene unfolding, and did what most physically fit younger men would do.
That is he ‘got into the face’ of the other guy. Yelling ensued and McGlockton pushed Drejka to the ground, who then pulled out his gun and killed him. It took the authorities too long in this writer’s opinion to finally charge the shooter with manslaughter. Here’s my point: If the ‘Handicapped Parking Nazi’ did not have a gun, maybe there wouldn’t have been much of a scene at all.
Is this the George Zimmerman case all over? Zimmerman, for those who forgot, in February 2012 was acting as a ‘Neighborhood Watch’ volunteer. He told the cops that a ‘suspicious’ black kid (17 year old Trayvon Martin) was walking around his development. The cops instructed Zimmerman to not pursue… and he did anyway. When the kid noticed that he was being followed by Zimmerman, he confronted him. Who knows what was said etc, but the ‘out of shape’ Zimmerman found himself on the ground with the kid on top of him, something that has been happening with fist fights for centuries. Zimmerman was carrying, and the next thing was that he shot the kid dead. Zimmerman got off. What if? What if he did not have that ‘Concealed Weapon’ permit? How about this? What if Zimmerman had to do time, and not just a year or two? Just maybe that Clearwater shooter would not be so quick to pull that trigger?
As far as police officers go, one cannot make any sort of generalization. However, to this writer there really are just two categories of police officers. There are those who do their job, and truly believe they are there to ‘Protect and Serve’, and have no ‘Psycho – Sexual’ feelings about the GUN. They know how dangerous and deadly a gun can be, and they don’t see it as an extension of their penis! These officers never get hung up with the ‘Power trip’ of being a cop.
Sadly, the other category of officers is 180 degrees off from that mindset. These cops are the ones who do the heinous deeds to the many unarmed civilians. There are only a few ways to counteract that deviancy, and it is just that, deviancy. First off, justice should come down ‘fair and hard’ on cops who shoot too quickly with deadly force. When cops nationwide read and hear of harsh consequences levied out, the deterrent card will be played. Secondly, ALL police officers should be four year college graduates, needing at least a minor in Sociology or Psychology. Period!
Mr. Trump wishes to have his Military parade in November. Let me elaborate: We are not at war since WW2! All the remainder of our ‘foreign excursions’ have been this Military Industrial Empire firing its Big Weapons on the rest of the Third World. Enough already!
Cut this drastic military spending (over half of your tax dollars), get most of our foreign bases closed, send our boys and girls in uniform home and fix our economy! This ‘warm gun’ mentality is literally killing us… and the rest of the world!
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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].
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Sunni Muslim Arabs have occupied the territory previously known as Palestine, as the majority of the region’s inhabitants, since the seventh-century, together with a sizeable Christian minority. Indeed, at the start of the 19th century the Jewish population was only about 3%. To imply otherwise would be a distortion of historical fact. Jews were only a minority in the land of Palestine ever since about 700 BC until 1948 – with the forcible establishment of the state of Israel – i.e. for approximately 1200 years. That is documented and verifiable history.
For hundreds of years prior to the British Mandate, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire and was divided into provinces in which there were only very few recorded Jewish inhabitants.
However, that there was a Hebrew sect, with its own temple, in and around Jerusalem in ancient times i.e. during and before the life of Christ, is not in dispute. But the only people to have a valid claim on the region that runs between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan, as the continuous indigenous people of the region were, and are, the Muslim Arab.
Nevertheless, during the 1880s, a Jewish nationalist movement by the name of ‘Zionism’ evolved among persecuted Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic pogroms in Europe, using the slogan: “a land without a people for a people without a land”. This was, of course, demonstrably false as the land of Palestine was already occupied by predominantly Muslim communities and had been for over a thousand years!
The British government, however, was ‘playing with politics’ when, in 1917, its then foreign secretary, A J Balfour, sent a deliberately ambiguous statement of British intent to pro-Zionist, Lord Rothschild, on 2 November which was subsequently published in The Times. It did not promise a Jewish state in Palestine but vaguely expressed the sentiment that HM Government viewed with favour the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine whilst recognising that there was an existing Muslim population long settled in the region.
The Balfour Declaration far from being written to help Jews fleeing from persecution, was in fact designed to help boost American support for Britain’s then war effort from an America with a significantly influential Jewish population, even then. This is substantiated, historical narrative.
Fortunately, Mr Netanyahu cannot erase history no matter how influential, powerful or flush-with-casino-gambling-profits is the AIPAC Israel lobby in Washington or its associated paid political persuaders in Westminster, Strasbourg, the Bundestag or the Élysée Palace.
In the final analysis, truth will eventually always win over propaganda, and those who disseminate it.
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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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“Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news…Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas City, July 24, 2018)
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (1903-1950), English novelist, essayist, and social critic, (in ‘1984’, Ch. 7, 1949)
“This is a White House where everybody lies.” Omarosa Manigault Newman (1974- ), former White House aide to President Donald Trump, (on Sunday August 12, 2018, while releasing tapes recording conversations with Donald Trump.)
“I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power.” Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), American inventor and US Founding Father, (in ‘Words of the Founding Fathers’, 2012).
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In this day and age, with instant information, how does a politician succeed in double-talking, in bragging, in scapegoating and in shamefully distorting the truth, most of the time, without being unmasked as a charlatan and discredited? Why? That is the mysterious and enigmatic question that one may ask about U. S. President Donald Trump, as a politician.
The most obvious answer is the fact that Trump’s one-issue and cult-like followers do not care what he does or says and whether or not he has declared a war on truth and reality, provided he delivers the political and financial benefits they demand of him, based on their ideological or pecuniary interests. These groups of voters live in their own reality and only their personal interests count.
1- Four groups of one-issue voters behind Trump
There are four groups of one-issue voters to whom President Donald Trump has delivered the goodies:
Christian religious right voters, whose main political issue is to fill the U. S. Supreme Court with ultra conservative judges. On that score, Donald Trump has been true to them by naming one such judge and in nominating a second one.
Super rich Zionists and the Pro-Israel Lobby, whose obsession is the state of Israel. Again, on that score, President Donald Trump has fulfilled his promise to them and he has unilaterally moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in addition to attacking the Palestinians and tearing up the ‘Iran Deal’.
The one-percent Income earners and some corporate owners, whose main demand to Trump was substantial tax cuts and deregulation. Once again, President Trump has fulfilled this group’s wishes with huge tax cuts, mainly financed with future public debt increases, which are going to be paid for by all taxpayers.
The NRA and the Pro-Gun Lobby, whose main obsession is to have the right to arm themselves to the teeth, including with military assault weapons, with as few strings attached as possible. Here again President Donald Trump has sided with them and against students who are increasingly in the line of fire in American schools.
With the strong support of these four monolithic lobbies—his electoral base—politician Donald Trump can count on the indefectible support of between 35 percent and 40 percent of the American electorate. It is ironic that some of Trump’s other policies, like reducing health care coverage and the raising of import taxes, will hurt the poor and the middle class, even though some of Trump’s victims can be considered members of the above lobbies.
Moreover, some of Trump’s supporters regularly rely on hypocrisyand on excuses to exonerate their favorite but flawed politician of choice. If any other politician from a different party were to say and do half of what Donald Trump does and says, they would be asking for his impeachment.
There are three other reasons why Trump’s rants, his record-breaking lies, his untruths, his deceptions and his dictatorial-style attempts to control information, in the eyes of his fanatical supporters, at least, are like water on the back of a duck. (— For the record, according to the Washington Post, as of early August, President Trump has made some 4,229 false claims, which amount to 7.6 a day, since his inauguration.)
a- The first reason can be found in Trump’s view that politics and even government business are first and foremost another form of entertainment, i.e. a sort of TV reality show, which must be scripted and acted upon. Trump thinks that is OK to lieand to ask his assistants to lie. In this new immoral world, the Trump phenomenon could be seen a sign of post-democracy.
b- The second one can be found in Trump’s artful and cunning tactics to unbalance andmanipulate the mediato increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda. When Trump attacks the media, he is in fact coaxing them to give him free coverage to spread his insults, his fake accusations, his provocations, his constant threats, his denials or reversals, his convenient changes of subjector his political spins. Indeed, with his outrageous statements, his gratuitous accusations and his attacks ‘ad hominem’, and by constantly bullying and insulting adversaries at home and foreign heads of states abroad, and by issuing threats in repetition, right and left, Trump has forced the media to talk and journalists to write about him constantly, on a daily basis, 24/7.
That suits him perfectly well because he likes to be the center of attention. That is how he can change the political rhetoric when any negative issue gets too close to him. In the coming weeks and months, as the Special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s reportis likely to be released, Donald Trump is not above resorting to some sort of “Wag the Dog” political trickery, to change the topic and to possibly push the damaging report off the headlines.
In such a circumstance, it is not impossible that launching an illegal war of choice, say against Iran (a pet projectof Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton), could then look very convenient to a crafty politician like Donald Trump and to his warmonger advisors. Therefore, observers should be on the lookout to spot any development of the sort in the coming weeks.
That one man and his entourage could whimsically consider launching a war of aggressionis a throwback to ancient times and is a sure indication of the level of depravity to which current politics has fallen. This should be a justified and clear case for impeachment.
c- Finally, some far-right media outlets, such as Fox Newsand Sinclair Broadcasting, have taken it upon themselves to systematically present Trump’s lies and misrepresentations as some ‘alternative’ truths and facts.
Indeed, ever since 1987, when the Reagan administration abolished the Fairness Doctrine for licensing public radio and TV waves, and since a Republican dominated Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for the mass conglomeration of local broadcasting in the United States, extreme conservative news outlets, such as the Fox and Sinclair networks, have sprung up. They are well financed, and they have essentially become powerful political propaganda machines, erasing the line between facts and fiction, and regularly presenting fictitious alternative facts as the truth.
In so doing, they have pushed public debates in the United States away from facts, reason and logic, at least for those listeners and viewers for whom such outlets are the only source of information. It is not surprising that such far-right media have also made Donald Trump the champion of their cause, maliciously branding anything inconvenient as ‘fake’ news, as Trump has done in his own anti-media campaign and his sustained assault on the free press.
2- Show Politics and public affairs as a form of entertainment
Donald Trump does not seem to take politics and public affairs very seriously, at least when his own personal interests are involved. Therefore, when things go bad, he never volunteers to take personal responsibility, contrary to what a true leader would do, and he conveniently shifts the blame on somebody else. This is a sign of immaturity or cowardice. Paraphrasing President Harry Truman, “the buck never stops at his desk.“
Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical showman diva, behaving in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians.
3- Trump VS the media and the journalists
Donald Trump is the first U.S. president who rarely holds scheduled press conferences. Why would he, since he considers journalists to be his “enemies”! It doesn’t seem to matter to him that freedom of the press is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution by the First Amendment. He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called ‘tweets’ to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication.
The ABC News network has calculated that, as of last July, Trump has tweeted more than 3,500 times, slightly more than seven tweets a day. How could he have time left to do anything productive! Coincidently, Donald Trump’s number of tweets is not far away from the number of outright lies and misleading claims that he has told and made since his inauguration. The Washington Post has counted no less than 3,251 lies or misleading claims of his, through the end of May of this year, —an average of 6.5 such misstatements per day of his presidency. Fun fact: Trump seems to accelerate the pace of his lies. Last year, he told 5.5 lies per day, on average. Is it possible to have a more cynical view of politics!
The media in general, (and not only American ones), then serve more or less voluntarily as so many resonance boxes for his daily ‘tweets’, most of which are often devoid of any thought and logic.
Such a practice has the consequence of demeaning the public discourse in the pursuit of the common good and the general welfare of the people to the level of a frivolous private enterprise, where expertise, research and competence can easily be replaced by improvisation, whimsical arbitrariness and charlatanry. In such a climate, only the short run counts, at the expense of planning for the long run.
Conclusion
All this leads to this conclusion: Trump’s approach is not the way to run an efficient government. Notwithstanding the U.S. Constitution and what it says about the need to have “checks and balances” among different government branches, President Donald Trump has de factopushed aside the U.S. Congress and the civil servants in important government Departments, even his own Cabinet, whose formal meetings under Trump have been little more than photo-up happenings, to grab the central political stage for himself. If such a development does not represent an ominous threat to American democracy, what does?
The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current administration and for future ones.
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William Binney, the U.S. National Security Agency’s former technical director for global analysis, has, for the past year, been globe-trotting to investigate the actual evidence regarding the official Russiagate investigations, and he finds that the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, who is prosecuting Russia’s Government, can only accuse Russian officials, not convict any of them on at least the important charges, because conclusive evidence exists and has already been made public online, making clear that the important accusations against those officials are false. However, Binney can’t get any of the U.S. major ‘news’media’s interest in this fact, nor even into openly discussing it with them. Apparently, they don’t want to know. Binney is knocking on their doors, and they refuse to answer.
The “VIPS” there is Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and they are 17 whistleblowing former high officials of the CIA, NSA, State Department, and other U.S. officials with top secret national-security clearances, who jointly signed and published on 24 July 2017, their report, which likewise was at Consortium News, “Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence”, in which they confirmed the validity of a 9 July 2017 report that had been published by Elizabeth Vos of Disobedient Media.com, which was titled “New Research Shows Guccifer 2.0 Files Were Copied Locally, Not Hacked” and which I then reported in more ordinary language seven days later under the headline “Russiagate Exposed: It’s a Fraud”. I quoted there the analysis’s basic finding “that the DNC computer network which the media tells us and the DNC tells us was hacked by the Russians, … was physically accessed by someone within close proximity of the DNC” and not outside the United States (Russia or anywhere else). The original research-report had been done by an anonymous person who called himself “the forensicator,” and he had sent it to Adam Carter, another highly technically knowledgeable person, who happened to be at Disobedient Media, and who then worked with Vos to prepae her article on it.
Binney, as the nation’s now-retired top NSA expert in the analysis of such matters, then followed up, during the past year, in order to probe more deeply, by contacting various individuals who had been involved behind the scenes; and Patrick Lawrence’s article was a report of what Binney had found. It’s this:
The forensic scientists working with VIPS continued their research and experiments after VIPS50 was published. So have key members of the VIPS group, notably William Binney, the National Security Agency’s former technical director for global analysis and designer of programs the agency still uses to monitor internet traffic. Such work continues as we speak, indeed. This was always the intent: “Evidence to date” was the premise of VIPS50. Over the past year there have been confirmations of the original thesis and some surprises that alter secondary aspects of it. Let us look at the most significant of these findings.
At the time I reported on the findings of VIPS and associated forensic scientists, that the most fundamental evidence that the events of summer 2016 constituted a leak, not a hack, was the transfer rate—the speed at which data was copied. The speed proven then was an average of 22.7 megabytes per second. …
The fastest internet transfer speed achieved, during the New Jersey–to–Britain test, was 12.0 megabytes of data per second. Since this time it has emerged from G-2.0’s metadata that the detected average speed—the 22.7 megabytes per second—included peak speeds that ran as high as 49.1 megabytes per second, impossible over the internet. “You’d need a dedicated, leased, 400–megabit line all the way to Russia to achieve that result,” Binney said in a recent interview. … That remains the bedrock evidence of the case VIPS and others advance without qualification. “No one—including the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA—has come out against this finding,” Binney said Monday. …
The identity of Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be a Romanian hacker but which the latest Mueller indictment claims is a construct of the GRU, Russian military intelligence, has never been proven. The question is what G–2.0 did with or to the data in question. It turns out that both more, and less, is known about G–2.0 than was thought to have been previously demonstrated. This work has been completed only recently. It was done by Binney in collaboration with Duncan Campbell, a British journalist who has followed the Russia-gate question closely.
Peak Speed Established
Binney visited Campbell in Brighton, England, early this past spring. They examined all the metadata associated with the files G–2.0 has made public. They looked at the number of files, the size of each, and the time stamps at the end of each. It was at this time that Binney and Campbell established the peak transfer rate at 49.1 megabytes per second. … “Now you need to prove everything you might think about him,” Binney told me. “We have no way of knowing anything about him or what he has done, apart from manipulating the files. …
The conclusions initially drawn on time and location in VIPS50 are now subject to these recent discoveries. “In retrospect, giving ‘equal importance’ status to data pertaining to the locale was mistaken,” Ray McGovern, a prominent VIPS member, wrote in a recent note. “The key finding on transfer speed always dwarfed it in importance.” …
How credible are those indictments in view of what is now known about G–2.0?
Binney told me: “Once we proved G–2.0 is a fabrication and a manipulator, the timing and location questions couldn’t be answered but really didn’t matter. I don’t right now see a way of absolutely proving either time or location. But this doesn’t change anything. We know what we know: The intrusion into the Democratic National Committee mail was a local download—wherever ‘local’ is.” That doesn’t change. As to Rosenstein, he’ll have a lot to prove.”
However, yet another technically knowledgeable analyst of the available evidence, George Eliason, claims that to assert that there were only “leaks” and not also “hacks” would clearly be wrong, because there were both. On August 14th, he bannered at Washington’s Blog, “Beyond The DNC Leak: Hacks and Treason” and he wrote:
There were multiple DNC hacks. There is also clear proof supporting the download to a USB stick and subsequent information exchange (leak) to Wikileaks. All are separate events.
Here’s what’s different in the information I’ve compiled.
The group I previously identified as Fancy Bear was given access to request password privileges at the DNC. And it looks like the DNC provided them with it.
I’ll show why the Podesta email hack looks like a revenge hack.
The reason Republican opposition research files were stolen can be put into context now because we know who the hackers are and what motivates them.
At the same time this story developed, it overshadowed the Hillary Clinton email scandal. It is a matter of public record that Team Clinton provided the DNC hackers with passwords to State Department servers on at least 2 occasions, one wittingly and one not. I have already clearly shown the Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian Intelligence Operators.
This gives some credence to the Seth Rich leak (DNC leak story) as an act of patriotism. If the leak came through Seth Rich, it may have been because he saw foreign Intel operatives given this access from the presumed winners of the 2016 US presidential election. No political operative is going to argue with the presumed president-elect over foreign policy. The leaker may have been trying to do something about it. I’m curious what information Wikileaks might have.
Eliason’s analysis doesn’t support Robert Mueller’s indictments any more than the others do. All are essentially incompatible with the accusations (including ones which now have become also indictments) from Mueller. Moreover, as Patrick Lawrence noted, “Indictments are not evidence and do not need to contain evidence. That is supposed to come out at trial, which is very unlikely to ever happen. Nevertheless, the corporate media has treated the indictments as convictions.” Maybe that’s the biggest crime of all.
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This article was originally published on The Saker.
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Ecological economists, such as Herman E. Daly, stress that as the external costs of pollution and resource exhaustion are not included in Gross Domestic Product, we do not know whether an increase in GDP is a gain or a loss.
External costs are huge and growing larger. Historically, manufacturing and industrial corporations, corporate farming, city sewer systems, and other culprits have passed the costs of their activities onto the environment and third parties. Recently, there has been a spate of reports with many centering on Monsanto’s Roundup, whose principle ingredient, glyphosate, is believed to be a carcinogen.
A public health organization, the Environmental Working Group, recently reported that its tests found glyphosate in all but 2 of 45 children’s breakfast foods including granola, oats and snack bars made by Quaker, Kellogg and General Mills. (See this)
In Brazil tests have discovered that 83% of mothers’ breast milk contains glyphosate. (See this)
The Munich Environmental Institute reported that 14 of the most widely selling German beers contain glyphosate. (See this)
Glyphosate has been found in Mexican farmers’ urine and in Mexican ground water. (See this)
Scientific American has reported that even Roundup’s “inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.”
A German toxicologist has accused the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment and the European Food Safety Authority of scientific fraud for accepting a Monsanto-led glyphosate Task Force conclusion that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. (See this)
Controversy about these findings comes from the fact that industry-funded scientists report no link between glyphosate and cancer, whereas independent scientists do. This is hardly surprising as an industry-funded scientist has no independence and is unlikely to conclude the opposite of what he is hired to conclude.
There is also controversy about what level of contamination is necessary for products adulterated with glyphosate to be classified as dangerous. It does seem to be the case that the concentrations rise with use and time. Sooner or later the concentration becomes sufficient to do the damage.
For this article, the point is that if glyphosate is carcinogenic, the cost of the lost lives and medical expenses are not borne by Monsanto/Bayer. If these costs were not external to Monsanto, that is, if the corporation had to bear these costs, the cost of the product would not be economical to use. Its advantages would be out-weighed by the costs.
It is very difficult to find the truth, because politicians and regulatory authorities are susceptible to bribes and to doing favors for their business friends. In Brazil, lawmakers are actually trying to deregulate pesticide use and to ban the sale of organic food in supermarkets. (See this)
In the case of glyphosate, the tide might be turning against Monsanto/Bayer. The California Supreme Court upheld the state’s authority to add the herbicide glyphosate to its Proposition 65 list of carcinogens. (See this)
Last week in San Francisco jurors awarded a former school groundkeeper $289 million in damages for cancer caused by Roundup. Little doubt that Monsanto will appeal and the case will be tied up in court until the groundkeeper is dead. But it is a precedent and indicates that jurors are beginning to distrust hired science. There are approximately 1,000 similar cases pending. (See this)
What is important to keep in mind is that if Roundup is a carcinogen, it is just one product of one company. This provides an idea of how extensive external costs can be. Indeed, glyphosate’s deletarious effects go far beyond those covered in this article. (See this)
GMO feeds are also taking a toll on livestock. (Listen to this)
Now consider the adverse effects on air, water, and land resources of chemical agriculture. Florida is suffering algae blooms from chemical fertilizer runoff from farmland, and the sugar industry has done a good job of destroying Lake Okeechobee. (See this)
Fertilizer runoffs cause blue-green algae blooms that kill marine life and are hazzardous to humans. Currently the water in Florida’s St. Lucie River is 10 times too toxic to touch. (See this)
Red tides can occur naturally, but fertilizer runoffs fuel their growth and their persistance. Moreover, pollution’s contributions to higher temperatures also contribute to red tides, as does draining wetlands for real estate development, which results in water moving quickly without natural filtration. (See this and this)
As water conditions deteriorated and algae blooms proliferated, Florida’s response was to cutback its water monitoring program: See this.
When we consider these extensive external costs of corporate farming, clearly the values attributed to sugar and farm products in the Gross Domestic Product are excessive. The prices paid by consumers are much too low and the profits enjoyed by corporate agriculture are far too high, because they do not include the costs of the massive marine deaths, the lost tourist business, and the human illnesses caused by the algae tides that depend on chemical fertilizer runoff.
In this article I have barely scratched the surface of the problem of external costs. Michigan has learned that its tap water is not safe. Chemicals used for decades on military bases and in the manufacture of thousands of consumer items are in the water supply. (See this)
As an exercise, pick any business and think about the external costs of that business. Take, for example, the US corporations that offshored Americans’ jobs to Asia. The corporatons’ profits rose, but the federal, state, and local tax bases declined. The payroll tax base for Social Security and Medicaid declined, putting these important foundations of US social and political stability into danger. The tax base for school teachers’ and other government employees’ pensions declined. If the corporations that moved the jobs abroad had to absorb these costs, they would have no profits. In other words, a few people gained by shoving enormous costs on everyone else.
Or consider something simple like a pet store. All the pet store owners and customers who sold and purchased colorful 18 to 24 inch pythons, boa constrictors, and anacondas gave no thought to the massive size these snakes would be, and neither did the regulatory agencies that permitted their import. Faced with a creature capable of devouring the family pet and children and suffocating the life out of large strong adults, the snakes were dumped into the Everglades where they have devastated the natural fauna and now are too numerous to be controlled. The external costs easily exceed many times the total price of all such snakes sold by pet stores.
Ecological economists stress that capitalism works in an “empty economy,” where the pressure of humans on natural resources is slight. But capitalism doesn’t work in a “full economy” where natural resources are on the point of exhaustion. The external costs associated with economic growth as measured by GDP can be more costly than the value of the output.
A strong case can be made that this is the situation we currently face. The disappearance of species, the appearance of toxins in food, beverages, water, mothers’ breast milk, air, land, desperate attempts to secure energy from fracking which destroys groundwater and causes earthquakes, and so forth are signs of a hard-pressed planet. When we get right down to it, all of the profits that capitalism has generated over the centuries are probably due to capitalists not having to cover the full cost of their production. They passed the cost on to the environment and to third parties and pocketed the savings as profit.
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Update: Herman Daly notes that last year the British medical journal, Lancet, estimated the annual cost of pollution was about 6 % of the global economy whereas the annual global economic growth rate was about 2 percent, with the difference being about a 4% annual decline in wellbeing, not a 2 percent rise. In other words, we could already be in the situation where economic growth is uneconomical. See this.
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.
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Every day you log on, you ask yourself how much dirtier the campaign to unseat Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party is going to get, how much lower his enemies are going to sink. And each day they surpass themselves in the race to the gutter of British politics.
Last week, Britain’s three Jewish newspapers, who usually feud with each other, joined forces to post a joint editorial declaring that a Corbyn-led government would pose “an existential threat” to British Jews.
The campaign’s real purpose
On Saturday, the Daily Mail claimed that Corbyn had laid a wreath at the grave of two Palestinians who had allegedly organised the Munich Olympic massacre. Today the mass circulation tabloid, The Sun, ran two pieces in the same edition. One was a “letter’s special” declaring that Boris Johnson was “bang on” when he said that women who wear burqas resemble letter boxes or bank robbers: “Boris must be allowed to speak honestly, he has nothing to apologise for.”
Just imagine what would have happened if Corbyn had mocked the Kippah, overtly and brazenly, in a national newspaper.
The other was an editorial saying that Corbyn was unfit to be Labour leader and “cannot be allowed near government”. At least – at last- we are arriving at the purpose of this campaign. It is clear now it has nothing to do with the actual and verifiable state of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, or Corbyn turning up at cemeteries in Tunis in 2014 for Palestinian refugees.
It is crystal clear that its purpose is to take out the leader of the opposition by using the tactics of fascists – smearing, libelling, intimidating.
Unable to put up a candidate capable of defeating him by democratic means, at the ballot box, unable to attack him on his polices for which there is majority support in the country, Corbyn’s detractors have methodically and consistently set about the task of character assassination.
And, of course, it works.
Feeding the crocodile
Corbyn is facing the biggest threat to his leadership since the “coup” organised by his parliamentary party. He is also increasingly isolated among his own supporters. John McDonnell, Corbyn’s closest ally, who shuns foreign policy, thinks this is not Labour’s fight. Emily Thornberry, his shadow foreign secretary, has not said a word.
Ed Milliband, the former Labour leader under whose tenure anti-Semitism was historically greater than during Corbyn’s reign, has offered little support. Union leaders are pealing away. Muslim groups do not want to know. Corbyn is alone.
And the result is that Corbyn feels he is left with no option but to back down, apologise, accept the contentious “working examples”of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-semitism one by one, in a slow, painful retreat.
This is a disastrous miscalculation. Corbyn’s “apologies” for crimes of which he is innocent, only feed the crocodile. As the Georgians say: “Once you run out of chickens to throw to the crocodile, it will have your arm.” Whether Corbyn survives this onslaught or not, everyone who is taking part, either wittingly or unwittingly, in this campaign should beware of getting what they want.
Whatever happens to Corbyn, there are three victims of this dirty episode.
The victims
The first is the truth: Almost every time you take a specific allegation and examine it, the evidence crumbles like sand in your hands. Let’s take the latest: that Corbyn laid a wreath at the graves of two Palestinian terrorists. It turns out he didn’t lay a wreath at that grave, which was 15 yards away, but was present when a wreath was laid. The wreath was for everyone at the cemetery: Palestinians who died under bombardment, those who were assassinated, and those who had simply died in exile. So Corbyn honoured the Palestinian dead 22 years after Oslo.
And who were these two terrorists, anyway? Both were PLO men, the Palestinian faction that went on to negotiate Oslo and recognise Israel. One was Salah Khalaf, who met with the US ambassador in Tunis as part of the dialogue with the PLO authorised by the then US Secretary of State James Baker. Does this make Baker guilty of the same crime Corbyn has just committed?
Khalaf was identified by the Americans as a pragmatist who was shifting PLO policy. The second one was Atef Bseiso, the PLO’s liaison officer with the CIA. Israel accused him of involvement in the Munich massacre, although it is a matter of historical dispute as to how many of those assassinated were directly linked to Munich. French intelligence traced his assassination in Paris to Abu Nidal, and the PLO accused the Mossad. Are we saying that two PLO men who created backchannels that would lead to the Madrid Conference and thence to Oslo should now be considered terrorists decades after the State department had got over that hurdle?
Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad, was head of intelligence for the PLO and Arafat’s right hand man. Jack Straw laid a wreath at Arafat’s grave. Should Straw be now outed for doing so? Bseiso and Khalaf hail from the days in the early 1970’s of Black September. Just how far back in history do Corbyn’s detractors want to go? Why stop at the 1970’s ?
Israel had two prime ministers who were former terrorists from the bombings they helped organise in 1944. Menachim Begin was a leader of Irgun, an underground Zionist paramilitary group whose aim was to force the British to leave Palestine. Irgun staged a series of bombings in 1944 against British targets, the Immigration Department, the tax offices, a series of police stations. His face appears on a wanted poster issued by the Palestine Police Force.
Yitzak Shamir was a member of Lehi, or the notorious Stern Gang, who assassinated Lord Moyne, the British resident minister in the Middle East. Both Begin and Shamir are celebrated as freedom fighters in Israel.
McCarthyism at work
The second victim of this campaign are the Palestinians. The aim is to terrify all politicians, be they Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat , or SNP from having any contact with Palestinian organisations, which could be used to discredit them in the future . Everyone is now put on guard for what records exist of the contacts and conferences which took place long ago. The IHRA’s anti-Semitism definition, which is not legally binding, will be used as a retro-active weapon.
If this sounds like the tactics US Senator Joseph McCarthy used in the early 1950s against suspected communist – “reds under the bed” – at the height of the cold war, it is because it is. From now on, any past contact, any event, any platform shared with Palestinian groups, supporters, activists, and any photograph which emerges from the bowels of Israel’s psych-ops servers could be used to destroy a British politician’s reputation as effectively as Corbyn’s has been. Whether he survives or not, Corbyn’s international reputation has been tarnished. If you are an aspiring Democrat in the US, would you now meet with him?
It is every British party’s policy to back – the now moribund – two state solution. Every political party backs the establishment of an independent, viable Palestinian State. For this very reason, this campaign effectively paralyses any communication between Palestinian activists, of whatever hue, and British politicians.
I am addressing this point specifically to Corbyn’s enemies on the right of the party and to the Parliamentary Party. Do you seriously want the same tactics you have used, or colluded with, against Corbyn, to be used against you? Do you really think British democracy is the winner as a result?
If anyone thinks that having taken out Corbyn, this campaign will stop there, they are deluding themselves.
Everyone’s fight
The third victim of this campaign is anyone, be they Palestinian or Israeli, Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, who is identified and targeted by Israel as a dissenter.
Let’s just record what happened to Jewish American journalistPeter Beinart at Ben Gurion Airport. Beinart, who has publicly expressed his support for boycotting products manufactured in the settlements in the occupied West Bank, was interrogated for an hour about his political writings and activities .
“The session ended when my interrogator asked me, point blank, if I was planning to attend another protest,” Beinart wrote. “I answered truthfully: No. With that I was sent back to the holding room.” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu immediately rowed back and claimed Beinart’s interrogation had been an “administrative mistake”.
For US Jews and indeed British ones, this is the real canary in the coal mine. This is the path upon which Israel is headed, and the path Israel is dragging the Jewish diaspora along. Speak up now and resist it before it is too late. Corbyn’s fight for his own integrity, reputation and honesty is everyone’s fight.
If you don’t, if you stand aside, if you stay silent, if you grin knowingly and do nothing, you could be next.
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David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief, European Correspondent, and Ireland Correspondent. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.
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Western news fabricators would have us believe that Russia is a threat.Russia is not a threat.NATO isthe threat. Western politicians are fronts for self-serving, bailed-out, public-looting monopolies that create unreasonable fear for profit.Arms manufacturers are a prime example.These are the policymakers. They are war profiteers.
In 2016, General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, admitted that,
“it is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.“
Decoded, Russia was not a threat to the West.
More recently, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg admitted that,
“we don’t see any imminent threat against any NATO ally.”
Decoded, Russia is still not a threat.
But war profiteers benefit from war preparations, lucrative government contracts, scare-mongering, and the demonization of foreign leaders, in this case, President Putin. All of it is based on lies and deceptions.
The lies and deceptions generate plenty of money from increasingly thirdworldized tax payers.The 2018 U.S. military budget is a staggering 700 billion dollars.
It isn’t about jobs either. According to a U.S. study (“The Page That Counts” Yes! Magazine) a billion dollars spent on the military yields 8,555 jobs, while the same amount spent on health care yields 10,770 jobs, the same amount on education yields 17,687 jobs, and the same amount on mass transit yields 19,795 jobs.
The Military Industrial Complex is a hallmark of publicly-funded “neoliberal” monopoly capitalism.Socialism for the rich, death and/or poverty for everyone else.
The oligarch classes need to propagandize us all, otherwise the bi-partisan, toxic system would not garner public consent. Hence monopoly news fabricators are all about spreading false narratives to generate fear, hatred, war, and war preparations.
The North American public is being “colonized” by the same monopolies that we are so eager to support.
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
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Featured image: Jordanian soldiers just a few meters from River Jordan and Israeli controlled POT
Where precisely, is Jordan now? Is it with the West, or with the Arab world? How independent is it, really, and what future lies ahead?
Recently, in the middle of the capital city – Amman – several sleek 5-star hotel towers grew towards the sky, including the trendy “W” and Rotana. Dressed to kill women from the Gulf, wearing high heels and suggestive make up, are now sipping cappuccinos in various cafes at the posh new pedestrian area called The Boulevard. Saudi men can be seen downing pints of beer and carafes of wine. It is a scene not unlike that commonly observed in Bahrain. The Gulf now comes to Amman to escape strict regulations, to play, to be careless, to enjoy life. Some people travel here for medical treatment, staying in overpriced private hospitals which resemble 4-star hotels more than medical facilities.
Built with money from the Gulf
But predominately, here in Amman, it is all about fashion, about food and drinks, about showing off and being seen – the entire area doesn’t have one single decent bookstore (there is only a tiny kiosk at the entrance to the Abdali Mall), art cinema or a concert hall.
Unlike Beirut, with its vibrant international art scene and thirst for knowledge, Amman’s affluent residents and visitors are obsessed with consumerism. With half-closed eyes, The Boulevard could be located in some smaller city of Texas or Georgia.
By the Dead Sea – for very rich and tourists
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Just a few kilometers away, at Al-Basheer Hospital (the biggest public medical facility in the country), doctors are on strike. They are exhausted, underpaid and depressed. Only emergency cases get treated. Blood is on the floor, patients look resigned.
I get pushed away as the Health Minister makes his visit with his entourage.
Ambulances keep howling, bringing casualties.
“Quality of public medical services in this country is appalling,” I am told by one of the patients.
Eerie dilapidated public hospital
I talk to two Syrian ladies who are waiting here with a sick boy. One of them laments:
“We had to travel here all the way from Al-Azraq. We are not insured in this country, and even UNHCR does not help us, when we are facing medical emergencies. We went to a private clinic where a simple series of tests cost us 300 JD (US$428). We are here now. It is uncertain whether we will be treated at all. We are totally desperate.”
Soon after, a plain-clothed cop begins interrogating me. “Do I have a permit to ask questions at the hospital?” I don’t. After I leave, two police officers try to intercept me. Pretending that I don’t understand, I smile like an idiot and they let me go.
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In Jordan, people are afraid to talk. To be precise, they do talk inside their homes and cars, or in the backrooms of their offices, but not in public. They hardly ever give their full names.
In 2018, Jordan ‘exploded’ on various occasions. In February, riots broke in the city of Al-Salt, over the proposed 60% price hike of bread, but also over the increase of electricity and fuel prices as well as the cutting of subsidies for basic goods and services.
The infamous and brutal IMF structural adjustment had been gradually implemented in Jordan, which was suffering from a stagnating economy and bizarre misappropriation of funds. In 2017, Jordan’s recorded government debt stood at $32 billion, equivalent to 95.6% of the country’s GDP.
In June, massive protests shook the capital, Amman. Protesters were demanding the change of the government. They were outraged by planned tax hikes and the rapidly declining standard of living. They also called for the end of endemic corruption among government officials.
Scores of people were arrested.
In July, the government resigned, and King Abdullah asked Omar al-Razzaz, a former World Bank economist, to form a new government.
People dispersed. They were told that they had won, but almost nothing changed.
“Let me explain: before they were, for instance, threatening to introduce a 15% tax on cars,” my driver in Amman explained. “Now what they will do is introduce a tax hike of 5% this year and 10% in 2019. Everything is the same.”
In a desperate settlement, Kufrain Village, near the River Jordan and Dead Sea, a baker at Alihsan Bakery was much more outspoken:
“We don’t trust the government: new or old. They are all the same bullshitters.
The riots? Change of government? Don’t make me laugh: so-called ‘riots’ were organized and led by intelligence officers and by the government itself. They manipulated people. This government does precisely the same things as the previous one, but with the new alphabetic order.”
A day earlier, I had heard precisely the same lament from an upper-class Jordanian lady whom I met on the bank of the Jordan River, while visiting the Bethany Beyond Jordan Site (great opportunity to photograph fortified border with Israeli occupied Palestine (OPT).
She explained, cynically and in perfect English:
“Jordanian people had enough; this time they were ready to overthrow the regime in Amman. The elites knew it. They organized riots, made them look real but relatively orderly, then changed a few political players at the top, while saving the system. People felt that they won, but in fact, nothing changed, whatsoever”.
Jordan is a staunch ally of the West. Its ‘Elites’ are unconditionally pro-US.
The country has been, for decades, betting on collaboration with NATO.
Azraq refugee camp
It hosts several deadly military and air force bases of various Wester countries, the most lethal being Al-Azraq, where part of the war planes that were previously situated at the Turkish airbase Incerlik, have recently been re-located.
British and US Special Forces have been, for years, invading the Syrian state, from Jordanian territory.
Functioning as a service station of the West, has been securing the main income of the country and to its ‘elites’, but not necessarily to its people. Very little or nothing has been invested into science, research or production. It is all about the military bases, malls for the expats, medical tourism for the rich Gulf citizens, few maquiladoras, and of course the main privately own component of the local economy – tourism (some 14% of the GDP and growing).
Tourism primarily benefits the big Western hotel chains and is consistently ruining the fragile ecosystem of the Dead Sea and lately, the Gulf of Aqaba. At the same time, the Al-Azraq air force base is destroying and draining the precious water reserves of the desert oases.
Official unemployment in Jordan now stands around 18% but is in reality much higher.
The border with Syria remains closed, so cheap goods cannot come in (relatively poor Jordan is periodically ranked as the most expensive country to live in the Arab world).
Here there are no cappuccinos
The country is presently ‘hosting’ 670,000 Syrian refugees, although some are now determined to return home. The refugees (many of them live in despicable conditions and face various types of discrimination) are yet another source of foreign funding for Jordan, but on the streets of Amman, people keep complaining that ‘Syrians take jobs from the local people’. That does not prevent Jordanians from importing cheap labor from poor countries like the Philippines and Kenya. No matter how stretched and impoverished, Jordanians are not ready to do ‘dirty jobs’.
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I spoke to a curator at the modest Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. There, a surreal and post-modernist installation called “Factory” was trying to shock by avant-garde forms and, it appeared to me, by very little substance.
The National Gallery was desperately empty; people were most likely somewhere else, in cafes, malls or pubs.
I asked the curator whether she was planning to show some artwork depicting the recent riots, or to get to the core of what triggered the recent wave of desperation.
She looked at me, horrified:
“No, why? Of course not!”
I asked whether there is at least one gallery in Amman, that is reacting to the events?
“No,” she almost shouted at me. She was very angry. I was trying to understand, why?
It never pays to be a Western colony, in the Arab world or anywhere else. Some individuals or a group of people may get filthy rich, but the rest of the population will struggle. It will become ‘irrelevant’.
While neighboring Syria is winning its epic battle against the terrorists implanted there by the West and its allies, Jordan is living the sad reality of some Central American semi-colony of the United States.
Here, almost all ideology had been neutralized. Not even dreams of pan-Arab socialist unity that had been shaping, for decades, both Syria and Iraq, could be traced here.
Nobody in Jordan appears to be happy. Some complain, some don’t, but there are no concrete proposals on how to change the pro-Western regime.
In the meantime, the posh Boulevard area is ‘protected’ by metal detectors and guards, uniformed and plain-clothed. Hotels are turning into fortresses. Now even to enter some cafes at the Boulevard, one has to go through a second stage of security, including robust metal detectors. Amman is an extremely safe city. I wonder:
“Is it in order to stop terrorism? Or, perhaps, is it to prevent poor and desperate people from entering and seeing with their own eyes that the foreign interests and local collaborators are robbing them of their own country?”
Slums at the outskirts of Amman
I ask aloud. My local friend does not reply. In Jordan, there are some questions that should never be asked.
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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
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The known carcinogen and infamous weed killing chemical glyphosate has just been found in breakfast foods marketed for children. A new study has discovered trace amounts of the most widely used herbicide in the country in oats, granolas, and snack bars.
Concern over glyphosate has continued to grow in the United States in recent years. Although the chemical may be safe in some amounts to spray on weeds if certain safety precautions are taken, it is probably a lot more dangerous if it’s ingested by a child. Most disturbing, however, is the fact that thirty-one out of 45 tested products had levels of glyphosate that were higher than what many scientists consider safe for children.
The study, which was conducted by the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that many of the breakfast foods marketed to children contain glyphosate.
“I was shocked,” said Dr. Jennifer Lowry, who heads the Council on Environmental Health for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Although not much is known about the effects of the chemical on children, parents and doctors are concerned. “We don’t know a lot about the effects of glyphosate on children,” Lowry said. “And essentially we’re just throwing it at them.”
“We’re very concerned that consumers are eating more glyphosate than they know,” said Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs at EWG, according to CBS News. Faber has been working to improve food safety standards for more than a decade. He said he and his team at EWG conducted the study which included a lab test involving “45 samples of products made with conventionally grown oats.”
EWG used it’s own very stringent standards of safe levels of glyphosate when testing the products, which should also be noted. Because of that, in response to EWG’s study, Monsanto said, “even at the highest level reported… an adult would have to eat 118 pounds of the food item every day for the rest of their life in order to reach the EPA’s limit” for glyphosate residues. Just last week, in fact, a jury in California ordered Monsanto to pay one man $289 million in damages after his lawsuit claimed the company’s weedkillers caused his cancer. EWG’s Faber is skeptical of EPA’s glyphosate limits.
The World Health Organization says glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen,” and California lists it as a chemical “known to the state to cause cancer.” Monsanto continues to dispute the claim that the chemical is carcinogenic, saying in a statement, “glyphosate does not cause cancer” and “has a more than 40-year history of safe use.”
As the debate over glyphosate’s safety continues, it isn’t likely to see tests on the stuff cease anytime soon. And Faber isn’t the only person concerned over its possible carcinogenic effects.
“It is time now for them to step up and do their jobs to ban glyphosate,” said Zen Honeycutt, who heads Moms Across America, a group formed to raise awareness about toxic exposures. “We want to trust that what is in the grocery store is safe and the shocking reality is that in many cases it’s not,” Honeycutt said.
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When you think that they have already done enough damage, that they have seen the light, and maybe they have repented and disappeared to enjoy the wealth they have amassed thanks to an insane capitalist system, they surface again like a cancer that no surgery or radiation has been able to remove.
I’m reacting to a news report by Telesur [1] and reprinted by MintPress News [2] saying that Steve Bannon will be advising far-right presidential candidate in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro in the upcoming elections in October. What could someone with racist views contribute positively to a country like Brazil where 51% of the population is black or mixed?
This is the same Steve Bannon who helped “Trump ascend to the U.S. presidency” and served in his administration for one year after being dumped. Bannon is also the former executive chairman of the far-right syndicated Breitbart News Network. Any association with Breitbart News, even if “former” association, does not reflect well on Mr. Bannon. The network is widely considered to be ideologically driven, with a reputation of publishing misleading stories and “news” with racist and xenophobic overtones.
Having burned off his bridges in the U.S., Mr. Bannon resurfaces to go international presumably with his quest for a worldview that we hoped was long gone. His view has a “white-economic-nationalist agenda.” The last time we confronted a similar agenda, it came from Nazi ideology with all the consequences we know. But we also know that in the 21st century there is a revival of white supremacist ideology popping up from the US to Ukraine via Israel.
As if it wasn’t enough that Brazil had a coup that installed unelected president Michel Temer to replace elected president Dilma Rousseff, we may live to see a surge of white supremacy in Brazil, of all places. In the history of Latin America this would be going 500 years back in time during European colonial rule.
According to the Telesur report, Bannon is an admirer of Brazil’s presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. That explains the reason to be his political advisor.Also according to Telesur, “Bannon said that Bolsonaro’s mission in Brazil” will be more “arduous” than Trump’s presidential campaign. That in turn might explain his personal interest in choosing the challenge.
Bolsonaro is running for the Partido Social Liberal (Social Liberal Party – PSL). Despite the name this is a very rightwing party. He is running on a platform of privatization of public enterprises, reducing government and privatizing basic and higher education.
Bolsonaro is infamous for stating that Brazil’s dictatorship of the 1970s “prevented Brazil from falling under the sway of the Soviet Union.” That was the dictatorship that imprisoned and tortured a young leftist Dilma Rousseff for three years. He also said that Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet “should have killed more people.”
But other disturbing statements are attributed to him:
“Women should earn less because they get pregnant;” that the inhabitants of Afro-Brazilian communities that resisted slavery are “not even good for breeding anymore;” and that he would be “incapable of loving a homosexual son.” [3]
Certainly for some of those reasons Jair Bolsonaro is considered in Brazil a controversial figure who has been described as “a caricature of (U.S. President Donald) Trump.”
There is a general consensus that the statistical advantage of Bolsonaro in the polls is because the leading popular candidate, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT), is still in prison since last April with trumped up charges.
A large proportion of Brazilians want Lula to be freed, which will surely see him as the winning presidential candidate for the Workers’ Party (PT). Obviously Bolsonaro strongly opposes Lula’s freedom and candidacy, and he has mockingly stated that he favours a free Lula but “in 2030”.
Brazilians know very well who they want as president if they are given the freedom to choose. With someone like Steve Bannon joining in friendship to an unwelcome candidate, they are reminded of the old adage, tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.
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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” http://www.cubasolidarityincanada.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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On the August 15 – 19 anniversary of the CIA coup against democratically elected Iranian PM Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Trump regime’s neocon extremist Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the creation of a so-called “Iran Action Group” – for regime change he failed to explain, saying:
It’ll “be responsible for directing, reviewing, and coordinating all aspects of the State Department’s Iran-related activity, and it will report directly to me.”
A litany of Big Lies followed, saying:
“For nearly 40 years, (Iran) has been responsible for a torrent of violent and destabilizing behavior against the United States, our allies, our partners, and indeed the Iranian people themselves” – a US/NATO/Israeli/Saudi speciality, not how the Islamic Republic operates.
Trump “withdrew from the flawed Iran nuclear deal, which failed to restrain Iran’s nuclear progress or its campaigns of violence abroad” – bald-faced lies.
The Islamic Republic abhors nuclear weapons, wanting them eliminated. Nuclear armed and dangerous America and Israel risk WW III with nukes, the ultimate nightmare scenario.
The world community strongly supports the JCPOA. Unanimously affirmed by Security Council members, it’s international law the Trump regime flagrantly breached by its illegal pullout.
Trump “instituted a campaign of pressure, deterrence, and solidarity with the long-suffering Iranian people,” Pompeo roared.
The Trump regime is in “solidarity” with dark forces at war on humanity at home and abroad alone, disdainful of ordinary people everywhere.
“(C)hanging…Iranian…behavior” Pompeo called for is code language for regime change, wanting Islamic Republic sovereign independence replaced by unacceptable pro-Western puppet rule.
The “Iranian threat” he claimed doesn’t exist – other than its government standing in the way of US control of the country, its valued oil and gas reserves, as well as its people Washington wants exploited the same way it mistreats populations elsewhere abroad as well as at home.
Trump regime State Department policy planning director Brian Hook heads the Iran Action Group, serving as US special representative for the Islamic Republic, in charge of its regime change initiative.
Trump sent Iran mixed messages. In July, he warned Iranian President Hassan Rouhani by tweeting:
“NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE” – in response Rouhani saying:
“Do not play with the lion’s tail or else you will regret it…Peace with Iran would be the mother of all peace and war with Iran would be the mother of all wars.”
Separately, Trump said he’s willing to meet with his Iranian counterpart without preconditions – a hollow gesture.
His JCPOA pullout, reimposition of nuclear and other sanctions, stiffer ones to follow in November, formation of the Iran Action Group, along with other policies aimed at destabilizing and toppling the Islamic Republic show his regime’s real intentions.
Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed the idea of negotiating with the Trump regime, citing the following reasons:
Trump’s political and economic war on Iran, notably his JCPOA pullout, reimposition of sanctions, and orchestration of destabilizing activities leave no room for dialogue.
It’s only possible if his regime acknowledges nearly 40 years of US hostility toward the Islamic Republic.
Trump repeatedly proved he and his regime can never be trusted. The same goes for Obama when in power, responsible for breaching the JCPOA multiple times – proving undemocratic Dems are as untrustworthy as Republicans.
US dirty hands are behind efforts to destabilize Iran by orchestrating unrest in the country, aiming to topple its government by color revolution – what was tried before and failed, unlikely to succeed this time.
The Iran Action group aims to stoke internal unrest more intensively than earlier Trump regime efforts – US war on the Islamic Republic perhaps to follow if coup d’etat actions fail.
Khamenei, Rouhani, and other Iranian officials justifiably believe negotiating with a nation bent on achieving dominion over planet earth can accomplish nothing.
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
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When I was in Iran earlier this year, the government there blocked Twitter, deciding for a whole nation what they can not see. In America, Twitter purges users, deciding for a whole nation what they can not see. It matters little whose hand is on the switch, the end result is the same. This is the America I always feared I’d see.
Speech in America is an unalienable right, and goes as deep into the concept of a free society as any idea can. Thomas Jefferson wrote of the right flowing from his notion of a Creator, not from government. Jefferson’s 18th century invocation is understood now as less that free speech is heaven-sent and more that it is something existing above government. And so the argument the First Amendment applies only to government and not to all public speaking (including private platforms like Twitter) is thus both true and irrelevant, and the latter is more important.
The government remains a terrifying threat to free speech. An Espionage Act prosecution against Wikileaks’ Julian Assange will create precedent for use against any mainstream journalist. The war on whistleblowers which started under Obama continues under Trump. Media are forced to register as propaganda agents. Universities restrictcontroversial speakers. The Trump administration no doubt will break the record (77%) for redacting or denying access to government files under the Freedom of Information Act.
But there is another threat to freedom of speech now, corporate censorship. It is often dressed up with NewSpeak terms like deplatforming, restricting hate speech, or simply applying Terms of Service. Corporations always did what they wanted with speech. Our protection against corporate overreach used to rely on an idea Americans once held dear, enshrined as “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend your right to say it.” The concept was core to a democracy: everyone supports the right of others to throw ideas into the marketplace independent. An informed people would sort through it all, and bad ideas would be pushed away by better ones. That system more or less worked for 240 years.
For lack of a more precise starting point, the election of Donald Trump did away with near-universal agreement on defending the right to speak without defending the content, driven by a belief too much free speech helped Trump get elected. Large numbers of Americans began not just to tolerate, but to demand censorship. They wanted universities to deplatform speakers they did not agree with, giggling over the fact the old-timey 1A didn’t apply and there was nothing “conservatives” could do. They expressed themselves in violence, demanding censorship by “punching Nazis.” Such brownshirt-like violence was endorsed by The Nation, once America’s clearest voice for freedom. The most startling change came within the American Civil Liberties Union, who enshrined the “defend the right, not the speech” concept in the 1970s when it defended the free speech rights of Nazis, and went on to defend the speech rights of white supremacists in Charlottesville.
Not so much anymore. The ACLU now applies a test to the free speech cases it will defend, weighing their impact on other rights (for example, the right to say the N-word versus the rights of POC.) The ACLU in 2018 is siding with those who believe speech can be secondary to other political goals. Censorship has a place, says the ACLU, when it serves what they believe is a greater good.
A growing segment of public opinion isn’t just in favor of this, it demands it. So when years-old tweets clash with 2018 definitions of racism and sexism, companies fire employees. Under public pressure, Amazon removed “Nazi paraphernalia and other far-right junk” from its online store. It was actually just some nasty Halloween gear and Confederate flag merch, but the issue is not the value of the products — that’s part of any free speech debate — it’s corporate censorship being used to stifle debate by literally in this case pulling things out of the marketplace.
Alex Jones’ InfoWars was deplatformed off download sites where it has been available for years, including Apple, YouTube (owned by Google), Spotify, and Amazon, for promoting “hate speech.” Huffington Post wondered why more platforms, such as Instagram, haven’t done away with Jones and his hate speech.
That term, hate speech, clearly not prohibited by the Supreme Court, is an umbrella word now used by censorship advocates for, well, basically anything they don’t want others to be able to listen to or watch. It is very flexible and thus very dangerous. As during the McCarthy-era in the 1950s when one needed only to label something “Communist” to have it banned, so it is today with the new mark of “hate speech.” The parallels are chilling — it was in the McCarthy-era Hollywood created its infamous blacklists, actors and writers who could not work because of their political beliefs.
Twitter is perhaps the most infamous platform to censor its content. The site bans advertising from Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik. Twitter suspends the accounts of those who promote (what it defines as) hate and violence, “shadow bans” others to limit their audience, and tweaks its trending topics to push certain political ideas and downplay others. It regularly purges users and bans “hateful symbols.” There are near-daily demands by increasingly organized groups calling on Twitter to censor specific users, with Trump at the top of that list. The point is always the same: to limit what ideas you can be exposed to and narrow debate.
Part of the 2018 problem is the trust people place in “good companies” like Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter. Anthropomorphizing them as Jeff, and Zuck, and @jack is popular, along with a focus on their “values.” It seems to make sense, especially now when many of the people making decisions on corporate censorship are the same age and hold the same political views as those demanding they do it.
Of course people age, values shift, what seems good to block today might change. But the main problem is companies exist to make money and will do what they need to do to make money. You can’t count on them past that. Handing over free speech rights to an entity whose core purpose has nothing to do with free speech means they will quash ideas when they conflict with what they are really about. People who gleefully celebrate the fact that @jack who runs Twitter is not held back by the 1A and can censor at will seem to believe he will always yield his power in the way they want him to.
Google has a slogan reading “do no evil.” Yet in China Google will soon deploy Dragonfly, a version of its search engine that will meet Beijing’s demands for censorship by blocking websites on command. Of course in China they don’t call it hate speech, they call it anti-societal speech, and the propaganda Google will block isn’t from Russian bots but from respected global media. In the U.S. Google blocks users from their own documents saved in Drive if the service feels the documents are “abusive.” Backin China Apple removes apps from its store on command of the government in return for market access. Amazon, who agreed to remove hateful merch from its store in the U.S., the same week confirmed it is “unwaveringly committed to the U.S. government and the governments we work with around the world” using its AI and facial recognition technology to spy on their own people. Faced with the loss of billions of dollars, as was the case for Google and Apple in China, what will corporations do in America?
Once upon a time an easy solution to corporate censorship was to take one’s business elsewhere. The 2018 problem is with the scale of platforms like Amazon, near global monopolies all. Pretending Amazon, which owns the Washington Post, and with the reach to influence elections, is just another company that sells things is to pretend the role of unfettered debate in a free society is outdated. Yeah, you can for now still go through hoops to download stuff outside the Apple store or Google Play, but those platforms more realistically control access to your device. Censored on Twitter? No problem big guy, go try Myspace, and maybe Bing will notice you. Technology and market dominance changed the nature of censorship so free speech is as much about finding an audience as it is about finding a place to speak. Corporate censorship is at the cutting edge of a reality targeting both speakers (Twitter suspends someone) and listeners (Apple won’t post that person’s videos made off-platform). Ideas need to be discoverable to enter the debate; in 1776 you went to the town square. In 2018 it’s Twitter.
In the run up to the midterm elections, Senator Chris Murphy, ironically in a tweet, demanded social media censor more aggressively for the “survival of our democracy,” implying those companies can act as proxies for those still held back by the First Amendment. We already know the companies involved can censor. The debate is over what happens when they do.
A PERSONAL NOTE: Some readers are aware I have been permanently suspended from Twitter as @wemeantwell. This followed exchanges with several mainstream journalists over their support for America’s wars and unwillingness to challenge government lies. Twitter sent an auto-response saying what I wrote “harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence someone else’s voice.” I don’t think I did any of that, and I wish you didn’t have to accept my word on it. I wish instead you could read what I wrote and decide for yourself. But Twitter won’t allow it. Twitter says you cannot read and make up your own mind. They have in fact eliminated all the things I have ever written there over seven years, disappeared me down the Memory Hole. That’s why all censorship is wrong; it takes the power to decide what is right and wrong away from you and gives it to someone else.
I lost my career at the State Department because I spoke out as a whistleblower against the Iraq War. I’ve now been silenced, again, for speaking out, this time by a corporation. I am living in the America I always feared.
As laid in my cell, I chuckled at the notion that the city was full of billboards proclaiming Finland was the “land of free press“.
So, I’ve grown an especially high sensitivity to both goonish behavior toward journalists trying to ask tough questions — and to those professing they are defending a free press when they are actually engaging in a marketing exercise.
As some have noted, the editorials today will likely help Trump whip up support among his base against a monolithic media. But, just as clearly, the establishment media can draw attention away from their own failures, corruptions and falsehoods simply by focusing on Trump’s.
Big media outlets need not actually report news that affects your life and point to serious solutions for social ills. They can just bad mouth Trump. And Trump need not deliver on campaign promises that tapped into populist and isolationist tendencies in the U.S. public that have grown in reaction to years of elite rule. He need only deride the major media.
They are at worst frenemies. More likely, at times, Trump and the establishment media log roll with each other. The major media built up Trump. Trump’s attacks effectively elevate a select few media celebrities.
My case is a small but telling one. Major media outlets were more likely to disinform about the manhandling I received in my attempt to ask about U.S., Russian and Israeli nuclear threats to humanity — I’ll soon give a detailed rebuttal to the torrent of falsehoods, some of which I’ve already noted on social media — than to crusade against it.
Other obvious cases: None of the newspaper editorials I’ve seen published today mention the likely prosecution of Wikileaks. If there were solidarity among media, the prospect of Julian Assange being imprisoned for publishing U.S. government documents should be front and center today.
Neither did I see a mention of RT or, as of this week, Al Jazeera, being compelled to register as foreign agents. State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert has openly refused to take questions from reporters working for Russian outlets. Virtual silence — in part because Russia is widely depicted as the great enemy, letting U.S. government policy around the world off the hook.
The above are actual policies that the Trump administration has pursued targeting media — not rhetoric that dominates so much establishment coverage of Trump.
Then there’s the threat of social media.
My day job is with the Institute for Public Accuracy. Yesterday, I put out a news release titled “Following Assassination Attempt, Facebook Pulled Venezuela Content.” Tech giants can decide — possibly in coordination with the U.S. government — to pull the plug on content at a time and manner of their choosing.
You would think newspaper people might be keen to highlight the threat that such massive corporations thus pose, not least of all because they have eaten up their ad revenue.
The sad truth is that this is what much of the media have long done: Counter to the lofty rhetoric of many of today’s editorials, the promise of an independent and truth-seeking press has frequently been subservient to propaganda, pushing for war or narrow economic and other interests.
The other major story of the day — quite related to this — is that of Trump pulling former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance. NPR tells me this is an attempt to “silence a critic.” But Brennan has an op-ed in today’s New York Times and is frequently on major media. He oversaw criminal policies during the Obama administration, including drone assassinations. If anything, this has elevated Brennan’s major media status.
Those who have been truly silenced in the “Trump era” are those who were critical of the seemingly perpetual U.S. government war machine since the invasion of Iraq.
Trump attacks on the establishment media — like many media attacks on him — are frequently devoid of substance. But recently one of his rhetorically tweets stated that media “cause wars“. I would say “push for war”, but that’s quibbling.
Trump is technically right on that point, but it’s totally disingenuous coming from him. He’s actually been the beneficiary of the media compulsion he claims to deride. When he exalts U.S. bombing strikes in Yemen, Syria and elsewhere, CNN calls him “presidential“.
Many consider “Russia-gate” critical to scrutinizing the Trump administration, but the two reporters, apparently picked by the White House, during the Helsinki news conference focused on “Russia-gate” — which eventually led to Brennan and others attacking Trump as “treasonous”. Meanwhile, much more meaningful collusion that can be termed Israel-gate is being ignored as the U.S. and Israeli governments attempt to further mold the Mideast.
The need for genuinely free sources of information is greater than ever. It is unclear to me if traditional newspapers can be part of the equation. Quite likely, the institutions desperately needed to carry out that critical mission are yet to be born.
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This article first appeared on Sam Husseini’s blog, Posthaven.
Sam Husseini is an independent journalist, senior analyst at the Institute for Public Accuracy and founder of VotePact.org. Follow him on twitter: @samhusseini.
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How much does the US government know about you? It’s not a question easily answered. The US government operates the largest and most advanced spying, surveillance, and data collection programs on the planet. It’s made up of multiple law enforcement and intelligence agencies, some of which operate in secret. The federal government, of course, consists more than two dozen major agencies that perform regular record keeping for operational purposes, such as the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Social Security Administration.
Aside from official government entities, third parties often comply with government requests for information. These include big tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, all of which were shown by Edward Snowden to have cooperated with the NSA’s spying efforts. And while we’re thinking about Edward Snowden, recall that he was a private contractor at the NSA at the time and not a government employee. Contractors and private companies can collect information on behalf of the US government as well.
The amount and accuracy of information that the government varies from one person to the next. Someone who spends a lot of time online, sharing on social media, creating accounts at different services, and/or communicating with friends and relatives overseas will leave a much more clear trail of data than someone who shuns Facebook and takes proactive steps to protect their privacy. Government employees must undergo rigorous background checks, while someone getting paid under the table at a local restaurant can fly under the radar.
Attempting to cover all the information that the US government knows about any one person quickly becomes overwhelming and full of caveats. With all of this in mind, it’s clear we need to narrow down our parameters. To that end, we’ll create three typical archetypes–Alice, Bob, and Chris–who fit the following profiles:
Alice is:
A naturalized citizen (immigrant)
Middle aged
A private sector employee
A frequent online shopper
A tenant in a rented apartment
A college graduate
Bob is:
A US citizen from birth
Elderly
Retired from the public sector
Not very computer-literate and doesn’t spend much time online
A homeowner
Chris is:
A minor
A public school student
Active on social media
Applying for college
Doesn’t have a job
To narrow our scope a bit further, let’s assume none of these three people has a criminal record. They are all US citizens, either from birth or naturalized. None of them have served in the military or law enforcement. They do not collect welfare such as unemployment checks, food stamps, worker’s compensation, or disability benefits. Finally, we’ll only cover information that the government can legally collect without a court order.
We’ll categorize the types of information based on, in broad strokes, who originally collects it:
Non-law enforcement government agencies – Mostly routine information that the government needs to operate and is not collected for intelligence or law enforcement purposes
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies – Information swept up in government spying and surveillance programs
Non-government companies – Private companies, credit bureaus, public utilities, and other entities not operated by the government but that cooperate with government requests for information
Info collected by non-intelligence agencies
Some information is required for the US government to effectively operate and serve the public. This includes information that’s used collect taxes, dole out welfare, deliver mail, draw boundaries for congressional and school districts, and assess social and economic trends and make policy decisions.
While we say this information is “routine”, once it’s all combined, one could actually formulate a fairly intimate depiction of a person’s life. The US government likely knows the following about all three of our hypothetical characters:
Name
Social security number
Permanent address and/or place of usual residence
Age, birth date
Place of birth
Prior place of residence and duration of residence
Ethnicity
Marital status
Household composition (family members and how they’re all related)
This information can be collected through various means, including tax forms, the postal service, and census data.
The decennial census in particular gathers a large amount of personal information. Individual information is kept private for 72 years; the latest census data available to the public is from 1940.
You might presume that intelligence and law enforcement agencies can access Census records whenever they want, but think again. The US Census Bureau is bound by Title 13 of the United States Code, guaranteeing confidentiality. The FBI and other government entities do not have the legal right to access this information. So the US government technically knows a lot about you through the Census and IRS, but, on paper, that information is locked away and only used in aggregate.
The IRS is a bit different. IRS.gov’s page on disclosure laws notes, “pursuant to court order, return information may be shared with law enforcement agencies for investigation and prosecution of non-tax criminal laws.” That means all the information in your tax return can be used by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies with a court order. The IRS actually uses some of the same surveillance techniques as national intelligence agencies, including deployment of Stingrays to spy on cell phones.
Chris doesn’t have an income yet and thus doesn’t need to file his own taxes, but he is about to apply to college and thus will fill out a FAFSA to apply for federal student aid. He’s also a public school student, so it’s reasonable to assume the government knows the following about him:
Education level
What classes he takes
Where he goes to school
Parents’ income from their jobs and investments
Parents’ employment status
Alice holds down a full-time job and files taxes every year. She also participates in the census as required by law. It’s reasonable to assume the US government would know the following information about her:
Employment status
Occupation and industry
Income
Place of work
Education level
Student loan payment status
Bob is retired and own his own home. He earns a modest pension and collects social security. Medicare pays for the majority of his medical expenses. He’s also a bit of a philanthropist who regularly donates to charity. We can assume the government collects the following information about him in a given year:
Income
Current medicare and social security benefits, and estimate of future benefits
Employment status
Donations claimed on tax forms
Education level
Previous occupation and industry
Medical history, medications
Doctor(s) and hospital visits
Property tax and valuation info, including:
Value of home and land
How the property is used
Location
Size
Improvements and problems
Easements
Type of access
While we’re on the topic of social security, note that a regulation that required the SSA to to disclose information about certain people with mental illness to the national gun background check system. That regulation was nixed by President Trump in February 2017.
All three fictional characters could conceivably have a driver’s license or passport. Driver’s licenses are administered at the state level, but the data about drivers is presumably accessible by the federal government. These types of official photo IDs contain information like
Name
Home address
Birth date
Photo
Sex
Height
Weight
Eye color
Signature
And don’t forget: a driver’s license means a driver’s record as well, including a record of any past infractions. Bob and Alice own their own vehicles, which are registered with the following information:
Make
Model
Year
Previous owners
License plate number
Government-accessible info collected by private companies
In this section, we’ll look at information collected by private entities, some backed by the government and others wholly private. These include internet service providers (ISPs), internet companies, utility companies and credit bureaus.
Info provided by ISPs and internet companies
The FBI and NSA perform their fair share of online surveillance, to be sure. But in many cases they might not be allowed to monitor who they want, when they want due to laws and regulations, particularly those about spying on US citizens. In many cases, however, intelligence and law enforcement agencies don’t even have to conduct their own surveillance. It’s much easier and more efficient to simply use data that private companies already have.
The FBI might ask for information regarding a particular redditor, like Chris, such as the IP address from which they access the site. The NSA might ask for the account names of everyone who typed in a particular search term in a certain period of time, e.g. Bob searching for information about his pain medication. The ATF could ask Amazon to set up an alert every time a customer purchases a specific book, such as if Alice buys a book about Islam. And the DEA could request your ISP hand over the browsing history of suspected drug dealers.
Internet companies earn revenue from the data they collect, so for many of them, more is better. How much they share with law enforcement without a court order depends on the company itself. Check the privacy policy and terms of service of your ISP or a website to see what types of information they collect, with whom they share it, and under what circumstances. Most major companies now state that they don’t hand over customer information without a court order. But when those court orders do come in, they often come paired with a gag order. Some guarantee no such protection and will cooperate with law enforcement, court order or no.
The information that websites and ISPs collect varies depending on the company and what you do online, but here’s a list of possibilities:
Browsing history
Search queries
Device name and unique ID
IP address and location
Videos watched, songs listened to
Purchases
Downloads
Social media posts
In 2017, Congress repealed an Obama-era FCC rule that prevented ISPs from sharing browsing data with third parties like advertisers. With that rule out of the way, ISPs that control your access to the internet are expected to start gathering more data than ever on their users. If you don’t want to be tracked by your ISP, we recommend signing up for a reputable VPN.
Library records and ebooks
48 states in the US have laws that protect library records from snoopers, and two have legal directives that serve a similar purpose. To access a person’s library records, a court order is usually necessary.
That’s more protection than you’ll find on Amazon when buying an ebook. Amazon and other ebook sellers usually have privacy policies stating they also only hand over reader’s private information with a court order, but there’s technically no law barring them from doing so. Furthermore, Amazon can keep much better track of what you’re reading and how you read on its Kindle devices and companion apps. Amazon can not only see what you read, but what page you’re on, when you read, highlighted passages, and any notes you’ve scribbled into the ereader.
Only four states have laws about protecting e-reader data in libraries, so you’re best checking out a physical book from your local library for maximum privacy.
Credit reporting agencies
All three of our hypothetical characters have credit reports maintained by one of the three major US credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and Transunion. Creditors and government agencies can access your credit report for background checks and other purposes. Credit reporting agencies are overseen by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
A credit report contains the following information:
Name
Address
Social Security number
Date of birth
Trade lines (credit accounts)
Bank and credit cards
Auto loans
Mortgages
Date you opened each account
Credit limit or loan amount
Account balance
Payment history
Credit inquiries
A list of everyone who accessed your credit report in the last two years, both voluntary and involuntary. The latter occurs when lender order your report to send pre-approved credit offers
Public records and collections – Information on the public record aggregated from courts and collection agencies, including:
Overdue debt
Bankruptcies
Foreclosures
Suits
Wage garnishment
Liens
Of course, a hard lesson about keeping all of this information with just three companies was learned the hard way when Equifax was breached in 2017, leaking Social Security numbers and other details of more than 145 million Americans.
Other financial info
Most targeted surveillance on finances requires a court order, but that’s not always the case. Human Rights Watch explains:
“In investigations related to international terrorism or espionage, the FBI can also demand bank account statements and credit card histories using a national security letter, which doesn’t require a judge’s approval – and which often comes served with a gag order.”
For most of us, however, the government probably knows about accounts opened in your name, but not necessarily their contents or spending records.
If you invest in the stock market, then your investments are tracked by the Securities Exchange Commission and other official oversight bodies. Each state has its own blue sky law, which requires:
Registration of all securities offerings and sales
Stockbrokers
Brokerage firms
The laws are less clear when it comes to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. In late 2017, the IRS ordered the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, to hand over information about all customers who made a transaction worth $20,000 or more between 2013 and 2015. That information includes:
Names
Birth dates
Addresses
Tax IDs
Transaction logs
Account invoices
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are often thought of as anonymous, but if you have an account with a major exchange, then that exchange most likely requires such identifying information—not to mention a credit card or bank account—to purchase cryptocurrencies with fiat currency. In addition to the blockchain, which tracks transactions of all transactions on a cryptocurrency’s network, following the paper trail is a simple matter.
Public utilities
Public utility companies, excluding telecommunications, require a minimum amount of information in order to deliver their services. Water, gas, and electricity companies can be private or public, but all companies classified as utilities undergo heavy government regulation because they are allowed to operate regional monopolies on the condition they serve the public. Utility companies know more about a household as a whole rather than specific people. The information they collect normally consists of:
Name
Address
Telephone number
Payment information (bank account and/or credit card number)
Technical information about equipment on the residence necessary to deliver a service
The adoption of a smart grid that began during the Obama administration aim to allow consumers to use energy resources more efficiently. In particular, the rollout of smart meters allow property owners to better monitor and control their consumption of electricity and gas. However, this also raises concerns about the flow of detailed information not only between customers and energy providers, but also between tenants and their landlords.
A public utility company that installs a smart meter at your household could, even without detailed knowledge of the appliances you own, determine with reasonable certainty when you cook, shower, sleep, and leave the house,among other activities. According to a 2009 report published by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission stated the following:
“A remarkable number of electric appliances can be identified by their load signatures, and with impressive accuracy. Researchers have all but mastered identification of the larger common household appliances such as water heaters, well pumps, furnace blowers, refrigerators, and air conditioners, with recognition accuracies approaching perfection. Ongoing work focuses now on the myriad smaller electric devices around the home such as personal computers, laser printers, and [different types of] light bulbs.”
The software algorithms and the smart meter hardware itself has likely gotten more advanced since then, so you can expect a commensurate increase in accuracy. In response to these concerns, a handful of states passed laws restricting how smart meter data can be used and by whom. These include California, New York, Ohio, and Colorado.
Info collected by law enforcement and intelligence agencies
Mass surveillance and metadata
In 2013, Edward Snowden shocked the world when he revealed a series of mass surveillance programs used to intercept communications of both Americans and non-Americans. The NSA and FBI argue that they do not record the contents of phone calls or emails without a court order and merely collected metadata about those calls.
The NSA, where Snowden worked as a contractor, collected data on millions of people’s phone records from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. Phone call metadata includes:
Phone number of both parties making and receiving the call
How long the call lasted
When the call was made
Snowden said the NSA secretly gained direct access to servers at Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Yahoo, among other companies that participated in the PRISM program. Those companies denied the allegations outright, saying they only hand over information on a case-by-case basis with a court order, and not in bulk.
However, The Guardian reported in 2013 that the Bush and Obama administrations collected email metadata on any communication between non-US citizens or communications in which at least one party is outside of the US, even if they are an American citizen. The email metadata does not include the contents of emails, which, like phone calls, would require a court order. Email metadata includes:
The email addresses of the sender and receiver
A timestamp of when the email was sent
An IP address used by people sending emails from inside the US
Location based on the IP address
In 2012, the Department of Homeland security revealed in a lawsuit that it monitored social networks like Facebook and Twitter by running searches for keywords for at least a year and a half. The information swept up in the surveillance includes the contents of social media posts and comments. Chris’ Facebook and Twitter posts could be swept up in such surveillance.
In short, the US government can legally obtain metadata about calls, messages, and emails, but not their actual contents. For that, a court order is necessary, although the person being investigated probably won’t be notified in such an event.
Most of these programs were conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and/or the Patriot Act. Those laws are officially restricted to spying on non-US citizens, but many Americans’ communications get swept up by bulk interception programs. Alice, a naturalized US citizen who has family in another country, would likely have her communications with them closely monitored by US intelligence agencies.
Spying on the contents of electronic communication typically requires a court order. Government agencies can and do collect metadata about emails, text messages, and phone calls, but not their actual content. The FBI or NSA can record the sender and receiver, time sent, call duration, and location of the correspondents without a warrant, but they’ll need a court order to actually listen in or read your messages.
Location
A home and work address is far from the only way the government can track someone’s location. Many of us now have at least one GPS-enabled device within at all times, likely a phone or vehicle with navigation capabilities. But GPS is a navigation system owned by the US government and operated by the US Air Force.
The law hasn’t kept up and isn’t entirely clear on whether law enforcement can use GPS data to track someone without a court order. A 2012 Supreme Court ruling states that law enforcement cannot place a GPS tracker on a suspect’s vehicle without a warrant. However, that ruling doesn’t take into account cars and smartphones with GPS already built in. We can assume that the government can hone in and record someone’s movements using a GPS signal that they voluntarily broadcast into public airspace.
Even if Chris turns the GPS on his phone off, his approximate location can still be tracked by analyzing nearby wifi networks and cell towers that his phone pings whenever its in range. All internet-connected devices also have a unique IP address that’s assigned in accordance with a specific region.
The government can access the flight records of anyone who has flown to or from an airport in the US.
Photos and videos taken from the air above your house and from the street are legal, including satellite and drone imagery.
Biometric information
More avant-garde surveillance focuses on information that can identify a person’s physical characteristics. Biometric analysis can be used to identify people based on a photo, fingerprint, or even a retina scan.
If you have a passport, driver’s license, or any other government-issued photo ID, then you can be identified by the FBI using facial recognition. In 2017, The Guardianreported about half of adult Americans’ photographs are stored in databases accessible to the FBI. About 80 percent of them are non-criminal entries.
The NSA, meanwhile, intercepts tens of thousands of images per day of people’s faces. Those images are swept up by bulk surveillance programs that collect the images from emails, messages, social media, video conferences, and other communications, according to a 2014 New York Times report.
Advanced security cameras can be placed in transportation hubs like airports and train stations in order to spot and track specific people. As with other forms of bulk surveillance in the US, government agencies are limited to intercepting communications with foreigners or US citizens living and traveling overseas. Domestic communications between American citizens within US borders are legally off limits.
Firearms
The Firearm Owners Protection Act prohibits the US government from creating a national gun registry that keeps track of who owns what firearms. However, the ATF does keep some gun-related databases. These include:
Sales reports of specific firewarms with owner’s name and address
Guns suspected to be used for criminal purposes but not recovered by law enforcement
Traced gun records that include the retail purchaser and seller. These include registration records from out-of-business gun stores that incude name, address, make, model, serial number, and caliber
Guns reported as stolen to the ATF
Bargaining chips
The information age hasn’t really changed the types of information that government wants to get its hands on. It just created more vectors for government agencies to get that information, and the amount of information has increased to an exponential degree.
Recall that we’ve only outlined information that can be accessed without a court order. As you can see, all that info could be coalesced to form a reasonably accurate profile of a US citizen and their behavior. In her article, “A picture of you, in federal data,” Politico‘s Nancy Scola writes:
“Even if the blended data doesn’t contain a name or Social Security number, the image that comes into focus can quickly be so specific to plausibly belong to only one person, or a handful of people.”
But before you start wheezing into a paper bag, know that Big Brother isn’t as smart as he likes people to think. At least, not yet. All of this data is not part of one giant spreadsheet containing every American citizen. It’s messy, fractured, and jealously horded. In 2011, political scientist Alon Peled wrote about a top-down order by President Barack Obama to open up federal information caches to the public. The order floundered because, Peled said,
“Datasets are valuable assets which agencies labor hard to create, and use as bargaining chips in interagency trade, and are therefore reluctant to surrender these prized information assets for free.”
So the US government does know a lot about Alice, Bob, and Chris, but it hasn’t figured out a way to efficiently manage and utilize that information in cooperation with other agencies. At least, not for now. A single inter-agency searchable database could be a reality in the future.
In 1974, Senator Sam Ervin warned future Americans about surveillance overreach:
“When [the] quite natural tendency of government to acquire and keep and share information about citizens is enhanced by computer technology and when it is subjected to the unrestrained motives of countless political administrators,” he said. “The resulting threat to individual privacy makes it necessary for Congress to reaffirm the principle of limited, responsive government on behalf of freedom.”
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Recently, Syrian activists have launched an incredible campaign, called #TimeToBackHome. Users, among them popular bloggers, local politicians, analysts, and experts, are posting the image tagged #TimeToBackHome on their social media accounts.
Those first who supported #TimeToBackHome flash-mob were an independent Australian political economist and writer, internationalist and academic, member of Hands Off Syria,Tim Anderson, Syrian al-Akhbar journalist Basel Dayoub, Iraqi journalist Hasan ash-Shoun, Jordanian political analyst Mohammad Joursi, Syrian businessman Mahir at-Tahan and Inside Syria Media Center.
The flash mob has also been supported through social networks. Numerous pro-Russian groups such as “Hands of Syria”, “The Syrian Revolution”, “The truth about the war in Syria” and even the Yemeni regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party have joined the campaign on Facebook.
Activists are voicing their support to Anna Le Claire, Wilma Schrover, and Mark Taliano. They also mention Syrians under nicknames @abcxyztea, @paquita_337, @phoenx7, @clubbayern, @good_now4 as well as many others involved.
As noted by media reports, the campaign’s mission is to appeal to Syrians abroad to return home and build a new life together.
So, if you stand for restoring peace in this amazing Arab country and empathize with its citizens who suffered from war terror, you may express your support to the peace process.
Make a difference. Click “Edit profile” on any of your social platform and change your header/cover/profile photo to the image tagged #TimeToBackHome at least for an hour, then post it and share with your friends.
Don’t forget #TimeToBackHome hashtag. Send screenshots of your changed profile to [email protected]. Show the world your solidarity to the good and justice!
Thank you for your minute of hope.
The mail is open for your thoughts and suggestions on the subject too.
Hundreds of Syrians have already come back home from a refugee camp in the Lebanese town of Arsal, reported al-Mayadeen.
According to Jordanian Interior Minister, Ayman Safadi, tens of thousands of Syrians may return home soon as the situation in Southern Syria stabilizes.
Just for the past week, more than 200 Syrian refugees left Lebanese town of Shebaa to return home to Mazraat Beit Jinn.
Syria is really waiting for its citizens to come back, doing everything possible to that. Syrians want to restore their country together. Let’s support the #TimeToBackHome campaign!
*
Sophie Mangal (pen name) is a special investigative correspondent at Inside Syria Media Center where this article was originally published.
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The Labour party, relentlessly battered by an organised campaign of smears of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn – first for being anti-semitic, and now for honouring Palestinian terrorists – is reportedly about to adopt the four additional working “examples” of anti-semitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Labour initially rejected these examples – stoking yet more condemnation from Israel’s lobbyists and the British corporate media – because it justifiably feared, as have prominent legal experts, that accepting them would severely curb the freedom to criticise Israel.
The media’s ever-more outlandish slurs against Corbyn and the Labour party’s imminent capitulation on the IHRA’s full definition of anti-semitism are not unrelated events. The former was designed to bring about the latter.
According to a report in the Guardian this week, senior party figures are agitating for the rapid adoption of the full IHRA definition, ideally before the party conference next month, and say Corbyn has effectively surrendered to the pressure. An MP who supports Corbyn told the paper Corbyn would “just have to take one for the team”.
In a strong indication of the way the wind is now blowing, the Guardian added:
“The party said it would consult the main [Jewish] communal bodies as well as experts and academics, but groups such as the pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice for Labour have not been asked to give their views.”
No stomach for battle
The full adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism will be a major victory both for Israel and its apologists in Britain, who who have been seeking to silence all meaningful criticism of Israel, and for the British corporate media, which would dearly love to see the back of an old-school socialist Labour leader whose programme threatens to loosen the 40-year stranglehold of neoliberalism on British society.
Besieged for four years, Corbyn’s allies in the Labour leadership have largely lost the stomach for battle, one that was never about substance or policy but about character assassination. As the stakes have been constantly upped by the media and the Blairite holdouts in the party bureacracy, the inevitable has happened. Corbyn has been abandoned. Few respected politicians with career ambitions or a public profile want to risk being cast out into the wilderness, like Ken Livingstone, as an anti-semite.
This is why the supposed anti-semitism “crisis” in a Corbyn-led Labour party has been so much more effective than berating him for his clothes or his patriotism. Natural selection – survival of the smear fittest for the job – meant that a weaponised anti-semitism would eventually identify Corbyn as its prime target and not just his supporters – especially after his unexpectedly strong showing at the polls in last year’s election.
Worse, Corbyn himself has conceded too much ground on anti-semitism. As a lifelong anti-racism campaigner, the accusations of anti-semitism have clearly pained him. He has tried to placate rather than defy the smearers. He has tried to maintain unity with people who have no interest in finding common ground with him.
And as he has lost all sense of how to respond in good faith to allegations made in bad faith, he has begun committing the cardinal sin of sounding and looking evasive – just as those who deployed the anti-semitism charge hoped. It was his honesty, plain-speaking and compassion that won him the leadership and the love of ordinary members. Unless he can regain the political and spiritual confidence that underpinned those qualities, he risks haemorrhaging support.
Critical juncture
But beyond Corbyn’s personal fate, the Labour party has now reached a critical juncture in its response to the smear campaign. In adopting the full IHRA definition, the party will jettison the principle of free speech and curtail critical debate about an entire country, Israel – as well as a key foreign policy issue for those concerned about the direction the Middle East is taking.
Discussion of what kind of state Israel is, what its policy goals are, and whether they are compatible with a peace process are about to be taken off the table by Britain’s largest, supposedly progressive party.
That thought spurred me to cast an eye over my back-catalogue of journalism. I have been based in Nazareth, in Israel’s Galilee, since 2001. In that time I have written – according to my website – more than 900 articles (plus another few hundred blog posts) on Israel, as well as three peer-reviewed books and a clutch of chapters in edited collections. That’s a lot of writing. Many more than a million words about Israel over nearly two decades.
What shocked me, however, as I started to pore over these articles was that almost all of them – except for a handful dealing with internal Palestinian politics – would fall foul of at least one of these four additional IHRA examples Labour is about to adopt.
After 17 years of writing about Israel, after winning a respected journalism prize for being “one of the reliable truth-tellers in the Middle East”, the Labour party is about to declare that I, and many others like me, are irredeemable anti-semites.
Not that I am unused to such slurs. I am intimately familiar with a community of online stalkers who happily throw around the insults “Nazi” and “anti-semite” at anyone who doesn’t cheerlead the settlements of the Greater Israel project. But far more troubling is that this will be my designation not by bullying Israel partisans but by the official party of the British left.
Of course, I will not be alone. Much of my journalism has been about documenting and reporting the careful work of scholars, human rights groups, lawyers and civil society organisations – Palestinian, Israeli and international alike – that have charted the structural racism in Israel’s legal and administrative system, explaining often in exasperating detail its ethnocractic character and its apartheid policies. All of us are going to be effectively cast out, denied any chance to inform or contribute to the debates and policies of Britain’s only leftwing party with a credible shot at power.
That is a shocking realisation. The Labour party is about to slam the door shut in the faces of the Palestinian people, as well as progressive Jews and others who stand in solidarity with them.
Betrayal of Palestinians
The article in the Guardian, the newspaper that has done more to damage Corbyn than any other (by undermining him from within his own camp), described the incorporation of the full IHRA anti-semitism definition into Labour’s code of conduct as a “compromise”, as though the betrayal of an oppressed people was something over which middle ground could be found.
Remember that the man who drafted the IHRA definition and its associated examples, American Jewish lawyer Kenneth Stern, has publicly regretted their impact, saying that in practice they have severely curbed freedom of speech about Israel.
How these new examples will be misused by Corbyn’s opponents should already be clear. He made his most egregious mistake in the handling of the party’s supposed anti-semitism “crisis” precisely to avoid getting caught up in a violation of one of the IHRA examples Labour is about to adopt: comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
He apologised for attending an anti-racism event and distanced himself from a friend, the late Hajo Meyer, a Holocaust survivor and defender of Palestinian rights, who used his speech to compare Israel’s current treatment of Palestinians to early Nazi laws that vilified and oppressed Jews.
It was a Judas-like act for which it is not necessary to berate Corbyn. He is doubtless already torturing himself over what he did. But that is the point: the adoption of the full IHRA definition will demand the constant vilification and rooting out of progressive and humane voices like Meyer’s. It will turn the Labour party into the modern equivalent of Senator Joe McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities Committee. Labour activists will find themselves, like Corbyn, either outed or required to out others as supposed anti-semites. They will have to denounce reasonable criticisms of Israel and dissociate themselves from supporters of the Palestinian cause, even Holocaust survivors.
The patent absurdity of Labour including this new anti-semitism “example” should be obvious the moment we consider that it will recast not only Meyer and other Holocaust survivors as anti-semites but leading Jewish intellectuals and scholars – even Israeli army generals.
Two years ago Yair Golan, the deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military, went public with such a comparison. Addressing an audience in Israel on Holocaust Day, he spoke of where Israel was heading:
“If there’s something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance it’s the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then – 70, 80 and 90 years ago – and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016.”
Is it not a paradox that, were Golan a member of the Labour party, that statement – a rare moment of self-reflection by a senior Israeli figure – will soon justify his being vilified and hounded out of the Labour party?
Evidence of Israeli apartheid
Looking at my own work, it is clear that almost all of it falls foul of two further “examples” of anti-semitism cited in the full IHRA definition that Labour is preparing to adopt:
“Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
and:
“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
One hardly needs to point out how preposterous it is that the Labour party is about to outlaw from internal discussion or review any research, scholarship or journalism that violates these two “examples” weeks after Israel passed its Nation-State Basic Law. That law, which has constitutional weight, makes explict what was always implict in Israel as a Jewish state:
1. that Israel privileges the rights and status of Jews around the world, including those who have never even visited Israel, above the rights of the fifth of the country’s citizens who are non-Jews (the remnants of the native Palestinian population who survived the ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948).
2. that Israel, as defined in the Basic Law, is not a state bounded by internationally recognised borders but rather the “Land of Israel” – a Biblical conception of Israel whose borders encompass the occupied Palestinian territories and parts of many neighbouring states.
How, one might reasonably wonder, is such a state – defined this way in the Basic Law – a normal “democratic” state? How is it not structurally racist and inherently acquisitive of other people’s territory?
Contrary to the demands of these two extra IHRA “examples”, the Basic Law alone shows that Israel is a “racist endeavour” and that we cannot judge it by the same standards we would a normal western-style democracy. Not least, it has a double “border” problem: it forces Jews everywhere to be included in its self-definition of the “nation”, whether they want to be or not; and it lays claim to the title deeds of other territories without any intention to confer on their non-Jewish inhabitants the rights it accords Jews.
Demanding that we treat Israel as a normal western-style liberal democracy – as the IHRA full definition requires – makes as much sense as having demanded the same for apartheid South Africa back in the 1980s.
Unaccountable politics
The Labour party has become the largest in Europe as Corbyn has attracted huge numbers of newcomers into the membership, inspired by a new kind of politics. That is a terrifying development for the old politics, which preferred tiny political cliques accountable chiefly to corporate donors, leaving a slightly wider circle of activists largely powerless.
That is why the Blairite holdouts in the party bureaucracy are quite content to use any pretext not only to root out genuine progressive activists drawn to a Corbyn-led party, including anti-Zionist Jewish activists, but to alienate tens of thousands more members that had begun to transform Labour into a grassroots movement.
A party endlessly obsessing about anti-semitism, a party that has abandoned the Palestinians, a party that has begun throwing out key progressive principles, a party that has renounced free speech, and a party that no longer puts the interests of the poor and vulnerable at the centre of its concerns is a party that will fail.
That is where the anti-semitism “crisis” is leading Labour – precisely as it was designed to do.
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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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It is estimated that since 2012, 300 Swedish individuals have travelled abroad to join jihadi-groups. About 80 percent of these foreign fighters are associated with ISIS, and a substantial minorty with Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of the extremists have travelled back and forth between the conflict area and Sweden. Almost all of them have cheated the swedish state so as to access financial support under false pretences while working for ISIS. [I]
According to Swedish law, all of these returnees should be charged for having made preparations to commit crimes, as well as accepting an employment to perform illegal acts. Swedish law prohibits all of this. It also bans giving/receiving of payments to commit crimes. Additionally Swedish law also prohibits facilitating crimes. All of this is spelled out in our penalcode (i.e ”Brottsbalken”) chapter 23, paragraph 2. This in combination with the swedish ban against terrorism (”Lag (2003:148) om straff för terroristbrott” paragraph 4), which broadens the criteria of guilt to include conspiring to commit terrorism – makes the legal case even more clear cut. [II] In accordance with these laws, all returnees should all be prosecuted for preparations to commit murder, enslavement or terrorism – seeing as these are the main activities pertaining to ISIS. All who joined ISIS must have known that they volunteered to commit, or assisted others in committing terrorism. They have also received a salary for their willingness to perform illegal tasks if commanded to.
Whether one can be proven to have committed an act of terror, the standard applied currently, should not be relevant to the criminal activity of preparing or conspiring to commit a crime, a preparation that is fulfilled by simply traveling to ISIS-controlled territory and joining their ranks.
As a comparison, in 2016 a man was convicted of planning a murder when he traveled to his ex-partner with a knife and an axe in his car. The women was warned by friends of the man, that he harbored murderous intentions. Another man has been convicted for the act of travelling armed only with a hammer, to a place where he wrongfully believed his potential victim lived. The court decided that the potential victims life was never in danger, but still upheld the law by convicting the man for preparing to commit murder. Yet another person has been convicted of planning to steal a jacket, in this case for cutting of the alarm attached to it. The swedish high court, our supreme judicial authority, has also convicted a man for planning to travell to a bank with the purpose of robbing it. This latest case has the power of legal precedence, seeing as the case was seatled by the supreme court. The case should be a point of guidance for our legal system, a dissenting judge even noted in this case – that local courts have a high level of freedom to interpret at what stage the ”planing”-phase of a crime can be said to bave begun.[III] Which means that even if the issue of returnees stod on shaky grounds, the courts would still possess the prerogative to make novel interpretations of the law. All these facts point to one conclusion.
According to CNN, ISIS-members had to fill out ”a kind of job application for the terror group”. With the two employment options of being a ”fighter” or ”suicide attacker”. Having said this, we should take the time to look into what ”conspiring to commit crimes”, mentioned in the Swedish ban against terrorism – is supposed to mean. The swedish prosecution agency defines the term as referring to ”A form of preparation which means that a person in consultation with another person decides to commit a crime, attempts to induce another party to commit a crime or takes it upon themself to commit a crime”. [IV]
Ask yourself, how could signing a contract not be considered an act falling under this description? Isn’t the signing of a contract, for the purpose of agreeing to perform a service for an organisation, to take something upon onself? By travelling to a conflict zone and signing up as fighters for a terror group in the area were they are activly commiting their atrocities, all ISIS-returnees have committed far greater preperations for crimes, than all the swedish legal cases just mentioned. Even if a man joined ISIS, only to do non-violent acts in order to earn his paycheck, let us say he simply repaired cars – these vehicles are still used to transport slaves and travel to hotspots to commit murder. In other words he is still facilitating crimes, which as previously mentioned is outlawed as well. Both the law and legal precident, demand that returnees are charged, but the swedish authorities remain passive on the issue.
One thing should be clarified, the swedish government has instituted a specific ban against travelling to join terrorgroups, but this ban was instituted to late, late enough so that most ISIS-returnees can not be prosecuted under this law. Seeing as they travelled before the prohibition was put into effect. Some ISIS-members are prosecuted, but only if they admitt to or can be proven to be guilt of concrete violations that they as individuals have committed (by which i mean other violations than that the act of preparing crimes, a transgression that they are all guilty of – by definition).
All the major parties in sweden have special spokespersons on the issue of law and order, I have emailed all of these (I couldn’t find our feminist party FI:s spokesperson personal email, so I sent to their general email). Asking if they could file a policereport against all ISIS-returnees. Similarly to how the socialdemocrats womensgroup filed a policereport against a dating site, a site that promoted sugerdejting, something that the womensgroup thought should fall under the current ban against pimping and prostitution. Despit the law not being crystal clear in favour of their interpretation [V]
This womensgroup did not act in an unusual or unproductive way, laws do not exist in a vacuum but must instead be interpreted. Taking a case to court can radically change how laws are applied and how society functions. To take an American example, Lochner v. New York was one simple case that dramatically changed working life of New Yorkers and started what was called the Lochner era. Other parties have also filled police reports on separate occasions [VI]. This dramatic devolpment from taking a single case to court, is of course possible in Swedens own legal system as well. The Swedish retailer ICA once started selling alchohol, in hopes of having the statemonopoly on alcohol overturned by a judge.
The major parties of sweden would have a world to win by trying to bring a single ISIS-returnee to justice. They could accomplish a lot by simply asking tough questions to the judicial branch of government, or more dramatically by appointing new higher ups to our legal institutions (always acting within the limits set up for the executive branch of course, I am not advocating any form of banana republic:ish actions). For we must remember that the swedish prosecutions agencies passivity on the issue, is not an unavoidable state of affairs. In regards to hate speech, the local Malmö branch of the prosecution agencie stated recently in an official document meant to guide its employees in upholding the law, that: ”the separation between what falls under the realm of freedom of speech, and what falls within the realm of that which is harmfull for vulnerable groups, is a judicial question rather than a question of evidence – and should be settled by the courts through convictions. Instead of being decided upon by attorneys choosing which cases not to prosecute”[VII]
Through applying legitimate pressure, our parties could ensure that new guiding documents and policies were produced to guide attorneys in taking the same proactive approach regarding prosecuting on the issue of preparing to commit crimes.
They could help create a new precident that would bring redress to the victims of ISIS, by starting a chain reaction of having all returnees charged. They would stand nothing to lose. Despite this the major parties all ignore this option, most of them even ignored my emails. Except for two spokesperson, one for the Liberal party and one for the Green party. Take note that liberal in the swedish sense is closer to ”classical liberal” or libertarian (i.e ”small goverment”-advocates), rather than the American meaning of liberal (as being left of center). The spokesperson for the liberal party responded by asking if a prosecution against the ISIS-returnees was even possible. I recommended that he contact the Swedish security police Säpo (I was referred there myself when I tried to take the issue to court) to find out. I also asked him if the liberal party finds it problematic, if indeed it would turn out to be true that the ISIS-returnees were impossible to file a policereport against. He has not responded to my follow up questions.
The Green Party responded by stating that they did not have any need to file a police report. It is unclear whether their spokesperson understood the reasoning behind the Social democrats women’s group. Their spokesperson also insisted that the constitution was not worth changing in this case (this constitution amendment a last case scenario that will be explained in detail below). I asked if her inaction on the issue did not violate the golden rule (the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated), would not she have wanted all necessary measures to be taken if she were one of the victims of ISIS? Would she have found her own response sufficient, if she imagined herself in such a role? She did not respond to this question.
Upon repeated attempts to contact them, the left party finaly responded. In a similar manner to the green party, they chose not to act. None of the other parties have responded at all.
Another comparison of applied legal interpretation, is worth bringing up. A 79 year old man has been convicted of hatespeech for writing ”fuck allah”, ”fuck islam” and ”arab swines go home”. [VIII] This case illustrates a thought pattern, most likely a subconscious one, that I think is part of the explanation as to why no prosecution has been attempted. There is at play, a form of eurocentrism (to focus strongly on europe or europeans/excluding non-europeans and their experience), a eurocentrism that trivialises the experiences of the people of the third world. The 79 year old man wrote his slogans in view of swedish muslims and swedes with arabic ethnicity, and the legal system was therefore willing to take the case to court. The victims of ISIS are Iraqi and Syrians, and as such the system doesn’t value their rights as highly. Many westerners have come to view violations against people of the third world as ”natural” or inevitable, thereby rendering legal efforts to protect them irrelevant. With that in mind, take a hard looke at this Swedish ISIS-member:
His name is Michael Skråmo. How can one not look upon a white man born in Sweden travelling to a terrorist organisation in a third world country, signing a countract to kill for them and accepting a paycheck to do their bidding, facilitating their crimes against the local population – and not see the immense bigotry of the Swedish state choosing to not at least try and prosecute people like him upon returning to his homeland. The government agency responsible for crime prevention, has notet that: ”If the potential plaintiff [i.e victim] is swedish and the accused seems to be of foreign origin the propensity to investigate crime increases. But if both parties seem to be of foreign origin, the results are reveres: in these cases the police are less eager to start an investigation”. This pattern was observed regarding the phenomenon physical abuse. I would wager that it is a pattern that applies to law and order more generally. Doesn’t this pattern fit well as an explanation for the government’s inaction? To me it seems like swedish authorities have in their bigotry (subconsciously) excluded the perpetrators from the swedish identity, and the victims from their moral sphere of concern. They seem to view the incident as ”an ingroup problem” for ”arabs” or ”muslims” – not something that ”real swedes” should be concerned about.
Let us look closer at the previous case of the 79 year old man convicted of hate speech. The action of writing ”arab swines go home” is definetly immoral, but is this elderly man really a threat to anyone? Most likely not. Swedish muslims and Swedes with arabic ethnicity, could at most be offended by his activity. The swedish state values their feelings enough to prosecute, but it does not value the physical safety and freedom of people belonging to the third world, enough to even attempt to prosecute swedish inhabitants who travell far away to murder and enslave these third world:ers. ISIS has declared war on all shia muslims, and there are reports of them attempting to cleans the areas they conquered of all shias. ISIS have also been conducting a genocide against middle eastern christians. [IX].
As a consequence of not being charged, these ISIS-returnees will not be given a fair chance of rehabilitation. The victims of these ISIS-returnees are third world:ers today, but there is little in the way of stopping these victimisers from stealing a truck and killing swedes. We can rarely act immoral towards others, without creating the circumstances for being victimised ourself. The swedish states seems to assume that it can allow members of it’s own people to terrorise the inhabitants of the third world, without consequence – the question is how long this illussion will hold. In fact one ISIS-returnee has already been arrested for a murder he allegedly committed in sweden.
The principles at stake here are much larger than these 300 jihadist. Nazis that travelled to fight for the far right in Ukraine around 2014 [X] have also gone without any attempt at prosecution upon their return to Sweden. A conviction against these ISIS-returnees could be the first step against taking these nazi-warriors to court.
Some legal objections might be brought fourth here, such as it being necessary for the act to be illegal in both sweden and the countries were the actions were performed, to enable prosecution. This is not a problem in both the cases of Iraq and Syria. Both countries have laws on the books that enables a wide interpretation of terrorism and prosecution of terrorist. Human Rights Watch has even complained that the Iraqi law enables such a wide application that innocent people risk being convicted. Similar criticism has been aimed at Syrias ”Counter-terrorism Law” which contains a number of definition of ”terrorist act, terrorist organization and terrorism financing”, as well other Syrian laws banning ”promoting terrorist [activities]”. [XI] The point being that the laws of these countries are if anything too far reaching, not too modest to hinder prosecutions.
Another potential objection, is to claim that the laws I have named are impossible to apply in the ways I advocate – to insist that I am merely an amateur lost in the corridor of paragrafs and convoluted legal principles. If we assume this objection to be true, it only makes one wonder why new laws are not made to serve justice better? In which case the apologist for ISIS point out that the swedish constitution prohibits laws to be enacted for actions that took place before the laws were put into place, and that such enactments would be unethical. This principle is referred to as the ban against ex post facto-law (”retroaktiv rättstillämpning” in swedish). Ex post facto-law means to change a current law or make a new law that retroactively alters a defendant’s rights, by criminalizing and imposing punishment for an act that was not punishable at the time it was committed, increasing the severity of already existing punishment or changing the criteria for the determination of guilt.
The problem with this argument, is that it assumes that the constitution can not be amended to include exemptions to legal principles. Something that is not only possible, but done more or less routinely for much less noble goals than providing the victims of terrorism with justice. Introducing Swedens ban against hate speech meant that an exception to our constitutional right to freedom of speech has been put into law, calls from Brussels has also lead to changes in the constitution to solidify our EU-membership.
So in other words, our constitutional right to freedom of speech (one of the highest values of a democracy) has been intruded upon to protect the delicate sensibilities of swedish citizens – microaggressions against swedes is seen as more worthy of punishment than terrorism against the third world. With the flick of a pen, the swedish parlament could change our constitution so as to enable prosecution of all ISIS-returnes. We could allow the ban against travelling to join terrorgroups, to be unique in holding the quality of enabling retroactive usage – if we are afraid of government overreach we could also set a time limit to this change in the constitution. So that we are given a decade to prosecute the perpetrators, and then automatically return to legal normality unless the swedish parliament through an overwhelming majority decides to actively prolong this retroactive applicability. As previously mentioned, we have already changed our constitution to enforce our membership in the EU, so when the brussels bureaucrats call for constitutional changes the swedish parlament obliges, but when third world:ers call for justice, nothing is done.
And when it comes to the ethical problems of Ex post facto-laws, one must remember that something being unethical in general does not mean that there are no particular cases in which it is allowed or even a moral duty to perform. And also that all ethical principles are not created equal, some may under extreme circumstances be necessary to temporarily part from in order to protect even higher ideals. The trial against nazi war criminals after world war II has been criticized for making use of Ex post facto-laws [XII]. Should we have allowed the nazis go free simply to uphold this one principle, and thereby forsake all other principles of providing justice for past victims and protecting potential future victims?
To my knowledge, there seems to be no credibly way of defending the current position of not prosecuting all returning ISIS-members. If prosecutions were to start tomorrow, all would not be found guilty of course, some would successfully claime to have traveled to the area for other reasons. But the people who gloated about their membership in ISIS through socialmedia, or who lack the skill to lie their way out, would at least face justice.
If you wan’t to help solve this problem, I have started a petition that I would much appreciate to find your name here.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: tradet smakade torsdag.
For the ban against conspiring to commit terrorism, see the law against terrorism (”Lag (2003:148) om straff för terroristbrott” in the original swedish), paragraph 4. Link:https://lagen.nu/2003:148
The term I have translated to ”conspiring” is the somewhat ambiguous ”stämpling”. The swedish prosecution agency defines ”stämpling” as: ”A form of preparation which means that a person in consultation with another person, decides to commit a crime, attempts to induce another party to commit a crime or takes it upon themself to commit a crime”
The original swedish quote is: ”En form av förberedelse till brott som innebär att en person i samråd med någon annan beslutar att begå ett brott, försöker förmå någon att utföra brott eller åtar sig att utföra ett brott.” it can be found here: https://www.aklagare.se/ordlista/s/stampling/ Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20180721210300/https://www.aklagare.se/ordlista/s/stampling/
[IV] Gruber, Silvia Anna (2016/04/19) ”Fängelse för förberedelse till mord” SVT
The quote for the robberycase, in the original swedish:”I målet har på vissa åtalspunkter invänts att den s k försökspunkten inte har uppnåtts. TR:n gör i den delen följande allmänna bedömning. I de aktuella fallen hade M.J. planerat rånet och med kamrater och rånarutrustning begett sig till utgångsläget. Därefter har han med någon medgärningsman i den stulna bilen begett sig därifrån mot den utsedda penninginrättningen. Det bestämda syftet var att begå rån och själva rånet skulle utföras i omedelbart samband med bilfärden. Endast mellankommande omständigheter skulle hindra att brottet fullbordades. För den som väntade vid utgångsläget återstod inga åtgärder att utföra för att rånet skulle komma till stånd. Denne kunde inte heller påverka händelsernas vidare utveckling.
Försökspunkten är den punkt vid vilken planeringen slutar och brottets utförande påbörjas. Försökspunkten skall läggas där det förefaller naturligt. M.J. hade i de aktuella fallen utsett bank, skaffat vapen, bil och övrig rånarutrustning. Dessutom hade han samlat medgärningsmännen vid utgångsläget nära den tilltänkta brottsplatsen. TR:n anser att förberedelserna avslutades vid utgångsläget och att försök att begå rån påbörjades i och med att M.J. och kamrater, utrustade för rån, i den stulna bilen lämnade utgångsläget för färd mot utsedd bank. […] Domslut. HD ändrar på det sättet HovR:ns dom att M.H. i stället för försök till rån enligt åtalspunkterna 10 och 12 döms för förberedelse till rån och att längden av det M.H. ådömda fängelsestraffet bestäms till 5 år 4 mån. HD ändrar vidare HovR:ns dom på det sättet att M.A. i stället för försök till rån enligt åtalspunkterna 10 och 11 döms för förberedelse till rån och att längden av det M.A. ådömda fängelsestraffet bestäms till 1 år 6 mån. […] JustR Lambe var skiljaktig på sätt framgår av följande yttrande: Gränsdragning mellan förberedelse och försök vid en brottsplan som omfattar flera handlingar måste i ganska stor utsträckning ankomma på omständigheterna i det enskilda fallet (SOU 1940:19). […] Domstolarna anses vid gränsdragningen stå tämligen fria och kan vid ett sammanhängande händelseförlopp med flera led lägga försökspunkten på ett något tidigare stadium av händelseutvecklingen än slutskedet om det framstår som naturligt att anse att gärningsmannen då har påbörjat utförandet av brottet ”
The term I have translated to ”conspiring” is the somewhat ambiguous ”stämpling”. The swedish prosecution agency defines ”stämpling” as: ”A form of preparation which means that a person in consultation with another person decides to commit a crime, attempts to induce another party to commit a crime or takes it upon themself to commit a crime”
The original swedish quote is: ”En form av förberedelse till brott som innebär att en person i samråd med någon annan beslutar att begå ett brott, försöker förmå någon att utföra brott eller åtar sig att utföra ett brott.” it can be found here: https://www.aklagare.se/ordlista/s/stampling/
The quoted paragh taken from the local Malmö branch of the prosecution agencie, has been translated. The original was concentrated to one single sentence, but in order to accommodate the grammar of english it was needed split into two sentences and several commas and a dash (-) was added for the same reason.
The original swedish sentence is ”Avvägningen mellan skyddet för yttrandefriheten och skyddet för utsatta grupper är en rättsfråga snarare än en bevisfråga och bör avgöras av domstol genom en dom hellre än av åklagare i form av negativa åtalsbeslut.” (emphasis added) it is taken from (2018/07)”Hets mot folkgrupp på sociala medier – en vägledning” Utvecklingscentrum Malmö, see page 6.
[IX] Dujmovic, Robert (2018/03/09) ”79-åring klottrade rasism på toaletter och busskur” Helsingborgs Dagblad.
”Bashar al-Assad Issued Law 19 of 2012 which contains a number of definitions of ‘terrorist act, terrorist organization and terrorism financing’ in addition to penalties of committing or promoting terrorist actions.”
The quote above is taken from: no named author (2015/04) “Special Report on Counter-Terrorism Law No. 19 and the Counter-Terrorism Court in Syria CounterTerrorism Court: a Tool for War Crimes Violations” Documentation Center in Syria – VDC, page 10. Link: http://www.vdc-sy.info/pdf/reports/1430186775-English.pdf
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Today, the largest economic states express their interest in the Arctic. Vast natural resources constitute the reason for their interest. Moreover, the Arctic is one of the few places on the planet that have yet to be delineated, because initially the region was not divided between the countries neighboring it. At least five states are claiming national arctic zones: the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark. All these countries have access to the coast of the Arctic Ocean.
It should be noted that for Denmark, a small European country, Greenland is a pass to the Arctic club, and Copenhagen’s sovereignty over this island looks very unusual and somewhat resembles the colonial system that collapsed in the middle of the twentieth century. Territorial ambitions of the states may be backed up by different arguments in the future, but it is clear that the main one is the country’s real readiness to actively develop the North.
The Arctic holds a special place in the Russian economy. Over 11% of the country’s gross domestic product and more than a quarter of the Russian exports are provided by the territories where less than 2% of the Russians live. It is here the main mineral resource deposits of the country are located – gas, oil, coal, non-ferrous metals and huge reserves of clean drinking water – one of the main world treasures of the modern technogenic civilization .
The economy of polar projects is ambiguous. The construction and maintenance of one mile of the railway infrastructure, for example, costs about five times more expensive here than in the southern latitudes. However, the cost of liquefied natural gas production is at least a third lower than in Qatar.
Last year, the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy issued its annual review of the energy sector in Russia, which examined the effectiveness of the sanctions policy towards Moscow and the sanctions impact on the implementation of existing and prospective projects on the Arctic shelf. The review indicates the sanctions played a paradoxical role: they increased attractiveness of the Arctic and shale projects at a certain stage, as the Russian authorities changed the tax and tariff policy that made extraction of natural resources in the Arctic profitable business and as a result attracted foreign investors such as Total, Exxon and others.
Today, more and more experts from Washington-based think tanks begin to understand the ineffectiveness of continuing the current sanctions confrontation. Thus, Daniel Fried, who coordinated sanctions in the Obama administration, noted the sanctions package against Nord Stream-2 could damage relations with Germany and President Trump should apply sanctions measures only after coordination with European partners, since every hasty action could damage the relations between the United States and the European Union. The White House was then called upon to avoid imposing sanctions against Russia’s offshore oil and gas projects on the shelf, as too many US financial institutions are tied up for their financing, and the European partners’ unwillingness to go beyond existing restrictions can create dangerous gap in the joint sanctions policy coordination.
Such fears of the former high-ranking American officials who were at the root of the entire sanctions campaign against Moscow are quite indicative, especially amid the growing discontent of Europeans, who bear the main burden of costs as a result of US geopolitical combinations.
At the same time, the trend of transferring key export flows of Russian fossil raw materials noted by the specialists of the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy indicates that there are rational reasons in Washington for believing that the turn to Asia declared by the Russian leadership has long-term prospects. At the same time, the adoption of new sanctions packages pushes Moscow to move in this direction and does not motivate the Russian leadership to give up protecting the national interests, as the Kremlin sees them.
A little context is mandatory to perfectly define the message that Rudolf was carrying. The outstanding works of researchers such as Anthony Sutton and Charles Higham are critical in our understanding of the real historical context surrounding the creation of the Nazi war machine. When in 1933 Hitler accessed to the Chancellery in the Reichstag, Germany was in financial limbo. Worst, the nation was in the gutters of limbs. It owed tens of billions in reparations for WW1, and its inability to comply had provoked a gargantuan-scale inflation crisis on the mark in 1923 that cut the currency to 1/500 billionth of its original value. To make matters worse, the country suffered along everyone the world Crash of 1929. So how in the world was Germany able to eradicate unemployment and create the most formidable military machine the world had ever seen in just 6 years? Over achievement is under rated when it comes to explain the German Miracle of the ’30s.
The first tool that is required in our investigator’s toolbox is to admit the very documented fact that the Bank of England, controlled by the Rothschild family, had been involved in the financing of the Nazis. It had become a common procedure for the rich European banking family to fund enemies as well as allies, in order to make profits from both sides of wars since Napoleon. The self-proclaimed French Emperor of the early 19th century had been hired as a proxy by Rothschild who wanted to impose his private central banks in the conquered countries. So, the heirs of the Rothschild family saw in Hitler their next Napoleon, who would submit rival colonial empires like Belgium, the Netherlands and France, as well as destroying the mighty USSR, in order to singlehandedly take the reins of the New World Order, which is simply the economical and political ruling of the whole planet by a handful of bankers. Even though the New World Order sounds like a supercharged conspiracy theory, it’s an indisputable and quite simple concept.
Even if the infamous banking family helped the Führer, the bulk of the money that flooded Germany between 1933 and 1939 didn’t come from England, but mainly from the United States of America. Not the American government per say, but more specifically American bankers and industries. Through white-washing money schemes, through the newly founded Bank of International Settlements and through joint venture investments in Germany with their companies such as Standard Oil, GM, Ford, ITT, General Electric or IBM; Rockefeller, Morgan, Harriman, DuPont, Ford and a few other billionaires were mainly responsible for what is known as the German Miracle, that now looks more like an American Dream. Thanks to British and American investments, Nazi Germany went from the poorest country in Europe to the second world economy. Even though education won’t tell you anything about it, the overwhelming help that Hitler got from the West is never disputed because it was exposed in numerous US inquiries, senatorial committees and court cases based on the Trading with the enemy Act adjusted by President Roosevelt in 1933, but the verdicts always came after the usual “we didn’t know what Hitler was going to do next” explanation. As if Mein Kampf, published in 1925, hadn’t been clear enough on the matter.
The War
Things looked fine for England at the start. Hitler quickly filled the mandate he had on top of his agenda by invading the colonial trio of Netherlands-Belgium-France in a month and a half. The complicity of the British Army is appalling in the lightening speed success of the Wehrmacht. The four “allied” countries had together 149 divisions, or 2 900 000 men, while the Wehrmacht had 2 750 000 men split in 137 divisions. Allied countries had more canons, more tanks, more ammunition, yet France, a country of 70 million people, gave up in one month! History tried to explain this lame defeat by the unstoppable German blitzkrieg, but this blitz was advancing at 15 kms/hour, when it was moving at all. One would think that there was plenty of time to aim at this jogging pace. Russian historian Nikolay Starikov has looked thoroughly over what happened on the ground to find some plausible clues to the quick defeat of France in June 1940, which can be summed up very simply: Churchill betrayed France, as clear as crystal, by purposely failing the French General Weygan’s plan of defense. This grand treason is also circumstantial evidence of what self-proclaimed virtuous nations can do to each other that extends to the destruction of an ally for your own benefit. But Hitler was yet to reward Churchill for his great help in the conquest of France, so he turned a blind eye on the evacuation of the British army in Dunkirk that history explains as a “strategic blunder” from Hitler. Reality does explain rather mysterious events of the war that only find dubious explanations in our books; another unexplainable event was the vicious attack of the British Navy on France’s fleet in July 1940, presumably to avoid that the ships fall in German hands. It turns out that it was another very positive step in order to complete the destruction of the French colonial empire, as were the operations by Rothschild-funded Japan that were ousting the French from Indochina at the same time. From the British point-of-view, the Wehrmacht pit-bull would next leave France and jump at the throat of USSR.
Against Churchill’s expectations, the next few months were devoted to the Battle of Britain that started by a German invasion of the Channel Islands, from where German planes could start bombing England. Churchill was evil, but he wasn’t so stupid as to not understand that Hitler had stopped working for England. Whatever the deal was, the RAF defense definitely slowed down any advantage that the Luftwaffe could gain over the British skies and after the horrendous mutual bombings of London and Berlin, Germany decided on October 12th 1940 to postpone its operation Sea Lion designed to invade England with ground troops. It looked like Germany and England were in a stalemate by the winter of 1940-1941.
If you’re acquainted with the official history, you would think that Hitler’s attack on great American allies such as France and England would have motivated the USA to enter the war at once, but no. Not at all. President Roosevelt even declared on October 30th 1940 that “his boys wouldn’t go to war”. This policy would extend until the spring of 1941, and not a single move, decision or sanction was undertaken by the US government that really looked like it had decided to never get involved in WW2.
The theater of war moved into North Africa and the Middle East for the winter, where people could kill and maim each other under more pleasant and milder climate. With the melting of ice and snow in the spring of 1941, Hitler was facing two options: launch Sea Lion and invade England, or leave the West in peace and launch Barberossa against the Soviet Union. Both were major operations that couldn’t be sustained by Germany at once, and Hitler had to make a choice. He also knew that the invasion of England would’ve mortally crippled the Rothschild family’s influence on the planet and paved the way for Wall Street to rule the world at will.
Well folks, that’s precisely when Rudolf Hess was parachuted in England on May 10th 1941. Without any form of speculation, it now appears very clearly that Hitler didn’t want to take this mighty decision alone, and that he didn’t want the rest of the world to know about his dilemma.
The Proposal
According to an article published in May 1943 by the magazine American Mercury, here’s what the Führer proposed to England through Rudolf Hess:
Hitler offered total cessation of the war in the West. Germany would evacuate all of France except Alsace and Lorraine, which would remain German. It would evacuate Holland and Belgium, retaining Luxembourg. It would evacuate Norway and Denmark. In short, Hitler offered to withdraw from Western Europe, except for the two French provinces and Luxembourg [Luxembourg was never a French province, but an independent state of ethnically German origin], in return for which Great Britain would agree to assume an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards Germany as it unfolded its plans in Eastern Europe. In addition, the Führer was ready to withdraw from Yugoslavia and Greece. German troops would be evacuated from the Mediterranean generally and Hitler would use his good offices to arrange a settlement of the Mediterranean conflict between Britain and Italy. No belligerent or neutral country would be entitled to demand reparations from any other country, he specified.
Basically, Hitler wanted to be a partner in a British-led New World Order by taking care of Eastern Europe. He even spoke in front of the Reichstag about the option of peace with England. The American Mercury article concluded that these very likely terms offered by Hitler to be implemented on the spot were swiftly rejected by Churchill since none of the conditions ever happened, but in reality, they were terms to be applied after the war, after the destruction of the USSR by Germany. But the Red Army had other future plans, of course.
There is no doubt that we are now deep into speculation about whatever proposal Hess made to England, but in reality, this wasn’t the main point of his mission. And independently of the exact terms that were discussed, what was to happen next dissipates any cloud of mystery, be it thin or thick.
To be continued.
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Working both as a TV documentary director and journalist for 25 years, Sylvain Laforest published in 2016 La Déprogr@mmation (in french only) about media disinformation, and his second book Wars and Lies will come out in 2018 with the Progressive Press label.
All images, except the featured, in this article are from the author.
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I lost my flight.. On purpose.. I was pretty sure I would though, when I left for Palestine. To be honest, I don’t think its gonne make it easier to leave later. The more I know, the more people I know – the more involved I get. And how, I wonder, am I going be able to get on a plane and leave, when my new friends aren’t even able to leave the West Bank. They can’t leave and they can’t live. Are some of my new friends gonne be arrested when I’m gone? Will I lose some? It does not bear thinking about..
Yesterday I came home from the northern Jordan Valley, knackered.. Stayed one night, sleeping under the stars next to a guava grove. Almost a full moon, nice breeze. Accompanied by my Icelandic friend and fellow volunteer Anna, and a very nice new Palestinian friend, Rasheed. Sounds lovely right? To the right we could see the lights from Jordan, separating us was the Jordan river and to the left, the so called holy land.. Still sounds pretty nice? Well, reason for being there was to wait for the Israeli soldiers who had announced that they would arrive the next morning to tear down the green houses of local farmers –claiming they have been stealing water. A.k.a – the water Israel is `legally`taking from the farmers.
The local farmers do not have access to the water under their farms, there literally are Israeli waterpipes under their land, going to illegal settlement – and they themselves – do not have access. They are at the mercy of the Israelis who charge them the some of the highest water prices in the world.
The day before Israelis soldiers, heavily armed, had come to the village to inspect the pipes.. To see if anyone was stealing their stolen water. In the neighbouring village the soldiers welded shut two connections, and broke a pipe. Cutting farmers off from their water supply. In the past two months this has been happening aggressively. Israelis breaking pipes, Palestinians desperately trying to get water back.
This is farmland. The bread basket of Palestine it was known as– due to the immense underground water reserves. 4 times a year they could harvest. But, already the Palestinian population is down from 320.000 to 56.000. The ones left live in refugee camps, in caves (!!), many in tents (they are not allowed to build – one man has had his home demolished 34 times..So I guess living in a tent is just practical for obvious reasons) – and some still remain on their farms… To exist is to resist … I saw this written on many walls.. To exist is to resist… Who is the terrorist?
Thankfully the soldiers did not wake us up.. I had one scare, when there was a commotion in the bushes not far from my make shift bed… Rasheed was up like a flash and checking with his flash light…in The end he excitedly called me over to reveal a pig.. I never actually saw it though, so I’m not sure if it was a language thing or if it was a pig on the loose… Anyway… Thankfully soldiers did not arrive.. But that’s not to say they wouldnt arrive today, or tomorrow… Not so thankfully we discovered that the water pressure that supplied the Guava field we were next to had been cut off.. Its a communal field. So Rasheed rushed off, us in tow, trying to find the problem… As they only get 2 hours of water for this field.. In the end they gave up… The 2 hours were up anyway… And if the Israelis stop the water, well then they stop the water... I asked, and apologised for asking, if there ever is a possibility of calling the Israelis to see if there is a problem that can be solved with the water they are actually allowed to take… I’m sure you can imagine the answer.
Before heading back to Ramallah. Our friend took us on a drive. It was depressing… And beautiful, good conversation, good music, for a bit it almost felt quite normal, pleasant.. But mostly depressing. The Jordan river behind a security fence, Israel having declared it a security zone. Illegal of course, but its Israel… River beds have run dry. Quite often we would drive past green oasis, and lush fields – illegal settlement, to where the water is diverted… At one point an illegal settlement was right opposite the refugee camp. The water lines for the settlements, goes under the camp. In the camp they have water tanks and they have to pay to have them filled.. I’m not making this shit up!! Its unbelievable!! I don’t why anyone would want to live like this – and I’m talking about the illegal settlers. Apparently many are poor people from Russian and Eastern Europe – enticed to come here where they get land and water.. – and live like kings, behind barbed wires … Staring at refugee camps where the ethnic population lives…. And should they wish, they also have the opportunity to shoot some people with out consequences (no joke)…
For the animal lovers.. Of course this is also affects the wild life.. I did not even consider this.. But the gazelles, the dears….we saw 3 gazelles… They are cut off from the water too… Israel is killing the holy land, if it ever was. But for sure there are legends born and legends dying in Palestine every day. How they manage to continue living, not to give up, to find solutions when Israel finds a new way to oppress… Its just… I don’t know… I’m witnessing the most extreme human greatness… The capacity to make a life in the most difficult of circumstance… When Palestine is free, which I hope will be soon.. We can all come here for holiday, and how I would love to bump in to Palestinians on holiday abroad, not as refugees, but as holiday makers.. If they are this great under occupation, I cant imagine what they will be like when they have their freedom.
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On August 15, ISIS attacked several positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies in the southern part of the al-Taim oil field in the province of Deir Ezzor. According to pro-opposition sources, the following clashes resulted in minor casualties among the both sides but the terrorist group’s members were forced to retreat causing almost no damage to the government’s infrastructure in al-Taim.
In July and August, ISIS units carried several attacks on SAA positions in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert. According to local sources, these attacks are an attempt to draw the SAA attention from ISIS cells hiding in the desert area at the administrative borders between the provinces of al-Suwayda and Rif Damashq.
The estimated manpower of the ISIS units operating in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert, and according to some sources in the US zone of responsibility near the At-Tanf garrison, is about 1,000 members.
Abu al-Fath al-Farghaly, a senior commander of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda), warned Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that his group will “cut the feet” of any soldier, who would attack the so-called opposition in the province of Idlib.
“The Mujahedeen are in their strongest physical and moral status and their will won’t decline for a moment until the liberation of Damascus and beyond,” al-Farghaly said in an open letter to Lavrov, according to the HTS-linked news agency Iba’a.
This unprecedented open letter has been described by Syrian experts as a desperate attempt to boost morale of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies ahead of a possible SAA operation in the province of Idlib. Previously, militants groups have repeatedly claimed that they would never retreat from Aleppo city, Daraa, Quneitra and other key areas. However, all of them has been liberated by the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance. The history is about to repeat itself once again in Idlib.
Meanwhile, the SAA artillery has increased strikes on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham targets near the villages of Sarja and Umm Rajim and nearby areas in southern Idlib. Several members Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and Jaysh al-Izza were reportedly killed in the shelling.
Artillery strikes as well as separate airstrikes by the Syrian military is aimed at destroying the militants’ defense infrastructure and weapon depots. This would help the SAA in case of a large-scale confrontation in this area.
While some pro-government sources have already claimed that the Idlib advance will be launched soon, many still depends on results of the ongoing behind the scenes negotiations between Russia and Turkey on the issue. The situation is developing.
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On Wednesday, Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, a White House statement saying:
“Historically, former heads of intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been allowed to retain access to classified information after their government service so that they can consult with their successors regarding matters about which they may have special insights and as a professional courtesy. Neither of these justifications supports Mr. Brennan’s continued access to classified information,” adding:
“(A)ny benefits that senior officials might glean from consultations with Mr. Brennan are now outweighed by the risks posed by his erratic conduct and behavior.”
After Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said other former US officials may lose theirs. Their status is under review. See below.
Have no sympathy for Brennan. He’s responsible for cooking up Russiagate – falsely claiming the Kremlin interfered in America’s political process, a bald-faced lie. .
DNC/John Podesta emails were leaked, not hacked – an indisputable fact media suppress to their disgrace.
The Big Lie alone matters when it’s the official narrative. The Russian meddling hoax and phony Kremlin threat to US security are central to maintaining adversarial relations with America’s “invented enemy”.
Russia and other invented enemies justify pouring countless trillions of dollars down a black hole of waste (military spending), fraud and abuse at the expense of eroding social justice and other vital homeland needs.
They’re pretexts for waging permanent wars of aggression against nations threatening no one – an endless cycle of slaughter and destruction, human misery inflicted on countless millions,.
Washington’s bipartisan class shares guilt for what’s going on, Trump the latest in a long line of US warrior presidents.
His regime placed the following individuals under review for possible revocation of their security clearances:
Former DNI James Clapper, former NSA and CIA head Michael Hayden,Sally Yates, Susan Rice, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Orr. Former FBI director James Comey’s security clearance was rescinded at the time of his sacking.
All of the above officials are undemocratic Dems. All are members of Washington’s elite, unaccountable for their abuses of power while in office.
That’s what matters most. Revoking their security clearances usually retained by former officials is inadequate, a slap on the wrist alone.
Security clearances of former GOP elite members aren’t under review by the Trump regime.
Washington’s current and former criminal class is bipartisan. The issue isn’t whether they retain or lose their security clearances.
It’s failure to address their past and ongoing high crimes against humanity at home and abroad.
Bill and Hillary Clinton, GW Bush, Cheney, Obama, and countless other members of Washington’s elite are legally, ethically and morally compromised beyond redemption.
Yet they’ve become super-rich from their disservice to the nation and humanity, from high crimes too egregious to ignore.
Brennan is an NBC News talking head last February.
,US broadcast and cable channel employ a virtual army of former government and military officials – paid to lie and otherwise deceive viewers, not responsibly inform them about vital world and national issues.
Virtually all undemocratic Dems are fierce Trump critics, most often for the wrong reasons – Brennan one of the worst, a despicable character belonging in prison, not profiting from his persona.
Following July Putin/Trump Helsinki summit talks, Brennan outrageously accused the US president of “treason,” along with suggesting Russia may be blackmailing him – scandalous remarks media scoundrels failed to denounce.
Washington’s political system is too debauched to fix. It’s on a slippery slope toward totalitarian rule the way things are heading – with support from the nation’s bipartisan criminal elite.
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
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Israeli investigations when conducted virtually always whitewash high crimes.
Three times since December 2008, IDF forces waged preemptive naked aggression on Gaza, falsely claiming the Strip was attacked in self-defense.
Protective Edge in summer 2014 was Israel’s most devastating war since its 1948 transformation of historic Palestine into an apartheid Jewish state.
Over 2,200 Gazans were ruthlessly slaughtered, including entire families, over 11,000 injured.
Around 550 children were murdered in cold blood – two-thirds under age 12, another 3,400 injured, over 1,000 maimed for life.
Like Washington, Israel considers civilians legitimate targets. International law calls killing, injuring, and otherwise harming them grievously flagrant war crimes.
On 1 August 2014, Israel and Hamas agreed to a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire.
The IDF ignored it. In Rafah bordering Egypt, Israeli soldiers preemptively attacked Hamas fighters, Israeli Lt. Hadar Goldin captured during the incident.
One of the deadliest episodes of the war followed, lasting four days, massacring over 200 civilians, countless others injured, hundreds of Palestinian homes and other civilian structures destroyed or heavily damaged – war crimes by any standard.
According to Israel’s military, over 2,000 bombs, missiles, rockets, and artillery shells were fired on Rafah, around 1,000 during a three-hour August 1 time frame – intense hellfire largely against civilians.
Overwhelming evidence showed Israeli forces attacked Rafah with disproportionate, indiscriminate ferocity – targeting civilians in their homes, others fleeing for safety, and anything seen moving.
What happened was savage revenge attacks for capturing an IDF soldier, collectively punishing the entire population of Rafah – flagrantly violating the UN Charter, Fourth Geneva, and other international law.
A UN Independent Commission of Inquiry accused Israel of disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks amounting to war crimes.
Around a year after Israeli aggression ended, IDF prosecutors found none of its forces guilty of war crimes, falsely claiming insufficient evidence, three soldiers alone indicted for looting.
No one was held accountable for the Rafah massacre, no proper investigation conducted.
On Wednesday, Israel’s military advocate general major general Sharon Afek formally closed the IDF whitewash probe into the Black Friday massacre, saying no military police inquiry was warranted.
No criminal or other proceedings will be pursued against anyone involved in what happened – case closed, the way Israel always absolves its forces of indisputable war crimes.
Justice for Palestinians is always denied, including from the international community, one-sidedly supporting Israel no matter how egregious its high crimes.
The August 1 – 4, 2014 Rafah massacre was carried out under Israel’s so-called Hannibal Directive.
It’s been official Israeli policy since 1986 – kept secret for many years.
It established live fire rules in cases of Israeli soldier abductions, stating:
“During an abduction, the major mission is to rescue our soldiers from the abductors even at the price of harming or wounding our soldiers.”
“Light-arms fire is to be used in order to bring the abductors to the ground or to stop them.”
“If the vehicle or the abductors do not stop, single-shot (sniper) fire should be aimed at them, deliberately, in order to hit the abductors, even if this means hitting our soldiers.”
“(E)verything will be done to stop the vehicle and not allow it to escape.”
Code-named “Hannibal,” the directive considers a dead IDF soldier better than a captured one.
The IDF wants soldiers taken alive avoided, concerned about political embarrassment, wanting enemies denied bargaining chips, along with being able to offer no concessions to secure abducted soldier releases.
The father of an Israeli soldier abducted years earlier perhaps spoke for others against Hannibal’s mandate, saying:
“It’s shocking to think that a soldier will execute his pal…I prefer a captive son to a dead son. That way I still have hope.”
Hannibal was revised several times. Its original mandate and spirit remain. Israeli has no qualms about killing its own.
It massacres Palestinians with impunity time and again. Cold-blooded murder is official Israeli policy, accountability never an issue.
A Final Comment
On Monday, Israeli war minister Avigdor Lieberman admitted another war on Gaza is coming, saying:
“The question we should ask is not whether another round of fighting will start, but when will it start,” adding:
“We are prepared, know what we should do and how to do it.”
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
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There has been a dramatic shift in how the United States government carries out its business internationally. Admittedly, Washington has had a tendency to employ force to get what it has wanted ever since 9/11, but it also sometimes recognized that other countries had legitimate interests and accepted there was a place for diplomacy to resolve issues short of armed conflict. The Bush Administration reluctance to broaden its engagement in the Middle East after it recognized that it had blundered with Iraq followed by Obama’s relaxation of tensions with Cuba and his negotiation of a nuclear agreement with Iran demonstrated that sanity sometimes prevailed in the West Wing.
That willingness to be occasionally accommodating has changed dramatically, with the State Department under Mike Pompeo currently more prone to deliver threats than any suggestions that we all might try to get along. It would be reasonable enough to criticize such behavior because it is intrinsically wrong, but the truly frightening aspect of it would appear to be that it is based on the essentially neoconservative assumption that other countries will always back down when confronted with force majeure and that the use of violence as a tool in international relations is, ultimately, consequence free.
I am particularly disturbed with the consequence free part as it in turn is rooted in the belief that countries that have been threatened or even invaded have no collective memory of what occurred and will not respond vengefully when the situation changes. There have been a number of stunningly mindless acts of aggression over the past several weeks that are particularly troubling as they suggest that they will produce many more problems down the road than solutions.
The most recent is the new sanctioning of Russia over the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury England. For those not following developments, last week Washington abruptly and without any new evidence being presented, imposed additional trade sanctions on Russia in the belief that Moscow ordered and carried out the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4th. The report of the new sanctions was particularly surprising as Yulia Skripal has recently announced that she intends to return to her home in Russia, leading to the conclusion that even one of the alleged victims does not believe the narrative being promoted by the British and American governments.
Though Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded with restraint, avoiding a tit-for-tat, he is reported to be angry about the new move by the US government and now believes it to be an unreliable negotiating partner. Considering the friendly recent exchanges between Putin and Trump, the punishment of Russia has to be viewed as something of a surprise, suggesting that the president of the United States may not be in control of his own foreign policy.
Turkey is also feeling America’s wrath over the continued detention of an American Protestant Pastor Andrew Brunson by Ankara over charges that he was connected to the coup plotters of 2016, which were allegedly directed by Fetullah Gulen, a Muslim religious leader, who now resides in Pennsylvania. Donald Trump has made the detention the centerpiece of his Turkish policy, introducing sanctions and tariffs that have led in part to a collapse of the Turkish lira and a run on the banking system which could easily lead to default and grave damage to European banks that hold a large party of the country’s debt.
And then there is perennial favorite Iran, which was hit with reinstated sanctions last week and is confronting a ban on oil sales scheduled to go into effect on November 4th. The US has said it will sanction any country that buys Iranian oil after that date, though a number of governments including Turkey, India and China appear to be prepared to defy that demand. Several European countries are reportedly preparing mechanisms that will allow them to trade around US restrictions.
What do Russia, Turkey and Iran have in common? All are on the receiving end of punitive action by the United States over allegations of misbehavior that have not been demonstrated. Nobody has shown that Russia poisoned the Skripals, Turkey just might have a case that the Reverend Brunson was in contact with coup plotters, and Iran is in full compliance with the nuclear arms agreement signed in 2015. One has to conclude that the United States has now become the ultimate angry imperial power, lashing out with the only thing that seems to work – its ability to interfere in and control financial markets – to punish nations that do not play by its rules. Given Washington’s diminishing clout worldwide, it is a situation that is unsustainable and which will ultimately only really punish the American people as the United States becomes more isolated and its imperial overreach bankrupts the nation. As America weakens, Russia, Turkey, Iran and all the other countries that have been steamrolled by Washington will likely seek revenge. To avoid that, a dramatic course correction by the US is needed, but, unfortunately, is unlikely to take place.
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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
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Brexit has brought out the worst in us much more than it has brought out the best in us. We have reasons to fear for our country. Our way of life is being seriously threatened and there’s not much we can do about it.
In a report out yesterday, “Brexit Poll – Have They All Gone Mad” we showed how one-third of the adult population of Britain would now put up with anything to leave the EU. And when I say anything, I mean literally that. This included forcing Northern Ireland out of the union and forced to join Southern Ireland within the EU.
The head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) told a committee in the House of Commons that the new IRA have already themselves declared Brexit was an “opportunity” to kick-start the nationalist cause in Ireland and was demanding hundreds more officers to help quash the expected violence. Could the result of that be acts of terror including a bombing campaign to match the horrors of the IRA campaign in the 1970s, 80s and 90s?
Indeed, this same one-third would find the complete break-up of the union of Britain acceptable as well. Scotland, Ireland and or Wales.
Already, as a direct result of Brexit, we have many more racially motivated attacks in Britain. Speaking at the end of her mission to the UK, Prof Tendayi Achiume, UN special rapporteur on racism specifically highlighted the Brexit-related growth in “explicit racial, ethnic and religious intolerance”, including extreme views that have gained ground in mainstream political parties of the left and the right.
Nearly two-thirds of the electorate is so fed-up with Brexit, they don’t care what happens as long as ‘we get on with it’.
In the meantime, public opinion has also shifted against Brexit. We are now heading into dangerous waters filled with predators who were once beneath the surface now being given air.
Change of sentiment – Change of atmosphere
The 632 seats in England, Scotland and Wales that make up Britain’s parliament were examined for an extensive study. It found that 112 had switched from Leave to Remain. The new analysis suggests there are now 341 seats with majority Remain support, up from 229 seats at the referendum.
One seat has switched support in Scotland and 97 have switched in England, while 14 of the 40 seats in Wales have changed from Leave to Remain. Overall, the model puts Remain on 53% support, with 47% backing Leave.
Data scientists compiling the study used a technique known as multi-level regression and post-stratification, similar to that used by YouGov in its pre-election model, which proved far more accurate than conventional opinion polls.
Among the constituencies to switch from Leave to Remain is that of Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and face of the Leave campaign. Support for Remain in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency has risen from 43.6% to 51.4%, according to the new model.
Surrey Heath, the constituency of the other Leave figurehead, Michael Gove, also emerged as having a pro-Remain majority. Support for Remain increased from 48% in 2016 to 50.2%. There was also a 12.8-point swing to Remain in shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s seat of Hayes and Harlington.
The seats of three pro-Leave Labour MPs switched to Remain. Birkenhead, Frank Field’s constituency, now has a 58.4% majority in favour of Remain. Graham Stringer’s Blackley and Broughton constituency now has a 59% in favour of Remain. Kelvin Hopkins’s Luton North seat now has 53.1% backing Remain.
The point being made here is this. If one-third of the population, who are willing to go to any lengths to get Brexit no matter what the consequences – what will they do if the electorate want to change their minds and vote to stay. The change of sentiment will give fresh air to a much more toxic and extreme political atmosphere on both sides of the debate.
Demographic collapse
Extensive polling has continually confirmed that around 70 per cent of over-65s would accept a big economic hit – and half are willing for family members to lose their jobs. The social divide between young and old is not hard to fathom.
However, in just two years time, Britain, as far as Brexit is concerned will have a slightly different demographic to the one put forward in 2016. There will be 2.5 million fresh-faced, over-18-year-olds, who will be mostly remainers but 1.5 million over 65s, mostly Brexiters, freshly in their graves.
In 2016, 17.4 million voters went for Brexit, 16.1 million went for Remain. You can see the maths working against the original referendum result over time. In 10 years time, that swing in numbers, assuming no change in political sentiment, will be huge. Don’t forget, that swing has apparently already happened though.
Democratic failure – the spark
If ‘Brexit means Brexit’ but Theresa May gets her ‘Brexit in name only’ plan through (or some variation of it) democracy will have been seen to have failed. If sentiment towards Brexit changes and the country proceeds with Brexit, no matter how hard or soft – so have the principles of representative politics in Britain. No matter who wins, about half the population loses. In other words, Brexit is about as divisive and toxic as it gets and will be for years to come.
There are many that now believe the far-left and far-right in the Brexit debate will only get worse, not just now but a long way into the future.
Dr Paul Stocker is a historian and a research associate at Teesside University’s Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies says:
“The descent of Britain’s political culture from one which learned the lessons of the past and was militant towards the consequences of nationalism has been a rapid one. Worryingly, it shows no sign of slowing down as Britain hurtles out of the European Union and into the unknown.”
Just over one-third (34%) of all Remainers believe that significant damage to the UK economy is a price worth paying to prove their point and bring the UK back into the EU. Of all Brexiters, 61% believe that significant damage to the economy is a price worth paying for leaving the EU.
Extremist views on both the left and right are rapidly rising and are now infecting mainstream politics in Britain – this is Britain’s new norm whether we like it not.
A prominent British politician addressing a far-right or militant left rally or making Islamophobic or racist comments just three years ago would have been an act of political suicide. Not today it seems.
Let us never forget – political extremism
We should not forget that NI’s terrible legacy is rippling on the surface once again. The power-sharing government that the NI agreement created is currently suspended and Brexit threatens to tear apart a key thread that binds the deal — the invisible border facilitated by the U.K. and Ireland’s membership of the European Union. One-third of the entire adult population agree that handing Northern Ireland to Southern Ireland would be acceptable – to England.
The ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland that spilled over into mainland Britain was an ethno-nationist conflict fuelled by historical events. Guerilla warfare lasted for three decades. More than 3,600 people were killed in the conflict, of whom 52% were civilians, 32% were members of the British security forces, and 16% were members of paramilitary groups. Tens of thousands were injured.
A key issue was the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. It wasn’t really a religious conflict, although often sold as one. The population of NI is less than 2 million. An estimated 30,000 went to prison for paramilitary offences for they believed in.
Does the NI conflict, as an example of a home-grown constitutional crisis not provide us with the possibilities of just how bad things could get in the years ahead? And what other acts by a civilian uprising could we see?
Think about that for a moment. Today, citizens of England are now in agreement that a low-level civil war and the breakup of the union is a price worth paying for fully leaving the EU, which may not happen and even if it does, may not happen to their liking. One wonders where this English uprising is eventually going to end up.
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The Israeli Occupation is once again testing a strange new and unknown weapons on civilians protesting the illegal siege on Gaza, at the separation barrier fence last Friday.
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Below is video footage of this new weapon technology. Have you seen anything like this before?
Also on Friday, a 14-year-old child inhaled an unknown neurotoxin that has left him in a coma.
The child’s father released this statement August 14th:
“I received a shocking call by the youth on Gaza borders, that my son was injured last Friday and it’s the third time that my son got injured during the Great Return March demonstrations on Gaza borders, but this time he has a very critical injury. My son inhaled a killer gas emitted from gas bombs, on the demonstrators and this gas was filled with a severe chemical which affected all my sons nervous system, leading him to convulse horrifically every 5 minutes. As you see my son is on the bed of the hospital and he has been convulsing violently with shock, since 4 days ago. All the Physician’s and Doctors tried their best to do analysis and diagnosis. But they can’t treat him because the Israel Occupation cut the supply of medications for my sons case (neurotoxin) and it’s going terribly uncontrolled. Doctors told me that my sons treatment as well as medications are available only in Israel or out of Gaza and I am wondering why Israel kills our kids and prevents us to treat them? Therefore, I ask all the humanitarian foundations around the world, all World governments, the PA president as well as Ismail Haniyeh and everyone with s soft heart to help my son get treatment out of Gaza urgently and to recover soon!”
Today, I received word from the child’s father that his son is still in a semi-coma, going in and out of consciousness, but mostly remaining comatose. He still convulses every 5 minutes.
The Great Return March demonstrations began on March 30th. There is documented footage of the Occupation’s usedChemical Weapons on protesters since April, yet no world government or international body has taken any action or sent a delegation to Gaza to investigate.
Arms manufacturers, primarily the US Israel and the UK, are using the Occupation’s Massacres in Gaza to test new technology.
More footage of the Occupation’s illegal testing of Chemical Weaponswas also released in May. Gaza Doctors have reported the symptoms are caused by a neurotoxin, an unknown chemical nerve agent in the form of gas, which targets the entire nervous system of the victims resulting in violent convulsions, extreme suffocation, coma and in some cases death.
The treatment for this child and other civilian victims of Chemical Warfare, is a simple medicine which Israel is now preventing from entering Gaza.
Already at the end of April, the ICSPR informed me that the Ministry of Health had reported that Gaza hospitals are completely depleted, having no supplies left to treat the injured. They are absent of absolutely everything and due to this, the hospitals are empty. Patients are being sent home, even with severe injuries, to await their fate because “we can do nothing to help them.”
The ICSPR also reported that 50 of Gaza’s top Doctors left the end of July, because they are unable to save lives in these conditions. It has also become impossible for the Ministry of Health to track the recovery process of wounded victims.
We must demand an investigation into Israel’s illegal use of chemical and banned weapons on civilians. We must demand that the borders to Gaza remain open for all necessary humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza.
Below are the latest statistics of casualties and wounded during the Great Return March.
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Ariyana Love is Founder of Occupy Palestine TV, TLB Director of Middle East Rising and Goodwill Ambassador to Palestine (ICSPR, Gaza). Ariyana is Chairwoman of Meta Nutrients Trust, a Human Rights Defender and Activist.
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The decision of the new Tory Government in Ontario to terminate the basic income (BI) pilot project that their Liberal predecessors had set in motion, confirms that the right is as divided as the left on this issue of social policy. The Doug Ford Tories form part of an international right wing opposition to BI that does not share the view of the Silicon Valley billionaire set, the World Bank and a range of others within the neoliberal order that this form of income support could serve the needs of capitalist exploitation.
The right wing skeptics are bothered by the element of reduced conditionality that basic income contains and Ford and his crew, as meat and potatoes reactionaries, are especially hostile to the notion of giving poor people income without keeping the boot firmly on their necks. It’s instructive to compare the reasoning of Ford’s Minister of Community and Social Services, Lisa MacLeod, with that of the UK Tory secretary for work and pensions, Esther McVey. Separated by an ocean but united in a commitment to war on the poor, the two Tories both view basic income as a ‘handout’ that prevents the corrective treatment they believe must be administered in order to create an industrious poor.
Left Opposition to Basic Income
The Ford Government’s decision to kill the BI pilot gives us little reason to celebrate because they are removing it only so as to clear the way for a brutal attack. I shall return to this point shortly but, first, for reasons that are very different to those of Poor Law fans, the idea of basic income should still be rejected by those on the left. A horribly fascinating dissenting voice was raised against the Ontario Tory rejection of basic income. Federal Tory Finance Critic, Pierre Poilievre, while dismissing the Liberal pilot as a model of hopeless generosity toward the poor, vigorously defends basic income as part of the arsenal of the right. Citing the writings of the late unlamented Milton Friedman, Poilievre advocates “a tiny survival stipend for all low-income people” paid for by “eliminating all other programs, including housing, drug plans, child care and the bureaucrats who administer it all.”
Of course, Poilievre wants to stick it to the Liberals but, in reality, their pilot, while it may have gone a little beyond the thin gruel he favours, did actually adhere to a model that served the neoliberal agenda. I have already taken up the nature of the pilot in more detail in an earlier Bullet but, fundamentally, it had little to do with the ‘universal basic income’ that progressive advocates talk of. As a small scale showpiece program, it paid an income that was significantly more than social assistance but that was still low enough to drive people into low waged work. Drawing its test subjects, for the most part, from among those who were employed, it functioned as an experiment in providing a subsidy to the most exploitative employers. Moreover, the loss of supports and benefits that those on social assistance who went on the program faced, took us exactly in the direction of Friedman’s goal of using BI to replace, rather than augment, other systems of social provision.
The end of the Ontario pilot is no reason for us to reconsider opposition to basic income as a neoliberal trap. However, this in no way means that the Ford Tories have moved in any positive direction. There is one hugely unjust immediate impact that flows from their decision and a truly dreadful impending result that we must consider.
The Doug Ford Poor Laws
However necessary it is to stress that basic income would be implemented across a major political jurisdiction in such a way as to further neoliberal objectives, it is also absolutely obligatory to express outrage at the way in which the 4,000 people receiving income through the Ontario pilot are having the rug pulled out from under them. Though still a sub-poverty income, the showpiece pilot meant a significant improvement for those who had been on Ontario Works (OW) or the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). People had been promised this income would be maintained for three years and had planned their lives accordingly. The demand that the agreement should be lived up to by the new Government is an entirely just one that should be fully supported regardless of any disagreements on the broader implications of basic income.
The greatest threat that flows from the Tory decision to kill the pilot, however, lies in their glaringly obvious motive for doing so. Campaigning for office, they appeared ready to continue with the test run but, once they formed the Government, they realised that an experiment that involved easing up on the level of bureaucratic intrusion into the lives of people on income support could not be tolerated. This is because they intend to double down on such a Poor Law approach in the near future.
Tory Minister MacLeod held a press conference on July 31 in which she announced the end of the pilot and the killing of a series of positive measures that had been set to go into effect. She also revealed that the 3% increase in social assistance rates that had been due to take effect would be cut in half. The viciousness of this is apparent when you consider that, ever since the Mike Harris Tories cut the rates by 21.6% in 1995, there has never been a year when an increase has been provided above the rate of inflation. This would have been the first time in more than two decades that those on social assistance did not sink deeper into poverty. It was a brutal but well calculated move on the part of Doug Ford’s ‘Government for the People’. However, this is only a mean spirited down payment and the big attacks are still being prepared.
At her press conference, MacLeod made clear that the Tories would be conducting a 100 day review of the social assistance system that will produce a model of right wing ‘welfare reform’ that will take the war on the poor to a new level. She revealed that the Tories will intensify the policing of people on social assistance and launch a crackdown on so called ‘welfare fraud’. This will serve as a ‘ritual of degradation’ that makes the receipt of public assistance even more humiliating than it is at present. MacLeod focused her comments, however, on her Government’s goal of a system of sub-poverty income support that has been perfected as a mechanism for driving people into the lowest paying and most exploitative jobs on offer. This work gets underway even as the Tories target the minimum wage and basic workers’ rights. Obviously, not afraid to resort to right wing clichés, the Minister told those gathered for her announcement that “the best social program is a job.” She would not respond to media questions on whether a workfare forced labour approach would be part of her ‘reform’ package.
The objective here is clear. The degrading of social assistance in Ontario has contributed enormously to the proliferation of low wage precarious work. Benefits have been reduced and access to the system so restricted that a climate of sheer desperation has taken hold. The Ford Tories are not satisfied that this has gone far enough. They want a system that is even more inadequate, uncertain and punitive. The scramble for the worst jobs is to be made even more desperate and the Minister was careful to stress that disabled people would not be exempt from it. This is a war on the poor but, by extension, it is an attack on all workers, aimed at reducing bargaining power, depressing wages and weakening the capacity of trade unions to fight back.
Basic income has been taken off the table for now in Ontario but only to clear the way for the Doug Ford Poor Laws. As the fight against this Government grows, the Tory attack on the right to an income people can survive on must be seen as one of the main elements of their agenda and challenged accordingly.
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A recent report from the UN Security Council’s Sanctions Monitoring Team has found that many of the places in Syria where the terror group Daesh (ISIS) continues to operate, recuperate and extract oil for profit are in areas of the country occupied by the United States.
According to the report’s executive summary:
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), having been defeated militarily in Iraq and most of the Syrian Arab Republic during 2017, rallied in early 2018 [owing to] a loss of momentum by forces fighting it in the east of the Syrian Arab Republic, which prolonged access by ISIL to resources and gave it breathing space to prepare for the next phase of its evolution into a global covert network.”
While the text itself doesn’t explicitly state who controls these areas of Syrian territory, maps of eastern Syria make it clear that the pockets of Daesh within U.S.-controlled territory have remained unchanged in size since November 2017 while the Daesh pockets in the Syrian government-controlled portion of eastern Syria have shrunk considerably since last November.
A map of the territory held by ISIS (grey) at the Syrian-Iraqi border in the U.S. controlled zone north of the Euphrates (yellow). April 24, 2018. (Source: Syria Live Map)
Furthermore, the UN report states that the areas where Daesh has rallied since the year began are located in “pockets of territory in the Syrian Arab Republic on the Iraqi border” where the group has mounted “attacks, including across the border into Iraq.” Again, area maps clearly show that the Daesh-controlled areas in only the U.S.-occupied portion of eastern Syria are along the Syria-Iraq border.
Notably, in the sliver of Daesh-controlled land between U.S. and Syrian government-controlled areas in the border city of Abu Kamal, when the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has tried to attack Daesh positions in the area this year, they have been targeted by U.S. coalition airstrikes. U.S. coalition airstrikes have also attacked Syrian civilian villages in the government-controlled portion of Abu Kamal. Survivors of that attack claimed that their villages had been targeted for refusing the entry of the U.S.-backed opposition militias — such as the Qasad militia, which is largely composed of former Daesh fighters.
U.S. coalition airstrikes targeting the SAA in Abu Kamal and elsewhere in eastern Syria have also been the key cause of the “loss of momentum” of forces fighting Daesh that was cited in the UN report, as Syrian forces have declined to advance deep into U.S.-held territory in order to pursue Daesh after being bombednumerous times. In addition, the U.S.’ own bombing campaign against Daesh can hardly be called effective given that the U.S., along with their military proxy the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), frequently announceon social media when and where they will be bombing Daesh in eastern Syria days in advance.
#DeirEzzor – After a short surveillance tour by Gen. Funk, Gen. Jarrard and #SDF commander in Middle Euphrates River Valley heval Çiya yesterday, operation to liberate #Hajin to start today in the evening.#JazeeraStormpic.twitter.com/t9gqrNveVX
Beyond eastern Syria, the report also notes that another Daesh-infested area of concern is also located farther south in the area around the al-Tanf military base, which has been occupied by the United States since 2016. The UN report raises concerns about the Rukban refugee camp, which lies within the so-called “deconfliction” zone that the U.S. has imposed on a 55-kilometer radius around al-Tanf.
The report states:
The densely populated Rukban camp in southern Syrian Arab Republic contains some 80,000 internally displaced persons, including families of ISIL fighters, a situation which Member States fear might generate new ISIL cells.”
As with other Daesh-held areas under U.S. “protection,” the U.S. has attacked the SAA for attempting to enter the U.S.’ unilaterally-imposed “deconfliction” zone in an effort to attack Daesh militants.
Washington’s Daesh-dependent long-game
The evidence that the U.S. presence in Syria is actually helping to strengthen Daesh flies in the face of the Pentagon’s justification for the U.S.’ occupation of northeastern Syria as being necessary because the Syrian government is not strong enough to defeat Daesh on its own. However, as the recent UN report reveals, the Pentagon’s portrayal does not appear to be the reality of the situation.
As MintPresshas noted in the past, this finding is hardly surprising given that the Defense Intelligence Agency report from 2012 revealed that the U.S. willingly allowed Daesh to be formed in order to destabilize the Syrian government and partition Syria through foreign military intervention. Since then, the U.S. has adapted its justifications for its presence in Syria, particularly after the failure of Daesh and foreign-funded opposition groups to depose the current government of Syria.
By maintaining a Daesh pocket in the territory it occupies, the U.S. can continue to justify its illegal presence in the country for the long-term. Indeed, just last month, the Trump administration made it clear that the U.S. military plans to stay in Syria for the long haul, substituting Iran for Daesh as its new regional boogeyman.
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Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
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Major developments related to internal and external relations are taking place in Horn of Africa states.
This is a region of East Africa which has been deeply fractured due to the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism since the 19th century. The area has been a focal point for interventions by the United States along with other NATO governments.
Prospects for making strides towards greater cooperation came with the reality of the newly-ascended Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed visiting the capital of neighboring Eritrea on July 8-9 to meet with his counterpart President Isaias Afwerki. The two leaders signed agreements ending their dispute over the border territories around Badme, the reconnecting of direct communication links and a pledge to embark upon joint economic projects designed to benefit both nations.
Abiy, who came to power on April 2 amid widespread discontent with the previous administration of Hailemariam Desalegn, made the first gesture towards Eritrea when he announced in June that Ethiopia would withdraw its troops from the Badme border and revoke all claims to the territory. Later a delegation from the Eritrean foreign ministry paid a working visit to Addis Ababa setting tone for a reciprocal trip to Asmara.
Eritrea had been colonized by Italian imperialism after the failed attempt by Rome to conquer Abyssinia in 1896. Menelik II defeated the Italian army, however, allowed the imperialists to establish a base on the Red Sea restricting Addis Ababa’s access to the waterways so vital to national development.
Fascist Benito Mussolini held delusional notions of reclaiming the ancient Roman Empire and invaded Abyssinia in October 1935 killing thousands of Africans utilizing sophisticated armaments and chemical weapons. After the defeat of Italy during World War II in North Africa, Britain and later the Ethiopian monarchy under His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I designated Eritrea a protectorate under London and later incorporating the country into Ethiopia as a province.
A thirty-year war raged between Eritrean independence organizations and Ethiopia, under both the monarchy beginning in 1961 and continuing into the socialist-oriented government after 1974, until the time of its demise in 1991. Eritrea declared itself independent in 1991 and a United Nations sponsored plebiscite in 1993 won international recognition for the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) led government.
Even though the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE) headed by Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam collapsed amid intensive fighting with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) dominated Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and the EPLF, relations soon deteriorated between the new government in Addis Ababa and Asmara. In 1998 and 2000 an eruption of military clashes around Badme left an estimated 100,000 troops and civilians dead on both sides.
Algeria on behalf of the-then Organization of African Unity (OAU) negotiated a truce although tensions remained high for nearly two decades. The commitment of both Addis Ababa and Asmara for normalized relations has been warmly received from people in the region and internationally.
Other Internal Challenges in Ethiopia
After coming to power, Prime Minister Abiy lifted the state of emergency which had been imposed on several occasions over the last decade and a-half. Thousands of political prisoners were released from detention and exiled political leaders from the Oromia region of Ethiopia were allowed to return to the country. Abiy held talks with opposition party leaders while legalizing their peaceful activities inside Ethiopia.
However, on June 23 during a political rally in Addis Ababa, a grenade was thrown into a crowd in the immediate aftermath of an address delivered by Abiy. The prime minister was not injured although at least two people were killed in the explosion and dozens more were wounded.
There is speculation that elements within the TPLF wing of the ruling EPRDF are not enthusiastic about the bold moves taken by the prime minister. The assassination attempt did not at all halt the pace of national reconciliation which has become the hallmark of the new administration.
In the Somali-dominated Ogaden region of Ethiopia unrest flared up again based upon long-held grievances. The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has been long suppressed by the Ethiopian state and declared as terrorists. In recent weeks this policy has been reversed with the release of ONLF prisoners and a suspension of hostilities between the two sides.
Also the Omoro Liberation Front (OLF) has joined in with its own gestures through the halting of hostilities with Addis Ababa. At present the country has moved further than ever in modern times towards ethnic reconciliation and social stability.
Somalia and Eritrea Hold Talks
For many years, the western-backed government in Mogadishu has accused Eritrea of supporting the al-Shabaab rebels who have fought both the Somalia national army and the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) troops which have occupied the country since 2007. Yet on July 28, Somalia President Mohamed Abdullahi Famarjo paid a state visit to Asmara in a joint effort to normalize relations.
Eritrea has been subjected to United Nations sanctions for a decade over allegations that it interfered in the Washington and European Union plans for the direction of the political system in Somalia. President Afwerki has continually denied any involvement in Somalian affairs.
With the pledge of Mogadishu and Asmara to refrain from any form of meddling in the affairs of each other’s respective states, pressure will mount on the UN to lift these punitive measures. Ethiopia as well has called for the lifting of the sanctions against Eritrea based on its commitment to realizing peace in the region.
The Horn of Africa and the Strategic Imperatives of Imperialism
Left on their own these states could move in a direction which could easily improve the living standards of the majority of people within all of the countries. Although Ethiopia has been cited as having phenomenal economic growth over the last few years at some ten percent annually, the distribution of the national wealth remains highly disproportionate.
Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti have tremendous potential for development considering their vast mineral, energy and shipping potentials. Somalia and Ethiopia have oil which is only now being extracted at critical levels while the strategic ports on the coasts of Eritrea and Djibouti place these states in a lucrative position.
Despite all of this, all four governments are bound by relationships with the imperialist states and their allies in the Middle East. Ethiopia has received significant military assistance from Washington along with business investments. Somalia is beholden to the Pentagon, Britain, Turkey and the EU for its security infrastructure aimed at preventing al-Shabaab from seizing power. Djibouti allows its ports and territory to be used as bases for the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which has a military installation at Camp Lemonnier housing several thousand Pentagon soldiers.
Eritrea allows United Arab Emirates to build military base at the Port of Assab
Eritrea has close military relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia where the ports at Assab serves as a staging area for the war against neighboring Yemen where over ten thousand people have been killed through aerial bombardments and ground offensives against the Ansurallah since March 2015. Yemen has the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with cholera, the lack of adequate water, food and medicine imperiling millions within this already least developed country in the Middle East.
It has been reported that the UAE played a significant role in the mediation talks which brought Asmara and Addis Ababa towards this historic agreement. At the same time the UAE has constructed a military base at Assab. The Eritrea-Ethiopia normalization will lead to the opening of Assab again for Ethiopian exports particularly in the textile industry. Ethiopia has relied on the port at Djibouti which could see a decline in activity from Addis Ababa with the opening of Assab.
Another major aspect of the rapprochement involving Asmara and Addis Ababa is the reports surfacing in early August that the UAE is slated to build an oil pipeline connecting Assab with the Ethiopian capital. Prime Minister Abiy’s government wants to begin a full-fledged oil drilling operation in the southeast.
To demonstrate its connection with Saudi Arabia, President Afwerki has taken sides in the diplomatic row which has erupted over alleged human rights policies with Canada. Eritrea is saying that Ottawa has no business commenting on the internal affairs of Riyadh.
These foreign policy questions expose the continuing neo-colonial character of international relations in the Horn of Africa. For there to be genuine development within the region where the masses of workers, farmers, youth and professionals are to enjoy the remunerations gained from the marketing of natural resources of all of the countries, a system of socialist construction must be adopted.
Socialism can unleash the productive capacity of the majority of people within this region of Africa as well as the continent as a whole. Sustainable peace is inevitably linked with people-centered economic growth and development. In the long term Washington and its principal allies among the Gulf monarchies will act in their own interests which are at variance with the people of the Horn of Africa.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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According to the Islamist Turkish newspaper Yeni Akit quoted by Ahvalnews,President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is ready for war.
“The secret to successful states is their readiness for war. We are ready with everything we have,” said Erdoğan on Monday in a meeting with ambassadors in Ankara.
According to reports, the US has instrumented a currency war targeted against the Turkish lira.
“Erdoğan’s comments come as the Turkish currency continues to slide against the U.S. dollar following Washington’s announcement of sanctions against Ankara this month”. Ahvalnews
The decline is indicated in the chart below (Bloomberg), from 4.85 Lira to the dollar on July 16 to approximately 5.94 Lira to the dollar on August 16.
“It is everyone’s observation that the developments in foreign currency exchange have no financial basis and they are an attack on our country,” Erdoğan said.
“On the one hand you are a strategic ally and the other you shoot (the country) in the foot. Is something like this acceptable?” he asked, in an apparent reference to sanctions on two ministers and increased steel and aluminium tariffs imposed by the United States.(Ahvalnews)
The US is involved in de facto acts of financial warfare directed against Turkey. According to Michel Chossudovsky, the Trump administration with the support of Wall Street institutional speculators seeks the collapse of the Turkish Lira.
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“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” ― Benjamin Franklin
What a mess.
As America has become ever more polarized, and those polarized factions have become more militant and less inclined to listen to—or even allow for the existence of—other viewpoints, we are fast becoming a nation of people who just can’t get along.
Here’s the thing: if Americans don’t learn how to get along—at the very least, agreeing to disagree and respecting each other’s right to subscribe to beliefs and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different—then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).
In such an environment, when we can’t agree to disagree, the bullies (on both sides) win and freedom suffers.
Intolerance, once the domain of the politically correct and self-righteous, has been institutionalized, normalized and politicized.
Even those who dare to defend speech that may be unpopular or hateful as a constitutional right are now accused of “weaponizing the First Amendment.”
On college campuses across the country, speakers whose views are deemed “offensive” to some of the student body are having their invitations recalled or cancelled, being shouted down by hecklers, or forced to hire costly security details. As The Washington Postconcludes, “College students support free speech—unless it offends them.”
“The boycotters refused to engage a writer who would use such an offensive word. They hadn’t read the story; they wouldn’t lower themselves to that level. Here is what they missed: The story’s title refers to a lawn jockey, a once common ornament of a black man holding a lantern. The statue symbolizes the suffering of an entire group of people and looking at it bring a moment of insight to a racist old man.”
It’s not just college students who have lost their taste for diverse viewpoints and free speech.
In Charlottesville, Va., in the wake of a violent clash between the alt-right and alt-left over whether Confederate statues should remain standing in a community park, City Council meetings were routinely “punctuated with screaming matches, confrontations, calls to order, and even arrests,” making it all but impossible for attendees and councilors alike to speak their minds.
“The sad fact is that this fundamental freedom is on its heels across America,” concludes Ruger. “Politicians of both parties want to use the power of government to silence their foes. Some in the university community seek to drive it from their campuses. And an entire generation of Americans is being taught that free speech should be curtailed as soon as it makes someone else feel uncomfortable. On the current trajectory, our nation’s dynamic marketplace of ideas will soon be replaced by either disengaged intellectual silos or even a stagnant ideological conformity. Few things would be so disastrous for our nation and the well-being of our citizenry.”
Disastrous, indeed.
You see, tolerance cuts both ways.
This isn’t an easy pill to swallow, I know, but that’s the way free speech works, especially when it comes to tolerating speech that we hate.
The most controversial issues of our day—gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.
This haphazard approach to the First Amendment has so muddied the waters that even First Amendment scholars are finding it hard to navigate at times.
It’s really not that hard.
The First Amendment affirms the right of the people to speak freely, worship freely, peaceably assemble, petition the government for a redress of grievances, and have a free press.
Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense, hurting someone’s feelings, safeguarding government secrets, protecting government officials, insulating judges from undue influence, discouraging bullying, penalizing hateful ideas and actions, eliminating terrorism, combatting prejudice and intolerance, and the like.
Unfortunately, in the war being waged between free speech purists who believe that free speech is an inalienable right and those who believe that free speech is a mere privilege to be granted only under certain conditions, the censors are winning.
We have entered into an egotistical, insulated, narcissistic era in which free speech has become regulated speech: to be celebrated when it reflects the values of the majority and tolerated otherwise, unless it moves so far beyond our political, religious and socio-economic comfort zones as to be rendered dangerous and unacceptable.
Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) have conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good.
On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
Emboldened by phrases such as “hate crimes,” “bullying,” “extremism” and “microaggressions,” the nation has been whittling away at free speech, confining it to carefully constructed “free speech zones,” criminalizing it when it skates too close to challenging the status quo, shaming it when it butts up against politically correct ideals, and muzzling it when it appears dangerous.
Free speech is no longer free.
The U.S. Supreme Court has long been the referee in the tug-of-war over the nation’s tolerance for free speech and other expressive activities protected by the First Amendment. Yet the Supreme Court’s role as arbiter of justice in these disputes is undergoing a sea change. Except in cases where it has no vested interest, the Court has begun to advocate for the government’s outsized interests, ruling in favor of the government in matters of war, national security, commerce and speech.
When asked to choose between the rule of law and government supremacy, the Supreme Court tends to side with the government.
If we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to voice our opinions in public—no matter how misogynistic, hateful, prejudiced, intolerant, misguided or politically incorrect they might be—then we do not have free speech.
What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that’s a whole other ballgame.
Just as surveillance has been shown to “stifle and smother dissent, keeping a populace cowed by fear,” government censorship gives rise to self-censorship, breeds compliance, makes independent thought all but impossible, and ultimately foments a seething discontent that has no outlet but violence.
The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world.
When there is no steam valve—when there is no one to hear what the people have to say—frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation. By bottling up dissent, we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate, distrust and paranoia among portions of the populace.
Silencing unpopular viewpoints with which the majority might disagree—whether it’s by shouting them down, censoring them, muzzling them, or criminalizing them—only empowers the controllers of the Deep State.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.
It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.
We’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we’ve allowed ourselves to become so timid in the face of offensive words and ideas that we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean.
The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.
In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems with each other and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears of each other.
So where does that leave us?
We’ve got to do the hard work of figuring out how to get along again.
Charlottesville, Va., is a good example of this.
It’s been a year since my hometown of Charlottesville, Va., became the poster child in a heated war of words—and actions—over racism, “sanitizing history,” extremism (both right and left), political correctness, hate speech, partisan politics, and a growing fear that violent words would end in violent actions.
Those fears were realized when what should have been an exercise in free speech quickly became a brawl that left one activist dead.
Yet lawful, peaceful, nonviolent First Amendment activity did not kill Heather Heyer. She was killed by a 20-year-old Neo-Nazi who drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians in Charlottesville, Va.
Words, no matter how distasteful or disagreeable, did not turn what should have been an exercise in free speech into a brawl. That was accomplished by militant protesters on both sides of the debate who arrived at what should have been a nonviolent protest armed with sticks and guns, bleach bottles, balloons filled with feces and urine and improvised flamethrowers, and by the law enforcement agencies who stood by and allowed it.
This is what happens when we turn our disagreements, even about critically and morally important issues, into lines in the sand.
If we can’t agree to disagree—and learn to live with each other in peace and speak with civility in order to change hearts and minds—then we’ve reached an impasse.
That way lies death, destruction and tyranny.
Now, there’s a big difference between civility (treating others with consideration and respect) and civil disobedience (refusing to comply with certain laws as a means of peaceful protest), both of which Martin Luther King Jr. employed brilliantly, and I’m a champion of both tactics when used wisely.
Frankly, I agree with journalist Bret Stephens when he says that we’re failing at the art of disagreement.
As Stephens explains in a 2017 lecture, which should be required reading for every American:
What does it mean to not merely disagree but rather to disagree well?
According to Stephens,
“to disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely. You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate empathically with his line of reasoning. And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say.”
Instead of intelligent discourse, we’ve been saddled with identity politics, “a safe space from thought, rather than a safe space for thought.”
Safe spaces.
That’s what we’ve been reduced to on college campuses, in government-run forums, and now on public property and on previously open forums such as the internet.
The problem, as I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, is that the creation of so-called safe spaces—where offensive ideas and speech are prohibited—is just censorship by another name, and censorship breeds resentment, and resentment breeds conflict, and unresolved, festering conflict gives rise to violence.
Charlottesville is a prime example of this.
Anticipating the one-year anniversary of the riots in Charlottesville on August 12, the local city government, which bungled its response the first time around, is now attempting to ostensibly create a “safe space” by shutting the city down for the days surrounding the anniversary, all the while ramping up the presence of militarized police, in the hopes that no one else (meaning activists or protesters) will show up and nothing (meaning riots and brawls among activists) will happen.
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Featured image: The 4-day launch event in Quito included demonstrations of traditional face painting (Source: Selva Producciones)
Sarayaku is an indigenous Kichwa community from a remote part of Ecuador’s southern Amazon. A delegation has travelled to the capital city of Quito to present a bold and visionary proposal that aims not only to protect their own 135,000 hectares of pristine rainforest, but to protect indigenous territories worldwide.
The proposal, the Kawsak Sacha Declaration, also seeks to promote the indigenous worldview, which sees nature as a living entity, to be respected and coexisted with.
The Sarayaku believe that a shift towards this perspective could be the key to mitigating the unfolding global environmental crisis.
Living forest
The concept for the proposal came from the kawsak sacha, or living forest, itself and was transmitted to the community via their shamans (yachaks in the Kichwa language), who act as intermediaries between the rainforest and those who protect it.
The Kawsak Sacha Living Forest Declaration (LFD) is a counterproposal to the prevailing extractivist model that has already wrought untold damage in Ecuador’s northern Amazon and around the world.
Instead of seeing Sarayaku territory as an inert space to exploit for resources, the Declaration describes the rainforest as a living entity with consciousness, constituted by all the beings within it, including those from the animal, vegetable, mineral, spiritual and cosmic worlds.
The Declaration asserts that the territory is subject to legal rights and demands that these rights be upheld. It also declares that the area be free of any type of extractive activity such as oil exploitation, mining, logging and biopiracy.
Though it was born from the indigenous cosmovision, the Declaration is a concrete proposal based on existing national and international law.
Legal ratification
In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to award legal rights to nature in its constitution, which also states that any person, community or nationality can demand the State to uphold these rights.
Furthermore, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their spiritual relationship with their territories, and to conserve and protect these territories.
From deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Kawsak Sacha Declaration was borne by canoe to Quito, where the Sarayaku delegation delivered it to representatives of the Ecuadorian State at a launch event on July 26.
The next step is to demand the legal ratification of the document via the National Assembly or the Constitutional Court. If the State refuses to recognise the Declaration, it will be defying its own constitution and international law.
The Sarayaku have called for international organisations and indigenous peoples to adopt the proposal and are planning to present it to the UN.
Global audience
It won’t be the first time the Declaration has been given a global audience.
After being adopted by the Assembly General of the Original People of Sarayaku in 2012, it was presented in Paris at the global climate change conference, COP21, and to the President of France, François Hollande, in 2015.
Earlier this month, it was well received at the international Fostering Community Conservation Conferencein Montreal.
The Declaration was inaugurated in Ecuador with a four-day exhibition and conference from 25 to 29 July that showcased Sarayaku’s way of life, culture, and vision, including exhibitions and demonstrations of ancestral medicines, ceramics, handicrafts, gastronomy, face painting, singing and dancing.
A Kichwa house was built in El Arbolito Park and will remain there, a gift to the city of Quito.
Violated rights
A series of panels were held to discuss extractivism and defence of the rainforest.
The events were attended by international NGOs Amazon Watch, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network (WECAN), as well as the Presidents of national indigenous organisations CONAIE and CONFENAIE.
The launch of the Declaration coincided with the 6th anniversary of the historic ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which found that the Ecuadorian Government violated the rights of the Sarayaku people by allowing an oil company to prospect in their territory without consultation.
In 1996 the Argentinian oil company CGC, accompanied by soldiers, carried out detonations, felled trees, dug more than 400 wells and buried more than 1.4 tons of high grade explosives in Sarayaku territory.
The community was unaware that their land had been concessioned to an oil company until armed men arrived in helicopters.
Key players
In 2018, Sarayaku is once again threatened by oil exploitation. The Ecuadorian Government are planning to auction 3 million hectares of largely virgin rainforest in the XI Oil Round, or Ronda Sur.
Three of the oil blocks cover nearly all the Sarayaku territory, the borders of which are being planted with flowering trees to symbolise the community’s peaceful resistance and defence of their territory via the Kawsak Sacha Declaration.
The Sarayaku people’s hopes for the Declaration go beyond the protection of the 135,000 hectares that lie within their borders.
The proposal was presented to the State on behalf of all indigenous peoples with the hopes that other nationalities will use it to uphold the legal rights of nature in their territories.
With indigenous peoples acting as stewards of 95 percent of the planet’s most threatened biodiverse regions and key players in the fight against climate change, the Declaration could have a global impact.
Leading resistance
It’s a bold vision for a village of 1400 people living deep in the Amazon, but, looking at their past achievements, it’s impossible not to take the Sarayaku proposal seriously.
Beyond their legal victory against the Ecuadorian State, this is a community that has launched a professional football team; sailed a canoe down the Seine; and created a documentary, Children of the Jaguar, which won Best Documentary at the National Geographic Film Festival.
The Sarayaku call themselves the People of the Zenith, referring to an ancient prophecy of their ancestors claiming that they would be a pillar of resistance after other communities had surrendered, a beacon of light as strong as the sun at noon.
When asked what drives his community to keep fighting to defend the Amazon, Sarayaku leader and former President José Gualinga referred to this prophecy:
“The Sarayaku resistance is based upon our deep connection with the rainforest, which even our young people still maintain, and our unity.
“The Sarayaku community functions as a single organism, like a human body. We resist in fulfilment of the ancient prophecy of our ancestors. We have seen what has happened to our brothers in the northern Amazon region, who have not only experienced the destruction of their territories by oil exploitation, but have suffered a spiritual impoverishment.
“They have been dominated, silenced, humiliated. They are alive but not alive. We, the people of Sarayaku, cannot allow that to happen to us.”
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Bethany Pitts has been working with indigenous communities in Ecuador since 2013, especially those defending their territories from extractivism. She is currently writing the Moon Guide to Ecuador & The Galapagos Islands (2019), which will be the first international guide book on Ecuador with a focus on eco- and community tourism.
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The US’ Hybrid War on OBOR doesn’t stop at the military phase but importantly continues into the informational domain in order to undermine China’s New Silk Roads through the planting of Trumpist “time bombs” in strategic transit states that can only be neutralized by a comprehensive perception management strategy that breaks from the centralized model that Beijing is known for.
Two of the top three global trends that the author analyzed in his latest piece for Eurasia Future are Hybrid War Balkanization and Trumpism vs. Globalism, both of which are weapons of asymmetrical warfare against China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity. The first actually contributes to the proliferation of the second, however, through the transition of a failed unconventional war to an indefinitely prolonged infowar that seeks to accomplish a pair of complementary objectives that will be explained in this analysis, the point of which is to draw attention to a little-known but very “politically incorrect” vulnerability afflicting the Silk Road. Simply put, China has a poor handle on perception management techniques outside of its borders, and it’s accordingly ill-equipped to confront the multitude of informational challenges that will inevitably confront its global OBOR ambitions.
The Phased Transition Of Anti-OBOR Operations
From Hybrid War…
To review the elementary basics of HybridWars, these are externally provoked identity conflicts that exploit preexisting fault lines within a society in order to pressure the targeted government through manufactured “grassroots” means to enact political concessions advantageous to the offensive party under pain of having the conflict escalated to the point of pursuing regime change and/or a regime reboot (forced constitutional reform). Nowadays, however, “Democratic Security” strategies can be relied upon to lessen the impact of this asymmetrical onslaught and keep it at the low-intensity level, if not snuff it out completely, but the aggressive party might not be thwarted by this defeat and could instead leverage it through infowar means by decontextualizing, misportraying, and then over-amplifying weaponized narratives that could be similarly destabilizing for the victimized state if they’re not contained.
To Infowars…
The US’ intentions are to masterfully craft the false perception that the targeted state is too dangerous for other countries’ companies to do business with, let alone transit through en route to China, which could then diminish its Silk Road potential and consequently impact on China’s economic security by denying it the markets that it needs to offload its excess capacity to. This could in turn imperil its national growth depending on the transit country involved (Pakistan being the most important in this context) and potentially lead to an economic downturn with time that might eventually trigger political destabilization at home. Resultantly, it would be natural for the targeted state to grow more dependent on Chinese assistance as other countries distance themselves from it after falling for the US’ infowar narrative, but therein lays the second phase of the Hybrid War on OBOR
And Finally “Trumpism”:
The US learned from the example of Myanmar in the 2000s that states that become disproportionately dependent on China are much more susceptible to weaponized populism (i.e. “Trumpism”), which can be timed to explode precisely at the moment when Beijing is inversely becoming dependent on their transit and market potentials through OBOR. “Nationalist” reactions naturally form under these conditions, but these sentiments can also be shaped and guided from abroad through NGOs and social media perception engineering operations. The US was still experimenting with its efforts to attain “scenario superiority” over the Myanmar-China relationship and therefore executed its plans imperfectly, but the lasting lesson that it learned was that countries can indeed be forced into China’s embrace, after which the dynamics that organically develop between them could make the two partners “too close for comfort” and thus open up a valuable window of narrative opportunity for the US to exploit.
Scenario Review
To rehash the infowar dimension of the US’ Hybrid War on OBOR, the targeted state’s suppression of the initial violent phase of the Hybrid War doesn’t mean that the destabilization operation against it has stopped, as any infrequent and low-intensity violence that still occurs could be manipulatively used by the US and its allies to attack the country’s international reputation. The purpose of doing this is to decrease investor and entrepreneur confidence in the said state’s security capabilities, which could therefore scare them away from doing business there and utilizing its Silk Road transit infrastructure for facilitating trade with China. The predictable result would be that the targeted country becomes more dependent on China, though this too can be manipulated from abroad because it naturally produces a “nationalist” (“Trumpist”) reaction with time that could be weaponized to undermine Beijing after it becomes entwined in a complex system of economic-strategic interdependency there.
An oversimplification of this process is as follows:
Hybrid War à Infowar à Trumpism
The Perception Management Solution
The only way that this phased scenario can be countered is through proper perception management strategies, though this has unfortunately proven itself to be China’s Achilles’ heel because of its hitherto inability to effectively influence how others perceive its international activities. Confucius Institutes are only useful when it comes to apolitical soft power and fostering civil society interactions, while the interconnected concepts of OBOR and win-win cooperation aren’t anything necessarily specific to China (apart, in the first case, from its financing). The “Global Times” information outlet has a purpose, albeit a limited one because it’s already recognized by most of the world that this platform is a means for the Communist Party to “indirectly” send certain messages into the mainstream. The rigidity involved in this messaging operation makes it insufficiently inflexible for responding to the multitude of rapidly adapting infowar narratives targeting China, its partners, and their OBOR interests.
The solution is for China to learn from existing Mainstream and Alternative Media structures and either create a brand-new one from scratch or partner one of its existing platforms such as CGTN with a variety of its counterparts in key Silk Road states such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey (the four other members of the Golden Ring), and Ethiopia. It must, however, “let go of the reins”, “loosen its grip”, and grant its employees the “professional liberty” to proactively expose infowar narratives while simultaneously promoting defensive ones for protecting the Silk Road states, though this must absolutely be done in coordination with China continuing to deliver tangible benefits to its partners’ population and not “overstepping” in its interactions with them otherwise this effort might come off as “propagandistic” and counterproductively backfire.
Because of how “revolutionary” it would be for a Chinese-backed international media outlet to “decentralize” its information operations, the first cadre of employees must be vetted and trusted by the authorities. The key to this initiative succeeding is for competent experts to be placed in positions of influence from where they could instantly react to changing infowar narratives instead of having to wait for the central authorities in Beijing to formulate specific talking points. Furthermore, because it’ll be based abroad and won’t broadcast in China, these figures could even walk the line of “political correctness” as needed (or even cross it under exceptional circumstances) in order to more effectively produce and disseminate certain narratives as needed. Again, given the nature of the Chinese system, vetted and trusted individuals should be the only ones placed in these roles, but sooner than later, China will need to experiment with this model if it is to succeed.
Concluding Thoughts
The US’ Hybrid War on OBOR is evolving to the point where the violent phase of this strategy might more easily be defeated by China’s many Silk Road partners than ever before, but these targeted states could still be caught equally unaware by the secondary infowar phase of this destabilization campaign if they aren’t careful. China conceives of itself as being the torchbearer of economic globalization and consequently free trade, but ironically, this means that business have the choice whether or not to trade with it, and if so, via which means. The manufacturing of false narratives pertaining to the security of CPEC and China’s other Silk Road corridors is very dangerous because it could easily lead to investors and entrepreneurs choosing to continue trading with the People’s Republic through the Strait of Malacca and across the South China Sea, thereby nullifying the strategic reason for OBOR’s cross-Eurasian mainland connectivity projects that were always intended to avoid putting China under the blackmailing influence of the powerful US Navy.
The American plan is to have China commit hundreds of billions of dollars to Eastern Hemispheric infrastructure projects and then provoke low-intensity and cost-effective Hybrid Wars in its many Silk Road partners so that it can have the basis on which to build a prolonged infowar campaign against them. This in turn could cause international investors and entrepreneurs to stay away from the country and stick to using US Navy-controlled maritime routes through the Strait of Malacca and South China Sea to trade with China, thus making it more difficult for the host nation to service its Chinese debt. This would accordingly drive the country closer to China, though this relationship might become uncomfortable after a period of time just like Myanmar’s did in the 2000s and give rise to a US-encouraged populist/nationalist (“Trumpist”) movement.
The end result is that China might never receive a return on its investments in the regime-changed state if a new pro-American “Trumpist” government defaults because Beijing has no means to enforce payment compliance, and the cumulative effect of this could be macro-economically disastrous if it’s timed to coincide with other such happenings elsewhere in the world, especially the countries where China has invested the most. Not only that, but the “economic nationalism” component of “Trumpism” could lead to a situation where China loses its previous de-facto free trade privileges in the ports and other points of access that it helped finance, despite how mutually destructive of a policy this would be for its former “partner” to commence (though the EU’s US-influenced sanctions prove that vassals will enact self-inflicted damage in order to please the hegemon). It goes without saying that the aforementioned strategy could kill the Silk Road if it succeeds and possibly even cause domestic political problems in China, which is why the People’s Republic must urgently improve its perception management operations abroad in order to defend itself from this doomsday scenario.
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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.
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On August 14, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) released a statement providing a look at their operations in the area of Afrin against the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA).
According to the statement, Abdul Razzaq al-Bakr, a TFSA field commander, died on August 8 after being wounded in a bomb explosion in the district of Mabata. On August 11, YPG cells set off a motorcycle-bomb on the road to the village of Kafr Jannah in the district of Shera. The bombing reportedly hit a joint patrol of the TAF and the TFSA killing one Turkish soldier and wounding another. “A number” of TFSA members were allegedly killed.
YPG cells have been carrying out attacks on the TAF and the TFSA constantly since the fall of the city of Afrin into Turkish hands on March 18. These attacks show significant gaps in security efforts employed by the TAF and the TFSA in the area.
At the same time, the YPG and pro-YPG entities have tried to launch a large-scale international propaganda campaign to pressure Turkey over its actions in Afrin. They have accused Turkey-led forces of ethnic cleansing, civilian casualties and multiple war crimes. So far, these efforts have led to little result. However, if tensions between Washington and Ankara grow further, based on a growing rift in the economic and diplomatic spheres, the US may choose the Afrin issue as one of the options, which could be incorporated into its propaganda in the ongoing media standoff.
The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have further advanced against ISIS cells in the Safa volcanic plateau area at the al-Suweida-Rif Dimashq administrative border. They have restored control of Arh Amirah, Rujm Mughrabah and Markadah. The advance is ongoing.
According to some sources, ISIS members already started withdrawing from the al-Safa area aiming to reach the desert area at the Syrian-Iraqi border. If this is true, government forces will soon restore control of al-Safa without significant resistance from ISIS.
Rumors once again appeared that (alleged) ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been injured. This time, he was allegedly severely wounded in June when an Iraqi airstrike targeted a meeting of ISIS top commanders in Syria. The source of these claims is Iraqi TV channel AlSumaria.
The media outlet went further claiming that al-Baghdadi is unable to assume his duties because of the injures and ISIS top commanders have chosen Abu Othman al-Tunisi to succeed him thus triggering a rift within the terrorist group.
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For a summary of Mary Ellsberg’s history of work with the US government agencies actively promoting regime change in Nicaragua, and her involvement with toxic elements advocating a similar destabilization campaign against Syria, see the editor’s note that follows this piece.
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There is so much misinformation in mainstream corporate media about recent events in Nicaragua that it is a pity that Mary Ellsberg’s article for Pulse has added to it with a seemingly leftish critique. Ellsberg claims that recent articles, including from this website, often “paint a picture of the crisis in Nicaragua that is dangerously misleading.”
Unfortunately, her own article does just that. It looks at the situation entirely from the perspective of those opposing Daniel Ortega’s government while whitewashing their malevolent behavior and downplaying the levels of US support they have relied on. Her piece is an incomplete depiction of what is happening on the ground, ignoring many salient facts that have come to light and which have been outdated by recent events.
The following is a brief response to Ellsberg’s main points from someone who lives in Nicaragua and has observed the situation directly and intimately.
First, Mary Ellsberg says that those who claim ‘the opposition has been defeated’ are wrong. She shows a photo of a large demonstration to prove her point. However, this demonstration occurred months ago, on May 30. It was taken at the peak of the opposition’s support. Subsequent demonstrations have seen numbers fall to levels that they must find embarrassingly low.
In contrast, while Ellsberg claims that Ortega and vice-president Murillo lack support, there were massive pro-government demonstrations throughout July, culminating in the biggest on July 19, not just in Managua but in towns and cities up and down the country. They have continued since.
The truth is that, in terms of demonstrations, strikes, and barricades on the streets, opposition support fell away rapidly once people began to see through its lies and the violence and chaos it caused.
Opposition protest numbers are rapidly dwindling. This puny march was observed in Managua on July 26.
Second, Ellsberg minimizes the importance of US money and right-wing support for the opposition. But the anti-Sandinista “Civic Alliance” gives little indication of its own political agenda for Nicaragua, beyond getting rid of the elected government, so it is perfectly legitimate to ask where its political support comes from.
Even Ortega critics, like Ben Waddell, have said that US agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy have been laying the groundwork for insurrection by giving financial support to the Nicaraguan opposition.
In the middle of the crisis, its leaders traveled to Washington and Miami, funded by Freedom House, to meet right-wing Republicans like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
Student leaders went on to seek support from the extreme right in El Salvador, meeting officials of the Arena party.
More recently, they appeared at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, a bastion of right-wing militarism and pro-Israel extremism. What does all this tell us about their political intentions?
Victor Cuadras, the face and voice of Nicaragua’s coup plotting opposition students, finds a natural base at the Hudson Institute, a hyper-militarist neocon think tank funded by Likudnik and far-right foundations https://t.co/if9ZxqJAVIhttps://t.co/0bAstG79sN
Third, while the deaths in the protests are a major tragedy, calling them a “massacre” gives credence to the exaggerated and cynically manipulated numbers being used by the opposition. A detailed analysis of casualties in the first two months, which eliminated double-counted and incidents unrelated to the protests, found there had been 119 deaths, divided equally between both “sides.” A recent official count logs 197 deaths by late July.
Ellsberg cites higher figures from reports by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR), but they lost any credibility they might have had by jumping to conclusions based on the work of the two local human rights bodies, which both have a long history of open bias against the Sandinista government. Paulo Abrāo, head of IACHR, far from being a neutral observer, openly declared his support for student protesters on May 19 when they had just violently held up a bus full of people returning from a peace demonstration, resulting in various injuries.
Fourth, like the opposition leaders themselves, Ellsberg refers to “peaceful” protesters and refuses to accept the violence which they perpetrated. This has included the murder of 22 police, plus many government officials and Sandinista supporters, the most recent a few days ago in Matagalpa. Several Sandinistas have endured gruesome torture.
She refers to the violent scenes when government forces managed to reopen access to the cities of Jinotepe and Diriamba, in which Sandinista supporters attacked priests and bishops. (Ironically, they were protected by a heavy police escort, the very police the bishops had earlier asked to be taken off the streets.) What she fails to say is how angry people were at the church being used as a place of sanctuary for armed protesters who terrorized these two cities for over a month, holding about 400 drivers and their vehicles hostage on the main highway.
The government would never have been able to remove the hundreds of barricades the opposition erected if they hadn’t had popular support to do so.
Now that the coup has been defeated, much more evidence of violence is coming to light, such as the testimony byDania Valeska, one of the student protesters, about the arming of the people who occupied one of the main universities (the UNAN).
Ellsberg shows a picture of Valeska in one of the video appeals (“Mama, forgive me…”) she made while allegedly under attack at the UNAN, later shown to be play-acting. That fake video was used by the opposition and their media friends all over the US and Europe.
Mary Ellsberg is right in one respect: the opposition has gained the support of international media, and of the US administration and the now mainly right-wing governments in the rest of Latin America. The opposition is clinging on to these allies, helped by the false picture painted by articles such as Ellsberg’s, while their support in Nicaragua itself is fading.
Since mid-July the country has been gradually returning to normal; Sandinista supporters have returned to the streets; the barricades have been dismantled (often by local people themselves); and the violence has largely stopped. The enormous damage done by protesters to public buildings, health centers, roads, and dozens of private houses is being repaired. Businesses and schools that were closed have reopened. Daily life has resumed and tourists have begun to reappear.
The coup has failed, but Mary Ellsberg and others still continue to try to persuade the rest of the world that Nicaragua’s crisis is ‘far from over’.
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Note from Grayzone Project’s editor
While downplaying the role of the US in the coup, Mary Ellsberg has worked for years with some of the main US government-backed organizations that have aimed at smashing the Sandinista movement, as well as European government NGO’s that have been active inside Nicaragua.
Ellsberg’s George Washington University CV indicates extensive work with USAID, which just committed $1.5 million in funding to opposition media and NGO’s Nicaragua. (Here is one USAID report that Ellsberg contributed to). Ellsberg has even been a member of a delegation organized by the US State Department, the governmental parent of USAID.
In her article, she not only failed to disclose her involvement with the US government’s regime change arm, she neglected to mention that USAID has spent over $5 million in the past four years “laying the groundwork for insurrection” in Nicaragua.
Meanwhile, Ellsberg’s son, Julio Martinez Ellsberg, has been an advisor to an opposition student group, whitewashing the opposition’s violence while actively lobbying “progressive groups…to publicly cut ties with the [Sandinista] party.”
Mary Ellsberg’s distortion-laden editorial was published at Pulse Media, one of the most active English-language platforms for promoting regime change in Syria, and for smearing public figures who dissent from the Washington consensus. Pulse’s creator, Idrees Ahmad, has been under a long-running investigation by his employers at the UK’s Stirling University for his serial online harassment of ideological foes. (Ellsberg would probably not appreciate Ahmad’s penchant for leveling misogynistic insultsagainst feminist activists with whom he disagrees.)
Before I published my factual two-part expose on the USAID-backed White Helmets organization, I received an unsolicited phone call from Ahmad. He unleashed a threatening tirade, seeking to intimidate me against publishing the article. I still do not know how he obtained my phone number or how he learned that I was going to publish, though I have my suspicions. (The audio is here.)
It is revealing that Ellsberg, one of the principal “progressive” voices in Washington calling for regime change in Nicaragua, has joined forces with the most malicious advocates for doing the same in Syria. Fortunately for people in both countries, their efforts have so far been a failure.
–Max Blumenthal
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Charles Redvers is a Canadian who has known and lived in Nicaragua at different times over the last three decades, currently in León. He is the author of ‘Nicaragua’s failed coup’.
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The Washington correspondent of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Amir Tibon, headlined on the night of Tuesday, August 14, “Trump Administration Wants to See a Gaza Cease-fire ‘With or Without the Palestinian Authority’,” and he reported that, “The Trump administration wants to see a long-term cease-fire in Gaza, with or without the support of the Palestinian Authority, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council told Haaretz on Monday.”
In other words: U.S. President Donald Trump is not angling for Palestinians to become ruled by the more moderate of the two political entities that are contesting for control over Palestine — he’s not favoring The Palestinain Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, over Hamas, Ismail Haniya. He is, instead, aiming for Jews inside Israel to conquer completely the non-Jews, not only inside Israel, but also in the adjoining areas, Palestine.
Trump has now officially placed the United States on the side of Israel’s Jews, for them to conquer and subdue Palestine, for Jews to rule over Palestinians, and for the residents in Palestine not to be allowed to participate in Israel’s elections.
This will be very good for American firms such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics, which depend wholly or primarily upon sales to the U.S. Government and to its allied governments, including Israel, for their profits and their net worths, their stock-market valuations. More war is essential for these firms, which sell only to these governments — governments which seek to control more land, regardless of what the residents there want, and which need to buy more weapons in order to do it.
Trump’s foreign policies have been very effective.
Trump’s biggest success, thus far into his Presidency, has been his sale of $400 billion (originally $350 billion) of U.S.-made weapons to the Saudi Arabian Government, which is owned by its royal family, after whom that nation is named. This sale alone is big enough to be called Trump’s “jobs plan” for Americans. It is also the biggest weapons-sale in all of history. It’s 400 billion dollars, not 400 million dollars; it is gigantic, and, by far, unprecedented in world-history. Consequently, anyone who would allege that he has been anything other than an extraordinary success for his constituency, the people who will be funding his 2020 re-election campaign, would be wrong. America is controlled by dollars, not by people; everything is geared to maximizing the return on investment, for the people who have invested in Trump. Increasing their net worths is his goal, and he has been stunningly successful at achieving it.
The individuals who control those corporations are also in control of those governments, via political corruption, such as the “revolving doors” between ‘government service’ and the private sector. If they can’t control those governments, then they can’t control their own finances. But if they do control those governments — and especially their own Government, the U.S. Government — then they control the very source of their own wealth. They are totally dependent upon the U.S. Government. Trump has, regarding U.S. military and diplomatic policies — the Pentagon and the State Department, and the intelligence agencies — been just as effective as the neoconservatives, the people who actually run both Parties on behalf of those firms, for those firms’ owners, could have hoped.
This does not mean that they won’t in 2020 back an opponent of Trump, but only that Trump is issuing as many IOUs to these people as he can, and as fast as he can, and that he has been remarkably successful (unprecedented, actually) at doing that. Whereas Democrats such as Joe Biden and Eric Swalwell might contest against him for their support, no one can reasonably say that Trump has been a disappointment to the proponents of American conquest and control over the entire world — the people commonly called “neoconservatives,” and all other agents of what Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.” While those people might criticize him in order to push him even farther to the right on foreign affairs than he has been, he has been very effective for them, and he clearly is hoping that, at least regarding military policies, in America’s militarized economy, those people will be satisfied for him to remain in power. That’s his hope. That’s his goal. It’s shown by his actions, not by his mere words.
America’s alliance with Israel is almost as important as America’s alliance with the owners of Saudi Arabia, the Saud family. Both of those allies want the Palestinians to be conquered. And so does Trump. And, of course, so too do the people who are rotating constantly through those revolving doors, the other agents for America’s rulers.
“the Israeli Air Force bombed Al-Meshal, one of the Gaza Strip’s most important cultural facilities. They claim that the building — which comprises two theaters, three large halls, and a department serving the Egyptian community living in the Strip — was being used by Hamas.”
“The two leaders discussed the easing of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, rehabilitation of its infrastructure and terms for a ceasefire.”
Israel said that
“everything that will happen in Gaza will be done with Egyptian mediation and involvement.”
This means that the setting-up of Israel’s control over Gaza will “be done with Egyptian mediation and involvement,” but the operation of Israel’s control over Gaza won’t be — it’ll be 100% Israeli.
For example, Sisi might be able to get Netanyahu to agree to increase the current, 85 truckloads of food daily into Gaza so as to raise Gazans’ food-intake above its current “subsistence” level. Although he might try, Israel’s record of violating its international agreements is even stronger than America’s record for that is. But to serve PR purposes, Sisi might try. Ever since 2007, when Israel was allowing into Gaza 106 truckloads daily, that number was reduced down to this “subsistence” level.
On 1 January 2008, was secretly issued from Israel’s Ministry of Defense, a document “Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Lines”, in which the Ministry of Health informed them that the then-current 106 trucks daily was too much for “subsistence”:
“The Ministry of Health is conducting work for calculating the minimal subsistence basket based on the Arab sector in Israel. The ‘minimum basket’ allows nutrition that is sufficient for subsistence without the development of malnutrition.”
“The Ministry of Health estimates that the new basket will be 20% lower than the current basket [85 trucks instead of 106].”
Import of goods to Gaza also dropped significantly with the imposition of the blockade in mid-2007. By 2008, the monthly average of truckloads entering Gaza had decreased by 75%17. The amount of imports slowly increased as import restrictions were gradually relaxed, with the number of trucks entering in 2015 and 2016 reaching levels similar to those prior to 2007. It is difficult to draw a parallel between 2015/2016 and 2007 however, given that due to the vast needs for post-hostilities reconstruction as well as recovery of Gaza’s deteriorating infrastructure, coupled with rapid population growth, demand for import into Gaza was much higher in 2015/16 than it was prior to 2007.
The needs today are even higher than that.
Sisi might be able to win some voters if he can brag to them that he has gotten Israel to increase that number above whatever it currently has been, but it will be only for show, anyway.
Egypt is heavily committed both to the Saudi regime and to the American regime. To say that the fate of the Gazans is in the hands of Israel and of Egypt, would be to say that it’s in the hands of the rulers of America and of the rulers of Saudi Arabia (the Saud family, who own that country). The rulers of Israel won’t have any international backing, at all, if they don’t have America’s rulers supporting them. For Donald Trump to tell Benjamin Netanyahu that not only will Israel be allowed to ignore Hamas but it will even be allowed to ignore the Palestinian Authority, means that Netanyahu now has America’s support no matter what Israel might do to the Gazans — and to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank.
This is excellent news for the holders of U.S. ‘Defense’ stocks. The more that America’s ‘enemies’ suffer, the better it is for America’s owners. This is how capitalism actually functions. Inequality is natural. That’s true not only between nations, but within nations. In the natural world, losers get eaten. Justice doesn’t naturally occur anywhere. To the extent that it exists anywhere, it is imposed, by the public, against the aristocracy. Within nations, justice is almost non-existent. Between nations, it is entirely non-existent. For examples: were George W. Bush and Tony Blair executed for invading and destroying Iraq in 2003? Of course not. Neither of them was even imprisoned. Nor were Obama and Sarkozy and Cameron executed for invading and destroying Libya in 2011. Those are only examples, of the basic reality.
This news-report is written so as to place a news-event into its actual context, not divorced from that, as is normal. In other words: it’s news instead of propaganda (the latter of which, avoids the relevant context behind the reported event).
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Australia’s environment has been in precarious hands since European settlement found its lengthy and persistent way to the continent. It has been mined, mauled, drained, farmed, deforested and despoiled at a rate that was only restrained by the size of its small but rapacious populace. When environmental matters have made an appearance, they have done so with a veil of political opportunism. Few typify this more than Labor’s environment minister Senator Graham Richardson’s efforts regarding the Tasmanian forests. To win over the conservation-minded voter in marginal, city-based seats, it was good to go green – at least for a bit.
The Great Barrier Reef has not been exempt from the political tussles of a troubled environmental conscience. Its monumental size, and its status as an ecological wonder meant little in the late 1960s, when the appetite for development mattered most. In 1967, it seemed to be facing imminent destruction, another casualty of a predatory mining industry keen for new conquests. The state of Queensland had elected a National Party government hungry to exploit the environment’s wares.
As local tour operator Alistair Pikeexplained to the ABC,
“We had a fairly full-on development oriented government… and mate, if they couldn’t drill it, mine it, chop it down or whatever, they really didn’t want to know about it.”
It took characters such as that feted “rat bag” of an activist, rogue of action and Mission Beach artist John Büsst to bring angered but focused attention on threats to bulldoze Ellison Reef. An impeccably connected person, he had the ear of Australian prime minister and fellow diver Harold Holt. A cast of characters were duly mobilised: the CSIRO forester Len Webb, and president of the Queensland Wildlife Society Judith Wright became enthusiastic and un-phased recruits.
In the Australian environmental conscience, this gorgeously freakish wonder of ecology has been seen in isolation, its problems a local provenance and interest rather than a global phenomenon of ailing. As the earth continues is warming push, earthbound, and very terrestrially unimaginative politicians have been attempting to treat the Reef’s woes as separately resolvable from the broader challenges of climate change.
Little wonder, then, that a problem viewed in such limited terms could be duly remedied by donations without tender, lump sum payments without review. Narrowly viewed problems tend to lead to narrowly devised solutions. Such was the nature of the Turnbull government’s $444 million “rescue package” to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, one conceived and delivered in a haze.
The issue of who takes the reins and ensures study and conservation was never going to be free of a political push. While common sense suggests that the task be left to government organisations within the scientific community – CSIRO, the Australian Institute for Marine Science and the Marine Park Authority, other contenders have been stalking the scene.
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation was deemed the chosen one, but questions are circulating as to why that outfit got preferment for such largesse. For one thing, it seemed an oddly hasty move, given that it entailed an expenditure of almost the entire spending allocation for the 2050 Reef Partnership program.
Then came the organisation’s profile. Its chief executive Anna Marsden is married to Ben Myers, chief of staff to former Queensland premier Campbell Newman. (Newman can be counted, incidentally, as one of those durable environmental sceptics who prefers the bulldozer to reef hugging conservation.) One of the four founding businessmen behind the venture is the current chairman of the foundation, and former chairman of Esso Australia and the Commonwealth Bank. Advocates of barrier reef protection, beware.
That particular non-profit group had a revenue stream of less than $8 million in 2017, a humble outfit with six full time employees. Nothing suggests that those working for it had a clue that this staggering cash supply was coming their way.
“We didn’t have much time before the announcement to be prepared for it,” came the perplexed, albeit thrilled Marsden.
Easy to understand why Marsden considered this winning the lottery. Overnight, even given a spread of funding over six years, the Foundation has become one of the largest, if not largest NGO in Australia. By way of grim contrast, government employees connected with the science fraternity are facing skint measures to fund their projects.
The bungling has led to Josh Frydenberg, the environment and energy minister, asking the secretary of his department to urge the National Audit Office to give the funding arrangement serious consideration “as a priority”.
This piqued the interest of Tony Burke, Labor’s opposition spokesman, who claimed that it “was an extraordinary step for the secretary of the department to be sending a letter like that to the Auditor-General at the exact same time that Josh Frydenberg is standing up in Parliament saying there is no problem here”.
The outstanding feature of the funding spill to the foundation is its conspicuous absence of any reference to climate change. It is a hermetic form of deliverable rescue sans climate science, an approach that politically factors in the climate change sceptics within the Turnbull government. By all means try to preserve an Australian wonder; but ditch the climate science. The conclusion of one unnamed scientist to the Fairfax press about the nature of this arrangement was elementary and crude:
“Obviously this is political – it’s to head off Labor making a big issue of the Great Barrier Reef at the next election.”
Woe to the reef.
*
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge and lectures at RMIT University. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Email: [email protected]
First published by Global Research in March 2015, the following text was presented to the Public Forum on:
America’s War on Terror and the Urgency of World Peace,
Social Sciences, University of the Philippines (UP-Cebu), March 2, 2015
Introduction
America’s “war on terrorism” is a hegemonic project, under a fake counter-terrorism agenda which consists in going after al Qaeda entities which “threaten Western civilization”.
Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (U.S.-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy.
We are not dealing with piecemeal military and intelligence operations. The July-August 2014 attack on Gaza by Israeli forces was undertaken in close consultation with the United States and NATO. The actions in Ukraine and their timing coincided with the onslaught of the attack on Gaza, Syria and Iraq.
In turn, military undertakings are closely coordinated with a process of economic warfare which consists not only in imposing sanctions on sovereign countries but also in deliberate acts of destabilization of financial and currencies markets, with a view to undermining the enemies’ national economies.
Our analysis in this article will largely be geared towards refuting the myth that the United States is waging “a Global War on Terrorism”. The evidence amply confirms that the the United States of America is a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” and that the campaign against the Islamic State is a smokescreen used by the US and its allies to justify in the eyes of public opinion its global war of conquest.
The Global War on Terrorism has become a consensus. It is part of war propaganda. It is also used by Western governments to justify and implement “anti-terrorist” legislation. It is the cornerstone of the West’s demonization campaign directed against Muslims.
It should also be understood that the “Global War on Terrorism” supports a process of “economic conquest”, whereby countries forego their sovereignty.
Their national economies are “taken over by foreign investors”.
Their assets are confiscated, austerity measures are imposed and a process of macro-economic restructuring under the helm of Wall Street and the Bretton Woods institutions are implemented.
US sponsored terrorism creates factional divisions within national societies.
Countries are impoverished and destabilized. National institutions are undermined as part of a US led war of conquest.
The evidence presented in this article, including the historical review, is intended to fully reveal the “Big Lie”.
Beyond doubt, the “Global War on Terrorism” is a fabrication. The United States of America is the “Number One” State Sponsor of Terrorism.
Public Forum on America’s War on Terror and the Urgency of World Peace: Its Ramification in the Philippines. University of the Philippines, UP-Cebu, March 2 2015
The Global War on Terrorism: Obama’s Crusade against the Islamic State (ISIS)
The U.S. airstrikes initiated in September 2014 directed against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State are part of a scenario of military escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia.
Since August 2014, the US Air Force with the support of a coalition of more than twenty countries has relentlessly waged an intensified air campaign against Syria and Iraq allegedly targeting the Islamic State brigades.
According to Defense News, over 16,000 airstrikes were carried out from August 2014 to mid January 2015. Sixty percent of the air strikes were conducted by the US Air Force using advanced jet fighter and bombing capabilities (Aaron Mehta, “A-10 Performing 11 Percent of Anti-ISIS Sorties”. Defense News, January 19, 2015.)
The airstrikes have been casually described by the media as part of a “soft” counter-terrorism operation, rather than an act of all out war directed against Syria and Iraq.
This large scale air campaign which has resulted in countless civilian casualties has been routinely misreported by the mainstream media. According to Max Boot, senior fellow in national security at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Obama’s strategy in Syria and Iraq is not working… [ because] the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS has been remarkably restrained”. (Newsweek, February 17, 2015, emphasis added).
Americans are led to believe that the Islamic State constitutes a formidable force confronting the US military and threatening Western Civilization. The thrust of media reporting is that the US Air Force has failed and that “Obama should get his act together” in effectively confronting this “Outside Enemy” of America.
According to CFR Max Boot, military escalation is the answer: what is required is for the president “to dispatch more aircraft, military advisers, and special operations forces, while loosening the restrictions under which they operate.” (Ibid)
What kind of aircraft are involved in the air campaign? The F-16 Fighting Falcon,(above right), The F-15E Strike Eagle (image below) , The A-10 Warthog, not to mention Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor stealth tactical fighter aircraft.
Why has the US Air Force not been able to wipe out the Islamic State which at the outset was largely equipped with conventional small arms not to mention state of the art Toyota pickup trucks?
From the very outset, this air campaign has NOT been directed against ISIS. The evidence confirms that the Islamic State is not the target. Quite the opposite.
The air raids are intended to destroy the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria.
The USAF-15E Strike Eagle
We call on our readers to carefully reflect on the following image, which describes the Islamic State convoy of pickup trucks entering Iraq and crossing a 200 km span of open desert which separates the two countries.
This convoy entered Iraq in June 2014.
What would have been required from a military standpoint to wipe out a ISIS convoy with no effective anti-aircraft capabilities?
Without an understanding of military issues, common sense prevails.
If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June.
The answer is pretty obvious, yet not a single mainstream media has acknowledged it.
The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map right). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, F16) it would have been –from a military standpoint– “a piece of cake”, a rapid and expedient surgical operation, which would have decimated the Islamic State convoys in a matter of hours.
Instead what we have witnessed is an ongoing drawn out six months of relentless air raids and bombings, and the terrorist enemy is apparently still intact.
(In comparison, the NATO bombing raids of Yugoslavia in 1999 lasted about three months (March 24-June 10, 1999).
And we are led to believe that the Islamic State cannot be defeated by a powerful US led military coalition of more than 20 countries.
The air campaign was not intended to decimate the Islamic State.
The counter-terrorism mandate is a fiction. America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism”.
The Islamic State is not only protected by the US and its allies, it is trained and financed by US-NATO, with the support of Israel and Washington’s Persian Gulf allies.
Al Qaeda Afiliated Entities are “Intelligence Assets. Instruments of US Intelligence
The Global War on Terrorism is a Fabrication used to justify a war of conquest. The Jihadist terrorists are “Made in America”. They are instruments of US intelligence, yet they are presented to public opinion as “enemies of America”.
The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently the alleged target of a US-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, continues to be supported covertly by the US. Washington and its allies continue to provide military aid to the Islamic State.
US and allied bombings are not targeting the ISIL, they are bombing the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria including factories and oil refineries.
The IS caliphate project is part of a longstanding US foreign policy agenda to carve up Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan.
These various affiliated Al Qaeda entities in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are CIA sponsored “intelligence assets”. They are used by Washington to wreck havoc, create internal conflicts and destabilize sovereign countries.
The US is also supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of China. The underlying objective is to trigger political instability in Western China.
“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad.”
Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman and founder of Al Qaedawas recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihadist war against Afghanistan . He was 22 years old and was indoctrinated in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp. Al Qaeda was a creation of US intelligence, which was put together with the support of Pakistani and Saudi intelligence:
“[I]t was the government of the United States which supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged.” (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks In the US, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RAW109A.html , 16 September 2001)
Since the Carter Administration, Washington has supported the Islamic terror network
Ronald Reagan called the terrorists “freedom fighters”. The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades. It was all for “a good cause”: fighting the Soviet Union and regime change, leading to the demise of a secular government in Afghanistan.
Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the White House in 1985 (Reagan Archives)
Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official, Milt Bearden at a Mujahideen training camp in North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987. (source RAWA)
“We Created Al Qaeda to Fight the Soviets in Afghanistan”
“We know of their deep belief in god – that they’re confident that their struggle will succeed. – That land over-there is yours – and you’ll go back to it some day, because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes, your mosques, back again, because your cause is right, and god is on your side.”
Under Reagan’s NSDD 166, US assistance to the Islamic brigades channelled through Pakistan was not limited to bona fide military aid. Washington also contributed –through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)– to financing the process of religious indoctrination, largely to secure the demise of secular institutions. (Michel Chossudovsky, 9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan and the Soviet-Afghan War to George W Bush and September 11, 2001, Global Research, September 09, 2010)
… the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books…
The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books “are fully in compliance with US law and policy.” Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.
… AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.
“It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction,” Stratos said. “But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.”
… Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska -Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $ 51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.” (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)
Picture above is translated as follows: “Jihad – Often many different wars and conflicts arise among people, which cause material damages and loss of human life. If these wars and disputes occur among people for the sake of community, nation, territory, or even because of verbal differences, and for the sake of progress…”
This page is from a third-grade language arts textbook dating from the mujahidin period. A copy of the book was purchased new in Kabul in May 2000.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations in the wake of the US 2001 invasion,”New madrassas sprouted, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,where students were encouragedto join the Afghan resistance.
Washington’s Agenda: Destabilize Secular Institutions. Install an Islamic State in Afghanistan. The Role of the Wahhabi Missions
US military intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s was supported by the Wahhabi missionaries out of Saudi Arabia, which trained the Taliban (‘graduates”) in the US sponsored madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Wahhabi doctrine would not have spread in the way it did without the support of US intelligence.
Saudi Arabia worked closely with Washington in recruiting the Mujahideen (holy warriors) to fight against the Soviet Union. The Saudi monarchy enlisted the support of the religious authorities. Fatwas were issued;
“urging Saudi and non-Saudi youths to go to Afghanistan and carry out jihad there. And it praised those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of Islamic nation’s causes.” (Al-Quds al-Arabi, op cit)
Confirmed by the Afghan Project (http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/afintro.htm ), which has collected hundreds of CIA and State Department documents, cables and memoranda, the CIA developed from the late 1970s, ties with a number of Islamic organizations. The objective was to use “Islamic fundamentalist” doctrine to unseat the secular pro-Soviet People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government as well as unleash a war with the Soviet Union. The same strategy of supporting Islamic political movements was used by Washington in the post-Cold War era in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union as well in Bosnia and Kosovo.
In the 1980s, Kabul was “a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women held government jobs.” There were female members of parliament, and women drove cars, and travelled and went on dates, without needing to ask a male guardian for permission. (Julie Levesque, Women Rights: From Afghanistan to Syria: Women’s Rights, War Propaganda and the CIA, Global Research, April 2014)
Al Qaeda and The Islamic State
“The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is presented as a “Clash of Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.
U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence since the 1980s) have been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen. Al Qaeda affiliated organizations have also been deployed in several Asian countries including China and Indonesia.
The Islamic State (ISIS) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة).
In relation to the Syrian insurgency, the Islamic State fighters together with the Al Qaeda affiliated jihadist forces of the Al Nusrah Front are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance. They are covertly supported by US-NATO-Israel. Their mandate is to wage a terrorist insurgency against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The atrocities committed by Islamic State fighters in Iraq are similar to those committed in Syria. Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors.
The ISIS brigades were involved in the US-NATO supported insurgency in Syria directed against the government of Bashar al Assad. NATO and the Turkish High Command were responsible for the recruitment of ISIL and Al Nusrah mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011.
According to Israeli intelligence sources, this initiative consisted in:
“a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011.)
There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIL. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.
Western military specialists on contract to the Pentagon have trained the ISIS and Al Nusrah terrorists in the use of chemical weapons.
“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)
The ISIS’s practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Yousaf al Salafi – allegedly the Pakistan commander of Islamic State (IS) or Daish – has confessed during investigations that he has been receiving funds through the United States.
Law enforcing agencies on January 22 claimed that they arrested al Salafi, along with his two companions, during a joint raid in Lahore. However, sources revealed that al Salafi was actually arrested sometimes in December last year and it was only disclosed on January 22.
“During the investigations, Yousaf al Salafi revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organisation in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria,” a source privy to the investigations revealed to Daily Express on the condition of anonymity.
…[F]rom 2007 where the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel openly conspired to stand up, fund, and arm a terrorist army to fight a proxy war against Syria and Iran, to 2015 where this army has finally manifested itself as the “Islamic State” complete with funding, arms, and fighters streaming in from NATO members, the source cited by the Tribune claiming that “the US had to dispel the impression that it is financing the group for its own interests,” and thus must now feign to be interested in stopping the organization in Syria, is the most compelling and logical explanation available.
The State Sponsors of Terrorism: Who’s Who
George W. Bush and the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
The late Saudi King Abdullah was known to have supported and financed Al Qaeda in liaison with the Washington. Saudi intelligence played a key role in this regard.
The House of Saud provides financial aid to the terrorists. And so does the bin Laden family. According to The Washington based CATO Institute (November 2001) Saudi Arabia is a “prime sponsor of terrorism”
The U.S. government has warned that it will treat regimes that harbor or assist terrorist organizations the same way that it treats the organizations themselves. Yet if Washington is serious about that policy, it ought to regard Saudi Arabia as a State sponsor of international terrorism. Indeed, that country should have been included for years on the U.S. State Department’s annual list of governments guilty of sponsoring terrorism.
We recall that in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush stated in no uncertain terms that “State sponsors of terrorism” would be considered as “terrorists”.
“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”.
But there is always an “Exception that the Proves the Rule” and that is George W. Bush himself.
When George W. Bush respectfully kisses King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, does this mean that Dubya could –by some stretch of the imagination– be considered a “suspected terrorist”, who should never have been elected president of the United States of America?
The answer is negative: Kissing “State sponsors of terrorism” on the mouth is not defined by the FBI as “suspicious behavior”.
The Insidious Relationship between the Bush and bin Laden Families
Now let us turn our attention to the relationship between the Bush and bin Laden families.
The Bushes and bin Ladens are long-time friends. This relationship goes back to George H. W. Bush, who served as head of the CIA in the Ford administration, before becoming Vice President under the Reagan administration and President of the United States (1989-1993).
George W. Bush Junior had business dealings in the oil industry dating back to the late 1970s, at the time when his father Bush Senior was head of the CIA:
The wider bin Laden clan [was] closely tied to the Saudi royal family. According to Seymour Hersh … it is far from clear that the royal family, … has forsaken Muslim extremists. Indeed, some members of the royal family itself are said to bankroll Osama bin Laden. … The Saudi monarchy, Hersh reports, has also quietly resisted U.S. efforts to conduct background checks of Saudi suspects in the wake of September 11. While much remains to be learned about these shadowy connections, it is clear that any investigation of the bin Laden’s family’s U.S. investments will lead to some well-placed Texans.
Like George W. Bush, the fortune of Osama bin Laden is rooted in oil and his family’s government connections. Before his death in a 1968 plane crash, Osama’s father, Mohammed bin Laden, made a fortune off construction contracts awarded by the Saudi royal family. The $5 billion per year construction conglomerate, known as the Binladin Group (the company uses another spelling of the name) remains closely tied to the Saudi royal family.
After the death of Mohammed bin Laden, control of the company passed to Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half brother. The roots of the first known Bush-bin Laden convergence date back to the mid-1970s, when the two clans were linked by a Houston businessman named James R. Bath. … By 1976, when Gerald Ford appointed the elder George Bush as CIA director, Bath was acting as a business agent for Salem bin Laden’s interests in Texas. …
After W. lost a bid for Congress, he decided to launch an oil company in Midland in 1979. For $50,000, Bath bought a 5 percent stake in W.’s Arbusto (Spanish for “Bush”) partnerships. At the time, Bath also served as business agent for several prominent Saudis, including Salem bin Laden. In exchange for a percentage of the deals, Bath made U.S. investments for these clients in his own name, according to Time. Although Bath has said that he invested his own money in Arbusto, not Saudi money, the fact that he was Salem’s agent at the time has fueled speculation that Osama bin Laden’s eldest brother was an early investor in W.’s first oil venture. It was around the time of this investment, incidentally, that Osama bin Laden made his first trip to the Khyber Pass, where he would soon join the Mujaheddin and the CIA in the holy war that expelled the Soviets from Afghanistan. (Salem, for his part, owned a house in Marble Falls, and died in a 1988 plane crash near San Antonio.) Andrew Wheat, The Bush-bin Laden Connection, Texas Observer, November 9, 2001)
The Bush-bin Laden Relationship: Flash Forward to September 10, 2001
Despite his family ties and links to the Royal Saudi household, Osama bin Laden was officially considered “a disgrace” to members of the bin Laden family, who reluctantly provided him with “pocket money”, which was used to develop Al Qaeda (The Base). He was referred to as a “Black Sheep”.
Its all part of a “good guys project” of going after Osama, the “Black Sheep”, and waging the “Global War on Terrorism”.
There is nothing wrong, therefore, in socializing and doing business with family members of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, including the late Salem bin Laden and Shafiq bin Laden of the Carlyle Group.
Flash Forward to September 10, 2001. The Bush-bin Laden Relationship prevails. Confirmed by the Washington Post, “fellow investors” of the Carlyle Group Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden and former President H.G.W. Bush met at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on September 10, 2001, one day before 9/11, (see image below):
It didn’t help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden [Shafiq bin Laden]. Former president Bush [senior, see image below], a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. (Greg Schneider, Pairing the Powerful With the Rich, Washington Post, March 16, 2003)
Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden was the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks, yet his brother Shafiq bin Laden was meeting up with the presidents’s dad, former president George H. W. Bush on September 10, 2001.
A day later, on the evening of September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush pronounced a historic speech in which he defined the relationship between “terrorists’ and “state sponsors of terrorism”:
The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.
Needless to say Osama’s brother Shafiq and members of the bin Laden family were flown out of Washington in government planes in the immediate wake of 9/11.
Where was Osama bin Laden on September 10, 2001
Ironically, on September 10th while brother Shafiq bin Laden and George Bush Senior were meeting at the Ritz Carleton, the alleged 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was undergoing treatment for his kidney condition at the Urology War of Pakistan’s military hospital in Rawalpindi. (according to Dan Rather, CBS News Report).
Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.
“The military had him surrounded,” says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, “and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time,” he says, “I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after.” Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11.
AHMED RASHID, TALIBAN EXPERT: There were reports that Pakistani intelligence had helped the Taliban buy dialysis machines. And the rumor was that these were wanted for Osama bin Laden.
PETERSEN (on camera): Doctors at the hospital told CBS News there was nothing special about that night, but they refused our request to see any records. Government officials tonight denied that bin Laden had any medical treatment on that night.
…
PETERSEN: The United States has no way of knowing who in Pakistan`s military or intelligence supported the Taliban or Osama bin Laden maybe up to the night before 9/11 by arranging dialysis to keep him alive. So the United States may not know if those same people might help him again perhaps to freedom.
Barry Petersen, CBS News, Islamabad. (CBS News quoted in Michel Chossudovsky, Where was bin Laden on 9/11, Global Research, November 16, 2003)
What this CBS report, which has largely been overlooked by analysts, suggests is that:
1) Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (ISI), which is in permanent liaison with the CIA, was complicit in protecting Osama bin Laden.
2) If the CBS report by Dan Rather is accurate and Osama had indeed been admitted to the Pakistani military hospital on September 10, 2001, courtesy of America’s ally, in all probability, his whereabouts were known to US officials.
3) The hospital was directly under the jurisdiction of the Pakistani Military, which has close links to the Pentagon. U.S. military advisers based in Rawalpindi. work closely with the Pakistani Armed Forces. Again, no attempt was made to arrest America’s best known fugitive, but then maybe bin Laden was serving another “better purpose”. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld claimed at the time that Osama’s whereabout were unknown: “Its like looking for a needle in a stack of hay”.
Needless to say, the CBS report was a crucial piece of information in the 9/11 jigsaw. It refuted the administration’s claim that the whereabouts of bin Laden were unknown. It pointed to a Pakistan connection, it also suggested a cover-up at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
Bush and the “State Sponsors of Terrorism”
Ironically, in a subsequent address to the joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate on September 20, 2001, president George W. Bush stated unequivocally his administration’s intent to “pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism”, with no exceptions (e.g. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan)
Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.
“We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.
Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.)
From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime [state sponsor of terrorism]. President George W. Bush, 20 September 2001 (emphasis added)
What both presidents Bush and Obama have failed to acknowledge is that America’s staunched ally Saudi Arabia, not to mention Turkey and Israel are financing and supporting the terrorists, in liaison with Washington.
Both Bush and Obama seem to be caught up in the contradictions of their own political rhetoric, the “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” conundrum:
“I am with myself and I am also with the terrorists”
Flash Forward to March 2011: “New Normal” and the War on Syria: Supporting “Moderate Terrorists”
With the war on Syria (2011- ), establishing political ties with “State sponsors of terrorism” is considered to be part of a “New Normal”, a humanitarian endeavor intent upon unseating the secular government of Bashar al Assad and spreading American democracy throughout the Middle East.
John Kerry concurs: financial aid to Syria’s Al Nusrah, an affiliate of Al Qaeda is part of an R2P mandate.
There are now “‘good guy terrorists” and “bad guy terrorists”. Financial aid is channeled to Al Qaeda “good guy terrorists” to protect Syrians against the terrorists (New York Times, April 20, 2013)
Barack Obama, John Kerry, John McCain: Are They “Terror Suspects”?
Now let us examine in more detail the Al Nusrah Front, which constitutes the main rebel fighting force in Syria. Al Nusrah is affiliated to Al Qaeda. The leader of Al Nusrah, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, has pledged his allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who replaced Osama bin Laden after his death.
According to the State Department Bureau of Counter-terrorism, Jabhat al Nusrah, the main rebel force in Syria is a terrorist organization, an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
The State Department has issued a “prohibition against knowingly providing, or attempting or conspiring to provide, material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with, al-Nusrah Front, and
the freezing of all property and interests in property of the organization that are in the United States, or come within the United States or the control of U.S. persons.” (emphasis added). It is understood that US State Department Counter-terrorism policy also applies to “state sponsors of terrorism”.
Al Nusrah is financed by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel in close consultation with NATO and the Pentagon.
The Obama administration has openly confirmed its support for the Syrian rebels with most of this aid channeled to Al Nusrah.
US Senator John McCain is reported to have met up with jihadist terrorist leaders in Syria. (see picture right)
The Role of Israel: State Sponsor of Al Nusrah and the Islamic State (ISIS)
Jihadist fighters have met Israeli IDF officers as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu. The IDF top brass acknowledges that “global jihad elements inside Syria” [ISIL and Al Nusrah] are supported by State of Israel. See image below:
image. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon next to a wounded mercenary, Israeli
military field hospital at the occupied Golan Heights’ border with Syria, 18 February 2014″.
Xenophobia: The Demonization of Muslims
The US president and his NATO allies, not to mention Bejamin Netanyahu, “R the Terrorists”, they are the “state sponsors of terrorism.”.
Obama’s “counter-terrorism” campaign against the Islamic State has contributed to the demonization of Muslims, who in the eyes of Western public opinion are increasingly associated with the jihadists.
Anybody who dares to question the validity of the “Global War on Terrorism” is branded a terrorist and subjected to the anti-terrorist laws.
The ultimate objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the inquisitorial social order which rules America.
The Obama Administration has imposed a diabolical consensus with the support of its allies, not to mention the complicit role of the United Nations Security Council. The Western media has embraced the consensus; it has described the Islamic State as an independent entity, an outside enemy which threatens the Western World.
France has initiated a hate campaign against French Muslims, who represent approximately ten percent of France’s population.
While France mourns the victims of the Charlie Hebdo January 2015 attacks, the French government under the helm of president Francois Hollande is supporting as well as funding Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists in the Middle East and North Africa in liaison with the US, NATO and Israel:
With the recent attack in Paris likely the work of the very terrorists France has been arming and backing across North Africa and the Middle East, the French government itself stands responsible, guilty of the continued material support of a terrorist organization that has now killed French citizens, including two police officers, not only on French soil, but within the French capital itself. (Tony Cartalucci, Global Research, January 8, 2015)
Ironically, while the French media in chorus point to “Freedom of Expression” in journalism, not a single French media has had the courage of pointing to the issue of State sponsorship of terrorism by the French Republic.
The Urgency of World Peace
The antiwar movement in several Western countries is in crisis. Some of America’s wars are condemned outright, while others are heralded as “humanitarian interventions”. A significant segment of the US antiwar movement condemns the war but endorses the campaign against international terrorism, which constitutes the backbone of US military doctrine.
Historically, progressive social movements in Western countries (including the World Social Forum) have been infiltrated, their leaders co-opted and manipulated, through the corporate funding of non-governmental organizations, trade unions and political parties. The ultimate purpose of “funding dissent” is to prevent the protest movement from challenging the legitimacy of the capitalist elites.
The “Just War” theory (Jus Ad Bellum) has served to camouflage the nature of US foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders. The logic behind the “Global War on Terrorism” is that of a Just War. It is portrayed as a counter-terrorism initiative rather than outright military operation.
A large segment of “progressive” opinion in the US and Western Europe is supportive of NATO’s R2P “humanitarian” mandate (Responsibility to Protect) to the extent that these war plans are being carried out with the “rubber stamp” of civil society.
Prominent “progressive” authors as well independent media outlets have supported regime change and NATO sponsored humanitarian intervention in Libya. Similarly, many “progressive voices” rallied in support of the US-NATO sponsored opposition in Syria.
Let us be under no illusions: This pseudo-progressive discourse is an instrument of propaganda. Several prominent “left” intellectuals –who claim to be opposed to US imperialism– have supported the imposition of “no fly zones” and “humanitarian interventions” against sovereign countries.
“Progressives” are funded and co-opted by elite foundations including Ford, Rockefeller, et al. The corporate elites have sought to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. War and globalization are no longer in the forefront of civil society activism. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement. The economic crisis is not seen as having a relationship to the US led war.
Dissent has been compartmentalized. Separate “issue oriented” protest movements (e.g. environment, anti-globalization, peace, women’s rights, climate change) are encouraged and generously funded as opposed to a cohesive mass movement. This mosaic was already prevalent in the counter G7 summits and People’s Summits of the 1990s.
In numerous organizations including the trade union movement, the grassroots is betrayed by their leaders who are co-opted. The money trickles down from the corporate foundations, setting constraints on grassroots actions. Its called “manufacturing dissent”. Many of these NGO leaders are committed and well meaning individuals acting within a framework which sets the boundaries of dissent. The leaders of these movements are often co-opted, without even realizing that as a result of corporate funding their hands are tied.
In recent history, with the exception of Iraq, the so-called Western left namely “Progressives” have paid lip service to US-NATO military interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. “Progressives” also support the official 9/11 version of events. They deny 9/11 Truth.
“Progressives” acknowledge that the US was under attack on 9/11 and that the war on Afghanistan was a “Just War”. In the case of Afghanistan, the “self-defense” argument was accepted at face value as a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks, without examining the fact that the US administration had not only supported the “Islamic terror network”, it was also instrumental in the installation of the Taliban government in 1995-96. It was tacitly implied that by supporting al Qaeda, Afghanistan had attacked America on September 11, 2001.
In 2001, when Afghanistan was bombed and later invaded, “progressive” organizations largely upheld the administration’s “just cause” military doctrine. In the wake of 9/11, the antiwar movement against the illegal invasion of Afghanistan was isolated. The trade unions and civil society organizations had swallowed the media lies and government propaganda. They had accepted a war of retribution against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Media disinformation prevailed. People were misled as to the nature and objectives underlying the invasion of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were identified as the prime suspects of the 9/11 attacks, without a shred of evidence and without addressing the historical relationship between Al Qaeda and the US intelligence apparatus (as outlined above). In this regard, understanding 9/11 is crucial in formulating a consistent antiwar position. 9/11 is the pillar of US war propaganda; it sustains the illusion of an outside enemy, it justifies pre-emptive military intervention, it is the cornerstone of xenophobia and the hate campaign directed against Muslims.
With regard to Syria, from the outset in 2011, “progressives” and mainstream “antiwar” organizations have supported so-called opposition forces without acknowledging that the mainstay of these forces is composed of Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists, recruited, trained and financed by US-NATO and their allies including Israel, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
These antiwar groups, which previously supported NATO intervention in Libya, blame the Syrian government for the atrocities committed by the US sponsored Al Qaeda rebels.
Rebuilding the Antiwar Movement
What is required is to rebuild a mass movement. And this cannot be undertaken by organizations which are supported of corporate foundations and charities.
The social base as well as the organizational structure of the antiwar movement must be transformed. America’s “Long War” is an imperialist project which sustains the financial structures and institutional foundations of the capitalist World Order. Behind this military agenda are powerful corporate interests including an extensive propaganda apparatus.
War and the Economic Crisis are intimately related. The Worldwide imposition of neoliberal macro-economic policy measures is part of the broader imperial agenda. And consequently, the broader movement against neoliberalism must be integrated into the anti-war movement.
Breaking the “Big Lie” which presents war as a humanitarian undertaking, means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force. This profit-driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.
The holding of mass demonstrations and antiwar protests is not enough. What is required is the development of a broad and well-organized grassroots antiwar network, across the land, nationally and internationally, which challenges the structures of power and authority as well as the nature of the capitalist World order. People must mobilize not only against the military agenda – the authority of the state and its officials must also be challenged.
A meaningful anti-war movement requires breaking the “war on terrorism” consensus and upholding 9/11 Truth. To reverse the tide of war and globalization requires a massive campaign of networking and outreach to inform people across the land, nationally and internationally, in neighborhoods, workplaces, parishes, schools, universities and municipalities, on the nature of the imperial project, its military and economic dimensions, not to mention the dangers of a US sponsored nuclear war. This movement must also occur within the Armed Forces (including NATO) with a view to challenging the legitimacy of the military agenda.
The message should be loud and clear:
The US and its allies are behind the Al Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists who have committed countless atrocities against civilians on the specific instructions of the Western military alliance,
China and Russia are not a threat to Global Security. Neither are Syria, Iran or North Korea a threat to World Peace. Quite the opposite. The threat to Global Security emanates from the Pentagon and the US State Department.
What has to be achieved:
Reveal the criminal nature of this military project. War is a criminal undertaking under Nuremberg. It is the ultimate “Crime against the Peace”.
Undermine war propaganda, reveal the media lies, reverse the tide of disinformation, wage a consistent campaign against the corporate media. Bear in mind war propaganda is also considered a criminal act under the Nuremberg protocol
Break the legitimacy of the warmongers in high office. Indict political leaders for war crimes.
Dismantle the multibillion dollar national intelligence apparatus.
Dismantle the US-sponsored military adventure and its corporate sponsors. Bring home the troops.
Repeal the illusion that the state is committed to protecting its citizens.
Uphold 9/11 Truth. Reveal the falsehoods behind 9/11 which are used to justify the Middle East/Central Asian war under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT).
Expose how a profit-driven war serves the vested interests of the banks, the defense contractors, the oil giants, the media giants and the biotech conglomerates.
Challenge the corporate media which deliberately obfuscates the causes and consequences of this war.
Reveal and take cognizance of the unspoken and tragic outcome of a war waged with nuclear weapons.
Call for the Dismantling of NATO.
Reorganize the system of international justice which protects the war criminals. Implement the prosecution of war criminals in high office.
Close down the weapons assembly plants and implement the foreclosure of major weapons producers.
Close down all US military bases in the US and around the world.
Develop an antiwar movement within the armed forces and establish bridges between the armed forces and the civilian antiwar movement.
Forcefully pressure governments of both NATO and non-NATO countries to withdraw from the US-led global military agenda.
Develop a consistent antiwar movement in Israel. Inform the citizens of Israel of the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israeli attack on Iran.
Target the pro-war lobby groups including the pro-Israeli groups in the US.
Dismantle the homeland security state. Repeal the legitimacy of Obama’s extrajudicial assassinations. Repeal the drone wars directed against civilians.
Undermine the “militarization of law enforcement”.
Reverse the gamut of anti-terrorist legislation in Western countries which is intended to repeal fundamental civil rights.
These are no easy tasks. They require an understanding of the power structure, of hegemonic relations between the military, intelligence, the state structures and corporate powers which are promoting this destructive agenda.
Ultimately these power relations must be undermined with a view to changing the course of World history.
Without war propaganda and media disinformation, war criminals in high office do not have leg to stand on. Without the mainstream media’s lies and fabrications, the legitimacy of the “Global War on Terrorism” would collapse like a deck of cards.
This text was presented to the Forum on America’s War on Terror and the Urgency of World Peace: Its Ramification in the Philippines.
Social Sciences, University of the Philippines (UP-Cebu), in cooperation with Cebu Educators Forum (CEF), National Union of Students of the Philippines, (NUSP), National Commission on Muslim Filipinos, Visayas (NUSP), NUJP, Cebu Archdiocese, Peace Solidarity Movement, Cebu.
This incisive article was first published by UNZ review and Global Research in November 2018
The stars came out in Hollywood on November 2nd, or at least some of them did. The gala event celebrated the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and raised funds to support its mission in Israel itself and on the occupied West Bank. The organization being fêted was the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), which has fourteen regional offices in the United States and operates under the slogan “Their job is to look after Israel. Our job is to look after them.” In attendance were Arnold Schwarzenegger and actor Gerald Butler. Entertainment was provided by the singer Seal.
Hollywood Jewish royalty was thick on the ground, the grub was strictly kosher and billionaires competed to see who could give the most to such a worthy cause. The 1,200 attendees at the Beverly Hilton Hotel donated a record $53.8 million, with Oracle founder Larry Ellison leading the pack with a contribution of $16.6 million. Israeli media mogul Haim Saban, Hillary Clinton’s most generous supporter, served as host of the event and donated $5 million. Two weeks ago, a similar gathering of 1,200 in New York City dubbed “A Night of Heroes,” attended by GOP major donor casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, raised $35 million, $7 million coming from Adelson personally. FIDF reportedly was sitting on $190 million in contributions for the year before the Hollywood and New York events.
Donations to FIDF are tax deductible as the organization is registered with the U.S. Treasury as a 501(c)3 educational and charitable non-profit foundation. One might well ask how it is possible that the American taxpayer should subsidize a foreign military organization that is regularly accused of war crimes in its ongoing brutal and genocidal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem? One might also wonder how an organization that continues a military occupation in opposition to multiple United Nations resolutions that have been endorsed by Washington gets any kind of tax break at all? And finally, one might reasonably ask why an organization that already gets in excess of $3.8 billion annually directly from the U.S. Treasury needs more money to allegedly provide creature comforts for its soldiers?
The answer to all of the above would be that Jewish power in the United States makes it happen. But more particularly, it is Jewish money that does the trick since cash on the table provides access both to the media and to the people that matter in Washington. A tight circle of billionaire oligarchs, including Saban, Ellison and Adelson as well as Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus directly support organizations like FIDF as well as major pro-Israel groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the America Israel Political Action Committee, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. The billionaires are not shy about where their loyalty lies, boasting as does Saban, that he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel. Adelson has stated that he wishes that he had served in the Israeli army instead of the U.S. military and wants his son to grow up to “be a sniper for the IDF.” Both have publicly advocated bombing Iran. In Adelson’s case, the bomb would be nuclear.
Sometimes both the Israel agenda and the financial support is deliberately hidden, as in the case of the recently launched “Christian engagement in the Middle East” anti-Iran Philos Project, which was funded by Singer. The billionaires also directly donate to the campaigns of politicians and support projects that engage in the message management that is used to justify pro-Israel policies in Congress and the media.
Much of the current agitation to “do something” about Iran comes, for example, from these groups and media assets. In truth, American aid to Israel has become virtually untouchable and is something like a goose that keeps on laying golden eggs. The operation of “The Lobby,” generally regarded as the most powerful voice on foreign policy in Washington, led Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer to ask,
“Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security … in order to advance the interests of another state? [No] explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the U.S. provides.”
They observed that
“Other special interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country—in this case, Israel—are essentially identical.”
The money committed by the Jewish oligarchs on behalf of Israel has turned out to be a good investment, returning billions for millions spent. Since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, it has been “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II,” according to the Congressional Research Service. The United States has provided Israel with $233.7 billion in adjusted for inflation aid between 1948 through the end of 2012, reports Haaretz.
The $38 billion over ten years in military assistance that the Obama recently promised to Israel is far less than what will actually be received from the United States Treasury and from other American sources, including handouts from Congress. To cite only one recent example, in September Congressman Alcee Hastings proposed a legislative amendment that would give $12 million to help settle Israel’s Ethiopian community. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), speaking in the most recent legislative discussion over Israeli aid, stated that the $38 billion should be regarded as a minimum amount, and that Congress should approve additional funds for Israeli defense as needed.
At its most recent meeting in March 2017, AIPAC announced the latest windfall from America, applauding “the U.S. House of Representatives for significantly bolstering its support of U.S.-Israel missile defense cooperation in the FY 2017 defense appropriations bill. The House appropriated $600.7 million for U.S.-Israel missile defense programs.” And there is a long history of such special funding for Israeli-connected projects. The Iron Dome missile-defense system was largely funded by the United States, to the tune of more than $1 billion. In the 1980s, the Israeli Lavi jet-fighter development program was funded by Washington, costing $2 billion to the U.S. taxpayer before it was terminated over technical and other problems, part of $5.45 billion in Pentagon funding of various Israeli weapons projects through 2002.
How Israel gets money from the United States Treasury is actually quite complex and not very transparent to the American public, going well beyond the check for $3.8 billion handed over at the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1st. Even that check, uniquely given to aid recipient Israel as one lump sum on the first day of the year, is manipulated to produce extra revenue. It is normally immediately redeposited with the U.S. Treasury, which then, because it operates on a deficit, borrows the money to pay interest on it as the Israelis draw it down. That interest payment costs the American taxpayer an estimated $100 million more per year. Israel has also been adept at using “loan guarantees,” an issue that may have contributed to the downfall of President George H.W. Bush. The reality is that the loans, totaling $42 billion, are never repaid by Israel, meaning that the United States Treasury picks up the tab on principle and interest, a form of additional assistance. The Bush-era loan amounted to $10 billion.
Department of Defense co-production projects, preferential contracting, “scrapping” or “surplusing” of usable equipment that is then turned over to the IDF, as well as the forward deployment of military hardware to an Israeli base, are considerable benefits to Tel Aviv’s bottom line. Much of this assistance is hidden from view.
In September 2012, Israel’s former commander-in-chief, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, admitted at a conference that between 2009 and 2012 American taxpayers had paid for more of his country’s defense budget than had Israeli taxpayers. Those numbers have been disputed, but the fact remains that a considerable portion of the Israeli military spending comes from the United States. It currently is more than 20 percent of the total $16 billion budget, not counting special appropriations.
Through tax exemptions, the U.S. government also subsidizes the coordinated effort to provide additional assistance to Israel. Like FIDF, most organizations and foundations that might reasonably be considered active parts of the Israel Lobby are generally registered with the Department of the Treasury as tax-exempt foundations. Grant Smith, speaking at a conference on the U.S. and Israel on March 24th, explained how the broader Israel Lobby uses this legal framework:
“Key U.S. organizations include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Hundreds more, including a small number of evangelical Christian organizations, play a role within a vast ecosystem that demands unconditional U.S. support for Israel. In the year 2012 the nonprofit wing of the Israel lobby raised $3.7 billion in revenue. They are on track to reach $6.3 billion by 2020. Collectively they employed 14,000 and claimed 350,000 volunteers.”
The $3.7 billion raised in 2012 does not include the billions in private donations that go directly to Israel, plus billions in contributions that are regarded as “religious exemptions” for groups that don’t file at all. There are also contributions sent straight to various Israeli-based foundations that are themselves often registered as charities. The Forward magazine investigated 3,600 Jewish tax-exempt charitable foundations in 2014 and determined that they had net assets of $26 billion, $12–14 billion in annual revenue, and “focuse[d] the largest share of [their] donor dollars on Israel.” The Forward added that it is “an apparatus that benefits massively from the U.S. federal government and many state and local governments, in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants, billions in tax-deductible donations and billions more in program fees paid for with government funds.”
Money being fungible, some American Jews have been surprised to learn that the donations that they had presumed were going to charitable causes in Israel have instead wound up in expanding the illegal settlements on the West Bank, an objective that they sometimes do not support. Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushnerhas a family foundation that has made donations to Israel, including funding of West Bank settlements, which is illegal under U.S. law, as has Ambassador David Friedman.
Israel also benefits in other ways, frequently due to legislative action by Congress. It enjoys free and even preferential trade status with the United States and runs a $9 billion trade surplusper annum. Its companies and parastatal organizations can, without any restrictions, bid on U.S. defense and homeland-security projects—a privilege normally only granted to NATO partners. It’s major defense contractor Elbit recently was awarded a multi-million dollar contract to apply technologies to defend American tanks. It was a prime example of U.S. aid subsidizing an Israeli industry that then competes directly with American companies, producing a loss of jobs in the United States.
And the transfer of public money to Israel is common even at state and local levels. Some state treasuries and pension funds have purchased Israel Bonds, which are a bad investment, putting retirees at risk, as they have to be held to maturity and therefore have no secondary market and lack liquidity. Most recently, the Ohio Treasurer’s office bought a record $61 million in Israel Bonds on April 3rd. Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel admitted the purchase was in response to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, meaning that Ohio taxpayers are unsuspecting participants in a risky investment scheme largely intended to punish critics of Israel. Mandel is, not surprisingly, hardly a disinterested party on the subject of Israel. He was a member of AIPAC while attending Ohio State University and spoke at its 2008 Policy Conference in Washington. After denouncing Iran, he said that “Israel is our best friend and ally in the Middle East and it’s important that we maintain a strong and lasting relationship with them.” Eighty other state and municipal public employee pension and treasury funds have also reportedly bought the bonds.
The U.S.-Israeli bilateral relationship has been an expensive proposition for Americans, yet another instance where the perceived needs of a U.S. “ally” take precedence over genuine national interests. Tens of billions of dollars need not necessarily be spent to placate a wealthy foreign country and its powerful domestic lobby or to satisfy the pretensions of the billionaires who grease the machinery to keep Israel’s money machine operating.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
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Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are demanding answers after Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai finally admitted last week that—as many cyber experts, digital rights advocates, and members of Congress had long suspected—the claim that the agency’s public comment system was targeted by a cyberattack during last year’s net neutrality debate was false.
Pai’s admission came just ahead of an FCC Inspector General’s report which shattered allegations that the system was targeted by multiple “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS) attacks last summer after television host John Oliverencouraged his viewers to comment in favor of preserving the regulations, which were repealed in a party-line vote in December.
In a letter (pdf) to the chairman on Tuesday, Democratic Reps. Frank Pallone, Jr. (N.J.), Mike Doyle (Pa.), Jerry McNerney (Calif.), and Debbie Dingell (Mich.) wrote that they were “deeply disturbed” by the IG’s findings that “the FCC’s system simply was unprepared to handle the volume of pro-net neutrality commenters inspired by John Oliver’s report,” and that Pai “made a series of misrepresentations to Congress about the event.”
Especially considering that Democrats on the committee had requested that Pai provide additional proof of the alleged attacks, the letter states,
“it is troubling that you allowed the public myth created by the FCC to persist and your misrepresentations to remain uncorrected for over a year. …To the extent that you were aware of the misrepresentations prior to the release of the report and failed to correct them, such actions constitute a wanton disregard for Congress and the American people.”
The letter also notes that “given the significant media, public, and Congressional attention this alleged cyberattack received for over a year, it is hard to believe that the release of the IG’s report was the first time” that Pai was informed that no attacks occurred. “Such ignorance would signify a dereliction of your duty as head of the FCC,” the letter concludes.
“Therefore, we want to know when you and your staff first learned that the information the Commission shared about the alleged attack was false.”
The Democrats included a list of eight questions with the letter, and requested answers from Pai by Aug. 28. The chairman has not yet publicly responded to the letter, but he is expected to face similar scrutiny from Senate Democrats at an oversight committee hearing scheduled for Thursday.
A so-called cyberattack that disrupted the FCC's public comment system when Ajit Pai announced his plan to repeal #NetNeutrality wasn't a cyberattack after all: https://t.co/DsFTMiZEse Now, Pai will appear before a Senate oversight committee to answer why the FCC lied to Congress pic.twitter.com/6ZM8o4JccN
“His failure to acknowledge and fix a broken FCC comment system—and his vehemence in defending now disproven claims of a DDoS attack—seem part of a larger effort to duck accountability to internet users in his decision to kill net neutrality,” Tim Karr, Free Press’s senior director of strategy and communications, declared on Twitter.
“Ajit Pai is an embarrassment,” added Fight for the Future deputy director Evan Greer. “Lawmakers are rightly demanding answers. But they should also act immediately to overrule Ajit Pai’s corrupt gutting of net neutrality, by signing the discharge petition and passing the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to reverse the repeal.”
Although the CRA resolution passed the Senate in May, so far only one House Republican has signed on to support the measure. Battle for the Net recently launched a scoreboard to let constituents know where their lawmakers stand on the matter.
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A pro-Brexit campaign group with ties to a neoliberal transatlantic network and climate science denial is emerging as a potentially influential player pushing for environmental deregulation and a “no deal” scenario.
Economists for Free Trade (EFT), formerly known as Economists for Brexit, has made the news recently following its report claiming that a cliff edge Brexit and adoption of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules would be “the very best” option for the UK.
The group claims to be a coalition of independent economists, but it has strong ties to Brexiteer Conservative MPs, right-leaning mainstream media and some well-known climate science deniers.
The group has long been pushing for a full break-up with the EU and has accused the Treasury and civil servants of misleading the public on the costs of Brexit and staying in the customs union.
Led by Patrick Minford, professor of economics at Cardiff Business School, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher and supporter of the controversial poll tax, the EFT uses its strong connections with the mainstream right-wing media to push its agenda of deregulation while giving a platform to some of its members’ climate science denial views.
With a team of 18 members writing reports and about free-trade and Brexit and 13 advisors, the EFT is heavily male and only includes one woman, former trade negotiator Andrea Hosso.
Its members and advisors boast wide-ranging networks including across the political and media spheres while also including millionaire businessmen representing significant private interests.
It includes MPs such as chair of the European Research Group Jacob-Rees Mogg, member of the EU scrutiny committee and former minister of state for the department for exiting the EU David Jones, and the climate science denying former environment secretary, North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson.
Influential columnists such as the Sunday Telegraph’s Liam Halligan, founder of Conservative Home Tim Montgomerie and The Times’ Matt Ridley, a coal baron and prominent climate change denier, are also among the group’s ranks.
Climate change and deniers
The Brexit debate has provided climate science deniers with an influential space within neoliberal, free market and pro-Brexit organisations to push their agenda.
In 2014, Miller told DeSmog UK he was “proud” of his donations to the GWPF and “intended to continue to contribute”.
At the time, DeSmog UK also reported that Miller financed Ukip supporter Christopher Monckton, whose research has repeatedly denied global warming and climate science.
Meanwhile, two of the UK’s most prominent climate science deniers, former environment secretary Owen Paterson and Times columnist Matt Ridley, an advisor to the the GWPF, both advise the EFT.
EFT member Kevin Dowd, professor of finance and economics at Durham University, is also registered as an adjunct scholar for the Cato Institute, a libertarian thinktank based in Washington DC and funded by big fossil fuel lobby such as the Koch brothers.
Several EFT reports on issues regarding Brexit and deregulation include references to Colin Robinson’s book Climate Change Policy: Challenging the Activists, which was published by the Institute for Economic Affairs in 2008. In the book, Robinson challenges the scientific consensus that wide-ranging government intervention is necessary to combat the effects of climate change. He argues that there is uncertainty about the economics and climate science and that the free market economy will better deal with climate change than government-led regulation.
John Longworth, an EFT advisor, is the former director of the British Chamber of Commerce and the co-chairman and founder of hard-Brexit group Leave Means Leave, also based at 55 Tufton Street.
The EFT does not publicise its office address but the group shares the same telephone number as Leave Means Leave.
Last week, an undercover investigation by Greenpeace’s investigation unit Unearthed revealed potential US donors were being “offered ministerial access” to the likes of Michael Gove, Liam Foxand former ministers Steve Baker and Boris Johnson to push for free trade deals and a hard-Brexit in what IEA director Mark Lilltewood was caught on tape describing as a “Brexit influencing game”.
Michael Burrage, another advisor to the EFT, is a senior research fellow at Civitas, a registered educational charity specialising in health, education and economics.
At least 11 of the EFT members and advisors are regular contributors to the media platform Brexit Central.
Business interests
The EFT is also linked to businessmen representing private interests and who want to benefit from free trade deals.
This includes David Ord, co-owner of the Bristol Port Company and a member of the exclusive Bristol club the Society of Merchant Venturers. The co-owner of the Bristol Port Company, Terence Mordaunt, was last year announced as a Director of the climate science denial campaign group, the GWPF.
Ord is a major donor to the Tory party. Through his company, David Ord Ltd, he donated more than £1.2 million to the Conservative Party since 2005, according to data from the Electoral Commission.
Ord is also the vice chairman of Open Europe, a pan-European policy thinktank which claims to be “non-partisan and independent” and advocates a close relationship between the UK and the EU post-Brexit. Open Europe leases an office at 7 Tufton Street from the Church of England charity the Society of the Faith.
Media on side
Thanks to the support of right-wing columnists, the EFT has been able to disseminate its message for a “clean” cut off from the EU on the 29 March next year in the mainstream press.
EFT member Liam Halligan, columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, has worked to push the group’s message into the media writing in his last column on the subject “‘No deal’ is looking increasingly likely – and that’s just fine”.
Last year, the EFT’s convener Miller also penned a column for the Telegraph arguing that “we shouldn’t worry about the Brexit negotiations, no deal is better than what we have with the EU”.
Halligan has previously expressed sympathetic views towards climate science deniers. Reporting on Owen Paterson’s 2014 lecture to the GWPF during which the North Shropshire MP attacked the climate consensus and called for the repeal of the Climate Change Act, Halligan described his intervention as “a corker”.
Halligan is also the co-author of Clean Brexit – making the case for how the UK can make a success of Brexit – with EFT co-founder Gerard Lyon, former chief economic adviser to Boris Johnson during his time as mayor of London and chief economic adviser to the Policy Exchange.
EFT advisors also include hardline Brexiteer Tim Montgomerie, previously a columnist at The Times, now editor of commentary wesbite UnHerd and founder of ConservativeHome.
Times columnist Matt Ridley is also an advisor to the EFT. Ridley has repeatedly used his columns to spread disinformation about climate change and oppose government-led actions to prevent dangerous warming. In a recent column, he approvingly quoted figures from another EFT member, Michael Burrage, without declaring his own affiliation to the group.
The Economists for Free Trade did not respond to our request for comment.
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The framework for our panel this morning is “Unity against the Right: A historical approach.”
There are in fact many histories of such united resistance, each with its own lineage. We could talk of howLouis Riel united Métis, First Nations, and many colonial settlers to battle for democracy and aboriginal rights. Or of how women debated how to find allies in their liberation struggle and the trade-off with partnerships with the sectors of the elite or of the subaltern masses. But I will not speak of this. I will also set aside the struggle of colonized peoples for unity against imperialism, so central to the socialist movement of the last century.
Turin Factory Councils 1919-20
My topic relates to the origin of Fascism. It was born in Europe as an expression of the ideology of European supremacy, and my focus will thus necessarily be European as well. I’m going to speak of events in Italy a century ago, not simply because of their objective importance but because they carry great weight in our political memory and imagination.
Italy – Between the Wars
Italy then ranked as an imperialist power, although a weak and unstable one, the product of an incomplete bourgeois revolution in which owners of large estates and the Catholic Church held great power, while the majority of Italy’s immense peasantry were landless. A sizable industrial working class was largely socialist in conviction, and the Italian Socialist Party governed more than 2,000 municipalities.
Formally a winner in the First World War (28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918), the Italian ruling class had been weakened by the impact of great human and material destruction in this conflict. The war’s end brought economic crisis, the ruin of middle layers, a mass of discharged soldiers with no visible future, and a militant workers’ upsurge that for a moment seemed about to sweep all before it.
In September 1920 a great wave of factory occupations brought the country to the brink of revolution. However, the Socialists gave no leadership and the movement foundered, opening the gates to counterrevolution.
A wave of reaction was then sweeping across much of Europe. It brought many rightist dictatorial regimes to power, as in Hungary, where the regime executed 5,000 supposed Reds. The Hungarian regime was aristocratic in nature, a military dictatorship based on upper-class cadres. Italy was different: the reactionary movement seemed to emerge from among the masses themselves.
Commandos Right and Left
In Italy, after the war ended, the spearhead of reaction emerged: the Arditi, or “commandos,” a network of anti-labour mercenaries led mainly by former army officers. But the most successful such force, the Fascists, was plebeian. Its leader, Benito Mussolini, had been a left-wing Socialist; the group, founded in 1919, posed as supporters of strikes and workers’ management and of land to the peasants. Yet their ideology was pro-capitalist, rooted in worship of the state and the nation. They acted as murderous anti-labour militia, financed by elements of the ruling class and tolerated or supported by the police and army. The Fascists backed up violence with a forceful ideology rejecting reason and fact while appealing to mysticism and religious-like idolatry of the state and the “man from destiny.”
By mid-1921 Fascism was a menacing mass movement. How did its opponents respond?
The Socialist Party relied on the state to rein in the Fascists. Rejecting organized self-defense, it pressed the regime to take action against lawless Fascist gangs, while rejecting entry into government. At one point it signed a “truce” with the Fascists, which the latter quickly cast aside. (The Socialist refusal to join a bourgeois-dominated government, while consistent with Marxist principle, was out of step with the conduct of most Social Democratic parties in that period, which did often enter such governments.)
The democratic parliamentary parties did in fact pass laws and regulations aimed against the fascists. For example, guns were to be reregistered and seized if due cause for ownership was not produced. Barricades were to be erected on highways to block Fascist flying squads. However, implementation depended on police and judges mostly sympathetic to the far right. As a result, little was done to enforce such measures.
The Italian Communist Party, which separated from the Socialists early in 1921, did not perceive the distinction between fascism and the democratic forms of capitalist rule. The Communists were for self-defense against fascists, to be sure, but without alliances and only when attacked. In practice, the Communist Party as an organization largely stood aside from the struggle.
Meanwhile, a spontaneous rank-and-file self-defense organization the Arditi del Popolo (People’s commandos), sprang up and won wide support. Both the communists and socialists were hostile to the new organization, ordering their members to leave its ranks. Alone, the Arditi del popolo could not win against a fascist host financed and supported by the ruling class and aided by the regular army. Even so, the Arditi led and won pitched battles against the Fascists on several occasions, indicating the road by which a united working class could have got the upper hand.
At the end of 1922, the Fascists consummated their one-sided civil war with a parliamentary deal, in which they were appointed to government by the king and mainstream capitalist parties. During the half-decade that followed, the Fascist regime hardened into a totalitarian dictatorship that lasted until 1943.
Two conclusions jump out from this depressing story:
First, the Socialists were wrong to believe the bourgeois democratic state could provide effective protection from fascism.
Second, the Communists were wrong to believe that they could deal with fascism on their own.
During the years of Mussolini’s rise, however, the policy of the Communist International on alliances evolved greatly in a direction that, if applied in Italy, might well have changed the outcome. Five stages in this process should be noted:
First, in 1920, far-right generals in Germany carried out a coup against the republican government. Social-democratic trade union leaders called a general strike that swept the country, while workers in many areas took up arms and gained effective control. The coup lasted only four days. This outcome proved the power of united workers’ resistance to the far right.
After the coup collapsed, workers refused to end their strike and demanded effective protection against the far-right conspirators. The social-democratic trade-union leaders then came up with a novel proposal: a workers’ government including all workers’ parties and based on the unions. Although that government did not come to be, the idea behind it gained support and the Communist movement took note.
The next year, the Communist International (Comintern) adopted the policy that had found expression in resistance to the German putsch, calling on workers’ parties to unite in struggle against the far right and for basic demands they had in common. This policy was known as the “united front.” It was not applied in Italy. Internationally, it met with resistance from Social Democratic leaderships. Why was this policy not applied by the Italian Communists? Their failure to conform indicates that descriptions of the Comintern’s supposedly excessive “centralism” in that period are often exaggerated.
Another year passed, and the Comintern adopted the workers’ government approach broached during the great German general strike of 1920. Such a government would be sustained by the workers movement, not the state, and could serve as a transitional stage to revolution. A workers’ and peasants’ government of this general type was actually established by the October 1917 Russian revolution.
Finally, in 1923, the Comintern adopted a strategy for resisting fascism. It was elaborated and presented by Clara Zetkin, drawing on the experience above all of the German workers’ movement. Her plan consisted of four major propositions:
Workers self-defence against fascist violence: not through individual terror, but through “the power of the revolutionary organized proletarian class struggle.”
United front action against fascism “involving all working-class organizations and currents regardless of political differences.” By endorsing the Arditi del Popolo, the Comintern indicated willingness to join in anti-fascist struggle with non-working-class forces. They rejected, however, the perspective of a bloc with capitalist parties for government.
An ideological campaign to reach the best of the young people influenced by fascism who, in Zetkin’s words, “are seeking an escape from deep anguish of the soul. We must show them a solution that does not lead backward but rather forward to communism.”
Demonstration of “absolute determination to fight to take power out of the hands of the bourgeoisie in order to resolve capitalism’s social crisis,” including by “cementing the alliances necessary to do so.” Zetkin insisted that the perspective of a workers’ and peasants’ government “is virtually a requirement for the struggle to defeat fascism.”
Essence of Fascist Doctrine
There’s something missing here: an analysis of the racist and xenophobic essence of fascist doctrine. It was the reverse side of the fascists’ worship of an aggressive nationalism, which rested on plans for conquest of south Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Africans – all viewed as inferior peoples. In German fascism, such racial stereotyping became more explicit, maturing into a project of genocide against Jews, Poles, Russians, Roma, and other peoples.
Despite this weakness, Zetkin’s report and resolution, adopted by the Comintern in June 1923, stand as the outstanding exposition of a Marxist response to fascism during its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. It theorized the lesson of the Italian Arditi del Popolo experience while fusing it with a perspective for workers’ power. Alternatively, the Comintern position can be seen, as Leon Trotsky later insisted, as an application of the Bolsheviks’ united front policies in the run-up to the Russian October revolution of 1917.
Given the strategic force of this position, it may seem surprising it was applied during only two brief periods of Comintern history. Comintern anti-fascist policy proved to be unstable, going through no less than six reversals up to the International’s dissolution in 1943. Two of these turnabouts were particularly significant:
In 1928 the Comintern reverted to the sectarian stance of Italian Communists during Mussolini’s rise, refusing to seek alliances with non-Communist workers’ organizations. The Social Democrats, for their part, refused of united action with the Communists. The absence of workers’ unity in action, opened the door to Hitler’s victory.
In 1935 the Comintern switched to a policy of unity with Social Democrats while adding two significant innovations: first, unity was now to embrace progressive forces in the imperialist ruling class and, second, the project was now basically parliamentary in nature: to form a progressive coalition encompassing bourgeois forces.
In my opinion, the 1935 policy, known as “popular frontism,” brought the Comintern into broad alignment with Social Democracy as regards the strategic alternative to fascism. The goal of socialist revolution was set aside in favour of a project for defense of democratic capitalism and alliance with forces within the imperialist ruling class.
This occurred at the height of Stalin’s murderous repression of Bolshevik cadres, and this witch-hunt also infected the Comintern and its “people’s front.”
To conclude, the responses of socialists to the first 15 years of fascism fall into three categories: sectarian isolation, an alliance for progressive reform, or a united front to bring working people to power. Despite the immense transformation in social structure and global geopolitics, these divergent impulses continue to find expression today, as we feel our way toward an effective defense against fascist dangers today.
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Merkel doesn’t really care whether Kosovo is partitioned or not, but by framing his actions as going against the German Chancellor’s position, Vucic is employing “reverse-psychology” in a bid to exploit Serbs’ predisposition to opposing Berlin on principle, which he consequently hopes will shore up support for his unpopular plan to sell out Kosovo.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is at it again spinning another manufactured drama around himself in an attempt to score political points at home, this time publicly pouting about how German Chancellor Angela Merkel is supposedly opposed to his plan to partition Kosovo as part of a formal political settlement to the conflict and one of his country’s preconditions for joining the EU. Merkel doesn’t really care how the Kosovo issue is resolved so long as it results in Serbia’s official recognition of the NATO-backed breakaway territory as a so-called “independent country”, but she could very well just be putting on a show and playing along with Vucic because she understands how important it is to secure as much public support for his partition plot as possible.
As it stands, Serbs are firmly opposed to their leader’s unconstitutional scheme to surrender the cradle of their civilization and perhaps even three Albanian-inhabited but Belgrade-controlled border territories beyond the frontier of this separatist entity, but it can’t be ruled out that Vucic’s “obsession” with Kosovo could see him committing political suicide like he earlier foreshadowed if he takes unilateral anti-constitutional action to settle this dispute in NATO’s favor. Even so, for his ego’s sake, he’d prefer to perversely frame his actions in as “patriotic” of a light as possible so that his ruling party – which he envisions remaining the single most-powerful one for the indefinite future (whether by hook or by crook) – can enforce historical revisionism on the next generation and “absolve” him of his sins.
For that to happen, however, then he must stick to the weaponized infowar narrative that his government’s rolling out for use against its own people in order to make this perception engineering operation as convincing as possible, hence the elementary use of “reverse-psychology”. Vucic knows just how predisposed his people are to opposing Berlin on principle no matter what the issue is after having suffered under its fascist yoke in World War II and experienced the catastrophic fallout of its joint American plan to dismember the former Yugoslavia, which is why he’s condescendingly utilizing this approach in a bid to shore up support for his partition plan. That said, what Vucic is doing is so obvious that it might even backfire on him.
Nobody wants to feel like they’re being manipulated, especially about an issue as emotionally significant as Kosovo is to the Serbs, and sometimes it’s easier just to openly say what someone’s doing no matter how shocking it is than to go to great lengths to hide it. It wouldn’t make it any “better” but at least it would be the most “sincere” approach, though the Serbian President is so worried about his historical legacy if he succeeds with his sell-out scheme that he’s not willing to forever face the music for what he’s about to do. Instead, he wants to make it seem like he’s standing toe-to-toe with a geopolitical giant like Germany and spiting it in a 21st-century replay of David vs Goliath, notwithstanding the fact that he’s actually doing Germany’s bidding.
The EU leader, like its US master, wants to “legitimize” the brutal removal of Serbia’s civilizational heart from the rest of its national body, and that’s why both Berlin and Washington need Belgrade to finally get on board with what they did and openly endorse it, albeit after first receiving a tiny territorial “concession” that it can show off to its people as “proof” of a “diplomatic victory” in order to distract from the likely surrendering of three Albanian-inhabited border regions that will probably be linked to this foreign-imposed “deal”. Agreeing to this demand is akin to Serbia castrating itself by chopping off its most historically virile part even though it had already been rendered functionally impotent by NATO at the turn of the century.
Still, the symbolism of what Vucic is about to do is so strong that it will lead to the eternal humiliation of the Serbian people. They’re so experienced with his tricks that they can easily see through his charade, but sadly for them there isn’t much that they can do to stop what’s about to happen, with this entire process being completely out of their hands despite the smokescreen of a possible referendum that Vucic has proposed on the issue. Left without any realistic political recourse, the best that the Serbs might be able to do is resist the historical revisionism that Vucic is presently trying to advance by exposing his false narratives and ensuring that future generations correctly judge him for selling out Kosovo.
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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.
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A few short years ago Alex Gibney had an insightful documentary on Scientology, Going Clear. What really got to me was how utterly foolish and chronically masochistic many of those former members of this so called Church were. I have studied various cults, and even dabbled within one myself during my younger days. I have seen, firsthand through my own vulnerability, how the need to either belong to or feel needed by a group of others can drive one to enter into these cults. The sad reality is that few people, and this is key, ever realize that it is in fact a cult that they are joining.
What made me literally shout at my television screen while listening to some of those interviewed was ‘How much **** did you have to take for so many years before you finally saw the light?’
Watch the film and see for yourself how far people allow themselves to be manipulated and exploited and even tortured.
Mind you, my experience with cults like Scientology, including my brief visit with LifeSpring (an offshoot of EST), revealed to me the vast number of highly educated and (seemingly) intelligent people who allow themselves to be taken in. I myself was taken in too… all the way up to LifeSpring’s advanced training course which consisted of two weeks of intensive (and expensive) mind control. As I began to speak one on one with some of the others sharing this experience, I realized how many overly sensitive and ‘needy’ folks like myself (including many recovering addicts and alcoholics) that were there. The need to ‘belong’ and to ‘feel wanted’ can be so great.
Having gone through three years of intensive Freudian analysis in the early 80s I can see how cults like Scientology and EST and LifeSpring copied much from standard psychoanalysis, then tweaked it a bit and renamed it something else. Having studied how our own government has used various techniques of outright torture, especially in regard to this ongoing Orwellian ‘War of Terror’, I can see how cults copy those techniques and refine them a bit, all for the same heinous purpose: Control.
Having also spent over half my adult life studying the entire Nazi movement right through WW2, I can see how much of what Hitler’s gang did with their mass rallies and pomp and circumstance has and is being mirrored by cults like Scientology. Seeing the leaders of this cult and its top executives dressed in uniforms that resemble those worn by movie ushers from the 30s and 40s, one has to laugh at the audaciousness of it all. Yet, it is real! Thousands attend these spectacles and cheer and applaud… just like those fools did in 1930s Germany! Or, how about the overflowing crowds who follow those TV preachers and send their hard earned savings for ‘Prayer cloths’ and other nonsense?
Now, allow me to go one step further. In two years from now we will have our next Presidential Horserace. Check out the conventions they hold for these two major political parties. You will then realize why cults like Scientology have been so successful.
To this writer the two party system here in our dear America has been the longest lasting cult in our nation’s history. As with the inane British ‘Tory vs. Labor’ con job, our own ‘Republican vs. Democrat’ garbage has for so long scammed so many good, decent Americans.
Do the research and see how the really key issues and policy decisions that keep this American Empire going full speed always have the consensus of the two parties. It has to… or the wizards behind the curtain would do some pruning to make certain of it. Cults, any and all… “Suck”! Isn’t it time for more Americans to ‘connect the dots’?
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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected]
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Looking at the article “Freedom and Loathing in Lethbridge” by Tadzio Richards for Alberta Views is a depressing undertaking. Dressed, apparently, in the clothing of serious investigation – the reality of its sham nature is disappointing … for there is no question that clear light needs to be shone on the Court of Star Chamber rape of procedure, fairness, and natural justice in the University of Lethbridge Academic Freedom case now nearly two years in operation.
As in many Mainstream Media pieces, this one seems – on the surface – to be written by someone wishing seriously to consider the long two years at the University of Lethbridge. But, writing from an Establishment point of view, the writer can only produce material which, in my judgement, violates fairness, balance, and an attempt at exact reporting. The article, in short, is – to me – hugely embarrassing.
Mr. Richards leap-frogs basic and fundamental material embarrassing to president Mahon and the University of Lethbridge Board of Governors.
The Academic Freedom case was propelled into prominence by a vicious, brutal, anti-semitic cartoon posted on the Facebook Page of a University of Lethbridge professor who was out of the country and unaware of the posting. That very strange action might be seen as a kind of fully-intended, mini-False Flag. Surprising, violent, apparently coming out of nowhere, immediately attributed to a false source, then falsely investigated … but, in fact, absolutely uninvestigated by primary authorities … the event was used as a basis, in effect (among other things) to vilify a professor, to further anti-Islamic propaganda, and to provide a basis to work for the suffocation of Freedom of Expression….
As if well prepared in advance, Israel government-connected organizations and people leapt on the August 26, 2016 event and they fell upon University of Lethbridge president Michael Mahon (if they were not already collaborating with him), and they fell upon every government office they could discover in order to vilify the absent (and innocent) professor and demand severe action against him … without a shred of evidence that he was involved. University officialdom became immediately involved as did the Police of Lethbridge who, apparently, had been contacted by B’nai Brith the day before the vicious posting and who set about “investigating” (without, apparently contacting Facebook authorities) Anthony Hall to learn if he had posted the evil cartoon.
That was August 26, 2016. One might be certain that within days president Mahon would have met and asked the returned University of Lethbridge senior Professor for his account – especially since he knew nothing of the vicious posting.
President Mahon did no such thing. But what did happen is that claims were made at the University against Professor Anthony Hall for anti-semitism. One was made by faculty member Goldie Morgentaler. It was made, apparently, after she met and spent time consulting with president Mahon.
The time in Lethbridge between the foul (August 26) posting on Professor Hall’s Facebook Page and the October 4 letter from president Mahon to Professor Hall asking Hall to meet and to hear why Hall shouldn’t be peremptorily, without any due process, suspended and removed from University of Lethbridge property… the time was full of (largely) invalid accusations from non-University organizations, an ostensible Lethbridge Police investigation of Hall’s role in the Facebook Posting, and other such negative ‘noise’ about which no action whatever has been taken and which Tadzio Richards treats (conveniently) as, apparently, not having existed.
He ignores all of those key happenings. And he accepts that the president of the University of Lethbridge suspending Professor Hall, terminating his salary, ordering him away from any University of Lethbridge property, even forbidding him to have access to his own office (without due process) could be described as “a precautionary” measure not a disciplinary or punitive one. Richards does not ask why the University of Lethbridge president, the Board of Governors, and Alberta government officials failed to ask Facebook who it was that posted the vicious cartoon. Instead, he opens his “story” with total Establishment “charm”. As follows:
The marvellously human, very acceptable president, Michael Mahon, is in his office wondering what to do about the totally savage and procedurally improper letter he sent to Professor Hall asking him to appear and say why he shouldn’t be treated contemptuously, viciously, and outside all university agreements and without regard to fundamental processes insuring justice. Hall did not appear. And so reasonable, thoughtful, sensitive Michael Mahon writes a letter unilaterally and improperly pitching Hall out of the University of Lethbridge [pending “a review of the matter”]. To that letter, as Tadzio Richards writes: “Mahon signed his name”.
Richards goes on to say what fine things Mahon has done for the University of Lethbridge. And he airs (at some length) the often unspoken differences about Freedom of Expression held by faculty through their Associations and the national Canadian Association of University Teachers and those held by presidents and the Presidents’ Club, called Universities Canada.
Presidents are frequently more dictatorially inclined than faculty are because presidents are chosen by Boards of Governors often staffed by self-made, no-nonsense, bullying Capitalists, and their like, who expect little back-chat from their inferiors. As one presidential candidate told me openness to ideas and to student action were not evident in any of the questions put by members of the Board to the candidate … who confided in me … and later became a celebrated university president.
The screaming, incendiary fact that Tadzio Richards appears to avoid at all cost to fair reporting and judicious commentary is that Rachel Notley, premier of Alberta, was drawn into the dispute with (embarrassingly) powerful members of Israel government-connected organizations involved; one was even standing by her side when she made her most outrageous [and ill-informed, I say] attack on Anthony Hall.
Indeed, at no point does Tadzio Richards so much as introduce the huge and heavy-handed involvement of Israel government-connected organizations in the whole story! But, on the other hand, he writes a great deal about Monika Schaefer and her brother – questioners of the Holocaust. And he dramatizes, in a way that almost ridicules, Anthony Hall’s questioning of attitudes to the murdered during and after the Second World War (and elsewhere in history). Who is it okay to murder … who not? What does the “selected” building of memorials to the dead mean?
Hall’s insistence upon many Holocausts (not the least being the extinction of whole bands and communities of Native Peoples in North America) appears (by the author’s style used) to amuse Tadzio Richards, and Richards’ style may well be intended to ridicule professor Hall – unless I cannot read what is printed in front of me.
Tadzio Richards finds nothing, ever, wrong with the actions of president Michael Mahon, and Richards does nothing whatever (that he makes evident) to learn of Mahon’s connections and meetings and deliberations with outside-University of Lethbridge forces determined to destroy Anthony Hall. The image of Michael Mahon is sacred, not to be questioned, even if fact has to be twisted and falsified. Even if the screaming failure of Alberta power to ask Facebook Authorities who posted the vicious, anti-semitic cartoon on Hall’s Facebook Page is an admission that Alberta power does not want known who did it (in typical False Flag fashion).
Tadzio Richards shows he has taken a side in his article – and no more clearly than when he ignores the central act: the vicious anti-semitic posting placed on Anthony Hall’s Facebook Page to launch the still unended attack upon him … and the strange and improper actions that have followed that event. To suggest that Michael Mahon’s outrageous actions taken to drive Professor Hall from the University Campus without a shred of acceptable process could be “cautionary” reveals (at least to me) that the writer has given up all independent thought and reasonable judgement … and will write down anything.
And… I would say … he does write down anything, anything that supports a fundamentally false picture of the real events and the real history of betrayal of the finest values that mark excellent universities. The effects of that betrayal will not easily pass, and the University of Lethbridge will become legendary as the University that seeks revenge before excellence, loyalty before truth, and brainless kow-towing to empty, Orwellian ‘authority’ before anything like bold and spirited investigation and research….
The University of Lethbridge will, I think, possess all the excellence that can be bestowed upon it by flashy Public Relations pamphlets… and by articles of the kind published in Alberta Views by Tadzio Richards.
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“The responsibility of the left is to build on Trump’s anti-NATO remarks – whatever his motivations – by offering a real critique of NATO.”
The decision by Democrat Party president Harry Truman to bomb the cities of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on the 9th with the newly developed nuclear weapon signaled to the world that the U.S. was prepared to use military force to back up its new-found position as the leader of the Western colonial-capitalist powers, now referred to as the “Western alliance.” The main audience for that grotesque display of racist violence in 1945 was the Soviet Union but some 73 years later, militarism and war continue to be the central instruments of U.S. foreign policy.
This is the lesson we must stress continually as the public is being subjected to a constant barrage of incitements to support the use of military force by the U.S state against a growing array of enemies and potential enemies from Russia and China to Iran and the never-ending war on terror. Working-class and poor people must oppose war in part because they are the expendable cannon fodder used to advance ruling-class dominance under the banner of protecting the “national interests,” which are really only those of the economic elites. Fighting for those interests means killing poor and working-class people in other parts of the world.
“Working-class and poor people must oppose war in part because they are the expendable cannon fodder used to advance ruling-class dominance.”
In this era of economic warfare between competing capitalist nations and newly forming capitalist blocs, taking an anti-war position is a pro-working class, pro-poor, pro-displaced peasant/farmer, and internationalist position. The economic sanctions (a form of warfare) that the U.S. levies against various nations have nothing to do with concerns for human rights – official rationales notwithstanding – but everything to do with undermining economic competitors and non-compliant states and movements as in Venezuela.It should be clear that supporting U.S. aggression in the form of economic warfare, subversion, proxy war and direct military intervention is in fact supporting the interests of the U.S.-based transnational capitalist class. Yet many leftists have embraced a crude national chauvinism and joined liberals in demonizing various peoples and nations and thus objectively providing support to and political cover for the capitalist/imperialist system that they pretend to oppose.
The structural crisis of international capital is also a crisis of the nation-state, especially in the centers of global capital from London to New York. The imposition of neoliberal economic restructuring in the West generated a crisis of legitimacy for the neoliberal global architecture that was carefully crafted over the last four decades. The post-war compromise between capital and labor that was officially negated with the economic crisis of 1973-75 and the turn to neoliberalism produced the conditions and politics that produced Donald Trump in 2016.
“The economic sanctions have nothing to do with concerns for human rights, but everything to do with undermining economic competitors and non-compliant states and movements as in Venezuela.”
But the crisis of legitimacy also produced something else — a more pronounced dependency by the state on the use of force, be it in the Black and Brown colonized areas where the economically marginalized reside or in the Black and Brown areas of the world that are no longer accepting their suffering as an inevitable and unchanging condition of their existence.
The $717 billion military budget Congress passed that transfers public resources to the pockets of the military-industrial criminals who profit from war is not only a rip-off scheme but also a recognition on the part of the rulers that military might is their best and perhaps only means to hold onto the loot they stole from the peoples of the U.S. and the world. And it is also why taking an anti-war and an anti-imperialist position is such a political threat to the rulers at this specific moment in history.
In April the Trump administration called on all agencies to expedite the process for increased arms sales abroad . So when Trump raises questions about NATO, we know he is hustling for the military industrial complex. When he calls on NATO countries to increase their military spending, the beneficiaries of that spending will be the shareholders of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics Corporation, United Technologies and Northrop Grumman. At the same time, his critique of NATO begs legitimate questions: Why does NATO still exist, and why are nations like Colombia being brought into its structure?
It is an absurd position for the left to bash the Trump administration for undermining the so-called Western alliance when he criticizes NATO. For oppressed people around the world, NATO is an instrument of Western capitalist dominance, a structure of European/U.S. colonial power that is an enemy of humanity. So the responsibility of the left is to build on Trump’s anti-NATO remarks – whatever his motivations – by offering a real critique of NATO.
“The $717 billion military budget is a recognition on the part of the rulers that military might is their best and perhaps only means to hold onto the loot they stole from the peoples of the U.S. and the world.”
When Trump meets with Kim Jong-Un, the anti-war and anti-imperialist position would be to support any de-escalation of tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. If it wasn’t for U.S. imperialism there would be no North and South Korea in the first place, so how can any self-respecting leftist not support at least the rhetoric of peaceful resolution, knowing full well that the U.S. is eventually going to have to be kicked out of Korea entirely?
The same thing goes with capitalist Russia. How can someone position themselves on the left and align with a fraction of the ruling class to agitate against Trump’s Russia policies? What do those policies have to do with the economic contradictions facing workers in the U.S., unless those policies lead to potential conflict that must be opposed?
The imperial left has entangled itself in all kinds of political and ideological contradictions. It finds itself in alignment with the neoliberal right because it desperately believes the neoliberal right that controls the state (don’t be confused — governments/administrations come and go, but the state endures until it is smashed) will somehow put the brakes on the more extreme right that is not even in power! The left’s embrace of bourgeois patriotism and support for liberal totalitarianism in the form of collusion between the state and big telecommunications firms to restrict and control speech and information provides a foundation for the legitimization and expansion of fascistic forms of rule.
“The imperial left has entangled itself in all kinds of political and ideological contradictions.”
Our analysis of the duopoly must be unsparing. Both parties are the enemies of the people. Both parties are committed to policies that deny human rights to the people of the U.S. but also the world. And both parties have never hesitated to support the use of military force to advance U.S. geostrategic interests.
When Trump demanded more spending by European governments on NATO, that demand was widely panned as an assault on the interests of working-class Europeans. Many correctly noted that more expenditures by European governments for NATO amounted to policies that would “plunder and loot their citizens through higher taxation to help pay for NATO’s exorbitant expenses.” But the Democrats join the Republicans in the wholesale plundering of the public with obscene levels of military expenditures, including the commitment of more than a trillion dollars to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next 10 years while claiming there are no resources for housing, universal child care, public transportation, services for elders and clean water for the working class.
Therefore, we must engage in unrelenting agitation against both parties while urgently developing independent non-state and non-electoral popular structures. While we do this, we must build an anti-war movement and embrace the position of the Black Alliance for Peace that says without equivocation: “not one drop of blood from the working class and poor to defend the interests of the capitalist oligarchy.”
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Dear Readers,
More than ever, Global Research needs your support. Our task as an independent media is to “Battle the Lie”.
“Lying” in mainstream journalism has become the “new normal”: mainstream journalists are pressured to comply. Some journalists refuse.
Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.
While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.
The involvement of U.S. military intelligence in “fine-tuning” the targets of coalition airstrikes is likely the main factor explaining why the U.S. government has refused to condemn the strike and has refused to support an independent investigation into the atrocity.
A spokesman for the Saudi coalition called it “a legitimate military operation” in its campaign against Houthi rebels that operate in northern Yemen — a claim that was scoffed at by most of the rest of the world, alarmed at the growing humanitarian crisis in the region.
As atrocities and scandal begin to mount regarding the US-backed Saudi-led war on the impoverished nation of Yemen, the involvement and hypocrisy of the United States and other Western backers is coming to full light.
U.S. companies such as Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin have sold billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries in the Saudi-Emirati-led coalition which is attacking Yemen.
The U.S. military refuels Saudi and Emirati warplanes through midair exercises. And, the United States helps the Saudi coalition warmakers choose their targets.
The attack was but the latest of multiple incidents in which weddings, funerals and hospitals have been hit by coalition forces in a war that has gone badly wrong and demonstrates Saudi military ineptitude despite the fact that the kingdom’s armed forces operate some of the world’s most sophisticated weaponry, according to military sources.
Nearly half of US arms exports go to the Middle East, supplying about one-third of all arms worldwide, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Between 2013 and 2017, arms exports to the Middle East doubled, responsible for mass slaughter and destruction in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere.
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ISIS has increased its efforts in order to expand its influence in Afghanistan. The local ISIS branch is believed to have about 3,000-5,000 members, including local Afghans, Pakistanis and Uzbeks.
According to available data, most of the terrorists are in the province of Nangarhar. However, cells of the terrorist group operate across the entire country.
Over the past few months, ISIS members have carried a series of terrorist attacks against government targets as well as engaged members of the Taliban in separate clashes and hit-and-run operations.
The ISIS expansion is fueled by fighters and field commanders, whom had fled Syria and Iraq where the terrorist group’s self-proclaimed caliphate was recently defeated. Another factor contributing to growth of the ISIS influence is a poor humanitarian, economic and social situation in the country.
According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the central government controls only about 56-57% of Afghanistan. About 29% of the country is contested. The rest is mostly controlled by the Taliban.
The Taliban is actively combating ISIS. On August 1, the movement carried out a large-scale operation against the terrorist group in the province of Jawzjan. According to the Taliban news agency Voice of Jihad, 153 ISIS members were killed and over 100 others were injured in the Taliban operation. 134 terrorists were captured.
A day later, the provincial authorities linked to the Kabul government said that 250 ISIS members had surrendered to the government. While these terrorists fled the Taliban operation, the MSM has already described this is a major success in the US-backed effort against ISIS.
A major part of the Afghan population dislikes intensely the ISIS ideology and its sectarian approaches. However, one of the problems of the Taliban is that the movement has not been able to improve the live conditions of the young population in the areas it controls. ISIS exploits this displeasure to recruit new members in the government-held, contested and even Taliban-held areas.
The Taliban has increased its attacks against the US-backed Kabul government aiming to strengthen its influence across the country and to gain additional support among the local population, which is in opposition to the US-led bloc and its “allies” in Kabul.
The previous ISIS attempt to entrench and expand in Afghanistan took place in 2015. Then, ISIS was exploiting its victories in Syria and Iraq to set up additional branches around the world. In 2018, the ISIS expansion in Afghanistan is based on the recent setbacks in the Middle East. However, this does not make the terrorist group less dangerous.
The complicated security situation concerns regional and global powers involved in the conflict. Thus, the administration of US President Donald Trump significantly increased the number of troops deployed in Afghanistan: from 8,500 in early 2017 to 14,000 in early 2018. The US military has also expanded its train and advice efforts to strengthen forces of the Kabul government. A number of strikes by the US air power was increased.
At the same time, Washington is attempting to stabilize the situation through negotiations with the Taliban. According to media leaks, the US wants the Taliban to find some peaceful solution with the Kabul government.
The course of the conflict has shown that the US and US-backed forces are unable to defeat the Taliban insurgency military without deployment of additional US forces and a full occupation of the country. So, the Trump administration is searching another way to declare a “victory” in the conflict – something President Trump has repeatedly promised to his supporters.
However, this situation remains unlikely. The Taliban has repeatedly stated that one of its key demands is a full withdrawal of US forces in Afghanistan.
Russia, China and as well as other Afghanistan’s neighborhoods are also concerned with the growing ISIS activity. According to experts, Beijing and Moscow, which play an important role in the region, are interested in stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan that would allow to the Kabul government, the US-led forces or the Taliban to deliver a decisive blow to ISIS.
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The investigation headed by Special Counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller into alleged “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election has entered a new stage.
Mueller is seeking to substantiate the case he advanced last month—as part of the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers—that Trump campaign insider Roger Stone and WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange were part of a conspiracy to hack and publish emails sent by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairperson John Podesta (see: “In run-up to Trump-Putin summit, Mueller charges 12 Russian officers with DNC email hack”).
At least eight alleged “associates” of Roger Stone have been questioned or subpoenaed by Mueller’s investigation. One, Kristin Davis, gave a voluntary interview last month and was instructed to give formal testimony again to a grand jury last Friday. Another, Andrew Miller, refused to appear the same day and has been ruled in contempt of court. Last Thursday, Mueller also subpoenaed radio commentator and WikiLeaks supporter Randy Credico to testify on September 7.
Credico’s lawyer stated last Friday that the Mueller investigation “probably want to talk to him about Roger Stone and Julian Assange.” Kristin Davis told CNN on Monday that the grand jury had questioned her “about whether or not any collusion happened with Russia.”
The purported evidence of a nefarious plot involving Russian intelligence, Stone and WikiLeaks is threadbare to the point of being ludicrous.
Julian Assange publicly revealed in an interview that WikiLeaks had information on the Democratic campaign in June 2016. It published the DNC leaks on July 22, 2016.
Roger Stone claimed to be “communicating” with Assange on August 8. His first alleged messages to Randy Credico, however, asking the radio host if he could use his connection with Assange to find out if WikiLeaks had more material, were not even sent until September.
Likewise, Stone’s tweets to alleged hacker “Guccifer 2”—whom American intelligence claims was a front for Russian agencies—were sent after WikiLeaks was in possession of the leaked emails and had already published the DNC files.
While WikiLeaks cannot and does not reveal its sources, a credible claim has been made by one of its supporters—British whistleblower Craig Murray—that the leaks were made by DNC insiders, not hackers.
In regard to the DNC and other Democratic Party emails, the source is irrelevant in any case. By any standard of journalism, they were newsworthy. They exposed the real conspiracy that had taken place in the course of the presidential election: a deliberate campaign by the ostensibly impartial DNC to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders and ensure Hillary Clinton won the nomination.
WikiLeaks published the DNC emails on the eve of the Democratic Party National Convention. The revelations provoked fury among many of the 13 million Americans who had voted for Sanders in the Democratic primaries, in large part due to their support for his denunciations of the “billionaire class” and populist vows to fight for greater social equality.
DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign in disgrace before the convention. After it concluded, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned.
On October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks published a trove of emails sent by John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign. As with the DNC leaks, the information was highly newsworthy. The emails included transcripts of speeches given by Hillary Clinton to various bank and corporate forums, where she boasted of her support for Wall Street and commitment to the interests of the financial oligarchy.
The exposures made by WikiLeaks only served to underscore what millions of American workers and youth had already decided, faced with the choice between Trump and Clinton: neither big business candidate could be supported. Trump won the Electoral College and the presidency because, amid an overall fall in voter turnout, Clinton did not win sufficient support in a small number of key states, despite winning the overall national popular vote by more than three million. Russian “meddling,” even if it were taking place, had no significant role in the outcome.
The entire “Russian interference” conspiracy theory could be dismissed as absurd if it were not being so relentlessly pursued by powerful sections of the American establishment, and did not have such immense implications for both democratic rights in the US and world political relations.
The campaign has served deeply reactionary purposes. Firstly, it has been used to demand sweeping censorship of oppositional, primarily left-wing views from internet search engines, Facebook and other social media sites, on the pretext of purging “fake news.”
At the same time, it has played a significant role in the intensified persecution of Julian Assange himself. The WikiLeaks editor has been slandered as a Russian stooge, even as his communication with the outside world has been cut off and preparations made to force him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted political asylum in 2012. Assange faces the danger of being detained in Britain while American authorities file to extradite him to the US to stand trial on false charges of espionage.
Secondly, the hysteria over “meddling” has been used to pressure the Trump administration to maintain a bellicose foreign policy against Russia, threatening to trigger conflict in the Middle East and Europe.
Finally, the claim of collusion is clearly viewed as a possible means to force out or impeach Trump, ending his erratic presidency through a palace coup, and replacing him with his right-wing, Christian fundamentalist vice president Mike Pence.
The accusations against Roger Stone are central to this agenda. The unstated insinuation is that Trump, through his relations with Stone, was in some way aware of, and consented to, a plot to influence the election outcome.
On September 27, 2017, Stone faced down hostile questioning by the House Intelligence Committee. He specifically denied “the charge that I had advance knowledge of the timing, content and source of the WikiLeaks disclosures from the DNC.” He stated that his only communication with WikiLeaks had taken place through a “journalist” who served as a “go-between.” He later named Randy Credico.
Credico has indicated he will contradict Stone before the Mueller investigation, to the extent that he denies that exchanging some messages made him a “go-between” for the right-wing political operator with WikiLeaks. He has also indicated, however, that he will testify that he does not have any knowledge of a direct relationship between Stone and Assange.
WikiLeaks has repeatedly tweeted that it did not discuss the details or schedule of its publications with Stone.
The main consequence of Mueller’s subpoena of Credico, and ongoing pursuit of Stone, over alleged links to WikiLeaks is that it ensures that “Russian meddling” will remain prominent in the US media in the lead-up to the November congressional elections.
The forces that stand behind the hysteria appear to be calculating that the constant accusations that the Trump campaign engaged in collusion or even “treason” will help ensure the Democratic Party wins a majority in the House of Representatives. This would provide a new base of power for conducting investigations and otherwise putting pressure on the administration, as well as raising the possibility of impeachment.
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American weapons makers have dominated the global arms trade for decades. In any given year, they’ve accounted for somewhere between one-third and more than one-half the value of all international weapons sales. It’s hard to imagine things getting much worse — or better, if you happen to be an arms trader — but they could, and soon, if a new Trump rule on firearms exports goes through.
But let’s hold off a moment on that and assess just how bad it’s gotten before even worse hits the fan. Until recently, the Trump administration had focused its arms sales policies on the promotion of big-ticket items like fighter planes, tanks, and missile defense systems around the world. Trump himself has loudly touted U.S. weapons systems just about every time he’s had the chance, whether amid insults to allies at the recent NATO summit or at a chummy White House meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose brutal war in Yemen is fueled by U.S.-supplied arms.
A recent presidential export policy directive, in fact, specifically instructs American diplomats to put special effort into promoting arms sales, effectively turning them into agents for the country’s largest weapons makers. As an analysis by the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy has noted, human rights and even national security concerns have taken a back seat to creating domestic jobs via such arms sales. Evidence of this can be found in, for example, the ending of Obama administration arms sales suspensions to Nigeria, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. The first of those had been imposed because of the way the Nigerian government repressed its own citizens; the second for Bahrain’s brutal crackdown on the democracy movement there; and the last for Saudi Arabia’s commission of acts that one member of Congress has said “look like war crimes” in its Yemeni intervention.
Fueling death and destruction, however, turns out not to be a particularly effective job creator. Such military spending actually generates significantly fewer jobs per dollar than almost any other kind of investment. In addition, many of those jobs will actually be located overseas, thanks to production-sharing deals with weapons-purchasing countries like Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and other U.S. allies. To cite an example, one of the goals of Saudi Arabia’s economic reform plan — unveiled in 2017 — is to ensure that, by 2030, half the value of the kingdom’s arms purchases will be produced in Saudi Arabia. U.S. firms have scrambled to comply, setting up affiliates in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and in the case of Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky unit, agreeing to begin assembling military helicopters there. McClatchy news service summed up the situation in this headline: “Trump’s Historic Arms Deal Is a Likely Jobs Creator — In Saudi Arabia.”
For most Americans, there should be serious questions about the economic benefits of overseas arms sales, but if you’re a weapons maker looking to pump up sales and profits, the Trump approach has already been a smashing success. According to the head of the Pentagon’s arms sales division, known euphemistically as the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Department of Defense has brokered agreements for sales of major systems worth $46 billion in the first six months of 2018, more than the $41 billion in deals made during all of 2017.
And that, it seems, is just the beginning.
Slow Motion Weapons of Mass Destruction
Yes, those massive sales of tanks, helicopters, and fighter aircraft are indeed a grim wonder of the modern world and never receive the attention they truly deserve. However, a potentially deadlier aspect of the U.S. weapons trade receives even less attention than the sale of big-ticket items: the export of firearms, ammunition, and related equipment. Global arms control advocates have termed such small arms and light weaponry — rifles, automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and handguns — “slow motion weapons of mass destruction” because they’re the weapons of choice in the majority of the 40 armed conflicts now underway around the world. They and they alone have been responsible for nearly half of the roughly 200,000 violent deaths by weapon that have been occurring annually both in and outside of official war zones.
And the Trump administration is now moving to make it far easier for U.S. gun makers to push such wares around the world. Consider it an irony, if you will, but in doing so, the president who has staked his reputation on rejecting everything that seems to him tainted by Barack Obama is elaborating on a proposal originally developed in the Obama years.
The crucial element in the new plan: to move key decisions on whether or not to export guns and ammunition abroad from the State Department’s jurisdiction, where they would be vetted on both human rights and national security grounds, to the Commerce Department, whose primary mission is promoting national exports.
The Violence Policy Center, a research and advocacy organization that seeks to limit gun deaths, has indicated that such a move would ease the way for more exports of a long list of firearms. Those would include sniper rifles and AR-15s, the now-classic weapon in U.S. mass killings like the school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Newtown, Connecticut. Under the new plan, the careful tracking of whose hands such gun exports could end up in will be yesterday’s news and, as a result, U.S. weapons are likely to become far more accessible to armed gangs, drug cartels, and terrorist operatives.
President Trump’s plan would even eliminate the requirement that Congress be notified in advance of major firearms deals, which would undoubtedly prove to be the arms loophole of all time. According to statistics gathered by the Security Assistance Monitor, which gathers comprehensive information on U.S. military and police aid programs, the State Department approved$662 million worth of firearms exports to 15 countries in 2017. The elimination of Congressional notifications and the other proposed changes will mean that countries like Mexico, the Philippines, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as various Central American nations, will have far easier access to a far wider range of U.S. firearms with far less Congressional oversight. And that, in turn, means that U.S.-supplied weapons will play even more crucial roles in vicious civil wars like the one in Yemen and are far more likely to make their way into the hands of local thugs, death squads, and drug cartels.
And mind you, it isn’t as if U.S. gun export policies were enlightened before the Trump era. They were already wreaking havoc in neighboring countries. According to a report from the Center for American Progress, an astonishing 50,000 U.S. guns were recovered in criminal investigations in 15 Western Hemisphere nations between 2014 and 2016. That report goes on to note that 70% of the guns recovered from crimes in Mexico are of U.S. origin. The comparable figures for Central America are 49% for El Salvador, 46% for Honduras, and 29% for Guatemala.
While Donald Trump rails — falsely — against a flood of criminals washing across the U.S.-Mexico border, he conveniently ignores this country’s export of violence in the other direction thanks to both legal and illegal transfers of guns to Mexico and Central America. The U.S. has, in short, already effectively weaponized both criminal networks and repressive security forces in those countries. In other words, it’s played a key role in the killing of significant numbers of innocent civilians there, ratcheting up the pressure on individuals, families, and tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have then headed for the United States looking for a safer, better life. Trump’s new proposal would potentially make this situation far worse and his “big, fat, beautiful wall” would have to grow larger still.
In the past, congressional awareness of foreign firearm deals has made a difference. In September 2017, under pressure from Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the Trump administration reversed itself and blocked a sale of 1,600 semiautomatic pistols to Turkey because of abuses by the personal security forces of that country’s president, Recep Erdogan. (Those included what the New York Times described as “brutal attacks” on U.S. citizens during Erdogan’s May 2017 trip to Washington, D.C.) Similarly, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) persuaded the Obama administration to halt a deal that would have sent 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippines, where security forces and private death squads, egged on by President Rodrigo Duterte, were gunning down thousands of people suspected of (but not charged with or convicted of) drug trafficking. As Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin has noted, under the new Trump rules, it will be nearly impossible for members of Congress to intervene in such a fashion to stop similar deals in the future.
On the implications of the deregulation of firearms exports, Cardin has spoken out strongly.
“The United States,” he said, “should never make it easier for foreign despots to slaughter their civilians or for American-made assault weapons to be readily available to paramilitary or terrorist groups… The administration’s proposal makes those scenarios even more possible. The United States is, and should be, better than this.”
The Trump plan is, however, good news for hire-a-gun successors to Blackwater, the defunct private contractor whose personnel killed 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in a notorious 2007 incident. Such firms would be able to train foreign military forces in the use of firearms without seeking licenses from the State Department, allowing them to operate in places like Libya that might otherwise have been off-limits.
Embracing the Gun Lobby
Not surprisingly, Trump’s proposal to make it easier for global gunrunners to operate from U.S. soil has been greeted with jubilation by the National Rifle Association and U.S.-based firearms manufacturers. The NRA has been a staunch opponent of efforts to place any kind of controls on the global trade in guns since at least the mid-1990s. That was when the United Nations first addressed the impact of the global trade in small arms and light weapons, which ultimately led to the passage of an international Arms Trade Treaty in 2014. Though the Obama administration signed it, the Senate refused to ratify it, in large part thanks to an NRA lobbying campaign.
Now, the NRA has an enthusiastic ally in the president. And that organization, which vigorously backed him in the 2016 election campaign, spending over $30 million on ads praising him or trashing Hillary Clinton, is backing his efforts to deregulate gun exports to the hilt. In a June 2018 letter from its Institute for Legislative Affairs, the NRA urged its supporters to weigh in favorably during the public-comment period on the new rules, describing them as “among the most important pro-gun initiatives by the Trump administration to date.” That’s no small claim, given the president’s enthusiastic embrace of virtually every element of the NRA’s anti-gun-control agenda.
The National Sports Shooting Federation (NSSF), the misleadingly named trade association for U.S. gun manufacturers, is also backing Trump’s efforts to boost firearms exports. The federation’s president, Lawrence Keane, has asserted that the administration proposal will be “a significant positive development for the industry that will allow members to reduce costs and compete in the global marketplace more effectively, all while not in any way hindering national security.”
Among the biggest threats posed by Trump’s approach to guns is his administration’s decision to settle a case with Defense Distributed, a Texas-based firm run by gun advocate Cody Wilson, and so usher in “the age of the downloadable gun.” Though a Seattle-based judge intervened to stop him for the time being, the government had green-lighted Wilson’s posting of designs on the Internet that could be used to produce plastic guns on 3-D printers. If it does happen, it will undoubtedly prove to be a global bonanza for anyone in need of a weapon and capable of purchasing such a printer anywhere in the world.
Arms control and human rights groups have joined domestic gun control organizations like the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in trying to block the change, which will dramatically undermine efforts to limit the proliferation of guns at home and abroad. If they fail, it will suddenly become much easier to produce untraceable plastic firearms — from handguns to AR-15s. The administration even agreed to pay Cody Wilson’s legal fees in the dispute, a move former congressman Steve Israel (D-NY) has described as “a particularly galling example of Mr. Trump’s obsequiousness to the most extreme fringe of the gun lobby.”
Congress could seek to blunt the most egregious aspects of the Trump administration’s deregulation of firearms exports by, for instance, ensuring that oversight of the most dangerous guns — like sniper rifles and AR-15 semiautomatic weapons — not be shifted away from the State Department. It could also continue to force the administration to notify Congress of any major firearms deals before they happen and pass legislation making it illegal to post instructions for producing untraceable guns via 3-D printing technology.
In a political climate dominated by an erratic president in the pocket of the NRA and a Congress with large numbers of members under the sway of the gun lobby, however, only a strong, persistent public outcry might make a difference.
In the meantime, welcome to the world of American gunrunning and start thinking of Donald Trump as our very own gunrunner-in-chief.
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The media coverage in the Western press went into fever pitch over this story, but no Western journalist actually investigated the story and reported it. Not one. It all emanated from a press release.
Woman arrested with daughter in Dubai over drinking wine is released gloated the Guardian’s headline. This story was written by one of their journalists and ‘agencies.’ In other words, The Guardian didn’t do anything except hash together their version of a press release without declaring who the ‘agency’ was. And they certainly didn’t check the facts.
The day earlier The Guardian reportedWoman held in Dubai with daughter after drinking wine on flight and that the Swedish dentist says she was detained and had her passport confiscated after having one glass of wine after it was offered by the airline’s own cabin crew.
The mainstream press dutifully followed – its a great story. Blonde, attractive Western woman unjustly arrested with her little daughter, locked up in harsh stinking conditions having been entrapped for having had a single glass of wine – how typical of those dastardly Arabs. The Telegraph, The Star, et al went off on one, became delirious as the story – one designed for click-baiting by a click-baiter, reached its summit of hysteria by quoting the distressed detainee: “My daughter is a happy, smiley girl, but now she was terrified.”
Perhaps Ellie Holman, 44, who arrived on an Emirates flight from London Gatwick on July 13 should have checked her passport which had expired 3 days earlier. One has to question why did the officials at Gatwick did not notice or that the computerised check-in system failed.
Missing from all these MSM reports is the fact that Ms Holman was, in fact, also curiously carrying an Iranian passport. When she produced that, the official at Dubai airport, quite rightly pointed out that she needed to pay for a short 96-hour visa as she had not got one. Many countries use these short visas to allow for transfer times in the airport and short breaks for long-haul flights. Ms Holman had neither a valid passport nor a visa. She was not legally allowed entry. The official offered a way out. Ms Holman got angry because her planned 5-day visit had to be shortened in order to comply with the rules.
According to a statement issued by the airport, Ms Holman “refused angrily to the additional payment fees that the process would require and proceeded to verbally insult the immigration officer and take photos of the officer via her phone”.
Again, it should be pointed out that in most airports people are not allowed to take photos at border control, border crossings or check-in areas for security reasons. These rules exist in all British airports for instance. In Britain, Holman would have been sent straight back to the country of origin at the expense of the airline.
It should also be pointed out that it is against the law to be publicly abusive in the UAE. Anyone who has lived and worked in the UAE knows this is the one thing that residents really do like. There is almost no such things as violence, thuggery, theft, drunkenness, swearing in public or vandalism – because the penalty is a few weeks in prison and deportation.
Ms Holman initially told the British media that her detention related to having a glass of wine on her flight to Dubai, which is not an offence nor a reason for her detention. And it never has been. People arriving in Dubai or Abu Dhabi will not be arrested for having a drink on an inbound flight. If you are visibly drunk and abusive at an airport, then maybe you’ll be arrested. But then you would be anywhere in the world.
Two other parts to this story are wrong as well.
The Telegraph, for instance, said:
“A mother was detained in Dubai for three days with her four-year-old daughter after a drinking a complimentary glass of wine on a flight from London.”
Holman was not detained for three days. She was apparently detained for less than 24 hours and then allowed to stay with friends whilst the authorities sorted out Holman’s situation.
The paper claimed Holman was made to clean toilets and then claimed they were denied access to toilets and that she didn’t realise it was illegal to drink alcohol heading to Dubai. None of these claims seem to be true. It is not illegal for Westerners to drink alcohol in Dubai.
Holman said that after three days in a hellhole prison:
“By now, Gary (her partner) knew something was wrong and had flown to Dubai to look for me. Friends had found out I was in jail and tried to visit. Nobody was allowed to see us.”
Dubai’s attorney general refuted claims that Ms Holman was not looked after and said:
“The woman and her child remained together in the airport security office for less than 24 hours while services were provided to them, taking into full account and consideration of her four-year-old daughter.”
You may choose not to believe that – after all – the Dubai authorities would say that.
However, one should not be confused with the central character in this case – that of ‘Detained in Dubai.’ Whilst not disputing that this organisation has indeed assisted some Westerners to get out of trouble – in this case, they are misleading the public.
Detained in Dubai (DID) are described in all of the MSM as an NGO or ‘non-governmental-organisation. An NGO is officially defined as: a non-profit organization that operates independently of any government, typically one whose purpose is to address a social or political issue. Not a single journalist has checked this fact out.
Just to start, DID are located in London. They are registered as a limited company. It was incorporated only in March – 2018.
In 2017, Detained in Dubai was dissolved via a compulsory strike-off. The strike-off is a notice of intent to strike the company name off the Companies House register. This may be because the company has been dissolved. However, a compulsory strike-off action was threatened by Companies House and then discontinued in both 2016 and in 2015. There could very well be legitimate reasons for this, we do not know.
The listed director is Rahda Stirling who owns all the shares in the company and there are no other significant persons listed. Stirling’s listed occupation is not ‘solicitor’ or ‘lawyer’ but only as ‘MD’. The overview of the company activities is described as “Other professional, scientific and technical activities not elsewhere classified.”
Stirling, born in Florida, America is described by Wikipedia as having attended Australia’s Bond Law School. This is inaccurate. The university, which was only granted that status in 1989 is called simply Bond University. It, like many, does not specialise particularly in law as a subject and we cannot find Rahda Stirling as having achieved any academic qualifications in the subject of law. That does not say she has none, just that we have not dug deep enough yet to find any.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority in Britain does not list Stirling as a qualified practising member of the law community.
One of DID’s partners, David Haigh is described on their own website as “one of the most high profile human rights lawyers focusing on the Middle East today” – does not actually have a certificate to practise law in the UK. According to one report:
“He has not got a practising certificate at this time and has not had one since 2014, which means he cannot act as a solicitor carrying out any of the six reserved legal activities.” the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) spokesman said.
“We know that he has spent time in prison because we gather information on the regulated community. When an application is made we assess all admissible evidence, but obviously we cannot speculate what his intentions might be in the future.”
There is an interesting story HERE about Haigh, who was himself deported from the UAE for embezzlement, amongst other things. How true they are, is for you to decide as they were published in the press in the UAE.
Another partner in the firm is Shahid Bolsen, also not legally qualified from what we can ascertain, has a background in political science, economics, and journalism and “plays a key role in managing the mainstream and social media campaigns for Detained in Dubai” – according to the DID website.
It is important to note that the Swedish dentist, living in Britain, with an out of date EU passport but with an in-date Iranian passport and no visa – took her partner’s surname as if married – is not actually married. You can imagine any border control official anywhere in the world being somewhat suspicious of an individual presenting themselves as such. And let’s not forget, to complicate matters, the UAE is not friends with Iran – quite the opposite.
It is also important to note that Ellie Holman has complained publicly that the cost of her three-day detainment in Dubai was around £30,000. In fact, she describes this as all of her and her ‘husbands’ savings. No other firm has been referenced in this story and only Detained in Dubai has been named as representing her, one can only assume where their savings went.
Detained in Dubai actively state on their website that:
“We assist with case strategy, press, negotiating the legal system in the UAE and whatever it takes to achieve a positive outcome for you.”
Finally, we are not defaming the work of Detained in Dubai – and quite sure it does good work. But it is not an NGO as we have been misled to believe, is a for-profit limited company, not a charity and does not provide legal services because it, nor the people who work there are not qualified to do so.
This story was probably created in order to stir up a media frenzy to put pressure on the authorities in Dubai when it probably wasn’t required in the first place – for money. Many of the claims made by the MSM in this story are indeed, not true at all.
Here are some readers responses (screenshots) from the Independent who also reported the story. There were at the time only 19 responses, several were angry at the quality of reporting:
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above
The disconnect could not be greater. As wild-fires raged across the US last week, inflamed by climate change, Trump officials attended the America First Energy Conference, where delegates heard age-old fossil fuel arguments that, amongst others, carbon dioxide makes the planet greener and could not be creating a climate crisis.
The conference comes after an unprecedented heat wave in the Northern hemisphere. Scientists are warning that this summer’s heatwave is caused by climate change, which is turn has caused unprecedented temperatures and wild-fires from Canada, to Greece, Sweden and the US. Indeed this summer’s heatwave was made more than twice as likely by climate change, according to a rapid assessment by scientists.
Some scientists are even warning that we are descending into “hothouse earth”, where a series of positive feedback mechanisms could trigger even more extreme warming.
A record number of Americans now believe that humans are causing climate change, too. The latest survey by the University of Michigan Muhlenberg College revealed that “a record 60% of Americans now think that global warming is happening and that humans are at least partially responsible for the rising temperatures.”
These high temperatures continue to cause massive wildfires with over 100 major active blazes in the US right now. Some 30,000 personnel are battling wildfires that have devastated over 1.6m acres (648,000 hectares) of land.
Meanwhile the climate dinosaurs continue as if nothing is happening. They deny the science and evidence as the flames get ever closer.
The conference was organised by the leading climate denial think tank, Heartland Institute (picture is a screengrab of its website) which has been regurgitating the same climate denial old rubbish – what we now would now call “fake news” – for the last two decades. It has received significant funding from Exxon and the Koch Brothers to do so.
But all their climate denial friends were there too, according to Reuters, including speakers from JunkScience, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center For Industrial Progress and officials from the U.S. Department of Interior and the White House.
The panels included sessions on “Carbon Taxes, Cap & Trade, and Other Bad Ideas,” “Fiduciary Malpractice: The Sustainable Investment Movement,” and “Why CO2 Emissions Are Not Creating A Climate Crisis.”
Another one of the ludicrous conspiracy theories peddled at the conference was “that the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market”. Oh and they hate renewable energy too, calling wind and solar energy “dumb”.
According to Reuters, the U.S. officials who attended included White House Special Assistant Brooke Rollins, Interior Department Assistant Secretary Joe Balash, and Jason Funes, an assistant in the office of external affairs at Interior. All “praised the administration’s moves to clear the way for oil industry activity”.
Tim Huelskamp, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, closed the seminar by stating the person who had made the difference to the climate deniers was Donald Trump.
“We have a President who has kept his promises. It proves that one man can make a difference”. He called Trump “our last political chance at freedom.”
And in many ways he is right. Trump represents the last chance for the fossil fuel industry to wreck this planet. What they call freedom, we call wildfires. When they see freedom, we see sea-level rise.
“The leftist claims about sea level rise are overblown, overstated or frankly just wrong.”
Ironically the conference was held in New Orleans, which was once ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. As Reuters – not normally seen as left-wing conspiracy theorists – noted:
“Evidence of sea level rise, however, is strewn across the state that hosted the conference.”
The panel speakers are so blinkered in their climate denial they do not notice what is happening right now. They may look, but they cannot see. On the speaker’s lectern was the strapline “freedom rising”. Maybe someone should have just written “sea-level rising” instead.
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Featured image is a screengrab from the Heartland website.
More avant-garde surveillance focuses on information that can identify a person’s physical characteristics. Biometric analysis can be used to identify people based on a photo, fingerprint, or even a retina scan.
From the very outset, this air campaign has NOT been directed against ISIS. The evidence confirms that the Islamic State is not the target. Quite the opposite.
Now let us examine in more detail the Al Nusrah Front, which constitutes the main rebel fighting force in Syria. Al Nusrah is affiliated to Al Qaeda. The leader of Al Nusrah, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, has pledged his allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who replaced Osama bin Laden after his death.
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