Global Research

On Thursday, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar told reporters that the number of immigrant children separated from their parents was around 3,000—50 percent higher than the 2,000 previously reported. Many of these children have been separated from their parents for weeks.

According to Azar, 101 of the children are under the age of five. The Justice Department reported that of the youngest children, 16 have not yet been linked to any parents, while the parents of 19 children have already been deported. The government is unable to locate the parents of another 19 children. It is likely that many will never see their children again.

Earlier on Thursday, Commander Jonathan White, HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, reported that the government was performing DNA tests of immigrant children to test whether those seeking their liberation from detention were their biological parents.

The compilation of a DNA database of immigrant children calls to mind the types of measures employed by the Nazis against Jews and other “undesirables.” And those few parents who have been able to free their children have been forced to pay for the cost of relocation—often thousands of dollars—echoing the Nazi requirement that the relatives of those shot pay for the bullets.

Late Thursday night, the Trump administration filed a motion requesting an extension of a court deadline requiring the government to reunite children with their parents. The administration claimed that more time was needed to genetically test immigrant children and locate their parents. A judge responded by saying he needed more time to consider the administration’s request, meaning the children will remain in limbo.

Though the media reported Trump’s announcement of an “end” to family separation last month as an “about face” and a “reversal,” only a handful of detained children have been united with their parents. The Los Angeles Times wrote of one mother’s letter about her detained son:

“It’s been a month since they snatched him away and there are moments when I can’t go on… If they are going to deport me, let them do it—but with my child. Without him, I am not going to leave here.”

The Trump administration has responded to growing popular protest by defending the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agencies and ramping-up its inflammatory xenophobic rhetoric.

On Thursday, Trump tweeted:

“Every day, the brave men and women of ICE are liberating communities from savage gangs like MS-13. We will NOT stand for these vile Democrat smears in law enforcement. We will always stand proudly with the BRAVE HEROES of ICE and BORDER PATROL!”

He reiterated his demand that immigrants be stripped of all due process rights, tweeting,

“Tell the people “OUT,” and they must leave, just as they would if they were standing on your front lawn. Hiring thousands of ‘judges’ does not work and is not acceptable – only Country in the World that does this!”

He also tweeted,

“A vote for Democrats in November is a vote to let MS-13 run wild in our communities, to let drugs pour into our cities, and to take jobs and benefits away from hardworking Americans. Democrats want anarchy, amnesty and chaos—Republicans want LAW, ORDER and JUSTICE!”

Trump’s denunciation of Democrats for being “pro-immigrant” is a farce. Those Democrats who have spoken about “abolishing” ICE have clarified that this does not mean putting an end to deportation and mass detention of immigrants. On the contrary, Democrats seek to return to the policies of the Obama administration, when a record 2.7 million immigrants were deported and hundreds of thousands of parents were torn from their children.

Responding to Trump’s claim that Democrats support abolishing borders, Minority Leader Charles Schumer tweeted on June 21,

“Open borders, @realDonaldTrump? The bipartisan immigration bill I authored had $40 billion for border security and would have been far more effective than the wall.”

Vice President Mike Pence gave a televised address at ICE headquarters yesterday, calling the American immigration Gestapo “American heroes” and proclaiming: “We will never abolish ICE.” He denounced those who are demanding the agency’s abolition, stating:

“The American people have a right to their opinions, but these spurious attacks on ICE by our political leaders must stop. The type of language that’s being used to describe the men and women in this agency and the work that you do every day is unacceptable.”

Behind the rhetoric aimed at shoring up institutional support for the US deportation forces, the government is rapidly militarizing ICE and preparing for a new round of mass raids. According to a July 3 report by Ken Kippenstein of the Young Turks,

ICE “is quietly training its deportation officers in the use of weapons more familiar to the US military than to domestic law enforcement, federal records show.”

Citing federal procurement records and contracts, Kippenstein reported that

ICE’s “enforcement and Removal Officers are being trained in the use of M4 assault rifles, chemical agents, stun grenades, and flash bangs.”

The M4 is the primary service weapon of the US Marine Corps. ICE and CBP have recently doubled their M4 contracts, acquiring 8,000 assault rifles, records show.

“Sounds like they’re getting ready for war,” former ICE agent Rob Uribe Alvarez told the Young Turks.

In June, the Young Turks reported that

“ICE had retained a former CIA interrogator to train agents in handling ‘terrorist suspects.’”

In a further sign the government is preparing to use the military to raid immigrant neighborhoods, the military has begun discharging dozens of immigrants. The Associated Press reported Thursday that dozens of “US Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged.”

Some recruits were told they posed “security risks because they have relatives abroad,” AP reported.

Hector Barajas, a military veteran who was deported from the US, told the World Socialist Web Site:

“Just like with the mistreatment of immigrant children, this has been going on since the Obama administration, only now it is worse and the government is more blunt.”

Barajas, who fought in the Persian Gulf War, was allowed to return only in April after a years-long struggle to win re-admittance to his home country.

“I’ve been deported for 14 years,” he said. “There’s always been anti-immigrant sentiment, whether against the Italians, Irish or whoever. Now it’s Hispanics mostly. Right now, they say immigrants are causing problems by crossing borders. How many people did Obama deport? Millions of people. Now Trump says to immigrants, ‘We don’t need you.’ But if there’s a war with Russia, they’re going to take everyone and they don’t care if you speak English or not. They will send us to war even though they treat us like second class soldiers.”

Polls show that Trump’s anti-immigrant policies are increasingly unpopular. Nearly 70 percent of Americans said they opposed the family separation policy, according to a new poll from the Washington Post. The Trump administration’s attack on immigrants, including the establishment of detention camps and the arming of special Gestapo-like deportation units, is directed ultimately against the entire working class and all social opposition to inequality and war.

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Next week, the Arab American Institute Foundation will release a comprehensive study on anti-Arab hate crimes in the US. The result of eight months of work, “Underreported, Under Threat: Hate Crime in the United States and the Targeting of Arab Americans,” fills a gap in available research on hate-based crime.

More than just a compilation of acts of violence or threats against persons of Arab descent, the AAIF study also reviews the history of how law enforcement agencies have dealt with (or rather has not dealt with) anti-Arab hate crimes. The report then rates the performance of all 50 states and the District of Colombia as to whether or not they have hate crime and data collection statutes, and require and provide appropriate law enforcement training. It concludes with recommendations for national and local governments to assist in improving their reporting and performance in dealing with these crimes.

Among the report’s findings we learn that while pervasive negative stereotypes and political exclusion have increased the vulnerability of Arab Americans, actual threats and incidents of violence against members of the community have “historically intensified in the wake of developments in the Middle East or incidents of mass violence”—whether or not the perpetrator was of Arab descent. The study notes with concern that this “backlash” effect has “increased in the current political climate.”

As the report makes clear both federal and state governments have, to varying degrees, been negligent in addressing this problem. The FBI started collecting data on hate crimes, including those targeting Arab Americans, after Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990. But in 1992, the federal government told the FBI it was not allowed to publish statistics on anti-Arab hate crimes, and the category used to report anti-Arab hate crimes was removed from the FBI’s data collections. This did not stop local law enforcement agencies from reporting hundreds of incidents under this category until 2003, when the FBI told agencies that it would start rejecting “improperly coded data.”  Even though the category was reintroduced in 2015, the AAIF study shows that federal anti-Arab hate crime statistics are still deficient. One indication is that state governments report a greater number of anti-Arab hate crimes in their own publications than federal statistics. In the case of nationwide data targeting all communities, comparing hate crimes compiled by state governments with federal data reveals “thousands of hate crimes were reported at the state level but not published in federal statistics.”

For me, this issue is deeply personal. I know from experience how dangerous and painful anti-Arab hate can be. I received my first death threat in April 1970 in the form of a letter stating, “Arab dog, you will die…” In 1980, my office was fire-bombed and I continued to receive threats throughout the next two decades. After repeated threats, a colleague and friend in California, Alex Odeh, was murdered when his office was bombed in 1985. And since September 11, 2001, three individuals have gone to prison for threatening my life and the lives of my children and staff.

In all of this, I have observed several patterns.

In most instances, these hate crimes were politically motivated and were tied either to the perpetrator’s racist assumption that all Arabs were responsible for violent events in the Middle East or here at home. Or they were an effort to silence me and other Arab Americans from speaking out on issues of concern. Although it is not the focus of the AAIF report to discern the motives of the perpetrators of bias-motivated incidents, my experience dictates the “why” is worth noting.

As I observed in congressional testimony in 1985, in too many instances the threats against us were preceded by incitement. As I noted,

These acts of violence and threats of violence against Arab American(s) are but part of a larger picture of discrimination, harassment, and intimidation. We can document numerous instances of active political discrimination against Arab Americans, ‘blacklisting’ of Arab American political activists and spokespersons, and efforts to bait or taint Arab American leaders and organizations as terrorists or terrorist supporters.

All of these actions and practices create a climate in which Arab Americans become fearful of speaking freely and participating in legitimate political activity. Further, these practices serve to embolden the political opponents of Arab Americans to the point where, as we have seen, some have escalated their opposition to include acts of violence against Arab Americans and their organizations.

To the old adage “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” I have suggested adding “but names, if repeated often enough, may incite others to commit violence.” It was no mere coincidence that some of the death threats against me and my colleagues quoted material taken from virulently anti-Arab publications or websites.

Another byproduct of persistent defamatory attacks, some emanating from major pro-Israel organizations, was to make it difficult for Arab Americans to normalize their political involvement or to discourage others from becoming politically engaged—which I believe was the purpose of the defamation. This, in turn, historically played a role both in increasing the community’s vulnerability to threats and also in discouraging Arab American victims from reporting them when threats occurred.

Why would discussions of Middle East politics find their way to an analysis of hate crimes? Because as the AAIF report notes, targeted violence against Arab Americans is best contextualized within broader historical trends of anti-Arab animus and the role exclusionary politics played in advancing it. This exclusion, or the fear of being excluded, often made members of the community reticent to go public when threatened.

Thankfully, this situation has dramatically changed. Although still subject to defamation, Arab Americans are no longer excluded from the political mainstream. Not only have we found our voice, but we have allies who will come to our defense. And, despite real concerns with their work in other areas, law enforcement agencies have become more responsive to hate crimes against Arab Americans.

A final word about the efforts of law enforcement in addressing hate crimes:

Over the past four decades, the performance of federal law enforcement agencies in addressing hate crimes has gone from deplorable to commendable. Early on, Arab Americans even hesitated to report death threats because of the behavior of the agents who came to visit us. After the 1980 fire bombing for example, I ended up feeling that I was being grilled more for information about the Arab community, then about the likely perpetrators—members of an FBI-designated terrorist group, the Jewish Defense League (JDL). The JDL had issued a statement “approving” of the attack and the group’s founder later appeared outside my new office shouting,

I know who is in there—cowards and supporters of terrorism. Their office was burned down. They ran over here and changed their name. But we know who they are.

In 1985, I went to the director of the FBI with over 100 affidavits from Arab Americans in the Los Angeles area complaining of FBI harassment and a dozen reporting threats of violence. I pointedly asked, “why do you spend so much time and resources harassing us and so little time defending us.” A few months later, one of the Arab Americans who had reported a threat, Alex Odeh, was murdered in a bombing attack on his office.

Since 9/11, the situation changed quite dramatically. The FBI and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division have taken threats seriously. While other problems remain, in this area they have been quite protective of the community – investigating, prosecuting, and convicting individuals in over one hundred hate crime cases.

It is this context of the progress made and the work that remains to be done that the AAIF report has been issued. It will, I believe, serve as an invaluable resource for policy makers, law enforcement agencies, and community groups.

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James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute.

Featured image is from Khalil Bendib.

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The long-awaited reports of the investigation by the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) into Detainee Mistreatment and Rendition between 2001 and 2010 have finally been published. We ourselves have been researching the UK’s part in rendition and torture for years and gave evidence to the committee – and these reports are much harder hitting than we had expected.

Chaired by MP and QC Dominic Grieve, the ISC’s investigation has revealed that the extent of UK involvement in prisoner abuse was even greater than we had previously documented. The reports also highlight serious weaknesses relating to the training of security personnel, and governance and oversight of their conduct. Many of the ISC’s conclusions corroborate our own research findings, and we were pleased to see a number of issues we raised when we gave evidence to the ISC in January 2017.

As we have argued for years now – and as we told the ISC – British complicity in torture was deep, wide and sustained. Government ministers have always denied this – the former foreign secretary, Jack Straw famously stated that only conspiracy theorists should believe the UK was involved in rendition. That position is now more untenable than ever. It is clear from the ISC reports that UK officials knew about the US programme immediately after 9/11 and worked to support their allies in ways which enabled continued “plausible deniability”.

The report’s findings are unambiguous. In more than 70 cases – far more than have ever been identified before now – British intelligence knew of, suggested, planned, agreed to, or paid for others to conduct rendition operations. Some of the details are excruciating – one MI6 officer was present while a prisoner was transferred in a coffin-sized box. In literally hundreds of further cases, UK officials were aware of detainees being mistreated by their allies, continued to supply questions to be asked of detainees under torture, and received intelligence from those who had been tortured.

While names and locations have been redacted in these reports, our own years of investigation enable us to fit new facts into our broader picture of post-9/11 torture. It is likely that we will be able to identify some of the important detail left out by the reports. In many cases, these omissions resulted from the government refusing to allow the ISC to interview intelligence officers with knowledge of British involvement. In the absence of a full judge-led inquiry, our fact-finding work remains crucial, and we are committed to doing what we can.

We also know enough from the victims themselves, in their own words, about the human toll of this form of state violence. If you are being beaten up, electrocuted, raped, or subjected to mock execution, you tend to say whatever it takes to make it stop. Small wonder that intelligence received under torture is notoriously of limited value.

The fact that the UK attempted to keep its hands clean by involvement from afar makes the situation no better. When the reports were released, Theresa May stated that “intelligence and Armed Forces personnel are now much better placed” to deal with detainee-related work and that the necessary lessons have been learned. But in our evidence to the ISC, we also raised a number of concerns about the adequacy of today’s training and the strength of current guidance, which ostensibly prevents a return to the early years of the “War on Terror” – and we are not convinced.

No stone unturned

In our testimony to the ISC, we pointed to flaws in the so-called “Consolidated Guidance” issued to all security agencies and the military from 2010. The ISC has taken this seriously. In their conclusions, it concludes that the guidance is by no means “consolidated”, and that “it is misleading to present it as such”. The ISC points to “dangerous ambiguities in the guidance”, noting that “individual ministers have entirely different understandings of what they can and cannot, and would and would not, authorise”.

We encouraged the ISC to examine how frequently agency or Ministry of Defence personnel had followed the guidance, and to establish how frequently concerns about prisoner abuse were reported up the chain of command. This the ISC has done. Frustratingly, corresponding data is redacted from the final release. Nevertheless, the ISC’s conclusions indicate that record keeping on these matters is weak, and that there are considerable risks that cases which should be reported upwards are not.

This is exacerbated by the fact that “there is no clear policy and not even agreement as to who has responsibility for preventing UK complicity in unlawful rendition”. And as the ISC reports, the government “has failed to introduce any policy or process that will ensure that allies will not use UK territory for rendition purposes”.

We have long argued that the Consolidated Guidance does little more than provide a rhetorical, legal and policy scaffold, enabling the UK government to demonstrate a minimum procedural adherence to human rights commitments. As the ISC quite rightly concludes, there is an urgent need for review and fundamental reform of the Consolidated Guidance. The government must also establish much more robust oversight, training and accountability mechanisms.

We would also argue, in the strongest possible terms, that only a judge-led inquiry with full powers of subpoena will enable the public to know what was done in their name. Without this it will be even harder to achieve full accountability and to identify current forms of UK complicity in human rights abuses. With the anti-torture norm being eroded at the very top of the US government once again, these risks are very present and real.

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Update 4: A second junior Brexit minister has resigned – Suella Bravermanm MP for Fareham. This leaves just two of the five person Brexit team remaining.

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Update 3: Here is the full text of Theresa May’s letter in response to David Davis’s resignation as Brexit Secretary (highlights ours):

Dear David

Thank you for your letter explaining your decision to resign as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.

I am sorry that you have chosen to leave the Government when we have already made so much progress towards delivering a smooth and successful Brexit, and when we are only eight months from the date set in law when the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.

At Chequers on Friday, we as the Cabinet agreed a comprehensive and detailed proposal which provides a precise, responsible, and credible basis for progressing our negotiations towards a new relationship between the UK and the EU after we leave in March. We set out how we will deliver on the result of the referendum and the commitments we made in our manifesto for the 2017 general election:

1. Leaving the EU on 29 March 2019.
2. Ending free movement and taking back control of our borders.
3. No more sending vast sums of money each year to the EU.
4. A new business-friendly customs model with freedom to strike new trade deals around the world.
5. A UK-EU free trade area with a common rulebook for industrial goods and agricultural products which will be good for jobs.
6. A commitment to maintain high standards on consumer and employment rights and the environment.
7. A Parliamentary lock on all new rules and regulations.
8. Leaving the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy.
9. Restoring the supremacy of British courts by ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK.
10. No hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, or between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
11. Continued, close co-operation on security to keep our people safe.
12. An independent foreign and defence policy, working closely with the EU and other allies.

This is consistent with the mandate of the referendum and with the commitments we laid out in our general election manifesto: leaving the single market and the customs union but seeking a deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement; ending the vast annual contributions to the EU; and pursuing fair, orderly negotiations, minimising disruption and giving as much certainty as possible so both sides benefit.

As we said in our manifesto, we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside our withdrawal, reaching agreement on both within the two years allowed by Article 50.

I have always agreed with you that these two must go alongside one another, but if we are to get sufficient detail about our future partnership, we need to act now. We have made a significant move: it is for the EU now to respond in the same spirit.

I do not agree with your characterisation of the policy we agreed at Cabinet on Friday.

Parliament will decide whether or not to back the deal the Government negotiates, but that deal will undoubtedly mean the returning of powers from Brussels to the United Kingdom.

The direct effect of EU law will end when we leave the EU. Where the UK chooses to apply a common rulebook, each rule will have to be agreed by Parliament.

Choosing not to sign up to certain rules would lead to consequences for market access, security co-operation or the frictionless border, but that decision will rest with our sovereign Parliament, which will have a lock on whether to incorporate those rules into the UK legal order.

I am sorry that the Government will not have the benefit of your continued expertise and counsel as we secure this deal and complete the process of leaving the EU, but I would like to thank you warmly for everything you have done over the past two years as Secretary of State to shape our departure from the EU, and the new role the UK will forge on the world stage as an independent, self-governing nation once again.

You returned to Government after nineteen years to lead an entirely new Department responsible for a vital, complex, and unprecedented task.

You have helped to steer through Parliament some of the most important legislation for generations, including the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which received Royal Assent last week.

These landmark Acts, and what they will do, stand as testament to your work and our commitment to honouring the result of the referendum.

Yours sincerely,

Theresa May

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Update 2: Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wasted no time in launching a full on attack on May, tweeting:

“David Davis resigning at such a crucial time shows @theresa_may has no authority left and is incapable of delivering Brexit. With her Government in chaos, if she clings on, it’s clear she’s more interested in hanging on for her own sake than serving the people of our country.”

David Davis resigning at such a crucial time shows @Theresa_May has no authority left and is incapable of delivering Brexit.

With her Government in chaos, if she clings on, it's clear she's more interested in hanging on for her own sake than serving the people of our country.

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 8, 2018

And in light of recent advanced by democrat socialists in the US, it probably wouldn’t be too ridiculous for the UK to make a hard left turn next as well.

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Update 1: Confirming earlier rumors, Sky News reports that Steve Baker, Britain’s junior Brexit minister, technically the Brexit minister for “contingency planning”, is the other (for now) conservative MP to resign alongside Davis.

* * *

In what has been called “an absolute bombshell”, U.K. Brexit Secretary David Davis resigned from Theresa May’s government late Sunday, one week before the UK is scheduled to present its demands to Brussels.

His full resignation letter is below (highlights ours):

Dear Prime Minister

As you know there have been a significant number of occasions in the last year or so on which I have disagreed with the Number 10 policy line, ranging from accepting the Commission’s sequencing of negotiations through to the language on Northern Ireland in the December Joint Report.

At each stage I have accepted collective responsibility because it is part of my task to find workable compromises, and because I considered it was still possible to deliver on the mandate of the referendum, and on our manifesto commitment to leave the Customs Union and the Single Market.

I am afraid that I think the current trend of policy and tactics is making that look less and less likely. Whether it is the progressive dilution of what I thought was a firm Chequers agreement in February on right to diverge, or the unnecessary delays of the start of the White Paper, or the presentation of a backstop proposal that omitted the strict conditions that I requested and believed that we had agreed, the general direction of policy will leave us in at best a weak negotiating position, and possibly an inescapable one.

The Cabinet decision on Friday crystallised this problem. In my view the inevitable consequence of the proposed policies will be to make the supposed control by Parliament illusory rather than real. As I said at Cabinet, the “common rule book” policy hands control of large swathes of our economy to the EU and is certainly not returning control of our laws in any real sense.

I am also unpersuaded that our negotiating approach will not just lead to further demands for concessions.

Of course this is a complex area of judgement and it is possible that you are right and I am wrong. However, even in that event it seems to me that the national interest requires a Secretary of State in my Department that is an enthusiastic believer in your approach, and not merely a reluctant conscript. While I have been grateful to you for the opportunity to serve, it is with great regret that I tender my resignation from the Cabinet with immediate effect.

Yours ever,

David Davis

Davis resignation comes two days after May received backing from her cabinet for a new “soft Brexit” plan which envisioned maintaining close ties with the EU after the UK’s departure from the block, news which was cheered the UK business lobby and which had set cable on an upward trajectory in early Asia trading, before the news hit which halted the pound’s ascent.

The cabinet signed up to the proposals, which were hammered out at Chequers – the country house of the UK Prime Minister – last week. May is due to unveil the plans tomorrow in parliament, before a potentially stormy meeting with her own MPs.

Davis had disagreed with May’s plans for keeping EU rules for goods and adopting a close customs model with the bloc, and his resignation threatens more political turmoil, this time in the UK, as moderates are set off against hard brexiteers.
However, some pro-Brexit Tories are angry about the plan, with speculation that it could end up in a leadership challenge.

As Sky News adds, some pro-Brexit Tories are angry about the plan and there is speculation it could end up in a leadership challenge. Sky’s political correspondent Lewis Goodall called the resignation of Mr Davis “an absolute bombshell”.

He said: “To resign tonight after the emergency meeting at Chequers on Friday is really quite shocking when you consider, apparently according to the briefing we received, that every single member of the cabinet – admittedly some with their reservations – all agreed that they would support the prime minister’s proposals and they would defend them in public.

“The big question now is, is David Davis going to be joined by any other figures? All eyes of course will be on Boris Johnson and other Brexiteers.”

According to BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, “Davis concluded he could not stay in post after a meeting” with Theresa May earlier today – “understand he was furious at Number 10 handling”

Davis concluded he could not stay in post after a meeting in Number 10 earlier today – understand he was furious at Number 10 handling

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) July 8, 2018

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson reportedly described defending the plans as like “polishing a turd” during the Chequers summit, before eventually falling into line behind the prime minister.

* * *

As a reminder, late on Friday Theresa May won approval at an all-day Chequers summit for a pro-business plan to keep Britain intimately bound to the EU single market and customs union, beating back Eurosceptic cabinet opposition to her new “soft Brexit” strategy, the FT reported.

May briefed the media at 6.45pm on Friday that the cabinet had agreed a collective position to create a “UK-EU free trade area which establishes a common rulebook for industrial goods and agricultural products”. The plan would see Britain commit in a treaty to adopt new EU rules for goods— an approach viewed by some Tories as leaving the UK as “a vassal state”. Parliament could break the treaty, but trigger severe market reprisals from the EU if it did.

May challenged critics including foreign secretary Boris Johnson to back the plan for a “UK-EU free trade area” in a confrontation seen by senior Tories as a decisive moment in the tortuous Brexit process.

Johnson and five other cabinet ministers met on Thursday night at the Foreign Office to plan a counter-attack to try to preserve a clean Brexit, but they eventually concluded they could not stop Mrs May’s plan.

“People are not happy with what is being proposed but people are keen to keep the government together,” said one of those at the meeting at Mrs May’s country residence.

May’s team had vaunted the prime minister’s ability to face down the Eurosceptics, encouraged by pleas from mainstream Conservative MPs that the time had come for her to tell her critics to put up or shut up.

Davis’ unexpected resignation threatens to further inflame cabinet tensions, especially in light of an earlier Mirror report that 42 lawmakers had formally expressed no confidence in Theresa May. A leadership contest would be triggered if 48 Conservative MPs formally submit letters.

May said on Friday that the proposals were “good for the UK and good for the EU” and would “deliver prosperity and security”.

And while it remains unclear if there will be more resignation in Davis’ footsteps, according to the BBC at least one more minister is on their way out:

Davis is taking at least one minister with him

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) July 8, 2018

Following the news, cable dipped modestly however it has since regained much of the losses and looks set to continue on its upward trajectory established last Friday. As Bloomberg’s Mark Cranfield adds, “EUR/GBP will quickly unwind last week’s drop and then climb further as David Davis’ resignation leaves the U.K. without its most experienced Brexit negotiator. This dramatically reduces the chances of Theresa May being able to push the Brexit White Paper through the U.K. parliament this week.”

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All images in this article are from Zero Hedge.

In the June 7 provincial election, Ontario politics took a sharp turn to the right as the Progressive Conservatives (PCs), under the leadership of the populist businessman and former Toronto city councillor Doug Ford, steamrolled to a majority government. The PCs took 40.5 per cent of the popular vote and 76 out of 124 seats in the Ontario legislature, putting an end to the 15-year reign of the Ontario Liberals. The Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP), under the leadership of Andrea Horwath, catapulted from their third-place position to Official Opposition, and received 33.6 per cent of the popular vote and 40 seats. Meanwhile, Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals suffered a catastrophic defeat, receiving just 19.6 per cent of the popular vote and 7 seats – one seat below the threshold for official party status in the legislature.

The PCs last won an election in Ontario in 1999, when the right-wing government of Mike Harris – whose ‘Common Sense Revolution’ included large tax cuts, ‘workfare’, the weakening of trade unions and deep cuts in public spending – was re-elected with a second majority. By the 2003 election, however, the tide had turned strongly against the Tories and the party spent the next 15 years in opposition. During this period, the party was divided between those that wished to continue the Harris approach and those that sought to move closer to the political centre. In the most recent election in 2014, PC leader Tim Hudak, a right-wing ideologue, flirted with ‘right to work’ laws and promised to take the Common Sense Revolution further. His One Million Jobs Plan that called for the elimination of 100,000 public sector jobs in order to eliminate the province’s deficit, as well as the slashing of corporate taxes by 30 per cent in order to attract investment. Offering voters little more than hyper-austerity, the Tories again went down to defeat.

Doug Ford

The PCs: The Triumph of Right-Wing Populism, Ontario Style

In the May 2015 leadership race, federal Conservative MP Patrick Brown prevailed over PC MPP and deputy leader Christine Elliott. In spite of Brown’s own socially conservative voting record and support from social conservatives in his leadership run, Brown quickly changed course and set out to remake the PCs as a socially liberal, centrist party that rejected ideological polarization and sought to govern for all Ontarians. In November 2017, Brown released his program, the “People’s Guarantee,” a rather centrist document that included a carbon tax and left much of the Liberal legacy in place.

With the Tories enjoying a wide lead in the polls as they headed into the election, Brown appeared well poised to be the next Premier of Ontario. However, Brown was forced to resign as leader in January in the wake of sexual harassment allegations. This led to another leadership contest that took place in March. In addition, Brown was accused of misappropriating party funds.

In announcing his leadership bid, Doug Ford stated that

“I can’t watch the party I love fall into the hands of the elites.”

Ford prevailed over ‘establishment’ candidate Christine Elliott, who had the support of most of the PC caucus. While narrowly losing the popular vote to Elliott, Ford won the leadership race due to a points system that weighted votes by riding.

The son of the late Doug Ford Sr., a Harris era MPP and founder of Deco Labels, a multimillion dollar company with operations in Canada and the USA, Doug Ford is a co-owner of the family business and has continued the family tradition of right-wing politics. He was also seen as the brains behind his brother, the late Rob Ford, the infamous mayor of Toronto elected on populist pledges of “respect for taxpayers,” stopping the “gravy train” at City Hall and ending the “war on the car” who later brought notoriety to Toronto worldwide when videos emerged of him smoking crack. Doug Ford entered politics in 2010 and was elected in the low income, multicultural ward in north Etobicoke that had previously been represented by his brother. Doug Ford acted as the ‘co-mayor’ of Toronto during his brother’s mayoralty, and stepped in to run for mayor when his brother received a cancer diagnosis. Ford lost the mayoralty race to the establishmentarian conservative John Tory, but received 34 per cent of the popular vote and carried the working class wards on the city’s periphery.

As a wealthy businessman who rails against the “elite,” Ford has inevitably drawn comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump. While Ford had previously expressed strong support for Trump, he later rejected the comparison and dismissed it as a media fabrication. Like Trump, he is known for his refusal to be ‘politically correct’, denigration of expertise, hostility to the press and bullying behavior. Ford also has a long track record of misogyny. Yet in contrast to Trump and other right-wing populists, racism and xenophobia have not been a central component of Ford’s campaign messaging and Ford has received significant support in many ethnic and immigrant communities (in spite of his past links to, and continued support from, far-right circles).

In his pitch for the leadership, Ford spoke of his key role in his brother’s administration, making the dubious claim of having saved Toronto taxpayers $1-billion. He offered the PCs the ability to win seats in the city of Toronto, where the party had been more or less shut out since 2003 (though former city councillor Raymond Cho was elected as a PC MPP in a Scarborough riding in a 2016 by-election), as well as an ability to appeal to disaffected Liberal and NDP voters, blue collar workers and “populists” across the province.

With Brown out of the picture, the “People’s Guarantee” was declared null and void by all of the leadership candidates, with Ford leading the charge. Appealing to the right-wing base of the party, Ford railed against the implementation of a carbon tax and vowed to scrap the province’s cap-and-trade system (“cap the carbon tax and trade Kathleen Wynne”). And in an appeal to social conservatives, Ford pledged to “stand for parents” and repeal the province’s sex-ed curriculum (“Sex ed curriculum should be about facts, not teaching Liberal ideology”). Upon winning the leadership race, Ford declared that:

“The party is over with the taxpayers’ money.”

Ford simplified the PC Party message (and laid it out under the sly platform title, For the People: A Plan for Ontario). Freeze the minimum wage at $14 an hour and instead eliminate the provincial income tax on incomes below $30,00 in order to provide relief to low-income workers. A 20% income tax cut for the ‘middle class.’ Cut the corporate tax rate from 11.5% to 10.5% in order to make Ontario ‘open for business’ and attract jobs. Lower gas prices by 10 cents a litre by cutting the provincial fuel tax and fight the implementation of any carbon tax by Ottawa. Respect the will of parents over ‘special interests’ and replace the sex education curriculum. Lower hydro prices by firing the CEO of Hydro One (“the six million dollar man”) and its board of directors.

In contrast to Hudak’s “100,000 jobs” pledge, Ford vowed that there would be no layoffs under his watch (“Let me be clear: No one is getting laid off”). Rather he would eliminate government waste simply by finding $6-billion in unspecified “efficiencies.” According to Ford, given the fiscal recklessness of the Liberal government, this was a modest goal that could easily be achieved. As he put it in the first leaders’ debate:

“When I tell people, ‘My friends, we will find four cents on every dollar of efficiencies,’ they break out laughing. ‘That’s all you can find is four cents in efficiencies?’”

In addition, Ford promised to balance the budget within his first term in office.

Ford was repeatedly questioned by his opponents and the media as to how specifically he would find ‘efficiencies’ without cuts to jobs and public services, but he repeatedly dodged the question, stating only that a costed platform would appear before June 7. The PCs released a partially costed platform just days before voting day (but not before promising “a buck a beer back to Ontario” – meaning it was legal for brewers to sell at that price).

An analysis of party platforms by economist Mike Moffat found that the PCs were the furthest away from a balanced budget among the parties. According to Moffat:

“The promises add up to about $7-billion a year in tax cuts and spending. And it’s not clear where that $7-billion is going to come from.”

In addition to the lack of a costed plan, other controversies dogged the campaign, but they had little impact on the final result. For example, more than one quarter of PC candidates faced lawsuits or police investigations. And three days before the election, Rob Ford’s widow Renata Ford, filed a lawsuit against Doug Ford, alleging that he had mismanaged the family business and cheated Rob Ford’s family out of their inheritance.

Ford received a lukewarm reception in Ontario’s elite sectors, which would have preferred a smoother delivery from a more ‘generic’ conservative. The Globe and Mail, the main voice of the business establishment, refused to endorse its traditional party choice under Ford’s leadership. However, like the ‘never Trump’ movement among certain ‘establishment’ Republicans in the U.S., the impact was virtually nil.

While the PCs had a comfortable lead in the polls at the beginning of the campaign, Ford was seen as a liability to the party brand. The party’s decision to not have a media campaign bus was widely seen as a move to avoid media scrutiny. What looked like a cake-walk soon turned into a neck-in-neck race with the NDP. However, the PCs pulled ahead in the last days of the campaign, benefitting from anti-Liberal sentiment in the province and a sizable constituency of fiscal and social conservatives.

The Liberals: Out of the Game

In their 15 years in office, the Liberals have pursued an approach of ‘progressive competitiveness.’ While implementing some progressive social policy reforms during their tenure, such as full-day kindergarten, this was all done within in a broader framework of keeping Ontario ‘competitive.’ Corporate taxes were kept low, and Ontario maintained the lowest level of per capita spending among the provinces. The Liberals also showed a strong affinity for the use of private-public partnerships for financing investments in hospitals, transit and other infrastructure.

Kathleen Wynne was elected to the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party and became the Premier of Ontario in January 2013. A former school trustee who entered politics to fight Harris cuts to education, Wynne was first elected as a Liberal MPP in 2003 and went on to serve in several Cabinet portfolios in the government of Dalton McGuinty. The first woman premier of Ontario and the first openly gay premier of any province, Wynne was seen as a left-wing Liberal and expressed a desire to be remembered as the ‘social justice premier’.

In the October 2014 election, the Liberals reversed course from the austerity-focus of the McGuinty governments and campaigned on progressive planks such as taxing the rich, the establishment of an Ontario pension plan, and deficit financing to pay for major investments in transit and infrastructure. While the Tories staked out territory on the hard right, Wynne presented herself as a champion of activist government. The Liberals outflanked a rightward-shifting NDP on the left, which desperately sought to present itself as a party of fiscal responsibility. The ‘bury the NDP’ strategy proved successful, and the Liberals also benefitted from a ‘stop Hudak’ campaign led by the province’s unions. Wynne was able to overcome the scandals of the McGuinty era and led the Liberals to a majority government.

A year later, however, Wynne’s controversial decision to sell off a majority stake of the province’s publicly-owned electrical utility, Hydro One, in order to pay for infrastructure improvements, marked a turning point for her government. The Toronto Star provincial affairs columnist Martin Regg Cohn described it as “the biggest miscalculation of Kathleen Wynne’s time as premier.” The privatization was opposed by over 80% of the population, and Ontarians associated the privatization with skyrocketing electricity bills. And, despite the election’s progressive tones, Wynne governed in her first years in office with the same budget austerity as McGuinty and adopted the infamously neoliberal Drummond report as her policy reference.

But in her last year in office, Wynne again – and confusingly – shifted leftward. While previously lukewarm to the idea of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, Wynne soon gave into pressure from the “15 and Fairness” campaign. In May, Wynne announced that the province’s minimum wage of $11.40 an hour would be significantly increased, rising to $14 an hour in January 2018 and again (if the Liberals were re-elected) to $15 in January 2019. The Liberals also implemented changes to Ontario’s labour laws, including card check union certification in certain sectors and supports for temporary workers and some measures to support equal pay for equal work. The Liberals also introduced a pharmacare program for all Ontarians under the age of 25, OHIP+.

In their election budget, the Liberals unveiled a universal childcare program for children aged 2.5 until the start of kindergarten that was widely praised by childcare advocates. It also called for investments in healthcare, mental health and transit. After achieving a modest surplus in 2017-18, the Liberals would return to deficit spending, with a projected six years of deficits. With the slogan “Care Over Cuts,” Wynne and the Liberals sought a repeat of the 2014 election strategy of marginalizing the NDP and presenting themselves as the progressive choice in a two-way race with the Conservatives.

The bump the Liberals received in the polls from the budget soon evaporated. With Wynne’s personal unpopularity and around 80 per cent of Ontarians wanting a change in government, the Liberals fell to third place.

While continuing their attacks on Ford and the Conservatives (“Doug Ford sounds like Donald Trump and that’s because he is like Donald Trump”), the Liberals soon turned their guns on the rising NDP as well. In a meeting with the Toronto Star editorial board, Wynne defended her record, stating that

“We really, I believe, run the most progressive government in North America.”

While maintaining that the Liberals and NDP shared “similar values,” the Liberals embraced “practical solutions” and did not “let ideology get in the way.” Wynne continued to attack the NDP for being too ideological and too beholden to unions.

In a stunning announcement on June 2, Wynne conceded that:

“After Thursday, I will no longer be Ontario’s premier.”

Conflating Ford and the NDP as equally risky, Wynne called for the election of as many Liberal MPPs as possible to block a majority government. Wynne maintained that voting Liberal would prevent either party from “acting too extreme” and from having a “blank cheque.”

Given her reputation as a progressive Liberal, it is difficult to believe that Wynne truly believed that an NDP government would be just as bad as a Ford one. However, an NDP victory was more likely to solidify their hold on the centre-left that the Liberals had traditionally occupied and prevent the Ontario Liberal Party from ever recovering. Wynne put the future of her party over the good of Ontario.

The NDP: The Orange Wave Fizzles

Andrea Horwath, a community organizer and city councillor in Hamilton before being elected as an MPP in 2004, has served as the leader of the Ontario NDP since 2009. Under Horwath’s leadership, the NDP, which had spent more than a decade in the political wilderness following the defeat of the unpopular government of Bob Rae in 1995, began to regain traditional levels of support.

Under Horwath, the NDP moved further away from traditional social democratic ideology. In the 2011 election, the party cracked 20 per cent for the first time since 1995, receiving 22.7% of the popular vote and 17 seats. The NDP showed further momentum by then picking up seats in four by-elections in Southwestern Ontario and Niagara region.

Rejecting what many saw as a fairly progressive budget, Horwath pulled the plug on the minority Liberals and forced an election in 2014. The NDP further alienated many of its traditional supporters and ran a populist campaign that positioned themselves to the right of the Liberals. Two of their central policy planks called for a Ministry of Savings and Accountability to find waste in government and tax cuts for small business. The NDP saw its popular vote increase modestly by 1 percentage point and took 21 seats, the same as before the election. The NDP picked up three seats elsewhere in the province, but three Toronto MPPs went down to defeat in an election that seemed to offer little for urban voters. Furthermore, the NDP now had less influence in the legislature as the Liberals went from minority to majority government.

In spite of the wounds of the 2014 election, Horwath made her peace with her critics in the party and easily survived a leadership review. Horwath shifted leftward in her rhetoric and promised to listen more closely to the party grassroots. In April 2016, the NDP belatedly came out in support of a $15 minimum wage, after previously rejecting such calls from activists in order to secure support from small business.

Seeking to avoid a repeat of the last campaign where they were outflanked on the left by the Liberals, the 2018 election platform, “Change for the Better,” moved closer to traditional social democratic positions. It focused on five key themes: (1) drug and dental coverage for all Ontarians; (2) end hallway medicine and fix seniors’ care; (3) cut hydro bills by 30% by bringing Hydro One back into public ownership; (4) take on student debt by converting loans to grants; and (5) making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share.

“Change for the Better” moved away from the fiscal conservatism of the previous campaign, and run deficits over five years (though smaller than those of the Liberals). New revenues would come from increased personal taxes on incomes above $220,000 and an increase in the corporate tax rate to 13%. It included several positive reforms such as the end of police carding, covering 50% of municipal transit costs, and making it easier for workers to form unions. And certainly the calls for expanded social provision were welcome.

Yet however ‘bold’ the platform may have seemed compared to last time, many of the measures were very modest. The NDP’s childcare plan, for example, offered free childcare for families earning less than $40,000 and above childcare would average $12 a day based on income. Traditionally social democrats have prioritized universality in social programs rather than means testing. The dental plan was a complicated array of requiring employers to provide dental benefits and the establishment of a means-tested government benefit plan. The pharmacare plan would only cover 125 ‘essential’ drugs, with no specified timeline or plan on how to expand from there.

Considering the effort under Horwath to move the party to move to the political centre and present the NDP as a ‘government in waiting’, a surprising aspect of the campaign was that many of the party’s candidates had strong activist backgrounds. And there was more enthusiasm on the Left for the NDP in this election than there was in a long time. Activists that were traditionally skeptical of parliamentary politics, such as Rinaldo Walcott and Naomi Klein, as well as Desmond Cole, came out unequivocally in support of an NDP government to block a Ford government.

Horwath performed well in the first leaders’ debate, where she spoke strongly out against Ford’s claim to find ‘efficiencies’ (“efficiencies actually are cuts and people will pay the price in different ways”). The NDP soon pulled ahead of the Liberals, and by mid-May the NDP was neck-in-neck with the Conservatives. It seemed very possible indeed that the NDP could form the government. The Liberals were on the decline and among Liberal voters, an overwhelming majority had the NDP as their second choice over the PCs led by the polarizing Ford.

With its rise in the polls, the NDP came under greater scrutiny. An accounting error in the NDP platform meant that a projected $3.3-billion deficit in their first year was in fact $4.7-billion. While the NDP still had smaller deficits than those of the Liberals (and almost certainly the PCs!), this likely hurt their attempt to assure skeptics that an NDP government would be ‘fiscally responsible.’ The NDP also came under virulent attack from the Conservatives and the right-wing tabloid Toronto Sun (and similar papers across the province) that essentially served as an arm of the Ford campaign, with a focus on the “radical activists” who made up the party’s candidates (needless to say there was no mention of extreme right-wing candidates such as Andrew Lawton in London). And not surprisingly, the specter of the Rae government was raised, with Ford warning that an NDP government would “annihilate the middle class” and “bankrupt this province” and would be “ten times worse than the Liberals.

Horwath distanced herself from Rae (“We’re in 2018 now. This is not 1990.”). She came out strongly in defence of the NDP’s ‘radical’ candidates. She also strongly defended public sector collective bargaining rights in the face of attacks on the NDP’s ‘rigid’ opposition to the use of back-to-legislation (“It’s a pretty heavy hammer… it’s very much against our values”), and placed the blame for strikes in the postsecondary education sector squarely on the lack of government funding.

With the Liberals out of contention, many traditional Liberal voters turned to the NDP to stop Ford. The NDP received a key endorsement from the Toronto Star, the province’s largest circulating newspaper, which traditionally backs the Liberal Party.

In spite of the NDP’s rise in the polls, the party hardly galvanized Ontarians. While many voters were willing to give the NDP a chance, this support was soft and largely had to do with exhaustion with the Liberals, Horwath’s personal likeability and the deep unpopularity of Wynne. With a more popular program and inspiring campaign, the NDP may have been able to better deflect the attacks from the right, but instead they just seemed to feed the ‘not ready to govern’ narrative. The NDP was unable to dislodge enough residual support for the Liberals. Furthermore, the anti-Liberal narrative that developed over the past few years was mostly a right-wing one about bloated government and wasteful spending. The NDP had spent much of the Wynne period aiding this narrative rather than challenging it, and was unable to develop in such short time a compelling critique of the government from the left.

A Conservative Majority

The map of Ontario on election night was almost entirely blue and orange (see Table 1).

The PCs were able to obtain the majority by dominating suburban ridings across Ontario, particularly in the crucial Greater Toronto Area, adding to their traditional rural and small-town base. The NDP retained their traditional strongholds with a history of industrial trade unionism and class-based voting, and made significant gains in urban centres across the province. With the PC vote rising across the province, virtually all of the NDP pickups were in Liberal-held ridings (with the remainder being new ridings in an expanded legislature). The NDP came within 1,000 votes of defeating the Conservative candidate in 7 ridings (see Table 2). The Liberals, meanwhile, were wiped off the map outside of Toronto, Ottawa and Northern Ontario.

In the city of Toronto, the NDP and Conservatives each won 11 seats out of 25 seats and the Liberals held out in three. The NDP swept the 8 ridings that make up the progressive, but increasingly gentrified city core, including the new, affluent riding of University-Rosedale and the previously ‘safe’ Liberal ridings of Toronto Centre and St. Paul’s (both of which had been vacated by their incumbents). This was a sharp contrast to the 2014 campaign where the NDP underperformed among urban progressives. This time, inner Toronto saw some of the strongest swings from the Liberals to the NDP (see Table 3).

Meanwhile, the PCs took most of outer Toronto, winning ‘Ford Nation’ ridings in Scarborough and the city’s northwest and ridings that voted for John Tory municipally (such as Etobicoke-Lakeshore and Willowdale). In some ‘Ford Nation’ ridings (such as Scarborough North, represented by incumbent Raymond Cho and Ford’s own riding of Etobicoke North), the PCs received over 50% of the vote. Yet not all ‘Ford Nation’ ridings went PC. The NDP picked up three working class ridings (Scarborough Southwest, York South-Weston and Humber River-Black Creek) where they traditionally had a solid base of support but had been won by Ford municipally (and the NDP also came within 1,000 votes of winning in the new riding of Scarborough-Rouge Park which was strong territory for Ford municipally), while the popular Liberal Cabinet minister Mitzie Hunter narrowly prevailed in her riding of Scarborough-Guildwood. Kathleen Wynne narrowly held on to her riding of Don Valley West (the wealthiest riding in the province and one of the weakest areas for Ford municipally), while another popular Liberal Cabinet minister, Michael Coteau, was re-elected in neighbouring Don Valley East.

While the Liberals had won most of the suburbs of the ‘905’ belt that surrounds Toronto in 2014, this time the Liberals were shut out. The PCs won 26 out of 30 seats in this area and swept Mississauga, York and Halton Regions and all but one seat in Durham Region. The affluent northern suburbs of York Region swung especially hard toward the Conservatives, where they received over 50% of the vote. The working class, multicultural suburb of Brampton – bolstered by a beachhead established by federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh in his election as an MPP in 2011 – represented an exception to Conservative dominance of the 905 region, with the NDP taking three out of its five seats (and came less than 500 votes short in a fourth). The NDP also held onto a seat in the working class city of Oshawa, albeit by a much reduced margin.

The NDP dominated the Hamilton-Niagara region, which includes Horwath’s home city and is an area with a long-standing tradition of working class support for the ‘labour party.’ The NDP picked up St. Catharines – where Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, the longest-serving member of the legislature, went down to defeat – as well as the middle class seat of Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas.

Southwestern Ontario was marked by an urban/rural split, with the NDP maintaining the traditional labour stronghold of Windsor and expanding their reach in London and Kitchener-Waterloo, and the PCs sweeping the rural and ‘rurban’ seats. While the NDP under Horwath has put much effort into winning Southwestern Ontario, the party’s gains in the region were modest, picking just up one seat each in the urban centres of London and Kitchener (though the NDP also came within 1,000 votes in two other Kitchener area seats). Fordian populism resonated with many working class voters in the region. The Conservatives picked up Cambridge and Brantford (albeit by just over 600 votes over the NDP in the latter), and easily defended seats such as Sarnia-Lambton that were targeted by the NDP. Another notable development in Southwestern Ontario was the election of Green Party leader Mike Schreiner in Guelph, giving the Greens representation at Queen’s Park for the first time.

In Eastern Ontario, the PCs, to nobody’s surprise, swept the traditionally conservative rural areas. They also made modest gains in the Ottawa area where they won 4 out of 8 seats. The Liberal vote held up stronger in the National Capital Region than anywhere else in Ontario, and three incumbent MPPs were re-elected (the ridings of Ottawa-Vanier and Ottawa South were the only ridings in the province that the Liberals won by more than 10 percentage points). In Ottawa Centre, socialist candidate Joel Harden defeated the province’s Attorney General, Yasir Naqvi, in a stunning upset (the NDP also came within 200 votes of the PCs in the riding of Ottawa West-Nepean). Another gain for the NDP in Eastern Ontario was the ‘university town’ of Kingston, a longtime Liberal stronghold.

The PCs swept the ‘cottage country’ region of Central Ontario, a traditionally conservative stronghold. The NDP won most of the seats in Northern Ontario, a region with a history of class politics and industrial trade unionism. It took two new ridings of Kiiwetenoong and Mushkegowuk-James Bay, established in the north to serve First Nations and francophone communities, and also gained the seat of Thunder Bay-Atikokan from the Liberals (by a margin of 81 votes!) However, the NDP lost its hold in the open seat of Kenora-Rainy River, where former federal Conservative Cabinet minister Greg Rickford was elected.. The PCs also narrowly prevailed over the NDP in Sault Ste. Marie (by 414 votes), a seat they took in a by-election last year. The Liberals narrowly hung on in the riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North (with the NDP losing by just over 800 votes).

The Ford electoral coalition thus included the traditional Tory base in rural and small-town Ontario, affluent suburbanites and much of the working class, as well as significant support from immigrant and racialized communities in the GTA. The NDP pulled together a cross-class coalition that comprised of a sizeable number of highly educated, ‘liberally minded’ professionals in urban centres and much of the ethnically diverse ‘new’ working class, in addition to their traditional working class and union base.

It is important to stress that a majority of Ontario voters oppose Ford and cast votes for more progressive parties. However due to the workings of the ‘first-past-the-post’ (or single-member plurality) electoral system, the Conservatives prevailed in a majority of the seats. The PCs clearly benefitted from vote-splitting between the NDP and Liberals. In 20 ridings alone, the combined NDP and Liberal vote exceeded that of the PC winner by a margin by at least 5,000 votes.

Challenging Ford’s ‘Populist Austerity’

Ford was sworn in as Premier on June 29. His slimmed down 21-member Cabinet includes the right-wing Vic Fedeli, who served as the party’s interim leader after the departure of Patrick Brown, as Finance Minister. Ford’s main leadership rival, Christine Elliott, was appointed as Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. Although Elliott has an image as a Red Tory, she tacked right during the leadership race and has long been an advocate of a greater role for the private sector in healthcare. Ford rejected appeals from First Nations leaders to retain a stand-alone Minister of Indigenous Affairs (a recommendation of the Ipperwash Inquiry). And in spite of Ford’s promise to diversify the PCs, Ford’s Cabinet choices were overwhelmingly white and male (just seven women and one racialized person) and drew heavily from rural Ontario.

In his first days in office, Ford has begun to quickly act on his agenda. One of Ford’s top priorities is lowering the gas tax, which would deprive the government of about $1-billion a year for transit and infrastructure. Ford also announced a public sector hiring freeze that will certainly cripple the ability of government to provide quality public services. The government has also made the decision to remove OHIP+ from young people whose parents have private coverage, a setback in terms of the movement toward pharmacare. Ford has also moved to strengthen police powers, reversing new police oversight laws recently introduced by the previous Liberal government. And in a move pandering to their right-wing base and nativist sentiment, the Ford government has expressed its intention to withdraw from a federal-provincial agreement to help resettle asylum-seekers.

As Andrew Jackson has recently noted,

“a major part of Ford’s base, like that of Trump, is made of disaffected and insecure working class voters who welcomed his message that he would stand up for them against the insiders and the liberal elites. He appealed to these voters with classic ‘pocket book’ promises to cut taxes and to lower the cost of living… These promises seem to have resonated more strongly than the expansion of public services promoted by the Liberals and the NDP, even though Ford’s promised tax cuts would primarily benefit the upper middle-class.”

Certainly, Ford will have to implement drastic cuts to public services that working class Ontarians depend on to finance tax cuts. While Ford’s allure will likely wear off among ‘soft’ voters as he governs as a more ‘orthodox’ conservative than he campaigned on, progressives will have to make a renewed case for the importance of public services and collective provision over dependence on the market, and the taxes needed to finance them.

The NDP can be expected to speak out against many Conservative government policies. And several candidates with solid activist backgrounds, such as Joel Harden (Ottawa Centre), Jessica Bell (University-Rosedale), Jill Andrew (Toronto-St. Paul’s), Bhutila Karpoche (Parkdale-High Park) and Rima Berns-McGown (Beaches-East York), were elected, and these MPPs can articulate the demands of social movements in the legislature. Riding associations could be transformed into community action hubs rather than simply be electoral machines. However, the pressure to conform to the norms of parliamentarism will be immense as the NDP will seek to present itself to reassure more centrist voters and present itself as a responsible ‘government in waiting.’ With a large Conservative majority, however, the NDP will have little ability to reverse the overall course, and its parliamentarist focus, if its past actions are at all a guide to the present, will do little to support broad activist organizing across the province.

A broad-based resistance movement outside of the legislature to the hard-right Ford government is essential. A revitalized labour movement is key, as the ‘social unionism’ that led to the “Days of Action” in the Harris years has given way to an extremely divided and conciliatory, ‘business unionist’ approach across all unions (no matter what their rhetoric is). The $15 and Fairness campaign organized a rally in Toronto in defence of recent labour law changes (and attended by much of the NDP caucus). The Workers Action Centre has announced its attention to pressure 16 PC MPPs in ridings where a $15 minimum wage likely has broad support. As the Ford government will certainly prove disastrous for cities (and ‘efficiencies’ will certainly be found by downloading cuts to cities), municipal elections in Toronto and across the province this fall also represent opportunities to elect left and progressive candidates and begin to form a network of ‘rebel cities’ in opposition to the Ford regime. Perhaps, if stronger community-based infrastructure can take hold and revitalized social coalitions form, the labour movement in Ontario might yet again return to leading social struggles and the political space for a radical opening suddenly appear.

*

The Western media has provided scanty coverage of the DPRK position, upholding the absurd proposition that North Korea rather than the USA is a threat to Global Security. 

The accusation of “Unilateral Gangster Mindset” is not directed against President Trump. It refers specifically to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The Statement confirms: “We still cherish our good faith in President Trump.” 

But, the U.S. side [Pompeo] came up only with its unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization just calling for CVID, declaration and verification, all of which run counter to the spirit of the Singapore summit meeting and talks.

The U.S. side never mentioned the issue of establishing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula which is essential for defusing tension and preventing a war.

Pyongyang is negotiating with a U.S Secretary of State (former CIA Chief) who casually announced last October that Kim Jong-un was on the CIA’s assassination list. (click link for more details). From a diplomatic standpoint, this is untenable.

We thought that the U.S. side would come with a constructive proposal which accords with the spirit of the DPRK-U.S. summit meeting and talks. But expectation and hope of ours were so naive as to be foolish.

Pompeo should be replaced. Read the DPRK statement. Pompeo’s intent in Pyongyang was to sabotage the spirit of the Singapore Summit.

The US Congress and the White House should fully understand that there are no prospects for peace with Mike Pompeo as chief US negotiator. 

Michel Chossudovsky, July 9, 2018

ANNEX

Below is the complete transcript of the statement of the DPRK Ministry of the Foreign Affairs:

International society has focused its expectation and attention on the DPRK-U.S. high-level talks for the implementation of the Joint Statement of the DPRK-U.S. summit after the first historic summit meeting and talks were held between the DPRK and the U.S.

We expected that the U.S. side would bring itself with a constructive proposal which would help build up trust true to the spirit of the DPRK-U.S. summit meeting and talks. We, on our part, were also thinking of doing something which corresponds with it.

It was, however, so regretful to mention what the U.S. side had shown in its attitude and stand at the first DPRK-U.S. high-level talks held on 6 and 7 July.

The DPRK side, during the talks, put forward the constructive proposals to seek a balanced implementation of all the provisions of the Joint Statement out of its firm willingness to remain faithful to the implementation of the spirit and agreed points of the DPRK-U.S. summit meeting and talks.

These include taking wide-ranging proactive steps of simultaneous actions in a respective manner such as realizing multilateral exchanges for improved relations between the DPRK and the U.S., making public a declaration on the end of war first on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement to build a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, dismantling the test ground of high thrust engine to make a physical verification of the suspension of ICBM production as part of denuclearization steps and making an earliest start of the working-level talks for recovering POW/MIA remains.

Before the talks, Kim Yong Chol (image on the right), vice-chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, who is also a chief delegate from our side to the talks, was authorized to convey with a due respect to U.S. State Secretary Pompeo a personal letter sent from Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK Kim Jong Un to President Trump.

Chairman Kim Jong Un expressed his expectation and conviction that good personal relations forged with President Trump and his sentiments of good faith built towards the latter at the Singapore summit and talks would be further consolidated through the process of future dialogues such as high-level talks this time.

But, the U.S. side [Pompeo] came up only with its unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization just calling for CVID, declaration and verification, all of which run counter to the spirit of the Singapore summit meeting and talks.

The U.S. side never mentioned the issue of establishing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula which is essential for defusing tension and preventing a war. It took the position that it would even backtrack on the issue it had agreed on to end the status of war under certain conditions and excuses.

As for the issue of announcing the declaration of the end of war at an early date, it is the first process of defusing tension and establishing a lasting peace regime on the Korean peninsula, and at the same time, it constitutes a first factor in creating trust between the DPRK and the U.S. This issue was also stipulated in Panmunjom Declaration as a historical task to terminate the war status on the Korean peninsula which continues for nearly 70 years. President Trump, too, was more enthusiastic about this issue at the DPRK-U.S. summit talks.

The issues the U.S. side insisted on at the talks are all roots of troubles, which the previous administrations also had insisted on to disrupt the dialogue processes, stoke the distrust and increase the danger of war.

The U.S. side, during the talks [ie. Mike Pompeo], made a great publicity about suspension of one or two joint military exercises. But suspension of one action called exercises is a highly reversible step which can be resumed anytime at any moment as all of its military force remains intact in its previously-held positions without scraping even a rifle. This is incomparable with the irreversible step taken by the DPRK to explode and dismantle the nuclear test ground.

The results of the talks can’t but be so apprehensive.

We thought that the U.S. side would come with a constructive proposal which accords with the spirit of the DPRK-U.S. summit meeting and talks. But expectation and hope of ours were so naive as to be foolish.

Conventional ways can never create new things. Treading on trite stereotype of all the failure would invite another failure only.

Valuable agreement was reached in such a short time at the Singapore summit talks first ever in the history of the DPRK-U.S. relations. This is attributable to the fact that President Trump himself said he would move towards resolving the DPRK-U.S. relations and the issue of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a new way.

If both sides at the working level reneged on the new way agreed at the summit and returned to the old way, the epoch-making Singapore summit would be meaningless, which was held thanks to the determinations and wills of the two top leaders to open a new future for the interests of the two peoples and peace and security of the world.

The first DPRK-U.S. high-level talks this time brought us in a dangerous situation where we may be shaken in our unshakable will for denuclearization, rather than consolidating trust between the DPRK and the U.S.

In the last few months, we displayed maximum patience and watched the U.S. while initiating good-will steps as many as we can.

But, it seems that the U.S. misunderstood our goodwill and patience.

The U.S. is fatally mistaken if it went to the extent of regarding that the DPRK would be compelled to accept, out of its patience, the demands reflecting its gangster-like mindset.

A shorter way to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula is to remove deep-rooted mistrust and build up trust between the DPRK and the U.S. For this, both sides should be bold enough to be free from old ways which had only recorded failures and resolve the problem in a fresh manner which is never bound by the existing ways. A shortcut to it is also to take a step-by-step approach and follow the principle of simultaneous actions in resolving what is feasible one by one while giving priority to creating trust.

But, if the U.S., being captivated in a fidget, tries to force upon us the old ways claimed by the previous administrations, this will get us nowhere.

If the objective situation does not stand in favor of the denuclearization against our wills, this would rather cast a heavy cloud over the atmosphere of developing bilateral relations which had shown its good movement in its beginning.

Should the headwind begin to blow, it would cause a great disappointment not only to the international society aspiring after global peace and security but also to both the DPRK and the U.S. If so, this will finally make each side seek for another choice and there is no guarantee that this will not result into yet another tragedy.

We still cherish our good faith in President Trump.

The U.S. should make a serious consideration of whether the toleration of the headwind against the wills of the two top leaders would meet the aspirations and expectations of the world people as well as the interests of its country.

Source DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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Featured image is from Anadolu Agency.

On June 27, the Security Council was briefed on the “Fifth report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 2231.”  The report, which was short on corroborated fact and long on insinuation  resembled an attempt at demonization of Iran, that early stage laying the groundwork for severe punitive action against a nation.   The unsubstantiated innuendo began: 

“In this reporting period, the Secretariat received information from two Member States on the supply, sale, transfer or export to Iran of dual-use items that may have been undertaken contrary to the resolution…Since our last report, Saudi authorities have brought to the attention of the Secretariat nine additional launches of ballistic missiles by the Houthis, which in their assessment were Iranian Qiam-1 missiles…..We provided preliminary observations, in our last report, from our examination of the debris of the missiles launched into Saudi Arabia on 22 July and 4 November 2017.  Based on the information and material analysed, the Secretariat assesses that the debris of the five missiles launched at Yanbu’and Riyadh since July 2017 share key design features with the Iranian Qiam-1 ballistic missile.  It is also our assessment that some component parts of the debris were manufactured in Iran. …The report also reflects information received from Israel regarding the possible presence of an Iranian drone in Syria, which was reportedly downed after entering Israeli airspace on 10 February.  The Secretariat did not have the opportunity to examine its debris, but images provided by Israeli authorities show that its wing configuration appears to be consistent with that of an Iranian drone unveiled in October 2016.”

“The Secretariat examined arms and related material that was seized in Bahrain after 16 January, 2016, and obtained additional information on the unmanned surface vessel, laden with explosives, that was recovered by the United Arab Emirates.  In both cases, the Secretariat is confident that some of the arms and related material it examined were manufactured in Iran….”

The Fifth Secretary-General report does not provide any valid  evidence of Iran’s violation of international law, or violation of Resolution 2231.  However, the report’s presentation so starkly resembles crude propaganda, that it is surprising, indeed, that the UN Secretary-General would permit his imprimatur to be used in connection with this report.   It appears to have been written by the US and its allies, and merely rubber-stamped by the Secretary-General.

In fact, the US delegation, referring to the report, stated:

“If there was ever any doubt regarding Iran’s clear threat to international peace and stability, the findings of the report should lay it to rest.”

In contrast to the biased and defamatory character of this report, Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu of China stated: 

“The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported 11 times in a row that Iran has been implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, originally signed by the U.S., China, France, Germany, Britain , Russia and Iran)…China believes the report of the Secretary-General should reflect the implementation efforts in an objective, balanced and comprehensive manner, and take the legitimate concerns of Iran into consideration.  The Secretariat should act in strict accordance with its mandates and functions.”

And Russian Ambassador Nebenzia’s scathing and intellectually flawless critique of the crude insinuations of the report brilliantly repudiated  the shameful presentation:

“Considering the significance that the unilateral actions by the United States have for the implementation of resolution 2231 and the JCPOA, we were astonished that the report mentions it only in passing. It is simply unfathomable that it was possible to draft a document entitled “Implementation of resolution 2231” with no mention whatever of the fact that Washington’s reimposition of unilateral sanctions is a direct violation not only of its obligations under the JCPOA, but also of resolutioin 2231….the report is overtly unbalanced and more like a collection of unproven accusations about Iran than an attempt to paint an objective picture of the situation concerning the implementation of resolution 2231, an approach that is all the more incomprehensible considering that none of the examples of Tehran’s alleged violations of the resolution have been confirmed, owing to insufficient information and the lack of a firm body of proof.  We are once again compelled to point out that it is unacceptable for the Secretariat to carry out any so-called investigations of potential violations of resolution 2231 without a clear mandate from the Security Council.   We again emphasize that the Secretariat staff do not have the qualifications or expertise for analyzing and evaluating missile systems or conventional weapons.  The report therefore indicates an absence of any of the elements that constitute a violation.  The same applies to the Secretariat’s illegitimate inspections in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates……We must continue to insist that the report should not contain information from open sources or references to unverified or unverifiable information provided by individual countries, especially when it is not even being brought to the attention of the members of the Security Council.  WE BELIEVE SUCH PRACTICES ARE COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE AND CONSIDER THEM MALICIOUS ATTEMPTS TO CREATE A GROUNDLESSLY NEGATIVE CLIMATE AROUND IRAN BY CIRCUMVENTING THE COUNCIL.”

The startlingly biased character of this fifth report raises troubling questions, especially following the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, and the re-imposition of unilateral sanctions against Iran.  What is the agenda, and why is the Secretary-General allowing his offices to be associated with a report which lacks credibility, and which is an intellectual embarrassment to the United Nations?  Why is an attempt being made to unjustifiably accuse Iran of violations, with no valid proof provided? 

In an effort to salvage the JCPOA, Iran’s President Rouhani traveled to Vienna this week, hoping to reach agreements with the other supporters of the JCPOA within  Europe, in order to mitigate the damage to Iran’s economy caused by the re-imposition of sanctions by the USA.  In a bizarre “coincidence,” which  conspicuously appears not to be coincidental,  Austria arrested an Iranian diplomat, allegedly involved in an attempted attack on a rally of Iranian opposition demonstrators in Paris.  This “coincidence” blatantly undermines  President Rouhani’s mission, undertaken to alleviate the distress of the Iranian people resulting from the re-imposition of sanctions by the United States.  Iran’s dazzlingly smart and sophisticated Foreign Minister, Mohammed Javid Zarif,  described this “coincidental” arrest as a “false flag ploy and deliberate distraction,” and Zarif tweeted: 

“How convenient:  Just as we embark on a Presidential visit to Europe, an alleged Iranian operation and its ‘plotters’ arrested!”

President Rouhani stated: 

“If other signatories apart from the United States, can guarantee Iran’s interests, then Iran will stay in the JCPOA.” 

If Europe fails to cooperate, Iran may restart nuclear activities, and there are now even rumors that Iran may consider blocking the Strait of Hormoz.  More than ten years ago “The New Yorker” published a series of articles by Seymour Hersh, describing detailed plans for US military intervention in Iran.  Is that where these provocations of Iran are leading?

*

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

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

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.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

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Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador‘s transition team unveiled a plan Friday to shake up the fight against crime, including reduced jail time but stiffer controls on weapons, as the country reels from a militarized drug war.

The concept of “transitional justice” is part of the incoming government’s security strategy, Olga Sanchez, Lopez Obrador’s proposed interior minister, told Reuters in an interview before her team unveiled the plan.

Transitional justice typically involves leniency for those who admit guilt, truth commissions to investigate atrocities and the granting of reparations for some victims.

“Not only will it be amnesty, it will be a law to reduce jail time,” Sanchez said.

“We will propose decriminalization, create truth commissions, we will attack the causes of poverty, we will give scholarships to the youth and we will work in the field to get them out of the drug situation,” she said.

Lopez Obrador, a leftist who handily won the presidency Sunday, wants to rewrite the rules of the drug war, suggesting a negotiated peace and amnesty for some of the very people currently targeted by security forces.

Sanchez had said the new administration, which takes office on Dec. 1, would move fast to reconsider drug policies and use of the military that, despite toppling some high-profile kingpins, failed to prevent more than 200,000 murders since first adopted in 2006.

“It’s an integrated public policy,” Sanchez said, the aim of which was to “pacify” the nation.

Lopez Obrador’s pick for security minister, Alfonso Durazo, said the administration would aim to remove a significant part of the military from the streets within three years while professionalizing local police.

He said the government would combat corruption in the ports and seek to establish stricter customs controls to stop illegal weapons from entering the country.

Colombian Process

To consider the possibility of a negotiated peace, Sanchez’s team has studied Colombia’s peace process with its biggest guerrilla group, which allowed rebel leaders to avoid prison.

After the Mexican plan is reviewed by Lopez Obrador, Sanchez said the amnesty idea would be presented as a public referendum. If it receives public support, the administration would then put it before Congress, where Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement and allies gained seats on Sunday, she said.

The concept could mirror a similar strategy enacted in 1940 by Lazaro Cardenas, who was then president, Sanchez said.

Cardenas decriminalized drugs, authorized doctors to prescribe narcotics for addicts, opened up clinics for addicts and proposed treating them as patients instead of criminals.

The purchase of small quantities of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin was made legal and the state-controlled their sale. Lower-level criminals were freed from jails.

However, the radical changes only lasted six months as shortages of cocaine and morphine during World War Two prompted the law to be canceled.

The modern-day militarized drug fight, Lopez Obrador argues, has failed to stop narcotics smuggling and violence, and does not address the poverty that leads many to the drug trade.

His new plan was developed in consultation with human rights groups, religious leaders and the United Nations, though details are still being worked out.

“It’s a change in everything: in combat, in social policy, in drug policy, in politics against violence, a very important change in our country starting with Andres Manuel,” Sanchez said.

Separately, Lopez Obrador told reporters that his senior campaign official Tatiana Clouthier and Zoe Robledo, a lawmaker attached to his National Regeneration Movement party, had both been proposed as deputy interior ministers.

On the third anniversary of the referendum to decide whether Greece was to accept the bailout conditions imposed by its creditors, the political landscape of the country looks so much different.

Former firebrands Alexis Tsipras and his SYRIZA-led government which orchestrated the referendum and urged people to reject the conditions by voting ‘No’ on July 5, 2015, have since made a huge U-turn, agreeing to a third bailout program and becoming its most enthusiastic supporter.

Greece is due to complete the third bailout in August, but critics say that tough austerity measures, including pension cuts will be implemented in the next few years, as the country will enter a long period of “enhanced surveillance” by its creditors.

The referendum was announced by Tsipras in the early morning of 27 June 2015, and ratified the following day by the parliament and the president.

From the outset, he saw the referendum as a negotiating maneuver. The idea of a referendum that would “strengthen” the Greek position in the negotiations with the Troika had been floated in the spring of 2015.

“Our aim is for the referendum to be followed by negotiations for which we will be better armed,” he said in an interview on state television.

It was the first referendum to be held since the republic referendum of 1974, and the only one in modern Greek history not to concern the form of government.

As a result of the referendum, the bailout conditions were rejected by a majority of over 61 percent to 39 percent approving, with the “No” vote winning in all of Greece’s regions.

Supporters of the “No” vote danced for joy in the streets of the Greek capital. But, Tsipras refused to join the celebrations.

He declined to make some kind of “victory appearance”, he called meetings with opposition leaders to forge a common position and dismissed Yanis Varoufakis, his finance minister whose six-month negotiating tactics had infuriated his European counterparts.

Varoufakis later described the atmosphere in the PM’s office on the night of the referendum as “downcast”, as if Tsipras and his aides dreaded the emphatic victory of the “No” vote.

Three days following the referendum, Athens “formally asked for a three-year bailout from the eurozone’s rescue fund and pledged to start implementing some economic-policy overhauls” beginning by mid-July 2015.

European finance leaders scheduled a “crisis summit” on 12 July to consider the request. The Greek request included a “drastic turnaround” for Tsipras regarding “pension cuts, tax increases and other austerity measures”.

On Monday, 13 July, the SYRIZA-led government of Greece accepted a bailout package that contained larger pension cuts and tax increases than the one rejected by Greek voters in the referendum.

*

All images in this article are from the author.

AS early as 2016, talk of war against Nicaragua could again be heard in Miami, at a time when the streets of this nation were a regional example of security, peace, and prosperity, where a hardworking, tranquil people proudly enjoyed the social and economic advances achieved by the Sandinista government, that had established a national consensus, in the wake of one of the worst interventions carried out by the United States in Central America.

With no justification whatsoever – when the news from Nicaragua around the world was about a proposed inter-oceanic canal that would boost the economy and impact global navigation – Congress members who make a living off the U.S. war against Cuba and Venezuela were mounting efforts to reverse the prosperity and calm that reigned in the land of Augusto César Sandino.

Congress members, first in the House of Representatives and later the Senate, introduced a bill to create obstacles to the awarding of international loans to Nicaragua, hamper foreign investment, and put a brake on socio-economic development in the country. This imperialist punishment, cooked up by the worst of the anti-Cuban mafia in 2015, set in motion the fabrication of a pretext regarding the alleged lack of democracy, justified as a way to “guarantee electoral transparency and fight corruption.” The result of this initial maneuver was the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act of 2017 (NICA Act).

Ileana Ros, Albio Sires, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, and others, among the most reactionary legislators in Congress from South Florida, Texas, and New Jersey, are again attempting to reinvent the Contras and get rid of the Sandinista government, which has repeatedly shown at the polls that it enjoys the people’s majority support.

The tentacles of this subversive plot go beyond the capital, since these forces are well connected to the United States’ coup-manufacturing machinery, and laid the foundation for a media campaign in coordination with agencies specialized in carrying out dirty wars and soft coups, working with U.S. intelligence and the CIA, in particular.

In this specific case, international press media have documented the participation of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), as well their sub-contractors, which have been working meticulously, since Daniel Ortega was first elected, to re-invent a “new leadership,” selectively infiltrating key sectors of the economy, targeting youth, students, medium and small businesspeople, environmental and feminist groups, among others, to undermine the foundation of support for the Sandinista government.

It is revealing that on April 16, this year, following the same line espoused by anti-Cuban Congress members, USAID Administrator Mark Green announced that the U.S. government would continue supporting the participation of a “free … genuine” civil society in Nicaragua, after stating that the United States is concerned about the closing of democratic spaces in Nicaragua, “systematic” violations of human rights, and government corruption.

In March, Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Albio Sires sent a letter to Green, in which they call on the U.S. government to reverse its decision to provide “zero aid” to Nicaragua through USAID for the fiscal year 2018-2019, while at the same time calling on the agency to avoid supporting “members of the private sector linked to corruption, money laundering, or the Daniel Ortega regime.”

At the end of 2008, the media reported that USAID had provided at least a million dollars in Nicaragua that year to NGOs, radio broadcasters, and political groups like the Communications Research Center (CINCO), to intervene in municipal elections.

This financing, as was denounced at the time, contributed surreptitiously as “small donations,” that were not to exceed 25,000 dollars, was part of a large scale U.S. plan to overthrow the government of Daniel Ortega, carried out since then by internal agents from the Nicaraguan right.

The strategy mounted to discredit the Sandinista government in the media was conducted via two financing routes; one directed by USAID and the Casals & Associates firm, and another managed by the so-called Common Fund in Europe, which provided funds to organize campaigns and mobilizations to destabilize the government.

By 2008, media in Nicaragua had identified at least 14 subversive projects run by USAID across the country, under the cover of a wide range of titles and objectives, made possible by this funding.

Another key element of the U.S. machinery linked to the CIA is the National Democratic Institute, an instrument dedicated to promoting “change” that focuses on “empowering” so called “agents of change” in countries with governments not to Washington’s liking.

A Swedish journalist reported, this past June 4, that three students from Nicaragua were conducting a tour of Europe to raise support for a plot against the Sandinista government, stating that at least one of the youth represented an organization created and financed by the United States.

Jessica Cisneros, he reported, was active around the issue of the involvement and participation of youth in political processes, and was a member of the Movimiento Cívico de Juventudes (Civic Youth Movement).

Another of these “agents of change” promoting hate for the Sandinista government and support for a coup, was Yerling Aguilera, from the Polytechnic University in Managua (UPOLI) and specializing in research on revolution and the feminist movement, who, according to the reporter, has been an employee and consultant for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP) in Nicaragua, that works to “strengthen the abilities of political, state, and social actors for a better informed public via creative, innovative services,” which has received 224,162 dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) between 2014 and 2017.

The NED has distributed some 4.2 million dollars in Nicaragua, over this three-year period.

The USAID, NDI, and NED have been busy in the country, with thousands of activists trained to “change society.” Hundreds of NGOs, universities, and political parties have received funds and materials as part of the subversive plan that was not conceived to advance through traditional political organizations, but rather those invented to give the impression that they emerged “spontaneously” from dissatisfaction, hiding the true interest of the North at work.

Although efforts were intensified after Ortega’s 2006 electoral victory, since 2015, with the approval of the NICA Act, U.S. agencies increased and broadened financial support and resources for their “agents of change” in Nicaragua, above all through leadership courses and money for young people in universities, NGOs, and political parties.

In their political, diplomatic, and media advice to the coup-plotters, Washington has insisted on demonizing Daniel Ortega and his government, an effort carried out not only by the White House, and its agencies, allies, satellites, and mercenaries, but also the corporate media monopolies and fabricators of lies, which magnify internal problems and accuse authorities for all types of human rights violations, totally omitting the crimes and destruction committed by individuals who have been “empowered” by the USAID, NDI, NED, and CIA, who have caused the failure of talks and calls for peace. As is the case in Venezuela, Donald Trump and his advisors, architects of a thousand invasions, do not believe in dialogue or pacts, opting for war on all fronts.

Nicaragua has become the epicenter of U.S. warmongering efforts, hand in hand with Anti-Cuban legislators and profiteers, and other veteran hawks. Washington is attempting to re-invent its strategy at the cost of human lives and destruction in the streets of Nicaragua.

USAID’s Thinly Disguised Subversion Projects in Nicaragua:

• Citizen participation in electoral processes
• Developing a culture of transparency among Nicaraguan youth
• Communications training for students to produce stories that promote self-efficacy
• Multimedia for democratic governability
• Strengthening civil rights of women and youth in Masaya
• Citizen action legal framework for journalists
• Active participation for Nicaraguans exercising their right to vote

NDI Tentacles

• Since 2010 the NDI has been associated with Nicaraguan universities and civic organizations conducting a youth leadership program which has helped prepare more than 2,000 “youth leaders,” and worked to increase the political influence of women, LGBT persons, and electoral processes
• The Movimiento Cívico de Juventudes (MCJ) is an organization financed, created, and part of the NDI.
• Several members of the group graduated from the NDI program earning a Certificate in Leadership and Political Management (CLPM).

Featured image: Sari Bashi of Human Rights Watch, from her twitter feed.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is among the leading guardians of human rights in the world. Sari Bashi is HRW’s Israel/Palestine Advocacy Director. She can lay claim to an impressive academic pedigree (BA, Yale; JD, Yale), and she co-founded the important Israeli human rights group Gisha. It thus cannot but depress that Bashi is so wanting in elementary moral and legal judgment when it comes to the people of Gaza.

Shortly after the Israeli massacre in Gaza on 14 May 2018, Bashi posted a commentary under the title, “Don’t Blame Hamas for the Gaza Bloodshed.”

“Israel has a right to defend its borders, but shooting unarmed protesters who haven’t breached its frontier is disproportionate and illegal.” Insofar as the demonstrators didn’t pose an “imminent threat to life,” Bashi concludes, Israel had no right to use lethal force against them and, in any event, did not “exhaust” nonlethal means “such as tear gas, skunk water, and rubber-coated steel pellets” to throw back the assembled crowd.

The UN has pronounced Gaza unlivable, while Sara Roy of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies has written,

“Innocent people, most of them young, are slowly being poisoned by the water they drink.”

Is it not a tad unseemly, not to say unsettling, for the representative of a respected human rights organization to coach Israel how to stay within the letter of the law—before resorting to bullets, you must first try “tear gas, skunk water, and rubber-coated steel pellets”—while it’s herding two million people, half of them children, in an unlivable space in which they are slowly being poisoned?

To be sure, Bashi is not oblivious to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza caused by Israel’s blockade. But she makes out no legal nexus between the effects of the siege and Israel’s right to use force. Instead, she dwells on the apparently paradoxical outcome that whereas Israel imposed the blockade to weaken Hamas, it has in fact “helped Hamas grow in strength.”

But the siege is not irrelevant to a legal determination of Israel’s right to use force—be it proportionate or disproportionate, moderate or excessive, lethal or nonlethal—to prevent demonstrators from breaching Gaza’s perimeter fence. For brevity’s sake, I would want to touch here on one basic, uncontroversial point. (A forthcoming article by Jamie Stern-Weiner and this writer parses the more nuanced legal issues.)

It is a tenet of international law that no state can resort to forceful measures unless “peaceful means” have been exhausted (UN Charter, Article 2). This principle is as sacred to the rule of law as the analogous Hippocratic Oath, primum non nocere (first, do no harm), is to medicine. Now consider the situation in Gaza. Nearly all competent observers agree:

• Israel has imposed an illegal blockade on Gaza;
• The illegal blockade has created a humanitarian catastrophe;
• The impetus behind the protests at the perimeter fence is the illegal blockade, and their objective is to end it.

It is to be noted that even Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu concedes the last bullet point.

“They’re suffocating economically,” he observed, “and therefore they decided to crash into the fence.”

If Israel wants to protect its border, then it need not resort to either lethal or nonlethal coercion. It merely has to lift the siege. Israel’s refusal to take this preliminary peaceful step puts it in double breach of international law: the imposition of an illegal blockade and the unlawful resort to armed force when peaceful means have not been exhausted.

It is cause for wonder why Bashi doesn’t see that Israel’s resort to any force against Gaza demonstrators cannot be legally justified. It is cause for dismay that she counsels Israel to use nonlethal repression in order to corral Gaza’s inhabitants in a hellhole, instead of counseling it, not just as a matter of political expedience but also as a matter of law, to end the siege. If, by way of comparison, police repeatedly enter a man’s premises in flagrant violation of the law, the homeowner finally resists, and the police try to subdue him, would a human rights representative be advising the officers to use graduated force?

Were the siege of Gaza lifted, it would put Israel on the right side of the law as it yielded the double dividend of enabling the people of Gaza to breathe and terminating the purported threat to Israel’s border. In other words, it would render all talk of force superfluous.

*

Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He taught political theory and the Israel-Palestine conflict for many years and currently writes and lectures. Finkelstein’s books have been translated into 50 foreign editions. His latest is “Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom” (University of California Press, January 2018).

In his statement to the House of Commons on 5^th July, the British Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, stated the following:

“The use of chemical weapons anywhere is barbaric and inhumane. The decision taken by the Russian government to deploy these in Salisbury on March 4 was reckless and callous –  there is no plausible alternative explanation to the events in March other than the Russian state was responsible. The eyes of the world are on Russia, not least because of the World Cup. It is now time the Russian state comes forward and explains exactly what has gone on.”

Anyone with their wits about them will immediately notice the cognitive dissonance in Mr Javid’s statement. On the one hand, he states that the Russian government took a decision to deploy chemical weapons in Salisbury on 4^th March, 2018. This is an emphatic declaration, and implies that the British Government possesses irrefutable evidence that this is so. Then in the next breath, he states that there is “no plausible alternative”. This is very much less than emphatic, and the word “plausible” implies that the British Government does not have irrefutable evidence to back up their claim.

This is not a subtle difference. It is the difference between suspecting something and knowing something. If you know something to be true, because you have the hard evidence to back it up, you don’t use equivocal phrases like “no plausible alternative”. You simply say, “here is the evidence to prove it beyond reasonable doubt.” On the other hand, if you do not possess irrefutable evidence of something, as the weasel phrase “no plausible alternative” suggests, then you have no right to pronounce definitively on the matter, as Mr Javid felt fit to do.

Still, he’s only the Home Secretary. You can’t expect him to understand such petty legal concepts.

As it happens, there are plenty of plausible alternatives, as Mr Javid no doubt knows only too well. If he’s interested, he can check out the one I have put forward here. Of course, regardless of whether my “plausible alternative” is correct or not, it is unlikely that Her Majesty’s Government would want investigations to follow the line of inquiry I advanced, since it might raise an awful lot of troublesome questions about the role of British Intelligence in the attempt to stop Donald Trump getting elected. Apparently, they want to keep that quiet. Which is why they slapped D-Notices on various aspects of Skripal 1.0 to hush all that up.

So Mr Javid states that Russia must explain itself, but in so doing unwittingly admits that the Government has no hard evidence of Russian state involvement. It merely is unable to imagine a “plausible alternative”, which either means that its members are somewhat lacking in imagination, or they don’t wish other “plausible alternatives” to be discussed (of course, it could even be both). Nevertheless, since he and the Government are the ones making the claim, I’d say that actually it is incumbent on them to explain themselves, not the ones they are accusing. That is how these things are supposed to work, is it not?

This being the case, I have a number of questions for them, which urgently need answering. Urgent, because they could prove vital to the investigation. However, before I come onto the questions, I must explain the nature of them, which may well come as something of a surprise, given the latest twist to this sorry tale in Amesbury. The surprise is that not one of the 10 questions relates to the Amesbury case. This might seem odd, but there is a very important reason for it.

At the moment, very few details have emerged about the Amesbury case, and so it is not exactly clear which questions could even be asked. True, the details that have emerged so far in the official narrative are about as coherent and plausible as those in the original case, one of which I have already debunked here. However, what Mr Javid sought to do, with a very clever sleight-of-hand to cover his case of cognitive dissonance, is to make definitive claims about Case 2, based on the assumption that Case 1 has somehow been proven. But of course it hasn’t. Not even remotely. In fact, there are a ton of questions about Case 1 still hanging in the air that have not been answered, and I really don’t think that we should let Mr Javid and Co. off the hook before they’ve given us the answers to them.

But in the spirit of decency, let’s make it extremely easy for them. Let’s not ask them any hard questions. Nothing like, “C’mon, tell us the names of the people wot did it,” for instance. No, let’s instead satisfy ourselves by asking them some remarkably simple questions that they – or at least the Metropolitan Police – must know the answers to if their narrative is correct, and for a very simple reason, as you will see. So here goes:

1. What were Mr Skripal’s and Yulia’s movements on the morning of 4^th March?
2. Why were their phones switched off?
3. Did Mr Skripal see anyone or anything suspicious near his house that day?
4. According to witnesses in Zizzis, Mr Skripal appeared to be very agitated. Was this because he was feeling unwell?
5. According to witnesses in Zizzis, Mr Skripal appeared to be in a hurry to leave. Was this because he had an appointment to keep?
6. What did Mr Skripal do after he left Zizzis?
7. Can he confirm or deny that the couple seen on the CCTV camera in Market Walk, one of whom was carrying a large red bag, are him and Yulia?
8. Did either Sergei or Yulia have a large red bag with them that day?
9. What are his last memories before collapsing at the bench?
10. Is Mr Skripal prepared to make a public statement answering the above, and will members of the international media be free to ask him questions?

So why must they know the answers to these questions? Simple. Because all they have to do to get answers to them is ask Sergei Skripal. They know where he is, don’t they? They must have questioned him, haven’t they? And Mr Skripal must surely have been eager to answer them, since the answers he gives could prove vital in helping to find out who poisoned him and his daughter, mustn’t he?

Just pause there for a second and think about it. Here we are, a third of a year after Skripal 1.0, with both Mr Skripal and his daughter having recovered months ago, and we still don’t know the answers to these basic, vital, but extraordinarily easy-to-establish questions. Isn’t that amazing?

I could even make it easier for them by boiling it down into one question:

When will the world hear from Mr Skripal about the events and circumstances of 4th March 2018, from the time he awoke until 4pm that afternoon?

C’mon British Government. It really isn’t hard. Or at least it wouldn’t be if the case you’ve presented is true. Just ask Sergei. But in the continued absence of answers to these simple questions, it seems that there might well be no “plausible alternative” but to assume that your case simply does not stack up. Which is why the onus is on you, not those you accuse, to explain yourselves.

On the first anniversary of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), new YouGov polling commissioned by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has found an overwhelming rejection of nuclear weapons.  The poll was conducted in the four EU countries that host US nuclear weapons: Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Italy. In each country, an overwhelming majority of people surveyed were in favour of removing the weapons from their soil, and for their countries to sign the Treaty that bans them outright.

Download the full survey here.

What did the survey find?

1. At least twice as many people are in favour of removing the weapons than keeping them.
2. At least four times as many people are in favour of their country signing the TPNW than not signing the TPNW.
3. At least four times as many people are against companies in their country investing in nuclear weapons activities than in favour of it.
4. A strong majority of people are against NATO buying new fighter jets that are able to carry both nuclear weapons and conventional weapons.

One year on, a vast majority supports the Nuclear Ban Treaty

“In their totality, the survey results show a clear rejection of nuclear weapons by those Europeans who are on the frontline of any nuclear attack: those hosting American weapons on their soil. More than simply demonstrating a ‘not in my back yard’ mentality, Europeans are even more strongly in favour of a blanket ban of all nuclear weapons worldwide than they are against simply removing the weapons from their own soil,” said Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN.

“The people of Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy all know that these weapons are a massive humanitarian disaster in waiting, and they will be on the frontline,” Ms Fihn said. “That’s why on the first anniversary of the Treaty to ban all nuclear weapons we are standing with them to push NATO leaders at next week’s Brussels summit to forge a new NATO security that rejects nuclear weapons, in line with the democratic wishes of their constituents.”

This week marks the first anniversary of 122 nations adopting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in New York on July 7th 2017. The landmark global treaty prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory.

With Scott Pruitt’s resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency amid a slew of ethics scandals, environmentalists who long campaigned for his ouster should be careful what they wished for.

That is because the acting administrator of the EPA is now Andrew Wheeler, formerly the agency’s second-in-command. Nominated by President Trump and narrowly confirmed in April by the Senate, Wheeler came into the job as the polar opposite of the EPA’s stated mission “to protect human health and the environment.”

Andrew Wheeler: Coal lobbyist

Andrew Wheeler comes to the top EPA post as an unabashed inside man for major polluters on Capitol Hill. Wheeler lobbied for coal giant Murray Energy, serving as a captain in that company’s bitter war against President Obama’s efforts to cut global warming emissions and enact more stringent clean air and clean water rules.

When Pruitt sued the EPA 14 times as Oklahoma attorney general between 2011 and 2017 on behalf of polluting industries, a top petitioner and co-petitioner in half those cases was coal giant Murray Energy. Wheeler was its lobbyist from 2009 until last year.

Notably, Wheeler accompanied Murray Energy’s CEO, Robert Murray, to the now-notorious meeting last year with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the one in which Murray handed Perry a 16-point action plan ostensibly designed to “help in getting America’s coal miners back to work.” That plan ultimately became the framework of a proposal by Perry to bail out struggling coal and nuclear power plants (Wheeler was also a nuclear industry lobbyist).

That particular proposal was shot down by federal regulators, but with Pruitt’s help, the Trump administration has made inroads on most of that plan’s 16 points, with devastating consequences to the environment—including the US pullout from the Paris climate accords, the rejection of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, and slashing the staff of the EPA down to a level not seen since the 1980s attacks on the agency by President Reagan.

Wheeler has denied helping Murray draw up that document, but he certainly shares its sentiments, telling a coal conference in 2016, “We’ve never seen one industry under siege by so many different regulations from so many different federal agencies at one time. This is unprecedented. Nobody has ever faced this in the history of the regulatory agenda.”

Andrew Wheeler: Longtime Inhofe aide

If it weren’t enough that a top coal lobbyist is now at the helm of the agency charged with protecting the nation’s environmental health, it bears noting that Wheeler’s vigorous lobbying career came after serving as a longtime aide to the Senate’s most vocal climate change denier, Oklahoma’s James Inhofe.

After the Trump administration announced Wheeler’s nomination to the agency in April, Inhofe hailed Wheeler as a “close friend.” That closeness was evident last year when Wheeler held a fundraiser for Inhofe, as well as for Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, which advanced Wheeler’s nomination by a party-line 11-10 vote. The Intercept online news service reported that Wheeler held the fundraisers even after press accounts revealed that he was under consideration to be Pruitt’s second in command.

Up until now, Wheeler has largely managed to escape the harsh scrutiny that has forced the withdrawal of some Trump appointees—such as Michael Dourson, whose close ties to industry doomed his nomination to oversee chemical safety at EPA, or Kathleen Hartnett White, who spectacularly flamed out with her blatant skepticism about the sources of climate change, once calling carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, the “gas of life.”

In contrast to these colleagues, Wheeler has so far stuck to slickly dry, brief statements that climate change is real, while agreeing with Trump’s pullout of global climate change accords. He even tried to play the good Boy Scout. After Tom Carper of Delaware recited Scouting’s commitment to conservation, Wheeler said,

“I agree with you that we have a responsibility in the stewardship of the planet to leave it in better shape than we found it for our children, grandchildren, and nephews.”

Wheeler’s long track record of lobbying suggests precisely the opposite. But Pruitt’s reign was so mercifully short that many of his efforts to roll back critical vehicle emissions standards and the Clean Power Plan, and end full scrutiny of toxic chemicals common in household products, were only in beginning stages. When Wheeler was a lobbyist behind the scenes, it was easy for him to help industry erode the EPA’s science-based mission of protecting public health and the environment.

As the face of an EPA roiling with disillusion and dissent among its scientists, he will not find it so easy to do the bidding of his former masters. This is his chance to act like an administrator for the people, not an abdicator on behalf of industry.

Note: This post is adapted from an earlier version that appeared April 6, 2018, when Andrew Wheeler was nominated to be deputy administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Featured image is from the author.

The criteria used for this research of political scandals covers a period from 1918 to the present day. In the last 100 years there have been 8 Conservative, 7 Labour and 2 Coalition governments. A period covering 1931 to 1945 had a government called the National government which was a mix of coalitions to start that then led into governing the country through the war years with both a coalition and national government.

What is interesting is that when a party is in power, the political scandals rack up quickly, when they are out of power the opposite occurs. Clearly, this has a lot to do with greater journalistic scrutiny and holding power to account.

In total, encyclopedias list 71 political scandals since 1918. Of that 30 can be attributed to the Conservative party, 20 to Labour, 10 to the Liberal parties and the balance encompass scandals involving both parties.

Due to the nature of investigative journalism and technology, the number of scandals has seriously increased since the 1980s. However, this could also be attributed to the advent of neoliberal capitalism that drove up bribery and corruption to influence government policy, which is evident from this report.

See our first report: The Top 10 Political Scandals Series: The Tories and our second report: The Top 10 Political Scandals Series: The Labour Party.

Lastly, it’s important to understand what is a scandal. The top 10 are those formally listed in encyclopedias. However, there are many more scandals that are not.

In chronological order the top 10 political scandals since 1918 are:

1922 – Liberal – Cash for Peerages – Lloyd George: – Honours sold for large campaign contributions

1963 – Conservative – Profumo Affair – John Profumo: Secretary of State for War had an affair with prostitute Christine Keeler who was having an affair with a Soviet spy at the same time.

1960’s – Liberal – The Jeremy Thorpe Affair:  Subject of rumours that he was homosexual and tried to murder an ex-lover

1972  – Conservative – Reginald Maudling:  Seriously dodgy business activities involving bribery and corruption.

1974 – Labour – John Stonehouse:  Ended up being a spy for the Czech republic – Remembered for his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death

1994 – Conservative – Cash for questions: – London’s most successful parliamentary lobbyist, Ian Greer had bribed Conservative Members of Parliament in exchange for asking parliamentary questions.

2003 – Labour – The Dodgy Dossier: Documents ultimately used by the government to justify its involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

2006 – Labour – Cash for honours Labour:  Peerages for secretly lending the Labour party money.

2009 – Parliamentary Expenses scandal: Widespread misuse of allowances and expenses permitted to MP’s

2009 – Labour – Cash for influence: Details of covertly recorded discussions with 4 Labour Party peers and their ability to influence legislation. There was also a Cash for Influence scandal in 2010 paying lobbyists to influence government policy.

Other political scandals

From the Suez crisis to Harold Wilson’s Lavender List, the sale of arms to Iraq to Ron Davis’ ‘moment of madness’ – the list is long. David Cameron’s decision to attack Libya, supported by France and NATO (USA) is not listed as a scandal but it ended up being an international disaster with both the public and parliament deceived over a ‘humanitarian’ cover-story that was supposed to save people from a dictator. The result was the crushing of Africa’s most stable and wealthy nation that now boasts open slave markets, is run by tribal gangs, where terror organisations like ISIS flourish that ultimately led to an uncontrollable migrant crisis and the destabilisation of the EU.

More recently, Britain’s involvement in the civilian catastrophe of Syria and Yemen are scandals in the making as is the myth perpetuated by the West that is now termed ‘Russiaphobia’ that is stoking the perils of a new cold war simply to keep citizens in fear and government in power. Again, there are many to choose from.

The biggest single political scandal in 100 years

Without any doubt the biggest political scandal in 100 years was a document called; Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation. This became known as the Iraq Dossier, the February Dossier or most commonly, the ‘Dodgy Dossier’. It was a 2003 briefing document for the British PM Tony Blair’s Labour Party government and was issued to journalists on 3 February 2003 by Alastair Campbell, Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy, which concerned Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Together with the earlier September Dossier, these documents were ultimately used by the government to justify its involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequently found to be baseless.

This also led to one of the most censored stories in the mainstream press and broadcast media ever – the scale of fatalities directly related to the conflict in Iraq. You can read that report, which has been updated in an article entitled: Shocking Truth Of UK Involvement In The Deaths of 6-8 million in Iraq and Afghanistan

The nastiest party

In 2002, the Tories, out of power and led by leader Iain Duncan Smith, were accused by newly appointed chairwoman of the party Theresa May, of being the ‘nasty party’ after it had “sunk into corruption, incestuous feuding and the electorally disastrous exclusion of women and minorities”. Today, it would be fair to say that the Tories are truly a nasty party and considerably worse now than envisaged back then.

However, to be fair, from the information we have so far, it would only be right to say that the nastiest party over the last 100 years has, on balance, been the Labour party. You may have a different view, it is a subjective question, but Iraq has clearly eclipsed any scandal ever achieved by any party.

Going forward

Brexit is the biggest domestic political issue facing the country since the world war. With senior Brexiteers jumping ship and Nigel Farage keeping his £73,000 EU pension and allowing his children dual citizenship to gain free movement within Europe, to hard Brexiteer Nigel Lawson applying for French residency. From Arron Banks and the Leave.EU funding scandal to Cambridge Analytica’s deep connections to the ruling Conservative party. Will Brexit finally break the union and become the political scandal that beats them all since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. Brexit is a huge gamble that could lead to either a new resurgence of prosperity globally or the final nail in its coffin as the empire continues its descent into oblivion. Only time will tell but for Britain.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

The five foreign ministers, minus US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, of the countries signatory to the 2015 Iran deal on curbing its civilian nuclear enrichment program, will meet in Vienna on Friday to explore ways of preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action after the treaty was violated by the Trump administration.

The JCPOA was signed by Britain, France, Russia, and China on the UN Security Council plus Germany as an informal representative of the European Union.

Trump is attempting to sabotage the deal, which placed severe restrictions on Iran’s enrichment activities in return for an end of UNSC sanctions. The deal implied that US sanctions would be lifted or lightened, as well, but that never happened because of the hostility of the Republican Congress to the deal.

I’m of a generation where the idea of the UN Security Council meeting without the US is hard to imagine. The conference is eloquent about how isolated and increasingly irrelevant Trump has made America. The rest of the world now sees Washington as an annoying problem to get around.

Moreover, think of it. This meeting involves three of America’s closest military and economic allies–Britain, France and Germany– having been pushed by Trump into the same corner with Russia and China in seeking to have better relations with Iran. I guess Trump has taught *them* a lesson.

Trump is ordering the US Department of the Treasury to slap third-party sanctions on non-US firms who do business with Iran. Companies like Total, S.A., the French oil giant, who do business with the US, cannot afford to buck the Treasury Department and so are pulling out of planned Iran investments.

Smaller European firms that do not do business with the US and who can use Euros or some other currency and go through non-US banks could conceivably go on doing business with Iran with no exposure to the wrath of the enormously powerful Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control. China’s gas giant Sinopec has said it will defy US sanctions, as has the Turkish foreign ministry, and Russian officials and concerns also reject Trump’s bullying. While the Indian government has warned the country’s corporations to be ready for anything, New Delhi will make a stand for economic independence of the US and plans to buy Iranian oil with rupees. The US Treasury Department only has authority over dollar exchanges, and over banks that have branches in the US or do business with the US.

Iran gave up perhaps 90% of its enrichment activities, keeping only a small number of centrifuges and enriching uranium only to the 3.5% needed to run its 3 Russian-built nuclear power plants at Bushehr. Tehran has therefore demanded economic guarantees from the remaining signatories.

Although Emmanuel Macron in France has said his government is committed to finding ways to protect French trade with and investment in Iran from Trump, few dispassionate observers think he is likely to succeed in that quest, with regard to the larger French firms. At most, small business might be sheltered.

Iranian president Rouhani has made a lot of blustery threats about what will happen if Europe reneges on the JCPOA, including that Iran could start back up its more ambitious enrichment program, and, more recently, could interfere with oil and gas exports from the Gulf (from which 22% of world petroleum originates). Iran is saying that if it cannot export its oil from the Gulf, then it can’t see why its enemies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates should be allowed to.

It is hard to imagine such a scenario. Even during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, relatively little oil sabotage took place, because each side was afraid of lasting damage to its own industry. But that Iran could resume its enrichment program is entirely plausible. And that Iran could turn spoiler is also plausible, though in less overt ways.

Washington doesn’t negotiate. It demands, wanting all other nations bowing to its will – Trump and neocons infesting his regime more hardline than their predecessors.

From Truman to Trump, 13 US presidents maintained an uneasy armistice with North Korea instead of formally ending the 1950s war – orchestrated by Washington, launched by the South against the North, not the other way around.

Despite publicly amicable Kim Jong-un/Trump interactions in Singapore last month, US relations toward Pyongyang remain adversarial – wanting the country denuclearized in return for empty promises.

America can never be trusted, Trump’s JCPOA pullout the latest example. His abandonment of an international agreement endorsed by the world community, unanimously adopted by the Security Council making it binding international law, shows what the DPRK is up against.

On July 6 and 7, Mike Pompeo visited North Korea for talks with its officials, Kim Jong-un not included. Notoriously hawkish on the country, he earlier said

“(t)he previous administration was negotiating from a position of weakness.”

“This administration will be negotiating from a position of enormous strength,” calling for “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of North Korea,” offering nothing substantive in return at the time.

Asked if he got closer to a timeline for DPRK denuclearization after concluding his visit on Saturday, he declined to say anything more than claim “progress in every element of our discussions” was made.

Both sides said further clarification of things discussed was needed. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Pompeo sought three basic goals – complete, verifiable, irreversible DPRK denuclearization, security assurances, and repatriating remains of US soldiers from the 1950s war.

In June, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said Pompeo made 47 demands of North Korean officials during his last visit to achieve denuclearization, eliminating its ballistic and other missiles, along with relevant infrastructure before any lifting of sanctions or US security guarantees are given.

Hours after Pompeo’s departure on Saturday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesman diverged sharply from his “progress (achieved) in every element of our discussions” remark, saying:

“We were expecting the US…to come up with constructive measures to help build confidence in the spirit of reunion and talks.”

“However, the attitude of the US was indeed regrettable,” making unilateral demands, pledging nothing substantive in return, adding unsettling talks created a “dangerous phase that might rattle our willingness for denuclearization that had been firm.”

Instead of “offer(ing) constructive measures that would help build trust based on the spirit of the leaders’ summit…the attitude and stance (Pompeo) showed in the…meeting was regrettable.”

Hopes that Kim/Trump summit talks would lead to “lasting and stable peace…on the Korean peninsula” are more illusion than reality.

Washington wants pro-Western puppet regimes replacing all sovereign independent governments – North Korea very much included.

Peace and stability on the peninsula depend on its subservience to US interests.

Dark forces in Washington want North Korea co-opted as a US vassal state, part of its plot to isolate China, its key regional adversary.

Obama’s 2011 Asia pivot was all about advancing Washington’s military footprint to counter Beijing’s growing economic and military might, checking Russia in the Pacific at the same time.

Containment is longstanding US policy against key rivals, a dominant feature of Cold War politics, back with a vengeance under Trump.

US imperial wars rage in multiple theaters. Given Washington’s unbending hegemonic aims, conflicts against other sovereign independent nations could erupt any time at its discretion.

North Korea remains on the Trump regime’s target list if it refuses to accept US demands – with no assurances any of its own being met.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Pyongyang on a two day visit “ to press leader Kim Jong-un for details on his plans for denuclearisation.”

It was a polite and courteous welcome, Korean style.

But with Pompeo in charge of negotiations, what are the prospects?

Back in October 2017, Pompeo  hinted in no uncertain terms when he was head of the CIA:

Not one UK official nor anyone from the British Embassy was in the stadium to see England’s decisive win against Sweden on Saturday afternoon. It exemplifies British politicians utter contempt for their public.

I predict if the British Government are going to keep to their silly and pointless boycott of Russia, it will prove to be electoral suicide for the Tories back in the UK one day, such is the importance of football.

Don’t forget precisely how important the game of football is, described universally as ‘the beautiful game’ and best summed up by the legendary Liverpool manager, the late, great Bill Shankly

“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”

This passion for the game, not only for the British, is simply not understood by the Prime Minister and her fellow elitist millionaire class of Ministers. But make no mistake, the ordinary British voter has forever noted what amounts for them as the treachery of the lie that are these Salisbury events claims that have damaged their sacred and beloved World Cup. Even the simplest of Britons will tell you they know they are being lied to by this Prime Minister and her buffoon Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

Another twist: Russia on Saturday night lost their Quarter final match against Croatia in a cruel penalty shoot, however all will agree that their team leave the World Cup with dignity and all have admiration for their players’ unwavering spirit. Russian and non Russian football supporters alike are proud of the Russian team, I assure you!

So why is a British ally, France and its President Emmanuel Macron, attending France’s World Cup semi-final in Russia, a fact his office confirmed on Friday?

Does, I suspect, France not take seriously the British diplomatic boycott of the tournament over an alleged and very suspicious “military grade” nerve agent attack in Salisbury, near the scientific and biological Ministry of Defence facility at Porton Down?

Macron had promised before the French team won their last match to attend the if France reached the semi-finals which they did on Tuesday against Uruguay in Saint Petersburg,

“Well done to our boys in blue. See you on Tuesday!” Macron tweeted after Tuesday’s game.

British officials however continue to boycott the tournament and Russia, blaming Moscow for the alleged attempted assassination of MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal in March.

The Kremlin has strongly denied that it was behind the said to be Novichok attack on Skripal and his daughter, which hospitalised them for weeks but strangely didn’t kill them. They since have made a total miraculous recovery; so where are they now in UK one might ask? The Russians are asking, as is their right.

The row is back in the spotlight after another couple in Salisbury fell ill last week after being exposed allegedly to the same ‘chemical’, spreading fear among local residents and angering and reminding British politicians afresh. How timely!

A little background for readers is necessary. Prime Minister Theresa May announced an official boycott of the World Cup earlier this year and reiterated the stance this week after the new alleged poisoning.

Several of Britain’s Western allies followed suit with the boycott at the time.

Ahead of the World Cup, the UK Foreign Affairs Committee – essentially Boris Johnson – further issued a statement unnecessarily insulting Russia warning Britons that “racist and/or homophobic intimidation, violence from hooligans and anti-British hostility” may put fans’ safety at risk.

Find me one, only one, British fan that had anything but good to say about their experience in Russia at the World Cup and I will join a monastery!

That above British Government statement came after the UK-Russia relations reached an unprecedented low following the Skripal poisoning and resultant tit-for-tat expulsion of Russian diplomats worldwide.

More examples: Iceland snubbed the tournament altogether, after indefinitely postponing all meetings with Russia. Officials from Sweden and Denmark boycotted the June 14 opening ceremony, though since then all have attended games.

Ignoring the lies of The PM and the eccentric Boris Johnson, Belgium’s King Philippe took his sons to Russia to watch his country play Tunisia, while Spain’s King Felipe VI took a private jet to Russia to see his nation beaten by hosts Russia.

In the last hours, Theresa May has “hinted” that the boycott on Ministers and Royals attending the World Cup could be eased if England make it to the final.

What is her logic if she truly believes Russia committed such a heinous act in Salisbury? Where are her principles?

Asked whether the position could change, the Prime Minister, who offered her ‘huge congratulations’ to British Football Manager Gareth Southgate said: ‘We take this every game at a time’. What hypocrisy.

One might ask why don’t Russia boycott them? I’ll answer. Because the Russian Government have proven to the world that they have more dignity and graciousness than the much ridiculed, once greatly respected, British.

It should be noted that the whole of Britain is suffering an unprecedented uncomfortable extreme heatwave but a record estimated at over 35 million British fans watch the games on TV.

This coming Wednesday’s (11th July) England semi-final in Moscow will be the first time England has reached a semi-final of the World Cup in 28 years and over 35 million Britons will watch it.

But relentlessly stubborn Prime Minister dampened her congratulatory message to England Manager, Southgate by adding

“There was a reason why Ministers haven’t been going to Russia saying “It was because of the attack that took place on the streets of a British city, an attack using a chemical weapon.”

That however didn’t stop Prince William who is president of the English Football Association tweeting his joy for England’s victory.

That a sitting British government should be so out of touch with its own public ensures that if there were political circumstances that caused a snap General Election, that the Tories – not forgetting their disastrous handling of Brexit, NHS, et al – would lose such an election by a landslide.

Regardless of reservations many British people may have of Corbyn’s Labour Party, especially if both Jeremy Corbyn and Prince William were to attend the World Cup, separately of course, especially Wednesday’s Semi Final and hopefully the Final too on the 15th July, should England beat Croatia.

Continuously Ill advised, nevertheless, as stated previously, the Prime Minister Theresa May repeated her official boycott of the World Cup, reiterating her position this week after this other alleged poisoning incident.

Yet, as also stated earlier, President Emmanuel Macron will attend France’s World Cup semi-final in Russia, his office confirmed Friday, despite British allegations of a “military grade nerve agent attack” on British soil by the Russians, Without evidence or proof to back that statement up. Is it possible that the French don’t  believe the British?

Macron had promised to attend the match if France reached the semi-finals Tuesday in Saint Petersburg, and that confirmation came shortly after the team went through with a 2-0 win against Uruguay.

The row is back in the spotlight as of last week after a couple, in Salisbury, one a heroin addict, whose immune system presumably must be fairly low, assuring his inevitable death (if it was, as we are told Novichok exposure) appeared to have been poisoned.

Odd that members of the Royal Family, politicians and other British VIPs and dignitaries had, since the Skripal event in March, visited Salisbury on other business and were neither warned, took precautions nor contracted Novichok poisoning.

And so the myth continues as do the obvious lies from Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

Needless to say, Russia has strongly refuted that it was behind the attack on Skripal and his daughter.

I predict that it will be football that will bring down this incompetent British government.

The Russia bashing has to stop is what the EU Head Jean Claude Juncker said recently. One thing I can agree with him on.

Robert (Bob) Parry was born in 1949 and died suddenly from pancreatic cancer in January 2018. An enthusiastic tribute to him and his work was recently held in Berkeley California. A video of the event is online here. 

Although Robert Parry never became personally famous, many readers will recall news stories he played a key role in bringing to public consciousness. He uncovered the “Iran-Contra scandal” where the US secretly sold weapons to Iran via Israel with profits supporting mercenary “Contras” attacking the Nicaraguan government. He uncovered Lt. Col. Oliver North secretly working at the Reagan White House to supervise support for the Contras. He exposed CIA collusion with criminals sending weapons to the Contras and receiving tons of cocaine on return flights from Colombia and Central America. 

In 1988, Parry co-authored an article which documented CIA and State Department activities to misinform the public to promote the desired public policy. 

Next, Parry worked with the television documentary “Frontline” to uncover the “October Surprise”. That story involved Ronald Reagan’s election team clandestinely negotiating to delay the release of American hostages held in Iran. These stories appeared in mainstream media but were ultimately swept under the carpet. 

The CIA-Contra-Cocaine Connection

The story about CIA complicity with drug-dealers was especially explosive because of the impact of drugs in poor communities across the US. There was an epidemic of cheap crack cocaine flooding poor and especially African American communities. 

Robert Parry originally reported the CIA-Contra-Cocaine story in the mid 1980’s. Ten years later, in 1996,  investigative journalist Gary Webb uncovered what happened after the cocaine arrived in the U.S.: crack cocaine had flooded poor and African American communities, especially in California. The negative consequences were huge. The San Jose Mercury News published Gary Webb’s investigation as an explosive front page 3-day series titled “Dark Alliance”. 

The story was initially ignored by the foreign policy and media establishment. But after two months of rising attention and outrage, especially in the African American community, a counter-attack was launched in the NY Times, Washington Post and LA Times. The LA Times alone assigned 17 reporters to what one reporter dubbed the “Get Gary Webb team”. They picked apart the story, picked apart Gary Webb’s personal life and distorted what he wrote. The attack succeeded. The Mercury News editors published a partial “correction” which was taken to apply to the whole story. Gary Webb was demoted and then “let go”. His reputation was destroyed and he ultimately committed suicide. An 2014 movie titled “Kill the Messenger”, made in consultation with Gary’s family and Bob Parry, depicts the events. 

When the establishment media was going after Gary Webb, with the quiet encouragement of the CIA, many journalists were silent or joined the pack attack. Later, when an internal CIA investigation confirmed the veracity of Webb’s research and writing, they mostly ignored it. Robert Parry was one of the few national journalists to defend Gary Webb and his reporting from beginning to end. 

At the Berkeley tribute, journalist Dennis Bernstein recalled being with Bob Parry and Gary Webb:

“I remember the power that those guys had with audiences. It was easy to understand why people would be afraid of them. They were truth tellers.”

The Birth of Consortiumnews 

As other western journalists were being pressured into compliance or driven out of the profession, Robert Parry chose a different path. Together with his oldest son Sam Parry, he launched the first investigative magazine on the internet: Consortiumnews. In his last article Bob Parry explained,

“The point of Consortiumnews, which I founded in 1995, was to use the new medium of the modern internet to allow the old principles of journalism to have a new home, i.e., a place to pursue important facts and giving everyone a fair shake.” 

For the past 23 years, Consortiumnews has published consistently high quality research and analysis on international issues. To give just a few examples: In March 1999, Bob Parry surveyed the dangers of the Russian economic collapse cheered on by Western neoconservatives while Mark Ames exposed the reality of Russian economic gangsters. In February 2003, Consortiumnews published the First Memorandum to the President by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) after Colin Powell addressed the UN Security Council. VIPS presciently warned of “catastrophic” consequences if the US attacked Iraq. 

In 2005, Bob Parry exposed the bias and deception behind the rush to blamed the Syrian government after Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri was assassinated. In April 2011, as the US was pushing to overthrow Gadaffi in Libya, Parry drew parallels to the disastrous consequences of overthrowing the socialist leaning Afghan government three decades earlier. 

Beginning in 2014, Bob Parry exposed the dubious accusations regarding the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH-17 in Ukraine. Over the past two years, Bob Parry wrote and edited dozens of articles exposing the bias and lack of evidence behind “Russiagate”. A few examples can be seen here.  

Commitment to Facts and Objectivity

Sam and several other speakers at the Berkeley Tribute noted that Robert Parry was not ideological. He believed in following the leads and facts wherever they led.  The new editor of Consortiumnews, Joe Lauria, said,

“Bob was not a lefty radical… He was just reporting the facts and where they led. That turned out to be kind of a left wing position in the end because that’s what happens when you follow the facts wherever they go. But he didn’t start out from an ideological position or have a preconceived notion of what the story should be.” 

Bob Parry’s investigations in the 1980’s revealed the U.S. administration plans and propaganda aiming to “glue black hats” on the Nicaraguan government and “white hats” on the Contra opposition. Thus he was well prepared to critically examine the disinformation campaigns accompanying “regime change” campaigns over the past decades: from Yugoslavia to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and others. 

Under Bob Parry’s leadership, Consortiumnews has exposed “fake news” at the highest levels. As journalist Norman Solomon said at the tribute,

“It’s important to remember that the most dangerous fake news in the last few decades has come from the likes of the front page of the New York Times and Washington Post. There are a million dead Iraqis and many dead Americans to prove it.” 

Bob Parry wrote several books including “Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, The Press and Project Truth” (1999), “Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom” (1992), and America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Barack Obama” ( 2012). 

Challenging the New McCarthyism 

In his last article , published just two weeks before his death, Parry informed Consortiumnews readers about his health issue. He speculated on possible contributing factors including “the unrelenting ugliness that has become Official Washington and national journalism.” 

Parry described the decline in journalistic standards and objectivity.

“This perversion of principles – twisting information to fit a desired conclusion – became the modus vivendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending journalistic principles of skepticism and even-handedness were increasingly shunned by our colleagues, a hostility that first emerged on the Right and among neoconservatives but eventually sucked in the progressive world as well…. The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is just the most dangerous feature of this propaganda process – and this is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The US media approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. 

At the Berkeley event, writer Natylie Baldwin addressed this issue. In her presentation she said,

“Robert Parry referred to the phenomena of careerism and group think. He argued that it was ruining journalism …When our most experienced academic expert on Russia, Stephen Cohen, can hardly get an interview on CNN and cannot get an op-ed published by the New York Times or the Washington Post, but a neo-con ideolog like Michael Weiss, who has no on the ground experience or educational credentials about Russia can be hired as a commentator by CNN on the subject, it’s dangerous. When someone like Rachel Maddow, who from her past investigative reporting knows better, has allowed herself to be used as a cartoonish purveyor of anti Russia propaganda, virtually ignoring coverage of more immediate issues facing average Americans and distracting them away from confronting the Democratic Party’s failures and dishonesty, it’s dangerous.” 

Natylie Baldwin elaborated on the current critical situation and need for honest and objective journalism. She said,

“Our media, like our political system, is in crisis. Indeed, these two crises reinforce each other as both our media and our political system are corrupted by money and have been largely reduced to a cheap spectacle. According to polls, large majorities of millennials have contempt for these establishment institutions. They’re open to and looking for alternatives to these broken systems. This makes Robert Parry’s legacy and the space for genuine investigative journalism that he fostered at Consortiumnews more important than ever.” 

Reflections on Bob Parry 

Joe Lauria said,

“Bob was a skeptic but not a cynic – there’s a big difference.” 

Sam Parry said,

“Dad was a patriot. I think that he really loved America. He loved our ideals, he loved the people, he loved the idea of holding the institutions that govern us accountable. That was his passion. That was what he was all about and what really drove him and propelled him through his life.” 

Australian journalist John Pilger wrote about Robert Parry:

“His founding of Consortiumnews was a landmark. He was saying in effect, ‘We must not lie down in the face of media monoliths, the Murdochs, the liberal pretenders, censors and collaborators.’”

Bob Parry exposed the double standards and bias of mainstream media but maintained connections there. At the east coast Celebration of the life of Robert Parry, former neighbor, family friend and executive editor of the NY Times, Jill Abramson, made the understated but accurate summary:

“Bob Parry certainly did his part to challenge the established order.”

Robert Parry’s website continues; his work and life continue to inspire. 

*

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Featured image: Carl Gershman

During a recent congressional hearing, the heads of three influential non-profit organizations that operate in numerous countries around the world revealed the subtle ways in which the United States meddles in the internal affairs of other countries by playing what the officials called “the long game.”

The three officials—Carl Gershman, Daniel Twining, and Kenneth Wollack—told Congress about their long-term efforts to empower the opponents of U.S. enemies and boasted about their ability to change foreign governments. They said that they had recently helped their political allies gain political power in Malaysia, acknowledged that they have helped train thousands of activists in Nicaragua, and speculated about the potential to create new governments in China, Russia, and North Korea.

All three men strongly defended their activities, insisting that they are critically important to the advancement of democracy in the world.

“We’re not asking people to do anything that they don’t want to do,” Gershman said. “We’re supporting their own aspirations and giving them some of the tools to realize those aspirations.”

Gershman is the president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. taxpayer-funded nonprofit created by the U.S. government in 1983. As the president of NED, Gershman oversees the issuance of grants to its political-party-associated organizations, including the International Republican Institute (IRI), which is headed by Twining, and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), which is headed by Wollack.

Facing skepticism about their work from the Trump administration, which views the organizations as unnecessary expenses and wants to cut their funding, Gershman and his colleagues provided Congress with a broad overview of how their work affects the world. They defended their ongoing operations, trying to persuade Congress that they should continue to receive funding.

Ultimately, the three officials revealed how they are helping the U.S. government interfere in numerous countries around the world.

The NED Approach

The general strategy of NED is to empower like-minded activists to build new political movements in their home countries. NED helps these activists become influential political actors, often with the goal of creating new possibilities for political change.

Officials typically describe their approach as one of “democracy promotion.” They argue that they are helping democratic forces introduce democratic politics into countries ruled by authoritarian leaders.

“These leaders, their strategic Achilles heel is fear of their own publics,” Twining explained. “And I think we should think about the old Reagan message of exploiting that a little bit.”

The strategy requires a long-term commitment in the countries where the NED is active. Twining calls it “playing the long game.” Gershman calls it “long-term work.”

The officials discussed numerous examples. Twining said that IRI has been working with opposition forces in Malaysia since 2002. He credited IRI with helping opposition forces prevail in the country’s recent parliamentary elections, calling the victory “an example of playing the long game.”

U.S.-backed opposition forces are “now in-charge of this very strategic country right there on the frontlines of the South China Sea, right there on the frontlines of the Islamic world’s intersection with rest of Asia,” Twining said. “And that’s good for America.”

The NED has also been active in Nicaragua, where opposition forces are organizing major protests against the Nicaraguan government. The protesters are trying to bring down the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a popular leftist leader who has been in power since 2007.

“We have been working on youth leadership programs and have worked with more than 8,000 youth on a very extensive coursework and academies to develop U.S. engagement,” Wollack said.

Although Wollack denied that the organizations are training their grantees for the purpose of overthrowing Ortega, Gershman indicated that regime change is the ultimate goal.

“Time for him to go,” Gershman said, referring to Ortega.

The three officials also cited many additional opportunities to influence governments around the world. They are especially excited about opportunities in Armenia, where a major social movement recently ousted a government backed by Russia.

Twining speculated about the possibility of achieving regime change in Russia, calling Putin a “very brittle” leader who is “frankly quite insecure.”

Gershman saw potential for a similar outcome in North Korea.

“This is an eroding totalitarian system, so we shouldn’t give up hope on the possibilities for internal change,” he said.

Gershman believes that the primary focus should be on China, however. He called China “the most serious threat our country faces today.”

Although Gershman said that the U.S. government will initially respond to challenges from China with a mix of military, economic, and geostrategic power, he insisted that the long-term solution could be found in the “unhappy people” who oppose the Chinese government.

“We have to not give up on the possibility for democratic change in China and keep finding ways to support them,” he said.

The Controversy in Washington

The open talk of U.S. meddling in other countries around the world was so commonplace that the U.S. mass media spent no time covering the hearing, even though the speakers did encounter some pushback. Not all members of Congress are on board with the programs.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) made the strongest critique, insisting that U.S. meddling destabilizes countries while creating more problems for the United States in the long run. Rohrabacher blamed recent U.S. meddling for destabilizing Ukraine. He argued that the U.S. involvement in national protests that led to the downfall of the government of Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 prompted the subsequent Russian invasion of the country and the war that continues there today.

“I don’t believe the Russians would have invaded Ukraine had we not arrogantly involved ourselves to overthrow that democratically elected government in Ukraine,” Rohrabacher said.

Rohrabacher also insisted that the U.S. should support dictators. He singled out Egypt, saying that the country should continue to be ruled by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the military dictator who gained power by overthrowing the country’s first democratically elected government in 2013.

“I know I am making everybody mad at me, but I had to say it,” Rohrabacher commented.

Faced with Rohrabacher’s criticisms, the remaining participants in the hearing made some effort to counter his arguments but otherwise said very little, preferring instead to blandly praise NED for performing admirable work by promoting democracy around the world.

The general feeling in Congress is that the U.S. government should continue to fund the work of the NED and its affiliated institutes. Most members of Congress view the organizations as important assets in the U.S. government’s toolkit, believing they play an important role in U.S. global strategy.

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA) unabashedly praised NED, IRI, and NDI, calling their work “exciting.” He told the three officials that “nothing does America prouder than the work frankly you’re doing.”

*

Edward Hunt writes about war and empire. He has a PhD in American Studies from the College of William & Mary.

On Friday July 6th, the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is tasked to determine whether there was a gas or other chemical attack on April 7th in Douma Syria (and which alleged occurrence the U.S., French and British forces launched 105 missiles into Syria to punish on April 13th), issued its interim report, and this report states that no conclusive evidence has yet been concluded to confirm that such an attack occurred. Here is the complete main portion of this interim report:

2.5 The results of the analysis of the prioritised samples submitted to OPCW designated laboratories were received by the FFM team on 22 May 2018. No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties. Various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from Locations 2 and 4, along with residues of explosive. These results are reported in Annex 3. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is ongoing. S/1645/2018 page 3

2.6 The FFM team visited Locations 2 and 4, where it observed the presence of an industrial gas cylinder on a top floor patio at Location 2, and the presence of a similar cylinder lying on the bed of a top floor apartment at Location 4. Close to the location of each cylinder there were crater-like openings in the respective reinforced concrete roofs. Work is ongoing to assess the association of these cylinders with the incident, the relative damage to the cylinders and the roofs, and how the cylinders arrived at their respective locations. 

2.7 Based on the equipment and chemicals observed during the two on-site visits to the warehouse and the facility suspected by the authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic of producing chemical weapons, there was no indication of either facility being involved in the production of chemical warfare agents. 

2.8 The FFM team needs to continue its work to draw final conclusions regarding the alleged incident and, to this end, the investigation is ongoing.

*

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The OPCW long ago lost credibility, functioning as a pro-Western imperial tool, violating core Chemical Weapons Convention provisions it’s sworn to observe and uphold.

Its reports on Syria have been one-sided, objectivity abandoned, likely on orders from Washington and Brussels.

Three months after the alleged April 7 Douma CW incident, the organization finally released its unacceptably long delayed report.

The so-called incident was a victimless nonevent – no one killed, hospitalized or ill from exposure to toxic chemicals of any kind.

Douma eyewitnesses and local medical personnel debunked the falsified Western narrative.

In April, days after the alleged incident, Russian technical experts found no traces of chemical toxins in soil samples and other analysis.

In late April, Russia and Syria brought 17 credible Douma eyewitnesses to OPCW headquarters in the Hague.

Their testimonies proved no CW incident occurred. No forensic evidence corroborated one.

At the time, Russia’s envoy to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin issued a statement, saying:

“Taking part in the news briefing (were) eyewitnesses of shooting of the footage that featured the fake pseudo-humanitarian action staged by the White Helmets and that provided grounds for the US/UK/French missile strikes at Syria on April 14,” adding:

“In all, there (were testimonies from 17 witnesses), including physicians who were right at the scene on that day. They recount(ed) the true story of the (false flag) incident.”

“(D)elegations (of OPCW member states got) first-hand evidence on the forged footage that misled the world community.”

“The briefing (was) organized in support of the OPCW fact-finding” Douma mission to investigate the alleged incident and report on its findings.

“(W)e had no doubt that the allegations of chemical use in Douma are a fabricated and provocative play staged by the so called White Helmets and Western media outlets.”

“We can prove that the video of the White Helmets is fabricated, and therefore there is no basis or validity to the signals of Western countries that this material is evidence of a chemical attack in the city of Douma.”

Facts on the ground didn’t matter. The OPCW report failed to debunk the falsified Western narrative.

While saying “results (of its so-called analysis) show(ed) no organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products…in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties,” it turned truth on its head adding:

“(V)arious chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is a full chain of custody.”

The OPCW claimed to find what Russia’s technical analysis said didn’t exist.

So-called witnesses it interviewed included al-Qaeda-linked White Helmets and other anti-government elements.

Following Douma’s liberation, Russian forces found a laboratory operated by terrorists in the town able to produce chemical toxins. Video footage by Russian journalists showed large stockpiles of chemical agents.

At the alleged sites of the Douma false flag incident, Russian experts found no traces of chemical toxins.

Arriving 11 days after the victimless nonevent, the OPCW in its report claimed evidence of CWs Russian analysis proved didn’t exist.

Make your own judgment about the veracity of its long-delayed report. What should have taken days to produce, at most a few weeks, took three months.

Its findings attempted to justify the unjustifiable US, UK, French aggression on Syrian sites days after the Douma false flag.

The attack had nothing to do with Douma, CWs, their alleged production or use – everything to do with advancing Washington’s imperial agenda based on Big Lies, pretexts for all acts of aggression.

It’s likely the Trump regime will use the OPCW report as red meat justification to continue the rape and destruction of sovereign Syria threatening no one.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

First published on December 28, 2015

The IMF is the leading international monetary agency whose public purpose is to maintain the stability of the global financial system through loans linked to proposals designed to enhance economic recovery and growth.

In fact, the IMF has been under the control of the US and Western European states and its policies have been designed to further the expansion, domination and profits of their leading multi-national corporations and financial institutions.

The US and European states practice a division of powers:  The executive directors of the IMF are Europeans; their counterparts in the World Bank (WB) are from the US.

The executive directors of the IMF and WB operate in close consultation with their governments and especially the Treasury Departments in deciding priorities, deciding what countries will receive loans, under what terms and how much.

The loans and terms set by the IMF are closely coordinated with the private banking system.  Once the IMF signs an agreement with a debtor country, it is a signal for the big private banks to lend, invest and proceed with a multiplicity of favorable financial transactions.  From the above it can be deduced that the IMF plays the role of general command for the global financial system.

The IMF lays the groundwork for the major banks’ conquest of the financial systems of the world’s vulnerable states.

The IMF assumes the burden of doing all the dirty work through its intervention.  This includes the usurpation of sovereignty, the demand for privatization and reduction of social expenditures, salaries, wages and pensions, as well as ensuring the priority of debt payments.  The IMF acts as the ‘blind’ for the big banks by deflecting political critics and social unrest.

Executive Directors as Hatchet Persons

What kind of persons do the banks support as executive directors of the IMF? Whom do they entrust with the task of violating the sovereign rights of a country, impoverishing its people and eroding its democratic institutions?

They have included a convicted financial swindler; the current director is facing prosecution on charges of mishandling public funds as a Finance minister; a rapist; an advocate of gunboat diplomacy and the promotor of the biggest financial collapse in a country’s history.

IMF Executive Directors on Trial

The current executive director of the IMF (July 2011-2015) Christine Lagarde is on trial in France for misappropriation of a $400-million-dollar payoff to tycoon Bernard Tapie while she was Finance Minister in the government of President Sarkozy.

The previous executive director (November 2007-May 2011), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was forced to resign after he was charged with raping a chambermaid in a New York hotel and was later arrested and tried for pimping in the city of Lille, France.

His predecessor, Rodrigo Rato (June 2004-October 2007), was a Spanish banker who was arrested and charged with tax evasion, concealing ϵ27 million euros in seventy overseas banks and swindling thousands of small investors who he convinced to put their money in a Spanish bank, Bankia, that went bankrupt.

His predecessor a German, Horst Kohler, resigned after he stated an unlikely verity – namely that overseas military intervention was necessary to defend German economic interests, such as free trade routes.  It’s one thing for the IMF to act as a tool for imperial interests; it is another for an IMF executive to speak about it publically!

Michel Camdessus (January 1987-February 2000) was the author of the “Washington Consensus” the doctrine that underwrote the global neo-liberal counter-revolution. His term of office witnessed his embrace and financing of some of the worst dictators of the time, including his own photo-ops with Indonesian strongman and mass murderer, General Suharto.

Under Camdessus, the IMF collaborated with Argentine President Carlos Menem in liberalizing the economy, deregulating financial markets and privatizing over a thousand enterprises.  The crises, which ensued, led to the worst depression in Argentine history, with over 20,000 bankruptcies, 25% unemployment and poverty rates exceeding 50% in working class districts . . . Camdessus later regretted his “policy mistakes” with regard to the Argentine’s collapse.  He was never arrested or charged with crimes against humanity.

Conclusion

The criminal behavior of the IMF executives is not an anomaly or hindrance to their selection.  On the contrary, they were selected because they reflect the values, interests and behavior of the global financial elite:  Swindles, tax evasion, bribery, large-scale transfers of public wealth to private accounts are the norm for the financial establishment.  These qualities fit the needs of bankers who have confidence in dealing with their ‘mirror-image’ counterparts in the IMF.

The international financial elite needs IMF executives who have no qualms in using double standards and who overlook gross violations of its standard procedures.  For example, the current executive director, Christine Lagarde, lends $30 billion to the puppet regime in the Ukraine, even though the financial press describes in great detail how corrupt oligarchs have stolen billions with the complicity of the political class (Financial Times, 12/21/15, pg. 7).  The same Lagarde changes the rules on debt repayment allowing the Ukraine to default on its payment of its sovereign debt to Russia.  The same Lagarde insists that the center-right Greek government further reduce pensions in Greece below the poverty level, provoking the otherwise accommodating regime of Alexis Tsipras to call for the IMF to stay out of the bailout (Financial Times, 12/21/15, pg.1).

Clearly the savage cut in living standards, which the IMF executives decree everywhere is not unrelated to their felonious personal history.   Rapists, swindlers, militarists, are just the right people to direct an institution as it impoverishes the 99% and enriches the 1% of the super-rich.

Pursuant to its “zero-tolerance” policy, the Trump administration separated some 2,300 migrant children from their parents at the US-Mexico border since May 5, 2018. Widespread international condemnation ensued. On June 26, a federal judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunite the families and established a timetable for reunification.

On June 29, the Department of Justice filed a notice of compliance with the court order, but indicated its intention to indefinitely detain families together. Indefinite detention violates international law.

“The Government will not separate families but detain families together during the pendency of immigration proceedings when they are apprehended at or between ports of entry,” the Justice Department wrote in its notice of compliance.

That would amount to indefinite detention as immigration cases can last for months or even years.

A 1997 settlement called the Flores agreement requires that detained immigrant children be released after 20 days. In its notice of compliance, the Justice Department asked the court to modify the Flores agreement to allow indefinite detention of migrants.

Meanwhile, on July 2, a federal judge in Washington ordered the government to give asylum applicants a meaningful opportunity to be released. More than 1,000 applicants have been incarcerated for months or years with no resolution of their cases.

Indefinite detention violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A Violation of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

The United States has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, making its provisions part of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which says treaties “shall be the supreme law of the land.”

The UN Human Rights Committee is the expert body that monitors compliance with the covenant.* The committee has stated that detentions are arbitrary if they do not accord with due process and are manifestly disproportional, unjust or unpredictable.

Indeed, according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, under the covenant,

“‘arbitrariness’ is not to be equated with ‘against the law’, but must be interpreted more broadly to include elements of inappropriateness, injustice, lack of predictability and due process of law.”

Keeping families locked up for months with no good reason is unjust and inappropriate. It denies them due process and a timely resolution of their legal claims. And their time of release is unpredictable.

Moreover, the Human Rights Committee has said that even if detention is initially legal, it could become “arbitrary” if unduly prolonged or not subject to periodic review.

People deprived of their liberty are entitled to a speedy trial. When they are arbitrarily detained, they have the right to compensation under the covenant.

The covenant’s provisions are not limited to citizens, but apply in cases of immigration control as well. Parties to the covenant may refuse to comply with them only “in time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation.”

Alfred de Zayas, UN independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, and former secretary of the Human Rights Committee, wrote in 2016 that,

“Neither the war on terror nor restrictive immigration policies justify indefinite detention.”

Experts report that prolonged indefinite detention can cause anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.

Even brief detentions can result in permanent physical and mental harm to children. The American Academy of Pediatrics wrote a 2015 letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security, which stated,

“The act of detention or incarceration itself is associated with poorer health outcomes, higher rates of psychological distress, and suicidality, making the situation for already vulnerable women and children even worse.”

Documents obtained by the ACLU reveal that children in the custody of Customs and Border Protection between 2009 and 2014 suffered horrific brutality and physical, sexual and verbal abuse.

Negative effects of prolonged detention may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, in violation of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the United States has ratified.

A Violation of the Refugee Convention

The United States is also a party to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which prohibits parties from imposing penalties on refugees for illegal entry or presence. The refugees must either: (1) come from a place where their life or freedom was threatened; or (2) enter or be present without authorization. They are required to present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their unauthorized entry or presence.

Indefinite detention constitutes a penalty prohibited by the Refugee Convention.

After an initial period of detention, the Refugee Convention allows countries to impose restrictions on movement if they are “necessary” for national security or in special circumstances, such as a mass arrival of refugees.

Neither of those two conditions was present before Trump ordered indefinite detention of families.

Contrary to Trump’s nativist claims, immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than US citizens. And a Customs and Border Protection report concluded that rates of illegal entry at the UN border in 2017 were “at the lowest level … on record.”

A Violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states,

“No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”

Although the United States has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the US has signed it. A signatory to a treaty cannot take action inconsistent with the object and purpose of the treaty.

A primary object and purpose of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is to protect the best interests of the child. Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, stated that,

“Detention is never in the best interests of the child and always constitutes a child rights violation.”

Pentagon Builds Migrant Housing on Military Bases

As it formulates plans to indefinitely detain migrant families, the Pentagon is constructing temporary housing for them at two Texas military bases — Fort Bliss in El Paso and Goodfellow Air Force Base near San Angelo.

A US Navy internal document says the Navy is planning to build tent cities to house migrants, including two camps in California slated to house up to 47,000 people each. They will be called “austere” tent cities.

Since 1983, one of the sites, the former Concord Naval Weapons Station in California, has been undergoing “clean-up of Navy contamination and is not suitable for transfer nor human occupation,” according to Concord Mayor Edi Birsan.

“The idea that you put almost 50,000 people in a tent city facility in the middle of the Bay Area, an urban area, is absurd,” California Rep. Mark DeSaulnier wrote in a letter to the secretary of the Navy. “This does remind me of World II and Japanese internment. We don’t want to be a party to that.”

In the meantime, local officials across the United States are resisting Trump’s inhumane policies. Officials in Texas near Austin, California’s Sacramento County, Springfield County in Western Oregon, and Alexandria, Virginia, have cancelled deals with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants.

*

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and an advisory board member of Veterans for Peace. An updated edition of her book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, was recently published. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Note

*This is a different body than the UN Human Rights Council, from which the United States recently withdrew.

On July 6, the OPCW—the body charged with investigating the accusations that Syria had used a nerve agent or other chemical weapon in Douma, Syria—reported that “no organophosphorous nerve agents” were detected in the prioritized samples they had taken, including from “alleged casualties”.

The OPCW states that its investigation included on-site visits in Douma, and interviews with witnesses.

While corporate media was screaming that Syria had used a chemical weapon or nerve agent against civilians in Douma, based on the claims of the US-funded Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets), independent journalists went to Douma and spoke to medical staff at the hospital in question, as well as civilians.

I did so myself in late April. Numerous testimonies I and others before and after me took said no chemical attack had taken place. Seventeen civilians from Douma, including medical staff and a boy featured in an unverified video, testified at the OPCW headquarters at the Hague that there had not been a chemical attack. And yet, corporate media dismissed their testimonies, and the on the ground testimonies of many journalists, instead declaring that Syria was guilty of a chemical attack.

As I previously wrote, Marwan Jaber, a medical student present at the hospital on April 7, the day of the alleged attacks, told me:

Patients who came in were being treated for normal shelling injuries, as well as for breathing difficulties, due to the combination of dust and their having taken refuge for extended periods in basements. While staff were treating normal bombing injuries and breathing cases, “strangers” entered screaming about a chemical attack and started hosing people with water. Hospital staff calmed the situation down and went back to treating the patients as ‘normal’ shelling victims, as they had not exhibited any indications of having been exposed to a chemical agent.”

These strangers appear, with the White Helmets, in the unverified videos presented to the world as “evidence” that the Syrian government had used a chemical or nerve agent against its people. The videos of the White Helmets were “evidence” enough for the US, UK and France to illegally bomb Syria over 100 times the night before OPCW inspectors arrived in Syria to investigate.

Marwan Jaber also told me:

“Patients’ symptoms were “not in line with the symptoms of a chemical attack. There wasn’t pupil constriction or Broncho-constrictions leading to death,” Jaber recalled. “The symptoms we received were all symptoms of choking, patients affected by the smoke and regular war injuries. They came here, we treated them, and dispatched them home.”

Jaber said that none, not one, had died, and that none of the hospital staff were affected, as one might expect they would be had a chemical agent been used.

The OPCW investigation included samples from rooms shown in the unverified video including the room with a bed and a large missile delicately perched on a non-shattered bed, supposedly having fallen through the roof. In their report, the OPCW noted that samples from the bed, pillow, resulted in: “No CWC-scheduled chemicals detected.” Same for samples from a basement room, also shown in the White Helmets video, strewn with re-arranged bodies. “No CWC-scheduled chemicals detected.” [No chemicals that are prohibited in the Chemical Weapons Convention.] “No nerve agent related chemicals detected.” The latter comment is regarding a sample taken from “piece of cloths from victim.”

The OPCW found traces of “chlorinated organic chemicals”, but not Sarin, as widely alleged by corporate media and supposed investigators.

The issuance of this latest report finding allegations of chemical or nerve agents being used in Douma to thus far not be based on evidence is another important negation of the stories spun by corporate media and think tanks, and confirms what Syrian civilians and medical staff themselves testified on numerous occasions to numerous journalists: that they had not experienced a chemical attack in Douma.

Those promoting the lies to the contrary are guilty of war propaganda and have Syrian blood on their hands for promulgating a narrative that could lead to further illegal intervention and bombing by the US and allies.

*

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine. She is a recipient of the International Journalism Award for International Reporting, Mexican Press Club, 2017. Visit her personal blog, In Gaza. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

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As American motorists complain of rising gasoline prices, the Trump Administration and the oil and banking interests behind it are smiling on their way to the proverbial bank. If we look at seeming disparate events in Iran, in Venezuela and now in Libya it becomes clear there is a coherent strategy to promote disruption in key oil flows to the immediate advantage of US oil domination.

A decade ago the idea that the United States could displace Saudi Arabia or the Russian Federation as the world’s largest oil producer was considered unthinkable. Today it is clearly a foreign policy priority of the Trump Administration and the major Wall Street banks financing US shale oil production. The strategy is geopolitical and ultimately aims to weaken Russia, Iran and the other independent world oil producing powers like Venezuela.

If we look at several recent events that have dramatically impacted global oil prices a clear pattern emerges not of free market forces but of geopolitical manipulation, above all by Washington. The cases of Iran, of Venezuela and most recently of Libya make the case clear that Washington is determined to push an oil price high enough to again make economical investment in its developed shale oil industry.

Iran not about nuclear but oil

The obvious point about the Trump administration unilateral rejection of the Iran nuclear agreement, an agreement that was to have enabled Iran to be free from Western economic sanctions and open the way for billions of dollars of foreign investments, above all in her oil and gas industry, is the fact that it had nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear plans per se. It has immediately to do with an excuse to re-impose economic sanctions on Iran oil sales and oil and gas development.

Ignoring UN IAEA reports finding Iran compliant with the nuclear agreement, the Trump Administration in May unilaterally announced a de facto end to the agreement to the protests of EU, Russia and China signatories. On November 4, barring an unlikely Iran capitulation to Washington demands, severe new sanctions targeting mainly Iran oil exports will come into force. Washington is linking its actions to Iran’s agreeing to withdraw support for Shi’ite forces in Yemen and Assad in Syria. Since the nuclear agreement, Iran’s state oil company has managed to rebuild oil exports to almost 4 million barrels daily, near the pre-sanction levels. Through secondary sanctions Washington is making clear EU or other companies aiding Iran to continue oil exports will be sanctioned in any business in the US, a hard hurdle. Already the French energy giant Total has said it will end its joint venture in Iran’s huge energy sector.

On July 2, a senior US State Department official made clear Washington aims in Iran:

“Our goal is to increase pressure on the Iranian regime by reducing to zero its revenues from crude oil sales. We are working to minimize disruptions to the global market, but we are confident that there is sufficient global spare oil production capacity.“

Venezuela as well

At the same time the Trump administration renews targeting Iranian oil in world markets, with a delay until November, it is encouraging the complete collapse of the Venezuela oil production as part of Washington’s ongoing financial and political war against the Maduro government.

At the time of the latest Venezuelan election victory of incumbent socialist President Maduro, Washington escalated sanctions that cut off all access of state oil company PDVSA and Venezuela to US banks, as well, cutting off all refinancing of new debt. Prior to the recent OPEC ministers meeting, Venezuela Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo declared,

“These sanctions are very strong, the sanctions are practically immobilizing PDVSA…It’s an attack on the oil market.”

According to the International Energy Agency, Venezuela oil production averaged 1.36 million barrels of oil daily in June, down from 2.9 million bpd five years ago.

Then with convenient timing, the major US oil company ConocoPhillips seized about $636 million in assets belonging to Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA due to a2007 nationalization of the US oil major’s projects in Venezuela. The seizure has blocked PDVSA from meeting its export obligations and creating tanker bottlenecks at Venezuelan ports. To counter significant loss in Venezuela oil imports, China’s Development Bank has just announced a US$5-billion loan for Venezuela’s oil industry. Among the major importers of both Venezuela and Iran oil is China, a fact well known to the US Treasury and State Department.

And Libya now

While oil traders have reacted to the supply reductions in both Iran and Venezuela sending prices for various grades of crude oil sharply higher above $70 for the first time in three years, the market situation, seen from the standpoint of the US oil industry, especially shale oil, is not yet secure. That is changing, however,  given recent developments in Libya.

Ever since Washington’s “humanitarian” bombing of Qaddafi’s Libya, then one of the most economically advanced countries in Africa, the country has been in a de facto civil war and political division. On the one side is a UN-imposed and Washington supported regime in Tripoli, a deceptively-named Government of National Accord, under an appointed Prime Minister and alsohead of the Presidential Council (PC), Fayez Al-Sarraj. Al-Sarraj is backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, the secretive political Salafist organization behind the Washington-backed Arab Spring and the Mohammed Morsi regime in Egypt. The Tripoli group is also backed by the USA, UK and France.

Al-Sarraj’s prime opponent is Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar who has de facto established military control through the anti-Salafist Libyan National Army, with backing of key tribal leaders in the oil-rich eastern Libya and who is backed by the elected Libyan Libyan House of Representatives (HOR).

Haftar, a bitter foe of the Muslim Brotherhood whom he calls terrorists, has de facto established military control in the eastern part of the country in the Oil Crescent. When his forces tookcontrol of key sections of eastern Libya in recent days, including the vital oil ports at Hariga and Zueitina, Haftar went in direct opposition to the Tripoli US-backed regime and announced that control of the eastern oil ports would go to the separate Benghazi-based National Oil Company, affiliated with the eastern government, which is not recognized by the UN. At that point, with Washington backing, the Tripoli Western NOC declared force majeure over the eastern ports and brought shipments of up to 850,000 barrels/day of Libyan oil off the world market on July 2.

Haftar’s army is known to be very close to Egyptian President al-Sissi, also a bitter foe of the Muslim Brotherhood. Haftar also has good relations with Putin’s Russia. Preventing Haftar’s forces in the oil-rich east from creating a parallel oil economy independent of the US-backed Tripoli regime is adding to the dramatic change in global oil markets and is almost certain to push world market prices well above $80 a barrel, to levels not seen since 2014.

Conveniently that would be a profitability level that would give a huge boost to US shale oil output.

US Shale: a New Oil Geopolitics?

Scott Sheffield the chairman of the Texas-based Pioneer Resources, one of the largest US shale oil producers, in a recent interview in Vienna during the recent OPEC meeting, declared that before the end of this year, that the United States will pass Russia to become the world’s largest oil producer. He stated that US production will exceed 11 million barrels daily in 3-4 months and could “very quickly” reach 13 million bpd, and 15 million bpd within seven or eight years, based on production of shale oil from places like the Permian Basin in Texas. He stated that the most favorable price for shale right now is in a range of $60 to $80 a barrel. Could it be that by targeting the oil supplies of Iran, of Venezuela and now of Libya the influential energy companies behind the Trump foreign policy, are aiming to insure that US shale oil floods the world market in coming months to displace not only that oil but also, increasingly, Russian oil?

Notably, Iran has accused the United States of withdrawing from the JCPOA in order to raise the price of oil. On May 11, Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar Zangemeh declared

“President Trump playing double game in oil market. Some OPEC members playing into US hands. US seeking to boost shale oil production.”

The longer-term problem with the Washington oil domination strategy is the uncertainty of shale oil supply. While technology investment in recent years has improved well productivity and production rates, shale oil has major problems. One is that a given shale or tight oil well depletes far more rapidly than a conventional oil well, with production declines of 75% or more after the first year typical. To maintain overall volume then, more wells and more expensive wells are required.  The other limit is the high requirement for added well water for fracking, in some places like Permian Basin, 5 barrels of water per barrel oil. Industry reports suggest that beginning 2020 the golden years of shale oil production in the US will be over as rising costs, lower quality acreages and other constraints limit shale oil growth and with it US oil output. That will have a major negative impact on the current Trump Administration strategy to make America the great oil king. It is a strategy ultimately built on myths, lies and, yes, oil wars.

*

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Pyongyang has voiced its regret over America’s attitude during high-level talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and accused Washington of seeking unilateral and forced denuclearization from North Korea.

“We were expecting the US… to come up with constructive measures to help build confidence in the spirit of reunion and talks. However, the attitude of the US was indeed regrettable,” said a statement released by the Korean Central News Agency.”

Let this be a lesson to Putin, as if he needs another one, that no deal with Washington can be trusted.  As Assad recently said, talking with Washington is a waste of time, because Washington’s word doesn’t mean anything.  Washington says one thing and does another.

Putin also has the example of Trump tearing up the nuclear agreement with Iran.  Now apparently North Korea.  Russia herself has a long miserable experience of stupidly trusting Washington:  “NATO won’t move one inch to the East.”  The ABM Treaty, and so on.

If Putin is constrained by starry-eyed Russian Atlanticist Integrationists and isn’t on his toes when he meets with Trump in a few days, Russia will again have a miserable experience.  Already the Western-worshiping Atlanticist Integrationists are planting stories in the media about the concessions Putin is prepared to make to Washington.  

Why should Putin make any concessions?  The problem is Washington’s hegemonic ideology, not Russia.  Putin should make no concessions.  If he does, he will collect nothing in return.  

How long will it take for Russia to learn this lesson?

*

This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review.

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

This article first published June 2016 provides an insight into Russia’s military doctrine. It points to the nature of  the weapons systems which would be used by Russia in response to a US-NATO military operation directed against the Russian Federation. The information presented in this article are of crucial importance. Global Research does not necessarily share the views presented by the author.

*      *      *

US rules the globe, having a navy three times stronger than that of Russia. Moreover, the Pentagon has created a strategic command to deploy large units of land forces, consisting of hundreds of cargo ships of large capacity. All of these vessels are organized in very strong expeditionary naval groups and around aircraft carriers, amphibious landing ships, and naval convoys of troops and military equipment.

With troops deployed in Europe and Asia, with the armies of allied states, the US can trigger an invasion of Russia. Therefore Russia’s new military doctrine establishes that the biggest risk to Russia’s security groups is the American expeditionary naval groups, which can transport invasion troops to the Russian border.

Several types of anti-ballistic shield protect US naval expeditionary groups and zones of landing for troops from transport ships. The first is the naval system AEGIS armed with SM-3 block 1b mounted on US destroyers and cruisers AEGIS, plus anti-ballistic shields in Poland and one in Romania. The second is the mobile THAAD system of the US land forces, defending landing zones. Add to this the mobile long-range missile anti-aircraft batteries like Patriot with anti-ballistic capabilities against missiles that are in their final stage of the path, under an altitude of 35,000 m.

The premise from which Russian experts started building hypersonic vehicles was that American antiballistic missiles cannot intercept any projectile flying in the mesosphere (at altitudes of 35.000- 80.000 m), and that Russia, unlike the US, owns a number of very powerful rocket engines. For example, the Pentagon and NASA cannot send satellites into orbit if Russia does not deliver the RD-180 rocket engines. Russia is on the verge of creating, starting in 2018, the surest antidote to this vulnerability by means of a hypersonic battle. Aerial vehicles are classified according to the airspeed as follows: subsonic (below the speed of 1,220 km/h, – Mach 1) supersonic (speeds between Mach 1 and Mach 5 – up to 6000 km/h), and hypersonic (with speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 10 – up to 12,000 km/h).

Russian hypersonic weapons

The main Russian hypersonic weapon are derived from space glider Yu-71 (Project 4202), which flew during tests at a speed of 6000-11200 km/h over a distance of 5,500 km at a cruising altitude below 80,000 m, receiving repeated pulses from a rocket engine to climb, execute maneuvers and cornering trajectory. It is estimated that the glider is armed with warheads that are spatially independent, with autonomous guidance systems similar to the air-ground missiles Kh-29 L/T and T Kh-25 (which provides a probable deviation of 2-6 m). Although it may take nuclear warheads, the space glider will be armed with conventional warheads and will be powered by a rocket launched normally from nuclear-powered Russian submarines.

Another variant of the hypersonic weapon derived from the Yu-71 would be those launched from the Russian military transport aircraft Il-76MD-90A (II-476). Since 50% of the missile’s fuel is spent solely on take off and rising though the layers of extremely dense atmosphere of up to 10,000 m, mass launcher and glider space represents 50% of the rocket carrier used to launch from nuclear-powered submarines.

The second type of weapon different from hypersonic spatial glider is the Zirkon 3M22 missile, which is launched from maritime patrol aircraft. Zirkon has a speed of Mach 6.2 (6500 km/h) at a cruising altitude of 30,000 m and a kinetic energy at impact with the target 50 times higher than existing air-ship and ship-to ship missiles.

Hypersonic concept for a war

The new Russian military doctrine states that an attack on the American invasion fleet is to be executed in three waves, three alignments, thus preventing American expeditionary naval groups from positioning themselves near the Russian coast of the Baltic Sea. The first wave of hypersonic weapons, consisting of space gliders arranged on Russian nuclear-powered submarines under immersion in the middle of the Atlantic, starts fighting US naval expeditionary groups as they start crossing the Atlantic to Europe. The American naval groups need 7-8 days to cross the Atlantic; the plane Il-76MD-90A has a maximum flight distance of 6300 km and can be powered in the air, reaching the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in a few hours.

If the first wave does not destroy the targets, the second wave of hypersonic weapons will be launched on the US naval groups when they are located 1,000 km from the eastern shore of the Atlantic Ocean. The attack will be launched from the Russian submarines in the Barents Sea or Plesesk base of strategic missiles, located near the Arctic Circle and the White Sea.

The third wave of hypersonic attack will be executed by missiles 3M22 Zirkon launched on American naval groups when they would be in the Skagerrak strait (crossing the North Sea to the Baltic Sea), on the assumption that NATO is attacking Russia through the Baltics. If the American expeditionary naval group head to the Black Sea, it will be hit by the third wave of hypersonic weapons in the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.

As with many of my compatriots, there are many things about Britain and the British people that I admire. As someone whose whole life has been linked with literature, cinema and theatre, I have the greatest appreciation for English literature and the arts, for its writers and playwrights, actors and directors. As someone who had the good fortune to have played the iconic Englishman Sherlock Holmes in a very successful Soviet film series, I was honoured to have been awarded an MBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I am grateful for a chance to have been part of the mutually enriching cultural kinship and synergy of our two countries. As someone who has lived a long life, I vividly remember the years of WWII when the Soviet Union and Britain were staunch and proud allies in the fight against Nazism.

Many Russians feel an affinity with many things English – from pubs and gardens to Scotch whisky and Welsh singing and luscious valleys. Ascot races, Chelsea flower shows, London museums and Stonehenge – many will have been or at least seen them on TV. Perhaps surprisingly, many entertain a lively interest in the British monarchy and the Royal family, Russian television and papers carry stories about the Queen and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Flattering stereotypes of Britain still abide. But more and more this idyllic picture is being marred by the political developments of recent years.

Today, as many of my compatriots, I am sad to see the state to which the relationship between our two countries has been reduced. While conflict situations can seldom be blamed on one party alone, I am convinced that the current deplorable and deepening crisis is primarily of London’s making.

Please do not make the mistake of writing this view off as a casualty of devious Kremlin propaganda. On the contrary, the view I hold and share with the vast majority of Russians has been shaped and honed, paradoxically, by incessant anti-Russian propaganda emanating from London’s corridors of power and the media that seems to have lost all capacity for independent reasoning, at least for anything Russian. Many in Britain may be surprised that Russian audiences are kept well informed of the international media coverage, certainly insofar as it concerns their country.

I do not intend to dwell on the long list of geostrategic and political differences between Moscow and London. Surely, each of side has its own interests and reasons for acting the way it does. Understanding these reasons is the job of respective governments and their foreign policy thinktanks. Manifestly refusing to understand those reasons is an abject failure of government. And that, I am sad to say, is exactly what I am seeing at the top of the British government and in much of the British press.

What we have been witnessing is London’s – and, more generally, Western – consistent refusal to treat post-Soviet Russia as an equal partner in international affairs. The more hawkish Western capitals – notably, London – have been trying to condemn Russia to be the defeated party in the Cold War, and to behave like one. Mind you, this is a view taken by most Russians who are also increasingly convinced that the West’s attacks are not directed at Putin or the Kremlin, but at their country as such, at the people and state of Russia.

Many will point to Crimea as proof of Russia’s aggressiveness and threat to world peace. But they should consider that Crimea, rather than being the cause, is a consequence of the total collapse of East-West dialogue in which London has played a significant role and often been the cheerleader. More importantly, it is, in the final count, down to the people of Crimea to decide where they want to be, certainly not to London or Washington.

The accusations London has been flinging at Russia’s door fly in the face of every complimentary stereotype that Russians have of Britain and its allegedly gentlemanly culture. People at the top of the British government have been talking down to Russians as some kind of ‘lesser people’ in a language that invokes the less flattering pages of the not so distant British imperial history.

PM Theresa May accusing Russia in the Skripals poisoning without any serious evidence was downright shameless.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson likening Russia’s upcoming World Cup to Hitler’s 1936 Olympics was the ultimate insult – not only to Russia, but to Britain itself and the rest of the anti-Hitler coalition.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson telling Russia to ‘shut up and go away’- does he even realise whom he is trying to bully? You can criticise Moscow all you want but it has never stooped to this level in talking to sovereign nations, big or small. Is an acute crisis in British education the reason for this excuse for statesmanship? What sort of policy do they think they are pursuing, what kind of world they are shaping? I feel genuinely sorry for Her Majesty the Queen that she has to call this government her own.

The current explosion of Russophobia and anti-Russian hysteria in Britain has no precedent in living memory. Not even the Cold War saw such blatant disregard for the norms and conventions of inter-state diplomacy. Anyone who calls for a meaningful engagement with Russia is branded a dangerous radical or traitor. People who even agree to talk to the Russian media are ostracised and side-lined. Anyone who simply calls for restraint or caution is vilified as a Putin puppet. Is there a name for it already? Un-British activities? A curious yet deeply troubling throwback to the McCarthy era in modern-day enlightened Britain.

It’s hard to escape the timing of this latest chapter in London’s lengthy anti-Russian saga with a crucial stage of the North Stream 2 project, the football World Cup and of course the recent presidential election in Russia. Which only goes to show that the instigators are quite ignorant of what the Russian people are like. Any hostile moves from the outside will unite us, we come together and find a response. They wouldn’t have attempted it if they knew the first thing about what makes Russia tick. They have to realise that in their poisonous campaign they are engaging not just the Kremlin or Putin, they are taking on the whole of the Russian people, including its political class and business elite.

We have no beef with the people of Britain. From what we can glimpse, more and more of them are sceptical of the anti-Russian propaganda spewed by the hawks in government and much of the media. The current cold winds will die down and our two countries will revert to a civilised and respectful relationship which has so much to offer.

As a proud recipient of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire I aspire to wise and dignified British statesmanship that will make it possible.

Vasily Livanov, is a legendary Russian actor, director and novelist, born in 1935. He was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth in 2006 for his exceptional portrayal of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in the hugely successful Russian film series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.

“What we’re seeing is a reversal, complete erosion, of all of the gains that were made during this phase in the mid 2000s. Poverty is up, inequality is up, and these are for me extremely serious concerns which are simply not being addressed by the government’s economic policy.”

-Julia Buxton (Oct. 1, 2017)

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This week, we present special programming as part of the Global Research News Hour’s 2018 summer series.

Venezuela, once a beacon for democratic and social transformation for Latin American countries, and an inspiration for much of the progressive Left abroad, is now struggling under an unprecedented economic and political crisis.

Over the course of President Hugo Chavez’s first decade in power, Venezuela saw households in poverty reduced by 39 per cent and those in extreme poverty down by more than half. Enrollment in higher education had doubled. Real social spending per person had more than tripled. [1]

A recent survey however, put together by three universities, found 87 per cent of Venezuelan households to be living in poverty, a 38 per cent increase since 2014. In 2017, 64 per cent of Venezuelans had lost about 11 kg of weight due to hunger. The homicide rate in Venezuela increased by 345 per cent in 2017 over 1998. One in five Venezuelans in 2017 were the victim of some crime with 65 per cent preferring not to report to authorities out of distrust of the authorities. Six out of ten people between the ages of 18 and 24 no longer have access to higher education, and 38 per cent of children under 17 have stopped attending school citing problems with transportation, blackouts, and lack of food. [2]

Political chaos sweeping the country both from within and abroad has been taking its toll. Protests against Maduro’s government  sprang up in 2017. Foreign powers have rejected the results of the last presidential election as fraudulent, with the US and Canada imposing additional sanctions.[3]

To be certain, low oil commodity prices [which were the object of manipulation], Venezuela has been very dependent on its oil exports, is a big part of the problem. There has also been long-standing animosity toward the independence displayed by the Chavistas, in opposition to America’s military and economic hegemony of the South American continent.

But to dwell on these factors alone do a disservice to other problematic dynamics in play. For example, the failure to address legacies of corruption and social violence, ideological tensions between state and worker management, and those between the civilian and military elements of the ruling PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) and government.

As Venezuela under newly re-elected President Nicolas Maduro struggles with this crisis, we present a rigorous dissection of the events there in the last two decades and explore the prospects for the country moving ahead.

Professor Julia Buxton has made Venezuela the particular focus of her research. In a keynote address delivered in Winnipeg on October 1 2017, the academic plows past the ideological rhetoric, and provides insights into the human experience of the changes brought about under Chavez, and unaddressed oversights which contributed to the turmoil of today. This speech was presented as part of the University of Manitoba based Geopolitical Economy Research Group’s Revolutions Conference.

Audio provided by videographer Paul S Graham.

Julia Buxton is Professor of Comparative Politics at Central European University’s School of Public Policy, and Senior Research Associate at the Global Drug Policy Observatory, Swansea University.  A specialist on Latin America and an expert on Venezuela, receiving her PhD from the London School of Economics, Buxton has thematic expertise on democratisation and transition processes, post conflict recovery, and conflict analysis, including conflict sensitive design and policy implementation, as well as gender and gender sensitive design. She has authored numerous books and articles on Venezuela in the Chavez period and on Latin America in general.

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Notes:

1. http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/report-examines-economy-and-social-indicators-during-the-chavez-decade-in-venezuela
2. http://elucabista.com/2018/02/21/resultados-encovi-2017-radiografia-la-crisis-venezolana/
3. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-rights/venezuela-systematically-abused-foes-in-2017-protests-rights-groups-idUSKBN1DT0J4?feedType=RSS&

Iran’s insistence that Europe do more to preserve the nuclear deal suggests that it’s worried about becoming too strategically dependent on Russia in the coming future and is anxious to find a “balancing” partner before that happens.

Iranian President Rouhani is in Europe trying to get the three relevant signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal to offer more loans and concrete investment plans for enticing the Islamic Republic to abide by the terms of this agreement.  The author wrote about some of Iran’s motivations for doing so in his earlier piece at the end of May about how “Iran ‘Blackmailing’ Europe Plays Right Into Trump’s Hands”, but the continued failure of this policy deserves a follow-up analysis to update the reader about the changing strategic calculations inherent to this approach. The original points from the aforementioned piece still stand, but what’s changed since then is that Iran is increasingly worried that it’s about to become more strategically dependent on Russia than ever before, hence its anxious search for a “balancing” partner to counteract any perceived (key word) infringement on its sovereignty that this forthcoming relationship might inadvertently lead to.

The Real Story About Russian-Iranian Relations

Theoretically speaking, the overreliance of any state on a single partner usually leads to a lopsided relationship between the two parties, whereby the weakest of them finds itself unable to resist the will of the other. Should Trump’s sanctions war on Iran lead to even “moderate” results, then the country will quickly find itself largely isolated in the economic sense, especially if the US’ new Indian ally abides by Washington’s warning to greatly scale back its relations with Tehran under pain of the same so-called “secondary sanctions” that the EU is also being threatened with. The only realistic “pressure valve” that Iran could turn to for across-the-board relief under these trying circumstances is nearby Russia, which would be more than eager to realize its centuries-long dream of establishing predominant influence over the former Persian Empire. Unlike the naked imperialist motivations of the past, the current driving force is to put Moscow in the driver’s seat of multipolarity and allow it to “manage” Iran on behalf of the world.

Although it’s “politically incorrect” to speak about and violates one of the “sacred” tenets of Alt-Media dogma, Russia is already “balancing” Iran in the Mideast, especially through the consequences of its game-changing military-strategic partnership with “Israel” which has seen Moscow quietly give Tel Aviv the greenlight to turn Syria into a country-wide bombing range against the IRGC and Hezbollah. Russia’s 21^st-century grand strategy is to become the supreme “balancing” force in the Eurasian supercontinent, which therefore naturally necessitates playing the pivotal role in neutralizing the prospects of a Western-led War on Iran. Given its physical-military limitations and the prudent lack of political will for testing the boundaries of World War III in this regard, Russia’s “balancing” policy is complementary with the West’s in that it goes along with the notion that Iranian influence in the “Mashriq” (West Asia/Mideast) should be rolled back, though its multipolar twist is that it wants to redirect the country’s strategic focus eastward towards the Golden Ring in response.

Chasing Dreams Of Chinese Relief

It’s understandable why Iran would feel uncomfortable with seemingly being “downgraded” from an independent “subject” of International Relations to an “object” that can be “contained” and “corralled” in a certain direction like “cattle”, and it’s for that reason why it’s so actively seeking out a “balancing” partner. The first thought that most readers might instinctively have is for Iran to reach out to China, which is already its long-standing partner and extremely unlikely to bend to Trump’s will in abiding by his “secondary sanction” threats, unlike India. The challenge, however, is that Iran’s over-the-top rhetoric to raise the oil price has spooked the People’s Republic, which broke with its diplomatic custom of not openly trying to influence the affairs of other states by “chiding” the Islamic Republic after Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong said that it “should do more to benefit peace and stability in the region, and jointly protect peace and stability there. Especially as it is a country on the Gulf, it should dedicate itself to being a good neighbor and co-existing peacefully.”

Russia and China have both emphasized their commitment to fully implementing their responsibilities under the 2015 nuclear deal, but this in and of itself won’t be sufficient in compensating for the EU’s possible downscaling of its own under American pressure, which could deal a heavy hit to Iran’s budgetary planning especially in the context of Trump’s upcoming sanctions war against it. Unlike Russia, China might be reluctant to do more for Iran because of its new perception of the country as an increasingly irresponsible actor, to say nothing of Beijing’s needs to maintain a “balance” of interests between it and Saudi Arabia. Russia, too, is one of the Kingdom’s non-traditional but recently important strategic partners, especially as regards OPEC+, but the difference is that Riyadh understands the “containment”/”balancing”/”management” role that Moscow can play vis-à-vis Tehran which Beijing is unable to fulfill for simple reasons of geography and overall influence in the Mideast. Because of this, Russia can do much more for Iran as its “pressure valve”, which is accordingly why it’s received implicit “international approval” for this function.

Money Makes The World Go ‘Round

Another contributing factor influencing Iran’s strategic calculations regarding the “China card” is that the People’s Republic will probably limit its assistance to the economic sphere, which would surely be welcomed under the upcoming “Time of Troubles” but nevertheless has its risks in the sense that Beijing could essentially extend loans to the country at whatever interest rates and other terms that it wants, unless of course Russia was capable of presenting a competing offer. Encouraging “friendly competition” between Russia and China is a solid policy that would undoubtedly play out to Iran’s ultimate advantage, though provided that the two Great Powers don’t coordinate their economic approach to the country in order to keep rates artificially high in a relative sense, understanding that there aren’t any other realistic options available for the Islamic Republic. Europe, in this scenario, could be the perfect “third way”, which is why Iran is trying so hard to keep it committed to the nuclear deal so that it can “balance” out Russia and China.

In addition, despite prevailing Alt-Media wishes to the contrary and irrespective of wisdom, the euro is still very attractive to Iran, and the country’s decision makers would evidently prefer to conduct trade in that currency than Russia and China’s if given the choice (and all other factors being equal) for the very reason that they believe that it’s worth more in the global marketplace. It doesn’t matter that deal-signatory France hosts the MEK terrorist group that’s vowed to overthrow the Iranian government, because at the end of the day, “business is business” and “balancing is balancing”, and Iran is apparently willing to ignore the implications for its international image by trying to woo France as its much-needed “third partner” so long as this allows it to comfortably retain “equidistance” between Russia and China and therefore preempt any perceived overreliance on either (and especially Moscow). The pragmatism of this unofficial policy stands in stark contrast to the official “principle-driven” one that the state regularly promotes, but it nevertheless proves that all states are indeed guided by their interests first and foremost.

Concluding Thoughts

In order to avoid any deliberate twisting of the author’s words, it must be unambiguously stated at this point that no claim or suggestion is being made about Russia having any ill intentions in mind by advancing the policy that was described in this analysis, which is presumably understood in Moscow policymaking circles as the best strategy available to them for simultaneously securing their country’s interests in the Mideast and most “responsibly” maintaining its multipolar gains by “balancing” Iran for the reasons that were already mentioned. Iran, for its part, doesn’t have any “anti-Russian” motivation for seeking out a “balancing” partner for mitigating the country’s predicted overreliance on Moscow, nor does China have any “malicious” desire in potentially take advantage of the Islamic Republic’s situation in order to spin an impressive profit.  As regards France, Iran isn’t “selling out” on its principles by courting it and the rest of the EU as the country’s envisioned “third balancer” but is simply pursuing the most pragmatic option available to it under the geostrategic circumstances.

The interest-driven interrelated dynamics of the aforementioned states may surprise those who had hitherto naively assumed that one, some, or all of those countries only try to “do the right thing” and don’t care about the advantages or costs that this brings them, but therein lays one of the fundamental takeaways from this analysis. The Neo-Realist (or one could even say, Hyper-Realist at this point) paradigm is the most accurate model for understanding the emerging Multipolar World Order in the New Cold War, with even friendly countries like Russia, China, and Iran competing with one another as they try to lock in their geostrategic positions at this pivotal opening stage of the global systemic transition. Chaos Theory teaches that the initial conditions of any complex system disproportionately influence their development and ultimate outcome, which is why every player so urgently wants to carve out their niche at this time, though with Russia having an unparalleled advantage in this regard. That’s precisely what Iran fears, however, and which is why it’s so desperately seeking a “balancer” in the EU.

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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.

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

In June 2018 alone, more than 500 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Their boats were refused access to land in either Malta, or Italy. They were force-driven back by gun-boats to the North African shores they came from, mostly Libya, but many boats capsized and countless refugees didn’t make it.

These are de facto murders, high crimes against humanity, committed by the very European Union. The same “leaders” (criminals, rather), whose forebears are known to have raped, exploited, tortured, ravaged peoples and their lands of Asia, Africa, Latin America over the past 1000 years of abject colonization. Europeans have it in their genes – to be inhuman. This can possibly be extended to the ‘superior’ greedy white race in general. At least to those who make it to political or corporate high office in the formidable EU or exceptional US, or to those who appoint themselves into the European Commission. We should call them “The Heartless Bunch”.

This is the so-called West, now led by the United States of America – basically the British empire transplanted across the Atlantic, where they felt safer between two shining seas, than as a rickety island in the Atlantic, just in front of the enormous, contiguous land mass called Eurasia. The Old Continent, alias Europe, was given by the new trans-Atlantic empire, the new masters of the universe, a subservient role. And that was in the making for at least the last 100 years, when the new empire started weakening Europe, with two World Wars.

Today’s European (EU) leaders are puppets put in place by the Atlantist elites, to make sure that the rather educated Europeans do not go on the barricades, that they are debilitated regularly by free market corporatism creating unemployment, taking their hard worked-for social safety nets away, saturating them with fake news – and gradually oppressing them with growing police states, with a massive militarization – and finally using the articulately planned flood of refugees from the very US-EU-NATO destroyed countries – destroyed economically and by wars – as a further destabilizing weapon. Greece should serve as a vivid example of what’s really going on and is planned, starting with “inferior” southern EU states, those bordering on the strategic and economically important sea way – the Mediterranean Sea.

You think I’m crazy? – Start thinking again and connect the dots.

The refugee death toll in the Med-Sea in 2017 was about 3,200, 40% down from 2016, and more than 600 up to end of April 2018, and another more than 500 in June. This figure is bound to increase drastically, given the European closed-border policy – and more. The EU is contracting among others, the Libyan Coast Guard with gun boats to chase refugee vessels back to the Libyan shores, many sink – and saving those thrown into the sea is ‘forbidden’ – they are simply left to die. That’s the rule. Malta, a little island-appendix to Brussels, but important as a refugee transit, has issued strict bans on private fishing boats and NGOs trying to rescue refugees.

As a consequence, the by now well-known German NGO “Lifeline” boat with 234 rescued refugees and migrants on board from Africa and the Middle East – miserably poor, sick, desperate people – struggling for sheer survival, many with small kids, who wanted nothing more than their children to have a better life – was rejected by Malta, turned back into the sea, under guidance of NATO and EU hired military-type private contractor gun-boats. Eventually Portugal offered her safe shores for the refugees. Malta has a Partnership for Peace (PfP) Agreement with NATO, i.e. obeys NATO orders. NATO, a killer organization, has, of course, not a shred of humanity in its structure, nor in the blood of the people at its helm – anywhere in the world.

Imagine – in this context, an EU summit took place at the end of June 2018 to “arrange” and agree on how to handle the refugee crisis in the future, in other swords, how to keep them out of Europe. None of the countries, other than Germany, were even considering accepting some of these poor souls out of sheer humanitarian reasons, to give them shelter, food and medication. The discussion even considered where to build a wall – yes, fences were discussed to keep them out – Europe a xenophobic free-port for the rich, acting in questions of migration as a carbon copy of Trump. They deserve each other, Trump and Brussels, trade wars not withstanding – let them shred each other to pieces.

Well, this almost happened during, before and after the now-called “mini-summit”, with Madame Merkel almost losing her Chancellor’s job, as she, against all odds, represented the most humanitarian view of all the 28 neolibs. This did not go down well with her partner party, the ultra-conservative Bavarian CSU. Calls for her resignation abounded. The German Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, was about to resign over Merkel’s alleged refugee ‘generosity’ – in which case the highly fragile right-left coalition would have collapsed – and who knows how Germany may have continued to govern. Perhaps new elections would have had to be called, and then only god knows what might have happened. The empire could not allow this uncertainty to prevail, because Washington needs Germany as the chief-slave driver to lead Europe into total disarray and serfdom. It worked. Germany is alive and saved – and ticking.

Instead, the European refugee / migrant policy is in shambles. The EU are literally out to kill refugees, as a means of dissuasion? – Mass-murder as a means of discouraging the desperate to seek shelter in those very countries that were instrumental in destroying their livelihoods, their families, their towns, their infrastructure, their education and health facilities – their youth? Generations of young Middle Eastern and African people are gone, destroyed.

Did these high-ranking EU officials in Brussels mention their own huge responsibility for the refugee floods with one single word? – No, of course not. Not with one breath. Has the conscience in one single head of these fake, neolibs-neonazis, as it were, self-serving EU heads of state been awakened by this very fact of guilt for what they are to confront? – Has it caused sleepless nights? I doubt it. They are far from this level of human compassion, they are monsters.

Then, there was and is Italy, with her strange new coalition, a coalition of convenience. The leftish 5-Star Movement in alliance with the right-wing Lega Norte, selling their human conscience to be able to reign, giving away their responsibility for migration to the xenophobic, narcissistic, and yes, close to fascist Lega Norte – which is adamant not to receive migrants. They would boycott any result that would force Italy to take in refugees, or even build border transit camps. In the end, they reached a toothless agreement; a non-agreement, rather; an accord that obliged none of the parties to do anything. Everything is voluntary. Period. And Macron said that this was the best refugee summit the EU ever had. So much for dismal brainlessness.

All was voluntary. The only agreement they could book for themselves, is to build refugee camps in North African countries for the shipped-back survivors. Fortunately, every North African country, from Egypt to Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco said no. Having seen what happened in such literal slave camps in Libya, they had at least the compassion for these desperate human beings to prevent this from reoccurring. Compassion, a term, a feeling or sensation, the Europeans are devoid of.

However, no Israeli- Trump- Brussels-type wall or barbed-wire fence will keep the desperate in their economically, or by war, or western terrorism destroyed countries. The west, and only the west, is responsible for the endless destructive chaos, torture and lawlessness in these nations that the west wants to dominate, for myriad reasons – to steal their energy, minerals; for their strategic location, and finally on the way to total full spectrum world hegemony. This, the west will not achieve. That’s for sure. Evil will not prevail in the long run. Darkness will eventually cede to light. That’s the way nature works. But on its way to collapse, Evil will maim and kill millions of lives. Countless children will have no future, no parents, no education, no health services, no drinking water. They will be made to slaves as a means for their survival, to be raped and exploited or eventually killed. The European crime is of infinite dimension and nobody sees it, let alone stops it.

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

Featured image is from TruePublica.

Increased Pakistani dependence on China to help it avert resorting to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to avoid a financial and economic crisis spotlights fears that the terms of Chinese investment in massive Belt and Road-related projects would not pass international muster.

Concerns that China’s US$ 50 billion plus investment in Pakistani infrastructure and energy, the Belt and Road’s crown jewel dubbed the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), potentially amounts to a debt trap, compound suggestions that Pakistan increasingly will have no choice but to toe Beijing’s line.

The concerns are reinforced by the vision spelled out in a draft plan for CPEC. The plan envisioned a dominant Chinese role in Pakistan’s economy as well as the creation of a Chinese style surveillance state and significant Chinese influence in Pakistani influence.

Pakistani officials, concerned that Chinese loans offer a band-aid rather than a structural solution, have cautioned China, in a bid to keep the People’s Republic committed to bailing them out, that CPEC projects would be at risk if their country was forced to seek help from the IMF.

The officials said that they would have to disclose the terms of CPEC projects if they are forced to revert to the IMF and that this could lead to projects being cancelled.

“Once the IMF looks at CPEC, they are certain to ask if Pakistan can afford such a large expenditure given our present economic outlook,” the Financial Times quoted a Pakistani official as saying.

China has so far been willing to bail Pakistan out with Chinese state-owned bank giving the South Asian country some $5 billion in loans in the last 12 months in addition to a US$1.5 billion trade facility.

Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves plunged to US$9.66 billion last month from US$16.4 billion in May 2017.

Pakistani efforts to avert a crisis could not come at a more sensitive moment with elections scheduled for July 25. Political tension in the country were heightened this week by the sentencing to prison on corruption charges of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter, Maryam, as well as the likely participation of a large number of Islamic militants in the polls.

To make things worse, China last month did not try to shield Pakistan from being grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international anti-money laundering and terrorism watchdog. that threatens to impair the country’s access to international financial markets.

Pakistan is struggling to avoid being blacklisted by the group.

Pakistani concern about disclosing terms of CPEC projects, even if it may involve a degree of opportunistic hyperbole, reinforces widespread worries in the country itself as well as in the international community that Chinese-funded Belt and Road projects put recipients at risk of walking into a debt trap and losing control of some of their key assets.

Malaysia this week suspended China-backed projects worth more than US$20 billion on the grounds that many made no financial sense. The projects included a railway and two pipelines.

China has written off an undisclosed amount of Tajik debt in exchange for ceding control of some 1,158 square kilometres of disputed territory close to the Central Asian nation’s border with the troubled north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Sri Lanka, despite public protests, was forced to give China a major stake in its port of Hambantota.

Pakistan and Nepal withdrew last November from two dam-building deals. The withdrawal coincided with mounting questions in Pakistan about what some saw as a neo-colonial effort to extract the country’s resources.

A report published in March by the Washington-based Center for Global Development warned that 23 of the 68 countries benefitting from Belt and Road investments were “significantly or highly vulnerable to debt distress.”

The centre said eight of the 23 countries – Pakistan, Tajikistan, Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Laos. the Maldives, Mongolia, and Montenegro, Pakistan, and Tajikistan – were particularly at risk.

Djibouti already owes 82 percent of its foreign debt to China while China is expected to account for 71% of Kyrgyz debt as Belt and Road-related projects are implemented.

“There is…concern that debt problems will create an unfavourable degree of dependency on China as a creditor. Increasing debt, and China’s role in managing bilateral debt problems, has already exacerbated internal and bilateral tensions in some BRI (Belt and Road initiative) countries,” the report said.

With analysts predicting that China will ultimately be unable to stabilize Pakistan financially, Pakistan is ultimately likely to have to revert to the IMF in a move that could seriously impact the Belt and Road initiative, widely perceived as an infrastructure driven effort to cement Chinese economic and geopolitical influence across a swath of land that stretches from South-eastern Europe and the Atlantic coast of Africa to the People’s Republic.

Analysts estimate that Pakistan this year needs US$ 25-28 billion to service its debt and ensure investor confidence in its ability to put its financial house in order. An IMF technical assistance team this week concluded a week-long visit to Pakistan.

Said one analyst:

“Ultimately, the IMF is Pakistan’s only option. If an IMF-imposed regime has consequences for BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) projects, it could impact perceptions of the terms China imposes.”

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This article was also published on The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario,  Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa, and the forthcoming China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom

Featured image is from Investors Lounge.

Last week was the 90^th anniversary of Che Guevara’s birth. He was a revolutionary and a doctor. Most importantly, he was a philosopher. He had ideas, needed today. Che argued with the Soviets about human motivation. He said human beings are not motivated by televisions and cars, not for what matters.

Capitalist economists say he was right, although he doesn’t get credit. 1 For simple, uninteresting challenges, we act for gain. But for tasks of sacrifice, discovery and creation, material gain is often irrelevant. Moral incentives, Che said, are what drive us to change the world.

He meant “moral” in a broader sense than mere cultivation of virtue. He meant experiencing growth as a human being: realizing essentially human capacities, emotional and intellectual.

European philosophers had a silly view about straight lines. They said reason depend upon ends: Know what you want and find ways to get it. Some even say you can’t live without ends: something to look forward to. They call it hope.

I wrote a doctoral dissertation on this view, called “instrumental rationality”. It wasn’t because I was interested in it. I wanted to know why academic philosophers liked it. It was really the only view out there, in analytic philosophy.

It rules out discovery, the kind Che knew was necessary for anti-imperialists – discovery of humanness.

I thought about Che when I read Ramzy Baroud’s powerful book, The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto 2018). The book is personal stories of catastrophe, by generations of Palestinians, in the Middle East and abroad.  Joe Catron is the only non-Palestinian in the book. In a crucial way, his story is central.

Joe is from Hopewell, Virginia. He discovers that the Palestinians’ struggle is his. He goes to Gaza for a few days and stays years. He stays through two wars. Death hangs over Joe like it hangs over Gazans. But Joe feels alive. He learns that it is not his death he cares about.

As a human shield at the El-Wafa Medical Rehabilitation centre, with 12 critical patients who can’t be moved, bombarded for days, Joe Catron goes from being “an activist with many questions and few answers to … a man, still with few answers but with a clear sense of a calling”.

It wasn’t an end he’d dreamed up back in Hopewell, and then set out to achieve, following a plan. No straight lines explain the relevance and depth of what Joe understands and acquires in Gaza. As he describes it, what happens to him in Gaza is, quite simply, friendship.

It changes him. It is moral incentive. When Che refers to el hombre nuevo (the new person), he means, in part at least, what happens to Joe: awareness of dependence on others, and direction based on that dependence. Joe doesn’t collect information about tunnels, political groups and strategies, as other foreigners in Gaza were doing. His “clear sense of a calling” is the person he becomes.

A recent best-seller tells us to abandon self-help books and read novels. 2 The author is interviewed around the world. Such a sensation shows how desperately the North needs ideas from the South and East: more sensible, naturalistic ones. The self-help industry is all about straight lines. They don’t notice that this is  so. There are no straight lines in nature.

We can learn this from good literature. True. Or we can learn it from life. Che did. So did Joe Catron. They knew it because they respected life, others’ lives. They wanted to know them.

And that’s been the message of countless wise philosophers, from across the globe, and throughout the ages, including Che, José Martí, Marx, Lenin, the Buddha. They didn’t tell us not to bother with straight lines. The idea never occurred to them in the first place. It doesn’t make sense. European liberals invented that unrealistic idea.

Brilliant Cuban politician and academic, Raúl Roa, in 1953, opens his Viento Sur (Southern Wind) with an echo of Marx’s “A specter is haunting Europe”: “A wind blows in the south”, Roa writes. No straight lines, no formulae, no pills can save us from existential complexity: insecure, decaying, contradictory.

But we can face that reality, with conciencia (awareness). It is eminently more interesting , and motivating.

Che told medical students in 1960:

“If we all use the new weapon of solidarity … then the only thing left for us is to know the daily stretch of the road and to take it. Nobody can point out that stretch; that stretch in the personal road of each individual; it is what he will do every day, what he will gain from his individual experience … dedicated to the people’s well- being.”  3

Why is it considered a new insight that we should learn to feel – through literature, for instance – rather than seek out a quick fix for our human condition? Fidel Castro said in Caracus in 1998,

“They discovered ‘smart weapons’ but we discovered something more powerful: that people think and feel”.

It’s not trivial. The viento sur is more useful than yet another self-help book, even if it tells us to read novels.  If we know the world, that is, if we discover what we did not know before, and if we learn how to live well in that world, humanly, it is because of capacity for connection, not because we reason in lines: el hombre nuevo. If we believe in science, there’s no other way.

It’s why Ana Belén Montes needs to be known now. She is a threat to what Che called “the myth of the self-made man”. She knows moral incentive. Ana is still silenced in a US jail. 4

Please sign petition here.

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Susan Babbitt is author of Humanism and Embodiment (Bloomsbury 2014). She is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Notes

1. Pink, Dan (2010). The surprising truth about motivation. RSA Animate.

2. Svend Brinkman, Stand firm (Polity 2017)

3. Speech to medical students and health workers. In David Deutschman (Ed.), The Che Guevara Reader (NY: Ocean Press, 1997) 104

4. http://www.prolibertad.org/ana-belen-montes. For more information, write to [email protected] or[email protected]

In this article, we have attempted to identify the most censored stories of modern times in Britain. We have asked the opinions of one of the most famous and celebrated journalists and documentary film-makers of our time, a high-profile former Mi5 intelligence officer, a veteran journalist of the Iraq war, a gagged ex-army medic along with the head of one of the worlds largest charities.

One comment from our eclectic group of experts said;

“the UK has the most legally protected and least accountable intelligence agencies in the western world so even in just that field competition is fierce, let alone all the other cover-ups.”

So true have we found this statement to be that we’ve had to split this article into two categories – military and non-military, with a view that we may well categorise surveillance and privacy on its own another time.

Without further ado – here are the most censored military stories in Britain since the 1980s, that we can publish – in no particular order. Do bear in mind that for those with inquisitive minds, some of these stories you will have read something about somewhere – but to the majority of citizens, these stories will read like conspiracy theories.

Iraq sanctions – the death toll that wasn’t

Before the full-scale British/American led attack on Iraq in 2003-11, a US, UK and UN sanctions regime was imposed on Iraq on the pretext of denying Saddam Hussein the materials necessary to make weapons of mass destruction. Items banned from Iraq under this rationale included a vast number of items needed for everyday life.

Undisputed UN figures have since shown that 1.7 million Iraqi civilians died due to the West’s brutal sanctions regime, half of whom were known to be children. The mass death was seemingly intended. Among items banned by the UN sanctions were equipment essential for Iraq’s national water treatment system.

A secret US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) document discovered by Professor Thomas Nagy of the School of Business at George Washington University amounted to what he said was: “an early blueprint for genocide against the people of Iraq”.

Source

In his paper for the Association of Genocide Scholars, Professor Nagi explained that the DIA document revealed: “minute details of a fully workable method to ‘fully degrade the water treatment system’ of an entire nation” over a period of a decade.”

This means that in Iraq alone, the US-UK killed 1.9 million Iraqis from 1991, then from 2003 onwards another 1 million in the attack of Iraq: totalling just under 3 million Iraqis dead in two decades.

In May 2013 the reputable polling company ComRes asked a representative sample of the British public the following question: “How many Iraqis, both combatants and civilians, do you think have died as a consequence of the war that began in Iraq in 2003?” According to 59% of the respondents, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis died as a result of the war. The Britsh media totally ignored this story. How’s that for manipulating the minds of the masses?

Menwith Hill – The centre for kill-capture ops

For years, journalists and researchers have speculated about what really goes on inside Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, while human rights groups and some politicians have campaigned for more transparency about its activities. Documents revealed by The Intercept showed how the NSA used the British base to aid “a significant number of capture-kill operations” across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by powerful eavesdropping technology that can harvest data from more than 300 million emails and phone calls a day.

The NSA pioneered groundbreaking new spying programs at Menwith Hill to pinpoint the locations of suspected terrorists accessing the internet in remote parts of the world. The programs — with names such as GHOSTHUNTER and GHOSTWOLF aided covert missions in countries where the U.S. has not declared war.

The disclosures about Menwith Hill raise questions about the extent of British complicity in U.S. drone strikes and other so-called targeted killing missions, including many civilians deaths, which may in some cases have violated international laws or constituted war crimes.

To keep information about Menwith Hill’s surveillance role secret, the U.S. and U.K. governments have actively misled the public for years through a “cover story” portraying the base as a facility used to provide “rapid radio relay and conduct communications research.”

David Cameron – A Nuclear Weapons Deal – £18m syphoned off to Tory party funds

South Africa operated a covert nuclear ballistic missile program in the 1980s. The United Nations introduced a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa in the development and manufacture of such weapons. The result was that nine nuclear weapons were left after testing.

David Cameron bought and sold with taxpayers money three of those nuclear weapons, put them in unsafe hands in the Middle East and the Conservative party banked nearly £18 million.

Documentary filmmaker Peter Eyre:

“I find it amazing that David Cameron and others travelled to South Africa during the embargo period and not only violated international law but also violated international law in dealing with nuclear weapons that were not known to the UN. In 1989 David Cameron and others went down to South Africa to carry a plan that resulted in only 6 operational nuclear weapons going back to the US for decommissioning. The other three were to be purchased by the British Government as a standby mechanism against Saddam Hussain. Remember this is all under the radar of the United Nations!”

These weapons were not only stored unsafely in the Arabian peninsula but were stored in a volatile region, which subsequently went missing. Margaret Thatcher was asked to sign off these weapons in late 1990 under a special Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) describing them as metal cylinders rather than nuclear bombs.

Dr David Kelly (remember him?) was the only person in mainstream UK MOD tasked with being in the loop for that covert offshore procurement of battlefield nukes from Apartheid South Africa. Using money from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) to acquire the weapons, it was subsequently revealed later that £17.8 million was syphoned from this secret nuclear deal into Conservative Party funds. No wonder this story was kept under wraps.

Use of Thermobaric weapons

The Ministry of Defence revealed for the first time – accidentally, just a few months ago – that British drones are firing thermobaric weapons in Syria.  The disclosure comes in a Freedom of Information (FoI) response to Drone Wars detailing the use of Reaper drones over the previous three months.

Dr David Kelly – Censored for 70 years

David Kelly (the same one as above) was an authority on biological warfare, employed by the British Ministry of Defence, and formerly a weapons inspector with the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq. Kelly was found dead two days after a parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee interrogated Kelly about the so-called ‘dodgy dossier.

The upshot was that Lord Hutton’s decision to classify documents about the death of Dr David Kelly faced claims of a whitewash amid claims by experts that there are increasing grounds to question the inquiry’s verdict of suicide.

The Hutton inquiry, which reported in 2004 that Kelly’s death was suicide after he cut an artery in his wrist, came under scrutiny from doctors who claim the medical account is improbable. Hutton subsequently ordered the documentation surrounding Kelly’s death, including the pathology reports and witness statements – to be classified for 70 years. Although Freedom of Information experts all agree there are strong grounds to release the documents – every angle, including legal challenge has been rejected.

“This is a revelation,” said Michael Powers QC, a former assistant coroner and expert in coronial law. “I can’t think of anything that would justify these documents being treated any differently.”

These documents have also been classified for twice as long as documentation of national security.

Questions have remained around the death of Dr Kelly after the initial inquest into his death was never resumed. In addition, the Hutton enquiry used a less stringent test than would have used in an ordinary inquest raising further suspicions that Dr Kelly was in fact murdered. Under these conditions, none of us living today are likely to hear what actually happened.

The US paid a British PR company to produce fake al Qaeda videos

The Pentagon gave a controversial British PR firm over half a billion dollars to run a top-secret propaganda programme in Iraq making fake videos of Al Qaeda atrocities, partly to keep taxpayers cash rolling in as the general public became more war-weary over time.

Bell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos. The company was one of Britain’s most successful public relations organisations and was credited with honing Margaret Thatcher’s steely image and helping the Conservative party win three elections.

Bell Pottinger’s work in Iraq was a huge media operation which cost over a hundred million dollars a year on average. Documents unearthed shows the company was employing almost 300 British and Iraqi staff at one point.

Transactions worth $540 million between the Pentagon and Bell Pottinger were recorded for information what they termed ‘operations and psychological operations’ on a series of contracts issued from May 2007 to December 2011. The disgraced PR firm has since gone bankrupt over a series of scandals, including stoking up racial tensions in South African elections.

Had it not been for a whistleblower, this story would not be known at all today.

The White Helmets

The White Helmets brand was conceived and directed by a marketing company named “The Syria Campaign” based in New York. They have managed to fool millions of people. They recently won a 2016 Right Livelihood Award and Netflix released a special ‘documentary’ movie about the White Helmets. The Guardian and others even called on the Nobel Committee to award the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to the White Helmets.

They stole the name Syria Civil Defense from the real Syrian organization. They are not independent, are funded by governments that want regime change and are not apolitical. They do not work across Syria but only work in areas controlled by the armed opposition, mostly Nusa and Al Qaeda. Dozens of reports have emerged about how this group carry weapons and make publicity and propaganda videos.

The Swedish Doctors for Human Rights even demonstrated how the White Helmets were seemingly happy watching a baby die simply to make a video. (Viewer discretion – report and video HERE).

The real Syrian Civil Defense force works on a shoestring budget with real volunteers without a video team accompanying and promoting them. Most in the West are unaware that the 60+ year old Syrian Civil Defense team continues to work with absolutely no recognition.

Sadly, the White Helmets would sit very comfortably in another story in this report where it was found that the Pentagon paid a British PR company hundreds of millions of dollars to produce fake al Qaeda videos. It also fits nicely with the fact that the Syrian Observatory is funded by The Foreign Office and that Britain’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund feeds the White Helmets millions in taxpayers money.

Syria Gas Attacks

Irrefutable, hard evidence came forward that totally destroyed the story of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government over its own people in Douma.  Twice winner of the British Press Awards‘ Journalist of the Year prize, and seven-time winner of the British Press Awards’ Foreign Correspondent of the Year, Robert Fisk, a Middle East correspondent since 1976 and since 1989 has been correspondent for The Independent, managed to make his journey unaccompanied by Russian or Syrian officials – to Douma.

This is the site of the so-called attack that the US, UK and France decided was enough evidence to be the pretext for attacking a sovereign state that could have escalated into something much worse – a major conflict with Russia, Iran and even China.

Far from what we had been told in the mainstream media – Fisk’s report went on to say “that many eye-witness accounts confirmed that there had never been any gas attacks.” The witness report confirmed many times over said:

“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”

Fisk was subsequently persecuted by his peers in the mainstream media and this important story largely went unreported.

Rendition and torture – New secret courts and secret evidence

It is no coincidence that the media has just reported that there are: “Allegations that the US government has intervened to censor a report into rendition and torture by UK spies.” Dominic Grieve, chair of the intelligence and security committee attacked the government, accusing it of acting “unacceptably” by leaking the report to the media (presumably for political reasons).

Over the past few years, increasing evidence has come to light of UK knowledge of, and involvement in, the CIA’s post 9/11 programme of extraordinary rendition and torture and in attempts to use information obtained through the use of torture as evidence in UK courts. This was backed up in recent years by a number of people who have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Morocco and elsewhere who have alleged that UK officials actively assisted their abusers.

There is also evidence that UK officials have passed on information to their American counterparts which was then used in abducting and subjecting people to extraordinary rendition and in torture interrogations.

The terms of the inquiry referred to above made sure that the Government’s most senior civil servant and not a judge presided – nothing less than the use of closed courts and secret evidence. It is clear that extraordinary steps have been taken to keep any information about possible UK complicity of torture secret.

As Liberty, the human rights organisation said:

“There is now effectively a parallel system of secret courts and secret evidence.”

We may never know the full extent of rendition and torture conducted by the United Kingdom since 9/11.

Drone Wars Don’t Exist

The UK has surrounded its use of armed drones with secrecy. The government is refusing to provide key documents even to the secretive Intelligence and Security Committee. Committee Chair Andrew Tyrie told that Guardian that without the documents the committee would not be able to do its job when it was investigating the illegal extra-judicial killing of a British subject in Syria under the Cameron government.

Another key secret is where Britain’s armed drones are based and where they are actually operating?  While the UK currently has a fleet of armed Reapers, the MoD refuses to say how many or where they are located, arguing that security concerns prevent disclosure.  No such security concerns affect other UK aircraft.  The real reason for the secrecy is that the UK wants to be able to operate them covertly just as the US does on kill missions in countries where no war is being conducted and where no permissions exist for their use in those countries.  We are simply not allowed to know.

Armed drones and the idea of ‘risk free warfare’ is a growing danger to global security and is a myth perpetuated by the UK and US governments.  In 2014 it was known that of 41 human targets identified to be killed by drones – 1,147 innocent civilians died as a result. This means that for every designated kill, over 30 completely innocent civilians are killed just for the crime of being in the wrong place.

These are just some of Britain’s most censored stories. There are so many of them that we have had to categorise them, which says something about how democracy, free speech, civil liberty and human rights are performing in Britain right now.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

NATO, as the world knew it, is dead, and the organization’s demise is attributable to the combination of President Putin deft diplomacy in advancing the Russian-Turkish rapprochement and his American counterpart’s revolutionary reconceptualization of the very essence of the alliance, both of which wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for Obama.

NATO, as it was previously conceived of for decades, is dead, and while it might be reborn in a different format sometime in the future, its previous model has exhausted its purpose and is entering into the dustbin of history. The organization still officially exists, but everything about it is changing to the point where it might soon become unrecognizable. The consistently anti-Russian driving force behind the bloc has been decisively neutralized by President Putin’s deft diplomacy in winning over its second-largest military member, Turkey, as Russia’s newest strategic partner, while Trump’s revolutionary reconceptualization of the alliance as an equal collection of states combating the asymmetrical security challenges of terrorism and illegal migration will fundamentally transform what it means to be a NATO member.

The Shadow Of Obama

Before going through the post-mortem in detail, it’s worthwhile to describe how Obama’s shadow hangs heavy in the sense that he orchestrated the three greatest mistakes that inadvertently led to NATO’s demise. The 2011 NATO War on Libya has the chance of being seen in hindsight as the final flash of a fast- fading star, with its “shock-and-awe” destruction of the former Jamahiriya going down in history as perhaps the last real instance of the bloc’s members working on coordination with one another to conventionally wage war against a targeted state. The self-congratulatory pomp that followed this brief military campaign has since been proven to have been premature because of the country’s ongoing civil war and role as a transit state for facilitating the flood of hundreds of thousands of migrants into Europe, which sparked its own crisis that has since led to the rise of EuroRealist populists in the continent.

In addition, the Libyan model of Hybrid War destabilization was also applied to Syria, albeit minus the final conventional warfare form, and this exacerbated the Migrant Crisis to the point of no return in guaranteeing the inevitable rise of right-wing politicians in Europe. Taken together, the Wars on Libya and Syria, waged in different manners but nevertheless following the same neo-imperialist regime change form, generated unprecedented humanitarian blowback to the point of triggering far-reaching political changes in NATO’s EU members, making many of them reconsider the official anti-Russian purpose of the bloc when it could be better put to use in defending the organization’s southern shores from swarms of migrants. For as “constructive” of an idea as this may have been, it led to deep divisions within the EU itself between the pro-migrant Western countries, the anti-migrant Central & Eastern European ones, and the anti-Russian Baltic States, Poland, and Romania.

While these intra-NATO disagreements were percolating, Obama made another massive mistake in giving the greenlight for the failed pro-American coup attempt against Turkish President Erdogan in summer 2016, and the blowback from this sloppy operation was almost instantaneous in making the bloc’s second-largest military deeply suspicious of US intentions from then on out. Although Turkey had hitherto been mostly focused on facilitating American strategic objectives in the Mideast (which for the most part were disadvantageous to Russia’s long-term regional vision), its unchanging geopolitical position as an irreplaceable part of NATO’s anti-Russian “containment” policy was thought to have retained a consistent function that had been taken completely for granted up until that point. That was a huge error, as will be seen, because President Putin’s deft diplomacy succeeded in its judo-like maneuver to flip Turkey from an enemy into a partner.

Putin’s Judo

Taking advantage of President Erdogan’s understandable distrust of what he had presumed was his country’s closest ally, President Putin reached out to extend his support for the embattled Turkish leader in demonstrating which of the two Great Powers really had Ankara’s best interests in mind. It shouldn’t be forgotten that unconfirmed reports also alleged that Russian intelligence might have tipped President Erdogan off right before a fighter jet flown by one of the coup conspirators was set to bomb his residence, therefore saving his life and sealing a new bond of friendship between both countries. It might never be known whether that actually happened or not, but in any case, the Russian-Turkish rapprochement that followed soon thereafter was swift and even saw Moscow passively accepting Ankara’s limited “Euphrates Shield” incursion into northern Syria later that summer, something that would have been utterly unthinkable just a few months prior.

The revival of the Turkish Stream pipeline project and a related agreement on nuclear energy cooperation served as physical testimonies to the strength of the Russian-Turkish Strategic Partnership, which went one dramatic step much further in officially including a military dimension per Ankara’s desire to buy Moscow’s state-of-the-art S-400 air & missile defense system despite Washington’s threats to sanction it if the deal goes through. In the course of less than two years, President Putin’s deft diplomacy flipped the tables on the previous US-Turkish Strategic Partnership by replacing America with Russia and totally changing the overall dynamics of Mideast geopolitics. The de-facto removal of NATO’s second-largest military force from the organization, which is essentially the true state of affairs at the moment given Ankara’s planned S-400 military cooperation with Moscow and Washington’s CAATSA sanction threats, dealt a heavy blow to bloc from which it has yet to recover.

Decades’ worth of strategic planning that went into using Turkey as a bulwark against the spread of Russian influence towards the Mediterranean are now worthless after Ankara has for all intents and purposes turned its back on the bloc out of protest of the US’ role in the failed summer 2016 coup attempt. The organization can no longer count on the cornerstone of its Mideast, Black Sea, and Eastern Mediterranean policies, and this has inevitably led to the alliance having to reinvent itself. As it happened, this took place concurrent with the rapid politicization of the Migrant Crisis and its resultant intra-NATO/-EU disputes about how best to respond to this civilizational challenge, further exacerbating divisions within the West and making Turkey’s “defection” (brought about through President Putin’s masterful diplomacy) all the more impactful of a destabilizing move for the already confused alliance.

Trump’s Turnaround

The last and most powerful factor that contributed to the death of NATO was Trump himself, who decided to turn everything around and reorient the bloc from its official anti-Russian purpose by transforming it into something entirely different. It’s true that some of the anti-Russian functions will still remain because of the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania’s membership as “frontline states”, but Trump’s vision is to use NATO as a platform for responding more to asymmetrical security threats such as terrorism and illegal immigration instead of conventional ones like Russia was portrayed as being since the organization’s inception. Words are one thing, but transforming them through action is another, and it’s here where Trump is “walking the walk” much more than “talking the talk” like his predecessors did in visibly pressuring his “allies” to contribute their required 2% of GDP towards defense like they were always supposed to do to begin with.

Trump, being the successful businessman that he is, can’t fathom why the US should subsidize the EU’s “socialist welfare states” especially given that the “foreboding challenge” of a “Soviet invasion” no longer makes that necessary like it may have once did. Seeing world affairs from an economic perspective and therefore perceiving the EU to be America’s rival in this respect, Trump knows that the best way to “level the playing field” and “get a better deal” is to put pressure on America’s military underlings by compelling them to pay more for defense in order to advance their interests in a reconceptualized NATO, with this being coordinated alongside the US’ campaign to get the EU to lift its anti-American tariffs. The knock-on effect of this “double whammy” could hit the Europeans’ economic growth and possibly compel them into “cutting a deal’ of some sort for relief, one which can only be speculated upon at this time but which would undoubtedly strengthen American influence.

Far from representing the “united” West that NATO did during the Old Cold War and the brief period of unipolarity that followed, the New Cold War has seen the bloc weakened from within because of the blowback caused by Obama’s disastrous Wars on Libya & Syria as well as the failed pro-American coup attempt against President Erdogan in summer 2016.

President Putin skillfully exploited the latter in rapidly turning Turkey into a close partner and convincing it that its future interests are best served by keeping the bloc at arm’s length, while Trump dealt the deathblow against the alliance for his own reasons mainly having to do with a different view on contemporary security challenges and his economically driven vision of foreign affairs. While the shell of NATO still exists, its functional capacities are now divided into different regional blocs mostly constituting the new anti-migrant European Intervention Force in Western Europe and the remaining anti-Russian forces in the East, though Turkey’s de-facto “defection” means that the organization will never be the same as before.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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

Featured image is from Activist Post.

The military operation of government forces in southern Syria was once again resumed after the Damascus government and local militants groups had failed to reach any kind of fully-fledged reconciliation agreement that would allow to settle the situation in the area via a peaceful way.

On July 5, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Tiger Forces and their allies liberated the town of Saida and the nearby abandoned air defense base in the province of Daraa. Additionally, the SAA advanced along the border with Jordan liberating over 10 villages between the border points of 71 and 79.

According to pro-government sources, the SAA faced a little resistance during their operation along the border. Russian troops were spotted there.

The operation is also supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces. Nonetheless, the number of airstrikes is limited. Currently, government forces are developing their operation in the direction of the Nassib border crossing.

Clashes between Turkish-backed militants, reportedly members of Ahrar al-Sharqiyah, and government troops have taken place in the village of Tadef in the province of Aleppo. Turkish-backed forces captured some positions, but were forced to withdraw from them later. According to pro-government sources, the withdrawal was ordered by the Turkish military to de-escalated the situation.

Such incidents show the real sentiments among the so-called moderate opposition groups backed by Turkey and limitations of Ankara’s control of these groups.

The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq claimed that on July 4 ISIS fighters had ambushed a convoy of the US-led coalition in the village of Namliyah in the eastern part of Deir Ezzor province. According to Amaq, ISIS employed 18 IEDs against the convoy killing four US troops. Other sources say that only two US servicemen were killed. The US-led coalition has not commented on these reports so far.

Meanwhile, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have captured the villages of Madinah and Qabr Taha from ISIS in the southern part of Hasakah province. The SDF is continuing it operation in the direction of the Tuwaymin area.

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Washington demands all other countries bow to its will. That’s how imperialism works, diabolically pursuing what’s harmful to most people worldwide.

Endless wars of aggression, financial wars, currency wars, sanctions wars, bloody coups, color revolutions, political assassinations, and other hostile tactics show how far the US will go to achieve its aims – on trade and virtually everything else.

Three rounds of Trump regime trade talks with China failed to resolve key outstanding differences.

Beijing vowed to retaliate in kind to US tariffs and other trade impediments if imposed – making it clear if Trump wants a trade war, he’ll get one.

On July 6, it began with 25% US tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese products becoming effective, $16 billion more to follow.

The Trump regime threatened similar duties on another $400 billion worth of Chinese goods if Beijing retaliates in kind.

China’s Commerce Ministry responded straightaway, saying

Beijing “will not fire its first shot, but is inevitably forced to strike back to defend the core interest of the nation and its people. We will report to the World Trade Organization on a timely basis.”

Trade wars assure losers, not winners. China is a major world power, not about to roll over for Washington, a reality Trump apparently doesn’t understand or won’t accept. In time, he will – the hard way if he remains rigid.

He’s mainly targeting Beijing’s Made in China 2025 strategy – a 10-year plan to transform the country into a global industrial and high-tech manufacturing superpower.

Follow-up plans aim to further enhance China technologically and industrially by 2049, the People’s Republic of China’s 100th anniversary.

US economic and financial confrontation with Beijing has nothing to do with America’s trade deficit, caused by letting the nation’s corporate predators offshore its industrial base to low-wage countries.

Paul Craig Roberts explained it in his book, titled “The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism,” saying

“half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations.”

Millions of US production and other jobs were lost, China unfairly blamed for the actions of corporate America, Washington OKing what happened.

Roberts put it this way, saying

millions of Americans “lost their middle class jobs not because China played unfairly, but because American corporations betrayed the American people and exported their jobs.”

“ ’Making America great again’ means dealing with these corporations, not with China” – laying blame where it belongs.

Representing Beijing’s view, China’s Global Times (GT) slammed the Trump regime, saying it’s “determined to rewrite world trade rules,” benefitting US interests exclusively.

China is the world’s second largest economy, heading toward surpassing America in the years ahead, including by becoming a manufacturing and high-tech superpower – what Washington wants to prevent.

What’s inevitable won’t be prevented. President Xi Jinping doesn’t want a trade war.

“But if (Trump) wants to contain China’s high-tech development and marginalize its promising high-tech industry, it will be quite another case,” GT explained, adding:

“It is China’s right to develop its high-tech industries, including aerospace, telecommunications and artificial intelligence.”

“It does not make sense that China cannot set foot in these fields just because the US is in the lead or believes that if Beijing ever achieves any results, they would all be ‘stolen’ from Washington. This is a severe distortion of the spirit of intellectual property.”

“If the US is determined to escalate conflicts with China, then so be it. Perhaps the Trump administration can only clear its mind after a fight.”

So far, US duties on Chinese products target engines, motors, construction and farming machinery, electric transportation, telecom equipment and certain precision instruments.

Beijing’s countermeasures target US soybeans and other agricultural commodities, vehicles and aquatic products.

The Trump regime’s trade dispute with China and other countries is all about pursuing its hegemonic goals – seeking unchallenged US economic, financial, technological, political and military dominance over all other nations.

When pursued the hegemonic way Washington operates, it’s the stuff global wars are made of.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

Israel’s Supreme Court ordered late on Thursday a pause on the demolition of the Palestinian Bedouin town of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank, Israeli media outlets reported.

Israel has faced mounting international condemnation as its security forces continued preparations to demolish the town.

On Wednesday morning, Israeli soldiers cracked down on activists who had come to support the town’s residents, injuring 35, four of whom were hospitalised. Thirteen people were arrested, including a teenage girl, a PLO official said.

The High Court had upheld the demolition order against the town of 180 residents in May.

The suspension was issued on Thursday to examine claims about the ownership of the land. A judge gave the Israeli government until 11 July to challenge the injunction.

An interim injunction was issued allegedly regarding the claim that the land where Khan Al Ahmar sits is privately owned by residents of Anata & was expropriated in 1975. The injunction is until the State answers these claims

— Sharona Weiss (@sharona_weiss) July 5, 2018

Save the Children country director Jennifer Moorehead highlighted in a statement on Friday that the injunction mean little more than a postponement of the demolition.

“The school and community of al Khan al-Ahmar have received a last minute reprieve for possibly a few days.  But the legal options for this community have been exhausted,” she said. “The community is terrified that the bulldozers will be back.

“This community has already suffered so much and the impending threat of demolition is having a huge impact on the psychological wellbeing of the children,” she added, noting that Khan al-Ahmar is home to school that serves some 170 Palestinian children living in Bedouin communities in the area.

Israel regularly demolishes Palestinian homes and schools in the West Bank, arguing that they are built without permits.

However, Human Rights Watch notes that

“the Israeli military refuses to permit most new Palestinian construction in the 60 percent of the West Bank where it has exclusive control over planning and building, even as the military facilitates settler construction”.

Palestinian activists and officials say the scheme to displace Palestinian residents in the area aims to expand illegal settlements, isolate East Jerusalem from Palestinian communities in the West Bank, as well as to effectively cut off the southern and northern West Bank, forcing Palestinians to make even lengthier detours to travel from one place to another.

Walid Assaf, head of the National Committee to Resist the Wall and Settlements, credited activists on the ground for the injunction. He also thanked foreign diplomats and lawyers who worked on the case and visited the community regularly in support.

“We will persist here until a final decision is issued,” Assaf was quoted as saying by official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

In a statement published by the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department on Thursday, Khan al-Ahmar residents had called on the international community to “hold Israel accountable for its crimes”.

“The issue of Khan al-Ahmar illustrates Israel’s objective of widespread and systematic forcible displacement of Palestinians and replacement with Israeli settlers, as part and parcel of Israel’s broader scheme of creeping annexation,” the statement said.

“Though various in form, these policies and practices share a common underlying force: the forcible transfer of Palestinians based on their ethnicity, under the semblance of legality.”

On Thursday, prior to the court’s decision, the United Nations warned that displacing Palestinian villagers has “serious human rights and humanitarian law consequences”.

“The latest developments are of serious concern as it is evident that they are undertaken with the objective of relocating the concerned communities, as well as causing serious distress to the vulnerable residents who are watching what appear to be preparations for the demolition of their community,” Scott Anderson, the director of operations in the West Bank for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said in a statement.

“These pastoral communities are mostly Palestine refugees – originally displaced from their tribal lands in the Negev. They should not be forced to experience a second displacement against their will.”

Many European countries have also called on Israel to halt the demolitions. On Thursday envoys from France, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland, Finland, Spain and the European Union visited the area but Israeli police denied them access to a school funded by several European countries.

“We wanted to show our solidarity to this village which is threatened with destruction, for reasons both humanitarian (…) and because it is a major issue of international law,” said the consul general of France in Jerusalem, Pierre Cochard.

“This is a very clear violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention which determines the obligations of the occupying powers in the occupied territories,” he added.

“This decision complicates a little more and significantly the search for peace and a peace based on two states” – one Israeli, one Palestinian, he added.

Villagers have vowed not to abandon their land.

Yusuf Abu Dawoud, a 37-year-old resident of Khan al-Ahmar, told Middle East Eye on Wednesday that Israeli forces and bulldozers were beginning to attack the village “without any humanity”.

“The Israelis are racist, they do not want any Palestinians in this area, because it is the gateway to East Jerusalem,” he said. “They want to erase Jerusalem from any Palestinian heritage and influence. They want to kick us out of our lands, but we will stay.”

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Featured image is from i24NEWS.

This article (edits and updates in 2018) focusses on China’s capitalist system under a “Communist” label.

Wages are exceedingly low, productivity is high. These are the social realities of commodities “Made in China”, marketed Worldwide.

China is an advanced capitalist economy integrated into the World market.  Wages for non-skilled labor in Chinese factories are as low as 300$ a month (or lower), a small fraction of the minimum wage in Western countries.   

The factory price of a commodity produced in China is of the order of 10% of the retail price in Western countries. Consequently, the largest share of the earnings of  China’s cheap labor economy accrues to distributors and retailers in Western countries. 

In recent developments, Trump has duly instructed his administration to impose tariffs on about $50 billion worth of Chinese imports.

His stated objective is to reduce the trade deficit with China.

What Trump does not realize is that the trade deficit with China contributes to sustaining America’s retail economy, it also contributes to the growth of America’s GDP.

Trade sanctions directed against China would immediately backlash against America.

China is not dependent on US  imports. Quite the opposite. America is an import led economy with a weak industrial and manufacturing base, heavily dependent on imports from China.

Imagine what would happen if China following Washington’s threats decided from one day to the next to significantly curtail its “Made in China” commodity exports to the USA.

It would be absolutely devastating, disrupting the consumer economy, an economic and financial chaos.

“Made in China” is the backbone of retail trade in the USA which indelibly sustains household consumption in virtually all major commodity categories from clothing, footwear, hardware, electronics, toys, jewellery, household fixtures, food, TV sets, mobile phones, etc.

Importing from China is a lucrative multi-trillion dollar operation. It is the source of tremendous profit and wealth in the US, because consumer  commodities imported from China’s low wage economy are often sold at the retail level more than ten times their factory price.

Production does not take place in the USA. The producers have given up production. The US trade deficit with China is instrumental in fuelling the profit driven consumer economy which relies on Made in China consumer goods.

A dozen designer shirts produced in China will sell at a factory price FOB at $36 a dozen ($3 dollars a shirt). Once they reach the shopping malls, each shirt will be sold at $30 or more, approximately ten times its factory price. Vast revenues accrue to wholesale and retail distributors. The US based “non-producers” reap the benefits of China’s low cost commodity production. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, 2003).

Trumps recent threats against China follow those formulated in 2017 in relation to China’s trade with North Korea, which are analysed in the first part of this article.

Chinese policy makers are fully aware that the US economy is heavily dependent on “Made in China”.

And with an internal market of more than 1.4 billion people, coupled with a global export market, these veiled threats by President Trump will not be taken seriously in Beijing.

China: Capitalist Restoration

In 1981-82, based at the University of Hong Kong, Centre for Asian Studies (CAS), I started my research on the process of capitalist restoration in China. I took a crash course in Mandarin at the HKU Language School as well as in Taiwan.  This research –which extended over a period of 4 years–  included fieldwork conducted in several regions of China (1981-83) focussing on economic and social reforms, analysis of the defunct people’s commune and the development of privately owned capitalist industry including the cheap labor export economy.

I started reviewing Chinese economic history including structures of the factory system prior to 1949, the development of the treaty ports established in the wake of the Opium wars (1842) and came to the realization that what was being reinstated in terms of special economic zones was influenced by the history of the treaty ports, which granted extraterritorial rights to Britain, France, Germany, the US, Russia and Japan.

In the 1980s, the consensus among Leftists was that China was a socialist country. Debating the restoration of capitalism in China in Leftist circles was a taboo.

Most “Left wing”  economists and social scientists dispelled my analysis: “What you are saying Michel is an impossibility, it goes against the laws of history” said Brazil’s political economist  Theotonio dos Santos (in response to my presentation, Second Congress of Third World Economists, Economistas del Tercer Mundo, Havana, 26-31 April 1981).

A dogmatic perspective prevailed: Chinese socialism could not be reversed. The Socialist Mainstream refused to even acknowledge the facts pertaining to land concentration, ownership, the collapse of social programs and the rise of social inequality.

I completed the manuscript of my book entitled “Towards Capitalist Restoration? Chinese Socialism after Mao” in 1984. It was  casually turned down by Monthly Review Press: “We unfortunately have no market for a book on this subject”.

While this  was a slap in the face from what I considered to be an important and powerful socialist voice, I came to realize that MR (Harry Magdoff in particular) throughout the 1980s remained  firmly supportive of the post-Mao regime under the helm of Deng Xiaoping.  I had previously met and was in contact with both Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff for whom I had high regard.

The book was subsequently published by Macmillan in 1986. Click to download in pdf  (very slow due to size of file)

Eighteen years later, Monthly Review came out with a book by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett entitled “China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle” (Monthly Review, 2004) which concludes that

“market reforms” have fundamentally subverted Chinese socialism…. Although it is a disputed question whether the Chinese economy can be still described as socialist, there is no doubting the importance for the global project of socialism of accurately interpreting and soberly assessing its real prospects.

Income inequality has been rising rapidly in China and now surpasses that of the U.S. by a large margin, say University of Michigan researchers.

That is the key finding of their study based on newly available survey data collected by several Chinese universities.

“Income inequality in today’s China is among the highest in the world, especially in comparison to countries with comparable or higher standards of living,” said University of Michigan sociologist Yu Xie. University of Michigan study. 

While China plays an important and positive balancing role on the geopolitical chessboard, it does not constitute a viable “socialist” alternative to Western capitalism. In contrast to the US, however, China has no imperial ambitions.

Unlimited Reserves of Cheap Labor: 287 Million Internal Migrant Workers

China’s has currently, according to official figures[ 275 million (2015) ] 287 million in 2017 internal migrant workers employed in the cheap labor export economy, construction and infrastructure projects as well as in the urban service economy.

A formidable labor force almost the size of the population of the US (325 million in 2017).

China’s 287 million migrant workers also constitute the driving force behind the development of infrastructure, roads and transport corridors not to mention the PRC’s “Belt and Road” Eurasian trade and investment initiative.

These workers largely from rural areas and townships constitute more than a third of the labor force. They do not have the right of abode in urban areas.

Moreover, since the abolition of the People’s Commune (1983), agricultural land has in large part been privatized. In turn, many of the small scale rural industries of the Maoist period have been closed down. People in rural areas largely rely on remittances from migrant employment in the cities and “special economic zones” in manufacturing and construction.

My book on Capitalist Restoration, Chinese Socialism after Mao can now be downloaded in pdf format by clicking the cover page above. (Note: very slow download)

The Largest Cheap Labor Factory in the World 

The following 2009 documentary video describes a tendency towards a highly regulated social fabric which serves the development of the low wage (profit driven) industrial economy.

Imperialism will be on Trial in the UK in a series of Conference events in July.  

These events bring together an array of speakers from the world of politics, academia, journalism, former diplomats and clergy to offer their insights and expertise on the subject of imperialism and neoliberalism.

They will cover Eurasia, Latin America, Ireland, Palestine, Syria, Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, Wahhabism, Korea, the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine, and the subjects/countries.

We provide a platform where an alternative perspective and analysis is presented to the audience and on-line viewers, which challenges the mainstream narrative.

All speakers are driven by a profound and sincere desire for an end to these endless wars of aggression, and regime changes. We all want peace, diplomacy, and good international relations to replace what has become the norm for the hegemony the US and it’s vassal states- of coercive diplomacy, sanctions, threats of war, hot wars, cold wars and proxy wars.

We welcome an alternative to the unipolar vision advanced by the neoliberal and imperialist elites; and embrace a world which has multispheres of influence, where no one country, or group of countries dominate others.

We believe that trade and international relations should be based on parity, and not coercion and subservience. We espouse the rights for countries to have national sovereignty and self-determination, and to not live in fear of war or economic hardship from sanctions.

We are anti-imperialists, and don’t pick favourites. We don’t victim-blame. A victim of imperialism is a victim. No person, no country, no leader is perfect. It is not the role of the West, or any nation to impose its will on another sovereign nation.

Several of the speakers including Eva Bartlett, Peter Kuznick, Peter Ford and Adam Garrie, are frequent contributors to Global Research.

Eva Bartlett: Torture, Starvation, Executions: Eastern Ghouta Civilians Talk of Life Under Terrorist Rule, By Eva Bartlett, July 06, 2018

Peter Kuznick: The Untold History of US War Crimes, By Peter Kuznick and Edu Montesanti, July 06, 2018

This series of events being held in four cities in the United Kingdom offers an alternative narrative on global politics and war, to that presented by the mainstream media.

Scroll down for details.

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This incisive article by Adam Garrie was first published in September 2017

Adam Garrie will be speaking at a series of events in the UK (10-16 July) together with Peter Ford (former UK Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain), Eva Bartlett (investigative journalist), Professor Peter Kuznick (Co-Author with Oliver Stone, Untold History of the United States),, Ken Livingstone (Former Mayor of London), Rev Andrew Ashdown (Doctoral Research Student in ‘Christian-Muslim relations in Syria’), Catherine Shakdown (goepolitical analyst and writer) and more!

This series of events being held in four cities in the United Kingdom offers an alternative narrative on global politics and war, to that presented by the mainstream media. Scroll down for details at the foot of this article.

***

Russia has slammed Reuters UK for a breach of journalistic integrity, after the organisation published outright lies which have been derived from the propaganda arm of al-Qaeda in Syria.

Western governments, including those of the US and UK, have engaged in a concerted effort to publicly rehabilitate al-Qaeda, the notorious Gulfi funded Takfiri jihadist group which the US held responsible for the 9/11 atrocities. It was the group al-Qaeda in Iraq which eventually became ISIS and in Syria al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch commonly known as al-Nusra, has been responsible for countless acts of barbaric in parts of western and central Syria.

Enter a fake charity/aid group called White Helmets, sometimes confusingly referred to as Syrian Civil Defence. The group has no affiliation from real aid groups in Syria such as Syria’s actually civil defence service, nor are they at all affiliated with the UN recognised White Cross and White Crescent aid groups.

Among other things, White Helmets have been exposed by Russia as staging chemical attacks and staging them poorly at that. At various times, White Helmets actors were seen handling bodies that were supposedly infected with toxic gas, without gloves or proper masks. One image also showed a White Helmet actor smoking a cigarette in an area which was supposed to be cloaked in gas.

Even more seriously, the group has been exposed has participating in the killing of children as well as the exploitation of children.

The group which has been photographed carrying al-Qaeda flags during savage celebrations has been named and shamed multiple times by the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian Defense Ministry.

In October of last year, RT’s CrossTalk explored the extent of the dangerous fraud that is White Helmets when Peter Lavelle interviewed Patrick Henningsen, Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, three journalists who helped expose the sham to the wider public.

After the Battle of Aleppo was won in 2016, al-Qaeda’s fortunes in Syria were dashed. Today, one of the only areas in Syria where al-Qaeda and therefore the White Helmets still have a presence is in Idlib Governorate. Idlib is currently home to a civil war between al-Qaeda/al-Nusra and various factions of the FSA as well as some jihadist groups linked to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

In an effort to pacify the region, the most recent meeting of the Astana Group created a new de-escalation zone in Idlib Governorate which is largely policed by Turkey. The new zone, like other de-escalation zones, allows for the continued targeting of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Russia has recently struck al-Qaeda forces in Idlib who martyred civilians in Latakia, when they began firing rockets at the birthplace of the Assad family, the mountainous town of Qardaha.

The reach of White Helmets has gown down in-line with the reduction of al-Qaeda as a formidable force in Syria. However, as Russia works to help Syria squeeze the group out of Idlib, they decided to engage in yet another propaganda drive against Russia and Syria. Al-Qaeda/White Helmets has accused the Russian Aerospace Forces of targeting urban neighbourhoods and killing civilians even though the strikes targeted weapons outposts and storage facilitates away from populated areas.

While lies from groups like White Helmets are less and less noticed, UK Reuters picked up the propaganda as though it was deriving from a reliable source. It is also crucial to realise that the al-Qaeda/White Helmets report was released on the day Russian President Vladimir Putin lands in Ankara for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Al-Qaeda is clearly worried about Turkey’s pivot to Russia and away from western backed terrorist factions in Syria.

Russia’s Defense Ministry Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov has blasted Reuters UK and others who picked up the story as falling victim to fake news.

He stated,

“Syria’s Civil Defense which UK news agency Reuters cites, reporting of alleged civilian deaths, is the same thing as the White Helmets. The attempt of the British to pass these war scammers off as a new brand of objective information sources is a manipulation for amateurs.

The Russian Aerospace Forces’ planes to not carry out airstrikes on residential neighbourhoods in settlements to avoid civilian casualties. The targets are terrorist bases, armoured vehicles and munitions depots, identified with unmanned devices and confirmed through other channels.

This week, all airstrikes of Russian planes in the province of Idlib were concentrated on equipment, reserves and groups of Nusra Front militants who were trying to rescue terrorists from the Akerbat encirclement in eastern Hama with a sudden offensive. The actions of Russian planes in Syria derailed this operation, and the terrorists participating in it were destroyed”.

This video of the airstrikes, clearly corroborates Russia’s statement. It is apparent from the footage that Russia is not targeting an urban or residential area.

Russian airstrike on Nusra (HTS) terrorist hideout turns it upside down #Idlib #Syria pic.twitter.com/SUUBVWbvKF

— The'Nimr'Tiger ???? (@Souria4Syrians) September 28, 2017

The racist Sunni supremacist White Helmets have simply produced more propaganda to bolster their increasingly hopeless cause. The real shame is with so-called ‘respectable’ outlets who have reported blatant propaganda as fact.

Imperialism on Trial Conference Events in the Uk (July 10-16)

Featuring Peter Ford (former UK Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain), Eva Bartlett (investigative journalist), Professor Peter Kuznick (Co-Author with Oliver Stone, Untold History of the United States), Adam Garrie, (Director, Eurasia Future), Ken Livingstone (Former Mayor of London), Rev Andrew Ashdown (Doctoral Research Student in ‘Christian-Muslim relations in Syria’), Catherine Shakdown (goepolitical analyst and writer) and more!

This series of events being held in four cities in the United Kingdom offers an alternative narrative on global politics and war, to that presented by the mainstream media.

Featured image is from the author.

Eva Bartlett will be speaking in a series of Conference venues next week in the U.K. alongside several other prominent authors including Peter Ford (former UK Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain),  Professor Peter Kuznick (Co-Author with Oliver Stone, Untold History of the United States), Adam Garrie, (Director, Eurasia Future), Ken Livingstone(Former Mayor of London), Rev Andrew Ashdown (Doctoral Research Student in ‘Christian-Muslim relations in Syria’), Catherine Shakdam (geopolitical analyst and writer) and more!

Imperialism on Trial: This series of events being held in four cities in the United Kingdom (10-16 July) offers an alternative narrative on global politics and war, to that presented by the mainstream media. For details, scroll down to foot of this article.

***

Featured image: The author with Douma residents

Last week (early June 2018) I wrote about what civilians from Ghouta told me regarding unverified claims of the Syrian Army attacking them with chemicals, but they also talked about crimes committed by terrorists and the White Helmets’ role.

***

Munitions factory Saqba

“Every time there was a case that was a bit severe, they would say you must amputate this person. They would say that we are in short of medical supplies and so amputation is the best choice. They didn’t use to treat people. Even people who had minor surgery, they would just amputate it.”

Claims of lack of medical supplies turned out to be false, as in eastern Aleppo. In an underground hospital in Saqba alone, I saw rooms full of medicines and stolen medical equipment. Syrian journalists documented such stores elsewhere in eastern Ghouta.

According to Hanadi Shakr,

“All of the medical and food aid that was brought in, it would just vanish, they would sell it and take the money. Everything went to the leaders of the terrorist factions.”

When eastern Ghouta was being liberated, corporate media was busy churning out fake reports of massacres, just as corporate media did when Aleppo was being liberated. They produced stories  emanating from supporters of terrorist factions, always blaming the Syrian government for starvation, and above all, whitewashing the crimes and terrorism of extremist groups occupying eastern Ghouta.

In reality, Ghouta civilians had much to say about their captors’ crimes, and also about their relief at being liberated by the Syrian Army, but corporate media isn’t interested it doesn’t fit their regime-change narrative.

*

Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. Her writings can be found on her blog, In Gaza. 

All images in this article are from the author.

Featuring Peter Ford (former UK Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain), Eva Bartlett (investigative journalist), Professor Peter Kuznick (Co-Author with Oliver Stone, Untold History of the United States), Adam Garrie, (Director, Eurasia Future), Ken Livingstone (Former Mayor of London), Rev Andrew Ashdown (Doctoral Research Student in ‘Christian-Muslim relations in Syria’), Catherine Shakdown (goepolitical analyst and writer) and more!

This series of events being held in four cities in the United Kingdom offers an alternative narrative on global politics and war, to that presented by the mainstream media.

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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Peter Kuznick will be speaking in a series of Conference venues next week in the U.K. alongside several other prominent authors including Peter Ford (former UK Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain), Eva Bartlett (investigative journalist), Professor Peter Kuznick (Co-Author with Oliver Stone, Untold History of the United States), Adam Garrie, (Director, Eurasia Future), Ken Livingstone (Former Mayor of London), Rev Andrew Ashdown (Doctoral Research Student in ‘Christian-Muslim relations in Syria’), Catherine Shakdown (geopolitical analyst and writer) and more!

Imperialism on Trial: This series of events being held in four cities in the United Kingdom (10-16 July) offers an alternative narrative on global politics and war, to that presented by the mainstream media. For details, scroll down to foot of this article.

In this exclusive interview, Prof Peter Kuznick speaks of: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagazaki; US crimes and lies behind the Vietnam war, and what was really behind that inhumane invasion; why the US engaged a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and how that war and the mainstream media influences the world today; the interests behind the assassinations of President Kennedy; US imperialism towards Latin America, during the Cold War and today, under the false premise of War on Terror and War on Drugs.

Edu Montesanti: Professor Peter Kuznick, thank you so very much for granting me this interview. In the book The Untold History of the United States, Oliver Stone and you reveal that the the launch of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by President Harry Truman was militarily unnecessary, and the reasons behind it. Would you comment these versions, please?

Peter Kuznick: It is interesting to me that when I speak to people from outside the United States, most think the atomic bombings were unnecessary and unjustifiable, but most Americans still believe that the atomic bombs were actually humane acts because they saved the lives of not only hundreds of thousands of Americans who would have died in an invasion but of millions of Japanese.

That is a comforting illusion that is deeply held by many Americans, especially older ones. It is one of the fundamental myths emanating from World War II. It was deliberately propagated by President Truman, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and many others who also spread the erroneous information that the atomic bombs forced Japanese surrender. Truman claimed in his memoirs that the atomic bombs saved a half million American lives.

Hiroshima after the Bomb

President George H.W. Bush later raised that number to “millions.” The reality is that the atomic bombings neither saved American lives nor did they contribute significantly to the Japanese decision to surrender. They may have actually delayed the end of the war and cost American lives. They certainly cost hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives and injured many more.

As the January 1946 report by the U.S. War Department made clear, there was very little discussion of the atomic bombings by Japanese officials leading up to their decision to surrender. This has recently been acknowledged somewhat stunningly by the official National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington, DC, which states, “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military.

However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria…changed their minds.” Few Americans realize that six of America’s seven five star admirals and generals who earned their fifth star during the war are on record as saying that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary or morally reprehensible or both.

That list includes Generals Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Ernest King, and Chester Nimitz. Leahy, who was chief of staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, called the atomic bombings violations of “every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.” He proclaimed that the “Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…The used of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. In being the first to use it we adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the dark ages.”

Eisenhower agreed that the Japanese were already defeated. MacArthur said that the Japanese would have surrendered months earlier if the U.S. had told them they could keep the emperor, which the U.S. did ultimately allow them to do.

What really happened? By spring 1945, it was clear to most Japanese leaders that victory was impossible. In February 1945, Prince Fumimaro Konoe, former Japanese prime minister, wrote to Emperor Hirohito, “I regret to say that Japan’s defeat is inevitable.”

The same sentiment was expressed by the Supreme War Council in May when it declared that “Soviet entry into the war will deal a death blow to the Empire” and was repeated frequently thereafter by Japanese leaders.

The U.S., which had broken Japanese codes and was intercepting Japanese cables, was fully aware of Japan’s increasing desperation to end the war if the U.S. would ease its demand for “unconditional surrender.” Not only was Japan getting battered militarily,

it’s railroad system was in tatters and its food supply was shrinking. Truman himself referred to the intercepted July 18 cable as “the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace.” American leaders also knew that what Japan really dreaded was the possibility of a Soviet invasion, which they maneuvered unsuccessfully to forestall.

The Japanese leaders did not know that at Yalta Stalin had agreed to come into the Pacific War three months after the end of the fighting in Europe. But Truman knew this and understood the significance. As early as April 11, 1945, the Joint Intelligence Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was reporting that “If at any time the USSR should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.”

Yalta Conference 1945

At Potsdam in mid-July, when Truman received Stalin’s confirmation that the Soviets were coming into the war, Truman rejoiced and wrote in his diary, “Fini Japs when that comes about.” The next day he wrote home to his wife, “We’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed.”

Potsdam July 1945, Churchill, Truman and Stalin

So there were two ways to expedite the end of the war without dropping atomic bombs. The first was to change the demand for unconditional surrender and inform the Japanese that they could keep the emperor, which most American policymakers wanted to do anyway because they saw the emperor as key to postwar stability. The second was to wait for the Soviet invasion, which began at midnight on August 8.

It was the invasion that proved decisive not the atomic bombs, whose effects took longer to register and were more localized. The Soviet invasion completely discredited Japan’s ketsu-go strategy. The powerful Red Army quickly demolished the Japan’s Kwantung Army. When Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki was asked why Japan needed to surrender so quickly, he replied that if Japan delayed, “the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido.

This will destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war when we can deal with the United States.” The Soviet invasion changed the military equation; the atomic bombs, as terrible as they were, did not. The Americans had been firebombing Japanese cities for months. As Yuki Tanaka has shown, the U.S. had already firebombed more than 100 Japanese cities.

Destruction reached as high as 99.5 percent in downtown Toyama. Japanese leaders had already accepted that the United States could wipe out Japanese cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two more cities to vanquish, however thorough the destruction or horrific the details. But the Soviet invasion proved devastating as both American and Japanese leaders anticipated it would.

But the U.S. wanted to use atomic bombs in part as a stern warning to the Soviets of what was in store for them if they interfered with U.S. plans for postwar hegemony. That was exactly how Stalin and those around him in the Kremlin interpreted the bombings. U.S. use of the bombs had little effect on Japanese leaders, but it proved a major factor in jumpstarting the Cold War.

And it put the world on a glide path to annihilation. Truman observed on at least three separate occasions that he was beginning a process that might result in the end of life on this planet and he plowed ahead recklessly. When he received word at Potsdam of how powerful the July 16 bomb test in New Mexico had been, he wrote in his diary, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.

It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era after Noah and his fabulous Ark.” So the atomic bombings contributed very little if anything to the end of the war, but they began a process that continues to threaten humanity with annihilation today–70 plus years after the bombings. As Oliver Stone and I say in The Untold History of the United States, to kill innocent civilians is a war crime. To threaten humanity with extinction is far, far worse. It is the worst crime that can ever be committed.

Edu Montesanti: In the Vietnam War’s chapter, it is revealed that the US armed forces conducted in that small country the launch of a greater number of bombs that all launched during World War II. Would you please detail it, and comment why you think it happened, professor Kuznick?

Peter Kuzinick: The U.S. dropped more bombs against little Vietnam than had been dropped by all sided in all previous wars in history–three times as many as were dropped by all sides in WWII. That war was the worst atrocity–the worst example of foreign aggression– committed since the end of WWII. Nineteen million gallons of herbicide poisoned the countryside. Vietnam’s beautiful triple canopy forests were effectively eliminated. The U.S. destroyed 9,000 of South Vietnam’s 15,000 hamlets.

It destroyed all six industrial cities in the North as well as 28 of 30 provincial towns and 96 of 116 district towns. It threatened to use nuclear weapons on numerous occasions. Among those who discussed and occasionally supported such use was Henry Kissinger. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told my students that he believes that 3.8 million Vietnamese died in the war.

Thus, the war was truly horrific and the Americans have never atoned for this crime. Instead of winning a Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war, Henry Kissinger should be in the dock in the Hague standing trial for having committed crimes against humanity.

Edu Montesanti: Please speak of your experiences in the 60’s in Vietnam, and why the US decided to engage a war against that nation.

Peter Kuznick: Oliver and I approached the war from different perspectives. He dropped out of Yale and volunteered for combat in Vietnam. He was wounded twice and won a medal for combat valor. I, on the other hand, was fiercely opposed to the U.S. invasion of Vietnam from the start.

As a freshman in college, I started an anti-war group. I organized actively against the war. I hated it. I hated the people who were responsible for it. I thought they were all war criminals and still do. I attended many antiwar marches and spoke often at public events. I understood, as my friend Daniel Ellsberg likes to say, we weren’t on the wrong side. We were the wrong side.

The U.S. got gradually involved. It first financed the French colonial war and then took over the fighting itself after the Vietnamese defeated the French. President Kennedy sent in 16,000 “advisers,” but realized the war was wrong and planned to end it if he hadn’t been killed. U.S. motives were mixed. Ho was not only a nationalist, he was a communist. No U.S. leader wanted to lose a war to the communists anywhere.

This was especially true after the communist victory in China in 1949. Many feared the domino effect–that Vietnam would lead to communist victories across Southeast Asia. That would leave Japan isolated and Japan, too, would eventually turn toward the communist bloc for allies and trading partners. So one motivation was geopolitical.

Another was economic. U.S. leaders didn’t want to lose the cheap labor, raw materials, and markets in Indochina. Another reason was that the military-industrial complex in the U.S.–the “defense” industries and the military leaders allied with them–got fat and prosperous from war. War was their reason for being and they profited handsomely from war in both inflated profits and promotions.

So it was a combination of maintaining U.S. preeminence in the world, defending and exploiting U.S. economic interests, and a perverse and corrosive anti-communist mentality that wanted to defeat the communists everywhere.

Edu Montesanti: What were the real reasons behind the US Cold War with the Soviet Union?

Peter Kuznick: George Kennan, the U.S. State Department official who provided the theoretical rationale for the containment theory, laid out the economic motives behind the Cold War in a very illuminating memo in 1948 in which he said, “We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population…we cannot fail to be the object of envying resentment.

Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.” The U.S. pursued this task. Sometimes that required supporting brutal dictatorships. Sometimes it required supporting democratic regimes. The fight occurred on the cultural as well as the political, ideological, and economic realms.

Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life Magazines, said, in 1941, that the 20th century must be the American Century. The U.S. would dominate the world. The U.S. set out to do so. The Soviets, having been invaded twice through Eastern Europe, wanted a buffer zone between themselves and Germany. The U.S. was opposed to such economic and political spheres that limited U.S. economic penetration.

Although the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, never went to war, they fought many dangerous proxy wars. Human beings are lucky to have survived this dismal era.

Edu Montesanti: How do you see US politics towards Cuba since the Cuban Revolution, and towards Latin America in general since the Cold War?

Peter Kuznick: The U.S. completely controlled the Cuban economy and politics from the 1890s until the 1959 revolution. Batista carried water for U.S. investors. The U.S. had intervened repeatedly in Latin American affairs between 1890 and 1933 and then often again in the 1950s. Castro represented the first major break in that cycle.

The U.S. wanted to destroy him and make sure that no one else in Latin America would follow his example. It failed. It didn’t destroy his revolution, but it guaranteed that it would not succeed economically or create the people’s democracy many hoped for.

However, it has succeeded in other ways. And the revolution has survived throughout the Cold War and since. It has inspired other Latin American revolutionaries despite all the U.S.-backed and U.S.-trained death squads that have patrolled the continent, leaving hundreds of thousands of dead in their wake.

The U.S. School for the Americas has been instrumental in training the death squad leaders. Hugo Chavez and others have picked up where Fidel left off in inspiring the Latin American left. But many progressive leaders have been brought down in recent years.

Today Dilma Rouseff is fighting for her life but Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcie Linera in Bolivia are standing proud and standing tall to resist U.S. efforts to again dominate and exploit Latin America. But across Latin America, progressive leaders have either been toppled or are being weakened by scandals. U.S.-backed neoliberals are poised once again to loot local economies in the interest of foreign and domestic capitalists. It is not a pretty picture. The people will suffer immensely while some get rich.

Edu Montesanti: According to your researches, Professor Kuznick, who killed President John Kennedy? What interests were behind that magnicide?

Peter Kuznick: Oliver made a great movie about the Kennedy assassination–JFK. We didn’t feel that we needed to revisit those issues in our books and documentaries. We focused instead on what was lost to humanity when Kennedy was stolen from us. He had grown immensely during his short time in office.

He began as a Cold Warrior. By the end of his life, following the lessons he learned during the first two years of his administration and punctuated by the Cuban Missile Crisis, he wanted desperately to end the Cold War and nuclear arms race. Had he lived, as Robert McNamara stated, the world would have been fundamentally different.

The U.S. would have withdrawn from Vietnam. Military expenditures would have dropped sharply. The U.S. and the Soviets would have explored ways to work together. The arms race would have been transformed into a peace race. But he had his enemies in the military and intelligence communities and in the military sector of the economy.

He was also hated by the Southern segregationists, the Mafia, and the reactionary Cuban exile community. But those behind his assassination would much more likely have come from the military and intelligence wing.

We don’t know who did it, but we know whose interests were advanced by the assassination. Given all the holes in the official story as detailed by the Warren Commission, it is difficult to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that the magic bullet did all that damage.

Edu Montesanti: Do you think US imperialism against the region today, especially attacks against progressive countries are in essence the same policy during the Cold War?

Peter Kuznick: I don’t think the U.S. wants a new cold war with a real rival that can compete around the globe. As the neocons proclaimed after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. really wants a unipolar world in which there is only one superpower and no rivals.

Progressive countries have fewer major allies today than they had during the Cold War. Russia and China provide some balance to the U.S., but they are not really progressive countries challenging the world capitalist order. They both are beset by their own internal problems and inequalities.

There are few democratic socialist models for the world to follow. The U.S. has managed to subvert and sabotage most of the forward thinking and visionary governments. Hugo, despite all his excesses, was one such role model. He achieved great things for the poor in Venezuela. But if we look at what is happening now in Brazil, Argentina, Honduras, it is a very sad picture.

A new revolutionary wave is needed across the third world with new leaders committed to rooting out corruption and fighting for social justice. I am personally excited by recent developments in Bolivia, despite the results of the latest election.

Edu Montesanti: How do you see the Cold War culture influences US and world society today, Professor Kuznick? What role the Washington regime and the mainstream media play on it?

Peter Kuznick: The media are part of the problem. They have served to obfuscate rather than educate and enlighten. They inculcate the sense that there are dangers and enemies lurking everywhere, but they offer no positive solutions.

As, a result, people are driven by fear and respond irrationally. Former U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace, one of America’s leading visionaries in the 20th century, responded to Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in 1946 by warning,

“The source of all our mistakes is fear… If these fears continue, the day will come when our sons and grandsons will pay for these fears with rivers of blood… Out of fear great nations have been acting like cornered beasts, thinking only of survival.”

This also operates on the personal level where people will sacrifice their freedoms to achieve greater security. We saw that play out in the U.S. after 9/11. We’re seeing that now in France and Belgium.

The world is moving in the wrong direction. Inequality is growing. The richest 62 people in the world now have more wealth than the poorest 3.6 billion. That is obscene. There is no excuse for poverty and hunger in a world of such abundant resources. In this world, the media serve several purposes, the least of which is to inform the people and arm them with the information they need to change their societies and the world.

The media instead magnify people’s fears so that they will accept authoritarian regimes and militaristic solutions to problems that have no military solutions, provide mindless entertainment to distract people from real problems, and narcotize people into somnambulence and apathy.

This is especially a problem in the United States where many people believe there is a “free” press. Where there is a controlled press, people learn to approach the media with skepticism. Many gullible Americans don’t understand the more subtle forms of manipulation and deception.

In the U.S., the mainstream media rarely offer perspectives that challenge conventional thinking. For example, I’m constantly getting interviewed by leading media outlets in Russia, China, Japan, Europe, and elsewhere, but I’m rarely interviewed by media in the United States.

Nor do my progressive colleagues get invited onto mainstream U.S. shows. So, yes, there is a certain measure of press freedom in the United States, but that freedom is undermined not by the government as much as it is by self-censorship and silencing of progressive voices. Much of the rest of the world is more open to criticizing the U.S. but not as forthright when it comes to criticizing their own governments’ policies.

Edu Montesanti: What could you say about the ideia that the current US “War on Terror” and even “War on Drugs” especially in Latin America are ways the US has found to replace the Cold War, and so expand its military power and world domination?

Peter Kuznick: The U.S. rejects the methods of the old colonial regimes. It has created a new kind of empire undergirded by between 800 and 1,000 overseas military bases from which U.S. special forces operate in more than 130 countries each year.

Instead of invading forces consisting of large land armies, which has proven not to work in country after country, the U.S. operates in more covert and less heavy-handed ways. Obama’s preferred method of killing is by drones.

These are of dubious legality and produce questionable results. They are certainly effective in killing people, but there is lots of evidence to suggest that for every “terrorist” they kill, they create 10 more in his or her place.

The War on Terror that the U.S. and its allies have waged for the past 15 years has only created more terrorists. Military solutions rarely work. Different approaches are needed and they will have to begin with redistribution of the world’s resources in order to make people want to live rather than to kill and die. People need hope.

They need a sense of connection. They need to believe that a better life is possible for them and their children. Too many feel hopeless and alienated. The failure of the Soviet model has produced a vacuum in its place. As Marx warned long ago, Russia was too culturally and economically backward to serve as a model for global socialist development.

The Revolution was challenged from the start by invading capitalist forces. Problems abounded from the beginning. Then Stalinism brought its own spate of horrors. To the extent that the Soviet model became the world standard for revolutionary change, there was little hope for creating a decent world. Nor did the Chinese model provide a better standard.

So some have turned to radical Islam, which brings its own nightmare vision. As progressive governments continue to stumble and fall, U.S. hegemony strengthens. But the U.S. has had little positive to offer the world. Future generations will look back at this Pax Americana not as a period of enlightenment but one of constant war and growing inequality.

Democracy is great in principle but less uplifting in practice. And now with the nuclear threat intensifying and climate change also threatening the future existence of humanity, the future remains uncertain. The U.S. will cling to wars on terror and wars on drugs to maintain the disparities that George Kennan outlined 68 years ago. But that is not the way forward.

The world may look upon U.S. internal politics as a descent into lunacy–an amusing sign of the complete failure of American democracy–but the outsider success of Bernie Sanders and even the anti-establishment revolt among the Republican grassroots shows that Americans are hungry for change. Both Hillary Clinton and the Republican establishment, with their Wall Street ties and militaristic solutions, do not command respect outside of certain limited segments of the population.

They may win now, but their time is limited. People everywhere are desperate for new positive, progressive answers. Some, clearly, as we see now across Europe, will turn to rightwing demagogues in times of crisis, but that is at least in part because the left has failed to provide the leadership the world needs.

A revitalized left is the key to saving this planet. We’re running out of time though. The road ahead will not be easy. But we can and must prevail.

Peter Kuznick, a History Professor and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University at American University, Washington D.C., with Oliver Stone co-authored the 10 part Showtime documentary film series and book, both titled The Untold History of the United States.  A New Yorker who was active in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and remains active in antiwar and nuclear abolition efforts, Professor Kuznick is also author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America (University of Chicago Press), co-author with Akira Kimura of Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives(Horitsu Bunkasha, 2010), co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Genpatsu to Hiroshima – Genshiryoku Heiwa Riyo No Shinso [Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power (Iwanami, 2011)], and co-editor with James Gilbert of Rethinking Cold War Culture (Smithsonian Institution Press).

Edu Montesanti is author of Lies and Crimes of “War on Terror” (Ed. Scortecci, Brazil, 2012; Mentiras e Crimes da “Guerra ao Terror”, original in Portuguese), and writes forPravda (Russia) 

Featuring Peter Ford (former UK Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain), Eva Bartlett (investigative journalist), Professor Peter Kuznick (Co-Author with Oliver Stone, Untold History of the United States), Adam Garrie, (Director, Eurasia Future), Ken Livingstone (Former Mayor of London), Rev Andrew Ashdown (Doctoral Research Student in ‘Christian-Muslim relations in Syria’), Catherine Shakdown (goepolitical analyst and writer) and more!

This series of events being held in four cities in the United Kingdom offers an alternative narrative on global politics and war, to that presented by the mainstream media.

This article was published in January 2016, a year before the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Who the US elects is the world’s business, and our people and Parliament have every right to take a stand, argues Salman Shaheen

Everyone knows what Donald Trump thinks about the world. How he wants to build a wall to keep out the Mexicans, who he views largely as drug traffickers and rapists. How he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the US.

Extreme wealth, power and the platform afforded him by the US presidential race have beamed what would otherwise have remained the rantings of a backyard bigot into homes across the globe. Not surprisingly, a lot of people don’t much like what they hear. Moreover, they are terrified that they could be hearing the pronouncements of the soon-to-be most powerful person in the world.

Following Trump’s call to ban Muslims from the US a British petition to ban Trump from our shores swiftly attracted over half a million signatures, becoming the most popular government petition in British history and earning itself a debate in Parliament.

Despite the overwhelming revulsion MPs from across the political spectrum displayed towards Trump’s opinions, there was no vote. Of course, Britain was never actually going to approve a ban on a man with whom it may be forced into a special relationship next year. Nor should it. As a countryman of Trump’s once said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Freedom of speech is vital. Trump is free to air his racist views and the world is free to call him to account for them.

Many Trump supporters expressed a range of emotions from bafflement to outright hostility when they heard another country’s parliament was debating the idea of banning their chosen rabble-rouser. In supporting last week’s debate on Russia Today, I was subjected to a number of outright racist comments from Trump’s tag-alongs. One said with a name like Salman Shaheen I couldn’t really be British — perhaps I too should release my birth certificate to silence the tin-hat birthers.

Trump himself called the campaign to ban him an “absurd waste of time.” Others said Britain has no right to comment on US internal affairs, that for MPs to pass judgement on what should be the preserve of the US democratic system was “neocolonialist paternalism.”

The debate was not a waste of time. And it is absolutely right that British politicians and people — and indeed people from all over the world — should voice their opinions on Trump. The US is the most powerful nation in the world. Who leads it and what they say and do affects us all.

We might not have a vote in November, but we will be profoundly affected nonetheless. Equally, a US president — especially one who may be prone to insulting half its population even before he’s dropped his first bomb — affects their country’s global standing.

Global opinion of the US fell sharply even among allies as George W Bush lit fires all over the Middle East. In 2000, 78 per cent of Germans held a favourable view of the US according to the Department of State. By Bush’s final year in office in 2008, this had fallen to just 33 per cent. The picture is similar in France, falling from 62 per cent to 42 per cent, and even in Britain it fell from 83 per cent to 53 per cent.

Turkey saw an even more marked decline, down from 52 per cent to 12 per cent, and at the starts of the Iraq war in 2003, only 1 per cent of Jordanians had a positive view of the US. Generally, global opinion of the US improved markedly once Barack Obama took office. It is, therefore, vital that in choosing their next president US voters consider his or her standing on the world stage.

And what is Trump’s standing? Unsurprisingly he has been universally condemned south of the border in Mexico, which, like Britain, is another key US partner. The nation’s newspapers rounded on him and its richest man, Carlos Slim, pulled the plug on a real estate project with Trump on the back of the Republican hopeful’s unflattering appraisal of Slim’s countrymen. In the aftermath, Trump pinatas experienced a surge in popularity.

North of the border, Canadians have been hanging their heads. “How could such a buffoon become the top candidate to lead the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower into the next election for US president?” wrote Marcus Gee of Canada’s Globe and Mail in August, as Trump was surging in the polls.

L Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s regional director for East Africa, describes him as “arrogant, crass and uneducated,” decrying his offensive views on immigrants and women and the support he enjoys from white supremacists.

In France he has been likened to former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. And French Prime Minister Manuel Valls accused him of stoking hatred after his comments about banning Muslims from the US.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s comments did little to endear him to Muslim nations. “Hate rhetoric” was how Egypt’s official religious body described Trump’s pronouncement. In Pakistan, another vital US ally, human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir accused him of bigotry and ignorance and said: “Although we are not as advanced as the US, we have never elected such people to power in Pakistan.” Even Benjamin Netanyahu — who has vigorously continued apartheid policies in Israel — condemned Trump’s remarks.

In a year’s time Trump could be the man with his finger on the nuclear button. Trump could have to negotiate an end to the Syrian civil war and a de-escalation of tensions with Russia. Trump could have to oversee the detentes with Cuba and Iran. Trump could have to work towards a lasting and equitable peace between Israel and Palestine. Trump could have to steer the global economy through the turbulent waters of China’s slowing growth. Can he be trusted to do this? At the end of the day, only US voters will decide. But they ignore the world’s opinion at their peril.

Salman Shaheen is editor-in-chief of The World Weekly. He has written for the Guardian, New Statesman and Huffington Post and is a regular commentator on current affairs on television and radio.

When it comes to fundamental Palestinians rights, Netanyahu operates like a tinpot despot.

His hardline coalition partners ruthlessly oppress a long-beleaguered people unaccountably, Gazans suffering most.

Newly enacted Knesset legislation permits withholding millions of dollars of welfare payments made by the PA to families of Palestinian political prisoners and other families of Palestinians killed or wounded by Israeli ruthlessness – funds deducted from taxes Israel collects to pass on to Ramallah.

On Monday, the measure was approved overwhelmingly by an 87 – 15 majority. Knesset members are predominantly hardline, especially relating to Palestinian rights they disdain.

Joint (Arab) List MK Jamal Zahalka called the new bill “despicable,” adding the Knesset is “stealing from the Palestinian people.”

In heated debate, he called co-sponsor of the law Avi Dichter a “terrorist.” Ziofascist Islamophobe best describes him and most other Knesset members – militantly hostile to Palestinian rights.

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeiheh blasted the new measure, saying

“(w)e condemn the law to offset the prisoners’ benefits. It crosses a red line.”

It’s “a declaration of war on the Palestinian people and a severe blow to the Oslo Accords,” adding “all options are open for the Palestinian leadership, including the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council.”

Israel ignores international law and Security Council resolutions hostile to its interests with impunity – because of full, uncompromising support by Washington, no matter how vile, cruel or lawless its practices.

Over $330 million will be withheld, Palestinian money, not Israel’s. Taking it illegally amounts to grand theft – unrelated to the stated purpose, entirely related to forcing oppressive hardships on the Palestinian people, this action one of many.

PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashwari called the new law “nothing short of highway robbery,” adding:

“This is real piracy. They are stealing Palestinian funds. It’s not theirs to decide what to do with it. If we were free, we wouldn’t need Israel to collect customs.”

Freezing funds effectively steals them.

Israel’s grand theft measure follows harsh Trump regime actions against Palestinians, withholding vitally needed UNWRA funding, the agency providing humanitarian aid to millions of Palestinian refugees – along with freezing US aid to the PA entirely following enactment of so-called Taylor Force legislation.

It calls for withholding aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) unless it meets four unacceptable conditions:

• terminating financial aid to families of Palestinians unjustly called terrorists by Israel;
• revoking laws authorizing the aid;
• taking “credible steps” to end justifiable Palestinian resistance against a ruthless occupier falsely called terrorism; and
• investigating alleged Palestinian violence, publicly condemning it.

The legislation ignored Israeli high crimes of war and against humanity, its daily state terror against millions of defenseless Palestinians, falsely blaming them for Israeli crimes committed against them.

The Trump and Netanyahu regimes partner in waging war on people they want subdued, on fundamental rights they want destroyed, on rule of law principles they ignore, on democratic values they reject, on peace and stability they abhor.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

It all risks becoming pornographic, looped and re-run with an obsessive eye for updates and detail about despair and hope.  The twenty-four hour news cycle tends to encourage this sort of thing, ever desperate for snippets, obsessively chasing the update.  With a soccer team of twelve youths and their coach trapped in Tham Luang Nang Non cave some one kilometre below the surface, the curious, the gormless, and those with an unhealthy interest in the morbid have assumed couch position.

First came the discovery of the team by British divers after the group had gone missing for nine days.  They were found on a ledge inside the Northern Thai cave system.  Divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen were feted as being among the best in the world, the former having been awarded an MBE for, of all things, services in cave diving.

There was much hooting and tooting in celebration, something prompted by the fact that any hope of finding them alive, according to the governor of Chiang Rai province, was nigh impossible. But the mechanics of extricating the team from the cave started to mount in complexity and desperation, bursting the initial balloon of celebration.

With 2.5 miles of flooded cave between the team and the entrance, a sense of imperilment has grown.  This is compounded by a dreaded risk that adds a televisual ghastliness to the tale: the prospect of more heavy rain on the weekend, something that will foil current efforts to drain the excess water.

A village of international rescue experts including military personnel has grown around the enterprise, not to mention a vast hive of media representatives.  Four questions seem to be doing the rounds: to leave the team in the cave till there is a receding of the water level (dangerous given the monsoon season); pumping out the water to an extent to enable the trapped team to wade out; teaching the youths how so scuba dive, something which would be no mean feat given the length of time it would take for them to journey out of the cave (some five hours) and their status as virginal divers; and finally, drilling into the cave system.

Thai Navy Seals have been deployed, and much help is at hand, but the goriness has not been entirely dissipated.  The Navy Seal Chief Rear Adm. Arpakorn Yoo-kongkaew has been feeding the story to journalists keen to strike the optimistic note.

The Rear Admiral did not disappoint.

“Now we have given food to the boys, starting with food that is easy to digest and provides high energy.”

Thai soccer team gets diving lessons as rescuers prepare for extraction from cave (Source)

He stressed that care has been given to the youths “following the doctor’s recommendation.  So do not worry, we will take care of them with our best.  We will bring all of them with safety.  We are now planning how to do so.”  Such confidence was given a dint with the subsequent death of one of his crew, Samarn Poonan, who perished due to lack of oxygen during a dive.

One similar incident stands out to what is currently unfolding in Thailand: the initial loss, the recovery and sanctifying of the “Los 33”, the Chilean miners who became celebrities of salvation in 2010.  They spent 69 days in the collapsed San Jose mine near Copiapó.  Over time, a process of mythologising began to take place.

It was fame imposed on the ordinary, confected by the mere fact, as important as that fact was, that they had survived.  Like Church miracle artefacts, they were vested with allure, attraction, and sheer pulling power.  They were also there to be exploited, used, and interpreted.  Otherwise, they were uncomplicated creatures of animal and mineral, many of whom believed that God had been the thirty-fourth miner keeping them resolute.

As the rescue effort unfolded, the minor celebrity bandwagon grew.  US radio personality Ryan Seacrest sent prayers and well wishes hoping, rather insipidly, “to see everyone on the surface soon.” The clownish Irish song duo of Jedward sent their own message of tinny idiocy:

“All the miners remember it’s not about mining it’s about finding dinosaurs and dragons.”

The late English presenter Keith Chegwin expressed some mock shame that “Dig Brother” had ended.  “Wonder what Chile 4 will put on now.”

The miners would subsequently add a touch of mysticism to the rescue, essentially sacralising it.  Jorge Galleguillos spoke of seeing “a white species… a butterfly” falling “like a paper” into the mine.  “Faith is nourishment… Faith is life.”  Stories abounded of how medical ailments were healed by prayer.  The drill used to tunnel to the miners was guided, according to miner Ariel Ticona, “by the hand of God”.

The miners became the heralds of a modern success story.  They were invited as guests of honour to Manchester United.  They did the US chat show circuit.  As a statement of pure fantasy, they went to that composite of fantasy, Disneyland. Then, for another sort of miracle dream work, they ventured to the Holy Land.  Expenses were footed.

Amidst the celebratory orgy typical of myth came a few sceptical qualifiers.  The degree of medical danger posed to them, for instance, had been given undue embellishment.  Dr. James Polk, deputy chief medical officer and chief of space medicine at NASA put this down to “not having all the facts, and things that people did not know about the situation”.

The workers were, for instance, trapped at sea level and could hardly have suffered from decompression sickness.  The miners were less confined as was portrayed, able to continue their labours underground.  Nor were they at risk of Vitamin D deficiency.

“Chilean authorities,” according to Polk, “anticipated this, and they gave them a large dose of Vitamin D3 as part of their nutritional supplementation.”

Many of the rescued miners subsequently faced the ruination of imposed fame.  Mario Sepúlveda spoke of “fame but not money. It is the worst possible thing.”  The camera that had given him and his colleagues celebrity had also consumed them.  His world remains one of anti-depressants and a return to mining, where the darkness comforts.

The “Los 33” effect is very much at play regarding this young football team even as the rescue crews are busying themselves on tactics.  The big and the moneyed are seeking their place in the sun, offering advice.  Some are constructive; others are simply sentimental.  Elon Musk, according to a spokesman, has revealed that negotiations are underway on supplying location technology using Space Exploration Technologies Corp. or Boring Co. technology for digging purposes, or providing Tesla Inc. Powerwall battery packs.  But to every little bit of brain storming comes the deadly qualifier: engaging such services as that of Boring Co., with its colossal drills, might simply be too dangerous.

Even now, the young team has drawn on the heartstrings of the football community, encouraging a measure of faith.  Liverpool Football manager Jürgen Klopp, in an official video intended for the youngsters and their coach, spoke of “hoping every second that you see the daylight again.  You’ll never walk alone.” Such language, heartfelt yet tinged with a sense of funereal doom.

*

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from Idaho Statesman.

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UK Mounts Fresh Offensive Against Russia Following Second Alleged Novichok Poisoning

By Chris Marsden, July 06, 2018

Britain’s Conservative government has used a second alleged novichok nerve agent poisoning incident in the Salisbury area of England to launch a fresh provocation against Russia.

The Skripals and a New Novichok Affair: No End in Sight?

By Dr. Ludwig Watzal, July 06, 2018

There was another Novichok attack on a couple that was found unconsciously at their British home in Amesbury, UK, close to Salisbury where the Skripals were found sleeping on a park bench after being attacked by a nerve agent. After leaving the hospital, the Skripals are blocked off from the public.

Novichok Hoax 2.0?

By Stephen Lendman, July 06, 2018

A man and woman identified as Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess are hospitalized in critical condition. According to UK police, it’s unclear how the two affected individuals came in contact with whatever made them seriously ill, or whether they were targeted.

Western media jumped on the incident, suggesting Russian responsibility. Novichok is virtual code language for alleged Kremlin involvement.

The Amesbury Mystery. The “Novichok” Nerve Gas Used against the Skripals is “Extremely Persistent”

By Craig Murray, July 05, 2018

We are continually presented with experts by the mainstream media who will validate whatever miraculous property of “novichok” is needed to fit in with the government’s latest wild anti-Russian story. Tonight Newsnight wheeled out a chemical weapons expert to tell us that “novichok” is “extremely persistent” and therefore that used to attack the Skripals could still be lurking potent on a bush in a park.

Bonus article:

We’re Protesting Trump’s Visit by Flying an Inflatable Trump Baby Over London

By Leo Murray, July 06, 2018

Theresa May practically fell over herself to invite the orange sex pest here, despite nearly two million people signing a petition asking her not to. And that was before he started snatching babies from their parents at the border and locking them in cages. Any ‘special relationship’ May tries to sign us up for with the Trump regime is obviously going to be an abusive one.

Britain’s Conservative government has used a second alleged novichok nerve agent poisoning incident in the Salisbury area of England to launch a fresh provocation against Russia.

Based solely on previous and unproven accusations that the Putin regime was responsible for the attempted assassination of double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Julia, Moscow is now accused of responsibility for a “collateral damage” incident that has left two British citizens in a reportedly critical condition.

The circumstances surrounding the latest accusations are as dubious and baseless as those initially made regarding the March 4 incident, which led to a global diplomatic rupture as Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson secured the agreement of the US and other allies to expel more than 100 Russian diplomats.

UK Security Minister Ben Wallace yesterday identified Russia with the poisoning of Dawn Sturgess, 44, from Salisbury, and Charlie Rowley, 45, from Amesbury—located just seven miles away.

“The working assumption would be these are victims of the consequences of the previous attack or something else but not that they were directly targeted,” he told the BBC.

Wallace spoke less than 24 hours after Neil Basu, Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer, told the media that scientists at the Porton Down chemical weapons facility had supposedly identified novichok exposure as the reason for the couple’s collapse.

Later, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, after chairing a meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee, told parliament that the UK “will be consulting with our international partners and allies following these latest developments.”

“The eyes of the world are currently on Russia, not least because of the World Cup. … It is now time that the Russian state comes forward and explains exactly what has gone on.”

It is the UK government who should properly be asked to explain what is going on. The timeline of events leading up to these latest accusations is extraordinary.

The first time the alleged poisoning in Wiltshire came to national attention was Wednesday morning, July 4, as police said that they were now questioning their earlier hypothesis that the two had been made ill by contaminated heroin or crack cocaine and were seeking the assistance of Porton Down. Novichok was confirmed as the apparent cause later that evening.

The two supposed victims fell ill on Saturday, June 30—with Sturgess taken to hospital after 11:00 a.m. and Rowley at 6:30 p.m. To believe official accounts of the extraordinary delay requires accepting that Rowley being a registered heroin addict and Sturgess a drug user created such confusion that no police officer considered the possibility of a connection to the Skripal affair. This is despite the two being found at an address just seven miles from Salisbury and reportedly showing symptoms very similar to the Skripals.

Only yesterday did reports finally appear supposedly explaining how the two had possibly been exposed to novichok—miraculously overlooked by a clean-up operation involving hundreds of police officers and others costing over £10 million.

British officials previously said that the novichok agent used on the Skripals had not proved lethal because it was delivered as a gel smeared on a door-handle and would have by now been rendered completely ineffective by being broken down by water and evaporation.

To account for a nerve agent used four months ago still having such a devastating effect, it is suggested that Rowley was visiting Sturgess, who became homeless and lives in the John Baker House hostel in Salisbury, when they found and for some reason picked up an undiscovered syringe containing the novichok used against the Skripals while visiting the Queen Elizabeth Gardens park, near where the Russians were found slumped on a bench.

Chemical weapons expert Richard Guthrie had told BBC Breakfast that if the couple had come across novichok in a syringe “or pot,” it might have been better preserved. Chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told the MailOnline that novichok could survive for “months or longer” inside a syringe.

The Guardian focused on revising the previous account of novichok’s properties, citing Alastair Hay, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Leeds, asserting,

“How long they [novichoks] take to degrade is certainly not data that is publicly available, but from discussions with people at Porton Down, I understand they are slow to degrade.”

The latest account relies solely on the testimony of Sam Hobson, a friend who accompanied Rowley and Sturgess throughout that day and said Sturgess began feeling ill after “touching an item” in Queen Elizabeth Gardens.

After Sturgess was taken to hospital, Rowley apparently spent the day picking up his prescription from Boots, visiting a hog-roast with Hobson and then buying red, white and blue hair dye in preparation for upcoming England’s match against Colombia in the World Cup. He fell ill only after returning home to Muggleton Road, run by a housing association.

The claim that the police only considered the involvement of chemical weapons later is belied by eye-witnesses, who report that paramedics who came to pick up Rowley were wearing hazmat suits.

Neighbour Amy Ireland told the Daily Mail that the estate was packed with firemen, police and paramedics on Saturday.

“Cordons were set up and people were being moved back. … People thought it was a gas leak at first.”

Another neighbour told the Daily Mirror that

“we were all told to stay in our homes.”

Chloe Edwards, a 17-year-old college student who lives opposite Rowley’s flat, said,

“There were ambulances, fire engines, lorries, and the people that got out were wearing yellow and green suits.”

She also told the Independent that firefighters had connected a hosepipe to the water mains, which the newspaper notes is

“a procedure that is commonly used for decontamination. A specialist ‘decontamination shower’ was taken to the scene by Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service on Saturday, but a crew from Swindon later tweeted that ‘thankfully the incident wasn’t serious and our decontamination shower wasn’t required’. The tweet has since been deleted.”

All of this was kept secret for days. And nothing that has since been reported can be taken at face value, given the long record of lies surrounding the Skripal affair. One needs only recall the initial presentation of Sergei Skripal as being long retired, before former British Ambassador Craig Murray revealed in May that D-Notices had been issued to the media to prevent reporting on Skripal’s MI6 handler, Pablo Miller.

Murray is now questioning the account of Rowley and Sturgess as homeless, unemployed addicts and asking whether Pablo Miller “knows Rowley and Sturgess, living in the same community?”

What is certain is that the UK government has every reason to put a fire under its fast-fading and discredited Skripal provocation. Javid’s citing of the World Cup indicates the degree to which the Tories have been embarrassed by the tournament’s success. With all the main parties, including Labour, and the Royal family boycotting proceedings, the government now faces the prospect of England in the quarter finals and possibly even playing Russia in the semi-finals, with no official presence.

More serious still are the growing concerns that President Donald Trump will seek a new modus vivendi with President Vladimir Putin at a summit meeting scheduled for July 16 in Helsinki, Finland, just one day after his long-delayed trip to the UK and a week after July 11-12 NATO summit to discuss reinforcing the military alliance’s eastern operations on the Russian border.

Two days before the events in Wiltshire, on June 28, the Guardian ’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, wrote,

“The UK, through choice and circumstance, has been the western power most hostile to Putin, and now risks finding its position badly undercut…the fear is that the Trump-Putin summit will echo his summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Will he make an impulsive gesture that blindsides Europe, or will he be impatient at the Nato and May meetings, just as he was at the G7 ahead of his bilateral with Kim?”

We all have the odd laugh-or-cry moment, and nations are no exception. Trump’s visit to the UK this month is just such a moment.

Theresa May practically fell over herself to invite the orange sex pest here, despite nearly two million people signing a petition asking her not to. And that was before he started snatching babies from their parents at the border and locking them in cages. Any ‘special relationship’ May tries to sign us up for with the Trump regime is obviously going to be an abusive one.

I’ve heard plenty of establishment opining that protocol demands Britain keeps things civil with Trump; ‘respect the office, if not the man’, the argument goes. But being rude to Trump is respecting the office of US president, which he brings deeper into disrepute with each passing day. In case nobody has noticed, normal diplomatic protocol has been suspended. Diplomacy under Trump now literally consists of him flicking sweets at Angela Merkel during G7 meetings.

So it’s on everyone who knows the difference between right and wrong to resist this grotesque excuse for a president when he comes here. He needs to be run out of town, figuratively at least. But how? This is a man who lacks the capacity for moral shame. Liberal outrage just makes him smirk harder.

To really get through to Trump, you have to get down on his level and talk to him in a language he understands: personal insults.

That’s why my friends and I have made a six-metre-high, orange, inflatable baby with tiny hands and a malevolent, constipated expression on his face, which we intend to fly over Parliament during the president’s visit on July 13th.

Ridiculing tyrants and despots is a proud British tradition, so we can think of this as the whistling ‘Hitler has only got one ball’ of our times. If this generation is going to have to fight fascism again, we may as well have a bit of a laugh while we are doing it.

This point is key. The day Donald Trump won the US presidential election, I found myself gripped by a profound sense of dread. It was a feeling that I had not experienced since I first got to grips with the looming threat of catastrophic climate change, the issue I now work on every day.

But my rising panic over Trump’s election wasn’t about climate change exactly. It was about a crushing sense of my own powerlessness to prevent terrible, unconscionable things happening to vulnerable people on an enormous scale. For me, in the face of a humanitarian disaster like climate change or Donald Trump, it really is a case of having to laugh, or cry. So I choose laughter.

To begin with, officials in the London Mayor’s office were not super pumped about our application to fly an unflattering effigy of the US president over Parliament on 13th July, telling us that Trump Baby was “art” and inflatables did not qualify as legitimate protest.

But there was nothing in the rules about not flying inflatables, and all our paperwork was in order. We began to wonder if this might not be an important test of the health and vitality of our democracy.

So we started a petition to the Mayor to let Trump Baby fly – and the great British public did not disappoint. In under three weeks the petition has been signed by over 10,000 people, while our crowdfunder to cover the costs of the protest smashed its initial target in 48 hours, with money pouring in from every corner of Britain and beyond. Trump Baby seems to have captured the mood of the moment.

It is therefore an honour and a privilege to be able to today confirm – Trump Baby will fly!

City Hall has granted us consent for Trump Baby to make a majestic two hour flight over the seat of Britain’s democracy, between 9.30 and 11.30am on Friday the 13th July. His flight will be a beacon of light in a dark time, a historic national gesture of defiance against the rise of Trump’s barbarous and hateful politics, and a welcome reminder that parts at least of Britain’s democracy are still working how they are supposed to.

But the story doesn’t end there. Our crowdfunder has already raised £15,000 – three times the amount we set out to spend humiliating Trump on his visit to the UK. So, thanks to everyone’s ridiculous generosity and enthusiasm for the project – Trump Baby is going on world tour!

After Trump Baby’s UK debut, we plan to draw up an itinerary of Trump’s scheduled diplomatic visits over the next 12 months, and reach out to local activist groups around the world who want to help.

The crowdfunder will keep rolling, and as long as people keep giving, Trump Baby will keep popping up in the skies above little Donald wherever he goes, an unmistakable reminder of how the rest of the world really sees this unsavoury stain on the office of US president. Great work team!

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Featured image is from londonist.com.

The new U.S. leadership is resorting to every ploys and lies to demonize Iran. The new project of Iranophobia has intensified since Pompeo confirmed as secretary of state in late April. He seems to be superseding in animosity against Iran in comparison to John Bolton, the national security advisor to Trump.

Pompeo’s degree of hatred toward Iran was fully laid bare during his speech at the Heritage Foundation on May 21 in Washington.

It is quite clear to the entire world that it is Saudi Arabia and the UAE – the United States’ close friends – which have created human tragedy in Yemen by strangulating and starving millions of people in the poor Arab country. Maybe it is the easiest way to blame Iran for what Washington’s friends have been doing.

How can Iran, even if it wanted, to help Yemeni rebels while the country is besieged by the Saudi-led alliance. Attempts to link the miseries of the Yemenis to Iran can never hide the crimes being committed by the Saudi-led coalition.

In addition to efforts to demonize Iran, Pompeo probably wants to facilitate and justify the sale of more arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Pompeo’s boss, Donald Trump, who has a covetous eye on the immense wealth of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, should be happy with the war on Yemen because he wants to sell more and more “beautiful” weapons to these two wealthy states in order to say that he is creating jobs in the United States.

However, Pompeo and other hawks in the U.S. cannot fool the public opinion about the realities of the Yemen war. The people around the world know that it was Saudi Arabia that started the war against Yemen in March 2015 and it is Saudi Arabia along with it coalition partners which erroneously think that they should pound Yemen until it surrenders.

If the U.S. had been really concerned about the sufferings of the Yemenis it would have put pressure on Saudi Arabia to end the war. The irony is that the U.S. itself is an accomplice in this tragedy. It not only sells arms to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, it also shares intelligence with them and refuels their fighter jets in mid-air.

Pompeo also claimed that Iran’s support for Houthis has enabled Yemen to launch attacks on Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This statement shows the Saudi-led coalition, despite support by the U.S., has not only failed to defeat Yemenis it has also made them more resilient and stronger.

History is a great lesson. If the United States, along with a support by NATO, after 17 years had succeeded to bring the Taliban to its knees in Afghanistan then it could have been imagined that the Saudi-led coalition may one day win over the Yemenis. Now it is the U.S. which is begging talks with the Taliban but the Taliban reject it.

People familiar with the Yemeni society say that the people in this poor country are even more battle-hardened than Afghans who fought the Soviets in the 1980s and finally made the Soviets to leave the country in disgrace.

In the light of these facts vicious attempts by Pompeo to fault Iran for the human tragedy in Yemen are flawed, lamentable and also laughable.

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Featured image is from the author.

Faced with the return of U.S. sanctions, Iran is studying a revival of a plan to barter crude oil for goods, possibly resuming the scheme that it used to try to blunt the impact of the previous round of sanctions between 2012 and 2016.

Unable to bring in U.S. dollars and euros ahead of the new U.S. sanctions that kick in in early November, Iran is open to accepting agricultural products and medical equipment in exchange for its crude oil, Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) quoted the spokesman of the Parliament’s energy committee, Asadollah Gharekhani, as saying.

According to Gharekhani, Iran will only trade with countries that buy its oil.

Considering that the U.S. is pushing for “zero” Iranian oil exports and is pressing other countries to stop importing Iran’s oil, Tehran may not have many countries left to trade with.

“We have informed our oil customers that we will only buy their commodities if they buy our crude,” Gharekhani said.

In the previous sanctions on Iran between 2012 and early 2016, when Europe also imposed sanctions alongside the U.S. to punish Iran for its nuclear program, Tehran resorted to barter and was offering gold bullions in vaults overseas or crude oil in exchange for food. Back then, the sanctions severely limited Iran’s ability to pay for imports of basic goods, which led to a spike in food prices. Those sanctions were not banning companies from selling food to Iran, but the transactions with banks were very difficult.

This time around, the U.S. sanctions and the tough U.S. approach to try to cut off as many Iranian oil barrels as possible have spooked banks, insurers, and shippers, who have started to wind down business with Iran for fear of coming under secondary sanctions.

In June, Iran’s crude oil exports stood at 2.280 million bpd, and condensate exports were 330,000 bpd, Iran’s oil ministry news service Shana reported earlier this week. Those levels are lower than the record-high in April and the still-high exports in May—the month in which U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and announced fresh sanctions on Iran.

Just after President Trump’s announcement, oil prices jumped, and analysts started to guesstimate how much Iranian oil barrels could be taken off the market by the end of this year. Few thought it would be 1 million bpd or more.

But the tough U.S. stance on Iranian oil exports over the past two weeks has had even India—Iran’s second-largest oil customer after China—preparing for a drastic reduction of oil imports from Iran, as its companies and the sovereign are reportedly worried that they would lose access to the U.S. banking system if they continue to import Iranian oil.

According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, oil prices will hit $90 a barrel by the second quarter of 2019, as Iranian oil barrels are removed from the market and other supply disruption risks threaten the tightening oil market.

Morgan Stanley thinks that oil prices will jump to $85 a barrel as early as the second half of this year, because of the U.S. push to remove as much Iranian oil from the market as possible. Morgan Stanley expects that Brent Crude will average $85 a barrel over the next six months—$7.50 higher than its previous estimate. Early on Thursday, Brent Crude was down 0.5 percent at $77.77.

Before lifting its oil price forecast this week, Morgan Stanley had expected that Iran would lose 700,000 bpd in oil exports through 2019 from the sanctions. But the tougher U.S. approach now makes the bank’s analysts think that Iran’s exports to Europe, Japan, and South Korea—a total of 1 million bpd—would “fall to minimal levels.”

“Over the course of last week, downside risk to future Iranian oil supply has increased rapidly,” Martijn Rats, global oil strategist and head of the bank’s European oil and gas equity research, told CNBC.

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Featured image is from the author.