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Those familiar with the debate around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) may be forgiven for thinking that science alone can solve the world’s food problems. The industry asserts that GMOs are vital if the world is to increase agricultural productivity and we are going to feed a growing global population. There is also the distinct impression that the GMO issue is all about ‘science’ and little else. 

People who question the need for and efficacy of GM have been labelled anti-science elitists who are responsible for crimes against humanity as they supposedly deny GM food to the hungry. Critics stand accused of waging a campaign of fear about the dangers of GM. In doing so, the argument goes that, due to ideology, they are somehow denying a technological innovation to farmers.

Critics have valid concerns about GMOs and have put forward a credible evidence to support their views. But instead of engaging in open and honest debate, we see some scientists hardening their positions, lashing out at critics and forwarding personal opinions (unrelated to their specific discipline) based on their perceived authority as scientists. There’s a fine line between science and industry-inspired lobbying and spin. Unfortunately, a number of scientists have difficulty locating it.

The problem: global food regime or GM technology itself

An accusation sometimes levelled at critics of GM is that they have trouble when it comes to differentiating between the technology and the companies who have come to dominate GM: they are thus overly concerned with waging an assault on big business and capitalism, losing site of the potential benefits of GM.

For sure, GM technology has become associated with large conglomerates that have rolled it out as a tool to further consolidate their dominant market position. These corporations are embedded in a system of capitalism that facilitates corporatisation of the global food regime and all that entails: for instance, a push towards seed monopolies, the roll-out of highly profitable proprietary inputs and chemical/biotech treadmills, leverage over legislation, trade deals and treaties and the general boosting and amalgamation of corporate power (as seen by recent mergers and acquisitions).

However, it is unfair to accuse critics of being unable to differentiate between the food regime and GM itself. Both scientists and non-scientists have concluded that genetic engineering poses unique scientific risks and has political, cultural, ethical and economic ramifications.

There are good reasons why in Europe robust regulatory mechanisms are in place for GM. GM food/crops are not substantially equivalent to their non-GM counterparts. More and more studies are highlighting the flawed premise of substantial equivalence. Given the risks, the precautionary principle is recognised as a sensible approach.

International consensus exists that the products of genetic engineering are not equivalent to their conventional counterparts. Many of the potential hazards are inherent in the GE process itself, and “are not techniques used in traditional breeding and selection” (Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, on page 7 of this document, where the example of GM maize and the amino acid lysine is also discussed; in addition, see references 5-10 at the bottom this page here).

There is sufficient reason to hold back on commercialising GM and subject each GMO to independent, transparent environmental, social and health impact evaluations: there can be no blanket statement that all GMO crops/foods are safe or somehow ‘good’. The claim of substantial equivalence is an industry get-out tactic to avoid the inconvenience of proper assessment and regulation. And any claim that there is consensus on the safety/efficacy of GM within the ‘scientific community’ is based on spin rather than reality. This, along with the claims that ‘the science is decided’ on GM is mere rhetoric designed to close down debate.

There are major uncertainties concerning the technology (not least regarding its precision and health safety aspects), which are brushed aside by claims of ‘the science’ is decided and the ‘facts’ about GM are indisputable. Such claims – alongside the attempt to sideline non-scientists from the debate – are merely political posturing and part of the agenda to tip the policy agenda in favour of GM.

We must consider too that many things that scientists are trying to achieve with GMOs have already been surpassed by means of conventional breeding. We should not accept the premise that only GM can solve problems in agriculture. Non-GMO options and innovations have out-performed GM. So why press ahead with a technology that changes the genetic basis of food with all that entails for human health and the environment?

Despite critics’ concerns, they continue to be attacked for supposedly being anti-science and anti-choice. For instance, the pro-GMO line of blaming people in richer countries for denying the benefits of GM to others elsewhere has become part of industry rhetoric. The case of Golden Rice is often used as an example. UK politician Owen Patterson is on record as saying that wicked activists are denying food to little children.

Glenn Stone and Dominic Glover (Washington University and the University of Sussex) have noted that this claim just does not stack up. Golden Rice has not come to market because ongoing tests show it has failed to deliver as a technology. Meanwhile, Vitamin A deficiency is falling dramatically in the Philippines, while the claims about Golden Rice remain wishful thinking.

It is a convenient and misleading to accuse ‘privileged activists’ in affluent countries of denying choice to poor people by preventing the commercialisation and cultivation of GM crops across the globe. In  South America and Africa, for example, it is not some affluent bunch of activists in rich countries who are against GM. It is local farmers and it is because corporations with US govt help and philanthropic colonialists like Bill Gates are moving in to assert their leverage in agriculture and over indigenous farming.

According to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (ASFA):

“White male European so-called experts are channelling the message of the biotech industry, heavily controlled by US-European seed and chemical giants Monsanto/Bayer, Syngenta and DuPont Pioneer. The message once again is that failure of African farmers to adopt GMO technology is the root cause of hunger and poverty on the continent. It is ironic that GMO foods are banned by law as unsafe in the European home countries of those giving the advice. Meanwhile the African biotech scientists seem more concerned that the strict liability measures will chase away donor funding and investment for their costly and “prestigious” research.

“They blame the anti-GMO activists, rather than their own technological failure, for the impasse. They claim that if only the activists would shut up and go away, the industry backed researchers could fix the food insecurity problem once and for all!  Once again Africa is being compelled to adopt others’ views, others’ technologies, others’ interests. Have we not seen this before? They claim to have ‘sound science’ on their side but what kind of science resolutely ignores the evidence? What has actually happened in those African countries where GMOs have been rolled out? Let’s take a look at the facts.”

ASFA then goes on to highlight the false promises and failures of GM in Africa. Clearly, it is not just the politics of GM that ASFA has concerns about: it is the technology itself.

It is misleading when supporters of GM call people’s attention to apparent public sector funding of GM and the apparent altruism that is claimed to underpin the GM project. Even when not directly pushing GM to boost the bottom line, big business (and US state interests) is certainly present in the not too distant background. As with the current push for GM mustard (also misleadingly portrayed as a public service endeavour ) in India, ‘pioneering’ crops have a role in opening the GM floodgates in a region or country (there are sound reasons for rejecting GM mustard as described by Aruna Rodrigues in her submitted court documents).

But is this type of ‘activism’ denying choice to farmers? Not at all, as I have outlined elsewhere. If anything, large corporations do their best to break traditional practices and environmental learning pathways developed over time with the aim of getting farmers on technological treadmills. These same companies also exert their leverage on a wider level via the WTO, Codex and various international agreements.

But you never see supporters of GM campaigning against any of this. Perhaps they are too busy helping the process along via the right-wing neoliberal think tanks they are associated with. Instead, they fixate on Greenpeace or ‘activists’ whose leverage is dwarfed by the power of these corporations.

Pro-GMO activists make great play about ‘potential’ benefits of GM and roll out examples to ‘prove’ the point. Fine, if these benefits really do stack up in reality; but we need to look at this objectively because plenty of evidence indicates that GM is not beneficial and that non-GM alternatives are a better option. Most of all, we need to put commercial interests and the career/funding interests of scientists to one side when determining the need for and the efficacy of GM.

Solution based on food sovereignty

Banning GMOs will not solve the problems associated with lobbying and corruption, the adverse impacts of pesticide use, corporate monopolies, monocultures, food commodity speculation, the denial of peasant’s land rights or any other problems associated with the capitalist food regime. But neither will GM lead to ensuring global food security.

We must look away from the industrial yield-output paradigm and adopt a more integrated, systems approach to food and agriculture that accounts for many different factors, including local food security and sovereignty, local calorific production, cropping patterns and diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability, climate resilience, good soil structure and the ability to cope with evolving pests and disease pressures. This is precisely why, from Africa to India, locally owned, grass-root agroecology and zero budget farming are gaining traction.

Scaling up agroecology offers potential solutions to many of the world’s most pressing problems, whether, for instance, climate change and carbon storage, soil degradation, water shortages, unemployment or food security. Working with the natural environment (as Bhaskar Save notes) involves a different mindset from that which wants to genetically engineer it and all the risks and unforeseen consequences that it inevitably entails. If readers take time to click on the previous link for Bhaskar Save, it becomes patently clear that undermining or eradicating one system of farming by imposing another has serious ethical, environmental, social and political ramifications. Something that scientific research does not concern itself with.

The consequences of GM do not just relate to unpredictable changes in the DNA, proteins and biochemical composition of the resulting GM crop. Introducing GM can involve disrupting cultures and knowledge systems and farmers’ relationships with their environments. Who is to say that GM is somehow ‘better’ or should take precedence over these traditional systems?

Corporate boardroom executives or well-funded microbiologists each with their own agendas and looking at things from their own blinkered perspectives? Once those systems are disrupted, the knowledge and practices that underpin them become lost forever. For instance, in terms of an integrated pest management strategy, Devinder Sharma talks of women who can identify 110 non-vegetarian insects and 60 vegetarian insects. Can such knowledge survive? To be wiped out for corporate profit and a flawed GM experiment?

As described in this paper, for thousands of years farmers experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. By learning and doing, trial and error, new knowledge was blended with older, traditional knowledge systems. The farmer therefore possessed acute observation and has traditionally engaged in risk minimising strategies. Farmers took measures to manage drought, grow cereals with long stalks that can be used as fodder, engage in cropping practices that promote biodiversity, ethno-engineer soil and water conservation, use self-provisioning systems on farm recycling and use collective sharing systems such as managing common resource properties.

Farmers know their micro-environment, so they can plant crops that mature at different times, thereby facilitating more rapid crop rotation without exhausting the soil. Today, however, large-scale industrial-based agricultural production erodes biodiversity by depleting the organisms that live in soil and by making adverse changes to the structure of the soil and the kind of plants that can be grown in such artificially-created environments.

Many of the practices of small farmers are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate. It is no surprise therefore that various high-level reports have called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and invested in to achieve global sustainable food security. Instead, what we see is the marginalisation traditional organic agriculture by corporate interests.

Traditional food production systems depend on using the knowledge and expertise of village communities and cultures in contrast to prioritising imported ‘solutions’. The widespread but artificial conditions created by the latter work against the survival of traditional knowledge, which creates and sustains unique indigenous farming practices and food culture.

None of this is based on a romantic yearning for the past or ‘the peasantry’. It is for good reason that the reports referred to call for investment in this type of agriculture centred on small farms: despite the pressures (including the fact that industrial agriculture grabs 80%of subsidies and 90% of research funds), it continues to feed most of the world.

Cultural, ethical, political and environmental considerations matter just as much – even more – than the science of GM. And that’s even before we consider how the ill thought out introduction (or imposition) of GM can have dire financial impacts for communities, as has been the case with Bt cotton in many areas where it has been adopted.

In acknowledging the type of food regime that exists and the risks, motives and implications of GM, pushing back against the large corporations that hold sway over the global food system, food sovereignty based on localisation and (political) agroecology is necessary. This involves reclaiming the food system and challenging the leverage that private capital has over all our lives.

In the meantime, we are not talking about ‘banning’ anything. Where GMOs, gene editing, synthetic biology or other similar technologies are concerned, we require a responsible approach based on transparent social, health and environmental impact assessments. In the absence of this, there should be a moratorium because the potential for a responsible approach is most definitely lacking: Rosemary, Mason, Carol van Strum, the late Shiv Chopra, Evaggelos Vallianatos and others have described how high-level institutions responsible for food and environmental safety have been subverted and corrupted over the years by commercial interests.

Decades on from Rachel Carson, have we learned nothing? If the people listed above tell us anything, it is that the ‘pesticide revolution’ was based on widespread fraud. We are now trying to deal with the health and environmental impacts of dousing the land with agrotoxins year in, year out.  They also tell us that commercial interests should not determine regulatory regimes. We need transparency, democratic accountability, science untainted by corporate interests and robust public institutions which guard against commercial interests that undermine regulatory decisions.

While the pro-GM lobby rushes to experiment with the genetic core of the world’s food and leave a potentially detrimental legacy for future generations, the question remains:

“How is it possible that in the 21st century the world has the capacity to feed every single human being on the planet, yet the majority of people in Africa and the rest of the Global South, who are poor – whilst obesity soars in the West – go rampantly hungry?” – Walden Bello 

It is because food and agriculture have become wedded to power structures that have created food surplus and food deficit areas and which have restructured indigenous agriculture across the world and tied it to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for a manipulated and volatile international market and indebtedness to international financial institutions.

Once you understand how global capitalism and its corporate food regime operates and how private capital shapes and benefits from a food regime based on an exploitative ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy, you realise that genuine political and economic solutions are required if we are to feed the world and ensure equitable food security.

We must not be deterred by the “haughty imperialism” that exists in scientific circles that aggressively pushes for a GMO techno-fix. We must not be distracted from the root causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

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How does a British government respond when an allied state invades another territory with the backing of jihadists, overthrows a democratic experiment and consolidates an occupation? Judging by what Turkey is doing in the Afrin district of northern Syria, the answer is: by supporting it.

Britain, far from helping to defeat terrorism in Syria, is once again aiding it.

Turkey’s military intervention in Afrin was launched on 20 January and largely concluded on 18 March, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his forces were in control of Afrin city. In that two-month period, over 200,000 people fled, and human rights groups accused Turkish forces of shelling civilians, killing scores, and indiscriminately shooting at refugees attempting to cross into Turkey.

British backing

Turkey’s wrath was launched against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the dominant element in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighting the Islamic State (IS) in northern Syria – but which Erdogan calls a “terror army” linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group in Turkey.

Ankara has wanted to stop the US plan to stay in Syria and form a 30,000-strong force with the SDF to protect Syrian territory held by its mainly Kurdish allies. Turkey’s war aim appears to be to create a sphere of influence in northern Syria free from the Kurds.

Britain has backed the intervention in Afrin, saying it recognises “Turkey’s legitimate interest in the security of its borders” – an apologia for Turkish actions that prompted a senior Turkish official to say that Ankara “appreciates” the UK stance. While London did go through the motions of calling for “de-escalation”, it rejected a call for a ceasefire.

Throughout the military operation in Afrin, the UK was in “close communication” with Turkey and said it “cannot categorically state” that British weapons were not used. Last year, the UK already signalled it would do nothing to prevent a Turkish attack on Afrin.

Britain has also helped Turkey out diplomatically by its ambassador to Ankara, Sir Dominick Chilcot, who has said the UK has “a lot of respect and consideration” for Turkey’s views on the YPG, and referred to the “potential threat posed by the YPG” and said it had “very close links” to the PKK.

On the side of jihadists

British support for Turkey is especially noteworthy in light of UK military support to the force it is fighting, the SDF. Although the UK is not known to have supplied arms to the YPG, unlike the US, the UK has carried out airstrikes to support the SDF that are “likely to have assisted the YPG”, a British parliamentary committee concluded.

Moreover, in March, a British Special Air Service (SAS) soldier embedded with US forces was killed fighting with local Kurdish troops to stabilise the northern city of Manbij. SAS sources revealed that those who planted the bomb could belong to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the same affiliation of militias, including jihadists, being backed by Turkey to take over Afrin.

Journalist Patrick Cockburn reported that Turkey also recruited and trained ex-IS fighters to drive the YPG out of Afrin: Of the 10,000 FSA forces who crossed into Syria on 20 January with 6,000 Turkish troops, “most” were ex-IS and many were “open about their allegiance to al-Qaeda and its offshoots”.

It can be presumed that Britain knows all about Turkish collaboration with jihadists. Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, has, for example, said that Turkey cooperates best with the US and UK in terms of intelligence-sharing on foreign fighters who want to use Turkish territories when entering or exiting Syria.

May’s support for Erdogan

As Britain arms Turkey, there is a real risk that such military equipment can end up in the hands of jihadists. Yet the British government defines Turkey as a priority market for promoting arms sales that have been worth more than £200 million ($265m) since 2016, including aircraft, helicopters, drones, grenades, small arms and ammunition.

In January 2017, British Prime Minister Theresa May visited Ankara and signed a £100m deal to sell British warplanes to Turkey. Earlier this year, Turkish fighter jets of unknown origin reportedly bombed the main hospital in Afrin as part of the Turkish offensive, killing 16 people.

Two months after the conquest of Afrin was completed, May welcomed Erdogan to London, where he also met the Queen. In a government statement, May said Ankara was an ally in the fight against terrorism, failed to mention Afrin at all, and only mentioned Kurds in the context of “Kurdish terrorism”.

In a phone call with Erdogan last month, May said the UK would “continue working in partnership” with Turkey in Syria, showing that London is intensely relaxed about its ally’s collaboration with the jihadists it is meant to oppose.

Once again, it can be seen that the UK’s principal aim in this part of the Middle East is not to fight terrorism, but to maintain its alliance with Turkey, sell arms and counter the Assad regime in Syria. This strategy has led it to undermine its main ally in the region fighting IS – the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the YPG, which the Foreign Office recognises “make an important contribution to counter-[IS] efforts”.

The case of Rojava

Although the UK proscribes the PKK in Turkey as a terrorist organisation, it does not so regard the YPG in Syria; the minister of state for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, has said they are “separate organisations”.

The PYD declared a self-governed territory that it refers to as Rojava, or the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. Rojava showed a significant commitment to promoting multi-ethnic governance and women’s rights, having held elections in September last year. This experiment was demolished by Turkey’s takeover of Afrin, with Turkish forces taking over homes and seizing farms, while 134,000 Afrin residents remain displaced and face restrictions in returning.

To students of British history, Britain’s favouring of Islamist-backed military conquest over more liberal, democratic forces comes as no surprise – rather, it is a leitmotif of British foreign policy in the Middle East.

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This article was originally published on Middle East Eye.

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

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Back in April 2018,  The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres explained at a conference in Geneva that three-quarters of the Yemeni population were in desperate need of aid and protection as the war continued to rage.

He explained that

over 8 million people in Yemen “did not know where they will obtain their next meal,” and that “every ten minutes, a child under five dies of preventable causes” and because of this, “nearly two-thirds of girls are married before the age of 18, and many before they are 15.”

It is clear that there is a significant humanitarian disaster occurring in Yemen that is mostly being ignored internationally as the world keeps its eyes on Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. So why then is Yemen being ignored?

To answer this question, we must ask why Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea are the focus. The most straight forward way to answer this critical question is by highlighting that neither of these four countries are under the orbit of American imperialism and are therefore targeted whether it be by military means and/or by severe economic sanctions in the hope that they become compliant and open their economy to corporate domination and US dollar hegemony. Accompanied with these acts of economic subversion are the constant accusations of human rights abuses made by Washington and their allies against these governments. They are accused of perpetrating human rights abuses against their own people.

But with Yemen having a food shortage crisis with ports blockaded, a cholera crisis, and civilians targeted by double-tap airstrikes, including attacks against schools, hospitals, weddings, funerals and any other social event possibly imaginable, why is there little international condemnation against the main perpetrator, Saudi Arabia?

Turkish energy analyst and the Chairman of Ankara-based Institute for Energy Markets and Policies, Dr. Volkan Ozdemir, said in an interview with Sputnik Turkiye in 2017 that:

“For the last 44-45 years, the petrodollar system has been ruling the world, which means that the international oil trade had been mostly paid for in US dollars. It stems from the Middle Eastern crises of the 1970s, when Saudi Arabia bound itself to selling oil only in US dollars. Given that Saudi oil has played the major role in the US dollar becoming the world’s reserve currency, the US turned into the guarantor of the security of Saudi Arabia. Being the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar has remained the foundation of the US’ global hegemony.”

As Dr. Ozdemir explains, there is a very intimate relationship between Saudi oil and the US dollar. So long as the dollar hegemony is not threatened, any state can perpetrate human rights atrocities as Saudi Arabia perpetrates against its own people and Yemenis on a daily basis, but threaten this hegemony, then the full force of American might will be felt.

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had ambitions to unify Africa through a single currency called ‘the Dinar’ that would be backed by gold and would liberate the continent from the US Dollar monopoly. The new gold-backed currency would have meant African states would have traded its vast and precious resources for gold, thus undermining the dollar that is literally only paper. What we saw in 2011 was his capture, torture, sodomization and murder by US-backed militants. This was also repeated earlier in the Muslim World with long-time Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein dumping the Dollar to trade Iraq’s oil in Euros; this being one of the main reasons for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea in different manners are either outside the orbit of the US Dollar or have challenged its hegemony. Their resistance to being economically dominated by the US Dollar and to achieve, or maintain, sovereignty over their own economic destinies has seen the constant accusations of human rights abuses levelled against them.

However, as Saudi Arabia is a compliant state to US imperialism and is a bulwark of protecting the Dollar hegemony on the global economy, it can escape all criticisms and allegations made against it. It is for this reason that Saudi Arabia can escape sanctions and criticisms despite its use of cluster munitions and White Phosphorus, killing journalists, attacking facilities run by aid organizations, and while all this occurs, the US and the UK have accelerated weapon sales to the puritanical kingdom.

Rather, Washington and London should have at the minimum taken on the example made by Islamabad who were asked by Riyadh to join in the coalition against Yemen, but maturely opted to remain neutral in such an aggression against the Arab world’s most impoverished state. This is unsurprising as we continue to see Pakistan liberate itself from US control that previous leaders put the country under and we now see Islamabad operate mostly independently to make decisions that are in the best interests, at least in foreign policy, of the Pakistani people.

So long as Saudi Arabia continues to help preserve the hegemony of the US Dollar, it will be able to continue human rights abuses, including the starvation of the Yemeni population, to achieve its goal of regional hegemony. Saudi Arabia believes that it is countering Iranian influence on its southern border, but this is literally coming at the price of thousands of deaths because of preventable diseases, starvation and airstrikes. The question then remains whether we can take US accusations against other states of human rights abuses seriously when considering the daily human rights abuses perpetrated by Saudi Arabia?

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Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

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After 70 years of Israeli colonization of Palestine and discrimination against the Palestinians treating them as subhuman goyims, Israelis; the racist self-proclaimed holy people, light on all nations, have just crowned their racist ideology with a new law; Jewish Nation-State Law, that was passed on July 19th.

This law defines the Zionist Israeli colony in Palestine as a state that belongs exclusively to the “Jewish people”. It totally disregards and cancels the citizenship of the indigenous Palestinians numbering more than 50% of all the recent population and whose roots in the land go back thousands of years in history even before the alleged existence of ancient Israel. 

This law considers the “land of Israel” (all historical Palestine) as the historical homeland of the Jewish people, where they can fulfill their alleged cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination that is unique and exclusive to the Jewish people. It stipulates that al-Quds (known as Jerusalem), complete and united, as the capital of Israel. It grants automatic citizenship to world Jewry and encourages all Jews, and only Jews, to immigrate to Israel. To accommodate these new immigrants this law views the expansion and development of new Jewish settlements (colonies) as a national value. To make this Jewish Zionist Israel more unique and more exclusive than the rest of the world this law paints it with Hebrew language and Hebrew calendar as the official language and calendar of the state.

All these privileges for the Jews come on the expense and nullification of the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. This law violates international laws, UN resolutions, peace process and political agreements, and most importantly human morality. It totally negates the existence of Palestinians; the rightful owners of the land. It cancels the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their own homes and towns as guaranteed by international laws. It negates their history, their language, their culture, their religion and their humanity. What is most dangerous is that it paves the way for more ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and more theft of their land to build more Jewish colonies.

In short, this law is a flagrant discrimination against Palestinians. This Jewish discrimination has a long history that started 100 years ago and gradually grew in intensity until it culminated with this Jewish National-State Law. Israel does not allow Palestinians to buy or rent any land because the Israeli government claims the whole Palestine as Jewish owned granted by divine land deed. Palestinian towns are considered contaminants on sacred Jewish land that need to be extricated. Thus, Israeli governments pursued a policy of graduated demolition of Palestinian homes and villages. The recent demolition of Palestinian Khan el-Ahmar village last week is the latest example. Palestinian existence is tolerated as long as they are perceived as slaves; animal souls born in human bodies whose sole existence is to serve the god’s chosen people; the Jews.

Israel has finally admitted what all the world has known since the beginning of its illegal colonial establishment as the ultimate racist apartheid in the whole world. Israel is a colonial project based fundamentally on the racist religious faith of Judaism with a genocidal real estate racist god, who favors one alleged nation over the rest of his creations to be the light on nations and assigns them a promised piece of land as a homeland. Let us remember that Judaism is a religion not a nationality, and that “Jewish people” is just a religious farce, for modern Jews came from different nationalities, and Israeli Jews are Jews, who adopted the Zionist colonial ideology.

This law openly declares that Israel is an apartheid regime that is worse even than the old South African apartheid regime. It clearly exposes the fallacy that Israel is the “only democracy” in the Middle East for in actuality Israel has been the only racist and Jewish exclusive state in the Middle East. The region does have some Arab democratic regimes such as that of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt where government is elected in as a democratic fashion as the American elections. Unlike Israel that considers itself Jewish only, these Arab countries have citizens who are members of different religions and creeds and are from different ethnicities.

This Israeli law embodies the ugliest form of racism far worse than the Nazi’s motto of “Deutchland über alles” (Germany above all).

Racism is the most fundamental building block of Zionism/Israel and is an intrinsic characteristic of the Zionist colony so much so that Zionist Jews do not just discriminate against all goyims; non-Jews, but they also discriminate against different factions of Jews among themselves, and segregate each faction from the others; Ashkenazim, Haredim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, and black African Jews, Oriental Jews, Russian Jews European and American Jews. This intra-racism is so strong that white Jewish Israelis regularly commit hate crimes against black Ethiopian Jewish Israelis and refuse to have them live in the same neighborhood or shop in the same grocery stores, or work in the same office, or even buried in the same grave yards. This racism is implanted early in the minds of their children in public schools, where black Jewish Israeli children are segregated from white Jewish Israeli children.

This intra-racism is not restricted to individual Jews, Jewish gangs, or certain Jewish Israeli neighborhoods or cities, but it is also a governmental policy adopted by governmental as well as civil and private institutions. The well-publicized cases of forcibly injecting Jewish African immigrant women with birth control on their first entry to the state, building walls isolating Ethiopian communities from white communities, the dumping in trash of donated black Jewish blood believing it is religiously unfit for white Jews, the theft of thousands of African Jewish new-born babies from their newly immigrated mothers claiming them as born dead while giving them to white Jewish families, among other similar cases of extreme intra-racism and discrimination are examples of racist policies perpetrated by the Zionist governments.

This racism and segregation breed hatred and violence that is encouraged in the Israeli educational system since kindergarten classes. Students are taught that the Jewish race is a special race, a holy race, light upon all nations; god’s chosen people, while the Others are defiled races.

This racist apartheid law is the major premise in the Zionist colonial ideology. The Israelis did not dare to declare it in the past for fear of global reprimand. But now with the American support at its zenith with Trump’s administration declaring al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the Israeli capital, and with the timid objections from global communities, who seem to be unwilling to hold Israel responsible for its many crimes, Israeli leaders are emboldened to despise all international laws and to pursue their brutal racist colonial project of Greater Israel in the Middle East.

It is still not clear to many nations and their political leaders that the ultimate goal of this Greater Israel Project is not just to colonize and control only Palestine, but also the whole Middle Eastern region as its second phase.

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Featured image is from The Tyee.

Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

Featured image is from Snopes.com.

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On July 20, the US Defense Department announced in a statement that it will provide $200 million to Ukraine in security-cooperation funds earmarked for additional training, equipment, and advisory efforts to build the defensive capacity of its armed forces.  The funds are intended to enhance Ukraine’s command-and-control and situational-awareness systems, secure communications, military mobility, night-vision capabilities, and military medical treatment. “This reaffirms the long-standing defense relationship between the United States and Ukraine,” the statement noted.

The package includes equipment to support ongoing training programs and operational needs, including counter-artillery and counter-mortar radars, high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles, night-vision devices, electronic warfare detection, secure communications, and medical equipment. The total of US security-sector assistance to Ukraine since 2014 will now top $1 billion in aid. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the founder the Senate Ukraine Caucus, hailed the announcement, which he called “a clear message that America stands with the Ukrainian people in their struggle … against Russian aggression,” as he put it.

In March, the State Department cleared a $47-million sale of FGM-148 Javelin portable anti-tank missiles to Ukraine.  The package specified 210 missiles and 37 launchers. Ukrainian personnel have been training with the new weapons since May. Sending US military on an advice and training mission is tantamount to indirect involvement in Ukraine’s internal conflict. Hundreds of US and Canadian military instructors have been training Ukrainian personnel at the Yavorov firing range since 2015. The US Navy operates a facility in Ochakov.

In June, Ukraine’s parliament approved the law “On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine (on the Direction of Ukraine’s Foreign Policy),” which set NATO membership as Ukraine’s foreign-policy goal, replacing the country’s non-aligned status. With the economy in pitiful shape, Ukraine’s defense expenditures already greatly exceed  2% of its GDP. Very few NATO members spend such a share of their GDP on military needs, despite the pledges they have made at summits.

Ukraine’s government says its military will meet NATO standards by or during the year 2020. But allocating a large percentage of GDP to military needs and getting bang for one’s buck are two different things. Natan Chazin, a former advisor to the chief of the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, believes the military reforms have gone nowhere. According to a sensational story in the New York Times, corruption is widespread in the ranks of Ukraine’s military. If so, who can guarantee that the US-supplied weapons would not fall into the wrong hands and be used against the US military somewhere outside of Europe?

The US 2018 fiscal year (FY) defense budget allocates $350 million for security assistance to Kiev. In the draft budget for FY 2019, Ukraine is included in the list of countries to be granted security assistance under the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing program.

The sum of $200 million was allocated months ago as part of the defense budget, but was kept on hold pending “a series of defense reforms” Washington was demanding from Kiev. The passage of Ukraine’s new national security law, signed by the Ukrainian president on July 5, met the requirements enshrined in the US legislation, thereby allowing the Pentagon to release the funds.  The Law on National Security provides a legislative framework for aligning Ukraine’s national security architecture with Euro-Atlantic principles. It is perceived as a major step toward achieving NATO interoperability.

The timing has a symbolic impact.  US President Donald Trump has come under harsh criticism for the remarks he made during a joint press conference after the summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16.  The announcement on military aid to Ukraine came on the same day the White House rejected a proposal from Russia to hold a referendum in eastern Ukraine on the fate of the region.   The possibility was raised by Vladimir Putin during the talks. Addressing Russian diplomats on July 19, President Putin said that any country pushing Ukraine or Georgia into the NATO fold “should think of the possible consequences of this irresponsible policy” because Russia would “respond in kind to any aggressive steps that directly threaten Russia.” Indeed, why should the US provide lethal weapons and training to a neighbor of Russia, not to mention its military presence in Ochakov? Russia has not sent weapons to any neighbors of the US, nor does it have a military presence near America’s borders.

Military cooperation between the US and Ukraine is a multilateral process that is moving forward. A US-Ukraine cyber-security bill has passed in the House.

So, cooperation in various areas is thriving, despite human-rights violations in Ukraine. This fact has been confirmed by a report from the State Department. The corruption in Ukraine is an internationally acknowledged problem. Popular protests are commonplace, despite the fact that the conflict in the Donbass is being used to distract the public from their domestic woes. Many in the West are frustrated with the way Kiev is implementing reforms and with the political influence of the oligarchs.  A study by the prestigious Brookings Institute has confirmed the fact that the reforms in Ukraine have foundered. The country’s politicians are embracing extremist rhetoric.

But a blind eye is being turned to all of this, as Kiev grows obsequious and ready to comply with instructions from Washington. In late June, the Ukrainian government made a decision to buy American coal from Pennsylvania, which is said to be almost twice as expensive as what is locally sourced in the Donbass.  It has also decided to rely on cooperation with Westinghouse, in an attempt to maintain its nuclear energy capacity. The deal assumes that the spent fuel will be stored near the surface, turning the country into a nuclear dump.

Kiev has recently been rewarded with an official status in NATO. The 2018 NATO summit confirmed its support for Ukraine’s membership. To display its diligence Kiev has recently joined a new three-nation anti-Moscow alliance.

With the US-Russia two-way dialog on Ukraine stalled, Washington is no longer viewed as a mediator, but rather an accomplice who is fueling the conflict. America’s vigorous political support and security assistance is enticing Kiev into seeking a military solution to the crisis in the Donbass. Where could that lead? Russia can supply the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine with weapons systems, including the Kornet anti-tank system, which has better specs than the US Javelin. Moscow could recognize the republics as independent states, once the Minsk II accords wash out. If Russian forces are invited in by the governments of those new republics, Moscow may agree to those requests, which would be an action strictly in compliance with international law. This is the scenario the US and Ukraine may provoke.  They will have no one to blame but themselves.

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Arkady Savitsky is a military analyst based in St Petersburg, Russia.

Featured image is from the author.

This week,  leaders of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will be meeting in Johannesburg amidst an evolving trade war sponsored by the Trump administration. The venue will be attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

To what extent will the BRICS countries respond to the wave of economic sanctions and trade measures. China has intimated its resolve to implement bilateral trade deals which bypass the dollar. 

What is the nature of the BRICS project? How will it evolve in relation to the current trade environment?

Three out of the five BRICS member states are full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) including China, Russia and India.

Brazil and South Africa are heavily dollarized economies, with governments broadly committed to the tenets of neoliberalism. Both Brazil and South Africa are experiencing deap-seated political crises which in large part are attributable to US imperial policies. 

Will the BRICS initiative be in a position to effectively challenge US dollar hegemony? 

Global Research will covering the BRICS venue which will be dominated by debate concerning the US imposed trade restrictions. 

The following background article first published by GR in April 2015 focusses on some of the inherent contradictions of the BRICS initiative, which still prevail today. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 24, 2018

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The financial media as well as segments of the alternative media are pointing to a possible weakening of the US dollar as a global trading currency resulting from the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) initiative. 

One of the central arguments in this debate on competing World currencies hinges on the BRICS initiative to create a development bank which, according to analysts, challenges the hegemony of Wall Street and the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions.

The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) was set up to challenge two major Western-led giants – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. NDB’s key role will be to serve as a pool of currency for infrastructure projects within a group of five countries with major emerging national economies – Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa. (RT, October 9, 2015, emphasis added)

More recently, emphasis has been placed on the role of China’s new Asia Infrastructure Investment  Bank (AIIB), which, according to media reports, threatens to “transfer global financial control from Wall Street and City of London to the new development banks and funds of Beijing and Shanghai”.

While the creation of BRICS has significant geopolitical implications, both the AIIB as well as the proposed BRICS Development Bank (NDB) and its Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) are dollar denominated entities. Unless they are coupled with a multi-currency system of trade and credit, they do not threaten dollar hegemony. Quite the opposite, they tend to sustain and extend dollar denominated lending. Moreover, they replicate several features the Bretton Woods framework.

Towards a Multi-Currency Arrangement? 

Heavily indebted under the brunt of their external creditors,  all three countries are faithful pupils of the IMF-World Bank. The central bank of these countries is controlled by Wall Street and the IMF. For them to enter into a “non-dollar” or an “anti-dollar” development banking arrangement with multiple currencies, would have required prior approval of the IMF.

The Contingency Reserve Arrangement

The CRA is defined as a “framework for provision of support through liquidity and precautionary instruments in response to actual or potential short-term balance of payments pressures.” (Russia India Report April 7, 2015). In this context, the CRA fund does not constitute a “safety net” for BRICS countries, it accepts the hegemony of the US dollar which is sustained by large scale speculative operations in the currency and commodity markets.

In essence the CRA operates in a similar fashion to an IMF precautionary loan arrangement (e.g. Brazil November 1998) with a view to enabling highly indebted countries to maintain the parity of their exchange rate to the US dollar, by replenishing central bank reserves through borrowed money.

The CRA excludes the policy option of foreign exchange controls by BRICS member states. In the case of India, Brazil and South Africa, this option is largely foreclosed as a result of their agreements with the IMF.

The dollar denominated $100 billion CRA fund is a “silver platter” for Western “institutional speculators” including JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Goldman Sachs et al, which are involved in short selling operations on the Forex market. Ultimately the CRA fund will finance the speculative onslaught in the currency market.

Neoliberalism firmly entrenched

An arrangement using national currencies instead of the US dollar requires sovereignty in central bank monetary policy. In many regards, India, Brazil and South Africa are (from the monetary standpoint) US proxy states, firmly aligned with IMF-World Bank-WTO economic diktats.

It is worth recalling that since 1991, India’s macroeconomic policy was under under the control of the Bretton Woods institutions, with a former World Bank official, Dr. Manmohan Singh, serving first as Finance Minister and subsequently as Prime Minister.

Moreover, while India is an ally of China and Russia under BRICS, it has entered into a  new defense cooperation deal with the Pentagon which is (unofficially) directed against Russia and China. It is also cooperating with the US in aerospace technology. India constitutes the largest market (after Saudi Arabia) for the sale of US weapons systems. And all these transactions are in US dollars.

Similarly, Brazil signed a far-reaching Defense agreement with the US in 2010 under the government of Luis Ignacio da Silva, who in the words of the IMF’s former managing director Heinrich Koeller, “Is  Our Best President”, “… I am enthusiastic [with Lula’s administration]; but it is better to say I am deeply impressed by President Lula, indeed, and in particular because I do think he has the credibility”  (IMF Managing Director Heinrich Koeller, Press conference, 10 April 2003 ).

In Brazil, the Bretton Woods institutions and Wall Street have dominated macro-economic reform since the outset of the government of Luis Ignacio da Silva in 2003. Under Lula, a Wall Street executive was appointed to head the Central Bank, the Banco do Brazil was in the hands of a former CitiGroup executive. While there are divisions within the ruling PT party, neoliberalism prevails. Economic and social in Brazil is in large part dictated by the country’s external creditors including JPMorgan Chase, Bank America and Citigroup.

Central Bank Reserves and The External Debt

India and Brazil (together with Mexico) are among the World’s most indebted developing countries. The foreign exchange reserves are fragile. India’s external debt in 2013 was of the order of more than $427 Billion, that of Brazil was a staggering $482 billion, South Africa’s external debt was of the order of $140 Billion. (World Bank, External Debt Stock, 2013).

External Debt Stock (2013)

Brazil  $482 billion

India   $427 billion

South Africa  $140 billion

All three countries have central banks reserves (including gold and forex holdings) which are lower than their external debt (see table below).

Central Bank Reserves (2013)

Brazil  $359 billion

India:  $298 billion

South Africa $50 billion

The situation of South Africa is particularly precarious with an external debt which is almost three times its central bank reserves.

What this means is that these three BRICS member states are under the brunt of their Western creditors. Their central bank reserves are sustained by borrowed money. Their central bank operations (e.g. with a view to supporting domestic investments and development programs) will require borrowing in US dollars. Their central banks are essentially “currency board” arrangements, their national currencies are dollarized.

The BRICs Development Bank (NDB)

On 15 July 2014, the group of five countries signed an agreement to create the US$100 billion BRICS Development Bank together with a US dollar denominated  ” reserve currency pool” of US$100 billion. These commitments were subsequently revised.

Each of the five-member countries  “is expected to allocate an equal share of the $50 billion startup capital that will be expanded to $100 billion. Russia has agreed to provide $2 billion from the federal budget for the bank over the next seven years.” (RT, March 9, 2015).

In turn, the commitments to the Contingency Reserve Arrangement are as follows;

Brazil, $18 billion

Russia $18 billion

India  $18 billion

China $41 billion

South Africa $5 billion

Total $100 billion

As mentioned earlier, India, Brazil and South Africa, are heavily indebted countries with central bank reserves substantially below the level of their external debt.  Their contribution to the two BRICs financial entities can only be financed:

• by running down their dollar denominated central bank reserves and/or
• by financing their contributions to the Development Bank and CRA, by borrowing the money, namely by “running up” their dollar denominated external debt.

In both cases, dollar hegemony prevails. In other words, the Western creditors of these three countries will be required to “contribute” directly or indirectly to  the financing of the dollar denominated contributions of Brazil, India and South Africa to the BRICS development bank (NDB) and the CRA.

In the case of South Africa with Central Bank reserves of the order of 50 billion dollars, the contribution  to the BRICS NDB will inevitably be financed by an increase in the country’s (US dollar denominated) external debt.

Moreover, with regard to India, Brazil and South Africa, their membership in the BRICS Development Bank was no doubt the object of behind closed doors negotiations with the IMF as well as guarantees that they would not depart from the “Washington Consensus” on macro-economic reform.

Under a scheme whereby these countries were to be in be in full control of their Central Bank monetary policy, the contributions to the Development Bank (NDB) would be allocated in national currency rather than US dollars under a multi-currency arrangement. Needless to say under a multi-currency system the contingency CRA fund would not be required.

The geopolitics behind the BRICS initiative are crucial. While the BRICS initiative from the very outset has accepted the dollar system, this does not exclude the introduction, at a later stage of a multiple currency arrangement, which challenges dollar hegemony.

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The 10^th BRICS Summit will take place in Johannesburg from 25-27 July and will see the most important figures from the emerging Multipolar World Order congregate together on the African continent. This is an historical moment in and of itself that’s made all the more special by the invitations that the host country extended to Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Jamaica, and Turkey to participate in this event because of their roles in various international organizations of significance such as the G20 and other integrational platforms. Although a wide array of topics are expected to be discussed, it can be certain that South Africa will do its utmost to keep Africa as the subject of conversation whenever possible, knowing that the dozens of countries on the landmass collectively represent the verge of economic development this century that’s made all the more promising by the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) that they’re working to create. 

Russian scholar and visionary thinker Yaroslav Lissovolik recently wrote an enlightening policy paper for the prestigious Valdai Club titled “BEAMS Of The Sunrise: A Look At BRICS 5-Year Cycles” that focuses on the many complementarities that BRICS has with other organizations. His thesis is that BRICS’s evolution to BRICS+ (a concept that he first described in his June 2017 piece about “The Mechanics Of BRICS+: A Tentative Blueprint”) has seen it expand its influence throughout the regional integrational blocs that its members are a part of, with the second step of BRICS++ (described in detail in his February 2017 work about “Re-Thinking The BRICS: On The Concepts Of BRICS+ And BRICS++”) envisioned to connect each of these multilateral bodies together and even involve their partners. Per his first-mentioned article, he believes that relations between BIMSTEC, the Eurasian Economic Union, the African Union, Mercosur, and the SCO (BEAMS) will be the driving force behind this process.

In practice, the guiding strategy as proposed by Mr. Lissovolik is to have BRICS function as the ultimate platform for managing multipolarity as this organization gradually surmounts its Western counterparts in importance and eventually comes to involve almost the entirety of the non-Western world. The relevance that this has for Africa is that he thinks that the African Union component of BEAMS (which itself is the embodiment of BRICS+) could streamline more solid continental integration through its various sub-blocs like he wrote in his December 2017 article concerning “A BRICS+ Framework For Africa: Targeting Regional Connectivity”. This proposal dovetails perfectly with the continental building blocks of the CFTA, but this grand vision requires the crucial participation of BRICS members China, India, and Russia if it’s to ultimately be successful. The first two are economic powerhouses with limitless potential for transforming the continent, but they might require their mutual Russian partner’s managing efforts to cooperate in Africa.

Trust between these two Asian Great Powers is lacking after last summer’s Donglang/Doklam incident even though it’s been on the rise lately following Prime Minister Modi’s informal summit with President Xi in Wuhan and India’s growing economic friction with the US over its newly implemented tariffs. Even so, India’s own protectionist measures vis-à-vis Chinese products and its unflinching opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that it regards as transiting through Pakistani-controlled territory that it claims as its own are serious obstacles that make any full-fledged economic – let alone strategic – rapprochement between the two unlikely no matter the high-sounding slogans that they and their media surrogates chant from time to time for domestic political reasons. As a case in point, the newly unveiled joint Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” (AAGC) is poised to compete with China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) vision of New Silk Road connectivity instead of cooperate with it.

“Friendly competition” between these two developmental models concentrating mostly on soft and hard infrastructure respectively could end up being to Africa’s advantage if its countries properly leverage this, though they’re nowhere near as organized as they’d have to be in order to effect any positive influence on this process, nor is South Africa in any position to do so either. Therefore, the most realistic prospect is for Russia to take the lead in “balancing” between both of its privileged partners’ transcontinental infrastructure projects by seeking to involve itself in each of their African operations, which could make Moscow the “glue” that connects the two together and manages their rivalry. This in turn could improve their complementarity with one another and enable Africa to reap the full advantages of being the object of China and India’s economic competition, with Russia’s participation giving the host countries an additional qualitative benefit to each model.

For this to happen, however, Russia must use the opportunity of the 10^th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg to explore various avenues for multilateral economic cooperation with China and India in Africa, playing off of its silent return to the continent over the past year which the author described in detail in his May 2018 article about “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”and the more specific one a month later on how “Russia’s Making Some Smart Moves In The Central African Republic”. If Moscow can make its partners in Beijing and New Delhi appreciate its newfound influence in Africa, then it can make the case for them to involve it in their OBOR and AAGC projects there, which could in turn result in Russia most effectively managing their competition to the continent’s supreme advantage. This would therefore make next week’s summit the best thing to ever happen to Africa if Russia’s creative “balancing” efforts succeed in unlocking its true BRICS+ potential.

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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 the author.

President Trump was savagely attacked by the American political and academic community over the Helsinki summit, during which, in their opinion, he capitulated to President Putin on every issue.

All attempts to defend him have been in vain

The American press, who consider themselves to be the freest and most professional journalists in the world, continue their race to the bottom. First they humiliated their own president and country (there’s no other way to say it) during the Helsinki summit itself. Rather than asking about the most important issues on the global agenda, they were only interested in Russia’s interference in the American election. I guess that superpower has no other problems that are worth discussing with Russia (such as North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, Iran’s growing power in the Middle East, the failure to contain China, the collapse of the transatlantic alliance, or the inability to palm Ukraine off onto another financial sponsor), other than Moscow’s alleged influence on the US 2016 election. However, even if this is such a riveting topic, journalists should still ask questions, not simply make declarations that are all variations of “Why should the American people and Trump believe you when you say that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 elections?” Things got to the point that the American president was forced to defend his Russian counterpart in the face of their inappropriate behavior.

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive in Helsinki, Finland, on Sunday ahead of a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump is under increasing pressure to confront Putin directly about special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russians accused of conspiring to interfere in the 2016 election

And these reporters/peddlers of propaganda needed someone to apologize for them. A quick glance through the articles and commentary published by the US media following the summit confirms that they paid no attention to either Syria, Ukraine, disarmament issues, or the progress being made by diplomatic work sessions. Their focus was almost entirely centered on Trump’s “unacceptable” and “shameful” behavior. “The moment called for Trump to stand up for America. He chose to bow,” wrote the Washington Post. An article by columnist Thomas Friedman in the Seattle Times was actually titled “Trump and Putin vs. America.”

He didn’t back them

Naturally, most of the noise is coming from his personal enemies, who finally have the opportunity to challenge the main pillar of Trump’s legitimacy — his commitment to defending America’s national interests. Former FBI director James Comey wrote indignantly,

“This was the day an American president stood on foreign soil next to a murderous lying thug and refused to back his own country.”

Mr. Comey was the one who supported the cruel and deceitful Hillary, refusing to obey the law and protect his own country from an attack against his own president and constitution.

However (unfortunately for Trump), even many Republicans have added their voices to the howl of criticism. Republican senator Jeff Flake holds the same opinion, claiming that he did not think that he would live to see such a day. The Republicans were displeased, first of all, that in Putin’s presence Trump questioned the national intelligence agency’s findings about Russian interference during the run-up to the election. And though the American president has already retreated a bit  —  claiming that although he places a high value on the work of the intelligence community, he simply wants to leave the past in the past  —  even so, the wave of rage has not subsided.

Stupidity, treason, or the nation’s best interests?

In terms of tone, the press articles only diverged in regard to their differing assumptions about the motives behind Trump’s capitulation to Putin. Some wrote that Trump lacked professionalism and backbone. According to the Washington Post, prior to the summit his aides had prepared as many as 100 pages of briefing materials offering advice and strategies to help Trump negotiate with Putin from a position of strength  —  but that the president ignored almost all of it.

Others claim that the problem isn’t that there’s something deficient about the American president, but that the Russian leader has something extra.

“President Trump’s weakness in front of Putin was embarrassing, and proves that the Russians have something on the president, personally, financially or politically,” declared House minority leader Nancy Pelosi.

And former CIA Director John Brennan bluntly labeled the US president’s actions as treasonous. It will be interesting to see if the Democrats continue to advance this idea, because treason, unlike many of other charges that the establishment is pursuing against Trump, is a clear-cut basis for launching impeachment proceedings.

Treason did actually occur  —  however it wasn’t Trump who was guilty of it, but rather the political and academic community. A few voices of reason, such as Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen, tried to explain the obvious. Trump is doing what other American presidents before him have done  —  he is meeting with the head of the Kremlin in order to prevent a nuclear war. In addition, the US president is trying to start afresh with Russia and turn that rival into an instrument of US foreign policy  —  a means to help contain Iran or China. However, the liberals and globalists who have declared war against him are undermining every effort by the occupant of the Oval Office and thus weakening the US position on the global stage. And of course no one is going to try to impeach them  —  in the end, they don’t have to answer for anything, and, according to Trump, “[all they] know how to do is resist and obstruct.” And unlike them, the president would rather “take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”

What did the American president accomplish?

What specific goals did President Trump manage to achieve during the Helsinki summit?

First of all, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin reached an agreement to resume their dialog on strategic stability and the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Given the past few years of escalating tensions surrounding these issues, plus recent events during which the whole world was literally on the verge of nuclear war, this step represents a real breakthrough. During that very meeting, the American president received specific proposals from his Russian counterpart, which have not yet been announced.

Second, as a result of the negotiations, agreement was reached in regard to the most important aspect of US policy in the Middle East: reducing Iran’s influence in Syria. President Putin affirmed Russia’s commitment to reestablishing full compliance in the Golan Heights with the 1974 agreement on disengagement between Syria and Israel.

Third, the American president managed to establish the prerequisites for constructing a new architecture for the global market for carbon emissions, in order to safeguard US economic interests.

In addition, during the final press conference after the summit, Donald Trump was handed a real bargaining chip by his Russian counterpart, which he can use in his political battle at home against his relentless opponents. In response to questions about Russia’s alleged interference in the US presidential election, Vladimir Putin announced that William Browder’s company, Hermitage Capital  —  which has been accused of tax evasion on $1.5 billion of its Russian earnings that were taken out of the country  —  had actually funneled $400 million into campaign contributions for Hillary Clinton.

Thus, in addition to the US president’s previous demands that the Democratic Party provide the FBI with access to its computer servers that were supposedly hacked “on orders from Moscow,” Donald Trump now has public testimony that Hillary Clinton’s election campaign was financed by “dirty money.”

Developments in the very near future will show how the US president will deal with the aftermath of the summit with his Russian counterpart. Whether or not he will be able, or allowed, to implement the agreements that were reached will largely depend on the outcome of the next round of the domestic political battles in Washington.

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All images, except the featured (from NPR), in this article are from Oriental Review.

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Though the announcement is couched in terms that make it seem humanitarian, as potentially a huge advance in science, an agency tied to the British government is encouraging efforts in gene-editing of the DNA of human embryos. It belongs in the category of eugenics. Not surprisingly, the footprints of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller eugenics circles, and major pharma groups as well as GMO seed companies are found here.

Following a well-placed article by Microsoft founder and major GMO supporter Bill Gates in the prestigious New York Council on Foreign Relations magazine, Foreign Affairs, strongly endorsing the development of so-called genetic editing, the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a part Government-funded advisory body, has now released a report titled Genome Editing and Human Reproduction.

The report and the people behind it, including the Government’s Medical Research Council, indicate that a major push is underway to convince the public that genetic manipulation of human embryo DNA, so-called gene editing, is desirable and beneficial.

Among its conclusions the report states,

“use of heritable genome editing interventions to influence the characteristics of future generations could be ethically acceptable.” It adds that, “research should be carried out on the safety and feasibility of heritable genome editing interventions to establish standards for clinical use.”

With many sentences stressing that the decision should only be licensed “on a case-by-case basis subject to assessment of the risks of adverse clinical outcomes for the future person,” by a national competent authority; and “strict regulation and oversight,” the report opens a Pandora’s box of eugenics issues, the long-standing agenda of circles such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller University, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others.

The focus is use of new technologies for gene editing, including CRISPR-Cas9, to “alter a DNA sequence(s) of an embryo, or of a sperm or egg cell prior to fertilisation. The aim would be to influence the inherited characteristics of the resulting person.” They elaborate,

“We refer to these as ‘heritable genome editing interventions’ since the altered DNA may be passed to future generations…”

They suggest that

“One use of heritable genome editing interventions would be to have a child while excluding a particular heritable disorder that the child might have inherited from their biological parents.” 

The person heading the new study is Birmingham University Prof. Karen Yeung, a professor not of biology, but of law and ethics and an expert in Artificial Intelligence. Yeung told the UK Guardian,

“It is our view that genome editing is not morally unacceptable in itself. There is no reason to rule it out in principle.”

The issuance of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report marks a major advance to creation of radical new laboratory interventions into human embryos to create what critics call “designer babies.”

The problem is that the technology of gene editing is anything but precise, contrary to what its advocates like Bill Gates may claim. The methodology of manipulating a specific part of a DNA chain to change human embryos is based on flawed scientific reductionism, which ignores the complexity of biophysical reality and of the fundamental laws of nature.

Risk to future generations

Take the statement from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report:

“We refer to these as ‘heritable genome editing interventions’ since the altered DNA may be passed to future generations…”

The altered DNA may be passed to future generations?… And what if the altered DNA goes awry and that too is passed to future generations?

The scientist who first suggested developing gene drives in gene editing, Harvard biologist Kevin Esvelt, has publicly warned that development of gene editing, in conjunction with gene drive technologies, have alarming potential to go awry. He notes how often CRISPR messes up and the likelihood of mutations arising, making even benign gene drives aggressive. He stresses,

“Just a few engineered organisms could irrevocably alter an ecosystem.”

Esvelt’s computer gene drive simulations calculated that a resulting edited gene, “can spread to 99 percent of a population in as few as 10 generations, and persist for more than 200 generations.”

He was discussing gene editing of mosquitoes. Now the debate is moving on to gene editing of human embryos.

UK Francis Crick Institute

The experiments have already begun, though researchers rush to stress they are with “donated embryos,” not implanted after into the womb of a woman, but killed after several days of lab experimenting. Two years ago, researchers in China used human embryos given by donors of embryos that could not have resulted in a live birth, to edit a specific gene. The results were a bad failure. The tested cells failed to contain the intended genetic material. Lead researcher Jungiu Huang told Nature,

“That’s why we stopped. We still think it’s too immature.”

Two years prior to the recent call by the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics to, in effect, give a broad green light to experiments with gene editing of human embryos, the UK Government’s so-called “fertility regulator,” the Orwellian-sounding Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), gave permission to scientists at London’s Francis Crick Institute to do limited experiments involving gene editing modification on human embryos.

The HFEA is part of the UK Department of Health and Social Care. It was the first time a national government approved use of the DNA-modification technique in human embryos. The researchers reportedly alter genes in donated embryos, which will be destroyed after seven days.

The Francis Crick Institute opened that same year, 2016, so the gene editing of human embryos was one of its first projects. Notably, the institute has 1,500 staff, including 1,250 scientists, and an annual budget of over £100 million, making it the biggest single biomedical laboratory in Europe. Among its first donors was the UK pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline, giving funding and personnel.

Also notable is the CEO and Director of the Francis Crick Institute, Sir Paul Nurse, geneticist and former President of the Rockefeller University in New York. In 2009 Nurse hosted an exclusive meeting at the Rockefeller University of hand-picked billionaires, invited by Bill Gates and David Rockefeller, to discuss the problem of “over-population.” They reportedly called their group The Good Club, and it included, according to reports, billionaire financiers Warren Buffett, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.

Grave Concerns

The fact that today the same Sir Paul Nurse heads one of the world’s largest and best financed biomedical laboratories where they are doing gene editing of “donated” human embryos, suggests that a very dangerous agenda is being advanced under the banner of gene editing. And the fact that Bill Gates and his huge foundation, a major investor of Monsanto (now Bayer AG), have been funding experiments in gene editing for more than a decade, including CRISPR, suggests that gene editing could soon become a new name for human eugenics.

Gene editing itself is hugely flawed and unregulated by governments. It has been shown repeatedly that only a small minority of cells into which CRISPR is introduced, usually by a virus, actually have their genomes edited as intended. Indeed, the risks of human embryo gene editing are such that an open appeal published in Nature magazine from Edward Lanphier, Fyodor Urnov and a number of other leading gene editing researchers declared,

“Don’t edit the human germ line.”

The appeal of the scientists stated,

“There are grave concerns regarding the ethical and safety implications of this research… In our view, genome editing in human embryos using current technologies could have unpredictable effects on future generations. This makes it dangerous and ethically unacceptable. Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications.”

The gene scientists added the alarming warning,

“The precise effects of genetic modification to an embryo may be impossible to know until after birth. Even then, potential problems may not surface for years.”

They called for a voluntary scientific moratorium on human gene editing.

The term “non-therapeutic modifications” might very well include genetic editing of certain “undesirable” human races, to program them for biological extinction, the eugenics ultimate dream for over a century. Is that unthinkable? Not to some minds to be sure.

*

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.

Featured image is from the author.

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

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Most Canadians believe the dominant narrative from our controlled, monopoly media. But the dominant narrative is a lie. Russia is not the enemy.  We are.  We are the one’s supporting al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, not Russia.

Recently, for example, the Canadian government announced that it will welcome 50 White Helmets and their families into Canada.  Here they will have a safe haven.¹

The Canadian government and its agencies extol the imagined virtues of these “first responders”. 

 Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, tweeted:

The White Helmets are courageous volunteers and first responders who risk their lives to help their fellow Syrians. Our thanks to Israel, Jordan, US, UK, Germany and our other partners who have worked closely with Canada to make the evacuation of WH possible.

— Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland) July 22, 2018

But we know, and it is well-documented, that the White Helmets are al-Qaeda auxiliaries.² They stage false flags. They fight alongside their al-Qaeda/al-Nusra Front and affiliated terrorist brigades.

The White Helmets are part of a “smart power” complex³ that disguises terrorism and wars of conquest as “humanitarian”. These terrorists are not independent.  The West, including Canada⁴, supports them financially. 

None of this international criminality will ever benefit Canadians, and all of it is to the detriment of humanity.

If Canadians knew the truth, they would not support policymakers who are making decisions in favour of terrorism and never-ending wars of aggression.

Canadians need to know the truth.

*

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

1. «Le Canada va accueillir des héros d’« Al-Qaïda avec un lifting. » Le Tribunal de l’infaux
Crimes et délits des médias dominants. 22 July, 2018.( https://tribunaldelinfaux.com/2018/07/22/le-canada-va-accueillir-des-heros-d-al-qaida-avec-un-lifting/) Accessed 23 July, 2018.

2. Mark Taliano, “The White Helmets are “Black Helmets”, They are Al Qaeda| And Canada Supports Them.” Global Research. 2 April, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-white-helmets-are-black-helmets-they-are-al-qaeda/5634301) Accessed 7 July, 2018.

3. Mark Taliano, “The War on Syria: Driving Home the Truth and the Need to Act Now.” Global Research. 12 July, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-war-on-syria-driving-home-the-truth-and-the-need-to-act-now/5647214) Accessed 23 July, 2018.

4. Ken Stone, “TRUDEAU GOVERNMENT ADMITS TERRORIST AUXILIARIES TO CANADA.” 23 July, 2018. (https://www.facebook.com/notes/hamilton-coalition-to-stop-the-war/for-immediate-release-hamilton-monday-july-23-2018/2586684938024128/) Accessed 23 July, 2018.

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

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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The fact that Canada is admitting as refugees at least 250 White Helmets and their family members exposes the involvement of the Trudeau government, like the Harper government before it, in the illegal, US-led, regime-change operation in Syria.

These two federal governments are collectively responsible for setting up and continuing the international coalition that produced the proxy war against Syria, using terrorist mercenaries as its footsoldiers; leading the international regime of brutal economic sanctions against Syria which turned about four million Syrians into refugees – (the international sanctions regime was drawn up in a meeting in Ottawa in June 2013); demonizing the legitimate government of Syria, breaking off diplomatic relations with it, and trying to delegitimize it in international forums; supporting armed rebels against Syria, a member state of the United Nations, by bringing their leaders to Ottawa and giving them funds; overflying Syria on military missions without the express consent of its government; and supporting the propaganda arm of the regime change operation through the White Helmets.

Now that the Syrian government has liberated Daraa, where the western-sponsored regime-change operation began in 2011, the “rebels” and their auxiliaries have had to scramble to find places of refuge. Thus, the Trudeau government has felt obliged to admit as refugees to Canada some of their foreign policy assets, namely the White Helmets.

Who are the White Helmets? The White Helmets claim to be a “fiercely independent” organization of volunteer first responders in Syria helping Syrian civilians injured in the war.

In fact, the White Helmets are a fiercely partisan organization of relatively well-paid employees, set up by British and US intelligence services inside of Turkey (a belligerent in the war against Syria) in 2013. A Madison Avenue public relations firm was contracted to develop the concept of the White Helmets as a humanitarian agency for public consumption in the West – to provide a ‘suger-coating’ to an ugly and illegal imperial war. John Lemesurier, a former British military intelligence officer and later “military contractor”, was hired to front the organization, which has been funded to the tune of about 150 million dollars by the governments of the USA, UK, France, Holland, Denmark, Japan, New Zealand, and Canada, among others. In 2016, Canada donated $4.5 million dollars to the White Helmets. Currently, a Freedom of Information request is seeking to determine if the Canadian government has made repeated donations of $4.5 million in 2017 and 2018. On top of the donations, the Canadian government has organized two cross-Canada publicity tours of White Helmet personnel in recent years in various cities. This past March, a delegation of White Helmets was welcomed to speak to the Canadian parliament’s Human Rights Committee. In addition, the New Democratic Party endorsed the White Helmets for the Nobel Peace Prize, which it failed to win.

The White Helmets are embedded in the Al-Qaeda terrorist network and operate exclusively in terrorist-held areas of Syria. Though it also calls itself the Syrian Civil Defence, the government of Syria created the real Syrian Civil Defence in 1953 and was a founding member of the International Civil Defence Organization.

Once in place inside the terrorist-occupied enclaves inside of Syria, the true role of the White Helmets emerged. The group specialized in making videos of dramatically-staged rescues of children from among the rubble of part of cities which Al-Qaeda (and sometimes other terrorist groups) had managed to seize and occupy. Two notorious staged videos stand out: the staged rescues of Omran Daqneesh in Aleppo and Hassan Diab in Douma. Occasionally, however, the White Helmets joined in recreational video competitions, such as the Mannequin Challenge. The twofold principal purposes of the child-rescue videos was, first, to demonize the Syrian government as a brutal tyranny, even though it was lawfully defending its sovereign territory against foreign invasion, and, secondly, to promote the western regime change operation in Syria as a humanitarian intervention. Specifically, the White Helmet videos were timed to promote calls by western governments for directly military intervention in Syria by such means as a no-fly zone (similar to the one imposed on Libya in 2011) or a “civilian corridor”. And, on at least two occasions, the tactic worked. In April 2017, the White Helmets staged a false flag chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun which prompted a US missile attack on the Sharyat Air Base in Syria. A recent outstanding example of the propaganda use of such videos was the staging of a fake nerve agent attack in Douma, Syria, on April 7 of this year. The incident, later revealed as a hoax by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), nonetheless resulted in over one hundred missile strikes by the USA, UK, and France on Syria on April 13, 2018.

In addition, the White Helmets’ true role as an auxiliary to terrorism was captured on film on several occasions when they participated in Al-Qaeda summary executions and by Facebook postings by numerous White Helmets on their personal accounts showing themselves moonlighting as armed Al-Qaeda fighters and heaping praise on Al-Qaeda leaders. Contrarily, civilians inside the enclaves in Syrian cities liberated from Al-Qaeda and ISIS told many western reporters that the White Helmets provided no medical help or assistance to them, but rather only to the armed terrorists. Moreover, real Syrian Civil Defence workers testified that many of their comrades were killed by Al-Qaeda fighters and their equipment and vehicles given to the White Helmets.

The rescue of the White Helmet “rescuers” by Israel through the Golan Heights should not come as a surprize because Israel has been a major player in the illegal, failed, regime change operation in Syria. Israel has bombed Syria more than one hundred times during the war. Israel openly supported FSA fighters with arms, intelligence, and funding in southern Syria and routinely transferred wounded terrorists to hospitals inside Israel for medical treatment before returning them to the front. Israeli PM Netanyahu posed for photos in one of those hospitals at the bedside of wounded terrorists last year. Today (July 22, 2018), in a tweet, Netanyahu stated that both President Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau personally asked for his help in rescuing the White Helmets from Syria.

Syria is well rid of these White Helmets. But, if Canadians understood who these people really were, they would strongly object to the settling of terrorists in our midst. Last November in the House of Commons, Trudeau asserted that Canadians returning from terrorist activities in Syria and Iraq would not be charged with criminal offences. Rather, he asserted, “We also have methods of de-emphasizing or de-programming people who want to harm our society, and those are some things we have to move forward on.” At the end of the day, then, the Trudeau government in effect embraces terrorist fighters and their auxiliaries.

That the Canadian government is planning to admit White Helmets personnel to Canada as refugees should gravely concern Canadians. These civil defence poseurs are ideologically committed to terrorism, personally connected to Al Qaeda, and have the blood on their hands of many Syrians whose country they helped to invade and occupy. The potential for them to cause harm in Canada is high.

We urge Canadians immediately to contact their MP’s about this matter, to spread the alarm via social media, and to write letters to newspapers. We also urge the Canadian government to do the following:

1. withdraw from the US-led military coalition in Syria and Iraq;
2. end Canada’s punishing economic sanctions against Syria;
3. re-establish diplomatic ties with the Syrian government;
4. participate in the reconstruction of Syria through payments of reparation.

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At present, the US maintains more than 800 military bases in over hundred countries, which cost in excess of $100 billion annually to operate. That means the Americans currently have more military bases in foreign lands than any other nation or empire has ever possessed since the times of the ancient Greeks. America’s global military dominance becomes more apparent when considering that Russia only has military bases in nine countries, many of which are former soviet republics, the UK has ten, France has nine, and China has just one. American officials justify their extensive foreign presence and the associated costs by claiming that the United States is an exceptional country that is committed to safeguarding world peace and security. That being said, specific pretexts do differ depending on region, with the War on Drugs being frequently cited in Latin America, protecting countries from Russian aggression constituting the dominant rationale in Europe, containing Chinese influence and North Korea representing the main motivations in the Asia-Pacific region, and combatting terrorism and containing Iranian influence among the objectives in the Middle East.

Argentina is currently among the countries considered likely destinations for new American military installations in the foreseeable future, despite the fact that such arrangements have been rejected by both the population and former leadership of the country in recent years. In fact, all military exercises between Argentina and the U.S. were suspended from 2007 to 2015, as the successive governments of Nestor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sought to reorient Argentine foreign policy away from the U.S. in an attempt to combat imperialism and strengthen regional integration. However, that stance has effectively been reversed since the election of Mauricio Macri as President of Argentina in December of 2015. The Macri administration has prioritized strengthening diplomatic ties with Washington at the expense of regional cooperation, which entailed favouring pro-American foreign policies, while implementing neo-liberal economic reforms at home. This included signing security and defense ‘cooperation agreements’ with both the Obama and Trump administrations, permitting the U.S. to establish military bases throughout the country.

A number of US military bases have been established throughout Argentina since the election of president Macri. For example, a base was set up in Argentina’s Salta province, located near its borders with Bolivia and Chile, on the pretext of combatting drug trafficking. Another base was established in Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego province, at the southernmost tip of the country, only a few kilometres from the NATO base on the Falkland Islands and close to an important source of fresh water. Researchers have estimated that Ushuaia possesses the largest reserve of frozen fresh water in the world with enough capacity to meet the needs of the entire planet for next 200 years if properly managed.

In early 2018, Macri’s government also approved the construction of another American military base in the province of Misiones. This is a highly strategic position because the province is situated in the tri-border area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, which contains the Guaraní Aquifer, the largest subterranean drinkable and renewable fresh water reserve in the world. Specifically, of the 1.2 million square kilometers of land containing the Guarani Aquifer, 850,000 square kilometers are in Brazil’s territory, 225,000 square kilometers are in Argentina, 70,000 square kilometers are in Paraguay, and 25,000 square kilometers are in Uruguay. 

None of the foreign military bases constructed during Marci’s presidency were approved by Argentina’s congress, which is explicitly required under Argentine law. This practice was defended by Argentina’s Minister of Defense, Oscar Raúl Aguad, on the basis that congressional approval was not required for such joint military ‘cooperation agreements’, because American military forces were only providing technical assistance and military intelligence.  More precisely, the Macri government claimed that joint military exercises with the Americans were necessary in the TBA to combat terrorism and limit the global trafficking of drugs and weapons of mass destruction in the region, while scientific research was the basis for the American presence in Ushuaia.

 This sentiment was echoed by Argentina’s security minister, Patricia Bullrich, who explained that the government was creating ‘an analysis center with Paraguay and Brazil (and the U.S.) to figure out where, how and with whom narcotraffickers operate’ in the TBA. In other words, the main objectives for allowing growing numbers of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and FBI agents to operate on Argentine territory in the TBA, in addition to an increased presence of American military personnel, are to reduce narco-trafficking and counter terrorism. Minister Bullrich further a dds that part of the rationale for this decision is that Argentine law does not permit drug samples or materials related to terrorism to be sent abroad for analysis or investigation. 

According to Bullrich, this close relationship with the DEA and FBI has already proven to be invaluable in terms of reducing the instances of drug-related offenses and limiting the presence of international terrorist organizations like Hezbollah in the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Her enthusiastic support for the strategy was evident in her 2018 statement that ‘it’s important for our government to collaborate (with the U.S.) and that they collaborate with us. We’re going to work together at the triple border regarding terrorism. We think we’ll have DEA and other agencies there to better understand what’s happening in the region.’

There is little evidence to suggest that the increasing presence of foreign agents and soldiers is generating such enthusiasm among the Argentine populace and certain segments of its leadership. Meanwhile, the rationale put forth by the Macri administration to justify its agreement with the US, allowing for the establishment multiple foreign military bases throughout the country without seeking approval from the Argentine congress, has also been met with much skepticism. For instance, on July 10, 2018, a group of approximately 60 organizations, including ‘political parties, social organizations, human rights groups, workers’ unions’, arranged a protest against the establishment of a US military base in Neuquén, Argentina. There are two large rivers situated in Neuquén, the Limay and Neuquén rivers, which are important water sources that generate approximately one-quarter of all hydroelectric power produced in Argentina. Additionally, the Neuquén Basin is home to Vaca Muerta, a 36,000 km2 area that, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), represents the second largest non-conventional gas resource and the fourth largest shale oil reserve in the world. As such, it should come as no surprise that Vaca Muerta has garnered the attention of some of the most prominent oil companies in the world, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and U.S. oil. At present, YPF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales), an Argentine company that that specializes in the exploration, production, refining and commercialization of petroleum, ‘owns 42% of the area, GyP, a state company of Neuquen, has 12%, and the remaining 46% is distributed among other companies that include ExxonMobil, Pan American Energy, Petronas, Pluspetrol, Shell, Tecpetrol and Wintershall, among others.’. 

The Macri administration has already enacted measures that make it easier for large corporations to invest in Vaca Muerta. According to Ernesto López Anadón, an engineer and president of the Argentine Institute of Oil and Gas (IAPG):

Vaca Muerta has many players who are working and obtaining optimal results with very good productivity. The costs are being lowered and is already an asset that has gained international relevance. For those who are looking for business opportunities to develop reserves, Vaca Muerta represents that attraction. Why is there a hurry to enter? Because there are still opportunities, areas that were not awarded and possibilities of partnership with other companies. This will allow the investor to be one of the leaders. We have gone from the exploration stage to the development phase in almost all the companies that approached to this project and the tendency is the momentum for expansion. Later entry will also likely be possible, but at a higher cost. 

The protestors did not believe claims emanating out of Washington and Buenos Aires that the facility in Neuquén was a humanitarian base as opposed to a military installation. This was evident in the official statement released by the protest group, contending that ‘the base is presented as humanitarian aid (to avoid) being called a military base, which would require approval of Argentina’s Congress.’

The TBA has long been regarded as a strategically important region by Washington, first being identified as such during the Reagan presidency. Subsequently, in early 2000, the Bush administration began fabricating stories about the presence of terrorist threats and fundraising activities for Islamic terror organizations taking place in the TBA, which were reported in the mainstream media. Among the claims made by officials was the notion that Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and Foz do Iguacu in Brazil were ‘a terrorist paradise’. American authorities also maintained that Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and, more recently, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS) had conducted training exercises and obtained a significant amount of financing within the region. Such stories about a significant terrorist presence in the TBA have allowed for an unprecedented expansion of American military forces in the region since 2000.

In actuality, no hard evidence has ever been presented to back claims of a significant terrorist presence in the TBA of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, which was used to justify the establishment of a significant American military presence in the region.  On the contrary, a report by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering confirmed that while the TBA is in fact an important location for money laundering, there is no evidence to demonstrate that Islamist terror organizations have generated any funding there, or that the region has been used as a training ground for Islamist terrorists. As a matter of fact, the last Islamic terrorist attack to take place in South America occurred in 1994, when the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires was targeted in a bombing that killed 85 people. The persistence of fabricated stories about the training and funding of Islamist terrorists in the TBA, despite the complete lack of any tangible evidence, is likely to justify the continued presence of American military forces in the region. As for the Americans, they are likely using the pretext of terrorism as a false flag to conceal their real motivation for maintaining and expanding the presence of their military in the region. Considering the history of American interventions, the fact that the region is rich in natural resources, including oil, gas and, particularly, freshwater reserves, could represent the US with an enticing incentive to increase its influence in the TBA.

At present, almost 50% of the global population does not have consistent access to a safe source of potable water. This figure is forecast to rise going forward, as the effects of climate change are likely to exacerbate water shortages. This deplorable inequality in the distribution of global freshwater resources illustrates the growing strategic importance of significant water reserves like the Guaraní Aquifer and the freshwater sources in Ushuaia. These realities make it easier to understand why the Americans are so keen to establish military bases in these regions of South American that are particularly rich in water resources. While American politicians and officials have a reputation for climate change denial, the Pentagon has no reservations with including it as a key factor in future conflicts in its assessments of combat readiness. In fact, the Pentagon released a study at the beginning of 2018 stating that extreme weather linked to climate change ‘endanger 1,700 military sites worldwide, from large bases to outposts’, which  ‘run contrary to White House views on global warming’.

According to the World Bank, Latin America will play in increasingly important global role if water shortages significantly worsen moving forward, given that the continent possesses some of ‘the largest freshwater reserves in the world’. There has already increased commercial interest expressed in the water reserves of the Guarani aquifer, in addition to political debates between the governments of Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. This has come from a number of prominent multinational companies involved in the water market including Monsanto, Thames Water, Bechtel Company, and Vivendi.

History has demonstrated that the real motivation for the global expansion of American militarization has always been to dominate and control the world’s economy and natural resources, by influencing the political and market arenas of the host countries and their neighbours. Countries that resist or refuse to accept American hegemony often find themselves subjected to destabilization efforts directed by the US military aimed at overthrowing the incumbent government. The 20^th and 21^st centuries provides many examples of American military bases organizing, directing, and participating in interventions against the countries hosting them or other nations in the region. If and when a foreign intervention is deemed necessary by US officials, ‘Somehow they always manage to find the necessary pretext’. Typically, such interventions have been justified on the grounds of national security, with recurring pretexts including the Cold War, the Global War on Terrorism, the War on Drug, and immigration control. To be more precise, during the Cold War, the main impetus for the American military to establish foreign bases was the battle of ideologies against communism. Subsequently, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became the war on drugs and, more recently, the war on terrorism. 

Other key US objectives for establishing permanent military bases in foreign territories include: repressing social movements opposed to neo-liberal economic policies; preparing for future wars in the region by establishing a dominant military posture; and creating regional conflicts. It is reasonable to suspect that the Pentagon has been manufacturing false narratives to justify an American military presence in the TBA of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, as this would allow them to gain control over parts of the Amazon rainforest, the freshwater reserves of the Guarani Aquifer, natural gas reserves in Bolivia, carbon deposits in Brazil, and even the largest proven oil reserves in Venezuela. If the relatively conventional notion that future wars will be fought over the control and distribution of increasingly scarce fresh water and energy resources turns out to be true, then the TBA region represents a very strategic location for the US and its rivals.

Macri delivered strategic territories of Argentina situated in both the north and south of the country to the American military despite an abundance of historical evidence demonstrating that the interests of the host nation are rarely among the priorities of US military bases. Perhaps president Macri feels that he may need some assistance in oppressing the freedom and self-determination of his own electorate, given that his administration has already experienced three national strikes against his neo-liberal economic reforms in less than three years. Many Argentines are likely becoming increasingly frustrated with the rapid deterioration of their economic circumstances and prospects since Macri assumed the presidency. Further strikes and protests might be expected in response to the recent agreement with the IMF that will provide Argentina with a $50 billion loan, the largest in the institution’s history.

The expansion of American military bases throughout South America will undoubtedly continue in the absence of significant pushback. That being said, Argentines need to realize that the recent military cooperation agreements signed between the Macri administration and the US have neglected their country’s national interests. In particular, the agreement to permit the American military to establish permanent bases throughout the country is a matter national interest that should require some degree of public discourse. Furthermore, before permitting the Americans to take the lead in combatting terrorism in their country, Argentines should consider their previous performances in the Middle East, and North Africa. Similarly, they should also consider the poor track record of America’s Drug Enforcement Agency in attempting to eliminate the illicit drug trade via interventions in Colombia and Mexico. If Argentines do not react soon, they could lose sovereignty, independence and self-determination over important parts of their country, while the Argentine Army becomes increasingly subordinate to US interests, as has been the case in many countries throughout the 20^th and 21^st centuries. 

Any future government that seeks to reverse the present expansion of American military influence within Argentina should proceed with caution, as contemporary history includes many examples of countries being subject to military interventions for defying Washington’s dictates, resulting in catastrophic outcomes. With this in mind, Argentines should take heed of Hugo Chavez’s warning that: ‘When imperialism feels weak, it resorts to brute force…Most governments in the United States in a hundred years have not respected the peoples of Latin America. They have sponsored coup d’états, assassinations.’ 

*

Global Research contributor Dr. Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

Notes

1. Russia currently has 21 military bases, mainly in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Syria. 

2. Before permitting the establishment of additional US military installations, Argentines should consider the American military’s reputation of creating environmental disasters. For example, rocket launches and the detonation of bombs in free fire zones emit a variety of toxic substances. Each year, American military bases also burn thousands of tons of trash in open areas, including hazardous materials like poisons, plastics, chemicals, medical and human waste, batteries, and weapons. Among toxins released into the environment from such practices are dioxin, cadmium, lead, mercury, and uranium, among others, which often enter the soil, oceans and freshwater resources, and subsequently make their way into the food chain. Furthermore, American military bases have always managed to avoid legal consequences for their actions, even though they led to locals being evicted from their homes (i.e. Alaska, Hawaii, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, South Korea, etc.), and often conduct training sessions that disturb the daily lives of civilians.

3. On November 22, 2015, Mauricio Macri won the presidential election. He was inaugurated less than one month later, on December 10, 2015, in the Argentine Congress.

4. The American military organized a training session in a section of the Amazon rainforest in Tabatinga, Brazil, which contains large reserves of hydrocarbons, water, niobium, titanium, tungsten, petroleum, gas, and uranium, from November 6 – 13 in 2017, as a rehearsal of potential future military actions in Latin America. This was the largest military exercise ever orchestrated in the Amazon.

5. In 2006, George W. Bush purchased more than 100,000 acres of land in Paraguay’s northern ‘Chaco’ region, which is situated near the Guaraní Aquifer and contains vast reserves of natural gas. Since then, thousands of mercenaries and hundreds of U.S. troops have been stationed in the vicinity and patrolled the area in order to protect Bush’s property.

6. The Guaraní Aquifer represents the fourth largest water reservoir in the world.

7. Therefore, 71% of the biggest reservoir of fresh, renewable, and potable water in the world lies under land belonging to Brazil.

8. https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Over-60-Social-Movements-Protest-US-Military-Base-20180712-0006.html 

9. Despite the benevolence of these stated objectives under the overarching theme of achieving world security, American military bases are often greeted with hostility and disdain by local populations. This is evidenced by the many protests that have been organized by residents of nearby communities in the vicinity of US military bases in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, often supported by social groups and human rights organizations. Common complaints by locals include the loss of access to land and fishing resources, the destruction and degradation of the environment, and soldiers not being held accountable for misbehaviour and serious crimes.

10. ‘Capital attraction will be key to the development of these resources. It is estimated that Vaca Muerta will require an investment of US$ 120 billion up to 2030 (US $ 8,000 million per year).’ (https://www.pwc.com.ar/es/publicaciones/assets/vaca-muerta-energia-argentina-i.pdf).

11. YPF was privatized in 1993, but 51% of the enterprise was renationalized in 2012 by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

12. https://www.pwc.com.ar/es/publicaciones/assets/vaca-muerta-energia-argentina-i.pdf 

13. ‘The New Gas Plan that encourages investments in unconventional reservoirs in the Neuquen basin, guaranteeing for gas marketed in the local market a minimum price of US $ 7.50 / MMBTU for 2017 and 2018, US $ 7.00 for 2019, US $ 6.50 for 2020 and US $ 6.00 for 2021. Agreement with the Provincial Government of Neuquen, so that oil companies and unions would have greater competitiveness in Vaca Muerta and reduce labor costs. Project to reduce import tariffs of machinery used for the exploitation of hydrocarbons, which will have a 7% tariff’ (https://www.pwc.com.ar/es/publicaciones/assets/vaca-muerta-energia-argentina-i.pdf).

14. https://www.pwc.com.ar/es/publicaciones/assets/vaca-muerta-energia-argentina-i.pdf

15. History has shown that American military installations are characterized by a lack of transparency.

16. https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Over-60-Social-Movements-Protest-US-Military-Base-20180712-0006.html 

17. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/31912.pdf 

18. http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/americas/11/07/inv.terror.south/ 

19. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-military/climate-change-threatens-half-of-u-s-military-sites-pentagon-idUSKBN1FK2T8 

20. In the subsequent decades following the Second World War, the US took measures and enacted policies to solidify and expand its dominance, as embodied by American diplomat and historian George Keenan when he stated ‘we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population…Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security’. The establishment of an excess number of permanent military bases in foreign territories could be regarded as a part of that strategy, as it allows American forces to quickly deploy to counter challenges from rivals to its hegemonic interests in all regions.

21. Washington has a habit of supporting military interventions to reverse revolutions and eliminate government that oppose American interests, regardless of whether or not they were democratically elected. Examples of countries currently facing threats of military intervention from the US include Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela. 

22. Fidel Castro at the United Nations General Assembly in 1960.  

23. Some European and American industries have also been taking measures to alleviate the extraction of domestic water resources by moving water-intensive economic activities to Third World countries, particularly in the agriculture sector.

24. In rare instances where American pressure to station soldiers in a particular country is resisted, Washington will often retaliate by threatening to cut or reduce foreign aid to that country. For example, in 2004, ten South American nations refused to guarantee immunity from prosecution for American soldiers in the event that they commit crimes while serving in their territories. The US responded by cancelling $330 million in economic aid. Subsequently, Paraguay reversed its decision and signed an agreement with the US the following year, which extended the stay of American soldiers stationed in the country from 6 to 18 months, while the country’s Congress passed legislation that protected American soldiers from prosecution for criminal activity. 

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More than 60 studies have shown increases of childhood leukemia around nuclear facilities worldwide. Despite this finding, there has never been independent analysis in the US examining connections between childhood cancer and nuclear facilities. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had tasked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct such a study, but then withdrew funding, claiming publicly that it would be too expensive.

In fact, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process reveal that NRC employees had already determined the study would show no impact. Internal emails indicate that staff was presupposing a conclusion for which they had no evidence, demonstrated by statements like “even if you found something that looked like a relationship [between cancer and radiation], you wouldn’t know what to attribute it to,” and “[m]ost people realize that all the evidence shows you’re not going to find anything.” The evidence, however, had not yet been fully collected and examined.

Not protective and unaccountable

While the NRC claims it protects public health, its radiation exposure standards fail to account fully for:

• impacts on the placenta
• impacts on fetal blood forming cells
• impacts on fetal and embryonic organs
• estrogenic impacts
• disproportionate impacts on women
• genetic impacts past the second generation
• cumulative damage of repeated radiation exposure

NRC exposure data and modeling is designed to demonstrate compliance with the NRC’s regulations but not to assess health impacts. The NRC has already stated numerous times that it believes low doses of radiation, the kind NRC claims its licensees are allowed to release, pose risks so low that health impacts may not be discernible. We don’t know if NRC’s claims of no discernible or attributable public health impact from nuclear power are actually true since no one has ever looked properly.

Pregnancy and unborn children are the most vulnerable to serious damage from radiation exposure.

Studies in other countries show association between nuclear facilities and childhood cancer. However, given the demonstrable bias of the US NRC toward low doses having no health impact, it is essential that a US study go forward under the auspices of outside, independent experts, in order to examine what is happening in the US.

Ground-breaking study plans were threat to current health assumptions

Under the original and now canceled study, the NRC had tasked the NAS to use the most advanced methods in order to update the study the NRC currently uses to claim its reactors are safe. That study, published in 1990, had several shortcomings including the way the authors define and examine disease, assumptions about doses, location of cases, and who is examined.

The NAS was considering two study designs, one examining specifically children. This study type, dubbed by one expert as a case-control nested in a cohort, is very similar in basic design to studies conducted in France and Germany, which show increases in childhood leukemia around nuclear power facilities.

The NRC scuttled the NAS study in 2015, dubiously claiming it would have cost too much and taken too long. Upon examination, however, it is clear that the NAS study would have challengedthe fundamentals of the NRC’s health assessment regime.

To date, most radiation studies have routinely suffered from a host of improper methodologies, making it impossible to discern health impacts. The NAS was considering using new ways of examining the issue by implementing a more detailed, more thorough, publicly shared research protocol. The protocol included:

• Making the study process and underlying assumptions public while the study was being conducted
• Allowing public comment during the study process
• Standardizing raw health data and making it available to researchers and the public
• Standardizing and verifying pollutant data
• Integrating independently collected pollutant and meteorological data
• Examining and redoing the current health models
• Tailoring health studies to local conditions
• Creating new health models, specifically for the radionuclide carbon 14, which concentrates in fetal tissue more than maternal tissue.

This detailed and accessible protocol could have opened the NRC’s regulatory regime to exhaustive scrutiny, revealing just how inadequate it is for examining health impacts in the first place, never mind protecting public health. Further, with such careful research, NRC could have feared that the NAS study would point to an association between environmental radiation and cancer, as other studies have, although FOIA documents consisting mostly of internal emails did not specifically demonstrate this fear.

Moribund study could be revived, made better

While the NAS child study design and protocol had much to recommend it, it is unclear whether it would have been free of all of the flaws that have historically plagued radiation health assessments. At the point of study cancellation, independent experts still had concerns.

Historically, industry and radiation regulators have insisted that a causal link must be absolutely established between radiation and disease. For protection of the public, however, experts claim the standard should be a lower bar of association with disease. If this study moves forward under the NAS, it needs to relinquish concepts and methods that favor causation.

To date, researchers have started radiation health studies by presuming that there will be no impact because doses are too low — a contention that, in reality, remains scientifically unproven. Many studies reveal the opposite. Any new such research needs to ensure that the basis for health assessments is a focus on health outcomes, not dose models that are fraught with uncertainties.

While NRC licensees attempt to monitor environmental contamination, the NRC has never incorporated biological monitoring, which might prove useful after spike releases from various facility outages. There are several techniques that have been used in other health studies, which a revived cancer study could weave into any child or adult health assessment.

A truly independent and scientifically robust study would attempt to address these issues in addition to using the other enlightened protocols the NAS was considering. With the public process and protocol review suggested by the NAS for this now moribund study, perhaps these remaining shortcomings would finally have been addressed as well. The NRC made sure that did not happen. However, according to Ourania Kosti, NAS researcher coordinating the study, the NAS has left the door open to completing it.

“I think it is important to update the findings of the 1990 study using better methodologies and information,” Kosti said. “This is the reason the Academies agreed to carry out the update. The Academies remain willing to do the study, if asked to.”

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Cindy Folkers is the radiation and health specialist at Beyond Nuclear.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disability Summit (Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt). The concealed actual purpose of the president’s trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in place since 2012; eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London; and then hand over the WikiLeaks founder to British authorities.

Moreno’s itinerary also notably includes a trip to Madrid, where he will meet with Spanish officials still seething over Assange’s denunciation of human rights abuses perpetrated by Spain’s central government against protesters marching for Catalonian independence. Almost three months ago, Ecuador blocked Assange from accessing the internet, and Assange has not been able to communicate with the outside world ever since. The primary factor in Ecuador’s decision to silence him was Spanish anger over Assange’s tweets about Catalonia.

Presidential decree signed on July 17 by Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno, outlining his trip to London and Madrid.

A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the president’s office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to The Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the U.K. within the next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week. On Friday, RT reported that Ecuador was preparing to enter into such an agreement.

The consequences of such an agreement depend in part on the concessions Ecuador extracts in exchange for withdrawing Assange’s asylum. But as former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told The Intercept in an interview in May, Moreno’s government has returned Ecuador to a highly “subservient” and “submissive” posture toward Western governments.

It is thus highly unlikely that Moreno — who has shown himself to be willing to submit to threats and coercion from the U.K., Spain, and the U.S. — will obtain a guarantee that the U.K. not extradite Assange to the U.S., where top Donald Trump officials have vowed to prosecute Assange and destroy WikiLeaks.

The central oddity of Assange’s case — that he has been effectively imprisoned for eight years despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime — is virtually certain to be prolonged once Ecuador hands him over to the U.K. Even under the best-case scenario, it appears highly likely that Assange will continue to be imprisoned by British authorities.

The only known criminal proceeding Assange currently faces is a pending 2012 arrest warrant for “failure to surrender” — basically a minor bail violation that arose when he obtained asylum from Ecuador rather than complying with bail conditions by returning to court for a hearing on his attempt to resist extradition to Sweden.

That offense carries a prison term of three months and a fine, though it is possible that the time Assange has already spent in prison in the U.K. could be counted against that sentence. In 2010, Assange was imprisoned in Wandsworth Prison, kept in isolation for 10 days until he was released on bail; he was then under house arrest for 550 days at the home of a supporter.

Assange’s lawyer, Jen Robinson, told The Intercept that he would argue that all of that prison time already served should count toward (and thus completely fulfill) any prison term imposed on the “failure to surrender” charge, though British prosecutors would almost certainly contest that claim. Assange would also argue that he had a reasonable, valid basis for seeking asylum rather than submitting to U.K. authorities: namely, well-grounded fear that he would be extradited to the U.S. for prosecution for the act of publishing documents.

Beyond that minor charge, British prosecutors could argue that Assange’s evading of legal process in the U.K. was so protracted, intentional, and malicious that it rose beyond mere “failure to surrender” to “contempt of court,” which carries a prison term of up to two years. Just on those charges alone, then, Assange faces a high risk of detention for another year or even longer in a British prison.

Currently, that is the only known criminal proceeding Assange faces. In May 2017, Swedish prosecutors announced they were closing their investigation into the sexual assault allegations due to the futility of proceeding in light of Assange’s asylum and the time that has elapsed.

The far more important question that will determine Assange’s future is what the U.S. government intends to do. The Barack Obama administration was eager to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, but ultimately concluded that there was no way to do so without either also prosecuting newspapers such as the New York Times and The Guardian, which published the same documents, or creating precedents that would enable the criminal prosecution of media outlets in the future.

Indeed, it is technically a crime under U.S. law for anyone — including a media outlet — to publish certain types of classified information. Under U.S. law, for instance, it was a felony for the Washington Post’s David Ignatius to report on the contents of telephone calls, intercepted by the National Security Agency, between then-national security adviser nominee Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, even though such reporting was clearly in the public interest since it proved Flynn lied when he denied such contacts.

That the Washington Post and Ignatius — and not merely their sources — violated U.S. criminal law by revealing the contents of intercepted communications with a Russian official is made clear by the text of 18 § 798 of the U.S. Code, which provides:

“Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates … or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes … any classified information … obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both” (emphasis added).

But the U.S. Justice Department has never wanted to indict and prosecute anyone for the crime of publishing such material, contenting themselves instead to prosecuting the government sources who leak it. Their reluctance has been due to two reasons: First, media outlets would argue that any attempts to criminalize the mere publication of classified or stolen documents is barred by the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment, a proposition the Justice Department has never wanted to test; second, no Justice Department has wanted as part of its legacy the creation of a precedent that allows the U.S. government to criminally prosecute journalists and media outlets for reporting classified documents.

But the Trump administration has made clear that they have no such concerns. Quite the contrary: Last April, Trump’s then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, now his secretary of state, delivered a deranged, rambling, highly threatening broadside against WikiLeaks. Without citing any evidence, Pompeo decreed that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” and thus declared,

“We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.”

The longtime right-wing congressman, now one of Trump’s most loyal and favored cabinet officials, also explicitly rejected any First Amendment concerns about prosecuting Assange, arguing that while WikiLeaks “pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice … they may have believed that, but they are wrong.”

Pompeo then issued this bold threat:

“To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.”

Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions has similarly vowed not only to continue and expand the Obama Justice Department’s crackdown on sources, but also to consider the prosecution of media outlets that publish classified information. It would be incredibly shrewd for Sessions to lay the foundation for doing so by prosecuting Assange first, safe in the knowledge that journalists themselves — consumed with hatred for Assange due to personal reasons, professional jealousies, and anger over the role they believed he played in 2016 in helping Hillary Clinton lose — would unite behind the Trump Justice Department and in support of its efforts to imprison Assange.

During the Obama years, it was a mainstream view among media outlets that prosecuting Assange would be a serious danger to press freedoms. Even the Washington Post editorial page, which vehemently condemned WikiLeaks, warned in 2010 that any such prosecution would “criminalize the exchange of information and put at risk” all media outlets. When Pompeo and Sessions last year issued their threats to prosecute Assange, former Obama Justice Department spokesperson Matthew Miller insisted that no such prosecution could ever succeed:

For years, the Obama Justice Department searched for evidence that Assange actively assisted Chelsea Manning or other sources in the hacking or stealing of documents — in order to prosecute them for more than merely publishing documents — and found no such evidence. But even that theory — that a publisher of classified documents can be prosecuted for assisting a source — would be a severe threat to press freedom, since journalists frequently work in some form of collaboration with sources who remove or disclose classified information. And nobody has ever presented evidence that WikiLeaks conspired with whoever hacked the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta email inboxes to effectuate that hacking.

But there seems little question that, as Sessions surely knows, large numbers of U.S. journalists — along with many, or perhaps most, Democrats — would actually support the Trump Justice Department in prosecuting Assange for publishing documents. After all, the DNC sued WikiLeaks in April for publishing documents — a serious, obvious threat to press freedom — and few objected.

And it was Democratic senators such as Dianne Feinstein who, during the Obama years, were urging the prosecution of WikiLeaks, with the support of numerous GOP senators. There is no doubt that, after 2016, support among both journalists and Democrats for imprisoning Assange for publishing documents would be higher than ever.

If the US did indict Assange for alleged crimes relating to the publication of documents, or if they have already obtained a sealed indictment, and then uses that indictment to request that the U.K. extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial, that alone would ensure that Assange remains in prison in the U.K. for years to come.

Assange would, of course, resist any such extradition on the ground that publishing documents is not a cognizable crime and that the U.S is seeking his extradition for political charges that, by treaty, cannot serve as the basis for extradition. But it would take at least a year, and probably closer to three years, for U.K. courts to decide these extradition questions. And while all of that lingers, Assange would almost certainly be in prison, given that it is inconceivable that a British judge would release Assange on bail given what happened the last time he was released.

All of this means that it is highly likely that Assange — under his best-case scenario — faces at least another year in prison, and will end up having spent a decade in prison despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime. He has essentially been punished — imprisoned — by process.

And while it is often argued that Assange has only himself to blame, it is beyond doubt, given the grand jury convened by the Obama Justice Department and now the threats of Pompeo and Sessions, that the fear that led Assange to seek asylum in the first place — being extradited to the U.S. and politically persecuted for political crimes — was well-grounded.

Assange, his lawyers and his supporters always said that he would immediately board a plane to Stockholm if he were guaranteed that doing so would not be used to extradite him to the U.S., and for years offered to be questioned by Swedish investigators inside the embassy in London, something Swedish prosecutors only did years later. Citing those facts, a United Nations panel ruled in 2016 that the actions of the U.K. government constituted “arbitrary detention” and a violation of Assange’s fundamental human rights.

But if, as seems quite likely, the Trump administration finally announces that it intends to prosecute Assange for publishing classified U.S. government documents, we will be faced with the bizarre spectacle of U.S. journalists — who have spent the last two years melodramatically expressing grave concern over press freedom due to insulting tweets from Trump about Wolf Blitzer and Chuck Todd, or his mean treatment of Jim Acosta — possibly cheering for a precedent that would be the gravest press freedom threat in decades.

That precedent would be one that could easily be used to put them in a prison cell alongside Assange for the new “crime” of publishing any documents that the U.S. government has decreed should not be published. When it comes to press freedom threats, such an indictment would not be in the same universe as name-calling tweets by Trump directed at various TV personalities.

When it came to denouncing due process denials and the use of torture at Guantánamo, it was not difficult for journalists to set aside their personal dislike for Al Qaeda sympathizers to denounce the dangers of those human rights and legal abuses. When it comes to free speech assaults, journalists are able to set aside their personal contempt for a person’s opinions to oppose the precedent that the government can punish people for expressing noxious ideas.

It should not be this difficult for journalists to set aside their personal emotions about Assange to recognize the profound dangers — not just to press freedoms but to themselves — if the U.S. government succeeds in keeping Assange imprisoned for years to come, all due to its attempts to prosecute him for publishing classified or stolen documents. That seems the highly likely scenario once Ecuador hands over Assange to the U.K.

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In a late-night Twitter rant, President Donald Trump issued an all-caps threat to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The threat came after Rouhani urged Trump not to “play with the lion’s tail or else you will regret it.”

“You cannot provoke the Iranian people against their own security and interests,” Rouhani said later in his speech.

“To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” Trump tweeted.

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018

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Featured image is from The New Republic.

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Tony Blair is advising the Saudi government under a £9m ($11.8m) deal with his “institute for global change,” the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The former UK prime minister’s group reached an agreement earlier this year to help support Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman‘s modernisation programme under a “not for profit” arrangement, the Telegraph reported.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is a programme of reforms intended to open up and diversify the kingdom’s oil-centric economy by selling public assets, including a stake in the world’s biggest oil producer, Aramco, and reinvesting the funds.

The deal is the first major agreement to have emerged involving the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), which Blair established in 2016 after winding down his commercial operations, the Telegraph said.

Tony Blair is advising the Saudi government under a £9 million deal between the country and his 'institute' https://t.co/pcZKIoLcKz via @telegraphnews

— Dallo #JC9 (@dallo100) July 21, 2018

The newspaper said the institute received a $10m payment in January for the work, which is being carried out by its staff based in the Middle East.

The payment was made from Media Investment (MIL), a Guernsey-registered firm that is a subsidiary of the Saudi Research and Marketing Group, according to the Telegraph.

Sources told the newspaper that the total provided to the institute so far exceeded $12m. The funding is not mentioned on the institute’s website, in spite of a subsequent post praising Saudi Arabia and its crown prince.

Blair’s office said the institute was “under no duty to disclose donors or donations” and declined to say what discussions Blair had held with members of the Saudi royal family or government about the funding.

Asked about the deal, a spokesman confirmed to the Telegraph that TBI “has received a donation from MIL” for the “not for profit” work of the institution.

“We work to support the Saudi change programme,” the spokesman told the Telegraph, adding that the work would be included in the institute’s first annual report.

Last month in London, Blair reiterated a call for the West to ally with Russia to fight the threat of “terrorism”.

Blair said that although there would always be “disagreements” with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, the need to tackle militant activity made cooperation necessary.

Last July, a British court blocked an attempt by a former Iraqi general to bring a private prosecution against Blair over his government’s involvement in the Iraq war.

In 2016, Blair, who after leaving office embarked on a second career as a Middle East diplomat, was successful in hammering out a deal that saw Qatar pay $30m towards the wages of public-sector workers in Gaza, senior sources within Hamas told MEE.

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During the past three days, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies entered up to 40 villages and settlements in the southern provinces of Quneitra and Daraa after militants, mostly members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had surrendered in the area.

A few batches of radical militants and their families, consisting of dozens of buses, already left southern Syria towards the militant-held part of Idlib province. Militants also handed over more than 10 battle tanks to the SAA. On July 23, militants continued surrendering weapons to government forces and leaving towards Idlib.

Israel transported several hundred of the White Helmets and their families from the southwestern part of Syria to Jordan overnight July 21, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reported saying this move was “a humanitarian effort” at the request of the US and European countries.

According to Jordan’s official Petra state media outlet, the number of evacuated persons included 800 White Helmets members and their families.

The IDF claimed Israel engaged in the “out of the ordinary” move due to the “immediate risk” to the lives of the civilians from the ongoing military operation in the area.

The White Helmets is an infamous Western-backed organization, which according to Syrian, Russian and Iranian governments as well as to independent researchers, has been involved in staging chemical attacks and other propaganda operations in order to assist the US-led block in its attempts to overthrow the Assad government. The organization operates only within the militant-held area, in a close cooperation with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

One of the most prominent cases of the White Helmets operations is the Douma chemical incident on April 7, 2018, which was used by the US, France and the UK to justify a massive missile strike on Syria on April 14.

According to Syrian experts, the key goal of the evacuation of the White Helmets members is to not allow forces of the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance to question members of the organization over its activities coordinated with Western intelligences.

The repeatedly declared Israeli “noninvolvement” in the conflict continued on July 22 when four senior FSA commanders in southern Syria run away to Israel. Syrian opposition activists identified them as “Moaz Nassar,” the leader of the Golan Knights Brigade, “Ahmed al-Nahs,” a commander in the Saif al-Sham Brigades, “Alaa al-Halaki,” the leader of the al-Ababil Army and “Abu Rateb Nassar,” a commander in the Golan Knights Brigade.

Over the past few years, these armed groups have been repeatedly accused by the Damascus government of cooperating with the Israeli military and intelligence. Their evacuation is another sign that Israel and its allies are attempting to hide some of their operations in the war-torn country.

Russian forces intercepted at least two armed UAVs over the Khmeimim Air Base on July 20 and 21. Drones were launched by militants from the so-called de-escalation zone area, which includes Idlib and northern Latakia.

The continued attacks by militants on the Russian facilities in Syria are only nearing the Russian-backed SAA advance to put an end to this attacks and the presence of terrorists excluded from the ceasefire, like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, in the area.

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“Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours…. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”— Professor Neil Postman

Americans have a voracious appetite for TV entertainment, and the Trump reality show—guest starring outraged Democrats, power-hungry Republicans, and a hodgepodge of other special interest groups with dubious motives—feeds that appetite for titillating, soap opera drama.

After all, who needs the insults, narcissism and power plays that are hallmarks of reality shows when you can have all that and more delivered up by the likes of Donald Trump and his cohorts?

Trump is inclined to denounce any news agencies and reports that paint him in a less than favorable light as “fake news,” which leaves only the Fox News channel to carry the president’s torch for media integrity.

Yet as John Lennon reminds us, “nothing is real,” especially not in the world of politics.

In other words, it’s all fake, i.e. manufactured, i.e. manipulated to distort reality.

Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.

Likewise, “The Trump Show” keeps the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided.

This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.

As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer’s seat, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.

The more that is beamed at us, the more inclined we are to settle back in our comfy recliners and become passive viewers rather than active participants as unsettling, frightening events unfold.

Reality and fiction merge as everything around us becomes entertainment fodder.

We don’t even have to change the channel when the subject matter becomes too monotonous. That’s taken care of for us by the programmers (the corporate media).

“Living is easy with eyes closed,” says Lennon, and that’s exactly what reality TV that masquerades as American politics programs the citizenry to do: navigate the world with their eyes shut.

As long as we’re viewers, we’ll never be doers.

Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguishbetween what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.

“We the people” are watching a lot of TV.

On average, Americans spend five hours a day watching television. By the time we reach age 65, we’re watching more than 50 hours of television a week, and that number increases as we get older. And reality TV programming consistently captures the largest percentage of TV watchers every season by an almost 2-1 ratio.

This doesn’t bode well for a citizenry able to sift through masterfully-produced propaganda in order to think critically about the issues of the day, whether it’s fake news peddled by government agencies or foreign entities.

Those who watch reality shows tend to view what they see as the “norm.” Thus, those who watch shows characterized by lying, aggression and meanness not only come to see such behavior as acceptable and entertaining but also mimic the medium.

This holds true whether the reality programming is about the antics of celebrities in the White House, in the board room, or in the bedroom.

It’s a phenomenon called “humilitainment.”

A term coined by media scholars Brad Waite and Sara Booker, “humilitainment” refers to the tendency for viewers to take pleasure in someone else’s humiliation, suffering and pain.

“Humilitainment” largely explains not only why American TV watchers are so fixated on reality TV programming but how American citizens, largely insulated from what is really happening in the world around them by layers of technology, entertainment, and other distractions, are being programmed to accept the brutality, surveillance and dehumanizing treatment of the American police state as things happening to other people.

The ramifications for the future of civic engagement, political discourse and self-government are incredibly depressing and demoralizing.

This not only explains how a candidate like Donald Trump with a reputation for being rude, egotistical and narcissistic could get elected, but it also says a lot about how a politician like Barack Obama—whose tenure in the White House was characterized by drone killings, a weakening of the Constitution at the expense of Americans’ civil liberties, and an expansion of the police state—could be hailed as “one of the greatest presidents of all times.”

This is what happens when an entire nation—bombarded by reality TV programming, government propaganda and entertainment news—becomes systematically desensitized and acclimated to the trappings of a government that operates by fiat and speaks in a language of force.

Ultimately, the reality shows, the entertainment news, the surveillance society, the militarized police, and the political spectacles have one common objective: to keep us divided, distracted, imprisoned, and incapable of taking an active role in the business of self-government.

Look behind the political spectacles, the reality TV theatrics, the sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions, and the stomach-churning, nail-biting drama, and you will find there is a method to the madness.

We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.

This is mind-control in its most sinister form.

How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.

In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used.

In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.

Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination, infantilism, the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.

Donald Trump is no exception to this Orwellian manipulation of language for dubious ends: labelling something as “fake news” is a masterful way of dismissing truth that may run counter to the ruling power’s own narrative.

As George Orwell recognized,

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Orwell understood only too well the power of language to manipulate the masses. In Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.” In this dystopian vision of the future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation), the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda). The mottos of Oceania: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Orwell’s Big Brother relied on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.

Where we stand now is at the juncture of Oldspeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted).

Truth is often lost when we fail to distinguish between opinion and fact, and that is the danger we now face as a society. Anyone who relies exclusively on television/cable news hosts and political commentators for actual knowledge of the world is making a serious mistake.

Unfortunately, since Americans have by and large become non-readers, television has become their prime source of so-called “news.” This reliance on TV news has given rise to such popular news personalities who draw in vast audiences that virtually hang on their every word.

In our media age, these are the new powers-that-be.

Yet while these personalities often dispense the news like preachers used to dispense religion, with power and certainty, they are little more than conduits for propaganda and advertisements delivered in the guise of entertainment and news.

Given the preponderance of news-as-entertainment programming, it’s no wonder that viewers have largely lost the ability to think critically and analytically and differentiate between truth and propaganda, especially when delivered by way of fake news criers and politicians.

While television news cannot—and should not—be completely avoided, the following suggestions will help you better understand the nature of TV news.

1. TV news is not what happened. Rather, it is what someone thinks is worth reporting. Although there are still some good TV journalists, the old art of investigative reporting has largely been lost. While viewers are often inclined to take what is reported by television “news” hosts at face value, it is your responsibility to judge and analyze what is reported.

2. TV news is entertainment. There is a reason why the programs you watch are called news “shows.” It’s a signal that the so-called news is being delivered as a form of entertainment.

“In the case of most news shows,” write Neil Postman and Steve Powers in their insightful book, How to Watch TV News (1992), “the package includes attractive anchors, an exciting musical theme, comic relief, stories placed to hold the audience, the creation of the illusion of intimacy, and so on.”

Of course, the point of all this glitz and glamour is to keep you glued to the set so that a product can be sold to you. (Even the TV news hosts get in on the action by peddling their own products, everything from their latest books to mugs and bathrobes.) Although the news items spoon-fed to you may have some value, they are primarily a commodity to gather an audience, which will in turn be sold to advertisers.

3. Never underestimate the power of commercials, especially to news audiences. In an average household, the television set is on over seven hours a day. Most people, believing themselves to be in control of their media consumption, are not really bothered by this. But TV is a two-way attack: it not only delivers programming to your home, it also delivers you (the consumer) to a sponsor.

People who watch the news tend to be more attentive, educated and have more money to spend. They are, thus, a prime market for advertisers. And sponsors spend millions on well-produced commercials. Such commercials are often longer in length than most news stories and cost more to produce than the news stories themselves. Moreover, the content of many commercials, which often contradicts the messages of the news stories, cannot be ignored. Most commercials are aimed at prurient interests in advocating sex, overindulgence, drugs, etc., which has a demoralizing effect on viewers, especially children.

4. It is vitally important to learn about the economic and political interests of those who own the “corporate” media. There are few independent news sources anymore. The major news outlets are owned by corporate empires. Moreover, even those “fake” news outlets denounced by Trump are enjoying significant sales and ratings boosts as a result of Trump’s so-called war on the media. Indeed, as one trade journal reports, “Trump, of course, has become the greatest source of lead generation the American press has ever seen.” In other words, to a dying news industry, the Trump presidency has been great for business.

5. Pay special attention to the language of newscasts. Because film footage and other visual imagery are so engaging on TV news shows, viewers are apt to allow language—what the reporter is saying about the images—to go unexamined. A TV news host’s language frames the pictures, and, therefore, the meaning we derive from the picture is often determined by the host’s commentary. TV by its very nature manipulates viewers. One must never forget that every television minute has been edited. The viewer does not see the actual event but the edited form of the event. For example, presenting a one- to two-minute segment from a two-hour political speech and having a TV talk show host critique may be disingenuous, but such edited footage is a regular staple on news shows. Add to that the fact that the reporters editing the film have a subjective view—sometimes determined by their corporate bosses—that enters in.

6. Reduce by at least one-half the amount of TV news you watch. TV news generally consists of “bad” news—wars, torture, murders, scandals and so forth. It cannot possibly do you any harm to excuse yourself each week from much of the mayhem projected at you on the news. Do not form your concept of reality based on television. TV news, it must be remembered, does not reflect normal everyday life. Studies indicate that a heavy viewing of TV news makes people think the world is much more dangerous than it actually is.

7. One of the reasons many people are addicted to watching TV news is that they feel they must have an opinion on almost everything, which gives the illusion of participation in American life. But an “opinion” is all that we can gain from TV news because it only presents the most rudimentary and fragmented information on anything. Thus, on most issues we don’t really know much about what is actually going on. And, of course, we are expected to take what the TV news host says on an issue as gospel truth. But isn’t it better to think for yourself? Add to this that we need to realize that we often don’t have enough information from the “news” source to form a true opinion. How can that be done? Study a broad variety of sources, carefully analyze issues in order to be better informed, and question everything.

The bottom line is simply this: Americans should beware of letting others—whether they be television news hosts, political commentators or media corporations—do their thinking for them.

As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, a populace that cannot think for themselves is a populace with its backs to the walls: mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all.

It’s time to change the channel, tune out the reality TV show, and push back against the real menace of the police state. If not, if we continue to sit back and lose ourselves in political programming, we will remain a captive audience to a farce that grows more absurd by the minute.

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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

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Israeli troops, with the backing of Washington and other major NATO powers, carried out an operation over the weekend to evacuate some 800 operatives of the so-called White Helmets organization from southern Syria, where government forces have staged a major offensive to retake areas previously held by Western-backed Islamist militias.

The White Helmets, ostensibly a civil defense group dedicated to rescuing civilians caught in the fighting in Syria, has been heavily funded by the US and European powers. It has operated solely in areas controlled by the so-called rebels, who are armed and funded by the US and its NATO allies, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the operation Sunday, stating:

“Several days ago President Trump contacted me, as did Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and others, and requested that we assist in evacuating hundreds of White Helmets from Syria. These are people who have saved lives and whose lives were in danger.”

The Israel Defense Forces reportedly opened up border crossings in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and provided a heavily armed escort for the White Helmets, who were loaded on buses and taken to Jordan. The IDF issued a statement describing its actions as “an exceptional humanitarian gesture.”

The Jordanian Foreign Ministry acknowledged in a press release the role played by Amman in the operation in allowing the US-backed operatives to pass through its territory.

“The [Jordanian] government allowed the UN to organize passage of about 800 Syrian citizens through Jordan for their naturalization in Western states after the three Western states, namely the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada, proposed in writing… to undertake their resettlement for a certain period of time due to the threat to their lives.”

British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt said on Sunday that the UK had to evacuate the White Helmets to ensure their “immediate protection.”

CNN reported last week that the evacuation of some 1,000 White Helmets and their families from Syria had been discussed during the recent NATO summit in response to the advances made by Syrian government forces.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said that she had “called for global leadership to support and help these heroes” during a meeting of foreign ministers at the NATO summit in Brussels a week ago.

Both the Israeli and Jordanian governments, while joining in the rescue of the White Helmets, have sealed their borders to the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting in Syria’s Daraa and Quneitra provinces. Israel has allowed in no refugees since the war for regime change was initiated in Syria seven years ago. It has, however, provided arms, supplies and medical care to Islamist “rebels” fighting the Syrian government.

This weekend’s extraordinary operation, transferring Syrians across Israel into Jordan for resettlement in Europe and Canada, was not a “humanitarian” intervention, but rather the salvaging of individuals who have served as assets in the Western-backed campaign to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad and replace it with a pliant stooge regime.

The White Helmets were created in 2013 principally by the US and UK governments, with additional funding from the German, Dutch and Danish governments. The principal figure involved in the group’s founding was the former British army officer and MI6 agent James Le Mesurier, who went on to work as a mercenary for Gulf oil monarchies in conjunction with a company linked to the infamous former US military contractor, Blackwater.

Le Mesurier trained Syrians in Turkey and then sent them back into Syria to function as a logistical support and propaganda arm of the Western-backed “rebels.”

Operating principally in zones controlled by the Al Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, and its allies, the White Helmets filmed staged rescues in areas hit by bombs dropped by government and Russian warplanes, passing on the videos to the Western corporate media, which aired them without any questions.

The group has been accused of fabricating both attacks and rescues, most infamously in the case of an alleged gas attack in the city of Douma on April 7. While film of the “attack’s” supposed aftermath was broadcast in the US and throughout Europe, residents and doctors at the facility where the White Helmets filmed themselves yelling “gas” and hosing down children with water came forward to say that there had been no attack.

The patent aim of the fabricated incident, as with similar cases previously, was to provoke a US-NATO intervention. The US, the UK and France responded by launching more than 100 missiles on multiple targets in Syria a week later.

Representatives of the White Helmets have been among the most vocal in calling on the US and its allies to impose a “no-fly zone” in Syria, a tactic that would require a massive military occupation of the country and that would heighten the danger of a military confrontation between the world’s two major nuclear powers, the US and Russia.

Videos have surfaced showing members of the White Helmets carrying weapons with Al Nusra forces and participating in atrocities against Syrian government troops.

The White Helmets have enjoyed massive funding. Much of the money has been channeled through private contractors working for the US and British governments.

The US funds have flowed through Chemonics, a Washington, D.C.-based contractor that has also been active in Afghanistan and Libya. USAID awarded the company $128.5 million in January 2013 to support “a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria.” It is estimated that at least $32 million of this money had been funneled into the White Helmets.

Mayday Rescue, a UK-based company, has funneled tens of millions more to the “civil defense” group.

Germany, Canada, and the UK have all reportedly agreed to accept the White Helmets members as refugees, while closing the door to other Syrians fleeing the war.

Washington, however, has made no such offer. While pouring tens of millions of dollars into the organization, it barred its chief, Raed Saleh, from entering the country when he flew to Washington in April 2016 to receive an award for his contributions to “humanitarian relief.” The State Department explained that he had been sent back to Turkey because of suspected “extremist connections.”

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Looks like Trump is running amok with his “trading policies”. Not only has he upset the European Union – which doesn’t deserve any better, frankly, for having been and still being submissive vassals against the will of by now 90% of Europeans; but he has also managed to get China into a fury. Well, for China it is really not that important, because China has plenty of other markets, including basically all of Asia and probably increasingly also Europe, as Europe increasingly feel the need for detaching from the US.

What is striking, though, is that even at the outset of the G20 Summit now ongoing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Trumps Ministers have made it clear that unless Europe cancels all subsidies – referring primarily to agricultural subsidies – and eliminates the newly imposed retaliatory import duties, new trade deals are not going to be discussed. Never mind that the US has the world’s highest farm subsidies.

From afar this looks like the most wicket and non-sensical trade war the US via Trump, is waging against the rest of the world – à la “Make America Great Again”. Will it work? Maybe. One can never predict dynamics, especially not in a neoliberal western world that is used to live on linearism, which by definition is always wrong. Knowingly and deliberately the west and it’s financial key institutions, IMF, World Bank, FED, European Central Bank – trick the public at large into believing their statistics and predictions – which, if one goes back in history, have always been off, way off.

All life is dynamic. But to understand this it takes independent thinking – which the west has long given up, unfortunately. So, in response to the latest Trump-promoted trade fiasco at the G20 in Argentina, the IMF is up in arms, saying this might lower world GDP by at least 0.5%. – Even if true, so what?

In reality, there is a totally different scenario that nobody dares talk about. Namely, what renewed local production and monetary sovereignty can bring to the world economy; precisely what Mr. Trump says he wants to propagate for the US of A – local production for local markets and for trade with countries that respect mutual benefits. The latter is of course a question not easily achieved by any trade deal with the US. But the former is an enormous economic power keg. The stimulation of local economies through internal credit, is the most commanding means to boost local employment and GDP.

Then there is the sanctions game. It’s getting ever more aggressive. New sanctions on Russia, new sanctions on Venezuela – and new heavy-heavy sanctions on Iran. And the European puppets still follow suit, although they are the ones that most suffer from US sanctions imposed on others, especially because out of ‘stupidity’ or fear, they cannot let go of the destructive empire, hobbling away on its last breath. Or is it perhaps, that those fake leaders of the Brussels construct are bought? – Yes, I mean bought with money or with favors? – It’s not out of this world, since those of the European Commission who call the shots are not elected, thus, responsible to no one.

Take the case of Iran, Trump and his peons, Bolton and Pompeo, have threatened every oil company around the globe with heavy sanctions if they keep buying hydrocarbons from Iran beyond November 2018. Particularly concerned are the European Petrol giants, like Total, ENI, Repsol and others. – As a consequence, they have canceled their literally of billions of euros worth of contracts with Iran to protect themselves – and, of course, their shareholders. Just recently I talked to a high executive from Total. He said, we have no choice, as we cannot trust our people in Brussels to shield us from Washington’s sanctions. So, we have to look elsewhere to fulfill our contractual obligations vis-à-vis our clients. But, he added, we did not buy the American fracking stuff; we are negotiating with Russia. – There you go.

The European market for Iran’s hydrocarbon is estimated at about 20% of Iran’s total production. An amount, easily taken over by China and others which are too big (and too bold) to be sanctioned by the empire. Some may actually resell Iranian hydrocarbons through their backdoor to the otherwise sanctioned European oil corporations.

Iran has another strong weapon which they already made clear, they will use, if the US attempts seriously to block anyone from buying Iranian oil and gas. Iran can block the Gulf of Hormuz, where daily about 30% of all hydrocarbon used by the world is being shipped, including about half to the United states. This might increase the price of petrol exponentially and ruining many countries’ economies. However, higher prices would also benefit Russia, China and Venezuela, precisely the countries that Washington wants to punish.

Would such a move by Iran provoke a direct US aggression? – One never knows with the war profiteers of the US. What’s for sure, such an intervention would not pass without a commensurate response from China and Russia.

On the other side of the scenario – imagine – countries mired in this global mess, made in the US of A, start looking for their own internal interests again, seeking their own sovereignty, independence from the globalist dependency. They are embarking on economic policies furthering self-sufficiency, self-reliance; first foodwise, then focusing on their scientific research to build their own cutting-edge technology industrial parks. A vivid example is Russia. Since sanctions were imposed, Russia has moved from a totally import-dependent country since the collapse of the Soviet Union, to a food and industry self-sufficient nation. According to Mr. Putin, the sanctions were the best thing that happened to Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia has been the world’s largest wheat exporter for the last two years.

Europeans have started quietly to reorient their business activities towards the east. Europeans may finally have noticed – not the elitist puppets from Brussels, but Big Business and the public at large – that the transatlantic partner cannot be trusted, nor their self-imposed EU central administration of Brussels. They are seeking their own ways, each one of these nations are seeking gradually to detach from the fangs of Washington, eventually detaching from the dollar dominion, because they notice businesswise the dollar-based economy is a losing proposition.  

There is BREXIT, the most open move away from the ‘freedom limiting’ European dictate which is nothing else but a carbon copy of the economic dictate of the dollar, as practiced in the United States and everywhere the dollar is still the main international contract and reserve currency. 

The Five Star Movement in Italy was created on similar premises – breaking out from Brussels, from the Euro-policy handcuffs. In a first attempt towards sidelining the Euro, they received a spanking from the euro-friendly Italian President, Sergio Mattarella, when he refused to accept the 5-Stars coalition partner’s, Lega Norte, proposed Eurosceptic Minister of Finance, Paolo Savona, who called Italy’s entry into the eurozone a “historic mistake”. This thrive by Italy to regain monetary sovereignty has by no means ended. To the contrary, it has taken strength and more determination. Germany moves in the same direction – quietly opening doors to Moscow and Beijing. 

Unfortunately, these moves have little to do with a new more human and peace-loving consciousness, but rather with business interests. But perhaps conscious awareness – the reconnecting with the original spark of a humanity solidified in solidarity is a step-by-step process.

What if, considering the motion towards peoples’ new self-determination, Trump’s amok run, his jumping from chaos to more chaos, to the sanction game no end – punishing, or threatening friends and foes alike, will lead to a genuine de-globalization of the world? – If this were to happen then, we the 90% of the globe’s population, should be very grateful to Mr. Trump who has shown and created the path to enlightening – the enlightening of de-globalization.

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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. 

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Featured image: The Aboghlou women’s cooperative meets outside in Ourika Valley, Morocco. (Source: author)

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has the lowest female employment rate of anywhere in the world. Though most countries in the MENA region, including Libya and Iran, have seen gradually increasing rates of working women, Morocco’s female labor force participation (FLFP) rate has actually decreased since 1999, now sitting at 26 percent, according to Brookings. This decline not only contradicts global and regional trends, but also comes despite significant efforts both by the Moroccan government and NGOs to increase women’s education, in hopes of improving their employment opportunities. The World Bank estimates that higher FLFP rates could result in a 25 percent average increase in household income, something which would dramatically improve the lives of men, women, and youth in the region.

Women’s education programs are excellent endeavors that change lives and promote equality, especially considering the high illiteracy rates of rural women. However, education alone is not the solution to low FLFP. In Morocco, according to the World Bank, women comprise 47 percent of the population holding a tertiary degree of some kind, and yet the vast majority remain marginalized from the workforce. Similar statistics showing high education and low employment for women are prevalent throughout the MENA region. The issue is not unemployment for women, but complete inactivity in the workforce. Morocco World News reports that over 70 percent of Moroccan women have simply left the workforce; they are neither employed nor searching for work, though one third of these women possess degrees that would qualify them for well-paying jobs.

In a Brookings survey, urban women aged 15 to 29, who were either in school or recently graduated, were asked if they were working or planning to work upon graduation. The vast majority of respondents said no, and were asked for their reasoning: 45 percent listed family opposition, while 30 percent said they were too busy with responsibilities at home. Though lack of education is certainly a problem in Morocco, particularly among rural women, it is clear that it is not the only barrier to female employment.

Neither is legal restriction; though the MENA region does have the highest number of constraints on women in the world – making it difficult for women to attain the social, political, and economic agency necessary to participate in the workforce – Morocco is somewhat of an exception. In 2004, Morocco enacted a progressive reform to its code of family law (Moudawana) to promote equality in the rights of women and men.

In the case of Morocco specifically, advocates of higher FLFP do not need to push for legal reform, but for the active enforcement of existing laws. The Moudawana reform set the stage for women’s economic participation; however, the vast majority of rural women remain unaware of their rights and, therefore, unable to exercise them. The formal law is in place, but it is not being applied effectively. There is not widespread respect of these rights because very few people are familiar with them. Efforts to increase awareness of Moudawana would help remove the implicit biases and barriers continuing to prevent Moroccan women from working.

Since young women listed family opposition and responsibilities at home as their two main reasons for not entering the workforce, governments and NGOs need to design programs that address these issues specifically. In Morocco and the MENA, there is a desperate need for women’s empowerment. Women need self-confidence and the ability to advocate for their ambitions, otherwise they will continue to be consigned to the domestic sphere. The duties of childcare, cooking, and cleaning are placed almost solely on women, making it difficult for them to work outside the home. Incentive programs for employers to provide services that ease the domestic burden on women, such as free daycare centers, paid maternity leave, etc., would significantly help women enter the workforce. Additionally, more focus should be given to the creation of women’s cooperatives, especially in rural regions. Cooperatives allow women to collectively manage their businesses, which means they set their own schedules, and are thus in a better position to accommodate both household and work responsibilities.

Existing strategies to increase women’s presence in the workforce are not working.  Since 2016, the High Atlas Foundation has been conducting a women’s empowerment program in Morocco that integrates Moudawana with a self-discovery process, bringing women together to unlock their socioeconomic potential. Often, this program (developed in conjunction with the Empowerment Institute) results in the creation of cooperatives, where rural women pool their resources and talent to start their own entreprises. If sustainable change is to occur, governments and NGOs need to take a participatory approach that focuses on the self-identified obstacles and needs of women.

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Katherine O’Neill is studying International Relations at Claremont McKenna College; she is interning with the High Atlas Foundation for the summer.

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As the summer moves on, the world is literally burning under intense heat due to ever worsening climate change, mainly as a result of government impotence under corporate sway. Areas near Tokyo have just experienced a record temperature of 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41.1 Celsius), with beleaguered residents fleeing to avoid the sun. Across Japan, this unprecedented heat wave has already killed dozens of people.

Nor are the searing temperatures being restricted to southerly climes. In northern Siberia, temperatures of over 91 degrees Fahrenheit (33 Celsius) were recorded on 5 July. The heat wave in sections of Siberia’s far north, more than double the normal temperatures expected, has astonished meteorologists. It also raises dire concerns that billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane, for centuries locked in frozen permafrost, will be released into the atmosphere and thereby further accelerate climate change. This is a major concern for scientists who note with growing alarm the unchecked temperatures even within the Arctic circle.

In other northerly landmasses – Canada for example – scores of people are estimated to have died this month, with the huge province of Quebec experiencing particularly severe heat. Montreal, the most populous municipality in Quebec, endured record breaking temperatures early this month of almost 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36.6 Celsius).

Scandinavia is also undergoing blinding heat, with parts of Sweden, Norway and Finland recording temperatures almost twice the average; slightly above or below 90 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking previous records. Last week, in the urban area of Bardufoss in Norway’s far north, a record was compiled of 92.3 degrees Fahrenheit (33.5 Celsius). For weeks Sweden has been been battling dozens of forest fires, which have destroyed about two million square meters of woodland – with almost $70 million worth of damage inflicted.

While these temperatures have been broadly reported over the previous weeks, the root causes are almost invariably overlooked or downplayed. Since records began in the mid-19th century, 17 of the hottest 18 years have occurred since 2000. Unless government policies drastically alter, this trend will continue as the years advance.

Oil price decreases in recent times have been widely heralded by the corporate press in the West. It represents another surreal moment in human history. In reality, the media has been lauding the impending destruction of the planet along with that of their children and grandchildren’s futures. Jubilant headlines regarding falling oil prices have long been declaring under such lines that,

“It gives consumers more money and cuts manufacturing costs”, when instead they should read, “Let’s accelerate the destruction of the human species and incinerate the earth”.

The price of oil in the US market is too low, and should instead be placed at a higher cost as it is in Europe. The higher price discourages the continuing use of fossil fuels, which is wiping out the environment, and a driving factor behind planet-altering climate change. Should the dependence on non-renewable resources like oil continue, it will prove another significant blow to the globe.

With not a reference of the threat to the earth, economic policy analyst Stephen Moore, a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other publications, wrote in late 2016 that,

“The greatest stimulus to the US economy in the past two years has been the steep decline in oil prices… Think about the boon to American consumers… The blessings of low oil prices are doubly felt in the US because we still import hundreds of billions of oil a year. The big losers from low energy prices are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, ISIS and OPEC. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people”.

Unmentioned by Moore is that Saudi Arabia has been a major US ally for the past 75 years, continuing with enormous support under president Donald Trump. Indeed Moore himself, a Republican Party member, acted as a key economic adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign. Perhaps it is little wonder that Trump subsequently pulled his country out of the Paris Climate Agreement, another blow to the planet.

With regard coal, a lethal and increasingly defunct fossil fuel, Trump has said in the preceding months,

“We have ended the war on American energy – and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal”.

On a separate occasion Trump said that,

“Hillary Clinton wants to put all the miners out of business. There is a thing called clean coal. Coal will last for 1,000 years in this country”.

Should current policies persist, there may not be a United States as we know it in 100 years, let alone a thousand years. After all, burning of coal is the largest contributor to human-engineered carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere; humans’ use of coal has long been a key factor in the ongoing warming of the planet.

It is a strange spectacle witnessing policies being continued that are pushing the human race closer to the cliff’s edge. In Bangladesh, a small country in southern Asia, scientists forecast that up to 25 million of its people will be forced to flee within the next generation. This is due to rising sea levels as a result of melting ice sheets and glaciers, along with other severe weather events. Migrant crises in which tens of millions are expected to depart will be far more serious than the exodus of recent years, which was primarily as a result of people fleeing wars waged or supported by Western governments.

Bangladesh’s chief climatologist Atiq Rahman believes that,

“These migrants should have the right to move to countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States”.

Indeed, over nine million Bangladeshis have already left their homeland, departing because of worsening climate change allied to the country’s dismal poverty.

Across the world temperatures are already becoming increasingly intolerable, mostly affecting the poor. In Iraq, the thermometer is this week set to read 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 Celsius), having previously reached a staggering 129 degrees Fahrenheit (54 Celsius) in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2016. With temperatures to continue breaking records as the years go by, states like Iraq who have suffered so much will become desolate, uninhabitable places.

As the Himalayan glaciers melt, clean water for many in southern Asia is becoming a rarer commodity. This is already a major issue in India, a nuclear weapon state, with tens of millions of the country’s inhabitants having no access to clean drinking water.

Elsewhere, even small and seemingly insignificant countries like Ireland are now bearing a serious global responsibility. Ireland – a rich nation dogged by inequality – has long held company with the worst climate culprits in Europe, and in 2018 has the second worst climate change record among EU states (Poland is last). It is a remarkable fact that Ireland, with a population well under 10 million, produces more carbon emissions than over 5% of the global human population.

John Sweeney, Ireland’s leading climate scientist, writes that

“when it comes to getting our own greenhouse gas emissions in order, it is among the worst laggards in the developed world. We emit more greenhouse gases than the poorest 400 million people on the planet. Almost unique in the EU, Ireland is failing to meet its obligations and is increasing its greenhouse gas emissions”.

Such is the price that countries pay for surrendering to corporate power, as compromised governments act with ongoing impotence.

The general populations of the rich states mostly responsible for unbridled climate change are largely unaware of how serious the problem is. Much of this is due to the gross underreporting of this earth-defining issue. The business-run media, acting under the Orwellian title of “the Free Press”, are irrevocably chained to powerful vested interest groups, as are their governments above them.

The corporate grip upon media would undoubtedly start slipping were serious reporting of climate change (and nuclear weapons) to be undertaken. Instead, as the world burns, the press is largely focused on such issues as “Russian meddling in the US election” – a subject which must have people collapsing in laughter and bewilderment in Latin America, Asia and so on, regions all too familiar with what American interference in domestic affairs truly entails.

In Europe, the unending Brexit negotiations have been regular front page news for about two years. Meanwhile, the far more important topic of climate change either goes unreported, or relegated deep into the inside pages. As a result of their inaction, the mainstream media are contributing to the growing threats facing the earth.

In the US, over half of Americans do not believe “global warming will pose a threat in their lifetime”, according to a Gallup poll from March this year. Yet the reality is that climate change is already posing a serious threat to the American mainland, as seen by the increasingly destructive droughts in California and Nevada – and elsewhere by massive hurricanes battering America in recent years, like Harvey, Sandy and Katrina, inflicting tens of billions of dollars worth of damage.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Putin dropped a bomb in the recent Trump/Putin meeting in Helsinki, Finland. Putin charged that an investment fund manager named Bill Browder (a British citizen) took $1.5 billion out of Russia and that he (and others) made the money illegally. On top of that, Putin charged that some U.S. Intelligence Officers helped guide “$400 million as a contribution to the campaign (2016) of Hillary Clinton.” Putin suggested Russian authorities want a deal to talk to Browder. Trump has turned down Putin, but shouldn’t the U.S. ask some questions? Don’t expect the disinformation scam that is the mainstream media (MSM) to ask the hard questions because FOX and MSNBC would only get Browder’s reaction to Trump turning down the Putin request. NOBODY would ask about the $400 million that Putin says was sent via U.S. Intel Officers to the Clinton Campaign. Not asking that question of Browder, when you have him on camera for an interview, is too stupid to be stupid.

The Deep State and their MSM partners are going hysterical because of the meeting with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. They are calling Trump a traitor, but they know it’s a fake and phony charge. The real reason for the hysteria is they know that the Deep State is in deep trouble, and they are trying anything they can to discredit him and cast doubt. Trump is not afraid and has announced another meeting with Putin. The Deep State wanted war between the U.S. and Russia, and it looks like peace is breaking out instead. The Deep State, MSM, Democrats and RINO’s are panicked that Russia and America are working together against the New World Order and the Deep State.

Warren Buffett’s bank, Wells Fargo, is in trouble again for ripping off its customers. Why do they keep doing this sort of thing? Could it be the bank needs money anyway it can get it?

Join Greg Hunter as he gives his analysis on the week’s top stories in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

(This report talks about how the MSM is ignoring a $400 million Putin bomb he dropped on Clinton, the Deep State’s panicked reaction to the Trump/Putin meeting in Finland and more warning signs of trouble for Wells Fargo.)

Update After the Wrap-Up

The plot thickens.  Now, I find that the Russia News Agency TASS has made a correction in the $400 million number Putin used in the Helsinki press conference.    TASS (Russian state sponsored news) has corrected the number to $400 thousand sent to the DNC and Clinton campaign.  I find it hard to believe that Putting had this big of a miss.

It is still illegal for U.S. intel Officers to “guide” money to Clinton campaign and DNC from a foreign national (Browder).  Why aren’t the MSM press talking about this?????

Financial and gold expert Egon von Greyerz will be the guest on the Early Sunday Release. He will talk about the record breaking global financial risk and how it is being ignored.

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Nations rely on taxes – the people pay all the bills. For long-term projects a nation has choices. For example, a government can print money, or print bonds and sell them. At one time savings bonds were a great source of money for governments. Bonds were sold to the people and repaid to the people, with interest. The government could also print bonds, then sell them to a publicly-owned national bank, with the interest repaid to the people through the national bank. The worst option for governments is to print bonds, and sell them to the private banks, with banks getting the interest.

Prior to the 1970’s, if the U.S. or Canadian governments had significant projects to fund, they paid for it from their own resources. If they wanted a new battleship or new bridge, they simply paid for it. The money could be raised from money on hand, or from newly printed money, or borrowed from the federal bank, then repaid with interest to the government. After the mid-1970’s, money for new projects was obtained by selling bonds to banks, which would be repaid with interest. The change was that simple.

The charts below show the result of that change: the United States chart is on the left[1] and Canada on the right[2]. The obvious features are the similarity of the start dates and the similarity of the steep rise in debt.

In both charts national debt from about 1900 is all but flat through the 1940’s, 1950’s, 1960’s, and stays more or less flat until the mid-1970’s. Flat for thirty years, then it soars. The decades when debt did not increase include the 1930’s stimulus spending to end the depression, the huge expenses of the Second World War in the 1940’s and the Korean War in the 1950’s.

Between the years 1954-1960, Canada and the United States built the St. Lawrence Seaway, an expensive undertaking that allowed ships from the Atlantic Ocean to sail inland through the Great Lakes to Chicago and Minnesota. To accomplish this, fifteen locks had to be built to lift ocean ships almost six hundred feet above sea level. Bridges had to be raised, canals deepened and one town moved. When it was completed prairie grain, coal and iron could be shipped directly to Europe. Hydroelectric power was a spin-off that added another $600 million to the cost and rapidly paid for itself.

The total cost was huge for the time: C$470 million ($336.2 million from Canada) which was eventually to be paid for by tolls. By 1978 the Canadian portion had been paid, and in 1986 the U.S. eliminated tolls on their portion. The Canadian government lent the seaway corporation the money repaid as shares (equity). There was no surge in national debt.

In 1969 the U.S. embarked on a program to put a man on the moon, which cost about $25 billion. The U.S. also had the costs of the 19-year Vietnam War from 1956-1975, which cost about $111 billion. Both occurred without a spike in debt. But in the mid 1970’s, with no similar huge expenses, for no apparent reason, debt began to soar.

None of these costly items created debt to compare with whatever occurred in the 1970’s.

A standard rule in finance is to pay for things over the useful life of the project. As I mentioned earlier, paying for a house over twenty or thirty years makes sense for young people. If a business buys a machine to use for ten years, paying for it over more than ten years would be foolish. For projects that will last decades, like harbors or museums or bridges, interest can be amortized over those longer periods, but cost because of interest, soars enormously. Soaring debt in the mid-1970’s was a direct result from governments financing everything by borrowing and paying interest to the banks.

Governments did not have to do that then, and do not have to do that now. Governments are assumed to be the source of money: the US Constitution gives the government the right to ‘coin’ money. It can lend money and can charge interest, but if it lends it to itself, the interest is to be paid to itself.

In the U.S. the escalating national debt has increasingly put pressure on the social contract. For example, social security has moved from being something natural, decent and fair that we once could afford, to an ‘entitlement’ program we cannot now afford. The national debt Is used to threaten health care, Old Age Security, education and all social programs, which have all been redefined as ‘expensive and unaffordable’ in our wealthier modern world. It makes no sense to me.

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Notes

[1] http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html

[2] http://sceo.archives.math.ca/edu/edu04/edu04_0171d-eng.htm

Title

Author: Gordon Bryant Brown

Publisher: FriesenPress (May 17 2018)

ASIN: B07D5N8C4T

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The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is called “The Third Way” and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political center, nothing “extremist” or “marginal.” But didn’t liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans — they attract flies and billionaires, but not many votes. And didn’t the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 — and the Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27 March 2009, “I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you.” And, he did keep his promise to them, though not to his voters.)

They’re at it, yet again. On July 22nd, NBC News’s Alex Seitz-Wald headlined “Sanders’ wing of the party terrifies moderate Dems. Here’s how they plan to stop it.” And he described what was publicly available from the 3-day private meeting in Columbus Ohio of The Third Way, July 18-20, the planning conference between the Party’s chiefs and its billionaires. Evidently, they hate Bernie Sanders and are already scheming and spending in order to block him, now a second time, from obtaining the Party’s Presidential nomination. “Anxiety has largely been kept to a whisper among the party’s moderates and big donors, with some of the major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop the Vermonter if he runs for the White House again.” This passage in Seitz-Wald’s article was especially striking to me:

The gathering here was … an effort to offer an attractive alternative to the rising Sanders-style populist left in the upcoming presidential race. Where progressives see a rare opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to win over Republicans turned off by Trump.

The fact that a billionaire real estate developer, Winston Fisher, cohosted the event and addressed attendees twice, underscored that this group is not interested in the class warfare vilifying the “millionaires and billionaires” found in Sanders’ stump speech.

“You’re not going to make me hate somebody just because they’re rich. I want to be rich!” Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday to laughs.

I would reply to congressman Ryan’s remark: If you want to be rich, then get the hell out of politics! Don’t run for President! I don’t want you there! And that’s no joke!

Anyone who doesn’t recognize that an inevitable trade-off exists between serving the public and serving oneself, is a libertarian — an Ayn Rander, in fact — and there aren’t many of those in the Democratic Party, but plenty of them are in the Republican Party.

Just as a clergyman in some faiths is supposed to take a vow of chastity, and in some faiths also to take a vow of poverty, in order to serve “the calling” instead of oneself, anyone who enters ‘public service’ and who aspires to “be rich” is inevitably inviting corruption — not prepared to do war against it. That kind of politician is a Manchurian candidate, like Obama perhaps, but certainly not what this or any country needs, in any case. Voters like that can be won only by means of deceit, which is the way that politicians like that do win.

No decent political leader enters or stays in politics in order to “be rich,” because no political leader can be decent who isn’t in it as a calling, to public service, and as a repudiation, of any self-service in politics.

Republican Party voters invite corrupt government, because their Party’s ideology is committed to it (“Freedom [for the rich]!”); but the only Democratic Party voters who at all tolerate corrupt politicians (such as Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York State) are actually Republican Democrats — people who are confused enough so as not really to care much about what they believe; whatever their garbage happens to be, they believe in it and don’t want to know differently than it.

The Third Way is hoping that there are enough of such ‘Democrats’ so that they can, yet again, end up with a Third Way Democrat being offered to that Party’s voters in 2020, just like happened in 2016. They want another Barack Obama. There aren’t any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest). But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again — after the disaster of 2016?

Maybe the Third Way is right, and there’s a sucker born every minute. But if that’s what the Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America’s stunningly low voter-participation rate is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt driven to do in 2016).

The Third Way is the way to the death of democracy, if it’s not already dead. It is no answer to anything, except to the desires of billionaires — both Republican and Democratic.

The center of American politics isn’t the center of America’s aristocracy. The goal of groups such as The Third Way is to fool the American public to equate the two. The result of such groups is the contempt that America’s public have for America’s Government. But, pushed too far, mass disillusionment becomes revolution. Is that what America’s billionaires are willing to risk? They might get it.

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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.

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This short communiqué is to my friends who are trapped in hating Donald Trump so much that any “alternative fact” (as long as it is against President Trump) is virtue to them. They are not realizing that the feud among the 1%, regardless of their Party affiliation is a family feud. The extreme right wing politicians and billionaires run both the Democratic and Republican parties. Their arguments are not about our state of healthcare, education or jobs. 

Friends who are dissatisfied with the current political situation (instead of organizing against the reactionary policies of the current administration or question the congress for approving the Tax Cut for the rich) are competing in posting the Democratic Party hysteria against Russia on the social media. They are distracted by the false narrative that “American Democracy” is under “attack” by one man in Russia, President Putin who has Mr. Trump in his “pocket”.

Those who believe such an absurd storyline rely on the U.S. Intelligence agencies reports and findings! These are the same agencies that informed Americans that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. They are the same people who justified war against Iraq in 2003 which opened the gates of hell in that region for decades. Now, after they had succeeded in blowing up people and countries in the Middle East on false information, the ladies and gentlemen of the U.S. intelligence agencies have found a new bogeyman to scare the American people. This is just another DISTRACTION, period.

The fascistic minded President of the U.S. is not in anybody’s pocket. As a matter of fact, today it is the political pocket pickers in Washington who are robbing the American working people and holding us as hostages. When was the last time that you saw the White House or Congress address the working people’s real needs and problems? Some friends are mesmerized by the nastiness of the 1% cultural values. However exposing Mr. Trump sexual affair with a “Porn Star” will not help the American people’s struggle for the Minimum Wage or Protecting Environment, Immigration and so on. This is just another DISTRACTION.

Under bright light, President Trump and his opponents play out their childish, embarrassing show against each other in front of the corrupt media, while in the shadow of DISTRACTION they are limiting our FREEDOM OF SPEECH and taking away our democratic rights. Both parties are afraid of the energy and determination of workers, farmers, women and youth which eventually could challenge the entire existing miserable system. Historically, they are well aware of the potential of revolt by people who are organized and conscious. The ladies and gentlemen in charge of the U.S. foreign and domestic policy are incapable of solving our social or political problems; the only thing they are good at is to create decoys and DISTRACTION. The gossip shows on the corporate media are blindfolding us to see the slaughters in Gaza or Yemen or the devastating consequences of the Trump administration Trade War drive against the EU and China¹ on American farmers and workers.

Independent and democratic minded people SHOULD NOT take any side between the different factions of the 1%. We should not allow the 1% use us as their pawns to propagate their hate and disunity among people.

The White House and Congress are obsolete. Independent and democratic minded people should UNITE, ORGANIZE and seek a new operating system – a system that puts people’s need over profit.

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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Note

1. www.globalresearch.ca/imagine-what-would-happen-if-china-decided-to-impose-economic-sanctions-on-the-usa-2/5598941

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Featured image: President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation | July 16, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

It’s been nearly a week since Trump sold America’s birthright to Comrade Putin, making the once-great United States a Russian colony as payment for a dozen Russian hackers’ efforts in winning him the presidency. Six days we have had nothing to eat but borscht and sadness, while our former president, clad in nothing but a spiked collar and chaps, is paraded around on a leash from press conference to press conference, barking like a dog.

That was the story in the establishment media, at least, which offered the American people five days of unprecedented hysteria, flinging around terms like “treason” as they frantically tortured their thesauruses to the brink of death trying to impress upon the people the urgency of the situation. After flogging the “treason” narrative to within an inch of its life, with nothing to show for it but strained vocal cords and declining ratings, they abruptly switched gears, returning to the well-worn territory of what Hillary Clinton used to call “bimbo eruptions” – a recording from Trump’s lawyer involving payments to a Playboy Playmate to keep quiet about her past assignations with the commander-in-chief.

The Helsinki hysteria shone a spotlight on the utter impotence of the establishment media and their Deep State controllers to make their delusions reality. Never before has there been such a gaping chasm visible between the media’s “truth” and the facts on the ground. Pundits compared the summit to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, with some even reaching for the brass ring of the Holocaust by likening it to Kristallnacht, while polls revealed the American people really didn’t care. 

Worse, it laid bare the collusion between the media and their Deep State handlers – the central dissemination point for the headlines, down to the same phrases, that led to every outlet claiming Trump had “thrown the Intelligence Community under the bus” by refusing to embrace the Russia-hacked-our-democracy narrative during his press conference with Putin. Leaving aside the sudden ubiquity of “Intelligence Community” in our national discourse – as if this network of spies and murderous thugs is Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood – no one seriously believes every pundit came up with “throws under the bus” as the proper way of describing that press conference.

The same central control was apparent in the unanimous condemnations of Putin – that he murders journalists, breaks international agreements, uses banned chemical weapons, kills women and children in Syria, and, of course, meddles in elections. For every single establishment pundit to exhibit such a breathtaking lack of insight into their own government’s misdeeds is highly unlikely. Many of these same talking heads remarked in horror on Sinclair Broadcasting’s Orwellian “prepared statement” issuing forth from the mouths of hundreds of stations’ anchors at once. Et tu, Anderson Cooper?

The media frenzy was geared toward sparking a popular revolt, with tensions already running high from the previous media frenzy about family separation at the border (though only one MSNBC segment seemed to recall that they should still care about that, and belatedly included some footage of kids behind a fence wrapped in Mylar blankets). Rachel Maddow, armed with the crocodile tears that served her so well during the family-separation fracas, exhorted her faithful cultists to do something. Meanwhile, national-security neanderthal John Brennan all but called for a coup, condemning the president for the unspeakable “high crimes and misdemeanors” of seeking to improve relations with the world’s second-largest nuclear power. He called on Pompeo and Bolton, the two biggest warmongers in a Trump administration bristling with warmongers, to resign in protest. This would have been a grand slam for world peace, but alas, it was not to be. Even those two realize what a has-been Brennan is. 

Congress wasted no time jumping on the Treason bandwagon, led by Chuck Schumer conjuring the spectre of the KGB, Marco Rubio as neocon point-man (one imagines Barbara Bush rolling in her grave at his usurpation of Jeb’s rightful role) proposing locked-and-loaded sanctions in case of future “meddling,” and John McCain, still desperate to take the rest of the world with him before he finally kicks a long-overdue bucket, condemning the “disgraceful” display of two heads of state trying to come to an agreement about matters of mutual interest. The Pentagon has invested a lot of time and money in positioning Russia as Public Enemy #1, and for Trump to put his foot in it by making nice with Putin might diminish the size of their weapons contracts – or the willingness of the American people to tolerate more than half of every tax dollar disappearing down an unaccountable hole. Peace? Eh, who needs it. Cash, motherfucker.

Trump’s grip on his long-elusive spine was only temporary, and he held another press conference upon returning home to reiterate his trust in the intelligence agencies that have made no secret of their utter loathing for him since day one. When the lights went out at the climactic moment, it became clear for anyone who still hadn’t gotten the message who was running the show here (and Trump, to his credit, actually joked about it). The Intelligence Community believes it is God, and it hath smote Trump good. Smelling blood in the water, the media redoubled their shrieking for several days, and…crickets. On to the Playmates. 

Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest series, “Who is America,” targeted Ted Koppel for one segment. Koppel cut the interview short after smelling a rat and expressed his high-minded concern that Cohen’s antics would hurt Americans’ trust in reporters. But after a week of the entire media establishment screaming that the sky is falling while the heavens remain firmly in place, Cohen is clearly the least of their problems. At least he’s funny. 

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Helen Buyniski is a journalist and photographer based in New York City. She covers politics, sociology, and other anthropological/cultural phenomena. Helen has a BA in Journalism from New School University and also studied at Columbia University and New York University. Find more of her work at http://www.helenofdestroy.com and http://medium.com/@helen.buyniski.

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The Mueller special counsel investigation was launched to probe charges that the key FBI officials developing evidence in the case thought were baseless.  That’s a bombshell accusation that appears to have been confirmed by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, according to John Solomon.  It tends to confirm the suspicion that the Mueller probe is a cover-up operation to obscure the criminal use of counterintelligence capabilities to spy on a rival presidential campaign and then sabotage the presidency that resulted.

Earlier reports indicated that Page has been answering questions from the House Judiciary Committee quite frankly and may even have cut a deal selling out her ex-lover Peter Strzok over their professional misbehavior (and quite possibly worse) in targeting the campaign and presidency of Donald Trump with the intelligence-gathering tools of the FBI.

Last night, John Solomon of The Hill revealed that he has obtained information from sources who heard Page’s testimony in two days of sworn depositions behind closed doors that she offered a bombshell confirmation of the meaning of one of the most enigmatic text messages that the public has seen (keep in mind that there are many yet to be released).

Writing in The Hill, Solomon explains:

 [T]here are just five words, among the thousands of suggestive texts Page and Strzok exchanged, that you should read.

That passage was transmitted on May 19, 2017.  “There’s no big there there,” Strzok texted.

The date of the text long has intrigued investigators: It is two days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and the Russia campaign.

Since the text was turned over to Congress, investigators wondered whether it referred to the evidence against the Trump campaign.

This month, they finally got the chance to ask. Strzok declined to say – but Page, during a closed-door interview with lawmakers, confirmed in the most pained and contorted way that the message in fact referred to the quality of the Russia case, according to multiple eyewitnesses.

The admission is deeply consequential.  It means Rosenstein unleashed the most awesome powers of a special counsel to investigate an allegation that the key FBI officials, driving the investigation for 10 months beforehand, did not think was “there.”

The truth behind the Mueller probe is looking uglier and uglier.  Pursuing bogus accusations without foundation is the very definition of a witch hunt – President Trump’s term for Mueller’s team of Hillary-supporters.

We don’t know anything at all about the activities of Utah U.S. attorney Peter Huber, who is investigating the potential abuse of U.S. intelligence apparatus for political purposes.  That is the proper procedure for grand jury probes.  But if Lisa Page is honestly answering questions under oath for a congressional committee, she probably is doing so in grand jury sessions, if summoned.

The glacial pace of this probe is frustrating for Trump-supporters.  But doing it right and observing the ethical and legal constraints takes time and does not generate leaks.  Nevertheless, I am deeply encouraged by this leak to Solomon, as it seems to indicate that the truth will come out.

Appearing on Hannity last night, Solomon elaborated: watch video here.

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Private citizen Trump was a geopolitical know-nothing. As president, he only knows what’s fed him by hard-right regime handlers and advisers, congressional leaders, and Fox News – his favorite source for (dis)information.

Pre-election and now, he knows little or nothing about Iran other than what he’s told, including by Netanyahu, wanting regime change. 

He’s ignorant about a nation dedicated to protecting and preserving its sovereign independence, deploring nuclear weapons, wanting them eliminated, advocating world peace and stability, and opposing US imperial rampaging.

Trump’s regime change plot against the Islamic Republic perhaps began straightaway after assuming office.

Demonizing a nation and its leadership as an existential threat precedes all US wars and color revolutions for regime change – supported by media scoundrels instead of responsibly denouncing the scheme.

Trump’s campaign against Iran began with hostile rhetoric. In March 2016, ahead of announcing his candidacy for president in June, he said his “number-one priority (was) to dismantle the disastrous (nuclear) deal with Iran.”

He lied saying Obama negotiated the deal “from desperation.” He lied claiming “we’re giving them billions of dollars in this deal, which we shouldn’t have given them. We should have kept the money.”

He lied saying when JCPOA provisions sunset, “Iran will have an industrial-size military nuclear capability ready to go.” He lied claiming the deal lets Iran go nuclear.

In Riyadh last year, he recited a litany of Big Lies about Iran, falsely claiming its leadership “funds arms and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region,” adding:

“For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror. It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this very room.”

All of the above and other hostile comments on Iran are polar opposite hard truths about the country and its leadership.

Trump regime destabilization tactics followed hostile rhetoric toward the Islamic Republic. In January, 2018, made in the USA and Israel protests erupted in Tehran and other Iranian cities.

They didn’t happen spontaneously. They were manufactured needing leadership. Color revolutions are a US specialty, numerous ones staged earlier.

Some succeeded. Others failed, including the 2009 green revolution attempt for regime change in Iran.

Staged protests in the country last January followed a Trump/Netanyahu agreement to confront Iran’s leadership, wanting pro-Western puppet rule replacing it – what color revolution attempts are all about.

Last January’s plot fizzled in days. In June, staged protests erupted again – much weaker than earlier. At the time, Pompeo tweeted:

“#Iran’s corrupt regime is wasting the country’s resources on Assad, Hizbollah, Hamas & Houthis, while Iranians struggle.”

“It should surprise no one #IranProtests continue. People are tired of the corruption, injustice & incompetence of their leaders. The world hears their voice.”

Failure of the Obama regime to deliver on JCPOA promises contributed to Iran’s economic woes, exacerbated under Trump’s hardline agenda toward the Islamic Republic, aiming for regime change.

National Iranian American Council founder president Trita Parsi called John Bolton’s appointment as national security advisor “a declaration of war (on) Iran.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for imposing “the strongest sanctions in history” on the country if it fails to comply with outrageous US demands no responsible leadership anywhere would accept.

Trump’s May 2018 JCPOA pullout appeared part of a regime change plot against the country.

Nuclear related sanctions will be reimposed on August 4. Other JCPOA-related sanctions will be reimposed on November 6 – targeting Tehran’s energy sector, petroleum related products, and central bank transactions.

The Trump regime’s plot aims to isolate Iran politically and economically, notably attempting to block its oil sales, access to hard currencies and foreign investments, along with imposing harsh sanctions and overall financial hardships on the country – part of a regime change plot.

A State Department announcement said

“Pompeo will deliver remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California, on Sunday, July 22…”

His “remarks on ‘Supporting Iranian Voices’ will be delivered as part of a visit with members of the Iranian-American community in the United States.”

His address launches another Trump regime campaign to stoke unrest in Iran, aiming to topple its government.

According to National Iranian American Council research director Reza Marashi, Pompeo’s Sunday address has nothing to do with promoting democracy in in the country, everything to do with wanting pro-Western puppet rule replacing its sovereign independence.

The plot is familiar. It played out many times before. Iran is resilient. It withstood nearly 40 years of US efforts to topple its government.

A US/Israeli joint working group was formed to encourage destabilizing protests in Iran, a likely softening up process for tougher regime change tactics to follow.

A so-called “white paper” circulated among Trump’s National Security Council officials. It reportedly discusses a strategy for toppling Islamic Republic governance – aiming for driving “a deeper wedge between the Iranian people and the ruling” authorities.

Earlier regime change plots failed. Iran’s leadership knows what it’s up against. On Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani slammed US plotters, saying:

“The Americans should learn very well that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace and war with Iran is the mother of all wars,” adding:

“Iran’s strategic depth reaches the (Indian) subcontinent to the east, and the Mediterranean to the west, the Red Sea to the south, and the Caucasus to the north.”

“We rooted Daesh out and saved the people in the region. We take pride in ourselves.”

He praised Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) for protecting the country against enemy plots.

Iran is a formidable adversary if attacked. Another US color revolution attempt won’t like fare better than earlier ones.

War if launched by the Trump regime, perhaps with Israeli involvement, would be disastrous for the region.

Rouhani warned Trump, saying

“(w)e will not accept threats. (They’ll bring us closer. Don’t twist the lion’s tail. You will regret it.”

*

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

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The last few days have been truly amazing. I didn’t even write an article yesterday; I’ve just been staring transfixed by my social media feeds watching liberal Americans completely lose their minds. I can’t look away. It’s like watching a slow motion train wreck, and everyone on the train is being really homophobic.

I’ve been writing about Russiagate since it started, and I can honestly say this is the worst it’s ever been, by far. The most hysterical, the most shrill, the most emotional, the most cartoonishly over-the-top and hyperbolic. The fact that Trump met with Putin in private and then publicly expressed doubt about the establishment Russia narrative has sent some political factions of America into an emotional state that is indistinguishable from what you’d expect if Russia had bombed New York City. This despite the fact that the establishment Russia narrative consists of no actual, visible events whatsoever. It is made of pure narrative.

I don’t think the US media has ever been nuttier than they are right now. It would be comical if it wasn’t so dangerous. They are harming the national psyche in a profound way

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 18, 2018

I don’t even know where to start. Everyone has been completely mad across the entire spectrum of what passes for America’s political “left” today, from the usual suspects like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and their indistinguishable Never-Trump Republican allies, all the way to supposedly progressive commentators like Cenk Uygur and Shaun King. Comparing this pure narrative non-event to Pearl Harbor is now commonplace and mainstream. I just watched a United States Senator named Richard Blumenthal stare right into the camera refer to the hypothetical possibility of future Russian cyber intrusions as “this 9/11 moment.”

“We are in a 9/11 national emergency because our country is under attack, literally,” Blumenthal told CNN while demanding a record of Trump’s meeting with Putin at the Helsinki summit. “That attack is ongoing and pervasive, verified by objective and verifiable evidence. Those words are, again, from the director of National Security. And this 9/11 moment demands that we do come together.”

Nothing about the establishment Russia narrative is in any way verifiable, and the only thing it has in common with 9/11 is the media coverage and widespread emotional response.

September 11 had actual video footage of falling towers. You could go visit New York City, look at the spot where those towers used to be, and see them not being there anymore. You could learn the names of the people who died and visit their graves and talk to their family members. Exactly how it happened is a matter of some debate in many circles, but there is no question that it happened. There was an actual event that did happen in the real world, completely independent of any stories people tell about that event.

Russiagate is like 9/11, but with none of those things. It’s like if 9/11 had all the same widespread emotional responses, all the same nonstop mass media coverage, all the same punditry screaming war, war, war, except no actual event occurred. The towers were still there, everyone was still alive, and nothing actually happened apart from the narrative and the emotional responses to that narrative.

Russiagate is 9/11 minus 9/11.

This is what I’m talking about when I say that whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Whoever controls the stories that westerners are telling each other has the power to advance concrete agendas which reshape global geopolitics without any actual thing even happening. Simply by getting a few hand-picked intelligence agents to say something happened in a relatively confident way, you can get the entire media and political body advancing that narrative as unquestionable fact, and from there advance sanctions, new military operations, a far more aggressive Nuclear Posture Review, the casting out of diplomats, the arming of Ukraine, and ultimately shove Russia further and further off the world stage.

As we discussed last time, the current administration has actually been far more aggressive against Russia than the previous administration was, and has worked against Russian interests to a far greater extent. If they wanted to, the international alliance of plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies could just as easily use their near-total control of the narrative to advance the story that Trump is a dangerous Russia hawk who is imperiling the entire world by inflicting insane escalations against a nuclear superpower. They could elicit the exact same panicked emotional response that they are eliciting right now using the exact same media and the exact same factual situation. They wouldn’t have to change a single thing except where they place their emphasis in telling the story. The known facts would all remain exactly as they are; all that would have to change is the narrative.

Public support for Russiagate depends on the fact that most people don’t recognize how pervasively their day-to-day experience is dominated by narrative. If you are intellectually honest with yourself, you will acknowledge that you think about Russia a lot more now than you did in 2015. Russia hasn’t changed any since 2015; all that has changed is the narrative that is being told about it. And yet now the mass media and a huge chunk of rank-and-file America now view it as a major threat and think about it constantly. All they had to do was talk about Russia constantly in a fearful and urgent way, and now US liberals are convinced that Vladimir Putin is an omnipotent world-dominating supervillain who has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government.

If humanity is to pull up and away from its current path toward either ecological disaster, nuclear armageddon or Orwellian dystopia, we are necessarily going to have to change our relationship with narrative. As long as the way we think, vote and organize can be controlled by the mere verbiage of the servants of power, our species will never be able to begin operating in a sane and wholesome way. If all it takes to make us act against our own interest is a few establishment lackeys speaking a few words in a confident tone of voice, if mere authoritative language can hypnotize us like a sorcerer casting spells, we are doomed to slavery and destruction.

So stop staring transfixed by the narratives, and begin looking at the behavior and motives of the people advancing them instead. Stop staring at the movie screen they’re constantly drawing your attention to, turn around in your theater seat, and look at the people who are running the projector. The way out of this mess is to begin ignoring the stories we’re being hypnotized with and start critically examining the people who are conducting the hypnosis. Ignore the stories and stare with piercing eyes at the storytellers. The difference between the official narrative and the actual reality of this world is the difference between fiction and fact. Evolve beyond.

*

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerilla poet. Utopia prepper.

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Featured image: President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation hold a joint press conference | July 16, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)

Comedy?  Disaster?  Mental disorder?  Hearing loss?

Even days after President Donald Trump’s bizarre appearance in Helsinki alongside a cool, composed President Vladimir Putin, it’s hard to tell what happened.  But it certainly was entertaining.

In case anyone in the universe missed this event, let me recap.  Trump met in private with Putin, which drove bureaucrats on both sides crazy.  So far, Trump won’t reveal most of what was said between the two leaders.

But after the presidential meeting, Trump replied to reporter’s questions by saying he believed Russia had no role in attempts to bug the Democratic Party during the election.  Outrage erupted across the US.  ‘Trump trusts the Russians more than his own intelligence agencies’ went up the howl.  Trump is a traitor, charged certain of the wilder Democrats and neocon Republicans.  Few Americans wanted to hear the truth.

In fact, so intense was the outrage at home that Trump had to backtrack and claim he had misspoken.  Yes, he admitted, the Russians had meddled in the US election.  But then he seemed to back away again from this claim.

The whole thing was black comedy.  Maybe it was due to Trump’s poor hearing or to jet lag and travel fatigue.

Hillary Clinton did not lose the election due to Russian conniving.  She lost it because so many Americans disliked and mistrusted her.  When the truth about her rigging of the Democratic primary emerged, she deftly diverted attention by claiming the Russians had rigged the election.  What chutzpah (nerve).

Yet many Americans swallowed this canard.  If Russia’s GRU military intelligence was really involved in the run-up to the election, as US intelligence reportedly claimed, it’s alleged buying of social media amounted to peanuts and hardly swung the election.

Back in the 1940’s, GRU managed to penetrate and influence Roosevelt’s White House.  Now that’s real espionage.  Not some junior officers and 20-somethings on a laptop in Moscow.

Besides, compared to US meddling in foreign politics, whatever the Ruskis did in the US was small potatoes.  Prying into US political and military secrets is precisely what Russian intelligence was supposed to do.  Particularly when the US Democratic Party was pushing a highly aggressive policy towards Russia that might lead to war.

For the US to accuse Russia of meddling is the ultimate pot calling the kettle black. The neocon former US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, admitted her organization had spent $5 billion to overthrow Ukraine’s pro-Russian government.  US undercover political and financial operations have recently been active in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, to name but a few nations.

Democrats and Republican neocons are in full-throat hysteria over an alleged Russian threat – Russia, whose total military budget is smaller than Trump’s recent Pentagon budget increase this year.

What we have been seeing is the fascinating spectacle of America’s war party and neocons clamoring to oust President Trump.  Included in their ranks are most of the US media, led by the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and TV’s war parties, CNN and NBC.

It’s also clear that Trump’s most ardent foes are the big US intelligence agencies whose mammoth $78 billion combined budget exceeds total Russian military spending.  The bloated US intelligence industry fears that Trump may slash its budgets, power and perks.

The uproar over Putin has revealed just how fanatic and far to the right were the heads of the US national security state operating under the sugarcoating of the Obama administration.  Straight out of the wonderful film, ‘Dr. Strangelove.’  We now see them on CNN, snarling away at President Trump.

Speaking of far right generals, one is also reminded of the brilliant film, `Seven Days in May,’ in which a cabal of generals tries to overthrow the president because of a peace deal he made with Moscow.  Could there be a real plot against the president?  Watching US TV one might think so.

Now, completing the childish ‘Reds Under Our Beds’ hysteria comes the final touch, the evil Russian temptress-spy who managed to infiltrate the National Prayer Breakfast, of all silly things.  This dangerous Jezebel is now in the hands of the FBI.  If this is the best KGB or GRU can come up with they need urgent help from Congolese intelligence.

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The Israeli Knesset voted 62 to 55 early today, Thursday, 19 July 2018, to approve the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law that constitutionally enshrines the identity of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

This law guarantees the ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish and entrenches the privileges enjoyed by Jewish citizens, while simultaneously anchoring discrimination against Palestinian citizens and legitimizing exclusion, racism, and systemic inequality.

The Jewish Nation-State Basic Law is the “law of laws” capable of overriding any ordinary legislation.

The law will apply to areas known as the “Green Line”, where nearly twenty percent of the population are Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as to territories occupied in 1967 such as Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which were annexed to the territory of the State of Israel by law. This annexation is considered illegal under international law.

Adalah General Director Hassan Jabareen responded to the Israeli parliament’s vote to approve the Nation-State Law:

“The Jewish Nation-State Law features key elements of apartheid, which is not only immoral but also absolutely prohibited under international law. The new law constitutionally enshrines the identity of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people only – despite the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of the state and residents of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – and guarantees the exclusive ethnic-religious character of Israel as Jewish. By defining sovereignty and democratic self-rule as belonging solely to the Jewish people – wherever they live around the world –  Israel has made discrimination a constitutional value and has professed its commitment to favoring Jewish supremacy as the bedrock of its institutions.”

The Nation-State Basic Law declares that Israel is a Jewish state – only. The law provides that,

“The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established” and that “the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people”.

The “people” here are not limited to “Israeli Jews” nor is it defined in terms of the “state of all citizens”, but rather it includes the “Jewish people” wherever they are in the world. Palestinian citizens of Israel, who compromise 20% of the population, are totally excluded.

The Nation-State Basic Law, which has constitutional status, is anti-democratic: The law negates the main purpose behind the introduction of a democratic constitution according to which residents living in a given territory are equal citizens and constitute the sovereign.

The Basic Law provides that self-determination will be exclusive to Jews. The law stands to justify the difference between the realization of basic rights between Jews and non-Jews as a legitimate distinction and not as an invalid discrimination.

The Nation-State Basic Law establishes discrimination as a constitutional value: It determines the national interest in accordance with the collective Zionist interests, which serve to justify the exclusion of the rights of the Arab population. Despite the bi-national reality, the law promotes exclusive, ethnic discrimination. National projects that seek to Judaize spaces, encourage Jewish settlement, and create demographic balances become worthy causes that justify discrimination against Arabs on the level of individual and collective rights.

Oppression and control are expressed in two main aspects of the law: First, the law imposes a constitutional identity on the Arabs without their consent. Second, the law creates a situation in which the Arabs participate, under coercion, in promoting the discrimination against them. While they bear equal tax obligations as citizens/residents, the Basic Law’s alignment of national interests with the exclusive interests of the Jewish population, results in forcing the Arab population to contribute, subsidize and promote those national projects that negate their identity and status.

What is new in the Basic Law that differs from existing practice? The policy of discrimination and oppression against Palestinians has existed since 1948, according to principles based on the supremacy of the Jewish population that support the Judaization of the space and the demographic dilution of the Palestinian population. However, there is a difference between racism and racist practices and this new Basic Law that requires, as a constitutional mandate, racist acts.

The Nation-State Law violates absolute prohibitions under international law: The Basic Law suspends the two systems of law that are perceived as legitimate under international law:. The first system is the state’s domestic legal system, which should be based on equality before the law and the rule of law. The second system is that of international humanitarian law (IHL), which is applicable to an occupied territory.

A colonial regime is expressed in this Basic Law by the imposition of a constitutional identity of Jewish ethnic supremacy and control, without consent and cooperation, which denies the connection between the Palestinian natives (citizens and residents) with their homeland. This colonial regime is the kind that falls within the bounds of absolute prohibitions under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (“the Apartheid Convention”), which proclaims practices of apartheid, including legislation, as a crime against humanity.

The Nation-State Basic Law is illegitimate. It seeks to maintain a regime in which one ethnic-national group controls an indigenous-national group living in the same territory while advancing ethnic superiority by promoting racist policies in the most basic aspects of life.

*

Featured image is from silkroadgazette.com.

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Everyone knows U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has more to do with destabilization than diplomacy. Whether arming terror states like Israel and Saudi Arabia or flattening entire countries like Libya and Iraq, American intervention is pretty much always a humanitarian disaster. At times, this policy has even included arming ISIS — the very terror group Washington claims to oppose.

The reason for this help is that ISIS assists U.S. foreign policy goals. It is no secret that the U.S. has tried to overthrow the democratically elected Syrian government for years. To further their goals, the U.S. regime has more or less aligned with just about every terrorist group short of ISIS publicly, including Jahbat al-Nusra.

Yet at times this alliance has extended past terror groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner. In many situations, the U.S. has seemingly supported ISIS. Whether these instances are mere coincidence or represent a pattern of support is up to you to decide. Below are five strongest instances of the U.S. helping ISIS and other terrorist groups.

1. Fighting as ISIS’s Air Force

There are several instances of the United States providing air support to terrorist groups like ISIS but none quite as obvious — and dire — as Deir Ez Zor in 2016.

In September 2016, the humanitarian situation in the Syrian city of Deir Ez Zor was dire: the largest city in eastern Syria was completely besieged by ISIS fighters. Syrian civilians and soldiers alike were completely dependent upon airlifted supplies to survive. Then, on September 17, U.S. warplanes led British, Danish, and Australian jets on a series of airstrikes against the city’s defenders, the Syrian Arab Army. The air raids lasted about an hour and decimated crucial Syrian Army positions on the mountains that overlook Deir Ez Zor airport. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the airstrikes killed at least sixty-two Syrian soldiers and injured over 100 more.

Immediately following the airstrikes, ISIS fighters attacked the weakened Syrian troops defending the critical mountains. ISIS ultimately overran positions on the mountains threatening both the airbase and the cities roughly 200,000 residents. These particular airstrikes occurred during a ceasefire between “rebel” and Syrian Arab Army forces. After the strikes, the ceasefire quickly fell apart.

While the U.S. claims the airstrikes were intended to strike ISIS fighters, Russia and Syria see the situation differently. Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s U.N. ambassador said “It is highly suspicious that the US chose to conduct this particular air strike at this time,” adding that the strikes killing Syrian soldiers did not look like a mistake. Syrian President Bashar Assad went so far as to say that the U.S. airstrikes intentionally targeted the Syrian Army.

2. Granting Safe Passage to ISIS through a Secret Deal

Speaking of ISIS’s siege of Deir Ez-Zor, ISIS fighters were again bolstered there by the now infamous “Raqqa Deal:” a secret agreement between the U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and ISIS.

Encircled ISIS fighters were transported via trucks through SDF territory to other parts of the country — including Deir Ez-Zor. ISIS fighters left the area with their weapons and “families” including captured sex slaves and children.

While the U.S. and Kurds intended to keep the deal secret for obvious reasons, news quickly broke when disgruntled truck drivers talked to the press. Since they were hired under false pretenses, the truck drivers were quite surprised to discover that their cargo included heavily armed terrorists laden with suicide belts.

According to the U.S. coalition, the SDF granted safe passage out of Raqqa to only 250 ISIS terrorists but this number is more likely than not a boldface lie. Talal Silo, a former commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces, says roughly 4,000 ISIS fighters were bussed out of the city with their families and weapons. Silo also claims that U.S. officials made the decision in consultation with the SDF — contradicting the U.S. narrative that local SDF commanders forced it upon the U.S.

3. Supplying Sophisticated Anti-tank Weapons to Terrorist Groups

Of all the weapons in ISIS’s arsenal, perhaps none are more devastating than U.S.-made TOW launchers. These laser-guided anti-tank missiles make it extremely difficult to secure terrorist-controlled areas because they partially negate the big advantage that tanks and armored vehicles provide forces fighting underequipped terrorists. In 2015, an ISIS propaganda video even featured one such TOW launcher destroying a modern Russian Tank.

According to a 2014 Washington Post article, the U.S. provided many of these launchers to the self-described “moderate” rebel groups like Harakat Hazm (or Movement of Steadfastness) which later joined hardline extremist Levant Front. In the case of Harakat Hazm, the group joined the extremist Levant Front just a year after receiving the U.S. TOW launchers. The Levant Front is a broad coalition consisting not of ISIS fighters per se, but still containing fighters under the banner of numerous terrorist organizations within its ranks.

4. (Likely) Arming Terrorists with Surface-to-Air Weapons

One of the most devastating weapons available to ISIS and ISIS adjacent forces are MANPADS: shoulder fired anti-aircraft rocket launchers.

Ample video evidence displays fighters of every rebel group from ISIS to al-Qaeda in Syria using such weapons to devastating effect. One video even shows ISIS fighters with U.S.-made Javelin rocket launchers. While it is possible these weapons were simply captured, some evidence points to the weapons being supplied by the U.S.

Many foreign policy experts suggest that the U.S. and its allies have quietly supplied these devastating anti-aircraft weapons to Syrian “rebels.” Such an operation would be relatively easy to cover up as the U.S. has a large amount of Soviet made MANPADS looted from Iraq and Libya.

Fueling suspicions even more, in 2016, the U.S. Congress granted the president legal authority to supply these devastating weapons to “moderate” Syrian rebels. Seeing as how “moderate” rebels has previously included groups such as al-Nusra and al- Qaeda, this new legal authority represents a major escalation.

Since the bill passed, there has been two high profile cases of jihadist forces using MANPADS to shoot down fighter jets.  RT and other non-western news sources have suggested that the MANPADS used in the attacks originated from the U.S. although it’s impossible to determine the weapons’ origins from mere terrorist propaganda videos. Very convenient plausible deniability.

5. Using Turkey and Saudi Arabia as Proxies to Funnel Support to ISIS

Perhaps the largest and most obscure way that the U.S. helps ISIS and other terror groups is through middlemen like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. gives extensive military, intelligence and financial aid to these regimes that then funnel those resources towered ISIS.

During the early days of the ISIS’s rise, Turkey’s open border policy was instrumental to foreign terrorists flooding into Iraq and Syria. In fact, Turkey’s involvement with ISIS runs so deep that in 2016 David Phillips, an ex-State Department and Columbia University researcher, published a comprehensive study on Turkey’s support for ISIS.

The study found evidence of Turkey providing military equipment, transport and logistical assistance, training, medical care to ISIS fighters. But that’s not all. The study determined that Turkey supports ISIS financially through purchasing oil and assisting ISIS recruitment. The report also said Turkish forces fight alongside ISIS fighters (specifically referring to the Battle for Kobani). Phillips attributes all this to the idea that Turkey and ISIS share a common worldview.

Saudi Arabia — another U.S. ally — covertly supports ISIS while publicly opposing the terror group. According to a report by the British government, Saudi Arabia supplied ISIS with major financing. London attempted to bury the report because of the embarrassment it could cause the U.K. government.

Even the neoconservative Brookings Institute admits that “Saudi Arabia’s contribution to Islamist extremism has far outstripped Iran’s.” Hillary Clinton, one of Saudi Arabia’s staunchest supporters in the U.S., has privately admitted that Riyadh supports ISIS.

In a 2014 email published by WikiLeaks, Clinton wrote that 

“While this military/para-military operation is moving forward [in Syria], we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Isis] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

Clinton of course, was an outspoken advocate of arming “moderate” Syrian rebels.

Conclusion

Whether the Gulf of Tonkin, Iraq’s WMD’s, or simple coups, secret operations that destroy entire countries for U.S. interests are as American as apple pie.

Trying to piece together the definitive actions of a government so apt at lying and deception is difficult. But what we do know doesn’t paint a good picture of the U.S. in Syria. No matter how you spin it, the U.S. and its allies are relentlessly employing terrorists to serve America’s own selfish interests.

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

Pages: 240 Pages

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Hal Brands – the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments – pines of waning American hegemony in his op-ed in Bloomberg titled, “America’s New World Order Is Officially Dead.”

The sub-headline would further elaborate, “China and Russia have fully derailed the post-Cold War movement toward U.S.-led global integration.”

And while Brands blames Russia and China for America’s decline – it should be noted that the “US-led global integration” Brands and others within the halls of corporate-financier funded policy think tanks promote, was little more than modern day empire.

Post-Cold War, the United States abused and squandered its monopoly over military and economic power. It led serial wars of aggression across the globe, destroying entire regions of the planet. It proved that whatever the rhetoric was used to sell its unipolar world order to rest of the world, it was in practice an order that ultimately served Wall Street and Washington at the expense of everyone else on the planet.

Russia and China’s vision of a multipolar world order is not predicated on institutions the world must surrender its sovereignty, trust, and future to. It is an order built on a much more realist balance of power – where national sovereignty holds primacy and a balance of economic and military power defines and protects the boundaries of international norms. This is in stark contrast to America’s vision in which an easily co-opted and manipulated UN made it easy for the largest, most powerful nations to sidestep national sovereignty and even international law, and expand wealth and power through sanctions, invasions, perpetual military occupations, and the creation of subordinate client states.

An Order Built on Betrayal and Brutality 

The international order Brands mourns began with the immediate betrayal of Western promises not to expand its NATO military alliance eastward toward Russia’s borders. At the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse, a buffer zone existed between Russia’s borders and NATO member states – many of these states choosing to benefit from the best of both Eastern and Western relations.

Today, NATO sits on Russia’s borders, particularly in the Baltic states where US troops train just shy of the Russian border – in Lithuania which surrounds Russia’s Kaliningrad oblast, and in Ukraine where US and NATO members have installed a regime in power dependent on literal Neo-Nazi militants and their respective political wings.

It is also an international order which saw in Russia’s moment of weakness, an opportunity to impose its order by force on former Soviet client states. This not only included NATO’s process of expansion in Eastern Europe through sanctions, subversion, and all out war, but also in the Middle East and Central Asia.

It would be US Army General Wesley Clark who best summarized US foreign policy in the proper, realist context it was actually executed in.

In a 2007 Flora TV talk titled, “A Time to Lead,” General Clark would reveal this post-Cold War agenda by relating a conversation he had as early as 1991 with then US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, by stating (emphasis added):

I said Mr. Secretary you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm. And he said, well yeah, he said but but not really, he said because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and we didn’t. And this was just after the Shia uprising in March of 91′ which we had provoked and then we kept our troops on the side lines and didn’t intervene. And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets wont stop us. He said, and we have got about five or ten years to clean up those all Soviet client regimes; Syria, Iran, Iraq, – before the next great super power comes on to challenge us. 

And of course, that is precisely what the US embarked upon doing. General Clark would also mention a later conversation he had at the Pentagon, regarding how the US planned to use the attacks on September 11, 2001 as a pretext to expand from military operations in Afghanistan and accelerate this process to invade and overthrow the governments of at least seven other nations.

General Clark would state (emphasis added):

 I came back to the Pentagon about six weeks later, I saw the same officer, I said why why haven’t we attacked Iraq? We are sill going to attack Iraq, he said, oh sir he says, its worse than that. He said he pulled up a piece of paper of his desk, he said, I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office, it says we are going to attack and destroy the governments in in seven countries in five years. We are going to start with Iraq and then we are going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran seven seven countries in five years.

While all of these nations were part of a singular, cynical, hegemonic agenda, each nation has been targeted and attacked under false pretenses ranging from false accusations regarding “weapons of mass destruction,” to the use of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) – leveraging “human rights” as a pretext to intervene in wars of Washington’s own engineering.

American post-Cold War foreign policy is an expression of modern day hegemony. The US has placed its armies on Russia’s borders in Eastern Europe, ravaged the Middle East, and has attempted to encircle China through meddling and a military presence extending from Afghanistan in Central Asia to South Korea and Japan in far East Asia. It was a race against the proverbial clock to achieve global conquest before competitors – enabled by economic strength and improving technology – could reestablish and protect the notion of national sovereignty.

Everywhere in between, the US has used economic pressure, political subversion, military threats, and even covert terrorism as means to coerce and co-opt sovereign governments and overwrite the independent institutions of targeted nations that refuse to subordinate themselves to both Washington and Wall Street directly, and who refused to play an obedient role in America’s “international order.”

It is in reality everything policy wonks like Brands warn us Russia and China will do now that America’s global power grab has failed.

American Exceptionalism is its Own Worst Enemy 

Throughout America’s post-Cold War attempt to establish itself as sole hegemon, it has repeatedly subordinated national sovereignty to what it calls “international laws and norms.” These laws and norms are expressed through the United Nations, a supposed international organization that in reality is little more than the sum of its parts. The United States is the most powerful economic and military power in the United Nations, thus commands the greatest ability to bend this organization to its will.

In each instance of military aggression and political subversion the United States has engaged in, the notion of national sovereignty has been sidestepped by US claims of its own exceptionalism. This is most apparent when examining the US National Endowment for Democracy, engaged in an industrialized process of political meddling and election rigging operating in virtually every nation on Earth. It creates and supports pro-Washington and Wall Street opposition groups in their bid to both create parallel institutions in their respective nations, and eventually displace or overthrow existing, sovereign and independent institutions and governments when the opportunity presents itself.

Nations like Russia and China have highlighted and condemned this – facing significant inroads made by NED within their respective borders. Russia and China lack anything resembling NED in both scope or scale.

American exceptionalism comes into play when considering recent US accusations against Russia and China of interfering in America’s own internal political affairs. Claims of hacking e-mail servers and posting messages on social media pale in comparison to entire media organizations created and operated in both Russia and China by the US government either under the auspices of the US State Department’s Voice of America and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) or more clandestinely through NED funding, often not disclosed on NED recipient websites posing as “independent media platforms.”

The NED also stands up entire opposition groups who organize and execute physical protests in the streets of targeted nations. In Thailand for example, US, British and European embassy staff can be seen often accompanying US-funded agitators to police stations to face sedition charges – a clear threat to the Thai government that it must suffer sedition, or suffer greater penalties still. One could only imagine if the “meddling” the US accused Russia or China of even remotely approached such levels.

But because America sees itself as “exceptional” – it’s meddling and interference is “acceptable” – whereas any nation attempting to so much as defend against US influence and interference is “unacceptable” – saying nothing of attempts by other nations to seek equal but opposing influence within the US itself.

American exceptionalism thus is but a poorly disguised synonym for hypocrisy. An international order built on hypocrisy benefits only those who lead it. Virtually any alternative would appear more palatable, dooming any such order to inevitable failure.

Even America’s own allies and partners may realize this. In the long run what the United States has attempted to create is unsustainable and as it begins to crumble, Washington and Wall Street are already shifting the weight of its collapsing order onto its allies and partners first, before bearing any of the consequences itself.

Unipolar vs Multipolar 

Russia and China’s multipolar world is one in which national sovereignty holds primacy. Resisting attempts by the US to impose itself on Russia and China and nations in their peripheries have defined what Brands in his Bloomberg op-ed claims was America’s post-Cold War attempt to “integrate” the world – not any sort of ideological struggle between liberalism and authoritarianism.

Brands in his Bloomberg op-ed claims of Russia that:

…China and Russia were indeed moving inexorably toward Western-style economic and political liberalism. Russian reform ground to a halt in the late 1990s, amid economic crisis and political chaos. Over the next 15 years, Vladimir Putin gradually re-established a governing model of increasingly undisguised political authoritarianism and ever-closer collusion between the state and major business interests.

And of China, Brands claims:

China, for its part, has been happy to reap the benefits of inclusion in the global economy, even as it has increasingly sought to dominate its maritime periphery, coerce and intimidate neighbors from Vietnam to Japan, and weaken U.S. alliances in the Asia-Pacific.

Brands uses “moving toward Western-style economic and political liberalism” as a euphemism for domination by Western institutions and the corporate-financier interests that control them. He does however obliquely admit both Russia and China’s policies reflect a response to NATO’s expansion toward Russia’s borders and the extensive US military presence in Asia Pacific – thousands of miles from America’s own shores.

He claims:

The trouble here was that Russia and China were never willing fully to embrace the U.S.-led liberal order, which emphasized liberal ideas that were bound to seem threatening to dictatorial regimes — not to mention the expansion of NATO into Moscow’s former sphere of influence and the persistence of U.S. alliances and military forces all along China’s East Asia periphery. And so, as Beijing and Moscow obtained, or regained, the power to contest that order, they increasingly did so.

One must wonder though, what sort of “liberal ideas” are actually expressed by NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion or America’s military occupation of Asia Pacific. It is oblique admissions like this that reveal just what Brands and others mean by “Western-style liberalism.”

Brands claims that Russia has “sought to revise the post-Cold War settlement in Europe by force and intimidation” citing Moscow’s tensions with Georgia and Ukraine as examples. However, it was NATO’s violation of this settlement and the inroads it made in both nations through coercion and political subversion, that prompted Moscow’s reaction in the first place.

Brands inadvertently reveals that US-led “global integration” was little more than American hegemony, pursued through transparently hypocritical and lopsided policies that only ever could have elicited resistance from not only larger players like Russia and China, but also every other nation in between – including Washington’s own allies.

And Brands admits this as his op-ed neared its conclusion. He claims (emphasis added):

…the U.S. needs to become both tougher and less ambitious in its approach to great-power relations and the international system. Less ambitious in the sense that it needs to set aside the notion that the liberal order will become truly global or encompass all the major powers anytime soon. And tougher in the sense of understanding that more strenuous efforts will be required to defend the existing order against the challenges that revisionist powers represent.

By “revisionists” Brands is referring to nations that refuse to subordinate themselves to “US-led global integration.” It is interesting to note that while the US seems to view Russia and China’s refusal to subordinate themselves to a US-led international order, the US itself refuses to participate in a multipolar alternative even as an equal.

Brands concludes by prescribing a series of US actions to help cling to what remains of its global hegemony, claiming (emphasis added):

This will require taking difficult but necessary steps, such as making the military investments needed to shore up U.S. power and deterrence in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific, and developing capabilities needed to oppose Chinese coercion and Russian political subversion of their neighbors. It will require rallying old and new partners against the threat posed by Russian and Chinese expansionism. Above all, it will mean accepting that great-power relations are entering a period of greater danger and tension, and that a willingness to accept greater costs and risks will be the price of meeting the revisionist challenge and preserving American interests.

What Brands refers to as “Russian and Chinese expansionism” is in reality simply Russia and China reclaiming territory and spheres of influence they possessed both before the post-Cold War period, or before Western colonialism. This includes territory and spheres of influence in which populations speak Russian or Chinese, are within geographical proximity of Russia and China’s borders, and at one time actually existed within their borders.

Thus, Brands’ prescription is merely for the self-preservation of Washington and Wall Street’s own expansionism – expansionism that in no rational way can be justified by either geographical proximity or historical and cultural claims. The notion of the United States investing in the defense of Taiwan – for instance – thousands of miles from American shores, speaking Mandarin and populated by ethnic Chinese – is another transparent example of American exceptionalism and hypocrisy.

Might Makes Right No Longer Fun When Washington is No Longer Mightiest  

While Brands hides behind phrases like “Western liberalism,” he and others within the halls of corporate-financier funded policy think tanks are in fact describing a world order built on “might makes right.” This is what allows the US to encroach on Russia’s borders, but prevents Russia from defending itself and its allies. This is what makes US fleets plying the waters of the South China Sea “right” and China building up its own military presence along its own shores, “wrong.”

But as technology and economics shift the balance of power, enabling not only Russia and China to emerge out from under the shadow of decades of American global primacy – but other nations across the developing world as well – Washington is finding that it is no longer the “mightiest.” The prescription of Brands and others to invest more militarily and continue coercing nations whenever and wherever Washington can, is really just a prescription to go kicking and screaming from its failed “global integration.”

Sound leadership grounded in reason would invest instead in preparing the United States to play an equal partner to the emerging multipolar world – to play a constructive role in establishing a sustainable balance of power and enabling nations to stand on their own economically and militarily to prevent the temptation of any nation, including the US, Russia, and China – from the coercive, manipulative, subversive, and destructive policies that have defined the failed “post-Cold War  movement toward US-led global integration.”In terms of international laws and norms, the US can set an example that will benefit it in the long run – by reducing its overseas military presence and eliminating its foreign interventions and interference by dissolving organizations like NED and reforming USAID to carry out disaster relief operations only. Thus when the US seeks to criticize “Russian and Chinese expansionism,” it can do so with legitimacy instead of as the unprecedented hypocrite it currently represents upon the global stage today.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

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Most Americans are ill-informed, dis-informed, and uninformed easy marks to be fooled time and again – no matter how many previous times they were duped.

They’re victims of falsified state narratives and scoundrel media propaganda repeating it, along with what the late Gore Vidal and Studs Terkel called the United States of amnesia, real information on vital issues passing through their minds like water through a sieve – understanding something today, erased from their memory later on.

Polls when conducted well can be revealing. Key is choosing a well-defined universe, using a statistically accurate methodology, wording questions properly for clear understanding, asking them in the right order, and taking great pains to avoid bias.

So-called man-on-the-street interviews used by some news organizations are worthless and deceptive because proper methodology isn’t used. Comments by individuals briefly interviewed signify nothing but their views, unrelated to the general consensus.

Gallup, Inc. has been conducting public opinion polls since 1935, currently operating in America and abroad in many countries.

Days before Putin/Trump summit talks, Gallup polling revealed 40% of Republicans view Russia as a US ally or friendly – compared to 22% in 2014 during Obama’s tenure.

Only 25% of Dems hold the same positive view – compared to 28% in 2014. Among all Americans, 31% say Russia is an ally or friendly to the US.

Gallup: “Overall, 6% of Republicans now describe Russia as a US ally, 34% as friendly but not an ally, 38% as unfriendly and 20% as an enemy.”

“Among Democrats, 8% say Russia is an ally, 17% say it is friendly, 33% unfriendly, and 42% describe it as an enemy.”

Overall in 2014, 26% of Americans said Russia is an ally or friendly to the US.

Throughout its post-Soviet history since December 1991, the Russian Federation never attacked another country or threatened belligerent confrontation against anyone – actions America does repeatedly, currently at war in multiple theaters against invented enemies.

Russia champions world peace and stability. America is perpetually at war at home and abroad, peace and stability considered anathema notions.

A post-Helsinki CBS News poll showed only 32% of Americans approve how Trump handled summit talks with Putin, despite knowing little or nothing about what was discussed or agreed on – other than what’s fed them by media scoundrels hostile to both leaders.

Over two-thirds of Americans polled (70%) believe falsified US intelligence claims that Russia interfered in the nation’s political process – despite not a shred of evidence proving it.

Most Americans feel Trump is too friendly toward Russia, getting along with the country considered a negative, not a positive based on this data.

Nearly four in 10 Americans feel less confident about Trump standing up for US interests, largely reflecting the view of Dems. Republicans are more confident or feel about the same as pre-summit.

Overall, Republicans are more positive about Russia than Dems. Over 60% of Americans fear Russian interference in upcoming November midterm elections, despite no evidence suggesting it.

Americans are mixed on how Washington should engage with Russia. Slightly more than 50% favor pressure over dialogue and cooperation.

Americans are influenced by their sources of information. Most are brainwashed to believe utter rubbish they’re fed by scoundrel media print and electronic media.

Opinion polls consistently show it. An uninformed electorate is easily manipulated to believe most anything they’re fed repeatedly – no matter how egregiously untrue.

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

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Featured image: Nicaraguans celebrate 39th Anniversary of the 1979Nicaraguan Revolution in Managua, July 2018. Source Redvolution.

Author’s Note: Before the update on Nicaragua, I an providing two recent interviews that provide a context for what is happening in Nicaragua.

First, is an interview I did with Lee Camp, the lead writer, and host of Redacted Tonight, “US Pushing for Regime Change in Nicaragua,” where we discuss the economic and political situation in Nicaragua as well as who is behind the coup and the government response. This interview discusses the issues raised in an article by me and Nils McCune, “Correcting The Record: What Is Really Happening In Nicaragua.”

On Clearing The FOG radio and podcast, Margaret Flowers and I interviewed Stephen Sefton, who lives in Nicaragua and is a founder of Tortilla con Sal. He names the names behind the violence and describes what is happening in Nicaragua.

Lessons Learned From The Failed Violent Coup In Nicaragua And Next Steps

The violent coup in Nicaragua has failed. This does not mean the United States and oligarchs are giving up, but this phase of their effort to remove the government did not succeed.  The coup exposed the alliances who are working with the United States to put in place a neoliberal government that is controlled by the United States and serves the interests of the wealthy. People celebrated the failure of the coup but realize work needs to be done to protect the gains of the Sandinista revolution.

People Celebrate Revolution, Call For Peace, Show Support for Government

The people of Nicaragua showed their support for the democratically-elected government of Daniel Ortega with a massive outpouring in Managua in a celebration of the 39th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. In addition to the mass protest in Managua, various cities had their own, in some cases very sizeable ones.

People have wanted peace to return to Nicaragua. They have also wanted the roadblocks removed, which have resulted in closed businesses, job loss and loss of mobility. Roadblocks have been removed, even in the opposition stronghold of Masaya. There were two opposition deaths and one police officer killed in the removal. There was also an earlier death of a policeman in Masaya, captured when he was off-duty, tortured and burnt to death. This brings the total of police killed since April up to at least 21 with hundreds injured. With the opening of the main road on the east side of Masaya, all Nicaragua’s main routes are open to traffic and buses etc are operating normally.

At the rally, President Ortega called on the people of Nicaragua to defend peace and reinstate the unity that existed in the nation before the violent opposition protests. He described how the violent coup attempted to destabilize the country and ended the peace that has existed through the eleven years of his time in office. He said,

“Peace must be defended every day to avoid situations like these being repeated.”

He also criticized the Catholic Bishops for their role in the failed violent coup. Ortega described the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua as “coup leaders” for collaborating with the opposition during the protests. Not only did the Catholic leadership side with the opposition during the national dialogue, but priests were involved in kidnapping and torture. Pope Francis has a lot of work to do to rein in the Catholic Church in Nicaragua. If their role in these violent protests and opposition to an economy for the people is not stopped, this will become a scandal for the Catholic Church.

Other Latin American leaders spoke out against involvement in the coup. Bolivian President Evo Morales condemned US “interference” in Nicaragua, denouncing the “criminal strategies” used against the government of Daniel Ortega. Morales accused the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) of “openly supporting violence” in Nicaragua. Also at the celebration were the foreign ministers of Cuba and Venezuela, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, and Jorge Arreza, all supporting Nicaragua over the violent coup of the United States and oligarchs.

The United States is Escalating Economic War and Support for Opposition

The United States is not giving up. Also on the anniversary of the revolution, the NICA Act, designed to escalate the economic war against Nicaragua, was introduced in the Senate. It has already been passed by the US House of Representatives. The Senate bill, called the Nicaragua Human Rights and Anti-corruption Act of 2018, imposes sanctions, calls for early elections and escalates US intelligence involvement in Nicaragua. It is a law that ensures continued US efforts to remove the democratically-elected government.

At the same time, USAID announced an additional $1.5 million for Nicaragua to build opposition to the government. This will fund the NGOs that participated in the protests, human rights groups that falsely reported the situation, media to produce the regime change narrative and other support for the opposition.

The coordination between Nicaraguan opposition and the United States was shown by Max Blumenthal’s attempted visit to an organization that funnels USAID and NED money to the opposition. He visited the Managua offices of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policies (IEEPP in Spanish), but it was closed because its director, Felix Maradiaga, who was at the heart of the violent unrest, was in Washington, DC seeking more funding from USAID.

Tried to visit the Managua offices of IEEPP, a main channel for US National Endowment for Democracy/USAID money to the opposition. It was closed bc its director, Felix Maradiaga, who was at the heart of the violent unrest, was back in Washington to ask USAID for more money. pic.twitter.com/kLeIzsMoNc

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 20, 2018

On July 18, the US-dominated OAS passed a resolution concerning “The Situation in Nicaragua.” An earlier effort to endorse a report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) was so biased that it failed. The report ignored the opposition’s widespread violence or inaccurately attributed it to the government.  It also failed to recognize government actions in self-defense. The resolution approving the IACHR report was supported by only ten out of 34 countries.

The resolution, which was finally passed by the OAS, condemned violence on all sides and urged Nicaragua to pursue all options including the national dialogue to seek peace begun by Ortega. On the issue of elections, the resolution urged Nicaragua “to support an electoral calendar jointly agreed to in the context of the National Dialogue process.” Only this mainly symbolic resolution could pass muster in the OAS, despite US domination.

What Happened and What Was Learned

In our article “Correcting the Record: What Is Really Happening In Nicaragua,” Nils McCune and I describe what was behind the violent coup attempt. We reported that there was a lot of misinformation on what was occurring in Nicaragua, indeed the false narrative of regime change was part of the tactics of the failed coup. Perhaps most importantly we described the alignment of forces behind the coup.

The coup was a class war turned upside down. The Ortega government includes none of the oligarchic families, a first in the history of Nicaragua. He has put in place a bottom-up economy that has lifted people out of poverty, provided access to health care and education, given micro-loans to entrepreneurs and small businesses and created an economy energized by public spending. Ortega expanded coverage of the social security system; as a result, a new formula was required to ensure fiscal stability.

Ortega made a counter-proposal to the IMF/business proposal, which would cut social security and raise the retirement age. He proposed no cuts to social security and increasing employer contributions by 3.5% to pension and health funds, while only slightly increasing worker contributions by 0.75% and shifting 5% of pensioners’ cash transfer into their healthcare fund.  These reforms were the trigger as it was the business lobby who called for the protests.

The forces aligned with the violent coup included the oligarchs, big business interests, foreign investors (e.g. Colombian financiers), the US-funded NGO’s and the Catholic Church, a long-term ally of the wealthy. Also involved was the Movement for Renovation of Sandinismo (MRS), a tiny Sandinista offshoot party, of former Sandanistas who left the party when Ortega lost an election in 1990 who are aligned with the US State Department.

Regarding students, there were already student protests around university elections, and these were redirected by the violent coup effort and supported by a small minority of students from private universities, the April 19th Movement. Some of these students had been brought to the US by the Freedom House, which has long ties to the CIA and met with far-right interventionist members of the US Congress, including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Sen. Ted Cruz.

These groups acted in opposition to the bulk of Nicaraguan society and showed their true colors. This includes:

• Being tied to and subservient to the US government.
• Being led by oligarchs and big business interests that are out of power and cannot win elections.
• Using violence as a strategy of creating chaos and trapping the government into responding with violence to restore order.
• Spreading false propaganda through oligarch-controlled media, often funded by NED, as well as highly-manipulated social media echoed by western media, especially The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post and cable TV news outlets.

No doubt more will come out about this in the future as the coup is researched and analyzed. As the facts become clear, the opposition will lose more political power and be even less likely to win elections. The blockades of roads with violence undermined the economy and had a negative impact on the poor and working class. If it becomes evident that this was a strategy of the opposition, they will lose power. NGO’s that are funded by the US and run by members of the MRS will be noted for their dishonest narrative and will be seen as an arm of the United States and not trusted by the people of Nicaragua. Media outside of Nicaragua will come to understand that human rights groups and NGOs are not reliable sources of information but need to be questioned. They need to be pushed to break their ties with the United States.

This does not mean all is well on the Sandinista side of the alliance of forces. The coup is an opportunity for self-reflection and self-criticism that is already happening, as seen in this list of 20 results from the coup, which begins with “A more consolidated and United FSLN.” In addition, the Action Group of the Solidarity with Nicaragua Campaign put forward seven propositions to unify around. The protest took advantage of challenges the Nicaraguan government faces in continuing to lift up the poor and economically insecure. It shows their need to build their capacity to quickly let the public know their side of the story. And, it shows the need for planning for a post-Ortega Sandinista government, as the president is in his third term.

The anniversary of the revolution was a good beginning at strengthening the unity of the Sandinista movement and celebration of the defeat of the coup, but there will be challenges ahead. Nicaragua is a poor country that needs foreign investment. If the United States escalates the economic war, which seems to be the intent, it will make it challenging to continue the social and economic programs that are lifting up the poor. Nicaragua had relied on investment from Venezuela, but it is also in the midst of an economic war, which along with the low oil prices has created economic challenges for them. Nicaragua has begun to build economic relationships with China, Russia, Iran and other countries; these will likely need to expand.

The misinformation was deep and widespread. Inside Nicaragua, there were stories of students being killed that never happened but that escalated the protests. The opposition claimed to be nonviolent when their strategy was to use violence to force regime change while the government quartered the National Police. False news and videos of attacks on neighborhoods and universities never stopped being manufactured.  One example, students calling for help and claiming they were under attack, was later exposed in a video showing the students practicing the false social media narrative.

Peace and justice activists in the United States and western nations have learned they need to be much more careful believing reports on what is occurring in Nicaragua. The US-funding of NGOs involved in women’s issues, environmental protection and human rights in Nicaragua make them questionable sources of information for justice advocates. In addition, US-funded regime change efforts are getting more sophisticated at social media; and thus, care must be taken as social media has it is abused by regime change advocates. We must look to other sources that have shown the ability to report accurately e.g., Tortilla con Sal, Telesur, Redvolucion.  Peace and justice advocates must be grounded in anti-imperialism and nonintervention by the United States.

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Kevin Zeese is director of Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

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It is represented globally by a political pressure group, the international Israel Lobby that exerts an undue influence over not only the US Congress but also the British Parliament and other national legislative assemblies: an influence that threatens democratic government. 

It has persuaded, through the use of financial inducements, 600,000 of its own citizens to leave their homes in Israel to illegally settle on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights in direct violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 which states unequivocally that ‘Israel’s Settlements Have No Legal Validity and Constitute a Flagrant Violation of International Law’.

It is the only United Nations state whose establishment was facilitated by UN Resolution in 1947/8, but which today rejects the authority of the very same international body that gave it self-determination.

It is the only undeclared and uninspected nuclear weaponised state anywhere in the world. It has an underground arsenal estimated to contain of up to 400 warheads that also arm a fleet of cruise missile -equipped submarines assumed to be covertly patrolling both the Mediterranean and the Gulf.

It has recently passed restrictive legislation that serves to designate 20% of its entire population who are Israeli Arabs, as second class citizens with their national language no longer officially recognised, thereby turning itself into the only neo-colonial, apartheid-style state of the 21st century.

There is no other nation state with WMD that is so arrogantly dismissive of world opinion or the authority of the United Nations. That state is also an integral part of the bizarre Netanyahu-Trump alliance that is now repudiating international treaties on trade, peace and goodwill that have served the international community well for over 70 years.  God help us all.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Long satisfied to attempt to dominate pan-Arab media and battle it out with Qatar’s state-owned Al Jazeera television network, Saudi Arabia has now set its hegemonic sights on influencing the media landscape of the non-Arabic speaking greater Middle East.

In the wake of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s concentration last year of control of Saudi-owned pan-Arab media in an anti-corruption power and asset grab, Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG) this week announced a tie up with Britain’s Independent news website to launch services in Urdu, Turkish, Farsi and Arabic.

The announcement provided no details of the business model or whether and, if so, how the SRMG-owned, independent-branded websites would become commercially viable. That may not be an issue from the Independent’s perspective, given that the deal amounts to the British publication licensing its brand and content to a Saudi partner.

The bulk of the content of the new websites is slated to be produced by SRMG journalists in London, Islamabad, Istanbul and New York, with the Independent contributing only translated articles from its English-language website.

The sites, operated out of Riyadh and Dubai, would produce “highest-quality, free-thinking, independent news, insight and analysis on global affairs and local events,” the Independent said.

SRMG publishes the English-language Arab News and Arabic-language Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, newspapers operating within the constraints of tight Saudi censorship that do not challenge Saudi policies.

SRMG was chaired until he recently was appointed minister of culture by Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud. An unknown member of the Saudi ruling family, Prince Bader made headlines last year when he paid a record $450m for a Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ, allegedly as a proxy bidder for Prince Mohammed.

Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel, a Saudi banker with no track record in media acquisitions, last year bought a 30 percent stake in the Independent. An executive of NCB Capital, a subsidiary of government-controlled National Commercial Bank, Mr. Abuljadayel said at the time he was investing on his personal account.

A cache of Saudi diplomatic cables leaked in 2015 documented a pattern of Saudi chequebook diplomacy that aimed to buy positive coverage of the kingdom by European, Middle Eastern and African media who were encouraged to put “learned” Saudi guests on talk shows and counter “media hostile to the kingdom.”

Cables by the late Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, suggested that Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat, and another Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily, Al Hayat, refrain from criticizing Lebanon and Russia.

Saudi funding ranged from the bailout of financially troubled media to donations, the purchase of thousands of subscriptions, and all-expenses paid trips to the kingdom. It was often driven by Saudi Arabia’s covert public diplomacy war with Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s near monopoly on staid pan-Arabic media was broken in 1996 with the launch of Al Jazeera and its free-wheeling, hard hitting reporting and talk shows. Al Jazeera’s disruption of conservative, Arab state broadcasting prompted Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, a brother in law of the late King Fahd, to launch Al Arabiya as an anti-dote.

The rise of Al Jazeera cemented a realization in the kingdom that it needed to expand from print media into broadcasting. The need for broadcasting was initially driven home six years earlier when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Saudi authorities banned Saudi media from reporting the invasion only to discover on the third day that Saudis were getting their news from foreign media outlets, among which CNN.

The Saudi-Qatari battle for control of the air waves escalated in the run-up to this year’s World Cup in Russia. With Al Jazeera and beIN, the network’s sports franchise, blocked in the kingdom as part of the 13-month-old Saudi-UAE-led economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar, Saudi Arabia initially turning a blind eye to beOutQ, a bootlegging operation operating out of the kingdom that used a satellite that is co-owned by the Saudi government.

Threatened by FIFA with punitive action, Saudi Arabia began cracking down on beOutQ and said it welcomed legal action in the kingdom being initiated by the world soccer body. At the same time, Saudi Arabia explored ways to challenge beIN’s broadcasting rights.

The choice of languages for the Independent websites suggests that SRMG sees the deal as strengthening its brand while supporting the kingdom in its battles with Qatar and Iran and quest for regional hegemony.

The launch of a Farsi website targets the kingdom’s arch rival Iran. Leaving politics aside, Iranians, confronted with an economic crisis that is being exasperated by harsh US sanctions, are unlikely to subscribe or advertise on the website. The same is true for Saudi businesses in the absence of diplomatic relations and given Saudi backing for the sanctions.

The Independent’s Turkish website will have to compete in a heavily populated media landscape that has largely been muzzled by President Recep Tayeb Erdogan. The website’s significance lies in the fact that Turkey supports Qatar in the spat that pits the Gulf state against Saudi Arabia and its allies, maintains close ties to Iran, and challenges Saudi regional ambitions in Palestine as well as the Horn of Africa.

In many ways, Urdu-speaking Pakistan, one of the world’s most populous Muslim nations that borders on Iran, has long supported the kingdom militarily, and is home to the world’s largest Shia Muslim majority, could prove to be the most lucrative element of SRMG’s tie up with the Independent.

In contrast to Turkey, Saudi Arabia enjoys empathy in major segments of Pakistan’s population, hosts a sizeable Pakistani community, has strong support among the country’s religious scholars as well as ties to influential militants whom the military is seeking to ease into mainstream politics, and funds religious media outlets.

At the bottom line, the SRMG-Independent tie-up may be for the kingdom less about business and more about soft power.

“A channel is a very economical way to influence people. Bang for your buck, it’s much cheaper than guns. It is about controlling the discourse, and for Saudis about being in charge,” said Hugh Miles, author of Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World. Mr. Miles’ analysis applies as much to broadcasting as it does to online media.

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This article was originally 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 the author.

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On July 1, 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known by his initials as AMLO, was elected President of Mexico by a sweeping margin. He won 53% of the votes. His closest rivals were Ricardo Anaya (of PAN) with 22% and José Antonio Meade (of PRI) with 16 percent. In addition, his party alliance, MORENA, won a majority of the seats in the legislature.

His victory has been compared to that of Lula in Brazil and that of Jeremy Corbyn in Great Britain. But Lula did not come near having a majority of the votes, and his broad party alliance included reactionary groups. Corbyn is still struggling to maintain control of the British Labour Party and, even if he succeeds, faces a difficult election.

AMLO by contrast has probably the largest margin of victory ever of any contender in a multiparty relatively honest election. He will have no trouble remaining in power in the single six-year term permitted by the Mexican constitution.

So, why only two cheers? A look at Mexico’s history will clarify my reserve. The so-called Mexican Revolution of 1910 overthrew an oppressive and very undemocratic regime, which is why it is seen as the beginning of the modern state in Mexico. It did not, however, result in relative peace and stability. Quite the contrary! The two decades after that saw constant violent struggles between various armed militias, none of which were able to prevail.

However, following the assassination of a major candidate for the presidency, a de facto arrangement was able to bring about a certain degree of stability and greatly reduce the violence. The party that guaranteed this relative stability went through name changes and eventually became called the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI.

The system PRI evolved was based on Mexico’s constitutional requirement of an election every six years on July 1. The incumbent could have only one term. His successor was chosen by a behind-the-scenes negotiation among PRI leaders. The actual election was in effect a formality. With the exception of one politically radical period from 1936 to 1942, the PRI system of arranged elections resulted in governments with highly corrupt elites and ones that had little to offer to the bottom third to half the population.

The PRI system eventually reached a point of high popular discontent. It led to the emergence of a major challenger in the end of the twentieth century called the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). PAN was built on a Catholic base that was reacting to Mexico’s and PRI’s strong anticlerical program.

PAN won the election in 2000, thereby ending PRI’s monopoly of office. In addition to PRI and PAN there emerged also a social-democratic party called the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). Mexico had now become a country of competitive elections. How much difference did this make? Not all that much.

AMLO ran as the PRD candidate in 2012 but was cheated out of his majority. He fought hard against the “false” winner, but with little support from the PRD. AMLO now built his struggle for power out of a rejection of all three major parties.

Why wasn’t he similarly cheated in 2018? The 2012-2018 PRI government used extreme violence against the opposition. They shot and killed student protestors. This led to widespread uprisings from underneath that made it impossible for PRI to cheat the results once again.

AMLO put forth a truly left program. He ran on a platform of significant increase in material distribution to the very large poor[I1]  underclass. He called for the ending of the so-called pensiones[I2]  by means of which enormous sums were paid to ex-presidents. AMLO was advocating instead pensiones for the poor. This is where his program was similar to that of Lula with his Bolsa familiar and his Hambre cero. The difference is that AMLO cannot be ousted from power, as was Lula.

AMLO calls his proposal nini (neither nor). For those that are neither students nor workers, who constitute a very large group of young people. He calls for payments to them to survive while they obtain the skills through government programs that will make them employable.

The Latin American left has hailed AMLO’s election, seeing in his victory a possibility of re-igniting the so-called pink tide in Latin America that had had many reverses in the last decade. The United States is clearly worried and unhappy. Trump is already trying to co-opt AMLO.

I too hail AMLO’s victory. But I worry about the fact that, unlike Lula, he has shown little taste for becoming a Latin American and not merely a Mexican leader. He is in a very strong position in Mexico for the moment, but not one impervious to counter-pressures. He cannot really do it alone. He needs the Latin American left just as they need him. We shall have to see how he navigates negotiations over NAFTA.

Finally, just like all popular leaders who have fought hard and successfully to come to power, I wonder how much he reflects on the limitations of being a charismatic figure. Too much self-assurance has been the downfall of many a leftist populist leader. Nor has AMLO indicated much tolerance in the past for those who question the prudence of some of what he does.

So, two cheers yes – loud ones, with hope for the best.

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In my article “Was Reagan a Traitor Too?,” I detailed how three U.S. presidents since World War II have been vilified and condemned for befriending Russia, America’s World War II partner and ally: John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and now Donald Trump.

However, they are not the only presidents who have been targeted by the U.S. national-security state for daring to befriend Russia. There are at least three others.

One was Jacobo Arbenz, the president of Guatemala, who was elected by the people of that country in a fair and free election. Arbenz was a socialist. That was one strike against him in the eyes of the U.S. national-security establishment. But what really cost him his position as president of Guatemala was his willingness to have friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the group of communist-run countries of which Russia was the principal member.

The year was 1954, when the Cold War that the U.S. deep state had been waging against Russia and “godless communism” since the end of World War II was in full swing. Any foreign leader who befriended Russia or any other communist state was automatically deemed an official enemy of the United States by the Pentagon, the CIA, and other elements of the U.S. government and labeled a threat to U.S. “national security.”

The CIA was assigned the task of getting rid of Arbenz, in one way or another. In the preparations for the operation, the CIA came up with an assassination list that listed the Guatemalan officials who were to be murdered. Americans are still not permitted to see who was on the list, but it is a virtual certainty that Arbenz was at the top. After all, he was the president. He was the one befriending Russia. It would make sense that he would be first to be murdered.

Arbenz was lucky, however. Realizing that his days as the democratically elected president of Guatemala were numbered, he escaped the country and preserved his life. The U.S. national-security establishment replaced him with a brutal, rightwing military general, a man who U.S. officials considered to be a “patriot.”

Another target was Fidel Castro, the president of Cuba, who successfully ousted from power the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista during the Cuban revolution in 1959. That was one strike against him because Batista was the U.S. government’s dictator in Cuba. Like Arbenz, Castro was a socialist. That was strike two. Strike three was the big one: Castro established friendly relations with Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union.

U.S. officials deemed Castro a threat to U.S. “national security” and targeted him for regime change. That is what the CIA’s paramilitary invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 was all about. It’s what the CIA’s partnership with the Mafia was for — to develop ways to murder Castro. It’s what Operation Northwoods was all about. It was why the Pentagon and the CIA were exhorting President Kennedy to attack and invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, notwithstanding the almost certain outcome of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. It is what the decades-long economic embargo against Cuba was all about.

It all came to naught. The U.S. deep state failed to oust Castro from power.

The third president was Salvador Allende, a Chilean physician who had been active in Chilean politics for a long time. In 1970 he won a plurality of votes in the national presidential election, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. government had provided his opposition with millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money in the hopes of preventing Allende from winning. When the election was thrown into the Chilean parliament, U.S. officials then used U.S. taxpayer money in an attempt to bribe Chilean officials into voting against Allende.

All that U.S. meddling in Cuba’s presidential election came to naught. Allende won and was sworn into office as president.

Strike one was that Allende was a socialist. Strike two was his decision to befriend Cuba’s president Fidel Castro, even inviting him to visit Chile. Strike three was Allende’s decision to befriend Russia.

U.S. officials labeled Allende a threat to U.S. “national security.” The CIA was assigned the task of ousting him from power and replacing him with a pro-U.S. military general, just like what the CIA had done in Guatemala.

One big obstacle, however, was that the commanding general of the Chilean Armed Forces, Gen. Rene Schneider, said no to the U.S. demand for a coup. Schneider’s position was simple: the Chilean Constitution didn’t provide for a coup as a way to remove the nation’s democratically elected president. The only two methods to remove a president were impeachment and the next election, and impeachment had already failed.

That wasn’t the position of the Pentagon and the CIA. Their position was that the national-security establishment of a nation has the moral duty to remove a democratically elected president from office who is deemed to be a threat to “national security” (a position that has obvious ramifications in the assassination of President Kennedy).

U.S. officials conspired to kidnap and assassinate Schneider to remove him as an obstacle to the coup. The conspiracy was based in Washington, D.C., and Langley, Virginia. The CIA smuggled high-powered weapons into the country under diplomatic pouch and conspired with local thugs to kidnap Schneider. In the kidnapping attempt, Schneider, who was armed, fought back. The thugs shot him dead on the streets of Santiago. It was later determined that the CIA paid hush money to keep them quiet. When Schneider’s widow and children brought suit in U.S. federal court for the wrongful death of their husband and father, the federal judiciary summarily dismissed their suit.

With Schneider’s removal, U.S. officials convinced their counterparts in the Chilean national security establishment that they had the moral duty to remove their democratically elected president from office. On 9/11 in 1973, they did it. The national-security branch of the government attacked the executive branch with air force planes firing missiles at the president’s position in the national palace and with infantry troops surrounding him and shooting at him from the ground.

There has long been dispute over whether Allende was killed or committed suicide to avoid being taken prisoner and brutally tortured. In any event, he was soon dead and replaced by a brutal pro-U.S. military general, whose national-security state forces, with the full support of the U.S. national-security establishment, proceeded to round up, torture, disappear, rape, abuse, or execute tens of thousands of people who had supported their democratically elected socialist president.

Donald Trump should be counting his lucky stars. Being ousted from office by special counsel would really not be so bad given the other methods that the U.S. deep state has employed against presidents who have dared to befriend Russia.

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This article was originally published on The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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Israel Declares Itself Apartheid State, and Governments Must Hold It Accountable — Omar Barghouti

By Palestinian BDS National Committee, July 22, 2018

Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset condemned the law, which enjoys constitutional power, as an “apartheid law.”

Adalah, a leading Palestinian human rights organization in Israel, describes how the law “affirms the principle of apartheid in housing, land and citizenship.” It concludes that “this law constitutionally sanctions institutionalized discrimination.”

U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Kavanaugh Scorns International Law and Loves Executive Power

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, July 22, 2018

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has nothing but contempt for international law. But he has shown uncritical deference to executive power, particularly in the so-called war on terror cases.

Military, Deep State and the American Innocence

By Chris Kanthan, July 22, 2018

While many Americans consider it heretical to question the U.S. military, none other than a five-star military general and U.S. president did just that. In an extraordinary farewell speech in 1961, Eisenhower went on national TV and said, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Video: “My Jerusalem”: Responding to the U.S. Embassy Announcement

By Michael Welch, July 22, 2018

Recognizing that the Middle East Peace Process, and the U.S. role in that process may have undergone a fundamental re-visioning, organizers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada decided to stage a public discussion at the University of Winnipeg, entitled My Jerusalem: Responding to the U.S. Embassy Announcement. The aim was to examine some of the historical background of the Holy City, and its significance to representatives of the three major Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, which trace their spiritual lineage to this special place.

Trump, The Manchurian Candidate: “Conspiracy” to Destabilize the Trump Presidency

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 22, 2018

In recent developments in the wake of the historic Trump-Putin Helsinki July 2018 summit, we have reached a new threshold. The “Impeachment” agenda seems to have been scrapped in favor of an “unconstitutional change in government”. A widely held consensus in establishment circles is unfolding, which is sustained by propaganda. Trump is now accused of treason including “high crimes and misdemeanors”.

Por onde começar a analisar a loucura dos media de referência em reacção à reunião Trump-Putín em Helsínquia? Ao concentrar-se na psicologia individual, a psicologia relegou o problema da insânia em massa, a qual agora subjugou o establishment dos Estados Unidos, seus mass media e a maior parte dos macacos de imitação europeus. Os indivíduos podem ser sãos, mas como uma manada eles estão prontos para saltar o abismo.

Durante os últimos dois anos, um grupo de poder específico tentou explicar a sua perda de poder – ou antes, a sua perda da presidência, pois ele ainda predomina no poder institucional – através da criação de um mito. Os media de referência são conhecidos pelo seu comportamento de manada e, neste caso, editores, comentadores, jornalistas apresentaram uma narrativa em que inicialmente eles próprios dificilmente poderiam acreditar.

Donald Trump terá sido eleito pela Rússia?

À primeira vista, isto é absurdo. Claro, os Estados Unidos podem forjar eleições fraudulentas nas Honduras, ou na Sérvia, ou mesmo na Ucrânia, mas os EUA são demasiado grande e complexo para deixar a escolha da Presidência a uma barragem de mensagens electrónicas totalmente não lidas pela maior parte dos eleitores. Se isto fosse assim, a Rússia não precisaria tentar “minar nossa democracia”. Isto significaria que a nossa democracia já estava minada, em cacos, morta. Um cadáver em pé pronto para ser derrubado por um tweet.

Mesmo se, como é alegado sem provas, um exército de bots russos (ainda mais vasto do que os notórios bots do exército israelense) estivesse a assediar os media sociais com as suas calúnias nefastas contra a pobre e inocente Hillary Clinton, isto poderia determinar uma eleição apenas num vácuo, sem outras influências no campo. Mas havia muitas outras coisas a acontecerem nas eleições de 2016, algumas a favor de Trump e outras de Hillary, e a própria Hillary marcou deu próprio objectivo crucial ao denegrir milhões de americanos como “deploráveis” porque eles não se ajustavam na política de identidade dos seus círculos eleitorais.

Os russos nada podiam fazer para dar apoio a Trump e não há nem um indício de prova de que o tenham tentado. Eles poderiam ter feito alguma coisa para prejudicar Hillary, porque havia muito ali: os emails do seu servidor privado; a fundação Clinton; o assassinato de Gaddafi; o pedido de uma zona de exclusão aérea na Síria … eles não precisavam inventar isto. Estava lá. O mesmo aconteceu com a promiscuidade do Comitê Nacional Democrata (CND), sobre o qual as acusações se concentram clintonitas, talvez para fazer com que todos esqueçam coisas muito piores.

Quando se chega a pensar nisto, o escândalo do CND centrou-se em Debbie Wasserman Schultz, não na própria Hillary. Berrar acerca de “russos a hackearem o CND” tem sido um diversionismo em relação a acusações muito mais séries contra Hillary Clinton. Apoiantes de Bernie Sanders não precisaram de tais revelações para deixarem de gostar de Clinton ou mesmo para descobrir que o CND estava a trabalhar contra Bernie. Isto sempre foi perfeitamente óbvio.

Assim, na pior das hipóteses, “os russos” são acusados de revelarem alguns factos menores referentes à campanha de Hillary Clinton. Grande coisa.

Mas isso é suficiente, depois de dois anos de falsificações, para remeter o establishment para um furor de acusações de “traição” quando Trump faz o que disse que faria quando estava em campanha, tentar normalizar relações com a Rússia.

Este berreiro vem não só do mainstream dos EUA como também das elites europeias as quais durante setenta anos foram domesticadas como caniches ou bassets obedientes do zoo americano, através da pressão intensa de “associações de cooperação” americanas transatlânticas. As ditas elites basearam suas carreiras na ilusão de partilhar o império mundial ao seguir os caprichos dos EUA no Médio Oriente e ao mudar a missão das suas forças armadas da defesa para unidades de intervenção externa da NATO sob o comando dos EUA. Não tendo pensado seriamente acerca das implicações disto durante meio século, elas entram em pânico à sugestão de serem deixadas por conta própria.

A elite ocidental agora sofre de demência auto-infligida.

Donald Trump não é particularmente articulado, navegando através da linguagem com um pequeno vocabulário repetitivo, mas o que ele disse na sua conferência de imprensa em Helsínquia foi honesto e mesmo corajoso. Tal como os cães ladram pelo seu sangue, ele muito correctamente recusou-se a endossar as “descobertas” das agências de inteligência dos EUA, catorze anos depois de as mesmas agências terem “descoberto” que o Iraque estava repleto de armas de destruição em massa. Como é que alguém no mundo poderia esperar qualquer outra coisa?

Mas para os media que se proclamam como referência, “a narrativa” na cimeira de Helsínquia, mesmo a única narrativa, foi a reacção de Trump às acusações forjadas de interferência russa em nossa democracia. Você foi ou não foi eleito graças a hackers russos? Tudo o que eles queriam era uma resposta sim ou não. A qual não poderia ser sim. Assim poderiam escrever suas notícias com antecedência.

Qualquer um que tenha frequentado os meios dos jornalistas mainstream, especialmente aqueles que cobrem os “grandes temas” nos assuntos internacionais, está consciente da sua obrigação de conformismo, com poucas excepções. Para conseguir o emprego, ele deve ter “fontes” importantes, o que significa porta-vozes governamentais desejosos de contar o que é “a narrativa”, muitas vezes sem serem identificados. Uma vez que eles sabem o que é “a narrativa”, estabelece-se a competição: competição no como contá-la. Isso leva a uma escalada da retórica, variações sobre o tema: “O presidente traiu nosso grande país entregando-o ao inimigo russo. Traição!”

Este coro enlouquecido sobre o “hacking russo” impediu mesmo os media mainstream de fazerem a sua tarefa. Até mesmo de mencionar, e muito menos analisar, qualquer das questões reais na cimeira. Para encontrar análises deve-se ir on line, longe das falsas notícias oficiais da reportagem dita independente. Exemplo: o sítio the Moon of Alabama apresenta uma interpretação inteligente da estratégia de Trump, a qual soa infinitamente mais plausível do que “a narrativa”. Em suma, Trump está a tentar cortejar a Rússia para afastá-la da China, numa versão invertida da estratégia de Kissinger de quarenta anos atrás de cortejar a China para afastá-la da Rússia, evitando assim uma aliança continental contra os Estados Unidos. Isto pode não funcionar porque os EUA se demonstraram tão inconfiáveis que os cautelosos russos provavelmente não abandonarão sua aliança com a China em troca de sombras. Mas isto faz perfeito sentido como uma explicação da política de Trump, ao contrário dos miar de gatos que temos ouvido de senadores e de apresentadores na CNN.

Tais pessoas parecem não ter ideia do que é diplomacia. Elas não podem conceber acordos que fossem benéficos para ambos os lados. Não, para elas tem de ser um jogo de soma zero, o vencedor fica com tudo. Se eles vencem, nós perdemos e vice-versa.

Elas também não têm ideia do dano para ambos os lados se não concordarem. Elas não têm projecto, nem estratégia. Apenas odeiam Trump.

Ele parece totalmente isolado e todas as manhãs vejo os noticiários para ver se já foi assassinado.

É inimaginável para quaisquer moralistas maniqueus que Putin também estar sob fogo internamente por deixar de repreender o presidente americano pelas violações dos EUA direitos humanos em Guantanamo; ataques de drones assassinos contra cidadãos indefesos por todo o Médio Oriente; pela destruição da Líbia em violação do mandato da ONU, pela interferência nas eleições de incontáveis países por “organizações não governamentais” financiadas pelo governo (a National Endowment of Democracy); pela espionagem electrónica à escala mundial; pelas invasões do Iraque e do Afeganistão, sem mencionar a maior populacional prisional do mundo e os massacres de crianças de escolas. Mas os diplomatas russos sabem como ser polidos.

Ainda assim, se Trump realmente fizer um “acordo”, poderá haver perdedores – não os EUA nem a Rússia, mas sim terceiros. Quando duas grandes potências chegam a um acordo, muitas vezes é a expensas de outrem. Os europeus ocidentais temem que sejam eles, mas tais temores são infundados. Tudo o que Putin quer é relações normais com o Ocidente, o que não é pedir muito.

Ao invés disso, o candidato número a pagar o preço são os palestinos, ou mesmo o Irão, de modos marginais. Na conferência de imprensa, indagado acerca de possíveis áreas de cooperação entre as duas potências nucleares, Trump sugeriu que os dois podiam concordar na ajuda a Israel:

“Ambos falamos com Bibi Netanyahu. Eles gostariam de fazer certas coisas em relação à Síria, tendo a ver com a segurança de Israel. Quanto a isso, gostaríamos absolutamente de trabalhar a fim de ajudar Israel. Israel estará a trabalhar connosco. Assim ambos os países trabalhariam em conjunto”.

Em termos políticos, Trump sabe onde reside o poder e está contando com a influência do lobby pré Israel, o qual reconhece a derrota na Síria e a crescente influência da Rússia, para salvá-lo dos imperialistas liberais – uma aposta ousada, mas ele não tem muita escolha.

Acerca de outro assunto, Trump disse que “nossos militares” entendem-se melhor com os russos “do que os nossos políticos”. Trata-se de outra aposta ousada, sobre o realismo militar que poderia de algum modo neutralizar o lobby no Congresso do complexo militar industrial por cada vez mais armas.

Em suma, a única probabilidade de finalizar a ameaça da guerra nuclear pode depender do apoio a Trump de Israel e do Pentágono!

Os histéricos globalistas neoliberais parecem ter descartado qualquer outra possibilidade – e talvez esta também.

“Diálogo construtivo entre os Estados Unidos e a Rússia adianta a oportunidade de abrir novas vias rumo à paz e à estabilidade no nosso mundo”, declarou Trump. “Eu antes assumiria um risco político em busca da paz do que arriscaria a paz em busca da política”, acrescentou.

Isso é mais do que os seus inimigos políticos podem reivindicar.

Donald Trump was Elected by Russia? Mass Dementia in the Western Establishment

Tradução : http://resistir.info/

Da mesma autora:

• The 2016 Elections: “The Bad Losers” and What They Fear LosingVer também o vídeo integral (46 minutos) da conferência de imprensa de Trump e Putin em Helsínquia:
  [*] Autora de Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions . Seu novo livro é Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton . As memórias do pai de Diana Johnstone, Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness , foram publicadas pela Clarity Press com comentários seus.   [email protected] .

   

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On the world’s Grand Chessboard, the US is fighting for control and influence. And there are countries where its ambassadors are perceived more as imperial governors than simple channels of communication.

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For more than a fortnight the fires of fury have been stoked in the oil-rich and Shia-majority south of Iraq after the government was accused of doing nothing to alleviate a deepening unemployment crisis and to tackle rampant corruption.

The demonstrations began in Basra, before swiftly spreading to major population centres including Najaf and Amarah, and now discontent is stirring in the capital, Baghdad.

Baghdad’s Green Zone has been quick to promise more funding and investment in development of chronically underdeveloped cities, but this has done little to quell public anger. Iraqis have heard these promises countless times before, and with a water and energy crisis striking in the middle of scorching summer heat, people are less inclined to believe what their government says.

With Iran refusing to provide for Iraq’s electricity needs, Baghdad has now also turned to Saudi Arabia to see if its southern Arab neighbour can help alleviate the crises it faces.

Protesters killed

Demonstrations against chronic unemployment, corruption and Baghdad’s subservience to the agendas of foreign powers have entered their third week.

Iraqis in the Shia-dominated south – the heart of Iraq’s oil sector – are outraged at the political elite for failing to provide opportunities for citizens, particularly the youth. Youth unemployment currently stands at 18 percent, and has hit those with higher education degrees hardest.

About 60 percent of Iraqis are below the age of 24, and with such a high proportion of jobless youth, politicians have their work cut out to be able to convince young people that officials have a plan to ensure they have a future.

The situation is made even worse in southern industrial cities like Basra, where the petroleum industry is employing cheap foreign labour – despite laws stating that 50 percent of staff employed by companies enjoying the spoils of lucrative Iraqi oil contracts must be Iraqi.

Demonstrators have angrily lashed out at politicians they accuse of benefiting from kickbacks and corruption by allowing companies to hire cheaper labour and ignoring the domestic workforce. Protesters have even attempted to break into oil installations, according to Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi, who last week said that foreign workers were being evacuated for their own safety.

The eruption of anger forced Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to cut short his trip to the NATO summit in Brussels last week and head straight to Basra to try and calm public fury after security forces killed an unarmed demonstrator. Rather than prevent an escalation of the violence, and promising to hold violent Shia militias and unruly security forces to account, nine more Iraqis were killed by the start of the week, with more video footage emerging showing the lifeless bodies of victims of state and militia violence.

Demonstrators and their supporters on social media have accused Abadi of being incapable of controlling violent police, military and paramilitary units, including Iran-backed Shia militants in the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) – a militant group that is now formally a part of the Iraqi armed forces. The PMF and its constituent militias often only follow the orders of their own local commanders, or Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), completely undermining the prime minister’s role as commander-in-chief.

#breaking : Protesters have attacked Dawa party office in Najaf, Dawa has been the party of the PM in Iraq for the last 12 years pic.twitter.com/Q5uuirfvog

— Steven nabil (@thestevennabil) July 13, 2018

Counter-terrorism forces used against ‘Baathist’ protesters

PMF militants, including the notoriously sectarian Asa’ib Ahl ul-Haq militia, the Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba group, and Kata’ib Hizballah, have all taken part in violently suppressing protests. This follows the torching of the rulign Dawa Party’s offices and those of IRGC-linked militias by demonstrators in the first week of the protests.

Shia Arab protesters could be heard cursing various political parties and militant groups as “Iranians” and not Iraqis, and branding them “Safavids”, in reference to the Shia Persian empire who fought against the Ottoman Turks for control over Iraq for centuries.

The use of the term “Safavid” is more usually associated with Sunni groups who remain critical of the former Persian empire for their sectarian pogroms in Baghdad and other cities – so its use by Shia Iraqis is perhaps indicative of the scale and depth of the anger against Iranian interventionism in Iraq.

Open criticism against pro-Iran groups is rarely tolerated in Iraq, however, and Dawa Party officials have been quick to react, especially after protests spread to Baghdad, causing politicians and militia leaders to become jittery.

The New Arab’s Arabic language service reported that Saad al-Muttalibi, a Dawa Party official loyal to former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, described the protesters as “little children” and claimed they were linked to the proscribed Baath Party of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Muttalibi, who also serves on the Baghdad security council, said his party had information that demonstrators in the Shola district were attempting to “encourage acts of sabotage”, but had been thwarted by political parties and security forces, who arranged a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Activists in Baghdad say they organised demonstrations in solidarity with their countrymen in Basra, Najaf and other major cities, and because they shared the same grievances. Nevertheless, counter-terrorism forces have been deployed against them.

This is not the first time that Muttalibi has fuelled major controversy. In early 2017, during the battle for Mosul, Muttalibi openly admitted during an appearance on TRT World that his government was conducting executions without trial. When he was informed by another panellist that he was in fact admitting to war crimes, Muttalibi burst out in laughter.

Such disregard for international human rights law has likely encouraged an environment of impunity, as PMF militants and security forces abduct, torture and sometimes kill demonstrators.

Al Jazeera Arabic’s Iraq editor, Hamid Hadeed, reported that a young man, Mohammed al-Shakir, was kidnapped and murdered before being dumped on the streets of Najaf as a message to other protesters. The victim was a Shia activist killed by Shia militias.

Iraq turns to Saudi Arabia as Iran fails to cut electricity deal

In an attempt to quench the fires of public anger, Baghdad has attempted to negotiate with neighbouring Iran for an increase in the electricity supply to Iraq and to stabilise the grid. Although Iraq has enough natural resources to be completely energy independent, a cocktail of corruption, mismanagement and the effects of decades of war has left it reliant on neighbouring powers, particularly Tehran.

However, Iran has been unwilling to assist Iraq this time, as it grapples with its own domestic problems, cutbacks and the fallout of the imminent reinstatement of US sanctions. Tehran has even cut the electricity supply to Iraq which has made an already hot summer even hotter as Iraqis contend with record scorching temperatures.

With tempers already flaring, Abadi has sought alternative solutions, and has turned to Saudi Arabia instead, seeking Riyadh’s help to calm public anger.

A senior delegation travelled to Riyadh on Wednesday to tackle issues “led by the electricity and fuel problems”. The prime minister’s office also revealed that the country’s energy minister will be dispatched later this week to sign urgent energy agreements with the Sunni Arab monarchy.

While Iran’s intransigence has been seen as a sign of its displeasure at the outcome of the Iraqi elections held in May, this is perhaps an overly conspiratorial outlook that is not reflective of the reality faced by the Iranian regime. Iran has a plethora of unpaid debts as well as power and energy problems of its own – and with the United States decision to walk away from the nuclear deal earlier this year portending difficult times for Tehran.

This has caused Iran to pare back services that it views as non-essential to its aims, including power distribution to southern Iraq.

Iran’s decision may have unintended consequences, however, with Saudi Arabia being in a prime position to fill the void and show Iraqis that there is an alternative to reliance on Iran. Abadi may seek to balance both powers against one another to his benefit, but only if he manages to hold onto the premiership – which is far from certain, even though a new government has yet to be formed and is unlikely to appear in the near future.

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This statement was released today by the Palestinian Boycott National Committee. “Israel effectively declares itself an apartheid state. Palestinian Civil Society Reacts to Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law.”​

Today, Israeli lawmakers gave their final approval to the “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People” bill that unambiguously defines Israel as a state that belongs exclusively to the “Jewish people.” This is despite the fact that one in five citizens of Israel is an indigenous, non-Jewish Palestinian.

Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset condemned the law, which enjoys constitutional power, as an “apartheid law.”

Adalah, a leading Palestinian human rights organization in Israel, describes how the law “affirms the principle of apartheid in housing, land and citizenship.” It concludes that “this law constitutionally sanctions institutionalized discrimination.”

Najwan Berekda, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, reacted:

As a Palestinian citizen of this state, this bill entrenches my third-class citizenship on the land where generations of my family have lived since long before the state of Israel even existed.

The Jewish-Israeli majority is loudly reminding us indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel that we are not welcome in our own ancestral homeland. My people have always suffered from legalized racism by the state of Israel and its institutions, but this law makes our apartheid reality the law of the land like never before.

As “non-Jews” we are already not allowed to buy or rent land on 93% of the area controlled by the Israeli state, and many of our communities are declared to be “unrecognized” and bulldozed out of existence by Israeli forces. I received a racially segregated and inferior education in a school system that conspicuously privileges Jewish-Israelis.

Israel is now stripping us of any semblance of equal rights based solely on our ethno-religious identity. It’s even demoting our language from one of the state’s two official languages.

Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) commented:

Israel has dozens of racist laws, including some which strikingly fit the UN definition of apartheid. But with the constitutional power of this Basic Law, Israel is effectively declaring itself an apartheid state and dropping its worn-out mask of democracy.

From now on, it will not just be legal to racially discriminate against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of the state. It will be constitutionally mandated and required. This should stir people, institutions and governments to take effective action to hold Israel accountable.

Omar Barghouti concluded:

If ever there was a time for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel’s system of oppression, it is now. Israel’s official adoption of apartheid opens the door for the Palestinian people, Arab nations and our allies around the world to pressure the UN to activate its anti-apartheid laws and impose serious sanctions on Israel like those imposed on apartheid South Africa.

We shall double our efforts to further grow the BDS movement for Palestinian rights to hold Israel accountable for all its crimes against our people. No Israeli law will erase our right to self-determination in our homeland or the right of our refugees to return home. No Israeli far-right government, with all the blind support it receives from xenophobic and outright fascist forces in the United States and Europe, will ever extinguish our aspiration for freedom, justice and equality.

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On Thursday, the British media uncritically regurgitated Press Association reports that police had “identified the suspected perpetrators of the novichok” attacks in Salisbury.

In March, former Russian spy and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were taken apparently gravely ill, allegedly poisoned with the nerve agent in Salisbury.

Both made a full recovery, but in June, Dawn Sturgess and her partner Charlie Rowley were struck down, supposedly by the same agent. Rowley lived in Salisbury and Sturgess in Amesbury, just eight miles north of Salisbury.

Sturgess died on July 8. An inquest into her death opened and was adjourned, also on Thursday, until January 2019.

According to the Press Association, an unnamed source with knowledge of the police investigation had reported,

“Investigators believe they have identified the attack … through CCTV and have cross-checked this with records of people who entered the country around that time. They (the investigators) are sure they (the suspects) are Russian.”

No evidence was released to back up the claims, which were not officially endorsed by police. Nonetheless, they were uncritically recycled and amplified by the press.

The Mail, for example, claimed officers believe that “a team of Russian assassins” were sent to the UK, and that the “kill team” was “recorded on CCTV as they carried out their mission.” The team had “up to six” members.

The Sun described the team as comprising variously “two Russians” and “several Russians” working “on behalf of the Kremlin. … They were thought to have left the UK for Russia the next morning [after the Skirpal poisoning] and are thought to be under the protection of President Vladimir Putin.”

It cited yet another unidentified “source” claiming that “facial recognition technology was used to identify the suspects,” and that the “pair’s departure was discussed in a coded Russian message to Moscow—intercepted by a British base in Cyprus.”

The reports follow comments in the New York Times earlier in the week by a Mark Galeotti, who was cited as an “expert on Russian intelligence” that “at the very least, they have grainy photographs from CCTV of the people they assume were involved.”

Why this information should only have just recently come to light, fully four months after the alleged fourth attack by “novichok,” was not explained.

Not a word emanating from the US and British authorities and media can be taken at face value. Yet again, none of the claims are substantiated or even make sense. Each new supposed disclosure only serves to contradict previous claims.

Sturgess and Rowley fell ill June 29 having apparently come into contact with a substance that caused them to suffer symptoms similar to those of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Sturgess died some days later. Rowley is reported to have regained consciousness and has spoken to his brother.

No evidence has been presented publicly to allow independent verification of the claim that the pair fell ill due to exposure to the same substance as the Skripals. Neither has evidence been offered to suggest that either attack in fact involved the “novichok” nerve agent, allegedly one of the most dangerous ever manufactured.

However, if indeed the attack on Sturgess and Rowley was related in some, even accidental, way to the attack on the Skripals, it raises more questions than it answers.

Charlie Rowley told his brother that he had picked up a “perfume bottle” before falling ill. A small bottle was found in Rowley’s house, one of hundreds of items and vehicles seized and transported to the nearby British government chemical weapons research facility at Porton Down.

Rowley apparently stated that Sturgess sprayed some of the bottle’s contents on herself, believing it to be perfume. According to the Telegraph, investigators are now considering the possibility that the bottle was found by Sturgess and Rowley in a Salisbury park or around the city centre.

But in the case of the Skripals, the official narrative went through several mutations as to how the poison had been delivered—from involving flowers at a grave, a car’s air-conditioning system, food, items in Sergei Skripal’s house, before finally settling on a “gloopy” substance smeared on the door handle at Skripal’s house.

How it remained in place despite inclement weather and why the Skripals were able to go about their business apparently unaffected for hours before both falling ill simultaneously—despite the difference in age and weight—has never been explained.

Likewise, the gel-like substance as a means of infection has now become a spray perfume bottle. No evidence has been made available on the perfume bottle—the brand, possible date of purchase, possible vendors in the Salisbury area.

No explanation has been offered of why the attackers would discard the bottle in a public area. How it lay undiscovered for months, despite a virtual lockdown in the area, is similarly passed over in silence. Why, having lain around in all manner of weather for so long, it proved more potent the second time around—again nothing.

In a related absurdity, police only this week began a fingertip search of the Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury, which Rowley and Sturgess were known to have visited shortly before they fell ill. Queen Elizabeth Gardens is only five minutes’ walk from the park bench where the Skripals were found comatose months earlier.

The fact that this elementary search had not apparently been carried out after the Skripal attack, let alone the more recent poisoning, is consistent with the authorities seeking to prevent, rather than prosecute, a serious investigation of both attacks.

It cannot be ruled out that Sergei Skripal was indeed a target and his daughter, Sturgess and Rowley the unfortunate “collateral damage.” But the haste yet again to blame the Kremlin and Putin in particular only heightens the suspect character of the official narrative.

Both the bottle’s discovery and the apparent identification of Russian agents coincide with the explosion of the ferocious right-wing faction fight within the US into charges of treason against a sitting president, with all this entails.

Last Friday saw the announcement of a US grand jury indictment charging 12 Russians, alleged officers in the GRU, the intelligence arm of Russia’s military, with hacking and leaking Democratic Party emails during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. The charges were brought by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe into Russian “meddling” in the US election.

The anti-Russian propaganda reached fever pitch with the meeting Monday between US President Donald Trump and Putin in Helsinki, that saw Trump denounced by sections of the military/intelligence apparatus and the Democratic Party as a “traitor” and Kremlin stooge.

At root, the raging disputes within the American ruling class revolve around foreign policy and the extent to which military efforts should be directed primarily against Russia.

It would be foolish to believe that sections of the British intelligence and political establishment do not have a dog in this fight.

In May, it was reported by former British diplomat Craig Murray that a D-notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) had been issued by the British government regarding the Skripal case.

He suggested this was to protect Pablo Miller, an associate of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Miller, also a spy, had apparently been involved in recruiting Sergei Skripal as a double agent in the 1990s.

In 2016, Steele put together the notorious Trump-Russia dossier, commissioned by the Democratic Party in the US, alleging that the Putin regime had accumulated information on sexual misconduct by Trump for blackmail purposes. Steele was the subject of an earlier D-notice, which attempted, and failed, to hide his identity as the dossier’s author.

Murray speculated that Miller, a former spy, resident in Salisbury, and known to keep in contact with Skripal, could well have been involved, along with Skripal himself, with the deeply dubious Trump-Russia dossier.

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Featured image is from Tass.

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Thousands of leading scientists have urged their colleagues against helping governments create killer robots, making the movie The Terminator a reality.

2,400 scientists have pledged to block the development of lethal weaponry using Artificial Intelligence, The Guardian reported.

In other words, killer robots, that could eventually develop a mind of their own and take over the world. Scientists have vowed they will not support robots “that can identify and attack people without human oversight.”

Two leading experts backing the commitment, Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind and Elon Musk at SpaceX, are among the more than 2,400 signatories whom have pledged to deter military firms and nations from building lethal autonomous weapon systems, referred to as Laws.

The move is the latest from concerned scientists and organizations about giving a machine the power to choose someone’s fate of life or death.

The pledge organized by The Future of Life Institute, calls on governments to agree on norms, laws, and regulations that stigmatize and effectively outlaw the development of killer robots.

The signatories of the pledge have stated they will “neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons.” More than 150 AI-related firms and organizations added their names to the pledge that was announced at the International Joint Conference on AI in Stockholm.

Robots are beginning to take over every aspect of society.  They are also headed for retail businesses delivering freight and eliminating truckers.

But, can we really give robots the choice whether to kill or let a human being live?

In fact, it sounds quite dangerous allowing a freight truck to drive itself; if the sensors break down on a big rig truck going  60-70 MPH, that’s potentially 40 tons barreling down the highway unattended except by artificial intelligence.

As another example, imagine A.I. having to choose who to let live in a freak accident?

This may be why, as Activist Post reported back in March, Uber had to halt nationwide testing of its A.I. vehicles following the death of a pedestrian in Arizona. And that was a car actually attended by a human backup operator.

Automation clearly isn’t a foolproof technology, and it can also be exploited by hackers for malicious purposes that could even include programming a bot to kill an individual.

This comes after Google employees drafted their own demands and a petition against Google’s involvement with Project Maven, demanding the engagement end, as well as an agreement to never get involved with the military again.  That action caused Google to quit its drone program.

However, the agreement was already signed, so the company is locked in for another year until the contract runs out in March 2019. Google can then legally stop assisting the government with the advancement of artificial intelligence for use with its drones.

At least a dozen staff resigned over the issue.

A DoD statement from last July announced that Project Maven aimed to “deploy computer algorithms to war zones by year’s end.”

The military has also proposed a drone mothership in the sky like in the movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier, an absolutely scary concept at best.

The Tesla founder has previously said that artificial intelligence is potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons.  That’s a shared thought with scientist Stephen Hawking, who also previously warned that “artificial intelligence could spell the end for the human race if we are not careful enough because they are too clever.”

This is the beginning of The Terminator movie, as even scientists agree that machines will begin to think for themselves in the near future and could be a threat to the human race.

With this pledge by at least 2,400 of the world’s brightest minds maybe we can stop a potential man-made threat to the human race.

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Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Minds, Steemit, SoMee, BitChute, Facebook and Twitter. 

Featured image is from the author.

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Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has nothing but contempt for international law. But he has shown uncritical deference to executive power, particularly in the so-called war on terror cases.

The two primary sources of international law are treaties and what’s known as “customary international law.” Ratified treaties are part of domestic US law under the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which says treaties “shall be the supreme law of the land.” Furthermore, it has long been established that customary international law, which arises from the consistent and general practice of nations, is part of US law.

Although he professes to interpret the Constitution as written by the founders, Kavanaugh has apparently overlooked the supremacy clause and simply scorns customary international law.

Jordan Paust, international law scholar and professor emeritus at University of Houston Law Center, told Truthout in an email,

“The unanimous views of the Founders, Framers, and Supreme Court Justice opinions is that the President and all members of the Executive Branch are bound by international law.”

Paust also referenced a 2016 article he wrote in the Houston Journal of International Law documenting this fact.

Kavanaugh, however, erroneously conflates international law with foreign law. The US agrees to the terms of treaties it ratifies. And in most instances, the United States can opt out of a customary international law norm if the US objected while the norm was being developed. Foreign law, on the other hand, is the law of other countries — such as French law, German law, etc.

In the 2016 case of Al Bahlul v. United States, a Guantánamo detainee argued that since “conspiracy” was not an offense under the international laws of war, he should not be tried for conspiracy before a military commission.

Kavanaugh’s concurrence in that case characterized al-Bahlul’s argument as “extraordinary” because “it would incorporate international law into the U.S. Constitution as a judicially enforceable constraint on Congress and the President.”

That would mean, Kavanaugh cynically wrote, that wartime decisions made by the president and Congress to try unlawful enemy combatants before military commissions “would be subject to the dictates of foreign nations and the international community, as embodied in international law.”

He added: “The federal courts are not roving enforcers of international law. And the federal courts are not empowered to smuggle international law into the U.S. Constitution and then wield it as a club against Congress and the President in wartime.”

Kavanaugh and the War on Terror

For 12 years, while serving as a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Kavanaugh had the opportunity to rule on several cases stemming from the “war on terror.” In nearly all of them, he demonstrated nothing but disdain for international law and an uncritical deference to executive power.

During the Bush administration, the Supreme Court checked and balanced the executive branch in several war on terror cases. They included Rasul v. Bush (which established that federal courts have jurisdiction to hear Guantánamo detainees’ habeas corpus petitions); Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (which held that a US citizen held as an enemy combatant has due process rights to contest his or her detention); and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (which concluded that Bush’s military commissions violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions).

In 2008, the high court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo detainees held as enemy combatants have the right to file habeas corpus petitions in US federal courts to challenge their detention.

But in the wake of the Boumediene decision, Kavanaugh tried to neuter detainees’ habeas corpus rights in cases that came before him on the Court of Appeals, such as Omar v. McHugh and Uthman v. Obama.University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck noted in a 2011 articlethat since Boumediene was decided, commentators “have accused the D.C. Circuit in general — and some of its judges in particular — of actively subverting [Boumediene] by adopting holdings and reaching results that have both the intent and the effect of vitiating the … decision.”

“Prominent among those judges is Kavanaugh,” Edith Roberts wrote at SCOTUSblog.

In the 2010 case of Al-Bihani v. Obama, Kavanaugh ruled that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), under which al-Bihani was held as an enemy combatant, should not be interpreted in light of the international laws of war.

Kavanaugh wrote,

“International-law norms that have not been incorporated into domestic U.S. law by the political branches are not judicially enforceable limits on the President’s authority under the AUMF.”

Paust noted in a law review article that Kavanaugh “embraced and basically relied merely on a radical ahistorical and ultimately anti-constitutional minority viewpoint” in that statement.

Kavanaugh “prefers a radical and dangerous view that ‘courts may not interfere with the President’s exercise of war powers based on international-law norms that the political branches have not seen fit to enact into domestic U.S. law,’” Paust wrote.

In fact, Kavanaugh twisted the law to reach what appear to be politically motivated results. Paust opined, “Bias is strikingly evident in [Kavanaugh’s] non-judicious use of the phrase ‘lurking international-law.’”

“This sardonic mischaracterization of law,” according to Paust, “is one that [Kavanaugh’s] former colleagues in the White House (for example, [Alberto] Gonzales, [George W.] Bush, [David] Addington, and [Dick] Cheney) might have appreciated during their infamous era of serial criminality orchestrated in the White House.” But, Paust added, “it is decidedly out of place in an impartial appellate chamber within the judicial system of the United States.”

Another example of Kavanaugh’s disrespect for international law and fondness for executive power is the 2009 case of Kiyemba v. Obama.Seventeen Uighur men found to be unlawfully detained at Guantánamo feared being returned to China in violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and a federal statute, given the likelihood that they would face torture upon their return. Kavanaugh took the position that courts must defer to the president’s determination of whether there is a likelihood of torture upon return. Most of the Uighurs were ultimately relocated to other countries, but many remain in detention.

A Dangerous Presumption

Kavanaugh’s deference to the president goes even further. In a 2014 law review article, he wrote that the take care clause of the Constitution requires the president to enforce the law, “at least unless the President deems the law unconstitutional, in which event the President can decline to follow the statute until a final court order says otherwise.” Kavanaugh would create a dangerous presumption in favor of a president who refuses to follow the law.

If confirmed to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh will almost certainly defer to the president’s wartime decisions during the perpetual war on terror. He will likely extend that deference to Donald Trump’s immigration policies under the guise of “national security.” And Kavanaugh’s frightening theory will encourage the president to disobey any law he deems unconstitutional, including customary and treaty-based international law.

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Since July 26, 1947, the CIA has played a role in hundreds of assassinations, military coups, and rebellions around the globe, from Argentina to Zaire.

Despite its championing of freedom, the CIA’s true objective has always been imperialist in nature. Whether oil in Iran or bananas in Guatemala, the U.S. has a material interest in every country in whose affairs it has meddled.

In order to meet its goals, the CIA recruits influential, intellectual and charismatic personalities. The agency also resorts to threats, kidnapping, torture, enforced disappearances and assassinations. The organization incites violence, uprisings and military rebellion, and causes economic chaos and misery to the people through scarcity of basic foods and so on.

The CIA has been exposed on a number of occasions through documented evidence, leaks of information and whistleblowing by active and former agents.

1. 1954 in Guatemala

In 1944, the violent U.S.-backed dictatorship of Jorge Ubico was overthrown by a popular uprising. Ubico had merely served as a puppet of the United Fruit Company, which basically enslaved the population. It stripped campesinos and Indigenous people of their lands and forced them to work their own parcels and paid them crumbs. Those who dared to disobey were brutally punished by a police force working for the U.S. agricultural company.

The victory of the uprising brought peace to the country for 10 years, its culmination being the election in 1951 of progressive Jacobo Arbenz, who sought an agrarian reform.

In 1954, the CIA launched the code-named Operation PBSUCCESS. The country’s capital Guatemala City was bombed by U.S. warplanes. The young Ernesto “Che” Guevara was there and witnessed the invasion first hand.

Under a series of military rulers after the coup, Guatemala suffered three decades of brutal repression in which as many as 200,000 people died, many of them campesinos killed by security forces.

U.S.-backed and financed military tyrants of Guatemala 1954.

2. 1959 in Haiti

Haiti is as strategic to the United States as are the Dominican Republic and Cuba. But in Haiti, the story is different. In 1959, two years after coming to power, Francois Duvalier, with the help of the CIA, created a rural militia called the Tonton Macoute after a Haitian Creole bogeyman in response to discontent among the people to his developing dictatorial rule. The Macoute, which by 1961 was twice as big as the army, never developed into a real military force but was more than just a secret police, terrorizing those who opposed the U.S.-backed dictator.

Duvalier’s son, CIA-approved heir, Jean-Claude succeeded his father in 1971 and continued the repressive rule. During his presidency, until 1986, “prisons and torture centers claimed the lives of hundreds of victims. Arbitrary arrests, torture, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and political killings were regularly reported,” according to Amnesty International.

U.S.-backed dictator Francois Duvalier.

3. 1964 in Brazil

Image on the right: Joao Goulart’s mistake was carving into U.S. companies’ profits for the good of his people.

The early 1960s were years of incredible transformation in Brazil. President Joao Goulart implemented his “Basic Reforms” plan, which aimed to combat adult illiteracy; control the transfer of profits by multinational companies with headquarters abroad by reforming tax laws; expropriate land and redistribute to the population.

In 1964 a military coup ousted Goulart. Lincoln Gordon served as U.S. ambassador, playing a major role in support of the opposition against the government of Goulart and during the coup. On March 27, 1964, he wrote a top secret cable to the U.S. government, urging it to support the coup of Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco with a “clandestine delivery of arms” and shipments of gas and oil, to possibly be supplemented by CIA covert operations.

4. 1969 in Uruguay

During the 1960s, revolutionary movements spread through Latin America. The United States saw influential socialist leaders emerge in this South American nation. For example, the urban revolutionary guerrilla group known as the Tupamaros. Jose “Pepe” Mujica was part of it and so was his wife Lucia Topolansky. Washington became obsessed with eliminating them, fearing the influence and power they were achieving.

Nelson Rockefeller went to Uruguay in 1969 on a Latin American tour commissioned by President Richard Nixon to observe first hand the growing anti-Yankee sentiment in the region. He returned to Washington to alert authorities that something needed to be done urgently. Of course, the CIA responded immediately.

They sent Dan Mitrione. In 1969, Mitrione moved to Uruguay to oversee the Office of Public Safety, under the guise of USAID. The OPS helped local police for many years in the 1960s, training them and providing weapons. Mitrione was reportedly the man who made torture routine, applying in his words, “the precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.”

In 1971, Juan Maria Bordaberry was elected president under the Colorado Party. He led a coup in June 1973, with the blessing of the CIA, and remained in power until 1976, when he, in turn, was overthrown by the military. Under Bordaberry and Operation Condor, hundreds of people were murdered, tortured, imprisoned, kidnapped and disappeared.

Pepe Mujica bravely fought off U.S. attempts to annihilate socialist leaders in Uruguay and survived.

5. 1971 in Bolivia

Image below: Two years after leading a guerrilla movement against the Bolivian oligarchy, Che Guevara was murdered.

In 1967, Che Guevara was murdered after having led a guerrilla war in Bolivia against the oligarchy. The CIA-backed mission to assassinate the revolutionary leader had international repercussions.

Meanwhile, in 1970, General Juan Jose Torres took power and implemented reforms to benefit workers and those living in poverty. Hope returned to Bolivia. After less than a year in power, Torres was overthrown in a bloody coup led by the Junta of Commanders of the Armed Forces. Despite massive resistance — both civilian and military — the conservative forces applied brutality without compunction. Banzer ruled the country for the next seven years, working within Operation Condor and the CIA to silence all dissent.

6. 1973 in Chile

Image on the right: Salvador Allende, another victim of the many covert coups carried out by the United States.

In Chile, the CIA used different tactics but the results were the same. The agency led a smear campaign against the government of Chile, as it is currently doing in Venezuela. They used national and international media to demonize socialist President Salvador Allende.

By causing scarcity through extortion, through torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearances and assassinations, the CIA and right-wing forces in the country attempted to destabilize the country especially after Allende nationalized natural resources. On Sep. 11, 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet led the military all the way to the presidential palace with the backing of the CIA, who provided him with all the necessary weapons and armored vehicles.

War planes dropped bombs on the palace. Before he died, Allende told his people,

“I will not give up! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for the loyalty of the people with my life. And I tell you with certainty that the which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They are strong and they may be able to dominate us, but the social processes cannot be halted nor with crime nor by force.”

Pinochet ruled for 17 years, with the official victim toll at 40,018. These include detained and/or tortured; forcibly disappeared or executed; and kidnapped. Over 200,000 Chileans were forced into exile.

7. 1976 in Argentina

The Dirty War from 1976-1983 was marked by detention centers, torture centers, massacres, rape of women and children and disappearances. In total, 30,000 people are believed killed, with 13,000 disappeared.

A military junta overthrew President Isabel Peron in 1976 and soon after the new Foreign Minister Cesar Guzzetti told U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that the military was aggressively cracking down on “the terrorists,” according to the New York Times.

Kissinger responded,

“If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly,” warning that the U.S. congress may cut off aid.

Thus the Argentine government was given a green light by the U.S. to continue its brutal attacks against leftist guerrillas, political dissidents and suspected opponents.

8. 1980 in El Salvador

There is compelling evidence to show that for over 30 years, members of the U.S. military and the CIA helped organize, train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador.

Former Death Squad officer and Company Commander in the Salvadoran Army Ricardo Castro revealed that he held monthly briefings with Deputy CIA Chief of Station in El Salvador Frederic Brugger who had recruited him for intelligence work after meeting him at an interrogation class. Castro also claimed to have knowledge of the perpetration of large massacres of civilians by Army Department 5.

In 1980 and throughout the government’s war against the rebels in the FMLN, the CIA-backed death squads terrorized the Salvadoran people. Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a believer in liberation theology, was murdered as he was officiating mass in 1980. When the U.S.-inspired civil war was over, at least 75,000 people were reported murdered and many thousands displaced.

Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was an exponent of liberation theology and paid for it with his life.

9. 1989 in Panama

On December 20, 1989, over 27,000 U.S. soldiers invaded Panama.

Under the name “Just Cause,” the operation left at least 3,000 dead in its wake, with many unidentified bodies burnt and piled up in the streets, according to many witnesses.

The military invasion, launched by President George H. W. Bush, came 10 years after the small country had finally gained its independence over its canal. Ten days after the invasion, the canal, which belonged to the United States until 1979, was finally due to return to partial Panamanian control in 1990, and fully in 2000. In order to try to maintain a government that supported U.S interests, and to maintain U.S. hegemony in the region, Washington had previously tried economic sanctions, and even a failed military coup attempt, before resorting to a full-scale invasion.

The fear that their authority over the canal could be transferred to a government that didn’t completely submit to U.S. interests prompted the United States to claim it would be “saving” the Panamanians from a suddenly “cruel dictator,” who was also a drug-trafficker — an activity that they were aware of but did not seem to mind while President Manuel Noriega was collaborating with the CIA, in Washington’s fight against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas for instance.

Until 1988, Washington even praised Noriega’s efforts against drug trafficking in the region on several occasions, even though the CIA kept a record of his involvement in criminal activities since 1972, as Noam Chomsky pointed out in his 1993 book, “What Uncle Sam really Wants.”

Until 1988, Washington even praised Noriega’s efforts against drug trafficking in the region on several occasions.

10. 1990 in Peru

Alberto Fujimori was elected president in 1990. He named Vladimiro Montesinos National Intelligence Service Director. Montesinos was at the center of a vast web of illegal activities, including embezzlement, graft, gunrunning, and drug trafficking. He was later tried, convicted and sentenced for numerous charges. Montesinos had strong connections with the CIA and was said to have received $10 million from the agency for his government’s anti-terrorist activities.

As early as 1997, the U.S. state department annual human rights report’s chapter about Peru described the massive power SIN had acquired under Montesinos’ direction and its use against domestic political opponents. Despite those concerns, arms sales to the Fujimori regime by the U.S. government and U.S.-licensed companies nearly quadrupled in 1998 to $4.42 million, compared to $1.17 million in 1997.

On 7 April 7, 2009, a three-judge panel convicted Fujimori on charges of human rights abuses, declaring that the “charges against him have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt.” The panel found him guilty of ordering the Grupo Colina death squad to commit the November 1991 Barrios Altos massacre and the July 1992 La Cantuta massacre, which resulted in the deaths of 25 people, among other crimes.

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“Members of the Congressional Black Caucus prove themselves to be happy tools of the neoliberal war party.”

“Outraged by President Trump’s 2 hr meeting w/Putin, the man who orchestrated attacks on our democracy. Where do his loyalties lie?”– Barbara Lee

“Trump’s denial of the demonstrated fact that Russia attacked American democracy in 2016 is beyond disgraceful.”– James E. Clyburn

“Instead, he legitimized Putin and disrespected the clear findings of our law enforcement and intelligence officials here at home.”– Elijah Cummings

Black people should be first in line when it comes to casting doubt on the work of intelligence agencies and federal prosecutors. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) ought to uphold the proud tradition of defying corrupt law enforcement. Instead they prove themselves to be happy tools of the neoliberal war party, a bipartisan construct that includes the Democrats. They join with the rest of the democratic party in flogging the Russiagate story and hope that their constituents won’t ask them about anything else.

Robert Mueller is no different from his prosecutor colleagues across the country. They lie. They over charge and force innocent people to plead guilty. They “squeeze” defendants with threats of draconian sentences and get them to turn on other people or even to tell lies themselves.

Mueller’s indictments of Russian officials is akin to the shady doings that he and the rest of his profession always engage in. After more than one year of investigation Mueller succeeded only in proving that Paul Manafort is a crook and that Donald Trump, Jr. is stupid. The charges against Manafort and Trump attorney Michael Cohen have nothing to do with the Russian collusion story at all. The indictments make a political rather than a criminal case and are a weak effort to prove that the year-long charade was worth carrying out at all.

“After more than one year of investigation Mueller succeeded only in proving that Paul Manafort is a crook and that Donald Trump, Jr. is stupid.”

The allegations made in the indictment are a rehash of claims that the Russian government hacked Democratic National Committee emails and used Wikileaks to release them and discredit Hillary Clinton. The indictment relies on the word of the DNC’s CrowdStrike firm who self-diagnosed a Russian hack without corroboration from anyone else.

Russia does not extradite its citizens so the indicted individuals will never appear in an American courtroom. Of course the last thing Mueller wants is to provide evidence in court. The real purpose of the investigation has succeeded. The goal is to make excuses for the Democratic Party elite, explain away their failures which led to Donald Trump’s election, protect the real electoral colluders in U.S. intelligence agencies, and prevent any normalization of relations between the United States and Russia.

The timing of the indictments killed many birds with one stone. They were a last ditch effort to embarrass Vladimir Putin as the soccer world cup wound down in Moscow and had the added benefit of delegitimizing the Trump and Putin summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland.

“The indictments make a political rather than a criminal case and are a weak effort to prove that the year-long charade was worth carrying out at all.”

Mueller names 12 Russian nationals as military intelligence officers and also says that they conducted the hacking and leaking. He provides no evidence so the claims must be taken on blind faith, something that is never recommended where the feds are concerned.

And this is where the CBC groveling is so shameful. If there were any doubts before, it is now clear that they have thrown in their lot with our enemies. Hillary Clinton was the second Democrat to have a presidential election stolen by Republicans in less than 20 years. In 2000 republicans took eligible voters off the rolls to deny Al Gore a victory in the pivotal state of Florida. In 2016 various forms of voter suppression, and electronic vote theft denied Hillary Clinton enough votes in enough states to give Trump an electoral college victory. She also denied herself by depriving the get-out-the-vote campaign of much needed funds from her $1 billion war chest.

The CBC have said little about the real threats to what is left of democracy in this country. It is Republicans who routinely steal votes, not foreign governments. It was Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and CBC members themselves who chose not to address the needs of their constituents and hoped that she could somehow win by a slim margin. CBC members are among the culprits who brought the Trump presidential administration into being.

“It is Republicans who routinely steal votes, not foreign governments.”

No one in the rogues gallery has been called to account. The so-called resistance is a fraud, a means of stoking fear about Republican bogeyman instead of giving people the right to health care and jobs and housing and gaining electoral victory in the process. The Democrats still hope to win without giving the people what they want and need. Only the specter of Vladimir Putin is enough to get otherwise intelligent people to trust a party which stabs them in the back at every opportunity.

This columnist was in the process of writing this commentary when an email arrived from the NAACP. They were pleased to announce that Bill Clinton would speak at their annual convention now taking place in San Antonio, Texas. This is the same Bill Clinton who ended the right to public assistance and who put thousands more black people behind bars. Yet he is welcomed with open arms by the CBC and their ilk.

It will be interesting to see if Slick Willie will vilify Vladimir Putin too. That may be a bit difficult after earning a cool $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow. But he may do it after all. He is shameless and so are his friends among the black misleaders.

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Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com . Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at [email protected].

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A recently released animated video produced by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) depicts the body as being resolutely involved in what the video describes as the “international fight against terrorism”. The irony, however, is that NATO has a history of perpetuating terror in order to achieve the objectives of its political masters.

How can one not react with cynicism to NATO’s claim to “fight terrorism everyday” when its actions in attacking Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 have facilitated the creation and sustaining of Islamist terror organisations?

The occupation of post-war Iraq led to an insurgency by malcontents from the Sunni community, who felt deprived of the power and privileges they had held during the rule of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist Party. It is from the initial rebellion that the seeds of future Islamist terror groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Islamic State (IS) were sown.

NATO’s strategic bombing of Libya’s infrastructure and its armed forces was done with the specific aim of overthrowing the secular government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. These actions were in support of a rebellion by Islamist groups, the most notable at the time being the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). In fact, it was revealed that British Special Forces trained these rebels and were embedded with their brigades.

The result was not only the entrenchment of Islamist-friendly militias in what had previously been hostile territory for such groups, but also that Libya became the repository of battle-hardened jihadis who transferred their expertise to Syria where NATO countries were also trying to engineer the overthrow of the secular government of Bashar al-Assad. What is more, sizeable quantities of the munitions depots of the fallen Libyan army have got into the hands of Islamist groups active in North Africa such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and further south, in West Africa, where Boko Haram continues to wreak havoc in Nigeria and Cameroon.

NATO has not only created the conditions for terrorism to flourish, member states have actively utilised Islamist groups as proxies in pursuit of the geopolitical goals of the Western alliance. The aforementioned training of members of the LIFG by British Special Forces is not the only documented interaction between the armed forces of NATO members and Islamist groups. The Turkish High Command was involved in setting up training camps for rebels, and enabling their infiltration of Syria. In March 2013, the British Guardian newspaper reported that British, French and American military officers were giving rebels what it termed “logistical and other advice in some form”.

The truth is that NATO has a troubling historical connection to terrorism.

NATO, to this day, refuses to give a full or even partial disclosure of its role in managing the stay-behind networks in its member states, and the role they allegedly played in fomenting terror as a means of discrediting the political Left during the Cold War era. For instance, an Italian investigating judge named Felice Casson was able to link the bomb which exploded and killed three Carabinieri in Peteano in 1972 to military-grade munitions (C4), only available to NATO, discovered at an arms dump created for the Italian stay-behind.

The stay-behinds were groups of secret soldiers who were tasked with the role of fighting occupying troops of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies in the event of an invasion of Western Europe. The networks were supervised by the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). In Italy, the secret army was known by the code-name ‘Gladio’.

It is widely believed in Italy that Gladio was used to facilitate many key terroristic outrages during the anni di piombo (Years of Lead), which lasted roughly from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The idea was to forestall the coming to power of the Italian communists and other Leftists who were gaining a significant amount of electoral support. This, it was reckoned, could be achieved by putting in place a strategy of tension, that is, creating the conditions where terror outrages, carried out by state-aided neo-fascist groups, would be blamed on the Left, and the resultant high level of fear and outrage on the part of the population would lead to widespread calls for the firm rule of a Right-wing government.

This modus operandi as applied in the Peteano attack involved using Vincenzo Vinciguerra of the neo-fascist Ordine Nuovo to plant the bomb, and then calling on the services of Marco Morin, an explosives expert for the Italian police, who forged a report which asserted that the explosive was of a kind traditionally used by Brigate Rosse, Italy’s foremost Left-wing terror group. Morin, was also a member of Ordine Nuovo.

The true origin of the bomb used for the Peteano outrage, Judge Casson later discovered, was from a Gladio arms dump hidden beneath a cemetery near Verona. They were military grade C4 plastic explosives used by NATO.

It should also be noted that Gladio’s commander at the time of the incident, General Geraldo Serravalle, would later testify to an irregularity at another munitions dump near the city of Trieste. Gladio had logged seven containers of C4, but when the Carabinieri had stumbled upon a cache of weapons there in February 1972 -two months before the Peteano incident- there were just four containers left.

At the time of the Trieste discovery, the police had assumed that they had stumbled across an arms cache owned by a criminal syndicate. The connection to Gladio was not discovered until Casson’s investigation.

Vinciguerra himself explicitly linked NATO to many of the outrages perpetrated during the anni di piombo beginning with the bombing at Milan’s Piazza Fontana in 1969. In 1990, he issued the following statement to the Guardian newspaper:

The terrorist line was followed by camouflaged people, people belonging to the security apparatus, or those linked to the state apparatus through rapport or collaboration. I say that every single outrage that followed from 1969 fitted into a single, organised matrix… Avanguardia Nazionale, like Ordine Nuovo, were being mobilised into battle as part of an anti-communist strategy originating not with organisations deviant from the institutions of power, but from within the state itself, and specifically from within the ambit of the state’s relations within the Atlantic Alliance.

Although General Paolo Inzerilli, the head of Italy’s secret service would announce in the latter part of 1990 that Gladio had been disbanded, there is no evidence that this was ever done, or that it was simply transformed into a new model of Special Forces irregulars.

Meanwhile, the communist enemy has been replaced by an Islamic one, and it would not be unreasonable to consider whether Gladio-type units are active in fomenting outrages which give the politicians from NATO countries the excuse to sanction military interventions in Middle Eastern countries, as well to pass legislation of the sort that has been gradually eroding civil liberties since the beginning of the so-called ‘War on Terror’.

It is while bearing these historical and contemporary events in mind that one pauses to reflect on NATO’s fight against terrorism. Its motto, Animus in consulendo liber, Latin for “A mind unfettered in deliberation” could arguably be more fittingly expressed as “A mind unrestrained by diabolical conspiracies”.

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This article was originally published on Adeyinka Makinde’s blog.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His tweets can be read at @AdeyinkaMakinde

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On July 19, 2018, the Israeli parliament ratified into law an apartheid system that has long been a reality. “Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” is the newly approved Basic Law in a country where such laws take the place of the constitution Israel has never had.

The “Nation-State” law had been under consideration for many years, but even many ardent Zionists had been opposed, not because they disagreed with its provisions but because it would remove all doubt worldwide about the apartheid character of the regime. For the same reason, many pro-Israel organizations and leaders in the United States spoke out against the law.

Apartheid is a crime against humanity under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

Total support from the Trump administration, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, was the green light for many members of the parliament (Knesset) to vote for the bill now. At the same time, the massive military and economic support, and diplomatic protection extended by Washington have made Israeli leaders increasingly dismissive of criticism from other governments.

The vote for the law was 62-55, with most of the opposition – excepting 13 Palestinian Arab members – still motivated by fears of international reaction to openly proclaiming Israel to be a racist state.

Ahmed Tibi, one of the dissenting Palestinians legislators, called it “the official beginning of fascism and apartheid.”

An openly racist law

Point 1, “Basic Principles” states:

“A. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established. B. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination. C. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

It should be pointed out that the borders of the “land of Israel” are not defined, as they never have been since the formation of the state in 1948. This is not accidental. From the very beginning, the Israeli colonizers considered their original territory to be insufficient and temporary, and have waged several expansionist wars. Today, crossing into the West Bank one encounters no sign of a border.

Not mentioned here, nor anywhere in the law, are the Palestinian people, who comprised 92 percent of the population a century ago, and who were evicted en masse by means of terror in 1948-49.

The “right to exercise national self-determination . . . is unique to the Jewish people” explicitly denies any national rights to the Palestinians who make up 21 percent of the population inside the 1948 borders, and at least 50 percent of those living today in what was the British colony of Palestine.

One of the aims of making the right of self-determination “unique” to Jewish people is to foreclose such a right for the Palestinians in the case of Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Not only are national rights denied to Palestinians in the law, but nowhere in the text are to be found the words “equality” or “equal rights.”

As this author wrote in an article on Liberation News in early June:

“On June 5, the leadership of the Knesset (parliament) voted not to allow even the discussion of a bill calling for equal rights and status for the ‘Arab and Jewish nationalities’ inside the 1948 borders of the Israeli state.”

The bill, titled, “State of All Its Citizens,” was introduced by three members of the Balad party, Jamal Zahalka, Haneen Zoabi and Jouma Azbarga.  Balad is one of the parties representing the approximately 1.5 million Palestinians living inside Israel.

Speaker of the parliament, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, an immigrant to Israel from Ukraine, called the bill “absurd” and explained why the indigenous Palestinian population must not, from his point of view, be accorded equal rights:

“We cannot allow a proposal whose goal is to gnaw away at the foundations the State of Israel is built upon to be on the Knesset’s agenda.”

Most of Edelstein’s colleagues were in full agreement. Knesset Legal Adviser Eyad Yinon stated:

“As a matter of principle and in its details, it’s hard not to see this proposal as seeking to negate the State of Israel’s existence as a state of the Jewish people.”

The admission that a law calling for equal rights for all would “negate” or “gnaw away at the foundations” of Israel undercut the oft-repeated mantra that Israel is the “only democracy in the Middle East.” In fact, racism and exclusivism have always characterized Zionism, the ideological foundation upon which the state of Israel was constructed.

While the Balad bill would have been overwhelmingly defeated had it come to the Knesset floor, that was an eventuality that Israeli political leaders sought to head-off at all costs, given the embarrassing public relations consequences.

Time for renewed solidarity

In another attack on Palestinian rights, Point 3 of the “nation-state” law asserts that “The capital of the state Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”

Point 4 states that Hebrew is the only state language and downgrades Arabic from an official state language to one with “special status,” meaning that it will not have to be available in state institutions.

Point 5 calls for the “In-gathering of the exiles (sic). The state will be open for Jewish immigration.” This is another blatant apartheid provision. The Israeli state continues to illegally deny the right of return to all Palestinian refugees.

Point 7 stipulates:

“The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”

Again, it is important to point out that there are no geographical restrictions placed of such settlements. The settlements will be Jewish-only. They constitute an obvious violation of international law in addition to the fundamental right of Palestinians to their land.

In their towering arrogance, the rulers of Israel have exposed the profoundly racist character of their state and society. There can be no more credible denials. Now is the time for all people who believe in justice to join in solidarity with the heroic and long-suffering Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination and liberation.

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This article was originally published on Answer Coalition.

Richard Becker is West Coast Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition.

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Introduction

Freedom is Slavery: Destroying Nations in the Name of Democracy

In 1945, British writer and social critic George Orwell wrote a book titled 1984 on the theme of a fictional totalitarian society. The book, one of the most successful in publishing history, relates the aftermath of an atomic world war in which the world is partitioned into three states. One state, Oceania, whose capital is London, is ruled by an English Socialist Party that has total control over all its citizens, especially over their minds. The central mind-control program used to keep its citizens abject and obedient mind slaves was referred to as “doublethink.” In doublethink, subjects were submitted to two contradictory concepts, both of which they must accept as correct simultaneously, termed by psy-chologists “cognitive dissonance.” So, although Oceania is constantly at war, its citizens act as if there is peace too. The essence of the doublethink is summarized by Orwell at the beginning of the novel:

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.1

In the following work I chronicle what, in truth, is an adaptation of Orwell’s doublethink which might be termed “democracy as cognitive dissonance.” It’s the chronicle of one of the most destructive and one of the most effective operations by the intelligence services of any modern state, including of that of Stalin’s Soviet Union or even Hitler’s Goebbels-steered Third Reich. It’s the chronicle of a vast project developed by US intelligence services over decades, going back to the May 1968 CIA student strikes that brought down French President Charles de Gaulle, a determined foe of American global domination.

To purchase F. William Engdahl’s book click the front cover (right)

The Cold War between the countries of NATO and those allied to the Soviet Union lasted nearly a half century. Finally, exhausted and economically in dire straits, the Soviet Union, under Mikhail Gorbachev, raised a white flag of surrender in November 1989, as Moscow let the Berlin Wall fall. The wall had become the symbol of what Winston Churchill, in his famous 1946 Fulton, Missouri–speech, called the Iron Curtain dividing the West–the “Free World” as Washington propaganda was fond of ever repeating–from the communist world dominated by Moscow.

Outside a small circle of US CIA, State Department, and Pentagon senior officials, together with their allies in select Washington think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute or the New York Council on Foreign Relations, what few realized was that Washington was about to unleash the most concerted effort at regime change across the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and the newly formed Russian Federation itself. The rallying call was the “introduction of US-style democracy, freedom, human rights, a neo-liberal free market.” It was to become a tyranny and in some cases, such as Ukraine, it would be far worse than anything experienced under the Soviet regime.

The Washington regime-change operations came to be called “color revolutions” because of the distinct Madison Avenue color-logo themes each destabilization brought with it—the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Green Revolution in Iran, and so forth. Invariably, they targeted any significant nation that stood in the way of what David Rockefeller, in his Memoirs, referred to as a one-world government or Bill Clinton, in the 1990s, referred to by the innocent-sounding term but not-so-innocent process of corporate globalization.2

In truth, what those Washington color revolution regime-change inter-ventions represented was an attempt to replace former communist leaders with handpicked, Washington-corrupted political leaders who would be willing to sell their national crown jewels and their people to select Western financial predators, such as the billionaire speculator George Soros or Western bankers and multinational corporations.

The Aura of American Power

Ironically, the greatest challenge confronting Washington, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the powerful military–industrial and banking lobby groups, who control congressmen and presidents with their money, was the end of the active Cold War in late 1989. There was suddenly no “enemy” to justify continued vast US military spending or the existence of NATO.

James R. Schlesinger, former US defense secretary and later CIA director, described the dilemma:

“American policymakers should be quite clear in their own minds that the basis for determining US force structure and military expenditures in the future should not simply be the response to individual threats, but rather that which is needed to maintain the overall aura of American power.”3

At the end of the 1980s, the economy and financial system of the US was in the throes of its deepest crisis since the Great Depression. The larg-est banks of Wall Street—Citigroup, Bank of America, and others—were technically bankrupt. The deregulation of US Savings & Loan banks had led to a real estate speculation bubble that collapsed in the late 1980s, at the same time as a dramatic fall in world oil prices led to waves of bankruptcies across the US domestic oil industry.

To demand that US taxpayers continue to waste hundreds of billions of their tax dollars on high levels of defense spending for an enemy that could no longer be identified, rather than to create a “peace dividend” that would allow those billions to go to the renewal of America’s rapidly decaying economic infrastructure, was a challenge to the US military and intelligence establishment. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State Colin Powell told Army Times in April 1991:

“Think hard about it, I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains. . . I’m down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.”4

That dilemma was soon to be resolved. Rather than solely relying on military overt force to advance its global agenda, Washington unveiled a dramatic new weapon: “fake democracy” nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that would be used to covertly create pro-Washington regimes in strategic parts of the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Democratic freedom would be the banner, incredibly enough, to introduce a new tyranny: “free” markets in actual fact controlled by Wall Street and European global banks, as well as Western multinational corporations that would loot the vast state-owned resources of the collapsed communist world.

Weaponizing Human Rights

Instead of overt military confrontation, the 1990s, with the brutal exception of Washington’s war in Yugoslavia, were to see the major deployment of what was becoming a dramatically effective new weapon for US-steered, fake democracy regime changes around the world.

So-called “human rights” NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch financed by billionaire speculator George Soros, Freedom House, the International Republican Institute (IRI), Amnesty International USA, or the US govern-ment’s supposedly private National Endowment for Democracy (NED), were to become a primary Washington weapon for regime change to transform the newly independent states of formerly communist Eastern Europe and Russia as well. Later, Washington’s “fake democracy” color revolutions would be brought to China, Central Asia, and, most dramatically, to the oil-rich states of the Middle East as the so-called Arab Spring.

The goal was to turn the target countries into US economic satrapies, or vassal states, by way of a series of regime-change color revolutions. It took a while before the unsuspecting target nations realized what was being done to them and their economies in the name of US export of “democracy.”

The first successful fake democracy color revolution regime change was aimed at Slobodan Milošević, then president of what had become by 1999 former Yugoslavia—Serbia, Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro.

We begin our investigation with a description of the birth of the NGO in Washington that was created with little fanfare by President Reagan’s CIA Director Bill Casey and others in the early 1980s. It was called the NED or National Endowment for Democracy. That NED has played the central role in every Washington-backed regime destabilization aimed at governments pursuing policies not congruent with those of Washington’s post–Cold War new globalization order.

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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. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1. George Orwell, 1984, cited in https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgeorwe141783.html

2. David Rockefeller, Memoirs, p. 405, http://opengov.ideascale.com/a/dtd/David-Rockefeller-s-book-Memoirs-admits-secretly-conspiring-for-a-NWO/4007-4049. The quote reads: “Some even believe we [Rockefeller family] are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – One World, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

3. Joe Stork, New Enemies for a New World Order, MER176, http://www.merip.org/mer/mer176/new-enemies-new-world-order?ip_login_no_cache=e4b-596febb56c8ddb4c739f2806fd833.

4. William W. Kaufmann and John D. Steinbruner, Decisions for Defense (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1991), p. 45.

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The defense of non-ISIS militants in southern Syria has fully collapsed under pressure from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Tiger Forces and their allies.

Government troops have liberated al-Shaikh Sa’d, Tell al-Bahsa, Tell Ashtara, Khirbat al-Tira, al-Sukariyah, Qrqus and Tell al-Jabiyah mostly taking control of these areas accepting surrender deals from members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

According to pro-government sources, members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and the FSA have fully surrendered to the SAA and a radical part of them has accepted an evacuation agreement. Under the agreement, the militants will hand over all of their weapons to the SAA and get an open corridor to move to the militant- held areas in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Additionally, the militants will hand over two observation posts near the villages of Umm Batinah and Ruwayhibah, inside the demilitarized zone, to the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, established by UN Security Council Resolution 350 on May 31, 1974 to separate Syrian and Israeli forces.

Despite this, units of the SAA and the Tiger Forces still have lots of work to secure the rest of the areas, which are still formally controlled by militants.

According an SAA source contacted by SouthFront, government forces and moderate members of the FSA are now actively coordinating their efforts over the developing reconciliation agreement. Their key concern is to prevent attempts by the ISIS-linked Khalid ibn al-Walid Army to use this situation to launch own advance expanding areas under the group’s control in southern Syria.

Meanwhile, in the province of Idlib, up to 6,500 civilians and members of the local National Defense Forces have been evacuated from the besieged government-held towns of al-Fu’ah and Kafriya. According to pro-government sources, at least 160 buses and 10 ambulances have been involved in this effort.

Under the same agreement, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is also set to release dozens of women and children who were captured by its fighters during Idlib offensive in 2015. Abdullah al-Hassan, a HTS official, told the HTS-linked news network Iba’a that in response the Damascus government will release more than 1,500 persons from its jails, including 41 HTS fighters

Al-Fu’ah and Kafriya are the core of a government-held, which has been under siege of HTS and its allies since March 28, 2015. Currently, the SAA has no free resources to carry out a needed large-scale military operation to link up this area with the government-controlled part of Aleppo province. Therefore, Damascus has used a recently opened opportunity to evacuate the besieged civilians and NDF members. The another side of the story is that this decision will de-facto transfer control of al-Fu’ah and Kafriya to HTS.

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All day today the presstitute at NPR went on and on about President Trump, using every kind of guest and issue to set him up for more criticism as an unfit occupant of the Oval Office, because, and only because, he threatens the massive budget of the military/security complex by attempting to normalize relations with Russia.  The NPR even got an ambassador from Montenegro on the telephone and made every effort to goad the ambassador into denouncing Trump for saying that Montenegro had strong and aggressive people capable of defending themselves and were not in need of sending the sons of American families to defend them.

Somehow this respectful compliment about the Montenegro people was supposed to be an insult. The ambassador refused to be put into opposition to Trump. NPR kept trying, but got nowhere.

 As a former Wall Street Journal editor I can say with complete confidence that NPR crossed every line between journalism and advocacy and no longer qualifies as a 501c3 tax-exempt public foundation.

The NPR assault on President Trummp was part of an orchestration.  The same story appeared in the Washington Post, long-believed to be a CIA asset.  Most likely, it has appeared throughtout the presstitute media.  

The ability of the military/security complex to control the explanations given to Americans, about which President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961 to no effect, has produced an American population, a large percentage of which is brainwashed.  

For example, in Caitlin Johnstone’s column, linked below, Kurt Eichenwald, who says that the bottom line is that you either believe “our intelligence community,” which most definitely did not concluded what Eichenwald says they have concluded, “or you support Putin. You are either a patriot, a traitor or an idiot.”

Note that Eichenwald defines a patriot, as do the Democrats, many Republicans, the entirely of the US print and TV media and NPR, as a person who believes the self-serving lies issuing from the military/security complex in support of the $1,000 billion dollars annually taken from unmet US taxpayer needs to put in the pockets of the mega-rich for “defending” American from an orchestrated, but otherwise nonexistent, thrreat. If you don’t support this theft from the American people, you are, according to Eichenwald, “a traitor or an idiot.”

Caitlin Johnstone tells us how utterly stupid Americans are to fall for the line that it is treason to seek peaceful relations with a nuclear power that can destroy us.  This means that presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan were treasonous.  This is the official position of the American presstitute media, the Democratic Party, and the military/security complex.  It is also the position of a fake entity that misrepresents itself as “the American left.”   

This utterly absurd position that to pursue peace is to commit treason is precisely the position that the corrupt American print and TV media and NPR represent.  It is the position of the Democratic Party.  It is the position of the Republians in Congress, such as the warmongers John McCain and Lindsey Graham who are owned by the military/security complex.

Every American who believes the line that reducing tensions with Russia is treasonous is preparing nuclear Armageddon for themselves, their friends and families, and for the entire world.

Caitlin tells it to you like it is, see this.

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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 Intercept.

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It is perhaps typical in a time where a star of the fleshy celluloid wonder Baywatch, should feature as a political voice.  Pamela Anderson’s views are treated with judicious seriousness – at least in some quarters.  Her association with Julian Assange has given needless room for columns on what, exactly, their relationship constitutes. 

Having such defenders as Anderson has added to his conspicuous support base, but it will not move those bureaucrats who are chewing pens in anticipation and pondering options as to how best to eject him from the Ecuadorean embassy (compound would be more fitting) in London.  Easily missed amidst the titter of celebrity gossip is the plight of an ailing Assange, who is facing the next critical stage of his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy.

Since the changing of the guard in Ecuador, President Lenín Moreno has shown a warmer feeling towards the United States, and a desire to raise the issue of Assange’s stay in the embassy with US Vice President Mike Pence with the urgency of man desiring to be rid of a problem.  The UK government has also been brought into the mix.  The forces against Assange are marshalling themselves with a renewed impatience.

A squeeze evidently designed to break the will of WikiLeaks’ publisher-in-chief was commenced in March, with a change of the embassy’s Wi-Fi password effectively blocking his use of the Internet.  Phone calls and visitations have also been curtailed.  The bill of Ecuadorean hospitality, if it can be termed that, also became a subject of discussion – some $5 million expended on security and Assange’s various activities.  Attitudes to a troublesome guest have hardened.

The press circuit has increasingly thickened in recent days with speculation about a round of high-tier discussions being conducted by Ecuador and the UK government on Assange.  The Ecuadorean paper El Comercio has remarked upon the talks.  It was a turn that was unsurprising, with Moreno unimpressed by Assange’s feats and credentials, the Australian being viewed back in January as an “inherited problem” who had created “more than a nuisance” for his government.

According to Glenn Greenwald, the report that those discussions did more than touch on the matter of handing Assange over to UK authorities “appears to be true”. This might trigger an indictment from US authorities and possible extradition proceedings, a point made acute by the promise of US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions back in April to “seek to put some people in jail”, with Assange’s “arrest” being a priority.  “Can’t wait to see,” quipped Greenwald, “how many fake press freedom defenders support that.”

RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan smells that something nasty is brewing.

“My sources tell [Julian] Assange will be handed over to Britain in the coming weeks or even days.  Like never before, I wish my sources were wrong.”

That particular process, it would seem, is being headed by Sir Alan Duncan of the Foreign Office, the same individual who had an impulse back in March to call Assange that “miserable little worm” before fellow parliamentarians.

The line that Assange has been in arbitrary detention has never quite cut it in Duncan’s circles and he has been dangling a carrot with spectacular condescension.

“It is our wish,” he told Parliament last month, “that this can be brought to an end and we’d like to make the assurance that if [Assange] were to step out of the embassy, he would be treated humanely and properly and that the first priority would be to look after his health, which we think is deteriorating.”

Such comments are always rounded up by that fanciful notion that Assange is “in the embassy of his own choice”.  That line on inventive volition was reiterated by Britain’s new foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, who issued a statement of praise for Britain as “a country of due process” keen to see that Assange “face justice for those [serious] charges”:

“At any time he wants to he is free to walk out onto the street of Knightsbridge and the British police will have a warm welcome for him.”

Such grotesquely insincere concerns about health, fashioned as a weapon and an incentive by Duncan, would be academic should Assange find himself on the dismal road to US custody, where promises of a firm and icy welcome have been made.  He would be merely nourished and fattened for a notoriously cruel prison system, analogous to the doctor healing a person on death row.

Anderson herself makes the relevant point about her urgent advocacy for Assange.

“My role is to let people know that he’s a human being and not just a robot or a computer, and that he’s really sacrificing a lot for all of us.  He hasn’t seen sunlight in six years.  His skin is transparent.”

In what is nothing less than a war about what we can see, know and interpret, those who wish to preserve the traditional models of power and the clandestine state remain adamant: Assange is a trouble maker who must disappear.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.  Email: [email protected].

Wikileaks’ latest tweet has the potential to destroy the Democrat Party’s narrative the election of 2016 was corrupted by Russian election meddling. The news agency detailed the contents of the book “Shattered” — written by Jonathan Allen — and it makes some damning accusations.

The work details former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential loss to billionaire Donald Trump. Allen, who was and is a correspondent for Bloomberg News, has also written extensively about Congress, national politics, and works as a political analyst on national television news programs.

Wikileaks uploaded a picture from a page of Allen’s new book which destroys the Russian hacking narrative immediately. Wikileaks tweeted,

“New book by ‘Shattered’ by Clinton insiders reveals that “blame Russia” plan was hatched “within twenty-four hours” of the election loss.”

The page uploaded by Wikileaks explains how the Clinton spin machine was set in motion in the minutes following her loss to Trump. Allegedly, John Podesta (Clinton’s campaign manager), collaborated with Robby Mook (fellow member of the Clinton campaign) to make the argument the election was rigged by the Russians — an argument which was put forward when it was revealed in early 2016 the Democratic National Committee’s emails had been hacked.

Building on that narrative, the Clinton camp reportedly put out the notion to members of the media the election was anything but fair. The suggestion was apparently made that “Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

The page uploaded by Wikileaks explains how the Clinton spin machine was set in motion in the minutes following her loss to Trump. Allegedly, John Podesta (Clinton’s campaign manager), collaborated with Robby Mook (fellow member of the Clinton campaign) to make the argument the election was rigged by the Russians — an argument which was put forward when it was revealed in early 2016 the Democratic National Committee’s emails had been hacked.

Building on that narrative, the Clinton camp reportedly put out the notion to members of the media the election was anything but fair. The suggestion was apparently made that “Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

The motivations for doing so are speculative at best. Was Clinton’s team preparing a comeback in 2020? Was the effort done to cast the shadow of doubt over a Trump presidency? Or was the plan to implicate the Russians a way to rile up voters in an effort to somehow win the presidency when the official electoral votes were cast for the newly elected Trump?

Allen seemed to know, and his sources seemed to indicate the Clinton camp was not at all willing to concede without first doing damage to a Trump presidency. Immediately following the election, riots took place in the streets of several metropolitan areas, including Washington, D.C.

Our very own Claire Bernish took to the streets to document the uprising. With Allen’s revelations and Wikileaks’ charge, those same riots and school walkouts now appear to be a direct result of the Clinton campaign’s spin tactics.

To this date, we’ve still yet to see a single shred of evidence that Russia hacked the US elections. In fact, the US is trying so hard to prove this nonexistent hacking they allegedly bribed a Russian man — offering him cash, citizenship, and an apartment — if he confessed to hacking Clinton’s emails on behalf of Donald Trump. He refused.

The effects of those tactics, as well as the reportedly invented story of Russian meddling, culminated this week with the firing of FBI Director James Comey. His firing took place just as investigations into Russian election meddling were ramping up.

It remains to be seen if Trump’s firing of Comey will quell the wildfire of controversy sparked by what appears to be one candidate’s incessant desire to paint her opponent as nothing more than a pawn of the Russians, and painting herself as a hapless victim.

While there are plenty of reasons to stand against Donald Trump — war, flip-flopping on promises, increasing the police state, etc. — Russian hacking is not one of them.

As late as the first week in May, Clinton was still blaming the Russians among other things. According to the Associated Press, Clinton blamed misogyny (hatred of women), James Comey and the FBI, Russian meddling in the election, and even herself for her loss. Now, it seems, there’s one less group to blame; The Russians.

If Allen is to be believed, it was all an apparent invention from her campaign team in an effort to control the narrative, and in some ways, control the man who beat her. The real question is who is behind these Deep State movements?

Who continues to control the mainstream media’s relentless claims the Russians are to blame for a Trump presidency? Again, our readers should be reminded that not one iota of evidence exists that seem to indicate the Russians were involved at all in U.S. presidential election of 2016. Yet we’ve been told over and over again from talking heads in Washington the Russians did it. There simply is no proof they even attempted to interfere with the U.S. election of 2016.

“But today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.”  – U.S. President Donald Trump (December 6, 2017) [1]

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On December 6, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump made the very controversial announcement that his administration was authorizing the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem from its previous base in Tel Aviv. [2]

The announcement was the latest outrage generated by the divisive Head of State. Though welcomed by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian leaders interpreted the move as a declaration of American abandoning any pretense of playing an honest broker role in settling the Middle East conflict. Protests would erupt in the Gaza strip. The U.N. General Assembly voted on December 21st to condemn US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In spite of U.S. efforts to bully member nations into compliance with their position, the final vote was 128 nations in favour and nine votes against with 35 abstentions. [3][4][5]

The U.S. position contributed to the recent spate of violence along the Gaza border which saw Israeli Defense forces firing on unarmed protesters, leaving over 140 Palestinians dead. [6]

Recognizing that the Middle East Peace Process, and the U.S. role in that process may have undergone a fundamental re-visioning, organizers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada decided to stage a public discussion at the University of Winnipeg, entitled My Jerusalem: Responding to the U.S. Embassy Announcement. The aim was to examine some of the historical background of the Holy City, and its significance to representatives of the three major Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, which trace their spiritual lineage to this special place.

The discussion was held February 28th, 2018 at the U of W’s Eckhardt-Grammattee Hall. Sponsors included the Canadian Arab Association of Manitoba, Global College – University of Winnipeg, Independent Jewish Voices – Winnipeg, Mennonite Central Committee – Manitoba, Mennonite Church Manitoba Working Group on Palestine and Israel, Peace Alliance Winnipeg, United Church Conference of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario, United Jewish Peoples Order – Winnipeg, and United Network for Justice & Peace in Palestine & Israel.

The evening featured a historical breakdown of the Jerusalem and its place in Palestine from pre-World War I to the present. Panelists Rabbi David Mivasair, Idris Elbakri, and Fadi Ennab spoke in turn. A Question and Answer engagement followed.

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Video courtesy of Community video-grapher Paul S. Graham.

Esther Epp-Thiessen is the Public Engagement Coordinator for the Mennonite Central Committee Ottawa Advocacy Office. Esther is a longtime staffperson with Mennonite Central Committee, and has served with MCC in the Philippines and also in various parts of Canada. As the public engagement coordinator for MCC’s advocacy office she has helped to spearhead a campaign on Palestine and Israel called A Cry for Home. She is a trained historian and has written several books on themes in Mennonite history.

Rabbi David Mivasair is motivated by the Biblical command to “seek peace and pursue it” and lived in Jerusalem for four years. He is active with Independent Jewish Voices in Canada, sits on the Rabbinic council of Jewish voices for Peace in the US, and is Rabbi Emeritus of the Ahavat Olam Synagogue in Vancouver where he lives.

Idris Elbakri was born in the city of Jerusalem and spent his formative years there, he has lived in Winnipeg for nearly 13 years and been active in a number of community initiatives including grassroots efforts to welcome Syrian refugees.

Fadi Ennab is a lecturer and educator on migration and anti-oppression and is a Palestinian-Canadian from an Arab-Christian background born and raised in the Middle East.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 4pm.

Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time. 

Notes:

1. https://www.vox.com/2017/12/6/16742640/trump-jerusalem-israel-speech-full-text
2. https://www.dw.com/en/us-recognizes-jerusalem-as-israels-capital/a-41683294
3. ibid
4. ibid
5. Harriett Alexander (December 21, 2017), ‘Donald Trump’s decision on Jerusalem condemned by UN general assembly despite US ‘bullying’ over vote of censure’, The Telegraph; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/21/donald-trumps-decision-jerusalem-condemned-un-general-assembly/
6. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/gaza-protest-latest-updates-180406092506561.html