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In the hysterical wake of the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki, President Donald Trump was roundly criticised in the media for taking the side of a “hostile state” over his own intelligence agencies. The Guardian referred to Mueller as a “heroic marine” who Trump disbelieved in favour of a “Russian dictator”.

In the past, when Trump has criticised the FBI, CIA or NSA he has been accused of “undermining faith in our institutions”. He’s been blamed for a collapse of trust in the government. But was this trust ever earned?

At every corner, we are urged to simply believe what we are told. Whether it is about believing Porton Down and MI6 about “novichok”, or believing the White Helmets about Sarin, or believing the FBI about “collusion”, we are presented with no facts, just assertions from authority. Those who question those assertions are deemed “bots” at best or “traitors” at worst.

Well here, fellow traitors, are the Top Ten reasons to question anything and everything the CIA – or any intelligence agency – has ever told you.

That’s our list, and there’s really only one lesson you can take away from it:

These people, agencies and institutions deserve no trust, have earned no trust and have abused every micron of trust ever placed in them. To suggest we have a duty to believe them – or that they have ever done anything to serve the public good – is to live in a dream world.

This list is not a full catalogue of Deep State crimes, it would be 1000s of entries long if it were, but these ten are important. They’re important because they are admitted, proven and beyond debate. They are important because they show the many facets of dishonesty, hypocrisy and abuses of power that Intelligence agencies engage in, and they are important because they form the best riposte to the disingenuous clamour for “trust” in our “democratic institutions”.

Never trust the CIA, they have proved they don’t deserve it.

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For those of you who understand our world has gone nutty here’s a headline to cement your understanding. POLITICO Magazine exclaims – “The Will Die in Tallinn: Estonia Girds for War With Russia.” No, you are not dreaming, a so-called expert wrote a piece outlining the tiny Baltic nation’s plan to thwart a coming Russian invasion. Read on and cross your fingers in the hopes Putin does not have designs on Iowa.

Author Molly K. McKew decided to preview the coming Donald Trump meetup with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki with a nonsensical tale of an Estonian Special Forces chap to crystallize a blatant fearmongering lie. McKew and her colleagues at Robert Allbritton’s elitist/globalist magazine want the world to believe Russia has designs on Europe. Resuscitating the same old narrative from the Georgia War the west fueled in 2008 the first place, the lobbyist turned information warfare expert transforms herself into a NATO troll. Trolling Trump and Putin, tossing in some fancy military strategy terms, and digs up one Colonel Riho Uhtegi, who’s commander of the Estonian Special Operations Force, in order to strike fear into Putin and Russia! Yes, Estonia is fully prepared to go it alone against the Russian bear. Oh boy. Maybe you’ll want to read Dustin Giebel’s critique of the expert McKew here.

Her quizzing of the good colonel ends as an assessment of “new” capabilities powered by fantastical military rationalization. Colonel Uhtegi, in his posturing for POLITICO, compares Estonia’s situation in relation to the limited warfare Russia carried out in Georgia. These two geniuses leave out the fact that the Georgia War was a result of ill-advised actions by then-President George W. Bush. The NATO membership MAP Plan suggested by Bush forced Vladimir Putin’s hand. Anyway, the conversation in between the would-be cyberwarfare guru McKew and the unconventional (or crazy as hell) Estonian colonel reminds me of the disastrous (for Germany) Operation Bagration (1944) when Soviet forces sliced through Hitler’s main army group to take Poland in two weeks. These nincompoop analysts and military misfits assume Vladimir Putin will invade a NATO country with some kind of token asymmetrical warfare force. The pair go on to discuss a “hybrid conflict” arising out of an act of ultimate war in between Russia and the western alliance! These people are idiots, but let’s move on to bigger logic.Quasi-experts spitting out the globalist narrative always seem to ignore the biggest deterrents to a Putin invasion of Europe proper. Not to worry though, I shall explain briefly.

Russia has absolutely no interest in Europe other than tourism and natural gas sales. Of course, a preemptive invasion to create a “kill zone” should NATO advance is a real strategic probability. But in general, all Europe has to offer Putin and Russia are more mouths to feed. Let’s be clear on this. Russia holds all the natural resource cards. Russia has all the free land left. Russia has been on the defensive since FOREVER. Point two. Besides and Eiffel Tower and some ancient ruins to visit here or there, the Russians pretty much have everything Europeans do. Let’s move on to point two.

NATO experts and Washington think tanks continually mull over geo-strategic mumbo jumbo. Like attorneys create laws to ensure their own usefulness and longevity, war academics invent scenario after scenario in order to get their paychecks. You cannot find an assessment of the Georgia War, for instance, that tells you the real reason Russia did not take over in days. Yes, I know the reason, now get ready for it. Putin and Medvedev did not take over Georgia in days because they wanted to avoid collateral civilian deaths. The “hybrid conflict” in Georgia had two distinct limiting characteristics. First and foremost, Russians are Georgians and vice versa. Killing off their own people was not something Putin or Dmitry Medvedev wanted. Add to this limitation the fact the Russian military was still rebuilding after being decimated during the Yeltsin era and preventing collateral damage was nearly impossible if the Russians practiced the Georgia War in any way other than they did. End of story. Russia’s forces are now 100 times more effective, and the entirety of NATO has zero chance of containing them. Forget about Estonia being invaded though. Putin can visit the Christmas market in Tallinn whenever he feels like it. That is unless Estonian Nazis in the military are not put in power. In that case, Russia may have to spank a few Baltic butts.

To conclude, there’s really no danger of Russian bodies lining the blood-soaked streets of Tallinn. But the main reason this will not happen is not that Putin’s military could crush Estonian forces in a day or two. The biggest deterrent against Baltics-Russia crisis is the fact citizens in these countries harbor no hate for one another. The hate rhetoric you read about is manufactured by the NATO trolls and the western elitist media. How can I know this? Well, my good friends in Pskov, Russia drive to Riga or Tallinn unimpeded, and on a regular basis. Singing stars like Brussels’ own Laura Fabian and Russia’s now deceased legendary baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky gave yearly concerts there. Normal human beings in these and other nations do not come and go each day envisioning global war and senseless bloodshed. Normal human beings have the job of living.

So, is it fair to claim that POLITICO analysts and Estonian warfighters are abnormal? Should we condemn the Washington think tanks for dreaming up our destruction? You’re damn right, they are abnormal, and they do want us all to die.

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Phil Butler is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

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Hamas is a legitimate political organization, not a terrorist group as falsely designed by Israel and Washington in deference to the Jewish state.

The shameful designation gives Israel an unjustifiable pretext to hold two million Gazans hostage under flagrantly unlawful land, sea and air blockade – an act of war by any standard.

Gaza’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades military wing is no match for the might of Israel’s IDF – nuclear armed and dangerous, along with powerful ground, sea and aerial weapons able to turn the Strip to rubble barely resisted.

The world community is a bystander in the face-off between Israel and all Palestinians – murdering, imprisoning, torturing, dispossessing, and otherwise brutalizing them with impunity.

What’s been ongoing for 70 years continues with no end of it in prospect because world leaders are indifferent about Palestinian rights, uncaring about their longstanding suffering – beholden to Israel no matter how egregious its actions.

As long as the Jewish state has US support, it’s free to get away with mass murder and much more – Hamas, other Palestinian victims, and others cross-border falsely blamed for Israeli high crimes committed against them.

Kites, flaming or otherwise, do not justify Israeli war on two million trapped Gazans – virtually defenseless in the face of its might.

Is this where things are heading – Israel’s fourth preemptive war of aggression on the Strip in the last decade?

Supplemented by cross-border tank and artillery shelling, Israel terror-bombed dozens of Gazan sites on Friday – after days of hostilities launched earlier.

For the 17th consecutive Great March of Return Friday, Israel used excessive lethal force against peaceful demonstrators – including against women, children, journalists and paramedics aiding the wounded.

Israel considers defenseless civilians legitimate targets. Terror-bombing and otherwise brutalizing them is standard practice.

Do IDF soldiers, airmen, and naval personnel ever question their high crimes? Have they no shame, no sense of decency, no idea of the difference between right and wrong?

Do they simply follow orders blindly, ignoring the rule of law? For decades, they committed the most egregious of high crimes – naked aggression against targeted nations and Palestinians menacing no one.

As long as the Jewish state exists, regional and world peace are threatened.

Israel’s sordid history is blood-drenched, unmatched in modern times along with Washington’s war on humanity.

The late Edward Said once called conditions in Occupied Palestine “a disheartening bloody impasse.” The Territories are a virtual isolated prison, an entire population being suffocated into submission or out of existence.

Israeli viciousness is unrelenting, a nation transformed into a killing machine, Palestinians subjected to ruthless state terror.

Zionism’s final solution is eliminating Palestinians by slow-motion genocide.

Israel and its “Zionist agencies, forces and terrorist gangs ruthlessly (conduct) a systematic and comprehensive military, political, religious, economic, and cultural campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious group (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) constituting the Palestinian people,” Francis Boyle earlier explained, adding:

“This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a).”

It continues causing “serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b).”

The Jewish state deliberately and maliciously “inflicts on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.”

Ilan Pappe explained

“(t)he  inhuman living conditions in (Gaza), the most dense area in the world, and one of the poorest human spaces in the northern hemisphere, disabl(ing) the people who live it to reconcile with the imprisonment Israel had imposed on them ever since 1967.”

The rest of Occupied Palestine fares little better, subjected to dozens of brutalizing community raids weekly, numerous arrests and detentions, an entire population held hostage to an occupying power treating them like subhumans.

William Cook’s book on “The Plight of the Palestinians: A Long History of Destruction” explains “methodical genocide in Palestine (since) the 1940s.”

James Petras earlier addressed “Israeli genocide and its willing accomplices” – Washington, complicit Western partners, rogue Arab regimes, and “major Zionist organizations.”

Richard Falk earlier asked is it an “irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with (Nazi Germany’s) collective atrocity? I think not,” he stressed.

Israeli Ziofascists threaten Gaza’s total destruction. Is Israeli naked aggression on the Strip coming?

Were days of terror-bombing, cross border shelling, and shooting peaceful Gazan demonstrators prelude to full-scale war?

On Saturday, hostilities stopped for now, an IDF statement saying “(a)t the end of an assessment by the southern command this morning, it was decided to maintain a full civilian routine in the communities close to the Gaza strip.”

Does it reflect a temporary calm before a full-scale storm? Israeli agreements are made to be breached.

It’s just a matter of time, maybe days, before Israel’s killing machine unleashes its venom again – maybe full-scale aggression on Gazans for the fourth time since December 2008.

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

Click image below to view Michel Chossudovsky’s video presentation under the auspices of The International Movement for a JUST World, JUST Malaysia

The evidence amply confirms that Malaysian Airlines MH17 was not brought down by a surface to air missile. It was brought down by a military aircraft. 

The U.S and its allies continue to accuse Russia and the Donbass separatists of having brought down the plane with a surface to air missile.

The Dutch investigation has been twisted. The families of the victims have been misled. 

“Machine Gun Like Holes”

The shrapnel marks should be distinguished from the small entry and exit holes “most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile” fired from a military aircraft. These holes could not have been caused by a missile explosion as hinted by the MSM and the “official” investigation.

While the MSN is saying that the “shrapnel like holes” can be caused by a missile, the OSCE has confirmed the existence of what it describes as “machine gun like holes”.

In this regard, the GSh-302 firing gun operated by an Su-25 is able to fire 3000 rpm which explains the numerous entry and exit holes.

Click image below to view Michel Chossudovsky’s presentation

According the DSB, Ukraine’s National Bureau of Air Accidents Investigation (NBAAI) requested the Netherlands to undertake the investigation on 23 July 2014.

The perforations were identified as the result of “high energy objects” from outside the aircraft.

The Dutch Safety Board dismissed from the outset an analysis of the machine gun-like holes, stating that these were the consequence of the explosion of the surface to air missile which was “spraying its fragments” towards the aircraft.

See below:

Screenshot from the video (below)

Simulation of the shrapnel which allegedly according to the DSB report created the perforations of the fuselage. 

They also casually denied the testimonies of witnesses (recorded by a BBC report, which was subsequently supressed) who saw a second aircraft. Nor do they mention the testimony of the Spanish air traffic controller.

The government of the Netherlands issued an official statement, without evidence:

‘The downing of flight MH17 caused unimaginable suffering,’ said Dutch foreign minister Stef Blok. ‘The government has always said that the truth surrounding the MH17 disaster had to be brought to light and that justice must be achieved for the victims and their next of kin. The Netherlands has the support of the international community in this respect. On the basis of the JIT’s conclusions, the Netherlands and Australia are now convinced that Russia is responsible for the deployment of the Buk installation that was used to down MH17. The government is now taking the next step by formally holding Russia accountable.’

Below is the video summary of the Dutch Safety Board Investigation, which excluded outright that the perforations of the fuselage could have been triggered by gun fire from an aircraft.

See also the report of the Spanish air traffic controller based at the Ukraine airport who reports the presence of another aircraft.

Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing MH#17

 

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Dana Milbank wrote it off as a victory of demographics, a minor, inconsequential point which left the “down-the-line liberal” Rep. Joe Crowley in its wake, a simple ploy that avoids any hard headed analysis of the Democrats themselves.  “The argument that there is a Democratic establishment resisting the progressive tide is a straw man.”

This was as one such reaction to the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Congressional primary for New York’s 14^th District, secured against the secure middling Rep. Crowley, who had been fairly immune to challenges – three in all – the last being in 2004.  This fact tended to induce a certain failing not found in other seasoned politicians: an ultimately fatal vulnerability in campaigning.

The primary night debate between an ill-prepared Crowley and confident Ocasio-Cortez last month left the veteran exposed. Ocasio-Cortez, in contrast to her overly seasoned opponent, “presented,” in the words of Briahna Gray, “as a well-studied newcomer with natural talent: delivering a summary of her agenda in a manner which was confident and sharp, if not effortless.  The theme of her remarks was clear: ‘Not all Democrats are the same.’”

Fundamentally, and critically for the Democrats, the youthful usurper was pitching an angle neglected by the card carriers of orthodoxy in the party. “It’s not enough to fight Trump. We have to fight the issues that made his rise in the first place.”

All Crowley was effectively doing was using Trump as an alibi for was believed to be a certain victory: a vote for Crowley would have been a vote for an old, steady hand against the absurd.  In contrast Ocasio-Cortez was insisting on single-payer healthcare, invigorating the Democratic Socialist platform nationally, and abolishing the immigration enforcement agency.

The vanquishing of Bernie Sanders by a ruthless, and ill-sighted Clinton machine in 2016 left a testy vacuum that may well be finding some filling at long last.  Party, with its assembly of officials, does not come first. The movement does.  Hence the emergence, with some consequence, of the Democratic Socialists of America, which has also given a taster of how Sandersland, the sort despoiled by the Clinton apparatus, can be repositioned and reclaimed. In the Trump-era, the DSA has found itself with surging membership.  The party founded by Michael Harrington is thriving with resurgent intoxication.

As the DSA National Director Maria Svart explained to CNN,

“Democratic socialism speaks to people’s fears and anger and offers a positive vision. We remind people of the power of collective action and we help people overcome the isolation and loneliness that they experience and that sense of powerlessness.”

There is little doubt that the establishment is shaken.  Joe Lieberman seemed frightened.  Ocasio-Cortez “didn’t speak much about foreign policy during the primary, but when she did, it was from the DSA policy book – meaning support for socialist governments, even if they are dictatorial and corrupt (Venezuela), opposition to American leadership in the world, even to alleviated humanitarian disasters (Syria), and reflexive criticism of one of America’s great democratic allies (Israel).”

The other approach is somewhat more guileful, such as that of the Democratic governor of Rhode Island.  Gina Raimondo has been making an effort to capture a bit of the Ocasio-Cortez lustre in the hope that it will fireproof her against progressive contenders.  This has been noted as a fairly absurd proposition, given her Wall Street links.

Another angle is to simply avoid the issue altogether, or view it in tactical, localised terms.  Yes, goes E.J. Dionne Jr. in The Washington Post, the victory was impressive.  But in such roots was a basic traditionalism inherent in New York politics: “the transition of power from one ethnic group to another.” Seeing this “as a prelude to a radical takeover of the Democratic Party badly misreads what has been happening.”  No apparent “lurch”, merely a sprinkling of modest moderates getting their due in some bloodletting of the old guard.

For all that qualified dampening, the Ocasio-Cortez victory might well be catching.  Eoin Higgins of The Intercept detects one aspect of this trend, suggesting the  prospect of young women of colour in the offing on the broader US political stage.  Tahirah Amatul-Wadud is another such contender, vying for Massachusetts’s 1^st District.  Her intended opponent is the firmly ensconced Richard Neal.

This has all the makings of a New York re-run: confident upstart youth in a direct challenge with party plutocracy.  Neal’s problem is very much one of established, long-in-tooth politicians who have essentially treated Washington as a retirement village stacked with delightful, seemingly endless perks buttressed by the incurably seductive power of the establishment.

The local Weekend Gazette demonstrated this point in taking out a missing person’s ad: “Has anyone seen this man (yes, he’s our congressman).” The jibe was fittingly sharp: Neal had been near invisible, lost in the capital’s obscure undergrowth. “All we’re saying is this: Come to Williamsburg to meet the voters in a Town Hall and let’s have a conversation about issues that are important to rural voters.”

That’s the crucial, and perhaps fatal point of many such practitioners of party, as opposed to representative politics. If the victory of Ocasio-Cortez is anything to go by, such absentee, even petrified figures in Congress protected by the armour of their parties are viewing a possible, and healthy removal, from the scene of US politics. And just to add some ballast to that prospect some of Hillary Clinton’s former advisors, one of them Jake Sullivan, admit to a reality that is fast thumping on the doors of those in denial: That the centre of gravity in US politics “is moving, and this is a good thing.”

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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]

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On July 18, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said that their members, backed up by the US-led coalition, had captured 1,100km2, which included sixteen villages, from ISIS in the provinces of al-Hasakah and Deir Ezzor.

According to the SDF, four ISIS members were killed and four others were captured during the advance. One SDF member reportedly died. Additionally, the SDF captured a pickup truck, two heavy machine guns, a RPG-7 launcher, mines and ammunition. The provided numbers show that ISIS had shown almost no resistance to the advancing US-backed force.

A day earlier, on July 17, Ilham Ehmed, co-chairperson of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), a political wing of the SDF, announced that the SDC will open offices in the provinces of Hama, Homs, Latakia and in the capital of Damascus in the near future in a move allegedly aimed to propel negotiations between the SDF/SDC and the Damascus government.

The announcement came a day after a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Putin in Helsinki on July 16, during which the discussed the situation in Syria and other important topics.

Meanwhile, militants in the southern Syrian city of Daraa handed over another batch of weapons to the Syrian Arab Army. This batch included three T-55 battle tanks, two BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, four so-called “Hell canons”, several heavy machine guns and ammunition.

A reconciliation agreement in the area was reached on July 14 and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) restored control of the city. Since then, militants have been surrendering their weapons there.

A local reconciliation deal was also reached in the town of Nawa, northeast of Daraa city. According to pro-government sources, units of the SAA have established control of key hills around the town by July 19 and militants have started preparing to hand over their weapons.

Earlier a series of firefights between the SAA and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took place in Nawa. However, a more moderate part of militants was able to expel Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from the area.

Russia has established a center for receiving, relocating and accommodating refugees in Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on July 18. The center will monitor the return of displaced persons and Syrian refugees from foreign countries to their homes. It will also be involved in humanitarian aid deliveries and will assist the Syrian government in restoring healthcare and human services.

As the conflict in most of Syria comes to an end of its hot phase, humanitarian operations and the ability of the Damacsus government to restore a peaceful life across the country will become important factors impacting the prospects of a possible political solution of the entire conflict.

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From the 17 July 2018, the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be able to prosecute leaders responsible for waging aggressive war – with conditions. This is the fourth ‘core’ crime that the ICC has jurisdiction over and is the first time since the post-WWII trials in Nuremburg and Tokyo, that an international court will be able to hold leaders individually criminally responsible for waging aggressive war.

The crime was included in the ICC jurisdiction back in 1998 (when the court was established), but was suspended until its elements could be decided (in 2010) then ratified by at least 30 states (in 2016). To date, 35 states parties have ratified the new statute, including 14 NATO member states: Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. This means that over half of the NATO member states have not done so, including three states – France, the UK and USA – that also hold permanent seats at the UN Security Council. The UK and France, rather shockingly, appear to have done all they can to block the process on the grounds of seeking ‘greater clarity’. The United States has been a longstanding opponent of the court.

Acts of aggression are defined under the statute as: invading another state; bombing another state; blockading the ports or coastlines of another state; attacking the land, sea, or air forces, or marine or sea fleets of another state; violating a status of forces agreement; using armed bands, groups, irregulars or mercenaries against another state; allowing territory to be used by another state to perpetrate an act of aggression against a third state.

In light of the amount of space given to allegations of Russian acts of aggression in the recently concluded Brussels NATO Summit Declaration, the reticence among key alliance member states is all the more surprising and hypocritical. And NATO as an institution, through the Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, could have spoken in favour of the court but has failed to do so, no doubt a reflection of the divisions within the alliance on this issue.

Although ICC jurisdiction over aggression is now activated, its direct power of prosecution will only apply to nationals of the 35 states that have so far ratified the newly defined crime. In addition, the ICC Prosecutor must wait for a determination of the UN Security Council regarding an act of aggression. If the Security Council determines an act of aggression has taken place, the Prosecutor may proceed. Thus, as the human rights barrister, Geoffrey Robertson, argues,

“the superpower veto means that it will not be allowed to finger the collar of any politician or military leader who has acted in alliance with one of the security council’s ‘big five’”.

Nonetheless, this is a potentially powerful addition to the ICC’s jurisdiction. The need to hold to account those responsible for illegal acts of aggression remains one of the biggest challenges of our time. Consider Russia in Crimea, the US and UK in Iraq, Saudi Arabia in Yemen, etc. The capability to scrutinise illegal military interventions and, in some cases, prosecute those responsible for them, should help to move our system of international relations towards a stronger rules-based approach, rather than one based on military power.

And even with the right of veto, the new statute may act as a deterrent on coalition-type military interventions – as argued by Tom Dannenbaum. If, for example, a possible, proposed, or ongoing use of force by the United States would meet (even potentially) the criteria for a criminal aggression, this might deter foreign cooperation with the action, including among longstanding US NATO allies that have signed the statute. These include Germany (with its US military bases), Poland (a significant contributor to the 2003 invasion of Iraq) and Belgium (the home of NATO decision-making). The key question, from the US and these allies’ perspective, is: under what conditions would such leaders be criminally liable for cooperating in a US act of aggression?

In conclusion, while prosecution by the ICC for illegal war-mongering remains unlikely as of today, the addition of the crime of aggression to the court’s legal toolbox should be cause for optimism. Public pressure is now required to increase the number of signatory states to the statute, especially in those 15 NATO member states that shamefully remain outside of its jurisdiction.

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Following a request under the Freedom of Information Act submitted by Peace Now and the Movement for Freedom of Information (and after refusing to give the information and a two-and-a-half year delay), the Civil Administration’s response was received:

• 99.76% (about 674,459 dunams) of state land allocated for any use in the Occupied West Bank was allocated for the needs of Israeli settlements. The Palestinians were allocated, at most, only 0.24% (about 1,625 dunams).
• Some 80% of the allocations to Palestinians (1,299 dunams) were for the purpose of establishing settlements (669 dunams) and for the forced transfer of Bedouin communities (630 dunams). Only 326 dunams at most were allocated without strings for the benefit of Palestinians, and at least 121 of those dunams are currently in Area B under Palestinian control.
• Most of the allocations to the Palestinians (about 53%) were made prior to the 1995 Interim Agreement (the Oslo II Agreement, in which the West Bank was divided into Areas A, B and C, and transferred control over 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority).

Click here to read the report as a PDF.

The High Court of Justice is currently facing the issue of the evacuation of the Palestinian village of Al-Khan al-Ahmar, which the state wants to demolish and expel its residents to another area. The residents of the village are asking the High Court of Justice to stop the evacuation until the Civil Administration discusses the detailed construction plan they prepared for the village’s approval, which the state has refused to consider. The data revealed here about the state’s systematic abstention from allocating land for Palestinian use attests to the severe and structural discrimination that prevents the villagers from obtaining the land and from getting their village retroactively approved. The question of the legality of this discrimination will be hanging in the background of the upcoming High Court hearing.

Peace Now:

“The significance of the data is that the State of Israel, which has been in control of the West Bank for more than 50 years, allocates the land exclusively to Israelis, while allocating virtually no land for the unqualified benefit of the Palestinian population. Land is one of the most important public resources. Allocation of land for the use of only one population at the expense of another is one of the defining characteristics of apartheid. This is further proof that Israel’s continued control of the occupied territories over millions of Palestinian residents without rights and the establishment of hundreds of settlements on hundreds of thousands of dunams has no moral basis.”

Movement for Freedom of Information, Adv. Noa Shalit:

“The request for information was submitted to the Civil Administration in March 2016, and it took more than two years to obtain an answer that matched the requested information. In our eyes, the information received does not justify the continuation of the process and the foot-dragging by the Civil Administration, which for two years has tried to exhaust us and to prevent the publication of this critical information in order to bring it to the attention of the public.”

Background: “State Land” – Of Which State?

Land is one of the main and most precious public resources in every place and society. The division of this resource is key to development and growth, and the manner in which land resources are distributed is an expression of government policy with a decisive influence on the welfare of the residents.

The term “state land” is misleading because there is no “state” in the occupied territories, neither the State of Israel nor an independent State of Palestine. The more appropriate term is “public land”—lands that belong to the public.In independent countries, it is the state that manages public lands.

The state decides to whom to allot the land and assigns it in leases or for various uses. In the occupied territories, the person who manages the public lands is the Israeli military body, whose policy is dictated by the Israeli government, while the Palestinians have no assigned right to influence this policy.

Until the Interim Agreement in 1995 (Oslo II), the IDF was responsible for all residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including the conduct of daily life in all towns and villages. But since then has been directly responsible for “only” 60% the West Bank (Area C) and indirectly on certain aspects in the rest of the West Bank, as well.

A. Allocation of State Land to Israelis Only

Before 1967, most of the area that the Civil Administration defines as state land was not considered public property. Over the years since then, Israel has declared close to one million dunams of “state land,” and has included almost all of these lands within the jurisdiction of the local settlement authorities. The Palestinians were therefore precluded from using this land even before the land was allocated for any use.

The military administration is obligated to take care of­ the protected residents of the occupied territory (in this case, the Palestinians). As the Supreme Court held: “The military government is not entitled to sell government property, and its legal status in that property is the same as that of a recipient of a benefit only.” This is both according to the provisions of international humanitarian law and Israeli administrative law (HCJ 393/82 Jam’iyat Iskan al-Malamun v. Commander of Israel Defense Forces [4], 785 (1983) 791).

As the Association for Civil Rights in Israel explains: Israel holds state land in an occupied territory as a trustee, and must do everything possible to preserve and develop it for the benefit of the local Palestinian population. The very use of state land for the purpose of building settlements and/or developing infrastructure and industrial zones not in favor of the Palestinian population constitutes a violation of international law. The fact that the activity of the Custodian of Government and Abandoned Property in the Civil Administration has been conducted for years without transparency and in violation of basic rules of proper administration is not coincidental. A situation in which no one knows how much state lands there is, how much was allocated and to whom makes for almost unlimited possibilities for manipulation.

Now it turns out that the overarching policy of Israeli governments throughout the years has been to allocate as much land as possible for Israeli settlement use, and not to allocate any land to the Palestinians who make up 88 percent of the West Bank population.

B. Inflated information given by the Civil Administration to the Court in 2013

In 2013, the Civil Administration gave Bimkom and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) information on state land allocated to Palestinians in a petition filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The information provided at the time stated that the total amount of state land allocated to the Palestinians was 8,649 dunams, about 1.27% of the state land allocated in general.

Peace Now asked the Civil Administration for details on the purpose of these allocations, and in the Civil Administration’s response (obtained after two and a half years) it turned out that the figures given to Bimkom and ACRI in the court proceedings were misleading. In fact, only 1,625 dunams of state land were allocated to the Palestinians, not 8,649.

The difference between the data (about 7,000 dunams!) can be explained from the response of the Civil Administration to Peace Now: “A review of all the materials revealed that the data provided included all land allocations to the Palestinians, and not necessarily allocations of state lands.” In other words, the vast majority of the 8,649 dunams allocated to the Palestinians were not state lands, but private lands of Palestinians considered absentees, which were used extensively in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1968, Israel began to establish settlements in the Jordan Valley on private Palestinian land, and in return gave the owners alternative lands, mainly those of other Palestinians considered absentee, or what were called “Badal” lands or “Tabdil”. As an aside, it should be noted that at the same time, the military administration had prepared a list of all the absentee landowners whose land was allocated to the Palestinians or the settlers (the “One Hundred List” – named after the number of people on the list) and determined that they would not be granted entry permits back into the West Bank.

Below is how the State Comptroller describes this in Report 56A on Land Administration by the Civil Administration, p. 194:

B. Allocation of Palestinian lands – In the late 1960s and 1970s, Palestinian land was allocated to Israeli communities in the Jordan Valley, through land swaps, in which Palestinians were granted alternative land owned by absentees, and by direct allocation of land belonging to absentees on the scale of thousands of dunams. These allocations, which were defined in the documents of the Legal Advisor to the Civil Administration as seemingly illegal, continued to be carried out by the Administration later. (Emphasis added).

C. List of State Land Allocated to the Palestinians – Response of the Civil Administration (CA):

To download the state’s response, click here.

D. Analysis of the Data

1968 – Allocation of land for the purpose of establishing settlements in the Jordan Valley (669 dunams) – Approximately 41% of the land on the list was allocated in 1968 in the Jordan Valley. In the years immediately following the 1967 war, Israel established many settlements in the Jordan Valley and took private land from Palestinians and in return gave the owners other lands. Supposedly, the 669 dunams allocated to the Palestinians in the Jordan Valley in 1968 were part of the “land swap” that Israel imposed on the landowners. It is possible that even the 50.2 dunams allocated to the residents of Jiftlik in 1972 were part of an exchange deal for the establishment of a settlement, but we have no information about this.

Allocations prior to the Oslo II Agreement – The Interim Agreement signed in September 1995 divided the West Bank into Areas A and B (40% of the West Bank) where civil control was handed over to the Palestinian Authority, and Area C (60% of the West Bank) where Israel is in charge of all civil and security control. Most of the land allocated to Palestinians (866 dunams, about 53 percent) was allocated before the Interim Agreement, when Israel directly administered all Palestinian towns and villages.

Despite the full Israeli responsibility, almost no public land has been allocated for Palestinian use: of the 866 dunams allocated before 1995, 669 dunams were allocated as aforesaid for the purpose of establishing the settlements; And of the remaining 197 dunams, at least 121 dunams are currently located in Area B, which is under Palestinian control anyway.

Allocations for the forced transfer of Bedouins – According to the data, nearly 40 percent (630 dunams) of the land allocated to the Palestinians was done for the purpose of “splinting” (Heb. kibua), or permanently resettling, the Rashaida tribe (270 dunams) and the Jahalin tribe (360 dunams). In the 1990s, when the government expanded the Ma’ale Adummim settlement, it sought to evict the Bedouin residents living there from the area designated for the settlement. The High Court did not allow the state to “throw” the Bedouin out of the land without allowing them alternative land, and the state decided to allocate to them land of several dozen dunams in al-Jabal, on the land of Abu Dis, adjacent to a huge garbage dump of Jerusalem and the surrounding area.

It should be noted that of the 630 dunams that were counted by the Civil Administration as lands that were “allocated” to the Palestinians, most of the land was not allocated in practice. The land in the Nu’ayman area that was designated for the Rashaida tribe was not allocated to it, and the plan to relocate it has not taken place so far. Of the land of al-Jabal, designated for the Jahalin tribe near the garbage dump, only parts of the 360 dunams were allocated to Bedouin families that were uprooted from their lands in the 1990’s. The rest of the land is planned to be given to the Bedouins of Khan al-Ahmar and other communities Israel wishes to evict.

2015 – Allocation of 54.5 dunams for agricultural cultivation – The allocation of 54.5 dunams for cultivation is likely the case of land used by Palestinians for decades, for both residential and agriculture purposes. Recently, the Civil Administration issued eviction orders against the landowners, and following appeals filed with the Appeals Committee, the Civil Administration decided to agree to allocate the land for Palestinian use. It should be noted that in practice, the allocation contracts were not signed with the state, since the Palestinian landowners refuse to pay the rent the state requests for what they perceive as their private land.

E. Attempts to Conceal Requested Information

In March 2009, Bimkom applied to the Civil Administration, in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, to ascertain the amount of state lands allocated in Area C to Israelis and Palestinians. After no substantive response was given, Bimkom and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed an administrative petition against the Civil Administration demanding the receipt of the information.

The Administration’s response at the time was that the information was not in its hands, and that hundreds of hours of work were needed to prepare it. During the discussions it was evident that the Civil Administration, the body that is entrusted with land administration in the territories, had no precise information regarding the lands under its responsibility and had no idea about the state lands that it had transferred to the Settlement Division.

At the end of 2013, following the Court’s intervention, an official response was issued, which was full of inaccuracies, for it found that 8,649 dunams (1.27% of allocated state land) were allocated to the Palestinians while 674,459 dunams (98.73%) were allocated for Israeli settlement use. It should be noted that, as explained in the previous sections, it now appears that in practice only 1,625 dunams of state land were allocated to Palestinians, and that the data provided in the framework of the petition by Bimkom and the Association for Civil Rights included approximately 7,000 dunams of absentee property allocated to the Palestinians.

In March 2016, Peace Now asked the Civil Administration to provide explanations on state land allocated for Palestinian use – a list of the objectives for which the land was allocated. Eight months later, in November 2016, and following many reminders, the Civil Administration refused to provide the information, claiming that much work was required to examine thousands of allocation files.

In November 2017, the Movement for Freedom of Information filed a new application that significantly reduced the scope of work, to obtain representative examples of the allocation contracts. In this case, too, many reminders and complaints were sent to the Freedom of Information Unit in the Ministry of Justice, until a year and a half later, an answer was received (in part).

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All images, except the featured, in this article are from APN.

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In a massive attack on imperiled wildlife, the Trump administration announced a series of rollbacks today to the regulations implementing key provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

The three proposed rules from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service would severely weaken protections for hundreds of endangered animals and plants across the country. They would also ensure that hundreds of imperiled species awaiting protection — like the monarch butterfly and the American wolverine — either never get safeguards or face additional, extinction-threatening delays.

One set of regulatory changes would weaken the consultation process designed to prevent harm to endangered animals and their habitats from federal agency activities.  A second set of changes would curtail the designation of critical habitat and weaken the listing process for imperiled species. A third regulation would gut nearly all protections for wildlife newly designated as “threatened” under the Act.

The proposals are part of a broader effort by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to undercut protections for wildlife and public lands.

“These proposals would slam a wrecking ball into the most crucial protections for our most endangered wildlife,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If these regulations had been in place in the 1970s, the bald eagle and the gray whale would be extinct today. If they’re finalized now, Zinke will go down in history as the extinction secretary.”

Under the proposal relating to federal consultations, impacts to critical habitat will be ignored unless they impact the entirety of an animal’s habitat — ignoring the fact that “death by a thousand cuts” is the most common way wildlife declines toward extinction.

The proposal will also prohibit designation of critical habitat for species threatened by climate change, even though in many cases these species are also threatened by habitat destruction and other factors. The proposal will also preclude designation of critical habitat for areas where species need to move to avoid climate threats.

“This proposal turns the extinction-prevention tool of the Endangered Species Act into a rubber stamp for powerful corporate interests,” said Hartl. “Allowing the federal government to turn a blind eye to climate change will be a death sentence for polar bears and hundreds of other animals and plants.”

The regulatory proposal addressing listing and critical habitat designations will gut wildlife agencies’ ability to designate critical habitat in unoccupied areas needed for recovery. Even though most endangered species currently occupy small fractions of their historic range, those areas would effectively be precluded from ever helping a species recover.

“Ordinary Americans understand that many species of wildlife have drastically declined in recent years, and that if we are going to save wildlife, we have to let them return to places they used to roam. Denying imperiled wild animals that ability means they have no future,” said Hartl.

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Featured image is from Radio Free.

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Featured image: A Bolshevik soldier shot dead by an American guard, 8 January 1919.

Amid the bi-partisan mania over the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki, fevered, anti-Russian rhetoric in the United States makes conceivable what until recently seemed inconcievable: that dangerous tensions between Russia and the U.S. could lead to military conflict. It has happened before.

In September 1959, during a brief thaw in the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev made his famous visit to the United States. In Los Angeles, the Soviet leader was invited to a luncheon at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios in Hollywood and during a long and rambling exchange he had this to say:

“Your armed intervention in Russia was the most unpleasant thing that ever occurred in the relations between our two countries, for we had never waged war against America until then; our troops have never set foot on American soil, while your troops have set foot on Soviet soil.”

These remarks by Khrushchev were little noted in the U.S. press at the time – especially compared to his widely-reported complaint about not being allowed to visit Disneyland.  But even if Americans read about Khrushchev’s comments it is likely that few of them would have had any idea what the Soviet Premier was talking about.

But Soviet – and now Russian — memory is much more persistent.  The wounds of foreign invasions, from Napoleon to the Nazis, were still fresh in Russian public consciousness in 1959 — and even in Russia today — in a way most Americans could not imagine.  Among other things, that is why the Russians reacted with so much outrage to the expansion of NATO to its borders in the 1990’s, despite U.S. promises not to do so during the negotiations for the unification of Germany.

The U.S. invasion Khrushchev referred to took place a century ago, after the October Revolution and during the civil war that followed between Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik forces, the Red Army against White Russians.  While the Germans and Austrians were occupying parts of Western and Southern Russia, the Allies launched their own armed interventions in the Russian North and the Far East in 1918.

The Allied nations, including Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S., cited various justifications for sending their troops into Russia: to “rescue” the Czech Legion that had been recruited to fight against the Central Powers; to protect allied military stores and keep them out of the hands of the Germans; to preserve communications via the Trans-Siberian Railway; and possibly to re-open an Eastern Front in the war.  But the real goal – rarely admitted publicly at first—was to reverse the events of October and install a more “acceptable” Russian government. As Winston Churchill later put it, the aim was to “strangle the Bolshevik infant in its cradle.”

In addition to Siberia, the U.S. joined British and French troops to invade at Archangel, in the north of Russia, on September 4, 1918.

Source: Consortiumnews

In July 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had personally typed the “Aide Memoire” on American military action in Russia that was hand-delivered by the Secretary of War at the beginning of August to General William Graves, the designated commander of the U.S. troops en route to Siberia. Wilson’s document was curiously ambivalent and contradictory. It began by asserting that foreign interference in Russia’s internal affairs was “impermissible,” and eventually concluded that the dispatch of U.S. troops to Siberia was not to be considered a “military intervention.”

The Non-Intervention Intervention

But the American intervention began when U.S. soldiers disembarked at Vladivostok on August 16, 1918.  These were the 27th and 31st infantry regiments, regular army units that had been involved in pacification of U.S.-occupied Philippines.  Eventually there were to be about 8,000 U.S. troops in Siberia.

Judging from his memoires, General Graves was puzzled by how different things looked on the ground in Siberia than his vague instructions seemed to suggest.  For one thing, the Czechs hardly needed rescuing.  By the Summer of 1918 they had easily taken control of Vladivostok and a thousand miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

For the next year and a half, General Graves, by all appearances an honest and non-political professional soldier, struggled to understand and carry out his mandate in Siberia.  He seems to have driven the U.S. State Department and his fellow allied commanders to distraction by clinging stubbornly to a literal interpretation of Wilson’s Aide Memoire as mandating strict non-intervention in Russian affairs. The general seemed incapable of noticing the broad “wink” with which everyone else understood these instructions.

Graves strove to maintain “neutrality” among the various Russian factions battling for control of Siberia and to focus on his mission to guard the railroad and protect Allied military supplies.  But he was also indiscrete enough to report “White” atrocities as well as “Red” ones, to express his distaste for the various Japanese-supported warlords in Eastern Siberia and, later, to have a skeptical (and correct) assessment of the low popular support, incompetence and poor prospects of the anti-Bolshevik forces.

For his troubles, it was hinted, absurdly, that the General may have been a Bolshevik sympathizer, a charge that in part motivated the publication of his memoirs.

In the face of hectoring by State Department officials and other Allied commanders to be more active in support of the “right” people in Russia, Graves repeatedly inquired of his superiors in Washington whether his original instructions of political non-intervention were to be modified. No one, of course, was willing to put any different policy in writing and the general struggled to maintain his “neutrality.”

By the Spring and Summer of 1919, however, the U.S. had joined the other Allies in providing overt military support to “Supreme Leader,” Admiral Alexander Kolchak’s White regime, based in the Western Siberian city of Omsk.  At first this was carried out discretely through the Red Cross, but later it took the form of direct shipments of military supplies, including boxcars of rifles whose safe delivery Graves was directed to oversee.

Domestic Intervention 

But the prospects for a victory by Kolchak soon faded and the Whites in Siberia revealed themselves to be a lost cause.  The decision to remove the US troops was made late in 1919 and General Graves, with the last of his staff, departed from Vladivostok on 1 April 1920.

In all, 174 American soldiers were killed during the invasion of Russia. (The Soviet Union was formed on Dec. 28, 1922.)

Interestingly, pressure to withdraw the U.S. troops from Siberia came from fed-up soldiers and home-front opinion opposing the continued deployment of military units abroad long after the conclusion of the war in Europe. It is notable that during a Congressional debate on the Russian intervention one Senator read excerpts from the letters of American soldiers to support the case for bringing them home.

Then, as in later U.S. foreign interventions, the soldiers had a low opinion of the people they were supposed to be liberating.  One of them wrote home on July 28, 1919 from his base in Verkhne-Udinsk, now Ulan Ude, on the southern shore of Lake Baikal:

“Life in Siberia may sound exciting but it isn’t.  It’s all right for a few months but I’m ready to go home now. . .  You want to know how I like the people?  Well I’ll tell you, one couldn’t hardly call them people but they are some kind of animal.  They are the most ignorant things I ever saw.  Oh, I can get a word of their lingo if they aren’t sore when they talk.  They sure do rattle off their lingo when they get  sore. These people have only one ambition and that is to drink more vodka than the next person.”

Letter home from U.S. soldier during invasion of Russia (Source: Consortiumnews)

Outside of the State Department and some elite opinion, U.S. intervention had never been very popular.  By now it was widely understood, as one historian noted, that there may have been “many reasons why the doughboys came to Russia, but there was only one reason why they stayed: to intervene in a civil war to see who would govern the country.”

After 1920, the memory of “America’s Siberian Adventure,” as General Graves termed it, soon faded into obscurity.  The American public is notorious for its historic amnesia, even as similar military adventures were repeated again and again over the years since then.

It seems that we may need to be reminded every generation or so of the perils of foreign military intervention and the simple truth asserted by General Graves:

“. . .there isn’t a nation on earth that would not resent foreigners sending troops into their country, for the purpose of putting this or that faction in charge.  The result is not only an injury to the prestige of the foreigner intervening, but is a great handicap to the faction the foreigner is trying to assist.”

General Graves was writing about Siberia in 1918, but it could just as well have been Vietnam in the 1960s or Afghanistan and Syria now. Or a warning today about 30,000 NATO troops on Russia’s borders.

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Jeff Klein is a retired local trade union president who writes frequently about international affairs and especially the Middle East.  The postcard and soldier’s letter are in his personal collection.

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Note from MEE: The following is a translation of the final version of the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People, as published on the Knesset website.

Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People 

1. Basic principles

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.

2. The symbols of the state

A. The name of the state is “Israel.”

B. The state flag is white with two blue stripes near the edges and a blue Star of David in the centre.

C. The state emblem is a seven-branched menorah with olive leaves on both sides and the word “Israel” beneath it.

D. The state anthem is “Hatikvah.”

E. Details regarding state symbols will be determined by the law.

3. The capital of the state

Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.

4. Language

A. The state’s language is Hebrew.

B. The Arabic language has a special status in the state; Regulating the use of Arabic in state institutions or by them will be set in law.

C. This clause does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.

5. Ingathering of the exiles

The state will be open for Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles

6. Connection to the Jewish people

A. The state will strive to ensure the safety of the members of the Jewish people in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship.

B. The state shall act within the Diaspora to strengthen the affinity between the state and members of the Jewish people.

C. The state shall act to preserve the cultural, historical and religious heritage of the Jewish people among Jews in the Diaspora.

7. Jewish settlement

A. The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.

8. Official calendar

The Hebrew calendar is the official calendar of the state and alongside it the Gregorian calendar will be used as an official calendar. Use of the Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian calendar will be determined by law.

9. Independence Day and memorial days

A. Independence Day is the official national holiday of the state.

B. Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Wars and Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day are official memorial days of the State.

10. Days of rest and Sabbath

The Sabbath and the festivals of Israel are the established days of rest in the state; Non-Jews have a right to maintain days of rest on their Sabbaths and festivals; Details of this issue will be determined by law.

11. Immutability

This Basic Law shall not be amended, unless by another Basic Law passed by a majority of Knesset members.

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President Bashar Assad is set to recover control of the Syrian frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a major victory over rebels who have agreed to surrender terms, sources on both sides said Thursday.

Backed by Russian air power and unopposed by Assad’s foreign adversaries, government forces have swept through southwestern Syria in the last month in one of the swiftest campaigns of the war, forcing surrender on massively outgunned rebels.

The campaign, which has already restored Assad’s control over a critical portion of the frontier with Jordan, marks another milestone in his efforts to recover control of the country fractured by more than seven years of conflict.

There was no government confirmation of the Qunaitra agreement. State media cited “reports” a deal had been reached. It was not clear when implementation would begin.

A copy of the agreement sent to Reuters by a rebel source said insurgents had negotiated the deal with Russia.

Echoing surrender terms imposed on rebels elsewhere, opposition fighters agreed to give up heavy and medium-sized weapons. Those wishing to stay in the area will “settle” their status with the state, meaning accepting a return of its rule.

Those who reject the deal will be given safe passage out to the opposition-held province of Idlib in the northwest, according to terms that were also reported by Hezbollah’s war media center. Iran-backed Hezbollah is fighting in Syria in support of Assad.

Once the southwestern campaign is finished, Assad’s focus will likely turn to the two remaining areas outside his grasp.

These are the rebel-held northwest, where the presence of Turkish forces will complicate any military campaign, and swathes of the northeast and east that are held by Kurdish-led militias, supported by some 2,000 U.S. troops on the ground.

As Damascus and its allies pursue military victory, there appears little chance of the kind of negotiated peace which Assad’s adversaries say is needed to stabilize the country and encourage millions of refugees to return.

The war is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people, displacing 11 million and forcing some six million abroad as refugees.

A Reuters witness on the Israeli side of the Golan frontier said fighting continued in the area of Tel al-Haara, a strategically vital hilltop seized by government forces this week. The sound of planes could be heard as shelling continued.

The campaign near the Golan frontier has been particularly sensitive because of Israeli concerns. Israel has signaled it has no problem with Assad recovering the area as long his Iranian and Iran-backed allies were kept away from the frontier.

Israel has also said it would demand strict adherence to the 1974 disengagement deal with the Syrian army on the Golan, threatening a “harsh response” to any attempt by Syrian forces to deploy in that zone. The deal, concluded after the 1973 Mideast War, created a buffer zone patrolled by the U.N. Disengagement and Observer Force.

The report by the Hezbollah’s war media center said the surrender agreement stipulated “the return of the Syrian army, represented in the 90th and the 61st brigades, to the positions that it was in before 2011”.

Details of the deal sent by the rebel source included a provision that Russian military police would accompany the same two Syrian army brigades “to the ceasefire line and the demilitarized zone, according to the 1974 agreement”.

The provisions did not elaborate on any implications of the deployment of military units on the 1974 agreement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a visit to Russia to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin this month, indicated his country did not object to Assad’s return to the Golan as long as Iranian force and Hezbollah stayed away.

In a briefing with Israeli reporters, he said Israel had not had a problem “with the Assad regime for 40 years”, noting that “not one bullet was fired on the Golan Heights” in that time.

Israeli media accounts of the meeting with Putin also quoted him as saying that the Russians had succeeded getting Iranian and Hezbollah forces to move dozens of kilometers away from the Golan frontier.

U.S. President Donald Trump said at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday in Helsinki that both had agreed to work together to help ensure Israel’s security.

Putin, Assad’s most powerful ally, cited the need to restore the situation along the Golan borders to the state that prevailed before the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011.

Israel has been pressing Russia to rein in Iranian and Iran-backed forces that have been fighting in support of Assad. Israel has stepped up attacks against what it describes as Iranian and Iran-backed targets in Syria this year.

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Analysis of figures released in response to Freedom of Information requests by Drone Wars UK indicate that the UK has spent £1.75bn on armed air missions against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since August 2014. It should be noted that the overall cost of UK military operations in Iraq and Syria will be much higher.

Strikingly, the data shows that at £268 million, the cost alone of the weapons fired over the last 3½ years is more than the total amount the UK has spent on humanitarian assistance in Iraq (£210 million) in the same time period.  The full cost of flying the UK’s armed aircraft (Tornado, Typhoon and Reaper) for more than 42,000 hours is almost £1.5 billion.

In statements on the costs of Operation Shader, ministers have given a figures for what they call ‘net additional costs’.  They argue that only fuel costs (at a flat rate of £5,000 per hour) should count towards the operational costs of flying the aircraft.  Defence analysts argue however that the full-cost, including crew, maintenance and capital costs should be included.   In his 2011 evidence to the Defence Select Committee after Operation Ellamy (Libya), expert defence analyst Francis Tusa wrote:

“the ‘fuel only’ costs … doesn’t come remotely close to the stated cost of operations… This would seem to show that ‘official figures’ are not a true and realistic calculation of the costs of operations.”

While these are huge figures, the UK’s 1,700 airstrikes are just a fraction of the enormous number of air strikes launched in in Iraq and Syria over the past 3½ years.  According to figures compiled by Airwars, the US-led Coalition as a whole have launched 29,000 air strikes using more than 105,000 bombs and missiles since 2014.  Extrapolating from UK figures, the financial cost of just the bombs and missiles used in Coalition airstrikes is around £8 billion ($10.5bn). As always in war time, someone is making a killing.

The Human Cost

But of course, it is not just the financial cost of war that is being hidden.  Civilian casualties are virtually invisible in mainstream reporting and the public consciousness.  While Airwars  has recorded over 6,000 civilian deaths from Coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the US only admits that around  841 civilians have been killed. The UK, publicly at least, continues to insist that there is no evidence any of its air strikes have killed or harmed civilians.

The remote nature of today’s wars means that the financial and human cost of aerial bombing becomes virtually invisible and therefore more difficult for us to comprehend. The danger is that without a proper grasp of the costs and consequences, there is less resolve to bring wars to an end as quickly as possible.  Perhaps that is why there has been silence in parliament about UK air strikes continuing in Syria, even though Iraq has declared victory over ISIS and secured its borders, the stated aim of the intervention in the first place.

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Sources

Weapons costs:  Number used: FoI responses.  Unit costs: Paveway IV; Hellfire; Brimstone; GBU-12; Storm Shadow. Enhanced Paveway II & III: estimated.

Flight costs:   Hours flown: FoI responses.   Tornado and Typhoon (figure include fuel, crew, maintenance and capital costs).  Reaper (* figure only includes  fuel and maintenance costs)

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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)

“We need to talk about everything, from commerce to the military, missiles, nuclear, and China” – this was how President Trump began at the Helsinki Summit. “The time has come to talk in detail about our bilateral relationship and the international flashpoints”, emphasised Putin.

But it will not only be the two Presidents who will decide the future relationships between the United States and Russia.

It’s no coincidence that, at the very moment when the President of the United States was about to meet with the President of Russia, special prosecutor Robert Mueller III charged twelve Russians with having manipulated the US presidential elections by hacking into the data networks of the Democratic party in order to hinder candidate Hillary Clinton. The twelve Russians, accused of being agents of the military secret services (GRU), were officially defined as “conspirators”, and found guilty of “conspiracy to the detriment of the United States”.

Simultaneously, Daniel Coats, National Director of Intelligence and principal advisor to the President in these matters, accused Russia of working to “undermine our basic values and our democracy”. He then sounded the alarm about the “threat of cyber-attacks which have arrived at a critical point” similar to that which preceded 9/11, on behalf not only of Russia, “the most aggressive foreign agent”, but also China and Iran.

At the same time, in London, British “investigators” declared that the Russian military secret service GRU, which had sabotaged the Presidential elections in the USA, is the same service which poisoned ex-Russian agent, Sergueï Skripal and his daughter, who, inexplicably, survived contact with an extremely lethal gas.

The political objective of these “enquiries” is clear – to maintain that at the head of all these “conspirators” is Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom President Donald Trump sat down at the negotiating table, despite vast bi-partisan opposition in the USA. After the “conspirators” had been charged, the Democrats asked Trump to cancel the meeting with Putin. Even though they failed, their pressure on the negotiations remains powerful.

What Putin tried to obtain from Trump is both simple and complex – to ease the tension between the two countries. To that purpose, he proposed to Trump, who accepted, to implement a joint enquiry into the “conspiracy”. We do not know how the discussions on the key questions will go – the status of Crimea, the condition of Syria, nuclear weapons and others. And we do not know what Trump will ask in return.

However, it is certain that any concession will be used to accuse him of conivence with the enemy. In opposition to the easing of tension with Russia are not only the Democrats (who, with a reversal of formal roles, are playing the “hawks”), but also many Republicans, among whom are several highly-important representatives of the Trump administration itself. It is the establishment, not only of the US, but also of Europe, whose powers and profits are directly linked to tension and war.

It will not be the words, but the facts, which will reveal whether the climate of détente of the Helsinki Summit will become reality – first of all with a de-escalation of NATO in Europe, in other words with the withdrawal of forces (including nuclear forces) of the USA and NATO presently deployed against Russia, and the blockage of NATO’s expansion to the East.

• Even if an agreement on these questions were reached between Putin and Trump, would the latter be able to implement it?
• Or will the real deciders be the powerful circles of the military-industrial complex?

One thing is certain – we in Italy and Europe can not remain the simple spectators of dealings which will define our future.

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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto.

Translator: Pete Kimberley

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

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The annual budget of the military/security complex is $1,000 billion.  This vast sum is drawn from US taxpayers who have many unmet needs.  To justify such an enormous budget a major enemy is required.  The military/security complex and the media and politicians that the complex owns have designated Russia to be that enemy.  The complex and its political and media agents will not permit Trump to normalize relations with Russia.  

To prevent President Trump from reducing the dangerous tensions between nuclear powers that Washington has created, the military/security complex orchestrated Russiagate, a proven hoax, but believed by many due to its endless repetition. The military/security complex orchestrated the false indictments of 12 Russians.  The military/security complex orchestrated the false arrest of Maria Butina, and so on and on.

The military/security complex acting through the politicians and presstitutes that it owns and controls has turned the normal everyday responsibility of the President—one acknowledged and acted upon by every previous president—to defuse tensions that could lead to nuclear war into a high crime.  President Trump is accused of treason for trying to make peace!

An unaware person might think that this is silly and laugh, but as Finian Cunningham shows, President Trump has been set-up as a treasonous enemy of America.  We are currently experiencing sedition at the highest levels as the military/security complex unfolds its coup against the elected president of the United States.  

In 1961 President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans in his last public address that the military/industrial complex was a threat to American democracy.  Truer words were never spoken by an American president.  Shortly thereafter, the military/security complex assassinated President John F. Kennedy for working toward peace with Soviet leader Khruschev.  To get rid of President Nixon, who made too many arms control agreements with the Soviets and opened to China, the military/security complex used its asset, the Washington Post, to orchestrate the “Watergate crisis” that the military/security complex used to force Nixon’s resignation.  Now the military/security complex is openly inciting sedition against the President of the United States.  If this plot succeeds, which is the most likely case, America will be a complete dystopia and all independent voices will be shut down.  

Who can Trump rely on?  Not on his own political party. Not on his own government.  Not on the print and TV media or NPR.  Not on Europe.  Not on the Secret Service.  Not on the Pentagon. Not on the unaware American people.  Trump has only the “deplorables,” and they are unorganized and will experience retribution once Trump is removed.  

“Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.” – Frederick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.” – D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form.  The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a ‘biological’ need.” – Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man

There is a vast literature analyzing the political prophecy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Big Brother, double-speak, telescreens, crimestop, etc. – all applied to our current political situation.  The language has become part of our popular lexicon, and as such, has become clichéd through overuse.  Blithe, habitual use of language robs it of its power to crack open the safe that hides the realities of life.

There is no doubt that Orwell wrote a brilliant political warning about the methods of totalitarian control.  But hidden at the heart of the book is another lesson lost on most readers and commentators.  Rats, torture, and Newspeak resonate with people fixated on political repression, which is a major concern, of course.  But so too is privacy and sexual passion in a country of group-think and group-do, where “Big Brother” poisons you in the crib and the entertainment culture then takes over to desexualize intimacy by selling it as another public commodity.  

The United States is a pornographic society.  By pornographic I do not just mean the omnipresent selling of exploitative sex through all media to titillate a voyeuristic public living in the unreality of screen “life” and screen sex through television, movies, and online obsessions.  I mean a commodified consciousness, where everyone and everything is part of a prostitution ring in the deepest sense of pornography’s meaning – for sale, bought.  And consumed by getting, spending, and selling.  Flicked into the net of Big Brother, whose job is make sure everything fundamentally human and physical is debased and mediated, people become consumers of the unreal and direct experience is discouraged.  The natural world becomes an object to be conquered and used.  Animals are produced in chemical factories to be slaughtered by the billions only to appear bloodless under plastic wrap in supermarket coolers.  The human body disappears into hypnotic spectral images. One’s sex becomes one’s gender as the words are transmogrified and as one looks in the mirror of the looking-glass self and wonders how to identify the one looking back.  Streaming life from Netflix or Facebook becomes life the movie.  The brilliant perverseness of the mediated reality of a screen society – what Guy Debord calls The Society of the Spectacle – is  that as it distances people from fundamental reality, it promotes that reality through its screen fantasies.  “Get away from it all and restore yourself at our spa in the rugged mountains where you can hike in pristine woods after yoga and a breakfast of locally sourced eggs and artisanally crafted bread.”  Such garbage would be funny if it weren’t so effective.  Debord writes,

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images….Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior.  

Thus sex with robots and marrying yourself are not aberrations but logical extensions of a society where solipsism meets machine in the America dream.

As this happens, words and language become corrupted by the same forces that Orwell called Big Brother, whose job is total propaganda and social control.  Just as physical reality now mimics screen reality and thus becomes chimerical, language, through which human beings uncover and articulate the truth of being, becomes more and more abstract.  People don’t die; they “pass on” or “pass away.”  Dying, like real sex, is too physical.  Wars of aggression don’t exist; they are “overseas contingency operations.”  Killing people with drones isn’t killing; it’s “neutralizing them.”  There are a “ton” of examples, but I am sure “you guys” don’t need me to list any more.  

Orwell called Big Brother’s language Newspeak, and Hemingway preceded him when he so famously wrote in disgust In a Farewell to Arms,

“I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice, and the expression in vain….Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene…” 

This destruction of language has been going on for a long time, but it’s worth noting that from Hemingway’s WW I through Orwell’s WW II up until today’s endless U.S. wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, etc., there has been the parallel development of screen and media culture, beginning with silent movies through television and onto the total electronic media environment we now inhabit – the surround sound and image bubble of literal abstractions that inhabit us, mentally and physically.  In such a society, to feel what you really feel and not what, in Hemingway’s words, “you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel” has become extremely difficult.

Image below: Winston Smith and Julia hidden in the bushes, away from their reality (Source: Pinterest)

Language, as the Greeks told us, should open up a clearing for the truth (Greek aleitheia, unhiddenness) to emerge so we can grasp the essence of life.  And so it is ironically appropriate that Orwell’s Winston Smith discovers such essence, not in analyzing Crimestop, his tormenter O’Brien, or Doublethink, but “in a natural clearing, a tiny grass knoll surrounded by tall saplings that shut it in completely” where he secretly meets a young woman who had passed him a note saying she loved him.   Away from the prying eyes of Big Brother and his spies, amidst bluebells and a torrent of song from a thrush, they come together almost wordlessly. 

“Winston and Julia clung together, fascinated” as the thrush sang madly.  “The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as if the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity…He stopped thinking and merely felt.” 

Here the secret lovers affirm their humanity, the truth of sexual intimacy that is the enemy of all abstractions used by the powerful to control and manipulate normal people and to convince them to participate in killing others.

  “Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated.” 

Reveling in love-making in a free space outside the Party’s control, they felt they had triumphed.

But as we learn in 1984 and should learn in the U.S.A. today, “seemed” is the key word.  Their triumph was temporary.  For sexual passion reveals truths that need to be confirmed in the mind.  In itself, sexual liberation can be easily manipulated, as it has been so effectively in the United States. “Repressive de-sublimation” Herbert Marcuse called it fifty years ago. You allow people to act out their sexual fantasies in commodified ways that can be controlled by the rulers, all the while ruling their minds and potential political rebelliousness. Sex becomes part of the service economy where people service each other while serving their masters.  Use pseudo-sex to sell them a way of life that traps them in an increasingly totalitarian social order that only seems free.  This has been accomplished primarily through screen culture and the concomitant confusion of sexual identity.  Perhaps you have noticed that over the past twenty-five years of growing social and political confusion, we have witnessed an exponential growth in “the electronic life,” the use of psychotropic drugs, and sexual disorientation.  This is no accident.  Wars have become as constant as Eros – the god of love, life, joy, and motion – has been divorced from sex as a stimulus and response release of tension in a “stressed” society.  Rollo May, the great American psychologist, grasped this:

Indeed, we have set sex over against eros, used sex precisely to avoid the anxiety-creating involvements of eros…We are in flight from eros and use sex as the vehicle for the flight…Eros [which includes, but is not limited to, passionate sex] is the center of vitality of a culture – its heart and soul.  And when release of tension takes the place of creative eros, the downfall of the civilization is assured.

Because Julia and Winston cannot permanently escape Oceania, but can only tryst, they succumb to Big Brother’s mind control and betray each other.  Their sexual affair can’t save them.   It is a moment of beauty and freedom in an impossible situation.  Of course the hermetically sealed world of 1984 is not the United States.  Orwell created a society in which escape was impossible. It is, after all, an admonitory novel – not the real world.  Things are more subtle here; we still have some wiggle room – some – although the underlying truth is the same: the U.S. oligarchy, like “The Party,” “seeks power entirely for its own sake” and “are not interested in the good of others,” all rhetoric to the contrary. Our problem is that too many believe the rhetoric, and those who say they don’t really do at the deepest level.  Fly the flag and play the national anthem and their hearts are aflutter with hope.  Recycle old bromides about the next election when your political enemies will be swept out of office and excitement builds as though you had met the love of your life and all was well with the world.

But understanding the history of public relations, advertising, propaganda, the CIA, the national security apparatus, technology, etc., makes it clear that such hope is baseless. For the propaganda in this country has penetrated far deeper than anyone can imagine, and it has primarily done this through advanced technology and the religion of technique – machines as pure abstractions – that has poisoned not just our minds, but the deepest wellsprings of the body’s truths and the erotic imagination that links us in love to all life on earth.  

In “Defence of Poetry,” Percy Bysshe Shelley writes:

The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasure of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.                                                            

We are now faced with the question: Can we escape the forces of propaganda and mind control that run so very deep into American life?  If so, how?  Let’s imagine a way out.

Orwell makes it very clear that language is the key to mind control, as he delineates how Newspeak works. I think he is right.  And mind control also means the control of our bodies, Eros, our sex, our physical connections to all living beings and nature. Today the U.S. is reaching the point where “Oldspeak” – Standard English – has been replaced by Newspeak, and just “fragments of the literature of the past” survive here and there.  This is true for the schooled and unschooled.  In fact, those more trapped by the instrumental logic, disembodied data, and word games of the power elite are those who have gone through the most schooling, the indoctrination offered by the so-called “elite” universities. I suspect that more working-class and poor people still retain some sense of the old language and the fundamental meaning of words, since it is with their sweat and blood that they “earn their living.”  Many of the highly schooled  are children of the power elite or those groomed to serve them, who are invited to join in living the life of power and privilege if they swallow their consciences and deaden their imaginations to the suffering their “life-styles” and ideological choices inflict on the rest of the world.  In this world of The New York Times, Harvard, The New Yorker, Martha’s Vineyard, The Washington Post, Wall St., Goldman Sachs, the boardrooms of the ruling corporations, all the corporate media, etc., language has become debased beyond recognition.  Here, as Orwell said of Newspeak, “a heretical thought…should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words.  Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express.”  The intelligently orthodox, he adds, must master the art of “doublethink” wherein they hold two contradictory ideas in their minds simultaneously, while accepting both of them.  This is the key trick of logic and language that allows the power elites and their lackeys in the U.S. today to master the art of self-deception and feel good about themselves as they plunder the world.  In this “Party” world, the demonization, degradation, and killing of others is an abstraction; their lives are spectral.  Orwell describes doublethink this way:

To tell deliberate lives while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary.  Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink.  For by using the word one admits one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

It may sound silly to say, but language, as its etymology tells us, begins with the tongue (Latin, lingua).  And the tongue is a bell, tolling out its meaning.  Indeed, all language springs from the body – is body language. And when language becomes abstract and devoid of blood, it becomes etiolated and unable to convey the truth that is the mystical body of the world.  It becomes a viper’s tongue, dividing the “good” people from the “bad” so the good can eliminate the bad who have become abstractions.  

When Winston Smith and Julia hid in the arbor and for once felt free and alive as they fucked – despite its transitoriness – Orwell was suggesting something that his dystopian novel denies is possible: that we can escape our own 1984 in 2018 by returning to fundamentals. Whitman told us that if anything is sacred it is the human body, and he sung “the body electric.”  This is the task of artists: to sing the words that tell the truth the propagandists try to deny.

James Joyce writes in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

Welcome, oh life!  I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.  

Perhaps we should add: in the smithy of our souls and bodies.  His fellow Irishman, William Butler Yeats, brings us down to earth with the words:

Now that my ladder’s gone/I must lie down where all the ladders start/In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

“Yes I said yes I will Yes.”

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Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely; he is a frequent contributor to Global Research. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

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Where to begin to analyze the madness of mainstream media in reaction to the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki?  By focusing on the individual, psychology has neglected the problem of mass insanity, which has now overwhelmed the United States establishment, its mass media and most of its copycat European subsidiaries. The individuals may be sane, but as a herd they are ready to leap off the cliff.

For the past two years, a particular power group has sought to explain away its loss of power – or rather, its loss of the Presidency, as it still holds a predominance of institutional power – by creation of a myth.  Mainstream media is known for its herd behavior, and in this case the editors, commentators, journalists have talked themselves into a story that initially they themselves could hardly take seriously.

Donald Trump was elected by Russia?

On the face of it, this is preposterous.  Okay, the United States can manage to rig elections in Honduras, or Serbia, or even Ukraine, but the United States is a bit too big and complex to leave the choice of the Presidency to a barrage of electronic messages totally unread by most voters.  If this were so, Russia wouldn’t need to try to “undermine our democracy”.  It would mean that our democracy was already undermined, in tatters, dead.  A standing corpse ready to be knocked over by a tweet.

Even if, as is alleged without evidence, an army of Russian bots (even bigger than the notorious Israeli army of bots) was besieging social media with its nefarious slanders against poor innocent Hillary Clinton, this could determine an election only in a vacuum, with no other influences in the field.  But there was a lot of other stuff going on in the 2016 election, some for Trump and some for Hillary, and Hillary herself scored a crucial own goal by denigrating millions of Americans as “deplorables” because they didn’t fit into her identity politics constituencies.

The Russians could do nothing to build support for Trump, and there is not a hint of evidence that they tried.  They might have done something to harm Hillary, because there was so much there: the private server emails, the Clinton foundation, the murder of Moammer Gaddafi, the call for a no-fly zone in Syria … they didn’t have to invent it.  It was there.  So was the hanky panky at the Democratic National Committee, on which the Clintonite accusations focus, perhaps to cause everyone to forget much worse things.  

When you come to think of it, the DNC scandal focused on Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not on Hillary herself.  Screaming about “Russian hacking the DNC” has been a distraction from much more serious accusations against Hillary Clinton.  Bernie Sanders supporters didn’t need those “revelations” to make them stop loving Hillary or even to discover that the DNC was working against Bernie.  It was always perfectly obvious.

So at worst, “the Russians” are accused of revealing some relatively minor facts concerning the Hillary Clinton campaign.  Big deal.

But that is enough, after two years of fakery, to send the establishment into a frenzy of accusations of “treason” when Trump does what he said he would do while campaigning, try to normalize relations with Russia.

This screaming comes not only from the US mainstream, but also from that European elite which has been housebroken for seventy years as obedient poodles, dachshunds or corgis in the American menagerie, via intense vetting by US trans-Atlantic “cooperation” associations.  They have based their careers on the illusion of sharing the world empire by following U.S. whims in the Middle East and transforming the mission of their armed forces from defense into foreign intervention units of NATO under U.S. command.  Having not thought seriously about the implications of this for over half a century, they panic at the suggestion of being left to themselves. 

The Western elite is now suffering from self-inflicted dementia.

Donald Trump is not particularly articulate, navigating through the language with a small repetitive vocabulary, but what he said at his Helsinki press conference was honest and even brave.  As the hounds bay for his blood, he quite correctly refused to endorse the “findings” of US intelligence agencies, fourteen years after the same agencies “found” that Iraq was bursting with weapons of mass destruction.  How in the world could anyone expect anything else?

But for the mainstream media, “the story” at the Helsinki summit, even the only story, was Trump’s reaction to the, er, trumped up charges of Russian interference in our democracy.  Were you or were you not elected thanks to Russian hackers? All they wanted was a yes or no answer.  Which could not possibly be yes.  So they could write their reports in advance.

Anyone who has frequented mainstream journalists, especially those who cover the “big stories” on international affairs, is aware of their obligatory conformism, with few exceptions.  To get the job, one must have important “sources”, meaning government spokesmen who are willing to tell you what “the story” is, often without being identified.  Once they know what “the story” is, competition sets in: competition as to how to tell it. That leads to an escalation of rhetoric, variations on the theme: “The President has betrayed our great country to the Russian enemy. Treason!”

This demented chorus on “Russian hacking” prevented mainstream media from even doing their job. Not even mentioning, much less analyzing, any of the real issues at the summit.  To find analysis, one must go on line, away from the official fake news to independent reporting.  For example, “the Moon of Alabama” site offers an intelligent interpretation of the Trump strategy, which sounds infinitely more plausible than “the story”.  In short, Trump is trying to woo Russia away from China, in a reverse version of Kissinger’s strategy forty years ago to woo China away from Russia, thus avoiding a continental alliance against the United States.  This may not work because the United States has proven so untrustworthy that the cautious Russians are highly unlikely to abandon their alliance with China for shadows. But it makes perfect sense as an explanation of Trump’s policy, unlike the caterwauling we’ve been hearing from Senators and talking heads on CNN.

Those people seem to have no idea of what diplomacy is about.  They cannot conceive of agreements that would be beneficial to both sides.  No, it’s got to be a zero sum game, winner take all.  If they win, we lose, and vice versa.

They also have no idea of the harm to both sides if they do not agree.  They have no project, no strategy.  Just hate Trump.

He seems totally isolated, and every morning I look at the news to see if he has been assassinated yet.  

It is unimaginable for our Manichean moralists that Putin might also be under fire at home for failing to chide the American president for U.S. violations of human rights in Guantanamo, murderous drone strikes against defenseless citizens throughout the Middle East, the destruction of Libya in violation of the UN mandate, interference in the elections of countless countries by government-financed “non-governmental organizations” (the National Endowment of Democracy), worldwide electronic spying, invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the world’s greatest prison population and regular massacres of school children. But the diplomatic Russians know how to be polite.  

Still, if Trump actually makes a “deal”, there may be losers – neither the U.S. nor Russia but third parties.  When two great powers reach agreement, it is often at somebody else’s expense. The West Europeans are afraid it will be them, but such fears are groundless.  All Putin wants is normal relations with the West, which is not much to ask.

Rather, candidate number one for paying the price are the Palestinians, or even Iran, in marginal ways. At the press conference, asked about possible areas of cooperation between the two nuclear powers, Trump suggested that the two could agree on helping Israel:

“We both spoke with Bibi Netanyahu. They would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel. In that respect, we absolutely would like to work in order to help Israel. Israel will be working with us. So both countries would work jointly.” 

In political terms, Trump knows where political power lies, and is counting on the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, which recognizes the defeat in Syria and the rising influence of Russia, to save him from the liberal imperialists – a daring bet, but he does not have much choice.  

On another subject, Trump said that “our militaries” get along with the Russians “better than our politicians”.  This is another daring bet, on military realism that could somehow neutralize military industrial congressional complex lobbying for more and more weapons.

In short, the only chance to end the nuclear war threat may depend on support for Trump from Israel and the Pentagon!

The hysterical neoliberal globalists seem to have ruled out any other possibility – and perhaps this one too.  

“Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world” Trump declared “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”

That is more than his political enemies can claim.

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Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). She can be reached at [email protected].

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The Russian US Election Meddling Big Lie Won’t Die

By Stephen Lendman, July 19, 2018

The sole redeeming part of his agenda was wanting improved relations with Russia and Vladimir Putin personally – preferring peace over possible confrontation, wanting the threat of nuclear war defused.

Despite tweeting post-Helsinki that he and Putin “got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match,” his remarks on CBS News showed he’ll continue dirty US business as usual toward Russia.

Indictment of 12 Russians: Under the Shiny Wrapping, a Political Act

By Scott Ritter, July 19, 2018

With great fanfare, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Friday released a 29-page indictment, a byproduct of the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Ostensibly, this indictment cemented the government’s case against the Russians and punched a hole in the arguments of those, like President Trump, who have been labeling Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.” This, of course, is precisely what Rosenstein and Mueller hoped to achieve through their carefully timed, and even more carefully scripted, indictment.

The Establishment Strikes Back

By Philip Giraldi, July 19, 2018

The Helsinki Summit between the two leaders was critically important to anyone interested in preserving the planet Earth as we know it and there was no reason at all to release a non-time sensitive document that was clearly intended to cast a shadow over the proceedings. In fact, the surfacing of the indictment might easily be explained as a deliberate attempt by a politicized Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Mueller to torpedo President Trump over concerns that he might actually come to some understanding with Putin.

America Overrules Trump: No Peace with Russia

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, July 19, 2018

The Russians—especially the naive Atlanticist Integrationists—should take note of the extreme hostility, indeed, to the point of insanity, directed at the Helsinki meeting across the entirety of the American political, media, and intellectual scene.  Putin is incorrect that US-Russian relations are being held hostage to an internal US political struggle between the two parties.  The Republicans are just as insane and just as hostile to President Trump’s effort to improve American-Russian relations as the Democrats, as Donald Jeffries reminds us.

Under Massive Pressure, Trump Backpedals on Russia “Meddling”

By Andre Damon, July 18, 2018

Speaking at the White House Tuesday, US President Donald Trump attempted to walk back statements he made just 24 hours earlier at his summit in Helsinki, Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he questioned claims by US intelligence agencies that the Russian government “meddled” in the 2016 election.

Helsinki – Trump and Putin – a Showdown for Summer Doldrums or a Genuine Attempt Towards Peace?

By Peter Koenig, July 18, 2018

President Trump, opened the meeting by saying that up to now relations between the United States and Russia were bad, and confessing that the US was to blame for it. He wanted them to improve and hoped that this meeting – he indicated that others of similar nature may follow – may be a first step towards normalizing relations between the two atomic super-powers which together, he said, control 90% of the world’s nuclear destructive force. A timely admission, but ignoring the most dangerous and unpredictable atomic power, the rogue nation of Israel.

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Throughout much of the Syrian conflict, the exploits of the rescue organization that calls itself the Syrian Civil Defense, better known to Western media as the White Helmets, have been a source of constant controversy. Much of this controversy stems from their multi-million dollar funding from Western governments and their documented collaboration with terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, all while purporting to be a local “first responder” organization with a neutral stance regarding the country’s conflict.

Yet now, following the recent success of the Syrian government’s campaign to rid southern Syria of both radical jihadist and foreign influence, the same Western governments that have long funded the White Helmets are seeking to evacuate their assets and resettle them abroad.

According to a report recently published in CBS News, several Western countries that have provided funding for the group – such as the Netherlands, the U.K., Germany and France – are now “scrambling” to evacuate the estimated 1,000 White Helmets and their families, claiming that they are “in danger of assassination” and “now in need of rescuing themselves.”

Several of these countries had brought up the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump at last week’s NATO summit, per CBS’ sources. However, the Trump administration – which recently restored $6.6 million in funding for the White Helmets — declined to comment on rescue efforts for the group, but did voice its concern that the White Helmets and related groups could face “reprisals” from the Syrian government.

The report asserted that, of all the leaders who had discussed the White Helmets at the recent NATO summit, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May was the most adamant, as she also brought up the issue during her personal meeting with Trump over the weekend in London. May’s concern is unsurprising, given that the U.K. has spent more than any other government in funding the White Helmets, spending more than $80 million from the time the group was founded in 2013 through 2016. Furthermore, the group itself was founded by a former U.K. military intelligence officer turned mercenary, James Le Mesurier, which suggests that the U.K.’s connection to the group may go deeper than mere funding.

Western diplomats who spoke to CBS stated that, while no formal plan has yet been adopted, “dozens of ground escape routes” that would lead White Helmets out of Syria are currently being explored. However, if that method fails, those diplomats asserted that Russia would have to approve an aerial escape, though they openly doubted whether Russia could be trusted to aid such an effort.

Terrorists as neighbors?

Another area of confusion for those governments seeking to extract White Helmet members from Syria is where they should be resettled. While the Trump administration’s travel ban excludes the U.S., given that the ban prohibits the entry of Syrian nationals, Canada was named by CBS as a top possibility for a White Helmet “safe haven.” The report also asserted that Jordan and Israel would also likely assist such efforts.

However, resettlement may be a problem, not so much for the White Helmets as for Canadians, or the citizens of whatever nation would host the evacuees. This is because the White Helmets have been shown on several occasions to effectively be the same organization as terror group al-Nusra Front and have been caught on film aiding al-Nusra terrorists execute Syrian civilians. It is hard to imagine any Westerner who would want the White Helmets as neighbors.

Evacuation phase

Ultimately, the fact that the group’s foreign funders are acting to evacuate White Helmet operatives from Syria makes it clear that the Syrian government, thanks to its own efforts and those of its allies, clearly has the upper hand in now seven-year-long conflict. A U.S. official speaking to CBS all but confirmed this, stating:

This effort says we are in the evacuation phase. It is an admission that the regime is going to regain control of the country and the White Helmets can’t remain.”

Though this could well be the final chapter for the Syrian White Helmets, such reports should be taken with a grain of salt, as they have been used in the past to generate sympathy among the Western public in order to justify increased support for the group. For instance, a prior CBS report had spoken of the Trump administration’s “funding freeze” for the White Helmets and how this endangered the group’s activities. However, as noted above, just two months later the U.S. restored funding for the group to the tune of $6.6 million.

Thus, while the group may be finished in Syria’s south, its presence along with its activities in service to its Western paymasters is likely to continue in other areas of Syria that are controlled by terrorists and foreign occupiers, despite assertions of the group’s imminent evacuation.

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Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

Featured image is from the author.

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Oil-rich Neuquén, Argentina – Site of a New U.S. Military Base

By W.T. Whitney Jr., July 18, 2018

Obsessive media focus on President Trump’s personal indecencies undoubtedly contributes to important news stories not seeing the light of day. In that regard, it’s no wonder the U.S. public is generally unaware of U.S. military interventions in parts of the world, particularly in Latin America. That way, U.S. imperial excess gets a pass.

Africa: Contradictions between Regional Security and Imperialist Interventions

By Abayomi Azikiwe, July 18, 2018

This gathering took place amid the burgeoning challenges facing the African continent involving the efforts to realize a meaningful peace process in the Republic of South Sudan, an ongoing independence movement to liberate the Western Sahara from Moroccan occupation, gender equality and end to violence against women, the recently-announced African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the role of imperialism as it relates to the question of national and regional security.

India: The Assault on Scholar and Social Activist Swami Agnivesh

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, July 18, 2018

The assassins are allegedly from the youth wing of the BJP, the ruling party. They had torn his clothes and hurled abuses at Agnivesh. They were angry that the activist had made a statement defending the consumption of beef. In recent months, the consumption of beef in a society where the cow is venerated has become a volatile issue with cases reported of Muslims being killed because they had eaten the meat of the animal even within the confines of their homes.     

A Short History of the Costs of Military Air Shows

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, July 18, 2018

Pilots from the US Department of the Navy returned from World War II flush with pride at winning the war in the Pacific. So, in 1946, the Navy established a base of naval air operations on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico where the Blue Angels began doing air shows for the public, partly for recruiting future pilots and partly for raising unit morale. 

Helsinki – Trump and Putin – a Showdown for Summer Doldrums or a Genuine Attempt Towards Peace?

By Peter Koenig, July 18, 2018

President Trump, opened the meeting by saying that up to now relations between the United States and Russia were bad, and confessing that the US was to blame for it. He wanted them to improve and hoped that this meeting – he indicated that others of similar nature may follow – may be a first step towards normalizing relations between the two atomic super-powers which together, he said, control 90% of the world’s nuclear destructive force. A timely admission, but ignoring the most dangerous and unpredictable atomic power, the rogue nation of Israel.

Video: Criminalization of War, Israel’s Biggest Concentration Camp. Michel Chossudovsky

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Astro Awani, July 18, 2018

Watch the interview of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky with Malaysia’s Astro Awani on the Criminalization of War, focus on Israel’s massacre in Gaza.

According to Prof. Chossudovsky, “… the problem is in addressing the complicity of the international community in closing their eyes regarding these atrocities.”

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Featured image: First Lady Melania Trump during a joint press conference between President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation | July 16, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Throughout the day before the summit in Helsinki, the lead story on the New York Times home page stayed the same: “Just by Meeting With Trump, Putin Comes Out Ahead.” The Sunday headline was in harmony with the tone of U.S. news coverage overall. As for media commentary, the Washington Post was in the dominant groove as it editorialized that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is “an implacably hostile foreign adversary.”

Contempt for diplomacy with Russia is now extreme. Mainline U.S. journalists and top Democrats often bait President Trump in zero-sum terms. No doubt Hillary Clinton thought she was sending out an applause line in her tweet Sunday night:

“Question for President Trump as he meets Putin: Do you know which team you play for?”

A bellicose stance toward Russia has become so routine and widespread that we might not give it a second thought — and that makes it all the more hazardous. After President George W. Bush declared “You’re either with us or against us,” many Americans gradually realized what was wrong with a Manichean view of the world. Such an outlook is even more dangerous today.

Since early 2017, the U.S. mass media have laid it on thick with the rough political equivalent of a painting technique known as chiaroscuro — “the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition,” in the words of Wikipedia. The Russiagate frenzy is largely about punching up contrasts between the United States (angelic and victimized) and Russia (sinister and victimizer).

Countless stories with selective facts are being told that way. But other selectively fact-based stories could also be told to portray the United States as a sinister victimizer and Russia as an angelic victim. Those governments and their conformist media outlets are relentless in telling it either way. As the great journalist I.F. Stone observed long ago,

“All governments lie, and nothing they say should be believed.”

In other words: don’t trust, verify.

Often the biggest lies involve what remains unsaid. For instance, U.S. media rarely mention such key matters as the promise-breaking huge expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders since the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the brazen U.S. intervention in Russia’s pivotal 1996 presidential election, or the U.S. government’s 2002 withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, or the more than 800 U.S. military bases overseas — in contrast to Russia’s nine.

An Open Letter for Sanity

For human survival on this planet, an overarching truth appears in an open letter published last week by The Nation magazine:

“No political advantage, real or imagined, could possibly compensate for the consequences if even a fraction of U.S. and Russian arsenals were to be utilized in a thermonuclear exchange. The tacit pretense that the worsening of U.S.-Russian relations does not worsen the odds of survival for the next generations is profoundly false.”

The initial 26 signers of the open letter — “Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security” — included Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, writer and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem, former UN ambassador Gov. Bill Richardson, political analyst Noam Chomsky, former covert CIA operations officer Valerie Plame, activist leader Rev. Dr. William Barber II, filmmaker Michael Moore, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen, former U.S. ambassador to the USSR Jack F. Matlock Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Alice Walker and Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, former senator Adlai Stevenson III, and former longtime House Armed Services Committee member Patricia Schroeder. (I was also one of the initial signers.)

Since its release five days ago, the open letter has gained support from a petition already signed by 30,000 people. The petition campaign aims to amplify the call for protecting the digital infrastructure of the electoral process that is now “vulnerable to would-be hackers based anywhere” — and for taking “concrete steps… to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers.”

We need a major shift in the U.S. approach toward Russia. Clearly the needed shift won’t be initiated by the Republican or Democratic leaders in Congress; it must come from Americans who make their voices heard. The lives — and even existence — of future generations are at stake in the relationship between Washington and Moscow.

Many of the petition’s grassroots signers have posted comments along with their names. Here are a few of my favorites:

• From Nevada: “We all share the same planet! We better learn how to do it safely or face the consequences of blowing ourselves up!”
• From New Mexico: “The earth will not survive a nuclear war. The weapons we have today are able to cause much more destruction than those of previous eras. We must find a way to common ground.”
• From Massachusetts: “It is imperative that we take steps to protect the sanctity of our elections and to prevent nuclear war anywhere on the earth.”
• From Kentucky: “Secure elections are a fundamental part of a democratic system. But this could become meaningless in the event of thermonuclear war.”
• From California: “There is only madness and hubris in talk of belligerence toward others, especially when we have such dangerous weapons and human error has almost led to our annihilation already more than once in the past half-century.”

Yet a wide array of media outlets, notably the “Russiagate”-obsessed network MSNBC, keeps egging on progressives to climb toward peaks of anti-Russian jingoism. The line of march is often in virtual lockstep with GOP hyper-hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The incessant drumbeat is in sync with what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”

Meanwhile, as Dr. King said,

“We still have a choice today: nonviolent co-existence or violent co-annihilation.”

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Norman Solomon is the coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

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Featured image: Yonatan Shapira (Source: The Electronic Intifada)

Yonatan Shapira says Israel’s ‘democracy’ is in fact an apartheid state led by fascist Jewish supremacists.

Watch the video below.

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DIMITRI LASCARIS: This is Dimitri Lascaris, reporting for The Real News Network from the port of Naples, Italy. We are seated in front of the ships of the Gaza flotilla, the Freedom Flotilla, which have been docked here for a couple of days, and I’m pleased to be joined today by Yonatan Shapira. Yonatan is a former rescue pilot in the Israeli Air Force. He’s also a founding member and prominent activist of the Israeli movement Boycott From Within.

And I’d like to thank you very much for joining us today, Yonatan.

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Thank you. Thank you for coming.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: So I’d like to start by talking about your experiences within the Israeli Air Force, and your decision ultimately to become a dissenter from military service. Could you tell us about that?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Well, there is a long story to tell here, but I’ll just try to say in a few words that in 2003, after more than 10 years of service in the Israeli Air Force, I was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot doing rescues and flying soldiers, and doing everything that I was asked. I realized together with other friends in the air force that we are fighting for the wrong side, and we are part of an organization that commits a crime against innocent Palestinians, and we do not want to be part of it anymore. So together with a group of about 27 pilots from all different squadrons of the Israeli air force, attack pilots, rescue pilots like me and others, veterans and active, we send this letter to our commander and the whole society in Israel telling them that we are no longer willing to obey the orders and be part of this illegal and criminal, immoral, occupation. That’s what started my life as an activist fifteen years ago, on the eve of the Jewish year, Rosh Hashanah.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And subsequently you became a prominent member, as I mentioned, at the outset of this movement, Boycott From Within. Can you tell us, what is it like being an Israeli citizen advocating for the imposition of a boycott given the attitude of the Israeli government towards the whole boycott movement?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: As a human being, I’m very proud of it. I feel super confident about what we, we are many activists. We are still a minority of a minority. But there are activists in Israel who are calling for boycott, divestment, and sanctions because we believe it’s for the benefit of all people; Palestinian people, and Jewish people, and everyone living there and everyone in the world. Of course, the Zionist society in Israel doesn’t like it. So you pay the [little] price of being a dissenter in an apartheid. So you get some benefit, some of your privilege away. But overall I’m still able to be there when I’m there, and lead a relatively comfortable life.

And slowly, slowly, the apartheid system is trying to make it harder and harder and more difficult on us. But again, when I look and compare my life to the life of a Palestinian or a refugee in Israel, or even a non-white Ashkenazi Israeli man in Israel, I’m still able to live quite comfortable. As we speak there are many trying in Parliament to make the apartheid in Israel more official. So different laws that are trying to constitute, that will make it even harder for us to still be free to still act.

And it’s just important to remember that Israel claims to be a democracy. It is not. It’s, it’s an apartheid. It’s led by a group of fascist Jewish supremacy people, and prime minister, and ministers. But if you’re a Zionist Jew, you can feel great democracy. If you are not a Zionist, and if you’re not a Jew, you’re living in apartheid.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Now, you’ve participated in prior missions of the Freedom Flotilla. Could you tell me why, and also how you were received by your former colleagues within the Israeli military when the vessels were intercepted on those occasions?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: The first time I tried to break the blockade with a group of activists was 2010. About three months after what happened on the Mavi Marmara, where Israeli, the Israeli army shot and killed about 10 activists from Turkey, most of them. The helicopter that landed, the soldiers that killed and massacred people on the Mavi Marmara, were helicopters from the squadron I used to fly in, this Blackhawk squadron in the Israeli air force. And therefore I decided that I must participate in the second boat that will try to break the blockade. It happened in September 2010. We were very small, and we were intercepted by many warships, small and big. And if we were Palestinians or Turks I guess they would shoot us and kill us, maybe, but I got the better treatment of a Taser gun in my heart. So maybe they thought that they will resuscitate my Zionist behavior. My Zionist heart will start beating again.

But instead it just made me more clear about my decision, and confident about the need to struggle against apartheid and against this illegal crime of ghettoization and that concentration of two million people. The second attempt was 2011, a year, about a year later. I was on a crew of The Audacity of Hope. It was a big American boat, and we were part of the second flotilla trying to leave from the port of Piraeus in Greece. Unfortunately, the Greek government was coopted by Israel and the U.S., and with different pressure, I guess, they obeyed Bibi Netanyahu. And we had a big sign saying, who’s your commander, Netanyahu or Poseidon? Who is the god of the sea. Is it Israel, or the Greek Poseidon?

Unfortunately, it was Netanyahu and on a gun show on a gunpoint. We were stopped by the Greek coast guard just a few minutes after leaving the port of Priaeus, and we had to go back, and were detained by the, by the Greeks. And the third attempt was 2012, with the Ship to Gaza, the Swedish group that was with many international organizations, and the Finnish flagged boat. We had other Israelis on board. And we were also stopped about 40 miles from, from shore, from Gaza. This time it was a big operation. I guess they used it as a maneuver for training their forces, because they know that we are not posing any threat, like military threat, on them. So they were hundreds, maybe thousands of soldiers participating. About 15 warships, big and small. And also one Blackhawk helicopter that came in circled above us. And when I looked at it on the tail I could see that the number on the tail is 852, which is the same helicopter, tthe same piece of metal that I used to fly some years before. They again arrested us, tasered us, and took us to the Navy base of Ashdod, and we spent a few days arrested.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: I’d like, I’d like to talk to you about the future, to conclude. And you know, those of us in the West watching with trepidation what’s happening seem, it seems to be that every day the predicament of the Palestinian people is worse, and that the Israeli government’s sense of impunity is on the increase, if anything. Do you, are you feeling hopeful, based upon what you see, for the cause of Palestinian justice, justice for the Palestinian people? Do you see signs that this is a battle that is being won, ultimately, and that this is something that may actually be won within your lifetime?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Well gives me hope is nothing about the governments and the system that controls us in your country, in my country. I see a lot of hypocrisy all over Europe and elsewhere, and also Canada. What gives me hope is to see the popular struggle of Palestinians that are showing incredible bravery. That reminds me what I grew up on, you know, the struggle in the ghettos, in the Warsaw Ghetto, in other ghettos. With the, with all the courage to walk into the fence, towards the fence of this biggest prison in the world, without bearing any arms. Walking and trying to protest this siege. It gives me a lot of hope, because I think that’s where the mighty power of the Israeli military collapses, when we have thousands and thousands of Palestinians that are uniting, holding hands and standing in front of the Israeli snipers.

That gives me hope. That means that it’s not going to be able to last forever. And things like that gives me hope to be together with the Spanish, Italians, Americans, Canadians, Norwegians, Swedish, everyone. It means that somewhere on a deep nerve of many people around the world, it’s quite clear that this symbolic struggle of the Palestinians for freedom will be won at some point. And our job is to not be deterred, and not be, not lose our hope when we see the hypocritical governments in one hand saying something against Israel’s crimes, and on the other hand still doing arms trade with them and giving them all the impunity and all the actual support to continue with this massacre and this illegality.

But it’s important to to say to everyone who listens to us that we need you. We need the person that now maybe sits in Canada, or in the U.S., or in elsewhere in Europe, or somewhere else. We need you to join this struggle. And this struggle is not just about freedom for Palestinians. It’s about the struggle against what Europe and the U.S. and other countries are doing to refugees that are trying to escape the horrors in Africa. It’s the same struggle. It’s the struggle of the people who have less to be recognized and to get their basic human right. So if you want to be part of the struggle, wherever you are, you don’t have to come all the way and join us in this flotilla. You can be active on your, in your local community, for justice for, for everyone. And then you are part of the struggle for justice for Palestine.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: I’d like to thank you very much for speaking with The Real News today, Yonatan. It’s been a pleasure.

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Thank you for coming here. And good luck with your health.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Thank you very much. And this is Dimitri Lascaris, reporting for The Real News from Naples, Italy.

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Why is Europe full of hate for Donald Trump?

Is it, perhaps, because millions could soon die in yet another of the senseless and horrible wars unleashed by the Western empire? Or is it because Europeans suddenly ‘saw the light’ and realized that they mistreated billions of innocent people throughout history; that actually all people on Earth are equal and should be left alone and be allowed to live their lives as they please?

Far from that; unfortunately, very far!

Most of the Europeans simply hate Trump because he had enough of the status quo, of what could be objectively described as sneaky and sleazy games.

Mr. Trump sees collaboration with Europe as an extremely bad business.

Not that President Trump is a saint himself. Of course, he isn’t. He is a businessman – a very ruthless one, and in the past very daring and very successful. He has already managed to break the backs of hundreds of people, and now he would not hesitate to run hundreds of countries to the ground, if they’d dare to stand in his way. When he sees that someone is trying to take advantage of him (or of the company he was allowed to manage – the United States of America), he knows perfectly well from where the stench comes, as he has been spoiling the air himself, all throughout his colorful career.

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The main reason why Europeans are so disgusted with Donald Trump, is because, in their eyes, he is impolite, simply rude. He does not show any respect for the Western civilization; he simply doesn’t care. He snaps at everyone – Europe, Japan, China, Mexico. It is even hard to call him a racist – he seems to hate everybody, sometimes at different times, or simultaneously.

The “Old continent” likes it dandy and smooth. It adores well-mannered people who behave, no matter what their color of the skin is, precisely like Europeans.

You see, if Mr. Trump was acting as an ordinary U.S. president from the upper class, perhaps like Mr. Obama or Bill Clinton were acting just very recently, there would be absolutely no outrage and no protests in London or Berlin. Some 10 million corpses in the Democratic Republic of Congo did not outrage European masses, as long as they got plenty of coltan for their mobile phones, and enough uranium for the NATO nukes.

Millions of corpses in Iraq, Libya and Syria – it mattered very little to bon vivants in Italy, France, or Greece. As long as the gentleman in charge of the world order was polite, as long as he knew how to respect the cradle of Western ‘civilization’ – Europe – there was no reason to worry.

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Europe used to murder tens, even hundreds of millions of people, on all continents and throughout the centuries. No matter how hard Washington tried (and it has been trying very hard), it was never able to compete with the gruesomeness of extermination campaigns that had originated in Paris, Brussels, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid or Lisbon. 

These things are, of course, never pronounced. Both Europe and the U.S. are supposed to be synonymous with ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and liberal values, not with the genocides. But of course, Western rulers know perfectly well of what stuff history is made.

To guarantee the stability of Western dogmas and propaganda, almost all U.S. presidents were accustomed to demonstrating great respect for Europe, at least publicly.

After all, Europe is where the American culture comes from, isn’t it? It is from where Christianity arrived. It is where people who slaughtered the great majority of the native Americans came from. It is where the slave owners and plantation owners came from. Europeans were people who were supplying slaves to the “New World”, hunting them down like animals in Africa, raping them, then chaining them inside the monstrously overcrowded vessels. What a legacy; what a civilization!

North America is nothing else than that wild, violent dream of the Europeans come true; a dream of open spaces and almost unopposed plunder: Kill all the natives, rob all that you can, then enslave people from other continents, and bring them to work for free on your plantations and construction sites – chained, humiliated and broken. When you digest your loot, then begin expanding again, as your ancestors – Europeans – were doing for centuries. But this time expand from your new base, from North America (new base but the same culture and the same aggressive hordes); expand towards Latin America and the Philippines, and eventually, towards the entire world.

Let us be very honest: The United States of America is just a huge extension of Europe, with several minorities living on its territory: descendants of slaves, broken native people, and the most aggressive immigrants from all parts of the planet. But it is Europe, in some places ‘diluted’, but Europe nevertheless.

When the Europeans are criticizing, even ridiculing the U.S. (without ridiculing themselves in the same breath), it is truly grotesque. Europe and North America have absolutely the same destiny, same goals and interests. For the last few decades, the U.S.A. has been doing an extremely dirty job, manipulating and plundering the world, on behalf of the entire West. It was rolling itself in filth, while Europe was stuffing itself on refined food, prostituting pristine parts of all continents with its mass tourism, and dictating to everyone how to live and even how to think.

Whatever you think of Donald Trump, it is obvious that he is very well aware of all this. He understands the correlation between Europe and the United States. And he is sick of what he sees.

The entire West is looting, plundering and raping the rest of the world; it does it in unison. Most of the world has by now been converted into a high security prison. The entire West is preventing people of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East from thinking, and from living their lives as it suits them the best. The entire West is spreading propaganda, dark nihilism (read my latest book “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”), and it is discrediting, even overthrowing, all socially-oriented movements and governments.

But it is the United States of America that is paying for all this, while letting its workers, the elderly and minorities literally rot in deplorable conditions. It robs and gets robbed, or at least its people are.

Look at the European so-called unemployed, enjoying their sexual escapades in Southeast Asia or East Africa, all at the expense of the people living or rotting alive in countless poor nations. Look at those long vacations, short working hours, free medical care and education, while people both in the poor nations and in the United States, can hardly make ends meet.

Is Europe really ‘colonized’ by the United States? Don’t make me laugh! It appears that it is Europe, which is still colonizing the world, making it work for its lethargy and extravagance. The U.S. has been, increasingly, like an idiot, working and killing on behalf of Europe.

Donald Trump suspects that this is what is happening. I am not sure he can formulate it, but at least he knows, intuitively, that something unsavory is going on. 

Donald Trump thinks that this relationship with Europe is a damn bad deal for his country. 

One can almost hear him shouting: “If we all steal, if we all have been screwing the world, let us all enjoy the booty. Pay your share, dudes, and let my people thrive, too!”

It is undeniable, that using gangster logic, he is totally right! And the West is, by now, patently, an out of control mafia which is brutalizing the entire planet!

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Some people in the West, even in the United States, are hoping that the present U.S. administration will manage to disgust Europe so much that ‘the Old Continent’ would crack-off, leave the alliance with the U.S. They think that it would have a very positive impact on our planet. 

This scenario could actually happen, but it would be even worse for the rest of the world than the present, already horrible, status quo setup.

It is because the foundations of the present global evil are not in the U.S., but in Europe itself.

“Independent”, rearmed Europe would mean even more suffering for Africa (just look what France has been doing recently in its former colonies), Asia (U.K. in Afghanistan), the Middle East (EU supporting Saudi Arabia in its terror drive against both Yemen and Syria) and elsewhere.

It is clear that Mr. Trump is concerned about his country. He is trying to put the interests of the U.S. first, not the interests of the West in general. Is he doing it elegantly? Definitely not. Is he a genius? Hardly.

But who knows, he may think that his people could be better off if he tries to move closer to Russia and Asia Pacific. That could be quite correct. After all, cooperating with Europe never brought many benefits to anyone. Europe is too tricky, too selfish, and too brutal. It only takes, never gives.

The entire U.S. liberal establishment is in disarray. It is totally Euro-centric. It seems to be more pro-European than Europe itself. It actually is Europe. Could the United States under Donald Trump become cosmopolitan? I am not sure. We will soon find out.

Both Europe and the former ‘U.S. pro-European regime’ are notoriously, fundamentally anti-Russian and anti-Chinese. 

Donald Trump is definitely not pro-Russian or pro-Chinese, but it appears that he dislikes Europe as much as he dislikes the others. Such a neo-egalitarian approach may actually bring some fruits and relief to our planet. 

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, a writer of revolutionary novel Aurora and several other books.  His latest books: are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, and The Great October Socialist Revolution. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

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Patients in Gaza’s hospital’s organised a sit-in in central Gaza City to appeal to the international community, Quds Press reported, Tuesday.

The sit-in included those wounded by Israel as well as rights groups. It took place in front of Erez Crossing where Gazans can pass through to receive treatment in Israel or Palestinian hospitals in West Bank.

Speakers at the sit-in said that Gaza’s hospitals suffer from shortages in medicines, lab equipment and testing materials due to the Palestinian Authority (PA) sanctions and the Israel’s siege of the strip.

First aid crews and patients lying on stretchers take part in a protest against the impairment of health due to Israel’s over a decade long blockade in front of Beit Hanoun Border Gate in Gaza City, Gaza on 17 July, 2018 [Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency]

The patients called for the international community to save their lives by lifting the siege and sanctions.

Spokesman of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qidra, called for an, “immediate and unconditional end of the suffering of the Gaza patients.”

Al-Qidra said that the Israel had killed 141 Palestinians and wounded 16,000 others during the protests of the Great March of Return. This put a heavy burden on the ministry of health and consumed most of the medical supplies.

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An unprecedented joint statement has been issued by dozens of Jewish groups in several countries offering their support to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. They affirmed that their condemnation of the Israeli state does not amount to antisemitism.

“As social justice organizations from around the world, we write this letter with growing alarm regarding the targeting of organizations that support Palestinian rights in general and the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in particular,” the letter began.

“These attacks too often take the form of cynical and false accusations of antisemitism that dangerously conflate anti-Jewish racism with opposition to Israel’s policies and system of occupation and apartheid.”

The letter went on to note that history has made Jewish people “all too aware of the dangers of increasingly fascistic and openly racist governments and political parties.”

“The rise in antisemitic discourse and attacks worldwide is part of that broader trend. At times like this, it is more important than ever to distinguish between the hostility to – or prejudice against – Jews on the one hand and legitimate critiques of Israeli policies and system of injustice on the other.”

The Jewish-based solidarity campaign was initiated by the Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP, a U.S.-based organization, along with 36 Jewish groups in 15 different countries, including South Africa, Brazil and Germany, according to The New Arab.

Activists and supporters of the BDS movement have taken inspiration from the boycott and sanctions campaign undertaken in the 1980s to help bring an end to South Africa.

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Propaganda works, proved effective time and again – why it’s a key tool in America’s deep state playbook. 

Virtually anything repeated enough, especially through the major media megaphone, gets most people to believe it – no matter how preposterous the claim.

Not a shred of evidence suggests Russia meddled in America’s political process – nothing.

Yet an earlier NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed most Americans believe the Russia did it Big Lie. A months earlier Gallup poll showed three-fourths of Americans view Vladimir Putin unfavorably.

Americans are easy marks to be fooled. No matter how many times they were deceived before, they’re easily manipulated to believe most anything drummed into their minds by the power of repetitious propaganda – fed them through through the major media megaphone – in lockstep with the official falsified narrative.

America’s dominant media serve as a propaganda platform for US imperial and monied interests – acting as agents of deception, betraying their readers and viewers time and again instead of informing them responsibly.

CNN presstitute Poppy Harlow played a clip on air of Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asking Putin in Helsinki the following question:

“Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”

Putin said: “Yes,” he wanted Trump to win “because he talked about bringing the US-Russia relationship back to normal,” as translated from his Russian language response.

Here’s the precise translation of his remark:

“Yes, I wanted him to win, because he talked about the need to normalize US-Russia relations,” adding:

“Isn’t it natural to have sympathy towards a man who wants to restore relations with your country? That’s normal.”

Putin did not address the fabricated official narrative notion that he directed his officials to help Trump win. Yet CNN’s Harlow claimed otherwise, falsely claiming he ordered Kremlin officials to help Trump triumph over Hillary.

He did nothing of the kind or say it, nor did any other Kremlin officials. No evidence proves otherwise – nothing but baseless accusations supported only by the power of deceptive propaganda.

Time and again, CNN, the NYT, and rest of America’s dominant media prove themselves untrustworthy.

They consistently abandon journalism the way it’s supposed to be, notably on geopolitical issues, especially on war and peace and anything about Russia.

After rejecting, or at least doubting, the official narrative about alleged Russian meddling in the US political process to aid his election, Trump backtracked post-Helsinki – capitulating to deep state power.

First in the White House, he said he misspoke abroad – then on CBS News Wednesday night, saying it’s “true,” deplorably adding:

Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election, and he “would” hold Russian President Vladimir Putin responsible for the interference – that didn’t occur, he failed to stress.

Here’s his verbatim exchange with CBS anchor Jeff Glor:

GLOR: “You say you agree with US intelligence that Russia meddled in the election in 2016.”

TRUMP: “Yeah and I’ve said that before, Jeff. I have said that numerous times before, and I would say that is true, yeah.”

GLOR: “But you haven’t condemned Putin, specifically. Do you hold him personally responsible?”

TRUMP: “Well, I would, because he’s in charge of the country. Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country. So certainly as the leader of a country you would have to hold him responsible, yes.”

GLOR: “What did you say to him?”

TRUMP: “Very strong on the fact that we can’t have meddling. We can’t have any of that – now look. We’re also living in a grown-up world.”

“Will a strong statement – you know – President Obama supposedly made a strong statement. Nobody heard it.”

“What they did hear is a statement he made to Putin’s very close friend. And that statement was not acceptable. Didn’t get very much play relatively speaking. But that statement was not acceptable.”

“But I let him know we can’t have this. We’re not going to have it, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

There you have it – Trump capitulating to America’s deep state over Russia on national television.

From day one in power, he caved to the national security state, Wall Street, and other monied interests over popular ones.

The sole redeeming part of his agenda was wanting improved relations with Russia and Vladimir Putin personally – preferring peace over possible confrontation, wanting the threat of nuclear war defused.

Despite tweeting post-Helsinki that he and Putin “got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match,” his remarks on CBS News showed he’ll continue dirty US business as usual toward Russia.

Anything positive from summit talks appears abandoned by capitulating to deep state power controlling him and his agenda.

Normalized relations with Russia and world peace are anathema notions in Washington.

Bipartisan neocons infesting the US political establishment want none of it. America’s hegemonic aims matter most – wanting dominance over planet earth, its resources and populations.

Endless wars of aggression, color revolutions, and other unlawful practices harmful to human rights and welfare are its favored strategies.

Will Americans go along with sacrificing vital freedoms for greater security from invented enemies – losing both?

Will US belligerent confrontation with Russia inevitably follow? Will mushroom-shaped denouement eventually kill us all?

*

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

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Nine hundred and seven.

That’s how many battery-electric buses  the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is planning to purchase over the next nine years. They will cost many billions of scarce public dollars.

Sixty battery-electric buses (BEBs — also known as eBuses or zero-emission buses [ZEBs]) will be tested, with the first 30 comprising 10 each from BYD, Proterra and New Flyer.

The plan is for a flood of BEBs to arrive in Toronto very shortly after the first 60: another 67 will arrive in 2021, 80 in 2022, 100 in 2024, etc. There will be very little time for testing the first buses before orders are placed for hundreds more.

This break-neck pace is part of a move to a “zero-emission” public-transportation bus fleet in the name of TransformTO and the C40 Fossil-Fuel-Free-Streets Declaration.

In my first article, published July 18, I noted some red flags.

“So, I take it that you think we should not make these purchases?” queried councillor and TTC commissioner Joe Mihevc in an email to me after reading that article. “Methinks that electric buses are the way of the future… fossil-fuels engines just can’t continue.”

Joe, I agree that going green is necessary. And I’d be fine with the choice of BEBs if it’s arrived at through a suitable duration of testing by an objective third-party, and also via a thorough, third-party analysis of the most cost-effective greenhouse-gas-emission-reduction options from the array of choices ranging from new-generation hybrids to compressed natural gas. And if there’s attention paid to  an LA Times investigative report    that evaluators at Los Angeles Metro ranked BYD as “‘unqualified’ or ‘marginal’ in meeting quality and reliability requirements” for BEBs.

Instead, the TTC staff and board have ignored all this and prepared a largely ‘eBus or bust’ plan that includes BYD on equal footing with other BEB manufacturers.

Don’t you wonder about the Sept. 6, 2017, email I uncovered via a Freedom of Information request and mentioned in my first article? In it, Case, head of TTC’s Vehicles Programs, wrote that,

“going forward cost is not the main driver — ZEBs are the goal.”

Joe, shouldn’t cost be among the top considerations in the ultra-expensive BEB project, particularly since the TTC already is desperately short of cash?

Perhaps you’ll take notice of another email I mentioned in my first article. In that July 7, 2017, email, an extract of which I’ve posted online, Mike Macas, senior manager of vehicle engineering – vehicles program, said that the day before he had talked to “Jonathan” [likely Jonathan Li, a Toronto Hydro engineer], who “advised that there was a telephone conference between the TTC (Rick Leary), City of Toronto (Minnan-wong [sic]) and Toronto Hydro… last Tuesday. The purpose of the discussion was to ensure that TTC was collaborating with TH [Toronto Hydro] as the City wants us to expedite the studying of this [BEB] technology ASAP.” (My emphasis.)

Who is the person or people at the city is pushing for BEBs: Denzil Minnan-Wong, Mayor John Tory, and/or someone else? And why are they pushing?

Decision-makers and watchdogs should be asking these questions — but none, including our city’s auditor general, appear to be.

Minnan-Wong defends eBuses

Toronto councillor, deputy mayor and TTC Board member Denzil Minnan-Wong — who according to records on the Toronto Lobbyist Registry has been lobbied by Chinese BEB maker BYD, along with Tory and high-level officials in the Ontario and federal governments — says the e-bus-buying plan is solid. (I also reached out to Tory’s office for comment but didn’t receive a response.)

“I think from a technology point of view you’ve got to know the right time when to step in, and I think the TTC’s taking the right step in terms of dipping their toe but not diving in,” said Minnan-Wong in a telephone interview. “I think that the [transit] commission is taking a balanced approach by going to three different vendors [for the first 30 BEBs].”

He added that testing the eBuses during winter conditions in Toronto is important, “because you don’t want to get an order and the things fall apart. Or they don’t start. Or there’s some mechanical problems.”

Minnan-Wong repeatedly said a 2016 a Columbia University report helped convince him BEBs are worth checking out.

The report asserts that each BEB saves $39,000/year over the 12-year lifespan of the bus compared to other types of buses because BEBs don’t use fuel and require less maintenance. There’s another possible $150,000/year savings from reduced healthcare costs due to fewer air-pollution-associated diseases among the residents of cities where BEBs are used. The report says this more than offsets the higher cost of BEBs.

But if Minnan-Wong has taken a few minutes to read the 2006 U.S. government study the Columbia University paper is based on, he knows the fuel efficiencies the 2006 study used — which are key to its conclusions — are from model-year 2002 buses. The 2006 study’s authors themselves admit that the diesel and CNG engines they studied were no longer in service in 2006, and that “newer engines from other manufacturers may have shown better results.” Moreover, the Columbia university analysis was published fully 10 years later, by which time the CNG, diesel and hybrid diesel technologies had improved even more.

Minnan-Wong and others at the TTC and its board aren’t fazed by that.

Neither are they batting an eye at a damning report on BYD’s BEBs published in the LA Timeson May 20, 2018.

LA Times investigation glossed over

The LA Times investigative report documented extensive problems with BYD’s BEBs purchased by Los Angeles Metro and transit agencies in Albuquerque, N.M., Denver, Col., and other jurisdictions.

In the article, Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative reporter Paige St. John quoted from a Metro-commissioned 2016 expert report that concluded it would be years until battery technology was capable of replacing conventional buses, and that “currently available technology can cut most of the pollution at a tenth [of] the cost. ”

Yet St. John found a pattern of top LA officials being lobbied by BYD and then doggedly defending buying more of BYD’s BEBs, despite these buses having poor performance. For example, BYD gave one of the directors of LA Metro scripted remarks on how to convince other directors that BYD’s BEBs are superior to those of other manufacturers.

St. John also discovered that two city departments sought sole-source contracts for BYD, and “when the projects hit snags, managers told the staff that the purchases were ‘political’ and in one case to work around problems with the buses.”

She found documents showing that all Metro staff evaluators have rated BYD “as ‘unqualified’ or ‘marginal’ in meeting quality and reliability requirements.” St. John also found documentation of road tests and driving logs from a total of nine cities that “show variability in bus range, and averages below what the company [BYD] claims.” (Note that ranges are key to BEBs’ cost efficiencies.)

“[In addition], public officials in Albuquerque were so alarmed by production problems and severe range shortfalls on BYD’s newest product, a $1-million, 60-foot articulated bus, that they raised concerns about its $23-million contract,” the article said. “Mayor Tim Keller said a nearly 100-mile gap in driving range [between the range BYD promised and what the vehicles had in practice] could force the city to spend millions of dollars more on buses. ‘The whole thing is a bit of a lemon,’ Keller said, ‘and now we’ve got to learn to make lemonade.’”

Yet none of this was mentioned in a report to the next TTC board meeting, on June 12, by Vehicle Programs head Bem Case and Mike Macas. The pair recommended the TTC purchase by mid-2020 60 BEBs — including 10 from BYD as part of the first batch of 30, leaving the door wide open for buying many more buses from BYD — and another 847 BEBs by 2027.

St. John’s damning article also was the subject of only one, soft-ball question at the June board meeting. The question was from councillor and TTC commissioner Glenn De Baeremaeker, who is a fan of the BEB project, to Case.

Case replied,

“It [the article] does not give me any hesitation… to buy BYD buses. The article primarily focused on the concerns around lobbying, and… [via] our approach to buy 10 buses from each of three manufacturers, we… take… even the potential for that… out of the equation. And the other concerns raised [by] the article were around… production quality, and they were primarily focused on the earliest buses that BYD produced out of their Lancaster [Calif.] plant. They’ve since gone through a couple of generations of buses — one generation anyway — and so we would expect the quality to have improved since then.”

Case’s response ignores, among many other things, that St. John’s information encompasses some of the latest-generation BYD BEBs such as its 60-foot articulated bus.

The TTC board voted at that meeting to start buying only “zero-emission propulsion technology” starting in 2025, and to accept Case’s and Macas’s report, including the goal of purchasing 907 BEBs by 2027.

“TTC staff have TTC staff have acted with integrity and professionalism at all times as it relates to this procurement,” Stuart Green, the agency’s senior communications specialist, said in an emailed response to my request for a comment about the process for the planned BEB purchases.

Notwithstanding Green’s stance, what’s happening certainly appears to lack rigour and objectivity — particularly important attributes for such a huge project.

Low-balling BEB-cost numbers

Interestingly, the “cost-benefit analysis” section of the TTC staff report to the June 2018 board meeting does not include a cost-benefit analysis.

The staff report also shows relatively low costs for the BEBs project.

Green emailed the following information to correct per-BEB cost I quoted in my first article:

“The cost per bus is approximately $1.2 million for each of the 60 buses (including chargers). The total budget with approval as of the June 12th Board [meeting] is now $140m[illion], which includes those 60 buses, chargers, on-site energy storage systems as well as civil, mechanical and electrical work at three garages, one substation and one emergency backup generator.”

Neither Green nor the minutes or the report from the June board meeting state what design stage these estimates are from, but it is  likely 10 per cent design stage or earlier. Therefore, there’s a very high probability of an increase.

There appear to be other factors at play pulling the costs down, at least in the short term.

Steve Munro wrote in his June 11, 2018, blog entry that,

“[TTC] staff replied [to my queries by saying that] the updated figures [for the life cycle costs of BEBs in the June 2018 staff report] reflect revised estimates for power cost (lower) and capital cost (higher) that on balance produce a lower cost/km than in the November report. However, this assumes that the buses actually achieve the mileage per charge that is claimed.”

Perhaps the following sentences from an email I received from the TTC via a Freedom of Information request helps explain why the power-costs estimates are low. In that email, dated July 27, 2017, Mike Macas summarizes a meeting with Toronto Hydro that took place earlier that day.

Included in that summary:

“TH [Toronto Hydro] advised that infrastructure upgrades required should not drive TTC’s decision for making quantity of BEB’s to pilot; TH would find a way to support regardless” and “TH advised that TH owning/supplying/financing/leasing BEB batteries is possible.”

Therefore, part of the plan appears to pass some significant portions of the costs to other parties, making the TTC’s books look better in the short term. This is an old trick that unfortunately doesn’t mean taxpayers are off the hook: in fact, such interventions often end up increasing the bill to taxpayers.

What can we do to change this decision-making process? Remember that it’s an election year in Toronto. Call your councillor, particularly if he or she is one of the seven city councillors on the TTC board to say you object.

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Featured image: Survivors of the Nagasaki bomb walk through the destruction as fire rages in the background. (Source: Political Concern)

The third clause in the Bishop of Chelmsford’s motion at the General Synod Debate on the UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons:

(c) commit the Church of England to work with its Anglican Communion and ecumenical partners in addressing the regional and international security concerns which drive nations to possess and seek nuclear weapons and to work towards achieving a genuine peace through their elimination.

It was passed 260 for, 26 against, 21 abstentions.

The first six pages of an online search found no reference to this decision in any member of the mainstream media (MSM) secular press. Only one entry – from the Defence Journal – recorded the event.

Will MSM cloak today’s Anglican news with silence?

Political damage is being done by social media’s highlighting of the austerity-excused trials and deprivations of the poorest and most disabled. Today it has been announced that the church is now reaching out ‘primarily to people under 40-years-of-age who have no current connection with a church’ – on pioneering café-style premises in coastal areas, market towns and outer urban housing estates.

Threatening? If the basic tenets of Christianity are taken to heart, enormous damage will be done to the sales of:

• armaments,
• pornography
• illegal drugs,
• junk food,
• many TV programmes,
• gambling offers
• and some sections of the film industry.

And the legal profession’s earnings will slump.

President and former General Eisenhower would have approved of the Synod’s decision. He said:

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together”(farewell address)

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From inception, democracy in Israel was pure fantasy. Now rights for Jews alone is official with Knesset enactment of apartheid rule over Palestinian citizens.

The new Basic Law, the equivalent of US constitutional law, way exceeds contentiousness.

It’s the Jewish state’s version of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws. Israel is to Palestinians what Hitler’s regime was to Jews – in both countries treated like subhumans, forced to endure virtually every type indignity, degradation and crime against humanity.

Palestinians and Israeli Arab citizens are discriminated against in virtually all aspects of their lives – their fundamental freedoms denied, their personal safety jeopardized by what the late Edward Said called “refined (Israeli) viciousness.”

Ahead of enactment of Israel’s Nation-State law, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said the following:

The Basic Law “falls within the bounds of absolute prohibitions under international law and is therefore illegitimate as a colonial law with characteristics of apartheid.”

Last Sunday, Adalah’s general director Hassan Jabareen said:

“The Nation-State Basic Law is illegitimate, as it establishes a colonial regime with distinct apartheid characteristics in that 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.”

Adalah attorney Sawsan Zaher earlier explained that the Nation-State Law conveys to Israeli Arab citizens that “Jewish rights are superior” to theirs.

Click here to read Adalah’s July 16, 2018 position paper on Israel’s Nation-State Law.

Separately, Adalah said

“(n)o country in the world today is defined as a democratic state where the constitutional identity is determined by ethnic affiliation that overrides the principle of equal citizenship.”

Enacting the measure illegitimately enshrines Jewish supremacy over equal rights for Arab citizens into Israeli Basic Law – what apartheid is all about.

It exceed the worst of South Africa’s version – including murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, arbitrary arrests, illegal imprisonments, denial of the right to life and liberty, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and other abusive acts imposed by Jews on Arabs.

Former UN Special Human Rights Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, Richard Falk, earlier said

“Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid in relation to the Palestine people should be taken with the utmost seriousness by all those who affirm human solidarity and care about making visible the long ordeal of a suffering and vulnerable people.”

Writing for the Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid, Karine MacAllister earlier said:

It “involves or necessitates the denial of the other; of their presence, rights and existence on the land and reconstruction of the past, namely that the land was empty before the advent of Zionist settlement, hence the movement’s slogan, (creating the myth about) ‘a land without people for a people without land,” adding:

Zionism is “a sophisticated legal, social, economic and political regime of racial discrimination that has led to colonialism and apartheid as well as the dispossession and displacement of the Palestinian people.”

“Colonialism flourishes by separating indigenous people from their land and heritage.”

Article 7(1)(j) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court calls apartheid a crime, stating:

“For the purpose of this Statute, (a) ‘crime against humanity’ means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(a) Murder;

(b) Extermination;

(c) Enslavement;

(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;

(f) Torture;

(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;

(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;

(i) Enforced disappearance of persons;

(j) The crime of apartheid;

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”

From inception, Israel stands guilty of virtually all of the above abuses and other high crimes against Palestinians – yet remains unaccountable because the world community supports the Jewish state, doing nothing to hold it accountable, nothing supporting fundamental Palestinian rights.

Apartheid is racism on steroids, institutionalized in Israel – now illegally codified under its Basic Law, defying international law, declaring the country to be the exclusive “nation-state of the Jewish people (and their) historic homeland…they have an exclusive right to…”

On Thursday, the measure was enacted by a 62 – 55 vote – officially adopting apartheid rule as the law of land, ending the myth of democratic rule once and for all.

Joint (Arab) List chairman Ayman Odeh denounced the bill, saying it

“declare(s) (Israel) does not want us here,” affirming “Jewish supremacy…tell(ing) us that we will always be second-class citizens.”

Netanyahu praised enactment of the apartheid law, calling it “a defining moment.”

Indeed so – revealing Israeli viciousness in the cold light of day, its discriminatory nature, its contempt for Palestinians rights, officially denying what’s affirmed under international laws, norms and standards.

*

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

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Russia is continuing to diversify state reserves away from US debt. The latest data from the US Treasury shows that Russia’s share hit an 11-year minimum and totaled only $14.9 billion.

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As post-war Britain escaped from rationing in the 1950s a new ingredient arrived from the rainforests in Malaysia. This versatile, solid fat would provide an alternative to more expensive butter.

It was high-yielding, cheap to produce and it provided both the crunch and creaminess needed for a variety of manufactured foodstuffs.

But this miracle ingredient – palm oil – was set to ignite one of the most environmentally damaging practices of the 21st Century: deforestation.

Through deforestation, we have seen the loss of unique habitats for endangered species, premature death rates for local populations due to air pollution and a major contribution to climate change.

But with new certification schemes and corporate sustainability policies in place, palm oil is no longer linked to deforestation, right?

Wrong.

A football pitch every 25 seconds

At Ethical Consumer, we’ve been tracking the palm oil problem for over 20 years. But, as highlighted in our recent report, despite involvement from governments, the World Bank, environmental groups and certification bodies, the rate of deforestation due to the production of palm oil is increasing.

A football pitch sized patch of rainforest is lost every 25 seconds and 24 million hectares were destroyed in Indonesia alone between 1990 and 20152.

A growing global demand for palm oil and lack of control in the supply chain is allowing this deforestation to continue unchecked and it is crucial that we take action to stop it – now.

Where does the power lie?

Undoubtedly, a huge amount of the power to change this situation lies with global food manufacturers. Together they hold the purchasing power to transform the supply chain but they simply aren’t doing enough to bring about this change.

On paper, they look to be buying from certified palm oil sources and meeting their commitments to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and other certification schemes, but this is obscuring an underlying problem.

Some of the palm oil used by the most popular brands is still being sourced from new plantations seeded after deforestation.

Spotlight on Mondelēz

We’ve put the spotlight on one of the major manufacturers known to be using this palm oil, in order to understand how deforestation palm oil is still entering the supply chain.

But they are by no means the worst offender on the issue – they score a middle ethical consumer rating. The way they report and present their palm oil usage does raise some interesting questions.

Mondelēz is a US company who owns many snack brands popular here in the UK – including Cadbury, Green & Blacks, Barny, Bel Vita, Tuc and Oreo. According to a recent WWF report into palm oil usage, they used 289,255 tonnes of palm oil in 2015 of which 96 percent was certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO).

Our investigation into Mondelēz’s 2017 RSPO filing and company policy shows that only 1.2 percent of their overall figure was segregated supply (down from 11 percent in 2016), meaning that the palm oil was kept separate from other supplies and could be fully traced back to the mills who processed it and the producers who grew it.

The vast majority of its CSPO was certified under the book and claim scheme, meaning that they bought credits through RSPO-certified suppliers.

By relying on third-party traders to take care of their supply, they have removed themselves from the checking process and therefore don’t fully understand their supply chain from producer to the factory.

We know that this book and claim process is often ineffective. Just last month Wilmar, a major trader for Mondelēz was investigated for its close family ties to Gama, a producer who was reported by Greenpeace to have destroyed more than 50,000 hectares of rainforest and tropical peatland in Indonesia in the past five years.

By devolving their role in the supply chain to a third party, Mondelēz is able to tick the CSPO box, without ensuring that the palm oil is from a deforestation-free supply.

Sadly they are not alone in doing this, and many of the companies we investigated in our recent guides to chocolate, bread, biscuits and margarine used this same method.

The clock is ticking

Mondelēz and other major brands made a commitment in 2010 under the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) to clean up the supply chain within a decade, having faced pressure from environmental groups

With less than two years to effect these changes, Greenpeace unearthed evidence in March 2018, that none of the big food brands has yet to clean up their supply chains other than to release policies and join certification schemes.

Of the 16 global brands approached, eight refused to share the names of their traders and mills and of the other eight, including Mondelēz, there was proven evidence of palm oil sourced from producers linked to deforestation.

Mondelēz is not operating in isolation here. In truth, certification schemes are weaker than they could be and some of the palm oil in our food is still coming from land that was recently covered in virgin rainforest.

So, what needs to change?

Along with Greenpeace and other environmental action groups, we’re calling for global brands such as Mondelēz to take responsibility for their supply chains, to stop hiding behind traders and certification labels and meet their commitment to using only deforestation-free palm oil by 2020.

The power to make the biggest change sits with these brands and they must act now.

*

Mackenzie Denyer is a writer and researcher at Ethical Consumer. 

Tim Hunt is co-editor and director of Ethical Consumer. Ethical Consumer has developed the most sophisticated and simple to use, personal ethical rating system, based on detailed research of over 40,000 companies, brands and products.

Ethical Consumer gives consumers the information they need to make ethical purchasing decisions.  

Featured image is from The Ecologist.

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Featured image: U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, above, released the 29-page indictment of 12 Russians days before President Trump was due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Internet Education Foundation / CC BY 2.0)

With great fanfare, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Friday released a 29-page indictment, a byproduct of the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Ostensibly, this indictment cemented the government’s case against the Russians and punched a hole in the arguments of those, like President Trump, who have been labeling Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.” This, of course, is precisely what Rosenstein and Mueller hoped to achieve through their carefully timed, and even more carefully scripted, indictment.

The indictment was made public at a time when the FBI is under increasing scrutiny for the appearance of strong anti-Trump bias on the part of some of its senior agents. This purported bias in turn generated rational concerns on the part of the president’s supporters that it possibly influenced decisions related to investigations being conducted by the FBI into allegations of collusion between persons affiliated with the campaign of then-Republican candidate Trump and the Russian government. The goal of this alleged collusion was to interfere in the American electoral processes and confer Trump an advantage against his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

It also comes on the heels of a concerted effort on the part of the president and his political supporters to denigrate the investigation of Mueller and, by extension, the judgment and character of Rosenstein, who, since the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from the Russian investigation, has been giving Mueller his marching orders. Indeed, several conservative members of the House of Representatives are mulling the impeachment of Rosenstein,claiming he is refusing to cooperate with Congress by denying them access to documents related to the investigation that certain members of Congress, at least, deem relevant to their constitutionally mandated oversight function.

While the impeachment of Rosenstein is highly unlikely and the likelihood of the FBI being found guilty of its investigations being corrupted by individual bias is equally slim, in the world of politics, perception creates its own reality and the Mueller investigation had been taking a public beating for some time. By releasing an indictment predicated upon the operating assertion that 12 named Russian military intelligence officers orchestrated a series of cyberattacks that resulted in information being stolen from computer servers belonging to the Democratic Party, and then facilitated the release of this information in a manner designed to do damage to the candidacy of Clinton, Rosenstein sought to silence once and for all the voices that have attacked him, along with the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Mueller investigation, as a participant in a partisan plot against the president.

There is one major problem with the indictment, however: It doesn’t prove that which it asserts. True, it provides a compelling narrative that reads like a spy novel, and there is no doubt in my mind that many of the technical details related to the timing and functioning of the malware described within are accurate. But the leap of logic that takes the reader from the inner workings of the servers of the Democratic Party to the offices of Russian intelligence officers in Moscow is not backed up by anything that demonstrates how these connections were made.

That’s the point of an indictment, however—it doesn’t exist to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, but rather to provide only enough information to demonstrate probable cause. No one would, or could, be convicted at trial from the information contained in the indictment alone. For that to happen, the government would have to produce the specific evidence linking the hacks to the named Russians, and provide details on how this evidence was collected, and by whom. In short, the government would have to be willing to reveal some of the most sensitive sources and methods of intelligence collection by the U.S. intelligence community and expose, and therefore ruin, the careers of those who collected this information. This is something the government has never been willing to do, and there is much doubt that if, for some odd reason, the Russians agreed to send one or more of these named intelligence officers to the United States to answer the indictment, this indictment would ever go to trial. It simply couldn’t survive the discovery to which any competent defense would subject the government’s assertions.

Robert Mueller knew this when he drafted the indictment, and Rob Rosenstein knew this when he presented it to the public. The assertions set forth in the indictment, while cloaked in the trappings of American justice, have nothing to do with actual justice or the rule of law; they cannot, and will never, be proved in a court of law. However, by releasing them in a manner that suggests that the government is willing to proceed to trial, a perception is created that implies that they can withstand the scrutiny necessary to prevail at trial.

And as we know, perception is its own reality.

Despite Rosenstein’s assertions to the contrary, the decision to release the indictment of the 12 named Russian military intelligence officers was an act of partisan warfare designed to tip the scale of public opinion against the supporters of President Trump, and in favor of those who oppose him politically, Democrat and Republican alike. Based upon the media coverage since Rosenstein’s press conference, it appears that in this he has been wildly successful.

But is the indictment factually correct? The biggest clue that Mueller and Rosenstein have crafted a criminal espionage narrative from whole cloth comes from none other than the very intelligence agency whose work would preclude Rosenstein’s indictment from ever going to trial: the National Security Agency. In June 2017 the online investigative journal The Intercept referenced a highly classified document from the NSA titled “Spear-Phishing Campaign TTPs Used Against U.S. And Foreign Government Political Entities.” It’s a highly technical document, derived from collection sources and methods the NSA has classified at the Top Secret/SI (i.e., Special Intelligence) level. This document was meant for internal consumption, not public release. As such, the drafters could be honest about what they knew and what they didn’t know—unlike those in the Mueller investigation who drafted the aforementioned indictment.

A cursory comparison of the leaked NSA document and the indictment presented by Rosenstein suggests that the events described in Count 11 of the indictment pertaining to an effort to penetrate state and county election offices responsible for administering the 2016 U.S. presidential election are precisely the events captured in the NSA document. While the indictment links the identity of a named Russian intelligence officer, Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, to specific actions detailed therein, the NSA document is much more circumspect. In a diagram supporting the text report, the NSA document specifically states that the organizational ties between the unnamed operators involved in the actions described and an organizational entity, Unit 74455, affiliated with Russian military intelligence is a product of the judgment of an analyst and not fact.

If we take this piece of information to its logical conclusion, then the Mueller indictment has taken detailed data related to hacking operations directed against various American political entities and shoehorned it into what amounts to little more than the organizational chart of a military intelligence unit assessed—but not known—to have overseen the operations described. This is a far cry from the kind of incontrovertible proof that Mueller’s team suggests exists to support its indictment of the 12 named Russian intelligence officers.

If this is indeed the case, then the indictment, as presented, is a politically motivated fraud. Mueller doesn’t know the identities of those involved in the hacking operations he describes—because the intelligence analysts who put the case together don’t know those names. If this case were to go to trial, the indictment would be dismissed in the preliminary hearing phase for insufficient evidence, even if the government were willing to lay out the totality of its case—which, because of classification reasons, it would never do.

But the purpose of the indictment wasn’t to bring to justice the perpetrators of a crime against the American people; it was to manipulate public opinion.

And therein lies the rub.

The timing of the release of the Mueller indictment unleashed a storm of political backlash directed at President Trump, and specifically at his scheduled July 16 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. This summit was never popular with the president’s political opponents, given the current state of affairs between Russia and the U.S., dominated as they are by events in Syria and Ukraine, perceived Russian threats against the northern flank of NATO, allegations of election meddling in the U.S. and Europe, and Russia’s nuclear arsenal. On that last point, critics claim Russia’s arsenal is irresponsibly expanding, operated in violation of existing arms control agreements, and is being used to underpin foreign policy objectives through the use of nuclear blackmail.

President Trump has publicly stated that it is his fervent desire that relations with Russia can be improved and that he views the Helsinki summit as an appropriate venue for initiating a process that could facilitate such an outcome. It is the president’s sole prerogative to formulate and implement foreign and national security policy on behalf of the American people. While his political critics are free to criticize this policy, they cannot undermine it without running afoul of sedition laws.

Rosenstein, by the timing and content of the indictment he publicly released Friday, committed an act that undermined the president of the United States’ ability to conduct critical affairs of state—in this case, a summit with a foreign leader the outcome of which could impact global nuclear nonproliferation policy. The hue and cry among the president’s political foes for him to cancel the summit with Putin—or, failing that, to use the summit to confront the Russian leader with the indictment—is a direct result of Rosenstein’s decision to release the Mueller indictment when he did and how he did. Through its content, the indictment was designed to shape public opinion against Russia.

This indictment, by any other name, is a political act, and should be treated as such by the American people and the media.

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Scott Ritter spent more than a dozen years in the intelligence field, beginning in 1985 as a ground intelligence officer with the US Marine Corps, where he served with the Marine Corps component of the Rapid Deployment Force at the Brigade and Battalion level.

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Russia has stopped “inching towards de-dollarization” as I wrote about on July 3^rd, and has now energetically walked out of the list of largest holders of US government bonds, hence this update. For the two months ending in May 2018, Moscow has offloaded more than $80 billion in US Government debt obligations.

The $30 billion “minimum” listing Rubicon has been crossed by Russia.

As of the end of May, Russia had bonds worth only $ 14.9 billion. For comparison: in April, Russia was on the Treasury list with bonds totaling $48.7 billion. Even then it was offloading US$ debt securities as Russia owned in March over $96 billion. At the end of 2017, Russia had US treasury securities worth $102.2 billion. It is anyone’s guess what Russia will own when the June and July figures are released in August and September – probably less than today.

This simply serves as a confirmation that Russia is steadfastly following a conservative policy of risk diversification in several areas such as financial, economic, and geopolitical. The US public debt and spend is increasingly viewed as a heightened risk area, deserving sober assessment.

So where have all the dollars gone? The total reserves of the Russian Central Bank have not changed and remain at approximately the equivalent of $ 457 billion, so what we are seeing is a shift of assets to other central banks, other asset classes, just not US$ government bonds.

During the same time (April-May) as this US$ shift happened, the Russian Central Bank bought more than 1 million troy ounces of gold in 60 days, and continues.

For comparison sake, the maximum Russia investment in US public debt was in October 2010 totaling $176.3 billion. Today it is $14.9 billion.

The largest holders of US government bonds as of May are China ($ 1,183.1 billion), Japan ($ 1,048.8 billion), Ireland ($ 301 billion), Brazil ($ 299.2 billion), Great Britain ($ 265 billion).

Using the similar conservative metrics that the Russian Central Bank has been rather successfully applying through this geopolitically and economically challenging period with the US and the US Dollar, it may not stretch the imagination too much that other countries such as China may eventually follow suit. Who will finance the debt/spend then?

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There are a number of elements in the recent release of an indictment of twelve named alleged Russian military intelligence GRU officers by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein looking into possible ties between Moscow and the Trump Administration that I find either implausible or even incoherent. But before considering that, it is necessary to consider the context of the announcement.

The Department of Justice, which had, based on evidence already revealed, actually interfered in the 2016 election more that Moscow could possibly have done, continued in that proud tradition by releasing the indictment three days before President Donald Trump was due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Helsinki Summit between the two leaders was critically important to anyone interested in preserving the planet Earth as we know it and there was no reason at all to release a non-time sensitive document that was clearly intended to cast a shadow over the proceedings. In fact, the surfacing of the indictment might easily be explained as a deliberate attempt by a politicized Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Mueller to torpedo President Trump over concerns that he might actually come to some understanding with Putin.

The 30-page long indictment is full of painstaking details about alleged Russian involvement but it makes numerous assertions that the reader is required to accept on faith because there is little or no evidence provided to back up the claims and the claims themselves could be false trails set up by any number of hostile intelligence services to implicate Moscow. From an intelligence officer’s point of view, there are even some significant areas where operational implausibility completely undermines the case being made.

The indictment identifies by name and position the twelve alleged GRU officers who “knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other, and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury (collectively the ‘Conspirators’), to gain unauthorized access (to ‘hack’) into the computers of US persons and entities involved in the 2016 US presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election.”

All twelve alleged GRU officers are described in detail, together with the cover mechanisms they reportedly used and the targets they pursued. But they are all in Russia and there is virtually no chance that they will be extradited to stand trial in Washington, which was certainly understood when the indictment was prepared. That means the “facts” as stated in the document will never be subjected to the normal judicial review process or discovery that takes place whenever someone is accused of a crime, which in turn means that information contained in the indictment will never be challenged.

The document itself also provides no information on how the Russian officers and their positions were identified, which suggests that it could have been a US hack or agent in place, either run by CIA or NSA, that came up with a list of those individuals connected to GRU cyber operations. That would be information involving sources and methods, codeword protected material beyond Top Secret.

If the GRU list is authentic, it would expose US ability to penetrate that organization, leading to Moscow tightening up security to the detriment of American intelligence. But it might alternatively be suggested that the drafters needed a group of plausible Russians and used a generic list provided by either CIA or NSA to come up with the culprits and then used those identities and the detailed information regarding them to provide credibility to their account. What they did not do, however, is provide the actual evidence connecting the individuals to the “hack/interference” or to connect the same to the Russian government. If the information in the indictment is completely accurate, which may not be the case, there is some suggestion that alleged Moscow linked proxies may have deliberately sought to undermine the campaign of Hillary Clinton to favor Bernie Sanders, but absolutely no evidence that they did anything to help Donald Trump.

Beyond what is or is not contained in the document itself, there is a clear misunderstanding regarding how a sophisticated intelligence organization, which certainly includes the GRU, operates. If there had been a large-scale Kremlin sanctioned plan to disrupt the US election, it would not be run by twelve identifiable GRU officers working with what appears to be only limited cover and resources. If the facts are correct, the activity might have been a routine probing, collecting and selective dissemination of information effort that all intelligence agencies engage in. The United States does so routinely in many countries, interfering in elections worldwide, far more than Russia with its limited resources, and even carrying out regime change.

If the Kremlin’s objective were truly to undermine American democracy, a task that is already being undertaken very ably by the GOP and Democrats, hundreds of officers would be involved, all working under deep cover and operating securely out of dispersed sites. And no one involved would be using computers connected to networks that could be penetrated to enable personal identification or discovery of the ultimate source of the activity. Everyone would be working in alias on stand-alone machines and the transmission of information would be done using cut-outs to break any chain of custody. A cut-out might consist of using thumb drives to transmit information from one computer to another, for example. There would be no sending or receiving of information by channels that could be identified by NSA or CIA and compromised.

So the idea that the United States government identified twelve culprits who were responsible for trying to overthrow American democracy is by any measure ludicrous, if indeed there was a major plan to disrupt the election at all. The indictment is little more than a political document seeking to undermine any effort by Donald Trump to establish rapprochement with Vladimir Putin. It will also serve to give fuel to the Democrats, who are still at a loss to understand what happened to Hillary Clinton, and Republican hawks like John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse who persist in seeking to refight the Cold War. As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin said in their Helsinki press conference, the coming together of the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nuclear armed countries is too important an opportunity to let pass. Cold Warriors in Washington should take note.

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Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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«Abbiamo da discutere su tutto, dal commercio al militare, ai missili, al nucleare, alla Cina»: così ha esordito il presidente Trump ieri al Summit di Helsinki. «È arrivata l’ora di parlare in maniera particolareggiata dei nostri rapporti bilaterali e dei punti nevralgici internazionali», ha sottolineato Putin. Ma a decidere quali saranno in futuro i rapporti tra Stati uniti e Russia non sono solo i due presidenti.

“Wir haben Diskussionen über alles, vom Handel bis zum Militär, von Raketen, über Atomtechnik bis hin zu China” erklärte Präsident Trump bei der Eröffnung des Gipfels von Helsinki. “Die Zeit ist gekommen, um im Detail über unsere bilateralen Beziehungen und die internationalen neuralgischen Punkte zu sprechen”, unterstrich Putin.

Aber nicht nur die beiden Präsidenten entscheiden über die Art der künftigen Beziehungen zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und Russland.

Es ist kein Zufall, dass, gerade als der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten im Begriff war, den russischen zu treffen, Sonderermittler Robert Mueller III Anklage gegen 12 Russen wegen Manipulation der Präsidentschaftswahlen in den USA erhoben hat, die in die digitalen Netze der Demokratischen Partei eingedrungen sein sollen, um die Kandidatin Hillary Clinton zu schädigen. Die Zwölf, die beschuldigt werden, Agenten des russischen Geheimdienstes Gru zu sein, werden offiziell “die Verschwörer” genannt und wegen “Verschwörung zur Begehung einer Straftat gegen die Vereinigten Staaten” angeklagt.

Gleichzeitig sagte Daniel Coats, Direktor des Nationalen Geheimdienstes und erster Geheimdienstberater des Präsidenten, über Russland: “Es ist ihre Absicht, unsere Grundwerte zu untergraben, die Demokratie zu untergraben”. Dann schlug er Alarm wegen der “Bedrohung durch Cyberangriffe, die sich an einem kritischen Punkt befindet”, ähnlich wie vor dem 11. September, nicht nur aus Russland, “dem aggressivsten ausländischen Agenten”, sondern auch aus China und dem Iran.

Gleichzeitig gaben britische “Ermittler” in London bekannt, dass der russische Geheimdienst Gru, der die Präsidentschaftswahlen in den Vereinigten Staaten sabotiert hat, derselbe ist, der in England einen ehemaligen russischen Agenten, Sergej Skripal, und seine Tochter vergiftet hat, die unerklärlicherweise ein extrem tödliches Gas überlebt haben.

Die politische Absicht dieser “Untersuchungen” ist klar: zu behaupten, dass der Kopf der “Verschwörer” der russische Präsident Putin ist, mit dem Präsident Trump trotz der großen parteiübergreifenden Opposition in den USA am Verhandlungstisch gesessen hat.

Nach der Anklage gegen die “Verschwörer” hatten die Demokraten Trump aufgefordert, das Treffen mit Putin abzusagen. Auch wenn es ihnen nicht gelungen ist, bleibt ihr Druck auf die Verhandlungen zwischen den USA und Russland stark. Was Putin von Trump zu bekommen versucht, ist einfach und kompliziert zugleich: die Spannungen zwischen den beiden Ländern zu lockern. Zu diesem Zweck schlug er Trump eine gemeinsame Untersuchung der “Verschwörung” vor, die dieser akzeptierte.

Es ist nicht bekannt, wie sich die Verhandlungen über die Kernfragen entwickeln werden: den Status der Krim, den Zustand Syriens, Atomwaffen und andere. Es ist auch nicht bekannt, was Trump im Gegenzug verlangen wird. Es ist jedoch sicher, dass jedes Zugeständnis benutzt werden kann, um Trump der Komplizenschaft mit dem Feind zu bezichtigen.

Diejenigen, die gegen eine Entspannung mit Russland sind, sind nicht nur die Demokraten (die mit einer Umkehrung der formalen Rollen die Rolle der “Falken” spielen), sondern auch viele Republikaner, darunter wichtige Vertreter der Regierung Trump selbst. Es ist das Establishment nicht nur in den USA, sondern auch in Europa, dessen Macht und Gewinne mit Spannungen und Kriegen verbunden sind.

Nicht die Worte, sondern die Fakten werden zeigen, ob die entspannende Atmosphäre des Gipfels von Helsinki Wirklichkeit wird. Vor allem mit einer Deeskalation der NATO in Europa, d.h. mit dem Abzug der US/NATO-Truppen, einschließlich der nuklearen Kräfte, die gegen Russland stationiert sind  und mit der Blockade der NATO-Osterweiterung.

Ø  Selbst wenn es in den Verhandlungen zwischen Putin und Trump zu einer Einigung über diese Fragen kommen sollte, wird letzterer dann in der Lage sein, sie umzusetzen?

Ø  Oder werden diejenigen, die entscheiden, die mächtigen Kreise des militärisch-industriellen Komplexes sein?

Eines ist sicher: Wir können in Italien und Europa nicht nur Zuschauer der Verhandlungen bleiben, von denen unsere Zukunft abhängt.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 17. Juli 2018

L’establishment USA dietro il Summit di Helsinki

Übersetzung: K.R.

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The governments of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, if their countries are to survive, must give up their deluded hopes of reaching agreements with the United States.  No such possibility exists on terms that the countries can accept.

American foreign policy rests on threat and force.  It is guided by the neoconservative doctrine of US hegemony, a doctrine that is inconsistent with accepting the sovereignty of other countries.  The only way that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea can reach an agreement with Washington is to become vassals like the UK, all of Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia.  

The Russians—especially the naive Atlanticist Integrationists—should take note of the extreme hostility, indeed, to the point of insanity, directed at the Helsinki meeting across the entirety of the American political, media, and intellectual scene.  Putin is incorrect that US-Russian relations are being held hostage to an internal US political struggle between the two parties.  The Republicans are just as insane and just as hostile to President Trump’s effort to improve American-Russian relations as the Democrats, as Donald Jeffries reminds us.    

The American rightwing is just as opposed as the leftwing.  Only a few experts, such as Stephen Cohen and Amb. Jack Matlock, President Reagan’s ambassader to the Soviet Union, have spoken out in support of Trump’s attempt to reduce the dangerous tensions between the nuclear powers.  Only a few pundits have explained the actual facts and the stakes.

There is no support for Trump’s agenda of peace with Russia in the US foreign policy arena.  The president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, spoke for them all when he declared that

“We must deal with Putin’s Russia as the rogue state it is.” 

Russia is a “ rogue state” simply because Russia does not accept Washington’s overlordship. Not for any other reason.

There is no support even in Trump’s own government for normalizing relations with Russia unless the neoconservative definition of normal relations is used.  By normal relations neoconservatives mean a vassal state relationship with Washington. That, and only that, is “normal.” Russia can have normal relations with America only on the basis of this definition of normal.  Sooner or later Putin and Lavrov will have to acknowledge this fact.

A lie repeated over and over becomes a fact.  That is what has happened to Russiagate.  Despite the total absence of any evidence, it is now a fact in America that Putin himself put Trump in the Oval Office.  That Trump met with Putin at Helsinki is considered proof that Trump is Putin’s lacky, as the New York Times and many others now assert as self-evident.  That Trump stood next to “the murderous thug Putin” and accepted Putin’s word that Russia did not interfere in the election of the US president is regarded as double proof that Trump is in Putin’s pocket and that the Russiagate story is true.

We can see now why neoconservative John Bolton arranged the Helsinki meeting.  It set Trump up for political execution by the media and Congress, both controlled by the military/security complex. In the United States there is zero independence, with the exception of Tucker Carlson, in the print and TV media, and zero independence in Congress.  These are controlled institutions, and Tucker will not be tolerated much longer.

The lie of Russian interference is now so firmly established that even the Open Letter published in The Nation and signed by luminaries such as Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Gloria Steinem states:

“We must reach common ground to safeguard common interests—taking steps to protect the nation’s elections and to prevent war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.” 

Even the most lucid Americans have to accept Russiagate as a fact and regard protecting our elections as important as preventing nuclear war.

There is no meaningful support in the Republican or Democratic party for Trump’s agenda of normalizing US/Russian relations.  The combination of a lie made into truth and the power of political campaign combinations from the military/security complex suffice to stifle any support for normalizing relations with Russia.  Any US Senator or Representative who supports Trump’s effort to remove Russia from the enemy category will find themselves confronted in their re-election with well-financed opponents declaring them to be traitors who supported Trump’s sell-out of America, while their own campaign contributions dry up.  

The American people who are not on the military/security payroll or otherwise dependent on this powerful lobby support peace and elected Trump for that reason, only to discover that a president who stands for peace with Russia is branded a traitor. 

It has happened many times before.  For example, in his history, The First World War, A. J. P. Taylor explained that all efforts to stop the disastrous war that destroyed Europe were blocked by smearing “as a defeatist, a pacifist, probably a traitor, every advocate of peace, or even of moderation.” As Taylor writes, the “top hats” wanted the money, and the “cloth hats” paid for it with their lives.  

What we are experiencing is that democracy is weak and dysfunctional when confronted with powerful lobbies capable of controlling explanations.  In America the control over explanations is so complete that the vast majority live in The Matrix.

The Russian media has ignored the American outpouring of hatred and insult against Trump for “selling out America” and has portrayed the Helsinki meeting positively as having established a road to better relations.  This Russian view ignores that Trump has no support in the US government or in the media to help him to build this road.  The Russian media desperately needs to become familiar with the  American response to Trump’s Helsinki meeting with Putin.  I have collected together a number of these responses in my recent columns, and the link in this column to Donald Jeffries provides a good sample of the Republicans’ rejection of Trump’s effort to repair the US-Russian relationship. 

Just as the World War I British, French, German, and Russian governments could not end the slaughter because they had promised victory and would be discredited, once the Russian government encourages the Russian people that better relations with America are in the making, the Russian government will be locked into delivering the better relations, and this will require the Russian government to give up more than it gains. Russian sovereignty will be part of the price for the agreement. 

If the Russians, desperate for Western acceptance, hold on to their delusion that Washington’s hegemony is negotiable, it will not only be at their own peril but also at the peril of all of humanity.

Postscript:  The rant in this URL in Salon, which I suspect is a CIA asset, by a non-entity of no merit or achievement is devoid of fact.  But it does stand as an accurate representation of the organized, orchestrated assault in the United States on truth and on those individuals committed to truth, such as Jill Stein and Julian Assange. As the goal is to denigrate Trump, it is not possible to believe the portrayal of the unidentified Republican state senator in the Salon account who lost his faith in Trump simply because Trump did not behave provocatively when he met with Putin. Nevertheless, the portrayal, even if fictional, is accurate in the sense that it represents the controlled explanation that is being fed to the American people and the subject peoples of Washington’s empire.  

The Russian media desperately needs to accurately translate and publish the Salon article in order for the Russian people to comprehend the impossibility of any agreement with the United States that leaves Russia a sovereign nation. The hatred of Russia that is being generated in America is extraordinary.  It can only lead to war.

Throughout the Western World truth and facts have lost their authority.  The West lives in lies, and this is the West that confronts the world.  It is pathetic to watch Lavrov and Putin continue, time and again, to appeal to facts and to truth when these mean nothing in the West. 

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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.

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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)

“The Cold War is a thing of the past.” By the time President Putin said as much during preliminary remarks at his joint press conference with President Trump in Helsinki, it was clear this would not stand. Not after so much investment by American conservatives in Cold War 2.0.

Russophobia is a 24/7 industry, and all concerned, including its media vassals, remain absolutely livid with the “disgraceful” Trump-Putin presser. Trump has “colluded with Russia.” How could the President of the United States promote “moral equivalence” with a “world-class thug”?

Multiple opportunities for apoplectic outrage were in order.

Trump: “Our relationship has never been worse than it is now. However, that changed. As of about four hours ago.”

Putin: “The United States could be more decisive in nudging Ukrainian leadership.”

Trump: “There was no collusion… I beat Hillary Clinton easily.”

Putin: “We should be guided by facts. Can you name a single fact that would definitively prove collusion? This is nonsense.”

Then, the clincher: the Russian president calls [Special Counsel] Robert Mueller’s ‘bluff’, offering to interrogate the Russians indicted for alleged election meddling in the US if Mueller makes an official request to Moscow. But in exchange, Russia would expect the US to question Americans on whether Moscow should face charges for illegal actions.

Trump hits it out of the park when asked whether he believes US intelligence, which concluded that Russia did meddle in the election, or Putin, who strongly denies it.

“President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

As if this was not enough, Trump doubles down invoking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server.

“I really do want to see the server. Where is the server? I want to know. Where is the server and what is the server saying?”

It was inevitable that a strategically crucial summit between the Russian and American presidencies would be hijacked by the dementia of the US news cycle.

Trump was unfazed. He knows that the DNC computer hard-drives – the source of an alleged “hacking” – simply “disappeared” while in the custody of US intel, FBI included. He knows the bandwidth necessary for file transfer was much larger than a hack might have managed in the time allowed. It was a leak, a download into a flash-drive.

Additionally, Putin knows that Mueller knows he will never be able to drag 12 Russian intelligence agents into a US courtroom. So the – debunked – indictment, announced only three days before Helsinki, was nothing more than a pre-emptive, judicial hand grenade.

No wonder John Brennan, a former CIA director under the Obama administration, is fuming.

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to exceed the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

How Syria and Ukraine are linked

However, there are reasons to expect at least minimal progress on three fronts in Helsinki: a solution for the Syria tragedy, an effort to limit nuclear weapons and save the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty signed in 1987 by Reagan and Gorbachev, and a positive drive to normalize US-Russia relations, away from Cold War 2.0.

Trump knew he had nothing to offer Putin to negotiate on Syria. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) now controls virtually 90% of national territory. Russia is firmly established in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially after signing a 49-year agreement with Damascus. 

President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation hold a working lunch | July 16, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Even considering careful mentions of Israel on both sides, Putin certainly did not agree to force Iran out of Syria.

No “grand bargain” on Iran seems to be in the cards. The top adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, was in Moscow last week. The Moscow-Tehran entente cordiale seems unbreakable. In parallel, as Asia Times has learned, Bashar al-Assad has told Moscow he might even agree to Iran leaving Syria, but Israel would have to return the occupied Golan Heights. So, the status quo remains.

Putin did mention both presidents discussed the Iran nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action and essentially they, strongly, agree to disagree. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have written a letter formally rejecting an appeal for carve-outs in finance, energy and healthcare by Germany, France and the UK. A maximum economic blockade remains the name of the game. Putin may have impressed on Trump the possible dire consequences of a US oil embargo on Iran, and even the (far-fetched) scenario of Tehran blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

Judging by what both presidents said, and what has been leaked so far, Trump may not have offered an explicit US recognition of Crimea for Russia, or an easing of Ukraine-linked sanctions.

It’s reasonable to picture a very delicate ballet in terms of what they really discussed in relation to Ukraine. Once again, the only thing Trump could offer on Ukraine is an easing of sanctions. But for Russia the stakes are much higher.

Putin clearly sees Southwest Asia and Central and Eastern Europe as totally integrated. The Black Sea basin is where Russia intersects with Ukraine, Turkey, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Or, historically, where the former Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg empires converged.

A Greater Black Sea implies the geopolitical convergence of what’s happening in both Syria and Ukraine. That’s why for the Kremlin only an overall package matters. It’s not by accident that Washington identified these two nodes – destabilizing Damascus and turning the tables in Kiev – to cause problems for Moscow.

Putin sees a stable Syria and a stable Ukraine as essential to ease his burden in dealing with the Balkans and the Baltics. We’re back once again to that classic geopolitical staple, the Intermarium (“between the seas”). That’s the ultra-contested rimland from Estonia in the north to Bulgaria in the south – and to the Caucasus in the east. Once, that used to frame the clash between Germany and Russia. Now, that frames the clash between the US and Russia.

In a fascinating echo of the summit in Helsinki, Western strategists do lose their sleep gaming on Russia being able to “Finlandize” this whole rimland.

And that brings us, inevitably, to what could be termed The German Question. What is Putin’s ultimate goal: a quite close business and strategic relationship with Germany (German business is in favor)? Or some sort of entente cordiale with the US? EU diplomats in Brussels are openly discussing that underneath all the thunder and lightning, this is the holy of the holies.

Take a walk on the wild side

The now notorious key takeaway from a Trump interview at his golf club in Turnberry, Scotland, before Helsinki, may offer some clues.

“Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe. Russia is a foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive.”

Putin certainly knows it. But even Trump, while not being a Clausewitzian strategist, may have had an intuition that the post-WWII liberal order, built by a hegemonic US and bent on permanent US military hegemony over the Eurasian landmass while subduing a vassal Europe, is waning.

While Trump firebombs this United States of Europe as an “unfair” competitor of the US, it’s essential to remember that it was the White House that asked for the Helsinki summit, not the Kremlin.

Trump treats the EU with undisguised disdain. He would love nothing better than for the EU to dissolve. His Arab “partners” can be easily controlled by fear. He has all but declared economic war on China and is on tariff overdrive – even as the IMF warns that the global economy runs the risk of losing around $500 billion in the process. And he faces the ultimate intractable, the China-Russia-Iran axis of Eurasian integration, which simply won’t go away.

So, talking to “world-class thug” Putin – in usual suspect terminology – is a must. A divide-and-rule here, a deal there – who knows what some hustling will bring? To paraphrase Lou Reed, New Trump City “is the place where they say “Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.”

During the Helsinki presser, Putin, fresh from Russia’s spectacular World Cup soft power PR coup, passed a football to Trump. The US president said he would give it to his son, Barron, and passed the ball to First Lady Melania. Well, the ball is now in Melania’s court.

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Early last month, at a tiny military post near the tumbledown town of Jamaame in Somalia, small arms fire began to ring out as mortar shells crashed down. When the attack was over, one Somali soldier had been wounded — and had that been the extent of the casualties, you undoubtedly would never have heard about it.

As it happened, however, American commandos were also operating from that outpost and four of them were wounded, three badly enough to be evacuated for further medical care. Another special operator, Staff Sergeant Alexander Conrad, assigned to the U.S. Army’s Special Forces (also known as the Green Berets), was killed.

If the story sounds vaguely familiar — combat by U.S. commandos in African wars that America is technically not fighting — it should. Last December, Green Berets operating alongside local forces in Niger killed 11 Islamic State militants in a firefight. Two months earlier, in October, an ambush by an Islamic State terror group in that same country, where few Americans (including members of Congress) even knew U.S. special operators were stationed, left four U.S. soldiers dead — Green Berets among them. (The military first described that mission as providing “advice and assistance” to local forces, then as a “reconnaissance patrol” as part of a broader “train, advise, and assist” mission, before it was finally exposed as a kill or capture operation.) Last May, a Navy SEAL was killed and two other U.S. personnel were wounded in a raid in Somalia that the Pentagon described as an “advise, assist, and accompany” mission. And a month earlier, a U.S. commando reportedly killed a member of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal militia that has terrorized parts of Central Africa for decades.

And there had been, as the New York Times noted in March, at least 10 other previously unreported attacks on American troops in West Africa between 2015 and 2017. Little wonder since, for at least five years, as Politico recently reported, Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and other commandos, operating under a little-understood legal authority known as Section 127e, have been involved in reconnaissance and “direct action” combat raids with African special operators in Somalia, Cameroon, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia.

None of this should be surprising, since in Africa and across the rest of the planet America’s Special Operations forces (SOF) are regularly engaged in a wide-ranging set of missions including special reconnaissance and small-scale offensive actions, unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and security force assistance (that is, organizing, training, equipping, and advising foreign troops). And every day, almost everywhere, U.S. commandos are involved in various kinds of training.

Unless they end in disaster, most missions remain in the shadows, unknown to all but a few Americans. And yet last year alone, U.S. commandos deployed to 149 countries — about 75% of the nations on the planet. At the halfway mark of this year, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM), America’s most elite troops have already carried out missions in 133 countries. That’s nearly as many deployments as occurred during the last year of the Obama administration and more than double those of the final days of George W. Bush’s White House.

Going Commando

“USSOCOM plays an integral role in opposing today’s threats to our nation, to protecting the American people, to securing our homeland, and in maintaining favorable regional balances of power,” General Raymond Thomas, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, told members of the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year. “However, as we focus on today’s operations we must be equally focused on required future transformation. SOF must adapt, develop, procure, and field new capabilities in the interest of continuing to be a unique, lethal, and agile part of the Joint Force of tomorrow.”

Members of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, assigned to the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron, provide security of a landing zone during a combat search and rescue exercise in support of Eager Lion 2017. Eager Lion is an annual U.S. Central Command exercise in Jordan designed to strengthen military-to-military relationships between the U.S., Jordan and other international partners. (Source: Public Domain)

Special Operations forces have actually been in a state of transformation ever since September 11, 2001. In the years since, they have grown in every possible way — from their budget to their size, to their pace of operations, to the geographic sweep of their missions. In 2001, for example, an average of 2,900 commandos were deployed overseas in any given week. That number has now soared to 8,300, according to SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw. At the same time, the number of “authorized military positions” — the active-duty troops, reservists, and National Guardsmen that are part of SOCOM — has jumped from 42,800 in 2001 to 63,500 today. While each of the military service branches — the so-called parent services — provides funding, including pay, benefits, and some equipment to their elite forces, “Special Operations-specific funding,” at $3.1 billion in 2001, is now at $12.3 billion. (The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps also provide their special operations units with about $8 billion annually.)

All this means that, on any given day, more than 8,000 exceptionally well-equipped and well-funded special operators from a command numbering roughly 70,000 active-duty personnel, reservists, and National Guardsmen as well as civilians are deployed in approximately 90 countries. Most of those troops are Green Berets, Rangers, or other Army Special Operations personnel. According to Lieutenant General Kenneth Tovo, head of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command until his retirement last month, that branch provides more than 51% of all Special Operations forces and accounts for more than 60% of their overseas deployments. On any given day, just the Army’s elite soldiers are operating in around 70 countries.

In February, for instance, Army Rangers carried out several weeks of winter warfare training in Germany, while Green Berets practiced missions involving snowmobiles in Sweden. In April, Green Berets took part in the annual Flintlock multinational Special Operations forces training exercise conducted in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Senegal that involved Nigerien, Burkinabe, Malian, Polish, Spanish, and Portuguese troops, among others.

While most missions involve training, instruction, or war games, Special Forces soldiers are also regularly involved in combat operations across America’s expansive global war zones. A month after Flintlock, for example, Green Berets accompanied local commandos on a nighttime air assault raid in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, during which a senior ISIS operative was reportedly “eliminated.” In May, a post-deployment awards ceremony for members of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group, who had just returned from six months advising and assisting Afghan commandos, offered some indication of the kinds of missions being undertaken in that country. Those Green Berets received more than 60 decorations for valor — including 20 Bronze Star Medals and four Silver Star Medals (the third-highest military combat decoration).

For its part, the Navy, according to Rear Admiral Tim Szymanski, chief of Naval Special Warfare Command, has about 1,000 SEALs or other personnel deployed to more than 35 countries each day. In February, Naval Special Warfare forces and soldiers from Army Special Operations Aviation Command conducted training aboard a French amphibious assault ship in the Arabian Gulf. That same month, Navy SEALs joined elite U.S. Air Force personnel in training alongside Royal Thai Naval Special Warfare operators during Cobra Gold, an annual exercise in Thailand.

The troops from U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, or MARSOC, deploy primarily to the Middle East, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific regions on six-month rotations. At any time, on average, about 400 “Raiders” are engaged in missions across 18 countries.

Air Force Special Operations Command, which fields a force of 19,500 active, reserve, and civilian personnel, conducted 78 joint-training exercises and events with partner nations in 2017, according to Lieutenant General Marshall Webb, chief of Air Force Special Operations Command. In February, for example, Air Force commandos conducted Arctic training — ski maneuvers and free-fall air operations — in Sweden, but such training missions are only part of the story. Air Force special operators were, for instance, recently deployed to aid the attempt to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped deep inside a cave in Thailand. The Air Force also has three active duty special operations wings assigned to Air Force Special Operations Command, including the 24th Special Operations Wing, a “special tactics” unit that integrates air and ground forces for “precision-strike” and personnel-recovery missions. At a change of command ceremony in March, it was noted that its personnel had conducted almost 2,900 combat missions over the last two years.

Addition Through Subtraction

For years, U.S. Special Operations forces have been in a state of seemingly unrestrained expansion. Nowhere has that been more evident than in Africa. In 2006, just 1% of all American commandos deployed overseas were operating on that continent. By 2016, that number had jumped above 17%. By then, there were more special operations personnel devoted to Africa — 1,700 special operators spread out across 20 countries — than anywhere else except the Middle East.

Recently, however, the New York Times reported that a “sweeping Pentagon review” of special ops missions on that continent may soon result in drastic cuts in the number of commandos operating there. (“We do not comment on what tasks the secretary of defense or chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff may or may not have given USSOCOM,” spokesman Ken McGraw told me when I inquired about the review.) U.S. Africa Command has apparently been asked to consider what effect cutting commandos there by 25% over 18 months and 50% over three years would have on its counterterrorism missions. In the end, only about 700 elite troops — roughly the same number as were stationed in Africa in 2014 — would be left there.

Coming on the heels of the October 2017 debacle in Niger that left those four Americans dead and apparent orders from the commander of United States Special Operations forces in Africa that its commandos “plan missions to stay out of direct combat or do not go,” a number of experts suggested that such a review signaled a reappraisal of military engagement on the continent. The proposed cuts also seemed to fit with the Pentagon’s latest national defense strategy that highlighted a coming shift from a focus on counterterrorism to the threats of near-peer competitors like Russia and China.

“We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists,” said Secretary of Defense James Mattis in January, “but great power competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

A wide range of analysts questioned or criticized the proposed troop reduction. Mu Xiaoming, from China’s National Defense University of the People’s Liberation Army, likened such a reduction in elite U.S. forces to the Obama administration’s drawdown of troops in Afghanistan in 2014 and noted the possibility of “terrorism making a comeback in Africa.” A former chief of U.S. commandos on the continent, Donald Bolduc, unsurprisingly echoed these same fears.

“Without the presence that we have there now,” he told Voice of America, “we’re just going to increase the effectiveness of the violent extremist organizations over time and we are going to lose trust and credibility in this area and destabilize it even further.”

David Meijer, a security analyst based in Amsterdam, lamented that, as Africa was growing in geostrategic importance and China is strengthening its ties there,

“it’s ironic that Washington is set to reduce its already minimal engagement on the continent.”

This is hardly a foregone conclusion, however. For years, members of SOCOM, as well as supporters in Congress, at think tanks, and elsewhere, have been loudly complaining about the soaring operations tempo for America’s elite troops and the resulting strains on them.

“Most SOF units are employed to their sustainable limit,” General Thomas, the SOCOM chief, told members of Congress last spring. “Despite growing demand for SOF, we must prioritize the sourcing of these demands as we face a rapidly changing security environment.” Given how much clout SOCOM wields, such incessant gripes were certain to lead to changes in policy.

Last year, in fact, Secretary of Defense Mattis noted that the lines between U.S. Special Operations forces and conventional troops were blurring and that the latter would likely be taking on missions previously shouldered by the commandos, particularly in Africa.

“So the general purpose forces can do a lot of the kind of work that you see going on and, in fact, are now,” he said. “By and large, for example in Trans-Sahel [in northwest Africa], many of those forces down there supporting the French-led effort are not Special Forces. So we’ll continue to expand the general purpose forces where it’s appropriate. I would… anticipate more use of them.”

Earlier this year, Owen West, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, referred to Mattis’s comments while telling members of the House Armed Services Committee about the “need to look at the line that separates conventional operating forces from SOF and seek to take greater advantage of the ‘common capabilities’ of our exceptional conventional forces.” He particularly highlighted the Army’s Security Force Assistance Brigades, recently created to conduct advise-and-assist missions. This spring, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recommended that one of those units be dedicated to Africa.

Substituting forces in this way is precisely what Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, an Iraq War veteran and member of the Armed Services Committee, has also been advocating. Late last year, in fact, her press secretary, Leigh Claffey, told TomDispatch that the senator believed “instead of such heavy reliance on Special Forces, we should also be engaging our conventional forces to take over missions when appropriate, as well as turning over operations to capable indigenous forces.” Chances are that U.S. commandos will continue carrying out their shadowy Section 127e raids alongside local forces across the African continent while leaving more conventional training and advising tasks to rank-and-file troops. In other words, the number of commandos in Africa may be cut, but the total number of American troops may not — with covert combat operations possibly continuing at the present pace.

If anything, U.S. Special Operations forces are likely to expand, not contract, next year. SOCOM’s 2019 budget request calls for adding about 1,000 personnel to what would then be a force of 71,000. In April, at a meeting of the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities chaired by Ernst, New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich noted that SOCOM was on track to “grow by approximately 2,000 personnel” in the coming years. The command is also poised to make 2018 another historic year in global reach. If Washington’s special operators deploy to just 17 more countries by the end of the fiscal year, they will exceed last year’s record-breaking total.

“USSOCOM continues to recruit, assess, and select the very best. We then train and empower our teammates to solve the most daunting national security problems,” SOCOM commander General Thomas told the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities earlier this year.

Why Green Berets and Navy SEALs need to solve national security problems — strategic issues that ought to be addressed by policymakers — is a question that has long gone unanswered. It may be one of the reasons why, since Green Berets “liberated” Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has been involved in combat there and, as the years have passed, a plethora of other forever-war fronts including Cameroon, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.

“The creativity, initiative and spirit of the people who comprise the Special Operations Force cannot be overstated. They are our greatest asset,” said Thomas.

And it’s likely that such assets will grow in 2019.

*

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept. His latest book is Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan. His website is NickTurse.com.

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Featured image: Israeli Education Minister, Naftali Bennett [Solidarity with Palestine Walter Herrman/Facebook]

Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennet has insisted that Israeli warplanes should drop bombs over the heads of Palestinian children flying kites into Israel, Ynet Net News reported.

During the meeting of the Israeli Security Cabinet on Sunday, which convened to discuss the latest Israeli attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip, Bennet said:

“Why not shoot anyone who launches aerial weapons at our communities, and at the cells?

“There is no legal impediment. Why shoot next to them and not directly at them? These are terrorists for all intents and purposes.”

When the Israeli Army Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot responded, saying:

“I don’t think shooting teens and children – who are sometimes the ones launching the balloons and kites – is right.”

He also asked Bennet:

“Are you proposing to drop a bomb from a plane on incendiary balloon and kite cells?”

Bennett stressed that the Israeli army should do this, pushing the army chief to say:

“I disagree with you. It’s against my operational and moral positions.”

Most of the Palestinians who fly the kites during the Great March of Return, which started on 30 March, are children.

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“Talking to people in Gaza, you realise how much the drones are burrowed into their daily lives,” says Daniel Tepper, an American photographer who has been researching and documenting the production and militarisation of drones in Israel since the 2014 conflict in Gaza.

In Arabic, unmanned aircrafts are referred to as ‘zenana’, local slang for the buzzing of a mosquito; in English ‘drones’ take their name from the male honeybee, and the monotonous hum it makes in flight. The Israeli military pioneered the use of drones in combat, employing the technology during the 1982 Lebanon War, and since then people in Gaza have become accustomed to the insidious noise of drones, sounding so close “they could reside beside us”, as Dr. Atef Abu Saif writes in his first-hand account of the 2014 conflict, The Drone Eats With Me.

“It’s like it wants to join us for the evening and has pulled up an invisible chair,” he adds.

Despite this familiarity, what’s most scary about the drones is the fact it’s always unclear why they’re out – if they’re doing surveillance, if they’re armed, or if they’re about to strike. During the summer of 2014 the people of Gaza lived under constant surveillance, so much so you couldn’t distinguish a star or a satellite from a drone at night, says Vittoria Mentasti, an Italian photographer who experienced the conflict while reporting on it. According to Hamushim, a human rights group based in Gaza, drone warfare was responsible for almost a third of the 1543 civilian casualties in the 2014 war.

“The use of drones ensures a state of fear that perpetuates war,” says Mentasti, who has been working with Tepper to document drones and their use in Gaza. “All people in Gaza now suffer from the traumatic experience of war and the lack of any illusion of safety makes it impossible to heal from trauma.”

An employee of the Israeli aerospace manufacturer, Aeronatuics Defense Systems, carries an Orbiter 2 UAV after a flight demonstration for foreign buyers in southern Israel, near the border with Gaza. © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Keen to find out more, Mentasti and Tepper joined forces in 2015 to photograph Israeli weapons conventions, and through this work gained access to the factories that manufacture drones. Israeli companies are a top global exporter of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles], accounting for over 60% of all international sales since 1985. The industry reportedly made $4.62 billion between 2005 to 2012, mostly from foreign sales.

Mentasti and Tepper found that, paradoxically, the fully-automated drones are put together piece-by-piece by hand by skilled technicians.

“It’s like putting together a model aeroplane,” says Tepper, who adds that the factories they work in are there to sell as much as they are to produce, with the drones displayed next to promotional videos.

Visiting the factories, Tepper and Mentasti also found that many of the people and businesses associated with manufacturing UAVs believes they are humanitarian weapons, as they help reduce military and civilian casualties.

“They certainly believe they’re doing the right thing,” says Tepper.

In 2016, the duo decided to travel to Gaza and photograph the survivors of Israeli drone strikes. Travelling from Italy, Tepper came across a small infrared camera in an Apple store in Torino, made by a manufacturer that sells similar cameras for use on UAVs. He and Mentasti decided to use this camera on the project, to give an idea of what UAV operators see from their bases while remotely manning the machines.

“With infrared images, people on the ground look like insects, like little white spots running along the ground,” he says. “We don’t really feel anything from that. It’s graphic and removed like a video game. There’s no emotional pull when you see that kind of imagery.”

“We always envisioned this project to be multifaceted,” he adds. “Whatever situation we found ourselves in, we thought about what best way to express what we wanted to say.”

And what they wanted to say encompasses much more than Israel and its use of drones alone, he adds.

“It was about looking at the technology, and saying that what’s happening in Gaza is what’s happening when nations like the US, France, the UK, all these first-world nations, are using their drones all over the world.”

Ground control stations, used to pilot large drones, built inside of camouflaged shipping containers at Israel Aeronautic Industries’ main facility, near Ben Gurion Airport, Israel. Israel Aeronautic Industries (IAI) was founded in 1953 and the state-owned company is the largest aerospace and defense manufacturer in Israel. IAI has produced fighter jets, missiles, and spacecraft for domestic and international clients and is the largest manufacturer of UAV systems in Israel. This hangar is used as a showroom, exhibiting the many UAVs and related systems produced by the company.
 © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

The Orbiter mini UAV inside the Aeronautics Defense Systems factory in Yavne, Israel. This highly autonomous UAV can locate and track moving targets while piloting itself along a patrol route without any minimal human control. The Orbiter is flown by military forces in over 30 countries including Mexico, Ireland, and Poland.

 The company displayed a new version of the Orbiter at the Paris Air show that includes 2.2kg warhead – turning the system into a loitering munition – essentially a kamikaze drone. These types of drones can remain above a target longer than any cruise missile and are also recoverable if the strike is aborted. The drone’s warhead is designed to detonate above a target showering an area 50 meters in diameter with shrapnel. © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Inside a hangar at Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) main facility, near Ben Gurion Airport, Israel. Founded in 1953, the state-owned company is the largest aerospace and defence manufacturer in the country. IAI has produced fighter jets, missiles, and spacecraft for domestic and international clients and is the largest manufacturer of UAV systems in Israel.

 This hangar is used as a showroom, exhibiting the many UAVs and related systems produced by the company. The small vehicle on the right is a scale-model of the Naval Rotary Unmanned Air Vehicle – a helicopter drone used for naval ISR missions. © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Yavne, Israel – A flight simulator inside the Tactical Robotic factory © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Gaza City – A warhead from an Israeli missile that failed to detonate and was recovered by a Palestinian explosive ordinance disposal unit after the 2014 war, also known as Operation Protective Edge. The warhead is encased by a fragmentation jacket composed of thousands of tiny, metal cubes. It is most likely from a LAHAT missile, which is manufactured by Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and can be fired from tanks, ships, helicopters, and UAVs © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Al-Faraheen, Gaza © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

© Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Ibrahim al-Remahi shows where he was injured in a drone strike that killed three of his children and wounded other members of his family during the 2014 war, in Wadi as-Salqa, Gaza Strip. “I evacuated my house with my family and I went with my sons to pray. We finished and suddenly the drone missile targeted us directly – the type of missile that has the small metal cubes. I received one cube on my neck and beside my liver here. And then there is my son who got killed directly in front of my eyes and the other he got injured with his nerves and he started to bleed a lot. After the missile targeted us I look around to see what’s happened. I realised that my first son got killed and the other is still bleeding and suddenly I realised that also I’m bleeding. So I start to put my hand on the parts that bleed and after that there was another rocket that hit my two daughters. The other missile targeted us and killed the sisters completely. After that I just saw myself in the ambulance and I spent more than 20 days in the hospital. I had a surgery in my stomach because of the shrapnel. I didn’t see my family that got buried because I woke up after 20 days.” Ibrahim al-Remahi. © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Inside the home of Helmi Abu Toha, which was targeted by multiple airstrikes during the 2014 war, in Gaza City. Before the airstrikes, Abu-Toha’s neighbour received a call from an Israeli agent telling him to warn the Abu-Toha family to evacuate their house immediately. Hearing his neighbour’s shouting, Abu-Toha began moving his family out of their home when the building was hit with a small munition that exploded on the roof. This tactic, first employed by the Israeli Air Force and later adopted by the United States, is known as a ‘roof knocking’. It is used to warn those inside a targeted building to evacuate before the next strike, which is usually much more destructive. The warning shot is probably fired by a drone in most cases. Abu-Toha and his family managed to escape before the building was hit again. A bomb penetrated through four floors and ended up in the basement without exploding. The Israeli Air Force sometimes drops inert, concrete filled bombs in an effort to reduce collateral damage. Abu-Toha’s building sustained significant damage and a small food market the family ran out of the first floor was destroyed. They do not know why the building was targeted. “It’s so amazing in any moment this house could be targeted again. Any way, any clashes, when they break the ceasefire for sure I will evacuate my house because I will not feel safe anymore in this house…I just would like to know why they targeted our house. What’s the goal for targeting my house?” Helmi Abu Toha
. © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

© Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Shuja’iyya, Gaza – Eslam Shamali stands amid the rubble of her destroyed home. Eslam’s brother was a Hamas commander who died during the 2014 war, houses owned by their family were destroyed by the Israeli military during heavy fighting in their neighbourhood. © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

Wadi al-Salqa, Gaza Strip. Shrapnel-damaged walls at the site of a drone strike that killed a fifteen year old boy in 2012. © Vittoria Mentasti and Daniel Tepper

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Obsessive media focus on President Trump’s personal indecencies undoubtedly contributes to important news stories not seeing the light of day. In that regard, it’s no wonder the U.S. public is generally unaware of U.S. military interventions in parts of the world, particularly in Latin America. That way, U.S. imperial excess gets a pass.

Political ramifications would be more likely if stories like two recent good examples from Argentina were known about. One of them is a warm-up to the other, which is the main show here.

On July 12, a Hercules C-130 U.S. military transport plane landed at a military base near Buenos Aires with at least eight U.S. Special Forces troops on board, along with “arms, explosives, and head gear.” They will be preparing 40 police officers from Argentina’s “Special Group for Federal Operations” to take charge of security for a two-day meeting of the G-20 group of wealthy nations set for Buenos Aires beginning on November 30. Argentina and Brazil are the only Latin American members of the G-20 group.

The U.S. government will pay most of the $1.5 million cost of the training project. The U.S. soldiers belong to the “Special Operations Command” of the U.S. Southern Command. They’ll be in the country until August 3.

Argentina’s Law 25.880 requires that the government seek congressional approval for the entry of foreign troops. That did not happen with these U.S. soldiers. A government spokesperson emphasized that they will “be strengthening relations and ties of friendship between both countries.”

As acolytes of the market economy and expropriators of natural resources, the two nations enjoy an affinity, which is oxygen for a U.S. project underway now in Neuquén. That southwestern city of 340,000 people is the largest in Argentina’s Patagonia region.

A coalition known variously as the “Multi-Sectorial [Group] for Territorial Sovereignty,” or the “Multi-Sectorial for No to Yankee Bases” held a meeting in Neuquén on June 27. The organization is made up of 60 labor, political, and social organizations. Spokesperson Marcela Escobar informed the local press the meeting was about “the imminent installation of a U.S. base in Neuquén [which was being] presented deceitfully as something humanitarian.”

The new base, said Escobar, is “at the side of the Northern Highway, next to the international airport and the Petroleum Route, the road to Vaca Muerta (Dead Cow).”

Vaca Muerta, it must be explained, is an expanse of 11,583 square miles extending across several provinces in the Pampas. Underground deposits there of shale oil and shale gas are huge. The U.S. Energy Information Administration explains:

“Argentina has world-class shale gas and shale oil potential—possibly the most prospective outside of North America—primarily within the Neuquén Basin. (emphasis added) … Significant exploration programs and early-stage commercial production are underway in the Neuquén Basin by Apache, EOG, ExxonMobil, TOTAL, YPF, and smaller companies.”

According to Buenos Aires’s Clarín newspaper,

“Global investment in the unique [Vaca Muerta] deposits will exceed $100 billion in equipment and structures over the next 10 years. U.S. companies will be providing most of that money.”

It’s by no means accidental, therefore, that a U.S. base is being constructed in such a place, and in an area too, one adds, with large aquifers of fresh water.

The base will cost $2 million. U.S. embassy spokespersons say American troops will be helping out with natural disasters. Provincial officials, however, identify the installation as a “military base.” The Southern Command was to have established a base in Neuquén in 2012, but held off in the face of protests against a base proposed for Chaco province.

Argentina’s government is transferring troops to the Neuquén area where, according to a military spokesperson, they “will…be able to move immediately in case of eventual conflict in the region, especially in the petroleum zone.”

Marcela Escobar’s June 27 meeting and her group’s subsequent press conference concerned their demonstration opposing the Neuquén base that took place on July 9, which is Argentina’s Independence Day. According to a report,

“labor union representatives, opposition political parties, and social organizations gathered at a monument to liberation hero San Martin and then traveled on the Northern Highway to the location of the new civil defense center that the U.S. Southern Command has donated.”

A document was circulated saying that,

“Today there’s nothing to celebrate…. We are met in the place where the national and provincial governments are about to install a U.S. military base.”

Speakers rejected the supposed “humanitarian” objectives of the base, because

“these can change and the base is ready to be fully activated in the event of uprisings by workers and people who may want to reclaim for themselves the production of [natural] gas and petroleum.”

Maria Ortega of the House of Friendship with Cuba reminded fellow demonstrators that the United States “invades countries to overthrow their governments, and destabilizes governments that are for the people.” Indigenous leader Jorge Nahuel declared,

“We know the United States has interests through its corporations and petroleum multinationals they need to protect.… [But] they know too that people are mobilized and they need to contain that reaction…and killings don’t matter to them.”

Other U.S. bases are on the way in Argentina. One in Misiones, in the North near the “Triple Border” with Brazil and Paraguay, is programmed to combat narco-trafficking and terrorism. Another will be in Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. Scientific purposes are spoken of. There’s a proposal for yet another in Jujuy province, in the country’s extreme northwest where massive deposits of lithium are located.

Very likely the role of U.S. bases, at least in Latin America, is to make real the U.S. concept of mobilizing national alliances to serve U.S. purposes. That strategy was evident at a gathering of regional military forcesin November 2017 at Tabatinga, Brazil, near the convergence of three nations’ borders. Speculation at the time had it that the training exercises were directed toward possible military action against Venezuela.

Possible scenarios for Neuquén include these: a political movement cropping up in neighboring Chile led by a latter-day Salvador Allende, indigenous rebellions nearby or across borders, and oil-worker unionists taking on old ideas of national independence and regional solidarity.

The potential exists for violent confrontations. Eventually, perhaps, the reasons why local activists, bystanders, and minders of corporate interests might die in such circumstances will be unacceptable in the United States. The U.S. citizenry, hardly anti-imperialist, might lose heart at the deaths of loved ones in the Argentine Pampas. Someday they may even reject their civilization’s addiction, no matter the toll, to fossil fuels as drivers of production.

*

W.T. Whitney Jr. grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont and now lives in rural Maine. He practiced and taught pediatrics for 35 years and long ago joined the Cuba solidarity movement, working with Let Cuba Live of Maine, Pastors for Peace, and the Venceremos Brigade. He writes on Latin America and health issues for the People’s World.

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In terms of suffering caused, there is often not, in fact, much to choose between dismembering and burning people alive with high explosives, shredding them with shrapnel, and choking them with poison gas. Modern ‘conventional’ weapons can be far more cruel and devastating than, for example, chlorine gas. But chemical weapons, prohibited by international law, are extremely potent in allowing Western ‘humanitarians’ to justify ‘intervention’ in response to crimes – real, hyped or imagined – that the West has itself far surpassed using more respectable forms of mass murder.

Noam Chomsky has observed that

‘propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state’.

This is certainly true for social control at home, but propaganda also allows nominally democratic states to wield their military bludgeons abroad in much the same way as totalitarian states.

Thus, in April, it happened again: the entire corporate media system rose up with instant certainty to damn an enemy state for crimes against humanity on April 7, in Douma, Syria.

This was not acceptable death by bomb and bullet; this was a nerve gas attack. The villainous agent on every journalist’s lips: sarin, a highly toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound that has no smell or taste, but which quickly kills through asphyxiation.

As we discussed at the time, there was no question that this was a repetition of the fake justification for war to secure non-existent Iraqi WMDs, or to prevent a fictional Libyan massacre in Benghazi. Instead, the Guardian editors insisted that this certainly was ‘a chemical gas attack, orchestrated by Bashar al-Assad, that left dead children foaming at the mouth’. From the safety of his Guardian office, assistant editor Simon Tisdall hammered the drum for a war that risked even nuclear confrontation:

‘It means destroying Assad’s combat planes, bombers, helicopters and ground facilities from the air. It means challenging Assad’s and Russia’s control of Syrian airspace. It means taking out Iranian military bases and batteries in Syria if they are used to prosecute the war.’

By contrast, Scott Ritter – a former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq who understands the issues – was more cautious:

‘The bottom line, however, is that the United States is threatening to go to war in Syria over allegations of chemical weapons usage for which no factual evidence has been provided. This act is occurring even as the possibility remains that verifiable forensic investigations would, at a minimum, confirm the presence of chemical weapons…’

No matter, on April 14, three days after Ritter’s article appeared, the US, UK and France attacked Syria in response to the unproven allegations.

Robert Fisk of the Independent visited Douma and spoke to a senior doctor who works in the clinic where victims of the alleged chemical attack had been brought for treatment. Dr Rahaibani told Fisk what had happened that night:

‘I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.’

When Fisk’s report wasn’t ignored, it was sneeringly dismissed. A headline in The Times read:

‘Critics leap on reporter Robert Fisk’s failure to find signs of gas attack’

The Times, which is no stranger to controversy, suggested that there were big question marks over Fisk’s record:

‘Fisk is no stranger to controversy.’

 No Organophosphates Found

On 6 July 2018, the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), issued an interim report on the FFM’s investigation regarding the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma. The passage that jumped out of the report:

‘No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties.’

No sarin! But is it possible that any nerve agents had degraded and disappeared before OPCW investigators reached the site? An April 17, Guardian article had reported:

‘The OPCW has been racing against the clock to collect samples from the site of the attack, a three-storey house in Douma, in which scores of people died in a basement. Jerry Smith, who helped supervise the OPCW-led withdrawal of much of Syria’s sarin stockpile in 2013, said samples of nerve agent rapidly degrade in normal environmental conditions… The Russian military and Syrian officers have had access to the house since last Thursday, raising fears that the site may have been tampered with. However, Smith said it was likely that residual samples of nerve agent would remain for at least another week, even after an attempted clean-up.’

The OPCW later commented:

‘On 21 April 2018, after security concerns had been addressed, the FFM team conducted its first visit to one of the alleged sites of interest, and it was deemed an acceptable risk to enter Douma…’

In other words, OPCW’s race ‘against the clock’ appeared to have been successful. Charles Shoebridge a former Scotland Yard detective and counter terrorism intelligence officer, observed:

‘if OPCW find no traces, likely not due to any inspection delay’

Before we examine ‘MSM’ reaction to the OPCW report, particularly to the failure to find ‘organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products’, let’s look at their initial reaction to claims of a nerve agent attack on April 7.

Initial Response – ‘Those Symptoms Don’t Come From Chlorine’

CNN reported on April 14:

‘Senior US officials expressed confidence Saturday that both chlorine and sarin gas were used in Syria’s alleged chemical weapons attack on the Damascus enclave of Douma last week…’

CNN cited reports ‘from media, nongovernmental organizations and other open sources’ that ‘point to miosis – constricted pupils – convulsions and disruptions to central nervous systems. Those symptoms don’t come from chlorine. They come from nerve agents… It’s a much more efficient weapon, unfortunately, the way the regime has been using it, and it’s resulted in higher deaths, it resulted in terrible pictures.’

The Financial Times cited Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the UK’s chemical biological radiological and nuclear regiment (see here on his credibility as an impartial source):

‘There’s no doubt this was a major chemical weapons attack. The big question is whether it was chlorine or sarin. I am favouring a mix of the two.’ (David Bond and Rebecca Collard, ‘Experts say gas attack proof will take weeks: Civil war. Douma Inspectors are struggling to access site of alleged atrocity as Assad’s troops move in,’ Financial Times, 12 April 2018)

A Telegraph article opened with this harrowing line:

‘The victims were found exactly where they had been when the gas hit. Their silent killer had given little warning.’

This clearly suggested a very powerful nerve agent, as the article explained:

‘Medics on the ground reported smelling a chlorine-like substance, but said the patients’ symptoms and the large death toll pointed to a more noxious substance such as nerve agent sarin.

‘”The number of casualties is so high and that’s not typical for chlorine,” said Dr Ahmad Tarakji, president of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), which assists hospitals in Eastern Ghouta. “Unfortunately, because of a lack of resources, we can’t take blood samples.”‘

The claims did indeed suggest something much more powerful than chlorine, as The Daily Mail made clear in a report also citing de Bretton-Gordon:

‘If it was chlorine, they could have escaped. But they died after just taking a few steps.’ (Vanessa Allen, ‘Little girl left foaming at the mouth by horrific gas attack,’ Daily Mail, 16 April 2018)

The Mail cited an ‘activist’ making the same point:

‘Ibrahim Reyhani, a White Helmet civil defence volunteer, said anyone who touched the bodies started getting sick, and said he believed a mixture of sarin and chlorine had been used.

‘He told the Sunday Times: “If it’s just chlorine, if you smell it you can escape. But sarin you breathe and it kills you.”

The Telegraph published an op-ed by de Bretton-Gordon:

‘There have been a number of chlorine attacks, but it would appear that chlorine, although outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention, is below the threshold for the UK and France to strike.

‘Saturday’s attack, with so many deaths and casualties, looks possibly to be a mixture of chlorine and the nerve agent sarin, and this atrocity must surely stretch above their threshold for action.’

It is worth reiterating again – as media responses to the OPCW’s latest report, conspicuously, have not – that chlorine was not a sufficiently deadly agent to cause either the claimed level of carnage or the claimed level of Western moral outrage. In 2015, Barack Obama noted: ‘Chlorine itself, historically, has not been listed as a chemical weapon.’

Charles Shoebridge commented:

‘while headlines of chemical weapons are undoubtedly dramatic, the relatively low lethality of chlorine makes it an ineffective – and therefore arguably also unlikely – choice of weapon…

‘Indeed, given the low toxicity of the allegedly small amounts used and the unpleasant bleach smell that always betrays chlorine’s presence, in most instances people could avoid being killed by simply walking away – another indication of its near uselessness as a weapon. Perhaps the only way it could be tactically effective is if used to drive people from trenches or bunkers to allow them to then be killed with bombs and bullets – but again, the amounts of chlorine needed would be far more than is alleged, and the accuracy needed to target in this way is unlikely to be achieved using unguided rockets as alleged this week in east Ghouta, or by dropping a “barrel bomb” from a helicopter.’

Chlorine gas was not included in the list of Syrian chemical weapons reported to the OPCW. It is an unsophisticated weapon that could also be deployed by ‘rebel’ forces and to which they have had access. The OPCW reported in August 2016: ‘Chlorine is available to all parties in the Syrian Arab Republic.’

A Guardian leader also linked the alleged attack in Douma to sarin:

‘Dozens of civilians in the Douma district were killed by Syrian government chemical attacks on Saturday.’

It continued:

‘This is not the first time this has happened. Since the use of sarin at Khan al-Assal in 2013 there have been dozens of chemical attacks by the regime.’

Peter Hitchens commented on the Guardian’s coverage in the Mail on Sunday:

‘Here is the Guardian, on 9th April 2018: “Aid workers and medics described apocalyptic scenes in the besieged city of Douma, where at least 42 people have died from what appears to be a chemical attack, as they scrambled to save the survivors of the latest atrocity in Syria…

‘”Doctors said the symptoms had been consistent with exposure to an organophosphorus substance.”‘

Hitchens asked:

‘Which doctors? Note the absence of named, checkable sources in a story written some distance from Damascus. This was typical of almost all western media reports of the episode at the time.’

Hitchens observed that OPCW had found no traces of organophosphates but that ‘The quoted “doctors”, being unidentified, cannot now be approached to ask for their response to this.’

Responding To OPCW’s July 6 Report

The skwawkbox website noted that the BBC had covered, and distorted, OPCW’s July 6 report. A BBC headline read:

‘Syria attack was chlorine gas – watchdog

‘The deadly attack in Douma in April left dozens of civilians dead and caused and international outcry.’

This was complete invention. As skwawkbox commented: ‘the OPCW report emphatically does notsay that chlorine gas was used‘. The report actually said:

‘Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.’ (Our emphasis)

Chlorinated organic chemicals are extremely common, found in degreasers, cleaning solutions, paint thinners, pesticides, resins, glues, and many other mixing and thinning solutions. The BBC amended the article, which later read:

‘The report said two samples from gas cylinders recovered at the scene tested positive for chlorine.’

Skwawkbox commented again:

‘This is a classic example of a technically-correct claim that is completely misleading.

‘The [OPCW] report does note the presence of chlorine in some samples tested from the cylinders – but not chlorine gas or the residues that would be expected from its reaction with other substances…

‘The relevant page of the OPCW’s full report states that no ‘relevant chemicals’ were found from a swab inside the opening of one cylinder:

‘In debris and on other items around the cylinder, chlorine compounds were found – but these are common compounds that would be unlikely to be formed simply by chlorine reacting with something on site.’

In similar vein, Alec Luhn, the Telegraph’s Russia correspondent, tweeted:

‘The April chemical attack in Douma was caused by chlorine gas, the OPCW says. Or it was completely staged, if you still believe the Russian authorities’

Sharmine Narwani, a writer, commentator and analyst covering Middle East geopolitics, replied brusquely but accurately:

‘No, the OPCW didn’t say that. It found traces of chlorine on the scene, which it would find in your house or office or water supply too, if sampled. Try actual #journalism.’

OffGuardian noted several headlines covering OPCW’s findings. Reuters reported:

‘Chemical weapons agency finds “chlorinated” chemicals in Syria’s Douma’

The Independent wrote:

‘Syrian conflict: Chlorine used in Douma attack that left dozens of civilians dead, chemical weapons watchdog finds’

As Off-Guardian noted, the headlines should have read: No nerve agents found.

Remarkably, these rare mentions aside, the OPCW interim report has been ignored by most major newspapers and media, including the Guardian.

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Featured image is from Media Lens.

---

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

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

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Featured image: French President Emmanual Macron meets with African leaders at AU summit in Mauritania, July 2, 2018

On July 1-2, 2018, the 31^st Ordinary Summit of the African Union (AU) was held in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott under the theme of “Winning the Fight against Corruption: A Sustainable Path to Africa’s Transformation.”

This gathering took place amid the burgeoning challenges facing the African continent involving the efforts to realize a meaningful peace process in the Republic of South Sudan, an ongoing independence movement to liberate the Western Sahara from Moroccan occupation, gender equality and end to violence against women, the recently-announced African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the role of imperialism as it relates to the question of national and regional security.

An Elusive Peace in South Sudan

Several days prior to the convening of the AU Summit, a peace agreement was signed in Khartoum, Republic of Sudan, bringing together President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Reik Machar. For over three years, the government  and ruling party, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Juba, has been split leading to the declaration of the SPLM in Opposition (SPLM-IO) headed by Machar.

Under the June 23 deal which was designed to go into effect on June 27, Machar is to be reinstated as Vice President of South Sudan. Nonetheless, just hours after the ceasefire was scheduled to begin there were reports of violations from both the SPLM and the SPLM (I-O). 

During the week of July 16 the United Nations Security Council imposed an arms embargo against Juba. Nonetheless, neighboring head-of-state President Yoweri Museveni has called for the lifting of sanctions by European states on South Sudan. Museveni made this statement while he met with a visiting official delegation from Britain which included the Minister of State for the Armed Forces Mark Lancaster. 

Despite these promising developments, other opposition groups within South Sudan have complained of not being consulted by the two main tendencies, SPLM and SPLM (I-O). The South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) has stated that it is awaiting the governance agreement that was scheduled to go into effect on July 17. Meanwhile the SPLM Leaders Former Political Detainees (SPLM—FPD) is calling for greater AU involvement in the discussions expressing distrust over what they claim to be the lack of transparency in the process being primarily led by the East African Inter-regional Authority on Development (IGAD). 

Western Sahara: The Quest for National Independence

A major anti-colonial struggle being waged by the Polisario Front and the Sahwari Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which is recognized by the AU, has become a more complicated situation in light of the readmission of the Kingdom of Morocco in 2017. Morocco had remained outside the former Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the AU for more than three decades due to its support for the liberation of the people in this former Spanish colony which has been occupied for over 40 years by the neighboring monarchy. 

According to a report on the AU Summit in Mauritania published by the Journal of Cameroon, it says:

“The African Union has renewed its resolve to seek more engagement with the United Nations to resolve the unresolved question of the Western Sahara, a territory under Moroccan control. In a communiqué at the end of the 31st AU Heads of State Summit in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott on Monday, the 54-member continental body said its members have agreed to support ongoing efforts led by the UN to broker a lasting and mutually agreeable solution to the decades-old crisis.”

This same article continues in regard to the AU position noting the regional body is:

“encouraging parties to the crisis to demonstrate flexibility and resume talks without preconditions as the only way to addressing the protracted controversy surrounding the destiny of the enclave, which straddles Morocco in the north and Mauritania in the south. Emerging from several hours of talks on the issue, AU leaders agreed that the UN’s role will be crucial drawing up the details that would form the basis of a durable compromise between the protagonists to the conflict, which is one of Africa’s forgotten crises.”

Gender Equality and the AU

A joint session of the preliminary meetings of the 31^st Ordinary summit was held on June 30 between current AU Chairperson President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and European Union (EU) Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica of Croatia. Kagame, who heads the Central and East African state with the largest representation of women within the parliamentary system than any other country in the world, noted that women can contribute far more to society when they are empowered. 

During the “Women in Power” symposium the Rwandan leader said:

 “Women can deliver more when they are enjoying their full rights. But with men and women working together using their talents to the maximum the effect is not just additive, it multiplies.  All of society benefits. The sum is indeed much greater than the parts.”

Kagame continued by emphasizing:

“Despite the goodwill, substantial problems remain in the way of women’s whether cultural, legal and economic empowerment. There are important policy changes to advocate for and that will always be important and must continue to be a priority as will be discussed today.”

Nonetheless, the burning question today related to AU-EU relations center around the so-called “migration crisis.” Millions of Africans are fleeing the continuing imperialist war in Libya and other regions of the continent attempting to travel across the Mediterranean into southern, eastern and central Europe. African women are adversely impacted by this dislocation and displacement through violence, human trafficking and deaths.

Thousands have died annually since 2014 while the influx of large numbers of Africans and Asians in the European states has pushed to the fore right-wing, neo-fascist elements some of whom have increased their presence in parliamentary bodies as well as becoming ruling parties in the governments of Hungary and Italy. In response to this phenomenon of the backlash against migration from the Global South, EU leaders are advancing programs designed to encourage people to either remain in Africa or be repatriated. 

Such projects are inherently flawed since they do not address the underlying historical exploitation and national oppression through colonialism and neo-colonialism. Africa remains dependent upon European and North American capitalist regimes where terms of trade, commodity prices and military policy leave the continent at an extreme disadvantage. 

Economic turmoil prompted by the destruction of the Libyan state in 2011, the proliferation of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), the undermining of the international energy and strategic minerals markets and the refusal of the imperialists to open up the United Nations Security Council to permanent status for AU governments, illustrates the glaring dubious character of EU foreign policy. Despite the platitudes of EU leaders, their statements ring hollow when the overall character of relations is objectively assessed.

Free Trade and Regional Security: The Irreconcilable Contradictions

As leader of the AU, Rwandan President Kagame has motivated the adoption and ratification of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). More AU states are signing the AfCFTA and taking the initiative to their legislatures for implementation.

The economic plan would theoretically combine a $US3 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP) constituting the sum total of goods and services within the AU. The program is designed to eliminate tariffs in inter-African trade facilitating the uninhibited movement of resources across the continent. 

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the agreement in Mauritania during the summit while encouraging his counterpart in the West African state of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, to follow suit. Buhari’s hesitation it is said derives from the trepidation among Nigerian industry fearing an undermining of their financial status both domestically and internationally. Nigeria and South Africa have the two largest economies within the AU and any effective free trade area requires their full participation.

Ironically the AU summit was visited by French President Emmanuel Macron who spoke to the members of the G5 Sahel Regional Force nations including Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad. These former colonies of Paris came together in 2014 under the guise of fighting terrorism carried out by Islamist rebels across these states.

G5 Sahel Regional Force map

Attacks on a French military installation in Mali at Sevare along with two other locations, and in southeast Niger, resulting in the deaths of 10 soldiers, highlighted the precarious security situation leading up to the Mauritania AU summit. France admits to having at least 4,500 troops in the Sahel region ostensibly to enhance security.

What are often not discussed are the interests of France and the U.S. within these West African nations. Both AFRICOM and French military forces are escalating their occupations creating further uncertainty among the civilian populations. The British government of Teresa May is also entering the fray assisting French and U.S. forces with surveillance drones and helicopters. 

However, the military interventions of Paris, London and Washington are not acts of charity by any means. These policies reflect the degree of underdevelopment in post-colonial Africa. The imperialists are in the region to secure the natural resources including uranium and oil. 

The pretext of fighting Islamists cannot be taken at face value in that these same elements were deployed by the EU member-states and Washington in Libya during the overthrow of the government of former leader the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi. Syria has been a focus of destabilization utilizing certain Islamist groups that are armed and trained by western governments. 

A free trade zone in order for it to reach its full potential must be secured by the African governments themselves. It would not be rationale for the AU member-states to rely on the imperialist governments to supply them with security assistance without continuing their neo-colonial policies which are the antithesis of genuine economic development and regional sovereignty.

Undoubtedly the ruling classes of Western Europe and North America understand this dilemma quite well. African states should know that the economic renaissance of the continent cannot reach its fruition at the behest of the same imperialist nations which continue to benefit from their systematic underdevelopment and dependency. 

Consequently, until the AU makes the decisive turn inward breaking its subservient ties to imperialism there will be the inevitable instability and impoverishment. Any military program aimed at sustainable security requires the formation of an All-African military force which bans the construction of bases, drone stations and open monitoring of its territories by the Pentagon and NATO forces. 

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

All images in this article are from the author. 

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The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) is shocked to learn that the prominent Indian social activist, Swami Agnivesh, was assaulted on the 17^th of July 2018 in the Pakur area of Jharkhand State while leaving a hotel where he had participated in an event.

The assassins are allegedly from the youth wing of the BJP, the ruling party. They had torn his clothes and hurled abuses at Agnivesh. They were angry that the activist had made a statement defending the consumption of beef. In recent months, the consumption of beef in a society where the cow is venerated has become a volatile issue with cases reported of Muslims being killed because they had eaten the meat of the animal even within the confines of their homes.       

The BJP has denied that its youth workers were involved in the Agnivesh assault. One hopes that a fair and unbiased investigation will be carried out by the authorities. The culprits should be severely punished according to the law. 

It is a shame that intolerance and aggressive bigotry of this sort is gathering momentum in parts of India. It has been facilitated according to certain sources by the increasing legitimization of a narrow notion of religious identity which in a sense is a travesty of the universalism and inclusiveness of the Hindu faith. Those who wield power and influence in politics and religion should not lend credibility to such gross misinterpretations of the sacred beliefs of the majority of the populace. 

Swami Agnivesh is one of those few Indians who has always sought to combat bigotry and hatred propagated in the name of religion, any religion.  He has adopted principled positions on major controversies in his country with courage and integrity for many decades. A multi-religious, multi-cultural democracy should eulogise – not assault – such individuals. 

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is Founder and President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), prominent human rights advocate, author and academic, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from The Indian Express.

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This week in Toronto the largest health board in Canada which consists of local city councilors and pubic health officials voted ten to zero to decriminalize all drugs. They’re fed up. They’ve had enough. The war on drugs is a failure and one of the biggest scams of our time. So what are the alternatives, and why could this be more significant and deserve more attention than Trump meeting with Putin? 

People who have been deceived by the medical system they sought help from are dying of opiate overdoses at an unprecedented rate. The numbers grow larger every year. 3,987 died in 2017 in Canada while 92% of them were unintentional.[6] The USA in 2016 saw about 42,000 die from overdosing on prescription opiates, heroin, fentanyl and its related chemical analogs collectively. 66% of all of the 64,070 overdose deaths in the USA came from opiates in 2017 which have killed ~350,000 people here since the early ’90’s. [1]

Not long after the turn of the century the streets were flooded with cheap heroin from the flourishing poppy fields of Afghanistan as a curious byproduct of the “war”. The place I used to hike was dubbed ‘heroin hill’ and I was once stopped on my way up there by a pissed cop looking for a bust. The cost and availability of prescription opiates became out of reach for the users with their tolerances rising higher. Switching to the cheaper and stronger street heroin without the fillers was a no brainer for many addicts who never wanted to be addicted at all. The pills were initially given to them by their doctors who found the kickbacks from Big Pharma to be a nice addition to their ever-so-stressed work schedule. After all, doctors nowadays have some of the highest suicide rates among all of the professions in America. Clocking in around the rate of suicides of veterans of the Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan wars who take their lives on average of 120 times a year. [3] [4]

The pharmaceutical companies are actively being sued by states and counties in the US over their deliberate role in marketing this scheme to doctors. [2] Purdue Pharma lobbied for Oxycontin to be prescribed for even minor pains and injuries citing a botched study that claimed it had little to no addictive potential at all. [5] They claimed a dose every 12 hours would be enough to alleviate a patients pain.

The reality the patients who took the drug found was the dose prescribed for every 12 hours wasn’t effectively managing the pain. Or if it did it no longer was because of tolerance that develops when someone takes some types of drugs or medications daily. It not only makes their effects weaker but it can also exacerbate a persons pain levels higher than they were before they had taken the drug. Their response was to up the dosage, which didn’t do anything for prolonging pain relief, it just doped people up more, setting them up for a higher probability of becoming addicted to the drug. This is how, in stripped-down terms, the flood gates of profits and deaths were opened by the greedy sociopaths propping up the corporations who have no ethics or sense of value in us and the lives of our friends, families, neighbors, and passersby except how much money we can give them while we’re still alive.

Around 2014 fentanyl started getting popular. An opiate 100x more powerful than Oxy. You could get it shipped in from China before it was banned but a lot of it is coming in from Mexico now and will continue to regardless of the fence. Once it was banned, chemists started making very similar analogs to the compound that were technically still legal. Think of it like a drug that’s similar enough in psychoactivity to another drug but structurally different enough to not be legally classified as one thus forfeiting any liability in its production or transportation across the border. This game of chemical cat and mouse with law enforcement and laboratories continues to this day.

If say an adversarial government wanted to use a drug to decimate a nations population all they really had to do was rent out their labs over night to anyone who would pay and the buyers would line up like sheep to the ankle bites of the mangy dog. Cutting, or mixing, heroin with fentanyl became a dangerous game. Inhaling the dust could be a death sentence due to the sheer power of the substance at such a small dosage. Mishandling the powder could turn one cold and blue in a matter of hours. And this is exactly what happened and is happening to everyone trying to get their fix on cheap heroin that is now laced with fentanyl analogs for profit and for warfare. What Big Pharma started, the underground labs took over, and the addicts and dealers who are sometimes coerced into the trade by their addictions or other nefarious means and economic oppressions have paid the price with their lives. 72% of the opiate overdose deaths in Canada in 2017 were from a mixture of fentanyl or its related analogs. [6] Up from 55% in 2016.

Gabor Maté, an author and physician from Vancouver, CA made a name for himself writing about and educating others on the complexity of addiction from a psychological, physiological, and spiritual perspective. He has illustrated in books like In ‘The Realm of Hungry Ghosts’ that addiction is not something a person chooses and it is not just something that lies dormant in their genetics.

He estimated there’s a 5% genetic & 95% environmental impact on what causes a person to become an addict. Numerous factors from before they were born, after they were born, and their place in our dysfunctional society all play a pivotal part in creating the criminals we see on the streets of America who get locked up for whims largely outside of their control. They make up the millions of non-violent offenders in the private prison industrial complex that is so profitable today while our education system lies disgracefully in shambles. He also successfully treated many addicts with sessions of ayahuasca, a psychedelic tea brewed from two types of plants found in the Amazon, with variations popping up in other areas of the world throughout history, like the Sufi with their Syrian Rue. He had an unprecedented success rate that was never done before in the eyes of mainstream medicine. So of course the Canadian government forced him to stop doing it in their jurisdiction.

If seeking help for drug addiction in America doesn’t land you in the big house where guards become your new dealers, or you don’t lose your healthcare in the process, the best thing they have to offer you is daily doses of methadone or suboxone. These drugs are largely a fallacy to every person who has been coerced into addiction or finds themselves stuck and wants to get out but doesn’t know how. There is no suggested viable long term plan for the methadone or suboxone user except to try to ween off eventually somehow. They give them a half-assed version of an opiate that still binds to the same receptors in the central nervous system and keeps them hooked in some cases indefinitely. The upsides to this program are eliminating the potentially deadly and toxic hazard that comes with consuming street drugs and also some of the health care costs in terms of overdosing and the diseases from used needles, ulcers, and other ailments that result from the constant stress and poison—But this isn’t nearly good enough. Somewhere down the line they gave up and gave into the stigma and pressure of the federal government—Or is this what was deemed the most profitable solution for the homeland?

Decriminalizing all drugs, like Portugal successfully did in 2004, has been proven to be a highly effective way to implement a harm reduction policy that treats addiction like the disease that it is and puts addicts into the care they need and out of the prisons and street culture that are devastating their lives. [7] Three people out of a million die of drug overdoses there giving it the second lowest figures in all of Europe. [8] Some would argue that it creates bad precedent for the children. I say nay. Teach your children the truth. The statistics show a clear correlation between decriminalization and reduction of both teen and adult drug use and abuse. Decriminalizing drugs takes them out of the hands of dealers and shady laboratories and puts them into the hands of certified chemists with quality control measures and precise dosages to eliminate overdose deaths and the physical and mental diseases that come with their addictions.

It can create a new and better paradigm where addicts no longer have to participate in illegal activity or be subjected to detrimental stigma that comes with it and allows them to be open to seek the help they really need. If the health board succeeds in lobbying for this to Ottawa now that things have finally reached epidemic proportions they may successfully and profoundly decrease the amount of overdose deaths in their country and improve the lives of their entire population as a whole for generations to come.

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Vember is a pen name.

Notes

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html 

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44705658 

[3] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/suicide-is-much-too-common-among-u-s-physicians/ 

[4] https://www.centeronaddiction.org/the-buzz-blog/revealing-bad-science-behind-oxycontin 

[5] https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/01/06/top-11-professions-with-highest-suicide-rates/ 

[6] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/substance-abuse/prescription-drug-abuse/opioids/apparent-opioid-related-deaths.html 

[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/05/why-hardly-anyone-dies-from-a-drug-overdose-in-portugal/ 

[8] https://m.mic.com/articles/120403/14-years-after-decriminalizing-drugs-one-chart-shows-why-portugal-s-experiment-has-worked

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Sometimes the eyes don’t lie and what people see in front them is actually what’s happening, which in this case is the extremely unlikely partners of Russia and Croatia entering into a soft power alliance with one another that will extend far beyond the World Cup.

It would be an exercise in futility to deny that Russia and Croatia aren’t in a soft power alliance with one another after the fawning coverage that the host country’s media outlets lavished on the second-place finisher’s President, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, despite her past work as the Croatian Ambassador to the US and NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy. Sports are supposed to be apolitical so a simple explanation would be that the Russians were just very excited about rooting for the underdog, one which some of them regard as “fellow Slavs”, and that Kolinda’s charm offensive was successful in wooing them to her country’s side. Nevertheless, whether as part of an intentional extension of informal policy or coincidental to the aforesaid, it can’t be overlooked that this Russian-assisted public relations offensive in support of Croatia dovetails perfectly with Moscow’s new policy towards Zagreb.

Russia’s been making outreaches to this strategically positioned Balkan state and Three Seas Initiative member for the past two years, presumably encouraged by the influential “progressive” faction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that’s been successful in advancing their country’s fast-moving rapprochements with non-traditional partners such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan. Croatia, despite its World War II-era fascist past and the glorification of this dark period by some of its leaders, isn’t judged for it any more than Turkey is for its so-called “Neo-Ottoman” vision, which is to say that it’s a non-factor influencing the course of this bilateral relationship. There are understandably some who might object to the pure pragmatism of this approach, but it’s evidently the most flexible strategy to apply in responding to the twists and turns of the emerging Multipolar World Order and being in the best possible position to shape them.

Geopolitical considerations are still very important for influencing foreign policy, but no longer in the same way as before in all cases, such as concerning Russian-Croatian relations. Without any tangible interests in a given state, it essentially loses all strategic value because its territory is deprived of any practical significance for the outreaching party, which is why one needs to understand exactly what it is that’s driving the Russian-Croatian rapprochement and possibly even the two sides’ soft power alliance. For starters, Kolinda’s former US and NATO past isn’t seen as a problem but an opportunity, with Russia believing that it could influence her to utilize those same connections as part of its backchannel diplomatic efforts for sanctions relief. Relatedly, her highly regarded status in Western circles makes her public embrace of President Putin and Russia all the more important for improving both of their images, too.

Still, openly courting the archrival of Russia’s Serbian ally solely out of hope that it could facilitate informal inter-elite communication and potential rewards would be much too narrow-minded of a strategy that’s completely out of character for Moscow’s diplomatic professionals, which is why there’s obviously more to it than just that. Unbeknownst to most people outside of the Balkans and the Western academic community that focuses on that region, Russian banks just secured 47% control of the bankrupt Agrokor food & retail enterprise that’s the biggest company in the Balkans following extended and recently concluded negotiations over its future. This has in turn given Russia a massive physical stake in the real-sector economic activities of the region, potentially making Agrokor altogether more important for its Balkan strategy than even the Russian-owned Serbian energy companies that the Kremlin had previously depended on for influence.

Naturally, it wouldn’t be surprising for Russia to want to “rehabilitate” the reputation of such a significant newfound partner, hence what might have been the strategic calculations that possibly contributed to the month-long public relations blitz surrounding Kolinda and Croatia. Another motivating factor might have also been that Russians are looking for a safer holiday alternative to replace Egypt and Montenegro, the first of which is a well-known terrorist target and the second is becoming increasingly hostile to Russia ever since it joined NATO in spite of that country’s impressive tourist & real estate investments there. Croatia, by comparison, is now seen by most Russians as a friendly country eager to return the hospitality that was provided to them during the World Cup, and it wouldn’t be surprising if tourist companies begin promoting it as the next main destination to be discovered.

Having discussed the most important factors contributing to the Russian-Croatian soft power alliance, it’s now possible to understand it in its proper context instead of as the stand-along political anomaly that it would otherwise be interpreted as. Although grand geopolitical motivations related to “balancing” the Three Seas Initiative through Croatian-facilitated diplomatic means and more local interests dealing with a new holiday destination for Russian tourists are important, the most pivotal one is the influence that the Agrokor settlement had on these two countries’ relations, which transformed them from being simply about symbolic gestures to acquiring a solid strategic basis that extends throughout the entire Balkans. Russia’s old Serbian ally will always have a role in Moscow’s regional policy by virtue of historical inertia and geography, but the country’s new privileged partner for the 21^st century might just end up being its Croatian rival.

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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.

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No Russian interference in America’s political process occurred in 2016, earlier, or is being cooked up for the nation’s November midterm elections.

Trump knows it and said so in Helsinki. When asked if he holds Russia accountable for anything, he said:

“I hold both countries responsible (for dismal bilateral relations). I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish…And I think we’re all to blame.”

Regarding election meddling, he said:

“There was no collusion at all. Everybody knows it. And people are being brought out to the fore. So far that I know, virtually none of it related to the campaign. And they’re going to have to try really hard to find somebody that did relate to the campaign.”

“My people came to me and some others…(T)hey think it’s Russia…President Putin…said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I dont see any reason why it would be.”

“…President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

Trump is wrong about most things, not this. No evidence, nothing, proves Russian meddling in the US political process.

If it existed, it would have been revealed long ago. It never was and never will be because there’s nothing credible to reveal, Big Lies alone.

Trump’s above remarks were in Helsinki. In response to a raging Russophobic firestorm of criticism back home, he backtracked from his above comments, saying he misspoke abroad.

He accepts the intelligence community’s claim about Russian US election meddling – knowing it didn’t occur.

Russiagate was cooked up by Obama’s thuggish Russophobic CIA director John Brennan, media keeping the Big Lie alive.

DNC/John Podesta emails were leaked, not hacked – an indisputable fact media scoundrels suppress to their disgrace.

Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray earlier explained that

“(t)he source of these emails and leaks has nothing to do with Russia at all,” adding:

“I discovered what the source was when I attended the Sam Adam’s whistleblower award in Washington.”

“The source of these emails (came) from within official circles in Washington DC. You should look to Washington, not to Moscow.”

“WikiLeaks has never published any material received from the Russian government or from any proxy of the Russian government. It’s simply a completely untrue claim designed to divert attention from the content of the material” and its true source.

The Big Lie alone matters when it’s the official narrative. The Russian meddling hoax and mythical Kremlin threat to US security are central to maintaining adversarial relations with America’s key invented enemy.

It’s vital to unjustifiably justifying the nation’s global empire of bases, its outrageous amount of military spending, its belligerence toward all sovereign independent states, its endless wars of aggression, its scorn for world peace and stability, its neoliberal harshness to pay for it all, along with transferring the nation’s wealth from ordinary people to its privileged class.

America’s deeply corrupted political process is far too debauched to fix, rigged to serve wealth, power and privilege exclusively, at war on humanity at home and abroad.

It’s a tyrannical plutocracy and oligarchy, a police state, not a democracy, a cesspool of criminality, inequity and injustice, run by sinister dark forces – monied interests and bipartisan self-serving political scoundrels, wicked beyond redemption, threatening humanity’s survival.

Today is the most perilous time in world history. What’s going on should terrify everyone everywhere.

Washington’s rage for global dominance, its military madness, its unparalleled recklessness, threatens world peace, stability, and survival.

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

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Speaking at the White House Tuesday, US President Donald Trump attempted to walk back statements he made just 24 hours earlier at his summit in Helsinki, Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he questioned claims by US intelligence agencies that the Russian government “meddled” in the 2016 election.

Trump’s about-face followed a full-court press campaign by all US media outlets, the US intelligence agencies, the Democrats, and leading figures in the Republican Party, who demanded that he reaffirm the US government’s confrontational stance toward the world’s second most powerful nuclear power.

In the weeks leading up to Trump’s meeting with Putin, the Democrats treated him like an invincible colossus. It was impossible, they said, to seriously oppose his reactionary Supreme Court nominee, and nothing could be done to hold him to account for his criminal policy of breaking up refugee families, which was called child torture by the United Nations.

In fact, the Senate had just voted with overwhelming bipartisan support to approve his massive Pentagon budget increase, which included provisions for keeping open the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and allowing the fascistic demagogue to proceed with his unprecedented military parade in Washington.

But the moment Trump did something that cut across a central pillar of American foreign policy, the Democrats and the media ferociously sprang into action.

Trump’s questioning of the unproven narrative of the intelligence agencies was met with absolute hysteria and the implication that anyone failing to hold their unsubstantiated allegations as incontestable is nothing but a Russian agent.

In the post-World War II period, even within the tradition of American cold war liberalism, the activities of the FBI and CIA were always treated with extreme skepticism: as enormous and real threats to the survival of American democracy.

For nearly half a century, it was noted, J. Edgar Hoover ran a police state-within-a-state through the FBI. The FBI and CIA, functioning as a law unto themselves, spied on and blackmailed American political figures, carried out coups around the world and were widely believed to have been involved in the assassination of an American president.

The Watergate scandal, the Church Commission of the 1970s and the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, not to mention the intelligence agencies’ role in fabricating the “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction ahead of the invasion of Iraq, their criminal mass domestic surveillance and their role in drone murder, made clear that these are criminal organizations, willing to use any means to expand their own power at the expense of democracy.

But now, these organizations have been elevated by the media into America’s quintessential guardians, and their word declared to be the gospel truth. Any discussion of their role in torture, domestic spying and drone assassinations has been shelved.

Trump was denounced as a traitor, in language that seemed to invite a military coup. His conduct was squarely declared “unacceptable” and he was, so to speak “shown the instruments.” The warning last year by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer,

“You take on the intelligence community—they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” was demonstrated in practice.

Faced with implacable and universal pressure from within the political and media establishment, as well as the military and intelligence apparatus, Trump was forced to beat a retreat.

This entire sordid episode expresses the degree to which there is overwhelming institutional commitment within the US ruling elite for conflict with Russia, if necessary to the point of nuclear war. This war drive, which aims at the transformation of Russia into what would be for all intents and purposes a colony of American imperialism, has become an unchallengeable pillar of American foreign policy. Trump can commit any violation of human rights, can traduce constitutional norms at will, but he may not question this axial precept of American politics.

The universality with which this argument is accepted within the US political establishment makes clear, as the World Socialist Web Site has long insisted, that there exists no constituency for democracy within the American ruling elite.

It likewise vindicates the assessment by the WSWS that the fundamental dispute between Trump and the Democrats centers on foreign policy. What cannot be allowed is any divergence from what are seen as the key strategic interests of US imperialism.

In other words, the Democrats’ opposition to Trump is entirely from the right. On domestic issues, the Democrats are effectively in alliance with Trump. They support his tax cuts, his attacks on social spending, and, with minor caveats, his reactionary social and immigration policies. They distinguish themselves from Trump only in that they identify unconditionally with the US intelligence apparatus, and are more directly ruthless in the pursuit of US geopolitical interests, as opposed to Trump’s more transactional focus on economics.

The various factions of the ruling elite, in other words, are fighting out their differences through the method of the palace coup, of reactionary intrigue within the state. But one voice has not been heard in this ferocious, right-wing faction fight: that of the working class.

In addressing the crisis that has erupted within the state as the result of the coming to power of Donald Trump, the working class must bring its own methods to bear: those of the class struggle, animated by the socialist perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Only through these means can the ruling class’s drive to war and dictatorship be averted.

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Featured image is from NPR.

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Featured image: The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds perform the “Diamond pass and review” at Travis AFB, California on July 30, 2011.   (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt Richard Rose Jr.)

“Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations.” — George Eliot, from the author’s last novel, Daniel Deronda 

Pilots from the US Department of the Navy returned from World War II flush with pride at winning the war in the Pacific. So, in 1946, the Navy established a base of naval air operations on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico where the Blue Angels began doing air shows for the public, partly for recruiting future pilots and partly for raising unit morale. 

Within a few years the US Air Force established a base in Texas, where the first USAF Thunderbird team began doing air shows in 1953. 

The Gulf of Mexico has been the Blue Angels’ base of operations ever since 1946, first at Jacksonville, Florida (until 1950), then at Corpus Christi, Texas (from 1950 to 1954), and finally settled in its permanent home at Pensacola, Florida. 

The Thunderbirds started in Texas but have been based near Las Vegas, Nevada for decades. Every US military base has suffered serious environmental damage, just like every military base in the history of the world, and the Blue Angels and Thunderbird bases are no exception. Many US military bases are so seriously polluted that they have acquired the infamy of being designated EPA SuperFund sites. The process is called “fouling your own nest”.

The Blue Angels have been petrochemically poisoning the Gulf of Mexico when the Navy thought it wise to have its jets dump their excess fuel over the Gulf just prior to landing, in order to decrease the remote possibility of a lethal fireball engulfing the plane and pilot in case of a crash landing. 

No records seem to have been kept quantifying the volume or frequency of such fuel dumps, and, simply out of ignorance or arrogance, no environmental impact study was ever done or even considered. I have heard that the Blue Angels have discontinued fuel dumping a decade or so ago when the price of fuel rose dramatically; so now they only dump fuel before landing in certain emergencies.

JP-5 Jet Propellant is Highly Toxic Whether Burned or Dumped

The fuel that the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds use is a highly toxic propellant, a recent permutation of which is called JP-5. The many additives in the fuel do not burn “clean”, no matter what the Navy or Air Force says.

Blue Angels air show

JP-5 is actually a highly refined kerosene that also contains a complex mixture of hundreds of volatile chemical additives, some of which are carcinogenic. Many of them can be toxic to liver, brain, kidney and human or human or animal immune systems.

The post-combustion exhaust from jet engines is equally poisonous to air, water, soil, animal, plant and many forms of aquatic life. 

The military personnel that handle the JP-5 fuel are at high risk of being poisoned by the chronic inhalation of either the raw fumes or the engine exhaust. Those exposed can easily develop, in a delayed fashion, chronic illnesses because of the toxicity of the volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) in the fumes.

The Sobering Economics of Military Air Shows

The fuel consumption data for the Blue Angel and Thunderbird air shows are generally kept secret – and for good reasons. The alarmingly high fuel consumption would tend to dampen the enthusiasm of all but the most patriotic, thrill-seeking or willfully ignorant ticket-buyers.

The aviation industry says that JP-5 jet fuel costs 2-3 times more than automotive fuel. A few years back JP-5 cost the Pentagon between $8 and $12/gallon!

In 2014, the Blue Angels were in Duluth, headlining the biannual air show, which many of those critical of US militarism, US imperialism and US exceptionalism derogatorily call the Dulut Hairshow). During the 2014 pre-show promotional build-up, a local reporter for the Duluth News-Tribune was given a publicity ride, and he enthusiastically wrote in his column that the jet burned 1,200 gallons of fuel per hour! That number should sober up every thinking person, for a very fuel-efficient car that gets, say, 40 mpg, could drive 48,000 miles on the 1,200 gallons.

Back in 2014, 1,200 gallons of JP-5 cost the military upwards of $12,000 (at $10/gallon). If one multiplied that consumption by 6 (the number of jets in each performing team) the fuel costs would be $72,000 per hour just for the fuel used up doing the performance. And that is not counting the essentially daily practice sessions year-round that also last an hour. Nor does that count the fuel consumption for the round trip to Florida and back for each of the 70 air shows that the Blue Angels do in a typical year. 

How much of the Pentagon’s “missing” $23 trillion dollars can be Blamed on Military Air Shows?

Do the math and you will start to reconsider the wisdom of supporting such environmentally-insensitive and earth-unsustainable entertainment events. Surely some of the “missing” $23 trillion dollars (23,000,000,000,000 dollars) that the Pentagon recently reported that it can’t account for can be blamed on fuel wastage and other expenses that air shows incur.

On Bastille Day of 2014 (July 14) eight USAF Thunderbird F-16 jets arrived in Duluth along with the obligatory C-17 cargo plane carrying 30 support staff and spare parts for the jets (for air shows the support contingent usually numbers 50-55 members). 

Three of six U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds take off simultaneously as they begin their aerobatic performance at the Duluth Airshow in 2016. (Source: Duluth News Tribune)

The next day, 6 of the 8 Thunderbird jets left Duluth to do a 10 second flyover for the start of the Major League Baseball All-Star game at Target Field in Minneapolis – the only reason for them to be in Minnesota! (No information on the economics of the event was published. Hopefully, Major League Baseball footed the bill.)

The flyover was to coincide with the last strains of the Star-Spangled Banner. The two spare jets, who made the trip for nothing except as back-ups, were left sitting on the tarmac in Duluth, thus saving us taxpayers $10,000. The News Tribune reporter covering that story wrote that “each of the multi-million-dollar fighter jets will consume about 500 gallons of fuel just to make the 30-minute round trip to and from Minneapolis”. 

The cost of the fuel just for that quick trip from Duluth to Minneapolis and back for 10 seconds of entertainment? Here’s the math: $10 dollars/gallon X 500 gallons, X 6 Thunderbirds = $30,000!! And that is not considering the costs of the maintenance and the crews of the other planes involved, the practice sessions, the salaries and pensions and health care costs of all the military personnel involved.

We’re talking big bucks and a massive amount of fuel wastage every time the two stunt-flying teams perform or practice, even if one acknowledges that a portion of the costs are covered by civilian event sponsors. But there is more to understand about US military air shows that should raise additional concerns.

More Sobering Math: How much does it Cost to Train the Pilots?

A Duluth News-Tribune reporter covering one of Duluth’s past air shows wrote that the commanding officer of one of the flight teams was required to fly a minimum of 3,000 training hours (paid for by the US taxpayer) to qualify for the role of commander. The other team members had to fly 1,350 training hours. The reporter noted in that article that there were 15 pilots in the team, although only 6 perform at a time. The team members (the subs as well as prime time flyers) practice their highly technical and dangerous stunts virtually every day of the year in order to keep their skills honed and the air shows relatively safe. 

As of 2006, there had reportedly been 230 fighter pilots since the Blue Angels started their stunt-flying for audiences. Since the Blue Angels teams began flying in 1946, about 25 of their pilots have died in crashes, which means that as many as 25 multimillion-dollar planes went down in the crashes as well (this figure does not factor in the number of planes that were demolished while the pilot survived by ejecting safely). 

In 2011, 70 Blue Angel air shows (two shows per weekend) were presented at 35 different sites, with rehearsal flights the day before each performance. When they are not touring, the Blue Angels practice their routines year-round, usually over the Gulf of Mexico at their Pensacola base of operations. The Thunderbirds practice over Nevada’s vast desert north of Las Vegas, which is where a rookie Thunderbird pilot recently died in a practice session crash on April 4, 2018, just a couple of months before he was to be in Duluth. The crash was the third Thunderbird accident in the past 22 months. 

Using the figures that the journalist obtained from the Blue Angels, the 3,000 hours of training for the single Commanding Officer (CO) used up as many as 2,400,000 gallons of jet fuel just to qualify (3,000 hours X 800 gallons/hour = 2,400,000 gallons, which at $10 per gallon amounts to $24,000,000 for every qualifying commanding officer)! Of course, this training number does not include the equally enormous amounts of fuel consumed during the air show performances, the rehearsals or the flights to and from Pensacola. 

The 1,350 training hours for the other pilots on the team (at one time there were as many as 15 pilots on Blue Angels teams) consumed as much as 1,080,000 gallons for each pilot’s training (which costs us taxpayers, at $10/gallon, $10,800,000 for each Blue Angel pilot that qualified!). For the 14 non-commander pilots, the total fuel costs expended just to qualify comes to $15,120,000! 

And those costs do not factor in the airmen’s or support crew’s salaries, the pensions or the tens of millions of dollars that each jet costs. 

I challenge readers to try to estimate in dollar figures the enormous fuel costs for all of the US military shows/year, and then try to calculate the fuel used up in the flights to and from Pensacola or Las Vegas (in the case of the Thunderbirds). And then add in the costs of the huge transport planes that carry all the repair parts and the 50-55 support crew members that work in supply and maintenance. 

Of course, the costs to the American taxpayer are impossible to calculate precisely, but surely it must be many billions of dollars per year, admittedly partly offset by ticket sales. Nevertheless, since so many of America’s military excursions are for control of oil, the burning of precious fuel for whatever reason must be taken into account if and when the future of fuel-wasting military air shows is to be re-considered.

Squandering Increasingly Scarce Fossil Fuel for our Amusement

In 2016 the USAF Thunderbirds headlined what used to be biannual Duluth air shows. But in 2017 the Blue Angels were back again. At every show there are any number of other stunt-flying participants, all using up increasingly scarce petroleum products for purposes of entertainment plus, of course, for the recruitment of starry-eyed, vulnerable young boys (and girls) who are being primed, partly because of their extensive experience with first person shooter videogames, to want to join the death-dealing military professions that make homicidal violence normal and attractive. 

The world is over-populated and heading for catastrophic economic and climate change cliffs, so isn’t it about time for people to get serious about what should be the sobering realities mentioned above? We live in a world of dwindling, irreplaceable fossil fuel resources that are already being squandered by thousands of corporate misleaders on Wall Street and War Street, including Big Oil, Big Agribusiness, Big Chemical, Big Food, Big Media and Big Armaments. Each of these industries – in one way or another – profits from wars and rumors of war, and so the mesmerizing beat goes on. 

Far too many US military veterans are physically, neurologically and/or spiritually dead or dying. Often the deaths are by suicide – 22 per day for active duty soldiers and veterans combined! These once-gung-ho wounded warriors were easily seduced by the pseudo-patriotic jingoism coming from the “military-industrial complex” often wasting the best years of their lives. And then they were sacrificed, not for American “democracy”, but for American capitalism and the money-hungry, pro-militarism, war-profiteering corporations (and the subservient politicians and presidents of both political parties) that cunningly waved the flag and dutifully wore the flag pins on their suit coat lapels. 

Now we know that these corporate entities never really cared about the well-being of their “cannon fodder” warriors who were doing the dirty work to ensure the success of their evil enterprises abroad. The flag that corporate CEOs pledge allegiance to is NOT the Stars and Stripes but the flag that has their corporate logo on it. 

Millions of dead and dying American veterans from every war since 1898 (the year that the US military captured the Philippine Islands, Puerto Rico and Cuba from Spain and started feeling their imperialistic oats) joined the US military partly out of a sense of patriotic duty, partly to “see the world” and partly to get out of their poverty; but most of them soon found themselves either

1) disillusioned by the atrocities they witnessed or had been ordered to commit; 

2) sickened from their exposures to military toxins (including the obligatory, massive over-vaccination agendas for every member, no matter how irrational); 

3) malnourished or sickened from the, toxic, non-organic, highly processed, chemically-treated, pseudo-food in their rations; 

4) neurologically and/or psychiatrically sickened from the ubiquitous overuse of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs or the cocktails of legal psych drugs given to them by military psychiatrists, medics and the VA; and/or 

5) tormented by the post-combat demons, the nightmares and the suicidality – while at the same time earning less than the minimum wage. 

And part of the process that led many of the above victims (of America’s endless military adventurism) to think that there somehow was glory involved in killing and dying for their nation’s financial elites, may have begun with the thrill of experiencing military air shows.

America’s soldiers, airmen, seamen and Marines have been, in reality, working not for the US Constitution to which they pledged allegiance, but rather for a whole host of nefarious special interest groups that stopped supporting them when their broken bodies, their broken brains and the body bags came home under cover of darkness. 

Hopefully, acknowledging these unwelcome realities may someday set us free from the war-glorifying, war-profiteering, war-mongers on Wall Street and War Street. Good examples would include Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas/Boeing, the suppliers of the Thunderbird planes, who depend on wars and rumors of war to continue doing business, maintain dividend payments and ensure high stock prices for their investors.

So, while thousands of patriotic Duluthians watched in wide-eyed wonder last week-end as the highly skilled jet pilots did their breath-taking stunts, there were, at the same time, tens of thousands of Duluthians that refused to spend their time and money attending and supporting these pro-militarization air shows. 

Sadly, the Thunderbirds, their sponsors and fans are unconsciously hastening America’s impending moral, energy, climate and financial collapse by ignoring the wastefulness of burning up precious, expensive, non-renewable fossil fuel resources while simultaneously poisoning the planet and risking the health of everybody, including America’s progeny.

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Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, health, democracy, civility and longevity of the populace.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The attack on Hodeidah — Yemen’s fourth largest city and predominant port on the Red Sea, responsible for providing over 70 percent of Yemenis’ food, aid and medicine — has gained speed this week as the U.S.-Saudi-led coalition rejected an initiative from the United Nations envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, aimed at ending the fighting in the port city and surrounding area.

Griffiths had presented a plan on June 3, during his visit to Sana’a, in an effort to stop the fighting along Yemen’s West Coast, but the plan was rejected by the Saudi-led coalition despite having been supported by the Houthi rebels.

“We have accepted that the United Nations have a technical and logistic role in the port of Hodeidah but the enemies have refused to do so,” stated Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi during a televised speech on Friday marking the anniversary of Al-Sarkha (“the slogan”) — the day of Houthis’ declaration of opposition to U.S. policies in the Middle East in 2002. “The enemies’ excuses were cut off by our initiative,” he added.

Earlier this month on July 4, Martin Griffiths said that he had held talks with al-Houthi. During a press conference that same day, Griffiths stated

“I’m greatly reassured by the messages I have received [from the Houthis], which have been positive and constructive.”

The Saudi-led coalition, however, rejected Griffiths’ efforts. The coalition, which has been waging a war against Yemen since early 2015, claims that the Houthis are using Hodeidah for weapons deliveries, an allegation rejected by Hodeidah`s local residents and the Houthis.

However, the Hodeidah port is the lifeline for the majority of Yemen’s population, which is why Saudi Arabia has make it into a target, attacking the Yemenis’ lifeline to survival. An attack against it threatens over 70 percent of the population, who are in need of relief aid like food, fuel and medicine owing to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war against the poorest country in the Middle East.

As a result of the coalition’s rejection of the UN-backed initiative, the Houthis as well as Hodeidah`s local residents have threatened to turn Hodeidah into a graveyard of Saudi and UAE troops and their mercenaries, who are engaging in a genocidal war against Yemen that has left over 10,000 civilians dead and nearly a million injured, and who are using the blockade of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.

The Saudi-led blockade of Hodeidah port over the last two years — which has prevented medical supplies, food and humanitarian aid from reaching Yemen — has created one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the modern era. Due to the blockade and the the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing campaign in the region, the UN estimates that over 18 million Yemenis may die of hunger by the end of 2018.

On Friday, addressing his supporters via a televised speech broadcast from the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a, al-Houthi said:

The aggressors are expending all their efforts to overrun the western coastal province of Hodeidah, but are confronted with strong popular resistance. They have dismally failed in their attacks. We will recruit more fighters to turn Hodeidah into a graveyard of enemies.”

Yemeni tribes join battle

Local tribes have gathered in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a to voice their support for the Tahamah residents and the Houthis in their fight to hold onto Hodeidah, as the city is a lifeline for the majority of Yemen’s population. Cars containing willing fighters and supplies left Sana’a for Hodeidah on Sunday, as tribal leaders pledged to take their battle to the front lines.

Nabaih Abbu Nashtan, the leader of Arhab tribes from all Houthi-controlled districts, declared during a large tribal gathering, which also included many tribal sheiks from southern Yemen:

Today, we tell the enemies that there are men headed to the coast. We are ready for the battle [of Hodeidah] on all battlefronts. We are ready for the enemies, more than they can ever imagine.”

Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition, supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, has stepped up its airstrikes against civilians and displaced people throughout Hodeidah, conducting five airstrikes on the Salif district and the island of Kamaran on Monday. Those strikes resulted in the deaths of six civilians when UAE airstrikes bombed a house in Zabid city.

Another civilian was killed and six more were injured when airstrikes targeted a bus in the road between Zabaid and Al Jarahi cities. Saudi-led Coalition warplanes using U.S. munitions also bombed regional farms in the city of Bajel. Another Saudi bombing in Sa’ada, in the north of Yemen, killed two children and injured two more, while artillery targeted the Shada and Baqim districts also in the northern Province of Sa’ada, where there were no immediate reports of possible casualties.

According to a statement of the Coast Guard Department obtained by MintPress, more than 97 Yemeni fishermen have been killed and 47 injured by coalition warplanes and warships around Hodeidah since the beginning of 2017. Over that same time frame, 34 fishing boats have been destroyed. Furthermore, Saudi warships have detained 477 fisherman, 100 of whom continue to be detained along with 45 of their fishing boats, according to information from Yemen’s Coast Guard.

Since 2015, when the U.S.-Saudi-led coalition launched its military campaign against Yemen, about 15,000 civilians have been killed and 3,000 injured, according new statistics made available to MintPress by The Legal Center for Rights and Development.

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Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News and local Yemeni media.

Featured image is from Yemenpress.

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The Helsinki Summit – or the Treason Summit, as some call it – of the 16^th of July, has come and gone. It left a smell of burning hot air behind.

President Trump, opened the meeting by saying that up to now relations between the United States and Russia were bad, and confessing that the US was to blame for it. He wanted them to improve and hoped that this meeting – he indicated that others of similar nature may follow – may be a first step towards normalizing relations between the two atomic super-powers which together, he said, control 90% of the world’s nuclear destructive force. A timely admission, but ignoring the most dangerous and unpredictable atomic power, the rogue nation of Israel.

If ever the promising dream-like sounds of Donald Trump of denuclearizing the globe were to see the light of day, Israel would have to be among the first countries to be de-nuclearized – which would be a real step towards world security and peace in the Middle East.

During the later Press Conference, Trump though voicing his appreciation for the ‘fine’ secret services of his country, he admitted that he trusted more Putin’s word on Russia’s non-interference than that of his secret service, “why would they interfere?”, for which he was trashed at home by his adversaries, the MSM, the democrats and even the Republicans. Now, back home, Trump has to accommodate the public, telling them he mispronounced ‘would’; he really meant “wouldn’t”… a first rate spectacle of idiocy that, surely, after a while will go away, as everything does that has no solution, but gambles with dishonesty.

There is no winning in the indoctrinated and brainwashed to the bones American public. It couldn’t be more obvious, how the media are rallying the American people for war with Russia. The greedy military needs war – and the economy of the US of A also needs war to boost her GDP, or rather for sheer economic survival. The topic of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Elections, will just not be dropped. After a zillion of proven false accusations, in a reasonable world it would fade away. Not in the US. It is a clear sign of the decline of the empire. It’s the desperate hopelessness of the naked emperor that speaks.

So, they call Trump treacherous towards his country – a President who dares saying the truth publicly is called by the slimy Democrats and the yet slimier Republicans – and foremost by the mainstream media – a case for impeachment.

There is an internal battle raging in the United States. It pulls the country apart. It’s the want of making America Great Again, by concentrating on internal production for local markets, versus the globalized aspirations – the drive for a dollar world hegemony and the full and total subjugation of the peoples and their resources of this globe. The latter will not be possible without an all-out war – and the elite doesn’t really want to live underground perhaps for years in protection of a nuclear fallout nobody knows how long it may last. Trump’s handlers are aware of the alternative, ‘building from within’. Is what Trump is propagating, “America First”, the right approach? – Maybe not, but the concept might be right, given the destitute state of the world, where sanctions and trade wars, also initiated by Trump, are creating havoc among former partners.

A regrouping of nations, aiming at self-sufficiency and selective trading partners according to cultural and political similarities might bring back national sovereignties, abolishing the corporate globalized approach that has been doing harm to 90% of the people. WTO, the monster made by the west to further advance corporate power over the weak, should and would become obsolete.

Trump’s contradictions are what defeats his credibility. He admonishes Madame Merkel for being enslaved by Russia for buying Russian gas instead of the US’s environmentally destructive fracking gas.

“We put NATO in Europe to protect you from the enemy, Russia, yet you prefer buying Russian gas than dealing with those who protect you”.

It didn’t occur to any of the European NATO halfwits to tell Trump that all that NATO has done so far is destroying countries throughout the Middle East and the world, and that they, the Europeans, have supported the US in their senseless destruction, creating a flood of refugees which now threatens to suffocate Europe. – There was nothing, but nothing about protection by NATO. If anything, NATO was an aggressive force, moving ever closer to Russia and flanking China on the eastern front. None of this was said, though, by the European NATO puppets.

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

Trump then goes to Helsinki, meets Putin and says he likes him and he wants to be friends and make peace with Russia. – Of course. We all want peace. But who can believe him, when a few days before he accused Germany of playing into the hands of the enemy, Russia?

Remember, a year ago at the G7 summit in Hamburg, Trump was shaking Putin’s hand and said ‘I like him’. At the recent disastrous G7 conference in Canada, which turned out to be a G6+1 summit, before running off to Singapore to meet North Koreas Kim Jong-Un, Trump dropped a little bomb, “why not converting the G7 again to the G8 and include Russia?” – He left the group stunned and speechless. – So, his drive towards improved relations with Russia is nothing new. It’s just not accepted by the warriors in Washington.

The Helsinki summit looked and sounded like a summer show – just to continue the attention deviation maneuvers of the World Cup that ended the day before in Russia. – What’s going on behind the scenes? – It’s one of those hot summers when nobody wants to think, just to be entertained, never mind the farces and lies – like during Roman Empire times – it’s the modernized Colosseum, adopted to the age of cell phones, tablets and micro-chips. The Colosseum is the all-so transparent veil that should shield the world’s eyes from the empire’s auto-destruction.

Today’s gladiators are the peoples of entire countries, continents, slaughtered or made homeless by the millions, by teleguided missiles and bombs, causing the largest migration streams – by far – in modern history; 70 million worldwide and upwards are on the move. Generations without homes, education; generations without a future, drifting across the seas in desperate hope of survival.

Mr. Putin’s words in Helsinki were words of wisdom, propagating peace as a good thing and dismissing Russian interference in the American elections. Not even discussing the re-inclusion of Crimea. Period. He could have mentioned, instead, the hundreds of elections and regime changes that Washington initiated, manipulated and manufactured around the globe within the last 70 years alone, but he didn’t. Wise man; non-aggression. It is obvious, the “muttonized” world of Americans and European vassals don’t even think that far anymore. For them it’s natural that the ‘exceptional nation’ does what she wants with impunity – but the same rights wouldn’t apply to others.

President Putin handed Trump a list of steps and actions to consider to embark on a denuclearization process. Trump and those of the deep state elite who’s love for life is too great to risk a nuclear war, may just take advantage and do something about it.

The enigma Trump is perfect for the Deep Dark state – he is a roller-coaster of confusion and contradictions. To the NATO members, at the recent Brussels NATO summit, he ordered “pay up, or else’’ – which could mean, or we pull out of NATO. Though that is the desire of a large majority of Europeans, for Trump it’s a contradiction, as he pretends that NATO is supposed to defend Europe against her arch-enemy, Russia. But, then, in turn, Mr. Trump moves on, courting this very “arch-enemy’’, by responding to the peace bells Mr. Putin has been offering ever since he came to power, never a negative word against Washington, calmly calling the demonizers ‘our partners’.

Confused people can easily be taken off-guard and manipulated.

Who knows what the real agenda of the Trump handlers has in store. Trump’s bold statements on the side of President Putin, will make his demonization at home easier. Though the people at large clearly want peaceful relations between the two nations; everybody fears war, but they will continue to be indoctrinated by the CNN-NBC-BBC’s of this world. Let’s face it, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was and is no reason to make Putin and Russia America’s enemy. But Putin’s assertiveness in bringing Russia to the fore and onto the world stage again, was a good reason to upset the self-appointed Uni-Power, US of A.

The US super-power lives of wars, and this lifestyle requires enemies. Russia and China are ideal, as they control huge land masses with almost unlimited natural resources.  They have done nothing of what the mainstream accuses them of. And if the President of the United States annuls the key enemy, turning him from foe to friend, such a President becomes a liability for the swamp of Washington – a liability, indeed – “or else”.

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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.

Thomson Reuters Foundation in its recent survey released on June 26, 2018 ranked India as the most dangerous country in the world for women.

More than 500 global experts on women’s issues took part in a survey covering areas such as healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual and non-sexual violence and human trafficking. Not enough was being done to tackle the dangers women faced, they said. India was ranked fourth in a similar study conducted in 2011.

Afghanistan and Syria were ranked second and third in the study, followed by Somalia and Saudi Arabia. The only western nation in the top ten was the USA. The foundation said that this was directly related to the #MeToo movement.

According to government data gathered in the study, crimes against women in India rose by more than 80 per cent between 2007 and 2016. Nearly 40,000 rapes were reported in 2016, despite a greater focus on women’s safety after the fatal gang rape of a student in Delhi in 2012 that prompted nationwide protests and led to tougher laws against sexual abuse being introduced.

India recorded 539 cases of sexual harassment in the workplace in 2016, 170 per cent from 2006, a report from last year suggested. However, campaigners have said that those figures are only the tip of the iceberg; a 2017 survey by India’s National Bar Association found that nearly 70 per cent of victims did not report sexual harassment.

Manjunath Gangadhara, an official at the Karnataka state government, said:

“India has shown utter disregard and disrespect for women. Rape, marital rapes, sexual assault and harassment, female infanticide has gone unabated. The fastest-growing ecnomy and leader in space and technology, is shamed for violence committed against women.”

Some observers pointed out that the study, while it took in wider streams of figures, was primarily based on opinion.
Upasana Mahanta, of Jindal Global University in Delhi, told The Times:

“I’m not sure that India is any more dangerous now than it was six years ago. In terms of progress, having only legal provisions will not make the difference. Most studies show that women in India are mostly victims of violence from their partners or family members. Which shows they are hurt because they are women, regardless of cultural, economic or social factors. Women are basically being put in their place through violence.”

In the past year several prominent rape and murder cases involving children have led to the introduction of the death penalty for those convicted and speedier trial process for violence against females.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development declined to comment on the survey results, said the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news network’s philanthropic arm.

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We have to hand it to Putin. He is the best that there is. Note the ease with which he mopped up the floor with Fox News’  Chris Wallace.

What is wrong with the US media that it cannot produce a second competent journalist as company for Tucker Carlson? Why are America’s remaining good journalists, such as Chris Hedges, now in the alternate media?

All I can say, and Putin probably already knows it, is that there is more going on than presstitutes holding the relationship between Russia and the US hostage to an internal political struggle between the Democratic Party and President Trump. It is not just that the corrupt US media is serving as propagandists for the Democratic Party against President Trump. The presstitutes are serving the interest of the military/security complex, which has ownership interests in the highly concentrated US media, to keep Russia positioned as the enemy that justifies the huge $1,000 billion budget of the military/security complex. Without the “Russian enemy,” what is the justification for such a waste of money when so many real needs go underfunded and unfunded?

In other words, the American media are not only stupid, they are corrupt beyond all measure.

Source: Fox News

Today at 12:40 Eastern time NPR had a collection if Trump-bashers doing their utmost to prevent the Trump/Putin meeting from leading to a normalizing of relations between the two governments.

For example, as every informed person knows, the US intelligence community has most certainly not concluded that Russia interferred in the presidential election. That conclusion was reached by a few hand-picked members of 3 of the 16 intelligence agencies and was expressed not as a proven fact but as “highly likely.” It other words, it was nothing but an orchestrated opinion given by cooperative agents who no doubt expect promotions in return.

Despite this known fact, the NPR propaganda team said that Trump had believed Putin instead of an unanimous US factual intelligence report that proved Russia interfered. The NPR Trump-bashers said that Trump had believed the “thug Putin” and not his own American experts. The NPR Trump-bashers went on to compare Trump’s “siding with Putin” with Trump’s opinion that the Charlottesville violence had contributors from both sides. The NPR Trump-bashers equated Trump’s factual statement about violence from both sides into “siding with the neo-nazis” in Charlottesville.

NPR’s point is that Trump sides with Nazis and Russian thugs and is against Americans.

What Trump said in fact about alleged election interference was that whether there was or was not any election interference, it had no effect as Comey and Rosenstein have admitted, and is certainly not as important as two nuclear powers getting along with one another and avoiding tensions that could result in nuclear war. One would think that even an NPR idiot could understand that.

The Trump-bashing on NPR has gone on all day intermixed with an occassional bashing of Russia for killing Syrian civilians in air attacks on the Washington-supported jihadists that are, as instructed by Washington, trying to hold on to a bit of Syria so that Washington and Israel can restart the war. One wonders at the stupidity of those who give money to NPR so that NPR can lie to them all day long. Like George Orwell foresaw, people are more comfortable with Big Brother’s lies than with the truth.

NPR was once an alternative voice, but it was broken by the George W. Bush regime and has become completely corrupt. NPR still pretends to be “listener-supported,” but in fact is now a commercial station just like every commercial station. NPR tries to disguise this fact by using “with support from” to introduce the paid advertisements from the corporations.

“With support from” is how NPR traditionally acknowledged its philanthropic donors. The real question is: how does NPR hold on to its 501c3 tax-exempt status when it sells commercial advertising? No need for NPR to worry. As long as the presstitute entity serves the ruling elite at the expense of truth, it will retain its illegal tax-exempt status.

It is obvious that the indictments of the 12 Russian intelligence officers immediately prior to the Trump/Putin meeting was intended to harm the meeting and to give the presstitutes more opportunities for more dishonest shots at President Trump. In my day, journalists would have been smart enough and would have had enough integrity to understand that. But Western presstitutes have neither intelligence nor integrity.

How much proof do you want? Here is presstitute Michelle Goldberg writing in the New York Times that “Trump shows’s the world he’s Putin’s lacky.” The presstitute says she is “staggered by the American president’s slavish and toadying performance.” Apparently Goldberg thinks Trump should have beaten up Putin.

The Washington Post, formerly a newspaper, now a sick joke, alleged that “Trump just colluded with Russia. Openly.”

It is not only the presstitutes. It is the so-called experts, such as Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, a self-important group, financed by the military/security complex, that presides over American foreign policy. Haass, sticking to the official military/security line, declared erroneously:

“International order for 4 centuries has been based on non-interference in the internal affairs of others and respect for sovereignty. Russia has violated this norm by seizing Crimea and by interfering in the 2016 US election. We must deal with Putin’s Russia as the rogue state it is.”

What is Haass talking about? What respect for sovereignty does Washington have? Surely Haass is familiar with the ruling neoconservative doctrine of US world hegemony. Surely Haass knows that the orchestrated troubles with Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Russia, and China are due to Washington’s resentment of their sovereignty. What is Washington’s unilateralism about if Washington respects the sovereignty of countries? Why does Washington want a unipolar world if Washington respects the sovereignty of other countries? It is precisely Russia’s insistance on a multi-polar world that has Russia in the propaganda crosshairs. If Washington respects sovereignty, why does Washington overthrow countries that have it? When Washington accuses Russia of being a threat to world order, Washington means that Russia is a threat to Washington’s world order. Is Haass demonstrating his idiocy or his corruption?

As the American media has conclusively proven that it has no independence but is a mouthpiece for Democrats and corporate interests, it should be nationalized. The American media is so compromised that nationalization would be an improvement.

The armaments industry should also be nationalized. Not only is it a power greater than the elected government, it also is vastly inefficient. The Russian armaments industry with a tiny fraction of the US military budget produces far superior weapons. As President Eisenhower, a Five-Star General, said, the military-industrial complex is a threat to American democracy. Why are the presstitute scum so worried about non-existant Russian interference when the military/security complex is so powerful that it can actually substitute itself for the elected government?

There was a time when the Republican Party represented the interests of business, and the Democratic Party represented the interests of the working class. That kept America in balance. Today there is no balance. Since the Clinton regime, the rich one percent has been getting vastly richer, and the 99 percent has been getting poorer. The middle class is in serious decline.

The Democrats have abandoned the working class, which Democrats now dismiss as “Trump deplorables,” and support instead the divisiveness and hatreds of Identity Politics. At a time when the American people need unity to stand up to warmongering and greed, there is no unity. Races and genders are taught to hate one another. It is everywhere you look.

Compared to the America I was born into, the America of today is fragile and weak. The only effort at unity is to create unity that Russia is the enemy. It is just like George Orwell’s 1984. In other aspects the current American dystopia is worse than the one Orwell described.

Try to find an American public or private institution that is worthy of respect, that is honorable, that respects truth, that is compassionate and strives for justice. What you find in place of compassion and demand for justice are laws that punish if you criticize the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians or leak information showing the felonies committed by the US government. With all of their institutions corrupted, the American people become corrupted as well. Corruption is what the young are born into. They know no different. What future is that for America?

How can Russia, China, Iran, North Korea reach a compromise with a government that does not know the meaning of the word, a government that requires submission and when submission is not given destruction follows as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen learned.

Who would be so foolish as to trust an agreement with Washington?

Instead of pursuing an agreement with Trump, who is being set up for removal, Putin should be preparing Russia for war.

War is definitely coming.

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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.

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Watch the interview of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky with Malaysia’s Astro Awani on the Criminalization of War, focus on Israel’s massacre in Gaza.

According to Prof. Chossudovsky,

“… the problem is in addressing the complicity of the international community in closing their eyes regarding these atrocities.”

If video screen does not work, click the image below

http://www.astroawani.com/video-malaysia/100-hari-malaysia-baharu-kriminalisasi-peperangan-235896
 

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The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have liberated the settlements of Al-Harra, Nimer, Umm al-Awsaj and the hills of Harra and Ahmar as well as some other points in the area north of Daraa city in southern Syria from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The town of Nawa has remained one of the key militant defense points in the area east of the Golan Heights. Once it falls, the defense of militant groups will fully collapse.

Meanwhile, reports appeared that some FSA units in the area have requested a ceasefire and negotiations with the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance to reach a comprehensive reconciliation agreement. According to reports, a moderate part of the militants want to surrender their weapons and to settle their legal status with the Damascus government. However, agreement has not yet been reached.

On July 16, US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held a face-to-face meeting in the Finnish capital of Helsinki. The situation in Syria was among the topics discussed by the leaders.

During a joint press conference after the meeting, Putin said that the key goal is to establish peace in the war-torn country and this effort could become an example of successful Russian-US cooperation. He emphasized the need to return displaced people to their homes and to improve the humanitarian situation.

In turn, Trump once again showed the key place of Israeli interests in his administration’s policy in the Middle East. He said that the US is closely coordinating with Israel and that “creating safety for Israel” is among the key goals of his country.

Regarding the situation in southern Syria, Putin said that following the defeat of the terrorists, the situation in the Golan Heights “must be brought into full compliance with the 1974 disengagement of forces agreement between Syria and Israel.”

The joint press conference showed that the sides may have found at least a partial understanding on the situation in southern Syria and may have set a foothold for reaching a comprehensive agreement on employing a political solution for the crisis in the war-torn country. However, only real steps from the sides can show how close this is to reality.

Meanwhile, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have resumed their advance on the ISIS-held town of Hajin in the Euphrates Valley. According to pro-Kurdish sources, the SDF has entered the town capturing some buildings inside it. Clashes are ongoing.

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Far from the seemingly “invincible” player that the Western Mainstream Media has propagandistically portrayed it as for years, “Israel” is actually so weak right now and extra vulnerable to Iranian-initiated destabilization operations that the New Cold War Great Power rivals of the US and Russia are putting their many differences behind them and historically joining forces to ensure its security.

Declaring The Joint Protectorate

Everything that the Western world previously assumed about “Israel’s” supposed “invincibility” has been exposed as a discredited propaganda operation that not even the US is capable of conducting anymore after the on-the-ground facts have disproven its very basis. Long thought of as the “Sparta” of Mideast affairs because of its military’s ability to punch well above its weight in regional conflicts and the efficient capabilities of its intelligence services in catalyzing the MENA-wide Yinon Plan of the so-called “Arab Spring”, “Israel” has now been exposed to have several glaring vulnerabilities that have put it in such a position of weakness vis-à-vis Iran that it’s now compelled to seek joint American and Russian assistance in ensuring its security.

During the joint press conference in Helsinki, President Putin proclaimed his long-known desire to protect “Israeli” interests by telling the world that:

“I would also like to note that after the terrorists are routed in southwest Syria, in the so-called ‘southern zone’, the situation in the Golan Heights should be brought into full conformity with the 1974 agreement on the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces. This will make it possible to bring tranquillity to the Golan Heights and restore the ceasefire between the Syrian Arab Republic and the State of Israel. The President devoted special attention to this issue today.”

Trump took it even further by adding that:

“We’ve worked with Israel long and hard for many years, many decades. I think that never has any country been closer than we are. President Putin also is helping Israel, and we both spoke with Bibi Netanyahu. And they would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel. So, in that respect we absolutely would like to work in order to help Israel, and Israel will be working with us, so both countries would work jointly.

 And I think that when you look at all the progress that has been made in certain sections with the eradication of ISIS – we’re about 98–99 percent there – and other things that have taken place that we have done and that, frankly, Russia has helped us within certain respects. But I think that working with Israel is a great thing, and creating safety for Israel is something that both President Putin and I would like to see very much.”

Beyond any shadow of doubt, the two Great Powers have made “Israel” their joint protectorate, and this surprising state of affairs has far-reaching implications for not just Syria, but the entire Mideast and especially Iran.

Yinon Gone Bad

To be succinct, the Yinon Plan dramatically backfired by creating the conditions for Iranian military “advisors” in Syria to creep closer to the occupied Golan Heights, a pressing security threat of the highest importance that could only be temporarily staved off by Russia’s greenlighting of “Israeli” bombing raids against them. Still, this isn’t a sufficient solution because it’s unclear exactly how many of these forces are in the region and whether or not they’re operating incognito as part of the “National Defense Forces” militias or even members of the Syrian Arab Army itself. Furthermore, Russia barely has any influence on Iran’s military plans in Syria no matter how much pressure Moscow has put on Damascus to curtail what the Kremlin views to be a regionally destabilizing factor.

The only way to sustainably secure “Israel’s” existence from the asymmetrical threat that Iranian forces and their Hezbollah allies pose near the occupied Golan Heights was for Tel Aviv to strike an indirect deal with Damascus through Russian mediation whereby the self-proclaimed “Jewish State” would implicitly recognize the continued leadership of President Assad in the Arab Republic so long as he could guarantee that his sworn enemy’s foes will be kept an uncertain distance away from the de-facto “border”. Getting “Israel” to back down from its years-long unofficial policy of regime change in Syria would be even more of a game-changer than when Saudi Arabia recently did the same, with Russia being responsible for both previously unthinkable policy reversals.

The Quid-Pro-Quo

The US is brought into the equation because it and “Israel” are essentially the same political entity on different continents, meaning that any Russian deal with one of them in Syria must naturally be cleared with, or at the very least coordinated with, the other. Moreover, the US is just as opposed to Iran’s direct and proxy military involvement in Syria as “Israel” is, which gives it a natural stake in ensuring that any speculated deal in southern Syria is respected by all the parties involved, especially Damascus. In exchange for President Assad’s cooperation, it’s conceivable that the US will put pressure on its Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) underlings to enter into talks with Damascus, which is about to happen according to recent reports.

The pieces of President Putin’s unofficial peace plan for Syria are gradually coming into place, with the most important component being Iran’s dignified “phased withdrawal” from the country, which has yet to happen in full but is evidently being advanced to a degree by its “containment” from southwestern Syria per the most likely terms of the US-Russian deal. Unlike the US, Russia is the only Great Power realistically capable of “balancing” Iran in a peaceful manner, which it was already doing even before the Putin-Trump Summit, but now Moscow is also playing a key role in doing the same with “Israel” as well by participating in a joint protectorate over it together with the US and therefore smashing all of the Mainstream Media’s stereotypes about its “invincibility”.

“Israel” is simply incapable of fighting what it fears could become a three-front war against another Palestinian Intifada inside of its “borders”, Hezbollah along the Lebanese one, and Iran in the Syrian one, so for the first time in its history it has to pick and choose its battles. Its leadership apparently decided that Syria is the least of its concerns and is the easiest to indirectly manage so long as it compromises on its position of regime change against President Assad as part of a Russian-mediated deal, which therefore makes Moscow a guarantor of its security via its predominant influence over Damascus’ compliance with this arrangement. To be clear, no party is “selling out” to any other, but it’s just that they’re all advancing their own interests.

Trust No One Except Your Own Interests

President Putin put it best when responding to a question during his news conference with Trump, when he wisely said that:

“Should you or should you not have trust in someone? Can you trust anyone in general? No you can’t. Why on Earth do you think the President [Donald Trump] trusts me and I fully trust him, too? Donald Trump defends the interests of the US and I defend Russia’s interests. We have some common interests and points of contact. Along with it, we have the issues on which we still differ and we’re looking for ways of bridging these differences and making our efforts fruitful.”

The same principle of Hyper-Realism that’s influencing Russia’s decisions on the “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard” could also be applied towards Syria, which has no reason to trust President Putin or especially Netanyahu, but is bridging the differences that it has with “Israel” through Russian mediation in order to expand their common interests and points of contact in such a way that their efforts will be fruitful. From theory to practice, this means that President Assad wants “Israel” to strategically surrender by abandoning its regime change plans and resultantly relieving the Arab Republic of the immense Zionist-backed pressure that it’s been incessantly under, with the trade-off of denying Iranian forces the freedom to operate in southwestern Syria apparently being acceptable to Damascus under these conditions.

Weak, Weaker, And The Weakest

While Syria might look “weak” for “caving into” the “international community’s” demands, it’s actually “Israel” that comes out looking weaker by comparison because it had to rely on Russia to protect its interests by facilitating this development, which not even its decades-long American ally was capable of achieving. Keeping Iran away from the occupied Golan Heights is the first step in its dignified “phased withdrawal” from Syria, and the fact that this is even happening shows just how little influence Tehran has over Moscow nowadays when considering that the Ayatollah’s influential advisor Ali Akbar Velayati was just in the Russian capital lobbying for this exact same scenario not to happen. If anything, Iran is emerging from all of this looking weaker than both Syria and “Israel” because its rhetoric was just exposed as theatrics.

As a perfect example, the second-in-command of the IRGC boasted in June in response to “Israel’s” bombing of the T4 base in April that (underlined emphases are the author’s own):

“They imagined that they would not receive any response; they thought that they can intimidate the Resistance Front with US and British support, and that no one would respond to them. As you all witnessed, they said if we (the Resistance Front) retaliated, they would put an end to the Syrian government; but they received a response in the Golan, and dozens of missiles flew over the region. A message was sent to them that if they responded, we would raze to the ground the heart of Tel Aviv; they were forced to shut up, and haven’t done a damn thing since then.”

This might go down in history as one of the most premature statements ever because “Israel” just bombed northern Aleppo right after Netanyahu’s latest visit to Moscow and it was actually Iran which “was forced to shut up, and hasn’t done a damn thing since then”. If “over-zealous” Alt-Media “perception management” operations attempt to portray Syria as being weak for quietly agreeing to keep Iran away from the occupied Golan Heights , then they’d do best to consider exactly how weak it makes Iran look that it would taunt “Israel” for not responding to a certain event but then not even give its own response when Aleppo is bombed or its forces are pushed back from the “Israeli” frontier. Syria might look “weak”, “Israel” even “weaker”, but Iran appears to be the “weakest” in this ignoble “hierarchy”.

Turning The Tables

Actually, however, it might be that the tables are turning because Iran has been pretty strong up until now, and it exerts such a powerful sway over Mideast affairs at the moment after masterfully exploiting the many failings of “Israel’s” Yinon Plan that Russia felt compelled to “balance” against it to Tel Aviv’s favor. It’s still too early to say whether the perception of Iran being the weakest in comparison to Syria and “Israel” is true or not, but it might just be that the Putin-Trump deal is designed to “correct” what both Great Powers feel is this regional “imbalance”. It should be remembered that Trump told reporters before the summit that Iran would be on the agenda, and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov praised the two leader’s talks by describing them as “better than super”, implying that they saw eye-to-eye on this topic too and probably agreed to secretly coordinate on it as well.

If there’s indeed another strategic reversal taking place (or rather, a counter-reversal or “correction”) whereby “Israel” is regaining its regional influence with the help of its American and Russian protectors, then it’ll still take some time to fully unfold, and the process itself leaves Russia in an excellent position full of strategic flexibility to shape the final outcome. Being the only country in the world that has great relations with both of these rival parties, Russia is the only player capable of managing their competition and guiding it in the direction of its own envisioned interests, which is to make Moscow the supreme “balancing” force in the Mideast by preventing either party from ever getting to the point where one of them regains their previously dominant role in the region. Rather, if Russia gets its way, then it will be Moscow –not Tel Aviv nor Tehran – that determines the contours of the “New Mideast”.

Concluding Thoughts

The Russian and American leaders’ de-facto declaration that “Israel” is now their joint protectorate is a watershed event in Mideast history because it disproves the Mainstream Media narrative about that entity’s supposed “invincibility” while simultaneously confirming the success of Moscow’s regional “balancing” strategy, which is now being put to use against “Israel” just as much as it is against Iran. President Putin has finally obtained his goal of making Russia the ultimate arbiter of regional affairs by making both rival parties dependent on Moscow for their security, which in turn has resulted in the Kremlin replacing the White House as the architect of the “New Mideast”. That’s not to say that it’ll be “smooth sailing” from here on out, but just that a game-changing process is currently underway, one which caught many observers completely off guard.

It’s difficult – and for some, almost painful – at first thought to even countenance “Israel” as being anything other than an American protectorate, but the times have surely changed and Russia’s alliance with that entity is more solid than ever, with the strength of their ties now on public display by having the US President himself openly agree to giving his geopolitical “competitor” joint management over his country’s most valuable piece of real estate in the world. Iran must understandably be feeling restless after seeing this happen and realizing that its rhetoric was exposed as theatrical bluster, to say nothing of the failure of the Ayatollah’s top envoy to prevent this from happening during last week’s panicked visit to Moscow. The tables are turning on the Islamic Republic, slowly but surely, but that shouldn’t be interpreted as though Russia itself “turned” on its partner.

Like President Putin emphasized during the press conference, interests are all that matter, and he will always do whatever he can to support what he sincerely believes is the best course of action for his country, even if this ends up seeing Russia’s position on some issues align with America’s like the US has been trying very hard to have happen since Trump entered into office. The same principle is just as applicable for Syria, “Israel”, and Iran, with none of their leaders “selling out”, but each competing with one another in the Hyper Realist “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard” to advance and protect their interests, though in this context through Russian mediation and other methods of influence over the “rules of the game”. The outcome of this grand struggle is uncertain, but one thing is clear, and it’s that Mideast geopolitics will never be the same again now that the US and Russia jointly established a protectorate over “Israel”.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from JerusalemOnline.