Global Research

Is Donald Trump a fascist? With each passing news cycle, more people here and abroad are asking the question.

On a trip to Berlin in early June, my wife and I were pressed for answers in spontaneous encounters with cab drivers, waiters, hotel clerks and sundry others. Regardless of occupation, everyone closely followed U.S. politics, and most had come to the conclusion that the American president had long ago crossed a dark ideological line.

The Berliners we spoke with (all fluent in English) were social-democratic types. Among them there were no members of the Alternative for Deutschland, the ultranationalist group that is now the third largest political party in Germany.

None were alive during the Nazi era, although a tour guide disclosed that her 99-year-old grandfather was still ticking and remained very much an admirer of the Third Reich. Some, however, had lived on the east side of the city during the Soviet era, which they recalled as a period of austere, soul-crushing conformity. They weren’t fans of capitalism, they said, but they understood the dangers of autocracy, past and present. How was it, they wondered, so many Americans did not?

We assured them that some Americans were, in fact, very worried about Trump, and a solid majority disapproved of him and his policies. I told the tour guide that as a columnist I had been comparing Trump with Benito Mussolini since the early days of his presidential campaign. Still, we conceded that for the most part, whether out of ignorance, timidity or a naive belief in the myth of exceptionalism, Americans were reluctant to consider whether their head of state actually is a fascist.

No more.

The issue of Trump’s fascism has finally reached center stage in the U.S., sparked by the administration’s shameful treatment of Central American refugees and its Gestapo-like “zero tolerance” policy on unauthorized border crossings.

On June 17, protesters at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., heckled White House aide Stephen Miller, widely credited as the principal architect of Trump’s immigration crackdown, as a fascist. Two days later, another group hurled similar epithets at Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, who like Miller had cluelessly chosen to dine Mexican.

Even liberal media pundits are throwing down the “F” word. Michelle Goldberg, for example, referred to “Trump’s fascist instincts” in her June 21 New York Times column on the separation of immigrant families.

In a June 24 op-ed for the Duluth News, iconoclastic writer and entrepreneur John Freivalds, who was born in Latvia and now lives in Minnesota, went further, charging,

“[I]n every dictionary definition I have come across, the president is a fascist. This label is not so much a pejorative as a fact.”

It doesn’t get much more heartland than the Duluth News.

Not everyone agrees with Goldberg and Freivalds, of course. Trump’s approval rating among Republicans stands at 87 percent. By and large, Republicans still see him as a champion of grass-roots democracy and an antidote to predatory corporate globalism.

Ironically, the president also has a small number of occasional defenders on the progressive left, who continue to view him, as some did during the campaign, as more likely to steer the world away from nuclear Armageddon than his defeated Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Because of the gravity of the issue, debates about Trump’s fascism invariably devolve into heated emotional affairs, cleaved along racial and politically tribal lines. You’re either a patriot and support Trump’s promise to “make America great again” or you’re the opposite for failing to condemn him.

It may be impossible to set emotions aside entirely, but it’s not impossible to arrive at the truth, or at least to search for it through honest discourse. Although fascism, historically, is a complex ideology, it is as real today as a mass movement and a theory of governance as it was when Mussolini popularized the term in 1919.

Any rational discussion has to begin with a definition, and when it comes to fascism, there are many to examine. Among the most instructive is the one proffered by political scientist Robert Paxton in his classic study “The Anatomy of Fascism” (Harvard University Press, 2004):

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

Drawing on the work of Italian novelist and professor Umberto Eco, Cameron Climie, a Canadian economist, listed 14 fluid characteristics of fascism in an essay published last year by the website Medium.com. They are:

• A cult of traditionalism.
• A rejection of modernism (cultural, rather than technological).
• A cult of action for its own sake and a distrust of intellectualism.
• A framing of disagreement or opposition as treasonous.
• A fear of difference.  … Fascism is racist by definition.
• An appeal to a frustrated middle class—either due to economic or political pressures from both above and below.
• An obsession with the plots and machinations of the movement’s identified enemies.
• A requirement that said enemies be simultaneously seen as omnipotent and weak, conniving and cowardly.
• A rejection of pacifism. Life is permanent warfare.
• Contempt for weakness.
• A cult of heroism.
• Hypermasculinity.
• A selective populism, relying on chauvinist definitions of “the people” that it claims to speak for.
• A heavy usage of Newspeak—impoverished vocabulary, elementary syntax and a resistance to complex and critical reasoning.

Reasonable minds can differ about whether Trump, now in the middle of the second year of his presidency, is a full-blown fascist or, to be more precise, moving in a fascist direction.

In a May 2017 article in Harper’s Magazine, Paxton contended that Trump had even by then displayed numerous “fascist staples,” such as his “deploring national decline, which he blames on foreigners and despised minorities; disdaining legal norms; condoning violence against dissenters; and rejecting anything that smacks of internationalism, whether it be trade, institutions, or existing treaties.” Nonetheless, he concluded that Trump’s pursuit of “unchecked executive power indicates generic dictatorship” and “plutocracy” rather than fascism in particular.

Perhaps the best way of understanding Trump’s fascism is as a work in progress, or a form of “pre-fascism.” As journalist Fintan O’Toole asserted last week in an Irish Times column:

To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialed is fascism—a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist”—what we are living with is pre-fascism.

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. …

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s time to start talking about Trump’s fascism, and holding him fully accountable under that rubric.

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Bill Blum is a former judge and death penalty defense attorney. He is the author of three legal thrillers published by Penguin/Putnam (“Prejudicial Error,” “The Last Appeal” and “The Face of Justice”) and is a contributing writer for California Lawyer magazine. His nonfiction work has appeared in such publications as Crawdaddy magazine, In These Times, The Nation, The Progressive, the ABA Journal, the Orange County Register, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly and Los Angeles magazine.

Just as the World Cup had forced the British media to grudgingly acknowledge the obvious truth that Russia is an extremely interesting country inhabited, like everywhere else, by mostly pleasant and attractive people, we have a screaming reprise of the “Salisbury incident” dominating the British media. Two people have been taken ill in Amesbury from an unknown substance, which might yet be a contaminated recreational drug, but could conceivably be from contact with the substance allegedly used on the Skripals, presumably some of which was somewhere indoors all this time as we were told it could be washed away and neutralised by water.

Amesbury is not Salisbury – it is 10 miles away. Interestingly enough Porton Down is between Amesbury and Salisbury. Just three miles away from Muggleton Road, Amesbury. The news reports are not mentioning that much.

“I am all out of ideas Inspector. What can possibly be the source of these mysterious poisonings?”

Neither Porton Down nor the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has any idea where the substance to which the Skripals were allegedly exposed was made. Boris Johnson’s great “coup” of obtaining a majority vote at the OPCW to expand its powers to place blame for chemical attacks, has proven rather otiose as the OPCW has no evidence on which to base any blame for Salisbury. In fact, four months on, May and Johnson’s shrill blaming of Russia remains entirely, 100% evidence free.

I do however wish to congratulate the neo-con warmongers of the Guardian newspaper for verbal dexterity. They have come up with a new formulation to replace the hackneyed “Of a type developed by Russia”, to point the finger for a substance that could have been made by dozens of state or non state parties. The Guardian today came up with “Russian-created novichok”. This cleverly employs a word that can encompass “developed” while also appearing to say “made”. It also again makes out that novichok is a specific substance rather than a very broad class of substances. The Guardian’s Steven Morris, by this brilliant attempt deliberately to mislead his readers, runs away with this week’s award for lying neo-con media whore of the week. His achievement is particularly good as the rest of his report is largely a simple copy and paste from the Press Association.

I most certainly hope that the couple in Salisbury hospital recover from whatever is afflicting them. The media is, by making this the lead story on all broadcast news after last night’s football, inviting us to make the connection to the Skripals. In which case I assume the couple were perfectly well for five hours after contact, able to be very active and even to eat and drink heavily, before being mysteriously instantly disabled at the same time despite different ages, sexes, weights, and metabolisms and random uncontrolled dosages.

Replicating that would be quite a feat.

The term affirmative action was first included in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act – landmark New Deal legislation, letting organized labor bargain with management on a level playing field more than ever before.

It was the high water mark of labor/management relations, letting workers unionize, protecting them from discrimination on the job, Blacks and Latinos not protected by union bosses.

Legislative benefits gained were short-lived. Union bosses collude with management for their own self-interest. Workers are largely powerless, unsupported by Republicans, undemocratic Dems, and their leadership.

Nearly straightaway in office (March 1961), Jack Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925.

It required government contractors to “consider and recommend additional affirmative steps which should be taken by executive departments and agencies to realize more fully the national policy of nondiscrimination.”

“The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”

The EO established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (PCEEO).

Government contractors failing to comply with the EO risked loss of government business. Kennedy’s order didn’t require preferential treatment for minorities.

It “advocat(ed) racially neutral hiring to end job discrimination.” In December 1961, a separate Commission on the Status of Women was established – charged with “examining employment policies and practices of the government and of contractors” with regard to gender.

In June 1963, Kennedy’s EO 11114 declared it was the “policy of the United States to encourage by affirmative action the elimination of discrimination in employment.”

The landmark 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education held that “separate educational facilities (are) inherently unequal” and unconstitutional.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination against students and college applicants on the basis of race or gender.

Affirmative action policies adopted by many US colleges and universities give special consideration to racial minorities, women, and other discriminated against groups.

In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action, ruling race to be a legitimate college admissions policy – excluding racial quotas it called unlawful.

In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan’s Law School affirmative action admissions policy.

In Fisher v. University of Texas (2016), the High Court preserved the constitutionality of race-based admissions.

Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy highlighted the importance of “student body diversity,” calling it “central to its identity and educational mission.”

Despite the above High Court rulings, at least 10 states limit or banned affirmative action as a factor in college or university admissions.

On July 3, the Trump regime ordered the practice abandoned, a joint Education and Justice Department letter, banning “advocate policy preferences and positions beyond the requirements of the Constitution.”

The White House turned truth on its head, claiming affirmative action practices for college and university admissions creates discrimination.

Some background to Tuesday’s action. In August 2017, Trump’s Justice Department “challenge(d) (affirmative action practices) colleges and universities have undertaken to expand educational opportunity,” calling them “an affront to our values as a country.”

The DOJ began “investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants.”

At the time, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights head Vanita Gupta issued a statement, saying

“(l)ongstanding Supreme Court precedent has upheld the constitutionality and compelling state interest of (affirmative action) policies, and generations of Americans have benefited from richer, more inclusive institutions of higher education.”

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law executive director Kristen Clarke said the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was “created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation’s most oppressed minority groups.”

The US Commission on Civil Rights accused Trump’s Justice Department and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos with “repeated refusal” to enforce federal civil rights, calling their actions “particularly troubling.”

Republican and undemocratic Dem governance serves privileged interests in America exclusively.

Trump’s domestic and geopolitical agenda exceeds the extremism of his predecessors – on the wrong side of virtually everything important to ordinary Americans.

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

When news reports first began to emerge that 81 of the migrant children recently separated from their parents had been sent into the care of one of the largest adoption agencies in the country, the response was swift alarm. Was the government planning on creating “social orphans” out of the children, then offering them up for adoption?

Horrified observers had already drawn parallels between the separation crisis and the blatantly assimilationist treatment of Native American children, starting with their mass removal to boarding schools in the late 19th Century and continuing through the Indian Adoption Project, which from the late 1950s to early 1970s removed 25 to 35 percent of all Native American children from their families. Or how U.S. slavery systematically broke apart families, selling children away from their parents. A number pointed out that the forcible transfer of children from one group of people to another fits the United Nations definition of genocide.

To adoption reform advocates, who monitor unethical and abusive practices in child welfare, it looked like any number of adoption crises in the past, like the airlifts out of Haiti in the wake of its cataclysmic 2010 earthquake. Then, masses of unaccompanied children were suddenly labeled orphans and became the focus of a deafening campaign in the U.S. to rescue them through inter-country adoption, even as Haitian adults were being warned not to try to come themselves.

Fears of a new adoption rush in today’s border crisis weren’t groundless. There was reason to be concerned. The former head of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Barack Obama warned that some of the children who’d recently been separated would remain separated “permanently” and potentially be adopted. Reports surfaced of mothers who were told that their children would be adopted as an incentive to “behave.” On Tuesday night, the Daily Beast reported that the threat of adoption has become weaponized, as a Guatemalan mother detained by Customs and Border Protection earlier this month was allegedly presented with the ultimatum that if she didn’t abandon her asylum appeal, she would be jailed for a year and her daughter put up for adoption. And conservative figures deeply hostile to immigrant families, like Fox News provocateur Laura Ingraham, herself an adoptive mother, toggled between mocking the detention of children as akin to “summer camp” and calling to “make adoption easier for American couples who want to adopt these kids.”

What policies and laws might apply to the children was so unclear that even many child welfare experts and former officials weren’t sure how to think about the threat. When migrant parents were taken into ICE custody at the border, their children became wards of Health and Human Services, specifically its Office of Refugee Resettlement, which facilitates the care of “unaccompanied alien children.” Although they’d arrived with parents, upon separation, the children had been officially transformed into unaccompanied minors with immigration cases distinct from the adults they’d arrived with. And it was already becoming clear that, despite its protestations to the contrary, the government had no real plan for bringing them back together.

Children, including infants, began arriving at care facilities around the country, sometimes in the dead of night, sometimes without being told where they were going, sometimes without paperwork noting their parents’ detention locations or even their names.

“Thus far, we’ve seen no evidence that any system has been put in place by the government to ensure these families are communicating or connecting,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, on a recent media call. “Some of us have been trying to reconnect the children, but it’s incredibly hard.” Young added, “It feels like our legal aid staff have become private investigators, working from what you have — a name, a birthday, an ‘A’ number” — an alien registration number.

Sometimes authorities claim they don’t have any information either: On a form filled out by a detained parent requesting a phone number to reach her daughter, an ICE official responded tersely, “I do not have this information.”

It was a system that Suzan Song, head of George Washington University’s child and family psychiatry division and a former humanitarian protection adviser for youth and families of forced migration with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said was more poorly organized than the process for reuniting refugee children who’d fled Syria.

“With this policy, the focus is really on the separation part,” said Song, “and it seems there’s very little planning or foresight about the complex processes for family tracing and reunification that has to happen.”

Part of the context for the advocates’ alarm over adoption is that international adoption as an industry has been in free fall for the last decade. Country after country has suspended or shrunk its adoption program, leaving a greatly reduced supply to meet a U.S. demand for adoptable children that hasn’t waned. At its peak in 2004, some 23,000 children were sent from abroad to the U.S. to be adopted, including thousands from Guatemala, the home country of many of today’s detained migrants.

International adoptions finally slowed down amid a pattern that replicated itself, country by country, of adoption booms, followed by ethical scandals, then the closure of that nation’s international adoption program. The scandals were as diverse as the countries supplying the children: coercion or baby buying in Vietnam; recruitment from poor, rural families in Ethiopia; even cases of outright kidnapping in Guatemala. The adoption programs of several frequent source countries were suspended over ethical concerns, in addition to other factors like the solidifying middle class in China, which provided stability and its own domestic adoption market, and political retaliation from Russia, which ended international adoptions to America after the U.S. passed the Magnitsky Act in 2012. International adoptions today are down nearly 80 percent since 2004. Some adoption agencies went out of business, and one adoption lobbying group closed shop as well.

As the family separation crisis unfolded on the border, adoption reform advocates noticed that the agency facilitating the foster care of some immigrant children in Michigan, Bethany Christian Services, announced a waiver of its $550 international adoption application fee for the month of June in a since-deleted Facebook post. The dissonance struck the anxious reformers as absurd on its face.

“Why in hell would they be lining people up for international adoption right now?” asked Karen Smith Rotabi, author of “From Intercountry Adoption to Global Surrogacy: A Human Rights History and New Fertility Frontiers” and a professor of social work at United Arab Emirates University. “There’s no way that lining people up for international adoption is ethical, because there simply isn’t the flow of children.” (Bethany Christian Services declined to comment for this story, but has stated that the children will not be offered for adoption and that it will continue to try to reunite children with their families.)

Bethany, which is caring for some of the separated children under a grant with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to offer transitional foster care for unaccompanied minors, has repeatedly said that they oppose the family separation policy and are involved because they believe that the children will suffer less in a family setting than in an institution. In a statement on its website, Bethany argued,

“Nobody benefits from creating more orphans.”

But reform advocates familiar with numerous allegationsregarding Bethany’s domestic adoption program, relating to coercive and misleading practices with birth parents — some of which I wrote about in my 2013 book, “The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption” — worried that the agency was finding in the separated children a new adoption supply.

Writing at Medium, Kimberly McKee, a Grand Valley State University professor and assistant director of the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network, predicted,

“Bethany Christian Services is laying the groundwork to turn these children into adoptable objects — transformed into disciplined bodies acceptable to white America.”

On June 20, protesters stood outside Bethany’s office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, holding signs that read, “No profit for kidnappers” and “End the contract,” a reference to their agreement with the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Bethany’s director of refugee and foster care programs, Dona Abbott, responded by telling Fox17 West Michigan that

“it would be hard to say we’re profiting off of them for adoption when we’ve not placed any of these children for adoption. And it’s so early on to say whether these children will be available for adoption at all.”

“If the kids aren’t reunified, what would the adoption process even look like?” asked Linh Song, a lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Social Work who described avid interest on adoptive parent listservs to take in the children. “Would it be international adoption? Would they have to petition for an orphan visa while being fostered in West Michigan?”

Given that the status of the children was so ambiguous, it remains unclear what policies would apply. Many worried that children being placed in foster care — not just with Bethany, but also other Office of Refugee Resettlement grantees around the country — could end up staying there so long that they would trigger a mechanism within the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act that was intended to keep children from languishing in foster care for years. The law provides that if a child has been in foster care for 15 out of 22 consecutive months, except in cases of relative foster care, child welfare agencies must stop working toward the goal of reunifying the child with their parents and instead, move to terminate parental rights and make the child available for adoption.

That law has become such a pivotal point in the child welfare process that parents whose children are taken into state custody are sometimes shown a video titled “The Clock Is Ticking,” emphasizing how quickly they could lose their parental rights if they don’t meet the requirements of their child protective services case plan. While in practice, many, many children do still remain in foster care for years — without either reunification or adoption — the law has also meant that parents who receive even short prison sentences for drug offenses may be left with far too little time to meet case plan objectives, such as making court or visitation appointments, and finding employment or housing.

The same principles could apply to the children separated at the border, legal analyst Danny Cevallos speculated last week on MSNBC.

“The initial goal is always reunification and state law usually requires that,” said Cevallos. “But the parents can’t meet any of the requirements such as visitation if they are detained or removed from the country.”

He added that, in cases in which foster parents develop an attachment to the child they’re caring for and seek to adopt, they often have a leg up on parents who have been separated from their children. Whereas foster parents are in the area and have access to the court system, he said, separated parents “may not even know anything about the process. And by the time they find out, it’s possible that parental rights have already been terminated by a court.” If court battles do ensue, he continued, the attachment that may have developed between foster parents and their wards could be taken into account by judges who are tasked with making decisions in the “best interest” of a child.

While there does exist an ICE directive that provides detained parents the right to be notified of any custody proceedings regarding their children, ICE isn’t required to notify a state child protective agency of a detained parent’s location so they could actually be informed. Nor does ICE have to transport parents to custody-related court hearings. Advocates worry that judges or caseworkers may wonder why parents went AWOL and aren’t showing up to fight for their child, and may eventually terminate their rights.

JaeRan Kim, a University of Washington professor who researches issues around child welfare and an adoptee herself, recalled that several years ago, as reports began to arise about family separations at the border, some adoption scholars began to worry about exactly this scenario.

“At a conference I was at several years ago, someone said we shouldn’t be surprised to see this as another avenue for adoption.”

Amid massive public outrage, President Donald Trump backtracked on the family separation plan on June 20, indicating that he’ll instead seek to detain families together and ultimately overturn the federal settlement, known as “Flores,” that mandates that children not be held in detention facilities longer than 20 days. After initial wavering from the administration about whether the at least 2,300 already separated children would be “grandfathered in” to the order came news that either 522 or “several hundred” children had been reunited with their parents. Simultaneously, a New York Times report cited the Department of Homeland Security in explaining that “some children will remain separated from the adults they were traveling with if a family relationship cannot be established or if there are concerns about the children’s safety with those adults.” And on Wednesday, a week after Trump issued his executive order, the New Yorker reported that migrant families who have arrived at the border since the policy change are still being threatened with separation as a deterrent to applying for asylum, including through being shown videos of crying children being taken away from their parents and of adults dying in immigration detention facilities.

“What’s the legal status of the kids down the road?” asked Linh Song. “The longer they stay, will there be foster parents who will contest for custody and adopt? It would be one thing if the kids are going as unaccompanied minors or teens. But if you have an infant with you, I bet there are parents who won’t want to give that child up.” She said, “What’s the likelihood of an indigenous Guatemalan mom fighting a family in western Michigan with access to law firms and large, conservative Christian megachurches? It’s really daunting.”

At present, any potential efforts to adopt these children don’t have the support of some of the most influential voices in the adoption world. Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans — an umbrella group that once led a movement of evangelicals advocating widespread international adoption as a religious calling, but now focuses more of its efforts on other child welfare issues — said that within his community, there was “concerned speculation” about the implications of the family separation crisis. “Because clearly if a child’s temporary separation from their family became permanent, that is a profound tragedy for all involved.”

Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the National Coalition for Adoption, an adoption industry interest group, was even more forceful.

“Not only do we not believe these children are candidates for adoption, but as we understand the policies, they would never be considered for adoption.”

The coalition just wrapped up its annual conference in Washington, D.C., he said, and among the hundreds of child welfare professionals in attendance — including from groups that have contracts or grants with Health and Human Services —

“I didn’t hear of anyone who said that they’d be willing to work with any family toward completing adoption processes for these children.”

“These children — the reason they’ve come here, the purpose, what’s happened to them — I think it would send the world a terrible signal for them to be adopted,” Johnson said.

Several former officials with Obama’s Health and Human Services Department said they believed that the threat of adoption doesn’t track with how they understand federal law to apply. At least as the Office of Refugee Resettlement functioned under Obama, they said, there was no provision for adoption for children in Health and Human Services custody. The forms of foster care offered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement — typically short-term care for young and special needs children, and longer-term care for teenagers who lack U.S. sponsors — are both distinct processes from state foster care and lack a mechanism for adoption. The Adoption and Safe Families Act, they believe, doesn’t apply.

State foster care is a child welfare program, which is fundamentally different from the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s mission to care for and reunite unaccompanied minors, according to Maria Cancian, the former deputy assistant secretary for policy at Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, which oversees the refugee resettlement bureau. While the latter uses some foster home placements, in addition to a lot of congregate care, such as group homes, Cancian explained,

“The mandate is different, the rules are different, the funding is different. It’s a really different program.”

“In [regular] foster care, the kids are typically in state custody because the state has determined that parents are doing an inadequate job keeping the kids safe,” said Cancian. “The mission of ORR is principally to reunite children with their parents, where the presumption is that parents are appropriate and adequate parents to provide for their children. It’s the circumstances that separated the kids, so it’s not like the parents have something to prove in the way that they usually do in a child welfare setting.”

On a practical level, Cancian added, state foster care systems are unlikely to want to take in this population, given that they’re chronically overburdened already, with many states already lacking enough foster care homes to accommodate the U.S. kids in their care.

Under the Obama administration, the former officials said, the Office of Refugee Resettlement focused on moving children quickly out of government custody into a ranked list of possible guardians: close relatives, who received the vast majority of children; followed by more distant relatives; then family friends. Longer-term stays in foster care were reserved typically for youth who didn’t have U.S. guardians to sponsor them. One former official, Marrianne McMullen, the former deputy assistant secretary for policy and external affairs at the Administration for Children and Families, said that although she didn’t have a complete overview of the agency’s work, she could only recall one adoption that had taken place out of Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, under unusual circumstances.

She said she couldn’t imagine these children being offered for adoption,

“but a lot of things are happening that I couldn’t have imagined. Could things change? Could the Trump administration overstep? Well, they already have. They’re moving out of the realm of child welfare in compromising the welfare of children in order to enforce immigration law. The question is how far will they go in harming children for the sake of enforcing immigration law? It’s not alarmist at this point.”

Given that the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s mission has now been further compromised by the demand that they share potential sponsors’ personal information and location with ICE — as a recent open letter from one resettlement office counselor details — McMullen added,

“It could become such an anti-immigrant police state that [potential guardians] might not claim their own children. It’s worth playing out how bad this could be if it’s not stopped right now.”

“This administration is doing pretty horrific things,” said another former official, whose current employer doesn’t allow her to speak on the record. “So I can’t say that that’s not something they’ll consider going forward — especially considering they’re seemingly paternalistic, with Scott Lloyd’s [position] that he’s the dad figure and can tell a teenage girl she can’t have an abortion” — a reference to the Office of Refugee Resettlement director’s maneuvering to prevent minors in custody from terminating pregnancies. “It makes sense that they might think that it makes more sense for kids to be adopted by good Christian families in the U.S., instead of deported parents.”

The official added,

“I want to be careful to say that could happen.”

What such a potential change in policy would require is unclear, the officials agreed.

“This was never something that was considered,” said the former official. “It goes against the best interests of a kid if the parents did nothing wrong other than being separated.”

But the 2012 case of Encarnacion Bail Romero (image on the left), a Guatemalan mother who was arrested on immigration charges while working at a Missouri chicken processing plant, demonstrates that it can happen, as a Missouri judge ruled that the very fact of Bail Romero’s illegal immigration made her unfit, since “illegally smuggling herself into the country is not a lifestyle that can provide any stability for the child.”

However, Bail Romero’s case was also distinct in an important way: She was already living in the U.S. when she was taken into ICE custody and her child ultimately adopted. And that, said Cancian, is likely the more immediate threat when it comes to migrants’ children being unethically adopted.

“I have concerns about everything about this program right now, because of the pressure it’s under,” said Cancian.

When it comes to fears of separated children being adopted, she said,

“I would worry about children whose parents have been deported who are in many cases U.S. citizen children.”

In those cases — where a U.S. citizen child has been living here with her undocumented parents — deportation can very well mean the transfer of the child to state foster care, thereby triggering the Adoption and Safe Families Act timer for how long a parent has to regain custody before their rights are terminated. As the Associated Press noted, a 2017 paper found that, partly due to immigration enforcement, the percentage of Hispanic children in state foster care systems rose by 15 to 21 percent between 2001 and 2015.

Late Tuesday, in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, a federal court in California issued a nationwide injunction to stop the Trump administration from separating families and ordered that all children be reunited with their parents within 30 days. Children younger than 5, the judge ruled, had to be reunited within 14 days. One of the two cases the ACLU brought was on behalf of the Brazilian mother who’d been threatened with adoption if she didn’t behave. Whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions appeals the decision, sparking a prolonged court battle, or how the order would be enforced, remain significant unanswered questions, especially as the administration has already conceded that it will have trouble meeting the judge’s deadlines. But even if the more than 2,000 currently separated children are returned to their parents within a month, for undocumented parents with U.S. citizen children, that threat — or, in some cases, anxious choice — remains.

“If a parent wanted their child back and couldn’t find them, and the kid is put in an adoption, that’s clearly an inappropriate adoption,” said Cancian. “The parent and child want to be together and because we failed to put them in contact, they’re not together. That’s an easy one. But what happens if a parent is deported to El Salvador and thinks their kid is going to be killed in gang violence and decides it’s better for the child to stay in the U.S., and that child is adopted by an American family? How do we think about that?”

“If I were a mother in El Salvador and I had to make that choice, it would really break my heart,” she said.

Lauren Heidbrink, an anthropologist at California State University Long Beach and author of “Migrant Youth, Transnational Families, and the State: Care and Contested Interests,” is one of the few scholars who has tracked the long-term trajectories of young people who have been in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, conducting research within the office’s facilities from 2006 to 2010. For the last five years, she followed 50 young people who were deported to Mexico or Guatemala after being detained in the U.S. Heidbrink says that adoptions of unaccompanied minors do sometimes take place — not directly from Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities, but rather after they’ve been reclassified as an unaccompanied refugee minor, rather than an unaccompanied alien minor. (The office of Refugee Resettlement did not respond to a request for comment.) In order for that to happen, migrant children must receive legal status of some sort: asylum, a visa for victims of crime or trafficking, or being recognized as a special immigrant juvenile  if they’re found to have been abused, neglected, or abandoned.

Cases where children receive the special status deserve particular attention, Heidbrink added, because, unlike asylum applications, crime, or trafficking visas, special immigrant juvenile status is determined by a probate or family court judge seeking to determine the best interests of the child. In those court proceedings, Heidbrink said,

“what’s presented as abuse, abandonment, or neglect can instead be a parent who was deported or detained.”

While Heidbrink does believe that the federal government has the information necessary to reunite children and parents, she said a mechanism for communication between Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, and the Department of Homeland Security, which detains the adults, is often lacking.

“If it doesn’t happen, and they’re mired in bureaucracy and lack of communication, what I’ve seen is the parents are deported, they try to find their child in the U.S. foster care system, whether federal or domestic, and it’s really difficult to meaningfully participate in those custody proceedings,” Heidbrink said. “ORR may say we don’t have unaccompanied children being adopted from ORR facilities and that the forced separations we’ve been seeing at the border won’t lead to adoption. But when you follow young children for much longer, you see the different trajectories they follow, some of which end in adoption.”

Even in these instances or potential cases in which immigrant children and their parents might want them to be adopted — as a means of securing U.S. citizenship or keeping the child safe — the National Council for Adoption’s Chuck Johnson notes that the laws governing adoptees’ citizenship have been so restrictively written that they apply only to children who have entered the country for the express purpose of international adoption. It would be unlikely in these cases, he said, that citizenship would then attach to those children.

That recalls a key fight around the time of the Haiti adoption airlifts, when Americans clamored to adopt Haitian children by the thousands, even as Haitian adults were being told — at the U.S. Embassy, through a U.S. Air Force plane broadcasting messages in Creole, and in the form of a fleet of Coast Guard ships patrolling the waters outside Port-au-Prince — not to attempt to flee themselves. To facilitate those adoptions, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., sponsored the Help HAITI Act, a bill that would have ensured that evacuated Haitian children who were adopted by Americans receive U.S. citizenship — something that, as many adult adoptees at risk of deportation know, is not guaranteed. The bill almost didn’t pass when rumors flew that Democrats were considering tying it to Obama’s DREAM Act, thereby also creating a path to legal residency for undocumented children whose biological parents had brought them into the country. At the time, the website Rightwing News responded with outrage:

“Think of it … if Republicans vote against the DREAM Act,” a post on the site said, “they would also be voting AGAINST the orphans.”

Then, as now, it was a potent illustration of the duality at the heart of discussions of immigration and adoption: of which sorts of people — adults or children — and even which sorts of children — infants or teenagers, those who are brought across the border by white adoptive parents or their brown biological ones — are viewed as worthy of help.

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This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

Featured image is from the Center for American Progress.

Iran’s ominous rhetoric about making the OPEC+ countries “pay” for their “treachery” to it and hinting at taking action to stop Gulf exports has had its desired effect in raising the oil price, and similar such statements in the run-up to the November reimposition of US sanctions against the country’s energy industry should also be interpreted as attempts to manipulate market speculation and squeeze as much revenue as possible from this resource while Tehran still has the opportunity to do so.

Iranian state representatives were once again in the news this week for their statements about the global oil industry. First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said that

“Anyone trying to take away Iran’s oil market (share) would be committing great treachery against Iran and will one day pay for it”, and while not naming the OPEC+ duopoly’s leaders of Russia and Saudi Arabia, it was obvious who he was referring to.

Just two days afterwards, President Rouhani ramped up the rhetoric by declaring that

“The Americans have claimed they want to completely stop Iran’s oil exports. They don’t understand the meaning of this statement, because it has no meaning for Iranian oil not to be exported, while the region’s oil is exported”, which was widely interpreted as a threat to interfere with Gulf exports despite Tehran’s official claims to the contrary.

The sending of passive-aggressive messages by Iran isn’t anything new, nor is the state’s formal denial of their implied intent, and just like it’s always done, the latest round of rhetoric had the effect of raising oil price, which is exactly what the country was expecting.

Iran is bracing for a major economic hit after the US reimposes sanctions against the country’s energy industry in November and vowed to implement “secondary” ones against any state that continues to purchase its resources. This will probably shake the Islamic Republic to its core and exacerbate the ongoing protests that are more or less aimed at compelling the government to enact economic reforms as soon as possible (except in the cases when Hybrid War hooligans hijack these demonstrations in order to provoke a police crackdown). The weaponized deprivation of billions of dollars of oil revenue is undoubtedly intended to catalyze political consequences for the US’ chief Mideast adversary, and the authorities will have difficulty containing the aftereffects of this game-changing move even under the “best” of circumstances, to say nothing if its anticipated proceeds prior to that point are lower than expected.

The OPEC+ deal between unlikely Great Power partners Russia and Saudi Arabia is conditioned on the need to control rising prices so that they no longer reach the point where US fracking is profitable, which in that scenario would lead to the US cutting into both of their respective market shares.

As it turns out, however, the intentional lowering of prices roughly a third of a year before the US’ anti-Iranian energy sanctions kick in is extremely disadvantageous to Tehran’s interests because it’ll unexpectedly lead to less revenue that could subsequently be used to temporarily quell growing public anger over the speculated long-term socio-economic consequences of America’s antagonistic move. Speaking of speculation, this is a strong force in and of itself when it comes to influencing the oil price, something that Iran knows very well and which is why it occasionally crafts passive-aggressive yet “plausibly ambiguous” statements in order to manipulate this sentiment to its desired end. Understandably, Iran wants to rake in as much money as it can from its existing oil exports while it still has the opportunity to do so, paradoxically pursuing its own interests despite always relying on the rhetoric of “collective” ones when speaking about the fate of the nuclear deal.

The Iranian state has a responsibility to the its people first and foremost, not to Russia, Saudi Arabia, or anyone else, though the point in drawing attention to this action is to highlight the instruments that Tehran uses to pursue its self-interests, which in the sphere of energy are entirely rhetorical at this point in time.

It’s extremely unlikely that the Islamic Republic will do anything aggressive in making Russia and Saudi Arabia “pay” for their “treachery” for taking some of its oil market share, nor will it for that matter rely on military means to follow up on its vague threat to shut down Gulf energy exports through the Strait of Hormuz, though it must be noted that Iran’s threats in other strategic realms should be taken much more seriously because it has the political will to use unconventional measures to advance its own interests. Seeing as how the focus of this analysis is restricted to energy, however, then it can be provocatively concluded that Iran is “all bark and no bite” because it can’t realistically take any action to follow up on its representatives’ words in the manner that they implied, though this was intentional because all that it had to do was “bark” loud enough to trigger the speculative raising of oil prices.

Therefore, one can say that this strategy entails zero physical costs but has the chance of producing impressive financial gain for the time being, though the long-term ramifications for Iran’s reputation – especially in the eyes of Russia – might to lead decision makers reconsidering its utility in hindsight.

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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 Sprott Money.

To be as impartial as possible for this series, which obviously only includes the Conservative and Labour parties (as the last Liberal government was in power exactly 100 years ago), the criteria used for this research of political scandals covers a period from 1993 to the present day. This then gives 13 years to each party in power, including the Con/Lib coalition of 2010 to 2015. In that time there have been 35 listed political scandals.

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

Of that number, 15 are attributed to the Conservatives, 16 to Labour and 4 to other political parties. The parliamentary expenses scandal, Westminster sex scandals and Cash For Influence (2010 – not to be confused with 2009) scandals have been left out as they involve both parties to a greater or lesser extent, which would over complicate this report.

Political scandals have changed considerably over the decades. A watch given by Michael Mates in 1993 to Asil Nadir was considered a scandal at the time (What subsequently happened after was that Mates privately accused MI6 of being behind the prosecution of the former Polly Peck chairman, then a fugitive from British justice). Compare that to the recent scandal involving the Conservative party blocking a major money laundering investigation into LycaMobile, one of their biggest donors.

Lastly, it’s important to understand what is a scandal. The top 10 are listed as those formally listed in encyclopedias. However, there are many more scandals that are not – and there is an additional list of examples of those below.

In chronological order the top 10 political scandals involving the Tories since 1993 are:

• Cash for questions  – Lobbyist and bribery -1994
• Jonathan Aitkin – Perjury/Libel – 1995
• Jeremy Hayes – Underage gay sex – 1997
• John Major/Edwina Currie extramarital affair – 2001
• Liam Fox/Adam Werrity – National security – 2011
• Cash for access – illegal political funding – 2012
• Jeremy Hunt/Murdoch – BSkyB corruption – 2012
• Lord Ashcroft – David Cameron’s lewd behaviour – 2015
• Windrush – deportation of British citizens – 2018
• Cambridge Analytica – high profile donors to both the Conservative Party/Leave.EU – 2018

Other scandals not listed rather bizarrely have a much greater impact on society than some of those listed above. Leaving aside the Tory party obsession with killing off its own Prime Ministers over the European Union that eventually led to Brexit there have been many others – mostly driven with a profit motive against civil society.

To name a few is not hard to do at all.

The privatisation of the NHS after stating the organisation was in safe hands, has turned into a national crisis. There are additionally numerous examples of rampant profiteering by reckless Tory policy. Just one of many, was the sale of the national blood bank to an American outfit, who sold it on to the Chinese three years later and pocketed hundreds of millions.

The Royal Mail sell-off also cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions, estimated by some at well over £500m. Banks, hedge funds and wealthy investors pocketed a fortune, some heavily connected to the Tory party. Another was the privatisation of the UK forensics service which has led to numerous court cases collapsing.

We could also list the biggest drop in housebuilding from 2010 to the present day causing a peak to the housing crisis with a help-to-buy scheme that will have gifted a total £20bn of taxpayers money to the largest housebuilders in the country. Ironically, that is about the same amount of money the NHS is to be given to help get it back on its feet in an attempt to save Theresa May’s political aspirations.

The employment of private contractors within the welfare system has squandered a fortune whilst enriching, mainly foreign corporations at the expense of the most vulnerable. Universal credit – another Tory scandal is a failure, it will lose astronomical sums of taxpayers money and achieve nothing but a bit more misery for those who have already had a good dose of it served up through austerity – itself a failed ideological project.

So there you have it. Labour will be in the next report in a day or so covering the same time frame, then an overall report in the series for the last 100 years. It will be interesting to see which party really is the nasty party.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

In a memo to tourists, China is warning citizens planning on traveling to the United States to keep watch over their surroundings at all times, avoid visiting U.S. hospitals without American health insurance, and to not venture out alone at night.

According to the South China Morning Post, the Chinese embassy in the United States is warning tourists planning trips to the U.S. to be wary of shootings and theft, and to not get sick or injured lest a foreign visitor be gouged by the United States’ absurdly expensive healthcare system.

“Social security in the States is not satisfactory. Shootings, robbery, theft happen frequently,” a memo from the Chinese embassy read. “Be aware of suspicious people around you and avoid going out alone at night.”

Figures from Statista show that Chinese tourists are visiting the U.S. in ever-increasing numbers. Last year, more than three million Chinese tourists came to the United States, and more than 4.5 million tourists are expected to come to the U.S. by 2022.

Chinese tourists visiting the U.S., 2002-present (chart by Statista)

In addition to warning of inadequate social welfare programs and a prevalence of shootings, the Chinese government is warning citizens visiting the U.S. to not get into any confrontations with U.S. immigration officials, as arguing with a customs agent will “only make things worse.”

“A US visa does not guarantee you have the right to enter the country,” the embassy stated. “Law enforcers at the customs [desks] have the ultimate power to decide.”

China’s warning to tourists– particularly about mass shootings — isn’t hyperbolic. According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), there have been 157 mass shootings in 2018 as of July 1 — just 181 days into this year. The GVA defines a mass shooting as a mass casualty incident caused by firearms in which at least four people were killed or injured, not including the shooter. There were 346 mass shootings in 2017, using the GVA’s numbers and methodology.

The American and Chinese healthcare systems are also strikingly different. In a 2017 post for supChina’s Sinica series, author Jia Guo — who did not have health insurance — described having to pay approximately $2,000 for one emergency room visit for severe fever in which doctors didn’t do anything besides conduct an X-ray test, a urine test, and a blood test, and prescribe antibiotics, which Jia refused. According to Jia, a similar consultation in China would have cost roughly $35 USD.

“My parents, who were visiting me from China at the time, couldn’t believe that a regular fever could result in all the procedures I was put through and how much everything cost,” Jia wrote.

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Michael Boone is a freelance journalist and columnist writing about politics, government, race, and media. He graduated from Texas Southern University’s School of Communication, and lives in Houston’s Third Ward.

Featured image is from the author.

Iran, in the latest of a series of incidents on its western and south-eastern borders, said it had disbanded a Pakistan-based cell of ant-Shiite militants in a clash this week on the Iranian side of the border.

The clash, shrouded in mystery like similar past incidents in the ethnic Baloch province of Sistan and Baluchistan and Kurdish areas in the West, occurred amid mounting speculation that the Trump administration, backed by Saudi Arabia and Israel, is striving for regime change in Tehran.

Iran and Jaish-al-Adl (the Army of Justice), a splinter group that traces its roots to Saudi-backed anti-Shiite groups in Iran, issued contradictory statements about the incident. Iran said three militants and two of its Revolutionary Guards were killed in the incident. Jaish-al-Adl claimed it had killed 11 Guards while suffering no losses.

US and Israeli officials insist that their anti-Iranian moves aim to increase domestic pressure on Iran to change its policies at a time that the country is witnessing multiple protests related to economic policies and water shortages rather than at regime change.

US and Israeli officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, have resorted to social media to support the protests.

At the same time, debate within the Trump administration pits proponents of regime change like national security advisor John Bolton, backed by Mr. Netanyahu, against those that believe that domestic pressure is pushing the Iranian regime to the brink and simply needs a degree of encouragement.

In a series of tweets, Mr. Pompeo supported Iranian protesters and charged that

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

Mr. Pompeo’s comments were echoed in one of several video clips by Mr. Netanyahu, celebrating the brilliance of Iranians and their achievements in technology.

“So why is Iran so poor? Why is unemployment so rampant? The answer is in two words: the regime. Iran’s dictators plunder the country’s wealth… The Iranian people are the ones that suffer,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

The messages appeared to be the result of a joint US-Israeli working plan drafted late last year to counter Iran with covert as well as diplomatic actions.

A participant before joining the Trump administration, Mr. Bolton this year stayed away from an annual gathering in Paris of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a controversial Iranian opposition group that since being dropped from US, Canadian and European terrorism lists has garnered significant support in Western political, military and security circles.

There is widespread doubt that the Mujahedeen, that advocates the armed overthrow of the Iranian regime, commands popular support in Iran.

Image on the right: Rudolph Giuliani

That did not stop President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, and former House of Representatives speaker and Trump ally, Newt Gingrich from attending alongside former US officials, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and European politicians. The US State Department said the Americans were not representing the administration.

“This president does not intend to turn his back on freedom fighters… When the greatest economic power stops doing business with you, then you collapse … and the sanctions will become greater, greater and greater,” Mr. Giuliani told the rally.

The recent clash with militants as well as the rally occurred as Iranian President Hasan Rouhani was visiting Europe to shore up support for the 2015 international nuclear agreement that has been in jeopardy since Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the accord in May and re-imposed sanctions on the Islamic republic that would affect non-European entities that continue to do business with it. Europe, Russia and China have vowed to honour the agreement.

In a mysterious twist, German, Belgian and French authorities arrested an Iranian diplomat, a couple of Iranian descent, and three suspected accomplices on suspicion of planning to bomb the Mujahedeen’s Paris rally.

It was not clear why Iran would want to jeopardize Mr. Rouhani’s trip as well as international support for the nuclear deal by bombing a group that has little domestic support unless Iranian hardliners saw it as a way of further weakening the reformist president.

“How convenient: Just as we embark on a presidential visit to Europe, an alleged Iranian operation and its ‘plotters’ arrested. Iran unequivocally condemns all violence & terror anywhere and is ready to work with all concerned to uncover what is a sinister false flag ploy,” tweeted Iranian foreign minister Javid Zarif.

With little known about the most recent clash and earlier incidents, it remains difficult to establish whether there is a pattern even though circumstantial evidence suggests it is a possibility.

Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman vowed last year that the battle between his kingdom and the Islamic republic would be fought “inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.”

Former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Britain and the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who is believed to often air views held by Prince Mohammed, shined, like Mr. Bolton, with his absence at this year’s Mujahedeen gathering but told the group in preceding years that “I, too, want the fall of the regime.”

A Saudi think tank, the Arabian Gulf Centre for Iranian Studies (AGCIS), believed to be backed by Prince Mohammed, that has since rebranded itself as the International Institute for Iranian Studies, called last year in a study for Saudi support for a low-level Baloch insurgency in Iran. There is no solid evidence that the plan has been translated into policy.

In the study, Mohammed Hassan Husseinbor, a Washington-based Baloch lawyer, researcher and activist, argued that the

“Saudis could persuade Pakistan to soften its opposition to any potential Saudi support for the Iranian Baluch… The Arab-Baluch alliance is deeply rooted in the history of the Gulf region and their opposition to Persian domination,” Mr. Husseinbor said.

Pointing to the vast expanses of Sistan and Baluchestan, Mr. Husseinbor went on to say that

“it would be a formidable challenge, if not impossible, for the Iranian government to protect such long distances…in the face of widespread Baluch opposition, particularly if this opposition is supported by Iran’s regional adversaries and world powers.”

Pakistani militants have claimed that Saudi Arabia in the last year stepped up funding of militant madrassas or religious seminaries in Balochistan that allegedly serve as havens for anti-Iranian fighters.

Said Iran scholar Ahmad Majidyar:

“Iran’s south-eastern and north-western regions – home to marginalized ethnic and religious minorities – have seen an uptick in violence by separatist and militant groups… Sistan and Baluchestan can be a breeding ground for local militant and separatist movements as well regional and international terrorist groups.”

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

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

Featured image is from the author.

I have just spent a couple of days in New York City. Returning to Virginia on Wednesday morning, I had a somewhat strange experience. I cleared through my emails before leaving the hotel and also read through a number of the featured news articles. One, in particular, caught my eye. It described how the Democratic Party primary in Queens New York had returned a startling result. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won over mainstream incumbent Joe Crowley, signaling that not everyone in the Democratic Party is buying into the Clinton model of good governance by big donors and powerful interest groups. Many want change and even a radical departure from the political game whereby media savvy pressure groups and narrow constituencies are pandered to to create a governing majority.

One paragraph in particular in the article I read was highly suggestive, the claim that Ocasio-Cortez had been strongly opposed to the Israelis’ routine slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, which has by now become of such little import that it is not even reported any more in the U.S. media. She is also allegedly a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement (BDS), which pressures Israel to end its theft and occupation of Palestinian land. The article expressed some surprise that anyone in New York City would dare to say anything unpleasant about Israel and still expect to get elected.

This is what Ocasio-Cortez, who called the shooting of more than 130 Gazans a “massacre,” actually said and wrote:

“No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore. I think I was primarily compelled [to speak out] on moral grounds because I could only imagine if 60 people were shot and killed in Ferguson. Or if 60 people were shot and killed in the West Virginia teachers’ strikes. The idea that we are not supposed to talk about people dying when they are engaging in political expression just really moved me.”

Five hours later, when I arrived home in Virginia I went to pull up the article I had read in the morning to possibly use it in a piece of my own and was somewhat surprised to discover that the bit about Israel had been excised from the text. It was clearly yet another example of how the media self-censors when there is anything negative to say about Israel and it underlines the significance of the emergence of recent international media reporting in The Guardian and elsewhere regarding how Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson largely dictates U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. That means that the conspiracy of silence over Israel’s manipulation of the United States government is beginning to break down and journalists have become bold enough to challenge what occurs when pro-Israel Jews obtain real power over the political process. Adelson, for what it’s worth, wants war with Iran and has even suggested detonating a nuclear device on its soil to “send a message.”

I personally would have liked to see Ocasio-Cortez go farther, a lot farther. Israel is a place where conventional morality has been replaced by a theocratically and culturally driven sense of entitlement which has meant that anything goes when it comes to the treatment of inferior Christian and Muslim Arabs. It also means that the United States is being played for a patsy by people who believe themselves to be superior in every way to Americans.

The question of the relationship with Israel comes at a time when everyone in America, so it seems, is concerned about children being separated from their parents who have illegally crossed the border from Mexico into the United States. The concern is legitimate given the coarse and sometimes violent justifications coming out of the White House, but it’s a funny thing that Israeli abuse and even killing of Arab children is not met with the same opprobrium. When a Jewish fanatic/Israel settler kills Palestinian children and is protected by his government in so doing, where is the outrage in the U.S. media? Settlers and soldiers kill Palestinians, young and old, with impunity and are almost never punished. They destroy their orchards and livestock to eliminate their livelihoods to drive them out. They bulldoze their homes and villages. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency does none of that and is yet subject to nonstop abuse in the mainstream media, so what about Israel?

A recent story illustrates just how horrible the Israelis can be without any pushback whatsoever coming from Washington objecting to their behavior. As the United States is the only force that can in any way compel Israel to come to its senses and chooses not to do so, that makes U.S. policymakers and by extension the American people complicit in Israel’s crimes.

The particularly horrible recent account that I am referring to describes how fanatical Jewish settlers burned alive a Palestinian family on the West Bank, including a baby, and then celebrated the deaths while taunting the victims’ surviving family when they subsequently appeared in court. The story was covered in Israel and Europe but insofar as I could determine did not appear in any detail in the U.S. mainstream media.

Israeli Jewish settlers carried out their shameful deed outside a court in the city of Lod, chanting “’Ali was burned, where is Ali? There is no Ali. Ali is burned. On the fire. Ali is on the grill!” referring to the 18-month old baby Ali Dawabsheh, who was burnt alive in 2015 by Jewish settlers hurling Molotov cocktails into a house in the West Bank town of Duma. Ali’s mother Riham and father Saad also died of their burns and were included in the chanting “Where is Ali? Where is Riham? Where is Saad? It’s too bad Ahmed didn’t burn as well.” Five year-old Ahmed, who alone survived the attack with severe burns, will have scars for the rest of his life.

The settlers were taunting Ali’s grandfather Hussein Dawabsheh, who accompanied Ahmed, at a preliminary hearing where the court indicted a man who confessed to the murders and a minor who acted as an accomplice. A video of the chanting shows Israeli policemen standing by and doing nothing. The court appearance also revealed that there have been another Molotov cocktail attack by settlers on another Dawabsheh family house in May that may have been an attempt to silence testimony relating to the first attack. Fortunately, the family managed to escape.

And by all accounts this outrage was not the first incident in which the burning of the Palestinian baby was celebrated. A December 15^th wedding video showed settlers engaged in an uproarious party that featured dances with Molotov cocktails and waving knives and guns. A photo of baby Ali was on display and was repeatedly stabbed. A year later, 13 people from what became known as the “murder wedding” were indicted for incitement to terrorism, but as of today no one has actually been punished. Israelis who kill Arabs are rarely indicted or tried. If it is a soldier or policeman that is involved, which occurs all too often, the penalty is frequently either nothing at all a slap on the wrist. Indeed, the snipers who fired on Gazans recently were actually ordered to shoot the unarmed civilians and directed to take out anyone who appeared to be a “leader,” which included medical personnel.

Source: Green Left Weekly

The Trump Administration could, of course, stop the Israeli brutality if it chooses to do so, but it does not think Benjamin Netanyahu’s crimes against humanity are on the agenda. Nor did Clinton, Bush and Obama dare to confront the power of Israel’s lobby, though Obama tried a little pushback in a feeble way.

Someone in Washington should be asking why the United States should be fighting unnecessary wars and becoming an international pariah defending a country and people that believe they are “chosen” by God? One can only hope that the shift in perceptions on the Middle East by liberal Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez has some legs and will lead to some real change in U.S. foreign policy. To succeed the liberal Democrats will need to push against some formidable obstacles within their own party, most notably the Clinton wing and people like Senator Chuck Schumer, Minority leader in the Senate, who describes himself as Israel’s “shomer” or defender in the Upper House. Perhaps someone on the New York Times editorial board should publicly suggest to Schumer that he go and run for office in Israel since he seems to prefer it to the country that has made him rich and powerful. But of course, the Times and all the other mainstream media, which is responsible for what we are not allowed to know about Israel and its American mouthpieces, will never entertain that suggestion or anything like it.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

Dr. Giraldi is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

The Party and the Sermon

The celebratory event took place on Tuesday evening, November 5, 1946 at the Officers’ Club of the Army War College in Washington, D.C. The occasion was to mark the disbanding of Joint Army-Navy Task Force Number One, the body that organized and oversaw the first post-war atomic tests in the Pacific. These highly publicized detonations on Bikini Atoll are remembered today, if at all, for displacing an entire indigenous population of islanders, for inspiring a revealing line of swimwear for women and for unleashing the myth that movie star Rita Hayworth’s image was once affixed to an A-bomb.

The Operation Crossroads tests were the biggest media story of 1946, so it was only fitting that the dissolution of the team that produced the show would spark one final media storm. The entire function would have occurred without notice had it not been for the presence of a photographer from the prestigious Harris & Ewing Studio.[1]What triggered the controversy was a picture that the commander of the Task Force, Vice Admiral William H.P. Blandy, and his wife posed for with Rear Admiral Frank J. Lowry. In it, the so-called “Atomic Admiral” is seen cutting into an elaborately engineered “mushroom cloud”-topped cake (with token assistance from Mrs. Blandy) while Lowry looks on with a smile.

The unusual pastry was there in the first place because of an order to an East St. Louis, Illinois bakery by Lieutenant John T. Holloway, a member of Blandy’s staff. “It was strictly a business request,” said Eugene Kuehn to the Associated Press at the time. Kuehn, with the help of a bakery supply salesman named L.Y. Stephens, designed the strange looking dessert and had it delivered by car to Washington.[2]

On November 7, 1946 the bizarre photograph was published as the centerpiece of the Washington Post’s society column under the headline “Salute to Bikini.” It was accompanied by other shots of military men gaily hobnobbing with women dressed to the nines. The grotesque inappropriateness of the party as captured by the Post quickly caught the attention of a local Unitarian minister named Arthur Powell Davies. Three days later, on Sunday, November 10^th, the outspoken pastor uncorked his outrage over the insensitive revelry and delivered a blistering broadside from his pulpit at the All Souls Church:

I have with me here in the pulpit this morning a page from a newspaper. From a very fine newspaper. It contains a picture—as it seems to me, an utterly loathsome picture. If I spoke as I feel I would call it obscene. I do not blame the newspaper for printing the picture, or the photographer for taking it. What fills me with bitterness is the fact that such an event could take place at all. It is a picture of two high naval officers and a very beautiful lady.[3] They are in the act of cutting what is called an atom-bomb cake. And it is indeed a cake shaped in the form of an atomic explosion. The caption [in the Post’s photo] says it is made of angel food puffs. I do not know how to tell you what I feel about that picture. I only hope to God it is not printed in Russia—to confirm everything the Soviet government is telling the Russian people about how ‘American degenerates’ are able to treat with levity the most cruel, pitiless, revolting instrument of death ever invented by man… The naval officers concerned should apologize to the armed service of which they are a part, and to the American people. No apology would be sufficient to efface what it may mean to the people of the world.[4]

The Reaction

News of Davies’s sermon—officially entitled Lest the Living Forget—made Time magazine and headlines around the world. His remarks apparently gave voice to the disgust that many people had been feeling over America’s exuberant embrace of all things atomic since August 6, 1945. Despite the reverend’s professed hope, the hubbub over what became known as the “Atomic Cake” even made its way to Moscow:

Soviet Papers Comment on ‘Atom’ Cake

Moscow, Nov. 17 (AP)—Two Soviet newspapers took cognizance today of the recent serving at an American officers’ club of a cake shaped like an atom bomb explosion and one commented that American “atomists” would “like to stew a big atomic kasha and make millions of peaceful people bear the consequences.”

The reference to kasha, a Russian cereal, was by the government newspaper Izvestia, which illustrated its story by a picture of a portly gentleman in a morning coat cutting a cake. Trud, the trade union newspaper, was the other newspaper that referred to the “atomic cake.”[5]

In America, the sermon and the resulting news coverage prompted letters to the editor (some with the motive of defending the Admiral). The following is a sampling:

A note on that delightful picture of Admirals Blandy and Lowry and attached dimpling woman all preparing to eat the charming and oh-so-divine “atom bomb” cake. On Armistice Day I was thinking of so many charming variations of this theme. We could have darling little cakes made in the shape of coffins, and the cutest little crosses pressed of angel-puffs. And a few drops of cherry extract could be—you guessed it—drops of blood.

History will not scorn us for our last-resort use of this most horrible of all weapons to end finally and completely the most terrible of all wars. But we will be damned as barbarians without vision or heart if we do not feel the deepest sadness at the necessity for authorizing such cruelness. And let no one toss such conscience pangs aside with easy thoughts about legitimate ends. Hitler ravished a continent because, having committed himself to “good ends,” he could tolerate any means.

I think the entire episode was a monument to poor taste, and The Post shares the guilt by printing such obscenities.

EX-INFANTRYMAN, Arlington, Va.[6]

The recent picture of Admiral and Mrs. Blandy and Admiral Lowry cutting a cake made in the form of an atomic underwater explosion gave wide publicity to the unusual views of the Rev. A. Powell Davies, Unitarian pastor of a “fashionable Washington church.” As published, with accompanying errors of text, it did a great injustice to Admirals Blandy and Lowry, who have been tireless in their efforts to tell the citizens of the world of the devastating power and insidious poison of the atomic bomb.

For example, in October Admiral Blandy, at the New York Herald Tribune Forum and over a national radio network, said: “It is my earnest hope that all nations of the world join America in a straightforward march along the path leading to elimination of atomic weapons by an effective international control of atomic energy which will guarantee its development for exclusively peaceful purposes.”

Mr. Davies’ remarks also did a great injustice to Mrs. Blandy, who was brought up and married and whose children were christened in the same church of which Mr. Davies has but recently become the pastor.

Admiral and Mrs. Blandy were not the hosts (as stated in published accounts), but were the guests of honor at a party given by officers of the Crossroads staff. They had no part in the planning or procurement of the cake. The Post requested and was accorded the privilege of sending a news photographer to the party, and the picture was taken at the request of the photographer. In acceding to the request, Admiral and Mrs. Blandy and Admiral Lowry were acting as would any lady and gentleman.

To be publicly pilloried from the pulpit for this seems to be a strange reflection of the principles of Him who founded the Christian church.

DAVID H. BLAKELOCK, Colonel, United States Army; FITZHUGH LEE, Captain, Joint Task Force 1, Washington[7]

Sirs:

The recent picture of Admiral and Mrs. Blandy and Admiral Lowry cutting a cake made in the form of an atomic underwater explosion [TIME, Nov. 18] gave wide publicity to the unusual views of the Rev. A. Powell Davies, Unitarian pastor of a “fashionable Washington church.” As published … it did a great injustice to Admirals Blandy and Lowry, who have been tireless in their efforts to tell the citizens of the world of the devastating power and insidious poison of the atomic bomb. . . .

Admiral and Mrs. Blandy and Admiral Lowry were not the hosts but were the guests of honor at a party given by Officers of the Crossroads staff. They had no part in the planning or procurement of the cake.

DAVID H. BLAKELOCK Colonel, U.S.A. FITZHUGH LEE Captain, U.S.N. Washington[8]

Sirs:

. . . Utter astonishment could not describe my feelings when I read the tirade let loose by a Washington minister at two men who contributed such a large part in the defeat of our enemies. He would “damn to hell” these men; he would call down the wrath of God on these men were he a medieval priest; he would put in torment their souls for their base, utter disregard of all the principles of humanity. . . . Who is he? This minister might just as well damn every Air Corps officer, every bombardier, every flame-throwing private, every machine gunner and every rifleman to everlasting hell for using a weapon as destructive as the one he carried in defense of his country. . . .

Personally, it is my belief, and I am sure the belief of the majority of servicemen, that the atomic bomb accomplished at the proper moment a complete demoralization of the Japanese and led to ultimate surrender, thus saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American men who would otherwise have been lost. God grant that we might have had this bomb at the start of the conflict. God grant that this nation have such a weapon as this if & when our enemies feel the time is ripe to strike another blow at Freedom and mankind. . . .

J. N. TALBOTT

Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N.R. Philadelphia[9]

Davies’s local brethren of the cloth sought to minimize their colleague’s position while at the same time getting their own names in the papers. Reverend J. Warren Hastings of the National Christian Church of Washington, D.C. told the Associated Press: “If we can only learn to go no further with the atomic bomb than making the likeness of its explosion into a cake we shall be all right.” Reverend Peter Marshall of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, also in D.C., remarked to the same reporter: “I don’t see anything loathsome about it at all.”[10]

The two central players in the sermon clearly just wanted to move on—albeit without the apology demanded of them by the minister. Blandy stated that he did not want “to comment offhand” and Lowry told a reporter that the pastor “probably just doesn’t understand the situation.”[11] For his part, L.Y. Stephens, the man who assisted in the creation of the now famous dessert, did not subscribe to the negative symbolism assigned to his handiwork by Reverend Davies. He told the Associated Press that the sermon was “silly” and that “We intended the cake as something to eat.”[12]

Meanwhile, other, more important people were taking note of the confectionary brouhaha and—behind the scenes—they were siding with Davies’s point of view. On November 11, 1946, the influential columnist Walter Lippmann wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, James V. Forrestal to voice his concern:

3525 Woodley Road, N.W.
Washington 16, D.C.
November 11, 1946

Dear Jim:

The outburst of Reverend A.P. Davies about the atomic bomb cake is, I feel sure, a sign of the times, which I feel should not be ignored.

Public relations officers of both the War and Navy Departments have been out of hand for some time, and I have detected for some months a growing undercurrent of feeling that will affect the whole military establishment if something isn’t done about it.

I have compiled a list of new and terrifying weapons announced by the War and Navy Departments, and of other stories originating there which are boastful or threatening. The total effect was bound to produce a popular reaction, and I really feel that you and Bob Patterson ought to look very seriously into this business.

You are going to have a very hard time with the next Congress getting appropriations, and if the large church-going population of this country with its pacifist leanings gets the idea that the Services are out of hand, it will have a bad effect in the fight for adequate appropriations.
I am sure you appreciate the spirit in which I am writing this.

Yours.

Walter Lippmann

Honorable James V. Forrestal
Secretary of the Navy
Washington 25, D.C.

Forrestal, who was of the same mind as Lippmann, wrote him back the next day:

12 November 1946

Dear Walter:

Your letter of yesterday:

I am in complete agreement. So is [Secretary of War] Bob Patterson with whom I have just talked. We are both acting accordingly. As a matter of fact I had started something in this direction about ten days ago but at that time it was on the thesis that people were becoming bored with such adolescent competitive publicity. I think your point if of deeper importance.

Vice Admiral Felix Johnson, who is now in charge of the general policy of Public Relations, is a most intelligent man and some day I will ask you to come over and talk with him.

Sincerely yours,

James Forrestal

Walter Lippmann, Esq.,

3525 Woodley Road N.W.,

Washington 16, D.C.[13]

The impact that Forrestal and his P.R. team had on subsequent matters involving atomic testing appears to be limited to their success in preventing a recurrence of embarrassing celebratory parties. And Lippmann, the writer frequently co-credited with the coining of the term “Cold War,” evidently steered clear of the issue in his columns from this period.[14] But even if the efforts of these two powerful men remained largely confined to their archives, something more public was about to happen…

The Hiroshima Drawings

The most significant result of Davies’s “outburst,” as Lippmann called it, was that reports of his anger reached the eyes of Dr. Howard Bell, an official in General Douglas MacArthur’s provisional government in Japan. Bell, a kindred spirit, wrote to Davies and playfully admonished him for not using stronger language in expressing his indignation, but conceded that the minister “had to make some concessions to the proprieties of pulpit utterance.” He went on in his letter to describe the hardship of Japanese school children—particularly in Hiroshima—and suggested that American school children should clean out their desks and send spare school supplies like pencils and notebooks to their Japanese counterparts.

Reverend Davies took Dr. Bell’s idea to heart and on February 13, 1947 he delivered a sermon entitled “In Reply to a Letter from Japan” asking his flock for action. In the period that followed, the youngest parishioners of the church collected over a half ton of paper, pencils, crayons, erasers, paste and other items. The material was then shipped to Japan where it arrived in December of 1947—just in time for Christmas. The supplies were distributed to two schools and an orphanage.

The recipients of this remarkable gift from American schoolchildren responded with immense gratitude. The most touching and enduring gift that the U.S. students received for their efforts were crayon drawings and watercolor paintings from the youthful artists at the Honkawa Elementary School in Hiroshima. The art work depicted many different scenes from the home country and themes such as “Friends of America” and “Peace – Japan.” After the “Hiroshima Drawings” went on a nationwide tour sponsored by the U.S. government, they were returned to the All Souls Church and, over time, seemingly lost.[15]

According to a forthcoming documentary, the art work was rediscovered in 1996 in a box in the home of a parishioner of the All Souls Church. The nearly fifty drawings and paintings were then moved to the church’s vault where they would periodically be displayed for visiting Hibakusha (atom bomb survivors). In 2007, the pictures were restored and sent back to their place of origin—the Honkawa Elementary School—for exhibition.[16] What had started out as a trivialized media story about an “atomic cake,” had, in the end, led to a lasting expression of peace.

Passings

Reverend Davies died of hemorrhaging from a blood clot in one of his lungs while he was working in his study at the church’s parsonage on September 26, 1957. He was 55 years old. The memorial service held at All Souls Church two days later was attended by three sitting Supreme Court Justices—Hugo Black, Harold Burton and William O. Douglas. According to the Washington Post, Davies was cremated.[17]

William Blandy, the primary target of the minister’s wrath in 1946, had died several years earlier, in 1954, at the age of 63.[18] His legacy is a U.S. Navy ship named for him, a plot at Arlington National Cemetery and, most prominently, a ridiculous photograph.

*

Notes

[1] The infamous photograph of Blandy and the “atomic cake” is credited to “Harris & Ewing” (a prominent Washington, D.C. studio that is now defunct—for an excellent history, read this Washing ton Business Journal article) on the November 8, 1946 Washington Post society page (page 18) on which it appears. On the same page (but smaller), there are other uncredited photographs from the event that were presumably taken by a staff photographer. In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post published on November 22, 1946, Colonel David H. Blakelock, U.S. Army, and Captain Fitzhugh Lee, Joint Task Force 1, state that the Post requested permission from the party’s organizers to send a photographer. It is not clear whether the photographer from Harris & Ewing was working under contract to the Post, but given the presence of the other staff photographer, it is more likely that the Post’s editors caught wind of the exquisitely posed ‘cake’ photo and licensed it for publication.

[2] “Cake Shaped Like Atomic Blast Draws Pastor’s Wrath,” Rhinelander (Wisconsin) Daily News, November 11, 1946.

[3] The woman Davies is referring to is Vice Admiral Blandy’s wife.

[4] George N. Marshall, A. Powell Davies and His Times [Boston: Skinner House Books, 1990] pp. 139-140. To read a transcript of the complete sermon, see the Atomic Cake Sermon blog post on CONELRAD Adjacent.

[5] “Soviet Papers Comment on ‘Atom’ Cake,” Washington Post, via the Associated Press, November 18, 1946.

[6] Letter to the editor, Washington Post, November 13, 1946.

[7] Letter to the editor, Washington Post, November 22, 1946. Note: Blakelock and Fitzhugh, who had a professional motive to shield Blandy and Lowry from criticism, conveniently omit in their letter the fact that the East Saint Louis, Illinois baker, Eugene Kuehn, had already told the Associated Press that the order for the cake came from a member of Blandy’s staff (see paragraph two of main CONELRAD story above).

[8] Letter to the editor, Time magazine, December 9, 1946 and see preceding footnote for additional comment. Note: The letter that appeared in Time was a truncated version of the letter that appeared earlier in the Washington Post by the same authors.

[9] Time, December 9, 1946.

[10] “Capital Clergy Split on ‘Loathsome’ Atom Cake,” Syracuse (New York) Herald-Journal, November 11, 1946.

[11] “Picture of Atomic-Bomb Cake ‘Obscene,’ D.C. Pastor Declares,” Washington Post, via Associated Press, November 11, 1946.

[12] “Cake Shaped Like Atomic Blast Draws Pastor’s Wrath,” Rhinelander (Wisconsin) Daily News, November 11, 1946.

[13] Yale University
Walter Lippmannn Papers
Lippmannn-Forrestal Correspondence
November 11, 1946—November 12, 1946
Box 71, Section 3, Folder 794

[14] According to The Cold War Encyclopedia by Thomas Parrish [New York: Henry Holt] pp. 68-69, the post-World War II usage of the term “Cold War” is traced back to a newspaper writer named Herbert Bayard Swope who included the phrase in a speech that he wrote for the prominent businessman and political adviser, Bernard Baruch. Baruch delivered the speech to the legislature of his home state of South Carolina on April 17, 1947. It was Lippmannn, however, who popularized the term in a series of articles and a 1947 book entitled The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy [New York: Harper]. CONELRAD was unable to locate Lippmannn columns from this period that address the “Atomic Cake” issue.

[15] Initial history of “Hiroshima Drawings” derived from A. Powell Davies.org accessed on September 7, 2010.

Note: At least one other art exhibit by Hiroshima school children was staged in the United States. According to a brief item in the June 28, 1953 Albuquerque (New Mexico) Journal there was a display of 75 paintings by Hiroshima children at the Fine Arts Gallery at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The exhibit was part of an art exchange with Santa Fe, NM school children whose work was displayed in Hiroshima.

[16] “Pictures From a Hiroshima School” documentary website accessed on September 7, 2010.

[17] Details on Davies’s death derived from his biography on the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society webpage accessed on September 7, 2010. Additional details derived from September 27, 1957 Washington Post article, “Dr. A. Powell Davies Dies in His Study Here.”

[18] “Atom Expert Dies,” Washington Post, via Associated Press, January 13, 1954. Note: Blandy died from complications of a stroke.

1. History of the movement, structure, and ideology

History

The movement of Ansar Allah (Supporters of Allah), also known as the Houthis, is a paramilitary group of Zaidi Shi’ites, acting in Yemen. This is one of the moderate streams of Shia Islam, which has more than 10 million followers around the world and accounts for a third of Yemen’s population. In dogmatic matters, Zaidis took a position which is close to Sunni Islam, relying primarily on the Koran and the Sunnah. In contrast to other Shi’ites, Zaidis do not recognize the doctrine of the Hidden Imam, “prudent concealment” of their faith (taqiya), and they reject anthropomorphism and  unconditional predestination.

In 2004, the Houthis formed an uprising. They sought to end government tyranny and corruption, to oppose majority rule of the Sunnis, to resist to ideas of Wahhabism, acquired from neighbouring Saudi Arabia and to make their own leader, Imam Badr al-Din al-Houthi, a head of state. Nonetheless, he was killed on September 10 of the same year.

The organization of Zaidi Shi’ites of Yemen, from which the Houthis movement was subsequently formed, initially focused on cultural and educational work. The first such organization appeared in the early 1990s and was called the “Forum for Youth of Faith”. This organization planned summer camps and various school clubs to promote the ideas of Zaidi Islam in Sa’adah province.

One of the main reasons behind the establishment of the movement by Badr al-Din al-Houthi is the marginalization and persecution of the Hashemites and Zaidis by the Yemeni government. They were expelled from all important positions in the country after the establishment of the Republic of Yemen. In addition, Badr al-Din al-Houthi established the movement out of fear of the disappearance of the Zaidi doctrine, especially after many Zaidis converted to the Sunni faith because of persecutions by the Yemeni governments. It is important to note that for many years the provinces, where the majority of population are Zaidis, were poorly developed economically.

Structure

Following the killing of movement’s founder, Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi in 2004, the Houthis were led by Hussein’s father, spiritual leader Badr al-Din al-Houthi. The movement’s current leader is Hussein’s younger brother, Sayyid Abdul-Malik Badr al-Din al-Houthi. Until April 19, 2018, the Chairman of the Supreme Political Council of Yemen was Saleh al-Samad. He was one of the youngest heads of state and government in the modern world. He was killed during a bombing by the coalition’s warplanes. His successor in this post is Mahdi al-Mashat.

Political leadership

Members of the Houthi family have a significant prescience in the political leadership of the movement. However, the leadership is not fully concentrated in their hands.

On November 28, 2016, when the Houthis formed the National Salvation Government, the members of the movement occupied only 10 out of 36 ministries: (Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, Minister of Justice, Defence Minister, Minister of Civil Service and Insurance, Transport Minister, Education Minister, Information Minister, Minister of Legal Affairs, Minister of Electricity and Energy, Tourism Minister). On 2 October 2016, Abdel-Aziz bin Habtour was appointed as Prime Minister of the newly formed government.

Initially, after the flight of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the Supreme Revolutionary Committee (SRC) was the main governing body in the country. The SRC began to act as an interim government on February 6, 2015, when the Houthis established control over Sana’a.

On August 15, 2016, the SRC formally handed power to the Supreme Political Council (SPC). The SPC is an executive body formed by Ansar Allah and the General People’s Congress (GPC) to rule Yemen. Formed on 28 July 2016, the presidential council consists of 10 members and until his death in a drone air strike on 19 April 2018, it was headed by Saleh Ali al-Sammad as president with Qassem Labozah as vice-president. The SPC carries out the functions of head of state in Yemen and manages state affairs in a bid to fill in political vacuum during the war. The SPC is not internationally recognized. The SPC was responsible for the creation of the National Salvation Government. At the same time, the SRC authorities have not been abolished and in fact continue to exercise control over important areas of political and social life on the ground.

The Houthis have a full-fledged military structure that includes both newly formed paramilitary formations and a large part of the armed forces of Yemen. The Houthis created their own full-fledged armed forces with general staff, air and coastal defenses, missile forces, intelligence and special operations forces.

Military command

According to available data, the Houthi forces are divided into 7 military districts, each with its own commander.

Military districts and commanders

A special role in the structure of the Houthi forces is occupied by Yemeni Missile Forces (5th and 6th missile brigade), who are responsible for conducting missile strikes against targets in Yemen and Saudi Arabia and for converting a stock of around 200 V-755 SAMs from the S-75/SA-2 system into ballistic missiles. Service, assembly and conversion of missiles are carried out by forces of its own research division — the Missile Research & Development Center. Various Soviet surface-to-air missiles turned into ballistic missiles are known as Qaher-1, Qaher-2 and Qaher-2M.

In April 2018, a Saudi air strike killed Nasser al-Qubari, who, according to pro-Saudi sources, headed the Republican Guard (Militia) team responsible for major missile operations against targets in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

According to various sources, the Houthis currently have about 150,000 fighters across the country.

Ideology

Goals of the movement include combating weak economy and political marginalization in Yemen, and fighting for the autonomy of regions in which majority of the population is Zaidi. From the statements of high-ranking officials of the movement, one can draw a conclusion about what Ansar Allah wants to achieve. Their aims include seeking government accountability, fighting corruption, ensuring people have access to public services, fighting for fair fuel prices, employment opportunities for ordinary Yemenis and stopping Western intervention in the country’s affairs. They also declared their desire to establish a democratic non-sectarian republic in Yemen.

As for religion, the leaders of the movement claim that their actions are aimed at combating the expansion of Salafism, which comes from neighboring Saudi Arabia and protecting the community against discrimination based on religious grounds. The slogan of the movement is “Allah is the greatest. Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, victory to Islam”. This does not mean that the Houthis want to destroy the US or Israel. According to Ali al-Bukhayti, the spokesperson and official media person of the Houthis, this slogan means that the movement is against interference in the affairs of Yemen of the US and Israel, which help Saudi Arabia and its allies.

2. Background of the conflict and the Saudi-led intervention

In January 2011, mass demonstrations began demanding the resignation of then President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled the country for 33 years. Causes: poverty, a significant part of the population constantly suffered from hunger and lack of access to drinking water, youth unemployment, and religious tensions.

In early February 2011, the protests forced the president to make some concessions: he did not transfer power to his son, reduced the number of presidential terms to two in a row and dropped an idea to participate in the upcoming elections. Saleh refused to leave the post at that moment. On February 17, the first protesters died at the hands of the police in Aden. Violence grew until it reached its peak on March 18, when 52 demonstrators were killed in the capital, Sana’a. Confrontation that involved shootings and explosions lasted until May 19, 2011, at which point a ceasefire agreement was reached. President Saleh was prepared to leave his office within 30 days and hold presidential elections in the following 2 months.

However, Saleh refused to sign the document agreed upon by the parties. This decision caused a new round of violence. Yemen’s aviation and armed groups of the opposition entered the scene. 72 more people were killed in the capital. In the last days of May, 50 Yemenis were killed from dispersal of demonstrations in the southwestern city of Taiz. An important turning point was the shelling of the presidential residence in Sana’a on June 3. Prime minister and speaker of parliament, and Abdullah Saleh himself, were wounded. The Houthies ​​tried to break into the city. Saleh fled from Yemen.

In November of the same year, he finally resigned, declaring this from the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, in the presence of King Abdullah and then Crown Prince Nayef Al Saud. Saleh actually transferred power to Hadi – then vice-president of Yemen, a Sunni, who took a pro-Saudi position. However, this action did not prevent the civil war or change the situation. The troops led by Saleh’s son opened fire on protesters, killing and injuring up to a hundred people. The government took several unpopular measures, in particular, reducing subsidies for oil products, which was expected to lead to higher prices of gasoline. New protests began. The Houthis took up arms and seized districts and state institutions in Sana’a, installing their checkpoints. Despite the peace agreement that was signed with the participation of the United Nations, and the replacement of the prime minister, the military actions continued, spreading to other Yemeni cities. On January 20, 2015, supporters of Ansar Allah occupied the residence of the President of Yemen and forced Hadi to file a resignation on January 22 and flee the country.

Saudi-led intervention

Given the political crisis and the inability of the Hadi government to restore order and carry out the required reforms, the popularity of the Ansar Allah movement increased substantially. The movement was gaining control of more and more territories and infrastructure. This situation was unacceptable to the Saudi regime. The Saudi assembled a military coalition, which included virtually all countries of the Persian Gulf (except Oman). To some extent, Egypt, the United States, Morocco, Sudan, Pakistan, Senegal and Jordan also provided assistance. Fleeing to Saudi Arabia, President Hadi called for military intervention in the country to suppress the insurgency. Aden became the capital for forces loyal to the fled president. The Houthis, in turn, strengthened in the north-west of the country.

An airstrike in Sana’a on 11 May 2015 (Source: Ibrahem Qasim / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The invasion officially began on March 26, 2015 with Operation “Decisive Storm”. The coalition established a no fly zone over Yemen. After initial air strikes, most air defense systems on the territory, belonging to the Houthis, were destroyed or put out of order. Full-scale fights began on both sides.  On April 21, the operation was officially ended on the formal request of President Hadi himself.  On April 22, 2015, a second operation was launched – Operation “Restoring Hope”, which continues to this day. Its goal is to restore the power of President Hadi over the whle country and put an end to the Houthi movement.

Currently, the Ansar Allah movement consists of tribes from northern Yemen, some supporters of the former president Saleh, including units of the Republican Guard and the Yemen Army. Iran is an external ally, providing military advisers and technical specialists, including those from Lebanese Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia’s interests within Yemen are supported by the Sunnis, supporters of the deposed President Hadi, as well as local Wahhabists. Another side of the conflict is the UAE, which supports the Southern Yemeni Movement, representing the interests of a significant part of the population of the former South Yemen (the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen).

3. General Course of the War

Main Events

2015 was marked by the most violent clashes. During this period, the coalition lost the F-16 of the Moroccan Air Force in the province of Sa’adah, as well as three AN-64 Apache helicopters, two of which were shot down in the Saudi province of Najran, another lost over the Yemeni province of Marib. The coalition’s offensive on the Aden-Abyan road in summer 2015 was known for heavy losses of armored vehicles. On August 24, the Houthies destroyed two Abrams battle tanks in the Saudi province of Jizan. On August 25, in the province of Baida, a column of armored vehicles of the UAE was destroyed in an ambush. Soldiers from Emirates lost 11 MRAPs, some of which were abandoned by the crews. On August 29, two more Abrams were destroyed in the same province. By the end of August, the planned blitzkrieg of the coalition turned into a total failure. Hadi supporters and interventionists were trapped in fierce battles in the provinces of Taiz, Marib and Baida. It is estimated that dozens of armored vehicles were lost. On September 4, more than 100 fighters were killed, including 52 UAE soldiers, 10 Saudi soldiers and 5 citizens of Bahrain, when the “Tochka-U” missile hit a military camp of the coalition in Marib.

In mid-September, over 20 Saudi armored vehicles were destroyed in Marib in three days. Large losses forced commanders of the coalition to replace their soldiers with militants from among the supporters of Hadi. In the same month, the UAE Air Force began providing air support to Hadi supporters, from the Eritrea territory, which significantly reduced the fly-time for air strikes. Seeking to reduce the cost of the air campaign, the leadership of the UAE preferred to use light AT-802U attack aircraft for air strikes; this is much cheaper than to employ Apache attack helicopters and F-16 fighters. In October, a Sudanese military arrived in Yemen, and there were reports of mercenaries from Colombia operating in the region.

In 2016, the war acquired characteristics of prolonged trench warfare. Hadi forces were in a half-kilometer of the Taiz area, but the Houthis did not have enough strength to cut the enemy’s communications. Frictions began within the coalition regarding the continuation of the operation and on June 16 the UAE reduced its direct military involvement in the conflict. However, the coalition’s aviation continued air strikes against military and civilian targets in Yemen. For their part, the Houthis ​​and their allies continued raids on the border provinces of Saudi Arabia and missile attacks on military installations in Saudi Arabia. This situation was used by terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). These organizations acquired control of large areas in the south and east of the country.

In 2017, the war in Yemen also bore characteristics of trench warfare. In May, the Sudanese military attempted to carry out independent offensive operation in the desert of Midi, which ended in the complete defeat of the Sudanese force. In the fall of 2017, the Houthis and a loyal part of Yemen’s army undertook an offensive operation in the province of Taiz, which led to bitter trench battles in which neither side was able to achieve decisive success. The Houthis remained in ​​control the western provinces of the country, including the capital. Iran provides extensive assistance to anti-Saudi forces. Supporters of Hadi and the interventionists have control over the southern and eastern provinces.  Militants of AQAP and IS act in the north, an example of which is the attack by ISIS on Aden in November 2017.

By the end of November 2017, the air force of the coalition had lost 8 aircraft, mostly for technical reasons, and at least 14 helicopters. The total number of casualties of the coalition is unknown. However, by the end of September, 2017 at least 412 Sudanese had been killed in Yemen. Saudi Arabia lost at least 42 tanks during the conflict, the total losses of armored vehicles exceed 300. The UAE lost at least 150 armored vehicles. The official losses of the coalition forces at the beginning of 2018 are almost 1,300 service members, the total number of casualties of the coalition and its proxies throughout the conflict is certainly estimated in the thousands. A war that was meant to be a quick victory turned into a big problem for Riyadh. Despite huge funding, the Saudi army was unable to take control of Yemen’s territory and to protect its territory from raids ​​and missile attacks of the Houthis.

In 2018, key military developments were taking place in the city of Aden, north and east of the city of Sana’a and in the western coast, north of the port city of Hudaydah. Additionally, clashes also continued in the Saudi-Yemeni border area and other areas across the country.

For example:

From January 28 to January 31, the UAE-backed Southern Movement clashed with Saudi-backed forces loyal to Hadi over the control of Aden. The violence was halt after the mediation by the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The city formally remained in the hands of the coalition, but an influence of the Saudi-backed faction decreased in the area.

On January 31, the coalition-led forces captured the city of Aden. This advance was presented as a huge victory of the coalition.

On February 18, the Houthis ambushed a large UAE Army convoy in the district of Mawza in the Taiz province. Twelve Emirati soldiers and several fighters, loyal to Hadi were reportedly killed, four armoured personnel carriers (APCs) of the UAE Army and four other vehicles of pro-Hadi forces were destroyed.

On March 14, the coalition-backed forces captured Rab’ayen and al-Admagh mountains in the Nihm district of the Saana province allegedly killing 26 Houthi fighters and destroying 3 vehicles and 2 armored vehicles. Over 70 Houthi fighters were reportedly injured and killed in multiple artillery strikes across the district. The goal of the advance was to set a foothold for capturing the Saana international airport and thus preparing for another attempt to capture the Yemeni capital.

On March 24, the Houthis launched an offensive in the Nihm district killing more than 120 fighters backed by the coalition. Dozens of their vehicles were reportedly destroyed. the international Saana airport, north of the Yemeni capital of Saana. The Houthis reversed the coalition’s gains in a single rapid attack. On March 27, the Houthis forced Saudi-backed forces to withdraw from some of their positions in the Yam mountain range area.The Saudi-backed attempt to advance on Sana’a failed.

On April 7, the Houthis ambushed a battalion of the 9th Airborne Division of the Armed Forces of Sudan, fighting on the side of the Saudi-led coalition in the Midi district in the northwestern province of Hajjah. Between 50 and 80 Sudanese fighters were killed and more than 100 were wounded.

On April 11, the Saudi-led forces captured a center of the Midi district. Thus, they secured a notable part of the border south of the Saudi province of Najran. However, this was not enough to stop the Houthis’ cross-border attacks.

On April 25, the coalition’s forces resumed their military operation in the southwestern province of Taiz capturing some positions in the district of Dimnat Khadir.  However, they were not able to develop the initial success.

Since early May, the coalition’s forces have resumed active attempts to reach and capture Hudaydah, which remains one of the key logistical hubs in the Houthi-held area allowing the group to receive humanitarian aid for the local population. Fierce clashes north of the city were taking place from mid May till June when the coalition’s forces were pushed from their positions near the Hudaydah airport. On June 6, the Houthis started attacking supply lines of the coalition’s forces involved in the operation. The situation in the area remains tense.

The nature of land combat in Yemen is different from what was observed in Iraq and Syria. In 2003 in Iraq, American infantry and armoured units used tactics of rapid advancement and clearing, from area to area with minimal downtime. This was not observed in the actions of the Saudi army. On the contrary, there was a glaring incompetence of personnel and an inability of the command to use available forces and means. Several eyewitnesses testified that the leadership of the Saudi army was engaged in sorting out personal quarrels instead of organizing and planning operations. The commanders of the Saudi coalition made a number of significant mistakes in their use of armored vehicles during the offensive operations in the summer and autumn of 2015. Lightly armored BMP and BTR vehicles, intended for the transport of personnel, were used as support vehicles for infantry when the infantry stormed positions of the Houthis, resulting in massive losses of these light armored vehicles.

The apotheosis of unprofessionalism of the coalition was the use of MRAPs, which became one of the symbols of the Yemeni ventures of the kingdom.

The MRAPs which were frequently used in Yemen, possessed good anti-mine protection but were completely deprived of any protection from fire of anti-tank weapons. The Saudis tried to compensate for low training and poor morale of their infantry by using a large number of armored vehicles. The result was a massive loss of these vehicles. The MRAPs were destroyed by fire from ATGMs, RPGs and heavy machine guns. Often, the crews of these vehicles were seen fleeing the battlefield. Equipment designed for patrolling the terrain and transferring personnel in counter-partisan war turned out to be useless. The Houthis usually destroyed the abandoned MRAP vehicles. They did not have sufficient material or technical support required for repair. Similar mistakes were made by the Saudi coalition with use of the heavy armored vehicles. Low training of the personnel allowed the Houthis ​​to knock out American Abrams M1 battle tanks to a safe distance with the help of obsolete Soviet anti-tank systems.

It is almost certain that in the future, the war in Yemen will become increasingly partisan. There are several reasons for this. The Ansar Allah movement is under a blockade and does not have sufficient reserves for a full-scale offensive to the south and east of the country. In turn, the coalition forces incurred unnecessarily high losses and experience problems with motivation and morale of their own armed forces.

The Houthis and supporters of Saleh have an advantage in combat experience and training of their personnel. A significant number of Yemeni officers was previously trained by Soviet specialists. In addition, Iranian advisors also played a significant role in assisting anti-Saudi forces.

Missile war

Until the early 1990s, the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, commonly referred to as South Yemen, had been actively purchasing Soviet missile systems 9K72 (SCUD) and 9K79 (Scarab), which were widely used during the 1994 civil war. By the mid-2000s, the Yemeni army had four artillery brigades, one of which was equipped with field artillery, and three: the 1st, 26th and 89th artillery brigades, were equipped with the operational-tactical missile systems. All three brigades were part of the Yemeni Republican Guard. Their main task was to protect the capital of Sana’a. In the early 2000s, the Yemeni army withdrew Luna-M short range artillery rocket systems and replaced them with Hwasong-6 tactical ballistic missiles, which were acquired from North Korea. Pyongyang also assisted in the organization of missile services, and the necessary training of personnel. However, under the pressure of the US, since 2003, the parties’ cooperation has been terminated. According to data provided to the US Congress, 24 “Tochka” and 18 “Scud” complexes were in service in Yemen as well as some stockpiles belonging to them in 2004. According to the US analytical center “Jamestown Foundation”, in the 2000s the government of Yemen purchased 45 Hwasong-6 missile systems from the North. In the 2000s, Iran was responsible for supplying Yemen with missile systems and missiles. Its missiles are compatible with Soviet and North Korean launchers such as SCUD (for example, “Shehab-2”). In addition, they are even more powerful and long-ranged than their Soviet and Korean counterparts. However, at present Iran does not have the opportunity to supply their Houthi allies with new missiles. The naval blockade makes it is almost impossible to deliver large-scale weapons to Yemen. Perhaps the production of these missiles or their partial assembly from the previously supplied components is already established in Yemen itself.

The U.S. Navy has actively participated in the Saudi-led naval blockade. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

From the onset of the operation of the Arab coalition in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and its allies tried to destroy stockpiles of heavy weapons and ballistic missiles. However, this goal was not fully achieved. Units of the Yemeni military, which united with the Houthis, managed to retain the bulk of the mobile missile systems and rocket reserves, which subsequently allowed them to launch regular missile strikes on Saudi Arabia.

For example:

• In October 2016, it was reported that a Yemeni ballistic missile was intercepted in the area of ​​Mecca. At that time, Yemenis were aiming at an airport near the city of Jeddah. A rocket was also launched on the King Fahd Air Base.
• In May 2017, the Houthis commemorated US President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh by launching a Burkan-2 missile. It fell in the vicinity of the Saudi capital. Earlier, the Yemenis carried out two more missile strikes in the direction of Riyadh. A strike on the air base of King Salman was also made in May 2017.
• On July 22, 2017 the Houthis ​​published a video of the launch of the Burkan-2 ballistic missile at the Saudi refinery in the city of Yanbu. It was reported that this missile flew about 930 kilometers, which is the longest distance a Houthi missile has travelled. The Houthis said that the missile struck an oil refinery, however, representatives of Saudi Arabia stated that after the fire was extinguished, the enterprise continued to operate normally.
• On November 4, 2017, Saudi air defense forces intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Yemen northeast of Riyadh. In response, the Crown Prince of Saudi – Mohammed bin Salman – said that the alleged missile supplies to the Houthis from Iran was an act of military aggression.
• From the onset of 2018 there has been an increase in the number of missile launches by the Houthi-led forces. The launches were particularly numerous in March-April of this year.
• On March 22, the Yemeni forces that are loyal to the Houthis, announced in an official statement, that they tested a new short-range ballistic missile named Badr-1. According to the statement, a key oil facility of the Saudi Aramco oil company in the southern province of Najran was successfully targeted. The Yemeni forces said, that the Badr-1 is a solid fuel ballistic missile with a speed of up to 4.5 Mach and high accuracy. However, the available images allow to conclude that it is a solid fuel artillery rocket, not a ballistic missile. The Badr-1 is likely a copy of the Iranian Fajr-3 artillery rocket, as both rockets appear to have similar diameter and length. The range of the Fajr-3 is over 43km. This is more than enough to hit Najran province form the Houthis-held areas in northern Yemen.
• To mark the third anniversary of the military operation of the Saudi-led coalition, Houthi forces launched seven rockets of various types, during the night of March 25^th to 26^th at the airports of Riyadh, Abhi, Jizan and Najran. The Burkan-H2 missile was launched at Riyadh. Qaher-M2 missiles (modified S-75 air defense missiles) were employed against other targets. Saudi air defense forces intercepted the missiles through a massive launch of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles. However, judging by video evidence, at least two anti-aircraft missiles malfunctioned: one exploded almost immediately after its launch, the other lost its course and fell to the ground.
• On April 8, the Yemeni Missiles Forces launched a Badr-1 missile at a radar station outside the city of Khamis Mushait in the province of Asir. On April 9, they launched a Zelzal-2 missile at the Nahouqa military base in the province of Narjan. On April 10, a Badr-1 ballistic missile was launched at a military facility in the province of Najran. On April 11, a Burkan-H2 missile was launched towards the Saudi capital and a Badr-1 was launched into one of the border regions of Saudi Arabia. The Burkan-H2 missile reached its target and fell in one of the inhabited areas of the city. On the same day, the Houthis carried out successful strikes at the Abha airport in the province of Asir and facilities of the Saudi company Aramco in the province of Jizan using Qasif-1 suicide UAVs.
• On April 17, the Yemeni Missiles Forces launched a Badr-1 rocket at a power station in the province of Najran. The rocket was intercepted by the Saudi military, according to Saudi sources.
• On April 23, the Houthis launched two Bader-1 rockets at oil facilities belonging to Aramco in Jizan.
• On April 28, the Houthis launched at least 8 Badr-1 ballistic rockets at “economic and vital targets” in Jizan. However, no details were provided.

The naval blockade along with a deficit of material resources forced the Houthis to develop an asymmetric response to the coalition. Therefore, the Houthis re-designed anti-aircraft missiles from air defense systems to short-range ballistic missiles.  This made sense given that the country’s air defense system ceased to function but the stock of missiles from it remained. The best suited missiles were large anti-aircraft missiles. They have powerful cores with high-thrust engines Their engine works only in the dispersed section and then the missile goes along the ballistic curve as an artillery shell. Anti-aircraft missiles from S-75 air defense systems in this regard are an ideal choice.

In December of 2015 the Qaher-1 ballistic missile was shown. It originates from missiles of the S-75 air defense systems. Its launch at the Saudi Khalid Bin Abdul Aziz air base was also announced. It is difficult to judge the specific parameters of this homemade missile but it can deliver a warhead weighing 200-250 kg to a range of 100-250-kilometers.

Actions of the Houthis against air and naval forces of the coalition

Airspace

Prior to the intervention, Yemen had about 80 combat aircraft, of which the most modern were MiG-29s. There were about 20 of them and most were stored at the Al-Dailami airbase (near the Sana’a international airport). A small detachment of these aircraft was also stationed in Al-Anad. During the first weeks of the 2015 campaign, the Yemeni Air Force was eliminated, including shelters in which the MiG-29 fighters were stationed.

The only possible way to counteract aggression was the use of anti-aircraft guns, self-propelled antiaircraft guns and MANPADs. Before the start of the aggression of the coalition, the Yemeni Air Defense had 20 STRELA-1 missile systems, 200 to 360 STRELA-2 missiles, up to 120 self-propelled antiaircraft guns (from 20 to 34 American M163s (6×20 mm), up to 89 Soviet Shilkas (4×23 mm)), up to 500 anti-aircraft guns (52 American M167s (20 mm), from 100 to 200 Soviet ZU-23-2s (23 mm), up to 150 units of 61-K (37 mm), up to 120 units of C-60 (57 mm), up to 40 units of KS-12 (85 mm)). A large part of this arsenal fell into the hands of the supporters of the Ansar Allah movement.

Yemen had up to 4 batteries (up to 40 launchers) of Soviet S-75 air defense systems, 2 batteries (up to 8 launchers) of S-125 air defense systems and an unknown number of Kub air defense systems. Some of them lost their operational capability even before the outbreak of the hostilities. A large chunk of the stationary complexes and positions of radio engineering equipment were put out of order during the initial air strikes. Despite this, Yemeni air defense units, though use of camouflage and tactical methods, continue to inflict losses on the coalition’s air force.

In addition to missiles and air defense systems, the movement uses a reserve of missiles that are intended for launch from fighter jets. On March 21, 2018, an air-to-air missile R-27, launched from a land-based launcher in Sa’ada province, was successfully used against a Saudi coalition warplane. On March 26, the Houthis used R-27T air-to-air missiles from ground-based launchers. It was said that the launches were carried out on two F-16 UAE aircraft, but this time, the missiles failed to hit their targets.

In August 2017, the Arab coalition released a memo, officially recognizing that since May 26, 2015 it lost 10 aircraft: 4 were from the UAE, 3 from Saudi Arabia, one from Bahrain, one from Jordan and one from Morocco. However, the August 2017 memo significantly underestimates the loses of the coalition.

Official chronology of the coalition’s losses from the start of the Saudi-led intervention is as follows:

• May 20, 2015 – a F-16 jet of the Morroco Air Force was shot down, the pilot died;
• August 22, 2015 – an Apache helicopter of the Sauudi Air Force was shot down with MANPADs, both crew members died;
• December 30, 2015 – a F-16 jet of the Bahraini Air Force was lost due to a “technical malfunction” in Jizan;
• March 14, 2016 – the UAE Air Force lost a Mirage-2000-9 jet south of Aden, both pilots died;
• June 12, 2016 – a UAE helicopter was shot down over the sea near the port of Mocha;
• June 13, 2016 – a UAE helicopter was lost near Aden;
• June 25, 2016 – an Apache helicopter of the Sauudi Air Force was shot down (allegedly crashed because of the weather) over the province of Marib, both pilots died.
• February 24, 2017 – a F-16 fighter of the Royal Jordanian Air Force was lost in the province of Najran;
• April 18, 2017 – a Black Hawk helicopter of the Saudi Air Force was shot down in Marib;
• August 11, 2017 – a UAE Air Force helicopter crashed, 4 crew members died.

Fighting at sea

Naval military operations are reduced to a sea blockade and the shelling of the Yemeni coast by the forces of the coalition. The Houthis retaliate with anti-ship missiles against the Navy of the coalition countries.

• On October 7, 2015 the Yemeni Coastal Defense Forces (YCDF) hit a ship of the Saudi coalition with a PKR “P-20” or its analogue of Chinese or Iranian production. Shortly after a burning and sinking ship washed ashore. It turns out that the struck target was the Saudi fuel-tanker Boraida with a displacement of 11,200 tons
• On October 10, the YCDF launched a missile at a Baynunah-class corvette, belonging to the UAE Navy, with a displacement of 630 tons. The missile hit its target and the ship sunk.
• On October 10, the YCDF launched a missile at a La Fayette-class frigate of the Saudi Navy, Al Damman. Its displacement is 4,650 tons. The missile hit its target and the ship was damaged. According to some reports it later sunk.
• On October 10, the YCDF launched a missile at a Baynunah-class corvette, belonging to the UAE Navy, with a displacement of 630 tons. The missile successfully struck its target.
• On November 7, the YCDF launched a missile at what looks like a Saudi guard ship carrying a helicopter. The missile destroyed the target.
• On November 8, the YCDF launched a missile at the coalition forces’ gunboat, which was shelling the coast.
• On November 15, several missiles were launched at a gunboat shelling the coast. It is reported that one missile hit the target and the ship was damaged. The target is identified as a Zulfiquar-class frigate with the number 254, which gives grounds to conclude that it is the Aslat.
• On November 24, a missile was launched at the ship of the Saudi-led coalition. The missile hit its target resulting in a large explosion on the ship.
• On December 5, the YCDF reported that it sunk another battle ship of the Saudi-led coalition. A missile struck a Baynunah-class corvette and sank it.
• On December 16, the YCDF launched a missile at another battleship of the Saudi-led coalition, which was sank or damaged.

In 2015, the Yemenis actively and successfully used anti-ship missiles of PK-20 class or its analogue of Chinese or Iranian production to cause significant damages to the naval forces of the Saudi coalition. 2015 was the year of the greatest intensity of military operations at sea. In addition to 10 sunken and damaged battle ships of the coalition, the Houthi-led forces damaged numerous support vessels, barges, tankers and other ships. In the coming years, the intensity of military operations at sea declined. Due to significant loses, the coalition was forced to limit the use of its naval forces. As for the Houthis, the large number of launches likely depleted their missile arsenal.

Despite this, some military action at sea continued. On October 2, 2016, the Houthis, with a help of a Chinese C-802 missile, destroyed the hybrid catamaran HSV-2 Swift that was leased by the UAE from the US. This vessel was used in the interest of the Arab coalition.

An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer of the US Navy, the USS Mason (board number 87), that possessed a guided missile armament was attacked on October 9, October 12 and October 15 of 2016. In all cases, Chinese-made S-802A anti-ship missiles or their direct counterparts of Iranian production, Nur, did not reach their targets. The low radar power of on-shore guidance systems and the active use of electronic warfare assets by the USS Mason’s crew were likely main reasons behind this scenario. Perhaps the main purpose of these attacks was to probe the destroyer’s protection systems.

On January 30, 2017 the Saudi Navy’s Al Madinah-class frigate was attacked on the western coast of Yemen by the Houthis. A strong explosion ensued. According to official data, two crew members were killed and three were wounded.

On April 3, 2018 a Saudi tanker was attacked with an anti-ship missile in international waters south of the Hodeida province. The vessel received only minor damage and continued its course.

It is difficult to confirm how many targets were sunk. The degree of damages is different, and even ships that receive severe damages can be restored. On the other hand, the coalition’s navy unequivocally suffered irreplaceable losses. Perhaps this was the reason why the Saudi Navy put an order to Spain for 5 new corvettes of the Avante 2200 class. The contract was valued at 3.3 billion.

Humanitarian situation in Yemen

A long civil war, complicated by external intervention, brought Yemen to a humanitarian catastrophe. According to the Yemen Centre for Human Rights and Development, in the spring of 2015, more than 10,000 civilians were killed as a result of air strikes by the coalition. According to UN estimates, three quarters of the population of Yemen – 22.2 million people – need humanitarian assistance.

During the war, Yemen became the largest zone for humanitarian disaster in the world. On the eve of the intervention the country was 90% dependent on the import of medicines and food. At present it is the largest center of cholera on the planet. 700,000 people are infected with cholera, 44% of all new cases in the world and 32% of those dying from cholera in the recent months are recorded among children under 15 years old. In December 2017, about six million doses of the diphtheria vaccine were delivered by a chartered UNICEF airplane to Sana’a. This suggests that in addition to the cholera epidemic, the UN is also afraid of outbreaks of diphtheria.

Nine million people are at the point of starvation. 400,000 children already suffer from acute malnutrition. At least 14.8 million people don’t have access to medical aid. After the introduction of the blockade, wheat flour in Yemen went up by 30%, the price of fuel doubled. In some areas, drinking water costs 600 times more than it did before the blockade. The country has high infant mortality rate from hunger and cholera.

UN experts for human rights came to the conclusion that one of the causes for the severe humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen was the air and sea blockade by the coalition. As a result of this blockade, the work of seaports was in disarray, imports of food, fuel and medicines were disrupted. Unjustified delays in issuing permits for entry of ships into Yemeni ports or refusals for such entries became routine practice from the coalition forces.

4. Propaganda

The Ansar Allah movement has developed its own media strategy to spread their ideas. This strategy largely borrows the ideas of Lebanese Hezbollah. It consists of the release of news stories, videos, dissemination of information through newspapers and forums in social networks. Like the Hezbollah media, the media of Ansar Allah is religious in nature and focuses on combating the US-Saudi invasion. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the current leader of the movement, makes speeches that are very similar to those of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.

In 2011, the movement launched its official satellite TV channel, Al-Masirah. The channel has two offices: one in the southern suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut and another in the Yemeni capital. Two local radio channels stations in Sana’a: al-Masira Radio and Sam FM. There are additional radio stations in other provinces of Yemen. The movement’s biggest focus is print media, given that a significant number of Yemenis do not have access to television due to ongoing fighting and the blockade. Ansar Allah has up to 25 printed and electronic newspapers that spread the ideas of movement. The publications of Al-Masira, Al-Masar, Al-Hawiya and Al-Diyar are important to mention, with Al-Masar mobile and Al-Masira mobile being some of the most important electronic news services. The movement controls part of the state media, including the state news agency SABA and about a dozen of the regional media networks. Some independent or semi-independent groups of activists also support the movement. One of the most popular of these groups is the Yemen Wrath.

The Houthis are very active in producing video reports from direct points of combat. This footage is the basis of content about the conflict on the Internet but is strictly censored on the leading social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc., making it difficult to distribute.

Reasons for censorship include regular demonstration of corpses, primarily of the coalition soldiers, excessive naturalism and lack of English broadcasting. Recently there has been an improvement in the quality of produced video content. Earlier videos just showed scenes from the battlefield, now the videos frequently feature voiceovers and animation.

The Ansar Allah propaganda uses established terminology, where the deceased supporters of the movement are represented as martyrs and active fighters are depicted as mujahideens. The movement actively uses graffiti and banners on buildings to spread their messages on the streets. These often include slogans and Suras from the Koran, the Prophet’s utterances, and quotes from the founder of the Houthi movement.

Ansar Allah created a number of bands that perform traditional mountain songs in al-Zamel, which is located in the north of the country. Their music glorifies different tribes, war, courage and faith. These songs coincide in many ways with the tone, rhythm and technique of Hezbollah’s songs, as they use the religious connotations associated with jihad. They are broadcasted on television and radio stations belonging to the Houthies in areas under their control, especially near frontlines. The Houthis also use cars with loudspeakers that drive through densely populated areas and streets of Yemen.

5. Sources of income and financing

Currently, the bulk of external financing comes from Iran and the Yemeni diaspora abroad. At the start of 2010’s around 1.5 to 2 million Yemenis lived outside the country, mainly in the oil-producing countries of the Persian Gulf (about 800 thousand in Saudi Arabia) as well as in Djibouti and Indonesia. Small Yemeni diasporas exist in the UK (the largest is in western Europe – up to 80,000 people), the US and Canada. According to Yemeni government sources, up to 4 billion annually was contributed from foreign workers from Saudi Arabia alone. However, with the beginning of the conflict, the flow of money has dried up. Even before the outbreak of hostilities against the Houthis in 2013, the bulk of workers from Yemen were deported by the Saudi leadership and currently the number of workers from Yemen there is minimal.

A number of experts believe that Iran’s financial assistance does not exceed 10-20 million dollars a year. It should be noted that the Islamic Republic’s capacity to provide assistance to Yemen is now limited, as Iran is also providing financial assistance, weapon and personnel to Hezbollah as well as to Shia militias in Syria and Iraq. Moreover, Yemen is currently under a sea and land blockade. Therefore, the possibilities to assist the Houthis are severely limited. Several Iranian vessels captured by the forces of the coalition in 2014 contained rockets for  multiple rocket launchers, MANPADS, RPG-7 grenade launchers, explosives, cartridges, small arms and Iranian-made night vision devices. Thus, it can be concluded that the movement prefers to receive assistance in kind, as the possibility of independent operation in the arms market is now limited.

After the seizure of Sana’a and the deposition of Hadi’s government, almost all portable and stationary property of the Islamist party “al-Isla” was confiscated. The entrance of the Houthis into the capital was so rapid that neither the representatives of the “al-Isla” nor the members of the Government of President Hadi had time to remove or hide their finances or valuables such as jewelry. Several tonnes of gold bullions were confiscated in the homes of a number of high-ranking functionaries of the party of “al-Isla “. In addition, the Houthis acquired the holdings of the Central Bank.

However, all this happened during the first stage of the conflict. The war lasted several years and resources, such as the holdings of the central bank, are now depleted. The Houthis were cut off from major oil fields in the south and in Ma’rib. Currently, funding sources of the Houthis are limited. The main sources of financing are drawn from within the country. According to some data, the management of the Houthis taxed retail and almost fully monopolized large wholesale trade in the country.

6. Relations with local players and role in the Middle East

Saleh and his forces

The relations between the Houthis and the late President Saleh can be characterized as paradoxical. As a descendant of the Sanhan tribe, which was part of the most powerful coalition of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was able to maintain more or less peaceful relations between the various tribal groups in the Yemeni Arab Republic (YAR) before its unification with the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) in 1990. Saleh was previously the president of the YAR and expressed support for the US after the events of September 11, 2011. At the time, US actions in Afghanistan and Iraq lead to a sharply negative view of the US among the population of Yemen and the president’s popularity plummeted, both among the Sunni and the Shia Zaidis.

The assassination of the leader of the Houthis, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, in 2004 led to a direct confrontation between the Houthis and the then-acting president, resulting in political instability and a series of internal armed conflicts, which ended in 2010. After the overthrow of Saleh in 2011, the place of the president was occupied by his deputy Hadi, who is actually a puppet of Saudi Arabia. The subsequent political dialogue between the opposing forces did not lead to tangible results. By 2014, the political process stalled and the parties had once again moved to armed confrontation. In September of the same year, the Houthis forced Hadi to flee from Sana’a. In this phase of conflict, Saleh and his supporters became allied with the Houthis.

This state of affairs did not please Saudi Arabia. A group of nine countries under the Saudi leadership launched a military campaign against Yemen. The conflict lingered. Being an experienced politician, Saleh decided to re-take matters into his own hands and turned against the Houthis. “Yemeni citizens have tried to tolerate the recklessness of the Houthis over the last two and half years but I cannot. I call on the brothers in neighbouring countries to stop the aggression, to lift the blockade. Let’s turn this page.” Saleh said in a televised address on December 2, 2017. With this statement he angered all the sides of the conflict. On December 4, 2017 his car was hit by a grenade launcher and Saleh died. After his death, a smaller part of his supporters joined the coalition and pro-Hadi forces, while a large part of them recognized the power of the Houthis as legitimate. It is also known that Saleh has a son, Ahmed, who now resides in the UAE. It is probable that the coalition may declare him as a legitimate ruler of Yemen.

The Southern Movement

The Southern Movement known as al-Hirak is a popular movement for the re-establishment of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. Al-Hirak – is the main force in the south of the country, a coalition of different parties, groups and tribes. It has two branches: a moderate branch, seeking autonomy within a single state, and a radical branch led by former Socialist leader Ali Salem al-Beidh. The movement became active in 2007.

For more than 120 years, South Yemen was a British colony. After acquiring independence, the region chose to become a social state. As a result, the rule of law, a system of free health, education and social welfare, were the pride of southern Yemenis. After unification, the standard of living fell sharply causing discontent among the population in the southern part of the country. Many people in Aden speak foreign languages or have technical education as opposed to those living in northern Yemen.

Until recently, relations between the parties were complicated by an alliance of the Southern Movement with pro-Saudi President Hadi. Thanks to this alliance, the Southern Movement received military and financial assistance from the coalition. In January 2018, there was a disagreement between the allies. Hadi’s supporters and forces of the Southern Movement entered into clashes.

In this situation, the disagreements between Saudi Arabia and the UAE became evident. Dubai does not agree with the role that Saudi Arabia assigns it in the region. Political leadership of the UAE decided to make an independent move, by supporting the Southern Movement, through which it can support its own interests in the region. On one hand, the conflict between the Southern Movement and Hadi supporters helps the Houthis as former allies became enemies. On the other hand, a new player, the UAE, entered the arena.

Hadi government

When President Saleh was forced to resign, Hadi became his successor. Hadi won the early presidential election, being the only candidate and having unlimited administrative control. However, he could not carry out urgent political reforms and hold power. He was viewed critically by most people in South and North of the country. During the Houthi offensive, Hadi fled south to Aden, and territories loyal to him surrendered one after another. Aden was the only source of resistance where the Southerners fought against the Houthis. Having stopped the Houthis in Aden, the Southern Movement, with the support of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, later occupied almost the entire territory of the former South Yemen, after which, the front froze. Poorly armed Yemenis from the north, were unable to defeat Yemenis in the south, but easily coped with Saudi and Emirati special forces, backed up by armored vehicles and aviation.

Hadi soldiers and their Saudi allies were unable to break the resistance of the Houthis outside southern Yemen.  In turn, the supporters of President Hadi did not need Sana’a. They were more concerned with establishing control for Aden and what had to be done with the territory that was captured from the Houthis, where the Southern Movement was gaining strength.

Iran, Hezbollah and the countries of the “Shia Crescent”

The basis of the interaction between Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis lies in the field of information and propaganda, as well as military-technical cooperation. The Houthis take the experience of Hezbollah in the field of mass media and use information resources of the Lebanese movement to promote their own interests. Iran assists in weapon supplies and provides technical specialists and military advisers from members of Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Today, a bloc of ideologically and socially similar movements, organizations and states is being formed on the territory stretching from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, meaning on the territory of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

It is likely that the members of this bloc seem to strive towards the following objectives:

1. Maintaining the territorial integrity and sovereignty of their countries.
2. The establishment of full-scale cooperation in the field of defense and security against the threats of Islamic extremism and the aggressive foreign policy of Israel and the US.
3. Development of a common political outlook allowing for improvement of the quality of cooperation in various industries.

This block, in one way or another, includes modern Yemen. The current role of Yemen and the Ansar Allah movement is to restrain expansion and to limit the possibility of active foreign policy in the Middle East by the pro-Western monarchies of the Persian Gulf. The monarchies are forced to divert resources to operations in Yemen. This undermines their economy and morale of the armed forces.

Saudi Arabia

Relations between Yemen and Saudi Arabia remain extremely tense and have been so for a long period of time. The reasons for the confrontation lie in the history, culture and interplay of the various tribes and peoples of the Arabian Peninsula.

For example, in the first half of the 20th century, there were three districts of predominantly Zaidi-Shia and Ismaili population – Asir, Najran, Jizan – were occupied by Saudi troops. The hostilities in which Yemen was defeated ceased after the signing of the Taif Treaty (23 June 1934). Through it, Saudi Arabia obtained recognition by the Yemeni government of its control of Asir, Jizan and parts of Najran. The Houthis believe that the occupied provinces and the tribes that reside there must return to Yemen. The Ahrar al-Najran movement operates in the province of Najran. It stands for independence from the kingdom. The movement arose after Riyadh violated previous treaties between the kingdom and the tribes during the Saudi operations against the southern neighbor.

Shias living in the areas of Asir, Najran, Jizan, which now belong to Saudi Arabia, constitute a large part of the population, but do not have the same rights as the Sunni majority. This tense situation became worse when in March and November 2011 the Shias of Saudi Arabia held rallies, which were brutally dispersed by the authorities. In January 2016, the kingdom’s authorities executed a prominent Shia preacher Nimr al-Nimr and 46 of his supporters, causing a new escalation between Sunnis and Shias.

The observed pattern of behavior of the Saudi regime against Yemen is likely based on the risks associated with Shia rebellion for secession from Saudi Arabia. A similar scenario was considered by the New York Times in 2013 when they published a map of the kingdom, split into 5 states. This map was made on the basis of the geographical settlement of the tribes.

The scenario involves the creation of a new state: East Arabia, along the coast of the Hormuz Strait. The Hejaz region will belong to Western Arabia. The lands bordering Yemen were depicted under Southern Arabia. Part of the northern regions of the country were transferred to Northern Arabia, and the current Saudi Arabia was left with the central part of the country with the capital of Riyadh, which was to become the new capital of the Wahabistan.

This can explain why the country is fighting with the Houthis for so long and so stubbornly, ignoring the loss of people and resources. The kingdom is waging a war to keep its current existence. Another reason for the kingdom’s intervention in the Yemeni conflict lies in the logistical factor that has to do with oil. Yemen contains the oil port of Aden, which is the key to the transit of hydrocarbons in the Middle East.

The UAE

The battle against the supporters of Ansar Allah, AQAP and ISIS is the declared goal of the Arabian coalition in Yemen. However, the leading members of the Coalition (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) adhere to fundamentally different points of view. While expeditionary forces of Saudi Arabia remain uninvolved in anti-terrorist operations, UAE units with the support of unmanned US aviation, conducted a number of successful operations against Al-Qaeda in Handramaut (including the liberation of the administrative Centre of al-Mukalla) and in the area of Aden. In the view of the authorities from the Emirates, the main objective of the operation in Yemen should be to prevent the spread of terrorism in the Arabian Peninsula, not to fight Shia rebels.

The UAE has reacted quite harshly to Saudi Arabia’s desire to dominate both the region and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The Emiratis rightly believe that their country, having achieved considerable success in the sphere of economy and having gained sufficiently solid political capital, achieved a significant prestige in the world community, became the largest financial center in the Gulf, and no longer deserves to remain the secondary actor in the region.

While Riyadh supports President Hadi and is involved in action in Yemen, the UAE is gaining influence in the south of the country, where they are embodying their project to control the main ports of the Gulf of Aden and to attract the Southern Movement to their side. For example, UAE military bases in the Aden Gulf are already located on the island of Socotra (Yemen), in the port of Assab, including the airport (Eritrea), the port of Djibouti, including the airport, on the basis of Berbera (Somalia). Since June 16, 2016, the UAE ceased its fully-fledged participation in the Yemeni operation. Foreign Minister of the UAE Anwar Gargash announced that the military intervention in Yemen had achieved all of its goals, the war for the Emirate troops is almost over and they will remain in the country to monitor a political process and help Yemeni security structures in the captured areas. Another reason to leave the coalition was the appointment of General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who was the commander of the loyalist Yemeni troops since February 2016, to the post of Vice President of Yemen. This was regarded as an insult in Abu Dhabi. This high-ranking military official is a member of the al-Isla party, a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, most importantly the leadership of the UAE left after seeing doubtful results and even more vague prospects of the operation. According to official data of the UAE, during the years of intervention, the country lost more than 120 people, not counting armament and military equipment. These are an unacceptable loss for the country. Therefore, since June 2016, the UAE troops are mainly engaged in ensuring the security of their bases in al-Mukalla and on the island of Socotra, while their participation in operations in northern Yemen is very limited.

In this regard, it can be predicted that the UAE will continue a limited participation in the conflict, while trying to control the Southern Movement, and, consequently, the infrastructure of ports in the southern part of the country.

Impact of the Yemeni conflict on the balance of power in the region

Currently, Yemen is a very complex node of conflicts. There is no single method to achieve peace within the country, in the region, and perhaps throughout the world. If the coalition continues its efforts with increased strength, it is likely that the Houthis will have to leave the capital and use the north-western part of the country as their main foothold. This will be accompanied by guerrilla warfare on the territory of the districts of Asir, Jizan and Najran, in which the Houthis will assist Ahrar al-Najran. In case of a military-political conflict in the region, the Houthis will be increasingly drawn into the orbit of Iran. Yemen will remain the front of regional conflicts, which would influence the global military-political agenda.

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Did the U.S. “intelligence community” judge that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election?

Most commentators seem to think so. Every news report I have read of the planned meeting of Presidents Trump and Putin in July refers to “Russian interference” as a fact and asks whether the matter will be discussed. Reports that President Putin denied involvement in the election are scoffed at, usually with a claim that the U.S. “intelligence community” proved Russian interference. In fact, the U.S. “intelligence community” has not done so. The intelligence community as a whole has not been tasked to make a judgment and some key members of that community did not participate in the report that is routinely cited as “proof” of “Russian interference.”

I spent the 35 years of my government service with a “top secret” clearance. When I reached the rank of ambassador and also worked as Special Assistant to the President for National Security, I also had clearances for “codeword” material. At that time, intelligence reports to the president relating to Soviet and European affairs were routed through me for comment. I developed at that time a “feel” for the strengths and weaknesses of the various American intelligence agencies. It is with that background that I read the January 6, 2017 report of three intelligence agencies: the CIA, FBI, and NSA.

This report is labeled “Intelligence Community Assessment,” but in fact it is not that. A report of the intelligence community in my day would include the input of all the relevant intelligence agencies and would reveal whether all agreed with the conclusions. Individual agencies did not hesitate to “take a footnote” or explain their position if they disagreed with a particular assessment. A report would not claim to be that of the “intelligence community” if any relevant agency was omitted.

The report states that it represents the findings of three intelligence agencies: CIA, FBI, and NSA, but even that is misleading in that it implies that there was a consensus of relevant analysts in these three agencies. In fact, the report was prepared by a group of analysts from the three agencies pre-selected by their directors, with the selection process generally overseen by James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Clapper told the Senate in testimony May 8, 2017, that it was prepared by “two dozen or so analysts—hand-picked, seasoned experts from each of the contributing agencies.” If you can hand-pick the analysts, you can hand-pick the conclusions. The analysts selected would have understood what Director Clapper wanted since he made no secret of his views. Why would they endanger their careers by not delivering?

What should have struck any congressperson or reporter was that the procedure Clapper followed was the same as that used in 2003 to produce the report falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had retained stocks of weapons of mass destruction. That should be worrisome enough to inspire questions, but that is not the only anomaly.

The DNI has under his aegis a National Intelligence Council whose officers can call any intelligence agency with relevant expertise to draft community assessments. It was created by Congress after 9/11 specifically to correct some of the flaws in intelligence collection revealed by 9/11. Director Clapper chose not to call on the NIC, which is curious since its duty is “to act as a bridge between the intelligence and policy communities.”

Clapper (far right): Picked who he wanted. (Office of Director of National Intelligence)

Unusual FBI Participation

During my time in government, a judgment regarding national security would include reports from, as a minimum, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) of the State Department. The FBI was rarely, if ever, included unless the principal question concerned law enforcement within the United States. NSA might have provided some of the intelligence used by the other agencies but normally did not express an opinion regarding the substance of reports.

What did I notice when I read the January report? There was no mention of INR or DIA! The exclusion of DIA might be understandable since its mandate deals primarily with military forces, except that the report attributes some of the Russian activity to the GRU, Russian military intelligence. DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, is the U.S. intelligence organ most expert on the GRU. Did it concur with this attribution? The report doesn’t say.

The omission of INR is more glaring since a report on foreign political activity could not have been that of the U.S. intelligence community without its participation. After all, when it comes to assessments of foreign intentions and foreign political activity, the State Department’s intelligence service is by far the most knowledgeable and competent. In my day, it reported accurately on Gorbachev’s reforms when the CIA leaders were advising that Gorbachev had the same aims as his predecessors.

This is where due diligence comes in. The first question responsible journalists and politicians should have asked is “Why is INR not represented? Does it have a different opinion? If so, what is that opinion? Most likely the official answer would have been that this is “classified information.” But why should it be classified? If some agency heads come to a conclusion and choose (or are directed) to announce it publicly, doesn’t the public deserve to know that one of the key agencies has a different opinion?

The second question should have been directed at the CIA, NSA, and FBI: did all their analysts agree with these conclusions or were they divided in their conclusions? What was the reason behind hand-picking analysts and departing from the customary practice of enlisting analysts already in place and already responsible for following the issues involved?

State Department Intel Silenced

As I was recently informed by a senior official, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence Research did, in fact, have a different opinion but was not allowed to express it. So the January report was not one of the “intelligence community,” but rather of three intelligence agencies, two of which have no responsibility or necessarily any competence to judge foreign intentions. The job of the FBI is to enforce federal law. The job of NSA is to intercept the communications of others and to protect ours. It is not staffed to assess the content of what is intercepted; that task is assumed by others, particularly the CIA, the DIA (if it is military) or the State Department’s INR (if it is political).

The second thing to remember is that reports of the intelligence agencies reflect the views of the heads of the agencies and are not necessarily a consensus of their analysts’ views. The heads of both the CIA and FBI are political appointments, while the NSA chief is a military officer; his agency is a collector of intelligence rather than an analyst of its import, except in the fields of cryptography and communications security.

One striking thing about the press coverage and Congressional discussion of the January report, and of subsequent statements by CIA, FBI, and NSA heads is that questions were never posed regarding the position of the State Department’s INR, or whether the analysts in the agencies cited were in total agreement with the conclusions.

Let’s put these questions aside for the moment and look at the report itself. On the first page of text, the following statement leapt to my attention:

“We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.”

Now, how can one judge whether activity “interfered” with an election without assessing its impact? After all, if the activity had no impact on the outcome of the election, it could not be properly termed interference. This disclaimer, however, has not prevented journalists and politicians from citing the report as proof that “Russia interfered” in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

As for particulars, the report is full of assertion, innuendo, and description of “capabilities” but largely devoid of any evidence to substantiate its assertions. This is “explained” by claiming that much of the evidence is classified and cannot be disclosed without revealing sources and methods. The assertions are made with “high confidence” or occasionally, “moderate confidence.” Having read many intelligence reports I can tell you that if there is irrefutable evidence of something it will be stated as a fact. The use of the term “high confidence” is what most normal people would call “our best guess.” “Moderate confidence” means “some of our analysts think this might be true.”

Guccifer 2.0: A Fabrication

Among the assertions are that a persona calling itself “Guccifer 2.0” is an instrument of the GRU, and that it hacked the emails on the Democratic National Committee’s computer and conveyed them to Wikileaks. What the report does not explain is that it is easy for a hacker or foreign intelligence service to leave a false trail. In fact, a program developed by CIA with NSA assistance to do just that has been leaked and published.

Retired senior NSA technical experts have examined the “Guccifer 2.0” data on the web and have concluded that “Guccifer 2.0’s” data did not involve a hack across the web but was locally downloaded. Further, the data had been tampered with and manipulated, leading to the conclusion that “Guccifer 2.0” is a total fabrication.

The report’s assertions regarding the supply of the DNC emails to Wikileaks are dubious, but its final statement in this regard is important: “Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.”  In other words, what was disclosed was the truth! So, Russians are accused of “degrading our democracy” by revealing that the DNC was trying to fix the nomination of a particular candidate rather than allowing the primaries and state caucuses to run their course. I had always thought that transparency is consistent with democratic values. Apparently those who think that the truth can degrade democracy have a rather bizarre—to put it mildly–concept of democracy.

Most people, hearing that it is a “fact” that “Russia” interfered in our election must think that Russian government agents hacked into vote counting machines and switched votes to favor a particular candidate. This, indeed, would be scary, and would justify the most painful sanctions. But this is the one thing that the “intelligence” report of January 6, 2017, states did not happen. Here is what it said:

“DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.”

This is an important statement by an agency that is empowered to assess the impact of foreign activity on the United States. Why was it not consulted regarding other aspects of the study? Or—was it in fact consulted and refused to endorse the findings? Another obvious question any responsible journalist or competent politician should have asked.

Prominent American journalists and politicians seized upon this shabby, politically motivated, report as proof of “Russian interference” in the U.S. election without even the pretense of due diligence. They have objectively acted as co-conspirators in an effort to block any improvement in relations with Russia, even though cooperation with Russia to deal with common dangers is vital to both countries.

This is only part of the story of how, without good reason, U.S.-Russian relations have become dangerously confrontational. God willin and the crick don’t rise, I’ll be musing about other aspects soon.

*

(Thanks to Ray McGovern and Bill Binney for their research assistance.)

This article was originally published on JackMatlock.com.

Jack Matlock is a career diplomat who served on the front lines of American diplomacy during the Cold War and was U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union when the Cold War ended. Since retiring from the Foreign Service, he has focused on understanding how the Cold War ended and how the lessons from that experience might be applied to public policy today.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) applauds the work and recommendations of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group’s (CPPFG) following its March 30th to April 6th educational trip to Palestine. The delegation report, issued late last month, provides a detailed account of the MPs’ itinerary and experiences, while highlighting the struggle of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation.

The CPPFG sent its report to the Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, with a number of recommendations for the government, including:

1) That the government should work with international partners to:

• Appoint a Special Envoy to help protect the human rights of Palestinian children living under Israeli military law;
• Hold Israeli military authorities accountable to their obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law;
• Keep working to encourage all parties to take necessary diplomatic efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis.

2) That the government should continue to increase its support for the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

3) That the government should work to bring about a halt to Israeli settlement construction in the Palestinian Territories.

CJPME President Thomas Woodley reacted saying,

“This report confirms the brutal reality of Israel’s military occupation and suppression of Palestinian human rights. The Canadian government cannot afford to ignore these principled and timely recommendations.”

As such, CJPME calls the government to heed the report and begin to seriously address Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international law.

CJPME commends the delegation from the CPPFG for making the trip, making observations on the ground, and taking a principled stand for Palestinian human rights. CJPME has long encouraged members of Parliament to visit the West Bank and other Palestinian territories to gain a better perspective on the harsh realities on the ground for Palestinians. CJPME is hopeful that the bi-partisan CPPFG delegation will be able to positively influence the Canadian government to foster policies that facilitate a just and peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Featured image: Border wall between Turkish Karkamis and Syrian Jarabulus

When we first met in 2017, the Turkish poet, Mustafa Goren, stood proudly and defiantly next to a monstrous concrete wall built on orders from Ankara. The partition has just recently separated two towns with the same culture: Turkish Karkamis and Syrian Jarabulus.

The poet then read some of his verses, and my friend, a translator of my books, originally from the city of Adana, tried to keep pace, interpreting.

The poem began with quite an unusual opening, and it warned Europe and its people: 

“One day, true leaders of the world will come, and they’ll cut off all the gas and petrol supplies to you, and you’ll find yourself in even deeper shit than the one into which you are throwing this part of the world! You’ll have to burn your designer clothes and shoes, just to stay warm. You forgot, but you will soon be reminded, Europe: we are all human beings!”

He was raising his right hand accusingly, shouting towards the sky. Somehow, he looked like the Soviet revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovski.

The poet was obviously indignant. It was 2017 then. Everything at the border was still raw, new, and terribly painful. Everything, good and bad, seemed to be possible: full-scale Turkish – Syria war, even a war between Turkey and Russia, or perhaps a Turkish exit from NATO and much closer alliance with Russia and Iran against the West.

Image on the right: Mustafa Goren

Like so many patriots and thinkers in his country, Mustafa Goren strongly disliked the West. He was expressing his full-hearted support for his friends – the people and the state of Syria.

Stopping the Syrian war was all that mattered to him; it was his mission. He was sustaining himself by selling cigarettes on the street of Carsi Mahallesi; a street that hugs the borderline and now the wall. 

He did not care how he was making a living, as long as he had time to create, to write, to recite. He was full of determination, zeal and optimism.

*

Now, when I met him one year later, things definitely looked different. It was 2018, a different era, and totally different Karkamis. 

The wall was still there, as well as the Turkish military operations behind it. The poet was still living and struggling in Karkamis, too, but his face looked defeated and tired. Now he was working in a small café. He was broke. His eyes had lost all their previous shine:

“Turkey is now fighting against the European Union… in ,” he said. But somehow it did not sound convincing.

My comrades and I then drove one kilometer towards the Euphrates River; to the ancient cemetery with a commanding view of the border and the Syrian town of Jarabulus.

This has been the best place in the area to take a leak, to film the border and to observe Turkish military operations inside Syria. 

This time, shrapnel was flying too close, and the explosions were loud.

Two veiled ladies who were visiting the cemetery, spotted us.

“What are you looking for in this godforsaken ,” one of them asked. She gave us a hostile, or perhaps desperate look:

“What do you think you will find here? We are tired of this fight. We are bored of this conflict. All we want to do is to leave this place; to go far, very far away…”

We heard more shells flying nearby, and more explosions.

The lady couldn’t stop:

“Go away! Don’t you understand: we don’t want any foreigners here. Foreigners are the cause of this conflict!”

We tried to find our old contacts, including Mr. Bulent Polat, a Kemalist from the opposition Republican People’s Party. But his shop on the main street was gone, hermetically sealed. Nearby, an armored vehicle was parked, unceremoniously.

Like almost everyone we spoke to in Karkamis, Mr. Polat was a strong opponent of the war. And he was especially against the Turkish involvement in it:

“I know what we are doing there, across the border! To mobilize people against Assad, the anti-government militants supported by Turkey and the West, have been dressing in official Syrian military uniforms, then shoot at the civilians, killing many. Then they say: ‘Assad did it!’ It has been happening all over Syria.”

Now Mr. Polat was gone.

Mustafa Goren, the poet, ordered tea for all of us. Then he sat down at a simple table, holding his head between two palms, before beginning to speak:

“Nobody wants to stay here, at the border, anymore. In Karkamis, there is more Syrians than Turks, now. If Syrians leave, the whole place will turn to a ghost town.”

Then he begins mixing everything together:

“Turkey is not fighting against the PKK and the Kurdish terrorist groups here and in Syria – it is fighting against the European Union. This is our own, internal issue, and if we have to die in this fight, we will!”

Such discourse can be heard all over Turkey. It is difficult and for many foreigners, hard to follow, but it is how it is. Turkey is in a complex transition: from where is obvious, but to where, almost no one knows.

“Mustafa,” I asked him softly. Despite all this pain, desperation and confusion, he is my comrade, a fellow poet. “What about Russia?”

His eyes softened up, as well as his entire facial expression:

“Russians never stabbed Turks in the back. During WWI, they helped us against the West, at Galipoli. They are honest people. We have to coordinate with the Russians…”

He nods towards the explosions.

For a while, we sit quietly, listening. Then we embrace. It is time to go.

*

Karkamis is getting de-populated. It is alarming but understandable. It is becoming truly dangerous to live here. Plus, there is almost no work left in this area. 

The entire frontier region used to rely heavily on trade with Syria. There were strong friendships forged between the individuals and families on both sides of the border. People were visiting each other, and they were intermarrying. Goods and services were flowing between Turkey and Syria almost freely.

Now, there is a full stop. The border can only be crossed by armored vehicles, tanks, and ambulances. They are going back and forth, bringing soldiers, carrying the wounded and even corpses. No civilian can pass.

Further west, Elbeyli town is a bizarre hive of spies, a fortification. Everything here is monitored. It is because from here, the Turkish military forces are constantly invading Syrian territory. Here, no one dares to speak. To ask questions leads to immediate phone calls, arrests and interrogations.

Entrance to a refugee camp near Elbeyli

Now, many villages around Elbeyli are half-empty. It is an eerie sight. The war has ruined entire communities.

What is thriving is the construction business. Not of the infrastructure, but of the military bases, spy antennas and above all, of the walls. An enormous, monstrous wall, which separates two countries – Turkey and Syria, in the past two inseparable sisters – is now scarring this ancient land. It is around 900 kilometers long, they say. How much money, how much concrete is being poured into it, and why?

Then the City of Killis. 

We are shown destroyed walls of a house; a place “where rockets fell recently from the Syrian territory”. This is what the Turkish government uses as its justification for the invasion.

The local people have it all very clear. Several of them declare openly, but without revealing their names:

“If only the Turkish government and military would coordinate their operations with the legitimate government in Damascus!”

New Turkish military base near Killis and Syrian border

Things are tough in Killis. Like elsewhere along the border, businesses are closing down. An owner of a kebab stall couldn’t find any job for more than a year and had to try his luck in far-away Jakarta; in Indonesia which is much poorer than Turkey. He came back, had some luck and has now turned into an ultra-nationalist:

“Now the world can see the power of Turks!” He declared, passionately, voicing his full support for the invasion.

But here, at the border, he is clearly in the minority.

At a barbershop, “Salon Hassan”, several people are gathered, just in order to discuss politics. The most common assessment of the situation is:

“The biggest mistake is that the Turkish military is not coordinating its operations with President Assad.”

We are told that

“some 8.000 of the refugees living in the camps all over the region are now returning back to Syria.”

But Turkey is hosting more than 3.5 million Syrian migrants. The situation is extremely complex, as intercommunal violence between Turks and Syrians tripled in the second half of 2017.

Turkish president Erdogan often declares that it is mainly because of his military forces operating across the border, that so many Syrian refugees now feel safe to return home. “Nonsense”, most Syrian people reply to such claims.

“It is because of the Syrian army, President Assad, and his Russian and Iranian allies! Legitimate Syrian government is now winning the war. Only because of that, things are much safer for the Syrian people.”

“We love Russians here,” a local man professed, loudly. Some citizens of Killis also love Erdogan, as well as President Assad of Syria. ‘Too much love?’ Too many contradictory feelings? It is Turkey, after all. Here, nothing is ever simple.

But what is Russia here, to these people? In many parts of Turkey and all over the Middle East, more than a country, Russia became a symbol of defiance, proof that the West and its deadly designs can be confronted and stopped.

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Things appear confusing, but in Turkey, they always are.

As we drive through this ancient, beautiful but wounded land, my Turkish friend and translator utters, in desperation:

“The ‘Elderdog’ (increasingly common derogatory nickname for the present leader) is going to lose during the next elections. I bet he is going to…”

“But is the Turkish policy towards NATO and towards Syria going to change, dramatically?” I wonder.

For a while, there is silence in the car.

“I wish hope,” friend, my comrade says, finally.

He doesn’t know. Of course, he doesn’t. In Turkey, anything is possible.

“I hope Turkey comes to its senses. I love this country,” I say honestly. “I am really tired of hating it.”

“So am I,” he nods.

We are literally licking a huge concrete wall. Behind it is Syria, clearly visible, beautiful.

Actually, it is all very simple. People there are fighting against terror and against the Western imperialism.

People here, in Turkey, are still at the wrong side of the barricade. But they are waking up; many of them already understand. They may soon join those who are fighting for the survival of humanity. They may. Hopefully they will.

(Note: as this essay goes to print, Turkish election polls are closing. 56 million voters have been able to cast their ballots, voting simultaneously in parliamentary and presidential elections. According to preliminary results, President Erdogan secured a  comfortable lead.) 

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

 All images in this article are from the author.

Tomorrow, July 4, 2018 is the 242 anniversary of the date chosen to stand as the date the 13 British colonies declared independence.  According to historians, the actual date independence was declared was July 2, 1776, with the vote of the Second Continental Congress.  Other historians have concluded that the Declaration of Independence was not actually signed until August 2. 

For many living in the colonies the event was not the glorious one that is presented in history books.  There was much opposition to the separation, and the “loyalists” were killed, confiscated, and forced to flee to Canada.  Some historians explain the event not as a great and noble enterprise of freedom and self-government, but as the manipulations of ambitious men who saw opportunity for profit and power.

For most Americans today the Fourth of July is a time for fireworks, picnics, and a patriotic speech extolling those who “fought for our freedom” and for those who defended it in wars ever since.  These are feel good speeches, but most of them make very little sense.  Many of our wars have been wars of empire, seizing lands from the Spanish, Mexicans, and indigenous tribes.  The US had no national interest in WW 1 and and very little in WW 2.  There was no prospect of Germany and Japan invading the US.  Once Hitler made the mistake of invading the Soviet Union, the European part World War 2 was settled by the Red Army.  The Japanese had no chance of standing up to Mao and Stalin. American participation was not very important to either outcome. 

No Fourth of July orator will say this, and it is unlikely any will make reference to the seven or eight countries that Washington has destroyed in whole or part during the 21st century or to the US overthrow of the various reform governments that have been elected in Latin America.  The Fourth of July is a performance to reinforce The Matrix in which Americans live.

When the Fourth of July comes around, I re-read the words of US Marine General Smedley Butler (image on the right).  General Butler is the most highly decorated US officer in history.  By the end of his career, he had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of only three men to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. 

Butler served in all officer ranks that existed in the US Marines of his time, from Second Lieutenant to Major General.  He said that

“during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.  In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”  

Butler says he was a long time escaping from The Matrix and that he wishes “more of today’s military personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elite as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad.”

Butler wrote:

“WAR is a racket. It always has been.

“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

“A few profit — and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

“The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nation’s manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation — it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted — to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.” See this.  

In November, 1935, Butler wrote in Common Sense magazine:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period . . . I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”   

The military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned Americans 57 years ago, adroitly uses the Fourth of July to portray America’s conflicts in a positive light in order to protect its power and profit institutionalized in the US government.  In stark contrast, by the end of his career General Butler saw it differently.  Washington has never fought for “freedom and democracy,” only for power and profit.  Butler said that “there are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.”

Today the anti-gun lobby and militarized police have made it very difficult to fight for the defense of our homes, and the War on Terror has destroyed the Bill of Rights.  If there could be a second American revolution, maybe we could try again.

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

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

Featured image: Members of the Aboghlou Women’s Cooperative in the Ourika Valley, Morocco (photo by the High Atlas Foundation).

This week we celebrate the United Nations International Day of Cooperatives, commemorated every year on the first Saturday of July. Cooperatives’ success in sustainable development, wealth creation, and poverty alleviation give many hope for an equitable future. As we commend cooperatives, it is important to recognize and understand how they function.

Cooperatives are largely based on the Rochdale Society in 1844 from England. In a time of terrible working conditions and low wages, this group of poor, English weavers  struggled to buy basic goods, like flour. Without a rich, capitalist donor, the members all pooled their money to collectively purchase necessities. Their contribution earned them a say in the management of the association, and an equitable distribution of the net profits.

As the first largely successful cooperative, their principles have endured. Further, cooperatives have been a model for communities to come together and lift themselves out of poverty through democratic practices. According to the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) today, they should follow seven rules:

1. Voluntary and Open Membership: anyone who can benefit and contribute can join.

2. Democratic Member Control: members participate in policy and decision-making.

3. Member Economic Participation: members contribute and manage the capital, the common property of the cooperative.

4. Autonomy and Independence: members control the cooperative in agreements with other organizations, governments, or external donors.

5. Education, Training, and Information: cooperatives give members life and work skills.

6. Cooperation among Cooperatives: cooperatives ought to empower each other.

7. Concern for Community: members sustainably develop their communities.

Cooperatives have shown promise in developing their local economies. They produce the supplies and reap the rewards, making decisions that holistically benefit everyone. They act as an economic mover in democracy and civic society building, helping communities articulate their needs. They allow people to collectively compete in markets, and individually elevate their roles in the economy and society.

In Morocco, the model most familiar to Westerners would be women’s cooperatives. Rural women have expressed a desire to work, earn money, and make decisions. By exporting fair trade handicrafts and products, they receive income where they were previously marginalized, unskilled, and relegated to household roles. For example, in the Ourika Valley, the Aboghlou Cooperative makes couscous and other dried goods. These 32 women got the capital necessary to grow almond seedlings for families and schools. In 2017, they also harvested and processed 60 kg of calendula flowers, selling to companies like L’Oreal.

The Aboghlou Women’s Cooperative at work drying calendula flowers (photo by the High Atlas Foundation).

International companies are proud to support these cooperatives and affirm their ethical consumerism. This has been a veritable boon for the economy. Additionally, Moroccan cooperatives like the Izourane Ouargane Women’s Cooperative produce and sell argan oil. By running a business and negotiating with Western cosmetic companies, the women earn and share both profit and respect. They learn through experience, growing more confident about how to manage a business.

Members of the Izourane Ouargane Women’s Cooperative in Essaouira process argan (photo by the High Atlas Foundation)

However, cooperatives are under threat from imposters and uncertainty. Foreigners that come to Morocco want to support women’s cooperatives and buy their products, but they are worried about insincere businesses that abuse the label to trick them. Their concern lies in tourist traps where the women only have performative roles, such as publicly sorting the argan products, but do not have their fair share of control or profit. They know that untrustworthy middlemen exploit their sympathy for women’s development and empowerment.

There is a broad asymmetry of market information in Morocco, especially for tourists. Sellers always have the advantage in knowing the true value of their goods, and in the souks, products are rarely branded, priced, or otherwise consistently labelled. Locals would have more expertise in discerning good quality materials from scams, but foreigners are more wary. Tourists are always pursuing authenticity in their new experiences, and want proof of legitimacy.

Accordingly, there needs to be an international verification for cooperatives. Just as products need to meet a standard to be certified organic, enterprises that claim to be cooperatives ought to meet a standard to use the label. The ICA launched the Cooperative Marque in 2013, to emphasize the viability of the cooperative structure as professional and contemporary. An expansion of that could decidedly label cooperatives for being ethical and developmental. The Moroccan Office du Développement de la Coopération has a form for cooperatives to register themselves, but this information is not easily or ostentatiously available on products. Cooperatives that claim to help women should be examined and have more legitimacy on a global scale.

Cooperatives have so much potential to sustainably lift people out of poverty. They can move people from subsistence agriculture to international commerce, bring communities together to capitalize on their shared resources, and improve living standards alongside economic opportunities. However, they need help. Cooperatives need assistance with facilitating dialogue and certification from an international standard. Cooperatives are founded upon trust between their members and the global public. While we celebrate them and all of the good they have done this week, let us support them as well.

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This article was first published by the High Atlas Foundation

Amy Zhang ([email protected]) is an Intern with the High Atlas Foundation in Marrakech, and a student at the University of Virginia studying Economics and Middle Eastern Studies.

Global Research strives for peace, and we have but one mandate: to share timely, independent and vital information to readers across the globe. We act as a global platform to let the voices of dissent, protest, and expert witnesses and academics be heard and disseminated internationally.

We need to stand together to continuously question politics, false statements, and the suppression of independent thought.

Stronger together: your donations are crucial to independent, comprehensive news reporting in the ongoing battle against media disinformation. (click image above to donate)

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Video: Saudi Arabia Bombs Residential Neighborhood in Yemen Killing Entire Family

By Ahmed Abdulrahman, July 03, 2018

Just this Monday, a U.S.-backed Saudi-coalition bombing campaign targeted a residential neighborhood in Amran in northern Yemen, killing 15 civilians and injuring 9, most of whom were women and children.

Ethiopia and Zimbabwe Heighten Security in Response to Attacks on Political Rallies

By Abayomi Azikiwe, July 03, 2018

Ethiopia and Zimbabwe within the African context are important state and regional entities which have valuable natural wealth and a legacy of struggle against colonial and neo-colonial dominance. The normalization of relations involving Addis Ababa and Asmara (Eritrea) could potentially set a standard for the resolution of other protracted conflicts which drain monumental human and material resources. 

Iran Accuses US of Docking Chemical Weapons-Laden Ship in Persian Gulf

By Zero Hedge, July 03, 2018

However, the Iranians seem to think the vessel is some kind of permanent chemical weapons transport vehicle, which it is not, though it understandably doesn’t sit well with Tehran that the US conducts regular war games in Iran’s own maritime backyard.

CIA: How to Shape Okinawan Public Opinion on the U.S. Military Presence

By Jon Mitchell, July 03, 2018

Between 1945 and 1972, Okinawa was directly ruled by the U.S. military and its bases stored a vast array of nuclear and chemical weapons. The island was used to launch wars in Korea and Indochina; during the U.S. occupation (1945-52), Okinawans’ were driven from their land, much of which was turned into US military bases, and were victimized by frequent crimes and accidents involving military personnel.

America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Is a State-Sponsored Terrorist Organization – Abolish ICE

By William Boardman, July 03, 2018

Over the past fifteen years, lacking enough serious criminals to justify its $6 billion budget, ICE has reduced itself (with poisonous political pandering in support) to the horrifying monster we’re finally seeing more clearly, littering the American landscape with caged parents and children, broken families (by choice, not by law), incarcerated innocents, harmless working taxpayers, and disrupted American businesses – a full range of social mayhem chosen by the past several presidents in preference to any humane, decent policy rooted in justice.

U.S. Crushes Europe. EU Corporate Decline

By Eric Zuesse, July 03, 2018

Europe is shrinking as an international place to invest, even while it is exploding as an international place to receive refugees from the nations where the U.S. regime bomb and destroy the infrastructure, and leave hell for the residents, who thus flee, mainly to nearby Europe, and so cause the refugee-crisis there.

I asked the Washington hosts of Andriy Parubiy, the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament and founder of two neo-Nazi parties, why they were legitimizing an open fascist at the heart of the extremism plaguing his country.

While racist violence raged through Ukraine, punctuated by a wave of attacks on Roma encampments by the state-funded C14 neo-Nazi militia, Congress played host to an actual Ukrainian fascist. He was Andriy Parubiy, and besides being the proud founder of two Nazi-like parties — the Social-National Party and the Patriot of Ukraine — he was the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament.

During a meeting hosted by the American Foreign Policy Society inside the Senate, I seized the chance to ask Parubiy’s hosts why they were welcoming a figure who was so central to the extremism overtaking Ukrainian society. I also put the question to Michael Carpenter, a former Pentagon official who helped deepen the US relationship with post-coup Ukraine during the Obama administration.

The responses I received reflected a semi-official policy of denying the very existence of Ukraine’s far-right plague in order to turn the heat up on Moscow.

The Ukrainian lawmaker appeared on a panel alongside fellow speakers of Eastern European parliaments eager to join the US-NATO crusade against Russia in exchange for handsome aid packages. At the top of the agenda was stopping the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany, a project viewed in Washington as an existential threat to US economic leverage over Europe.

Earlier in the day, Parubiy held private discussions with the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan and enjoyed what Under Secretary of State for Arms Control Andrea Thomson described as an “excellent meeting” with a “proactive” leader.

Parubiy’s first meeting with Ryan, which Ben Norton covered for the Grayzone last June, was also treated as business as usual, without a single protest or critical word from the Beltway press.

Watch my exchange in the video report below, which I co-produced with Thomas Hedges.

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

Featured image is from the author.

Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen is being described as a deliberate war against women and children.

Just this Monday, a U.S.-backed Saudi-coalition bombing campaign targeted a residential neighborhood in Amran in northern Yemen, killing 15 civilians and injuring 9, most of whom were women and children.

Eight of those killed belonged to one family household named Ali Ahmed. Five of them were children aged 10 months old, 3 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old and 15 years old.

The injured were taken to the local Amran General Hospital.

The airstrikes also targeted a post office, a police station, and a telecommunications center, leveling them to rubble.

Local residents told MintPress that the search for victims among the rubble of homes in the targeted neighborhood is ongoing.

Despite the early morning bombing of an obviously civilian neighborhood, at dawn the U.S.-backed Saudi-coalition continued to rain bombs on the nearby security-department building.

The Saudi coalition claimed it was targeting a Yemeni military reinforcement site in response to a recent missile launch on the Ministry of Defense Information Center by Houthi forces.

But locals say the attack is part of a broader campaign against civilians by Saudi Arabia and the United States to destroy the morale of the Yemeni people.

Local residents in Amran held a rally to condemn the recent crime against civilians and ongoing indiscriminate bombing campaigns by Saudi Arabia and the United States.

In 2017, the United Nations blacklisted Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies for its indiscriminate killing of civilians, which targeted women and children.

This should have resulted in the imposition of sanctions or a prohibition of other countries from selling weapons or providing military aid to the coalition.

Instead, the United States sold over $110 billion in weapons to the Kingdom that same year.

Saudi Arabia was added to a similar list of nations targeting children in war in 2016, but, after Riyadh threatened to withdraw aid to the UN, their name was removed from the list.

Media reports indicate that the Saudi coalition has carried out a staggering 16,000-plus airstrikes on Yemen since 2015, but local authorities claim it’s closer to 100,000.

Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen — one of the poorest nations in the world — has left nearly one million dead and injured, most of whom are women and children.

Two separate grenade attacks in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo resulted in the deaths of several people.

These deadly acts occurred immediately after addresses by the heads-of-state of both countries which are significant forces in modern African history. 

Newly-appointed Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to office earlier this year amid a rise in demonstrations by opposition groups demanding reforms. Abiy succeeded former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn who served in the position after the death of Meles Zenawi in 2012. 

Hailemariam oversaw the arrests of many activists said to have been involved in protests beginning in 2016. The unrest began among the Oromo people in the south of the East African state and later spread to areas inhabited by the Amhara. The previous PM resigned from his governmental post as well as Chairman of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). 

Since taking the highest governing position in Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed has released thousands of people held for political reasons from prisons, allowed exiles to return home and is embarking upon a process of normalization of relations with neighboring Eritrea. 

At a large gathering of tens of thousands at Meskel Square in Addis Ababa on June 30 an explosion was heard just seconds after Abiy had returned to his seat from the rostrum. The PM was rushed from the scene while panic ensued within the crowd.

It has been reported that two people died in the attack and 156 were injured, eight of whom seriously. In the subsequent investigation of the incident approximately 40 people have been detained for interrogation. 

Several police officers were arrested for failing to secure the site of the explosion. A Deputy Police Commissioner of Addis Ababa was also taken into custody related to the failure to prevent such an attack. 

Ethiopian attack on rally addressed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on June 23, 2018 in Addis Ababa

Abiy spoke to the nation over Ethiopian Television after the incident saying that those responsible would not be successful in halting the process of democratization and the transformation of the national economy. He noted that there was widespread support for his policies which would not be reversed.

The PM emphasized that:

“The people who did this are anti-peace forces. You need to stop doing this. You weren’t successful in the past and you won’t be successful in the future.”

Abiy went on to claim that the grenade attack was part of a broader plan involving infrastructural and economic sabotage. These operations were designed to undermine the ability of the new government to effectively respond to a security crisis. 

Image on the right: Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed waves at crowd prior to grenade attack in Addis Ababa on June 23, 2018

The PM continued in a separate statement claiming:

“It has been proven that the attempt to disrupt the rally involved other plots in addition to hurling the grenade. First, a power outage and a telecommunications network disruption coincided with the event. Second, coordinated acts of economic sabotage are being undertaken to worsen the cost of living and thirdly, various agencies meant to provide different services to the public are being prevented from delivering.” (Channel NewsAsia, June 29)

Nonetheless, the government believes those responsible for the attack may strike again and is taking measures to prevent any further attempts at destabilization. Ahmed Shide, the director of Ethiopia’s Government Communication Affairs Office warned:

“There is suspicion that these forces whose bid was foiled may strike again in different parts of the country.” (Reuters, June 27)

On the regional foreign policy level, Abiy is offering a plan to end the two decades-long border dispute with Eritrea around Badme. Tens of thousands of troops from Eritrea and Ethiopia died in battles which occurred in 1998 and 2000. 

Eritrea had waged a thirty year war of independence between 1961 and 1991 when the socialist-oriented government of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam collapsed. In 1993, after a nationwide referendum in Eritrea, the country was recognized as an independent state by the Organization of African Unity (OAU, the predecessor to the African Union) and the United Nations.

A high-level delegation led by Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh arrived in Addis Ababa for talks on the normalization project. Although this has been welcomed by many domestically and internationally, there are still those within the border areas in Ethiopia who are concerned about the implementation of an agreement brokered in Algeria by the OAU in 2000.

Resistance to the peace plan is reportedly coming from elements within the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been the dominant grouping within the EPRDF since 1991 when Meles came to power. The Tigray people are a minority within Ethiopia and their role in administering the multi-national state has been a source of conflict over the last two years.

Zimbabwe Grenade Attack in Bulawayo

At White City stadium in the second largest city in the Southern African state of the Republic of Zimbabwe  on June 23, an assassination attempt was carried out against President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his two vice presidents, their wives, along with other top cabinet ministers and officials of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union, Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). Two people have died so far as a direct result of the grenade thrown towards the stage where a rally had just ended.

Zimbabwe grenade attack on ZANU-PF leadership at Bulawayo rally on June 23, 2018

Dozens of other people were wounded and injured by shrapnel from the explosion. Vice President Kembo Mohadi and Minister of Environment, Climate and Water, Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri (who is also Chairperson of ZANU-PF), both long-time members of the party, were later airlifted to the Republic of South Africa for more specialized treatment. 

Even though more than a week has passed since the incident, not one suspect had been reportedly arrested in connection with this egregious breach of national security and treason. President Mnangagwa, who came to power late last year in the wake of the forced resignation of former President Robert Mugabe, was quick to suggest that the assassination attempt was not the machinations of the people of Matabeleland, where Bulawayo is located.

A profile of one of the fatalities in the June 23 grenade attack was laid out in an article published by the state-controlled Zimbabwe Herald. Nelson Dube, said to have been a key figure in President Mnangagwa’s security detail, died as a result of the assassination attempt on the political leadership of the country. 

The Herald report said:

“He was taken to Mpilo Hospital, where he later succumbed to injuries sustained during the bomb attack on June 23, 2018. Due to the nature of his job as an intelligence officer charged with protecting the President, he was an unsung hero. Many a people from all walks of life have been mourning this unknown hero, but keen to know who Cde Nelson Dube, nom de guerre, Cde Shingirai Tichazvipedza, was.” (Herald, June 29)  

Ironically the heckling of former First Lady Grace Mugabe during a youth interface rally at the same location last November 2017, created the condition for the removal of the-then Vice President Mnangagwa. Political elements surrounding Grace Mugabe blamed Mnangagwa for the embarrassment. Mnangagwa and his supporters believed that an assassination attempt was eminent and facilitated the-then vice president’s removal from the country to South Africa.

When the military under Commander General Constantino Chiwenga took control of the national media and key government installations on November 15, the stage was set for the resignation of Mugabe (on Nov. 21) and the ascendancy of Mnangagwa as president and Chiwenga himself as Vice President. ZANU-PF is running to remain in charge of the country in national elections on July 30. Over twenty other candidates for political parties are also seeking the presidency and parliamentary seats.

The major candidates for the presidency appear to be Mnangagwa for ZANU-PF and Nelson Chamisa, 40, of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T). As a condition for the new political dispensation, Mnangagwa has granted observer status to a host of international bodies, even those state entities which continue to maintain sanctions against Zimbabwe. The United States and Britain have laid down terms for the lifting of sanctions and the normalization of relations. 

One such prerequisite is the holding of elections that satisfy the requirements of these imperialist governments. The economic crisis in Zimbabwe is largely due to the draconian sanctions levelled against the ZANU-PF government and the previous five-year Government of National Unity (GNU, 2008-2013).     

Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa visits wounded people in Bulawayo hospital after grenade attack on June 23, 2018

Although no imperialist intrigue has been suggested by official sources in Zimbabwe, the former First Lady Grace Mugabe and members of the Generation 40 faction of ZANU-PF have been mentioned as possible suspects. Mnangagwa in an interview published by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said that without any concrete evidence the G40 people were in all likelihood behind the White City explosion on June 23.

Jason Burke of the Guardian in a report on the incident wrote:

“Many of those who were close to the former first lady have fled Zimbabwe. Opposition leaders in Zimbabwe fear the bombing may serve as a pretext for a wide-ranging crackdown by the government or the military in the Southern African state. Mnangagwa said such concern was unfounded. ‘There is no need for a security crackdown … this is a criminal activity … but of course we must make sure the population is protected … and only when we have got them are we going to be able to assess the extent to which the network is spread.’” (June 27)

Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and the Strategic Interests of Imperialism

There is of course a long and sordid history of western intervention in the affairs of post-colonial African states. In fact the imperialists want no genuinely independent and stable African government to exist.

Ethiopia and Zimbabwe within the African context are important state and regional entities which have valuable natural wealth and a legacy of struggle against colonial and neo-colonial dominance. The normalization of relations involving Addis Ababa and Asmara (Eritrea) could potentially set a standard for the resolution of other protracted conflicts which drain monumental human and material resources. 

Zimbabwe is well endowed with minerals and fertile soil. The national liberation movements from the late 19^th century through the modern era were fueled by the desire for the reacquisition of the land encompassing the enormous deposits of diamonds, platinum group metals (including palladium), coal, chromium ore, nickel, copper, iron ore, vanadium, tin and gold. The country also has lithium, chrysotile asbestos and vermiculite.

National, regional and continental unity would position the AU member states to embark upon a course of achieving economic as well as political integration. The formation of a continental state would wipe away security concerns which provide a rationale for military collaboration and cooptation by the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and NATO groupings. 

The grenade explosions in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe have been condemned by the AU, the United Nations and other international bodies. Nonetheless, ultimately the security of Africa and its governments are the responsibility of the people themselves. 

As long as nations such as Ethiopia and Eritrea allow the military penetration of their armed forces, ports and state structures by imperialist military and intelligence agencies in a quest for economic sustenance, the longer Africa will remain in a dependent relationship with western capitalism. This would hold true for Zimbabwe as well when it is compelled by the need to lift sanctions to in turn accept the monitoring of its electoral process by European and North American governments which openly practice racism and class exploitation against oppressed peoples and the working class as a whole within their respective countries.

Mauritania is the venue for the June 25-July 2 31^st Ordinary AU Summit where Chairperson President Paul Kagame of Rwanda will oversee discussions on four key areas of concern to the continent: the South Sudan conflict; Western Saharan colonial question; state corruption; and the imperatives for gender equality. There is the necessity to continue discussions on the implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which was adopted several months ago by a number of AU member-states.  

However, as long as instability and dependency reign on the continent these issues cannot be adequately resolved. Concrete problems deriving from the failure to unify Africa and its people must be solved in order for sustainable development and progress to be realized in the 21^st century. 

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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. 

On June 27, 2018, a coalition of over 2000 Canadian healthcare organizations and healthcare providers, including doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists and midwives have signed on to an open letter, calling on the Canadian government to take the following four actions immediately:

1. End child detention and family separation in Canada.
2. End immigration detention in Canada.
3. End the Safe Third Country Agreement.
4. Call on the United States to end its practice of child and family detention.

We reproduce their important initiative here.

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Dear Ministers,

Over the past 6 years, Canada has held approximately 45,000 people in immigration detention. For the first time in over a decade, Canada is projected to see a sharp rise in the total number of detainees.

Children continue to be detained in Canada in large numbers, with current projections exceeding last year’s total of 162 children held in immigration detention.

We are a group of healthcare providers working in Canada who – like many around the world – have been watching with horror the news of the separation of over 2000 child migrants from their parents in the United States. This cruelty is apparently the newest front of the Trump administration’s war against asylum seekers. We’ve heard audio recordings of young children begging for their parents, and read first person accounts of migrants being told they will never see their children again.

As healthcare providers, we regularly see the results of childhood trauma in patients of all ages. Harm done at a young age can reverberate throughout one’s life, causing intense distress and health consequences. It’s no surprise to us that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Canadian Pediatric Society, the American Medical Association, and the Canadian Medical Association have all come out with strong statements condemning the separation of migrant children from their families.

In Canada, immigration detention of both adults and children, and family separation, have been a long-standing and grave concern. Canadian research and reports have repeatedly shown the severe mental health impacts of even short-term detention on both adults and children, including elevated rates of depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms in adults. Children also suffer severe symptoms such as regression of developmental milestones, sleep disruption, anxiety and depression.

As healthcare providers we urge our federal leaders to take action on this issue and consider how history will look back on what we as a country choose to do right now. While Canada’s practice of detaining migrant children is not new, the general public is now rapidly becoming more aware of it. It is hypocrisy to criticize the United States when children are being detained and separated from their families here in Canada, causing similar severe psychological trauma that physicians and other mental health experts are now speaking out about.

For the past few years, healthcare providers in Canada have been calling for an end to the indefinite detention of migrants, the separation of families, and the detention of children. In 2017, the Canadian Medical Association passed a resolution calling for “legislative changes to protect migrants and refugees from arbitrary and indefinite detention in jails and jail-like facilities.”

We call on the Canadian government to take the following actions immediately:

1. End child detention and family separation in Canada

Imprisoning children, or forcibly separating them from their parents, is simply not acceptable, no matter what the migratory status of the children or their parents.

2. End immigration detention in Canada

Currently, in Canada, migrants are detained in both immigration holding centres and maximum security jails. We join a group of Canada’s leading physicians, academics, lawyers, community organizers, and policy makers in calling for the government to stop holding immigration detainees in maximum-security correctional facilities and to end the practice of indefinite immigration detention. We join these experts in stating that: As a matter of principle, individuals should not be placed in immigration detention or separated from their families. If a person poses a danger to him or herself or to others, other legal measures outside the scope of immigration policy should be used to address such situations.

3. End the Safe Third Country Agreement

We join Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care in calling for an end to the Safe Third Country Agreement. The recent actions of President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have made it clear that the United States is not a safe country for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

4. Call on the United States to end its practise of child and family detention

Following President Trump’s executive order, there is fear within the medical community that while the end of child separation is a positive step forward, more children and families will end up in immigration detention.

Sincerely

The organizations supporting the statement include:

• Canadian Pediatric Society
• Ontario Association of Social Workers
• University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry
• Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario
• Canadian Association of Community Health Centres
• Ontario Psychiatric Association
• Federation of Medical Women of Canada
• Canadian Federation of Medical Students
• Department of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario
• Children’s Mental Health Ontario
• and many more.

The letter, along with the full list of signatories, can be found at endmigrantdetention.wordpress.com.

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Health Providers Against Poverty works to eliminate poverty and reduce inequity. Their website is healthprovidersagainstpoverty.ca.

Featured image is from HPAP.

ICE has strayed so far from its mission. It’s supposed to be here to keep Americans safe, but what it’s turned into is, frankly, a terrorist organization of its own, that is terrorizing people who are coming to this country. – Cynthia Nixon, Democrat for Governor of New York, June 21, 2018

ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is the largest police agency (some 20,000 employees, offices in 50 states and 48 foreign countries) in the Department of Homeland Security. Created with little serious thought in the post-9/11 government panic, ICE was supposed to be a bulwark against the inflated threat of international terrorism. Over the past fifteen years, lacking enough serious criminals to justify its $6 billion budget, ICE has reduced itself (with poisonous political pandering in support) to the horrifying monster we’re finally seeing more clearly, littering the American landscape with caged parents and children, broken families (by choice, not by law), incarcerated innocents, harmless working taxpayers, and disrupted American businesses – a full range of social mayhem chosen by the past several presidents in preference to any humane, decent policy rooted in justice. In 2002, Congress voted to make ICE a national police force with Gestapo-like powers. Corrupt law and corrupt politics have produced corrupt results. What a surprise.

How best to respond to this paramilitary police state operation that mostly produces human carnage (including widespread sexual abuse of detainees since 2010)? How best to end the chronic violation of human rights law by this brutal regime that denies asylum to the persecuted and sends them back to suffer or die? The current movement to abolish ICE began last winter with a piece in The Nation magazine, in which Sean McElwee concluded:

“It’s time to rein in the greatest threat we face: an unaccountable strike force executing a campaign of ethnic cleansing.”

Abolishing ICE is no panacea, but it is a necessary first step to creating immigration policy based on law, compassion, and our own better history.

The political will to reinvent American idealism may or may not emerge in the face of vicious, bipartisan opposition. On June 21, Cynthia Nixon (image on the right) apparently became the first high-profile politician to call ICE by its rightful terrorist name and to call for its abolition. She’s running for Governor of New York against Democratic establishment hope-crusher Andrew Cuomo, who supports ICE. But two days before Nixon spoke out, Cuomo announced his plan for New York to file a multi-agency lawsuit against the Trump administration for “violating the Constitutional rights of thousands of immigrant children and their parents who have been separated at the border.” The treatment of families at the border is only one part of ICE’s assault on human rights, as Cuomo surely knows, as indicated in his apparently ironic comment:

“I think ICE should be a bonafide law enforcement organization that prudently and diligently enforces the law.” [emphasis added]

Nixon first spoke out against ICE at the St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church in New York City. The church has given sanctuary to a 32-year-old Guatemalan mother, Debora Berenice Vasquez, and her two children (both US citizens), after ICE threatened them with deportation. How do these facts square with ICE’s promise:

“We vow to continue our mission to protect the United States by promoting homeland security and public safety through the criminal and civil enforcement of federal laws …”?

What “homeland security” or “public” is served by taking 13 years to bring a case that robs a mother of her job and freedom while traumatizing her two American children? At the church’s press conference announcing the sanctuary, Nixon said:

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for offering sanctuary to Debora and her children. And thank you for giving us all a place to gather today to stand up with one voice as New Yorkers and say, ‘No,’ and say, ‘No, not in our name. Not in our name.’

This event didn’t happen in a vacuum. On June 26, New Yorkers voted in their Democratic primary and in one race rejected a member of the House leadership, who carefully supports ICE (he voted to create it) and who doesn’t live in his district, in favor of a 28-year-old Latina whose campaign targeted ICE and the party’s aging, out-of-touch leadership. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grew up in the district that covers much of the Bronx and Queens. She graduated from Boston University and came home and organized. She was the first to challenge the incumbent in more than a decade. She said of her campaign:

It’s time we acknowledge that not all democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off of foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air cannot possibly represent us.

She was describing the media-cliché “powerful Democrat,” ten-term congressman Joseph Crowley, crony to Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and presumed easy winner of the seat to which he was surely entitled, along with his predicted rise to Speaker of the House. The race got little attention until the media and professional politicians woke up “surprised” to find that a former organizer for Bernie Sanders had won the nomination with more than 57% of the vote. Trump and the rest of the right-wing dishonest noise machine are already lying about what Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats stand for, as Trump called Democrats “now officially the party of impeachment, open borders, abolishing ICE, banning the 2nd Amendment and unbridled socialism.” What Ocasio-Cortez actually said about ICE has had nothing to do with open borders:

Abolishing ICE doesn’t mean get rid of our immigration policy, but what it does mean is to get rid of the draconian enforcement that has happened since 2003 that routinely violates our civil rights, because, frankly, it was designed with that structure in mind.

The day before the primary, June 25, a Democratic candidate for New York Attorney General published an editorial in the Guardian titled: “ICE is a tool of illegality. It must be abolished.” Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout is challenging at least three other candidates in the September 13 primary for the open office, but the filing deadline doesn’t close the race till July 12. The temporary attorney general, Barbara Underwood, is not running. She replaced AG Eric Schneiderman (also a Democrat) who resigned in May amidst sexual misconduct allegations. Teachout appears to be the only candidate calling for the abolition of ICE, writing in The Guardian:

Let’s be clear: Ice is a fairly recent development. When the George W Bush administration successfully pushed to place immigration enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it transformed decades of past practice where internal immigration policy was conducted by the justice department. The new policy sent a clear and chilling signal: immigrants should be treated as criminals and a national security threat.

The same day as Teachout’s editorial, four current Congress members – Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) – said they would support legislation to abolish ICE. Representative Pocan said he would introduce a bill this week (it was not available as of June 28). Pocan explained his motivation in a press release:

During my trip to the southern border, it was clear that ICE, and its actions of hunting down and tearing apart families, has wreaked havoc on far too many people. From conducting raids at garden centers and meatpacking plants, to breaking up families at churches and schools, ICE is tearing apart families and ripping at the moral fabric of our nation. Unfortunately, President Trump and his team of white nationalists, including Stephen Miller, have so misused ICE that the agency can no longer accomplish its goals effectively….

I’m introducing legislation that would abolish ICE and crack down on the agency’s blanket directive to target and round up individuals and families. The heartless actions of this abused agency do not represent the values of our nation and the U.S. must develop a more humane immigration system, one that treats every person with dignity and respect.

A weeklong barricade of ICE offices in Southwest Portland, Oregon, has been broken up by police. Representative Blumenauer spoke in favor of the protestors at a rally at City Hall. He voted against the creation of ICE in 2002. In support of Pocan’s legislation, Blumenauer wrote:

We should abolish ICE and start over, focusing on our priorities to protect our families and our borders in a humane and thoughtful fashion. Now is the time for immigration reform that ensures people are treated with compassion and respect. Not only because it is the moral thing to do, but it’s better policy and will cost less.

Rational, moral, and humane as these voices are, they still represent only a small minority of Democrats, most of whom have run for cover on the issue. Media coverage tends to treat “abolish ICE” as a trivial issue or at Fox, an offense against the state. Democrats of note appear intimidated by the issue. Bernie Sanders voted against ICE, now doesn’t want to abolish it. Nancy Pelosi voted against ICE, now supports it. In all, 120 Democrats in Congress opposed ICE in 2002, but today only four are on record to abolish it. In 2002, Democratic senators overwhelmingly supported creating ICE in a 90-9 Senate vote. None of the 9 Democrats opposing ICE in 2002 remain in office.

Maybe this is changing, maybe Ocasio-Cortez’s strong victory will be a shock to the all but dead party of Democrats. On June 28 on CNN, New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand was caught in a high-pitched defense of her failure to respect Ocasio-Cortez as a candidate. The interviewer read a tweet from Ocasio-Cortez, calling out Gillibrand’s lockstep party orthodoxy. Then, on the defensive, Gillibrand suddenly expressed support for abolishing ICE, almost as if she meant it. Now how hard was that? November is coming and Democrats continue to cling to old notions detached from current reality (the Crowley Democrats). Under pressure, Gillibrand took the right position for the moment. For November to be worth celebrating, the party will have to do much better than that. It will have to find a heart and a soul and a brain and apply them all to the criminal atrocities our government commits daily at home and abroad.

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This article was originally published on Reader Supported News.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theater, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

There’s no better moment than now for Mexico to embrace multipolarity by teaming up with China and possibly constructing a Pacific-Caribbean rail corridor across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but such a project has its limitations and isn’t anything to get too excited about at this time, let alone blindly jump into just for the sake of satisfying a campaign promise.

AMLO’s Ambitions

The crushing victory that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known by his initials as AMLO, dealt to the Institutional Revolutionary Party that has ruled Mexico almost continuously for close to a century proves that the people are tired of The Establishment and eagerly craving the leftist nationalist-populism that this political outsider campaigned on. One of his many platforms included a pledge to double down on infrastructure spending in an attempt to pull his country of nearly 130 million out of the cycle of crime, poverty, and migration that many of its citizens have fallen into, and it’s with this in mind that the Financial Times (FT) wrote about his ambitious plan for what they termed to be a “Mexican Silk Road” (article behind a paywall but available for free at this partnered site).

This initiative calls for reviving the early 20^th-century plans for an overland rail corridor connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico’s very impoverished southern region, and the FT quotes one of AMLO’s economic advisors as saying that “I can see us perfectly well approaching the Chinese, above all. It’s the type of project they will certainly want to invest in, because they are long-term infrastructure projects with clearly positive returns.” On the surface, the Mexican Silk Road would appear to be a win-win for both parties because it would provide China with an intermodal alternative to the Panama Canal while bringing jobs and development to southern Mexico, but things aren’t always as they initially seem and this project isn’t anything for people to get too excited about at this time.

The Siren Song Of The Silk Road

Before addressing the possible shortcomings of this initiative, it’s better to speak to the perceived advantages that it could bring in order to make the contrast even clearer for all readers.

Mexican Multipolarity:

China’s grand strategy in the region is to make Mexico multipolar so that it can have the same function towards the US as America’s newest military-strategic partner India has vis-à-vis China, ultimately enabling Beijing to establish influence on its Great Power rival’s Caribbean doorstep in a similar manner as Washington has done in the South China Sea. If successful in this endeavor, then China might be able to finally “balance” the US and keep it in check, though it’s certain that Washington wouldn’t ever let Beijing’s plans get anywhere near that point without offering up heavy resistance in one way or another. In any case, the first step that China would need to make in this direction is to involve Mexico in its One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, which is where the Tehuantepec Corridor comes into relevance.

Nixing The Nicaraguan Canal:

This project could become the flagship of China’s North American infrastructural investments and powerfully symbolize Mexico’s new multipolar future after AMLO’s commitment to this model of global reform. Moreover, it would also provide a much-needed solution for replacing the stalled plans to construct a Nicaraguan Canal, a long-delayed project funded by a private Chinese entrepreneur but which appears to have been dealt a deathblow once and for all after the Nicaraguan government’s latest decree last week. Managua surprised the world by giving 10 different militaries the right to train on its territory for “humanitarian purposes”, and while multipolar ones like Russia, Venezuela, and Cuba are included in this new law, so too are the US and even Taiwan, China’s enemy. Considering the latter’s forthcoming military presence in Nicaragua, there’s no way that Beijing could rely on the country as the route of its regional Silk Road.

Hybrid War-embattled President Ortega’s de-facto strategic capitulation to the US by indirectly killing the Nicaraguan Canal after allowing US and Taiwanese troops to “train” in his country for “humanitarian” reasons provides a powerful impetus for China to replace this costly maritime corridor with a more economically efficient intermodal one across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll be built, or that it’ll have its intended win-win effect.

Geostrategic Offsets

The Panamanian Pivot & TORR:

For starters, the rapid development of Chinese-Panamanian ties over the past decade saw the Central American country abandoning its recognition of Taipei in favor of Beijing last year, which was considered to be a diplomatic coup carried out right under the US’ nose. While there’s no doubt that Panama largely remains a powerless American client state subject to the mercy of American military pressure in the event that Washington’s New Cold War with China ever turns hot, that’s unlikely to deter the People’s Republic from continuing to use this trade route due to its more economical nature in costing less than creating a brand new intermodal one in spite of the strategic risk involved. After all, with the successful completion of the Transoceanic Railroad (TORR) in South America sometime in the future, China won’t have to transit the Central American isthmus to trade with Brazil when the Mercosur giant can just ship its goods across mountainous Bolivia to Peru’s Pacific port of Ilo.

Wartime Uselessness:

Not only that, but China’s trade with the US is much more important than its trade with any Latin American country, to say nothing of the Caribbean, and is expected to remain so despite the so-called “trade war”. This means that the scenario of the US shutting down the Panama Canal to Chinese ships or indirectly using Hybrid War techniques to disrupt whatever alternative Beijing may have built through Nicaragua or Mexico wouldn’t even matter much to China because its driving Silk Road interest in North America is to streamline connectivity between its own Pacific ports and the US’ in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. These would be off limits to China anyhow in the event that it and its rival go to war with one another, so OBOR projects in this part of the world shouldn’t be taken as seriously as in the Eastern Hemisphere. Even if China and Mexico decide to pursue the Tehuantepec Corridor, their plans might not materialize as expected.

The Limits Of Win-Win Cooperation

Supposing that both parties are serious about the Mexican Silk Road, each of them will still have considerable obstacles to surmount in order to make it as viable as envisioned.

Mexico’s Military-Economic Moves:

Before this project can even get off the ground, Mexico needs to ensure the security of all those who will use this Silk Road corridor, thus requiring it to “get its house in order” first by cleansing the military of its many corrupt and cartel-infiltrated recruits while simultaneously resolving the drug violence that makes this part of the country extremely unsafe. This is a lot easier said than done, to put it nicely, and it might ultimately be a “lost cause” that necessitates the presence of “private military contractors” (PMCs, “mercenaries”) instead, though with all of the attendant risks that the introduction of this variable would bring to such an already chaotic situation. Without credibly guaranteeing security for Chinese transshipments and isthmus value-added investments, Beijing will probably never agree to build, let alone use, the Tehuantepec Corridor.

Relatedly, even if proper security is provided, AMLO must have a comprehensive plan for turning this project into more than just an overland Chinese-US toll road in order to deliver on his promise of bringing wealth to this impoverished region of Mexico. An initial suggestion would be to establish special economic zones (SEZ) astride this corridor and in each of its terminal ports, but in doing so, the government would need to ensure that jobs aren’t taken by any immigrants from nearby Central American countries. AMLO considers migration to be a “human right”, but it might be politically unwise for him to spend billions in taxpayer funds for constructing a megaproject that his own citizens don’t even end up using because much cheaper migrant workers are employed there instead due to their president-elect’s sympathy with their cause.

China’s “Trade War” Concerns:

As for China, it might simply lose interest in the Tehuantepec Corridor if its “trade war” with the US continues and exports to that marketplace drop, no matter how significant they’ll likely remain in the overall sense. A contributing factor to this probable scenario is Trump successfully renegotiating NAFTA or outright withdrawing from it in order to secure the American marketplace from China’s “backdoor” entry to it via economic transshipment outposts in Mexico that abuse this trade deal’s terms through various “legal workarounds”. China’s focus could therefore shift from America to the domestic Mexican marketplace (although it won’t soon come anywhere near replacing it), but this would mean that Beijing would have more of a motive for building infrastructure elsewhere in the country for connecting to its more profitable and already economically developed regions than pioneering what might at that point be the strategically defunct Tehuantepec Corridor.

Even if these “trade war” concerns lead to China believing that the costs of this project outweigh its benefits (especially when considering that it could just use the Panama Canal as a much cheaper transit route to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean per the analysis’ previously mentioned reasons), there’s a chance that the Tehuantepec Corridor could still be built, but only because of both parties’ cynical and separate self-interests involved. China might come to reconceptualize this initiative as more of a financial investment than a commercial one, thereby relying on high-interest loans or other financial means instead of trade in order to reap a profit, while AMLO might for whatever (possibly ideologically misguided) reason want to build a Hambantota-like “white elephant” to show off to the masses. In that case, the confluence of Chinese-Mexican “interests” could make the project possible, though it would lose its original Silk Road purpose.

Concluding Thoughts

AMLO’s stunning victory has excitedly enabled Mexico to enter a completely new era, and the leftist populist-nationalist has an indisputable mandate to reshape the country according to his promised vision, which crucially includes a heavy infrastructural investment component. The logic of “spending one’s way out of poverty” through public works projects has been tried and tested by the USSR after World War I and the subsequent Civil War, while the US did the same during the Great Depression. While the merits of this policy are controversial because its visible successes in both aforementioned cases may be attributable more to situational factors that extend beyond the reach of economics and into the political (centralized “authoritarian” state model) and military (wartime domestic industrial revival) realms respectively, the concept was apparently convincing enough to tens of millions of Mexicans that they voted for AMLO partially because of it.

That being the case, the president-elect is expected to seriously entertain the Tehuantepec Corridor megaproject that formed a key part of his campaign platform, though this initiative needs to be soberly assessed by both his country and its Chinese partners to see whether it’s worth the risk of investing billions of dollars into at this time. It’s not to say that the Mexican Silk Road can’t become a game-changing development in the New Cold War by bringing multipolarity to the US’ southern shores, but just that it isn’t as clear-cut of a win-win idea as it’s been made out to be. Upon closer consideration, it might not even have any real strategic purpose, and even if it’s determined to, then the costs might outweigh the benefits. The last thing that Mexico needs right now is a “white elephant”, but if it isn’t careful, then that might be exactly what it gets.

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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.

President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton was in Moscow last week organizing what promises to be an historic summit meeting between his boss and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bolton, who has for years demanded that the US inflict “pain” on Russia and on Putin specifically, was tasked by Trump to change his tune. He was forced to shed some of his neoconservative skin and get involved in peacemaking. Trump surely deserves some credit for that!

As could be expected given the current political climate in the US, the neoconservatives have joined up with the anti-Trump forces on the Left — and US client states overseas — to vigorously oppose any movement toward peace with Russia. The mainstream media is, as also to be expected, amplifying every objection to any step away from a confrontation with Russia.

Bolton had hardly left Moscow when the media began its attacks. US allies are “nervous” over the planned summit, reported Reuters. They did not quote any US ally claiming to be nervous, but they did speculate that both the UK and Ukraine would not be happy were the US and Russia to improve relations. But why is that? The current Ukrainian government is only in power because the Obama Administration launched a coup against its democratically-elected president to put US puppets in charge. They’re right to be nervous. And the British government is also right to be worried. They swore that Russia was behind the “poisoning” of the Skripals without providing any evidence to back up their claims. Hundreds of Russian diplomats were expelled from Western countries on their word alone. And over the past couple of months, each of their claims has fallen short.

At the extreme of the reaction to Bolton’s Russia trip was the US-funded think tank, the Atlantic Council, which is stuck in a 1950s time warp. Its resident Russia “expert,” Anders Åslund, Tweeted that long-time Russia hawk Bolton had been “captured by the Kremlin” and must now be considered a Russian agent for having helped set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. Do they really prefer nuclear war?

The “experts” are usually wrong when it comes to peacemaking. They rely on having “official enemies” for their very livelihood. In 1985, national security “expert” Zbigniew Brzezinski attacked the idea of a summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was “demeaning” and “tactically unwise,” he said as reported at the time by the Washington Times. Such a meeting would only “elevate” Gorbachev and make him “first among equals,” he said. Thankfully, Reagan did engage Gorbachev in several summits and the rest is history. Brzezinski was wrong and peacemakers were right.

President Trump should understand that any move toward better relations with Russia has been already pre-approved by the American people. His position on Russia was well known. He campaigned very clearly on the idea that the US should end the hostility toward Russia that characterized the Obama Administration and find a way to work together. Voters knew his position and they chose him over Hillary Clinton, who was also very clear on Russia: more confrontation and more aggression.

President Trump would be wise to ignore the neocon talking heads and think tank “experts” paid by defense contractors. He should ignore the “never Trumpers” who have yet to make a coherent policy argument opposing the president. The extent of their opposition to Trump seems to be “he’s mean and rude.” Let us hope that a Trump/Putin meeting begins a move toward real reconciliation and away from the threat of nuclear war.

Throughout its entire post-WW II history, US hostility persisted against North Korea – solely for its sovereign independence, not for any threat the country poses.

Chances for sustainable improved bilateral relations following Kim Jong-un/Trump summit talks are virtually nil – perhaps what was accomplished already starting to unravel.

On Friday in Japan on the final leg of his East Asia tour, US war secretary Mattis vowed to continue treating North Korea as an adversary, not an ally, saying Washington and its regional partners intend to maintain a “strong collaborative defensive stance” on the DPRK.

The Trump regime will deal with its leadership “from a position of unquestioned strength.” The Pentagon will continue “maintaining the current US force levels on the Korean peninsula” and region overall.

On Friday, NBC News cited unnamed US intelligence officials, saying Pyongyang increased enrichment of uranium for nuclear fuel at secret sites – attempting to refute Trump’s claim about the DPRK “no longer (posing) a nuclear threat…”

According to one unnamed US official quoted,

“(t)here is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the US.”

“Work is ongoing to deceive us on the number of facilities, the number of weapons, the number of missiles…We are watching closely.”

The NBC report was planted by US dark forces, wanting no chance of improved relations with North Korea.

Its leadership and military were never a regional or US threat, its nuclear program for defense alone because of genuine fears about possible US aggression.

Throughout its history, the DPRK never attacked another country. In June 1950, its forces responded to US-orchestrated South Korean aggression, not the other way around.

38 North provides “analysis of events in and around the DPRK.” It’s a pro-Western Johns Hopkins University Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies US-Korea Institute program – managed by former State Department official Joel Wit and USKI assistant director Jenny Town.

On June 26, it claimed “improvements to the infrastructure at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center are continuing at a rapid pace,” according to alleged satellite imagery, adding:

“Continued work at the Yongbyon facility should not be seen as having any relationship to North Korea’s pledge to denuclearize. The North’s nuclear cadre can be expected to proceed with business as usual until specific orders are issued from Pyongyang.”

The monitoring group said it can’t confirm if the above work continued after the June 12 Kim/Trump summit.

On Sunday, the neocon/CIA house organ Washington Post claimed “newly obtained (post-Kim/Trump summit) evidence” shows Pyongyang “does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile, and instead is considering ways to conceal the number of weapons it has and secret production facilities,” citing unnamed US officials, adding:

“(A) new, previously undisclosed Defense Intelligence Agency estimate (said) North Korea is unlikely to denuclearize.”

“(T)he DIA has concluded that North Korean officials are exploring ways to deceive Washington about the number of nuclear warheads and missiles, and the types and numbers of facilities they have, believing that the United States is not aware of the full range of their activities.”

All indications are that the DPRK is committed to denuclearize as long as its security is guaranteed – by America and China most of all.

Its other demands are reasonable, wanting a formal end to the 1950s war, unacceptably harsh sanctions lifted, its sovereign independence respected, and a durable peace replacing threatened war on the peninsula.

If all of the above are achieved, its nuclear deterrent no longer is needed.

Given Washington’s rage for global hegemony, its longterm hostility toward the DPRK, its aim to transform all sovereign independent nations into US vassal states, and its deplorable history of reneging on promises, it’s pure fantasy to believe this time is different going forward in bilateral relations.

Washington’s deplorable record speaks for itself. US hostility toward Pyongyang remains unchanged as long as hardline neocon extremists are in charge of geopolitical policymaking.

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

Featured image: MV Cape Ray in the Persian Gulf during Operation Nautical Horizon, June 24, 2018. Image source: Stars and Stripes 

Multiple Russian and Middle East news sources are reporting new accusations by the Iranian military that that a US ship carrying chemical weapons has recently anchored in the Persian Gulf and in engaged in a “dangerous plot”, though not naming the particular “Gulf state” territorial waters at which the ship docked. 

The accusation comes just as a major seven week US military exercise, Operation Nautical Horizon, has concluded in the Persian Gulf which involved the same military transport ship that decommissioned Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles. 

In all Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO’s, party swept over 91 percent of all legislative districts and won a landslide of municipal elections.

Consumers of left-wing media are well aware that America is an oligarchy, not a democracy. Everyone with a functioning cerebrum, in fact, should be aware of it by now: even mainstream political scientists recognize it, as shown by a famous 2014 study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page. Nevertheless, it is important to continue to publicize the oligarchical character of the United States, in order to delegitimize the institutions that have destroyed democracy (insofar as it ever existed) and inspire people to take action to restore it. Ron Formisano’s book American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class (2017) is a valuable contribution to this collective project.

“American Oligarchy has been written,” Formisano says, “not to propose a path out of the New Gilded Age, but to discredit the political class by raking its muck between covers in black and white.”

Formisano certainly achieves his goal: the “political class” comes out stinking of, yes, a swamp, a putrid moral bog. This “networked layer of high-income people and those striving for wealth including many politicians in and out of office, lobbyists, consultants, appointed bureaucrats, pollsters, television celebrity journalists (but not investigative reporters), and the politically connected in the nation’s capital and in the states” calls to mind in its hedonism, corruption, money-worship, and giddy myopia the decadent Senate-attached aristocracy of the late Roman Republic, greedy beyond the dreams of avarice.

The term ‘aristocracy’ is apt, for Formisano argues convincingly that the U.S. is headed beyond oligarchy to an aristocracy of inherited wealth, complete with all the ideological and cultural trappings of aristocracy. Our exalted rentiers and their service-providers have the usual attitudes of aristocratic entitlement to all good things in this world (and exclusion of the non-rich), sputtering rage at the occasional prospect of losing a particle of their preferential tax treatment, and the valorization of nepotism as first among the virtues. “The rampant nepotism of the political class fuels the galloping socioeconomic inequality of the twenty-first century.” The main differences between the American aristocracy of today and, say, the French aristocracy of the eighteenth century seem to be that the former has incomparably lower cultural (and architectural) tastes than the latter and is incomparably more destructive of society and the natural environment.

The circles in which the nation’s political leaders and their thousands of well-heeled minions travel are indeed reminiscent of some enormous eighteenth-century court. Over half the members of Congress are millionaires, with a total worth in 2013 of $4.3 billion; but even the ones whose income is of a mere six figures are able to live like millionaires. The reason is that the gears of Washington are greased by a “gift economy,” which, to quote ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, amounts to “a system of legalized bribery. All of it is bribery, every bit of it.” 

In 2007 Congress passed a law prohibiting lobbyists from giving gifts to representatives, but, as Abramoff says, in effect “they just reshuffled the deck… They’re still playing the same game.” Campaign committees and “Leadership PACs” pay for the many luxurious trips legislators take around the world, as do lobbyists and donors. Golf outings, lavish “conferences,” fishing in the Florida Keys, skiing in Colorado, trips to Paris or Vienna or Hawaii, innumerable expensive parties and receptions and breakfasts with lobbyists and donors—all are paid for by either tax dollars or various committees, lobbying firms, corporate interests, etc. Aside from the obviously corrupting influence of all this legalized bribery, it matters a great deal that “politicians have no experience of poverty.” In fact, from 1998 to 2008 only 13 members of Congress came from blue-collar backgrounds, and they had long ago left behind that experience. No wonder policy almost never favors the working class.

Meanwhile, while in 1970 only 3 percent of members leaving Congress moved into lobbying, now well over half do. As do thousands of congressional aides. In addition to reinforcing the insularity and chumminess of the Beltway culture, this “accelerating exodus of staffers to K Street…has had the effect of increasing the power of lobbyists by shortening the overall tenure of staffers.” As the latter group becomes younger and less experienced, lobbyists take on an ever-greater role in crafting legislation—increasingly byzantine legislation that is difficult even for staffers to understand, which further enhances the power of lobbyists.

Source: Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast

Formisano documents with admirable thoroughness the fact that the foremost concern of politicians and the politically connected in both the nation’s capital and the states is to look out “for me and mine.” The most obvious and common means of doing so is to monetize one’s public service, but almost as common is the practice of nepotism. “[T]he political class practices nepotism routinely, brazenly, and shamelessly, giving their ‘nephews’ plum jobs, promotions, a place at the head of the line.” Donald Trump may (unsurprisingly) be even more shameless than most, with his political use of his daughter, his son-in-law, and his sons—one of whom has remarked candidly that nepotism “is a beautiful thing.” But the second Bush administration took nepotism to a high art, given, for example, the important roles of Liz Cheney, her husband, and her son-in-law; the Mehlman brothers, the McLellans, the Powells, and Ted Cruz and his wife; the Martins, the Ackerlys, and the Ullmans, etc. The Obama administration was hardly innocent either, though it didn’t go to quite the extremes of its predecessor. Children of governors and members of Congress fare well too, whether serving in politics, in law firms, in businesses that benefit from political connections, or as lobbyists.

The media are almost as riddled with nepotism as politics. When her mother was Secretary of State, Chelsea Clinton was hired by NBC as a television journalist, making $600,000 a year ($26,724 for every minute she was televised). CNN’s Andrea Koppel, Anderson Cooper, Jeffrey Toobin, and Chris Cuomo are beneficiaries of nepotism, as are (at other channels and publications) Douglas Kennedy, Chris Wallace, Mark Halperin, Mika Brzezinski, Bill Kristol, Ronan Farrow, Luke Russert, Meghan McCain, Jenna Bush, Jackie Kucinich, and others. Formisano concludes,

“Whether the field is literature, television, entertainment, or politics, the hallmark of this New Gilded Age of Inequality is ‘naked, unabashed favoritism,’ and the shameless effrontery of those who give and receive it.”

American Oligarchy also contains long discussions of the nonprofit world, specifically of its contributions to rising income inequality. The nonprofit sector employs 10 percent of the U.S. workforce, and in 2010 corporations, government, and individuals donated $300 billion to charitable enterprises. At least $40 billion every year is lost to “fraud, theft, personal enrichment of executives, and misappropriation.” In general, the culture of large nonprofits is approximately that of the permanent political class in Washington. 

University presidents and hospital CEOs, for instance, can make millions of dollars a year, and that doesn’t include such perks as bonuses, deferred compensation, auto allowances, and financial planning. In the same years as student debt has soared and state funding has declined, university foundations have been used as slush funds for big payouts and personal expenses for presidents and other administrators. Even more egregiously, nonprofit hospitals have initiated hundreds of lawsuits against patients who couldn’t pay and have routinely had arrest warrants issued and jailed debtors. Conversely, lawsuits have been filed against hundreds of hospitals in seventeen states for gouging the poor.

In other cases, nonprofits have in effect become allies of the forces they’re supposed to be challenging. A particularly outrageous instance is that of The Nature Conservancy, “by far the wealthiest green group with well over $6 billion in assets.” On its governing board and advisory committees sit executives of oil and chemical companies, mining and logging businesses, auto manufacturers, and coal-burning electric utilities, who have influence over the group’s policies. Even while preserving millions of acres, The Nature Conservancy has logged forests, drilled for natural gas under the last breeding ground of an endangered bird species, invested millions in energy companies, cultivated relationships with such polluters as ExxonMobil and BP, and sold its name and logo to companies that then claim undeserved credit for being green. Similarly, the World Wildlife Federation has close relationships with both Monsanto and the rainforest-destroying palm oil company Wilmer.

At any rate, the evidence Formisano amasses proves that the moral corruption of the American aristocracy has utterly polluted the ostensibly selfless and charitable world of nonprofits. From museums, public libraries, and human rights organizations to symphony orchestras, veterans’ groups, and environmental organizations, excessive executive compensation, corporate ties, and outright corruption have perverted the public mission of nonprofits. 

American Oligarchy is not an uplifting read. Its chapter on Kentucky, a case-study of political corruption in a poor state, is, despite the detached analytical tone, at times wrenching, in particular when you reflect on all the human suffering that is the corollary of the aristocracy’s venality and greed. On the one hand are profits for Purdue Pharma in the billions of dollars, and power and money for a complicit political class; on the other hand are numberless opioid deaths and lives ruined by addiction. 

But books such as this are indispensable in their bleakness, since we live in bleak times that call for unstinting exposés. Perhaps as the backlash against Donald Trump grows, American Oligarchy and books like it will acquire a wide readership and so contribute to the radicalization of a generation.

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Chris Wright has a Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is the author of Notes of an Underground Humanist, Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States, and Finding Our Compass: Reflections on a World in Crisis. His website is www.wrightswriting.com.

News that a meeting has been arranged between Presidents Trump and Putin on 16 July was greeted with displeasure in many sectors of the western world, and especially by the military-industrial complex, the cabal of war-profiteering US and European oligarchs whose interests lie solely in maintaining their lucrative arms manufacturing empires. Trade is most important to them — but peace and friendship come way down their page of priorities, because it is enmity and distrust that lead to lucrative sales of weapons.

UK newspapers reacted predictably to the news, with the right wing Daily Mail stating

 “Fears are mounting that Donald Trump wants a ‘peace deal’ with Vladimir Putin that could fatally undermine NATO. Ministers are becoming increasingly alarmed that the US president could offer the Russian president deep concessions such as withdrawing forces from Europe.”

The Times of London recorded that

“One [UK government] minister told the Times: ‘What we’re nervous of is some kind of Putin-Trump ‘peace deal’ suddenly being announced. We could see Trump and Putin saying, Why do we have all this military hardware in Europe? and agreeing to jointly remove that. ‘It’s hard to be against peace, but would it be real peace?’”

Yes, it would be real peace, because what Russia wants is amicable relations and trade. Trade with the US and the EU and China and every country that wants to trade — including, most importantly, the Baltic States that have been encouraged by the Pentagon-Brussels NATO High Command to imagine that Russia is poised to invade them.

The US defence secretary, General James Mattis, told Estonia’s minister of defence that “Russia is trying to change international borders by force” and at meetings in May with Lithuania’s president and Baltic defence ministers “reassured US allies in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of American solidarity with them and of US determination to defend Baltic and other NATO territory against any aggression.”

Of all the absurd concoctions swinging round the Western propaganda world at the moment, the notion that Russia wants to invade Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania is probably the least believable and most laughable. The Russian government fully realises that such action would inevitably result in wider conflict; and that there could be escalation to a shattering nuclear war. Even if it didn’t result in global catastrophe, the occupation of any one of these countries by Russian forces would be cripplingly costly in every way and simply doesn’t make sense.

In the context of the impending US-Russia presidential talks, not a single Western media outlet mentioned that, as detailed in the 2018 World Report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI),

“In 2017 the USA spent more on its military [$610 billion] than the next seven highest-spending countries combined… at $66.3 billion, Russia’s military spending in 2017 was 20 per cent lower than in 2016.”

It would be awkward and indeed embarrassing for the Western media to give prominence to SIPRI’s indisputable statement that in 2016 “NATO’s collective military expenditure rose to $881 billion” while “European NATO members spent $254 billion in 2016 — over 3 times more than Russia.”

Russia is reducing its expenditure on defence while the US-NATO military alliance, as noted by Radio Free Europe, agreed on 7 June to “reinforce NATO’s presence in a potential European crisis with the deployment of 30 troop battalions, 30 squadrons of aircraft, and 30 warships within 30 days — the so-called ‘Four 30s’ plan.” This, said the Secretary General of the US-NATO military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, presumably with a straight face, is not “about setting up or deploying new forces — it is about boosting the readiness of existing forces across each and every ally.”

Then the BBC reported that Stoltenberg had put the best face he could on the unwelcome news of reduced tension and possible friendship. He said that

“dialogue is a sign of strength… We don’t want a new Cold War, we don’t want to isolate Russia, we want to strive for a better relationship with Russia.”

This is the man who declared in March 2018 that the US-NATO military grouping is increasing its numbers of confrontational deployments. He is proud of the fact that at the end of 2017 there were more than 23,000 troops involved in NATO operations, an increase of over 5,000 since 2014. This is a most peculiar way of striving for a “better relationship” with Russia, whose borders and shores are constantly menaced by NATO’s attack and electronic warfare aircraft, missile-equipped ships and tank-heavy troop manoeuvres.

In June, immediately before the start of the World Cup football tournament in Russia the US-NATO alliance (plus Israel) conducted a two-week military exercise in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. 18,000 troops took part in the manoeuvres which, according to the Pentagon’s HQ in Europe, were “not a provocation of Russia.” At the very time that citizens of countless countries were preparing to travel to Russia to enjoy a major sporting jamboree, the Pentagon-Brussels pressure group did its best to confront the country whose defence budget is one third of Europe’s and a tenth of America’s and whose President declared that his overwhelming priority is reduction of poverty and “the well-being of the people and the prosperity of Russian families.”

It is deeply ironical that while the US-NATO military fandangos were in full swing in the Baltic States, it was reported that

“Russia on Wednesday [6 June] successfully launched its Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft carrying three crew members to the International Space Station (ISS)…”

The spacecraft carried three astronauts: Serena Aunon-Chancellor of the US, Germany’s Alexander Gerst and Russia’s Sergei Prokopyev.

The spacecraft zoomed away in international harmony two days before US Senator Ben Sasse grouched that

“Putin is not our friend and he is not the president’s buddy. He is a thug using Soviet-style aggression to wage a shadow war against America, and our leaders should act like it.”

With that sort of attitude, widespread in the Congress, it’s going to be difficult to realise Trump’s desire to “get along with Russia” which he observes would be “good for the world, it’s good for us, it’s good for everybody.”

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Trump is the most erratic president the US has ever known. He ricochets from malevolent tweeting to spiteful speeches, and is now distrusted by almost every foreign leader of stature. It is difficult to disagree with the opinion of Iran’s foreign minister that he is “impulsive and illogical” but — and it is a very big ‘but’ — at the moment he presents the best chance for rapprochement and amity with Russia. The fact that Washington’s warmongers so violently oppose his forthcoming talks with President Putin is evidence enough that he is on the right track. Let’s hope that President Putin can keep him on the rails that lead to peace, trade and friendship.

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Brian Cloughley is a British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan.

On June 28th, PwC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) came out with their listing of “Global Top 100 companies (2018): Ranking of the top 100 global companies by market capitalisation”, and reported:

“The increase in China’s market capitalisation has been close to that of the US this year. … China’s contribution to the top 100 market capitalisation increased by 57%, to $2,822bn. … European companies have never fully recovered from the 2009 financial crisis. Europe is now represented by just 23 companies (down from 31 in 2009) and accounts for only 17% of the top 100 market capitalisation (compared to 27% in 2009).”

How much more can Europe’s wealth shrink? 

Europe is shrinking as an international place to invest, even while it is exploding as an international place to receive refugees from the nations where the U.S. regime bomb and destroy the infrastructure, and leave hell for the residents, who thus flee, mainly to nearby Europe, and so cause the refugee-crisis there. Usually, the U.S. isn’t the only invader: it solicits any allies it can muster — mainly fundamentalist-Sunni Arab regimes, plus the apartheid theocracy of Israel, but also a few regimes in Europe — to join in this creation of hell for the escapees, and of immigrants to Europe. But, as Barack Obama put it,

“The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come.”

The U.S. aristocracy intend to keep things that way, and their allies just tag along.

The U.S. regime is solidly neoconservative, or imperialistic; and the way that it grows its wealth and its power now is at Europe’s expense. The data show this.

During recent centuries, Europe had led the world, but now the U.S. does, and at Europe’s expense, but especially at the expense of the people who live where we bomb. This is just a fact, but what are Europeans doing about it? Thus far, nothing. Is that about to change? Maybe things are finally getting bad enough.

On page 31 of the PwC report, is shown that whereas in 2009 the U.S. had 42% of the “Top 100” companies, that figure in 2018 is 54% — 54 firms, instead of the previous 42.

China has 12 instead of the former 9.

But most of Europe has seen declines, instead of rises.

UK now has 5 instead of the former 9.

France now has 4 instead of the former 7.

Germany now has 4 instead of the former 5.

Russia has been hit particularly hard by U.S. sanctions; it now has 0, instead of the former 2.

Three European countries had 1 in 2009 and now have 0 — none at all — and these three are: Italy, Norway, Finland.

No one can reasonably deny, in light of these data, that the U.S. aristocracy — the individuals who control America’s international corporations and U.S. Government and America’s ‘news’ media (to control the public) — have continued to win against Europe’s aristocracies (the U.S. counterparts in the European subcontinent).

What’s amazing is that Europe’s aristocrats are not fighting back — except (some of them) against the refugees from America’s invasions and coups (and opposing those refugees isn’t dealing with the source of Europe’s economic problem). Even if the publics in Europe are powerless, the billionaires who still remain there are not. How much longer will they continue to be sitting ducks for America’s billionaires to target and eat?

Europe’s power in the world could shrink to almost nothing, unless foreign affairs in Europe soon reverse 180 degrees, and turn against the U.S. and its allies, instead of stay with those regime-change fanatics — and against themselves.

Europe is not declining on account of some failure by Europeans, except a failure to fight back in an intelligent way, which means, above all: against the real source of Europe’s decline. America, after all, definitely is not a democracy.

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

Like the many unwinnable wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria) started by two previous US presidents, president Trump’s war of his own choosing against China is also unwinnable not just because China is a formidable “economic partner” and has the capacity to retaliate massively, but also because China itself is too big a market for the US-based business and it can hurt the US without having to impose new tariffs.

While by the end of 2017, the US investment in China totaled US$14 billion compared to China’s US$ 29 billion in the US, in terms of stocks however, US companies had “significantly more historical investment” in China, estimated at about US$256 billion, than Chinese firms had in the US, according to a report by the National Committee on United States-China Relations and Rhodium Group in April. And China imported some US$140 billion worth of US products last year, and it would have no compunction about putting different hurdles in the way of every US company, including the General Motors which has been outselling other motor companies like Honda, BMW and Mercedes Benz in China, operating in China. While there is no doubt that, as the US president’s various announcements tell us, the US can hurt as much as US$450 billion worth of Chinese goods, a number of US companies operating in China would equally start facing a crisis that, if the past is any guide to future, may eventually have to wrap things up.

For instance, in 2016, when the Philippines decided to take the case of South China Sea Islands to the Hague for arbitration, China did retaliate in an unprovoked manner by simply issuing a notice of non-compliance on Philippine bananas, saying that they had detected a pest called Dysmicoccus neobrevipes in a shipment to Shenzhen, a major entry point for Philippine bananas to China. The Philippines exported nearly 450,000 tonnes of bananas to China in 2016 worth US$157.5 million. After the incident, China destroyed 35 tonnes of bananas and suspended 27 exporters. Such an incident had also occurred in 2012 when a standoff took place between China and Philippines over the Scarborough Shoals, which began on April 8 when the Philippines sent its navy to confront Chinese vessels fishing in the area, forcing China into taking measures that hit the Philippines economy by slowing down its inceptions of imports from the Philippines such as papayas, mangoes, coconuts and pineapples, thus forcing the Philippine authorities to search for other markets in the Middle East and other regions.

As far as the US is concerned, its trade war with China will hurt a lot private US business companies operating in China. While US tariff would hurt Chinese companies as well, these companies are state-owned and are unlikely to put pressure on their government to end the war.

As of 2018, McDonalds has about 2500 outlets in China. Currently it is planning to increase the number of outlets to 4500 by 2022. Starbuck is also opening a new outlet in China every 15 hours and expecting to add more 2,000 more by 2021. If this trade war gets serious and both sides start retaliating, both of these companies may have to revisit their plans. The General Motors, which delivered more than 1.1 million vehicles to China in 2016 as compared to the 202000 it delivered in the US, would also have to do the same and look for other markets as well. Reportedly, other US-based companies such as Apple are already starting to feel the pressure and Apple’s Tim Cook told Trump in April that trade war with China, where Apple has 41 stores (most in a single region outside the US) and where its sales have already declined, wasn’t a good thing.

War will expand to other markets

One crucial factor that is going to hurt the US more is that its tariff policy is not going to hurt China alone. On the one hand, these tariffs will hurt its economic relations with other countries, and on the other, any decline in Chinese exports to the US will leave a major impact on a number of Asian economies, which act as a supplier of products, such as smart-phone chips, to China which China uses to produce things that it exports to the US.

The US imposed tariffs have already started another trade-war between the US and its erstwhile ally in Asia, India. When Trump recently mentioned India at G7 and threatened additional tariff, Delhi was not amused. Now India says it is planning to raise customs duty by 50 percent on a revised list of 30 US products including motorbikes, lentils and some steel goods. India has also decided to increase import duties to counter the impact of higher US tariffs on certain steel and aluminium products which would have implications of around $240 million on India.

That India did this as a retaliation is evident from the notification it sent to WTO stating that the duties imposed and concessions suspended “are substantially equivalent to the amount of trade affected by the measures imposed by the US.”

This economic tension has already led China to forge better ties with India in a way that might enable both of these countries to counter the trade challenge thrown by Trump. Ahead of Modi-Xi summit in April, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that “the world is now faced with rampant unilateralism as well as the rising protectionism in the process of globalisation. All these trends have been closely followed and debated.” “So against such backdrop, China and India have a lot to discuss. We are newly emerging markets as well as developing countries with big populations, so we believe the two countries will continue to uphold the globalisation so that it is more inclusive”, Lu added further.

In a way, this trade war has largely helped India and China to submerge the Doklam standoff and re-configure their relations in the changing global economic context. The US, therefore, is unwittingly driving a country away from its axis that it not so long ago was courting as its bulwark against China in Asia for the next 100 years, but now has been forced to postpone its 2+2 strategic dialogue, an outcome of strained economic relations.

There is, therefore, every likelihood of the US imposed trade war backfiring on the US itself not just in economic terms, but also in geo-strategic, giving the US enough reasons to review its ‘war strategy’ and equally giving reasons to the president Trump to revisit his stance to avoid ending up as yet another president failing to win yet another self-imposed war.

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Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from the author.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Tiger Forces and their allies are about to achieve a stunning and rapid victory in their battle against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and their allies in southern Syria.

Over the past few days, government forces have liberated over 15 settlements in the eastern and western countryside of Daraa and forces some groups of militants to accept a surrender agreements.

According to the Syrian state media, at least 10 villages – Tisiyah, Maaraba, al-Samaqiyat, Smad, Samj, Abu Khatula, Elemtaih, al-Taebah, al-Nada and Jamrin – almost signed the reconciliation agreement and militants started preparing for surrender.

Militants in the town of Bosra al-Sham already started surrendering weapons. At the same time, the so-called moderate opposition in the town of Tafas and have pledged allegiance to the ISIS-linked Khalid al-Walid Army.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have deployed additional armoured and artillery forces, including battle tanks, in the occupied Golan Heights, near the contact line with Syria.

Israel claimed the additional forces were deployed solely to “respond” to potential incidents and that “the IDF will continue to insist on the principle of non-involvement in what is happening in Syria”.

Meanwhile in reality, Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted forces of the Damascus government in southern and central Syria describing these strikes as a defensive measure.

It’s interesting to note that many of these strikes took place during important battles between the SAA and terrorist groups.

Syrian and local sources say that the IDF is preparing for carrying out more strikes amid the ongoing SAA anti-terrorist operation in the provinces of Daraa and Quneitra. While such strikes cause a new round of the Syrian-Israeli tensions, they will not likely influence in any way the strategic situation in these provinces because militants’ defense has already collapsed.

If Israeli forces continue striking SAA troops attacking the Khalid al-Walid Army near the occupied Golan Heights, the international audience will easily find out that Israel is encouraging ISIS in the area and using the terrorist group to create a buffer zone there.

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Mass protests against the Trump regime’s unlawful agenda toward unwanted aliens are very much warranted and vital. Yet they’re way short of what’s most needed.

Upholding justice under law for everyone, along with strictly observing the letter and spirit of rule of law principles, are global issues – one above others in America way inadequate, especially when issues more important than others are ignored or get short shrift.

Nothing approaches the importance of challenging Washington’s imperial war agenda, smashing one country after another, responsible for countless millions of casualties – responsible parties free to commit high crimes of war and against humanity with impunity.

Where’s the mass outrage, including about countless trillions of dollars spent for mass slaughter and destruction, vital homeland needs left begging, including the erosion of important social programs to help pay for naked aggression and global dominance.

Most Americans don’t realize how greatly they’re harmed by endless US imperial wars.

The spirited Vietnam era anti-war movement greatly helped getting US combat troops out of Southeast Asia – though not easily or quickly.

In 1971 testimony before Congress, a young John Kerry Vietnam veteran explained high crimes committed by US soldiers, including highly decorated ones.

They included massacring and raping Vietnamese women, chopping off heads, cutting off ears for souvenirs, electro-shocking genitals, random shootings, “raz(ing) villages (like) Genghis Khan,” shooting livestock and pets “for fun, poison(ing) food stocks,” and much more.

“We saw firsthand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime…We rationalized destroying villages…to save them.”

“We saw America lose her sense of morality (by accepting) a My Lai” massacre and many others like it. “We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.”

Kerry explained the above, later becoming part of the dirty system in Congress and as secretary of state – his morality and soul sold for wealth, power and privilege, atrocities in US war theaters today as horrendous or worse than earlier, suppressed by media scoundrels.

Current US policymakers place a cheapness on lives everywhere, at home and abroad, committing daily high crimes of war, against humanity and genocide – vital public outrage absent.

Without it, US Nuremberg-level high crimes continue endlessly, along with police state harshness at home and serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of fast eroding social justice, heading toward disappearing altogether.

The public spirit of that earlier era is gone, why America gets away with mass murder and much more, why thirdworldizing the country continues, why most people are mindless about growing tyranny posing as democracy, disdained from the nation’s inception, today as well under one-party rule with two right wings – hostile to virtually everything just societies hold dear.

Widespread anti-war fervor of a bygone time no longer exists. Anti-Trump protests are suspect.

During and after the presidential campaign, dark forces in Washington and other centers of power manipulated Americans to turn out in large numbers against him.

It’s part of a plot to delegitimize and undermine him, including by falsely claiming Russian US electing meddling helped him triumph over Hillary, a bald-faced lie still resonating.

Unknown numbers were paid to protest earlier. Were weekend crowds assembled the same way to demonstrate against Trump’s hostility toward unwanted aliens?

Most Americans are easy marks to manipulate and fool – no matter how many times they were had before. The late Studs Terkel and Gore Vidal both called the nation “the United States of amnesia.”

I and others call the US a plutocracy, not a democracy. Since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, America became increasing neoliberal, hardline and belligerent – a warrior state more than ever post-9/11.

Trump exceeds the ruthlessness of his predecessors at home and geopolitically – unacceptable hostility toward unwanted aliens one of many illegal and immoral policies.

All are important, some more than others, none more than mass opposition to imperial wars, along with mass activism against police state injustice, harming America’s poor and most disadvantaged, and a nation serving privileged interests exclusively.

Where’s the outrage against all of the above? Selective indignation, especially if manipulated, not grassroots, doesn’t pass the smell test.

It’s not how true blue activism operates, too few in numbers domestically, at most a shadow of its long ago peak.

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

The US Air Force has tested the B61-12 nuclear bomb by dropping a dud from a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber over Nevada, as part of an ambitious project to extend the service life of the bomb, introduced in 1968, by another 20 years.

 To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.

Moral boundaries

But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination.

People have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group

It is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages. I wonder how it will go down with Rupert Murdoch.

To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”. And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.

‘Devious’ infants

And the results are quite satisfactory. There is good news on two fronts. First, Rupert Murdoch is happy with it – his Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors. They went the whole swinish hog: even the brown babies are liars. Those sobs of anguish are typical of the manipulative behaviour of the strangers coming to infest us – should we not fear a race whose very infants can be so devious? Second, the hardcore fans loved it: 58 per cent of Republicans are in favour of this brutality. Trump’s overall approval ratings are up to 42.5 per cent.

Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors

This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable. So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow.

Several hundred thousand people turned out on Saturday for rallies across the United States to denounce the Trump administration’s policy of persecuting immigrants and asylum seekers. Protests took place in more than 700 locations, with the biggest crowds in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington and New York City.

The protests were particularly directed at the separation of thousands of immigrant children from their parents, carried out as a consequence of Trump’s “zero tolerance” directive requiring the arrest of anyone suspected of entering the United States illegally.

The biggest demonstration was in Los Angeles, home to the largest immigrant population in the United States. More than 75,000 people surrounded City Hall in a crowd so dense it was difficult to move through it. By contrast, only 20 people showed for a miserable pro-Trump counterprotest that was given undue attention by the local news media.

Protesters, outraged by videos of young children crying after being forcibly separated from their parents, continued arriving at the demonstration in a continuous stream throughout the course of the day. There was widespread support for placing Trump, Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions and other cabinet figures on trial for crimes against humanity. Others called for the abolition of Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other repressive instruments of the anti-immigrant dragnet. “Human Rights should have no border” was a common slogan on placards throughout the rally.

Celebrity entertainers and Democratic Party politicians dominated the platform and sought to direct the outrage over the abuse of immigrants and separation of parents and children into support for the Democratic Party in the November congressional elections. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti spoke about the need for ICE and immigration officials to simply “follow the law.” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom spoke of the rich history of diversity in California, while pledging to do nothing whatsoever to protest Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

Source: NPR

In one of the largest demonstrations, over 50,000 rallied in Chicago, according to crowd estimates by the city police department. Braving intense and dangerous heat, wide layers of the population—high school and college students; immigrants and their families; teachers, nurses, and state workers; sections of the middle and even upper-middle class—turned out to express their opposition to the Trump administration’s barbaric anti-immigrant policies.

There was a similar turnout in New York City, with marches in both Manhattan and Brooklyn. A crowd of demonstrators filled Brooklyn Bridge from end to end for more than two hours as they marched across the East River.

Some 15,000 people gathered at Government Center in Boston, where the speakers platform was dominated by Democratic politicians, including senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Representative Joe Kennedy, all promoting a vote for the Democrats in November. The Massachusetts Secretary of State office had a table set up to register people to vote.

There were sizeable protests in many regional centers, such as Atlanta, Denver and Dallas, where five people were arrested outside an ICE facility; at mid-size cities like Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City; and even in small interior towns such as Redding, California, and Huntington, West Virginia.

In El Paso, Texas, a large crowd blocked the bridge across the Rio Grande to Juarez, Mexico. There were organized protests in all 50 states.

At what was billed as the main national rally, in Washington DC, the march organizers, from MoveOn.org, the American Civil Liberties Union and the AFL-CIO-backed National Domestic Workers Alliance, made the decision to have the “vote in November” argument made exclusively by entertainers, ministers and activists representing various “identities”—black, Hispanic, Asian, female, etc.—rather than having any leading Democrats on the platform.

This was done in part out of concern that the crowd might not react favorably to such figures and in part because top Democrats did not want to associate themselves in so public a way with the defense of immigrants. But the absence of Democratic politicians from the platform in Washington did not change the message, as speakers repeatedly led the crowd in chants of “vote them out.” Not one speaker criticized the role of the Obama administration in carrying out mass deportations—more than any previous government—and setting the stage for the brutal escalation of attacks by Trump.

The speakers list in Washington aimed to reinforce the efforts of the Democratic Party and its pseudo-left supporters to split the working class along the lines of race, religion, ethnicity and gender. Not a single speaker claimed to represent the working class or speak in the name of the vast majority of Americans who are united as part of that class.

Protesters carry signs and chant slogans in front of Federal Courthouse in Los Angeles on Tuesday (Source: Long Beach Press-Telegram)

The reactionary ideology behind this lineup was given voice by one speaker in particular, Rev. Traci Blackmon of the United Church of Christ, an African-American pastor from St. Louis. She presented the entire history of the United States as one of white oppressors ripping children away from nonwhite parents: from enslaved black women to Native American families, Japanese-Americans in World War II and parents locked up in the prison system, whom she called “predominantly black and brown,” despite the fact that working-class whites make up a large proportion of those in jail.

This presentation was explicitly racialist, as the preacher spoke of breaking through the “iron curtains of white nationalism” and claimed the motivation for the attacks on immigrants was that “The false god of whiteness is threatened.” There were no protests from the platform against this type of language, nor any attempt to assert the unity of white, black and other minority working people in a common struggle.

While the speakers in Washington and in other major cities covered up the role of the Obama administration and sought to turn the defense of immigrants into an electoral campaign for the Democrats, those attending the rallies were extremely receptive to a socialist alternative.

Supporters and members of the Socialist Equality Party intervened at many of the rallies around the country and found enormous support for the SEP’s call to unite the working class against all the politicians of the capitalist class, whether Trump and the Republicans or the Democrats, who serve as the second line of attack against immigrants.

SEP supporters distributed thousands of copies of the statement addressed by the party to the rallies, under the headline, “Mobilize the working class against the bipartisan attack on immigrants!”

At some of the smaller rallies, where the platform was less strictly controlled by groups affiliated with the Democratic Party, SEP members were able to speak and declare the party’s support for open borders, the freedom of all workers to live and work where they choose, and against the subordination of the working class to big-business politicians and parties.

In those cases there was a warm response to the policies advocated by the SEP and clear indications that working people are increasingly interested in a socialist perspective and eager to discuss it.

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Featured image is from CNBC.

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Massive Victory for Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexican Elections

By Rafael Azul, July 02, 2018

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leader of the Movement for National Reconstruction (Morena), was elected President of Mexico yesterday by a massive margin amid high voter turnout. His two main opponents, José Antonio Meade (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) and Ricardo Anaya (Together for México coalition, which includes the National Action Party, PAN, and the Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD) conceded early yesterday evening.

America Is “One Dollar One Vote”, Not Really “One Person One Vote”

By Eric Zuesse, July 02, 2018

The basic problem in America, therefore, isn’t Democratic versus Republican; it is instead democracy versus dictatorship. And this problem exists within each Party: each Party is controlled by its billionaires, not by its voting-public.

Nationwide Protests: Pro-Immigrant or Anti-Trump?

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, July 02, 2018

Over the past weeks, there has been a series of major protests against the mistreatment of immigrants. Hundreds were arrested after blocking DC streets and sitting-in at a Senate office building.  Two weeks ago, there were #FamiliesTogether rallies across the United States that forced Trump to end child separation and return to the Obama-era policy of incarcerating immigrant families. People are taking action for immigrant rights and protesting the separation of children from their families as well as the indefinite detention of immigrant families.

In Upholding the “Muslim Ban”, the Supreme Court Ignored International Law

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, July 02, 2018

Under the guise of deferring to the president on matters of national security, the 5-4 majority disregarded a litany of Trump’s anti-Muslim statements and held that the ban does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which forbids the government from preferring one religion over another. Neither the majority nor the dissenting opinions even mentions the US’s legal obligations under international human rights law.

GMO Agriculture and the Narrative of Choice

By Colin Todhunter, July 02, 2018

GM agriculture is not ‘feeding the world’, nor has it been designed to do so: the companies that push GM are located firmly within the paradigm of industrial agriculture and associated power relations that shape a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy resulting in strategic surpluses and scarcities across the globe. The choice for farmers between a technology that is so often based on broken promises and non-GMO agriculture offers little more than a false choice.

Canada: Let’s Not be Distracted by Stephen Harper. We Have Chrystia Freeland to Contend With

By Nino Pagliccia, July 02, 2018

Canadian foreign policy has experienced a striking shift toward the political right in the last thirty years with both Liberal and Conservative governments at the helm. Following the world trend on globalization, Canada has moved from a perceived peace promoting position on the world stage to an outright recognized wars and uprisings supporter, and weapons exporter that rivals very closely with the Trump administration.

Featured image: Members of the “Champions Team” from the Palestine Amputee Football Association at training (MEE/Mohammed Asaad)

When he was just nine years old, Ibrahim Khattab lost his left leg during Israel’s 2014 “Protective Edge” military operation against Gaza. The 50-day assault left over 2,100 Palestinians dead, most of them civilians.

Now 13-year-old Khattab is the youngest member of Gaza’s first amputee football team, established in March this year.

“The past four years were harsh. It was not easy for me to cope with my new condition, but now I am proud that I play with all these men who are much older than me,” he said.

Image on the right: Ibrahim Khattab says he is “proud that I play with all these men who are much older than me and yet I sometimes manage to compete with them” (MEE/Mohammed Asaad)

Khattab said that what he went through in the aftermath of the Israeli attack was “unbearable”.

He and his friends were playing football in front of his home in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip when he was hit by an Israeli drone. He immediately fainted and was transferred to the nearest hospital. When he woke up a few hours later, he found out he had lost his left leg.

“The explosion was massive, and it happened before I could run,” he recalled. “I did not realise what was happening, I just remember that I saw my leg bleeding then I slept and woke up in the hospital a few hours later.”

Khattab was nervous about going back to school at first.

“I was afraid my friends would not accept me anymore,” he said. “I used to run and play on the street all day. Now my parents are always afraid something bad will happen to me if I run or hang out alone.”

But Khattab has come a long way since then. He says that Monday, the day the team meets for training, has become his favourite day of the week.

“I get to meet my new friends here. Joining the team has made me confident about my body and abilities again. I love the support my coach and friends give me.”

Ibrahim Khattab says Monday are his favourite day of the week because it is the day the team meets for training (MEE/Mohammed Asaad)

He said he dreams of travelling to represent Palestine in international games.

The football team of 13 amputees, dubbed “the Champions Team,” meets once a week for a three-hour training session.

They aim to compete in international championships by challenging their current situations and breaking common stereotypes about the disabled.

Ten of the 13 members on the team suffered amputations due to injuries sustained from Israel’s three military operations targeting the Gaza Strip between 2008-14. Others were victims of shelling incidents that have occurred sporadically since the beginning of the blockade Israel imposed on the strip in 2007.

For Noaman Abushamla, the association’s manager, the initiative is a resistance tool for Palestinians to challenge the occupation (MEE/Mohammed Asaad)

As a result of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in the summer of 2014 alone, 1,100 people have been left with permanent disabilities, including 100 amputations.

More recently, since the beginning of the Great Return March protests, Gaza doctors have performed 32 amputations, 27 of which were on lower limbs, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Tensions have soared in Gaza since 30 March, when Israel met largely peaceful mass protests near the fence separating Israel from Gaza with lethal force, killing at least 133 Palestinians. There have been no Israeli fatalities.

Gaza has been suffering a humanitarian crisis as a result of the Israeli-imposed blockade. According to the World Health Organisation, 1.2 million people lack adequate access to healthcare.

Common goals

Wahid Rabah, the oldest member of the team, lost his right leg during an Israeli military operation in 2006 dubbed “Summer Rain,” which was launched after an Israeli soldier was captured and taken into Gaza. The attack left more than 240 Palestinians dead, including 48 children.

Over the years, the 42-year-old has tried to find different ways of coping with his disability and in March he received a call from the founder of the Palestine Amputee Football Association (PAFA) – founded that same month – asking whether or not he would be interested in joining the first amputee football team in Gaza.

“It took me three years to start coping by enrolling myself in local sport clubs and playing different sports, like sitting volleyball and football. Then the founder of this association called me and suggested that I join the team, and I said, why not?” he explained.

Image below: Islam Amoun has not let the loss of his arm stop him from playing football (MEE/Mohammed Asaad)

In July 2006, Rabah, a national security officer at the time, said he was hit by an Israeli drone, while he was on duty in the Bureij refugee camp.

“I can never forget the date, 19 July,” Rabah said. “I got injured and lay on the ground. When my colleague took off his shirt and tied it on my leg, I knew at that moment that I was going to lose it forever,” he recalled.

Rabah’s right leg was amputated due to severe damage to his bones and tissue. He usually uses a prosthetic leg but does without it on the football pitch to abide by the association’s rules, which allow players to use only crutches, since not all amputee players have prosthetic legs. The goal keeper must have a disbaility in his upper limbs while the rest of the players must have a disability in the lower limbs, among other rules.

Rabah believes his decision to join the team helped him realise that there are others that suffer similar disabilities to him and that he was not so different.

“Losing part of your body is not easy,” he said. “But getting to know people whose cases are similar to yours is very encouraging. This is why I have decided to stay with this team.”

A level playing field

A familiar figure on the sidelines of the pitch is Fouad Abu Ghalioun, the founder and chairman of PAFA, who supervises the team’s weekly training session.

Abu Ghalioun said he decided to create the amputee football team in Gaza after being inspired by the spirit shown by players in the European Amputee Football Championship (EAFF) in October 2017. 

“[I] thought to myself, if the idea is implemented in Europe where amputees have access to proper medical treatment and enjoy all their rights, then it is a must to start it in Gaza where victims of Israeli attacks are forgotten and left with no hope,” Abu Ghalioun told Middle East Eye.

“I immediately called some friends and proposed the idea. They supported the initiative and started gathering information on what is needed to form such teams, who can join, and the kind of crutches used by players.”

Abu Ghalioun spent five months working to bring the idea to life and said it is always a challenge to initiate such projects in Gaza. 

The first obstacle was a lack of resources needed to fund the project, which included securing a football pitch and buying special crutches for the players.

Though the players do not have enough resources or equipment yet, they meet weekly for training (MEE/Mohammed Asaad)

“It was also hard to convince the amputees, the majority of which did not accept their condition, to [accept] their disabilities and play football using only one leg,” he said.

The Deir al-Balah Municipality opens its pitch for the team to practise once a week, however, the players should practise at least twice a week in a fully equipped football pitch, which must include bleachers, dressing rooms and toilets.

According to Abu Ghalioun, the players require special sturdy crutches that cost at least $100 each. There are other costs as well, such as renting a football pitch and the cost of transporting the players who come from different areas in Gaza to the pitch in the central Gaza Strip, all of which may total an estimated $10,000 a year in running expenses for the club.

Big dreams

Image on the right: Naji Naji lost his leg when he was 15 years old, after stepping on an explosive device in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp (MEE/Mohammed Asaad)

The 13 players hope to one day make it to the international Paralympic Games.

“It would be a dream come true, not only for the team, but for all persons with disabilities in Gaza, if we manage to represent our country in international games,” said 26-year-old Naji Naji, as he took a break from practice. He lost his leg when he was 15 years old, after stepping on an explosive device in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp.

“I was walking in the street when an explosion suddenly struck. I immediately fell on the ground and my left leg was gone,” Naji recalled.

“You can see these crutches we are using are not made for sport. They bend and break most of the time. We do not have enough resources and equipment for training, but we are confident that we can make it despite everything.”

Notwithstanding the lack of resources, Naji wishes this project had been initiated a long time ago.

“The coaches are teaching us to run as fast as we can when we were afraid to even walk alone,” Naji said. “I hope we can train every day. It makes me feel alive.”

Abu Ghalioun says he hopes to form an additional four amputee teams from different governorates in the Gaza Strip within the next few months so they can compete with one another. In this way they can form a national team that will be able to compete at the international level. In these teams, he is also aiming to include players who also lost their limbs while participating in the Great Return March.

“We already have two teams that will start training in the next two weeks, including one for children with disabilities entitled ‘Hope and Future’ that will be given special training to help children cope with their condition,” he said.

Resistance tools

Mahmoud al-Naouq, the administrative manager of PAFA, lost both of his legs in two different incidents during the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza.

According to al-Naouq, after an Israeli warplane targeted his home in Deir al-Balah, he was immediately transferred to the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital near his home, where doctors had to amputate his left leg as shrapnel completely damaged his bones. A few days later, al-Naouq says he lost his other leg after Israeli warplanes targeted the hospital where he was recovering.

According to al-Naouq, the first training session took place on Land Day, which coincided with the beginning of the Great Return March protests. Land Day commemorates the day when Israeli forces killed six Palestinians during protests against land confiscation in 1976.

“While the occupation usually portrays Palestinians as advocates for violence and death, this initiative came to reflect our desire to live rather than get killed,” al-Naouq said.

“The amputee team has given the players another chance to feel normal again,” said al-Naouq. “After feeling left out for years, this initiative teaches them how to play football with only one leg, but also helps them live with their disabilities.”

For Noaman Abushamla, the association’s manager, such initiatives are resistance tools for the Palestinians in the besieged enclave to “challenge the occupation and prove they still exist despite all attempts to marginalise them”.

“Our message is to voice these victims’ demands,” Abushamla said. “You see they are clinging to life, and it is our duty to show the world what they are capable of doing, instead of what they cannot do.”

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

One comment from our eclectic group of experts said;

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

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

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

Consequences of American corporate influence over British welfare reforms

The demolition of the welfare state was first suggested in 1982 by the Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Using neoliberal politics, every UK government since 1982 has covertly worked towards that goal. It is also the political thinking used as justification for the welfare reforms of the New Labour government, which introduced the use of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) for all out-of-work disability benefit claimants. Neoliberal politics also justified additional austerity measures introduced by the Coalition government since 2010, and the Conservative government(s) since 2015, which were destined to cause preventable harm when disregarding the human consequences. Much of this is known and in the public domain.

However, what is less known is a story the government have tried very hard to gag. The American healthcare insurance system of disability denial was adopted, as was the involvement of a US healthcare company to distance the government from the preventable harm created by its use.  The private sector was introduced on a wide scale in many areas of welfare and social policy as New Labour adopted American social and labour market policies – and the gravity of its effects cannot be understated.

The result? In one 11 month study 10,600 deaths were attributed to the government disability denial system of screening, with 2,200 people dying before the ESA assessment was even completed. Between May 2010 and February 2014, an astonishing total of 40,680 people died within 12 months of going through a government Work Capability Assessment. The government department responsible has since refused to publish updated mortality totals.

This political and social scandal has been censored, with the author of THIS truly damning report in trouble with the government for publishing it.

Climate Change, what a British oil giant knew all along

For decades, tobacco companies buried evidence that smoking was deadly, the same goes for the fossil fuel industry. As early as 1981, big oil company Shell was aware of the causes and catastrophic dangers of climate change. In the 1980s it was acknowledging with its own research that anthropogenic global warming was a fact. Then, as the scientific consensus became more and more clear, it started introducing doubt and giving weight to a “significant minority” of “alternative viewpoints” as the full implications for the company’s business model became clear.

By the mid-90s, the company started talking about “distinguished scientists” that cast aspersions of the seriousness of climate change. THIS REPORT provides proof of Shell’s documentation including emails of what they knew and what they were hiding from the public domain. One document in 1988 confirms that:

“By the time the global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even stabilise the situation.”

It was not until 2007 that scientific research eventually took a grip of the problem and proved what was known all along. However, as Shell did say – it’s probably too late to take effective countermeasures now anyway. There is still persistent quoting of climate science deniers by the fossil fuel industries.

Government Surveillance

In 2016, the UK was identified as the most extreme surveillance state in the Western world. However, legislation really only came about to legalise its use because of the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013. Prior to that, the British government had created a secret 360-degree mass surveillance architecture that no-one, including most members of parliament, knew anything about. And much of it has since been deemed illegal by the highest courts in both Britain and the European Union.

From operation Optic Nerve which took millions of sexually explicit images of an unknowing public through their devices to a hacking operation called Gemalto – where GCHQ stole the keys to a global encryption system with 700 million subscribers. The unaccountable spymasters of the UK have undertaken breathtaking operations of illegality with absolute impunity.

Some other programmes included; Three Smurfs – an operation to turn on any mobile device so it could listen to or activate the camera covertly on mobile phones. XKeyScore was basically a Google search engine for spies to find any data about anyone. Upstream and Tempora hacked into the worlds main cable highway, intercepting everything and anything globally with a leaked presentation slide from GCHQ on this programme expressly stating they were intent on “Mastering the Internet”. Royal Concierge identified diplomatic hotel reservations so GCHQ could organise a surveillance operation against dignitaries either domestic or foreign, in advance.

In truth, Britain is classed as an endemic surveillance state and right now, we only know what has been uncovered by whistleblowers. This is why people like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and others are nothing less than political prisoners of Western governments. They don’t want you to know what they know about you. They also don’t want you to know about them, which is why the architecture is there in the first place. It is not for catching terrorists because if it was the courts would not deem these surveillance systems as illegal.

Evidence-Based Medical Studies

Over the last few years, medical professionals have come forward to share a truth that, for many people, proves difficult to swallow. One such authority is Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet – considered to be one of the most well respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world.

Dr. Horton recently released a statement declaring that a lot of published medical research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false.

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”

Across the pond,  Dr Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is also considered another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.  I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine”.

Many newspapers in Britain take the opportunity to indulge in some shameless click baiting and report completely false stories simply to gain visitor numbers onto their website – as in this example by the Mail Online HERE  or  HERE.

The Skripal poisoning and Pablo Millar

Source: New Eastern Outlook

D-notice’s (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) are used by the British state to censor the publication of potentially damaging news stories. They are issued to the mainstream media to withhold publication of damaging information. One such case was the widespread use of D-notices regarding the British ex-spy deeply involved in the Skripal/Novichok poisoning case in Salisbury.

(Here are the official D-Notices to the Skripal Affair)

Mainstream journalists, the press and broadcast media were issued with D-notices in respect of a former British intelligence officer called Pablo Miller. Miller was an associate of Christopher Steele, first in espionage operations in Russia and more recently in the activities of Steele’s private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.

Steele was responsible for compiling the Trump–Russia dossier, comprising 17 memos written in 2016 alleging misconduct and conspiracy between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Putin administration. The dossier paid for by the Democratic Party, claimed that Trump was compromised by evidence of his sexual proclivities (golden shower anyone?) in Russia’s possession. Steele was the subject of an earlier D-notice, which unsuccessfully attempted to keep his identity as the author of the dossier a secret.

Millar is reported to be Skripal’s handler in Salisbury and if Miller and by extension, Skripal himself were involved in Orbis’ work on the highly-suspect Steele-Trump dossier, which is thought to be the case (for all sorts of reasons – including these D-notices) alongside representatives of British and possibly US intelligence, then the motivations for the attempted assassination on the ex-Russian double agent was very wide at best. As it turned out, blame could not be pinned on Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, no matter how hard the government tried. This particular part of the Skripal poisoning story remains buried by the mainstream media.

The City of London – A global crime scene

For over a hundred years the Labour party tried in vain to abolish the City of London and its accompanying financial corruption. In 1917, Labour’s new rising star Herbert Morrison, the grandfather of Peter Mandelson made a stand and failed, calling it the “devilry of modern finance.” And although attempt after attempt was made throughout the following decades, it was Margaret Thatcher who succeeded by abolishing its opponent, the Greater London Council in 1986.

Tony Blair went about it another way and offered to reform the City of London in what turned out to be a gift from God. He effectively gave the vote to corporations which swayed the balance of democratic power away from residents and workers. It was received by its opponents as the greatest retrograde step since the peace treaty of 1215, Magna Carta. The City won its rights through debt financing in 1067, when William the Conqueror acceded to it and ever since governments have allowed the continuation of its ancient rights above all others.

The consequence? It now stands as money launderer of the world, the capital of global crime scene with Britain referred to by the global criminal fraternity to be the most corrupt country in the world.

A ‘watchman’ sits at the high table of parliament and is its official lobbyist sitting in the seat of power right next to the Speaker of the House who is “charged with ensuring that its established rights are safeguarded.” The job is to seek out political dissent that might arise against the City.

The City of London has its own private funding and will ‘buy-off’ any attempt to erode its powers – any scrutiny of its financial affairs are put beyond external inspection or audit. It has it’s own police force – and laws. Its dark and shadowy client list includes; terrorists, drug barons, arms dealers, despots, dictators, shady politicians, corporations, millionaires and billionaires  – most with something to hide. The shocking Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Lux Leaks barely scratching the surface even with their almost unbelievable revelations of criminality.

Keith Bristow, Director-General of the UK’s National Crime Agency said in June 2015 that the sheer scale of crime and its subsequent money laundering operations was “a serious strategic threat to Britain.” And whilst much of this activity is indeed published – the scale of it is not. It is now believed by many investigative journalists that the City of London is managing “trillions in ill-gotten gains” – not billions as we have all been told.

State propaganda – manipulating minds, controlling the internet

Reading this you would think this was the stuff of a conspiracy theory – sadly, it’s not. The government, through its spying agent GCHQ developed its own set of software tools to infiltrate the internet to shape what people see, hear and read, with the ability to rig online polls and psychologically manipulate people on social media. This was what Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept confirmed through the Snowden files in 2014. It was not about surveillance but about manipulating public opinion in ever more Orwellian ways.

These ‘tools’ now constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda delivery systems and internet deception programmes known to mankind. What the Snowden files show are that the government can change the outcome of online polls (codenamed Underpass), send mass delivery of emails or SMS messages (Warpath) at will, disrupt video-based websites (Silverlord) and have tools to permanently disable PC accounts. They can amplify a given message to push a chosen narrative (GESTATOR), increase traffic to any given website” (GATEWAY) and have the ability to inflate page views on websites (SLIPSTREAM). They can crash any website (PREDATORS FACE), reduce page views and distort public responses, spoof any email account and telephone calls they like. Visitors to WikiLeaks are tracked and monitored as if an inquiring mind is now against the law.

Don’t forget, the government has asked no-one for permission to do any of this and none of this has been debated in parliament where representative democracy is supposed to be taking place. There is no protective legislation for the general public and no-one is talking about or debating these illegal programmes that taxpayers have been given no choice to fund – costing billions. This is government sponsored fake news and public manipulation programmes on a monumental scale.

Chris Huhne, a former cabinet minister and member of the national security council until 2012 said –

 “when it comes to the secret world of GCHQ, the depth of my ‘privileged information’ has been dwarfed by the information provided by Edward Snowden to The Guardian.”

The Guardian’s offices were then visited by MI5 and the Snowden files were ordered to be destroyed under threats that if they didn’t, it would be closed down – a sign of British heavy-handedness reminiscent of the East-German Stasi.

Censorship – Spycatcher

‘Spycatcher’ was a truly candid autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer published in 1987. Written by Peter Wright, a former MI5 officer, it was published first in Australia after being banned by the British government in 1985. Its allegations proved too much for the authorities to allow it to be in the public domain.

In an interesting twist of irony, the UK government attempted to halt the book’s Australian publication. Malcolm Turnbull, current Prime Minister of Australia, was a lawyer at the time and represented the publisher that defeated the British government’s suppression orders against Spycatcher in Australia in September 1987, and again on appeal in June 1988. This is the same man that refuses to assist Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, from his hellhole existence in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The book details plans of the MI6 plot to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser during the Suez Crisis; of joint MI5-CIA plotting against British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and of MI5’s eavesdropping on high-level Commonwealth conferences. Wright also highlights the methods and ethics of the spying business.

Newspapers printed in England, attempting proper reportage of Spycatcher’s principal allegations were served gag orders. If they continued, they were tried for contempt of court. However, the book proved so popular many copies were smuggled into England. In 1987, the Law Lords again barred reportage of Wright’s allegations or sale of books.

The ruling was then overturned, but Wright was barred from receiving royalties from the sale of the book in the United Kingdom. In November 1991, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British government had breached the European Convention of Human Rights in gagging its own newspapers. The book has sold more than two million copies. In 1995, Wright died a millionaire from proceeds of his book.

Censorship – The Internet

To the inquisitive and knowledgeable, censorship of the internet by the British government is not news. In addition, there have been many reports, especially from independent outlets complaining about search engines and social media platforms censoring oppositional and dissenting voices.

Already described earlier in this article is the involvement of the authorities in strategies to manipulate public opinion and disseminate false narratives in their aims for control of the internet itself.

A few months ago, the government changed the law to block online content deemed as either pornographic or of an extremist nature to protect those under 16 years of age. It was anticipated that approximately 50 websites would be banned altogether. What subsequently happened was that thousands of websites disappeared from the internet with no court orders, injunctions, notices or justification. Even finding out which websites are on that list is a secret.

Over time, like many pieces of legislation that has been abused by the state, websites and online content that the government of the day does not like will have the perfect tool to simply press the ‘delete’ button, pretty much as they have already started doing.

On another, but related matter, just last week, The Independent had the headline: “Today’s vote will change the face of the internet forever, from an open platform to a place where anything can be removed without warning.” The articles first line reads; “The idea of instituting a regime of petty everyday censorship, that randomly and unfairly damages campaigns, artists and the denizens of the Internet, ought to fill you with rage.” This is how the state slowly takes control of what you read, see and hear.

In the meantime, Britain’s current Prime Minister has refused to rule out censoring the internet like China in future.

Dark Money Taking Power

Soon after the Second World War, some of America’s richest people began setting up a network of thinktanks to promote their interests. These purport to offer dispassionate opinions on public affairs. But they are more like corporate lobbyists, working on behalf of those who founded and fund them. These are the organisations now running much of the Trump administration. These same groups are now running much of Britain. Liam Fox and what was the Atlantic Bridge and the Adam Smith Institute are good examples.

They have control of the Conservative party and are largely responsible for years of work that steered Britain through the EU referendum that ended with Brexit. Tens of £millions have been spent, mostly undisclosed on making this dream to exploit Britain and its people a reality. In fact, almost everything in this article is about such organisations. Those hugely powerful individuals that own search engines and social media platforms along with the banking industry, the pharmaceutical and medical business, the fossil fuel and arms industries – they have reached a pinnacle of unprecedented corporate power.

Some of those fully censored stories pushed below the radar by these corporations include; how over 100,000 EU citizens die every year because of lobbying against workplace carcinogens, how corporate profits and taxes are hidden, the Tory-Trump plan to kill food safety with Brexit – to name but a few. And don’t forget the corporate media who are complicit. There are a handful of offshore billionaires that have the ability to decide what millions should read or see.

The Adam Smith Institute referred to earlier is a good example. It is a mouthpiece for right-wing extreme neoliberal capitalists. With a turnover of over £130 million and an operating profit of nearly £17 million, it has received millions of pounds in UK government funding. That is taxpayers money being used against taxpayers because the ASI does not believe in the likes of the NHS or civil society in general.

Talking of Dark Money – Brexit and the climate deniers

We recently reported about a transatlantic network of lobbyists pushing against action on climate change and (latterly) for Brexit? This group are all based out of one building around the corner from the Palace of Westminster.

What is much less known is that more recently, these groups have lobbied for a Hard Brexit, hoping the UK’s withdrawal from the EU will lead to a weakening of those environmental regulations that hinder future profits. These same groups are also behind the Tory-DUP pact, currently keeping Theresa May in her job while allowing hard-line Northern Irish social conservatives to dictate significant parts of the UK’s political agenda, themselves climate change deniers.

These are just some of Britain’s most censored stories. There are so many of them that we have had to categorise them, which says something about how democracy, free speech, civil liberty and human rights are performing in Britain right now.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

Last year Richard Bruce, who has suffered severely for many years following exposure to pesticides in the course of his work, sent news of research into links between diabetes and exposure to organophosphate, the most frequently and largely applied insecticide in the world, undertaken by a team from Madurai Kamaraj University, published in Genome Biology. It is accessible to all readers and may be accessed here.

He now draws attention to the Hindu’s report of a food poisoning incident in Navi Mumbai which led to the death of three children and 40 people falling ill (200 according to the Hindustan Times).

Dr. Ajit Gawli, Raigad district civil surgeon, said

“The serum test reports of two patients indicated presence of organophosphate compound in the food. The cholinesterase enzyme level was found to be around 800, which ideally should be around 1,200. It does confirm the presence of organophosphate compound found in insecticides and pesticides. After the reports of the serum of the deceased come in, we can confirm the saturation of the compound and what exactly the chemical was.” The food samples have been sent to a forensic science laboratory at Kalina and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for further analysis.”

An American campaign

Richard earlier sent news of a press release issued from Portland, Oregon, by the Center for Biological Diversity, a national, non-profit conservation organization with more than 990,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

It reported that group of farmworkers, child-safety and environmental advocates sent a letter to the government’s Environmental Protection Agency urging it to ban seven organophosphate pesticides, currently under review, that are used on crops such as corn, cotton, watermelon and wheat. It was submitted in response to the EPA’s request for public comments on new releases of human-health and ecological risk assessments for organophosphate insecticides.

“Every spring season, children around the U.S. are facing low-dose exposure to this dangerous chemical,” says a Minnesota mother who was sickened, along with her infant son, by chlorpyrifos. “It is in the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the food they eat,” she adds. “By leaving this chemical on the market, we are gambling with the lives of children. It is stealing their futures from them and increasing the amount of health care dollars they will need for treatment.”

Chemical & Engineering News reported that no ban was imposed; there was ‘pushback’ from Dow Sciences and others in the chemical industry.

Leonardo Trasande, an internationally renowned authority on children’s environmental health, in a study published in 2017 writes:

“A regulatory ban was proposed, but actions to end the use of one such pesticide, chlorpyrifos, in agriculture were recently stopped by the Environmental Protection Agency under false scientific pretenses”.

“Strong evidence now supports the notion that organophosphate pesticides damage the fetal brain and produce cognitive and behavioral dysfunction through multiple mechanisms, including thyroid disruption.”

Israel is in the process of enacting laws that would allow it to formally annex parts of the occupied West Bank, in serious violation of international law, a United Nations expert said on Friday, according to WAFA.

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Michael Lynk, said, after a fact-finding tour of the region, that he was gravely alarmed about the deterioration of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), saying that reports received during his visit to the region, this week, painted the most dispiriting picture yet, of the situation on the ground.

“After years of creeping Israeli de facto annexation of the large swathes of the West Bank through settlement expansion, the creation of closed military zones and other measures, Israel appears to be getting closer to enacting legislation that will formally annex parts of the West Bank,” he said. “This would amount to a profound violation of international law, and the impact of ongoing settlement expansion on human rights must not be ignored.”

Lynk travelled to Amman, Jordan, this week, where he met with Palestinian civil society, government officials and UN representatives, after Israel prevented him from entering the OPT. His mission was to collect information for his next report, to be presented to the 73rd session of the General Assembly, in October of 2018.

“This is my third mission to the region since I assumed the mandate in May 2016, and the reports I received this week have painted the bleakest picture yet of the human rights situation in the OPT,” he said.

“Palestinians in the West Bank face daily indignities, as they pass through Israeli checkpoints, face night raids of their homes, and are unable to build or expand their homes or work to develop their communities due to the complex system which makes building permits nearly impossible to obtain from the Israeli authorities,” the Special Rapporteur said.

Lynk cited the situation of Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin community near Jerusalem, which is at imminent risk of forcible transfer after the Israeli High Court of Justice upheld a demolition order for all structures in the community.

“Its residents are living in a coercive environment that may lead to forcible transfer, not knowing where they may find themselves in the coming months and not knowing if they will be living in a place where they are able to continue their traditional way of life,” he said.

Lynk further stated that the situation in Gaza has continued to worsen, highlighting that the electricity crisis, for example, which became acute last June, had not been alleviated.

“Residents are deprived of their most basic rights, including the rights to health, to education, and most recently, in attempting to exercise their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, they were deprived of the right to life,” Lynk said, in reference to the recent demonstrations along the fence during which Israeli security forces killed more than 140 and wounded thousands of Palestinian protesters.

He also expressed concern about the impact of significant cuts to the funding of UNRWA, the UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees, noting its crucial role in providing health, protection and education services as well as employment in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Special Rapporteur heard eloquent testimony of the challenges facing the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, and expressed concern at information he received, recently, stating that the Israeli government and the West Jerusalem municipality have been advancing plans which risk denial of the residency rights of 120,000 Palestinians in the municipality, as part of a larger policy to maintain an Israeli Jewish majority in Jerusalem.

The Rapporteur was particularly concerned at information he received, this week, which indicated that many human rights organizations and human rights defenders – Israeli, Palestinian, and international – are facing increasing attacks aimed not only at their delegitimization, but at their ability to operate.

He is particularly concerned that these attacks are gaining traction with members of the international community.

“The incredible, and extremely difficult work that these human rights organizations do is essential to preventing a further deterioration of the human rights situation in the OPT, and any effort to undermine this work only serves to weaken human rights in the OPT, and in the broader world.”

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Featured image is from IMEMC.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leader of the Movement for National Reconstruction (Morena), was elected President of Mexico yesterday by a massive margin amid high voter turnout. His two main opponents, José Antonio Meade (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) and Ricardo Anaya (Together for México coalition, which includes the National Action Party, PAN, and the Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD) conceded early yesterday evening.

Though full results will not be known until later on Monday, exit polls give López Obrador between 43 and 49 percent of the vote, ahead of Meade, who obtained between 22 and 26 percent of the vote, and Anaya with 23 to 27 percent of the vote. Other exit polls have López Obrador winning over 50 percent.

Other Morena candidates also appear likely to win, including Claudia Sheinbaum, the Morena candidate for Mayor of Mexico City, ending 21 years of PRD control. Morena also reportedly will win the governorships of the states of Morelia, Tabasco and Chiapas.

A record number of voters cast their ballots. Voters waited for hours at their polling stations and by noon over fifty percent of those eligible had already voted. By the end of the electoral process, seventy percent had voted, a historic turnout.

The results show a collapse in support for the main parties of the Mexican bourgeoisie in the face of widespread hostility to inequality, state-sanctioned violence, the militarization of society, and the xenophobic policies of US President Donald Trump. The PRI and PRD were devastated by the results.

Exit polls from the legislative elections show the Morena-led alliance, which also includes the Christian right-wing Social Encounter Party (PES) and the Workers Party (PT), with above 50 percent of federal deputies. According to unofficial exit poll results, the PT won between 64 and 75 seats—nearly double the PRI’s expected total (between 37 and 47 seats). The PAN won between 63 and 76 seats, and the PRD between 33 and 43 seats. Morena is expected to win between 127 and 142 seats. If these results hold, the PRI will have lost three-quarters of its current seats in the chamber of deputies.

The projected results of the PT—a party with Maoist origins—would be particularly notable if they hold. The PT currently has zero seats in the chamber of deputies (though it has 19 of 128 seats in the Senate). In a statement yesterday, López Obrador said he cast his presidential vote symbolically for Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, former candidate for the Pabloite Workers Revolutionary Party (PRT) and now a PT member.

The candidates of the parties opposing Morena and López Obrador were conciliatory in their concession speeches, indicating an intention on the part of the ruling class to accept López Obrador’s election. The bourgeois press has lauded the election as “a victory for democracy.”

Nevertheless, the vote was marred with several hundred incidents of violence and disappearances.

As the polls were about to open, Flora Reséndiz González, 49, an activist of the PT, was assassinated at her home in Contepec, Michoacán. Reséndiz died in the hospital at 6:30 a.m. Her death added to the 138 candidates killed during the election campaign in Mexico. PT leader Alberto Anaya Gutiérrez condemned the killing and called for an investigation: “We are profoundly saddened by the death of our beloved comrade,” declared Anaya, adding that this and other killings are symptoms of “social decomposition.”

The killing of candidates has been a feature of this campaign. It is blamed on local drug gangs that get to decide with impunity which candidate is not acceptable to them. On the day of the election there were also reports from the states of Chiapas, Veracruz and Mexico of the destruction of polling stations, armed gunmen in the open forcing voters to vote and instructing them on how to vote. In Veracruz, in an incident seemingly unrelated to the voting, two men waiting in line were kidnapped and whisked away.

Polls opened at 7:00 a.m. National Election Electoral Institute head Lorenzo Córdova indicated that there were 156,807 polling stations around the country and that only 4 would not open. Some 89 million voters were eligible to vote, half of which are under forty years old. Thirteen million are first-time voters.

All in all, more than 3,400 posts are being determined by the vote. In addition to electing a president, Mexican voters also voted to fill 500 seats in the lower house of Congress, and 128 senatorial seats.

The massive turnout reflects the anger and frustration of the Mexican working class. In addition to outrage over two hundred thousand killings and tens of thousands of disappearances over the last twelve years, there is mass anger over the interrelated issues of increasing poverty, inequality, and widespread government corruption and impunity for criminal acts.

A business elite, allied with the ruling PRI, in league with the PAN and PRD, is widely hated. The collapse of the PRI is particularly significant, as the party has exercised its domination over the country’s political system for nearly a century, with the exception of two PAN presidencies from 2000-2012.

Popular anger has fed support for López Obrador, particularly among young voters, who have repeatedly shown that they have no confidence in the traditional parties. An estimate based on social media gives López Obrador 51 percent of the youth vote, followed by 24 percent for the PRI’s Meade and 14 percent for Anaya of the PAN coalition.

Protest rallies took place at special voting stations, set up for those voters that could not get to their assigned locations. Many of them ran out of ballots, as voters demanded their democratic right to vote.

López Obrador, long depicted as a “leftist,” who fell short of winning the presidency in his 2006 and 2012 elections, ran a pro-corporate campaign. Its main purpose was to convince the Mexican and American ruling classes that his election would not impinge upon private profit or capitalist property relations.

The only comprehensive and scientific study which has ever been done of whether the U.S. is a democracy or instead a dictatorship, was published in 2014. It studied the period during 1981 through 2002, and it found that, “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.”

And this is quoting now directly from the study itself:

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

A study published two years later (in 2016) reviewed the entire relevant scientific literature and found that “responsiveness [to the American public’s preferences] seems to have declined during the late twentieth century” and might be getting worse yet than that: “The picture appears to be even more ominous — that is, opinion and policy are negatively related — on highly salient issues that attract media attention.” (Consequently: the more media-attention, the less that the Government’s policy will reflect the public’s preferences on the given issue. This is indirect proof that the media which the public are being exposed to are controlled by the aristocracy and thus focus on and propagandize for, whatever the aristocracy most want to fool the public about.) This scientific report stated, in its “Conclusions,” that, “the trends seem to be moving in the wrong direction from the standpoint of democratic theory — that is, people seem less and less likely to get what they say they want from government.” This, if it is true, proves the aristocracy’s success, against the public. It proves that the aristocracy are still in control and therefore are increasingly getting their way, against the public — that America is increasingly an aristocracy (sometimes called instead an “oligarchy” but meaning the same thing: the billionaires rule) and not a democracy.

The basic problem in America, therefore, isn’t Democratic versus Republican; it is instead democracy versus dictatorship. And this problem exists within each Party: each Party is controlled by its billionaires, not by its voting-public.

The best videos that I’ve seen explaining how, in local politics, the aristocracy controls America, are the following two:

First which is actually a series of three video reports on corruption in Georgia.

Second where Nomi Konst explains N.Y. politics via big-money control — the aristocracy’s control via corruption — against and over the public.

Here is a libertarian arguing for this corrupt control by the aristocracy to continue and to increase:

The libertarian presentation reflects refusal to see, or understand, systemic issues — the very issues that the operation by the aristocracy are being hired and paid to master. Consequently: libertarianism is the aristocracy’s ideology to fool the public into submission. In effect: it’s the aristocratic religion, the aristocratic faith, and so it is funded massively by the aristocracy.

The best video explaining the study which proved that corruption rules America, is:

To call a country like that a ‘democracy’ is to insult democracy. Any honest libertarian despises democracy. (Dishonest ones try to deceive the public to think that libertarianism supports democracy. But that’s merely adding deception to deception, as if the dishonest ideology isn’t already bad enough.)

Incidentally: If billionaires (and perhaps a few of the centi-millionaires) have almost entirely been controlling the U.S. Government, then they should be almost entirely funding (by their taxes and fees) the U.S. Government. If the rest of the public haven’t had any significant control of the Government, then the rest of the public shouldn’t pay any signficiant percentage of the Government’s costs. And any of the federal debt that has been engendered and accumulated, should likewise be charged proportionately — and not charged, to any sigificant extent, against the public. This would certainly be the democratic solution to the federal debt.

This article is being submitted to all U.S. news-media, and may be freely published by any of them — and will presumably be published by any of them that want the U.S. public to have access to the information and documentation that are provided in it. Of course, any that wish to hide this information and documentation will not publish it, even though they may freely do so — they would rather pay their hirees and selected contributors, instead. Freedom of the press (at least in the United States) means freedom of the owners of the press — it has nothing to do with democracy, which concerns freedom of the public, against any type of dictatorship (including aristocracy or “oligarchy”).

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

Featured image is from Vox.

As NATO’s role in the new Cold War between Russia and the West is being discussed, U.S. President Donald Trump is further drawing away from his European allies. Trump defends that NATO’s entire financial burden is on the U.S.’s shoulders. Trump had shocked his allies when he said, “NATO is worse than NAFTA,” at the G-7 Summit in Canada. According to him, the European Union is also worse than China, for Trump’s trade wars severely harmed relations with EU countries. Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton went to Moscow and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the meeting, a decision was made immediately after the NATO Summit between Trump and Putin to hold a summit in Helsinki. Trump said that Russia needs to be readmitted into the G-7. Collectively taking all these developments into consideration, it seems like the NATO summit is going to be extremely tense.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is trying to fix Trump’s damaged trust relations with his European allies. U.S. military officials, on the other hand, are calming allies saying,

“Take our actions into consideration, not Trump’s tweets.”

One other development that concerns Europeans was Mike Pompeo, who is known for his hawk views, and John Bolton taking up the positions vacated after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser Gen. McMaster resigned. Thus, the only actors left in Trump’s inner cabinet to calm the Europeans are Mattis and White House Secretary-General Gen. John Kelly.

However, according to information leaked to U.S. media, Mattis and Kelly are not as effective as they used to be in Trump’s inner cabinet. As a matter of fact, behind the scenes it is being said that Kelly is soon going to resign and, Hope Hicks, who previously resigned while communications director, is going to fill his position. Hicks is known as a figure loyal to Trump’s political agenda. It is also said that the communications director position is going to be filled by Trump’s political ally, Fox News’s former Chair Bill Shine who had quit in May 2017 due to harassment scandals. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s assistant Nick Ayers and White House Administration and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney are also among the names likely to replace Kelly. It is said that Kelly will be leaving this week or after the NATO Summit.

Mattis is going to become further isolated with Kelly gone. When Pompeo was CIA chief, he used to spend more time with Trump than Mattis. After becoming secretary of state, this shift further increased. Pompeo was also the architect of the summit between Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Trump in Singapore. Looking at hearsays, Mattis found out about Trump’s decision to postpone joint military drills with South Korea afterward. Trump also thinks that U.S. soldiers need to withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria. But Mattis is not on the same page as Trump regarding this matter. Despite having backtracked with respect to both matters, Trump is yet to give up. The question is: “How much longer can Mattis restrain Trump?” Trump also wants to establish a “Space Military Force” that is said will bring hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of trade volume. This fantastical project is going to bring an additional burden to U.S. taxpayers as well. Neither Mattis nor the Air Forces are pleased with this idea. When Trump gave the order to launch preparations to establish the “Space Force,” he did not speak to Mattis. This order was a surprise for both the Pentagon and Mattis.

It is said that Mattis, who could not prevent Bolton and Pompeo’s appointment to critical positions, may remain in his post as long as he refrains from criticizing Trump in public. Trump and Mattis are also known not to see eye-to-eye on the withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal and moving the U.S.’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. It is stated that Trump is tired of Mattis and Kelly’s attempts to restrain him. In conclusion, the Trump-Mattis relations seems to be stuck in a tight spot. It is only a matter of time before this tension erupts.

Mexicans are attending polls this Sunday to elect the new president and both chambers of the legislative branch at a federal level. As expected, fraud accusations have been rolling in for days and reports on vote buying, stealing ballots and violence are increasing.

The attorney’s office, which specializes in electoral crimes, registered 1,106 complaints since Thursday. According to Hector Diaz Santana, head of the office, this elections’ staple has been violence, but that’s something the public security authorities have to deal with.

Regarding the common electoral crimes, Diaz Santana said only about 324 complaints had been received by 2:00 p.m. local time and at least 17 people were arrested. Among the most common crimes are vote buying and the stealing of IDs used to vote.

A group of 60 social organizations known together as Citizen Action Against Poverty (ACFP), reported the price for vote buying skyrocketed from US$25 in May up to US$500 ($10,000 Mexican pesos) a couple of days before Sunday’s election.

Voters are also offered provision boxes, household appliances, electronic wallets, construction materials, or are receiving threats about losing their jobs or social benefits if such candidate loses.

Vecinos y representantes del partido Vía Radical denunciaron la entrega de despensas y artículos de construcción en Valle de Bravo, Edomex, para favorecer, presuntamente, al alcalde priista Mauricio Osorio Domínguez, que busca reelegirse https://t.co/jBVgwZVQye pic.twitter.com/rYUkYj8qtk

— AnimalPolitico.com (@Pajaropolitico) June 30, 2018

“Neighbors and representatives of the Radical Path party denounced handing of provision boxes and construction materials in Valle de Bravo, State of Mexico, to supposedly benefit the PRI mayor Mauricio Osorio Dominguez, who’s aiming for reelection.”

Similar cases have been reported in several municipalities, especially coming from the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) and its satellite organizations. However, reports have been filed against every electoral coalition with no exceptions, according to the ACFP.

Unfortunately, this is a normal electoral day in Mexico. Every time there are multiple reports of vote buying, stealing ballot boxes, or threatening people to vote for a certain candidate. Things are calmer now. Decades ago, it was normal to have armed groups attacking polling stations or people in the streets. Now, these reports are few and more people trust the electoral system, even though many remain critical and vigilant.

Another common problem is that of the special polling stations located in several cities across Mexico. Citizens must vote in their place of residence registered on their national IDs, but if they move from city or state and don’t inform the electoral authorities, they still have the chance to vote in one of these special stations. However, the ballots sent to this stations have proven to be insufficient.

Reports across the country say voters in several special stations are growing desperate due to the lack of ballots, some waiting for hours in the line only to find out they will not be able to vote.

#Elecciones2018 | En la casilla especial ubicada en el Parque 5 de Mayo de Tuxtla Gutiérrez, ciudadanía exclama "queremos votar" debido a que las 750 boletas presentadas ya fueron utilizadas pic.twitter.com/EqQXTGQ5Fg

— Andrés Domínguez (Compa Telex) (@andresreportero) July 1, 2018

“#Elections2018 In the special polling station in the 5 de Mayo Park in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the people is shouting “we want to vote” because the available 750 ballots were already used.”

The electoral authorities announced there would be a limited number of 750 ballots in every special polling station. This was agreed on by every party with no complaint, and the measure was announced in advance. But many voters claim the number of special ballots is way below the needed, especially in Mexico City and surrounding areas where there’s a high rate of internal migration.

Votantes en #Ecatepec exigen mas boletas porque dicen que ya no hay boletas especiales para la presidencia. Gritan corruptos y queremos boletas. Llevan 4 horas esperando. Hay confusión total #EleccionesPresidenciales2018 #EleccionesMexico pic.twitter.com/pa885kW4N5

— Andalalucha (@Andalalucha) July 1, 2018

“Voters in #Ecatepec are demanding more ballots because the special ballots for the presidency ran out. They’re shouting “corruption” and “we want ballots.” They’ve been waiting for 4 hours. There’s total confusion. #PresidentialElections2018 #MexicoElections”

As an alternative method, people in special polling stations are designing their own ballots, but the electoral authorities already said this won’t be valid.

In Sevina, state of Michoacan, the local electoral authorities decided to take away the special station to avoid further violence, as neighboring communities were boycotting the process.

The authorities refrained from installing polling stations in several communities in the state of Jalisco, mostly wixarika Indigenous communities, due to their boycott of the electoral process.

Also, a video recorded by a woman in Iztapalapa, in Mexico City, shows that the indelible ink used to mark citizens’ thumbs after voting can be perfectly cleaned with a little bit of hands soap.

Violence is another of Mexico’s greatest problems during the electoral days. In the Santiago el Pinar municipality, state of Chiapas, an armed group opened fire against polling station officials, injuring 15. Authorities report things under control, but the elections were temporarily suspended in the municipality.

In Coatzintla, state of Veracruz, the local electoral authorities decided to temporarily close down the stations due to the presence of armed groups moving around it.

On August 17, 1988, the then President of Pakistan General Zia Ul Haq died in an air crash. It was termed as an accident then. But was it really an accident? A very important person of the time Johan Gunther Dean, the then Ambassador of the US to India did not agree. Is he suggesting that Zia was killed? Who killed Zia then?

With this suspense the book unfolds the sequence of events and analyses the opinion of various key figures about the Indo-Pak relations, the role of Russia, US and goes on to conclude that it was just not an accident. A larger conspiracy was behind it, which largely remained at bay from common knowledge.

“Dean blamed Israel for the crash…what was important for him was the events of 1988 that could have been avoided if a better plan was followed regarding Afghanistan’s future and Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions…”

The Johan Gunther Dean’s papers stored in the Jimmy Carter Presidential library forms the basis of the book.

The fateful day

At 4.30 pm on August 17, 1988, the President and a powerful elite including some top generals and US Ambassador to Pakistan boarded the “Pak One”aircraft took off from Bahawalpur airport. The group had gone there to a firing range to witness the field tests of a US made tank which the Army was evaluating to induct to the defenseforce. Just after take off, the VVIP aircraft malfunctioned and hit the ground after staying in the air for a few minutes. There was near-total destruction of the bodies of all onboard. The chief opponent of Zia, Benazir Bhutto called it a “Wrath of God”!

Ronen Sen, the powerful joint secretary in the PMO handling sensitive intelligence and communications, first gave the information about the crash to Dean before the World could know it. The news of the plane crash, felt Dean, could immediately trigger another India-Pakistan war as the relationship between countries has been tensed for some time. And a war of vengeance could quickly turn nuclear. Tension was also high in the PMO in India lest situation is exploited by the Pakistan Army to declare a war against India. Though eventually nothing of sort happened.

“Dean felt that US was responsible for Zia’s death. The US had been working for three years to avoid such a situation in South Asia…aborted the mission midway…”…

Afghanistan as flashpoint of the cold war

To deal with the internal conflicts in Afghanistan, which started in the 70s, the Soviet Union intervened militarily [at the request of the Kabul government] and the troops reached Afghanistan in 1979. After the intervention of Moscow, Pakistan also got involved in the Afghanistan crisis. Pakistan [ in liaison with Washington] sponsored a jihad war against the Kabul government supported by the Soviet Union. Eventually America’s secret war in Afghanistan began and “by 1980, Afghanistan became a flashpoint in the cold war”.

India had to play role in the crisis as the involvement of Pakistan meant flow of weapons from CIA.

Eventually, to resolve the crisis Ronald Regan and Rajiv Gandhi began their secret dialogue. America expected India to play a role in convincing the Soviet leadership for troop withdrawal.

Dean was a personal friend of Rajiv Gandhi. He was instrumental in promoting Indo-US technological cooperation. During his stint in New Delhi, the US, India and Pakistan attempted to rearrange the affairs in South Asia. The US, India and Pakistan worked on a peace plan for Afghanistan which did not take off due to differences. And on the other side, India was unhappy with the arming of Pakistan with American weapons. The letters of exchange between Rajiv Gandhi and the then US President Ronald Reagan showed that it had hit a roadblock. Gandhi felt that India is not getting any benefits on Pakistan and Afghanistan from US.

UN Secretary General’s special envoy Diego Cordovez started talks with all groups concerned and developed a peace formula. Cordovez’ formula of creating a national government in Afghanistan failed as Zia rebelled with American support…

“Everyone seems to betray everyone else. An air crash and explosions were probably not unthinkable in such circumstance.” Expounds the book.

…

The book contains six chapters. One chapter is fully dedicated to the description of the larger situation, which would have led to the assassination of Zia.

A full chapter deals with Dean and his role in the Indo-US relationship and the south Asian affairs. Other chapters exclusively dwell on Rajiv’s western affinities, role of Moscow, and finally the happenings in the month when Zia was killed.

The author of the book, Kallol Bhattacherjee is a senior assistant editor of “The Hindu”. The book is an interesting reading like a novel unraveling a deep-seated conspiracy. It’s relevant for the current day’s Indo-Pak relationshipfor it provides a lot of background information.

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The author is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi. He can be reached through e mail: [email protected]

Over the past weeks, there has been a series of major protests against the mistreatment of immigrants. Hundreds were arrested after blocking DC streets and sitting-in at a Senate office building.  Two weeks ago, there were #FamiliesTogether rallies across the United States that forced Trump to end child separation and return to the Obama-era policy of incarcerating immigrant families. People are taking action for immigrant rights and protesting the separation of children from their families as well as the indefinite detention of immigrant families.

Protesters are holding policymakers personally accountable. This includes protests against Homeland Security director, Kirstjen Nielsen, outside her home playing tapes of immigrant children as well as in a restaurant. The White House staffer, Stephen Miller, who is behind many of Trump’s most racist policies was also protested at a Mexican restaurant and outside his condo in Washington, DC. Popular Resistance believes in holding individuals accountable with carefully planned protests as an essential activist tool.

The occupation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field offices by mothers and children, holding that agency specifically responsible for abusive law enforcement practices, and the burgeoning #OcccupyICE protests, beginning in Portland, are putting pressure on ICE. Microsoft workers called for Microsoft to cancel contracts with ICE. And, people marched on tent city prison camps where children and immigrant families are being held. These build on efforts in court to hold ICE accountable.

Many cities have chosen to be sanctuary cities by refusing to use their law enforcement to do the work of ICE. Cities that welcome immigrants and have non-discrimination policies have fewer deportations and less insecurity. This is also having the result of making those cities safer in general because immigrants have less fear of reporting crimes.

While sanctuary and humane treatment of immigrants bring security, raids on immigrants leave misery and broken communities. Here is one account of the terror and hardship caused by an ICE raid on a business last month in Ohio. And the issue of racist and violent policing is still a problem because some cities make a distinction between protecting “law-abiding” immigrants versus those who break a law, as determined by racist police.

There are divisions over immigration within the enforcement community. In March, an ICE spokesperson resigned rather than continue to put out false information about immigrants. This week, top leaders of Homeland Security enforcement wrote a letter that was made public claiming ICE is making their job of protecting the country from real threats more difficult. Calls for abolition of ICE are now being made by activists and the list of Democrats calling for the abolition of ICE is rapidly growing.

Thousands march across the Brooklyn Bridge on June 30, 2018 by Carolyn Cole for the Los Angeles Times.

Are The Protests Pro-Immigrant or Anti-Trump?

The protests against immigration policies in the Trump-era are different than protests against abusive immigration policies in the Obama-era. There were mass protests against Obama’s immigration policies, which led to deportations at levels that Trump has still not approached, but in the Obama-era, the protests were organized and led primarily by immigrants. In the Trump era, there are protests by immigrants, especially around protecting the Dreamers, but they are also being organized by non-immigrant protesters with a focus against President Trump. These protests began almost immediately with the election of Trump and focused on his policies of stopping immigration at airports, Trump’s Muslim ban.

The protests remind us of the immense anti-war protests during the George W. Bush presidency, which turned out in hindsight to be more anti-Bush than anti-war as they dissipated when President Obama was elected. The Bush wars continued under Obama, as did coups and other efforts to reverse the pink tide in Latin America. President Obama expanded militarism using robotic-drone warfare, new military troops and bases throughout Africa and mass destruction and slaughter in Libya, yet there were no mass anti-war protests against him as were seen in the Bush era.

Democratic Party-aligned groups used the anti-war sentiment to stir up their voter base in opposition to President Bush and the Republicans, but were noticeably silent during the Obama administration in order to protect the Democrats. Is immigration being used similarly as an issue to elect Democrats? It appears to be the case.

Democratic Party-aligned groups like MoveOn and the Women’s March have led some of the organizing efforts. MoveOn reported on the mass protests yesterday, writing in an email:

In Washington, D.C., today, 35,000 demonstrators braved 96-degree temperatures to march on the White House and send a crystal-clear message: Families Belong Together. There were 30,000 participants in New York, 60,000 in Chicago, more than 70,000 in Los Angeles, and huge turnouts from Orlando, Florida, to Austin, Texas, to Boise, Idaho. We were everywhere.

Here’s the eye-popping map of all the protests, one dot per demonstration, spanning all 50 states, as hundreds of thousands of us gathered in cities from Antler, North Dakota, to Lake Worth, Florida:

More than 750 cities. One message. This is what it looks like when a nation speaks with one voice.

While abuse of immigrant families and their children are important reasons to protest, it is critical to be non-partisan or the pro-immigrant movement risks going the way of the anti-war movement, which is still struggling to rebuild. If the protests are framed as anti-Trump, then voters may conclude that electing Democrats will solve the problem. Both major political parties have failed immigrants in the US. We need to build national consensus for pro-immigrant policies that hold whomever is in power accountable.

Facing the Roots of Abusive Immigration Policies: Racism and Profit

The connection between immigration policies and racism and profit-seeking is being exposed. Stirring up racist hatred against immigrants benefits the ruling elites by keeping people focused on fighting each other while the rich get richer. The federal government has spent $4 billion since the start of 2017 fiscal year on contracts and grants for private prisons, security firms, the tech industry and child “protective” agencies and non-profits, as well as the budgets of federal agencies including Homeland Security, ICE and the US military, which is building prison camps for 120,000 immigrants. Abusing immigrants means high profits for some and plays on the divide-and-rule racism politicians use to control people.

The broader context is that today’s immigration policies of separating and mistreating families have deep roots. The colonizing founding of the United States treated imported African slaves in brutal ways, including family separation. There has been a similar mistreatment of Indigenous peoples, separating families and putting children into brainwashing, abusive boarding schools. And, racist-based mass incarceration results in fathers and mothers being removed from their families and communities, particularly for black and brown people.

The duopoly parties ignore the root causes of mass migration, which are due in large part to US economic policies including the injustice of corporate trade agreements on behalf of transnational corporations that abuse people and steal resources throughout the world, as well as US empire policies of militarism, regime change, and imperialism. We wrote two weeks ago about how to protect the human rights of immigrants, the US must end the policies that drive migration.

Immigrants Are Welcome Here. From Overpass Light Brigade twitter.

The United States Needs A Pro-Immigration Policy To Correct Abusive Treatment of Immigrants

The beginnings of a pro-immigration policy in the United States is developing. Indeed, that word “pro-immigration” needs to become part of the political dialogue. We heard the call for a pro-immigrant policy at the Maryland State Green Party meeting this weekend. It was a phrase we had not heard in the political dialogue, but we are pleased to see it brought out into the open.

A critical area of information that has been suppressed is the positive impact of immigration on the economy. Research shows that the presence of immigrant workers has a small positive impact for US-born workers. Immigrants tend to work in different sectors or hold different jobs within the same sector than US-born workers. They also make significant contributions through taxes. Mapping shows how immigration has helped build the economy across the United States.

The US needs to recognize the positive impacts of policies that protect the human rights of people to move across borders. Research published this week shows that free movement of people could expand the global economy by $78 trillion.

It is time to end the failed policies of abusive immigration policy, militarized law enforcement and a militarized border and build a positive approach to immigration that protects human rights and builds the economy from the foundation up by using the best of each person who comes to the United States or who already live here.

If the $4 billion spent on abusive immigration enforcement in the last year had been used to build the foundation of the US economy with a positive approach to immigration, we would all be better off. A positive immigration policy will increase security and build the economy for all people.

*

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are co-directors of Popular Resistance.

A recent opinion piece by Michael Harris in iPolitics titled “Harper’s willingness to appease Trump should scare all Canadians” comments on the fact that former Conservative PM Stephen Harper “is back representing Canada on the world stage.” In fact he is making a full-fledged public appearance with a new book coming out soon and a big splash in the news speculating about his visit to Washington on July 2. [1] No one, and that includes the Canadian government, seems to know the reason for the visit, which is private. Therefore he is not really representing Canada. Not that he has ever really represented the popular will of most Canadians. Disdain is the most descriptive characteristic that can be associated with his behaviour.

It was simply a matter of time before Harper would surface again. And surely, as Harris suggests, Canadians should be concerned since he is still capable of causing some political damage. But should Canadians be less concerned if Harper was not in the news? Harper will continue being Harper both in and out of public life. No surprises there. It’s old news. But the fact that we have a Trudeau turned into a Harper, that should scare the hell out of most Canadians.

The article uses Harper’s reported view that “the world would just have to get used to the new world order Donald Trump is trying to impose on everyone” as an excuse to really justify an attack on Trump. Harris uses several paragraphs to highlight all the bad policies that the Trump administration is implementing. We certainly do not disagree with Harris, especially when he refers to “Trump’s fascist impulses.”

However, Trump will continue being Trump. That again is old news. US-Americans should be concerned about that and should act on it if they care. In Canada, as in the rest of the world willing to resist the US imperial dominance, we should be more scared at the blind spot that the Liberal government is attempting to create vis-à-vis “Trump’s fascist impulses.”

Harris asks the valid question “Will anything survive Trump’s presidency?” But that is a passive question. I would like to ask a pro-active one: What is Canada doing to offset the dismal implication of the question?

My short answer is, not much. On the contrary, the Liberal government continues to have a foreign policy fully aligned with that of the US, despite some recent political bickering on trade. There is nothing Harper can do to make it worse.

Canadian foreign policy has experienced a striking shift toward the political right in the last thirty years with both Liberal and Conservative governments at the helm. Following the world trend on globalization, Canada has moved from a perceived peace promoting position on the world stage to an outright recognized wars and uprisings supporter, and weapons exporter that rivals very closely with the Trump administration. The most dramatic examples of policy changes in international relations have occurred during Chrystia Freeland tenure as Minister of International Trade of Canada (2015–2017) and as Canada’s Minister of Foreign Relations since January 2017. 

The Hill Times recently reported an increase of 44% in Canadian military exports in 2017 with almost half of the exports going to Saudi Arabia. [2] The aggressive military involvement of Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, not to mention the human rights abuses domestically, does not bode well for the often-upheld Canadian values. This is a typical example of trade priorities over more humane considerations.

Closer to home, Chrystia Freeland has tacitly and actively supported regime changes in Latin America. In the case of Venezuela she has taken on the infamous leadership role – together with the US and EU governments – to subvert the constitutional order there. She has done so by promoting and supporting a violent opposition and calling the military to a rebellion, by heading the so-called Lima Group – a splinter group of a dozen nations outside the more formal Organization of American States – pushing the Nicolas Maduro government to a crisis, and by sanctioning Venezuelan high-ranking officials. This extremely aggressive interference can only be explained as a defense of Canada’s corporate mining interests in Venezuela and other Latin American countries.

There are more examples that Chrystia Freeland is imposing a personal ideology on Canada’s foreign policy. “Canada supports the most extreme form of sectarianism” in Syria. [3] She chooses to ignore the neo-Nazi surge in Ukraine and even more “Ms Freeland appears to be less the foreign minister of Canada and more the foreign minister of Ukraine.” [4] She has also manifested an old Cold War attitude towards Russia that seems to be more subjectively than politically motivated.

Stephen Harper is likely quite proud of the current foreign minister and Canada’s foreign policy. Michael Harris warns Canadians about citizen Harper but he does not warn Canadians about the Trudeau government as represented internationally by Freeland.  Considering Freeland’s recent speech in Washington, Harris should consider a follow up article titled “Freeland’s willingness to appease Trump should scare all Canadians.” [5][6]

Canada should detach itself from the grip of an old unipolar US-centered world and accept a shared multipolar world. It should stop imposing its own ideological authoritarianism blaming the victims when they exercise their sovereign rights. We need to gain the trust of other nations by sincerely seeking peace and mediating for peace, especially in the Americas. We would benefit from welcoming the genuine trade connectivity expansion coming from China. We should support the war-deterrent balancing role that Russia is exerting in the Middle East. 

By moving forward with these strategies Ms Freeland would help gain respect for Canada (and herself) from Canadians and the rest of the world, and contribute to world peace.

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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” http://www.cubasolidarityincanada.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] https://ipolitics.ca/2018/06/28/harpers-willingness-to-appease-trump-should-scare-all-canadians/ 

[2] https://www.hilltimes.com/2018/06/27/arms-export-top-1-billion-saudi-sales-spike/149240 

[3] https://www.globalresearch.ca/global-affairs-canada-statement-represents-a-complete-disconnect-from-realities-on-the-ground-in-syria-tacit-endorsement-of-al-qaeda/5645944 

[4] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ukraine-issue-and-canadas-foreign-minister-chrystia-freeland/5637600

[5] https://www.globalresearch.ca/chrystia-freeland-fails-to-see-that-it-is-a-multipolar-world-on-the-march-not-authoritarianism/5644436 

[6] http://rabble.ca/columnists/2018/06/canadas-diplomat-year-fails-torture-test 

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Featured image: Ambassador Richard Grenell with German President Frank Walter Steinmeier. Image credit: usbotschaftberlin/ flickr

Ambassadors have existed since the time of the ancient Greeks. They were from the beginning granted a special immunity which enabled them to talk to enemy spokesmen to attempt to resolve issues without resort to arms. In the modern context, Ambassadors are sent to reside in foreign capitals to provide some measure of protection for traveling citizens and also to defend other perceived national interests. Ambassadors are not soldiers, nor are they necessarily the parties of government that ultimately make decisions on what to do when dealing with a foreign nation. They are there to provide a mechanism for exchanging views to create a dialogue while at the same time working with foreign governments to avoid conflict, whether over trade or politics.

There has been a great deal of discussion in the European press about the new American Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell. Grenell, a protégé of National Security Adviser John Bolton who doesn’t speak German, would seem to have enough on his plate defending the unpopular Trump Administration decisions on climate change, the Iran nuclear deal and on tariffs directed against European Union exports, but he has apparently gone out of his way to make the bilateral relationship with a key ally even worse. After the White House withdrew from the Iran agreement, Grenell tweeted that German businesses should “wind down operations immediately” in Iran. The ineptly worded advice was inevitably taken by the Germans as a threat. He has also celebrated anti-immigration sentiment in Europe, a slap at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and breached protocol by meeting with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who was on a state visit.

Nils Schmid, a German Social Democratic Party foreign policy spokesman, goes so far as to say that

“He does not understand what the role of an ambassador should be. An ambassador is a bridge-builder who explains how American politics works, how the American government works, and at the same time explains to America how Germany sees things.” Grenell has, however, “defined his role for himself, and it is not the traditional role of an ambassador. … He will work as a propagandist [for Donald Trump]”

To be sure, Grenell is not unique. There is a long history of incompetent or unwelcome U.S. Ambassadors, particularly in the prestige posts like Paris or London, which have long since been awarded to political cronys and campaign donors. One recalls passionate Irish nationalist Joe Kennedy being sent to London by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. Kennedy took every opportunity to offend his British hosts, particularly over their relationship with Germany. He opposed financial and military aid to London after war broke out and was greatly disliked. FDR finally had to recall him in 1940.

More recently, some U.S. Administrations have sought to use Ambassadors to interfere openly in local politics, which goes well beyond acceptable exchanges of points of view that are part and parcel of diplomatic relations. In particular, a number of American Ambassadors have been sent overseas to confront the existing government and to “promote democracy,” that infinitely flexible concept that can be used whenever Washington is seeking to bully a foreign government.

Syria is a prime example of U.S. interference-by-ambassador. Syria-phobia goes back to the George W. Bush Administration in December 2003, when Congress passed the Syria Accountability Act, House Resolution 1828. Damascus at that time was already in the crosshairs of two principal American so-called allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Both were actively working to destabilize the regime.

The drive to “get” Syria has remained a constant in American Foreign Policy to this day. In 2010, when the U.S. still had an Embassy in Damascus, President Barack Obama maladroitly sent as Ambassador Robert Ford. Ford actively supported the large demonstrations by anti-regime Syrians inspired by the Arab Spring who were opposed to the al-Assad government and he might even have openly advocated an armed uprising, a bizarre interpretation of what Ambassadors are supposed to do in a foreign country. He once stated absurdly that if the U.S. had armed opponents of the regime, al-Qaeda groups would have been “unable to compete.” Ford was recalled a year later, after being pelted by tomatoes and eggs, over concerns that his remaining in country might not be safe, but the damage had been done and normal diplomatic relations between Damascus and Washington have never been restored.

And then there is the case of Russia. The neoconservatives and their neoliberal allies have both long been dreaming of regime change for Moscow, either because it is perceived as a threat or as an unacceptable autocracy. The Obama era 2010 appointment of Stanford Academic and Russia expert Michael McFaul as Ambassador was intended to “reset” the bilateral relationship while also pushing the democracy promotion agenda and confronting various aspects of the domestic policies of the Vladimir Putin government that were considered unacceptable, to include the treatment of homosexuals. Pursuing that end, McFaul made a point of meeting with the political opposition in Russia. He thereby antagonized the officials in the government that he should have been working with and his term of office was an embarrassing failure.

Finally, there is Ambassador David Friedman in Israel, who represents the Israeli government more than that of the United States. He recently told journalists to “shut their mouths” when they dared to criticize the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Friedman is a passionate supporter of the Israeli settlers’ movement, which is considered illegal by everyone but Israel, and has succeeded in changing the U.S. government language used to describe the Israeli control over the Palestinian West Bank from “occupied” to “disputed.”

Friedman is backed up by the reliably pro-Israel Nikki Haley, whom I have discussed in some detail. She is the preferred presidential-candidate-in-waiting of the neoconservatives, so, unfortunately, we Americans will have to suffer more of her in the future.

Beyond the Ambassadors themselves, America’s roving mischief makers have included the State Department’s Victoria Nuland in Ukraine and various Senators named McCain and Graham who have showed up regularly in troubled regions to harass the local authorities.

To put it mildly, clueless and agenda-driven Ambassadors are not what U.S. diplomacy should be all about. An Embassy serves as a two-way channel to exchange views and protect interests. It is part of a process whereby no one wins everything while no one loses completely, producing a result that everyone can live with. It is not about “We are right. Take it or leave it” but rather “We have to coexist, so let’s work something out.”

*

This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

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.

Children as young as three years old are being forced to hold their own in deportation proceedings in federal court, judges have reported, further confirming how the cruelties of the U.S. immigrant enforcement regime have been largely unhindered by the local and global controversy it’s provoked.

The practice began under former President Barack Obama, but has widened under President Trump to encompass an ever-larger group of youth — who are often toddlers, unable to understand the dire circumstances that they’re in.

Speaking to Texas Tribune, Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles executive director Lindsay Toczylowski said:

We were representing a 3-year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child — in the middle of the hearing — started climbing up on the table … It really highlighted the absurdity of what we’re doing with these kids.”

Continuing, she noted that the children are scarcely able to put into words the conditions – frequently violent – that force the families to leave their homes and make the treacherous journey to the north:

The parent might be the only one who knows why they fled from the home country, and the child is in a disadvantageous position to defend themselves.

The kids don’t understand the intricacies that are involved with deportation and immigration court … They do understand that they have been separated from their parents, and the primary goal is to get back with people they love.”

Over 2,000 children are slated to face the proceedings in the absence of their parents, who alone have the vocabulary and the knowledge to properly explain to authorities what the context was that drove them to seek asylum or enter the United States.

While a federal judge ruled earlier this week that the reuniting of separated families must be a priority for the Trump administration, immigration lawyers are saying that this won’t help those parents who have already been sent home while their children languish in U.S. detention facilities. The lawyers also note that no actual model for such a reunification exists yet.

The revelation is just the latest indication of the enormous human costs of Trump’s stepped-up and “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement, mass confinement and deportation regime.

Confusion reigns but the war on migrants must continue

Now the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency has signaled that it will cease handing parents over to authorities until the administration can figure out how to make good on their prosecution without ripping their children from their arms.

Such a move would, in effect, be tantamount to the “catch and release” program opposed by Trump, which saw unauthorized migrants being released and told to return to face a judge in the future.

The government has been unable to cope with the demands placed on its detention and concentration camp facilities, leading to a crisis of overcrowding, rights abuses, and even calls by President Trump to suspend due process and asylum-protection rights for unauthorized immigrants.

Tweeting on Sunday, Trump said:

We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came [sic].”

“Cannot accept all of the people trying to break into our Country. Strong Borders, No Crime!”

The CBP move also comes shortly after the Department of Defense confirmed that it had been tasked by the administration to hold migrants in camps within 45 days as an initial step toward managing the encampment of a migrant “family population of up to 12,000 people.”

If facilities are not available then camps meant to contain around 4,000 people each will be built at three separate locations, according to the Pentagon.

Trump appears to be faced with no good options, as the anger and outcry over his policies continues to build. The existing laws and restraints on the immigration enforcement regime that he inherited from past administrations have been a mere inconvenience for the president as he pursues this latest escalated war on migrants.

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project head Jorge Baron told Reuters:

Here, I think he is making it clear, he just doesn’t want anybody here. He wants people to just be sent back, no matter what.”

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Elliott Gabriel is a former staff writer for teleSUR English and a MintPress News contributor based in Quito, Ecuador. He has taken extensive part in advocacy and organizing in the pro-labor, migrant justice and police accountability movements of Southern California and the state’s Central Coast.

On what plane of reality is it possible that two of the world’s most morally bankrupt corporations, Bayer and Monsanto, can be permitted to join forces in what promises to be the next stage in the takeover of the world’s agricultural and medicinal supplies?

Warning, plot spoiler: There is no Mr. Hyde side in this horror story of epic proportions; it’s all Dr. Jekyll. Like a script from a David Lynch creeper, Bayer AG of poison gas fame has finalized its $66 billion (£50bn) purchase of Monsanto, the agrochemical corporation that should be pleading the Fifth in the dock on Guantanamo Bay instead of enjoying what amounts to corporate asylum and immunity from crimes against humanity. Such are the special privileges that come from being an above-the-law transnational corporation.

Unsurprisingly, the first thing Bayer did after taking on Monsanto, saddled as it is with the extra baggage of ethic improprieties, was to initiate a rebrand campaign. Like a Hollywood villain falling into a crucible of molten steel only to turn up later in some altered state, Monsanto has been subsumed under the Orwellian-sounding ‘Bayer Crop Science’ division, whose motto is: “Science for a better life.”

Yet Bayer itself provides little protective cover for Monsanto considering its own patchy history of corporate malfeasance. Far beyond its widely known business of peddling pain relief for headaches, the German-based company played a significant role in the introduction of poison gas on the battlefields of World War I.

Despite a Hague Convention ban on the use of chemical weapons since 1907, Bayer CEO Carl Duisberg, who sat on a special commission set up by the German Ministry of War, knew a business opportunity when he saw one.

Duisberg witnessed early tests of poison gas and had nothing but glowing reports on the horrific new weapon:

“The enemy won’t even know when an area has been sprayed with it and will remain quietly in place until the consequences occur.”

Bayer, which built a department specifically for the research and development of gas agents, went on to develop increasingly lethal chemical weapons, such as phosgene and mustard gas.

“This phosgene is the meanest weapon I know,” Duisberg remarked with a stunning disregard for life, as if he were speaking about the latest bug spray. “I strongly recommend that we not let the opportunity of this war pass without also testing gas grenades.”

Duisberg got his demonic wish. The opportunity to use the battlefield as a testing ground and soldiers as guinea pigs came in the spring of 1915 as Bayer supplied some 700 tons of chemical weapons to the war front. On April 22, 1915, it has been estimated that around 170 tons of chlorine gas were used for the first time on a battlefield in Ypres, Belgium against French troops. Up to 1,000 soldiers perished in the attack, and many more thousands injured.

In total, an estimated 60,000 people died as a result of the chemical warfare started by Germany in the First World War and supplied by the Leverkusen-based company.

According to Axel Koehler-Schnura from the Coalition against BAYER Dangers:

“The name BAYER particularly stands for the development and production of poison gas. Nevertheless the company has not come to terms with its involvement in the atrocities of the First World War. BAYER has not even distanced itself from Carl Duisberg’s crimes.”

The criminal-like behavior has continued right up until modern times. Mike Papantonio, a US attorney and television presenter discussed one of the more heinous acts committed by this chemical company on Thomas Hartmann’s program, The Big Picture:

“They produced a clotting agent for hemophiliacs, in the 1980s, called Factor VIII. This blood-clotting agent was tainted with HIV, and then, after the government told them they couldn’t sell it here, they shipped it all over the world, infecting people all over the world. That’s just part of the Bayer story.”

Papantonio, citing Bayer’s 2014 annual report, said the company is facing 32 different liability lawsuits around the world. For the 2018 Bayer liability report, click here.

Before flushing your Bayer products down the toilet, you may want to put aside an aspirin or two because the story gets worse.

One of the direct consequences of the ‘Baysanto’ monster will be a major hike in prices for farmers, already suffering a direct hit to their livelihood from unsustainable prices.

“Farmers have already experienced a 300% price increase in recent years, on everything from seeds to fertilizer, all of which are controlled by Monsanto,” Papantonio told Hartmann. “And every forecaster is predicting that these prices are going to climb even higher because of this merger.”

Yet it’s hard to imagine the situation getting any worse for the American farmer, who is now facing the highest suicide rate of any profession in the country. The suicide rate for Americans engaged in the field of farming, fishing and forestry is 84.5 per 100,000 people – more than five times that of the broader population.

This tragic trend echoes that of India, where about a decade ago millions of Indian farmers began switching from farming with traditional farming techniques to using Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds instead. In the past, following a millennia-old tradition, farmers saved seeds from one harvest and replanted them the following year. Those days of wisely following the rhythms and patterns of the natural world are almost over. Today, Monsanto GMO seeds are bred to contain ‘terminator technology’, with the resulting crops ‘programmed’ not to produce seeds of their own. In other words, the seed company is literally playing God with nature and our lives. Thus, Indian farmers are forced to buy a new batch of seeds – together with Monsanto pesticide Round Up – each year and at a very prohibitive cost. Hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers

But should the world have expected anything different from the very same company that was involved in the production of Agent Orange for military use during the Vietnam War (1961-1971)? More than 4.8 million Vietnamese suffered adverse effects from the defoliant, which was sprayed over vast tracts of agricultural land during the war, destroying the fertility of the land and Vietnam’s food supply. About 400,000 Vietnamese died as a result of the US military’s use of Agent Orange, while millions more suffered from hunger, crippling disabilities and birth defects.

This is the company that we have allowed, together with Bayer, to control about one-quarter of the world’s food supply. This begs the question: Who is more nuts? Bayer and Monsanto, or We the People?

It’s important to mention that the Bayer – Monsanto convergence is not occurring in a corporate vacuum. It is all part of a race on the part of the global agrochemical companies to stake off the world’s food supplies. ChemChina has bought out Switzerland’s Syngenta for $43 billion, for example, while Dow and DuPont have forged their own $130 billion empire.

However, none of those companies carry the same bloodstained reputations as Bayer and Monsanto, a match made in hell that threatens all life on earth.

*

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. 

Featured image is from the author.

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

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

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

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

The US President’s personal lawyer and ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani visited a rally held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Paris where he said that Iran’s “regime” will collapse soon and “democratic” representatives of the NCRI have to take power in the country.

“The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go, and they must be replaced by a democratic government which Madam Rajavi represents. Freedom is right around the corner… Next year I want to have this convention in Tehran!” Giuliani claimed adding that tighter sanctions will be imposed on Iran facilitating the ouster of the country’s government.

“When the greatest economic power stops doing business with you, then you collapse… and the sanctions will become greater, greater and greater.”

Furthermore, he called for “a campaign to shame the European governments who are unwilling to support freedom and democracy” and urged to boycott companies “that continually do business with this [Iranian] regime.”

Meanwhile, the Iranian government is already preparing for possible sanctions to prevent their negative impact.

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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.

Is it time to completely rethink how we design the goals of conservation programs? Some scientists say it is.

In a paper published last week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, a team of Australian researchers argue that we need to shift conservation goals to focus on diverse and ambitious “nature retention targets” if we’re to truly safeguard the environment, biodiversity, and humanity.

The researchers, who are affiliated with Australia’s University of Queensland (UQ) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), make a distinction between targets aimed at retaining natural systems and the current model that seeks to achieve targets for setting aside land as protected areas.

Whereas targets aimed at retaining nature can be determined by measuring what is needed to achieve conservation goals like preserving water quality, carbon sequestration, or biodiversity levels, protected area targets are “blind to what is needed” and don’t have a clear end goal, paper co-author James Watson of UQ and WCS told Mongabay.

For instance, Aichi Target 11, established by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010, calls for at least 17 percent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas around the world be gazetted as protected areas by 2020. But that may not be sufficient to guarantee the ecological functions humans and biodiversity require, according to Watson and his colleagues.

“Right now, there is no clear endgame and we don’t know what victory looks like on a map and who needs to do what,” Watson said. “The targets set today are often incoherent and unmeasurable and don’t speak to each other or a bigger plan. They also don’t speak to other environmental agendas” such as halting global climate change or meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he added.

Even if we were to fully meet the goals of Aichi Target 11, that still leaves 83 percent of Earth’s land area and 90 percent of its oceans unprotected, the researchers note in the paper. In other words,

“Most evolutionary processes, ecological functions and biota are, and probably will always be, beyond the boundaries of nationally gazetted protected areas,” they write. “This means that most of the ecosystem services on which humanity relies will be provided predominantly by areas that are not officially protected. Achieving the objectives reflected in the other Aichi Targets, and the SDGs, depends heavily on what happens in that 83-90%.”

Giraffe roaming the plains in a protected area in Ruaha, Tanzania. Photo Credit: The University of Queensland.

While strict protected areas that are off-limits to human activities are necessary, the researchers contend that they are not sufficient for ensuring a functioning planet in the future because they are not designed to protect all of the natural systems that sustain life on Earth.

“Only a multi-faceted approach that includes protected areas, but does not exclusively rely on them, can achieve the many different goals of sustaining nature,” they state in the paper.

The authors note that protected area networks are “rarely designed to maximize their contribution to the overall retention of nature.” These networks usually aim to be “comprehensive, adequate and representative: in other words, to conserve examples of the full range of types of biota within a network that contains both strict protected areas and regions that are less focussed on conservation objectives (called ‘other effective area-based conservation Measures ’). Such networks cannot preserve all biodiversity, let alone provide the much broader range of benefits we want from nature.”

Rather than simply setting a certain amount of the planet’s land and seas aside, nature retention targets would establish the baseline levels of natural system functions that we need to preserve in order to ensure the health of ecosystems and the services they provide. The paper’s lead author, UQ’s Martine Maron, explains that nature retention targets are essentially “limits to what we are prepared to lose.” Mankind relies on nature for many things that we require to survive, from a stable global climate to the provision of clean water and healthy soils for food production.

“Yet the destruction of nature continues apace — and is often irreversible,” Maron told Mongabay. “It is incredibly irresponsible for this to continue with no end point in sight — we risk losing the nature we, and all other species, rely upon.”

Maron said that she and her co-authors believe that nature retention targets must be quantitative and determined on a state-by-state basis.

“That is, rather than a target like ‘reduce the rate of loss,’ we need to say just how much nature — of different kinds, and in particular places — we must keep on the planet if we are to continue enjoying its benefits.”

The researchers set out three criteria for nature retention targets in the paper:

“they relate to a quantified target state, not a target rate of change; they act as a framework designed to enable and support the achievement of multiple nature conservation goals; and, as a result, the headline target must be high.”

In designing retention targets to support the multiple goals of nature conservation and human well-being, they add,

“a series of area-based, quality-specific sub-targets should be set to ensure adequate provision of key ecosystem services, such as carbon storage and watershed protection, as well as biodiversity conservation and wilderness protection.”

The researchers write that more ambitious and area-specific targets for preserving key ecosystems can help achieve multiple goals, such as biodiversity conservation, wilderness retention, carbon storage, water regulation, soil stabilisation, avoided desertification, and fisheries maintenance. These targets would, they say, benefit humanity as much as the environment and wildlife.

“You can map what is needed and then add it up,” Watson said. “By doing this, you don’t have to worry about whether it is for people (or not). It’s for both! It makes the entire question of whether conservation is for nature or for people irrelevant.”

Even calls to protect half of the world’s natural systems, such as those made by the Half-Earth Initiative and Nature Needs Half, which are certainly ambitious proposals, may still fall short, the researchers say.

“If by protecting half the Earth, we imply we can lose all nature from the other half, it may not be enough,” Maron said. “A much higher target for well-sited and well-managed protected areas is crucial for the protection of biodiversity and will help maintain the provision of many ecosystem services — but on its own, it may not be enough to provide all we need from nature.”

That doesn’t mean that Maron and team think more than half the Earth must fall within traditional protected areas, but she said they do propose

“that the areas we must protect to conserve the planet’s biodiversity, the areas of crucial water catchments, carbon stores, irreplaceable wilderness areas, places for urban populations to interact with nature, and so on, are likely to add to even more than half the Earth.”

“We need a big, bold plan. There is no doubt that when we add up the different environmental goals to halt biodiversity loss, stabilize run-away climate change and to ensure other critical ecosystems services such as pollination and clean water are maintained, we will need far more than 50 percent of the earth’s natural systems to remain intact,” Watson said in a statement. “And we must remember that most nations have committed to this in various environmental treaties. It is time for nations to embrace a diverse set of bold retention targets to limit the ongoing erosion of the nature humanity relies upon.”

The researchers propose nature retention targets as a framework for the post-2020 strategy of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

“As we approach the deadline for achieving the 20 Aichi Targets under the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, the world is working toward a new set of targets,” Maron told Mongabay. “A global approach is important because key ecosystem services are global in nature, and their preservation needs global coordination. But retention targets are sensible for any level of government to consider, across its jurisdiction, how to avoid losing too much nature and, where necessary, to restore in places that have already gone too far. Many places continue to see nature destroyed year on year with no end in sight — a completely unsustainable model.”

*

Source

Maron, M., Simmonds, J. S., & Watson, J. E. (2018). Bold nature retention targets are essential for the global environment agenda. Nature ecology & evolution, 1. doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0595-2

The pro-GMO lobby claim critics of the technology ‘deny farmers choice’. They say that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies. It is all about maximising choice and options. Taken at face value, who would want to deny choice?

At the same time, however, we do not want to end up offering a false choice (rolling out technologies that have little value and only serve to benefit those who control the technology), to unleash an innovation that has an adverse impact on those who do not use it or to manipulate a situation whereby only one option is available because other options have been deliberately made unavailable or less attractive. And we would certainly not wish to roll out a technology that traps farmers on a treadmill that they find difficult to get off.

When discussing choice, it is can be very convenient to focus on end processes (choices made available – or denied – to farmers at the farm level), while ignoring the procedures and decisions that were made in corporate boardrooms, by government agencies and by regulatory bodies which result in the shaping and roll-out of options.

Where GMOs are concerned, Steven Druker argues that the decision to commercialise GM seeds and food in the US was based on regulatory delinquency. Druker indicates that if the US Food and Drug Administration had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings about risk, the GM venture would have imploded and would have never gained traction.

It is fine to talk about choice while ignoring what amounts to a subversion of democratic processes, which could result in (and arguably is resulting in) changing the genetic core of the world’s food. Whose ‘choice’ was it to do this? Was the choice given to the US public, the consumers of GM food? Did ordinary people choose for GM food to appear on their supermarket shelves?

No, that choice was denied. The decision was carried out above their heads, ultimately to benefit Monsanto’s bottom line and to gain strategic leverage over global agriculture. And, now that GM food is on the market, can they choose whether to buy it? Again, the answer is no. The massive lobbying firepower of GMO agritech and food corporations have ensured this food is unlabelled and the public has been denied the right to choose.

Of course, let’s not also forget that the GMO venture, like the original Green Revolution, often works with bio-pirated germplasm: little more than theft from the Global South to be tweaked and sold back as hybrid or patented GM seeds to the Global South (read The Great Seed Piracy).

But any serious discussion about the corporate capture of agriculture, seed patenting, the role of the WTO or World Bank, or issues concerning dependency, development and ensuring genuine food security by addressing the dynamics of neoliberal capitalism (globalisation), are often shouted down by pro-GMO scientists and their supporters with accusations of ‘conspiracy theory’. Based on my own personal experience, this even occurs when referring to the work of respected academics who are sneered at as non-scientists and whose PhDs and the peer-reviewed journals their work appear in are somehow unworthy of recognition.

Yet, aside from the issues mentioned above which need to be addressed if we are to achieve equitable global food security (issues the pro-GMO lobby and its prominent scientists in academia seem to not want to discuss – for them, the ‘conspiracy’ slur will suffice), the fact is that the industry has placed GM on the market fraudulently, is complicit in seed piracy and has fought hard to deny consumer choice by using its political and financial clout along the way to undermine democratic processes. Issues that are highly relevant to any discussion about ‘choice’.

(For the sake of brevity, Monsanto’s subversion of science and issues emerging from the ‘Monsanto Papers’ will be put to one side, as this has been presented on numerous occasions elsewhere.)

What are critics denying?

So, just what is it that critics are said to be denying farmers when it comes to the right to choose?

Pro-GMO activists say that GM crops can increase yields, reduce the use of agrochemicals and are required if we are to feed the world. To date, however, the track record of GMOs is unimpressive.

Image on the right: Bt cotton

In India and Burkina Faso, for example, Bt cotton has hardly been a success. And although critics are blamed for Golden Rice not being on the market, this is a convenient smokescreen that attempts to hide the reality that after two decades problems remain with the technology.

Moreover, a largely non-GMO Europe tends to outperform the US, which largely relies on GM crops. In general, “GM crops have not consistently increased yields or farmer incomes, or reduced pesticide use in North America or in the Global South (Benbrook, 2012; Gurian-Sherman, 2009)” (from the report ‘Persistent narratives, persistent failure’).

GM agriculture is not ‘feeding the world’, nor has it been designed to do so: the companies that push GM are located firmly within the paradigm of industrial agriculture and associated power relations that shape a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy resulting in strategic surpluses and scarcities across the globe. The choice for farmers between a technology that is so often based on broken promises and non-GMO agriculture offers little more than a false choice.

“Currently available GM crops would not lead to major yield gains in Europe,” says Matin Qaim, a researcher at Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Germany.

Consider too that once the genetic genie is out of the bottle, there may be no way of going back. For instance, Roger Levett, specialist in sustainable development, argues (‘Choice: Less can be more, in Food Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 2008):

“If some people are allowed to choose to grow, sell and consume GMO foods, soon nobody will be able to choose food, or a biosphere, free of GMOs. It’s a one-way choice… once it’s made, it can’t be reversed.”

There is much evidence showing that GM and non-GM crops cannot co-exist. Indeed, contamination seems to be part of a cynical industry strategy. For instance, GM food crops are already illegally growing in India.

And if we turn our attention to India, recent reports indicate that herbicide tolerant (HT) cotton seeds are now available in certain states. Bt cotton (designed to be pest resistant) is the only legally sanctioned GM crop in India. HT crops are not only illegal in India but have led to serious problems in countries where they are used. The Supreme Court-appointed TEC Committee said that such crops are wholly inappropriate for India.

It seems that, however, according to reports, many farmers are ‘choosing’ to buy these seeds.  And this is where the pro-GMO activists jump in and yell their mantra about offering choice to farmers.

Regardless of the laws of the country being violated, things are not that simple.

Manufacturing ‘choice’

Professor Glenn Stone has conducted extensive field research concerning India’s cotton farmers. By employing the concept of technology treadmills as well as environmental, social and didactic learning, he can help us understand the ‘choices’ that farmers make.

Stone has noted where Bt cotton has been concerned, any decision by farmers to plant GM seeds was not necessarily based on objective decision-making. There was no experimentation or the testing of seeds within agroecological contexts by farmers as has been the case traditionally.

On the back of a national media campaign about the miracle wonder seeds and a push by Monsanto to get Bt cotton into India in the 1990s, farmers eventually found themselves at the mercy of seed vendors who sold whatever seed they had in stock, regardless of what the farmers wanted. Without agricultural support services from trusted non-governmental organisations, farmers had to depend on local shopkeepers. They believed they were buying the latest and best seeds and created a rush on whatever supplies were available.

The upshot is that traditional knowledge, testing and evaluations by farmers in the field was undermined or broke down and, in many respects, gave way to an unregulated industry-orchestrated free for all. ‘Environmental learning’ gave way to ‘social learning’ (farmers merely emulated one another).

However, in agriculture, environmental learning has gone on for thousands of years. Farmers experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. By learning and doing, trial and error, new knowledge was blended with older, traditional knowledge systems.

Farmers took measures to manage drought, grow cereals with long stalks that can be used as fodder, engage in cropping practices that promote biodiversity, ethno-engineer soil and water conservation, use self-provisioning systems on farm recycling and use collective sharing systems such as managing common resource properties. In short, farmers knew their micro-environment.

To get farmers onto a corporate technology treadmill, environmental learning pathways have to be broken, and Stone offers good insight into how this occurred with Bt cotton and is now happening with HT cotton. He describes how traditional ‘double-lining’ ox ploughing is breaking down due to ‘didactic learning’ under the promise of increased productivity. After having adopted ‘single-lining’ ploughing (as advocated by didactic ‘teachers’), this promise does not seem to have materialised. However, the farmer is now faced with more weeds.

So, who could blame the farmer for being attracted towards HT cotton and the purchasing of herbicides as a perceived easy fix when faced with an increase in weeds and government policies that have inadvertently increased farm labour costs?

The breaking with traditional practices (or pathways) to implement fresh approaches (which fail deliver much benefit) can be regarded as part of the process of nudging farmers towards seeking out alternative options to deal with the new problems that arise (the beginning of the treadmill).

It is highly convenient that illegal HT seeds now seem widely available. It dovetails with Monsanto’s stated plan to boost herbicide sales in India (which it regards as a potentially massive growth market). And if farmers demand these seeds, (farmers are a huge vote bank for politicians), Monsanto (now Bayer) might eventually achieve what is has been pushing for all along: India embracing GM agriculture.

In effect, Stone (with his colleague Andrew Flachs) helps us to understand how ‘didactic learning’ (which Monsanto has been undertaking with Indian farmers since the 1990s) can result in driving farmers towards the very option and very choice Monsanto wants them to make. Stone and Flachs also make it clear that once farmers are on an agrochemical/agritech treadmill, it is very difficult for them to get off, even when they are aware it is failing.

A question of power

When the pro-GMO lobby uses ‘choice’ as a stick to hit critics with, it fails to acknowledge these processes, which powerful agritech players are cynically manipulating for their own ends. In other words, ‘choices’ or options must be understood within the broader context of power.

Choice is also about the options that could be made available, but which have been closed off or are not even considered. Take the case of Andhra Pradesh in India. The state government is committed to scaling up zero budget natural farming to six million farmers by 2024. In Ethiopia, agroecology has been scaled up across the entire Tigray region. These types of initiatives are succeeding because of enlightened political leaders and the commitment of key institutions.

However, in places where global agribusiness/agritech corporations have levered themselves into strategic positions, their interests prevail. From the overall narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, these firms have secured a perceived thick legitimacy within policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse. As a result, agroecological approaches are marginalised and receive scant attention and support.

This perceived legitimacy allows these corporations to devise and implement policies on national and international levels. For example, it was Monsanto that had a leading role in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies. The global food processing industry wrote the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. Whether it involves Codex or the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring Indian agriculture, the powerful agribusiness/food lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers.

So how can the pro-GMO lobby assert with any degree of credibility that it is a bunch of activists curtailing or defining choice when it has been powerless to prevent any of this, either at ‘field level’ in places like India or within governments and international bodies?

As Stone and Flachs describe, it is Monsanto – a Fortune 500 company with all its influence and wealth (not ‘anti-GMO activists’) – that has taken its brand of corporate activism (imperialism) to farmers to expand its influence and boost its bottom line:

“Beginning with 500 farmer programs in 2007, Monsanto India targeted a range of farmers through an herbicide research program… They also conducted more than 10,000 farm demonstrations directed at small and large farmers in 2012 to raise awareness of Roundup® and discourage knockoff products… These efforts build on Monsanto’s didactic activities since the late 1990s. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh the Meekosam Project placed Monsanto employees in villages to demonstrate products and promote hybrid seeds and chemical inputs…”

From the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ to the Gates Foundation’s role in opening up African agriculture to the global food and agribusiness oligopolies, democratic procedures at sovereign state levels are being bypassed to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by powerful corporations.

Whether it involves the destruction of indigenous agriculture in Africa or the ongoing dismantling of Indian agriculture at the behest of transnational agribusiness, where is the democratic ‘choice’?

Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill. And Bayer’s hand is possibly behind the ongoing strategy behind GM mustard in India. Through secretive trade deals, strings-attached loans and outright duplicity, the global food and agribusiness conglomerates have scant regard for democracy, let alone choice.

As Michel Chossudovsky outlines in his book ‘The Globalization of Poverty’ (2003), the ongoing aim is to displace localised, indigenous methods of food production and allow transnational companies to take over, thereby tying farmers and regions into a system of neoliberal globalization. Whether it involves the undermining or destruction of what were once largely self-sufficient agrarian economies or what we are currently seeing in India, the agenda is clear.

In finishing, one final point should be noted. In their rush to readily promote neoliberal dogma and corporate-inspired PR, many government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that (corrupt) profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. There is the premise that water, seeds, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

These natural assets (‘the commons’) should be under common stewardship and managed in the common interest by local people assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf because that’s the bottom line where genuine choice is concerned.

And how can we move towards this? It is already happening: we should take inspiration from the many successful agroecological projects around the world.

*

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

---

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

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

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

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