Global Research

Featured image: UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn visits Baqa’a, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, on 23 June 2018 [File photo]

Israel is seeking with all its weight and supportive lobby to demonise Jeremy Corbyn. He is facing a campaign in Britain accusing him of anti-Semitism and arrows are being shot in his back from the right side of his party, the Labour Party, represented by the heirs and orphans of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and from circles loyal to Israel. These two groups are also targeting both the left wing trend he has adopted and his support for the rights of the Palestinian people.

Anti-Semitism and Palestinian advocacy are often confused deliberately in the ranks of the European left wing in general and in Britain in particular. Many people classify Corbyn as part of the radical left wing. He faced a so-called coup within the Labour Party, which he heads, after Britain voted to leave the European Union.

Jeremy Corbyn, born in 1949 in Chippenham, was elected to the British House of Commons in 1983 as an MP for London’s Islington North district. He was arrested in 1984 outside the South African embassy after violating a protest ban during Apartheid.

In 2015 he was elected to head the Labour Party, winning 59.9 per cent of the vote, reaching the minimum number of votes needed to win during the first round. He moved from the backbenches in the House of Commons, where he served 32 years, to the forefront of the party in a surprise move that still stuns many.

As soon as Corbyn’s victory was announced, the Israeli media fiercely attacked him, accusing him of being anti-Semitic and criticising him for not considering Hamas a terrorist organisation. They also criticised his promise to impose a ban on selling arms to Israel if he is elected prime minister.

Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper noted Corbyn’s call for conducting international investigations to convict Israel of war crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, as well as his vow to issue an apology for his country’s participation in the Iraq war under Tony Blair’s leadership. He also said it was time for the Labour Party to apologise to the British people for dragging them into a war in Iraq based on a ploy and to the Iraqi people for the devastation caused. He also called for involving Hamas and Hezbollah in the peace negotiations in the Middle East.

The first decision made by Corbyn after his victory was announced was to participate in a protest supporting refugees organised by various organisations and movements. He called on the government to “open your hearts and open your minds and open your attitude towards supporting people who are desperate, who need somewhere safe to live, want to contribute to our society, and are human beings just like all of us”. He rejected harsh treatment of immigrants, saying they contributed to the development of Britain. He supported the reception of refugees and called on the government to help them, taking his cue from Germany.

Corbyn is considered a peace activist and a member of the Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Campaign. He quoted senior military figures describing his country’s nuclear weapons as militarily useless.

In his speeches Corbyn focuses on his support towards the poor and the marginalised, supporting the country’s social welfare system, the party’s unity in the coming phase and his willingness to cooperate with everyone so that the party will once again lead be victorious in the elections.

The Labour Party saw a strong turnout in the run-up to the party’s presidential election, a move many attributed to the ability of Corbyn and his programme to attract various popular and youth segments of the party.

However, this did not prevent his opponents, even inside the party, from taking positions against him. Many analysts continued to ask questions regarding the party’s future in light of his unconventional new leadership and if he would be able to win in the general elections scheduled for 2020 and then form a government and govern the country. They raised questions of whether he would move strongly to the left, leaving the centre to the ruling conservatives to expand into, while the Labour Party moves back to the second or third level.

The party passed its first test after Corbyn’s victory in the form of the election of the party’s candidate, Muslim MP Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London, beating the Conservative Party’s Boris Johnson who won the position in 2008. However, Corbyn was accused of failing in the referendum conducted regarding Britain’s remainder in the European Union even though the Labour Party is considered to be among the most prominent supporters of Britain’s continued membership in the EU.

Some members of the party and others outside the party considered the result of the vote to be catastrophic for Labour. Internally, the voices opposed to Corbyn are leading a group considered by the British media to be an attempt at a coup.

Corbyn did not come from the traditional background of British politics, as he belongs to a family known for their human rights activism. Even growing up, he did not get involved in political work as much as he got involved in human rights activism. He is known for his adoption of the far-left ideology, which prompted him to dedicate his career to defending the working class and the rights of minorities and the marginalised in British society. Despite the fact that he is not financially or socially classified as working class, some in Britain call him a working class hero.

Corbyn has grown accustomed to going against the current, as after he graduated from secondary school he joined a local British newspaper and did not focus on his studies at university. He did not graduate from a prestigious British university like Oxford or Cambridge, but instead left university to volunteer in Jamaica for two years. He then started his career in human rights until he was voted in as an MP in 1984.

Before attending his first session he appeared before the House of Commons to respond to the criticism by other MPs because he did not wear a “proper suit” when he went to parliamentary meetings. He said he was wearing a jacket his mother sewed for him herself and there was no need to spend time and money on choosing his clothes and a proper suit because, as he said, the British parliament is not a club for elegant men, but a place where MPs represent their constituents – the British people.

The man who comes from outside the limelight and outside the Downing Street elites on the shoulders of the unionists and the supporters of the traditional left wing who are frustrated by the policies of Tony Blair and his successors, is preparing for Britain’s leadership while Teresa May, leader of the Conservative Party and the prime minister is preparing to leave 10 Downing Street.

In the event of May’s departure the British people will be faced with two non-traditional British politicians. The first is her rival in the party, Boris Johnson, who is a part of the right wing that leans towards extremism. He is known for his hostility towards Muslims and is very similar to US President Donald Trump and the leaders of the populist wave that have swept the world recently. The second is Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, who comes from outside the traditional elite, and who is well known to us in the Arab world as a friend and politician who is extraordinary, honest and courageous.

*

This article first appeared in Arabic in Assabeel on 25 June 2018.

2018 is the 70th anniversary of the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) which started before the state of Israel was created and continues today.

In 1948, 1.4 million Palestinians lived in 1,300 Palestinian towns and villages all over historical Palestine. More than 800,000 of the population were driven out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries, and other countries of the world. Zionists managed to take over the lands from 774 towns and villages and destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages between 1948 to 1950 In that period Zionist forces also committed more than 70 massacres in which more than 15 thousands Palestinians were killed…

Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh, May 15, 2018

For more analysis consult Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh’s chapter on “refugees”  in his 2004 book on “Sharing the Land of Canaan”.

*

Notes from the Massoud Nayeri:

• This is the modified Nakba artwork which I designed in 2011 when the first massive Palestinians attempt to Return had started.
• The Key: symbol of returning home
• The combination of key and map: to show number 4 in 1948
• The shape of 8 (in 1948): This is to resemble Handala the famous and beloved character of the late Naji Al-Ali, Palestinian cartoonist.
• The red flame: to show that the flame of resistance and sacrifices of Palestinians is alive and burning.
• The word Nakba in English and Arabic.

*

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh is Founder and Director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History.

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

Featured image is from the author.

It is very difficult to define political art. Views on what makes art political can range from the idea that all art is political (i.e. it either implicitly supports or explicitly opposes the status quo) to pointing out, for example, the obviously political murals on walls around Belfast. As a way of narrowing the former and broadening the latter I suggest here a view of political art that uses three categories: Portrayal, Promotion, or Projection.

Portrayal

In the first category ‘Portrayal’ covers art that says ‘this is what happens if, is happening now or happened in the past’. This kind of art describes events or situations that people find themselves in as a result of social or political structures. Any political perspective is implicit in the art but is also free-floating. For example, a painting of a white man whipping black slaves describes a particular situation where the black man may say, ‘Yes! That is how we are treated!’ yet the slave-owner may say, ‘Yes! That is the way to treat them!’ Thus both sides can see the confirmation of their point of view in the work of art.

For the slaves, the ultimate effect of such art may be positive or negative. In a positive sense it may create group awareness and solidarity, or, in a negative sense, it could also consolidate inertia, a feeling that nothing can be done to change the situation. The art styles or movements of Realism, Social Realism and Naturalism could fit into the category of ‘

Promotion

In the second category of ‘Promotion’ ways and means towards the resolution of the problem are presented. That is, a particular aspect of an event is highlighted over other aspects. This aspect would concentrate on the people or groups who are actively struggling to change the situation in which they find themselves.

Thus one view of an event, that which would encourage others or strengthen an activism already present, is promoted over images of the event that may have the opposite effect. In this case, the politics of representation takes precedence over the representation of politics.

Unlike ‘Portrayal’, this type of art is harder to manipulate from an opposing point of view. The politics is generally explicit and can have a positive inspirational effect. The art styles or movements of Socialist Realism and ‘Political Art’ (e.g. murals, banners, posters etc.) and Social Realism to a certain extent could fit into the category of ‘Promotion’.

Eviction Scene Henry Jones Thaddeus (1889) [source History Ireland]

[In this painting above the artist represents an eviction scene from inside the house as the occupants try to deal with the fire and defend themselves from the police. The ‘politics of representation’ may be seen here in the compositional dominance given to the defenders and the very small area given over to the intruding police. The type of view we are more familiar with is of the landlord, police and passive onlookers dominating the scene from outside the house – compare eviction scene below.]

Eviction in the West of Ireland Aloysius O’Kelly (1881) [source History Ireland]

Projection

In the third and last category ‘Projection’ refers to art that takes disparate elements and then recombines them to form a new image. It is an art which says ‘This is what could happen or could be if …’. Art styles or movements such as Surrealism, collage, utopian or visionary images would fit into this category. Such speculative art can have a positive effect of providing inspiration by suggesting ideas that are outside one’s usual ways of thinking, and can be implicitly or explicitly political.

For example, a picture showing the Rock of Cashel (ancient fortress in Co. Tipperary, Ireland) with a Japanese Shinkansen bullet train speeding by may be a jarring conjunction of images but suggests the possibility of a super fast transport system in Ireland. Therefore it has social and economic implications for the Irish State which in turn makes it implicitly political.

However, like in the first category Portrayal, opposing political viewpoints can claim this image for their vision of the future. The same scene would be explicitly political though, if, for example,  ‘Workers of the world unite’ was written on the side of the Shinkansen.

Thus it can be seen from the above categories that the representation of particular actions or the inclusion of particular types of text ties an image down to an explicitly political perspective. The past, present and future, with some overlapping, are also covered in this way of seeing or defining political art.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is a prominent Irish artist who has exhibited widely around Ireland. His work consists of drawings and paintings and features cityscapes of Dublin, images based on Irish history and other work with social/political themes (http://gaelart.net/). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). An earlier version of this article was published in 2010.

There is nothing about the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME to overturn 41 years of precedent and declare that agency fee/fair share is unconstitutional that surprised me. Watching the tendency of the conservative majority it would have been a miracle for them to have decided otherwise. Perhaps, if they had been true to their alleged conservative principles, they would have decided that the matter of whether public sector unions could negotiate agreements with governmental entities that provided for represented – though non-union – workers to pay their share for representation, was a matter for the states. But as we have seen over time, there are few principles that the Right-wing feels bound to respect.

Much will be written about the Janus v. AFSCME decision in the coming days and months by people far more learned than this writer. Nevertheless it felt important to make note of one critical issue: the matter at stake had nothing to do with the First Amendment.

Unions: Fairly and Equitably Represent All Workers

The Court majority suggests that agency fees paid by non-members challenges the freedom of speech of workers who choose not to join a labor union. As the Court minority points out, in their dissent, that is not the issue. Unions do not inhibit the freedom of speech of members or non-member agency fee payers. Labor unions do have a statutory right to fairly and equitably represent all workers in a given bargaining unit, i.e., within a particular jurisdiction where common interests have been identified. In fact, labor unions are, by law, the exclusive representatives of workers in a certified bargaining unit, i.e., there cannot be another union representing the same workers.

The matter before the Court really came down to whether workers who are represented by a union have an obligation to contribute toward the cost of representation. In any other institution the matter would be simple. If, for instance, you live in a town or city and you are required to pay taxes, you do so in order to cover the collective costs of that jurisdiction. Individuals cannot declare one day that as a result of differences with a government body that they should be able to avoid taxes. Yes, people have tried that route and there is not a good ending to that story.

In the case of labor unions, they have been granted by law the right and duty to represent workers in a given economic jurisdiction – a bargaining unit. Workers in the public sector are not obligated to join the union but the compromise that was established, and been in operation for 41 years in many states that permit public sector unionism, was that those who choose not to join contribute toward representation costs. Thus, an individual worker who decides not to join the union may, nevertheless, face an issue for which they need representation. Representation costs money. A case may go to arbitration, for instance, which can be very expensive. There may be issues that have to be litigated in court. Indeed, an issue may need to go to a legislative body. These steps can be very expensive. The Supreme Court majority knows this and, essentially, what they said today is that they do not give a damn.

The objective of the Court majority, along with their political allies, has always been the destruction of labor unions. Of course they will not confirm that, but their actions have been continuously telegraphed. Janus is a decision that aims to weaken the ability of public sector unions to represent their respective workforces. As the Supreme Court majority knows, from any assessment of “open shop” situations, when a union is compelled – at its own cost – to represent workers that they must represent by law, their resources are drained.

The moves toward “open shop,” that is, no forms of union security, have been underway for a long time. There have been, throughout the history of labor unions in the USA, periodic offensives by the employer class to either eliminate unions altogether or weaken them significantly. In the current moment, at the federal, state, county and municipal levels, public sector unions are perceived as an obstacle to the political Right and much of corporate America that seeks to eliminate the social safety net, privatize all that can be privatized, and weaken government to the point that its only relevance is in the realm of police, fire, prisons and, of course, the military.

Fight or Die

Too many unions were in utter denial about the danger of the continuous “open shop” offensives. They assumed that this would not happen in either the public or private sector. In some of the worst cases they relied on agency fee payers rather than recruiting all agency fee payers into the unions as full members. The labor unions in the U.S. Postal Service have demonstrated that one can be successful in organizing in an open shop environment. Several of the bargaining councils in the American Federation of Government Employees have also demonstrated this.

Now the issue of the transformation of labor unions into militant, forward-thinking and social justice institutions has become an immediate challenge. For years most of the leadership of organized labor believed that union transformation could be punted or, at best, resolved through simply organizing more members. The Supreme Court’s majority has now demonstrated that we have only two choices: fight or die. And fighting means becoming organizations that are constantly speaking on behalf of workers, whether in our ranks or not, demonstrating each day that our movement is a movement grounded in the struggle for social and economic justice. Case in point: the teacher union insurgencies that we have seen over 2018.

Janus is not the end of the story. It is the end of a chapter.

*

This article was originally published on billfletcherjr.com.

Bill Fletcher, Jr., co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, is a media columnist and long-time activist. He served as President of TransAfrica Forum and was formerly the Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO.

Featured image is from The Bullet.

Angela Merkel’s continued position as chancellor now appears untenable as a result of two significant policy failures. 

1. Europe’s migration crisis in which Merkel played a pivotal role by admitting over one million refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2015, during her controversial open border migration policy, has caused a surge in support for Right-wing political parties throughout Europe. Although she has now belatedly admitted that Germany had insufficient border controls.

Her policy has caused outrage among many Europeans who fear an unacceptable reduction in job prospects and social services including education, medical and housing. Plus the real fear of an increase in urban crime in major city conurbations. This is a crisis that reflects the concern of Germany’s electorate over the impact of Merkel’s disastrous asylum strategy.

2. The second grave policy error was the unilateral decision to alter the balance of global power by supplying Israel with a fleet of German-built, Dolphin class submarines that she knew would be immediately retrofitted by the Netanyahu government with nuclear cruise missiles giving the Israeli state a second strike capability which Germany itself does not possess, thereby potentially endangering European/ NATO security.

For these reasons alone, Merkel is now past her ‘sell-by date’.  Germany needs a new chancellor with policies that will co-ordinate an acceptable EU solution for the movement of goods and people but one that would also preserve national identities and state security.   The EU is about to undergo significant change, and not only due to Brexit.

*

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

Global Research is independent in the true sense of the word. We don’t receive funding from war-makers and “banksters”, therefore our news is free of corporate agendas. This is only possible thanks to our readers who show their commitment to the truth by sending in donations, creating memberships and purchasing books from our online store in order to get in-depth information on today’s pressing issues.

To help us in continuing to deliver the “stories behind the stories”, please consider showing your support for Global Research. Empowerment now means peace for the future. We can do this together.

*     *     *

Supreme Court Upholds Trump’s Travel Ban

By Stephen Lendman, June 27, 2018

His policy has nothing to do with protecting national security, nothing about screening out “radical Islamic terrorists” Washington created and supports – everything to do with hyping fear, justifying endless wars, keeping unwanted Muslims out of America, along with Venezuelan officials and North Koreans.

Anti-Muslim Bigotry Is Now US Law

By CJ Werleman, June 27, 2018

Another cause for genuine alarm is the fact that the Supreme Court vindicated Trump’s Muslim ban based on concerns for “national security”. You don’t need to be a historian to know that a great majority of the world’s worst atrocities have been carried out in the name of “national security”, including the Soviet purges, the Holocaust, the US Japanese civilian internment camps and the campaigns of ethnic cleansing taking place in Myanmar, Palestine, Syria and elsewhere today.

The Supreme Court Ignores the Reality of President Trump’s Discriminatory Muslim Ban

By Cody Wofsy, June 27, 2018

The Supreme Court today rejected the challenge to President Trump’s Muslim Ban. In its 5-to-4 decision, the court failed to make good on principles at the heart of our constitutional system — including the absolute prohibition on official disfavor of a particular religion. The fight against the ban will continue, but the court’s decision is devastating. History will not be kind to the court’s approval of an unfounded and blatantly anti-Muslim order.

A Children’s Gitmo on the Border

By Karen J. Greenberg, June 27, 2018

Just such separations, of course, became the well-publicized essence of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border and, until the president’s executive order issued last week, the numbers of children affected were mounting exponentially — more than 2,000 of them in the previous six weeks, some still in diapers. (And keep in mind that there already were 11,000 migrant children in U.S. custody at that point.)

Why Do They Flee?

By William Blum, June 27, 2018

Those in the US generally opposed to immigration make it a point to declare or imply that the United States does not have any legal or moral obligation to take in these Latinos. This is not true. The United States does indeed have the obligation because many of the immigrants, in addition to fleeing from drug violence, are escaping an economic situation in their homeland directly made hopeless by American interventionist policy.

Immigration: Western Wars and Imperial Exploitation Uproot Millions

By Prof. James Petras, June 27, 2018

The US invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq uprooted several million people, destroying their lives, families, livelihood, housing and communities and undermining there security.

As a result, most victims faced the choice of resistance or flight.  Millions chose to flee to the West since the NATO countries would not bomb their residence in the US or Europe.

Take off the “feel good” Alt-Media glasses and face the facts, sanctions are very successful in inflicting Hybrid War harm against victimized states, which is an “inconvenient reality” that Iran’s being reminded of right now.

Contrary to the “politically correct” Alt-Media dogma that sanctions “only make states stronger”, some of them are inevitably destabilized by this asymmetrical weapon whenever it takes on Hybrid War dimensions, as it currently is in Iran.

The Islamic Republic is being besieged from within due to the external encouragement of the time-tested tool of speculation as a means for influencing the country’s financial and currency markets, with the result being that economically driven protests are spreading throughout the country’s capital and into other cities as well. These aren’t the first such mass demonstrations this year because Iran earlier had to deal with large-scale protests over similar issues roughly six months ago, which were also sparked by civil society’s discontent and ended up being guided  by largely unseen foreign hands in the direction of destabilization, too.

The Spurious Kurdish Connection

The same phenomenon is repeating itself once again, albeit possibly with the intent of transforming the previous “test run” into the “real thing”, or in other words, seeing foreign state actors (mostly the US & Saudi Arabia) providing clandestine military support to urban and rural terrorist/”insurgent” forces in order to provoke a self-sustaining cycle of escalation that could be manipulated for geopolitical ends. Last winter’s unrest could in hindsight be seen as a probe for gauging the government’s response and testing the limits of what could “acceptably” be done before eliciting a reaction from the security forces. Armed with this contextual Color Revolution knowledge, they then proceeded to experiment with their modified techniques in Iranian Kurdistan, which has a militant history of preexisting identity discord and is therefore the most susceptible part of the country to Hybrid War.

The authorities cracked down on smuggling in this region in early spring, but this had the effect of prompting protests by the impoverished locals who complained that they couldn’t receive much-needed supplies at the prices that they had previously depended on. Moreover, the Kurdish population was already predisposed to more political assertiveness following the nationalist demonstration effect that they observed in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan last fall after the region’s unsuccessful independence attempt. The cocktail of nationalist and economic concerns created fertile ground for demagogues to argue that the entire population should take to the street in order to resist the government’s anti-smuggling crackdown. Although disconnected from the current events in Tehran, the Mainstream Media narrative will predictably be that this new round of protests originated in Iranian Kurdistan and have since spread nationwide.

The “Zero Tolerance” Chain Reaction

The present events are driven more by speculation (whether unfounded or not) than anything else because many people are worried that Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, the reimposition of sanctions, and subsequent November deadline for the world to stop purchasing Iranian oil will totally wreck their economy and lead to a sharp decrease in living standards. After all, the US’ “zero tolerance” policy of refusing to issue any “secondary sanctions” waivers to China and India – Iran’s two largest energy partners – might lead to them curtailing their oil imports in order to avert a more pronounced trade war with America. Should this happen, then the US would succeed in Asia against Iran where it failed in Europe against Russia by significantly dipping into its opponent’s market share and therefore depriving it of much-needed cash revenue.

Making matters even more pronounced is that many Iranians, and particularly those in the urban areas such as Tehran, genuinely believed in the false hopes that the “reformist”-led Rouhani government encouraged in their hearts after the 2015 deal that convinced them that their personal futures would be brighter than ever before. Whether this was a deception all along or just a terrible and mismanaged policy to begin with, the fact of the matter is that many people feel deeply disappointed by what happened and might be less willing to passively accept a worsening of their living conditions no matter how much the government says that Trump is solely responsible for this. The knock-off effect of this speculation is that the value of the Iranian rial has plunged and everything is now naturally more expensive for everybody.

Screenshot from Reuters, June 25, 218

In response, the authorities banned the import of 1300 products in a bid to boost Iran’s “resistance economy” of “Make in Iran” import-substitution, though it may take an undetermined length of time for this policy to reap actual results in placating the anxious and protesting masses. In the meantime, a “window of opportunity” has opened up for external forces to exacerbate the economically driven internal unrest in an attempt to steer it towards a geopolitical direction. The government is well aware of this scheme and that’s why the Ayatollah decreed that “economic security” must be safeguarded at all costs in order to prevent this manufactured crisis’ exacerbation and the US’ resultant artificial recreation of the same series of events that led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Recreating The Revolution

The Shah’s primary weakness wasn’t so much that he was an authoritarian ruler, but that he failed to improve the economy to the point where the majority of the population wouldn’t care about political issues because everything was comfortably taken care of for them. Economic protests eventually spiraled out of control after the state resorted to using its monopoly on violence against peaceful demonstrators, therefore triggering a self-sustaining escalation cycle that never abated no matter how hard the government tried. This quickly led to the Shah’s overthrow, which was soon thereafter taken advantage of by the Ayatollah in order to usher in an Islamic Republic on the backs of the many leftist protesters who made the revolution happen in the first place.

Adapting this model to the present day, the US is hoping that the state security forces either overreact to the economic protests (some degree of which are being directly and indirectly influenced from abroad) or are pressed into do so by the most unruly rioters’ provocations, which could then set into motion the “revolutionary” Hybrid War cycle that could see the Islamo-Marxist MEK terrorists becoming the vanguard force for destabilizing the Iranian state at the behest of its US and Saudi patrons. Accordingly, this could spark the series of cascading scenarios elaborated on by the author in his July 2016 analytical forecast about “The US-Saudi Plan To Prompt An Iranian Pullback From Syria” that include the foreign empowerment of ethno-regional terrorist/”insurgent” groups all around the Persians’ periphery.

The end goal of the ongoing Hybrid War on Iran is the same as it always has been, and that’s to advance the interconnected objectives of Regime Tweaking, Regime Change, and Regime Reboot (R-TCR). This phased progression of asymmetrical pressure first seeks to compel the targeted state, which in this case is Iran, into unilateral political concessions such as downscaling its physical and ideological presence in its Mideast “sphere of influence” in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen before ultimately withdrawing just like the 1980s USSR did its Eastern European “sphere of influence” in the late 1980s. Should that be unsuccessful, then the next step is to try and overthrow the government prior to “rebooting” its entire state structure through “constitutional reform” that “Balkanizes” it into “Identity Federalized” components that can be more “easily managed” through classic divide-and-rule means.

The Way Forward 

Bearing this grand strategy in mind and the invaluable experiences that the US & its allies acquired over the past half a year through “test runs”, it should be anticipated that Iran’s adversaries are going to “twist the knife” through concerted economic (sanctions) and asymmetrical (terrorist) warfare measures in order to throw the Islamic Republic into Hybrid War chaos through the triggering of the self-sustaining cycle of escalation that was discussed earlier. Iran runs the very real risk of becoming embroiled in a serious conflict if it doesn’t regain control of the strategic dynamics at play, to which end it must take care not to overreact to provocations but should nevertheless demonstrate resolve when responding to them. Furthermore, the state must clearly explain to the people how it plans to implement its “resistance economy” and what “collective sacrifices” this entails.

Concurrent with this, an information campaign must be initiated whereby the state informs the people about the geopolitical motivations and practical mechanisms for externally exploiting their domestic economic situation, taking partial responsibility for some policy failings and prevailing naiveté in making the country more vulnerable to these asymmetrical attacks. It’s impractical at this point to blame everything solely on Trump – whether wholly justified in doing so or not – because it doesn’t change anything in tangible terms for the people who are suffering or stand to suffer the most, especially after their unrealistically high hopes from 2015 were dramatically dashed by the cold slap of unipolarity. It’s possible that the state might quietly make Russian-facilitated “compromises” in Syria in an effort to alleviate the heavy pressure being put on it, but even this wouldn’t likely be enough to earn much relief.

Therefore, the only sustainable solution is for Iran to unapologetically embrace the Golden Ring of Multipolar Great Powers by redirecting its strategic focus eastward in response to the multifaceted challenges facing it on the western front in the aforementioned domains of its Mideast “sphere of influence”. It’s not to say that Iran should “surrender” its hard-fought influence in these countries, but just that it needs to reconceptualize its role in Eurasia and urgently begin exploring real-sector economic opportunities in the supercontinent in order to “balance” its hitherto ideologically-driven foreign policy that has yet to yield the profits that its people need in order to withstand this latest Hybrid War siege. The context of this latest coordinated effort at regime change is vastly different than what Iran experienced in the 1980s given the changed international (New Cold War) and domestic (economic and demographic) conditions, which is why a radical policy readjustment might be necessary.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s no longer possible to downplay the economic unrest in Iran and completely attribute it to foreign forces because the highly publicized shutdown of the Tehran bazaar attests to the very real nature of what’s happening. There’s undoubtedly an external hand involved in manipulating the structural circumstances in which regular Iranians have found themselves, but observers can’t overlook the fact that well-intentioned people are nevertheless still participating in these events in spite of that as they protest their deteriorating living standards and desperately attempt to stave off what they’ve been speculatively led to believe will be their continued worsening in the future. Having learned from the two “test runs” that took place at the beginning of the year in urban locales across the country and then later on in rural Iranian Kurdistan, the US and its allies have acquired a keen sense of understanding over how they could guide developments in the direction of their grand strategic interests.

The danger is that massive apolitical protests by a majority of peaceful people will be hijacked by a few terrorist/”insurgent” provocateurs who try their utmost to trick the state into a militant overreaction that could inevitably lead to the loss of civilian life, after which the “Rules For Radicals” decontextualization and subsequent reframing of the situation as “unprovoked killings by the dictatorship’s security services” could fuel a self-sustaining cycle of violence. Building off of the intermittent disturbances in Iranian Kurdistan, the country’s enemies could then exploit this region as the epicenter of Hybrid War destabilization by encouraging the return of Kurdish jihadis and the MEK-facilitated arming of the “Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran” (whose leader just visited Washington). From there, it may be possible to spark other peripheral “insurgencies” that divert the attention of the security services and open the state up to an unexpected blow at either a predetermined moment or the “right opportunity”.

The end goal is to overthrow the mullah-managed republic and replace it with an “Identity Federation” that makes the “New Iran” incomparably easier to control through divide-and-rule means, though this won’t happen so long as the country continues to resist the Hybrid War against it. The security services have repeatedly proven their capability in handling all manner of threats, but the government must spearhead an economic solution for sustaining its military gains and ensuring the continued “compliance” of the population. The last thing that the state needs is countless well-intentioned citizens refusing to leave the streets and inadvertently being taken advantage of as “human shields” by provocateurs, which is why something must urgently be done to placate the restless people. Seeing as how Iran’s western-directed ideologically-driven foreign policy of the past decades hasn’t yielded any real economic results, it’s sensible to at least consider whether a pragmatic geostrategic redirection eastward towards the Golden Ring is long overdue.

*

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.

Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.

We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.

If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.

Two international items in the news this week highlight, by its absence, an underlying feature of reporting events in ‘troubled’ areas of the world. That absence is simply the historical background of each event.

Canada in Mali

Canada is maintaining its superficial idealism of peacekeeping as it commits 250 military personnel to Mali, relying on “faith” (rather than respect), operating for “human rights” with an initial goal of “stability.” [1] In spite of a peace deal being signed by various groups five years ago a status quo of corruption, internal fighting, and crimes against citizens are ongoing. Well over one hundred UN “peacekeepers” have been killed in Mali since the beginning of the mission.

All that idealism and resolve on Canada’s part is well and good, but what is missing is the historical context within which Canada also participated. While the news and the political talk shows mention the disruption in Libya as playing a role in that situation, they do not mention Canada’s role in Libya.

Canada’s role in Libya was essentially war crimes against the country of Libya. Although authorized by the UNSC for countries to create a no fly zone in order to prevent a theorized genocide, the participating countries – essentially NATO with the full backing of the US and their then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – went well beyond that. Even with the spurious rationale of the no fly zone and genocide, the mission’s real purpose was to dispose of the Libyan government of Gaddafi and prevent any Libyan government from establishing an independent position against the US. Along with that was stopping the idea of having an independent gold backed African currency, as well as stopping Chinese assistance within the oilfields of Libya.

A Canadian soldier looks on as the first Canadian troops arrive at a UN base in Gao, Mali, on Sunday, June 24, 2018. (Source: Sean Kilpatrick/CANADIAN PRESS)

Canada played a major role in criminally extending the no fly zone into an aerial combat mission to assist the “rebels” who were mainly comprised of fundamentalist religious fighters. In that role Canadian air forces attacked both regular Libyan army units as well as destroying much civilian infrastructure in Libya, essentially directly assisting the rebel ground forces. [2] When it was all over they pulled out, leaving behind a chaotic situation that spilled over into the Sahel region of Africa and thus the problems in Mali. By operating well beyond the “no fly zone” of the UNSC and with provisions of ground support for the “rebels” Canada was complicit of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Libya.

The Prime Minister at the time, Stephen Harper was so proud of our heroic flyboys that they were honoured with a state visit in Canada’s senate.

That context is omitted from current news broadcasts on the CBC. In effect, Canadian troops are operating in a war theatre they had a decisive role in creating several years previously, at the time operating under the auspices of the UN but in reality acting for the wishes of the US and its goal of maintaining/creating a global hegemony for its petro dollar reserve currency.

Refugees from Central America’s “northern triangle”

Canada’s CBC has been following events concerning asylum seekers and refugees entering the US along the border with Mexico. As with the reporting on Mali, the background context is missing. When discussing why the people are leaving their countries the accepted answer is because of poverty, crime, extortion, drugs, extrajudicial killings, corruption – essentially the whole load of bad news that accompanies failed states.

The CBC news reports identified the refugees as arriving from the Northern Triangle of Central America: the states of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Yes, these countries have the crime and corruption and drugs that the natives are fleeing even by their own account. What isn’t discussed is how they became that way in the first place.

It is a long history, but essentially these countries are the quintessential ‘banana republics’. Early US entrepreneurs realized there was money to be made from banana plantations marketed to the US mainland. Backed by US military, US banks, and private police forces, the agencies of United Fruit (now Chiquita, also now with Dole) maintained large private reserves, commanding the majority of the local economic scene to the detriment of the indigenous people.

More recently, when these countries attempted to have even mildly socialist governments that maybe just hinted against US dominance, corruption, and hegemony, the US intervened either directly, covertly, or through bizarre schemes such as the Iran-Contra affair. The violence comes from this, but also importantly from the “School of the Americas”, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. This “school” was a school that instructed special forces how to torture, intimidate, create rebellions, set up false flags, and simply kill the major participants within the opposition.

From covert operations, private militias, instructions in how to fight dirty and illegally, it is no wonder that armed gangs have formed, intent on securing their own part of the economy through intimidation (murder, torture, threats) and the sale of drugs. That the governments are corrupt is simply part and parcel of all the mayhem created by US intrusions into the area. They are failed states because the US deliberately ‘failed’ them in order to retain control of the overall setting.

It is no surprise that the first two CIA overthrows of governments involved the democratically elected governments of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, the former for bananas, the latter for oil, both to save them from independence.

The real news for Canada

Canadians are receiving the real news, at least the minimum the establishment wishes to enlighten the public about. To have full news coverage would require the CBC to examine the “roots” of the problems mentioned (as stated by Justin Trudeau during his election campaign) and discuss the nature of US interventions and dominance for each region along with Canada’s subservient role in it all. Unfortunately Canada follows US foreign policy and the CBC is not as independent or as thorough with the news as they like to be perceived to be.

*

Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Harjit Sajjan, Canada’s Minister of Defence. “Power and Politics”, CBC, 2018-06-25.

[2] Yves Engler. “Canada’s role in the “War” on Libya.”, Dissident Voice, August 28, 2015.

Iran’s Indian-back port of Chabahar, inaugurated months before the United States re-imposed sanctions on the Islamic republic, is where Asia and the Middle East’s multiple political conflicts and commercial rivalries collide.

Chabahar was destined to become a player in geopolitical and economic manoeuvring between China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Central Asian states even without the re-imposition of sanctions.

The sanctions have, however, significantly enhanced its importance as Iran struggles to offset the likely punishing impact of US efforts to force the Islamic republic to alter its foreign and defense policy and/or achieve a change of regime.

Iran sees the port together with the Indian-backed Chabahar Free Trade Zone, that hopes to host a steel mill and a petrochemical complex, as the motor of development of the Iranian section of the Makran coast. Iran’s province of Sistan and Balochistan shares the coast line with the Pakistani province of Balochistan, home to the Chinese-backed rival port of Gwadar.

Saudi Arabia sees the Pakistani region as a launching pad of a potential effort by the kingdom and/or the United States to destabilizing the Islamic republic by stirring unrest among its ethnic minorities, including the Baluch. Saudi Arabia has put the building blocks in place for possible covert action but has to date given no indication that it intends to act on proposals to support irredentist action.

A study written by Mohammed Hassan Husseinbor, an Iranian of Baloch origin, and published by the International Institute for Iranian Studies, formerly known as the Arabian Gulf Centre for Iranian Studies, a Saudi government-backed think tank, argued that Chabahar posed “a direct threat to the Arab Gulf states” that called for “immediate counter measures.”

Mr. Husseinbor said Chabahar would enable Iran to increase market share in India for its oil exports at the expense of Saudi Arabia, raise foreign investment in the Islamic republic, increase Iranian government revenues, and allow Iran to project power in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Saudi Arabia, months before the US re-imposition of sanctions, already sought to thwart development of Chabahar by stopping South Korea’s POSCO Engineering & Construction from moving ahead with a $1.6 billion agreement with Iranian steelmaker Pars Kohan Diar Parsian Steel (PKP) to build a steel mill in Chabahar. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has a 38 percent stake in POSCO.

“This project mandatorily requires the decision of the board of directors. However, as relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia rapidly grew worse after a severance of diplomatic ties last year, outside directors in the board meeting are having negative stances on Iran projects, especially those requiring investment and JVC (joint venture company) establishment,” POSCO said in a letter to PKP.

POSCO said it had difficulty “convincing and reaching consent on the unfavourable opinion from the outside directors.”

The POSCO letter signalled that Chabahar’s success would depend on the political will of governments with India and Iran in the lead rather than on any hope to attract private sector investment.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the signing of the trilateral transit agreement between the three countries in May 2016. (Source: CC BY-SA 2.0)

India was earlier this month forced to drop a demand that the winner of a bid to manage the Chabahar port pay an upfront US$8.52 million premium.

“We were charging a premium from the successful bidder to meet our preliminary expenses. But the shortlisted bidders said that the project is of strategic importance and is not commercially viable,” said an Indian official.

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj insisted last month that her country would not bow to US pressure to adhere to the Trump administration’s sanctions.

“India follows only UN sanctions, and not unilateral sanctions by any country,” Ms. Swaraj said.

Beyond the port’s economic importance for Iran, it will also likely allow the Islamic republic to increase its influence in Afghanistan at a time that the United States and Saudi Arabia are stepping up economic cooperation with Kabul in a bid to isolate both Iran and the Taliban.

For its part, Afghanistan sees the port as a way to reduce its transport dependence on Pakistan with which it has strained relations.

Despite the US cloud hanging over it, Chabahar’s potential significance goes beyond whether it will contribute to the Iranian effort.

India hopes that its US$500 million investment in the port will offer it a gateway to Afghanistan and land-locked Central Asia that constitutes an alternative to infrastructure related to China’s Belt and Road initiative, including the $50 billion plus China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and an anti-dote to Chinese investment in Indian Ocean ports.

If geopolitics did not already amount to a full plate, Chabahar is likely, together with a host of ports in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Oman and Qatar, to challenge the longstanding dominance in the Indian Ocean of Dubai’s Jebel Ali port.

Commercial competition between ports has been reinforced by the Saudi-Iranian battle for regional hegemony as well as the Gulf spat between Qatar and a Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led alliance that a year ago imposed an economic and diplomatic boycott on the Gulf state and the war in Yemen.

As a result, commercial, military and geopolitical drivers for port investment in the region have blurred and expanded the multiples rivalries into the Horn of Africa with the UAE and others, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar jockeying for position in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen and Djibouti.

Said NATO Defence College analyst Eleonora Ardemagni:

“The political rift in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) weakens economic integration prospects and as a consequence cooperation among commercial ports. The Qatari crisis opened a new chapter in intra-GCC relations marking the emergence of latent nationalism in the Arab Gulf region: the rising geopolitics of ports is going to further unveil this trend.”

*

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

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

Featured image is by Alireza numberone/CC BY-SA 4.0.

Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.

We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.

If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.

From the United States to Europe, the “migrant crisis” is causing bitter interior and international controversy about the policies which need to be adopted concerning the migrant flow. However, these movements are being represented by a cliché which is the opposite of reality – that of the “rich countries” obliged to suffer the growing migratory pressure of the “poor countries”. This misrepresentation hides its basic cause – the world economic system which enables a restricted minority to accumulate wealth at the expense of the growing majority, by impoverishing them and thus provoking forced emigration.

As concerns the migrant flow towards the United States, the case of Mexico is emblematic. Its agricultural production collapsed when, with the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the USA and Canada flooded the Mexican market with low-cost agricultural products, thanks to their own public subsidies. Millions of agricultural workers found themselves without jobs, thereby increasing the work pool recruited by the “maquiladoras” – thousands of industrial establishments along the frontier, in Mexican territory, possessed or controlled, for the most part, by United States companies, where salaries are very low and trade union rights inexistent.

In a country where approximately half of the population lives in poverty, this situation has increased the mass of people who want to enter the United States. This is the origin of the Wall along the border with Mexico, which was begun by the Democrat President Clinton in 1994 when the NAFTA came into effect, pursued by the Republican Bush, reinforced by the Democrat Obama, the same wall that the Republican Trump now hopes to complete along all 3,000 kilometres of the border.

Concerning the migratory flow towards Europe, the case of Africa is emblematic. The continent is rich in raw materials – gold, platinum, diamonds, uranium, coltan (or tantalite), copper, oil, natural gas, precious woods, cocoa, coffee and many others.

These resources, once exploited by the old European colonialist system with slave-type methods, are today being exploited by European neo-colonialism in collaboration with the African elites in power, a low-cost local work force, and interior and international control of the market-place.

More than one hundred companies listed at the London Stock Exchange, British and others, exploit the mineral resources of 37 sub-Saharan African countries for a value of more than 1,000 billion dollars.

France controls the monetary system of 14 African ex-colonies via the CFA Franc (originally the acronym of the “Colonies Françaises d’Afrique”, now recycled as “Communauté Financière Africaine”). In order to conserve parity with the Euro, these 14 African countries are obliged to pay the French Treasury half of their monetary reserves.

The Libyan state, which sought to create an autonomous African currency, was demolished by the war of 2011. In the Ivory Coast (CFA region), French companies control the greater part of the commercialisation of cocoa, of which the country is the world’s top producer – the little producers are left with hardly 5% of the value of the end product, such that most of them live in poverty. These are only a few examples of the neo-colonial exploitation of the continent.

Africa, presented as being dependent on foreign aid, in fact pays foreign countries a net annual forfeit of about 58 billion dollars. The social consequences are devastating. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is greater than one billion souls, and is composed of 60% children and young people between the ages of 0 and 24 years old, about two thirds of the inhabitants live in poverty and amongst these, about 40% – which is to say 400 million – live in conditions of extreme poverty.

The “migrant crisis” is in reality the crisis of an unsustainable economic and social system.

*

This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

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

Injustice in America is deep-seated. It’s politicized – the poor, people of color, Muslims and others disadvantaged are denied constitutionally guaranteed due process and equal justice under law with disturbing regularity.

The world’s largest gulag prison system by far is testimony to a nation serving privileged interests over others, disdainful of the nation’s least advantaged, thousands incarcerated for political reasons.

America is the only nation sentencing children under age-18 to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole – an unconstitutional practice, banned under the 8th Amendment, prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishments,” yet over 2,100 juveniles are affected, never again to be free without a presidential pardon surely not coming.

At least nine states and the federal government imprisoned over 3,000 individuals to life without parole (LWOP), mostly for nonviolent drug offenses.

Over 80% of the sentences were mandatory, judges unable to offer leniency. The ACLU earlier said thousands in America got LWOP sentences for “possessing a bottle cap smeared with heroin residue,” shoplifting three belts, breaking into a parked car, or stealing a lunch bag – minor offenses and others like them, warranting no more than misdemeanor punishment.

US federal courts are stacked with right-wing extremists, including most Supreme Court Justices. Serving for life, they have enormous power for good or ill, too much of the latter, little of the former.

They’re supremely pro-business, ideologically conservative and reactionary. No one on today’s High Court approaches the stature of William Brennan, William Douglas, Thurgood Marshall or Louis Brandeis.

Five justices are Federalist Society (FS) members – Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

The organization supports rolling back civil liberties, imperial wars, free-wheeling laissez-faire capitalism and corporatism, along with ending New Deal/Great Society social programs.

It’s against reproductive choice, government regulations, labor rights, environmental protections, and justice for unwanted aliens.

Tuesday High Court ruling by five of its prominent members reflects FS sentiment, the Court upholding Trump’s travel ban, largely affecting majority Muslim nations.

Racist war in America on unwanted aliens way pre-dated Trump, a white supremacist Judeo-Christian state affording justice most often to wealth and powerful interests over others.

Muslims are discriminated against for their faith and ethnicity, Blacks and Latinos for their race and countries of origin.

Hostility toward unwanted aliens began with the 1790 Nationalization Act, foreign-born “free white persons (of) good moral character” alone wanted.

Unwanted at the time were free Blacks, Native Americans being exterminated to make way for white American development, and later Asians and Latinos for not being white enough.

The 1952 Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act (INA) did for the first time what no law before it allowed.

It made individuals of all races eligible for citizenship, strict quotas imposed to limit immigration from non-causasian countries.

The 1996 Immigrant Responsibility Act and Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act permit detention and deportation of unwanted aliens – without discretionary relief, restricting access to counsel, and banning appeals even for alleged minor offenses.

The laws deny unwanteds constitutionally guaranteed due process and equal justice under law.

Undemocratic Dems are as hostile to justice as Republicans. Tuesday’s High Court ruling, upholding Trump’s travel ban, shamefully endorsed injustice.

The history of Supreme Court rulings on race and other major issues is mixed, too often disturbing.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) established the principle of judicial supremacy, making the Court the final arbiter of what is or is not lawful.

The deplorable Dred Scott ruling (1857) denied Black slaves and their descendants constitutional protections, including the right to become citizens.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) affirmed segregation in public places.

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), granted corporations personhood under the 14th Amendment with all accruing rights and privileges but none of the obligations – what I consider the High Court’s most egregious ruling in its history.

Korematsu v. United States (1944) was another deplorable one, ordering the internment of Japanese Americans threatening no one during WW II.

In Bush v. Gore (2000), majority right-wing justices overruled the popular vote, halted the Florida recount on spurious grounds, installing GW Bush as president – the first time in history that the Court reversed the outcome of a presidential election.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the Court ruled against government limits on corporate spending in elections, claiming a First Amendment right of “political speech.” Its ruling was equivalent to one vote per dollar.

In a dissenting vote on an earlier Court ruling, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said “the Court has taken its task to be the constitutionalization of a totally immoral, rapacious, economic system instead of the promotion of justice, domestic tranquility, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty.”

For every Brennan, T. Marshall and Douglas, dozens of John Jays (the first chief justice), Roger Taneys, Rehnquists, Burgers, Scalias, and majority justices on today’s High Court supported privilege over justice for all.

Upholding Trump’s unconstitutional travel ban is the latest example.

*

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

Social Collapse

The U.S. cannot and will not protect its citizens against attacks by violent armed assailants, especially as politicians are being bought off by gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association.

The U.S. will not provide jobs or a living wage to a significant proportion of its population, especially youth and racial minorities.

The refusal of Congress to pass national single-payer health insurance is genocidal for the poor, the young, the elderly, and the underprivileged.

U.S. industry is poisoning the natural environment as the bee population is killed off by glyphosate and fungicides and the food supply is degraded with GMOs and GE foods.

Chronic disease is skyrocketing due to rising economic stress, unaffordable health care, and food supply degradation.

The pharmaceutical industry gets rich as it kills millions of people annually by facilitating misuse, overuse, and abuse of prescription medication.

The economy has become genocidal to the elderly by eliminating pensions for most and eroding the value of Social Security and other sources of fixed income.

Addiction to drugs and alcohol and an associated growth in crime is a major effect of the collapse of job and income security.

Life expectancy is less than that of many other developed countries and is falling.

Militarism and Foreign Policy

The U.S. military constantly wants more money to further its aims to conquer the globe while society at home disintegrates.

American weapons of mass destruction have the power to destroy all life on earth many times over, yet the military wants bigger and better weapons.

The military thrives on war and has no interest in promoting peace with other nations.

The military must always come up with new and more frightening enemies to justify its bloated budgets.

The “War on Terror” was an excuse for the U.S. military to engage in multiple wars of conquest.

The military is developing new secret weapons to wage war in space.

The elevated position of the military and its immunity from political control propagate the falsehood that force and violence are the legitimate way to solve problems.

Influence on Hollywood by the military exploits and glorifies violence and is a major propaganda tool.

Video games, supported by the military and corporate interests, teach young people that killing is fun.

The military cares nothing for the excessive national resources it consumes at the expense of socially beneficial uses.

The U.S. military is one of the world’s largest environmental polluters.

A major purpose of the military is to provide the muscle for stealing other nations’ resources.

The stealing of resources began with the assault by white Americans on Native Americans and the theft of their lands and continues today in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and around the world.

The U.S. military and police are conditioned to regard reformers and protesters as enemies of the state, not people exercising their rights.

War is being waged against Russia and other countries through economic sanctions and military threats without any constitutional declaration by Congress.

U.S. foreign and military policy is based on a gigantic lie—9/11.

Economics

The U.S. is an oligarchy where the economy, politics, and media are controlled by the rich.

Tax policies favor the rich over working people.

Working people are no longer readily allowed to organize through labor unions for fair wages and working conditions.

The minimum wage is too low for people to live on.

Wall Street creates and destroys businesses for the sake of financial profits regardless of the impact on individuals, families, and society.

The U.S. economy is not driven by honest business enterprise such as manufacturing but is kept afloat artificially by bank and government-created bubbles, including the debt-driven bubble of military spending.

The elimination of the gold standard in favor of bank-controlled fiat currency debased the national currency and has led to a half-century of inflation.

Panic has set in as other nations steer away from the use of inflated U.S. dollars in the petroleum markets and as a reserve currency.

Student, housing, and consumer debt are creating a society of debt-slaves.

People are being sent to jail for non-payment of debt. Some with out-of-control debt commit suicide.

The federal government’s national debt is a growing burden to society that can never be paid off. George W. Bush with his wars doubled the national debt in eight years. It doubled again during the Obama eight-year war period.

The lack of decent jobs drives huge numbers of people into cybercrime, drug dealing, prostitution, and other criminal pastimes simply as a mode of survival.

The court system unfairly targets the poor.

The Deep State and Government

Agencies of the Deep State, starting with the CIA, are instruments used by the oligarchy to control the government and society and ultimately take over the rest of the world.

Lying and concealment are a way of life for all levels of government, especially the Deep State.

The government has never come clean about crimes of the past committed by the Deep State, including 9/11 and the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK.

The Deep State continues to engage in targeted assassinations against U.S. citizens and people of other nations.

The CIA and other agencies of the Deep State work in secrecy to undermine other nations abroad and eliminate honest dissent at home.

The Deep State seeks to maintain total electronic surveillance of all individuals.

The Deep State tries to overthrow any government abroad that undertakes to reform itself in the direction of greater fairness to its own population.

Secretive government vastly increased its powers by setting up the Department of Homeland Security and passing the Patriot Act after the false flag of 9/11.

One of the CIA’s major abuses is its self-admitted role in the international drug trade.

The Deep State, the media, and the military foment hatred of countries like Russia and China in order to conceal their own abuses and consolidate their power.

The Deep State controls government at all levels—federal, state, and local.

The government seeks to foster Nazi-like practices in raising a cult to worship the flag, and by promoting wars abroad and oppressive police practices at home.

The government has militarized local police forces in order to oppress the poor and racial minorities.

All levels of government, including the police, are corrupted by political contributions, payoffs, bribes, and special privileges.

The Media

The media destroy freedom of thought by using its powers, including those of advertising, to regiment, control, and censor public opinion.

Government uses the media to deliver its own constant propaganda messages.

The media spew forth hatred and lies through such outlets as Fox News.

The media are controlled by a handful of oligarchic interests that suppress honest news reporting while attacking independent journalism at every turn.

The corporate-orchestrated attack on net neutrality seeks to eliminate independent opinion on the internet as was done in the past on cable TV.

Major media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and the national TV broadcast networks are controlled by the oligarchy and Deep State which use them as propaganda organs for their pro-war, corporate agendas.

The media-driven lie of the U.S. as “the exceptional nation” is a particularly pernicious piece of propaganda that has been used to justify abuses inflicted on other countries.

Political Parties

The Republican Party, which at present controls the federal government along with a majority of state and local governments, has become a racist/genocidal cult funded by oligarchs.

The Republican Party and its base blame the victims of economic collapse for their inability to find jobs and earn a decent living.

The Republican Party could not exist as it does at present without the support of fundamentalist Christian churches that support war and racism.

The Democratic Party lost touch with its historic populist mission by being taken over by the pro-corporate Clinton wing in the 1990s.

The Democratic Party has been manipulating people by frantically pushing the myth that the Russians got Donald Trump elected president in 2016.

The Democratic Party, including its so-called progressive wing, is as pro-war and controlled by the Deep State as the Republican.

The U.S. electoral system prevents any effective third-party reform movement from arising.

No politician has a chance who wants fundamental reform such as reducing military spending, terminating the policy of endless wars, changing the monetary system, or basic economic fairness for all levels of society.

Social Life

The oligarchy, the media, the government, the political parties, and the Deep State all foster hatred and division among segments of society in order to preserve their rule.

Racism against people of color and other nationalities remains deeply lodged in the national psyche and is used by the oligarchy as a means of control.

The higher educational establishment is controlled by the corporate/military state and offers little or no resistance.

The nation’s churches have been co-opted or cowed into silence and likewise offer no meaningful alternatives.

The drift to create a totalitarian American police state is well-advanced.

Conclusion

Can the U.S. survive as a nation for another generation? It seems doubtful without a major reform movement dedicated to correcting ALL the above-mentioned abuses. But before the U.S. destroys the planet it may simply collapse from its internal failures or through its policies of endless war and the guilt this has produced.

Yet none of this report is to denigrate the millions of people in the U.S. and worldwide who are awake to the present peril and are praying and working for a better future.

At present a major war between the American empire and the Eurasian nations seems a real possibility, though it would be much better if the U.S., Russia, and China came together in a positive alliance.

Miracles do happen if, paradoxically, people work for them.

*

Paul Yesse is the pen-name of a former U.S. government analyst.

Global Research has been able to develop its activities thanks to the contribution of its readers. For those who are willing and able, we ask you to support our projects and battle to get critical, unreported stories and information out as a means to challenge the tide of misinformation being used as a smokescreen for imperialism and war. Global Research does not seek financial support from private and public foundations. This is why we value every single donation and contribution made by our readers.

Please support Global Research, please support getting the truth out.

Dos Estados Unidos à Europa, a “crise dos migrantes” suscita polémicas acesas, internas e internacionais, sobre a política a adoptar a respeito das correntes migratórias. No entanto, essas polémicas são representadas de acordo com um estereótipo que altera a realidade: o dos “países ricos” forçados a sofrer a crescente pressão migratória dos “países pobres”.

Esconde-se a causa de fundo: o sistema económico que, no mundo, permite que uma pequena minoria acumule riqueza à custa da crescente maioria, empobrecendo-a e provocando, assim, a emigração forçada.

A respeito dos fluxos migratórios para os Estados Unidos, o caso do México é exemplificador. A sua produção agrícola desabou quando, com o NAFTA (o acordo norte-americano  de comercio “livre”), os EUA e o Canadá inundaram o mercado mexicano com produtos agrícolas baratos graças aos seus subsídios estatais. Milhões de agricultores ficaram sem trabalho, avolumando a força de trabalho recrutada nas ‘maquiladoras’  : milhares de plantações industriais ao longo da fronteira no território mexicano, pertencentes ou controladas principalmente por empresas dos EUA, onde os salários são muito baixos e os direitos sindicais inexistentes. Num país onde cerca de metade da população vive na pobreza, a massa daqueles que procuram entrar nos Estados Unidos aumentou. Daí o Muro ao longo da fronteira com o México, iniciado pelo presidente democrata Clinton quando o NAFTA entrouem vigor em 1994, continuado pelo republicano Bush, fortalecido pelo democrata Obama, o mesmo muro que o republicano Trump completaria agora em todos os 3000 km de fronteira.

No que concerne os fluxos migratórios para a Europa, o caso da África é típico. Ela é rica em matérias-primas: ouro, platina, diamantes, urânio, coltan, cobre, petróleo, gás natural, madeira preciosa, cacau, café e muitas outras. Estes recursos, explorados pelo antigo colonialismo europeu com métodos de escravidão, são agora explorados pelo neocolonialismo europeu, fomentando elites africanas no poder,  mão-de-obra local de baixo custo e  controlo dos mercados internos e internacionais. Mais de cem empresas citadas na Bolsa de Valores de Londres, tanto no Reino Unido como noutros lugares, exploram em 37 países da África Subsaariana, recursos minerais num valor superior a 1 bilião de dólares.

A França controla o sistema monetário de 14 antigas colónias africanas através do Franco CFA (originalmente um acrónimo de “Colónias Francesas de África”, reciclado como “Comunidade Financeira Africana”): para manter a paridade com o euro, os 14 países africanos têm de pagar ao Tesouro Francês, metade das suas reservas cambiais. O Estado líbio, que queria criar uma moeda africana autónoma, foi demolido pela guerra, em 2011. Na Costa do Marfim (região CFA), as empresas francesas controlam a maior parte do marketing de cacau, do qual o país é o maior produtor mundial: os pequenos agricultores têm apenas 5% do valor do produto final, tanto que a maioria deles vive na pobreza. Estes são apenas alguns exemplos da exploração neocolonial do continente.

A África, apresentada como dependente de ajuda externa, fornece um pagamento líquido anual de cerca de 58 biliões de dólares ao exterior. As consequências sociais são devastadoras. Na África Subsaariana, cuja população ultrapassa um bilião de habitantes e 60% da mesma é composta  por crianças e jovens de 0 aos 24 anos, cerca de dois terços da população, vive na pobreza e, entre estes, cerca de 40% – isto é 400 milhões – vivem em condições de extrema pobreza.

A “crise dos migrantes” é, na realidade, a crise de um sistema económico e social insustentável.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 26 de Junho de 2018

Trump is militantly hostile to Muslims and nations targeted for regime change.

His policies speak for themselves, waging war on multiple Muslim-majority countries, banning entry to America from designated countries.

His policy has nothing to do with protecting national security, nothing about screening out “radical Islamic terrorists” Washington created and supports – everything to do with hyping fear, justifying endless wars, keeping unwanted Muslims out of America, along with Venezuelan officials and North Koreans.

His proposed great wall along America’s southern border targets unwanted Latinos the same way.

Christians and Jews are welcome, especially from favored nations. Treating them one way and Muslims another is flagrantly racist.

Refugees, asylum seekers, and others from the wrong countries are unwelcome in Trump’s America. Islamophobia is official regime policy. So is hate-mongering to justify unjustifiable policies.

The nation’s Supreme Court is stacked with right-wing extremists. On Tuesday, they upheld Trump’s travel ban, affecting five predominately Muslim countries, along with North Korea and targeted Venezuelans by a narrow 5 – 4 majority – wrongfully claiming

“the Government has set forth a sufficient national security justification to survive rational basis review.”

No such justification exists. Trump’s Muslim ban is an extension of his war on Islam, far exceeding his predecessors in terror-bombing ruthlessness.

His regime is responsible for dropping powerfully destructive bombs in targeted countries every 12 minutes since taking office, a breathtaking pace of mass slaughter and destruction – 44,000 bombs during his first year in office, civilians overwhelmingly harmed most.

Responding to Tuesday’s High Court ruling, the ACLU’s immigration rights project director Omar Jadwat minced no words saying:

“This ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures. It repeats the mistakes of the Korematsu decision, upholding Japanese-American imprisonment and swallows wholesale government lawyers’ flimsy national security excuse for the ban instead of taking seriously the president’s own explanation for his action.”

“It is ultimately the people of this country who will determine its character and future. The court failed today, and so the public is needed more than ever.”

“We must make it crystal clear to our elected representatives: If you are not taking actions to rescind and dismantle Trump’s Muslim ban, you are not upholding this country’s most basic principles of freedom and equality.”

The ACLU, National Immigration Law Center, International Refugee Assistance Project, along with other organizations and individuals others sued the Trump regime in federal court – on grounds of the First Amendment’s prohibition against “law(s) respecting an establishment of religion” and Fifth Amendment “due process of law” rights.

Last October, a federal district court in Maryland blocked Trump’s ban. So did a federal court in Hawaii a day earlier.

In February, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against his travel ban, calling it “unconstitutionally tainted with animus toward Islam,” adding:

“On a fundamental level,” the ban “second-guesses our nation’s dedication to religious freedom and tolerance.”

Last December, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Trump’s ban, saying it exceeded his authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Supreme Court earlier let the ban stand while challenges worked their way through lower courts before issuing its own ruling on Tuesday.

It’s up to a future Congress to try overturning Trump’s ban with legislation passed in both houses by a two-thirds veto-proof majority – or after he leaves office by a simple majority if his successor opposes his action.

*

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

US and European media outlets reported anti-Chinese protests across Vietnam. Claims regarding numbers varied greatly from several hundred to others claiming several thousand. The Western media was particularly careful not to mention the names of any of the individuals or organisations leading the protests.

The South China Morning Post in its article titled, “Anti-China protests: dozens arrested as Vietnam patriotism spirals into unrest,” would claim:

People were angry at a draft law that would allow 99-year concessions in planned special economic zones, which some view as sweetheart deals for foreign and specifically Chinese firms.

Though the Post and others across the Western mainstream media claimed the protests were “peaceful,” they eventually spiralled out of control resulting in assaults on police and vandalism of public buildings.

The systematic omission of essential facts and intentional misrepresentation regarding the protests follows the same pattern observed regarding other US-European sponsored unrest around the globe.

Anti-Chinese Fervour is Pro-American, Not “Nationalist” 

The Post itself would claim the protests took on a “nationalist” tone, yet in the Post’s own article and without an explanation from the Post as to why, American flags could be clearly spotted among the mobs.

The few names that were mentioned by the US-European media included well-known so-called “pro-democracy” activists drawn from networks openly supported by Washington, London and Brussels.

This included Duong Dai Trieu Lam, mentioned by the Financial Times in its article, “Anti-Chinese protesters take to Vietnam’s streets.” He’s a member of the so-called Vietnamese Bloggers Network which routinely coordinates its anti-government activities with the support of Western embassies.

The network was founded by now-jailed opposition figure Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, also known as “Mother Mushroom.” A Newsweek article titled, “Who is Vietnam’s Mother Mushroom? Blogger Honored by Melania Trump Jailed for Ten Years,” would admit:

Quynh, a single mother of two, had given interviews to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, her lawyer Vo An Don said. She founded a network of bloggers in her homeland and has written about deaths in police custody, environmental disasters and human rights. 

She received the Woman of Courage award at the U.S. State Department in March this year, presented by Melania Trump. Vietnam said the award “was not appropriate and of no benefit to the development of the relations between the two countries”, the Guardian reported.

Other US-European sponsored opposition figures include Nguyen Van Dai who heads the so-called “Brotherhood for Democracy,” another transparently US-funded and directed front aimed at pressuring, destabilising, co-opting and/or overthrowing Vietnam’s political order.

Nguyen Van Dai was recently released from prison and exiled from Vietnam.

His exile was not the first. There was also blogger Nguyen Hoang Hai, also known as Dieu Cay, who when exiled to the United States, was greeted by supporters waving the yellow and red-striped flag of the now defunct Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the proxy state created by French colonialists and American invaders during the Vietnam War.

His return was covered by US State Department-funded and directed Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese-language version.

Other pro-US/anti-Chinese opposition figures include Le Quoc Quan, who was in fact a US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) fellow. US Congress members and the NED itself wrote passionate pleas for Le Quoc Quan’s release from prison. The NED, in a post on their website titled, “NED Reagan-Fascell Fellow Le Quoc Quan Arrested after Return to Vietnam,” would claim (our emphasis):

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is greatly troubled by the arrest in Vietnam of Le Quoc Quan. Le Quoc Quan, a lawyer, has recently been in residence at NED on a congressionally-funded Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship, pursuing independent research on the role of civil society in emerging democracies. He was arrested on March 8 in his hometown in Nghe An province, only 4 days after his return from Washington to Vietnam. At this time, Le Quoc Quan’s whereabouts are unknown, and there are no public charges against him. 

“It is a deep insult to the United States that the Vietnamese regime would harass someone in this way who has just participated in a citizen exchange program supported by the US Congress and Department of State,” said NED President Carl Gershman. “Le Quoc Quan is someone who is optimistic about the future of his country, who is most concerned about improving the lives of his fellow citizens, and who is nothing if not a Vietnamese patriot.”

Frontline Defenders, a front funded by Western governments and corporate foundations like George Soros’ Open Society, would mention Le Quoc Quan’s anti-Chinese activities, stating that:

As well as providing legal representation to those who are persecuted for claiming their rights, Le Quoc Quan runs a blog. In this blog he writes about various issues including civil rights, political pluralism and religious freedom. He has also participated in a number of protests against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

It is clear that Vietnam’s so-called opposition is in no way “nationalist,” and merely opposes Chinese interests in Vietnam because Washington opposes them. By taking US and European funding and carrying out Western directives, they are actively undermining Vietnam’s sovereignty, not upholding it.

It is also clear why the US and European media omit mention of opposition leaders even when covering significant events like the recent anti-China street protests. Had the truth been told to international audiences, the opposition’s hypocrisy would be exposed and their legitimacy undermined.

American Meddling Endangers Vietnam and the Region 

At a time when the US and its European allies make accusations about supposed “Russian interference,” US and European-backed mobs take to the streets in nations like Vietnam, attempting to influence national policy and decision-making, while literally flying US flags.

For Hanoi, it must continue its balancing act between Beijing and Washington. But the sort of opposition Washington is cultivating in the streets of Vietnam appears to not only be overtly coercive, but clearly connected to unfinished business dating back to the US invasion and occupation of Vietnam. Hanoi and Beijing have faced off militarily as well, but the threat the US posed and still poses is not a matter of disputed borders between two nations, but Washington’s enduring desire to control all within Vietnam’s borders.

Vietnam is not the only nation facing growing US coercion in the form of US-funded and directed opposition movements. Cambodia and Thailand likewise face opposition parties entirely backed by the US and its European allies. US-backed opposition also just assumed power in Malaysia and a US-funded and directed opposition party has already seized power and ruled in Myanmar since 2016.

US efforts to undermine and overwrite national sovereignty across Southeast Asia includes regional synergies between opposition fronts in each respective nation. It would likely benefit targeted nations to likewise coordinate their activities in countering, diminishing or entirely uprooting foreign-funded and directed networks interfering in the region’s internal political affairs.

*

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. 

All images in this article are from NEO.

The reported details of the forthcoming peace deal that’s expected to be signed shortly prove that the very concept of an independent South Sudan has failed.

South Sudan defied all expectations and surprised the world by agreeing to a peace deal for its five-year-long civil war during international talks in the neighboring Sudanese capital of Khartoum from whence the world’s newest country originally seceded in 2011. The personal intervention of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri  Museveni – both of whom exert the most influence over their mutual neighbor – is considered to have been indispensable in getting South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and former Vice-President-turned-rebel Riek Machar to come together for a third time in trying to end their homeland’s seemingly intractable conflict.

Conflict Summary

The South Sudanese Civil War began as a political competition between these two strong personalities that quickly took on deadly ethnic dimensions as the country’s two largest ethnic groups began killing one another in a nationwide bloodletting that’s since claimed at least 50,000 lives and displaced 4 million, half of whom have fled abroad as refugees and overwhelmed the capacities of host states such as Uganda and Ethiopia. The second-mentioned state, despite being much larger and having a much longer history hosting refugees, has been especially destabilized by these “Weapons of Mass Migration” because of the fact that its sparsely populated border region of Gambella now has almost as many refugees as citizens.

This has exacerbated the preexisting conflict between highland Anuak and lowland Nuer, the latter of whom mostly live in South Sudan and form the core of Machar’s rebel forces, as Nuer refugees clashed with their ethnic kin’s rivals upon arrival in this Ethiopian region. The situation has since been contained by the authorities but the threat nevertheless remains, which is one of the reasons that aspiring hegemon Ethiopia continually took the lead in encouraging peace talks between South Sudan’s two warring factions. As it turned out, the many previous efforts at peace weren’t in vain since they laid the basis for the so-called “Framework Agreement” that the international press reported was agreed to by Kiir and Machar.

A Framework For Peace?

It still needs to be signed, and Machar said that he needs up to 48 hours to notify everyone on his side about its terms, but the deal is being portrayed by the world as the first real chance for peace since the conflict started half a decade ago. The “African News” online information outlet shared a tweeted picture of the Framework Agreement that enumerates its main points, which are as follows:

“* The areas agreed upon include a permanent ceasefire, grounding of all forces and the deployment of forces by regional body IGAD and the African Union to safeguard the ceasefire;

 * President Kiir and Dr Machar further agreed to have three capital cities; namely Juba, Wau and Malakal on temporary basis to host the three proposed vice-presidents;

 * According to the signed Framework Agreement, seen by the media, the two rivals agreed to allow the Khartoum government to secure the oil fields in South Sudan in coordination with the Juba administration, and to rehabilitate the wells to restore the previous levels of production;

 * They also declared to work together again for the third time after their long disagreement proved difficult for peace and stability.”

Judging from the above and presuming the veracity of the reported document, the Framework Agreement and attendant peace deal that it forms the basis of contradict the concept of an independent South Sudan and prove that this years-long American-“Israeli” geopolitical initiative has resolutely failed.

Africa’s Longest Civil War

As a brief backgrounder, South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 after two back-to-back civil wars from 1955-1972 and 1983-2005 that many observers consider a single long-running conflict. Post-independence Sudan was the geographically largest state in Africa but was internally split from the get-go between northern Arab Muslims and southern English-speaking black Christians and Animists, generating tensions between the two identity-separate groups that were easily exploited by the country’s Ugandan & Ethiopian neighbors for regional geopolitical reasons but also the US & “Israel” due to Khartoum’s Cold War loyalties. It’s not to suggest that Arab Muslims and black Christians can’t peacefully coexist in the same country, but just that the colonial-era legacy of distrust between them made this very difficult.

This was naturally taken advantage of in sustaining the decades-long conflict that bled Sudan dry and contributed to its so-called “international isolation” at various periods of time, thus leading to South Sudan’s independence in 2011. That very idea, however, has since proven to have been a failure because of the inability of the world’s newest country to remain functional in spite of the enormous economic promise that it has by virtue of its copious oil resources. Khartoum warned about this many times in the past and has been vindicated in hindsight after the tragedy that has befallen the South Sudanese people following their independence. In fact, it’s becoming less and less accurate to even refer to this political entity as “independent” considering the terms of the Framework Agreement.

De-Sovereignizing South Sudan

To begin with, the first point of the Framework Agreement calls for the deployment of peacekeepers from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union to safeguard the permanent ceasefire, with this task likely being carried out mostly by Sudan and Uganda, which have the greatest influence in South Sudan and stake in its success, though it can also be expected that Ethiopia will likely play a notable role as well. The follow-up proposal for three separate national capitals will crystalize the country’s “Identity Federalism” by legalizing its “Balkanization”, which is exceptionally dangerous in the long-term given South Sudan’s pivotal location at the transregional space between North, East, and Central Africa that structurally reminds one of Afghanistan’s at the crossroads of Central, South, and West Asia.

It’s the third point, however, that does the most to de-sovereignize South Sudan and prove that its existence as an independent state has failed. Despite fighting for decades to secede from Sudan, South Sudan is now inviting its adversary’s military forces into the country to secure and rehabilitate its oil fields in a stunning strategic reversal that turns the most economically productive regions of the South into the “North’s” de-facto “protectorate”, exactly as Khartoum wanted. Some of the territory that its troops will be deployed to was previously disputed since the 2011 secession but will now come fully under the “North’s” influence in exchange for resurrecting the South’s energy industry and consequently assisting one of the world’s poorest countries with much-needed revenue generation.

Oil Makes The World Go Round

There’s little doubt that it was this dimension of the deal that incentivized Kiir and Machar to resolve their personal feud with one another and finally end the civil war. South Sudan’s conflict decimated its oil industry and was a lose-lose for both politicians and the country as a whole, with its people desperately in need of urgent relief from the fighting in order to begin the long overdue task of (re-)building their fledgling state. The only possible “compromise” that both leaders could apparently reach was to divide South Sudan into three sub-states with their own regional capitals, invite foreign forces to enforce this “Balkanization”, and sell out their sovereignty to Sudan so that the oil can start flowing again and “greasing everyone’s palms”.

There are also larger factors at play which may have led to the “international community” (i.e. the US-led West) putting enormous backroom pressure on Kiir and Machar to agree to this deal. The US expects that the forthcoming imposition of its “zero tolerance” stance towards Iranian oil imports (at pane of “secondary sanctions”) will give newfound energy allies Russia and Saudi Arabia larger market share in this industry and the possibility of “cornering it” through a de-facto “duopoly”, hence the need to get other sources of supply online as soon as possible. Although the “North” Sudanese transit state has become increasingly close to Russia and China, the South Sudanese producer is still an American-“Israeli” proxy which therefore enables the latter two to “balance” out the first-mentioned pair’s influence over this oil arrangement.

Concluding Thoughts

South Sudan can no longer be considered a functionally “independent” state following the reported terms of the Framework Agreement that both of its warring parties accepted in advance of the forthcoming peace deal for ending the country’s half-decade-long civil war. The desperate humanitarian situation in this landlocked state, coupled with the loss of revenue that both sides of the conflict experienced throughout the course of this fratricide, came together to force its most influential politicians to cede their sovereignty to the “North” Sudanese state that they had fought for almost half a century to separate from in exchange for much-needed oil money that could then be used to (re-)develop this “Balkanized” country at the strategic tri-regional crossroads of North, East, and Central Africa.

Khartoum’s commitment to this “win-win” agreement will see it establishing military control over the most oil-rich and partially disputed portions of its southern neighbor and former autonomous region, thereby doing away with the very concept of an “independent” South Sudan and turning it into a de-facto “protectorate” that it will basically rule as a condominium together with Uganda and Ethiopia through their own respective “spheres of influence”. So long as each of the stakeholders ensures that the ceasefire remains “permanent”, then the struggle will shift from ending the civil war to containing the “Balkanization” process that it unleashed by design, relying on concerted measures and close regional-local coordination to mitigate this geostrategic threat. Even so, South Sudan has proven itself to be full of surprises, and the worst might still be yet to come.

*

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.

Someone finally asked Obama administration officials to own up to the rise of ISIS and arming jihadists in Syria. 

In a wide ranging interview titled “Confronting the Consequences of Obama’s Foreign Policy” The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan put the question to Ben Rhodes, who served as longtime deputy national security adviser at the White House under Obama and is now promoting his newly published book, The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House.

Rhodes has been described as being so trusted and close to Obama that he was “in the room” for almost every foreign policy decision of significance that Obama made during his eight years in office. While the Intercept interview is worth listening to in full, it’s the segment on Syria that caught our attention.

In spite of Rhodes trying to dance around the issue, he sheepishly answers in the affirmative when Mehdi Hasan asks the following question about supporting jihadists in Syria:

Did you intervene too much in Syria? Because the CIA spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding and arming anti-Assad rebels, a lot of those arms, as you know, ended up in the hands of jihadist groups, some even in the hands of ISIS.

Your critics would say you exacerbated that proxy war in Syria; you prolonged the conflict in Syria; you ended up bolstering jihadists.

Rhodes initially rambles about his book and “second guessing” Syria policy in avoidance of the question. But Hasan pulls him back with the following: “Oh, come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms.” 

The two spar over Hasan’s charge of “bolstering jihadists” in the following key section of the interview, at the end of which Rhodes reluctantly answers “yeah…” — but while trying to pass ultimate blame onto US allies Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia (similar to what Vice President Biden did in a 2014 speech):

MH: Oh, come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms. You know, the U.S. was heavily involved in that war with the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks.

BR: Well, I was going to say: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi.

MH: You were in there as well.

BR: Yeah, but, the fact of the matter is that once it kind of devolved into kind of a sectarian-based civil war with different sides fighting for their perceived survival, I think we, the ability to bring that type of situation to close, and part of what I wrestled with in the book is the limits of our ability to pull a lever and make killing like that stop once it’s underway.

To our knowledge this is the only time a major media organization has directly asked a high ranking foreign policy adviser from the Obama administration to own up to the years long White House support to jihadists in Syria.

Though the interview was published Friday, its significance went without notice or comment in the mainstream media over the weekend (perhaps predictably). Instead, what did circulate was a Newsweek article mocking “conspiracy theories” surrounding the rapid rise of ISIS, including the following:

President Donald Trump has done little to dispel the myth of direct American support for ISIS since he took office. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump claimed—without providing any evidence—that President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton co-founded the group and that ISIS “honors” the former president.

Of course, the truth is a bit more nuanced than that, as Trump himself elsewhere seemed to acknowledge, and which ultimately led to the president reportedly shutting down the CIA’s covert Syrian regime change program in the summer of 2017 while complaining to aides about the shocking brutality of the CIA-trained “rebels”.

Meanwhile, mainstream media has been content to float the falsehood that President Obama’s legacy is that he “stayed out” of Syria, instead merely approving some negligible level of aid to so-called “moderate” rebels who were fighting both Assad and (supposedly) the Islamic State. Rhodes has himself in prior interviews attempted to portray Obama as wisely staying “on the sidelines” in Syria.

But as we’ve pointed out many times over the years, this narrative ignores and seeks to whitewash possibly the largest CIA covert program in history, started by Obama, which armed and funded a jihadist insurgency bent of overthrowing Assad to the tune of $1 billion a year (one-fifteenth of the CIA’s publicly known budget according to leaked Edward Snowden documents revealed by the Washington Post).

It also ignores the well established fact, documented in both US intelligence reports and authenticated battlefield footage, that ISIS and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) jointly fought under a single US-backed command structure during the early years of the war in Syria, even as late as throughout 2013 — something confirmed by University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis, widely considered to be the world’s foremost expert on Syria.

Important “Islamic State Leader Omar al-Shishani Fought Under U.S. Umbrella as Late as 2013” by @BradRHoff https://t.co/JQg5TwcLDp

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) March 10, 2016

Syria experts, as well as a New York Times report which largely passed without notice, verified the below footage from 2013 showing then US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford working closely with a “rebel” leader who exercised operational command over known ISIS terrorists (Ambassador Ford has since acknowledged the relationship to McClatchy News): 

This latest Ben Rhodes non-denial-cum-sheepish-affirmation on the Obama White House’s arming jihadists in Syria follows previous bombshell reporting by Mehdi Hasan from 2015.

As host of Al Jazeera’s Head to Head, Hasan asked the former head of Pentagon intelligence under Obama, General Michael Flynn, who is to blame for the rise of ISIS? (the August 2015 interview was significantly prior to Flynn joining Trump’s campaign).

Hasan presented Flynn with the 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) declassified memo revealing Washington support to al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists in Syria in order to counter both Assad and Iran. Flynn affirmed Hasan’s charge that it was “a willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood…”. 

Soon after, The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald appeared on Democracy Now to discuss the shocking contents of the Flynn interview:

It will be interesting to see years from now which “narrative” concerning Obama’s legacy in the Syrian conflict future historians choose to emphasize.

…Obama the president who “stayed out” and “on the sidelines” in Syria? …Or Obama the president whose decisions fueled the rise of the most brutal terrorist organization the world has ever seen?

* * *

Below is the relevant excerpt covering Syria from the 26-minute Intercept interview with Obama deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes [bold emphasis ours].

The audio is available here — Mehdi Hasan begins questioning Rhodes about Syria and ISIS at the 19-minute mark.

Mehdi Hasan: My guest today was at President Obama’s side every step of the way over the course of those two terms in office. Ben Rhodes joined the Obama election campaign in 2007 as a foreign-policy speechwriter, when he was just 29, and rose to become a deputy national-security adviser at the White House, who was so intellectually and ideologically close to his boss that he was often described as having a mind-meld with Obama.

Ben, who currently works at the Obama Foundation, has written a new book, “The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House.” And earlier this week I interviewed him about Obama’s rather contentious foreign policy record…

…

MH: But Ben, here’s what I don’t get, if you’re saying this about Afghanistan and prolonged conflict, all of which I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. How do you, then, explain Syria? Because you’ve been criticized a lot. I’ve been listening to your interviews on the book tour; you talk about in the book about how you were criticized for not doing enough on Syria. I remember being an event in D.C. a couple years ago where Syrian opposition members were berating you for not doing enough at an event, and you often were the public face who came out and defended Obama. I want to come to the other direction and say: Did you intervene too much in Syria? Because the CIA spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding and arming anti-Assad rebels, a lot of those arms, as you know, ended up in the hands of jihadist groups, some even in the hands of ISIS. Your critics would say you exacerbated that proxy war in Syria; you prolonged the conflict in Syria; you ended up bolstering jihadists.

Ben Rhodes: Well, what I try to do in the book is, you know, essentially raise — all the second guessing on Syria tends to be not what you expressed, Mehdi, but the notion that we should’ve taken military action.

MH: Yes.

BR: What I do in the book is I try to look back at 2011 and 2012, was there a diplomatic window that we missed or that we, in some ways, escalated its closure by pivoting to the call for Assad to go — which obviously I believe should happen, I believe Assad has been a terrible leader for Syria and has brutalized his people — but, you know, was there a diplomatic initiative that could have been taken to try to avert or at least minimize the extent of the civil war. Because, you know, what ended up happening essentially there is, you know, we were probably too optimistic that, you know, after Mubarak went and Ben Ali and eventually Saleh and Gaddafi, that you would have a situation where Assad would go. And, you know, not factoring in enough the assistance he was going to get from Russia and Iran, combined with his own nihilism, and how that could lead him to survive. So I do look back at that potentially missed diplomatic opportunity.

On the support of the opposition, you know, I don’t know that I would give us that much agency. There are a lot of people putting arms into Syria, funding all sorts of —

MH: Oh, come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms. You know, the U.S. was heavily involved in that war with the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks.

BR: Well, I was going to say: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi.

MH: You were in there as well.

BR: Yeah, but, the fact of the matter is that once it kind of devolved into kind of a sectarian-based civil war with different sides fighting for their perceived survival, I think we, the ability to bring that type of situation to close, and part of what I wrestled with in the book is the limits of our ability to pull a lever and make killing like that stop once it’s underway.

So that’s why I still look to that initial opening window. I also describe, there was a slight absurdity in the fact that we were debating options to provide military support to the opposition at the same time that we were deciding to designate al-Nusra, a big chunk of that opposition, as a terrorist organization. So there was kind of a schizophrenia that’s inherent in a lot of U.S. foreign policy that came to a head in Syria.

MH: That’s a very good word, especially to describe Syria policy…

Note: Image captions are above the images.

1. The 2014 Mount Polley Environmental Disaster (British Columbia, Canada)

Aerial view of the outlet of tiny Hazeltine Creek (normally 6 feet wide) as it empties into Quesnel Lake (a once world-famous salmon fishery) at the head of the 600 mile-long Fraser River estuayr that is now contaminated with 2.5 billion gallons of toxic sulfide mine waste (including sulfuric acid) that was discharged in 2014. The brown color represents the trunks of the huge trees that were up-rooted during the deluge. The diameter of some of the trees measured half the width of the original creek.

The massive earthen dam at Mount Polley – post disaster – Imperial Metals is getting ready to re-start the mining. Alamy stock photo.

Before and after NASA satellite photos of Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley copper/gold sulfide mine disaster. Note the change in color of the three lakes in the photo, representing the toxic pollutants that had been stored in the tailings lagoon. Note the invisibility of Hazeltine Creek in the left photo and appreciate the fact that is is now visible from outer space. For a more thorough view of British Columbia’s worst environmental disaster, google “Images of the Mount Polley mine disaster”.

2. The Samarco Mine Disaster (Brazil)

Above are before and after photos of the Samarco iron mine disaster in Brazil (November 5, 2015). The project was a joint venture by Vale, a Brazilian mining company and BHP-Billiton (an English-Australian company). The top two images (looking downstream from the tailings pond area) are before and after shots of the little town that was wiped off the map because it was situated downstream from the two tailings pond dams that dissolved in sequential fashion and discharged their toxic contents into the Rio Doce river estuary (ironically “doce” is the Portuguese word for “sweet”). The two lower images are the before and after photos of the tailings ponds and the massive erosion that killed many humans and animals and most of the fish in the river all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean, 300 miles below.

A small downstream mining town destroyed in the disaster. All the miners lost their jobs.

The mouth of the Rio Doce at the site where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean

For many more images of the catastrophe, watch the slide show here.

3. The Bingham Canyon Mine (Utah)

The Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah is one of the largest open-pit mines in the world. It measures over 4 kilometers wide and 1,200 meters deep and is located about 30 kilometers southwest of Salt Lake City. It was operated by Kennecott Copper Company until Rio Tinto purchased Kennecott Utah Copper in 1989. NASA Satellite photo.

Open pit copper mine district near “Green” Valley, Arizona. Asarco and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold are the extracting companies. Note the absence of trees or any other green vegetation in the following series of NASA satellite photos.

4. The Berkeley open pit mine SuperFund site (Butte, Montana)

The Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) had purchased the old Anaconda Copper Mining Company in 1977 and closed the Berkeley open pit mine in 1983, laying off 1,300 workers. The Berkeley Pit was located immediately adjacent to Butte, Montana. After the mine was shut down and the water pumps stopped, the mine began filling up with toxic water that today has a pH that is less than 2.5! The highly acidic water will be forever incompatible with normal life, specifically fish and fowl. The acid mine drainage has poisoned the ground water and aquifer and thus has made the water of Butte undrinkable. The Berkeley Pit, now an EPA SuperFund site, once yielded copper, gold and silver. The area was once nicknamed “The Richest Hill on Earth”. NASA satellite image.

5. The 2015 Gold King Mine tailings pond disaster (Colorado)

In 2015 the Gold King Mine tailings pond near Silverton, Colorado breached and spilled into the Animas River estuary. The area is now an EPA SuperFund site. 3 million gallons of orange wastewater breached an earthen dam and contaminated downstream water with mercury and arsenic. Mines in the area continue to drain thousands of gallons of heavy metal-contaminated water into the river every day.

6. The Escondida copper-gold-silver mine complex (Chile)

The Escondida copper-gold-silver mine complex in Chile’s Atacama desert. The Escondida produces more copper than any other mine in the world (1.483 million tons in 2007), amounting to 9.5% of world output and making it a major part of the Chilean economy. The mine is located 110 miles southeast of Chile’s port city of Antofagasta, which is the namesake of the copper mining company that is planning to mine for copper in northeast Minnesota’s water-rich Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). All of Antofagasta’s copper mines in Chile are in arid, water-poor areas.

The Escondida mine tailings lagoon above – in Chile’s Atacama desert – is the world’s largest tailings pond. The tailings are intended to be held in perpetuity behind earthen retaining dams. The straight line at the left of the photo represents the tallest of the surrounding retaining walls, and is 0.6 miles long. NASA satellite photo.

7. Reserve Mining Company’s MilePost 7 tailings lagoons – Silver Bay MN

Until 1980, Reserve Mining Company reportedly dumped 47 tons of waste ore sludge into Superior every day.

In 1980, Reserve Mining Company belatedly began using its Milepost 7site  to “store” the tailings. The two “ponds” were located 7 miles inland from Silver Bay. As can be easily measured, the two tailings ponds are massive and together measure about 5 miles across at its greatest dimension. It is said that if the ponds suddenly breached the earthen dam walls and released their toxic contents in a heavy rain event, a wall of sludge 28 feet high would inundate the area all the way to Lake Superior, just as the Mount Polley Copper Mine tailings dam breach did in British Columbia in 2014 and the Samarco Iron mine did in Brazil in 2015.

Two views of the “delta” that formed at Silver Bay, Minnesota by Reserve Mining’s continuous discharging of taconite tailings directly into Lake Superior. The delta eventually extended 1/3 of a mile from the original shoreline. Reserve Mining attempted to do some remediation, as seen in the second photo that shows some vegetation growing, but the toxins in the underlying sludge will never be fully de-toxified.

The sulfide and precious metals mining process produces a toxic slurry of finely ground mine tailings, that inevitably contain undesirable toxic substances like arsenic, mercury, and other toxic sulfide minerals, which are poisonous to all living things. A major difference between taconite and copper/nickel/gold/sulfide mining is that the post-extraction waste volume for sulfide mining is 99+% and for taconite it is only 60%. 

When insoluble material such as mine tailings settle in a body of water, the process inevitably smothers lake and river bottoms where fish spawn and feed. Marine life dies or is disabled where acid mine waste pollutes the water. The offshore area from Reserve Mining Company’s permanently toxic tailings plume in Silver Bay, MN surely keeps Lake Superior fish from thriving in the area.

When any ore is refined for its minerals, a slurry of mud/rock sludge is left behind. In the case of copper mining the tailings byproduct represents over 99% of the total. What to do with tailings is one of the biggest unsolved issues in mining and is a secret that mining companies prefer that the public and its elected representatives not consider in their decisions about permitting mining upstream from the population

Of the 1,950 operating mines world-wide most dispose of their tailings in big open pits behind earthen dams that can be quite soluble in the case of unpredictable heavy rains and very unstable in the case of unpredictable earthquakes. In a handful of countries around the world, including Indonesia, Norway and Chile (the world’s leading producer of copper), the leftover sludge is dumped into the sea. As a matter of historical fact, what the rest of the world’s mining companies are doing to the planet’s oceans is exactly what Reserve Mining Company did to Minnesota’s precious, previously drinkable Lake Superior water at Silver Bay prior to Judge Miles Lord’s order to shut down the tailings dumping in the mid-1970s! Reserve Mining repeatedly refused to consider building or using the inland lagoon to “store” its taconite tailings until 1980.

*

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, prosperity, democracy, civility and the health and longevity of the planet and the populace. Many of his columns are archived at

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2; or at

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

In 2015, then US presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” despite this violating a number of provisions of the US Constitution, including laws governing equal protection and the right to due process.

During his first month in office, Trump turned his discriminatory and hateful rhetoric into policy, signing an executive order that banned visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Sudan – despite the fact that nationals of these countries had not carried out any deadly attacks on US soil.

Naked discrimination

Federal judges across the country ruled the travel ban to be nothing more than a naked attempt to discriminate against Muslims. In a revised version, Iraq was dropped from the list, but in March 2017, a US court blocked the ban again.

“The illogic of the government’s contentions is palpable. The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed,” stated US District Judge Derrick Watson.

The Trump administration eventually issued a third, slightly watered-down version of the ban, which the Supreme Court has now upheld in a 5-4 vote. By ruling in favour of the ban, the five conservative judges have defied not only lower court judges, but also a slew of constitutional scholars throughout the US.

Essentially, the five conservative judges have determined that it is totally fine to discriminate against Muslims, so long as your prejudice is disguised by also targeting Venezuelans and North Koreans, who were covered by the third version of the travel ban. Moreover, the 5-4 ruling grants the president unprecedented power to shape and reshape immigration laws in any way he deems fit, effectively giving the country yet another big shove towards authoritarian rule.

Codifying Islamophobia

Even worse, the ruling has institutionalised and codified Islamophobia into law for the first time in US history.

Even before today’s Supreme Court ruling, the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a US-based human rights group, warned of “alarming parallels” between Trump’s America and Hitler’s Germany, suggesting that Trump’s targeting of democratic institutions and minorities mirrored the years leading up to the Holocaust.

Another cause for genuine alarm is the fact that the Supreme Court vindicated Trump’s Muslim ban based on concerns for “national security”. You don’t need to be a historian to know that a great majority of the world’s worst atrocities have been carried out in the name of “national security”, including the Soviet purges, the Holocaust, the US Japanese civilian internment camps and the campaigns of ethnic cleansing taking place in Myanmar, Palestine, Syria and elsewhere today.

In her dissent, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed her five colleagues on the bench, writing:

“The United States of America is a nation built upon the promise of religious liberty … The court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle. It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ because the policy now masquerades behind a facade of national-security concerns.”

Moreover, the ban does nothing to address these so-called national security concerns, especially as many terrorist attacks carried out in the US today are perpetrated by white, right-wing, Christian men who identify and sympathise with Trump.

Rightwing extremism

A recent report published for Congress by the Government Accountability Office found that of the 85 deadly attacks by violent extremists since 9/11, far-right violent groups were responsible for 73 percent, while “radical Islamist” extremists were responsible for 27 percent – a margin of almost three to one.

Moreover, an analysis of every terrorist attack carried out on US soil during the past 20 years revealed that Trump’s Muslim ban would have saved zero lives over this timeframe. Yes, you read that right – zero.

Preventing terrorism was never the aim of this ban, however. It was always about rewarding the Islamophobia industry for its patronage of Trump’s presidential campaign, along with the slice of white America that hates anyone and everyone who doesn’t look or sound like them.

Welcome to these Islamophobic United States of America. Discriminating against Muslims is now the law.

*

CJ Werleman is an opinion writer for Salon, Alternet, and the author of Crucifying America and God Hates You. Hate Him Back. Follow him on Twitter: @cjwerleman

On June 13, 2018, the Washington Post published an original piece by Paul Sonne that describes America’s potential use of the low-yield nuclear warheads that are to be installed on the future US B-61-12 nuclear bombs, as well as on the ballistic missiles carried by the Trident II submarines in the form of W76-2 warheads, in accordance with Washington’s 2018 nuclear doctrine. The article claims that the introduction of low-yield warheads and the idea of their potential use is being justified by the Pentagon as necessary due to the fact that Russia is allegedly prepared to use similar warheads against NATO countries, based on that nation’s current nuclear doctrine and because a purported strategy of “escalate to de-escalate” has apparently been “approved” by Moscow.

It should be kept in mind that the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, which has sections covering the potential use of nuclear weapons, says nothing about the power of the nuclear weapons that might be utilized, nor is there any mention of warheads with either high or “low” yields in TNT equivalents. Those sections of the official doctrine do not even categorize Russian nuclear weapons into strategic vs. tactical varieties.

Only one term is specified in Russia’s military and strategic posture: “nuclear weapons.” And only two circumstances are listed as a basis for their potential use: the first — only in response to the use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against the Russian Federation and/or its allies; and the second — in the event of aggression against Russia that employs conventional weapons to the point that “the very existence of the state is threatened.” In other words, only reciprocal actions are permitted in either case.

Nor does the Russian nuclear doctrine list the countries or alliances against which nuclear weapons can be used.

It seems odd that the US still does not understand the basic tenets of Russia’s nuclear posture. And it must be said that this is not the first time that Western analysts have taken such an unprofessional approach. This has become especially glaring in the run-up to the next NATO summit, which will take place July 11-12 in Brussels.

On the other hand, the newest US nuclear doctrine, which was approved last February, specifies 14 justifications for the use of nuclear weapons, including “low-yield” warheads, which is how US arms experts classify nuclear warheads of 5.0-6.5 kilotons and below. These are precisely the sea- and air-launched warheads the Pentagon intends to utilize in accordance with its new concept of “escalating to de-escalate.” Under that theory, low-yield nuclear warheads can be employed by US nuclear forces on an increasing scale in a variety of regional conflicts, with the aim of “de-escalating” them, which might be accomplished with the help of a nuclear first strike.

This practice could cause a chain reaction in the use of nuclear weapons, involving not only “low-yield” warheads, but also more powerful nuclear explosives.

The practice being described — the potential use of low-yield nuclear weapons, which is a real fixation for the current US administration and is being discussed with increasing frequency in the US — suggests that America’s military and political leaders are committed to dramatically lowering the minimum threshold for their use and expanding the list of acceptable reasons to utilize them under real-world conditions. The adage from the past that everyone could relate to — “A nuclear war cannot be unleashed, because there will be no winners” — is now absent from the political statements that are being heard. It is clear that forces have taken the upper hand on Capitol Hill that are still incapable of imagining the consequences of a nuclear Armageddon. Such a path, even if this scenario proves unlikely, will inevitably lead to a potential undermining of the already fragile non-proliferation regime and a breakdown in the negotiations on establishing control over nuclear facilities, which — and this is not news — very few countries are taking part in at the present time.

For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by Washington, in the interests of preserving global stability. In order to achieve this goal, the strategic guidelines for inflicting a first “preemptive and preventive” nuclear strike, as well as the continuing premise of “unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence,” which have remained unchanged since 1945, must be completely eliminated from American nuclear strategies.

These are not ultimatums, as someone defending US nuclear policy has already tried to portray them. This is a completely natural, logical, and sensible step, which would no doubt be positively received all over the world.

*

Vladimir Kozin, Ph.D., is an Expert Council member of the Russian Senate’ Foreign Relations Committee, Professor of the Academy of Military Science, former high-ranking diplomat, leading expert on disarmament and strategic stability issues.

“Disappointing is the word.  Empty is the other word.” – Mile Jedenak, Jun 26, 2018.

Australia was always the outsider in the tournament, and a loitering one at that.  Its fans, and loyal commentators, thought otherwise.  In Kazan, the journalists gave the impression that the so-called Socceroos were Lotharios to be admired, wonders to be embraced.  A story went around that Australia had become some substitute Netherlands side, a touch far fetched though enticingly sentimental.   

In Sochi, such sentimentality became hackneyed and wooden.  Australia needed to beat another unfancied side, Peru, and hope for a good French performance against the other group member Denmark, to have a chance to scrape into the last sixteen.  The exercise was ultimately an academic one: France failed to score against Denmark, as did Denmark against France.  Peru and Australia would be leaving the tournament. 

When it came to the group matches, there were chances, means, and hopes garlanded with prospect.  The Danes were struck by the fortitude of the Socceroos, both sides squaring the ledger after ninety minutes.  Such is the nature of football and its arithmetically perverted odds: it distorts to a charming degree and affords comfort in the most unlikely of cases.

The reality is all too clear: the Socceroos have been flat.  Be it in execution, delivery and generation, the team has been operating in discordant assembly, its barbs either hidden or totally absent.  The gloriously bearded captain Mile Jedinak may well have scored from his two penalty shots, but finding a goal from open play has been less likely than a koala sighting in Kazan.   

Much of the commentary around the match against Peru was based on the suspended meaningless of a moment. 

“Peru scored with their one and only shot of the half,” chirped a dissatisfied former Australian goal keeper, Mark Schwarzer.  The context and qualifier follows: “Socceroos have looked the more threatening and dangerous going forward.  I think we’re unlucky to be behind.” 

Luck remains the emptiest of alibis in football, but it is appealing as a refuge of last resort.   

The old tricks of the disgruntled show find their place: the performers who did well in a village styled pedestrianism but came up without the result; the injustice of the fine tuned shot (how dare they!) that penetrated and punctured all; and the sense of god awful luck; or its lack, if you are an Australian soccer tragedian.   

The broadcast had to emphasise failed potential, promise gone wrong.  Another smattering from the Optus Sport Twitter feed, of which there were many:

“Tom Rogic was almost unstoppable… until Pedro Gallese go in the way.” 

But the despoiler of the show was Andrew Carillo, who decided to shine when necessary.  In the second half, Paolo Geurrero added another punch to the misery. As the gradual unravelling of a team was taking place, the side punditry was warming up: Would Tim Cahill play?  Was he warming up? 

This is the soppy nature of World Cup feeling and Australians were feeling it in abundance. 

“A dagger in the Socceroos’ heart,” came another post on the Optus Sport Twitter feed, which is good to see, given that Optus proved fairly incapable of showing anything dagger related at all in broadcasting its complement of matches to Australian audiences.

In terms of football, Australia remains a country in cryogenic storage, archived in the pocket of potential, the slot of future expectation.  The same cannot be said about the women, who seem to have outdone their male counterparts by some stomping margin.  The World Game, as it has been marketed through sporting channels in the country, has yet to globally impose its omnipresent sense upon the populace.  There are still many competing codes.

In terms of team make-up, there is no excuse why this population located at the base of Asia should not muster something that moves, at the very least, into the elimination stage of the tournament.  Players such as the green but delightfully promising Daniel Arzani were kept back as delicate porcelain samples.  Tim Cahill, the terror of set pieces and some delicious moves in the previous World Cup, was treated as a worn talisman who might, given the right moment, have emerged from wheelchair royalty. Deployed all too late, his appearance against Peru seemed but a meek and ineffectual swansong. 

In a World Cup where goals have come with graceful ease and fluency, Australia has struggled with shots.  Build-ups did come, mounted with some grit and fortitude; there were even times in the drawn match against Denmark that suggested something of a blooding, a growing in confidence.  But other teams wised up to the glaring disability, leaving the Socceroos as mutes before a noisy and insistent chorus.   

“We played well,” came the redundant summation from former Socceroo John Aloisi, “we were the better team tonight.”  Cries were registered at the final whistle that the first goal from Peru was inflicted from an offside situation.  But what mattered was that Peru did score, which will be etched in sporting history.  Same with France in its narrow victory, helped by the freakish nature of providence itself.  In the context of tournament matches, that is all that matters. 

*

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Girls and mothers, waiting for their duvets, in Kabul Photo credit: Dr. Hakim

Writing this week for the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman called a U.S. Government report on the war in Afghanistan “a chronicle of futility.” “The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” report says the U.S. spent large sums “in search of quick gains” in regional stabilization – but these instead “exacerbated conflicts, enabled corruption and bolstered support for insurgents.”

“In short,” says Chapman, the U.S. government “made things worse rather than better.”

Gains, meanwhile, have certainly been made by weapon manufacturers. On average, during Trump’s first year in office, the Pentagon dropped 121 bombs per day on Afghanistan. The total number of weapons – missiles, bombs – deployed in Afghanistan by manned and remotely piloted aircraft through May this year is estimated at 2,339.

War profiteers deliver hellish realities and futile prospects, but the Afghan Peace Volunteers have not given up on bettering their country. In recent visits to Kabul, we’ve listened as they consider the longer-term question of how peace can come to an economically devastated country where employment by various warlords, including the U.S. and Afghan militaries, is many families’ only way to put bread on the table. Hakim, who mentors the APVs, assures us that a lasting peace must involve the creation of jobs and incomes with a hope of sustaining community. Inspired by Mohandas Gandhi’s calls for self-sufficiency, and the example of his Pashtun ally, Badshah Khan, they resist war by fostering education and creating local cooperatives.

Miriam is a student in the APVs’ “Street Kids’ School,” which prepares child laborers to pursue schooling while helping their families stay afloat with monthly rations of rice and oil. Sitting with me in the garden of the APVs’ Borderfree Center, her widowed mother, Gul Bek told me of the hardships she faces as a single mother of five.

Each month, she struggles to pay for water, rent, food, and fuel. Some years ago, a company installed a water pipeline leading to her home, but every month a representative from the company comes to collect 700 – 800 Afghanis (about $10.00) in payment for the family’s water consumption. An impoverished household – even free of war’s ravages – can’t easily spare $10. She tries hard to conserve.

“But we must have water!” says Gul Bek. “We need it to clean, to cook, to do laundry.”

She knows how important hygiene is, but she doesn’t dare go over her budget for water. Gul Bek fears she might be evicted if she can’t manage rent. Would she then go to a refugee camp in Kabul? She shakes her head. I asked if the government helps at all.

“They know nothing about how we live,” she said. “At the beginning of Ramadan, we couldn’t even have bread. We had no flour.”

Her two eldest sons, age 19 and 14, are beginning to learn tailoring skills and they attend school part time. I asked if she ever considers allowing them to join the military or the police to earn something closer to a living wage. She was adamant. After working so hard to raise these sons, she doesn’t want to lose them. She won’t allow them to carry guns.

Visiting a refugee camp several days later, I could understand her horror of moving into a camp. The camps are overcrowded, muddy, and dangerously unsanitary. An elder from the camp, Haji Jool, was entrusted with the keys to a control room for a well that two NGOs recently installed. On that day, the valves weren’t functioning. 200 of the 700 families in the camp depend on that well for water. I looked at the worried faces of women who had been waiting, since early morning, to collect water. What would they do? Haji Jool told me that most of the families had come from rural areas. They fled their homes because of war or because they lacked water. Kabul’s battered infrastructure, in desperate need of U.S. reparations for fifteen years of war, simply can’t sustain people.

Our APV friends, recognizing the need to create jobs and incomes, have begun forging ahead with impressive work to establish cooperatives. In early June, they initiated a shoemaking cooperative, led by two young men, Hussein and Hosham, who’ve already been trained and have taught their skills to Noorullah. They named their store “Unique.” A carpentry co-op will soon be up and running.

The APV are grateful to the many internationals who, over the past six winters, have assisted their annual “Duvet Project” to bring much-needed blankets to Kabul residents lacking protection from harsh winter weather. The “Duvet Project” has donated winter blankets to some 9,000 destitute families in Kabul and has offered a winter income to as many as 360 seamstresses. Yet, the APV have grappled with a persistent plea from seamstresses who, while appreciative of the seasonal project, express their acute need for an income throughout the year.

This year, APV are forming a seamstresses’ cooperative which will manufacture clothing year-round for inexpensive local sale and will also distribute duvets.

The U.S. exerts massive power from the skies of Afghanistan, raining down hellfire in ever greater quantities. Its Security Zone and its military bases, within and near Kabul, help to drain the local water table faster than wells can be dug. It persistently causes hatred and harm. Meanwhile, it might sound like a cliché, but in imagining a better world our young friends are helping to build one. With sustainable projects to support the neediest, they embrace Gul Bek’s refusal to cooperate with war. Their simple, small actions do strengthen Kabul.  They give themselves over to compassion, to strengthening their neighbors. They plant the seeds that may or may not grow a forest there – they use, rather than wasting, what power they have. They aren’t rewarded with the titanic achievement of having shaped and ruined a country, but instead with purposeful intent to stop the vicious cycle of war and resist the cruel hierarchies attempting to prevail. We at Voices are grateful for the chance, with them, to reject despair. In supporting their projects, we can make reparations, however small, for the persistent futility of war.

*

Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). She visited Kabul in early June as a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers (ourjourneytosmile.com)

Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.

We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.

If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.

The Supreme Court today rejected the challenge to President Trump’s Muslim Ban. In its 5-to-4 decision, the court failed to make good on principles at the heart of our constitutional system — including the absolute prohibition on official disfavor of a particular religion. The fight against the ban will continue, but the court’s decision is devastating. History will not be kind to the court’s approval of an unfounded and blatantly anti-Muslim order. 

By now the story of this shameful policy is familiar. During his campaign, Trump issued a statementcalling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” — which remained on his website until well into his term in office. That was hardly a stray comment. Rather, over and over, both before and after the election, Trump expressed his animus for Islam and Muslims and tied that animus to his proposed immigration ban.

Just one week into office, Trump attempted to make good on the campaign promise, issuing a sweeping ban on over a hundred million Muslims without even consulting the government’s national security experts. Courts rejected that first version as well as the order the administration crafted to replace it. Finally, those temporary measures were replaced by the current proclamation, which likewise bans over 150 million people — approximately 95 percent of them Muslim. As Justice Sotomayor explained in her dissenting opinion, Trump’s consistent messages and actions paint a “harrowing picture, from which a reasonable observer would readily conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by hostility and animus toward the Muslim faith.”

Nonetheless, the court today rejected the constitutional challenge to the ban. Applying deference to the president despite the evidence presented, the court explained that it would “uphold the policy so long as it can reasonably be understood to result from a justification independent of unconstitutional grounds.” The court then concluded based on the record in the case that the ban had “a legitimate grounding in national security concerns, quite apart from any religious hostility.”

As Justice Sotomayor cogently explained, the majority could reach this conclusion only by “ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals.”  In this respect, as she noted, the case repeats some of the worst mistakes the court has made in the past.  In particular, the parallels to Korematsu v. United States, the court’s 1944 decision upholding the incarceration of Japanese-Americans, are striking.

As in that case, the court today paid lip service to the vital constitutional values at stake, but it willfully ignored the reality of the situation. The majority today repudiated Korematsu, saying it “was gravely wrong the day it was decided.” But as Justice Sotomayor pointed out, then, as now, it was clear to those willing to look at the evidence that the government’s policy was not about safety but prejudice:

“By blindly accepting the Government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security, the Court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one ‘gravely wrong’ decision with another.”

Today’s decision is devastating. Whatever the court may have intended, the message it relays to Muslim communities around the country and around the world is that our Constitution tolerates transparent discrimination and animus against Islam. It undermines our standing to encourage tolerance and pluralistic democracy abroad, and it reinforces the intended message that Muslims — and immigrants, people of color, LGBT communities, and other marginalized groups — are not welcome in Trump’s America.

But this fight is not over.

Indeed, the greatest repudiation of Trump’s anti-Muslim policy to date was not delivered by any court. Instead, it was delivered by thousands of people spontaneously coming together at airports across the country to declare that we will not stand for hatred and discrimination.

*

Cody Wofsy is Staff Attorney, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Featured image is from the author.

It has often been said that Israel, since its establishment in 1948, has presided over the “miracle” of making the country’s “desert bloom.” That heavily promoted narrative — which asserts that the Palestinians have long lacked the capacity, knowledge or desire to properly develop agriculture in the region — has often been used as a legitimizing factor in Israel’s establishment. As former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres once said, “The country [Palestine] was mostly an empty desert, with only a few islands of Arab settlement; and Israel’s [cultivated] land today was indeed redeemed from swamp and wilderness.”

Were it not for Israel, the desert would have remained unproductive and fallow – or so the story goes.

There is, however, another side to this story, one that shows that the “blooming desert” of Israel is a convenient disguise for the degradation and destruction of Palestine’s natural resources, a means of obfuscating the worst of occupation by wrapping it in the cloak of Zionist mythology. While a central theme of Zionist mythology has long been the need for the Jewish Diaspora community to re-establish itself by returning to agricultural labor, the truth of Israel’s agricultural “success” involves the unsustainable use of occupied resources and the deliberate destruction of the land and water still used by Palestinians today.

Erasing a rich history

Though the official narrative of the state of Israel claims that it has turned the land it occupies from an empty desert into a lush, agricultural wonder, the actual fate of the land following Israel’s establishment in 1948 tells a very different story. Indeed, prior to 1948, the historical record demonstrates that Palestinian farms were very productive and that both Palestinian Arabs and Jewish settlers were successful farmers. For example, a UN report on agriculture in Palestine between 1945 and 1946 recorded that Palestinian-grown crops accounted for nearly 80 percent of Palestine’s total agricultural yield that season, with Palestinian farms producing over 244,000 tons of vegetables, 73,000 tons of fruit, 78,000 tons of olives, and 5 million liters of wine.

Two years later, when the majority of Palestinians were forced from their land during the “Nakba” that founded the state of Israel, the farms and orchards that had previously been tended by Palestinians were left abandoned, as their owners fled under the threat of death at the hands of Zionist militias.

As Israeli historian and journalist Meron Benvenisti detailed in his book Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948:

By April 1948 Jewish farmers had already begun harvesting the crops that had ripened in the abandoned fields and picking the citrus fruit in Arab groves. […] by mid-1949 two-thirds of all land sown with grain in Israel was abandoned Arab land.”

Thus, it was land theft that was largely responsible for Israel’s initial agricultural production, not the labor or agricultural expertise of Zionist settlers.

In addition, the claim that Israel turned an undeveloped desert into an agricultural wonder seems to be – in part – projection on the part of the Israeli state. Indeed, as Benvenisti noted, following the removal of Palestinians, the vast majority of centuries-old fruit orchards that had long been maintained by the native inhabitants of the land were untended, neglected and, in some cases, bulldozed to make room for ever-expanding settlements.

According to Benvenisti’s research, that neglect led to a situation in which “entire tracts of productive citrus trees, especially in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, were earmarked for the construction of housing developments,” as was the case for Palestine olive groves and pomegranate orchards that the land’s new occupants considered “an annoyance.” Part of the reason for the destruction of the land was that it would weaken Palestinian claims to return to the land, as keeping agricultural infrastructure intact “might have made possible the absorption of the returning refugees.”

Current Israeli government policy, particularly its support for the construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian land, is the continuation of this effort to erase Palestine’s history by targeting its agricultural heritage as well as its natural wonders. Indeed, Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted back in 2011 that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s steady push for Israeli expansion into Palestinian territory had been coupled with “his insistence on seeing nature and landscape as no more than an obstacle to the realization of his settlement vision.”

Covering a crime with water-sucking pines

Another project central to the “desert bloom” mythology is Israel’s “afforestation” of the desert, which has helped “turn the desert green” through the planting of non-native pine trees. These forests, largely planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), have been touted as a “miracle.” Yet, the pine stands, much like Israel’s treatment of Palestine’s agricultural legacy, have been motivated by a need to cover up the events that led to the creation of the Israeli state.

Indeed, more than two-thirds of all JNF forests and sites lie on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages demolished during and after the founding of Israel, and the group’s continuing afforestation efforts are aimed at acquiring land in the occupied West Bank to prevent “trespassing” and “conceal” Palestinian villages in order to prevent the return of Palestinian refugees.

Moreover, the effort to maintain a forest of non-native trees – regardless of whether its chief aim is to cover up the true history of Palestine or “green” a desert — has come at a great cost to the natural environment. As journalist Max Blumenthal has noted:

Most of the saplings the JNF plants at a site near Jerusalem simply do not survive, and require frequent replanting. Elsewhere, needles from the pine trees have killed native plant species and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem.”

They also become fodder for forest fires that have caused major damage and mass evacuations throughout Israel over the years.

Another ecological consequence of JNF forests is their likely effect on Israel’s horrendous drought, considered to be the worst the region has faced in over 900 years. As studies have shown in other countries where non-native pine plantations have been introduced in vast numbers, pines consume a significant amount of water – leading to droughts and even the disappearance of entire rivers – as well as fundamentally alter and degrade the soil. While these forests have been presented as an ecological miracle, they are instead destroying the environment and degrading the land’s resources, suggesting that the main driver behind the long-standing project is aimed at covering up the ruins of Palestine.

Continuing the attack on Palestinian agriculture

Today, the stark difference in agricultural development in the land tended by Israelis and Palestinians derives from policies that often receive little coverage in the media and are largely absent from the “desert bloom” narrative. Indeed, much of the coverage the issue has received paints Palestinian agricultural successes as either the work of foreigners offering aid or resulting from the “theft” of Israeli-settlement agricultural infrastructure.

Palestinian water tanks vandalized by Israeli settlers in Hebron. (Photo: ISM Palestine / Flickr)

Such reports fail to acknowledge the realities of the issue, such as the illegal blockade of Gaza that has crippled its economy and agricultural sector, as well as Israel’s destruction of agricultural infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank. Gazan agricultural infrastructure was ravaged by Israel in times of war and, in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers regularly demolish rain cisterns, pipelines and irrigation systems installed by Palestinians, citing as a reason that such structures lacked the “proper authorization” from Israel. Farmers themselves, mainly in Gaza, are often targeted directly by Israeli soldiers if they come too close to the border fence.

The Israeli government has also targeted Palestinian agriculture through chemical warfare. The use of white phosphorus as a weapon against Gaza, for example, has had major consequences for the area’s farmers. In addition to the chemical weapon’s often deadly effects on the human body, it has destructive effects on the environment and plants, as its incendiary nature often leads to the spontaneous ignition and burning of trees, forests and farmland. It also lingers in the environment for several years.

Beyond the use of chemical weapons, Israel has also directly targeted Gazan farmland with herbicide. In 2015, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)admitted to using herbicides and germination inhibitors to kill off vegetation along the Palestinian side of the border, damaging over 420 acres of land. A year later, tactic was repeated, this time destroying around 400 acres of farmland. The IDF has stated that it sprays the chemicals over the vaguely defined “no-go zone” it has established along the border “in order to enable optimal and continuous security operations.” However, the area accounts for a third of Gaza’s arable land and 17 percent of the entire territory.

Furthermore, the herbicides, like white phosphorus, have consequences for the environment long after they are sprayed. As Anwar Abu Assi, manager of the chemical laboratory at Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture, told Al Jazeera in 2016:

Herbicides are sprayed in high concentrations. Thus, they remain embedded in the soil, and then find their way to the water basin. This constitutes a real hazard for the population.”

The targeting of Palestinian agriculture in the present and its treatment by the Israeli and American press suggest another and nefarious way in which Israel’s “desert bloom” mythology has manifested. In order for Israel’s agricultural “superiority” to remain unchallenged, Palestinian agriculture must also be suppressed. Were Palestinian agriculture able to develop unimpeded and flourish, it would call into question the idea that the land was barren before the Zionists, threatening the latter’s legitimacy.

The cover-story for all conquerors and colonizers  

The myth of Israel “making the desert bloom” has its basis in neo-colonial narratives that have long been used in other settler states such as Canada, New Zealand, the United States and Australia. In the cases of the latter countries, the native inhabitants and their culture have also inaccurately been depicted as “primitive” and incompetent, a narrative that suggests that the land would have remained “wild” and undeveloped were it not for the “fortunate” appearance of European settlers. Such narratives cast the settlers as both superior and normal while the natives become inferior and abnormal, thus obfuscating the settler’s status as foreigner and conqueror.

Zionist mythology reinforces similar themes. For example, as in the United States Native Americans were considered as uncivilized and wild as the natural environment, Zionist mythology reinforces the idea that all Arabs are “sons of the desert” while the desert similarly represents a barbaric obstacle to “progress” and development.

Another historical analogue is the 19th century concept of “manifest destiny” — the idea that the expansion of the United States had been preordained by God himself, which led the U.S. to break many of its numerous treaties with indigenous tribes and even go to war with Mexico in order to acquire the land it coveted. The Israeli government similarly sees its expansion and control of all of Palestine as a matter of fulfilling prophecy and “redeeming” the Holy Land. This effort of redemption continues to feed Israel’s expansion. As Netanyahu has said, Israel is “obligated to develop all parts of the country – the Galilee and the Negev [the West Bank].”

Living the myth and the lie

Yet, no matter how much evidence exists to the contrary, Israel will never tell the real story behind the “miracle” of making “the desert bloom.” It will never tell the real story precisely because it can’t – to do so would mean demolishing the neo-colonial narrative at the center of the settler state, a narrative that is the pillar of its legitimacy.

Indeed, if Israel has not actually improved the land by making “the desert bloom” but instead degraded the land, the legitimacy of the state of Israel itself becomes questionable, as it suggests that its native inhabitants – the Palestinians – were better caretakers of the land than the current occupiers. For this reason, Israel must continue to propagate the myth regardless of the facts, and continue to deny Palestine’s rich cultural history and agricultural legacy.

With Israel now facing the consequences of its mistreatment of the land and its resources, the historical revisionism once used to sell the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian agricultural prowess has become ineffective. For that reason, Israel must now use other tactics — chemical warfare through toxic agrochemicals, the physical destruction of Palestinian agricultural infrastructure, and illegal blockades – in order to keep the artificial narrative alive, creating the illusion of primitivism and scarcity where none exists.

*

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

Explicitly focusing on alleged anti-Israel bias the U.S. withdrew from further participation in the UN Human Rights Council. The only internationally credible basis for criticizing the HRC is its regrettable tendency to put some countries with the worst human rights records in leading roles, creating genuine issues of credibility and hypocrisy. Of course, such a criticism would never be made by the U.S. as it could only embarrass Washington to admit that many of its closest allies in the Middle East, and elsewhere have lamentable human rights records, and, if fairly judged, the U.S. has itself reversed roles since the year 2000, itself slipping into the category of the most serious human rights offenders. In this regard, its ‘withdrawal’ can be viewed as a self-imposed ‘suspension’ for falling short when it comes to the promotion and protection of human rights.

Undoubtedly, the U.S. was frustrated by its efforts to ‘reform’ the HRC according to its views  of the UN agency should function, and blamed its traditional adversaries, Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, along with Egypt, with blocking its initiative. It also must not have welcome the HRC High Commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, for describing the separation of children from their immigrant parents at the Mexican border as an ‘unconsciounable’ policy.

In evaluating this latest sign of American retreat from its prior role as global leader, there are several considerations that help us understand such a move that situates the United States in the same strange rejectionist corner it now shares with North Korea and Eritrea:

• the fact that the U.S. withdrawal from the HRC occurred immediately after the Israeli border massacre, insulated from Security Council censure and investigation by a U.S. veto, is certainly part of political foreground. This consideration was undoubtedly reinforced by the HRC approval of a fact-finding investigation of Israel’s behavior over prior weeks in responding to the Great Return March border demonstrations met with widespread lethal sniper violence;
• in evaluating the UN connection to Palestine it needs to be recalled that the organized international community has a distinctive responsibility for Palestine that can be traced all the way back to the peace diplomacy after World War I when Britain was given the role of Mandatory, which according to the League of Nations Covenant should be carried out as a ‘sacred trust of civilization.’ This special relationship was extended and deepened when Britain gave up this role after World War II, transferring responsibility for the future of Palestine to the UN. This newly established world organization was given the task of finding a sustainable solution in the face of sharply contested claims between the majority Palestinian population and the Jewish, mainly settler population.

This UN role was started beneath and deeply influenced by the long shadow of grief and guilt cast by the Holocaust. The UN, borrowing from the British colonial playbook, proposed a division of Palestine between Jewish and Palestinian political communities, which eventuated in the UN partition plan contained in General Assembly Resolution 181. This plan was developed and adopted without the participation of the majority resident population, 70% non-Jewish at the time, and was opposed by the independent countries in the Arab world. Such a plan seemed oblivious to the evolving anti-colonial mood of the time, failing to take any account of the guiding normative principle of self-determination. The Partition War that followed in 1947 did produce a de factor partition of Palestine more favorable to the Zionist Project than what was proposed, and rejected, in 181. One feature of the original plan was to internationalize the governance of the city of Jerusalem with both peoples given an equal status.

This proposed treatment of Jerusalem was never endorsed by Israel, and was formally, if indirectly, repudiated after the 1967 War when Israel declared (in violation of international law) that Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the Jewish people never to be divided or internationalized, and Israel has so administered Jerusalem with this intent operationalized in defiance of the UN. What this sketch of the UN connection with Palestine clearly shows is that from the very beginning of Israeli state-building, the role of the international community was direct and the discharge of its responsibilities was not satisfactory in that it proved incapable of protecting Palestinian moral, legal, and political rights. As a result, the majority of Palestinian people have been effectively excluded from their own country and as a people exist in a fragmented ethnic reality. This series of events constitutes one of the worst geopolitical crimes of the past century. Rather than do too much by way of criticizing the behavior of Israel, the UN has done far too little, not because of a failure of will, but as an expression of the behavioral primacy of geopolitics and naked militarism;

• the revealing stress of Ambassador Haley’s explanation of the U.S. withdrawal from the HRC gives almost total attention to quantitative factors such as the ‘disproportionate’ number of resolutions compared with those given to other human rights offenders, making no attempt whatsoever to refute the substantiveallegations of Israeli wrongdoing. This is not surprising as any attempt to justify Israeli policies and practices toward the Palestinian people would only expose the severity of Israel’s criminality and the acuteness of Palestinian victimization. The U.S. has also long struggled to be rid of so-called Item 7 of the Human Rights Council devoted to human rights violations of Israel associated with the occupation of Palestinian territories, which overlooks the prior main point that the UN is derelict in its failure to produce a just peace for the peoples inhabiting Mandate Palestine.
• withdrawing from international institutional arrangements, especially those positively associated with peace, human rights, and environmental protection has become the hallmark of what be identified as the negative internationalismof the Trump presidency. The most egregious instances, prior to this move with regard to the HRC, involved the repudiation of the Nuclear Program Agreement with Iran (also known as the JCPOA or P5 +1 Agreement) and the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Unlike these other instances of negative internationalism this departure from the HRC is likely to hurt the U.S. more than the HRC, reinforcing its myopic willingness to do whatever it takes to please Netanyahu and the lead American Zionist donor to the Trump campaign, Sheldon Adelson. Only the provocative announcement of the planned unilateral move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem last December was as explicitly responsive to Israel’s policy agenda as is this rejection of the HRC, both initiatives stand out as being contrary to a fair rendering of American national interests, and hence a show of deference to Israel’s preferences. Despite this unabashed one-sidedness the Trump presidency still puts itself forward as a peacemaker, and promised to produce ‘the deal of the century’ at the proper moment, even enjoying the backing of Saudi Arabia, which seems to be telling the Palestinians to take what is offered or shut up forever. Knowing the weakness and shallow ambitions of the Palestinian Authority, there is no telling what further catastrophe, this one of a diplomatic character, may further darken the Palestinian future. A diplomatic nakbamight be the worst disaster of all for the Palestinian people and their century-long struggle for elemental rights.

It should also be observed that the U.S. human rights record has been in steady decline, whether the focus is placed on the morally catastrophic present policies of separating families at the Mexican border or on the failure to achieve acceptable progress at home in the area of economic and social rights despite American affluence (as documented in the recent report of Philip Alston, UNHRC Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty) or in the various violations of human rights committed in the course of the War on Terror, including operation of black sites in foreign countries to carry on torture of terror suspects, or denials of the tenets of international humanitarian law (Geneva Conventions) in the administration of Guantanamo and other prison facilities;

• it is also worth noting that Israel’s defiance of internatonal law and international institutions is pervasive, flagrant, and directly related to maintaining an oppressive regime of occupation that is complemented by apartheid structures victimizing Palestinian refugees, residents of Jerusalem, the Palestinian minority in Israel, and imprisoned population of Gaza. Israel refused the authority of the International Court of Justice with respect to the ‘separation wall’ that back in 2004 declared by a near unanimous vote of 14-1 (U.S. as the lone dissent) that building the wall on occupied Palestinian territory was unlawful, that the wall should be dismantled, and Palestinians compensated for harm endured. There are many other instances concerning such issues as settlements, collective punishment, excessive force, prison conditions, and a variety of abuse of children.

In conclusion, by purporting to punish the Human Rights Council, the Trump presidency, representing the U.S. Government, is much more punishing itself, as well as the peoples of the world. We all benefit from a robust and legitimated institutional framework for the promotion and protection of vital human rights. The claim of an anti-Israeli bias in the HRC, or UN, is bogus, the daily violation of the most basis rights of the Palestinian people is a tragic reality. This is all we need to know.

*

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

According to the Washington Post (6/17/18), Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the frontrunner in Mexico’s July 1 election, “bears more than a passing political resemblance” to US President Donald Trump.

Indeed, they are practically the same person: In the late 1970s, AMLO—as López Obrador is sometimes called—was “taking on Mexico’s state-run oil company, Pemex, setting up protest camps outside its offices to force it to pay compensation to indigenous communities and campesinos whose lands it had polluted.”

Around the same time, in 1975, Donald Trump was busy settling a lawsuit with the US Justice Department that accused the company he owned with his father of refusing to rent or negotiate rentals “because of race and color,” “requir[ing] different rental terms and conditions because of race” and “misrepresent[ing] to blacks that apartments were not available.”

AMLO says that, if elected, he will explore the possibility of granting amnesty to those involved in Mexico’s bloody drug war in order to bring peace to the country. Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed federal prosecutors to

pursue the most severe penalties possible, including mandatory minimum sentences, in his first step toward a return to the war on drugs of the 1980s and 1990s that resulted in long sentences for many minority defendants and packed US prisons.

Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador “bears more than a passing political resemblance to President Trump,” according to the Washington Post editorial page (6/17/18).

As mayor of Mexico City, López Obrador subsidized subway fares and gave stipends to senior citizens and single mothers. As president, Trump and his allies in Congress doled out “close to $5 trillion in tax cuts almost exclusively for the wealthy,” including a corporate tax cut of $1.5 trillion that CEOs say they will keep rather than invest or use to increase workers’ wages, while raising taxes on lower earners by $5.8 billion, taking such measures as eliminating tax deductions for interest on student loans, medical costs and teachers’ out-of-pocket expenses.

Thus, the editorial’s entirely apt and not-at-all hallucinatory title reads in part, “Mexico’s Could-Be President Is a Lot Like Trump.”

The Post’s López Obrador/Trump analogy is a particularly pernicious (and dumb) instance of what Tariq Ali calls “the extreme center,” a dynamic that reduces politics to “a contest to see who can best serve the needs of the market,” and one that has dominated the West since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The extreme center involves two political parties funded by the same sources carrying out very similar policies, including neoliberalism, austerity, mass surveillance and US-led wars. Centrists, extreme or otherwise, treat a departure from these practices as dangerous radicalism.

The one incredibly shallow sense in which Trump and López Obrador are comparable is that both have taken positions that fall out of the extreme centrist status quo. However, Trump challenges the center from the right and AMLO does so from the left. In conflating Trump and López Obrador, the Post emphasizes the sole superficial trait they share and skates over the manifold, substantive differences between the two. For example, the Post’s editorial concludes:

If Mexicans choose Mr. López Obrador, they will be, like the voters who backed Mr. Trump, blowing up the status quo without a reliable sense of what will replace it. The result is likely to be more trouble on both sides of the border.

It’s true that AMLO could mean “trouble,” but for a rather dissimilar constituency than Trump. López Obrador has vowed to reverse Mexican oil policies that led to a $15 billion energy trade deficit with the US in 2017, and is proposing “a sweeping reorientation of the nation’s energy policy with an emphasis on independence from the United States.” This “could slow oil production in Texas and impede deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico by international oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron,” while hampering natural gas sales to Mexico “that are an important source of revenue for American oil and pipeline companies.” Trump, by contrast, has been “trouble” for Yemeni civilians, Puerto Rican hurricane victims, and migrant children, toddlers and babies.

*

Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.

Featured image is from the author.

On June 26th, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 5-4 majority decision in the landmark case of “Trump v. Hawaii”, about President Trump’s commonly misnamed ‘Muslim ban’. This decision probably established a new precedent: that national security is an interest that overrides the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Here is how it does this outrageous thing, which is so shocking for such persons — who are oath-bound to uphold the U.S. Constitution — to do:

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, in full:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The traditionally-called “Establishment Clause” is the part of the First Amendment that says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

On the opening page of its 92-page decision, the Supreme Court says,

“We now decide whether the President had authority under the Act to issue the Proclamation, and whether the entry policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

On the 7th page, it says,

“Plaintiffs [the ‘Hawaii’ side in the case of ‘Trump v. Hawaii’] further claimed that the Proclamation violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because it was motivated not by concerns pertaining to national security but by animus toward Islam.”

Page 26 says,

“The First Amendment provides, in part, that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Our cases recognize that ‘[t]he clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another’.” 

The Court’s decision asserts, first, that Trump’s Muslim ban, of any immigrants from any of the five nations of Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya — all of which 5 nations have Muslim majorities — is not discriminatory on the basis of religion; and that therefore no religious denomination is being officially preferred over another, in that ban or “Proclamation.”

Second, here is how the decision asserts — at least provisionally, and (as will be shown) likely permanently — that national security overrides the Establishment Clause (and therefore overrides the Constitution itself): On page 29, it says,

“plaintiffs seek to invalidate a national security directive. … Their claim accordingly raises a number of delicate issues regarding the scope of the constitutional right [right to “the free exercise thereof”] and the manner of proof. The Proclamation, moreover, is facially neutral toward religion. Plaintiffs therefore ask the Court to probe the sincerity of the stated justifications for the policy.”

The Court’s decision then entirely ignores — and never even so much as touches upon — the “sincerity” matter, at all, or in any form. Therefore, the majority decision is implicitly asserting that the sincerity of the rationale that Trump gave for his “Proclamation” (his so-called ‘Muslim ban’) is immaterial to this case, not relevant to determining whether or not the Proclamation “officially” prefers any religion over any other. The 5-member majority are, in effect, asserting that, by the term “officially,” is meant “explicitly,” or publicly admitted. For example (in another hotly-debated historical instance): If Adolf Hitler did not publicly admit that his intention was to exterminate every Jew on Earth, then (according to this reasoning from those five jurists) he was not responsible for the Holocaust (the attempt by his followers to exterminate Jews, within each of those officials’ own sphere of authority, as granted to them by Hitler). Those five jurists are saying that, since Trump never publicly admitted that he was a bigoted person and never explicitly asserted that religion had anything to do with his Proclamation, Trump’s Proclamation simply did not violate the Establishment Clause. That’s the end of the story — Hawaii’s assertion that Trump’s publicly declared reason needs to be challenged on the basis of its sincerity is simply, and peremptorily, rejected — to “ask the Court to probe the sincerity of the stated justifications for the policy” is placed, by them, simply out-of-bounds.

However, prosecution for any crime requires any court to consider what the motivations of any possible defendant for that crime were in the given matter. To obtain a criminal conviction, the prosecution must establish the presence of two elements at the time of the alleged crime — namely, actus reus (“guilty act”) and mens rea (“guilty mind”); but these five members of the U.S. Supreme Court effectively rule out-of-bounds the very possibility that a U.S. President (or, specifically, this U.S. President) might, on any occasion (but specifically, this occasion), have been “insincere” (or had “a guilty mind” — guilty of actually having violated the First Amendment, in this case). So: these five jurists proved their ownguilty minds — and they thereby impose upon the entire nation this nullification of our nation’s Constitution, simply casting aside both executive accountability and the Constitution’s supreme legal authority in our land. Is that treasonous? It certainly violates their oaths-of-office. But is it treasonous?

It is, in any event, the way that these 5 judges dismissed any consideration of Trump’s motive for his ‘Muslim ban’ — this particular “entry policy” issued by the Proclamation. However, what about the question itself, of “whether the entry policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.” Well, if you aren’t being allowed to question what its motive was, then you aren’t being allowed to question the Constitutionality of the ban, either.

The Court’s mega-scandalous decision closes:

The Government has set forth a sufficient national security justification to survive rational basis review. We express no view on the soundness of the policy. We simply hold today that plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their constitutional claim. 

[Section] V 

Because plaintiffs have not shown that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims, we reverse the grant of the preliminary injunction as an abuse of discretion. Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 

U. S. 7, 32 (2008). The case now returns to the lower courts for such further proceedings as may be appropriate. 

They declare (but are they sincere about this?) that “We express no view on the soundness of the policy.” They bounce the matter back down to “the lower courts,” without even so much as having considered the mens rea issue — which was central to the case before them. The President’s having avoided admitting the fact that bigotry was involved in his Proclamation, has been accepted as final on the matter, for these five jurists. But would it be final if Hawaii were to continue in “the lower courts” to challenge the Proclamation? According to CNBC’s news-report about the decision:

“Neal Katyal, attorney for the challengers, said in a statement. ‘Now that the Court has upheld it, it is up to Congress to do its job and reverse President Trump’s unilateral and unwise travel ban’.”

Obviously, Ketyal won’t take the matter back down to the lower court in the case. Perhaps his challenge to the ban had actually been only political, to embarrass Republicans, in order that the Democratic Party can continue to holier-than-thou moralize their supposed superiority above the bigotry and/or sheer stupidity, of the President’s (and Republican-supported) “ban.”

Here is the actual type of “establishment of religion” that I believe that Trump is here imposing (and which the five far-right jurists today are trying to help him to impose upon the nation) — it’s more against Shiite Muslims than against Sunnis — who constitute the vast majority of Muslims and virtually the entirety of the ones who have perpetrated terrorism anywhere other than in Israel (and this President is not supposed to be the President of Israel):

This case is not, as Hawaii (Ketyal) was asserting, a Trumpian bigotry against Islam. Only five nations were included in the ban, and so it applies to only a small percentage of the world’s Muslims. Though the Court accepted the President’s flimsy assertion that these, and only these, nations pose such a national-security threat to the United States as to warrant a total immigration-ban, the actual evidence regarding Islamic terrorism in the United States has been overwhelming that virtually only fundamentalist Sunnis have perpetrated it; no Shiites have. With the lone exception of Somalia, none of these five banned nations is Sunni majority and Sunni controlled — they’re all either Shiite majority or Shiite-dominated, or (in the case of Libya) failed states without any nationwide government because of the U.S.-and-allied invasion in 2011. (And so, Trump is banning refugees from that country which his Democratic predecessor Obama had destroyed — let them escape to Europe instead!) The U.S. Deep State has been trying since 1949 to overthrow Syria’s Government and replace it with one that would be controlled by the fundamentalist-Sunni Saud family who own Saudi Arabia and are allied with the U.S. aristocracy (America’s “Deep State”). Yemen right now is being bombed to smithereens by the U.S.-Saudi-UAE alliance, and this operation is supporting, instead of opposing, fundamentalist Sunnis (such as ISIS in Yemen, and Al Qaeda in Yemen, neither of which group of jihadists is in the Shiite region of Yemen, which we’re bombing and destroying, while we’re claiming that this is ‘anti-terrorist’). The actual facts indicate that any “Muslim ban” should be focused against Saudi Arabia — and this ban would be authentically to protect against terrorism, not to disadvantage any particular religion — but Trump instead sold the Sauds $350 billion of U.S.-made weapons. That global all-time-record high U.S. military sale to the Sauds gives them far more clout over the U.S. Government than the U.S. Government has over them. No wonder why the U.S. Government protects them for 9/11, etc.

Regarding Somalia, the only article online about “Somalia-United States Relations” is at Wikipedia and doesn’t indicate any terrorist incidents in the U.S. as having been at all Somali. Furthermore, Wikipedia’s article “Foreign Relations of Somalia” goes country-by-country, but doesn’t indicate anywhere any link to terrorism, against any country, at all.

However, notwithstanding the actual facts in this case, these five far-right jurists just trashed the U.S. Constitution, and thereby allowed this President’s bigoted and/or stupid Proclamation, which possesses no authentic national-security justification whatsoever, to become imposed, regardless even of whether it is sincere, or comports with the Establishment Clause. The precedent here is carte-blanche to this President and to any of his successors. A U.S. President’s will, supersedes the U.S. Constitution, if a ‘national security’ excuse — no matter how flimsy or even counterfactual — is being asserted. His/her sincerity — and even the facts as opposed to the mere allegations from a President — cannot be challenged in U.S. courts.

Hawaii’s (Ketyal’s) challenge, under the Establishment Clause, was sloppy, presuming as it did, that Trump is “anti-Musim” instead of anti-Shiite, which seems to be more like the reality. But, in any event, both the challenge, and the way that the U.S. Supreme Court handled it, were incompetent, at best. This pathetic Court decision establishes not only the precedent for banning consideration in U.S. courts of whether a sitting President may effectively be challenged as to his sincerity on a given matter, but also precedent for treating “national security” as being more important than the U.S. Constitution itself. If Trump had intelligently formulated his ban on the basis of the relevant data, then maybe these five jurists could have put together some sort of intelligent case to uphold his ban. But, instead, those jurists made a mess of everything, and a zero of the U.S. Constitution that they are duty-bound to uphold.

No lower court can make good on the harm that those jurists — Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kennedy — did and do. Mark Joseph Stern’s article at Slate opened with an accurate summary of it:

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court affirmed and expanded the president’s power to exclude entire classes of immigrants from the country. Its 5–4 decision in Trump v. Hawaii is a historic triumph for Donald Trump and a crushing blow to immigration activists, who had hoped the courts might rein in the president’s sweeping order. Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s appointee to the court, cast the decisive fifth vote to uphold the ban. While Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion for the court strives to rise above politics, Hawaii will almost certainly be remembered as a deeply partisan opinion in which five Republican appointees willfully ignored the flagrant bigotry of a Republican president.

*

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.

By the time Donald J. Trump threw in the towel, who among us hadn’t seen or heard the chilling videos in which U.S. border officials shamelessly grabbed uncomprehending children and toddlers from their pleading mothers and fathers? Some were told they were being taken to bathe or shower by people with little sense of the resonances of history. They were, of course, creating scenes that couldn’t help but bring to mind those moments when Jews, brought to Nazi concentration camps, were told that they were being sent to take “showers,” only to be murdered en masse in the gas chambers. Some of those children didn’t even realize that they had missed the chance to say goodbye to their mothers or fathers. Those weeping toddlers, breast-deprived infants, and distressed teens were just the most recent signs of the Trump administration’s war against decency, compassion, and justice.

Because the victims were children, however, it was easy to ignore one reality: new as all this may have seemed, it actually wasn’t. Dehumanized, traumatized, and scared, those children — their predicament — shocked many Americans who insisted, along with former First Lady Laura Bush, that this was truly un-American. As she wrote in the Washington Post:

“Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war. We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents — and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.”

Her essay essentially asked one question: Who have we become? Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, tweeting out a picture of the Birkenau concentration camp over the words “Other governments have separated women and children,” suggested an answer: we were planting the seeds that could make us the new Nazi Germany.

Other governments have separated mothers and children pic.twitter.com/tvlBkGjT0h

— Gen Michael Hayden (@GenMhayden) June 16, 2018

But let me assure you, much of what we saw in these last weeks with those children had its origins in policies and “laws” so much closer to home than Germany three-quarters of a century ago. If you wanted to see where their ravaging really began, you needed to look elsewhere (which, surprisingly enough, no one has) — specifically, to those who created the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility. From its inception beyond the reach of American courts or, in any normal sense, justice, this prison camp set the stage structurally, institutionally, and legally for what we’ve just been witnessing at the border.

Kenneling Children

The fingerprints of those who created and sustained that offshore island prison for war-on-terror detainees were all over that policy. Not surprisingly, White House Chief of Staff and retired General John Kelly, former head of SOUTHCOM, the U.S. military combatant command that oversees Guantánamo, was the first official in the Trump administration to publicly float the idea of such a separation policy on the border. In March 2017, answering a question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the separation of children from their mothers, he said,

“I would do almost anything to deter the people from Central America” from making the journey here.

Just such separations, of course, became the well-publicized essence of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border and, until the president’s executive order issued last week, the numbers of children affected were mounting exponentially — more than 2,000 of them in the previous six weeks, some still in diapers. (And keep in mind that there already were 11,000 migrant children in U.S. custody at that point.)

Apprehended at the border, the children were taken to processing facilities, separated from their parents thanks to a mix of Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Justice policy directives, and then locked up. From the moment they arrived at those facilities, the echoes of Guantánamo were obvious (at least for those of us who had long followed developments there over the years). First, there were the most visible signs; above all, the children being placed in wire cages that, as journalists and others who saw them attested, looked more like holding cells for animals at a zoo or dogs at a kennel than for humans, no less children. This was, of course, exactly how the first Gitmo detainees were held back in 2002 as that prison was being built.

President Trump foreshadowed the treatment to come.

“These aren’t people,” he said in May, referring to undocumented migrants crossing the border, “these are animals.”

To make the children’s caged existence worse still, the lights were kept on around the clock and the children subjected to interruptions all night, recalling the sleep deprivation and constant light used as a matter of policy on detainees at Guantánamo Bay. In addition, caregivers were not allowed to touch the children. Even shelter workers were forbidden to do so, which meant adults were not able to console them either. And bad as any of this sounded, such conditions were but a prelude to a much deeper tale of abuse at government hands.

As at Guantánamo, those children were also being subjected to a regime of intentional abuse. The cruel and inhuman treatment began, of course, with the trauma of separation from their parents and often from their siblings as well, since children of different genders were sent to different facilities (or at least different parts of the same facility). Such policies, according to pediatrician and Columbia professor Dr. Irwin Redlener, a leading authority on public policy and children in harm’s way, amount to “child abuse by the government.” In other words, it all added up to a new form of torture, this time visited upon children.

Asking for Congress and the White House to end the policy of separation, members of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry weighed in on the harm that the trauma of forced separation can cause:

“Separating these children from their families in times of stress creates unnecessary and high-risk trauma, at the very time they need care and support the most.”

In addition,

the “children who experience sudden separation from one or both parents, especially under frightening, unpredictable, and chaotic circumstances, are at higher risk for developing illnesses such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other trauma-induced reactions.” (Ironically, one of the few characteristics Justice Department lawyers in George W. Bush’s administration acknowledged would constitute torture was “prolonged mental harm.” In their words, for severe pain or suffering to amount to torture would require that “the acts giving rise to the harm must cause some lasting, though not necessarily permanent, damage.”)

Name me the parent who doesn’t think that his or her child would suffer lasting harm if separated from his or her closest attachments. Yet, in a press briefing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen bluntly insisted that

“claiming these children and their parents are treated inhumanely is not true.”

It’s worth mentioning, by the way, that the parents of the children were being tortured, too, not knowing where their children were being sent or held and when (or even if) they would ever see them again.

Perversely, administration spokespersons seemed to think that a trade-off had occurred: the loss of basic human rights for at least the pretense of pleasant cosmetic props. Some of the children at least were given toys and games. Nielsen even bragged that Trump administration officials had “high standards. We give them meals, we give them education, we give them medical care. There is videos, there is TVs.”

This, too, should have been a reminder of Guantánamo logic. The more the prisoners there were deprived of in terms of legal and human rights, the more the Bush administration boasted about the creature comforts offered to them, like movies, halal food, and even comfortable chairs (while they were being force-fed) — as if the presence of toys could counteract the wrenching separation from a parent (or a comfortable chair, force-feeding).

Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, caught the hypocrisy of it all, reporting that the children she saw were surrounded by “toys, books and crayons,” but banging the floor and crying out in pain.

Creating Gitmos

Beyond the physical and emotional deprivations, there were the legal ones. The stay of those children was indefinite, the defining characteristic of Gitmo. Before the Trump separation policy started, children, as minors whose parents were awaiting decisions on immigration status, could only be held by the government for 20 days. With “zero tolerance,” their saga suddenly became interminable.

Legally, like their parents, they were also reclassified. These were no longer the children of migrants or asylum seekers in immigration court, for whom there were strict policies and time limits on detention. They were now the children of alleged criminals, having essentially been rendered orphans. At Guantánamo, changing legal categories in a similar fashion — that is, defining the prisoners’ detentions as military, not criminal in nature — accomplished the same trick, avoiding the application of due process and rights for the detainees.

Which brings up yet another fundamental parallel between Gitmo’s prisoners and the children’s Gitmo at the border. Those being held were described in both places using the same crucial term: detainee. Guantánamo branded this word forever as beyond the bounds of normal legality because the Bush administration officials who set up that system wanted to ensure that the normal legal protections of both national and international law would not be extended to those captured and held there. Guantánamo, the government insisted, was not a prison. It was merely a “detention center.” So many years later, it still is, while those incarcerated there have often served “sentences” of a decade and more, even though only a handful of them were ever actually sentenced by a court of any sort. In 2018, that same label was taken from those accused of being battlefield enemies and slapped on the children of asylum seekers.

As with Guantánamo, lawyers who wanted to represent the parents, whose fates were to determine those of their separated children, found themselves impeded in their access to the detained adults. No one familiar with Gitmo could have missed the parallel. Lawyers seeking to provide assistance to war-on-terror detainees were kept out of Guantánamo for more than two years after it opened.

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently filed suit claiming that, at two detention centers, authorities had limited the access of those undocumented immigrants to lawyers, violating due process. To make matters worse, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s Department of Justice recently decided not to renew two programs that offered legal aid lawyers to undocumented immigrants facing deportation. Meanwhile, that department has instituted a new policy in which pro-bono lawyers (those from NGO groups seeking to represent the detainees) now have to go through a certification process before taking them on at their own expense.

The media has been similarly restricted. Photographs of the detention “camps” for those children were left to the government alone to provide. So, too, when Guantánamo opened, visiting journalists were ordered to leave their cameras behind. These restrictions stayed in place as official policy, intensified by none other than John Kelly. (Ironically, the Pentagon itself sent out the iconic early 2002 images of kneeling, shackled, orange-jump-suited detainees.)

For 16 years now, opponents of the U.S. detention center on the island of Cuba have understandably warned that its remarkable disregard for the rule of law would inevitably creep into America’s institutions. For the most part, their worries centered on the federal court system and the possibility that defendants there might someday lose basic rights. Now, we know that Guantánamo found a future in those detention camps on our southern border. Don’t think it will be the last place that the influence of that infamous prison will pop up.

While this moment of crisis may have passed, consider this piece, at best, a requiem for a tragedy that has barely ended (if it has) — and also a warning. The legacy of Guantánamo continues to haunt our laws, our imaginations, and our way of life. It’s time to do what we have failed to do for so long now: push back hard on the truly un-American policies spawned by that prison and apparent in so much else of Donald Trump’s America. We need to do so now, before the way of life we once knew is largely erased. It’s time to insist on the right to bring up our children in an America of compassion, law, and respect for the rights of all, not in one whose leaders are intent on robbing them — and so many other children — of their future.

*

Karen J. Greenberg, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law (CNS) and the author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State. She also wrote The Least Worst Place: Guantánamo’s First 100 Days. The summer interns at CNS contributed research for this article.

Israeli forces have killed 18 Palestinian children in 2018 alone – but after a complaint to the Corporation from a pro-Israel activist, the BBC have taken the extraordinary decision to reprimand their Senior Political Pundit Andrew Marr for exposing such horrific child executions by Israeli forces.

Following the beginning of the ‘March of Return’ on 30th March this year – an annual Palestinian protest which marks the commemoration of Land Day when Israeli forces killed 6 Palestinian children in 1976 for protesting the confiscation of their land – Israeli forces began firing live ammunition at protestors, ultimately resulting in the deaths of 123 Palestinians, including numerous children.

Subsequently, following reports emerging of the horrific killings by Israeli forces, the BBC’s Senior Political pundit Andrew Marr made brief comments on his self-titled Sunday morning show that compared the killing of innocent children by Israeli forces to the Syrian regime’s human rights abuses against innocent children.

During the newspaper review section of the show where guests were discussing the ongoing crisis in Syria and reports of an alleged chemical weapons attack, Andrew Marr said:

“And the Middle East is aflame again. I mean there’s lots of Palestinian kids being killed further south as well by the Israeli forces.“

You can watch the discussion and Andrew Marr’s comments below [beginning 09:55]:

However, following Marr’s comments, anti-Semitism campaigner Jonathan Sacerdoti made a complaint to the BBC claiming that the host was simply inventing false accusations against the Israeli forces, stating in his complaint that:

“When talking about a story on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Andrew Marr for some reason decided to talk about Israel (which was unrelated anyway). He stated there’s a lot of Palestinian kids being killed further south by Israeli forces.

This is completely incorrect and is made up. This was irrelevant to the conversation on Syria… and also actually completely false.”

However, between the start of the 2018 and the broadcasting of the show on April 8th, at least 5 Palestinian children had been gunned down by Israeli forces, including three child murders in quick succession between March 30th and April 6th.

However, despite the facts showing that Israeli forces had indeed killed numerous children as Marr had briefly mentioned, the BBC have decided to uphold Sacerdoti’s complaint, choosing instead to reprimand Andrew Marr.

The BBC’s Head of Executive Complaints, Fraser Steel, wrote to Mr Sacerdoti saying:

“The BBC’s guidelines require that output is “well sourced” and “based on sound evidence”.

In the absence of any evidence to support the reference to “lots” of children being killed at the time of transmission, it seems to us to have risked misleading audiences on a material point.

‘We therefore propose to uphold this part of your complaint.”

With their decision, the BBC has essentially declared that the murder of 5 innocent children by Israeli state forces is ‘not a lot’.

The unprecedented decision by the Corporation will also surely also act as a reminder to other BBC pundits that any criticism – however truthful it may be – of Israel’s policy of shooting dead unarmed protestors, is completely off-limits.

Call me old fashioned, but I’d argue that the killing of just one innocent child should be considered as too many.

More than 13,000 refugees and migrants, including pregnant women and children, have been force-marched into the Sahara desert by Algerian security forces over the past 14 months, where many of them have died from hunger and exposure.

The shocking revelation by the Associated Press was substantiated by videos showing hundreds of migrants stumbling through a sand storm and others being driven in massive convoys of overcrowded trucks to be dumped at Algeria’s southern border with Niger and forced into the desert at gunpoint.

As the AP itself makes clear, the murderous policy of the Algerian government is being carried out at the behest of the countries of the European Union, which have increasingly sought to induce North African regimes to act as their border guards, impeding the flow of migrants by means of intimidation, violence and death.

The refugees are being forced by Algerian security forces into the Sahara without food or water and, in many cases, after being robbed of their money and cellphones. They are pointed in the direction of the nearest settlement in Niger, over nine miles away, across empty sands where the temperature rises as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

The migrants told AP of

“being rounded up hundreds at a time, crammed into open trucks headed southward for six to eight hours to what is known as Point Zero, then dropped in the desert and pointed in the direction of Niger. They are told to walk, sometimes at gunpoint.”

Two dozen different migrants who survived the crossing told the news agency that in their groups a number were unable to go on and died in the desert.

“Women were lying dead, men … Other people got missing in the desert because they didn’t know the way,” said Janet Kamara of Liberia, who was pregnant when she was forced across the border. “Everybody was just on their own.”

Kamara’s baby died at birth and she was forced to bury him in a shallow grave in the desert.

“I lost my son, my child,” she said.

While the world’s media has focused on the dangerous crossing from northern Africa to southern Europe having turned the Mediterranean into a watery graveyard for countless thousands, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), for every refugee who drowns in the sea, two more succumb to the relentless heat and harsh conditions of the Sahara. It estimates that the death toll in the desert exceeds 30,000 just since 2014.

The migrants expelled by Algeria come from countries throughout sub-Saharan Africa, including Niger, Mali, Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Liberia and others.

“They come by the thousands … I’ve never seen anything like it,” Alhoussan Adouwal, an IOM official in Assamaka, Niger told AP. “It’s a catastrophe.”

A spokesperson for the European Union told AP that the EU is aware of what Algeria is doing with refugees and migrants, but that its view is that “sovereign countries” can carry out such expulsions so long as they comply with international law.

The revelations about the horrors inflicted upon refugees in the Sahara desert come on the eve of a summit meeting of EU member states on Thursday to discuss the issue of immigration.

On the eve of the summit, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has been urging EU member states to put more money into an Africa trust fund with an eye toward financing the construction of “migrant screening” camps in North Africa. At the top of the EU summit agenda is expected to be a proposal for holding asylum seekers at such camps in countries that include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Niger and Tunisia.

In the run-up to the summit, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the right-wing, anti-immigrant Lega party and Italy’s new interior minister, flew to Tripoli on Monday to praise the regime for its “excellent work” in “rescuing” nearly 1,000 people on Sunday after the Libyan Coast Guard intercepted them. The purpose of the coast guard, which is financed, trained and to some degree directed by Italy and other European powers, is not to rescue refugees trying to reach Europe, but rather to drag them back to Libya. There they face imprisonment in camps where torture and executions are commonplace and even being sold into slavery.

Salvini said that Italy would work with the UN-recognized regime, which controls little outside of Tripoli, to stop a “full-on invasion” of Libyan waters by aid groups seeking to rescue refugees at sea. He also called for migrant detention centers to be placed at Libya’s southern border in the Sahara desert.

Salvini has become infamous for refusing to allow rescue ships carrying refugees to dock at Italian ports. He ordered the Aquarius carrying over 600 refugees, including pregnant women and children, turned back earlier this month, forcing it to make a dangerous voyage to Spain. Presently, there are two ships in limbo in the Mediterranean carrying hundreds of refugees, a boat operated by German aid group Mission Lifeline with 234 aboard, and the Danish-flagged Alexander Maersk cargo ship with 100. In a statement laying bare the depth of the racism and reaction of the new Italian government, Salvini referred to the refugees as “human meat.”

Meanwhile the new PSOE government in Spain, which allowed the Aquarius to dock and condemned the Italian response, dispatched its own interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to Morocco with much the same mission as Salvini’s in Libya, securing cooperation for immigrant detention camps.

Spain’s new development minister, Jose Luis Abalos, told Cadena Ser radio that, while Spain is taking “a respectful humanitarian approach” toward the refugees’ plight, it had no intention of becoming “Europe’s maritime rescue organization.”

Human rights groups have warned that refugees will be subject to abuse and denied asylum rights if kept in camps in Libya, Egypt and other North African countries with records of massive human rights abuses. EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who is playing a central role in plans for setting up these centers, responded to these concerns last week, declaring,

“I want to be very clear on that. I’m against a Guantanamo Bay for migrants.”

He was referring to the Guantanamo Bay Naval base prison camp where those rounded up in the US “war on terror” were subjected to systematic torture.

In Europe, as in the US—where President Donald Trump has expressed his own desire to throw Central American refugees back into the desert without any asylum proceedings—the number of refugees and migrants has actually fallen steadily, even as the political hysteria whipped up by right-wing governments and politicians has sharply escalated.

According to the UN refugee agency, the number of migrants arriving in Europe is on track to reach just half the number for last year, and less than a quarter the number in 2016.

The “immigration crisis,” both in Europe and America, is a noxious political invention, aimed at dividing the working class and scapegoating the most oppressed layers of the population and the victims of imperialist war and oppression for the continuously worsening conditions created by capitalism.

*

Featured image is from Defend Democracy Press.

Like clockwork, every Sunday night I talk to my parents (by way of explanation, I live in New York, they reside in Rancho Mirage, California—a distance that makes in-person discussions somewhat difficult to manage). After catching up on family news, inevitably our conversation devolves into politics. I had (infamously, in my mom’s view) predicted Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shortly after the Democratic National Convention in July of that year, citing Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings as a candidate more than Trump’s positives. My mom, a Clinton supporter, was aghast that I could side with such a fundamentally flawed character as Trump. In the time Trump has held office, Mom has unfailingly sought to remind me of the president’s obvious (in her mind) failings as a leader and a human being. Our last conversation was pretty much along the same lines—wishing my dad a happy Father’s Day, talking about my niece’s graduation from high school and her future college prospects, the U.S. Open, and—inevitably—Trump.

Normally, I laugh my way through this part of the conversation. This time, however, we were discussing the ongoing policy of separating children from the parents of immigrants who illegally cross into U.S. territory. While I am far more liberal on immigration policy than President Trump, I respect the fact that he was elected as the chief executive and as such is responsible for setting policy. I was perturbed at Congress for failing to jump at the president’s offer to clear the way for more than a million immigrants to legalize their status in exchange for providing him with the funds needed to build a border wall, which was the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. However, like my mom, I was (and am) aghast at what is happening along the U.S.-Mexico border today—between mid-April and the end of May of this year, 1,995 children have been physically separated from their parents at the border. Hundreds more have been taken away since then.

Domestic politics is not my comfort zone—I’ll take weapons of mass destruction and arms control issues over health care and tax policy any day of the week. After I articulated my disdain for the current policy, however, my mom challenged me.

“You write about all these other issues,” she said. “Why don’t you write about this one?”

I threw out the standard excuse—not my area of expertise. Mom did not relent, pressing me harder. I finally came up with the weakest answer I could possibly give—it wouldn’t make any difference, and worse, it could lead to a backlash that might hurt my chances at getting picked up by conservative publishers in the age of Trump. The bottom line, I said, mattered. Mom relented.

After we hung up I reflected on my answer, and found it wanting. I tuned in to the Sunday news shows, listening to commentators from both sides of the political aisle address the issue. I looked at the imagery of children sitting in cages, put there by sworn American law enforcement officers. And I listened to the sounds of children crying as they were taken away from their parents, begging the officers involved to let them stay. I’m a rule-of-law kind of person, and I believe that all nations—not just the United States—have a sovereign duty and responsibility to their citizens when it comes to securing their borders. In my view, America’s immigration policy—which directly impacts the issue of border security—is fundamentally broken, and I support the efforts of those, Democrat and Republican alike, who are working to resolve this issue.

Children in immigration detention facilities are required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, according to the Washington Post. (Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol)

I’m also a parent, and someone who supports the right of all human beings to live a life free of oppression. In my opinion, what America was—and is—doing to the children of immigrants detained at the border represented the most vile, base form of oppression, if for no other reason than it targets the most innocent and defenseless for the sole purpose of making a political point (i.e., funding for Trump’s vaunted border wall.) Moreover, it awoke within me memories of an experience from my past involving incarcerated children, one in which I had been called upon to weigh the horrors of the images and sounds of their suffering with what I deemed to be a “larger purpose” of stopping a war. My mom’s insistence that I write something that addressed the human tragedy transpiring on America’s border with Mexico prompted me to reflect on that decision, and the larger question of whether the suffering of children can be condoned under any circumstance.

In March 2002, the on-line magazine Salon ran an interview with me conducted by Asla Aydintasbas. Midway through the interview, Aydintasbas asked about defining Iraq beyond simply Saddam Hussein, its former ruler. In my answer, I spoke about what I had seen during my seven years as a United Nations inspector—the institutions that made Iraq and the people who ran them. The point I tried to make was that Iraq was more than just one man, both in terms of the good, the bad, and the ugly. In underscoring the “ugly” aspect of what I had witnessed, I told Aydintasbas that

“I’ve been to the children’s prison at Amn al-Amm [the Directorate for General Security headquarters in downtown Baghdad]. It was horrific; these are kids in jail under horrific conditions, sweltering because of the political crimes of their parents. Dad speaks out about Saddam, Mom goes to the women’s prison, the kids go to the children’s prison. And do you know what they do to those kids? I don’t even want to get to that.”

To me, it was a throwaway moment in one of a long series of interviews I was giving at the time to draw attention to what I believed to be the real threat of an American invasion of Iraq. Aydintasbas pushed me several times to consider the horrific nature of Saddam’s rule as justification for regime change. I wouldn’t buy it:

“I just cannot accept the argument that we have to intervene to remove Saddam Hussein on moral grounds.”

I pointed out that an estimated 1.5 million Iraqis had died due to economic sanctions imposed on Iraq linked to its disarmament obligation.

“We have killed almost six times as many Iraqis trying to eliminate weapons of mass destruction programs than weapons of mass destruction have killed in the entire 20th century—that’s a moral issue to me.”

The issue at hand was an incident that occurred during an inspection I led in Iraq on Jan. 11, 1998, as a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM. We were investigating a sensitive piece of U.S.-sourced intelligence which claimed Iraq had conducted experiments using biological agents on live human subjects in the summer of 1995. The information was dated but contained enough specifics to investigate—the prisoners were taken from specific prisons by agents of the Amn al-Amm to remote locations in the desert where the experiments were conducted. UNSCOM was under a lot of pressure from the United States to come up with a smoking gun that proved Iraq was in violation of its obligation to disarm, and the American intelligence was infused with enough troubling data to make it appear credible and give inspectors something to search for during an inspection. After consulting with the White House, UNSCOM ordered me to carry out an inspection. I organized the inspection team into two elements—one would inspect the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the other would visit the Amn al-Amm.

Given the sensitivity of entering the Amn al-Amm, which served as the headquarters of Saddam’s secret police, I put myself in charge of the group inspecting that site. Our presence at the main gate created near panic on the part of the Iraqis—they had not expected us to attempt such a brazen inspection of one of their most sensitive facilities. Per existing inspection protocols, I was eventually allowed to enter along with a team of three inspectors. Our goal was the office of the director, where I would lead a detailed and focused search for any documents that might be related to the human experiments alleged to have been conducted in 1995. I split the team in half to facilitate our survey of the site. My element proceeded to inspect parking garages, residential complexes for the officers and families of the Amn al-Amm, armories and, in the basement of an office building, what could only be described as a children’s prison.

The inspector accompanying me had called me over to a series of ground-level windows looking in on the basement of the structure. Through the barred windows I could see dozens of children, boys and girls of varying ages. The stench was awful—it was obvious the rooms they were crammed into had open latrines and no access to water. When the children saw our faces, a cry went up inside the room, with the ones closest to the windows making gestures at their mouths as if they were hungry and wanted to eat. The Iraqi official accompanying me hurried up to my side. “This has nothing to do with your mandate, Mr. Ritter. Move on.”

My teammate and I headed back to our parked vehicle, but instead of getting inside and driving off, I opened the back of the white U.N. Nissan Patrol SUV and grabbed as many two-liter water bottles and Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) packets from our contingency supply as I could carry, instructing my teammate to do the same. I pushed past the Iraqi official, and made my way back to the windows, where we handed the water and food into the children inside. Within seconds there were armed Amn al-Amm agents standing next to us, pushing themselves between us and the children in the basement, whose arms extended through the window. “That’s enough, Mr. Ritter,” the Iraqi official said. “It’s time to go.”

The look in his eyes, and in those of the armed agents, left little doubt he was deadly serious. I threw the remaining bottles and packets at the window, hoping the kids inside would be able to catch them, but watched in frustration as the Amn al-Amm agents kicked them away. As we left, the agents made their way into the building, where there was no doubt in my mind that they would confiscate the water and food we had handed to the kids. There was nothing either my teammate or I could do except hope the kids would drink and eat as much as they could in the little time they had.

We eventually found the office we were searching for and, given the sensitivity of the location, agreed to meet with the senior Iraqi leadership, including the deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, later that evening to discuss how best to proceed with a document search. As soon as we exited the facility, the Iraqis ceased all cooperation with the team, labeling me a CIA spy and agent provocateur. UNSCOM found itself in a fight for its survival, and I was at the center of the storm. My every move was being tracked by foreign governments and the press, none of whom were looking out for either my or UNSCOM’s best interests. I was muzzled by my leadership, prohibited from saying anything to anybody while negotiations took place to get inspections back on track. Moreover, even if I had been allowed to speak, the children’s prison would have been the last thing I would have brought up. I had been accused by Iraq of being a spy. My only defense against such a charge was to adhere to the four corners of my mandate as an inspector and exclusively focus on the mandate of disarmament we had been given by the U.N. Security Council.

In August of 1998 I resigned from UNSCOM, protesting the failure of the U.S. to support the work of the inspectors. In September 1998 I testified before Congress about weapons inspections in Iraq, and in early 1999 I wrote a book, “Endgame,” which focused on the Iraq crisis from the perspective of its disarmament obligation. I made scores of public appearances, speaking on the topic of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and wrote numerous articles and opinion pieces on the subject. I never once raised the topic of the Amn al-Amm children’s prison, as it simply was outside the scope of my primary focus, which was at the time trying to prevent a war with Iraq being fought over the false pretense of a retained Iraqi weapons of mass destruction capability. In fact, my interview with Aydintasbas was the first time I had publicly discussed the incident of the children’s prison.

In September 2002, to head off what I deemed to be a rush to war by the George W. Bush administration, I returned to Iraq, where I addressed the Iraqi Parliament and met with senior Iraqi government officials in an effort to convince them to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return to work and, in doing so, undercut the case America was making for an invasion. In the aftermath of this visit (which proved successful—shortly after I departed Iraq, Saddam announced that he would allow U.N. weapons inspections to resume), I was interviewed by several media outlets about what I was trying to accomplish. One of these interviews, conducted by Massimo Calabresi, appeared in Time magazine. In it, Calabresi asked me to describe what I had seen at the children’s prison in Iraq.

“The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in January 1998,” I replied. “It appeared to be a prison for children—toddlers up to pre-adolescents—whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene.”

I then reverted to inspector mode, trying to get the discussion back on topic, which for me was the issue of Iraq’s disarmament obligation.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I’m waging peace.”

As I had explained early in the interview, “waging peace” was about facilitating “a debate here in the United States on America’s policy toward Iraq, a debate that’s been sadly lacking. We’re facing a critical moment in American history and I believe this is something that has to be more thoroughly looked at.” I argued that

“no one has backed up any allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability with anything that remotely resembles substantive fact.”

Moreover, as I pointed out to Calabresi, the U.S. had “tremendous capabilities to detect any effort by Iraq to obtain prohibited capability. The fact that no one has shown that he has acquired that capability doesn’t necessarily translate into incompetence on the part of the intelligence community. It may mean that he hasn’t done anything.” The Bush administration was arguing that Iraq had a WMD capability; I was challenging that assertion. Children’s prison’s, in my opinion, weren’t part of that debate.

Some people took umbrage at the notion. This included Bill Keller (image on the left), the former managing editor of The New York Times, who, on December 14, 2002, while serving as a senior writer and op-ed columnist for the Gray Lady, wrote an editorial titled “The Selective Conscience,” in which he called me out by name for my stance. He articulated it as representing the “apotheosis” of the “high-minded quandary” confronting human rights proponents when dealing with the issue of a possible war with Iraq.

To his credit, Keller fairly articulated my position:

“Officially, formally, Saddam’s depravity is not relevant to the question of whether America will lead a military effort to oust him. The question of invasion—officially, formally—is all about ridding Iraq of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the means to deliver them.”

However, according to Keller,

“the barbarity of the regime is subtext to everything,” noting that “Saddam’s cruelties also touch a little on two central questions about any exercise against Iraq: What’s the evidence that Saddam is a real threat? (Any leader who encourages the torture of children as a mechanism of control is probably never going to become a good neighbor.) How will Iraqis react to an invasion? (Many of them with an outpouring of relief, wouldn’t you think?)”

In the end Keller took a position on Iraq that supported the notion that the issue of weapons of mass destruction trumped the issue of human rights when it came to a decision on whether to go to war.

“The view I’ve expressed in this space,” he wrote,“is that Saddam’s appetite for a nuclear weapon makes him a grave danger, that containment is ultimately a sucker’s game, and that Mr. Bush is right to prepare for war—purposefully but patiently, hoping it will be unnecessary, and aiming to act as part of an aggrieved world rather than a posse of one. To my mind the sadistic practices of the Iraqi police state, and the more genocidal impulses—now successfully held in check by American and British air patrols—may be ample cause to indict Saddam as a war criminal, but they are not in themselves enough to launch an invasion.”

While inspectors did, in fact, return to Iraq, their work was not enough to forestall President Bush’s desire for war—in March 2003 a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power. America’s subsequent 15-year experiment in trying to fashion a stable replacement for Saddam’s regime has shown Keller’s morality-derived analysis to have been wrong—in terms of containing both Iran and the forces of Islamic fundamentalism, Saddam’s regime was not only not a threat, but a force of stability that no post-invasion Iraqi government has been able to replicate. Moreover, the incessant anti-American fighting that has shaken Iraq virtually nonstop since 2003 makes a mockery of Keller’s fanciful “outpouring of relief” the American invasion was supposed to presage.

Having been proved right by events, however, doesn’t resolve the “high-minded quandary” raised by Keller regarding troubling human rights issues such as the existence of the children’s prison in Baghdad, and my decision to suppress that horrific reality in favor of what I deemed a higher purpose—preventing an unnecessary war. On April 8, 2003, U.S. Marines moved into Baghdad and liberated a prison containing 100 to 150 children. I was unable to ascertain from the news article reporting this event whether the prison liberated was the one I had seen, or another—the children were said to have been imprisoned for the crime of refusing to join a pro-Saddam children’s militia, making their offense the kind of political “crime” the Amn al-Amm would be responsible for policing, so it’s possible it was.

The Marines’ action set off a firestorm among the chattering class that populates the comments section of web-based publications. Accuracy in Media (AIM) got the ball rolling, reporting on the liberation of a children’s prison on April 24, 2003, along with commentary that noted “the existence of children’s prisons in Iraq was reported last September by Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector.” Although factually incorrect (I had first mentioned the children’s prison in my March 2002 interview with Salon), the AIM article went on to speculate that “the liberal media” was following my lead when it came to its failure to widely report on the existence of the children’s prison. In the comments section, a reader posted what appeared to be an original poem commemorating the action of the Marines, commemorating the moment when the Marines “opened wide those prison gates and cast aside that tyrant’s hate.”

The AIM article was picked up by numerous conservative websites, including a Baptist-affiliated online community, Baptist Board, where one commenter noted that the story of the Marines liberating the children’s prison was “not widely reported by the media,” adding that “this alone would be enough for me to want to wage war on Iraq. Forget all the other reasons. A man who would do this had to be deposed.” This was followed by, “Scott Ritter has known about the prison since ’98 and kept it quiet. I wonder how many children were incarcerated, tortured or killed because Ritter decided not to tell the world.”

I take umbrage at the notion that I somehow opted out of telling the world about the Amn al-Amm children’s prison—the only reason Bill Keller, Time, AIM and the others could comment of the prison’s existence is because I opted to reveal what I saw during my interview with Salon. The notion that my somehow not highlighting the children’s prison prior to this interview led to additional Iraqi children being incarcerated, tortured or killed is on its face absurd. Given the context of the Iraq discussion at the time, any deviation away from my area of expertise would have detracted, not added, to the debate. I know this from personal experience—whenever I tried to shift the debate to include the issue of economic sanctions and the resultant suffering of the Iraqi people (including the deaths of some 500,000 children then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously dismissed as worth the price when it came to containing Saddam Hussein), I was unceremoniously reminded to stay in my lane.

What does resonate with me from this experience, however, is the legitimacy of outrage that existed regarding the existence of the children’s prison, and the callousness of a world, including myself, willing to turn a blind eye to such depravity in the cause of an erstwhile “greater good.” Today a variation of this argument is being used by the Trump administration, seeking as it does to justify the policy of separating children from parents at the border as a necessary evil in service of the greater good that comes from a strong immigration policy and strict border controls. I’m sure Saddam Hussein and his henchmen had similarly constructed arguments as to why they needed to separate children from their parents as well—national security can be used to conceal many sins.

There is a risk in conflating the Trump policy of child separation with whatever policies the Saddam regime used to justify their children’s prisons; most Americans will agree that there is simply no moral equivalency between the United States and Saddam’s Iraq. I, too, share this believe, which is why I raise the issue to begin with—if the U.S. is morally superior to Saddam’s Iraq, then why engage in a policy of forcibly removing children from their parents and imprisoning these children under conditions child psychologists and legal experts have deemed amount to child abuse that are akin to the past practices of that regime?

Of particular concern is the tendency on the part of many conservatives to defend this practice, including Robert Jeffress, a pastor of the First Dallas Baptist Church, who noted, “Any American who commits a crime is going to be separated from his or her child. You don’t send children to jail with their parents in America, so I’m not sure why the only criminals who would get a pass on that policy would be illegal immigrants.” The “crime” Jeffress alludes to is the act of illegal entry into the United States, which last month the Trump administration announced would be charged as a misdemeanor offense requiring the arrest of the perpetrators and the forcible separation of any accompanying children. “If you are smuggling a child,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared when announcing the policy, “then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” The problem is, there is no law that requires children to be separated from their parents—this is an invention of the Trump administration.

In the end, the forced imprisonment of children by the United States is not about national security, or any other “higher cause.” It is a purely political move designed to compel Congress to do President Trump’s bidding on the issue of border security. That this cynical mindset has led to the forcible separation and cruel imprisonment of children by the government of the United States is an affront to all Americans. These children are not “child actors”, as Anne Coulter has so callously suggested, any more so than the wretched kids locked up in the Amn al-Amm prison were. What is transpiring on the U.S.-Mexico border today is a testament to the soul of our nation, and how low we have collectively sunk in the name of partisan politics.

I’ll do my part to amend for these shortcomings—Mom was right, I did need to write about this issue. There is no ignoring evil when you see it, especially when that evil is being perpetrated by those who act in your name. But until a judge deems what is happening along the border to in fact constitute child abuse chargeable under the law, and properly mandated law enforcement officials move to cease this practice and arrest those responsible for perpetrating this abuse, or Congress acts and rewrites the laws in question and defunds Trump’s criminal border security enterprise, then my words will have little or no impact.

Unlike what happened in Iraq, there is no Marine invasion force coming to liberate these children from America’s prisons—that can only happen when the people who elected Donald Trump turn on him, something polls suggest has not yet happened. The conservative voices that once claimed that the existence of a children’s prison in Baghdad was justification alone for regime change in Iraq, and condemned Saddam Hussein as a dark force who tried to own the minds of the children he imprisoned, are largely silent on the issue of forcible separation and imprisonment of children by the Trump administration, their hypocrisy and moral cowardice on display for the entire world to see.

Fifteen years ago, these alleged pillars of American society took it upon themselves to call me out by name on my stance vis-a-vis children’s prisons in Iraq. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t reflect on what I heard and saw in Baghdad that day and wrestled with what I could have done about it. Today I am returning the favor, calling out those who either actively support the president’s policies concerning the separation and imprisonment of immigrant children, or have turned a convenient blind eye to these policies, citing “national security.” Look at the pictures of the children crying as they are taken away from their parents, and the images of children locked in cages like animals. Listen to their cries for help. And then either change your position and join the chorus of Americans who are rising in opposition to these policies, or rot in hell, along with Saddam Hussein and all those whom you similarly condemned then for perpetrating the same acts you so callously condone today.

And thanks, Mom, for pushing me to write this.

*

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

• The current mass exodus of people from Central America to the United States, with the daily headline-grabbing stories of numerous children involuntarily separated from their parents, means it’s time to remind my readers once again of one of the primary causes of these periodic mass migrations.

Those in the US generally opposed to immigration make it a point to declare or imply that the United States does not have any legal or moral obligation to take in these Latinos. This is not true. The United States does indeed have the obligation because many of the immigrants, in addition to fleeing from drug violence, are escaping an economic situation in their homeland directly made hopeless by American interventionist policy.

It’s not that these people prefer to live in the United States. They’d much rather remain with their families and friends, be able to speak their native language at all times, and avoid the hardships imposed upon them by American police and other right-wingers. But whenever a progressive government comes to power in Latin America or threatens to do so, a government sincerely committed to fighting poverty, the United States helps to suppresses the movement and/or supports the country’s right-wing and military in staging a coup. This has been the case in Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Honduras.

The latest example is the June 2009 coup (championed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) ousting the moderately progressive Manuel Zelaya of Honduras. The particularly severe increase in recent years in Honduran migration to the US is a direct result of the overthrow of Zelaya, whose crime was things like raising the minimum wage, giving subsidies to small farmers, and instituting free education. It is a tale told many times in Latin America: The downtrodden masses finally put into power a leader committed to reversing the status quo, determined to try to put an end to two centuries of oppression … and before long the military overthrows the democratically-elected government, while the United States – if not the mastermind behind the coup – does nothing to prevent it or to punish the coup regime, as only the United States can punish; meanwhile Washington officials pretend to be very upset over this “affront to democracy” while giving major support to the coup regime. The resulting return to poverty is accompanied by government and right-wing violence against those who question the new status quo, giving further incentive to escape the country.

Talk delivered by William Blum at the Left Forum in New York, June 2, 2018

We can all agree I think that US foreign policy must be changed and that to achieve that the mind – not to mention the heart and soul – of the American public must be changed. But what do you think is the main barrier to achieving such a change in the American mind?

Each of you I’m sure has met many people who support American foreign policy, with whom you’ve argued and argued. You point out one horror after another, from Vietnam to Iraq to Libya; from bombings and invasions to torture. And nothing helps. Nothing moves these people.

Now why is that? Do these people have no social conscience? Are they just stupid? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions. Consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, and if you don’t deal with these basic beliefs you may as well be talking to a stone wall.

The most basic of these basic beliefs, I think, is a deeply-held conviction that no matter what the US does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what horror may result, the government of the United States means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on many occasions cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are always honorable, even noble. Of that the great majority of Americans are certain.

Frances Fitzgerald, in her famous study of American school textbooks, summarized the message of these books:

“The United States has been a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world: throughout history it had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and diseased countries. The U.S. always acted in a disinterested fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took.”

And Americans genuinely wonder why the rest of the world can’t see how benevolent and self-sacrificing America has been. Even many people who take part in the anti-war movement have a hard time shaking off some of this mindset; they march to spur America – the America they love and worship and trust – they march to spur this noble America back onto its path of goodness.

Many of the citizens fall for US government propaganda justifying its military actions as often and as naively as Charlie Brown falling for Lucy’s football.

The American people are very much like the children of a Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don’t want to know, but then they wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window.

This basic belief in America’s good intentions is often linked to “American exceptionalism”. Let’s look at just how exceptional America has been. Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
2. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
3. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
4. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
5. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
6. Led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American teachers, especially in Latin America.

This is indeed exceptional. No other country in all of history comes anywhere close to such a record. But it certainly makes it very difficult to believe that America means well.

So the next time you’re up against a stone wall … ask the person what the United States would have to do in its foreign policy to lose his or her support. What for this person would finally be TOO MUCH. Chances are the US has already done it.

Keep in mind that our precious homeland, above all, seeks to dominate the world. For economic reasons, nationalistic reasons, ideological, Christian, and for other reasons, world hegemony has long been America’s bottom line. And let’s not forget the powerful Executive Branch officials whose salaries, promotions, agency budgets and future well-paying private sector jobs depend upon perpetual war. These leaders are not especially concerned about the consequences for the world of their wars. They’re not necessarily bad people; but they’re amoral, like a sociopath is.

Take the Middle East and South Asia. The people in those areas have suffered horribly because of Islamic fundamentalism. What they desperately need are secular governments, which have respect for different religions. And such governments were actually instituted in the recent past. But what has been the fate of those governments?

Well, in the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a secular government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women, which is hard to believe, isn’t it? But even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women’s rights in Afghanistan. And what happened to that government? The United States overthrew it, allowing the Taliban to come to power. So keep that in mind the next time you hear an American official say that we have to remain in Afghanistan for the sake of the women.

After Afghanistan came Iraq, another secular society, under Saddam Hussein. And the United States overthrew that government as well, and now the country has its share of crazed and bloody jihadists and fundamentalists; and women who are not covered up properly are sometimes running a serious risk.

Next came Libya; again, a secular country, under Moammar Gaddafi, who, like Saddam Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in important ways be benevolent and do some marvelous things. Gaddafi, for example, founded the African Union and gave the Libyan people the highest standard of living in Africa. So, of course, the United States overthrew that government as well. In 2011, with the help of NATO, we bombed the people of Libya almost every day for more than six months.

Can anyone say that in all these interventions, or in any of them, the United States of America meant well?

When we attack Iran, will we mean well? Will we have the welfare of the Iranian people at heart? I suggest you keep such thoughts in mind the next time you’re having a discussion or argument with a flag-waving American.

In case you haven’t noticed

No evidence of “Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election” has yet been presented. And we still await even a believable explanation of how the supposedly advanced American nation of 138 million voters could be so crucially influenced by a bunch of simplistic, often-crude, postings on Facebook and elsewhere on the Internet.

In May, the House Intelligence Committee began releasing the text of numerous of these postings as evidence of Russian interference. The postings dealt with both sides of many issues, including football players who knelt during the national anthem to bring attention to issues of racism, and pro- and anti-Trump and Clinton messages. Most did not even mention Trump or Clinton; and many were sent out before Trump was even a candidate.

So what did any of this have to do with swaying the result of the election? The committee did not say. However, Cong. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee, stated:

“They sought to harness Americans’ very real frustrations and anger over sensitive political matters in order to influence American thinking, voting and behavior. The only way we can begin to inoculate ourselves against a future attack is to see first-hand the types of messages, themes and imagery the Russians used to divide us.”

Aha! So that’s it, dividing us! Imagine that – the American people, whom we all know are living in blissful harmony and fraternity without any noticeable anger or hatred toward each other, would become divided! Damn those Russkis!

Many of the Facebook postings were done well after the presidential election. That alone should have made the congressmen think that perhaps the ads had nothing to do with the US election, but that is not what they wanted to think.

This all lends credence to the suggestion that what actually lay behind the events was a so-called “click-bait” scheme wherein certain individuals earned money based on the number of times a particular website is accessed. The mastermind behind this scheme is reported to be a Russian named Yevgeny Prigozhin of the Internet Research Agency of St. Petersburg, which is referred to by the House committee as “Kremlin-sponsored”, without explanation.

The organization has been named in an indictment issued by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigating committee, but as the Washington Post reported:

“The indictment does not accuse the Russian government of any involvement in the scheme, nor does it claim that it succeeded in swaying any votes.”

In the new Cold War, as in the old one, the powers-that-be in America seldom miss an opportunity to make Russia look bad, even to the point of farce. Evidence is no longer required. Accusation is sufficient.

Another charming example of American exceptionalism

The Washington Post coverage of the football World Cup in Russia couldn’t allow all the joy and good vibes to go unchallenged of course. So they found “a pipe worker named Alexander” who had a joke to tell: “An adviser comes to Putin and says, ‘I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you were elected president. The bad news is that no one voted for you.’”

Now let’s imagine an American adviser coming to President Trump and saying: “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you were elected president. The bad news is that you didn’t get the most votes.”

This has now happened five times in the United States, five times that the “winner” received fewer popular votes than any of his opponents; this insult to democracy and common sense has now happened twice within the most recent five presidential elections.

And I find the worst news is that a year and a half after Trump’s election I haven’t heard or read a word of anyone in the US Congress or a state legislature who has taken the first step in the process of modifying the US Constitution to finally do away with the stupid, completely outmoded Electoral College system. If it’s such a good system, why doesn’t the United States use it for local and state elections? Why doesn’t it exist anywhere else in the world? Is it to be regarded as part of our beloved “American exceptionalism”?

The other “n” word is even more prohibited

The city of Seattle on June 12 voted to repeal a tax hike on large employers that it had instituted only weeks before. The new tax would have raised $48 million annually to combat Seattle’s homelessness and affordable-housing crisis. The Seattle area has the third-largest homeless population in the country.

The plan had passed the City Council unanimously but was fiercely opposed by Amazon.com and much of the city’s business community.

Many American cities are sincerely struggling to deal with this problem but are faced with similar insurmountable barriers. The leading causes of homelessness in the US are high rents and low salaries. A report released June 13 by the National Low Income Housing Coalition stated that there is nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum-wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment. Not even in Arkansas, the state with the cheapest housing. More than 11.2 million families wind up spending more than half their paychecks on housing. How did America, “the glorious land of opportunity” wind up like this?

The cost of rent increases inexorably, year after year, regardless of tenants’ income. Any improvement in the system has to begin with a strong commitment to radically restraining, if not completely eliminating, the landlords’ profit motive. Otherwise nothing of any significance will change in society, and the capitalists who own the society – and their liberal apologists – can mouth one progressive-sounding platitude after another as their chauffeur drives them to the bank.

But to what extent can landlords be forced to accept significantly less in rents? Very little can be done. It’s the nature of the beast. Rent control in some American cities has slowed down the steady increases, but still leaving millions in constant danger of eviction or crippling deprivation. The only remaining solution is to “nationalize” real estate.

Eliminating the profit motive in various sectors, or all sectors, in American society would run into a lot less opposition than one might expect. Consciously or unconsciously it’s already looked down upon to a great extent by numerous individuals and institutions of influence. For example, judges frequently impose lighter sentences upon lawbreakers if they haven’t actually profited monetarily from their acts. And they forbid others from making a profit from their crimes by selling book or film rights, or interviews. It must further be kept in mind that the great majority of Americans, like people everywhere, do not labor for profit, but for a salary. The citizenry may have drifted even further away from the system than all this indicates, for American society seems to have more trust and respect for “non-profit” organizations than for the profit-seeking kind. Would the public be so generous with disaster relief if the Red Cross were a regular profit-making business? Would the Internal Revenue Service allow it to be tax-exempt? Why does the Post Office give cheaper rates to non-profits and lower rates for books and magazines which don’t contain advertising? For an AIDS test, do people feel more confident going to the Public Health Service or to a commercial laboratory? Why does “educational” or “public” television not have regular commercials? What would Americans think of peace-corps volunteers, elementary and high-school teachers, clergy, nurses, and social workers who demanded well in excess of $100 thousand per year? Would the public like to see churches competing with each other, complete with ad campaigns selling a New and Improved God? Why has American Airlines just declared “We have no desire to be associated with separating families, or worse, to profit from it.”

*

This article was originally published on The Anti-Empire Report. 

Notes

1. See Mark Weisbrot, “Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras.” Also see William Blum, Killing Hope, chapters on Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

2. Moon of Alabama, “Mueller Indictment – The ‘Russian Influence’ Is A Commercial Marketing Scheme”, February 17, 2018

3. Washington Post, June 23, 2018

4. Washington Post, June 9 and 16, 2018

Introduction

“Immigration” has become the dominant issue dividing Europe and the US, yet the most important matter which is driving millions to emigrate is overlooked – wars. 

In this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely (1) imperial wars (2) multi-national corporate expansion (3) the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe (4) the weakness of the trade union and solidarity movements.

We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to the western powers forcing refugees to ‘follow’ the flows of profits.

Imperial Wars and Mass Immigration

The US invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq uprooted several million people, destroying their lives, families, livelihood, housing and communities and undermining there security.

As a result, most victims faced the choice of resistance or flight.  Millions chose to flee to the West since the NATO countries would not bomb their residence in the US or Europe.

Others who fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East or Latin America were persecuted, or resided in countries too poor to offer them employment or opportunities for a livelihood.

Some Afghans fled to Pakistan or the Middle East but discovered that these regions were also subject to armed attacks from the West.

Iraqis were devastated by the western sanctions, invasion and occupation and fled to Europe and to a lesser degree  the US , the Gulf states and Iran.

Libya prior to the US-EU invasion was a ‘receiver’ country accepting and employing millions of Africans, providing them with citizenship and a decent livelihood.  After the US-EU air and sea attack and arming and financing of terrorist gangs, hundreds of thousands of Sub-Sahara immigrants were forced to flee to Europe.  Most crossed the Mediterranean Sea to the west via Italy, Spain , and headed toward the affluent European countries which had savaged their lives in Libya.

The US-EU financed and armed client terrorist armies which assault the Syrian government and forced millions of Syrians to flee across the border to Lebanon,Turkey and beyond to Europe, causing the so-called ‘immigration crises’ and the rise of  rightwing anti-immigrant parties.  This led to divisions within the established social democratic and  conservative parties,as sectors of the working class turned anti-immigrant.

Europe is reaping the consequences of its alliance with US militarized imperialism whereby the US uproots millions of people and the EU spends billions of euros to cover the cost of immigrants fleeing the western wars.

Most of the immigrants’ welfare payments fall far short of the losses incurred in their homeland. Their jobs homes, schools, and civic associations in the EU and US are far less valuable and accommodating then what they possessed in their original communities.

Economic Imperialism and Immigration: Latin America

US wars, military intervention and economic exploitation has forced millions of Latin Americans to immigrate to the US.. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras engaged in popular struggle for  socio-economic justice and political democracy between 1960 – 2000.  On the verge of victory over the landed oligarchs and multinational corporations, Washington blocked popular insurgents by  spending billions of dollars, arming, training, advising the military and paramilitary forces.  Land reform was aborted; trade unionists were forced into exile and thousands of peasants fled the marauding terror campaigns.

The US-backed oligarchic regimes forced millions of displaced and uprooted pr unemployed and landless workers to flee to the US .

Image on the right: Protest in Honduras

US supported coups and dictators resulted in 50,000 in Nicaragua, 80,000 in El Salvador and 200,000 in Guatemala.  President Obama and Hillary Clinton  supported a  military coup in Honduras which overthrew  Liberal President Zelaya— which led to the killing and wounding of thousands of peasant activists and human rights workers, and the return of death squads, resulting in a new wave of immigrants to the US.

The US promoted free trade agreement (NAFTA) drove hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers into bankruptcy and into low wage maquiladoras; others were recruited by drug cartels; but the largest group was forced to immigrate across the Rio Grande.

The US ‘Plan Colombia’ launched by President Clinton established seven US military bases in Colombia and provided 1 billion dollars in military aid between 2001 – 2010.  Plan Colombia doubled the size of the military,

The US backed President Alvaro Uribe, resulting in the assassination of over 200,000 peasants, trade union activists and human rights workers by Uribe directed narco-death squad. Over two million farmers fled the countryside and  immigrated to the cities or across the border.

US business secured hundreds of thousands of Latin American low wages, agricultural and factory workers almost all without health insurance or benefits – though the paid taxes.

Immigration doubled profits, undermined collective bargains and lowered US wages.  Unscrupulous US ‘entrepreneurs’ recruited immigrants into drugs, prostitution, the arms trade and money laundering.

Politicians exploited the immigration issue for political gain – blaming the immigrants for the   decline of  working class living standards  distracting  attention from the real source:  wars, invasions, death squads and economic pillage.

Conclusion

Having destroyed the lives of working people overseas and overthrown progressive leaders like Libyan President Gadhafi and Honduran President Zelaya, millions were forced to become immigrants.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, Mexico witnessed  the flight  of millions of immigrants  — all victims of US and EU wars. Washington and Brussels blamed the victims and accused the immigrants of illegality and criminal conduct .

The West debates expulsion, arrest and jail instead of reparations for crimes against humanity and violations of international law.

To restrain immigration the first step is to end imperial wars, withdraw troops,and to cease financing paramilitary and client terrorists.

Secondly, the West should establish a long term multi-billion-dollar fund for reconstruction and recovery of the economies, markets and infrastructure they bombed

The demise of the peace movement allowed the US and EU to launch and prolong serial wars which led to massive immigration – the so-called refugee crises and the flight to Europe.  There is a direct connection between the conversion of the liberal and social democrats to war -parties and  the forced flight of immigrants to the EU.

The decline of the trade unions  and worse, their loss of militancy has led to the loss of solidarity with people living in the midst of imperial wars.  Many workers in the imperialist countries have directed their ire to those ‘below’ – the immigrants, – rather than to  the imperialists who directed the wars which created the immigration problem.

Immigration, war , the demise of the peace and workers movements,and left parties has led to the rise of the militarists,and neo-liberals who have taken power throughout the West.  Their , anti-immigrant politics, however, has provoked new contradictions within regimes,between business elites and among popular movements in the EU and the US.  The elite and popular struggles can go in at least two directions – toward fascism or radical social democracy.

*

Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

• Dear Friends and Supporters,

You may recall that, in early May, CBC News reported that a senior lawyer at the Canadian Department of Justice urged the French authorities in 2009 to obtain new handwriting “evidence” against Hassan when the extradition case was about to collapse. In another effort to shore up the case, the DOJ lawyer requested fingerprint analysis as he believed that the evidence would be very powerful in getting Hassan extradited. When the fingerprint analysis excluded Hassan, the DOJ lawyer never disclosed this fact to the court in Canada or to the defense.

Last week, CBC News reported that another key fingerprint analysis exonerating Hassan was not disclosed to the court in Canada. The court in Canada was told that no such evidence existed, when in fact the fingerprint analysis that excluded Hassan was done many months before France requested Hassan’s extradition.

“France told Canada key evidence did not exist in Hassan Diab terrorism case”, CBC News, June 20, 2018

In a separate story, CBC news revealed that a senior official at the Department of Justice who is running the “internal review” regarding Hassan’s case had actually played a role in Hassan’s extradition, which is a clear conflict of interest.

“Internal review of Hassan Diab’s extradition tainted by conflict of interest, says lawyer”, CBC News, June 20, 2018

These revelations point to a long, troubling pattern of injustice in Hassan’s case and the role that government officials, especially within the Canadian Department of Justice, played in Hassan’s ordeal.

We urge you to join us and a growing list of organizations – such as Amnesty, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Association of University Teachers, and Criminal Lawyers Association – in calling upon the Government of Canada to appoint an independent commissioner to conduct a thorough public inquiry into Hassan Diab’s extradition case, so no other Canadian would go through what Hassan and his family had to endure.

Please sign the petition here.

If you’ve already signed, THANK YOU. Please share the petition with family and friends, and distribute it on social media.

As a reminder, the Paris Court of Appeal will render a decision on July 6 regarding whether to uphold the investigating judges’ dismissal of the case against Hassan. The judges have declared Hassan innocent of the 1980 crime and ordered Hassan’s release. However, for political reasons and due to the climate in France, the French prosecutor has appealed. We remain hopeful that reason and justice will prevail and an innocent man’s ordeal will end soon.

Whilst the MOD and Parliament are both concerned at the rate of diminution and decline of Britain’s military capability on the world stage whereby we no longer have either a credible naval task /defence force or a 24/7 operative nuclear deterrent, the state of Israel has amassed an underground arsenal estimated by many authoritative sources to be in excess of that of the combined total of the nuclear WMD of Pakistan, India and North Korea.

There is no certainty of these figures, of course, because Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapons state in the world and is not subject to inspection by the IAEA as are the vast majority of UN member states. But most important is the fact that it has also a Second Nuclear Strike capability courtesy of an apparently deranged German Chancellor who made a unilateral decision to supply the Israeli navy with a fleet of government subsidised, state-of-the-art, German-built submarines, now reliably reported to have been retro-fitted with nuclear cruise missiles and secretly patrolling the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Red Seas, and the Gulf.  And in so doing, irrevocably altered the balance of global power to the detriment of the European continent.

Of course, Israel is not a NATO member and is not in Europe.  But she is the last of the neo-colonial powers still in the process of subjugating an indigenous Arab population that has settled the land for over a thousand years and is now a demographic numbering in excess of 5 million.

Instead of sending a British royal representative to cavort about the Middle East, it would perhaps have been more productive to have implemented plans to defend our island in the future from any non-NATO, nuclear-armed, belligerent state with an expansionist government that treats the United Nations and international law with contempt.  Because the primary duty of any government – even that of Theresa May – is national security and the survival of the state.

*

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

On Sunday, Trump disgracefully tweeted: “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,” adding:

“Our immigration (is) laughed at all over the world.”

US immigration policy is the shame of the nation under Republicans and undemocratic Dems, along with a whole lot more – mocking the notion of equity and justice for all, a nonstarter in America.

Due process is constitutionally guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, stating:

“No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It applies to all states by the 14th Amendment, a universally recognized principle – derived from the 1215 Magna Carta, stating:

“No free man (woman or child) shall be seized, or imprisoned, or stripped of his (or her) rights or possessions, or outlawed, or exiled, or deprived of his (or her) standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him (or her), or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his (or her) equals, or by the law of the land.”

“Due process of law” later substituted for “the law of the land.” It’s inviolable. Invoking executive authority otherwise is flagrantly unlawful.

Responding to Trump’s tweets, the ACLU tweeted its own, saying:

“What President Trump suggested here is both illegal and unconstitutional.”

“Any official who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws should disavow it unequivocally.”

In Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruled that “illegal aliens… may claim the benefit of the (14th Amendment’s) Equal Protection Clause, which provides that no State shall ‘deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ “

Equal protection applies to government at all levels, as required by the Fifth Amendment due process guarantee.

The protection applies to everyone within the borders of America. Presidents, Congress, state and local authorities cannot legally deny this right to anyone.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants

“the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

Summarily deporting unwanted aliens denies them due process, equal protection, legal counsel, and other constitutional rights – along with what the Magna Carta affirmed for everyone – including in Trump’s America.

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court ruled that separate is inherently unequal. Segregation based on race violates equal protection under the Fifth and 14th Amendments.

In Mapp v. Ohio (1961), the High Court ruled against evidence collected in violation of Fourth Amendment protection from an unlawful search, as well as Fifth and 14th Amendments’ due process clause protection.

In Gideon v Wainwright (1963), the Supreme Court affirmed the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel and 14th Amendment equal protection right in a criminal proceeding denied him by Florida and the state’s high court.

Constitutional law and High Court rulings affirm the inviolability of due process and equal protection rights.

If Trump’s tweets quoted above become regime policy, he’ll flagrantly violate these rights afforded everyone in America.

*

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

Dagli Stati uniti all’Europa, la «crisi dei migranti» suscita accese polemiche interne e internazionali sulle politiche da adottare riguardo ai flussi migratori. Ovunque però essi vengono rappresentati secondo un cliché che capovolge la realtà: quello dei «paesi ricchi» costretti a subire la crescente pressione migratoria dai «paesi poveri».

Si nasconde la causa di fondo: il sistema economico che nel mondo permette a una ristretta minoranza di accumulare ricchezza a spese della crescente maggioranza, impoverendola e provocando così l’emigrazione forzata.

Riguardo ai flussi migratori verso gli Stati uniti, è emblematico il caso del Messico. La sua produzione agricola è crollata quando, con il Nafta (l’accordo nordamericano di «libero» commercio), Usa e Canada hanno inondato il mercato messicano con prodotti agricoli a basso prezzo grazie alle proprie sovvenzioni statali. Milioni di contadini sono rimasti senza lavoro, ingrossando il bacino di manodopera reclutata nelle maquiladoras: migliaia di stabilimenti industriali lungo la linea di confine in territorio messicano, posseduti o controllati per lo più da società statunitensi, nei quali i salari sono molto bassi e i diritti sindacali inesistenti.

In un paese in cui circa la metà della popolazione vive in povertà, è aumentata la massa di coloro che cercano di entrare negli Stati uniti. Da qui il Muro lungo il confine col Messico, iniziato dal presidente democratico Clinton quando nel 1994 è entrato in vigore il Nafta, proseguito dal repubblicano Bush, rafforzato dal democratico Obama, lo stesso che il repubblicano Trump vorrebbe ora completare su tutti i 3000 km di confine.

Riguardo ai flussi migratori verso l’Europa, è emblematico il caso dell’Africa. Essa è ricchissima di materie prime: oro, platino, diamanti, uranio, coltan, rame, petrolio, gas naturale, legname pregiato, cacao, caffè e molte altre.

Queste risorse, sfruttate dal vecchio colonialismo europeo con metodi di tipo schiavistico, vengono oggi sfruttate dal neocolonialismo europeo facendo leva su élite africane al potere, manodopera locale a basso costo e controllo dei mercati interni e internazionali.

Oltre cento compagnie quotate alla Borsa di Londra, britanniche e altre, sfruttano in 37 paesi dell’Africa subsahariana risorse minerarie del valore di oltre 1000 miliardi di dollari.

La Francia controlla il sistema monetario di 14 ex colonie africane attraverso il Franco CFA (in origine acronimo di «Colonie Francesi d’Africa», riciclato in «Comunità Finanziaria Africana»): per mantenere la parità con l’euro, i 14 paesi africani devono versare al Tesoro francese metà delle loro riserve valutarie.

Lo Stato libico, che voleva creare una moneta africana autonoma, è stato demolito con la guerra nel 2011. In Costa d’Avorio (area CFA), società francesi controllano il grosso della commercializzazione del cacao, di cui il paese è primo produttore mondiale: ai piccoli coltivatori resta appena il 5% del valore del prodotto finale, tanto che la maggior parte vive in povertà. Questi sono solo alcuni esempi dello sfruttamento neocoloniale del continente.

L’Africa, presentata come dipendente dall’aiuto estero, fornisce all’estero un pagamento netto annuo di circa 58 miliardi di dollari. Le conseguenze sociali sono devastanti. Nell’Africa subsahariana, la cui popolazione supera il miliardo ed è composta per il 60% da bambini e giovani di età compresa tra 0 e 24 anni, circa i due terzi degli abitanti vivono in povertà e, tra questi, circa il 40% – cioè 400 milioni – in condizioni di povertà estrema. La «crisi dei migranti» è in realtà la crisi di un sistema economico e sociale insostenibile.

Die politisch-medialen Projektoren konzentrieren sich auf den Migrationsstrom über das Mittelmeer von Süden nach Norden und lassen die anderen Mittelmeerströme im Dunkeln – jene von Norden nach Süden, die Streitkräfte und Waffen beinhalten.

Vielleicht sollten wir besser vom “Großen Mittelmeer” sprechen, einem Gebiet im Rahmen der USA/NATO-Strategie, das sich vom Atlantik zum Schwarzen Meer und im Süden vom Persischen Golf bis zum Indischen Ozean erstreckt.

Während seinem Treffen mit NATO-Generalsekretär Jens Stoltenberg in Rom, betonte Premierminister Giuseppe Conte die „zentrale Bedeutung des großräumigen Mittelmeeres für die europäische Sicherheit“, die jetzt durch den „Bogen der Instabilität vom Mittelmeer bis zum Nahen Osten“ bedroht ist. Deshalb ist ein Bündnis unter US-Kommando wichtig für die NATO, welches Conte als „Pfeiler der nationalen und internationalen Sicherheit“ bezeichnet. Das ist eine vollständige Verdrehung der Realität.

Es ist die Grundlage der US/NATO-Strategie, die in Wahrheit den „Bogen der Instabilität“ hervorgerufen hat, durch zwei Kriege gegen den Irak, den beiden weiteren Kriegen, die Jugoslawien und Lybien zerstört haben und den Krieg, der die Zerstörung Syriens zum Ziel hat. Laut Conte spielt Italien, das an all diesen Kriegen teilnahm, “eine Schlüsselrolle für die Sicherheit und die Stabilität der Südflanke des Bündnisses”.

Inwiefern? Wir können die Wahrheit durch das, was die Medien verbergen, herausfinden. Das US-Marineschiff Trenton, das 42 Flüchtlinge aufnahm (die im Gegensatz zu denen der Aquarius in Sizilien an Land gehen durften), ist nicht in Sizilien stationiert, um humanitäre Zwecke im Mittelmeer zu erfüllen – es ist in Wahrheit eine schnelle Eingreiftruppe (bis zu 80 km/h), die innerhalb weniger Stunden die nordafrikanische Küste erreichen kann, eine Expeditionstruppe mit 400 Soldaten und ihren Fahrzeugen. US-Spezialeinheiten operieren in Lybien, um alliierte Armeeformationen auszubilden und zu  führen, während bewaffnete US-Drohnen, die von Sigonella (Sizilien) aus starten, ihre Ziele in Lybien treffen. In Kürze, gab Stoltenberg an, werden auch NATO-Drohnen von Sigonella aus operieren.

Sie werden das “Hub” oder “NATO Strategic Direction South” (NSDS), das Geheimdienstzentrum für Militäroperationen im Nahen Osten, Nordafrika, der Sahelzone und dem subsaharischen Afrika, integrieren.

Das Zentrum, das im Juli in Betrieb geht, hat seinen Hauptsitz in Lago Patria, neben dem Joint Force Command of NATO (JFC Napels), unter dem Befehl eines US-Admirals – derzeit James Foggo – der auch die US-Marinesteitkräfte in Europa (mit ihrem Hauptsitz in Neapel-Capodichino und der sechsten Flotte, in Geata stationiert) und auch die US-Marinesteitkräfte für Afrika befehligen wird.

Diese Streitkräfte wurden durch den Flugzeugträger Harry Truman eingebunden, der das Mittelmeer vor zwei Monaten mit seiner Angriffsgruppe erreichte.

Am 10. Juni, als die Aufmerksamkeit der Medien auf die Aquarius gerichtet war, wurde die US-Flotte mit 8.000 Soldaten und bewaffnet mit 90 Kampfflugzeugen sowie über 1.000 Raketen, im östlichen Mittelmeer stationiert, bereit, Syrien und den Irak anzugreifen. Zur gleichen Zeit, am 12./13. Juni, machte die Liberty Pride in Livorno fest – ein militarisiertes US-Schiff, und beförderte auf ihren 12 Brücken weitere Fracht und Waffen, die, von der US-Basis Camp Darby (Pisa), jeden Monat nach Jordanien und Saudi Arabien geschickt werden, um die Kriege in Syrien und dem Jemen aufrecht zu erhalten.

Auf diese Weise nähren wir diese Kriege, die, durch neo-koloniale Methoden der Ausbeutung, die Verarmung und Entwurzelung der Bevölkerungen verursachen. Infolgedessen nimmt der Migrationsstrom weiterhin dramatisch zu und erschafft Opfer und neue Formen der Sklaverei. “Es scheint, dass es sich jetzt auszahlt, hart gegen Immigration vorzugehen”, kommentierte Präsident Trump in Bezug auf die Maßnahmen, die nicht nur von Mattea Salvini sondern von der ganzen italienischen Regierung beschlossen wurden, deren Premierminister als „fantastisch“ bezeichnet wird.

Dies ist eine angemessene Anerkennung seitens der Vereinigten Staaten, die im Programm der Regierung als „priveligierter Verbündeter“ Italiens benannt sind.

(il manifesto, 19. Juni 2018)

Übersetzung: K.R.

Global Research is an independent organization that is funded exclusively through the support of its readers.

We should mention that we are currently running a monthly budget deficit. 

Every contribution helps us continue to bring you the up-to-date, incisive information that you count on.

Support Global Research.

*     *     *

U.S. to Continue to Use White Helmets As Long As the Western Public Accepts “Media War Lies”

By Mark Taliano and The Syria Times, June 26, 2018

U.S. policymakers will go ahead with using not only the White Helmets but also the false flag chemical weapons events in Syria for as long as broad-based domestic populations accept the war lies and the engineered deceptions, the Canadian political analyst and Research Associate at Global Research Mark Taliano told the Syriatimes e-newspaper.

Moscow-Riyadh: Balancing Out Washington

By Andrew Korybko, June 26, 2018

The state-owned Russian Railways is already planning to participate in the construction of the Trans-Arabian Railroad (also known as the GCC Railroad) for connecting the Gulf Kingdoms, so it’s already clearly developed the connections within Saudi Arabia for clinching relevant deals. The company could therefore leverage these contacts to explore the options available for participating in the Israeli-Saudi Railway too, and considering Moscow’s excellent relations with Riyadh and Tel Aviv as a result of Russia’s fast-moving rapprochements with both of them over the past couple of years, it’s unlikely that these two increasingly independent actors would object to its proposed role even if their American ally was unhappy with it.

Are al-Qaeda Affiliates Fighting Alongside U.S. Rebels in Syria’s South?

By Sharmine Narwani, June 26, 2018

Whether there will now be a full-on battle for the south or not, visits last week to Syria’s three southern governorates, Daraa, Quneitra, and Suweida, reveal a startling possibility: al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise—the Nusra Front—appears to be deeply entrenched alongside these U.S.-backed militants in key, strategic towns and villages scattered throughout the south.

US Senate Bans Sale of F-35s to Turkey: Dealing with an Unreliable Partner

By Peter Korzun, June 26, 2018

On June 19, the Senate passed a draft defense bill for FY 2019 that would halt the transfer of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft to Turkey, until the secretary of state certifies that Turkey will not accept deliveries of Russian S-400 Triumf air-defense systems. It paves the way for Ankara’s expulsion from the program if it does not bow to this pressure. The support for the measure (85-10) is too strong to be overridden.

US-NATO Led Wars Have Created a Global Migrant Crisis. Solutions?

By J. Michael Springmann, June 26, 2018

At one time or another, the United States has invaded, attacked, subverted, or regime-changed nearly every country south of its border with Mexico, as well as most of those in the Caribbean. Because of wrecked governments, devastated economies, and consequent loss of freedom, waves of migrants have moved north to the “Land of Opportunity”, now called by some on National Public Radio here as the “Land of Humanity”.

U.S. Forces Failed Attempts to Seize Territory in Southern Syria. U.S. Backed Al Qaeda Fighter Fleeing from SAA Forces

By Eric Zuesse, June 26, 2018

On June 25th, U.S.-aided fighters in southern Syria were fleeing from the Syrian Government’s Army, southward toward U.S.-allied Israeli-controlled areas in the Golan Heights and toward America’s ally Jordan.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Tiger Forces and their allies have reportedly established full control of the district of Lajat in the province of Daraa. According to pro-government sources, militants in the area have mostly surrendered to government troops.

Additionally, the SAA and its allies liberated the village of Mleha al-‘Atsh and captured the center of Busr al-Harir.

If all these reports are confirmed, government forces have liberated about 400km2 since the start of clashes in northeastern Daraa last week.

On June 25, the Russian Defense Ministry released a statement saying that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) had carried out a large attack on government positions in the province. The attack was repelled and 70 militants were killed.

This attack likely was an attempt to sabotage the SAA progress in Lajat.

On June 26, Israel reportedly carried out a new missile strike on Syria targeting the Damascus International Airport.

According to pro-government sources, at least two missiles fell in near the airport. Pro-Israeli sources claim that the strike hit an Iranian cargo plane inside the airport.

Local sources say that Syrian air defense systems were employed. However, it is unclear if some missiles were intercepted.

An alleged pro-government partisan group, the Popular Resistance in Manbij, has announced the start of preparations for an uprising against foreign occupiers – i.e. forces of the US, France and Turkey – aiming to divide Syria.

In April, a similar group, entitled “the Popular Resistance in al-Hasakah”, appeared in eastern Syria. This group also threatened the US-led coalition and its proxies with attacks. However, no notable attacks have been carried out so far.

In any case, appearance of such groups show that far from everyone in northeastern Syria like the US-led coalition.

*

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront,

The defeat of the Egyptian national football team by their Saudi Arabian counterparts in the 2018 World Cup can be viewed as a metaphor for the triumph of the Saudis over Egypt after an intense and sometimes deadly political rivalry played out during the rule of the charismatic and secular-orientated Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Egypt has a rich tradition of football at both domestic and international levels. Along with the ‘Black Stars’ of Ghana, the ‘Pharaohs’ of Egypt were the glamour team of African football back in the 1960s and despite several significant lows have over the course of time established as seven-times winners of the African Cup of Nations tournament. The derby matches held between the Cairo club sides Al Ahly and Zamalek represent an enduring rivalry which is arguably as passionately intense as any other in the world including Istanbul’s Kitalarasi Derbi and the Spanish El Clasico.

Saudi Arabia, which established its football federation 35 years after Egypt’s, did not enter a tournament until 1984. And although it has gone on to become one of Asia’s most successful national football teams, the rankings tabulated respectively by FIFA and the Soccer Power Index, demonstrate that Asian football continues to trail that of the African continent.

Going into yesterday’s match held in Volgograd, Egypt could boast of having defeated Saudi Arabia in 4 out of 6 meetings. The first meeting between both countries in September 1961 during the Pan Arab Games ended in a 13-0 rout of the Saudis. Although the phenomenal gap in quality had closed over the years, Egypt emerged as 2-1 winners the last time they met in 2007.

For these reasons, it would appear rather perplexing to think of a footballing rivalry as existing between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. However, the nature of the football World Cup tournament in its straightforward evocation of nationalist pride and rivalry has been apt at bringing into sharp focus the relations of nations who have been scheduled to play each other.

This was clearly the case when England played Argentina in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, four years after the military conflict between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, or, to Argentineans, Las Islas Malvinas.

And the imagination of the global public was stirred by the drawing of the United States and Iran in the same group during the 1998 tournament.

While the same cannot be said about the drawing together of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Arab Republic of Egypt into Group A of the present World Cup, the Saudi defeat of an Egyptian side which included English Premier League Golden Boot winner Mo Salah, may have brought to the minds of some the previously intense and sometimes deadly political rivalry which existed between both countries.

The struggle for the heart and soul of the Arab masses between the secular Egyptian republic led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Wahabbist monarchy of Saudi Arabia was at its peak during the 1960s. The eight-year-long civil war in North Yemen between republican and royalist factions was one manifestation of a struggle, which also placed both countries on opposite sides in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Where the pro-Western Saudis were tradition-bound and seemingly resistant to change, the government of Nasser, which had been formed by members of the Free Officer Movement, appeared to be progressive. Nasserism not only embodied Arab nationalism, it also embraced the spirit of Bandung-era anti-imperialist sentiment and Afro-Arab solidarity.

At the apex of its appeal in the years following the Suez War of 1956, Nasser-led Egypt appeared to represent the aspirations of the Arab people -not the rulers of Saudi Arabia, who felt threatened and sought to check the spread of Egyptian influence.

That rivalry has, for all intents and purposes, been defunct for several generations.

How and why did Egyptian prestige and influence in the Arab world fall to its present state? Perhaps a starting point can be made by referencing the humiliating defeat inflicted on the Egyptian armed forces by the State of Israel in 1967 when the Israelis routed the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

This defeat so traumatised the Arab psyche that it provided an avenue through which the fundamentalist brand of Islamism espoused by ideologues such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Sayyid Qutb could begin to gain greater appeal.

Nasser may have executed Qutb, but a succession of failures: militarily against Israel, economically in relation to the implementation of his brand of socialism, and politically the fracture of the United Arab Republic project with Syria alongside the quagmire in Yemen, began to convince some intellectuals and the man-in-the-street that secular nationalism was no longer the preferred course through which Arabs could develop their societies.

Egyptian prestige dwindled when it began to be perceived that Anwar Sadat, Nasser’s successor, had become a tool of the West, and Egypt, with its ever expanding population but meagre resource, could not compete economically with the oil-rich Saudis.

While Sadat had garnered a modicum of esteem for Egypt after the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, the oil embargo and the ensuing fuel crisis strengthened the hand of the Saudis whose deal with the United States to sell oil solely in US dollars in return for guaranteeing the security of the House of Saud, offered the Saudi monarchy an extra layer of protection.

Although less concerned now about the possibility of Nasserite-inspired conspiracies aimed at overthrowing the royal house as had occurred during Nasser’s heyday, the Saudis still felt threatened by the possibility of a revival of the Nasserite ideology in Egypt, or by the machinations of his ideological heir, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who had overthrown the Libyan monarchy in 1969.

An indication of the change in the balance of Saudi-Egyptian relations was apparent with the more or less wholesale abrogation by Sadat of Nasser’s policies, in return for subsidies and low-interest loans from the Saudis. Also, while the Arab League has for much of its history been characterised as a ‘do-nothing’ organisation, it was clear that as Egyptian influence waned, that of the Saudis grew.

The hand of the Saudis was also strengthend by the jolt caused in 1979 by the Siege of Mecca, which had the effect of intensifying the policy of exporting the Wahhabist ideology to foreign Muslim lands as a form of atonement to the senior clerics of the realm who warned Saudi Arabia’s rulers that the siege, which was staged by the followers of Juhayman al-Otaibi had been caused by Saudi Arabia’s steady drift towards an ‘infidel culture’, that is, what they considered to be the adapting of Western practices in Saudi society.

By now, the days when Egypt had actively provided a counter-weight ideology of secularism to the Muslim world were long gone.

For decades, Egypt’s rulers, beginning with Sadat and continuing with Hosni Mubarak, have largely played second fiddle to the Saudis. And under General Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, this state of affairs has arguably become more pronounced. It is an open secret that el-Sisi was brought to power in 2013 by a coup which was financed by Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore, the ceding by Egypt to the Saudis of the Red Sea Islands of Tiran and Sanafir in June 2017, provoked widespread outrage in Egypt. Although both Islands are largely uninhabited, the transfer of sovereignty was interpreted by many Egyptians as an abject surrender to Saudi suzerainty. It was a pact that many believe was reached because of Egyptian need for Saudi aid.

There are likely to be many Egyptians whose pride will be sorely dented by a sporting loss to the sparsely-populated desert kingdom to whom their leaders have increasingly become beholden.

A football match, it appears, has come to mirror the loss of Egyptian geopolitical power and influence relative to that gained and wielded by the Saudis.

*

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Featured image is from the author.

As we write, troops commanded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), backed by Saudi Arabian warplanes, are fighting to take control of the port city of Al Hudaydah on Yemen’s western coast, now held by Yemen’s Houthi movement. Aid flowing through Al Hudaydah is the only thing standing between 22 million Yemenis and starvation. And now it’s being threatened by a reactionary offensive armed, trained, guided, and backed by the USA.

After a week of fierce fighting, UAE forces have reportedly taken over the airport south of Al Hudaydah, as Saudi warplanes bomb the city. Hundreds have been killed, and 30,000 have reportedly fled the city along with 76,000 from the surrounding region. The assault has disrupted supplies of electricity and clean water, and aid workers warn of a cholera outbreak that could spread “with lightning speed” and infect hundreds of thousands. Many aid workers have been forced to leave Al Hudaydah, and others can’t access areas where the fighting has been heaviest.

America: A Force for Barbarity, Not Good in the World

If you want to understand what a truly barbaric, monstrous system America is, look at what it’s done—and is doing—to the 28 million people of this impoverished Middle Eastern country. After creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, it’s now threatening Yemen’s meager flow of humanitarian aid and deliberately flirting with mass slaughter through famine and disease. Closing Al Hudaydah’s port “means that you’re cutting the last artery to Yemen,” said one aid worker. For over three years, behind the scenes and a veil of lies, the U.S. has been deliberately murdering hundreds of thousands of children and starving millions of oppressed Yemeni people. They’ve done so by providing the monarchs of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with weapons and planes, fuel and training, hands-on direction and intelligence, Green Berets on the front lines, and the political and propaganda support to wage war on the people of Yemen.

This is a war of mass slaughter, mass starvation, and mass disease—waged by blockading food and medicine, destroying the country’s health, water, and power systems—war crimes that have targeted the country’s means for sustaining life.

A war waged so the U.S. imperialists can maintain their stranglehold on the Middle East and the world, and so their murderous Saudi and UAE “allies” can maintain their death grip on the Arabian Peninsula. These predators view isolating and overthrowing the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) as crucial to this overall agenda, and see the war in Yemen as one front in that struggle. Iran has attempted to advance its own reactionary regional interests through this war, although its involvement in the conflict and backing of the Houthis has been vastly overstated by the U.S. rulers, when in reality Iran isn’t directly involved in the fighting and whatever backing it’s provided the Houthis doesn’t begin to compare to the massive assaults and crimes being carried out by the Saudis, the UAE, and the U.S.

Source: revcom.us

Between 15,000 and 44,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians, have been slaughtered by U.S. and British bombs and missiles. More than 22 million Yemenis have been driven to the brink of hunger, over eight million to the brink of starvation. In two years (2016-2017), 113,000 children died of hunger or preventable disease. The U.S.-Saudi-UAE coalition’s destruction of Yemen’s water and sewer system led to the largest outbreak of cholera, a bacterial disease spread by drinking contaminated water, in history. Over the last year, a million people have been infected; 2,300 have died, mainly children. During the epidemic, the U.S.-Saudi coalition, which regularly issues statements of their supposed “concern” for the suffering in Yemen, blocked imports of the chlorine tablets needed to make water safe to drink.

Doubling Down on Mass Murder and Starvation

America claims it’s not involved, and its clients Saudi Arabia and the UAE claim their hands are clean. They say they want to take Al Hudaydah to insure the flow of humanitarian aid. But if that were true, if the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the UAE gave a rat’s ass about the welfare of Yemen’s people, then:

• Why have the Saudis and the UAE—with a green light from the U.S.—continued their assault (and demand for unconditional surrender) when they have already threatened humanitarian relief and when every humanitarian agency in the world demanded they stop?
• Why, according to a new report by Amnesty International (AI), has Saudi Arabia deliberately delayed aid from arriving in Al Hudaydah for weeks at a time, an action AI said constituted the war crime of collective punishment? And why are they holding back a ship with 25,000 tons of wheat now!?
• Why have Saudi planes targeted Al Hudaydah’s port during the war, and are on track to do even more damage now?
• Why, in the areas Saudi- and UAE-backed forces have controlled for years, do Yemenis still lack basic necessities—food, clean water, healthcare—even though the Saudis and the UAE control the flow of goods into the country?
• Why would the UAE be running at least 18 secret prisons across Yemen where the most depraved, unspeakable sexual tortures are rampant according to an Associated Press report, which cites examples where prisoners were lined up, ordered to strip, and then sodomized by guards claiming to be looking for contraband, while being threatened by dogs? One top prison official told the AP, “Americans use Emiratis as gloves to do their dirty work.”

No wonder the International Rescue Committee denounced Saudi and UAE claims as “a publicity stunt meant to draw attention away from the undue suffering the attack is causing,” and that their “so-called relief plan … must be seen for exactly what it is; a justification to launch an attack that will have catastrophic consequences.”

The U.S. is the godfather behind all this savagery.

“When [the Saudis] have the backing of the United States, they’ve been able to wage this war of extreme proportions that they would have never been able to wage on their own,” said Yemeni-American researcher Shireen Al-Adeimi in a June 22 interview on The Michael Slate Show. “[The Saudis] don’t manufacture their own weapons, they don’t train their own soldiers, they don’t refuel their own jets. They rely on the U.S. for all these things, and that’s why they’ve been able to wage this incredibly destructive war.”

U.S. and British officers have even staffed Saudi command rooms for airstrikes.

After the U.S. publicly rejected their request for minesweepers for the Al Hudaydah attack, a UAE official said:

“Not giving us military assistance is not the same as telling us not to do it.” (See revcom.us article “America Targets Yemen’s Children for Death by Starvation.”)

Yemeni Lives Are Hanging in the Balance… What Are YOU Going to Do?

Right now, the U.S.-backed Saudi-UAE attack on Al Hudaydah is continuing. They’re attempting to seize Yemen’s lifeline—in order to threaten, terrorize, and if necessary starve the Yemeni people into submission. The lives of millions of Yemenis—men, women, and yes children—now hang in the balance.

American lives are NOT more important than Yemeni lives, and we in this country have a responsibility to loudly and visibly denounce and oppose this offensive, and call for an end to this mass murder before it becomes horribly genocidal! And people need to confront the real nature of an empire based on starving children, HERE, and the real solution to ending it, and all the horrors it inflicts on humanity, HERE.

U.S. policymakers will go ahead with using not only the White Helmets but also the false flag chemical weapons events in Syria for as long as broad-based domestic populations accept the war lies and the engineered deceptions, the Canadian political analyst and Research Associate at Global Research Mark Taliano told the Syriatimes e-newspaper.

The analyst asserted that U.S. policymakers support al Qaeda in Syria, and the White Helmets are al Qaeda auxiliaries, so it makes sense that the U.S. which seeks global control, would continue to support them.

But he pointed out that the US aspirations are being frustrated on Syrian soil.

“As Syria and its allies continue to win this war, the world is shifting, geopolitically, to a multipolar orientation. Yes, I expect Syria will win this war and regain its sovereignty and territorial integrity, as per international law,” Taliano said, adding that Syria and its allies have almost completely destroyed the international brigades of terrorists within Syrian territory.

“The remaining terrorists in Syria – ISIS, al Qaeda, FSA etc. — are all in U.S occupied areas of Syria, and the U.S is protecting them as per usual. But Syria and its allies are defeating the terrorists, so we can expect another false flag incident anytime now, which will be used as a pretext for increased Western support of their terrorist proxies,” stressed the Canadian analyst, who visited Syria twice in 2016 and 2018.

He expects no change in the policy of western countries towards Syria, affirming that Israel and the west have been intervening directly since the war began in Syria and they commit war crimes as policy.

Suffocating mantle of lies

“Western policymakers are committing an overseas holocaust right now, in the Middle East and beyond. These elite, largely unaccountable policymakers, and an increasingly transnational oligarch class, are the short- term beneficiaries of these policies, to the detriment of domestic and global populations.  We need to break through the suffocating mantle of lies that is destroying us all,” said Taliano.

He, in addition, commented on MSM’s attacks against European delegations and reporters that come to Syria to see the reality of events by saying:

“MSM is an ignorant appendage of the mindless war machine, hence MSM fake journalists feel threatened by real reporting that contradicts their criminal war propaganda.”

“Voices from Syria”

The Canadian political analyst, who was in Syria in in April, 2018, at the same time that the U.S, France, and U.K bombed Syria with their cruise missiles following the Ghouta false flag, published one year ago a book entitled ‘Voices from Syria’ after he came to Syria in September 2016 as he sensed that the official narrative being fed to North Americans across TV screens, in newsprint and on internet were false.

“Voices from Syria is a very short book, but it is full of primary source documentation and evidence that refutes the incessant Western war propaganda. It also explains what we as Westerners can do to amplify the Truth for Peace and Justice,” the author clarified.

He went on to say:

“I hope to visit Syria again.  All of humanity is connected to Syria’s ancient civilization in one way or another, and Syria’s rich roots are spiritually uplifting. I see Syria as a bastion of civilization that is confronting and defeating international terrorism for the benefit of humanity.”

Taliano described the achievements of Syria and its allies against terrorism as ‘extraordinary’ and a ‘remarkable feat’, given the fact that all of NATO and its allies support the terrorists.

*

Interviewed by Basma Qaddour  

This article was originally published on The Syria Times.

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

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

The US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment affirms the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…”

Warrants based on probable cause must be obtained to conduct them legally.

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5 – 4 majority in Carpenter v. United States that Fourth Amendment protections apply to cell phone location information.

Prior to the ruling, government at the federal, state and local levels could obtain cell location records from companies on request by claiming they’re required as part of an investigation.

Supporting the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said location information collected by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and other cell providers creates a “detailed chronicle of a person’s physical presence compiled every day, every moment over years…400 million devices in the United States” tracked.

Authorities must now get warrant approval before obtaining this data, an important privacy protection.

According to the Court, cell phone tracking lets government achieve “near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user.”

Cell providers collect it for every device so “police need not even know in advance whether they want to follow a particular individual, or when.”

The FBI, CIA, NSA, and other Big Brother US spy agencies have other ways of monitoring everyone, trampling on Bill of Rights protections virtually unrestrained.

Federal mass surveillance is pervasive, circumventing rule of law principles, metadata collected unrelated to national security without court authorized warrants.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Apple, and major telecommunications companies are complicit in spying on customers.

Phone conversations are recorded, emails collected and stored, computers and television sets turned into monitoring devices in ways Orwell never imagined, today’s technology way ahead of his time.

Capabilities enable spying on virtually everything we do, turning America and other so-called Western democracies into totalitarian states.

What’s going on happens extrajudicially without congressional oversight or knowledge.

Big Brother is real, no longer fiction, reflecting unchecked police state power. Fundamental freedoms are vanishing, most people unaware of or indifferent about what’s happening.

Friday’s Supreme Court ruling was an important step in the right direction, prohibiting cell phone information exchanged between individuals from being shared with third parties without warrant authorization.

Yet it’s not enough to counter the power and ability of the state to monitor and control our lives in countless ways – capabilities increasing as technology advances.

*

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

The Times of Israel published an article titled “Israel to begin promoting railway linking Haifa seaport with Saudi Arabia”, which self-explanatorily describes Israeli Transportation Minister Israel Katz’s unprecedented proposal for pioneering an overland rail route from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf as part of his signature “Tracks for Regional Peace” initiative. First unveiled just a few months ago, this plan envisions Israel replacing Syria as the mainland gateway for facilitating EU-Gulf trade through rail connections with Palestine, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, the latter of which has yet to formally sign a peace deal with Israel but is widely regarded as one of its most solid regional allies in the larger Mideast proxy war against Iran. 

The timing of the article comes right after reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) held secret talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Jordanian capital of Amman, supposedly over the US’ forthcoming peace plan but which possibly also included discussions about this prospective connectivity route. In fact, the Haifa-to-Dammam rail corridor might even become a fundamental component of the so-called “New Middle East” that the Trump Administration is trying to build, given that it would represent the undeniable betterment of Israeli-Saudi relations and could even come to precede a formal peace treaty between the two de-facto anti-Iranian allies after they openly join forces in pushing the US’ soon-to-be-unveiled peace plan on the Palestinians.

Symbolism aside, there are very real economic reasons for building this railway. MBS’ ambitious Vision 2030 comprehensive reform program aims to assist the Kingdom’s phased transition to its inevitable post-oil economy, to which end Riyadh is seeking billions in investment in real-sector development projects. China is slated to play a key role in this process by building up the heavily populated eastern part of the country’s southern Persian Gulf shoreline into an industrial powerhouse as part of its plans to turn Saudi Arabia into a tri-continental pivot node along its New Silk Road, which if successful could see Beijing making use of the Haifa-to-Dammam rail corridor to export products to the EU.

In other words, the irony of this US-assisted plan is that it might inadvertently help China because of the very real potential that Beijing has for “piggybacking” off of it in pursuing its own self-interests, which interestingly overlap with all the relevant parties’, including Washington’s own. From the American perspective, it makes sense to invest in this project in order to exert influence over what might become one of its rival’s Silk Road branch lines, thus keeping Chinese-EU trade under the watchful eye of the US no matter which geographic domain it’s conducted across. So as not to be left out of this exciting confluence of strategic interests, Russia should endeavor to play a role in this project.

The state-owned Russian Railways is already planning to participate in the construction of the Trans-Arabian Railroad (also known as the GCC Railroad) for connecting the Gulf Kingdoms, so it’s already clearly developed the connections within Saudi Arabia for clinching relevant deals. The company could therefore leverage these contacts to explore the options available for participating in the Israeli-Saudi Railway too, and considering Moscow’s excellent relations with Riyadh and Tel Aviv as a result of Russia’s fast-moving rapprochements with both of them over the past couple of years, it’s unlikely that these two increasingly independent actors would object to its proposed role even if their American ally was unhappy with it.

It’s always to Russia’s benefit to participate in mutually (or in this case, multilaterally) beneficial projects with its partners, especially its newfound and non-traditional ones such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of whom have the available funding to reciprocally invest within the country itself as a quid-pro-quo for the successful outcome of this or any other initiative. Speaking of which, the proposed railway isn’t the only potential platform for trilateral cooperation between these three players, as MBS’ plans for constructing the so-called “NEOM future city” close to the Gulf of Aqaba could naturally involve Israel and also Russia as well.

Tel Aviv has an interest in funding this nearby project and incorporating it into the so-called “Red-Med Railway” that could even potentially be expanded across part of the former Hejaz Railway route for streamlining a connectivity corridor along Saudi Arabia’s western coast to complement the GCC Railway down its eastern one. Moscow, meanwhile, could also provide financing to the NEOM future city but might additionally seek to involve its Skolkovo Innovation Center in this initiative too, thereby giving it a “big-ticket project” to attach its name to and gain further global renown. Altogether, Russia can play a crucial role in tightening the Israeli-Saudi alliance and reaping strategic dividends as a result.

Economic rewards are of course the driving factor incentivizing Russian participation in these aforementioned projects, but even important though much longer-term is the role that Moscow would be playing in “balancing” out Washington’s hitherto monopolization of this partnership, which has thus far been advanced without any multipolar influence. Taking advantage of its rapid rapprochements with Israel and Saudi Arabia, Russia should market its prospective role in these initiatives as strengthening both parties’ strategic independence by proactively mitigating any possible overreliance on the US. Seeing as how China stands to gain immensely from these projects, it’s inevitable that the US will exert disproportionate influence over them with time, which is why it’s so important for Russia to apply a positive counterbalancing force when this moment finally arrives.

*

This article was originally published on InfoRos.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoRos.

I thought that perhaps I had tuned into John Oliver or to Saturday Night Live in error, but no doubt about it, there was an unmistakable President Donald Trump speaking before an audience at the National Space Council. He was saying that on his own presidential authority “I’m hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces. … We are going to have the Air Force, and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal.”

Before signing Space Policy Directive 3 mandating the change and abruptly departing, Trump went on to explain that

“My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world’s greatest space-faring nation. The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers. But our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of national identity, but a matter of national security. It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space.”

The Air Force, which already has a Space Command, will no doubt object to the new arrangement, preferring instead to roll the expanded responsibilities and money into its already existing framework. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is also reported to be against the expansion, explaining in a speech last year that

“The creation of an independent Space Corps, with the corresponding institutional growth and budget implications, does not address…our nation’s fiscal problems in a responsive manner.”

And Donald Trump will have to get over a couple of bureaucratic hurdles to get his nifty new interstellar command up and running. First of all, it will require an Act of Congress to create a new branch of the military. That might not be difficult to do as the expansion is being packaged as “national security,” which Republicans will support reflexively and Democrats will also get behind not wanting to appear weak before the elections in November. And both parties will also be willing to line up to benefit from the political contributions coming from defense contractors as well as the creation of new military support facilities providing jobs in congressional districts.

And then there is the money, alluded to by Mattis. Start-up funding a new, coequal military branch would mean a huge increase in the defense budget. As long as the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency and the treasury can print money without any real backing it is possible to ride the wave, but there are currently significant challenges to the dollars survival in that role. If its supremacy ends, there goes the economy taking the unrestrained government spending with it and sinking the Space Command together with much, much more.

Major defense contractors, all of whom were present to hear Trump’s speech, were immediately seen to be drooling over the prospect of a new cash cow. And at the Pentagon champagne corks were popping at the thought of a couple of hundred new flag officer positions that will have to be invented and filled as well as the full complement of civilians to staff the bureaucracy. And think of the uniforms that will have to be distinct from those used by the other branches of the service, maybe copying those formerly in vogue on the Starship Enterprise or as seen in the movie Starship Troopers.

The reality is that the United States does indeed have a major national security interest in protecting its network of satellites in orbit as well as related infrastructure, but there is still quite a lot in the Trump remarks that is disturbing. Trump is basically saying two things. The first is that he will be weaponizing outer space and the second is that he is doing so because he intends for the United States to become dominant in that domain. It is a complete ass-backwards approach to the problem of potential development of threats coming from beyond the atmosphere. Instead of arming outer space, Washington should be working with other countries that have capabilities in that region to demilitarize exploration and both commercial and government exploitation. Everyone has an interest in not allowing outer space to become the next site for an arms race, though admittedly working with other countries does not appear to be something that the Trump Administration enters into lightly. Or at all.

And Trump should also abandon his insistence that the United States develop “dominance” in space. The use of such language is a red flag that will make any agreement with countries like Russia and China impossible to achieve. It virtually guarantees that there will be a competition among a number of nations to develop and deploy killer satellites employing lasers and other advanced electronic jamming technologies to protect their own outer space infrastructure.

Trump appears to have internalized a viewpoint that sees the United States as surrounded by threats but able to emerge victorious by being hyper-aggressive on all fronts. It is a posture that might unnerve opponents and bring some success in the short term but which ultimately will create a genuine threat as the rest of the world lines up against Washington. That day might be coming if one goes by the reaction to recent U.S. votes in the United Nations and Trump’s behavior at G-7 are anything to go by.

No one in his right mind would allow Trump to dominate outer space based on Washington’s track record of irresponsible leadership since 9/11. It has wrecked the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, killing possibly as many as 4 million Muslims in so doing. It has bullied allies into joining its projects in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria while also disparaging foreign governments and entering into trade wars. It has bankrupted itself in all but name, systematically dismantled the rights of its own citizens, and has become a rogue nation by virtually every measure.

And when you have firmly established the principle that might makes right and all the universe is at the disposal of Washington, what comes next? Antarctica and the arctic region are by some accounts rich in natural resources. Will we Americans be seeing an Antarctic Command with a mandate to dominate the polar regions to enhance national security? Stay tuned.

*

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.

When are America’s global corporations and Wall Street going to sit down with President Trump and explain to him that his trade war is not with China but with them.  The biggest chunk of America’s trade deficit with China is the offshored production of America’s global corporations. When the corporations bring the products that they produce in China to the US consumer market, the products are classified as imports from China.  

Six years ago when I was writing The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I concluded on the evidence that half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations.  Offshoring is a substantial benefit to US corporations because of much lower labor and compliance costs. Profits, executive bonuses, and shareholders’ capital gains receive a large boost from offshoring.  The costs of these benefits for a few fall on the many—the former American employees who formerly had a middle class income and expectations for their children.

In my book, I cited evidence that during the first decade of the 21st century “the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees.  Over the decade, the number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500 workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent. These losses are net of new start-ups.  Not all the losses are due to offshoring.  Some are the result of business failures” (p. 100).

In other words, to put it in the most simple and clear terms, millions of Americans lost their middle class jobs not because China played unfairly, but because American corporations betrayed the American people and exported their jobs.  “Making America great again” means dealing with these corporations, not with China.  When Trump learns this, assuming anyone will tell him, will he back off China and take on the American global corporations?

The loss of middle class jobs has had a dire effect on the hopes and expectations of Americans, on the American economy, on the finances of cities and states and, thereby, on their ability to meet pension obligations and provide public services, and on the tax base for Social Security and Medicare, thus threatening these important elements of the American consensus.  In short, the greedy corporate elite have benefitted themselves at enormous cost to the American people and to the economic and social stability of the United States.

The job loss from offshoring also has had a huge and dire impact on Federal Reserve policy.  With the decline in income growth, the US economy stalled. The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan substituted an expansion in consumer credit for the missing growth in consumer income in order to maintain aggregate consumer demand. Instead of wage increases, Greenspan relied on an increase in consumer debt to fuel the economy.

The credit expansion and consequent rise in real estate prices, together with the deregulation of the banking system, especially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, produced the real estate bubble and the fraud and mortgage-backed derivatives that gave us the 2007-08 financial crash.

The Federal Reserve responded to the crash not by bailing out consumer debt but by bailing out the debt of its only constituency—the big banks.  The Federal Reserve let little banks fail and be bought up by the big ones, thus further increasing financial concentration. The multi-trillion dollar increase in the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet was entirely for the benefit of a handful of large banks.  Never before in history had an agency of the US government acted so decisively in behalf only of the ownership class.

The way the Federal Reserve saved the irresponsible large banks, which should have failed and have been broken up, was to raise the prices of troubled assets on the banks’ books by lowering interest rates.  To be clear, interest rates and bond prices move in opposite directions. When interest rates are lowered by the Federal Reserve, which it achieves by purchasing debt instruments, the prices of bonds rise. As the various debt risks move together, lower interest rates raise the prices of all debt instruments, even troubled ones. Raising the prices of debt instruments produced solvent balance sheets for the big banks.

To achieve its aim, the Federal Reserve had to lower the interest rates to zero, which even the low reported inflation reduced to negative interest rates.  These low rates had disastrous consequences.  On the one hand low interest rates caused all sorts of speculations.  On the other low interest rates deprived retires of interest income on their retirement savings, forcing them to draw down capital, thus reducing accumulated wealth among the 90 percent.  The under-reported inflation rate also denied retirees Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, forcing them to spend retirement capital.  

The low interest rates also encouraged corporate boards to borrow money in order to buy back the corporation’s stock, thus raising its price and, thereby, the bonuses and stock options of executives and board members and the capital gains of shareholders.  In other words, corporations indebted themselves for the short-term benefit of executives and owners. Companies that refused to participate in this scam were threatened by Wall Street with takeovers.

Consequently today the combination of offshoring and Federal Reserve policy has left us a situation in which every aspect of the economy is indebted—consumers, government at all levels, and businesses.  A recent Federal Reserve study concluded that Americans are so indebted and so poor that 41 percent of the American population cannot raise $400 without borrowing from family and friends or selling personal possessions.

A country whose population is this indebted has no consumer market. Without a consumer market there is no economic growth, other than the false orchestrated figures produced by the US government by under counting the inflation rate.

Without economic growth, consumers, businesses, state, local, and federal governments cannot service their debts and meet their obligations. 

The Federal Reserve has learned that it can keep afloat the Ponzi scheme that is the US economy by printing money with which to support financial asset prices.  The alleged rise in interest rates by the Federal Reserve are not real interest rates rises.  Even the under-reported inflation rate is higher than the interest rate increases, with the result that the real interest rate falls.  If the stock market tries to sell off, before much damage can be done the Federal Reserve steps in and purchases S&P futures, thus driving up stock prices.  

Normally so much money creation by the Federal Reserve, especially in conjunction with such a high debt level of the US government and also state and local governments, consumers, and businesses, would cause a falling US dollar exchange rate.  Why hasn’t this happened?

For three reasons.  One is that the central banks of the other three reserve currencies—the Japanese central bank, the European central bank, and the Bank of England—also print money.  Their Quantitative Easing, which still continues, offsets the dollars created by the Federal Reserve and keeps the US dollar from depreciating.

A second reason is that when suspicion of the dollar’s worth sends up the gold price, the Federal Reserve or its bullion banks short gold futures with naked contracts. This drives down the gold price.  There are numerous columns on my website by myself and Dave Kranzler proving this to be the case.  There is no doubt about it.

The third reason is that money managers, individuals, pension funds, everyone and all the rest had rather make money than not.  Therefore, they go along with the Ponzi scheme.  The people who did not benefit from the Ponzi scheme of the past decade are those who understood it was a Ponzi scheme but did not realize the corruption that has beset the Federal Reserve and the central bank’s ability and willingness to continue to feed the Ponzi scheme. 

As I have explained previously, the Ponzi scheme falls apart when it becomes impossible to continue to support the dollar as burdened as the dollar is by debt levels and abundance of dollars that could be dumped on the exchange markets.  

This is why Washington is determined to retain its hegemony.  It is Washington’s hegemony over Japan, Europe, and the UK that protects the American Ponzi scheme.  The moment one of these central banks ceases to support the dollar, the others would follow, and the Ponzi scheme would unravel.  If the prices of US debt and stocks were reduced to their real values, the United States would no longer have a place in the ranks of world powers.

The implication is that war, and not economic reform, is America’s most likely future.

In a subsequent column I hope to explain why neither US political party has the awareness and capability to deal with real problems.

*

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

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

At first glance, all appears calm in this southern Syrian city where protests first broke out seven years ago. Residents mill around shops in preparation for the evening Iftar meal when they break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

But the tension is nonetheless palpable in this now government-controlled city. A few weeks ago, Russian-brokered reconciliation talks in southern Syria fell apart when Western-backed militants rejected a negotiated peace.

Whether there will now be a full-on battle for the south or not, visits last week to Syria’s three southern governorates, Daraa, Quneitra, and Suweida, reveal a startling possibility: al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise—the Nusra Front—appears to be deeply entrenched alongside these U.S.-backed militants in key, strategic towns and villages scattered throughout the south.

U.S. media and think tanks obfuscate this fact by referring to all opposition fighters as “rebels” or “moderates.” Take a look at their maps and you only see three colors: red for the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies, green for opposition forces, black for ISIS.

So then, where is the Nusra Front, long considered by Western pundits to be one of the most potent fighting forces against the SAA? Have they simply—and conveniently—been erased from the Syrian battle map?

Discussions with Syrian military experts, analysts, and opposition fighters during my trip revealed that Nusra is alive and kicking in the southern battlefields. The map below specifically identifies areas in the south controlled by Nusra, but there are many more locations that do not appear where Nusra is present and shares power with other militants.

Despite its U.S. and UN designation as a terrorist organization, Nusra has been openly fighting alongside the “Southern Front,” a group of 54 opposition militias funded and commanded by a U.S.-led war room based in Amman, Jordan called the Military Operations Center (MOC).

Specifics about the MOC aren’t easy to come by, but sources inside Syria—both opposition fighters and Syrian military brass (past and present)—suggest the command center consists of the U.S., UK, France, Jordan, Israel, and some Persian Gulf states.

They say the MOC supplies funds, weapons, salaries, intel, and training to the 54 militias, many of which consist of a mere 200 or so fighters that are further broken down into smaller groups, some only a few dozen strong.

SAA General Ahmad al-Issa, a commander for the frontline in Daraa, says the MOC is a U.S.-led operation that controls the movements of Southern Front “terrorists” and is highly influenced by Israel’s strategic goals in the south of Syria—one of which is to seize control of its bordering areas to create a “buffer” inside Syrian territories.

How does he know this? Issa says his information comes from a cross-section of sources, including reconciled/captured militants and intel from the MOC itself. The general cites MOC’s own rulebook for militants as an example of its Israel-centricity:

“One, never threaten or approach any Israeli border in any way. Two, protect the borders with (Israeli-occupied) Golan so no one can enter Israel.”

To illustrate the MOC’s control over southern militants, Issa cites further regulations:

“three, never take any military action before clearing with MOC first. Four, if the MOC asks groups to attack or stop, they must do so.”

What happens if these rules are not upheld?

“They will get their salaries cut,” says Issa.

The armed opposition groups supported by the MOC are mostly affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), itself an ill-defined, highly fungible group of militants who have changed names and affiliations with frequency during the Syrian conflict.

Over the course of the war, the FSA has fought alongside the Nusra Front and ISIS—some have even joined them. Today, despite efforts to whitewash the FSA and Southern Front as “non-sectarian” and non-extremist, factions like the Yarmouk Army, Mu’tazz Billah Brigade, Salah al-Din Division, Fajr al-Islam Brigade, Fallujah al-Houran Brigade, the Bunyan al-Marsous grouping, Saifollah al-Masloul Brigade, and others are currently occupying keys areas in Daraa in cooperation with the Nusra Front.

None of this is news to American policymakers. Even before the MOC was established in February 2014, Nusra militants were fronting vital military maneuvers for the FSA. As one Daraa opposition activist explains:

“The FSA and al-Nusra join together for operations but they have an agreement to let the FSA lead for public reasons, because they don’t want to frighten Jordan or the West…. Operations that were really carried out by al-Nusra are publicly presented by the FSA as their own.”

Efforts to conceal the depth of cooperation between Nusra and the FSA go right to the top. Says one FSA commander in Daraa:

“In many battles, al-Nusra takes part, but we don’t tell the (MOC) operations room about it.”

It’s highly doubtful that the U.S. military remains unaware of this. The Americans operate on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis with regard to FSA-Nusra cooperation. In a 2015 interview with this reporter, CENTCOM spokesman Lieutenant Commander Kyle Raines was quizzed about why Pentagon-vetted fighters’ weapons were showing up in Nusra hands. Raines responded:

“We don’t ‘command and control’ these forces—we only ‘train and enable’ them. Who they say they’re allying with, that’s their business.”

In practice, the U.S. doesn’t appear to mind the Nusra affiliation—regardless of the fact that the group is a terror organization—as long as the job gets done.

U.S. arms have been seen in Nusra’s possession for many years now, including highly valued TOW missiles, which were game-changing weapons in the Syrian military theater. When American weapons end up in al-Qaeda hands during the first or second year of a conflict, one assumes simple errors in judgment. When the problem persists after seven years, however, it starts to look like there’s a policy in place to look the other way.

It’s also not difficult to grasp why U.S. maps patently ignore evidence of Nusra embedded among U.S.-supported militias. The group, after all, is exempt from ceasefires, viewed as a fair target for military strikes at all times.

In December 2015, UN Security Council Resolution 2254 called for “Member States to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), Al-Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the Security Council” (emphasis added). Furthermore, the resolution makes clear that ceasefires “will not apply to offensive or defensive actions against these individuals, groups, undertakings and entities.”

This essentially means that the Syrian army and its allies can tear apart any areas in the south of Syria where Nusra fighters—and “entities associated” with it—are based. In effect, international law provides a free hand for a Syrian military assault against U.S.-backed militias co-located with Nusra, and undermines the ability of their foreign sponsors to take retaliatory measures.

That’s why the Nusra Front doesn’t show up on U.S. maps.

In an interview last week, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad blamed the sudden breakdown of southern reconciliation efforts on

“Israeli and American interference,” which he says “put pressure on the terrorists in that area in order to prevent reaching any compromise or peaceful resolution.”

Today, the Israeli border area with Syria is dotted with Nusra and ISIS encampments, which Israel clearly prefers over the Syrian army and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies. The Wall Street Journal even reported last year that Israel was secretly providing funding for salaries, food, fuel, and munitions to militants across its border.

In early June, two former Islamist FSA members (one of them also a former Nusra fighter) in Beit Jinn—a strategic area bordering Syria, Lebanon, and Israel—told me that Israel had been paying their militia’s salaries for a year before a reconciliation deal was struck with the Syrian government.

“Every month Israel would send us $200,000 to keep fighting,” one revealed. “Our leaders were following the outside countries. We were supported by MOC, they kept supporting us till the last minute,” he said.

Earlier that day, in the village of Hadar in the Syrian Golan, members of the Druze community described a bloody Nusra attack last November that killed 17:

“All the people here saw how Israel helped Nusra terrorists that day. They covered them with live fire from the hilltops to help Nusra take over Hadar. And at the end of the fights, Israel takes in the injured Nusra fighters and provides them with medical services,” says Marwan Tawil, a local English teacher.

“The ceasefire line (Syrian-Israeli border) is 65 kilometers between here to Jordan, and only this area is under the control of the SAA,” explains Hadar’s mayor. “Sixty kilometers is with Nusra and Israel and only the other five are under the SAA.”

Israel is so heavily vested in keeping Syria and its allies away from its borders, it has actively bolstered al-Qaeda and other extremists in Syria’s southern theater. As Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon famously explained in 2016,

“In Syria, if the choice is between Iran and the Islamic State, I choose the Islamic State.”

To justify their interventions in the battle ahead, the U.S. and Israel claim that Iranian and Hezbollah forces are present in the south, yet on the ground in Daraa and Quneitra, there is no visible sight of either.

Multiple sources confirm this in Daraa, and insist that that there are only a handful of Hezbollah advisors—not fighters—in the entire governorate.

So why the spin? “This is a public diplomacy effort to make the West look like they’ve forced Iran and Hezbollah out of the south,” explains General Issa.

The U.S., Israel, and their allies cannot win this southern fight. They can only prolong the insecurity for a while before the SAA decides to launch a military campaign against the 54-plus-militias-Nusra occupying the south of Syria. The end result is likely to be a negotiated settlement peppered with a few “soft battles” to eject the more hardline militants.

As one SAA soldier on the scene in Daraa tells me: “Fifty-four factions in a small area shows weakness more than it shows strength.” And their cooperation with the Nusra Front just makes the targets on their backs even larger.

*

On April 19th, university students in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, exploded onto the streets. Their initial demand? A more effective government response to wildfires burning out of control in the country’s most precious repository of biodiversity.

Soon, a social wildfire took hold in Managua and then spread across the country. Thousands of Nicaraguans added a second demand to the first: for President Daniel Ortega to revoke his recent changes to the country’s social security law, which had simultaneously raised social security taxes (upsetting private enterprise) and cut benefits to seniors (angering many ordinary people). In the ensuing clashes, close to 200 Nicaraguans have died, hundreds have been arrested, and thousands have been injured, almost all at the hands of anti-riot police, unidentified snipers, or gangs of pro-government thugs on motorcycles. Today, this movement of auto-convocados (self-conveners) articulates two key demands: justice and democracy — justice for those who have died at the government’s hand and a return to democratic governance for Nicaragua.

Why should we care? In a world where the U.S. president proclaims his desire to see his people “sit up and pay attention” to him the way North Koreans do for Kim Jong-Un; where his attorney general tore children from their parents’ arms; where the United States plans to initiate the militarization of space (despite our endorsement of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which outlaws exactly that) — in such a world, why should people care what happens in an impoverished Central American nation thousands of miles from the centers of power?

Because there was a time when Nicaragua’s imaginative, idiosyncratic revolution offered the world an example of how a people might shuck off the bonds of U.S. dominance and try to build a democratic country devoted to human well-being. I know, because I saw a little of that example during the six months I spent in Nicaragua’s war zones in 1984, working with an organization called Witness for Peace. My job there was to report on the U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary (Contra) military campaign to overthrow the Sandinista government, which had replaced a vicious dictator in 1979.  The Contras employed an intentional terrorist strategy of torture, kidnapping, and murder, targeting civilians in their homes and fields and workers in rural schools and clinics.

Some (Abbreviated) History

Nicaragua sits dead center on any map of the Americas and, in the 1980s, small as it was, it also occupied the center of the political imaginations of many people. In that country lay the hopes of millions living beyond its borders, hopes that a people really could become the protagonists of their own nation’s story or, in the words of the Sandinista anthem, “dueño de su historia, arquitecto de su liberación” — directors of their own history, architects of their own liberation.

Before the fall of its Washington-supported dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle (image on the right), in 1979, very few people outside Central America had given a thought to Nicaragua. It was the poorest, most illiterate nation in the region. Indeed, Somoza is reported to have said, “I don’t need educated people. I need oxen!” (Or, as our own president put it during his 2016 campaign, “I love the poorly educated!”) In the years following the dictator’s ouster, Nicaragua became a symbol of hope for people on the left globally.

Somoza had treated Nicaragua like his own private hacienda, leasing out its hillsides for clear-cutting to U.S. and Canadian lumber companies and, along with an oligarchic class of landowners and businessmen, squeezing every dollar out of the people he ruled. He maintained his power thanks to a regime of intimidation, torture, and assassination. His National Guard functioned like a private army (and would eventually form the nucleus of the Contras after many of its members fled to neighboring Honduras when the Sandinistas came to power).

In 1979, however, after a year-long insurrection fought in the mountainous areas of the country by a guerrilla force armed with AK-47s and in the cities by ordinary citizens wielding homemade bombs thrown from behind barricades, the Somoza regime collapsed. By the time he fled, after a brutal final round of aerial bombardment, no sector of the country backed him. Erstwhile allies like the big landowners, private industry, and the Catholic Church, along with the press of all stripes, had all turned on him. So had the majority of Nicaraguans, the rural campesinos (a word inadequately translated as “peasants”), and the country’s tiny urban working class. In the end, even his patrons in Washington abandoned Somoza as a hopeless cause.

A group called the Frente Sandinista (the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN) stepped into the vacuum he left. Founded in 1961, it took its name from Augusto César Sandino (image on the left), a guerrilla leader who had fought against a U.S. occupation of Nicaragua decades earlier. In 1978, despite internal disagreements, the group united around four basic principles of governance: political pluralism; the formation of a mixed economy, including private ownership, state-owned enterprises, and collectives; popular mobilization through a variety of mass organizations; and a foreign policy of nonalignment.

In July 1979, when Somoza resigned and fled the country, the FSLN assumed power with long-established plans to improve the lives of the rural and urban poor. The party established health clinics, promoted free public education, and offered a “canasta básica” (basic food basket) of affordable staple foods, quickly reducing the endemic malnutrition in the country. Through a national vaccination campaign, it eliminated polio in 1981. It also brought in laws that protected poor farmers from losing their land to banks and instituted agrarian reform, transferring land titles to thousands of previously landless campesinos.

In 1980, 90,000 people, two-thirds of them middle-class high school students from the cities, took part in a national literacy campaign. In the process, those young students spent five months living with campesino families, learning about the hardships (and joys) of subsistence farming. In return for such hospitality, those students taught their host families to read. Today, my partner sits on the board of a Nicaraguan development NGO, several of whose organizers began their lives of community engagement as teenage participants in that literacy campaign.

Of course, the Sandinista government was not perfect. Some of its worst policies reflected the country’s endemic racism against indigenous groups and English-speaking Nicaraguans of African descent. Existing conflict between the Sandinistas and Miskito Indians was further exacerbated by the government’s imposition of a military draft in response to the Contra war. Many Miskitos were members of the pacifist Moravian church, but the Sandinistas interpreted their resistance to the draft as complicity with the enemy, and so opened the way for successful CIA infiltration of the group.

The military draft became deeply unpopular throughout the country and its enforcement was sometimes heavy-handed. More than once, I sat on a bus stopped at a Sandinista roadblock, waiting for soldiers to check the papers of all the young men on board to be sure none of them were draft dodgers.

The Sandinistas also created and consolidated government structures, including a presidency and national assembly. When the party swept the 1984 elections with 67% of the vote, and Daniel Ortega became president, no one doubted that the result represented the will of the overwhelming majority of Nicaraguans.

In 1986, the National Constitutional Assembly approved a new constitution, which granted abundant rights to Nicaraguans, including women and LGBT people. One of its articles even called for absolute equality between men and women and the full sharing of housework and childcare. (Let’s pause here to remember that the U.S. Constitution has yet to include any kind of Equal Rights Amendment, let alone an article requiring men to share equally in domestic labor!)

Among the new constitution’s provisions was a six-year fixed term for the presidency.

However, Nicaraguans were not stupid. They knew that, as long as the Sandinistas ran the government, the U.S. would continue its Contra war. So, in 1990, Nicaraguans replaced the FSLN with the UNO party run by Violeta Chamorro in a result that shocked many people outside Nicaragua, including the Sandistas’ U.S. polling firm. The people had spoken, and the Sandinistas accepted their verdict.

And that was momentous in itself. For the first time in history, a victorious revolutionary party allowed itself to be voted out of office, relinquishing many of its hopes, but preserving the democratic structures so many Nicaraguans had died to create and maintain.

Nicaragua in U.S. Hearts and Minds

While Nicaragua was having its revolution, back in the United States we were enduring our own: the Reagan Revolution. Former California Governor Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential victory marked the beginning of the Republican Party’s successful attack on the New Deal structures still embedded in American life. The Reagan administration undermined unions, cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulated vital industries from banking to health care (with disastrous results still felt today), attacked social programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Medicaid, and turned perfectly respectable words like “welfare” and “entitlement” into code for African American moral turpitude. AIDS was ravaging gay communities, but the president refused to even say the word in public until the first year of his second term. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration escalated Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs” into a full-scale assault on poor communities. In 1986, the president signed a drug law requiring guaranteed — and long — prison sentences even for minor, non-violent drug offenses.

In other words, things in the U.S. were pretty grim. That made it tempting indeed to adopt someone else’s ready-made revolution, especially one that had already achieved so much and had such a great soundtrack: the music of the brothers Luis and Carlos Mejía Godoy, including the Sandinista anthem mentioned above and the beloved “Nicaragua, Nicaragüita,” with its final line,

“Pero ahora que ya sos libre, Nicaragüita, yo te quiero mucho más.”(“But now that you are free, little Nicaragua, I love you so much more.”)

And Nicaragua was indeed free, although also under attack. The United States had always been its biggest trading partner. In 1985, however, President Reagan embargoed all trade with the country and cut off air and sea transport to and from the U.S. Other nations, including Soviet bloc countries, Cuba, and the European Union, along with many thousands of American individuals and organizations, stepped in to offer material aid, technical assistance, and in the case of Witness for Peace, accompaniment in the war zones. Such volunteers risked their lives — young engineer Ben Linder actually lost his — for the privilege of being part of this experiment in liberation.

In my six months there, I met Nicaraguans who had never been more than 50 kilometers from the tiny villages in which they were born, but had a vision of change that would spread across Central America, Latin America, and — as in my case — even reach the United States. Over and over, people told me,

“Americans can stop Congress from voting for aid to the Contras this year; you can stop it next year, but until you make a revolution in your own country, nothing will really change. We will always be confronted by U.S. power.”

Heady stuff. And it turned a lot of heads, not always in the most helpful ways. Some visiting Americans became ever more convinced that their own left-wing party back home was destined to become the vanguard that would bring revolution to North America. Some became more rojinegro (red and black, the colors of the FSLN’s flag) than the Sandinistas themselves and would hear no criticism of the party or its leaders. Others simply lived for the day when they could abandon the United States, with its hopeless, politically backward population, and make the permanent move to Nicaragua, and its highly conscious (or in today’s language, “woke”) people.

And some of us reluctantly acknowledged that, much as we loved Nicaragua’s brilliant green mountains, our real work lay in our own country. We came home believing that if we could not find a way to love the United States, despite its maddening intransigence, we would never find a way to change it.

Trouble in Paradise

Like everything in Nicaragua, its post-1990 history has proven complicated indeed. As a start, some of the elements in the FSLN most committed to popular democracy left to form smaller Sandinista-style parties, but without significant success at the ballot box. Meanwhile, in the months between the election and the transfer of power, many Sandinistas took part in the Piñata — a wholesale appropriation of state-owned property, companies, vehicles, and cash. In the process, Daniel Ortega, his wife Rosario Murillo, and other high-ranking party members began amassing personal fortunes and rebuilding their political power. The couple even underwent a well-publicized conversion to a charismatic form of Roman Catholicism (which helps explain why Nicaragua today has one of the world’s harshest anti-abortion laws).

By 1999, Ortega had made a pact with the notorious right-wing politician and then-president, Arnoldo Alemán. He and his PLC party, which drew its support from the oligarchic class that once supported Samoza, had beaten Violeta Chamorro in the 1996 election. Alemán was later convicted of corruption on a grand scale and sentenced to years of house arrest.

In 2006, Daniel Ortega was again elected president. Having himself weathered a number of personal scandals, including his stepdaughter Zoilamerica’s credible accusations of years of sexual abuse, he would gradually grant Alemán complete clemency.

In the 12 years since his second election, Ortega has consolidated his own power, placed family members in important (and lucrative) positions, and achieved full control of the FSLN party apparatus. He engineered constitutional changes that now permit him to serve an unlimited number of terms; that is, he granted himself a potential presidency for life.

In spite of the increasingly autocratic nature of his rule, Nicaragua has seen substantial economic development in the last decade, from which many have benefitted. Ortega’s is an authoritarian government that has nonetheless provided real material benefits to Nicaraguans. Furthermore, whether because of a lingering esprit de corps in the police and army or thanks to Ortega’s mano dura (harsh hand), or a combination of the two, the country is not suffering the plague of drugs and government-by-cartel that has terrorized the peoples of much of the rest of Central America and Mexico.

Today, the United States is once again Nicaragua’s largest trading partner and the Ortega government is on good terms with international lending agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

At the Crossroads

In towns and urban neighborhoods across the country, people have once again built barricades, as Sandinista supporters did in the 1979 insurrection against Somoza. Once again, they are pulling up the concrete paving blocks once produced in Somoza’s own factory — this time to prevent the Sandinista police from entering their towns and neighborhoods.

Envío, a digital magazine put out by the University of Central America in Managua, calls this uprising an unarmed revolution. “Unarmed” is a modest exaggeration, since defenders at many of the barricades have used homemade mortars (steel tubes which hold hemp fuses attached to bags of gunpowder), but the demonstrators are massively outgunned by the government’s regular army and the police, as well as the turbas — organized gangs of thugs.

For longtime Nicaragua-watchers, it has been strange to see COSEP, the country’s private industry council and inveterate Sandinista opponent, joining with university students and campesinos to create a Civil Alliance for Justice and Democracy. In late May, leaders of the Alliance agreed to a dialogue with the government, mediated by the country’s council of Catholic bishops. The talks have been on-again, off-again ever since.

Although leftists around the world hailed Ortega’s return to power, his is not the revolutionary government of the 1980s. Perhaps because they wish it were, some Ortega supporters here and elsewhere are treating the present uprisings as if they were a reprise of the Contra war, a right-wing coup attempt orchestrated in Washington. I don’t think that’s true, although I have Nicaraguan friends who disagree with me.

To blame everything that happens in the country on puppet masters in Washington denies Nicaraguans their own agency. As student leader Madelaine Caracas told the German news network Deutsche Welle:

“It’s us Nicaraguans who are in the streets. Not a political party, not liberals, not conservatives, not the CIA. It’s an awakening, an exhaustion with seeing our brothers murdered.”

Y Ahora, Qué? (Now What?)

When Somoza left power, the FSLN was waiting, ready to govern. As far as I can tell, today there is no such organized force on the left that could fill the vacuum left by Ortega, for example, by successfully campaigning in any new elections. If, however, Ortega refuses to leave office, the alternatives are at least as painful to consider: his successful repression of a genuine uprising of popular anger through yet more killings, beatings, and jailings (with the continuation of an autocratic government into the unknown future), or a turn from a largely unarmed and, when armed, defensive, resistance to a full-scale civil war, with all the horrors that entails.

The only thing I am sure of is that Nicaragua always does better when the United States is looking elsewhere. So let’s hope Trump keeps his focus on infuriating his allies and courting his enemies in other parts of the world.

Many years ago, I sat in a hotel room — really more of a cot in a shed — in the tiny town of San Juan de Bocay, talking with my Witness for Peace travelling companion and a young Sandinista soldier. The soldier’s pet chipmunk sat on the windowsill chewing sunflower seeds. We discussed what the revolution meant to him and his country, and his hopes as well as ours that Nicaragua’s seeds of liberation would spread through the Americas. In that warm, dim light, revolution almost seemed possible.

Maybe I should have paid more attention to the chipmunk’s name. It was Napoleon.

*

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.

The troops live under
The cannon’s thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar
Moving from place to place
When they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skins are black or yellow
They quick as winking chop him into
Beefsteak tartar
—“The Cannon Song” from “The Threepenny Opera”

The soldier’s tale is as old as war. It is told and then forgotten. There are always young men and women ardent for glory, seduced by the power to inflict violence and naive enough to die for the merchants of death. The soldier’s tale is the same, war after war, generation after generation. It is Spenser Rapone’s turn now. The second lieutenant was given an “other than honorable” discharge June 18 after an Army investigation determined that he “went online to promote a socialist revolution and disparage high-ranking officers” and thereby had engaged in “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Rapone laid bare the lie, although the lie often seems unassailable. We must honor those like him who have the moral courage to speak the truth about war, even if the tidal waves of patriotic propaganda that flood the culture overwhelm the voices of the just.

Rapone enlisted in the Army in 2010. He attended basic training at Fort Benning, Ga. He graduated from airborne school in February 2011 and became an Army Ranger. He watched as those around him swiftly fetishized their weapons.

“The rifle is the reification of what it means to be infantrymen,” he said when I reached him by phone in Watertown, N.Y. “You’re taught that the rifle is an extension of you. It is your life. You have to carry it at all times. The rifle made us warriors dedicated to destroying the enemy in close personal combat. At first, it was almost gleeful. We were a bunch of 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds. We had this instrument of death in our hands. We had power. We could do what 99 percent of our countrymen could not. The weapon changes you. You want to prove yourself. You want to be tested in combat. You want to deliver death. It draws you in, as much as life in the Army sucks. You start executing tactical maneuvers and battle drills. You get a certain high. It’s seductive. The military beats empathy out of you. It makes you callous.”

He was disturbed by what was happening around him and to him.

“When you get to RASP [the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program], you’re told you not only have to understand Ranger culture and history, you have to adopt what’s called an airborne Ranger in the sky,” he said. “They make you go online and look at Rangers who were killed in action. You have to learn about this person and print out a copy of their obituary. It’s really unsettling, the whole process. This was a class leader acting on behalf of the cadre, he said something to the effect of ‘I’ll give you a hint, don’t pick Pat Tillman.’ ”

Rapone began to read about Pat Tillman, the professional football player who joined the Rangers and was killed in 2004 in Afghanistan by friendly fire, a fact that senior military officials, including Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who at the time was the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, covered up and replaced with a fictitious Hollywood version of death in combat with the enemy. Rapone watched the 2010 documentary “The Tillman Story” and would later read the 2006 Truthdig essay “After Pat’s Birthday,” written by Pat’s brother Kevin, who was in the Rangers with Pat. Pat Tillman, who had been in contact with Noam Chomsky, had become a critic of the war. In addition to lying to the Tillman family about Pat’s death, the Army did not return, and probably destroyed, Pat’s papers and diary.

“Pat Tillman showed me I could resist the indoctrination,” he said. “I did not have to let the military dehumanize me and turn me into something monstrous. When I learned how his death was covered up to sell the war, it was shocking. The military wasn’t interested in preserving freedom or democracy. It was only interested in protecting the profits of those in power and expanding the U.S. hegemony. I was not a Hollywood freedom fighter. I was a cog in the imperialist machine. I preyed on the poorest, most exploited people on the planet.”

“We were told to ‘shoot, move, and communicate,’ ” he said of his Ranger training. “This became our entire existence. We did not need to understand why or the larger implications. These things did not concern us.”

By July 2011 he was in Khost province in Afghanistan. He was 19 years old. He was an assistant machine gunner on an Mk-48, an 18-pound weapon that is mounted on a tripod and has a fire rate of 500 to 625 rounds per minute. He carried the spare barrel, along with the ammunition, which he fed into the gun. When his fellow Rangers cleared dwellings at night he set up a blocking position. He watched as the Rangers separated terrified men, women and children, treating them “as if they were animals.” The Rangers spoke of the Afghans as subhumans, dismissing them as “hajjis” and “ragheads.”

“A lot of the guys would say, ‘I want to go out every night and kill people,’ ” he told me. “The Rangers are about hyper-masculinity, misogyny, racism, and a hatred of other cultures.”

His platoon sergeant had the hammer of Thor, a popular symbol among white supremacists, tattooed on his arm. The sergeant told new Rangers that if they saw something that upset them and wanted to speak out about it they were “in the wrong fucking place.”

Rapone left the Rangers to attend West Point in 2012. Maybe, as an officer, he could make a difference, infuse some humanity into his squads of killers. But he had his doubts.

“When I started West Point in July 2012 I encountered a lot of similar themes I noticed in the Ranger regiment,” he said. “Officers and NCOs relished the idea of being able to kill people with impunity. It’s Rudyard Kipling. It’s the young British soldier mentality we’ve seen for hundreds of years. Its hyper-masculine. Even female cadets have to assimilate themselves. Any display of femininity is considered weakness. This is combined with the structural racism. They still honor [Confederate Gen.] Robert E. Lee at West Point. There’s a barracks named after him. There’s a portrait of him in the library in his Confederate uniform. In the bottom right of the portrait, in the background, is a slave.”

Rapone watched with growing anger as black cadets were kicked out for infractions that did not lead to the expulsion of white cadets.

He majored in history. But he read outside of the curriculum, including authors such as Howard Zinn and Stan Goff, a former Special Forces master sergeant who had been in Vietnam, Haiti, Panama, Colombia and Somalia and who wrote “Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti.”

“I realized we are the muscle for those with wealth and status,” Rapone said. “I also realized I was a socialist. It was jarring.”

His outspokenness and criticism saw him reprimanded.

“I almost got kicked out my senior year at West Point,” he said. “At that point, I was a socialist. When you study political economy, when you study critical theory, it informs your analysis and your work. It started off as an academic position. But I thought there has to be more to this. There has to be some kind of an action to back up my theories.”

He was derided as the “communist cadet.” He sought out those at the military academy who suffered from discrimination there, including people of color, women and Muslims. He joined the Muslim Cadet Association, although he is not Muslim.

“I wanted to help Muslim cadets find a platform,” he said. “I wanted them to know they were not forgotten. At West Point, there weren’t too many people who understood or appreciated Islam or how the U.S. has ripped Islamic countries to shreds.”

He helped organize an effort to provide Muslims at the academy with a proper prayer space, something that led him into heated arguments with senior administrative officials.

One professor confronted him:

“I’ve been watching you for the past three, four years—you think you can do whatever you want.”

“Yes, sir,” Rapone answered, a response that resulted in his being written up for speaking back to an officer.

The professor examined his social media accounts and found Rapone was posting articles from socialist publications and criticizing U.S. policy on Syrian refugees. The teacher sent a file on Rapone to the Criminal Investigations Division and G2, or military intelligence. Rapone was interrogated by senior officers. He was issued a “punishment tour” lasting 100 hours. He was forced to walk back and forth in the central square at West Point in his full dress uniform each week until the required hours were fulfilled.

“It looked like something out of a Monty Python sketch,” he said.

He was stripped of his privileges for 60 days. His spring break was canceled. He spent spring break doing landscaping and other menial tasks to “pay off” his punishment debt. He was required to train cadets who had not passed a required event.

“At West Point, they’ll maintain that hazing doesn’t exist,” he said, “at least the kind that was around in the ’50s or ’60s. But it’s still hazing. You’re considered a plebe when you first get to West Point. You take out upper classmen’s trash every night. You’re not allowed to talk when you’re outside as a plebe. You have to keep your hands balled up and walk in position of attention. If you’re caught talking to a classmate, you’ll get in trouble. The worst part is that those who move on from their plebe year enforce the same dehumanizing behavior, which they despised, on the new plebes.”

He had experienced hazing in the Rangers, too. New Rangers were forced to fight each other and do numerous push-ups or were hogtied and their stomachs were smacked repeatedly.

“The hazing weeds out people who won’t embrace it,” he said. “To resist total assimilation, a lot of people create an ironic detachment. But this ironic detachment is really another form of assimilation. It runs pretty deep. There was a guy in a leadership position who tried to kill himself when I was overseas. There were cadets who committed suicide when I was at West Point and others who tried to commit suicide. I spent eight years in the Army. Suicide was a very tangible reality. A lot of suicides were the result of the combination of hazing and military culture, which in a sense is a form of hazing. Your drill instructor can’t beat the shit out of you the way he used to, but the military still has methods to torture you emotionally.”

When he graduated from West Point he was sent back to Fort Benning, where he had been a young recruit six years earlier.

“Every other Friday a basic training class graduates,” he said. “I would see these buzzed-cut teenaged boys, who had barely progressed out of puberty, being sent into the meat grinder. It was unsettling. I was being trained to lead these guys, to tell them the mission we were doing was just and right. I could not in good conscience do that. I searched for an opening. I looked for ways to leave or speak out. When the whole national anthem thing was starting up with Colin Kaepernick (image on the right), putting his skin in the game, risking himself to fight against systemic racism, I thought I could at least do my part.”

He posted a picture of himself in uniform with the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick.

“Everything snowballed from there,” he said. “Colin Kaepernick, for me, was linked to Pat Tillman. He too was willing to risk himself and his status to speak truth to power.”

His public support of Kaepernick—along with his social media posts of photos of himself at his 2016 graduation at West Point wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt under his uniform and holding up his fist as he showed the words “Communism will win” on the inside of his cap—led to an investigation. Afterward, the Army’s 10th Mountain Division accept his resignation.

“The United States is almost religious about its patriotism,” he said. “Military personnel are seen as infallible. You have someone like [Secretary of Defense] James Mattis, who is a bona fide war criminal. He dropped bombs on a wedding ceremony in Iraq. He’s responsible for overseeing many different massacres in Iraq. Or [general and former national security adviser] H.R. McMaster. These people can’t do any wrong because they’ve served. This reverence for the military is priming the population to accept military rule and a form of fascism or protofascism. That’s why I felt even more compelled to get out.”

“The public doesn’t understand how regressive and toxic military culture is,” he went on. “The military’s inherent function is the abuse and degradation of other people. It is designed to be a vehicle of destruction. It’s fundamental to the system. Without that, it would collapse. You can’t convert the military into a humanitarian force even when you use the military in humanitarian ways, such as in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The military trains soldiers to see other human beings, particularly brown and black human beings, as an imminent threat.”

“Of course, the military prides itself on being apolitical, which is oxymoronic,” he said. “The military is the political muscle of the state. There are few things more dangerous than a soldier who thinks he or she doesn’t have a political function.”

“I want to implore other soldiers and military personnel, there’s more to being a soldier than knowing how to fire a weapon,” Rapone said. “You can take a lot of what you’ve learned into society and actually help. At West Point, they say they teach you to be a leader of character. They talk to you about moral fortitude. But what do we see in the military? I was blindly following orders. I was inflicting violence on the poorest people on earth. How is there any morality in that?”

*

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best selling author, former professor at Princeton University, activist and ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 11 books, including the New York Times best-seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco.

Featured image is by Mr. Fish/Truthdig.

The U.S. Navy has proposed training and testing exercises in the Pacific Ocean that could injure or kill thousands of marine mammals, including endangered whales and seals. The proposal would allow the Navy to harm marine mammals approximately 15 million times over five years.

That take, which the Navy today asked the National Marine Fisheries Service to authorize, could include seriously injuring 83 California long-beaked dolphins, three endangered blue whales and three Hawaiian monk seals, an endangered monk-seal population that has only recently begun to recover after heading toward extinction.

“The Navy doesn’t need to blow up dolphins or blast whales with sonar to keep us safe. Sonar can injure and deafen whales who depend on hearing for their survival,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Hawaiian monk seals will pay a big price for the Navy’s war games in its habitat.”

The latest analysis shows the Navy exercises would cause approximately 15 million  harmful incidents. Long-beaked common dolphins could be harmed more than 1.1 million times and blue whales 9,245 times over five years. Hawaiian monk seals could be harmed 916 times. The exercises could also seriously injure 18 humpback whales, 444 short-beaked common dolphins and 478 California sea lions.

Ocean mammals depend on hearing for navigation, feeding and reproduction. Scientists have linked military sonar and live-fire activities to mass whale beaching, exploded eardrums and even death. In 2004, during war games near Hawaii, the Navy’s sonar was implicated in a mass stranding of up to 200 melon-headed whales in Hanalei Bay, Kauai.

The Navy and Fisheries Service estimate that, over the current plan’s five-year period, training and testing activities will result in thousands of animals suffering permanent hearing loss, lung injuries or death. Millions of animals will be exposed to temporary injuries and disturbances, with many subjected to multiple harmful exposures.

Featured image: Children in immigration detention facilities are required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, according to the Washington Post. (Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol)

While tearing children away from parents under a policy designed to keep asylum seekers from entering U.S. society, the Trump administration is forcing those same children to pledge their allegiance to the country that is actively trying to expel them.

We make the children recite a pledge of allegiance to the country that took them from their parents. This is calculated sadism.https://t.co/pYHl4VBxRt

— matt blaze (@mattblaze) June 25, 2018

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week stating that families would be detained together under his “zero tolerance” immigration policy, but thousands of children remain separated from their parents.

The Washington Post on Monday detailed the conditions in which many of those children are living, in detention centers like Casa Padre in Brownsville, Texas, describing “a converted Walmart where each morning they are required to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, in English, to the country that holds them apart from their parents.”

A facility employee told the Post, “We tell them, ‘It’s out of respect.'”

Hey, kids-you don't speak English, we ripped you from your parents, we've put you in cages and you'll never be Americans-so now recite the Pledge of Allegiance. https://t.co/HRGz0uszsp

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) June 25, 2018

Abducted little refugee kids forced to recite the pledge of allegiance to the country abusing them as a sign of respect. Because nothing says respect like abducting kids.
https://t.co/TgKS7lNCpa via @Splinter_news

— PEZ (@Seriously_usa_) June 25, 2018

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, Casa Padre also features a prominently displayed mural of President Donald Trump.

As details about the treatment of children in detention facilities have emerged, many have drawn comparisons to internment camps for Japanese-Americans that were established during World War II. Actor and activist George Takei‘s memories of the camp he lived in as a child mirror the descriptions of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Every morning at the shelter for separated immigrant children begins the same way. The kids are asked to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. @washingtonpost

(https://t.co/HbxIezl1xz)

We have been here before. @GeorgeTakei on his experience during WWII.https://t.co/aj0qyH5nKT pic.twitter.com/qvxgFWyacG

— Meghna Chakrabarti (@MeghnaWBUR) June 25, 2018

As the Post‘s report coincided with much discussion of the Virginia restaurant whose owner refused to serve White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over the weekend—and other public protests against administration officials—many critics strongly pushed back against the notion that Americans should be concerned with “civility” toward the Trump administration—while children are being forced to show “respect” for the government holding them hostage.

And they want us to believe that the big moral outrage here is that the people behind this aren't welcome at nice restaurants.

— matt blaze (@mattblaze) June 25, 2018

Let me make sure I have this straight: babies and children who have done nothing wrong are being ripped away from their parents, locked in cages, and being forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in front of murals of Donald Trump, but the biggest crisis of today is "civility"?

— Evan Greer (@evan_greer) June 25, 2018

*

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

On June 19, the Senate passed a draft defense bill for FY 2019 that would halt the transfer of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft to Turkey, until the secretary of state certifies that Turkey will not accept deliveries of Russian S-400 Triumf air-defense systems. It paves the way for Ankara’s expulsion from the program if it does not bow to this pressure. The support for the measure (85-10) is too strong to be overridden.

Turkey has been one of six major partner nations in the JSF project since 2002. It is responsible for the production of certain components and for providing maintenance services in Europe to other operators of the aircraft. About a dozen Turkish companies are involved in the manufacturing, in accordance with the deal that was reached 16 years ago (2002). Ankara has placed an order to buy more than 100 F-35A Lightning IIs. It has already paid $800 million, so any restrictions that are imposed now will be an illegal breach of obligations by the US.

On June 21, the Senate Appropriations Committee added an amendment to the foreign-aid bill that would put a stop to future deliveries, if Ankara does not cancel the S-400 deal already concluded with Moscow. One of the arguments for blocking the F-35 transfer is the fear that Russia would get access to the JSF, enabling Moscow to detect and exploit its vulnerabilities. It would learn how the S-400 could take out an F-35.

Screenshot from the Reuters

The House version contains even more limits on arms transfers to Turkey. In May, the bill passed the House with a provision mandating a temporary hold on all major defense sales to Turkey, including F-35s, due in part to its impending purchase of the S-400. Almaz-Antey, the company that manufactures the Triumf, is on a State Department list of banned entities. Any deal with that firm could result in sanctions. Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) has introduced an amendment to the FY 2019 Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 6157) that would bar the planned transfer of the aircraft to Turkey. So, there may be some changes to the wording but that won’t significantly alter the final result — the F-35 transfer will remain blocked after the reconciliation process.

The bill is expected to become law this summer. The administration will have no choice but to exclude Turkey from the F-35 program, to remove any parts of the plane produced in that country, and to ban the Turkish F-35s from leaving the territory of the United States.

Despite the proceedings on Capitol Hill, officials from the government and Lockheed Martin held a ceremony on June 21 in Fort Worth, Texas, to mark the “roll out” of the first F-35A Lightning II jet under its Turkish program. It was an imposing ceremony, but it disguised some sleight of hand. The US government will retain custody of the aircraft while the Turkish pilots and service technicians are undergoing training at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. This is a long process that will take several years, but the bill will become law soon. Turkey may be denied access to the cloud-based Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) computer network, depriving it of software updates and other data. The US could insert some malicious code to disable the aircraft even if they are transferred and based in Turkey in 2020 as planned.

US officials don’t shy away from open statements about their intentions to exert pressure and prevent other countries from buying Russian weapons.

“I would work with our allies to dissuade them, or encourage them, to avoid military purchases that would be potentially sanctionable,” said David Schenker, the nominee for assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, at his Senate confirmation hearing on June 14. “In other words, I would tell Saudi Arabia not to do it,” he explained.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are in talks with Moscow to buy the S-400.

According to UAWire, The US State Department’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction has announced a tender for the monitoring of open-source information about arms deals involving the Russian Federation and the CIS countries. That data will be collected in Russian, English, Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Urdu, and several other languages. The information will be used for decision-making and planning sanctions against foreign states.

So far, the policy of twisting arms has failed. Demand for Russian arms is booming in the Middle East and Africa. Just a few days ago, one of Iraq’s armored brigades swapped out its American-made M1 Abrams tanks for new Russian T-90s. Last year, Russia and Iraq signed a huge arms deal.

Unfazed by the US lawmakers’ stance, Ankara remains all set to go ahead with the purchase of the S-400 from Moscow. If the deal is blocked it will find an alternative, such as Russia’s Su-57 jet, or Turkey could produce an aircraft of its own, as part of its indigenous TFX stealth fighter program.

India has recently been warned against buying the Russian S-400. If it does, a ban will be put in place on sharing sensitive American military technology with Delhi, which is refusing to back down under pressure.

A deal is not always what one may think it is. A deal signed with the US is a special case because there are strings attached, which cannot be found in the text and are not mentioned during the negotiations. All of a sudden a partner finds out that there is a caveat that goes without saying. One may sign a deal and be naive enough to take it at face value, only to find out later that it will not be valid if certain unwritten conditions are not met. If you cooperate with another country without US approval, like Turkey does, you don’t get what you are entitled to under the terms of that agreement. Buy American, they say, but if you make a deal with Russia, like India wants to do, the access to the best technology the US has is going to be cut off.

Congress has offered a lesson to those who cooperate with America. They should remember that whatever they may sign with Washington cannot be taken for granted. US lawmakers can change everything to their heart’s content at any time they wish. There is nothing worse than an unreliable partner. And that’s what America is.

*

Peter Korzun is an expert on wars and conflicts.

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: The ‘high risk’ Sizewell nuclear power plant, seen from Southwold, Suffolk. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

In the Guardian recently, Paul Brown reminded us that in 2012 a document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the Environment Agency was warning that 12 out of the UK’s 19 nuclear sites were in danger of coastal flooding and erosion because of climate change. Among them was Hinkley Point in Somerset, one of the eight proposed sites for new nuclear power stations around the coasts.

The analysis was conducted by officials from the floods and coastal erosion team (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Defra) as part of a major investigation into the impact of climate change on the UK. But when the results were published in January 2012 only summary numbers for the 2080s were mentioned and no individual sites were named.

That was before the increasing volume of melting of the Greenland ice cap was properly understood and when most experts thought there was no net melting in the Antarctic.

Now we read that melting ice sheets are hastening sea level rise and satellite measurements and that warmer seas are eroding ice shelves and glaciers. Estimates of sea level rise in the next 50 years have gone up from less than 30cm to more than a metre, well within the lifespan of the nuclear stations the UK government has planned.

Defra has now released its full analysis in response to a request under freedom of information legislation. As a result, the department’s assessments of the risks for individual sites can be disclosed for the first time. Seven of those sites containing radioactive waste stores are judged to be at some risk of flooding now, with a further three at risk of erosion by the 2080s.

Experts suggested the main concern was of inundation causing nuclear waste leaks.

“Sea level rise, especially in the south-east of England, will mean some of these sites will be under water within 100 years,” said David Crichton, a flood specialist and honorary professor at the hazard research centre at University College London. “This will make decommissioning expensive and difficult, not to mention the recovery and movement of nuclear waste to higher ground.”

The extra coastal erosion and threat of storm surges that this increase in sea level will bring to our shores might make sensible people think twice about siting any buildings in vulnerable places, let alone nuclear power stations.

So far, however, the government has yet to respond and is pressing ahead with its plans.

The Moseley reader who drew attention to this issue sends a useful link to a government report on rising sea levels (cover above right) with reference to nuclear issues on Page 15 and comments:

“Worrying, as it demonstrates yet more short term thinking by government, the members of which will be long gone when the problems are evident.

“Perhaps they should be forced to make all decisions based on the lives of their grandchildren; which would be forfeit should things go wrong!”

Featured image: Israeli occupation forces [Source: Salih Zeki Fazlıoğlu/Anadolu Agency]

The Israeli military has prepared plans for a full-scale invasion of the occupied Gaza Strip, in the event of a serious escalation in the south, according to a report by Israeli news site Ynet.

Veteran correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai, citing unnamed Israeli military officials, wrote that the army “is already considering alternatives to the Hamas government”, should the latter not cooperate in efforts to establish an economic-security “arrangement” in Gaza agreeable to the Israelis.

“There is a feeling in the [Israeli army’s] Southern Command that, this time, the IDF will be able to create a considerable change in the situation if it is required to launch a major campaign in Gaza,” wrote Ben-Yishai.

“The offensive missions inside the Strip will be carried out from now on by the IDF’s tip of the spear storming divisions, which—according to the plan—will enter Gaza and dissect it in two, and even occupy significant parts of it,” Ben-Yishai continued.

“The plan is based on three things: A strong protection of the western Negev and the Israeli home front, a systemic blow of fire in full force from the very first moment, and a quick broad manoeuvre into the Strip to dissect it and conquer parts of it.”

According to the defence expert, the Israeli army’s goal “will be to prevent Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad from gaining psychological achievements and getting them to request a ceasefire as soon as possible following the beginning of the fighting.”

Israel will also reportedly seek to prevent the involvement of a third-party mediator by “reach[ing] a military victory in the next war that will be so decisive and unequivocal that it will allow Israel to dictate the terms for the end of the fighting to Hamas and to the Palestinian factions.”

There’s no one more interesting and important in the JFK story–and indeed the history of the CIA–who is more important than the late James Angleton. Lisa Pease has studied the man and had a few things to say at the AARC’s conference on the Warren Commission on September 27, 2014.

This version of Ms. Pease’s lecture is somewhat edited and shortened.

.

First published by Global Research on May 27, 2018

When the Saudi Crown Prince gave an interview to the Washington Post, declaring that it was actually the West that encouraged his country to spread Wahhabism to all corners of the world, there was a long silence in almost all the mass media outlets in the West, but also in countries such as Egypt and Indonesia.

Those who read the statement, expected a determined rebuke from Riyadh. It did not come. The sky did not fall. Lightning did not strike the Prince or the Post.

Clearly, not all that the Crown Prince declared appeared on the pages of the Washington Post, but what actually did, would be enough to bring down entire regimes in such places like Indonesia, Malaysia or Brunei.Or at least it would be enough under ‘normal circumstances’. That is, if the population there was not already hopelessly and thoroughly indoctrinated and programed, and if the rulers in those countries did not subscribe to, or tolerate, the most aggressive, chauvinistic and ritualistic (as opposed to the intellectual or spiritual) form of the religion.

Reading between the lines, the Saudi Prince suggested that it was actually the West which, while fighting an ‘ideological war’ against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, handpicked Islam and its ultra-orthodox and radical wing – Wahhabism – as an ally in destroying almost all the progressive, anti-imperialist and egalitarian aspirations in the countries with a Muslim majority.

As reported by RT on 28 March 2018:

“The Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism began as a result of Western countries asking Riyadh to help counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the Washington Post.

Speaking to the paper, bin Salman said that Saudi Arabia’s Western allies urged the country to invest in mosques and madrassas overseas during the Cold War, in an effort to prevent encroachment in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union…

The interview with the crown prince was initially held ‘off the record’. However, the Saudi embassy later agreed to let the Washington Post publish specific portions of the meeting.”

Since the beginning of the spread of Wahhabism, one country after another had been falling; ruined by ignorance, fanatical zeal and fear, which have been preventing the people of countries such as post-1965 Indonesia or the post-Western-invasion Iraq, to move back (to the era before Western intervention) and at the same time forward,towards something that used to be so natural to their culture in not such a distant past – towards socialism or at least tolerant secularism.

*

In reality, Wahhabism does not have much to do with Islam. Or more precisely, it intercepts and derails the natural development of Islam, of its strife for an egalitarian arrangement of the world, and for socialism.

The Brits were behind the birth of the movement; the Brits and one of the most radical, fundamentalist and regressive preachers of all times – Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.

The essence of the Wahabi/British alliance and dogma was and still is, extremely simple: “Religious leaders would force the people into terrible, irrational fear and consequent submission. No criticism of the religion is allowed;no questioning of its essence and particularly of the conservative and archaic interpretation of the Book. Once conditioned this way, people stopped questioning and criticizing first the feudalist, and later capitalist oppression; they also accepted without blinking the plunder of their natural resources by local and foreign masters. All attempts to build a socialist and egalitarian society got deterred, brutally, ‘in the name of Islam’ and ‘in the name of God’”.

Of course,as a result, the Western imperialists and the local servile ‘elites’ are laughing all the way to the bank, at the expense of those impoverished and duped millions in the countries that are controlled by the Wahhabi and Western dogmas.

Only a few in the devastated, colonized countries actually realize that Wahhabism does not serve God or the people; it is helping Western interests and greed.

Precisely this is what is right now happening in Indonesia, but also in several other countries that have been conquered by the West, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Destroyed Aleppo

Were Syria to fall, this historically secular and socially-oriented nation would be forced into the same horrid direction. People there are well aware of this, as they are educated. They also see what has happened to Libya and Iraq and they definitely do not want to end up like them. It is the Wahhabi terrorist fighters that both the West and its lackeys like Saudi Arabia unleashed against the Syrian state and its people.

*

Despite its hypocritical secular rhetoric, manufactured mainly for local consumption but not for the colonies, the West is glorifying or at least refusing to openly criticize its own brutal and ‘anti-people’ offspring – a concept which has already consumed and ruined both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. In fact, it is trying to convince the world that these two countries are ‘normal’, and in the case of Indonesia, both ‘democratic’ and ‘tolerant’. At the same time,it has consistently been antagonizing almost all the secular or relatively secular nations with substantial Muslim majorities, such as Syria (until now), but also Afghanistan, Iran (prior to the coup of 1953), Iraq and Libya before they were thoroughly and brutally smashed.

Extremist attacks against Indonesian churches 

It is because the state, in which the KSA, Indonesia and the present-day Afghanistan can be found, is the direct result of both Western interventions and indoctrination. The injected Wahhabi dogma is giving this Western ‘project’ a Muslim flavor, while justifying trillions of dollars on ‘defense spending’ for the so-called ‘War on Terror’ (a concept resembling an Asian fishing pond where fish are brought in and then fished out for a fee).

Obedience, even submissiveness – is where, for many reasons, the West wants its ‘client’ states and neo-colonies to be. The KSA is an important trophy because of its oil, and strategic position in the region. Saudi rulers are often going out of their way to please their masters in London and Washington, implementing the most aggressive pro-Western foreign policy. Afghanistan is ‘valued’ for its geographical location, which could potentially allow the West to intimidate and even eventually invade both Iran and Pakistan, while inserting extremist Muslim movements into China, Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian republics. Between 1 and 3 million Indonesian people ‘had to be’ massacred in 1965-66, in order to bring to power a corrupt turbo-capitalist clique which could guarantee that the initially bottomless (although now rapidly thinning) natural resources could flow, uninterrupted and often untaxed, into places such as North America, Europe, Japan and Australia.

Frankly, there is absolutely nothing ‘normal’ about countries such as Indonesia and the KSA. In fact, it would take decades, but most likely entire generations, in order to return them to at least some sort of nominal ‘normalcy’. Even if the process were to begin soon, the West hopes that by the time it ends, almost all of the natural resources of these countries would be gone.

But the process is not yet even beginning. The main reason for the intellectual stagnation and lack or resistance is obvious: people in countries such as Indonesia and KSA are conditioned so they are not able to see the brutal reality that surrounds them. They are indoctrinated and ‘pacified’. They have been told that socialism equals atheism and that atheism is evil, illegal and ‘sinful’.

Hence, Islam was modified by the Western and Saudi demagogues, and has been ‘sent to a battle’, against progress and a just, egalitarian arrangement of the world.

This version of religion is unapologetically defending Western imperialism, savage capitalism as well as the intellectual and creative collapse of the countries into which it was injected, including Indonesia. There, in turn, the West tolerates the thorough corruption, grotesque lack of social services, and even genocides and holocausts committed first against the Indonesians themselves, then against the people of East Timor, and to this day against the defenseless Papuan men, women and children. And it is not only a ‘tolerance’ – the West participates directly in these massacres and extermination campaigns, as it also takes part in spreading the vilest forms of Wahabi terrorism and dogmas to all corners of the world. . All this, while tens of millions of the followers of Wahhabism are filling the mosques daily, performing mechanical rituals without any deeper thought or soul searching.

Wahhabism works – it works for the mining companies and banks with their headquarters in London and New York. It also works extremely well for the rulers and the local ‘elites’ inside the ‘client’ states.

*

Ziauddin Sardar, a leading Muslim scholar from Pakistan, who is based in London, has no doubts that ‘Muslim fundamentalism’ is, to a great extent, the result of the Western imperialism and colonialism.

In a conversation which we had several years ago, he explained:

“Trust between Islam and the West has indeed been broken… We need to realize that colonialism did much more than simply damage Muslim nations and cultures. It played a major part in the suppression and eventual disappearance of knowledge and learning, thought and creativity, from Muslim cultures. The colonial encounter began by appropriating the knowledge and learning of Islam, which became the basis of the ‘European Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ and ended by eradicating this knowledge and learning from both from Muslim societies and from history itself. It did that both by physical elimination – destroying and closing down institutions of learning, banning certain types of indigenous knowledge, killing off local thinkers and scholars – and by rewriting history as the history of western civilization into which all minor histories of other civilization are subsumed.”

“As a consequence, Muslim cultures were de-linked from their own history with many serious consequences. For example, the colonial suppression of Islamic science led to the displacement of scientific culture from Muslim society. It did this by introducing new systems of administration, law, education and economy all of which were designed to impart dependence, compliance and subservience to the colonial powers. The decline of Islamic science and learning is one aspect of the general economic and political decay and deterioration of Muslim societies. Islam has thus been transformed from a dynamic culture and a holistic way of life to mere rhetoric. Islamic education has become a cul-de-sac, a one-way ticket to marginality. It also led to the conceptual reduction of Muslim civilization. By which I mean concepts that shaped and gave direction to Muslim societies became divorced from the actual daily lives of Muslims – leading to the kind of intellectual impasse that we find in Muslim societies today.  Western neo-colonialism perpetuates that system.”

*

In Indonesia, after the Western-sponsored military coup of 1965, which destroyed the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and brought to power an extreme pro-market and pro-Western regime, things are deteriorating with a frightening predictability, consistency and speed.

While the fascist dictator Suharto, a Western implant after 1965, was said to be ‘suspicious of Islam’, he actually used all major religions on his archipelago with great precision and fatal impact. During his pro-market despotism, all left-wing movements and ‘-isms’ were banned, and so were most of the progressive forms of arts and thought.The Chinese language was made illegal. Atheism was also banned. Indonesia rapidly became one of the most religious countries on Earth.

At least one million people, including members of the PKI, were brutally massacred in one of the most monstrous genocides of the 20^th century.

The fascist dictatorship of General Suharto often played the Islamic card for its political ends. As described by John Pilger in his book,“The New Rulers of The World”:

“In the pogroms of 1965-66, Suharto’s generals often used Islamicist groups to attack communists and anybody who got in the way. A pattern emerged; whenever the army wanted to assert its political authority, it would use Islamicists in acts of violence and sabotage, so that sectarianism could be blamed and justify the inevitable ‘crackdown’ – by the army…”

‘A fine example’ of cooperation between the murderous right-wing dictatorship and radical Islam.

After Suharto stepped down, the trend towards a grotesque and fundamentalist interpretation of the monotheist religions continued. Saudi Arabia and the Western-favored and sponsored Wahhabism has been playing an increasingly significant role. And so has Christianity, often preached by radical right-wing former exiles from Communist China and their offspring; mainly in the city of Surabaya but also elsewhere.

From a secular and progressive nation under the leadership of President Sukarno, Indonesia has gradually descended into an increasingly radically backward-looking and bigoted Wahhabi-style/Christian Pentecostal state.

After being forced to resign as the President of Indonesia during what many considered a constitutional coup, a progressive Muslim cleric and undoubtedly a closet socialist, Abdurrahman Wahid (known in Indonesia by his nickname Gus Dur), shared with me his thoughts, on the record:

“These days, most of Indonesian people do not care or think about God. They only follow rituals. If God would descend and tell them that their interpretation of Islam is wrong, they’d continue following this form of Islam and ignore the God.”

‘Gus Dur’ also clearly saw through all the tricks of the military and pro-Western elites. He told me, among other things, that the 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta was organized by the Indonesian security forces, and later blamed on the Islamists, who were actually only executing the orders given to them by their political bosses from the pro-Western military regime, which until nowis being disguised as a, ‘multi-party democracy’.

In Indonesia, an extreme and unquestioning obedience to the religions has led to a blind acceptance of a fascist capitalist system, and of Western imperialism and its propaganda. Creativity and intellectual pluralism have been thoroughly liquidated.

The 4^th most populous nation on the planet, Indonesia, has presently no scientists, architects, philosophers or artists of any international standing. Its economy is fueled exclusively by the unbridled plunder of the natural resources of the vast, and in the past, pristine parts of the country, such as Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan), as well as on the brutally-occupied Western part of Papua. The scale of the environmental destruction is monumental; something that I am presently trying to capture in two documentary films and a book.

Awareness of the state of things, even among the victims, is minimal or out rightly nonexistent.

In a country that has been robbed of its riches; identity, culture and future, religions now playthe most important role. There is simply nothing else left for the majority. Nihilism, cynicism, corruption and thuggery are ruling unopposed. In the cities with no theatres, galleries, art cinemas, but also no public transportation or even sidewalks, in the monstrous urban centers abandoned to the ‘markets’ with hardly any greenery or public parks, religions are readily filling the emptiness. Being themselves regressive, pro-market oriented and greedy, the results are easily predictable.

In the city of Surabaya, during the capturing of footage for my documentary film produced for a South American television network TeleSur (Surabaya – Eaten Alive by Capitalism), I stumbled over an enormous Protestant Christian gathering at a mall, where thousands of people were in an absolute trance, yelling and lifting their eyes towards the ceiling. A female preacher was shouting into a microphone:

“God loves the rich, and that is why they are rich! God hates the poor, and that’s why they are poor!”

Von Hayek, Friedmann, Rockefeller, Wahab and Lloyd George combined could hardly define their ‘ideals’in more precise way.

*

What exactly did the Saudi Prince say, during his memorable and ground-breaking interview with The Washington Post? And why is it so relevant to places like Indonesia?

In essence, he said that the West asked the Saudis to make the ‘client’ states more and more religious, by building madrassahs and mosques. He also added:

“I believe Islam is sensible, Islam is simple, and people are trying to hijack it.”

People? The Saudi themselves? Clerics in such places like Indonesia? The Western rulers?

In Teheran, Iran, while discussing the problem with numerous religious leaders, I was told, repeatedly:

“The West managed to create a totally new and strange religion, and then it injected it into various countries. It calls it Islam, but we can’t recognize it… It is not Islam, not Islam at all.”

*

In May 2018, in Indonesia, members of outlawed terrorist groups rioted in jail, took hostages, then brutally murdered prison guards. After the rebellion was crushed, several explosions shook East Java. Churches and police stations went up in flames. People died.

The killers used their family members, even children, to perpetrate the attacks. The men in charge were actually inspired by the Indonesian fighters who were implanted into in Syria –the terrorists and murderers who were apprehended and deported by Damascus back to their large and confused country.

Many Indonesian terrorists who fought in Syria are now on their home turf, igniting and ‘inspiring’ their fellow citizens. The same situation as in the past – the Indonesian jihadi cadres who fought against the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan later returned and killed hundreds and thousands in Poso, Ambon and other parts of Indonesia.

Indonesian extremists are becoming world-famous, fighting the battles of the West as legionnaires, in Afghanistan, Syria, Philippines and elsewhere.

Their influence at home is also growing. It is now impossible to even mention any social or god forbid, socialist reforms in public. Meetings are broken up, participants beaten, and even people’s representatives (MP’s)intimidated, accused of being “communists”, in a country where Communism is still banned by the regime.

The progressive and extremely popular Jakarta governor, Ahok, first lost elections and was then put on trial and thrown into jail for “insulting Islam”, clearly fabricated charges. His main sin – cleaning Jakarta’s polluted rivers, constructing a public transportation network, and improving the lives of ordinary people. That was clearly ‘un-Islamic’, at least from the point of view of Wahhabism and the Western global regime.

Radical Indonesian Islam is now feared. It goes unchallenged. It is gaining ground, as almost no one would dare to openly criticize it. It will soon overwhelm and suppress the entire society.

And in the West ‘political correctness’ is used. It is lately simply ‘impolite’ to criticize Indonesian or even the Saudi form of ‘Islam’, out of ‘respect’ for the people and their ‘culture’. In reality, it is not the Saudi or Indonesian people who get ‘protected’ – it is the West and its imperialist policies; policies and manipulations that are used against both the people and the essence of Muslim religion.

*

While the Wahhabi/Western dogma is getting stronger and stronger, what is left of the Indonesian forests is burning. The country is literally being plundered by the Western multi-national companies and by its local corrupt elites.

Religions, the Indonesian fascist regime and Western imperialism are marching forward, hand in hand. But forward – where? Most likely towards the total collapse of the Indonesian state. Towards the misery that will come soon, when everything is logged out and mined out.

It is the same, as when Wahhabism used to march hand in hand with the British imperialists and plunderers. Except that the Saudis found their huge oil fields, plenty of oil to sustain themselves (or at least their elites and the middle class, as the poor still live in misery there) and their bizarre, British-inspired and sponsored interpretation of Islam.

Indonesia and other countries that have fallen victims to this dogma are not and will not be so ‘lucky’.

It is lovely that the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke publicly and clarified the situation. But who will listen?

For the Indonesian people, his statements came too late. They did not open many eyes, caused no uprising, no revolution. To understand what he said would require at least some basic knowledge of both the local, and world history, and at least some ability to think logically. All this is lacking, desperately, in the countries that have found themselves squashed by the destructive imperialist embrace.

The former President of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid, was correct: “If God would come and say… people would not follow God…”

Indonesia will continue following Mr. Wahab, and the capitalist dogma and the Western imperialists who ‘arranged it all’. They will do it for years to come, feeling righteous, blasting old North American tunes in order to fill the silence, in order not to think and not to question what is happening around them. There will be no doubts. There will be no change, no awakening and no revolution.

Until the last tree falls,until the last river and stream gets poisoned, until there is nothing left for the people. Until there is total, absolute submission:until everything is burned down, black and grey. Maybe then, few tiny, humble roots of awakening and resistance would begin to grow.

*

This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

Ron Ridenour’s book, The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert, a true historical page-turner, is destined to endure and inform future readers, writers and researchers about both what has been reported—mainly malicious propaganda—and what truly took place in the one hundred years from the 1917 Russian Revolution until the eruption of the distinct harbingers of the collapse of the US empire in the early twenty-first century.

Events often just seem to happen, caught up in the swirl of history. But still, we try to interpret them and to understand. And then, in many cases, take a stand for or against. Understanding is like discovering a new world, like converting to a new faith. Revolt invades your life and everything is different from what it once was. Ridenour’s book helps us along the way to first remembering the historical facts so that we can then understand. His new work documents clearly facts about the early years of the Soviet Union’s relations with the West, its difficult steps toward socio-political maturity and Communism, and its enormous sacrifices along the way: its defeat of Western intervention during the revolutionary and civil war period; its regulation of state economic planning and the reforms required for the industrialization of the nation; its defeat of the German Nazi military juggernaut at the gates of Russia’s major cities and the coup de grace in the ferocious battle in Stalingrad, defeating German invaders and crushing Nazi Germany before the USA even entered the war; and finally the arduous salvation of Russia after the collapse of the USSR under US post-WWII economic firepower and the most treacherous anti-Russian policies since the early 1900s.

Those Western policies continue to determine US-Russian relations today. Throughout this long work Ridenour recalls and clarifies diverse significant historical details, obscured by time and by Western propaganda, facts that are so easily forgotten or that were never learned: such ignored truths as the importance of the USSR in the defeat of Japan in WWII and the timing of the US use of the atomic bomb in Japan. Not many people are aware of the extent of the destruction of many Japanese cities which the author details here. He points out that the Soviet Union kept its word to help the United States by its intervention against Japan, the decisive reason why Japan was defeated even before the atomic bombs fell. A stunning but little known fact is that in response to the Russians’ sacrifice the Anglo-American leaders—first Churchill and later Truman— were hatching Operation Unthinkable and Operation Pincher to launch a surprise war against Soviet forces in Europe. These military plots included the potential use of nuclear bombs. This is a book that no well-informed Western reader should be without, especially those inhabiting the homeland of the new empire, the dangerously brainwashed United States.

***

Title: The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert

Author: Ron Ridenour

Publisher: Punto Press, LLC; 1 edition (June 22, 2018)

ISBN-10: 0996487069

ISBN-13: 978-0996487061

Click here to order.

.

.

Here’s the Law on Migrants. U.S. immigration law essentially tracks the wording of the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol to it.

In the United States and elsewhere, there are refugees and asylees. Refugees are people who meet the appropriate legal status and are of special humanitarian concern. Standing as such is granted, in general, on the basis of a person being unable or unwilling to return to their country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Additionally, an asylee is someone who meets the definition of refugee and is already in the United States or is seeking admission at a port of entry. [101(a)(42) and 208(a) et seq. of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, INA]. There is no provision for migrants, i.e., no provision for economic refugees, no provision for opportunistic refugees, no provision for unstable-country refugees, no provision for criminal refugees. And refugee status is not permanent, while asylum is.

Europe’s refugee crisis is modeled on that of the United States. And both derive from American foreign and domestic policy.

Differing Views on Migrants. Europeans, even knowledgeable ones, generally take the view of one individual known to the author that “I am wary of the ‘migrant timebomb’ messaging as it feeds far right Islamophobia. I believe in migration especially as [the]West has destroyed/destabilized/ financially raped so many of the ‘migrants’ countries… my family and I live in an increasing atmosphere of heightened alert because of hatred of Muslims across Europe. It’s always really important to keep our empathy alive and avoid ‘othering’.”

The real link to the migrant crisis, whether it be the United States or Europe, is right there in plain English: essentially, “don’t put an end to the destruction of the migrants’ countries; just let them in, be empathetic, and avoid ‘othering’ “.

Origin and Nature of the Problem. At one time or another, the United States has invaded, attacked, subverted, or regime-changed nearly every country south of its border with Mexico, as well as most of those in the Caribbean. Because of wrecked governments, devastated economies, and consequent loss of freedom, waves of migrants have moved north to the “Land of Opportunity”, now called by some on National Public Radio here as the “Land of Humanity”. Why “Humanity”? Because the migrants are using children, accompanied or unaccompanied, as “protection” to guarantee their admission to the United States. It is an emotional counter to President Donald J. Trump‘s ill-thought out policy of “Zero Tolerance” for illegal aliens. This is the pattern governing the current situation in Europe.

The concept of migration, whether it be in America or the Continent, boils down to permitting the free flow of immigrants. The idea is that everyone has the right to move to another country and live a better life. Laws, regulations, language, customs, society, housing, available jobs have no role in the matter. And this view is gaining traction. In October 2017, at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, the author spoke about his books, Visas for Al Qaeda, CIA Handouts That Rocked The World and Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb. The evening went well until one member of the audience asked if this writer supported unrestricted emigration. The reply was “No”. Citing the laws of the United States and those of other countries, the author told the listener that no country on earth permitted people to pack up and move into the state without meeting existing legal requirements. The man persisted in what became his demands for unlimited colonization, to the point where the moderator had to shut him down as disrupting the meeting.

Migrants and Merkel. In Europe, to a great extent, the migrant issue is closely connected to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, i.e., Prime Minister, and the country’s history. Those who back Merkel’s stance on welcoming incoming aliens with candy and flowers and who oppose any effort to restrict their entrance or send them home generally have a specific background. They are people who had either personal knowledge of the Second World War or the 10 years immediately afterwards. As one 75-year old German journalist recently told this writer, Germany, because of its sordid past in the 1930s and 1940s, has a special requirement to take in anyone who needs a better life. And Angela Merkel, perhaps because of her 35 years in Communist East Germany, is well placed to understand the migrants’ plight and provide relief, she said. The correspondent also repeated the German government line that opposition to unrestricted relocation was the purview of extreme right-wing groups filled with neo-Nazis like the AfD, Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany). Our interlocutor did note that Merkel, perhaps, has stayed too long in office and that she is increasingly less effective in her position. Continuing, our contact feared a migration-sparked breakup of the shaky governing coalition and felt that new elections would increase the AfD’s representation in parliament, the Bundestag.

What the West Hath Wrought. To focus on what U.S. policy has done to Europe by creating a migrant crisis, let’s look again at our well-connected, extremely knowledgeable contact’s statement: “[the]West has destroyed/destabilized/ financially raped so many of the ‘migrants’ countries…”

Without covering the entire world, see what “the American Way” has done in:

• Afghanistan. War–1978 to the present. By 1982, 2.8 million Afghans had fled to Pakistan and 1.5 million to Iran. By 1989, 15,000 Soviet soldiers had been killed, along with about 2 million Afghans. At the end of 2015, the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] estimated there are approximately 1.2 million internally displaced persons in Afghanistan. An additional 2.7 million Afghans are refugees abroad, primarily in Pakistan and Iran. A quarter of refugees worldwide are Afghan.
• Yugoslavia. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia once was comprised of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and two autonomous provinces. As the result of Germany encouraging secession and a series of wars (1991-1995; 1998-1999) in which the U.S. and NATO participated, the country became seven statelets, i.e., the foregoing plus Kosovo. Two hundred thousand people were killed; 2.7 million made homeless.
• Iraq. As the result of American sanctions and warfare against Iraq, as of 2017, according to the UNHCR, 2.6 million were still internally displaced, and about 1.5 million refugees have returned from abroad. Nearly 1 million people have died as the result of combat, about a million adults through sanctions, and 500,000 children through sanctions.
• Libya. In 2017, 200,000 people remain internally displaced as the result of the 2011 war against Moammar Gaddafi. More than 200,000 migrants, out of a total of about 472,000, went to Europe in 2017. In the fighting, 30,000 died, with another 50,000 wounded.
• Syria. Since 2011, over 250,000 have died in the war, and half the country’s population has been displaced — including four million Syrian refugees abroad in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Europe.

The Migrants Are Still Marching But Change May Be Coming. Naturally, the migrants keep marching. Allegedly democratic governments have, until recently, ignored their citizens’ protests. (The United States’ news media plays up only the opposition to illegal aliens, emphasizing the wrongs done to people violating the Immigration and Nationality Act. They say not a word about unlawful voting, illegal entry, or the benefits of cheap, easily exploited labor.) But change seems to be coming, at least in Europe.

• As noted earlier, Germany‘s ruling coalition supports the continued entry of migrants (with increasing restrictions). However, it fears the growing clout of increasingly vocal opposition groups such as the AfD, now the third-strongest party in the Bundestag.
• Austria, because of the migrant wave, has a new, right-wing government now placing restrictions on illegal aliens. According to a contact just returned from Italy, Austrian border guards are now checking bus riders traveling through the Brenner Pass into the old Archduchy.
• Italy is another country that has elected a government opposed to the unending migrant stream. It is refusing entry into Italian ports of “rescue” ships that pick up migrants at sea and carry them to Europe.
• Slovenia‘s newly-elected government is now anti-migrant.
• Sweden has a party, the anti-migrant Sweden Democrats, which, according to the polls, is almost even with the ruling Social Democrats ahead of September 2018’s elections.

Victims? Who are the victims? Really?

It’s the migrants first of all. The United States and NATO, either in concert or with the help of the alliance’s member states individually, have destroyed most of South and Southwest Asia and North Africa. Their reasons were supposedly noble–they had a “responsibility to protect” people in those regions! However, houses, factories, shops, schools, waterworks, and sewage treatment plants disappeared under a hail of bombs, drone strikes, and artillery shells. And the jobless, penniless people were herded, by shadowy individuals and organizations, into Europe. Mirabile dictu, interpreters were found, wifi networks set up, SmartPhones provided, and smugglers located.

For the most part, Europe has little connection to the migrants’ home countries. There’s no pool of Dari speakers or Arabic linguists or Pushtun talkers. The Continent lacks any cross-cultural contacts with the migrants’ lands, other than, perhaps, through restaurants. So, ultimately, the aliens must adapt to Europe, rather than the other way round. In a way, it’s cultural imperialism. The newcomer must adapt to the new life he’s been forced into and give up his old language and culture. Simultaneously, he must deal with a native population that resents his being pushed upon them and given support and benefits out of their tax money–without any agreement to do so.

Muslims in particular are disadvantaged. First, they are seen as practitioners of a disfavored religion (even though, like Christianity and Judaism, it acknowledges one God and has a long-established code of righteous conduct). Second, as Muslim friends here in the United States have told this writer, it’s difficult belonging to a minority religion that imposes a strict fast during the holy month of Ramadan. Americans, and, increasingly, Europeans eat a lot between meals. In Southwest Germany, there is the long-established Second Breakfast, and in Austria, the late afternoon snack. Third, there are jobs closed to devout Muslims: work in bars and nightclubs, serving meals of forbidden pork in restaurants, brewing beer and distilling spirits. Fourth, Muslim friends have told the author that celebrating major religious feasts is much more enjoyable when there is a large gathering of family and friends.

And the natives in Europe and America are also victims. Under the pain of being denounced as insensitive, right-wing, neo-Nazis, they are required to welcome and work with the aliens. Questioning their ability to speak the local language, adapt to well-established customs, or absorb the mores of the region is strictly forbidden. They are taxed to support the alien, they are fined or jailed if they are too critical of them, and they lose housing to them. They’ve had their societies turned upside down and, in Germany, women are told to change their style of dress and go out only with a male escort. They (and some of the migrants) are victims of crime that appears to show no abatement, recent examples coming from Germany in 2018: 200 migrants smashed police cars transporting an illegal alien to deportation; a man from Niger, whose asylee status had been denied, fatally stabbed his wife and decapitated one of their children in a subway station; a Tunisian man, a migrant, was arrested for trying to produce the deadly poison ricin.

Solutions. If Any? How do we solve this? How do we change things? 1. Stop the wars generating migrants. 2. End the herding from their home countries to the United States, Canada, and Europe. 3. Rebuild their destroyed nations. 4. Help them go home.

But that costs money!!! Yes, it does. And the logical source for the funds to do all of this is the military budgets for NATO’s member states. In 2016, European NATO countries spent US$254 billion on their armed forces. The United States spent US$611 billion, the highest expenditure of any country in the world.

Which is cheaper? Continued social disorder and uproar or a reduction in the Western War Machine’s funding? Do we look to the future or do we look to the past? As one German friend noted, failure to deal with the migrant issue demonstrates Albert Einstein’s belief that stupidity is as endless as the universe.

*

J. Michael Springmann is an attorney, author, political commentator, and former diplomat. He has written Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World and a second book, Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.