Global Research

After 18 months of withering attacks and accusations, Donald Trump has decided to get up off the canvas and fight back. In a series of tweets stretching from Sunday night to early Monday morning, Trump announced that he would launch his own investigation to see whether the FBI and DOJ had improperly targeted his campaign for “political purposes”.

“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration! Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump, Twitter, Sunday, May 20

It’s a gutsy move by Trump but one that could backfire quite badly. By demanding an investigation of the DOJ and FBI, the president is asking those agencies to willingly reveal their own transgressions, to produce the documents and other information that could potentially expose many of their own people (Obama holdovers) to criticism or even criminal prosecution. It’s hard to believe that many career bureaucrats would want to assist Trump in an effort that could potentially damage their colleagues or the reputation of their own department.

In any event, Trump has decided to throw caution to the wind and go for broke. He’s decided that the only way he’s going to get his enemies off his back is by flushing them out into the open and subjecting their activities to public scrutiny. It’s a risky strategy, but the scrappy New Yorker seems to think he can pull it off without a hitch. Here’s another late-night tweet from Trump:

Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a “hot” Fake News story. If true – all time biggest political scandal! Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump, Twitter, May 18

Is he right? Did the FBI place a mole inside the campaign to gather information on Trump and his aids? Because, if they did, then this is bigger than Watergate, in fact, it would be the biggest political corruption scandal in history. According to the New York Times, however, Trump’s got it all wrong. There was no spy inside the campaign, there was a trusted informant who was trying to gather information from individual members of the campaign. There’s a big difference. But whether the informant was inside or outside, the fact remains that the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against the rival party’s presidential campaign in order to gather information that was intended to damage, discredit or incriminate the targets of the operation. That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? The nation’s top law enforcement agency, operating on orders from god-knows-who (Obama?), was engaged in a plot to gain an unfair advantage in the election, undermine the two-party system and sabotage the democratic process. Trump may have misstated the details but the basic facts remain the same. Here’s an excerpt from the article in the Times:

“President Trump accused the F.B.I. on Friday, without evidence, of sending a spy to secretly infiltrate his 2016 campaign “for political purposes” even before the bureau had any inkling of the “phony Russia hoax.”

In fact, F.B.I. agents sent an informant to talk to two campaign advisers only after they received evidence that the pair had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign. The informant, an American academic who teaches in Britain, made contact late that summer with one campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, according to people familiar with the matter. He also met repeatedly in the ensuing months with the other aide, Carter Page, who was also under F.B.I. scrutiny for his ties to Russia.” (“F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims ” New York Times)

The Times is technically right, but their hair-splitting defense misses the point altogether. It’s up to the FBI to prove that their extremely-suspicious and perhaps illegal activities were justifiable. And whatever excuse the Bureau eventually settles on, it should not have anything to do with Russiagate since that bogus probe has been a ‘dry well’ from the get-go and hasn’t produced even a scintilla of hard evidence in more than a year and half. The FBI needs to come clean and explain what was really going on behind the scenes. What’s this all about? Clearly, the informant wasn’t talking to gasbag Papadopoulos because he thought he’d uncover a link between Putin and Trump, but because his disjointed braggadocio would help him build a case against the president. That what’s really going on, it’s plain as the nose on your face. The FBI was using the Russia pretext to gather damaging and possibly incriminating dirt on Trump. The obvious objective was to prevent Trump from being elected and then, afterwards, to remove him from office. This is from The Hill on Monday:

“The Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked its inspector general to look into whether the FBI surveilled President Trump’s campaign for “inappropriate purposes.”

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement.” (DOJ asks watchdog to probe Trump campaign surveillance claims, The Hill)

Got that? So deep-state Rod is going to sort this mess out and let us all know if there’s been any funny business or not. What a joke. The man is so conflicted he should have been removed months ago. It was Rosenstein who wrote the 3-page memo that persuaded Trump to dump Comey after which he quickly appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel using the ‘firing of Comey’ as his justification. That might the sleaziest political switcheroo I’ve seen in my lifetime.

And notice how carefully Rosenstein chooses his words like an ambulance-chasing barrister inveigling an injured client. He says,

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,”

Okay, so who decides what is appropriate or inappropriate? The Inspector General or our buddy Rosenstein who’s going to do everything in his power to hide the smoking gun. In any event, that doesn’t change the fact that the campaign was infiltrated by at least one informant who tried to wrangle as much information as possible out of his targets. Which brings us to the case of Stefan Halper (image on the right), “the 73-year-old Oxford University professor and former U.S. government official” who “was outed as the FBI informant ” and who “was paid handsomely by the Obama administration starting in 2012 for various research projects.

….Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election…..while a search of public records reveals that between 2012 and 2018, Halper received a total of $1,058,161 from the Department of Defense.” Here’s more from an article at Zero Hedge:

“The most recent award to Halper for $411,575 was made in two payments, and had a start date of September 26, 2016 – three days after an… article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by “pissgate” dossier creator Christopher Steele….

The second installment of Halper’s 2016 DoD contract is dated July 26, 2017 in the amount of $129,280 – around three months before the FISA warrant on Carter Page was set to expire following repeated renewals signed by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and a federal judge….

Halper’s July 28 email to Page – sent two days after the second portion of his contract kicked in, suggests that the espionage operation against Trump associates was still active seven months into the new administration….

Following Halper’s doxxing, President Trump called for an official investigation by the Department of Justice -” (“FBI Informant Stefan Halper Paid Over $1 Million By Obama Admin; Spied On Trump Aide After Election”, Zero Hedge)

And here’s more on Halper from the WSWS:

“The choice of Halper for this spying operation has ominous implications. His deep ties to the US intelligence apparatus date back decades. His father-in-law was Ray Cline, who headed the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence at the height of the Cold War. Halper served as an aide to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Alexander Haig in the Nixon and Ford administrations.The revelations of the role played by Halper point to an intervention in the 2016 elections by the US intelligence agencies that far eclipsed anything one could even imagine the Kremlin attempting.” (“Long-time CIA asset named as FBI’s spy on Trump campaign”, Bill Van Auken, World Socialist Web Site)

Maybe the Halper connection is a big nothingburger for which there is some perfectly logical explanation, but, seriously, does anyone really think this passes the smell test??

Let’s cut to the chase: When we look at the long list of potential felonies committed by the Obama team– including bogus FISA warrants, wiretaps, improper unmasking, questionable surveillance on campaign members, and, now, paid informants dredging up whatever dirt they can find on the newly-elected government, we are left scratching our heads wondering, “Is this really America? What on earth were these people thinking??” Here’s how political analyst Nick Short sums it up in a recent comment on Twitter:

“FBI opened a CI (CounterIntelligence) investigation in the absence of any (a) incriminating evidence, or (b) evidence implicating the Trump camp in Russian espionage. The FBI collaborated w/ CIA to probe an American political camp using foreign-intel surveillance & informants. Bigger than Watergate…” @PoliticalShort

Bingo. Any reasonable person would naturally assume that the informant was being used to gain an unfair advantage in the election by gathering privileged information that could be used against the targeted party or its candidates. (aka–Trump) In other words, we must disabuse ourselves of the idea that the perpetrators of this counterintelligence operation, were at all focused on the fictitious “Russia” angle. There’s no proof of that whatsoever. There is, however, considerable circumstantial evidence that a cabal of senior-level government officials, Intel agents, law enforcement officers, and high-ranking members of the DNC were using their access to the extraordinary powers of state surveillance to sabotage the democratic process, undermine the two-party system and topple the elected government. Unlike the Times, which seems to think these goings-on are just a harmless blip on the radar, we believe that this naked attempt to decimate the two-party system and reinforce the malign grip of unseen corporate oligarchs is actually the most egregious political crime of the century. Here’s how Barry Grey sums it up at the World Socialist Web Site:

“The recent press reports add to a wealth of information showing that the US intelligence and spy agencies, operating behind the backs of the American people and without any democratic accountability, manipulated the 2016 elections on a scale that massively outweighed anything Moscow could have attempted.

The real threat to the democratic rights of the American people comes not from Russia or foreign terrorists, but from the US government itself, which is completely controlled by a vast military/intelligence complex allied to the financial oligarchy. Both major parties are beholden to this “deep state” machine for surveillance and repression.

The Democratic Party evinces not the slightest concern or opposition to this police state apparatus. Its ringing defense of the FBI and CIA coincides with its critical role in supplying the votes necessary to confirm “black site” torturer Gina Haspel as CIA director earlier this week.” (“Democrats defend FBI following reports it spied on Trump’s election campaign”, Barry Grey, World Socialist Web Site)

Right again. This is not a Dems vs Republicans issue, at least, it shouldn’t be. It’s about the unelected cabal that operates behind the cloak of partisan politics to exert its stranglehold on political power. As comedian George Carlin said,

“The parties exist to make you think you have a choice. But you have no choice. You have owners, and they own everything.”

Russiagate was merely the paper-thin pretext this secretive group settled on to launch its attack on the candidate who was never supposed to win the election. Here’s more from the NY Times:

“F.B.I. agents sent an informant to talk to two campaign advisers only after they received evidence that the pair had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign….The role of the informant is at the heart of the newest battle between top law enforcement officials and Mr. Trump’s congressional allies over the F.B.I.’s most politically charged investigations in decades. The lawmakers, who say they are concerned that federal investigators are abusing their authority, have demanded documents from the Justice Department about the informant.

Law enforcement officials have refused, saying that handing over the documents would imperil both the source’s anonymity and safety. The New York Times has learned the source’s identity but typically does not name informants to preserve their safety.” (“FBI used informant to investigate Russia ties to Campaign, Not to spy, as Trump claims”, New York Times)

Translation– The FBI and DOJ are stonewalling Congress. They’re preventing Congress from getting the documents they need to fulfill their constitutional duty of oversight. The documents they need will likely reveal information that proves that senior-level officials were spying on the Trump campaign to gain an unfair advantage in the elections. Congress needs the documents to establish whether officials or agents at the FBI, CIA or NSA were involved in a conspiracy to torpedo the Trump campaign or (later) topple the President. Here’s more from the Times:

“Democrats say the Republicans’ real aim is to undermine the Special Counsel investigation.”

Special Counsel’s credibility has already been severely eroded by its obvious bias in carrying out a politically-motivated agenda that has been used to cast a cloud of suspicion around the president while producing no hard evidence that these suspicions are warranted. It’s worth noting, that the current Russia investigation is based on the dubious claim that Russia hacked DNC computers. As Andrew C. McCarthy points out in his excellent article at National Review, that’s pretty thin gruel. Here’s what he says:

“It has now been confirmed that the Trump campaign was subjected to spying tactics under counterintelligence law — FISA surveillance, national-security letters, and covert intelligence operatives who work with the CIA and allied intelligence services. It made no difference, apparently, that there was an ongoing election campaign, which the FBI is supposed to avoid affecting; nor did it matter that the spy targets were American citizens, as to whom there is supposed to be evidence of purposeful, clandestine, criminal activity on behalf of a foreign power before counterintelligence powers are invoked.

But what was the rationale for using these spying authorities?

The fons et origo of the counterintelligence investigation was the suspicion — which our intelligence agencies assure us is a fact — that the Democratic National Committee’s server was hacked by covert Russian operatives. Without this cyber-espionage attack, there would be no investigation. But how do we know it really happened? The Obama Justice Department never took custody of the server — no subpoena, no search warrant. The server was thus never subjected to analysis by the FBI’s renowned forensics lab, and its evidentiary integrity was never preserved for courtroom presentation to a jury…..

So, yes, the entire “Russia hacked the election” narrative the nation has endured for nearly two years hinges on the say-so of CrowdStrike, a private DNC contractor with significant financial ties to the Clinton campaign.” “In Politicized Justice, Desperate Times call for Desperate Measures”, Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review

So the FISA surveillance, the national-security letters, the FBI informants and 18 months of relentless probing-harassment have all been justified on the basis of allegations about Russia hacking that may or may not have happened at all??

Yep. Like we said earlier, it’s pretty thin gruel.

More from the Times: “No evidence has emerged that the informant acted improperly when the F.B.I. asked for help in gathering information on the former campaign advisers, or that agents veered from the F.B.I.’s investigative guidelines and began a politically motivated inquiry, which would be illegal.” (New York Times)

What sort of nonsense is this?? The “informant acted improperly” the minute he infiltrated the Trump campaign with the intention of gathering information on the rival party. Is the Times really trying to make the case that spying on one’s political opponent is morally, ethically or legally acceptable??

It’s ridiculous. This is just a feeble attempt to protect the informant from prosecution which he will undoubtedly face when he’s forced to testify before a grand jury and provide details of his employment including who gave him his assignment, what information was he gathering (and on who), and what other government officials or agency chiefs were involved in the counterintelligence operation aimed at sabotaging the election? (We already know that former CIA boss John Brennan originally referred the case to the FBI, so we’re convinced that he is the one who got the ball rolling.)

The fact that the informant has been exposed is just the first step in a long process that will (hopefully) reveal the machinations of the deep state apparatus and its connection to behind-the-scenes corporate mandarins, the real puppetmasters in this political fiasco.

One last blurb from the Times:

“According to people familiar with (General Michael) Flynn’s visit to the intelligence seminar, the source was alarmed by the general’s apparent closeness with a Russian woman who was also in attendance. The concern was strong enough that it prompted another person to pass on a warning to the American authorities that Mr. Flynn could be compromised by Russian intelligence, according to two people familiar with the matter.”

Got that? Flynn talked to a Russian woman at a seminar and the Times thinks that’s sufficient grounds for ‘tailing’ him or infiltrating the Trump campaign or issuing FISA warrants or National Security letters or collecting all-manner of electronic surveillance on Trump’s former campaign chairman or appointing a Special Counsel to snoop around in the elected government’s private affairs or saturating the airwaves with fake news stories for the better-part of 18 months. Where does it stop or is Russia going to be the all-purpose excuse for government misbehavior until we’re all locked up in Gitmo under 24-hour surveillance?? Would the editors of the Times find a justification for that, too?

We’re pretty sure they would.

The reason the Times released this article on a Friday night, when everyone was focused on the Royal wedding, was to minimize the political fallout. They wanted to see the public’s reaction, but they wanted to limit the circulation. They wanted to see if they could still control the narrative in lieu of damning new details that had surfaced. Most of all, they wanted to see if they could still divert people’s attention from the fact that a powerful group of government insiders and their junta-allies at the DNC have been engaged in a coup d’état to roll back the 2016 elections and remove the president from office. It’s getting harder to hide the truth all the time.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

More than 400 lawsuits are pending against Monsanto Co. in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, filed by people alleging that exposure to Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that Monsanto covered up the risks. The cases have been combined for handling as multidistrict litigation (MDL) under Judge Vince Chhabria. The lead case is 3:16-md-02741-VC.

On March 13th, 2017, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled — over Monsanto’s objections — that certain documents obtained by plaintiffs through discovery could be unsealed. The documents listed below include discovery materials, transcripts of court proceedings, depositions and other case-related items.

Recent updates in the federal MDL:

• Science Week: Live testimony from witnesses took place March 5-9, 2018
• Link to video of the hearings and transcript of oral arguments
• Judge Chhabria  ordered an additional hearing for two plaintiffs’ experts, Dr. Chris Portier and Dr. Beate Ritz.  Additional Daubert hearing testimony from Dr. Portier took place 4/6/2018, while additional testimony from Dr. Ritz took place 4/4/2018. Transcripts are available below.

Parties, attorneys and journalists may listen to case management conferences and hearings by telephone—but may not participate—using the CourtCall remote court appearance service. Advance registration is required. This can be done online (journalists select “other” from the drop-down menu) or by calling CourtCall at (866) 582-6878 no later than noon on the day before the case management conference.

Additionally, thousands of other plaintiffs have made similar claims against Monsanto in state courts. Plaintiffs’ attorneys estimate the total number of plaintiffs at approximately 4,000. The first trial in the Roundup litigation is set for June 18, 2018 in the Superior Court for the County of San Francisco. Documents pertaining to that case as well as others are also included below in the middle column.  An expert admissibility and summary judgment hearing was held May 10 in San Francisco County Superior Court. Details regarding the time and location of the trial can be found here: (STATE CASE) Dewayne Johnson V. Monsanto trial date set

European Parliament Joint Committee hearing on the Monsanto Papers took place in October 2017. Information from Carey Gillam’s presentation, “Revelations from the Monsanto Papers.”

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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

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

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

“A fish rots from the head down.” —Ancient proverb of disputed origin

Another week has come and gone, and with it, another mass shooting. The American culture of death marches on, fueled by our obscene stockpiles of lethal weaponry and stoked by the divisions, alienation, hatred and fear that have come to define us as a nation.

As I wrote in my column after the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, we are in the grips of a self-destructive social and psychological disorder—a Hobbesian “war of all against all”—that has long festered. Far from improving since then, the disorder has metastasized to new levels under the leadership of our 45th president.

The latest outrage took place early Friday morning at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, a rural community of just over 12,000 about 20 miles northwest of Galveston.

The perpetrator has been identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis (image below), a 17-year-old student, who used a shotgun and a .38 revolver belonging to his father to shoot 10 people dead—eight fellow pupils and two teachers—and wound at least 10 more. Pagourtzis is being held without bail on charges of capital murder. In all likelihood, in the “hang ’em high” Lone Star State, he’ll be tried as an adult and given the death penalty.

Described by classmates as a quiet loner who had been subjected to persistent bullying, Pagourtzis was carrying a duffel bag and wearing a long black trench coat and combat boots, despite the 88-degree temperature outside, when he entered an art class and opened fire. His Facebook page, investigators learned shortly after the incident, contained photos of a custom-made T-shirt printed with the words “Born to Kill,” along with photos of a duster jacket adorned with Nazi military medallions and an Iron Cross. According to some accounts, he was wearing the shirt at the time of the shooting.

In addition to seizing the firearms Pagourtzis used, police reportedly have found improvised explosive devices on campus and in surrounding areas. Authorities have interviewed, but apparently not charged, two other students as persons of interest or possible accomplices.

Within hours of the shooting, President Trump sent his official condolences to the people of Santa Fe. Speaking at a prison-reform conference at the White House, he assured the community:

“We grieve for the terrible loss of life and send our support and love to everyone affected by this absolutely horrific attack. To the students, families, teachers and personnel at Santa Fe High: We’re with you in this tragic hour and we will be with you forever.”

On Friday afternoon, Trump ordered flags at federal facilities to be flown at half-staff. Still later in the day, he announced that his school safety commission would reconvene. The commission, which is led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and includes Attorney General Jeff Sessions but has no rank-and-file teachers or students, was set up after the murders in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

We’ve been here before, all of us in one way or another. We’ve witnessed the carnage, either as survivors ourselves or as friends or relatives of the fallen, or just from afar as spectators watching images of blood and grief on television and social media. We’ve heard the heartfelt prayers and the feckless clichés from political figures pledging solidarity, support and vague promises of action. Over and over again.

Worse, we all know that nothing constructive will come from Trump’s safety commission. After Parkland, the best the commission could offer was the arming of teachers. In the meantime, we’ve come to embrace mass shootings as routine features of everyday life.

Mass shootings are defined broadly as crimes with at least four victims, whether killed or wounded. Delineated thusly, the slaughter in Santa Fe is the 101st event of its kind this year. As one Santa Fe student told a local ABC news reporter in an interview Friday, she wasn’t at all shocked that one had erupted at her school.

“It’s been happening everywhere,” the student said. “I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here too.”

The student’s grim fatalism, sadly, is grounded in fact. We are awash in an ocean of firearms and killers armed to the teeth.

In a purely empirical sense, America’s obsession with guns and gun violence is easy to chart, as CNN did in an online article that was first posted in October 2017 and updated in March, not long after the Parkland shootings. Among other findings the network summarized were the following:

• Americans own 310 million guns, nearly half of the 650 million owned by civilians worldwide. According to a 2017 Pew Center study cited by CNN, 66 percent of American gun owners have more than one firearm, and 74 percent say their sense of personal freedom is directly tied to their gun ownership.
• Americans possess more guns per capita—89 per 100—than any other country. War-ravaged Yemen places second with 55 per 100.
• The U.S. makes up less than 5 percent of the world’s population but accounts for 31 percent of mass shooters worldwide.
• Gun homicide rates are 25.2 percent higher in the U.S. than in other high-income countries.

Guns are also a big business in the U.S. The annual revenue of gun and ammunition manufacturers tops $13 billion a year, and gun stores rake in $3 billion. In 2013, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, nearly 11 million pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns were sold across the country.

The surge in sales and profits has been accompanied by stepped-up political spending by gun industry lobbyists, particularly the National Rifle Association. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Federal Election Commission records show that the PAC and nonprofit arms of the NRA spent a combined $54.4 million in the 2016 elections. A cool $30 million was directed to supporting Trump’s presidential bid.

The NRA has also spent millions more to defeat even modest legislative proposals aimed at restoring the assault weapons ban: bolstering the federal background-check system and applying the system to gun shows and private sales; limiting the sale of large-capacity magazines; outlawing straw purchases (in which a nominal buyer poses for an ineligible end user); restricting the number of guns that any single person can buy in a given time period; and ensuring the availability of mental health counseling for all Americans.

It’s tempting to think of Trump, a businessman of expediency and self-aggrandizement, as the NRA’s tool, happy to do the gun lobby’s bidding in exchange for buckets of campaign cash. Tempting but wrong.

In the NRA, Trump has found the perfect vehicle for the culture of death that helped propel him to office. The NRA is as much his tool as he is theirs.

What is that culture? In a 2013 column on gun control titled “Mass Violence, Gun Control and the American Culture of Death,” I quoted Rich Broderick, an unheralded journalist based in Minnesota, who described it well before Trump’s election as a “culture that embraces a soulless free-market idolatry in which the value of everything, including human beings, is determined by the bottom line. … It is a culture of death that prevails on Wall Street, K-Street, Hollywood, and our ever-expanding Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex.”

In the aftermath of Trump’s ascension, others have taken the metaphor further. In a column posted by Truthout in early March this year, the American and Canadian scholar Henry Giroux wrote:

“We live in an age in which the politics of disposability has merged with what [CounterPunch editor] Jeffrey St. Clair has called the spectacle of ‘American Carnage.’ The machineries of social death and misery now drive a mode of casino capitalism in which more and more people are considered waste, expendable and excess. The politics of disposability now couples with acts of extreme violence as pressure grows to exclude more and more people from the zones of visibility, justice and compassion. This is especially true for children. Violence against children in the United States has reached epidemic proportions.”

Even conservative commentators see the grave dangers afoot. In a Washington Post column printed the day before the shooting in Santa Fe, Michael Gerson, who helped craft George W. Bush’s second inaugural address, wrote:

“Whatever else Trumpism may be, it is the systematic organization of resentment against outgroups. Trump’s record is rich in dehumanization. It was evident when he called Mexican migrants ‘criminals’ and ‘rapists.’ When he claimed legal mistreatment from a judge because ‘he’s a Mexican.’ (Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel was born in Indiana.) When he proposed a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.’ When he attacked Muslim Gold Star parents. When he sidestepped opportunities to criticize former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. When he referred to ‘very fine people’ among the white-supremacist protesters in Charlottesville. When he expressed a preference for Norwegian immigrants above those from nonwhite ‘shithole countries.’ ”

This does not imply, of course, that the NRA or Trump can be held criminally responsible for the acts of Dimitrios Pagourtzis or any other mass shooter. Still, it implies something of nearly equal weight: Trump and the NRA have combined to put fear and dehumanization into the hearts and minds of Americans, and fear and dehumanization sustain a fertile environment for continued outbreaks of mass violence.

If we are ever to heal our culture of death, at a minimum, we have to dislodge both the NRA and Trump from the pinnacles of power they now occupy. As the old saying goes, “A fish rots from the head down.”

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Bill Blum is a former judge and death penalty defense attorney. He is the author of three legal thrillers published by Penguin/Putnam.

On May 16, 2018, Canada’s Prime Minister issued a statement calling for an “immediate independent investigation” into the “tragic” killing and wounding of “countless” protesters in Gaza. Trudeau professed in his statement to be “appalled that Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian citizen, is among the wounded – along with so many unarmed people, including civilians, members of the media, first responders, and children.”

A mere two days later, in a debate at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Trudeau’s government opposed just such an investigation. Ultimately, the UNHRC voted by a margin of 29-2, with 14 abstentions, to establish a Commission of Inquiry into the Gaza massacres.

Given Trudeau’s history of shameless pandering to the pro-occupation lobby, his May 16 statement inspired little confidence that he would in fact insist upon a truly independent investigation into the Gaza massacres and the IDF’s shooting of Dr. Loubani. That is why, on May 17, I tweeted:

The explanation given for Trudeau’s immediate and craven self-reversal, which you can watch and listen to here, is that the UNHRC resolution calling for the investigation “prejudges the outcome of such an investigation,” is “one-sided and does not advance the prospects for a peaceful, negotiated settlement” between Israelis and Palestinians, and “singles out Israel without reference to other actors.”

Let’s unpack that, shall we?

Claim #1: The UNHRC resolution “prejudges the outcome of such an investigation”

It is certainly true that the UNHRC’s resolution, which can be seen here, accuses Israel of violating international humanitarian law, but so too does Canada’s own government. Canada’s Global Affairs website states:

Canada does not recognize permanent Israeli control over territories occupied in 1967 (the Golan Heights, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip). The Fourth Geneva Convention applies in the occupied territories and establishes Israel’s obligations as an occupying power, in particular with respect to the humane treatment of the inhabitants of the occupied territories. As referred to in UN Security Council Resolutions 446 and 465, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The settlements also constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.

As far as the recent killings in Gaza are concerned, Trudeau himself stated on May 16 that he was “appalled” by the shooting of Dr. Loubani and of “so many unarmed people, including civilians, members of the media, first responder and children.”

The whole world knows that it is the Israeli military that is shooting those unarmed protesters, and is doing so deliberately. In a now-deleted tweet, the Israeli army itself declared on March 31, 2018, the day after it shot 773 Palestinians with live fire, that “we know where every bullet landed.”

Under the circumstances, the fact that the UNHRC resolution accuses Israel of violating international law is no justification for opposing the UNHRC investigation. On the contrary, the UNHRC has ample reason – as does Canada’s own government – to level such accusations. The UNHRC investigation will help to ascertain the extent and nature of those violations, and precisely which military and governmental officials are responsible for them.

The mandate of the UNHRC’s Commission of Inquiry is:

to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military assaults on the large-scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018, whether before, during or after, to establish the facts and circumstances, with assistance from relevant experts and special procedure mandate holders, of the alleged violations and abuses, including those that may amount to war crimes, to identify those responsible, to make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring legal accountability, including individual criminal and command responsibility, for such violations, and on protecting civilians against any further assaults, and to present an oral update to the Council at its thirty-ninth session and a final, written report at its fortieth session.

It is simply unfathomable that any government truly committed to human rights would object to this mandate.

Claim #2: The UNHRC Resolution is “one-sided”

If the UNHRC Resolution appears to focus on Israel’s misconduct, that is simply because it is Israel’s military that is doing all of the killing and the Palestinians who are doing all of the dying. To date, not a single Israeli soldier has been killed, and only one has been lightly wounded.

By contrast, according to the human rights organization Al Haq, approximately 111 Palestinians have been killed, including 12 children, two journalists, and four persons with disabilities. During the same period, approximately 7,000 Palestinian were injured, including 1,244 children, 253 women, 42 paramedics, and 60 journalists – at least 3,615 of whom were hit by live fire.

One could hardly imagine more ‘one-sided’ casualty figures than this. If indeed the UNHRC resolution is ‘one-sided’, that resolution simply reflects the terrible reality of what is happening on the ground.

Claim #3: The UNHRC Resolution “does not advance the prospects for a peaceful, negotiated settlement”

This is, without doubt, the Trudeau government’s most pathetic rationale for opposing the UNHRC investigation.

The obvious point of the UNHRC investigation is to ensure that those who are responsible for these atrocities are held accountable. Without accountability, Israel will continue to violate international humanitarian law with impunity.

Are we seriously to believe that the perpetuation of Israel’s impunity will ‘advance the prospects for a peaceful, negotiated settlement’?

The answer to this question is obvious. So too is the Trudeau government’s double standard.

In the case of 19 other human rights violators, the Trudeau government has gone well beyond mere investigation by imposing economic sanctions. Meanwhile, it lavishes support on Israel – a state whose human rights violations the Canadian government has acknowledged for decades – by voting against broadly-supported UN resolutions critical of Israel’s human rights abuses, supporting more trade between Canada and Israel, allowing products from Israel’s illegal, West Bank settlements to be labelled as ‘product of Israel’ in Canadian stores, permitting the sale of Canadian-made weapons to Israel, and according charitable status to the Jewish National Fund, an organization that is deeply complicit in the violation of Palestinian human rights. The Canadian government even permits Canadians to serve in Israel’s lawless military forces.

In effect, Canada’s government has rewarded Israel for trampling the rights of the Palestinian people, who have lived under a brutal military occupation for over 50 years.

Has this ‘advanced the prospects for a peaceful, negotiated settlement’?

Claim #4: The UNHRC Resolution “singles out Israel without reference to other actors”

The Trudeau government’s statement of opposition at the UNHRC did not identify who the “other actors” are, but undoubtedly, at least one of them is Hamas, which Canada’s government designates a terrorist organization.

Whatever its offences may be, however, there is simply no evidence that Hamas fighters have killed or wounded any protesters or Israeli soldiers during the Great March of Return. Why then, should the UNHRC’s investigation focus on Hamas?

Israel’s apologists claim that Hamas has organized the protests. This is vigorously disputed by observers on the ground: they say that the protests have been organized by Palestinian civil society. Renowned Israeli journalist Gideon Levy maintains that these unarmed protesters are approaching the fence in Gaza not because Hamas brought them there, but because, after years of an inhuman blockade and eight massacres by Israeli forces, a profound sense of despair has befallen Gaza, and all that remains to its trapped and tormented inhabitants, half of whom are children, is to peacefully express their dissent, even if expressing their dissent poses great risk to themselves.

Let us assume, however, that Hamas organized these peaceful protests. Shouldn’t we welcome this development? Is it not a sign that Hamas may have understood, finally, that peaceful resistance is the right and only path to freedom?

The real reason for Trudeau’s lightning-speed self-reversal

The real reason for Justin Trudeau’s opposition to the UNHRC investigation is not that it is one-sided, undermines peace, or fails to focus on the true perpetrators of these atrocities. No, the real reason is that Justin Trudeau came under a withering assault from Canada’s pro-occupation lobby the moment that he waded into the waters of justice.

After briefly exhibiting a modicum of moral courage, Trudeau has swiftly retreated into his comfortable bunker of lies, hypocrisy and callous indifference to Palestinian suffering.

To borrow his own term, Canadians should be “appalled”.

Thousands of UK personnel are intimately involved in maintaining the military war machine of Saudi Arabia, enabling it to carry out its one-sided slaughter in Yemen.

A recent report, “UK Personnel Supporting the Saudi Armed Forces–Risk, Knowledge and Accountability”, by researchers Mike Lewis and Katherine Templar, is part of a Brits Abroad study funded by the Joseph Rowntree Trust.

The Saudi Arabian-led war against the Middle East’s poorest country is now in its fourth year. The Saudi regime launched the war in March 2015 to reinstall President Abd-Rabbuh Mansur Hadi (image below) who had been driven from power by Houthi rebels. Hadi is currently in exile in Riyadh, apparently under house arrest.

The US, UK and other western countries have supported the Saudi intervention. Like Saudi Arabia, they regard the war against the Houthis as a proxy conflict with Iran.

According to the UN, more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudis launched their invasion in March 2015, and more than 85,000 people have been displaced since January this year.

Among the crimes carried out was the killing by Saudi planes of over 30 people at a wedding in April this year, with twice as many suffering horrific wounds. In October 2016, around 150 were killed and more than 500 injured when Saudi planes bombed a funeral in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital.

The UK has a decades long program for supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia. According to the report, 50 percent of all UK weapons and military equipment exports between 2013 to 2017 went to Saudi Arabia. In the period between 2007 and 2011 it was just over a quarter. Most materiel went to the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF), with the UK supplying nearly half its 324 Combat aircraft, along with spare parts and ammunition.

According to a Sky News report in March, 50 open licences to supply weapons to Saudi Arabia were issued for the period July 2016 to September 2017—up by a third on the previous 15 months and coinciding with Theresa May’s premiership. Open licences allow an uncapped number of weapons to be sent over a period of five years. Only then can the value of the licence be revealed, but the government is under no obligation to publish the figures.

The grand total of UK arms licences since the invasion in Yemen in March 2015 is more than $6.2 billion for aircraft, helicopters, drones, bombs and missiles, according to government figures.

Lewis and Templar’s report explains:

“Under a sequence of formal agreements between the UK and Saudi governments since 1973, the UK Ministry of Defence and its contractors supply not only military ‘hardware’, but also human ‘software.’ Around 7,000 individuals—private employees, British civil servants and seconded Royal Air Force personnel—are present in Saudi Arabia to advise, train, service and manage British-supplied combat aircraft and other military equipment.”

The UK government claims these personnel are not involved directly in targeting, loading weaponry or in the planning of operational sorties. But confidential agreements signed between the UK government and the RSAF, which are not to be released to the public till 2027, outline the number of personnel and functions they undertake.

The UK-Saudi Al Yamamah agreement, a record arms deal signed in 1986 which included the supply and support of Tornado fighter-bombers, is still ongoing. The agreement is secret, but the report’s authors were able to see a batch of Downing Street papers that were filed in the National Archive at Kew revealing some details.

Under the agreement the

“United Kingdom civilian and military personnel will remain available in Saudi Arabia for preparation, including arming and support, of the [Tornado fighter-bomber] aircraft during an armed conflict…”

Lewis and Templar interviewed technicians, managers and officials of all ranks over two years and their report notes the critical role of UK personnel in the Saudi war-machine:

“A mix of company employees and seconded RAF personnel have continued to be responsible for maintaining the weapons systems of all Saudi Tornado IDS fighter-bombers, a backbone of the Yemen air war… work as aircraft armourers and weapons supervisors for the UK-supplied Typhoon fighters deployed at the main operating bases for Saudi Yemen operations, and provided deeper-level maintenance for Yemen-deployed combat aircraft.”

UK personnel in Saudi Arabia have been placed at physical or legal risk, including from scud missiles and unexploded ordnance. Some of those who have tried to whistle-blow over possible war crimes have been harassed and have not been afforded protection under UK law.

The report unearthed evidence that some of the UK personnel are involved in the handling of cluster bombs.

Lewis and Templar also found that the UK government has used private companies to “work on behalf of the British state but with Saudi masters; without the legal protections accorded to UK civil servants or military personnel; and without any guidance or protocols for reporting risks of IHL (International Humanitarian Law) violations to the UK government, or to their employers… Whitehall’s limited oversight of their activities is a deliberately constructed choice.”

The British government singled out arms exports as a key priority post-Brexit, with former defence secretary Michael Fallon promising that the UK would “spread its wings across the world.”

Britain’s arms trade with Saudi Arabia is enormously unpopular at home, with only 6 percent of the British public supporting it according to a recent poll. A legal bid to challenge the UK’s arms exports was financed by a crowd fund appeal.

Earlier this month, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) won its Court of Appeal bid to overturn last year’s High Court judgement that the export of arms from the UK to Saudi Arabia was lawful, despite widespread concern the trade was in breach of international humanitarian law. CAAT also won the right to challenge the closed verdict, where judges had heard evidence from the government in secret.

The court case revealed that the government went ahead with the sales despite its export policy chief telling then business secretary, Sajid Javid,

“My gut tells me we should suspend [weapons exports to the country].”

The UK has long-standing interests in the Yemen. British troops first occupied the port of Aden in present day Yemen in 1839 and it soon became important as a coaling station for British warships. From 1937 the port of Aden and the surrounding protectorate became a British colony. In 1934 Britain aided Saudi Arabia when it annexed Asir, then part of Yemen. Britain enforced a treaty to give Saudi Arabia a 20-year lease on the territory which remains a part of Saudi Arabia to this day.

In 1962, following the death of King Ahmad of Yemen, Arab nationalist army officers took power and proclaimed a republic. Royalists backed by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Britain began an insurgency to restore the monarchy.

A dirty war ensued, with Britain initially supplying Jordan with fighter jets to carry out airstrikes in Yemen and embedding military advisers with its key allies. From March 1963, Britain supplied weaponry directly to the Royalist forces. At the same time, MI6 along with SAS founder David Stirling set up a British force to work with the insurgents. To mask British involvement, SAS and paratrooper forces were given temporary leave and were paid over £10,000 a year (equivalent to £197,000 today) by a Saudi prince.

In 1964 under the Labour government of Harold Wilson (image on the left), covert bombing of Yemeni targets by the RAF began. Airworks Services was set up as a British company to train Saudi pilots.

Britain was eventually driven out of Aden in November 1967.

Today, driven by intractable crisis and the further erosion of its global standing, Britain is seeking to re-establish its influence in Yemen and across the Middle East as part of a new carve-up by the imperialist powers.

As a general rule, when Dick Cheney favors a foreign policy position it’s best to be on the opposite side if you value liberty over war and authoritarianism. The former vice president’s enthusiastic endorsement of not only Gina Haspel as CIA director but of the torture program she oversaw should tell us all we need to know about Haspel.

Saying that Haspel would make a great CIA director, Cheney dismissed concerns over the CIA’s torture program. Asked in a television interview last week about the program, Cheney said,

“if it were my call, I’d do it again.”

Sadly, the majority of the US Senate agreed with Cheney that putting a torturer in charge of the CIA was a good idea. Only two Republicans – Senators Paul and Flake – voted against Haspel. And just to confirm that there really is only one political party in Washington, it was the “yes” vote of crossover Democrats that provided the margin of victory. Americans should really be ashamed of those sent to Washington to represent us.

Just this month, the New York Times featured an article written by a woman who was kidnapped and send to the secret CIA facility in Thailand that Haspel was said to have overseen. The woman was pregnant at the time and she recounted in the article how her CIA torturers would repeatedly punch her in the stomach. She was not convicted or even accused of a crime. She was innocent. But she was tortured on Haspel’s watch.

Is this really what we are as a country? Do we really want to elevate such people to the highest levels of government where they can do more damage to the United States at home and overseas?

As the news comes out that Obama holdovers in the FBI and CIA infiltrated the Trump campaign to try and elect Hillary Clinton, President Trump’s seeming lack of understanding of how the deep state operates is truly bewildering. The US increasingly looks like a banana republic, where the permanent state and not the people get to decide who’s in charge.

But instead of condemning the CIA’s role in an attempted coup against his own administration, Trump condemned former CIA director John Brennan for “undermining confidence” in the CIA. Well, the CIA didn’t need John Brennan to undermine our confidence in the CIA. The Agency itself long ago undermined the confidence of any patriotic American. Not only has the CIA been involved in torture, it has manipulated at least 100 elections overseas since its founding after WWII.

As President Trump watched Gina Haspel being sworn in as CIA director, he praised her:

“You live the CIA. You breathe the CIA. And now you will lead the CIA,” he said.

Yes, Mr. president, we understand that. But that’s the problem!

The problem is not Haspel, it’s not John Brennan, it’s not our lack of confidence. The problem is the CIA itself. If the president really cared about our peace, prosperity, and security, he would take steps to end this national disgrace. It’s time to abolish the CIA!

*

Featured image is from TruePublica.

Featured image: President visit the Western Wall, Jerusalem, May 22, 2017. (Photo credit: Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv)

In a letter addressed to President Donald Trump, with copies to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN Security Council, four top former officials at the highest level of the US government have given him legal notice about his duty to advise the US Congress, the ICC and the UNSC, among others, about Israel’s actions coinciding with the “70^th anniversary of the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.”

The letter is signed, among others, by former CIA operations officer Phil Giraldi; former Pentagon official Michael Maloof; former US Army officer and State Department coordinator for counterterrorism contractor Scott Bennett; and former diplomat and author of Visas For al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World, Michael Springmann.

Maloof, Bennett and Giraldi, as well as Springmann and this correspondent, were among guests at the 6^th International New Horizon conference in the holy city of Mashhad, eastern Iran. The top themes of the conference’s debates were Palestine and the Trump administration’s unilateral exit from the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

As Maloof and Bennett separately confirmed to Asia Times, the letter was written by Giraldi and Maloof at an airport lounge as they were waiting for a flight from Mashhad to Tehran, where it was presented at a press conference this past Tuesday. This correspondent was on a reporting trip in Karaj. We all reunited on Thursday at Mashhad’s airport. The press conference in Tehran was virtually ignored by US corporate media.

Visas for the visiting Americans were an extremely delicate matter debated at the highest levels of the Iranian government between the Foreign Ministry and the intelligence services. In the end, the visitors, under intense scrutiny by Iranian media, ended up finding a huge, eager audience all across Iran.

A new psyops in the making

The letter signatories make a direct connection about Israeli actions that may trigger “and escalate American military actions against Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Russia since these nations are opposed to the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem; and rising tensions already exacerbated by the US withdrawal from the JCPOA.”

President Trump is also served legal notice that the letter “will be included as evidence in all matters relating to the US Embassy move to Jerusalem/Al Quds and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The letter is to be listed as “exhibit 1 in any war crimes investigation and prosecution (past, present, future) relating to this matter, at all times.”

As Bennett told Asia Times, the main concern is that according to his military sources the current, volatile situation may establish the preconditions for “a new psyops campaign.”

Trump has been served legal notice – pursuant to 18 US Code 4, and 28 US Code 1361 – of “national and international legal violations.” The letter also doubles as “a legal notice to the American people” – and is established as legal protection “against any retaliation, detainment, investigation, sequestration, interrogation, discrimination, imprisonment, torture, financial consequences, or any other negative or prejudicial consequences or actions.”

Moreover, “any action taken against the undersigned will be interpreted as a violation of the following; 18 USC 242 (conspiracy to deny/violate constitutional civil rights); 42 USC 1983, 1984, 1985 (civil action for rights violations); 18 US 2339A (providing material support to terrorists).

The letter may also be interpreted as an olive branch; apart from requesting full whistleblower protection, the signatories offer themselves to fully debrief the President as well as Congress.

The letter is copied to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani.

There has been no White House response so far.

Considering the US embassy transfer to Jerusalem; the unilateral abrogation of the JCPOA followed by a declaration of economic war against Iran; the new narrative on the DPRK — as in there’s only our deal, or you will be destroyed like Libya; not to mention the treatment of whistleblower Julian Assange, the prospects for a fruitful dialogue remain bleak.

The Law Society of South Africa (LSSA) joins the call by human rights organisations across the world in demanding that the international community take strong measures against Israel to put an end to the ongoing international human rights and humanitarian law violations perpetrated by the Israeli security forces’ use of live ammunition and snipers against civilian protesters.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Israel’s actions in the context of Gaza amount to wilful killings which may be prosecuted as war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The prosecutor of the ICC is currently carrying out a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine to prosecute and hold political and military officers accountable, in order to avoid further violations and to ensure justice.

The prosecutor of the ICC must accelerate her ongoing preliminary examination and open an investigation without further delay.

For the seventh week in Gaza, Palestinian protesters demanding an end to the unlawful closure of the Gaza strip and the right of return for refugees who were forced to flee from their land 70 years ago were once again met with dis- proportionate violence by Israeli security forces, who used deadly force.

The LSSA calls for legal organisations worldwide to highlight the serious human rights violations and calls for an end to the killings, and for the UN to pressurise the Israeli state and its supporters to stop these atrocities.

In releasing this statement, the LSSA acts in compassion and solidarity with the loved ones and families of those killed and does not subscribe to the view that any killing of civilians can be justified on the basis of political expediency.

The inaction and absence of a political will by the international community and Israel to ensure respect for international humanitarian law will only exacerbate the conflict and allow for the chronic denial of human rights and justice to continue.

It is essential that the international community takes immediate action to protect the civilian population in Gaza.

Failure by the international community to ensure the respect for international humanitarian law will only allow the conflict to worsen, with the resultant catastrophic loss of human life and continued denial of human rights and justice

We call on all concerned to engage in dialogue and peaceful means to resolve differences.

We express our support for the South African government and hope it will do all it can to encourage peace and discourage disproportionate violence.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Trump’s hardened war cabinet is in charge of geopolitical policymaking, more wars of aggression likely on its agenda – Iran perhaps a prime target.

In his first public address as Secretary of State, titled “After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy,” neocon extremist Mike Pompeo threatened Iran with “the strongest sanctions in history” if it fails to comply with US demands – things Tehran won’t ever agree to, its sovereignty not for sale to Washington.

“The JCPOA put the world at risk because of its fatal flaws,” Pompeo roared – a bald-faced lie!

“(T)he weak sunset provisions of the JCPOA merely delayed (Iran’s) inevitable nuclear weapons capability” – another disgraceful Big Lie, adding:

“After the countdown clock ran out on the deal’s sunset provisions, Iran would be free for a quick sprint to the bomb, setting off a potentially catastrophic arms race in the region. Indeed, the very brevity of the delay in the Iranian nuclear program itself incentivized Middle Eastern proliferation.”

America and Israel are nuclear armed and dangerous. Iran abhors these weapons, wanting nothing to do with them. No evidence suggests otherwise.

Pompeo:

“Iran has lied for years about having had a nuclear weapons program. Iran entered into the JCPOA in bad faith. (It) continues to lie.”

“The mechanisms for inspecting and verifying Iran’s compliance with the deal were simply not strong enough. (Its) ballistic and cruise missiles could deliver nuclear warheads.”

It “spen(ds) its resources fueling proxy wars across the Middle East…Iran perpetuates a conflict that has displaced more than 6 million Syrians” internally and millions more “outside its borders.”

All of the above are bald-faced lies, many more in Pompeo’s hostile address, barely stopping short of declaring war on the Islamic Republic – Pompeo saying:

Washington will work with its allies “to deter (nonexistent) Iranian aggression. We will track down Iranian operatives and their Hezballah proxies operating around the world and we will crush them. Iran will never again have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East.”

“If they restart their nuclear program, it will mean bigger problems – bigger problems than they’d ever had before.”

He wants air-tight assurance that “Iran has no possible path to a nuclear weapon, ever” – something it deplores, never sought and wants eliminated everywhere, all nations threatened as long as these weapons exist.

He demands Iran cease all uranium enrichment and pledges no plutonium processing ever. The JCPOA permits enough of the former for energy use.

Tehran must allow “unqualified access to all sites throughout the country,” including off-limits military ones under the JCPOA.

Its government must cease its regional military activities – entirely involved in combating US supported terrorists in Syria on request of its government.

It must cease supporting legitimate entities Washington illegally declared terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Yemeni Houthis.

US citizens held by Iran must be released, no matter what offenses they’re accused of committing.

The Islamic Republic must cease being a threat to Israel. It never was and isn’t now, the Jewish state a major threat to regional and global security.

It “must end its…ballistic missiles…launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems” – the latter something it doesn’t have or want, the former it has every right to develop.

It “must…permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias” in Iraq. Tehran supports what Washington rejects – Iraqi sovereignty.

Iran must “cease harboring senior al-Qaida leaders” – a US specialty, the Islamic Republic strongly opposed to the scourge they represent.

“Iran…must end the IRG Qods Force’s support for terrorists and militant partners around the world.” What Iran abhors, Washington supports.

Pompeo:

“At the end of the day, the Iranian people will get to make their choice about their leadership.”

“If they make the decision quickly, that would be wonderful. If they choose not to do so, we will stay hard at this until we achieve the outcomes that I set forward today.”

Pompeo wants a Senate-ratified treaty replacing the JCPOA. He wants Iran transformed into a US vassal state. He wants what Tehran won’t ever agree to – demands made to be rejected, not accepted.

He threatened European and other companies with stiff sanctions if they fail to bend to Washington’s will on Iran, adding:

“I know our allies in Europe may try to keep the old nuclear deal going with Tehran. That is their decision to make. They know where we stand.”

On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said his country’s involvement in Syria is at Assad’s request, stressing:

“Nobody can force Iran to do something against its will. Iran is an independent country that pursues its policies according to its own interests,” adding:

“All those should leave Syria who entered the territory of the country without the approval of the Syrian government.”

He said Pompeo’s hostile Monday demands are undeserving of a serious answer, calling the notion of negotiating with Washington “ridiculous.”

He also denied US accusations of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan, saying:

“The Islamic Republic…has been standing for nearly four decades alongside the friendly and brotherly government and people of Afghanistan to defend their sovereignty and independence, and the statements made to satisfy outsiders and invaders have no congruity with these friendly relations.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed the Islamic Republic will continue “out path” undeterred by Washington, adding the era of its regimes “decid(ing) for the world is over.”

He categorically rejected Pompeo’s outrageous demands.

His deplorable address reflected US imperial arrogance and hubris, further proof of its pariah state status, at war on humanity for global hegemony – everyone everywhere threatened by its endless quest for dominance, no matter the human cost.

Trump’s outrageous hostility toward Iran, his JCPOA pullout, along with appointing notorious neocon extremist Iranophobes to key administration positions escalated regional tensions instead of responsibly stepping back from the brink.

Will hot US war on the Islamic Republic follow propaganda and sanctions war? Administration extremists make the unthinkable possible.

*

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

A few years ago the story of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal allegedly being poisoned with a deadly nerve agent in the UK supposedly by the Russian state, would have shook geopolitics and placed immense pressure on Moscow.

Today, while it certainly did shake geopolitics, it was more from the narrative hitting a brick wall than from its desired impact toward cornering the Kremlin.

While the United Kingdom’s credibility unraveling played a major role in the UK’s own narrative failing, it has been the growing global alternative media that has exposed and diminished the true nature of British credibility in the first place.

Analysts have linked the Skripal affair with a series of other Anglo-American geopolitical maneuvers including staged chemical attacks in Syria and the subsequent missile attack launched against the Syrian state.

However, all of these pretexts failed to find their mark, leaving Western capitals increasingly exposed without the cover of legitimacy they have manufactured and enjoyed in the past.

Russia’s Own, Modern Media 

Russia’s own international media played a significant role in publicly informing global audiences of alternatives to the UK’s Skripal narrative, as well as challenging the UK directly.

The growing influence of Russia’s international media helped provide balance to global discourse that was once solely dominated by US and European media organizations.

Long gone are the days of clumsy Soviet state media. Russia’s modern media has performed an act of public relations judo, using the most effective techniques of the Western media, and directing them back against the West.

When this involves some of the most dishonest and aggressive agendas driven by Western special interests, they resonate with a global public increasingly disillusioned by the Western media.

For the time being, the global alternative media comprised of small independent media organizations and even individuals, have benefited from working with modern Russia media.

Despite claims of “Russian influence” and “Russian propaganda,” it should be noted that citizens and organizations around the globe contributing to, being interviewed by and appearing on Russian media are no different than those appearing on American and European networks.

Attempts to portray it as being somehow different is based on the assumption that Anglo-American and European media is in some way morally superior to that of other nations, yet this assumption in and of itself is predicated on decades, if not centuries of exceptionalism bred from quite immoral hegemony.

Independent media organizations and individual journalists and analysts holding alternative views from the mainstream US-European media are systematically denied a platform to fairly air these views in the West. Contrary to the West’s supposed values of “free speech” and objectivity among a “free press,” the actions of the Western media promote anything but.

As long as Russia’s media focuses on issues such as corrupt global corporations, global military aggression and other global issues barred from being discussed freely and honestly in the West, this partnership will continue to flourish.

The UK’s attempts to frame Russia for a “nerve agent” attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter on British soil and thus dishonestly drag the British nation into a wider confrontation with Russia threatened not only Moscow’s best interests, but those of the British public as well.

The Alternative Media 

While state media from Russia certainly helped counter the UK’s narrative regarding Skripal, thousands of independent media organizations and individuals around the globe also contributed.

News personalities and analysts with large audiences across social media and video platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have grown into an increasingly important counterbalance to the Western corporate media.

To illustrate how effective the alternative media has become, the Western media has intentionally and very dishonestly attempted to lump them in with Russian international media to undermine their credibility.

Public Perception isn’t Everything, But it is Also Not Nothing

While the truth behind the Skripal affair has yet to be fully revealed, with Sergei Skripal and his daughter having  disappeared from public view and official mention, and while it is still not certain why exactly the British government fabricated this incident, it does appear linked to the likewise staged chemical attack in Douma, Syria.

The Skripal affair may have been designed to undermine Russian credibility at the United Nations Security Council ahead of the staged Douma chemical attack. Had things worked according to plan, a much bolder and more muscular “international” response might have been organized by the US, forcing Russia to back down in Syria and even potentially move the Syrian government out from under its political and military protection.

However, this did not happen, for a variety of reasons.

The military balance in the Middle East may still favor the US and its allies, but it is an advantage that can only be exploited through a much wider conflict than is currently unfolding in Syria.

It will be difficult for the US to create the right combination of provocations and manipulate public perception sufficiently to justify the scale of conflict required to move its agenda forward in Syria.

The Skripal affair failed make its desired impact on public perception regarding Russia at the United Nations. Yet the US was prepared to move forward with staged provocations and then strikes on Syria anyway.

It is always difficult to quantify how much public perception plays in decision making. Washington’s military might is not directly affected by public perception, but an unconvinced and unwilling public can indirectly and unpredictably undermine military operations.

With this in mind, we can see why nations like Russia, China and Iran have developed their own international media organizations, clawing space for themselves across once Western-dominated global audiences.

The impact of this may not have in and of itself stopped the “Skripal Effect,” but it certainly blunted it. With sound foreign policy composed of viable incentives and deterrents, Moscow was able to fully stop it. The Skripal affair is now being transformed into a scandal, with the British government having more to explain themselves than supposed Kremlin assassins of whom there is still no evidence.

As Russia reaps the benefits of years of developing its own reach into the global public, other nations across the developing world should consider the merits of creating their own international media organizations aimed at providing their side of the story to global audiences and reflecting their own national interests.

Currently, many nations throughout the developing world have corps of journalists trained and indoctrinated in the West. When they return to their home nations, their reporting reflects Western, not domestic interests. They often develop direct ties to the Western media and even Western embassies, which further compromises not only any genuine journalist integrity, but also their ability to at least represent the interests of local populations they deliver misinformation to.

Nations like Russia and China which export technology and defense systems, could potentially export their successes regarding international media by assisting other nations in building up effective media organizations that truly reflect each respective nation’s interests. Unlike the US which funds media in targeted nations to simply serve as an echo chamber in support of the US-led international order, Russia and China would be giving the tools to other nations to defend their information space themselves.

While the interests of these nations may not always overlap with Moscow or Beijing’s, they will also most certainly never overlap with Western hegemony, a fact that serves to confront a common grievance among a growing number of nations worldwide well beyond just Russia and China.

*

Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from the author.

“Two plus two is five – if the party says so” (George Orwell)

Should anyone record the history of the 20th and 21st centuries, they may report that, while temperatures and sea levels were rising, the human sense of reality has been clouded by electronic system, including television, the internet and smart phones, by science fiction, virtual realities, public circuses, fake news, gratuitous hype and superlatives, overtaking common sense and the quest for protection of the Earth and the survival of the species.

As glaciers melt, sea levels rise at an accelerate rate and intense hurricanes and wildfires increase, by a factor of ~3 since early in the 20^th century, unthinkable consequences of runaway global warming and nuclear wars loom. A new Orwellian age of fake news, half-truths, cover-ups and false flags is becoming the order of the day. When $trillions are spent on weapons of  mass destruction instead of protecting nature and humanity from global heating, the hapless inhabitants of planet Earth are left with a non-choice between a nuclear winter and a greenhouse summer. When politicians lay flowers on the graves of soldiers and at the same time re-arming for future wars, or decline to endorse anti-nuclear treaties, or pledge token action on climate change while promoting new coal mines, can anyone believe it when they talk about a “future”? 

Hoodwinked by the half-truths of a conscience-free mainstream media, the inhabitants of suburbia international have become more interested in cricket ball tampering, Eurovision-type circuses and royal weddings, allowing the “powers that be” to proceed with policies leading toward ecocide and genocide.

It may or may not be understood, but is hardly reported by the mainstream media that, under a global temperature rise of +1.5C, which has already been reached over the continents (see this), sea level is committed to rise by more than 10 meters, flooding coastal plains, delta and low river valleys where the bulk of the world’s population live and grows food, and where major industrial centers and cities are located. This would include large parts of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Viet Nam, China, Philippines, Egypt, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, UK, southeast USA, and many other parts of the world, triggering large waves of migration. Although the precise time table is unclear, several meters sea level rise during the 21^st century is possible.

Source: author

Depending on the extent to which fossil fuel combustion and amplifying feedbacks take place, on current trajectories warming would rise toward and beyond +2 degree Celsius, amplified by the release of methane from the polar oceans and from melting permafrost. A rise of global temperatures to and above Pliocene (5.2-2.6 million years-ago) level (+2C to +3C) would result in 25+/-12 meters sea level rise and higher, changing the map of the world (see this).

It does it look as if the Empire is inclined to do much to arrest climate change. In so far as the rest of the world may decide to attempt to limit global warming, this would depend on: 

• Whether the rise in global temperature has already reached a point of no return?
• Whether current emission levels will be halted and negative emissions, namely carbon capture and storage, can be sequestered on a scale that can arrest and reverse global heating?
• Whether governments may undertake such measures despite pressure by the fossil fuel industry and their powerful lobbies?
• Would governments be able to divert the $trillion-scale funds from the military-industrial complex toward climate mitigation and adaptation?

On January 17, 1961, retiring President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist”. 

If leaders are unwilling or unable to convey the facts of climate change to the populations, what chance is there they would be prepared to elaborate on the enormous danger of a global nuclear conflict? Although in principle the advent of nuclear weapons is supposed to have rendered wars obsolete, at present no negotiations are being held between the big powers on limiting nuclear weapons or removing them from on-alert state. Given the absence of real ideological differences between west and east, both dominated by oligarchs, a rising rivalry based on oil and weapons is pushing the world toward a nuclear suicide pact by accident or design. 

The first casualty of war being the truth (Hiram Johnson), in the lack of leadership this role should fall on the Fourth Estate. Dominated by the rating and infotainment, much of the mainstream media has undertaken the role of prosecutor, judge and jury on behalf of dominant political lobbies. Rather than advocating peace, much of the press vilifies perceived enemies using derogatory language. No one wants to believe in conspiracy theories, such are propagated where it serves a political purpose, but history is full of examples of false flag attacks, some of which have led to war:

The realities of the world belong to the starved masses bombarded in distant regions, not to those who watch them on television. Should there be anyone to record the history of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, they may observe that, while temperatures and sea levels were rising, the human sense of veracity has been clouded by electronic systems, including television, internet, smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, public circuses, science fictions, fake news, virtual realities, hype and superlatives, overtaking the human common sense and the quest for survival. 

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Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and Paleo-climate science, ANU School of Anthropology and Archaeology, ANU Climate Change Institute, ANU Planetary Science Institute, Honorary Associate Professor, Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, University of Queensland. Dr. Andrew Glikson is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

We demand from Iran:

First, Iran must declare to the IAEA a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program, and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity. [Israel and the U.S. get to keep our nukes but Iran must not keep theirs, and must instead do what these two rabidly hostile bully-Governments, Israel & U.S., say.]

Second, Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing. This includes closing its heavy water reactor. [Maybe Iran will do that when Israel and U.S. stop threatening Iran, and when Israel stops having nukes while Iran doesn’t.]

Third, Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country. [The latest IAEA report on Iran actually says, “Since 16 January 2016 (JCPOA Implementation Day), the Agency has verified and monitored Iran’s implementation of its nuclear-related commitments.” Iran fulfills its obligations under the treaty, but now the U.S. does not (and insists that Europe must not).]

[Fourth,] Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems. [Iran will do that when Israel and U.S. do.]

[Fifth,] Iran must release all U.S. citizens, as well as citizens of our partners and allies, each of them detained on spurious charges. [The U.S. dictates that the legal cases against those charged be terminated, and this demand assures that those cases will be fully prosecuted; so, Pompeo is hardly helping anyone by this arrogance.]

[Sixth,] Iran must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. [All Islamic terrorism except against Israel comes from the Sunni-run nations that are allies of the U.S. against Shia-run Iran and that finance Al Qaeda and other such terrorist groups, all of which are Sunni and rabidly anti-Shia — and Iran is the leading Shia nation.]

[Seventh,] Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias. [ America overthrew Iraq’s Government in 2003 and now accuses Iran of violating “the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government.” Is Pompeo rehearsing for a role as Satan in some stupid play?]

[Eighth,] Iran must also end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a peaceful political settlement in Yemen. [The U.S., and two of its Sharia-law Sunni royal allies, Saudi Arabia and UAE, are bombing the hell out of and starving Yemen, and demand that Houthis and other Shia in Yemen stop their resisting that.]

[Ninth,] Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria. [Iran might consider doing that after the U.S. and its fundamentalist-Sunni allies stop their invasion-occupation of sovereign Syrian territory.]

[Tenth,] Iran, too, must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring senior al-Qaida leaders. [Pompeo lies: the Taliban are fundamentalist Sunnis who were trained and armed by Saudi Arabia and the United States and therefore are enemies of Iran; he’s like the wife-beater who demands that someone who isn’t wife-beating must cease wife-beating.]

[Eleventh,] Iran, too, must end the IRG Qods Force’s support for terrorists and militant partners around the world. [The Quds Force were created during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war in order to protect Iranians against Saddam Hussein’s invasions when Saddam was supported by the U.S. Government in order to re-conquer Iran in 1980. Iran will not take orders from the nation, America, that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Government in 1953, and that then backed Saddam’s attempt to reconquer Iran in the 1980s. The U.S. Government lies constantly about Iran.]

[Twelfth,] And too, Iran must end its threatening behavior against its neighbors – many of whom are U.S. allies. This certainly includes its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes threats to international shipping and destructive – and destructive cyberattacks. [These are just more lies and distortions.]

That list is pretty long, but if you take a look at it, these are 12 very basic requirements. The length of the list is simply a scope of the malign behavior of Iran. We didn’t create the list, they did.

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Not a month goes by without Canada demonstrating in many ways that it is a strong supporter of the neoliberal imperial agenda of the – take your choice – one percenters, military-industrial-financial complex, the deep state.  Since the last report, many things have lined up with U.S. desires for global hegemony.

Russia

First off was another politically oriented attack against Russia – if you can’t get them on the false flag Skripal affair, attack them somewhere else.  In this instance the Trudeau government “condemned” the Kerch bridge connecting mainland Russia with Crimean Russia.   The road section was completed in two and a half years and was officially opened by Vladimir Putin earlier this month.  This follows on the example of their imperial mother, as the UK also condemned the bridge while lying about the annexation of Crimea to Russia.

Along with this are reports of UN forces working on the Ukrainian front lines in the Donbas with possible deaths or injuries to US and Canadian personnel.  With nothing being reported in the mainstream media (MSM)  this indicates that it may not have happened as it would be a great cause for some more anti-Russian hysteria; or maybe they want it silenced as the Canadian forces are supposed to be there simply on a training mission.

Israel

How pathetic – Canada’s lack of critical reasoned response to the Israeli murder of unarmed protesting Gaza prisoners –  interesting how a change of word paints a different picture.  Canada did respond indirectly through the CBC, its MSM branch, calling the murders to be a result of “clashes” and “violence” even though it was demonstrably a non-violent protest on the part of the Palestinians.  To add context, a CBC correspondent showed a simple outline map of Gaza, describing the border as a 60 km “fence” to keep out any “invasion” from Gaza.

The missing context is the absolute control Israel exerts over all aspects of life in Gaza and the use of its massive military to keep the Palestinians under constant military threat from the sea, land, and air.   The other part of the missing context of course is the whole history of the colonial settler actions of the Jewish people, a position Canada is familiar with in its own relations with its indigenous people.

Korea

As with all things military, Canada plays a subordinate role to the U.S. while cloaking its imperial role in terms of “peace and security”.  Canada has taken on the No. 2 position for the command of UN forces technically still at war with North Korea.  It goes beyond Korea as the new commander also stretches that role out “throughout the Asia-Pacific region”  – an interesting case of ‘mission creep’.

Again Canadians as a whole remain ignorant of the context.  There are many historical works on the Korean war indicating that it was essentially a civil war, with the generally approved forces of Kim Il-sung attempting to unite a country divided arbitrarily by the U.S. (with Soviet Union acquiescence) in its attempts to contain China and Russia in the nascent Cold War.

If Canada truly wanted peace in the region it would unilaterally declare its part of the war finished, withdraw its forces, and then work critically towards the U.S. in order to stop their threats and antagonism towards North Korea – and to withdraw their forces and nuclear weapons bases from the region.

Saudi Arabia versus Venezuela

Canada retains strong military and financial ties to Saudi Arabia  and supports their attitudes against Yemen and Iran – in part by supplying them with billions of dollars of armoured vehicles.  Even if the vehicles are not used directly in combat, it does release other monies and materials to be used in the Saudi’s illegal war against Yemen and support its rhetorical boasting against Iran.

On the other hand Canada has decided it won’t recognize the recent election in Venezuela, probably one of the most scrutinized in Latin America.   Apparently they say it was rigged and undemocratic even though it has one of the more foolproof election processes in the region.  Trudeau actually admitted that he was stopping Canada’s own attempts at electoral reform because they did not suit the purposes of his Liberal government, another nice double standard.

Of course, the real sticker here is that Venezuela has oil….but so does Saudi Arabia?  The essential difference being that the theocratic monarchic misogynist head-chopping Saudi’s sell their oil using the petro-dollar and are part and parcel of the U.S. attempts at global hegemony for their financial elite.  Venezuela on the other hand does not support U.S. global hegemony, has been under sanctions for a long time, has had one pro-U.S. coup defeated by Chavez, and sells it oil for other currencies.

Canada in its subordinate imperator role (see all the above) has wisely decided to limit its consular contact – a great way for a country wanting “peace and security” through negotiations (a la Israel) to play its proper role.

Climate and pipelines

This is a domestic issue that reflects a global reality.  Canada theoretically supports the Paris climate agreement, yet at the same time is pushing for a dilbit pipeline (dilbit is a combination of tar sands and a solvent to carry it) from the interior to the coast.  This demonstrates a double standard on two fronts.  First is the climate change denial and rhetorical abuses of the slogan calling for both the pipeline and more jobs (as always) against the scientifically known results of spewing more carbon (and other pollutants) into the atmosphere and waterways of Canada and thus the world.  In the process the indigenous people get screwed again, as a significant portion of the pipeline runs through their unceded territory and through their historical fishing and harvesting territories.

In sum, Canada continues its recalcitrant and incorrigible actions against countries deemed to be enemies by the U.S. imperium.   The maternal influence is strong and is supported by its subservience to its aggressive sibling.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Sofia is proceeding from the assumption that any de-facto revival of the South Stream pipeline would make it a pivotal player in the New Cold War, and contrary to most people’s initial reactions, Moscow might actually be interested.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev told Russia’s famous business publication Kommersant that his country wants to receive direct energy shipments from Russia through an undersea pipeline that he tentatively called “Bulgarian Stream” and which bears no difference whatsoever to the “South Stream” project that Sofia itself helped scuttle back in late 2014. Since that time, Turkey and its Turkish Stream pipeline have replaced Bulgaria and the South Stream as Russia’s newest southern-focused energy corridor, but Sofia appears to be having second thoughts about the wisdom of obstructing Moscow’s megaproject in order to please its backers in Brussels and Washington at the time, hence the attempt to revive this project in everything but name.

For reasons of national security amid deteriorating EU-Turkish ties that will likely remain on their downward trajectory for the foreseeable future, Bulgaria would rather receive direct energy exports from Russia through “Bulgarian Stream” than Turkish Stream, which if ever actualized would make it one of only three direct pipeline customers after Poland discontinues its purchase of Russian gas in 2022 like planned and Russia accordingly phases out if trans-Ukrainian pipelines. More costly but “politically convenient” US LNG is expected to make up the EU’s difference of supplies by that time, as well as the extra resources that Russia will export through Nord Stream II & Turkish Stream, both of which will directly connect to Germany & Turkey and make them important hubs for Northern/Western and Southern/Central Europe, respectively.

Bulgaria, despite being a “small power”, wants to carve out an ultra-strategic niche for itself in Europe’s energy security by playing in the “big leagues” with these two Great Powers, betting on Brussels and Berlin’s dislike of Ankara to get them to be more lenient when it comes to enforcing EU regulations on any prospective pipeline deal between Sofia and Moscow (unlike the last time around with South Stream). Should this come to pass, then Bulgaria – and not Turkey – would become the ultimate “gatekeeper” for Russian energy supplies to the rest of the Balkans and Central Europe (Hungary), thereby enabling the EU to manage Turkey’s energy influence by restricting it to Southern Europe via the TANAP-TAP projects.

In fact, even that might be “balanced” out if Brussels gets its way with the East Mediterranean Pipeline (EMP) from “Israel” to Italy that the author briefly touched upon in a January 2017 analysis about Cyprus and which political analyst Adam Garrie recently talked much more about in one of his latest pieces. When framed in this manner, the EU’s American-pressured policy of “energy diversification” takes on a new dimension by actually “encouraging” “Bulgarian Stream” so as to prevent any overreliance on Turkish-transiting supplies, especially in the event that a “New Détente” is reached. Altogether, the EU would in theory like to receive gas from Russia (Nord Stream II, “Bulgarian Stream”), Azerbaijan (via the Turkish-transiting TANAP-TAP projects), “Israel” (EMP), and the US (LNG), with the possibility existing for Qatari LNG to “fill in the gaps”.

By being one of the EU’s two energy interfaces with multipolar Russia, Bulgaria hopes to be able to achieve an outsized geostrategic importance by leveraging this to its ultimate benefit in the New Cold War in order to finally become a “Balkan Power”, though not in the traditional sense of this concept. As the Warsaw-led “Three Seas Initiative’s” (TSI) southeastern-most member, Bulgaria could “balance” pro-American Poland’s institutional Russophobia in order to make this “bloc” mildly multipolar, especially when considering the TSI’s very close Silk Road relations with China. This would go well with Russia’s existing outreach efforts to the transnational organization’s four “Austro-Hungarian” states on which its Croatian rapprochement is predicated.

Bulgaria wants to replace Serbia as the “object” of “East-West” rivalry between Russia on the one hand and the EU & the US on the other despite already being a member of the latter two’s main institutions (EU & NATO) by attracting attention to its newfound energy significance. Moreover, Bulgaria is a coastal state that already enjoys a lot of tourism from “both sides”, so that’s an additional “selling point” in its “international attractiveness”. What works against its envisioned geostrategic role, however, is that the West already has predominant influence over it and that this could be exploited at any time to provoke a bilateral crisis in Bulgaria’s relations with Russia so as to obstruct the shipment of its “Bulgarian Stream” supplies to the rest of its Balkan and Central European partners.

There’s really no getting around this point, however, since Russia would either directly or indirectly rely on Bulgaria as a transit state in this respect, especially considering that the Republic of Macedonia is no longer a viable option after its rolling regime change succeeded in removing multipolar-friendly Prime Minister Grueveski and replaced him with the Soros-compliant Zaev. At the same time, though, Russia and Turkey might have had an implicit understanding with one another that the latter would be the main “gatekeeper” of Russian gas to the region and not Bulgaria, meaning that this “gentleman’s agreement” won’t be abrogated unless the EU made it all but impossible for this plan to go ahead, which is unlikely because Brussels nevertheless needs Ankara to supply Southern Europe via TANAP-TAP and can’t cut it out of the continent completely.

At the end of the day, it’s difficult to say whether “Bulgarian Stream” will ever go ahead or not because its fate rests on two factors that evade the public eye, being firstly whether a Russian-Turkish implicit agreement on Moscow facilitating Ankara’s energy “gatekeeper” role in the region exists and secondly whether the EU would prefer for Southeastern Europe to “balance” its Turkish-transiting supplies through Russian-originating ones. Related to the second-mentioned point, the EU isn’t an entirely independent actor in this regard because it’s already proven its strategic weakness in going along with the US’ anti-Russian sanctions despite this being contradictory to its interests, though any developing Transatlantic rift over the Iran deal might provide a chance for increasing this project’s prospects.

Because of these uncertainties, it’s impossible to say at this moment whether “Bulgarian Stream” will in fact ever be built, but at the same time and considering its strategic attractiveness to both the EU and Russia, it’s equally impossible to entirely discount it either.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from PravdaReport.

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Long-time CIA Asset Named as FBI’s Spy on Trump Campaign

By Bill Van Auken, May 21, 2018

The naming of Stefan Halper as the individual sent by the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election campaign has further inflamed the political warfare raging within the US state apparatus and political establishment. Halper is a long-time CIA asset with deep ties to US and British intelligence.

Back to the Future? Bolton, Trump and Iranian “Regime Change”: “Splinter the Iranian State into Component Parts”

By Gareth Porter, May 21, 2018

Bolton was part of the powerful neoconservative faction of national security officials in the George W Bush administration that had a plan for supporting regime change in Iran, not much different from the one Bolton is reportedly pushing now. But it was a crackbrained scheme that involved the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) exiled terrorist organisation that never had Bush’s support.

Facebook and The Atlantic Council Unite: Now Social Media Giant Serves NATO’s Agenda

By Bryan Macdonald, May 21, 2018

Facebook has engaged a think tank funded by weapons manufacturers, branches of the US military and Middle-Eastern monarchies to safeguard the democratic process. It’s akin to hiring arsonists to run the fire brigade.

Hypersonic Technology: How Russia and China Gained a Strategic Advantage

By Federico Pieraccini, May 21, 2018

The United States, China and Russia have in recent years increased their efforts to equip their armed forces with such highly destructive missiles and vehicles seen in the previous article. Putin’s recent speech in Moscow reflects this course of direction by presenting a series of weapons with hypersonic characteristics, as seen with the Avangard and the Dagger.

The War the National Rifle Association (NRA) Is Waging against American Kids

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, May 21, 2018

American schools have increasingly become shooting galleries in a war that the National Rifle Association (NRA) is winning, with the help of venal politicians and clueless Supreme Court Justices, against American students and teachers.

The Bayer-Monsanto Merger: Empowering a Life-Destroying Cartel

By Michael Welch, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Nick Meyer, and Ellen Brown, May 20, 2018

The U.S. Department of Justice recently cleared the path for the German pharmaceutical and chemical company Bayer to merge with U.S. based agricultural giant Monsanto in a take-over deal worth more than $60 billion.

It is our right to transfer the Arabs … The Arabs should go!” – Yosef Weitz, leading Zionist figure, director of the Land and Afforestation Department of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), 1940

The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” – David Ben-Gurion, 1937

The main thing is, first and foremost, to hit them hard. Not just one hit… but many painful [hits], so that the price will be unbearable. … To bring them to a state of panic that everything is collapsing … fear that everything will collapse … The world will say nothing. The world will say that we are defending ourselves.” – Current Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, 2001

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While Israel claims “security” and “defense of its border” to justify the recent mass murder in Gaza, the historical record of Israel’s founding fathers and government planners paints a different picture entirely. Aware that an “injustice was unavoidable” for their state to be established, the early Zionist settlers adopted a position of pure hegemony towards the Palestinians — which continues to this day. They had to be “shown the power of Israel” through the “use of force” until they were “compelled to concede” and “submit” to Israeli rule.

Yet, according to President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the recent move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem marks the start of “the journey to peace,” with “a strong America recognizing the truth.”

“What a glorious day!” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said of the event, telling Trump “You have made history.”

Indeed — while legitimizing Israel’s colonization of Jerusalem, as well as the massacre in Gaza only miles away, all while proclaiming a dedication to “peace” and “truth” — the event perfectly encapsulates what the U.S. really means when it speaks of “peace,” and the “truth” of what policy towards the Palestinians really looks like.

The “peace” of settler-colonialism

The Embassy move coincided with the 70th anniversary of the forceful expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian population from their homelands by European immigrants and the settler-colonialism that created the state of Israel on top of it.

Describing the situation in 1918, Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion explained:

There is no solution to the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. … And we must recognize this situation. … We as a nation want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.”

Albert Hourani, a distinguished historian at Oxford, in 1946 further explained that “no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the first.” Chaim Weizmann, soon to be the first president of Israel, agreed. According to a contemporary chronicler:

[Weizmann was] the first witness who has frankly and openly admitted that the issue is not between right and wrong but between the greater and lesser injustice. Injustice is unavoidable and we have to decide whether it is better to be unjust to the Arabs of Palestine or the Jews.”

This premeditated injustice is the reason Palestinians refer to Israel’s birthday as the “Nakba” — Arabic for “catastrophe.” It denotes the time when they were brutalized by Zionist settlers who justified their actions based upon past injustices committed against them by someone else, as an abused child justifies growing up to become the abuser of their own children.

The Embassy move made by “a strong America” was also a “recognition of the truth” of a longstanding Israeli policy, now fully endorsed and legitimized by U.S. unilateralism, of taking over and colonizing East Jerusalem, which began immediately following its seizure by Israel in 1967.

In the declassified record, we find that, as early as 1971, CIA analysts were describing how Israel was “undertaking a number of programs within the city that are clearly designed to make Israeli control irreversible.” Israel’s position that it sought full control of all of Jerusalem — “adopted immediately following the 1967 war” — was evidenced as “the Israelis have continued to make it abundantly clear [that] they have no intention of giving up control of the city.”

Read |  The declassified CIA memo on Jerusalem

Click here to read.

This is significant, the CIA analysts noted, because “the status of Jerusalem constitutes a stumbling block on which the entire peace effort could founder.” The Israeli actions therefore have “further complicated the issue” and ensured that achieving peace would be impossible, as indeed it was.

During all of this, the U.S. continuously voiced its dedication to “peace” and diplomatic resolution.

Carrying on the tradition, Trump on Monday said to the embassy ceremony that the United States “remains fully committed to facilitating a lasting peace agreement,” at the same time the U.S. was legitimizing a decades-long occupation of Jerusalem that effectively nullified any slim hope that might have remained for a negotiated settlement.

Trump’s brash actions are really just a more honest face displaying what the U.S. and Israel have always pursued: full Palestinian capitulation and submission. The legitimate grievances of the indigenous population are irrelevant; what matters is the rule of force. “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,” as Thucydides’ old maxim goes.

A “Glorious Day” in Israel; a massacre in Gaza

As Israel was celebrating its “glorious day,” the happy faces of wealth and privilege of the U.S. and Israeli elite were juxtaposed to an Israeli massacre in Gaza only miles away, in a squalid ghetto filled with resentment and despair.

The Palestinian refugees living in Gaza (70 percent of its population) have endured 12 long years of imprisonment and blockade within one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Denied basic human rights such as freedom of movement, Gaza is essentially a “giant open prison camp,” as former British Prime Minister David Cameron described it. According to former Israeli National Security Council Director Giora Eiland,

it is the “biggest concentration camp on earth.”

The enclave’s infrastructure is in collapse, due in part to repeated Israeli aggressions, colloquially referred to as “mowing the lawn” by the Israeli military. The last campaign saw the deaths of over 2,300 Palestinians — nearly 70 percent of whom were civilians (as per UN report) — at Israel’s hands.

Israeli officials explained their reasons for imposing the siege. It is meant to keep Gaza’s economy “on the brink of collapse,” to make sure that it is “functioning at the lowest level possible” short of tipping it over the edge into a “humanitarian crisis.” That way, Israel wouldn’t have to allow “residents of Gaza to live normal lives,” as former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted.

Another facet of being “totally subject to the decisions and policies of the Israeli government,” as Israeli human rights groups describe living in Gaza, is having over 90 percent of the water contaminated and “unfit for human consumption.” Since over half of Gaza’s population is under 18 years old, this means that “innocent human beings, most of them young, are slowly being poisoned by the water they drink,” as explained by Harvard political economist Sara Roy, the foremost academic expert on Gaza.

Palestinians in Gaza are trapped within an unremitting state of humiliation and agony.

Indeed, in 1948, Israeli government experts assessed that the Palestinian refugees would either have to assimilate elsewhere or they “would be crushed, … some of them would die and most of them would turn into human dust in the waste of society, and join the most impoverished classes in the Arab countries.”

Instead of standing idly by, Palestinians living in Gaza have decided to protest against their abuse. They decided to set up tents near the fence and gradually and peacefully move closer, in assertion of their internationally recognized right to return to the homes they were displaced from, in what is now Israel.

Israeli officials from the highest military and political echelons responded by deploying uniformed snipers to the fence with orders to shoot live ammunition against the demonstrators, regardless of their being unarmed or peaceful. The result was a bloodbath.

On Monday alone, Israel orchestrated “the highest number of both fatalities and injuries” since the protest began, killing at least 60 Palestinians, including eight children (one girl) and a health worker. 2,770 others were injured, 1,359 by live ammunition, with 130 others in critical condition.

Altogether, since March 30, 104 Palestinians have been killed, 12 of whom were children, while a staggering 12,600+ have been injured. No Israelis have been killed, with only one soldier being “lightly wounded.”

In short, Israel has been orchestrating a massacre, a “horrific slaughter” of “senseless violence” and “unabated brutality against civilians” meant “to stifle civil unrest,” which “has nothing to do with defense,” as U.S. Representative John Yarmuth (D-KY) wrote in outrage.

Because of Israel’s calculated policy, reads a statement by the UN’s Human Rights Commissioner:

it seems anyone is liable to be shot dead or injured: women, children, press personnel, first-responders, bystanders, and [anyone] at almost any point up to 700m from the fence.”

The reason for the slaughter: Submitting to Israeli rule

Putting official justifications and rhetoric aside, the real reasons for the carnage are not hard to understand.

As the early Zionists understood, an “injustice was unavoidable” if their project was to succeed. The founding of Israel was thereafter based on the rejection of the injustice at its inception, on its “right to exist.”

The abused Palestinians, who naturally reject having their homes stolen from underneath them, must, therefore, be crushed and forever prevented from exercising self-determination, from becoming strong enough to push their legitimate grievances.

The basic characteristic was described by Ben-Gurion just before the country’s founding. He testified before the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine that his approach to the Palestinian Arabs would be one of pure hegemony, where he would “tell them, here is a decision in our favor. We are right. We want to sit down with you and settle the question amicably. If your answer is no, then we will use force against you.”

The reason for this attitude, according to historian Charles D. Smith of the University of Arizona, was that, in Ben-Gurion’s mind, “the Arabs denied Israel’s right to exist,” so, therefore “they had to be shown the power of Israel time and again until they were compelled to concede.”

In other words, “Once they learned that opposition to Zionism was futile, they would ultimately accept it and submit to Jewish rule.”

Faced with peaceful demonstrations opposing the misery of Israeli rule, demanding the right to return to the homeland that Israel claims for itself, Israel, therefore, responded by “using force against you” since “your answer is no” to the question of submission to Israeli designs.

The protesting Palestinians “would be crushed” and “some of them would die” until they accepted their fate of being relegated to “the waste of society” in “the most impoverished classes in the Arab” world; they “had to be shown the power of Israel … until they were compelled to concede.”

Despite this inhumanity, the protesters have offered an inspiring display of courage and strength. To refrain from taking up arms or launching rockets in the face of such relentless brutality and carnage, to protest for their just right to a life of dignity and freedom when they know that it will likely cost them their very lives and limbs, is an awe-inspiring demonstration of self-sacrifice and commitment to justice.

For us in the United States and the West, Palestinian sacrifice must not be in vain. It is our responsibility to stop our government(s) from enabling this horror, lest our foot-dragging and inaction carry on for so long that “most of them … turn into human dust in the waste of society,” right before our very eyes.

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Steven Chovanec is an independent journalist and analyst based in Chicago, Illinois. He has a bachelor’s degree in International Studies and Sociology from Roosevelt University, and has written for numerous outlets such as The Hill, TeleSur, MintPress News, Consortium News, and others. His writings can be found at undergroundreports.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @stevechovanec.

Featured image: The hills above Hebron. (Photo EAPPI/Alex)

Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank and perhaps one of the most unique. About 800 Israeli settlers live in its centre, under the protection of a similar number of soldiers. This has resulted in the Israeli army closing off large sections of the city centre to Palestinians. Harsh restrictions have also been imposed on residents of adjacent areas.

Settlements are illegal under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention, applicable during military occupation, states that the occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territories it occupies”.

Freedom of Movement in Hebron

At the centre of the city is the burial site of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca and Jacob. Judaism ranks Hebron as the second-holiest city after Jerusalem, while Islam regards it as one of the four holy cities.

Sunset in Hebron City. Photo EAPPI/Alex

Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states;

“Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement”.

Shuhada Street

Once the city’s main thoroughfare, Shuhada street in Hebron’s old city was designated a Closed Military Zone (CMZ) in 2015, though it had already been closed to Palestinian traffic for many years before that.

Shuhadda Street, Hebron. Photo EAPPI/Miles

Hebron’s old city has been under Israeli military control since 1997, when an agreement, intended to be temporary, divided control of the city between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

Israeli military post atop a Palestinian home in Hebron’s old city. Photo EAPPI/Alex

Palestinian residents of Shuhada Street are not permitted to drive there, no matter how old or infirm, even to bring heavy items to their homes. But Israeli settlers are free to drive along it, or take buses that only Israelis may use.

Shuhadda Street, Hebron. Photo EAPPI/Miles

Military Checkpoints in Hebron

Within the small central area of Hebron there are some 20 checkpoints. These significantly disrupt the day-to-day lives of Palestinians.

Military Checkpoint in Hebron. Photo EAPPI/Miles

This pressure on their social, economic and cultural life is such that more and more feel compelled to leave.

Breaking the Silence in Hebron

In 2004 a group of Israeli soldiers who served in Hebron created an exhibition out of testimonies and photos of their time there.  They wanted to show Israelis the reality of what they had seen.

Breaking the Silence tour, Shuhadda Street, Hebron. Photo EAPPI

The soldiers created an organisation called Breaking the Silence. The name reflects their desire to speak the truth about what young Israelis experienced while serving their country. They have built up a large library of testimonies from serving and former soldiers.

When asked why they do this their spokeswoman says; “The occupation crosses moral red lines”.

Some of the testimonies make for harrowing reading.

The Israeli government is attempting to suppress Breaking the Silence. It challenges the confidentiality of the testimonies, seeking to undermine their credibility. The government also takes legal steps against them, such as blocking funding and preventing them speaking in schools and other institutions. The pressure on Breaking the Silence has been increasing, and individuals have been attacked and threatened personally.

Another week in the Donald Trump presidency, another handful of days so stuffed full of sordid and highly complicated stories that even journalists have trouble keeping track of what’s going on.

But the thread tying all the latest news together — from Trump lawyer Michael Cohen‘s sundry exploits, to Trump’s ongoing presidential profiteering, to the Russia investigation — is corruption. The Trump administration will surely go down as one of the most — if not the most — rotten in American history.

Let’s roll this most recent bit of tape. Ronan Farrow, who has become one of the signature investigative reporters of the Trump presidency, revealed at The New Yorker why somebody leaked the notorious financial reports of Michael Cohen showing that he had been given fantastically large sums of money from AT&T, Novartis, and a Russian oligarch-connected LLC. This information came from a “suspicious activity report” (SAR), which is something a bank files with the Treasury Department when they suspect something fishy is going on with a customer.

It turns out the source is a law enforcement official, and he released the SAR after he discovered that two more SARs detailing $3 million of additional similar transactions had somehow vanished from the Treasury Department’s database. The source told Farrow that he feared that someone within Treasury was withholding the documents for political reasons, and thus released the one he had.

The precise meaning of this revelation is as yet unclear. But let me suggest a reasonable tentative conclusion: corruption. AT&T and Novartis have already admitted they were paying Cohen personally for “insights” into the Trump administration, particularly regarding, respectively, a huge proposed merger with Time Warner and health-care policy. Given that Cohen has zero experience with antitrust or health-care law and the scale of the secret payments, it’s nearly beyond question they were really hoping to purchase political influence. And as for the disappearance of the SARs, Trump already straight-up admitted on national television that he fired then-FBI Director James Comey to stifle the Russia investigation, so obstruction of justice is clearly not a charge the president fears.

Obviously Cohen is legally innocent until proven guilty. But let’s have a whisper of common sense here. It’s not exactly a stretch to figure that the other SARs probably contain something similar to the first one, or that someone very well could be attempting to quash the Russia investigation, as Trump has already tried to do. (Oh, and a Qatari investor recently alleged that Cohen hit him up for a $1 million bribe in December 2016.)

That brings me to Trump’s bizarre about-face on the Chinese phone manufacturer ZTE, in which he promised to help restore the company’s jobs after being hit with U.S. fines and sanctions. Are we really to believe that this has nothing to do with China loaning $500 million to a huge Trump-branded development in Indonesia days beforehand? It simply beggars belief — indeed, there is practically no other comprehensible explanation.

Then there is the Russia investigation. As David Klion writes, the thing to remember about “Russiagate” (an unfortunate appellation, but one which seems to have stuck) is that Russia as such is only an incidental part of the story. Nearly all the major players are American, and if Russian efforts to influence the election did actually succeed to some degree, it’s only because America’s democratic institutions are rotten nearly to the core. Nations meddle in each other’s elections all the time, for good reasons and bad. The United States has done it dozens of times, and often immensely more aggressively than anything Vladimir Putin allegedly did in 2016. The remarkable thing was that such relatively moderate and cheap efforts actually made any sort of difference — and in such a rich and powerful nation.

One important reason why Trump was able to become president is because his business career was not derailed at any of the several points in which he allegedly committed crimes. He could have been finished on one of the dozen-plus occasions he was credibly accused of sexual harassment or assault, or when he illegally discriminated against black tenants in his properties, or for the Trump University scam, or for an illegal loan to one of his casinos, or about 10 other things. But instead, he was actually coddled and lifted up by the New York establishment.

And he was far from alone. It turns out that when you stop enforcing the law against rich people, a seething plasma of corruption tends to engulf the national political system. Perhaps in the future we can start applying laws to everyone, even the wealthy and powerful.

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Featured image is from the author.

It wasn’t just the news that the US had pulled out of the Iran Deal – that died when the White House opened its doors once again to John Bolton, a challenger to Kissinger’s status as the most unhinged sociopath in Washington history. It was the conditions drafted for a post-Iran deal world that really turned heads: that European, Russian and Chinese firms have 90-180 days to divest from Iran or meet the wrath of US financial penalties.

Without the secondary sanctions which Bolton and co have threatened on Europe the US breaking the agreement means very little. US trade with Iran only came to about $200 million last year, whereas Iran-EU trade grew to represent €20 billion. EU exports to Iran grew at an annual rate of 31.5 percent and imports grew 83.9 percent during 2016-17. From 2013 to 2017, the annual growth rate for imports was a staggering 89.7 percent, and growth for exports was 18.7 percent. For a largely economically stagnating continent, the new Iranian market comprising 80 million people is a big deal.

It’s important to make the distinction that the US did not formally withdraw from the JCPOA as most media outlets have lazily described it. The Iran deal is an agreement, not a treaty, and no mechanism for withdrawal is in place. The US simply chose to break the rules of an agreement they signed just three years ago.

To bow to American economic threats would be to enable the undermining of international law and punish those who have played along with good faith. According to all independent research, and not just Benjamin Netanyahu’s mad drawings of cartoon bombs, Iran have adhered to all the terms of the agreement and thus don’t possess the means to launch a nuclear weapon, unlike Benjamin Netanyahu, who possesses the world’s third largest stockpile.

The EU have stood up to an aggressive Trump administration once this year and they should do it again. It may carry risks, but the alternative is to throw away sovereignty. Conservative commentators argue that it’s ‘not worth starting a trade war with the US’; the reality is that we’re already in one.

Legal protections for EU firms who want to continue trading with Iran are possible but a last resort. An appeal to the World Trade Organisation would be fruitless as they merely serve to uphold US financial hegemony at all costs. When Third World countries who are burdened with false debts or countries bullied with ill-conceived sanctions look to the WTO for assistance they are met with the response of Chief Wiggum from the Simpsons: ‘ the law is Powerless to *help* you, not punish you.’

This is a political crisis, and demands a political solution. The EU could promise to compensate firms who face US fines through selectively lowering Iranian tariffs. The most obvious Hail Mary solution, however, would be to reintroduce a blocking statute against the sanctions, similar to the one used by the EU to continue trading with Cuba in the 90s.

.@JunckerEU #Sofia #Iran “Need to protect our companies, notably SMEs. @EU_Commission will start work tomorrow on amending the Blocking Statute to include US Iran sanctions. Aim is to get it in place before sanctions kick in on 6 August. We need to do it and we will do it.” pic.twitter.com/ZB3ZPVGc53

— Mina Andreeva (@Mina_Andreeva) May 17, 2018

This would fire the starting gun for a full-on trade war, but the only other option would be to allow the sovereignty of Europe to be undermined and the US to take the seat of George Bush-era aggressive global dominance once again.

The EU could cogently claim that their hand was forced, even if they choose to go down a ‘drastic’ route. Ultimately the only errant party in this affair is the US; they can go back on the agreement if they choose, but they have no right to set the document on fire.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has indicated that if the EU can give decent reassurances on the continuation of EU trade then business could continue almost as normal. This whole affair could be reduced to a simple tantrum of a fracturing empire if the EU decide to show some steel.

Good and substantive meetings with counterparts in Beijing & Moscow; heading to meet with EU High Rep and E3 FMs in Brussels. Will soon determine how P4+1 can guarantee Iran’s benefits under the #JCPOA, and preserve this unique achievement of diplomacy. pic.twitter.com/qH51vd7Dby

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) May 14, 2018

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Featured image is from the author.

A new report published by Drone Wars UK reveals that over the last five years the number of countries actively using armed drones has quadrupled. Drone Wars: The Next Generation demonstrates that from just three states (US, UK and Israel) in 2013, there are now a further nine who have deployed armed drones in a variety of roles including for armed conflict and counter-terror operations. The report also shows that a further nine states are very close to having armed drone capabilities, almost doubling the number of existing users. To this number, we have added five non-state actors who have used armed drones, which will take the number of active operators of armed drones to over 25 in the next few years.

A number of studies by think tanks and NGOS over the last few years have shown that military drone technology has spread to over 90 countries, however, the ability to use armed drones has until recently remained in the hands of only a relatively few states. Some media reports, perhaps egged on by special interest groups, can give the impression that the skies are already filled with armed drones from many countries, ready to strike at any moment and so there is little to be done. However, while the numbers of countries operating armed drones is increasing, we are not yet at the point of being unable to control the proliferation and use of these systems.

Drone Wars has sifted through much rumour, hearsay and propaganda from various countries to find out exactly who has manufactured, exported or acquired armed drones, and in what ways these drones have been put to use. We believe our report gives a clear picture of the reality of armed drone proliferation and the implications for global peace and security.

Click image at the right to read report.

The report also looks at the international mechanisms under which the export of armed drones is controlled and discusses whether they are fit for purpose.  The report ends with a call to the UK government to support a new initiative, developing under the auspices of the UN agency UNIDIR, to build a multilateral process to address the concerns around the proliferation and use of armed drones.

Who has armed drones?

As is well known, China has sold armed drones to a number of countries around the world. Since 2013, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE and Egypt have begun operating armed Chinese drones whilst another four countries (Jordan, Myanmar, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) are thought to have recently taken possession of, or be in discussion about the sale of, Chinese drones. These Wing Loong and CH series drones are cheaper and less powerful than US Predators and Reapers.  As, according to their specifications, they are not capable of delivering a payload of at least 500 kg to a range of at least 300 km they do not fall into the category of systems that would be refused under Category 1 of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) as the US systems do.

The Second Generation of armed drone operators

Turkey, Pakistan and Iran are actively using their own manufactured drones. Iran has, it seems, supplied Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis with armed drones while ISIS and the PKK have attached small explosives to off-the-shelf drones. Turkey are thought to be concluding deal with Qatar and the Ukraineand South Korea are very close to beginning production of their own armed drones.

As for the larger countries that one might expect to have already deployed armed drones, such as Russia and India, they still appear to be some distance from producing workable models. Moreover, the European countries who operate unarmed versions of US Predators and Reapers have been unable, until now, to convince the US to allow the export of armed versions. Italy and France look set to arm their Reapers in the near future, while Germany will take delivery of Israeli Heron drones that they can reportedly arm. Meanwhile several cross-European projects are underway to develop indigenous armed drones within the EU.

Imminent operators of armed drones 

Many of the states who have employed armed drones have done so to monitor and strike against armed groups within their own country. Nigeria against Boko Haram, Turkey against the PKK, Egypt against Sinai Province, Iraq against ISIS and Pakistan against al-Qaeda and associated groups. This is over half of the new (state) operators of armed drones and highlights how the ‘war on terror’ is facilitating the spread of this particular military technology. The ability of military drones to gather intelligence from hard-to-access areas and monitor individuals of interest and strike at a moment’s notice has proved attractive option for dealing with internally armed groups. However, given the US precedent of using drones for targeted killings, this raises questions about whether the spread of drones will help or hinder the rule of law in this area. Other countries have used their armed drones in extraterritorial conflict, such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran, and UAE, Egypt and possibly Iran and others in Syria.

Clockwise from top left: Chinese Wing Loong, Turkey’s Anka and Bayraktar, Iranian Shahed 129

The findings of this report serve as a reminder that the developing proliferation of armed drones is a reality and that the international community must take seriously the consequences of both drones in the theatre of war, and their use in the war on terror for extra-judicial killing.

With the numbers of operators of armed drones having more than quadrupled in the last five years, when NSAs are taken in to account, it is highly problematic that there has been such limited development on controls for proliferation and use of armed drones. The recent lobbying in the US has only served to convince the Trump administration to roll back conditions on export, with more of the same promised. Given the diversity of states that have engaged the use of armed drones and China’s prolific sales, it is incumbent upon all members of the international community to engage speedily and thoroughly in an open, UN-led process that will deal with both proliferation and use.

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

Featured image: Stefan Halper

The naming of Stefan Halper as the individual sent by the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election campaign has further inflamed the political warfare raging within the US state apparatus and political establishment. Halper is a long-time CIA asset with deep ties to US and British intelligence.

Published reports that the FBI had used a confidential informant to gather information on the Trump campaign led US President Donald Trump to announce via Twitter on Sunday,

“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes, and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Repeating his denunciation of the year-old probe by Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign, as a “witch hunt,” Trump declared last week that the report of FBI spying on his campaign was a political scandal “bigger than Watergate.”

A few hours after Trump’s latest tweet, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a statement saying that the Department of Justice had referred the matter to its inspector general, who is already reviewing applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Rosenstein said the inspector general would determine “whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.”

The identification of Halper—who was implicated as the leading figure in a conspiracy by intelligence agents to subvert then-President Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign in 1980—as the covert FBI spy has been the subject of a heated debate in Washington and the media.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two papers of record for the US political establishment, have studiously observed the demands of the FBI to conceal Halper’s identity.

The Post reported that it was concealing the identity of the spy from the American people because of “warnings from US intelligence officials that exposing him could endanger him or his contacts.” For its part, the Timesmerely indicated that it was following standard operating procedure, stating that it “has learned the source’s identity but typically does not name informants to preserve their safety.” Nothing could more nakedly expose the US media as a propaganda extension of the American intelligence agencies.

The White House has backed the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, who issued congressional subpoenas demanding that the Justice Department turn over documents on the origins of the investigation into the Trump campaign and the role of FBI spies. Nunes has demanded that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the documents.

Democrats have rallied behind the FBI’s defiance of congressional oversight. Leading Democrats have rushed to the defense of the intelligence agencies, denouncing Trump and Nunes for allegedly placing US security at risk.

Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, appeared on the CBS News program “Face the Nation” Sunday—well after Halper’s identity as the FBI covert agent had already been revealed by a number of publications—to threaten that “when individuals want to try to reveal classified information about the identity of an FBI or CIA source, that is against the law.”

Warner went on to warn that the attack on the Justice Department and the FBI by Trump and his allies “leads to an… era where people can start saying I’m going to decide which laws I want to follow and which laws I don’t want to follow.” He went on to declare that “classified information, identity of agents is sacrosanct.”

This line was echoed by the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff of California, who declared on the NBC Sunday talk show “Meet the Press,” in relation to the FBI spy, that “revealing information about this individual could compromise people’s lives, it could betray a relationship with our allies, it could compromise the investigation.”

This hysterical defense of the already blown cover of the FBI informer Halper is in line with the overarching political focus of the Democratic Party’s opposition to Trump, which is directed not at his war on immigrants, attacks on social programs or tax cuts for the rich, but rather at advancing the claims of “Russian meddling” in the 2016 election and “collusion” by the Trump camp.

The protracted campaign on this issue by the Democrats and the media, together with the Mueller investigation, now in its second year, has produced no evidence to substantiate that Russian government “meddling” played any role in tilting the US elections to Trump. The most widely cited “proof” of Russian interference is the alleged purchase by unidentified Russians of $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, less than a drop in the bucket in a $4 billion presidential campaign.

The revelation of Halper’s role in spying on the Trump campaign has exposed the previous explanation for the origin of the FBI investigation into alleged Russian ties to the Trump campaign as a lie. As the New York Times reported last week, in a lengthy article based on unnamed government sources, the probe was purportedly launched after the Australian ambassador to Great Britain, Alexander Downer, contacted US authorities to recount a conversation with George Papadopoulos (image on the right), a Trump foreign policy adviser, who told him about efforts to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton from Russian sources.

It is now clear, however, that Halper was sent to spy on the Trump campaign before any contact from the Australian ambassador. He reportedly met, beginning in early July 2016, with at least three Trump campaign advisors. Two of them, Papadopoulos and former national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn, have since pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI investigators about their contacts with Russian individuals. The third, Carter Page, was the subject of an FBI surveillance warrant.

Pentagon documents indicate that the Department of Defense’s shadowy intelligence arm, the Office of Net Assessment, paid Halper $282,000 in 2016 and $129,000 in 2017. According to reports, Halper sought to secure Papadopoulos’s collaboration by offering him $3,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to produce a research paper on energy issues in the eastern Mediterranean.

The choice of Halper for this spying operation has ominous implications. His deep ties to the US intelligence apparatus date back decades. His father-in-law was Ray Cline, who headed the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence at the height of the Cold War. Halper served as an aide to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Alexander Haig in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

In 1980, as the director of policy coordination for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, Halper oversaw an operation in which CIA officials gave the campaign confidential information on the Carter administration and its foreign policy. This intelligence was in turn utilized to further back-channel negotiations between Reagan’s campaign manager and subsequent CIA director William Casey and representatives of Iran to delay the release of the American embassy hostages until after the election, in order to prevent Carter from scoring a foreign policy victory on the eve of the November vote.

Halper subsequently held posts as deputy assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs and senior adviser to the Pentagon and Justice Department. More recently, Halper has collaborated with Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, the British intelligence service, in directing the Cambridge Security Initiative (CSi), a security think tank that lists the US and UK governments as its principal clients.

Before the 2016 election, Halper had expressed his view—shared by predominant layers within the intelligence agencies—that Clinton’s election would prove “less disruptive” than Trump’s.

The revelations of the role played by Halper point to an intervention in the 2016 elections by the US intelligence agencies that far eclipsed anything one could even imagine the Kremlin attempting.

Now that the Trump administration has derailed the Iran nuclear deal, the old issue of regime change in Iran is back again. National Security Advisor John Bolton is obviously the chief regime-change advocate in the administration, and there is every reason to believe he has begun to push that policy with Donald Trump in his first month in the White House. 

Bolton was part of the powerful neoconservative faction of national security officials in the George W Bush administration that had a plan for supporting regime change in Iran, not much different from the one Bolton is reportedly pushing now. But it was a crackbrained scheme that involved the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) exiled terrorist organisation that never had Bush’s support.

Bolton may find history repeating itself, with Trump resisting his plan for regime change, just as Bush did in 2003.

Trump calls for change

Trump has appeared to flirt with the idea of Iranian regime change in the past. During the December protests in Iran, he said on Twitter that it was time for a change, noting:

“The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years.”

Trump’s killing of the nuclear deal, however, stopped short of rhetoric signalling the aim of overthrowing the Islamic Republic. Instead, Trump suggested that

“Iran’s leaders” are “going to want to make a new and lasting deal, one that benefits all of Iran and the Iranian people”.

He added:

“When they do, I am ready, willing and able.”

A few days after the Trump announcement, an unnamed National Security Council (NSC) official avoided any hint of regime change, telling the neoconservative Washington Free Beacon:

“Our stated policy is to change the Iranian regime’s behaviour.”

Now, Bolton has issued an even more explicit denial, telling ABC News:

“That is not the policy of the administration. The policy of the administration is to make sure Iran never gets close to deliverable nuclear action.”

And on CNN’s State of the Union, he said:

“I’ve written and said a lot of things when I was a complete free agent. I certainly stand by what I said at the time, but those were my opinions then. The circumstance I’m in now is I’m the national security adviser to the president. I’m not the national security decision-maker.”

It’s not difficult to read between the lines: the implied message is that his views on regime change have not prevailed with Trump.

Advocating to bomb Iran

Bolton has long been one of the most vocal supporters of such a policy, although he is better known as the primary advocate of bombing Iran. He has been one of the most enthusiastic clients among former US officials who have associated themselves with MEK, which seeks to overthrow the Tehran regime with US backing.

Bolton has not only appeared at MEK rallies in Paris, along with other former US officials on the take from the well-endowed paramilitary organisation. In July 2017, he declared that the Trump administration should adopt the goal of regime change in Iran, calling MEK a “viable” alternative to the regime. And his final line, delivered with his voice rising dramatically, noted that “before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran”.

It appears that Bolton was still pushing the idea within the administration as of last week. The Washington Free Beacon reported on 10 May that a three-page paper outlining a regime-change strategy from a small far-right organisation called the Security Studies Group, with which Bolton is said to have close ties, was circulated among NSC officials. The quotes from the paper in the story make it clear that the strategy is based largely on seeking to exploit ethnic and religious conflicts in Iran.

The paper reportedly makes the point that ethnic minorities – such as Kurds, Azeris, Ahwazi Arabs and Baloch – represent one-third of Iran’s population, and argues that the Iranian regime’s “oppression of its ethnic and religious minorities has created the conditions for an effective campaign to splinter the Iranian state into component parts”.

It adds:

“US support for their independence movements, both overt and covert, could force the regime to focus attention on them and limit its ability to conduct other malign activities.”

Those minorities have all had organisations that have carried out violent actions, including bombings and assassinations against Iranian officials, over the past decade, and such a strategy would presumably involve supporting a step-up in such activities – in other words, US support for terrorist activities against Iranian government targets.

The role of MEK

But none of this is new. It was the official line of the powerful alliance between the neoconservatives and the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis within the Bush administration. By 2003, Douglas Feith, the uber-neoconservative former undersecretary of defense for policy, had developed a plan for giving MEK, whose army had been captured by US troops in Iraq, a new name and using them for a covert paramilitary operation in Iran.

Meanwhile, Iran was offering to provide names and other data on al-Qaeda officials it had captured in return for US information on MEK. When former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld sought to protect MEK from such a deal, Bush’s response was:

“But we say there is no such thing as a good terrorist.”

Despite the neocon fixation with supporting MEK, both the CIA and the Israelis have long regarded the idea that it could be an instrument for regime change in Iran as ridiculous. After the organisation helped Saddam Hussein’s regime suppress Shia and Kurdish uprisings, it lost any semblance of legitimacy inside Iran. After it relocated to Iraq, moreover, it was transformed into an authoritarian cult.

The former Israeli ambassador to Iran, Uri Lubrani, who was given a free hand to organise a programme for destabilising Iran, recognised long ago, as he told two Israeli journalists, that MEK has no capacity to do anything inside the country.

It was Lubrani who first advanced the argument that about a third of the total Iranian population were ethnic minorities, and that promoting their anti-Tehran activities could help to destabilise the government. Those groups have carried out terrorist bombings and other armed actions in various parts of Iran over the years, and it is well documented that Israel was supporting and advising the Baloch extremist organisation Jundallah on such operations. But the Israelis have used MEK mainly to put out disinformation on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The policy paper Bolton is reportedly pushing states explicitly that the regime change policy should include the use of military force against Iran if necessary. That was the premise of the Cheney-Bolton plan for regime change in Iran, as former vice president Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, later revealed. And it is the game that Bolton, the enthusiast for bombing Iran, is apparently still playing.

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Featured image is from the author.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

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

Year: 2015.

Launched in 2015 by the Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Mahathir Mohamad

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Facebook has engaged a think tank funded by weapons manufacturers, branches of the US military and Middle-Eastern monarchies to safeguard the democratic process. It’s akin to hiring arsonists to run the fire brigade.

A hot topic in military prognostications regarding China, Russia and the United States revolves around the development and use of hypersonic technology for missiles or UAVs as an invulnerable means of attack. As we will see, not all three countries are dealing successfully with this task.

The United States, China and Russia have in recent years increased their efforts to equip their armed forces with such highly destructive missiles and vehicles seen in the previous article. Putin’s recent speech in Moscow reflects this course of direction by presenting a series of weapons with hypersonic characteristics, as seen with the Avangard and the Dagger.

As confirmed by US Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Dr. Michael Griffin:

We, today, do not have systems that can hold them [hypersonic weapons] at risk…and we do not have defenses against those [hypersonic] systems. Should they choose to deploy them we would be, today, at a disadvantage.

Further confirmation that the US is lagging in this field came from General John Hyten, Commander of US Strategic Command:

“We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us, so our response would be our deterrent force, which would be the triad and the nuclear capabilities that we have to respond to such a threat.”

The development of hypersonic weapons has been part of the military doctrine that China and Russia have been developing for quite some time, driven by various motivations. For one thing, it is a means of achieving strategic parity with the United States without having to match Washington’s unparallelled spending power. The amount of military hardware possessed by the United States cannot be matched by any other armed force, an obvious result of decades of military expenditure estimated to be in the range of five to 15 times that of its nearest competitors.

For these reasons, the US Navy is able to deploy ten carrier groups, hundreds of aircraft, and engage in thousands of weapon-development programs. Over a number of decades, the US war machine has seen its direct adversaries literally vanish, firstly following the Second World War, and then following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This led in the 1990s to shift in focus from one opposing peer competitors to one dealing with smaller and less sophisticated opponents (Yugoslavia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, international terrorism). Accordingly, less funds were devoted to research in cutting-edge technology for new weapons systems in light of these changed circumstances.

This strategic decision obliged the US military-industrial complex to slow down advanced research and to concentrate more on large-scale sales of new versions of aircraft, tanks, submarines and ships. With exorbitant costs and projects lasting up to two decades, this led to systems that were already outdated by the time they rolled off the production lines. All these problems had little visibility until 2014, when the concept of great-power competition returned with a vengeance, and with it the need for the US to compare its level of firepower with that of its peer competitors.

Forced by circumstances to pursue a different path, China and Russia begun a rationalization of their armed forces from the end of the 1990s, focusing on those areas that would best allow them the ability to defend against the United States’ overwhelming military power. It is no coincidence that Russia has strongly accelerated its missile-defense program by producing such modern systems as Pantsir and S-300/S-400, which allows for a defense against ballistic attacks and stealth aircraft. Countering stealth technology became an urgent imperative, and with the production of the S-400, this challenge has been overcome. With the future S-500, even ICBMs will no longer pose a problem for Russia. In a similar vein, China has strongly accelerated its ICBM program, reaching within a decade the ability to produce a credible deterrent with their equivalent of the Russian SS-18 Satan or the American LGM-30G Minuteman III, possessing a long range and multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs) armed with nuclear warheads.

After sealing the skies and achieving a robust nuclear-strategic parity with the United States, Moscow and Beijing begun to focus their attention on the US anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) systems placed along their borders, which also consist of the AEGIS system operated by US naval ships. As Putin warned, this posed an existential threat that compromised Russia and China’s second-strike capability in response to any American nuclear first strike, thereby disrupting the strategic balance inherent in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD).

For this reason, Putin has since 2007 been warning Russia’s western partners that his country would develop a system to nullify the American ABM system. In the space of a few years, Russia and China have succeeded in this task, testing and entering into production various hypersonic missiles equipped with breakthrough technologies that will strongly benefit the entire scientific sector of these two countries, and against which the US currently has no counter.

Currently there are no defenses against hypersonic attacks; and given the trend of employing ramjet/scramjet engines on new generations of fighter jets, it seems that more and more countries will want to equip themselves with these game-changing systems. Russia, to counter America’s naval superiority, has already entered into service the Zircon anti-ship missile, and already plans an export version with a range of 300 kms.

India and Russia have long been working on the Brahmos, which is yet another type of hypersonic missile that could in the future be launched from the Su-57. Although it is a relatively new technology, hypersonic weapons are already causing more than a headache for many Western military planners, who are only coming to realize just how far they are lagging behind their competitors.

It will take a while for the US to close the hypersonic technological and scientific gap with China and Russia. Lockheed Martin has been awarded a contract to this end. In the meantime, the two Eurasian powerhouses are focusing on their overland integration via the Belt And Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasian Union, a strategic arrangement that denies the US and NATO the ability to easily intervene in an area so far inland, compounded by its inability to control the airspace, and ultimately outnumbered on the ground in any case.

The objective of the Russians and the Chinese is the realization of a highly defended (A2/AD) environment on their coasts and in their skies, which are buttressed by hypersonic weapons. In this way, Russia and China possess the means to disrupt the maritime logistical chain of the US Navy in the case of war. In addition, the A2/AD would be able to stop US power projection, thanks to HGV weapons able to sink aircraft carriers and target specific land-based ABM systems or logistic-chain hubs.

It is a defensive strategy that could potentially halt US Naval power projection as well as its ability to control the skies, two linchpins in the way the US plans to fight its wars. No wonder think-tanks in Washington and four-star generals are starting to sound the alarm on hypersonic weapons.

*

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Nicolas Maduro won another six-year term overwhelmingly by a two-thirds majority – far greater than polls predicted, turnout disappointing at less than 50%.

His main adversary, Chavista turncoat Henri Falcon, fared much poorer than predicted with around 21% of the vote.

Businessman/evangelical pastor linked to the Panama Papers tax haven scandal got only about 11% support.

Addressing a late Sunday night crowd of supporters, Maduro hailed his triumph as a victory over “imperialism,” saying:

“How much have they underestimated our revolutionary people, and how much have they underestimated me. And here we are victorious,” adding:

“It has been a heroic, beautiful, popular victory forged in the struggle. I’m the president of all of the Venezuelans. I call for a dialogue process. Permanent dialogue is what Venezuela needs. The revolution is here to stay!”

Scores of international observers from 30 countries monitored Sunday’s elections, including former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, saying:

“I do not have any doubt about the voting process. It is an advanced automatic voting system. I come here to keep the peace, coordinate and promote dialogue to improve the democratic mechanism here,” adding:

“What I need to do here is to see whether people can cast their ballots at their own discretion. Now we all see how people vote, don’t we?”

Other international observers called Sunday’s vote open, free and fair, the atmosphere calm, no incidents reported, no irregularities other than minor ones corrected.

Venezuela’s democratic process is the world’s best by far, polar opposite America’s money-controlled system, one-party rule with two right wings, serving privileged interests exclusively, steadily eroding social justice, heading toward eliminating it altogether – planned demise since the neoliberal 90s.

The Trump administration rejects the result of Venezuela’s election, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told reporters, adding sanctions on the country’s oil industry may be imposed, saying “(t)hey are under active review.”

Falcon rejected his overwhelming defeat, falsely calling the result illegitimate, wanting a new election not forthcoming.

The Trump administration and Western media, notably the NYT, falsely claimed key opposition candidates were barred from running.

Former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles was barred for misconduct. Leopoldo Lopez is a convicted criminal for leading violent anti-government protests – earlier imprisoned, currently under house arrest.

Parties boycotting last December’s municipal elections had to re-register with electoral authorities. Eligibility required them to collect signatures from 0.5 percent of the electorate in 12 states.

In late January, Venezuela’s Supreme Court ruled against the MUD coalition running a joint ticket – for “double affiliation,” holding membership in two parties at the same time, the court explaining:

“In the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, one cannot be a member of two political parties at the same time, because the interests of one and the other could coincide in some aspects, but there will always be distinctions, which make this unethical and inoperative.”

In late February, the key opposition undemocratic Dem Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition announced they’d boycott the presidential election, falsely calling the process “fraudulent and illegitimate.”

Founder and former editor of Venezuela Analysis Greg Wilpert called MUD’s pullout “puzzling,” saying given dire economic conditions (largely from US political and economic war), this year’s election was “the best opportunity since 1998 that the opposition ha(d) to defeat the Bolivarian Revolution.”

Why didn’t MUD participate? Wilpert believes it wanted more than just winning the presidency.

“(I)t wants a radical break from the Bolivarian Revolution, and the only way it can do that is to provoke a political and economic crisis that would lead to a coup or some other form of radical regime change.”

Chavistas control Venezuela’s “Supreme Court, the National Electoral Council, the Attorney General’s office, (and) National Constituent Assembly…in charge of re-writing the constitution.”

Since Venezuela became a Bolivarian social democracy under Hugo Chavez, now under Maduro, Washington sought regime change.

Multiple coup attempts to replace Bolivarian social democracy with fascist tyranny failed – in 2002, a late 2002/2003 general strike/management-led oil lockout, a 2004 recall referendum, months of likely CIA-orchestrated street violence to unseat Maduro, a 2014 plot against him, a 2005 plot to kill him, a 2017 helicopter attack on Venezuela’s Supreme Court and Justice Ministry, and a 2017 terrorist attack on Fort Paramacay in Carbobo state two days after Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly was inaugurated last August.

Will another US regime change attempt follow Sunday’s election? Trump administration economic war will surely continue, likely intensify, including imposition of tough new illegal sanctions.

Washington’s rage for control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the world’s largest with its heavy oil, virtually assures continued Trump administration destabilizing activities ahead.

Whether Maduro and Bolivarian social democracy can survive the onslaught remains very much uncertain.

*

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

The Canadian BDS Coalition and many of its member groups and friends are among the more than 50 signatories to this open letter sent on May 16th to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland.

***

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Freeland:

We are concerned Canadians who cannot remain indifferent and quiet to the massacre of innocent civilian Palestinians whose only crime is their peaceful protest of a brutal and illegal occupation.

Palestinians in Gaza live in an open prison denied basic necessities, electricity, clean water and medicines. The UN has already declared Gaza an unlivable place. How many Palestinians should die or get injured before the world would wake up to these war crimes? Why are Canadians silent and oblivious to these crimes against humanity?

We are calling on our government, our representatives in parliament, the human rights organizations and fellow Canadians to condemn and protest the slaughter of innocent people who are exercising their natural right to resist peacefully their occupiers. We are calling on Canadians to condemn those who have imprisoned and besieged their land and water and those who have denied them their basic human rights. Portraying all Palestinians in Gaza as members of Hamas or their protest as a terrorist activity is a callous trick to dehumanize them and justify their massacre.

We call on all Canadians and particularly the constituency of justice and peace to raise their voices in protest of these war crimes. Those who are silent at this juncture are complicit with these crimes. It is time to assert that Palestinians’ lives are precious too and that Canadians do not acquiesce with the brutal and disproportionate use of violence by the Israeli military against unarmed civilians.

It is high time that Canada lives up to its obligation as a high signatory under Article 1 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which requires that the Convention is upheld in all circumstances. Beyond this our domestic legislation, the Special Economic Measures Act, calls for action where gross and systematic human rights violations have been committed in a foreign state. Based on international and domestic law we call on the Canadian government to condemn Israeli actions and that a military embargo be put in place.

Our organizations demand the Canadian government to call for the lifting of the blockade on Gaza, and to denounce the opening of any embassies in Jerusalem/Al Quds. We join together to demand that the Canadian government immediately call Israel to cease and desist the massacre of civilians and recall the he Canadian ambassador to Israel until Israel abides by its obligations under international law to protect Palestinian civilians.

Sincerely,

• Canadian Arab Federation/ Canada
• Palestinian Canadian Congress /PCC
• Palestine House
• Association Of Palestinian Arab Canadians/ APAC
• Canadian Palestinian professional foundation/CPPF
• The Canadian Syrian Cultural Club
• The Canadian Lebanese Progressive Society/ LCPS
• Canadian Arab Network
• Arab Canadian Theatre of Kitchener Waterloo/KW-ACT
• Association Of Progressive Palestinian Canadians/ APPC
• Palestine Aid Society – Canada
• Palestinian Association of Hamilton
• Annahda Club of Montreal
• Syrian Canadian Club of Ottawa
• Canadian Palestinian Foundation of Quebec
• Independent Jewish Voices/ Canada
• United Network for Justice and Peace for Palestine and Israel/ UNJPPI
• Canadian Unitarian For Social Justice/CUSJ -Canada
• NDP Socialist Caucus
• Just Peace Advocates
• Canadian Peace Congress
• Canadian BDS Coalition
• Socialist Action
• The International league of People’s Struggle/ILPS-Canada
• CODEPINK
• Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation/BBCF- BC
• Canada Palestine Association/Vancouver
• The Canada Palestine Support Network/CanPalNet- Vancouver
• Coalition Against Israel Apartheid/ CAIA- Victoria
• Canada-Palestine Support Network – Winnipeg
• Winnipeg Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid
• Mid-Islanders for Justice and Peace in the Middle East/MIJPME
• Justice for Palestinians Calgary
• Palestine Solidarity Network-Edmonton
• Regina Peace Council/ Saskatchewan
• Bathurst United Church Of Canada
• Palestine Study Group/Okanagan
• Christian PeacemakerTeams/CPT-Ontario
• Educators for Peace and Justice/Ontario
• Palestinian Solidarity Working Group-Sudbury
• People for peace, London
• Palestinian and Jewish Unity/PAJU-Quebec
• Amnesty International Kelowna
• Coalition Against Israel Apartheid / CAIA- Toronto
• Al-Quds Committee/Toronto
• Al-Haadi Musalla/Toronto
• Science for Peace/Toronto
• Beit Zatoun
• Zatoun
• Toronto BDS
• International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network/IJAN
• Women in Solidarity with Palestine
• Jewish Liberation Theology Institue
• Oakville Palestinian Rights Association/Oakville
• Conscience Canada

NDP Condemns Killings in Gaza

On Monday (May 14), Canada’s New Democrats strongly condemned the killings of protesters in Gaza by Israeli Defence Forces and urged the Liberal government to take a more active stance for peace and human rights. According to numerous news reports, at least 55 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and around 2,000 were injured Monday by the Israeli military in demonstrations near the Gaza-Israel border.

“The use of live ammunition against protestors and resulting deaths are clear violations of international law and human rights,” said NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. “Our government has been shamefully silent on recent developments in Gaza, and the Prime Minister should condemn the violence, call on Israel to cease violations of international law, and support an independent investigation into these deaths.”

The protests follow the decision by U.S. President, Donald Trump, to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the disputed city as the capital of Israel. Trump’s move has been widely criticized by the international community, as this move will further destabilize the region and hinder the peace process. The Liberal government has refused to condemn Trump’s decision.

“The decision by the U.S. government to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is reckless and flies in the face of international law, not least since East Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory,” said Hélène Laverdière, the NDP Critic for Foreign Affairs. “All those responsible for the outrageous killings in Gaza today must be held to account. The Canadian government must call on the government of Israel to respect international law, condemn illegal settlements, and finally stand up for the rights of Palestinians as well as the rights of Israelis.”

Gaza has been under a total land, sea and air blockade since 2007, a situation that was described by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as a form of collective punishment, which is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. Palestinians have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Illegal killings, arbitrary and abusive detention, forced displacement, restrictions on movement, the expansion of illegal settlements, collective punishment and institutionalized discrimination have characterized this occupation that has persisted for over half a century. The NDP believes that Canada must do more towards a real, long-term, just peace for Palestinians and Israelis, and must call on the government of Israel to end this occupation.

CJPME Condemns Israeli Shooting of Canadian Doctor, Slaughter of Gaza Protesters

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) condemns Israel’s shooting of London, Ontario based doctor Tarek Loubani, shot while attending the wounded in Gaza. Despite being clearly identified as a first responder, Loubani sustained a moderate injury to his left leg, and a minor injury to his right leg. A friend and colleague of Loubani’s, paramedic Musa Abuhassanin was killed, along with at least 54 other Palestinians in Gaza yesterday.

Tarek Loubani (in blue scrubs) and other volunteers in Gaza. (Source: The Bullet)

Loubani makes regular medical missions to Gaza, and was trying to provide medical treatment to Palestinian protesters injured by Israeli snipers. Monday was the bloodiest day yet of a weeks-long protest in Gaza where Palestinians seek to call international attention to the “Nakba”: the dispossession and loss suffered by Palestinians as a result of the UN Partition Plan of 1947. International condemnation of Israel’s violent response to the protest grew yesterday, as UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein condemned the “shocking killing of dozens” by Israel, and the EU called on Israel to respect the principle of proportionality.

The Trudeau government’s response was muted, with foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland refusing to call out Israel on its bloody response to what is a passionate, but manifestly peaceful protest. However, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh asserted, “The use of live ammunition against protestors and resulting deaths are clear violations of international law and human rights.” He also called for an independent investigation of the Palestinian deaths.

“We demand that our government condemn the shooting of Loubani, if not the killing of the 55 other Palestinians,” declared Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “While the shooting of Palestinians civilians is unlawful, the shooting of medical personnel is even more egregious,” continued Woodley. Many pundits pointed out the incongruity between the killings in Gaza, and the nearby fanfare of the inauguration of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Current events suggest that CJPME was correct in disagreeing with U.S. president Trump’s assertion that the move of the embassy was a step toward peace.

IJV Canada statement on the 70th Anniversary of the Nakba

Seventy years have passed since the state of Israel was established in Palestine. As a direct result, hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, thousands were killed and and hundreds of thousands were rendered homeless. For Zionists, 15 May 1948, marks the culmination of ambitions to create a Jewish-majority state; for Palestinians, it marks what came to be known as al-Nakba: the Catastrophe.

Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) is a grassroots organization grounded in Jewish tradition that opposes all forms of racism and advocates for justice and peace for all in Israel-Palestine. Today, IJV stands in solidarity with Palestinians marking and mourning 70 years since the 1948 Nakba.

Palestinians say, “the Nakba continues!” and it is the shameful truth. The Israeli government systematically imprisons Palestinian children, it continues to colonize Palestinian land for Jewish-only settlement in collaboration with the Jewish National Fund, and of course denies Palestinian refugees their right to return.

The ongoing Nakba has perhaps been hardest on Palestinians in Gaza, who live in what is known as the world’s largest open-air prison, largely cut off from the outside world and subject to repeated aerial bombing campaigns. We dedicate a special message of solidarity to them, currently mourning the death yesterday and today of more than 60 people and the wounding of over 2000 others by Israeli snipers. The bravery they exhibit in facing the Israeli army speaks to the desperation of their situation, but also of the undying Palestinian will for justice and return to the land they call home.

Let this latest string of massacres be a wake up call to the world. We call on Canadians, and fellow Jewish Canadians in particular, to join us not only in acknowledging and mourning the Nakba, but in doing all that we can to put an end to it.

Mennonite Church Canada Working Groups Call for Sanctions Against Israel

The following letter was drafted by representatives of the Mennonite Church Canada network of regional working groups on Palestine and Israel, and sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, on May 2, 2018. It is being published in Canadian Mennonite at the request of the working groups.

***

In July 2016, Mennonite Church Canada passed a resolution regarding Palestine-Israel. The resolution was brought forth after more than 60 years of Mennonite service in the region and in response to the calls for justice from our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters through the 2000 Kairos Palestine Document, “A moment of truth,” to end Israel’s illegal occupation.

As a people rooted in Anabaptism, we remain committed to peace and living in right relationships with all of humanity. Our peace witness requires accountability, and therefore we write this statement with grave concern over the situation in Gaza, in particular within the last three weeks.

On March 30, 2018, on the commemoration of Land Day (the 42nd anniversary of the 1976 protest by Palestinian citizens of Israel against the expropriation of their land in Galilee, during which protesters were met with the military, who killed six unarmed protesters and injured 100), tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza embarked on a nonviolent protest to enact their right of return, which is part of a larger campaign called the Great March of Return. (In accordance with UN Resolution No. 194, passed after the war of 1948, Palestinians have the inalienable right to return to their home and their lands taken in 1948. Israel has denied them this right, resulting in millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps until this day.)

As protesters marched toward the border, they were met with severe repression from the Israeli military. Protesters faced tear gas shot from drones, rubber-coated steel bullets, and live ammunition from snipers. Twenty-one unarmed protesters were killed and more than 1,200 wounded, causing a state of emergency to be declared in Gaza hospitals.

One week later, in a follow-up action, Palestinian protesters marched to the border. Again, they were faced with excessive violence from the Israeli military. Eight unarmed protesters were killed. Included in the deaths is local journalist, Yaser Murtaja. Murtaja, who was covering the protest wearing a vest with “Press” written in large letters across the front and back. Murtaja was killed by a bullet from a sniper. The targeting of journalists is in contravention of international law.

We support and stand in solidarity with the nonviolent protesters in Gaza. In response, we condemn the Israeli military’s actions in killing unarmed protesters and targeting journalists. We express grave concern over statements by Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who stated to the press,

“There are no innocents in Gaza.”

While we express our concern over the events of the last few weeks, we recognize that Gaza has been in crisis for far longer. In 2007, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, forbidding the entry and exit of certain products, as well as imprisoning the entire population. Due to the blockade, Gazans have not been able to rebuild most of what was destroyed during the three wars on Gaza. Without adequate electricity, hospitals have been unable to run at full capacity, while medical workers say they are quickly running out of medical supplies. Meanwhile, Gaza’s water table has been destroyed. The United Nations has stated that if the blockade continues, Gaza will be unlivable by 2020.

MC Canada is committed to peace, and we yearn to see a peaceful and just solution to what is happening in Palestine and Israel. Because we believe in nonviolence and are committed to the values of Jesus, we love and are in relationship with both Palestinians and Israelis, and are committed to the safety and security of both. However, part of love and being in authentic relationship is accountability.

MC Canada’s resolution on Palestine and Israel states:

“We encourage the government of Canada to support measures that put pressure on Israel (including through economic sanctions) to end the occupation and work for a just peace, in accordance with international law.”

To implement this call, and in the necessity of accountability, we call upon the Government of Canada to put pressure on Israel to abide by international law through economic sanctions. As a peace church, we do not advocate for military intervention. However, the violence that Israel is imposing needs to end; through sanctions, this accountability can be carried out nonviolently.

Accordingly, we call upon the Government of Canada and all political parties having representation in Parliament to:

• Condemn Israel’s use of lethal force to suppress peaceful protest.
• Demand an independent and transparent investigation into the killing and wounding of unarmed Land Day protesters by Israeli forces.
• Work for a sustainable peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.
• Call for economic sanctions by the Canadian government and the United Nations until the siege is lifted and a comprehensive solution is found.

Solidarity with the Great Return March in Gaza

The members of the Socialist Project wish to express solidarity with the Palestinian “Great Return March” in Gaza, in addition to the ongoing non-violent movement in the West Bank against Israeli occupation and colonization. This movement, and international solidarity efforts in support of it, represents the most hopeful path to end the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land. As the occupation is carried out with the crucial support of the Canadian and U.S. governments, it is the duty of citizens in these countries to support the Palestinian struggle for human rights.

On March 30, the Israeli military perpetrated what appears to have been a deliberate massacre of non-violent demonstrators in Gaza, killing at least 17 and injuring 1,400. Almost half of these were children. While Israel routinely carries out mass killings of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip, the massacre nonetheless stands out as a particularly flagrant attack on non-violent demonstrators with no conceivable pretext. With this attack, the Israeli military (IDF) has followed through on threats it made to organizers and supporters of the march in the weeks leading up to the demonstrations, and has once again revealed the absurdity of its purported commitment to democracy and human rights.

Israel’s baseless claims that the protests are merely a “ploy” by Hamas to “carry out terror attacks” are intended to justify the murder of unarmed civilians demanding basic human rights. These demands are supported by international law as well as nearly every country in the world – with the marked exception of Canada, the USA, and Israel. In addition, the organizers of the march, which was supported by a wide cross-section of Palestinian political organizations, repeatedly insisted upon the non-violent nature of the march – claims supported by the observations of human rights workers (see also updated casualty numbers) as well as videos posted on social media.

It should be noted that this action is unfortunately consistent with Israel’s ongoing brutal suppression of the non-violent movement against the settlements and occupation in the West Bank, which has included the use of live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators, the imprisonment and torture of children, and other harsh methods.

The Socialist Project joins the international campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, as well as international civil society and human rights organizations such as Independent Jewish Voices, Jewish Voice For Peace, Amnesty International, and numerous others in condemning the massacre and demanding that violence against the demonstrators cease. We reaffirm our place among the rising chorus of voices from around the world calling for an end to the illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, and the right-of-return for the thousands of Palestinian families displaced and made refugees in the Nakba of 70 years ago.

This statement by the Socialist Project was released on 3 April 2018.

The inevitable stop, start and stuttering of the Korean peace process was bound to manifest itself soon after the hugs, expansive smiles and sympathetic back rubs.  Dates have been set – the Kim-Trump summit is slated to take place in Singapore on June 12, though there is much time for disruptive mischief to take place. 

One field of possible disruption lies in air exercises between the US and South Korea known as Max Thunder.  Such manoeuvres have been of particular interest to the DPRK, given their scale and possible use as leverage in talks.    

The latest irritation was occasioned by claims in Pyongyang that the US had deployed B-52 Stratofortress bombers as part of the exercise despite denying that this would take place.  This was construed, in the words of Leon V. Sigal, “as inconsistent with President Trump’s pledge at President Moon’s urging to move toward peace in Korea.” 

The position against using such nuclear-capable assets had been outlined in Kim Jong Un’s 2018 New Year’s Day address.  The South, he insisted, should “discontinue all the nuclear war drills they stage with outside forces,” a point reiterated in Rodong Sinmun, the Party newspaper, ten days later:

“If the South Korean authorities really want détente and peace, they should first stop all efforts to bringing in the US nuclear equipment and conduct exercises for nuclear warfare with foreign forces.” 

While these matters were unfolding, President Donald Trump’s national security advisor was being his injudicious self, doing his bit for global insecurity.  Never a diplomat in the true sense of the term, John Bolton remains a traditional head kicker for empire, the rustler of discontent.  

Bolton, history teacher incarnate, wants to impress upon the North Koreans certain jarring examples.  A favourite of his is the so-called Libyan solution. How well that worked: the leadership of a country maligned but convinced in its international rehabilitation to abandon various weapons programs in the hope of shoring up security.  More specifically, in 2003, Libya was convinced to undertake a process US diplomats and negotiators parrot with steam and enthusiasm: denuclearisation.

“We should insist that if this meeting is going to take place,” claimed Bolton on Radio Free Asia with characteristic smugness, “it will be similar to discussions we had with Libya 13 or 14 years ago: how to pack up their nuclear weapons program and take it toOak Ridge, Tennessee.” 

The problem with this skewed interpretation lies in its false premise: that US threats, cajoling and sanctions has actually brought North Korea, tail between legs, to the diplomatic table.  Being firm and threatening, according to Bolton, has been rewarding.  This reading verges on the fantastic, ignoring three years of cautious, informal engagement.  It also refuses to account for the fact that Pyongyang made firm moves in Washington’s direction after the insistence on firm preconditions was abandoned by Trump.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also been rumbling on the issue of a firm line, suggesting that he, like Bolton, has a preference for the stick approach.  Despite speaking about “warm” and “substantive” talks with Kim, he claims that any agreement with Pyongyang must have a “robust verification program” built into it. 

The suggestion of the Libyan precedent was enough to sent Pyongyang into a state, given their developed fears about becoming the next casualty of unwarranted foreign intervention.  Libya did denuclearise, thereby inflicting what could only be seen subsequently as a self-amputation.  As missiles rained down upon Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, launched by the British, French and the US ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, a sense of terrible regret must have been felt.  Soon, the mad colonel would be butchered, and his state torn asunder in a sectarian reckoning.

As the air assault was taking place, the North Korean foreign ministry identified the problem: the bargain between Libya and the western powers to surrender its nuclear weapons program was “an invasion tactic to disarm the country”.  The intervention “is teaching the international community a grave lesson”.

The state news agency KNCA took note of Bolton’s remarks, issuing an official rebuff highlighting the status of the DPRK as a true, fully fledged nuclear weapon state: the “world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met a miserable fate.  It is absolutely absurd to dare compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya, which had been at the initial stage of nuclear development.”

The DPRK’s vice foreign minister, Kim Kye Gwan, was unequivocal in warning. 

“If the US is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-US summit.” 

Bolton received specific mention:

“We do not hide a feeling of repugnance toward him.”

The Trump White House preferred to give different signals.  Sarah Huckabee Sanders is claiming that the president will be his own man on this, though Trump’s own reading of the “Libya model” has proven confusingly selective.  In any case the leverage brought by US ultimatum to disarm without genuine concessions is hardly likely to gain traction. The response from Pyongyang will be simple: resume missile testing and further enlarge the arsenal. 

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

Think of international organizations and groups like the UN, World Bank and the IMF might come to mind. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) likely doesn’t make most people’s lists. The SCO is probably the biggest international organization that you’ve never heard of, and that’s likely because the West is being expressly excluded. However, the SCO is increasingly influential and is set to only become more well-known in the West.

What is the SCO?

The SCO is largely a story about Russia and China coming together, but it’s also more than that. Its emergence is testing Sir Halford Mackinder’s 1904 thesis:

‘Whoever rules East Europe, will rule Heartland; whoever rules the Heartland, will rule the World Island; whoever rules the World Island, will rule the world.’

The origins of the SCO were in a loose-knit grouping of China, Russia and three former Soviet republics – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – who came together in 1996 to address unresolved border disputes following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. The group first met in Shanghai and so became known as the ‘Shanghai Five’, but in 2001 the members decided to establish themselves as a permanent new international organization. The SCO also added Uzbekistan that same year. The organization makes its decisions by consensus, and all members must adhere to the core principles of non-aggression and non-interference in the internal affairs of other members.

After successfully agreeing to demarcated borders, the SCO members moved on to address a set of common security-related concerns such as counter-terrorism, intelligence sharing and military cooperation.

Russia, China and the Central Asian republics are all seeking to establish greater security across the region. In addition to Russia’s experience in Chechnya and China’s efforts to quash the restive Muslim population in its western Xinjiang province, the Central Asian states are likewise worried about terrorism by Islamist groups in several of their countries. This is reflected in the fact that whilst the SCO is headquartered in Beijing, its regional anti-terrorist operations are run out of Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

All SCO members are worried about the unrest in neighbouring Afghanistan spilling over into their countries.

Others, however, have interpreted the SCO security efforts as an authoritarian commitment to preventing any more ‘colour revolutions’ – such as the Rose revolution in Georgia in 2003 or Ukraine’s Orange revolution in 2004 – from erupting amongst its members.

Between 2004 and 2005, the SCO admitted Mongolia, Pakistan, India, and Iran as observers. But in June 2017, it formally admitted both Pakistan and India as full voting members. With the entry of India and Pakistan, the SCO’s eight full members now represent 20 per cent of the world’s GDP, 42 per cent of its population and include four of the declared nuclear powers.

Currently, the SCO has four non-voting ‘observer states’ that include Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia, and six ‘dialogue partners’ that include Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

While its original main focus was to coordinate the fight against ‘terrorism, extremism, and separatism’ in the region, the SCO has more recently committed to also fostering deeper economic integration between member states. This has been especially underscored by China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road initiative, or now called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which comprises nearly USD $1 trillion in multiple projects for building infrastructure, roads, railways and ports across Asia to connect China’s eastern seaboard with South Asia, Russia and Europe. It is considered among the most ambitious infrastructure projects in history.

It is partly as a result of its recent and potential membership changes that the SCO is about to become much more well known in the West. Following its admission of India and Pakistan as full members in June, the SCO is now also seriously considering admitting Turkey – a US NATO ally, and Iran – a major US adversary, as full members as well. Both are moves that would surely set off alarm bells in the West.

In many ways the foundation of the SCO is based a strategic agreement between Russia and China to cooperate in ways to enhance their mutual military and economic interests across Asia. Although Russia is a declining regional power, it remains a major energy exporter and maintains a strong military-industrial base. And while China’s military technology is not on par with Russia’s, its economic prowess is certainly on the rise. In the crudest sense, the core of the SCO is based on the Russia-China strategic bargain – Russia has the guns, and China has the money. Together, they are seeking to dominate Mackinder’s World Island.

Source: The Indian Express

With India and Pakistan now on board, and with Turkey and Iran waiting in the wings, the SCO could ultimately become a force the West must reckon with.

The China-Russia relationship

The Russia-China arrangement is based on the melding of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and its Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) with China’s financial heft and ambitious BRI infrastructure plans for connecting the continent economically.

The SCO has facilitated increased bilateral trade and investment between the two Asian giants as well as stepped up military cooperation, including joint war games consisting of land, air and sea manoeuvres.

Many observers believe that the international economic sanctions placed against Russia by the US and Europe in 2014 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, and kicking Russia out of the G8, helped to push Russia further into the arms of China. For example, that same year Russia and China agreed to $400 billion deal to build a 2,500-mile gas pipeline from Russia to China’s Heilongjiang province that would supply 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to China annually for 30 years, beginning in 2019. And more recently, this was followed by a second deal for Russia to build another pipeline from western Siberia to China’s Xingjiang province that would deliver 30 bcm of gas for 30 years. If both pipelines are completed as planned, the 68 bcm they will deliver to China annually would dwarf the 40 bcm that Russia currently exports to Germany today.

Russia and China had previously come together as communist powers during the Cold War era in the 1950s and 60s, when they were allied against the capitalist West. But following US President Nixon’s opening to China in 1972, the alliance fell apart as China began cooperating with the US to check the increasing power of the Soviet Union. Following the end of the Cold War, a China-Russia rapprochement began in the 1990s, ultimately leading to the informal Shanghai Five group meetings that evolved into the SCO.

According to Harvard University’s Professor Joseph Nye, a Cold War expert and former US assistant secretary of defense, this earlier alliance was largely due to China’s weakness following World War II and at the beginning of the Cold War, whereas today China is the stronger partner and can extract more benefits from Russia. Nye believes this new power imbalance was reflected in the gas deals, in which it is widely believed that China was given a low price only because Russia was so eager to sign the deals. Additionally, Russia’s long-term trade imbalance is likely to worsen as it only exports raw materials in exchange for more advanced Chinese manufactured goods.

In the new alliance, while China is driving the financing for the new infrastructure across Asia, Russia is seeking to retain its influence as the security guarantor in the region, maintaining its series of military bases in Central Asia, stepping up its arms deals, and continuing to lead its Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led security bloc of former Soviet countries. This arrangement works well for Russia, which is eager to maintain its military clout in the region, and for China, which is reluctant to send its troops abroad but wants improved security.

Some strategic differences have remained, however. For example, since 2010, China has sought the establishment of an SCO Development Bank and a free trade zone for the region. But Russia has blocked these efforts, fearing China would use such mechanisms to economically dominate the region. However, there are recent indications that Russia may be willing to accede.

India and Pakistan join the SCO

The SCO took an astounding step forward in June 2017 when it simultaneously added both India and Pakistan as full members. Some analysts hope that by having both countries in a new multilateral setting, it could provide possibilities for informal negotiations to finally resolve the border disputes that have existed since India and Pakistan became independent states in 1947, just as the Shanghai Five group had made possible for Russia and China. Others are less optimistic about such prospects. And for many, the idea of India and Pakistan cooperating on regional counter-terrorism efforts seems a bit far-fetched. Indeed, even getting all the SCO members to agree which groups should be called ‘terrorists’ will be a challenge.

Yet, the world is changing quickly.

India’s membership had been supported by Russia while Pakistan’s entry into the group was supported by China. India has long been a major purchaser of Russian military hardware and the two countries are currently partnering on the joint-development of nuclear submarines, fighter jets, and satellite technology. India is hoping its entry into the SCO will help secure its future access to desperately needed gas and energy supplies in Central Asia.

From its perspective, Russia views the entry of India and Pakistan into the SCO as a way to diminish the outsized role of China’s economic power within the group. At the same time, China stands to benefit from its massive infrastructure investments in Pakistan that are a key part of its BRI initiative and will secure the connection between Central Asia and ports on the Arabian Sea. Likewise, the smaller SCO members in Central Asia will also benefit from the entry of India and Pakistan as it means they are likely to be less squeezed by the overbearing interests of China and Russia.

But the most important underlying dynamic behind the entry of India and Pakistan is the need of the SCO to finally get a political settlement in Afghanistan. All of the major long-term security and economic goals of the SCO are based on the ability to build infrastructure and allow commerce to flow smoothly through what has long been the region’s major hotbed of instability. But a final settlement in Afghanistan may end up looking nothing like what the US is hoping for. In fact, there are mounting indications that the political calculus within Afghanistan is changing as Russia, Iran, and China are aligning with Pakistan to support the Taliban against the current US-backed regime. Ultimately, these regional powers may collectively decide to add Afghanistan as a full SCO member – and then have it request the US and NATO forces to leave.

Bringing in Iran

Iran has had observer status in the SCO since 2005 and has been lobbying for full membership since 2008, but was blocked due to the international economic sanctions placed against it for its nuclear activities. But since the lifting of the international sanctions against Iran in 2015, both Russia and China have begun to fully support Iran’s full membership in the SCO.

China has close economic and diplomatic ties with Iran, and was also instrumental in pushing through the 2015 deal that ended the sanctions. Furthermore, in 2016, China and Iran signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement that envisions closer defence and intelligence ties, including efforts to strengthen Iran’s naval capacities in the Indian Ocean. Russia, too, has been stepping up its military coordination with Iran, particularly in the effort to shore up the Assad regime in Syria.

Because of its massive supplies of oil and gas reserves, Iran’s entry into the SCO would be an important step towards realizing Russia’s dream of establishing a ‘natural gas OPEC’. Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan hold the world’s first, third, and fourth largest reserves of natural gas, and could collectively raise global prices by forging a cartel (While Turkmenistan has not joined the SCO due to its formal position of international neutrality, it maintains extensive informal engagements with the group). Not to mention that Iran could also one day potentially provide the SCO with a fifth nuclear arsenal.

Bringing in Turkey

In 2012, Turkey, a member of NATO, was granted ‘dialogue partner’ status in the SCO. But it was in late 2016 when Turkey sent shockwaves through the region by announcing it could abandon its 11-year long formal bid to join the European Union and instead seek entry into the SCO.

The dramatic shift was in response to mounting tensions between Turkey and the EU following the Erdogan government’s harsh crackdown on dissidents in the wake of an abortive coup attempt in July 2016. The political repression that followed the coup attempt led to a vote by the European Parliament to freeze Turkey’s EU accession talks, which angered Ankara. Despite the fact that the EU remains Turkey’s largest trading partner, the country is now signalling its desire to join the SCO. Doing so may require Turkey abdicating its membership in NATO.

The idea was warmly received by both Russia and China, who responded by granting Turkey the chairmanship of the SCO’s energy club for the 2017 period, making it the first ‘dialogue partner’ country to chair an SCO club without having yet achieved full membership status.

Turkey’s relations with China and Russia have been steadily improving in recent years, and with its extensive gas pipeline projects underway and its proximity to European markets, Turkey is enthusiastic about fully integrating into China’s BRI infrastructure initiative for Asia.

The marginalization of the US

At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, establishment conservatives in the US warned against triumphantly expanding NATO into Eastern Europe and right up to the border with Russia, saying it would be too provocative and ultimately counterproductive. Yet that is what successive US administrations went on to do.

And following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the ‘Neo-cons’ of the Bush administration promised to expand US bases all over Central Asia and beyond. Therefore, it was not surprising that the US request for observer status in the SCO was promptly rejected in 2005, nor that the SCO issued a declaration that same year calling on the US to withdraw its air base from Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan followed suit in 2014 by calling on the US to close its air base there as well.

To Russia and China, another source of frustration was the unwillingness of the Western powers to meaningfully adjust the leadership at the WTO, IMF and World Bank to accommodate politically them as major world powers. Therefore, it was also not surprising that China and Russia would seek to establish the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), or that China would create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Notably, many of the closest allies of the US would join the AIIB despite American admonitions against doing so. The UK joined the AIIB in 2015.

Tectonic shifts in global geopolitics

Thus, we have arrived at this historic inflection point in international politics. At a time when the UK is moving to leave an economically weakened EU and NATO is congratulating itself for adding tiny Montenegro into its alliance, the SCO is making historic strides by adding India and Pakistan and now threatening to add Iran and Turkey as well.

While the SCO is not a full military alliance akin to NATO, it is not impossible to imagine that Russia and China will respond to a US deployment of missile defense systems in South Korea by stepping up their cooperation on building an SCO-based joint missile defense system.

None of this means SCO members cannot also still be friends with the West: Europe, which is dependent on Russian gas, may yet repair its ties with Moscow; India is still deepening its defense ties to the US and Japan; NATO would like Turkey to remain in the alliance; and China has embarked on a serious agreement for carbon emission reductions with the US.

Yet, the emergence of the SCO asserting ever greater control over Mackinder’s World Island reflects the fact that tectonic shifts are underway in global geopolitics, and that in terms of relative power, the US has become increasingly marginalized. And that may be why so few in the West have ever even heard of the SCO. But all the signs are that this is likely to change.

*

Rick Rowden, Doctoral Researcher, Centre for Economic Studies & Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi

Before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The meeting included an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation, an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes and a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor, the Times said.

Erik Prince, a private security contractor and the former head of Blackwater, arranged the meeting, which took place on 3 August 2016. The emissary, George Nader, told Trump Jr that the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win the election. The social media specialist, Joel Zamel, extolled his company’s ability to provide an edge in the campaign, the Times said.

Breaking News: Trump advisers met with an emissary for two Gulf nations during the campaign, suggesting countries beyond Russia may have offered help https://t.co/lnZfodONw2

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 19, 2018

Zamel’s company, the newspaper said, which employed several Israeli former intelligence officers, had prepared a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Trump, to which Trump Jr was said to respond approvingly. Still, it is not clear whether the proposal was ever put into operation.

Nader, however, was subsequently embraced as an ally by Trump campaign advisers, the Times reported. At the time, Nader was also promoting a secret plan to use private contractors to destabilize Iran, the rival of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

Large sum of money

After Trump was elected, Nader paid Zamel a large sum of money, possibly as much as $2m, according to the Times, which added that there were conflicting accounts of the reason for the payment.

The meeting and follow-ups, which had not been reported previously, are the first indication that countries other than Russia may have offered assistance to the Trump campaign in the months before the election, the Times said. The interactions are a focus of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who was tasked with examining possible Trump campaign coordination with Russia.

Three months before the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. met with an emissary for two Arab princes and an Israeli social media specialist, who offered assistance to the Trump campaign, The New York Times says https://t.co/StsnweT9uX pic.twitter.com/Wq99ohWPCv

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) May 19, 2018

Zamel’s lawyer denied his client took part in Trump’s campaign, saying Zamel has “provided full cooperation to the government to assist with their investigation”, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on its website. Nader’s lawyer said her client “has fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation and will continue to do so”.

Witnesses in Washington, New York, Atlanta, Tel Aviv and elsewhere have been questioned about what foreign help may have been pledged or accepted, and about whether any such assistance was coordinated with Russia, the Times said.

The newspaper said that recent interviews may indicate the special counsel’s investigation remains in an intense phase even as Trump’s lawyers are publicly calling for Mueller to bring it to a close.

The United States Senate has voted to overturn the FCC and restore net neutrality protections, the fate of that measure currently rests in the House of Representatives. While many will think that the uphill battle there makes it a lost cause, that is simply not true. Together, we have the power to win in the House of Representatives.

Now that the Senate has officially voted 52-47 to reverse the FCC’s so-called “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” under an expedited procedure known as the Congressional Review Act (CRA). It is now pending a vote in the House of Representatives. And while many will incorrectly assume since House Republican leadership has expressed their opposition to evervoting on net neutrality, nothing will come of it, the wishes of the leadership are frankly irrelevant.

What actually matters is whether 218 members of the House of Representatives from either party want to vote to protect net neutrality through a process called a “discharge petition.”

What is a Discharge Petition?

In 1931 the House of Representatives created a process where, if a majority of elected officials disagreed with the decision of the Speaker of the House and leadership team, they could force a vote on an issue. From 1967 to 2003 there have been 22 discharge petitions that reached the requisite 218 signatures to force a vote on an issue. This happens when there is overwhelming public pressure from citizens on their House Representative because they have to overrule their leadership’s opposition.

Net neutrality fits that formula. An overwhelming number of Americans opposed the FCC’s decision to repeal net neutrality with even more Americans registering their opposition in more recent polls (90 percent Democrats, 82 percent Republicans, and 85 percent independents). That strong support makes it possible to put pressure on representatives all across the country to sign the discharge petition.

Plus, you have a woefully out of touch FCC Chairman who openly mocks people who support net neutrality (which is basically everyone), and so politicians have to decide if they are on his side or with the American people. And you have a nationwide mobilization of small businesses, online video creators, civil rights groups, consumer groups, libraries, and technologists opposing the FCC.

Now its time to channel our forces to get 218 signatures from House Representatives.

We Need Everyone Now

You need to tell your House member to “sign the discharge petition on net neutrality.” Too often they will feign support for net neutrality or argue in favor of a fake net neutrality bill that actually legalizes paid prioritization (essentially allowing ISPs to charge websites for priority and slowing down parties that do not pay extra fees). As the polls of public opinion make clear, that position is not about what their constituents want and is more likely related to ISP lobbying and their campaign money.

Do not give them that space.

Make it clear that signing the discharge petition is the only way they can prove they support a free and open Internet. Supporting the discharge petition is a commitment to supporting net neutrality and voting for keeping the old protections. Anything falling short of signing it is both in effect and in outcome a vote against net neutrality. ­

That means calling their office on the phone to make the demand, going to a town-hall, or visiting their local district office, and making it clear you want them to sign the discharge petition. A politician can listen to a constituent demand a vote only so many times before it overwhelms the political money of companies like AT&T and Comcast. They answer to you first at the end of the day.

Once your elected official commits to signing the petition, they have to personally sign the document on the floor of the House of Representatives, upon which the document’s signer list is updated here. When we get to 218 signatures, the bill will come to the floor for a vote and will pass to the President for his signature. At which point, we’ll apply the same pressure to him we did to Congress.

Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA) initiated the discharge process on May 17, the day after the bill passed the Senate. More than 160 House of Representatives have pre-committed to supporting reversing the FCC before that discharge process even started, leaving us with a concrete goal of now pressuring the remaining Democrats and Republicans to support the petition. EFF has been tracking the public statements of support and opposition of House members here and has made it easy to call your representative by going here.

We have a lot of work ahead of us, but together we can keep the Internet free and open.

After spending a great deal of time online, I read and watched endless virtual conversations about who’s at fault and who’s not in the wake of the over 60 casualties in Gaza on Monday. Discussions varied from whether Israel is exercising a righteous act of self-defense, or if Palestinians are legitimately organizing a peaceful protest; whether it is a conflict between two equals who are both guilty, or it is between an army of a state and an occupied territory packed with civilians?

It’s mind-blowing how people have the energy to keep repeating the same claims over and over again for days and weeks, ignoring outside information. That is why I have decided to spare others the time, effort, and emotion, by writing out the most common claims I have seen regarding the events of the Great March of Return, followed by my responses. Those interested in fact-checking these common falsehoods, can find them in one place.

The one claim that I will not deal with, one of the most popular, is that of: “The Bible say God give the land of Israel to the Jewish people?” Fundamentalists, regardless of faith, will never see beyond their own holy books. This list isn’t for them and I won’t bother trying to change their minds.

Claim 1: Israel acted with “restraint” towards protesters in Gaza. 

Speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said,

“[W]ho among us would accept this type of activity on your border? No one would. No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has.”

Even harder it was to listen to an Israeli official saying how

“We have Israeli civilian communities, farms, and homesteads just 100 meters away from the border. If we’re allowing that borderer to be porous we’ll have dead Israelis.”

First thing I can think of is, what border? Israel is the only country in the world with no defined borders, as they keep expanding into others’ land. The line between Gaza and Israel is an armistice line from 1949 and 1967, not an internationally recognized border.

Second, Palestinians are not crossing the armistice line and killing Israelis living right across the fence once they are “unleashed.” They are not animals, neither are they cannibals! Palestinians are the not encaged blood-thirsty animals that will prey the first thing they witness once they are out. Yes, they are trying to cross the fence into 1948 areas, but this is about realizing their right of return to the land many of them were forced to leave. Seventy percent of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees from cities and towns in Israel. These people are trying to go home. They are trying to get to the houses they still have keys and official documents for! They are not embarking on a secret murderous mission.

Claim 2: Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years ago. Moving the embassy is just a recognition of that reality.

At the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said,

“In Jerusalem, King David established our capital 3,000 years ago.” Several members of the Trump administration have stated in recent weeks that Jerusalem is already the capital of Israel and moving the embassy is a “recognition of reality.”

King David is described in the Bible as the second king to preside over the United Monarchy, a unified territory of all Jewish tribes that lasted for about 100 years. Most of what is known about Kind David comes from religious readings, not archeological evidence.

According to religious tradition, King David reigned around 3,000 years ago. His capital was considered to be where the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan is located in East Jerusalem, along with the Israeli settlement and Bible park called the “City of David.”

Claim 3: This Great March of Return is totally organized by Hamas, a terrorist group.

It’s quite funny how this claim gives a huge deal of legitimacy to Hamas. They do Hamas a favor when they say that it could actually mobilize more than 40,000 people in one day for one goal.

The Great March of Return was organized by a grassroots group of Palestinians in Gaza. Here’s one of the founders of the protests, Nabeel Diab, telling Mondoweiss that it is a lie that Hamas is behind this movement. 

Hamas is paying $1000 to every Palestinian who tries to breach the #Gaza border with #Israel and murder Israelis.

The media wants you to think the #GreatReturnMarch is a human rights protest and that those people are innocent, but it is literally state sponsored terrorism.

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 14, 2018

Claim 4: Hamas paid each Palestinian protesters a whopping $1,000 to cross into Israel.

Alt-right personality Laura Loomer has circulated the claim that

“Hamas is paying $1000 to every Palestinian who tries to break the Gaza border with Israel and murder Israelis.”

Hamas was created in 1987. Palestinians had been resisting Israel since 1948. Who paid them before that?

Also, the assumption that Palestinians are nothing but a bunch of immoral mercenaries, is quite insulting to the nation that still comes up with new creative ways to prove its right in a better life.

Fact-check: relatives of Palestinians who were killed by Israeli forces were offered $3,000, and injured Palestinians were reportedly paid between $200 and $500. In reality these funds cover funerals, hospital bills, and provide a modest welfare stipend to the bereaved. More importantly, no Palestinian is being offered cash to kill Israelis.

Claim 5: Palestinians hate Israelis more than they love their kids.

This is a tired argument that keeps resurfacing one way or another ever since former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Mier said the first iteration,

“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” 

The line was just as offensive back then as it is now.

I am not sure how I can explain that no sane human being feels at ease endangering their kids, no matter what outcome they are expecting. No one can do this. None. I hardly think this kind of statements are meant to be discussed with logic. These are dehumanizing cruel insults I have no interest in wasting time on.

Claim 6: Live ammunition was only used to stop the ones crossing the fence. Israel used tear gas and rubber bullets for the most part. The casualties of journalists and minors are totally unintended mistakes.

I won’t say a word here. I’d rather let the IDF official Twitter account respond to this one (note: the IDF later removed the tweet):

Claim 7: This is Israel’s land and it will always be Israel’s, deal with it.

We are dealing with it, trust me. You took territory by force and ethnic-cleansing. We are trying reclaim our rights as civil and bloodless as possible in regular non-violent civil disobedience and boycotts.

The United States must play an aggressive role in bringing Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the international community together to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and stop this escalating violence.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 14, 2018

Claim 8: The humanitarian crisis in Gaza must be solved.

Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted yesterday,

“The United States must play an aggressive role in bringing Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the international community together to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and stop this escalating violence.”

While I appreciate these attempts to educate Americans on the Palestinian plight, and I understand how hard it is to maneuver while trying to avoid backlash, or in Bernie Sander’s case being smeared as “a self-hating Jew,” it is not very effective to call on an end to only the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, although it is getting worse by day.

The core problem is occupation and injustice. Without an end to the blockade, the humanitarian crisis will never end. Palestinians do not only demand food, water, and medication. They need full freedom, just like everybody else in the world.

Claim 9: Why should Israel give the Palestinians a state? Israel gave them Gaza and look what they have done with it? They are even split up between Fatah and Hamas.

This usually comes in response to any mention of a future Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. This logic that says we do things better, we have to train them first, they can’t run their own affairs, is quite similar to the colonial narrative that says brown people always need supervision from the others who know better, as if we are underage teenagers who can’t control our own fates. I don’t really have anything to say to counter this claim except, “If you are going to use this statement, then don’t get mad when we call Israel a colonial-settler state.”

Palestinian family, 1910s, Ramallah. (Photo: Public Domain)

Claim 10: Every stone in this land was built by Israel. It was a barren land, Israelis built and grew it.

Palestinians do no deny the Jewish existence in historic Palestine. We do realize that the Jews existed there; we are not interested in contradicting the truth. It might be surprising to some, but both the Christians and the Muslims of Palestine believe in all the prophets of the Jewish faith; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and Solomon. Narratives of the stories related to these figures are almost identical to people from all three faiths. There is no conflict there. In fact there are Jewish Palestinians. 

Furthermore, Palestine was not “a barren” land when European Jews arriving in the late 1800s and early 1900s began to increase. Haifa was an important cultural hub in the region. People worked to make a living, and historic Palestine was considered mostly an agrarian region of the Ottoman Empire. The old “land without a people” claim can be labeled as fiction.

Haifa Port. (Photo: Z. Kluger. Erez Israel from the air – 1937-38)

Advertisement for a 1939 theater production staged in Haifa. (Photo: Arab48)

Claim 11: Palestinians be third-generation refugees. That’s ridiculous.

Well, I think we can. As long as Palestinians are living in refugee camps, have very limited accessibility to the houses our families were forced out of, Palestinians can be refugees. Once Palestinians are given the choice to have our houses and farms back, only then we stop being refugees.

Claim 12: Refugee camps are not what you think. People drive nice cars and have decent housing. They even get educated. Why are they still complaining?

Thanks to the UNRWA schools and vocational training centers, generations of Palestinians refugees were and are still able to be provided with education. This is one basic human right granted by the UN. Although the education from the UN might not always be the highest-quality one can dream of, Palestinians have constantly managed to make something out of it, so they have better lives.

This does not go against the fact that they are still displaced. If you wish to understand why they can’t simply belong to where they were born and forget about anything else, please read my previous article on the connection between Palestinians and their heritage.

Mahmoud Abbas, end your apartheid! https://t.co/soiwRRJYNZ pic.twitter.com/fkbUOIrxeP

— Danny Ayalon (@DannyAyalon) February 20, 2018

Claim 13: Israel is not an apartheid state. Palestinian territory IS where you can’t find one Jew living among Palestinians. Israelis are not welcome there.

This is an increasingly popular allegation, that it is the Palestinians who are practicing apartheid, not Israel. This narrative is promoted by Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S., Danny Ayalon. He even bothered to produce a video about it and make it his pinned tweet.

The Palestinian Authority does not ban Israelis from being in, or living in the West Bank. It is Israeli who has made it illegal for Israeli citizens to enter Area A of the West Bank, the section of the occupied Palestinian territory that houses all of the Palestinian urban areas.

Claim 14: Palestinians are anti-Semites.

I totally understand that European Jews still live the horrors of the Holocaust. I do realize that the anti-Jewish sentiment is still present in Europe and the U.S. to this very day, I have witnessed it first-hand. But remember, we, Palestinians, had nothing to do with this. We are not the Germans.

Claim 15: Palestinians are originally from other parts of the world, they are not natives to the land.

This could be true indeed. But if we are going to trace every inhabitant of every spot in the world to their ancestral origins, it should sound fair when the 5.2 million Native Americans decide to kick out every other American citizen and tell them: “you have all of Europe, Africa, and Asia to live in, this is ours and only ours.”

Moments ago, in what seem to be the dumbest ever #Palestinian TV interview, #Hamas official Salah Al-Bardawil confirmed what Israel was saying all along: "50 of the 62 deaths (80%) on the #Gaza border in May 14ᵗʰ were of Hamas operatives". The work of the just is done by others! pic.twitter.com/KHUuiPLFnq

— Elad Ratson ?? (@EladRatson) May 16, 2018

Claim 16: Most causalities on May 14th were middle aged males in military age.

I just heard this yesterday by the Israeli Ambassador to the UK on CNN. This is usually used to say that they are potential terrorists. Totally shifting attention from the fact that there were kids among the victims. As if saying that middle-aged male Palestinians are necessarily violent death-loving ones.

This reminds me of what extremists on our side usually say when they wish to justify suicide attacks in Israeli shops and buses, saying that “ALL Israelis serve in the military, that are all responsible for occupation, therefore, they are all legitimate targets”.

If the first claim is accepted by the international community, I don’t see why the second isn’t. It’s either both are true, or neither. And for the sake of humanity I sincerely hope it’s neither.

This claim originated from Hamas’ Saleh Bardwil who said 50 of the 62 killed on Monday were Hamas’ people. This statement is unfounded propaganda. Neither Hamas or Israel has provided evidence that this is true. And Bardwil has an incentive to fabricate Hamas’ importance wherever he can.

Claim 17: Palestinians don’t respect woman. They are barbaric. Why would civilized people give them any rights? They have to be better human beings first.

The fact that there are various forms of injustices within a community doesn’t mean they can be deprived of their basic rights. Palestinians can resist patriarchy, corruption, double standards, all while resisting occupation. If they cannot, I demand that I see examples of societies and countries that could not enjoy full sovereignty before they were perfectly ideal and crime-free.

Claim 18: The call for Palestinian right to return, is an explicit call to destroy Israel and to kill its people.

Why not think “The call for Palestinian right to return is a great step to achieving peace, so Israelis and Palestinians can live all together in one secular, multi-cultural state with equal rights for all, and an ending refugee sufferings?”

The claim shows, if anything, a deep sense of dehumanizing Palestinians, of not showing a regard to their feelings, aspirations, needs, and most importantly: rights.

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Riham Darwish is a Palestinian blogger based in Amman, Jordan.

Featured image is from RT.

Featured image: GM protest in Montpellier, 2015 (Source: Flickr)

There is increasing concern about the health of our children among some parents, and our new book explores the perfect storm we have created that may be the culprit. 

This storm is formed by a toxic mix of;

• 1) outdated medical models that struggle with chronic diseases and often overlook food;
• 2) an embattled scientific community, some of whom have obscured questions about the safety of GM foods and their associated pesticides; and
• 3) frustrated parents and children who are finding solutions by doing something so simple as changing their diet.

Of course, the causes of children’s disorders are many. But food plays an enormous role.  Consider the possibility that some of the food we are feeding our children is loaded with chemical ingredients that are impairing our kid’s guts.

Gut feeling

We’ve always known that guts – the intestines – play a huge role in maintaining health and causing disease.  They allow food to become nutrition and nutrition, we all know, provides the external source of the building blocks for life. More recently, we’ve learned that the collection of microbes that inhabit our gut, called the microbiome, have a lot to do with this process.  The microbiome may just be the evidentiary glue that connects the dots between GM foods and poor health.

Rather than rehashing old and worn out debates about how GM foods create unknown proteins that may be harmful, or about how GM foods are not ‘natural’, or even about harms to agriculture from weed and insect resistance, this book takes us in a new direction.

We focus on the fact that GM foods, because they are designed to be resistant to the potent weed killer Roundup or to kill insect pests with Bt, come loaded with ingredients that were once thought to be harmless to humans but now may understood as being harmful to the microbes in our guts.

Consider the fact that increases in use of one of these ingredients, the active ingredient in Roundup called glyphosate, has escalated over 300-fold from 1974 to 2014.  Keep in mind, there are non-agricultural uses for glyphosate including playgrounds, parks, schools and backyards where Roundup is used profusely.

How GM foods affect human health

Now we start to get a sense of the crisis we are facing and the central claims of this book.  These are not the only GM foods to worry about, but they are the lion’s share of them, being ubiquitous in corn, canola, soy, sugar beets and other foods as well.

What has often been missing in the stories about GM foods is how to find a clear pathway through the controversial sciences to answer questions about how these foods affect human health.  Those familiar with the world of GM food debates know that we have never actually tested these foods on humans and that they have slipped through most of the safety regulatory processes, especially in the USA.

However, we do have a vast number of studies from animals that should raise alarm. Still, it is hard not to be confused. Anyone taking even a short journey to the science library on GM foods will be met with naysaying, with the notion that the scientific consensus has deemed these foods safe.

Our book offers a balanced and careful introduction to the arguments on both sides, ultimately however weighing in on the side of the nonGMO advocates and nonGMO science.

Another piece of the puzzle that we are able to bring to the story comes from the clinical world. Using an integrative approach to chronic disorders, and telling us about these by way of vivid patient cases, this book explains what is likely going on inside the body when it is overloaded with agrochemicals.

A symbiotic approach

They introduce the notion of leaky gut – a state of increased intestinal permeability that can trigger abnormal immune system responses. The result: chronic inflammation often associated with many chronic disorders whether the symptoms show up on the skin, in the lungs, the digestive tract, or in the brain.

Dysbiosis, the state of having an imbalance of healthy to unhealthy gut bacteria can also contribute to problems of leaky gut. Using scientific publications, this book helps readers make sense of how the agrochemicals used in GM foods may be triggering long-term, sub-acute assaults on the gut, and – as our title says – sick kids.

In the final chapters, we call for a rethink of our medical and scientific consensus by suggesting a more symbiotic approach to human, plant and animal health. Ecomedicine  is a concept we could use to reorient our medicine toward the connections between healthy soil, healthy food, healthy guts and healthy kids.

Organic is the way forward even if there remain many hurdles on the path to getting there – like making sure organic foods are actually healthy, making sure people have access to them and labels that distinguish between GM and nonGM foods and, finally, making sure that the scientists who work on producing the evidence base we need for this shift are both heard and supported.

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Vincanne Adams and Michelle Perro are the authors of What’s Making Our Children Sick?. You can join Michelle and Vincanne in London at an exclusive event on the evening of Thursday 24th May between 6.30-8.30pm. Tickets are free, but advance booking is essential. Click here for full details and to reserve your place.

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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

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

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

“It’s like the front lines of a war.” A student at the Texas Santa Fe High School, where 8 students and 2 teachers were shot and killed on Friday May 18, 2018, (less than two weeks to go before the end of the school year.)

“We are devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities. As the Brady Campaign, we work to enact and enforce sensible gun laws, regulations, and public policies through grassroots activism, electing public officials who support gun laws, and increasing public awareness of gun violence.” Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Mission statement, 1974.

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist, statesman, and author.

***

American schools have increasingly become shooting galleries in a war that the National Rifle Association (NRA) is winning, with the help of venal politicians and clueless Supreme Court Justices, against American students and teachers. In the U.S., criminals, crazies and angry types alike can buy attack weapons of any kind, at will. As a consequence, when students and teachers go to school in the morning, they and their parents are never certain if they are going to come back home, after school. If you follow the news, you may have gotten the impression that American schools have become a lottery of death. Students and teachers have become the innocent pawns whose lives are being cut short to please the fanaticism and the gun idolatry of the NRA.

Image on the right: The foundation of the United States is embedded in gun violence. (Photo: Joe Loong)

This was not the case fifty years ago. What has changed for the worse is an increasing lack of moral responsibility on the part of people in authority in the United States, and a rise in political corruption, which has allowed private organizations and entities, such as the NRA and the makers of guns, to buy up politicians to replace the common good in favor of narrow private interests. The editorial boards of newspapers and other media are also to blame for their lack of moral fortitude in not taking clearer stands against this widespread corruption. They are all accomplices, to a certain degree, in the epidemic of mass murders of children and teenagers in American schools.

Between 2012 and 2017, there has been no less than 239 school shootings in the United States—more than three gun shootings each month—and the massacres continue, month after month, relentlessly. The most irresponsible-in-chief is the current U.S. President, Donald Trump, who cowardly and publicly echoes the NRA propaganda motto that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people”. Such statements sweep under the rug another evidence, and that is that the instruments of killing do matter. In fact, guns are front and center in all mass killings. Military style automatic weapons can kill hundreds of people in a short span of time. This was well illustrated in Las Vegas, on October 1, 2017, when a heavily armed killer assassinated 58 persons attending a concert, and wounded 851 others, before he was found dead in his hotel room. He could not have done so much killing and wounding with his fists or with a knife! The type of weapons used was responsible for the high number of victims.

Of course, it takes a wicked, or a deranged or troubled individual, to kill another human being. That is a universal truth. However, given that evidence, the easiest it is for an evil or a deranged person to have access to deadly instruments of killing, the more killing there will be. This is a truth that some people refuse to accept, even though it is only pure logic. They pretend that they need an arsenal of heavy automatic weapons to protect themselves and their family against attacks. From whom? Is this paranoia or not? What can be said is that such a stand is illogical because when everybody is heavily armed, everybody is in mortal danger, even policemen who are entrusted with law enforcement to keep public order.

Indeed, many policemen are killed each year while being ambushed by heavily armed individuals. Between 2006 and 2016, some 1,500 police officers have been killed on duty, in the United States. As consequence, police officers are increasingly on their guard and may have become trigger-happy, because so many people are roaming the streets and highways while being armed to the teeth. This may have encouraged police officers to become more prone to overreact in some dangerous situations, to protect their own lives, but in so doing, they may threaten the lives of unarmed citizens. Arming every citizen, as some have proposed, not the least being U.S. President Donald Trump, would only make a bad situation worse, and it would risk bringing the United States to the threshold of an anarchic civil war.

But pure logic seems to have somewhat disappeared from the public discourse in the United State, and it has been replaced by a twisted and deranged logic, especially when the issue of easy access to sophisticated military-style automatic weapons is concerned.

The original constitutional guarantee, in the United States, to own a musket in order for ordinary civilians to dutifully join “a well-regulated militia” to defend the land, at a time when most people lived on a farm and at a time when the United States had only a small professional army, has been exploited and corrupted, a few centuries later, and has been elevated to the status of an absolute and unregulated right, for any individual, to have as many military-style attack weapons as he can afford, even in a close urban environment. This is a clear abuse of language and would seem to be far remote from the initial intention.

For some gun enthusiasts, indeed, the right to own lethal weapons would seem to supersede the right to life for everybody else, and private interests would seem to trump public interest. A society that accepts those crooked principles in this day and age is well on its way to social decay and disintegration.

Since the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado on Tuesday April 20, 1999, there have been no less than 139 American students, teachers and others who have been assassinated in American schools, and close to 300 other people who have been injured, by disgruntled and heavily armed killers. Only three months ago, this time at a South Florida High School, on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2018, seventeen people, (14 students and 3 instructors) were murdered at the hand of an expelled student, armed with an AR-15-style assault weapon.

While the problem persists, people tend to forget and move on to other preoccupations, that is, until the next mass killing in another school occurs.

Conclusion

Young Americans are reported to be increasingly eager to register to vote. This is a good sign. The political pendulum has swung too far in favor of the private right to own automatic guns for some and not enough in favor of public safety for all. Maybe the American youth will bring back sanity, in due time, to that deadly debate.

*

Renowned economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of   “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles” and of “The New American Empire”. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay’s new WEB site: http://rodriguetremblay100.blogspot.ca/

American foreign policy seems to be designed to infuriate everyone, friend and foe alike, though we realise the word “friend” is a euphemism for “useful for American interests.” In a futile attempt to reassert its world hegemony the American ruling class has ripped up or is forcing changes to,

• free trade agreements with Canada and Mexico, with the EU and Pacific nations,
• ignores the World Trade Organisation rules, has reneged on the agreement it forced down Iran’s throat at the point of a gun with regard to a supposed nuclear weapons development,
• imposed economic blockades on Iran and Russia that also hurt the interests of its “friends’ in the EU,
• imposed tariffs on Chinese goods and European steel, flirts with Taiwan,
• moved the US embassy to Jerusalem,
• encouraged Israel to attack Syria and to shoot down unarmed Palestinians en masse protesting the illegal occupation of their own land
• and shot itself in the head with respect to North Korea with all the chest pounding idiocy and bragging of a bullying teenager hopped up on crack surprised when he’s told he’s not welcome to the party because he’s an insulting jerk.

With respect to North Korea, the insults thrown at the North Koreans since John Bolton arrived on the scene can be put down to the psychopathology of that particular man and his contemptuous attitude to everyone and about whom the North Koreans said,

“We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him.”

But the American press were quick to denounce North Korea’s objections to American bullying as a return to “their old behavior” to try to escape the blame for the fiasco they have created in the Korea-US negotiations. Some commentators have even suggested that Bolton and Pompeo are trying to deliberately sabotage the negotiations with their wild talk but the stunned silence from the White House, Bolton and Pompeo indicates that it was not deliberate but a direct result of their arrogance and stupidity.

An opportunity for peace in Korea is being thrown away because of the personal crudeness and barbarity of these people but they are the “in your face” face of American capital; the lieutenants of capital prepared to commit every crime to serve and protect their bosses interests. That the face of American capital has become even uglier lately reflects the steady weakening of their position in the world.

On May 16 Donald Tusk the President of the European Council stated in relation to Iran, Gaza, and other issues that,

“Looking at the latest decisions of Trump someone could even think that with friends like that that who needs enemies. Thanks to him, we got rid of all our illusions.”

Tusk went on to say that Europe wants to ‘protect the transatlantic bond but is prepared to act on its own,” as it proves with its 9 point plan to try to shore up the Iran nuclear deal and counteract the reimposition of the US economic war on Iran, though what that plan is difficult to determine since only the intention has been stated not the 9 points of “the plan.” But the importance of the EU position is put by the British foreign Minister Boris Johnson who said in Brussels on the 15th at a meeting between Iran, Britain, Germany and France that,

“The UK and our European partners continue to view the nuclear deal as vital for our shared security, and remain fully committed to upholding it.”

A day later Jean Claude Juncker president of the European Commission stated that the European Commission will activate a law that prohibits European companies from complying with the American “sanctions” against Iran. The problem is that it is not very effective but the point is made that the EU regards the American sabotage of the Iran deal as an attack on its companies, a form of economic warfare that it does not appear to be willing to tolerate. The law was first used to counter American sanctions against Cuba but has never really been used. Nevertheless the European Commission has pulled another arrow from its quiver and stated that the European Investment Bank will be used to assist European companies investing in Iran to counter the loss of US financing.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German government representatives have repeated their willingness to openly oppose the United States in its Iran policy. Referring to the Trump administration’s breach of the nuclear deal, Merkel said,

“if everyone does what he likes, it would be bad news for the world.”

Defying the US will not be easy since most European companies have more trade with the US than with Iran and do not want to risk losing all that business. However, if they kowtow to the US they risk losing out to China which will quickly fill the gap if US sanctions force Europe’s companies to withdraw from Iran which has the prospect of becoming the most lucrative market in the entire Middle East. In fact, Chinese companies have already announced plans to expand their activities in Iran. Just a few days ago, a freight train set out from the People’s Republic of China to inaugurate a new transport link from China to Iran within the framework of the New Silk Road.

The US has also lost influence in Iraq as a coalition of the Shia nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr, secularists and the Iraqi Communist Party won the elections and will have to form a coalition government that could force out the remaining 10,000 American soldiers and other mercenaries still in the country which would be the final act in the biggest defeat inflicted on the Americans since they were kicked out of Vietnam.

The defeat in Iraq, the defeat of US proxy forces in Syria, and the recent failure of the mass missile attack by the US, France and Britain on Syria are linked to the decision by the US to move its embassy to Jerusalem in an attempt to weaken the Palestinians and to strengthen Israel politically at the same time encouraging Israeli brutality and war crimes no matter what the world reaction may be. Lives mean nothing to them when brutality is all they have left to try to escape the hole they have dug themselves into. The massacres in Gaza are so cruel and outrageous they can be considered a deliberate provocation against Iran, which sees itself as a protector of Muslims in the Middle East. Meanwhile the split between the US and Turkey grows as Turkey also denounced the Israeli crimes and recalled its ambassador.

Meanwhile Russia has passed legislation imposing sanctions on the US in retaliation for US sanctions against Russia, continues with the Astana talks with Iran, China and Syria about the war in Syria, continues its peace initiative in Afghanistan and continues to upgrade its superior weapons systems while China continues to modernize its armed forces, expands it navy and has flown its fighter and bomber aircraft over Taiwan in defiance of US attempts to undermine Chinese sovereignty over the island.

Yet, while American capital expends vast sums of money on armaments and wars that return it nothing its people continue to suffer a rapid degradation of their conditions. On the 17th of May it was reported by the United Way that nearly 51 million households don’t earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone. That’s 43% of households in the United States. This is the country that Mike Pompeo, the new US foreign minister, bragged was “going to rebuild North Korea.” More like North Korea needs to rebuild America. But this is how out of touch with reality these people are in the American leadership, bankrupt of ideas, ignorant of the world and history, locked into an economic system that cannot provide for even the basic the needs of its working people and without a functioning democratic system for the necessary changes to take place. And what is the result of all this but yet more war and so more war we will have as the collapse of American society accelerates.

*

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” where this article was originally published He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

North Korea has just delivered a brushback pitch, warning the United States and South Korea that inclusion of nuclear assets like the B-52s in joint military exercises—not the exercises themselves—is inconsistent with President Trump’s pledge at President Moon’s urging to move toward peace in Korea. And peace is a critical part of Pyongyang’s aim in its diplomatic give-and-take with Washington and Seoul. That’s why US and South Korean military authorities were right to cancel the B-52 flights.

Washington resumed B-52 flights after a long hiatus after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. When North Korea suspended nuclear and missile testing, it expected the United States and South Korea to exclude nuclear assets from their joint military exercises on the Korean Peninsula.

That was the crux of Kim Jong Un’s 2018 New Year’s Day address, calling on the South to “discontinue all the nuclear war drills they stage with outside forces.” The Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun confirmed that interpretation ten days later,

“If the South Korean authorities really want detente and peace, they should first stop all the efforts to bringing in U.S. nuclear equipment and conducts exercise for nuclear warfare with foreign forces.”

To the North, the resumption of B-52 flights now were a sign that President Trump may be tempted to heed the advice of John Bolton and other hardliners to confront Kim Jong Un at the summit with an ultimatum to disarm or else in the mistaken belief that brandishing sanctions and threatening war gives Washington leverage. But Kim retains far greater leverage by resuming nuclear and missile tests and making more weapons.

Washington believes that pressure brought Kim to the negotiating table. Yet Pyongyang signaled its current course more than three years ago in informal contacts, long before tougher sanctions took effect. US demands that Pyongyang suspend nuclear and missile tests as a precondition to talks without getting anything in return had only delayed diplomatic give-and-take for five years, enabling it to add to its nuclear capacity and boost its bargaining leverage in the meantime. Trump, by dropping those preconditions, opened the way to the summit, evidence that honey works better than vinegar.

Kim is not about to commit to denuclearize completely, Trump’s ultimate goal, without a reciprocal commitment from Trump to end enmity and move to peace in Korea. Such reciprocal pledges will serve as the basis of a Trump-Kim summit communique, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hinted after his last meeting with Kim.

An end to US enmity has been the Kims’ aim for thirty years. Throughout the Cold War, Kim Jong Un‘s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, had played China off against the Soviet Union to maintain his freedom of maneuver. In 1988, anticipating the Soviet Union’s collapse, he reached out to reconcile with the United States, South Korea and Japan to serve as counterweights to China. The North’s need only intensified as China’s power grew.

From Pyongyang’s vantage point, that aim was the basis of the 1994 Agreed Framework, which committed Washington to “move toward full normalization of political and economic relations,” or, in plain English, end enmity. That was also the essence of the September 2005 Six Party Joint Statement which bound Washington and Pyongyang to “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together, and take steps to normalize their relations subject to their respective bilateral policies” as well as to “negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”

For Washington, the point of these agreements was the end of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs—with some success. For nearly a decade under the Agreed Framework, when the North had no nuclear weapons, it shuttered its production of fissile material and conducted just two test-launches of medium and longer-range missiles. It did so again from 2007 to 2009. Both agreements collapsed, however, when Washington did little to implement its commitment to reconcile and Pyongyang reneged on denuclearization.

On Wednesday, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan (image on the right) made it clear that reconciliation, not aid or investment, remains Pyongyang’s aim:

“We have already stated our intention for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and made clear on several occasions that precondition for denuclearization is to put an end to anti-DPRK hostile policy and nuclear threats and blackmail of the United States.”

He concluded,

“If the Trump administration takes an approach to the DPRK-U.S. summit with sincerity for improved DPRK-U.S. relations, it will receive a deserved response from us. However, if the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit.”

His denunciation of the Libya model prompted the White House to deny it had that model in mind.

Trump and Kim both want a successful summit. Whether Kim means to keep his pledge to disarm is idle speculation. Sustained diplomatic give-and-take with concrete proposals for reciprocal steps is the only way to find out.

Featured image: MP Randall Garrison

Is it appropriate for NDP Members of Parliament to be working for “greater friendship” with a country that is killing and maiming thousands of non-violent protestors?

Would it have been appropriate for any elected member of the party to be a “friend” with South Africa’s government during the apartheid era?

Victoria area MPs Randall Garrison (left) and Murray Rankin are members of the Canada Israel Interparliamentary Group (previously named Canada-Israel Friendship Group).

Garrison is vice-chair of a group designed to promote “greater friendship” and “cooperation” between the two countries’ parliaments.

The chair of the group is York Centre MP Michael Levitt, a former board member of the explicitly racist Jewish National Fund, who issued a statement blaming “Hamas incitement” for Israeli forces shooting thousands of peaceful protesters, including Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani.

The Interparliamentary Group is one of many pro-Israel lobbying organizations in Canada. In conjunction with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, the Interparliamentary Group has hosted wine and cheese lobbying events on Parliament Hill. Three hundred parliamentarians and parliamentary staff attended their 2014 “Israeli Wine Meets Canadian Cheese” gathering in the East Block courtyard.

The group regularly meets the Israeli Ambassador and that country’s other diplomats. Representatives of the Group also regularly visit Israel on sponsored trips. For their part, Garrison and Rankin both participated in CIJA-organized trips to Israel in 2016.

The Interparliamentary Group works with its Israeli counterpart the Israel-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group. In 2016 the Group sent a delegation to the Israeli Knesset and last year they organized a joint teleconference with Israel-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group co-chairs Yoel Hasson and Anat Berko.

Last month Hasson responded to Meretz party Chairwoman Tamar Zandberg’s call for an investigation into the Israel Defense Forces’ killing of non-violent Palestinian protesters by tweeting, “there was nothing to investigate, the IDF is doing what’s necessary to defend the Gaza border.”

Chairman of the Zionist Union Knesset faction, Hasson opposed the UN resolution on a Palestinian state. When the Knesset voted to strip Arab MK Hanin Zoabi of parliamentary privileges for participating in the 2010 Gaza flotilla Hasson and MK Carmel Shama “nearly came to blows” with Zoabi and her fellow Balad party MK Jamal Zahalka. Hasson later called Zoabi a “terrorist”.

Berko is even more openly racist and anti-Palestinian. A Lieutenant-Colonel in the IDF reserves prior to her election with Likud, Berko openly disparaged African refugees. In February Israel National News reported,

“Berko said that the MKs should see the suffering that African migrants have caused South Tel Aviv residents before jetting off to Rwanda” to oppose an effort to deport mostly Eritrean and Sudanese refugees to the small East African nation.

In January Berko co-sponsored a bill to bypass a High Court ruling that Israeli forces cannot use the bodies of dead Palestinian protesters as bargaining chips. The aim of the bill was to make it harder for the bodies to be given over for burial, which should happen as soon as possible under Muslim ritual, in the hopes of preventing high profile funerals. In a 2016 Knesset debate Berko make the ridiculous claim that the absence of the letter “P” in the Arabic alphabet meant Palestine did not exist since “no people would give itself a name it couldn’t pronounce.” In response Richard Silverstein noted,

“Apparently, the fact that the word is spelled and pronounced with an ‘F’ (Falastin) in Arabic seems to have escaped her. It’s worth noting, too, that according to her logic, Israeli Jews do not exist either, since there is no letter ‘J’ in Hebrew.”

Garrison and Rankin must immediately withdraw from the Canada–Israel Interparliamentary Group. If the NDP MPs refuse to disassociate themselves from the pro-Israel lobby organization, party leader Jagmeet Singh should replace them as (respectively) NDP defence and justice critics.

Israel’s slaughter in Gaza should lead to an end of the NDP’s anti-Palestinian past.

Please join me in asking Garrison ([email protected]) and Rankin ([email protected]) to withdraw from the Canada–Israel Interparliamentary Group. Make sure to cc Jagmeet Singh ([email protected])

For the first time since the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria started, the country finally appears to be nearing a “political settlement” to the conflict.

The Meaning Of True Friendship

Syria might very well see the conclusion of a formal peace deal by the end of the year, and it’s all because of President Putin’s masterful geostrategic “chess moves”. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) & Hezbollah allies fought very hard to preserve the Syrian state up until the eve of the game-changing Russian anti-terrorist intervention in September 2015, and these ground forces have still done all the heavy lifting in liberating the majority of the country’s cities since then.

Still, had it not been for the pivotal support of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Syria might never have gotten to this point, though there wouldn’t have been a Syria for President Putin to save had it not been for Iran and Hezbollah.

Those two assisted Syria out of ideological solidarity in their shared anti-Zionist cause and also to “pay back” their close partner for the support that it gave them in the past. The SAA helped Hezbollah for over two decades during its own intervention in neighboring Lebanon, which advanced Iranian strategic objectives and also substantially served them through Damascus’ severing of an Iraqi oil pipeline to the Mediterranean during the First Gulf War (the Iran-Iraq War).

“Chess Moves”

The decision to begin the Russian anti-terrorist intervention was only the first of three major “chess moves” that President Putin made in Syria, with the second being the unveiling of a Russian-written “draft constitution” in January 2017 during the first Astana meeting (which itself was a crucial move) immediately after the Liberation of Aleppo (another important development), while the most recent one was the Putin-Netanyahu Summit that took place in Moscow on Victory Day when the “Israeli” leader was invited to be his Russian counterpart’s de-facto guest of honor.

This visit was bookended by two back-to-back bombings of Syria by “Israel” and represented the largest such attacks against the Arab Republic since the 1973 War, sending the signal that Russia is passively facilitating “Israeli” strikes against IRGC & Hezbollah forces there as part of its complex “balancing” strategy in geopolitically managing the Mideast. Realizing that his erstwhile policy of dilly dallying on making any tangible progress in implementing the Russian-written “draft constitution” and refusing to initiate the “phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah had backfired by putting his country in a weaker negotiating position than expected and triggering the largest-ever “Israeli” bombings in decades (that were even passively facilitated by Russia), President Assad hurried to Sochi to meet with President Putin and discuss what needs to urgently be done to change what had up until last week looked like Syria’s reversing fortunes.

The result of their extensive negotiations was that President Assad publicly announced his wholehearted support for participating in the UN-mediated process of revising his country’s constitution according to some of the suggestions put forth by the Russian-written “draft” one (as tentatively agreed during the “Syrian National Dialogue Congress” at the beginning of this year), but much more important than that was what President Putin said in stating his “assumption” that “foreign armed forces will be withdrawing from the Arab Republic”. Right afterwards, his Special Envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, clarified that this does in fact include Iran and Hezbollah just as much as it does Turkey and the US.

The Fate Of Foreign Forces

It’s difficult to imagine how anyone could forcibly evict the US’ 2000+ troops from their 20 or so reported bases in the country’s northeast without triggering World War III, just like no one can do so with Turkey’s in Idlib and Afrin without risking the same, and neither seems likely to peacefully withdraw even though this possibility would be more probable for Ankara to ever do if it cut a deal with Moscow than for Washington. In all likelihood, the so-called “de-escalation zones” could be expanded in include the American “sphere of influence” in Syrian “Kurdistan” and then used as the basis for implementing the Russian-written “draft constitution’s” “decentralization” proposals that might ultimately end up giving these regions such a high degree of “autonomy” that they’d be “permitted” to conduct foreign military deals in “legally” “allowing” those two occupying forces to remain in order to not jeopardize the “fragile peace”.

As for the IRGC and Hezbollah, neither of them has any exclusive stake in a geographically-defined “sphere of influence” like the US and Turkey do, but a more positive difference between them is that the first-mentioned two are in Syria at the invitation of its democratically elected and legitimate government. This means that those same sovereign authorities could kindly ask them to leave now that their original anti-terrorist mission is largely over following the defeat of Daesh and the serious beginnings of the peace process in the country, seeing their allies off with pomp and ceremony after congratulating them on a mission accomplished and a job well done.

The “Phased”, But Dignified, Withdrawal

The “phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah under dignified circumstances is the most likely eventuality, and the odds are that both of them would actually be happy to oblige, and not just out of respect for their Syrian hosts. Hezbollah is war-weary after playing such a pivotal frontline role for over seven years, while Iran has much more important concerns to focus on nowadays than “keeping the peace” in Syria amidst the US-led Hybrid War destabilization efforts against it.

Withdrawing from Syria would allow Hezbollah to adequately prepare the Lebanese home front for another Zionist aggression while Iran could mollify some of the rising civil society unrest in its cities through a populist move by announcing that the funds that had hitherto been used for its costly peacemaking efforts in Syria would now be redirected to domestic development and sanctions relief efforts. As for both of their sworn missions in fighting Zionism, they can still continue with this campaign outside of Syria after the sobering realization that they’ve become “sitting ducks” there after President Putin gave the green light a week and a half ago to turn the Arab Republic into a large “Israeli” bombing range.

Iran and Hezbollah will not be “allowed” to fight “Israel” “to the last Syrian” through whatever plans they may or may not be hatching against it given their reported military presence near the occupied Golan Heights, and the interests of their allied host country would best be served through a “tactical retreat” from the Arab Republic that enables all three parties to rest, regroup, and reevaluate their strategies so that they can fight more effectively at another day and under better circumstances whenever a more advantageous opportunity for them arises.

So long as they’re offered the chance to leave as heroes, then Iran and Hezbollah should have no problem with this arrangement because it also satisfies their own respective self-interests like it was argued, though refusing to take this deal would just mean that President Putin would stop “restraining” his good friend Netanyahu and let him be as wild as he wants in brutally forcing these two out of the country. “Bibi” is braying for blood and the only thing holding him back is President Putin’s “goodwill assurances” on Victory Day that he would soon succeed in “convincing” President Assad to organize their dignified “phased withdrawal” in the near future and therefore avert the dangerous escalation scenario that Moscow is working so hard to prevent.

Tying Up Loose Political Ends

If everything goes according to plan, then Iran and Hezbollah could leave Syria as soon as this summer, concurrent with the UN-mediated “constitutional reform” process making progress in implementing most (but obviously not all) of the Russian-written “draft” proposals and “freezing” the Turkish and American presences in the country as part of a “cold peace”. Logically, the next step after the constitution has been changed would be to execute UNSC 2254’s other mandated “solution” of new elections, though this undefined demand doesn’t have to be for presidential ones (as President Assad will likely remain in office for a transitional period as a “figurehead” leader per prospectively agreed upon constitutional “compromises”) but parliamentary ones.

There are predictably those who might fear for President Assad’s political future, but the reality is that all players need him to remain in office no matter what they publicly say to the contrary. Without President Assad, who most of the Syrian masses sincerely respect and trust, giving his approval to this entire process, the population will not go along with it and new fault lines could suddenly emerge in society that might perpetuate the armed conflict, so that’s why the US, Turkey, and even “Israel” will implicitly agree to him remaining in office because the alternative would be to jeopardize Russia’s hard-fought “balancing” strategy of “win-win” “compromises” for everybody.

Concluding Thoughts

Conclusively, Syria is a sovereign state that ultimately makes its own decisions, even if the choices that it makes have been heavily influenced by the geostrategic situation that others (especially Russia) have shaped, and President Assad’s presence at his Russian counterpart’s side when the latter spoke about the withdrawal of all foreign armed forces from the Arab Republic is the strongest sign yet that Damascus silently agrees with Moscow’s proposal and is implementing this very sensitive move behind the scenes together with its two Iranian and Hezbollah allies. Once their prospective “phased withdrawal” is completed, then the immediate conventional “Israeli” military threat to Syria will diminish as per the “balancing” understanding reached between President Putin and Netanyahu during their Victory Day Summit, with this occurring together with political advances being made in the UN-mediated “constitutional reform” process and the larger peace more generally.

There is no “perfect solution” to the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria and “maximalist” outcomes — no matter how legitimate they are in the sense of Syria having the sovereign and legal right to liberate “every inch” of its territory like President Assad promised — are impossible to pull off without risking another war, so that’s why Russia is leveraging its key role in the country to “balance” all actors and get them to enact “win-win” “compromises” and “freeze” the most contentious issues (the US and Turkish occupations) until an undefined later date. The priority right now is peace and then reconstruction, and all players — including Iran — will partake in the latter as the entire world marshals support for this gargantuan effort, albeit likely focusing their investments in certain “spheres of influence” such as the Gulf States getting involved in American-occupied Syrian “Kurdistan” while China chooses to do business in the rest of de-facto “rump Syria” that was freed by the SAA, for example.

*

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.

OPEC and Russia are meeting in a little more than a month to discuss the progress of their oil production deal and what’s next. On the face of things, there will be no surprises: every country taking part in the deal is still committed to the cuts until the end of the year.

But Russia pumped more than its quota in both March and April. But Energy Minister Alexander Novak hinted that Russia might like to see a gradual easing of the cuts following the June meeting. But Iran sanctions will remove a certain amount of Iranian crude from international markets, making space for more from other producers, and Russia may just surprise its partners in the deal.

Citigroup commodity analysts this week estimated that Russia has 408,000 bpd in idled capacity, which constitutes 4 percent of its total, which stands at 11.3 million bpd. That’s a lot less than Saudi Arabia’s idle capacity, which stands at 2.12 million bpd, but is apparently still a significant enough portion of the total.

Some of Russia’s biggest oil players made it clear long ago that they have ambitious production plans for the future, which the production cuts are restraining. Even with this restraint, however, some are actually expanding production, including Gazprom Neft, which last year produced 4.1 percent more oil than in 2016 despite the cuts. The increase came on the back of new fields in the Arctic and the company’s Iraqi ventures.

Rosneft pumped 7.6 percent more oil last year despite the cuts. For the first quarter of this year it reported a 1.2-percent decline in production because of the cuts, but it has also said that it could return to pre-cut production levels within two months. An advisor to the company’s president told Russian media this week the cuts were implemented with a view to a quick return to production when cutting was no longer necessary, so Rosneft had taken care to ensure the return to pre-cut levels is indeed quick.

Now, this might just be a general statement, or it could suggest that both Rosneft and Gazprom Neft—along with the other companies taking part in the cuts—are chomping at the bit, eager to expand into new fields.

Gazprom Neft, for example, had a very ambitious production plan for the period until 2020, aiming to hit annual production of 100 million tons of crude by 2020. Because of the cuts, the company will now move this target rate by one or two years, it said today.

Rosneft, meanwhile, is drilling new wells in Vietnam and western Siberia. Lukoil is expanding in the Gulf of Mexico and Iraq. Gazprom Neft is boosting production at its three Arctic fields, among others. Russia’s Big Oil is expanding, letting natural depletion take care of some of the production cuts. But they have made it clear that they would rather not curb existing production or stall new projects for much longer.

“The agreement lasts until the end of the year. In June, we can discuss, among other issues, a question about reduction of some quotas during this time, if it is expedient from the market’s point of view,” Alexander Novak said in April.

Now, with Brent close to US$80 and pretty likely to actually hit this price in the coming days, it may have become expedient to discuss some quota reductions. After all, why let Saudi Arabia be the only one to take advantage of the fall in Iranian crude supply after sanctions kick in?

*

Irina is a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

An American Doctor and Naval reserve officer who has done extensive medical evaluation of a high-profile prisoner who was tortured under the supervision of Gina Haspel privately urged Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to oppose Haspel’s confirmation as CIA director, according to an email obtained by The Intercept.

“I have evaluated Mr. Abdal Rahim al-Nashiri, as well as close to 20 other men who were tortured” in U.S. custody, including several who were tortured “as part of the CIA’s RDI [Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation] program. I am one of the only health professionals he has ever talked to about his torture, its effects, and his ongoing suffering,” Dr. Sondra Crosby, a professor of public health at Boston University, wrote to Warner’s legislative director on Monday. “He is irreversibly damaged by torture that was unusually cruel and designed to break him. In my over 20 years of experience treating torture victims from around the world, including Syria, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. al-Nashiri presents as one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”

Nashiri was snatched in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2002 and “rendered” to Afghanistan by the CIA and eventually taken to the Cat’s Eye prison in Thailand that was run by Haspel from October to December 2002. He was suspected of involvement in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. He is currently being held at Guantánamo Bay prison.

Despite Crosby’s pleas, Warner and five other Democratic senators have announced their support for Haspel. Warner backed Haspel after she sent him a carefully crafted letter designed to give the impression that she had changed her position on torture while simultaneously continuing to defend its efficacy.

“While I won’t condemn those that made these hard calls, and I have noted the valuable intelligence collected, the program ultimately did damage to our officers and our standing in the world,” Haspel wrote. “With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken.”

Haspel stated that she “would refuse to undertake any proposed activity that was contrary to my moral and ethical values.” But Haspel has refused to renounce torture, her role in its use or to condemn the practice of waterboarding. In fact, under questioning from Sen. Kamala Harris during her confirmation hearing, Haspel explicitly refused to say that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” she oversaw at a secret CIA prison in Thailand were immoral. That fact renders her pledge to Warner meaningless.

“It took her 16 years and the eve of a vote on her confirmation to get even this modest statement, and again, she didn’t say she had any regrets other than it offended some people,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee.

“I urge Senator Warner to oppose Ms. Haspel, who did not have the courage or leadership to oppose the RDI program,” wrote Crosby.

She stated that some of the techniques used against Nashiri are still classified. In her letter to Warner, Crosby stated that among the known acts of torture committed against Nashiri while he was in U.S. custody at several U.S. facilities, included:

• suffocated with water (waterboarding)
• subjected to mock execution with a drill and gun while standing naked and hooded
• anal rape through rectal feeding
• threatened that his mother would be sexually assaulted
• lifted off ground by arms while they were bound behind his back (after which a medical officer opined that shoulders might be dislocated)

(Crosby’s service in the U.S. Naval reserve is not related to her civilian work with victims of torture and, in an email, she made clear that her statements on torture and Nashiri’s case do not represent the Navy or the Department of Defense.)

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed senators that he was fast-tracking the vote in an executive session.

“If confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; the President be immediately notified of the Senate’s action, that no further motions be in order, and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record,” read an internal email obtained by The Intercept sent to Democratic staffers.

“Today we’re seeing what amounts to a secret confirmation,” Wyden said. He told Intercepted: “I’m worried that if you have a proceeding like this, a nominee confirmed this way with zero meaningful declassification, this is not going to be the last secret confirmation. You will see other nominees coming up, and their record will be covered up as well.”

Wyden blasted the CIA and Haspel for refusing to grant the Senate full access to Haspel’s record and choosing instead to provide carefully declassified information intended to burnish Haspel’s image.

“I want the American people to know that the agency is covering up her background. They’re covering it up because they’re trying to prevent what I think is the threshold issue of accountability … because if the American people knew what I know, I believe the Senate would have no choice but to reject her confirmation,” he said, pointing out that as acting director, Haspel is in charge of what the senators see and don’t see about her record. “She started with an enormous institutional advantage — I don’t know of a similar instance where the nominee gets to decide what is declassified about her and what isn’t.”

In a statement provided to The Intercept, Yasmine Taeb, senior policy counsel at the Center for Victims of Torture, said,

“It’s outrageous that Republican leadership is fast tracking this vote. The Senate cannot fulfill its constitutional ‘advice and consent’ responsibilities when the Senate lacks meaningful access to all the documents relevant to this nomination, and when the public — whose job it is to hold their elected representatives accountable — remains largely in the dark.”

Senators have also asked for more detailed information on Haspel’s role in the destruction of 92 video recordings of “enhanced interrogations” conducted in Thailand.

In a May 7 briefing to Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, also obtained by The Intercept, Crosby asserted that during Nashiri’s torture “unauthorized techniques were always used with authorized techniques.” Crosby stated that she could not discuss these “unauthorized techniques” because they remain classified. She cited a public statement from one of the CIA contractors who developed the enhanced interrogation program, psychologist James Mitchell, who said he witnessed an interrogator “dousing Nashiri with cold water while using a stiff, bristled brush to scrub his ass and balls and then his mouth and then blowing cigar smoke in his face until he became nauseous.” She offered to brief senators with appropriate security clearances on other classified unauthorized techniques.

“The bottom line on the Haspel nomination,” said Wyden, “is that the vast amount of information about her background could be declassified without compromising sources and methods, and that really does a disservice to the American people.”

Crosby told Senate staffers that the CIA’s “methodology consisted of strategic assaults — multiple traumas inflicted simultaneously, as well as consecutively, in a manner designed to instill terror and maximize harm in the prisoners.” The interrogation program, she stated, showed that “torture is not just a crime of physical violence, but a way of destroying someone’s humanity.” Crosby added:

“It is important to note that the barbarity of the torture methods used were shrouded and concealed in sterile euphemisms.”

In the briefing, Crosby described the torture in graphic, albeit unclassified, terms:

The terror of being kept naked in pitch-black, shackled to the ceiling while music blared, covered in urine and feces while insects crawled on their bodies, in dank cells that were freezing cold or unbearably hot. The horrific conditions in between interrogations were in some cases as bad as the interrogations. These torture methods were inflicted for hours and days, for weeks at a time, over the course of years. The men became disoriented with no sense of when the abuse would stop. Some of the men wished for death.

She concluded her briefing:

“The devastating human cost to this torture program cannot be overstated. Unfortunately, this toll is largely hidden due to ongoing secrecy and control that the CIA exercises. This is what I can say due to security restrictions.”

Crosby, who is currently at the Guantánamo prison examining Nashiri, told The Intercept that she could not offer further details because they are classified and, for the same reason, cannot speak about Haspel’s specific role in Nashiri’s torture. However, a brief prepared by Crosby’s organization, Physicians for Human Rights, asserts:

The CIA site in Thailand formed the blueprint for the rest of the CIA torture program. After her assignment there, Haspel continued to hold senior operational roles in the program, where presumably she would have been in a position to know about other abuses at other sites. Moreover, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the program and worked to protect it from criticism. This included drafting a cable ordering the shredding of videotapes depicting torture sessions, despite a court order staying their destruction. This act of cover-up should have led to Haspel’s dismissal – and should most certainly disqualify her from the role of leading the CIA.

On Monday, The Intercept reported that a senior Warner adviser wrote an email to Democrats on the Intelligence Committee informing them that a classified memo compiled by the committee’s minority staff and aimed at examining Haspel’s full involvement with torture and destruction of evidence was removed from the Senate. It was supposed to be housed in a secure facility inside Congress, so senators and their staff could read it before voting on Haspel’s nomination.

That memo, according to Democratic sources, provided classified details on Haspel’s role in torture, the destruction of evidence, and her tenure more broadly. The memo was based in part on the investigation conducted by U.S. attorney and special prosecutor John Durham into CIA activities following the September 11 attacks. On the eve of the committee vote on her confirmation, that memo was moved out of the U.S. Congress and Warner’s office said senators needed to ask his office in order to arrange to see it. Democratic sources have told The Intercept that few senators have read the classified memo.

On Wednesday, 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions requesting that he provide the “Durham report” to the committee, saying that it falls under its jurisdiction over “compliance with laws against torture, as well as potential violations of the Freedom of Information Act.”

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Following May 17 and 18 trade talks in Washington, a joint statement said the following:

“To meet the growing consumption needs of the Chinese people and the need for high-quality economic development, China will significantly increase purchases of United States goods and services. This will help support growth and employment in the United States.”

“There was a consensus on taking effective measures to substantially reduce the United States’ trade deficit in goods with China.”

Lead Beijing trade negotiator/Vice Premier Liu He said it’ll take time to resolve differences between both countries. In 2017, China’s trade surplus with America was a record-high $375 billion.

The devil is in the details on what was agreed on – to be discussed in further talks. Nor was anything said about Trump’s announced tariffs on Chinese imports.

Beijing agreed to increase purchases of US agricultural and energy products – insisting “the expansion of US imports must meet the urgent needs of its country’s economic and social development,” according to China’s Global Times (GT), adding:

“China believes that in order to reduce the US trade deficit, the US should further open its domestic market to Chinese buyers.” Beijing wants access to US high-tech products.

GT called this issue a key bilateral trade sticking dispute, certain US products off-limits to Chinese buyers. Beijing wants this policy ended.

Both countries agreed to increase trade in manufactured goods and services, as well as encourage “two-way investment.”

They agreed to cooperate in protecting intellectual property, along with maintaining high-level contacts to resolve trade disputes.

They vowed to avoid a trade war. China’s delegation was led by Vice Premier Liu He, Washington represented by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

According to analyst Suisheng Zhao,

China won’t “offer a $200 billion cut in the trade deficit in the near future. This is a much more long-term effort.”

“Both sides want to reach some kind of deal. It’s just that each side is trying to push the other side to make more concessions.”

“(T)here’s no quick solution” to bilateral differences on trade. It’s unclear when further talks will be held.

Alliance for American Manufacturing president Scott Paul expressed disappointment, saying talks didn’t achieve a bilateral playing field, adding:

“Sometimes it’s better to walk away from the negotiating table to reinforce the point to China that our resolve is strong. We need more details, but I’m not encouraged by the direction these talks are headed.”

China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the reported claim that Liu offered to cut the trade surplus with America by $200 billion, adding talks continue.

For now, it appears a trade war is averted. Whether consensus can be reached on key sticking points could prove another matter entirely. Bilateral differences are far from resolved.

*

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

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The Dispossession of Canada’s First Nations and the Kinder Morgan Pipeline

By Kim Petersen, May 20, 2018

In Canada, the American pipeline conglomerate Kinder Morgan desires to multiply the amount of fossil fuel carried from the province of Alberta to the British Columbia harbor city of Vancouver. Many First Nations and a multitude of British Columbians are against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain project.

Venezuela’s Highly Unusual Presidential Election

By Gregory Wilpert, May 20, 2018

Regardless of who wins, however, Venezuela’s future remains extremely uncertain. US efforts at radical regime change – targeting not just the presidency, but all state institutions – will make governing the country difficult no matter who wins. Already the US, and under its pressure almost all other conservative governments in the region, has pledged not to recognize the result. The pre-emptive non-recognition of an election, despite the use of one of the world’s most secure voting systems, is completely unprecedented in Latin American history.

The Pentagon Can’t Account for $21 Trillion (That’s Not a Typo)

By Lee Camp, May 20, 2018

But the 21 trillion number comes from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General—the OIG. Although, as Forbes pointed out, “after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG’s webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported “accounting adjustments,” was mysteriously taken down.”

Will Trump’s Pyrrhic Victory End with America’s Role as Global Bully?

By Philip Giraldi, May 20, 2018

Iran’s hopes that Europe will develop a spine and will reject the American overtures, joined by China and Russia, is perhaps too optimistic as banks will be reluctant to lend money for Iranian projects and foreign companies will be unlikely to risk entering into anything but very short-term contracts with the Iranian government for much needed infrastructure improvement.

Video: Israel, 200 Nuclear Weapons Targeted against Iran

By Manlio Dinucci, May 19, 2018

For over fifty years, Israel has been producing nuclear weapons at the Dimona plant, built with the help mainly of France and the United States. It is not subject to inspections because Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, does not adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed fifty years ago.

The Kiev Regime: Derogation of Freedoms of Speech

By Mark Taliano, May 19, 2018

On Tuesday, May 15, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) raided the RIA Novosti news agency’s Kiev offices and detained the outlet’s local bureau chief, Kirill Vyshinsky, ostensibly for acts of “treason.”

Serbs, Listen Up! Here’s Why Russia’s Getting Chummy with Croatia

By Andrew Korybko, May 19, 2018

Without a doubt, Russia is reaching out to Croatia in an unprecedented way that’s bound to make some Serbs feel a little surprised since they can’t imagine Russia ever offering them literal billions like Ambassador Azimov just did with Zagreb and then assuring them that Moscow could do more for their country than the US and the EU put together. Russia is undoubtedly Serbia’s top strategic partner and enjoys widespread and sincere love within the Balkan country’s society, but Serbs are forgiven for wondering what’s really going on nowadays between Russia and Croatia.

The American Century, so triumphantly proclaimed in a 1941 Life magazine editorial by US establishment insider Henry Luce, was built on the control of oil and on an endless succession of wars for that control of global oil. Now, ironically, with the illegal and unilateral cancellation of the Iranian nuclear agreement by the US President, oil may be set to play a key, if unintended, role in the downfall of the global hegemony of that same American Century.

Each element of various countries’ recent and increasing steps to get away from dollar dependency, in and of itself is insufficient to end the domination of the US dollar through Washington’s ability to force other countries to buy or sell their oil only in dollars. Yet each unilateral provocation and sanction action by Washington forces other countries to find solutions only four years ago not deemed possible or practical.

Since the 1973 oil price shock following the Yom Kippur War, Washington and Wall Street have moved to ensure that OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, would sell its oil only in US dollars. That insured that demand for the US currency could be more or less independent of the internal state of the US economy or of the Government debt or deficits. That system, dubbed petrodollar recycling by Henry Kissinger and others at the time, was a vital underpinning of US global ability to project its power at the same time it allowed its major corporations to walk away from national domestic taxes and investment, in the process of out-sourcing to places like China or Mexico, Ireland or even Russia. Were a significant group of nations to abandon the dollar and turn to other currencies or even barter at this point, it could start a chain-reaction of events that would lead to sharp US interest rate increases and a new US financial crisis that would be far uglier than that a decade ago.

US Sanction Mania

Ever since September 11, 2001 the US Government has been engaged in a process of transforming its use of financial sanctions, supposedly against financing of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, into a central weapon of warfare in defense of the American Century. The latest decision of the US Treasury to impose radical new forms of targeted sanctions on Russia, which not only ban American citizens from doing business with them, but also threatens sanctions on non-US citizens doing such business, is now being followed by re-imposition of draconian new US sanctions on Iran.

The Trump Administration, unilaterally withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, has announced that other countries trading Iran oil must wind down that trade by November or face sanctions themselves, so-called secondary sanctions. The US Treasury is also targeting vital international reinsurance companies or foreign banks that might be involved in Iran oil trade. The latest Iran sanctions use as justification the Section 1245 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.

What the unwarranted US move is doing is forcing key nations including China, Russia and Iran itself, along possibly with the EU, to distance themselves from the dollar as never to date.

Chinese Yuan Oil Trade

In March this year China launched a yuan-based contract for oil futures. Futures are a key component of today’s global oil trading. It is the first oil futures contract not in US dollars. Until the new Iran US sanctions, Washington regarded it as little than a nuisance that would take years if ever to gain serious acceptance. Now the US effort to block Iran from dollar sales of its oil might give a huge boost to Shanghai’s oil futures, and advance acceptance of what some call a petro-yuan.

China is by far Iran’s largest customer for its oil, importing some 650,000 barrels daily of the recent total export by Iran around 2.5 million barrels a day. India is second largest with around 500,000 a day of import. South Korea is third with 313,000 bpd and Turkey fourth at 165,000, according to a recent report by Bloomberg. The likelihood that Iran, which has recently expressed desire to be independent of the dollar, would sell its oil to China in Chinese yuan, is extremely high. If China were to make yuan sales a precondition of continued buying of Iran oil, saving the cost of dollar exchange, it would also significantly increase use of the Chinese renminbi yuan in global trade at expense of the dollar.

Iran is also a key strategic partner in China’s Belt Road Initiative, its multi-trillion dollar Eurasian infrastructure project. Following the latest US sanctions, on reports that France’s Total oil major may be forced to sell its major share in Iran’s huge South Pars natural gas field, a Chinese state energy industry source stated that China’s giant CNPC oil group is prepared to take over the French share. Currently Total holds 50.1% and CNPC 30% with Iran’s state oil company 19.9%. Trump’s National Security Council head, John Bolton, a long-standing neoconservative warhawk who has earlier advocated going to war against Iran, has stated that EU firms would face US sanctions if they continued to work with the Iranian government.

Further indication of growing China-Iran economic ties, on May 10, China launched a direct overland rail service connecting its Inner Mongolia from Bayannur some 8,000 kilometers across Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Teheran. Freight travel time is estimated at 14 days, some 20 days less than ocean freight time.

Russia Moves

A second significant business partner for Iran, Russia, though plagued itself by US sanctions, has engaged in numerous business agreements in Iran following the 2014 Iran Nuclear Agreement and lifting of sanctions. Russia’s Putin has explicitly declared Russia’s desire to become independent of the US dollar for security reasons related to sanction vulnerability. In that regard, bilateral Russia-Iran trade has been on a barter non-dollar basis for many products since November 2017.

Further, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was in Moscow on May 14 to discuss with Russia’s Lavrov the future of the Russian nuclear power project agreement and both sides pledged to continue economic cooperation. Several Russian oil companies are already engaged in Iran projects.

Trade between Russia and China is also moving out of the dollar, even prior to the latest foolish US rejection of the Iran agreement. Currently China is Russia’s largest trade partner with 17% share, double that between Russia and Germany, number two. Further reduction in Dollar trade between the two is likely to increase. At the April 25 meeting in Shanghai of the Valdai Discussion Club, Zhou Liqun, chairman of the Union of Chinese Entrepreneurs in Russia declared that the two Eurasian countries should increasingly get away from the dollar in their bilateral trade. He stated,

“The leaders of the two countries should think over improving relations, especially in financial cooperation. Why make payments with foreign currency? Why dollar? Why euro? They can be made directly in the yuan and the ruble,” he told a Russian state TV.

Even before latest Russian and Iran sanctions from Washington Russia and China have been carefully moving out of the dollar in their bilateral trade. Russia in late 2016 established an oil futures contract traded on the St. Petersburg Exchange (SPBEX) using its ruble to price Russian Urals oil futures paralleling the Shanghai petro-yuan futures.

This year bilateral Sino-Russia trade is estimated to reach US $100 billion, after increasing some 31% in 2017. The banks and companies of the two leading Eurasian countries are carefully laying the foundations to be independent of the dollar and, thereby, of vulnerability to dollar sanctions, the diabolical advantage of Washington having the world reserve currency.

In 2017 already nine percent of Russia goods to China were made in rubles; Russian companies paid 15 percent of Chinese imports in the renminbi. Those direct ruble and renminbi payments bypass risks of dollar or Euro currencies where NATO sanctions are increasingly a factor. Further insulating the two Eurasian countries from US financial warfare and sanctions, those payments can be made independent of the EU’s SWIFT interbank payments system by using the established China International Payments System (CIPS). Already over 170 Russian banks and brokers across Russia are trading yuan at the Moscow Exchange where China’s large state banks such as the Bank of China, ICBC, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China are represented. The ruble-yuan exchange rate is calculated without the participation of the US dollar.

Will EU Follow?

In recent days there has also been reports that the European Union is looking into possibilities of trading Iran oil in euros rather than the dollar as they have to date. They have condemned the Trump unilateral break with the Iran nuclear agreement and are looking for ways to preserve trade in Iranian oil as well as major aircraft and other technology contracts threatened by the US. EU foreign policy head, Federica Mogherini, told press that the foreign ministers of the UK, France, Germany, and Iran will work on practical solutions in response to Washington’s move in the next few weeks. They reportedly plan to expand economic ties with Iran, including in the area of oil and gas supplies.

Were the EU to make such a move it would rock the foundations of the dollar system and with it, the US power projection. While it is unlikely at present, each move by Washington to damage EU economic interests as have manifestly taken place since 2014 in the Russian sanctions demanded by Washington, the prospects of a major tectonic shift in geopolitical alliances away from the Atlantic become more thinkable.

The role of the US dollar as leading world reserve currency is the cornerstone of Washington power along with its military power. Were that to undergo major diminution, it would weaken the ability of the Pentagon to wage wars for continued superpower dominance using other nations’ resources. The more the unbridled throwing out of US Treasury sanctions forces nations such as China, Iran Russia and potentially the EU to reduce dollar dependency the weaker the power of Washington to dominate other nations. At the heart of the process as for the past century is the fight for control of oil and the role of the dollar for that control.

*

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

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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

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

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

Featured image: Marcela Florido in her New York City Studio

Marcela Florido is a young woman visual artist who was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has been living and working in New York City for several years. At the time of this discussion she was working as an artist-in-residence on Lamu Island located off the coast of the East African nation of Kenya. 

***

Abayomi Azikiwe: What do you perceive as the connection between your work in Brazil, England, the United States and Kenya?

Marcela Florido: At some point in my practice, I realized that the landscapes I depict do not correspond to real space or time. I understand them, instead, as fabricated memories of all the places I’ve called home over the past 10 years. Influences and imagery from personal experience, history books, and mass media layer over one another in my work, each the trace of a larger narrative. Through imagination, then, I question how I inhabit my place-informed identity, as my “home” is constantly redefined.

Azikiwe: How does the racial and political situation in Brazil compare to the U.S?

Florido: During the 90s, Rio was a dangerous place; guns were part of the landscape. As a child, I had an intuitive sense of the violent tension that separated the people in our society, but it seemed like a solvable issue: I was sure the problem wasn’t about the color of our skin or about being Latinos (what does that even mean in your own country?). For my child-self, all we needed was a fair government to dissolve our problems, which I was sure were all caused by economic inequality.

Fast forward to my first days in New York when I was watching an art critique led by a young African American artist whose work addressed the murders of Black men in his home town. He made a point of saying that his work was not in direct dialogue with the western art-historical cannon. It was new and exciting for me to watch the audience, mostly famous white American critics, struggling to follow the conversation on those terms. At some point, I was asked by someone to share my opinion, but the artist replied faster than I could: “She is not part of the conversation. My work is about Black and white America, and she is Latina.”

After 10 years of living abroad, I firmly believe that the violence in Brazil is related to racial issues — and I am deeply interested in interrogating how discourse on identity politics has empowered minority communities in the U.S., while still reinforcing culturally-constructed labels such as “Latina.” It is certainly exciting to see more non-white artists, especially non-white female artists, showing their work in major institutions and investigating the particularities of their experience through art. However, I have also felt reduced to those labels — and I still don’t know what being “Latina” really means.

Azikiwe: In which ways does this impact your creative impulses?

Florido: My work is a product of these contradictory feelings and confusing experiences. Through painting, I establish my own language for thoughts, so I can narrate the experiences that have been carved into my memory and my imagination. Art is a way I can play with, and therefore take ownership of, my femininity, sexuality, and body. Through painting, I liberate my sense of self from the restrictive notions of gender, race, and identity that surround me.

Azikiwe: What constraints, if any, do the influence of racially polarized societies such as Brazil and the U.S impose on your ability to reach broad audiences?

Florido: Artists who show their work internationally are always at risk of being misunderstood. I think that, in the U.S., the contemporary art scene has been so infused with discourses of identity politics that every foreign artist who articulates their subjective bodily experiences is at risk of having their work framed in a reductive manner as being simply about ‘identity’. I feel like I am constantly dodging being pigeonholed into categories such as ‘‘Feminist Brazilian Art,” or, more broadly, “Contemporary Latin American Art.”

I’ve seen so many Brazilian peers sticking to conservative arts practices, such as Geometric abstraction. It seems to me as if they linger in these aesthetics to avoid being constantly exoticized by international audiences — they articulate their own subjectivity without portraying bodies, and in that way avoid opening up their work to the complexes of identity and identification. Personally, I also find this approach restrictive, over-cautious, and, even worse, “race- or identity-blind.

It excites me to explore the conventions of the visual languages artists have developed throughout history, but I am primarily preoccupied with finding freedom within these languages. Art is not all about linguistics: there is something that goes beyond the verbal and allows for ambiguity and fluidity. For me, this tension between limits and freedom is what brings me back to the studio everyday.

Azikiwe: How did you get the opportunity to travel and work in Kenya?

Florido: Tilleard Projects is an art residency that invites artists living in New York to work in the island of Lamu, which lies off the Kenyan coast, for a month. I had been recommended to Caroline Tilleard, the founder of the project, by one of the previous residents, and Caroline thought my work would fit well with that of the two artists who were going to be part of the project in March. She was right: we were a perfect group.

Azikiwe: How conducive is the social atmosphere in Kenya for creative artists?

Florido: As a foreign artist, working in Lamu, which is a UNESCO World Heritage listed site, was truly an amazing and fruitful work experience. The restriction of territory meant that I could explore the island and feel like I was part of the community and the landscape. However, in my studio I would again feel removed, a mere observer. In my daily wanderings, I would almost only see and interact with men. In this predominately Muslim population, they’re the ones working in the town as craftspeople, fisherman and driving the boats at the beach. I cannot imagine what it would be like for a woman from Lamu’s community to be working as an independent artist and pushing against the accepted notions of authority, freedom, gender, and politics.

Marcela Florido on Lamu Island in Kenya with fellow artists during May 2018

Over dinner, the Nairobi-based artist Elias Mungora spoke at length about the contemporary art scene in Kenya and the important role of artist collectives within that community. According to him, it is because of these artist-led efforts that younger female Kenyan artists have been able to show their work and participate in the larger public conversation about art. But he was concerned about the level of interest in Nairobi, explaining that, for many different reasons, locals were still hesitant to go to art openings.

Our conversation made me think about New York’s atmosphere for female artists. During my first year in the city I felt artistically and creatively isolated not only from what was being shown in the mainstream galleries but also from the conversations I was having in some of my peers’ studios. Everyone seemed to have such different concerns, and New York as a whole seemed more like an art scene than an art community. It was then that I founded the artist collective Grupo<> with four other female artists from Latin America. Our aim was to generate critical dialogue about the complexities of art-making, while challenging preconceptions based on gender, geography and skin color. Our projects were grounded by the concerns of artists whose practices are interwoven with the history of Latin America. Grupo<> was a beautiful way of carving out a space in NY where we could have the kinds of conversation that we felt were being silenced by the mainstream art gallery system, and to give us strength to continue in our research.

Azikiwe: What is the political atmosphere now in Kenya which underwent considerable turmoil during the election period of 2017?

Florido: Political messages and graffiti are still visible on the walls of the old town of Shela and Lamu, but the island felt very safe and calm. Through conversations with local friends, I got the sense that during election periods tension and violence tends to rise significantly, so much that many people temporarily leave the country. Throughout history, Kenya (and Lamu in particular) has been shared by several different tribes, and visited by Bantu, Arab, Persian, Indian, Chinese and European traders, all of whom left , and continue to leave, their mark. I was amazed by how often politics were discussed; most people I encountered seemed to have an opinion on the current government and a strong grasp of the political history of the country – and everyone agreed that corruption was a major issue.

Azikiwe: In what way have other artists and the general public responded to your work in Kenya?

Florido: It was great to see local friends casually walking into the studio, even when I was not there, to look at the work and spend time with it. I was very happy with their reaction – which seemed one of curiosity for the stories that I was narrating.

Marcela Florido art work on display on Lamu Island in Kenya

While my earlier work has focused on the allegorical nature of paintings, or even on the discipline of painting, the work that I made in Lamu seemed more personal. In the large-scale drawing Mal-criação, two female figures pose together in a garden for what could be a family photograph; while the younger woman sits on the front, the older woman fades in the background. I also found myself depicting a lushness of atmosphere, that I’d never allow myself in NY – probably in the previously-mentioned attempt at dodging being pigeon-holed. Those labels just don’t apply in Kenya to the same degree, just like they don’t apply to the same degree in Brazil. But most importantly, what made me really happy about working in Kenya was the intimacy I felt between the viewers and my work.

Azikiwe: Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses.

Florido: Thank you so much for giving me the platform to share some thoughts.

*

Marcela Florido is a young woman visual artist who was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has been living and working in New York City for several years. From Yale School of Art, she earned a MFA in the Painting Department, New Haven, USA. Her BFA was received from Slade School of Art, London, UK. She also studied at the Foundation in Art and Design, Central Saint Martins, London, UK as well as receiving a Professional Degree in Classical Ballet, Ballet DalalAschar, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

Featured image: Then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during a 2008 visit to Kosovo with U.S. Army troops on foot patrol in the town of Gnjilane. (The U.S. Army / CC BY 2.0)

Twenty-one trillion dollars.

The Pentagon’s own numbers show that it can’t account for $21 trillion. Yes, I mean trillion with a “T.” And this could change everything.

But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

There are certain things the human mind is not meant to do. Our complex brains cannot view the world in infrared, cannot spell words backward during orgasm and cannot really grasp numbers over a few thousand. A few thousand, we can feel and conceptualize. We’ve all been in stadiums with several thousand people. We have an idea of what that looks like (and how sticky the floor gets).

But when we get into the millions, we lose it. It becomes a fog of nonsense. Visualizing it feels like trying to hug a memory. We may know what $1 million can buy (and we may want that thing), but you probably don’t know how tall a stack of a million $1 bills is. You probably don’t know how long it takes a minimum-wage employee to make $1 million.

That’s why trying to understand—truly understand—that the Pentagon spent 21 trillion unaccounted-for dollars between 1998 and 2015 washes over us like your mother telling you that your third cousin you met twice is getting divorced. It seems vaguely upsetting, but you forget about it 15 seconds later because … what else is there to do?

Twenty-one trillion.

But let’s get back to the beginning. A couple of years ago, Mark Skidmore, an economics professor, heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, say that the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General had found $6.5 trillion worth of unaccounted-for spending in 2015. Skidmore, being an economics professor, thought something like, “She means $6.5 billion. Not trillion. Because trillion would mean the Pentagon couldn’t account for more money than the gross domestic product of the whole United Kingdom. But still, $6.5 billion of unaccounted-for money is a crazy amount.”

So he went and looked at the inspector general’s report, and he found something interesting: It was trillion! It was fucking $6.5 trillion in 2015 of unaccounted-for spending! And I’m sorry for the cursing, but the word “trillion” is legally obligated to be prefaced with “fucking.” It is indeed way more than the U.K.’s GDP.

Skidmore did a little more digging. As Forbes reported in December 2017,

“[He] and Catherine Austin Fitts … conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.”

Let’s stop and take a second to conceive how much $21 trillion is (which you can’t because our brains short-circuit, but we’ll try anyway).

1. The amount of money supposedly in the stock market is $30 trillion.

2. The GDP of the United States is $18.6 trillion.

3. Picture a stack of money. Now imagine that that stack of dollars is all $1,000 bills. Each bill says “$1,000” on it. How high do you imagine that stack of dollars would be if it were $1 trillion. It would be 63 miles high.

4. Imagine you make $40,000 a year. How long would it take you to make $1 trillion? Well, don’t sign up for this task, because it would take you 25 million years (which sounds like a long time, but I hear that the last 10 million really fly by because you already know your way around the office, where the coffee machine is, etc.).

The human brain is not meant to think about a trillion dollars.

And it’s definitely not meant to think about the $21 trillion our Department of Defense can’t account for. These numbers sound bananas. They sound like something Alex Jones found tattooed on his backside by extraterrestrials.

But the 21 trillion number comes from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General—the OIG. Although, as Forbes pointed out, “after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG’s webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported “accounting adjustments,” was mysteriously taken down.”

Luckily, people had already grabbed copies of the report, which—for now—you can view here.

Here’s something else important from that Forbes article—which is one of the only mainstream media articles you can find on the largest theft in American history:

Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress.

That’s right. The expenses with no explanation were 54 times the actual budget allotted by Congress. Well, it’s good to see Congress is doing 1/54th of its job of overseeing military spending (that’s actually more than I thought Congress was doing). This would seem to mean that 98 percent of every dollar spent by the Army in 2015 was unconstitutional.

So, pray tell, what did the OIG say caused all this unaccounted-for spending that makes Jeff Bezos’ net worth look like that of a guy jingling a tin can on the street corner?

“[The July 2016 inspector general] report indicates that unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Department’s ‘failure to correct system deficiencies.’ ”

They blame trillions of dollars of mysterious spending on a “failure to correct system deficiencies”? That’s like me saying I had sex with 100,000 wild hairless aardvarks because I wasn’t looking where I was walking.

Twenty-one trillion.

Say it slowly to yourself.

At the end of the day, there are no justifiable explanations for this amount of unaccounted-for, unconstitutional spending. Right now, the Pentagon is being audited for the first time ever, and it’s taking 2,400 auditors to do it. I’m not holding my breath that they’ll actually be allowed to get to the bottom of this.

But if the American people truly understood this number, it would change both the country and the world. It means that the dollar is sprinting down a path toward worthless. If the Pentagon is hiding spending that dwarfs the amount of tax dollars coming in to the federal government, then it’s clear the government is printing however much it wants and thinking there are no consequences. Once these trillions are considered, our fiat currency has even less meaning than it already does, and it’s only a matter of time before inflation runs wild.

It also means that any time our government says it “doesn’t have money” for a project, it’s laughable. It can clearly “create” as much as it wants for bombing and death. This would explain how Donald Trump’s military can drop well over 100 bombs a day that cost well north of $1 million each.

So why can’t our government also “create” endless money for health care, education, the homeless, veterans benefits and the elderly, to make all parking free and to pay the Rolling Stones to play stoop-front shows in my neighborhood? (I’m sure the Rolling Stones are expensive, but surely a trillion dollars could cover a couple of songs.)

Obviously, our government could do those things, but it chooses not to. Earlier this month, Louisiana sent eviction notices to 30,000 elderly people on Medicaid to kick them out of their nursing homes. Yes, a country that can vomit trillions of dollars down a black hole marked “Military” can’t find the money to take care of our poor elderly. It’s a repulsive joke.

Twenty-one trillion.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke about how no one knows where the money is flying in the Pentagon. In a barely reported speech in 2011, he said,

“My staff and I learned that it was nearly impossible to get accurate information and answers to questions such as, ‘How much money did you spend?’ and ‘How many people do you have?’ ”

They can’t even find out how many people work for a specific department?

Note for anyone looking for a job: Just show up at the Pentagon and tell them you work there. It doesn’t seem like they’d have much luck proving you don’t.

For more on this story, check out David DeGraw’s excellent reporting at ChangeMaker.media, because the mainstream corporate media are mouthpieces for the weapons industry. They are friends with benefits of the military-industrial complex. I have seen basically nothing from the mainstream corporate media concerning this mysterious $21 trillion. I missed the time when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said that the money we dump into war and death—either the accounted-for money or the secretive trillions—could end world hunger and poverty many times over. There’s no reason anybody needs to be starving or hungry or unsheltered on this planet, but our government seems hellbent on proving that it stands for nothing but profiting off death and misery. And our media desperately want to show they stand for nothing but propping up our morally bankrupt empire.

When the media aren’t actively promoting war, they’re filling the airwaves with shit, so the entire country can’t even hear itself think. Our whole mindscape is filled to the brim with nonsense and vacant celebrity idiocy. Then, while no one is looking, the largest theft humankind has ever seen is going on behind our backs—covered up under the guise of “national security.”

Twenty-one trillion.

Don’t forget.

*

Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America. 

How did a person who should be in the criminal dock both in the US and in the International Criminal Court for running a torture prison get appointed Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency? What is all the Washington talk about defending human rights when a torturer is put in charge of covert operations?

Milosovic, the Serbia leader who tried to defend his country from Washington’s aggression, was sent by Washington to the Hague war crimes tribunal or some such place that only tries victims of Washington’s aggression. He died in prison, some say he was poisoned. The court ended up clearing him of the faked American charges. But little good that did a dead man.

But now Washington has a real criminal, a real person who has committed without any doubt “crimes against humanity” confirmed by the US Senate as CIA director. That tells us a lot about the hypocrisy, double standards, and utter mendacity of the government in Washington.

As some Republicans voted against the torturer in chief, it was the Democrats that put a torturer at the head of the CIA.

Listen to their excuses:

West Virginia’s Joe Manchin said: Haspel prioritizes the safety of America. She is “an unbelievable public servant.”

North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp said that Trump had picked the directer best suited to the job. Heidi said she would make sure that Congress conducts oversight of Haspel’s job, an ambivalent statement if the job is torture, which seems to be enshrined in US practices.

Indiana’s Senator Joe Donnelly said that he believed Haspel “has learned from the past, and that the CIA under her leadership can help our country confront serious international threats and challenges.”

What threats? What challenges? This is blah-blah talk. Think about it for a minute. Imagine a criminal before the judge saying “I have learned from my past crimes and am now fit to be an upstanding citizen who can help our country.”

Florida’s Bill Nelson covered his collapse as a moral person by meeting with Haspel personally and arriving at the conclusion that she was fit to serve.

According to Newsweek these four US Democratic senators face tough re-elections and voted to clear Haspel in order to appease the Trump deplorables. In other words, these four senators think that the deplorables, who voted for Trump because he said he was for peace in Syria and with Russia and was against the US being policeman of the world, want to have a torturer confirmed as CIA director. The Democrats voted for a torturer because they are afraid of Trump voters. If Trump voters want a torturer in office, the senators would be honor bound to stand up to the Trump voters.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D, NH) said that she believes Haspel that she won’t torture again.

“Your honor,” said the murderer in the dock, “I promise I won’t murder again. Just give me this plumb appointment as chief of police.”

Virginia’s Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put Haspel in the job with his assurance that she would stand up to Trump if he ordered her to torture. In other words, Warner associates Trump with torture, not Haspel who has actually tortured.

Please, let us not hear again about America liberating other nations and defending human rights, or having a moral conscience, or being a light unto the world.

*

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

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

“Thinking that you actually know a public figure – in the intimate, best-friend kind of way – is not healthy.” – Katie Stow, Harper’s Bazaar, Oct 17, 2017.

The citizenry of the US Republic might well insist on the sanctity of its laws, a prided exceptionalism and the genius that is the Constitution, but there is no provision as to how to combat a known, recurring sickness: royal watching and monarchical mania.  The House of Windsor continues to pull people out of beds and from their tasks with hypnotic appeal, most notably during a wedding occasion.

The nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seem the stuff of a regressive nightmare, a progressive’s conversion to the forces of reaction and misplaced adoration.  As a social statement, it is conservative and defiantly anti-modern.  Nevertheless, networks such as CNN insist that the Hollywood actress is the quintessential opposite: a feminist figure, a modern statement, a potential reformer. The network reported her own remarks of being “proud to be a woman and a feminist” and her determination to make a “bold feminist statement” in walking down the aisle unchaperoned.

The ceremony itself tried to buck the musty, staid manner typical of such occasions.  At times, it seemed that an evangelical stir combined with gospel theatrics would grip the gathering and send it into hysterics.

Bishop Michael Curry of Chicago did his best to take the occasion by the throat, doing a merry zigzag between the “redemptive power of love” (a la Martin Luther King), Jesus not getting “an honorary doctorate for dying” and various lusty references to Promethean fire:

“There was no Bronze Age without fire, no Iron Age without fire, no Industrial Revolution without fire.”

While the heavy American presence at the Harry-Markle show might explain the level of interest back in the US, the fascination from across the Atlantic pond has been a lingering one.  Deposing tyrannical monarchy and creating a republic did not banish the associated romanticism of having hereditary rulers – and inbred ones at that.

 “The American people are quite fond of the royal family,” explained former President Barack Obama to Prince Charles at a meeting in 2015.  “They like them much better than their own politicians.”

Research justifying monarchist mania has been sought with vigour, and inevitably, psychologists have been pressed on the issue. Tara Emrani’s work, done from her perspective as a licensed clinical psychologist, gives a sound tick of approval to the British royal family in finding “a way to stay relevant and present in the media.”  The portrayal of “the family is very relevant to the people in that they have a family, they do normal stuff, they go to normal places, although their royal.”

Such are the delusions of perceived normality, but Emrani wishes to run on it.

“The Duchess [Kate Middleton] recently talked about mental health and hunger and Prince Harry does a lot of charity work and things that people can admire, are inspiring, and feel relevant.”

Home grown substitutes have been sought.  The US Republic has had a lengthy string of dynastic rulers.  The Kennedys and Camelot was a very American attempt to seek the appropriated gloss of an indigenous royal family, to anoint this genetic compound with aristocratic credentials.  It also had the elements of stage management and direction.  Royal weddings serve to generate fantasy and hope, that unenviable and sinister nonsense that little girls can eventually grow up to marry a prince.

The prince who meets the commoner, albeit one birthed in the Hollywood dream bubble, has been the logical extension of that other “commoner” myth sired from the legend of Princess Diana.  It was soon forgotten that Diana was herself an aristocrat rather than being the People’s Princess as designated by the New Labour of Tony Blair.  The response to her death had a certain pathological, even totalitarian quality to it, leading the late Christopher Hitchens to remark that Britain had become, for a time, a “one-party state”.

The tension between modern trends and conservative institutionalism was only artificially demonstrated at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.  Black spiritualism tagged on to exaggerated feminist values mixed with traditional forms certainly gave an impression of difference, but these were daubs rather than extensive splashes.

The trick worked for some, not least the selection of Curry as wedding pastor, “an important move,” assessed Jonah Waterhouse, “as Meghan Markle is the first notable African American member of the British royal family.”  Markle, it has already been forgotten, is not there to inflict change upon the institution of monarchy, but be changed by it.

Between the monarchy and Hollywood lie certain similarities, and the modern British monarchy is very mindful of the power of image, the strength of a manufactured product.  Hilary Mantel’s controversial but entirely sensible summation of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, as “becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung” was apt if slightly cruel.  She had been “a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore.”

The most striking, and somewhat damnable feature of such confections as took place on Saturday is a certain genius on the part of Queen Elizabeth II and company.  They have managed to seduce those of republican tendency, to drive them potty with the seduction of celebrity.  While she will be the last monarch of her type, the institution does not risk going asunder before any bomb throwing revolutionary, actual or metaphorical.  Dolls, and suitable rags, will continue being sought, and royal weddings will persist in enthralling.

*

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]

Imagine that a group of bandits entered your house without permission and booted you and your family members out. Afterwards the bandits continue to occupy the house, but they graciously allow you and your family to stay in the cellar. Would you accept such a state of affairs? Would you not want your house back in its entirety? And would you not want the usurpers evicted?

Now imagine that the usurpers had some dubious code of honor whereby if they made any alterations to the stolen abode that they must consult with the original home occupants. Moreover, if the displaced first occupants sought to legally challenge their dispossession or any alterations to their former domicile, the usurpers would graciously cover the legal expenses of the dispossessed original occupants from the largess of the goods befallen the usurpers through acts of dispossessing others. Of course, the legal proceeding is controlled by the usurpers and ruled according to usurpers’ law with judges appointed by the usurpers.

No intelligent person denies that the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America) were the original inhabitants. In fact, they precede the coming of Norsemen, Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and conquistadores by several millennia. Yet the Catholic Church of later seafarers decreed (in the papal bull Inter Caetera, 1493) that non-believers were savages and that their territory would belong to European monarchs. This was largely overturned by the papal bull Sublimis Deus in 1537.

One might have thought that humankind would have evolved morally such that the egregious crimes of centuries ago would not be perpetuated in the 21st century.

Nonetheless, at the very least, human morality wouldn’t devolve, would it?

**

In Canada, the American pipeline conglomerate Kinder Morgan desires to multiply the amount of fossil fuel carried from the province of Alberta to the British Columbia harbor city of Vancouver. Many First Nations and a multitude of British Columbians are against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain project.

While the NDP-Green Party coalition in BC is opposed to the pipeline project, the federal government has approved it. However, chicanery has been unveiled in the process that led to federal approval.

Investigative reporting by the National Observer revealed documents wherein the federal government had “instructed public servants to find a way to approve the project, even though the government was supposed to be consulting and accommodating First Nations at that time.” Consultation with First Nations is required by the constitution in Canada.

This filliped the Tseil-Waututh Nation, supported by at least four other First Nations (the Coldwater Indian Band, the Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc (SSN), the Squamish Nation, and the Upper Nicola Band), to file an extraordinary motion asking the Federal Court of Appeal to force the government to order the release of uncensored copies of federal documents cited in the National Observer investigation.

The federal government and Kinder Morgan reacted by demanding the Tseil-Waututh Nation pay for their legal fees for the delayed pipeline project.

BC is unceded territory. [1] First Nation oral histories tell of a colonial-settler control wrought over the landmass of the province by genocide. [2] Canadian courts have evaded the question of who has legal jurisdiction over the land. [3] As for the treaties, Andrea Bear Nicholas – a Maliseet from Nekotkok (Tobique First Nation) in New Brunswick, and a professor emeritus at St. Thomas University – pointed out that in the Maritime Provinces, most treaties were nation-to-nation agreements – peace agreements between the encroaching settlers and Original Peoples – not land treaties.

“When you add it all up, for about 90 per cent of Canada, even under the best possible scenario, there is no legal transfer of title from the Aboriginal inhabitants to the Crown,” said Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, an Onyota’a:ka (Oneida) and former Director of Native Studies at St. Thomas University in the audio documentary Hoping Against Hope? The Struggle Against Colonialism in Canada. [4]

Now the federal government which finances itself through the dispossession of First Nations is requiring the First Nations to pay for a legal determination in the court of the usurpers.

Informed people should not be surprised. One brave lawyer, a specialist in Indigenous sovereignty matters, Dr. Bruce Clark charges that the Canadian legal profession and the judiciary are complicit in misprision of treason, fraud, and genocide. [5]

*

Notes

1. Kerry Coast, The Colonial Present: The Rule of Ignorance and the Role of Law in British Columbia (Clarity Press and International Human Rights Association of American Minorities, 2013). See review. 

2. Tom Swanky, The Great Darkening: The True Story of Canada’s “War” of Extermination on the Pacific plus The Tsilhqot’in and other First Nations Resistance (Burnaby, BC: Dragon Heart Enterprises, 2012). See review. 

3. Bruce Clark, from his soon to be published book, Aboriginal Rights and Genocide (Theytus Books). 

4. The link is now dead for the audio series. See review. 

5. Bruce Clark, op cit.

Venezuela will hold its 24th electoral event in 20 years this Sunday, 20 May. The path to this election was perhaps one of the most convoluted and difficult of Venezuela’s now nearly 20-year Bolivarian Revolution.

First, there was a snap election in 2013, a mere five weeks after president Chávez died of cancer on 5 March. The opposition believed this was their best chance since 1998 to oust ‘Chavismo’ from power and so, when its candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, lost to Nicolas Maduro by a mere 1.5 per cent, they cried fraud and launched a wave of violent protests and riots that left at least nine dead.

The following year the opposition launched another wave of violent protests (known as ‘guarimbas’) that lasted about three months and left 43 people dead. This opposition tactic, which the opposition tried again in 2017, was immensely effective on an international level because every time it was applied, and people were killed (most of the time at the hands of the protesters themselves), the international perception of Venezuela – as mediated by international news outlets – was significantly worsened. It was thus only a small step to routinely begin to refer to Venezuela as a dictatorship, despite its more than annual electoral contests.

Meanwhile, following president Chávez’s death, Venezuela’s economic situation began to deteriorate significantly. The inflation rate rose from 21 per cent in 2012 to over 100 per cent in 2015 (and turned into hyper-inflation in 2018), basic consumer items and of food staples became increasingly difficult to purchase because of shortages, oil revenues dropped by two-thirds, from an estimated $77 billion in 2012 to $25 billion in 2016 – all of which gave the opposition additional reasons to launch ever-more uncompromising attacks on the government.

The reasons for the economic crisis are manifold, but its heart can be found in the confluence of: a fixed exchange rate, a concerted business sector effort to undermine the economy, declining oil prices, and – beginning in 2017 – US financial sanctions, all of which combined to create one of the worst economic crises in Venezuelan history.

Seeing its situation as increasingly precarious, the Maduro government decided to engage in a series of negotiations with the opposition, which the government of the Dominican Republic and Spain’s former prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero mediated. In the course of the negotiations there was a general agreement that Venezuela’s presidential election, which normally was scheduled to take place in October or November 2018, should be moved up to the first half of 2018.

At first, the 22nd of April was the agreed-upon date, but in the last minutes before the agreement was to be signed in late February, opposition representatives decided to withdraw. Exactly why they withdrew is not completely clear, but it seems quite plausible that the US government intervened and convinced the opposition not to sign the agreement.

Rodriguez Zapatero went out of his way to criticize the opposition’s last-minute withdrawal, stating,

‘I find it shocking that the document was not signed by the opposition representation. I do not agree with the circumstances and the reasons, but my duty is to defend the truth and my commitment is not to give up on the achievement of a historic commitment among Venezuelans.’

The Maduro government then announced that it would sign the agreement anyway and proceed with the 22 April presidential election, with or without the opposition. The opposition, in contrast, announced it would boycott the election.

At first, the only major opposition leader to break from this decision was Henri Falcon, who immediately announced his candidacy for the presidency. Eventually, Falcon and Maduro agreed to set a new date – 20 May – for the presidential election, to give more time for campaigning.

Henri Falcon has always been a bit of a ‘maverick’ politician. Originally, he was a staunch Chavez supporter and governor of Lara state, one of Venezuela’s more populous states. However, he broke from Chávez in 2010. Already before 2010 Flacon had been regarded with suspicion by many Chavistas, mainly for his somewhat pro-business stance and for his often lukewarm support of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) party. Eventually, in 2012, he joined the opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) and formed his own political party, Progressive Advance. In 2013 he even became Henrique Capriles’ campaign manager in the presidential election of that year.

Falcon’s break with the MUD for the 2018 presidential election has caused hardline opposition leaders to regard him very suspiciously. However, despite this, he is enjoying the support of many moderate opposition leaders, such as Claudio Fermin, a long-time Venezuelan politician, who is now Falcon’s campaign manager, and of Jesus Torrealba, the former chair of the MUD.

The MUD’s decision to boycott the election should be puzzling. This is the best opportunity since 1998 that the opposition has to defeat the Bolivarian Revolution. The economy is now in hyper-inflation territory, real wages have dropped dramatically, and shortages continue to cause problems, especially in the area of medicines. Under such circumstances it ought to be possible to defeat even the enormously popular Chavez himself, were he alive today.

So why is the MUD boycotting the election? The official explanation is that there are insufficient guarantees that there will be no fraud. Key opposition demands and the creation of a new National Electoral Council and the dropping of charges against several key opposition leaders. I will return to the issue of the safety of the vote a little later, but even if the fraud concern were legitimate, no election in history has been successfully challenged with a preemptive boycott instead of participating and subsequently proving fraud.

The only other plausible explanation for a preemptive boycott is that the opposition does not want to win ‘only’ the presidency. That is, it wants a radical break from the Bolivarian Revolution and the only way it can do that is to provoke a political and economic crisis that would lead to a coup or some other form of radical regime change. That is, Chavistas continue to dominate not only the Supreme Court, the National Electoral Council, the Attorney General’s office, but also the National Constituent Assembly, which is in charge of re-writing the constitution.

Under such circumstances governing from an opposition-controlled presidency, even under Venezuela’s somewhat presidential system, would be extremely difficult. Given that opposition leader Julio Borges and others are lobbying for ever tougher sanctions against Venezuela, it seems clear that the strategy is to force a complete collapse of the government and not to participate any longer in any democratic processes within Venezuela.

Those who know about Venezuela from mainstream media no doubt dismiss Venezuela’s electoral system as a sham. However, contrary to popular belief, Venezuela actually has one of the most transparent and fraud-proof election systems in the world. It developed such a system precisely because of the country’s pre-1998 experience with rampant fraud, which led to the development of an exceptionally secure voting system.

This is not the place to go into this in detail, but it is a dual balloting system, in which paper ballots and electronic ballots are both cast and compared against one another. Also, every step of the process, from the voter registry, to the voting machines, to the fingerprint scanners, to the tabulation systems are thoroughly audited by election observers from all political parties. All of this makes Venezuela’s voting system far more secure and fraud-proof than practically any other voting system in the world.

The main problem that opposition candidate Henri Falcon faces now is not the voting system, but the lack of institutional support. With all of the main opposition parties boycotting the vote (only three parties out of over 20 opposition parties are supporting his candidacy), he is having a hard time mobilizing supporters for rallies and for his campaign more generally. On top of it all, Falcon must convince opposition voters not to participate in the boycott. Maduro, on the other hand, has the formidable machinery of the PSUV at his disposal. The country’s severe economic crisis, though, evens the scales quite a bit.

Opinion polls have been all over the place in terms of who is ahead in this race. In the past Venezuelan opinion polls have always been extremely partisan, with pro-government polls reliably showing the government candidate ahead and opposition polls showing the opposition candidate ahead. However, usually in the week before the election the polling numbers of the two sides tended to converge. This time around, though, they have remained as far apart as ever before. Pro-government pollsters, such as the company Hinterlaces give Maduro a 17 point advantage. Opposition pollsters, such as Datanalisis, are giving Falcon an 11 point advantage over Maduro. The main reason for the uncertainty in polling is the boycott. It is extremely difficult to know how many voters will participate. Opposition polls say it will be no more than 35 per cent, while pro-government polls put the participation figure at 70 per cent. In the end, whether Falcon or Maduro will win will depend entirely on how many voters abstain.

Regardless of who wins, however, Venezuela’s future remains extremely uncertain. US efforts at radical regime change – targeting not just the presidency, but all state institutions – will make governing the country difficult no matter who wins. Already the US, and under its pressure almost all other conservative governments in the region, has pledged not to recognize the result. The pre-emptive non-recognition of an election, despite the use of one of the world’s most secure voting systems, is completely unprecedented in Latin American history.

If Maduro wins, the US will no doubt intensify sanctions, perhaps prohibiting the import of Venezuelan oil. If Falcon wins, he would also have to manage an extremely complicated situation, in which most state institutions remain in Chavista hands and in which the opposition and the US possibly refuse to recognize him as the legitimate president.

As president of the Second Republic of Venezuela, Simón Bolívar, explained in the early 19th century, the US thus continues to ‘plague [the] America[s] with misery in the name of liberty.’

*

Gregory Wilpert is author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government (Verso Books, 2007), co-founder of Venezuelanalysis.com, and currently Senior Producer at The Real News Network.

Israel massacred 60 Palestinians on Monday, including seven children, bringing to 101 the total number of Palestinians Israel has killed since Palestinians began the Great March on March 30. In that period, Israel has killed 11 Palestinian children, two journalists, one person on crutches and three persons with disabilities.

Monday’s casualties included 1,861 wounded, bringing total injuries inflicted by Israel to 6,938 people, including 3,615 with live fire. Israel is using bullets designed to expand inside the body, causing maximum, often permanent damage:

“The injuries sustained by patients will leave most with serious, long-term physical disabilities,” says Médecins Sans Frontières (Ha’aretz, 4/22/18).

On the 70th anniversary of Israel’s so-called “declaration of independence,” the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem—a city Israel claims as its own, despite what international law says on the matter—and Palestinians undertook unarmed protests in reaction to the move and as part of the Great Return March. Although to this point, the only Israeli casualty during the entire cycle of demonstrations has been one “lightly wounded” soldier, considerable space in coverage of the massacres is devoted to blaming Palestinians for their own slaughter.

NBC (5/14/18) mentions “what Palestinians refer to as their ‘right of return’”; actually, it’s what international law calls it, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights‘ proclamation that “everyone has the right…to return to his country.”

Two of the first three paragraphs in an NBC report (5/14/18) provided Israel’s rationalizations for its killing spree. The second sentence in the article says that the Israeli military

accused Hamas of “leading a terrorist operation under the cover of masses of people,” adding that “firebombs and explosive devices” as well as rocks were being thrown towards the barrier.

A Washington Post article (5/14/18) devoted two of its first four sentences to telling readers that Palestinians are responsible for being murdered by Israel. Palestinian “organizers urged demonstrators to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them,” read one sentence. “At the barrier, young men threw stones and tried to launch kites carrying flames in hopes of burning crops on the other side,” stated the next one, as though stones and burning kites released by a besieged people is violence remotely equivalent to subjecting people to a military siege and mowing them down.

The New York Times (5/14/18) said that “a mass attempt by Palestinians to cross the border fence separating Israel from Gaza turned violent, as Israeli soldiers responded with rifle fire,” painting Israel’s rampage as a reaction to a Palestinian provocation. Like FAIR (2/21/18) has previously said of the word “retaliation,” “response” functions as a justification of Israeli butchery: To characterize Israeli violence as a “response” is to wrongly imply that Palestinian actions warranted Israel unleashing its firing squads.

A Yahoo headline (5/14/18) described “Violent Protests in Gaza Ahead of US Embassy Inauguration in Jerusalem,” a flatly incorrect description in that it attributes the violence to Palestinian demonstrators rather than to Israel. The BBC (5/15/18) did the same with a segment called “Gaza Braced for Further Violent Protests.”

One Bloomberg article (5/14/18) by Saud Abu Ramadan and Amy Teibel had the same problem, referring to “a protest marred by violence,” while another one (5/14/18) attributed only to Ramadan is headlined “Hamas Targets Fence as Gaza Bloodshed Clouds Embassy Move,” as though the fence were Monday’s most tragic casualty. Ascribing this phantom violence to Palestinians provides Israel an alibi: Many readers will likely conclude that Israel’s lethal violence is reasonable if it is cast as a way of coping with “violent protests.”

In Bloomberg‘s account (5/14/18), the fence seemed to be the real victim.

The second paragraph of the Bloomberg article solely written by Ramadan says that

Gaza protesters, egged on by loudspeakers and transported in buses, streamed to the border, where some threw rocks, burned tires, and flew kites and balloons outfitted with firebombs into Israeli territory.

This author—like the rest in the “Palestinians were asking for it” chorus—failed to note that Israel’s fence runs deep into Palestinian territory and creates a 300-meter “buffer zone” between Palestinians and Israeli forces, which makes it highly unlikely that the kites and balloons of the colonized will have an effect on their drone-operating, rifle-wielding colonizers, let alone on people further afield in Israeli-held territory.

The New York Times editorial board (5/14/18) wrote as though Palestinians are barbarians against whom Israel has no choice but to unleash terror:

Led too long by men who were corrupt or violent or both, the Palestinians have failed and failed again to make their own best efforts toward peace. Even now, Gazans are undermining their own cause by resorting to violence, rather than keeping their protests strictly peaceful.

The board claimed that “Israel has every right to defend its borders, including the boundary with Gaza,” incorrectly suggesting that Palestinians were aggressors rather than on the receiving end of 100 years of settler-colonialism.

Moreover, like the Times and Bloomberg articles discussed above, the editorial attempts to legitimize Israel’s deadly violence by saying that it is defending a border that Palestinians are attempting to breach, but there is no border between Gaza and Israel. There is, as Maureen Murphy of Electronic Intifada(4/6/18) pointed out, “an armistice line between an occupying power and the population living under its military rule” that Palestinians are trying to cross in order to exercise their right to return to their land.

A Washington Post editorial (5/15/18) called the Palestinians hunted by Israel “nominal civilians.” Apart from being a logical impossibility (one either is or isn’t a civilian), the phrase illuminates how too much of media think about Palestinians:  They are inherently threatening, intrinsically killable, always suspect, never innocent, permanently guilty of existing.

The Washington Post (5/15/18) condemned the “cruel, cynical tactic” of trying to exercise the internationally guaranteed right of return.

A Business Insider piece (5/14/18) by columnist Daniella Greenbaum described “Palestinian protesters who ramped up their activities along the Gaza strip and, as a result, were targeted by the Israeli army with increasing intensity.” Greenbaum’s use of the phrase “as a result” implies that it was inevitable and perhaps just that Palestinians’ “ramped up activities” led to Israel mowing down a population it occupies,70 percent of whom are refugees Israel refuses to allow to return to their homes.

Greenbaum then climbs into the intellectual and moral gutter, claiming that

absent from the commentary that children have unfortunately been among the injured and dead are questions about how they ended up at the border. On that question, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the extent to which Palestinians have glorified violence and martyrdom — and the extent to which the terrorist organization Hamas has organized the “protests.”

In her view, dozens of Palestinians died because they are primitive savages who take pleasure in sacrificing their own children, not because Israel maintains the right to gun down refugees in the name of maintaining an ethnostate.

In a rare instance of a resident of Gaza allowed to participate directly in the media conversation, Fadi Abu Shammalah wrote an op-ed for the New York Times (4/27/18) that offered an explanation of why Palestinians are putting their lives on the line to march. Life for the people of Gaza, including for his three young sons, has been “one tragedy after another: waves of mass displacement, life in squalid refugee camps, a captured economy, restricted access to fishing waters, a strangling siege and three wars in the past nine years. ” Recalling the concern for his safety expressed by his seven-year-old child, Shammalah concludes:

If Ali asks me why I’m returning to the Great Return March despite the danger, I will tell him this: I love my life. But more than that, I love you, Karam and Adam. If risking my life means you and your brothers will have a chance to thrive, to have a future with dignity, to live in peace with all your neighbors, in your free country, then this is a risk I must take.

Palestinians have a right to liberate themselves that extends to the right to the use of armed struggle, yet as Shammalah wrote, the Great Return March signifies a “nearly unanimous acceptance of peaceful methods to call for our rights and insist on our humanity.” Nevertheless, based on media coverage, readers could be forgiven for concluding that it was Palestinians, not Israel, who carried out what Doctors Without Borders called “unacceptable and inhuman” violence.

*

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.

An Israeli government spokeswoman has come under fire for her comments on the situation in Gaza and trying to justify Israeli forces’ use of live fire and the shooting dead of Palestinian protesters.

Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland on Monday, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Michal Maayan said

“Well, we can’t put all these people in jail” when asked why troops were shooting at the demonstrators.

Her comments during a live recording quickly went viral, drawing criticism from all around the world.

Responding to criticism that the U.S. decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will only cause more ‘instability’ in the region and hurt the peace process, Maayan said

“But moving embassies to Jerusalem isn’t stopping peace, it’s actually helping peace because it’s helping the Palestinians realize that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state of Israel and it helps them realize a reality that’s very important to us to go further on.”

“Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, it’s going to be the capital of Israel whatever future settlement we will arrive with Palestinians,” she told the Irish broadcaster.

When asked by an Irish reporter why Israel is shooting Palestinians in Gaza, gov't spokeswoman says "Well, we can't put all these people in jail" https://t.co/yhgqomSGXD pic.twitter.com/5mN5UpNGSM

— DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) May 16, 2018

Israel has come under international pressure after its border forces on Monday killed some 60 Palestinians protesting against the transfer the same day of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in seven weeks of protests, mainly from Israeli sniper fire.

Monday’s demonstration had coincided with Israel’s 70th anniversary – an event Palestinians refer to as “The Catastrophe” – and the relocation of Washington’s embassy to Jerusalem, which also took place Monday.

Last week, the Israeli government said the ongoing protests along the Gaza-Israel fence constituted a “state of war” in which international humanitarian law did not apply.

It’s got to be either one of the stupidest acts that I can recall or a very wicked plan by Washington neocons to sabotage Korean peace talks.

How else to describe the decision by Big Brother USA and junior sidekick South Korea to stage major air force exercises on North Korea’s border.  The prickly North Koreans had a fit, of course, as always when the US flexes its muscles on their borders.  Continuing South and North Korean peace talks scheduled this week were cancelled by the furious North Koreans.  The much ballyhooed Singapore summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is now threatened with cancellation or delay.

Who can blame the North Koreans for blowing their tops?  As Trump administration mouthpieces were gabbing about peace and light, the US Air Force was getting ready to fly B-52 heavy bombers and F-22 Raptor stealth fighters around North Korea’s borders and missile-armed subs lurked at sea.

This provocation was the first of two major spring military exercises planned by the US and its reluctant South Korean satrap.  In case North Korea failed to get the message, the second exercise is code-named ‘Maximum Thunder.’

And this right after Trump and his neocon minions reneged on the sensible nuclear treaty with Iran.  In a policy one could call ‘eat sand and die,’ Trump demanded that Iran not only give up any and all nuclear capacity (Iran has no nukes), but also junk its non-nuclear armed medium range missiles, stop backing the Palestinians, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, roll over and be good, don’t do anything to upset Israel, and pull out of Syria.  In short, a total surrender policy leading to future regime change.   Hardly an encouragement for North Korea.

North Korea was right on target when it accused arch-neocon John Bolton of trying to sabotage the peace deal.    In 2005-2006, Bolton served as the Bush administration’s ambassador to the UN. He established a tradition for the post of being anti-Muslim, pro-Israel and anti-Russian, a policy continued to this day by the current US UN rep, loud-mouthed neocon Nikki Haley.

In the 2005-2006 period, after years of negotiations, the US and North Korea were close to a nuclear/peace deal.

Enter John Bolton. He succeeded in sabotaging the US-North Korea deal.  Why? Because Bolton, as an arch neocon, was fanatically pro-Israel and feared that North Korea might provide nuclear technology to Israel’s foes.  As usual with the neocons, Israel’s interests came before those of the United States. Trump’s newly named Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, is also an ardent neocon.

Last week, Bolton went onto US TV and actually suggested North Korea might follow the course set by Libya, of all places.  Libya’s then ruler, Muammar Kadaffi, bought some nuclear equipment from Pakistan so he could hand it over to the US as a gesture of cooperation after the Bush administration invaded Iraq.  The handover was done with much fanfare, then the US, France and Britain attacked Libya and overthrew Kadaffi.  The hapless Libyan leader was eventually murdered by French agents.

Is this what Bolton has in mind for North Korea?  The Northerners certainly seemed to think so.  Some wondered if Bolton and perhaps Pompeo were trying to sabotage the North Korea deal.  Or were at least being incredibly obtuse and belligerent.  Was Trump involved in this intrigue? Hard to tell. But he can’t be happy. His minions and bootlickers are promoting Trump for the Nobel Prize – rather ahead of events.

Or was the US military rattling its sabers and trying to protect its huge investments in North Asia?  The Pentagon takes a dim view of the proposed Korean nuclear accords.  The burst of sweetness and light coming from Pyongyang just sounds too good to be true.

Veteran Korea observers, this writer included, find it hard to believe Kim Jong-un will give up his nuclear weapons, particularly after seeing Trump’s deceit in dealing with Iran and Kadaffi’s murder.

Speaking of de-nuclearization, why does North Korea not demand that the US get rid of its nuclear weapons based in South Korea, Okinawa, Guam and with the 7^th Fleet?  Many are targeted on North Korea.  US nuclear weapons are based on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.  Others are secretly based in Japan.

Why not demand the US pull out all its 28,500 troops in South Korea and some 2,000 military technicians at air bases? Conclusively halt those spring and fall military maneuvers that raise the threat of war.  End the trade embargo of North Korea that amounts to high level economic warfare.  Establish normal diplomatic relations.

Pyongyang has not even begun to raise these issues.  Smiles and hugs are premature.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Once a torturer, always one, the high crime an indelible stain on Gina Haspel’s despicable record.

Confirming her as CIA director assures continuation of virtually every conceivable form of agency lawlessness – including torture Haspel publicly repudiated, saying one thing, supporting another.

On Thursday, Edward Snowden tweeted:

“Gina Haspel participated in a torture program that involved beating an (innocent) pregnant woman’s stomach, anally raping a man with meals he tried to refuse, and freezing a shackled prisoner until he died. She personally wrote the order to destroy 92 tapes of CIA torture.”

Six undemocratic Senate Dems joined nearly all Republicans, confirming her by a 54 – 45 margin – following a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing days earlier, mostly lobbing softball questions at her, failing to hold her feet to the fire for ducking semi-hard ones.

Don’t let her gender fool you – a she-devil as vicious as the worst of her male counterparts. Her despicable record speaks for itself.

The White House headlined “Congratulations to our new CIA Director,” turning truth on its head, saying:

“Gina Haspel is the right woman at the right time” – to head Langley’s torture program and other criminal activities worldwide, it failed to add.

She’s “the new face of America’s intelligence community” – its actions incompatible with democratic governance.

Former naval reserve officer/current Professor of Public Health Dr. Sondra Crosby has extensive experience evaluating torture victims.

She evaluated Abdal Rahim al-Nashiri, one of Haspel’s torture victims, saying:

She’s “one of the only health professionals he has ever talked to about his torture, its effects, and his ongoing suffering. He is irreversibly damaged by torture that was unusually cruel and designed to break him,” adding:

“In my over 20 years of experience treating torture victims from around the world, including Syria, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. al-Nashiri presents as one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”

Haspel bears full responsibility for destroying him, currently held at Guantanamo, charged with masterminding the 2000 USS Cole bombing, killing 17 US sailors – being tried in a lawless military commission, a capital case without a death penalty lawyer representing him, in March proceedings suspended.

In 2009, charges against him were dropped, reinstated in 2011.

Before sent to Guantanamo, he was held in five CIA black sites.

Lawyers representing him called proceedings against him a show trial, never to be freed if found innocent of all charges. Earlier his legal team said the following:

“Through the infliction of physical and psychological abuse, the government has essentially already killed the man it seized” years earlier, adding:

“By torturing Mr. Al-Nashiri and subjecting him to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, the United States has forfeited its right to try him and certainly to kill him.”

Bloody Gina’s dirty hands were responsible for bringing him to the brink of death from severe torture, then reviving him for repeated episodes – transforming him to zombie state, a living dead man.

She’s now in a position to order industrial-scale torture and abuse on countless other victims of US savagery.

*

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

Ever since the Israeli-Syrian skirmish (falsely reported as an Israeli-Iranian clash in Syria by the mainstream press), questions have been circulating about what this means for Syria, Israel, Iran and the region, even the rest of the world. Was the retaliation by Syria all that was needed to finally make Israel understand that there might be consequences for its actions? Is this the beginning of a wider war between the two? What will be the response of the United States? The response of Russia?

While a full-on military conflict between Syria and Israel did not happen in the hours after the missiles ceased firing, it was announced by the Russians that Russia would not be sending its famed S-300s to Syria. This was despite a warning by the Russians earlier that the previous U.S. missile strikes against Syria removed all “moral hurdles” previously in Russia’s way to do so. The new Russian announcement seemed to coincide with a trip to Russia made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been campaigning against a transfer of those air defense missile systems for quite some time. As a result, many have been wondering whether or not Russia is going back on its support of Syria or if it is becoming infected with the virus that has made the United States exist in a symbiotic relationship with Israel. Indeed, this one announcement is leading many to question Russia’s entire relationship with Israel.

There are several questions surrounding the announcement that the Russians would not be sending Syria its S-300 air defense missile system. Among those questions are “Why did the Russians decide not to do so? Do the Syrians already have the missiles? Does the truth lie somewhere in between?”

First, it is important to look at the announcement itself. Western mainstream media has been uniform in its suggestion that Israeli lobbying has prevailed upon the Russian government not to provide the missiles to Syria. For instance, in the Reuters article, “Russia, after Netanyahu visit, backs off Syria S-300 missile supplies,” by Andrew Osborn, writes,

Russia is not in talks with the Syrian government about supplying advanced S-300 ground-to-air missiles and does not think they are needed, the Izvestia daily cited a top Kremlin aide as saying on Friday, in an apparent U-turn by Moscow.

The comments, by Vladimir Kozhin, an aide to President Vladimir Putin who oversees Russian military assistance to other countries, follow a visit to Moscow by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, who has been lobbying Putin hard not to transfer the missiles.

Russia last month hinted it would supply the weapons to President Bashar al-Assad, over Israeli objections, after Western military strikes on Syria. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes had removed any moral obligation Russia had to withhold the missiles and Russia’s Kommersant daily cited unnamed military sources as saying deliveries might begin imminently.

But Kozhin’s comments, released so soon after Netanyahu’s Moscow talks with Putin, suggest the Israeli leader’s lobbying efforts have, for the time being, paid off.

“For now, we’re not talking about any deliveries of new modern (air defense) systems,” Izvestia cited Kozhin as saying when asked about the possibility of supplying Syria with S-300s.

The Syrian military already had “everything it needed,” Kozhin added.

The Kremlin played down the idea that it had performed a U-turn on the missile question or that any decision was linked to Netanyahu’s visit.

“Deliveries (of the S-300s) were never announced as such,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call, when asked about the matter.

“But we did say after the (Western) strikes (on Syria) that of course Russia reserved the right to do anything it considered necessary.”

The possibility of missile supplies to Assad along with its military foray into Syria itself has helped Moscow boost its Middle East clout. with Putin hosting everyone from Netanyahu to the presidents of Turkey and Iran and the Saudi king.

Israel has made repeated efforts to persuade Moscow not to sell the S-300s to Syria, as it fears this would hinder its aerial capabilities against arms shipments to Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah. Israel has carried out scores of air strikes against suspected shipments.

On Thursday, Israel said it had attacked nearly all of Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria after Iranian forces fired rockets at Israeli-held territory. S-300s could have significantly complicated the Israeli strikes.

For its part, Israel seems happy to boast that its lobbying efforts have paid off.

“I see here another manifestation of mutual respect, which our countries have toward each other, and also adherence to the principle of accounting for [the partner’s] interests,” said Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz.

“Iran’s presence in Syria poses threats to Israel and is a source of instability both in Syria and in the Middle East. The solution to this problem would be driving Iran out of Syria and restoring stability in the region … Israel will continue its activity aimed at ensuring its security and preventing Iranian presence in Syria,” he added.

But Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that it was unfair to link the announcement to Netanyahu’s visit because the announcement, according to him, was made prior to the visit. However, the statements in question were indeed made two days after Netanyahu appeared at the Kremlin.

“We never announced these deliveries as such. However, we said that after the strikes [by the US, France and the UK on Syria], Russia reserves the right to do whatever it deems necessary,” Peskov said.

Regardless, the Israelis have been arguing against the Russian provision of S-300s to Syria for years.

Clearly, the implication in Russia’s public statements is that Russia has not provided Syria with S-300 missile systems. However, in April, Syrian Ambassador to Russia, Riyad Haddad, stated that the Russians had indeed delivered S-300s to Syria in March. His statements were denied by the Russian military and a diplomatic source.

In 2013, the President of Syria himself, Bashar al-Assad, told Lebanese television station, al-Manar TV, that Syria had received S-300 missile systems.

“Syria has got the first batch of Russian S-300 missiles … The rest of the shipment will arrive soon,” President Bashar al-Assad said.

So what is actually going on? Does Syria have the S-300s or not?

The truth is that no one really knows for sure. Syria has stated publicly that it does. Russia, however, has repeatedly stated that it does not.

There are thus a number of possibilities to consider here. One possibility is that Syria has not received S-300 missiles from Russia and is attempting to ward off Israeli temptations to launch airstrikes inside Syria to destroy those systems. Another possibility is that Syria has received the S-300s, or at least partially received them, but Russia is holding back further deliveries for one reason or other. A third possibility is that Syria does have S-300s but the Russian government wants to keep it under wraps so as not to inflame tensions in the region or tempt Israel further into “acting now” before Syria can effectively end Israel’s ability to conduct strikes. Israel has long launched individual strikes into Syrian territory not only for the purpose of inflicting damage and aiding terrorists but also to get Syria to light up its air defense systems so that, when the time comes, Israel will be able to eliminate those systems before launching a much more massive bombing campaign. It is possible that the possession of these weapons are being kept secret now so that, if a massive air campaign were to take place (via Israel or the US), the S 300s will be able to light up and demonstrate their capabilities with the element all at once with the element of surprise.

Lastly, it should be considered a possibility that S-300s are already in Syria but not manned by Syrians. Given that these systems are so effective, it could be that the Russians are manning these weapons either on Russian bases or elsewhere in the country so as to avoid premature launches and/or the possibility of downing Israeli or American planes before absolutely necessary and risking a wider war. Indeed, we know that S-300s are present in Syria under the control of Russian forces at least on the soil of the Russian base in Tartus.

A mysterious delivery of some type of hardware or material in April (notably around the time that the Syrian Ambassador suggested S-300s had been delivered) which involved unloading several cargo ships under the cover a gas that masked the unloading process and prevented satellite surveillance lends credence to the idea that S-300s are indeed present in Syria at a greater level than what has been publicly admitted by the Russians.

Russia’s Relationship With Israel – Adversary, Sell-out, or Pragmatic?

The question over Russia’s relationship with Israel and the influence the Israeli lobby has over the Russian government is perhaps the most controversial aspect of this entire affair, particularly in the alternative media where some claim that Putin is a secret warrior against Zionism and Israel and master of 5d chess, others claiming Putin has sold Syria down the river, and others still maintaining that Putin is merely a pragmatist.

Political analyst Andrew Korybko seems to believe that Putin is secretly attempting to force Syria to compromise to “federalization” and the weakening of the governmental structure in order to avoid a regional or possibly world war. As he writes in his article, “Could It Be Any Clearer? Russia Is ‘Urging’ Syria To ‘Compromise’ Now!” for Eurasia Future,

The Putin-Netanyahu Summit on Victory Day really did change everything, and Russia is no longer shy about showing the world its desire to “balance” “Israel” and Iran in Syria.

It couldn’t get any clearer – Russia is without a doubt “urging” Syria to “compromise” on a so-called “political solution” to its long-running crisis, and to do so as soon as possible in order to avoid a larger Mideast war. The groundbreaking Putin-Netanyahu Summit that took place a couple of days ago in Moscow on Victory Day was bookended by two back-to-back “Israeli” bombings of Syria within a 24 hour period, all of which was followed by Russia reportedly declining to sell S-300s to Syria. There’s no other way to analyze this than to see it for what it truly is, which is Russia utilizing various means to “urge” Syria to “compromise” on its hitherto recalcitrant position in refusing to make tangible progress in adapting the 2017 Russian-written “draft constitution” for “decentralization” (and possibly even “federalization”) and “complying” with Moscow and others’ “request” that it initiate the “phased withdrawal” of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their Hezbollah allies from the Arab Republic.

Sudden Flip-Flopping Or Scenario Fulfillment?

The suddenness with which Russia moved may have caught many Alt-Media observers by surprise, but that’s only because many of them were brainwashed by the community’s dogma that Russia is “against” “Israel” and supposedly on some kind of “anti-Zionist crusade”, which it definitely isn’t. Instead, Russia and “Israel” are veritably allies and the events of the past couple of days prove it. That said, just because Russian foreign policy seems (key word) to be “pro-‘Israeli’” doesn’t in and of itself make it “anti-Iranian”, at least not how Moscow conceives of it. Rather, Moscow believes that it’s fulfilling its grand geostrategic ambition to become the supreme “balancing” force in 21st-century Eurasia, to which end it’s playing the globally irreplaceable role of preventing the current “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war in Syria from evolving into a full-fledged conventional one all throughout the Mideast.

. . . .

The contradiction between Syria’s “maximalist” approach in wanting to liberate “every inch” of its territory (which is its sovereign and legal right) and Russia’s “pragmatic” one in recognizing the impossibility of this reality and declining to get militarily involved in advancing these plans (which would correspondingly include forcibly removing NATO members Turkey and the US from the Arab Republic) have led to a “strategic dilemma” between the two partners whereby Damascus is intent on dragging its feet and procrastinating in order to avoid the political (“new constitution”)and military (“phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah) “compromises” that Moscow’s “solution” entails. Russia respects that Syria has informally made the choice to avoid committing to either of these two interlinked prospective means for resolving the crisis, but it nevertheless won’t stop trying to “convince” Damascus that the options presented before it are what Moscow believes to be the “best” ones that will ever be offered from this point forward.

In pursuit of its peacemaking objective to get Syria to “compromise” on the terms that Russia has presumably presented it with in order to avoid escalating the “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war inside the country to the point where it becomes a conventional one all throughout the region, Moscow has apparently decided to send very strong symbolic messages to Damascus to let it know just how serious it is about this. The most powerful signals that sent shockwaves through the Alt-Media and likely also the global diplomatic communities came from the Putin-Netanyahu Summit and Russia’s passive “acceptance” of “Israel’s” latest bombing run against what Tel Aviv claimed were Iranian units in southern Syria. Furthermore, Russia’s reported reconsideration of possible S-300 sales to Syria also stands out in the starkest terms as an informal statement declaring Moscow’s unwillingness to contribute to anything that would “compromise” “Israel’s” ability to bomb suspected Iranian and Hezbollah targets at will.

Referring back to the title of this analysis, it couldn’t be any clearer that Russia is “urging” Syria to “compromise” as soon as possible, though it’s uncertain whether Moscow’s latest messages will get Damascus to “comply” or if it will continue digging in its heels to resist all international “pressure” to do so. Time is running out, however, because “Israel” has signaled that it’s run out of patience with this “game” and will utilize all means at its disposal to remove Iran and Hezbollah from Syria once and for all, counting as it will on open US and Gulf backing alongside Russia’s implicit support. Moscow’s passive involvement in these “containment” measures is a real game-changer and dramatically alters the strategic dynamics of the “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war in Syria, making it more likely than not that the odds will decisively shift in Tel Aviv’s favor with time unless Damascus “cuts a deal” and freezes the state of affairs before it gets any worse than it already is.

This raises the question about the skirmish itself. To be clear, Iran was not at all involved despite overwhelming reports in the Western mainstream press that it was. The skirmish began when Israel launched missiles against the Syrian village of Ba’ath located in the occupied Golan and Syria responded by not only taking out a number of those missiles but firing back at Israeli positions. Israel then launched bombing raids inside Syria against what it claims were Iranian military positions. While Syrian missile defense systems did a great job of taking out Israeli missiles, Russia did not intervene, most likely out of a desire to stay out of Israeli-Iranian conflicts and not to further inflame tensions. Russia also would not like to be forced to “choose” between Israel or Iran on the spur of the moment by downing Israeli jets and losing an “ally” and “partner” in Israel. It may also be true that Russia is willing to allow Iran to take as many hits as Israel is willing to give it, due to the fact that Iran is expanding its influence in the country. Russia may figure that the loss of life and material may begin to encourage Iran to head back home, reducing the complication of international relations between itself and Syria as well as itself and Israel.

This lack of defense of Syrian and Iranian positions has been interpreted as a Russian “green light” of the attack, especially since Netanyahu met with Putin in Moscow hours before the strike both by the mainstream press and a portion of the alternative media.

Netanyahu’s statements after the meeting were more upbeat suggesting that Russia would not interfere or block Israel’s routine attacks in Syria. “Given what is happening in Syria at this very moment, there is a need to ensure the continuation of military coordination between the Russian military and the Israel Defence Forces. . . . . . In previous meetings, given statements that were putatively attributed to – or were made by – the Russian side, it was meant to have limited our freedom of action or harm other interests and that didn’t happen, and I have no basis to think that this time will be different,” he said.Israeli lobbying, or “a long-running Israeli courting of Russian sensitivities,” was credited with this alleged decision by Putin and, notably, Israel has not joined the Western countries in imposing more sanctions of the disproven “Skripal affair” which Israel was more than willing to point out. Also notable is the fact that the United States has not responded with sanctions on Israel for ignoring its dictates.

This possible “green lighting” of the attack on the part of the Russians has been reported ad nauseam in the mainstream press. If it is true, then the fact that Russia would agree to such a massive attack – the largest Israeli attack on Syria since 1974 – is a major concern in terms of Russia’s commitment to Syria.

But there is another possibility that few have discussed. Whitney Webb of Mint Press News writes in her article, “Is Netanyahu Playing A Geopolitical Chess Game To Drive A Wedge Between Russia and Syria?”

Indeed, prior to the strikes, there had more or less been a consensus that Israel was increasingly desperate that its involvement in the Syrian conflict was not going it’s way.

Could this new narrative of Russia cozying up to Israel and distancing itself from Syria be a desperate act by Israel to create an impression that it now has the upper hand?

Webb continues by writing,

While reports on the Putin/Netanyahu meeting certainly suggest Putin approved Israel’s strikes beforehand, information from local sources and independent analysts suggest that narrative – based solely on Netanyahu’s post-meeting comments – was largely inaccurate. As journalist Elijah Magnier noted, the meeting with Netanyahu was much more tense than described by most media, with Putin expressing disdain for Israel’s bombing of Syria’s T4 Airbase in early April, just 50 meters from a Russian military position.

Information from sources within Syria and from the Syrian Arab Army also offered counter-narratives that reject the notion that Putin “greenlit” Israel’s strikes on Syria. Those sources alleged that Israeli jets, which took part in the strike, used a U.S. transponder signal to masquerade as U.S. fighter jets. Given that Syrian and Russian forces are under orders not to fire on jets transmitting U.S. transponder signals – in the hopes of avoiding a wider conflict – this ruse would have allowed Israeli jets to fly into Syria via its ally Jordan with little incident.

Earlier this month, a source in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Syria reported that Israeli jets had been using U.S. transponder signals to move freely in Syrian airspace, suggesting the tactic had been used by Israel prior to last Thursday’s strikes.

If true, this would mean that it is highly unlikely that Putin “greenlit” anything, as there was no way of knowing that those jets using U.S. transponder signals were not of U.S. origin and because allowing the jets to use those transponder signals would threaten the understanding between the U.S. and Russian militaries, a risk Putin was unlikely to take.

It would mean that Israel deliberately endangered the understanding between U.S. and Russian forces to respect flight paths of their respective fighter jets, which could potentially have dangerous consequences, as it would erode the trust that served as a basis for that understanding. Sources within the Syrian Arab Army also suggested that Netanyahu approved the use of U.S. transponders before his meeting with Putin, giving the subsequent Israeli strikes the appearance that they were approved by Putin and in turn sowing distrust between Russia, Syria and Iran.

Continuing with her discussion of the possibility that Israel is attempting to sow the seeds of deception between the Syrian, Russian, and Iranian alliance, Webb writes,

If Russia’s alleged “green lighting” was an indeed an intentional ploy on the part of Netanyahu to spread distrust through the key alliance of Russia and Syria and Iran, if would not be without precedent, as Netanyahu has been known to resort to similar tactics, including his recent presentation on Iran’s so-called “Atomic Archive,” where he presented old information on Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions as groundbreaking new evidence. In fact the whole foundation for the “green light” narrative came exclusively from Netanyahu’s comments combined with the timing of the strike, which came just hours after Putin and Netanyahu met.

Israel stands to gain significantly from fomenting distrust between Russia and Syria. As the foreign-funded proxy war targeting the Assad-led government in Syria has largely failed, weakening Assad’s most critical alliance by making Putin appear to have been complicit in a major Israeli air strike against Syrian Army bases would certainly benefit the Israeli government. Even Assad himself noted that Russia is largely to thank for “saving” the country from regime change efforts at the hands of foreign governments and their proxies. Were that alliance to weaken, it would give Israel, whose defense minister just a week ago spoke of “liquidating” the Syrian government, a new opening.

Israel’s apparent influence over Putin also distracts from other embarrassing news that came as a result of its attack on Syria, such as the apparent failure of its much-touted but often dysfunctional Iron Dome missile defense system, which managed to shoot down only four of the twenty Syrian missiles launched into Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In contrast, Syria’s 30-year-old Russian-made missile defense system downed more than half of the 70 missiles Israel fired in and around Damascus.

The Israeli government has been careful to prevent the proliferation of images or information showing the damage caused by the 16 Syrian missiles that landed in the Golan Heights, instead publicly claiming it has eliminated the “Iranian threat” (i.e., presence) in Syria.

Israel, always ready to point out how its neighbors are terrorizing and threatening it, has now claimed that it has “eliminated the Iranian threat,” signaling to some that Israel is not prepared to go any further in the near future. However, with the backing of the world’s biggest bully, the United States, Israel may also be acting deceptively in that regard as well. Knowing that the U.S. will come running ready to sacrifice as much American blood and treasure as necessary to defend it, Israel is as emboldened as ever.

But Putin’s hesitation to give Syria S-300s (if, in fact, Syria does not have them) may also be rooted both in pragmatism and lack of perceived necessity. As Tony Cartalucci writes in his article “Israel Baits The Hook. Will Syria Bite?”

A cynical reality remains as to why. Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006, conducted with extensive airpower – failed to achieve any of Israel’s objectives. An abortive ground invasion into southern Lebanon resulted in a humiliating defeat for Israeli forces. While extensive damage was delivered to Lebanon’s infrastructure, the nation and in particular, Hezbollah, has rebounded stronger than ever.

The baited hook to which Cartalucci refers is the U.S. strategic plan, developed by corporate-financier think tank, The Brookings Institution, to create a “multi-front war” in which pressure is brought to bear on Syria and/or the plan to provoke an Iranian response that would be used to justify an Israeli or American military invasion.

In its 2012 article, “Assessing Options For Regime Change,” Brookings wrote that Israel’s role, particularly in the Golan is to put pressure on Syria and create a “multi-front war.” It states,

Israel’s intelligence services have a strong knowledge of Syria, as well as assets within the Syrian regime that could be used to subvert the regime’s power base and press for Asad’s removal. Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to preserve itself. Advocates argue this additional pressure could tip the balance against Asad inside Syria, if other forces were aligned properly.

In regards to Iran, Brookings wrote in its article, “Which Path To Persia? Options For A New American Strategy Towards Iran,”

The truth is that these all would be challenging cases to make. For that reason, it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

Conclusion

At the end of the day, Putin’s interests are essentially Russian interests. Putin wants to see an end to the encircling of Russia and the economic isolation foisted onto it by the West. Putin does not want to see Russia’s strategic ally destroyed but Putin has also negotiated his own deals with the Syrian government that not only see Russian bases and ports established in the country but mining rights for Russian companies. It was a deal made at exactly the time when Assad couldn’t refuse. Whether or not Putin has personal feelings about the fate of the Syrian people, Russia entered the Syrian field because Russia’s interests deemed it necessary from a Russian perspective. Make no mistake, Russia is out for Russia’s interests, not Syria’s. This is not a criticism. The first priority a leader has is to his own people and enlightened self-interest is the wisest way to conduct international relations.

With all that being said, however, it is undeniable that Russia has acted as Syria’s savior with its entering the country and assisted the government in liberating territory from Western-backed terrorists. Even more so, Russia has stood as a deterrent to the United States which has attempted to launch direct military invasions of Syria on numerous occasions.

However, Russia is not interested in seeing regional tensions fanned simply because it makes the waters rougher for its own fleet. Thus, Russia is not on some anti-Israel crusade. It is merely looking to maintain stability in the region while at the same time maintaining and boosting trade with all parties and establishing a more equitable balance of power on the world stage along with the United States and China. This is why Russia has opposed Israel’s unprovoked attack on Syrian military targets while saying nothing about its attacks on Iranian military positions. It is also why, despite Israel and Syria being mortal enemies, that Russia has boosted its trade with Israel.

In the future, look for Russia to continue to do whatever it can to aid Assad in his attempt to retake the country while avoiding World War III and a confrontation with Israel. While it is tempting to become emotional and desire a little justice or at least a little revenge, Putin is going to continue to let cooler and more intelligent heads prevail. He is also going to let Russian interests take top priority and there may be a time when Russian interests and Syrian interests do not necessarily line up. For the sake of Syria, we hope that such a divide can be easily bridged.

*

Brandon Turbeville writes for Activist Post – article archive here – He is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. 

A little reported fact at the time, of an outburst by President Trump, last Thursday in the presence of the NATO’s Secretary General who looked and listened to the tirade of mixed subjects with what appeared to be bemusement.

Before going further the White House official video where the remarks were made have to be seen to appreciate, even empathize with the inevitable incredulity and to understand the probable reaction of the North Koreans.

Video at about 9 minutes

Incredibly to partially paraphrase President Trumps words, as you can see from the video, Trump strongly intimated that he would “decimate North Korea like Libya if they don’t accept a deal” adding that Libya though different, was similar and if the North Koreans did not agree with the US terms, Trump would “decimate” that country as was Iraq and Syria. Trump seems to like that word; maybe it’s a new one for him!

This rather shocking outburst indicates perfectly the insanity that prevails in the corridors of power in Washington. And reminds us of the importance in a way of the lead up to the unprovoked Libyan attack by NATO whose only true aim was regime change.

This policy of ‘regime change’ is more articulately described as a predisposition to resurrect a 21st century version of what is imperialistic colonialism by America along with centuries old practitioners of imperialism like Britain and France, is astonishing to most thinking people in this day and age.

Optimistically it is hoped, in the end, this foreign policy insanity will eventually fail. Israel and Turkey are also exhibiting just such Imperialist designs on the MENA region countries as well.

But Social Media in all its forms and a handful of journalists and organizations like THE RON PAUL INSTITUTE and others with integrity have made people much more well informed than ever before to accept master-servant relationships in the world, essentially colonial thinking, to succeed.

In a multi-polar world there is no place for Imperialism. Full stop.

The US’s entire foreign policy seems to an on looker only to consist of the obsessional unconditional support for Israel.

Where is the threat of Imperialism for Libya for example – well imperialism is the precursor to regime change – so the danger for Libyan leaders would be the continuance to accept support from Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, as it is a vassal, a puppet of the US.

The overriding reason for highlighting this being Saudi’s seemingly unholy alliance, brokered by Kushner, with Israeli Military & Israeli Intelligence, who to a man appear to be Zionists, if their recent behavior is anything to go by. In actuality therefore ultimately this would mean that it can be deduced from this that the US, through its surrogates, has Imperialistic designs on Libya, one of many countries no doubt, but as far as MENA countries, in tandem with Israel.

Let’s make one thing clear. Islam isn’t Wahhabism and Judaism isn’t Zionism. AIPAC do not understand this at all.

Given the evolving seriously dangerous situation in Jerusalem and Gaza, and the accompanying major shift in World opinion against Israel, which is daily gaining momentum, being seen to cooperate with the Israeli Military, directly or indirectly, could be a fatal mistake for any country and especially for Libya.

Nationalism can and is prevailing throughout the MENA region and, it could be argued, all over the world.

No wonder the North Koreans reacted so angrily at the strongly intimated warning from Trump that the US would do to them what they did to Libya, Iraq and Syria. Can you blame the North Koreans if they walk away from the table?

Who wouldn’t following such a crass threat?

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

I am in Iran speaking at a conference on the future of the Middle East. The timing for the meeting is particularly appropriate due to the recent American withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which limited the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for suspension of sanctions. Initial discussions with Iranians revealed that they are less pessimistic about the development than are the Americans and Europeans present, believing as they do that the situation can somehow be reversed either by Congressional refusal to endorse the Trump decision or by rejection of the demands being made by the White House that all parties who were also signatories to the agreement (Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) should also withdraw or themselves face secondary sanctions.

The Iranians concede that the move by President Donald Trump will bring with it additional economic suffering and will also likely upset the delicate political balancing act prevailing in their country, with President Hassan Rouhani being blamed by conservatives for having entered into the agreement in the first place. It was an agreement regarding which the president had expended considerable political equity, and he has also been accused of exaggerating its benefits, having claimed some months ago that all sanctions had been lifted, which was not the case. The stagnant state of Iran’s economy has produced considerable unrest in recent months and it is anticipated that more will be on the way as the economy continues to decline.

Iran’s hopes that Europe will develop a spine and will reject the American overtures, joined by China and Russia, is perhaps too optimistic as banks will be reluctant to lend money for Iranian projects and foreign companies will be unlikely to risk entering into anything but very short-term contracts with the Iranian government for much needed infrastructure improvement.

The major debate taking place is over where one goes from here. There are two distinct schools of thought, one of which basically asks whether continuation of what is essentially a unipolar world, supported by US power, in which the United States continues to be able to assert its vision of world global good order. This has been defined by Washington as a mixture of expansion of liberal democracy plus more-or-less free trade.

Even though it was Israel and Saudi Arabia that were driving the rejection of the Iran deal, it was the United states that had the economic, military and political muscle to take the steps necessary to disrupt an international agreement that had other major signatories and the endorsement of the UN Security Council.

The alternative view is quite different, asserting that Washington’s blow against Iran will ultimately be a Pyrrhic victory for Donald Trump as the blatant interference in what was a universally accepted largely successful treaty in which Iran was fully compliant will produce a global backlash against American interests. US military power and economic might give it considerable leverage to protect itself against any number of adversaries, but its huge and ultimately unsustainable budget deficits and debt make it potentially vulnerable. It is therefore likely that the first counterstrokes against Trump’s vision of America First will be to accelerate steps directed against the use of the US dollar as the world’s principal reserve currency.

There have already been moves in that direction, but they have succeeded in going only so far before being marginalized. This time they might stick because there is a large and growing consensus that America has finally gone too far in its role as global bully. One keen observer opines that the shift to a multipolar polity has now become inevitable due to American insensitivity and political blindness. The economic shifts that will, by some judgments, sink the US economy in five to ten years and lead to the rise of competing economic centers in countries like Russia and Brazil. It will be the beginning of an era in which Washington no longer will have either the resources or the will to attempt to maintain some form of global hegemony.

No surprisingly, the participants at the multinational conference I am attending would welcome the day when an interventionist “leader of the free world” America ceases to be. Many Americans would also welcome it, though without the economic disruption.

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Featured image is from the author.