Global Research

“The merger is more power in the hands of criminal corporations. To not just push the agenda, but corrupt governments, subvert democracy.”   

– Vandana Shiva (from this week’s interview)

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As much of the world and the media focuses on the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, another ‘royal couple’ is on the verge of completing its own matrimonial arrangement after a 21 month engagement.

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.

Once the partnership attains U.S. anti-trust approval, likely within days, a new entity will emerge, commanding more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides.

Would that this were a traditional wedding ceremony! With profound reasons for opposing this marriage, a robust crop of hands would spring up when prompted to ‘speak now or forever hold your peace!’

According to a recent poll of 48 U.S. States, 94 percent of farmers are concerned about the merger, with 83 percent being very concerned. Their top three concerns: market dominance to push other products, control over farmers’ data, and increased pressure to rely on chemical based farming practices.

This merger has implications not only for what goes on our dinner plate. There are questions of economic and political control that need to be addressed. Critics argue that the power of these economic giants is such that they have ‘captured’ regulatory agencies. Limitless financial resources permit these and similar companies to buy off academics, media and politicians.

The Global Research News Hour radio program takes a devoted look this week to the social and environmental costs associated with the merger of Bayer and Monsanto and the agro-chemical industry more generally with four interviews.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist and anti-globalization author. Her work centers on issues of bioethics, biodiversity, intellectual property rights, and genetic engineering. She founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in 1982, which led to the creation of Navdanya in 1991, a national movement for the protection of biological resources, especially native seeds. In a short discussion recorded in Winnipeg in May of 2017, Dr. Shiva put the Bayer-Monsanto merger and GMO agriculture within the larger frame of colonialism, patriarchy, and anthropocentrism, and points us to alternative perspectives which will allow our species not only to survive, but thrive. She has authored numerous books including her most recent: Who Really Feeds the World? (2016)

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute and the author of hundreds of articles and a dozen books including The Public Bank Solution: From Austerity to Prosperity (2013) and Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free (2007). Ms. Brown speaks about her recent article on the Bayer-Monsanto merger which makes reference to these two companies’ links to the infamous war-time chemical cartel known as I.G. Farben. Brown also makes note of the alternatives to GMO / agro-chemical agriculture being offered up by Russia.

Nick Meyer is a writer with the site March-Against-Monsanto.com. Meyer briefly lays out some of the history and rationale behind the resistance to Monsanto, and gives us some details about the priorities underlying the May 19, 2018 march.

Dr. Stephen Frantz is the Principal with Global Environmental Options, LLC, which specializes in the management of environmental toxicants through sustainable , ecologically sound intervention strategies. He holds a PhD in pathobiology from John Hopkins University and helped pioneer the concept of Integrated Pest Management. He has done extensive research into the effects of glyphosate and similar pesticides over the course of his work. Dr. Frantz confronts some of the misinformation and disinformation coming from Monsanto and its defenders about the safety of its products.

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Transcript- Interview with Vandana Shiva, May 26, 2017

Global Research: Dr. Shiva, I’m very interested in a lot of what you had to say in your recent talk and in your writings about this interface between the corporate for-profit model and how it intersects with this need to provide for our basic food needs and basic energy needs. I guess it just…bringing in something that’s fairly timely, this merger between Monsanto, who you’ve been very outspoken against, and Bayer.

Could you maybe quantify exactly how you see that merger making the situation worse, going from the frying pan to the fire? What, in particular, do you think that those … is a concern for farmers and for food security generally?

Vandana Shiva: First thing that people should remember is Monsanto and Bayer were one during the war. They were called Mobay. They worked together to sell poisons on both sides of the war. It’s only after the IG Farben trial at Nuremberg that the separation took place. So, in a way, the Bayer-Monsanto merger of the contemporary times is just a coming together in an open way of a hidden marriage that always was there. Second, even if you look at cross licensing arrangements, they’ve been working together.

When the BT Cotton of Monsanto failed in India in 2015-16 of the states of Punjab, 80% of the cotton was hit by White Fly. Who sold the pesticides? Bayer. So they work as one. As a poison cartel. Right now, buyers trying to push a GMO mustard. At the same time, Monsanto is trying to dismantle our patent laws which say we cannot allow patents and seeds, plants, animals, because these are not human inventions. They have their own self-organizing capacity to organize life, regulate life reproduce life, multiply seeds. What will this new open merger mean?

First is, I think the numbers like 66 billion are just games for the public. I’ve done an analysis. It will be out in my new book on the resurgence of the rial. The true owners of all of these corporations, down to the Coca Colas and Pepsis, all of them are the new investment giants, which are the cartel of the rich men, who have now designed ways of using their money to basically control the future of humanity.

And, for them, there is more future in collecting rents from seeds which they never invented, from selling more poisons, including corrupting governments, including denying the fact that even the W.H.O. said glyphosate is a carcinogen, so they’re putting their money to tell lies to defend killing and destroy democracy.

So, in effect, actually, the merger is more power in the hands of criminal corporations. To not just push the agenda, but corrupt governments, subvert democracy. We are witnessing it right now in India with the GM mustard case. Destroy science, and in the name of science, they say science requires GMOs, but they are knocking out any scientist who does real research on A] the fact that GMOs don’t produce more and B] that they haven’t controlled pests or weeds, they have created super pests and superweeds, C] that they have better ways through biodiversity, through agroecology, to actually produce enough food for people and have enough for other species, which is what the food system is about.

So, I see the merger of Bayer and Monsanto as, in a way, the peak of a contest between a century of ecocide and genocide with no stopping, versus Earth democracy where all species have their rights recognized, and they act. Because most of the subversion of the Monsanto agenda hasn’t taken place because people marched into the fields of Round-Up Ready soya, but the Palmer amaranth rose and defeated the project and that’s why I insist 300 million species and if you assume that even half of humanity will keep thinking and defending their freedom which would mean 3.5 billion people that’s a lot of intelligence against the criminality of a cartel of Bayer-Monsanto, Dow-Dupont, Syngenta-ChemChina all working together with a failed agenda of pushing GMOs.

GR: I find that there’s a sort of a parallel development perhaps – you’re talking about the food system, but there’s also the energy economy. And I noticed that there’s a lot of talk about transition, and about time, transition away from fossil fuel, but I noticed that a lot of investment, corruption, subversion, perhaps, is taking place in the guise of major investors like the Rockefellers and Warren Buffett and all of these major players. They are trying to invest, the Bill Gates Mission Innovation, they’re all trying to invest, get in on this renewable economy, but they’re not seeing the renewable economy as a… well, it seems as if their larger objective is finding a new frontier for capitalistic expansion.

And so, if I look at those sorts of developments when you see major donations to major environmental NGOs and so on, I’m wondering if we aren’t similarly seeing if this is something that we need to be on guard against. To prevent this kind of poison pill, another kind of poisonous cartel, from moving so that the renewable economy is in fact something that’s aligned with natural systems and natural intelligence and not simply another mechanism for for-profit growth and capitalist expansion. Could you address those concerns?

VS: First thing is, food is energy. It gives us energy when we eat nourishing food. Sadly, food itself has become the source of major confidence of a non-sustainable energy model. 90% of the corn in the soil, grown in the world right now, is going for biofuel. So we already have food diverted into a non-sustainable energy model. When it comes to renewable energy, which really began as small initiatives trying to build energy alternatives to fossil fuel, it was so clear in the Paris meetings that this would be the next platform for the Gates of the world and the Buffets of the world.

And do they make windmills? No, they don’t. He just keeps his hands in his pockets and eats hamburgers. Do they make solar panels? No. What do they run for? What is their innovation? Grabbing the patents. So, they are looking for a future where there will be a lot of renewable energy in the world but they will collect rents from the expansion of renewable energy like they seek to collect rents from seed, which is the only agenda for GMOs and the patents of seed.

What we are seeing is the emergence of a new economy that’s a rental economy based on intellectual property, and people who don’t work making the huge money and becoming the 1%, and the people who work and slog and are creative and are innovative punished just because they are hard-working human beings. It’s that – not just – I don’t call it inequality because it is worse than inequality. It is a lie, it is a brutalization, it is a dehumanization. It is a dehumanization of those that are robbed of their share of this Earth and the well-being of the Earth, but it’s a brutalization of those few who think being lords and masters of the universe at this critical time with a very survival of our species is at stake, that their profits come first not the humanity of the planet.

GR: You brought up the term anthropocentrism early in your talk, and that’s a serious concern insofar as it’s something that we just sort of don’t really pay attention or think about, it’s part of like the water that we swim in. And I’m finding that a lot of those technologies has that sort of anthropocentric veneer to it. Could you address the technologies, another vista, the digital technology that we mentioned, spyware, Edward Snowden talks about surveillance… I’m wondering if these technologies are irredeemably anthropocentric, or can we find some aspect to them where we can continue to utilize them?

VS: You know, for me, technologies are not some magical phenomenon that gets sent from the skies to a few privileged men, which is how Bacon used to think of the new technologies, and the new science, and the new Atlantis, and superheroes, etc. That’s not the way the world works. The way the world works is, people are creative and innovative, and they evolved tools.

The problem with the tools that have come from the commons… Microsoft is not the inventor of software. It’s the patenter of software. Monsanto is not the inventor of seed and definitely even not of recombinant DNA. It’s the patenter, and it’s the buyer of others who might have had the patent before them. So, it’s really a race for ownership through any means whatsoever. And the reason I worry about digital technologies is not that humans have worked out ways to deal with digital technologies, but that those who control digital technologies want to use it as an instrument of control.

For example, all of India’s economy was shut down on the 8th of November 2016, for a digital economy. Big cash notes were banned. All the savings of millions and billions of people were wiped out. This privileging of digital basically means that the global financial system where money runs to the U.S. to Wall Street, to these investment funds, that those people get your 6% rental with every transaction, and the hard-working person, through exchange, loses out. Has to pay more.

The second reason why the digital economy is being used as a new digital dictatorship, and I’ve written about this, is the new merger between digital technologies and information technologies on the one hand, and agriculture and biotechnologies on the other, but also digital technologies and finance. Right now, finance economy has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with wealth. It has everything to do with speculation, wire, rapid algorithms.

And I think it is narrowing our possibilities by not allowing the wide intelligences which are not one-dimensional, which are not linear, which play out in all kinds of combinations of hearts and heads and hands working as one to guide us out of crisis. At this moment of crisis, to put your fate of humanity in combinations of zeros and ones, and machines owned and patented, and algorithms owned and a handful of men who have zero real experience of what life is about is a very, very dangerous.

GR: And you also mention the term Terra Nullius, the second coming of Christopher Columbus and that whole mentality that seems to infect so much of our culture including the sciences. I mean, you come from a scientific background, and the way that we approach things, and you had to relearn from meeting with women and peasant folk a different understanding of this. So, could you maybe help us, those of us who wish to relieve ourselves of this infection, what we could do to not unknowingly or instinctively duplicate and replicate these same patterns?

VS: There are no empty lands; there are no empty minds, and the very idea that knowledge starts when someone gets the idea of conquest or extermination is the illusion born of colonialism, it’s the illusion born of fossil fuel age it’s the illusion born the concentration camps of Hitler and those are the kind of sciences that are dominating today especially in agriculture.

I think it is really time for us to recognize that we’ve done agriculture for 10,000 years. And there’s 10,000 years of knowledges, not one but many. It takes a different kind of ability to be able to live on fish in the Arctic in Greenland, and a totally different kind of ability to harvest your food from the Amazon rainforest. Each of these interactions generates its own knowledge, so the idea of one agriculture, one science that Bill Gates is trying to propose is absolutely against the diversity and vitality of the world.

The second thing we need to know and remember now is something – indigenous people never separated themselves from other species, never had an anthropocentric hierarchy, and realized that every plant, every microbe, every animal, was an intelligent and sentient being.

Science is finally waking up to this. The science not controlled by the poison cartel. And I think we need a new alliance of the ability to look through new eyes like microscopes. And the old eyes of wisdom, and join those in a resurgence of the real which is what my new book is about.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

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The Russian-Croatian rapprochement might have understandably taken a lot of Serbs by surprise, partly because Moscow hasn’t invested the proper resources into explaining it to the country’s population, but this multidimensional outreach strategy to their regional rival is part of Russia’s larger ambition to “balance” the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative” through pragmatic engagements with the members of its “Austro-Hungarian” sub-bloc.

“Believe Me, We Are The Most Reliable Partner You Could Ever Have…”

Countless jaws must have hit the floor in Serbia immediately after the latest interview with Russian Ambassador to Croatia Anvar Azimov (image below) was released right before the weekend. Speaking to his host country’s media, Russia’s top representative practically made a pitch to its citizens for a full-fledged strategic partnership between these two states, with the following excerpts being the most attention-grabbing statements:

“Economic and energy cooperation was the topic of the historically important meeting in October 2017 when President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin for five hours. I believe she never had such a long conversation…It is said that the (Krk island LNG) terminal will be constructed with 100 million euro invested by the EU, but that is not enough money, and Russia could give you billions. Believe me, we are the most reliable partner you could ever have…We want to invest in Croatia as well, but there must be political will. We are certain that Russia can do more for Croatia than the US and the EU put together…We want Croatia to be strong and self-sufficient and maintain good relations with the EU and the USA…Croatian ministers like me because I am very straightforward and open, and I accomplish what I promise…You need Russia.”

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.

“Balancing” The Balkans

The author tackled this subject in a three-part analytical series from February 2017 that the reader is encouraged to skim through in order to get a basic understanding of what’s happening:

• “Deciphering The Russian-Croatian Rapprochement”
• “Russia’s New Strategy In The Balkans”
• “Balkan Challenges To The New Détente”

Since the publication of those three texts, two follow-up theoretical ones were released that explain more about Russia’s “balancing” strategy in general:

• “Russia’s Foreign Policy Progressives Have Trumped The Traditionalists”
• “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”

 To be brief, the powerful “progressive” faction of the Russian “deep state” envisions their country being the supreme “balancing” force in 21^st-century Eurasia, though it can only truly fulfill this role if it enters into rapprochements with its non-traditional partners such as Croatia in order to become a “neutral arbiter” in regional affairs. In this case, the tangible basis for the Russian-Croatian rapprochement is being driven primarily by large-scale economic interests stemming from Sberbank’s efforts to protect its investments in Agrkor (the largest employer in the Balkans) following its epic bankruptcy and Russian energy companies’ desire to expand their presence in the Croatian marketplace.

Pretty much, cynics could say that “oligarchic interests” are behind this newfound and fast-moving partnership, though that’s not the entirety of it because Russian tourists are now flocking to this coastal state like never before, with the Croatian National Tourist Board estimating a 15% increase in guests just this year alone. The grand strategic motivations behind the comprehensive betterment of ties between Russia and Croatia is that Moscow is, like always, looking to weaken the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions regime from within by courting countries in “New Europe” who feel neglected by Brussels.

The Austro-Hungarian “Pivot”

There’s more to it than just that, though, because Croatia is involved in a bitter maritime dispute with tiny Slovenia, which just so happens to be one of Russia’s closest partners in Europe. Although Russia will probably never play any formal “balancing” role between these two, just like it’s unlikely to do so between Croatia and Serbia, Moscow is nevertheless in an enviable position by having excellent relations with Zagreb and the two neighbors that it’s in disputes with. Moreover, Russia’s on fantastic terms with Croatia’s northeastern neighbor Hungary and also with Austria, which altogether means that Moscow has “pivoted” to the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

These four countries – Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Austria – importantly form a third of the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative’s” 12 total members, thereby enabling Russia to hinder the working efficacy of any potential anti-Russian agenda that it comes up with or is instructed by the US to implement. The strategic significance of this development can’t be understated because it essentially neutralizes what could have otherwise been a formidable future threat to Russia, though provided that this “balancing” act holds long enough to ensure that that the “Three Seas Initiative” internally fractures along a north-south axis between its more pragmatic Balkan & Central European countries and the institutionally Russophobic ones of Poland & the Baltic States.

The Need For A Narrative

For as masterful of a grand geostrategy as this is, and accepting that the Russian-Croatian rapprochement forms a crucial component of it, the worst shortcoming of this plan is that it was never communicated to the Serbian masses, who are now confused and haven’t the slightest clue why their closest international partner is now on such friendly terms with one of their worst enemies. Russia hasn’t “backstabbed” Serbia, nor “sold it out”, but it did seemingly take it and its loyal population “for granted” by assuming that nothing that it does could ever harm the trust between their two peoples, especially since Serbia’s geostrategic position compels it to pursue strong relations with Russia no matter what.

This “negligent” attitude was touched upon in general in the author’s previously shared piece about Russia’s grand strategy, but it’s certainly apt to reflect upon after Ambassador Azimov’s strong pitch to clinch a strategic partnership with Croatia. Russia must urgently communicate its “balancing” intentions to Serbs, regardless of whether they ultimately agree or disagree with this policy move, via its friendly proponents in the country’s academia and media fields, since remaining silent on the matter and pretending like nothing out of the ordinary is happening in Russian-Croatian relations naturally breeds suspicion, which is unwarranted but understandable in this context due to the absence of any explanatory narrative whatsoever.

The Kosovo Connection

The Russian-Croatian rapprochement is an integral part of Russia’s larger “Austro-Hungarian pivot” in seeking to split the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative” along its north-south axis of Russophobic and pragmatic countries, respectively, but its grand “balancing” intentions in keeping this emerging threat in check have yet to be communicated to the Serbs, who are sitting on the sidelines with their mouths agape as they watch Russia chum it up with their Croatian adversaries. The narrative void that emerged after Russia got “so comfortable” with Serbia that it failed to invest any serious efforts in explaining this to its citizens has resulted in a lot of confusion over Moscow’s ultimate intentions, which is why a concerted effort must be undertaken as soon as possible in order to compensate for this soft power shortcoming.

This is more important than either party realizes at this point because a day of reckoning is soon approaching where President Vucic will probably end up “recognizing” (whether formally or informally) the “independence” of the NATO-occupied Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija as part of a deal for joining the EU, an historically traitorous move that will earn him the unforgettable and everlasting revulsion of his betrayed people. In a deceptive bid to deflect some of this hatred, he’ll likely hide behind the fact that Russia will respect whatever decision the Serbian government makes on this matter because, to paraphrase a saying, “Russians can’t be more Serbian than the Serbs themselves”. Without the masses understanding the basics of Russia’s “balancing” act, then Vucic’s ploy might succeed in getting them to redirect some of their disgust towards Moscow.

Concluding Thoughts

Per all of the aforementioned reasons, it’s high time for Russia to openly reveal its “balancing” intentions to the Serbian public so that it can preemptively defend itself from Vucic’s deflection and preserve its well-earned reputation as their country’s historic partner instead of unwittingly “sacrificing” itself for their President’s political “sake”.

There’s no better opportunity to do so than now, when Serbs are already scratching their head in bewilderment over what Russia’s up to with Croatia, but failure to act at this sensitive moment could doom Russia’s place in the hearts and minds of millions, especially if it comes to expectedly pass that Moscow lends “legitimacy” to Vucic’s likely forthcoming decision to “recognize” Kosovo by deferring to its usual position that this is an “internal affair of the Serbian state”.

The only way to stave off a lasting soft power defeat is for Russia to get Serbs to see that it’s “balancing” the Balkans without “betraying” anyone in the process, and that the realpolitik of the Hyper-Realist “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard” paradigm has replaced rhetorical feel-good slogans about “brotherhood” in its grand strategic calculations.

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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 The Kremlin.

During the last nationwide election, the one before that, and the preceding one as well, I was led to believe my vote really doesn’t count. Why? Because I don’t live in what our political parties define as a “swing state”, or a swing district, or a swing county. Our media focuses on races and on voters in far away Iowa, Ohio, Florida, or Pennsylvania. OK; voting patterns there may be inconsistent and unpredictable. But what about the ‘predictable’ rest of us?

As far as I understand a swing district is one whose loyalty to a party is not guaranteed. Thus, attention and funds from the two major parties’, trailed by media, is directed there in order to ‘swing’ undecided votes towards their candidate. Duly highlighted by all the networks and even our own local media, we’re informed that a viable and genuine race is underway… over there. We can rest assured our democracy is a fair contest and that our election system works… somewhere.

As for the majority of political races in the nation? One concludes there’s no real contest; results are taken for granted whether by gerrymandered arrangements or by discriminatory policies that thwart registration. Then, there are voters– a lot of them– who simply don’t vote. The status quo is undisturbed.

Maybe this process of designating one neighborhood as politically more vital than another explains why voter turnout across the USA is low, why so many citizens feel there’s no point casting their ballots. We feel excluded.

Viewing a political race as in-the-bag can be perilous, as demonstrated by Clinton’s 2016 campaign after it ignored Michigan and Wisconsin contests. In contrast, Republicans targeting voters in those states; with or without Russian interference or data provided by Cambridge Analytica, Republicans swung voters there away from their traditional alliances.

Attribution of districts as swing or solid is more than a misguided strategy; it’s discriminatory. It may also contribute to the cynicism and disinterest we find among American voters today.

When I lived in New York City, any Democratic candidate on the ballot was viewed as a shoo-in. I and left-leaning associates never felt excited about an election; we rarely discussed one candidate’s merits over another, except perhaps for the mayoral seat. Now I understand how Republicans may have felt.

Moving into a less Democratic constituency in Upstate New York, I’m the one feeling disempowered today. You suggest I might evade this binary system by seeking out a third party candidate. Yet there too my vote feels meaningless. (Small parties often don’t run a candidate and instead endorse a contestant representing a major party.)

In NY’s Congressional District 19, currently represented by John Faso, we’re following a vigorous pre-primary campaign. Seven candidates want to represent Democrats to challenge the incumbent congressman in November’s election. Thus far, local press seems non-committal, but articles elsewhere are highlighting CD 19’s Democratic contestants, generating a rumor that this congressional seat will be hotly contested. True or not, the rumor is beguiling; my very own district could move into the swing column!

“It’s still early in the game,” as politicians and sports commentators say; “Anything can happen”. We still have 6 weeks until the June 26 Democratic primary here.

But the mere suggestion of our significance can have a positive effect. Who doesn’t want to feel significant? Forget about CNN and Fox reporters arriving in our farms and hamlets to interview us. If a contest appears evenhanded, our interest grows, and maybe, maybe, we voters can feel that we really count.

Then comes the question: Why wait for outside rumors about the value of our vote? Why wait for a tarnished Democratic Party which blundered in 2016 pursuing so-called ‘minority’ votes and ‘urban-educated’ citizens to the exclusion of others?

Across the nation, there have been some upsets as vacant seats are announced, and where new faces are emerging to fight in their party primaries. The message I’m getting is that every seat, every election, counts.

Whatever the source of these rumors, I say: grab hold, chase after whomever candidate represents some principle, however personal or vague, which you identify with, whether through their personality, their statements, or their party affiliation. Candidates are usually women and men driven by the ideals of public service, of the possibility of change, and by the energy of fellow citizens. Know them, push them, challenge them.

And advise them. Because these newcomers often really don’t know basic facts about us or how to address our local issues. Then lobby your neighbors thought to be on the other side. Try it.

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Barbara Nimri Aziz is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Europe now faces its ultimate ideological fork-in-the-road, which it has thus far ignored but can no longer ignore: They need to decide whether they seek a world of nations that each is sovereign over its own territory but over no other (and this would not be a world at war); or whether they seek instead a world in which they are part of the American empire, a world based on conquests — NATO, IMF, World Bank, and the other US-controlled international institutions — and in which their own nation’s citizens are subject to the dictatorship by America’s aristocracy: the same super-rich individuals who effectively control the US Government itself (see this and this — and that’s dictatorship by the richest, in the United States).

Iran has become this fateful fork-in-the-road, and the immediate issue here is America’s cancellation of the Iran nuclear deal that America had signed along with 6 other countries, and America’s consequent restoration of economic sanctions against Iran — sanctions against companies anywhere that continue trading with Iran. First, however, some essential historical background on that entire issue:

The US aristocracy overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Government in 1953 and imposed there a barbaric dictatorship which did the bidding of the US and allied aristocracies, by installing the Pahlavi Shah there, just as they had earlier, in 1932, installed the Saud King in Saudi Arabia — which land never ever had known democracy. As Wikipedia says of Ibn Saud, who became King in 1932, “After World War I, he received further support from the British, including a glut of surplus munitions. He launched his campaign against the Al Rashidi in 1920; by 1922 they had been all but destroyed,” with Britain’s help. Similarly, the US and its British Imperial partner installed Pahlavi as Iran’s Shah in 1953. This was done by US President Dwight David Eisenhower.

After the death of the anti-imperialistic US President FDR, in 1945, the US Government quickly became pro-imperialistic under President Harry S. Truman (whom imperial England’s Winston Churchill wrapped around his little finger), and then even more so under Eisenhower, so that during the brief presidency of Ike’s successor President JFK, the anti-imperialistic ghost of FDR was coming to haunt the White House and thus again threaten the conjoined US-UK’s aristocracies’ surging global control.

Kennedy was quickly souring on, and coming to oppose, imperialism (just as FDR had done) — he was opposing conquest and dominion for its own sake. So, he became assassinated and the evidence was covered-up, so that the CIA, which Truman had installed and which Eisenhower placed firmly under the control of America’s aristocratically controlled military-industrial complex, became increasingly America’s own Deep State, designed for global conquest (though using an ‘anti-communist’ excuse and cover for their real and ruling motive of global conquest and dominion).

When the US-imposed Shah was overthrown by an authentic revolution in 1979, America’s continued alliance with the UK-US-installed Saud family turned into a US-UK alliance against Iran, which nation has ever since been demonized by the US and UK aristocracies as being a ‘terrorist regime’, even though Saudi Arabia actually dominates global Islamic terrorism, and Iran is opposed to terrorism (except to terrorism that’s aimed against Israel).

And everybody who knows anything on sound basis is aware of these established historical facts. But, actually, the US-Saudi alliance is even worse than that: global Islamic terrorism was invented and organized by the US aristocracy in conjunction with the Saud family starting in 1979 when Iran freed itself from the US-UK dictatorship and restored Iranian sovereignty (even though in a highly compromised Shiite theocratic way, nothing at all like the secular Iranian democracy that had been overthrown by the US and UK aristocracies in 1953). The US and Sauds created Islamic terrorism in 1979 in order to draw the Soviet Union into Afghanistan and ultimately used these terrorist proxy “boots on the ground” so as to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan — thereby draining the Soviet economy in the hope of ultimately conquering the USSR and then conquering Russia itself, which the US President GHW Bush on the night of 24 February 1990 made clear that the US and its allies must do — he gave the European vassal-nations their marching-order on that date, and they have reliably followed that order, until now.

Russia, which the US aristocracy craves to conquer, is an ally of Iran (which they hope to re-conquer). The basic principle of America’s aristocracy is repudiation of national sovereignty. That’s what the US Government globally stands for today. Russian Television headlined on May 11th, “‘Are we America’s vassals?’ France vows to trade with Iran in defiance of US ‘economic policeman’” and reported that US President Donald Trump’s re-imposition of US economic sanctions against any companies that do business with Iran, is being resisted by all the other nations that had signed the Obama-Kerry nuclear accord with Iran, the “JCPOA” treaty: UK, France, China, Russia, US, and EU (which is led by Germany). The US regime knows that if even America’s allies — UK, France, and Germany — hold together with Iran, to defy the Imperial actions punishing them for continuing with Iran even after the US pull-out from the treaty, then the Western Alliance will be jeopardized, if not terminated altogether, and finally the Cold War, which GHW Bush had ordered the allies to continue even after the end of the USSR, and of its communism, and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance mirroring America’s NATO alliance, will finally end also on America’s side, just as it had ended in 1991 on the Soviet Union’s side. Such an end to the Cold War would possibly cause America’s military-industrial complex — and the stock values of mega-corporations such as Lockheed Martin — to collapse.

Thus, the US aristocracy is afraid of peace replacing their existing permanent-war economy. All those trillions of dollars that have been invested in machines of mass-murder abroad, could plunge in value, if UK, France, and Germany, terminate the Western Alliance, and become individual sovereign nations who join with Iran — another individual sovereign nation — to say no to the Imperial power (the US), and yes to national sovereignty, which sovereignty constitutes the sole foundation-stone upon which any and all democracies are constructed. No democracy can exist in any nation that is a vassal to some other (the imperial power). In a world where national sovereignty is honored, democracy would not necessarily exist everywhere, but it would no longer be internationally prohibited by an imperial power, which inevitably is itself a dictatorship, no real democracy at all.

On March 3rd, the 175-year-old imperial magazine, The Economist, headlined against China as an enemy in this continuing Cold War, “How the West got China wrong” and explained “the Chinese threat”:

“China is not a market economy and, on its present course, never will be. Instead, it increasingly controls business as an arm of state power… Foreign businesses are profitable but miserable, because commerce always seems to be on China’s terms.”

The imperialistic view is that the international dictator and its corporations should rule — there should be no real sovereign other than this dictatorship, by the US regime now, since America is today’s imperialist nation.

Perhaps Europe now will make the fateful decision, between international dictatorship on the one side, or else the supreme sovereignty of each and every nation on the other, to determine its own laws — and to require any corporation that does business there to adhere to its legal system and to none other: the supremacy of each nation within its own territory, not of any international corporations, not even of ones that are based in some international-bully country that says it’s “the one indispensable nation” — meaning that every other nation is “dispensable.” Russia won’t accept that. Iran won’t accept that. China won’t accept that. Will Germany accept it — the land of the original: “Deutschland über alles”? Will France? Will UK?

Americans accept it. The US public are very effectively controlled by America’s aristocracy. A Yougov poll at the start of 2017 (the start of Trump’s Presidency) asked over 7,000 Americans to rate countries as “enemy”, “unfriendly”, “friendly”, “ally”, or “not sure”; and, among the 144 rated countries, Americans placed at the most hostile end, in order from the very worst, to the 13th-from-worst: North Korea, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Sudan. Other than Saudi Arabia, which the US Government treats as being its master if not as being its very top ally, and which is, in any case, by far the US military’s biggest customer (other than the US Government, of course), that list from Yougov looks very much like, or else close to, what America’s aristocracy would want to see targeted, as being America’s ‘enemies’. So, other than Americans’ including the top ally both of America’s aristocracy and of Israel‘s aristocracy, Saudi Arabia, on that list of enemies, the list was very much what the US aristocracy’s ’news’media had been promoting as being America’s ‘enemies’. In fact, even though those ‘news’media haven’t informed Americans that 92% of Saudi Arabians approve of ISIS, or that the Saudi royal family financed and organized the 9/11 attacks (in conjunction with others of George W. Bush’s friends), Americans view Saudi Arabia hostilely. That’s acceptable to America’s aristocracy, because the Saud family’s hatred is focused against Iran, the main Shiite nation, and the US public (have been deceive to) prefer Saudi Arabia over Iran. In fact, a 17 February 2016 Gallup poll showed that Iran was seen by Americans as being even more hostile toward Americans than is Saudi Arabia. So, America’s aristocracy have no reason to be concerned that their chief ally and second-from-top governmental customer, the Saud family, are unfavorably viewed by the US public. Both in America and in Saudi Arabia, the aristocracy effectively controls its public. Thus, the American people think in the way that the American aristocracy want them to — supporting any conquest (e.g., Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-) that the aristocracy want to perpetrate. Of course, the way to achieve this control is by means of the windows through which the public get to see the world around them, which windows on the world are the nation’s ‘news’media.

On May 12^th, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) reported that the American people are very effectively controlled to believe Iran to be America’s enemy and very dangerous to us. The headline was “Media Debate Best Way to Dominate Iran” and the article documented that the American people are being very intensively propagandized by the aristocratically controlled media, to favor aggression against Iran, and are being heavily lied-to, in order to achieve this.

So, though the American public will continue to support the American Government (despite distrusting both their government and their ‘news’media), foreign publics aren’t so rigidly under the control of America’s aristocracy; and therefore Europe’s aristocracies could abandon their alliance with the US aristocracy, if they strongly enough want to. Their ‘news’media would obediently do whatever they’re told, and could begin immediately portraying the reality of the US Government, to their people — including, for example, the reality that the US stole Ukraine, and some of the participants have even confessed their roles; Russia did not steal Crimea (and the Crimea-Ukraine issue was the alleged spark for the ‘restoration’ of the Cold War — which The West never actually ended on its side, only Russia did on its side).

An end of The Western Alliance (America’s empire) could happen. But it would require — from the EU’s leaders (and/or from Turkey’s Erdogan) — courage, conviction, and a commitment to national sovereignty’s being the foundation-stone to any democracy anywhere, and this change-of-political-theory would be something drastically new in Europe (and-or in Turkey), which is a region that has historically been staunchly supportive of empires, and thus supportive of dictatorships (ones that are compliant — foreign stooge-regimes). It would require a historic sea-change.

*

Published in September 2009

Michel Chossudovsky, the director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, sits down with The Corbett Report to discuss the real meaning of the banker bailouts.

The banks lend money to the government and with the money they lend to the government, the Treasury finances the bailout.

In turn, the banks impose conditionalities on the management of the US public debt. They dictate how the money should be spent.

The recipient banks are the beneficiaries as well as the creditors. As creditors, they will oblige the government a) to slash expenditures b) to run up the public debt through the issuing of treasury bills and government bonds.

This public debt crisis is all the more serious because the US federal government does not control monetary policy. All public debt operations go through the Federal reserve, which is in charge of monetary policy, acting on behalf of private financial interests. The government as such has no authority over money creation. This means that public debt operations essentially serve the interests of the banks.”

The stated objective of the bank bailout programs is to alleviate the banks’ burden of bad debts and non-performing loans. In actuality what is happening is that these massive amounts of money are being used by a handful of institutions to consolidate their position in global banking.

The exposure of the banks, largely the result of derivative trade, is estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars, to the extent that the amounts and guarantees granted by the Treasury and the Fed will not resolve the crisis. Nor are they intended to resolve the crisis.

The mainstream media suggests that the banks are being nationalized as a result of TARP, In fact, it is exactly the opposite: the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized. The establishment of a Worldwide unipolar financial system is part of the broader project of the Wall Street financial elites to establish the contours of a world government.

In a bitter irony, the recipients of the bailout under TARP and Obama’s proposed $750 billion aid to financial institutions are the creditors of the federal government. The Wall Street banks are the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt, although they hold only a portion of the debt, they transact and trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments Worldwide.

They act as creditors of the US State. They evaluate the creditworthiness of the US government, they rank the public debt through Moody’s and Standard and Poor. They control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board and the US Congress. They oversee and dictate fiscal and monetary policy, ensuring that the State acts in their interest.

Since the Reagan era, Wall Street dominates most areas of economic and social policy. It sets the budgetary agenda, ensuring the curtailment of social expenditures. Wall Street preaches balanced budgets but the practice has been lobbying for the elimination of corporate taxes, the granting of handouts to corporations, tax write-offs in mergers and acquisitions etc, all of which lead to a spiralling public debt.

The Federal Reserve System: Circular and Contradictory Relationship

The Federal Reserve system is a privately owned central bank. While the Federal Reserve Board is a government body, the process of money creation is controlled by the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, which are privately owned.

While the Federal Reserve can create money “out of thin air”, the multibillion outlays of the Treasury (including the Bush and Obama bank bailouts) will require the emission of public debt in the form of Treasury Bills and government bonds. Part of these T-Bills will of course also be held by the Fed.

US financial institutions oversee the US public debt. They are involved in the sale of treasury bills and government bonds on financial markets in the US and around the World. But they also hold part of the public debt. In this regard, they are the creditors of the US government. Part of this increased public debt required to rescue the banks will be financed or brokered by the same financial institutions which are the object of the bank rescue plan.

We are dealing with a pernicious circular relationship. When the banks pressured the Treasury to assist them in the form of a major bank rescue operation, it was understood from the outset that the banks would in turn assist the Treasury in financing the handouts of which they are the recipients.

To finance the bank bailout, the Treasury needs to run a massive budget deficit, which in turn requires a staggering increase of the US public debt.

Public opinion has been misled. The US government is in a sense financing its own indebtedness: the money granted to the banks is in part financed by borrowing from the banks.

The banks lend money to the government and with the money they lend to the government, the Treasury finances the bailout. In turn, the banks impose conditionalities on the management of the US public debt. They dictate how the money should be spent. They impose “fiscal responsibility”; they dictate massive cuts in social expenditures which result in the collapse and/or privatization of public services. They impose the privatization of urban infrastructure, roads, sewer and water systems, public recreational areas, everything is up for privatization.

The recipient banks are the beneficiaries as well as the creditors. As creditors, they will oblige the government a) to slash expenditures b) to run up the public debt through the issuing of treasury bills and government bonds.

This public debt crisis is all the more serious because the US federal government does not control monetary policy. All public debt operations go through the Federal reserve, which is in charge of monetary policy, acting on behalf of private financial interests. The government as such has no authority over money creation. This means that public debt operations essentially serve the interests of the banks.”

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Montreal, September 17, 2009

According to the United States Office of the Inspector General, $21 Trillion in taxpayer money is unaccounted for.

As unbelievable and absurd as that sounds, the actual total of unaccounted for taxpayer money at the Pentagon is most likely significantly more than $21 trillion.

“The fact that this mind-blowing amount of missing tax money has not been a lightning rod for mainstream media coverage, congressional investigations, and a lead issue for all political representatives, particularly those who claim to care about our skyrocketing national debt, calls into serious question the integrity and legitimacy of all leadership and responsible parties. … We are trapped in a vicious cycle; increased military spending, with inadequate oversight, leads to billions of our annual taxpayer dollars being given directly to the people who profit of war, terrorism and societal destabilization in general – as evidence clearly demonstrates.”

According to United States government documents, since 1998, the Office of the Inspector General has reported on $21 Trillion in unaccounted for taxpayer money.

As unbelievable and absurd as that sounds, the actual total of unaccounted for taxpayer money at the Pentagon is most likely significantly more than $21 trillion.

Researchers are unable to get data for every year of military spending, many Pentagon agencies do not have any publically available records, hundreds of thousands of transactions have been erased, and an estimated millions of transactions do not have any traceable record.

In fact, the Pentagon, which handles more than half of all of our tax dollars allocated by Congress, has never been properly audited – despite the fact that an annual audit has been required by law for all federal government agencies since 1996.

Read complete report

VIDEO 

Satire on the Missing $21 Trillion. Lee Camp

GR Editor’s Note

Lets be clear as to the implications.

When they ” shoot at children, they are doing so deliberately, under clear and specific orders.” 

What this means is that the Netanyahu government ordered the killing of Palestinian children. The guidelines adopted by the IDF were approved at the highest levels of the Israeli government.

We are dealing with crimes against humanity and the self-proclaimed “international community” applauds. Western leaders, not to mention the media, are complicit: the consensus is that “Israel has the right to defend itself” …. by killing children: 

“So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by… I am not Ahmad Tibi, I am Zvika Fogel. I know how these orders are given. I know how a sniper does the shooting. I know how many authorizations he needs before he receives an authorization to open fire. It is not the whim of one or the other sniper who identifies the small body of a child now and decides he’ll shoot. Someone marks the target for him very well and tells him exactly why one has to shoot and what the threat is from that individual.” (see transcript of Interview Below)

Through omission, the Western media  does not mention the words “Gaza Massacre”.  You won’t see it, because according to the mainstream opinion it did not happen.

Palestinian children are described as “terrorists”. The lie become the truth! Killing Palestinians constitutes a “Responsibility to Protect” rather than a crime against humanity. 

Brigadier-General Zvika Fogal‘s mandate is to kill Palestinian children with a view to protecting the State of Israel:

“And to my great sorrow, sometimes when you shoot at a small body and you intended to hit his arm or shoulder it goes even higher. The picture is not a pretty picture. But … that’s the price that we have to pay to preserve the safety and quality of life of the residents of the State of Israel” . 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, May 19, 2018

***

An Israeli general has confirmed that when snipers stationed along Israel’s boundary with Gaza shoot at children, they are doing so deliberately, under clear and specific orders.

In a radio interview, Brigadier-General (Reserve) Zvika Fogel describes how a sniper identifies the “small body” of a child and is given authorization to shoot.

Fogel’s statements could be used as evidence of intent if Israeli leaders are ever tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court.

On Friday, an Israeli sniper shot dead 14-year-old Muhammad Ibrahim Ayyoub.

The boy, shot in the head east of Jabaliya, was the fourth child among the more than 30 Palestinians killed during the Great March of Return rallies that began in Gaza on 30 March.

More than 1,600 other Palestinians have been shot with live ammunition that has caused what doctors are calling “horrific injuries” likely to leave many of them with permanent disabilities.

Our initial investigation confirms Israeli forces killed 14-year-old Mahmoud Ibrahim Ayoub in Gaza today around 4:30 pm local time. He sustained a gunshot wound to the head & was later pronounced dead at Shifa hospital. #GazaReturnMarch pic.twitter.com/CwJn8xqhPf

— Defense for Children (@DCIPalestine) April 20, 2018

As eyewitnesses and video confirmed, the child Muhammad Ayyoub posed no conceivable danger to heavily armed Israeli occupation forces stationed dozens of meters away behind fences and earthen fortifications on the other side of the Gaza boundary when he was killed.

Even the usually timid United Nations peace process envoy Nickolay Mladenov publicly declared that the slaying was “outrageous.”

? It is OUTRAGEOUS to shoot at children! How does the killing of a child in #Gaza today help #peace? It doesn’t! It fuels anger and breeds more killing. #Children must be protected from #violence, not exposed to it, not killed! This tragic incident must be investigated.

— Nickolay E. MLADENOV (@nmladenov) April 20, 2018

Targeting children

On Saturday, Brigadier-General Fogel was interviewed by Ron Nesiel on the Israeli public radio network Kan.

Fogel is the former chief of staff of the Israeli army’s “southern command,” which includes the occupied Gaza Strip.

תת אלוף(מיל) צביקה פוגל ברשת ב כאן: מי שמתקרב לגדר כדי לבדוק למשל אם יש שטחים מתים דינו מוות!
רון נשיאל המראיין : גם אם מדובר בילד לא חמוש? פוגל: כן , גם אם מדובר בילד.

— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) April 21, 2018

Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian lawmaker in Israel’s parliament, drew attention to the interview in a tweet.

A recording of the interview is online (it begins at 6:52). The interview was translated for The Electronic Intifada by Dena Shunra and a full transcript follows this article.

The host Ron Nesiel asks Fogel if the Israeli army should “rethink its use of snipers,” and suggests that someone giving orders “lowered the bar for using live fire.”

Fogel adamantly defends the policy, stating:

“At the tactical level, any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation.”

He adds:

“If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order to hide an explosive device or check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us …”

“Then his punishment is death?” Nesiel interjects.

“His punishment is death,” the general responds. “As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs.”

Fogel then describes the careful process by which targets – including children – are identified and shot:

“I know how these orders are given. I know how a sniper does the shooting. I know how many authorizations he needs before he receives an authorization to open fire. It is not the whim of one or the other sniper who identifies the small body of a child now and decides he’ll shoot. Someone marks the target for him very well and tells him exactly why one has to shoot and what the threat is from that individual. And to my great sorrow, sometimes when you shoot at a small body and you intended to hit his arm or shoulder, it goes even higher.”

For “it goes even higher,” Fogel uses a Hebrew idiom also meaning “it costs even more.”

In this chilling statement, in which a general talks about snipers targeting the “small body of a child,” Fogel makes crystal clear that this policy is premeditated and deliberate.

While presenting unarmed Palestinian children as dangerous terrorists worthy of death, Fogel describes the snipers killing them in cold blood as the innocent, vulnerable parties who deserve protection.

“We have soldiers there, our children, who were sent out and receive very accurate instructions about whom to shoot to protect us. Let’s back them up,” he says.

Lethal policy

Fogel’s statements are no aberration but represent Israeli policy.

“Israeli officials made it clear that the open-fire regulations would permit lethal fire at anyone attempting to damage the fence, and even at any person coming within 300 meters of it,” the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem stated in a recent analysis of Israel’s illegal targeting of unarmed civilians who pose no threat.

“Nevertheless, all state and military officials have steadfastly refused to cancel the unlawful orders and continue to issue – and justify – them,” B’Tselem added.

B’Tselem has called on individual soldiers to defy such illegal orders.

Following its investigation of the “calculated” killings of unarmed demonstrators on 30 March, the first day of the Great March of Return rallies in Gaza, Human Rights Watch concluded that the lethal crackdown was “planned at [the] highest levels of the Israeli government.”

Two weeks ago, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court issued an unprecedented warning that Israeli leaders may face trial for the killings of unarmed Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip.

Potential defendants would be giving any prosecutor a gift with such open admissions that killing unarmed people in an occupied territory who pose no objective threat is their policy and intent.

The question remains whether anything will finally pierce the shield of impunity that Israel has enjoyed for 70 years.

*

Full Transcript

Brigadier-General (Res.) Zvika Fogel interviewed on the Yoman Hashevua program of Israel’s Kan radio, 21 April 2018.

Ron Nesiel: Greetings Brigadier General (Res.) Zvika Fogel. Should the IDF [Israeli army] rethink its use of snipers? There’s the impression that maybe someone lowered the bar for using live fire, and this may be the result?

Zvika Fogel: Ron, let’s maybe look at this matter on three levels. At the tactical level that we all love dealing with, the local one, also at the level of values, and with your permission, we will also rise up to the strategic level. At the tactical level, any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order to hide an explosive device or check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us …

Nesiel: Then, then his punishment is death?

Fogel: His punishment is death. As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there …

Nesiel: But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger.

Fogel: Come, let’s move over to the level of values. Assuming that we understood the tactical level, as we cannot tolerate a crossing of our border or a violation of our border, let’s proceed to the level of values. I am not Ahmad Tibi, I am Zvika Fogel. I know how these orders are given. I know how a sniper does the shooting. I know how many authorizations he needs before he receives an authorization to open fire. It is not the whim of one or the other sniper who identifies the small body of a child now and decides he’ll shoot. Someone marks the target for him very well and tells him exactly why one has to shoot and what the threat is from that individual. And to my great sorrow, sometimes when you shoot at a small body and you intended to hit his arm or shoulder it goes even higher. The picture is not a pretty picture. But if that’s the price that we have to pay to preserve the safety and quality of life of the residents of the State of Israel, then that’s the price. But now, with your permission, let us go up one level and look at the overview. It is clear to you that Hamas is fighting for consciousness at the moment. It is clear to you and to me …

Nesiel: Is it hard for them to do? Aren’t we providing them with sufficient ammunition in this battle?

Fogel: We’re providing them but …

Nesiel: Because it does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world.

Fogel: Look, Ron, we’re even terrible at it. There’s nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. But let’s look at it at the strategic level: you and I and a large part of the listeners are clear that this will not end up in demonstrations. It is clear to us that Hamas can’t continue to tolerate the fact that its rockets are not managing to hurt us, its tunnels are eroding …

Nesiel: Yes.

Fogel: And it doesn’t have too many suicide bombers who continue to believe the fairytale about the virgins waiting up there. It will drag us into a war. I do not want to be on the side that gets dragged. I want to be on the side that initiates things. I do not want to wait for the moment where it finds a weak spot and attacks me there. If tomorrow morning it gets into a military base or a kibbutz and kills people there and takes prisoners of war or hostages, call it as you like, we’re in a whole new script. I want the leaders of Hamas to wake up tomorrow morning and for the last time in their life see the smiling faces of the IDF. That’s what I want to have happen. But we are dragged along. So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by. We can’t always take a single picture and put it before the whole world. We have soldiers there, our children, who were sent out and receive very accurate instructions about whom to shoot to protect us. Let’s back them up.

Nesiel: Brigadier-General (Res.) Zvika Fogel, formerly Head of the Southern Command Staff, thank you for your words.

Fogel: May you only hear good news. Thank you.

A former French Prime Minister unveiled a detailed and very ambitious plan to form a Eurafrican Axis in the New Cold War as a means of “balancing” between East and West, but what he’s really calling for is a policy of ‘controlled’ ‘replacement migration’ coupled with refined neo-imperial political and economic models for making France the ‘missing’ African hegemon.

Dominique de Villepin, a career diplomat and France’s former Prime Minister from 2005-2007, unveiled a detailed and very ambitious plan to form a Eurafrican Axis while speaking at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) at the beginning of the week. His strategic proposal deserves to be examined in depth because of the overall significance that it holds in the context of the New Cold War, especially in regards to what he says are his larger motivations in suggesting it.

His opening remarks even included the provocative assertion that he “believes the capacity of America and Asia to avoid a large scale confrontation that could destroy the world order depends on a strong Euro-African backbone”. He later made it clear that “Asia” is basically a euphemism for Russia and China, both of whom pursue a “model based on authority, nationalism and economic state-planning and strict defense of state sovereignty in foreign policy” which he believes justifies the US’ National Security Strategy (“The Trump Doctrine”) labelling them as “revisionist powers”.

Dominique de Villepin speaking at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA)

Based on this understanding as revealed in his speech, there’s no doubt that he envisions a future where the Eurasian Great Powers of Russia and China (and by extension, their Golden Ring partners of Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey) vie with the new Eurafrican Axis for dominance in the Eastern Hemisphere, although he disingenuously states tries to disguise this coming face-off through misleading rhetoric about the latter arrangement being the “logic of multipolarity” that will “not compete, even less confront, the initiatives of America, Russia or China”.

In reality, the Eurafrican Axis is really just a massive longitudinal manifestation of the US’ “Lead From Behind” strategy for adapting unipolarity to multipolarity through the formation of complex proxy coalitions, though in this context through America’s “special” French partner taking the lead in pioneering a neo-imperial continental takeover. The former Prime Minister laments that “there is no natural hegemonic power for the whole continent”, hinting that his country could fulfill that role in order to build the “dedicated governance body” that he says is needed for managing EU-African relations.

Speaking quite candidly, he said that “the Africa-Europe partnership will be driven by crisis management”, pointing to the Sahel, Congolese, and Horn of Africa conflicts that stretch from Africa’s Atlantic coast to its Indian one and contribute to forming what the author recently characterized as “Migrant Crisis 2.0”. Apart from the obvious security implications that this holds in intimating an indefinite and likely expanded French military presence all throughout the continent (to say nothing of the US’ presently existing one through AFRICOM), there’s also an economic-integrational dimension that’s designed to unofficially compete with China’s Silk Road.

In gearing the listeners up for his pitch, Villepin expresses remorse that Africa presently provides “a lack of sufficient financial returns” in spite of France controlling the economies of over a dozen countries through the West African and Central African Francs that are issued by Paris. What he’s probably referring to, then, is the relatively lengthy return on investment that ‘average’ European (French) entrepreneurs have to wait for in Africa and which makes them think that investments there aren’t worthwhile or worth the risk. The solution, Villepin believes, is “a public and collective vehicle to promote investment and hedge against risks, specially (sic) against political risks”.

The former French Premier praised Rwanda’s initiative last month to roll out an EU-like “Continental Free Trade Area” all across Africa, which he thinks would be greatly enhanced by a trilateral partnership “between the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank” in order to counter the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that China founded to fund its Silk Road projects. This in turn is expected to enable enable the construction of “transnational transport infrastructure”, which will again seek to unofficially counter China in Africa.

Considering how far behind France and its allies are in doing this throughout Africa, it’s more than likely that Paris will have to activate the “Hex” (the “Quad” plus Vietnam and France) and then urge its members to throw massive amounts of resources into the Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” as soon as possible in order to stand any chance whatsoever at making a dent in China’s developmental dominance in the continent. Nevertheless, prudently choosing to also invest in “people first” (soft infrastructure) and the creation of a (French-controlled) “special cultural board” dealing with movies, art, and education might give the “Hex” a soft power edge and yield positive perception management  dividends for it.

All in all, Villepin is seeking to sell the Eurafrican Axis to Europeans on the basis of it helping them engage in ‘controlled’ ‘replacement migration’ through the creation of a long-term ‘crisis management  mechanism’, one which he hopes will also appeal to Africans because of its ‘developmental’ dimension even though the entire proposal is essentially a rebranding of Paris’ decades-old “Françafrique” policy of neo-colonialism, albeit this time on a continental scale and qualitatively enhanced through the active participation of the “Hex”. The announcement of this gargantuan “Lead From Behind” structure therefore heralds in a new “Scramble for Africa” that’s bound to eventually lead to a series of Hybrid War flashpoints here as the New Cold War continues unabated.

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This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

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.

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.”[1]

International criminal lawyer Chris C. Black explains that this occurs at about the same time that the Kiev regime invaded the home of Petro Symonenko, head of the Communist party, (and subsequently interrogated him for seven hours).

Clearly, the Kiev regime equates “treason” with freedoms of speech, freedoms of association, and freedoms of the press.

None of this is surprising, since the Kiev regime is in fact an illegal Neo-Nazi/Banderite-drenched junta – and fully supported by the West, including Canada.[2]

The West itself has also forfeited its freedoms, but its methods for achieving these ends are more sophisticated.  Consent for the most criminal agendas is typically engineered by a controlled media, and puppet politicians.  Whereas the perception of freedom still lingers in the West, Kiev has forgone the niceties. Whereas Canada continues to support neo-Nazis and al Qaeda, it manages public perceptions to such a degree that the public remains oblivious.

No doubt Kiev is envious.

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

Notes

[1] Sputnik International. “Deafening Silence: Western Media Silent on Ukraine’s Russian News Agency Raid.” 16 May, 2018. (https://sputniknews.com/europe/201805161064512985-media-silence-ukraine-raid/) Accessed 17 May, 2018.

[2] Michel Chossudovsky, “The US Sponsored Neoliberal Neo-Nazi Coup d’Etat in Ukraine. An Act of War.” Global Research. 21 March, 2014. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-neoliberal-neo-nazi-coup-detat/5431339) Accessed 17 May, 2018.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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Global Research is a small team that believes in the power of information and analysis to bring about far-reaching societal change including a world without war.

Truth in media is a powerful instrument. As long as we keep probing, asking questions, challenging media disinformation to find real understanding, then we are in a better position to participate in creating a better world in which truth and accountability trump greed and corruption.

*     *    *

Our History Haunts Our Future

By Samah Jabr, May 18, 2018

The Nakba is not only an historical trauma but an accumulative affliction that continues to harm Palestinian identity, both collectively and individually; the Nakba is an ongoing injury that has never been bandaged or healed. The Nakba is a contemporary insult renewed with every Palestinian who is humiliated, arrested, and killed; salt is added to the wound of the Nakba with every demolished home and every bit of confiscated land.

Gina Haspel and Pinocchio from Rome

By Edward Curtin, May 18, 2018

Wherever you go in central Rome, you can hear the screams and smell the blood of those tortured and killed by the Roman Empire and those who ably followed in their stead. And you can see the crumbled stones and the pathetic architectural remains of those who thought they had triumphed. Their triumph turned to dust, and their belated mea culpas, if and when they ever came, always rang as hollow as Gina Haspel’s, Lt. William Calley’s, and Adolph Eichmann’s excuses that they were only doing their jobs and following orders.

World War II: The Murderous Allied Firestorms against German Civilians

By Shane Quinn, May 18, 2018

On 14 February 1942, a British Air Staff directive outlined their bombing campaigns should “be focused on the morale of the enemy’s civilian population”. As Daniel Ellsberg, the veteran former US military analyst, confirms in his recent book The Doomsday Machine, Britain was the first to begin “deliberate bombing of urban populations as the principal way of fighting a war”, starting in early 1942.

United Nations – Celebrating 70 Years of Human Rights – And Condoning 70 Years of Israel Massacring Palestine

By Peter Koenig, May 18, 2018

On 14 of May 1948 – Israel declared unilaterally her independence in a foreign land, called Palestine, supported by a UN Resolution sponsored by the UK (the United Nations “Partition Plan of Palestine” at the end of the British Mandate (euphemism for British ‘colony’), was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 II). 1948 was also the year of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights – this year, 2018, the UN declared Human Rights are, like Israel, celebrating their 70^th Birthday (United Nations General Assembly, Paris, 10 December 1948 – General Assembly Resolution 217 A).

Dangerous Liaison: Industrial Agriculture and the Reductionist Mindset

By Colin Todhunter, May 17, 2018

A minority of the global population has access to so much food than it can afford to waste much of it, while food insecurity has become a fact of life for hundreds of millions. This crisis stems from food and agriculture being wedded to power structures that serve the interests of the powerful global agribusiness corporations.

Korea and the United States: Negotiating a Peace Treaty

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 16, 2018

The Kim-Pompeo secret Easter March negotiations in Pyongyang involving intelligence and national security officials from the US, ROK and DPRK have set the stage for the formulation of a US agenda, requiring unilateral concessions on the part of the DPRK.  And it is this agenda which will be upheld by Washington in the forthcoming Kim-Trump summit in Singapore on June 12.

The biggest obstacle Donald Trump is going to face in his upcoming negotiations with Kim Jong-un, is not Kim’s unwillingness to abandon his nuclear weapons program, but resistance from powerful elements in the foreign policy establishment who will do everything they can to scuttle the agreement. We’ve already seen an example of this just this week when US nuclear bombers were included in the US-Korea joint military drills that are currently underway in the south. The B-52′s were clearly added to the massive “Max Thunder” exercises to provoke the DPRK leadership, increase tensions, and convince Kim that it was pointless to trust Washington. The move was bitterly criticized in North Korea’s state media which summed up the situation like this:

“At a time when the DPRK-U.S. summit is approaching, the U.S. has launched the largest ever drill involving B-52 strategic nuclear bomber, F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and other nuclear strategic assets. This is an extremely provocative and ill-boding act going against the trend for peace and security on the Korean peninsula ….The extremely adventurous 2018 Max Thunder joint air combat exercises are aimed at precision strike on key strategic objects of the DPRK and the seizure of the air control together with the U.S….”

The North’s assessment is entirely correct. The drills are a simulation of a preemptive attack on North Korea that would annihilate the military, level Pyongyang and “decapitate” the leadership. They are a deliberate provocation designed to poison the atmosphere prior to the June 12 summit in Singapore. They’re also a clear violation of the Panmunjom Declaration which affirms the mutual commitment of the North and South “to completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air and sea, that are the source of military tension and conflict.” (Panmunjom Declaration)

What we’d like to know is whether Trump was consulted about the drills? Did he give the go-ahead? Was it his decision to tweak Kim’s nose after Kim had just made a number of conciliatory gestures including the total banning of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles tests, the returning of three US prisoners to US custody, and meeting with leaders in the south in order to end hostilities and normalize relations? Is Trump responsible for this diplomatic disaster?

Of course not. Trump’s objectives are completely clear. He wants to win the Nobel Prize and he wants to be recognized as a foreign policy genius, both of which are within his grasp if he persuades Kim to ditch his nukes. Trump does not want to provoke Kim who, so far, has acted in good faith. He wants to cut a deal with him. The exercises represent the interests of some other constituency, some deeper faction within the national security state who have a stake in the outcome of future negotiations. They want the talks to fail so they can preserve the status quo. They want a divided Korea that “languishes in a permanent state of colonial dependency”. That works just fine for them, which is why the military drills were not postponed or cancelled. It’s also why John Bolton has been making incendiary comments about the “Libya model”, and why the media has been fueling public pessimism while misrepresenting US position. According to many media reports, the North will be expected to ‘totally decommission its nuclear weapons, missiles and biochemical weapons’ without any immediate compensation.

That’s not the deal. That’s never been the deal. No one on the North Korean side ever said that Washington was going to get something for nothing. And it’s not going to happen either. Kim is looking for a tradeoff, a decommissioning of his nuclear weapons in exchange for basic security guarantees. That’s the deal.

So who’s spreading all these false rumors and what is their objective? Here’s more from North Korea’s state media:

“The U.S. is miscalculating the magnanimity of the DPRK as signs of weakness and trying to embellish and advertise as if these are the product of its sanctions and pressure.

The U.S. is trumpeting as if it would offer economic compensation and benefit in case we abandon nukes. But we have never had any expectation of U.S. support in carrying out our economic construction and will not make such a deal in future….

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.” (End of statement)

The North doesn’t want Washington’s money or its economic inducements. The North wants assurances that the US will not attack it in the future. That’s it. That’s what Kim wants. He wants an end to the hostilities so he can move ahead with a regional economic-integration plan that will draw the two Koreas closer together, end the North’s isolation, strengthen the North’s economy, and pave the way for prosperity. In other words, Kim is offering to give up his nuclear weapons to (essentially) get Washington off its back and out of its hair.

None of this has anything to do with Trump’s absurd “maximum pressure” campaign, which had no impact on Kim’s decision at all. The North is not motivated by Trump’s hysterical threats of “total destruction”, but by a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to emerge from its long-term seclusion and become an active participant in an ambitious economic integration plan that will link North and South Korea to the rest of Asia via massive infrastructure and energy projects. The only catch to this proposal, is that the DPRK must abandon its nuclear weapons program and agree to resolve its issues with Seoul. In other words, Kim’s eagerness to denuclearize is not an attempt to placate Washington, but an effort to meet the minimal requirements of his economic partners in Beijing, Moscow and Seoul.

The United States is not central to the critical economic-political developments on the peninsula, in fact, the region is making a concerted effort to sever its ties with Washington by creating a giant free trade zone that will connect the region through ” large trilateral infrastructural and energy projects,” to Japan, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Europe. Check this out from the Kremlin website:

“The Korean Government has recently created the Northern Economic Cooperation Committee… This has completed the creation of a management system that will make Korea the leader in the development of the Far East. The Committee is tasked with strengthening economic cooperation with Northeast Asian and Eurasian countries. In the future, cooperation between the Committee and Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District and the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East will play a key role in the development of the Far East.

Next year, we will create a Korean-Russian Regional Cooperation Forum. It should bolster contacts between regional governments in Korea and the Russian Far East. Cooperation channels between regional economic communities and small and medium-sized businesses will greatly expand contacts between people and promote practical cooperation…..

The North Korean nuclear and missile ambitions are the biggest threat to the development of the huge potential of the Korean Peninsula and the Russian Far East. This is why we have come to the conclusion that this problem must be settled as soon as possible.” (Kremlin website)

See what’s going on? Kim has been asked to choose between prosperity or nukes, and he has wisely chosen prosperity. He has decided to participate in a common economic space that allows commerce to flourish without the bulk of the profits to be siphoned off by the voracious western corporations. Is it any wonder why powerful members of the foreign policy establishment want to torpedo the plan?

The integration plan is not some pie-in-the-sky apparition, but a broad and detailed economic blueprint for regional development; power plants, highways, high-speed rail, and pipeline corridors. It’s the whole nine yards. Here’s more from The South China Morning Post:

“President Moon Jae-in gave the North’s leader Kim Jong-un a USB drive containing a “New Economic Map of the Korean Peninsula” at the fortified border village of Panmunjom on April 27. The initiative included three economic belts – one connecting the west coast of the peninsula to China, making the region a centre of logistics; one connecting the east coast to Russia for energy cooperation and one on the current border to promote tourism.

“The new economic map includes railway links between the two Koreas and China’s northeast stretching all the way to Europe….”
…
“The plan would have a huge impact on China’s northeastern region as it would transform the region as a centre of logistics in East Asia, which could function as a driving force for the rapid economic growth of the region….A railway connection would bring a myriad of investments from overseas and would help the economy take off.”

Yet observers added that the initiatives were dependent on Kim accepting Seoul’s definition of denuclearisation – namely the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of the North’s nuclear programme.” (The South China Morning Post)

Kim must denuclearize in order to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity, which is why he is eager to make hefty concessions to Trump while getting very little in return. Think about it: Trump gets the nukes and the Nobel Prize while Kim gets a lousy piece of paper with Washington’s guarantees for security. That’s a great deal for Trump but not a very good deal for Kim. Even so, Kim is prepared to cooperate in order to meet his obligations and move forward with an economic plan that will strengthen his economy and improve the lives of his people. He’s making the right choice.

Some of Trump’s deep state opponents probably think that they can derail Kim’s plans by sabotaging the June 12th Summit. But that’s not entirely true. Kim does not need to reach an agreement with Trump, he merely has to convince his main trading partner, Beijing, that he’s made a sincere effort that was rejected by an unreasonable and tyrannical Washington. If Kim proves that he’s willing to go the extra mile for peace– by offering to decommission his nuclear arsenal– then Beijing is going to reward his behavior by easing the sanctions and restoring the DPRK’s economic lifeline. Bottom line: Kim is going to win one way or another.

In my opinion, the cat-n-mouse game Kim is playing with Trump is a bit of a ruse because, in truth, Kim is going to have to give up his nukes whether he makes a deal with Trump or not. As we said earlier, Moscow, Beijing and Seoul have all made denuclearization a basic requirement for participation in their economic integration plan, so it’s a done deal. Kim is going to have to abandon his nuclear weapons. The fact is, Russia and China don’t want the smaller, surrounding nations to have nukes any more than the US wants Mexico, Canada or Cuba to have them. It dramatically impacts regional security.

Finally, it wouldn’t surprise me if Washington’s deep state powerbrokers are more concerned about the proposed regional free trade zone, then they are about the North’s nuclear weapons. In order for the US to be a major player in the most populous and prosperous region in the world, it must implement its “pivot to Asia” strategy that controls China’s explosive growth and prevents the emergence of an economic or military rival. The so called “Putin Plan” for vast economic integration is a direct threat to Washington’s dream of maintaining its dominant position in the global economy. If successfully implemented, the Putin Plan will greatly accelerate the pace of imperial decline.

So far, I don’t see any indication that Washington knows how to deal with this threat.

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Featured image is from the author.

Russia’s “balancing” strategy was vindicated yesterday after the Syrian President came to Sochi and announced his country’s full participation in the post-Daesh constitutional revisionism process.

Restoring The “Balance”

President Putin’s feting of “Israeli” “Prime Minister” Benjamin Netanyahu as his guest of honor during last week’s Victory Day celebrations shocked many people who were hitherto unaware of the extent of the Russian-“Israeli” strategic and military partnerships, especially given that this visit was bookended by back-to-back bombings of Syria right before and after the summit took place. Even more surprising to some was that Russia almost immediately afterwards announced that it would not be giving its S-300 anti-air missile defense systems to Syria, which led to howling accusations that President Putin “sold out” his Mideast “ally”. The truth of the matter is a lot deeper than the demagogic allegations would lead one to believe because Russia is actually conducting a complex “balancing” act all throughout the Mideast as explained by these following five analyses:

• “Russia’s Foreign Policy Progressives Have Trumped The Traditionalists”
• “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”
• “The Syrian ‘Show’ Must Go On”
• “Could It Be Any Clearer? Russia Is ‘Urging’ Syria To ‘Compromise’, Now!”
• “Russia Is Already ‘Balancing’ Iran In The Mideast”

To sum it all up, Russia is leveraging its predominant military-diplomatic position in Syria after the defeat of Daesh and the beginning of the Moscow-initiated Astana peace process to enter into fast-moving multidimensional partnerships with all regional actors, especially those who are untraditional partners such as Turkey, “Israel”, and Saudi Arabia. The existing state of strategic affairs in the Mideast is such that the presence of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their Hezbollah allies in Syria following President Putin’s announcement of Daesh’s demise is perceived of as a “provocation” by “Israel” in spite of this relationship being entirely within Syria’s sovereign right to maintain however it sees fit. Nevertheless, because of its “disruptive” nature, a regional coalition of forces is increasingly applying ever-intensifying pressure on Damascus to seek their withdrawal, and therein emerges Russia’s pivotal role.

“Israel” Was Putin’s “Cat’s Paw” For Bringing Assad To The Negotiating Table

Envisioning itself as the supreme “balancing” force in 21^st-century Eurasian affairs, Russia is using its de-facto military and political “arbiter” status in Syria to manage the growing tensions between Iran and “Israel” in the Arab Republic, to which end Moscow “passively facilitates” Tel Aviv’s regular bombing raids in the country so long as they’re conducted on an alleged anti-Iranian pretext designed to restore the regional “balance”. Concurrent with this, Russia has been “urging” Syria to make tangible progress on the Astana peace process and specifically in implementing UNSC 2254’s mandate for “constitutional reform”. The “Syrian National Dialogue Congress” in January superficially succeeded in getting all parties to agree in sending delegations to the UN in order to jumpstart this process, something that hadn’t seen any progress whatsoever up until the Putin-Assad Summit.

About this surprise meeting, which in hindsight wasn’t all too unexpected, it can’t be looked at in a vacuum separate from the dynamic events that just took place over the past week. “Israel’s” back-to-back bombings of Syria which bookended Netanyahu’s visit to the Russian capital certainly sent an indirect signal from Moscow to Damascus that the former is going to allow Tel Aviv “free rein” to do as it pleases when it comes to “containing” Iran in the Arab Republic. Shortly afterwards, another signal was sent in the same direction when Russia declined to give S-300s to Syria, with the message this time being that Moscow will not allow Damascus to change the regional balance of forces in such a way as to obstruct “Israel’s” “freedom of action” to strike Iranian forces and their Hezbollah allies.

Under these militarily impossible circumstances, President Assad really had no choice but to beseech his Russian counterpart and reverse his government’s erstwhile unstated policy of procrastinating on the political process by publicly announcing that Damascus will indeed send a commission to the UN-mediated “constitutional committee” for revising his country’s founding document in accordance with UNSC 2254 and the outcome of the “Syrian National Dialogue Congress”. This peacemaking development would never have happened had Russia not “balanced” between “Israel” and Syria, as the latter had no practical intent of participating in this until it literally became the only way for the country to avoid experiencing any more Russian-facilitated “pressure” from “Israel”.

Constitutional Conundrum

The big question that everyone’s wondering about is the fate of the IRGC and Hezbollah, though it’s probable that they’ll be given a “face-saving” and “dignified” exit from the country via a forthcoming “phased withdrawal” as part of the “constitutional reform” process. This isn’t speculation either, as the Russian-written “draft constitution” of January 2017 specifically prohibits non-state military forces such as Hezbollah, as the author explained in his extensive review of this document in his February 2017 analysis about “SYRIA: Digging Into The Details Of The Russian-Written ‘Draft Constitution’”, which all readers should at least skim in order to become familiar with the most interesting aspects of this proposed document. Granted, the whole point of the UN-mediated “constitutional commission” is to agree on amendments to the Russian-written “draft constitution”, so it’s possible that some details might change.

It’s too early to say exactly which of the many controversial clauses included in this document will ultimately be amended, though it’s all but certain that the ones about “decentralization” will remain as they are there’s no way that the foreign-backed “opposition” – and especially those supported by Turkey in Idlib –will allow themselves to be peacefully reintegrated into a centralized Syrian state. To the contrary, the so-called “de-escalation zone” in which they’re presently operating was already predicted a year ago by the author to form the basis for these prospective administrative entities in his May 2017 piece about “Syria: From ‘De-Escalation’ Zones To ‘Decentralization” Units’. Likewise, it’s very possible that the “Israeli”-backed “opposition” abutting the occupied Golan Heights will seek to secure similar administrative “privileges” for themselves too, as will the American-assisted Kurds in the northeast.

That said, there might emerge a consensus decision driven by the many negotiating sides’ shared interests to do away with or at least further clarify several contentious proposals in the “draft constitution”. These concern “compulsory labor” for criminals, the removal of the 2014 Constitution’s prohibition on extraditing Syrians to “foreign entities” (instead changing it to “another state” and leaving open the possibility of sending citizens to the ICC), and the near impossibility of amending the new ‘constitution’ once it enters into force. The second-mentioned point is especially sensitive because it could potentially be abused to send members of the Syrian government and its military to international criminal tribunals despite likely having been originally written with only terrorists in mind.

Concluding Thoughts

Whatever the final outcome of this “constitutional revision” process may be, it needs to be accepted that there wouldn’t be any tangible progress on this whatsoever had Russia not succeeded in “balancing” “Israel” and Syria to this effect, as President Assad had been trying his hardest to hold out as long as possible in the hope that he may be able to negotiate from a better position that prevents him from having to “compromise” on “decentralization” and the presumably eventual “phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah from his country. Unfortunately for him, for as well-intended and deeply rooted as in his country’s national interests as it was, this strategy nonetheless failed to bring about the political-military dividends that it was supposed to and actually backfired to an extent because it made Damascus’ negotiating position much weaker with time.

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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.

First of all, the British Airways is not in the league of airlines such as Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific. Many of its intercontinental planes are old and unkempt; monitors are only bit bigger than a pack of cigarettes, and the selection of films thoroughly pathetic for a ‘global carrier’ – just a mainstream diet of Hollywood and British blockbusters.

While almost all first-rate airlines like Qatar Airways, Emirates, Thai, Singapore, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, but even KLM, Air France and Lufthansa, are offering cutting-edge films from Iran, China, Russia, Argentina, India and all other corners of the world, British Airways remains arrogantly and unapologetically US/UK-centric. Judging from the selection of its films, who would ever think that Great Britain used to colonize almost half of the world, and to this day is still meddling in the affairs of dozens of countries worldwide?

The BA’s selection of films, TV programs and news could only be described as shockingly dogmatic. That is of course expected from and fitting for the national airline of the country that acts as the chief propaganda producer and supplier for the entire West.

Judging by the selection of the ‘entertainment’ offered on UK and US carriers, it appears that both the UK and US are ‘scared of the world’, consequently trying to ‘protect’ their citizens and guests from ‘dangerous influences’ flowing out of Russia, China, Latin America, Iran and other countries with the best cinema in the world.

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On my 12 hour flight in BA’s ‘premium economy’, from Bangkok to London Heathrow, two British films caught my attention: “The Death of Stalin” and “Darkest Hour”.

I watched them both, first amused, then horrified, and by the end simply outraged.

Death of Stalin in one of British Airways’ monitors

The Death of Stalin, directed by Armando Iannucci (a BBC and HBO veteran), is simply a bad movie. BA’s brief introduction of the film is seasoned with the usual vulgar, lowest grade of contemporary British propaganda, which lately is so common in the mainstream UK media and even inside the British Parliament: “the horrors of Soviet Russia”, or the, “horrific insanity of life during the Great Terror”.

Seriously, is this the kind of language one would expect to encounter on the pages of a flagship airline magazine which is promoting a movie?

As for the film, it simply vulgarizes one of the most complex figures of the 20^th century, while simultaneously smearing everything about the Soviet Union – which stood and fought, for decades, against Western colonialism and imperialism.

BA magazine and Stalin

It is supposed to be a comedy, or perhaps a parody, but it absolutely doesn’t work; it is not funny at all. And it is clear that the film was made ‘to order’ (who gave the order can only be guessed), precisely during this time when the British regime is on a bizarre offensive, discrediting, attacking and provoking everything Russian and Soviet.

The British anti-Communist and anti-Russian propaganda has always been there, and it has always been effective and toxic. But it has never been brought to such an extreme; to this low and pathetic level.

Perhaps this film is part of those millions of dollars and pounds that both the US and UK regimes have pledged to spend on fighting the truth that, lately, has been pouring out from non-Western media sources.

It is worth noting (and readers can easily check it on the YouTube and elsewhere) that Soviet propaganda and its anti-Western counter-propaganda never sank as low as what is now being produced by the desperate and frustrated Western indoctrinators – Soviet propaganda at least had some artistic style and quality.

Now to the second film that I managed to watch on the tiny screen of my Bangkok to London flight: Darkest Hour (directed by Joe Wright). This is yet another film about Winston Churchill, a man responsible for the terror that the British Empire unleashed in various parts of the world, responsible for the tens of millions of human lives lost as a result of Western colonialism. Here, BA’s synopsis talks about, a “leader at a pivotal point in WWII…”

What discipline, what blindness it takes, to maintain that Winston Churchill was just a ‘war hero’, not also a racist, bigot and a criminal. In British pro-Churchill, nationalist propaganda (including countless films produced on the topic), not a word is uttered about the dark, even monstrous side of the man. Nothing about the gassing of people, about triggering famines that took millions of human lives in India and elsewhere, nothing about the brutality he unleashed in Africa. Not the slightest of hesitation or a sign of soul-searching can be detected!

It is simply unbelievable how indoctrinated, how intellectually obedient the British public has become. And the more it is, the more it actually dares to preach to the entire world, defending and even unceremoniously spreading its ‘values’.

So many films have been made in the West about Churchill and his stand against Nazi Germany. While not even one has ever been produced, even of recent, about Stalin and his monumental effort to mobilize his enormous country, effort that actually saved the world from the monstrous forces of fascism.

Could it all be as a result of the new Cold War unleashed by London and Washington? Or should that war be, perhaps, called the First Ideological World War – a war that could easily bear a subtitle such as: ‘the West against the rest of the Planet’?

To find out, fly British Airways. You will have to endure the tiny and outdated video screens, but at least you will get a glimpse of the latest propaganda ‘art work’ brought to you by the Empire. Enjoy!

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

Egypt and Israel have blocked Turkish aircraft from using their airports to transport thousands of Palestinians wounded by Israeli troops during protests in Gaza, Turkey’s deputy prime minister has said.

Recep Akdag made the announcement on Wednesday, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, amid a growing rift between Ankara and Tel Aviv over Israeli massacres of Palestinian protesters.

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians and wounded over 3,000 others mostly with live gunfire on Monday during protests against the transfer of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Israeli forces shot dead two more protesters on Tuesday as Palestinians marked the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled in the 1948 war.

Since border protests and clashes began on March 30, 116 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the Gaza Strip.

Turkey has offered to evacuate the wounded from Gaza for emergency medical treatment.

Israel has rejected the request over “security concerns”, local media has reported.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday lashed out at the international “silence” over the Israeli killings.

“If the silence on Israel’s tyranny continues, the world will rapidly be dragged into a chaos where banditry prevails,” Erdogan said at a dinner in Ankara.

Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador in Tel Aviv for consultations and told Israel’s ambassador to Ankara to leave, also for an unspecified period of time.

That drew retaliation from Israel, which ordered the Turkish consul in Jerusalem to leave for an unspecified period of time.

A French colleague once asked me, “Why are the Palestinians stuck in the Nakba? They commemorate villages no longer present on any map and bequeath to their children the keys to homes that have been long abandoned. Why don’t they leave it all behind, and look to the future?”

The answer is that the Nakba is not only an historical trauma but an accumulative affliction that continues to harm Palestinian identity, both collectively and individually; the Nakba is an ongoing injury that has never been bandaged or healed. The Nakba is a contemporary insult renewed with every Palestinian who is humiliated, arrested, and killed; salt is added to the wound of the Nakba with every demolished home and every bit of confiscated land.

The memory of the Nakba is not kept alive by the key that moves from the hand of the grandfather to the hand of the grandson. The memory lies in the damaged identity and self-image that has been thrust upon us and which is passed from generation to generation. We inherit the Nakba from the oppressed, expelled generation which came before–an anguished heritage which carries bad memories as if our genes themselves were anguished.

Neither an attempt to forget or the senility of old age can dispel these memories. Silence cannot undo its shocking impact.  On the contrary, commemoration of the Nakba is necessary in order to understand the present and to redress the injury of the past. A collective trauma requires a collective healing through popular narrative, rituals, and symbolic representation, as well as restorative justice. Silence and denial will only deepen the wound and inflict future calamities upon us.

“But the Palestinians who approach the fence in Gaza must be suicidal!” proclaims my colleague emphatically, without curiosity about the thoughts and feelings of these Palestinians. My colleague’s quick diagnosis does not acknowledge that these Palestinians may intend to communicate a need, may intend to alter the unchanging conditions of the status quo. These Palestinians may intend to protest the theft of their land or the siege or the partition of their people. But by making a quick diagnosis, my colleague forecloses the opportunity to listen and to negotiate better strategies; by drawing judgments on the basis of surface behavior, genuine understanding is short-circuited.

There is a difference between the psychological profile of a person who attempts suicide because of personal problems and the person who undergoes self-sacrifice in the context of social struggle. The suicidal person is hopeless and desperate, withdrawing from others pessimistically or fearing to be a burden upon them. Suicidal actions are often egocentric because the individual’s spark of life has lost its meaning in interpersonal terms. In contrast, the self-sacrificing person–even on the pathway to death–may be full of hope, indeed perhaps too much so. The act of self-sacrifice often involves an altruistic dedication to others and an eagerness to improve their future chances. Their hope is to extinguish their own soul in the service of giving light to others and brighten the road ahead.

I remember a dream that I had a few years ago. I was walking in the darkness and beheld creatures with brown fur walking slowly on their four legs. Every now and then, one stopped and turned its head upwards. It was too dark to see clearly, but I finally recognized a human face. That was a dream about my people and the poor insight in the world.

When Palestinians fight for their national rights, we are called “terrorists.” When we demonstrate in non-violent ways and are killed by the occupying forces, we are called “suicidal;” Avi Dichter, the Chairman of the Israeli Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, called peaceful demonstrators “idiots.”

Are there people who are willing to open their eyes in this darkness to see the Palestinian human face?

Throughout history, millions have marched to have their voices heard. Human beings often make sacrifices for the sake of their values or on behalf of others for whom they care. When such persons die, they are glorified and considered to be martyrs to their cause. Why should it be so different when such persons are killed by Israeli forces? Two months ago, Arnaud Beltrame, a French policeman, exchanged himself with a hostage in a terrorist attack in Trebes; he was unfortunately killed, but his behavior was lauded as brave and heroic, not suicidal.

The great march which started on Land’s Day and continues as I write this text, on the bitter occasion of the establishment of the American Embassy in my occupied city of Jerusalem, is meant to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Nakba. This march signifies the special meaning of this land to the Palestinians. Whereas some landowners may regard their lands as mere property that generates economic profit and can be exploited for water, energy, and food, the Palestinians feel otherwise. As a landless people, the Palestinians view land as an aspect of their own souls, representing their injured identity. Attached to their land with deep emotion, many Palestinians are ready to die for it. Advocacy, strategies, planning and calculation of risks are needed so that Palestinians do not need to be killed in order for their plight to be recognized. Premature judgment, psychiatric labeling, or exploitation of self-sacrifice cannot advance understanding of this plight.

Land is the material space for the life story of Palestinians, as with all people. Let there be space on earth for the Palestinians, so that human beings will not search for their life stories underground. It is a great anguish that so many Palestinians are killed in defense of their dreams. Our only solace is to believe that if they have left us by choice to sleep forever, they continue somehow to pursue those beautiful dreams.

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All images in this article are from Middle East Monitor.

“I want the Britain of the future to be a truly Global Britain, which is a force for good in the world. Steadfast in upholding our values – not least our fierce commitment to protecting the natural environment.” PM Theresa May, January 2018

As Britain heads for an uncertain post-Brexit future, the prospect of a deregulated corporate global free-for-all operating from offshore accounts with damaging environmental impact is the nightmare envisaged by many. But that future may be closer than people realise.

DeSmog UK has identified a hub of a dozen companies based around Mayfair, drilling for oil in Africa, and making use of tax-havens in British overseas territories and crown dependencies such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Jersey.

This is Empire Oil, a neocolonial snapshot of the future simultaneously revisiting Britain’s Imperial past in countries such as Somaliland, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa – and forging a new path for Global Britain.

At the centre of it is the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), London’s junior stock exchange. AIM operates ‘light touch regulation’, leading it to be described as a ‘casino’. It’s a system where nominee advisors – or ‘nomads’ – can act as both regulators of the system and brokers, potentially creating serious conflicts of interest.

Companies are using London’s reputation as a financial powerhouse to raise funds, while taking advantage of rules that allow them to keep ownership details hidden in offshore accounts

This makes public scrutiny challenging and once again demonstrates the value of independent media. With no corporate-backing, DeSmog UK is free to pursue stories the mainstream press often shy away from.

Source: Desmog.co.uk

Take for example Soma Oil and Gas, which was founded in 2013 by the former leader of the Conservative Party and now company chairman Michael Howard to pursue oil and gas opportunities in Somalia.

Since its creation in 2013, Soma Oil and Gas has changed its registration address five times in central London according to Companies’ House. In 2015, it was the subject of a criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud office (SFO) “in relation to allegations of corruption in Somalia”. In 2016, the SFO closed the case because of “insufficient evidence”. No charges were ever made.

Another company embroiled in controversy is London-based New Age African Global Energy – which was formed in Jersey in 2007 by Steve Lowden, an oil executive who had previously worked with Marathon Oil and Premier Oil.

The company is backed by US hedge-fund Och-Ziff, which had to pay more than $400 million (£295 million) in bribery settlements following an investigation by the US government that found the company had paid more than $100 million (£74 million) in bribes to government officials in Libya, Chad, Niger, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo to secure natural resources deals and investments.

The director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division Andrew J. Ceresney, said:

“Och-Ziff engaged in complicated, far-reaching schemes to get special access and secure significant deals and profits through corruption.”

A lawyer for Och Ziff told a federal judge presiding over the case in New York that “Och-Ziff has taken substantial remedial efforts to improve its compliance program to ensure something like this can never happen again”, Reuters reported.

DeSmog UK’s investigation does not identify illegal activity. However, the companies’ London residence combined with their use of tax havens and international activities raise serious questions about the UK’s commitment to being a global leader on environmental and corporate accountability issues.

The current system is allowing outsourced extraction in far-off lands by companies that are unregulated and untraceable.

The UK is one of 51 countries signed up to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global scheme that compels oil, gas and mining companies to disclose any payments made to governments. But companies registered in crown dependencies and overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands do not have to make financial disclosures under the EITI.

Pressure is mounting to reform AIM.

Last year, AIM itself called for submissions around proposed changes to its admission rules. AIM’s discussion paper included “consideration of further supervisory powers and sanctions to ensure consistency of standards across the market”.

Responding to AIM, the NGO Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) called for “urgent action to halt the laundering of assets” and warned that the light regulation system needed to be scrapped in order to stop London attracting “dirty money”.

RAID’s submission, seen by DeSmog UK, stated:

“It is highly doubtful that self-regulation, relying on private firms with vested interests as gatekeepers and designed to be ‘light touch’ will ever eliminate or even significantly reduce the use of AIM to launder assets and dirty money through London.”

AIM subsequently announced a series of minor changes to its listing process, none of which faced the structural reforms campaigners had called for to transform its system. It currently seems inconceivable that such a volatile and profitable forum will reform itself.

Such a move would have to come from government, but that also seems unlikely given wild rhetoric about Britain’s golden future as a global trading nation.

Earlier this month, the government was defeated in the UK parliament when MPs voted through a new amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill which would require 14 British overseas territories to publish registers of beneficial ownership by 2020 or face having them imposed.

Campaigners have seen the vote as a sign the mood may be changing over corporate openness and transparency.

But for now it seems that Empire Oil is London’s dirty secret, and it’s back to the future for Mayfair’s money boys.

Read the full special investigation here.

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Mike Small is Editor of Bella Caledonia and Deputy Editor of DeSmogUK.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today is deeply disappointed and concerned at the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Gina Haspel as CIA director. Haspel, who helped manage the CIA torture program, and who oversaw the waterboarding of detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, has yet to release any information about her precise involvement in the program and its cover-up, and did not adequately address questions on this throughout the confirmation process. Despite the CIA’s egregious campaign of secrecy and Haspel’s pointed refusal to repudiate torture during and after her hearing, she was confirmed, with among the fewest votes for CIA directors.

Donna McKay, executive director of PHR, called the Senate’s approval a critical setback to accountability for the use of torture by the United States and to its commitment to human rights.

“It is unacceptable that the United States’ intelligence agency will be led by someone who supervised torture, including waterboarding. As a senior official in that program, Gina Haspel helped the CIA conduct unlawful torture, systematically breaking the lives of detainees, and she helped destroy evidence in order to conceal these acts. Her promotion perpetuates secrecy and impunity for torture. It invites a return to the abuses of the CIA rendition, interrogation, and detention program, and sends a message to the world that the United States has retreated from its commitment to human rights, including the absolute ban on torture.

“What is known about Haspel’s role in torture and destruction of evidence, based on the limited public record, should have been more than enough to end her confirmation. The victims of the program she helped oversee will suffer lifelong mental and physical effects. Torture is illegal, immoral, and profoundly harmful – three facts that Haspel has disregarded to date. With Haspel’s confirmation, it is more critical than ever for Congress to exercise oversight over the intelligence agencies. In addition, all parts of civil society – including and especially health professionals – should continue to advocate for human rights. If we don’t demand responsibility for torture and insist on truth-telling, accountability, and cooperation, we diminish the role that the United States can play in advocating for human rights globally,” McKay added.

PHR, joined by other organizations, pushed vigorously for Haspel’s nomination and confirmation to be blocked. For more than a decade, PHR and its network of partners have led efforts advocating against torture, documented the devastating long-term health consequences of torture, and called attention to the complicity of some health professionals in the post-9/11 U.S. torture program.

Being in Rome, Italy and thinking of Gina Haspel, the CIA nominee and admitted torturer who says her “moral conscience” has changed after the fact, seems most fitting.  Wherever you go in central Rome, you can hear the screams and smell the blood of those tortured and killed by the Roman Empire and those who ably followed in their stead. And you can see the crumbled stones and the pathetic architectural remains of those who thought they had triumphed. Their triumph turned to dust, and their belated mea culpas, if and when they ever came, always rang as hollow as Gina Haspel’s, Lt. William Calley’s, and Adolph Eichmann’s excuses that they were only doing their jobs and following orders.

Throughout Rome there are hawkers dangling Pinocchio trinkets in your face, constant reminders of the cost of lying.  Or perhaps more aptly, the fame that ensues from lying followed by a childish semi-apology, even when it’s as obvious as the nose on your face that you are lying still.  So in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Haspel was asked by Senator Mark Warner, D-VA., the kind of question that allows a respondent to answer in a deceptive way that means nothing, but seems profoundly sincere. Warned asked:

If this president asked you to do something that you find morally objectionable, even if there is an [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, what will you do?  Will you carry out that order or not?

To which Haspel replied:

Senator, my moral conscience is strong.  I would not allow the CIA to carry out any activity that I thought was immoral – even if it was technically legal.  I would absolutely not permit it.

From all reports, neither Warner’s nor Haspel’s nose grew longer, but perhaps such deceptive phrasing slyly falls beyond the parameters of Pinocchio’s sins and the Blue Fairy’s  sanctions.

So the woman who oversaw detainee torture at a CIA “black site” in Thailand tells us she has a strong moral conscience, but she doesn’t tell us what that conscience considers intrinsically evil, if anything. Nor what that “strong” moral conscience considers moral or immoral in any way, just that the “CIA must undertake activities that are consistent with American values,” whatever they might be.  And if she were ordered to carry out an action – let’s say kill a foreign agent or assassinate a political leader – that was technically illegal but accorded with her strong moral conscience, would she do so?  Don’t ask; she wasn’t. Even Pinocchio would get confused with this legerdemain, and his “strong” moral conscience, Jiminy Cricket, would be utterly bamboozled.

The good Senator, adept at playing deceptive verbal games as befits his stature, is happy to have his non-question answered with a non-answer, and both he and Haspel are happy.  Good question, good answer, good conscience.  Nothing bad about that.  Then Warner goes and votes for Haspel, who he says is “among the most experienced people to be nominated” to head the CIA, and Haspel says she thinks torture – excuse me, “enhanced interrogation” – doesn’t work anyway.  Practicality wins the day.

But here in Rome so many regular people are not so practical.  They seem to relish life, not as a task to accomplish, but as a pleasure to enjoy.  Despite the history that surrounds them, and the dismal political economy that weighs heavy on their lives and country, they seem less anxious and terrorized than Americans. Of course this may be a visitor’s myopic vision, and when seen clearly, Romans might be as stressed as Americans.  But I doubt it.

But for this visiting American, it is hard to dismiss thoughts about the disgraceful charade happening back in Washington D.C.  Thinking here in Rome of the Haspel vote, I am reminded of the ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles’s and long-time Chief of Counterintelligence James Angleton’s organized “Ratlines,” the escape routes for Nazi and fascist killers and torturers, so many of whom were brought to the United States and other countries after World War II through Italy to help the newly formed CIA torture the truth out of detainees and assassinate opponents. Operation Paperclip, they called it.  No big deal; just a joining of two like-minded organizations by a tiny device.

Post September 11 torture is nothing new, and Haspel is nothing if not a traditionalist just doing her job. Is this what Haspel meant by “American values”?  Many victims would attest to that.

In an old city like Rome one tends to think old thoughts: that the history of torture, human treachery, lying, and violence has a long history; that secular and religious fanatics are nothing new; and that empires rise and fall and everyone dies, even those who build monuments to their own “glorious” deeds.

But if one wanders around Rome and through life with no itinerary, one also encounters beautiful people and small pockets of faith, love, and devotion.  One encounters magnificent art that embodies the heights to which humans can aspire.  One realizes that despite the gory history of the human race, the killers and torturers, humans have and do rise above their worst inclinations and do the work of angels, despite the devils.

As we were sitting at a café in the Piazza della Rotonda, my wife said to me, “You have your back to the Pantheon.” It was true. Those monumental gods bored me. My glass of vino rosso whirled my mind to better things.  Lighter. Not stone idolatry. Not empires, except their death. Not stone gods, nor inquisitors or black sites or hooded torturers with Ph’ds from Harvard. No palaces to Renaissance princes or Central Intelligence agents, corrupt bastards of different times and places. No Wall Street/CIA nexus. No dastardly gross stupid rich Trump with his orange hair and phallic towers, nor his doppelganger Berlusconi here in Italy. No basilicas, nothing petrified,despite the city of stone that enclosed me. Like the sparrow that alighted on the next table and was pecking at the bread in a basket, my thoughts flew to lighter and more sustaining images of life and love and the spirit of care that sustains this beautiful world despite the torturers and killers.

Gina Haspel seemed so far away – yet so very near.  My thoughts kept returning to all the U.S. Senators who have voted for this torturer to lead the CIA. Will they say they were only doing their jobs and following orders? Do they think of themselves as civilized?

I then looked up as the bird took flight and saw a cross silhouetted against the blue sky. Enough said.

Where will we conduct the next Nuremberg trials?

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

In the beginning of the internet back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when you for the first time had large and contentious discussions online at bulletin boards like Usenet, attorney Mike Godwin noticed that the longer a discussion went on, the more likely it was that someone would make a Hitler comparison. Some internet aficionados even declared a thread over when someone evoked the National Socialists of the 1930s. The implication was that such a comparison was always hyperbolic.

The problem with Godwin’s law is that it emerged at a time when we did not expect to have a Neonazi president. Not being able to point to the real similarities of Trump’s White Nationalist discourse with Nazi premises about racial hierarchies would actually be dangerous at this point. And we have seen Mr. Trump defend self-avowed Neonazis and Klansmen at Charlottesville. It is not an optical illusion.

So yesterday Trump again called some undocumented migrants into the US “animals.” Calling people animals has been a parlor sport with Mr. Trump, and he has often gotten things wrong, as when he used his wealth to persecute the falsely accused Central Park 5.

Calling people “animals” is not just the use of an ugly epithet. It is not merely impolite.

It is a call to mistreat the class of people so designated, to fear them and blame them and ultimately to seek to wipe them out.

“Animal” functions similarly in this regard to the Nazi technical term “Untermensch” or underman, subhuman.

Richard A Etlin in Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich translates passages from the infamous SS pamphlet of 1941, entitled Der Untermensch:

“It is a frightening creature, a mere shadow of a man, with humanoid racial features, yet spiritually and psychologically more base than any animal. Within this being rages a vile chaos of wild, uncontrolled passions, a nameless desire for destruction, the most primitive desires, and naked vulgarity.”

The pamphlet goes on to be more specific about the identity of this horrible category of apparent human beings, who are actually animals or worse. It specifies eastern Slavs (Russians and Poles) and Jews, among others. Not even some members of those groups, but all of them. The pamphlet functioned as a call for and a justification for the genocide against the Jews, Gypsies, gays and other groups as well as the slaughter of Russian boys at the eastern Front.

That is, denigrating people as less than human is a step toward permitting their elimination.

Trump apologists would say that he is only calling gangbangers “animals,” not all Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. But anyone who actually has listened to him talk about those groups knows that he tars them all with the brush of gang violence. It is worth underlining that the vast majority of immigrants are law-abiding, since they fear that tangling with law enforcement could get them deported.

There are some 55 million Hispanic people in the US. Less than one percent of them are gang members. Of the some 16,000 murders a year, only small percentage appear to be tied to gangs. Of the total, typically nearly a quarter are cases of close family members killing one another. Over half of women victims of homicide in the US are killed by an intimate, i.e. boyfriend, spouse or former such. In general, most murder victims are killed by someone they know, not by a stranger from among the Undermen or “animals.” Only about 12% of victims are killed by a complete stranger. The best predictor for perpetration of violent crime is not ethnicity but poverty. Nor should we give up on rehabilitating people who commit crimes, even violent crimes. They are human beings, not animals.

Although Trump’s initial move in eliminating those he sees as Undermen is to make sure they are deported if their papers are not in order, we have already seen at Charlottesville that he condones white nationalist violence against anyone who disagrees with him. He could be pulling our society into more and more frequent racial confrontations. Minorities who fight back will be labeled terrorists by the president of the United States. That this polarization Trump is trying to provoke could ratchet up into anti-Latino pogroms cannot be ruled out.

It is unfortunately worth pointing out that although the Jews were on the receiving end of discourse about dangerous subhumans in the Germany of the 1940s, today in Israel it is all to common to hear politicians refer to Palestinians as “animals.” That discourse is how you get rules of engagement where it is all right to shoot down unarmed, peaceful protesters in Gaza.

There are no Undermen. All human beings have the same rights.

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Featured image is a screenshot from C-span video.

The newest version of the 2018 Farm Bill, set for a vote on Friday, includes an unprecedented provision allowing the widespread killing of endangered plants and animals with pesticides.

The bill launches the broadest attack on the Endangered Species Act in 45 years, eliminating the requirement that federal agencies analyze pesticides’ harm to the nation’s 1,800 protected species before approving them, greatly increasing the risk of extinctions.

“House Republicans are putting salmon, killer whales and other wildlife on the fast track to extinction,” said Lori Ann Burd, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health program. “This is a stunning gift to the pesticide industry, with staggering implications for endangered species.”

Earlier this year the National Marine Fisheries Service released a “biological opinion” showing that three widely used insecticides — chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon — are putting killer whales and 37 different salmon and sturgeon species on a path to extinction.

In response the pesticide industry has sought to exempt pesticides completely from the Endangered Species Act. During this session of Congress, the pesticide industry has spent more than $43 million on congressional lobbying to achieve that goal.

In addition to the attacks on endangered species, H.R. 2 weakens Clean Water Act protections from pesticides, includes a sweeping provision that would gut protections for forests, and has 46 different provisions that would curtail public input and common-sense protections provided by the National Environmental Policy Act.

Late additions to the legislation would also roll back virtually all protections for old-growth forests in Alaska.

“This farm bill should be called the Extinction Act of 2018,” said Burd. “If it becomes law, this bill will be remembered for generations to come as the one that drove the final nail in the coffin of some of America’s most vulnerable species.”

The director of disgraced energy company EPM told Colombian media on Thursday that the country’s largest hydroelectric dam could burst.

Jorge Londoño conceded that it is “difficult to answer if the Hidroituango (dam) will be saved,” a stark assessment that if true, could cause an unprecedented amount of damage to the environment, the nation’s economy and ultimately lives.

The company and regional authorities called in the help of the national government on Wednesday after losing control over the dam that was only months from being inaugurated.

If authorities and EPM can’t figure out a way to prevent the dam’s walls bursting and flooding into the Cauca river, “an avalanche of huge proportions” may take place.

According to one expert,

“if the dam is irreparably damaged and the Cauca (river) floods, Armero’s tragedy would pale in comparison,” referring to the 1985 volcanic disaster that killed 23,000 Colombians.

Project workers had been advancing to raise dam walls to the “fundamental” elevation of 410 meters, yet due to the impending risks of the dam rupturing, workers have been evacuated, leaving the wall at an elevation of 403 metres.

Under this worst-case scenario, 12 municipalities downstream in the Antioquia, Cordoba, Sucre and Bolivar provinces could be flooded by the Cauca river. More than 100,000 people that live in the risk area could be affected.

Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez said that in such an event, floods would reach municipalities such as Nechi in 18 hours, Caucasia in 10, Caceres in five and Puerto Valdivia in just an hour.

Evacuation efforts have already begun in the municipalities that could be flooded in the event the dam breaks.

“Everyone is worried, especially since no one knows what will happen,” Ituango-based journalist Nicolas Bedoya told Colombia Reports.

“No one knows when road access will open up again and no one knows if the dam will be hiring again knowing that hundreds of families depend on the project,” said Bedoya.

National authorities are scurrying to create contingency plans on preventing a disaster and evacuating residents while EPM has sought international advice on how to deal with the situation.

Rating company Fitch alerted investors last week that the problems at EPM’s billion-dollar project could affect its financial stability for years. The rating agency’s negative observation was issued before the company was forced to abandon the project as a whole.

The Negative Observation of the rating reflects a higher probability of delays in the construction of the Ituango hydroelectric project, which will likely increase the pressure on the capital structure of EPM Inversiones in a sustained manner. In addition, logistical and environmental aspects have increased the uncertainty surrounding the possibility of significant cost overruns and associated liabilities.

As the national authorities try to respond to the emergency, tens of thousands of Colombians live in fear that they could lose their homes on both sides of the dam.

Celebrating the ‘historic win’ in the Senate on Wednesday for only the briefest of moments, advocates for the open Internet who have worked relentlessly to reverse an effort by the telecommunications industry and Trump’s FCC to kill net neutrality protections have immediately turned their attention to the U.S. House of Representatives where they say victory is possible if the American people keep up the pressure.

“The people saying we can’t win on net neutrality in the House are the same people who, just 5 months ago, were saying we could never do it in the Senate,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Thursday. “Ignore them. Just keep fighting.”

Markey led the opposition to the FCC in the Senate as lead sponsor of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that passed on Wednesday in a 52-47 victory that was celebrated across the Internet.

Now, say organizers, it’s time to turn that same energy—coupled with the momentum from the Senate win—to force the GOP-controlled House to allow a vote on the same CRA.

“With the majority leadership in the House opposed to this bill, the only way to bring it before the full House for a vote is through a discharge petition,” Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.), who is filing the petition, said Wednesday. “I’m sure that every member of the House will want to know where their constituents stand on this issue.”

Back by powerful corporate interests and the telecom lobby, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has expressed confidence that the Democrats will not succeed.

But in a detailed explainer about the battle to come, Fight for the Future, one of the consumer advocacy and net neutrality advocates that has led the charge so far, said the fight in the House will be an “uphill battle,” but one that it intends to win.

“DC insiders and pundits claim that we’ll never get anywhere in the House,” the group stated, echoing Markey. And, they added, “those are the same DC insiders that never thought we’d get a Senate vote.”

In order to implement the “discharge petition” introduced by Rep. Doyle, the group the noted, they’ll need 218 House members to sign on in support:

That means we’ll need to convince all the Democrats, and about 25 Republicans, to support the CRA. And the clock is ticking — if the CRA resolution doesn’t get a vote this year, it dies when the new Congress comes into session.

Outside of Washington, DC, net neutrality is not a partisan issue. But with the Republicans in power, the big ISPs have been putting all of their eggs into that basket, spreading misinformation that targets conservatives and trying to turn the net neutrality debate into a political circus. But we’re seeing cracks in that wall. Several Republican Senators have been openly considering voting for the CRA, while one of President Trump’s own high level advisors encouraged him to support it should it arrive on his desk.

If we can seize the momentum around this Senate vote and mobilize massive pressure on the House, we could see a small landslide of Republican lawmakers who choose to side with their constituents rather than cast a vote against net neutrality just months before the midterms. Either way, we need to harness as much political power as we can coming out of this CRA fight to ensure that we’re negotiating from a place of strength in any future congressional debates on the issue.

In a blog post for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, policy analyst Katharine Trendacosta provided links to where constituents could find out “where your representatives stand[s]” on net neutrality and also a link to a portal that would allow votes to “give [House members] a call telling them to use the Congressional Review Act to save the Open Internet Order.”

Free Press, another key member of the pro-net neutrality coalition, said there is not a minute to lose and put it this way:

Victory in the Senate!

Now, we go on the House.

START NOW: Call your representatives and tell them to get on the right side of history. The momentum is in our favor! Help save #NetNeutrality: https://t.co/vDFg24dtAv pic.twitter.com/2gvV2HB38Y

— Free Press (@freepress) May 16, 2018

“We’ve turned net neutrality into a mainstream issue for the first time ever,” declared Fight for the Future in their explainer. “And now we’re building a movement to make sure that we protect it for generations to come. The fight ahead is not going to be easy, but victory is within reach.”

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Featured image is from Fight for the Future.

Robert J. Barsocchini is a graduate student in American Studies. Years working as a cross-cultural intermediary for corporations in the film and Television industry sparked his interest in the discrepancy between Western self-image and reality. 

Shortly after becoming Britain’s prime minister in May 1940, Winston Churchill said the war will be directed “against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it’s in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest”. Such statements were a warning of what was to come. With the Nazis then rampaging across Europe, it would take time before Britain’s firestorms could be unleashed on the German people.

On 30 June 1940, Hitler’s Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering, then at the height of his popularity, declared just days after the fall of France,

“The war against England is to be restricted to destructive attacks against industry and air force targets… It is also stressed that every effort should be made to avoid unnecessary loss of life amongst the civilian population”.

By contrast, on 14 February 1942, a British Air Staff directive outlined their bombing campaigns should “be focused on the morale of the enemy’s civilian population”. As Daniel Ellsberg, the veteran former US military analyst, confirms in his recent book The Doomsday Machine, Britain was the first to begin “deliberate bombing of urban populations as the principal way of fighting a war”, starting in early 1942.

The murderous assaults on German civilians, often with incendiary bombs, were specifically to the liking of not just Churchill. Also a vociferous supporter of these methods was England’s Air Marshal, Arthur “Bomber” Harris – or “Butcher” Harris as he was known in the Royal Air Force. Among his first public broadcasts in the beginning of 1942, Harris said the Nazis had “sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind”.

Britain’s unscrupulous intentions were being signaled in even earlier military pronouncements. On 23 September 1941, a British Air Staff paper outlined that:

 “The ultimate aim of an attack on a [German] town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it… first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim is therefore twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction and (ii) fear of death”.

It was only after Britain began their mass targeting of residential areas that the Nazis responded in kind. On 28 March 1942, the RAF firestormed the medieval city of Lubeck, northern Germany, which persuaded Hitler to alter his tactics. During the British night raid on Lubeck, over 60% of all buildings there suffered damage, severe or light. The attacks lasted less than four hours, in which hundreds of Lubeck’s civilians were killed in the lightly-defended city.

“Bomber” Harris was satisfied with the destruction, saying Lubeck “was built more like a fire-lighter than a human habitation… it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance [Lubeck] than to fail to destroy a large industrial city”.

Lübeck Cathedral burning following the raids (Source: CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Britain’s outright targeting of German cities enraged Hitler. Just over two weeks after the Lubeck bombing, on 14 April 1942, a command was forwarded at his behest:

“The Fuhrer has ordered that the air war against England be given a more aggressive stamp… preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life”.

It would be unwise to suggest, however, that until April 1942 Hitler was a soft touch in relation to bombardment. For example, in September 1941, as his forces surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad (Petersburg), Hitler relayed the following order:

“The Fuhrer has decided to raze the city of Petersburg from the face of the earth. There is no reason for the future existence of this large city”.

Along with the people in it.

Soon, America willingly joined their British ally in the annihilation of German cities. In July 1943, US and British bombers killed over 40,000 civilians in Hamburg in a 10 day campaign – even more than was killed during the Luftwaffe’s eight month blitz of Britain. An eyewitness account of the Hamburg firestorms noted that

“Some people who tried to walk along, they were pulled in by the fire, they all of a sudden disappeared right in front of you”, while afterwards “Rats and flies ruled the city”.

Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1942-1945. Oblique aerial view of ruined residential and commercial buildings south of the Eilbektal Park (seen at upper right) in the Eilbek district of Hamburg, Germany. These were among the 16,000 multi-storeyed apartment buildings destroyed by the firestorm which developed during the raid by Bomber Command on the night of 27/28 July 1943 (Operation GOMORRAH). The road running diagonally from upper left to lower right is Eilbeker Weg, crossed by Rückertstraße.

The German historian and author, Jorg Friedrich, outlines that in total   About 600,000 German civilians were killed, including 76,000 children. It led Friedrich to describe Churchill as “the greatest child-slaughterer of all time”, with ample assistance provided by “Butcher” Harris, living up to his other nickname.

Little of these unwanted realities are outlined in Western mainstream records, historical accounts or school books. It seems not to fit with Western leaders’ saintly notion of the war being fought between “good” and “evil”. While Hitler’s Reich was one of the most murderous regimes in world history, Britain and America had hardly been angels of virtue until that point.

During Britain’s long subjugation and plundering of India, beginning in the mid-18th century – the imperial power’s policies were responsible for killing tens of millions of Indian people, mainly due to starvation caused from unnecessary droughts. In the year 1700, India had been one of the world’s richest countries, boasting 27% of global gross domestic product. By the time India finally gained independence from Britain in 1947, it was one of the earth’s poorest nations, while further plagued by widespread illiteracy and disease.

The United States’ foundation was built on settler-colonialism. Its basis was laid after Christopher Columbus, a mass murderer himself, “discovered” the continent in the late 15th century – often overlooked is that the indigenous population of 80 million or more had already long resided there. What followed was the Native Americans being “exterminated” in the words of America’s founding fathers, as the “superior” Anglo-Saxon race moved in and took their lands.

Meanwhile, as the Second World War advanced, one German city after another was incinerated by firestorms. Even small towns like Pforzheim, in southwest Germany, were obliterated by the RAF, killing a third of its 63,000 inhabitants in February 1945. Such atrocities came long after victory in the war was assured, mainly due to the Red Army’s exploits in the east.

It was previously hoped the Allies’ policies would turn Germany’s population against Hitler. It never happened. Not envisaged was that, from the mid-1930s until war’s end, millions of Germans were exposed to Joseph Goebbels‘ daily propaganda methods. Goebbels had, through devious marketing campaigns, ensured increasing numbers had access to radio sets. Through this medium, the virulently anti-Semitic propaganda minister had monopoly over the German mind. Come 1942 sixteen million households, about 70% of the German population, had confirmed radio reception. It should also be noted the dangers in rebelling against a dictatorship protected by Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the genocidal SS.

As the destruction mounted, by 20 April 1944 – Hitler’s 55^th birthday – adorning Berlin’s wrecked buildings were hundreds of miniature swastikas and banners, addressed personally to Hitler. Some messages read, “Our walls have broken, but not our hearts”. To avoid seeing the ruins, Hitler’s rare visits to Berlin were made by night. And yet, contrary to popular perception, Albert Speer observed that Hitler did not react to news of the Reich’s bombardment with apoplectic outbursts – rather, he responded to bombing reports with austere, reserved expressions.

The dictator only betrayed pained feelings when he learnt a particular theater or museum was damaged, such buildings being among his most prized possessions before the war. Residential areas were always of secondary importance. As a result, Hitler was oblivious to much of the German people’s suffering.

Indeed, from 23 June 1941, the Nazi leader spent over 800 days at the heavily wooded Wolf’s Lair headquarters, in East Prussia – 700 kilometers east of Berlin. The enormous military compound was built specifically for Hitler’s overseeing of Operation Barbarossa, on the Eastern Front. Remarkably, the heavily guarded headquarters escaped the attention of both Allied and Soviet intelligence. Hitler’s private secretary Traudl Junge said “there was never more than a single aircraft circling over the forest, and no bombs were dropped”.

At the Wolf’s Lair, secured from the realities of war, and surrounded by obsequious followers, Hitler eventually entered into a type of fantasy realm, as – despite a string of initial successes – the war slowly closed in around him. On 20 November 1944, Hitler departed the Wolf’s Lair for the final time, with the Soviet Army just 15 kilometers away having reached the small town of Angerburg.

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

Israel launched waves of air attacks and ground shelling on a score of alleged Iranian military positions in Syria this week.   Was this a big step forward in the plan by Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally Donald Trump to provoke a major war with Iran?

It certainly looks so.  The US, Saudi Arabia and Israel all recently suffered a stinging defeat in Syria. Their campaign to overthrow the Assad government in Damascus by using the rag-tag ISIS movement, then Sunni Muslim jihadist wild men, was defeated by the Syrian Army, backed by Russian air power, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and some Iranian militia groups and army advisors.

Israel now claims to have wiped out more than a score of Iranian positions in Syria.  As far as we can tell, these were minor logistics or communications facilities, not the backbone of a supposed Iranian offensive against Israel.

In fact, the alleged Iranian rocket barrage was directed at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that were illegally annexed and occupied after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and are still held, legally, as part of Syria. Israel is very nervous about having world attention drawn to its continued occupation of the strategic Golan Heights from which Israeli heavy artillery can reach Damascus.

But now that the Trump administration has fallen fully under the influence of the pro-war neocons, an attempt to overthrow the Iranian government appears highly likely, using both military intervention and intensified economic warfare.

Iran has been under siege by the US since the American/British installed shah was overthrown by a popular revolution in 1979. The CIA and Britain’s MI6 have mounted numerous attempts to oust the Islamic Republic and re-install a client ruler.

Ironically, the ‘democratic’ western powers – the US, Britain and France – rely on medieval monarchs and dictators to control the Mideast while democratic politicians and movements are ignored.  Iran, in spite of its many rigidities and failings, remains one of the region’s more democratic states.   Ask our Saudi or Kuwaiti allies when was the last time they held a real election?

The failure of western intelligence services to provoke serious uprisings in Iran (or Russia), means that the military option is increasingly tempting.   This probably means provoking military clashes with Iran in the Gulf leading to full-scale attacks on its nuclear infrastructure and industry.   US warplanes and warships are actively probing Iran’s borders.  In addition, US forces are getting ever more deeply involved in the Yemen War.

When the US last considered a major attack on Iran during the Bush years, the Pentagon (which opposed the idea) estimated it would need 2,800 air strikes against Iran on Day One alone.

Many of the same war party crowd that engineered the 2003 US invasion of Iraq are now running the Trump administration.  Their goal is to cripple Iran and leave the Mideast to joint Saudi-Egyptian-Israeli control.

Recall President George W. Bush’s assertion that once he had crushed Iraq the next targets of US military intervention would be Lebanon, Syria, Iran and then Pakistan.

Invading Iran would not be easy.  Iran has very little capability to project power beyond its borders.  Its air force, artillery and tanks are decrepit.  America controls the skies from Morocco to Afghanistan.  Iran is vulnerable to raids and small incursions but subjugating this large, mountainous nation of 80 million would be very difficult.

In fact, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander once told me, ‘let the Americans invade. They will break their teeth on Iran.’  Over-confidence, of course, but he had a point.  Fighting on the defensive in urban areas, Iran could offer fierce resistance.

America’s imperial machine, like its British Imperial predecessor, likes small, easy wars against small, backwards nations.  Iran would be very different.

As we have just seen with North Korea, Iran’s best survival strategy, short of security guarantees by Russia and China, would be to race to produce a small number of nuclear weapons to deter attacks by the US and Israel.  Europe, which co-sponsored the Iran nuclear act and is now humiliated by Trump reneging on the deal, is too weak and disorganized to guarantee the pact and stand up to Washington.  This is too bad.  Now would have been a fine time for the EU to assert its independence from US hegemony and begin building its own independent European military forces.

On the opening day of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers were murdering the children of Palestine as a sacrifice offering to their American masters. Mr. Jared Kushner “the messenger” not only did not stop this sacrificing offer, he even encouraged it. In his speech as the new American “peace broker” in the Middle East, Mr. Kushner said:

“As we have seen from the protests of the last month and even today, those provoking violence are part of the problem and not part of the solution”.

It is needless to say while he was blaming Palestinians as the “problem for peace”, Israeli snipers stationed about 45 miles from his podium, were busy solving this “problem” literally by gunning down and injuring the Palestinian protesters. According to the New York Times (May 14, 2018)

“By late in the evening, 58 Palestinians, including several teenagers, had been killed”.

An 8-month-old Palestinian infant Laila al-Ghandour was among the victims who died after inhaling tear gas. More than 2,700 were wounded by barrages of tear gas as well as live gunfire. Human Rights Watch described the killings as a “bloodbath”.

The battle between the civilized savages of the U.S./Israel and the outraged and desperate innocent Palestinians pose the undeniable challenge of drawing an effective strategy.

True and principled peace activists historically support and honor those who fearlessly scarify their lives for freedom with bravery. But this bravery needs to be guided by a conscious leadership. Peace activists around the world should introduce a unified plan of action between the endless battles of blood against bullet.

Only those peace activists who are armed with facts can organize a global union for peace to stop the warmongers’ war machine.

In 2018, the blood of Palestinian youth defeated the Israeli bullets; however this temporary bleeding victory is not a strategy, it is just a tactical move driven by empathy. For an effective strategy in advancement of the peace movement, there are dos and don’ts that need to be discussed freely.

But first, let’s review the political amplification of relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

The reality is that the U.S. and Zionist regime of Israel have lost their “Jerusalem Embassy” card. The picture of Ms. Haley leaving the U.N. Security Council meeting when she found herself at odds with just about every other member of the Council including the European allies; was a clear image of a defeated Imperial plan. When President Trump on November 6th 2017 announced that he had made up his mind to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he hoped this political maneuver would fulfill the vacuum of having an “elusive enemy” in the Middle East after the fall of ISIS in Syria and Iraq in the recent months. The White House administration and Mr. Netanyahu were hoping that by this stunt, the majority of people in the Muslim world would be challenged and respond desperately. However they underestimated the international backlash when the split images of the opening of the new U.S. embassy ceremony in Jerusalem were displayed live around the world next to the images of massacre of Palestinian youth on the Gaza borders. Upon this reality and experience, let’s discuss dos and don’ts.

Don’t’s: We should be independent from the Republican and Democratic parties in the U.S. and the similar parties in other countries. We should not rely on the corporate media and their 24/7 TV channels which at best could only produce boring and redundant political gossip shows. We also should reject those activists who are driven by anti-smite or other form of racists agenda or those irresponsible intellectuals who propagate anti-Semite phobia in the name of pure “Socialist” or “Progressive” formula. We condemn the sectarian attitude among peace activists. A peace movement is an exclusive and democratic movement which relies on the direct participation of the peaceful working people on a global scale.

Do’s: Organize locally and strive to connect to the other organizations that are against war and occupation. Our strength is in our unity. Understand that the lack of coherent leadership is not an excuse to act separately in despair. Support and trust the independent media such as the Global Research site and many other informative source of information which are listed as targets for internet censorship. Share opinions freely and contribute as free thinkers. Finally and more importantly, always rely on the glorious heritage and achievements in the past.

The true peace and justice activists call for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and strive for peace among all working people around the world.

Toward a Global Peace Union!

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

Featured image is from the author.

Introduction by Michael Brenner, May 17, 2018

The Middle East is in turmoil – with mortal risks at every point of the compass. While each crisis is presented in its own discrete terms in the mainstream media, we blind ourselves to two compelling realities: these conflicts are inter-twined; and the United States bears the main responsibility for this descent into mayhem and chaos. The chances of major conflagration mount even as American national aims and purposes are kept obscure. An unhinged nation is hurtling toward a disaster of choice.

Alastair Crooke is one of the few who have perceived the depth of our folly and the full import of what is occurring. He is a former British diplomat,  founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, and has a sterling record of integrity as well as insight into Middle Eastern affairs.

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Nahum Barnea writing in Yedioth Ahronoth sets out, plainly enough, the gamble underway between Israel and Iran (and to which Trump is willing accessory): In the wake of the US exit from JCPOA, Trump will threaten a rain of ‘fire and fury’ onto Tehran, should the latter attack Israel directly, whilst Putin is expected to restrain Iran from attacking Israel, using Syrian territory – thus leaving Netanyahu free to set new rules of the game by which the Israel may attack and destroy Iranian forces anywhere in Syria (and not just in the border area, as earlier agreed) when it wishes, without fear of retaliation.

Barnea calls this a this ‘a triple gamble’: “Netanyahu is counting on Khamenei’s caution, on Trump’s credibility, and on Putin’s generosity, three character traits that they have never been known to possess before today… The question is what will happen, if instead of breaking – the ayatollahs choose war, or more likely, the region devolves into war as a result of a hasty, uncalculated course of action by one of the players. Will Trump be willing, in order to defend Israel and Saudi Arabia, to open a new front in the Middle East? If he does, that will contrary to everything that he promised the voters during the election campaign”. Barnea’s colleague, Ben Caspit, however, asserts that this issue – US military support – is already assured:

“The United States [has] promised Israel full and total support on all fronts… if a regional war does break out, the United States will immediately make its position clear, express support for Israel, and send Moscow the right signals. This is to ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin stays out of the conflict, and does not try to intervene, whether directly or indirectly, on behalf of his allies, Iran and Syria. Upon returning from Washington, (Israeli Defence Minister) Liberman informed the prime minister that he had received a “green light” in security matters.”

Caspit candidly characterises the relationship, post JCPOA, between Bibi and Trump, thus: “There is only one thing that isn’t clear,” one of the people closest to Netanyahu told Al-Monitor, speaking on the condition of anonymity:

“That is, who works for whom? Does Netanyahu work for Trump, or is President Trump at the service of Netanyahu…From the outside, at least, upon close inspection, it looks like the two men are perfectly in sync. From the inside, this seems even more so: This kind of cooperation between the two leaders and their two offices — the Oval Office in the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem — sometimes makes it seem as if they are actually just one single, large office”, a senior Israeli Defence official told Caspit.

“For now, the gamble is paying off: The Iranians, have not (so far) responded. Now they have another good reason to display restraint: the battle for public opinion in Europe”, Barnea adds. “Trump could have declared a US withdrawal and made do with that. But under the influence of Netanyahu and of his new team, he chose to go one step further. The economic sanctions on Iran will be much tighter, beyond what they were, before the nuclear agreement was signed. ‘Hit them in their pockets’, Netanyahu advised Trump: if you hit them in their pockets, they will choke; and when they choke they will throw out the ayatollahs. As of last night [Trump’s exit from JCPOA], Trump had warmly adopted this approach.”

This then – from the horse’s mouth – is the Israeli view: Iran will be hit everywhere in Syria, (and much less plausibly) isolated diplomatically, and its economy shredded. The Iranian ‘regime’ is ‘ obbling’; its economy is “in a death spiral” and the Iranian rial is in freefall – if we are to believe the mainstream Israeli and American ‘hawk’ narrative.

Incidentally, the escalation and exchange of missile fire across the Israeli border on Wednesday and Thursday morning, was not Iranian in origin (there are no IRGC near the Golan). Nor was the exchange initiated by Iran, but rather by Israel, striking Syrian targets as it has done regularly over recent weeks. On this occasion, however, Israel intended to cast Iran as ‘the accused’ (the pre-announced opening of the shelters in occupied Golan by Israel was something of a ‘give-away’ to a coming false flag event), to further the pressures on Tehran.

In fact, that it was Damascus that broke convention by firing twenty missiles into occupied Golan, without taking into consideration Russian requests for restraint, is of greater import, than were it the Iranians that had fired the missiles. This missile exchange represented the first occasion, in decades, that Syria has fired missiles at Israeli military targets inside the Golan.

This represents the first ‘unintended consequence’ to Trump’s announcement: Israeli coat-trailing aimed at Iran, paradoxically, has forced the Syrian government to put the occupied Golan Heights into play, as the next battlefield.

“If Israel continues its attacks, Syria will think of sending its missiles or rockets way beyond the Golan Heights – to reach Israeli territory”, regional war commentator, Elijah Magnier forecasts.

But, contrary to the mainstream presentation, Trump’s ‘war’ on Iran has a much wider geo-political ramification than just a deepening of Iran-Israeli tensions. We will witness further ‘unintended consequences’ for the US, in the weeks ahead.

The wider significance to the above Israeli reading of the ‘Trump – Netanyahu understandings’ (if accurate – and probably, it is), is that it represents a strategic change: This is no longer Art of the Deal belligerence, as foreplay to a coupling – and ultimately to a negotiated settlement.

Barnea and other Israeli commentators may be correct: Netanyahu (and his team of hawks) has taken Trump, one step further. It has become the Art of ‘Regime Change’; a war of attrition against Iran – a medieval siege – by any other name.

Not only Iran, but North Korea, Russia and China will need to pay close attention. It seems that Kim Jong Un’s volunteering to talk de-nuclearisation with Trump has electrified, and seemingly legitimised, Trump’s enthusiasm for Art of the Deal style, ‘fire and fury’, threats-and-make up, tactics. Netanyahu however, seemingly has succeeded in waving the succulent scent of regime change before Trump’s nose, and lured him, to follow it on Bibi’s heels, hoping for a big ‘win’. Promising ‘fire and fury’, Trump seems convinced, is a ‘sure thing’ to achieving capitulation by the other party.

The problem is that Trump may find that he is building on sand. Was it Trump’s tough stance that brought Jong Un to the table? Or, perhaps contrarily, might Jong Un see a meeting with Trump precisely as the necessary and required price that he has to pay in order to get China ‘have his back’, as it were – in the event that a ‘de-nuclearisation for de-Americanisation’ of the region deal, just doesn’t work – and to develop his re-unification diplomacy with a South which now – for the first time – given its mandate to unification – irrespective of American wishes?

Is Trump even aware of this possibility? China is the Goliath in Korea’s back yard. It is its main – almost only trading partner – and it effectively controls the settings on the North Korea sanctions vice. And China has been tightening that vice, turn by turn. China has long, and insistently, advocated talks between Jong Un and Washington. Xi wants de-nuclearisation of the neighbourhood, and reconciliation with the South. Kim is complying with his powerful neighbour’s wishes; but, in turn, no doubt has been asking China to ‘have his back’ if it all goes wrong.

Trump’s ‘step beyond’ Art of the Deal strategies, to regime change (in Iran) does not bode well for China’s North Korea strategy. If Trump expects capitulation from Jong Un – and doesn’t get it, then China will have little option but to get involved in order to deter Trump from any ‘bloody-nose’ exercise, or from attempted regime change. China does not want Jong Un’s capitulation or removal — It has no desire to have an US proxy – or its missiles – on its border.

Trump’s rapture with his Art of the Deal – and newly, Regime Change approach – makes it more likely that Trump will mis-read Jong Un’s readiness to ‘kneel’ – with the ‘unintended consequence’ of finding that China has Jong Un’s ‘back’, and not Trump’s. The consequences may be profound.

In a similar vein, Israel has been predicting the overthrow of Iranian state by its people for decades (just as Israeli officials have been announcing Hizbullah’s weakness, and disavowal by the Lebanese people, with a constant regularity – at least until this week’s Lebanese elections).

Iran’s economy has been somewhat flaccid, it is fair to say; but it is not – at all – as weak (or in a ‘death spiral’) as the mainstream has it. Sure: Young people lack jobs (but that is the same across much of Europe). And 2018 is not 2012. Iran will not be either so financially or politically isolated in the wake of Trump’s JCPOA edict as before – in fact the Israeli-American initiative likely will bind Iran’s alliance with China and Russia, tighter. Iran will turn East, of course.

For, Russia, America’s message could not be plainer: The US and Israel want to keep Syria as an open wound, into which Israel can stick its finger at any time – primarily in order to deny President Putin any foreign policy ‘achievement’, but also just to keep Damascus ‘weak’. And Trump wants either the full capitulation of the Iranian government, or its overthrow.

With JCPOA exit, and the handing of Jerusalem to Israel, Putin will be contemplating a de-stabilised, conflicted and fragile, Middle East – just what China and Russia did not want to see. The paths of Syria, Iran and Russia are now deeply interwoven. They may have their differences, but Syria was the reason why they fight together, as comrades-in-arms, and why, in the wider context, they behave jointly as partners in a military and strategic alliance with China.

These three states are in a de facto alliance whose strategic domain, properly understood, is the entire Middle East, whether in terms of China’s Road and Corridor initiative, or Russia’s energy ‘heartland’ matching structure. Their interest is in a stable region, not a de-stabilised one. Trump’s two moves (JCPOA and Jerusalem) are fragmentation, explosive grenades tossed into the matrix of Chinese and Russian strategic interests.

Trump’s ‘step beyond’: his Art of exiting the deal in favour of regime change however, poses a different order of threat to Moscow. Of course, Putin is aware that the American ‘deep state’ wants its Atlanticist ‘fifth column’, economic power-base in Russia, to remove Putin from power – and for Russia to be brought to embrace the American-led global order.

Perhaps Putin had thought that somehow Trump would overcome the internal US ‘civil war’, to find his way towards détente. But the series of signals is unmistakeable: the initial US Defence Statements moved from seeing Russia as a ‘competitor’; then to ‘revisionist power’; then to number ‘one’ threat (above terrorism); then, to an much elevated ‘threat’ — demanding the up-grading of US missile systems, the replacement of its nuclear submarine fleet and the re-working of its nuclear arsenal; then to a doctrine of conditions-based use of nuclear weapons – and now, to the ‘step beyond’: regime change.

Putin understandably wants to avoid military conflict with the US, if at all possible, but, at the same time, he must know that if he does not draw Russia’s line in the sand for America (and Netanyahu), somewhere, soon, he will be perceived as being weak by the US hawks, who will just push him harder. Putin has been trying to mediate between Israel and Iran, but that prospect has been damaged by Pompeo and Trump’s anti-Iranian, Redemptionist passion. And Putin, too, must prepare for the worse with the US – and yet not prematurely damage the conditions for his Partner, Xi Jinping’s elaborate ongoing sparring match with Washington, over trade and tariffs and North Korea.

The greatest ‘unexpected consequence’ will be that Putin and Xi determine that Trump’s ‘step beyond’ precisely is the time to draw the ‘line in the sand’ – and resolve to enforce it. If this happens, everything changes. Does Trump understand this?

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Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

Featured image is from the author.

On 14 of May 1948 – Israel declared unilaterally her independence in a foreign land, called Palestine, supported by a UN Resolution sponsored by the UK (the United Nations “Partition Plan of Palestine” at the end of the British Mandate (euphemism for British ‘colony’), was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 II). 1948 was also the year of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights – this year, 2018, the UN declared Human Rights are, like Israel, celebrating their 70^th Birthday (United Nations General Assembly, Paris, 10 December 1948 – General Assembly Resolution 217 A). During 70 years of Human Rights, the UN has tacitly allowed Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, who lived in their own land, Palestine.

The UN has allowed Israel’s massacre of Palestine against dozens of UN Resolution to restrain Israel from their aggressions on Palestine, killing tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians, women, children and men. Destroying their livelihood, schools, hospitals and living quarters. Worse, confining 2 million Palestinians in an open torture and terror camp, called Gaza.

All this under the “watchful eye” of the United Nations, thousands of Blue Helmets patrolling ‘disputed’ – aka Israeli stolen territory from Palestine and surrounding Arab nations. And the world at large – by now 193 member-nations that make up the UN – watching, observing, but not saying beep loud enough to be heard.

New York Times 1945

It is a shame. Israel is a miserable and criminal disgrace – but a worse shame is the United Nations, the collectivity of 193 countries who collectively hide behind the mantle of the UN. Those who have dared to protest in the defense of human rights and in defense of Palestinians’ self-determination are few and far in between, risking the sword of the emperor and his poodles. Most have bent to and are still bending to – the king bull, Washington – and to its master, Israel. This is what is lamentable, that humanity has become a spineless bunch of nations – all kneeling in front of the big Satan, the torturing and killing monster, the US-armed to the teeth killing machine – the little dog that counts on the unlimited support from the most horrific bulldozer. That is an atrocious and unspeakable shame. – At least one honorable country, South Africa, has expelled Israel’s Ambassador over these most recent bloody atrocities.

That is the ignominy of our humanity in the 21^st Century. – Yes, there are Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria… and a few more sovereign nations that stand-up in protest, trying to use the corrupted UN system to right the wrongs – to no avail. Of course not. The majority counts – and the majority is being blackmailed by Washington on behalf of Israel into submission – or else – sanctions loom, in the form of blocked trade, blocked international monetary transfers, confiscation of assets abroad – or worse.

Where are the all so revered Human Rights that nobody dares to even cite, let alone enforce, in the case of Israel’s atrocities on Palestine, with the explicit support of the United States and most of her puppet “allies”?

When Trump in December 2017 declared that the US will transfer her Embassy to Jerusalem, he endorsed just once more a promise made over the last 30 years by several US Presidents, from the Bush dynasty to Clinton to Obama – but none of them implemented that promise, lest it would undermine peace negotiations. These promises by Washington were, of course, full of hypocrisy, as Washington always knew that peace was not on the table, that neither Israel or Washington were in favor of peace. Peace would have meant, as per the 1993 Oslo Accord, a two-state solution, meaning Israel and Palestine would live side-by-side in peace;two sovereign nations with equal rights.

The Oslo Accords are a number of agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO]. The Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington DC in 1993; and the Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995. These Accords marked the start of the Oslo process, aimed at achieving a Peace Treaty, based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, fulfilling the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The Oslo Accords are valid to this day. They counter then and today the larger objective of Israel and the United States – of a “Greater Israel”, stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile, a nuclearized Israel, dominating the Middle East – and disposing of the energy and other mineral riches of the entire region.

Well, Trump, has made his campaign promise true. He – ordered by his darkest handlers –has cut the hypocrisy, using Israel’s 70^th Birthday, 14 May 2018 to make Israel’s obsessive and oppressive dream come true, officially inaugurating the US Embassy in Jerusalem – to the detriment of peace and the total destitution of Palestine. The Oslo Accords saw Jerusalem as the final jewel in the mosaic for peace in a two-state solution – the Capital of both Palestine and Israel.

Trump’s decision – although refuted vehemently by the UN – has not only pushed peace light-years away into a phantom distance, but it has brought about a massacre – an unpardonable massacre – with Israeli soldiers armed to the teeth killing with live ammunition. Tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians were protesting on the Gaza-Israeli border, in the middle of nowhere, at least 100 km away from the US Embassy inaugural celebration in Jerusalem. Israeli soldiers and police killed at least 60, twenty or more of them children and women, and injuring about 3,000 – people who could not be properly treated at hospitals. Israel has blocked the shipment of medication and is systematically bombing Palestinian health facilities.

The protesters were far away from Jerusalem, where the inaugural US-Embassy celebrations took place, cordoned-off by armed security forces and where the protesters could do no harm. The demonstrations were an expression of anger, of helplessness in the face of so much injustice which nobody, but nobody on this planet manifestly and effectively objected and intervened against. Palestinians know, this will mean more oppression, more subjugation to Israel’s terror tyranny – more killing, more starvation as Israel is blocking vital food shipments to Gaza – where 50% of children below 5, are already chronically malnourished.

What happened on 14 May 2018 in Palestine, those who are behind the apartheid, ethnic cleansing and outright Holocaust Israel has imposed on Palestine during the last 70 years,belong, no doubt, before a Nuremberg-type tribunal – with sentences as harsh as those inflicted by the allies after WWII on the Nazis and their Holocaust.

Trump and his Zion-handlers are responsible for a massacre of unprecedented dimensions since Israel’s war on Gaza in 2014. And how many vassals of the tyrannical and criminal pair, United States and Israel, will now also shift their Embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem just to stay in the limelight of US favors, and, of course, to cement this universal Wrong?

And where are the UN declared Human Rights, ironically also celebrating their 70^th Birthday this year? – Under the Human Rights Act the UN has a right to intervene in countries and situations, where massive human rights infractions are committed, like in Palestine. Dozens of such resolutions had been submitted to the UN Security Council, they were all vetoed by Washington. What good is the UN? None, whatsoever. No longer, not today, the system is totally corrupted, bought and blackmailed into submission to the wishes and political whims of the US and Israel.

Likewise have all the related UN agencies been corrupted and swayed to favor the Exceptional Nation and the Chosen People. There is no way that the International Courts of The Hague would ever prosecute a war crime committed by the west, let alone by the west’s chief criminals, the US and Israel. It’s simply not going to happen. Not while the current power structures are in place. Why then even believe in this fake justice system?And who still dares quoting them as beacons of international justice? – This is a farce, if there has ever been one.

The noble ideas behind the creation of the United Nations and the Declaration of universal Human Rights have in the last 70 years been corrupted to the point of non-recognition. Corrupted by political pressure, blackmailing, by fear of sanctions, or actual economic sanctions – all of which is only possible because the west is also living with a totally fraudulent US imposed fiat dollar-based monetary system that controls every financial transaction of every “sovereign” nation, hence can block any monetary move, seize assets abroad, and block international contracts, as they (almost) all are written in US dollars.

The latter is gradually fading, as nations are aware of their vulnerability by sticking to the US dollar. Many are now dealing directly in their own currencies, trying to circumvent the US monetary control.But that recognition, again, is weakened itself by the fear of sanctions, or condemnation by US courts which have in fact absolutely no jurisdiction in another sovereign land. But, since under the current western Ponzi fiat scheme all financial transactions have to flow through a US bank either in New York or London, potential non-adherence to the rule is “punishable”, and that mostly by economic strangulation, regime change or death. – It’s a vicious circle, under which Human Rights are just a slogan and a farce; and under which the rights of sovereign nations, for example of Palestine, remain not more than a pipe dream.

But despite all war crimes and massacres – JUSTICE – as human spirituality is still there, cannot be killed. It may be pushed away, subjugated, ignored, castrated and violated, but it doesn’t go away. It’s in all of us; just deep down and asleep in western minds, indoctrinated and brain washed by daily propaganda lies.

The combined neoliberal onslaught with impunity from all sides reaches a level of increasing awareness and rejection; the fearlessness of diabolical actions by neofascist governments is about to cause an awakening, a consciousness that dares to say – enough is enough. Take France’s Macron’s labor reforms – since February this year France has been plagued by strikes no-end – and no end is in sight. This is the worst – or the best – France has known since the 1968 student up-raisings. France, under Macron, the Rothschild-implant, is also the most militarized country in Europe. The European Union – at least for now –and since Washington’s stepping out from Iran’s Nuclear Deal, is distinctly distancing herself from the extremist, unfettered neoliberal politics of Washington. It’s perhaps too soon to call Victory – but this abject, unjustified and criminal slaughter of Palestinians, of another blow of violent oppression of Palestine (there is no word that can properly describe what happened on 14 May 2018), may signal that the monster vessel on high sea is losing notch-by-little-notch its diabolical North.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog; and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Featured image is from Voice of the Cape.

America’s Republican politicians complain that “entitlements,” by which they mean pensions and medical care, are leading the country to bankruptcy even as they fatten the spending on the Pentagon, which now takes 12 percent of the overall budget. And it should be noted that while workers contribute to the social programs during all their years of employment, the money that goes to the military comes straight out of the pockets of taxpayers before being wasted in ways that scarcely benefit the average citizen unless one seriously thinks that folks over in Syria, Iran and Afghanistan actually do threaten the survival of the United States of America.

I was in a Virginia supermarket the other day checking out when the woman behind the cash register in a perky voice asked me “Will you give $5 to support our troops?” I responded “No. Our troops already get way too much of our money.” She replied, “Hee, hee that’s a funny joke” and I said “It’s not a joke.” Her face dropped and she signaled to her boss over in customer service and asked her to take over, saying that I had been rude.

If there is any group in the United States that exceeds the sheer greed of our politicians it is the military, which believes itself to be “entitled” as a consequence of its role in the global war on terror. I am a veteran who began service in a largely draftee army in which we were paid “twenty-one dollars a day once a month” as the old World War 2 song goes. When we got out, the GI Bill gave us $175 a month to go back to college, which did not cover much.

Today’s United States has 2,083,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen on active duty plus reserves. Now that the military is an all-volunteer rather than a conscript force, it is understandable that pay and benefits should be close to or equivalent to civilian pay scales. Currently, a sergeant first class with 10 years in service gets paid $3968 a month. A captain with ten years gets $6271. That amounts to $47,616 and $75,252 a year respectively plus healthcare, food, housing, cost of living increases and bonuses to include combat pay.

Though there are several options for retirement, generally speaking a soldier, sailor Marine or airman can retire after 20 years with half of his or her final “high three” pay as a pension, which means an 18-year-old who enlists right out of high school will be 38 and if he or she makes sergeant first class (E-7) he or she will be collecting $2338 a month or more for a rest of his or her life adjusted for cost of living,

Many Americans would be astonished at the pensions that general officers and admirals receive, particularly since 80% of them also land in “retirement” generously remunerated positions with defense contractors either in active positions soliciting new contracts from their former peers or sitting on boards. General David Petraeus, whom The Nation describes as the “general who lost two wars,” pulls in a pension of $220,000 even though he was forced to resign as CIA Director due to passing classified information to his mistress. He is also chairman of a New York City based company KKR Global, which is part of a private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts. He reportedly is paid in six figures plus bonuses for “oversee[ing] the institute’s thought leadership platform focused on geopolitical and macro-economic trends, as well as environmental, social, and governance issues.”

It apparently is difficult to take money away from general and flag officers. An Air Force four-star general named Arthur Lichte was reduced in rank to a two-star in 2017 after he was found guilty of having raped a lower ranking woman officer. His pension went down from $216,000 to $156,000 due to the reduction. Normally, however, America’s 1,000 general and flag officers can look forward to comfortable retirements.

But on top of that rather generous bit of cash there are the considerable other benefits, as the old recruiting sergeants would put it, the “bennies.” Military retirees can receive full tuition and expenses at a college or technical school if they choose to go back to school. This is why one sees so many ads for online universities on television – they are trolling for soldier dollars knowing that it’s free money. The retiree will also have access to heavily subsidized medical care for him or herself plus family. The medical care is a significant bonus under the Tricare system, which describes itself on its website as “the gold standard for medical coverage, [that] is government managed health insurance.” A friend who is retired recently had a hip replacement operation that would have cost $39,000 for only a few hundred dollars through Tricare.

What is significant is that even enlisted military personnel can start a second career on top of their pension, given that many of them are still in their thirties. Some that have security clearances can jump into highly paid jobs with defense contractors immediately while others also find places in the bureaucracy with the Department of Homeland Security. Working for the government twice is called “double dipping.”

Some would argue that military personnel deserve what they get because the jobs are by their very nature dangerous, sometimes fatal. Indeed, the number of maimed and PTSD-afflicted soldiers returning from the endless wars is a national tragedy and caring for them should be a top priority. But the truth is that only a very small fraction, by some estimates far less than 20% of Army and Marine personnel in so-called “combat arms,” ever are in danger. Air Force and Navy personnel rarely experience combat at all apart from bombing targets far below or launching cruise missiles against Syrians. It is true that given the volatile nature of war against insurgents in places like Afghanistan many soldiers in support roles can come under fire, but it is far from normal and most men and women in service never experience a gun fired in anger.

Some numbers-crunchers in the Pentagon have already raised the alarm that the current pay, benefits and retirement levels for military personnel is unsustainable if the United States continues its worldwide mission against terrorists and allegedly rogue regimes. And it is also unsustainable if the U.S. seeks to return to a constitutional arrangement whereby the nation is actually defended by its military, not subordinated to it and being bankrupted by its costs.

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Featured image is from the author.

Iran, under a renewed threat of U.S. sanctions returning, two months ago decided to switch using the greenback as a currency in its imports and banned all traders from using USD. A directive came from the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade. Iran was being backed into a corner and was facing a situation of having has no access to dollar transactions because of the sanctions. Hence, it decided to remove that threat. Now instead of using banks, it has to use a network of foreign exchange bureaus and even gone the distance by saying it wants no transactions at all in USD.

This was quickly but quietly followed up with a Reuters report at the same time in March that China was now ready to start testing its new system and that regulators had asked a handful of financial institutions to prepare for pricing China’s crude imports in the yuan. Since the launch in May, the interest in the renminbi-backed oil contracts has steadily increased. Traded daily volumes hit a record 250,000 lots within two weeks and surprisingly the share of yuan contracts in global trading jumped to 12 percent from 8 percent just eight weeks earlier.

Then, an industry news source for the oil and gas industry reported on April 9th that Russia was considering replacing the U.S. dollar in crude oil payments on deals with Turkey and Iran, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said.

According to Novak,

“There is a common understanding that we need to move towards the use of national currencies in our settlements. There is a need for this, as well as the wish of the parties. This concerns both Turkey and Iran – we are considering an option of payment in national currencies with them. This requires certain adjustments in the financial, economic and banking sectors.”

Two weeks later Novak then announced that Russia had put together an oil-for-goods program with Iran and confirmed that the first shipments had been made.  The deal aims for five years of trading and gets around the USD trade.

So far, no reader should be surprised that Russia, Turkey and Iran have decided to ‘ditch the dollar.’ It may be news that China is preparing the way to follow through as well.

However, a major turning point in relations between the US and EU is not far from an announcement. After infuriating the European Union over a series of deals like the Paris Climate Accord, TTIP and others, the final straw came when after twelve years of EU negotiators being the linchpin to the Iran nuclear deal, Donald Trump decided the best course of action – is to withdraw from the deal and impose even harsher sanctions.

With the USA giving the green-light under Obama in 2015 to allow Iranian trade, the EU struck lucrative deals worth tens of billions. In 2017, EU trade with Iran increased 45 percent from the previous year with the same growth expected by 2020. By contrast, the USA managed less than one-tenth of the trade available.

The USA has now not only scuppered EU growth plans but dangerously caused an inflationary spike in oil prices, meaning the EU is hit with the double whammy of inflationary pressures and economic growth plans turning into unemployment statistics.

As we reported last week, the EU has lost patience and all but declared it is now on an economic collision course with the United States of America.

A source told RIA Novosti –

 “I’m privy to the information that the EU is going to shift from dollar to euro to pay for crude from Iran.

In the last few hours, OilPrice.com the industry sector news outlet has just reported that the “EU Could Switch To Euros In Oil Trade With Iran” and so has the International Business Times.

Other measures are being considered. The 1996 Blocking Statute, which prohibited European companies from complying with US extraterritorial laws may be restored. Twenty years ago, when the Clinton administration threatened sanctions against European companies in the same Iran sanctions battle against Europe, the EU passed these blocking statutes giving companies cover to continue with business as usual. Clinton was forced to back down. The George W. Bush administration kept the sanctions on the go but did not enforce them for fear of sparking a trade war with Europe.

Some EU banks have declared they are already in a position to provide trading services to European corporations wishing to do trade with Iran.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

On Wednesday, May 16th, Russian Television reported recent crackdowns against the press, on the part of both Ukraine’s Government and Israel’s Government. One headline story, “9 journalists injured by Israeli gunfire in Gaza ‘massacre’, total now over 20”, reported that Israel had shot dead two journalists:

“Yaser Murtaja, 31, a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media agency, died on April 7 after he was shot by Israeli forces the previous day while covering a protest south of the Gaza Strip. He wore a blue protective vest marked ‘PRESS’.”

And:

“Ahmad Abu Hussein, 24, was shot by Israeli forces during a protest in the Gaza strip on April 13. He died from his injuries on April 25. He was also wearing a protective vest marked ‘PRESS’ at the time.”

The other 18 instances were only injuries, not murders, but Israel has now made clear that any journalist who reports from the Palestinian side is fair game for Israel’s army snipers — that when Palestinians demonstrate against their being blockaded into the vast Gaza prison, and journalists then report from amongst the demonstrators instead of from the side of the snipers, those journalists are fair game by the snipers, along with those demonstrators.

Some of the surviving 18 journalists are still in critical condition and could die from Israel’s bullets, so the deaths to journalists might be higher than just those two.

Later in the day, RT bannered “Fist-size gunshot wounds, pulverized bones, inadmissible use of force by Israel in Gaza – HRW to RT” and presented a damning interview with the Israel & Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch.

The other crackdown has been by Ukraine. After the U.S. Obama Administration perpetrated a very bloody coup in Ukraine during February of 2014, that country has plunged by every numerical measure, and has carried out raids against newsmedia that have reported unfavorably on the installed regime. The latest such incident was reported on May 16th by Russian Television, under the headline, “US endorses Kiev’s raid on Russian news agency amid international condemnation”. An official of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) stated there:

“I reiterate my call on the authorities to refrain from imposing unnecessary limitations on the work of foreign journalists, which affects the free flow of information and freedom of the media.”

An official of the CPJ (Committee to Protect journalists) stated:

“We call on Ukrainian authorities to disclose the charges and evidence they have against Vyshinsky or release him without delay. … We also call on Ukrainian authorities to stop harassing and obstructing Russian media operating in Ukraine. The criminalization of alternative news and views has no place in a democratic Ukraine.”

However, as reported by RT, Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General called the editorial policy of the anti-regime RIA Ukraine “anti-Ukrainian” in nature, amounting to “state treason.” So, the prosecutor is threatening to categorize and prosecute critical press under Ukraine’s treason law.

The U.S. regime is not condemning either of its client-regimes for their crackdowns. (It cites Ukraine’s supposed victimhood from “Russian propaganda” as having caused Ukraine’s action, and justifies Israel’s gunning-down of demonstrators and of journalists as having been necessary for Israel’s self-defense against terrorism.) In neither instance is the U.S. dictatorship saying that this is unacceptable behavior for a government that receives large U.S. taxpayers funds. Of course, in the U.S., the mainstream press aren’t allowed to report that either Israel or today’s Ukraine is a dictatorship, so they don’t report this, though Israel clearly is an apartheid racist-fascist (or ideologically nazi, but in their case not against Jews) regime, and Ukraine is clearly also a racist-fascist, or nazi, regime, which engages in ethnic cleansing to get rid of voters for the previous — the pre-coup — Ukrainian government. People who are selected individually by the installed regime, get driven to a big ditch, shot, with the corpses piling up there, and then the whole thing gets covered over. This is America’s client-‘democracy’ in Ukraine, not its client-‘democracy’ in Israel.

May 16th also was the day when the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10 to 5 to approve as the next CIA Director, Gina Haspel, the person who had headed torture at the CIA’s black site in Thailand where Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times and blinded in one eye in order to get him to say that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks; and, since then, Zubaydah, who has never been in court, has been held incommunicado at Guantanamo, so that he can’t testify in court or communicate with the press in any way. “The U.S. Government has never charged Zubaydah with any crime.” And the person who had ordered and overseen his torture will soon head the agency for which she worked, the CIA.

Whether the U.S. regime will soon start similarly to treat its own critical press as “traitors” isn’t clear, except that ever since at least the Obama Administration, and continuing now under Trump, the U.S. Government has made clear that it wants to seize and prosecute both Edward Snowden and Julian Assange for their journalistic whistleblowing, violations of “state secrets,” those being anything that the regime wants to hide from the public — including things that are simply extremely embarrassing for the existing rulers. Therefore, the journalistic-lockdown step, from either Israel, or Ukraine, to U.S., would be small, for the United States itself to take, if it hasn’t yet already been taken in perhaps secret ways. But at least, the Senate Intelligence Committee is strongly supportive of what the U.S. Government has been doing, and wants more of it to be done.

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

Featured image is from The Nation.

Over the last two years, academic researchers have identified various methods that they can transmit hidden commands that are undetectable by the human ear to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant.

According to a new report from The New York Times, scientific researchers have been able “to secretly activate the artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, making them dial phone numbers or open websites.” This could, perhaps, allow cybercriminals to unlock smart-home doors, control a Tesla car via the App, access users’ online bank accounts, load malicious browser-based cryptocurrency mining websites, and or access all sort of personal information.

In 2017, Statista projected around 223 million people in the U.S. would be using a smartphone device, which accounts for roughly 84 percent of all mobile users. Of these 223 million smartphones users, around 108 million Americans are using the Android Operating System, and some 90 million are using Apple’s iOS (operating system). A new Gallup poll showed that 22 percent of Americans are actively using Amazon Echo or Google Assistant in their homes.

With much of the country using artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, a new research document published from the University of California, Berkeley indicates inaudible commands could be embedded “directly into recordings of music or spoken text,” said The New York Times.

For instance, a millennial could be listening to their favorite song: ‘The Middle’ by Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey. Embedded into the audio file could have several inaudible commands triggering Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa to complete a task that the user did not instruct — such as, buying merchandise from the music performer on Amazon.

“We wanted to see if we could make it even more stealthy,” said Nicholas Carlini, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in computer security at U.C. Berkeley and one of the paper’s authors.

At the moment, Carlini said this is only an academic experiment, as it is only a matter of time before cybercriminals figure out this technology.

“My assumption is that the malicious people already employ people to do what I do,” he added.

The New York Times said Amazon “does not disclose specific security measure” to thwart a device from an ultrasonic attack, but the company has taken precautionary measures to protect users from unauthorized human use. Google told The New York Times that security development is ongoing and has developed features to mitigate undetectable audio commands.

Both companies’ [Amazon and Google] assistants employ voice recognition technology to prevent devices from acting on certain commands unless they recognize the user’s voice.

Apple said its smart speaker, HomePod, is designed to prevent commands from doing things like unlocking doors, and it noted that iPhones and iPads must be unlocked before Siri will act on commands that access sensitive data or open apps and websites, among other measures.

Yet many people leave their smartphones unlocked, and, at least for now, voice recognition systems are notoriously easy to fool.

There is already a history of smart devices being exploited for commercial gains through spoken commands,” said The New York Times.

Last year, there were several examples of companies and even cartoons taking advantage of weaknesses in voice recognition systems, including Burger King’s Google Home commercial to South Park‘s episode with Alexa.

While there are currently no American laws against broadcasting subliminal or ultrasonic messages to humans, let alone artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warns against the practice, calling it a “counter to the public interest,” and the Television Code of the National Association of Broadcasters bans “transmitting messages below the threshold of normal awareness.” However, The New York Times points out that “neither says anything about subliminal stimuli for smart devices.”

Recently, the ultrasonic attack technology showed up in the hands of the Chinese. Researchers at Princeton University and China’s Zhejiang University conducted several experiments showing that inaudible commands can, in fact, trigger voice-recognition systems in an iPhone.

“The technique, which the Chinese researchers called DolphinAttack, can instruct smart devices to visit malicious websites, initiate phone calls, take a picture or send text messages. While DolphinAttack has its limitations — the transmitter must be close to the receiving device — experts warned that more powerful ultrasonic systems were possible,” said The New York Times.

DolphinAttack could inject covert voice commands at 7 state-of-the-art speech recognition systems (e.g., Siri, Alexa) to activate always-on system and achieve various attacks, which include activating Siri to initiate a FaceTime call on iPhone, activating Google Now to switch the phone to the airplane mode, and even manipulating the navigation system in an Audi automobile. (Source: guoming zhang) 

DolphinAttack Demonstration Video 

While the number of smart devices in consumers’ pockets and at their homes is on the rise, it is only a matter of time before the technology falls into the wrong hands, and unleashed against them. Imagine, cybercriminals accessing your Audi or Tesla via ultrasonic attacks against voice recognition technology on a smart device. Maybe these so-called smart devices are not smart after all, as the dangers of these devices are starting to be realized. Millennials will soon be panicking.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

China is the world’s largest oil importing/consuming nation. Trading on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange since March, its petro-yuan poses the first ever challenge to petro-dollar dominance.

Will an EU petro-euro be a petro-dollar challenge too great to overcome? Will US sanctioned nations and their trading partners weaken dollar dominance by bypassing it in trade entirely?

China is shaking up the oil futures market at the expense of the dollar. Will the EU go the same way, freeing itself from observing US sanctions at the expense of its own interests?

Will the petro-yuan and a petro-euro, if introduced, prove game-changing longer-term?

The dollar as the world’s reserve currency remains dominant. Are its dominant days numbered?

Will Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal weaken dollar dominance? Iran’s trading partners have 90 days to decide whether to observe or bypass US sanctions in trade with the Islamic Republic – 180 days for Iranian oil.

Heavy US pressure is being exerted to go along with US sanctions, especially on EU nations, significant buyers of Iranian oil and other products.

Since Trump’s announced JCPOA pullout, Shanghai crude oil futures have been steadily rising. China effectively circumvents US sanctions by petro-yuan trading, along with creating companies operating in Iran and cooperating solely with the country.

Following Trump’s JCPOA pullout, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said his government remains committed to the international agreement, stressing:

Beijing “will continue with normal and transparent practical cooperation with Iran on the basis of not violating our international obligations.”

His government “oppose(s) the imposition of unilateral sanctions and the so-called long-arm jurisdiction by any country in accordance with its domestic laws.”

Will Brussels go the same way by switching from dollar trade to euros in dealings with Iran through the European Investment Bank (bypassing US ones), perhaps going the same way in trading with other countries?

At stake is 20 billion euros in annual EU/Iran trade. Increasing bilateral and multilateral trade in yuan, euros, and other currencies would greatly diminish dollar dominance, perhaps end it entirely – a significant blow to US hegemony if things develop this way.

In April, Iran switched from dollars to euros in international trade. According to EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini:

Brussels and Tehran are discussing ways of “maintaining and deepening economic relations with Iran; the continued sale of Iran’s oil and gas condensate petroleum products and petrochemicals and related transfers; effective banking transactions with Iran; continued sea, land, air and rail transportation relations with Iran; the further provision of export credit and development of special purpose vehicles in financial banking, insurance and trade areas, with the aim of facilitating economic and financial cooperation, including by offering practical support for trade and investment.”

According to Oilprice.com, some refiners and traders are concerned about financing issues if buying Iranian oil continues despite US sanctions, adding:

Insuring tankers is another major issue, “some shipping companies…already refusing to commit tankers to new Iranian cargoes, for fear of complications in the cargo and insurance related payments.”

The EU and Washington are the world’s largest political, economic and military partners. Most EU nations are US-dominated NATO members.

While Brussels at times disagrees with US policies, most often the EU goes along – notably by imposing sanctions on Russia along with Washington, despite harming its own self-interest.

The EU and America represent around 60% of global GDP, about a third of world trade in goods, over 40% in services – Europe and the US highly dependent on access to each other’s market.

Will Brussels risk harming political and economic relations with Washington by going its own way in dealings with Iran?

RT cited an unnamed source, saying the EU intends circumventing US sanctions on Iranian oil by using euros to keep buying it – perhaps continuing overall trade with Iran the same way.

Federica Mogherini was quoted, saying

“(w)e’re not naive and know it will be difficult for all sides.”

In relations with Washington, the EU most often is subservient to its interests. Will this time be different?

Will EU countries risk losing free access to the US market and possible sanctions if it continues normal economic and political relations with Iran – defying Washington?

Based on past history, the odds are long. Yet the jury is very much out. If this time is different, it’ll represent a major change in EU/US relations – perhaps the same way ahead on Russia.

It’s too soon to know, but it begs the question. Will Trump’s JCPOA pullout prove hugely counterproductive for Washington?

Will it be a long-remembered major mistake? Will it trigger belligerent US actions on Iran for failing to achieve its economic aims if things turn out this way?

Lots of questions remain unanswered – the fullness of time alone to explain how things will unfold ahead.

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

Overview

Since 30 March 2018, the Gaza Strip has witnessed an enormous increase in Palestinian casualties in the context of mass demonstrations taking place along Israel’s perimeter fence with Gaza. The demonstrations have occurred as part of the ‘Great March of Return’, a series of mass protests, expected to continue up to 5 June.

The large number of casualties among unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, including a high percentage of demonstrators hit by live ammunition, has raised concerns about excessive use of force by Israeli troops. Gaza’s health sector is struggling to cope with the mass influx of casualties, due to years of blockade, internal divide and a chronic energy crisis, which have left essential services in Gaza barely able to function.

Key humanitarian needs

• Rapid deployment of quality-assured emergency medical teams to conduct complex lifesaving surgery.
• Procurement of essential drugs, disposables and medical equipment to ensure accurate diagnostics and treatment of the injured.
• Increase in the number and presence of civil society partners to document possible human rights violations.
• Legal aid to address restrictions impeding medical patients from receiving treatment outside Gaza.
• Mental health and psychological support for children and families impacted by violence.
• Access to critical medical cases to treatment outside Gaza.

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The news that Israel killed more than 60 Palestinians on Monday alone, has sparked criticism from Americans who are frustrated with the United States’ failure to hold one of its closest allies accountable for the human rights violations it is committing—and individuals in one state will soon be labeled as “anti-Semitic” for openly voicing their opinion.

South Carolina will become the first state to legally define criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism” when a new measure goes into effect on July 1, targeting public schools and universities. While politicians have tried to pass the measure as a standalone law for two years, they finally succeeded temporarily by passing it as a “proviso” that was slipped into the 2018-2019 budget.

According to the text of the measure, the definition of “anti-Semitism” will now include:

• a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities;
• calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews; making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as a collective; accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, the state of Israel, or even for acts committed by non-Jews;
• accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust;
• accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations;
• using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism to characterize Israel or Israelis;
• drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis;
• blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions;
• applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;
• multilateral organizations focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations;
• denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist, provided, however, that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.

As can be determined by the long list of ways in which South Carolina will now define “anti-Semitism,” individuals will be forced to tiptoe around a legitimate subject, and expressing an opinion that is no longer considered politically correct can now be legally used against them.

Calling out this bill is not antisemitic, it is pro free speech. Criticizing the Israeli government as well as any other government is the right and duty of all free humanity. Just as TFTP advocates for the freedom of Americans, we advocate for the freedom of Israelis and the Palestinians. Only through discussion and peaceful criticism will peace ever be achieved.

What’s more, even the chief of the IDF would be considered in violation of this law because in 2016, he gave a speech comparing the “contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

For as long as this bill has been proposed, it has been criticized by many who argue that it infringes on Americans’ First Amendment rights. With the measure currently focusing on public universities, it has left protesters concerned that it will hurt one group while allegedly helping another. Caroline Nagel, a professor at the University of South Carolina, told The State that she is concerned the law will discourage discussions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will hinder pro-Palestine student groups.

“This bill, I fear, will silence professors and student groups who are trying to explain and to give voice to a diversity of opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am frankly baffled as to why any legislator would consider an ideal to curtail our freedom of speech,” Nagel said.

The United States is a country that prides itself on the “freedom and democracy” it has shared with other foreign nations over the years, and there is no doubt that if the governments in Syria, Iran or Russia were openly shooting and killing civilian protesters, the U.S. would be calling for war and championing a full-scale invasion.

But when Israel shoots and kills 60 civilians and injures around 1,700 in just one day, the U.S. responds to the bloodshed by blocking the United Nations Security Council’s attempt to push for an independent investigation into Israel’s actions.

Unfortunately, the idea that Israel should be exempt from criticism, and that all of its actions are automatically justified—when a very different standard applies to its neighbors—is nothing new in the United States.

As The Free Thought Project reported, 41 other members of Congress came together to champion proposed legislation in July 2017 that would “make literal criminals of any Americans boycotting Israel—a brazen, if not explicit, attack on the BDS Movement, incidentally exploding in popularity worldwide as the belligerent nation continues its occupation of Palestinian lands.”

Then when a hurricane caused massive destruction in Texas in October 2017, residents in Dickinson received a notice from the city that they would only receive funds to repair their homes if they agreed “not to boycott Israel.”

The new measure in South Carolina may focus on public universities right now, but it is setting a blueprint for other states to follow, and in addition to chipping away at the First Amendment, it is serving as a clear reminder that the United States only seems to care about oppressive governments who commit human rights violations when those governments are not considered “close allies.”

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Rachel Blevins is an independent journalist from Texas, who aspires to break the false left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Follow Rachel on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Steemit and Patreon.

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: Original art by Amna Alsalmi. (Photo: Karim Naser)

As Palestinians marked the 70th anniversary of the Nakba — or theft of their land by the creation of Israel in 1948 — the U.S. celebrated the transfer of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in another victory for Israeli colonialism.

Palestinians participating in the March of Great Return have been organizing since May 14 in Gaza to demand the right for exiled Palestinians to return to their ancestral lands, but have faced Israeli snipers that have killed 62 and injured 2771 thus far, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. During a White House press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah dismissed the killings of Palestinians at the border as an “unfortunate propaganda attempt,” which he blamed on Hamas.

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan also blamed Hamas for the killings. According to Erdan,

“with Nazi anger, [Hamas] endlessly shed blood to erase from people’s memories their own failures in the management of the Gaza Strip.” The death toll, he said, “didn’t indicate anything.”

The international community remained tethered to its usual condemnations while ignoring the existence of UN Resolution 194.

Between the stipulated right of return as enshrined in UN Resolution 194, and the outcomes inflicted upon Palestinians by Israel and the international community, there is a vacuum that is inhabited by dreams and legacies. Art provides the medium for communication when words alone seem insufficient.

On May 5, the Palestinian Conceptual Art Forum organized an event on the Gaza borders at the return encampments in Malacca, east of Gaza City, which brought together Palestinian artists expressing their right of return through art. Thaer al-Tawil, the principal of the organization, spoke to MintPress about the origins of the Forum and its initiative to participate in the Great Return March through what he terms “art protest.”

Artists work on original pieces in the art protest tent near the Great Return March protests on the Gaza border. (Photo: Karim Naser)

The artistic project organized by the Forum is reminiscent of a perpetual struggle. Themed “For the Return, we draw,” Al-Tawil explains the inspiration behind the event is rooted in a right that has sustained itself through generations since 1948:

The idea of this artistic project was formed when Palestinian artists wanted to participate in the Great Return March by organizing a big event that reflected the shedding of Palestinian blood on the Gaza borders.”

Al-Tawil expounds upon the link between art, resistance and return:

The art protest is also about sending a message to the Zionist occupation. The rifle, the painting and the artists’ pencil are all symbols of Palestinian unity. The Palestinian artist is humane in the fullest sense of the word. The artist is like the bird of peace that paints to impart the suffering of Palestinians over the years, to emphasize our right to return despite the persecution imposed on us by the Zionist occupation.”

Al-Tawil explains that the Forum has aims and ambitions — in terms of both psychological and artistic empowerment, as well as to enable Gaza’s artists’ recognition abroad. Sharing experiences and narratives through art is one of the main aims. The Forum provides courses for artist-students up to university. It also seeks to establish a union for artists, to safeguard their rights as well as provide protection for their creative expression. Al-Tawil continued:

The Forum was founded due to the political vacuum caused by the Palestinian political divisions between Hamas and Fatah and the absence of anybody, or party, that cares for the artists or supports them. A number of artists came up with the idea of founding a platform through which the young artists’ creativity can be channeled. That is how the Palestinian Conceptual Art Forum started.”

Communication through art is key for Al-Tawil. Despite the blockade, which has prevented Palestinians in Gaza from traveling freely, one of the Forum’s aims is to connect with artists abroad:

The Forum aims to bridge between artists inside and outside of Palestine and strengthen their relations. It also aims to have an existence abroad through artistic expeditions, traveling abroad and participating in artistic exhibitions.”

“For the return, we draw”

On March 30, which marks the commemoration of Land Day among Palestinians, the Great Return March protests started in Gaza. Israeli snipers targeted and murdered 19-year-old Palestinian artist Mohamed Abu Amr. Well known for his sand sculptures on Gaza’s shores, his last depiction, created and posted on his Facebook page on the eve of the protests, read “I will return.”

Al-Tawil remembers Abu Amr’s legacy and unfinished dreams. One of these was to sculpt a massive map of Palestine on Gaza’s shores:

The Palestinian artistic movement lost the martyr Mohamed Abu Amr – the sculptor who, a few days before being murdered by Israeli sniper fire, sculpted the words ‘we are returning.’ To remember his legacy, we artists collaborated to sculpt the Palestine map he had planned. We fulfilled what he had wanted to do. The largest map of Palestine ever sculpted.”

Al-Tawil explains that Palestinian collective memory has found an expressive avenue through art.  Referencing the Nakba of 1948, when Palestinians were massacred, ethnically cleansed, and forcibly displaced from their lands by Zionist paramilitaries to pave the way for the establishment of colonial Israel, Al-Tawil says it became an artistic duty “to portray and depict all of this collective memory through paintings and artwork.”

He mentions Ismael Shamoot, Ismael Ashoor, Bashir Sinwar and Fathi Ghabn as being among the first to utilize art as a form of resistance, and whose influence has lasted throughout the decades. Palestinian artists, he says, have been routinely persecuted by Israel, with methods ranging from restricting their freedom of movement to being targeted for assassination, like Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali.

Art, resistance, and return

Palestinian artists Somaia Shaheen and Wae Ziada discussed their participation in the art protest in terms of their art and the ongoing colonization of Palestine.

For Shaheen, her presence affirmed a message to the international community, as well as a constant yearning to return to places of which she has been deprived by Israel. Lifting the siege on Gaza and praying at Al-Aqsa constitute Shaheen’s main thoughts about the right of return. Her art, she says, conveys her feelings:

It’s a harsh feeling — knowing you would love to visit the mosque and pray there, but you find yourself unable to do so due to the occupation and the political situation that prevent us from reaching a place so close to our hearts.”

Ziada echoes al-Tawil’s musings:

I was motivated to come to the Eastern borders in order to prove to the whole world that the art, the rifle and the stone are together in the same vein.”

A view inside in the art protest tent near the Great Return March protests on the Gaza border. (Photo: Karim Naser)

Artist Amna Alsalmi shared her inspiration with MintPress. She learned about the Forum through events organized for artists and describes her experience in the art protest as “so different.”

Her art depicts a revolutionary young man with a slingshot:

As you see, the man is standing bravely in front of the occupation. I painted the background to mirror our reality — see the smoke coming out of the burned tires. The painting seeks to portray bravery and strength, in spite of the difference between our home-made weapons and the Israeli military’s latest technology.”

Alsalmi adds:

Everyone resists in their own way — the revolutionary youth with slingshots and stones, the photographer with the camera, and the artists with their pencils. All of us are delivering the same message to the world: we have the right to get our homeland back.”

Basel el-Maqosui, whose art depicts a man wearing a keffiyeh against a Palestinian background, explains his use of monochrome:

The painting is done in black acrylic. It is an expression of strength and challenge. The man masked with a keffiyeh is a Palestinian symbol that is known by all the world’s free people — it symbolizes good morals and values, and a behavior that is derived from these qualities.”

Basel el-Maqosui stands in front of his one of his paintings. (Photo: Shareef Sarhan)

Of the artist’s role in resistance, el-Maqosui states:

The artists is always the first to resist and the last to be beaten. As a conceptual artist, I work on spreading my message to the whole world — we are a nation that deserves to live. In Gaza, there is an abundance of artists, actors, authors, poets and people from every artistic field, who are conveying our message internationally. Our art is a means of resisting the occupation until return and freedom.”

Metaphor of the phoenix

Ismaeel Y Dahlan discussed his participation and artwork in profound detail, evoking discourse steeped in inspiration, resistance and metaphors. His painting depicted an abstract background that, at the fore, is dominated by a brightly colored phoenix.

He describes his participation in the art protest as having two distinct messages, a critical commentary that highlights the discrepancy between alienation and human rights with regard to the Palestinian right of return:

There are two messages in my participation – one to the usurper entity that we are the owners of rights and owners of this land.”

Dahlan’s emphasis on the right of return for all generations of Palestinians, encompassing the entire social structure, is the premise for his next point:

The other message is to the international community, which is not immune to this issue. Palestinian refugees have been under siege and oppression, deprived of their basic rights and forced to die, just so that the world’s attention can be drawn to their just cause.”

Ismaeel Dahlan paints his phoenix, inspired the Great Return protests in Gaza. (Photo: Karim Naser)

His painting, he says, was inspired by the Great Return March and its mobilization of Palestinians:

The movement was a source of inspiration for this painting. The youth were heading to the border — to the area of death — in order to identify their lives through the connection with the land and the history of their ancestors. The Canaanites’ symbol was the phoenix, which, according to myth, burst into flames to regenerate.

The new approach of these young Palestinians is reminiscent of this — they are pushing themselves towards the fire. Their options are returning with an injury or an amputation of one of their limbs, and a wheelchair or a crutch will accompany them for the rest of their lives. Otherwise, they return on the shoulders of Palestinians, to heaven to live a new life, just like the phoenix.”

Of his art, he speaks of continuity — both in terms of artistic expression as well as memory — that is crippled by the blockade on Gaza. The artist faces the same challenges as the rest of society and no privilege is associated with art:

I was hoping that this work would become a sculpture made out of the remnants of war and located at the return encampments to eternalize this movement. However, I couldn’t achieve this because the artist is not a separate component; he is part of the society under siege. The Great Return March protests may provide the opportunity to achieve this aim.”

Ultimately, Dahlan concludes:

“We are fighting the culture of force with the culture of power.”

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Bisan El-Yazuri from Gaza assisted with translating interviews in this article from Arabic to English.

Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer, and blogger. She writes about the struggle for memory in Palestine and Chile, historical legitimacy, the ramifications of settler-colonialism, the correlation between humanitarian aid and human rights abuses, the United Nations as an imperialist organisation, indigenous resistance, la nueva cancion Chilena and Latin American revolutionary philosophy with a particular focus on Fidel Castro, Jose Marti and Jose Carlos Mariategui. Her articles, book reviews, interviews, and blogs have been published in Middle East Monitor, Upside Down World, Truthout, Irish Left Review, Gramsci Oggi, Cubarte, Rabble.ca, Toward Freedom, History Today, Chileno and other outlets, including academic publications and translations into several languages.

Oil, weapons and drugs are among the products with the largest turnover in the world. According to the International Energy Agency, the world demand for oil is between 94 million barrels per day with the United States being the largest oil consumer in the world, 11,500,000 barrels of oil per day. Likewise, according to the International Institute of Studies for Peace in Stockholm, the United States is the leading producer and exporter of weapons worldwide, controlling 31% of the international market.

Regarding drugs, according to the United Nations report, 255 million people – slightly over 5 per cent of those aged 15 to 64 years worldwide – consume drugs. 182 million people consume only marijuana, 48.9 million people use heroin, 17 million users consume cocaine and the rest of people consume amphetamines, ecstasy and other types of drugs. According to the UN Drug Report, an unacceptable number of drug users worldwide continue to lose their lives prematurely, with an estimated 190,000 drug-related deaths in 2017.

Today the United States is the first marijuana producer in the world. As for heroin, Afghanistan (invaded by the United States since 2001) is the world’s leading producer of this drug. Cocaine continues to flow mainly from Colombia (where the United States has been operating since 2000 with the “Plan Colombia”). This country ranks first in the world for its illegal production that increased over the past years.

By the way, the case of Afghanistan is very interesting. According to the United Nations, the country, before the US intervention, had almost eradicated the production of heroin. However, since 2002 its production increased significantly, considering that only in 2014 there were estimated 6,500 tons of opium. It is even more amazing to know that 90% of the heroin consumed in Canada comes from Afghanistan. The heroin market of Europe is supplied by this invaded country as well.

The same thing happens to the production of cocaine in Colombia. The United States has implemented an alleged plan to shovel the cultivation of this illegal product since 2000 and has deployed 7 military bases in this country.

However, contrary to these measures drug production keeps on increasing and Colombia continues to supply cocaine to the American and European markets. According to the UN, Colombia has increased the production of this drug by 52% in 2015; it is about 442 metric tons per year.

How does the United States relate to the drug trafficking business?

The United States used the drug business to finance the subversive activities of the Central Intelligence Agency against other states. The CIA and the DEA – expelled in Venezuela and Bolivia – have acted hand in hand to support the world drug trade, thus turning the United States into an Empire of Drug Trafficking.

The CIA began using the drug trade to generate income since the 1950s, financing operations in Thailand and other Asian countries with a great amount of drugs. The climax of these American activities became evident in the 1980s when the United States used the funds obtained from heroin taken from Afghanistan to Western Europe for financing the organization led by Osama Bin Laden.

The same case occurred in Central America, when the United States with the mediation of the CIA, funded the Nicaraguan contras on the money taken from the sale of cocaine they received from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia and imported into their territory. Reports published by the US Congress and declassified documents confirm how the CIA and the DEA worked with drug traffickers and provided material assistance, including using their bank accounts in Bank of Credit and Commerce International to launder the drug money with which they financed their secret activities in the world.

Due to the international scandal the US position to “fight against drug trafficking” was under question and all the officials involved in these cases were prosecuted, however none of them was punished in fact and were reinstated by George Bush Jr.

Does the United States use this scheme today?

The monetary income from the sale of narcotics continues to be used by the United States to finance clandestine operations, but it has also served to finance its own crises. In 2009, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, stated that drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis. Later, in 2012, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released the report on U.S. vulnerabilities to money laundering, drugs, and terrorist financing stating that every year almost 300 billion dollars of criminal origin are washed by the banks throughout the world and half of those funds pass through the American banks.

Such allegations of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee were confirmed in 2012 when the New York Federal Court made public the participation of HSBC, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Banks of America in the laundering of money from drug trafficking.

In 2008, it was confirmed that HSBC had laundered 1,100 million dollars of the Sinaloa cartel for the United States. The Court imposed fines but none of its directors or staff was imprisoned. This indicates that we are facing a society of accomplices, where the state finishes legalizing drug money through the fines. There are more US banks that are identified to be involved in the laundering of drug dollars, such as City Group, Bank of New York, and Bank of Boston, however, everything indicates that they have the protection of the US authorities.

There are countless confirmed scandals around DEA in Latin America. This US entity maintains close relations with drug cartels in Colombia despite being presented as the one that fights them. In March 2015, the US Department of Justice published the report confirming the deformed behavior of these officials participating in sex parties organized by drug traffickers using the facilities of the DEA and receiving gifts from criminals.

The US intelligence flagrantly uses drug trafficking to keep its activities hidden under the international law, as well as to raise money for special operations. The policy chosen in the 1980s is currently maintained, and both the CIA and the DEA continue to protect their drug trafficking corridors. What continues to attract attention is that the UN Office against Drugs and Crime, despite having decisive information to blame US officials of being drug criminals, maintains an inert attitude towards this illegal activity that takes thousands of lives every year and causes so much harm to the society. In other words, interests of the White House and Wall Street prevail over those of humanity.

Ukraine must follow the example of Israel and strike blows on the territories that Kiev doesn’t control. This was stated on the air of the “112” TV channel by the adviser to former president Leonid Kuchma, political scientist Oleg Soskin.

“There were hopes for the ‘Minsk Agreements’ and there was a so-called Anti-Terrorist Operation, and not the operation of United Forces. Actually the ‘Minsk Agreements’ have sunk into oblivion, the law doesn’t say anything about them, and we have already moved on to a certain stage of the war with the Russian Federation. In the Donetsk-Lugansk enclave we must say that constant and total military operations are already being conducted.

People from our side die either every day or every other day, but people are wounded every day. And this is already war… Farther will it be necessary to wage war against Russian banks, it will be necessary to do what Israel does to West Bank and Gaza Strip, it will be necessary to strikeblows to their enclaves, to their leadership and to neutralise them. The period of physically liquidating terrorist leaders will begin,” said Soskin.

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Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard

Russia will not be the only country to use the Crimean Bridge which President Putin is opening today, on May 15. Ukraine and European countries will be able to use the bridge for profitable transit to Asia, Senator Sergei Tsekov of the Republic of Crimea said.

On May 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in the opening ceremony of the automotive section of the Crimean Bridge – a super 19-kilometre-long construction from mainland Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.

The state contract for the construction of the bridge provided for the launch of the automotive section in December 2018, but the first stage of the project has been delivered six months ahead of the deadline. For motorists, car traffic on the bridge will be opened on May 16 at 05:30 MSK. Local residents – Crimeans and Kuban residents – will be the first to drive through it.

Sergei Tsekov, Senator from the Republic of Crimea, a member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, told Pravda.Ru that the bridge has established direct connection with Russia.

“Crimea has now been linked to Russia. This gives us additional opportunities in economy, social sphere, logistics,” the official said.

Indeed, the construction of the bridge to the Crimea removes the transport blockade of the Crimea, which will be broken completely when the railway section of the bridge is launched in 2019.

“This is a major event for the country after Russia’s reunification with the Crimea,” Sergei Tsekov said in an interview with Pravda.Ru.

According to the senator, Russia has showed itself as a highly developed technological country having built the bridge. Russia used state-of-the-art technologies for the construction of support structures installed deep into the seafloor. This bridge is not only the longest one in Russia, but also in Europe.

Sergei Tsekov is convinced that the bridge will be protected accordingly from saboteurs. A special service will be established to protect both the surface and the underwater elements of the bridge.

“The bridge is important for both the Crimea and Russia. It is important for Ukraine, it is important for Europe, and I am confident that over time the bridge will be used by various economic structures of Ukraine to transport products to the territory of the Crimea. When the relationship between  Ukraine and Russia becomes normal – and it will become normal –  both the territory of the Crimea and the bridge itself will be used for the transit of goods from Ukraine and Europe to Asia. Therefore, the opening of the Crimean Bridge is a landmark event in the life of the European community,” the official told Pravda.Ru.

This report confirms Pyongyang’s response to recent U.S. foreign policy statements, not to mention conduct of US-ROK war games directed against North Korea. 

North Korea will “reconsider” a planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump if Washington forces the country to unilaterally abandon its nuclear weapons, the DPRK’s first Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Kye Gwan said on Wednesday.

In a Korean-language report carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim said the Trump administration had issued “ludicrous statements which are extremely provoking” ahead of the DPRK-U.S. summit – scheduled to be held on June 12 in Singapore.

The vice foreign minister denounced several senior officials at the White House and the U.S. State Department, including National Security Adviser John Bolton, for raising, among other things, the potential for a “Libyan model” for denuclearization.

Kim condemned comments calling for “Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible Denuclearization (CVID)” and “complete discarding of nuclear arsenals and chemical and biological weapons.”

“If the Trump administration comes forward to the DPRK-U.S. summit with sincerity for the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations, it will receive the deserved response,” Kim said in the written statement.

“But if it forces the abandonment of our nuclear arsenal unilaterally while driving us into the corner, we won’t have any interest in such dialogue, we can’t help but reconsidering if we acceded to the DPRK-U.S. summit.”

The DPRK vice foreign minister said the comments showed the U.S.’s “impure intention” to push the DPRK into a Libya or Iraq-style situation instead of resolving the  issue through dialogue.

The statement particularly singles out John Bolton.

“We’ve explicitly clarified who Bolton is, and we don’t hide the repulsion toward him now,” it reads.

“I can’t hold my violent anger over the U.S. behavior, and I doubt if the U.S. sincerely hopes for the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations through wholesome dialogue and negotiation,” he said.

Kim said it was “stupid” to compare the DPRK  – a nuclear weapons state – to Libya, which was at the early stages of developing nuclear weapons.

In his statement, the DPRK diplomat also reiterated Pyongyang’s stance that Washington had downplayed the North’s “generosity and bold measures” in pursuing dialogue, instead citing it as the result of a maximum pressure campaign.

“We’ve expressed the intention of the denuclearization on the Korean peninsula, we’ve clarified several times that the prerequisite is to terminate the U.S. hostile policy against the DPRK and nuclear blackmail,” he said.

Kim also, notably, dismissed claims economic incentives could be given in return for North Korean denuclearization.

“The U.S. is clamoring that they will offer economic rewards and benefits if we abandon nuclear arsenals,” he said. “But we’ve never built our economy while having expectations on the U.S, and we will never make such deal.”

The comments are likely a response to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s comments earlier in the week that “private sector Americans coming in” could be allowed to go to the North to improve its energy, infrastructure, and agriculture sectors in the event of a nuclear deal.

Wednesday’s statement also saw the DPRK vice foreign minister warn the Trump administration not to repeat the mistake of his predecessors, and that bilateral ties will suffer should Washington follow the opinion of “pseudo-patriots.”

In a marked shift from the diplomatic niceties of the past few weeks, Wednesday also saw the North cancel a planned high-level inter-Korean meeting, citing the ongoing joint ROK-U.S. Max Thunder military exercise.

An accompanying statement also warned that the North might withdraw from the upcoming summit.

“The U.S. will have to think twice about the fate of the DPRK-U.S. summit now on high agenda before a provocative military racket against the DPRK in league with the south Korean authorities,” it said.

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Featured image is from KCNA.

On May 15, President Vladimir Putin took part in the opening ceremony of the Crimean Bridge – “a super 19-kilometre-long construction” linking Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar region.

This bridge is strategic. The following article first published by Global Research in March 2014 examines the broader economic and geopolitical implications.

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The decision of  Crimea to join the Russian Federation has strategic and geopolitical implications.

The union of Crimea with Russia redefines both the geography as well as the geopolitical chessboard in the Black Sea basin. 

It constitutes a major setback for US-NATO, whose longstanding objective has been to integrate Ukraine into NATO with a view to undermining Russia, while extending Western military presence in the Black Sea basin.

With the March 18, 2014 Treaty signed between Russia and Crimea, the Russian Federation will extend its control over the Black Sea as well over the Sea of Azov, the West coastline of which borders on Eastern Ukraine and the Donesk region. (see map below)

Under the agreement between Russia and Crimea announced by president Putin, two “constituent regions” of Crimea will join the Russian Federation: the “Republic of Crimea” and the “City of Sevastopol”. Both will have the status of “autonomous regions”.

The status of Sevastopol as an autonomous entity separate from Crimea is related to the location of Russia’s Naval base in Sevastopol.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia retained its naval base in Sevastopol under a bilateral agreement with Ukraine. With the signing of the March 18th Treaty, that agreement is null and void. Sevastopol including the Russian naval base become part of an autonomous region within the Russian Federation. The naval base is no within Ukraine under a lease agreement. Moreover, Crimea’s territorial waters now belong to the Russian Federation.

Strategic Waterway: The Kerch Straits

Russia now formally controls a much larger portion of the Black Sea, which includes the entire coastline of the Crimean peninsula. The Eastern part of Crimea –including the Kerch straits– are now under Russia’s jurisdiction control.  On the Eastern side of the Kerch straits is Russia’s Krasnodar region and extending  southwards are the port cities of Novorossiysk and Sochi.

Novorossiysk is also strategic. It is Russia’s largest commercial port on the Black Sea, at the cross-roads of major oil and gas pipelines between the Black Sea and Caspian sea.

Historically, the Kerch straits have played a strategic role. They constitute a gateway from the Black Sea to Russia’s major waterways including the Don and the Volga.

During World War II, the Kerch peninsula occupied by Nazi Germany (taken back by the Red Army) was an important point of transit by land and water. In the coldest months of Winter, it became an ice bridge linking Crimea to the Krasnodar region.

The Kerch straits are about 5 kilometers in length and 4.5 km. wide at the narrowest point between the tip of Eastern Crimea and the peninsula of Taman. Kerch is a major commercial port linked to railway, ferry and river routes.

[image right: Kerch straits, photo taken from Crimean side, narrow width, below aerial view of straits]

The Sea of Azov: New Geopolitical Hub

Of significance, the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation means that Moscow is now in full control of the Kerch Straits linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian authorities are no longer in control of the port of Kerch. The bilateral agreement between Russia and Ukraine governing the maritime route through the Kerch straights has been scrapped.

The straits constitute an entry point into Russia’s major river waterways. The Sea of Azov connects with the Don River and the Volga, through the Volga Don Canal. In turn, the Volga flows into the Caspian sea.

The Kerch straits are strategic.  The Kerch-Yenikalskiy Canal allows large (ocean) vessels to transit from the Black sea to the Sea of Azov.

Moreoever, the Kerch Straits link the Black Sea to the Volga which in turn connects to the Moscow river through the Volga-Moskva canal.

Full control of the narrow Kerch straits by Russia ensures unimpeded maritime transit from the Black Sea to Russia’s capital as well as the maritime route to the Caspian Sea. (Black Sea- Sea of Azov -Don- Volga Don Canal -Volga -Caspian Sea)

In December 2013 Moscow signed a bilateral agreement with the Yanukovych government in Kiev pertaining to the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Straits, connecting Eastern Crimea (which was part of Ukraine) with Russia’s Krasnodar region. This agreement was a followup to an initial agreement signed in April 2010 between the two governments.

The Russia-Ukraine 2013 agreement pertaining to the construction of the bridge had, for all purposes already been scrapped before March 16. Crimea’s union to Russia was already in the pipeline prior to the referendum, it was a fait accompli. Less than two weeks before the March 16 Referendum, at the height of the crisis in Ukraine, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the state-road building corporation Avtodor, or “Russian Highways” “to create a subsidiary company that will oversee the building of a bridge across the Kerch Strait”.

This bridge would largely be geared towards train transport routes linking Western and Eastern Europe to the Caspian Sea basin, Kazakhstan and China. It is therefore an integral part of Eurasian Project.

Needless to say, the Kerchen bridge project will be fully under Russian ownership and control. The Kerchen straits are within Russian territorial waters on both sides of the straits.

The Sea of Azov, Eastern Ukraine and the Donbas Region

The Eastern Ukraine and the densely populated Donetz basin (Donbas region) of Ukraine -in which the Russian population constitutes a majority– borders on the Western coastline of the Sea of Azov, which is now in large part under Russian control.

“Ripple Effect” of the Crimean Referendum. How will the Crisis Evolve?

Will the referendum in Crimea set the stage for the integration of part of Eastern and Southern Ukraine into the Russian Federation?

Will it backlash on the illegitimate government in Kiev?

The geographic and geopolitical changes pertaining to Crimea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov have a direct bearing on unfolding events in Eastern Ukraine. (see map above)

Throughout Eastern Ukraine as well as in Odessa in southern Ukraine, the legitimacy of the interim neo-Nazi government in Kiev has been questioned.  Municipal and local levels citizens’ committees are challenging the authority of Kiev appointed officials.

In the port city of Odessa on the Black Sea, a protest movement demanding a referendum has unfolded. The referendum, however, does not focus on a union with Russia. It is to unseat the US-EU sponsored government in Kiev, which is considered illegal. It also challenges the adoption by the new government of the neoliberal economic reforms, which are slated to be adopted under the helm of the IMF.

Thousands held a Pro-Russian rally in support of Crimea’s referendum in Odessa, despite calls from the city’s authorities not to participate in meetings. Organizers claim more than 5,000 people joined the demonstration.

“Odessa is against the coup in Kiev, paid for by the West and Ukrainian oligarchs who remained in power with the help deceitful extremists and militants. We are tired of living in poverty and we are no longer going to tolerate the tyranny of oligarchs and officials,” ….

The people were chanting “Ukraine and Russia – one country,” and “Odessa, be bold, drive the fascists out,” as they gathered in the center of the city. (RT, March 16, 2014)

Reported by RT, protests have developed in Kharkov and Donetsk demanding the holding of a referendum on the federalization of Ukraine:

Protesters, on behalf of Kharkov’s assembly, asked Putin to “guarantee their rights and freedoms” and pass to the United Nations their demands regarding a referendum on the federalization, which they plan for April 27, reported Ukrainian National News (UNN) website. Additionally, activists asked to deploy Russian peacekeepers to Kharkov region, adding that they fear for their lives and property.

The demonstrators then marched to the nearby consulate of Poland, protesting against Western interference into Ukrainian affairs.

Kharkov protesters also looted the building housing offices of radical-nationalist organizations, including the Right Sector group, reported Interfax-Ukraine. The activists broke into the building, took out books and nationalist symbols and burnt them.

In Donetsk, pro-Russian protesters questioned the legitimacy of the interim coalition government:

Meanwhile, Kiev sent heavy military hardware to the borders with Russia. Activists in eastern Ukraine regions, including Donetsk and Lugansk, were reportedly blocking trains delivering military equipment from the central and western parts of Ukraine.

Similar rallies were held in Dnepropetrovsk and Lugansk.

In Lugansk the campaign focused on a ‘people’s referendum’ directed against the Kiev interim government:

In Lugansk, several thousand anti-coup activists were conducting a public poll by handing out “ballot papers” of “people’s referendum” of Lugansk region. The poll raised questions of trust in the authorities in Kiev, the possibility of joining the Customs Union following the federalization of Ukraine.

One of the questions was about the international bailout: “Do you support reduction of social benefits and cancellation of benefits at the request of the IMF?”

“This is for all an opportunity to officially announce their choice. Now we have run out of 5,000 forms, we are rushing to print more,” organizer Irina Gotman told UNIAN. (RT, op cit)

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers’ enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.”—Simone Weil, French philosopher and political activist

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the name of the national good by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.

We, the middling classes, are not so fortunate.

We find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes.

The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government are all around us: warrantless surveillance of Americans’ private phone and email conversations by the NSA; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; roving TSA sweeps; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies inflicted on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace that occasionally nudge a weary public out of their numb indifference and into a state of outrage.

Consider, for example, that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

A current case before the Supreme Court, Niang v. Tomblinson strikes at the heart of this bureaucratic exercise in absurdity that has pushed overregulation and overcriminalization to outrageous limits. This particular case is about whether one needs a government license in order to braid hair.

Missouri, like many states across the country, has increasingly adopted as its governing style the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

In Missouri, anyone wanting to braid African-style hair and charge for it must first acquire a government license, which at a minimum requires the applicant to undertake at least 1500 hours of cosmetology classes costing tens of thousands of dollars.

Tennessee has fined residents nearly $100,000 just for violating its laws against braiding hair without a government license.

In Oregon, the law is so broad that you need a license even if you’re planning to braid hair for free. The mere act of touching someone’s hair can render you a cosmetologist operating without a license and in violation of the law.

In Iowa, you can be sentenced with up to a year in prison for braiding hair without having attended a year of cosmetology school.

It’s not just hair braiding that has become grist for the overregulation mill.

Almost every aspect of American life today—especially if it is work-related—is subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control, whether you’re talking about aspiring “bakers, braiders, casket makers, florists, veterinary masseuses, tour guides, taxi drivers, eyebrow threaders, teeth whiteners, and more.”

For instance, whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost 1 in 3 American occupations requires a license.

The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician or a firefighter.”

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

This is the mindset that tried to penalize a fisherman with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water.

John Yates (image on the right), a commercial fisherman, was written up in 2007 by a state fish and wildlife officer who noticed that among Yates’ haul of red grouper, 72 were apparently under the 20-inch minimum legal minimum. Yates, ordered to bring the fish to shore as evidence of his violation of the federal statute on undersized catches, returned to shore with only 69 grouper in the crate designated for evidence.

A crew member later confessed that, on orders from Yates, the crew had thrown the undersized grouper overboard and replaced them with larger fish. Unfortunately, they were three fish short.

Sensing a bait-and-switch, prosecutors refused to let Yates off the hook quite so easily. Unfortunately, in prosecuting him for the undersized fish under a law aimed at financial crimes, government officials opened up a can of worms. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court in a rare (and narrow) flash of reason, sided with Yates, ruling that the government had overreached.

That same overcriminalization mindset reared its ugly head again when police arrested a 90-year-old man for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public.

Arnold Abbott (center) (Source: Change.org)

Arnold Abbott, 90 years old and the founder of a nonprofit that feeds the homeless, faced a fine of $1000 and up to four months in jail for violating a city ordinance that makes it a crime to feed the homeless in public.

Under the city’s ordinance, clearly aimed at discouraging the feeding of the homeless in public, organizations seeking to do so must provide portable toilets, be 500 feet away from each other, 500 feet from residential properties, and are limited to having only one group carry out such a function per city block.

Abbott had been feeding the homeless on a public beach in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl., every Wednesday evening for 23 years. On November 2, 2014, moments after handing out his third meal of the day, police reportedly approached the nonagenarian and ordered him to “‘drop that plate right now,’ as if I were carrying a weapon,” recalls Abbott. Abbott was arrested and fined. Three days later, Abbott was at it again, and arrested again.

It’s no coincidence that both of these incidents—the fishing debacle and the homeless feeding arrest—happened in Florida.

This is also the state that arrested Nicole Gainey for free-range parenting when she let her 7-year-old son walk to the park alone, even though it was just a few blocks from their house. If convicted, Gainey could have been made to serve up to five years in jail.

Despite its pristine beaches and balmy temperatures, Florida is no less immune to the problems plaguing the rest of the nation in terms of overcriminalization, incarceration rates, bureaucracy, corruption, and police misconduct.

In fact, the Sunshine State has become a poster child for how a seemingly idyllic place can be transformed into a police state with very little effort. As such, it is representative of what is happening in every state across the nation, where a steady diet of bread and circuses has given rise to an oblivious, inactive citizenry content to be ruled over by an inflexible and highly bureaucratic regime.

Just a few years back, in fact, Florida officials authorized police raids on barber shops in minority communities, resulting in barbers being handcuffed in front of customers, and their shops searched without warrants. All of this was purportedly done in an effort to make sure that the barbers’ licensing paperwork was up to snuff.

As if criminalizing fishing, charity, parenting decisions, and haircuts wasn’t bad enough, you could also find yourself passing time in a Florida slammer for such inane activities as singing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit, breaking more than three dishes per day, farting in a public place after 6 pm on a Thursday, and skateboarding without a license.

This transformation of the United States from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation illustrates perfectly what songwriter Joni Mitchell was referring to when she wrote:

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Only in our case, sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, we’ve allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.

The problem with these devil’s bargains, however, is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.

We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all—the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.”

In exchange for the promise of safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, lower taxes, lower crime rates, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.

In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives. So far, we’re up to 4500 criminal laws and 300,000 criminal regulations that result in average Americans unknowingly engaging in criminal acts at least three times a day. For instance, the family of an 11-year-old girl was issued a $535 fine for violating the Federal Migratory Bird Act after the young girl rescued a baby woodpecker from predatory cats.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people locked up, many of them doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates, who are forced to provide corporations with cheap labor.

A special report by CNBC breaks down the national numbers:

One out of 100 American adults is behind bars — while a stunning one out of 32 is on probation, parole or in prison. This reliance on mass incarceration has created a thriving prison economy. The states and the federal government spend about $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people work in the industry.

We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”

Justice Department figures indicate that as much as $4.3 billion was seized in asset forfeiture cases in 2012, with the profits split between federal agencies and local police. According to the Washington Post, these funds have been used to buy guns, armored cars, electronic surveillance gear, “luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.” Police seminars advise officers to use their “department wish list when deciding which assets to seize” and, in particular, go after flat screen TVs, cash and nice cars.

In Florida, where police are no strangers to asset forfeiture, Florida police have been carrying out “reverse” sting operations, where they pose as drug dealers to lure buyers with promises of cheap cocaine, then bust them, and seize their cash and cars. Over the course of a year, police in one small Florida town seized close to $6 million using these entrapment schemes.

We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments. Despite widespread public opposition, corruption and systemic malfunctions, these cameras—used in 24 states and Washington, DC—are particularly popular with municipalities, which look to them as an easy means of extra cash.

One small Florida town, population 8,000, generates a million dollars a year in fines from these cameras. Building on the profit-incentive schemes, the cameras’ manufacturers are also pushing speed cameras and school bus cameras, both of which result in heft fines for violators who speed or try to go around school buses.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.

Yet when all is said and done, who is really to blame when the wool gets pulled over your eyes: you, for believing the con man, or the con man for being true to his nature?

It’s time for a bracing dose of reality, America.

Wake up and take a good, hard look around you, and ask yourself if the gussied-up version of America being sold to you—crime free, worry free and devoid of responsibility—is really worth the ticket price: nothing less than your freedoms.

*

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

On April 18, Skandinavisk frihet site published an interview titled “Exclusive interview: Scandinavians that fight against ISIS”. According to an interviewed volunteer, his sub-unit “was acting in Syria during winter, spring and summer in 2017.”

Skandinavisk frihet is a body of the right-wing organization Skandinaviska Förbundet in Sweden, founded in February 2018.

The volunteer being presented as a Norwegian said that the sub-unit named “Scandinavian” had been receiving orders from the Russian Armed Forces and had been included in the operational structure of pro-government forces operating in Syria.

The interviewee described the sub-unit as a section of a mounted infantry, which had possessed the access to battle tanks and heavy weaponry. The main goals were the collecting of surveillance information, exploration of enemy’s deployment and number of ISIS’ forces. Most of the members were from Scandinavian countries: Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.

According to the volunteer, the Scandinavian sub-unit also received Russia’s artillery support during actions against ISIS.

On May 11, Norwegian media outlet AldriMer.no published an article “Norwegians combatted in Syria on the Russian side” quoting the interview of Skandinavisk frihet site. According to AldriMer.no, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) replied that the Norway citizens’ participation in the foreign military actions could be under Criminal Rule.

AldriMer.no analyzed the photos featuring Norwegian and Scandinavian soldiers published by Skandinavisk frihet. The results showed that some of those photos had been taken in April and May of 2017, proving the soldier’s allegations. However, other photos were clear from metadata.

More photos released by Skandinaviskfrihet:

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All images in this article are from Skandinavisk.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who provided the world’s people with the truth about US war crimes in the Middle East and many of Washington’s coups and regime-change intrigues around the globe, is in escalating danger.

Moves are afoot to force Assange out of Ecuador’s London embassy, where he sought political asylum close to six years ago and has been forced to live as an effective prisoner. If he is taken into custody by British authorities, he faces being handed over to the US government, which has long sought to place him on trial on espionage charges that potentially carry the death sentence.

The British newspaper, the Guardian, originally published some of WikiLeaks’ devastating exposures in 2010. It then turned viciously against him, along with other international news outlets. Now, it has instigated a foul campaign, clearly acting in league with various intelligence agencies, to justify Ecuador reneging on Assange’s asylum.

The fresh offensive against Assange comes seven weeks after the Ecuadorian government, under pressure from the US, Britain and other powers, cut off Assange’s entire Internet and phone contact with the outside world, and blocked his friends and supporters from visiting him.

The Guardian has published unsubstantiated allegations that Assange “violated” the embassy’s communications system and “apparently” read “confidential diplomatic traffic.” In a tweet, WikiLeaks emphatically denied the accusation and pointed to its source, saying:

“That’s an anonymous libel aligned with the current UK-US government onslaught against Mr Assange’s asylum—while he can’t respond.”

There is no doubt about the intent of the latest allegations. Guardian opinion writer James Ball was blunt. The WikiLeaks’ founder, Ball asserted, “should hold his hands up and leave the embassy.”

The Guardian’s lead article declared:

“If he walks out of the embassy, he can expect arrest and could spend up to a year in prison for breaking his bail conditions. The US might then seek to extradite him. He would contest any attempt, and might win, but would face a long, uncomfortable spell behind bars while his case is decided.”

Earlier this year, Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno (image on the right), who took office last May, stated that Assange was a costly “inherited problem” and a “hacker,” and made it clear that he viewed Assange as an obstacle to better relations with the US.

Ecuador’s government gave Assange political asylum in June 2012, when his legal appeals ran out against extradition to Sweden to answer questions over fabricated allegations of sexual assault, and likely rendition to the United States. Swedish authorities finally dropped their trumped-up investigation in May 2017, but Prime Minister Theresa May’s British government still refused to cancel an arrest warrant against him, nominally for skipping bail when he sought asylum.

Rafael Correa, Moreno’s predecessor, recently told journalists in Madrid that Assange’s “days were numbered” because Moreno, his former protégé, would “throw him out of the embassy at the first pressure from the United States.”

Since his election, Moreno has carried out a sharp turn to the right, with tax cuts for big business, cuts in social spending and attempts to reduce Ecuador’s dependence on loans and investment from China in favour of closer relations with US imperialism.

Ecuador’s government cut off Assange’s communications just one day after it welcomed a delegation from the US Southern Command (Southcom), the Pentagon’s arm in Latin America and the Caribbean, headed by General Joseph DiSalvo. Southcom said discussions were held to strengthen “security cooperation.”

There is no doubt that the US intelligence apparatus and political establishment are driving the conspiracy against Assange. Last year, WikiLeaks began publishing more incriminating files about the CIA’s global operations. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said putting Assange on trial for espionage was a “priority.” CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, declared that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

Last month, in a further bid to silence WikiLeaks, the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) launched a law suit, naming WikiLeaks and Assange as co-conspirators with Russia and the Trump campaign in a supposed criminal effort to steal the 2016 US presidential election.

In reality, the documents published by WikiLeaks laid bare the DNC’s intrigues to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign in the 2016 presidential primary elections, and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s intimate relations with Wall Street banks and companies.

Journalist and documentary film-maker John Pilger yesterday spoke out against Ecuador’s “betrayal” of Assange.

“The vindictive pursuit of Assange [is happening] for one reason only: he told the truth,” Pilger told Sputnik International.

“He revealed through Chelsea Manning… the war crimes of the United States in Afghanistan and in Iraq; and of course, last year, revealing the machinations of the Democratic National Committee in trying to gerrymander the result [of the primary vote] in that country, which it successfully did.”

Pilger condemned the Moreno government’s move to revoke Assange’s political asylum.

“Political refuge is something that is internationally recognised,” he said. “It’s not something you can then water down. Well, that’s what Moreno’s government has done. He’s negotiated with the British government over the head of Julian, at times not even involving him and his lawyers.”

Pilger pointed to the accommodation that Moreno was seeking with Washington, which has been aggressively moving against any government in Latin America regarded as an obstacle to US hegemony over the continent.

“It’s quite clear that this government has deferred to the United States because it cut off Julian’s contacts—all Internet, all phone, all visitors apart from food and lawyers on the day that US Southcom deputy commander General Joseph DiSalvo arrived in Quito, Ecuador to renegotiate a US base that Correa had shut down.”

The Guardian based its unverified accusations against Assange on “secret records” it had “seen,” together with Focus Ecuador, a right-wing website. It charged that Ecuador’s intelligence agency “bankrolled a multi-million-dollar spy operation” to “protect” Assange in the embassy. Over six years, this activity had cost $5 million.

A closer examination of the story, however, indicates that the surveillance was conducted primarily against Assange and WikiLeaks. A security firm watched Assange around the clock and installed CCTV cameras throughout the embassy.

“Operation Guest” logged every visitor that Assange had for six years, and spied on his every movement in the tiny embassy, monitoring his mood, habits and sleeping patterns, the Guardian reported. Agents recorded each visitor’s purpose of visit, their passport information and arrival and departure times.

“Every month, the security company sent a confidential list of Assange’s visitors to the Ecuadorian president,” the newspaper stated. “Sometimes, the company included stills from secret video footage of interesting guests, plus profiles and analysis.”

According to the Guardian, this possibly offered “clues as to who gave him the trove of hacked documents that helped to bring down Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.” It ominously stated that such a “visitor” would “interest” US special counsel Robert Mueller, who heads an investigation into the Trump administration’s alleged links to Russia.

According to the newspaper, the FBI has already interviewed “at least one source close to Operation Guest,” indicating that Ecuador has handed over all its records to the US intelligence agencies. As a result, every person who has visited or communicated with Assange while he has been in the embassy is at risk of persecution and, potentially, frame-up charges of complicity in espionage or seeking to manipulate the 2016 US election.

The plot against Assange is bound up with an intensifying campaign by the American government and its allies to impose far-reaching Internet censorship and suppress freedom of speech and broader democratic rights. Unsubstantiated allegations of “fake news” and “Russian meddling” are being used by Google, Facebook and other conglomerates to restrict access to websites—including WikiLeaks and the World Socialist Web Site—that provide critical commentary and exposures of the capitalist class and its agencies.

We urge workers and young people everywhere to come to Assange’s defence and demand his immediate freedom.

The Socialist Equality Party (UK) and IYSSE are holding public meetings against War, Internet censorship and the persecution of Julian Assange, beginning May 17 in Glasgow, May 19 in Bradford, and May 20 in London, followed by meetings in Manchester, Sheffield, Oxford, Liverpool, Cambridge and Dublin, Ireland. We urge WSWS readers and supporters of democratic rights to attend.

The Socialist Equality Party in Australia is holding a meeting in Brisbane, Queensland, on May 20, following meetings in Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle.

I have been a student of both WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust for most of my adult life.  I believe it was 1988 or 89 and I was home watching the made for television movie ‘Murderers Among Us- The Simon Wiesenthal Story’. A scene from the film caused me great consternation. 

In the scene, Wiesenthal, played by Ben Kingsley, is searching for his mother by the railroad station. He had heard that she was going to be ‘deported’ and he knew what that really meant. She was obviously in one of the crowded ‘cattle cars’ ready to depart the station. He was on the platform yelling out her name. There was a German guard off in the near distance. 

Wiesenthal was desperate. Who wouldn’t be, knowing your mother, the woman who nurtured you and loved you unconditionally, was being sent to most likely her death. Suddenly, he heard a cry from one of the cattle cars: “Simon!” He looked in the direction of the car that the cry came from. The train began to pull away, and the guard was between Wiesenthal and his mother’s cattle car. He fell to his knees and silently wept, so as not to startle the German soldier.

I quickly wiped my own eyes and grabbed a pen and notepad. This is what I wrote within a few minutes:

My poem was laser engraved onto a plaque and sent to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where it remains today as part of the holocaust museum’s archives. This is just how affected I was by my study of that horrific era in the history of the 20th Century.

Well, sadly I must state that many of my Jewish friends have failed to understand what the holocaust really meant. To forcefully remove perhaps as many as 750,000 Palestinians from THEIR HOMES in 1948 to finalize the Jewish state of Israel makes one recall similar such actions by the Germans in the 1930s. Is the ghetto that Gaza has become that much different than the  ghettos created in Warsaw and Krakow?

The Germans allowed for their citizens to move into areas in Poland and other Eastern countries, after displacing the natives of those areas (many being Jewish) under the guise of Lebensraum or ‘Living space’. How is that any different from many of my Jewish fellow citizens from Borough Park Brooklyn and other places moving to Israel and forming settlements in former Palestinian areas? How in the hell does a Jewish person from another country have such living rights over a Palestinian whose family has lived there for countless generations?

The new film “Killing Gaza” by Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen (both proud Jewish men) has just been released. Every American Jew, especially our Jewish American politicians, should watch it. I would imagine that even Israelis would have to acknowledge that Gaza is a ghetto. Of course, most Israelis who support the settler movement etc will blame it on the victims, and not on Israeli policy. This kind of inane justification of horrific treatment has always been used by the conqueror.  You shut off a man’s water supply and then call him a ‘dirty slob’ when he cannot wash properly. The bottom line is what the truth reveals, and nothing more. Finally, one anecdote from this writer seems to sum it all up. In 1988 I was travelling from NYC to Arizona by plane one night. It was a long 5 hour flight, and we were on a jumbo jet. I was standing alongside this man, late 40s perhaps, who said he was an Israeli engineer. During our conversation, I asked him about his feelings on the Palestinian situation, and now remember that this was 1988. He began explaining things as he saw it, and then said the following, with no emotion at all:

“You have to understand that we Israelis see the Palestinians as you in the USA see your blacks. Quite honestly, they breed like rabbits, and if this continues they will outnumber us with their excess population. As much as I hate to admit it, the only recourse we have is to push them into the sea before  they totally overwhelm us!” 

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

It was NBC’s Cal Parry who summed up the obscenity of Donald Trump’s ignorant and igniting decision to move the US Embassy to West Jerusalem, then to celebrate the inauguration on Monday, 14^th May: “Well dressed American and Israeli officials on one side of the screen: desperation, death and fires on the other.”

In 1948, 700,000 Palestinians began their flight from the city and the region trying to escape the massacres by Jewish militias on that date, seventy years ago. Commemorated ever since as the day of “Nakba” – disaster, catastrophe, cataclysm – following them to this day as land is stolen, families expelled and “settlements” encroach, and Palestinian history is bulldozed.

‘ “When the massacre started the (paramilitaries) took a kid and strapped him on an army jeep and drove him around different neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, saying ‘the same will happen to you if you don’t leave,’ ” Abu Kaya said, retelling his grandfather’s story to Middle East Eye.’ (1)

“ … not a single country currently has its embassy in Jerusalem because such a move is widely considered to violate international law.”

Further:

‘Under United Nations Resolution 181, which in 1947 set out the conditions for the partition of Palestine into an “Arab State” and a “Jewish State”, Jerusalem was to be administered by the UN under a “special international regime.”

‘The 1949 armistice agreement that formally ended the first Arab-Israeli war divided the city along the “Green Line” into Israeli-controlled western areas, and Jordanian-held East Jerusalem, which included the Old City.’

“Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is widely recognised as illegal and violates further United Nations resolutions.

“For Palestinians then, sovereignty over the city is not something for leaders of other countries to determine, as US President Donald Trump did when he announced the embassy move in December.”

In the few minutes it took to jot down notes for this piece, the Palestinian death toll of those demonstrating rose from twenty eight dead, shot by Israeli soldiers, to forty three. The injured rose from 1,693 to “near two thousand.”

Fadi Abo Salah, 30, who lost both legs in a bombing by Israeli aircraft, was one who lost his life, in his wheel chair – targeted by an Israeli sniper – in front of his wife and three small children. (Palestine Live group.)

Israel, frequently declaring itself “the only democracy in the Middle East”, carried out a very democratic slaughter and target practice. Young, old, disabled, male, female, all were equally entitled to be shot, sniped at, tear gassed.

Tiny Laila al-Ghandour who died from teargas inhalation was just eight months old. (Guardian, 15^th May 2018.)

Journalist Sharif Kouddos recorded:

“Wails of grief inside family home of Laila al-Ghandour, 8-month old who died of gas inhalation yesterday. Her aunt says the gas came from everywhere, including drones.”

By Monday’s end he Tweeted:

Casualty toll from today in Gaza now stands at 55 dead, including 6 minors. 2,770 wounded, including 225 children. Of the wounded over 1,350 were hit with live ammunition, according to Ministry of Health.

— Sharif Kouddous (@sharifkouddous) May 14, 2018

“It is unbearable to witness such a massive number of unarmed people being shot in such a short time,” stated Médecins Sans Frontières.

As the Embassy partied and visitors “clapped and cheered”, Gaza’s hospitals, already teetering on collapse resulting from restrictions on all coming in to the besieged Strip – including electricity, with water contaminated – had surgeons operating day and night, with the injured being treated in the hospital car parks even, due to the overwhelming influx of those targeted.

In another world, just sixty miles away: ‘Washington’s Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, stood on a stage painted with the US flag and said:

“Today’s historic event is attributed to the vision, courage and moral clarity of one person to whom we owe an enormous and eternal debt of gratitude: President Donald J Trump.”

The crowd cheered and gave a standing ovation.’ (Guardian, 15^th May 2018.)

Deaths had risen to fifty nine.

Of the eighty six Ambassadors to Israel, only thirty two attended the ceremony, with fifty four boycotting and only four EU Member countries attending. (2)

Moreover:

“The Haaretz newspaper reported that most EU member States did not participate in the ceremony because they have a firm policy towards the transfer of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It said that the ambassadors of Russia, Egypt, India, Japan and Mexico also did not attend the celebration.”

Fallout has been swift. French President Emmanuel Macron in a telephone call to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and to Jordan’s King Abdullah condemned the “violence of the Israeli armed forces …” and again criticized the moving of the Embassy.

King Abdullah, of course, has custodianship of all Jerusalem’s Holy Sites and: ‘has the right to exert all legal efforts to safeguard them, especially Al Aqsa Mosque, which is defined as “The Entirety of Al Haram Al Sharif.” ‘ (3) As far as can be ascertained thus far, it seems that this important, indeed unique, historic custodianship was neither discussed with the King or his representatives, nor even a consideration of the Trump Administration as they bulldozed their way through diplomacy, history and all norms in their Jerusalem settlement.

NATO ally President Erdogan of Turkey has recalled his Ambassadors to Israel and the US.

South Africa recalled their Ambassador to Israel, with immediate effect, as the Embassy celebrations were ongoing.

Ireland has summoned Israel’s Ambassador to protest Israeli violence.

Kuwait moved for an emergency meeting of the UN, which was blocked by the US. A ‘draft statement included language expressing “outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians exercising their right to peaceful protest.” ‘

‘It also reaffirmed UN resolutions on the status of Jerusalem, saying that recent events had “no legal effect” under international law. The statement was withdrawn once the US indicate that it would block it, a UN diplomat said.’ (CNN, 15^th May 2018.)

Qatar condemned “a massacre” and “savage killings.”

Germany, somewhat weakly, expressed concern at the massacre saying:

“The right to peaceful protest must also apply in Gaza”, via a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman

In the UK, the Labour Party’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry in an unusually unequivocal statement said:

“We condemn unreservedly the Israeli government for their brutal, lethal and utterly unjustified actions on the Gaza border, and our thoughts are with all those Palestinians in Gaza whose loved ones have been lied or injured as a result.

“These actions are made all the worse because they come not as the result of a disproportionate over-reaction to one day’s protests, but as the culmination of six weeks of an apparently systemic and deliberate policy of killing and maiming unarmed protestors and bystanders who pose no threat to the forces at the Gaza border, many of them shot in the back, many of them shot hundreds of metres from the border, and many of them children.

“Throughout that six-week period, the UN’s Secretary General has been calling for an independent investigation into these incidents, one that should urgently determine whether international law has been broken, and hold the Netanyahu government to account for their actions. The UK should lead calls for the UN Security Council to order such an investigation today.

“These incidents must also be the catalyst for urgent and concerted international pressure on the Netanyahu government to lift the blockade on Gaza, and end Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. No longer can Netanyahu act as a law unto himself, under the protection of the Trump administration, whose decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem today has further inflamed the situation.”

Chile, with the largest population of Palestinians outside the Arab world, raised Palestinian flags outside the main entrance of the Presidential Palace of La Moneda.

Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz, Bolivia’s UN Ambassador, read the names of the Gaza massacre victims at the UN session, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh.

The mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau has demanded an arms embargo on Israel, demanding backing of Amnesty International’s call for a global arms embargo on Israel. Amnesty has condemned:

“ … an abhorrent violation of International Law and human rights. “

Zeid bin Ra’ad al-Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated:

“Those responsible for outrageous human rights violations must be held to account.”

Writer, broadcaster and academic, Kenan Malik Tweeted:

Mark Regev, Israeli ambassador to the UK, considers the shooting dead of 58 Palestinians and the wounding of 2700 as 'measured' and 'surgical'. I'd hate to know what is his definition of 'unmeasured' or 'non-surgical'.

— Kenan Malik (@kenanmalik) May 15, 2018

The death toll became sixty.

From the Trumposphere, Donald Trump input:

Big day for Israel. Congratulations!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018

However, on this day of diplomatic vandalism – which the US State Department flagged as a “historic move” – the five times Draft Dodger in Chief it seems reverted to type. The man to whom limelight is seemingly indispensible, stayed in Washington and addressed the Embassy gathering by video, from a safe 5,897 miles away, dodging any potential conflict, demonstrations, dissent. Trump of course, pulled out of a visit to London in February, to open the new US Embassy, which has also relocated, reportedly for fear of the massive protests planned at his stay.

The man who can menace Iran, threaten North Korea with: “ … fire and fury and frankly the power the likes of which like this world has never seen”, cowers from peaceful protesters with placards. No wonder he had no intention of showing up in Jerusalem, even as guest of honour, surrounded by steel rings of security, in a region destabilized by the US and “allies” for decades, with the unarmed, indigenous population simply demanding some justice sixty miles away.

Donald Trump, it seems, talks the talk but can’t walk the walk. Perhaps someone also told him Armageddon is in Israel (site now named Megiddo.)

*

Veteran War Correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization and Associate Editor of Global Research.

Notes

1. http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/our-land-us-embassy-move-riles-palestinian-refugees-west-jerusalem-2027680826

2. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180515-54-ambassadors-boycott-israeli-american-embassy-celebration/

3. https://kingabdullah.jo/en/page/the-hashemites/custodianship-over-holy-sites

Food and agriculture across the world is in crisis. Food is becoming denutrified and unhealthy and diets less diverse. There is a loss of biodiversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water sources polluted and depleted and smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being squeezed off their land and out of farming. 

A minority of the global population has access to so much food than it can afford to waste much of it, while food insecurity has become a fact of life for hundreds of millions. This crisis stems from food and agriculture being wedded to power structures that serve the interests of the powerful global agribusiness corporations.

Over the last 60 years, agriculture has become increasingly industrialised, globalised and tied to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for the international market, indebtedness to international financial institutions (IMF/World Bank).

This has resulted in food surplus and food deficit areas, of which the latter have become dependent on (US) agricultural imports and strings-attached aid. Food deficits in the Global South mirror food surpluses in the North, based on a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy.

Whether through IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes related to debt repayment as occurred in Africa (as a continent Africa has been transformed from a net exporter to a net importer of food), bilateral trade agreements like NAFTA and its impact on Mexico or, more generally, deregulated global trade rules, the outcome has been similar: the devastation of traditional, indigenous agriculture.

Integral to all of this has been the imposition of the ‘Green Revolution’. Farmers were encouraged to purchase hybrid seeds from corporations that were dependent on chemical fertilisers and pesticides to boost yields. They required loans to purchase these corporate inputs and governments borrowed to finance irrigation and dam building projects for what was a water-intensive model.

While the Green Revolution was sold to governments and farmers on the basis it would increase productivity and earnings and would be more efficient, we now have nations and farmers incorporated into a system of international capitalism based on dependency, deregulated and manipulated commodity markets, unfair subsidies and inherent food insecurity.

As part of a wider ‘development’ plan for the Global South, millions of farmers have been forced out of agriculture to become cheap factory labour (for outsourced units from the West) or, as is increasingly the case, unemployed or underemployed slum dwellers.

In India, under the banner of a bogus notion of ‘development’, farmers are being whipped into subservience on behalf of global capital: they find themselves steadily squeezed out as farming due to falling incomes, the impact of cheap imports and policies deliberately designed to run down smallholder agriculture for the benefit of global agribusiness corporations.

Aside from the geopolitical shift in favour of the Western nations resulting from the programmed destruction of traditional agriculture across the world, the Green Revolution has adversely impacted the nature of food, soil, human health and the environment.

Sold on the premise of increased yields, improved food security and better farm incomes, the benefits of the Green Revolution have been overstated. And the often stated ‘humanitarian’ intent and outcome (‘millions of lives saved’) has had more to do with PR and cold commercial interest.

However, even when the Green Revolution did increase yields (or similarly, if claims about GMO agriculture – the second coming of the Green Revolution – improving output are to be accepted at face value), Canadian environmentalist Jodi Koberinski says pertinent questions need to be asked: what has been the cost of any increased yield of commodities in terms of local food security and local caloric production, nutrition per acre, water tables, soil structure and new pests and disease pressures?

We may also ask what the effects on rural communities and economies have been; on birds, insects and biodiversity in general; on the climate as a result of new technologies, inputs or changes to farming practices; and what have been the effects of shifting towards globalised production chains, not least in terms of transportation and fossil fuel consumption.

Moreover, if the Green Revolution found farmers in the Global South increasingly at the mercy of a US-centric system of trade and agriculture, at home they were also having to fit in with development policies that pushed for urbanisation and had to cater to the needs of a distant and expanding urban population whose food requirements were different to local rural-based communities. In addition to a focus on export-oriented farming, crops were also being grown for the urban market, regardless of farmers’ needs or the dietary requirements of local rural markets.

Destroying indigenous systems

In an open letter written in 2006 to policy makers in India, farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save (image on the right) offered answers to some of these questions. He argued that the actual reason for pushing the Green Revolution was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government and a few industries at the expense of a more diverse and nutrient-sufficient agriculture, which rural folk – who make up the bulk of India’s population – had long benefited from.

Before, Indian farmers had been largely self-sufficient and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so, the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.

Tall, indigenous varieties of grain provided more biomass, shaded the soil from the sun and protected against its erosion under heavy monsoon rains, but these very replaced with dwarf varieties, which led to more vigorous growth of weeds and were able to compete successfully with the new stunted crops for sunlight.

As a result, the farmer had to spend more labour and money in weeding, or spraying herbicides. Furthermore, straw growth with the dwarf grain crops fell and much less organic matter was locally available to recycle the fertility of the soil, leading to an artificial need for externally procured inputs. Inevitably, the farmers resorted to use more chemicals and soil degradation and erosion set in.

The exotic varieties, grown with chemical fertilisers, were more susceptible to ‘pests and diseases’, leading to yet more chemicals being poured. But the attacked insect species developed resistance and reproduced prolifically. Their predators – spiders, frogs, etc. – that fed on these insects and controlled their populations were exterminated. So were many beneficial species like the earthworms and bees.

Save noted that India, next to South America, receives the highest rainfall in the world. Where thick vegetation covers the ground, the soil is alive and porous and at least half of the rain is soaked and stored in the soil and sub-soil strata.

A good amount then percolates deeper to recharge aquifers or groundwater tables. The living soil and its underlying aquifers thus serve as gigantic, ready-made reservoirs. Half a century ago, most parts of India had enough fresh water all year round, long after the rains had stopped and gone. But clear the forests, and the capacity of the earth to soak the rain, drops drastically. Streams and wells run dry.

While the recharge of groundwater has greatly reduced, its extraction has been mounting. India is presently mining over 20 times more groundwater each day than it did in 1950. But most of India’s people – living on hand-drawn or hand-pumped water in villages and practising only rain-fed farming – continue to use the same amount of ground water per person, as they did generations ago.

More than 80% of India’s water consumption is for irrigation, with the largest share hogged by chemically cultivated cash crops. For example, one acre of chemically grown sugarcane requires as much water as would suffice 25 acres of jowar, bajra or maize. The sugar factories too consume huge quantities.

From cultivation to processing, each kilo of refined sugar needs two to three tonnes of water. Save argued this could be used to grow, by the traditional, organic way, about 150 to 200 kg of nutritious jowar or bajra (native millets).

If Bhaskar Save helped open people’s eyes to what has happened on the farm, to farmers and to ecology in India, a 2015 report by GRAIN provides an overview of how US agribusiness has hijacked an entire nation’s food and agriculture under the banner of ‘free trade’ to the detriment of the environment, health and farmers.

In 2012, Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25% to 35% and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9% to 37%.

Some 29% of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35% of youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in 10 school age children suffered from anemia. The Mexican Diabetes Federation says that more than 7% of the Mexican population has diabetes. Diabetes is now the third most common cause of death in Mexico, directly or indirectly.

The various free trade agreements that Mexico has signed over the past two decades have had a profound impact on the country’s food system and people’s health. After his mission to Mexico in 2012, the then Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, concluded that the trade policies in place favour greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable foods, particularly fruit and vegetables.

He added that the overweight and obesity emergency that Mexico is facing could have been avoided, or largely mitigated, if the health concerns linked to shifting diets had been integrated into the design of those policies.

The North America Free Trade Agreement led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in the retail structure (notably the advent of supermarkets and convenience stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in Mexico.

The country has witnessed an explosive growth of chain supermarkets, discounters and convenience stores. Local small-scale vendors have been replaced by corporate retailers that offer the processed food companies greater opportunities for sales and profits. Oxxo (owned by Coca-cola subsidiary Femsa) tripled its stores to 3,500 between 1999 and 2004. It was scheduled to open its 14,000th store sometime during 2015.

In Mexico, the loss of food sovereignty has induced catastrophic changes in the nation’s diet and has had dire consequences for agricultural workers who lost their jobs and for the nation in general. Those who have benefited include US food and agribusiness interests, drug cartels and US banks and arms manufacturers.

More of the same: a bogus ‘solution’

Transnational agribusiness has lobbied for, directed and profited from the very policies that have caused much of the above. And what we now see is these corporations (and their supporters) espousing cynical and fake concern for the plight of the poor and hungry.

GMO patented seeds represent the final stranglehold of transnational agribusiness over the control of agriculture and food. The misrepresentation of the plight of the indigenous edible oils sector in India indicates encapsulates the duplicity at work surrounding the GM project.

After trade rules and cheap imports conspired to destroy farmers and the jobs of people involved in local food processing activities for the benefit of global agribusiness, including commodity trading and food processor companies ADM and Cargill, there is now a campaign to force GM into India on the basis that Indian agriculture is unproductive and thus the country has to rely on imports. This conveniently ignores the fact that prior to neoliberal trade rules in the mid-1990s, India was almost self-sufficient in edible oils.

In collusion with the Gates Foundation, corporate interests are also seeking to secure full spectrum dominance throughout much of Africa as well. Western seed, fertiliser and pesticide manufacturers and dealers and food processing companies are in the process of securing changes to legislation and are building up logistics and infrastructure to allow them to recast food and farming in their own images.

Today, governments continue to collude with big agribusiness corporations. These companies are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations and are increasingly framing the policy/knowledge agenda by funding and determining the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes.

As Bhaskar Save wrote about India:

“This country has more than 150 agricultural universities. But every year, each churns out several hundred ‘educated’ unemployables, trained only in misguiding farmers and spreading ecological degradation. In all the six years a student spends for an M.Sc. in agriculture, the only goal is short-term – and narrowly perceived – ‘productivity’. For this, the farmer is urged to do and buy a hundred things. But not a thought is spared to what a farmer must never do so that the land remains unharmed for future generations and other creatures. It is time our people and government wake up to the realisation that this industry-driven way of farming – promoted by our institutions – is inherently criminal and suicidal!”

Save is referring to the 300,000-plus farmer suicides that have taken place in India over the past two decades due to economic distress resulting from debt, a shift to (GM)cash crops and economic ‘liberalisation’ (see this report about a peer-reviewed study, which directly links suicides to GM cotton).

The current global system of chemical-industrial agriculture, World Trade Organisation rules and bilateral trade agreements that agritech companies helped draw up are a major cause of food insecurity and environmental destruction. The system is not set up to ‘feed the world’ despite the proclamations of its supporters.

However, this model has become central to the dominant notion of ‘development’ in the Global South: unnecessary urbanisation, the commercialisation and emptying out of the countryside at the behest of the World Bank, the displacement of existing systems of food and agricultural production with one dominated by Monsanto-Bayer, Cargill and the like and a one-dimensional pursuit of GDP growth as a measure of ‘progress’ with little concern for the costs and implications – mirroring the narrow, reductionist ‘output-yield’ paradigm of industrial agriculture itself.

Agroecology offers a genuine solution

Across the world, we are seeing farmers and communities pushing back and resisting the corporate takeover of seeds, soils, land, water and food. And we are also witnessing inspiring stories about the successes of agroecology.

Reflecting what Bhaskar Save achieved on his farm in Gujarat, agroecology combines sound ecological management, including minimising the use of toxic inputs, by using on-farm renewable resources and privileging natural solutions to manage pests and disease, with an approach that upholds and secures farmers’ livelihoods.

Agroecology is based on scientific research grounded in the natural sciences but marries this with farmer-generated knowledge and grassroots participation that challenges top-down approaches to research and policy making. However, it can also involve moving beyond the dynamics of the farm itself to become part of a wider agenda, which addresses the broader political and economic issues that impact farmers and agriculture (see this description of the various modes of thought that underpin agroecolgy).

Jodi Koberisnki’s nod to ‘systems thinking’ lends credence to agroecology, which recognises the potential of agriculture to properly address concerns about local food security and sovereignty as well as social, ecological and health issues. In this respect, agroecology is a refreshing point of departure from the reductionist approach to farming which emphasises securing maximum yield and corporate profit to the detriment of all else.

Wei Zhang – an economist focusing on ecosystem services, agriculture and the environment – says that

‘worldview’ is important “to how you conceptualise issues and develop or choose tools to address those issues. Using systems thinking requires a shift in fundamental beliefs and assumptions that constitute our worldviews. These are the intellectual and moral foundations for the way we view and interpret reality, as well as our beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the processes of knowing. Systems thinking can help by changing the dominant mindset and by addressing resistance to more integrated approaches.”

Agroecology requires that shift in fundamental beliefs.

A few years ago, the Oakland Institute released a report on 33 case studies which highlighted the success of agroecological agriculture across Africa in the face of climate change, hunger and poverty. The studies provide facts and figures on how agricultural transformation can yield immense economic, social, and food security benefits while ensuring climate justice and restoring soils and the environment.

The research highlights the multiple benefits of agroecology, including affordable and sustainable ways to boost agricultural yields while increasing farmers’ incomes, food security and crop resilience.

The report described how agroecology uses a wide variety of techniques and practices, including plant diversification, intercropping, the application of mulch, manure or compost for soil fertility, the natural management of pests and diseases, agroforestry and the construction of water management structures.

There are many other examples of successful agroecology and of farmers abandoning Green Revolution thought and practices to embrace it (see this report about El Salvador and this interview from South India).

In a recent interview appearing on the Farming Matters website, Million Belay sheds light on how agroecological agriculture is the best model of agriculture for Africa. Belay explains that one of the greatest agroecological initiatives started in 1995 in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, and continues today. It began with four villages and after good results, it was scaled up to 83 villages and finally to the whole Tigray Region. It was recommended to the Ministry of Agriculture to be scaled up at the national level. The project has now expanded to six regions of Ethiopia.

The fact that it was supported with research by the Ethiopian University at Mekele has proved to be critical in convincing decision makers that these practices work and are better for both the farmers and the land.

Bellay describes another agroecological practice that spread widely across East Africa – ‘push-pull’. This method manages pests through selective intercropping with important fodder species and wild grass relatives, in which pests are simultaneously repelled – or pushed – from the system by one or more plants and are attracted to – or pulled – toward ‘decoy’ plants, thereby protecting the crop from infestation. Push-pull has proved to be very effective at biologically controlling pest populations in fields, reducing significantly the need for pesticides, increasing production, especially for maize, increasing income to farmers, increasing fodder for animals and, due to that, increasing milk production, and improving soil fertility.

By 2015, the number of farmers using this practice increased to 95,000. One of the bedrocks of success is the incorporation of cutting edge science through the collaboration of the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) and the Rothamsted Research Station (UK) who have worked in East Africa for the last 15 years on an effective ecologically-based pest management solution for stem borers and striga.

But agroecology should not just be regarded something for the Global South. Food First Executive Director Eric Holtz-Gimenez argues that it offers concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture. In doing so, it challenges – and offers alternatives to – prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics and the outright plunder of neoliberalism.

The scaling up of agroecology can tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by rich countries and the removal of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs.

Thick legitimacy

Various official reports have argued that to feed the hungry and secure food security in low income regions we need to support small farms and diverse, sustainable agroecological methods of farming and strengthen local food economies (see this report on the right to food and this (IAASTD) peer-reviewed report).

Olivier De Schutter says:

“To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available. Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live, especially in unfavorable environments.”

De Schutter indicates that small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years in critical regions by using ecological methods. Based on an extensive review of scientific literature, the study he was involved in calls for a fundamental shift towards agroecology as a way to boost food production and improve the situation of the poorest. The report calls on states to implement a fundamental shift towards agroecology.

The success stories of agroecology indicate what can be achieved when development is placed firmly in the hands of farmers themselves. The expansion of agroecological practices can generate a rapid, fair and inclusive development that can be sustained for future generations. This model entails policies and activities that come from the bottom-up and which the state can then invest in and facilitate.

A decentralised system of food production with access to local markets supported by proper roads, storage and other infrastructure must take priority ahead of exploitative international markets dominated and designed to serve the needs of global capital.

It has long been established that Small farms are per area more productive than large-scale industrial farms and create a more resilient, diverse food system. If policy makers were to prioritise this sector and promote agroecology to the extent Green Revolution practices and technology have been pushed, many of the problems surrounding poverty, unemployment and urban migration could be solved.

However, the biggest challenge for upscaling agroecology lies in the push by big business for commercial agriculture and attempts to marginalise agroecology. Unfortunately, global agribusiness concerns have secured the status of ‘thick legitimacy’ based on an intricate web of processes successfully spun in the scientific, policy and political arenas. This allows its model to persist and appear normal and necessary. This perceived legitimacy derives from the lobbying, financial clout and political power of agribusiness conglomerates which set out to capture or shape government departments, public institutions, the agricultural research paradigm, international trade and the cultural narrative concerning food and agriculture.

Critics of this system are immediately attacked for being anti-science, for forwarding unrealistic alternatives, for endangering the lives of billions who would starve to death and for being driven by ideology and emotion. Strategically placed industry mouthpieces like Jon Entine, Owen Paterson and Henry Miller perpetuate such messages in the media and influential industry-backed bodies like the Science Media Centre feed journalists with agribusiness spin.

When some people hurl such accusations, it might not just simply be spin: it may be the case that some actually believe critics are guilty of such things. If that is so, it is a result of their failure to think along the lines Zhang outlines: they are limited by their own reductionist logic and worldview.

The worrying thing is that too many policy makers may also be blinded by such a view because so many governments are working hand-in-glove with the industry to promote its technology over the heads of the public. A network of scientific bodies and regulatory agencies that supposedly serve the public interest have been subverted by the presence of key figures with industry links, while the powerful industry lobby hold sway over bureaucrats and politicians.

The World Bank is pushing a corporate-led industrial model of agriculture via its ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ strategy and corporations are given free rein to write policies. Monsanto played a key part in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies and the global food processing industry had a leading role in shaping the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (see this). From Codex, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring Indian agriculture to the currently on-hold US-EU trade deal (TTIP), the powerful agribusiness lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers to ensure its model of agriculture prevails.

The ultimate coup d’etat by the transnational agribusiness conglomerates is that government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that profit-driven Fortune 500 corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. These corporations have convinced so many that they have the ultimate legitimacy to own and control what is essentially humanity’s common wealth. There is the premise that water, food, soil, land and agriculture should be handed over to powerful transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

Corporations which promote industrial agriculture have embedded themselves deeply within the policy-making machinery on both national and international levels. From the overall narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, global agribusiness has secured a perceived thick legitimacy within policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse.

It gets to the point whereby if you – as a key figure in a public body – believe that your institution and society’s main institutions and the influence of corporations on them are basically sound, then you are probably not going to challenge or question the overall status quo. Once you have indicated an allegiance to these institutions and corporate power, it is ‘irrational’ to oppose their policies, the very ones you are there to promote. And it becomes quite ‘natural’ to oppose any research findings, analyses or questions which question the system and by implication your role in it.

But how long can the ‘legitimacy’ of a system persist given that it merely produces bad food, creates food deficit regions globally, destroys health, impoverishes small farms, leads to less diverse diets and less nutritious food, is less productive than small farms, creates water scarcity, destroys soil and fuels/benefits from World Bank/WTO policies that create dependency and debt.

The more that agroecology is seen to work, the more policy makers see the failings of the current system and the more they become open to holistic approaches to agriculture – as practitioners and supporters of agroecology create their own thick legitimacy –  they more willing officials might be to give space to a model that has great potential to help deal with some of the world’s most pressing problems. It has happened to a certain extent in Ethiopia, for example. That is hopeful.

Of course, global agribusiness nor the system of capitalism it helps to uphold and benefits from are not going to disappear overnight and politicians (even governments) who oppose or challenge private capital tend to be replaced or subverted.

Powerful agribusiness corporations can only operate as they do because of a framework designed to allow them to capture governments and regulatory bodies, to use the WTO and bilateral trade deals to lever global influence, to profit on the back of US militarism (Iraq) and destabilisations (Ukraine), to exert undue influence over science and politics and to rake in enormous profits.

The World Bank’s ongoing commitment to global agribusiness and a wholly corrupt and rigged model of globalisation is a further recipe for plunder. Whether it involves Monsanto, Cargill or the type of corporate power grab of African agriculture that Bill Gates is helping to spearhead, private capital will continue to ensure this happens while hiding behind platitudes about ‘free trade’ and ‘development’.

Brazil and Indonesia are subsidising private corporations to effectively destroy the environment through their practices. Canada and the UK are working with the GMO biotech sector to facilitate its needs. And India is facilitating the destruction of its agrarian base according to World Bank directives for the benefit of the likes of Monsanto, Bayer and Cargill.

If myths about the necessity for perpetuating the stranglehold of capitalism go unchallenged and real alternatives are not supported by mass movements across continents, agroecology will remain on the periphery.

*

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

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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

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

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

It has the makings of another Intifada: appalling timing in terms of commemoration (the founding of the state of Israel; the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem in all-Trumpistan affair); popular protest with all its untidy trimmings; then a massacre clinically inflicted by forces with superior fire power.

On Monday, the use of force by Israeli forces supposedly designed to quell riots and prevent an incursion by Palestinians from Gaza initially resulted in 58 deaths. The numbers duly grew, and it did not take long for a packaged, ribboned narrative to appear.

For one thing, who were the dead?  Hamas official Salah Al-Bardawil offered a morsel to the Israeli forces by telling the Palestinian Baladna news outlet that of the 62 who perished over Monday and Tuesday, “fifty of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people.” This made the moral computation for the Times of Israel simple: the bulk of deaths were “known members of terror groups”. 

The Israel Defence Forces, in an attempt at wholesale unmasking, were quick to release selected footage of the interview with Al-Bardawil turning his words against him and emptying them of moral suasion:

“Hamas official, Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil,” came one tweet “is clear about terrorist involvement in the riots.” 

Since then, the IDF has been busy constructing an oasis of certitude with one central point: Hamas did it, and the deaths were less from Israel’s weapons than Hamas’ remorseless calculation, much of it centred on attempts to breach the fence in the northern Gaza strip.

“Hamas,” went another statement, “is solely responsible for the events transpiring in and out of Gaza, and is accountable for all terrorist activity emanating from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians and Israeli sovereignty.”   

Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman was even more colourful in his description of these barbarians at the border. The leaders of Hamas were “a bunch of cannibals who also treat their own children as ammunition”.

The Israeli position, stated by Danny Danon as UN envoy, is to refocus attention on Hamas as wicked instigator and hostage taker.  Israel thereby becomes legitimate defender, a force of security facing agents of a barbarian project led by Lieberman’s cannibals. 

“They incite people to violence, place as many civilians as possible in the line of fire to maximise civilian casualties, then they blame Israel and come to the UN to complain. It is a deadly game they play at the expense of innocent children.”

Positions are stated as absolutes, with compromise being seen as an enemy of promise.  Terminology here is everything: a “right of return” is turned on its head as redemptive cause and a righting of wrongs that could only mean the destruction of the Jewish state.  Danon, again, emphasises these extremes with ideological certitude:

“When [Hamas] say day of rage they mean day of terrorism; right of return means the destruction of Israel; peaceful protest means incitement and violence.”

Violence, restraint, calm – all variables of relative worth where cruelty and brutality reign, and where humanitarian shocks sanctioned by Israel and Egypt function with ritual consistency. Gaza is a picture of enforced debility; options to behave decently are not to be found. But this is not a context that finds its way into assessments of IDF conduct. To the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, Israel was a paragon of propriety, its operations on Monday and Tuesday compelling.

“No country in this chamber could act with more restraint than Israel has.” 

Those outside the traditional US-Israel compass resort to the desk clerk’s alternative, a clip-board response with pen at the ready. Establish, goes this line of thinking, a committee, an investigation, an inquiry with findings that are bound to be shelved and ignored, redundancies even before the first question is asked.  

UK ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce took issue with the ammunition being used.

“The volume of live fire used in Gaza [on Monday] and the consequent number of deaths is distressing and cannot be ignored by the council”.

Activists are considering how to bolster the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, though the recent massacre is bound to provide ample grist.  The Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s Mustafa Barghouti used Monday’s violence to tell the BBC’s Newshour that BDS and popular nonviolent resistance are by far “the best two instruments to force Israel to change its policies.” 

On one level this is unsurprising: Palestinian leaders, wrangling, divided and weak, have had to rely on other high profile movements to do their work.  BDS has certainly developed enough momentum to draw calls from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deem the movement anti-Semitic.

“The boycotters,” he claimed in justification to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2014, “should be boycotted.”

Central to the denunciation of Palestinian protest, and specifically Hamas in its violent visage, is the notion that such behaviour is not only futile but indecent.  Stay at home, simper and whimper; forget the realm of the political, the value of the activist enraged by historical wrongs.  That the catastrophe – the annual nightmare or revisitation known as the Nakba – be a point of reminder drives Israel’s forces to further insist upon acceptance and subjugation. 

To dare counter such forces of suffocation is to not abide by a fictional code of etiquette that never took root in those blood soaked soils.  As long as this is sold to powerful sponsors, Israel will remain condemned in some circles but praised in others as survivor and defender.  The Palestinians will simply be the remaindered peoples of a cause sliding into amnesiac sunset, steered by leaders of very mixed blessings buttressed by token support.

*

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]

This article originally appeared on VICE Austria.

Excerpts are provided below

On Saturday, May 12, around 10,000 Croatians—including neo-Nazis and Catholic officials—gathered in a field in the southern Austrian town of Bleiburg to commemorate the defeat of the Ustaše army in May 1945.

This former Nazi-affiliated fascist movement was responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews, Romas, Serbs, and Muslims in World War II, many in the organization’s Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia, which was the only concentration camp run without any German involvement.

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 to support Gina Haspel’s nomination today, despite the fact that her facilitation of torture should disqualify her from assuming the role of CIA director.

Next the full Senate will make a final decision on Haspel’s nomination in a vote that is expected to take place next week but could occur as early as tomorrow.

In her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 9, Haspel insisted that the CIA’s interrogation program during the Bush administration was legal. Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, argued that it could not be determined whether torture was effective to gain intelligence. She refused to state categorically that torture is immoral. And she never condemned the torture program in which she participated.

Haspel was chief of base at the secret CIA black site in Thailand when al-Qaeda suspects, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were waterboarded and brutalized in 2002. Ten years later, Sondra Crosby said al-Nashiri was “one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”

Waterboarding involves pouring water into prisoners’ noses and mouths to make them feel like they’re drowning.

The Bush administration claimed it only waterboarded three individuals: al-Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But a footnote in a memo written by Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Steven Bradbury says waterboarding was utilized “with far greater frequency than initially indicated” and with “large volumes of water” rather than small quantities, as required by the CIA’s rules.

Waterboarding is illegal under all circumstances.

The Bush Torture Program Was Unlawful

US law has long considered waterboarding to be torture, which constitutes a war crime. After World War II, the US government tried, convicted and hanged Japanese military leaders for the war crime of waterboarding.

Torture is prohibited under the US Torture Statute; the US War Crimes Act; the Geneva Conventions; and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (also known as the Convention Against Torture).

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture,” the Convention Against Torture states unequivocally.

Last week, however, Haspel testified that the CIA’s actions in the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” program were lawful.

“The very important thing to know about CIA is, we follow the law,” she said. “We followed the law then, and we follow the law now.”

She was likely relying on memoranda written by lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, including John Yoo and Jay Bybee. Yoo and Bybee wrote memos with twisted reasoning purporting to justify torture, and advised high government officials on how to avoid criminal liability under the US War Crimes Act.

According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell, Bush’s secretary of state, the torture policy emanated from Vice President Dick Cheney‘s office.

That makes Cheney — along with George W. Bush and other officials who authorized the torture — liable for war crimes. But since Barack Obama refused to hold the Bush war criminals accountable, Cheney continues to advocate torture with impunity.

In a recent appearance on Fox Business, Cheney supported Haspel’s nomination. He said he “wholeheartedly” favors “enhanced interrogation techniques” — a euphemism for torture.

“I think the techniques we used were not torture,” Cheney claimed. “If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs,” Cheney said. “If it were my call, I’d do it again.”

Haspel’s Elusive Moral Compass

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a 499-page executive summary of its 6,700-page classified torture report in 2014. It contains many disturbing revelations. The summary says several detainees were waterboarded. One detainee in CIA custody was waterboarded 183 times; another was subjected to the waterboard on 83 occasions.

Al-Nashiri was waterboarded on Haspel’s watch. A rag was placed over his forehead and eyes and water was poured into his nose and mouth until he began to choke and aspirate. The rag was lowered, suffocating him with the water still in his throat, sinuses and lungs. After he was allowed to take three to four breaths, the process was repeated.

A broomstick was wedged behind Al-Nashiri’s knees as he knelt and his body was forced backward, pulling his knee joints apart. CIA agents also cinched his elbows behind his back and hoisted him up to the ceiling, causing a physician’s assistant to fear they had dislocated his shoulders.

Al-Nashiri was placed in a coffin between interrogations. At other times, he was locked into a small box the size of an office safe. Agents used a rolled towel placed around Al-Nashiri’s neck to swing him into a plywood wall, so the towel became an object of fear.

Agents instilled in Al-Nashiri “learned helplessness” to render him passive and dependent. To induce sleep deprivation, he was shackled to a bar on the ceiling and forced to stand with his arms above his head.

While hooded, naked and shackled to the ceiling, agents racked a handgun near Al-Nashiri’s head, then substituted a revved-up power drill.

Al-Nashiri was subjected to “rectal feeding.” A mixture of pureed hummus, pasta and sauce, nuts and raisins was rammed into his rectum. He was also forcibly sodomized and a stiff brush was raked across his “ass and balls and then his mouth.”

The summary confirmed the CIA used “rectal feeding” without medical necessity on prisoners, saying “rectal rehydration” was used to establish the interrogator’s “total control over the detainee.”

Other “enhanced interrogation techniques” that the summary documented included being slammed into walls; deprived of sleep — sometimes with forced standing — for up to seven and one-half days; forced to stand on broken limbs for hours on end; kept in total darkness; confined in a coffin-like box for 11 days; dressed in diapers; and bathed in ice water. The summary said one detainee “literally looked like a dog that had been kenneled.”

When Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) asked Haspel,

“Do you believe in hindsight that those techniques were immoral?”

the nominee gave a non-responsive answer. Haspel said,

“Senator, what I believe sitting here today is, I support the higher moral standard we have decided to hold ourselves to.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), vice-chairman of the committee, asked Haspel,

“If this president asked you to do something that you find morally objectionable, even if there is an [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, what will you do? Will you carry out that order or not?”

She replied,

“Senator, my moral compass is strong. I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral — even if it was technically legal,” Haspel explained.

Apparently Haspel has no moral objection to the torture techniques used on Al-Nashiri.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) inquired of Haspel,

“If the CIA has a high-value terrorism suspect in its custody and the president gave you a direct order to waterboard that suspect, what would you do?”

Again, Haspel demurred with a non-responsive reply:

“I do not believe the president would ask me to do that,” she testified.

Haspel is apparently unaware of Donald Trump’s declarations during the presidential campaign that he would “immediately” resume waterboarding and would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” because the United States has a “barbaric” enemy. Trump called waterboarding a “minor form” of interrogation.

Torture Doesn’t Work

Trump said he would allow the use of waterboarding “in a heartbeat” because “only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.”

But even “if it doesn’t work,” he added, “they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing.”

When queried about Trump’s statement that “torture absolutely works,” Haspel said,

“I don’t believe that torture works.”

She then wavered, saying that valuable intelligence had been obtained from senior al-Qaeda operatives “and I don’t think it’s knowable whether interrogation techniques played a role in that.”

The executive summary of the Senate report came to a contrary conclusion.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Relevant article selected from the GR archive, first published on GR in September 2017.

The Black Alliance for Peace is resolute in its opposition to United States-led imperialism, no matter which nations may be among the targets. We contend no justification exists for U.S. government interference in the affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), better known as North Korea.

President Donald Trump differs from his predecessors only with his intemperate language, threatening “fire and fury” and asserting that the U.S. military is “locked and loaded.”

The corporate media may lampoon his choice of words, but they do not oppose the premise that this country has the right to tell North Korea and every other sovereign nation what it can and cannot do.

Like the United States, North Korea has the right to test and develop as many weapons as it chooses. North Korea does not need another country’s permission to enhance its arsenal. Given the United States’ history of aggression, it would appear wise to do so. Any country deemed an enemy of the United States that does not have a strong defense is in danger of ending up like Iraq or Libya—invaded or destroyed by other means.

The U.S. military is the greatest threat to world peace. With more weapons—nuclear and conventional—than any other nation in the world, the United States is armed with the capacity for complete global destruction multiple times over.

The greatest danger stemming from North Korea’s missile program comes from American reactions to it.

The war party is made up of Democrats and Republicans who were nearly unanimous in passing a bill requiring economic sanctions not just against North Korea, but against Iran and Russia as well.

These countries are guilty of only one thing. They assert their right to exist and to resist American hegemony.

It is the United States that escalates tension with war games that simulate an invasion of North Korea. At the same time that North Korea is labeled a danger, the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system is being installed in South Korea. The THAAD poses a very real threat to peace in the region.

North Korea is not the only country targeted by the United States in this latest crisis. The saber rattling is also directed against China, which like the rest of the world, has great reason to defend itself against Trump and the war party duopoly. While the media helps the United States frighten the American public unnecessarily, none of them will speak simple truth. The truth is the United States doesn’t have to do anything about North Korea. America is not exceptional, nor is it indispensable. It should not have more rights than other nations and should not be allowed to threaten the world with destruction.

One would not know it from reading major American newspapers, but voices of reason exist around the world. Most American reporters and op-ed writers seem to see North Korea as a problem to be solved instead of as a nation to be engaged in a serious and respectful manner. They deliberately obscure the history of America’s near destruction of North Korea from 1950 to 1953 and the fact that the truce never ended the war between the north and south on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea is considered a bogeyman whether it tests missiles or not. It has been accused of everything from hacking into the Sony corporation computer systems to creating new malware viruses. Its president, Kim Jong-un, is treated like a joke or a demon. He appears to have chosen what seems to be the only defense he has at his disposal—to make America think twice about attacking his country.

The media may call North Korea a “rogue” nation, but that designation belongs to the United States. The United States has more than 1,000 military facilities around the globe. It spends more money on defense than any other country and has more conventional and nuclear weapons than any other nation. This should not be normalized. Yet it is.

This monstrous situation did not begin with Donald Trump. It has been building for decades as the United States became the world’s only superpower. Every American president exceeds the violence committed by predecessors and there is consensus among the politicians and punditry that “might makes right.” That is a patriarchal-white-supremacist-capitalist logic embodied in a national identity. The target may be North Korea or China or Russia or Iran or Iraq or Syria or Somalia. Regardless, the apparent goal of the United States’ global policy is for Full Spectrum Dominance, a doctrine which brings horrific conflict closer to reality.

Trump’s rhetoric may be more dangerous, but he is just the latest American president to make unilateral threats of nuclear attack.

Yet, the United States is not the only one that can assert its strength. The Chinese government has made clear that it will not stand by and allow the United States to attack North Korea. China’s ability to defend its ally is real. The pundits and politicians who utter words just as dangerous as Trump’s are equally culpable in bringing the world to the brink of multi-national conflict and casualties.

People who say they want peace, claim to be anti-fascist, and speak against white supremacy and patriarchy, must stand with North Korea against threats from the United States. The Black Alliance for Peace joins with people of conscience all over the world in condemning America’s aggressions and threats of aggression against North Korea and every other nation.

Hands Off North Korea!

No to U.S. Military Exercises Against North Korea and China!

Remove THAAD Missiles and U.S. Bases from South Korea!

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

The Globalization of War includes chapters on North Korea, Ukraine, Palestine, Libya, Iran, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Syria and Iraq as well as several chapters on the dangers of Nuclear War including Michel Chossudovsky’s Conversations with Fidel Castro entitled “Nuclear War and the Future of Humanity”.

According to Fidel: “in the case of a nuclear war, the ‘collateral damage’ would be the life of all humanity”.

The book concludes with two chapters focussing on “Reversing the Tide of War”.

“The Globalization of War” is diplomatic dynamite – and the fuse is burning rapidly.”

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

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95 

Order directly from Global Research

Special Price: $15.00

America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.

Conversations on the Dangers of Nuclear War: Fidel Castro and Michel Chossudovsky, Havana, October 2010

This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history.

It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.

The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of “human rights” and “Western democracy”.

Order directly from Global Research

REVIEWS:

“Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the most realistic of all foreign policy commentators. He is a model of integrity in analysis, his book provides an honest appraisal of the extreme danger that U.S. hegemonic neoconservatism poses to life on earth.”

Übersetzung : K. S.

La decisione degli Stati uniti di uscire dall’accordo sul nucleare iraniano – stipulato nel 2015 da Teheran con i 5 membri permanenti del Consiglio di sicurezza dell’Onu più la Germania – provoca una situazione di estrema pericolosità non solo per il Medio Oriente.

The White House has declined to comment on a planned Indonesian real estate project which will bring together Trump Organization branding and hundreds of millions of dollars of Chinese government money.

“MNC Lido City” is the name of the massive, billion-dollar “integrated lifestyle resort” that will be built on the outskirts of Jakarta. Among other things, the resort will include hotels, residences, and a golf course that will all be under the Trump Organization brand.

Meanwhile, a state-owned Chinese construction firm has signed a deal to be the ones to build a theme park inside the resort.

The project is yet another part of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” an ambitious trillion dollar effort that’s aimed at improving infrastructure, connectivity, and cooperation across Asia, Africa, and Europe while helping China to reassume its position at the center of the world.

In that vein, the resort will receive funding of up to $500 million in Chinese government loans, according to the AFP.

Though the Chinese construction firm will not actually build any of the Trump-branded properties, the AFP notes that China will play an extremely critical part in the project’s overall success — providing half of the funding and constructing one of its key attractions.

There’s no evidence that the Trump Organization lobbied for Chinese money and help in the project, however, the president’s sons were reportedly directly involved in various stages of the resort’s planning. The organization first signed on to be a part of the Lido project in 2015.

At a White House press briefing yesterday, a Los Angeles Times reporter asked how this project was not a violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause and of the Trump Organization’s promise not to engage in any new foreign deals while Trump was president.

“I’ll have to refer you to the Trump organization,” answered Press Secretary Raj Shah. “You’re asking about a private organization’s dealings that may have to do with a foreign government. It’s not something that I can speak to.”

Asked about Chinese government's involvement in a Trump Organization project in Indonesia and if that violates the emoluments clause, Raj Shah says, "I'll have to refer you to the Trump Organization… you're asking about a private organization's dealings." pic.twitter.com/3R2vjEHe32

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2018

While this sort of questionable and corruptible fusion of private business and the presidency has been part of the President Donald Trump experience from the very beginning, the Lido project has managed to raise more eyebrows than usual, coming just as Trump has made the unusual decision to publicly step forward to protect Chinese phone maker ZTE and save Chinese jobs.

ZTE is facing financial ruin at the moment after being hit with a crippling ban from the US Commerce Department which forbids American companies from selling to the firm for the next seven years. The ban came after ZTE was found to have broken an agreement reached last year with the US when it was caught illegally shipping millions of dollars of American hardware and software to Iran, violating sanctions.

Considering Trump’s “America First” persona and his fiery rhetoric against Iran, many were stunned and perplexed by his pro-ZTE tweet on Sunday. Some have now insinuated that the US president’s sudden support for the Chinese phone-maker comes because of the $500 million in loans from Beijing.

If you didn't care about Trump breaking the emoluments clause before, now that he's trying to bail out China Smartphone giant ZTE in what seems to be a way to secure a $500 million Chinese loan that benefits Trump hotels in Indonesia, maybe now would be a good time to start!

— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) May 14, 2018

However, others argue that Trump is merely acting as the Negotiator in Chief, offering to save ZTE in exchange for important trade concessions. The Wall Street Journal has reported that for the removal of sanctions against ZTE, China is prepared to drop tariffs on a number of US agricultural products including pork.

*

All images in this article are from the author.

Internet freedom defenders warned on Tuesday that with only 24 hours left before the Senate votes to possibly nullify the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) repeal of net neutrality, the vote is expected to be “excruciatingly close”—and urged net neutrality supporters to flood Capitol Hill’s phone lines and demand that lawmakers protect the Open Internet.

.

Republican senators were hoping to avoid the vote, but Democrats are using a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to force the full Senate to vote. The CRA resolution would nullify the FCC's December 2017 vote. https://t.co/QTFb5HnzYL

— Free Press (@freepress) May 15, 2018

Several lawmakers including Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), John Kennedy (R-La.), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) are currently on the fence, due to concerns over “retribution from Comcast’s and Verizon’s army of lobbyists,” according to the net neutrality advocacy group Fight for the Future.

WE'RE LESS THAN 24 HOURS AWAY FROM THE SENATE VOTE FOR #NetNeutrality

We need to sound the alarm in Louisiana and Alaska. Tell senators @lisamurkowski and @SenJohnKennedy why the open Internet matters to you. Take action before it's too late: https://t.co/VkoZiZdHEd pic.twitter.com/BqFZOSlN8i

— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) May 15, 2018

“We need to make it clear that they should be more afraid of us than they are of them. And we only have a few more hours to make a difference,” wrote the group in an email to its supporters.

The latest call to action followed similar rallying cries in recent days, as senators who oppose the FCC’s December repeal of net neutrality rules have prepared to bring the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to the senate floor for a vote. Passage of the resolution by the Senate and the House would offer a chance to void the Republican-controlled FCC’s 3-2 vote.

The FCC’s decision was welcomed by internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Verizon, which without net neutrality in place would be able to throttle traffic in order to charge content producers and web users for premium access or services. While powerful telecom companies would be the sole beneficiaries of the FCC’s rule change, surveys have consistently showed widespread and bipartisan backing for the net neutrality protections, with a recent poll showing 83 percent of Americans in support.

“The outcome of this Senate vote will impact the fight for Internet freedom for years to come,” wrote Fight for the Future’s deputy director, Evan Greer. “If we turn this into a huge moment, we can shift the dynamic in Washington, D.C. and get lawmakers from both parties to listen to their constituents for once, at least on this one issue.”

The group urged supporters to call key senators in Utah, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, and California, as well as Murkowski, Gardner, and Kennedy, to ensure that the Democratic caucus of 49 senators have the Republican support they need to pass the CRA. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is the only Republican who has pledged to support net neutrality.

“The next 24 hours could make or break this fight…This is a moment where the entire Internet needs to go all-in for net neutrality,” wrote Greer.

*

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Western Governments Complicit in Crimes against Humanity. “Israel has the Right to Defend itself” Says Trump

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 16, 2018

Not a single Western country has sofar ordered the expulsion of Israeli diplomats in protest over the mass killings of Palestinian civilians by IDF snipers, including children. A crime against humanity under international law is casually dismissed. “Israel has the right to defend itself”, says  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

West’s Failure to Act Will be Cause of the Next Gaza Massacre

By Jonathan Cook, May 16, 2018

Faced with protests at the perimeter fence in Gaza, Israeli snipers killed dozens of unarmed Palestinians and wounded more than 2,000 others, including children, women, journalists and paramedics, in a hail of live fire. Amnesty, the international human rights organisation, rightly called it a “horror show”.

Kim Jong Un’s Move from Nuclearization to Denuclearization? Changes and Continuities in North Korea and the Future of Northeast Asia

By Prof. Jae-Jung Suh, May 16, 2018

Kim Jong Un’s recent moves appear to many a complete reversal of his earlier policy of Byongjin under which his regime went full steam ahead towards developing nuclear weapons and ICBMs. In 2017 alone, Pyongyang conducted ICBM tests and an alleged “hydrogen bomb” test, declared the completion of a strategic nuclear force, and even threatened to annihilate the United States.

Trump Israel Collusion on Syria

By Renee Parsons, May 16, 2018

Considering the sequence of recent events in the Middle East, it is obvious that the circumstances regarding the US withdrawal from the nuclear accord with Iran were carefully thought out in advance, as a pre-arranged strategy to pave the way for escalating Israel’s conflict with Iran and the war in Syria.

Why is Venezuela’s Buying Foreign Oil for Latin American Allies?

By Andrew Korybko, May 16, 2018

All blame aside, however, the narrative that Venezuela is subsidizing its institutional partners at the expense of its own citizens is only partially true since there’s of course a literal “zero-sum” cost involved in these sorts of transactions, but that storyline misses the larger strategic point of why the Bolivarian Republic is even doing this in the first place.

Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza

By Black Alliance for Peace, May 16, 2018

While a delegation from the Trump administration and leaders from various parts of the world gathered in Jerusalem to witness the illegal and immoral move of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to the beleaguered and contested city, Israeli soldiers slaughtered unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. The latest count reports more than 50 dead and 2,700 wounded.

Victory Day! Russians Remembered Their 26 Million Dead, Unaware of Contribution of US Capitalism to Nazi Germany’s War Economy

By Jay Janson, May 15, 2018

This past weekend saw Russians parading in celebration of the anniversary of their costly victory over Nazi Germany. Millions marched throughout Russia, holding photographs of their fallen family members in bittersweet remembrance. To this archival research peoples historian’s knowledge there was no public reminder that Hitler’s armed forces were built up by the West in open violation of the Versailles Treaty’s prohibitions in expectation of Hitler fulfilling his threats to invade the Soviet Union.

This week, 61 killed and over 770 wounded: Palestinian civilians were targeted by IDF snipers with live ammunition.

 Not a single Western country has sofar ordered the expulsion of Israeli diplomats in protest over the mass killings of Palestinian civilians by IDF snipers. 

A crime against humanity under international law is casually dismissed.

Double standards is an understatement: Flashback to early March 2018. When the Skripal affair broke out in the U.K., the Kremlin was accused without evidence of poisoning double agent Peter Skripal and his daughter Yulia, with the deadly novichok nerve gas.

Pressured by London and Washington, more than twenty Western countries ordered the expulsion of more than 100 Russian diplomats. In the meantime the Skripals have fully recovered. Nobody was killed.

In contrast, following the Gaza massacre, not a single Israeli diplomat has been expelled from the member states of the European Union.

“Israel has the right to defend itself”, says  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

No UN member “would act with more restraint than Israel has.” said US Ambassador to the UN Nicki Halley.

The lie becomes the truth. These statements are tantamount to an endorsement of crimes against humanity by the self-proclaimed “international community”.

And the corporate media applauds. Palestinians are tagged as terrorists.

While the Skripal affair was the object of extensive (invariably biased) coverage largely with a view to upholding Theresa May’s baseless accusations against Russia, the reports pertaining to the Gaza killings largely uphold the notion that “Israel has the right to defend itself”.

The broader issue of crimes against humanity under international law is barely mentioned. What we are facing is the political acceptance of the Gaza massacre which is tantamount to the criminalization of the Western governments which represent us.

Here are the the names of some of the 61 Palestinians killed by IDF snipers, who, according to Donald Trump have been attacking Israel. They happen to be children.  An eight months old baby was targeted.

1. Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, 8 months old

2. Ezz el-din Musa Mohamed Alsamaak, 14 years old

3. Wisaal Fadl Ezzat Alsheikh Khalil, 15 years old

4. Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, 16 years old

5. Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, 16 years old

For the complete list of Palestinians killed click here

Eight-month-old Laila is the youngest Palestinian killed in Gaza on Monday, the deadliest day since 2014 war

.

.

From left: Ahmed Alrantisi, Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, Ahmed Altetr, Alaa Alkhatib Ezz el-din Alsamaak, Motassem Abu Louley (screengrab)

From left: Fadi Abu Salah, Motaz Al-Nunu, Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh

From left: Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah (screengrab)

From left: Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, Obaidah Salim Farhan (screengrab)

From left: Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk (screengrab)

List of names and ages

1. Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, 8 months old

2. Ezz el-din Musa Mohamed Alsamaak, 14 years old

3. Wisaal Fadl Ezzat Alsheikh Khalil, 15 years old

4. Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, 16 years old

5. Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, 16 years old

6. Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, 18 years old

7. Eman Ali Sadiq Alsheikh, 19 years old

8. Zayid Mohamed Hasan Omar, 19 years old

9. Motassem Fawzy Abu Louley, 20 years old

10. Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh, 21 years old

11. Mohamed Abd Alsalam Harz, 21 years old

12. Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, 22 years old

13. Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, 22 years old

14. Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, 23 years old

15. Mahmoud Mustafa Ahmed Assaf, 23 years old

16. Ahmed Fayez Harb Shahadah, 23 years old

17. Ahmed Awad Allah, 24 years old

18. Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, 25 years old

19. Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, 26 years old

20. Bilal Ahmed Abu Diqah, 26 years old

21. Ahmed Majed Qaasim Ata Allah, 27 years old

22. Mahmoud Rabah Abu Maamar, 28 years old

23.Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, 28 years old

24. Ahmed Fawzy Altetr, 28 years old

25. Mohamed Abdelrahman Meqdad, 28 years old

26. Obaidah Salim Farhan, 30 years old

27. Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, 30 years old

28. Fadi Hassan Abu Salah, 30 years old

29. Motaz Bassam Kamil Al-Nunu, 31 years old

30. Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, 31 years old

31. Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, 31 years old

32. Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, 32 years old

33. Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, 35 years old

34. Mohammed Mahmoud Abdulmoti Abdal’al, 39 years old

35. Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Hamdan, 27 years old

36. Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk, 30 years old

37. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Alrantisi, 27 years old

38. Alaa Alnoor Ahmed Alkhatib, 28 years old

39. Mahmoud Yahya Abdawahab Hussain, 24 years old

40. Ahmed Abdullah Aladini, 30 years old

41. Saadi Said Fahmi Abu Salah, 16 years old

42. Ahmed Zahir Hamid Alshawa, 24 years old

43. Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, 33 years old

44. Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, 34 years old

45. Mokhtar Kaamil Salim Abu Khamash, 23 years old

46. Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, 21 years old

47. Abdulrahman Sami Abu Mattar, 18 years old

48. Ahmed Salim Alyaan Aljarf, 26 years old

49. Mahmoud Sulayman Ibrahim Aql, 32 years old

50. Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah, 25 years old

51. Kamil Jihad Kamil Mihna, 19 years old

52. Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, 23 years old

53. Ali Mohamed Ahmed Khafajah, 21 years old

54. Abdelsalam Yousef Abdelwahab, 39 years old

55. Mohamed Samir Duwedar, 27 years old

56. Talal Adel Ibrahim Mattar, 16 years old

57. Omar Jomaa Abu Ful, 30 years old

58. Nasser Ahmed Mahmoud Ghrab, 51 years old

59 – 61: Unidentified

Never to forget …. never to forgive!