Global Research

The following text was presented at the opening plenary of the European IPPNW Conference: “Nuclear Weapons and Energy in an Unstable World – Analysis and Solutions”, Berlin, 7-9 May 2004.  

The US continues threatening the World with nuclear war. No solution has emerged. Moreover, since the war on Iraq, the antiwar movement is defunct.  

The mainstream media has failed to warn public opinion that a US led nuclear attack on North Korea or Iran could evolve towards the unthinkable. In the words of Albert Einstein: 

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.

This is the text I wrote 14 years ago.

Michel Chossudovsky, April 28, 2018 

***

We are the juncture of the most serious crisis in modern history.

In the wake of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, in the largest display of military might since the Second World War, the Bush Administration has embarked upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

The multilateral safeguards of the Cold War era with regard to the production and use of nuclear weapons have been scrapped.

While Al Qaeda is presented to public opinion as constituting a nuclear threat, the US Senate has provided a “green light” to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in conventional war theaters against “rogue states” and terrorist organizations.

According to the Pentagon, these weapons are “harmless to civilians”.

Introduction

The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a broader military agenda, which was launched at the end of the Cold War. The ongoing war agenda is a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War and the NATO led wars in Yugoslavia (1991-2001).

The war on Iraq has been in the planning stages at least since the mid-1990s. A 1995 National Security document of the Clinton administration stated quite clearly that the objective of the war is oil. “To protect the United States’ uninterrupted, secure U.S. access to oil.”

In September 2000, a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published its blueprint for global domination under the title: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”

The PNAC is a neo-conservative think tank linked to the Defense-Intelligence establishment, the Republican Party and the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which plays a behind-the-scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy.

Source: Visibility 9-11

The PNAC’s declared objectives are:

• defend the American homeland;
• fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
• perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
• transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;”

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had commissioned the PNAC blueprint prior to the 2000 presidential elections.

The PNAC outlines a roadmap of conquest.

It calls for “the direct imposition of U.S. “forward bases” throughout Central Asia and the Middle East “with a view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential “rival” or any viable alternative to America’s vision of a ‘free market’ economy” (See Chris Floyd, Bush’s Crusade for Empire, Global Outlook, No. 6, 2003)

Distinct from theater wars, the so-called “constabulary functions” imply a form of global military policing using various instruments of military intervention including punitive bombings and the sending in of US Special Forces, etc.

New Weapons Systems

The PNAC’s “revolution in military affairs” (meaning the development of new weapons systems) consists of the Strategic Defense Initiative, the concurrent weaponization of space and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.

The Strategic Defense Initiative, (Star Wars), not only includes the controversial “Missile Shield”, but also a wide range of offensive laser-guided weapons with striking capabilities anywhere in the world, not to mention instruments of weather and climatic warfare under the High Altitude Auroral Research Program (HAARP). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions.

Also contemplated is the Pentagon’s so-called FALCON program. FALCON is the ultimate New World Order weapons’ system, to be used for global economic and political domination. It can strike from the continental US anywhere in the World. It is described as a “global reach” weapon to be used to “react promptly and decisively to destabilizing or threatening actions by hostile countries and terrorist organizations”. This hypersonic cruise weapon system to be developed by Northrop Grumman “would allow the U.S. to conduct effective, time-critical strike missions on a global basis without relying on overseas military bases. FALCON would allow the US to strike, either in support of conventional forces engaged in a war theater or in punitive bombings directed against countries that do not comply with US economic and political diktats.

The “Pre-emptive” Use of Nuclear Weapons

The Bush Administration has adopted a first strike “pre-emptive” nuclear policy, which has now received congressional approval. Nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort as during the Cold War era.

In a classified Pentagon document (Nuclear Posture Review) presented to the US Senate in early 2002, the Bush Administration established so-called “contingency plans” for an offensive “first strike use” of nuclear weapons, not only against the “axis of evil” (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea), but also against Russia and China.

The pre-emptive nuclear doctrine contained in the Nuclear Posture Review is supported by the Republican Party and Washington’s conservative think-tanks:

“The Pentagon must prepare for all possible contingencies, especially now, when dozens of countries, and some terrorist groups, are engaged in secret weapon development programs.” (quoted in William Arkin, Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable, Los Angeles Times, 9 March 2002)

While scaling back – in agreement with Russia — on the number of nuclear warheads, the Pentagon’s objective is not only to ‘modernize’ its nuclear arsenal, but also to establish “full spectrum dominance” in outer space. With advanced surveillance equipment and space weaponry, the U.S. would be able to inflict force locally and instantly anywhere in the world, directly from orbiting satellites, using an appropriate level of pain and doing so with impunity.

The US, Britain and Israel have a coordinated nuclear weapons policy. Israeli nuclear warheads are pointed at major cities in the Middle East. The governments of all three countries stated quite openly, in the months leading up to the war on Iraq, that they were prepared to use nuclear weapons “if they are attacked” with so-called “weapons of mass destruction.”

Barely a few weeks following the entry of the US Marines into Baghdad in April 2003, the US Senate Armed Services Committee gave the green light to the Pentagon to develop a new tactical nuclear bomb, to be used in conventional war theaters, “with a yield [of up to] six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb”.

The “Privatization” of Nuclear War

The August 6, 2003 Hiroshima Day Meeting at Central Command Headquarters

This green light decision of the Senate Armed Services Committee was followed a few months later by a major redefinition of US policy pertaining to nuclear weapons.

On August 6, 2003, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 58 years ago, a secret meeting was held with senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex at Central Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

“More than 150 military contractors, scientists from the weapons labs, and other government officials gathered at the headquarters of the US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska to plot and plan for the possibility of “full-scale nuclear war” calling for the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons—more “usable” so-called “mini-nukes and earth penetrating “bunker busters” armed with atomic warheads.” (Alice Slater, Bush Nuclear Policy A Recipe for National Insecurity, August 2003 )

The new nuclear policy explicitly involves the large defense contractors in decision-making. It is tantamount to the “privatization” of nuclear war.

Corporations not only reap multibillion-dollar profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.

The Nuclear weapons industry, which includes the production of nuclear devices as well as the missile delivery systems, etc. is controlled by a handful of defense contractors with Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop, Raytheon and Boeing in the lead.

It is worth noting that barely a week prior to August 6 meeting, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) disbanded its advisory committee which provides an “independent oversight” on the US nuclear arsenal, including the testing and/or use of new nuclear devices. (The Guardian, 31 July 2003)

Meanwhile, the Pentagon had unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use of nuclear weapons for the “defense of the American Homeland.”

In an utterly twisted logic, nuclear weapons are presented as a means to building peace and preventing “collateral damage”. The Pentagon has intimated, in this regard, that the ‘mini-nukes’ (with a yield of less than 5000 tons) are harmless to civilians because the explosions ‘take place under ground’. Each of these ‘mini-nukes’, nonetheless, constitutes – in terms of explosion and potential radioactive fallout – a significant fraction of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Formally endorsed by the US Congress in late 2003, the mini-nukes are considered to be “safe for civilians”. Once this assumption has been built into military planning, it constitutes a consensus, which is no longer the object of critical debate. Decisions pertaining to the use of these nuclear weapons will be based on the prior “scientific” assessments underlying this consensus that they are “not dangerous for civilians”.

The propaganda campaign stipulates that the mini-nukes are harmless. Based on this premise, the US Congress has given the “green light”: this new generation of nuclear weapons is slated to be used in the next phase of the war, in “conventional war theaters” (e.g. in the Middle East and Central Asia) alongside conventional weapons.

In December 2003, the US Congress allocated $6.3 billion solely for 2004, to develop this new generation of “defensive” nuclear weapons.

The overall annual defense budget is in excess of 400 billion dollars, more than the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Russian Federation.

Nuclear Weapons and the “War on Terrorism”

To justify pre-emptive military actions, the National Security Doctrine requires the “fabrication” of a terrorist threat, –ie. “an outside enemy.” It also needs to link these terrorist threats to “State sponsorship” by so-called “rogue states.”

Spelled out in the 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), the preemptive “defensive war” doctrine and the “war on terrorism” against Al Qaeda constitute essential building blocks of the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign. In the wake of September 11, 2001, the nuclear option is intimately related to the “war on terrorism.”

The objective is to present “preemptive military action” –meaning war as an act of “self-defense” against two categories of enemies, “rogue States” and “Islamic terrorists”, both of which are said to possess weapons of mass destruction:

“The war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration. …America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.

…Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction (…)

The targets of these attacks are our military forces and our civilian population, in direct violation of one of the principal norms of the law of warfare. As was demonstrated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction- and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, (…). To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”12 (National Security Strategy, White House, 2002)

This “anticipatory action” under the NSS includes the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are now classified as in theater weapons alongside conventional weapons.

Nuclear weapons are presented as performing defensive functions to be used against so-called “rogue states” and terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda.

The propaganda ploy emanating from the CIA and the Pentagon consists in presenting Al Qaeda as capable of developing a nuclear device. According to a report entitled “Terrorist CBRN: Materials and Effects” by the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate (released 2 months prior to the August 2003 “Hiroshima day” meeting in Nebraska):

“Al Qaeda’s goal is the use of [chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons] to cause mass casualties,…

[Islamist extremists] “have a wide variety of potential agents and delivery means to choose from for chemical, biological and radiological or nuclear (CBRN) attacks,” said the four-page report titled ” (quoted in the Washington Times, 3 June 2003)

Amply documented, the “war on terrorism” is fabricated.

The nuclear threat emanating from Al Qaeda is also fabricated, with a view to justifying Washington’s pre-emptive nuclear policy. Needless to say, the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks have served to galvanize public opinion, particularly in the US, in support of the pre-emptive war doctrine.

While the media has its eyes riveted on Islamic terrorists and Al Qaeda, the threats to global security resulting from Washington’s pre-emptive nuclear doctrine are barely mentioned. Deafening Silence: the August 6 2003 “Hiroshima Day” meeting in Nebraska was not covered by the mainstream media.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, the “war on terrorism” constitutes a cover-up of the broader objectives underlying US military and economic expansionism. The central objective is to eventually destabilize Russia and China.

War and the Economy

The articulation of America’s war agenda coincides with a worldwide economic depression leading to the impoverishment of millions of people.

The economic crisis is the direct result of a macro-economic policy framework under IMF-World Bank-WTO auspices. More generally, trade deregulation, privatisation and downsizing under the neoliberal policy agenda have contributed to the demise of the civilian economy.

The recession hits the civilian sectors of economic activity. It tends to support the growth of the military industrial complex.

The shift towards a war economy is has resulted in massive austerity measures applied to all areas of civilian expenditure including public investment in infrastructure and social programs. While the civilian economy plummets, extensive financial resources are funneled towards America’s war machine. In North America and the European Union, State resources which had previously been tagged to finance health and education have been redirected towards defense.

The war economy will not resolve the mounting tide of unemployment. This new direction of the US economy geared towards the military industrial complex, will generate hundreds of billions of dollars of surplus profits, while contributing very marginally to the rehabilitation of the employment of specialised scientific, technical and professional workers laid-off in recent years in the civilian sectors of economic activity.

This redirection of the US economy is motivated by geopolitical and strategic objectives. The most advanced weapons systems are being developed by America’s military-industrial complex with a view to achieving a position of global military and economic dominance, not only in relation to China and Russia, but also in relation to the European Union, which Washington considers a potential encroachment.

Behind America’s so-called “war on terrorism” is the militarization of vast regions of the world.

Since the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, an Anglo-American military axis has developed based on a close coordination between Britain and the U.S. in defense, foreign policy and intelligence. The defense industries of the US, Britain, Canada and Israel are increasingly integrated.

Under the Trans-Atlantic Bridge, an agreement signed in 1999, British Aerospace Systems Corporation (BAES) has become increasingly integrated into the system of procurement of the US Department of Defense.

In turn, Israel, although not officially part of the Anglo-American axis plays a central strategic role in the Middle East on behalf of Washington.

Europe versus America

A rift in the European defense industry has occurred. There are serious divisions within NATO.

While Britain is firmly aligned with the US, France and Germany have joined hands in the development of a European based weapons arsenal, which challenges the hegemony of the US.

Franco-German integration in aerospace and defence production since 1999 constitutes a response to U.S. dominance in the weapons market. The latter hinges upon the partnership between America’s Big Five and Britain’s defence industry under the trans-Atlantic bridge agreement.

In 1999, in response to the alliance of British Aerospace with Lockheed Martin, France’s Aerospatiale-Matra merged with Daimler’s Deutsche Aerospace (DASA) forming the largest European defence conglomerate. And the following year, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) was formed integrating DASA, Matra and Spain’s Construcciones Aeronauticas, SA.

The Franco-German alliance in military production under EADS, means that Germany (which does not officially possess nuclear weapons) has become a de facto producer of nuclear technology for France’s nuclear weapons program. In this regard, EADS already produces a wide range of ballistic missiles, including the M51 nuclear-tipped ballistic submarine-launched ICBMs for the French Navy.

Concluding Remarks

War and globalization go hand in hand. The powers of the Wall Street financial establishment, the Anglo-American oil giants and the U.S.-U.K. defense contractors are indelibly behind this process, which consists in extending the frontiers of the global market system.

The purpose of America’s New War is to transform sovereign nations into open territories (free trade areas), both through military means, as well as through the imposition of deadly “free market” reforms.

The objective behind this war is ultimately to re-colonize not only China and the countries of the former Soviet block, but also the entire Middle Eastern region and the Indian peninsula.

Concurrently, Washington’s objective is to exert global dominance in military affairs, overshadowing the military capabilities of its European “allies”.

The development of America’s nuclear arsenal including the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in conventional war theaters is an integral part of this process.

Featured image is from Islam Forward.

White House officials are saying the administration expects John McCain to step down from the U.S. Senate in ‘the coming weeks.” 

“A replacement is being negotiated now,” a White House insider said.

True Pundit reported on March 8 that McCain would be stepping down from the U.S. Senate, an exclusive that sent his wife Cindy over the edge. She claimed McCain was healthy, recovering from his cancer treatments and would return to the Beltway.

She referred to True Pundit as “crackpots.”

That was nearly two months ago and still, no sign of McCain in Washington, D.C.

He has not been to work since Dec. 17, 2017.

Per the “crackpot” report in early March:

Sen. John McCain is not expected to return the Washington D.C. politics, according to several sources who are closely monitoring his health and medical treatments at his ranch in Arizona.

In fact, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is already in the process of selecting a candidate to run for McCain’s senate seat in a special election after McCain’s expected retirement from the Senate, sources said.

Candidates were contacted this week in fact as Democrats jockey to find new blood to oppose the GOP-held seat in Arizona.

“At this point, we are coming to terms that McCain is done here (in the Senate),” one Senate insider on the Hill said Wednesday. “Preparations are underway to deal with this.”

Democrats plan to tap Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, for the race, according to beltway insiders. Sources said Kelly was contacted this week with the proposal.

Just weeks ago, a White House official said McCain — known for his anti-Trump leaks to the media and his connection to the bogus Trump dossier — was refusing to step down from the Senate despite his reported stage IV brain cancer diagnosis and treatments.

Now, sources said, the GOP and Democrats are prepping for a likely special election for his Arizona senate seat. First, however, if McCain were to retire, the governor of Arizona would appoint an interim Republican to fill McCain’s seat before a special election.

That would give the GOP another vote in the Senate as McCain has been absent since Christmas.

As True Pundit reported Feb. 17:

John McCain may never cast another vote in the U.S. Senate.

But he plans to stay in Arizona and the U.S. Senate, according to a high-level White House source, regardless of GOP-backed pressure for him to retire from the Senate.

Met with D.C. heavyweight source today very plugged in who said McCain refuses to step aside even though he's dying and won't last the year. "It's all about him" the source said.

— Thomas Paine (@Thomas1774Paine) February 17, 2018

Anyone else would retire from the Senate and allow Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey appoint a new GOP replacement.

Not McCain.

*

John McCain is a pretty good runner for a guy with a boot on his leg.

Or legs. He switches the boot to different feet, all while recovering from an alleged “Achilles tear.”

Another lie in a career-long list of lies, half-truths and manipulations stretching the truth from Washington D.C. to Arizona to Vietnam and back again. Several times.

So it was of little surprise that when the bogus Trump dossier reached a fever pitch of debate and finger pointing on Tuesday, McCain was nowhere to be found.

Missing In Action.

Again.

Is McCain even in D.C? No. Sources report he is still at his $15 million mountain-top compound in Arizona. Is he under treatment for his Stage IV cancer treatment. No one is saying. Like always with everything McCain, it’s hard to believe what is true and what is polished hype to make him appear to be a hero.

But this was predicted in December and even before. True Pundit reported McCain would not return to D.C. if the dossier scandal stayed hot. it has. And McCain is not in the Beltway.

From Dec. 14, 2017 in True Pundit, McCain Eyes Exit from Senate Amid ‘Stress’ from Growing Trump Dossier Scandal:

John McCain is reportedly preparing to pull back from the U.S. Senate, according to Beltway insiders who say new demands to answer for his role in either underwriting or promoting the Trump phony dossier are stressing the Arizona senator’s fragile health.

It is not clear whether McCain plans to outright retire from the Senate or simply focus on his Stage IV cancer treatments away from Washington, D.C. but many GOP insiders believe McCain’s last days in the Senate are close.

Likely, McCain will not return after the Christmas break, many folks have privately confided.

McCain has been away for the Senate all week, missing votes and debate about a number of topics including tax cuts.

This is not the fist time McCain has sought medical treatment after his role in recent anti-Trump scandals have heated up.

It is hard to tell if McCain’s health is genuinely declining or not because he has played that card often to slip and slide out of answering questions for his role in Fusion GPS’ bogus Trump dossier.

Emergency surgery.

Late stage cancer diagnosis.

Bad Achilles.

Boot on the wrong foot.

The wheelchair.

Now the hospital.

McCain could in fact need all these medical devices and treatments. Or they could be props. Historically, McCain has been proven to simply lie. So it is hard for many to trust what he claims.

A few weeks ago when McCain had vanished due to health reasons — again avoiding questions about the Trump dossier — he turned up in Italy slamming President Donald Trump.

What is a guy with advanced brain cancer doing on a weekend junket to Italy if he is supposed to be treating his disease?

That is the problem with folks who use illness for political gain: You never can tell if they are truly sick and if you criticize them for play acting when they are sick, then you can be easily labeled as insensitive. A guy like McCain is savvy enough to exploit such grey area.

Looks like we were right on the money again.

The National Archives just released 19,045 JFK files. Today was the deadline for President Donald Trump to announce whether files previously either partially redacted or withheld from the public would remain hidden.

In a press release from this morning, NARA explained the process leading up to today:

As permitted by the JFK Act, agencies appealed to the President to continue postponement of certain information beyond October 26, 2017. The President provided agencies with a temporary certification until April 26, 2018 to allow for a re-review of all documents withheld in full or in part under section 5 of the JFK Act and directed agencies to “identify as much as possible that may be publicly disclosed” and to be “extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.”

According to NARA, 15,834 of the files still contain redactions. They also claim that 520 documents remain withheld in full from the public because they are not subject to disclosure, such as documents falling under the IRS code or a sealed court order. NARA clarified that the documents with remaining redactions would have another chance for disclosure in three years:

The President has determined that all information that remains withheld under section 5 must be reviewed again before October 26, 2021 to determine whether continued withholding from disclosure is necessary.

The White House also released a presidential memorandum stating the necessity for certain files to remain redacted:

Over the past 180 days, executive departments and agencies (agencies) have reviewed all of the information within records temporarily withheld from release and have proposed to the Archivist of the United States (Archivist) that certain information should continue to be redacted because of identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns. The Archivist has reviewed the information agencies proposed to withhold and believes the proposals are consistent with the standard of section 5(g)(2)(D) of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (44 U.S.C. 2107 note) (the “Act”).

I agree with the Archivist’s recommendation that the continued withholdings are necessary to protect against identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure. I am also ordering agencies to re-review each of those redactions over the next 3 years.

Roger Stone, a friend and former political consultant to the president, who also wrote a book on JFK claiming that President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, told WhoWhatWhy,

“I am pleased that the president directed the final release of 19,045 documents today and that no document has been completely withheld. I am also pleased that the president ordered another review of withheld material by Oct 26, 2021 to determine whether further withholding can be justified. I have not yet had the opportunity to review how much of the material released today has been redacted but I am mindful that the president directed that redactions must relate to persons who are still living.”

The WhoWhatWhy team is currently reviewing the files, and will bring you the latest.

Updated 4/27/2018, 2:30 pm.

*

Featured image is from National Archives / Wikimedia and Justin Grimes / Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0.

Dear Readers,

More than ever, Global Research needs your support. Our task as an independent media is to “Battle the Lie”.

“Lying” in mainstream journalism has become the “new normal”: mainstream journalists are pressured to comply. Some journalists refuse.

Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.

While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.

Consider Making a Donation to Global Research

When the Lie becomes the Truth, there is no turning backwards. 

Support Global Research.

*     *     *

Whether It’s Russiagate, Skripal or Syria, the Media Have Lost Their Grip on Reality

By Paul Mansfield, April 29, 2018

The “Blame Russia” for absolutely everything world we currently occupy has reached a point almost beyond return and is scaling heights that would turn Joseph McCarthy green with envy. Whether it is internally produced political turmoil and scandal, or because of generally reckless and failed foreign policy endeavours, the US and UK governments are more wiling than ever to pin the blame on Russia without fail.

Calls for Arms Embargo Against Israel: Jewish State Atrocities in Gaza

By Dr. Vacy Vlazna, April 29, 2018

Palestinians participating on Gaza’s non-violent Great March of Return have called for an arms embargo  against Israel. This has been  backed by the Amnesty International statement; Israel: Arms embargo needed as military unlawfully kills and maims Gaza protesters.

Bots, Hashtags and Fake Social Media: How Facebook Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Divide and Conquer America

By David DeGraw, April 29, 2018

By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion….

The Methane Time Bomb and the Future of the Biosphere

By Dr. Andrew Glikson, April 29, 2018

Methane, the most potent common greenhouse gas, billions of tons of which are stored in Arctic permafrost, lakes, shallow seas and sediments, is emitted as the Arctic warms by an average of 3-8 degrees Celsius. This release threatens to melt the large polar ice caps, leading to tens of meters sea level rise and disappearance of species a rate two orders of magnitude faster than they would have without human interference[iii].

Protests Force Starbucks to Ditch the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from Leading Anti-Racism Training

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, April 29, 2018

After a video of the arrest of two African-American men sitting in Starbucks without buying anything went viral, Starbucks scheduled anti-racism training. But their inclusion of the Anti-Defamation League in the training provoked another outcry and Starbucks capitulated.

The Korean Promise: The Meeting in Panmunjom

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, April 29, 2018

Rather than considering the totality of these agreements, and the deeper reasons for their failures, the paper suggested one, inglorious culprit: “North Korea has never stuck to any of its agreements.” Conservative figures such as the Liberty Korea Party’s head, Hong Joon-pyo, find little room to trust, seeing a manipulative dictator highly skilled in stage management.

Why the U.S. Regime Hates Vladimir Putin

By Eric Zuesse, April 29, 2018

The second of those videos shows Putin offering Russia’s billionaires the choice between being dispossessed of their companies by the Government, or else signing an agreement with the Government, promising that they will henceforth place the welfare of their workers and of the people of Russia, above their own personal welfare and wealth, and only one billionaire there, Oleg Deripaska, hesitated, at which point Putin treated him contemptuously and Deripaska promptly signed.

The chemical weapon attack in Douma, Syria, did not happen. Period.[1] Syria does not and never did use gas on its own people.[2] If Western audiences weren’t so ridiculously indoctrinated, it would be obvious. A child could figure it out. But Westerners have been infantilized by the totalitarian blanket of mind-numbing propaganda. The propagandists are monsters, just like the terrorists that they support.

The fake chemical weapon false flag and the military assault which followed it serve as yet another example (in an encyclopedia of examples), of how the West including Canada supports all of the terrorists in Syria.

Instead of talking about a chemical attack that did not occur, we should be talking about the Supreme International War Crimes that did occur on April 13, 2018 ET (April 14, 2018 local time) when France, the UK, and the US bombed Syria.

Instead of defending the terrorists who have been terrorizing and slaughtering civilians in Damascus for the last seven years,[3] we should be listening to Syrians whom the terrorists have been victimizing throughout this criminal Regime Change war.

Independent investigative journalist Eva Bartlett has been interviewing Syrian citizens for a number of days now.  Canadians need to listen to what Syrians are saying:

We should be listening to the voices of civilization, the voices of International Law, the voices of those who are combatting international terrorism for the benefit of all of us.

We should not be listening to mainstream media which has proven itself to be an agency of criminal war propaganda, nor should we be listening to our own governments which have been perpetrating Supreme International war crimes against a sovereign state, one of the founding members of the United Nations — Syria.

*

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] Pearson Sharp and Mark Taliano, “BREAKING: The Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria Did Not Occur. It was a Hoax, a False Flag To Justify the US-led Air Strikes, Staged by The Rebels.” Global Research. 16 April, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/breaking-the-chemical-weapons-attack-in-syria-did-not-occur-it-was-a-hoax-a-false-flag-to-justify-the-us-led-air-strikes-staged-by-the-rebels/5636423) Accessed 29 April, 2018.

[2] Mark Taliano, “Syria Chemical Weapons: Red Flags and False Flags.” Global Research.  24 April, 2018.  (https://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-chemical-weapons-red-flags-and-false-flags/5583616) Accessed 29 April, 2018.

[3] Mark Taliano, “Syria’s Children: ‘Condemned to Live’, Shackled by the Scars of US-NATO Terrorism.” Global Research, 22 April, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/syrias-children-condemned-to-live-shackled-by-the-scars-of-us-nato-terrorism/5637242) Accessed 29 April, 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)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

Indian cities are in crisis. Spend any length of time in a large city there and you will notice the overcrowding, the power and water shortages and, during monsoon, the streets that transform into stinking, litter-strewn rivers. At times, these cities can be almost unbearable to live in. Little wonder then that the concept of ‘smart cities’ is taking hold among policy makers, however fundamentally flawed or cynical the strategy to implement the notion seems to be.

And, not least of course, there is the horrendous traffic chaos and congestion, the choking pollution and the increasing number of massive concrete flyovers: monstrosities that have taken their place among so many other architectural monstrosities that blight the typical Indian city.

A couple of years back, Delhi introduced a policy whereby vehicles with certain registration numbers were allowed on the road only on designated days to try to cut down on traffic congestion and pollution. However, it failed to solve the underlying problem that stems from a model of ‘development’ that associates a (wholly unnecessary) push for urbanisation and car ownership with progress.

Road congestion in India (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the problems, the greater the urban sprawl and the more road building that takes place, the happier will be the real estate, construction and car manufacturing sectors. That’s not idle speculation: the documentary ‘How Big Oil Conquered the World’ describes how the car and oil industry criminally conspired to undermine public transport systems in US cities in order to get the population and urban planners hooked on the car.

As long as urban planning focuses on the car and wrong-headed notions of ‘development’ governed by the needs and profits of powerful players are prioritised, Indian cities will not only continue to sprawl ever outwards and be defined by traffic congestion and air and noise pollution (and related health problems), but residents will carry on experiencing an ever-worsening decline in their quality of life.

It is unfortunate that just as some cities in the West are beginning to realise the folly of widening and building ever more roads and jamming cities with cars, Indian planners have carried on regardless by blighting the urban landscape with huge concrete flyovers and expressways which divide and destroy communities.

A recent New York Times article noted that Los Angeles has decided against adding lanes to a freeway. Planners are finally waking up to the fact that adding extra lanes merely means more cars, more pollution and journey times increasing.

The writers note that as soon as you build a highway or add lanes to a freeway, cars show up to fill the available capacity (known as induced traffic demand). They conclude that urban planners and motorists impose costs on us all in terms of degraded public space and serious health risks: for example, recent research shows that a congestion charge in Stockholm reduced pollution and sharply cut asthma attacks in children.

Smart thinking in Copenhagen

If there is one city that seems to be on the right track, it is Copenhagen. The city indicates that cycling should be the foundation for sustainable transport strategies and is key to making cities clean, green and livable. Copenhagen’s urban transport solution gives space to cars but more importantly to bicycles, pedestrians and public transport.

Back in the early 1970s, Copenhagen was just as traffic-clogged as anywhere. Now it has around 400 km of cycle paths. The city’s 2017 Annual Bicycle Report confirms that cycling is the preferred mode of transport for the city’s inhabitants. Each day, some 62% of Copenhageners use their bikes to go to work or school/college.

Copenhagen has in recent years been voted the ‘best city for cyclists’ and the ‘world’s most livable city’. Throughout the world, there is now a desire to improve public health and combat climate change. As a result, Copenhagen’s renowned cycle-friendly policies are serving as a template for some of the world’s most congested cities.

Aside from health and environmental considerations, an effective urban transport policy should be democratic. Unlike cars, even the poorest segments of society can gain access a bicycle. The bicycle is indeed democratic, not just for those who cycle but also for the rest of the population who too often impacted by planning blight, pollution and the colonisation of urban space as a result of planning that privileges car users ahead of everyone else.

However, the bicycle is only truly democratic when spatial segregation is limited and bike lanes and appropriate cycle-friendly infrastructure exist to properly connect all areas. Inspired by Copenhagen, Mexico City’s bicycle strategy is attempting to address this issue through a comprehensive cycle path network, which aims to create mobility through areas that have been closed off due to previous planning strategies.

For cities to fully embrace the bicycle, city planners must stop thinking like motorists or capitulating to the influence of powerful automobile lobby groups and plan for the needs of cyclists. In Denmark, for example, the Copenhagen-Albertslund route is the first of a planned network that will comprise 26 Cycle Super Highways, covering a total of 300 km. The network is predicted to reduce public expenditure by €40.3 million annually thanks to improved health.

Consider that in Europe 50% of most city land is dedicated to streets and roads, parking, service stations, driveways, signals and traffic signs. And yet the average European car is parked for 92% of the time. Of the other 8% of time, 1.5% is spent looking for a parking space, 1% in congestion and just 5% is spent driving. There are 30,000 deaths per year on European roads and four times as many disabling injuries. Consider too that an average European car has five seats but on average carries 1.5 persons per journey.

In Copenhagen, city planners tend to give an adequate proportion of road space to cyclists – proper cycle lanes with curbs that separate cycling space from car space; cycle lanes that are usually also sufficiently wide. After all, why should cars hog so much road space when the majority of road users are cyclists?

In the article ‘The Arrogance of Space’ (by Copenhagenize Design Co), it says:

“We have a tendency to give cities human character traits when we describe them. It’s a friendly city. A dynamic city. A boring city. Perhaps then a city can be arrogant. Arrogant, for example, with its distribution of space.”

For too long the arrogance of car-obsessed urban planners has degraded our health and our quality of life. But when you have good-quality public transport and the opportunity to cycle thanks to appropriate infrastructure, there is no need to hand over excess space to cars and produce endless open concrete sprawl for car parks.

Walk (or cycle) around Copenhagen and you will immediately appreciate there is much less traffic noise and pollution compared with other cities. It is indeed a spatially “friendly city” and less “arrogant city”. It is also less hectic and more tranquil than many other cities and – taking things even further – arguably more community oriented.

The slow life

Of course, community-oriented living isn’t just due to transport strategies. The municipality encourages outdoor living by offering open-access communal table tennis tables, basketball facilities, kids parks, landscaped parkland and lakes. Despite the usually cold weather, many Copenhageners congregate on the streets and city benches to socialise and embrace the concept of ‘hygge’, probably best defined as: a conscious appreciation, a certain slowness, and the ability to recognise and enjoy the present. Get to know the city and you will soon realise that hygge isn’t just a cliché – it is real.

The key word in that definition is ‘slowness’ because from there we arrive at the concept of ‘slow living’.

Writing in 1973, activist and writer Ivan Illich stated:

“The use of the bicycle… allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance… In contrast, the accelerating individual capsule [the car] enabled societies to engage in a ritual of progressively paralyzing speed.”

Modern culture is an advocate of speed, epitomised by car worship. Cars, speed and high-energy living have become essentials fact of living. In the process, our communities have become disjointed and dispersed. We have sacrificed ‘slow living’ – in terms of intimacy, friendship and neighbourliness – for a more impersonal way of accelerated living.

However, bicycles offer a cheap, sustainable means of transport. The bicycle is also emblematic of a different form of urban planning based on more intimate social relations and localisation. Where is the need for the car if work, school or healthcare facilities are close by? Less need for ugly flyovers or six lane highways that rip up communities in their path. Getting from A to B would not require a race against the clock on the highway that cuts through a series of localities that are never to be visited, never to be regarded as anything but an inconvenience to be passed through.

Instead, how about an enjoyable walk or cycle ride through an urban environment defined by community and intimacy? An environment free from traffic pollution or noise and where ‘neighbourhood’ has not been deadened and stripped of its intimacy, local stores and facilities.

Many cities could learn much from Denmark’s attitude towards the bicycle and urban planning. After all, ‘smart cities’ call for smart thinking.

*

The author has spent many years in India and many months in Copenhagen. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Join PSC as we mark 70 years of Nakba with a series of events beginning on May 11^th.

Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist paramilitary forces ethnically cleansed and eradicated over 500 villages and cities in Palestine, displacing 750,000 Palestinians and taking over 78% of the land. Palestinians call this process the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe. 

Today, over 7 million Palestinian refugees are scattered around the world, many of whom live in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

These refugees are denied their right of return by Israel; a right demanded by tens of thousands of Palestinians protesting in Gaza over the last four weeks.  To date, 40 protesters at the ‘Great March of Return’ have been killed inside Gaza by Israeli snipers, including journalists and children. A further 5,500 protesters have been injured; over a third with live ammunition.

This treatment of Palestinian civilians is not exceptional; the Nakba did not end in 1948. 

Israel routinely uses lethal violence against Palestinian civilians; demolishes Palestinian homes and villages; imposes apartheid policies upon Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories; colonises Palestinian land through unlawful settlement building; and imprisons both adults and children in a military detention system notorious for torture and ill-treatment.

In May of every year, Palestinians and people of conscience around the world come together in recognition of this ongoing catastrophe. We invite you to join us at three key events as we mark 70 years of Nakba, and call for justice, equality and the right of return.

***

MAY 11 | National demonstration | 70 Years of Nakba – Stand up for Gaza – Stop the Killing

Join our protest in solidarity with Palestine after 70 Years of Nakba and with the Great March of Return, calling for justice, equality and the implementation of the right of return.

5.30pm to 7pm, Opposite the Israeli Embassy, London
Closest Underground: High Street Kensington 
Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Olive
Supported by: Muslim Association of Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Stop the War Coalition, EuroPal Forum

MAY 20 |PSC Conference- @70: Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return

The conference aims to provide the tools and education necessary for activists in the UK to continue to campaign for the right of return of Palestinian refugees, as enshrined in international law. Thus the conference will include sessions on international law, the historical background of the displacement of Palestinians, the experiences of refugees and the various discourses encompassing the right of return. Speakers include Dr Ghada Karmi, Hazem Jamjoum, Dr Ruba Salih, Eitan Bronstein, Amjad Iraqi, Mohamad Fahed, Sarona Bedwan, Tareq Baconi, and PSC Director Ben Jamal.

MAY 14-20 |@70: Celebration of Contemporary Palestinian Culture

This week-long festival of theatre, dance, films and talks commemorates the Palestinian experience of dispossession and loss of a homeland. This exceptional and unique series of events is coordinated by three artists from Gaza – Ahmed Masoud, Ahmed Najar and Khalid Ziyada, working closely with Amnesty International UK, the Hoping Foundation, Amos Trust, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Al Zaytouna Dance Theatre to bring together this creative response to decades of injustice.

Tickets are available here.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected]

Since Obama launched war on Syria in March 2011, Washington’s goal was and remains regime change, pro-Western governance installed, partitioning the country, looting its resources, exploiting its people, and isolating Iran – ahead of targeting the Islamic Republic the same way.

Washington is allied with NATO, Israel, and other regional states in pursuing these aims, the human cost of no consequence.

Syria is the world’s most dangerous hotspot, a tinderbox ready to explode. It’s just a matter of time before the next CW false flag pretext for escalated war occurs – perhaps full-scale US-led aggression to follow, pitting the two dominant nuclear powers against each other.

The stakes are huge, including the fate of the Middle East and world peace.

In Moscow on Saturday, Sergey Lavrov said

“attempts (are being made) split Syria on ethnic and religious grounds,” calling what’s going on “totally unacceptable,” adding:

“(W)e will seek to overcome this situation, particularly by strengthening trust among the parties ‘on the ground.’ “

Given clear US aims in country, it’s hard imagining he believes this is possible. Russia’s failure to confront US aggression in Syria more forcefully encourages escalated war, undermining efforts to resolve it.

Lavrov saying “developments (in) recent weeks show that not everyone wants peace to be restored in Syria” is the height of understatement.

Washington, NATO, Israel and their rogue allies are going all out to undermine conflict resolution efforts. No Geneva, Astana or Sochi breakthroughs were achieved, despite Lavrov suggesting otherwise.

In congressional testimony last week, war secretary Mattis said conflict between Israel and Iran in Syria is “very likely…because (Tehran) continues to do its proxy work there through Hezbollah,” adding:

“I can see how it might start, but I am not sure when or where.” He vowed to “re-energize” US military operations in Syria. “We are not withdrawing,” he stressed.

In Washington, Israeli war minister Avigdor Lieberman met with Mattis and John Bolton – three rogue actors plotting their next moves.

In Brussels on his first foreign trip as Trump’s undiplomatic top diplomat, Mike Pompeo made hawkish remarks to his counterparts at NATO headquarters – discussed in a same-day article.

In Saudi Arabia before heading to Israel and Jordan, senior State Department policy advisor Brian Hook accompanying him called for “sanction(ing) individuals and entities associated with Iran’s missile program…”

He falsely accused Tehran of supplying missiles to Yemeni Houthis – ignoring US-orchestrated Saudi terror-bombing.

He turned truth on its head claiming

“Iran’s missiles prolong war and suffering in the Middle East. They threaten our security and economic interests, and they especially threaten Saudi Arabia and Israel.”

Iran threatens no one. Washington and its rogue partners threaten world peace.

Iranian missile development and production are entirely legitimate. Its military advisors are in Syria at the request of Damascus, aiding Assad combat US-supported terrorists – operating legally. Washington’s presence in the country flagrantly violates international law.

On or before May 12, the Iran nuclear deal is up for grabs. It’s highly unlikely to be saved in its current form. Changes Trump wants are unacceptable.

He must decide whether to reimpose nuclear-related sanctions on Iran or waive them like earlier. Reimposition will likely kill the deal.

It would curb foreign investment in the country because of US-threatened sanctions, a major economic blow if things play out this way.

Financial war can be as devastating as conflict between standing armies, the dirty game Washington plays time and again – likely to escalate against Iran if the nuclear deal collapses.

Conflict resolution in Syria is unattainable as long as Washington and its rogue allies want endless war and regime change, not peace and stability restored to the country.

US rage for dominance risks global war. Full-scale war in Syria could launch it. What no one wants could happen because of things spinning out-of-control.

*

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

The “Blame Russia” for absolutely everything world we currently occupy has reached a point almost beyond return and is scaling heights that would turn Joseph McCarthy green with envy. Whether it is internally produced political turmoil and scandal, or because of generally reckless and failed foreign policy endeavours, the US and UK governments are more wiling than ever to pin the blame on Russia without fail.

The instant blame on Russia for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, or “highly likely” it was Russia, as Theresa May put it, proved grossly premature, graduating onto maybe not so likely at all – thanks to dedicated alt media and social media researchers and activists uncovering the development of Novichoks in multiple countries, making it entirely plausible that some country other than Russia may be responsible for the improbably Salisbury event.

No sooner did the Skripal Affair wind up, that another supposed ‘chemical attack’ unfold, this time in Syria, where an alleged chemical weapons airstrike was said to have taken place in Douma on 7 April. Accounts of this incident were reliant entirely for its evidence on two dubious sources, the US and UK-backed White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). It didn’t take long before the official story started springing leaks though. The hilarity of seeing chlorine cylinders laying on a bed, rather than smashing through it, numerous witness statements there was no chemical attack, the testimony of over a dozen medical personnel at the medical centre concerned that the White Helmets caused a panic by shouting chemical attack when there was none and the interview of 11 year old Hassan Diab, who was not a chemical weapon victim, but certainly was a victim of an unwarranted drenching as part of a staged event, have all demolished yet another false flag instigated by western intelligence agencies and their White Helmets operatives. All this was irrelevant however to the criminal Troika, the US, UK and France, who bypassed the United Nations and bombed Syria in the early hours of 14 April, provoking Russia into an instant reaction which never came.

Some are of the opinion that the Troika and Russia reached an agreement beforehand and so therefore there was never the threat of outbreak of conflict which could escalate to a catastrophic WWIII.

Here is the White Helmets ‘hose-down’ video which triggered a western military intervention:

Faced with rapidly dwindling legitimacy and credibility, the UK government in particular set their attack dogs in the mainstream media on to alt media and social media activists. The result is a coordinated and intensive smear campaign against independent journalists, academics and social media activists with large followings. The gutter press of the UK have demonstrated that in terms of propaganda and disinformation, they are without peer. US media Russophobes almost look like babes in the woods in comparison.

What we are witnessing is a war on truth, vicious intimidation of dissenting voices, the negating of fierce independent voices as Russian puppets and bots and Assad apologists, and ad hominem attacks all designed to shut down a powerful narrative which shines a light on the warmongering narrative propagated by the mainstream media.

The campaign reached a level of absurdity beyond comprehension when Twitter activist @Ian56789 was asked by Sky News hosts if he was a bot as he was being interviewed live on air!

As disinformation against Russia soars off the fake news Richter Scale and independent journalists and activists are being personally targeted, one only has to revisit the recent Devon Nunes Memo story as an example of a real domestic US political scandal which the derelict US mainstream media attempted to transform into yet another Russian disinformation campaign.

You would have to be living under a rock to not know of the salacious, but unverified dossier on US President Donald Trump, which purportedly started out as a piece of opposition research during the 2016 election campaign, but quickly became the driving force behind allegations that Trump colluded with the Russian government in order to win the presidential election. In the mind of many a deep state adoring Democrat and mainstream media journalist, it is beyond dispute that Trump colluded with Russia. The major questions are how extensive the collusion was and does it amount to having committed federal crimes. To answer these questions, the Mueller investigation must continue expanding as far and wide as necessary.

Many Republicans believe the widely ridiculed and discredited dossier prepared by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, was the catalyst for the FBI decision to investigate allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. A mocked and debunked dossier, which looked like it was concocted in a teenagers bedroom bought down on CNN and Buzzfeed a truck load of embarrassment when they decided to run with a story other media outlets balked at.

So how did it transform into such a vital document that initiated the Mueller probe into suspected Trump collusion with Russia?

We have had the mainstream media pumping this story 24/7. They will not let it go, determined that it bring about the downfall of Donald Trump. By gleefully accepting any lead from their highly coveted ‘sources’, the MSM begs to be subverted by the intelligence community, thereby subverting any prospect of a properly functioning US democracy and informed citizenry.

However, the revelations of #ReleaseTheMemo which alleged shocking FISA abuses by the FBI has raised the spectre of another alleged collusion; the FBI and the Obama DOJ colluding against Trump. The major accusation is that the FBI hid from the FISA court judge the fact that it was heavily relying on the dodgy Trump Dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant to spy on Trump, the man who was to become the future President. What is even more explosive is that it was not revealed to the judge that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign paid for the dossier. Dirty partisan politics has gone a step too far in this sordid affair, with the DNC and FBI duping the FISA court into unwittingly assisting them in their campaign against Trump.

And let’s be clear here; this is the work of the Obama administration and any rigorous investigation would pursue whether or not the collusion against Trump went all the way to former president Obama himself.

Republicans were outraged and demanded the release of the memo.

This is hardly a surprise, being shocked and alarmed at possible internal interference in the election by US intelligence agencies, the very agencies that told us it was Russia that undermined US democracy by its electoral interference.

It is crucial to grasp the fact that this affair is a case of internal interference in the election campaign and has generated intense reaction within the US political establishment and among many in the general public.

One may question then the spin the Hamilton 68 propaganda organ placed on the interest whipped up by the memo. It attempted to reframe calls to release the memo as yet another so-called Russian influence operation, using trolls and bots to amplify the message across cyberspace.

'Hamilton 68' doesn't track propaganda. It is propaganda. Its "Council"? Stuffed with Bill Kristol, Michael Chertoff, Mike Morell, etc. Its funding? Opaque (see its 990s). Its methodology? Unfalsifiable–Twitter users put on ad-hoc secret lists based on political view. Appalling.

— Julian Assange ⌛ (@JulianAssange) January 19, 2018

Hamilton 68, a banal and comical operation, is projecting on to Russia the very thing it is doing itself; spreading disinformation aimed at undermining and destabilizing Russia, but also the US political system. On the strength of CNN’s dumpster diving, Hamilton 68 likes to tell us all about how the cryptic ‘Internet Research Agency’ in St. Petersburg is one big giant troll factory. Sorry, Hamilton 68, but you are one big NATO/Deep state cyberspace troll factory yourselves.

The Democratic Party Russophobia icons, Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff, quickly took the opportunity to deflect from the emerging memo scandal, pulling out the playbook of Russian subversion through social media for the umpteenth time. Quite comfortable with the fact that they have secured the social media giants as appendages of the US deep state, Feinstein and Schiff wrote to Twitter and Facebook asking them to investigate what they claimed are Russian bots spreading the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag. The letter reads in part:

“… Several Twitter hashtags, including #ReleaseTheMemo, calling for release of these talking points attacking the Mueller investigation were born in the hours after the Committee vote. According to the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, this effort gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations. By Friday, January 19, 2018, the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag was “the top trending hashtag among Twitter accounts believed to be operated by Kremlin-linked groups.” Its use had “increased by 286,700 percent” and was being used “100 times more than any other hashtag” by accounts linked to Russian influence campaigns. These accounts are also promoting an offer by WikiLeaks to pay up to $1 million to anyone who leaks this classified partisan memo.

If these reports are accurate, we are witnessing an ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors…”

Nice sleight of hand Hamilton 68, Schiff and Feinstein, but this is a scandal that whipped Republicans, not Russians into a frenzy. It is a stand-alone scandal that raised questions about the ethics, partiality and possible illegal acts of the US intelligence community and the Obama DOJ. It does not need any Russian trolls to inflate the gravity of the situation.

Florida Republican Rep. Ron Desantis tweeted,

“Yesterday, I viewed a deeply troubling report compiled by House Intelligence that raises questions about Obama DOJ & the so-called collusion investigation.”

Yesterday, I viewed a deeply troubling report compiled by House Intelligence that raises questions about Obama DOJ & the so-called collusion investigation. Joining @foxandfriends in a few minutes to discuss why this report needs to be released to the American people ASAP.

— Ron DeSantis (@RepDeSantis) January 19, 2018

Desantis said it right there: collusion between the Obama DOJ and the FBI. If true, it is a shocking indictment on deep state interference in US politics, going all the way to the top in attempting to subvert the US presidential election.

So we have at least 2 allegations of collusion; the longstanding and tiresome Russiagate story, which the mainstream media will not give a moments rest and the newer, but equally shocking FBI/DOJ collusion emerging from the woodworks with the news of the classified memo.

You can read and watch RussiaGate stories in both US/Western MSM and Russian media. Fair enough, it was a big story, newsworthy and deeply concerning if it was true (the US media has overplayed their hand though to put it mildly). As time goes on and without a shred of evidence produced, it is time to put the whole issue to bed and move on. It is only the absurdity of the MSM insistence that collusion has been proved beyond doubt and any who question it are conspiracy theorists, that maintains the interest of the reasonable person, even if only to mock media figures and politicians who are the true conspiracy theorists.

The calls to release the Devon Nunes compiled memo also attracted huge coverage in both US and Russian media. However, US media framed it in terms of a partisan struggle between Democrats and Republicans; detracting from the implications of the abuse of the FISA system and placing the scandal into the realm of normal everyday, if somewhat dirty party politics.

There is nothing everyday about the possibility that this whole Russia investigation is in reality a conspiracy by top FBI officials and the DOJ to sabotage Trump and install Hillary Clinton (remember her?) as president. Look at Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as examples, whose texts made no secret of their contempt for Trump and their desire to see him lose the election.

So why did CNN, the New York Times and the supposedly reputable Business Insider deem it newsworthy to claim Russian influence networks were spreading the release the memo hashtag like wildfire across the social media landscape. Business Insider even implied the Nunes memo has been given wings by being amplified by Russian trolls and bots across the social media landscape.

The compiling of the memo by Republican aides on the House Intelligence Committee that led to the unfolding scandal was not initiated by Russia. The angry calls for action came from Republicans, not Russians.

We can’t even be sure if these so-called Russian networks of trolls are Russian at all. But let’s assume for a minute they are. Big deal if they spread the story. It is fascinating, very interesting and could have huge consequences of DOJ and FBI heads rolling. It also serves to relieve some of the pressure on Russia, so why wouldn’t they promote it heavily. They are merely acting in the interests of Russia, which no reasonable person could complain about.

Many people believe Americans are simply apathetic victims and that these supposed Russian trolls or bots are drowning them in disinformation, and that western media figures and politicians powerless to stop it. That’s the mainstream’s moderate narrative. However, a look at the number of followers of some US media celebrities on Twitter should dispel that misinformation in a heartbeat. Rachel Maddow, with 9 million followers, retweeted a tweet by NBC reporter Ken Dilanian, a tweet which itself got 6K retweets and 19K likes. His tweet, included,

“your #ReleaseTheMemo is the top trending hashtag among the Russian bots and trolls over the last 48 hours, and you might want to ask yourself why.”

So a media figure from NBC is clearly muddying the waters, throwing us a red herring in implying the nefarious hand of Russia is at play. Maddow gave Dilanian huge impetus in his attempt to try to flip the story to turn it into yet another opportunity to attack Russia. Deeply troubling allegations which could rock the foundations of the intelligence and justice communities are made a mockery of by a disreputable journalist who sees it as another chance to Russia bait. Before you know it, they will be telling us the #Memo was a joint venture put together by the FSB and Republicans, thus proving the collusion is still going as strong as ever. This level of hysteria is way beyond Cold War McCarthyism.

And when Rachel Maddow retweets something, how many likes and retweets does that generate. Enough to turn the Russian bots and trolls green (or should that be red) with envy.

Maddow herself is capitalizing very nicely on the Russophobia being generated by the whole Russiagate affair to boost her own ratings and affection within the political establishment. She has not got a single progressive bone in her body and epitomizes the dumbed down, hyped up claims about Russian interference in American political and social life. The spectacle is the theatre of the absurd, as Americans are subjected to Hollywood type entertainment to titillate and shock with the never ending “revelations” which roll out like clockwork. And, true to Hollywood style fiction, the more outrageous and sensational the better.

This is why Maddow is able to get away with calling Jill Stein a Kremlin puppet, and to feign seriousness and solemnity as she continues to call Trump a Putin puppet, putty in his hands, even as Trump has clearly embarked on a path which has plummeted US/Russian relations to their lowest point since the darkest days of the Cold War.

Maddow uses a technique for these claims which may enthral Never-Trumpers and fill Le Resistance with fear, but it is straight from the neocon playbook. It is that any sign of Trump not being totally committed to overt and outright hostility to Russia proves that he is a Russian puppet. He must adopt the neocon attitude of Russia being the eternal enemy, the biggest threat the US faces and that it must be confronted and made to pay a price for its aggression, expansionist ambitions and meddling in US affairs.

Putin has Trump in a vice like grip with the “compromat” on him, using it to blackmail him in to doing Russia’s biddings according to Maddow. Putin is forcing Trump to declare war on the intelligence community, fomenting chaos in a crowning glory of undermining US national security. How better to leave the US vulnerable to the rapacious desires of Russia than by shattering the institutions of US national security.

Maddow believes Putin blackmailed Trump with the Golden showers tape to hire Paul Manafort as his campaign manager, to hire Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, and to pressure him to withdraw US forces in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, (which hasn’t happened).

“Is the new President gonna take those troops out? After all the speculation, after all the worry, we are actually about to find out if Russia maybe has something on the new President? We’re about to find out if the new President of our country is going to do what Russia wants once he’s Commander-in-Chief of the US military starting noon on Friday. What is he gonna do with those deployments? Watch this space.”

In Maddows demented mind, anything less than the Trump administration universally standing poised to unsheathe their swords and land a mortal blow on Russia is proof of collusion with the Kremlin. Any conciliatory overtures are met by howls of derision by the Maddow/Hillary Clinton led “resistance.” Amid this red hot rhetoric and witch hunt for internal traitors, Maddow and her ilk are the ones to claim it is Russia sowing discord and discontent.

“This is international warfare against our country,” Maddow said on her show.

Maddow says she goes to bed every night wondering what new Russia scandal awaits the country the next morning, propelling the Russia hysteria all the way to election 2020 and bankrolling her show and career almost exclusively on one issue threadbare of any evidence. The McCarthy of the modern mainstream media some say. It’s Clickbait applied to cable TV you could also say:

“If the presidency is effectively a Russian op, if the American presidency right now is the product of collusion between the Russian intelligence services and an American campaign — I mean, that is so profoundly big, we not only need to stay focused on figuring it out. We need to start preparing for what the consequences are going to be if it proves to be true.”

‘If it proves to be true.’  That’s right, and we’re still waiting for the evidence.

Maddow and her fellow military industrial complex media mouthpieces don’t need evidence to believe Russia interfered in the election, as she spreads her poison to millions of viewers night after night. She sees Vladimir Putin as pure evil, the embodiment of the terrifying KGB and tells her viewers this repeatedly. She has become the torchbearer for an ever wilder conspiracy theory, whipping her audience into a frenzy, baying for Russian blood.

It is extraordinary that anyone listens to a word Maddow says after she produced her only evidence on Trump; his tax return which revealed he paid $38million in federal taxes on more than $150 million in income in 2005. Bombing out big time on alleged Trump tax cheating has clearly not stopped Maddow proceeding full steam ahead in accusing him of being a Kremlin installed puppet.

So who is running an influence campaign here, Moscow, or the US military industrial complex media?

What is never discussed outside of alt-media circles is how far were the FBI, the DOJ, and the Hillary Clinton campaign involved in what is increasingly looking every day more like FBIgate than Russiagate? What about the roles of powerful deep state actors like John Brennan and James Clapper, who are bound to have played a hand in concocting and promoting the official conspiracy theory? Clapper, who thinks it is in Russian DNA to hack things and Brennan who sees Russia as a long term threat intent on attacking US democracy, sternly warning the incoming President Trump not to ignore the huge threat Russia poses.

What was also not overtly acknowledged is that by pressuring for the release of the memo, Devon Nunes and other Republicans actually carried out a duty they were elected to perform; holding the intelligence community accountable. As former CIA analyst Ray McGovern of Consortium News said:

At this point, the $64 question is whether the various congressional oversight committees will remain ensconced in their customarily cozy role as “overlook” committees, or whether they will have the courage to attempt to carry out their Constitutional duty. The latter course would mean confronting a powerful Deep State and its large toolbox of well-practiced retaliatory techniques, including J. Edgar Hoover-style blackmail on steroids, enabled by electronic surveillance of just about everything and everyone. Yes, today’s technology permits blanket collection, and “Collect Everything” has become the motto.

The take-away from all of this is that no sin is too great, and no scandal can’t be flipped to pin the blame on Russia.

Meanwhile, any criminal or unethical conduct of Democrats and deep staters will not be plastered across the newspapers and cyberspace.

Don’t worry about it. Just say its Russian disinformation. Works every time.

*

All images in this article are from the author.

In accordance with President Trump’s direction on October 26, 2017, the National Archives today posted 19,045 documents subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act).   Released documents are available for download.  The versions released today were processed by agencies in accordance with the President’s direction that agency heads be extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.  

The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, established by the National Archives in November 1992, consists of approximately five million pages.  The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.  As permitted by the JFK Act, agencies appealed to the President to continue postponement of certain information beyond October 26, 2017.  The President provided agencies with a temporary certification until April 26, 2018 to allow for a re-review of all documents withheld in full or in part under section 5 of the JFK Act and directed agencies to “identify as much as possible that may be publicly disclosed” and to be “extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.”

Based on reviews conducted by agencies in accordance with the President’s direction, the National Archives released 3,539 documents on Dec. 15, 10,744 documents on Nov. 17, 13,213 documents on Nov. 9, and 676 documents on Nov. 3 of last year.  The 19,045 documents released today represent the final release of documents in accordance with the President’s direction on October 26, 2017.

All documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act have been released in full or in part.  No documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act remain withheld in full.  The President has determined that all information that remains withheld under section 5 must be reviewed again before October 26, 2021 to determine whether continued withholding from disclosure is necessary.

Featured image: Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities by Daniel Golden. Photo credit: Daniel Golden / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) and Henry Holt and Co.

During the Cold War, our elite universities were a breeding ground for future spies. Schools like Yale and Harvard provided some of the “best and the brightest” to America’s intelligence agencies.

Today, the CIA and FBI are using college campuses once again to gain new recruits in the global war for clandestine information and technology. These government agencies, in many instances, are working with the full support and blessing of professors and often top university administrators, who rely on both government contracts and the maximum revenue that comes from over one million international students in US universities.

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Daniel Golden, the efforts range from small colleges to large state universities to Ivy League institutions. In fact, Golden tells Jeff Schechtman in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast that Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government is one of the places where spies are most actively recruited.

In addition, foreign governments see US universities as an almost unlimited reservoir for obtaining intelligence and for recruiting vulnerable students who are in need of money, filled with innocence, and/or ideologically confused.

Today, creative destruction has moved campus recruitment from just US efforts in the binary conflict of the Cold War to a world of high technology and spycraft that involves multiple global players, millions of foreign students and professors, and is drawing from the world’s most prestigious classrooms and research centers.

Daniel Golden is the author of Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities (Henry Colt and Co., October 10, 2017) and The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates (Broadway Books, September 25, 2007).

Listen to the interview here.

Consult the Full transcript here on Who What Why

Palestinians participating on Gaza’s non-violent Great March of Return have called for an arms embargo  against Israel. This has been  backed by the Amnesty International statement; Israel: Arms embargo needed as military unlawfully kills and maims Gaza protesters.

The United Nations has imposed arms embargoes within the sanctions regimes of: 

• Sudan for ‘Those who impede the peace process, constitute a threat to stability in Darfur and the region, commit violations of international humanitarian or human rights law or other atrocities”

• Congo for “Engaging in or providing support for acts that undermine the peace, stability or security of the DRC”  such as “planning, directing, or committing acts in the DRC that constitute human rights violations or abuses or violations of international humanitarian law, as applicable, including those acts involving the targeting of civilians, including killing and maiming, rape and other sexual violence, abduction, forced displacement, and attacks on schools and hospitals’

• Libya for “Individuals and entities involved in or complicit in ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, the commission of serious human rights abuses against persons in Libya, including by being involved in or complicit in planning, commanding, ordering or conducting attacks, in violation of international law, including aerial bombardments, on civilian populations and facilities’  UN Sanctions

All the above criteria for sanctions (and more) apply to the Jewish state’s military occupation and control of Palestinian lives over the past 70 years and apply to its blatant belligerence during the past month against Gaza’s unarmed protesters that has culminated, to date, in 46 martyrs and over 6000 injuries that began with the Good Friday massacre. 

The killings and maiming are indisputable evidence of the violation of International Law and International Humanitarian Law ( IHL) which prohibits under Rule 70 ,

“The use of means and methods of warfare which are of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering”. 

100 Jewish snipers  were ordered to shoot unarmed civilians with semi-jacket bullets which are variously called dumdum, hollow-point,  expanding bullet, explosive, soft-point, soft-nosed, that inflict horrific Grade 3 wounds as on contact, the bullet splays out talons massive internal tissue damage, 

“Half of the more than 500 patients we have admitted in our clinics have injuries where the bullet has literally destroyed tissue after having pulverized the bone. These patients will need to have very complex surgical operations and most of them will have disabilities for life.” Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, Medecins Sans Frontieres’s head of mission in Palestine. 

These high velocity bullets ‘are prohibited under a number of  treaties’ for causing ‘superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering’. 

That the Jewish state uses Gaza to field test new weapons has been well documented and today in Gaza doctors have also remarked on a new tear gas, not gray but green in colour, that causes severe spasms and ‘cramps, vomiting and stress, severe cough and a faster heartbeat…Because the gas is unknown and the health complaints are also unknown, the use of this gas is very dangerous and one does not know what more damage the gas can cause to the body.’ Khamakar Press

Of course testing weapons on civilians is a war crime and yet Israeli armament companies boast that their  weaponry is field-tested which boosts sales to morally shoddy western governments. This impunity and complicity can come to a halt with campaigns focusing on the S in BDS- Boycott Divestment and SANCTIONS.

Speaking of sanctions, take the UK for example; it was hot to screech for sanctions against Russia after the magically non-lethal unproven ‘nerve agent’ attack in Salisbury but has not condemned  the ongoing real massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza and has, furthermore  sold to Israel, according to Middle East Eye, $445 million of arms, including spare parts for  sniper rifles’ since Israel’s  2014-war-crimes-war on Gazan families despite the UK having ratified the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on 2nd April 2014.

Article 6 of the ATT provides a solid legal structure and obligations for arms embargoes, 

Article 6: 3. A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1) or of items covered under Article 3 or Article 4, if it has knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a Party.

94 countries have ratified the ATT. We can demand that our governments honour their obligations and end arms trade with Israel and lobby our governments to support a UN arms embargo. It is the least we can do.

ATT  campaigns will erase any sense of bystander helplessness in the face of the Jewish state’s slaughter and maiming of brave young Gazans who are simply demanding their Right of Return under international law.

*

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name.  She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of  Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

Consortium News publishes three reports into the numbers of casualties, that is, actual fatalities, the U.S. is responsible for since September 11th, 2001. At TruePublica we conducted a study in 2015 and arrived at similar figures. However, we included all casualties from all causes including sanctions, disease, starvation and lack of medical facilities directly related to these wars of aggression. At the time we were the only organisation to have done so and our findings were published in Stop The War Coalition and Global Research among others. This latest research makes for truly grim reading as the numbers are far worse than our best efforts at the time. 

Barbara Lee, was famously the only member of Congress in the US to vote against the original authorization of force that led to the invasion of Iraq. Explaining her decision at the time, she warned, in language that annoyed many as the smoke still swirled from ‘ground-zero’ in ruins of the World Trade Centre after 9/11:

“As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

The crimes committed remain, as Nicolas JS Davies reports – are an urgent moral, political and legal imperative.

Iraq

In part one of “How Many Millions of People Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars?” – Davies starts with Iraq.

“The Iraq Death Toll 15 Years After the U.S. Invasion” which I co-wrote with Medea Benjamin, estimates the death toll in Iraq as accurately and as honestly as we can in March 2018. Our estimate is that about 2.4 million people have probably been killed in Iraq as a result of the historic act of aggression committed by the U.S. and U.K. in 2003.

It should be noted that all these figures are only estimated violent deaths as a direct result of invasion.  None include deaths from the indirect effects of these wars, such as the destruction of hospitals and health systems, the spread of otherwise preventable diseases and the effects of malnutrition and environmental pollution and sanctions, which have also been substantial in all these countries.

Davies explains that estimates of war deaths regularly published by UN agencies, monitoring groups and the media are nearly all based on fragmentary “passive reporting,” not on comprehensive mortality studies in all the countries being researched.

At best, passive reports can reveal a minimum number of war deaths. But that is often such a small fraction of actual deaths that it is highly misleading to cite it as an “estimate” of the total number of people killed. The huge disparities epidemiologists have found between the results of mortality studies and passive reporting (between 5:1 and 20:1) have been consistent across many different war zones all over the world.

From here, Davies deep dives into the hell hole that Iraq ended up being with his research.

“The figure of 655,000 deaths in the first three war years alone, however, clearly points to a crime against humanity approaching genocide.”

This historic act of aggression by the US and UK, says Davies, is ongoing to this day.

By late 2011, over 650,000 Iraqi people were now dead. For comparison, this number exceeds the 450,000 of British troops and civilians killed FROM ALL CAUSES throughout World War 2.

A bicyclist rides by the destroyed old Mosque of The Prophet Jirjis in central Mosul, Iraq on July 27, 2014.

By now three million refugees were created, 1 in 6 households destroyed – each one losing an average, one family member. Around this time in 2011, places like Fallujah spiralled out of control, with 40,000 losing their lives in the bombardment of Mosul alone that followed. Approximately 80% killed were found to be civilians.

The research from all sources concludes:

“That gives us an estimate of 2.38 million Iraqis killed since 2003, as a result of the criminal American and British invasion of Iraq.”

However, that is not the upper number given, which the report says, could reach as high as 3.4 million.

Final words from Davies in part one of this terrible three-part report says it all.

“The world will never hold major American and British war criminals accountable for their crimes as long as the public does not understand the full scale and horror of what they have done. And the world will not know peace as long as the most powerful aggressors can count on impunity for “the supreme international crime.”

However, as an example of including ‘other civilian deaths’, not in this report, we can refer to TruePublica’s own report which found that: “undisputed UN figures show that 1.7 million Iraqi civilians died due to the West’s brutal sanctions regime, half of whom were children” – prior to the attack of Iraq by America and Britain. Remember, Davies does not include deaths from all causes such as lack of medical care and the ongoing crisis from birth defects as a result of the widespread use of depleted uranium artillery that follows these wars.

In TruePublica’s report, we were able to cite a secret US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) document discovered by Professor Thomas Nagy of the School of Business at George Washington University. Nagy concluded it was “an early blueprint for genocide against the people of Iraq”.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

In Part Two of How Many Millions Have Been Killed in America’s post-9/11 Wars – Davies turns his attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“As I explained in part one, the U.S. has attempted to justify its invasions of Afghanistan and several other countries as a legitimate response to the terrorist crimes of 9/11. But the U.S. was not attacked by another country on that day, and no crime, however horrific, can justify 16 years of war – and counting – against a series of countries that did not attack the U.S.”

His research continues a grim story with huge numbers of nights raids in Afghanistan perpetrated by the McCrystal and Patreus killing machine that largely went unreported. In 2010 alone thousands died in over 5,000 night raids that took place away from the gaze of the media. As senior U.S. military officers letter admitted to Dana Priest and William Arkin of The Washington Post, more than half the raids conducted by U.S. special operations forces targeted the wrong person or house, so a large increase in civilian deaths was a predictable and expected result of such a massive expansion of these deadly “kill or capture” raids.

If only one thing is clear, says Davies, about the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reports of civilian deaths, it is that nobody should ever cite them as estimates of total numbers of civilians killed in Afghanistan – least of all UN and government officials and mainstream journalists who, knowingly or not, mislead millions of people when they repeat them.

There has been no attempt to conduct a serious mortality study in Afghanistan as there was in Iraq but using similar techniques to arrive at the body count in Iraq, Davies concludes that approximately 130,000 – 150,000 Afghan soldiers and police were killed. As for innocent civilians, the estimate is about 875,000 to have been killed since 2001, with a minimum of 640,000 and a maximum of 1.4 million.

The U.S. expanded its war in Afghanistan into Pakistan in 2004.  The CIA began launching drone strikes, and the Pakistani military, under U.S. pressure, launched a military campaign against militants in South Waziristan suspected of links to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.  Since then, the U.S. has conducted at least 430 drone strikes in Pakistan according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the Pakistani military has conducted several operations in areas bordering Afghanistan.

Our own reports at TruePublica along with media partner, Drone Wars UK concluded that the fatality rate of civilians in drone strikes is well over 90 percent against their intended target whilst their use in the first place is illegal.

Davies continues.

“The beautiful Swat valley (once called “the Switzerland of the East” by the visiting Queen Elizabeth of the U.K.) and three neighbouring districts were taken over by the Pakistani Taliban between 2007 and 2009.  They were retaken by the Pakistani Army in 2009 in a devastating military campaign that left 3.4 million people as refugees.” 

This catastrophe went unreported universally in the Western mainstream media.

The conclusion here is that about 325,000 people have been killed in Pakistan as a result of the U.S. War in Afghanistan spilling across its borders.

The final death toll as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 is estimated to be approximately 1.2 million. Don’t forget, related deaths are excluded and Afghanistan is now once again, practically over-run by the Taliban with opium sales higher than ever.

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen

In part three of How Many Millions Have Been Killed in America’s post-9/11 Wars, Davies highlights the very different nature of the American war machine, disguised as a quiet media-free approach to war.

“These wars have been catastrophic for the people of all these countries, but the U.S.’s “disguised, quiet, media-free” approach to them has been so successful in propaganda terms that most Americans know very little about the U.S. role in the intractable violence and chaos that has engulfed them.”

The war in Libya killed far more civilians than any estimate of the number killed in the initial rebellion in February and March 2011, which ranged from 1,000 (a UN estimate) to 6,000 (according to the Libyan Human Rights League).  So the war clearly failed in its stated, authorized purpose, to protect civilians, even as it succeeded in a different and unauthorized one: the illegal overthrow of the Libyan government.

There was a large group of women and children holding signs up that said “tell the TRUTH”, “thank you NATO for killing our people”

Final estimates using all data available leaves Davies to conclude that about 250,000 Libyans were killed in the war, violence and subsequent chaos that the U.S. and its allies unleashed in Libya in February 2011, and which continues to the present day. The maximum estimate of all deaths is 360,000.

David Cameron’s intervention in Libya directly led the country to become a failed state with all the horrors that bring with it, not least, of course, the millions trying to escape the violence and chaos and risking their lives attempting to reach Europe.

Syria

It is very hard going reading about the Syria report as the conflict is still raging. Contrary to reports you may have read, the real number of casualties when calculation methods in other conflicts are used, as many as 2 million people may well have been killed with Davies concluding that at least 1.5 million have been killed so far. Syria has a long way to go yet and no doubt the death toll will continue given the current trajectory.

Somalia

Somalia was finally “pulling itself up by its bootstraps” under the governance of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a union of local traditional courts who agreed to work together to govern the country.  People who knew the country well hailed the ICU as a hopeful development for peace and stability in Somalia.

But in the context of its “war on terror,” the U.S. government identified the Islamic Courts Union as an enemy and a target for military action.  The U.S. allied with Ethiopia, Somalia’s traditional regional rival (and a majority Christian country), conducted air strikes and special forces operations to support an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to remove the ICU from power.

As in every other country the U.S. and its proxies have invaded since 2001, the effect was to plunge Somalia back into violence and chaos that continues to this day.

Davies concludes that the estimate of the true number of people killed in Somalia since 2006 must be somewhere between 500,000 and 850,000, with most likely about 650,000 violent deaths.

Yemen

The Zaidis are a unique Shiite sect who make up 45% of Yemen’s population.  Zaidi Imams ruled most of Yemen for over a thousand years. Sunnis and Zaidis have lived together peacefully in Yemen for centuries and they prayed in the same mosques.

The story of the battle that currently continues is unique and you should read the full account by Davis HERE. He concludes that about 175,000 people have been killed – 15 times the numbers reported by the WHO and ACLED – with a minimum of 120,000 and a maximum of 240,000. Disease, starvation and other related deaths are spiralling out of control in Yemen with millions displaced and fighting a daily battle just for survival.

Conclusion

Davies starts his conclusion with the sombre note that:

“Altogether, in the three parts of this report, I have estimated that America’s post-9/11 wars have killed about 6 million people.  Maybe the true number is only 5 million. Or maybe it is 7 million. And the true number of people killed is most definitely not in the tens of thousands, as most of the general public in the U.S. and in the U.K. have been led to believe, according to opinion polls.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them.”

All of these conflicts have been supported by Britain in one way or another. Indeed, it is debatable if Iraq would have been invaded at all if Tony Blair had not engaged in fabricating the case for it. These conflicts have led to an information war against the people of Britain and America to eventually demonize its enemies when they quite simply did not exist in the first place.

The fabricated crisis such as we have seen in Britain recently, starting with the highly suspicious Skripal poisoning, leading to an increased Russiaphobia campaign and unproven chemical weapons gas attacks in Douma led directly, without justification to the bombing of Syria by the USA, Britain and France. This comes from exactly the same warmongering playbook – chapter by chapter.

Misinformation, disinformation and propaganda campaigns instigated by the US and UK governments against its own citizens to justify these illegal acts of aggression are paid for by the taxpayer and then only end up hiding the cost in human blood of the tragic and awful reality that they become. It is surely time to stop these murderous campaigns of death and destruction and call them out for what they are – war crimes.

*

Note

As a footnote to this report it should be noted that combining these reports by Nicolas Davies with our own, that is, reporting on all direct and indirect fatalities as a result of war, pre and post-war sanctions, lack of facilities such as clean water and adequate hospital facilities, it is not hard to arrive at a number approaching 10 million dead.

We are the evil that we deplore.

“Analytica’s personality model has allowed it to create a personality profile for every adult in the U.S. – 220 million of them, each with up to 5,000 data points.”

Much of this is done through Facebook dark posts, which are only visible to those being targeted…. Bots, or fake social media profiles, have become its foot soldiers – an army of political robots used to control conversations on social media and silence and intimidate journalists and others who might undermine their messaging….

This post features excerpts from my new report which can be read here.

In a Bloomberg interview, Analytica’s CEO Alexander Nix explained:

“Your behavior is driven by your personality and actually the more you can understand about people’s personality as psychological drivers, the more you can actually start to really tap in to why and how they make their decisions. We call this behavioral microtargeting and this is really our secret sauce, if you like. This is what we’re bringing to America.”

By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion….

It was a piece of a much bigger and darker puzzle – a Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine being used to manipulate our opinions and behavior to advance specific political agendas.

This new wave has brought the world something exponentially more insidious – personalized, adaptive, and ultimately addictive propaganda. Silicon Valley spent the last ten years building platforms whose natural end state is digital addiction….

“This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them…. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go,” said professor Jonathan Albright.

Led by Dr. Philip Howard, the team’s Principal Investigator, Woolley and his colleagues have been tracking the use of bots in political organizing since 2010. That’s when Howard, buried deep in research about the role Twitter played in the Arab Spring, first noticed thousands of bots co-opting hashtags used by protesters.…

The world these informants revealed is an international network of governments, consultancies (often with owners or top management just one degree away from official government actors), and individuals who build and maintain massive networks of bots to amplify the messages of political actors, spread messages counter to those of their opponents, and silence those whose views or ideas might threaten those same political actors.

They also frequently respond automatically to Twitter users who use certain keywords or hashtags — often with pre-written slurs, insults or threats….

They assume fake identities with distinct personalities and their responses to other users online are specific, intended to change their opinions or those of their followers by attacking their viewpoints….

Never has such a radical, international political movement had the precision and power of this kind of propaganda technology…. Elections in 2018 and 2020 won’t be a contest of ideas, but a battle of automated behavior change…

[Imagine an election campaign with] 250 million algorithmic versions of their political message all updating in real-time, personalized to precisely fit the worldview and attack the insecurities of their targets…

Instead of having to deal with misleading politicians, we may soon witness a cambrian explosion of pathologically-lying political and corporate bots that constantly improve at manipulating us.

While Facebook and Twitter get most of the attention, Google, YouTube and fake websites also play pivotal roles:

“Albright started looking into the ‘fake news problem’. As a part of his research, Albright scraped 306 fake news sites to determine how exactly they were all connected to each other and the mainstream news ecosystem. What he found was unprecedented — a network of 23,000 pages and 1.3 million hyperlinks….

They have been able to game Search Engine Optimization, increasing the visibility of fake and biased news anytime someone Googles…. ‘This network,’ Albright wrote in a post exploring his findings, ‘is triggered on-demand to spread false, hyper-biased, and politically-loaded information.’…

‘I scraped the trackers on these sites and I was absolutely dumbfounded. Every time someone likes one of these posts on Facebook or visits one of these websites, the scripts are then following you around the web. And this enables data-mining and influencing companies like Cambridge Analytica to precisely target individuals, to follow them around the web, and to send them highly personalised political messages.’…

The web of fake and biased news that Albright uncovered created a propaganda wave that Cambridge Analytica could ride and then amplify. The more fake news that users engage with, the more addictive Analytica’s personality engagement algorithms can become….

Albright’s most-recent research focuses on an artificial intelligence that automatically creates YouTube videos about news and current events…. It spooled out nearly 80,000 videos… in just a few days….

Instead of battling press conferences and opinion articles, public opinion about companies and politicians may turn into multi-billion dollar battles between competing algorithms, each deployed to sway public sentiment.

Stock trading algorithms already exist that analyze millions of Tweets and online posts in real-time and make trades in a matter of milliseconds based on changes in public sentiment. Algorithmic trading and ‘algorithmic public opinion’ are already connected. It’s likely they will continue to converge….”

With behavioral microtargeting, politicians now know exactly what to communicate to each individual to win their allegiance. Our last two presidential elections are proof of that.

In 2012, with the support of Facebook employees the Obama campaign sucked up all Facebook data on every American citizen who has ever used their platform. Once they knew all of our “likes” and who our “friends” were, the “whole social graph,” it was like taking candy from a baby. They were able to manipulate us on an unprecedented level; knowing exactly what to say to each individual and even going as far as to tell people what friends they should share specifically tailored messages with.

Then, in 2016, the Trump campaign hired SCL’s infamous Cambridge Analytica, of which Trump’s Chief Campaign Strategist Steve Bannon was a Vice President and founding board member.

Like the Obama campaign in the previous presidential election cycle, Cambridge Analytica also leveraged Facebook data. CEO Alexander Nix summed up their work for the Trump campaign by saying:

“We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy.”

For more detailed information on how they handled the Trump campaign, here is a Channel 4 News report:

“Mr. Turnbull described how the company could create proxy organisations to discreetly feed negative material about opposition candidates on to the Internet and social media.

He said:

‘Sometimes you can use proxy organisations who are already there. You feed them. They are civil society organisations. Charities or activist groups, and we use them – feed them the material and they do the work…. We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape. And so this stuff infiltrates the online community and expands, but with no branding – so it’s unattributable, untrackable.’

Cambridge Analytica’s senior executives were also filmed discussing a twin-track strategy to campaigning, putting out positive messages through the official Donald J Trump for President campaign, while negative material was pushed out through outside organisations.

Cambridge Analytica’s chief data scientist Dr Tayler said:

‘As part of it, sometimes you have to separate it from the political campaign itself. So in America you know there are independent expenditure groups running behind the campaign… Super PACs. Political Action Committees.

So, campaigns are normally subject to limits about how much money they can raise. Whereas outside groups can raise an unlimited amount. So the campaign will use their finite resources for things like persuasion and mobilisation and then they leave the ‘air war’ they call it, like the negative attack ads to other affiliated groups.’

In a different meeting, Mr Turnbull described how the company created the ‘Defeat Crooked Hilary’ brand of attack ads, that were funded by the Make America Number 1 super-PAC and watched more than 30 million times during the campaign.

Coordination between an official election campaign and any outside groups is illegal under US election law.”

As Nix (image on the right) also said:

“Many of our clients don’t want to be seen to be working with a foreign company… so often we set up, if we are working then we can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists, there’s so many options we can look at. I have lots of experience in this.”

When questioned by the undercover reporter about his meeting with Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill regarding their investigation into presidential election interference, Mr. Nix scoffed at it and dismissively said:

“They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works.”

He went on to say,

“They don’t understand because the candidate never is involved. He’s told what to do by the campaign team.”

The undercover reporter then asked,

“So the candidate is the puppet?”

“Always, in every election, or nearly,” replied Mr. Nix, before breaking into a chuckle.

When you analyze political demographics, you find that liberals tend to hope for the best, while conservatives tend to fear the worst. With Obama we had an amazing public speaker who knew all the right things to say to evoke liberal hopes. With Trump, we have a Reality TV host who knows all the right things to say to stoke conservative fears.

Is Mr. Nix right? Are politicians PSYOP puppets of covert Intel interests who are actually running the show?

4) Full Spectrum Dominance, Psychological Operations (PSYOPS)

“To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.”~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

In addition to using surveillance and illegal activities to create “behavioral change” in targeted individuals and populations worldwide, SCL specializes in psychological operations (PSYOPS).

As SCL’s Mark Turnbull describes it:

“The two fundamental human drivers are hopes and fears, and many of those are unspoken and unconscious. You didn’t know that was a fear until you saw something that just evoked that reaction from you. And our job is to drop the bucket further down the well than anybody else, to understand what are those really deep-seated, underlying fears, concerns.

It is no good fighting an election campaign on the facts, because actually it is all about emotion.”

Keep in mind what SCL’s Alexander Nix said,

“these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true, as long as they’re believed.”

Turnbull continued:

“We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control.”

For insight into how that “remote control” manipulates the minds of the masses, let’s read how SCL describes their “behavioral change” programs:

“SCL Group provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations worldwide.

We have taken on the challenge of big data in the intelligence community. We augment IC data with our own ongoing proprietary quantitative research and our behavioral data sets.

Our industry-leading data scientists use this data to build predictive models using machine learning, so that analysts are able to focus their time and tools on the right data subsets.”

In a section on “Psychographic Market Segmentation” SCL says:

“The barrage of media and communication noise becomes impossible for the audience to process, psychographic segmentation is proving most effective.

SCL uses advanced psychological models to segment audience data into usable target sub markets. This dramatically increases the effectiveness for each segment.”

SCL is by no means the only Global Private Military company engaged in these psychological operations. Palantir, SAIC, AggregateIQ, DataTrust and i360 Themis are all significant players. After all, Big Data is a fast-growing multi-billion dollar industry. It is a dream come true for advertisers and Intel PSYOPs experts. It’s a boom market, and U.S. Intel agencies, such as the NSA and CIA are leading the charge.

They are using everything that we do on our computers, mobile phones, televisions and credit cards — every purchase, change of the channel, online search, website-visited, comment, like, friend, follower, private message, email, text, phone call — every digital thought-print is recorded and fed into Big Data analytics and algorithms to create your “personality profile,” so they can predict, manipulate and increasingly control your behavior.

This is a major front in what the Pentagon calls “Full Spectrum Dominance Psychological Operations.”

The 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is now null and void. Privacy laws have become absurdly corrupt.

In a significant way, our computers and mobile devices are an externalization and extension of our minds. Our cell phones are deeply infiltrated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithmic bots and PSYOPS agents.

Make no mistake, they can “drop the bucket further down the well” of your consciousness then you realize, and may know your “hopes and fears” better than you do.

If you think that is an exaggeration, or some futuristic dystopian conspiracy theory, consider Artificial Intelligence created by Dr. Michal Kosinski, who specializes in Psychometrics, Big Data and Social Psychology.

Dr. Kosinski reveals, “with a mere ten ‘likes’ as input his model could appraise a person’s character better than an average coworker. With seventy, it could ‘know’ a subject better than a friend; with 150 likes, better than their parents. With 300 likes, Kosinski’s machine could predict a subject’s behavior better than their partner. With even more likes it could exceed what a person thinks they know about themselves.”

Now ask yourself: How many social media posts have you “liked”?

*

This article was originally posted on the David DeGraw’s Facebook. David DeGraw is a frequent contributor to Global Research

It seems, and certainly feels like a distant number of months since a panel of experts noshed and chatted over how best to overcome the nuclear impasse that pitted North Korea against its southern neighbour and allies.  Held in Seoul last December, the project of attendees hosted by the Korean National Diplomatic Academy was ambitious and lofty: the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

The US angle was one of continued military presence on the peninsula while acknowledging that Pyongyang would not relinquish their top option for empty guarantees.  Parties from Thailand and China felt that area should not become a security buffer zone favourable to the United States and its allies.  Good will entailed true neutrality.  The Russian and Chinese angle was an immediate push to calm the nerves: insist on a “freeze-for-freeze” (a halt to military drills and missile testing), a cold storage metaphor suggesting a seizing up on the road before catastrophe.

Across the parties was a general admission that nothing could be done, or advanced, without genuine measures to seek a state of affairs that would entrench peace even as measures to remove North Korea’s nuclear capability gathered pace.  A peace treaty, in other words, festooned with various security guarantees, would be indispensable.

Now, at the end of April, we have the leaders of Pyongyang and Seoul embracing and emitting tones of rosy confidence, promising steps of reconciliation that would have seemed as eye popping as any Trump tweet.  For the first time since 1953, one of the Kim dynasty found himself on the southern side of the demilitarised zone, chatting at the truce village of Panmunjom.

On Saturday, happy snaps were released of the previous day’s meeting between the DPRK’s Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in.  Such gestures were bound to tease the driest tear ducts, causing a necessary trickle. Summaries on the summit points were cobbled together for press circulation.  The Seoul Shinmun was not holding back: “No war on Korean Peninsula, complete denuclearisation, formal end to Korean War this year.”

The agreement, known as the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula itself promises the machinery for “a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”  The “current unnatural state of armistice” was to be ended. “Blood relations” between the states would be reconnected; “practical steps towards the connection and modernisation of the railways and roads on the eastern transportation corridor” would be adopted.

The occasion conjures up, in terms of historical pressings, the initial stages of Ostpolitik, when East and West Germany began a warming process that eventually culminated in re-unification, even if the last stages were induced by the shock of the Iron Curtain’s retreat.

“We are living next door to each other,” claimed Kim, “there is no reason we should fight each other.”

It was impossible to expect certain big mouths to stay silent.

“Please do not forget,” came President Donald Trump, “the great help that my good friend, President Xi of China, has given to the United States, particularly at the Border of North Korea.  Without him it would have been a much longer, tougher process!”

All charming, given the berating the man in the White House was giving Beijing’s leadership over previous mouths for not doing enough.

Such events are bound to leave certain parties unmoved.  The minstrel’s song will be falling on deaf ears, notably those hardened by decades of realpolitik cynicism.  Political boffins, notably in the West, continue to obsess with the utterance of the terms “complete denuclearisation”, and wonder whether this will, in fact, happen.

Former US national security advisor H. R. McMaster ran with the line that the DPRK was using its nuclear weapons capability “for nuclear blackmail, and then, to quote, ‘reunify’ the peninsula under the red banner.”  It never occurred to McMaster that pure survival is as good a reason as any, and nuclear weapons supply comforting insurance rather than offensive means.

The Washington Post was ready to throw some cold water on the cosy gathering, reminding readers of 1992, when Pyongyang signed a denuclearisation agreement with Seoul, then 1994, when the DPRK concluded one with the United States.  In April 2005, the gesture was repeated with North Korea’s four neighbours and Washington.  In 2012 came another agreement between Pyongyang and Washington.

Rather than considering the totality of these agreements, and the deeper reasons for their failures, the paper suggested one, inglorious culprit: “North Korea has never stuck to any of its agreements.” Conservative figures such as the Liberty Korea Party’s head, Hong Joon-pyo, find little room to trust, seeing a manipulative dictator highly skilled in stage management.

“The inter-Korean summit was a show of fake peace,” he fumed on Facebook.

Still others, such as Michael E. O’Hanlon, are claiming that the recent moves have little to do with the wily Kim or accommodating Moon, but the brutal sanctions regime that brought suitable pressure to bear on the northern regime. Kim’s moves suggested “that the world’s collective economic sanctions against his regime are starting to bite”.

Again, these old fictions circulate like counterfeit currency, suggesting that the DPRK’s nuclear regime – the supposed object of such measures – would be impaired.  As with all sanctions regimes, citizens tend to head the queue of punishment. Those in power are rarely scarred.

The Korean peninsula has rarely been entitled to prosper and develop on its own accord, ever at the mercy of ruthless powers and case jottings about security and self-interest.  An arbitrary border, drawn at the 38^th parallel by two US colonels, one of them the future Secretary of State Dean Rusk, brought Washington and Moscow into potential conflict.

This random division of political mismanagement precipitated a neurosis between Pyongyang and Seoul, as much a product of inward enmity as it was an external inspiration, poked and prodded by those too afraid to let go.  Perhaps that time is now.

*

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]

The extraction and transfer from the earth crust to the atmosphere of every economically available molecule of carbon, including coal,oil, tar sand oil, shale oil, methane gas, coal seam gas and other forms of hydrocarbon, constitutes the most significant shift in composition of the atmosphere since the PETM hyperthermal event about 56 million years ago[i] and the K-T extinction of the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago[ii]. Methane, the most potent common greenhouse gas, billions of tons of which are stored in Arctic permafrost, lakes, shallow seas and sediments, is emitted as the Arctic warms by an average of 3-8 degrees Celsius. This release threatens to melt the large polar ice caps, leading to tens of meters sea level rise and disappearance of species a rate two orders of magnitude faster than they would have without human interference[iii]. Compounding this effect is extensive drilling for coal seam gas, perforating the crust in several parts of the world and releasing commercial and fugitive emissions of methane to the atmosphere. Having sent young generations to kill and die in wars, the powers to be are now presiding over the greatest mass extinction of nature since 66 million years ago.

The accumulation of many hundreds of billions tons of unoxidized methane-rich organic matter in Arctic permafrost and of methane hydrates in shallow Arctic lakes and seas (Figure 1), before and since Arctic glaciation about 2.6 Ma-ago, as well as in tropical bogs, has created a reservoir of carbon whose release to the atmosphere may have catastrophic effects on the biosphere.According to the global carbon project[iv][v] up to 1400 GtC (1400 billion tonnes carbon) on land and ~16,000 GtC in the oceans (Figure 1), much of which may be potentially released upon a significant rise in temperatures, would cause widespread melting and defrosting of the polar ice sheets. This would ensue from major warming feedback effects from further combustion of fossil fuels from recoverable resources,estimated as at least >1100 GtC, and potentially from estimated resources of near 2000 GtC (Figure 2).

Even the release and dissipation of some ~500 to 1000 GtC to the atmosphere as methane, which has 25 to 75 times the greenhouse effect of CO₂[vi], may exceed the atmospheric greenhouse concentration of ~500-700 ppm CO₂e, leading to further extensive melting of the large ice sheets and major sea level rise and to a mass extinction event such as the PETM[vii] (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) or even the Permian-Triassic major mass extinction event[viii].

Figure 1.Vulnerable carbon sinks. (a) Land: Permafrost – 600 GtC; High-latitude peatlands – 400 GtC; tropical peatlands – 100 GtC; vegetation subject to fire and/or deforestation – 650 GtC;  (b) Oceans: Methane hydrates – 10,000 GtC; Solubility pump – 2700 GtC; Biological pump – 3300 GtC (After Canadell et al. 2007 GCTE-IGBP Book series; The Global carbon cycle; UNESCOSCOPE policy briefs; Vol. 2. Courtesy P. Canadell)

Figure 2 Estimates of fossil fuel resources and equivalent atmospheric CO 2 levels, including (1) emissions to date; (2) estimated reserves, and (3) recoverable resources (1 ppm CO 2 ~ 2.12 GtC) (Hansen et al. 2012)[ix].

Methane release from permafrost

Early warnings are manifest. Expeditions along the East Siberian Arctic Shelf in 2011 led by the Russian scientists Igor Semiletov and Natalia Shakova identified a large number of km-size sea bed structures from which methane plumes were bubbling[x]. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) is reported to be highly perforated and close to thawing. Reported release of methane from this region estimated as 150 megatons carbon per year[xi] drove atmospheric methane to 2500 ppb. At higher atmospheric altitudes up to ~8 km peak methane values are higher than 2000 ppb and up to a 2241 ppb, while global mean methane levels range from 1768 to 1795 ppb[xii]

Shakova et al. (2014)[xiii]indicate the temperature of submarine permafrost on the ESAS range from −1.8 to 0 °C. Sonar data indicate methane bubbles escaping the partially thawed permafrost inject 100–630 mg methane m⁻² d⁻¹ into the overlying water column. Due to storms a significant drop of methane levels occurs in the water column as a consequence of escape of the gas to the overlying atmosphere.

By winter of 2013, satellite measures were showing an increasing overburden of methane in the atmosphere above the Arctic (Figures 3 – 5). By summer of 2013, Peter Wadhams, a polar researcher with more than 30 years of experience studying Arctic sea ice from the vantage of British navy submarines, published in Nature an article titled “Climate science: Vast costs of Arctic change”[xiv], projecting the economic costs of a catastrophic 50 GtC methane emission from the ESAS over the coming decades. In reply the climate scientists David Archer and Gavin Schmidt suggested it will take centuries or perhaps thousands of years for a significant volume of methane to be emitted from the Arctic. However, Wadhams suggested that once the ice cover melts water turbulence will warm the underlying sediments by significant amount, up to 7 degrees Celsius. The intense methane bubbling[xv]and caving of permafrost in Siberia[xvi] (Figure 6) hints at a potential catastrophic disintegration of large tracts of Arctic permafrost

Figure 3a.A. Nov. 18, 2014.NASA ultra-high-resolution computer model displaying the distribution and migration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.NASA Goddard Space Flight Center[xvii]. In the NH winter absorption by cold water reduces atmospheric CO₂ while in the NH summer atmospheric CO₂ is reduced by photosynthesis; B. Monthly average atmospheric methane for January 2016 reaching >1900 ppb at pressures of 400 hPa (about 4500 meter height)[xviii].

Figure 3b. Variations inconcentrations of atmospheric methane over the last 800,000 years and during 1840-2016, displaying the extreme rise from about 800 ppb to over 1800 ppb CH₄.[xix]

The concentrations of atmospheric methane in the Arctic have been rising sharply during 2009-2013 (Figures 3b and 4), reaching values above >1800 ppb CH_4,as compared to values below <800 ppb before 1840 and about 400 ppb during the last glacial period. Hot spots of methane hydrate emissions occur in several parts of the Arctic Ocean (Figure 5). Field evidence for melting of permafrost and methane explosion vents and craters abounds in Siberia (Figure 6).

About one-fifth of the increase in radiative forcing by human-linked greenhouse gas emissions since 1750 is due to methane. The past three decades have seen prolonged periods of increasing atmospheric methane, but the growth rate slowed in the 1990s. From 1999 to 2006 the level of atmospheric methane was nearly constant while strong growth resumed in 2007[xx] (Figure 3b). Between 2000 and 2006 the annual methane peak was about 1740 ppb and since 2007 it has increased by 4-11 ppb per year, peaking at 1803 ppb in September 2015. Since 2007, methane in the atmosphere has steadily increased worldwide[xxi].

Figure 4.Variations in atmospheric methane concentrations during 2008 – 2013 mapped by  Leonid Yurganov, Senior Research Scientist, JCET, UMBC, and member of AMEG, using IASI/METOP satellite data (EUMETSAT)[xxii].

Figure 5.Methane hydrates release locations. WWF Arctic feedbacks[xxiii].

Figure 6.A. Permafrost thaw ponds on peatland in Hudson Bay, Canada in 2008. Wikipedia commons[xxiv]; B. Methane explosion crater northern Siberia[xxv]

CSG fugitive emissions

As if the release of hundreds of GtC carbon from the Arctic permafrost and shallow water bodies would not be disastrous enough, drilling for hydrocarbons in the Arctic Sea has commenced and drilling for coal seam gas is spreading over the continents (Figure 7). The techniques used to extract natural gas trapped in coal seams, tight sandstone or shale formations, may allow significant methane leakage and in 2012 it was reported emissions associated with unconventional gas production in the US were thought to exceed those previously believed[xxvi]. A paper “Enrichment of Radon and Carbon Dioxide in the Open Atmosphere of an Australian Coal Seam Gas Field” reported that in 2013 fugitive emissions over Australian coal seam gas (CSG) field (Surat Basin, Tara region, Queensland) yielded atmospheric CO₂ concentrations of ∼390 to ∼467 ppm, the latter near the centre of the gas field, and a∼3 fold increase in maximum of radon (²²²Rn), used as a tracer for fugitive emissions[xxvii].

Venting of methane from underground coal mines in the Hunter region of New South Wales has reached an atmospheric level of 3000 ppb, with levels of 2000 ppb extending to some 50 km away from the mines[xxviii]. Thus the paper “Fugitive methane emissions from natural, urban, agricultural, and energy-production landscapes of eastern Australia” (Kelly et al., 2015)[xxix] states:

“In the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, open-cut coal mining district we mapped a continuous 50 km interval where the concentration of methane exceeded 1800 ppb. The median concentration in this interval was 2020 ppb. Peak readings were beyond the range of the reliable measurement (in excess of 3000 ppb). This extended plume is an amalgamation of plumes from 17 major pits 1 to 10 km in length. Adjacent to CSG developments in the Surat Basin, southeast Queensland, only small anomalies were detected near the well-heads. Throughout the vast majority of the gas fields the concentration of methane was below 1800 ppb. The largest source of fugitive methane associated with CSG was off-gassing methane from the co-produced water holding ponds. At one location the downwind plume had a cross section of approximately 1 km where the concentration of methane was above 1800 ppb. The median concentration within this section was 1820 ppb, with a peak reading of 2110 ppb.”

Figure 7.[xxx] Coal seam gas field, Chinchilla, Qld. Wikipedia commons.

Having sent young generations to kill and die in wars, the powers to be are now presiding over the greatest mass extinction of nature since 66 million years ago.

*

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

Notes

[i] https://www.britannica.com/science/Paleocene-Eocene-Thermal-Maximum

[ii] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/208/4448/1095

[iii] https://www.populationmatters.org/about/campaigns-and-projects/welcome-to-the-anthropocene/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj7y7j7nc2gIVyky9Ch1wKgXPEAAYASAAEgJJevD_BwE

[iv] http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/

[v] https://www.earth-syst-sci-data-discuss.net/essd-2017-123/essd-2017-123.pdf

[vi] https://robertscribbler.com/2013/12/12/arctic-methane-monster-shortens-tail-shakova-semiletov-study-shows-esas-emitting-methane-at-twice-expected-rate/

[vii] https://www.britannica.com/science/Paleocene-Eocene-Thermal-Maximum

[viii] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/permian-extinction/#close

[ix] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/37/E2415/1

[x] https://robertscribbler.com/2013/12/12/arctic-methane-monster-shortens-tail-shakova-semiletov-study-shows-esas-emitting-methane-at-twice-expected-rate/

[xi] https://robertscribbler.com/2013/12/12/arctic-methane-monster-shortens-tail-shakova-semiletov-study-shows-esas-emitting-methane-at-twice-expected-rate/

[xii] http://arctic-news.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/dramatic-increase-in-methane-in-the-arctic-in-january-2013.html

[xiii] http://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2007

[xiv] https://www.nature.com/articles/499401a#supplementary-information

[xv] https://robertscribbler.com/2013/12/12/arctic-methane-monster-shortens-tail-shakova-semiletov-study-shows-esas-emitting-methane-at-twice-expected-rate/

[xvi] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/siberian-caves-reveal-permafrost-thaw/

[xvii] https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/141119-global-co2-nasa-vin?source=relatedvideo

[xviii] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87681

[xix] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87681

[xx] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6170/493

[xxi] https://theconversation.com/australias-coal-mines-are-pouring-methane-gas-into-the-atmosphere-55394

[xxii] https://arctic-news.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/striking-increase-of-methane-in-arctic.html?m=1

[xxiii] https://arctic-news.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/striking-increase-of-methane-in-arctic.html?m=1

[xxiv] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Permafrost_thaw_ponds_in_Hudson_Bay_Canada_near_Greenland.jpg

[xxv] http://arctic-news.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/north-siberian-arctic-permafrost-methane-eruption-vents.html

[xxvi] http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/verve/_resources/TCI_CSG_DiscussionPaper_September2012.pdf

[xxvii] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/es304538g

[xxviii] https://theconversation.com/australias-coal-mines-are-pouring-methane-gas-into-the-atmosphere-55394

[xxix] http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2015/EGU2015-5135.pdf

[xxx] https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyondcoalandgas/9313654158; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

After a video of the arrest of two African-American men sitting in Starbucks without buying anything went viral, Starbucks scheduled anti-racism training. But their inclusion of the Anti-Defamation League in the training provoked another outcry and Starbucks capitulated.

On April 12, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were arrested for trespassing at a Philadelphia Starbucks. A manager called the police because the men, who had been in the coffee shop for just a few minutes, hadn’t bought anything.

Melissa DePino, a Starbucks customer who recorded the video of the arrest that went viral on social media, said,

“These guys never raised their voices. They never did anything remotely aggressive . . . I was sitting close to where they were. Very close. They were not doing anything. They weren’t.”

In an attempt to avert a public relations disaster after the racist incident became public, Starbucks announced it would close most of its 8,000 locations on May 29 for racial bias training.

But, adding insult to injury, Starbucks included the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), with its notorious history of racism, as a primary participant in the anti-racism training.

Community outrage at ADL’s central role in the training was swift and strong. Starbucks demoted ADL to a consulting role, and named representatives of three prominent African-American-led civil rights organizations to lead the training.

ADL: “Anti-Muslim, Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Black and Anti-Activist”

After Starbucks had initially announced the composition of its anti-racism trainers, there was a powerful backlash in the civil rights community against ADL’s leadership role.

Tamika Mallory (image on the right), co-chair of the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter, called for a boycott of Starbucks. Mallory, a nationally prominent organizer for gun control and women’s rights, and against police violence, is the 2018 recipient of the Coretta Scott King Legacy Award.

Mallory tweeted that Starbucks “is NOT serious about doing right by BLACK people!” because of the prominent role it gave ADL, which “is CONSTANTLY attacking black and brown people.”

Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said she agrees with Mallory.

“You can’t be a piece of an anti-bias training when you openly support a racist, oppressive and brutal colonization of Palestine.”

Linda Sarsour, also co-chair of the Women’s March, wrote on Facebook that

ADL is “an anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian organization that peddles Islamophobia and attacks America’s prominent Muslim orgs and activists and supports/sponsors US law enforcement agents to travel and get trained by Israeli military.”

Palestinian-American comedian, activist and professor Amer Zahr grew up in Philadelphia. Zahr told this reporter that ADL and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) “were the architects of the anti-Arab and anti-Islamic industry in America for the last 50 to 60 years.”

Zahr said that

“welcoming groups like ADL into the family of civil rights organizations . . . is a real slap in the face to Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims who have been the victims of ADL rhetoric for decades.”

Asked to respond to Starbucks’ decision, a spokesman for the ADL who was contacted refused to comment.

Spied on Leftists

ADL’s logo in the 1940s

ADL was established in 1913 “to defend Jews, and later other minority groups from discrimination,” Robert I. Friedman wrote in 1993. It led the struggle against the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, and supported the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. But in the late 1940s,

“ADL spied on leftists and Communists, and shared investigative files with the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the FBI. The ADL swung sharply to the right during the Reagan administration, becoming a bastion of neoconservatism.”

In 1993, the San Francisco District Attorney released 700 pages of documents that implicated ADL in an extensive spying operation against US citizens who opposed Israel’s policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza, and apartheid in South Africa. ADL then passed the information to Israel’s Mossad and South African intelligence.

The documents revealed that ADL provided information to South African intelligence shortly before Chris Hani was assassinated. Hani was a leader of the African National Congress, which led the struggle against apartheid, and was considered the successor to Nelson Mandela. Hani was killed soon after returning from a speaking tour in California, where he had been spied on by ADL.

Fifteen civil rights groups and seven individuals filed a federal lawsuit against ADL in 1993 for violation of their civil and privacy rights by spying on them. Six years later, federal Judge Richard Paez issued an injunction permanently enjoining ADL from illegally spying on Arab-American and other civil rights organizations.

But ADL’s hateful activities continue. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson (image on the right) said in an interview with Consortium News that ADL, which “calls itself a civil rights organization, is in truth playing a really damaging role in a number of communities.” She noted that

ADL is “promoting and complicit in anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, anti-Black and anti-activist campaigns.”

Vilkomerson criticized ADL for honoring the St. Louis Police Department one year after their officers killed Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American man in Ferguson.

Arielle Klagsbrun of the St. Louis JVP explained,

“The ADL’s side is the side of police. As someone whose family members are Holocaust survivors, the lessons I learned from the Holocaust for today are that black lives matter and that we must stand against systemic racism.”

Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of Alliance of Families for Justice, said in an interview that if one were crafting a training program against anti-Semitism, you “wouldn’t go to the NAACP for sensitivity training,” adding, “as a Black person, I found [the inclusion of ADL] further insulting.”

Vilkomerson called ADL “one of the biggest purveyors” of exchanges between Israeli and US law enforcement, where American police go to Israel to learn “counter-terrorism” measures to be applied here. That encompasses “racial profiling, spying, mass surveillance and collective punishment.”

But “US police don’t really need a lesson in racism,” Vilkomerson added.

Starbucks Backs Down After Anti-ADL Backlash  

JVP circulated a petition against inclusion of ADL, which garnered 11,000 signatures in 72 hours. According to Vilkomerson, the “enormous outpouring” on Twitter of opposition to ADL’s initial central role in the training and the “week-long pushback,” including JVP’s petition, led Starbucks to back down.

Starbucks issued a statement identifying the leaders of the training as: Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of Equal Justice Initiative; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; and Heather McGhee, president of Demos, a civil rights organization.

The three leaders “will provide advice, counsel, connections to other experts, and recommendations to Starbucks for the May 29 training, which will launch the multiphase effort for the company.”

Starbucks said it “will also consult with a diverse array of organizations and civil rights experts – including The Anti-Defamation League, The Leadership on Civil and Human Rights, UnidosUS, Muslim Advocates, and representatives of LGBTQ groups, religious groups, people with disabilities, and others.”

JVP’s deputy director Ari Wohlfeiler stated in a press release:

Starbucks will never say it publicly, but because of the huge public outcry about the ADL’s unyielding pro-Israel position, their refusal to condemn police violence, their incessant Islamophobia, and the convergence of all those retrograde positions in their active facilitation of US/Israeli police exchange programs, Starbucks had no choice but to demote them.

It was an “excellent outcome,” Vilkomerson said.

*

This article was originally published on Consortiumnews.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and an advisory board member of Veterans for Peace. The second, updated edition of her book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, was recently published. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

A prominent UN official warned earlier this week that the next Migrant Crisis to crash into Europe might come from Africa and not the Mideast, and that its second iteration might be much more devastating than the first due to the sheer size of possible populations involved.

The Executive Director of the UN World Food Program made global headlines a few days ago when he warned that terrorists might weaponize food scarcity in Africa in order to trigger a new Migrant Crisis in Europe, one which they hope to exploit in order to infiltrate the continent. These were David Beasley’s exact words to the UK Guardian:

“You are going to face a similar pattern of what took place years ago, except you are going to have more ISIS [Daesh] and extremist groups infiltrating migration. What we are picking up is that they are partnering with the extremist groups like Boko Haram and al-Qaeda to divvy up territory and resources and to continue to infiltrate and destabilize in the hope of creating migration into Europe where they can infiltrate and cause chaos.

If you [the Europeans] think you had a problem resulting from a nation of 20 million people like Syria because of destabilization and conflict resulting in migration, wait until the greater Sahel region of 500 million people is further destabilized. And this is where the European community and international community have got to wake up.”

Liberal-Globalists might salivate at what he said because they see it as an historic opportunity to socio-culturally re-engineer the essence of European society and fulfill their ideological objectives, while EuroRealist patriots might shudder because this scenario represents the end of traditional Western Civilization as the world knows it.

Helping For The Wrong Reasons

It’s still too early to say for certain that this dystopian vision of the future will materialize, but what’s for sure is that there are plenty of systemic risks in Western and Central Africa that make it very possible that something like this could happen in the coming years, though this potential eventuality could be offset by robust security measures in the Mediterranean and a forward-focused US-French-Italian military presence in the region.  It should be cautioned, however, that while there’s a chance that these three countries and others might market the future expansion of their African footprint on this populist basis, there are also many ulterior reasons behind this move other than the publicly stated one, which includes of course securing access to energy deposits (such as Niger’s uranium), monopolizing new markets, and altogether “containing” China.

Sahelian Destabilization

Looking beyond the failed (former) “state” of Libya that NATO destroyed in 2011, there are several other crises waiting to happen in Africa and which could serve as the trigger for a Migrant Crisis 2.0 on the scale that Beasley warned. The first one isn’t country-specific but deals with the continent’s woes in general, and that’s the connected threats of food insecurity and explosive population growth threatening several strategic countries, the most fragile of which is Niger. This landlocked state is predicted by the UN to have the fastest population growth in the world and will grow from around 20 million people today to roughly 200 million by the end of the century if the current trajectory holds. On top of that, Niger also has one of the world’s largest uranium reserves and is unsurprisingly the site of several French bases and even a massive American drone base that’s being built in middle of the desert right now.

Niger is squeezed between Mali and Nigeria, both of which are experiencing profound terrorist destabilization at the moment from Al Qaeda- and Daesh-linked groups, the first of which grew out of a failed Tuareg separatist campaign in the aftermath of the NATO War on Libya while the second broke out shortly thereafter in the Lake Chad basin, and both continue as low-intensity conflicts to this day. The US and its new global partner France are coordinating their military activities across the broad swath of longitudinal space called the Sahel that stretches from the Senegalese Atlantic Ocean coast to the Sudanese Red Sea coast. Paris is leading the so-called G5 Sahel group of states in the western part of this region that are impacted by the Malian and/or Nigerian terrorist insurgencies, but the organization has yet to show any actual military effectiveness as France has struggled to “Lead From Behind” like the US is known for doing in these cases.

The “Arc Of Crisis” And “Chaos Belt”

This “Arc of Crisis” from Mali to Nigeria, which owes its origins to the NATO-led destruction of Libya, dangerously has the very real prospect of expanding into neighboring regions, to say nothing of coming together into an unprecedented “Chaos Belt” that would put Daesh’s 2014 “Syraq” campaign to shame. There are many large and poorly government (or in some cases, outright ungoverned) spaces in this transregional zone, with the most sparsely populated of them being fertile ground for quasi-states to flourish, whether “caliphates” or something else. Burkina Faso is already at risk of boiling over due to the Malian overspill, but this “domino effect” could spread into the neighboring region of Atlantic West Africa if the destabilization of that small landlocked state triggers a recurrence of violence in the northern Ivory Coast. This country is important because it’s part of the West African “quad” of interconnected coastal states together with Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, the latter two of which experienced vicious civil wars in the 1990s.

The regional security environment in some parts of Africa is such that unrest in one state could easily spill over into another, as was seen in Atlantic West Africa immediately after the Cold War as well as the highland nexus between East and Central Africa at that time too. The cascading civil wars in Rwanda and then immediately thereafter in Burundi produced what was called the “Great Lakes Refugee Crisis” and ultimately contributed to the two back-to-back Congo Civil Wars that altogether claimed the lives of over 5 million people through various means. Congo is once again on the brink of descending back into civil war, and the “destabilization” bridge between it and the “Arc of Crisis’” “Chaos Belt” that was described above is Nigerian-neighboring Cameroon and the Central African Republic that sits between them both. The first-mentioned is facing a multi-front Hybrid War against both Boko Haram and Anglophone separatists along the Nigerian border, while the latter is already embroiled in civil war.

Local vigilantes patrol communities in north east Nigeria to repel attacks by Boko Haram militants

Any serious intensification of the Boko Haram crisis in the Lake Chad region could push Cameroon over the edge and into collapse if the Anglophone separatists take advantage of this, possibly current with a Color Revolution succession crisis following the inevitable passing of elderly President Biya (which could be made all the worse if “Weapons of Mass Migration” continue streaming in from the Central African Republic). Although each nature of conflict across the “Chaos Belt” would differ from Islamist-driven violence in the west to its predominantly ethno-tribal counterpart along the eastern (Central African) edge of this zone, it’s possible to see the bigger picture of just how geographically broad the consequences of uncontrolled Hybrid War destabilization in Mali and the Lake Chad region can become if left unchecked, which isn’t even fully accounting for the unrest from the combination of growing food insecurity, explosive population growth, and dysfunctional resource export-dependent economies.

Poverty Inhibitors And NGO Facilitators

For as intimidating as these somewhat interlinked continental-wide security challenges may seem, both in general and definitely from the EuroRealist patriotic perspective of a native inhabitant wanting to avoid the dystopian Migrant Crisis 2.0 scenario that the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program outlined earlier this week, the cynical argument can be made that they won’t automatically (key word) lead to a massive outflow of millions upon millions of people up north simply because most of these victimized masses are much too poor to pay the smuggling fees that comparatively better-off Syrians were able to afford. The Sahara is so dangerous to cross that these people can’t do so without expert assistance, and while some are still paying to get across in the present day, these are probably the relatively “wealthier” members of society who can afford these costs (which might be footed by their families) and not the average impoverished citizen.

That shouldn’t however be taken to infer that a Liberal-Globalist “workaround” can’t be created in promoting “equal opportunity migration for all” through the Soros-led NGO network modelled off of the existing operations that are ongoing in helping illegal immigrants cross the Mediterranean as well as their Mexican counterparts involved in the so-called “caravan”. These organizations could either directly aid in Saharan crossings or contribute to subsidizing the journey at “discounted prices” in paying off professional smugglers. Either way, they’ll probably play a role in this process or at least attempt to, with the key variable being whether their homelands’ militaries deployed in the region will facilitate this or not. There could also be an interesting (and choreographed) interplay between these two actors whereby an increase in Western NGO smuggling activity is exploited to justify further military measures in Africa or vice-versa, with each of them “feeding” off of the other to result in more Western influence in the area in general.

Concluding Thoughts

When the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program spoke about the nightmare scenario of a Migrant Crisis 2.0 from Africa slamming into Europe’s shores in the coming years, this food-focused technocrat could hardly have known how geopolitically ominous his prediction was given the multitude of interconnected security challenges stretching across West and Central Africa. Close to 500 million people – or put another way, half a billion, which is approximately the size of the EU – could indeed be simultaneously pushed out of their homes by the consequences of state collapse and also be pulled into Europe by NGO facilitation, but the reality is that not every single one of those people will be able to afford the journey.

Even if a “only” quarter of them flee, which is roughly equal to the percentage that left Syria, that’s still more than 125 million people (the combined population of France and Italy), many of whom will probably succeed in at least making it to Africa’s Mediterranean shoreline. The forward deployment of Western military forces in the region, whether publicly marketed to be on an anti-migration basis or otherwise, can only do so much to stem the tide, and a comprehensive policy involving Mediterranean naval units will have to be fully coordinated with the “frontline states” of Spain, France, Italy, Malta, and Greece if Europe is to stave off this civilizational onslaught. In addition, this state of affairs will expectedly be exploited by the Brussels bureaucracy for its own “integrational” advantage.

At this moment, it’s difficult to imagine how else the EU can survive amidst this towering threat, but the bloc’s possible reform into a “decentralized” collection of “Three Seas”-led EuroRealist states might present an alternate solution. Some degree of multilateral coordination is required to confront this existential challenge, but everything could be managed through new sub-regional integrational platforms (even if informal) instead of Brussels, with a future “European military” comprised of the maritime “frontline states’” forces and their hinterland allies (such as Poland and Hungary) taking the lead instead of NATO, though this might in effect end up being the same thing at the end of the day. Nevertheless, the accent is on retaining as much national sovereignty as possible and thwarting the Liberal-Globalists’ plot to take advantage of this situation in order to demolish the nation-state.

*

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.

All images in this article are from the author.

Here is Putin in extemporaneous discussion and interview (translated into English): See this and this.

The second of those videos shows Putin offering Russia’s billionaires the choice between being dispossessed of their companies by the Government, or else signing an agreement with the Government, promising that they will henceforth place the welfare of their workers and of the people of Russia, above their own personal welfare and wealth, and only one billionaire there, Oleg Deripaska, hesitated, at which point Putin treated him contemptuously and Deripaska promptly signed.

Here is how Britain’s Express newspaper, on 7 October 2015, described that second  video (below):

It shows the 63-year-old [Putin], who has launched a blitz of more than 50 airstrikes against the terror regime [Syria’s ISIS] in recent days, directly confronting Russian oligarchs and ranting at them that they are good for nothing COCKROACHES.

In the incredible footage, Putin humiliates Oleg Deripaska, one of the world’s richest men with a fortune of $6m [Deripaska’s fortune in 2009 was actually $3.5 billion], and treats him like his personal lapdog.

It was filmed on a tour of Pikalevo, a struggling factory town where families had been venting their anger over job losses and unpaid wages.

Back when the Putin-Deripaska encounter happened, the right-wing British newspaper Telegraph had bannered, on 4 June 2009, “Vladimir Putin takes Oleg Deripaska to task”, and it placed their hostile slant on the event by sub-heading: “Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, publicly criticised his most faithful oligarch on Thursday in an attempt to deflect growing social discontent on to the country’s unpopular super-rich.” (Of course, the U.S. regime would ignore why Russia’s super-rich were “unpopular,” much less the fact that America’s super-rich were involved in these heists from Russia that had caused so much of Russia’s post-Soviet depression.)

Image below right: Putin and Deripaska

On 27 April 2018, Deripaska ceded control over the world’s second-largest aluminum-producer, Russal, and he did it because the United States regime had recently placed him and his corporations under new economic sanctions, which are allegedly focused against Russian billionaires who support Putin politically. If Deripaska wouldn’t cede control, then the sanctions-hit would be harder and more damaging to Russia’s economy, so Deripaska — in fulfillment of his agreement signed with Putin — ceded control.

In other words, Deripaska, whom Putin had actually forced to commit to placing Russia’s interests above their own, is now being treated by the U.S. regime as one of the chief people to ‘blame’ for Putin’s being in office, in Russia’s ‘dictatorship’.

This threat, by Putin, to Russia’s wealthiest (Deripaska having been one of the billionaires whom Putin didn’t dispossess when coming into power in 2000), wasn’t a staged PR event, but instead was simply the best-filmed instance of Putin’s standard policy, ever since becoming Russia’s leader: his policy that an aristocrat can lose everything if he places his interests above the nation’s interests.

This policy was the fundamental change from the prior, Boris Yeltsin, years, when Harvard’s economics department and the World Bank, during the immediate post-Soviet 1990s, came into Russia and set up the system, working in conjunction with Yeltsin’s friends, to funnel the future profits from Russia’s vast undervalued natural resources, into partnerships between Yeltsin’s friends and U.S. billionaires and affiliated investors. That American-led corruption sent the Russian economy into a tailspin, from which the new Russian President, Putin, rescued it, by laying down the law to the billionaires: that their interests were subordinate to, not dominant above, the nation’s interests. This is the principal difference between the ideology of today’s America, and of today’s Russia.

My 3 June 2014 article, “How and Why the U.S. Has Re-Started the Cold War (The Backstory that Precipitated Ukraine’s Civil War)”, showed, by means of graphs, that the economic depression which engulfed Russia (and which was totally ignored by the Western press) during 1990-2000, ended and reversed immediately following (when Putin came into power), and especially ever since around 2004, so that Russia’s economic growth-rate under Putin, at least the rate prior to America’s economic sanctions against Russia in 2014, was one of the world’s best and looked likely to pose serious competition to the U.S. aristocracy in the future. From the pits that were brought by the U.S. regime in Russia — including the massive heists from the Russian public — to the period of Putin’s rule in Russia, has been a sea-change, and the U.S. regime cannot tolerate it; they want the U.S. elite’s looting of Russia to return.

This is necessarily a simplified overview of the conflict between the U.S. regime and Russia, but it’s nonetheless true. In order to understand it more deeply, filling in the details during the period after the end of the Soviet Union — and of its communism, and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance mirror-image to America’s NATO alliance, till now — cannot meaningfully be done outside the context of the U.S. regime’s swindle of Russia ever since the night of 24 February 1990, when U.S. President George H.W. Bush told America’s allies that it was a lie to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev when Bush’s people had promised Gorbachev that if the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact ended, then NATO would not expand, not move “one inch to the east” toward Russia’s border — which the U.S. and those allies have since done all the way up to Russia’s border. (In reverse, it’s as if Russia now were placing its soldiers and its missiles on or near the Mexican border, and the Canadian border.) This swindle of Russia meant that though the Cold War did end on Russia’s side, it never yet has ended on America’s. The greed of the U.S. regime — and of its allies — seems to be endless, including, ultimately, grabbing Russia itself. Putin resists, and so they hate him. That’s the reality.

To the U.S. regime and it propagandists, Putin is “The Pariah” and “The West’s Public Enemy Number One”, but to the Russian people, he is the protector of their nation against the U.S. regime’s threats to Russia’s national sovereignty. More diametrically opposite views of the same man, could hardly even be imagined.

*

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.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Aiming to avoid a trade war, Trump is sending a quartet of trade hawks to Beijing on May 3 and 4 to meet with President Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials.

His team includes US Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and National Economic Council head Larry Kudlow.

They’ll meet with their Chinese counterparts. On Tuesday, Trump announced the trip, saying he hopes things will work out.

A previous article asked if a US/China trade war loomed. USTR Robert Lighthizer accused China of US Trade Act of 1974 violations.

Last August, he initiated an investigation into China’s intellectual property practices under Section 301 of the Trade Act, saying:

“The investigation will seek to determine whether acts, policies, and practices of the Government of China related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict US commerce.”

He may begin a new investigation, focusing on China’s cloud computing sector. The US Treasury is working on measures to restrict Chinese investments in sensitive US economic sectors, along with possibly restricting related exports to the nation.

Congressional legislation may expand US Committee on Foreign Investment authority to increase scrutiny of investments in America by certain countries, notably China.

Following Trump’s announced $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, threatening another $100 billion, US companies in China reported early fallout.

They’re experiencing delays in license approvals, mergers and acquisitions, along with longer waits to clear customs.

Resolving trade issues between both countries won’t be simple or short-term. Things could drag on for an extended time – very possibly leaving key disputes unresolved.

A Trump administration 2018 National Trade Estimate released earlier in April highlights what it calls significant “trade barriers.”

They include national policies on public health and environmental laws, food-labelling practices, even religious standards regarded as impediments to trade.

It calls Mexico’s hydrocarbon law a trade barrier because it requires foreign companies to use domestic courts to settle disputes – rather than unaccountable (corporate-run) international tribunals.

EU privacy legislation is considered a trade barrier. So are health policies designed to improve maternal and infant care.

Predominantly Muslim Malaysia was criticized for restricting alcohol imports. Numerous other trade barriers are listed, notably citing China.

US steel and aluminum tariffs on Chinese imports took effect. So have Beijing tariffs on US pork, apples and wine. Both countries announced $50 billion worth of tariffs on each other’s imports.

After Trump threatened another $100 billion, Beijing vowed to follow suit in response to further tariffs on its products.

US/Chinese talks next week could be contentious. They aren’t likely to resolve deep-seated trade disputes.

Beijing wants good economic and political relations with Washington. But it’s not about to yield to unreasonable demands.

Both countries hope a trade war can be avoided. It may be hard to avoid one.

A Final Comment

In mid-April, Trump shamefully flip-flopped on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) he condemned during the 2016 presidential campaign.

He ordered administration economic officials to “negotiate entry” into the agreement he pulled out of after taking office, calling it “horrible…a rape of our country…wealthy people…tak(ing) advantage of us.”

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach minced no words on Trump’s flip-flop saying:

His policy change “signal(s) that (he) does not give a crap about working people and cannot be trusted on anything.”

I made similar comments in numerous earlier articles on his deplorable domestic and geopolitical policies.

*

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

There are, of course, differences in the order of magnitude.  Whilst North Korea has maybe 25 nuclear missiles, Israel is estimated to have constructed a nuclear arsenal of up to 400 nuclear warheads – enough to destroy at least the whole of the Middle East and Europe. Furthermore, Israel has refused to be a party to both the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions and is therefore not subject – as is the rest of the international community – to official inspection by the OPCW, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.  This fact alone means that the Israeli state may well possess an arsenal of chemical WMD in addition to its undeclared nuclear capability.

That is a very frightening scenario indeed whereby a state of just 8 million people, on the Eastern Mediterranean, can dictate to and potentially threaten the entire world. It is also inexplicable as to why the other 190+ member states of the United Nations are prepared to accept an untenable situation whereby the government of Israel can apparently ride ‘a coach and horses’ through internationally agreed conventions on human and civil rights and on the accepted conventions on warfare including the absolute prohibition of chemical and biological weaponry.

The state of Israel is also not a party to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is not, therefore, subject to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as is the rest of the international community.

Notwithstanding the above facts, the Israel lobby in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels successfully infiltrates the centres of legislative and executive power in order to strengthen even further the grip of Likud Zionism upon US and EU foreign policy.  It is a very dangerous game, not least in its adverse impact upon worldwide antisemitism, which is so detrimental to Diaspora communities and to students on campus, particularly in America, and Britain.  Whilst the correlation is clear, it is, tragically, too often denied.

*

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

“Did I just shoot one of my former comrades for f___in’ AT&T?”                   – Excerpt from Smitten Gate [1]

“The true nature of 9/11 means that many of the events that followed are based on one very big lie.”                                                                              – George Grundy from his book: Death of a Nation [2]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

 Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The normalization of war and militarism is a sad fact of life, especially in the post 9/11 era.

Expenditures on the U.S. military have swollen to grotesque levels in the U.S. On Veterans Day, a grand military parade is in the works celebrating the American Armed Forces and its might.

For much of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, fear of Islamic terror in the wake of the 9/11 attacks provided an adequate excuse for America’s diversion of resources towards permanent warfare.

Mainstream media has played a key role in magnifying this public acceptance of war. One of the more notorious examples of this trend would be MSNBC anchor Brian Williams’ description of a U.S. Tomahawk missile strike in Syria last year as ‘beautiful.’ There is of course a general tendency of mainstream media to “play an important role propagandizing for war, not admitting mistakes and lies about war, helping maintain support for a war and being slow to end the war.” [3]

By presenting alternatives to pro-war narratives in public discourse, independent media, including sites like Global Research, have an important role to play in reversing the tide of war, and ushering in a course toward a humane and just peace. In this spirit, the Global Research News Hour radio program offers up two recently published books.

Smitten Gate has been billed “the first American antiwar novel to be published in decades.” It is the first work of fiction by previous guest, military veteran, and peace activist Stan Goff. Smitten Gate is notable for capturing a realistic portrait of the life of a career soldier without the glorifying and mythologizing that often saturates the writing of those ‘who have been there.’ At the same time, with its critical portrait of America’s role in foreign conflict, the narrative does not sink into stereotypes and tropes. As Goff explains on this week’s broadcast, “I wanted to write a book that looked like a war novel, that people who read war novels would pick up, and then maybe dislocate ’em a little bit, once they actually read the story.”

Smitten Gate is published by Club Orlov Press.

The follow up interview is with English-Australian author George Grundy. Grundy’s book, Death of a Nation: 9/11 and the Rise of Fascism in America recalls the most devastating attack on U.S. soil in living memory. This 500 page volume not only presents one of the most comprehensive challenges yet to the official 9/11 narrative, it details the legislative changes in American society that led to a sequence of deadly military conflicts, domestic surveillance, and a general curtailment on civil liberties. Grundy notes the xenophobia, Islamophobia, and mendacity exemplified by the Trump Administration as the latest signposts on a two decade road trip toward a fascist America.

Death of a Nation is published by Skyhorse Publishing.

Author interviews are conducted by special guest host Jonathan Wilson.

Stan Goff is an American author and a member of Veterans for Peace. During the period from January 1970 to February 1996, he served as an active duty member of the U.S. Armed Forces, including infantry and special operations.  

George W. Grundy is an English-Australian author, media professional blogger and businessman. He has worked in television production and international broadcast rights at the London offices of IMG. 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

 Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Notes:

1. Stan Goff (2017), p. 50, Smitten Gate, Club Orlov Press
2. George Grundy (2017), p. xvi, Death of a Nation: 9/11 and the Rise of Fascism in America
3. http://hope.journ.wwu.edu/tpilgrim/j190/J190findings.html

Commemorating the May 1968 civil rights movement, reflecting upon the “progressive Left”. This article was first published in August 2013

Once upon a time, in the early 1970′s, many people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerrillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia.

We also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted.

None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European “fascist” regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations.

I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition“in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011”, whose list of signatories includes a veritable who’s who of the Western Left. The petition claims that “The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”

The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only “hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria”.

They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing “in support of the slaughter of people”, although they are “allegedly friends of the Arabs”; they acknowledge that “the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries”, but blame them for “having done so with a clear cynical self-interest” and trying to “crush and subvert the uprising”. It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that “regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone”.

The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of “solidarity” from “intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements”, “with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country.” Nothing less!

This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today’s mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left’s thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan (“solidarity with Afghan women”) and Iraq (“they will be better off without Saddam”).

First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been relatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the “Alawi sect”, something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria.

Next, like it or not, the actions of “Russia, China and Iran” in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”. From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to “dictatorships”, but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic.

Moreover, it is “Russia and China” who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn’t it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: “never again!”?

The petition sees the events in Syria as an “extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”, but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty.

Finally, what should make anybody think that the “immediate” departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a “free, unified and independent Syria”? Aren’t the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements?

That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the “Stalinist” regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have taught us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the “revolution” in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy?

There have been repeated offers of negotiations by “Russia, China and Iran”, as well as from the “Assad regime” with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”). Shouldn’t one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The “Syrian regime” has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a “democratic future”, while a violent revolution can? Shouldn’t one give reform a chance?

However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian  interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the “global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments” can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn’t care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists.

And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine.

Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that “our” priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must “support” want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to “crush and subvert the uprising”).

Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don’t “support” the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how?

Moreover, the false impression that the “world powers have left the Syrian people alone” (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners.

Defenders of the petition will probably say that “we” must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the “people” revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly?

If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right.

This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West.  In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire.

In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism.

Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them.

But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements.

Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded “N”GO’s, colored revolutions, etc.

The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade.

Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence.

It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos.

People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog’s agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism.

But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances.

When I first heard Matt Brown was considering a run for Rhode Island governor, the first thing that struck me was how he’s spent the last decade since leaving office as secretary of state: first founding and then running Global Zero, an organization dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide by 2030. That work was certainly in direct contrast to a key focus of the state’s Congressional Delegation, which has thrown its political capital into development of a new class of nuclear-armed, ballistic missile submarines to be built at local Navy contractor General Dynamics-Electric Boat at the cost of up to $104-billion to U.S. taxpayers. Gov. Gina Raimondo, Brown’s opponent in this year’s Democratic primary, has also latched onto EB’s good fortune, dedicating more than $4-million in government funds to train the company’s workforce, labeling it one of the top jobs opportunities for the state.

I spoke to Brown by phone earlier this week, touching on his thoughts about nuclear weapons and Rhode Island’s role in producing them. The conversation evolved into a discussion on corporate power and the role of government in recent decades in enabling the most inequitable economic climate in America since the Gilded Age. As Brown sees it, his campaign will be about educating the public on these challenges with truthful and robust debate. The former founder of Rhode Island’s City Year school improvement program, Brown says his view of economic development distinguishes him from Raimondo, a former venture capitalist who has largely built her jobs growth plan around corporate subsidies and tax incentives—or what Brown characterizes as “giveaways.”

Below is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

***                                                                          

NUNES: Are nuclear weapons immoral?

BROWN: First of all, from a national security standpoint, spending a trillion-plus dollars over the next 30 years to modernize and expand our nuclear arsenal doesn’t make any sense. These are weapons we don’t use. They are weapons that are outdated at best. Even for people who believe that they have a deterrent role, we have 5,000 of them. We convened a commission at Global Zero several years ago chaired by [retired U.S. Marine Corps] General Jim Cartwright, who was the commander of nuclear forces. They did a deep and serious analysis of what actually is required just from a deterrent standpoint in terms of the size of the nuclear arsenal. These are experts. These are people who understand the war plans, who understand the strategy, who understand the geopolitics. And their determination was we needed no more than 900 nuclear weapons for deterrence. So the idea that we need to be building nuclear weapons and modernizing nuclear weapons doesn’t make any sense.

Matt Brown at the Global Zero London Summit 2011 (Source: The Simons Foundation)

In terms of the nature of nuclear weapons themselves, my view is that the destructive capacity of these weapons and the indiscriminate nature of that destruction inherently would kill civilians, would destroy environments, and potentially, in a large-scale nuclear war, would be destructive to the entire planet. These are not weapons with a legitimate military role. Some will make the case “Well, the point of nuclear weapons is deterrence. The point of nuclear weapons is to make sure nuclear weapons aren’t used.” But if you’re going to argue that the only role of nuclear weapons is deterrence, then the obvious next step is to say, “Well, then let’s move to a world in which we steadily and verifiably reduce all nuclear arsenals, and ultimately get to zero. The conclusion of a lot of experts and a lot of leaders is simply that nuclear weapons make the world more dangerous, not safer.

NUNES: You’re saying these are incredibly dangerous; they put the world at risk. You don’t think they have a justifiable, strategic purpose. They kill indiscriminately; some people would say that makes them immoral. Based on those facts, is General Dynamics-Electric Boat, a company that’s developing and expects to build one of these weapons systems, a company that is producing a dangerous weapon that’s also immoral?

BROWN: I’m talking about going forward. Looking backwards, what’s done is done. I’m certainly glad that if these things are going to be built, which they are right now, that the jobs are in Rhode Island. We certainly need the jobs. Having said that, we need to look at what we’re going to do going forward. And going forward, from a national security standpoint, spending a trillion dollars-plus of taxpayers’ money to build weapons that we don’t use and don’t need is not the best way to conduct our national security. And it’s certainly not the best economic development policy. As you know, there’s a boom-bust cycle to these kinds of jobs. I saw the bust and was here in the early 90s, and it was painful and devastating for a lot of people. It’s just not the smartest investment in terms of economic development. We need to invest in jobs and an economy that are stable and long-lasting.

As you’ve reported on, government dollars that go to the defense industry do not create as many jobs as investments in clean energy, healthcare, education, and other areas. For Rhode Island, the future of the economy is going to be and has to be being a leader in clean energy, a leader in healthcare, and a great place to start and run a small business. That’s the future of the economy. Unfortunately, the current [Raimondo] administration is taking us backwards on all three of those. Look at building a fracked gas plant [in Burrillville]. If we build a fracked gas plant, we can’t be a leader in clean energy. Defunding Medicaid has gutted the hospitals, and so our healthcare system locally is on the verge of collapsing. It’s essentially bankrupt and looking to sell itself to out of state corporations. And then giving one off giveaways in taxpayer dollars to massive corporations instead of helping out our small businesses, which are really the future of the economy.

We need a real economic development strategy that provides long-lasting, good, stable jobs that aren’t going to crash in a boom-bust cycle and aren’t going to be outsourced.

NUNES: Having interviewed a lot of elected and appointed officials in Rhode Island, I’ve not heard anyone say anything about nuclear weapons or Electric Boat that’s remotely as skeptical or critical as what you just said. I imagine that perspective you laid out would put you very much at odds with where the Congressional Delegation is at this point—Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, and [Rep.] Jim Langevin [in particular]—in terms of their incredibly strong advocacy for building this new Columbia-class of nuclear-armed submarines.

BROWN: What about what I said was in contrast to that?

NUNES: Jack Reed, as the ranking Democrat on the [Senate] Armed Services Committee, thinks that these submarines play an incredible strategic role. He thinks it’s a great jobs and economic development opportunity for the state. He thinks that the defense economy, generally speaking, is a great opportunity for the state. If they speak about threats geopolitically, they see these weapons as justified.

BROWN: I think that there’s not enough discussion at the state level. There’s more at the national level a discussion about national security issues. But these are issues that affect everybody right here on the ground. These aren’t just issues for Washington. By the way, this is why I’ve followed you. I think what you’re doing is important, because I think people here need to be part of the discussion. There needs to be much more focus and emphasis on questions of national security, because they affect all of us.

Just to say that there are rising threats, so we need to spend a trillion dollars on nuclear weapons—that doesn’t really answer the question. If political leaders and others want to make the case that we need to do this trillion dollar buildup of our nuclear arsenal, they should really explain what the missions of those weapons are going to be, because when you talk to the experts, the people who have commanded nuclear weapons strategy, they will tell you that you need no more than 900 weapons to carry out the current mission of deterrence. Not 5,000 nuclear weapons. I’d encourage anyone who wants to make the case to Rhode Islanders that they, as taxpayers, should contribute to a trillion dollar buildup of a 5,000-weapon nuclear arsenal to explain what everyone of those weapons is for. That’s the kind of discussion we ought to have. Just to say there are rising threats, and we need to spend a trillion dollars to deal with them, we ought to have more than that in our dialogue.

NUNES: I’ve thought the same thing. It seemed to me the public was being cheated out of a robust debate on this if Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse just say, “Oh, China and Russia. Big threats. Definitely need to do this. End of discussion.”

BROWN: They should also explain that nuclear weapons are not the only answers to a threat, by the way. In fact, they’re very far down the list. The United States now has conventional precision weapons that can get around the world very quickly and are very accurate in reaching their targets that do not indiscriminately kill civilians, that do not send radiation up into the environment that crosses all borders. These are weapons from the last century. We have other military strategies and responses to actual military threats.

NUNES: What do you think drives U.S. nuclear weapons policy and this modernization that Pres. Obama announced and now is being continued? If you talk to anti-war activists or anti-nuclear activists, they say it’s because people, including Jack Reed, are in the pockets of General Dynamics and these other defense companies that push for this.

BROWN: Part of it is that there is a small contingent of bureaucrats at the Pentagon—they called them the nuclear priesthood [in the 1980s]—who still believe that the answer to any national security concern that we have is to have a massive nuclear arsenal. I think they’re a small but influential group that uses tactics that are effective in Washington. And certainly, like everything else in our political system, there’s certainly the influence of corporations, of industry, and their money plays a role in policy-making, which it shouldn’t.

NUNES: I looked up campaign contributions to Gina Raimondo from General Dynamics-Electric Boat. The total was just under $11,000, most coming after she was sworn in as governor; $2,000 coming from the company president, Jeffrey Geiger; $1,000 coming from the head of human resources, Maura Dunn. Do you expect that this company’s going to oppose you or challenge you because of where you stand and your history of anti-nuclear advocacy?

BROWN: I don’t know. [Laughs.]

NUNES: It seems like people who run for political office in this state are intimidated or at least get in line with what Electric Boat wants to happen.

BROWN: Well, all I can do is tell you what I think. One of the things that’s important to me in this campaign is saying what I believe, and I think that’s all I can do.

NUNES: In terms of an economic development strategy, the Congressional Delegation and Gina Raimondo say defense-based jobs are this low-hanging fruit, and we’d be foolish not to go for it. It seemed like what you were saying earlier is these are unsustainable jobs because defense spending is so fickle, and this is Cold War economy stuff we should be moving beyond. Am I summarizing what you said correctly?

BROWN: Yeah, that’s right. The boom-bust problem. The poor return on the taxpayer dollar compared to investments in clean energy and healthcare, which I think are the future of the economy here, which we’re now going backwards on. Building a fracked gas plant in 2018 is crazy. We’ve got to use what we’ve got. We’ve got a lot of wind. We’ve got to use that. We’ve got to build an economy on that and solar, and we can be leaders in the new energy economy, and that’s going to be around for hundreds of years. That’s going to be the world energy system, and Rhode Island could be a leader. We could produce all of our energy with local, renewable resources and export it. These are the parts of the economy we need to be investing in. Not one off [deals]—I don’t even call them incentives. There’s a lot of evidence that, in fact, these giveaways to corporations are not incentives at all. They’re just not factors at all in their decisions about where to locate. They look at schools, roads, governance, other things.

These giveaway programs are just corporations playing states off of each other, and the taxpayers foot the bill. What do these multi-billion dollar, multi-national companies care about 10, 20, 30 million dollars? That’s a drop in the bucket to them, but it’s not to the taxpayers here who can barely rub two dimes together. So, same in this case [with General Dynamics-Electric Boat]. If General Dynamics needs to do some workforce training, that’s fine. But they can certainly afford to do it themselves. Again, to be clear, because we need jobs here, I’m glad they’re here. But I’m talking about what we do going forward. And going forward, that’s not real economic development. To be strong-armed by a corporation that made $30-billion-plus [in revenue] last year to pay for their workforce development when they could pay for it themselves is not the way to grow the economy.

The CEO of General Dynamics made $21-million [in 2016]. They spent, as you reported, $10-billion on stock buybacks from 2013 to 2016. They could have trained the workers themselves. That’s their job. We’ve already paid for the jobs once, right? This is a federal contract that they have paid for by taxpayers, including Rhode Island taxpayers. If they need another subsidy from Rhode Island taxpayers, then there’s something wrong with their business model; they can’t run their company and train their workers.

NUNES: Which I doubt is the case.

BROWN: Exactly. So then it’s just strong-arming Rhode Island taxpayers for a subsidy. [People] make the argument: Well, this is good workforce development for these workers. I’d say: Look, yes. We’ve got to do a better job preparing people for work in this state. But the answer to that is not to give millions of dollars to a massive corporation that doesn’t need it. It’s to invest in our education system. It’s to invest in our schools, which are literally falling apart—the school buildings—and what’s going on inside the school buildings often isn’t a lot better. We’re just not giving all of our kids a good education in this state.

The other option, of course, if General Dynamics is having a hard time attracting workers, is to pay them more than an average of $35,000 a year. I mean, raise the wages. They might be able to attract some more workers. Again: $35,000 a year average salary for the worker while the CEO’s getting paid $21-million.

You had a report a few days ago about some of the corporations that had gotten these giveaways from the taxpayers of the state [and] are paying salaries that are so low that their employees are ending up on Medicaid, and the taxpayers are then providing their healthcare. So, where’s the money going to? It’s going to the company, to the profits. We’ve seen this trend for four decades that people are working harder than ever, the companies they’re working for are more productive, but the benefits of that labor and the benefits of that productivity are going almost entirely to CEOs, shareholders, investors, the very wealthy—it’s not going to the workers, which is why incomes and wages have wavered between decline and stagnation. And it’s why, in Rhode Island, what people earn is not close to what they have to spend on the basic things that they need: housing, college, healthcare, childcare. And that’s the only economic fact that matters. They don’t have more money than they used to, but everything they need costs more. So life is harder. And that hasn’t happened by accident. It’s happened because government, for a long time, has made a lot of decisions that have created an economy where most of the money goes to big corporations, the very wealthy, big banks, and less and less to everyone else.

NUNES: How did you arrive at these opinions you’re expressing? When you were secretary of state I was in college, and I wasn’t following Rhode Island government as closely back then, so I don’t know what your stances were then. These are pretty progressive ideas that you’re talking about. What was your path to developing these opinions? Are they new? Did you always think this way?

BROWN: I grew up, as a kid, as an activist. My mother was part of the civil rights movement, of the anti-Vietnam War movement, and I grew up with her, going with her to all sorts of causes before I can even remember. And then, out of college, the first thing I did was to come back here and start City Year working in communities, working in schools that were disadvantaged and trying to do something to help. My basic worldview I’ve always had, which is that I think for a long time there have been deep trends in our state, in our country, in our world that have made life harder for a lot of people and have created a lot of problems: economical problems, social problems, social division, serious environmental problems. And my feeling is that the discussion in our political system, as we’ve been talking about, is just not seriously addressing these problems and not even really being truthful with the people about how serious the problems are and about what’s caused the problems. I’ve had that viewpoint for a longtime. The particular economic critique has probably emerged throughout my life, just like everyone else, watching the way things have gone, how extreme these trends are.

By the way, Rhode Island ranks very high in inequality, so we feel all these trends: the extreme concentration of wealth, the corporate dominance and monopolization that have crushed small businesses, environmental degradation, dominance of our political system by corporations and the wealthy that have contorted policy. Rhode Island, because we’re small, because we haven’t really had a robust economy since the manufacturing left 70 years ago, we’re more vulnerable to all these trends than a lot of other places are. So part of what I’m trying to do is to really lay out a plan of how we can solve these problems and counter these trends and build a different kind of economy here that’s really for people and not for corporations, and try to relentlessly tell the truth about what’s really going on and what it’s going to take to solve these problems.

*

Alex Nunes is an independent journalist based in Rhode Island. He has contributed reporting to NPR, Rhode Island Public Radio, The Providence Journal, and The Day of New London, Conn., among other news organizations. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a bachelor’s in sociology from Rhode Island College.

Featured image: Trees cut next to a highway in Belgium – to stop migrants from hiding in between them (Source)

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: 

“Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

*

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

Paraguay has become the latest nation in Latin America to follow in U.S. President Donald Trump‘s inflammatory footsteps by announcing plans to relocate its embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem.

President Horacio Cartes defended the move during a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Israeli state in Asuncion, Paraguay, insisting it was in response to a “political commitment” as well as a personal desire.

Cartes intends to complete the move before he leaves office in June as a means to honor the history of mutual respect and international relations shared between himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israeli Ambassador Zeev Harel said:

 “Paraguay is a friend and brother…The bilateral cooperation has grown in the fields of agriculture, in the subject of water, the exchange of technology, development of education innovation, we have the pleasure of sharing our knowledge with Paraguay.”

Late last year, Trump came under fire by the international community after taking the extraordinary step of formally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announcing plans to relocate the U.S. embassy by May 2018. Both were met with violent protests in Palestine.

The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the United States’ decision. Of the 193 votes, only Guatemala and six other countries sided with the United States and Israel. Paraguay abstained.

In the clearest sign to date, EU Ambassadors to Beijing have just released a document critical of China’s vast Belt, Road Initiative or New Economic Silk Road infrastructure project. All EU ambassadors excepting Hungary signed off on the paper in a declaration of growing EU opposition to what is arguably the most promising economic project in the past century if not more. The move fits conveniently with the recent Trump Administration targeting of China technology trade as tensions grow.

Twenty-seven of the 28 EU ambassadors to China have just signed a report sharply critical of China’s BRI development. Ironically, as if the EU states or their companies did not do the same, the report attacks China for using the BRI to hamper free trade and put Chinese companies at an advantage. The document claims that the Chinese New Economic Silk Road project, unveiled by Xi Jinping in 2013, “runs counter to the EU agenda for liberalizing trade and pushes the balance of power in favor of subsidized Chinese companies.”

Two Models of Global Development

Chinese President Xi Jinping first proposed what today is the Belt, Road Initiative, today the most ambitious infrastructure project in modern history, at a university in Kazakhstan five years ago in 2013. Despite repeated efforts by Beijing to enlist the European Union as a whole and individual EU member states, the majority to date have remained cool or distant with the exception of Hungary, Greece and several eastern EU countries. When China officially launched the project and held an international conference in Beijing in May 2017, it was largely boycotted by EU heads of state. Germany’s Merkel sent her economics minister who accused the Chinese of lack of commitments to social and environmental sustainability and transparency in procurement.

Now 27 of 28 EU ambassadors in Beijing have signed a statement suspiciously similar to that of the German position. According to the German business daily, Handelsblatt, the EU ambassadors’ declaration states that the China BRI “runs counter to the EU agenda for liberalizing trade and pushes the balance of power in favor of subsidized Chinese companies.” Hungary was the only country refusing to sign.

The latest EU statement, soon to be followed by a long critical report on the new Silk Road from the EU Commission in Brussels, fits very much the agenda of the Trump Administration in its latest trade tariffs against Chinese goods that alleges that Chinese companies force US partners to share technology in return for projects in China.

Moreover, the EU Commission has just released a long report on China in connection with new EU anti-dumping rules. The report declares that the fact that China is a state-directed economy with state-owned enterprises engaging in the construction of the Belt Road Initiative is in effect “the problem.” China answers that her economy is in the “primary stage of socialism”, has a “socialist market economy” and views the state-owned economy as the “leading force” of national development. The targeting of China’s state enterprises and of its state-directed economic model is a direct attack on her very economic model. Beijing is not about to scrap that we can be sure.

The latest stance of EU member states, led by Germany and Macron’s France, is an attempt to pressure China into adhering to the 2013 World Bank document, China 2030. There, as we noted in an earlier analysis, it declared that China must complete radical market reforms, to follow the failed Western “free market” model implemented in the West since the 1970’s with disastrous consequences for employment and stability. China 2030 states,

“It is imperative that China … develop a market-based system with sound foundations…while a vigorous private sector plays the more important role of driving growth.”

The report, cosigned then by the Chinese Finance Ministry and State Council, further declared that

“China’s strategy toward the world will need to be governed by a few key principles: open markets, fairness and equity, mutually beneficial cooperation, global inclusiveness and sustainable development.”

As Xi Jinping established his presidency and domination of the Party after 2013, China issued a quite different document that is integral to the BRI project of President Xi. This document, China 2025: Made in China, calls for China to emerge from its initial stage as an economy assembling technologies for Apple or GM or other Western multinationals under license, to become self-sufficient in its own technology. The dramatic success of China mobile phone company Huawei to rival Apple or Samsung is a case in point. Under China 2025 the goal is to develop the next transformation from that of a cheap-labor assembly economy to an exporter of Made in China products across the board from shipbuilding in context of the Maritime Silk Road to advanced aircraft to Artificial Intelligence and space technologies.

Refusal to Constructively Engage

By its recent critical actions, the EU Commission and most EU states are, while not slamming the door shut on what is developing as one of the few positive growth spots outside military spending in the world today, doing everything to lessen the engagement of EU states in the BRI.

For its part, China and Chinese state companies are investing in modernizing and developing deep water ports to handle the new Silk Road trade flows more efficiently. China’s State Oceanic Administration (SOA) is responsible for developing the so-called “blue economy” maritime ports and shipping infrastructure, the “belt” in Belt and Road. Last year China’s marine industries, exploitation of ocean resources and services such as tourism and container and other transport, generated the equivalent of more than $1 trillion turnover. Little wonder that China sees investment in ocean shipping and ports a high priority.

Sea lane shipping via the Malacca Strait and Suez is at present China’s life line for trade to EU states and vulnerable to potential US interdiction in event of a serious clash. Today twenty-five percent of world trade passes through the Malacca Strait. Creation of a network of new ports independent of that vulnerable passage is one aim of the BRI.

The Piraeus Example

China’s Maritime Silk Road envisions directing state investment into key sectors such as acquisition of port management agreements, investment in modernized container ports and related infrastructure in select EU states.

At present the most developed example is the Greek port of Piraeus, operated under an agreement with the Chinese state company, COSCO, as port operator. Modernization and more than €1.5 billion investment from China has dramatically increased the port’s importance. In 2016 Piraeus’s container traffic grew by over 14 percent and COSCO plans to turn Piraeus into the fifth largest European port for container traffic. Before COSCO, it was not even in the EU top 15 in 2007. In 2016 COSCO bought 51% of Piraeus Port Authority for €280 million, and now owns 66%. Last year Piraeus Port, COSCO and Shanghai Port Authority, China’s largest container port, signed a joint agreement to further boost trade and efficiency at Piraeus. Greek Deputy Economy Minister Stergios Pitsiorlas said at the time,

“The agreement means that huge quantities of goods will be transported to Piraeus from Shanghai.”

As the economically-troubled Greek economy produces few products China needs, China has encouraged growth of a mainstay of Greece’s economy, tourism trade with China. This year an estimated 200,000 Chinese tourists will visit Greece and spend billions there. As Piraeus is also a port for luxury cruise liners, Chinese cruise operators are servicing that as well. China company Fosun International, engaged in modernizing the former site of Athens Airport into one of the biggest real-estate projects in Europe, is also interested in investing in Greek tourism. Significantly, they own a share in Thomas Cook Group and are designing holiday packages aimed at the huge China tourist market. Fosun sees 1.5 million Chinese tourists in Greece in the next five years and is investing to accommodate at least a fair share.

Piraeus is only one part of China’s larger maritime strategy. Today Chinese ships handle a mere 25% of Chinese ocean container shipping. Part of the Made in China 2025 transformation is to increase that by investing in state-of-the-art commercial shipbuilding modernization. China’s State Oceanic Administration and the NDRC national development council have defined select industries in the port and shipbuilding sector as “strategic.” This means they get priority in receiving state support. Areas include upgrading fisheries, shipbuilding, and offshore oil and gas technologies and technologies for exploitation of deep sea resources. Further areas of priority in the current 5-year China state plan include developing a modern maritime services industry with coastal and sea tourism, public transport, and maritime finance. All these will benefit from the BRI Silk Road.

This is the heart of the present Xi Jinping transformation of China from a cheap labor screwdriver assembly economy to an increasingly self-reliant producer of its own high-technology products. This is what the ongoing Trump Section 301 and other trade war measures target. This is what the EU is increasingly trying to block. China is determined to develop and create new markets for its goods as well as new sources of imports. This is the essence of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Why import oil platforms from US companies if China can make them itself? Why charter Maersk or other EU shipping companies to carry Chinese goods to the EU market if China can do the same in their own ships? Isn’t the “free market,” so much touted since the 1970’s in the West, supposed to be about competition? In 2016 the Central Committee of China’s Communist Party and the State Council adopted the “Innovation Driven Development Strategy”, adopted in 2016 by the Central Committee and the State Council. According to this China intends to become an “innovative country” by 2020, to move into the top tier of innovative countries by 2030-35, and attain global leadership by 2050. This is what China 2025 is all about and why Washington and the EU Commission are alarmed. They have a plan. We in the West have so-called free markets.

Rather than take the Chinese strategy as a challenge to be better, they attack. For certain EU interests, free market works fine when they dominate the market. If someone comes along and does it one better, that is “unfair,” and they demand a “level playing field” as if the world economy was some kind of cricket field.

Silk Road Fund

One of the most amusing charges by EU countries against China and their state-guided economic model—a model not too different in essence by the way from the model used by Japan after the war or by South Korea– is that EU critics attack the funding practices of the China Silk Road Fund. A report by the German government has criticized the fact that Chinese state banks give some 80% of their loans for the BRI projects to Chinese companies.

The Silk Road Fund is a Chinese state fund established three years ago with $40 billion initial capital to finance select projects in Eurasia of the BRI or Silk Road. It is not to be confused with the separate Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Among its various projects to date are construction of a Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway; investment in the Karot Hydropower Project and other hydropower projects in Pakistan as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; or a share of Yamal LNG project in Russia.

The fact that a Chinese state-controlled fund, investing funds resulting from the hard work of Chinese people to produce real goods and services, decided to use its state funds to benefit Chinese companies is hardly surprising. The real issue is that the European Union as a group or the individual states so far have boycotted full engagement with what could be the locomotive of economic recovery for the entire EU. They could easily create their own versions of China’s Silk Road Fund, under whatever name, to give subsidized state-guaranteed credits to German or other EU companies for projects along the BRI, along the model of Germany’s Marshall Plan bank, KfW, which was used effectively in rebuilding communist East Germany after 1990. This it seems they do not want. So they boycott Chinafor lack of “transparency” instead.

These examples are useful to illustrate what is going on and how ineffective the EU “free market” model is against a coordinated state development strategy. It is time to rethink how France, Germany, and other EU member states rebuilt after World War II. The state played an essential role.

*

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

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.

Taken pleasantly by surprise, not least because of the speed at which the joint Panmunjom Declaration has materialised, the world cannot but rejoice. In the few months from the recent Winter Olympics in South Korea when the buds of peace sprouted, amidst sporting competition between nations, both leaders of North and South Korea have planted a tree of peace, shook hands and walked together, at one point hand in hand, promising Koreans of North and South peace. For the world, if the promise is fulfilled, the elimination of another flashpoint for war.

Granted this attempt at making peace has happened before, only to not bear the desired fruits of a much longed for peace and re-unification for the Korean Peninsula. The Korean War of American aggression (1950 to 1953) though ended was without a peace agreement. Instead, the armistice signed hung like a Sword of Damocles over the Peninsula threatening all of it, not just the North.

With luck this is now the past for, the circumstances this time are markedly different.

From the south comes Moon Jae-in, a leader long an advocate of peace for Korea. From the North, Kim Jong-un, with hands much strengthened by a nuclear arsenal that has irked Washington, notably the American President who dubbed Kim the “little rocket man”. A return volley from Pyongyang found much of the world wondering what “dotard” meant. According to the dictionary it means an old person who is senile and weak. But all the name- calling notwithstanding, yesterday Kim Jong-un stepped over the line and onto South Korean territory — albeit the de-militarised zone — the first time ever by a North Korean leader.

However, those who may be euphoric are strongly cautioned. History has clearly demonstrated that peace can only be delivered from beyond the Korean Peninsula because the Korean War, though fought on the Peninsula, was between two of today’s superpowers, China and the USA. For China, it is straightforward. Peace along its border is much welcomed. Whereas previously the USA is not easily persuaded that a Korean peace is of any advantage to herself, today the idea of a denuclearised North Korea could be very persuasive. And, a denuclearised Korean Peninsula is part of the Panmunjom Declaration.

Indeed, there is cause for optimism this time around and that both Washington and Beijing may yet endorse the Declaration, unfortunately, one other factor could be a stumbling block, America’s neoconservative deep state. They are not in a hurry to embrace peace, not on the Korean Peninsula nor elsewhere.

*

Askiah Adam is Executive Director of International Movement for a Just World (JUST) Malaysia.

Egypt has asked Israel officials to mediate in a dispute over a controversial Ethiopian dam that will drastically impact Cairo’s share of the Nile’s waters, sources have told The New Arab‘s sister publication.

The Egyptian government has requested Israel use its leverage in Ethiopia to ensure stalled talks over the latter’s controversial Renaissance Dam project resume, Egyptian diplomatic sources said on Thursday.

“Egypt’s move towards Israel has come after decision-makers have found themselves in an unfortunate position, with Addis Ababa refusing to attend talks in Cairo after the last meeting collapsed,” the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.

“Egypt has asked Israel to use its influence in Ethiopia to persuade the country to hold a new round of talks,”

The sources added that Egyptian officials have utilised recent communications, in which Tel Aviv has sought Egyptian mediation to end ongoing protests in Gaza, to make the request.

Earlier this month, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan met in Khartoum but talks ended with no deal on the lingering dispute of access to the Nile’s waters.

Egypt has called for another meeting in Cairo.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry last week warned Ethiopia that a chance to end the dispute would be lost if it did not attend talks.

“Egypt will not accept the status quo… and continues to defend the interests of its people regarding the Nile by several means,” Shoukry said.

The top diplomat said that Egypt has yet to receive a response from Addis Ababa and Khartoum to its invitation to the tripartite meeting in Cairo.

Cairo fears that once commissioned the dam will reduce water supplies from the Nile to Egypt. Ethiopia and Sudan are expected to benefit from the construction.

Egypt relies almost totally on the Nile for irrigation and drinking water, and says it has “historic rights” to the river, guaranteed by treaties from 1929 and 1959.

Egypt’s parliament recently passed a law allowing the government to restrict the cultivation of crops that require a large amount of water, amid the fears over the country’s water security.

Featured image: The Republican-controlled FCC’s vote to repeal net neutrality protections prompted nationwide protests. (Photo: Tim Carter/Flickr/cc)

In direct response to the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) December voteto repeal net neutrality protections, more than 100 mayors nationwide have now signed a pledge vowing to defend the open internet at the local level.

Unveiled by the mayors of New York City; Austin, Texas; and Portland, Oregon last month, the Cities Open Internet Pledge states that signatories will only conduct business with internet service providers (ISPs) that adhere to net neutrality standards, and reads in part,

“We each commit our city to take all available steps to ensure the internet remains open and to keep gatekeepers from throttling, blocking, or limiting government content.”

#BREAKING: over 100 mayors have joined our #NetNeutrality pledge to fight corporate interests and keep an open internet! Your city can still join us – head to https://t.co/tcioOO0aCX for more information. pic.twitter.com/4tV2SEPjGt

— Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) April 26, 2018

The mounting support for the pledge comes as the “slow and insidious” death of federal net neutrality rules has begun. While the Republican-controlled FCC was adamant about urgently repealing the rules leading up to last year’s vote, Chairman Ajit Pai is intentionally delaying the repeal, which could have been posted on Monday. His office has claimed that it is due to bureaucratic processes and a desire for a “smooth transition.”

However, as VICE explained, some experts believe the delay is actually a strategic move designed to buy time for Republicans in Congress to pass “a bogus net neutrality law” that they say will resolve the conflict between the telecommunications industry and consumers, “but whose real intention is to pre-empt tougher state laws, and block the FCC’s 2015 rules from being restored in the wake of a possible court loss.”

“If bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., won’t protect net neutrality against the FCC’s wrongheaded decision, local leaders are ready to step up for the people they represent,” declared Timothy Karr of the Free Press Action Fund, which partnered with a coalition of groups to create MayorsForNetNeutrality.org and enable residents to encourage their majors to sign the pledge.

Pointing out that the pledge has, on average, gained more than three supporters per day, Karr noted,

“So many mayors are signing on because they understand that an open internet is vital to the livelihood of their communities.”

St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson explained that “internet access is increasingly part of how we deliver services,” so sustaining the protections that bar ISPs from blocking, throttling, or charging more for certain content “is vitally important to ensure communications with our citizens, both daily and during emergencies.”

In addition to only working with ISPs that abide by the soon-to-be defunct federal regulations, pledge signatories also promise to:

• ensure an open internet connection for free or subsidized services for residents;
• mandate that ISPs post notices when blocking or prioritizing content;
•  monitor ISPs’ practices;
• encourage residents to use net neutrality-friendly ISPs; and
• follow net neutrality standards when providing internet service directly to residents via free public Wi-Fi or municipal broadband, which has increasingly garnered support in the wake of the FCC decision.

While city and state leaders increasingly use their platforms to defend the open internet, advocates and congressional Democrats are working to pass a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to overturn the FCC’s repeal.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who has introduced a resolution in the Senate, took to Twitter Thursday to note the widespread support for net neutrality rules among the American public and maintain pressure on Republican lawmakers to support his measure.

Supporting #NetNeutrality :

82% of Republicans
90% of Democrats
85% of Independents
100% of @SenateDems
1 (ONE) Senate Republican#OneMoreVote…

— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) April 26, 2018

In November 1917, Arthur Balfour, was Foreign Secretary in the British government of Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

‘At a meeting on 19 June, Balfour asked Lord Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann to submit a formula for a declaration. Over the next few weeks, a 143-word draft was prepared by the Zionist negotiating committee.’

‘Separately, a very different draft had been prepared by the Foreign Office.

The Foreign Office draft was strongly opposed by the Zionists, and was discarded.’

‘Following further discussion, a revised – and at just 46 words in length, much shorter – draft declaration was prepared and sent by Lord Rothschild to Balfour on 18 July. It was received by the Foreign Office, and the matter was brought to the Cabinet for formal consideration.’

‘As part of the War Cabinet discussions, views were sought from ten “representative” Jewish leaders. Those in favour comprised four members of the Zionist negotiating team (Rothschild, Weizmann, Sokolow and Samuel).’

The decision to release the declaration was taken by the British War Cabinet on 31 October 1917.’

In essence, the idea of an Israeli state was a Zionist construct from the late 19th century and their goal was eventually realised through pressure applied by them to the US President in 1948.  The eventual site of an Israeli state in Palestine was only confirmed after many other sites had been proposed and subsequently rejected.  The proposal of ‘a country without people for a people without a country’, was, of course, a Zionist fabrication, for Palestine had an indigenous Arab population there continuously for over a thousand years.

That fact was, however, intentionally concealed from the world as hundreds of Arab villages were razed to the ground in 1947/8, in an orgy of violence by armed Zionist militias comprising political refugees primarily from Eastern Europe; from Russia, Ukraine and Poland, the birthplaces of the majority of Zionism’s future leaders and politicians. Today, there are over one million Russians in Israel.

The truth is not easy reading nor the political intrigue that abounded in 1947/8 in Britain and America. An intrigue, that tragically, still abounds in both London and Washington, today.

*

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

Featured image is from YourNewsWire.

On April 30th 2018, we will be commemorating the 43d anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. US war crimes prevail. America used chemical weapons against an entire nation.  This article was first published by GR in August 2012

**

There are images from the U.S. War against Vietnam that have been indelibly imprinted on the minds of Americans who lived through it. One is the naked napalm-burned girl running from her village with flesh hanging off her body. Another is a photo of the piles of bodies from the My Lai massacre, where U.S. troops executed 504 civilians in a small village. Then there is the photograph of the silent scream of a woman student leaning over the body of her dead friend at Kent State University whose only crime was protesting the bombing of Cambodia in 1970. Finally, there is the memory of decorated members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War testifying at the Winter Soldier Hearings, often in tears, to atrocities in which they had participated during the war.

These pictures are heartbreaking. They expose the horrors of war. The U.S. War against Vietnam was televised, while images of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have intentionally been hidden from us. But what was not televised was the relentless ten years (1961-1971) of spraying millions of gallons of toxic herbicides over vast areas of South Vietnam. These chemicals exposed almost 5 million people, mostly civilians, to deadly consequences. The toxic herbicides, most notably Agent Orange, contained dioxin, one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).

From the beginning of the spraying 51 years ago, until today, millions of Vietnamese have died from, or been completely incapacitated by, diseases which the U. S. government recognizes are related to Agent Orange for purposes of granting compensation to Vietnam Veterans in the United States. The Vietnamese, who were the intended victims of this spraying, experienced the most intense, horrible impact on human health and environmental devastation. Second and third generations of children, born to parents exposed during the war and in areas of heavy spraying — un-remediated “hot spots” of dioxin contamination, — suffer unspeakable deformities that medical authorities attribute to the dioxin in Agent Orange.

The Vietnamese exposed to the chemical suffer from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Their children and grandchildren have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam were devastated and denuded. Centuries-old habitat was destroyed, and will not regenerate with the same diversity for hundreds of years. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles are threatened with extinction, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, causing dislocation of crop and animal life.

For the past 51 years, the Vietnamese people have been attempting to address this legacy of war by trying to get the United States and the chemical companies to accept responsibility for this ongoing nightmare. An unsuccessful legal action by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange against the chemical companies in U.S. federal court, begun in 2004, has nonetheless spawned a movement to hold the United States accountable for using such dangerous chemicals on civilian populations. The movement has resulted in pending legislation HR 2634 – The Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2011, which attempts to provide medical, rehabilitative and social service compensation to the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange, remediation of dioxin-contaminated “hot spots,” and medical services for the children and grandchildren of U. S. Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese-Americans who have been born with the same diseases and deformities.

Using weapons of war on civilian populations violates the laws of war, which recognize the principle of distinction between military and civilian objects, requiring armies to avoid civilian targets. These laws of war are enshrined in the Hague Convention and the Nuremberg principles, and are codified in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Optional Protocol of 1977, as well as the International Criminal Court statute. The aerial bombardments of civilian population centers in World Wars I and II violated the principle of distinction, as did the detonation of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9 of 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese people were killed in an instant, even though Japan was already negotiating the terms of surrender.

The use of Agent Orange on civilian populations violated the laws of war and yet no one has been held to account. Taxpayers pick up the tab of the Agent Orange Compensation fund for the U. S. Veterans at a cost of 1.52 billion dollars a year. The chemical companies, most specifically Dow and Monsanto, which profited from the manufacture of Agent Orange, paid a pittance to settle the veterans’ lawsuit to compensate them, as the unintended victims, for their Agent Orange related illnesses. But the Vietnamese continue to suffer from these violations with almost no recognition, as do the offspring of Agent Orange-exposed U.S. veterans and Vietnamese-Americans.

What is the difference between super powers like the United States violating the laws of war with impunity and the reports of killing of Syrian civilians by both sides in the current civil war? Does the United States have any credibility to demand governments and non-state actors end the killings of civilians, when through wars and drones and its refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the use of Agent Orange, the United States has and is engaging in the very conduct it publicly deplores?

In 1945, at the founding conference of the United Nations, the countries of the world determined:

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
• If we are to avoid sinking once again into the scourge of war, we must reaffirm the principles of the Charter and establish conditions under which countries take actions that promote rather than undermine justice and respect for our international legal obligations. The alternative is the law of the jungle, where only might makes right. It is time that right makes might.

August 10th marks 51 years since the beginning of the spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam. In commemoration, the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign urges you to observe 51 seconds of silence at 12 noon, to think about the horrors of wars which have occurred. We ask you to take action so as not to see future images of naked children running from napalm, or young soldiers wiping out the population of an entire village, or other atrocities associated with war, poverty, and violence around the world. We urge you to take at least 51 seconds for your action. In the United States, you can sign an orange post card to the U.S. Congress asking it to pass HR 2634. This would be a good start to assist the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange as well as the next generations of those exposed to these dangerous chemicals in both Vietnam and the United States.

Jeanne Mirer, a New York attorney, is president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. They are both on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign.

To sign the petition, go to http://www.vn-agentorange.org/

As Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, continues what Time Magazine described earlier this month as his “charm offensive,” Saudi-led airstrikes killed more than 20 people last week at a wedding party in northern Yemen. Women, including the bride, and children made up the bulk of the casualties.

Should we pay no attention to this and other, similar incidents? After all, Prince Mohammed is, we are told, a reformer and friend of the U.S.

He led the charge to grant Saudi women the right to drive a car, a change expected to take effect later this year. Prince Mohammed, or MBS as he is popularly known, also been credited with bringing the first movie theater to Saudi Arabia, as well as attracting Western spectacles like Cirque du Soleil to Riyadh.

In the United States, he has received favorable attention from different quarters. He has been courted by the Trump administration, the defense industries, and Texas oilmen. During a recent tour of the U.S., he had audiences with Oprah Winfrey, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger, John Kerry, and Michael Bloomberg. He hobnobbed with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and met the presidents of Harvard and MIT. He has been praised by Fox News and within the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

But, when you strip away the showmanship, the hype, and the fawning adoration of much of the Western media, MBS is a man with blood on his hands.

The incident involving the Yemeni wedding party is merely the latest atrocity committed by the Saudi Arabian government during its military intervention in Yemen, which started in March, 2015.

Since that time, nearly 6,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office. Other outlets have estimated the number could be much higher, in excess of 10,000 fatalities.

Saudi Arabia has utilized cluster bombs, supplied largely by Brazil and the United States, in many of its airstrikes. Cluster munitions were outlawed by the 103 countries ratifying the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Brazil, the United States, and Saudi Arabia were not among those countries.

Meanwhile, a Saudi-led blockade of the country has left more than 22 million Yemeni — more than 80 percent of the country’s population — without ready access to food, water, or health care.

“The situation in Yemen…looks like the apocalypse,” Mark Lowcock, the head of the United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, said in January.

More than 1 million Yemeni have contracted cholera, millions are suffering from acute malnutrition, and last year alone more than 50,000 Yemeni children died from starvation.

MBS is largely responsible for this disastrous intervention, which he has spearheaded since becoming the Saudi defense minister. According to the New York Times, he “took the lead, launching the war in March, 2015 without full coordination across the security services.”

However, Prince Mohammed did recently donate $930 million to the United Nations for humanitarian relief, nearly one-third of the total the U.N. is seeking for aid in Yemen this year. This gift is financially significant, but it is impossible not to question the Prince’s motives, given that he is the architect of policies that have inflicted such great harm in Yemen.

In MBS’ home country, where he is regarded by many as a reformer, he has not done much better. In fact, Saudi Arabia, a nation notorious for its human rights violations, has, by some measures, lost ground in terms of human rights since MBS came to power.

In its report on Saudi Arabia’s human rights record in 2017, the Human Rights Watch wrote:

“Saudi authorities continued their arbitrary arrests, trials, and convictions of peaceful dissidents. Dozens of human rights defenders and activists continued to serve long prison sentences for criticizing authorities or advocating political and rights reforms. Authorities continued to discriminate against women and religious minorities.”

In the area of domestic reform, in late 2017 MBS instigated a purge of prominent Saudis, resulting in the arrests of more than 500 people on charges of corruption. While few dispute that there is widespread corruption in Saudi Arabia, the main effects of the arrests may well have been to consolidate the Prince’s economic and political power.

Prince Mohammed has been celebrated here in the United States. He has rubbed elbows with Hollywood celebrities, promised to keep making arms deals with the U.S. government, and, human rights violations be damned, has continued to promote an image that casts him as a statesman.

At what point does the willingness of leading figures in the U.S. government, technology industries, entertainment, education, and beyond to court and praise Prince Mohammed discredit American values and make a mockery of our often-professed concerns for the sovereign rights of nations and the welfare of their citizens?

At what point does it become clear that Mohammed bin Salman is not a “man of the people,” but rather another power-hungry warmonger with little regard for the life he has taken or endangered?

It may be argued that creating an effective foreign policy for the United States in the 21st century depends on a return to many of the values on which the country was founded, including a fundamental opposition to tyranny. Refusing to align our country with despots like Prince Mohammed, with leaders who are willing to inflict the sort of suffering that has been visited on the Yemeni, would be an excellent place to start that process.

*

Will Tomer is Blade Letters and Op-Ed Editor. Contact Will Tomer at [email protected], 419-724-6404, or on Twitter @WillTomer.

With the world media focused on the discussions in Washington between US President Donald Trump and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron concerning the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Israeli government has adopted an increasingly provocative posture toward Iran while carrying out a buildup on its northern border in preparation for a military confrontation.

Macron bowed to Trump’s demand for an aggressive policy toward Iran aimed at further curtailing not only the country’s nuclear program, but also its conventional weapons, and rolling back its influence throughout the Middle East. Nevertheless, the reaction in Tel Aviv to the Franco-American summit was largely negative.

The Israeli perception is that Macron might succeed in brokering a deal that would deter the American president from the outright repudiation of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the nuclear deal reached between Iran and six major powers—the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany—in 2015. Trump faces a May 12 deadline for deciding whether to scrap the agreement and reimpose unilateral US sanctions against Iran. This would place Washington on a direct trajectory toward war with Iran, the preferred outcome of the Israeli government.

Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said in a radio interview Wednesday that the Iranian nuclear deal had to be “fundamentally amended, and if not, cancelled.” He warned that Macron and other European leaders had to understand that “putting pressure on Iran today can prevent violence and perhaps war tomorrow.”

The warning of a potential war made by the Israeli minister was by no means hypothetical. Israel has sharply escalated the danger of an all-out military confrontation with Iran.

Largely overshadowed by the April 14 US-British-French missile strikes launched against Syria on the phony pretext of a chemical weapons attack was an Israeli attack carried out against Syria six days earlier, with potentially even more far-reaching consequences.

The April 8 strike, a direct violation of international law and a violation of the sovereignty of two countries, was launched by US-supplied F-15 fighter jets flying over Lebanon against Syria’s T4 Air Base in the central province of Homs. The victims of the Israeli missiles included over a dozen military personnel, including seven Iranian military advisers, apparently the intended targets.

Iranian personnel are in Syria to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad, Tehran’s closest ally in the Arab world, against the bloody seven-year-old war for regime change orchestrated by the CIA and Washington’s regional allies. Tehran responded to the Israeli attack with an implicit threat of retaliation.

“When a regime assumes the right to violate another country’s airspace in a planned move and also targets forces fighting with terrorism, it should definitely consider its consequences and retaliatory actions,” the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, told reporters on Tuesday.

The Israeli government has answered Tehran with declarations that it is prepared for war.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and the security forces are ready for any development,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared recently. “We will fight whoever tries to harm us. We are not put off by the price and will exact a cost from those who want to harm us.”

Israeli army units have reportedly been reinforced on the Syrian and Lebanese borders, and the country’s air force has been placed on high alert.

The Western media has cast the escalating confrontation as pitting an aggressive Iran against a besieged Israel. This is nonsense. While Iran bowed to US and European pressure to limit its peaceful nuclear program, Israel remains the region’s sole nuclear power, with an arsenal estimated at 200 to 400 warheads. With the backing of Washington and its allies, Tel Aviv has steadfastly refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Meanwhile, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Saudi Arabia, which has emerged as the key regional ally in the US-Israeli axis against Iran, spent five times more than Tehran on military hardware in 2016.

Iran is a target because, as a regional power, it presents an obstacle to the US drive to exert undisputed hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. Iranian influence, including in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, has been strengthened by the catastrophic consequences of a quarter-century of US wars in the region.

The threat of an Israeli war against Iran has been underscored by a flurry of meetings between the US and Israeli military establishments. Gen. Joseph Votel, the chief of the US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, paid a visit to Israel on Monday, the first ever by a Centcom commander. His mission was apparently to assure the Netanyahu government that the US would not be carrying out Trump’s recent promise to withdraw American forces from Syria.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman then flew to Washington on Wednesday for talks with US officials, including Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser John Bolton. The agenda, according to the Israeli government, was countering Iran’s “expansion” in the Middle East, and especially in Syria.

There are, no doubt, divisions within the ruling establishment both in Washington and in Europe over Israel’s drive toward war with Iran. As the Washington Post reported,

“[S]ome foreign policy figures in Washington seem keen on letting Israel continue its covert campaign against the Iranians. They see Israeli strikes as necessary at a time when Mr. Trump wants to disengage from the Syrian conflict…”

On Wednesday, the daily Telegraph published an article drafted by Gen. Richard Dannatt, former chief of the British general staff, titled “War between Iran and Israel is coming—and Britain must take a stand against the former’s terrorist proxies.”

General Dannatt argues that

“we now face a situation where Iran, if left unchecked, will be the cause of a potentially devastating new war with Israel in the region.”

The former British commander makes the case that Israel faces an “intolerable threat” in Syria and Lebanon, concentrating his fire on Lebanon’s bourgeois Islamist Hezbollah movement, which he repeatedly charges with embedding its arms and fighters “among the civilian population,” providing a preemptive alibi for a future massacre of Lebanese civilians by the IDF.

“We must be prepared to expect Israel to defend its vital security interests robustly,” writes the British general. “Many criticize the IDF for being heavy-handed, but having quizzed their chiefs of staffs personally, I believe they would act within acceptable legal and moral standards.”

These “standards” have found recent expression in the IDF’s slaughter of unarmed demonstrators on the Israeli border with Gaza, where at least 40 have been shot dead and several thousand wounded.

A major factor driving Tel Aviv’s escalation toward war against Iran is the growth of social tensions within Israel. The most socially unequal of the so-called advanced countries after the United States, Israel is gripped by unending corruption scandals. Under these conditions, the Israeli government has ample motive for directing internal tensions outward in the form of war.

Similar motives underlie the support in Washington and among the other major imperialist powers for Israeli aggression and a far wider war in the Middle East.

The reckless policies being pursued by Israel and its backers in Washington, London and elsewhere threaten to trigger a region-wide conflict that could quickly draw in all of the major powers, including the world’s largest nuclear powers, the US and Russia. The only means of preventing such a catastrophe is the development of a mass movement of the international working class against war and the capitalist system that produces it.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

It has been nearly one year since the United States Forces Korea and the South Korean Defense Ministry first forced in key parts of the THAAD missile system using brute force against the residents who were peacefully blocking the road to the deployment site. Not much has changed, however, since the early morning of April 26, 2017. The struggle against the THAAD continues as construction for the base hosting the missile system continues. On April 23 of 2018, South Korean police forced 200 residents of Soseong-ri and anti-THAAD activists to disperse from their peaceful protest to make way for additional construction material and equipment to enter the deployment site of the THAAD missile system. Protesters mobilized on the night of April 22 in anticipation of construction material entering the THAAD base. They had set up to block Jinbat Bridge, which is the only road that leads to the military base. The residents and supporting peace keepers linked themselves to each other by wrapping large nets around their bodies. The protesters endured through cold rain overnight as well as confrontation with the police.

By the morning the South Korea’s Defense Ministry had deployed over 1,000 riot police to force the dispersal of the local residents and peace activists protesting on Jinbat Bridge. Over 15 protesters sustained some form of injury as a result of excessive force used by the riot police. At least three of them had to be taken to the local hospital. Less than two weeks ago, on April 12, the Defense Ministry deployed 3,000 riot cops to forcibly disperse protesters waging a peaceful sit-in protest on Jinbat Bridge and clear a path for construction material and equipment to enter the THAAD base.

Two photos above are from The Hankyoreh

The residents and members of the The Stop THAAD Peace Committee are also questioning the Defense Ministry’s decision to move forward with completing the construction of the facilities on the THAAD base so close to the the summit meeting between South and North Korea. Last week, the “Stop THAAD Peace Committee,” which is made up of six organizations that have been opposing the THAAD deployment, released a statement demanding an end to the construction of the THAAD base and an official promise “to withdraw the THAAD in the event of a peace treaty being signed.” The statement questioned whether the attempts by the U.S. and the South Korean Defense Ministry to complete the construction are a ploy to make the base permanent before a peace treaty is established on the Korean Peninsula.

The residents and peace keepers are also questioning the purpose of keeping the THAAD system, particularly after North Korea has announced that it is suspending nuclear tests and showing interest in negotiating for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. In light of North Korea demonstrating its commitment to the upcoming peace talks with South Korea and the United States, the Stop THAAD Peace Committee has called for all construction on the THAAD base be suspended at least through the summit meetings.

Throughout this month, many Korean people have been looking forward to the prospects for permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula. Meanwhile, the U.S. and South Korean governments continue to ignore the concerns of the Soseong-ri residents and continue to force the completion of the military base for the THAAD missile system. In the minds of the Soseong-ri residents and the Stop THAAD Peace Committee members, this is a direct contradiction to the South Korean government’s vow to work towards building the conditions necessary for the establishment of a permanent peace treaty.

On Friday (Korea Time), the leaders of North and South Korea, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, met at the truce village of Panmunjom for a historic summit that many Koreans believe could end the war and state of belligerence that has plagued both sides of the Korean Peninsula since the late 1940s.

Kim’s symbolic crossing of the border into the South could also pave the way for another precedent-shattering event: the planned summit in early June between Kim Jong-un and President Trump. If all goes well in the consecutive summits, the talks could end the threat of war—nuclear war—between North Korea and the United States and usher in a new era of peace in Northeast Asia.

To Korea hands who have seen tensions rise and fall over the years, the upcoming summits are a remarkable sign of progress toward ending a North Korean nuclear and missile program that started in the late 1980s to create a deterrent against the United States and succeeded in 2017 beyond anyone’s dreams in Pyongyang or Washington.

Read Full article on the Nation 

Adam Parsons, Business Correspondent for Sky News complains that the profession of journalism has never faced greater scrutiny. He blames first of all “fake news”. “It’s an expression that started life as a principled investigation into websites that peddled lies dressed up as the truths and was then appropriated by the President to pour contempt on reporters and facts he didn’t like,” laments Parsons, whilst forgetting just how many years fake news (or misinformation, disinformation or propaganda) has been propelled by his ‘Fleet Street’ colleagues.

He also detests the phrase “mainstream media,” and then blames, well, everyone else.

“It’s almost always used by people who harbour some grudge against journalism, or who believe in some grand conspiracy theory, or who just disagree with what they’ve read, heard or seen.”

Parsons ends his grievance piece with:

“So here’s the thing – the British media is great. Perhaps the best in the world – informed, opinionated, scrupulous, determined, envied and admired around the globe. It cherishes facts and truth, with a track record of exposing villainy and also cherishing and supporting its readers, viewers and listeners.”

So here are some home-truths for Parsons. The British press is regarded as the most “right–wing” and “biased” in Europe, according to research by YouGov.  In addition, the 2018 Edelman TRUST BAROMETER reveals a world of raging distrust by the public, which provides evidence that trust in the media, that being the ‘mainstream media’ has fallen, for the first time, below even that of politicians. Was that even possible? Its British report is more upbeat for the mainstream but still says that the news rejecters cite

“that the news is too biased, and that the news itself is controlled by “hidden agendas”.

These are hardly the ringing endorsements of the “best media in the world” are they?

From just about every subject you can think of affecting civil society, such as the alarming emergence of discrimination and racism, its hardly surprising that people, in general, do not trust the mainstream media as a whole when it’s largely the media stoking it all up in the first place.

To take one example of many – let’s look at the gas attack in Douma that ended with the bombing of Damascus by Britain, France and America. And let’s not forget, this incident has taken the whole world to the very brink of an international crisis that could have led anywhere and it was unanimously supported by the mainstream media.

Ann Wright – served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.  She was also a US diplomat and was in US Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.  She resigned from the US government in March 2003 in opposition to the lies the Bush administration was stating as the rationale for the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq.

Wright has a CV, personal knowledge and experience far greater in depth than the vast majority of mainstream media journalists. She wrote a piece for Consortium News highlighting her belief that the White Helmets is a propaganda outfit, not a humanitarian one and therfore doubts the veracity of evidence provided by them as to the gas attack.

Wright also refers to Max Blumenthal, an American author and journalist. He is a senior writer for Alternet and formerly a writer for The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, and Media Matters for America. His father was a writer and former aide to President Bill Clinton and aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Blumenthal ended his association with Al Akhbar in June 2012, over what he viewed as the newspaper’s pro-Assad editorial line during the Syrian Civil War. There is hardly a greater demonstration of his views here. He is no ‘Assad apologist’ – as the mainstream media like to brand these oppositional voices today. But even he reported that the White Helmets were created in Turkey by James Le Mesurier, a former British MI5 agent and exposed that the group has received at least $55 million from the British Foreign Office and $23 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as millions from the Kingdom of Qatar, which has backed a variety of extremist groups in Syria including Al Qaeda.

Blumenthal reports:

“When Defense Secretary James Mattis cited ‘social media’ in place of scientific evidence of a chemical attack in Duma, he was referring to video shot by members of the White Helmets. Similarly, when State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert sought to explain why the US bombed Syria before inspectors from the OPCW could produce a report from the ground, she claimed, ‘We have our own intelligence.’ With little else to offer, she was likely referring to social media material published by members of the White Helmets.”

Based on the evidence of social media and media clips shot by ‘The White Helmets’ rather than wait for the arrival of a team of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to assess whether chemicals had even been used in this latest incident, Trump gave the order to bomb. The same happened the year before.

When it was all over the first time around, US Defense Secretary James Mattis dropped a political bombshell when he said the U.S. has no evidence to confirm reports that the Syrian government had used the deadly chemical weapons on its citizens. The mainstream media were silent with this news.

Peter Hitchins wrote a piece about how the mainstream media were covering the gas attack.

“It began early on Sunday morning with claims of a gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus. Although the BBC were careful to state that the reports were unverified, my heart sank. The prominence being given to the story suggested that it didn’t much matter that they were not verified. Why lead a news bulletin on a main national material with unverified material, if you think verification matters a lot? Surely the old rule was ‘verify first’, then publish’?” 

For that Hitchins was roundly attacked by many, including the media. He has robustly responded.

Another accused ‘Assad apologist‘ happens to be twice winner of the British Press Awards‘ Journalist of the Year prize, and seven-time winner of the British Press Awards’ Foreign Correspondent of the Year – Robert Fisk. He has been Middle East correspondent since 1976 for various media; since 1989 he has been correspondent for The Independent, primarily based in Beirut. Just to be sure of his credentials though, he has lived in the Arab world for more than 40 years, covering Lebanon, five Israeli invasions, the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Algerian civil war, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq and the 2011 Arab revolutions. There’s no doubting this man’s C.V.

This time Fisk went against the mainstream media narrative based on what he saw. He got to the scene of the Douma gas attack unaided and unaccompanied. Here he reported that:

“the ‘”gas” videotape which horrified the world – despite all the doubters – is perfectly genuine. War stories, however, have a habit of growing darker. For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.”

Fisk interviews an eye-witness, one of many, who said:

“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”

For this, Fisk was practically branded a traitor – by none other than – Fact Checkers. But for some balance, here’s Snopes the FactChecker embroiled in their own secrecy scandal.

Pearson Sharp of One America News reports on battlefield conflict and specialises in the Middle East. He also interviewed doctors and witnesses at the clinic. They also said there was no chemical attack and that strangers came into the clinic and shouted “Gas!” and filmed the reaction. Again, the mainstream media never referred to this eye-witness evidence on the ground.

Ex British ambassadors Craig Murray and Peter Ford, both with extensive experience in the region have been heavily criticised, especially by the mainstream media for attempting to calm the situation by confirming that there was no real hard verifiable evidence of gas attacks perpetrated by the Syrian regime and therefore no reasonable, justifiable reason to carpet bomb areas of Damascus.

In fact, the only evidence that is actually available to everyone is that the gas attack claims are not to be trusted, the sources of what the US and UK governments are referring to are not to be trusted either. Did the mainstream media outlets not learn from their catastrophic errors in unquestioningly being co-opted by Tony Blair and his raft of lies when Britain engaged in its worst post-war foreign policy decision – to set the middle east on fire. This they blatantly did in the face of the world’s biggest anti-war demonstrations. They repeated this same old playbook of deceit and propaganda when it came to Libya.

Contrast the evidence we do have above with a few examples of headlines from the British press:

• Syria bombing: Chlorine and sarin gas WAS used in Douma attack says USA
• Pro-Assad Academics Blame Criticism On Conspiracy
• US says it has proof Assad’s regime carried out Douma gas attack

How does the saying go – rinse, wash, repeat. This is why the mainstream media are not trusted anymore. We’ve heard it all before. They are losing the informational war, they know it and are complaining about it. Parson’s should try to understand the terrible situation the British media has got itself into and offer some honest advice based on experience, not cry into his cornflakes that no-one loves him or his colleagues anymore.

From voices as diverse and distant as Malcolm X to today’s Jimmy Wales – criticism of mainstream media deception has been rife for decades. But the pinnacle of their mendacity and treachery to ordinary people across the Western world was Iraq. It was without a doubt the defining moment of its departure from reality. And quite rightly so.

Henry Giroux the Canadian scholar sums it up nicely:

“The mainstream media spins stories that are largely racist, violent, and irresponsible – stories that celebrate power and demonize victims, all the while camouflaging its influence under the cheap veneer of entertainment.”

The ‘mainstream media’ have an incredible amount of work to do to win back ‘hearts and minds’. Adam Parsons and Sky News are not meaningfully contributing to that struggle with this weeping hit piece that is, sadly, way off the mark.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health on Saturday warned that it is suffering from an unprecedented medical deficit.

Spokesman for the Ministry Ashraf al-Qedra said that the Ministry is facing the biggest drug shortage in 11 years after Gaza hospitals and medical centers have run out of 50% of essential drugs and medical supplies especially those related to emergencies.

Al-Qedra explained that this is the result of the Israeli violent targeting of peaceful protesters in the Great March of Return.

So far 46 Palestinians have been killed and over 7,000 injured, some of whom seriously, after being deliberately targeted by Israeli gunfire while taking part in the Great March of Return near Gaza’s eastern border.

*

Featured image is from TPIC.

On Monday, the New York Review of Books published an open letter and petition aimed at securing Western support for putting pressure on Turkey to end its occupation of Afrin, opposing further Turkish incursions into Syria, and backing autonomy for Rojava — the region of Northern Syria that has functioned autonomously since 2012 after its administration was taken over by U.S-allied Kurdish factions. Authored by the Emergency Committee for Rojava, it has since been signed by well-known progressive figures such as Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler in its bid to organize efforts for the fulfillment of the group’s demands.

Those demands are entirely focused on U.S. government policy. The petition asks the government to “impose economic and political sanctions on Turkey’s leadership, . . . embargo sales and delivery of weapons from NATO countries to Turkey, . . . insist upon Rojava’s representation in Syrian peace negotiations,” and – most paradoxically of all — “continue military support for the SDF [Syrian Democratic Forces],” the Kurdish-majority group that has acted as a U.S. proxy and has been accused of ethnic cleansing in its bid to construct a Kurdish ethnostate in Northern Syria.

The group’s first three demands are reasonable, in the sense of seeking to punish Turkey for its illegal invasion of Syrian territory. However, they are also rather fanciful, in the sense that the U.S. government is highly unlikely to stop weapons sales or to sanction Turkey, which it needs to court in order to prevent Ankara from pivoting towards Russia. Indeed, the U.S. — by refusing to support the Kurds during the battle for Afrin – made it clear that its “alliance” with Syrian Kurds is opportunistic and very much secondary to the U.S.’ relationship with Turkey.

The third demand is equally unlikely to come about, as Turkey has previously called the involvement of Syrian Kurds in peace talks unacceptable and has essentially issued an “it’s either us or them” ultimatum. In addition, past attempts to invite the Kurds to participate in the peace talks have been rejected by Western nations, including the United States, in order to please Turkey.

More recently, Kurds themselves refused to attend peace talks earlier this year over the Turkish occupation of Afrin in light of the lack of international response to that event. However, even prior to the occupation of Afrin, Syrian Kurds had declared they were “not bound” by any decisions made during Syrian peace talks, thereby weakening the peace process.

Yet, beyond the impractical nature of the petition’s first three demands, the final demand – that the U.S. continue military support for the Syrian Democratic Forces – is by far the most unusual, in the sense that well-known progressive figures, in signing this petition, are asking for the continued U.S. occupation of Syria and for increased military and financial support for the U.S. proxy forces, the SDF.

While most progressive figures, likely including those who signed the petition, would never publicly call for extending a U.S.-led military occupation, this petition shows that the war propaganda in Syria – particularly as it relates to the Kurds – has been highly effective in subverting the progressive anti-war left as it relates to the Syrian conflict.

Indeed, the Kurds in Syria have long been romanticized by Western media for having built “the world’s most progressive democracy” and for being trailblazers for gender equality and gay rights. While the Kurds have incorporated some progressive policies, the realities on the ground are more nuanced. Furthermore, the U.S.’ “support” for Rojava, which the petition seeks to extend, is hardly helping progressive or even Kurdish causes.

Distinguishing the Kurds and the SDF

Since the rise of Daesh (ISIS) in the Syrian conflict, Western media has placed the Kurds on a pedestal and has long treated them as the only “effective” fighters against the terrorist group. However, praising the local Kurdish militias for their fighting prowess has since given way to praising the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), even though the two could not be more different.

While the SDF does boast a significant portion of Kurds among its ranks, it is not expressly Kurdish and is an umbrella group of several militias. Though this itself is not concerning, the identities of many of its Arab fighters do give cause for concern. For instance, one of the groups operating under the SDF’s banner is the Deir Ezzor Military Council (DMC) — a group whose fighters were former members of Daesh and al-Nusra (Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate), who were “retrained” by U.S. forces in Northern Syria after surrendering to the SDF and U.S.-backed forces in Raqqa. In addition, tribes that were formerly allied with Daesh have joined forces with the SDF over the past year.

The loosely-knit coalition of Syrian rebel groups, including Kurdish factions, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are armed, trained and backed by the U.S. (SDF Photo)

In addition to hosting former members of Daesh and other terror organizations among its ranks, the SDF also regularly collaborates with Daesh in Northeastern Syria in targeting Syrian and Russian forces. Though the Kurds and Daesh are ostensible “enemies,” they have been shown to move amongst each other like allies, and Kurds have even worked alongside Daesh in coordination with U.S. special forces. Perhaps, then, it is little surprise that the SDF allowed Daesh terrorists to leave Raqqa peacefully last June as they took the city.

This collaboration with groups like Daesh, which the SDF has been praised in the West for fighting, has led to major defections of Kurds from the SDF — including SDF’s former spokesman Talal Silo, who accused the group of making secret deals with terrorists.

Along with their troubling ties and collaboration with Daesh, the SDF have participated in war crimes in Syria, in tandem with U.S. forces, and have been accused of ethnic cleansing in order to justify the establishment of a Kurdish ethnostate in Arab-majority areas of Northern Syria.

For instance, in the battle for Raqqa, the SDF — along with the U.S.-led coalition — committed war crimes, such as using chemical weapons and cutting off water supplies to Raqqa, which is still without water nearly a year after its “liberation.” The SDF also played a key role in the operation that left, by some estimates, as many as 8,000 dead and 160,000 more driven from their homes. The operation also left 80 percent of the city completely uninhabitable, and as many as 6,000 bodies are still believed to be buried in the rubble six months after the joint U.S-led coalition/SDF operation concluded.

Some journalists, such as Andrew Korybko, asserted that Raqqa’s civilian population was directly targeted because it was highly unlikely that any Arab, or non-Kurd for that matter, living in Arab-majority Raqqa would freely choose to live in a “Kurdish-dominated statelet” as a second-class citizen instead of choosing to have equal standing within the Syrian Arab Republic. In other words, the operation was, in part, targeting civilians who could resist Raqqa’s annexation by the U.S.-backed Kurds instead of Daesh forces, who were allowed to escape and were later re-assimilated into the SDF. The UN, however, has claimed that the SDF’s removal of Arab populations from Raqqa was done out of “military necessity” and thus did not constitute “ethnic cleansing.”

Have progressives thought through what they’re asking for?

Aside from the SDF, asking the U.S. to maintain its support of the group also means asking the U.S. to continue its illegal occupation of Syria. As MintPress has previously reported, the U.S.’ occupation of Syria is aimed at partitioning the country and preventing Syria’s Northeast from again coming under the control of the Syrian government.

Though partition has also been a goal of some U.S.-allied Kurdish nationalists, who have sought to use the division of Syria as a launching pad for an independent “Kurdistan,” the U.S. in recent months has made it clear that the partition of Northeastern Syria will not benefit the Kurds as much as Wahhabi Sunnis whose ideology is virtually indistinguishable from that of Daesh.

Early last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s new National Security Advisor John Bolton was working with U.S.-allied Middle Eastern nations to form an “Islamic coalition” that would replace the U.S. troops currently present in Northeastern Syria with an army composed of soldiers from nations like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. This coalition would be a permanent military “stabilizing force” in the region.

In addition to pushing for foreign Arab soldiers to police Rojava, the Trump administration has also sought Saudi commitment to funding the reconstruction of the region. Saudi Arabia — known for its deplorable treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, and funding terror groups like Daesh — and its Gulf allies are highly unlikely to support the Kurds’ nationalist aims as well as their “progressive” direct democracy and promotion of gender equality and gay rights. Indeed, Saudi Arabia is the complete opposite of the Western progressive view of the Kurds, as it is a dictatorial monarchy well known for its repression of women and minorities and execution of members of the LGBT community. However, it is also the country that the U.S. is seeking to give the leading role in governing the area of Syria it currently occupies.

In effect, by asking for the continuation of U.S. military presence in Syria in order to aid the SDF, the Emergency Committee for Rojava is actually undermining the “progressive” Kurds they seek to support — and aiding yet another U.S. government attempt at nation-building, which is likely to result in a Wahhabist enclave that would differ little from a Daesh-led “caliphate.”

The Emergency Committee for Rojava’s efforts come amid major attempts aimed at defending and extending the U.S.’ illegal involvement in Syria. However, this petition is aimed at Western progressives, the group that has historically opposed illegal U.S. military occupations and wars in the past. Given how it has enticed well-known members of the progressive community, the petition shows that the push for Western “humanitarian” intervention in Syria is stronger than ever.

*

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

Russia was never going to “intervene” in stopping the Armenian Color Revolution (or “people’s revolution” as its supporters at home and abroad are referring to it as), and manufacturing a news event out of this non-existent issue is useful only in furthering weaponized infowar narratives such as maintaining the so-called “Russian threat” and making it seem like President Putin “folded” in front of anti-government leader Nikol Pashinyan.

There was never any chance that Russia would “intervene” in Armenia, but that didn’t stop the country’s Color Revolution leader Nikol Pashinyan (image on the right) from reassuring his countrymen that this scenario has apparently been averted, an announcement that was gleefully spread all across the Western Mainstream Media these outlets’ self-interested “deep state” backers who were more than happy to remind the world about the omnipotent so-called “Russian threat” and frame this non-event in a way that makes it seem like President Putin “backed down”.

The Western public has been conditioned with a relentless stream of actual propaganda and a high degree of more professional infowar tactics to believe that the Russian reunification with Crimea wasn’t an exception to International Relations driven by the region’s historic, demographic, and geostrategic uniqueness from the rest of rump Ukraine, but was the beginning of a Eurasian-wide “hybrid war” blitzkrieg of which Armenia might have been the next so-called “victim” had it not been for Pashinyan.

The “Anti-Putin”

The hyper-nationalist figurehead aligned with the powerful Californian diaspora community is being presented as Armenia’s “anti-Putin” in the sense that he helped overthrow long-serving politician Serzh Sargsyan (image on the left) who was considered to be “Russia’s man”, which itself was a misleading description created in order to craft the perception that Moscow is somehow partially culpable for the country’s socio-economic malaise under the previous administration. For as ridiculous as this narrative is, Russia regrettably made itself an easy target because of its failure to communicate its “military diplomacy” with Azerbaijan to the masses, which allowed hostile foreign-backed forces and their domestic demagogic allies to portray it as “two-faced” and thus invent the supplementary storyline that Sargsyan was somehow “allowing” this happen by not “speaking out loudly enough” against it. Ignoring the fact that Russia is the only one of the three co-chairing Great Powers of the OSCE Minsk Group with a vested interest in regional stability, this narrative became believable to some people.

Russia surely explained its “military diplomacy” strategy to its Armenian counterparts from the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) but didn’t invest enough time, resources, or even – to be brutally honest –will to sufficiently carry this out on the civil society level. Most Armenians would probably have still disagreed for nationalist reasons with Russia’s approach, but it would have nevertheless allowed the country to be seen in a more positive light as a Great Power that cares about what its partner’s population thinks about it, not in the negative way that it’s been framed as a result of losing control over how its perception is managed. No matter the “distrust” that some Armenians have for Russia, most of them would never believe that the country would use its Gyumri military base to “intervene” in their affairs, the scenario of which was indirectly implied from Pashinyan’s statement. Instead, bringing up this non-event in the first place was preplanned in order to serve several objectives.

Twisting Minds

The first is that Pashinyan’s patrons wanted him to remind Armenians of the claims that Sargsyan was “Moscow’s man” in order to inspire them to continue their Color Revolution until they finally sweep out all Russian-friendly Republican Party elements from the country’s “deep state”, after which they and their oligarchic counterparts could be replaced with people loyal to the Californian – and not Moscow – diaspora in what is essentially an “oligarchic civil war” with geopolitical implications. This was anticipated to sustain the excessive nationalism that Pashinyan already harnessed by provoking people to inevitably imagine the “what if” scenario of this impossible event happening, thus allowing modern-day Armenia’s Color Revolution to surpass even 1980s Poland’s “Solidarity” in nationalist (but not necessarily anti-Russian) fervor. Relatedly, the second interconnected reason is that all of this allows Pashinyan to present himself as the vanguard force protecting Armenia’s interests and doing what Sargsyan himself was never able to supposedly do, and that’s “stand up” to President Putin.

This image of Pashinyan as a new Armenian “hero” is very important considering that the country’s parliament will choose its next Prime Minister at an extraordinary session on 1 May but that the political provocateur’s allies don’t have enough votes to officially make him the national leader. Accordingly, he’s doing everything that he can at this moment to sway some members of the Republican Party to his side otherwise he’ll keep them and the rest of the country in a state of indefinite Hybrid War blackmail until he gets what he wants. Although it’s still possible for Armenia’s comparatively more peaceful but nevertheless structurally similar version of “EuroMaidan” to be neutralized and potentially even reversed, it’s not at all likely that this will happen after the state proved that it lacks the backbone necessary for doing so and a critical mass of the population believes that the “revolution’s victory” is inevitable.

Exiting The Eurasian Union

Keeping with Pashinyan’s manufactured reputation as a “no-nonsense tough guy” who “isn’t afraid” to “stand up” to President Putin, it’s very likely that the coming “deep state” purge (“lustration”) that he and his Californian-backed supporters want to execute if they succeed in seizing total power will also see him attempting to renegotiate Armenia’s standing in the Russian-led Eurasian Union (EAU). Armenians are understandably upset at their failing state’s deteriorating economic conditions and have already been ginned up into a nationalist frenzy with the latest events, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for Pashinyan to steer their frustrations in the direction of the EAU on the preexisting infowar basis that he earlier propagated about this bloc being a “dangerous threat” to Armenia’s interests and partially to blame for its desperate socio-economic situation. There’s of course no truth in this statement, but that’s never stopped pro-Western Color Revolutionaries from uttering ridiculous statements for “populist” effect.

Just like with post-coup Ukraine, however, post-coup Armenia will probably endure similarly severe economic hardships much worse than what it went through in the period prior to the Color Revolution if it were to attempt any degree of disengagement from the Russian marketplace and/or attempt to expropriate the assets of what he and his followers might allege are “Russian-linked oligarchs”. Not only does Russia provide life-sustaining investment to Armenia, but its labor market gives many of that country’s compatriots an opportunity to earn a more decent living than they can in their own homeland, a “pressure valve” that could be instantly turned off if Armenia steps back from its legal EAU obligations in order to expand its recently signed “Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement” (CEPA) with the EU to a Ukrainian-like “Association Agreement” prior to being promised that it’ll join the bloc “sometime in the future” (which will predictably never come).

Concluding Thoughts

The West loves Pashinyan because they see him as being the “Armenian Saakashvili”, with all of the attendant anti-Russian geopolitical consequences that this brings. Furthermore, a pro-Western post-coup government in Armenia that steps away from the EAU would be an irresistibly tantalizing “former ally” for the American-backed EU to “poach” from President Putin, which would in effect allow it to “kill two birds with one stone” by fast-tracking Georgia’s EU membership as well in order to build an institutional bridge from the Black Sea to the Southern Caucasus. It’s unimportant to them that their newest vassal state might become poorer than the occupied Serbian Province of Kosovo because all that matters to the European-American (and of the latter, especially the wealthy Californian diaspora) elite is that they replace the supposed Russian oligarchs and gain ownership over their assets or at least the little that the country still has left.

That’s why the Western Mainstream Media’s manufacturing of the non-existent issue of Russia’s unwillingness to ”intervene” in Armenia into a popular “news” event takes on a certain strategic significance because it allows Pashinyan to present himself as the “anti-Putin” and also keeps the so-called “Russian threat” alive (mostly in the minds of the Western audience, not the Armenian one so much). The end result, as with all infowar operations, is to skillfully warp perceptions for geopolitical purposes, which in this case takes the form of “justifying” Armenia’s post-coup pivot towards the West via an exit from the EAU. Pashinyan is the perfect man to lead this movement because his hyper-nationalist credentials shield him from legitimate accusations that he’s actually acting contrary to the national interest, ergo why the Californian diaspora see him as “America’s man” in Armenia. While the “oligarchic civil war” isn’t yet over, it’s looking more and more like Washington might soon be able to claim a win over Moscow.

*

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.

Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep . . . It starts at 6:30 AM and, together with numerous other stressful construction noises, goes through breakfast, lunch, cocktail hour and dinner. In south Walton county, construction crews are permitted to work from 7 AM until 7 PM six days a week Monday through Saturday. Residents miss the white construction crews. They didn’t get going until 8 AM, knocked off at 3:30 PM, and didn’t work on Saturdays. But the Mexican construction crews produce non-stop construction noise 72 hours a week.

Construction noise is relentless. OSHA has added to it with beep-beeping machines. The noise, all penetrating, is very stressful. Many years ago on a large construction site a heavy equipment operator backed over a workman who, like the operator, was not paying attention. OSHA (Occupational and Safety Health Administration) mandated beep-beeps on all construction and earth moving equipment, and on all large trucks. Even some pickup trucks go beep-beep.

Noise from these trucks and equipment is pervasive. It would be interesting to know what the score is between the people killed by the stress of the noise vs. those not backed over by construction equipment and garbage trucks. One would think that today the beep-beep could be dispensed with and the problem of inattention handled by cameras. But don’t expect any logic or intelligence from OSHA. Little doubt but that the beep-beep manufacturers are a well-entrenched lobby in Washington.

In Japan there are noise ordinances that prevent real estate developers from dumping noise from their activities onto the lives of residents. This is the reason that Japanese homes are prefabricated and assembled, not constructed, on site. The ability of a profit-seeker to reduce the quality of life of others is limited by regulation. But in the barbaric US, nothing counts but profits.

Prefab home parts in Japan

In the US prefabs might not be appropriate in all circumstances, but 72 hours per week after week of construction noise inflicted on a neighborhood is certainly not appropriate. Yet, all rights belong to the outside developer, and none to residents, who can be surrounded on all four sides for years at a time with 72 hours a week of construction noise.

There has been excessive construction noise in south Walton for about 20 years ever since real estate speculators decided to destroy the communities along 30-A, the county road that fronts the Gulf of Mexico in the Florida panhandle. This was paper company land, and the paper company held on to it. Consequently, there was little development and miles of open beach with nothing but sand dunes and sea turtle nests. Birds galore. A person could walk the beach for miles and not see anyone.

Hurricane insurance was inexpensive, because there were relatively few dwellings, and thereby little exposure, and many were inexpensive one-story block houses low to the ground. Today hurricane insurance alone can drive out residents, but is an insignificant cost to vacation rental houses bringing in five figures weekly. The hurricane insurance rates go up with the rents, adding to the departure of residents.

The paper company threw in the towel. It was either the environmental harassment over the stench of the paper mill at Port St. Joe or it was Wall Street prodding the company with the threat of financing a takeover to capitalize on the development of its real estate assets, which are considerable.

Development occurred with a vengeance. New high-end communities were planned and created. But rental units, not communities, resulted. The three old communities that did exist, Inlet Beach, Seagrove, and Grayton Beach, fell under real estate attack.

An outside real estate speculator buys an Old Florida house that exudes character, knocks it down, and puts up a McMansion that sleeps 20-30 people. The communities are “protected” by codes that mandate single family residences. But fraud is permitted. The speculator says he is building a single family house, but he really is building a commercial rental that brings in $20,000 a week, a lot of money but a low per person cost when split among 20 to 30 occupants. In other words, it is a party house for commercial rentals, not the single family home it is misrepresented to be.

So, first there is the noise of the construction. Then there is the noise of the party house. Residents faced with the ruination of their neighborhood put their properties up for sale. More McMansions. More party houses. What was a community is transformed into vacation rentals.

A community “protected” by single-family zoning becomes a commercial area with no residents. Inlet Beach actually has a warehouse misrepresented by the builder as a single family dwelling. When the community protested this violation of the zoning, the county solved the problem by having the builder put a window into the windowless building. Apparently this re-classified the metal-sided warehouse as a single-family dwelling, although it is reportedly full of construction equipment.

The county government is happy with the code violations. The rentals, misrepresented as single family dwellings, bring in a large bed tax that pays for “tourist development” and perks for county employees. It also eliminates voters, making it easy for the interior parts of the county to shift the tax burden to the coastal commercial rentals.

Long term residents and vacation home owners are driven out not only by construction and party house noise, but also by the loss of their Gulf views and the transformation of the beach from a wild one to a Coney Island Beach advertised internationally.

In a civilized country, such as Japan, the view enjoyed by an owner is part of his property rights, but not in barbaric America. A Gulf view is something that can be appropriated by an outside real estate speculator who puts up a four-story McMansion in front of a resident’s property. By blocking the view, the outside real estate speculator can transfer value that was in the resident’s property to his speculation.

Moreover, the activities of outside real estate speculators overdevelop the area and create congestion, which uses up residents time in travel and makes an evening out a traffic ordeal. Nothing is the same. Beach communities give up and die. They are replaced with commercial enterprises.

According to economic theory, which is essentially a cover for looting and theft, free markets bring resources to their most highly valued use. This is not science. It is an ideology. It only works if there are no external costs or, if there are, the costs are compensated to those on whom they are imposed.

But free market real estate speculation does not compensate any of the costs that it imposes on others. Indeed, a case could be made that the external costs of real estate speculation in south Walton county exceed the value of the speculations constructed. The value of the communities that are destroyed are not counted as an offset to the profits of the activities that destroyed the communities.

Not only have many existing properties lost their Gulf views and been devalued, not only have people lost time from their lives in traffic congestion, not only have people’s enjoyment of their properties been reduced by endless construction and party house noise, not only have people’s finances been impacted by massive increases in property taxes and wind insurance, reflecting the high values of the McMansion $20,000 weekly rentals and high density, not only are people impacted by the cost of sewage fees replacing their septic tanks and by the tax burden they must shoulder for widening the two-lane highways into four lanes in order to provide some semblance of hurricane evacuation for the overdeveloped areas of south Walton county, they are also impacted by experiencing the loss of their community. It is similar to losing one’s village or town to a wartime bombing attack. What you knew and was part of your life is gone.

Highway widening goes through the middle of many communities, essentially destroying them. A family that lived far back from the road now has traffic passing through the front yard.

All of these costs, and there are more, are imposed on existing peoples and communities by outside real estate speculators. The speculators do not, and never will, live in the communities that they destroy. They are only concerned with their profits, and these profits originate in the ability of the speculators to impose the costs of their projects on every one else.

Can you imagine the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the Secretary of the US Treasury, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission all testifying before Congress that markets are self-regulating? Their testimony was just prior to the collapse of unregulated financial markets requiring trillions of newly printed dollars by the Federal Reserve to “save the system.” In their testimony ignorance spawned by ideology spoke through the mouths of these high public officers.

If markets are self-regulating, how is it possible for capitalists to impose their costs on third parties who do not share in the profits, but who experience enormous costs? If markets are self-regulating, how is it possible for real estate speculators to destroy entire communities?

Capitalism is a system whose costs in many instances exceed its benefits. It is often the case that capitalist profits owe their existence to the ability of capitalism to impose its costs on others. If the full costs of development in south Walton county had to be born by the developers, much of the development would not take place.

Karl Marx said that capitalism exists by exploiting labor, by paying labor less than labor’s contribution to the value of output. This is true today in the globalist corporation’s use of cheaper foreign labor to produce the goods and services sold to the domestic US market. However, another source of capitalist profits is the imposition of capitalism’s costs on the environment and on third parties who do not partake of the profits.

Capitalism is always profitable when its costs are paid by others.

What happens to Capitalism when there is nothing left to loot and nothing left to pollute? Being an exploitative system, capitalism is not sustainable. Unfortunately, greed drives the system to the limits of its logic. The system fails when the ruination it brings is complete.

Most real estate development has external costs, but depending on the character of the development, the costs vary in intensity. As Martin Anderson showed in his classic book, The Federal Bulldozer, urban renewal in inner cities displaced many low income ethnicities and replaced them with high income recipients. The external costs were the fate of the displaced ethnicities. When the rich purchased their high-dollar residences, the price did not include the costs to the people who lost their community.

Development in suburban countryside in which there are no established communities, if the development poses no threat to water and environmental resources and does not add noticeably to traffic congestion, has low external costs compared to block-busing established communities, as is occurring in south Walton county.

As population grows, mainly from mindlessly accepting immigrants difficult to assimilate, new homes are needed and will be built. But real estate development should be carefully regulated to ensure that its costs do not exceed its benefits.

In this article I have used real estate speculation to illustrate the nature of external costs. However, external costs are not limited to real estate. They are general and result from every economic activity. The point is not that the villain is real estate speculators. The point is that in America property rights are so poorly and often so one-sidedly defined, that the costs of capitalism can be imposed on those who are excluded from the profits. Without common sense regulation, the external costs can exceed the value of the projects that impose the costs.

Who is the bad guy in all of this? Is it the real estate developer or is it the failure of economists and legislators to take external costs seriously? It is the latter. Generally, external costs are explained away or disposed of theoretically on the grounds that they can be compensated. The US judicial system was poisoned by rightwing foundations underwriting law and economics courses taught to judges that, in effect, leave all rights in the hands of the capitalists.

It is the fault of law, not the developer, that he can come into your neighborhood or community, disrupt your life and activities with noise for long periods of time, block your view, create congestion, and cause your property taxes to rise even though your house has been devalued by the developer’s expropriation of your view. Americans are so brainwashed that they describe this as progress.

Think about the external costs of corporate agriculture and its herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers. Think about the external costs of concentrating 90 percent of the US media in six mega-companies repeating the identical propaganda. Think about the external costs of Google’s, Facebooks’ and YouTube’s ability to censure the Internet. Think about the external costs imposed on America by corporations offshoring their production of goods and services sold on the US market. Think about the external costs of fracking. Think about the external costs of energy exploration in environmentally sensitive areas.

Without common sense regulation and an understanding that Earth’s resources are finite, capitalism is a mechanism for destruction.

*

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

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

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

It was a historic gesture for ending decades of uneasy armistice conditions, as well as attempting to ease longstanding Korean peninsula tensions.

For the first time since US aggression on North Korea in the early 1950s, a DPRK leader walked across the border separating North from South, a significant gesture for peace and unity on the peninsula.

On Friday, the North Korea Times, the nation’s oldest online news service, said DPRK leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in began historic inter-Korean talks in Panmunjom’s truce village.

Kim crossed “the demarcation line into the South Korean half of the DMZ to meet” with his counterpart for summit talks.

Topics include formally ending the 1950s war, improving inter-Korean relations, and denuclearizing the peninsula, among other issues.

The summit precedes the first ever meeting between a DPRK and US leader, expected to take place in May or June – though by no means certain.

A tree-planting ceremony by Kim and Moon was hugely symbolic. It was from mixed soil from each nation, irrigated by North Korean river water – a pine tree signifying peace and prosperity.

The inscription on a plaque to be placed near the demarcation line will read:

“Peace and Prosperity Are Planted” – including signatures of both leaders.

Following afternoon talks, Kim and Moon declared willingness to work for peace and stability on the peninsula.

Kim’s delegation included nine senior DPRK officials, including Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader’s sister and key advisor.

After morning talks, Kim offered to visit Moon’s official Seoul residence if invited.

Before talks began, Kim wrote in the guest book:

“A new history begins now – at the starting point of an era of peace.”

“We should achieve good results by talking frankly about current issues.” said Kim, adding: “It’s a moment to write a new history of peace and prosperity.”

Moon replied:

“I hope we talk frankly to reach an agreement and present a big gift for Koreans and the people around the world who wish for peace.”

Stepping back from the brink for peace on the peninsula faces enormous obstacles – from Washington, not Pyongyang or Seoul.

Inter-Korean rapprochement and agreement to formally end the Korean War if this happens depends largely on how Washington reacts.

The DPRK has been threatened by hostile US administrations throughout the post-WW II period, why it sought nuclear weapons and long-range delivery system missiles – for self-defense, not offense.

Without genuine security guarantees, assured by allies, notably China and Russia, the DPRK isn’t likely to eliminate its most important deterrent against possible US aggression.

Given Washington’s permanent war policy, its long history of breaching agreements reached, its hostility toward all sovereign independent countries, it takes a giant leap of faith to believe it’ll turn a page on North Korea for peace on the peninsula.

Hold the cheers on possible normalized US/DPRK relations ahead. Washington’s rage for dominance is longstanding.

All sovereign nations not bowing to its will are threatened. Peace on the Korean peninsula may be unattainable.

Attempts to achieve it failed before. Neocon hardliners infesting Washington may undermine it ahead – whatever the outcome of a Kim/Trump summit if it occurs.

*

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

This story should make all our readers pretty angry. It’s about how the government picked on two Twitter accounts to help prove the story that automated Putin-bots are wrecking the Skripal/Novichok/Douma gas attack story, about how the Guardian newspaper is helping with this narrative and how Sky News then attack British citizens as Assad apologists and Russian sympathisers for questioning this narrative. They are all linked and it’s all rather pathetic to witness. It goes like this:

On the 19th of April, The Guardian (International Edition) published an article making the assertion that two Twitter accounts were Russian propaganda operations or as they like to put it ‘trolls and bots’ to unleash disinformation on to social media in the wake of the Salisbury poisoning.

The article is written by a rather unsuspecting and maybe, let’s be charitable here, nieve Heather Stewart, who went along with the government operative who fed this nonsense to her in the first place. Either that or she and The Guardian is deliberately distributing stories that are fake.

Stewart says

“according to fresh Whitehall analysis – Government sources said experts had uncovered an increase of up to 4,000% in the spread of propaganda from Russia-based accounts since the attack,– many of which were identifiable as automated bots. But civil servants identified a sharp increase in the flow of fake news after the Salisbury poisoning, which continued in the runup to the airstrikes on Syria.

One bot, @Ian56789, was sending 100 posts a day during a 12-day period from 7 April, and reached 23 million users, before the account was suspended. It focused on claims that the chemical weapons attack on Douma had been falsified, using the hashtag #falseflag. Another, @Partisangirl, reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over the same 12-day period.”

The article went on to promote how “Theresa May highlighted the cyber-threat from Russia in her Mansion House speech earlier this year, telling the Kremlin: “I have a very simple message for Russia. We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed.”

But there’s a problem with this.

The owners of both these Twitter accounts quickly stepped forward and on video too, demonstrating in no uncertain terms that they were, indeed are, in fact, real humans – and weren’t even Russian. They have defended themselves to prove they are definitely not software programs.

The Guardian should have taken this story down – its fake news, but they haven’t.

Ian of @Ian56789 even went on national TV, Sky News to be precise and he was quite definitely miffed about being called an automated Russian bot. How miffed –

“Government lies are very transparent and very easy to see and anyone who applies a smattering of critical thinking can see that the government story completely collapses,” says Ian.

Ian’s bio reads: “Advocate of Common Sense & Bill of Rights. Stock Mkt trader. Politics Analyst. Disseminating info. Calling out disinfo in the media. Stay curious!”

Sky News didn’t do their homework when it came to interviewing Ian. Ian took centre stage, went into peak livid mode and lambasted the government citing a Sky News report that confirmed Assad was no nutter and wouldn’t have brought this upon himself just at the point of winning the war. 7 minutes and 37 seconds later, Ian had reeled out more facts and figures about the Syrian war than anyone at Sky News.

The Sky News presenter then went on the attack and got Defence Correspondent Alistair Bunkell to snarl the accusation that @Ian56789 was being anti-British. What is interesting here is that SkyNews then confirmed it was the British government who had pinpointed Ian’s account as a fake ‘Putin-bot’.

Ian went ashen, was beside himself and was in no way going to let some spotty nosed so-called expert representing the lying spies from the establishment get one over on him. Bunkell consistently interrupted our Ian and then brought up a tweet from 2012 – that is one tweet from the 157,000 tweets our Ian has spurted out since 2011.

Ian, clearly suffering from a bit of high blood pressure by now has turned red and is still consistently being attacked and interrupted by both SkyNews presenters.

Ian is rediculously forced to confirm he is not Russian or connected to Russian spies and proudly states

“I am an ordinary British citizen”

Our Ian has been sharpening the knives and pulls out sabre number one –

“my research is based on credible journalists – now, there aren’t any of them on Sky News.”

@Ian56789 is locked and loaded, out comes sabre number two –

“the only people, journalists that is, that knows whats going on and reporting honestly are Peter Hitchins and Tucker Carlson in the US.”

Sky News presenters now on the backfoot interrupt our Ian again and then try to put the seed of doubt in his story by asking if there was any possibility that Russian propagandists had seeped into his tweet fan base, that frankly, to everyone’s surprise, Ian included, has now suddenly risen to 37,500. Ian whips out his sabre once again, wipes the mainstream media blood still dripping off its deadly edges and goes for one final fatal blow –

“What does it mean by being pro-British – does it mean being interested in the 60 million British people or the interests of the clique in the UK government, the cabinet – who are doing things for their own personal benefit and the benefit of their cronies. Theresa May’s husband runs a large hedge fund who has profited heavily from bombing Syria – I speak on behalf on 59.9 million people – I do  not speak for the UK government who do not work for the British people“

@Ian56789 – THREE, Sky News presenters NIL.

Sky News ends the interview whilst our Ian continues to complain about Theresa May – before he’s turned off and they switch to the all-important news that a foreigner called – Arsène Wenger has retired from a game called football somewhere in the capital.

What is evident here is that the government have clearly, mistakenly, tried to create a cover story for their disastrous Skripal story as the pretext for bombing Syria. Yet again, they had not done their homework.

The Guardian article was published on the 19th, was called out as 100 percent wrong the following day and 8 days later is still being promoted. It’s fake news.

Then, national television attempts to discredit a member of the general public – who is not a trained professional, who is put up as bait to be discredited in the eyes of the general public, family and friends.

Well done Ian. Not afraid to stand up for himself and his beliefs as a British citizen, not afraid that his own government and the mainstream media would attack him live on air in front of millions – and not afraid to air his critical views.

There aren’t enough people like Ian.

These are the false claims of The Guardian Newspaper, the false claims of the government and false claims of Sky News – shame on them. The only one thing that one can say in Sky News’ defence is that they aired it at all. But then again, it was live, they weren’t expecting Ian, because they too, had not done their homework.

Watch fearless Ian56789 take a stand. It might not be pretty but it is real.

Dear Readers,

More than ever, Global Research needs your support. Our task as an independent media is to “Battle the Lie”.

“Lying” in mainstream journalism has become the “new normal”: mainstream journalists are pressured to comply. Some journalists refuse.

Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.

While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.

Consider Making a Donation to Global Research

When the Lie becomes the Truth, there is no turning backwards. 

Support Global Research.

*    *    *

The historic meeting between Moon Jae-in of South Korea and his North Korean counterpart has set the stage for further negotiations. Will the meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump take place? According to the US president it’s “up in the air”… “It could be that maybe the meeting doesn’t even take place. Who knows?

The Kim-Moon DMZ Summit: Sophisticated North Korean Diplomacy Rewards Kim Jong-un

By Federico Pieraccini, April 27, 2018

Preparations for the meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump are for the moment continuing without a hitch. The next step is today’s  historic meeting between Moon Jae-in of South Korea and his North Korean counterpart. On the table are several possibilities. Pyongyang’s strategy seems to be much more refined than it may seem.

The Kim-Moon DMZ Summit: Full Text of the Panmunjeon Declaration

By Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un, April 27, 2018

During this momentous period of historical transformation on the Korean Peninsula, reflecting the enduring aspiration of the Korean people for peace, prosperity and unification, President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea held an Inter-Korean Summit Meeting at the ‘Peace House’ at Panmunjeom on April 27, 2018.

DPRK’s Closing the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site

By 38 North, April 26, 2018

On April 20, North Korea made the dramatic announcement[1] of several decisions that included suspending further nuclear and missile tests and that its “nuclear test center would be discarded in order to ensure the transparency of the suspension of the nuclear test.”[2] A number of analysts, including a Washington Post column by Max Boot on Saturday, mistakenly dismiss the offer by claiming that the test site is probably unusable anyway.

North Korea and the Dangers of Nuclear War. The Demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula. Towards a Peace Agreement.

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 25, 2018

This text is the transcript of  Professor Michel Chossudovsky‘s presentation at the ROK National Assembly, 국회의사당,  Seoul, South Korea, February 21, 2018. This text also puts forth a North-South peace agreement proposal which hinges upon the annulment of the US-ROK Joint Forces Command which puts ROK forces under the command of the Pentagon. The Korean language version of this text has been circulated widely among politicians and activists in the Republic of Korea.

Koreas Agree to Call for Formal End to War This Year

By Kim Rahn, April 27, 2018

South and North Korea will seek to hold tripartite talks with the United States, or talks including China, with the goal of declaring an end to the Korean War (1950-53) this year and establishing permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula, President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced Friday.

Video: On a Korean Peace Plan, The Role of the CIA. The Kim-Trump Summit, Will it Take Place?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Michael Welch, April 27, 2018

The Pompeo-Kim secret meeting was the result of a series of bilateral meetings between North and South Korea intelligence officials, which led to setting an agenda for future Kim-Trump summit. While a draft agreement has already been formulated, the Kim-Trump meeting is up in the air.

“Killing a man who says ‘No!’ is a risky business,” the priest replied, “because even a corpse can go on whispering ‘No! No! No! with a persistence and obstinacy that only certain corpses are capable of.  And how can you silence a corpse?”   Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine

Fifty years have elapsed since Thomas Merton died under mysterious circumstances in a cottage at a Red Cross Conference Center outside Bangkok, Thailand where he was attending an international inter-faith monastic conference.  The truth behind his death has been concealed until now through the lies and deceptions of a cast of characters, religious, secular, and U.S. governmental, whose actions chill one to the bone.  But he has finally found his voice through Hugh Turley and David Martin, who tell the suppressed truth of Merton’s last minutes on earth on December 10, 1968.

This is an extraordinary book in so many ways.  First, because the authors prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Trappist monk and anti-war writer Thomas Merton was assassinated and did not die in a fabricated accident, as has been claimed for all these years.

Second, because it is so meticulously researched, sourced, documented, and logically argued that it puts to shame and the lie to so many works, including academic ones, that purport to be profound but fall apart once carefully inspected, especially all those that have been written about Merton and his alleged accidental death. These false accounts of his death, obviously presented purposely by the key players – that he was electrocuted by a fan while wet from a shower – have been repeated ad nauseam over fifty years as if curiosity were reserved for cats and a writer’s job were to repeat commonplace absurdities. And of course the mainstream media, the prime organs of propaganda dissemination, have carried out their function by repeating these lies at every turn. The transparency of Turley and Martin’s presentation is greatly enhanced by the presence of footnotes, not endnotes, which allow readers to easily check sources as they read. Most footnotes refer to primary documents – letters, police reports, etc. – that are reproduced in an appendix that is, however, in need of enlargement, but whose contents have, for some odd or not so odd reasons, escaped the thousands of writers who’ve penned words about Merton.

Third, because it greatly expands our understanding of that fateful year – 1968 – by adding the prophetic Merton’s name to the list of well-known anti-war leaders – MLK and RFK – who were slain that year by U.S. government operatives intent on crushing the growing opposition to their genocidal war waged on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The links between these assassinations are made manifest as one follows the authors’ brilliant analysis that allows an informed reader to see the template common to them all and one that clearly leads to intelligence agencies practiced in the arts of murder and cover-up.

Fourth, because it proves that in the long run the pen is mightier than the sword, and the spiritually powerful poetic words of a God-entranced man living in seclusion can rattle the cages of men who embrace the void of violence while rejecting the spiritual essence of all religions – that non-violence and love are the laws of existence.  Merton may be dead for his killers, but not for those who hear his voice whispering on every page:

“The very thoughts of a person like me are crimes against the state.  All I have to do is think: and immediately I become guilty,” Merton wrote in “A Signed Confession of Crimes Against the State.”

Lastly, because The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton markedly forces the reader to face its harsh truths and examine one’s soul and complicity in evil as one learns of the perfidy and betrayal of Merton by friends, associates, and biographers whom a naïve person might assume are beyond reproach, until, that is, one reads this book.  It is a very hard lesson to accept and understand.  But Hugh Turley and David Martin sequentially force the reader to contemplate such matters; to conjecture why some have conspired and abetted in Merton’s murder and especially its fifty year cover-up.

Thomas Merton (Fr. Lewis) was a Catholic monk, poet, writer and theologian who became very well-known in 1948 with the publication of his autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, which became a bestseller.  Over the next dozen or so years, he published many books on religious themes, mainly avoiding social or political subjects.  But although he lived in a monastery, and eventually by himself in a hermitage nearby, he corresponded widely and was tuned in to worldly events.  He became a friend and mentor to religious/political activists such as Martin Luther King, Fathers Philip and Daniel Berrigan, James Douglass, among many others.  He was a friend of Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker.  He corresponded with Boris Pasternak and Ethel Kennedy; wrote about Albert Camus and Eugene Ionesco.  During the 1960s his writing turned more overtly political while remaining rooted in a deep mystical and contemplative spirituality.  He became a major inspiration for radical activists who opposed nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War, and the materialist way of life fostered by capitalism that relied on the spread of the American empire through world-wide violence.  Although living far away from the din and drama of day-to-day politics, his writing, encouragement, and influence were profound, and he became a major impediment to the propaganda and policies of the military-industrial-political-intelligence-complex.  He was an inspiration whose spirit disturbed church and state in the most radical way. Turley and Martin say of him:

Merton saw clearly that devotion to truth could not help but bring a person into conflict with sinister special interests.  The effectiveness of the truth-seeker would, of course, be greater to the extent he could rally others to his cause, but ultimately, he said, the truth seeker’s strength lay in trust in God.

Merton died on the afternoon of December 10, 1968 when those sinister special interests snuck up on him.  He had just given a talk, had lunch, and returned to his cottage shortly before 2 P.M., accompanied by Fr. Francois de Grunne, O.S.B. (Order of Saint Benedict) from Belgium, who shared the cottage with Merton and two others, Fr. Celestine Say, O.S.B. from the Philippines, whose room was across from Merton’s on the first floor, and John Moffit, a journalist editor whose room was directly over Merton’s on the second floor adjacent to de Grunne’s. The walk from the dining hall to the cottage took 10-15 minutes.  Say and Moffit were walking a good distance behind Merton and de Grunne and arrived at the cottage about 5-7 minutes after them. When they entered the unlocked building, they did not see Merton and de Grunne and presumed they had gone to their respective rooms.

Shortly after de Grunne and Merton entered the cottage, Merton was killed.  The actions of de Grunne, a mysterious figure who, according to the authors, “seems to have fallen off the face of the earth” and whose “abbey will not even respond to our questions about him,” clearly make him a prime suspect in the crime.  His actions and story are not believable and are contradicted by the most reliable witness, Fr. Say, whose statements have been absolutely consistent.

Beyond speculation, however, are the facts gathered by the authors that clearly prove that from the start there was a concerted effort to make a crime look like an accident.  These efforts were initiated by de Grunne, who was the first to call it an “accident,” but ably assisted by many others, including the Thai police or their surrogates, whose police report was released by the U.S. Embassy seven months after Merton’s death and has no title, author, date, photographs, laboratory reports, or investigators’ memos, and omits the testimony of the first two witnesses on the scene, Fr. Say and Fr. Egbert Donovan, who viewed Merton lying in a position and dressed in shorts totally inconsistent with the accidental death scenario.  Most importantly, this “report” omits an autopsy report since no autopsy was conducted, a dead giveaway that a cover-up was underway.  When a person is found dead, the first assumption of a competent investigation is that a crime may have been committed, and when the victim is found with a severe gash on the back of his head, is lying in a position inconsistent with an accident, an autopsy becomes essential.  But none was performed in Thailand or when Merton’s body arrived back at the Abbey of Gethsemane.  That the United States Embassy, at the request of Most Reverend Dom Rembert Weakland, O.S.B., who was presiding over the conference, had the U.S Army take possession of Merton’s body shortly thereafter, embalm it, and five days later fly it back to the U.S. aboard a military plane together with the corpses of American casualties of the Vietnam War is not only supremely ironic but downright suspicious.

The first public report of Merton’s death was delivered on December 11, as Turley and Martin report:

On December 11, 1968, the Associated Press reported that Merton had been electrocuted when he touched a short in a cord while moving an electrical fan, according to anonymous [my emphasis] Catholic sources.  The initial news reports did not include any important details such as who found Merton, the names of any witnesses or officials at the scene, or who determined it was an accident.

The Thai doctor’s cause-of-death certificate and the official death certificate said Merton died of sudden cardiac failure, but failed to mention the bleeding rear head wound seen by witnesses.

Most importantly, when Say and Donovan first saw Merton lying on the floor on his back, his legs straight, and his arms straight down by his side with palms to the floor as if placed in a coffin, with a floor fan lying across a thigh to the opposite lower waist, Donovan urged Say to take photographs of Merton before the crime scene was subsequently disturbed.  They were very suspicious.  Through great detective work, Turley and Martin have acquired a copy of these two photos, but they have been prohibited by the current abbot of Gethsemane from publishing them or even an artist’s rendering of them.  The authors say:

The photographs taken by Say are the best available evidence of the actual scene of Merton’s death….The reason the monks took the photographs, as we have emphasized, was to document exactly how they found the body.  As we have seen, people whom they would hardly have ever suspected, have consistently done their best to suppress those images.  The photographs are an essential resource to anyone interested in knowing the truth about how Merton was killed.

But it is clear that many people would like to suppress that truth and have been hard at work doing so for half a century.  But since this is intentionally a quasi-review because one must read this book from beginning to end to grasp the intricacies of this murder mystery and the cast of characters that comprise it (no review can do justice to such a detailed and brilliant investigation,and, even so, attempting one would spoil the book), I will end with the authors’ words:

Contrary to the common view, there is really no mystery about how Merton died. The best evidence indicates beyond any serious doubt that Merton was murdered. It’s a simple fact that the average person is far more likely to be murdered than to be killed by an electric fan, and Merton was no average person.  The story that a fan killed Merton is so preposterous that a series of fantastic stories have had to be invented to make it believable….Who did it and why? The CIA had the motive and the means.”

1968: It was a very dark year: MLK, RFK, and Thomas Merton – martyrs all.

If we want to see clearly and revive hope, the time has come to face the faces of the ghastly gallery of liars and deceivers guilty of these crimes.  Only then can we live the truths their victims suffered and died for.

Then we too can confess with Merton that we have thought “Crimes Against the State.”

*

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

Shortly before its attack on Syria, the US declassified its “Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States’ Use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations.” As its name implies, this paper concerns itself with US military operations abroad. The word “war” is never officially used, as you may notice, because the procedure for declaring war is a rather complicated process.

According to the report,

“US. forces remain in Afghanistan for the purposes of stopping the reemergence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten the United States or its interests.”

In regard to Iraq and Syria, the picture is much the same. US armed forces are deployed “to conduct operations against ISIS with indigenous ground forces.” Such evasive wording in regard to the second group suggests that this is a reference not only to terrorists, but also to Syrian government troops. This is confirmed a bit further into the document, where it states that

“US Armed Forces participating in the Defeat-ISIS campaign in Syria have taken a limited number of strikes against Syrian government and pro-Syrian government forces.”

As for the Kurdish divisions, only the Iraqi Peshmerga are mentioned, although in Syria the US has also provided military assistance to the Kurdish units of the SDF.

Only a relatively small contingent of American troops have been posted to Yemen, where they are conducting operations against the local branches of al-Qaeda. In addition to taking part in combat operations, the US provides logistical assistance from Saudi Arabia against Houthi rebels.

In Somalia, the US carries out both air strikes as well as ground operations, which includes cooperation with the African Union mission in Somalia. The US has designated al-Qaeda, ISIS, and al-Shabaab as its military targets.

Libya has mostly been on the receiving end of air strikes that are supposedly coordinated with the Libyan Government of National Accord.

The seventh country mentioned in the document does not often come up in any of the various news reports about the military hostilities. This is Niger, and the official reason for the presence of the US military there is to train, assist, and advise the local government in the fight against ISIS. Moreover it states that “United States and Nigerien partner forces responded with armed force in self-defense.”

In 2007 General Wesley Clark claimed in a television interview that after the attack on New York in 2001, the US planned to conduct seven wars in the Middle East region over the course of five years. The Pentagon would start with Iraq and then move on to target Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

The fact is that all of these countries, with the exception of Iran, have been the subject of direct or indirect aggression and political pressure from the US and its satellites. There are US military forces that remain stationed in some of them still to this day.

With regard to the legal framework, which is based on both local as well as international law, this document states that there has been no change that would apply to the presence and actions of the US armed forces there. Only in Yemen are certain restrictions in place. The section about the capture and detention of the citizens of various countries who are seized in conflict zones, as well as the sadly infamous Guantanamo prison, includes a similar statement. Despite the fact that this prison is actually even physically located on an illegally occupied part of Cuba at Guantanamo Bay, Washington continues to maintain that “detention operations at Guantanamo Bay are legal, safe, humane, and conducted consistent with U.S. and international law.” It reports that the detention operations at the prison will continue and new prisoners will be sent to Guantanamo.

Long War or Perpetual War?

To understand the US practice of warfare, one must turn to systematic studies that have been done on this subject, as this report is a logical continuation of the strategic research and development conducted by American academic and military institutions. In 2008, the RAND Corporation released a study, called “Unfolding the Future of the Long War: Motivations, Prospects, and Implications for the U.S. Army.” The document was drafted on the basis of the grimmest forecasts, i.e., the assumption that the US will be involved in conflicts against a unified Muslim world that will seek to supplant Western dominance until at least 2020, thus making it necessary to identify the ambiguities and actors in that war, as well as how it might unfold, and to come up with potential strategies to contend with that scenario.

The authors of the report suggest that methods such as capitalizing on the Sunni-Shiite conflict be used to sway US enemies in a future long war. For example, shoring up the region’s traditional Sunni regimes is suggested as a way to contain Iran and limit its influence in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

Another proposal is that the US might adapt its strategy to focus more on the long-term, relying less on forceful aggression in the Middle East. Under this option, the State Department, USAID, Peace Corps, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Justice could become the primary actors in this new American strategy.

It is revealing that the term “long war” was not simply added to the lengthy backlist of numerous other theoretical analyses, but has instead been transformed into a concept that is part of the common parlance of the current Washington establishment. This was confirmed by the relatively recent testimony presented by Seth Jones on April 27, 2017 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, titled “Managing the Long War: U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and the Region. ”

Given that Afghanistan is located in an important geopolitical region — between Iran and Pakistan and relatively close to the Central Asia states of the former USSR — this country is doomed to be the object of a long and perhaps even perpetual US war.

But apparently the Pentagon is gearing up to wage an unending war on three fronts — not only in Afghanistan, but also against China and Russia. At least that’s the claim of Professor Michael Klare, who calls this evolution of events “an invitation to disaster” and cautions officials in Washington to think hard before committing to any strategies that involve the use of force.

War is Business

On April 16, 2018 the news broke that some US senators were drafting a new war authorization bill. Its authors are Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. and Tim Kaine, D-Va. and its co-sponsors include Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del.; Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.; Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Todd Young, R-Ind. The bill would regulate the president’s power to press the US armed forces into service. But if one bothers to scrutinize even a bit all the work done by defense contractors and the political decisions related to combat operations, one can quickly see that there is a definite connection between the two. Therefore, any such restrictions can be not only political in nature, but also aimed at business interests. Both of the US missile strikes in Syria (April 2017 and April 2018) used Tomahawk missiles, which are manufactured by the American company Raytheon. In April 2017, when the US attacked a Syrian airbase (firing 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles), Raytheon surged 3% before paring its gain by half, but closed above its 50-day moving average and a 152.68 flat-base buy point. That put the stock back in buy range. Other Pentagon contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, also edged higher. Interestingly, after April 11, 2018, Raytheon shares began to creep upward, rising from $219 per share to a ceiling of $228 by April 17. And this was despite the fact that most of the Tomahawks landed wide of their target.

The U.S. Senate

One would have thought that this would have put the Russian company Rosoboronexport in a better position, since it supplies weapons systems to Syria (and some of those systems prevented the Tomahawks from reaching their target), but not Raytheon, whose products were virtual duds. However, on April 16, Russian companies suffered a bad day on the stock market due to the latest US sanctions, with financial analysts claiming that Rosoboronexport, along with Rusal, took the biggest beating. And that was despite the fact that military products from Russia are in high demand on the global arms market. In other words, some other kind of mechanism exists that makes it possible to manipulate the quotes for securities and the exchange rates. And sure enough, back in 2015 Business Insider reported that Donald Trump’s investment portfolio included stock holdings in Raytheon. At the time, a number of publications suggested that Trump’s financial interests benefited from the 2017 missile strike.  If someone has administrative leverage and the assistance of brokerage firms, a military campaign could be used for personal enrichment. And the whole shebang could be branded as a “defense of national interests” or “protection of democracy.”

The oil market also reacted to the attack on Syria. The price of crude oil jumped. Analysts explained this as a side effect of the potential danger that the conflict might escalate, thereby affecting the entire Middle East. And that could jeopardize the existing supplies. But those prices had changed before the US and Great Britain launched their missile attack. As early as April 11, Brent crude had risen to $71.96 a barrel, its highest point since December 2014. If one tracks the momentum of oil prices and the work of oil companies and traders on the global market, it’s easy to see who cashed in on this price hike.

Given that the US political system is based on “iron triangles” — the intersecting interests of corporations, government officials, and special-interest groups — it is unlikely that any truly sensible decision will be made in the US in regard to the use of armed force that would make it possible to resolve conflicts by means of diplomacy instead. The interests of the American military-industrial complex are clearly more compelling than those of the organizations that specialize in negotiations and consultations. War (or, to use the official rhetoric: “military operations abroad”) will be long, perpetual, and lucrative for the many actors involved.

*

Leonid Savin is a Geopolitical analyst, Chief editor of Geopolitica.ru, founder and chief editor of the Journal of Eurasian Affairs; head of the administration of International Eurasian Movement.

“They know that the Iranian regime is in its final days and will soon collapse,” Israel Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Elaph, an Arab-language publication, in an interview covered by Israeli media on April 26.

Lieberman further threatened that if Iranian forces attack Israel, the country’s military will respond “and destroy every Iranian military outpost in Syria threatening Israel.” The defense minister also said that while Tel Aviv did not seek war with anyone, it will not tolerate an Iranian presence in Syria – “whatever the cost may be.”

“We haven’t intervened in the war in Syria since it began seven years ago. The Iranians, Hezbollah, other militias, Russia and ISIS are there. Everyone is fighting each other and I wish them all success there,” Lieberman said. “We are not intervening, but Iran is trying to establish bases in Syria and arm them with advanced weapons,” he said

“From there it wants to attack us. I cannot sit idly by while I watch Iran do that close to the Golan Heights, while it supports Hezbollah, Syria and Lebanon.“

SF recalls on April 9, the Israeli Air Force carried out a missile strike on the T4 airbase in Syria where Iranian forces were located. At least 7 Iranian servicemembers, including an officer, were killed in the attack. According to reports, Iran uses the T4 airbase to operate UAVs across Syria.

Following the T4 strike, Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened Israel with a response to punish the move. However, no direct military actions have been taken by Iran so far. Most likely, Teheran will focus on strengthening its positions in Syria instead of attacking Israel directly. The growing Iranian influence poses much more threat to Tel Aviv in a long term than some limited retaliatory attack.

Israel has repeatedly contacted Russia asking it to help to limit the Iranian influence in Syria. However, it looks Tel Aviv has failed to achieve this goal. Moreover, Russia continues its efforts to strengthen the Syrian Air Defese Forces limiting Israeli capabilities to strike Iranian targets in Syria.

On April 26, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that the US is not going to withdraw its forces from Syria soon and that the US-led coalition has to expand its efforts against radical elements (ISIS) in the country.

“Right now we are not withdrawing [troops],” Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We are continuing the fight, we are going to expand it and bring in more regional support.”

The US is another hope of Israel to limit the Russian and Iranian influence in Syria.

The US government and organizations it funds posing as “human rights advocates” have decried Malaysia’s recent decision to deport 11 Uyghurs suspected of links to terrorism back to China.

The US State Department’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in its article titled, “U.S. Voices Concern Over 11 Uyghurs Beijing Wants Malaysia To Deport,” would report:

The United States on February 9 voiced concern over Malaysia’s possible deportation of 11 Uyghur Muslims to China. 

The Reuters news agency reported on February 8 that the 11 ethnic Uyghurs from China, who were among 20 that escaped from a jail in Thailand last year, have been detained in Malaysia, and that Beijing was in talks with Malaysia over their deportation.

Human Rights Watch, also decried Malaysia’s decision.

In a statement titled, “Malaysia: Don’t Send 11 Detainees to China – Group Members Face Possible Torture, Ill-Treatment,” HRW would claim (emphasis added):

The government of Malaysia should ensure that 11 detained migrants are not forcibly deported to China, Human Rights Watch said today. The migrants should have urgent access to refugee status determination proceedings by the United Nations refugee agency. 

The detainees appear to be among a group of 20 people who escaped from immigration detention in Thailand in November 2017. China claims that they are Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim, Turkic minority that originates from western China. After group members were initially detained in Thailand, they identified themselves as Turkish citizens and asked to be sent to Turkey.

It is important to note Turkey as the suspected terrorists’ alleged destination. They are part of a pipeline run by US-Turkish intelligence agencies to funnel foreign fighters into Syria. They, along with foreign fighters from around the globe, stage in Turkey, where they are armed, trained, and eventually sent into Syrian territory.

The HRW statement would even concede that (emphasis added):

Malaysia is one of several countries that in recent years has forcibly returned Uyghurs to China in violation of international law. In September 2017, Malaysia’s deputy prime minister, Zahid Hamidi, said Malaysia had arrested 29 Uyghur “militants” involved with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) since it began sharing biometric data with China in 2011. 

The US government – which itself routinely detains, tortures, and extrajudicially executes what it considers “terror suspects” globally – has attempted to impede Malaysian-Chinese joint security in dealing with the threat of Chinese-based terrorists transiting the region, moving onward to Syria.

By doing so, the US is attempting to strain Malaysian-Chinese ties as well as jeopardize the security of the entire region.

In 2015, when the Thai government deported 100 suspected terrorists back to China, the United States government and its “human rights” fronts similarly decried the move. Months later, Ugyhur terrorists detonated a bomb in downtown Bangkok, killing 20 – mostly Chinese tourists.

The New York Times in an article titled, “Thailand Blames Uighur Militants for Bombing at Bangkok Shrine,” would admit:

Nearly a month after the deadliest bombing in recent Thai history, Thailand’s national police chief made his most explicit comments on Tuesday about who carried out the attack here and why. 

The perpetrators, he said, were linked to Uighur militants, radical members of an aggrieved ethnic minority in western China, who struck to avenge Thailand’s forced repatriation of Uighurs to China and Thailand’s dismantling of a human smuggling ring.

The attack was professionally planned and executed with the target picked to maximize tensions between Bangkok and Beijing – suggesting that it was designed to serve high-level US strategic objectives.

US State Media Admits Uyghurs are Fighting in Syria 

In a December 2017 Associate Press article titled, “AP Exclusive: Anger with China Drives Uighurs to Syria Fight,” it would admit (emphasis added):

Since 2013, thousands of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from western China, have traveled to Syria to train with the Uighur militant group Turkistan Islamic Party and fight alongside al-Qaida, playing key roles in several battles. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops are now clashing with Uighur fighters as the six-year conflict nears its endgame. 

AP would also admit that Ugyhur terrorists traveled specifically through Southeast Asia on their way to Turkey and then onward to Syria, stating (emphasis added):

As Uighur refugees traveled along an underground railroad in Southeast Asia, they said, they were greeted by a network of Uighur militants who offered food and shelter — and their extremist ideology. And when the refugees touched down in Turkey, they were again wooed by recruiters who openly roamed the streets of Istanbul in gritty immigrant neighborhoods like Zeytinburnu and Sefakoy, looking for fresh fighters to shuttle to Syria.

With the Western media admitting thousands of Uyghur terrorists are travelling through Southeast Asia on their way to Syria to fight alongside Al Qaeda and assumably its affiliates including the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS),  it is obvious that attempts to decry Malaysian and Thai cooperation with China in closing down this “underground railroad” are meant to perpetuate not only the threat to Syria, but also the threat to China and the rest of Asia when these battle-hardened militants return home.

AP would explain:

…the end of Syria’s war may be the beginning of China’s worst fears.

“We didn’t care how the fighting went or who Assad was,” said Ali, who would only give his first name out of a fear of reprisals against his family back home. “We just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China.”

Other groups, funded directly by the US government and based in Washington D.C. – such as the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) – have also attempted to impede Asia’s collective efforts to stem the tide of terrorism flowing through their territory and onward to Syria. Organizations like WUC have been key in advocating separatism driving terrorism inside China’s Xinjiang province.

The US Protecting Terror Pipeline Behind Faux-Rights Groups 

And in both Malaysia and Thailand – two nations taking the forefront in disrupting the terror network in Southeast Asia – the United States government is also funding fronts to condemn local government efforts to work with China . These organizations are also attempting to impede local security operations under the pretext of defending “human rights.”

In Thailand, organizations funded by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) including iLaw, Prachatai, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, Fortify Rights, and others have conducted corridinated campaigns aimed at pressuring the Thai government to allow terrorists to travel onward to Turkey where they will link up with Al Qaeda in Syria.

In Malaysia, “Lawyers for Liberty” headed by Eric Paulsen is also funded by the US NED. It too has attacked local government efforts to stem the flow of Uyghur terrorists through its territory and onward to Syria.

In one post on social media, Paulsen would exclaim:

Hundreds of other Uighurs who were previously deported from Thailand & Malaysia were imprisoned or not seen again, their whereabouts unknown & unaccounted for. [Malaysia] must resist China’s demands, as these men have not committed any genuine crimes in Malaysia.

Paulsen’s qualifier, “as these men have not committed any genuine crimes in Malaysia,” comes to full light when understanding their presence in Malaysia is merely to transit onward to Syria where they will be engaged in a multitude of crimes including terrorism within the ranks of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Additionally, as the Associated Press pointed out – these same men fully intend to take their training and experience in Syria – and return to China where they will continue carrying out criminal behavior, including terrorism. And as seen in Bangkok in 2015, should this network of terror be disrupted, these terrorists will carry out attacks on other nations when and where they desire.

While the United States attempts to divide China and Southeast Asia over the Uyghur terror issue, it appears to be having the opposite effect. As US influence wanes in the region and its activities become more overtly disruptive and dangerous, cooperation between Thailand, Malaysia, and China only increases as all three nations, along with the rest of Southeast Asia remain targets of US subversion in Washington’s bid to maintain primacy over the region.

The US also runs the risk of overplaying its “humanitarian” ploys in defense of its networks of terror and subversion worldwide. With the Western media openly admitting Ugyhurs being caught in Thailand and Malaysia are recruits for Al Qaeda and ISIS fighting in Syria, while simultaneously demanding they be allowed to travel onward to Syria under the pretext of “human rights,” the US has once again exposed its use of “human rights” advocacy as a smokescreen for trampling both genuine human rights, and international law.

Southeast Asia by allowing an army of terrorists to pass through its territory today, further compromises Syria’s security today. Tomorrow, Asia’s collective security will be endangered when this army of terrorists returns home. Asia’s only choice is to collectively resist, expose, and dismantle not only this Western-sponsored terror pipeline, but also the faux-rights groups the US is using to protect it.

*

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: Alexander Shulgin (Source: OPCW)

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

On Wednesday, Russia and Syria brought 17 Douma false flag CW incident eyewitnesses to OPCW headquarters in The Hague.

Their testimonies proved no CW incident occurred. No forensic evidence corroborates one.

Russia’s envoy to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin issued a statement, saying:

“Taking part in the news briefing (were) eyewitnesses of shooting of the footage that featured the fake pseudo-humanitarian action staged by the White Helmets and that provided grounds for the US/UK/French missile strikes at Syria on April 14,” adding:

“In all, there (were testimonies from 17 witnesses), including physicians who were right at the scene on that day. They recount(ed) the true story of the (false flag) incident.”

“(D)elegations (of OPCW member states got) first-hand evidence on the forged footage that misled the world community.”

“The briefing (was) organized in support of the OPCW fact-finding” Douma mission to investigate the alleged incident and report on its findings.

“(W)e had no doubt that the allegations of chemical use in Douma are a fabricated and provocative play staged by the so called White Helmets and Western media outlets.”

“We can prove that the video of the White Helmets is fabricated, and therefore there is no basis or validity to the signals of Western countries that this material is evidence of a chemical attack in the city of Douma.”

Facts on the ground don’t preclude new provocations.

“(T)he Americans are (again) threatening to use force again against Syria, but we will not allow it.”

As previous articles explained, Russian forensic experts visiting Douma, its residents, and doctors treating alleged CW victims reported no one affected by chemical toxins, just respiratory problems from smoke and dust inhalation following detonations of explosives.

Soil samples taken by Russian experts found no CW residues. Douma resident Hassan Diab, aged-11, one of the 17 witnesses in the Hague, explained the following:

“We were (in) the basement, and we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold water on me” – referring to al-Qaeda-connected White Helmets involved in staging the fake incident.

Douma hospital emergency ward administrator Ahmad Kashoi explained

“(t)here were people unknown to us who were filming the emergency care.”

“They were filming the chaos taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were originally used to clean the floors…”

“That happened for about an hour. We provided help to (the alleged victims) and sent them home. No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.”

Hospital medical provider Halil al-Jaish said patients treated only suffered from respiratory problems because of smoke and dust inhalation, not CW exposure.

Other witnesses confirmed the same thing, including hospital doctors. The alleged CW incident was staged, not real, blaming Assad for what didn’t happened, used as a pretext for US, UK and French warplanes to terror-bomb Syrian sites.

The OPCW separately interviewed six of the 17 witnesses. It’s unknown what questions were asked or answers received.

The OPCW’s report on the alleged incident remains to be released. As explained in a previous article, if the organization supports the official falsified narrative, it’ll lose more credibility than already.

If it debunks the fake narrative, Syria and Russia will be falsely accused of sabotaging site evidence.

A Final Comment

As expected, Western media scoundrels ridiculed testimonies by 17 Douma eyewitness. Here’s a sampling of reports:

The NYT featured a Reuters report calling bona fide witness testimonies a “stunt.”

The Qatar dictatorship-controlled Al Jazeera reported the same falsified characterization, condemning legitimate testimonies as an “obscene masquerade.”

London’s Guardian used the same falsified language, claiming nonexistent evidence that other “victims (sic) exhibited symptoms consistent with a toxic gas attack” – a despicable Big Lie.

AP News said US, UK and French representatives “boycotted” Hague testimonies, calling them “nothing more than a crude propaganda exercise.”

Funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar, complicit with CIA efforts to topple independent governments, The Intercept’s credibility is sorely lacking.

Reporting on Hague testimonies, it called genuine evidence presented an “underwhelming case.”

It disgracefully accused Russia of “undermining the credibility of (staged White Helmets’) video…”

It lied claiming witnesses brought to the Hague were under “extreme intimidation,” including “threats to harm their families if they made any mention of chemical weapons” – citing the disreputable London Guardian as its source.

It called public testimonies of 17 eyewitnesses “bizarre.” It turned truth on its head claiming “piles of dead bodies, some with foam on their lips…” There were none!

Other media scoundrel reports were just as disgraceful – repeating the falsified narrative, debunking hard truths.

It’s just a matter of time before another staged false flag CW incident occurs, more US-led terror-bombing to follow.

In the Hague, Kremlin envoy to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin said Russia “will not allow” further US-led terror-bombing on Syrian sites.

Will Russian actions back up his words? Much depends on it.

*

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

“Se alguém pensa desligar a Itália dos nossos aliados históricos, que são o Ocidente e os países da NATO, então encontrar-me-á sempre em oposição a isso. Acima de tudo, a Itália e o Movimento 5 Estrelas, nunca disseram que se querem afastar dos nossos aliados históricos” : esta declaração do candidato a Primeiro Ministro Luigi Di Maio, levanta uma questão fundamental que vai para além do actual debate político.(Video entrevista à Otto e mezzo su La7, 16 Abril — 32:55″) .

Qual é o balanço dos setenta anos de ligação da Itália aos seus “aliados históricos”?

Em 1949, com o 5º governo De Gasperi (Democracia Cristã – PLI-PSLI-PRI), a Itália tornou-se membro da NATO, sob comando USA. Logo depois, segundo os acordos secretos assinados por De Gasperi em Washington, em 1947, começou a instalação das bases e das forças dos EUA, com cerca de 700 armas nucleares.

Durante 40 anos, na estratégia USA/NATO, a Itália está na vanguarda do confronto com a URSS e com o Pacto de Varsóvia, e sacrificável em caso de guerra (os EUA também têm preparadas no nosso território, minas atómicas de demolição).

Acabada a Guerra Fria, com a dissolução do Pacto de Varsóvia e da URSS, em 1991, inicia-se em Itália, não um período de paz, mas uma série contínua de guerras na peúgada do seu principal “aliado histórico”.

Em 1991, com o 6 ° Governo Andreotti (DC – PSI – PSDI – PRI – PLI), a República Italiana participou no Golfo, sob comando USA, na sua primeira guerra, violando o artº. 11 da Constituição.

Em 1999, com o governo D’Alema (ULIVO – PDCI – UDEUR), a Itália desempenha um papel fundamental, com as suas bases e os seus caças-bombardeiros, na guerra da NATO contra a Jugoslávia.

Em 2003, com o 2º governo Berlusconi (Força Itália – AN – LN – CCD-CDU), a Itália iniciou a sua participação (ainda em curso após 15 anos) na guerra USA/NATO, no Afeganistão.

Também em 2003, com o mesmo Governo, participa na invasão do Iraque, inserida na coligação sob comando USA.

Em 2011, com o 4º governo Berlusconi (PDL, LN, MPA), a Itália desempenha um papel de primordial importância na guerra da NATO contra a Líbia, na qual participa com 7 bases aéreas, caças-bombardeiros e unidades navais.

De 2014 a 2018, com o governo Renzi (Partido Democrático, NCD, SC, UCD) e com o governo Gentiloni (a mesma coligação), a Itália participa da escalada USA/NATO contra a Rússia, enviando tropas para a Letónia e bombardeiros para a Estónia.

Ao mesmo tempo, estes e outros governos, cedem o nosso território ao Pentágono, que o utiliza como uma ponte de comando e de lançamento para operações militares numa vasta área geográfica.

O Comando das Forças Navais USA Europa-África, em Nápoles-Capodichino, às ordens do mesmo almirante americano que comanda a Força Conjunta Aliada, em Lago Patria, cobre metade do Oceano Atlântico e os mares que banham toda a Europa, Rússia e quase toda a África.

As bases americanas de Aviano, Vicenza, Camp Darby, Gaeta, Sigonella e a estação MUOS em Niscemi, destinam-se a operações militares no Médio Oriente, África e Europa Oriental.

Ligada aos EUA, directamente e através da NATO – onde os EUA ocupam, desde 1949, a posição de Comandante Supremo Aliado na Europa e em todos os outros comandos-chave – a Itália está privada de poder soberano, no que diz respeito à política externa. As novas bombas nucleares B61-12, que os EUA irão instalar em Itália a partir de 2020, vão expor-nos a riscos ainda maiores.

Luigi Di Maio assinou o Compromisso ICAN de adesão da Itália ao Tratado ONU sobre a Proibição das Armas Nucleares, portanto, para retirar de Itália as armas nucleares americanas. Será que vai manter esse compromisso ou quebra-lo-á para não “desvincular a Itália” do seu principal “aliado histórico”?

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Settant’anni di sudditanza a Usa e NatoBy Manlio Dinucci, April 24, 2018

Tradução : Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Vidéo por PandoraTV, subtítulo em português

What happened in the days leading up to the historic Kim-Moon summit on April 27th on the South side of at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)? 

A future meeting between Kim and Trump had been envisaged. But Trump now seems to have hesitations: 

“It could be that I walk out quickly, with respect, but it could be. It could be that maybe the meeting doesn’t even take place. Who knows?”

The President said in the past, North Korea-US relations were “very, very nasty you know with little Rocket Man and with the buttons.” But now, he said, “they want to meet.” (CNN, April 26, 2018)

The CIA played a major role in the inter-Korean peace negotiations. The latter were conducive to CIA’s Mike Pompeo‘s secret visit to Pyongyang for talks with Kim Jong-un on the Easter weekend.

The Pompeo-Kim secret meeting was the result of a series of bilateral meetings between North and South Korea intelligence officials, which led to setting an agenda for future Kim-Trump summit. While a draft agreement has already been formulated, the Kim-Trump meeting is up in the air.

The CIA has a close and overlapping working relationship with its ROK counterpart The Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) (now referred to as The National Intelligence Service). The KCIA created in 1961 during the US sponsored military regime of President Park Chung-hee, has consistently acted as a de facto subsidiary of the CIA, largely acting on behalf of US intelligence.

In turn, in consultation with and on behalf of the CIA, the KCIA has developed over the years an “unofficial” bilateral “working relationship” with its North Korean intelligence counterparts.

Prior and in the course of the Winter Olympics, several key bilateral meetings were held between key national security and intelligence officials of North and South Korea.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s National security adviser Chung Eui-yong was put in charge of the negotiations in Pyongyang, officially acting on behalf of South Korea, but also (indirectly) on behalf of the United States.

On March 6, (local time), Chung Eui-yong, together with four other senior ROK officials met up with the DPRK leadership in Pyongyang. The delegation was also received at a State dinner with Kim Jong-un.

The ROK delegation also included  Suh Hoon, head of the ROK’s National Intelligence Service (KCIA), who was appointed by President Moon in May 2017. His appointment had been approved by Washington.

While KCIA Chief Suh Hoon had previously worked on a mandate geared towards dialogue and peace on behalf of the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, and now on behalf of President Moon, he nonetheless has routine consultations with CIA director Mike Pompeo. In relation to the Pyongyang talks, it is highly unlikely that Suh Hoon and Chung Eui-yong would have acted without consulting their counterparts in Washington, namely CIA Director Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser General H. R. McMaster.

(Michel  Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 10 2018)

These bilateral meetings between the KCIA and its DPRK counterparts set the stage for the secret Kim-Pompeo Easter meetings. Pompeo in the meantime has acceded to the position of Secretary of State.

**

In the video below, Professor Michel Chossudovsky breaks down the options for the Republic of Korea (ROK) and makes reference to a talk he presented at a venue hosted by the country’s National Assembly on the 21st of February. Specifically  Michel Chossudovsky presents the structure of a North-South Peace proposal which requires the annulment of the US-ROK Joint Forces Command which puts all South Korean forces under U.S. Command. 

In this 30 minute interview Professor Chossudovsky critiques the Trump Administration’s ‘bloody nose’ strategy, relays his impressions of the ROK political climate and the ROK President, and outlines where Japan fits into the overall dynamic unraveling in North East Asia.

It came out as a sort of minor scandal – considering the ’24/7 post-truth news cycle.’ Of the 28 EU ambassadors in Beijing, 27, with the exception of Hungary’s, signed an internal report criticizing the New Silk Roads as a non-transparent threat to free trade, allegedly favoring unfair competition by Chinese conglomerates.

The report was first leaked to respected German business newspaper Handelsblatt. EU diplomats in Brussels confirmed its existence to Asia Times. Then the Chinese Foreign Ministry calmed the turbulence, saying that Brussels had explained what this was all about.

In fact, it’s all about nuances. Anyone familiar with how dysfunctional Eurocrat Brussels is knows there’s no EU common policy towards China – or Russia for that matter.

The internal report does mention how China, via the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is “pursuing domestic political goals like the reduction of surplus capacity, the creation of new export markets and safeguarding access to raw materials.”

That’s a self-evident Chinese rationale inbuilt in BRI from the start – and Beijing never denied it. After all, the concept itself was first floated inside the Ministry of Commerce, way before the official announcements by President Xi Jinping in Astana and Jakarta in 2013.

Perceptions of the BRI vary across myriad latitudes. Central and Eastern Europe are mostly enthusiastic – as BRI is synonymous with badly needed infrastructure projects. So are Greece and Italy, as Asia Times reported. Northern ports such as Hamburg and Rotterdam are actually configured as BRI terminals. Spain is very much interested in the days when the Yiwu to Madrid cargo train will move to high-speed rail.

Essentially, it all boils down to companies from specific EU nations deciding their degree of integration with what Raymond Yeung, ANZ’s chief economist for greater China, describes as “the biggest economic experiment in modern history.”

Watch those Chinese engineers

The case of France is emblematic. President Emmanuel Macron – now on a massive geopolitical PR offensive to crown himself the unofficial King of Europe – actually praised the BRI when he visited China earlier this year.

But nuance, once again, applies:

“After all, the ancient Silk Roads were never only Chinese,” Macron said in Xian at the Daming Palace, the residence of the Ancient Silk Road stalwart Tang dynasty for more than two centuries. “These roads”, added Macron, “cannot be those of a new hegemony, which would transform those that they cross into vassals.”

So Macron was already prepositioning himself to steer EU-China relations away and beyond the number one EU grievance; how the Chinese play the foreign trade/investment game.

Macron has been very vocal in prodding the European Commission bureaucracy to toughen anti-dumping rules against Chinese steel imports and forcing EU-wide screening of takeovers in strategic sectors, especially from China.

In parallel, virtually every EU nation – not only France – wants more access to the Chinese market. As much as Macron has touted an optimistic mantra – “Europe is back” – in terms of EU competitiveness, that barely masks the primordial European fear; the fact that it’s China that may be getting too competitive.

The BRI, for Beijing, is all about geopolitical but most of all geo-economic projection – including the promotion of new global standards and norms that may not be exactly those practiced by the EU. And that brings us to the heart of the matter, not enounced by the leaked internal report; the intersection between BRI and Made in China: 2025.

Beijing is aiming to become a global high-tech leader in less than seven years. Made in China: 2025 identified 10 sectors – including AI, robotics, aerospace, green cars and shipping and shipbuilding – as priorities.

China-Germany bilateral trade, at 187 billion euros last year, is way bigger than China-France and China-UK, at 70 billion euros each. And yes, Berlin is worried. Made in China: 2025 represents a significant “threat” to top quality German companies producing high-end manufacturing goods.

Those days may be over when China bought astonishing amounts of German machinery – plus the inevitable BMWs and Audis. The new normal points to an army of Chinese companies moving up the value-added chain at breakneck speed.

As Bauer CEO Thomas Bauer told Reuters:

“(Rivalry with China) will not be a contest against copiers. It will be one against innovative engineers.”

Navigating the blue economy

The report Blue China; Navigating the Maritime Silk Road to Europe usefully expands the scope of the debate, pointing to how the development of the Maritime Silk Road may be even more crucial than overland connectivity corridors.

The report acknowledges how the Maritime Silk Road already affects the EU in terms of maritime trade and shipbuilding, and asks some questions about the increasing global presence of the PLA Navy. It recommends that the EU “should emulate China’s blue economy as an engine of growth and wealth, and encourage innovation to respond to well-funded Chinese industrial and R&D policies.”

The “blue economy” features heavily in Made in China: 2025 – especially in terms of innovation in port infrastructure and shipping. The rationale, from Beijing’s point of view, is always about maritime trade cost cutting – but that, of course, will always depend on whether oil prices will keep going up, as OPEC and Russia are keen.

As it stands, the EU bureaucracy has to be fearful, sensing the possibility of being squeezed between high-tech China and Trump’s America First. And that does not even factor in the inevitable geo-strategic clash between the BRI and the “free and open Indo-Pacific” to be managed, in theory, by the US, Japan, India and Australia; more of a glamorized South China Sea patrol than a vast project of Eurasian economic integration.

There will be an EU-China summit in July and then a German-China summit later in the year. Non-transparent sparks are bound to fly.

Featured image: South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un embrace each other after releasing a joint statement at the truce village of Panmunjeom, Friday. (Source: Korea Summit Press Pool)

South and North Korea will seek to hold tripartite talks with the United States, or talks including China, with the goal of declaring an end to the Korean War (1950-53) this year and establishing permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula, President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced Friday. 

In a joint declaration they announced after their summit at the truce village of Panmunjeom, the two leaders reaffirmed the two Koreas’ joint goal of making the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free through complete denuclearization.

To attain these goals and for further discussions on the North Korea nuclear issue, Moon will visit Pyongyang this autumn.

Moon and Kim signed the “Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula,” in which they made clear there would be no more war on the peninsula and that a new era of peace has begun.

“South and North Korea will actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” the declaration read.

The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to non-aggression and agreed on gradual arms reduction if military tensions are reduced and military confidence is built between the two Koreas.

“During this year that marks the 65th anniversary of the Armistice, South and North Korea agreed to actively pursue trilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the United States, or quadrilateral meetings involving the two Koreas, the United States and China with a view to declaring an end to the War and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime,” the declaration read.

“South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.”

Moon said,

“North Korea’s pre-emptive nuclear freeze will be a valuable beginning for complete denuclearization of the peninsula,” referring to the North’s recent announcement to suspend nuclear and missile tests and shut down its nuclear test site.

Kim said he gravely understood the wishes and expectations of all the people of the two Koreas.

“We confirmed the strong determination to open a new era in which all Korean people can enjoy prosperity and happiness in a peaceful land where there is no war, and agreed on practical measures for this,” he said. “I’m making efforts so that the agreement we made today will not become like previous agreements which have not been carried out, but will produce a good outcome.”

In the joint declaration, the two Koreas agreed to play their roles and take responsible actions for denuclearization of the peninsula, and make efforts to gain international support for it.

Moon and Kim agreed to talk over peninsula issues and build trust through regular summits and hotline talks. Moon will also visit Pyongyang this autumn, they said.

To relieve military tension and reduce the possibility of war, the South and the North decided to halt any hostile activities.

From May 1, they will stop propaganda broadcasting over the inter-Korean border, and make the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) a peace zone where there are no military weapons.

The two Koreas will also hold military talks often, with the earliest ones planned for May.

For improvement of inter-Korean relations, the two Koreas decided to hold talks in various fields as soon as possible, and open a liaison office in Gaeseong, North Korea, where officials from the two Koreas will be posted, for non-governmental exchanges.

They will seek to hold joint events across all sectors of society, and jointly participate in international sports events such as the 2018 Asian Games. They will also hold Red Cross talks for the reunion of separated families, planning to hold the earliest event on Liberation Day, Aug. 15.

The two Koreas will also seek various cooperative projects agreed on by an earlier joint declaration after the 2007 inter-Korean summit.

“Today I and Kim set a milestone, which will not be shaken, toward co-prosperity and unification,” Moon said. “We can give a good present to the South, the North and the world with Kim’s resolute decision. How to announce it was also special. It was the first time for a North Korean leader to make a joint announcement in front of the world’s press after a summit. I’m applauding Kim for making such an audacious and brave decision.”

Kim said,

“If the people of the two Koreas can pass on the road I passed today, if Panmunjeom, which is the symbol of a painful division, becomes a symbol of peace, the two Koreas which share the same blood, language, history and culture will become one as they used to be and enjoy endless joint prosperity.”

During the 100-minute talks in the morning, the two leaders agreed on most parts of the agreement. The afternoon discussion was held among delegates, without the leaders, to fine-tune the terms of the declaration.

Two Korean leaders agree as follows in Panmunjeom Declaration

(1) Two Koreas agree to declare the end of the Korean War that has been suspended since an armistice agreement in 1953.

(2) Two Koreas agree to set denuclearization as a common goal and work together to make the Korean Peninsula nuclear free.

(3) South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit Pyongyang in autumn.

(4) Two Koreas agree to stop a range of hostile acts on the ground, in the air and on the ocean.

(5) Starting May 1, the two Koreas will stop broadcasting propaganda on the inter-Korean border.

(6) Two Koreas will set up a jointly operated liaison office in Gaeseong, North Korea.

(7) On Aug 15, the two Koreas will host reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

(8) Two Koreas agreed to reconnect an inter-Korean railroad on the East Coast.

(9) Two Koreas will jointly participate in the 2018 Asian Games.

Witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, including 11-year-old Hassan Diab and hospital staff, told reporters at The Hague that the White Helmets video used as a pretext for a US-led strike on Syria was, in fact, staged.

During this momentous period of historical transformation on the Korean Peninsula, reflecting the enduring aspiration of the Korean people for peace, prosperity and unification, President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea held an Inter-Korean Summit Meeting at the ‘Peace House’ at Panmunjeom on April 27, 2018.

The two leaders solemnly declared before the 80 million Korean people and the whole world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.

The two leaders, sharing the firm commitment to bring a swift end to the Cold War relic of longstanding division and confrontation, to boldly approach a new era of national reconciliation, peace and prosperity, and to improve and cultivate inter-Korean relations in a more active manner, declared at this historic site of Panmunjeom as follows:

1. South and North Korea will reconnect the blood relations of the people and bring forward the future of co-prosperity and unification led by Koreans by facilitating comprehensive and groundbreaking advancement in inter-Korean relations. Improving and cultivating inter-Korean relations is the prevalent desire of the whole nation and the urgent calling of the times that cannot be held back any further.

① South and North Korea affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord and agreed to bring forth the watershed moment for the improvement of inter-Korean relations by fully implementing all existing agreements and declarations adopted between the two sides thus far.

② South and North Korea agreed to hold dialogue and negotiations in various fields including at high level, and to take active measures for the implementation of the agreements reached at the Summit.

③ South and North Korea agreed to establish a joint liaison office with resident representatives of both sides in the Gaeseong region in order to facilitate close consultation between the authorities as well as smooth exchanges and cooperation between the peoples.

④ South and North Korea agreed to encourage more active cooperation, exchanges, visits and contacts at all levels in order to rejuvenate the sense of national reconciliation and unity. Between South and North, the two sides will encourage the atmosphere of amity and cooperation by actively staging various joint events on the dates that hold special meaning for both South and North Korea, such as June 15, in which participants from all levels, including central and local governments, parliaments, political parties, and civil organizations, will be involved. On the international front, the two sides agreed to demonstrate their collective wisdom, talents, and solidarity by jointly participating in international sports events such as the 2018 Asian Games.

⑤ South and North Korea agreed to endeavor to swiftly resolve the humanitarian issues that resulted from the division of the nation, and to convene the Inter-Korean Red Cross Meeting to discuss and solve various issues including the reunion of separated families. In this vein, South and North Korea agreed to proceed with reunion programs for the separated families on the occasion of the National Liberation Day of August 15 this year.

⑥ South and North Korea agreed to actively implement the projects previously agreed in the 2007 October 4 Declaration, in order to promote balanced economic growth and co-prosperity of the nation. As a first step, the two sides agreed to adopt practical steps towards the connection and modernization of the railways and roads on the eastern transportation corridor as well as between Seoul and Sinuiju for their utilization.

2. South and North Korea will make joint efforts to alleviate the acute military tension and practically eliminate the danger of war on the Korean Peninsula. Alleviating the military tension and eliminating the danger of war is a highly significant challenge directly linked to the fate of the Korean people and also a vital task in guaranteeing their peaceful and stable lives.

① South and North Korea agreed 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. In this vein, the two sides agreed to transform the demilitarized zone into a peace zone in a genuine sense by ceasing as of May 1 this year all hostile acts and eliminating their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets, in the areas along the Military Demarcation Line.

② South and North Korea agreed to devise a practical scheme to turn the areas around the Northern Limit Line in the West Sea into a maritime peace zone in order to prevent accidental military clashes and guarantee safe fishing activities.

③ South and North Korea agreed to take various military measures to ensure active mutual cooperation, exchanges, visits and contacts. The two sides agreed to hold frequent meetings between military authorities, including the Defense Ministers Meeting, in order to immediately discuss and solve military issues that arise between them. In this regard, the two sides agreed to first convene military talks at the rank of general in May.

3. South and North Korea will actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. Bringing an end to the current unnatural state of armistice and establishing a robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is a historical mission that must not be delayed any further.

① South and North Korea reaffirmed the Non-Aggression Agreement that precludes the use of force in any form against each other, and agreed to strictly adhere to this Agreement.

② South and North Korea agreed to carry out disarmament in a phased manner, as military tension is alleviated and substantial progress is made in military confidence-building.

③ During this year that marks the 65th anniversary of the Armistice, South and North Korea agreed to actively pursue trilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the United States, or quadrilateral meetings involving the two Koreas, the United States and China with a view to declaring an end to the War, turning the armistice into a peace treaty, and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime.

④ South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. South and North Korea shared the view that the measures being initiated by North Korea are very meaningful and crucial for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and agreed to carry out their respective roles and responsibilities in this regard. South and North Korea agreed to actively seek the support and cooperation of the international community for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

For peace (Source: Korea Summit Press Pool)

The two leaders agreed, through regular meetings and direct telephone conversations, to hold frequent and candid discussions on issues vital to the nation, to strengthen mutual trust and to jointly endeavor to strengthen the positive momentum towards continuous advancement of inter-Korean relations as well as peace, prosperity and unification of the Korean Peninsula.

In this context, President Moon Jae-in agreed to visit Pyongyang this fall.

April 27, 2018
Done in Panmunjeom

Moon Jae-in, Kim Jong Un
President Chairman
Republic of Korea State Affairs Commission
Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea

RT

BBC

Al Jazeera

«Se qualcuno pensa di sganciare l’Italia dai nostri alleati storici, che sono l’Occidente e i paesi della Nato, allora troverà sempre me contrario. L’Italia, e il Movimento 5 Stelle soprattutto, non ha mai detto di volersi allontanare dai nostri alleati storici»: questa dichiarazione del candidato premier Luigi Di Maio (a Otto e mezzosu La7, 16 aprile), solleva una questione di fondo che va al di là dell’attuale dibattito politico. Qual è il bilancio dei settant’anni di legame dell’Italia con i suoi «alleati storici»?

“The greatest evil is not now done … in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Is the U.S. government evil?

You tell me.

This is a government that treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, tracked, tortured, and eventually eliminated once they’ve outgrown their usefulness.

This is a government that treats human beings like lab rats to be caged, branded, experimented upon, and then discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.

This is a government that repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn.

This is a government that wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and then turns a blind eye and a deaf ear while its henchmen rape and kill and pillage.

No, this is not a government that can be trusted to do what is right or moral or humane or honorable but instead seems to gravitate towards corruption, malevolence, misconduct, greed, cruelty, brutality and injustice.

This is not a government you should trust with your life, your loved ones, your livelihood or your freedoms.

This is the face of evil, disguised as a democracy, sold to the people as an institution that has their best interests at heart.

Don’t fall for the lie.

The government has never had our best interests at heart.

Endless wars. The government didn’t have our best interests at heart when it propelled us into endless oil-fueled wars and military occupations in the Middle East that wreaked havoc on our economy, stretched thin our military resources and subjected us to horrific blowback.

A police state. There is no way the government had our best interests at heart when it passed laws subjecting us to all manner of invasive searches and surveillance, censoring our speech and stifling our expression, rendering us anti-government extremists for daring to disagree with its dictates, locking us up for criticizing government policies on social media, encouraging Americans to spy and snitch on their fellow citizens, and allowing government agents to grope, strip, search, taser, shoot and kill us.

Battlefield America. Certainly the government did not have our best interests at heart when it turned America into a battlefield, transforming law enforcement agencies into extensions of the military, conducting military drills on domestic soil, distributing “free” military equipment and weaponry to local police, and desensitizing Americans to the menace of the police state with active shooter drills, color-coded terror alerts, and randomly conducted security checkpoints at “soft” targets such as shopping malls and sports arenas.

School-to-prison pipeline. It would be a reach to suggest that the government had our best interests at heart when it locked down the schools, installing metal detectors and surveillance cameras, adopting zero tolerance policies that punish childish behavior as harshly as criminal actions, and teaching our young people that they have no rights, that being force-fed facts is education rather than indoctrination, that they are not to question governmental authority, that they must meekly accept a life of censorship, round-the-clock surveillance, roadside blood draws, SWAT team raids and other indignities.

Secret human experimentation. One would also be hard-pressed to suggest that the American government had our best interests at heart when it conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins. The government reasoned that it was legitimate (and cheaper) to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society such as prisoners, mental patients, and poor blacks.

As the Associated Press reports,

“The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries, accompanied by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the government and corporations. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical guinea pigs … because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.”

In Alabama, for example, 600 black men with syphilis were allowed to suffer without proper medical treatment so that the government could study the natural progression of untreated syphilis. In California, older prisoners were implanted with testicles from livestock and executed convicts so the government could test their virility.

In Connecticut, mental patients were injected with hepatitis so the government could study the disease. In Maryland, sleeping prisoners had a pandemic flu virus sprayed up their noses so the government could monitor their symptoms. In Georgia, two dozen “volunteering” prison inmates had gonorrhea bacteria pumped directly into their urinary tracts through the penis so the government could work on a cure.

In Michigan, male patients at an insane asylum were exposed to the flu so the government could experiment with a flu vaccine. In Minnesota, 11 public service employee “volunteers” were injected with malaria, then starved for five days, so the government could study the impact.

Screenshot from PBS

In New York, prisoners at a reformatory prison were split into two groups to determine how a deadly stomach virus was spread: the first group was made to swallow an unfiltered stool suspension, while the second group merely breathed in germs sprayed into the air. In Staten Island, children with mental retardation were given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured.

Unfortunately, these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the atrocities the government has inflicted on an unsuspecting populace in the name of secret experimentation.

For instance, there was the U.S. military’s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men (African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Hispanics, etc.). As NPR reports,

“All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren’t recorded on the subjects’ official military records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn’t tell doctors what happened to them.”

And then there was the CIA’s Cold War-era program, MKULTRA, in which the government began secretly experimenting on hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel by dosing them with LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug secretly slipped into their drinks, so that the government could explore its uses in brainwashing and controlling targets. The CIA spent nearly $20 million on its MKULTRA program, reportedly as a means of programming people to carry out assassinations and, to a lesser degree, inducing anxieties and erasing memories, before it was supposedly shut down.

Similarly, the top-secret Montauk Project, the inspiration for the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, allegedly was working to develop mind-control techniques that would then be tested out on locals in a nearby village, triggering crime waves or causing teenagers to congregate.

Sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theorists, I know, but the government’s track record of treating Americans like lab rats has been well-documented, including its attempts to expose whole communities to various toxins as part of its efforts to develop lethal biological weapons and study their impact and delivery methods on unsuspecting populations.

In 1949, for instance, the government sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon’s air handling system, then the world’s largest office building. In 1950, special ops forces sprayed bacteria from Navy ships off the coast of Norfolk and San Francisco, in the latter case exposing all of the city’s 800,000 residents.

In 1953, government operatives staged “mock” anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg using generators placed on top of cars. Local governments were reportedly told that “‘invisible smokescreen[s]’ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.” Later experiments covered territory as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas.

In 1965, the government’s experiments in bioterror took aim at Washington’s National Airport, followed by a 1966 experiment in which army scientists exposed a million subway NYC passengers to airborne bacteria that causes food poisoning.

Now one might argue that this is all ancient history and that the government today is different from the government of yesteryear, but has the U.S. government really changed?

Ask yourself: Has the government become any more humane, any more respectful of the rights of the citizenry? Has it become any more transparent or willing to abide by the rule of law? Has it become any more truthful about its activities? Has it become any more cognizant of its appointed role as a guardian of our rights?

Or, having mastered the Orwellian art of Doublespeak and followed the Huxleyan blueprint for distraction and diversion, has the government simply gotten craftier and more conniving, better able to hide its nefarious acts and dastardly experiments under layers of secrecy, legalism and obfuscations?

Consider this: after revelations about the government’s experiments spanning the 20th century spawned outrage, the government began looking for human guinea pigs in other countries, where “clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules.”

In Guatemala, prisoners and patients at a mental hospital were infected with syphilis, “apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease.” More recently, U.S.-funded doctors “failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study in Uganda even though it would have protected their newborns.” Meanwhile, in Nigeria, children with meningitis were used to test an antibiotic named Trovan. Eleven children died and many others were left disabled.

What kind of government perpetrates such horrific acts on human beings, whether or not they are American citizens?

Is there any difference between a government mindset that justifies experimenting on prisoners because they’re “cheaper than chimpanzees” and a government that sanctions jailhouse strip searches of individuals charged with minor infractions simply because it’s easier on a jail warden’s workload?

John Lennon was right: “We’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends.”

Unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Just recently, for example, a Fusion Center in Washington State (a Dept. of Homeland Security-linked data collection clearinghouse that shares information between state, local and federal agencies) inadvertently released records on remote mind control tactics (the use of “psycho-electronic” weapons to control people from a distance or subject them to varying degrees of pain).

Mind you, there is no clear evidence to suggest that these particular documents were created by a government agency. Then again, the government—no stranger to diabolical deeds or shady experiments carried out an unsuspecting populace—has done it before.

After all, this is a government that has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

For too long now, the American people have been persuaded to barter their freedoms for phantom promises of security and, in the process, have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing—asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on—because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.

No matter how you rationalize it, the lesser of two evils is still evil.

There’s a scene in The Third Man, Carol Reed’s influential 1949 film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles in which a rogue war profiteer (Harry Lime) views human carnage with a callous indifference, unconcerned that the diluted penicillin he’s been trafficking underground has resulted in the tortured deaths of young children.

Challenged by his old friend Holly Martins to consider the consequences of his actions, Lime responds, “In these days, old man, nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, so why should we?”

“Have you ever seen any of your victims?” asks Martins.

“Victims?” responds Lime, as he looks down from the top of a Ferris wheel onto a populace reduced to mere dots on the ground. “Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”

Lime’s callous indifference is no different from the U.S. government’s calculating cost-benefit analyses.

In the eyes of the government, “we the people” are chump change.

So why do Americans keep believing the government has their best interests at heart?

Why do Americans keep trusting the government?

Why do Americans pretend not to know what is so obvious to anyone with eyes and ears and a conscience?

As Carl Sagan recognized,

“If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

We should never have trusted the government in the first place.

That’s why the Founders came up with a Bill of Rights. They recognized that without binding legal protections affirming the rights of the people, the newly instituted American government would be no better than the old British despot.

It was Thomas Jefferson who warned,

“In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Unfortunately, we didn’t heed the warning.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government has ripped the Constitution to shreds and left us powerless in the face of its power grabs, greed and brutality.

So how do you fight back?

How do you fight injustice? How do you push back against tyranny? How do you vanquish evil?

You don’t fight it by hiding your head in the sand.

Stop being apathetic. Stop being neutral. Stop being accomplices.

Start recognizing evil and injustice and tyranny for what they are. Demand government transparency. Vote with your feet (i.e., engage in activism, not just politics). Refuse to play politics with your principles. Don’t settle for the lesser of two evils.

As British statesman Edmund Burke warned,

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing.”

It’s time for good men and women to do something. And soon.

*

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].

Preparations for the meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump are for the moment continuing without a hitch. The next step is today’s  historic meeting between Moon Jae-in of South Korea and his North Korean counterpart. On the table are several possibilities. Pyongyang’s strategy seems to be much more refined than it may seem.

The news surrounding the negotiations on the North Korean peninsula continues to appear promising, with all the parties involved remaining relatively optimistic. Important words coming from Pyongyang have been heard in recent weeks. The North Korean leadership has recently established some guidelines regarding internal social and economic development over the coming years. Once complete nuclear deterrence has been achieved, the objective then becomes the development of the economy and an improvement in the material wellbeing of North Koreans. The renunciation of its nuclear status is part of a broader plan that brings with it some essential requirements, such as the reunification of the two Koreas, a peace treaty with the United States, and the withdrawal of foreign troops from the peninsula. The possibility of achieving economic wellbeing for North Koreans is subject to the success of meeting these requirements. In this sense, the April 27 meeting between Moon Jae-in (President of South Korea) and Kim Jong-un opens up new possibilities, given the good will of the leadership of both countries to resolve their long-standing problems. Proceeding according to the timeline presented above, the meeting between the two leaders should pave the way for the much more critical meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in a place yet to be decided, but one which would have high symbolic value.

Avoiding excessive optimism, despite the obvious improvements in tone, rhetoric and actions compared to a year ago, the overall US strategy in the region should be considered. We have learned in recent months that the incumbent of the Oval Office has little influence over the dictates of the foreign-policy establishment, the deep state — call it what you like. This is a toxic concoction of industrialists, politicians, think-tank experts, former politicians, soldiers, and philanthropists dedicated solely to the preservation of the role of American primacy, with aspirations to global hegemony, dictated by the (wrong) belief that America is an exceptional country (see parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). In this sense, as highlighted by the Nuclear Posture Review, Washington has to deal with two peer competitors (China and Russia) and two minor opponents (Iran and North Korea) and plans its actions in the long term. The US troops stationed in South Korea reflect the desire of policy-makers to surround the Heartland and its periphery to contain the two powers that occupy this geographical space: Russia and China.

The presence of American troops in South Korea is part of this geostrategic project and is viewed by Washington as crucial to the balance of power. All of these factors, in addition to the need to keep the flow of South Korean money into the coffers to US defense companies, indicate how the talks initiated by DPRK, South Korea and the United States are anything but straightforward.

Observing the general picture of the region and the recent news released by Pyongyang, the question arises as to whether North Korea possibly pursued its nuclear-weapons program only in order to renounce it for the purposes of gaining important concessions from the Americans in the process? Regardless, obtaining a nuclear deterrent has its own inherent logic, in light of the danger posed by Washington and its aggressive imperialist foreign policy.

But as we know, the real deterrent against any American invasion of the peninsula, or a decapitating first-strike against Pyongyang’s leadership, lies in North Korea’s possession of a huge and impressive conventional arsenal that is lined up along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). I pointed out in my previous article how the consequences of a war on the peninsula, even when not involving nuclear weapons, would represent a red line that could not possibly be crossed. The firepower directed against the forces stationed in South Korea by the DPRK would oblige the US to enter into a total war with the North, bringing about an irreparable crisis with Seoul, which would see hundreds of non-interceptable missiles launched against its city and troops. The obvious consequence would be a diplomatic break between South Korea and the United States, since Seoul would be forced to surrender/negotiate with the North. This would result in a disaster for US policy-makers, who use the Korean peninsula to station troops and military equipment (such as THAAD) as a launchpad for containing China.

Realistically, however, what appears to be emerging is very similar to a strategy cleverly developed by the North Korean leadership over a number of years. As Pyongyang needed to bring the United States to the negotiating table, while at the same time guaranteeing its survival, it pursued its nuclear-weapons program. Since Washington seems to have understood that a military solution is not practicable, especially given the pressure brought to bear by its allies all too cognizant of a nuclear-armed DPRK, Pyongyang is now willing to display its good will, deciding to surprise the world by embarking on negotiations, with the renunciation of its nuclear weapons as a major bargaining chip. Under these conditions, Pyongyang is willing to cooperate, and South Korea welcomes the initiative with open arms, accelerating the meeting between the two leaders and paving the way for peace on the peninsula. The People’s Republic of China applauds the diplomatic efforts and encourages South Korea, and later America, in these diplomatic efforts.

Seoul, Beijing and Pyongyang have every interest in reaching an all-encompassing deal, with or without Washington. The diplomatic ability of this trio has managed to leave the United States with its back against the wall, first of all obliging it to sit down at the negotiating table (something already revolutionary for reasons explained above), and then requiring it to ease sanctions considerably. Otherwise, North Korea would be seen as the party that is willing to achieve peace, while Washington is left isolated and looking like the warmonger.

North Korea finds itself in a win-win situation. If sanctions are eased and peace talks are managed in the right manner, then the process of socio-economic rebirth, which Kim Jong-un considers a priority, can begin. Should the rhetoric of war prevail in Washington, then Washington would find itself at odds with its main ally, Seoul. It is likely that China could even justifiably renounce its sanctions against the DPRK, blaming the US for not making any progress in the face of extraordinary offers by Kim Jong-un to renounce his nuclear weapons.

Washington would come across as the uncooperative party, and this would free the relevant parties, including allies, from taking the United States into consideration. Beijing would easily take the place of Washington as a mediator between North and South Korea, starting tripartite talks, taking into account everyone’s interests but Washington’s. The focus of the United States will be on achieving the least negative outcome for itself, given that it knows it has one of the weakest hands to play at the negotiating table.

*

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

Featured image is from the author.

There is a lot of concern over the possibility of a trade war between China and the USA. In early April, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that his administration was considering levying $100-billion of additional tariffs on Chinese exports, after the Chinese government responded to a previously proposed U.S. tariff hike on Chinese goods of $50-billion by announcing its own equivalent tariff hikes on U.S. exports. And the Chinese government has made it clear it will again respond in kind if these new tariffs are actually imposed.

So, what’s it all about?

To this point, it is worth emphasizing that no new tariffs have in fact been levied, by either the U.S. or Chinese governments. The first round of announced U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods are still subject to a public comment period before becoming effective, and the content of the second round has yet to be formally decided upon. Thus, both countries have time to back away from their threats.

Also significant is the fact that both countries are being careful about the products they are threatening to tax. For example, the Trump administration has carefully avoided talking about placing tariffs on computers or cell phones, two of the biggest U.S. imports from China. The U.S. has also refrained from putting tariffs on clothing, shoes, and furniture, also major imports from China.

Multinational Marketing Networks

It is not hard to guess the reason why: these goods are produced as part of multinational corporate controlled production and marketing networks that operate under the direction of leading U.S. corporations like Dell, Apple, and Walmart. Taxing these goods would threaten corporate profitability. As a former commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission pointed out:

“It seems that the U.S. trade representative was very much aware of the global value chains in keeping some of these items off the list.”

The Chinese government, for its part, has been equally careful. For example, it put smaller planes on its proposed tariff list while exempting the larger planes made by Boeing.

Although the media largely echoes President Trump’s claim that his tariff threats directed at China are all about trying to reduce the large U.S. trade deficit with China in order to save high paying manufacturing jobs and revitalize U.S. manufacturing, the president really has a far narrower aim – that is to protect the monopoly position and profits of dominant U.S. corporations. The short hand phrase for this is the protection of “intellectual property rights.” As Trump tweeted in March:

“The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!”

Bloomberg News offers a more detailed explanation of the connection between the tariff threats and the goal of defending corporate intellectual property:

“the White House is considering imposing tariffs on a broad range of consumer goods to punish China for its IP [intellectual property] practices… the U.S. alleges … that China has been stealing U.S. trade secrets, forcing American companies to hand over proprietary technology as a condition of doing business on the mainland, and providing state support for Chinese firms to acquire critical technology abroad. A consensus is growing that these policies, designed to establish China as a dominant player in key technologies of the future, from semiconductors to electric cars, threaten to erode America’s technological edge, both commercial and military.”

In other words, U.S. tariff threats are, in reality, a bargaining chip to get the Chinese government to accept stronger protections for the intellectual property rights and technology of leading U.S. firms in industries such as pharmaceuticals, aerospace, telecommunications, and autos. If Trump succeeds, U.S. multinational corporations will become more profitable. But there will be little gain for U.S. workers.

Jobs for U.S. Workers?

The auto industry offers a good case in point. President Trump has repeatedly said that forcing China to lower its tariffs on imported U.S. cars will help the U.S. auto industry. As he correctly points out, there is a 2.5 per cent tariff on cars shipped from China to the U.S. and a 25 per cent tariff on cars shipped from the U.S. to China. Trump claims that lowering the Chinese tariff would allow U.S. automakers to export more cars to China and boost auto employment in the USA.

However, GM, Ford and other automakers have already established joint ventures with Chinese firms and the great majority of the cars they sell in China are made in China. This allows them to avoid the tariff. China is GM’s biggest market and has been for six years straight. The company has 10 joint ventures and two wholly owned foreign enterprises as well as more than 58,000 employees in China. It sells approximately 4 million cars a year in China, almost all made in China.

The two largest automobile exporters from the U.S. to China are actually German. BMW shipped 106,971 vehicles from the U.S. to China in 2017; Mercedes sent 71,198. Ford was the leading U.S. owned auto exporter and in third place with total yearly exports of 45,145 vehicles. Fiat Chrysler was fourth with 16,545.

In short, lowering tariffs on auto imports from the U.S. will do little to boost auto production or employment in the USA, or even corporate profits. The leading U.S. automakers have already globalized their production networks. But, changes to the joint venture law, or a toughening of intellectual property rights in China could mean a substantial boost to U.S. automaker profits.

For its part, the Chinese government is trying to use its large state-owned enterprises, control over finance, investment restrictions on foreign investment, licensing powers, government procurement policies, and trade restrictions to build its own strong companies. These are reasonable development policies, ones very similar to those used by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. It is short-sided for progressives in the U.S. to criticize the use of such policies. In fact, we should be advocating the development of similar state capacities in the U.S. in order to rebuild and revitalize the U.S. economy.

That doesn’t mean we should uncritically embrace the Chinese position. The reason is that the Chinese government is using these policies to promote highly exploitative Chinese companies that are themselves increasingly export oriented and globalizing. In other words, the Chinese state seeks only a rebalancing of power and wealth for the benefit of its own elites, not a progressive restructuring of its own or the global economy.

In sum, these threats and counter-threats over trade have little to do with defending worker interests in the U.S. or in China. Unfortunately, this fact has been lost in the media frenzy over how to interpret Trump’s grandstanding and ever-changing policies. Moreover, the willingness of progressive analysts to join with the Trump administration in criticizing China for its use of state industrial policies ends up blurring the important distinction between the capacities and the way those capacities are being used. And that will only make it harder to build the kind of movement we need to reshape the U.S. economy.

*

Martin Hart-Landsberg is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon; and Adjunct Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences, Gyeongsang National University, South Korea. His areas of teaching and research include political economy, economic development, international economics, and the political economy of East Asia. He maintains a blog Reports from the Economic Front.

Featured image is from the author.

While Syrian troops carry on their liberation of Damascus’ suburbs from radical militants with the support of Iranian troops and Shia militia detachments, the United States and Saudi Arabia are planning to take advantage of Ankara’s tacit consent and launch a decisive blow against the forces of Bashar al-Assad. Saudi demands issued to Qatar, urging the latter to launch a military strike against Syria is just part of a multinational military operation in the making to rely on ground forces drawn from  Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. We face the probable entry of so-called Arab coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia into Syrian territory, illegally occupied by the United States. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has recently expressed its readiness to send its troops to Syria within the framework of a so-called International Coalition to replace American troops deployed there acting on the request of US President Donald Trump.

It’s safe to say that the plan aimed at balkanizing Syria is in full swing. From a realistic point of view, the Saudi-led forces only need to obtain consent from the US to launch an invasion, all while Washington is engaged in a variety of unnecessary political maneuvers, including holding consultations with Kurdish-led SDF forces that it has sponsored for some time now. Thus, the US is attempting to extend some form of authority to these forces as they enter US-occupied territories. While Russian forces enjoy the invitation of the legitimately recognized government in Damascus, the Pentagon has no such luxury, and therefore wants to obtain a plausible pretext by recognizing the SDF as a governmental power in the territory of eastern Syria. This means that their consent will also be a factor aimed at legitimizing the military occupation of the GCC forces.

Meanwhile, Turkish troops are also actively engaged in the formation of local self-governed bodies in the territories that Ankara occupies. And even though their structure is far more complicated than those formed by the SDF, the process is clearly moving forward, and in the foreseeable future, Turkey will also try to use the same pretext to try and justify its military presence in northern Syria as if it was acting at the request of legitimate authorities in the border areas with Turkey.

A great many Arab media sources report that consultations are being held with leaders of the SDF. As a matter of fact, representatives of the United States are indeed holding talks with the Kurdish People’s Self-Defense Forces, the dominant force in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), over the nature of the future occupation of their territories by a number of Arab states on the pretext that they will be defending those lands from the almost destroyed Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization, and it seems that the Kurdish leader Aldar Khalil believes that this occupation is a viable solution to the now unclear terrorist threat. However, he refused to disclose the contents of these negotiations, as well as the areas of possible deployment of Arab forces or their nationality, but he recognized them as part of the international US-led coalition. Kurdish sources would report that local militiamen had a meeting with representatives of the Arab states in Ayn Issa, a town within the Tell Abyad District of the Raqqa Governorate.

The progress made by pro-Assad forces and their Iranian allies aimed at liberating Syrian territories still held by militants are of little concern to the West and its allies, as these militants serve no direct role in future plans to occupy the edges of the Syrian state. Moreover, in the process of this liberation Syrian forces are suffering losses. On April 24, yet another attempt of breakthrough in the Yarmouk area failed, resulting in another 30 Syrian soldiers killed, including those from the elite Tiger Forces and Hezbollah, who had been redeployed to this area from Kalamoon due to the fact that Palestinians were leaving their positions en masse.

Naturally, the incursion of Arab forces will significantly strengthen the ground presence of the US-led coalition, and one is safe to assume that these Arab forces will try to push Iranian forces out of Syria and seal all land routes connecting Syria and Iran. The next phase of the war will have be aimed at directly colliding with the Iranian proxy forces and Iranian military detachments in Syria. Amid all of this remains the coalition’s ultimate goal – the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

Under these conditions, Russia is trying to strengthen air defense capabilities over the Syrian Arab Republic, so they can provide an adequate response to additional missile strikes that the Pentagon may launch against sensitive Syrian military infrastructure. This explains why the delivery of Russia’s advanced S-300 systems to Damascus is now being discussed by everyone, and in particular by Israel. However, Israeli officials made it clear that the Israeli Air Force will only launch strikes against S-300 systems deployed in Syria if they are used to target Israeli military aircraft. But you cannot win the Syrian war with air defense systems alone. They are quite capable of significantly weakening the effectiveness of US missile and bomb strikes, but the outcome will ultimately be determined by land engagements. Additionally, if the Syrian air defense forces are going to begin intercepting America’s Tomahawks and combat aircraft effectively, Washington is quite capable of bringing its entire military machine to the region, taking advantage of both its aircraft groups and the Al Udeid base in Qatar, that remains the largest in the region.

It seems that the end of the Syrian conflict is approaching. Almost all players have grown tired of it, including the US and Russia. Syria has become the strongest factor of contention amid Moscow’s relations with Washington and Tel Aviv, and against the backdrop of Washington’s attempts to make anti-Russian sanctions even broader, Moscow doesn’t seem determined to go all in on it. Armenia and eastern Ukraine also weigh heavily on decision makers in Moscow. Everyone understands that there will be no nuclear conflict between Moscow and Washington over Syria, no matter how intense such rhetoric becomes.

As for Saudi Arabia, it still finds itself trapped in a conflict of its own making in Yemen. It also faces mounting difficulties domestically including a possible attempted military coup from within. It’s clear that by pushing Qatar into the abyss that is the Syrian war, the Saudi royal family wants Syrian and Iranian forces to destroy all Qatari troops, as there is no more that six thousand servicemen serving Doha. Once those soldiers are eliminated, Riyadh will be able to work on eradicating the Al Thani regime with which it has poisoned ties, since the sitting Qatari emir has been courting Iran, while obstructing Saudi Arabia and the UAE from advancing aspects of their agenda in the Persian Gulf. The main goal of the Arabian monarchies shared by both the US and Israel is to destroy Iran through any means possible since it represents the principal rival of the Sunni Arab regimes in the region. And, apparently, Riyadh has received Trump’s consent for overthrowing the ruling Qatari family. It’s clear that Saudi Arabia is far more important to the US in its future struggle against Iran than a tiny gas-driven emirate like Qatar, too ambitious for its own good.

*

Peter Lvov, Ph.D in political science, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” 

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.