Global Research

In September 2007, in the dark of night, warplanes crossed the Syrian border and bombed a covert nuclear reactor. Recently, Israel took responsibility for the bombing mission that obliterated the Syrian reactor.

The Israeli announcement was unnecessary if it was intended to be an admission of responsibility. The origin of the bombers had never been a mystery. As early as 2008, Seymour Hersh began his report on the bombing with the line “Sometime after midnight on September 6, 2007, at least four low-flying Israeli Air Force fighters crossed into Syrian airspace and carried out a secret bombing mission.” Even the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report on the bombing said that the building had been “destroyed by Israel in September 2007.”

That the nuclear reactor was bombed by Israeli planes is clear. That the building the Israeli planes bombed was a nuclear reactor is far less clear.

The Nontechnical Questions

If Syria was building a nuclear weapons program, they were doing it entirely without the knowledge of the CIA. CIA Director Michael Hayden told President Bush that the CIA knew nothing about the Syrian reactor. That the CIA missed a secret nuclear program is not impossible to believe or even entirely unprecedented. What is more unbelievable is that they missed it when it was right out in the open. The Syrians made no attempt to conceal their biggest secret. The highly sophisticated U.S. satellites missed what a commercial satellite easily picked up.

It is hard to make sense of that. In fact, it is hard to make sense of a lot of nontechnical features of the Israeli story. Even to the layman with no technical knowledge of enrichment or nuclear reactors, a number of features made no sense. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh picked up on these nontechnical anomalies in his early investigative reporting of the strike, “A Strike in the Dark.” A former State Department intelligence expert told Hersh that many of the features that one would see around a nuclear reactor were missing from the site. There was not even any security around it. Former senior IAEA inspector Robert Kelley (image on the right) expanded on this anomaly in a personal correspondence. He said there was “no security whatever: no fences, no guards, no perimeter road, no security on the river pump house, water lines run under a public highway.” A nearby agricultural desert water station pump house had more security, he told me. He called the lack of security “a pretty big deal.” So did Syria’s then ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha:

“An allegedly strategic site in Syria without a single military checkpoint around it, without barbed wire around it, without anti-aircraft missiles around it, without any sort of security surrounding it, thrown in the middle of the desert without electricity, plans to generate electricity for it, with out major supply plans around it? And yet, it is supposed to be a strategic installation? And people don’t even think of it. Yesterday, in the White House presidential statement, it was stated to the letter that that was a secret location. And yet, every commercial satellite service available on earth was able to provide photos and images of this so-called secret Syrian site for the past five, six years.”

There were other details that didn’t fit the Israeli narrative either. The nuclear reactor was supposed to be based on a North Korean design, and North Korea was cast as a key player in the construction of the clandestine nuclear reactor. A North Korean ship called the Al Hamed attracted a lot of the spotlight. It was claimed to have brought the Syrians nuclear equipment from North Korea. But, the problem was that, in his investigation, Hersh found that neither maritime intelligence nor the ship’s transponder gave any indication that the Al Hamad had recently docked in North Korea.

At least two people I spoke to were also struck by the absence of people and the lack of activity at the site. You need a program, one person told me. You need bureaucratic support. Building a nuclear reactor is a huge project. Kelley says

“there were very few workers as in there are no buses and just a few motorcycles. That is a pretty big clue this is not a big deal. About to start up a super critical facility? No workers?”

Pursuing a different line of nontechnical questioning, one person I spoke to asked why, when war broke out in Syria, and America threw everything bad it had at Assad and Syria, from chemical weapons to barrel bombs, why did it never return to the illegal nuclear weapons program if it had real evidence that it had had one?

But, perhaps the most telling thing is not that the CIA missed what was out in the open for commercial satellites to pick up, not that they didn’t “have any proof of a reactor – no signals intelligence, no human intelligence, no satellite intelligence,” as a former senior US intelligence official who had access to the current intelligence told Hersh. What is, perhaps, more telling is that when they were provided with the intelligence, despite signing on to the Israeli narrative, they actually assessed only “low confidence” that the targeted site was part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program. And they weren’t the only ones. Mohamed ElBaradei, then director-general of the IAEA, said that their “experts who have carefully analyzed the satellite imagery say it is unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility.”

The IAEA Verdict

Despite the inconsistencies and the low confidence, by May 2011, the IAEA had rendered a verdict, repeated in their September 2014 report, that

“based on all the information available to the Agency and its technical evaluation of that information, it was very likely that the building destroyed at the Dair Alzour site was a nuclear reactor which should have been declared to the Agency.”

The Background section of the report informs that the information they had been provided with alleges that the bombed building was “a nuclear reactor that was not yet operational and into which no nuclear material had been introduced.”

But if the IAEA verdict is correct, why did Israel cross into Syrian air space and bomb the building in what was almost certainly an act of war? Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund and a leading expert on nuclear weapons, told me that he has no reason to doubt the IAEA’s verdict. But, he said, their verdict was only that it was “an unfueled nuclear reactor under construction,” and that, he said, is “only an initial step” “towards Syria developing a nuclear weapons capability.” Cirincione told me that “there was no imminent risk; no justification of an illegal Israeli attack” because Syria was still “a very long way from assembling the technical, industrial and financial capabilities needed to support a nuclear weapons program.” He said that, at this point in Syria’s development of a nuclear weapons program, the “matter should have been brought to the United Nations, not the Israeli Defense Force.”

The Technical Questions

But there were also reasons to doubt the IAEA’s verdict. More problematic for the Israeli-American-IAEA story than the nontechnical questions were a host of technical questions. There were three topics of technical questions.

The Photographs

The first was the photographs provided by Israel’s Mossad. There were two problems with the photographic evidence. The first was that Hayden never asked the Israelis how they got the photographs even though the CIA Director knew that at least one of the photographs had been photo-shopped to make the case more convincing, as investigative journalist Gareth Porter reports. The second was that the CIA was provided a bunch of photographs from inside a potential nuclear reactor and a bunch of photographs of the outside of the targeted building in Syria, but “nothing that links the two,” as former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter has pointed out. The former were potentially of a nuclear reactor, but were the latter?

The Bombed Building

The second set of technical problems involves the building itself. The first is that the building is the wrong size. The weight of the claim that the Syrian building was a nuclear reactor rests on the Israeli-CIA insistence that the building looks like the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon upon which they claim it was modeled. It is a type of reactor known as a gas-cooled graphite-moderated (GCGM) reactor. If it looks enough like that nuclear reactor, it could be a nuclear reactor; if it doesn’t, it wasn’t. But it doesn’t: the Syrian building didn’t fit the blueprint. Hersh pointed out this crucial inconsistency early. He says that nonproliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis told him that “even if the width and the length of the building were similar to the Korean site, its height was simply not sufficient to contain a Yongbyon-size reactor.”

Gareth Porter’s later investigation confirmed the contradiction. Porter relied on Yousry Abushady, the top IAEA specialist on North Korean reactors. Abushady knew GCGM reactors better than anyone at the IAEA, and “the evidence he saw in the video convinced him,” Porter reports, “that no such reactor could have been under construction” in Syria. And the first reason, again, according to Abushady was “that the building was too short to hold a reactor like the one in Yongbyon, North Korea.” According to Abushady the building bombed in Syria was only “a little more than a third as tall” as the supposed North Korean archetype.

But there were other problems. The North Korean reactor required at least twenty supporting buildings, but the Syrian site had few or none even though Israeli intelligence insisted that it was only a few months from being ready to operate. The reactor was supposed to be a gas-cooled reactor, but there was nothing in place to cool the gas: there was no cooling tower. Porter reports that Robert Kelley also pointed to a lack of facility for treating the water in the imaging. That means the water arriving in the reactor would be full of “debris and silt.” Kelley has said elsewhere that “the IAEA’s analysis of the water linesthat purportedly would in the future have supplied cooling water to the bombed building ignored a number of relevant features.” Kelley told me there was no support for fuel fabrication of reprocessing. There was also no building for a spent fuel pond. But, Abushady says that every GCGM reactor ever built has a separate building to house the spent fuel pond. Building after building is missing from the imaging, but the nuclear reactor was supposed to be on the verge of going operational.

The Environment

But the most serious problem is the third: the environmental inconsistencies: there were three damning environmental inconsistencies: the first had to do with barite, the second with uranium and the third with graphite.

The IAEA says that Syria purchased “large quantities” of barite, which can be used, amongst other uses, to “improve radiation shielding properties of concrete.” Since the IAEA did not believe that Syria sought the barite for use in rooms in hospitals that use radiation, it said that it “cannot exclude the possibility” that the barite was intended for use in the nuclear reactor. But Ritter says that the imagery of the site makes it clear that the “shield” would already have been in place. That means that the barite would already be there. In fact, he says, nearly 2,000 tons of it would be there. So, when the building was bombed, barite would have been scattered all over the site. But sensitive environmental sampling revealed none. Robert Kelley says that “none of the concrete samples analyzed . . . contain any barite”: a fact that he says that the IAEA analysis conveniently “failed to report”. Ritter concludes that “The lack of Barite, especially when logic dictates its presence if the [Syrian] facility was in fact nuclear related, is a strong indicator that there was no nuclear function, especially that associated with the operation of a nuclear reactor. . . .”

The second crucial ingredient missing was uranium. If the bombed Syrian building was a nuclear reactor, there should have been uranium in the environmental samples the IAEA took. But there wasn’t. Mohamed ElBaradei said that “so far, we have found no indication of any nuclear material.” Every sample that was actually taken from the ground in the area of the Syrian building tested negative for uranium and plutonium.

Gareth Porter says that

“Tariq Rauf who headed the IAEA’s Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office until 2011, has pointed out that one of the IAEA protocols applicable to these environmental samples is that “the results from all three or four labs to have analyzed the sample must match to give a positive or negative finding on the presence and isotopics or uranium and/or plutonium.”

And they did: they all gave a negative finding. There was no uranium at the Syrian site.

Strangely, though, Porter reports, uranium was found in an additional sample that was taken in violation of IAEA protocol. That anomalous result was used as evidence that a nuclear reactor had sat on that land. But, that sample was problematic. Why did it disagree with the protocol compliant samples the IAEA had taken?

Every sample taken from the ground around the bombed building had tested negative for uranium. But, the positive sample wasn’t taken from the ground around the building. It was taken from a “toilet” or, according to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, from “a changing room in a building associated with the reactor.” But why did the sample from inside the changeroom analyze positive for uranium?

The Syrians say the uranium came from the bombs the Israelis dropped on the site. The IAEA has rejected this explanation as having a low probability. But, Ritter says that the penetration bombs likely used by Israel could well have had uranium in them. He says that bombs dropped by the US in Kosovo led to the detection of uranium. Kelley agrees. He says that the IAEA assumed that the uranium in the bombs would have to be depleted uranium, and, since the uranium they found was not depleted, they said the uranium they found could not have been introduced by Israeli bombs.

“But,” Kelley has argued, “that assumption and the conclusion that followed it are incorrect. They fail to take account of the fact that natural uranium, of which Israel has an abundance based on what is known about its nuclear program, can be used as a strong nose in an earth-penetrating bomb (of the kind that was used at Dair Alzour) with precisely the same effectiveness as depleted uranium.”

Kelley goes on to say that the uranium that would be detected from such earth-penetrating bombs “would be similar to those found” in Syria. Kelley told me that the scientific reasoning the IAEA used was “kindergarten nonsense.” Intriguingly, Ritter says that “through its admitted morphology studies” on the uranium collected, the IAEA could answer questions about the source of the uranium. He says that

“The fact that the IAEA is withholding the specific properties of the anthropogenic nuclear particles . . . suggests that this issue is being used more for political purposes than scientific.”

Kelley, who was still with the IAEA at this time, told me that the IAEA handling of the uranium question was “embarrassing.” Stories had surfaced that there may have been traces of uranium found in Lebanon from Israeli earth-penetrating bombs.

When “Israel began dropping earth penetrators in Gaza,” Kelley says he “went to IAEA management and suggested we get samples.”

But, he told me that the IAEA refused.

“So an opportunity to compare samples from three sites, Lebanon, [Syria] and Gaza passed.”

And with it passed the opportunity to resolve the Syrian claim that uranium could have been left by Israeli bombs.

Ritter also says the uranium could have been “brought in by the IAEA inspectors, . . . suggesting the presence . . . of cross-contaminated equipment.” That might explain why uranium was found only inside the one site and not outside on the ground all around. And, that, Robert Kelley says, is exactly what probably happened.

In a comment he made on a previous article of mine, Kelley said

“the IAEA samples were almost certainly cross-contaminated.”

He told Gareth Porter a lot more. Kelley told Porter that a “very likely explanation” is that the uranium found in the change room was the result of “cross contamination” from the IAEA inspector’s clothing. According to Kelley, the Syrian case would not be exceptional: this type of cross contamination had occurred a number of times before, including in Iraq.

But the barite and the uranium were not even the biggest problem. The biggest environmental inconsistency came not from testing for barite or uranium but for graphite. After all, the Syrian site was supposed to be a gas-cooled graphite-moderated reactor. If it was, then when the building exploded, it should have sent graphite everywhere, according to former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Ritter says there would have been thousands of pounds of graphite in the facility already. But, he says,

“there’s no evidence in the destruction. . . . If it had been bombed and there was graphite introduced, you would have a signature all over the area of destroyed graphite blocks. There would be graphite lying around, etc. This was not the case.”

According to Porter, this inconsistency is what bothered Abushady the most too. He says the bombing of the reactor “would have spread particles of nuclear-grade graphite all over the site.” But none of the samples taken by the IAEA showed even a trace of graphite: graphite that would have to be there and that “would have been impossible to clean it up,” as nuclear expert Behrd Nakhai told Porter. Abushady says that

“these results are the basis to confirm . . . that the site cannot [have been] actually a nuclear reactor.”

It is presumably because of the lack of uranium and graphite in the sampling that the IAEA said that “based on all the information available to the Agency and its technical evaluation of that information, it was very likely that the building destroyed . . . was a nuclear reactor” but that it was a reactor that “was not yet operational and into which no nuclear material had been introduced.”

But there are two seemingly damning problems that seem to finally refute the Israeli-American-IAEA charge against Syria. The claim, presumably, is that there was no graphite in the environmental sampling because the nuclear reactor was not yet operational. But Scott Ritter told me in a recent correspondence that

“The graphite is an integral part of the reactor that would need to be in place prior to any nuclear material being inserted. According to the Israeli-provided images, the construction stage was pre-concrete pour, meaning graphite columns would logically be in place. Even if the graphite hadn’t been installed, it should have been present at the site awaiting installation given the alleged advance state of construction. Of course, the Israeli provided images could have been falsified, in which case no graphite would have been present. . . .”

Graphite bricks and tiles would have been part of the core structure of the building if it was a nuclear reactor. Ritter says there would have been about 30,000 bricks containing around 325 tons of graphite. If a building incorporating such bricks blew up, there would be graphite everywhere. There wasn’t. So, the nonoperational solution wilts.

So does the “into which no nuclear material had been introduced” solution. Saying that no nuclear material had yet been introduced was presumably supposed to make sense of the failure to find uranium in the environmental analyses. But rather than throwing a problematic result back at the Syrians, it only placed the problem right back in the Israeli-American-IAEA narrative. What is not given enough attention – and maybe even none – is that if no nuclear material had been introduced to the Syrian site, there should have been no uranium found in the additional sample taken outside of protocol from the inside of the change room of the associated building. If there was uranium brought into the change room before the Syrians had brought uranium into the site, then that means it was brought in by the inspectors who found it or from some other non-Syrian source. The anomalous uranium must have been the result of cross contamination.

And that, it seems, leaves little evidence of a nuclear reactor in the middle of the Syrian desert. No uranium, no barite and not even any of the graphite that a graphite-moderated reactor would have to be made of. Only a square building that doesn’t even look like the building whose resemblance is supposed to prove that the Israelis bombed a Syrian nuclear reactor in the dark of night in September 2007.

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Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

I don’t often comment on foreign relations between other countries – that is other than what the U.S. is doing concerning other countries, but having just listened to the UN Security Council discussion about the Skripal case, these thoughts stood out.

The Russian UN representative made his presentation first, outlining their doubts about the case as expressed by the UK and the manner in which it is being handled. This was followed by the British UN representative and her attempt at a rebuttal to the Russian comments.

I have to admit that the Brits are very clever and careful with they manner in which they manipulate their mother tongue. Along with the usual rebuttals the UK rep presented an argument about the use of the phrase “highly likely” in regards to the reasoning why Russia was guilty of the Skripal attack.

The UK representative said it was a reflection of the British judicial system in that “only a court can finally determine culpability.”

However she then goes on to argue that the lack of a court finding (because it hasn’t gone there) “should not be construed as casting doubt whatsoever on the likelihood of Russia being responsible.” In other words, we haven’t sent it to court yet, but Russia is obviously guilty anyway, without a doubt.

The UK rep the continues arguing about Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and his contradictory statements re: Porton Down’s statement using the “highly likely” phrase. According to her,

Boris Johnson “was making clear that Porton Down was sure the nerve agent was Novichok, a point they have subsequently reaffirmed.”

From anything else I have read in the media this is simply not true as they stated it was “like” a Novichok “class” of nerve agents, neither precise nor definitive.

She then argued that because there was a “lack of alternate explanations” that is why “we have reached the conclusion we have.” She then goes on to deride two alternate theories – outliers both – without considering the many questions that contradict the ‘official’ UK theory. Nor did she acknowledge the many other alternate explanations that could be arrived at from the information presented so far in public.

In short, regardless that the case has not gone through the judicial system, the UK knows that Russia tried to kill the Skripals (yet failed even though the chemical was supposed to be more toxic than any other highly toxic nerve agent). The UK rep’s argument rests on the phrase “highly likely” which is simply pushed aside as a legal dodge because, really, who could doubt that Russia really did it.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Anyone paying attention to events as they unfold about the March 4 incident knows Russia was wrongfully blamed for a US/UK false flag, a geopolitical hoax – an indisputable fact. No evidence suggests otherwise.

The incident had to have been well-planned in advance. Britain would never attempt a stunt like this on its own without US approval and involvement – intelligence agencies of both countries likely behind what happened.

False flags are a longstanding US tradition since at least the mid-19th century – 9/11 the mother of them all.

Once exposed, the damage is done. Over two dozen nations went along with the Skripal hoax – likely pressured, bullied and maybe bribed to support the Big Lie, knowing Russia wasn’t at fault.

That’s how dirty politics and imperialism work. Washington demands obedience. Nations refusing to go along are punished politically, economically and/or militarily.

At Russia’s behest, a special UN Security Council session convened on Thursday to discuss the Skripal affair.

Its envoy Vasily Nebenzya ripped apart the Big Lie.

“The main argument of the British side about the unquestionable Russian origin of the substance is no longer valid,” he stressed, adding:

“Couldn’t you (Britain) come up with a better fake story? We have told (UK officials), you are playing with fire, and you’ll be sorry…”

“(T)his story and this investigation are far from being over. (I)t’s just beginning. We…are assuming with a high degree of probability that the intelligence services of certain countries (the US and UK) are behind this mega provocation.”

They staged a “terrorist attack,” falsely blamed on Russia. Britain and America stand exposed as guilty parties in this affair.

Thursday remarks by US, UK and French UN envoys rang hollow, repeating earlier false accusations.

Organic chemistry Professor David Cullum tweeted:

“This nerve agent story has been transparent from the start.”

“Wondering where the rest of the organic chemists have been, but, if asked, they would confirm the simplicity of the cmpds and absurdity of the claims.”

He added his senior students could make the toxin allegedly used to harm the Skripals. There’s no antidote. Exposure assures death in minutes. Yet no one died, an obvious red flag.

Since March 4, the public in Western societies have been fed a pack of lies, go-along media repeating them with no due diligence checking for accuracy – the entire affair disgraceful Russophobic business, continuing despite clear evidence it’s a geopolitical hoax.

Who in the Western media community will step up to the plate responsibly and explain what’s going on. No one so far!

A disgraceful April 5 London Guardian editorial was typical Western media fake news fed the public, accusing Russia of “engaging in an aggressive disinformation war over the Skripal poisoning,” adding:

“Russia is engaged in a long game of sustained diplomatic and political disruption. Its policy towards the liberal democracies is to undermine and divide. It is, as we have said before, a troll state.”

Despicable stuff! No responsible editors would permit it! The Guardian is a longtime supporter of imperial America and Britain, including their endless wars of aggression, smashing sovereign independent countries unaccountably.

If brought before a legitimate independent tribunal, Russia would be exonerated straightaway – Washington and Britain declared guilty as charged!

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

Israel’s official mantra to explain and defend its crimes against Palestinians, including massacres, has always been, and continues to be, “security”.

For Israel, the word “security” means the security to exist as a Zionist Jewish state on part or all of historic Palestine — to exist as a state meant to be populated by as many Jews from around the world as it could entice to immigrate there, on land and property acquired by a combination of force, subterfuge and purchase from their rightful owners, all of which to be dedicated to Jews “in perpetuity”.

To achieve such “security”, Jewish Zionist forces had first to depopulate historic Palestine of its indigenous non-Jewish Arab population. That happened early on when an estimated two-thirds of non-Jewish Arab Palestinians were ethnic-cleansed, their villages erased from the face of the earth.

These villages keep popping up eerily from under the rubble and trees the Jewish National Fund planted to hide them — a village cemetery here, a line of cactus marking the edges of ruins there.

But most of all they continue to pop up in the collective memories of Palestinians, most poignantly in the collective memories of Palestinian citizens of Israel today, who became a national, religious, linguistic and cultural minority under international law in their own homeland.

Many of these Palestinian Arabs are displaced to this day within Israel itself (some, like Palestinian Bedouins live in “unrecognized” villages).

They can see and touch their village lands or property — as those do, for example, who are displaced in Jerusalem and look over the standing ruins of Lifta, my own paternal grandparents’ village.

: Thousands of displaced Palestinians in Israel march to the site of the northern village of Lubya on Nakba Day, which Israel celebrates as “Interdependence Day” (Source: Activestills.org)

Or they live in Haifa, gazing at a salvaged structure like my maternal grandparents’ family guest house (al-Madi family) one of the very few structures not destroyed by Israel in Ijzim, now a hotel in Jewish hands advertised as:

“Apartment «the Castle»
The Castle dates back to the 11th-century crusades, and is located 7 km from Hof Habonim Beach, and a 20-minute drive from both Cesarea and Haifa. This unique villa features elegant suites with balcony.
Tropki.ru — путешествия и отелиповсемумиру”

My family’s guest house in Ijzim, Haifa, now in the possession of Jews (MeronBenvenisti’s Sacred Landscape; The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948) (Source: author)

Displaced Palestinian Arabs in Nazareth can see and touch their village lands or property in:

“Maalul, Christians displaced to nearby Nazareth have carved a path through the forest of pine-trees that were planted to hide it, and have cleared the bracken to expose two churches, one Greek Orthodox, another Catholic, where they have begun celebrating festivals such as Easter.”

If the above sounds fantastic to you when expressed in the way I am describing it, that’s because, incredibly, Israel’s hasbara project has efficiently kept the racist and apartheid nature of Zionism under the radar of most people’s consciousness.

That, coupled with the campaign to demonize Palestinian Arabs and the West’s collusion and active partnering with Israel to keep Israel Jewish, has resulted in Palestinians being deprived even of the right to have rights. [See “Right to Have Rights”: Partition and Palestinian Self-Determination]

Zionists’ spurious justification for keeping Palestinian Arabs who are now citizens of Israel away from their land and property is that, in essence, such property belonged originally to Jews (I suppose by divine edict), but the Muslim villains took it away, and now the Jewish state is making it available again to followers of all religions in the form of a park.

The comments section of the Economist article “Christians luckier than Muslims” I cite above (which, strangely, pops up separately and first when you google the article and appears to be a deliberate hasbara link) has this comment, as an example of such reasoning and justification:

“Sir-

You present the modern-day Jews of Israel as arrivistes that breezed in and “conquered” Palestine in 1948, arbitrarily renaming the one-horse Muslim village of Safuriya as Tzipori (“Christians luckier than Muslims”, June 8). But Tzipori came first: it is the birthplace of the Virgin Mary in Christian tradition and the remains of synagogues from before the birth of Muhammad can still be found there (despite centuries of Muslim efforts to eradicate all trace). The old Muslim village grounds are now a national park, where people of all faiths are free to pray.”

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the State of Israel has continually confiscated the land of Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, demolished their homes and enforced their segregation, attempting to erase their identity and collective memory.

The self-justification for Israel’s theft, outside the hasbara justification above, is Israel’s legal system. Everything Israel does to Palestinian Arab citizens is legal — i.e., Israel’s discriminatory laws allow it.

The exact same Israeli legal justification process to judaize the West Bank is now taking place in Israel, even though it is against international law:

In 2017, the Israeli parliament enacted a law allowing the expropriation of private West Bank Palestinian land in order to retroactively “legalize” Israeli settlements.

The following paper, titled “From Arab land to `Israel Lands’: the legal dispossession of the Palestinians displaced by Israel in the wake of 1948” traces this legal justification and throws more light on the subject:

“… the Israeli government’s use of law to institutionalize the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs displaced by the 1948 war and trace the legal transformation of their land during the formative years of Israel’s land regime (1948–60).”

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

Featured image: Bassem Tamimi observing a flower through a loupe– a magnifying glass. ‘Extraordinary,’ he remarked. His wife Nariman and daughter Ahed are in an Israeli prison for resisting the military and settler  occupation of their land by Israel. (Source: author)

I spent the month of March in the Palestinian city of Hebron, volunteering as an English teacher. Because I work as a botanist, I was interested in introducing Palestinian children to the pleasures of observing flowers, and for this reason I brought a cheap dissecting microscope with me. My plan was to leave it as a gift upon my departure, but plans often go astray. I signed in with the Israeli El Al airline in New York for the flight to Tel Aviv, but once the El Al personnel learned that I was going to Palestine, I was subjected to considerable scrutiny. This was magnified substantially when they encountered the little microscope, which they took away for a long inspection. Ultimately they confiscated it, and let me know that if it did not have explosives in it they would send on a later flight.

A few days later I received a telephone call in Hebron from a delivery company, who informed me that the microscope had made its way to Tel Aviv and they wanted to bring it to me. The glitch in this plan was that Hebron is Palestinian, and is closed to Israelis—except for the Israeli settlers and soldiers that live in enclaves in the city. There is a red sign at the highway turnoff that reads, “The Entrance For Israeli Citizens Is forbidden, Dangerous To Your Lives, And Is Against Israeli Law.”

The delivery service decided to drop it off at a hotel in Jerusalem, where I could presumably come pick it up. But the hotel had a policy to not even touch a package not addressed to them, so they certainly were not going to accept delivery. In the end the box with the microscope was sent back to the airport in Tel Aviv, where I was able to pick it up on my way out of the country, and after another hour of physical and X-ray inspection, bring it back to the United States with me.

The question is, what is going on here? Why are Israelis afraid of a microscope? What is the history of events that have put so much fear and trepidation into Israeli citizens? I had an analogous experience while hiking in a natural area near Hebron called Wadi al-Quff. I took a taxi out to the trailhead—by the time the 20-minute drive was completed the Palestinian driver had given me a children’s book he himself had written and invited me to his home for a meal. I spent two hours hiking up a steep trail to the hilltop, where there proved to be a concrete bunker and a soldier pointing a machine gun at me. The site was Israeli military outpost, and the soldiers were completely shocked to see a human being out looking at flowers. The female soldier lowered her gun when I produced my American passport, but she repeatedly exclaimed, in English, how weird it was that anyone would be out observing nature in Palestine, and that in her opinion any Palestinians that found me would kill me. There was a small irony here of course in that the only Palestinian I had encountered (the taxi driver) had given me a gift and invited me home for dinner. So again the question arises, what’s going on here?

What is going on of course is that the Israelis and the Palestinians both claim the same small piece of the Earth to be their homeland. The actual history of the area that is often referred to as the Levant (the countries of the eastern Mediterranean; the word came into being in about 1500 from an Italian word for ‘rising,’ as in Italy the sun rises to the east, in the Levant) is long and complex. In the larger sweep of history both Israelis and Palestinians are merely bit players, present over the past 2500 years in one form or another in a land that has a 10,000 year tribal history and 100,000 year human history. Both are Semites, which is language group, not a race nor ethnicity. Genetic studies have shown that Mediterranean Jews (Sephardic) are identical to Palestinians, that is, they are the same people, while both are more distant genetically from European Jews (Ashkenazi).

An evolutionary (scientific) explanation for any religion is that it unites its adherents as being a ‘chosen’ people by the ruling god or gods of any given belief system. This is as true for Judaism as for any religion. A basic tenet of one of the Jewish religions books, the Kabala, is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body. According to the Kabala, the world was created solely for the sake of Jews; the existence of non-Jews was subsidiary. A famous teacher of the Kabala, Rabbi Kook, stated, ‘The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jew is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.’ Exceptionalism can be said to be the very core of all religious belief, granting social identity, albeit imaginary, to the believer.

When the Zionist Jews decided to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine (a seminal date for this being the 1st International Zionist Conference in 1897), their sense of their own exceptionalism reduced the existing population of Muslims and Christians in Palestine to a sub-human, almost non-existent stature. Thus Golda Meir (the 4th Prime Minister of Israel) was able to pronounce in 1969, ‘There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.’

In fact about one million people lived in Palestine at the turn of the 20th century, and Muslims and Christians made up 97% of that population. The only way for Palestine to become a Jewish state was to drive the non-Jews out. In December 1940 Joseph Weitz, responsible for Jewish colonization and a senior official of the Yishuv (settlement plan) wrote in his diary,

‘It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples . . . If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us . . . The only solution is a Land of Israel, at least a western land of Israel, without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises.’

A common misconception about the formative years of Israel is that violence erupted between Arabs and Israelis after Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948. But in fact a series of Israel massacres of Palestinians were initiated the year before, the purpose of which was to drive the ‘non-existent’ Palestinians off of their land. The massacres were consciously executed to terrorize the Palestinian people.

The village of Deir Yassin became the most famous massacre because of the barbarity involved and the fact that over 20 villagers were taken to a nearby Jewish settlement, paraded as game and then killed. Menachem Begin gloated about the massacre, writing,

‘The legend in Deir Yassin helped us in particular in the saving of Tiberia and the conquest of Haifa… All the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter. The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting Deir Yassin. Arabs throughout the country were seized by limitless panic and started to flee for their lives.’

The Red Cross representative who found the bodies at Deir Yassin arrived in time to see some of the killing in action. He wrote in his diary that Zionist militia members were still entering houses with guns and knives when he arrived. He saw one young Jewish woman carrying a blood-covered dagger and saw another stab an old couple in their doorway. The representative wrote that the scene reminded him of S.S. troops he had seen in Athens.

Village of Deir Yassin

Richard Catling, British assistant inspector general for the criminal investigation division, reported on ‘sexual atrocities’ committed by Zionist forces.

‘Many young school girls were raped and later slaughtered,’ he reported. ‘Old women were also molested.’

The Deir Yassin attack was perpetrated by two Zionist militias and coordinated with the main Zionist forces, whose elite unit participated in part of the operation. The heads of the two militias, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, later became Prime Ministers of Israel. Begin, head of the Irgun militia, sent the following message to his troops about their victory at Deir Yassin:

‘Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack. We stand to attention in memory of the slain. We lovingly shake the hands of the wounded. Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue thus until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.’

The British decision to give Palestine to the Zionists, formalized in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, is now understood have been calculated to help the British win World War I, to help keep Britain’s route through the Suez Canal to its ‘crown jewel’ colony of India (where it was growing opium to unload on China) protected, and as an added bonus, to induce the messiah Jesus to come back to Earth. Seriously. This is the level of intelligence that drives most big government decisions (which really should make people question the existence of big governments).

By mid-1916 Britain was in danger of losing World War I. In the Battle of the Somme of that year it lost ½ million men killed or wounded, with nearly 60,000 lost in the first day of fighting. Wealthy Zionists offered to persuade the United States to enter the war on the side of Britain if given the gift of Palestine as ‘homeland.’ President Woodrow Wilson, who had won re-election in 1916 on a promise to keep the U.S. out of the war, then declared war on Germany in April of 1917. Thus it was the Jewish-Zionist community that engineered the defeat of Germany in that war (a fact not lost on the Germans after the war).

In addition, Britain’s most lucrative colony in its worldwide empire was India, and access to and from India via the Suez Canal was vital to controlling the oppressed Indian people and keeping them working for British profits. In creating a ‘Judeo-Christian enclave’ in the Levant the British government felt it could better protect its shipping route though the canal. It is also the case that Arthur Balfour (the Foreign Secretary of Britain during World War I and one of the authors of the Balfour Declaration) was a fundamentalist Christian who believed with some others that certain passages in the bible indicated that Jesus would not return to Earth until ‘the Jews were back in Jerusalem.’ Which, if you think it through, means that the last 70 years conflict in the Holy Land has been in the name of the Prince of Peace. It has been said that god loves irony.

With this background information we can better understand the behavior of the Israelis that I encountered on my trip to Palestine. Because they terrorized the Palestinian people in 1947-48 and drove one million of them off of their land and into refugee camps, then stole the land and the dwellings and made them their own, because for 70 years now they have continued to usurp Palestinian land, brutalize the Palestinian people and have continued to try to drive them out of Palestine, because all of this nefarious behavior is based on power and dominance and mythology and lies– the Israelis have to constantly watch their backs. In fact 70 years after the creation of a Jewish state on Palestinian land, the most dangerous place in the world to be a Jew is in Israel.

There is a clear way out of this Gordian Knot and that is for the Israelis to abandon the pseudo-religious mythology of being somehow superior to the rest of humanity, to tear down the concrete walls they have built across the Holy Land and the concrete walls permeating their minds and hearts, and to create an egalitarian society based on human decency and perhaps even a measure of love, with the other inhabitants of the Levant, the Palestinian people, their genetic and geographic brothers and sisters.

*

Dana Visalli is an ecologist living in Washington State. He can be reached at [email protected],
www.methownaturalist.com

“…When Darkness and Disorder Began to Reign in a Kingdom…There Appeared the Loyal Ministers.” – The Tao Teh Ching

Eighteen more Palestinians were unapologetically murdered this past “Good Friday”  by the Israeli military. They were unarmed. They were on their own land. They were desperate.  They screamed their desperation as they marched. Then, they shouted their daily reality of personal horrors too close to Israel’s attention. So, they were killed.

These innocents were shot like fish in a barrel: No place to hide, no place to run, no chance of escape. The hunters all around them. Easy targets. In what now seems like a national sport, Israel has picked up the pace beyond tormenting Palestine…because it can!

For the record, it is important to accurately understand the current Israeli imposed rules of engagement for this latest round of unjustified violence. A synopsis is in order:

As any rational person should know well, Israel has been slowly- since the complete blockade of Gaza eleven years ago- torturing, by choking, what little is left to be stolen from Palestine. Thanks to the Israel friendly inhabitants in the US White House, Israel has been given carte blanche to increase this inhuman stranglehold. The new US/ Israeli policy towards Palestine holds the draconian view that any Palestinian love for their nation, their futures, their health, their families, and their happiness can be wiped away. Israel truly believes it can change the fundamental human mind of all of Palestine…if their imposed arbitrary torture and their killings are sufficient.

Beyond this increasing isolation, deprivation and degradation of Gaza and Palestine and the military takeover of the West Bank for more illegal Israeli settlements, the Likudists that dominate both Israeli and American politics, have managed to require their US president to hand them the Palestinian capital of Jerusalem as a gift for his ascendancy. Strangely, both these antagonists were then surprised that the Palestinians did not find this departure from history an acceptable US decision.

Despite having slowly seized, coerced or purchased 90% (95% if you count the Golan Heights)  of original Palestine since the inception of Israel in 1948, suddenly sensing trouble, the IDF next declared a 350-meter no-go zone within the borders of what they had not already taken from Palestine. With their futures sinking like a bag of kittens wantonly cast adrift, direct action within what remains of Palestine was understandable. On  March 30 “Land Day,” an annual commemoration of the deaths of six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in 1976, Hamas called for the start of a march called, “The Day of Return.” In protest they marched, some 17,000 strong, towards the border: To their border… right up to that fence.

Well, not quite.

One, two, three, four, five…eighteen…they were murdered. The videos do not lie. Bullets from the 100 Israeli snipers not being sufficient enough, however, a tank was used to blow to pieces a distant lonely farmer who was out of rifle-shot. Why? Not because they dared to visit the DMZ border zone. Not because they threw rocks that could never reach the fence. Not because the petrol bombs and burning tires of this desperate protest were hurled ineffectively in the direction of the thirty-foot-high, electrified, steel fence.

No. These little fish were killed for one simple, nay fundamental, reason: They refused to accept their fate. They would not change their minds. So…an example had to be made.

Are We Not All, Today, Palestinians?

“Resistance is futile.” That is the message of the IDF this week. It is also clearly implied within new US foreign policy designed to bring the Palestine, and particularly Gaza, to its knees. America considers this increased horror the means to a peaceful end to the bitter conflict of decades. This policy of delusion, however, too clearly echoes existing US foreign policy across the globe. That same threatening message is certainly explicit in too much of what is wrong with our world today. The arrogant Israeli horrors that are ongoing at this border protest are really just an extension of a collective worldwide US foreign policy that demands acquiescence and allegiance. Or Else!

Is resistance futile? In this, America is forcing everyone worldwide to become a Palestinian.

Take as example the Israeli military court decision -which met in Secret-to send 17 year-old Palestinian protester, Ahed Tamimi, to join hundreds of other convicted children in an Israeli prison for eight months. Her crime?  Not, that the IDF had just marched into her home. Not that her brother had just been shot in the face by the IDF for throwing stones in their direction. No. Her crime was that she did not willingly accept these horrors. She resisted; slapping the two soldiers for what they had done. This opinion was echoed by her lawyer, Gaby Lasky, who stated after the trial,

“They want to deter other Palestinian youth from resisting occupation.”

So, because she refused to accept being witness to this arbitrary horror, one that should shock the conscience, she is thus guilty of… resisting.

Take heed.

One look at the failures of recent attempts at, and enthusiasm for, national democracy seems to clearly bolster this point. Take Greece. It took less than 150 days for the fledgling Syriza party to go from achieving a stunning legitimately democratic victory to allowing the whole country and its future to be functionally overthrown by the feared Troika: the IMF, EC and ECB. The country was thus sold-off for pennies on the Euro- merely to obtain more debt. Greece is now economically and politically beholden to Brussels as is their treasonous president, Alexis Tsipras, the usual slippery politician who single-handedly (well, Finance Minister, Varoufakis certainly helped) sold Greece, his own government , and his soul willingly to a higher authority that controls virtually all of the future of Greece. A future that is already far worse, and of which they have no control.

Like the Palestinians?

Ukraine is an easy one. The US admits that it funded the overthrow of the Viktor Yanukovych’s presidential democratic election victory and that it has recently sent massive amounts of new high-powered weapons for a spring offensive of horror and wanton killing. America, its hand-picked president Poroshenko and his neo-Nazi themed government hope to break the will of the eastern Ukrainians in the Donbass region using increased violence, and bringing them, too, to their knees and stealing their future.

Like the Palestinians?

Then there was Spain and the Catalonia election, failed, sadly, before it all got started due the leadership’s lack of understanding -like Greece- of the true strength of their adversaries within the EU and Spain. Theirs was a drastic overestimation of their true political power. Post-election victory, the result has been a disaster with independence referendum president, Carles Puigdemont, also being arrested-with obvious EU complicity- in Germany this week. Catalonian resistance has been again squashed, its leaders taken, its people told to go home, return to work…or else. Yes, do as they are told by a foreign governing body of immoral politicians that they did not choose to elect.

Next, consider the UK and Brexit, the monumental, shocking and successful democratic vote for resistance to foreign hegemony. Like Ukraine, Greece, and Catalonia the primal forces of nature are doing their very best to ensure that democracy, here too, will fail. As described in a June,27 2016 article, Brexit was an easy target for delay and tactical overthrow well before it went to a vote. Almost two years later, Brexit is arguable, as predicted, further away from becoming a reality than before the vote because of the duality of the true allegiances of the UK politicians. So, who really holds power over the people of  Britain?  Politicians.  The House of Lords. The EU. Certainly not the people.

Like the Palestinians?

A Mind Programmed to Violence: The American Foreign Export

The cause, the epicenter, of this mental malady that demands subservience at the end of the gun is the American Congress and its foreign and domestic policies of obedience. The fault here also lies with the American public’s tacit willingness to accept this increasingly authoritarian rule without complaint.

One would have thought that in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election and the proven revelations of DNC corruption and Hillary Clinton criminal complicity, Americans would well know that they, too, do not have an opposition political party. Add the recent documentation of FBI and CIA collusion in the same conspiracy to bring HRC to power, while burying here proven crimes, and it is indeed a wonder that voters are once again excitedly heading off to the slaughter of the 2018 mid-terms.

Of course, few Americans see reality for themselves, but evidence abounds and with American foreign policy embracing, excusing and justifying these and a growing list of imposed horrors upon the conscience, the world would do well to understand from whence these are spawned: A country where violence and killing seem endemic. Where an artificially elected congress likes it that way.

Take the increase in police killings of unarmed citizens. For many, these US citizen’s resistance amounted to having their back turned, their hands in the air and/or running away. The US is certainly number one is this horror as well as in the least number of police convictions for same. The current White House marionette has already publicly embraced police brutality. Protests against these extra-judicial killings are paltry at best. So, the killings increase yearly.

Since taking office, Trump not just guaranteed that the Guantanamo Bay torture center will stay open, he has provided massive new- and undisclosed- funding for it. Ensuring that it will soon be at full capacity, he then named arguably the two most righteous, self-serving zealots of arbitrary torture and unabashed horror, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, to help with this goal: showcasing America’s hatred of human resistance. Philip Giraldi in an article on March 22, 2018, noted this point,

“… every change reflects an inexorable move to the right in foreign policy… so he [Trump] is inevitably being directed by individuals who have long American global leadership by force if necessary.”

Just in case, back in the USA Trump re-authorized the distribution of returning Mid-East military hardware to be distributed to towns across the country. Despite the best attempts of US media complicity, propaganda, and censorship, the government knows the people are slowly waking up to their own dismal futures. To this government and its military, it seems only a matter of time before the Second Amendment and the US military square-off against each other. They are preparing to crush this resistance.

Like the Palestinians?

But the American mind, one with a slowly building penchant for violence, helps to allow Trump and his monocracy in Congress to continue to get their unchallenged path to war by playing on this mindset. This is becoming endemic in the American mind; one that enjoys guns and killing. Spend just one hour watching American TV commercials and the routine level of violence shown via movie trailers, video games featuring ultra-violence and US military armed forces recruitment adverts is- hour after hour- like no country on earth. Congress and the NRA legislatively propagate this blood-lust, using America’s entrenched love for guns and killing as the misunderstood base rationale to increase the US budget for any and all the tools that kill.

This was sorely evidenced this past year, when the US House and Senate passed legislation- as an attachment- that allowed hunters to, not only kill wolves and bears, but to increase the thrill of the hunt, this Congress said it would be OK for these same hunters to now kill new born wolf puppies and bear cubs, too. So, the true morality of these humans was shown clearly. Despite every US senator being individually contacted by this reporter with the additional horrifying fact that this barbaric earmark of legislation would also allow these hunters to kill the pups and cubs during springtime and in their mother’s dens, the bill passed easily without any debate regarding this new degradation of the American conscience.

But, they had a good reason, as shown in their staff letters of reply,  to abandon their conscience.

The earmark that all but doomed the North American wolf back to extinction after decades of recovery, was tucked away in a spending bill. As goes the US budget year after year, this was, in majority, a military spending bill. It needed Republican votes to pass. The price for one single lowly congressional vote, dangled by Alaska state rep., Don Young, was to allow tiny newborns to be slaughtered at will. In the face of a military that needs to be fed and congressmen who need money and have a vote (soul) for sale; the wolves never had a chance.

Defenseless wolves or slaughtered Palestinians must be considered an example to the world. A call to action. Compared to a tranquilized US sponsored first world that ignores the real plight of the remaining civilized world around them, worldwide Palestinians know well, what these disaffected and apathetic populations refuse to admit: That, election results mean nothing, their government officials are controlled by others, their future and their lives are at the whim of American corporate economic interests, and… their happiness in life is of no concern to politicians at all.

Just like Palestinians?

Yes, the American man on the street will proudly tell you that his country is #1 in the world in everything. Of course his argument does not include the fact that America is also number one in: Mass killings, Prison incarceration, police killings of civilians, personal debt per person, share of national debt per person, military expenditure, private military contractors, money printing (QE), manipulating elections, overthrowing governments, drone killings of the innocent, money donated to Israel, weapons given to Israel or UN vetoes of humanitarian resolutions, etc.

This military madness was all too evident in the recent US spending bill of mere weeks ago. Yes, the military had its budget demands as did the Israel lobby within Congress. In a stunning example that proves who is really in charge in Washington, the Congress within the $1.3 trillion spending bill incredibly approved  $15.5 billion extra for the US military despite it having only requested a paltry $654.6 Billion.  Also, Israel was granted an additional $$558.4 million over their own budget request of $147.4 million. The total of $705.8 million is an increase of $105.4 million over what congress bequeathed to them last year.

Of course, there was not a penny extra for any of the social services that were gutted in the first two rounds of budget ping pong.

Still, America is number one? This irrational mind is a tribute to America’s media. This also highlights the one most threatening fact about the American understanding of its role in the world: Willful, delusional ignorance. One that increasingly suffers at the hands of their politicians yet cheers on the cause of their own demise. As an American journalist, Robert Bridge, noted this week;

This apathetic attitude on the part of so many Americans to this wave of death and destruction against foreigners in foreign lands suggests that any semblance of an anti-war consciousness has left the building.

More so than in any country, in the US fact and truth so are easily accepted as lies. This shows a madness deep inside.  A failure of the mind, one that watches passively at the violent destruction of so much of the world, at the hands of their own country, yet fails to notice that their own homeland’s myopic, insular, flag-draped future is also, piece by piece, month by month, being removed from their grasp; until there is nothing left.

Just like Palestine.

When US Foreign Policy Meets Criminal Insanity

This weekend, after the Good Friday Massacre, Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, not only proved charges that he and his Likudist part are criminally insane ( “a depraved indifference to human life”) and guilty of genocidal apartheid, he brashly showcased to the world a brand new crime of conscience: Criminal Hypocrisy.

Said Netanyahu’s office in a tweet;

“The most moral army in the world will not be lectured by those who have indiscriminately bombed civilian populations for years.”

His sick joke failed to note, of course, Israel’s actual inclusion the club of nations without consciences such as its US, EU, and UK patrons, and an incredible new allegiance with their new BFF, the Saudi Arabian, Mohammed Bin Salman. All collectively have the blood of millions on their hands. Distortion of this kind by Netanyahu shows the depravity of the mind aforementioned. As if these words were not enough to prove the point, IDF leader Avigdor Leiberman (image on the left) removed all doubt, stating with glee that the Israeli troops were, “doing their job” and that all involved in the slaughter ” deserved commendations.”

Only the insanity of US inspired military arrogance can utter such rot. Only those of a similar mind will believe it.

These self-serving – and false- statements belie the accurate casualty figures of the two previous Israeli inspired wars in Gaza and three in Lebanon when previously Israel felt the need to “cut the grass.”  When it comes to war, however, the actual facts forever prove a very different result of Israeli army tactics that can best be summed up in one word: chickenshit!

Casualty figures and the eyes of the world show without doubt that Israel never picks a fair fight, preferring civilian deaths to IDF body bags. Despite the world’s seventh largest military, Israel will not fight any Army without full US financial, military, munitions, intelligence, foreign policy, and UN assistance. Its massive, American funded military, prefers to attack the defenseless, the innocent and the civilian. This was shown clearly in daily TV horrors during the 2006 Lebanon War and the 2014 Gaza war. To argue otherwise is madness.

Worse, Israel leaves the on-the-ground killing to its proxies in the US, UK, EU nations and Saudi Arabia, nations that regularly use their national coffers and militaries, not for their own people, but to affect what, in reality, provides only a positive geopolitical bearing for Israel; not their own countries.

In doing so, it is the political leaders- not the citizens- of these many countries, and far too many others, that have almost thoroughly sold out their voters and their country to be co-opted into the embrace of America’s pro- Israel/ pro-war modern doctrine; one that increases in its threat to humanity with each and every Trump cabinet replacement.

The list of countries similarly affected, as are the Palestinians, by US foreign policy, beyond those referenced here, is so long and well established that one must pause in the task and reflect: why it is necessary to write it again? If the world, the Palestinian world beyond Gaza and the West Bank, has not, after all the worldwide horror- taken note on their own, it is not worth the effort. For thus they have not, despite all this evidence, realized their kinship with the beleaguered Palestinians of the world, and this is indeed a their own madness.

This madness predictably continued this past week in the aftermath of just one day of the Good Friday protests.

An investigation was called for by a special session of the UN Security Council, which the US vetoed. Going further, an Israel IDF spokesperson stated that there would be no investigation on their part. This is not surprising from a new world order that makes no apologies, much less admission, for its war crimes against humanity.

Amazingly, an IDF spokesperson did exactly that, publicly and disgustingly admitting ,via Twitter, Israel’s guilt when issuing his proud statement:

“Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.”

Nothing was ever so clear.

Back in America, the next few weeks will see Trump, his foreign policy, and the American people’s attention have their own Land Day style protest problem come to their own border. Approx. 1700 people are walking directly towards Trump’s symbolic wall. The majority are desperate refugees from Honduras, a country destroyed many times over by malicious US control that continues to inflict daily military horrors on its people with US weapons. The recent Honduran presidential election was overthrown by the US collusion in a very suspect recount when the US-backed presidential candidate initially lost by too slim of a margin. Now the country is in turmoil, killing routine, and these Honduran Palestinians have vowed to walk right up to Trump’s US border wall and demand asylum. Since the US directly caused their plight this would seem a fair request.

However, considering the true nature of the intent of US foreign policy, their example of resistance will have to be quashed. This will certainly be the case since today, April 3, 2018, a publicly nervous US president Trump authorized the US military to take control of the US southern border. What will transpire upon the refugee’s arrival will be an interesting test- if Mexico doesn’t stop it first. How many feet before the border will these refugees be allowed before being shot in cold blood? Will the US ship them all back to uncertain death in their home countries as the Israelis are doing to the black North African refugees now?

A good part of the world too well understands our current relationship to our national politicians. Those that have experienced or witnessed their horrors. The rest needs to awaken quickly.

A battle now rages worldwide. To merely witness it is to perish. The shrinking civilized world of correct and moral conscience is in a fight against  those who believe that they can infect the mind of the whole planet with the same madness that drives them to climb over the backs of all others onwards  to their own oblivion, as if this were a cherished goal.

This is the mind that believes in one fundamental:The rest of us? We are all Palestinians.

It is time to resist the temptation to do nothing. It is time to resist this madness that would numb us into willfully watching our own demise. It is time to march right up to walls of power across the globe- and cast these world leaders out from their citadels. It is time to tell them, “Je Suis…Palestine! “

Just like Palestinians.

*

Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 150 in-depth articles over the past seven years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, KXL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk

For decades the United States and its NATO allies have helped Saudi Arabia export methods of political indoctrination known as Wahhabism to radicalize individuals and swell the ranks of mercenary forces used to wage proxy wars abroad and manipulate Western populations at home.

What began as a means for the House of Saud itself to establish, expand, and eventually consolidate political power on the Arabian Peninsula in the 18th century has now become a finely honed tool of geopolitical power integrated into Washington’s foreign policy.

A remarkable admission was recently made in the pages of the Washington Post in an article titled, “Saudi prince denies Kushner is ‘in his pocket’.”

The article would quote Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, stating (emphasis added):

Asked about the Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism, the austere faith that is dominant in the kingdom and that some have accused of being a source of global terrorism, Mohammed said that investments in mosques and madrassas overseas were rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union.

Successive Saudi governments lost track of the effort, he said, and now “we have to get it all back.” Funding now comes largely from Saudi-based “foundations,” he said, rather than from the government.

While the article claims “successive Saudi governments lost track of the effort” and that funding is now provided by “Saudi-based “foundations,”” this is not true.

There are no “successive governments” in Saudi Arabia. The nation since its founding has been run by a single family – the House of Saud.

And while Saudi-based foundations may be the conduit through which Wahhabism is organized, funded, and directed, it most certainly is done at the behest of Riyadh in a process underwritten by Washington.

A Tool, Not an Ideology

Wahhabism was created and used as a political tool as early as the 1700’s. It served as the cornerstone of Saudi Arabia’s founding. Conveniently, Wahhabism – since its inception – was intolerant to outsiders. To the Saudis seeking political power through conquest, this intolerance was easily translated into the use of violence against tribes and neighboring states that did not submit to Saudi power.

The British would harness this political tool further in its contest of power with the Ottoman Empire. It encouraged and cultivated extremist ideologies like Wahhabism before and after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. After the World Wars, the British and the Americans would ally themselves with nations like Saudi Arabia and begin exporting Wahhabi indoctrination worldwide.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s admission of this gives further insight into Washington’s use of extremists in Syria in the late 1970s and early 1980s as well as US support to militants in Afghanistan aimed at dislodging the Soviet presence there.

But it also reveals precisely how terrorism as a geopolitical tool is being used post-Cold War today, and who is using it.

“Mosques” funded by Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states well beyond the Middle East – including in Europe and Asia – serve as indoctrination and recruitment centers for the US and its allies’ various proxy wars and destabilization efforts around the globe.

How Wahhabism is Honed

Foreign fighters recruited from around the globe to fight in Syria’s ongoing conflict have been drawn primarily from this Saudi-funded and directed Wahhabi network.

“Mosques” and “madrases” operating in North America and Europe do so with the full knowledge and cooperation of Western security and intelligence services. The recruitment, deployment, and homecoming of Wahhabi-indoctrinated mercenaries across the West has been admitted even across the Western media.

Danish media organization, The Local DK, would expose one such center in Denmark. The report in an article titled, “Danish mosque doubles down on Isis support,” would describe what is open support for designated terrorist organizations, specifically the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS).

The article would state:

“We want the Islamic State to come out on top. We want an Islamic state in the world,” the mosque’s chairman, Oussama El-Saadi, said in the DR programme. 

El-Saadi also said that he views Denmark’s participation in the US-led battle against Syria as a direct affront not only to his mosque but to all Muslims. 

“The war is against Islam,” he said.

This same supposed “mosque,” based in Denmark, despite openly admitting its support of terrorism, would not be immediately shut down and its leadership arrested as one would expect. Instead, the Danish government admittedly worked with he “mosque” to merely manage the process.

Der Spiegel’s article, “Community Response: A Danish Answer to Radical Jihad,” would report:

Commissioner Aarslev says he is proud of what they have thus far achieved, though he never forgets to praise his people and the others involved in the program. He is particularly effusive when speaking of one man: a bearded Salafist who is head of the Grimhøjvej Mosque in Aarhus, where many of the young men who left Aarhus to join the war in Syria were regulars. It’s leader is a man named Oussama El Saadi….

…these two men have joined forces in a project that is seeking to find answers to questions that are plaguing the entire continent of Europe: What can be done about radical returnees from Syria? What measures are available to counter the terror which once again seems to be threatening the West closer to home?

Astonishingly, the Western media has admitted to a multitude of such “mosques” openly recruiting men across the West to fight as mercenaries in Syria under the banner of Al Qaeda and its various subsidiaries and spin-offs before returning home and posing a security threat to Western populations.

Rather than dismantling the network and eliminating the threat, the West has intentionally left it to grow, creating sociopolitical divisions within Western nations. Increasing racism, bigotry, and xenophobia helps continue justifying the West’s wars abroad while justifying a growing police state at home.

The Cover Up

The UK Independent in its article, “Saudi Arabia boosting extremism in Europe, says former ambassador,” would admit:

Saudi Arabia has been funding mosques throughout Europe that have become hotbeds of extremism, the former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir William Patey has said. 

However, the article and many like it, intentionally deflects away from the larger implications of Saudi-funding and the use of these so-called “mosques” as indoctrination and recruitment centers feeding militants funded and armed by the US, Europe, Saudi Arabia, and its Arab partners into conflicts around the globe.

The Western media and politicians, as well as Saudi representatives themselves, have attempted to claim Riyadh either doesn’t fully control this network, or does not realize this network’s central role in driving global terrorism. Such excuses are – however – even at face value absurd.

The US and Saudi Arabia’s use of Wahhabi networks to fill the rank and file of militant groups fighting around the globe is blatant. The fighters “accidentally” being recruited in Saudi-funded “mosques” across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia form militant groups armed, funded, trained, and otherwise supported by the US, Europe, and their Middle Eastern allies including Saudi Arabia.

In relation to Syria in particular, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh even as early as 2007 in his article, “The Redirection Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” would expose this process in action – as the lead up to the 2011 war in Syria was already underway.

The article would state (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

The article would also point out:

This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

Thus, there is nothing at all accidental or unintended about Washington and Riyadh’s creation and use of these networks.
Other tactics have been used as well to prevent directly addressing this decades-long effort. The use of “multiculturalism” versus virulent racism, bigotry, and xenophobia have created a false debate that transforms what is essentially joint Western-Arab multinational sponsorship of terrorism into petty and highly divisive wedge issues.

Controlled opposition on both sides of the resulting “debate” intentionally direct public discourse away from questions surrounding the inception and utilization of Wahhabism by both Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies, as well as the West itself.

The US-Saudi Global Terror Pipeline

From Saudi-funded “mosques” indoctrinating, radicalizing, and recruiting militants, prospective fighters are then moved toward theaters of operation. US-Saudi sponsored extremists drawn from China’s Uyghur population in China’s western province of Xinjiang, have been moving across Southeast Asia before reaching Turkey where they stage, are trained and armed before being sent to fight Damascus’ troops in Syria.

And while currently the primary task of the US-Saudi terror pipeline has been to feed the proxy war with Syria, US-Saudi sponsored Wahhabi indoctrination, radicalization, and recruitment is also localized. While Uyghur extremists are being sent to Syria, others are recruited and arrayed within China itself.

Across Southeast Asia, Saudi-funding has found its way into militants fighting under the banner of ISIS in the Philippines. There are legitimate concerns that this US-Saudi funded network has tried to work its way into Thailand and exploit separatist fighting in the deep south.

In neighboring Myanmar, the US helped place the current regime headed by “State Counsellor” Aung San Suu Kyi  into power. Her ultra-nationalist and viciously racist supporters have waged years of genocidal violence against the nation’s Rohingya minority. Simultaneously, the US and Saudi Arabia have created a “Rohingya” militant group led by Ata Ullah – raised and educated in Saudi Arabia.

Ata Ullah’s backstory is nebulous. His “leadership” may be similar to ISIS’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – a figure head of an organization ultimately run by and for Riyadh and Washington.

The use of terrorists has served a variety of objectives. For Syria, it is regime change, in China, agitation and possible Balkanization along the nation’s frontiers, in Southeast Asia – attempts to divide and weaken nations Washington is attempting to install client regimes in or in nations like Myanmar in which the US requires a client regime to remain obedient, and for the Philippines in particular – a means to retain a US military presence on Philippine soil.

Exposing and Ending Washington and Riyadh’s Terror Enterprise 

The US sees Wahhabism as a useful geopolitical tool it has honed and used for decades already. While it and its Western allies feign ignorance to its inception, and feign impotence to stop it, they continue to invest in both its continued operation and its continual reinvention.

And while Wahhabism may have assisted Saudi Arabia in its founding and expansion as a powerful regional player, its sponsorship of these networks today is unsustainable and quickly becoming a liability. The US – as it has proven with many other former allies and proxies – will continue to use Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi construct until both Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia itself are no more.

While it is still too early to tell, Saudi Arabia has plenty of incentives to transform its long-feigned interest in exposing and dismantling these networks into real action.

For the public, shattering the petty political wedge issues used by the West to protect this multinational sponsored network of indoctrination, radicalization, and recruitment is essential to enlisting the public in exposing both Saudi Arabia and the West’s role in constructing and perpetuating 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 also a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

Featured image: A member of the White Helmets works a skidsteer emblazoned with the White Helmets logo in the recently captured city of Afrin, Syria. (Source: The White Helmets/Twitter)

After being banned by the Kurds in 2015, the White Helmets – the controversial “humanitarian” group that exclusively accompanies particular Western and Turkish-backed terrorist groups – have announced their return to the city of Afrin. The move follows the city’s takeover by the Turkish military and Turkish-backed rebels linked to terrorist groups, such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The group had originally been banned from Afrin by the Kurds due to their association with extremist groups like FSA and others.

That takeover, part of “Operation Olive Branch,” was launched by Turkey in response to the U.S.’ plan to create a 30,000-man “border force” consisting of recruits from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkey was outraged by the plan, as the SDF is largely Kurdish and has “substantial ties” to the People’s Protection Unit (YPG), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been engaged in armed conflicts with Turkey since 1984. Turkey has long considered the PKK and the YPG to be “terrorists.”

After two and a half years of prohibition, the #SyrianCivilDefense returned to work in the Syrian city of #Afrin to serve all Syrians. The #PYD and #YPJ closed the center and arrested the volunteers who were working there, to come back today and be with the residents. pic.twitter.com/32OHmLBvzN

— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) March 28, 2018

Since Turkish forces and their proxies took over the city, in fighting that some reports say killed around 500 civilians, reports of ethnic cleansing have surfaced. Members of Turkish proxy forces, such as the FSA, have threatened to massacre Afrin’s majority Kurdish population unless they convert to the variant of far-right Wahhabi Islam shared by terror groups like Daesh (ISIS) and al-Qaeda. Such demands often precede the mass-murder of ethnic and religious minorities by foreign-funded terrorist groups operating in Syria.

However, the White Helmets, despite their often-touted “humanitarian” leanings, have failed to make any public comment on the killings. Such silence is unsurprising for those who have followed the White Helmets’ actions in Syria over the years, where they have aided terrorist groups in the execution of civilians and have used children – both dead and alive – as props for pro-intervention propaganda intended to benefit the groups’ bids to topple the Syrian government.

Do they even know how to apply a bandage?

In addition, the organization’s documented lack of paramedic expertise has buoyed claims made by several journalists, such as independent journalist Vanessa Beeley, that the White Helmets were trained by British ex-mercenary James Le Mesurier as a “military group” also instructed in “publicity craft.”

#WhiteHelmets restored to #Afrin alongside Turkish backed terrorist factions, after Kurds had actually kicked WH out in December 2015. pic.twitter.com/qgKvxRskXW

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) April 1, 2018

Recent praise for the White Helmets in Afrin, coming from Turkish state media, provides further evidence that the White Helmets are a propaganda construct and not a first-responder group. According to reports, the White Helmets – which were actually founded in Turkey — have been “defusing the numerous mines and explosives” found in and around the city. One report cites Ismail Nassan, a White Helmet member, who stated that “lots of mines have been planted [in Afrin]. We have defused most of them.” Defusing explosives and mines is normally performed by specialized military experts, not paramedic first-responders who have claimed – falsely – to have been trained by the Red Cross.

The White Helmets’ reappearance in Afrin, alongside groups that have called on video for the ethnic cleansing of Kurds in the city, is just the latest example illustrating how the organization is paraded around to provide logistical support for — and improve the public image abroad of — those groups that seek to wipe out Syria’s ethnic and religious diversity as well as its independence from the U.S. and its allies.

*

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, and 21st Century Wire among others. She currently lives in Southern Chile.

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There is little or nothing that one can do about arthritis which is a degenerative disease but there is everything the world can do about rising antisemitism which is the direct product of the illegal policies of the current Israeli government.

There is a definitive and substantiated correlation between the persecution and killing of the dispossessed indigenous people of former Palestine and the dangerous increase in the tangible opposition to those perceived as supporting those killings by word and deed i.e. the sending of both money and arms to the Israeli government for use in the furtherance of the occupation of Palestinian land and the continuance of the ten year inhumane and illegal blockade of essential goods and services against 1.8 million civilians in Gaza.

That support, which totals millions of pounds annually from the UK alone, together with billions of dollars from the US, is the fuel that keeps the engine of the occupation running: the continuance of the blockade and the persecution of five million indigenous Arabs – both Muslim and Christian – who have been the majority people of the region continuously for over a thousand years.

The consequence is increasing antipathy towards those responsible for this neo-colonial endeavour that has deliberately kept nearly two million innocent people, in Gaza, unemployed, without electricity and just at subsistence level by a brutal, occupying military force trying to effect regime change for its own political advantage.

The tragedy is in the deafening silence of governments that has led predictably to the global increase in antisemitism. The increasingly likely consequences to those sympathetic to political Zionism and the expansionist policies of the Likud party of Binyamin Netanyahu, are disturbing. And that disturbance is increasingly evident as some of those affected are already packing their bags.

It is a situation that is fast becoming irreversible and that is entirely due to what can only be described as the criminal negligence of various European and North American governments in not only failing to condemn but actually supporting a political movement that is so clearly contrary to the democratic norms of the 21st century and the will of the United Nations.

*

Hans Stehling (pen name) is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Part of the Port of Sidon

“No pictures!” growls a burley Lebanese army captain, looking me deliberately in the eyes from not three feet away across his Major’s desk, while pointing directly at my Nikon. “No pictures!” he repeats, now staring at my translator. Since we are both seated in his office deep within the heavily armed perimeter of the army’s southern command, scores of heavily armed soldiers all around us, and these being the only words of English so far spoken by him, there was no doubting his sincerity on this point.

Four hours earlier, 7:56 AM on a Saturday near Beirut harbour, day pack loaded and now stepping into the early dawn light, my driver shows up with a wave from his rolled-down window and pulls up in front. Climbing in, we are off. Destination: The Lebanon/ Israel border ninety miles south. Goal: To get there.

Just south of the Lebanon/ Israel border, Israel is again furiously banging the drums of war using the dead bones of its bleach dried truth. The Israeli media is speculating daily about, if not promoting, a new Israeli war against the peaceful Lebanese while fantastically suggesting that Hezbollah will attack Israel; the polar opposite of the accurate history to date [see: Part Four]. Israeli military chiefs publicly demand the same. Defense Minister, Avigdor Leiberman, stated,

“all of Beirut will be hiding in bomb shelters.”

Minister Naftali Bennett also assured renewed crimes against humanity, saying

“the Lebanese [people]will pay the price.”

Former IDF brass, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Noam Tibon went further,

“The IDF is going to use a lot of force. These places will be destroyed almost completely,”

as did, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amiram Levin assuring that

“Lebanon will be destroyed.”

These bellicose statements are of course specific admissions of renewed Israeli war crimes to come. These also ignore a second more obvious natural truth: The  Lebanese border- as shown in Israel’s 2006 defeat- is a formidable natural defense and … a good reason for considering -instead- peace. Like many countries, Lebanon’s natural border is demised by mountains which here begin their ascent at the border uphill into Lebanon. Sadly and historically, for the past fifty-one years, Israel has preferred war to expand these borders. A trip today to their common border clearly shows this pre-existing defensive natural resource of ever-climbing banks of barren hills that overlook to the south what was once Palestine, now ready and waiting to help defend southern Lebanon…again.

In mid-February, former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ridiculously declared that Washington could help resolve the growing list of disputes between Israel and Lebanon, but Hizbullah political and spiritual leader,  Hassan Nasrallah, refused to have talks with the United States, stating more accurately;

“America is not an honest broker. And you have to deal with the American mediator as an attorney for Israel. It’s not three parties involved – the Lebanese are negotiating with the Israelis who are being represented by Tillerson…”

In lieu of recent events, this evaluation rings quite true and will likely become more divisive under incoming war-hawks, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who in tandem have expressed a disgust for any Arab interest not willingly at the behest of Washington and Israel. The factual analysis shows that it is Israel that desires to put forth military force beyond its current borders. Israel continues to provoke Lebanon and, more importantly, the Lebanese military that is, today, the dual defense of the Lebanese army and Hizbullah.  Given this stark change to 2006, when the Lebanese Army didn’t fight Israel in the south, this new situation/ war would put two US allies at war with each other – the IDF and the Lebanese regular army which is supplied-sans rockets- by the US.

Fresh from signing a very large and lucrative deal for supplying natural gas to Egypt, Israel two weeks ago set its military designs on a Lebanese natural gas field off Lebanon’s coast in its territorial waters. This sea area on the southern-most maritime border extends offshore along the edges of three Lebanese gas exploration Blocks: 8, 9, 10 of which Block 9 is said to be the most profitable. On the heels of Lebanon signing its own deal for exploratory drilling to begin, without justification, substantial sections of Block 9  were claimed by Israel. Since the works are to be carried out initially in Block 9, IDF boss Lieberman described Lebanon’s action of harvesting its own natural resources as “very provocative”, setting up an excuse for further threats these past weeks of a military showdown.

The prospects from these gas fields are so promising that an international consortium led by the giant French Total, Italy’s ENI and Russia’s Novatek, a private oil company close to Vladimir Putin has stepped forward to bid for rights to drill and were awarded an exploratory permit in early February of this year. Consortium leader Total has announced the first well will be drilled next year in Block 4, an undisputed sector, and that a second well will be in Block 9, the block that falls partly within an area claimed by Israel. Total was quick to clarify that the Block 9 drilling would occur more than 15 miles from the disputed zone claimed by Israel.

Kifah has been driving his own taxi for four years but has never been all the way to the border. Being Lebanese, he is not restricted from travelling as far as the last checkpoint before the UN imposed blue-line. To actually get to the border everyone, especially nosey, foreign, non- Arab appearing journalists need formal permission from the Lebanese army command. There is no guarantee they will give it. Since the rules of transit change at the whim of the army as the local situation changes, this day is an adventure into uncharted waters.

Not helping our cause, two days before this clear, bright blue morning, the Israeli Mossad attempted to assassinate Hamas senior official, Mohammed Hamdan, in Sidon, the town we are right now heading for in search of the same army command. Due to a premature detonation,  Hamdan survived, his attackers already arrested; one in Lebanon; one in Turkey. Hence, if there is one particular person that the army is looking for it is Mossad agents. They are also not too keen on Americans, who are also banned from getting anywhere near the border. However, two major assets would be of great help this day: A Canadian passport and a track record of honest, on-scene reporting. One that prefers world peace!

Most reporters heading south are on sponsored news junkets with all the details worked out for them beforehand, so they see only what is scripted. Alternatively, one might go it alone; put the beautiful and rugged Lebanese blue and grey rock-lined coastline on one’s right hand side, with the ever-ascending brown ,dusty denuded hills on the left, drive at high speed due south, looking across the expanses of dark green banana palms to the southwest side of the well worn four-lane highway, with… fingers crossed!

Pointing south, the road signs all say “Palestine.” They do not say Israel. Forever in the minds of the Lebanese, much less the tens of thousands of Palestinians in the refugee camps, we pass-open air prisons in reality- this land beyond the southern border will always be Palestinian. Possession may be, in the mind of modern Likudist Israel, “nine-tenths of the law,” but the other one-tenth remains forever firmly in the realm of factual history: the history of a stolen land. The history of a stolen country.

There is much to be learned from recent history at the Lebanon/ Israeli border.

Excuses For War

Beyond Israel’s claims on off-shore Lebanese natural gas fields provocation continues at the border. Israel has begun building a concrete wall inside the Lebanese border in violation of the UN cease-fire agreement of 2000. Beirut says it passes through territory that belongs to Lebanon but which lies on the Israeli side of the Blue Line. The area concerned is where the UN-demarcated Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Other than provocation, Israel has no need to build this wall.

Both sea and land provocations have been met with condemnation and vows of defence of its territorial borders by Lebanese top officials. President Michel Aoun, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, and parliament speaker Nabih Berri announced in unison that Lebanon would act to prevent Israel from building a wall on Lebanese land at the frontier, threatening an offshore energy block in disputed waters, Reuters reported.  Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah once again warned Israel to back off its claims over disputed oil and gas field just off the southern Lebanese coast, threatening that Hezbollah could “disable [Israel’s offshore oil installations] within hours.”

Israel adds to these provocations by accusing its primary manufactured, non-expansionist, imaginary threat; Iran, of establishing supply lines to its secondary, manufactured, non-expansionist imaginary threat: Hizbullah.

Post-2006 war, the Lebanese Army -at US/ Israeli insistence- was prohibited from possessing any airborne rockets or missiles at all, thus handing Israel military complete air supremacy. Israel of course previously used this air supremacy to devastate the civilian population of Beirut during their 2006 frustration of not beating Hizbullah into immediate submission. As Israeli threats against the general Lebanese civilian population trumpet from Tel Aviv almost daily, Hizbullah has reportedly established several missile manufacturing facilities within Lebanon. “In the battle for oil and gas, the only power you have, you the Lebanese people, is the resistance, because the Lebanese army is not allowed to own missiles,” Nasrallah affirmed. Israel cites this as a further reason to invade. Conveniently, Israel ignores any mention of its own massive military munitions pipeline and $3 Billion per year donation for same from its own patron: the American military.

Missing, however, is the unspoken but most important reason for Israel’s drive to war.

Yes, war may be again forced on Lebanon. Beyond territorial land and sea incursions or claims to restricting Lebanese civil defense, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu really needs a war. With the jaws of duplicitous justice closing rapidly in classic Ehud Olmert fashion, a self-inflicted conflict may be the only way out for the Likudist champion of expansionist Israel. However, the two most important reasons Israel and Netanyahu have as a reason for war are rapidly coming to pass. In less than n two months and in the near term afterwards, Lebanon will become autonomous both politically and financially.

The first Lebanese national election in nine years will take place on Sunday May 6, 2018. The result will likely see Hizbullah continue on its new political path to power [see: Part Three] and thus formally, rather than practically, in power within the parliament. Although Hizbullah will like still need to effect a coalition government this will be a much easier task than a decade due to Hizbullah’s newly gained respects across the full breadth of the Lebanese political landscape and its unwavering support of the Lebanese people despite the device political antics of Prime Minister and turn-coat Saad Hariri. Before the world and its adversaries Hizbullah, in less than 45 days is likely to become the legitimate, certified and undeniable controlling political party in Lebanon.

Combine this new political national autonomy with the financial autonomy that the massive natural gas reserves can provide an impoverished Lebanon will ultimately provide and thus collectively there becomes an autonomous nation that has a stable government and the financial means to be forever independent of western influence and coercion. This, of course, is anathema to the Huber-Hawks in the Likud party and the US state dept. that much prefers its recent examples of successful foreign policy in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Gaza, etc., al. Hence, Lebanese autonomy remains beyond the other proffered rationales:  the most important Israeli reason for war.

An Army on the Edge

The Lebanese Coast

The first matter at hand on our journey south: where to get army permission? The army’s base in Sidon is the likely place to start so we begin asking for directions there at the checkpoints we start crossing-without a problem- just before coming into the town. Heading south from Beirut, the Army’s presence becomes stronger compared to the already obvious military presence across the sprawling city [see: Part Two]. Besides the increased number of troops, armoured vehicles from MRAP’s to tanks increase in number the further we go towards Sidon. In several places on the east side of the highway, these mobile armaments sit in clusters of six to eight, behind loose netting under makeshift canopies. They do not appear to be needed at this moment, however, all are continuously manned as is evidenced by soldiers sitting idly behind the wheel or stationed in the gun turrets despite them being parked out of aerial view, engines turned off.

Current events are getting serious in South Lebanon. One can see this on the unsmiling faces of the soldiers. If they are called on to defend Lebanon, this may happen in a matter of minutes, so everyone is on high alert. This is a new role for the Army, which remained far north in the 2006 war [see: Part Four], but which now operates right up to the DMZ five miles before the border known a “the Blue-Line.” Within this neutral zone the  large United Nation military presence, their all-white tanks, troop carriers, and trucks, are in no way defensive, they are, “observers.”

The historical effectiveness of a UN presence as a deterrent to invading violence and/or war is meagre at best, usually symbolics as it here at the border. The all-white vehicles roam all over the blue-line DMZ that provides a supposed buffer zone is all in Lebanese territory. Israel did not give up an inch. It is a sad bet that, if the IDF tanks again march north from Israel,  these “observers” will be leaving northbound just as fast. Worse strategically, should Israel attack, the IDF will get an introductory, free, five-mile bite out of southern Lebanon before Lebanese defenses can react, courtesy of the UN’s Blue-line.

Strangely, and apparently, illegally, the Lebanese army is currently operating UN marked weaponry. Showing their true intended effectiveness, every UN mobile gun that was observed travelling down the roads, although having a UN soldier also sitting in the turret, the machine gun had been removed reducing him to a purely symbolic role atop. However, observed in the same areas, several all-white UN vehicles of the same type were seen with an all-Lebanese army crew driving, and a Lebanese army gunner also perched on top. Interestingly, there were two major differences between the two: the Lebanese army gunner was sporting a very obvious- and operational– 50 cal.

What new UN resolution allowed for the army to commandeer and arm UN tanks and weapons remains unclear.

After several inquiries after reaching Sidon, we find the military base’s single entrance; a massive steel barricade swinging down shut in front of us as we approach. On either side of our car, two soldiers watch us carefully, automatic weapons in hand as a fifth walks up to the window. Through Kifah we understand that we are in the right place, but must park in town and walk back. The military, as evidenced by the bombing in Sidon only days before, are very worried about car bombs. When we return we are escorted into a concrete, windowless bunker-like office adjacent to the steel barricade. There, an army officer dressed in casual street clothes- the men with real authority don’t wear uniforms- starts asking questions about our business.  He too does not like cameras and takes my Nikon and both our mobile phones before sending us back into town to copy my passport and Kifah’s drivers license. War seems on the horizon. No one is taking any chances.

Getting Passport Copied in Sidon

Returning with Kifah-now walking- through the barricade once again, the officer goes through my passport page by page. He is looking for an Israeli visa stamp, an automatic bar on further travel south. He asks questions about my business in Lebanon and does not like the many US visa stamps he sees. He wants to know, “ why?”  Calling someone on the phone, he releases us with instructions to go to the next office in search of “the Major.” The camera now returned, but the phones still in his possession, after having been frisked, we walk in the seemingly right direction, armed soldiers coming and going all around us.

Finding the right office, the next plain clothed officer inspects us over again watching me particularly and asking the same questions. He then calls the first officer from the barricade on his phone, staring me up and down while getting confirmation that we are still the same two people who passed minutes before. Satisfied, he sends us further within the base to an old, de rigueur, a military two-story wooden building surrounded by a dozen or so soldiers who are all watching us closely. Enquiring about our appointment with the major, we are told to go upstairs. As we tromp noisily up to the creaking stairs to the wooden planked landing, five offices are in front of us while over twenty uniformed soldiers sit on simple wooden benches in a long hallway without their weapons. They are new recruits, just arrived and waiting for deployment elsewhere. They lack the battle-hardened stare of their compatriots outside. They smile pointing to the office of the Major, just around the corner to the right.

Seated in the Majors office now, it turns out that he is busy and will not be back for some time, so we hunker down for a long wait. Kifah’s been a huge bonus, taking the lead as he translates our quest to a growing list of very suspicious military officials. We’ve gotten to know each other quickly on this trip, having met on the way to the Syrian embassy earlier that week. Like many Lebanese, he has seen the realities of war already and desires peace. He tells me much that day about today’s Lebanon [see: Part Three].

Thankfully, soon another officer comes in, his rank unknown since he too is in street clothes. Sitting down at the Majors desk abruptly, he calls the previous checkpoint to verify us yet again, then snatches-up my passport and engages in a furious discussion with Kifah that, due to his tone, is not going well. Looking me up and down repeatedly, his subject seems obvious. In Arabic, he asks about my business, who I write for and what are my intentions at the Israeli/ Lebanon border? He has me write down my address in Beirut, my mobile number and publications I write for. Arabic is spoken very fast and has no route in western language, making it almost impossible to follow at all. However, the word “Google” snaps my attention twice. Before permission can be granted they will be checking me out-closely.

Handing me back my passport and tossing the business card to one side casually, he hands Kifah a small white piece of paper, with Arabic writing on it, then picks up a huge binder stuffed with paper sized sheets of unknown origin. Finding the first blank space he enters the copy of my passport and his notes so far. “ No Pictures!” he barks and repeats the command to Kifah along with other info. I do not understand, then with a dismissive wave of his hand sends us back down the creaky wooden stairs and out into to the daylight and a camp filled with soldiers.

Lebanon disagrees with Israel over the precise demarcation of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEC) between the two countries which was established in 2010. The prime actors at present, in addition to the governments of Israel and Lebanon, include Russia, Hizbullah, Syria, Iran and the US in the shadows. The latest Israeli attacks on alleged Iranian bases or Hezbollah camps inside Syria are closely tied to the Israeli aim to prevent a land link from Iran through Syria to the Hezbollah home-base infrastructure in Lebanon.

In 2010 the oil and gas geopolitics of the Mediterranean changed profoundly. That was when a Texas oil company, Noble Energy, discovered a huge deposit of natural gas offshore Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean, the so-called Leviathan Field, one of the world’s largest gas field discoveries in over a decade. Until recently, political paralysis inside Lebanon and the war in Syria had prevented Lebanon from actively exploring its offshore gas and oil potential. Russia is engaging in Lebanon in a bold way. At a formal ceremony in Beirut on February 9, together with Lebanese President Michel Aoun, the heads of Total, ENI and Russia’s Novatek signed the first agreements to drill for oil and gas in the offshore sector claimed as part of Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

For Lebanon, to develop its own sources of natural gas would take it into the first world and out of debt and social poverty. The country has been subjected to electricity blackouts since the 1975 civil war.  Daily, Beirut residents must experience cuts in electricity because the peak demand exceeds production by a large margin. Currently,  Lebanon must import expensive diesel fuel at an annual loss to the economy of some $2.5 billion. Lebanon is one of the world’s most indebted countries with debt to GDP of some 145%. The Syrian war and internal Lebanese political stalemate had frozen its offshore energy exploration until now.

A UK company, Spectrum, conducted geophysical surveys in the offshore Lebanese section of the Levant Basin in recent years, including 3D seismic, and estimated that the Lebanese waters could hold up to 25 trillion cubic feet of economically recoverable gas. Obviously, development of those gas reserves would alter the entire economy of Lebanon and thrust its government into the geopolitical limelight of petrol- dominance. This is of course for great hope for the Lebanese people… and great angst for the Likudists watching helplessly to the south.

As we walk back through the main gate to the car, Kifah explains that we do not yet have permission so far, since it is the Major who decides, but we have been instructed to kill time for two hours and call the number on the white paper for the results and yes, they would be checking into my professional sincerity all the while. The fact that we have been given the white paper is encouraging, so we head further south into one of the oldest cities in recorded history, Tyre.

Kifah has suddenly gotten a bit jumpy, an inconvenient trait that would surface too often in the next many hours that day. Asked what is wrong, he says that the officer has made it clear that we will be watched and that any problems that might arise will be in his head. Indeed an understandable emotion considering the progressing depths of our collective adventure, however, as I remind him, there is, in reality, no danger to us at all. We are merely doing a job, with- so far- permission.

The first border checkpoint beyond the Blue-line is just south of Tyre and there is no point in going further until we hopefully gain permission. One of the oldest cities in the world, we tour about Tyre enjoying the magnificent clear blue day and then settle down to lunch and a chance to hear more about Lebanon. As we enjoy some local roasted chicken and rice, relaxing and hoping… Kifah’s phone rings. He motions for a pencil or pen saying, “ Remember number… remember the number!” As he chats back in rapid Arabic he looks at me. “ Six-seven… six -seven….six-seven,” he says, still listening. Then he hangs up. ”What’s this?” is the natural question. “ It is our number,” he says. “We have permission!”

A quick high-five and we are immediately out the door and into the car again and heading south beyond Sidon. Now, the military presence has increased yet again but has been added to by a very large contingent of the all-white UN military vehicles with very large black “UN” letters on each side. They zoom by us in both directions, some with turret guns- sans the gun- some are just pick-up trucks of several makes with flashing blue and white lights on their roofs. These commingle with the much smaller Lebanese army presence there. We are still north of the Blue-line, army territory still, as we pull into the first checkpoint south.

Again, my passport is inspected as the soldier uses his mobile phone to call the number on the white paper as his counterparts on the other side of the car watching us carefully as always. Any semblance of friendliness is now over. Fingers remain on triggers, left hands on gun barrels ready to aim and fire without pause. Here, the unknown is the enemy. We are the unknown. No one we will meet wearing a Lebanese army uniform from this point on is taking any chances. War is in the air. The soldiers know it. We know it, too. You can just… feel it.

Satisfied that we are indeed number sixty-seven, the soldier waves us along. We have just crossed the last checkpoint before the blue-line. We are now where few foreigners have ventured. We will make it to the border as planned. Good news indeed. Kifah, however, is getting nervous…again.

Our goal, the border, is dead ahead, barely five miles away. Besides the white UN military presence, there is another reality that comes into view- our goal: the seemingly innocuous hills of southern Lebanon border. The hills that have too often before proved to be as defensively resilient as the Lebanese people.

The Lebanon Border: A Defence worth 10,000 men

For those who recall the accurate results of the last Israeli war against Lebanon [see: Part Three], one strategic fact is undeniable: These hills are defense worth 10,000 men. The Israeli’s in 2006 found this out. Those same hills are still there, unscathed, as is their ongoing defence against invasion.

Starting at sea level at the coastal border, the brown almost treeless hills of Lebanon rise ever steeper as one drives inland, due east along the Lebanon Israeli border. Peculiarly, these hills slope most steeply towards the south and towards Israel as they rise ever higher to the northeast. In Israel’s 2006 rush to war it was these hills that provided a very effective natural barrier to their northbound incursion. Deploying hundreds of tanks that came in waves across this wire-mesh fenced border, these tanks were slowed by these hills- leaving them as sitting ducks to Hizbullah and their Russian made Kornet anti-tank rockets (see: Part Four).  Airpower is practically useless against the tactics of ground-based guerrilla warfare, and the IDF in just 33 days was reduced to running out of ammo while their troops were decimated in a ground war- sans armour- all of which had been destroyed. Israel had no choice but to retreat under a cease-fire, taking the burnt-out wreckage of over 200 tanks with them.

Touring the border via these hills these same natural defenses are now stronger than before.

In 2006 every house and village on this side of the border was completely destroyed by the IDF. This is evidenced by all the houses in the area being very new in construction, with many still being built. Some of these houses sit atop these hills, looking warily to the south or to the west over the full panorama of the Mediterranean. However, as these hills slope steeply up, now rocks in the form of huge boulders line the south side of the roads and the southern slopes of these hills. As confirmed by a source who fought here in 2006,[see: Part Three]these have been placed there in the past ten years for good reason: Israeli tanks do not care for steep hills… and they do not fare well over large jagged rocks.

A tank, despite its massive steel might, is as weak as a Tonka toy when encountering rocks, since the rocks break the tracks rendering the tank motionless, its driving wheels spinning furiously and uselessly. The hills by themselves presented a formidable obstacle in 2006, but since these boulders have been placed along the south facing width of many of the hills. To the casual observer, these have been seemingly built to create long terraces going up the hills in a series from their base to the top and might be used, as some are, for the planting of olive trees. However, on closer inspection, it is easy to see that these boulder-strewn terraces contain very few trees. These are not primarily for agriculture… they are in practicality tank traps!

Taking the last hard left turn just barely at beyond the last border check and now driving due east through these hills the Israeli border is more than obvious on the right-hand side. The current borderline is essentially a shallow valley between two rows of hills parallel to each other, the southern one; Israel, the northern; Lebanon. Lebanon’s hills are bigger and look out over Israel the more one travels east parallel to the border. While one can lose sight of the actual demarcation line- a single barb-wire topped fence- a continuing series of hundred foot high steel braced communications towers line the top of the Israeli’s southern hilltops every 400 meters and are never completely out of view. The rather unimportant border fence wanders out of sight sometimes in the dry creek of this border valley.

Despite reports that Israel is moving men and machinery to the border region, there is no sign of it. The Israeli side seems quiet. The hills block the view of the recent troop and artillery build-up being massed there by the IDF in preparation for new war. The border fence seems rather diminutive and benign, just two hundred yards away now. While UN and Lebanese army trucks zoom about the border and roam the hills, no movement of any kind is seen on the Israeli side of the fence; an ominous silence that is, considering daily newspaper reports, fooling no one on this side.

Kifah is getting jumpy again, probably because we have just been accosted by a UN soldier in an all-white pick-up truck asking more pointed questions about our purpose. I want to go further east, he now wants to turn around and go home. His English is good, so while I stretch my legs after hours in the car I carefully explain to him that he is in no danger at all, which does not yet register.

This was unfortunate, but a necessary development in our growing friendship. Fortunately, a mile or so later we are flagged down by a local Arab worker- he is Palestinian- needing a ride to the next village east. Using this opportunity I have Kifah ask the man several questions about this area and of any potential danger on either side of the fence. The stranger, nonplussed, tells us many things but assures us, as suspected, that there is nothing to worry about. Dropping off this man in his tiny dusty village, Kifah is again relaxed. I am dying to take pictures, but with the officer’s stern warning still in mind, the fact that the Lebanese observations towers are never out of sight of us and that we are the only foreign object likely to entertain their view, it is a safe bet that we are being watched. So…no damn pictures.

Gaining altitude over Israeli as we head directly east, the Lebanese hills becoming appreciably bigger, we can now see into Israel beyond their hilltops into the agricultural regions filled with farmland, lakes, pastures, and the Kibutzes of occupation. This area was once Palestine. It is now Israel. For only one reason…war.

Driving East, it becomes obvious why these hills have been a very effective barrier to further incursions. We continue to ascend high above the Israeli expanse of much flatter land that is thus far more suited to agriculture and the green pastures and brown stripped crop fields are easily in view below next to irrigation ponds and small lakes. Here in these hills, similar agriculture is not possible and the only evidence is many dishevelled looking olive trees growing out of the hills sides. Lebanon has some very developed agriculture but that lies in the mountain valleys some 20 mile north.

Defensively these hills are a formidable barrier to war because all wars need ground forces and artillery to advance and here, as in 2006 moving north will always be a slow progress. An example was Israelis loss of almost 200 tanks in 48 hours [see: Part Three] due to this too slow a progress. If Israel chooses war again these hills will remain defensive and an obstacle in getting as far as the capital, Beirut. Although Israel has been provided complete air superiority by the UN, when facing the necessity to move forward the IDF must have armour and armour must move across the ground and these hills. This was a disastrous development for the IDF in 2006 and will be again if the IDF actually fights Hizbullah and the Lebanese army and actually uses its air force against military targets rather than innocent civilian ones.

Israeli territory takes up the remaining arable land that continues about thirty miles north of this east-west border area as it takes a turn north towards Syria. Should Israel elect to attack from this position it will by-pass these hills, but have new series of even steeper ones that separate Lebanon from Syria and ring some of Lebanon’s best agricultural valleys. This leaves little advantage for Israel beyond accepting massive casualty counts no matter how much military might it sends north or west. It was this body count that stopped the last war at Israel’s request. Will Israel have the short-sightedness to ignore their own self-imposed history and death toll?

Reasons for Peace?

Despite the many justifications and fabrications being echoed for new war recent developments may be the reason for Israel to, this time, choose its fate more wisely.

Novatek, the huge Russian gas consortium, is one of the major partners in harvesting Lebanese natural gas including Track 9. Russia also has a tract record-despite massive US/ EU propaganda to the contrary- of promoting peace as has been documented accurately in the changing of the fortunes in Syria and the final demise of Daesh (ISIS).

A very important addition to the agreement for Lebanon’s natural gas was included to ensure Russian investment.  The Russian-Lebanese cooperation reportedly also includes,

“exchanging information on defense means and enhancing international security capabilities; activating anti-terror cooperation; improving joint cooperation in the fields of cadre training, military exercises and armed forces building; exchanging IT expertise; establishing mechanisms for cooperation between the two countries’ armies.”

This could be a game changer against the drive to war since the tag-team of the US and Israel is not used to an even match and certainly, Russia is more than capable of evening the fight- or at least protecting its investment.

Whether Russia will be able to contain these forces from starting an all-out war is not yet clear. As William F. Engdahl sums it up, in his piece in Global Research of Feb 15, 2018,

 “The Russian decision to sign a military cooperation agreement with Lebanon at the same time a leading Russian energy company wins rights to drill for oil and gas offshore Lebanon is no spur-of-the-moment decision. It is a calculated chess move in one of the most entangled lands of the world.”

This week’s American re-staffing in seeming preparation for a return to more worldwide war, torture and wanton civilian death came in the manifestation of neo-conservatives Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to power. This does not bode well for the rational US thinking or Israeli restraint. Added to the already laughably amateur demonization of Russia via the Skripal poisoning set-up, it appears the US and its willing proxies are all too willing to rush to war and hear only the drums of war.

Driving back west on the same narrow rough road, the day is almost over. The sun begins its slow descent into the Mediterranean horizon far away and below our vantage point across the southern Lebanese hills. The beauty of this panorama cannot hide the realities that the winds of war are now blowing in furious gusts from the south, across a simple barb-wire fence, meters away to the left.

Ukraine? Syria? Yemen? Iraq? Afganistan? Libya? Venezuela…? All destroyed, their countries ravaged, the futures and the happiness of their people now being toyed with like a sick, demented child smashing underfoot the slow-moving, defenceless snails, one by one, while merrily stomping along a rain-soaked footpath.

On these same winds of war, there is a horrible sound. It does not bode well. Is it the sound of the horrors of war? Is it the sound of the screams of the innocent? Is it the sound of lives forever shattered? No.

It is the sound of silence.

It’s growing quiet as we wind back down slowly to sea level. In my time in Lebanon, almost constantly I saw the remaining ravages of wars past. Bullet holes last a long time. Despite this past, Lebanon maintains an optimism in its people that has somehow managed to transcend these repeated horrors. There is a jovial spirit and a kindness here. There is optimism for a new future that is better. This future, like that of the remaining civilized world, deserves to be defended.

We, the civilized world, cannot accept and then witness the same fate for  Argentina, Brazil,  China, Russia before we act. For Lebanon?  Will we continue to ignore wholesale fact and truth and accept the lies instead? Will we accept growing atrocity and the sacrifice of our humanity rather than rise-up and demand peace? Will we continue to sit in silence?

If the answer is to be yes, then it is time for what remains of the civilized world to seek safe a final haven.

It will, then, be time for everyone to… head for the hills!

*

Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 150 in-depth articles over the past seven years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk

All images in this article are from the author.

“There’s a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

It’s been fifty years since Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 and nineteen years since the only trial in the case.  In that 1999 Memphis civil trial (see transcript) brought by the King family, the jury found that King was murdered by a conspiracy that included governmental agencies.   The corporate media, when they reported it at all, dismissed the jury’s verdict and those who accepted it, including the entire King family led by Coretta Scott King, as delusional. Time magazine – dutifully using the pejorative “conspiracy theory” label the CIA had in 1967 urged their mouthpieces to use – called  the verdict a confirmation of the King family’s conspiracy theory and “lurid fantasies.”  The Washington Post compared those who believed it with those who claimed that Hitler was unfairly accused of genocide.  A smear campaign ensued that has continued to the present day and then the fact that a trial ever occurred disappeared down the memory hole so that today most people never heard of it and assume MLK was killed by a crazy white racist, James Earl Ray, if they know even that.

Here and there, however, mainly through the alternative media, and through the monumental work and persistence of the King family lawyer in that trial, William Pepper, the truth about the assassination has surfaced. Through decades of research that extends well into the twenty-first century, Pepper has documented the parts played in the assassination by F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I., Army Intelligence, Memphis Police, and southern Mafia figures.  On March 30, 2018, The Washington Post’s crime reporter, Tom Jackman, published a four column front-page article, “Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.?  His family believes James Earl Ray was framed.”  While not close to an endorsement of the trial’s conclusions, it is a far cry from past nasty dismissals of those who agreed with the jury’s verdict as conspiracy nuts or Hitler supporters.  The Washington Post has a well-earned reputation for being the CIA’s paper of record, but my reading of Jackman’s article and its prominent placing suggests a split somewhere in the conscience(s) of journalists at the paper.Or perhaps it is a fortuitous accident.  Whatever the case, after decades of clouding over the truth of MLK’s assassination, some rays of truth have come peeping through,and on the front page of the WP at that.

Jackman makes it very clear that all the surviving King family members – Bernice, Dexter, and Martin III – are in full agreement that James Earl Ray, the accused assassin, did not kill their father, and that there was and continues to be a conspiracy to cover up the truth.  He adds to that the words of the highly respected civil rights icon and U.S. Congressman from Georgia, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who says,

“I think there was a major conspiracy to remove Dr. King from the American scene,”

and former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young who was with King at the Lorraine Motel when he was shot, who concurs,

“I would not accept the fact that James Earl Ray pulled the trigger, and that is all that matters.”

Additionally, Jackman adds that Andrew Young emphasized that the assassination of King came after that of President Kennedy, Malcolm X, and a few months before that of Senator Robert Kennedy.

“We were living in a period of assassinations,” he quotes Young as saying, a statement clearly intimating their linkages and coming from a widely respected and honorable man.

So if Ray didn’t kill MLK, then Oswald didn’t kill JFK, and Sirhan didn’t kill RFK is the implicit thought conveyed.  Then who killed Malcom X?  Could the same parties have killed them all?  And who might they be?

But then, as if to pull back abruptly from this line of thought, Jackman quotes David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of King, who has long held that James Earl Ray killed King.  Yet the historian Garrow’s statement is so condescending and illogical that a thoughtful person would be taken aback and think: How could an historian say that? Referring to the three remaining King family members as “children,” although all are 50-60 years old, he says that they “are part of a larger population of American people who need to believe [my emphasis] that the assassination of a King or a Kennedy must be the work of mightier forces,” not the victims “of small-fry, lifetime losers.”  (Notice how Kennedy, and one presumes he means just one Kennedy, JFK, is thrown in with King to include Oswald in the small-fry, lifetime loser category of the “real” killers, not the childish “need to believe” conclusions of meticulous scholars, such as James W. Douglass, author of the acclaimed JFK and the Unspeakable.)  But then comes the kicker.  The acclaimed historian Garrow says that credulous “people need to see [my emphasis] a balance between effect and cause. That if something has a huge evil effect, it should be [my emphasis] the result of a huge evil cause.” Now anyone who has not completely lost their ability to think knows that an historian’s raison d’etre is to explore facts in an effort to establish believable relationships between effects and causes, not by following a strict scientific method, but by arranging one’s research findings (documents, witness interviews and statements, etc.) within a narrative structure to reach logical conclusions.  Historians “need to believe” that effects have causes and when they are good historians the issue is not one of balancing but of truth.  They follow the evidence to truthful conclusions, no matter where it leads.  So for Garrow to dismiss the King family and other Americans because of a delusional “need to believe” is patently absurd and not intellectually honest, yet it is a trope that has echoed down the years whenever there is a need to brush off “conspiracy theorists” as ignorant children.

Then as one reads through Jackman’s article he notices three brief statements, one from Robert Blakey, the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, another from John Campbell, who investigated the King murder for the Shelby County, Tennessee district attorney’s office, and a third from Barry Kowalski who reinvestigated the case under Attorney General Janet Reno in 1998.  All three attest to Ray’s guilt.  But Jackman gives them little space, approximately a half-page, in an article that extends to nine printed pages.

The remainder of the article – six printed pages – is primarily devoted to the work of William Pepper, the attorney for the King family in the 1999 civil trial in Memphis that found the U.S government liable for the killing of King and the author of three books on the murder, including his latest, The Plot to Kill King, a voluminous and heavily documented masterly work that makes an irrefutable case that the U.S. government and not James Earl Ray killed MLK, and to those who support those findings, including King’s daughter, Bernice, who is given the final word.  Jackman quotes her as saying,

“I don’t believe James Earl Ray killed my father.  It’s hard to know exactly who.  I’m certainly clear that there has been a conspiracy, from the government down to the mafia…there had to be more than one person involved in all this.  I think it was all planned.”

This breakthrough article, the first such piece on the front page of a major newspaper to give such space to critics of the commonplace “lone nut” explanation for MLK’s murder, proves Leonard Cohen’s words prophetic:

“There’s a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in.”

Even a crack in The Washington Post wherein may dwell persons of conscience, despite the paper’s history of doing the devil’s work.

*

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/.

Almost exactly a year ago we published an article entitled “Britain To Become A One Party, Authoritarian Surveillance State.” It was a piece about Theresa May’s track record as a member of parliament, then as Home Secretary and predicted darker times ahead as PM. More recent events have made that prediction reality.

At the time we said that Mrs May had a somewhat dubious voting record when considering her vow on the steps of Downing Street to look after the interests of the many rather than just ‘the privileged few’ when accepting the role of unelected PM.  She voted for the Iraq invasion in 2003, abstained from the smoking ban in both 2006 and 2014, she voted in favour of destroying Libya in 2011, voted for the bedroom tax and against scrapping it in 2014 and voted for attacking Syria. May is a flagrant supporter of privatising Britain’s public services. She has voted both for and against equal gay rights and voted more often against equal rights and human rights and voted against terminally ill people to be given assistance at the end of their life.

This says a lot about our PM. But there’s a much darker side being revealed of late.

In her role as Home Secretary, Theresa May resided over the Yarl’s Wood detention centre scandal, failed to identify the child rape rings of Rotherham, Rochdale, Sheffield, Bradford and Oxford and subsequent cover-ups involving the police, politicians and several ‘establishment’ judges, all of whom resigned. May left the Home Office with a fully demoralised police force.

She saw net migration promises of the ‘tens of thousands’ reach a third of a million a year, that in large part contributed to Britain leaving the EU. Theresa May was not a popular MP and has been described by almost all commentators as a ‘control freak‘.

Some opponents have categorised Mrs May as Henry VIII, the tyrant king of the 16th century, a comparison also favoured by those of her colleagues who complain that she treats them with the same brutality that Henry meted out to spouses who aroused his displeasure. And Mrs May doesn’t like a lot of things.

Since becoming PM she has authorised the censoring of thousands of pages of information on the internet each week, hugely increased the use of secret courts, proposed the scrapping of the Humans Rights Act, classified non-violent activism as terrorism, allowed ministers and government agencies to veto Freedom of Information requests, condoned the arrest of journalists under the anti-terrorism act and forced schools to hand over private pupil information – to name just a few anti-democratic fundamentals.

A whole host of mass spying and surveillance systems introduced (by our previous Home Secretary and now PM) is described by many commentators as; “totally out of control”, “the most intrusive in Western history”, “the most spied on in the world” and “the worst surveillance offender in the modern world”. The UN has valid concerns as well by saying “that the impact of this extreme legislation (known as the Snoopers Charter) will be felt around the world, and copied by other countries.”

You wouldn’t think it could get worse. But it is just about to – right under your nose.

At this point, the reader should try to comprehend what has already been lost.

We have a Prime Minister who advocates the complete 360-degree mass surveillance of civilian citizens – deemed illegal by the highest courts in Britain and the EU. She approves of Britain’s intelligence services acting in cahoots with the lawlessness of America’s NSA and CIA that has included involvement in the illegal extra-judicial assassination‘s of British citizens, not to mention knowledge of kidnap, complicity in forms of torture and doing little to stop executions of political dissidents and opponents.

After whipping up the Russiaphobia debacle, it is clear that the skill sets of our current PM lie not in diplomacy but the suppression of free-speech, the degrading of hard-won civil liberties and the slow destruction of human rights built up over the generations. Meanwhile, Mrs May presides over our greatest post-war challenge in the form of Brexit and is facing what The Times newspaper calls ‘political implosion’.

Theresa May’s new Fusion Doctrine is the policy of a dictator. There was no discussion or debate with elected representatives. The surveillance state has just announced it has no limits. This really is quite scary stuff.

The Espionage Act of 2017 is designed to arrest and imprison whistleblowers, journalists and their editors and then treat them as foreign spies. The Committee to Protect Journalists defined this law rather charitably as “preventing journalists from fulfilling their mission to hold power to account.”

The Digital Economy Act of 2017 is nothing short of a new national censor that can block websites without a court order and is doing so right now. Hundreds of thousands of perfectly innocent websites are now blocked without notice to the owner. Many are opposition voices, that’s all, they are not extremists. This Act uses the cover of protecting children from ‘adult content’ online. OpenRightsGroup says –

“Once censorship is in place, politicians will think of plenty more things they can ban.”

All of these tools of suppression are imposed in an order and for a reason. Theresa May is an authoritarian leader. She believes in both hard and soft power and represents a form of totalitarianism that is essentially hidden from the public.

In the absence of political competence, she is eager to justify the augmentation of the British industrial-military complex just like Thatcher, Blair and Cameron did. Through her methods of amplification, Mrs May has substantially added to the fear-mongering rhetoric – a sure sign of her strategic geopolitical weaknesses.

“The UK will do what is necessary to protect ourselves, and work with our allies to do likewise”, she declared last November when accusing Russia of meddling in elections.

Any political opposition to May’s more shrill Russophobia and the wider official state-sanctioned fiction that it represents, is clearly regarded by the establishment as little more than ‘fake news’ which, has to be contained.

And of course, it is being contained, supported by insidious laws with impressive language that suggests matters of national security – such as the ‘Investigatory Powers Act’ and the ‘Espionage Act’. The former is designed to spy on and catch opposition voices and dissenters, the latter to punish publishers with extraordinary brutality for a modern Western democracy.

Today, we find civil liberties groups horrified that the government has been re-writing ‘torture guidance’ in secret. MI5 and MI6 had already been embroiled in the scandal of the torture of detainees held overseas when May presided over what was quite rightly described as a deep and lasting stain of UK complicity in extraordinary rendition and torture over the so-called ‘War on Terror.’ The American’s carry on like this all the time – but Britain should not. However, the Cabinet Office declined to say why rights groups were not being consulted as they should be.

It is clear that Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness are being completely dismantled bit-by-bit by this government.

In 2011, David Cameron promised a new era of transparency. Theresa May vowed to do the same. Neither delivered. In the meantime, Britain is slowly tipping into a darker era defined by secrecy and oppression.

Legitimate opposition and holding power to account are now seen as existential threats to what appears to be the emergence of what can only be described as an attitude of (long-gone) imperious powers. Undisclosed and undiscussed ministerial powers are being granted under the guise of Brexit and ‘taking back control.’ Dangerous and deceptive Acts of parliament shroud an ideology deeply entrenched by an elite political class seeking to consolidate its power.

The irony, lost on Theresa May herself, is a stated commitment to civil liberties, human rights, free speech and sense of fair play – wholly contradicted by her voting record and assault on the very tenets of what it actually means to be British.

This can be seen exactly in her speech of 2010 when the Tories came to power and she was Home Secretary. There was a Government pledge to rebalance civil liberties and the powers of the state. The Home Secretary herself promised to correct “mistakes” made by the Labour government which, she said, was allowed to “ride roughshod” over civil liberties. Mrs May said that she would reveal the findings of the review in the autumn, in which she then said: “National security is the first duty of government but we are also committed to reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties.” Then, in power, did exactly the opposite.

Theresa May has single-handedly created a corporate surveillance state designed to entrench a sense of untrustworthiness and fashioned to divide civil society. We have much to fear from a desperate Prime Minister, especially one who is prepared to drag the entire country to the edges of an international crisis bordering a cold-war delirium with a nuclear-armed super-power and endanger us all.

The purpose of this self-serving strategy is to frighten the civilian population, which is constructed to preserve their control and perpetuate powers over society being lost under the authority of the European Union.

She is ‘taking back control,’ – sadly, we are not.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

The death toll from last Friday’s bloodbath and aftermath stands at 22 – an Israeli atrocity against defenseless Gazans, protesting for their long-denied rights.

Will numbers killed and wounded on April 6 match or exceed week-ago horrors? What happened last Friday amounts to cold-blooded murder and rampaging by a vicious rogue state, the world community failing to hold it accountable for high crimes too grievous to ignore.

Days earlier, Israeli military intelligence-connected DebkaFILE (DF) said Israeli forces deployed along the Gaza border “were instructed…to remove the gloves and take (preemptive) action…”

Netanyahu, defense minister Lieberman and IDF chief Eisenkot set the policy – falsely blaming Hamas for Israeli aggression.

According to DF,

“(t)he IDF was…instructed to adopt new (harsher) tactics,” their “exact nature” unclear until they unfold.

DF lied claiming orders given “deviate sharply from the defensive posture adopted (last) Friday and Saturday…”

Israel initiated violence, not Gazans. How much more aggressive Israeli soldiers will be remains to be seen.

DF and Israeli officials turned truth on its head, accusing Gazans of assaulting the border area. Despite demonstrating 300 or more meters away, soldiers used lethal force against them – PREEMPTIVELY!

Early Friday morning, Israel deployed snipers and tanks along the Gaza border, drones likely to be used during the day like a week ago.

Thousands of Palestinians are massing hundreds of meters from the separation fence. Israeli attacks using tear gas began early in the day – followed by live fire, injuring several Gazans so far, including journalists covering what’s going on.

Trump’s Ziofascist Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt (image on the right) disgraced himself, turning truth on its head, saying:

“We condemn leaders and protestors who call for violence or who send protestors – including children – to the fence, knowing that they may be injured or killed.”

Blaming victims is longstanding US and Israeli policy.

According to the Israeli Wallah news site, soldiers deployed along Gaza’s border were ordered to use live fire on Palestinians up to 300 meters from the separation fence.

Reports indicate Gazans collected thousands of tires, intending to burn them along the border to obscure the vision of IDF snipers.

Another bloodbath may unfold throughout Friday. An IDF statement said “shoot to kill orders” remain unchanged, soldiers ordered to use live fire on any Palestinians “approach(ing) the border fence.”

According to Gaza’s Interior Ministry, Palestinians were told to remain committed to nonviolent protests. They’re advised to keep their faces hidden and avoid using smart phone Israel can easily monitor.

Gazan medical facilities, doctors and other personnel are braced for another possible bloody Friday.

*

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

What is left of the government’s definitive identification of Russia as the culprit in the Salisbury attack? It is a simple truth that Russia is not the only state that could have made the nerve agent: dozens of them could. It could also have been made by many non-state actors.

Motorola sales agent Gary Aitkenhead – inexplicably since January, Chief Executive of Porton Down chemical weapons establishment – said in his Sky interview that “probably” only a state actor could create the nerve agent. That is to admit the possibility that a non state actor could. David Collum, Professor of Organo-Chemistry at Cornell University, infinitely more qualified than a Motorola salesman, has stated that his senior students could do it. Professor Collum tweeted me this morning.

The key point in his tweet is, of course “if asked”. The state and corporate media has not asked Prof. Collum nor any of the Professors of Organic Chemistry in the UK. There simply is no basic investigative journalism happening around this case.

So given that the weapon itself is not firm evidence it was Russia that did it, what is Boris Johnson’s evidence? It turns out that the British government’s evidence is no more than the technique of smearing nerve agent on the door handle. All of the UK media have been briefed by “security sources” that the UK has a copy of a secret Russian assassin training manual detailing how to put nerve agent on door handles, and that given the nerve agent was found on the Skripals door handle, this is the clinching evidence which convinced NATO allies of Russia’s guilt.

As the Daily Mirror reported in direct quotes of the “security source”

“It amounts to Russia’s tradecraft manual on applying poison to door handles. It’s the smoking gun. It is strong proof that in the last ten years Russia has researched methods to apply poisons, including by using door handles. The significant detail is that these were the facts that helped persuade allies it could only be Russia that did this.”

Precisely the same government briefing is published by the Daily Mail in a bigger splash here, and reflected in numerous other mainstream propaganda outlets.

Two questions arise. How credible is the British government’s possession of a Russian secret training manual for using novichok agents, and how credible is it that the Skripals were poisoned by their doorknob.

To take the second question first, I see major problems with the notion that the Skripals were poisoned by their doorknob.

The first is this. After what Dame Sally Davis, Chief Medical officer for England, called “rigorous scientific analysis” of the substance used on the Skripals, the government advised those who may have been in contact to wash their clothes and wipe surfaces with warm water and wet wipes. Suspect locations were hosed down by the fire brigade.

But if the substance was in a form that could be washed away, why was it placed on an external door knob? It was in point of fact raining heavily in Salisbury that day, and indeed had been for some time.

Can somebody explain to me the scenario in which two people both touch the exterior door handle in exiting and closing the door? And if it transferred from one to the other, why did it not also transfer to the doctor who gave extensive aid that brought her in close bodily contact, including with fluids?

The second problem is that the Novichok family of nerve agents are instant acting. There is no such thing as a delayed reaction nerve agent. Remember we have been specifically told by Theresa May that this nerve agent is up to ten times more powerful than VX, the Porton Down developed nerve agent that killed Kim’s brother in 15 minutes.

But if it was on the doorknob, the last contact they could possibly have had with the nerve agent was a full three hours before it took effect. Not only that, they were well enough to drive, to walk around a shopping centre, visit a pub, and then – and this is the truly unbelievable bit – their central nervous systems felt in such good fettle, and their digestive systems so in balance, they were able to sit down and eat a full restaurant meal. Only after all that were they – both at precisely the same time despite their substantially different weights – suddenly struck down by the nerve agent, which went from no effects at all, to deadly, on an alarm clock basis.

This narrative simply is not remotely credible. Nerve agents – above all “military grade nerve agents” – were designed as battlefield weapons. They do not leave opponents fighting fit for hours. There is no description in the scientific literature of a nerve agent having this extraordinary time bomb effect. Here another genuine Professor describes their fast action in Scientific American:

Unlike traditional poisons, nerve agents don’t need to be added to food and drink to be effective. They are quite volatile, colourless liquids (except VX, said to resemble engine oil). The concentration in the vapour at room temperature is lethal. The symptoms of poisoning come on quickly, and include chest tightening, difficulty in breathing, and very likely asphyxiation. Associated symptoms include vomiting and massive incontinence. Victims of the Tokyo subway attack were reported to be bringing up blood. Kim Jong-nam died in less than 20 minutes. Eventually, you die either through asphyxiation or cardiac arrest.

If the nerve agent was on the door handle and they touched it, the onset of these symptoms would have occurred before they reached the car. They would certainly have not felt like sitting down to a good lunch two hours later. And they would have been dead three weeks ago. We all pray that Sergei also recovers.

The second part of the extraordinarily happy coincidence of the nerve agent being on the door handle, and the British government having a Russian manual on applying nerve agent to door handles, is whether the manual is real. It strikes me this is improbable – it rings far too much of the kind of intel they had on Iraqi WMD. It also allegedly dates from the last ten years, so Putin’s Russia, not the period of chaos, and the FSB is a pretty tight organisation in this period. MI6 penetration is just not that good.

A key question is of course how long the UK has had this manual, and what was its provenance. Another key question is why Britain failed to produce it to the OPCW – and indeed why it does not publish it now, with any identifying marks of the particular copy excluded, given it has widely publicised its existence and possession of it. If Boris Johnson wants to be believed by us, publish the Russian manual.

We also have to consider whether the FSB really publishes its secret assassination techniques in a manual. I attended, as other senior FCO staff, a number of MI6 training courses. One on explosives handling was at Fort Monckton, not too far from Salisbury. One in a very nondescript London office block was on bugging techniques. I recall seeing rigs set up to drill minute holes in walls, turning very slowly indeed. Many hours to get through the wall but almost no noise or vibration. It was where I learnt the government can listen to you through activating the microphone in your mobile phone, even when your phone is switched off. I recall javelin like directional microphones suspended from ceilings to point at distant targets, and a listening device that worked through a beam of infra-red light, but the target could foil by closing the curtains.

The point is that there were of course no manuals for this stuff, no manuals for any other secret MI6 techniques, and these things are not lightly written down.

I would add to this explanation that I lost all faith in the police investigation when it was taken out of the hands of the local police force and given to the highly politicised Metropolitan Police anti-terror squad. I suspect the explanation of the remarkably convenient (but physically impossible) evidence of the door handle method that precisely fits the “Russian manual” may lie there.

These are some of the problems I have with the official account of events. Boris lied about the certainty of the provenance of the nerve agent, and his fall back evidence is at present highly unconvincing. None of which proves it was not the Russian state that was responsible. But there is no convincing proof that it was, and there are several other possibilities. Eventually the glaring problems with the official narrative might be resolved, but what is plain is that Johnson and May have been premature and grossly irresponsible.

I shall post this evening on Johnson’s final claim, that only the Russians had motive.

Update: I have just listened to the released alleged phone conversation between Yulia Skripal in Salisbury Hospital and her cousin Viktoria, which deepens the mystery further. I should say that in Russian the conversation sounds perfectly natural to me. My concern is after the 30 seconds mark where Viktoria tells Yulia she is applying for a British visa to come and see Yulia.

Yulia replies “nobody will give you a visa”. Viktoria then tells Yulia that if she is asked if she wants Viktoria to visit, she should say yes. Yulia’s reply to this is along the lines of “that will not happen in this situation”, meaning she would not be allowed by the British to see Viktoria. I apologise my Russian is very rusty for a Kremlinbot, and someone might give a better translation, but this key response from Yulia is missing from all the transcripts I have seen.

What is there about Yulia’s situation that makes her feel a meeting between her and her cousin will be prevented by the British government? And why would Yulia believe the British government will not give her cousin a visa in the circumstance of these extreme family illnesses?

Beyond the general concerns regarding the nomination of John Bolton as National Security Advisor, there is also the specific issue of his impending access to the most highly classified intelligence information that the United States possesses.

There are a number of reasons why Bolton should be denied a clearance, including his well-known record of abusing subordinates at State Department and colleagues at the United Nations. Bolton also has a close personal relationship with Israel and its government that may have included divulging classified information. The Israeli connection is particularly sensitive because Bolton is beholden to casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who has funded his activities since he left State Department in 2006. And Bolton knows how to return a favor, approving of Adelson’s suggestion to detonate a nuclear bomb in the Iranian desert, just to warn them what might be coming. Adelson, a major GOP donor, was displeased with Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster, and to have been instrumental in their removal. Both men supported the nuclear agreement with Iran and both are now gone. McMaster was also targeted as “anti-Israeli” for having opposed moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Bolton’s regard for Israel has included unauthorized disclosure of classified information when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. He collaborated with the Israelis, often without the State Department being aware of what he was doing, to justify a US attack on Iran. The strategy to bring about a war included diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and the production of fabricated evidence by Mossad.

Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but he violated existing State Department regulations by taking a series of secret trips to Israel in 2003 and 2004. Thus, when Secretary of State Colin Powell was saying administration policy was not to attack Iran, Bolton was working with the Israelis to lay the groundwork for a new war. During a February 2003 visit, Bolton assured Israeli officials in private meetings that he had no doubt the United States would take down Saddam Hussein, before dealing with Iran and Syria.

During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had unannounced meetings, including with the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, without the usual reporting cable to the Secretary of State. Those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual US strike against the Iranians.

John Bolton, while serving as US ambassador to the United Nations, also went behind his boss’s back to supply Israel with crucial information on American plans at the U.N. so as to redirect US policy. Dan Gillerman, who served as Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. in 2006 when Bolton was US ambassador has described how “in more than one case, Ambassador Bolton called me and alerted me to the fact that his mission—the United States mission to the U.N.—was about to vote against Israel and asked that I alert the prime minister, who at that time was Ehud Olmert. In more than one case the prime minister called the president, who was then George W. Bush, and got him to overrule the State Department.”

Bolton would regularly reach out to the Israelis to subvert positions being supported by the US government, as in August 2006 when the U.N. Security Council was considering Resolution 1701, with the purpose of ending a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Bolton warned the Israelis what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was planning to support the initiative. Gillerman reports that

“In that case John Bolton got in touch with me at about 8 o’clock in the evening, which was 3 in the morning in Israel, calling to say ‘You have to call your prime minister and tell him that Condi Rice sold you out to the French.’”

Given what John Bolton did when last in office, he should never again be allowed to have access to classified information since he would clearly abuse that privilege to satisfy his own agenda. That President Trump will undoubtedly grant Bolton access to all sensitive information is discouraging, particularly as the new Advisor, supremely sure of himself and possessing a proclivity to do what he considers expedient without regard for consequences, cannot be relied to do the right thing when it comes to national security. He should never be granted a clearance to use top level intelligence and should never be placed in a position of authority that would permit him to do mischief. Unfortunately, urging President Trump to reverse the Bolton decision because of the grave damage it will inevitably do to the United States is not likely to be received favorably by the White House.

*

Philip Giraldi, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

By now it is fairly well established that the Skripal Affair was a hoax, which has had tremendous repercussions, leading to a dramatic disruption of diplomatic relations with Moscow.

That was the political objective at the outset. But what happens now.

The British government has acknowledged that there is no evidence that Russia was the source of the nerve gas agent, while still sticking to the story that the “Kremlin was behind the attack”.

“Smoking Gun”: The Issue is Not the Nerve Agent

The key issue, however, is not the nerve gas nor the source of the nerve agent. It pertains to Scotland Yard’s investigation which categorically refutes the official story. At the same time, there is reason to question the validity of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism report.

According to counter-terrorism officials and Scotland Yard, Peter Skripal and his daughter were poisoned at his home in Salisbury as a result of a “Russian hit squad which put poison on Skripal’s front door”.  According to Scotland Yard “The highest concentration of the nerve agent” was discovered on Skripal’s front door. “Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was also hospitalised, is thought to have become ill after going to the house” (Telegraph, March 28, 2018)

Telegraph, March 28, 2018

The foregoing statements by Scotland Yard as well as the media coverage are contradictory.

Skripal could not under any circumstances have been poisoned by a dangerous nerve agent at his home.

Why? 

Because the deadly nerve gas agent would have acted immediately and Skripal would not have been able to go from his home (in his BMW or otherwise) to the shopping mall where he was subsequently found (sitting on a bench) and taken to hospital together with his daughter Yulia.

“… experts believe that such gases can kill people within a few minutes. Skripal simply did not have time to walk to a restaurant or shopping center, where he was eventually found.”  

See the incisive article by Bassid al Khalili: U.K. is Lying: If Skripal was Poisoned at His Home, The Agent Used against Him Cannot be Nerve Gas  Global Research, April 4, 2018)

If Skripal and his daughter had been poisoned by a nerve agent (at his home), he would have been found at his home rather than on a bench in the shopping mall. This in itself disqualifies the official reports.

It also suggests that The Porton Down statement to the effect that “Russia was not the source of the nerve agent” is  a “red herring” (totally irrelevant). Why. Because the evidence amply confirms that Skripal and his daughter were not poisoned by a nerve gas at Skripal’s home.

This obvious fact –which has not been the object of media coverage– is that Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism report on the “Russian hit squad” is not only fake, it invalidates the UK government’s  “official” narrative, which is also fake. The lie discredits the lie.

Lest we forget, this latest fake Scotland Yard counterterrorism report was preceded by a string of “authoritative” (UK police, government) statements (analyzed and compiled by Stephen Lendman):

First it was claimed father and daughter Skripal were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent while eating lunch at a Salisbury restaurant.

The narrative switched to Yulia unwittingly transporting the nerve agent planted in her luggage on her flight from Moscow to London.

The story then shifted to Skripal’s BMW, the deadly toxin smeared on its handle, …

Next came the claim about the nerve agent perhaps in aerosolized form affecting them through the vehicle’s ventilation system.

The latest official version claims the alleged nerve agent was smeared on the front door of Skripal’s home.

If any of the above accounts were valid, the Skripals, Bailey and at least 38 reported others exposed to the same toxin would be dead – surely many others as well.

Yet a month later, no one died. Bailey recovered enough to be discharged from hospitalization. Yulia’s doctor said she improved markedly. Days earlier, Sergey was reported in stable condition.

Bombshell Report: Yulia Skripal Says Her Father is “All Right”

By Stephen Lendman, April 05, 2018

Russia was not the Source of the Nerve Agent: The Porton Down Statement. Boris Johnson and the Foreign Office

Her Majesty’s Foreign office is in crisis as a result of Porton Down’s statement to the effect that Russia was not the source of the nerve gas.

The justification for expelling Russian diplomats from a number of  EU countries no longer holds?  There is no proof that the nerve gas was from Russia.

Will Boris Johnson be forced to resign?

“Russia is to blame” said  Theresa May, without a shred of evidence. The UK government’s baseless accusations have led  the expulsion of Russian diplomats by 20 countries (18 countries of the EU, plus Canada and the US). and Moscow has responded by expelling Western diplomats.

Now that the hoax has been fully revealed. What next?

Boris Johnson has been asked to explain.

A political upheaval in several European countries?  Will diplomatic relations be normalized following these revelations? Unlikely unless there is a backlash from the EU governments which were deliberately misled by the U.K.

Screenshot RT

At the moment both the UK government and the media are in denial. The latest statement from Theresa May’s office emphasizes that “[the UK government has]  knowledge that within the last decade, Russia has investigated ways of delivering nerve agents probably for assassination…”  (quoted by the Washington Post, April 4, 2018)

The Media’s Double Standards in the Coverage of Important Events. The Skripal Novichock affair versus the Gaza Massacre

A sick Russian double agent and his daughter recovering in hospital, blamed on Vladimir Putin

Versus

14 innocent Palestinians killed and more than 750 wounded

The “Gaza Massacre” is not front page news. It does not make the tabloids. “Israel is not to Blame”.

Yet these killings were ordered by the Netanyahu government. 

Should these 20 Western countries not contemplate the timely expulsion of Israeli diplomats?

First published on January 8, 2018

January 7, 2018–Just as the U.S. Congress was preparing to vote on the controversial tax reform, UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston released a damning report on poverty in the United States, on December 15, 2017. Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and also a professor at NYC Law School, spent two weeks touring the United States at the invitation of the federal government. He visited California, Alabama, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Alston contends that 41 million Americans live in poverty, while the Republican tax bill will transfer more wealth to the rich.

In the introduction to his report he states,

“The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans. The dramatic cuts in welfare, foreshadowed by the President and Speaker Ryan, and already beginning to be implemented by the administration, will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes. It is against this background that my report is presented.”

This article will lay out, from a present and past standpoint, the urgency of the federal government to act in defense of the American people. As Franklin D. Roosevelt demonstrated in 1933, revolutionary change is required. Until federal government intervention occurs, people are going to continue to die needlessly.

Government Responsibility

On Dec. 19 Alston gave an interview to “Democracy Now” on his findings, in which he asserted that tax reform will make the U.S. “World Champion of Extreme Inequality.” Alston contended,

“[M]y job is to try to highlight the extent to which people who are living in extreme poverty are jeopardized by government policies. What I see in the United States now is not just a tax reform bill, but a very clear indication by government officials with whom I met, by the Treasury in their analysis, that this is going to be funded in parts by cuts to welfare, to Medicare, Medicaid. And so what you’ve got is a huge effort to enrich the richest and to impoverish the poorest. That is going to have very dramatic consequences.”

“However, it’s not so simple to get people off welfare when the government is not providing the full time quality jobs that are required to make a living,” Alston said. “I spoke with a lot of Walmart employees who are working full time, but who are still eligible for and totally dependent upon food stamps. This is compounded with the precariousness of employment, known as the gig economy.”

Alston posed the paradox:

“The United States is one of the very richest countries in the world. But all of the statistics put it almost at the bottom – whether it’s child mortality rates, longevity of adults, the degree of adequacy of healthcare.”

Among his findings, the United States ranks 36th in the world in access to clean water and sanitation.

“When I go to other countries, the big debate is that ‘We don’t have the money. We can’t afford to provide basic services to these people.’ And yet, in the United States, they’ve got a trillion or a trillion and a half to give to the very rich, but they also don’t have any of the money to provide a basic lifestyle that is human for the 40 million Americans.”

“One of the best quotes I got from an official in West Virginia, where voting rates are very low,” Alston told Goodman.

The official explained to Alston:

“Well, you know, when people are poor, they lose interest. They just don’t believe there’s any point.” “One begins to wonder if that’s a strategy,” Alston commented.

West Virginia now ranks one of the highest in the country in drug overdose deaths.

Alston reported on a meeting in Alabama with a major sewage problem, where a woman spoke of how her house was shot up by white neighbors when she got the right to vote in 1965. When Alston spoke to officials in Alabama and West Virginia of plans to address the sewerage problem, they looked dumbfounded, and said, “I don’t know. “

Alston also addressed the dire situation in Puerto Rico, where people have no electricity and are living in rubble, while unemployment is at depression levels.

Flashback to 1967

In May 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King made a fundamental shift by expanding his focus from African American voting and civil rights, to the economic well-being of all people in America. He laid out his vision for “The Poor People’s Campaign of 1967-68.” Speaking at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) just about a year before his assassination, he said,

I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights … [W]hen we see that there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…. That after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution… In short, we have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.

In a Sunday sermon, King stated,

“There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution; technological, a revolution of weaponry, and a human rights revolution. We are coming to Washington in a poor people’s campaign. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty.

On December 4, 1967, the SCLC released a statement by Dr. King detailing his Poor People’s Campaign, announcing that next Spring, that we

“will lead waves of the nation’s poor and disinherited to Washington, D.C. to demand redress of their grievances by the United States government and to secure at least jobs or income for all.” “We hope, with growing confidence, that our campaign in Washington will receive at first a sympathetic understanding across our nation.” “In short, we will be petitioning our government for specific reforms, and we intend to build militant nonviolent actions until that government moves against poverty.”

Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign

“In a sense, we are already at war with and among ourselves. Affluent Americans are locked into suburbs of physical comfort and mental insecurity; poor Americans are locked inside ghettos of material privation and spiritual debilitation; and all of us can almost feel the presence of a kind of social insanity which could lead to national ruin.”

Dr. King implored that it’s not acceptable that ”a nation gorged on money while millions of its citizens are denied a good education, adequate health services, decent housing, meaningful employment, and even respect, and are then told to be responsible.”

“The true responsibility for the existence of these deplorable conditions lies ultimately with the larger society, and much of the immediate responsibility for removing the injustices can be laid directly at the door of the federal government.”

“This is the institution which has the power to act, the resources to tap, and the duty to respond.“
“According to the Harris Poll, for example, a substantial majority of Americans believe that we must proceed at once to tear down and rebuild our slums, and a solid majority feel that everyone should have a job,” King said.

The Kennedy Brothers Intervene

In a clear demonstration of government defending the principle of justice, both social and economic, on behalf of the American people, John Kennedy backed up King’s principled views.

In June 1963, during the fight against segregation in Alabama, John F. Kennedy gave the following fourteen minute speech on nationwide TV, at the insistence of his brother Bobby.

“I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. This nation was founded on the principle that all men are created equal and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are diminished. “

Placing the present situation in historic context, Kennedy continued,

“One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free.”

Martin Luther King declared through tears, that Kennedy’s speech was,

“The most sweeping and forthright ever presented by an American president.” “Can you believe that a white man not only stepped up to the plate, he hit it over the fence?”

In January 1964, two months after John Kennedy’s assassination, Bobby Kennedy gave a speech in Tokyo, in which he said:

“Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis maintain their neutrality… It’s not sufficient to say, well, I don’t think I like the way things are going. We have a responsibility to offer an alternative.”

The speech has been characterized as the point of decision where Bobby Kennedy turned his focus back toward politics.

Soon after his brother’s assassination, Bobby said he saw the word “Poverty” scribbled in large letters on one of JFK’s notepads. Bobby believed that poverty was his brother’s last unfinished agenda. The fight to eliminate poverty came to define both Bobby’s campaign for the New York Senate, and his presidential run until June 1968.

The Ugly Truth

After fifty years, since the righteous call by Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers for federal government action to defend human rights by providing a decent living standard for all, the current conditions of life in the United States overall are hideous and unconscionable.

The UN Special Rapporteur’s detailed findings are shocking. For the purposes of this article, I will report only the broad statistical findings:

*The youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

A shockingly high number of children in the US live in poverty. In 2016, 18% of children – some 13.3 million – were living in poverty, with children comprising 32.6% of all people in poverty. Child poverty rates are highest in the southern states, with Mississippi, New Mexico at 30% and Louisiana at 29%.

Contrary to the stereotypical assumptions, 31% of poor children are White, 24% are Black, 36% are Hispanic, and 1% are indigenous. When looking at toddlers and infants, 42% of all Black children are poor, 32% of Hispanics, and 37% of Native American infants and toddlers are poor. The figure for Whites is 14%.

*The Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranks the most well-off countries in terms of labor markets, poverty, safety net, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. The United States comes in last of the top 10 most well-off countries, and 18th amongst the top 21.

*In the OECD the U.S. ranks 35th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality.

*According to the World Income Inequality Database, the US has the highest Gini rate (measuring inequality) of all Western Countries.

The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality characterizes the US as “a clear and constant outlier in the child poverty league.” U.S. child poverty rates are the highest amongst the six richest countries –
Alston contends,

“American exceptionalism was a constant theme in my conversations. But instead of realizing its founders’ admirable commitments, today’s United States has proved itself to be exceptional in far more problematic ways that are shockingly at odds with its immense wealth and its founding commitments to human rights. As a result, contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound.”

Alston concludes,

“The United States is unique. First of all, it doesn’t recognize what we call social rights at the international level—a right to healthcare, a right to housing, a right to food. The United States is unique in that, saying these are not rights.”

“Second, the issue with elimination of poverty always is around resources: `We don’t have the money.’ The United States, again uniquely, has the money. It could eliminate poverty overnight, if it wanted to. What we’re seeing now is the classic – it’s a political choice. Where do you want to put your money, into the rich or into creating a decent society, which will actually be economically more productive than just giving money to those who have a lot?”

The Urgency for Government Action Now

Since 2009, members of the U.S. Congress have filed 5 bills in both houses to restore Glass Steagall. Restoring this Depression-era legislation would significantly rein in the biggest Wall Street banks, and is essential for preparing the way for substantial investment in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and industrial base. But, despite the filing of the bipartisan bills, under both Democratic and Republican controlled congresses, the bills never were allowed to come up for a vote. In 2010, Congress passed Dodd-Frank, and protection for the bankers was the order of the day, as the gap between the rich and the poor grew into more hardship and despair for the average citizen.

In September 2011 a movement called “Occupy Wall Street” was founded in New York City to address income inequality. Although the timeliness of the movement gave it international notoriety, it had no real leadership or clear direction. Simple protest [often funded by corporate charities] will not do.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential election demonstrated anti-Wall Street sentiment, and an urgent desire for real job creation, on both ends of the political spectrum. Yet, in January 2018, a Rasmussen poll showed that 60% of Americans believe we are going in the wrong direction. Even a Wall Street Journal poll indicated that 74% of Americans agreed with that analysis.

For the last two years, drug overdose deaths have surpassed the total number of casualties during the Vietnam War, as life expectancy continues to drop during that same period.

Nothing has been done by any administration to address and reverse the post-industrial paradigm shift over the last fifty years. As a result 100 million working-age Americans have dropped out of the work force.

What are we doing, America? During the “Golden Era” of the economy, 1933-1965, Americans believed that every generation would be at a higher standard of living than the previous generation. How did we let the hope of the 1960s turned into one of despair?

In 1967, Dr. King said:

“America is at a crossroads of history, and it is critically important for us, as a nation and a society, to choose a new path and move upon it with resolution and courage. It is impossible to under-estimate the crisis we face in America. The stability of a civilization, the potential of free government, and the simple honor of men are at stake.”

Those words couldn’t ring truer today.

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All images in this article are from the author.

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)

According to the official UK narrative, Sergey and Yulia Skripal, along with police detective Nick Bailey, were poisoned by a deadly military-grade novichock nerve agent. 

No antidote exists, no recovery possible. The official narrative failed to explain exposure causes death in minutes.

From March 4 to recent days, the Tory narrative changed several times, explained in a late March article as follows:

First it was claimed father and daughter Skripal were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent while eating lunch at a Salisbury restaurant.

The narrative switched to Yulia unwittingly transporting the nerve agent planted in her luggage on her flight from Moscow to London.

The story then shifted to Skripal’s BMW, the deadly toxin smeared on its handle, suggesting he and Yulia were poisoned this way.

Next came the claim about the nerve agent perhaps in aerosolized form affecting them through the vehicle’s ventilation system.

The latest official version claims the alleged nerve agent was smeared on the front door of Skripal’s home.

If any of the above accounts were valid, the Skripals, Bailey and at least 38 reported others exposed to the same toxin would be dead – surely many others as well.

Yet a month later, no one died. Bailey recovered enough to be discharged from hospitalization. Yulia’s doctor said she improved markedly. Days earlier, Sergey was reported in stable condition.

The military-grade poisoning claim is a bald-faced lie, obvious to anyone following events and reports.

On Thursday, UK and other Western media said Yulia issued a public statement for the first time, indicating she’s recovering, still convalescing, adding she’s “glad to say (her) strength is growing daily.”

Tass cited a Rossiya-1 TV report, saying Sergey Skripal’s niece Viktoria Skripal spoke to Yulia by phone, the recorded conversation not yet verified.

The woman Viktoria reportedly spoke to identified herself as Yulia Skripal, saying she’s doing fine. Her father Sergey “is all right,” adding:

“Everyone is recovering. Everyone survived…No irreparable harm was done. That’s all. I will soon be discharged from the hospital.”

If the conversation is verified as accurate by both Viktoria and Yulia, it’s more clear proof along with what’s already known that the March 4 incident was a false flag – a geopolitical hoax, almost surely cooked up by Washington and Britain well before what happened occurred.

The Skripal incident follows numerous other fabricated anti-Russia accusations – including about “aggression” in Ukraine, “annexing” Crimea, MH-17’s downing, meddling in America’s 2016 presidential election and upcoming November midterm ones, along with interfering in European and upcoming Mexican elections, Brexit, alleged mass doping of Russian athletes, Russian trolls, cyberwar, sabotage, hybrid warfare and the Skripal incident.

None of the above accusations hold water. Russia is pilloried for its sovereign independence, opposition to Washington’s imperial agenda, and refusal of Vladimir Putin to bow to its will.

The Skripal affair isn’t the likely last attempt to vilify the country and its leadership, much more likely to come – a hugely dangerous strategy risking East/West confrontation.

The road to war is paved with ill intentions. Challenging Russia belligerently risks world war.

What’s inconceivable is ominously possible.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

 

The European Commission presented the Action Plan on Military Mobility on 28 March. “By facilitating military mobility within the EU, – explains the foreign representative of the Union, Federica Mogherini – we can be more effective in reacting when challenges arise”. Even if she does not say so, the reference to “Russian aggression” is evident.

The Action Plan was actually decided not by the EU, but by the Pentagon and NATO. In 2015, General Ben Hodges, commander of US gound forces in Europe (US Army Europe), called for the establishment of a “military Schengen Area” so that, to face “Russian aggression”, US forces could move quickly from one European country to another, without being slowed down by national regulations and customs procedures. (Manlio Denucci)

The Militarization of the European Union: Schengen Area Handed Over to US-NATO Forces

By Manlio Dinucci, April 05, 2018 

 

Manlio Denucci reveals in this pathbreaking video produced by Pandora TV the not so hidden agenda which consists in a US-NATO military occupation of the European Union. 

Video  (English subtitles)

Yemen Press: Can you describe, for the Yemen Press Agency, the situation in the UK ahead of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit?

Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos: Saudi Arabia is one of Britain’s closest allies and friends in the world.  Political, economic and military relations between Riyadh and London are intense, and these have become all the more close-knit because of the conflicts in Syria and in Yemen.  Regarding Syria, the Saudis and the British have armed, trained and financed Wahhabist terrorist groups in the country, such as Al-Nusra and the FSA, to try and overthrow the Syrian Government, while in Yemen, the British have sold billions of pounds worth of weapons to Riyadh so that the Saudi military can continue prosecuting its campaign of terror against Yemeni civilians.

Turning to Saudi influence in Britain, this is frighteningly high.  Many British politicians have close ties to Saudi Arabia and defend the Saudis to the bone.  So, for instance, in October 2016, the Labour Party put forward a motion in the House of Commons calling on the British Government to withdraw UK support from Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen.  Vast numbers of Conservative MPs voted against the motion, while approximately 100 Labour MPs were absent from the vote.  Unsurprisingly, the motion was defeated.  The actions of those Conservative and roughly 100 Labour MPs was an affront to humanity and shameful.  Those politicians have the blood of Yemeni civilians, including babies and children, on their hands.  But, what that vote demonstrated is how powerful Saudi influence is at the UK Houses of Parliament.

Together with Saudi Arabia wielding immense clout at Westminster, there are huge sums of Saudi money invested in London, especially in the stock exchange and in the property sector.  And it is believed that most mosques in the UK are under the control of the Saudis, who use this power to indoctrinate British Muslims with the poison that is Wahhabism.  Indeed, as Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria, recalled about his visit to the UK over 20 years ago: “I spoke at a mosque, as well as the biggest Jewish synagogue in London.  I warned that the terrorists are very close and that British mosques are in the hands of Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood.  I said the same thing in Oxford.  But nobody seems to have taken any notice.”

YP: Can you name the main political parties in Britain and whether any of these are planning to protest against Mohammed bin Salman’s visit?

DMP: The political landscape in the UK is dominated by the Conservative and Labour parties, and Saudi influence can be found in both of these parties, especially the Conservative one.  Regarding protests by British politicians against the visit to London by Mohammed bin Salman, these will be, regrettably, rather insignificant.  There will be, undoubtedly, protests by some Labour politicians who are on the left of the Labour Party.  As regards protests by Conservative politicians, I doubt there will be any at all.

Sadly, Britain does not have a free and independent press, so many Britons, including politicians, are not aware of the horrors that Saudi Arabia is inflicting on the people of Yemen, using British weapons in doing so.  But we must never lose sight of the fact that many British politicians are very aware of what the Saudis are doing in Yemen but remain indifferent so as not to jeopardise their ties with Riyadh.  That is a truly disgusting and despicable reality.

YP: Some people are accusing you of being an ally to Iran, especially after your interview with Sky News where you described the US-backed fighters in East Ghouta, Syria, as being Al Qaeda.  How do you reply to that?

DMP: I am an ally to the Syrian people and, indeed, all peoples who have suffered at the hands of Wahhabist terrorists, including my own people, the British.  At the scene of every terrorist attack in the world, be it New York, Bali, Madrid, London, Paris or Manchester, there was a sign pointing to Saudi Arabia.  I wish that more Britons would become aware that their own Government is endangering their lives because of its close relationship with Saudi Arabia.  In my opinion, mosques in the UK should be prohibited from preaching Wahhabism, airing sermons from Saudi Arabia and selling Wahhabist DVDs and literature.  Wahhabism should be made a criminal offence in the UK.  If I was a politician, I would be calling on the British Government to sever its relationship with Saudi Arabia and clamp down on Wahhabist activities in the UK.

YP: How do you see American influence in the Middle East?

DMP: American dominance of the Middle East is a reality and one that will not change, even though Russia has now resumed its role in exerting considerable influence in the region, as it did in Soviet times.   The US is Saudi Arabia’s most important ally and friend; no America, no Saudi Arabia – it is as simple as that.  So Saudi Arabia is able to extend its malignant tentacles across the world – killing mass numbers of people in doing so and poisoning the minds of countless others- because of America’s political, economic and military relationship with Riyadh.  Furthermore, if you thought that US-Saudi ties could not become any closer, then think again because Donald Trump has personal ties to Saudi Arabia and this helps to explain why, in just the first few months of his presidency, he signed contracts – economic and military – with the Saudis to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth.  Alas, the export of Wahhabism to the world will continue to flourish.

YP: Are Londoners planning to organise a protest against Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to London?

DMP: Yes – there is a planned protest by some ordinary Britons and by some human rights groups to demonstrate against the visit of Mohammed bin Salman, a most wretched of human beings.  But that will be it.  British media will not tell the UK public of the true nature of this man and his loathsome actions against civilians in Yemen, while British Ministers and other politicians, alike, will line up to see him – and, undoubtedly, in an obsequious way.  What a perverted world we live in.

The Metropolitan Police will, of course, be present at the protests to ensure that they are legal and peaceful, which I hope, and believe, they will be.  Of course, if there was any justice in Britain, the British police would arrest Mohammed bin Salman the second he sets foot on UK soil.

YP: Could you introduce yourself for the Yemen Press Agency’s readers, especially your timeline of supporting Yemen?

DMP: I hold a doctorate in Russian history and specialise in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union, as well as specialising on the former Yugoslavia.  I am also the editor of Politics First, a non-partisan publication for the UK Houses of Parliament – a magazine written by politicians for politicians.

As regards my support for the Yemeni people, I have been vocally supporting them ever since Saudi Arabia embarked on its murderous and depraved military campaign in Yemen, three years ago now.  To the people of Yemen, I have this message: I am so sorry for the actions of my Government in supplying arms to the Saudis which have then been used to murder your family members and friends; I only wish I could do more to help you at this perilous time.

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Featured image is from LobeLog.

Vídeo original em italiano com subtítulo em português.

Artigo original em italiano :

Ue, Area Schengen per le forze Nato

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Raging US/UK Political Assault on Russia

By Stephen Lendman, April 05, 2018

Despite no evidence suggesting Russian involvement, the official hostile narrative continues – supported by Western media.

During an OPCW Executive Council Wednesday special session, Moscow’s proposed joint investigation was rejected by Washington and Britain.

Doubts About Novichok

By Professor Paul Mckeigue, Professor Piers Robinson, and Jake Mason, April 05, 2018

Official statements from the UK government claim that the “military grade nerve agent” detected in Salisbury was “part of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok” that the Russian chemist Vil Mirzayanov alleged had been developed in the Soviet Union in a secret programme.  The structures of these compounds, labelled A-230, A-232, A-234, A-242 and A-262, were published by Mirzayanov in a book in 2008, twelve years after he emigrated to the US.

Skripal-Novichok Case: Hiding UK-U.S. Lies Gets Top Priority

By Eric Zuesse, April 05, 2018

The U.S. and its allies have been successful in hiding the basis on which Russian diplomats were expelled from their countries — expelled on still-undocumented accusations that Russia’s Government was behind the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury England on March 4th. On Wednesday April 4th, the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said no to Russia’s proposal for an OPCW investigation into the source of the toxin that was used in the attack.

The Skripal Affair is a Hoax. If Russia is “No Longer to Blame”, What Next?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 05, 2018

The British government has acknowledged that there is no evidence that Russia was the source of the nerve gas agent, while still sticking to the story that the “Kremlin was behind the attack”.

Russia Claims Skripal Poisoning Was Staged by the UK Intelligence

By Zero Hedge, April 03, 2018

Russia’s Ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, says that London’s reluctance to share information on the March 4 poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal has led Moscow to suggest that London authorities actually perpetrated the crime.

While In Coma: Yulia Skripal Logged Into Her VKontakte Page? (Russian Version of Facebook)

By Joaquin Flores, April 01, 2018

The 33-year-old daughter of  Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal, visited her”Vkontakte” page – sort of a Russian version of Facebook –  on the morning of March 7th, three days after the “assassination” attempt that put her allegedly in a coma, until just a few days ago. She was poisoned, according to the British government, along side her father Sergei,  and according to the official version, hasn’t regained consciousness until quite recently.

For almost three decades, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has been fighting against neoliberal austerity, especially that aspect of it that has involved systematically degrading systems of income support. The underlying motive in this attack has been to render benefit provision as inadequate and precarious as possible so as to create the desperation that can drive people into the expanding low wage sector.

In this situation, the notion has taken hold that the solution is a clean start, with income support restructured along the lines of a system of basic income. Given our bitter experiences, we might have been expected to respond favourably to this development. However, as we looked at the idea of basic income, alarm bells began to ring. Two things, particularly, seemed ominous and concerning.

First of all, we were struck by how elastic the concept is. The political range of those who support basic income is quite remarkable. You can find horribly right wing proponents, such as the notorious U.S. political scientist, Charles Murray, and work your way across the political spectrum to the notion of a “capitalist road to communism” advanced by Robert van der Veen and Philippe Van Parijs. An ‘aspirational’ policy concept that changes shape according to the values and objectives of whoever is proposing it, seemed to offer scant protection in the context of the dominant neoliberal agenda.

Our second major concern emerged as we came to understand that a form of basic income could be implemented that would actually facilitate, rather than reverse or impede, the goals of increased exploitation and the expansion of low wage precarious work. As we looked at the pilot projects that had been put in place in Finland and here in Ontario, our conviction grew that basic income, progressive hopes to the contrary, is fundamentally a neoliberal trap.

The Context of UK Austerity

Since 2010, the attack on those who must rely on social benefits in the UK has been dreadful, even by the harsh standards of the international austerity agenda. A kind of a nightmarish opposite of the post war reform period has unfolded. The film I, Daniel Blake has driven home some of this brutality. The horrible social abandonment involved in the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the benefit sanctions regime and, now, the rolling out of Universal Credit, can only produce in the UK a strong sense that anything must be better than the legislated poverty and rituals of degradation that present system entails. As understandable as such a conclusion is, however, I would still suggest that basic income is a gift horse whose mouth we should look into with some care.

The debate around basic income in the UK is of particular importance internationally. This is largely because of the progressive credibility that goes with the policy being given favourable consideration by the Corbyn led Labour Party. To this we must add support from the Scottish Government and pilot projects in Glasgow and Fife. What I would like to do here is to offer some general arguments about the regressive nature of any form of basic income that might actually come into existence and to bolster this with a look at the main features of the pilot project that is now unfolding in Ontario.

The Agenda of the Right

Income support systems have emerged in capitalist societies as reluctant concessions. The classic model is the English Poor Laws. As the peasants were driven from the land in the 1500s and a modern working class was being created, a dangerous and desperate surplus population also came into being. The landless, jobless and homeless posed a problem of public order for the Tudor authorities that proved too much even for their newly enhanced powers of state repression.

The Poor Laws that were adopted, were a calculated attempt to stave off unrest and social dislocation while allocating the minimum resources necessary for this so as to avoid the risk that unemployed people might find relief a better option than the worst forms of paid work. In 1834, this was taken further with the New Poor Laws and the concept of ‘less eligibility.’ Relief had to be lower than the lowest wages and provided under conditions that were as degrading as possible.

The systems of income support that emerged in the 20th Century, may have eased up on the horrors of the Victorian workhouse but they retained the fundamental features of less eligibility. Even during the years of the post war boom, in which major concessions were being made to unionized workers and the social infrastructure was being enhanced, the war on the poor by systems of public welfare was never called off. In the neoliberal decades since the 1970s, there has been a dramatic effort to render income support far less adequate and far more precarious than ever. The impact of this has been startlingly successful in terms of pushing down wages and supplying the needs of an expanding low wage sector.

Now, at this very point, the notion of basic income is placed on the table. At first glance, it appears strange that those who have gained so much from the degrading of existing income support systems would look with any interest at a replacement with progressive credentials. Indeed, there is no ruling class consensus on the matter. Donald Trump is focused on smashing any social provision Bill Clinton left intact and the UK Tories are quite happy to rely on the worst traditions of the Poor Laws. However, the more sophisticated players within the neoliberal order are giving serious thought to the advantages of a major tactical shift. In several important ways, basic income could work in their favour.

First of all, there is the not unimportant question of legitimacy. The rampant levels of inequality that have been generated during the neoliberal period are worrying the leaders of global capitalism. (More accurately, they are worried about the anger that is being created by this inequality). If right wing populism alarms them, we can be sure that radical movements on the left are even more of a concern. Even so unlikely an apostle of ‘enlightened capitalism’ as Theresa May has tried to counter the socialist threat of Jeremy Corbyn by contending that, “A free market economy, operating under the right rules and regulations, is the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created.”

Basic income fits nicely in the tool kit of an allegedly kinder and gentler capitalism. Some of the most rapacious exploiters on the planet, such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson sing its praises. The concept of a secure basic income offers the fantasy of painless capitalism, even in the face of massive technological displacement.

One of the main selling points for basic income is the notion that it could be delivered with far fewer conditions attached to it than present systems. Very justifiably, the bureaucratic intrusion and moral policing built into them are widely regarded as oppressive and unacceptable.

I tend to think, however, that the further advance of the neoliberal agenda may well proceed more efficiently with less conditional forms of income support.

The Poor Law based model has been very successful in creating an ample supply of low paid workers with fewer rights and reduced bargaining power. However, it may be time to ease up on the use of that stick, not only because it is less necessary but because it can actually become counterproductive.

The climate of denial and inordinate readiness to cut off benefits within the present systems throws people into crisis and renders them destitute with great frequency. The elastic, on call workforce that people like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are working towards might be easier to perfect with a less rule bound system that kept people more job ready.

Ontario’s Basic Income Experiment

A pilot project is now up and running in three areas of Ontario and the intention is to recruit 4,000 test subjects. It offers a veritable checklist for how a neoliberal version of basic income might be fashioned.

The Government promotional material says that it offers a “minimum income level.” In fact, this is set at about 75% of the Low Income Measure (LIM). While this is significantly more than the wretched pittance provided to people on social assistance in the province, it is certainly not an amount that would enable anyone to reject low wage employment or face the robot future with a smile.

Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that the levels of income provided under a relatively generous small scale test run would be maintained in any full scale programme. The pilot is not looking to test any universal system but is means tested. You must be poor to get on it and your additional earned income is clawed back.

A vitally telling element of the Ontario experiment is that it places great emphasis on drawing in people who work for poverty wages. Only 30% of those it wants to study will have been on social assistance. This reveals it as, primarily, a dry run for a wage top up system or, to put it another way, a subsidy to low wage employers. If employers in the low paying sector enjoy a set up under which their workers receive a significant portion of their income out of the general tax revenues, the pressure on them to increase wages is greatly reduced and governments can also avoid raising minimum wages. It is the 21st Century reincarnation of the Speenhamland system.

Right wing basic income proponents are always at pains to stress that the cash payment they wish to grant must not augment but, rather, replace existing systems of social provision, so that people become shoppers in the neoliberal marketplace, picking their way through the privatized rubble of the social infrastructure.

While operating on far too small a scale to take major steps in this direction, the Ontario pilot sends out some ominous signals of intent. Those test subjects who were previously on social assistance will lose many of the supports they previously had. Referral and counselling services are gone and people must ‘self navigate.’ Protection from court ordered debt payments is removed. Benefits for special dietary needs, payments for medical transportation, hearing aids, eyeglasses, service dogs and mobility devices are all eliminated.

In fact, even with the relatively more generous payments on the pilot, there is a whole population of disabled people with high support needs who would be worse off and would not wish to participate. When any evaluation process takes place after the conclusion of the test phase, we can only fear that they will be recklessly disregarded.

There is one other very important consideration when it comes to a regressive threat associated with basic income that I should note. In the context of an international refugee crisis and with the super-exploitation of migrant workers and ugly crackdowns on people without legal status, it is highly likely that any refashioned form of income support will be used as a means of racist exclusion from social protection. Yogi Acharya and AJ Withers from OCAP have written previously on how weak and sometimes overtly reactionary, the basic income lobby has been on these questions. The fact that, in the UK especially, basic income is frequently referred to as ‘citizen’s income’, is more than a little concerning.

Progressive Hopes

Before considering the question of a universal basic income (UBI) that would provide a truly adequate payment to all as a matter of right and without conditions, let’s note that many of those who advocate for basic income are ready to settle for something far short of UBI, often on the basis that it must be implemented in stages. This means that much of the progressive lobby is, in practice, prepared to accept a means tested payment to the poorest people that is, at the same time, a subsidy for low wage employers.

During last year’s race for the leadership of the federal New Democratic Party (Canada’s social democratic party), one contender, Guy Caron, came out for a form of basic income that would mainly use tax revenues to fill in the gap left by poverty wages. [Ed. also see LeftStreamed video “Basic Income: A Way Forward for the Left?”]

The NDP forms the Provincial Government in British Columbia at present and it holds power with the support of votes from the Green Party. It has declared that it will conduct some form of study of basic income. Very interestingly, a background paper to the Green’s last election platform offers the following comment. “There is a significant gap between minimum wage and liveable income. This approach is designed to protect marginal jobs. The long term intent is that the basic income program would fill the gap between minimum wage and a liveable wage.”

This tendency to settle for less and see regressive means tested wage subsidy systems as flawed but important first steps, is very common. However, it is generally argued that the eventual goal is to put in place a universal and unconditional system that provides a level of income that would enable someone to live reasonably well if they could not (or even didn’t wish to) participate in the job market.

Indeed, even in the face of massive displacement by technology, it is asserted that a UBI system would offer a viable way forward for society.

It is necessary to say very bluntly that the notion that the state is going to provide a level of secure and unconditional income that removes economic coercion from the dealings between employers and workers is just not rooted in reality.

After decades of neoliberal attack, our ability to win major social reforms has certainly been undermined but it goes beyond that. As Pam Frache has put it, “Simply put: no capitalist state will provide workers with the resources to go on indefinite strike.” If we were strong enough to win a concession from capitalism that removed from it the very capacity to exploit the working class, why would we settle for new social policy?

A Better Way Forward

If you believe that, somehow, a kind of post capitalist capitalism can be ushered into being in which everyone is topped up to income adequacy without conflict, then the harsh realities of the class struggle must seem very unappealing. However, if you’re prepared to accept that there is no social policy end run around neoliberal capitalism, then we have to act in line with that reality.

Even at its grandest and boldest, for all its radical pretensions, basic income seeks to make its peace with that neoliberal order and accept a commodified form of social provision. Armine Yalnizyan from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has written a piece revealingly subtitled, “Are we better off when we have more income, or need less of it?” that explores the benefits of struggling for public services that ‘buy more freedom from the market’ rather than focusing on the ‘income transfer.’ She points to the CCPA’s calculation that, in Canada, for an annual outlay of $15-billion, half the cost of an entry level basic income that would just lift the poor above the poverty line, it would be possible to “expand the stock of affordable housing, child care and public transit, as well as almost eliminate user costs for pharmacare, dental care and post-secondary schooling.”

John McDonnell has suggested that a Corbyn-led Labour Government might surpass the reform agenda of the Attlee Government of 1945. However, the welfare state that was developed at that time was about schools, hospitals, council housing and a complex and durable social infrastructure.

If we are to go on the offensive against the neoliberal agenda, surely it is the fight for free, expanded and accessible public services that should be our focus. If present systems of income support for unemployed, sick and disabled people are inadequate, we can demand full entitlement, adequate income and an end to intrusive rules and moral policing.

However, rather than hope for a tax funded payment to blunt the impact of low wage, precarious work, let’s step up the fight for decent wages. If technological displacement threatens us, let’s challenge it and demand reduced hours of work at no loss of pay. The gains of workers in Germany around a 28 hour work week are of far greater value than a promise of basic income from Silicon Valley.

If we are to drive back the attacks we face under capitalism and, indeed, to challenge that system itself and take our struggles in the direction of social transformation, it will be done through social mobilization and political struggle. Basic income is a futile hope for a way out that is, in reality, blocked. At the same time, a neoliberal version is in the works that is all too real and likely. It would be the most tragic miscalculation to lay down a progressive welcome mat for it.

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John Clarke is a writer and leading organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

La Commissione europea ha presentato il 28 marzo il Piano d’azione sulla mobilità militare. «Facilitando la mobilità militare all’interno della Ue – spiega la rappresentante esteri dell’Unione, Federica Mogherini – possiamo reagire più efficacemente quando sorgono le sfide». Anche se non lo dice, è evidente il riferimento alla «aggressione russa». (Ue, Area Schengen per le forze Nato)

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Throughout the Occupied Territories, Palestinian lives and welfare are threatened daily – Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem virtual free-fire zones.

Shooting, killing and injuring Palestinians demonstrating for their fundamental rights is one of many threats they face under repressive occupation.

Israel intends no letup in viciousness against Palestinians wanting to live free on their own land, in their own country, their fundamental rights respected, upheld by the international community – instead of one-sided support for Israel, treating them like non-persons.

Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman vowed no letup in Israeli viciousness, saying:

“We have set clear rules of the game, and we do not intend to change them.”

“Anyone who approaches the fence endangers his life, and I would recommend that Gaza residents put their efforts not into protesting against Israel, but into regime change within the Strip.”

Israeli forces “operated exceptionally well, as expected, and I have no doubt that we will continue to act in the same way in the days to come,” adding:

“(A)ll of our troops deserve a commendation.”

Freedom of expression and assembly are fundamental rights, enshrined in America’s First Amendment and international law, protected as long as peaceful.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states the following:

“The right of peaceful assembly shall be recognized. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. (Article 21).”

“1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

2. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those which are prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. (Article 22).”

Israel equates nonviolent Palestinian demonstrations with “incitement” – individuals involved in self-defense, along with justifiable resistance against tyranny, considered “terrorists.”

The world community largely closes its eyes to horrific Israeli high crimes, accountability never forthcoming despite horrific mistreatment of an entire population for over 70 years.

Israeli officials and supportive media falsely accuse peaceful Palestinian demonstrators with protesting violently.

Lieberman lied calling the majority of Palestinians killed on Friday “terrorists,” compounding his Big Lie, adding:

“These weren’t innocent civilians who came as part of a civil protest.”

“This was a provocation well organized by the military wing of Hamas in an attempt to violate our sovereignty, to disrupt our daily life and to pester the nation of Israel’s celebrations of the first day of Passover. We did what we had to do.”

“We didn’t initiate any provocations against the residents of Gaza. We protect our residents.”

All of the above is a despicable perversion of cold, hard facts.

Commenting on Friday’s massacre, the Palestinian BDS National Committee said what happened “(evok(ed) memories of the South African apartheid regime’s massacre of peaceful protesters in Sharpeville in 1960…”

“Israel’s military committed a new massacre against Palestinian civilians as they were peacefully commemorating Palestinian Land Day, calling for an end to Israel’s brutal blockade of Gaza, and asserting the UN-stipulated right of return for Palestinian refugees.”

Israeli violence was “premeditated,” in part explained by an IDF statement, saying “nothing was carried out uncontrolled. Everything was accurate and measured. We know where every bullet landed.”

“…Israel yet again used Palestinian civilians as guinea pigs in its weapons laboratory, testing its new teargas-firing drones against civilians in Gaza,” the Palestinian BDS National Committee stressed, adding:

“The export of Israeli military technology, ‘field-tested’ on Palestinians, contributes substantially to financing Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and military aggression against other nations.”

Israel is the region’s most egregious human rights abuser.

Full support and encouragement by Washington green-lights it to do what ever it pleases against Palestinians and Syria – no matter how lawless, destructive and harmful to human life and welfare.

*

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

More than 3,000 Google employees have signed a letter that’s circulating in the company demanding that the tech giant end its involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon program that could be used to develop drone technology.

The project, the workers argue, runs counter to the company’s stated mission and motto.

“By entering into this contract, Google will join the ranks of companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics,” wrote the employees, who include senior engineers. “The argument that other firms, like Microsoft and Amazon, are also participating doesn’t make this any less risky for Google. Google’s unique history, its motto ‘Don’t Be Evil,’ and its direct reach into the lives of billions of users set it apart.”

Driving pick-up trucks, the hit squad prowled the streets of Basra in southern Iraq, searching for the oil contractor it had been sent to kill. When the gunmen finally cornered Kadhim Wattban near his home, just before midnight, the married father of three stood no chance. He was shot more than two dozen times.

The murder in the affluent neighborhood of Baradhiyah in January shocked few people in the port city, where sudden bursts of violence have become part of everyday life. But the muted reaction from residents and police was the clearest sign yet that security in this strategic town has all but broken down.

While Daesh has wrought havoc elsewhere in Iraq, Basra’s troubles are caused by multinational companies, corrupt officials and avaricious tribal chiefs, according to sources who spoke to Arab News. Wattban was just one more victim in a bloody local struggle for money and power that is fueled by the world’s endless thirst for the country’s most lucrative asset, oil.

“All these tribes have turned into mafias,” a military adviser said on condition of anonymity. “This is a very serious problem that we have been suffering from for years. The local government is incapable of dealing with them as they have turned out to be a state within the state.”

Situated in the southeast corner of Iraq, Basra is home to 2 million people, with an infrastructure, economy, governance and culture that are inextricably linked to the energy industry. Were the city and surrounding province that shares its name a country, it would be the eighth-biggest oil producer in the world, ahead of the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

Basra produces about 3.5 million barrels of oil per day — roughly 70 percent of Iraq’s national output. Its stability is essential to the country’s chances of maintaining influence within the international community and recovering from the devastation caused by the three-year war against Daesh.

But these high stakes have brought new dangers that could prove almost as challenging to the government as the extremists’ campaign to forge a medieval state in the Middle East, according to officials, community leaders and industry insiders who spoke to Arab News.

Desperate to gain a bigger slice of the multi-trillion-dollar energy market, some of the world’s wealthiest companies have entered into murky, back-channel partnerships with local tribes and corrupt bureaucrats to secure access to the oilfields. This has led to massive bribes changing hands.

One senior government official appointed by the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi to investigate the issue claimed three of Basra’s most prominent clans have been paid more than $105 million as part of a racketeering scheme disguised as state-backed compensation.

Sources, including tribal sheikhs and security contractors, say these kind of payments have emboldened the tribes to intimidate and even kill anyone who threatens their pursuit of greater money and power — sowing fear on the streets of Basra and jeopardizing Iraq’s economic recovery.

In late February, Al-Abadi sent three military divisions to the city and surrounding areas to wrest control of Basra from the tribes. Their deployment temporarily reduced the violence, but few people with experience of Basra’s complex clan rivalries are confident the downturn will last.

“This damn nightmare will not end soon, we know that,” said Ahmed Ali, a local taxi driver. “Our security forces have eliminated Daesh, but they will not be able to tame the tribes.”

According to a government committee formed in early 2016 to solve the problem, dozens of people have died in Basra in the past three years as a result of violence arising from tribal clashes over oil revenue. Hundreds have been injured.

The murder of 25-year-old Wattban on January 22 inevitably triggered bloody reprisals. Hours later, fellow members of the Battat tribe meted out their own form of justice, sending gunmen into the nearby town of Karmat ‘Ali to take revenge against the Hamadina tribe, which they blamed for the killing. A ferocious battle ensued, leaving five more people dead.

Iraq’s oil reserves were nationalized and all foreign companies expelled in 1972, seven years before Saddam Hussein seized power. But just as the 2003 US-led invasion transformed the country’s political landscape, so it changed the economy and, in 2009, the energy market was finally reopened to foreign corporations.

About 800 international oil companies are licensed to work in Iraq by the Ministry of Oil, with more than 50,000 foreign workers employed in Basra’s energy sector alone. But the sheer size of the industry has proved to be both a blessing and a curse.

Under the terms of Iraq’s constitution, the country’s natural resources are owned by the people. As a result, the state needed to find a way to navigate around its own laws when opening the oilfields for tender. The government decided the best solution was to bribe the various tribes on whose land the oil is located, under the guise of compensation, hoping this would be enough to placate the main clans who hold sway over Basra.

But the move backfired and the tribes began asking for more money, this time going straight to the international companies with their demands, industry insiders say. When some companies also paid them off, they grew further emboldened, lashing out at rivals in an endless cycle of tit-for-tat killings that has brought chaos to the southern city.

Sheikh Mohammed Al-Zedawi was appointed by Al-Abadi to a national committee established to end the unrest between Basra’s clans. He told Arab News that three local tribes — the Battat, Halaf and A’awaji — had been paid a total of $105 million for allowing oil companies to work on their land.

The payments arose from the compensation scheme launched when Iraq’s oilfields were opened to multinational corporations, which he described as a “fabricated resolution” dreamt up by corrupt officials. He blamed the continuing violence, particularly in the north of Basra, on oil companies operating in the area.

In one incident recounted by another Arab News source, a minibus carrying employees of a multinational oil company was driving into Basra from the West Qurna Phase Two oilfield, northwest of the city, last year when it was ambushed by a pickup truck carrying several gunmen. The gunmen opened fire, terrifying the passengers, but causing no casualties. The attack was regarded as a tribal ultimatum: pay up or next time the corporation’s workers will get hurt.

Ali Faris Shaddad, head of the oil and gas committee on Basra’s provincial council, acknowledged that the situation was in danger of spiralling out of control. “The main cause of the instability is the illegal competition between tribes and local companies,” he said.

Tribal networks have always been central to economic life in Basra, but for years they were kept in line by the brutal authoritarianism of Saddam’s regime, which coopted them to help circumvent international sanctions imposed after the 1990-91 Gulf War.

With Saddam’s tacit approval, the tribes used their extensive regional contacts to smuggle food, weapons, drugs and alcohol back and forth between Iraq, Iran and the Gulf states. In return, Saddam gave the clans ownership of vast areas of land to the north and northwest of Basra, despite knowing they contained some of the world’s largest oil reserves.

Now the tribes, the energy corporations and corrupt government officials are all trying to profit from the massive energy boom that has followed the US-led invasion, sources said.

One security source who used to work for an energy company said it paid local tribes $25 million in compensation over a three-year period as well as a further $25 million in “gifts, bribes and commissions” to protect its operations.

“Foreign managers do not want to stop work for any reason,” he said. “Stopping work for a day or two means losing millions of dollars and this is unacceptable for them, so they pay to get rid of the headaches caused by the clans and to ensure the work goes on.”

Violent clashes arising from the oil money have become more frequent as an indirect result of the emergence of Daesh elsewhere in the country.

When the extremists seized the cities of Fallujah and Mosul in 2014, followed by Ramadi in 2015, the government withdrew most of its combat forces from central and southern provinces and redeployed them to the frontlines to fill the gaps left by the thousands of soldiers who fled the Daesh advance. This created a security vacuum in Basra, which the tribes and local officials were quick to exploit.

The UN estimates that 99 percent of the Iraqi government’s revenue is generated by the oil sector, and the huge sums of money involved in the industry make it a prime target for nefarious officials.

Iraqis working with the oil companies told Arab News that corrupt administrators in Basra are encouraging violence in the city by using clans to establish racketeering networks that can extort money from international investors who may be reluctant to hand out bribes.

They said officials contact tribal leaders with information about a particularly lucrative contract. The officials then provide them with a map of the oil rigs as well as details about the company’s convoys and the daily movement of its management. Equipped with this information, the tribes set out to intimidate the firm.

“It’s big business and goes in two directions. Officials ask the tribes to move when a new contract is put forward, then make recommendations and pressure the companies to award these contracts to local companies associated with specific tribes under the pretext of calming them,” said Mohammed, a translator working for one of the oil firms.
“Anyone who tries to break this circle without coordinating with the (officials involved) will face tribal consequences.”

At an international conference in Kuwait in February, Iraq appealed for $88.2 billion to rebuild the country after the three-year war against Daesh, but only received pledges amounting to $30 billion.

The governor of Basra, Asaad Al-Eidani, recently told reporters that the city “represents the economic lifeline of Iraq” and said investment in the country’s reconstruction “must be launched from here.”

But with thousands of Iraqis in the region employed by the energy sector and jobs elsewhere in short supply, any effort to clean up the corruption and clampdown on the tribes risks provoking a violent backlash that could see more bodies on Basra’s streets.

One security adviser working for an international oil company in northern Basra said he received multiple threats via his mobile phone every week. He said the tribes often forced firms to rent their vehicles and employ their relatives, even when they are not qualified to do the jobs required of them.

“We are working among wolves,” he said.

With the eyes of the world focused on the alleged nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal, the Russian who worked as a British double-agent before being exiled to the UK in 2010, since he and his daughter were found slumped on a Salisbury public bench last Sunday, one can’t help but notice the hypocritical reaction of the British political establishment to the attack.

Addressing the House of Commons on Monday, Prime Minister Theresa May alleged Kremlin involvement in the incident due to ‘Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations’.

These words were spoken in a self-righteous sense, one that suggested the UK held the moral ground over Russia and would never go so far as to conduct assassinations of political opponents on foreign soil.

Anyone with even a basic knowledge of British foreign policy towards Ireland however, would know that this patently isn’t the case.

In 1989, the north of Ireland was at the height of a bloody conflict in which Irish Republican militants were waging a guerrilla campaign on Crown Forces in a bid to end British rule in the region.

In order to counter the threat posed by the IRA and other such groups, Westminster had long decided that anyone charged with Republican activity in the occupied six counties would be brought before a non-Jury ‘Diplock’ court; thus maximizing the chances of conviction and imprisonment.

Photo: Max Blumenthal/Twitter

One human rights Lawyer from Belfast however, would quickly gain prominence for successfully defending Republicans charged before these courts.

Pat Finucane first came to public attention through his campaigning for Republican prisoners during the 1981 H-Block hunger strike.

He would quickly become a thorn in the side of the British establishment by representing Republicans in several high-profile cases throughout the 1980s, with the final straw coming in November 1988 when he successfully defended an IRA Volunteer in a case related to the deaths of two British soldiers.

On the 12th of February 1989, a pro-British death squad burst into Pat Finucane’s home and shot him 14 times as he had Sunday dinner with his wife and children.

The death squad in question, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), was a then-legal organisation under the control of the Force Research Unit (FRU), a covert British military unit tasked with turning the UDA into a more ‘professional’ organisation.

British state involvement in the killing went even higher than the military, with then-Home Office Minister Douglas Hogg lamenting in the weeks before Finucane’s death that there were Lawyers in the north of Ireland who were ‘unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA’.

The murder of Pat Finucane was not an isolated incident however, and not even a tactic confined by the British to intense periods of conflict in Ireland, such as the 1980s were.

Ten years after Finucane’s killing, the level of conflict in Ireland had decreased significantly following the 1998 surrender agreement between the Provisional IRA and British government.

This ‘peace’ however, was and still is maintained by the threat of violence from the British state should anything upset the status quo.

This is what ultimately led to the murder of Rosemary Nelson.

A human rights lawyer, like Pat Finucane, Rosemary had also risen to prominence through her successful defence of Republicans in high-profile cases.

However, it was her representation of the family of Robert Hamill, a young Nationalist beaten to death by a Loyalist mob in 1997 whilst in full view of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) the north of Ireland’s pro-British police force, that drew the most ire from the British establishment.

The remains of Solicitor Rosemary Nelson’s BMW car (Source: Belfast Telegraph)

On the 15th of March 1999, Rosemary Nelson was killed by a car bomb outside her home in Armagh, occupied Ireland. The attack was claimed by the Red Hand Defenders (RHD), a breakaway faction of the UDA.

In the days following her murder, it emerged that members of the RUC’s covert Special Branch had been involved in a surveillance operation close to Nelson’s home the night before her death, ostensibly to monitor suspected members of the IRA.

Despite the intense surveillance of the area surrounding Nelson’s home, no Special Branch members reported seeing the RHD team that carried out attack; like Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson had also become another victim of Britain’s bloody record of state-sponsored assassinations.

*

Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican and social activist from Dublin, Ireland. Secretary of Dublin Anti-Internment Committee.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

There’s no likely positive resolution to dangerously escalating US/UK-led Russia bashing – eerily similar to the run-up to earlier US-led NATO imperial wars.

Was Trump’s hardened war cabinet assembled to goad Russia into confrontation? Since the 1917 Russian revolution, US and UK imperialists sought regime change – from extremists under Woodrow Wilson in America and their counterparts under Britain’s Lloyd George to the present.

The Skripal affair is the latest Russia bashing incident – clearly a false flag the Kremlin had nothing to do with, but it doesn’t matter.

Despite no evidence suggesting Russian involvement, the official hostile narrative continues – supported by Western media.

During an OPCW Executive Council Wednesday special session, Moscow’s proposed joint investigation was rejected by Washington and Britain.

A UK statement turned truth on its head saying the following:

“Russia’s proposal for a joint, UK/Russian investigation into the Salisbury incident is perverse. It is a diversionary tactic, and yet more disinformation designed to evade the questions the Russian authorities must answer.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blasted Britain saying

“(t)hey will keep lying, prevaricating, shifting responsibility on each other. Why? Because this is not the first time they are doing this.”

Russia OPCW envoy Alexander Shulgin said

“(w)e insist…that the investigation should be truly transparent, comprehensive and unbiased and necessarily involve Russian experts.”

Questions on the Skripal incident posed to the OPCW have not been answered, Shulgin saying “(t)his is absolutely unacceptable.”

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called what’s going on “abominable from the very beginning…evidence (showing) insane accusations by Britain…are based on nothing.”

Britain’s Porton Down Defense Science and Technology Laboratory exposed the Big Lie, explaining the origin of the toxin it examined can’t be determined. It could have come from any number of countries or sources capable of producing it.

A Times of London propaganda report said

“(s)ecurity services believe that they have pinpointed the location of the covert Russian laboratory that manufactured the weapons-grade nerve agent used in Salisbury,” adding:

“Ministers and security officials were able to identify the source using scientific analysis and intelligence in the days after the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal a month ago, according to security sources.”

According to an unnamed Whitehall source the Times quoted,

“(w)e knew pretty much by the time of the first (emergency briefing) that it was overwhelmingly likely to come from Russia.”

All of the above is pure rubbish, no evidence corroborating any UK claims made.

Britain’s Porton Down CEO Gary Aitkenhead admitted its scientists were unable to prove a Russia connection to the Skripal incident, saying:

“We were able to identify (the toxic substance in question) as novichok, to identify that it was military-grade nerve agent.”

“We have not identified the precise source” – meaning no evidence linking it to Russia.

No known antidote to the deadly agent exists, he explained. Anyone exposed would be dead in minutes.

Clearly, the Skripals and others allegedly affected weren’t exposed to a deadly military-grade agent of any kind. What’s obvious continues to be ignored by Western officials and media.

Separately, US National Intelligence director Dan Coats promised additional measures against Russia, turning truth on its head adding

“we are more and more aware of the potential for Russia to continue to engage in any number of ways relative to our elections and a lot of steps are being taken.”

Intense US/UK hostility toward Russia shows nothing positive can be achieved by one or more Putin/Trump summits wherever held, no matter how much discussion takes place on bilateral relations, Syria, the arms race, and other key issues.

Nothing positive between both countries was achieved since the Reagan/Gorbachev era. Bilateral relations today are more dangerously dismal than ever.

Nothing suggests they’ll improve. Most likely they’ll worsen ahead.

Focusing on ties away from the US-dominated West along with preparing for the worst ahead appear Moscow’s only sound options.

Talks with Washington and Britain are a waste of time or worse if Russia maintains its delusion that better East/West relations are possible.

The notion is hazardous to its security.

*

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

Featured image: Minga, Moxico province. Dec 2017

Over its 27-year duration, the [US sponsored] Angolan war led to the death of an estimated two million people – making it one of the deadliest of the 20th century. But nearly two decades later, its violent legacy is still haunting the region.

Minga was excited by her new toy. She had been walking back to the cassava field with her grandmother when she remembered she’d left her plate where earlier they’d stopped for lunch. She turned and ran back, but the plate wasn’t where she left it. She stooped down and began looking amongst the reeds and wildflowers that grew by the bridge. That’s when she discovered the toy.

At dawn that same morning, when they’d left the village, her grandmother had told her not to come. “You worked all day yesterday, and you must be tired,” she’d said. But Minga, despite being just six years old, was already a headstrong young girl, and she went with her anyway.

And now she was glad she had, because of her discovery. Minga had never owned a toy. In her village, children often made do with sticks or broken wheels – but this was something different. It was green, metal and shaped like a small tin. She wanted to show her brothers and sisters, so she picked it up to take home.

As she did, she noticed on one side there was a clump of dirt. She tried to clean it off with a stick, but the mud was caked like concrete by the relentless sun. Looking around, she saw a rock by the river, and hit the tin twice to knock it off. On the third strike, the toy exploded.

The detonation blinded Minga, and her left arm was severed at the elbow. It was June 2009.

Minga at her family home Moxico province. Dec 2017

Think of a major war in the last 50 years, and it’s doubtful you’d think of Angola. In many ways, it’s a forgotten war, yet it was one of the most violent and long lasting of the 20th century. By its end, in 2002, an estimated two million people had died.

Sparked by a fight for power between two independence movements following the end of Portuguese colonial control in 1975, the Angolan war, much like Vietnam, became a proxy fight in the far bigger global cold war. The two sides, the MLPA and UNITA, were supported by Cuban and South African troops respectively; with funds flooding into both sides from the USSR and the USA.

It was a particularly brutal war, with civilian targeting, the use of child soldiers, and atrocities committed by both sides. Yet the world was happy to keep arming all factions of this oil and diamond-rich country. As late as 1989, George H W Bush had promised the rebel UNITA leader Savimbi “all appropriate and effective assistance.”

In fact, it was the death of Savimbi that was to effectively bring the war to an end. A near mythical figure, his charisma and power had been the core of UNITA. In 2002, he was injured in a fire-fight with Angolan government soldiers in Moxico province and died soon afterwards. Just six weeks after his death, a ceasefire was signed.

But peace did not bring stability and improved living for all. Visit Angola today and you find a still deeply divided society. While oil and diamonds have brought wealth to some, in many parts of the country, people live in poverty.

Moxico is Angola’s largest province, situated in the far east of the country, on the borders of Zambia and DC Congo. It covers an area the size of Great Britain, yet has a population smaller than Nottingham. During the civil war, it was often the centre of the guerrilla campaign, and as a result, much of the infrastructure was destroyed. Only recently were new roads built and the major bridges replaced.

For people living in Moxico, the civil war has cast a dark shadow – both economically, and over the thousands of refugees and internally displaced people who are still returning. But there is another deadly legacy that haunts the region 16 years after the war’s end: landmines.

It is estimated that 500,000 to more than one million landmines were laid during the civil war, with Moxico one of the most contaminated of all the provinces. It was one of these landmines that Minga had mistaken for a toy in 2009, and each year many more Angolans are killed or maimed by these hidden weapons.

Landmines are indiscriminate. Often they’re designed to maim, not kill: some are made to remove genitals, others to explode in the air spreading shrapnel. They can be filled with ball bearings, and are often made of plastic to avoid detection.

Despite the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning their use and production, their ease of manufacture, the opening of stockpiles (for example in Libya) and the use of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) by terrorist groups and insurgents, has worryingly led to an increase in their use in recent years. But it is the legacy landmines that are the greatest challenge – countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Colombia, Afghanistan are still contaminated by millions of landmines and UXO’s (unexploded ordinance) from past wars. In some of these countries, civilians are dying from landmines that were planted nearly 50 years ago.

Sadly it seems the longer ago the conflict, the harder it is to get the funding needed to deal with its legacy. It’s shocking to say, but when it comes to humanitarian aid and redevelopment, there are often trends – and countries getting the bulk of media interest tend to get the bulk of the funding. A country such as Angola, with its largely forgotten war, struggles to get the funding needed to deal with its legacy.

Sapalo in hospital. Luena. Dec 2017

It’s not just landmines that pose a hidden threat. Angola is also littered with tens of thousands of UXOs from the war. Grenades, bullets, rockets, bombs – despite often being decades old and often buried under the surface – are as deadly as when they were first manufactured, as 14-year-old Sapalo discovered in an accident that was to change his life.

Sapalo was playing in his uncle’s house when he saw a large rat dash across the room. He looked for something to hit it with, grabbing a lump of rusting metal that was sat on the table. He threw it at the rat.

A bright heat engulfed him, and Sapalo was thrown to the floor. Disorientated he tried to get up, but he couldn’t. Unknown to him, that lump of metal he’d picked up had been the explosive warhead from an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade). His uncle had found it when working in the fields that day, and brought it home in a plastic bag. He’d planned to get it identified, but had left it on the table. Its blast had destroyed both of Sapalo’s legs. Later that day, they would be amputated just below the knee.

In Luena’s central hospital, Sapalo struggled to deal with the pain. The hospital is desperately under-funded, even blood for a transfusion must be bought by the family. For Sapalo’s father, it’s a constant battle to find the money to keep his son alive.

Now, the future for Sapalo is bleak. Like most in the area, the family survives as subsistence farmers, they have little surplus from that to sell. Without support, Sapalo will struggle to attend school, and even if he manages to get a prosthesis, he won’t be able to work in the fields. With Angola’s economy struggling, the reality is that Sapalo will be left wheelchair-bound.

Sapalo’s father washes him to try an keep his fever down. Luena. Dec 2017

At Luena’s prosthetics centre – where, if the funds were available, Saplao would be treated – the staff struggle to meet the huge demand. Each day they arrive promptly at 7am, arrange their scant remaining tools on the tired worktop, then sit and wait. The shelves that were once full of materials and newly made prosthesis are bare, and what equipment they have left is held together by tape and the determination of the technicians. Few patients now visit the centre, and those that do are often turned away.

In 2012, the centre was making 150 prostheses a month. In 2017, that figure was zero. The reality is that they have no budget for materials, the wiring is unusable and what fabrication machines they had are long since broken. Many of the staff have not been paid for years – yet still, each day, they go to work and try to do as best they can.

A young man arrives with a prosthesis that has a large crack in the back. Jean Baptiste, the senior technician, holds the broken leg in his arms. For three years, he’s received no salary, yet his dedication to his work is undiminished. But like all the staff, they are frustrated in not being able to use their skills.

The broken plastic leg is held in a vice, and empty drawers are searched until a soldering iron is found. Using its heated point, Jean Baptiste tries to melt the plastic with the hot tip, to seal the crack. But the iron is broken and doesn’t get hot enough to do the job. He rolls up its cord neatly and places it back in the drawer. Eventually, a hot air gun is borrowed, a metal screwdriver heated over an open flame and somehow the leg is fixed.

Watching these scenes, it’s hard to feel positive that Angola’s landmine legacy can ever be solved and that survivors will get the chance to live full lives. When it comes to fighting wars, it seems we have no problem funding them – at the height of the Angolan war funds, arms and direct military support flooded into the country from Cuba, South Africa, the United States and Russia – yet when it comes to cleaning up the legacy, the international community needs to do more.

Staff at the prosthetic limb-fitting center. Luena. Dec 2017

Staff at the prosthetic limb-fitting center. Luena. Dec 2017

But there is hope. Throughout the country, there are NGOs who have shown a dogged perseverance to clear the landmine legacy despite the challenges: organisations such as MAG (Mines Advisory Group), who have been operating in Moxico Province since 1994. In 2017, MAG gave back 56 million square metres of land to communities in the province, removing 1800 landmines and UXO items, and helping an estimated 90,000 people.

Mine clearance is a slow, dangerous and exacting job. The technology has hardly changed since the first metal detectors were used during World War Two. Essentially a field is split into grids, and then teams with metal detectors meticulously comb each square. Each piece of hidden scrap metal has to be treated as if it could be an unexploded bomb or landmine. In the fierce Angolan heat, keeping your focus and attention for such long tedious hours pushes the teams to their limit.

Watching mine clearance in progress brings home how slow and labour intensive the work is, but also illustrates that this issue is solvable. It simply comes down to funding – if the number of teams working could be multiplied, then Angola could become landmine free. But the opposite is happening: in the last 10 years, international funding for mine action in the region dropped by $25.9 million. In the last decade, the funding has dropped by a staggering 90 per cent.

The goal is for all of Angola to be landmine-free by 2025, but at least $34 million in funding is needed every year to make that happen. To clear Moxico province in that timescale, MAG needs $8 million per year. But, without an increase in commitment from the international community, these goals are in doubt.

A metal door that was used as a stretcher to carry Jonas Savimbi the day he was killed in 2002. There are rumours that it is cursed, and so nobody has removed it.

Minga is a fiercely determined 15-year-old. Despite losing her sight, she tries to do everything as she did before the accident. Her week is spent in Luena, where she goes to school, but she is happiest when she returns to the family’s small village in the country. There she pounds cassava, helps to cook and still walks for an hour down to the bridge where she was injured, to wash her clothes in the river.

She hopes to one day become a teacher. Her dream is to help other children who’ve lost their sight like her, and to teach them to read braille – a skill that has changed her life. Her resilience is inspiring, but she should never have had to go through this. Resilience, an attribute born through suffering, is not a quality a young girl should have had to rely on.

Just a few miles from the bridge where Minga was injured, an old metal door rests against a tree. It’s been there since 2002 – a relic from the day the UNITA leader Savimbi was killed, when the door used as a makeshift stretcher.

In many ways, this is the spot where the war ended – but in Angola, you see clearly how a war doesn’t end when a peace treaty is signed. Its legacy is still leading to death and injury, and until the funding for mine clearance is increased, children like Minga and Sapalo will continue to pay a heavy price for a conflict that was supposedly over before they were even born.

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All images in this article are from Giles Duley / MAG.

Venezuelan authorities hit back at their counterparts in Panama and Switzerland this week after they approved new measures targeting Caracas.

Panama’s Economic and Finance Ministry announced this past March 27 that a warning was being issued to the Central American country’s banks advising them to limit and “diligently” supervise financial transactions involving 55 top Venezuelan officials as well as 16 private businesses allegedly associated with the Maduro government.

The list includes President Nicolas Maduro, National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena and rectors Tania D’Amelio and Socorro Hernandez, National Constituent Assembly members Diosdado Cabello and Hermann Escarra, Education Minister Elias Jaua, and Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas.

In an official statement, Panamanian authorities categorized the individuals and businesses as being “high risk in the area of money laundering, financing terrorism, and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” No evidence was, however, presented to support the allegations.

Venezuela possesses no nuclear weapons and is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as various other treaties banning the acquisition and development of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Similarly, many of those accused by Panama of allegedly financing terrorism belong to institutions which were themselves the objects of violent opposition attacks during last year’s anti-government protests – including the Supreme Court, the National Electoral Council, and regional government offices – which the Maduro administration has repeatedly described as “terrorism”.

Speaking Monday, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab, who is included on Panama’s list, fired back, describing the accusations as “fake news” and calling on them to provide evidence.

“Show the accounts, my accounts for example, show where my name, my photo appears,” Saab challenged.

Penitentiary Affairs Minister Iris Varela, who also appears on the list, similarly denied the accusations and called on the Central American authorities to publish a “complete list” of all Venezuelan citizens who own assets in the country, placing special emphasis on those mentioned in the Panama Papers.

“Why don’t they do it [publish the complete list],” she questioned. “Simply because they have assets and fortunes that belong to the [Venezuelan] opposition.”

The recent measures follow close on the heels of an announcement last month that Panama will not recognise the results of Venezuela’s upcoming presidential election, mirroring steps taken by the Trump administration and other regional conservative governments in rejecting the May 20 vote.

Meanwhile, Switzerland also moved to apply sanctions against seven high-ranking Venezuelan functionaries last Wednesday, freezing their alleged assets in Swiss banks and applying travel bans.

In response, the Venezuelan government delivered an official letter of protest to the Swiss charge d’affaires Monday, calling the sanctions a violation of the UN Charter’s ban on unilateral coercive measures and charging Switzerland with “subordination” to Washington and Brussels’ hardline Venezuela policy.

“This erratic action… on the part of a historically neutral country like the Swiss Confederation does not create conditions for dialogue and strengthens extremist positions that seek violent solutions,” reads the text of the letter.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court also issued a declaration Monday rejecting the moves as “illegal”. Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno was named in both Swiss and Panamanian measures.

The latest international actions targeting Venezuela have, however, won praise from members the country’s right-wing opposition, including Popular Will party Political Coordinator Carlos Vecchio, who applauded the Panama measures as “the right path at this stage”.

Vecchio is currently in Paris meeting with center-right French President Emmanuel Macron as part of a European tour aimed at drumming up support for more sanctions against Caracas.

During the meeting Tuesday, Vecchio, together with First Justice party leader Julio Borges and ex-Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma – who is currently fleeing the Venezuelan justice system – called on Macron’s government to apply “more sanctions” against Venezuela and to “halt Petro, gold, and capital legitimation operations,” referring to the South American country’s new crypto-currency. They also urged the French president and other European leaders “not to dialogue” with Caracas.

Opposition presidential frontrunner Henri Falcon, who defied the main opposition in launching his candidacy and has opposed economic sanctions in the past, has yet to issue a public statement with regard to the latest measures from Panama and Switzerland.

So far, only the US and the UK have approved economic sanctions against Caracas, while Canada and the European Union have rolled out sanctions against top Venezuelan officials

International sanctions against Venezuela have been denounced by the UNHuman Rights Council as well as by UN Independent Expert Alfred de Zayas, who labeled the US-led measures “crimes against humanity” and called for the International Court of Justice to investigate.

According to Datanalisis, 55.6 percent of Venezuelans oppose economic sanctions against their country, while just 42 percent support individual sanctions targeting top officials.

Edited and with additional reporting by Lucas Koerner from Caracas. 

John Bolton’s March 22 appointment-by-tweet as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser has given “March Madness” a new and ominous meaning.  There is less that a week left to batten down the hatches before Bolton makes U.S. foreign policy worse that it already is.

During a recent interview with The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill  (minutes 35 to 51) I mentioned that Bolton fits seamlessly into a group of take-no-prisoners zealots once widely known in Washington circles as “the crazies,” and now more commonly referred to as “neocons.”

Beginning in the 1970s, “the crazies” sobriquet was applied to Cold Warriors hell bent on bashing Russians, Chinese, Arabs — anyone who challenged U.S. “exceptionalism” (read hegemony).  More to the point, I told Scahill that President (and former CIA Director) George H. W. Bush was among those using the term freely, since it seemed so apt.  I have been challenged to prove it.

I don’t make stuff up.  And with the appointment of the certifiable Bolton, the “the crazies” have become far more than an historical footnote.  Rather, the crucible that Bush-41 and other reasonably moderate policymakers endured at their hands give the experience major relevance today.  Thus, I am persuaded it would be best not to ask people simply to take my word for it when I refer to “the crazies,” their significance, and the differing attitudes the two Bushes had toward them.

George H. W. Bush and I had a longstanding professional and, later, cordial relationship.  For many years after he stopped being president, we stayed in touch — mostly by letter.  This is the first time I have chosen to share any of our personal correspondence.  I do so not only because of the ominous importance of Bolton’s appointment, but also because I am virtually certain the elder Bush would want me to.

Scanned below is a note George H. W. Bush sent me eight weeks before his son, egged on by the same “crazies” his father knew well from earlier incarnations, launched an illegal and unnecessary war for regime change in Iraq — unleashing chaos in the Middle East.

Shut Out of the Media

By January 2003, it was clear that Bush-43 was about to launch a war of aggression — the crime defined by the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as “the supreme international crime differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”  (Think torture, for example.)  During most of 2002, several of us former intelligence analysts had been comparing notes, giving one another sanity checks, writing op-eds pointing to the flimsiness of the “intelligence” cobbled together to allege a weapons-of-mass-destruction “threat” from Iraq, and warning of the catastrophe that war on Iraq would bring.

Except for an occasional op-ed wedged into the Christian Science Monitor or the Miami Herald, for example, we were ostracized from “mainstream media.”  The New York Times and Washington Post were on a feeding frenzy from the government trough and TV pundits were getting high ratings by beating the drum for war.  Small wonder the entire media was allergic to what we were saying, despite our many years of experience in intelligence analysis.  Warnings to slow down and think were the last thing wanted by those already profiteering from a war on the near horizon.

The challenge we faced was how to get through to President George W. Bush.  It had become crystal clear that the only way to do that would be to do an end run around “the crazies” — the criminally insane advisers that his father knew so well — Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of State John Bolton.

Bolton: One of the Crazies

John Bolton was Cheney’s “crazy” at the State Department.  Secretary Colin Powell was pretty much window dressing.  He could be counted on not to complain loudly — much less quit — even if he strongly suspected he was being had.  Powell had gotten to where he was by saluting sharply and doing what superiors told him to do.  As secretary of state, Powell was not crazy — just craven.  He enjoyed more credibility than the rest of the gang and rather than risk being ostracized like the rest of us, he sacrificed that credibility on the altar of the “supreme international crime.”

In those days Bolton did not hesitate to run circles around — and bully — the secretary of state and many others.  This must be considered a harbinger of things to come, starting on Monday, when the bully comes to the china shop in the West Wing.  While longevity in office is not the hallmark of the Trump administration, even if Bolton’s tenure turns out to be short-lived, the crucial months immediately ahead will provide Bolton with ample opportunity to wreak the kind of havoc that “the crazies” continue to see as enhancing U.S. — and not incidentally — Israeli influence in the Middle East.  Bear in mind, Bolton still says the attack on Iraq was a good idea.  And he is out to scuttle the landmark agreement that succeeded in preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon any time soon.

Trying to Head Off War

In August 2002, as the Bush-43 administration and U.S. media prepared the country for war on Iraq, the elder Bush’s national security advisor, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, and Secretary of State James Baker each wrote op-eds in an attempt to wean the younger Bush off the “crazies’” milk.  Scowcroft’s Wall Street Journal op-ed of August 15 was as blunt as its title, “Don’t Attack Saddam.” The cautionary thrust of Baker’s piece in the New York Times ten days later, was more diplomatic but equally clear.

But these interventions, widely thought to have been approved by Bush-41, had a predictable opposite effect on the younger Bush, determined as he was to become the “first war president of the 21st Century” (his words).  It is a safe bet also that Cheney and other “crazies” baited him with, “Are you going to let Daddy, who doesn’t respect ANY of us, tell you what to do?”

All attempts to insert a rod into the wheels of the juggernaut heading downhill toward war were looking hopeless, when a new idea occurred.  Maybe George H. W. Bush could get through to his son.  What’s to lose?  On January 11, 2002 I wrote a letter to the elder Bush asking him to speak “privately to your son George about the crazies advising him on Iraq,” adding

“I am aghast at the cavalier way in which the [Richard] Perles of the Pentagon are promoting the use of nuclear weapons as an acceptable option against Iraq.”

My letter continued:

“That such people have the President’s ear is downright scary.  I think he needs to know why you exercised such care to keep such folks at arms length.  (And, as you may know, they are exerting unrelenting pressure on CIA analysts to come up with the “right” answers.  You know how that goes!)”

In the letter I enclosed a handful of op-eds that I had managed to get past 2nd-tier mainstream media censors. In those writings, I was much more pointed in my criticism of the Bush/Cheney administration’s approach to Iraq than Scowcroft and Baker had been in August 2002.

Initially, I was encouraged at the way the elder Bush began his January 22, 2003 note to me:

“It is only ‘meet and right’ that you speak out.”

As I read on, however, I asked myself how he could let the wish be father to the thought, so to speak.  (Incidentally, “POTUS” in his note is the acronym for “President of the United States;” number 43, of course, was George Jr.)

The elder Bush may not have been fully conscious of it, but he was whistling in the dark, having long since decided to leave to surrogates like Scowcroft and Baker the task of highlighting publicly the criminal folly of attacking Iraq.  The father may have tried privately; who knows.  It was, in my view, a tragedy that he did not speak out publicly.  He would have been very well aware that this was the only thing that would have had a chance of stopping his son from committing what the Nuremberg Tribunal defined as “the supreme international crime.”

It is, of couse, difficult for a father to admit that his son fell under the influence — this time not alcohol or drugs, but rather the at least equally noxious demonic influence of “the crazies,” which Billy Graham himself might have found beyond his power to exorcise.  Maybe it is partly because I know the elder Bush personally, but it does strike me that, since we are all human, some degree of empathy might be in order. I simply cannot imagine what it must be like to be a former President with a son, also a former President, undeniably responsible for such widespread killing, injury and abject misery.

Speaking Out — Too Late

It was a dozen years too late, but George H.W. Bush finally did give voice to his doubts about the wisdom of rushing into the Iraq War.  In Jon Meacham’s biography, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” the elder Bush puts most of the blame for Iraq on his son’s “iron-ass” advisers, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, while at the same time admitting where the buck stops.  With that Watergate-style “modified, limited hangout,” and his (richly deserved) criticism of his two old nemeses, Bush-41 may be able to live more comfortably with himself, hoping to get beyond what I believe must be his lingering regret at not going public when that might have stopped “arrogant” Rumsfeld and “hardline” Cheney from inflicting their madness on the Middle East.  No doubt he is painfully aware that he was one of the very few people who might have been able to stop the chaos and carnage, had he spoken out publicly.

Bush-41’s not-to-worry note to me had the opposite effect with those of us CIA alumni alarmed at the gathering storm and the unconscionable role being played by those of our former CIA colleagues still there in manufacturing pre-Iraq-war “intelligence.”  We could see what was going on in real time; we did not have to wait five years for the bipartisan conclusions of a five-year Senate Intelligence Committee investigation.  Introducing its findings, Chairman Jan Rockefeller said: “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

Back to January 2003: a few days after I received President Bush’s not-to-worry note of January 22, 2003, a handful of us former senior CIA officials went forward with plans to create Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).  We had been giving one another sanity checks before finalizing draft articles about the scarcely believable things we were observing — including unmistakable signs that our profession of intelligence analysis was being prostituted.  On the afternoon of February 5, 2003, after Powell misled the UN Security Council, we issued our first (of three) VIPS Memoranda for the President before the war. We graded Powell “C” for content, and warned President George W. Bush, in effect, to beware “the crazies,” closing with these words:

“After watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

Team B

When Gerald Ford assumed the presidency in August 1974, the White House was a center of intrigue.  Serving as Chief of Staff for President Ford, Donald Rumsfeld (1974-75), with help from Dick Cheney (1975-76), engineered Bush’s nomination to become CIA Director.  This was widely seen as a cynical move to take Bush out of contention for the Republican ticket in 1976 and possibly beyond, since the post of CIA director was regarded as a dead-end job and, ideally, would keep you out of politics. (Alas, this did not turn out the way Rumsfeld expected — damn those “unknown unknowns.”)

If, at the same time, Rumsfeld and Cheney could brand GHW Bush soft on communism and brighten the future for the Military-Industrial Complex, that would put icing on the cake.  Rumsfeld had been making evidence-impoverished speeches at the time, arguing that the Soviets were ignoring the AMB Treaty and other arms control arrangements and were secretly building up to attack the United States. He and the equally relentless Paul Wolfowitz were doing all they could to create a much more alarming picture of the Soviet Union, its intentions, and its views about fighting and winning a nuclear war.  Sound familiar?

Bush arrived at CIA after U.S.-Soviet detente had begun to flourish.  The cornerstone Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was almost four years old and had introduced the somewhat mad but stabilizing reality of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).  Crazies and neocons alike lived in desperate fear of losing their favorite enemy, the USSR.  Sound familiar?

Bush was CIA Director for the year January 1976 to January 1977, during which I worked directly for him.  At the time, I was Acting National Intelligence Officer for Western Europe where post-WWII certainties were unravelling and it was my job to get intelligence community-wide assessments to the White House — often on fast breaking events.  We almost wore out what was then the latest technology — the “LDX” (for Long Distance Xerography) machine — sending an unprecedentedly high number of “Alert Memoranda” from CIA Headquarters to the White House.  (“LDX,” of course, is now fax; there was no Internet.)

As ANIO, I also chaired National Intelligence Estimates on Italy and Spain.  As far as I could observe from that senior post, Director Bush honored his incoming pledge not to put any political gloss on the judgments of intelligence analysts.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, of course, had made no such pledge.  They persuaded President Ford to set up a “Team B” analysis, contending that CIA and intelligence community analyses and estimates were naively rosy.  Bush’s predecessor as CIA director, William Colby, had turned the proposal down flat, but he had no political ambitions.  I suspect Bush, though, saw a Rumsfeld trap to color him soft on the USSR.  In any case, against the advice of virtually all intelligence professionals, Bush succumbed to the political pressure and acquiesced in the establishment of a Team B to do alternative analyses.  No one was surprised that these painted a much more threatening and inaccurate picture of Soviet strategic intentions.

Paul Warnke, a senior official of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the time of Team B, put it this way:

“Whatever might be said for evaluation of strategic capabilities by a group of outside experts, the impracticality of achieving useful results by ‘independent’ analysis of strategic objectives should have been self-evident. Moreover, the futility of the Team B enterprise was assured by the selection of the panel’s members. Rather than including a diversity of views … the Strategic Objectives Panel was composed entirely of individuals who made careers of viewing the Soviet menace with alarm.”

The fact that Team B’s conclusions were widely regarded as inaccurate did not deter Rumsfeld.  He went about promoting them as valid and succeeded in undermining arms control efforts for the next several years. Two days before Jimmy Carter’s inauguration Rumsfeld fired his parting shot, saying,

“No doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces” and that those capabilities “indicate a tendency toward war fighting … rather than the more modish Western models of deterrence through mutual vulnerability.”

GHW Bush in the White House

When George H. W. Bush came into town as vice president, he got President Reagan’s permission to be briefed with “The President’s Daily Brief” and I became a daily briefer from 1981 to 1985.  That job was purely substantive.  Even so, my colleagues and I have been very careful to regard those conversations as sacrosanct, for obvious reasons.  By the time he became president in 1989, he had come to know, all too well, “the crazies” and what they were capable of.  Bush’s main political nemesis, Donald Rumsfeld, could be kept at bay, and other “crazies” kept out of the most senior posts — until Bush the younger put them in positions in which they could do serious damage.  John Bolton had been enfant terrible on arms control, persuading Bush-43 to ditch the ABM Treaty.  On Monday, he can be expected to arrive at the West Wing with his wrecking ball.

Even Jimmy Carter Speaks Out

Given how difficult Rumsfeld and other hardliners made it for President Carter to work with the Russians on arms control, and the fact that Bolton has been playing that role more recently, Jimmy Carter’s comments on Bolton — while unusually sharp — do not come as a complete surprise.  Besides, experience has certainly shown how foolish it can be to dismiss out of hand what former presidents say about their successors’ appointments to key national security positions.  This goes in spades in the case of John Bolton.

Just three days after Bolton’s appointment, the normally soft-spoken Jimmy Carter became plain-spoken/outspoken Jimmy Carter, telling USA Today that the selection of Bolton “is a disaster for our country.”  When asked what advice he would give Trump on North Korea, for example, Carter said his “first advice” would be to fire Bolton.

In sum, if you asked Bush-41, Carter’s successor as president, how he would describe John Bolton, I am confident he would lump Bolton together with those he called “the crazies” back in the day, referring to headstrong ideologues adept at blowing things up — things like arms agreements negotiated with painstaking care, giving appropriate consideration to the strategic views of adversaries and friends alike. Sadly, “crazy” seems to have become the new normal in Washington, with warmongers and regime-changers like Bolton in charge, people who have not served a day in uniform and have no direct experience of war other than starting them.

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  He served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then as a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years.  In January 2003, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and still serves on its Steering Group.

PALESTINE, that enclave of humanity occupied, brutalised and totally without any form of military defence against any and all aggressors is conveniently perceived as a threat by the Jewish state, Israel, the undeclared, sole nuclear power in West Asia and North Africa (WANA). This latter entity, the occupying power, is a usurper legitimised by imperial Britain and today unconditionally supported and armed by the United States of America (USA).

Such is the irony of the geopolitical construct that terrorises Gaza, virtually an open prison, and the West Bank, perpetually. Abandoned by the so-called international community, Palestinians draw inspiration from the defeat of the ‘mighty’ by the ostensibly ‘powerless’ at various points in history. It is that spirit which keeps the flames of resistance burning.

Demanding for the right of return to the homeland by the Palestinian diaspora of refugees, the on-going Great March of Return, a peaceful protest bringing out thousands of Palestinians marching along the Israeli border, is but the most recent show of this spirit with numbers symbolising strength. And, Israel not wishing to disappoint the world met this peaceful demonstration with such disproportionate violence that at least 18 Palestinians were killed and almost one and a half thousand injured because live bullets were fired into the crowd and drones flew overhead dumping tear gas on the marchers. That this degree of violence, which included a row of a hundred snipers on the ready, on the part of the occupiers was planned made it all the more galling. Tel Aviv knew they could perpetrate this act of inhumanity with impunity as it became obvious only too quickly. Calls for an investigation by the seemingly outraged international community were immediately quashed by a US veto in the UN Security Council, even as the martyred were being buried.

Long suffering, the Palestinians cannot any longer hope to find a solution through established institutions like the United Nations, now more than ever nothing but an instrument for legitimising the interests of the powerful member states. The time has come to unmask the futility of the two state solution used merely to prolong negotiations while enabling Tel Aviv to pursue its genocidal agenda. As Richard Falk insists the time for goodwill has “long passed”. It is time to pressure Israel into a settlement. Individuals and state actors alike must intensify the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. In the name of justice let us isolate Israel. Support the BDS Movement and intensify the siege.

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Askiah Adam is an Executive Director of the International Movement for a JUST World.

The Damascus suburb of East Ghouta is free of occupying forces for the first time in six years, but western media refuse to tell the whole story. During the six years, for example, the militants occupying East Ghouta shelled Damascus daily, killing over 10,000 people, including 1,500 children.

To date, over 120,000 civilians from East Ghouta have been evacuated. Nearly 40,000 militants and their families have accepted the government offer of safe passage and been transported by government buses to al-Nusra-occupied Idlib and Turkish-occupied Jarablus. Exiting civilians reported being terrorized by militants and threatened with death if they tried to leave.  Most reported deprivation and the deaths of loved ones at the hands of the militants.

Syrian and Russian de-mining teams are working today in Eastern Ghouta as they did following the liberation of East Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Palmyra, making the area safe for the return of civilian residents. 

Meanwhile, the US has created illegal military bases and deployed 5000 US troops in parts of Syria occupied mainly by Kurdish-led militias. Turkey has responded by attacking the Syrian Kurds in Afrin and heading east towards Manbij, a town that the US has declared a “no-fly” zone. US forces have killed Syrian soldiers with impunity while Israel has launched missiles into Syria without provocation. Several overlapping wars bring together multiple armies operating at cross purposes in a very small space. It is a very dangerous situation for the region and a continuing nightmare for the Syrian people.

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Featured image is from South Front.

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Eight days ago (on March 29), the ultra-conservative Dean of the Montpellier University Law School was summoned to police headquarters, interrogated, hauled into court, and held over in jail for arraignment by the Chief Prosecutor – all on the complaint of nine student strikers, who claim to have been brutally assaulted with Dean Philippe Pétel’s active complicity while ‘occupying’ a school auditorium.

The students, backed by live videos, described Dean Pétel encouraging masked thugs with wooden staves to burst into a Law School auditorium and violently expel a few dozen students who were ‘occupying’ it as part of the University-wide student strike. The thugs were videoed brutally beating students, even on the ground, and several were injured. The thugs then returned to the antechamber, where a counter-demonstration of conservative anti-strike law students including Pétel and several other faculty, was waiting. The Dean was videoed congratulating the bulked-out masked aggressors, whom no one was able to identify as students. The building was locked, but Pétel had the key to the antechamber from which the attackers issued. The complicity of other faculty members present is under police examination, and one has been arrested.

Within hours, the Law School attacks were all over the social networks, and student strikers, human rights groups, civil rights lawyers were busy organizing demonstrations and protests for the next day, framing it as a ‘fascist aggression’. This epithet is less of an exaggeration than it may seem, as the tradition of law students supplying the thuggish muscle for extreme-right groups here in France goes back for over a century (as I recall from my student days in Paris opposing the Algerian War). As we all know, student striker complaints of police brutality normally go unheeded, and protests against them may bring down even more police punishment. Deans who ‘stand firm’ against occupiers get promoted. How then to explain this ‘man bites dog’ reversal in Montpellier University (founded 1279)?

Image on the right is Dean Philippe Pétel.

Today in France, twelve universities are already on strike, and the social and labour situation is heating up rapidly. Here in Montpellier, Université Paul Valéry, the Liberal Arts University, just voted an open-ended strike and blockade of classes at an outdoor General Assembly attended by over 2,000 students. So far, the mood has been temperate. Support for the strike is near unanimous, but there is deep division over the tactic of blocking classes, especially among first-year students who are worried about their exams (which will probably now be put off). Some professors are offering their courses online and a radical ‘free university’ called “Vincennes 2.0” in memory of Paris in May 1968 has been set up. The local high schools are also full of agitation, with two or three ‘on strike’ and riot cops hanging around and making arrests. The situation is tense.

What’s At Stake for the Macron Government?

The paradox in this story is not the Dean Pétel’s more-or-less traditional role in the attack,¹ but the Prosecutor’s outlandish decision to hold a venerable Law Dean in the clink. To be sure, Pétel, a youngish cocksure neo-conservative, was ‘asking for it.’ He at first openly bragged of his role, oblivious to circumstances and the consequences, and made the national TV news and the front page of the big Paris papers. But my guess is that the order to lock him up came from Paris. In centralized, hierarchical France the Prosecutor answers to the Prefect who answers to the Minister of Justice who answers to the President. President Emmanuel Macron, who has laid down a major long-term challenge to both the students and public service workers, wants to push through his reforms as quickly and as smoothly as possible. The social situation is heating up, and Macron is too smart to polarize the situation further and waste political capital on a far-right loser. He also wants to be seen as impartial and as willing to strike his enemies on the Right as on the Left (as he no doubt will when the student and worker struggles really heat up).

The immediate issue for the university students is President Macron’s educational ‘reform’, which like all of his ‘reforms’ will be imposed by administrative decree, rather than through the legislative process (which normally includes lengthy discussion and amendments). Macron seems to prefer ruling by decree, although he has a solid majority of followers in the National Assembly, having split and evinced the parties of both the Left and the Right. All his moves seem carefully timed, and perhaps he fears delay. Macron prefers the ‘fast track’ method, and his authoritarian, technocratic style definitely pisses off many French people, but especially “the people,” who have long been fed up and are suffering cutbacks while the super-rich get subsidies (sound familiar?).

Macron has already pissed off France schoolteachers, on whom he is imposing – without discussion – yet another new K-12 national curriculum so confusing that nobody can figure out how to implement it. Meanwhile classes are huge (35 students), young people are getting harder and harder to teach, and support for teaching, supplies etc. is being cut way back. At the university level, the goal of Macron’s reform is to introduce “selection” in university admissions, which traditionally have been open to all who have earned the classical Baccalaureat diploma and the end of secondary school (just like the New York City colleges a generation ago).

France now has five million students, and thanks to constant cutbacks, there aren’t enough places for about 20 per cent of the incoming class. Hence the creation of ‘competition’ and U.S.-style admissions offices at each school. Moreover, although all French universities are under the administration of the national Ministry of Education, Macron wants to make them ‘competitive’ with each other, like in the USA. So some schools will be ‘easier’ to get into, but their degrees will be ‘worth’ less. Both these ‘reforms’ are obviously unfavorable to underpriviledged students, and favorable to the privileged. They are by definition ‘unpopular’.

Macron has also laid down the gauntlet to public service workers including to the venerable CGT railway workers union whose militancy is legendary. Last Spring, despite militant protests, Macron succeeded in pushing through, by decree, his reformed Labour Code, taking away seniority rights and legal protections enjoyed by private sector workers and making it easier and cheaper for bosses to fire them. This Spring, instead of relying on the traditional divide-and-rule precept, Macron proposes to take on both the five million students and the five million public sector workers (about 20 per cent of the total labour force) together. He may have bit off more than he can chew, especially with the general population in a hostile anti-government mood and ready to support these popular struggles.

For in attacking the public sector workers’ alleged ‘privileges’ and proposing to dismiss them in large numbers, Macron is effectively attacking precious, popular public services which are used by the large numbers among the popular classes. Trains, subways, hospitals, social services, public offices, roads, etc. These services have all been subject to cutbacks, which make life harder and lines longer for regular folk, and now it is obvious to all that Macron is downgrading them in preparation for privatizing them to sell-off cheap to corporations, as has already happened to the French Electric Company, the French Gas Company and to most of the French Post Office. They fear he will privatize the SNCF French railroad as Margaret Thatcher, his spiritual guide, did to British Rail (which is now expensive, dangerous and mostly late).

March 22: the First Skirmish

The social struggle got off to a militant start last week on March 22 (also the date of the attack on the Montpellier Law School occupiers) with 180 demonstrations by students and public workers across France. Air flights were down by 30 per cent. Over 5,000 railway workers from all over converged on Paris, held a march during which they set off loud industrial firecrackers, and then conducted a spontaneous mass General Assembly where they pledge to go beyond the announced schedule of staggered strikes planned by officials of the three railroad unions, beginning April 3. The day began with a huge morning demonstration of students converging from all over the Paris regions. The students then joined up with thousands of various public service workers demonstrating under their union banners, and this demonstration ultimately merged with the railroad workers. Hundreds of thousands are said to have been in the streets.

Remarkable, too, were the spontaneous actions of autonomous groups known as “March-Headers” (Tête de cortège) who come together at the very front of the legal, planned, well-organized and policed demonstrations with the aim of breaking the mass movement out of the routine of being led around like sheep by union organizers, subjected to prescribed slogans on signs and loudspeakers, and then sent home without being allowed to express themselves. Their goal is to bring together students and workers, younger and older people, workers from different sectors and to encourage discussion and self-organization.

Many of these activists, young and old, are veterans of the struggles of 2016 and 2017, recognize each other today, are forming networks and have experience in self-organization. Although they are also characterized as “black-blockers,” whose role has often been divisive and provocative, the March-Headers movement seems to me promising in its push to open up political space for anti-government, anti-system demonstrators to come together, exchange ideas, build relationships and learn self-organization through direct action.

Heretofore, big official protest movements in France have been kept separate, divided into interest groups, and regimented by union officials whose basic tactic has been to space out useless, symbolic one-day national mass mobilization until people got tired, summer vacation arrived and the government won. To be sure, spontaneous (and sometimes violent) wildcat movements have often broken out of this straightjacket. But today’s students, union members and others are much more open to coming together spontaneously and to linking through social media.

“From One Wild May to Another?”

Fifty years ago, in 1968, the highpoint of the French May Revolt was the conjuncture of the student movements occupying the universities and the organized working class occupying the factories under the discipline of the Communist CGT and other unions: the “student-worker uprising,” as it came to be known. But to those who lived it, the conjuncture never quite jelled, as the union leaderships mostly kept the workers barricaded inside the occupied factories, and their student supports outside, minimizing contact and exchange. A big disappointment, as recalled by a number of 1968 activists questioned by Mitchell Abidor in his lively just-published book of interviews May Made Me (PM Press, US; Pluto, GB). Perhaps today’s student and worker activists are ahead of the game and will not let themselves be ‘divided-and-ruled’ like previous generations. Also, today they have the advantage of social media which allows them to bypass the establishment media, get out their information and organize themselves in real time.

Here in Montpellier, the movement augers well. The student strikers at Paul Valéry have invited workers, homeless, elders into their assemblies and have received worker support and interest. Their action committees include not just students, but professors and campus workers as well. This is a good start. Moreover, they have harnessed social media to the extent of being well informed about what is happening locally and in touch with other universities. The record number of people that attended the last General Assembly (upto 2,500) is in part attributable to organization through social media (which are sometimes blamed for keeping people at home behind a screen).

Ironically, both this first mass demonstration and the Montpellier Law School incident took place on March 22. That date marks the 50th anniversary of the 1968 student occupation of the Administration building of Nanterre University which eventually set off a national general strike that shook de Gaulle’s authoritarian regime and sent the General scurrying to Germany for Army support. Might something similar be in store for Macron’s France today? The public mood is somber, after long years of high unemployment, stagnant wages, neoliberal chipping away of hard-fought social support systems and privatization of social services under Sarkozy (now also on trial!) and the ‘Socialist’ government of François Hollande.

The echoes of the May 1968 uprising reverberate in the air. A website calling itself lespaves (cobblestones) has issued an international “call to converge in Paris on May 1st” with the slogan: “They are commemorating May ’68. We are re-starting it!”

*

Richard Greeman has been active since 1957 in civil rights, anti-war, anti-nuke, environmental and labour struggles in the U.S., Latin America, France (where he has been a longtime resident) and Russia (where he helped found the Praxis Research and Education Center in 1997). He maintains a blog at richardgreeman.org.

Note

1. Personal recollection: In Hamilton Hall during the first night the April 1968 Columbia Unversity occupation, we were informed that Dean David Truman was making the rounds of the fraternities and dorms, organizing gangs of jocks to drive out the occupiers.

The European Commission presented the Action Plan on Military Mobility on 28 March. “By facilitating military mobility within the EU, – explains the foreign representative of the Union, Federica Mogherini – we can be more effective in reacting when challenges arise”. Even if she does not say so, the reference to “Russian aggression” is evident.

The Action Plan was actually decided not by the EU, but by the Pentagon and NATO. In 2015, General Ben Hodges, commander of US gound forces in Europe (US Army Europe), called for the establishment of a “military Schengen Area” so that, to face “Russian aggression”, US forces could move quickly from one European country to another, without being slowed down by national regulations and customs procedures.

This request was embraced by NATO: the North Atlantic Council, meeting on 8 November 2017 at the level of defense ministers, officially requested the European Union to “implement national rules that facilitate the passage of military forces through the borders and, at the same time, to ‘improve civil infrastructures so that they are adapted to military requirements’.

On February 15, 2018, the North Atlantic Council at the level of defense ministers announced the establishment of a new NATO Logistic Command to “improve the movement in Europe of troops and essential equipment for defense”.

Just over a month later, the European Union presented the Action Plan on Military Mobility, which exactly meets the requirements established by the Pentagon and NATO. It envisages “simplifying customs formalities for military operations and the transport of dangerous goods in the military domain”.

This is how the “military Schengen Area” is prepared, with the difference that free-to-circulate are not people but tanks.

Moving tanks and other military vehicles by road and rail is not the same thing as driving ordinary vehicles and trains. “The existing barriers to military mobility” must therefore be removed by modifying “infrastructures not suitable for the weight or size of military vehicles, in particular bridges and rails with insufficient load capacity” For example, if a bridge is not able to hold the weight of a column of tanks, it will have to be strengthened or rebuilt.

The European Commission “will identify the parts of the trans-European transport network suitable for military transport, including necessary upgrades of existing infrastructure”. They must be carried out along tens of thousands of kilometers of the road and rail network. This will require an enormous expense for the member countries, with a “possible financial contribution from the EU for such works”.

However, we European citizens will always pay these “great works”, useless for civil uses, with consequent cuts to social spending and investments in public utility projects.

In Italy, where funds for the reconstruction of the earthquake zones are scarce, billions of euros will have to be spent to rebuild infrastructures suitable for military mobility.

The 27 EU countries, 21 of which belong to NATO, are now called to examine the Plan. Italy would therefore have the possibility to reject it.

This, however, would mean, for the next government, to oppose not only the EU but NATO under US command, starting to disengage from the strategy that, with the invention of the Russian threat, prepares the war, this true, against Russia.

It would be a fundamental political decision for our country but, given the subjection to the US, it remains in the realm of political fiction.

Article in Italian :

Ue, Area Schengen per le forze Nato

 

Introduction

In view of the seriousness of the rapidly worsening relations between the West and Russia, and the quickly evolving military events in the Middle East, especially Syria, we have taken the step to publish relevant evidence-based analysis with respect to the Skripal incident of 4 March 2018. This update to our earlier briefing note covers new material that has become available.  We welcome comments and corrections which can be sent to Piers Robinson or provided on this site.

Summary

Official statements from the UK government claim that the “military grade nerve agent” detected in Salisbury was “part of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok” that the Russian chemist Vil Mirzayanov alleged had been developed in the Soviet Union in a secret programme.  The structures of these compounds, labelled A-230, A-232, A-234, A-242 and A-262, were published by Mirzayanov in a book in 2008, twelve years after he emigrated to the US.

Other than Mirzayanov’s story, there is no evidence that these compounds were ever synthesized in either the Soviet Union or Russia, or that the “Novichok” programme ever existed.  The use of the term “Novichoks” to describe this A-230 series of compounds, which are real chemical structures, is therefore tendentious. An account by another Russian chemist Vladimir Uglev, often cited as corroboration of Mirzayanov’s story, appears on close examination to be about the development of a class of nerve agents denoted GV which have been studied in several countries including Czechoslovakia and the US.

The UK government has not revealed the identity of the compound detected in Salisbury, but the Russian ambassador has stated that the Foreign Secretary told him that the compound detected was A-234.  Russian experts have revealed that the mass spectrometry profile of this compound was submitted to a public database by a researcher in the US Army’s Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center around 1998, indicating that Edgewood has synthesized and studied this compound.

There is also evidence that the US government has concealed what it knows about the A-230 series of compounds.  Edgewood’s entry for compound A-234 in the public database has been deleted.  Furthermore, US diplomatic cables from 2009 show that the US and UK governments sought to discourage discussion of Mirzayanov’s story at the OPCW and the Australia Group (an informal grouping of US-allied countries set up in 1985 to control the export of precursors for chemical weapons).

It has been suggested that the A-230 series of compounds have a different mode of action to that of classic organophosphates. To ensure that all relevant information is available to the doctors caring for the victims of the Salisbury poisoning, the UK government should without further delay reveal the identity of the compound detected, and should request urgently that all labs that have undertaken toxicity studies on such compounds make their results publicly available.

Detailed Discussion

Did a “Novichok” programme ever exist? 

The word “Novichok” comes from a Russian chemist named Vil Mirzayanov, who emigrated in 1995 after alleging that a secret programme to develop a new class of nerve agents had existed in the Soviet Union and had continued in Russia.  In 2008, Mirzayanov published a book containing structures of five compounds that he alleged had been developed in this programme: they were labelled A-230, A-232, A-234, A-242 and A-262.  We shall refer to these as the A-230 series of compounds, without taking any position as to whether they were developed in Russia as “Novichoks”.

The UK government has added to this story with this statement from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office:-

The Foreign Secretary revealed this morning that we have information indicating that within the last decade, Russia has investigated ways of delivering nerve agents likely for assassination. And part of this programme has involved producing and stockpiling quantities of Novichok.

The wording “we have information indicating” suggests that this is raw human intelligence rather than the “finished” evaluation for use by policy makers, for which wording of the form “we have assessed” would be used.

The Russian government denies that a Novichok programme ever existed.  The Russian envoy to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya stated on 15 March that:

No research, development or manufacturing of projects codenamed Novichok has ever been carried out in Russia, all CW programmes were stopped back in 1991-92_

In a television interview the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gave a comprehensive denial:-

Never on the territory of the USSR in Soviet times or in the times of the Russian Federation on its territory have there been studies conducted under the code name Novichok. It was neither patented, nor used as a symbol or a code. Once more, as this is the key thing: the word Novichok has never been used in the USSR or in Russia as something related to chemical weapons research. This word was introduced and used for poisonous materials in the West.

A recent interview with Vladimir Uglev has been often cited as corroborating Mirzayanov’s account. Uglev describes how he helped to develop a “new class of organophosphorus chemical agents”, but states that the name “Novichok” was not used for these compounds.  Uglev states that one of these compounds, obtained from a military laboratory, was used to murder the banker Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary Zara Ismailova in 1995.  A report in the pro-Western magazine Novaya Gazeta includes an image of a page from a document purported to be from the investigation of this murder.  This document shows a reconstruction of the molecular structure of the compound from the fragments detected by mass spectrometry.  However the reconstructed structure shown is identical to that of a nerve agent known as GV (see Appendix), with what may be the mistaken substitution of an ethoxy group for a fluorine atom. If Uglev’s account is accurate and this document is genuine, this establishes that the new class of nerve agents that he helped to develop was the GV class of agents, which Russia has never denied studying. Because the A-230 series of compounds have structures that are very different from GV-like compounds, Uglev’s story does not corroborate that of Mirzayanov.   Mirzayanov’s account in 1995, in which he labels “Substance 33” (the Russian isomer of VX), as a “precursor” (possibly “forerunner” is the intended meaning as Russian VX is not a chemical precursor) of what he called “novichoks” is also consistent with these being GV-type agents.  At a briefing by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 21 March, Viktor Kholstov, Director of the Centre for Analytical Research on Chemical and Biological Weapon Conventions under the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, stated that “Vil Mirzayanov did not have these formulas [the structures given in his 2008 book for the A-230 series of compounds] in the early 2000s”.

In summary, there is ample evidence that the Soviet Union and other countries were developing GV-type agents up to the 1990s.  However Mirzayanov’s story that the chemical structures labelled as A-230 to  A-262 in his 2008 book were developed in the Soviet Union or Russia remains open to serious doubt.

Was one of the A-230 series of compounds used in the Salisbury poisoning?

The Prime Minister stated to the House of Commons on 12 March that

It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. It is part of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok.

On 22 March, the Russian Ambassador to the UK gave a briefing:-

On 12 March, 8 days after the day of poisoning, I was summoned by Foreign Secretary Johnson, who put forward a 24-hour ultimatum to explain the Russian Government’s position by the end of the next day. The question was put like following: either the incident in Salisbury was a direct act of the Russian Government against the UK or the Russian Government had lost control of a nerve agent that the Foreign Secretary identified as A-234, and allowed it to get into the hands of others.

The UK government has not confirmed that the nerve agent was identified as A-234, or that this information was conveyed to the Ambassador by the Foreign Secretary.  It is expected that the OPCW investigation will reveal the identity of the agent detected in Salisbury within the next few weeks.  For now, it is reasonable to assume that the agent found was one of the A-230 series of compounds.

Scientific studies of the A-230 series of compounds

In 2016, Iranian scientists reported bench scale synthesis of a few compounds closely related to those labelled by Mirzayanov as “Novichoks”.  They added the mass spectrometry signatures of these compounds studied to the OPCW’s Central Analytical Database. The structure denoted “compound 3” in their paper is similar to A-234 except that it has methyl instead of ethyl groups.

A similar study of the compound later published as A-234 had been undertaken by Dr Dennis Rohrbaugh at the US Army Chemical and Biological Defense Command’s Edgewood Research Development and Engineering Center around 1998.  He added the mass spectrometry profile to the 1998-2001 version (NIST 98) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Mass Spectral Library. This was revealed in a television interview by Professor Igor Rybalchenko, formerly the head of the Russian chemical weapon detection lab (the Laboratory of Chemical and Analytical Control of the Ministry of Defence). Rybalchenko is a highly-respected scientist who has worked closely with western colleagues on the OPCW Scientific Advisory Board and with international agencies supervising the destruction of the former Soviet chemical weapons stockpiles. Rybalchenko showed a slide (at 1:11:53 in the recording) and explained:-

As far back as 1998, we looked though a regular edition of the spectral database released by the US National Bureau of Standards [now the National Institute of Standards and Technology], which has spectral data on about 300,000 compounds and is regularly updated, to find an agent that caught our attention as it was an organophosphate chemical. We understood that it must have a lethal effect. Now it has turned out that, judging by the name of that agent, it was “Novichok” A-234.

The image shows a faded printout of a record from NIST 98 for a chemical with formula C8H18FN2O2Pnamed as N-(O-ethyl-fluorophosphoryl)-N’-N’-diethyl-acetamidine, with NIST number 226889. As Rybalchenko notes, this molecular structure corresponds to A-234

Evidence that the US and UK governments are concealing what they know about the A-230 series of compounds

The record submitted by Edgewood for a compound with formula C8H18FN2O2P no longer exists in the current version of the NIST Mass Spectral Library.  As such research is entirely legitimate, it is puzzling that this record should have been deleted.

A secret cable dated 26 March 2009 from a US delegate to OPCW reported that at a meeting of the OPCW Data Validation Group in The Hague a few weeks earlier, “representatives of several countries (Finland, Netherlands, UK) had begun discussing the Mirzayanov book on the margins of the meeting”.   The US delegate noted that

U.S. Del understands from OSD that the UK Ministry of Defense has spoken to its counterparts in the Netherlands and Finland, apprised them of the conversation, and asked each country to provide guidance to its del members not/not to raise this issue in the future

The Canadian delegate was also curious, but the US and UK delegates expressed lack of familiarity with and interest in the matter.

On March 25, in a private conversation, Canadian delegate asked U.S. and UK Delreps whether they had heard of the Mirzayanov book “State Secrets: An Insider’s View of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program.” Canadian Rep added that Mirzayanov now appeared on YouTube. UK Rep acknowledged she had heard of it, but said this was the first time she had heard of “novichoks” and thought the entire discussion was best left to experts in capital. U.S. Delrep indicated a lack of familiarity with the subject matterand indicated no interest in pursuing the discussion further.

The cable requested further “guidance as to how this issue is to be handled if raised by others” for US members of OPCW technical advisory bodies such as the Scientific Advisory Board.  The cable was addressed to the CIA, the National Security Council, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, suggesting that this issue was being discussed at high levels of the US government.

A subsequent cable on 3 April 2009 from the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instructed the US delegation to the Informal Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Australia Group (a group of US-allied countries set up in 1985 to control the export of precursors of chemical weapons) that one of five US objectives for the meeting was to:-

— Avoid any substantive discussion of the Mirazayanov book “State Secrets: An Insider’s View of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program” or so-called ‘Fourth Generation Agents.’

More detailed guidance was provided for the US delegates, echoing the description of how US  and UK delegates had responded to the Canadian delegate a week earlier:-

If AG participants raise the issue of Vils Mirazayonov’s book “State Secrets: An Insider’s View of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program,” the Del should:

— Report any instances in which the book is raised.

— Not/not start or provoke conversations about the book or engage substantively if it comes up in conversation.

— Express a lack of familiarity with the issue.

— Quietly discourage substantive discussions by suggesting that the issue is ‘best left to experts in capitals.’

These cables establish that the US and UK governments sought to discourage discussion of Mirzayanov’s book in 2009.  Taken together with the deletion of the record for A-234 submitted by Edgewood to the NIST Mass Spectral library, this suggests that the US and UK governments are concealing what they know about the A-230 series of compounds, for reasons that are not clear.

These cables suggest a reinterpretation of our earlier briefing in which we noted that the OPCW Scientific Advisory Board in 2013 had stated that it “has insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of “Novichoks”.  We had interpreted this as scepticism, on the part of experts who were in a position to know, about whether these compounds were really military-grade nerve agents.   From the cables cited above, however, it appears that these experts may have been following the guidance issued earlier that they should “discourage substantive discussions” of the matter.

What is known of the toxicity of the A-230 series of compounds?

Rybalchenko stated that “All that we know is that all substances of this class are very difficult to overcome in case of injuries, and the antidote therapy will hardly bring about the desired effect”. One review has stated (without citing a source) that inhibition of an enzyme known as neuropathy target esterase, which can cause delayed nerve damage, “is of primary concern for the Novichok agent”.  The consultant treating the victims of the Salisbury poisoning reported on 22 March that they were “heavily sedated following injury by a nerve agent” and unable to communicate. This prolonged paralysis is not typical of acute poisoning by standard organophosphate agents.  To ensure that all available toxicological and medical expertise can be mobilized to help the Salisbury doctors manage the victims, the identity of the agent should be made public without delay.  Edgewood and any other laboratories that have studied this compound should reveal the results of any toxicity studies they have done.

---

Appendix – technical points

This appendix explains some technical points on which there has been confusion.

Why is it necessary to synthesize a new compound before it can be detected by mass spectrometry?

Mass spectrometry identifies compounds by the mass-charge ratio of the ions produced by fragmentation of the compound. These mass-charge ratios, combined with separation by another method such as gas chromatography, are a unique “signature” for the compound. To determine this signature for a new compound, it has to be synthesized and analysed by mass spectrometry to measure the mass-charge ratios, which are then added to databases so that the compound can be detected in future by matching the observed mass-charge ratios with the records in the database.

Is it feasible to synthesize these compounds at bench scale?

The Iranian paper confirms that compounds similar to A-234 can be synthesized at bench scale in any modern university lab.  Synthesis at industrial scale for military use would be a different matter, but an assassination would require only bench scale quantities.

Did Porton Down make a definite identification of the agent?

In Mr Justice Williams’s court judgement on 22 March, the statement from witness CC, described as “Porton Down chemical and biological analyst” was summarized as follows:-

Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the findings indicated exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent.

This is similar to the form of words that OPCW has used to report positive blood tests for sarin exposure: “sarin, or a sarin-like substance”.  This wording is used because blood tests for nerve agent detect only what is left of the molecule after it has bound to the receptor. The “leaving group” (the rest of the molecule) cannot be identified. For sarin (and presumably for A-234) the leaving group is a fluorine atom, and for VX the leaving group is a thiol.

Although it is possible that the blood test would not be able to identify definitively a molecular structure such as A-234. this inability to determine the leaving group applies only to physiological samples. If environmental samples have tested positive, Porton Down should have been able to identify the original molecule precisely.    As noted above, to use the word “Novichoks” for the A-230 series of compounds is tendentious.

The GV agents studied in several countries are not the “Novichoks” described by Mirzayanov

In his authoritative review, Dr Robin Black, former head of the detection laboratory at Porton Down, makes clear that the development of a class of “intermediate volatility agents” (IVAs), designated “GV agents” by the Czechoslovak chemists Ivan Masek and Jiri Matousek is distinct from Mirzayanov’s unconfirmed story about “Novichoks”:-

Two additional series of nerve agents are worthy of mention. Research on IVAs in several countries led to the analogue known as GV, O-(2-dimethylaminoethyl) N,N-dimethyl phosphoramidofluoridate (Scheme 1.7). The name GV was coined by Czech chemists to indicate properties of both G and V agents.⁶⁵ The US military designator was GP. GV is a hybrid structure incorporating structural features of tabun, sarin and V agent. GV had true intermediate volatility properties (bp 226 °C, volatility 527 mg m⁻³at 25 °C),⁶⁶ producing sufficient vapour to cause an inhalation hazard, and possessing percutaneous toxicity approaching that of the V agents. GV might have become an important threat agent had it not had very poor storage stability. It has been suggested that a binary version might be feasible.

In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents, ‘Novichoks’ (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the ‘Foliant’ programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive countermeasures.^67,68 Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain,^30,68–70 mostly originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov.⁶⁹ No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published.

*

This article was originally published on Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media.

If you want to understand what the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States really means consider the fact that Israeli Army snipers shot dead seventeen unarmed and largely peaceful Gazan demonstrators on Good Friday without a squeak coming out of the White House or State Department. Some of the protesters were shot in the back while running away, while another 1,000 Palestinians were wounded, an estimated 750 by gunfire, the remainder injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.

The offense committed by the Gazan protesters that has earned them a death sentence was coming too close to the Israeli containment fence that has turned the Gaza strip into the world’s largest outdoor prison. President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East negotiator David Greenblatt described the protest as “a hostile march on the Israel-Gaza border…inciting violence against Israel.” And Nikki Haley at the U.N. has also used the U.S. veto to block any independent inquiry into the violence, demonstrating once again that the White House team is little more than Israel’s echo chamber. America’s enabling of the brutal reality that is today’s Israel makes it fully complicit in the war crimes carried out against the helpless and hapless Palestinian people.

So where was the outrage in the American media about the massacre of civilians? Characteristically, Israel portrays itself as somehow a victim and the U.S. media, when it bothers to report about dead Palestinians at all, picks up on that line. The Jewish State is portrayed as always endangered and struggling to survive even though it is the nuclear armed regional superpower that is only threatened because of its own criminal behavior. And even when it commits what are indisputable war crimes like the use of lethal force against an unarmed civilian population, the Jewish Lobby and its media accomplices are quick to take up the victimhood refrain.

Last week, the Israeli government described the protests an “an organized terrorist operation” while Gazans are dehumanized by claims that they act under the direction of evil Hamas to dig tunnels and rain down bottle rockets on hapless Israeli civilians. The reality is, however, quite different. It is the Gazans who have been subjected to murderous periodic incursions by the Israeli army, a procedure that Israel refers to as “mowing the grass,” a brutal exercise intended to keep the Palestinians terrified and docile.

The story of what happened in Gaza on Friday had largely disappeared from the U.S. media by Sunday. On Saturday, The New York Times reported the most recent violence this way:

“…some began hurling stones, tossing Molotov cocktails and rolling burning tires at the fence, the Israelis responded with tear gas and gunfire.”

Get it? The Palestinians started it all, according to Israeli sources, by throwing things at the fence and forcing the poor victimized Israeli soldiers to respond with gunfire, presumably as self-defense. The Times also repeated Israel’s uncorroborated claims that there were gunmen active on the Gazan side, but given the disparity in numbers killed and injured – zero on the Israeli side of the fence – the Palestinian shooters must have been using blanks. Or they never existed at all.

The Israelis reportedly also responded to “suspicious figures” on the Gazan side with rounds from tanks, killing, among others, a farmer far from the demonstrations who was working his field. Israeli warplanes and helicopters also joined in the fun, attacking targets on the Palestinian side. Drones flew over the demonstrators, spraying tear gas down on them. One recalls that the major Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014 included vignettes of Israeli families picnicking on the high ground overlooking the assault, enjoying the spectacle while observing the light-and-sound show that accompanied the carnage. At that time, more than 2,000 Gazans were killed and nearly 11,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled.^. If the current slaughter in Gaza continues, it would be a shame to forego the entertainment value of a good massacre right on one’s doorstep.

The reliably neocon Washington Post also framed the conflict as if Israel were behaving in a restrained fashion, leading off in its coverage with

“Israel’s military warned Saturday it will step up its response to violence on the Gaza border if it continues…”

You see, it’s the unarmed Palestinians who are creating the “violence.” Israel is the victim acting in self-defense.

The newspaper coverage was supplemented by television accounts of what had taken place. ABC News described “violent clashes,” implying that two somewhat equal sides were engaged in the fighting, even though the lethal force was only employed by Israel against an unarmed civilian population.

The backstory to the killing is what should disturb every American citizen. When it comes to disregard for United States national sovereignty and interests, the Israelis and their amen chorus in Washington have dug a deep, dark hole and the U.S. Congress and White House have obligingly jumped right in. Since June 8, 1967, when the Israelis massacred the crew of the U.S.S. Liberty, Israel has realized it could do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants, any time it wants, to anybody…including American servicemen, and the U.S. would do nothing.

Let me speak plainly. The existence of many good Israelis to who oppose their own government’s policies notwithstanding, the current Israel is an evil place that Americans should be condemning, not praising. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not be receiving 29 standing ovations from Congress. He should be rotting in jail. Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and dehumanization of the Palestinian people is nothing to be proud of. That the United States is giving this band of racist war criminals billions of dollars every year is a travesty. That the reputation of American has been besmirched worldwide because of its reflexive support of anything and everything that this rogue regime does is a national disgrace.

Gazans are demonstrating in part because they are starving. They have no clean drinking water because Israel has destroyed the purification plants as part of a deliberate policy to make life in the Strip so miserable that everyone will leave or die in place. And even leaving is problematical as Israel controls the border and will not let Palestinians enter or depart. It also controls the Mediterranean Sea access to Gaza. Fisherman go out a short distance from the shore to bring in a meager catch. If they go any farther they are shot dead by the Israeli Navy.

Hospitals, schools and power stations in Gaza are routinely bombed in Israel’s frequent reprisal actions against what Netanyahu chooses to describe as aggressive moves by Hamas. Such claims are bogus as Israel enjoys a monopoly of force and is never hesitant to use it.

Over in the other Palestinian enclave the West Bank, or what remains of it, the story is the same. Brutal heavily armed Israeli settlers rampage, poisoning Palestinian water, maiming and killing their livestock and even murdering local residents. Children throw stones or slap a soldier and wind up in Israeli prisons. The settlers are backed up by the army and paramilitary police who also shoot first. The Israeli military courts, who have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, rarely convict a Jew when an Arab is killed or beaten.

And here in America a bought-and-paid-for Congress continues to do its bit. Last week President Trump signed the so-called Taylor Force Act, part of the marathon spending bill, which will cut aid going to the Palestinian Authority while also increasing the money going to Israel. Back in January, Congress had also cut the funding going to support Palestinians who are still living in U.N. run refugee camps in spite of resolutions demanding that they should be allowed to return to their homes, now occupied by Israeli Jews. During the perfunctory debate on the measure, Congressmen were lied to by pro-Israel lobbyists who claimed that Arabs are terrorism supporters and use the money to attack Israelis.

I could go on and on, but the message should be clear to every American. There is no net gain for the United States in continuing the lopsided and essentially immoral relationship with the self-styled Jewish State. There is no enhancement of American national security, quite the contrary, and there remains only the sad realization that the blood of many innocent people is, to a considerable extent, on our hands. This horror must end.

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

Featured image is from the author.

Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968. The official story finds a lone gunman, James Earl Ray, bears the entire responsibility for the death. However, a 1999 civil court ruling found that the death resulted from a conspiracy involving elements of the Memphis Police Department, the FBI, and the Mafia.

For the 50th anniversary of the assassination, James Corbett put together the following report which deconstructs the standard narrative which persists to this very day, and outlines the incontrovertible facts surrounding the murder, including the threat posed by King to the US Military industrial complex.

 

The U.S. and its allies have been successful in hiding the basis on which Russian diplomats were expelled from their countries — expelled on still-undocumented accusations that Russia’s Government was behind the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury England on March 4th. On Wednesday April 4th, the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said no to Russia’s proposal for an OPCW investigation into the source of the toxin that was used in the attack. 14 of the 41 OPCW countries endorsed an investigtion; 9 abstained; 17 opposed; 1 absented. 

German Radio headlined “EU stands behind Russian culpability in Skripal poisoning: The European Union has maintained that Russia is probably responsible for the Novichok nerve agent attack. This comes despite the UK’s inability to pinpoint the source of the chemical.”

The issue decided by the vote is that the expulsions of Russia’s representatives to U.S.-allied countries must stand on the basis merely of the UK Government’s allegations of Russia’s guilt, without any evidence being provided to back them up.

Essentially, what was at stake in this vote is whether the public, in each of these countries, should believe Russia’s guilt without being provided any evidence that Russia is guilty. This decision by the OPCW Executive Council is yes to that.

This means that any wars that might start or increase on account of those allegations are to be considered ‘justified’ by the residents in at least the U.S.-allied nations, because those nations’ Governments say so, and because they have the power to block an OPCW examination of whatever evidence that exists regarding this matter.

Similarly, on 20 March 2003, the U.S. and a few allies invaded and destroyed Iraq on the basis of secret ‘evidence’, which the public, in these ‘democracies’, was never permitted to see, but which ‘evidence’ now is known to have been concocted.

Many instances exist in which wars have begun on the basis of attacks that were done by the Nazis, or by the U.S., or by other fascist governments, and set up in advance so as to be falsely blamed against the Government that is to be invaded: the phrase that is commonly applied to such instances is “false-flag” events. This is what is done in order to have an ‘excuse’ for invading. Of course, the expulsion of diplomats is not an invasion, but it is commonly done in preparation for one. Usually, economic sanctions precede it; then come the expulsions; then, and perhaps months or even years later, the armed invasion. 

Each citizen in these countries will therefore have to make his or her own decision as regards whether or not that person’s Government is authentically a democracy, going to wars as democracies, or actually a dictatorship, which invades foreign countries on the basis of outright lies — deception of the invading country’s own public, essentially warring against its own public and not only against the invaded country. It has happened many times before; it could happen again. But this time, the targeted country would be Russia, not Iraq or another such weak nation. The implications of this could be staggering.

For the very latest and thoroughly honest information on these developing events, information that’s as reliable as possible and that’s as devoid of speculation as possible, I recommend this article.

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

Featured image is from Tass.

“Violence and other potentially criminal behaviors caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret.” — David Healy, UK psychiatrist and author (and co-founder of www.RxISK.org)

“The establishment media ignores the scientific evidence linking psychiatric medications and violent behavior because psychiatry is the religion of the mainstream media, and they don’t want to see the dangers of psychiatrically prescribed drugs.” — Peter R. Breggin, psychiatrist and author

“In some European nations it is against the law for doctors to prescribe SSRIs for children and adolescents because of 1) the lack of long-term safety studies and 2) the known increased incidence of violence and suicide.” — Source

“The FDA has warned that any abrupt change in dose, whether starting on, increasing, decreasing or discontinuing the drug, skipping doses by forgetting, or when switching from one antidepressant to another where you are both abruptly decreasing one antidepressant AND abruptly increasing the new antidepressant can cause suicide, hostility or psychosis – generally a manic psychosis which is often (mis-)diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder or occasionally as Schizophrenia when it is actually caused by the abrupt change in dose. Another problem can be if another antidepressant is added to one you are already takin,g thus producing a synergistic affect. Withdrawal, especially abrupt withdrawal, from any of these medications can cause severe neuropsychiatric as well as physical symptoms, both of which can be life threatening.” – Source

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist American author from the early decades of the 20th century. Sinclair’s 1903 novel “Jungle” was about the horrific slaughterhouse practices in the meat-packing industry in Chicago. That powerful book led to President Theodore Roosevelt’s pushing through the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. (Ed note: Upton Sinclair’s axiom, if taken to heart, applies to almost every employee, investor, CEO or member of every board of directors of every polluting, for-profit industry as well as for most of us physicians, psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, nurses, pharmacists, drug sales reps, journalists, banker-lenders and the employees and CEOs of every company that makes or markets toxic substances, drugs and vaccines– (with the exception of those courageous ones who stood up and spoke out against the injustice or the pollution that their industries were participating in). I was recently reminded of the lyrics of a Peter, Paul and Mary song that included the lyrics: “If you’ve been to jail for justice, then you’re a friend of mine”. Upton Sinclair would have resonated with that song.)

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Psychoactive Drugs and Violence

In my weekly Duty to Warn columns I have frequently written about the connections between

1) the wide-spread prescribing of dangerous psychiatric drugs to humans whose brains have not fully developed and

2) the large variety of violent, often criminal behaviors that are committed by the newly drug-intoxicated patients.

These abnormal drug-induced behaviors can occur either while the patient is “under the influence” of the drug or while the patient is going through the crazy-making withdrawal process when the patient stops or reduces the dosage of the drug – usually because of intolerable side effects.

For much more on this reality, see the addendum at the end of this column that discusses the not uncommon incidence of fully resolvable, drug-induced behaviors that include transient psychoses, homicidal violence, suicidality and a large variety of irrational behaviors.

Importantly, such drug-induced behaviors are NOT mental illnesses but still are commonly diagnosed as such and then tragically “treated” with life-long psychiatric drugs as if they were mental illnesses! The DSM IV code for that reality is 292.11. I wrote a column in 2012 that discussed 31 of Big Pharma’s most popular psychoactive drugs and their astonishingly high risks of causing violence. The link to that article is this.

The most infamous of those psychiatric drug-induced criminal behaviors happens to be the uniquely American epidemic of mass school shootings, of which the Parkland, Florida shooting is just one of the most recent ones. Not usually so well-publicized are the many acts of asocial behaviors, poor judgments (or actual crimes) which includes such actions as impulsive thefts, inappropriate sexual conduct, physical assaults, homicidal thinking, suicidality, drug-induced psychotic episodes, drug-induced mania, drug-induced OCD symptoms, drug-induced anxiety or depression, drug-induced, crazy-making sleep-deprivation, etc.

Illicit intoxicating drugs and alcohol are often accurately mentioned by “the authorities” as potential root causes of abnormal behaviors or criminal acts, but when legal, intoxicating prescription drugs are involved, most police, psychiatrists, lawyers and journalists don’t even consider the possibility that those psychoactive drugs could be a factor, despite the well-documented fact that the molecular structures, brain-damaging effects and mechanisms of action of both types of drugs can be identical.

Psychoactive Drugs and Brain Damage

In addition to warning about the many abnormal behaviors and criminal acts that are commonly associated with the use of psychoactive drugs, I have often written about the tight connections between violence and the many neurotoxic (ie, brain-damaging) effects of psychiatric drug use – which includes dementia, personality disorders, brain shrinkage, addiction/dependency, and the many varieties of withdrawal syndromes. These outcomes are well documented, but when these highly profitable, well-advertised, and popularized Big Pharma products are factors in public crimes, the whole truth is likely to be sabotaged, the connections buried and the primary role of the prescribed drugs hidden away, another teachable moment is wasted and we physician’s blameworthy prescribing habits continue unchanged. Prestige and doctor-patient confidentiality and all that.

The deadly relationship between prescription drug use and gun homicidality range from simple threats to “mass” shootings (which, according to the FBI’s definition of “mass shooting”, only applies when 4 or more gunshot victims actually die. Hence when an angry, humiliated, abusive “boyfriend” or ex-spouse shoots and kills his estranged partner and their two kids, the FBI does not regard that as a mass shooting!

Psychoactive Drugs and Guns: A Very Bad Combination

A good example of the connections between drugs and guns is the 2005 school shooting incident in Red Lake, Minnesota. Jeff Weise, the 16 year-old shooter, had just had the dose of Prozac upped to an unconscionable, highly toxic, 60 mg per day! Eli Lilly & Company’s popular, so-called “anti-depressant” drug Prozac was never proven to be safe at such a high dosage, particularly for adolescents. Indeed, the recommended starting dose for adults (as approved by the FDA) was 10 – 20 mg per day, which, for 10% of the population is not normally metabolizable and therefore even small doses of psych drugs can be toxic overdoses! Jeff Weise was tragically being overdosed with a dangerous brain-altering drug, unbeknownst to him, his psychiatrist and his community. His worsening depression, sleep deprivation, fear, hatred, self-hatred, aggression, suicidality and homicidality were actually being caused by his so-called drug “treatment”! It should be obvious to any open-minded observer that the shooter’s drug was a far more important motivating factor in the school shooting than the gun that he used to irrationally kill his family members, himself and his schoolmates. And that the tragic affair was iatrogenic (doctor- or treatment-induced).

Over the past several generations there has developed an unholy alliance between the following handful of corporate-controlled, profit-at-all-cost entities that have been prime suspects for the rapid rise in American school shootings and other mass shootings:

1)Big Pharma; the multinational pharmaceutical industry;

2)Big Government and its various agencies such as the corporate-subsidized and influenced FDA, CDC, NIMH, NIH, etc;

3) Big Medicine and Big Psychiatry and most of its physicians, trade associations and their journals (like the AMA, the APA, the AAP, AAFP, etc);

4) Big Pharma’s Washington, DC lobbyists and the legislators that are in the back pockets of corporations;

5) Big Insurance and the HMOs, who have chosen to favor (and reimburse for) non-curative psych drug treatments over the potentially curative psychotherapy;

6) the NRA and the weapons manufacturers it lobbies for;

7) Big Media, the entity that refused to publish the factual information that might offend their wealthy Big Pharma advertisers because such truths might adversely impact their bottom line; and

8) Wall Street and Big Finance, whose lending institutions and investment groups that salivate over the huge profits to be made in any industry that sells addictive products that customers can’t stop taking, even if it is killing them.

My Perspective on the Drug/Gun Connection

For the decade prior to my retirement from family practice medicine in rural Minnesota, I practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth, Minnesota a small city in the northeast part of the state. My independent solo practice largely dealt with the sickened, over-dosed and addicted survivors of conventional drug-based psychiatry. Every patient that came to me for help had never had a really thorough biopsychosocial (or drug) history taken. All of those drug-toxified patients had been too-rapidly diagnosed and then reflexively treated with neurotoxic psych drugs, usually in combinations that had never been adequately tested for safety or long-term efficacy. By the time my patients had come to see me, most of them had been over-diagnosed and mis-diagnosed with a large variety of often mutually-exclusive DSM coded disorders and then over-treated and/or mis-treated with cocktails of neurotoxic drugs whose mechanisms of action often conflicted one with the other. It soon became clear to me that my major responsibilities had to be: to re-assess each patient, re-diagnose them, re-educate them and then help them start the process of gradually tapering down the drugs that had both sickened and addicted them.

During that decade, I acquired a unique fund of insider knowledge about how psychiatry was being practiced behind the closed doors of out-patient clinics, psychiatric in-patient treatment facilities and electroshock rooms. In order to sort everything out, I had to re-learn what I actually had never been taught in med school or in my continuing education courses (which had ALL been partially planned and paid for by Big Pharma). In order to be successful in helping drug-toxified patients, I had to become familiar with psychology, brain chemistry, brain pathophysiology, brain nutrition and the molecular structures and mechanisms of action of the illicit drugs, the over-the-counter drugs and the legal psychoactive prescription drugs that my sickened patients had been exposed to over their lifetimes.

That decade of hard work helping patients get off or at least cut down the dosages of their drugs was sobering yet enlightening. But what I learned about the brain damage and the long-term dangers that those synthetic chemicals posed to patients, convinced me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, of the tight connection between psych drugs and medication-induced violence. Those adverse effects included homicidality, suicidality, akathisia, sleep-deprivation, irrational behaviors, restlessness, aggression, toxic psychosis, mania, worsening depression, behavioral dys-control and acute and tardive akathisia, dyskinesia and bradykinesia (Parkinson’s). And what was so sobering to me was the fact that any of those drug-induced, iatrogenic symptoms were commonly mistaken for new or recurring “mental illnesses of unknown cause” and therefore promptly mis-treated with more toxic drugs!

I witnessed again and again the mis-diagnoses and drug-induced tragedies to which my patients had been unnecessarily subjected. And they had all been made worse because of the long-term us of their brain-altering, brain-damaging cocktails of drugs despite the evidence that I had uncovered that revealed that most of them had not actually had a mental illness in the first place.

Most of my patients had been normal up until the time that they had become victims of brain trauma, drug- or vaccine poisoning, severe neglect during child-rearing or significant psychological, physical, sexual, military or spiritual trauma anytime during their brain-development and up-bringing.

All during my experience as an un-wanted insider observing up close and personal what was the common practice of drug-centered psychiatry, I was slowly beginning to realize how widespread must be the mis-treatment of patients elsewhere around the world. I eventually realized that I might be in a position to do something about what had to be considered an iatrogenic and drug-induced disaster. The 1,200 patients with which I had worked so hard over the decade represented a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of other victims of Big Pharma and Big Psychiatry world-wide. Having only directly impacted 1,200 patients over the decade, it became obvious to me that my advocacy for damaged patients couldn’t stop with my retirement. Hence my continued journalistic efforts to raise consciousness about these serious issues, even if my consciousness-raising might be regarded as a threat to the members of the 7 groups of wealthy obstructionists listed above.

It should be clear to every open-minded reader that psychiatric drugs are over-promoted and over-sold for huge profits by the entities listed above. It should be clear that Big Pharma’s dangerous, potentially addictive and unaffordable drugs are often cavalierly and ignorantly prescribed by Big Psychiatry’s psychiatrists and Big Medicine’s physicians to desperate, obedient, vulnerable, brain-washed patients who are often erroneously told to “take these medications for the rest of your lives” and then “see me every month or three for the rest of your lives for your brief med checks and prescription renewals”. It should be clear that Big Media, Big Medicine’s lobbying groups and its medical journals all benefit from the lucrative advertising revenues that they get from Big Pharma and therefore refuse to publish valid articles by authors and journalists who know that they should be exposing Big Pharma’s propaganda, corrupted clinical trials and other evil agendas – but are not allowed to do so.

The New York Times’ masthead slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, is seriously deceptive when it comes to that premier newspaper’s obvious reluctance to step on the big toes of the pharmaceutical industry or the psychiatric industry when their powerful propaganda claims are exposed as false, dangerous or criminal. As Dr Peter Breggin (image on the left) so accurately wrote:

“The establishment media ignores the scientific evidence linking psychiatric medications and violent behavior because psychiatry is the religion of the mainstream media, and they don’t want to see the dangers of psychiatrically prescribed drugs.”

90+% of American school shooters were either “under the influence” of legal brain-altering drugs at the time of the shootings or were experiencing the confusing and crazy-making symptoms of drug withdrawal. Eric Harris, the Columbine school shooter, blogged how he could alter the level of his aggressiveness and hatred for society and certain of his classmates by altering the dose of his Luvox (a Prozac look-alike drug marketed originally by Solvay Pharmaceuticals, then by Jazz Pharmaceuticals and Abbott Labs).

The punishment of inadvertently drug-intoxicated individuals needs to be informed by the reality of the above information, just like bartenders who may at times legally share some of the responsibility for the victims of the crimes committed by their intoxicated customers. That principle should also apply when justice is sought for the innocent victims of mass shootings. That of course would open up a can of worms for the assorted guilty parties who have falsely and widely promoted the false notion that psych drugs are safe and non-addictive, implying that the shooter’s genetics and innate badness are entirely to blame for the violent acts and NOT the guilty brain-altering drug or the prescribers or manufacturers of the guilty drug.

If one were to paraphrase the silly, distracting NRA mantra that wants to shift the blame, Big Pharma could proclaim that “Drugs Don’t Kill People; People Kill People” but they would be as wrong as the NRA because, in the case of deadly psychiatric drugs and deadly guns, both the drugs and the guns as well as the people and the corporations that are cavalierly dishing them out all must share the blame.

The information below lists a short list (of a hundred or so) cases where prescription psych drugs had large influences in American’s school shootings prior to 2012. This is a partial list, just like any list of non-school shootings would measure in the thousands. Antidepressants of all types are well-known to cause anger, aggression, sleep deprivation, worsening depression, hostility, suicidality and an “I don’t give a damn attitude”. Without those drug effects, the impulse to kill or suicide may never have occurred.

And, prior to the easy access to addictive, neurotoxic and lethal drug prescriptions and prior to the easy access to affordable, easy-to-shoot and highly lethal weapons of mass destruction (thanks to the NRA and the highly profitable weapons-manufacturing sector for which the NRA is a propaganda and lobbying tool), any psychiatric drug-induced motivation to avenge some perceived injustice or dis-respect might have only resulted in a fist fight or knife attack.

Guns and drugs don’t mix.

For much more on the sobering connections between irrational acts of violence and other dangerous aspects of psychotropic drugs, check out

1) the 6,000+ examples of violence related to SSRI drugs here;

2) the powerful CCHR documentaries here;

3) UK psychiatrist David Healy, author of Pharmageddon and The Antidepressant Era who co-founded this;

4) US psychiatrist Peter Breggin and his revelatory books Toxic Psychiatry, Medication Madness and many others (and his website here).

5) US author Robert Whitaker’s website established after his ground-breaking 2002 book Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill and his 2010 book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America; and

6) Danish author Peter Goetzsche’s powerful book, Deadly Medicine and Organized Crime (website here).

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Appendix A: Recent School Shootings Linked to Psychopharmaceutical Drugs

A list of 6,000+ preventable, irrational, psychotropic drug-related acts of violence can be obtained here, from which this partial list 50+ school shooters has been obtained:

May 20, 1988 – Winnetka, Illinois
Laurie Dann, age 30, walked into a second grade Hubbard Woods School classroom carrying three pistols killed an 8-year-old and wounded five others before fleeing. He was taking an Mallinckrodt’s antidepressant Anafranil (clomipramine) for “OCD”.

September 26, 1988 – Greenwood, South Carolina
James Wilson, age 19, went on a shooting spree in an elementary schoolyard, killing two 8 year olds, and wounding 7 other children and 2 teachers. He was taking Pfizer’s Xanax and several other psychiatric drugs.

September 17, 1992 – Houston, Texas
Calvin Charles Bell entered Piney Point Elementary School and opened fire. Two officers suffered gunshot injuries. He was on undisclosed antidepressants.

December 17, 1993 – Chelsea, Michigan
Steven Lieth, a Chelsea High School teacher walked out of a staff meeting and returned with a gun killing one and wounding another. He had been taking undisclosed numbers of antidepressants prescribed by a psychiatrist.

October 12, 1995 – Blackville, South Carolina
Toby Sincino walked into Blackville-Hilda High School, killed two teachers and then himself. He was taking Pfizer’s Zoloft.

February 2, 1996 – Moses Lake, Washington
Barry Loukaitis, age 14, shot and killed 2 students and 1 teacher and wounded 1 student in his algebra class. He was taking Novartis’s Ritalin at the time of the shooting.

October 1, 1997 – Pearl, Mississippi
Luke Woodham, age 16, killed 2 and wounded 7 students at Pearl High School. He was taking Eli Lilly’s Prozac.

December 1, 1997 – West Paducah, Kentucky
Michael Carneal age 14, during a prayer meeting at a high school, killed 3 fellow students and wounded 5 other students.. He was on Novartis’s Ritalin.

March 24, 1998 – Jonesboro, Arkansas
Andrew Golden, age 11, and cousin Mitchell Johnson, age 13, went on a shooting spree at Westside Middle School, killing four students and one teacher. 9 students and another teacher were also wounded. Both boys were on Novartis’s Ritalin.

April 9, 1998 – Pocatello, Idaho
Mitchell Gushwa walked into Pocatello School with a gun and held several staff and students hostage. He was on Pfizer’s Zoloft.

May 1, 1998 – Buffalo, New York
Juan Roman, age 37, an Erie County deputy sheriff, pursued his estranged wife into their children’s elementary school in Buffalo and shot her dead. He also shot an aide, but no children were hurt. He was taking unspecified antidepressants and seeing a psychiatrist.

May 21, 1998 – Springfield, Oregon
Kip Kinkel, age 15, killed 2 students, and wounded 22 others in the cafeteria at Thurston High School. He had been arrested and released a day earlier for bringing a gun to school. His parents were later found dead at home. He had been taking the Lilly’s Prozac and an amphetamine and had been attending anger control classes. He was under the care of a psychologist.

April 16, 1999 -Notus, Idaho
Shawn Cooper, age 15, fired two shotgun rounds in his school, narrowly missing students. He was taking a mix of SSRI antidepressants and Novartis’s Ritalin.

April 20, 1999 – Littleton, Colorado
Eric Harris, age 18, and Dylan Klebold, age 17, killed 14 students (including themselves) and one teacher. 23 others were wounded at Columbine High School. Harris was on the antidepressants Solvay/Jazz/Abbott’s Luvox and Pfizer’s Zoloft, and had been seeing a psychiatrist before the shooting. Both shooters had been in anger-management classes and had undergone counseling. The autopsy results for Dylan Klebold were not disclosed but it is thought he was sharing Harris’s medications.

April 28, 1999 – Taber, Alberta, Canada
Todd Cameron Smith, age14 killed on student and injured another at W.R. Myers High School. He had taken dexadrine.

May 20, 1999 – Conyers, Georgia
Thomas Solomon, age 15 shot and wounded 6 students injured at Heritage High School. He was taking Novartis’s Ritalin.

Dec. 6, 1999 – Fort Gibson, Oklahoma
Seth Trickey, age 13 wounded 4 students at Fort Gibson Middle School using a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. He was taking two unspecified psychotropic drugs.

January 10, 2001 -, age 17, Oxnard, California
Richard Lopez, age 17, took a fellow student hostage, and was later killed by police. He had taken Lilly’s Prozac and GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil.

February 2, 2001 – Winterstown, PA
William Michael Stankewicz, wounded 3 adults and 11 children with a machete at North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School. For the prior 2 weeks, he had been taking 4 different medications to “stabilize” acute depression and anxiety.

March 7, 2001 – Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Elizabeth Catherine Bush, age 14, wounded a fellow student at Bishop Neumann High School. She was on Glaxo’s Paxil.

March 22, 2001 – Granite Hills, California
Jason Hoffman, age 18, shot and wounded 1 teacher and 3 students wounded at Granite Hills High School. He was taking the antidepressants Forest Lab’s Celexa and Pfizer’ Effexor which had been prescribed by his psychiatrist.

April 15, 2001 – Mattawa, Washington
Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, took a rifle to his Wahluke High School, and held 23 classmates and a teacher hostage. According to a student, “Cory was yelling and then he just stopped, looked down at the gun in his hand and woke up.” No one was hurt, and he had no memory of the incident. 21 days before the event, he had been recently taken off Glaxo’s Paxil and prescribed a high dose of Pizer’s Effexor. He was on the varsity basketball team, played football and golf, and was very popular in school. “Cory sat in jail for 14 months before finally being released based on expert testimony by psychiatrists that his behavior was an adverse reaction to the drugs he was prescribed.”

June 9, 2001 – Japan
Mamoru Takuma, age 37, stabbed to death 8 Ikeda Elementary School students and injured 13 others. He had taken 10 times the normal dosage of an unspecified antidepressant.

January 16, 2002 – Grundy, Virginia
Peter Odighizuwa killed 3 people at the Appalachian School of Law including the Dean, a professor and a student. He was withdrawing from an unspecified anti-depressant.

January, 2003 – Elliot City, Maryland
Ryan T. Furlough, age 19, killed a Centennial High School classmate by spiking his soda with cyanide. He was on Pfizer’s Effexor.

February 9, 2004 – East Greenbush, New York
Jon Romano, age 16, shot and wounded a special education teacher. He was on Glaxo’s Paxil and had been seeing a psychiatrist.

June, 2004 – Gloucester Township, NJ
A teenager at Highland High School carried loaded handguns to school, but shot no one. His thoughts of violence were linked to over-medication with undisclosed psych drugs.

February 9, 2005 – Red Lion, Pennsylvania
John Meisky, age 16 attacked another student at Red Lion Area Senior High School with a knife. He was taking two prescriptions of unspecified antidepressants.

March 21, 2005 – Red Lake, Minnesota
Jeff Weise, age 16, killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girl friend at their home, then killed a teacher, a security guard, 5 students, and finally himself at Red Lake High School, leaving a total of 10 dead. He had previously spent about a year and a half in a residential juvenile treatment program and was on 60 mg/day(!) of Lilly’s Prozac.

January 24, 2006 – Cave City, Arkansas
A 15-year-old student at Cave City School attempted to commit suicide at school by slitting his wrists. He had taken 4 different antidepressants.

February, 2006 – Memphis, Tennessee
Ladarious Guy, age 15, punched a teacher in the mouth at Memphis City High School. He had just recently started taking Pfizer’s Zoloft.

April 24, 2006 – Hillsborough, NC
A student at East Chapel High School with a shotgun took a teacher and a fellow student hostage. He had just stopped taking unspecified antidepressants and antipsychotics.

August 30, 2006 – Hillsborough, North Carolina
Alvaro Castillo, age 19, shot and killed his father, then wounded two students at Orange High School before surrendering to police. Forest Lab’s Celexa and other medications were found in his personal effects.

September 13, 2006 – Montreal, Canada
Kimveer Gill, age 25, opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon at Dawson College. He killed 1 and injured 19 before killing himself. He had been depressed and was being treated at a local health clinic where he likely received unspecified antidepressants.

September 27, 2006 – Bailey, Colorado
Duane Morrison, Platte Canyon High School student, took 6 female students hostage, sexually assaulted them, then shot one of them in the back of the head before shooting himself. He was on an unspecified antidepressant.

September 29, 2006 – Cazenovia, Wisconsin
Eric Hainstock, a student at Weston High School, killed 1 person. He had been labeled with an ADHD diagnosis and was likely on Novartis’s Ritalin.

October 10, 2006 – Charleston, South Carolina
Tyrell Glover, age 19, took an air rifle to Burke High School where he planned to hold students hostage. He was gunned down by police. He had been on an unspecified antidepressant or several years and had switched to Lilly’s Prozac for the previous 6 months.

December 4, 2006 – Indiana
Travis Roberson, age 16, slit a classmate’s throat at Jennings County High School. He had recently missed an unknown number of doses of an un-named antidepressant.

January 3, 2007 – Tacoma, Washington
Douglas Chanthabouly, age 18, shot a fellow student at Henry Foss High School. He had been in a psychiatric hospital because of a suicide attempt and was on an unspecified anti-psychotic.

April 16, 2007 – Blacksburg, Virginia
Cho Seung-Hui, age 23, killed 32 fellow students and wounded 15 at Virginia Tech. He then killed himself. He was on Glaxo’s Paxil.

October 10, 2007 – Cleveland, Ohio
Asa H. Coon, age 14, wounded 2 students and 2 teachers and then killed himself. He had been taking the antidepressant Trazodone.

November 7, 2007 – Tyler, Texas
Felicia McMillan, age 17, stabbed a male student and the principal at Robert E. Lee High School. She was taking an unspecified anti-depressant.

November 7, 2007 – Tuusula, Finland
Pekka-Eric Auvinen,age 18, shot and killed 7 students and the principal at Jokela High School. At least 10 others were injured. He then shot and kitted himself. He had Pfizer’s Zoloft, Solvay/Jazz/Abbott’s Luvox and Lilly’s Prozac in his possession.

January 8, 2008 – Columbia, Tennessee
A 15 year-old student at Spring Hill High School brought a semi-automatic gun. He also had in his possession Pfizer’s Zoloft.

January 23, 2008 – Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
Brian Gilmore was arrested in the high school parking lot of Lake City High School with 3 stolen high powered rifles and ammunition. His mother stated that his psychiatric meds had “drastically” changed the teenager’s behavior, and his doctor had recently switched him to Lilly’s Prozac.

February 14, 2008 – DeKalb, Illinois
Stephen P. Kazmierczak a former graduate student at Northern Illinois University, killed 5 students and wounded 17 more in a NIU classroom. He then killed himself. His psychiatrist had prescribed Lilly’s Prozac, Pfizer’s Xanax and Sanofi Aventis’s Ambien for him.

February 15, 2008 – Blackfoot, Idaho
Curtis Kofoed, age 16, took a handgun to Snake River High School, but did not shoot anybody. 8 hours later, he killed himself. He had depression problems in the past and was taking an unspecified antidepressant.

March 13, 2009 – Winnenden, Germany
Tim Kretschmer, age 17, shot and killed 15 people at Albertville Technical High School. He had been suffering from depression, and was on unspecified antidepressants.

August 28, 2008 – Boerne, Texas
Allen Doelitsch, age 18, was jailed for asking a 14-year-old friend to join him in a “Columbine-style” attack. He had been depressed and had recently stopped his so-called bipolar medications because of the side effects.

September 23, 2008 – Western Finland
Matti Saari, age 22, shot and killed 10 students at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality before killing himself. Matti Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazepine tranquilizer.

November 10, 2009 – Pine Plains, New York
Christopher Craft Sr., age 43, a graduate of Stissing High School, took Middle School Principal Robert Hess hostage with a shotgun. He been on Eli Lilly’s Cymbalta for depression.

December 15, 2010 – Planoise, France
A 17 year-old with 2 swords held 20 pre-school children and their teacher hostage for 4 1/2 hours at Charles Fourier Preschool in Planoise, France. The teen was on an unspecified antidepressant.

October 25, 2011 – Snohomish, Washington
A 15 year-old student at Snohomish High School stabbed two schoolmates with kitchen knives. She had been taking an unspecified antidepressant.

February 5, 2012 – Huntsville, Alabama
Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a Discover Middle School student. He had a history for being treated for ADHD and depression. He had been seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist for ADHD and depression and was taking Pfizer’s Zoloft and “other unspecified psychoactive drugs”.

December 14, 2012 – Newtown, Connecticut
Adam Lanza, age 24, killed his mother at her home and then shot and killed 20 children and 6 staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Nobody that was shot survived. He committed suicide at the scene. According to the Washington Post and other witnesses, Lanza was on undisclosed psychotropic medications.

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Appendix B: Substance (Medication/Drug)-induced Psychotic Disorder (DSM IV 292.11)

Excerpted from here.

Definition

Prominent psychotic symptoms (i.e., hallucinations and/or delusions) determined to be caused by the effects of a psychoactive substance is the primary feature of a substance-induced psychotic disorder. A substance may induce psychotic symptoms during intoxication (while the individual is under the influence of the drug) or during withdrawal (after an individual stops using the drug).

Description

A substance-induced psychotic disorder is subtyped or categorized based on whether the prominent feature is delusions or hallucinations. Delusions are fixed, false beliefs. Hallucinations are seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling things that are not there. In addition, the disorder is subtyped based on whether it began during intoxication on a substance or during withdrawal from a substance. A substance-induced psychotic disorder that begins during substance use can last as long as the drug is used. A substance-induced psychotic disorder that begins during withdrawal may first manifest up to four weeks after an individual stops using the substance.

Causes

A substance-induced psychotic disorder, by definition, is directly caused by the effects of drugs including alcohol, medications, and toxins. Psychotic symptoms can result from intoxication on alcohol, amphetamines (and related substances, including antidepressants), cannabis (marijuana), cocaine (and its chemical look-alike, Ritalin), hallucinogens, inhalants, opioids, phencyclidine (PCP) and related substances, sedatives, hypnotics, anxiolytics, and other or unknown substances.

Psychotic symptoms can also result from withdrawal from alcohol, sedatives, hypnotics, anxiolytics, and other or unknown substances.

Medications that may induce psychotic symptoms include anesthetics and analgesics, anticholinergic agents, anticonvulsants, antihistamines, antihypertensive and cardiovascular medications, antimicrobial medications, anti-parkinsonian medications, chemotherapeutic agents, corticosteroids, gastrointestinal medications, muscle relaxants, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications, other over-the-counter medications, antidepressant medications, and disulfiram (Antabuse) .

Toxins that may induce psychotic symptoms include anticholinesterase, organophosphate insecticides, nerve gases, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and volatile substances (such as fuel or paint).

The speed of onset of psychotic symptoms varies depending on the type of substance. For example, using a lot of cocaine can produce psychotic symptoms within minutes. On the other hand, psychotic symptoms may result from alcohol use only after days or weeks of intensive use.

The type of psychotic symptoms also tends to vary according to the type of substance. For instance, auditory hallucinations (specifically, hearing voices), visual hallucinations, and tactile hallucinations are most common in an alcohol-induced psychotic disorder, whereas persecutory delusions and tactile hallucinations (especially formication) are commonly seen in a cocaine- or amphetamine-induced psychotic disorder.

Symptoms

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) notes that a diagnosis is made only when the psychotic symptoms are above and beyond what would be expected during intoxication or withdrawal and when the psychotic symptoms are severe. Following are criteria necessary for diagnosis of a substance-induced psychotic disorder as listed in the DSMIV-TR:

• Presence of prominent hallucinations or delusions.
• Hallucinations and/or delusions develop during, or within one month of, intoxication or withdrawal from a substance or medication known to cause psychotic symptoms.

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Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, prosperity, democracy, civility and the health and longevity of the populace.

Two new studies from Europe have found that the number of farm birds in France has crashed by a third in just 15 years, with some species being almost eradicated. The collapse in the bird population mirrors the discovery last October that over three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have vanished in just three decades. Insects are the staple food source of birds, the pollinators of fruits, and the aerators of the soil.

The chief suspect in this mass extinction is the aggressive use of neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly imidacloprid and clothianidin, both made by German-based chemical giant Bayer. These pesticides, along with toxic glyphosate herbicides (Roundup), have delivered a one-two punch against Monarch butterflies, honeybees and birds. But rather than banning these toxic chemicals, on March 21st the EU approved the $66 billion merger of Bayer and Monsanto, the US agribusiness giant producing Roundup and the genetically modified (GMO) seeds that have reduced seed diversity globally. The merger will make the Bayer-Monsanto conglomerate the largest seed and pesticide company in the world, giving it enormous power to control farm practices, putting private profits over the public interest.

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) noted in a speech in December before the Open Markets Institute, massive companies are merging into huge market-dominating entities that invest a share of their profits in lobbying and financing political campaigns, shaping the political system to their own ends. She called on the Trump administration to veto the Bayer-Monsanto merger, which is still under antitrust scrutiny and has yet to be approved in the US.

A 2016 survey of Trump’s voter base found that over half disapproved of the Monsanto/Bayer merger, fearing it would result in higher food prices and higher costs for farmers. Before 1990, there were 600 or more small independent seed businesses globally, many of them family owned. By 2009, only about 100 survived; and seed prices had more than doubled. But reining in these powerful  conglomerates is more than just a question of economics. It may be a question of the survival of life on this planet.

While Bayer’s neonicotinoid pesticides wipe out insects and birds, Monsanto’s glyphosate has been linked to over 40 human diseases, including cancer. Its GMO seeds have been genetically modified to survive this toxic herbicide, but the plants absorb it into their tissues; and in the humans who eat them, glyphosate disrupts the endocrine system and the balance of gut bacteria, damages DNA and is a driver of cancerous mutations. Researchers summarizing a 2014 study of glyphosates in the Journal of Organic Systems linked them to the huge increase in chronic diseases in the United States, with the percentage of GMO corn and soy planted in the US showed highly significant correlations with hypertension, stroke, diabetes, obesity, lipoprotein metabolism disorder, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, hepatitis C, end stage renal disease, acute kidney failure, cancers of the thyroid, liver, bladder, pancreas, kidney and myeloid leukaemia. But regulators have turned a blind eye, captured by corporate lobbyists and a political agenda that has more to do with power and control them protecting the health of the people.

The Trump administration has already approved a merger between former rivals Dow and DuPont, and has  signed off on the takeover of Swiss pesticide giant Syngenta by ChemChina.  If Monsanto/Bayer gets approved as well, just three corporations will dominate the majority of the world’s seed and pesticide markets, giving them enormous power to continue poisoning the planet at the expense of its living inhabitants.

The Shady History of Bayer and the Petrochemical Cartel

To understand the magnitude of this threat, it is necessary to delve into some history. This is not the first time Monsanto and Bayer have joined forces. In both world wars, they made explosives and poisonous gases using shared technologies that they sold to both sides. After World War II, they united as MOBAY (MonsantoBayer) and supplied the ingredients for Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.

In fact corporate mergers and cartels have played a central role in Bayer’s history. In 1904, it joined with German giants BASF and AGFA to form the first chemical cartel. After World War I, Germany’s entire chemical industry was merged to become I.G. Farben. By the beginning of World War II, I.G. Farben was the largest industrial corporation in Europe, the largest chemical company in the world, and part of the most gigantic and powerful cartel in all history.

A cartel is a grouping of companies bound by agreements designed to restrict competition and keep prices high. The dark history of the I.G. Farben cartel was detailed in a 1974 book titled World Without Cancer by G. Edward Griffin, who also wrote the best-selling Creature from Jekyll Island on the shady history of the Federal Reserve. Griffin quoted from a book titled Treason’s Peace by Howard Ambruster, an American chemical engineer who had studied the close relations between the German chemical trust and certain American corporations. Ambruster warned:

Farben is no mere industrial enterprise conducted by Germans for the extraction of profits at home and abroad.  Rather, it is and must be recognized as a cabalistic organization which, through foreign subsidiaries and secret tie-ups, operates a far-flung and highly efficient espionage machine — the ultimate purpose being world conquest . . . and a world superstate directed by Farben.¹⁰⁹

The I.G. Farben cartel arose out of the international oil industry.  Coal tar or crude oil is the source material for most commercial chemical products, including those used in drugs and explosives.  I.G. Farben established cartel agreements with hundreds of American companies. They had little choice but to capitulate after the Rockefeller empire, represented by Standard Oil of New Jersey, had done so, since they could not hope to compete with the Rockefeller/I.G. combination.

The Rockefeller group’s greatest influence was exerted through international finance and investment banking, putting them in control of a wide spectrum of industry. Their influence was particularly heavy in pharmaceuticals.  The directors of the American I.G. Chemical Company included Paul M. Warburg, brother of a director of the parent company in Germany and a chief architect of the Federal Reserve System.

The I.G. Farben cartel was technically disbanded at the Nuremberg War Trials following World War II, but in fact it merely split into three new companies — Bayer, Hoescht and BASF — which remain pharmaceutical giants today. In order to conceal its checkered history, Bayer orchestrated a merger with Monsanto in 1954, giving rise to the MOBAY Corporation. In 1964, the US Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against MOBAY and insisted that it be broken up, but the companies continued to work together unofficially.

In Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (2007), William Engdahl states that global food control and depopulation became US strategic policy under Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger, who was Secretary of State in the 1970s. Along with oil geopolitics, these policies were to be the new “solution” to the threats to US global power and continued US access to cheap raw materials from the developing world. “Control oil and you control nations,” Kissinger notoriously declared. “Control food and you control the people.”

Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity and establishing proprietary control with GMO seeds distributed by only a few transnational corporations led by Monsanto; and by a massive taxpayer-subsidized propaganda campaign in support of GMO seeds and neurotoxic pesticides. A de facto cartel of giant chemical, drug, oil, banking and insurance companies connected by interlocking directorates reaps the profits at both ends, by waging a very lucrative pharmaceutical assault on the diseases created by their toxic agricultural chemicals.

Going Organic: The Russian Approach

In the end, the Green Revolution engineered by Henry Kissinger to control markets and ensure US economic dominance may be our nemesis. While the US struggles to maintain its hegemony by economic coercion and military force, Russia is winning the battle for the health of the people and the environment. Vladimir Putin has banned GMOs and has set out to make Russia the world’s leading supplier of organic food.

Russian families are showing what can be done with permaculture methods on simple garden plots. In 2011, 40% of Russia’s food was grown on dachas (cottage gardens or allotments), predominantly organically. Dacha gardens produced over 80% of the country’s fruit and berries, over 66% of the vegetables, almost 80% of the potatoes and nearly 50% of the nation’s milk, much of it consumed raw. Russian author Vladimir Megre comments:

Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world – and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody’s got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year – so in the US, for example, gardeners’ output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens – and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.

In the US, only about 0.6 percent of the total agricultural area is devoted to organic farming. Most farmland is soaked in pesticides and herbicides. But the need for these toxic chemicals is a myth. In an October 2017 article in The Guardian, columnist George Monbiot cited studies showing that reducing the use of neonicotinoid pesticides actually increases production, because the pesticides harm or kill the pollinators on which crops depend. Rather than an international trade agreement that would enable giant transnational corporations to dictate to governments, he argues that we need a global treaty to regulate pesticides and require environmental impact assessments for farming. He writes:

Farmers and governments have been comprehensively conned by the global pesticide industry. It has ensured its products should not be properly regulated or even, in real-world conditions, properly assessed. . . . The profits of these companies depend on ecocide. Do we allow them to hold the world to ransom, or do we acknowledge that the survival of the living world is more important than returns to their shareholders?

President Trump has boasted of winning awards for environmental protection. If he is serious about protecting the environment, he needs to block the merger of Bayer and Monsanto, two agribusiness giants bent on destroying the ecosystem for private profit.

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This article was originally published on Truthdig.com.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including Web of Debt and The Public Bank Solution. Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

I have been waiting to see how long the British Prime Minister, the British Foreign Secretary, and the British Defense Secretary could continue to lie through their teeth before it caught up with them.

The liars got away with their lies longer than would have been possible if there was any longer any respect for truth in Western governments and media.

The British Foreign Secretary announced publicly that he was personally told by someone at the Porton Down laboratory that it was “absolutely categorical” that the nerve gas allegedly used in an attack on Skripal and his daughter came from Russia. The chief executive of the Porton Down laboratory has now stated that the scientists at the laboratory cannot confirm that the nerve agent is Russian.

Unlike NIST, which the US government forced to lie about how the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed, the British government was unable to force the Porton Down scientists to lie, or to lie enough. Consequently, the British government deleted its postings on social media as this one:

“Analysis by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down made clear that this was a military-grade Novichok nerve agent produced in Russia. Porton Down is OPCW-accredited and designated laboratory.” (Source: RT)

There is little doubt that the attack on the Skripals was an orchestration by the black op departments of the US and UK intelligence agencies. Just as George W. Bush was given a script to read about 9/11, the British government was handed a script to read about “the Skripal poisoning.”

This is the Russian government’s own stated conclusion.

The Russian Ambassador to the UK said,

“We have very serious suspicion that this provocation was done by British intelligence.”

Actually, the UK, a militarily insignificant country, would not have dared to make this level of provocation to Russia, which is capable of wiping the British off of the face of the earth in a few minutes at zero cost to Russia. The British were acting as agents of their masters in Washington. Surely, the Russian government knows this. In “the Western alliance,” the only country permitted to have an independent policy is the US.

The question before us is: what is the point of this blatent transparent provocation of Russia? What is the American deep state trying to achieve. Surely not to get the world destroyed in nuclear war, or so one would hope.

Nevertheless, war is a possibility. Pat Buchanan, a man of intense Washington experience, has asked, rather than asserted, if Trump is assembling a war cabinet with his choice of chief warmonger John Bolton as National Security Adviser, his choice of warmonger Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, his choice of the woman who ran the secret CIA torture prisons as CIA Director. If this is not a war cabinet, what is? It makes Hitler’s war cabinet look mild.

The demonization of Russia that has been ongoing since the Russian government blocked Obama’s planned invasion of Syria in behalf of Israel and Obama’s bombing of Iran in behalf of Israel has the appearance of preparing Western peoples for war with Russia. Before Washington destroyed Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen through its Saudi proxy, and attempted to destroy Syria through its “democratic rebels” proxy, Washington demonized the leaders and the countries that were subsequently destroyed. Why should Russia not think that Russia is being set up for destruction in the same way?

This scenario, should it be the one unfolding, is too scary. Unlike Hitler, whose secret weapons were not ready in time, Russia’s are. The West is so outclassed that nothing whatsoever will remain of the West if Russia’s weapons are unleashed on an arrogant, stupid, West drowning in Washington’s hubris.

Another possible answer to the question is that Washington is playing to the Atlanticist Integrationists in the Russian government and business and financial elite. The message is that you will never be accepted into the West until you get rid of Putin and accept Washington’s overlordship. Some of the Russian elite find this to be a tempting proposition. In my opinion it includes members of the Russian Academy of Sciences who value their relationships—free trips and paid speeches—in Western capitals. Washington buys everyone, Russian academics not excluded. Washington is making clear that paid trips for Russian academics abroad are at stake, Western financial holdings of Russian businesses and oligarchs are at risk of seizure along with Russian real property abroad, and important members of the Russian government and elite risk being sanctioned from traveling to the West.

In other words, Washington is telling members of the Russian elite, get rid of Putin, or we will get rid of you.

Just as Russian athletes were framed on false doping charges and prohibited from participating in the Olympics, now it seems Washington intends to cancel or boycott the World Cup in Russia. Washington intends to use Russian athletes against Putin, who is blamed for the expulsion of Russian athletes from the Olympics and for Russia’s possible loss of the World Cup.

What should Putin make of Trump’s invitation to come to Washington to discuss the arms race?

My advice to Putin is not to accept. It is too risky for Putin to put himself in Washington’s hands where he could be arrested on any number of false charges for which he is already set up in the Western media. He stole an American election — a felony. He invaded Ukraine and stole Crimea — war crimes. He poisoned Skripal and his daughter — attempted murder. He invaded Syria and defeated the “democratic forces” striving to bring democracy to Syria — more war crimes. He covered up Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Considering the compete and total lawlessness of the government in Washington, why would any sane person as demonized as Putin go there? Washington doesn’t even respect US law. Torture is a US crime as well as a crime under international law; yet President Trump has appointed a US and international criminal to be the Director of the CIA!!

Putin should tell Trump that whenever, if ever, Trump achieves control of the Deep State and can act independently as a president of the United States, then, and only then, he is welcome to Moscow to discuss the conditions on which the two countries can cooperate and mutually benefit. God forbid that Putin, who holds all the weapons cards, agree to any arms control with a government that has broken every agreement and thrown the pieces into the face of the Russian government.

If Putin succumbs to the Western harlot, Russia will be destroyed.

Washington is a hostile and determined enemy of Russia. The inability of Russia to accept this conclusion is a direct threat to the existence of Russia.

In the Russian military/security sphere there is realization that Russia now holds the balance of power and does not need to accept any “favors” from Washington. The director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryskin, said today that the West is an Orwellian version of itself in attempting to hold onto unilateral power when in fact, Western “influence, which used to be unchallenged, is now diminishing.” Washington’s unjustified arrogance, Naryskin said, “resembles the overconfident Biblical strongman Goliath, who was slain by the young David.”

Washington, Naryskin said, tries “to present the US-centered system of international relations, which is based on coercion and even blackmail, as an appearance of voluntary submission.” In this way, “the US is trying to masquerade the brutal American dictate as ‘Euroatlantic” or “international solidarity.”

Washington attempts to cover up its crimes, Narysin said, with “big talk about human rights and democracy,” but instead uses “military interventions into sovereign nations” which “were plunged into bloody chaos that had no place for such a fundamental right as a right to live. Over the past two decades hundreds of thousands [millions by my count] of innocent people fell victim to NATO aggression in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa.”

If President Putin makes the mistake of trusting Washington yet another time, he will destroy Russia and the world with it.

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

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

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

This article was originally published on GR in October 2017.

I recently went to a theater production of George Orwell’s ”1984” and also recently viewed the Ken Burns 10 episode documentary “The Vietnam War”on PBS. Although the Burns documentary was flawed in many respects, it was still well worth watching. I highly recommend that everybody watch it. It happens to be still running on PBS (one episode each Tuesday night in my Duluth, MN area).

Given the fact that the storylines of both the documentary and the play have relevance in our increasingly proto-fascist, increasingly militarized nation, I have decided to re-publish a slightly revised version of my April 4, 2017 Duty to Warn column about Orwell’s work of art and King’s critique of the Vietnam War. 

The famous date “April 4^th, 1984” appeared in one of the early pages of George Orwell’s most important novel (although the antifascist novel “Animal Farm” was in the same league as the antifascist novel “1984”). “1984” was published in 1949,and was a warning to readers about the continued threats to the world of a future totalitarian, corporatized, militarized police state – despite the defeat of Nazism in 1945. The novel was set in the fictional Oceania, once a thriving democracy which had been economically, structurally and morally torn apart by an atomic war that had started a perpetual world war. The date “April 4, 1984” was the first entry in the diary of Orwell’s main character, Winston Smith.

The previously free nation that he wrote about represented Great Britain and its allies forty years after the war had devastated the world, leaving it in a state with perpetual mind control and police state repression and torture and whose cruel and tyrannical elite (representing less than 1% of the population) ruled with an iron fist. The political system of Orwell’s Oceania was abbreviated INGSOC (short for English Socialism, which was obviously patterned after Hitler’s Nazi Party (short for National Socialism). The regime’s famous “doublethink” slogan was “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” (to which I admit I once added: “Bush is President”.

Orwell was an avowed anti-fascist, for he had experienced true peace and yet had witnessed a world war and the rise of militarism, corporatism and fascism in post-World War I Italy, Germany and Spain.

He was particularly aware of powerful fascist movements in his homeland that involved Oswald Mosley and his 1930s nationalist political party:the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists. Orwell saw the efforts of Vidkun Quisling’s fascist political party in nearby Norway, the National Unity Party.

A scene from George Orwell’s 1984 film

And Orwell may well have been aware of the foiled fascist coup d’etat attempt in 1933 that had been planned by America’s powerful, right-wing plutocrats that were afraid of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s plan to correct America’s obscene wealth disparity following the stock market crash of 1929. These wealthy, greedy, anti-patriotic and anti-democratic (and therefore traitorous) elites had conspired to overthrow the liberal Roosevelt administration by military force shortly after Roosevelt’s inauguration (google“The Business Plot to Overthrow Roosevelt” to find out who the elite traitors were).

Fascism is Alive and Well Despite Orwell’s and MLK’s Warnings

So Orwell understood the symbiotic relationships between Big Business and the Military/Industrial/Police State Complex (ie, fascism, whose orchestrators may be either friendly or frowning), whether it was occurring in Germany, Japan, Israel, South Africa, South America, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or in the United States. These relationships are currently alive and well and are in play in many 21^st century nations all around the world.

In 1936, knowing that he had to do something, Orwell joined the heroic anti-fascist Lincoln Brigade, along with many American idealists, and fought on the side of the pro-democracy forces in the civil war against the Spanish military dictator Francisco Franco. Interestingly, the Catholic Church supported the Catholic dictator and his brutal regime in the fight against the “godless” pro-democracy leftists (the same reason that the official Catholic Church in Germany supported the capitalist Hitler against the German Communist Party). In Spain’s killing fields, Orwell experienced the cruelty, carnage and futility of war up close and personal.

Witnessing the military devastation of future generations, the planet, the children and other living things during the war, he began writing 1984 right after Germany surrendered. The book was published in 1949. Tragically, Orwell died in 1950 before he could possibly appreciate how influential the book was.

Big Brother in 1984 is the Same as the Deep State in 2017

The protagonist of Orwell’s 1949 novel, Winston Smith, wrote the date “April 4, 1984” on the first page of his clandestine diary, fully realizing that the surveillance state he suffered under (called “Big Brother” in the novel) and in which he “lived” and worked would likely punish him, imprison him or even execute him if his act of defiance (writing a diary) was ever found out. To read some plot summaries of the novel, click here.

Some Pertinent Words of Wisdom from George Orwell

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”   

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”

“All that was required of them (i.e. the brain-washed masses)was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.” — 1984

April 4, 1968

April 4, 2017, was the 49^th anniversary of the execution of Martin Luther King, Jr. The assassination was orchestrated by un-identified – and therefore un-prosecuted – American Deep State assassins within (or hired by) the US government. The details of the plot to kill King have been documented in a number of books which have been successfully censored out of America’s consciousness and omitted from every officially-sanctioned history textbook.

For the real story of MLK’s murder, I recommend reading the book about the trial that the New York Times, the Washington Post and every other major media outlet in the US (!) black-balled – to their eternal shame. That jury trial posthumously exonerated James Earl Ray and identified some of the plotters. The book I am referring to is titled An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, Jr.

An Act of State was written by William Pepper, the attorney that prosecuted the case. During the trial, Pepper obtained a confession from one of the accomplices that was intimately involved in the murder. (An extended interview with the author is here. And a video of one of Pepper’s many speeches on the topic is here.)

April 4, 1967

Exactly one year before his assassination on April 4, 1968, King delivered a powerful speech to members of Clergy and Laity Concerned (condemning the war in Vietnam) at the Riverside Church in New York City. In that speech, King outlined many of the reasons that people of conscience like him – especially people of the Christian faith – needed to speak out against the atrocity-producing war in Vietnam.

That 1967 speech, much like the jury trial that proved that the United States government had framed James Earl Ray for the murder (thus proving complicity in the crime), was black-balled by the mainstream press. The speech was titled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence. It can be read in its entirety here.

MLK’s deservedly-famous anti-war speech was intolerable to the United States Deep State, which included the US military-industrial complex, the assorted corporate war profiteers, (especially the weapons industries), the CIA and even the FBI (J. Edgar Hoover hated King and everything he stood for). Most observers of the civil rights and anti-war movements realized in retrospect that the speech represented the signing of King’s own death warrant.

The assassination – as was also true of the executions of Robert Kennedy two months later and the execution of Jack Kennedy five years earlier was secretly planned behind the many closed doors of Deep State functionaries. (The patsies in those two assassinations were Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald, respectively.)

The patsy and perceived “white trash” James Earl Ray was falsely accused of the murder. Ray, under pressure and in solitary confinement was coerced to accept a plea bargain that was offered by a cunning Deep State-affiliated lawyer. It was a bargain that Ray eventually saw through and recanted of.

The documentation of this information is extensive, but in Deep State/Pentagon/NSA/CIA/FBI circles, and with corporate Big Media, Big Business, Big Banks and Big Weapons in control of almost everything, most of us are insufficiently aware of what they have been doing and are currently doing to those of us in the lower 99%. (Google “Mike Lofgren and the Deep State” or click this for more.)

Read the following words of wisdom from MLK and open your eyes to see what is happening to all those who are suffering and struggling to survive on our increasingly poisoned planet.

And then, in some way that matches with your abilities, please join the nonviolent anti-fascist resistance movement as aggressively as you are able – before we are faced with what George Orwell and Martin Luther King saw coming and what Winston Smith experienced.

Recall that Martin Luther King often said,

“It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social change is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the silence of the so-called good people.”

That truism should inspire every person of conscience to speak out.

Below are some extended excerpts from King’s April 4, 1967 Riverside Church speech. Whenever you read the word “Vietnam”, mentally insert Wounded Knee, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, East Timor, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Niger,  or any of the other scores of “targets” where US military forces (including Air Force, Navy, Army, Marine or their special commando units) have cavalierly drone-bombed or otherwise annihilated innocent civilians – and then the guilty parties experienced no remorse, guilt or war crimes indictments for doing so. (Note: it is usually only much later, after the combat mission is over, that remorse and guilt of those in the killing fields will strike the individual soldier who may only have been obeying the orders to kill from his or her equally guilty superiors.)

Some Pertinent Words of Wisdom from Martin Luther King

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”

“We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls ‘enemy’, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.”

“As I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.”

“They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945, after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony”.

“Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.”

“So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.”

“What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?

“We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

“Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call ‘fortified hamlets.'”

---

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, prosperity, democracy, civility and the health and longevity of the populace. Many of his columns are archived at

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=1;

https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=017930374292714292268%3Avw5cotp1r2c&q=gary+kohls+articles&sa=Search&siteurl=consortiumnews.com%2Farchives%2F&ref=consortiumnews.com%2Fabout%2F&ss=3193j1359707j10#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=gary%20kohls%20articles&gsc.page=1 or at

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

Featured image is from Countercurrents.

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We should carefully reflect on Martin Luther King’s  message to the World.

MLK understood the relationship between America’s war agenda and social justice and civil rights in America. “No one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war [Vietnam]”.

One cannot be a civil rights leader without taking a stance against U.S. led wars.

In the words of Martin Luther King: “Silence is Betrayal”.

Today with war hawks in the White House and the U.S. State department, America is leading a military adventure which in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity.

But this is not a talking point on network TV. Nor is it a concern of the “antiwar” movement. Meanwhile, the media is “killing the truth” either through distortion or omission.

Today we commemorate the passing of Martin Luther King who was assassinated in a high level conspiracy on the orders of key agencies of the US government (see text of Judgment).

Very few Americans are aware of the historical 1999 civil law suit of the King Family against the US Government. (Shelby County Court), Tennessee.

“After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations thatDr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. In a press statement held the following day in Atlanta, Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict, saying, “There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief.”

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 4, 2018

More than ever we need the support of our readers. Click image below to donate to Global Research 

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 50 Years Later: The Struggle Against Racism, War & Poverty Continues

By Abayomi Azikiwe, April 04, 2018

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for the elimination of national oppression, the war policy of the Pentagon and the necessity for the lifting the masses of people out of poverty. His assassination was a by-product of a system built on forced removals of the Indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans and the super-exploitation of workers in general.

Martin Luther King, Lesson for Today: Militarism and Economic Exploitation, Blatant Racism at Home and Imperialism Abroad

By Peter Ford, April 03, 2018

Martin Luther King was not deceived: American militarism and ‘the evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society’ are closely connected. That is why he came out bravely to express his opposition to the war in Vietnam. It is not fanciful to imagine that were he alive today he would be expressing similar opposition to America’s war against Syria.

Martin Luther King was Killed 50 Years Ago, April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tenn. Court Decision, U.S. “Government Agencies” Found Guilty in Martin Luther King’s Assassination 

By Carl Herman, April 03, 2018

After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.

Nonviolence or Nonexistence? The Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

By Robert J. Burrowes, April 02, 2018

Despite the vastly more perilous state of our planet, many people and organizations around the world are following in the footsteps of Gandhi, King and other nonviolent luminaries like Silo, and are engaged in what is effectively a last ditch stand to end the violence and put humanity on a path to peace, justice and sustainability.

“Beyond Vietnam”, Silence is Betrayal: Martin Luther King’s Historic 1967 Speech

By Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 04, 2018

Martin Luther King Jr. 4 April 1967 Speech at Riverside Church, Upper Manhattan, New York. The speech was delivered on the same day (April 4, 1967) one year before MLK was killed on April 4, 1968.

We Need a Martin Luther King Day of Truth

By Edward Curtin, January 15, 2018

As Martin Luther King’s birthday is celebrated with a national holiday, his death day disappears down the memory hole. Across the country – in response to the King Holiday and Service Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1994 – people will be encouraged to make the day one of service. Such service does not include King’s commitment to protest a decadent system of racial and economic injustice or non-violently resist the U.S. warfare state that he called “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.”

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

US Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer accused China of US Trade Act of 1974 violations, stating:

“1. China uses foreign ownership restrictions, such as joint venture requirements and foreign equity limitations, and various administrative review and licensing processes, to require or pressure technology transfer from US companies.”

“2. China’s regime of technology regulations forces US companies seeking to license technologies to Chinese entities to do so on non-market-based terms that favor

Chinese recipients.”

“3. China directs and unfairly facilitates the systematic investment in, and acquisition of,

US companies and assets by Chinese companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies and intellectual property and generate the transfer of technology to Chinese companies.”

“4. China conducts and supports unauthorized intrusions into, and theft from, the computer networks of US companies to access their sensitive commercial information and trade secrets.”

Lighthizer said he’d “publish a proposed list of products and any intended tariff increases within 15 days of the date of this memorandum.”

He proposed 25% tariffs worth about $50 billion in calendar year 2018 on designated Chinese products. A detailed technical list was itemized in the USTR document’s annex.

Around 1,300 Chinese products are targeted, including raw materials and components to finished products like autos.

Virginia-based Retail Industry Leaders Association vice president Hun Quach said

“(s)tuff that you put on your body: spared. Stuff you put in your home: targeted.”

US Chamber of Commerce executive vice president/head of international affairs Myron Brilliant said

“imposing taxes on products used daily by American consumers and job creators is not the way to achieve” fairness in trade.

Information Technology Council president Dean Garfield stressed

“(t)ariffs penalize US consumers by increasing prices on technology products and will not change China’s behavior,” adding:

“Instead, the administration should act consistent with international obligations and work with other countries to address systemic issues with China.”

Tariffs on targeted Chinese products are subject to 60 days of public review and comment before taking effect.

Beijing’s embassy in Washington

“strongly condemn(ed) the unfounded Section 301 investigation and the proposed list of products and tariff increases based on the investigation,” adding:

The US government’s “unilateralistic (sic) and protectionist action gravely violated fundamental (WTO) principles and values.”

“As the Chinese saying goes, it is only polite to reciprocate.” Beijing intends imposing tariffs “of equal scale and strength (on) US products in accordance with Chinese law.”

Beijing said it’ll levy 25% tariffs on 106 US products, including soybeans, automobiles, chemicals and aircraft – matching in value the $50 billion total on Chinese products.

US tariffs target Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” strategy, highlighting 10 economic sectors.

They include information technology, high-end machinery and robotics, aerospace, marine equipment and ships, advanced rail transport, new-energy vehicles, electric power, agricultural machinery, new materials and biomedical products.

In late March, Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro said

“China, in my view, brazenly has released this China 2025 plan that basically told the rest of the world, ‘We’re going to dominate every single emerging industry of the future, and therefore your economies aren’t going to have a future” – a disgraceful perversion of truth.

America wants its longstanding position as the world’s dominant political, economic, financial and military power maintained unchallenged.

As development of China, Russia and other nations advance considerably, America’s dominant position slips.

Russian super-weapons are more advanced than Washington’s. China is heading toward becoming the world’s leading economy.

Reality doesn’t go down well in America, slipping as other nations advance.

Trade wars assure losers, not winners. Trump’s strategy is wrongheaded. Economic damage done to both countries will be clearer in the months ahead.

*

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

UPDATE: I consulted a number of munitions experts before publishing this post. None responded till after it was published. An anthropologist specializing in guerrilla conflicts said he believed the bullets used in the massacre were high velocity munitions used normally to hit targets at long distances. When such bullets are used to hit targets at close range, the munitions have a highly explosive impact, causing the sorts of grievous injuries seen here. So even if the IDF didn’t use illegal weapons, it used bullets not meant for suppressing civil unrest. This caused severe injuries because they were inappropriate for the use made of them.

A trauma doctor treating the 750 severely injured Gazans in the Great March of Return massacre (17 were murdered and their suffering has ended, though their families will continue to suffer), offers evidence that the IDF used exploding bullets to maximize the damage done. The injuries are horrific. There’s a reason dum-dum bullets are illegal under international law. I usually make a point of refusing to display such images because they tend to be so incendiary and overwhelm the rational senses. But there are times when there images should and must be seen. This, I’m afraid is one of those times.

Pics from shifa hospital in #Gaza for the explosive bullets used by Israeli snipers and the huge damage caused by shooting it directly to the body of unarmed Palestinian at the border during #GreatReturnMarch
These bullets are internationally prohibited for its permanent damage! pic.twitter.com/SVXPuehAOn

— Dr-Abu Rayan Ziara (@Medo4Gaza) April 2, 2018

The IDF has revved up its mendacious media campaign falsely accusing the protesters of using “live fire,” which the army returned:

The IDF asserted that many protesters threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at its soldiers as well as opened fire on them…

As if, even if this were true, it would justify the murder of 17 protesters, when there were NO Israelis injured. Either those Palestinians who were supposedly firing at the IDF were terribly bad shots; or perhaps those shots were fired by Israeli mistarvim, infiltrators who blend into a crowd of protesters, then throw rocks at the army so that it is justified in commencing a violent suppression of the demonstration.

The army said that only “dozens” of Palestinians were hit by its fire, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Then it tried to claim that 10 of the dead were Palestinian “terrorists.” As if shooting an unarmed man to death is acceptable as long as you claim he is something worthy of killing. No evidence offered to substantiate the claim, by the way, except the names of various militant groups associated with each dead man, as they accompany him to the grave.

pic.twitter.com/wDWYaw13dW

— B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم (@btselem) March 31, 2018

The IDF also put its social media campaign into high gear, posting two especially troubling, offensive tweets. In one, it posted that the army, like God, knew every Palestinian who’d been killed or wounded and could account for every bullet fired. Though this was meant as one of those omniscient, God’s eye statements supposed to reassure the world that the IDF was in control, and that it behaved reasonably and proportionately to the protest; the impact was just the opposite.

The tweet implied that the IDF snipers had deliberately targeted and shot down every one of the 17 dead and 750 wounded. It indicated that the army response was premeditated and the massacre was precisely what the IDF intended from the outset. Though this is of course the truth, it’s not a truth the IDF was prepared to admit to the world. So the tweet was deleted without explanation. But those of us who follow these things know the truth, whether the army wants to admit it or not.

Hamas tells the world about a peacful protest, it should be called a violent riot pic.twitter.com/RFjEP1dBnL

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) March 30, 2018

Then there was this delightful bit of mendacity laced with a healthy dose of Islamophobia. Note that in the left panel the American posters protest civilly with the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building gracing the background. This is polite protest-tourism. When in truth, many American protests are violent and angry. Remember that Malcolm said that “violence is as American as apple pie.” Though none lead to nearly 1,000 protesters either dead or permanently maimed. If American military or police units perpetrated such a travesty there would be hundreds of thousands in the streets and there would be hell to pay.

Note the right hand panel, which features the dangerous, violent Palestinians throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks. In the background, a mosque ominously looms. The message: that Islam incites hatred and violence against Israel. A bit of cheap Islamophobic incitement, itself. Imagine if a Palestinian or Muslim posted this panel and instead of protesters in front of a mosque, there were Jews wearing kipot throwing rocks and a synagogue loomed in the background. That image would be deleted faster than you can say: “Anti-Semitism.” Apparently, some forms of religious hate are more acceptable than others.

Below, find my response to the IDF’S right-hand panel:

What the IDF brings to a protest? Snipers, tanks and tear gas resulting in 16 murdered Palestinians. Bullets vs sling shots=not a fair fight. #idflies #ReturnMarch https://t.co/FEwwLhvzbO

— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) March 30, 2018

Did The Onion hack NYT’s account? pic.twitter.com/G8X1ITaRMi

— Arash Karami (@thekarami) April 2, 2018

The NY Times apparently doesn’t believe that the Great March of Return deserves to be named as such in its pages since it tweets that the protest was “dubbed” with this name. You use such a word derisively when you question the motives of those who created the name. Not when you’re a serious journalistic enterprise reporting on a serious journalistic subject.

Note too that Israelis are sitting petrified in their homes expecting Palestinians to momentarily be flooding over the border to rip their property out from under them. Meanwhile, no mention of the thousands of Palestinians mourning the deaths and woundings of their own family members. Not a word of concern for their feelings or suffering.

Finally, where amidst this bloody mayhem was the U.S. ambassador to Israel? At the Kotel of course, where the settler idolaters he supports want to rip down the Haram al Sharif and replace it with the Third Temple. David Friedman was there to receive the priestly blessing and pray for the rebuilding of the Temple. Not too much consideration given, though, to how that Temple will impact the Muslims who also claim this spot as holy ground. But if Friedman did give it any though, he’d imagine a final triumphal Israeli victory over the Muslim forces of darkness. This is the vision of every settler and every Israeli ultra-nationalist. A Final Solution to the Palestinian problem.

You know as well as I that Friedman, Kushner, Greenblatt et al support the effort to rebuild the Temple. They’re not only Orthodox Jews, but supporters of an especially virulent form: Judean settlerism. A strain of Judaism which worships rocks and buildings more than it does the universalist ethical values of the Biblical prophets.

Israel’s Ambassador to Norway Left the Reservation

Norwegian activists alerted me to a shocking set of Facebook posts by the Israeli ambassador who railed at local citizens who besieged his Facebook page with criticism of the Israeli massacre. He was especially savage to one local pro-Palestine activist.

Though earlier in the thread he admits that he doesn’t speak Norwegian and Hansen’s posts were in Norwegian, he attacks her as an “anti-Semite.” Then he wields the coup de grace, smearing her by calling her a descendant of the Norwegian Nazi collaborator, Quisling. What supporting Palestinians under lethal fire has to do with being or supporting Nazis, is a historical analogy well above the ambassador’s pay grade.

He goes even further, saying that Norway is a “civilization that persecuted Jews for generations.” Them’s strong words. And completely false. The Nazis exterminated the Jews. There were very few Jews in Norway and any who perished died because the Nazis occupied the country and sealed their fate. Norway as a “civilization” was not responsible. In fact, there was a Norwegian resistance government based in London, which opposed the Nazis and their policies, including the extermination of Jews. But once again, the good ambassador can’t be bothered with historical niceties that spoil his invective.

In another post in this thread he blames the Norwegian activist for the murder of his parents at the hands of the Nazis. The problem is that his parents were German Jews, not Norwegian. And no Norwegian bears any responsibility for the deaths of German Jews. Oh my, what a cock-up this man has made of things.

Keep in mind that this is an ambassador whose job is to foster warm relations with the local populace. But here, he’s just called the entire Norwegian “civilization” Nazi collaborators who’ve hated Jews for centuries. I can’t see any way this man can represent Israeli interests in Norway. The national government should declare him persona non grata and send him packing. Maybe the next one taking his place can learn a few phrases in Norwegian, hire a good translator and a PR specialist to help him avoid such awful gaffes as Herr Schulz has made.

The history of Israeli ambassadors in Norway hasn’t been very auspicious lately. A few years ago, I wrote about the ambassador who tried to rape his housekeeper in the official residence. After she complained, he was sent packing after the story was published here and in Norway. There are so many similar stories of misbehaving Israeli diplomats which we’ve reported here, but that’s the subject for another post…

A federal court in Arizona has ordered the Trump administration to release public records about how much wildlife is being imported into the United States, including live animals for the pet trade and dead animals destined for clothing and biomedical research.

The court found the data, which includes the species’ names, quantity imported, and importing and exporting companies’ names, must be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The ruling stems from a 2016 FOIA request filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, followed by litigation after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refused to provide all the data.

“The United States is a huge hub for the wildlife trade, including trade in imperiled animals and plants,” said Tanya Sanerib, a senior attorney with the Center’s international program. “The public has every right to know what wildlife is coming across our borders. Given the enormous threats from wildlife trafficking, we’re glad to know these records will see the light of day.”

The United States imports millions of wildlife and plant parts each year from around the globe. Imported products include: birds, fish and turtles destined for the pet trade; python-skin boots and fur coats for the fashion industry; corals, orchids and shells used for home décor; lions and other animals killed as hunting trophies; and primates destined for medical research.

For decades the Fish and Wildlife Service has tracked wildlife import and export data and freely provided that data to conservation groups and the public. Beginning in 2016, however, the agency refused to release data from certain companies. Without the data, the public cannot track or evaluate whether U.S. trade is endangering wildlife at home or abroad and thus seek protections for those animals domestically or internationally.

The new court order directs the Service to release the disputed wildlife data within 14 days, finding the release of this basic import information would not disadvantage importing companies competitively.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq is the best-known example of America’s Government and press lying to fool its public to invade a foreign country that actually posed no threat to U.S. national security (so that America’s Defense Department was obviously America’s Aggression Department, and even its very name was a lie). However, that fraud and its resulting mega-violence were unfortunately typical, not at all exceptional, for the brutal American regime. This crucial but ugly fact will be documented here, so as to destroy (by clear facts) the lying U.S. regime’s supposed credibility — and this refers to both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party wings (and their ‘news’media), of our ruling aristocracy. (Same for America’s lapdog, UK.)

First, however: it’s important to document that both Americans and Brits were lied (and that word should be not only a noun, but also a verb, because “deceived” is far too soft a term for so heinous a consequence) into invading and occupying Iraq: 

A crucial date was 7 September 2002, when George W. Bush and Tony Blair both said that a new report had just been issued by the IAEA saying that Saddam Hussein was only six months away from having a nuclear weapon. The IAEA promptly denied that it had issued any such “new report” at all, and the ‘news’ media simply ignored the denial, which the IAEA then repeated weeks later, and it again was ignored; so, the false impression, that such an IAEA report had been issued, remained in the publics’ minds, and they consequently favored invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein before there would be, as Condoleezza Rice warned the next day following Bush-Blair, on September 8th, a “mushroom cloud”. It was all just lies — lies that were believed by the public, at the time, and even believed by many for a long time after we invaded. 

Some of these lies were derived from torturing detainees — torturing them to say what the U.S. and British regimes wanted them to say. But all were concocted by the perpetrating dictators. Like CIA Director George Tenet told his boss, George W. Bush, fooling the public into invading Iraq would be a “slam-dunk.”

Even today, many Americans still are successfully suckered into believing that torture extracts truths, instead of the desired lies, from suspects, to serve as ‘evidence’, in this ‘democracy’.

So: that’s the reality behind America’s destruction of Iraq — it was based upon lies from the Government, which were stenographically published and broadcast to the public as being truths, while the actual truths were being simultaneously hidden from the public — and the truth that the regime was lying didn’t get to reach us until we had already invaded and occupied the targeted country. That’s what happens when an evil regime fools its public, into supporting and doing its aristocracy’s invasion, at the taxpaying public’s expense, and psychopathically ignoring the massive horrors it is imposing upon the residents in the attacked country. This is psychopathy being displayed by a dictatorship — one that claims to be a ‘democracy’ and that demonizes other governments that it claims to be (and some of which, occasionally, are) dictatorships. With the ‘anti-communist’ excuse gone, only these types of lies still work; so, they’re used non-stop.

Here are other such instances:

Right now, the Obama-Trump regime, which use Al Qaeda in Syria to train and arm jihadists from around the world to go to Syria to fight and overthrow Syria’s Government and replace it by one that will be a stooge-regime of the U.S. aristocracy’s allied Saudi aristocracy (the Saud family), is, yet again, violating Trump’s promise to leave Syria as soon as ISIS is defeated. In contrast to the U.S. regime’s promises, Trump stays on in Syria after ISIS’s defeat and tries to carve out the northeastern part of Syria, now relying mainly upon Kurdish forces in Syria’s northeast, but also upon Al Qaeda-led jihadists in Ghouta and elsewhere, to serve as America’s “boots-on-the-ground,” for establishing the stooge-regime that the U.S. aristocracy and its allied Saudi and Israeli aristocracies want to control that land, so as to construct through it oil and gas pipelines to increase the invading aristocracy’s profits. 

How can a news-consumer tell if a supposed ‘news’-medium is honest about Syria? Here’s a simple and reliable method: If the ‘news’-medium uses the term ‘rebels’ instead of “jihadists” or “terrorists” in order to refer to the people who are trying to overthrow and replace Syria’s Government, then you know it’s lying, because those aren’t ‘democrats’ in any sense: they are jihadists-terrorists who are aiming to establish in Syria a fundamentalist-Sunni, Wahhabist-Salafist, and rabidly anti-Shia, dictatorship there, which will be basically run by the Sauds. For example, on 2 April 2018, the BBC headlined “Uncertainty Over Rebel Deal in Ghouta” instead of “Uncertainty Over Jihadist Deal in Ghouta” or “Over Terrorist Deal,” and so the BBC is clearly a lying propaganda-outlet that cannot reasonably be believed, but whose reports one instead must independently verify before citing or quoting to others. Similarly, the prior day, the Telegraph had bannered “Ghouta ‘deal struck’ as rebel fighters evacuated” and thus made clear that it too is propaganda, not reliable news-reporting. To show how consistent these types of deception are through time, the Telegraph, on 6 March 2013, had headlined an editorial “To end the conflict in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has to go” and called his overthrow “Our moral obligation”. And, just two days later, they bannered “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’” — which ‘news’ would have been real news-reporting if only those ‘rebels’ (and what they actually represented) had been at all honestly described. The basic technique of propaganda is to lie in the framing of an issue. It’s so routine as to be endemic in the ‘news’-reporting in any dictatorship. 

For yet another example: Any ‘news’-medium that refers to the overthrow in 2014 of Ukraine’s democratically elected Government, and its replacement by a racist-fascist (nazi) rabidly anti-Russian dictatorship, as having been not a coup but instead a ‘revolution’, is a rotten lying propaganda-medium, nothing better than that.

If the word “revolution” is used to describe the 2014 Ukraine overthrow, and the word “rebels” is used to refer to the fighters for the overthrow of Assad, not only is the medium consistently propaganda, but it is consistently pumping to precipitate World War III.

In my “The Nations that Accept Nazism Today” I documented that under Obama there were three: U.S., Ukraine, and Canada. And then in my “Trump Continues Obama’s Support of Nazism”, I documented that the number had declined to two — and now it was only U.S. and Ukraine. Those two news-reports (and my prior ones about Obama’s having backed nazism at the U.N.) were distributed free to all media, but only a few tiny media published any of them. The dictatorship needed to hide this shocking news from the public, not broadcast it to the public. The mainstream media (and some of the non-mainstream media) are fake-news media — and this comprises almost all of the ‘news’-media. On international relations, they’re just loaded with lies, and the key terms right now are, for Syria, “rebels” versus “jihadists”; and, for Ukraine, “revolution” versus “coup.”

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This article was originally published on Strategic Culture Foundation.

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].

The North Atlantic Alliance functions as an arm of US imperial policy – intended for offense, not defense, especially after Soviet Russia dissolved.

World peace and stability are unattainable as long as this killing machine exists, waging endless wars of aggression, raping and destroying one country after another, responsible for countless millions of casualties and vast destruction.

Washington controls NATO, defraying 75% of its budget, calling the shots, subservient alliance officials installed to serve its agenda.

At a time when no alliance enemies exist, they’re invented to justify NATO’s existence, including ISIS and other terrorist groups Washington created and supports, along with all nations on America’s target list for regime change – notably Russia, considered public enemy number one despite threatening no one.

According to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko,

“(t)he Skripal affair (is being) used…to tighten the ranks of the European Union and NATO” – at a time of “weakening US hegemony in the Middle East (given) conditions which could lead to a breakup of the” alliance,

Michel Chossudovsky explained, adding:

“Divisions within the Atlantic Alliance could take the form of one or more member states deciding to ‘Exit NATO,’ “ weakening the alliance,” especially its ability to pursue replacing all sovereign independent governments with pro-Western puppet rule.

On July 11 and 12, a NATO summit will be held, Washington pressuring the other 28 members to increase their military spending.

Was the Skripal incident planned to escalate East/West tensions, aiming to pressure NATO members to punish Russia politically and economically, along with increasing their military spending despite no credible threat justifying it?

Indeed so, it appears. According to Grushko,

“all this was planned, including due to the fact that it would be necessary to explain to the public in the near future where the money is going because it is colossal spending.”

The Skripal provocation is being used to justify what’s unjustifiable – manufacturing a Russian threat out of thin air when clearly none exists.

In an atmosphere of Russophobic hysteria, normal relations are fractured, conditions likely to worsen ahead, not improve. Expect further shoes to drop.

Serious consequences are risked if Washington and Britain fail to step back from the brink.

No sign of it so far, a cause for great concern. Nuclear war could erupt despite no one wanting it.

The unthinkable is possible, what should terrify everyone.

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

There is a great deal of misunderstanding between the people of the United States and North Korea. This is largely due to the lack of information the average U.S. citizen has about the suffering endured by Koreans during the Korean War, including war crimes committed by U.S. forces.

While U.S. forces carpet bombed North Korea, bombed irrigation dams, and threatened nuclear attack, their most controversial action was the use of bacteriological or biological weapons during the war.

For decades, the U.S. has strenuously denied the use of such weapons. At the same time, evidence of such use was kept from the American people. Even today, very few are aware of what really happened. Only in February 2018 was a full documentary report on germ warfare, prepared and written by mostly West European scientists, released online in easy-to-read format.

Some former Cold War researchers have maintained that China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea perpetuated a fraud in their claims of germ warfare. They rely on a dozen or so documents supposedly found by a rightwing Japanese journalist in Soviet archives. But these researchers never counted on the fact that someday the public could read documentary accounts of the biowar campaign for themselves.

The story that follows concerns one such episode, the dropping of plague-infected human fleas on a single small village. But we will see that the story itself is much larger, and includes a U.S. cover-up about Japan’s use of biological weapons in World War II, and testimony from a Marine Corps colonel about how the U.S. conceptualized its germ warfare campaign.

Excerpted from the 1952 “Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China,” p. 287 (p. 325 of linked PDF)

The tale begins with an American plane flying circles over and over a small North Korean village one moonless night in Spring 1952.

It was early Tuesday morning in the village of Kang-Sou, in South Pyongan Province. Song Chang-Won, a 32-year old peasant farmer had gone to his neighbor’s house one morning to ask him a farming-related question.

The date was March 25, 1952, and the country had been rent by war and invasion for exactly nine months now. Of much concern to North Koreans were the recent reports of American planes dropping plague and other germs over the country. The government had recently begun extraordinary efforts to contain the outbreak of epidemics.

Weeks earlier, on February 22, North Korea’s Foreign Minister, Bak Hun-Yung had officially protested the use of bacteriological warfare by the United States. On March 8, Chou En-Lai, Foreign Minister for the People’s Republic of China, made international headlines when he sent a telegram to the “Secretariat to the United Nations detailing claims of 448 germ warfare sorties by the US Air Force.”

Song’s neighbor was Pak Yun-Ho, a 26 year old peasant born and raised in the village. He had never travelled far from home. Unusually, Pak had been up for hours already. As he later told authorities, he was woken up by what he (and later others) identified as an American plane that had been circling above the village around 4:00am.

“The enemy plane flew away after circling several times without strafing or bombing. I couldn’t sleep again after this,” Pak told local investigators.

A few hours later he went to the nearby village well to wash his face. It was 6:00am and light was just gathering for the day. The well or small pond the peasants used was about a football field away from the cluster of small homes among which Pak lived. Arriving there, he was shocked to find “dozens of fleas floating on the surface of water in a water jar” a few yards east of the well.

Pak had filled the jar with fresh water only the night before. He was “surprised” at the sight of the fleas. He had heard about the claims of U.S. germ warfare in the country. Only a few weeks before, he had received a cholera-typhoid-paratyphoid-dysentery mixed vaccine, part of an intense public health campaign by North Korean authorities, following the germ warfare attacks. He knew he had to report what he’d seen.

A North Korean peasant villager gives testimony to the ISC, from video (link).

Hurrying back home, Pak ran into his neighbor Song, and took him to see the fleas. Song went to see the large jar, which had a nearly 20 inch (50 cm) opening on top. The fleas looked dark brown, and indeed they were floating on top of the water. The jar itself was surrounded by a good deal of grass and weeds.

Pak told interviewers,

“Song Chang-Won and I thought that these numerous fleas floating on the surface of water must have been dropped by the American plane circling over our village before dawn. We, therefore, immediately informed the chairman of the Village People’s Committee of this incident.”

The Mobile Epidemic Prevention Corps

The chairman brought the information to the local branch of the newly formed Mobile Epidemic Prevention Corps. As elsewhere, public health exigencies took precedence over forensic concerns, and most of the fleas were destroyed immediately. Even so, some of the fleas were gathered using sterile means and saved for later examination.

By noon that day, three members of the Mobile Epidemic Prevention Corps were onsite, investigating the strange flea phenomenon. They, too, found “dozens of fleas” floating on the water. Using sterile procedures, twenty fleas were placed into test tubes and sent to the Central Sanitary and Epidemic Prevention Station for examination.

The remaining fleas were burned and then buried. The area around the well and the vicinity was disinfected with 6% hexachlorane and 3% phenol. Rats were hunted, trapped and destroyed, because rats were believed to be carriers of bubonic plague, as during Europe’s infamous Black Death. No rats were found that carried plague. (Interestingly, only this year has scientific evidence been published showing the rat-plague connection is most likely false.) Inoculations against plague were administered to all the villagers, but it would turn out to be too late for Pak Yun-Ho.

No one saw any fleas falling from the sky, but everyone assumed they originated from the circling American plane. Neither was any projectile or device found that may have delivered the fleas, even though apparently there hadn’t been much of a search (or perhaps the fleas had been sprayed out of the plane, as we shall see had been the case in Japan’s use of plague in World War II).

Health officials’ energies went into disinfecting Pak’s house and all the other houses in the village. The district was quarantined. All told, 936 people lived in Kang-Sou.

Public health officials had heard about previous attacks of plague in the country. These infections all seemed to follow the path of American planes. The case seemed open and shut. North Korea had not had any history of bubonic plague for 500 years prior to 1952.

Six days after he discovered the fleas, Pak developed symptoms of plague. On the morning of April 2, he started to feel ill. He felt weak and suffered from chills and severe headache. He developed a high fever.

Pak went to see the doctor, who prescribed him Sulfadiazine, a common antibiotic used for plague at the time. He had a sister with him in the village. Perhaps she cared for him. He had suffered from malaria only the summer before.

That night, Pak could barely sleep. His temperature rose to 104 degrees fahrenheit. He had little appetite, but was quite thirsty. The doctor kept him on Sulfadiazine, and placed him on a glucose IV.

Portion of report from Chief, Mobile Epidemic Prevention Corps, in ISC report, pg. 288

By the afternoon of April 4, Pak was failing. Delirious, he drifted in and out of consciousness. His lips were turning blue. His vomit was greenish-yellow, and the lymph nodes in his groin were swollen and quite painful. That night, his body temperature started to rapidly fall. He died shortly before midnight.

While many efforts were taken to blunt any effects from the presumed U.S. bacterial warfare attack, it was determined that the young peasant from Kang-Sou died from septicemia, secondary to bubonic plague spread by fleas dropped from the American airplane. At least, this was the conclusion of the scientists who investigated the aftermath of this and other attacks.

The International Scientific Commission

By April 16, the laboratory reports confirmed what all suspected. The fleas Pak found were human fleas (Pulex irritans), accumulated in a strange and unnatural way. The bacteria isolated from them, as well as from Pak’s tissues after autopsy, was Pasteurella pestis, which causes plague.

Pasteurella pestis is more commonly referred to today as Yersinia pestis, after Alexandre Yersin, who first linked the bacillus to plague.

In September 1952, the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China (ISC) issued a report (large PDF, also see embed at end of this article) finding that the U.S. had conducted biological warfare during the Korean War.

The ISC linked Pak’s death to the discovery of plague-laden fleas in his village. His death was one piece in the chain of evidence in the case proving U.S. germ warfare.

The report noted:

“Since the beginning of 1952 numerous isolated foci of plague have appeared in North Korea, always associated with the sudden appearance of numbers of fleas and with the previous passage of American planes. Seven of these incidents, the earliest dating from 11th Feb., were reported in SIA/1, and in six of them the presence of the plague bacteria in the fleas was demonstrated. Document SIA/4 added the statement that after a delivery of fleas to the neighbourhood of An-Ju on the 18th Feb., fleas which were shown bacteriologically to contain Pasteurella pestis, a plague epidemic broke out at Bal-Nam-Ri in that district on the 25th. Out of a population of 600 in the village, 50 went down with plague and 36 died.”

(The ISC report states that “SIA/1”was the “First Report of the Korean Medical Service,” while “SIA/4” was the “International Democratic Lawyers’ Commission (Korea) Report.”)

The ISC also described another important instance of fleas carrying plague. A few months after the Kang-Sou incident, on April 23, two young lieutenants from the Chinese Volunteer Forces in Korea went back to pick up some wood they had cut the day before on a bare hillside outside Hoi-Yang, in the Song Dong district of North Korea. They were very surprised to find “a very dense mass of fleas” in the same spot that was clear the day before. The only change was that in the very early morning hours, around 4:00 am, an American plane had been spotted circling the area.

The ISC scientific experts noted acerbically:

“According to what is known of the oecology of this insect [the human flea], it would be impossible to find large numbers away from the houses of man. What, then, is to be said of the occurrence of a number of these insects estimated at many tens of thousands, at one time, on bare waste land remote from any human habitation? Such a witches’ sabbath was certainly not called together by any natural means.”

From report on bacteriological specimen, reproduced in ISC report, pp. 297–299

Charged with investigating the situation in the immediate aftermath of Pak’s discovery of the Kang-Sou fleas, the medical investigators in Kang-Sou had no actual experience with plague. Plague was unknown in their area. So they were relieved when Dr. Ch’en Wen-Kuei, the President of the Southwest Branch of the Chinese Medical Association came to the village to assist investigators there. He had been assigned recently to the Ministry of Health and Epidemic Prevention Service of Korea.

Imperial Japan Used Plague as Weapon in China

Dr. Ch’en knew a good deal about plague. He was the author of a 1941 report for Kuomintang authorities detailing a germ warfare attack by Japan’s biological warfare department, Unit 731, on the Chinese town of Changteh, in Hunan. He had plenty of experience with both plague and the experience of being attacked by biological weapons.

As in Kang-Sou, in Changteh there had been no plague bomb either. In that attack, however, eyewitnesses saw “wheat and rice grains, pieces of paper, cotton wadding” sprayed by air from a plane. Plague in the area developed within a few weeks. In Hunan province, almost 500 or so were to die from this and similar attacks.

From Dec. 13, 1946 memorandum from Frank Tavenner, Chief Prosecutor, IMTFE, to Soviet Major-General A. N. Vasilyev, concerning possible prosecution of Unit 731 for use of biological weapons (link)

After World War II, Ch’en’s report was subsequently filed with The International Military Tribunal For The Far East (IMTFE), which conducted war crime trials of Japanese military and civilian authorities.

In a controversial decision by the chief prosecutor for the IMTFE, Frank Tavenner, no evidence on biological warfare charges was allowed in the postwar war crimes trials. Supposedly this was because prosecutors could not link the germ warfare crimes to anyone who was specifically on trial. But in actuality, the U.S. had made a secret agreement with Japan’s biological warfare experts not to prosecute them if they gave all their data and expertise to U.S. biological warfare and intelligence departments.

Looking now at the evidence first found by Pak Yun-Ho, Dr. Ch’en concluded that the Korean and Chinese scientists were correct in identifying the Kang-Sou incident as a plague attack.

ISC investigators recounted his testimony:

“The whole picture in the case of this peasant-farmer was identical not only with that of those where the Japanese disseminated fleas infected with Pasteurella pestis between 1940 and 1944, but also with that of several other places in the northern part of Korea in 1952 where plague fleas suddenly appeared in large numbers after the passage of American planes…. The phenomena of 1952 were, in his opinion, on a considerably larger scale than anything which the Japanese had ever attempted.”

Image from International Scientific Commission (“Needham”) Report, pg. 318 (p. 355 of linked PDF)

Dr. Ch’en further described to investigators the method behind Japan’s use of plague:

“The Japanese system was to send planes to drop the fleas early morning, and then to keep up a desultory air bombardment all day for the purpose of confining the population to the shelters. When they returned to their homes in the evening, the concentrations of fleas would have dispersed and nothing untoward would be noticeable.”

In the case of the North Korean village, there was no bombing later in the day. In fact, at this point the U.S. biowar campaign was apparently experimental in nature.

A Top Marine Officer Presented a Biowar Timeline

According to a statement by Colonel Frank Schwable (image on the right), Chief of Staff of the First Marine Aircraft Wing, given to Chinese interrogators after his plane was shot down in on July 8, 1952,

“The general plan for bacteriological warfare in Korea was directed by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff in October, 1951…. The basic objective was at that time to test, under field conditions, the various elements of bacteriological warfare, and to possibly expand the field tests, at a later date, into an element of the regular combat operations, depending on the results obtained and the situation in Korea.”

Schwable continued,

“Terrain types to be tested included high areas, seacoast areas, open spaces, areas enclosed by mountains, isolated areas, areas relatively adjacent to one another, large and small towns and cities, congested cities and those relatively spread out….

All possible methods of delivery were to be tested as well as tactics developed to include initially, night attack and then expanding into day attack by specialized squadrons.”

It wasn’t until May 24, 1952 that, according to Col. Schwable, “General Barcus, Commanding General, 5th Air Force… directed General Jerome to extend the bacteriological warfare conducted by the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing into its operational stage.”

It would appear that much of what seems strange about the early months of the U.S. biological warfare campaign was due to its provisional, experimental nature.

Lt. Floyd B. O’Neal talks about his participation in germ warfare attacks before International Scientific Commission investigators, early Aug. 1952 at unidentified site in North Korea, from a video capture (link)

There is a great deal more evidence surrounding the use of U.S. bacteriological weapons during the Korean War, including both the evidence collected by the International Scientific Commission, led by British scientist Joseph Needham, and in a number of statements given both to interrogators, but also publicly (see videos here and here) by captured U.S. airmen.

Today, even as the Trump administration moves towards putative negotiations with the North Koreans over “denuclearlization” of the Korean peninsula, President Trump has been appointing new cabinet and national security officials, such as Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who have advocated an extremely hawkish stance towards North Korea.

Now is the time for the full truth to come out about the history of the United States in the Korean peninsula, so that the forces of peace can wage their own struggle with those who seek disastrous war.

Read the Needham Report here.

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Jeffrey Kaye is a Psychologist (retired), blogger, author of “Cover-up at Guantanamo”.

All images in this article are from the author.

The world watched in anger and horror as Israeli sharp shooters killed 18 Palestinian demonstrators and wounded more than 750 on March 31.  Footage of the blatant murder of civilians, including children shot in the back while running away, can be easily seen on the web.

What has been the U.S. government’s response? To protect Israel.

A bill now pending before Congress would make it illegal in the U.S. to support the movement to Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel.

100 organizations protest repressive bill

More than 100 national and state based organizations recently called on Congress to reject the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. In a public memo they contend that the oppressive bill, aimed at the BDS movement, is meant to stifle free speech and has extreme penalties for those who do not comply.

The memo explains,

“In the past two years, 24 states have enacted laws aimed at punishing participation in political boycotts for Palestinian rights. Together with these state laws, the Act will create a severe chilling effect on people across the country who are otherwise inclined to support First Amendment-protected boycotts for Palestinian rights, or who are merely curious to learn more.”

Rabbi Joseph Berman of Jewish Voice for Peace, a signer of the memo calls it a “gag bill” designed to “shield U.S. companies that support and profit from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the occupation.” Berman’s group plays a major role in BDS in the U.S.

What is BDS?

BDS is a Palestinian-led movement meant to pressure the state of Israel into ending its apartheid policies and human rights violations. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, it calls on groups and organizations across the world to join in to put a strain on Israel and its business partners and bring attention to the apartheid policies of Israel. Its three demands to the state of Israel are: 1) ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the West Bank separation wall, 2) recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and 3) respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194. Started in 2005, BDS has steadily gained traction, with support snowballing in recent years resulting in many victories.

The Israel Anti-boycott Act

This is the second time this bill has been submitted to Congress.  The first bill was withdrawn after legal advocacy groups and grass roots individuals and organizations raised an outcry. That bill sought to punish individuals who participate in a boycott of Israel.

While the amended version does not directly target individuals, it is still an atrocious attack on the free speech of those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.   The bill would prohibit companies, organizations and their employees from participating in, or even furnishing information about, a boycott of Israel called for by an international governmental organization like the European Union or the United Nations. Violations would be punishable with severe criminal financial penalties: a minimum of $250,000 and up to $1 million in penalties; the possibility of 20 years in prison. Just one penalty could absolutely cripple a progressive organization making it unable to do its work.

The Israel Anti-boycott Act would be the first such law on the federal level, giving more power to the federal government and presidential administrations to go after progressive groups who support the Palestinian cause, according to the memo.

Organizations responding to this outrageous attack

The over 100 groups that signed on to the memo include Palestinian, anti-war, civil rights watchdog groups and progressive religious organizations. Some are opposed the bill primarily because it is an assault on the Palestinian human rights movement, others because it is an assault on civil rights in general, setting a precedent that could usher in a whole new era of political suppression.

“This bill is unconstitutional because it seeks to impose the government’s political views on Americans who choose to express themselves through boycotts,” explained Ben Wizner, of the American Civil Liberties Union. It penalizes “participants in political boycotts in violation of the First Amendment.”

Political repression: a bipartisan effort

Many people think tactics like those described above are dirty tricks used only by the Republican Party and the rightwing. But in reality, both ruling class parties have long histories of championing political suppression and attacking progressive movements. This bill was originally introduced in the Senate by Benjamin Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland.

One of the most vocal proponents of the bill is Senate minority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer. Schumer recently called BDS “anti-Semitic” at this year’s American Israeli Public Affairs Committee conference, a false accusation often thrown at pro-Palestine organizations. Palestinian rights have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. This was made clear by the fact that 15 of the signers of the memo opposing the bill identify as Jewish groups.

Democrat and Republican presidents alike have always been quick to show their “allyship” to the state of Israel. The U.S. government has given billions of dollars of the most advanced military technology to Israel, along with other forms of support. Israel could not have fired into the March 31 Gaza demonstration without a green light from the Trump administration. In exchange for this support, Israel guards U.S. interests in the oil rich and strategic Middle East.

Bill or no bill, say no to apartheid!

Israel and its allies in Congress are scrambling to get the Israeli Anti-Boycott Act  passed because they fear how successful BDS is becoming. Boycotts, divestment and sanctions were tactics that lead to the fall of South African apartheid, and it can bring down Israeli apartheid as well.  But even if this repressive bill passes, organizers vow that it will not stop BDS. The bill will only evoke more outrage.

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This article was originally published on Liberation News.

Featured image is from the author.

It’s remarkable that the Euro and the Eurozone currency grouping hasn’t fallen apart until now. Greece could have done it in 2010 but it was avoided by extraordinary acts of the Euro governments and European Central Bank. Now those actions are coming back to haunt especially Germany who stands poised to become the “sugar daddy” of the debt-bloated southern Euro states such as Italy or Spain. This is one major reason that the anti-Brussels parties that triumphed in recent Italian elections—5-Star and Lega, suddenly dropped talk about leaving the Euro. They are betting that Macron and Markel and their proposed new EU architecture will pull their debt chestnuts out of the fire at expense of German taxpayers. It’s a timebomb ticking ever louder.

Ten years into the greatest financial meltdown in the history of finance, triggered by the USA sub-prime real estate bubble collapse in 2007, the Euro and its 19 member central banks are at a dangerous crossroad. It’s clear from her recent address to the German Parliament that Chancellor Merkel intends to lure Germany into what she and Macron intend to become a “transfer union.” In plain English that would mean the strong surplus economies of Germany and northern Europe including Holland, would have to “transfer” hundreds of billions of Euros to subsidize the deficit countries of Italy, Spain and southern Europe. The ultimate winner would be the shaky French and Southern Eurozone banks. It’s not surprising that Merkel, a close ally of former banker Marcon of France, is not being open with her people on what is at stake.

Target 2 Trap

In 2011, in the wake of the manipulated Greek bond crisis that triggered a Eurozone contagion panic in markets, the European Central Bank initiated a highly controversial and poorly understood disguised bailout known as Target 2.Without getting into the complex details of how Target 2 central bank balances function, they in effect allow the central banks of the Eurozone crisis countries, led by Italy and Spain, to issue state bonds which are in effect taken by the strong central banks of the Euro, notably Germany’s Bundesbank. Since 2011 and the Greek crisis, Target 2 balances have been growing phenomenally to where today the total is estimated for the Bundesbank alone at € 914 billion. This is about one third of German GDP.

In 2011 the highly-respected German economist and then-head of Munich’s IFO Institute, Hans-Werner Sinn, called the ECB use of Target 2 “The ECB’s stealth bail out.” He was the first to warn that the ECB Target 2 system for “Target balances constitute public credit relations in the same way as credit that is given via official rescue packages.”

In 2011 the sums involved were still a fraction of the present total. Today the sheer size of these little-publicized Target 2 central bank balances in the Eurozone, especially the Bundesbank, put enormous pressure on the more prudent northern EU countries, especially Germany, to finally drop resistance to adoption of George Soros’ plan to have the Euro countries issue common Eurobonds. With such Eurobonds, the public debt of euro-zone countries would be pooled and converted into Eurozone “Eurobonds” with collective responsibility. De facto that would mean German or other north EU taxpayers would support the debt of stressed countries like Italy or Portugal or Greece. For strong reasons former Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble fiercely resisted any supranational issuing of bonds as a disguised forced German bailout of the countries such as Italy or Spain.

As Sinn points out about the covert bailout Draghi’s ECB has created via the little-understood Target 2 central bank credits, “And yet the Bundesbank’s Target claims (on Italy, Spain, etc) are essentially worthless, because they can never be called due, and are issued at an interest rate determined by the debtors, which hold the majority on the ECB Governing Council. For the time being, they have set the interest rate to zero.” This is €914 today, alone for the German Bundesbank.

Merkel, SPD and Eurobonds

Now it becomes clear why Merkel elegantly pushed Schäuble aside by naming him CDU Parliamentary leader. His replacement, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, is rumored to be privately favorable to French President Macron’s proposal for a European banking union and a transfer union. In her first speech in March as Chancellor in the new Grand Coalition, Merkel suggested favoring plans to turn the €500 billion European Stability Mechanism, the eurozone’s crisis rescue fund since the crisis in 2013, into a permanent European Monetary Fund, an EU version of Washington’s International Monetary Fund.

The United Kingdom unknowingly admitted that its government has been lying, accusing Russia of allegedly poisoning former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia by the nerve agent Novichok on March 4 in Salisbury. The British government has already made two grave mistakes.

First, it reported that an assassin smeared a nerve agent on the door handle at Skripal’s home. Second, according to the doctors of the hospital where Yulia Skripal is being treated, her condition is getting better and her health status is currently described as stable.

Previously, the same doctors stated that Sergei Skripal and his daughter have only 1% hope of survival and ‘will be invalids for life’. Moreover, former chemical weapons scientist and former Russian chemical weapons’ program whistleblower Vil Mirzayanov, who is currently a leading western expert on toxic agents, assured the British media that 2 grams of Novichok will be enough to kill 500 people instantly. He also told the Daily Mail:

“These people are gone — this man and his daughter. Even if they survive they will not recover.”

It seems that Mirzayanov made these statements under the direction of the mainstream European and American media with the aim of discrediting his former homeland in the eyes of the world community.

If Sergey and Julia Skripal were poisoned in front of their house, then they wouldn’t have been able to walk through Salisbury. Thus, this fact completely excludes the use of nerve agent Novichok.

CNN, March 29

(The earlier report that Skripal and his daughter had been attacked while sitting on a bench at a shopping mall has also been refuted by Scotland Yard (GR Editor)).

Let us remind you, Scotland Yard detectives came to a conclusion that Sergey Skripal and his daughter were poisoned at their house. A particularly high concentration of agent was detected at the entrance door. If Skripal was poisoned at his home, then the agent used against him cannot be a nerve gas.

A number of experts believe that such gases can kill people within a few minutes. Skripal simply did not have time to walk to a restaurant or shopping center, where he was eventually found.

There is no way that the agent used to poison Skripal and his daughter could be Novichok. More likely the victims received an overdose of painkillers that are used for anesthetics.

This show with the involvement of pseudo-experts and baseless allegations was specially staged by the British government to increase tensions in Europe and contribute much to the rise of Russophobic sentiments around the world.

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Bassim al-Khalili is part of the Members of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Imagine! The western monotheistic world worships all these gods – never mind the contradiction in monotheistic –  and variations of gods – the Jewish god, the Muslim god, the variety and shades of Christian gods, stretching from the god substitute in Rome, to the reformist gods of Calvins, Luthers, Zwinglis, and of course, the god of the Freemasons – and surely many more –but none of them gods has the stomach, the courage in fact – to scream murder for what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for the last 70 years no end. None.

They are all silenced in awe. Let alone the people who follow these gods. They pray to them, they go to their masses and churches – all begging for the good of their souls – not even realizing that long ago – ages ago, centuries ago, they have seized having souls. Their emptiness is yawning. Yawning – so big, it’s gotten dark – a darkness ready to swallow the world, the western world that is, because only the western world has all these powerful gods.

And all these gods are gods of love and compassion. Imagine – a god of love that doesn’t dare telling his or her disciples and followers to stop hating, to stop killing, to love each other. Are they hypocrites, or just don’t have the guts to stand up and scream? – Aren’t they Almighties with endless powers inspired by endless love, by the godly spirit that is supposedly in all of us?

This godly spirit that allegedly besets us all, is killing helpless and unarmed, Palestinians, oppressed and raped for decades, deprived of their dignity and human rights, living in abject misery. Palestinians are slaughtered every day – 17 the other day, a real massacre of Palestinians. Where are the gods? They shut up. Do they even realize that they have the power, the godly power, to holler and yell – and shout for Love and Peace? For stopping the killing? Where are the gods that watch over Palestine? – Are they all sitting in armchairs, above the clouds, zipping beer and watching CNN, BBC, CNBC, DW et all… reporting on the love played out on mother earth, by the gods’ disciples.

Haven’t they noticed, these gods, are they too blind from comfort to see that love, their love, is running amok, that their disciples have forgotten what love is – the very love that is supposed to be guiding us all, since we all are part of you gods?

Gods wake up! – Palestine cannot wait. Palestine is being murdered, every day a little bit. And you, gods, say nothing. Your silence is assassination. Your silence – dear gods, disqualifies you from godliness. You don’t want that. You don’t want to lose the power of love and let evil reign. Do you?

If only one of you powerful gods would stand up, rise up and stand above Palestine with a fist full of roses screaming and yelling so loud that Israel would shrink back into the space they were graciously allocated out of love by you gods, that they would respect the lives of others, these Zionist-Israelis and all these AngloZionists and their vassals, that they would respect the voice of love, the voice that rules their gods’ kingdoms.

Just one god must have the courage to stand up with all his might and shout, NO! – But no, there is no such god.

Do we finally resign ourselves to recognize, that there is no god, that they are all fakes, that they are all excuses for us to keep murdering in the name of god, yes in the name of god, because all we ever do by worshipping is promising that we follow the ways of god, gods word, that we will love as god demands – but god never speaks. So, where is he gone?

Where is our protector, the protector also of Palestine, our father in heaven, to whom we pray to give us peace, every day we pray for peace and love? Where is he? Yet, the merciful god, never stands up to defend the rights of the powerless, those that have been deprived of their very right to live a decent live.

Palestine – you are loved in silence, by gods that have no voice, by gods that have no guts, by-god! by gods that have no soul. One asks, do they even exist, these gods of silence? Palestine your heart wrenching suffering is watched day by day by all these gods, and not one takes his power in his hands, heaves it above his head and shows the world that he IS god, because he knows what justice and love means – and he protects you – Palestine.

Palestine, you are on your own. There is no god to protect you, to bring justice to your people, Palestine – there is no god. Period. You live in a godless, loveless world, devoid of justice. Palestine, until we, the fake disciples of fake gods wake up to our soullessness and go searching for the lost spirit, the conscience that went floating away with our souls following greed and lust – until then, Palestine, you are alone. And only YOUR love for each other and YOUR soul which you haven’t lost will salvage you.

Little by little, some men and women of this godless world, will realize that the only god that has power is the god that lives – again – in us, if we allow him the space that he had when we were born. Only then, Palestine, with these men and women, who are willing to awaken to this dire reality, will you find solidarity and voices that dare to shout and to act as they shout – and bring re-birth to Love – the LOVE and PEACE you deserve, dear Palestine.

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

Featured image is from The HyperTexts.

April 4, 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of MLK in Memphis Tenn.

Featured image: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Benjamin Spock at UN Demonstration against Vietnam War, April 15, 1967 

This year also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the martyrdom of the central figure in the movement for Civil Rights and Peace in the United States during the 1960s.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for the elimination of national oppression, the war policy of the Pentagon and the necessity for the lifting the masses of people out of poverty. His assassination was a by-product of a system built on forced removals of the Indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans and the super-exploitation of workers in general.

Today, some five decades later, the presidency of Donald Trump is by no means an aberration within the socio-political context of American history. The dominant choice between Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her Republican counterpart Trump during 2016 represented two sides of the same fraudulent process of maintaining the status-quo.

As First Lady in the 1990s, Clinton witnessed the criminalization of tens of millions of African Americans and Latinos. The dreaded crime bill, the effective death penalty act and other reactionary legislation would facilitate the growth of the prison-industrial-complex incarcerating even larger numbers of oppressed peoples.

Although the myth exists of economic expansion in the 1990s, the growth was illusory in the sense that it empowered the financial institutions which ensnarled many into deeper debt both on a personal and institutional level. The following decade of the 2000s brought about the collapse of the financial matrix designed to maximize profits for the banks, insurance companies and their operatives within the private sector.

Millions were subjected to individual bankruptcies, home foreclosures and evictions. By 2008-2009, the working people of the U.S. were forced into paying for a bailout of the same banks and corporations which created the crisis. There was the initial $700 billion Congressional gift to the financial institutions in the fall of 2008. Later came the “restructuring” of two out of three auto firms being Chrysler and General Motors. Moreover, the Federal Reserve Bank forwarded trillions to the banks after 2008 with the explicit purpose of saving and fortifying international finance capital.

As a result of this process wages fell, homes were lost and many municipalities suffered from drastic declines in services, the lay-off of teachers and closing of schools, along with a heightening of state repression to reinforce the imposed austerity. African American wealth, largely deriving from home ownership, fell by at least 50 percent.

Over the last decade there has been no effort by the government or private capital to pay reparations to those affected by the Great Recession of the 2007-2010. President Barack Obama was placed in office at the apex of the crisis to redirect attention back towards the primacy of capital, the racist state apparatus and the war machine.

The impoverishment of the African American people remains a major issue requiring immediate action. A precipitous decline in household wealth, real wages and quality of life is framed by the government and corporate media as prosperity and stability. This scenario is being challenged with the stark reality of rising racial and class tensions in the U.S. and the escalation of a war being carried out both domestically and abroad.

Imperialism, National Oppression and the War Against the Poor

Dr. King saw the situation clearly when in 1966 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) took its campaign to Chicago and later Cleveland the following year. It is this aspect of the Civil Rights movement which is routinely overlooked by the establishment which heaps false praise on the leader after he was brutally isolated and assassinated at the aegis of the racist state.

Drawing the links between institutional racism, economic exploitation and war is important in understanding the struggle of the 1960s and the present. The only distinction in the governmental approach from five decades to 2018 is that the head-of-state is forthright in his disdain for non-European peoples, dispensing away with any notions of “liberalism and compassion.”

In his classic work entitled “The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America,” Samuel Yette, noted as early as 1971 in regard to the disproportional deployments and deaths among African Americans in the Vietnam War that:

“The question that cries out through all this, of course, is: If these thousands of young black and poor men could be so effectively prepared for a life in the military, why are they found so inept for life outside the military or paramilitary institutions such as the Army or Job Corps? One answer must be that racism and war, like capitalism, require institutional victims—a class of expendables.” (p. 152)

Yette then goes on to quote MLK who said during a speech:

“’We are willing to make the Negro (African Americans) 100 percent of a citizen in warfare, but reduce him to 50 percent of a citizen on American soil,’ Dr. King said, joining four U.S. Senators in a peace rally in Beverly Hills, California, February 25, 1967. ‘Half of all Negroes live in substandard housing and he (her, they) has half the income of whites. There is twice as much unemployment and infant mortality among Negroes. There were twice as many Negroes in combat in Vietnam at the beginning of 1967, and twice as many died in action—20.6 percent—in proportion to their numbers in the population as whites.”

Such observations and the interventions by the SCLC and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which came out in opposition to the Vietnam War a year prior to Dr. King, that set the stage for the assassination on April 4, 1968 in Memphis. Documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Counterintelligence Program indicates clearly the preoccupation with the African American movement from the proponents of nonviolent direct action such as Dr. King all the way to advocates of urban rebellion and revolutionary warfare.

From the summers of 1963 to 1968 well over 300 rebellions erupted in various areas throughout the U.S. from the West coast to the East as well as the South. In 1966-67, rebellions took on a more militant and politicized character prompting Dr. King to call for mass civil disobedience in the Northern cities particularly in Washington, D.C. on the questions of jobs and income. This was the basis of the Poor Peoples Campaign which was being organized when Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

The Legacy of Dr. King in 2018 and Beyond

This year there are plans to revive the Poor Peoples Campaign with direct actions scheduled for 25 different states beginning in the spring. With the best of intentions for this movement to remain nonviolent as Dr. King desired in 1968 may not necessarily be enough to contain the indignation of the masses.

After Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, while working in solidarity with an African American sanitation workers strike which represented the emerging phase of the Civil Rights and Black Power struggle encompassing profound class implications, rebellions broke out in approximately 125 cities around the U.S. The largest of these acts of resistance occurred in Washington, D.C., Chicago and Baltimore.

Chicago Rebellion after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968

The previous year, 1967, it was Newark on July 12 and Detroit on July 23, which ushered in a renewed phase of urban unrest which changed the direction of the African American Liberation Movement along with a reshaping of state repression which exists well into the 21st century. Out of the ashes of Newark, Detroit, Milwaukee and other cities emerged an armed revolutionary current which portends much for events of today.

Although the U.S. capitalist and imperialist system may appear to be strong in light of the indices emanating from the stock market and the Department of Labor, the contradictions between Black, Brown and White are reaching unprecedented levels. The gap is widening juxtaposing the rich and poor where the working class is exploited at unprecedented levels.

Lessons are to be learned from the events of 1968. It is essential to study these historical developments in order to devise new methods of struggle aimed at the empowerment of the people over the forces of oppression and exploitation.

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All images in this article are from the author.