Global Research

Considering that a nuclear conflict over North Korea appeared imminent in recent weeks, the winter Olympics at Pyeongchang, South Korea, is a most welcome distraction – and might even deter a major war on the peninsula.

The highlight of the games was the arrival of Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un. This was the first time a member of North Korea’s ruling Kim dynasty had come to South Korea. Her handshake with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in was a historic and welcome moment.

So too the planned joint marches by North and South Korean athletes under a new reunification flag.  For all Koreans, this was a deeply emotional and inspiring ceremony.

But not for US Vice President Mike Pence, who was sent by Trump to give the Olympics the evil eye.  He even refused to stand for the joint marchers in a surly act that spoke volumes about his role.  Whether he meets President Moon or Kim Yo-jong remains to be seen. Even a cup of tea between Pence and Kim could end all the crazy talk about nuclear war. Does anyone in Washington know that North Korea lies between China and Russia?

All this drama is happening as the Trump White House is advocating giving North Korea a `bloody nose.’  Meaning a massive bombing campaign that could very likely include nuclear weapons.  Trump, who received a reported five exemptions from military service because of a little bone spur in his foot, revels in military affairs and thinks a ‘bloody nose’ will warn Kim Jong-un to be good. Trump is planning a big military parade at which he will take the salute.

This writer went through US Army basic and advanced infantry training with a broken bone in my foot, and has no sympathy with the president’s militaristic pretensions.

South Korea’s able president Moon is moving heaven and earth to prevent a war in which his nation would be the main victim.  Some 2-3 million Korean civilians died in the 1950-53 Korean War.  All North Korea and much of South Korea were bombed flat by US air power.  Now, as tensions surge, US heavy bombers and nuclear weapons ring North Korea, ready to flatten the north and make the rubble bounce.

North Korea’s thousands of heavy guns dug into mountains just north of the DMZ (I’ve seen them) could flatten all of South Korea’s capitol, Seoul, north of the Han River, killing millions, not counting nukes and poison gas.  South Korea, the world’s eleventh industrial power, would again pay the terrible price for a new war on the peninsula.

One of VP Pence’s main missions is to whip up support among rightwing South Koreans who bitterly oppose any peace deal between the two Koreas and support attacking the north.  Many on South Korea’s hard right are evangelical Christians.  It’s no coincidence that Mike Pence, an ardent fundamentalist Protestant, was sent to show the flag and rally opposition to any détente with North Korea.  Whatever happened to ‘turn the other cheek?’

Washington does not want a lessening of tensions between the two Koreas.  And much less, talk of potential reunification.  If the two Koreas came to peace, what justification would the US have for keeping powerful air, land and naval forces in strategic South Korea, often called ‘America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier.’  Japan is no more favorable to a united Korea.

South Korean President Moon has been calling for a new, positive era in north-south relations. He has been adamant in opposing any chance of war on the peninsula.  But Washington has simply ignored Moon or brushed aside his objections to threats of war against North Korea.  The North Koreans routinely accused the south of being ‘American puppets.’  Pyongyang is the only ‘legitimate, truly independent Korean government,’ charges the north.

Interestingly, in the event of war, South Korea’s 655,000-man active armed forces and 4 million-man reserves come under the command of a four-star US general.  US nuclear weapons can be moved through South Korean bases.  The so-called joint US-South Korea joint command is mere window dressing.

It’s hard to say how close the US was to attacking North Korea.  Trump certainly backed himself into a corner by all his foolish threats to unleash ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea.  The Olympics delayed the rush to war against North Korea. But once they are over, the war drums will resume beating. President Trump is probably thinking about a dandy parade after a short, devastating attack on North Korea – provided, of course, that the troublesome northerners don’t manage to retaliate by landing a few nuclear warheads on Japan and Washington.

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Eric Margolis is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.

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Michel Chossudovsky

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Mainstream media messaging dictates much of what we think, hear, feel, say, and do.  It creates an engineered framework which excludes what the “Other”, those living in Imperial prey nations, think, hear, feel, say, and do. MSM demonizes them, and turns them into stock characters, imperial projections, as it obliterates their humanity, and our common humanity.

Mahmoud Altaweel, like all Syrians, defies this weaponized dehumanization. He lives in the northern part of Qunaitara, Golan, in a village called Haddar.  He teaches English to teens and to Red Crescent Society workers, — he had never heard of the White Helmets until Vanessa Beeley exposed them — and he told me via private Facebook messaging that he is “keen to expose terrorists and their supporters.”

Our conversation occurred after he wrote this commentary about a video taken in Idlib, Syria:

“Terrorists prosecute people by name of Allah. Humiliation and tyranny. This is the moderate opposition The WEST supports. Enjoy them US & EU they are yours. As Syrians we don’t want them”

Apparently, two men are being whipped because they violated Sharia by agreeing that a divorced woman could re-marry.

Altaweel explains that most Syrians reject the Wahhabism and extremist interpretations of Sharia Law that the NATO terrorists impose on occupied areas of Syria.

He says al Nusra and FSA terrorists attacked Haddar, and took control of some bordering villages. Haddar Self -Defence Groups, supported by the Syrian Arab Army and the Syrian government “logistically, morally and technically” successfully repelled the invaders.

“Backed by Israel, they started attacking us ( not breaking into the village) but by means of firing mortars, snipering people and farmers,” explains Altaweel, “They attacked us over than times. In defying our village not to be held by terrorists, 130 young people died. Ten or more houses completely shelled and smashed to the ground.”

When the SAA attacks terrorists, explains Altaweel, Israel attacks SAA positions “severely”. He adds that Israel also supplies terrorists with “medical aids, ammunition, reconnaissance, food stuff and financial supply”.

Altaweel says that “millions love and respect” President Assad and his wife, and they see Russians as brothers, but at the same time Syrians are sometimes critical of Russia.  He wonders “Why silence about American and Israeli violations?”

Altaweel’s voice, and the voices of millions living in the Eastern Mediterranean, ancient seed-grounds of civilization and religion, are all but disappeared by Western media, but these are the voices of Truth, Peace, and Justice.

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If you listen carefully on a quiet day, you can hear the gasps of future generations. They are looking back into a distant past where the decisions are being made that will erode any fair or equitable future.

This gasp – shared even today by many of us – reverberated across Europe at 17:50 (CET) on Tuesday when the EIB approved a loan of £1.3 billion (€1.5 billion) of Europeans’ money to fund the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

The TAP will be one part of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC); a series of inter-connected gas pipelines that seeks to pump 120 billion cubic meters of Caspian gas from Azerbaijan, across six countries to Europe. The TAP itself is a planned 870km long pipeline running from Greece to Italy, through Albania and the Adriatic Sea, making it just as ambitious as it is controversial.

Fossil fuel dependency

The EIB has succeeded in simultaneously undermining science, the Paris Accord, and democracy, by granting a loan irrespective of last week’s report that the SGC could be as emissions-intensive as coal power. The decision was taken in spite of widespread public resistance and and the contribution to catastrophic climate change.

The TAP has faced a significant public backlash over the years, stalling the loan at many stages. Last year, 4,000 emails from concerned citizens were send during EIB discussions, and this year a viral campaign began to circulate with global citizens campaigning with the slogan, ‘not with my money’.

But beyond the keyboard, there has been resistance on the ground. In Italy, 94 mayors have spoken out against the pipeline. There is widespread concern about the impact of  TAP on water supplies. In Albania and Greece, the pipe will be built directly through farmland.

However, rather than diplomatic discussion, this resistance has been met with militarisation and strong repression, with one Italian community being put on military lock-down. Within civil society, there is a deep feeling that TAP will undermine meaningful democracy.

The decision is at odds with the EU 2030 and 2050 energy and climate objectives. As Colin Roche, extractive industries campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe argues:

“The European Investment Bank is now shamelessly locking Europe into decades of fossil fuel dependency even as the window for fossil fuel use is slamming shut.”

Corruption and torture

“The banks’s biggest ever investment in dangerous fossil fuels undermines the EU’s commitment to climate action when we urgently need to be transitioning to a fossil free future.”

This loan comes after a wave of scientific warning against gas, for example a report released late last year which concluded categorically that if the EU is to deliver a mitigation programme of 2ºC then there can be no new gas infrastructure built. In short, gas is not a bridge to a clean energy future. It is a dead-end.

So why did the EIB grant such a contentious loan? The current line of the EU is that it will support ‘diversification of gas supply to meet future energy demands’. But perhaps we need to consider deeper political motives.

Russia currently provides 30 percent of EU’s natural gas, which has been a source of unease since the country historically halted its gas supply to Ukraine in 2014.

Hence, the EU seeks to ensure its own energy security by diversifying its supply chain away from alleged authoritarian regimes. However, TAP will import gas from Azerbaijan, a country that has never had a free election and is marred by allegations of corruption and torture.

Planning for failure

On top of this, the Azerbaijani Laundromat scandal last year exposed a $2.9 billion fund that was used by Azerbaijan to curry influence, and pay lobbyists, apologists and European politicians. So if the EU wants to diversify its gas supply away from what they decree to be less stable regimes, then perhaps this TAP logic doesn’t quite add up?

Perhaps switching from Russian gas is in fact a geopolitical move to undermine Russian influence? Or perhaps it is profit that is the puppet master of diplomacy? Or perhaps – as is so often the case – the lines between the two become further blurred.

The building of the pipe indicates the high levels of gas supply that Europe predicts for the future. With increased supply, price signals change and gas becomes cheaper. This in turn crowds out investment in gas’s future competitor – renewables.

Gas is not a companion to a renewable energy future, it is competition. The European Union now has €1.5 billion less to invest in renewable energy, pushing forward a decision that will lock us into a high-carbon future.

The the crux of TAP? Enormous sums of public money are being used to fund a programme that will be detrimental to both people and planet, meaning that the EU is actively planning for failure.

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Katie Hodgetts coordinates the UK Youth Climate Coalition’s 2018 campaign against gas, and works for Friends of the Earth Europe. More can be found at @ukycc or Katie tweets personally at @katiehodgettssx 

Featured image is from the author.

A new UN report has warned of potential collusion between human traffickers and state institutions in Libya, amidst further concerns that groups such as ISIS are exploiting these processes.

The 150-page report, which was collated by UN officials, was sent to a 15-member UN Security Council committee on Wednesday and documented how state security institutions might be working with smugglers to engage in illegal trafficking activities.

For several years, these smugglers have worked with complete impunity as they transferred thousands of people across the Mediterranean. Many of the people who undertook these dangerous journeys died as they attempted to made the perilous journey towards Europe.

In the report, Eritrean migrants told the UN officials that they had been arrested by the Special Deterrence Force (SDF) and then handed over to various smuggling networks. The SDF, which is an armed group affiliated with the Ministry of Interior of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), has thus far denied these allegations.

While questions of complicity between state officials and traffickers remain, fears are also growing that the so-called Islamic State are inserting themselves into these smuggling processes.

This comes as the group attempts to regain a foothold in Libya after its losses in 2016 and 2017. In mid-2016, the group was defeated in their onetime stronghold of Sirte by troops affiliated to the GNA and in late 2017, militants were finally defeated in the city of Benghazi by troops affiliated to the rival Libyan National Army (LNA), led by the General Khalifa Haftar.

While some see this as an opportunity for ISIS to gain prominence in Libya, others see it as a ploy by ‘gangs’ to exploit the current political and security instability to make money.

“Unfortunately, this exists. These gangs rob people and seek to make money illegally and criminally,” said Salah al-Din al-Jamali, the Arab League Envoy to Libya. “Therefore, the issue of trafficking in human beings must be viewed objectively and the security capabilities of the countries concerned – Libya and the Sahel countries – including Algeria, should be strengthened.”

Despite the prevalence of human trafficking, the Italian Interior Ministry announced that 3,500 people crossed from Libya to Italy this year, which marks a 60% reduction compared to this time last year.

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Featured image is from Al Shahid.

Nearly five months after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, more than a hundred thousand US citizens there still lack clean drinking water, and almost one-third of the island has no reliable electric power. As initial life-sustaining recovery efforts still grind toward completion, Puerto Rico’s Gov. Ricardo Rosselló (image below) has wasted no time using his territory’s recovery as an opportunity to push a number of policy proposals right out of the “disaster capitalism” playbook: from privatizing the island’s power utility to converting nearly all of its public schools to charters.

And while the mainstream US press has been mainly focused on the Trump administration’s woeful institutional response to the storm, it has barely noticed this much more radical political transformation of Puerto Rico, and the potentially disastrous long-term consequences for the citizens who live there.

Ever since Maria made landfall on September 20, the corporate press has been neglecting  the island in its coverage. Despite ranking second behind 2005’s Hurricane Katrina for property damage and lives lost, Maria has drawn markedly less media attention than the two major hurricanes that preceded it last summer. For example, according to a survey by the Tyndall Report, broadcast network evening news reports in 2017 devoted 30 percent less coverage to the aftermath of Maria than to Houston’s recovery from Hurricane Harvey. Likewise, Maria drew 12 percent less evening news coverage than Hurricane Irma’s devastation of Florida and the US Virgin Islands.

To be sure, major US news outlets have produced some notable pieces of accountability journalism about the storm’s aftermath. Intrepid reporting by the Daily Beast (10/24/17) uncovered how a tiny Montana energy contractor won an exorbitant $300 million no-bid contract to help restore the island’s power grid, a story that ultimately cost the head of the island’s power utility his job. A New York Times story this week (2/6/18) found similar incompetence and recklessness in Trump’s FEMA, which hired a one-woman company to provide 30 million meals to needy Puerto Ricans, only 50,000 of which were ever delivered.

New York Times (2/6/18)

However powerful, the focus of these breakout stories is mainly anecdotal, and the outrage they engender tends to fade from headlines and cable news talk shows after a few days. In her seminal report on “disaster capitalism” (The Nation,  4/14/05), author and activist Naomi Klein noted how these stories can also have the perverse effect of distracting from much larger, systemic transgressions happening out in the open:

If anything, the stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask this deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. And on this front, the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently that the privatizations and land grabs are usually locked in before the local population knows what hit them.

Nowhere was this “shock doctrine,” as Klein christened it, more evident than in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. Mere weeks after the storm hit—with many victims still missing or their bodies unrecovered—Republicans were already planning an onslaught of right-wing policy changes for the ravaged city, but few in the mainstream press took notice.

One example was an email list of policies sent from Congress’s Republican Study Committee, at the time chaired by then-Indiana Rep. Mike Pence. The memo proposed dozens of “pro–free market” ideas for the Bush administration to consider for the still-suffering city, which were little more than a wish list for corporations and private enterprise.

Similarly, Rep. Richard Baker, a Republican from New Orleans, offered this famously macabre comment on the storm’s devastating impact: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” He got his wish, and accompanying the subsequent massive makeover of the New Orleans public housing was a rapid, wholesale restructuring of the city’s troubled school system.

2 weeks after announcing the privatization of the electricity system, Puerto Rico's governor just declared the school system will be privatized (charters, vouchers), just like post-Katrina New Orleans. Don't let anyone tell you it was a success: https://t.co/OKQPAbVqoU https://t.co/l9OKCTxpPX

— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) February 5, 2018

Klein’s 2007 book, Shock Doctrine, zeroes in on the bifurcated response post-Katrina and its impact on the schools:

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid was brought back online, the auctioning off of New Orleans’ school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city’s poor resident still in exile, New Orleans’ public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools. Before Hurricane Katrina, the school board had run 123 public schools; now it ran just four. Before that storm, there had been seven charter schools in the city; now there were 31. New Orleans teachers used to be represented by a strong union; now the union’s contract had been shredded, and its 4,700 members had all been fired. Some of the younger teachers were rehired by the charters, at reduced salaries; most were not.

More than a decade later, Klein’s book sounds eerily prophetic of Puerto Rico Governor Roselló’s post-Maria plans. Under his education reform proposal, announced just this week, the island would closely follow the roadmap of New Orleans, creating a voucher system and converting more than 800 public schools to charters that would be run by non-profits or corporations. If implemented—the plan would require approval of the Puerto Rican legislature, but many in the majority party have already come out in support of it—the move would represent a seismic shift for the island’s struggling school system, and a major milestone for US education policy.

But mainstream US news organizations mostly shrugged at the news. Many, like the Washington Post, CBS News, CNN and MSNBC, didn’t even bother to cover it. For its part, the New York Times didn’t bother to write its own story. Instead, it just ran the same syndicated Associated Press article (2/5/18) that NBC News (2/5/18), ABC News (2/5/18) and Fox News (2/6/18) did.

El Nuevo Dia (2/6/18)

Tellingly, none of the national news coverage saw fit to mention New Orleans’ post-Katrina experience with charter schools, even though it closely resembles what Rosselló is proposing. Local news outlet El Nuevo Dia (2/6/18) did, however, giving its readers key context that the New York Times and Associated Press left out. It painted a much different picture than Rosselló’s rosy outlook:

In Louisiana, which is one of the models the Island tries to follow, all public schools in the city of New Orleans were converted into charters after Hurricane Katrina, but did not reach the expected academic achievement.

On the contrary, education and civic organizations have denounced segregation in the education system and that the poorest or most vulnerable did not have the same access to high-quality educational opportunities.

In fact, a three-month investigation of New Orleans charter schools in 2015 by In These Times (8/28/15) found even more systemic failures. Formerly tight-knit communities were disrupted by the voucher system, teachers unions were gutted in favor of younger, cheaper and less experienced staff, and many students were left out or left behind because they were considered too difficult to teach, and thus threatened the charter schools’ standardized test scores track record. And a New Orleans Times-Picayune analysis (4/20/16) found that dozens of the city’s charter school executives ended up earning well over six-figure salaries, while teachers’ pay averaged closer to $50,000.

A similar scenario played out at the end of January, when Rosselló announced plans to privatize PREPA, Puerto Rico’s antiquated, bankrupt public utility. Again, news organizations like ABC News (1/29/18), the New York Times (1/29/18), the Washington Post (1/29/18) and Fox News (1/29/18) all relied on one or two of the same news briefs from the AP for their coverage. However, few of these news organizations chose to include critical, historical detail from the AP, buried deep in one of its stories (1/23/18):

Puerto Rico once privatized its water and sewer company only to have the government take it back in the early 2000s after problems with service, billing and quality requirements set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

How would Rosselló’s plan avoid these same past mistakes? You won’t find any answers.

CNN (1/22/18) and NBC News (1/22/18) wrote their own short articles on privatizing PREPA, but front-loaded Rosselló’s claims, with only cursory skepticism over selling off such a critical public asset. With no other alternative sources or plans presented, their coverage made privatization seem like a fait accompli.

Left unmentioned were some of the reasons for PREPA’s dreadful state. To appease bondholders of Puerto Rico’s skyrocketing debt, the island instituted austerity measures in 2014, prompting hundreds of experienced PREPA employees to retire early to claim their pensions before the cuts kicked in (Economist, 10/19/17). They were never replaced, leaving maintenance and upgrades languishing. Similarly, Rosselló recently began stacking PREPA’s board with political cronies that had little to no experience in running a public utility.

A Wall Street Journal article (1/22/1) on PREPA’s possible privatization waited until the final paragraph of the story to point out this detail, as well as the fact that Roselló intentionally undermined a regulatory appointee charged with oversight of the agency—something particularly relevant to how well a future privatized Puerto Rican power company might respond to public needs.

Exacerbating nearly all of the many crises facing Puerto Rico is the territory’s broader fiscal situation—it currently suffers from $70 billion in debt—and federal oversight more focused on Wall Street bondholders than American citizens living in Puerto Rico. Again, only the Associated Press (1/17/18) seems to have paid much attention to the fact that, last month, the Trump administration withheld an already-approved billion-dollar emergency disaster loan, claiming Puerto Rico had too much cash on hand. This follows a little-reported announcement in late 2016 that the federal control board overseeing the territory’s finances rejected legislation creating a $100 million emergency fund for municipalities struggling in Maria’s aftermath—no matter that most of the island’s power, water and sewer systems have little to no funds left for operations.

A rare Washington Post story (1/23/18) on the territory’s fiscal problems noted that Republicans in Congress are still intent on forcing it to honor its crushing financial burden, despite projections that the island’s economy will be devastated by a massive diaspora of nearly 500,000 people by 2020, according to one Hunter College study. As the Post story noted, House Natural Resources Committee chair Rob Bishop (R.-Utah) said the goal of the federal oversight legislation was “to return Puerto Rico to fiscal accountability and the capital markets, and this can only occur if the fiscal plans respect the lawful priorities and liens of debt holders.” Servicing a monumental debt in the midst of the island’s 11-plus-year recession while trying to rebuild from one of worst natural disasters in US history is tantamount to fiscal harakiri. But it does provide a handy excuse for Puerto Rican officials looking to tear down or sell off whatever is left of the public commons for pennies on the dollar.

Wall Street Journal (11/24/17)

When not ignoring the the pillaging of Puerto Rico, some in the corporate press were not so subtly trying to make it worse. In late November, a Wall Street Journal op-ed by “Americas” columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady (11/24/17)—headlined “Puerto Rico Doesn’t Want Reform”—criticized the territory’s unwillingness to extend its own post-Maria misery when it dared to reject a predatory funding offer from PREPA bondholders.

Puerto Rico rejected the offer. “The bondholders’ proposal is not viable and would severely hamper and limit PREPA’s capacity to successfully manage its recovery,” Puerto Rico’s Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority said at the time. It added that the offer had the “appearance” of “being made for the purpose of favorably impacting the trading price of existing debt.” Heaven forbid.

The arch condescension in that “heaven forbid” sums up the disaster capitalism mindset. It also speaks to a broader failure of the press to cover more radical solutions to Puerto Rico’s formidable struggles. One such proposed solution, co-authored by Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz back in September, has been all but blacked out of corporate media’s post-Maria coverage of the territory, although Bloomberg (1/16/18) did mention it when the territory’s new fiscal plan was rolled out early this year. Coincidentally, this plan rejects the conventional wisdom that the island should further retrench into austerity while stripping down its assets and selling it off for parts. Instead, Stiglitz calls for more borrowing and expansion, coupled with massive write-offs of Puerto Rico’s debt—as much as 80 to 90 percent—and canceling interest payments on the remaining debt for at least five years.

Ironically, none other than President Trump endorsed the idea of radical debt forgiveness during his post-Maria visit to the island in October. “They owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street, and we’re going to have to wipe that out,” he said about Puerto Rico in the Washington Post (10/3/17). “You’re going to say goodbye to that. I don’t know if it’s Goldman Sachs, but whoever it is, you can wave goodbye to that.”

This off-the-cuff comment, from someone whose White House is chock full of Goldman Sachs alums, clearly caught his staff off guard. A day later, it fell to his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, to do damage control, reassuring bondholders that they could safely ignore the president’s comments. In statements to the press, Mulvaney made it clear that a Puerto Rican debt jubilee, like so many of this president’s populist-sounding promises, would not be happening (New York Times, 10/4/17).

But just because the White House wants to memory hole the inconvenient truth about Puerto Rico’s indentured servitude at the hands of Wall Street doesn’t mean the press should willingly oblige. Nor should journalists continue to ignore the long-term impacts of the privatization schemes its governor is intent on pushing through, or how the federal government enables them—not merely through its woeful emergency response, but in its failure to fund a full recovery.

Though last week’s government shutdown budget deal did allocate more money for the island, the new disaster relief package—for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, as well as California wildfires—only totaled $89 billion, whereas Puerto Rican officials have estimated more than $94 billion would be needed for the island’s recovery alone. And good luck seeing any news coverage point out that this shortfall could have easily been made up by taking some of the extra $165 billion that Congress happily added to the military budget. But then, under the “shock doctrine,” disasters are to be exploited, not mitigated—and the main role of the corporate press is not to notice.

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Reed Richardson is a media critic and writer whose work has appeared in The Nation, AlterNet, Harvard University’s Nieman Reports and the textbook Media Ethics (Current Controversies).

After more than a year of excesses by a president whom not only centrists and progressives but also a thinking conservative such as George Will can aptly assess to be the worst U.S. president ever, outrage fatigue has set in on many fronts. Throwing government ethics into the trash, indulging in other personal conduct that once would have been a certain disqualifier for higher office, and so on—Donald Trump has given the outraged too much ground to cover. Even just limiting oneself to high policy, it is hard to know where to start: the plummeting of the standing of the United States in the eyes of the world, the acceleration of a drive toward global environmental catastrophe, or something else.

A good case can be made, however, for prioritizing the attacks on critical institutions of American liberal democracy. This part of the Trumpian record also has several facets, including, for example, the assaults on a free press. But the one facet that has reached a fortissimo in recent weeks, and in some respects is most alarming, is the effort to take down the Justice Department and FBI and to make law enforcement servile to narrow political objectives.

One must always include the caveat that tomorrow or next week this president may do something else—such as reckless nuclear brinkmanship—that may warrant even louder and more immediate alarm bells. But there is a good reason that interior ministries, internal security services, and national police forces are among the first institutions that aspiring authoritarians want to subdue and control. They are the means for turning what had been a democracy into a police state.

Some among the outraged have looked for glimmers of hope, perhaps in the interest of avoiding mass despair. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, in likening Trump to the commie-hunting demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy, noted that McCarthy overreached when he attacked the Army, and that “Trump may have overreached by going after the FBI.” Cohen does qualify this glimmer by further observing that “McCarthy, an alcoholic, wrecked himself, but I wouldn’t count on Trump doing the same.”

Max Boot also alluded to McCarthy while comparing him not to Trump but instead to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who has functioned as Trump’s factotum in denigrating the FBI and anyone involved in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Boot accurately explains how Nunes’s efforts along this line have been without substance or merit. But the role of Nunes—whom House Speaker Paul Ryan appointed to his committee chairmanship—points to a larger and alarming aspect of Trump’s already alarming campaign against Justice and the FBI. An entire political party, with a few commendable exceptions, has been covering for, condoning, and even actively supporting many of Trump’s excesses. The excesses have included not only damaging policies such as turning sound fiscal policy upside down but also the assault on nonpartisan law enforcement—for the purpose of discrediting preemptively anything coming out of the special counsel’s investigation that will be damaging or politically embarrassing to Trump.

Political circumstances today are different, in important and relevant ways, from the McCarthy era. Moderate Republicans are an all-but-extinct species, in contrast to the 1950s when a Republican paragon of moderation was in the White House. Today’s scorched-earth partisanship is amplified by other changes in how the American body politic operates, including the development of tribal belief systems sustained by social media and slanted news and talk programs on mass media.

Even before Trump was elected, he indicated the direction he would take things regarding the politicization of law enforcement. Trump’s talk during the campaign of prosecuting his opponent, and the chants at the Republican convention of “lock her up”, were unlike anything heard not only during the 1950s outside of McCarthy’s calumnies but also through most of U.S. history. It is instead what is heard in failed democracies abroad.

Even if Trump doesn’t get his wall along the Mexican border, Nunes is building him a wall in committee offices, all the better to preclude any Democratic interference in, or even awareness of, future efforts to subvert the special counsel’s investigation. Meanwhile, Nunes’s destruction of responsible bipartisan oversight in an important committee may be the canary in the coalmine announcing that other elements of the nonpartisan rule of law are about to get blown up. Notwithstanding the best efforts of dedicated officers in the FBI, it will be difficult to prevent the assaults from above and from Capitol Hill from having some politicizing effect on the selection, pace, and direction of investigations. FBI Director Christopher Wray so far has sounded forthright about protecting the FBI’s mission, but the silence of Attorney General Jeff Sessions on this subject is inexcusable. Everybody recognizes that there are policy matters on which the attorney general is the president’s man and does his bidding, but fulfilling the duty of independent and objective law enforcement is not supposed to be one of them.

And what about law enforcement elsewhere, such as at the chronically underfunded and understaffed Internal Revenue Service? Given their anti-tax ethos combined with their disdain for objective law enforcement, neither the administration nor congressional Republicans may end up caring very much if tax avoidance increasingly slides into tax evasion or if the IRS has enough resources to enforce the law. This will make the U.S. budget deficit even worse, because a dollar used for enforcing tax laws returns more than a dollar in owed taxes. It also will make the United States look ever more like third world countries whose finances as well as political procedures are screwed up.

Meanwhile, try to sustain your outrage.

*

Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community. 

A Russian ground-attack aircraft – a Sukhoi-25 – was shot down using an anti-aircraft missile over the northern Syrian province of Idlib by Al Qaeda affiliates. The pilot was reportedly killed by militants according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The BBC in its article, “Russian jet shot down in Syria’s Idlib province,” would report:

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – formerly linked to al-Qaeda – said it had shot down the plane.

In a statement released on social media, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group claimed it had shot down the plane using a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile.

The BBC and other Western media organizations have worked ceaselessly to aid groups like “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” in their efforts to re-brand themselves and obfuscate public awareness over their status as terrorist organizations, thus making it easier for either the US and its European allies to aid and arm such groups, or for Western allies in the Middle East to aid and arm them.

That “Tahrir al-Sham” possesses anti-aircraft missiles indicates they are the recipients of state-sponsored arms deliveries. The fact that they murdered the downed pilot – a war crime – reaffirms their status as a terrorist organization.

Al Qaeda affiliates possessing anti-aircraft weapon systems should come as no surprise. The US had literally handed hundreds of anti-aircraft missiles to militants in Afghanistan during the 1980’s which included Arab volunteers assisted by Al Qaeda. With these missiles, militants likewise downed Russia warplanes and helicopters.

Arming Al Qaeda in Syria was ‘Plan A’ Before the Arab Spring “Sprung”

The Washington Post in its article, “Russia strikes back as Syrian rebels take credit for shooting down fighter jet, killing pilot,” regarding allegations that that the United States was responsible for Al Qaeda possessing anti-aircraft weapons used to down Russian aircraft would report:

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said any allegation that the United States has provided MANPAD missiles in Syria was untrue, and she denied that U.S. equipment was used in shooting down the Russian plane.

“The United States has never provided MANPAD missiles to any group in Syria, and we are deeply concerned that such weapons are being used,” she said.

Yet an examination of the Syrian conflict’s true inception reveals just how dubious this denial by the US State Department really is.

The Syrian conflict was conceived years before the first protesters took to the streets during the 2011 so-called “Arab Spring.”

US policymakers had been preparing since as early as 2007 to wage proxy war on Syria and Iran. To do so they built upon a history of collaboration with Saudi Arabia and other notorious state-sponsors of terrorism – which includes the joint US-Saudi-Pakistani support provided to militants including Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan during the 1980s to expel Soviet forces. This support included shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” provided a prophetic warning of the dangerous expansion of this state-sponsored terrorism. Hersh warned (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.

Hersh revealed that even then the US was using its Saudi allies to launder money and material support to opposition fronts:

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

In addition to the US State Department organizing political agitators that would flood the streets of nations like Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen at the onset of the “Arab Spring,” the US government and its regional allies began staging weapons and training and mobilizing militants, aimed at preparing armed groups to quickly leverage street mobs to expand and exploit the engineered conflicts.

The US Transformed Al Qaeda from a Terrorist Organization into a Standing Army 

By 2013, headlines in newspapers like the New York Times in its article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” exposed the full-scale proxy war – warned of by journalists like Hersh – the US was now waging on the Syrian state. The NYT would report (emphasis added):

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders. 

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

While the NYT and other Western media organizations attempted to claim US involvement in the weapon deliveries sought to prevent Arab donors from sending weapons like anti-aircraft missiles – the US used the CIA to covertly facilitate the weapon deliveries precisely because Washington’s Arab allies could send weapons the US openly could not, to groups the US could not afford to be seen directly supporting.

In other words, the CIA aided Arab allies in arming terrorists with a wide array of weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles, specifically because the US could not directly do so itself.

And while the US attempts to revise recent history, claiming that Al Qaeda and its affiliates have only just now come to prominence after “moderate rebels” were eliminated from the battlefield over the course of the now seven year conflict, in 2012 Western media already admitted the prominent role Al Qaeda’s “Al Nusra Front” played in leading the opposition.

The 2012 NYT article, “Syrian Rebels Tied to Al Qaeda Play Key Role in War,” admitted (emphasis added):

The lone Syrian rebel group with an explicit stamp of approval from Al Qaeda has become one of the uprising’s most effective fighting forces, posing a stark challenge to the United States and other countries that want to support the rebels but not Islamic extremists. 

Money flows to the group, the Nusra Front, from like-minded donors abroad. Its fighters, a small minority of the rebels, have the boldness and skill to storm fortified positions and lead other battalions to capture military bases and oil fields. As their successes mount, they gather more weapons and attract more fighters.

Those “like-minded donors abroad” include the very Arab allies the CIA aided in delivering weapons to militants in Syria – namely Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

It is neither without precedent nor plausibility then that the US is the prime suspect in arming – either directly or indirectly – the terrorists who recently downed a Russian warplane admittedly operating in and attacking territory held by Al Qaeda in Syria.

The US has already in recent history admittedly armed militants with anti-aircraft missiles to down Russia aircraft in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It was a point of US policy since 2007 to not only aid and arm Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Washington’s proxy war with Iran and its Syrian allies, but to do so through intermediaries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel – as revealed by Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article.

And it is demonstrated daily on the battlefields of Syria, despite claims that the billions the US has invested in “moderate rebels,” no such “moderates” exist. Claims that they were “displaced” by Al Qaeda begs the question – if the US invested billions in “moderate rebels,” who invested billions more in Al Qaeda giving them the operational edge to displace the “moderate rebels” from the battlefield?  The answer is simple – there were never any “moderate rebels.”

The US – as it did in Afghanistan – simply armed whatever militants were willing to fight – including, and now especially Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Al Qaeda’s possession of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as armored vehicles and even tanks illustrates how the US in its supposed “War on Terror” managed to transform a decentralized terrorist organization into a standing army now possessing entire cities and even provinces only Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies appear interested in fighting and eliminating.

US-backed terrorism has recently claimed a Russian pilot, amid a war that has cost tens of thousands their lives over the course of several years and threatened the stability of an entire region. But long after the war ends, whenever it ends, this threat as a result of America’s state-sponsorship of terrorism will endure for many more years to come, manifesting itself not only on battlefields but also in cities and towns, targeting soldiers and civilians alike – not just in Syria but around the planet.

*

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from the author.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

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VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

In cahoots with Washington, Israel wants Syria’s government toppled, pro-Western puppet rule replacing it – tyranny instead of Assad, ignoring his overwhelming popular support.

In response to Syria’s air defense downing an Israeli F-16 attacking targets in its territory from its airspace, the IDF escalated aggression against multiple Syrian sites.

A same-day article discussed the pre-dawn Saturday incident, beginning when Israel downed what it called an Iranian drone, most likely a Syrian one called Iranian.

No Iranian or Syrian drone entered Israeli territory pre-dawn Saturday, as Israel claimed. The downed UAV was in Syrian airspace. Israel lied claiming otherwise.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi blasted its Big Lie, saying

“(r)eports of downing an Iranian drone flying over Israel and also Iran’s involvement in attacking an Israeli jet are so ridiculous…Iran only provides military advice to Syria,” adding:

“The government and army of Syria as an independent country have a legitimate right to defend (their) territorial integrity and counter any type of foreign aggression.”

A Lebanese Foreign Ministry statement denounced Israeli “aggression,” saying Damascus has a “legitimate right” to defend its territory.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry disturbingly issued a weak-kneed statement instead of a strong one condemning Israeli aggression, saying:

“Moscow is deeply concerned with the latest developments and attacks on Syria. The danger of the escalation of tensions within and around the de-escalation zones, which have become an important factor in reducing violence in Syria, is of particular concern” – not disturbing enough for Moscow to threaten retaliation if US and Israeli aggression continue.

Saying Syrian forces “are complying with the existing arrangements to provide the consistent functioning of the de-escalation zone in the southwest of the country” isn’t good enough.

Nor is “urg(ing) compl(iance) with the existing arrangements to provide the consistent functioning of the de-escalation zone in the southwest of the country.”

Russia’s failure to counter US and Israeli aggression encourages both countries to escalate it, making conflict resolution unattainable.

Syrian media said Israeli “aggression” was launched against one of its army bases.

Israel’s follow-up Saturday aggression involved eight IDF warplanes striking 12 Syrian targets, according to a military spokesperson.

Later on Saturday, Netanyahu, defense minister Lieberman, IDF chief of staff General Gady Eisenkot and other officials met to discuss the day’s events – likely plotting further aggression, perhaps expanding it to Lebanon and Gaza.

Israel remains unaccountable for high crimes of war and against humanity since its forces raped Palestine in 1948, displacing and massacring its people, stealing a nation to illegally create one of its own.

Its forces frequently launch cross-border attacks, naked aggression against sovereign Syrian territory, accountability never forthcoming.

The US/NATO/Israeli axis of evil represents the greatest threat to world peace, stability and security. Their imperial agenda threatens humanity’s survival.

*

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

Featured image: The torch of the 2018 Olympic Games. (Source: Ververididis Vasilis/Shutterstock)

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has left open the possibility of Vice President Mike Pence meeting with North Korean officials during his trip to the Winter Olympic games in Seoul, whose opening ceremonies are on Friday. If that happens, Pence would be the highest ranking American official ever to huddle with a delegation from Pyongyang.

At the same time, North Korea is planning to send its highest ranking official ever to the South—Kim Yong-nam, the North’s ceremonial head of state and president of the Supreme People’s Assembly. In addition, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s influential sister, Kim Yo-jong, will also be joining the delegation, the first time an immediate Kim family member will have set foot in the South.

Is this the long shot diplomatic opening we’ve been waiting for?

It’s easy to be cynical, but I look at this from a unique position. I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun held by a fanatical North Korean spy and watched her blink. It’s why, watching the run-up to the Olympics, amidst levels of cooperation and kinship unseen for years between the two Koreas, I find myself allowing optimism to peek in between the shades.

The details must remain a bit sketchy but at one point during my years working for the State Department at the American Embassy in Seoul, I found myself inside a cell of a foreign intelligence organization alone with a North Korean spy. I’ll call her Miss Park, though I have no idea if even her “real” name was real (other identity details have been altered below). She’d been arrested for espionage. She was on a hunger strike.

I was there because Miss Park may have acquired American citizenship along her complex life journey and one of my jobs at the embassy was to look after the welfare of incarcerated American citizens. Miss Park was trying to starve herself to death to avoid cooperating and it was my task to provide her the same assistance as I would to any other American in jail: to convince her not to die.

Over a handful of visits with a nurse employed by the embassy, I watched Miss Park deny herself food. She was trained to do so. She took small sips of water, she explained, to keep her higher brain functions active enough to allow her to push back against the survival instinct. She was unshakable in her loyalty to her cause. She told me she would begin to give up secrets if she lived long enough, and everything she’d devoted her life to said she should kill herself to prevent that from happening.

Miss Park came not to trust me, but at least to understand that my role was not to pry information from her. So we spoke of family, mine at first to fill the air, then eventually hers. Her son liked the elites’ amusement park he’d once had access to. There was a day when Miss Park bought him shaved ice, some sweet flavor that reminded her of the fruits she’d eaten in the West but which her son had never tasted in real life. As the embassy nurse whispered to me that the prisoner’s vital signs were reaching a critical point and that we should schedule a second visit that afternoon “in case,” I saw Miss Park stare down the angel of death. Then she asked for rice.

Ms. Park is just one person, but she is exactly the kind of person you would least expect to change. She is one of the reasons I continue to believe there is a path that will not lead to war on the Korean Peninsula.

The essence of North Korea is written into its national philosophy of juche, which above all emphasizes survival. The Kim family has been remarkably good at that since 1948. They’ve endured total war, the collapse of their patron the Soviet Union, famine, natural disasters, and decades of sanctions. North Korea exists under a survivalist philosophy, not an apocalyptic one. A senior Central Intelligence Agency official has confirmed that Kim Jong-un’s actions are those of a “rational actor” motivated to ensure regime survival.

“Waking up one morning and deciding he wants to nuke Los Angeles is not something Kim is likely to do,” the official said. “He wants to rule for a long time and die peacefully in his own bed.”

The path to some form of peaceful co-existence on the Korean Peninsula lies in understanding survival, and that means North Korea can never denuclearize, a precondition the United States has insisted on before negotiations can move forward. If denuclearization was ever possible, perhaps through some form of security guarantee, the chances were reduced in March 2003 when Saddam Hussein, who had lost his weapons of mass destruction, found his country invaded by the United States. And the possibility evaporated completely when, after Moammar Gaddafi agreed to eliminate Libya’s nuclear weapons program, he was driven out of power by American bombs in 2011.

One Korea University professor has argued that Pyongyang’s leaders felt “deeply satisfied with themselves” after Gaddafi’s fall. In North Korea’s view, the Libyans “took the economic bait, foolishly disarmed themselves, and once they were defenseless, were mercilessly punished by the West.” Only a national leader bent on suicide would negotiate away his nukes after that.

The last serious attempt at finding a path forward with North Korea was in October 2000, when then-secretary of state Madeline Albright went to Pyongyang without preconditions. A flurry of quiet diplomatic activity followed (I was at the embassy in Seoul and saw it first-hand) as both sides began building the connective tissue, the working-level personal and bureaucratic ties essential to getting down to business. One outcome was a series of extraordinary family reunions between North and South, among relatives who had not seen each other since the 1950s. Those reunions were major media events in the South.

Enthusiasm from the American side dipped sharply after the election of George W. Bush, and the process collapsed completely in 2002 after Bush chucked North Korea into his “Axis of Evil” alongside Iraq and Iran. The last attempt to restart talks took place in February 2012, soon after Kim Jong-il passed away and Kim Jong-un, his son, took over. Washington and Pyongyang held limited discussions resulting in a moratorium on long-range missile launches, nuclear tests, and other activities. The agreement fell apart following a (failed) North Korean satellite launch, and a later successful nuclear test in February 2013. Diplomacy has otherwise not been tried much over the last five years.

Why might there be hope now? Since 2013, North Korea’s ability to deliver more powerful weapons via more accurate missiles has grown. Through one lens, that increases the threat to the United States. (Seoul, within range of overwhelming numbers of conventional weapons, is none the worse; their destruction was assured even prior to the North going nuclear.) Looking at it from Pyongyang’s perspective, however, offers a different picture: the more powerful weapons create a more realistic deterrent. To a regime that values survival at its core, that means a very different starting point for negotiations than in 2000.

The second factor is a long shot: Trump. The president seems unworried about maintaining a consistent policy position. He favors showmanship, the Big Play. His conservative flank is covered. One can imagine him being convinced his legacy could be that of Nixon opening China, the tarnished president who nonetheless is remembered for changing history.

The key lies in removing the precondition that any talks be aimed at denuclearization, and in understanding that diplomacy is never going to be a straight line. That setbacks will occur cannot be a predetermined definition of failure. Among other complications, Kim Jong-un will need to work any progress with America past the hardliners in his government.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence(L) and Fred Warmbier(C), the father of Otto warmbier who was imprisoned in North Korea (Source: WCPO.com)

Kim Jong-un is indeed North Korea’s supreme ruler, but to imagine he rules without consultation from, at minimum, his generals, is simplistic. Sending the 90-year-old Kim Yong-nam as his representative to the Olympics is a significant choice: Kim has been a Communist Party member since the pre-World War II Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula, has served all three North Korean rulers, was formerly minister of foreign affairs, has extensive overseas experience, and as a veteran of the 1950 war, has unimpeachable credibility inside the government. The U.S. has also carefully and quietly kept Kim Yong-nam off any sanctions list, ostensibly because he is not directly involved in nuclear development.

Despite that level of bureaucratic protection, Kim Jong-un will still need to balance conciliatory steps forward with bellicose gestures directed at a limited but important domestic hardline audience. Perhaps that’s not unlike Trump, who may be covering his own hand by sending Fred Warmbier, the father of student Otto Warmbier who died after being incarcerated by Pyongyang and returning to the U.S. in a coma, to attend the Olympics alongside Pence.

North Korea is a nuclear state. That is the starting point to any deconfliction on the Korean Peninsula, not the end goal. Finding peace under those conditions is a long shot, but sometimes taking a risk pays off.

*

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan. He tweets @WeMeantWell.

Featured image: The remains of the F-16 jet that crashed in northern Israel (Source: RTE)

Israel said it launched multiple air strikes against air defences and Iranian targets in Syria on Saturday after the Syrian army shot down an Israeli F-16 that crashed in northern Israel in a major escalation of tensions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel sought peace but would continue to defend itself against Iran.

Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah hailed Syria’s air defences after they downed the Israeli jet, saying it marked the start of a “new strategic era”.

“This is the beginning of a new strategic era which puts an end to the violation of Syrian airspace and territory,” Hezbollah said in a statement published by Lebanon’s ANI news agency.

Earlier in the day, a Syrian missile downed the Israeli warplane returning from a bombing raid on Iran-backed positions in Syria in the most serious confrontations yet between Israel and Iranian-backed forces based across the border.

Netanyahu said he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I reiterated to him our obligation and right to defend ourselves against attacks from Syrian territory. We agreed coordination between our armies would continue,” Netanyahu said in a televised statement.

Putin told Netanyahu there was a need to avoid any steps that would lead to a new confrontation in the region, Interfax reported.

US Pentagon spokesman Adrian Rankine-Galloway said:

“Israel is our closest security partner in the region and we fully support Israel’s inherent right to defend itself against threats to its territory and its people.”

Israel said it had sent its jets into Syria after shooting down an Iranian drone flying over Israeli territory earlier on Saturday.

Still, both Israel and Syria signalled they were not seeking wider conflict, even as Netanyahu rushed to military headquarters in Tel Aviv for consultations and the pro-Assad alliance pledged a strong response to any Israeli “terrorist action”.

Russia’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that Moscow, whose forces began intervening on behalf of Assad in 2015, was seriously concerned by the latest developments in Syria. It urged both sides to exercise restraint and avoid escalation.

“My impression is that it seems to be contained at this point,” said a Western diplomat in the region. “I don’t think anybody wants to escalate further.”

“Twelve targets, including three aerial defense batteries and four Iranian targets that are part of Iran’s military establishment in Syria were attacked,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

“During the attack, anti-aircraft missiles were fired towards Israel, triggering alarms that were heard in Northern Israel,” the military said.

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus told journalists in a phone conference the Syrians and Iranians were “playing with fire” but Israel was “not looking to escalate the situation”.

“This is the most blatant and severe Iranian violation of Israeli sovereignty in the last years,” Conricus said, referring to what he described as an Iranian drone entering Israeli airspace from Syria.

“That’s why our response is as severe as it is.”

IDF has targeted the Iranian control systems in Syria that sent the #UAV into Israeli airspace. Massive Syrian Anti-Air fire, one F16 crashed in Israel, pilots safe. #Iran is responsible for this severe violation of Israeli sovereignty. Event ongoing, more to follow.

— Jonathan Conricus (@LTCJonathan) February 10, 2018

The military alliance fighting in support of Assad said on Saturday that Israel will witness a “severe and serious” response to its “terrorism” from now on.

In a statement, the alliance said Israeli claims that a drone entered Israeli airspace were a “lie”.

The statement said Israel attacked a drone base in central Syria. The alliance added that drones had left the T4 air base in the morning to conduct routine operations against Islamic State in the Syrian desert.

“When the base was targeted our aircraft were still flying over the town of Sokhna, towards the desert,” the statement said. Sokhna is a town northeast of the city of Palmyra in central Syria.

“Reports of downing an Iranian drone flying over Israel and also Iran’s involvement in attacking an Israeli jet are so ridiculous … Iran only provides military advice to Syria,” Iranian state TV quoted Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying.

Syrian state media reported two separate Israeli attacks.

In the first one, a military source said Syrian air defences had opened fire in response to an Israeli act of “aggression” against a military base, hitting “more than one plane”.

Later, Syrian state media said air defences were responding to a new Israeli assault and air defences had thwarted attacks on military positions in southern Syria.

Iran’s expanding clout during Syria’s nearly seven-year-long war, including deployments of Iran-backed forces near the Golan frontier, has raised alarm in Israel, which has said it would act against any threat from its regional arch-enemy Tehran.

The clashes marked a dangerous new confrontation between the international powers caught up in Syria’s seven-year-old war.

Iranian and Iran-backed Shia forces, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have deployed widely in support of Assad.

“Iran believes Syria has the right to legitimate self-defence. To cover their crimes in the region, Israeli officials are resorting to lies against other countries,” foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told AFP on Saturday.

“The allegations regarding surveillance by an Iranian drone are too ridiculous for words.”

‘Massive’ anti-fire

Israel said one of its attack helicopters shot down an Iranian drone at around 4.30am (0230 GMT) that had come from Syrian into Israel.

“In response, the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] targeted Iranian targets in Syria,” the military said.

Conricus said a “substantial” number of Israeli warplanes on the mission had come under “massive Syrian anti-air fire” and only one Israeli jet was harmed.

The F-16 came down in a field near the northern Israeli village of Harduf, television footage showed, and one of the pilots was injured as they ejected, the military said.

David Ivry, a former Israeli Air Force chief, told Reuters he believed it was the first time an Israeli F-16 had been brought down since Israel began using the jets in the 1980s.

“We don’t know if the pilots ejected because of the [Syrian] fire,” Conricus said. It was also unclear at what stage of the mission they ejected, he said, “but it is of extreme concern to us if they were shot down”.

Flights temporarily suspended

Tensions have also spiked across the frontier between Israel and Lebanon over Israeli plans for border wall, and Lebanese plans to exploit an offshore energy block which is partly located in disputed waters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel had targeted areas in the countryside southwest of Damascus, near the Syrian-Lebanon border west of Damascus and in the eastern countryside of Homs province for several hours since dawn.

One set of raids hit positions belonging to the Syrian government and its allies in central Syria around the T4 airbase and in the Homs desert, the Britain-based Observatory said.

It said another set of raids hit southwest of Damascus, and another hit around the Damascus-Beirut highway near the border with Lebanon.

In Israel, uniformed military personnel could be seen gathered around the burnt and tangled metal in Harduf by mid-morning, with what appeared to be white foam on the surrounding grass. Others knelt in the grass, inspecting pieces of the jet.

Rocket alert sirens sounded in the Israeli-held Golan Heights and in northern Israel and there were no reports of casualties.

Flights in to Israel’s main airport near Tel Aviv were suspended for about 15 minutes and take-offs were held for about 20 minutes on Saturday morning.

“Ben Gurion Airport is now operating as usual,” Israeli Airport Authority spokesman Ofer Lefler said.

The airport’s online live flight schedule showed flights were departing and landing.

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This timely analysis was first published by Global Research on January 22, 2016, a year prior to the inauguration of the Trump presidency.

This incisive article analyses the impending 2016-2017 economic crisis as well as the evolving chaos in global financial markets.

Professor Tremblay views “the current unfolding crisis as essentially a continuation of the 2007-08 financial crisis which has been temporarily suspended and pushed into the future by the U.S. Federal Reserve.”

And it would appear that this temporary suspension which in 2016 “was pushed into the future” (aka 2018-2019) has come come to fruition with the dramatic February 2018 Worldwide collapse of stock markets.

Michel Chossudovsky, February 11, 2018

***

“May you live in interesting times.” Popular curse, purported to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse

“The sources of deflation are not a mystery. Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand —a drop in spending so severe that producers must cut prices on an ongoing basis in order to find buyers. Likewise, the economic effects of a deflationary episode, for the most part, are similar to those of any other sharp decline in aggregate spending—namely, recession, rising unemployment, and financial stress.” Ben S. Bernanke (1953- ), on November 21, 2002

“I’m about to repeat what I said at this time last year and the year before…Sooner or later a crash is coming and it may be terrific. The vicious circle will get in full swing and the result will be a serious business depression. There may be a stampede for selling which will exceed anything that the Stock Exchange has ever witnessed. Wise are those investors who now get out of debt.” Roger Babson (1875-1967), on September 5, 1929

Image: Author Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

The onset of 2016 has been most chaotic for global financial markets with, so far, a severe stock market correction. As a matter of fact, the first month of 2016 has witnessed the most severe drop in financial stocks ever, with the MSCI All-Country World Stock Index, which measures major developed and emerging stock markets, dropping more than 20 percent, as compare to early 2015. For sure, there will be oversold rallies in the coming weeks and months, but one can expect more trouble ahead.

Many commentators are saying that the epicentre of this unfolding financial and economic crisis is in China, with the Shanghai Composite Index beginning to plummet at the beginning of the year. In my view, reality is more complex and even though China’s financial and economic problems are contributing to the collapse in commodity prices, the epicenter of the crisis is still in Washington D.C.

That is because the current unfolding crisis is essentially a continuation of the 2007-08 financial crisis which has been temporarily suspended and pushed into the future by the U.S. central bank, the Fed, with its aggressive and unorthodox monetary policy of multiple rounds of quantitative easing (QE), i.e. buying huge quantities of financial assets from commercial mega-banks and other institutions, including mortgage-backed securities, with newly created money. As a consequence, the Fed’s balance sheet went from a little more than one trillion dollars in 2008 to some four and a half trillion dollars when the quantity easing program was ended in October 2014. Other central banks have followed the Fed example, especially the central bank of Japan and the European central bank, which also adopted quantity easing policies in monetizing large amounts of financial assets.

Why did the Bernanke Fed adopt such an aggressive monetary policy in 2008? Essentially for three reasons: First, the lame-duck Bush administration in 2008 was clueless about what to do with the financial crisis that had started with the de facto failure of Bear Stearns in the spring of 2008 and of Merrill Lynch in early September 2008, culminating on September 15, 2008, with the failure of the large global investment bank of Lehman Brothers. So the U.S. central bank felt that it had to step in. In fact, it financed the merger of the two first failed mega-banks with the JPMorgan Chase bank and the Bank of America respectively. (For different reasons, it did not intervene in the same way when the Lehman Brothers bank failed.)

Secondly, bankers who have a huge influence in the way the Fed is managed did not want the U.S. government to nationalize the American mega-banks in financial difficulties, as it had been done in the 1989 when the George H. Bush administration established the government-owned Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to take over some 747 insolvent savings and loans thrift banks.

Thirdly, the Bernanke Fed was very worried that the 2007-08 banking crisis would lead to a Japanese-style deflation that would wreak havoc with an overleveraged economy. The hope was to avoid a devastating debt-deflation economic depressionlike the one suffered in the 1930s.

By injecting so much liquidity in the system, the Bernanke Fed created a gigantic financial bubble in stocks and bonds, even though the real economy has grown at a somewhat languishing 2 percent growth rate. Stock prices went into the stratosphere while interest rates fell as bond prices rose. Last December 16, the Fed announced officially that it will no longer blow into the financial balloons and that it was raising short-term interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis, setting the target range for the federal funds rate to between 1/4 to 1/2 percent. This was a signal that the financial party was over. And what’s more, this means that the stock market and the bond market will once again go in different directions, as a reflection of the state of the real economy, no matter what the Fed does.

Since 2008, the U.S. Fed has painted itself into a financial corner from which I personally felt it would be difficult to extricate itself. Indeed, it would be extremely difficult to correct the financial bubbles it has created —as an unintended consequence of salvaging the mega-banks in creating trillions of free money —without damaging the real economy of production and employment. If global stock markets collapse and if price deflation accelerates, making it more difficult to service the debt of consumers, corporations, and government alike, a repeat on a larger scale of what has happened in Japan over the last twenty-five years can be feared. This, at the very least, could lead to a global economic recession in 2016-17. If we go back in history, it could also be a repeat of the 1937-38 crash and recession, eight years after the crash and financial crisis of 1929-32.

One thing can be made clear: The creation of the Fed in 1913, as a semi-public American central bank, has not prevented the occurrence of financial crises. It has, however, been a boon to large banks because it has served as an instrument to socialize their losses.

Stay tuned.

Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, an economist, is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”,

Please visit the book site at:

http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/

and his blog at:

http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.htm

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This article was first published by award winning author Professor Alfred McCoy in July 2017

The superhighway to disaster is already being paved.

From Donald Trump’s first days in office, news of the damage to America’s international stature has come hard and fast. As if guided by some malign design, the new president seemed to identify the key pillars that have supported U.S. global power for the past 70 years and set out to topple each of them in turn. By degrading NATO, alienating Asian allies, cancelling trade treaties, and slashing critical scientific research, the Trump White House is already in the process of demolishing the delicately balanced architecture that has sustained Washington’s world leadership since the end of World War II. However unwittingly, Trump is ensuring the accelerated collapse of American global hegemony.

Stunned by his succession of foreign policy blunders, commentators — left and right, domestic and foreign — have raised their voices in a veritable chorus of criticism. A Los Angeles Times editorial typically called him “so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality” that he threatened to “weaken this country’s moral standing in the world” and “imperil the planet” through his “appalling” policy choices. “He’s a sucker who’s shrinking U.S. influence in [Asia] and helping make China great again,” wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman after surveying the damage to the country’s Asian alliances from the president’s “decision to tear up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal in his first week in office.”

The international press has been no less harsh. Reeling from Trump’s denunciation of South Korea’s free-trade agreement as “horrible” and his bizarre claim that the country had once been “a part of China,” Seoul’s leading newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, expressed the “shock, betrayal, and anger many South Koreans have felt.” Assessing his first 100 days in office, Britain’s venerable Observer commented:

“Trump’s crudely intimidatory, violent, know-nothing approach to sensitive international issues has encircled the globe from Moscow to the Middle East to Beijing, plunging foes and allies alike into a dark vortex of expanding strategic instability.”

For an American president to virtually walk out of his grand inaugural celebrations into such a hailstorm of criticism is beyond extraordinary. Having more or less exhausted their lexicon of condemnatory rhetoric, the usual crew of commentators is now struggling to understand how an American president could be quite so willfully self-destructive.

Britain’s Suez Crisis

Blitzed by an incessant stream of bizarre tweets and White House conspiracy theories, observers worldwide seem to have concluded that Donald Trump is a president like no other, that the situation he’s creating is without parallel, and that his foreign policy is already a disaster without precedent. After rummaging around in history’s capacious closet for some old suit that might fit him, analysts have failed to find any antecedent or analogue to adequately explain him.

Yet just 60 years ago, a crisis in the ever-volatile Middle East overseen by a bumbling, mistake-prone British leader helped create a great power debacle that offers insight into the Trumpian moment, a glimpse into possible futures, and a sense of the kind of decline that could lie in the imperial future of the United States.

In the early 1950s, Britain’s international position had many parallels with America’s today. After a difficult postwar recovery from the devastation of World War II, that country was enjoying robust employment, lucrative international investments, and the prestige of the pound sterling’s stature as the world’s reserve currency. Thanks to a careful withdrawal from its far-flung, global empire and its close alliance with Washington, London still enjoyed a sense of international influence exceptional for a small island nation of just 50 million people. On balance, Britain seemed poised for many more years of world leadership with all the accompanying economic rewards and perks.

Then came the Suez crisis. After a decade of giving up one colony after another, the accumulated stress of imperial retreat pushed British conservatives into a disastrous military intervention to reclaim Egypt’s Suez Canal. This, in turn, caused a “deep moral crisis in London” and what one British diplomat would term the “dying convulsion of British imperialism.” In a clear instance of what historians call “micro-militarism” — that is, a bold military strike designed to recover fading imperial influence — Britain joined France and Israel in a misbegotten military invasion of Egypt that transformed slow imperial retreat into a precipitous collapse.

Just as the Panama Canal had once been a shining example for Americans of their nation’s global prowess, so British conservatives treasured the Suez Canal as a vital lifeline that tied their small island to its sprawling empire in Asia and Africa. A few years after the canal’s grand opening in 1869, London did the deal of the century, scooping up Egypt’s shares in it for a bargain basement price of £4 million. Then, in 1882, Britain consolidated its control over the canal through a military occupation of Egypt, reducing that ancient land to little more than an informal colony.

As late as 1950, in fact, Britain still maintained 80,000 soldiers and a string of military bases astride the canal. The bulk of its oil and gasoline, produced at the enormous Abadan refinery in the Persian Gulf, transited through Suez, fueling its navy, its domestic transportation system, and much of its industry.

After British troops completed a negotiated withdrawal from Suez in 1955, the charismatic nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser asserted Egypt’s neutrality in the Cold War by purchasing Soviet bloc arms, raising eyebrows in Washington. In July 1956, after the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower had in response reneged on its promise to finance construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Upper Nile, Nasser sought alternative financing for this critical infrastructure by nationalizing the Suez Canal. In doing so, he electrified the Arab world and elevated himself to the top rank of world leaders.

Although British ships still passed freely through the canal and Washington insisted on a diplomatic resolution of the conflict, Britain’s conservative leadership reacted with irrational outrage. Behind a smokescreen of sham diplomacy designed to deceive Washington, their closest ally, the British foreign secretary met secretly with the prime ministers of France and Israel near Paris to work out an elaborately deceptive two-stage invasion of Egypt by 250,000 allied troops, backed by 500 aircraft and 130 warships. Its aim, of course, was to secure the canal.

On October 29, 1956, the Israeli army led by the dashing General Moshe Dayan swept across the Sinai Peninsula, destroying Egyptian tanks and bringing his troops to within 10 miles of the canal. Using this fighting as a pretext for an intervention to restore peace, Anglo-French amphibious and airborne forces quickly joined the attack, backed by a devastating bombardment from six aircraft carriers that destroyed the Egyptian air force, including over a hundred of its new MiG jet fighters. As Egypt’s military collapsed with some 3,000 of its troops killed and 30,000 captured, Nasser deployed a defense brilliant in its simplicity by scuttling dozens of rusting cargo ships filled with rocks and concrete at the entrance to the Suez Canal. In this way, he closed Europe’s oil lifeline to the Persian Gulf.

Simultaneously, U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, backed by Washington, imposed a cease-fire after just nine days of war, stopping the Anglo-French attack far short of capturing the entire canal. President Eisenhower’s blunt refusal to back his allies with either oil or money and the threat of condemnation before the U.N. soon forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal. With its finances collapsing from the invasion’s soaring costs, the British government could not maintain the pound’s official exchange rate, degrading its stature as a global reserve currency.

The author of this extraordinary debacle was Sir Anthony Eden, a problematic prime minister whose career offers some striking parallels with Donald Trump’s. Born into privilege as the son of a landholder, Eden enjoyed a good education at a private school and an elite university. After inheriting a substantial fortune from his father, he entered politics as a conservative, using his political connections to dabble in finance. Chafing under Winston Churchill’s postwar leadership of the Conservative Party, Eden, who styled himself a rebel against hidebound institutions, used incessant infighting and his handsome head of hair to push the great man aside and become prime minister in 1955.

When Nasser nationalized the canal, Eden erupted with egotism, bluster, and outrage.

“What’s all this nonsense about isolating Nasser,” Eden berated his foreign affairs minister. “I want him destroyed, can’t you understand? I want him murdered, and if you and the Foreign Office don’t agree, then you’d better come to the cabinet and explain why.”

Convinced that Britain was still the globe’s great power, Eden rejected sound advice that he consult fully with Washington, the country’s closest ally. As his bold intervention plunged toward diplomatic disaster, the prime minister became focused on manipulating the British media, in the process confusing favorable domestic coverage with international support.

When Washington demanded a ceasefire as the price of a billion-dollar bailout for a British economy unable to sustain such a costly war, Eden’s bluster quickly crumbled and he denied his troops a certain victory, arousing a storm of protest in Parliament. Humiliated by the forced withdrawal, Eden compensated psychologically by ordering MI-6, Britain’s equivalent of the CIA, to launch its second ill-fated assassination attempt on Nasser. Since its chief local agent was actually a double-agent loyal to Nasser, Egyptian security had, however, already rounded up the British operatives and the weapons delivered for the contract killers proved duds.

Confronted with a barrage of angry questions in Parliament about his collusion with the Israelis, Eden lied repeatedly, swearing that there was no “foreknowledge that Israel would attack Egypt.” Protesters denounced him as “too stupid to be a prime minister,” opposition members of parliament laughed openly when he appeared before Parliament, and his own foreign affairs minister damned him as “an enraged elephant charging senselessly at… imaginary enemies.”

Just weeks after the last British soldier left Egypt, Eden, discredited and disgraced, was forced to resign after only 21 months in office. Led into this unimaginably misbegotten operation by his delusions of omnipotence, he left the once-mighty British lion a toothless circus animal that would henceforth roll over whenever Washington cracked the whip.

Trump’s Demolition Job

Despite the obvious differences in their economic circumstances, there remain some telling resonances between Britain’s postwar politics and America’s troubles today. Both of these fading global hegemons suffered a slow erosion of economic power in a fast-changing world, producing severe social tensions and stunted political leaders. Britain’s Conservative Party leadership had declined from the skilled diplomacy of Disraeli, Salisbury, and Churchill to Eden’s bluster and blunder.  Similarly, the Republican Party has descended from the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and George H.W. Bush to a field of 17 primary candidates in 2016 who promised to resolve an infinitely complex crisis in the Middle East through a set of incendiary policies that included making desert sands glow from carpet-bombing and forcing terrorists to capitulate through torture. Confronted with daunting international challenges, the voters of both countries supported appealing but unstable leaders whose delusions of omnipotence inclined them to military misadventures.

Like British citizens of the 1950s, most Americans today do not fully grasp the fragility of their status as “the leader of the free world.” Indeed, Washington has been standing astride the globe as a superpower for so long that most of its leaders have almost no understanding of the delicate design of their country’s global power built so carefully by two post-World War II presidents.

Under Democratic President Harry Truman, Congress created the key instruments for Washington’s emerging national security state and its future global dominion by passing the National Security Act of 1947 that established the Air Force, the CIA, and two new executive agencies, the Defense Department and the National Security Council. To rebuild a devastated, war-torn Europe, Washington launched the Marshall Plan and then turned such thinking into a worldwide aid program through the U.S. Agency for International Development meant to embed American power globally and support pro-American elites across the planet. Under Truman as well, U.S. diplomats forged the NATO alliance (which Washington would dominate until the Trump moment), advanced European unity, and signed a parallel string of mutual-defense treaties with key Asian allies along the Pacific littoral, making Washington the first power in two millennia to control both “axial ends” of the strategic Eurasian continent.

Presidents Eisenhower and Nasser meeting in New York, 1960 (Source: Wikipedia)

During the 1950s, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower deployed this national security apparatus to secure Washington’s global dominion with a nuclear triad (bombers, ballistic missiles, and submarines), a chain of military bases that ringed Eurasia, and a staggering number of highly militarized covert operations to assure the ascent of loyal allies worldwide. Above all, he oversaw the integration of the latest in scientific and technological research into the Pentagon’s weapons procurement system through the forging of the famed “military-industrial complex” (against which he would end up warning Americans as he left office in 1961).   All this, in turn, fostered an aura of American power so formidable that Washington could re-order significant parts of the world almost at will, enforcing peace, setting the international agenda, and toppling governments on four continents.

While it’s reasonable to argue that Washington had by then become history’s greatest global power, its hegemony, like that of all the world empires that preceded it, remained surprisingly fragile. Skilled leadership was required to maintain the system’s balance of diplomacy, military power, economic strength, and technological innovation.

By the time President Trump took his oath of office, negative, long-term trends had already started to limit the influence of any American leader on the world stage.  These included a declining share of the global economy, an erosion of U.S. technological primacy, an inability to apply its overwhelming military power in a way that achieved expected policy goals on an ever more recalcitrant planet, and a generation of increasingly independent national leaders, whether in Europe, Asia, or Latin America.

Apart from such adverse trends, Washington’s global power rested on such strategic fundamentals that its leaders might still have managed carefully enough to maintain a reasonable semblance of American hegemony: notably, the NATO alliance and Asian mutual-security treaties at the strategic antipodes of Eurasia, trade treaties that reinforced such alliances, scientific research to sustain its military’s technological edge, and leadership on international issues like climate change.

In just five short months, however, the Trump White House has done a remarkable job of demolishing these very pillars of U.S. global power. During his first overseas trip in May 2017, President Trump chastised stone-faced NATO leaders for failure to pay their “fair share” into the military part of the alliance and refused to affirm its core principle of collective defense. Ignoring the pleas of these close allies, he then forfeited America’s historic diplomatic leadership by announcing Washington’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord with all the drama of a reality television show. After watching his striking repudiation of Washington’s role as world leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told voters in her country that “we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans.”

Along the strategic Pacific littoral, Trump cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact on taking office and gratuitously alienated allies by cutting short a courtesy phone call to Australia’s prime minister and insulting South Korea to the point where its new president won office, in part, on a platform of “say no” to America. When President Moon Jae-in visited Washington in June, determined to heal the breach between the two countries, he was, as the New York Times reported, blindsided by “the harshness of Mr. Trump’s critique of South Korea on trade.”

Just days after Trump dismissed Moon’s suggestion that the two countries engage in actual diplomatic negotiations with Pyongyang, North Korea successfully test-fired a ballistic missile potentially capable of reaching Alaska or possibly Hawaii with a nuclear warhead (though experts believe Pyongyang may still be years away from effectively fitting such a warhead to the missile). It was an act that made those same negotiations Washington’s only viable option — apart from a second Korean War, which would potentially devastate both the region and the U.S. position as the preeminent international leader.

In other words, after 70 years of global dominion, America’s geopolitical command of the axial ends of Eurasia — the central pillars of its world power— seems to be crumbling in a matter of months.

Instead of the diplomacy of presidents past, Trump and his advisers, especially his military men, have reacted to his first modest foreign crises as well as the everyday power questions of empire with outbursts akin to Anthony Eden’s.  Since January, the White House has erupted in sudden displays of raw military power that included a drone blitz of unprecedented intensity in Yemen to destroy what the president called a “network of lawless savages,” the bombardment of a Syrian air base with 59 Tomahawk missiles, and the detonation of the world’s largest non-nuclear bomb on a terrorist refuge in eastern Afghanistan.

While reveling in the use of such weaponry, Trump, by slashing federal funding for critical scientific research, is already demolishing the foundations for the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower’s successors, Republican and Democratic alike, so sedulously maintained for the last half-century. While China is ramping up its scientific research across the board, Trump has proposed what the American Association for Advancement of Science called “deep cuts to numerous research agencies” that will mean the eventual loss of the country’s technological edge. In the emerging field of artificial intelligence that will soon drive space warfare and cyber-warfare, the White House wants to reduce the 2018 budget for this critical research at the National Science Foundation to a paltry $175 million, even as Beijing is launching “a new multi-billion-dollar initiative” linked to building “military robots.”

A Future Debacle in the Greater Middle East

With a president who shares Sir Anthony Eden’s penchant for bravura, self-delusion, and impulsiveness, the U.S. seems primed for a twenty-first-century Suez of its own, a debacle in the Greater Middle East (or possibly elsewhere). From the disastrous expedition that ancient Athens sent to Sicily in 413 BCE to Britain’s invasion of Suez in 1956, embattled empires throughout the ages have often suffered an arrogance that drives them to plunge ever deeper into military misadventures until defeat becomes debacle, a misuse of armed force known technically among historians as micro-militarism. With the hubris that has marked empires over the millennia, the Trump administration is, for instance, now committed to extending indefinitely Washington’s failing war of pacification in Afghanistan with a new mini-surge of U.S. troops (and air power) in that classic “graveyard of empires.”

So irrational, so unpredictable is such micro-militarism that even the most fanciful of scenarios can be outpaced by actual events, as was true at Suez. With the U.S. military stretched thin from North Africa to South Korea, with no lasting successes in its post-9/11 wars, and with tensions rising from the Persian Gulf and Syria to the South China Sea and the Koreas, the possibilities for a disastrous military crisis abroad seem almost unending. So let me pick just one possible scenario for a future Trumpian military misadventure in the Greater Middle East.  (I’m sure you’ll think of other candidates immediately.)

It’s the late spring of 2020, the start of the traditional Afghan fighting season, and a U.S. garrison in the city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is unexpectedly overrun by an ad hoc alliance of Taliban and Islamic State guerrillas. While U.S. aircraft are grounded in a blinding sand storm, the militants summarily execute their American captives, filming the gruesome event for immediate upload on the Internet. Speaking to an international television audience, President Trump thunders against “disgusting Muslim murderers” and swears he will “make the desert sands run red with their blood.” In fulfillment of that promise, an angry American theater commander sends B-1 bombers and F-35 fighters to demolish whole neighborhoods of Kandahar believed to be under Taliban control. In an aerial coup de grâce, AC-130-U “Spooky” gunships then rake the rubble with devastating cannon fire. The civilian casualties are beyond counting.

Soon, mullahs are preaching jihad from mosques across Afghanistan and far beyond. Afghan Army units, long trained by American forces to turn the tide of the war, begin to desert en masse. In isolated posts across the country, clusters of Afghan soldiers open fire on their American advisers in what are termed “insider” or “green-on-blue” attacks. Meanwhile, Taliban fighters launch a series of assaults on scattered U.S. garrisons elsewhere in the country, suddenly sending American casualties soaring. In scenes reminiscent of Saigon in 1975, U.S. helicopters rescue American soldiers and civilians from rooftops not just in Kandahar, but in several other provincial capitals and even Kabul.

Meanwhile, angry over the massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the anti-Muslim diatribes tweeted almost daily from the Oval Office, and years of depressed energy prices, OPEC’s leaders impose a harsh new oil embargo aimed at the United States and its allies. With refineries running dry in Europe and Asia, the world economy trembling at the brink of recession, and gas prices soaring, Washington flails about for a solution. The first call is to NATO, but the alliance is near collapse after four years of President Trump’s erratic behavior. Even the British, alienated by his inattention to their concerns, rebuff his appeals for support.

Facing an uncertain reelection in November 2020, the Trump White House makes its move, sending Marines and Special Operations forces to seize oil ports in the Persian Gulf. Flying from the Fifth Fleet’s base in Bahrain, Navy Seals and Army Rangers occupy the Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia, the ninth largest in the world; Kuwait’s main oil port at Shuaiba; and Iraq’s at Um Qasr.

Simultaneously, the light carrier USS Iwo Jima steams south at the head of a task force that launches helicopters carrying 6,000 Special Operations forces tasked with seizing the al-Ruwais refinery in Abu Dhabi, the world’s fourth largest, and the megaport at Jebel Ali in Dubai, a 20-square-mile complex so massive that the Americans can only occupy its oil facilities. When Teheran vehemently protests the U.S. escalation in the Persian Gulf and hints at retaliation, Defense Secretary James Mattis, reviving a plan from his days as CENTCOM commander, orders preemptive Tomahawk missile strikes on Iran’s flagship oil refinery at Abadan.

From its first hours, the operation goes badly wrong. The troops seem lost inside the unmapped mazes of pipes that honeycomb the oil ports. Meanwhile, refinery staff prove stubbornly uncooperative, sensing that the occupation will be short-lived and disastrous. On day three, Iranian Revolutionary Guard commandos, who have been training for this moment since the breakdown of the 2015 nuclear accord with the U.S., storm ashore at the Kuwaiti and Emirate refineries with remote-controlled charges. Unable to use their superior firepower in such a volatile environment, American troops are reduced to firing futile bursts at the departing speed boats as oil storage tanks and gas pipes explode spectacularly.

Three days later, as the USS Gerald Ford approaches an Iranian island, more than 100 speedboats suddenly appear, swarming the carrier in a practiced pattern of high-speed crisscrosses. Every time lethal bursts from the carrier’s MK-38 chain guns rip through the lead boats, others emerge from the flames coming closer and closer. Concealed by clouds of smoke, one finally reaches an undefended spot beneath the conning tower near enough for a Revolutionary guardsman to attach a magnetic charge to the hull with a fateful click. There is a deafening roar and a gaping hole erupts at the waterline of the first aircraft carrier to be crippled in battle since World War II. As things go from bad to worse, the Pentagon is finally forced to accept that a debacle is underway and withdraws its capital ships from the Persian Gulf.

As black clouds billow skyward from the Gulf’s oil ports and diplomats rise at the U.N. to bitterly denounce American actions, commentators worldwide reach back to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of imperial Britain to brand this “America’s Suez.” The empire has been trumped.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years, and the forthcoming In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, out in September from Dispatch Books.

This article was first published by award winning author Professor Alfred McCoy in July 2017

The superhighway to disaster is already being paved.

From Donald Trump’s first days in office, news of the damage to America’s international stature has come hard and fast. As if guided by some malign design, the new president seemed to identify the key pillars that have supported U.S. global power for the past 70 years and set out to topple each of them in turn. By degrading NATO, alienating Asian allies, cancelling trade treaties, and slashing critical scientific research, the Trump White House is already in the process of demolishing the delicately balanced architecture that has sustained Washington’s world leadership since the end of World War II. However unwittingly, Trump is ensuring the accelerated collapse of American global hegemony.

Stunned by his succession of foreign policy blunders, commentators — left and right, domestic and foreign — have raised their voices in a veritable chorus of criticism. A Los Angeles Times editorial typically called him “so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality” that he threatened to “weaken this country’s moral standing in the world” and “imperil the planet” through his “appalling” policy choices. “He’s a sucker who’s shrinking U.S. influence in [Asia] and helping make China great again,” wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman after surveying the damage to the country’s Asian alliances from the president’s “decision to tear up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal in his first week in office.”

The international press has been no less harsh. Reeling from Trump’s denunciation of South Korea’s free-trade agreement as “horrible” and his bizarre claim that the country had once been “a part of China,” Seoul’s leading newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, expressed the “shock, betrayal, and anger many South Koreans have felt.” Assessing his first 100 days in office, Britain’s venerable Observer commented:

“Trump’s crudely intimidatory, violent, know-nothing approach to sensitive international issues has encircled the globe from Moscow to the Middle East to Beijing, plunging foes and allies alike into a dark vortex of expanding strategic instability.”

For an American president to virtually walk out of his grand inaugural celebrations into such a hailstorm of criticism is beyond extraordinary. Having more or less exhausted their lexicon of condemnatory rhetoric, the usual crew of commentators is now struggling to understand how an American president could be quite so willfully self-destructive.

Britain’s Suez Crisis

Blitzed by an incessant stream of bizarre tweets and White House conspiracy theories, observers worldwide seem to have concluded that Donald Trump is a president like no other, that the situation he’s creating is without parallel, and that his foreign policy is already a disaster without precedent. After rummaging around in history’s capacious closet for some old suit that might fit him, analysts have failed to find any antecedent or analogue to adequately explain him.

Yet just 60 years ago, a crisis in the ever-volatile Middle East overseen by a bumbling, mistake-prone British leader helped create a great power debacle that offers insight into the Trumpian moment, a glimpse into possible futures, and a sense of the kind of decline that could lie in the imperial future of the United States.

In the early 1950s, Britain’s international position had many parallels with America’s today. After a difficult postwar recovery from the devastation of World War II, that country was enjoying robust employment, lucrative international investments, and the prestige of the pound sterling’s stature as the world’s reserve currency. Thanks to a careful withdrawal from its far-flung, global empire and its close alliance with Washington, London still enjoyed a sense of international influence exceptional for a small island nation of just 50 million people. On balance, Britain seemed poised for many more years of world leadership with all the accompanying economic rewards and perks.

Then came the Suez crisis. After a decade of giving up one colony after another, the accumulated stress of imperial retreat pushed British conservatives into a disastrous military intervention to reclaim Egypt’s Suez Canal. This, in turn, caused a “deep moral crisis in London” and what one British diplomat would term the “dying convulsion of British imperialism.” In a clear instance of what historians call “micro-militarism” — that is, a bold military strike designed to recover fading imperial influence — Britain joined France and Israel in a misbegotten military invasion of Egypt that transformed slow imperial retreat into a precipitous collapse.

Just as the Panama Canal had once been a shining example for Americans of their nation’s global prowess, so British conservatives treasured the Suez Canal as a vital lifeline that tied their small island to its sprawling empire in Asia and Africa. A few years after the canal’s grand opening in 1869, London did the deal of the century, scooping up Egypt’s shares in it for a bargain basement price of £4 million. Then, in 1882, Britain consolidated its control over the canal through a military occupation of Egypt, reducing that ancient land to little more than an informal colony.

As late as 1950, in fact, Britain still maintained 80,000 soldiers and a string of military bases astride the canal. The bulk of its oil and gasoline, produced at the enormous Abadan refinery in the Persian Gulf, transited through Suez, fueling its navy, its domestic transportation system, and much of its industry.

After British troops completed a negotiated withdrawal from Suez in 1955, the charismatic nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser asserted Egypt’s neutrality in the Cold War by purchasing Soviet bloc arms, raising eyebrows in Washington. In July 1956, after the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower had in response reneged on its promise to finance construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Upper Nile, Nasser sought alternative financing for this critical infrastructure by nationalizing the Suez Canal. In doing so, he electrified the Arab world and elevated himself to the top rank of world leaders.

Although British ships still passed freely through the canal and Washington insisted on a diplomatic resolution of the conflict, Britain’s conservative leadership reacted with irrational outrage. Behind a smokescreen of sham diplomacy designed to deceive Washington, their closest ally, the British foreign secretary met secretly with the prime ministers of France and Israel near Paris to work out an elaborately deceptive two-stage invasion of Egypt by 250,000 allied troops, backed by 500 aircraft and 130 warships. Its aim, of course, was to secure the canal.

On October 29, 1956, the Israeli army led by the dashing General Moshe Dayan swept across the Sinai Peninsula, destroying Egyptian tanks and bringing his troops to within 10 miles of the canal. Using this fighting as a pretext for an intervention to restore peace, Anglo-French amphibious and airborne forces quickly joined the attack, backed by a devastating bombardment from six aircraft carriers that destroyed the Egyptian air force, including over a hundred of its new MiG jet fighters. As Egypt’s military collapsed with some 3,000 of its troops killed and 30,000 captured, Nasser deployed a defense brilliant in its simplicity by scuttling dozens of rusting cargo ships filled with rocks and concrete at the entrance to the Suez Canal. In this way, he closed Europe’s oil lifeline to the Persian Gulf.

Simultaneously, U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, backed by Washington, imposed a cease-fire after just nine days of war, stopping the Anglo-French attack far short of capturing the entire canal. President Eisenhower’s blunt refusal to back his allies with either oil or money and the threat of condemnation before the U.N. soon forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal. With its finances collapsing from the invasion’s soaring costs, the British government could not maintain the pound’s official exchange rate, degrading its stature as a global reserve currency.

The author of this extraordinary debacle was Sir Anthony Eden, a problematic prime minister whose career offers some striking parallels with Donald Trump’s. Born into privilege as the son of a landholder, Eden enjoyed a good education at a private school and an elite university. After inheriting a substantial fortune from his father, he entered politics as a conservative, using his political connections to dabble in finance. Chafing under Winston Churchill’s postwar leadership of the Conservative Party, Eden, who styled himself a rebel against hidebound institutions, used incessant infighting and his handsome head of hair to push the great man aside and become prime minister in 1955.

When Nasser nationalized the canal, Eden erupted with egotism, bluster, and outrage.

“What’s all this nonsense about isolating Nasser,” Eden berated his foreign affairs minister. “I want him destroyed, can’t you understand? I want him murdered, and if you and the Foreign Office don’t agree, then you’d better come to the cabinet and explain why.”

Convinced that Britain was still the globe’s great power, Eden rejected sound advice that he consult fully with Washington, the country’s closest ally. As his bold intervention plunged toward diplomatic disaster, the prime minister became focused on manipulating the British media, in the process confusing favorable domestic coverage with international support.

When Washington demanded a ceasefire as the price of a billion-dollar bailout for a British economy unable to sustain such a costly war, Eden’s bluster quickly crumbled and he denied his troops a certain victory, arousing a storm of protest in Parliament. Humiliated by the forced withdrawal, Eden compensated psychologically by ordering MI-6, Britain’s equivalent of the CIA, to launch its second ill-fated assassination attempt on Nasser. Since its chief local agent was actually a double-agent loyal to Nasser, Egyptian security had, however, already rounded up the British operatives and the weapons delivered for the contract killers proved duds.

Confronted with a barrage of angry questions in Parliament about his collusion with the Israelis, Eden lied repeatedly, swearing that there was no “foreknowledge that Israel would attack Egypt.” Protesters denounced him as “too stupid to be a prime minister,” opposition members of parliament laughed openly when he appeared before Parliament, and his own foreign affairs minister damned him as “an enraged elephant charging senselessly at… imaginary enemies.”

Just weeks after the last British soldier left Egypt, Eden, discredited and disgraced, was forced to resign after only 21 months in office. Led into this unimaginably misbegotten operation by his delusions of omnipotence, he left the once-mighty British lion a toothless circus animal that would henceforth roll over whenever Washington cracked the whip.

Trump’s Demolition Job

Despite the obvious differences in their economic circumstances, there remain some telling resonances between Britain’s postwar politics and America’s troubles today. Both of these fading global hegemons suffered a slow erosion of economic power in a fast-changing world, producing severe social tensions and stunted political leaders. Britain’s Conservative Party leadership had declined from the skilled diplomacy of Disraeli, Salisbury, and Churchill to Eden’s bluster and blunder.  Similarly, the Republican Party has descended from the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and George H.W. Bush to a field of 17 primary candidates in 2016 who promised to resolve an infinitely complex crisis in the Middle East through a set of incendiary policies that included making desert sands glow from carpet-bombing and forcing terrorists to capitulate through torture. Confronted with daunting international challenges, the voters of both countries supported appealing but unstable leaders whose delusions of omnipotence inclined them to military misadventures.

Like British citizens of the 1950s, most Americans today do not fully grasp the fragility of their status as “the leader of the free world.” Indeed, Washington has been standing astride the globe as a superpower for so long that most of its leaders have almost no understanding of the delicate design of their country’s global power built so carefully by two post-World War II presidents.

Under Democratic President Harry Truman, Congress created the key instruments for Washington’s emerging national security state and its future global dominion by passing the National Security Act of 1947 that established the Air Force, the CIA, and two new executive agencies, the Defense Department and the National Security Council. To rebuild a devastated, war-torn Europe, Washington launched the Marshall Plan and then turned such thinking into a worldwide aid program through the U.S. Agency for International Development meant to embed American power globally and support pro-American elites across the planet. Under Truman as well, U.S. diplomats forged the NATO alliance (which Washington would dominate until the Trump moment), advanced European unity, and signed a parallel string of mutual-defense treaties with key Asian allies along the Pacific littoral, making Washington the first power in two millennia to control both “axial ends” of the strategic Eurasian continent.

Presidents Eisenhower and Nasser meeting in New York, 1960 (Source: Wikipedia)

During the 1950s, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower deployed this national security apparatus to secure Washington’s global dominion with a nuclear triad (bombers, ballistic missiles, and submarines), a chain of military bases that ringed Eurasia, and a staggering number of highly militarized covert operations to assure the ascent of loyal allies worldwide. Above all, he oversaw the integration of the latest in scientific and technological research into the Pentagon’s weapons procurement system through the forging of the famed “military-industrial complex” (against which he would end up warning Americans as he left office in 1961).   All this, in turn, fostered an aura of American power so formidable that Washington could re-order significant parts of the world almost at will, enforcing peace, setting the international agenda, and toppling governments on four continents.

While it’s reasonable to argue that Washington had by then become history’s greatest global power, its hegemony, like that of all the world empires that preceded it, remained surprisingly fragile. Skilled leadership was required to maintain the system’s balance of diplomacy, military power, economic strength, and technological innovation.

By the time President Trump took his oath of office, negative, long-term trends had already started to limit the influence of any American leader on the world stage.  These included a declining share of the global economy, an erosion of U.S. technological primacy, an inability to apply its overwhelming military power in a way that achieved expected policy goals on an ever more recalcitrant planet, and a generation of increasingly independent national leaders, whether in Europe, Asia, or Latin America.

Apart from such adverse trends, Washington’s global power rested on such strategic fundamentals that its leaders might still have managed carefully enough to maintain a reasonable semblance of American hegemony: notably, the NATO alliance and Asian mutual-security treaties at the strategic antipodes of Eurasia, trade treaties that reinforced such alliances, scientific research to sustain its military’s technological edge, and leadership on international issues like climate change.

In just five short months, however, the Trump White House has done a remarkable job of demolishing these very pillars of U.S. global power. During his first overseas trip in May 2017, President Trump chastised stone-faced NATO leaders for failure to pay their “fair share” into the military part of the alliance and refused to affirm its core principle of collective defense. Ignoring the pleas of these close allies, he then forfeited America’s historic diplomatic leadership by announcing Washington’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord with all the drama of a reality television show. After watching his striking repudiation of Washington’s role as world leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told voters in her country that “we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans.”

Along the strategic Pacific littoral, Trump cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact on taking office and gratuitously alienated allies by cutting short a courtesy phone call to Australia’s prime minister and insulting South Korea to the point where its new president won office, in part, on a platform of “say no” to America. When President Moon Jae-in visited Washington in June, determined to heal the breach between the two countries, he was, as the New York Times reported, blindsided by “the harshness of Mr. Trump’s critique of South Korea on trade.”

Just days after Trump dismissed Moon’s suggestion that the two countries engage in actual diplomatic negotiations with Pyongyang, North Korea successfully test-fired a ballistic missile potentially capable of reaching Alaska or possibly Hawaii with a nuclear warhead (though experts believe Pyongyang may still be years away from effectively fitting such a warhead to the missile). It was an act that made those same negotiations Washington’s only viable option — apart from a second Korean War, which would potentially devastate both the region and the U.S. position as the preeminent international leader.

In other words, after 70 years of global dominion, America’s geopolitical command of the axial ends of Eurasia — the central pillars of its world power— seems to be crumbling in a matter of months.

Instead of the diplomacy of presidents past, Trump and his advisers, especially his military men, have reacted to his first modest foreign crises as well as the everyday power questions of empire with outbursts akin to Anthony Eden’s.  Since January, the White House has erupted in sudden displays of raw military power that included a drone blitz of unprecedented intensity in Yemen to destroy what the president called a “network of lawless savages,” the bombardment of a Syrian air base with 59 Tomahawk missiles, and the detonation of the world’s largest non-nuclear bomb on a terrorist refuge in eastern Afghanistan.

While reveling in the use of such weaponry, Trump, by slashing federal funding for critical scientific research, is already demolishing the foundations for the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower’s successors, Republican and Democratic alike, so sedulously maintained for the last half-century. While China is ramping up its scientific research across the board, Trump has proposed what the American Association for Advancement of Science called “deep cuts to numerous research agencies” that will mean the eventual loss of the country’s technological edge. In the emerging field of artificial intelligence that will soon drive space warfare and cyber-warfare, the White House wants to reduce the 2018 budget for this critical research at the National Science Foundation to a paltry $175 million, even as Beijing is launching “a new multi-billion-dollar initiative” linked to building “military robots.”

A Future Debacle in the Greater Middle East

With a president who shares Sir Anthony Eden’s penchant for bravura, self-delusion, and impulsiveness, the U.S. seems primed for a twenty-first-century Suez of its own, a debacle in the Greater Middle East (or possibly elsewhere). From the disastrous expedition that ancient Athens sent to Sicily in 413 BCE to Britain’s invasion of Suez in 1956, embattled empires throughout the ages have often suffered an arrogance that drives them to plunge ever deeper into military misadventures until defeat becomes debacle, a misuse of armed force known technically among historians as micro-militarism. With the hubris that has marked empires over the millennia, the Trump administration is, for instance, now committed to extending indefinitely Washington’s failing war of pacification in Afghanistan with a new mini-surge of U.S. troops (and air power) in that classic “graveyard of empires.”

So irrational, so unpredictable is such micro-militarism that even the most fanciful of scenarios can be outpaced by actual events, as was true at Suez. With the U.S. military stretched thin from North Africa to South Korea, with no lasting successes in its post-9/11 wars, and with tensions rising from the Persian Gulf and Syria to the South China Sea and the Koreas, the possibilities for a disastrous military crisis abroad seem almost unending. So let me pick just one possible scenario for a future Trumpian military misadventure in the Greater Middle East.  (I’m sure you’ll think of other candidates immediately.)

It’s the late spring of 2020, the start of the traditional Afghan fighting season, and a U.S. garrison in the city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is unexpectedly overrun by an ad hoc alliance of Taliban and Islamic State guerrillas. While U.S. aircraft are grounded in a blinding sand storm, the militants summarily execute their American captives, filming the gruesome event for immediate upload on the Internet. Speaking to an international television audience, President Trump thunders against “disgusting Muslim murderers” and swears he will “make the desert sands run red with their blood.” In fulfillment of that promise, an angry American theater commander sends B-1 bombers and F-35 fighters to demolish whole neighborhoods of Kandahar believed to be under Taliban control. In an aerial coup de grâce, AC-130-U “Spooky” gunships then rake the rubble with devastating cannon fire. The civilian casualties are beyond counting.

Soon, mullahs are preaching jihad from mosques across Afghanistan and far beyond. Afghan Army units, long trained by American forces to turn the tide of the war, begin to desert en masse. In isolated posts across the country, clusters of Afghan soldiers open fire on their American advisers in what are termed “insider” or “green-on-blue” attacks. Meanwhile, Taliban fighters launch a series of assaults on scattered U.S. garrisons elsewhere in the country, suddenly sending American casualties soaring. In scenes reminiscent of Saigon in 1975, U.S. helicopters rescue American soldiers and civilians from rooftops not just in Kandahar, but in several other provincial capitals and even Kabul.

Meanwhile, angry over the massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the anti-Muslim diatribes tweeted almost daily from the Oval Office, and years of depressed energy prices, OPEC’s leaders impose a harsh new oil embargo aimed at the United States and its allies. With refineries running dry in Europe and Asia, the world economy trembling at the brink of recession, and gas prices soaring, Washington flails about for a solution. The first call is to NATO, but the alliance is near collapse after four years of President Trump’s erratic behavior. Even the British, alienated by his inattention to their concerns, rebuff his appeals for support.

Facing an uncertain reelection in November 2020, the Trump White House makes its move, sending Marines and Special Operations forces to seize oil ports in the Persian Gulf. Flying from the Fifth Fleet’s base in Bahrain, Navy Seals and Army Rangers occupy the Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia, the ninth largest in the world; Kuwait’s main oil port at Shuaiba; and Iraq’s at Um Qasr.

Simultaneously, the light carrier USS Iwo Jima steams south at the head of a task force that launches helicopters carrying 6,000 Special Operations forces tasked with seizing the al-Ruwais refinery in Abu Dhabi, the world’s fourth largest, and the megaport at Jebel Ali in Dubai, a 20-square-mile complex so massive that the Americans can only occupy its oil facilities. When Teheran vehemently protests the U.S. escalation in the Persian Gulf and hints at retaliation, Defense Secretary James Mattis, reviving a plan from his days as CENTCOM commander, orders preemptive Tomahawk missile strikes on Iran’s flagship oil refinery at Abadan.

From its first hours, the operation goes badly wrong. The troops seem lost inside the unmapped mazes of pipes that honeycomb the oil ports. Meanwhile, refinery staff prove stubbornly uncooperative, sensing that the occupation will be short-lived and disastrous. On day three, Iranian Revolutionary Guard commandos, who have been training for this moment since the breakdown of the 2015 nuclear accord with the U.S., storm ashore at the Kuwaiti and Emirate refineries with remote-controlled charges. Unable to use their superior firepower in such a volatile environment, American troops are reduced to firing futile bursts at the departing speed boats as oil storage tanks and gas pipes explode spectacularly.

Three days later, as the USS Gerald Ford approaches an Iranian island, more than 100 speedboats suddenly appear, swarming the carrier in a practiced pattern of high-speed crisscrosses. Every time lethal bursts from the carrier’s MK-38 chain guns rip through the lead boats, others emerge from the flames coming closer and closer. Concealed by clouds of smoke, one finally reaches an undefended spot beneath the conning tower near enough for a Revolutionary guardsman to attach a magnetic charge to the hull with a fateful click. There is a deafening roar and a gaping hole erupts at the waterline of the first aircraft carrier to be crippled in battle since World War II. As things go from bad to worse, the Pentagon is finally forced to accept that a debacle is underway and withdraws its capital ships from the Persian Gulf.

As black clouds billow skyward from the Gulf’s oil ports and diplomats rise at the U.N. to bitterly denounce American actions, commentators worldwide reach back to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of imperial Britain to brand this “America’s Suez.” The empire has been trumped.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years, and the forthcoming In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, out in September from Dispatch Books.

Do you want to know why the FBI continued to insist that the Nunes’ memo not be declassified and released to the public? The answer is right there on page 2, (see 1b) in the discussion about what was excluded from the application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of-and paid by-the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.

I believe that the part in bold is what the FBI wanted out of the memo because it exposes the uncomfortable fact that Christopher Steele was (and had been for some time) a paid asset of the FBI. That is huge news. In other words, Steele was not a mere consultant or sub-contractor for the FBI. He was being paid to provide information/intelligence to the FBI.

There are two classes of FBI “informants.” One is serving as a “criminal informant” and the other is as an “intelligence asset.” Information from “criminal informants” can be used in a U.S. judicial proceeding and the informant called as a witness. Getting money under that circumstance can be problematic because the source’s credibility can be impeached by defense counsel, who can argue that the testimony is purloined.

Many baby boomers remember the original MAD Magazine, which was founded in 1952. MAD reached its apex during the mid to late 60s, when there was so much to satirize about. The Cold War, The Vietnam debacle, the Civil Rights movement, Women’s Rights and of course the birth of ‘ The Pill ‘ were among the many great issues to consider during that time. Factor in the presidency of Richard Nixon and whopee, MAD had lots to satirize. We high school and college kids could not wait for the next issue to come out! This writer knows that MAD is actually still around, but the power of its themes were so great during those latter years.

Well folks, we are once again entering the cartoon years of this new Amerikan empire. I mean, can you imagine that a real estate mogul with orange hair and a closet filled with skeletons, along with a resume of Reality TV work, can become president of the United States?

No, I take that back, because most of his predecessors were never ‘Men of the people’ in any manner, especially Junior Bush. Sadly, very few of my friends and neighbors really care anymore. The working stiffs I speak with either have A) gone along for the stock market ride, B) only cared about being safe from the terrorists and of course having blacks and browns in their neighborhoods and schools, C) ran to the phony Democratic Party to keep on conning them with visions of ‘Hope and Change’ or D) Just said “**** It, I give up, the empire is too powerful!”

It’s all a cartoon folks! You have the good guys, we the Amerikans, and then the bad guys, the ISIL, Al Qaeda, the drug gangs from south of the border, and the lazy illegals who get free health care on our dime. The good guys will always “Fight a never ending battle for truth , justice and the Amerikan way” (Kudos to the Superman television show). So, you drive in your vehicle and see the countless license plates promoting our armed forces. Or, Proud Parent of a Marine Or Proud Grandparent of a soldier posted on the rear windows. Remember the phony war on Iraq in 1991? They came out with those yellow ribbons to honor our troops. Of course, never to honor the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians destroyed by our collateral damaging missiles and bombs. Need I go on? Don’t worry, it’s just a cartoon folks.

Here is what you all will be facing very shortly due to this insane and obscene ‘Cartoon worthy militarism’: In the town of Cranston, Rhode Island, due to critical budget shortfalls over the last several years the state legislature voted to unilaterally reduce public employees’ pension benefits… retroactively! Of course, there are lawsuits filed to stop this but think of the consequences if this ruling is allowed to stand. Now, our right wing leaning friends out there will say that these public sector employees get ‘too much of a deal’ to begin with. They would like to see ALL workers (but NOT themselves or their own family members) be at the mercy of the owners of business. As in Florida and many other states, these ‘Right to work’ private sector jobs are the answer to too many ‘giveaways’ to workers. Yet, no one on both sides of this argument will connect the dots and see the light of truth on this matter.

When you have over HALF of our federal tax dollars going down the rabbit hole of military spending, along with phony invasions and occupations, and close to 1000 foreign bases worldwide, COUNT DA MONEY! The reality is that for generations Uncle Sam utilized the procedure of Revenue Sharing using Block Grants to the states and their cities. This was money that was NOT to be paid back by the way.

Washington would take some of our tax dollars and send it along to each state for use to help fund whatever programs were necessary for each of their localities. Thus, a city like Cranston would receive enough funding to help with their public employee pensions… among other things. Well, since Congress allowed the Military Industrial Empire to eat up over half of our tax dollars on the aforementioned actions, well…  VERY LITTLE REVENUE SHARING AND BLOCK GRANTS! We have already seen how the cherished ‘Safety Net’ for the majority of us has already been tattered. The Cranston example is just one of a million others. Get wise folks!! Stop supporting this insanity, which will very shortly bankrupt us… BOTH FISCALLY AND MORALLY!

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected])

Reflecting on his life while dying of throat cancer in 1885, the former US President Ulysses S. Grant said the Mexican-American War was, “the most wicked war in history. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign”.

Grant had first-hand experience as he himself fought in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), then as a junior officer in his mid-20s. Less than two decades later, he rose to prominence as one of the most important figures during the American Civil War – as Commanding General his powerful Union Army finally crushed the under-resourced Confederates.

Grant would become a two-term American President (1869-1877), initially taking the job with reluctance. “I have been forced into it in spite of myself”, he wrote to William Sherman, a fellow Union Army general during the civil war.

Despite involvement in various conflicts, the Mexican-American War haunted Grant to the end. 

“I had a horror of the Mexican War and I have always believed it was on our part most unjust. The wickedness was in the conduct of the war. We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion”.

What is striking about Grant’s views today is how remarkably forthright they are. It would prove unthinkable for US presidents in later centuries to express ethical misgivings about the attacks on Korea or Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq – despite the much greater destruction and loss of life.

The defeat of Mexico consolidated US expansion of its territorial size by almost 25%. Texas had initially been annexed from Mexico in 1845, a state almost three times the size of Britain.

The Mexican government refused to recognize Texas’s illegal incorporation into American terrain. By May of the following year (1846), the US had declared war on its southern neighbor. US President James K. Polk utilized the pretext that attacking Mexican forces had “passed the boundary of the United States [in Texas], has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil”.

In truth, the “American soil” was Mexican soil annexed to become part of the US. The Americans were awaiting a ruse in which they could attack Mexico without causing unwanted popular uproar, allowing the US to make further gains into Mexican land.

In all the time since, there has been little demand from democratic leaders for the US to return Mexico’s stolen territories – or at least to recognize a gross injustice was inflicted upon her.

Instead, we hear hypocritical laments over Russia’s “annexation” of Crimea in 2014 – a region that was firstly part of Russia (from 1783-1917) and then later under the sphere of the USSR (1917-1991).

The principal purpose for America’s war of conquest over Mexico was gaining monopoly over cotton production. In the 19^th century, cotton was as vital as oil is today, and also represented a key commodity of the slave industry. Control over cotton “would bring England to its feet”. President Polk openly recognized this, as did his immediate predecessor, former President John Tyler.

Indeed, Tyler said of Texas’s 1845 annexation, 

“By securing the virtual monopoly of the cotton plant”, America had acquired “a greater influence over the affairs of the world than would be found in armies however strong, or navies however numerous”.

Tyler continued,

“That monopoly, now secured, places all other nations at our feet. An embargo of a single year would produce in Europe a greater amount of suffering than a fifty years war. I doubt whether Great Britain could avoid convulsions”.

The American victory over Mexico in February 1848, led to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It saw the US take not only Texas from Mexico, but also California, half of New Mexico, most of Arizona, Nevada and Utah, along with parts of Wyoming and Colorado. Much of these areas were rich in cotton, with the conquests signifying an epic land-grab whose repercussions last to the current day.

In keeping with modern times, the Free Press championed America’s illegal interventions. James Gordon Bennett – editor and founder of the New York Herald – then the US’s biggest selling newspaper, wrote approvingly that Britain was “completely bound and manacled with the cotton cords. A lever with which we can successfully control” their main rival. Not a word of the unwarranted acts perpetrated against Mexico.

Indeed, Bennett was hopeful that the Mexicans’ fate would be 

“similar to that of the Indians of this country – the race, before a century rolls over, will become extinct”. He wrote about the “imbecility and degradation of the Mexican people”.

Bennett was one of the major figures in the history of the American press, and felt that “the idea of amalgamation [of races] has been always abhorrent to the Anglo-Saxon race on this continent”.

The Cincinnati Herald editor described Mexicans as “degraded mongrel races”, along with Native Americans. The editor of the Augusta Daily Chronicle, in Georgia, offered prior warning in 1846 that attacking Mexico would likely reveal, 

“a sickening mixture, consisting of such a conglomeration of Negroes and Rancheros, Mestizoes and Indians, with but a few Castilians [Spaniards]”.

In 1845 James Buchanan, future US President, insisted that

“our race of men can never be subjected to the imbecile and indolent Mexican race”.

Texas Senator Sam Houston went even further, saying in 1848 that

“the Mexicans are no better than Indians, and I see no reason why we should not go on in the same course now and take their land [all of Mexico].”

Walt Whitman, America’s famous journalist and poet, asked 

“What has miserable, inefficient Mexico… to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?”

With these prevailing attitudes, a quick, easy victory was expected over Mexico. However, it was anything but, as the Mexican Army fought valiantly, surprising its over-confident American foe. The conflict lasted almost two years, before the weight of superior US forces finally told.

Following Mexico’s defeat, a new artificial border was imposed which remained quite open. Those wishing to cross it to visit relatives or engage in commerce found it a straightforward affair. That is, until the 1990s, when the Clinton administration began fortifying and militarizing the Mexican border.

George W. Bush then aggressively expanded upon Clinton’s initiatives along the frontier – under the pretexts of shielding the US from illegal immigrants, terrorists or drug dealers.

The territorial gains over Mexico have largely been erased from memory, despite having occurred comfortably within the past 200 years. It seems plausible that many Americans living in Texas or California may be unaware they are sitting on occupied Mexican land.

The American writer and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

“It really doesn’t matter by what means Mexico is taken, as it contributes to the mission of ‘civilizing the world’ and, in the long run, it will be forgotten”.

It has not been forgotten by Mexicans, however. In April last year Mexico’s former presidential candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, urged his government to bring a lawsuit against America in the International court of Justice, for reparations and indemnification.

A lawyer working for Cardenas said,

 “We are going to make a strong and tough case, because we are right. They were in Mexican territory in a military invasion”.

One suspects Ulysses S. Grant would be in their corner. 

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This article was originally published by The Duran.

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

Featured image is from The Duran.

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At Thursday’s close, it was down 10% from its all-time high.

On Tuesday, longtime market analyst Art Cashin told CNBC:

“I’ve been on Wall Street for 50 years and this looks like a market bottom.”

His attempt and others to reverse declining equity prices failed, the Dow plummeting another 1,032 points on Thursday after two days of sharp increases.

Short-term trading up or down on Wall Street and elsewhere doesn’t indicate a trend.

Yet a tsunami of liquidity courtesy of Fed quantitative easing, other key central banks following suit, along with near-zero interest rates, let bulls have things their way for the past nine years – not a record bull market but close.

Former Nixon Council of Economic Advisors chairman Herb Stein once said “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop” – another way of saying things that can’t go on forever won’t.

Has a Waterloo moment arrived for the aging bull market? It’s too soon to know, but clear if not now, it’s coming. Equities are hugely overvalued. They can’t keep rising exponentially.

On January 3, noted market analyst Jeremy Grantham said

“(b)rac(e) yourself for a possible near-term melt-up or end-phase of a bubble within the next 6 months to 2 years.”

Equity valuations rose sharply in the new year before swooning in late January. On January 26, the S&P 500 closed at 2,872.87 – since then declining 292 points (over 10%).

European, Asian and most other markets follow Wall Street. Absent volatility is back with a vengeance. Whether the bull market ended or continues, sharp market swings are likely to continue as long as uncertainty replaced complacency.

Buy the dip worked for years. Doing it now perhaps entails greater risk than many investors wish to take.

Since last weekend, professional investors began dumping Exchange Traded Funds, an ominous market sign if continues.

China’s currency dropped sharply, anticipating possible financial instability. European banks are holding around $2 trillion in non-performing loans.

Australian economist Steve Keen believes investors are asking the wrong question, wondering if recent trading days reflected a market crash.

The real one is “why did it take so long for this crash to happen,” he believes, adding market turbulence is “like a long-overdue earthquake.”

“(T)he ratio of stock prices to corporate earnings is almost higher than it has ever been.”

It’s only been higher during the dot.com bubble.

The crash saw Nasdaq valuations declining over 75%. Is a repeat coming, along with crashing Dow, S&P valuations, and similar declines in other markets, emerging ones likely hit hardest if bears replaced bulls on exchanges.

Keen calls the current market bubble the first central bank-created one. He thinks the Fed and other central banks will intervene with more quantitative easing, trying to “drive shares back to what think are ‘normal’ levels, but which are at least twice what they should be.”

If so, it will continue benefitting corporate predators and wealthy households at the expense of most others – the ongoing scheme since the neoliberal 90s, accelerating under Obama and Trump.

*

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

At a carefully planned dinner to honor Kim Yong Nam, the head of the North Korean delegation and Vice President Mike Pence, South Korean President Moon said that he hoped the Winter Olympics would be remembered as the “day peace began.” But, Vice President Mike Pence did his best to make sure that did not happen. He missed the opportunity created by Moon to further peace on the Korean peninsula. The historic opening created by North and South Korea at the Olympics was an opportunity, but Pence handled the situation like a childish teenager.

At a dinner reception where President Moon sought an opportunity for dialogue between the US and North Korea, Pence went to great lengths to avoid talking to the North Koreans. According to Reuters, when Pence arrived late to the reception, he told Moon he planned to leave directly after a photo session, but Moon asked him to “come and say hello to friends.” Moon was trying to create a dialogue to advance peace but Pence went around the table and shook hands with everyone except Kim Yong Nam of North Korea.

So Pence went around the table and greeted/shook hands with everyone – except North Korea’s Kim Yong Nam, who was sitting between the UN sec-gen Guterres and IOC chairman Bach

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 9, 2018

[ Kim Yong Nam is the head of the North Korean Delegation, Kim Yong Yo is the sister of the North Korean president]

Reuters reports that Moon said,

“There are some who would not want to be in the same room together if it wasn’t for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. But what is more important than anything is that we are together.”

That seemed to be a statement that described the behavior of Pence. The mainstream political media outlet Politico described it as a close call for Pence:

Vice President Mike Pence’s Olympic visit to Pyeongchang, South Korea, began Friday with a close call with the North Korean officials, whom the vice president appeared to avoid at a diplomatic reception before the opening ceremonies.

Since Pence arrived at the dinner late, the seating plan was shuffled. Pence again missed an opportunity created by Moon. Originally, the seating plan showed Pence, with his wife to the left and Moon to his right, seated across the round table from Kim, who was nestled between U.N. Secretary General António Guterres and International Olympics Committee President Thomas Bach’s wife. Kim’s visit is significant as she is the first member of North Korea’s ruling family to enter South Korea since 1953. Who knows what kind of conversation could have occurred that furthered the peace process, but Pence avoided the opportunity.

The initial seating plan for the Olympic reception for VIPs had @VP Pence sitting next to South Korean president Moon and opposite North Korea's head of state, Kim Yong Nam, @Reuters reports. Then Pence decided not to join the dinner. https://t.co/BHSVm6KdYG pic.twitter.com/AoEVAmlyAr

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 9, 2018

Pence left the event after five minutes. Reuters reports that Pence missed the symbolic desert, called “A Plate of Hope,” a “dark chocolate tempered in the shape of barbed wire lay over a map of the Korean peninsula rendered in thin blue chocolate, a representation of the heavily militarized border that separates Games host South Korea and its old enemy in the North.”

Reuters reports the diplomatic response of the Moon administration was a reaction to the avoidance antics of Pence:

“A source in the Moon administration said Pence’s absence at the reception was a ‘mere bump’ in an otherwise successful diplomatic event.”

At the Olympic stadium, Pence sat one row in front of the North Koreans. Even though Kim Jong Yo was very close to him, Pence did not even try to speak to her.  The pool report for the media was that Pence had “no interaction” with Kim Jong Yo. New York Magazine described it as Pence “avoiding eye contact” with the Korean leader.  Another missed opportunity for peace.

Vice President Pence, so close and yet so far from North Korea’s Kim Jong Yo. The two never even made eye contact.

Vice president Mike Pence, second from bottom right, sits between second lady Karen Pence, third from from bottom left, and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Behind Pence is Kim Jong Yo of North Korea. To the left is President Moon of South Korea and is wife.

While Pence was present, South Korean President Moon Jae-in shook hands with Kim Yo Jong, creating a historic moment and a photograph that gave hopes to many for peace between North and South Korea and movement toward unification and an end of hostilities.

Another show of unity occurred when two members of the Unified Korean Hockey Team, one from the North and one from the South, carried the Olympic torch up the final flight of stairs in the opening ceremonies. They handed the torch over to figure skater Yuna Kim, a South Korean who won the gold medal in 2010 and the silver medal in 2014 who then lit the Olympic cauldron.

A historic moment of unity, two women who play on the unified Korean ice hockey team carried the Olympic torch for the last leg of its journey at the opening ceremony for the 2018 PyeongChang Games. Park Jong-ah of South Korea and Jong Su-hyon of North Korea carried the flame together across the stage and up a steep flight of stairs to the base of the Olympic cauldron.

We recognize that these images of North and South Korea shaking hands and being friendly toward each other as well as of South and North Korean athletes walking into the Olympic stadium together do not ensure peace on the Korean peninsula. It is a long hard road to peace, much still needs to be negotiated. Peace is made more difficult with the US threatening a ‘bloody nose’, teenage bully talk for a military first strike, against North Korea. Pence exemplified the worst of US foreign policy with his childish behavior at the Olympics.

*

Kevin Zeese is co-director of Popular Resistance where this article was originally published. 

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

A short while ago, the Syrian National Dialogue Congress was finished in Russia’s Sochi. The innovative format of the negotiations has become unique and unprecedented among all the sectors of  Syrian society. In the conflict’s history, no one has been able to gather the representatives of the official Syrian government, members of the ruling party, tribal elders, various social movements, unions and religious denominations, and even members of the internal and external opposition.

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the absence of some other radically minded representatives of the opposition didn’t affect the decision-making process in any way. Instead of using the new opportunity to find touch points, the foreign-sponsored opposition ignored the negotiations, thereby confirming its political inferiority.

Many participants of the Congress are sure that the voice of the Syrian people has been heard for the first time in a while in Sochi. The final statement confirms this statement.

“There are some countries that seek the escalation of the Syrian conflict. We need peace for Syria. Therefore, there are so many influential Syrians in Sochi. Here with the help of Russians and their President we will be able to make significant process. They are the only one who is actually interested in the restoration of peace” a delegate from the Trade Unions and Associations group Majed Harmaz said.

At the same time, not everyone was satisfied with the results of the Congress. Thus, the head of the Syrian Negotiations Commission (SNC) Nasser Al-Hariri said that the process allegedly would undermine the UN’s efforts aimed at cessation of hostilities and establishing peace. However, he didn’t argue his words.

It should be mentioned that finding common ground in the Syrian society is an absolutely new format, and the last Congress really can give a new impetus to the stalling Geneva talks. The final decision on the establishment of a constitutional commission can’t be unnoticed or ignored, and will be considered at the UN.

Consequently, oppositionists boycotted the Syrian Nation Dialogue Congress in Sochi will still have to discuss its results in Geneva. That is, they will still have to include their representatives in the emerging membership of the constitutional commission, and the process will make significant progress. However, the awareness of the need to participate in the process of creating a new Basic Law of the country would require a lot of time on the part of the opposition and won’t happen immediately.

In fact, the process of the creation of a new constitution by Syria has been launched due to the efforts of the guarantor countries in Astana. In addition, the Syrian society’s position was underlined, such as territorial integrity, sovereignty, ensuring the rights of all ethnic and religious groups.

Therefore, it can be stated with certainty that the Congress in Sochi has provided a serious impulse to the process of peaceful settlement in Syria. This means that all the decisions that have been taken there are legitimate and in conformity with Council resolution 2254.

*

Featured image is from the author.

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Phony accusations persist – never backed by evidence because none exists.

Most Americans are none the wiser, bombarded endlessly with false claims, too few savvy enough to demand credible proof, believing without it, accusations are groundless.

From Colombia during his regional tour, Rex Tillerson repeated the Big Lie – without justification claiming Russia already is trying to meddle in US midterm congressional elections this November, adding:

“Really, I think it’s just important to continue to say to Russia, ‘Look, if you think we don’t see what you’re doing, we do see it and you need to stop.”

“If you don’t, you’re just going to continue to invite consequences for yourself.”

By joining Trump’s team as secretary of state, Tillerson transformed himself from predatory Big Oil boss to a caricature of a diplomat, disgracing the office he holds.

CIA director Mike Pompeo trumpeted the same Big Lie, claiming “I have every expectation that” Russia will try meddling in November midterm elections.

Neocon Senator Ben Cardin is militantly Russophobic, saying

“(i)t is imperative that the American people better understand the true scope and scale of Putin’s pattern of undermining democracy in Russia and across Europe,” adding:

“This threat existed long before President Trump took office, and unless he takes action now, it will continue long after his administration.”

No Russian threat exists, no Kremlin meddling in US, European or any other elections. When they turn out the way America’s deep state wants, they’re acceptable.

If the wrong candidates win, especially for high office, it’s Russia’s fault.

On Wednesday, an NBC fake news report headlined “Russians penetrated US voter systems, top US official say,” claiming Moscow “successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several US states prior to the 2016 presidential election.”

Once again, no evidence was cited. No Russian penetration of US voter registration rolls occurred.

According to Homeland Security Department cybersecurity head Jeanette Manfra,

“(w)e saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated,” adding:

She can’t disclose so-called classified information publicly – the same lame excuse given whenever corroboration evidence is requested.

If it existed, it would have been revealed long ago. In January 2017, the US intelligence community concluded with high confidence that Russia interfered in America’s 2016 presidential election to help Trump defeat Hillary.

It claimed Putin personally ordered an “influence campaign” to harm Hillary’s chances, along with “undermin(ing) public faith in the US democratic (sic) process.”

The Big Lie was repeated numerous times, regurgitated endless by the corporate media. After 13 months of anti-Russia accusations and allegations, no evidence backing them was revealed – clear evidence the accusations were fabricated.

I explained many times that the John Brennan cooked up scheme was and remains an attempt to delegitimize Trump for defeating Hillary, along with demonizing Russia, part of a longterm strategy, aiming for regime change.

In September 2016, a fake news NBC report claimed “more than 20 states had been targeted by the Russians,” US officials saying no registration rolls were altered – because none were targeted by Russia.

As long as Trump remains president, expect phony accusations of Russian US election to continue.

*

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

Few government organizations have been engaged in violation of the US citizens’ constitutional rights for as long a time and against as many individuals as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Seldom has there been greater collusion in the perpetration of crimes against civil liberties, electoral freedom and free and lawful expression as what has taken place between the FBI and the US Justice Department.

In the past, the FBI and Justice Department secured the enthusiastic support and public acclaim from the conservative members of the US Congress, members of the judiciary at all levels and the mass media. The leading liberal voices, public figures, educators, intellectuals and progressive dissenters opposing the FBI and their witch-hunting tactics were all from the left. Today, the right and the left have changed places: The most powerful voices endorsing the FBI and the Justice Department’s fabrications, and abuse of constitutional rights are on the left, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and famous liberal media corporations and public opinion makers.

The recently published Congressional memo, authored by Congressman Devin Nunes, provides ample proof that the FBI spied on Trump campaign workers with the intent to undermine the Republican candidate and sabotage his bid for the presidency. Private sector investigators, hired by Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, worked with pro-Clinton operatives within the FBI and Justice Department to violate the national electoral process while flouting rules governing wiretaps on US citizens. This was done with the approval of the sitting Democratic President Barack Obama.

The liberals and Democrats and their allies in the FBI, political police and other elements of the security state apparatus were deeply involved in an attempt to implicate Russian government officials in a plot to manipulate US public opinion on Trump’s behalf and corrupt the outcome of the election. However, the FBI, the Justice Department and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller have produced no evidence of collusion linking the Russian government to a campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in favor of Trump. This is despite thousands of interviews and threats of long prison sentences against former Trump campaign advisers. Instead, they focus their attack on Trump’s early campaign promise to find common ground in improving economic and diplomatic ties between the US and Russia, especially in confronting jihadi terrorists.

The liberal-progressive FBI cohort turned into rabid Russia-bashers demanding that Trump take a highly aggressive stance against Moscow, while systematically eliminating his military and security advisors who expressed anti-confrontation sentiments. In the spirit of a Joe McCarthy, the liberal-left launched hysterical attacks on any and every Trump campaign adviser who had spoken to, dined with or exchanged eyebrows with any and all Russians!

The conversion of liberalism to the pursuit of political purges is unprecedented. Their collective amnesia about the long-term, large-scale involvement by the FBI in the worst criminal violations of democratic values is reprehensible. The FBI’s anti-communist crusade led to the purge of thousands of trade unionists from the mid-1940’s onward, decimating the AFL-CIO. They blacklisted actors, screen writers, artists, teachers, university academics, researchers, scientists, journalists and civil rights leaders as part of their sweeping purge of civil society.

The FBI investigated the private lives of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, even threatening their family members. They illegally spied on and infiltrated civil liberties organizations, and used provocateurs and spies in anti-war groups. Individuals lives were destroyed, some were driven to suicide; important popular American organizations were undermined to the detriment of millions. This has been its focus since its beginning and continues with the current fabrication of anti-Russian propaganda and investigations.

President Trump: Victim and Executor

President Trump has pursued an agenda mirroring the police state operations of the FBI – only on a global scale. Trump’s violation of international law includes collaboration and support for Saudi Arabia’s tyrannical invasion and destruction of the sovereign nation of Yemen; intensified aid and support for Israel’s ethnic war against the Palestinian people; severe sanctions and threatened nuclear first-strike against North Korea (DPRK); increased deployment of US special forces in collaboration with the jihadi terrorist war to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria; coup-mongering, sabotage, sanctions and economic blockade of Venezuela; NATO missile and nuclear encirclement of Russia; and the growing naval threats against China.

Domestically, Trump’s response to the FBI’s blackmail has been to replace the original political leadership with his own version; to expand and increase the police state powers against immigrants; to increase the powers of the major tech companies to police and intensify work-place exploitation and the invasion of citizens’ privacy; to expand the unleash the power of state agents to torture suspects and to saturate all public events, celebrations and activities with open displays of jingoism and militarism with the goal of creating pro-war public opinion.

In a word: From the right to the left there are no political options to choose from among the two ruling political parties. Popular political movements and mass demonstrations have risen up against Trump with clear justification, but have since dissolved and been absorbed. They came together from diverse sectors: Women against sexual abuse and workplace humiliation; African-Americans against police impunity and violence; and immigrants against mass expulsion and harassment. They staged mass demonstrations and then declined as their ‘anti-Trump’ animus was frustrated by the liberal-democrats hell-bent on pursuing the Russian connection.

In the face of the national-political debacle local and regional movements became the vehicle to support the struggles. Women organized at some workplaces and gained better protection of their rights; African-Americans vividly documented and published video evidence of the systematic brutal violation of their rights by the police state and effectively acted to restrain local police violence in a few localities; immigrant workers and especially their children gained broad public sympathy and allies within religious and political organizations; and anti-Trump movements combined with critics of the liberal/democrat apparatus to build broader movements and especially oppose growing war-fever.

Abroad, bi-partisan wars have failed to defeat independent state and mass popular resistance struggles for national sovereignty everywhere – from North Korea , Iran , Yemen , Syria , and Venezuela and beyond.

Even the fight within the two-headed reactionary party of the US oligarchy has had a positive effect. Each side is hell-bent on exposing the state-sponsored crimes of the other. In an unprecedented and historic sense, the US and world public is witness to the spies, lies and crimes of the leadership and elite on prime time and on the wide screen. We head in two directions. In one direction, there are the threats of nuclear war, economic collapse, environmental disasters and a full blown police state. In the other direction, there is the demise of empire, a revived and renewed civil society rooted in a participatory economy and a renewed moral order.

U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has returned to Washington from his tour of Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Colombia, and a final stop in Jamaica on February 7. He must have surely reported back about his trip to his handlers. We will not know the details or content of his report, much less his personal impressions about the meetings he had with Latin-American heads of state. But we do know the messenger, the message he was carrying, and preliminary outcomes from his tour. We ask, do Venezuelan democracy, peace, and constitutional process fit in the corporate mind of Secretary of State Tillerson?

The messenger, Mr. Tillerson, has quite an extensive profile as a public figure in the private sector. A lot of information is readily available on Wikipedia. [1]

Mr. Tillerson has spent most of his professional life working for the oil and gas Exxon Mobil Corporation in different capacities. In the capitalist context he has done very well by becoming very wealthy, which is usually a prerequisite for jumping into public life. He has climbed the traditional business ladder from engineer in 1975 to CEO of Exxon Mobil in 2006, which has included conspicuous financial benefits in the order of millions of dollars as rewards.

“Mr. Tillerson is estimated to be worth at least $300 million.” (Wikipedia) But that is nothing compared to the giant corporation he headed that “had 80,000 employees, did business in nearly 200 countries, and had an annual revenue of nearly $400 billion.”

More interestingly, Mr. Tillerson lobbied against the Dodd Frank Act Rule 1504 reform and protections of 2010, which would have required Exxon Mobil to disclose payments to foreign governments. We can only guess the motive for him to reject more transparency in dealings with foreign governments. Then suddenly, in 2017, Congress voted to overturn Rule 1504 one hour before Tillerson was confirmed as Secretary of State. We can assume that now nothing will stop resource extraction businesses to make unspecified payments to foreign governments. That must be Mr. Tillerson legacy to the industry that treated him so well.

On the foreign front, Mr. Tillerson was also very successful and had made business deals on behalf of Exxon Mobil with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. In fact, in 2013, he was awarded the Order of Friendship by Vladimir Putin for his contribution to developing U.S.-Russia cooperation in the energy sector. Maybe Mr. Tillerson decided to oppose U.S. sanctions against Russia in 2014 in order to oblige?

That was Rex Tillerson wearing his corporate hat. But suddenly, Rex Tillerson, wearing his brand new Secretary of State hat, urged Russia to withdraw from eastern Ukraine stating

“the United States will consider working with Russia when we can find areas of practical cooperation that will benefit the American people. Where we do not see eye to eye, the United States will stand up for the interests and values of America and her allies.”

When did his view of the “interests and values of America” change since 2014?

The interaction of CEO Tillerson with Venezuela has also had a bumpy history. When the Hugo Chavez government re-nationalized the oil industry in 2007 Exxon Mobil claimed $15 billion as compensation, an international arbitration court only granted $1.6 billion. Is Mr. Tillerson seeking today a payback for his former friends?

These sketchy facts are important in order to establish the person’s character and level of integrity of his words. After all, the U.S. Senate must have reviewed Mr. Tillerson’s “performance” as a corporate citizen before confirming his appointment as one of the top U.S. official. So can we.

This is the person who has had a single-minded business view of the world who suddenly becomes the foreign arm of a U.S. president who has a similar single-minded business worldview. What kind of state diplomacy, morals, ethics, honour, and public sector experience are at play in running a corporation? Where do democracy, peace, and constitutional process fit in a corporate-trained mind? It’s anybody’s guess because those are values that are becoming scarce in U.S. foreign policy and are being replaced with sanctions, threats and actual military interventions in countries that dare to challenge the empire’s design of domination. Countries that cave in may be “rewarded” with trade deals that make sure “America first” is the outcome.

Mr. Tillerson, the U.S. messenger to the world, travelled to some Latin American countries not to promote real democracy, peace and respect for constitutional process but just the opposite. By his own words, he has incited a military coup in Venezuela, immediately echoed by senator Marco Rubio on Twitter:

“The world would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator”

This is a diabolical “marketing-style” means to sell havoc and death. A commercial would probably say, “Your family members would love you if you would protect them by buying our life insurance policy.” One day we hope we would declare similar words to Rubio’s as hate speech, or worse, as words inciting to genocide, as Peter Koenig called Washington policy recently. [2]

Days after Mr. Tillerson’s tour, Argentina said it would consider an embargo of Venezuelan oil. Colombia, mimicking the U.S., declared that it would be impossible to recognize the upcoming elections in Venezuela. Colombia and Brazil have just announced a build up of their troops close to the Venezuelan borders, which is the single most treasonous action by regional compatriots. The Lima Group has also joined the chorus of protests against Venezuela.

It is hard to believe that the U.S. does not pursue regime change in Venezuela. The U.S. government has declared Venezuela a threat to its national security. It has applied multiple sanctions to the country including a virtual financial blockade that only intend to promote discontent, not to mention suffering, in the population. It has issued threats of military intervention, and it has called the Venezuelan armed forces to rebel. Canada and the EU have followed suit at least on sanctions. The U.S. government actively seeks unlawful regime change in Venezuela.

Equivalent in spirit to Trump’s “shithole” remark, Mr. Tillerson said that the military “oftentimes” handles regime change in Latin America. That is insulting, to say the least, but more seriously it is an undiplomatic seditious message to the Venezuelan military. It totally forgets the long history of violent U.S. military interventions in Latin America.

This gross ignorance of history cannot be an excuse for his recent praise of the outdated 1823 Monroe Doctrine as a “success”. The implementation of that doctrine has had a devastating impact in the region. It is seen by many as raw U.S. imperialism, precisely the kind that the Bolivarian Revolution wants to eradicate to put an end to the rapacious exploitation of Latin America.

In the meantime, while Mr. Tillerson was on his tour planting seeds of treason in Latin America, the Venezuelan government has continued its dialogue with the opposition in the Dominican Republic. When it came time to signing an agreement last February 6, the opposition did not show up after reportedly receiving a phone call from Colombian President Santos. Mr. Tillerson happened to be in Colombia at the time. The unsigned agreement had an election date already set. Responding to the no show of the opposition, the Maduro government was consistent with its promise of going to elections with or without agreement: it then released the unratified agreement with the date that was set: April 22, 2018.

Without an understanding of the historical U.S. imperial role in Latin America it would be impossible to comprehend the level of contradiction between preaching democracy and at the same time stopping the only viable process that promotes democracy, that is dialogue and a peaceful electoral process without preconditions or threats.

However, after the Secretary of State returned to Washington, it is precisely more threatening statements that we hear. The State Department has already issued on February 8 a statement questioning the upcoming elections in Venezuela and supporting “the decision by opposition parties” to reject the elections. But even before then, the U.S. government had stated that it would not recognize the elections. Showing a great deal of consideration, President Maduro immediately tweeted

“Venezuela is open to giving all of the necessary guarantees and to receive all international observers who would like to come [observe our elections]. Beyond inspecting, they may learn from the impeccable electoral system that we’ve built.”

How will the U.S. respond to that? A sensible government with serious intentions towards peace would immediately seize the opportunity through a mutually agreed mediated effort.

Venezuela is a country that refuses to fit the neoliberal, right wing mold of the U.S. empire. It has an internationally recognized sovereign right to do so within the legality of its own constitution, legislation and the will of the people. As the often repeated slogan says, everybody else should keep their #HandsOffVenezuela.

*

Notes

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson

[2] https://www.globalresearch.ca/genocide-washington-style-venezuela-next/5628521

The US stock market closed up yesterday, with the Dow index rising 330 points in a day of wild swings at the end of the most turbulent week since the 2008 global financial crisis.

In an indication of the market gyrations, the business channel CNBC calculated that the Dow moved a total of 22,000 points up and down during the week, within a 2,000-point range. Movements in prices that would normally take place over hours or days occurred within minutes or even seconds.

Yesterday’s trading was another expression of this volatility. The Dow opened more than 300 points up before falling to 500 points down during the afternoon and then rising again—a swing of over 800 points during the day.

At one point, the more broadly-based S&P 500 index faced an 8.3 percent loss for the week, which would have made it the worst week since November 2008, during the financial crisis. The rally at the end of the day cut its losses for the week to around 5 percent.

The sell-off and wild swings on Wall Street had significant international effects. European stocks on Friday fell for the ninth day out of the last 10 days. The Eurofirst index was down 1.9 percent for the day, taking its losses for the week to 7.2 percent—the biggest fall since the eurozone financial crisis of 2011.

In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed down 9.5 percent for the week, its worst result in nearly a decade and Japan’s Topix index dropped 7 percent, its biggest weekly fall in almost two years.

In the course of five days an estimated $5.2 trillion was wiped off the value of global equity markets.

The trigger for the sell-off was the return of market volatility last Friday with the announcement of a small increase in US wages—up 2.9 percent for the year. This intersected with an upward movement in the interest rates on the benchmark US 10-year treasury bond to more than 2.8 percent. This was interpreted as sign that the era of ultra-cheap money, created by the quantitative easing policies of the world’s major central banks, could be coming to an end.

The return of volatility to the markets had an immediate impact on Monday when it led to a plunge in so-called exchange-traded products that allowed investors to make bets on the continued low levels of the volatility, or VIX, index. During the course of 2017 the value of these financial products is estimated to have doubled.

Monday’s plunge—when the Dow fell by 1,157 points, its biggest one-day point decline in history—forced two major banks to shut down two such products. Credit Suisse announced on Tuesday it would begin early redemption of a product it had created, once valued at $2.2 billion. The Japanese bank Nomura said it was shutting down a similar product.

The Financial Times noted that the collapse of the two products “and the central role of two significant banks … shone an unwelcome glare on a financial industry that has suffered in the past for its creation of complex financial products that hurt both clients and the economy at large.”

This was a rather understated reference to the creation by the banks and finance industry of a series of complex derivatives that played a major role in precipitating the 2008 meltdown.

As soon as these mechanisms blew up in 2008, however, sparking a financial crisis and the deepest recession since the Great Depression, the banks and finance houses set about creating new ones.

Another Financial Times article this week pointed to the comments of Sandy Rattray, one of those involved in devising a formula to tie contracts to movements in the VIX. He said the index had created a circular system in financial markets, “moving from being a measure of something to being something that influences this thing it is trying to observe.”

Sell-offs caused by a rise in the VIX triggered further sell-offs, generally via computer-generated trading programs. In other words, from being an indicator of risk, the index created more risk for trading models that relied on it.

Rattray claimed he had decided that any model based on the use of the index was too risky to be used.

But others—including some of the world’s major banks and finance houses, such as Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, UBS and Nomura—piled in, creating a series of products that allowed such bets to be made. The number of contracts in trading products tied to VIX futures and options rose from less than 20,000 in 2009, when such products were first launched, to more than one million by 2016.

While the increasing use of arcane VIX-based products may have been the trigger for the falls, it was not the underlying cause.

The worst week in financial markets since 2008 represents an inflection point—the result of a growing fear that the decade-long inflow of ultra-cheap money, used to finance a whole series of speculative activities, may be over.

This is indicated by the rise in bond market yields that began before the Wall Street sell-off and continued, amid fluctuations, throughout the week.

Since its low point in March 2009, the rise and rise of the stock market has been sustained by the “Fed put”—the belief that the US Federal Reserve would step in and not allow a major fall.

There are limits to that policy, however, determined by fundamental class relations. While it has intervened to support the market, the Fed also stands ready to increase interest rates to counter any significant movement by the working class against the decades-long suppression of wages. That is why the higher-than-expected rise in US wages announced last Friday played such a central role in sparking the market turmoil.

The impact of rising interest rates will go far beyond the financial markets. Since 2008, the limited growth that has taken place in the US, and the global economy more broadly, has been sustained by low rates. In the past decade the overall ratio of global debt to world economic output has increased by some 40 percent.

If interest rates begin to rise, even by a relatively small amount, that will impact heavily on the real economy, hitting a swathe of companies, labelled “zombie firms,” both in the US and Europe that are struggling already to cover their interest payments.

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What’s being hidden from the public by the U.S. news-media’s reports on Syria’s war is that, ever since 2012, the U.S. Government has been trying to overthrow Syria’s Government by supporting, training and arming, in Syria, the many jihadist groups who were being led by Al Qaeda in Syria — jihadist groups which unanimously accept Al Qaeda’s leadership there. Without Al Qaeda in Syria, the U.S. effort to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad (who was elected in 2014 to a new Presidential term in an internationally monitored democratic election, winning 89% of the vote) wouldn’t have come anywhere close to succeeding; but, with Al Qaeda’s help, it almost did succeed. America, even as late as late 2016, was demanding Russia to stop its bombing of Al Qaeda and of their allied jihadist groups in Syria, but Russia refused; this was a major hang-up in the years-long Kerry-Lavrov (U.S.-Russia) negotiations for a ceasefire in Syria. Kerry couldn’t get President Obama to go along with Russia’s (Putin’s) insistence upon continued bombing both of ISIS and of Al Qaeda; Obama insisted: No bombing of Al Qaeda.

More recently, after the effort to overthrow Syria’s Government failed during 2016, the U.S. goal (since nearly the very end of Obama’s Administration) has become assisting Kurds in Syria’s northeast who want to establish there a Kurdistan, which would be beholden to Washington and would cooperate with U.S. oil companies and their contractors such as Halliburton to extract Syria’s oil and to construct pipelines for both oil and gas from mainly three U.S. allies — Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar — into the world’s largest energy-market, the EU, to enable the U.S. and those fundamentalist-Sunni allies to displace Russia from that market, where Russia currently is the largest energy-supplier. 

This hiding, which is done in order to block the public’s understanding of what’s going on, is well-exemplified in the slick February 9th front-page New York Times headline news-report, titled “It’s Hard to Believe, but Syria’s War Is Getting Even Worse,” which is headlined online as instead “Far From Winding Down, Syria’s War Escalates on Multiple Fronts”. This half-fictional potboiler opens like any war-potboiler generally does, not by explaining anything, but instead with the typical slick-journalism device, of an anecdote (the bloodier and more-obviously outrageous, the better, in order to whip-up the interest and attention of the gullible mass of readers), “Half a dozen newborns, blinking and arching their backs, were carried from a burning hospital hit by airstrikes. A bombed apartment house collapsed, burying families.” Anyone will, of course, have sympathy for babies, and their families, in a hospital that gets hit by a bomb in a war. Everything that follows this slick opening is designed to anger readers against Syria’s Government — that being the propagandistic objective of virtually all U.S. ‘news’-coverage of this war.

The article leaves the reader totally confused as to why what is happening is happening. But it’s accompanied by yet another article, “Why Is the Syrian War Still Raging?” That piece says, “Each of the major conflicts has its own underlying logic that sustains the fighting” and then it goes on to consider, in turn, what it identifies as “the major conflicts,” which it alleges to be the following three (as being answers to consider, for the article’s title-question, “Why Is the Syrian War Still Raging?” — which means why the war is still raging, even after ISIS in Syria has been defeated and when the task that everyone had been expecting to remain now would be to kill the few ISIS and the other jihadists who still are there, and then to restore the country fully to peace without any jihadists):

“1. Assad versus rebels”

“2. The battle against ISIS”

“3. Turkey versus the Kurds”

They ignore altogether the actual reason “Why Is the Syrian War Still Raging?”: 

“4. U.S. versus Syria”

That’s what the Times leaves out — hides.

The U.S. went into Syria lying to say that its main goal was to eliminate ISIS there, but didn’t do anything to ISIS in Syria, until after Russia was invited into the war on 30 September 2015 and promptly started to bomb the oil-tanker-trucks that were carrying Syrian oil from ISIS-controlled areas into Turkey for export and income to ISIS (and Turkey). America had been committed ever since 2012 to overthrow Syria’s Government, but now (under Trump) it’s trying to break up Syria and to steal its oil and at least enough of its territory, so as to destroy Syria even further, and to cripple Russia in its main foreign market.

However, this isn’t a criticism of the New York Times especially, but of all ‘news’reporting in the U.S. and its allied countries. For example, the BBC did a one-year retrospective on the first anniversary of Russia’s 30 September 2015 start of its bombing of what the U.S. regime calls ‘the rebels’ in Syria, and, under the headline “Syria war: How Moscow’s bombing campaign has paid off for Putin” quoted a supposed reliable authority as saying, “Moscow had sought to steadily destroy the moderate Syrian opposition on the battlefield, leaving only jihadist forces in play, and lock the US into a political framework of negotiations that would serve beyond the shelf-life of this administration.” This is basically upside-down: The myth that there had been any substantial non-jihadist or “moderate” Syrian opposition, and that Washington’s operation in Syria relies upon such “moderates,” is an essential lie, in which all of the mainstream, and well over 90% of the “alternative news” media, must participate, if they’re to be allowed to continue. Billionaires have lots of clout. There’s talk about “manufactured consent,” and this is the way it is “manufactured.” It is manufactured by incessant lying, not only by the Government, but by the press.

A good rule is to distrust everything you read, and to click onto at least a sampling  of its sources and examine them yourself to see whether they support the allegations that they allegedly support; and to evaluate whether those sources are themselves trustworthy — and to ignore any ‘news’medium that doesn’t link to its sources (doesn’t conveniently let you check out its truth or falsehood), which includes especially TV, radio, and print media. Only online news can even qualify to be considered by an intelligent reader; but if it’s online print, like for example the New York Times, then it can be taken only on trust, which certainly isn’t earned by any record of carefulness to report the truth and only the truth. This is why I always link to my sources, either directly, or via articles that do link directly to them but that additionally place them into their essential context so that they can be accurately understood.

No news-report can be any more reliable than its sources are. Most ‘news’ is sourced to propagandists. The key thing for any educational system is to teach people how to be intelligently skeptical of everything; but no regime wants such an educational system. Honest news-coverage is therefore rare. Any assumption that it’s not rare is blatantly false.

As George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist, said in an extraordinary burst of honesty: 

“I work in a profoundly corrupt industry, and I hate it. … There are some really great journalists out there, but they live in a country under occupation — that’s how it feels. The industry is a really hostile place for good journalism, for journalism which seeks to hold power to account, which in my view is what journalism is all about — that’s the point of it. .. [But the reality of journalism is] it’s about actually reinforcing the messages of power … persuading people that what the billionaires want is what the rest of us should want”

*

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.

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

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

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Imperial arrangements require decent overseer of subjects.  In the Pax Americana, which is, in fact, rather violent, Australia is indispensable in the Pacific theatre.  It offers land, facilities, and the means to eye future enemies and keep allies in check.  Wedged between China and the United States, Australia could focus on smoothing rocky roads and building bridges.  But this is something Washington is very keen on preventing.  Those in the business of empire want to monitor the level of satrap loyalty. 

As General Joe Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff, explained, with measured gravity,

“We have enduring interests here, and we have an enduring commitment and we have an enduring presence here.”

Enduring being the operative word here.

That Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr. will be making his way across to Canberra as ambassador to Australia (or, as the official appointment goes, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary) is significant in one fundamental respect.  Harris is a man with a digest of distinct hawkishness where it counts.  US power must be preserved; rivals must be contained.  His motivations to that end are simple enough.  He also fits, in many ways, the profile of an appropriate governor of a distant province that might, should the time come, prove useful in war.

“During his 39-year career,” goes the press release from the White House, “he served in every geographic combatant command and has held seven command assignments, including the US Pacific Fleet, the US Sixth Fleet, and VP-46.”

The Australian Prime Minister was quick to express his relief at the appointment of this new watchdog, this keen manager of US interests.

“Great to see Admiral Harry Harris nominated by [Donald Trump] as US Ambassador to Australia,” tweeted Malcolm Turnbull with stomach turning reverence.  “Look forward to seeing you in Canberra, Harry!” Tribute must be paid.

If you are going to have an officer of empire watching you, go for quality, the man with appropriate breeding and achievement.  This is the view of The Australian, a paper very much given to an uncritical stance on the issue of the US-Australian relationship.

“The move is likely to anger Beijing, given Admiral Harris’s hawkish views on China, but it will be seen as a coup by the Turnbull government to have such a well qualified and senior former US military officer in the role at a time of growing strategic uncertainty in the region.”

Daddy, in other words, cares, promising to lend a reassuring hand.

Harris’ statements on China, notably those describing its moves in the East and South China seas as part of a “Great Wall of Sand” have a certain noisy currency, ringing true with a firmer line adopted by the Trump administration against Beijing’s ambitions.  He has, at stages, urged an increase of missile capacity against China’s PLA.  Zhang Junshe of the China Naval Research Institute was moved enough to claim that the Admiral was “the most prejudiced and Cold-War-minded chief of all US pacific commanders since WWII”.

Chinese media outlets have also taken aim at Harris’ ethnicity – half-Japanese from Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture.  In an acid commentary from Xinhua,

“Some might say an overemphasis on the Japanese background about an American general is a bit unkind.  But to understand the American’s sudden upgraded offensive in the South China Sea, it is simply impossible to ignore Adm. Harris’ blood, background, political inclination and values.”

Less known to Australians will be Harris’s time as commander of the infamous detention camp in the legal limbo of Guantánamo Bay.  It was there where the Australian David Hicks made legal history in efforts to try him by dubiously constituted military commissions. Hicks had been abandoned by the Howard government and thrown to the jackals.  But the US Supreme Court took issue with these creatures of executive fantasy, deeming them unconstitutional.  US Presidents, the court found, could not “invoke military commissions whenever he deems them necessary.”

It was Harris who featured in the news when three prisoners committed suicide in June 2006 in what was deemed a coordinated protest.  The men concerned were connected to various groups deemed undesirable to US interests in the dubiously named “war on terror”: a middle-ranking Al-Qaeda operative, the second captured in Afghanistan and the other a member of an unnamed “splinter group”. All three had been engaged in a hunger strike.

As Bill Goodman, legal director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights then explained,

“The total, intractable unwillingness of the Bush administration to provide any meaningful justice for these men is what is at the heart of these tragedies.”

Much criticism has been levelled at the Trump administration for not sorting out is ambassadorial appointments in timely fashion.  Australia has been without a US ambassador for 16 months. But absences have their uses.  A volatile Trump White House has Australian officials gnashing teeth and wiping brows, fearing the next confrontation.  To have an admiral of rank to conduct what will be the equivalent of a golfing stint coupled with eagle-eyed enthusiasm on compliance, is not necessarily something Australian subjects should relish.

*

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

Multiple reports indicate that Russian military contractors were among the dead in air and artillery strikes launched Wednesday by the US military in the northeastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor against forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Pentagon unleashed devastating firepower against the pro-government fighters on the pretext that they were mounting an attack against a headquarters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US proxy ground force that is dominated by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. US special forces troops directing the activities of the Kurdish proxies were stationed at the headquarters in the zone of influence carved out by the US intervention in Deir Ezzor, northeast of the Euphrates River.

Bombs and missiles were rained down upon the force, which reportedly included between 300 and 500 infantry, backed by tanks and artillery. US F15 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, AC-130 gunships and unmanned drones were all called in to attack the force, along with US artillery units.

According to Pentagon sources, 100 of the Syrian fighters were killed in the barrage. The Syrian government reported “dozens” killed in what it described as an unprovoked “massacre” and a “war crime.”

Iran’s Tasnim news agency quoted Syrian sources as reporting that several Russian military advisors were killed in the attack, which took place in the Khasham gas field in Eastern Deir Ezzor.

In the Washington Post, the newspaper’s columnist David Ignatius, who is well-connected to the US military and intelligence apparatus and is currently reporting from US-occupied areas in Syria, quoted a Kurdish militia commander working with the US special forces. The Kurdish commander, identified as General Hassan, told Ignatius that

“the casualties included some Russians, apparently from the mercenaries fighting alongside pro-regime forces.”

CNN, meanwhile, quoted Pentagon officials as saying that they were investigating reports of Russian casualties in the US strikes.

Moscow has insisted that it had no uniformed military personnel in the area, but Russian private military contractors have provided significant forces in support of the Assad government.

The attack, comes barely half a week after last Saturday’s shootdown of a Russian Su-25 fighter jet over Idlib province. The plane was brought down by a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile, or MANPAD, most likely supplied by the CIA or Turkey to the so-called rebels dominated by Al Qaeda. A funeral for the pilot, Maj. Roman Filippov, who managed to eject but was killed on the ground fighting elements of the Al Nusra Front, was held in the southwestern Russian city of Voronezh Thursday, drawing some 30,000 people.

The two incidents have raised tensions in Syria between the two major nuclear powers to an unprecedented level.

The pretext for the illegal US military intervention in the country—the so-called war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—has evaporated, and its real motives emerged ever more openly. These include Syrian regime change, sought initially through the support of the CIA and the Pentagon for Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias against the Assad government, and, more broadly combatting Iranian and Russian influence and continuing the bloody decades-old campaign for US hegemony over the oil rich Middle East.

The US defense secretary, recently retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, gave a press conference Thursday insisting that the US massacre of pro-government forces in Deir Ezzor was an act of “self-defense,” a claim belied by the fact that the US and its Kurdish proxies suffered not one fatality in the incident and reported a single YPG militia member wounded.

“Obviously, we are not getting engaged in the Syrian civil war,” Mattis said, describing Wednesday’s massacre as a “perplexing situation” and insisting he could not give “any explanation for why” the battle had erupted.

The immediate explanation, however, is made obvious by the location of the attack. The pro-government forces were moving into gas and oil fields that had previously been controlled by ISIS and fell under the sway of the American proxies of the Syrian Democratic Forces. As an SDF commander told the Wall Street Journal last September, after the fields were taken, “

Our goal is to prevent the regime from taking the areas of oil which will enable it to regain control of the country like it was before.”

In this case, the word “our” refers to both Washington and its proxies.

US officials, most prominently Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have made it clear that the US military force, officially consisting of some 2,000 special forces troops, will remain in Syria after the defeat of ISIS with the aim of toppling Assad and imposing a US puppet regime. To that end, Washington is determined to continue its carve-up of Syrian territory and to deny Damascus strategically vital energy resources in Deir Ezzor that are needed to fuel the country’s reconstruction. This is why the attack was unleashed Wednesday.

The US announcement of an indefinite military occupation in Syria, along with its plans for deploying a 30,000-strong “border security force” consisting in large part of the Kurdish YPG militia, is the principal driving force of the renewed escalation of violence in the country.

The Turkish military has resumed its airstrikes against the northwestern Syrian enclave of Afrin following a four-day hiatus imposed by Russia after the shootdown of the Russian fighter jet. It seems likely that Moscow, which exercises effective control over airspace in the region, gave the go-ahead to Ankara as a means of ratcheting up tensions between the US and Turkey.

Mattis, Tillerson and national security advisor H.R. McMaster are now all scheduled to arrive in Turkey next week for urgent talks with the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan, who has denounced the US plans as tantamount to creating a de facto Kurdish state on Turkey’s border, has vowed to extend the Turkish offensive eastward into the town of Manbij, which is currently occupied by the YPG along with its US special forces handlers. This raises the prospect of an armed confrontation between the two ostensible NATO allies.

The British Independent’s veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn, citing sources in the region, reported this week that militia forces that are fighting alongside the Turkish army in the offensive in Afrin have been drawn almost exclusively from former ISIS fighters, who have been rebranded as the “Free Syrian Army.”

Washington, undoubtedly aware of this fact, has made no move to interfere with the Turkish operation in Afrin, so long as it does not continue eastward into US-occupied territory. There is ample evidence that the Pentagon has made its own use of the former ISIS fighters, thousands of whom were evacuated—along with their arms and ammunition—from Raqqa and other cities besieged by the US and its proxies, in order to redeploy them against Syrian government forces.

Both Washington and the French government of President Emmanuel Macron have issued protests and threats over civilian casualties caused by Syrian government and Russian airstrikes against areas of Idlib province and Eastern Ghouta, outside of Damascus, that are controlled by Al Qaeda-linked militias. Dutifully echoed by the corporate media, these protests are utterly hypocritical, given the slaughter of tens of thousands carried out by the US itself in cites of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Unsubstantiated claims from Washington and Paris that the Syrian government, with Russian support, has carried out attacks using chlorine against the civilian population are being used to create conditions for a fresh military intervention against the Syrian government.

France’s Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly declared in an interview with the French broadcaster Inter on Friday that Paris had “potential evidence of the use of chlorine” by Damascus, but “no definite proof.”

This virtually echoes the statement made by US Defense Secretary Mattis, who threatened US military retaliation over unverified claims of chemical attacks, while acknowledging “we do not have evidence of it, but we are not refuting them.”

On Friday, the New York Times prominently carried an article by veteran propagandist Anne Barnard, depicting harrowing accounts of alleged atrocities by the Syrian and Russian militaries, beginning with the line,

“Half a dozen newborns, blinking and arching their backs, were carried from a burning hospital hit by airstrikes”

Reflecting pressure within the US ruling establishment for a more aggressive US intervention against Syria—as well as Iran and Russia—the Wall Street Journal published an editorial Friday, criticizing the Trump administration for having “turned, almost Obama-like, to pleading with Russia to make Assad stop his latest assaults.” It insisted that it was impossible to negotiate with Moscow, which “wants to keep Assad in power, maintain bases in Syria from which to threaten NATO, and thwart US goals in the Middle East.”

Insisting that Damascus has violated Washington’s “red line,” it called upon the administration to “send another” message to Syria, like the firing of the 59 cruise missiles against the country last April.

*

Featured image is from the author.

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

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

The bipartisan budget bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump Friday morning marks a new stage in the American ruling class’ drive for social counterrevolution and world military domination.

The deal, which reached Trump’s desk only because of support from congressional Democrats, expresses the oligarchic character of American society. Behind the factional mudslinging and mutual recrimination between Democrats, Republicans and Trump, it is the corporations and the military-intelligence agencies that dictate government policy. All sections of the financial aristocracy agree: the desperate social needs of working people must be subordinated to private profit and the preparation of the American military machine for a major war.

The budget agreement provides the military with $1.4 trillion over the course of the next two years, a 13 percent increase from 2017 and 7 percent more than what the White House requested. The size of the year-to-year increase alone—$80 billion—is larger than the combined annual military spending of every other country in the world except China.

An additional $71 billion is earmarked for “overseas contingency operations,” i.e., ongoing wars, indicating plans to continue indefinitely the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan and escalate the war in Syria, where US air and artillery strikes killed over 100 Syrian government-backed forces on Wednesday.

In preparation for the possibility that increased US military operations abroad may lead to conflict with a nuclear-armed power such as Russia or China, the budget provides the military with the resources necessary to replace its entire nuclear arsenal. It puts an end to limits placed on military spending in 2013 as part of a bipartisan agreement to cap domestic social spending, paving the way for even more astronomical increases in funding for the Pentagon.

The role of the Democrats in passing this deal exposes the right-wing character of their opposition to Trump. It was the Democrats who ensured that there would be sufficient votes to pass the bill in both houses of Congress after a faction of Republican deficit hawks in the House of Representatives announced its opposition. In the Senate, the Democrats voted four-to-one for the bill, providing more “yes” votes and fewer “no” votes than the Republicans. In the House, 73 Democrats voted for the agreement. Without their votes, the bill would have fallen short by a wide margin.

After the Democrats saved the budget bill, Trump signed it, tweeting,

“Just signed Bill. Our Military will now be stronger than ever before. We love and need our Military and gave them everything.”

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer echoed Trump in praising the deal, saying it

“gives our fighting forces the resources they need to keep our country safe.”

In an effort to lend the war budget a democratic veneer, Schumer claimed that it increases social spending. In reality, the bulk of the non-military spending comes from the limited expansion of several programs that already exist, such as the Community Healthcare Center (CHC) system and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Prior to this budget, 54 percent of federal discretionary spending, i.e., excluding entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, went to the military. Now this figure will increase to 59 percent.

Little of the new spending will reach people in need. For example, a paltry $2 billion is being made available to fix the electrical grid in Puerto Rico, where one third of the population remains without power more than four months after Hurricane Maria. In contrast, the bill provides $2.3 billion in recovery funds to the Florida citrus industry. Puerto Rico has estimated that fixing its grid would cost $17 billion.

Six billion dollars is allocated for the opioid crisis, a major factor in the ongoing decline in US life expectancy. This is far less than the $45 billion proposed in the 2017 congressional health care debate, which leading advocates called “woefully, woefully short.”

Much of the $6 billion will go to arming the police and prosecuting users. An unnamed White House official told CNN on Thursday that opioid spending “is a law enforcement issue.” On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions placed the blame for the opioid crisis, which killed 63,000 people in 2016, on its victims.

“I mean, people need to take some aspirin sometimes,” Sessions said. “Tough it out.”

The budget deal provides a mere $20 billion for infrastructure spending. According to the Federal Highway Administration, $328 billion is required just to fix crumbling bridges in the US.

Coming on top of the multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich passed in December, which the Democrats never seriously opposed, the massive increase in military spending will increase the federal budget deficit to $1 trillion or more for years to come. The drive to use the resulting increase in the US debt as justification for dismantling the core social programs from the 1930s and 1960s—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—has already begun.

At his weekly press conference, Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan reiterated his pledge to wage war on these entitlement programs. “The military is not the reason we’ve got fiscal problems. It is entitlements,” he declared.

After signing the budget bill on Friday, Trump said the social spending in the agreement was “waste.” He added that

“costs on non-military lines will never come down if we do not elect more Republicans in the 2018 election and beyond.”

Perhaps the most cynical point in the political theater surrounding the bill’s passage was the eight-hour speech Wednesday by Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who read the stories of young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US when they were children and have legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The bill includes no protection for the 800,000 DACA beneficiaries who face possible deportation beginning March 5, when the DACA program expires.

Pelosi’s stunt, which followed the announcement of a bipartisan budget agreement in the Senate, was an elaborate attempt to provide political cover for the Democratic Party, which had already agreed behind the scenes to provide the votes needed to pass the measure in the House. In typical fashion, a number of Democrats were allowed to cast meaningless “no” votes to preserve their “progressive” bona fides for future elections.

The Democrats have only disdain for those who sought to pressure them to the left. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown said of constituents who appealed to him to vote against the budget deal,

“If the suggestion is if I’m spooked by them or they affect my voting record, the answer is of course not.”

The passage of the budget bill shows the social character and political role of the Democratic Party. It is as much a pro-war, pro-corporate party as its Republican counterpart. It shares the Trump administration’s goals of increasing “border security,” reducing taxes on the wealthy, boosting corporate profits and preparing the military for total war—with its domestic component of internal repression.

The Democratic Party’s main differences with Trump are of a right-wing character, aimed primarily at forcing Trump to adopt a more bellicose policy against Russia in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The Democratic Party-inspired hysteria against “Russian interference,” including the bogus Mueller investigation into Trump collusion with the Russians, is a central element in this drive. It is accompanied by the reactionary campaign against “fake news” on social media, aimed at creating the framework for Internet censorship and an escalating attack on free speech.

In the working class, there is broad opposition of an entirely different character, based on anger over poverty, social inequality, police violence, poisoned water, student debt, health care costs and fear of deportation. This tremendous potential social power must be awakened and given an independent, socialist direction. It is only on this basis that the catastrophic war plans of US imperialism can be stopped.

North Korea is arguably the most sanctioned country on earth. U.S. sanctions against North Korea have been in place since the 1950s, and a series of UN resolutions in the past decade have forbidden, among others, the export of coal, iron, and seafood, and banned North Korea textile exports, crude oil, joint ventures, and North Korean nationals from working abroad in other countries. Why, then, hasn’t the country collapsed by now?

Just two decades ago, images of emaciated North Korean children flooded the internet, and most North Korea watchers predicted the country’s imminent demise. But recent accounts of people who have traveled there–before Trump’s travel ban–paint a picture of implausible economic growth: high-rise apartment buildings, fully-stocked supermarkets, and North Koreans at leisure at sunny beaches, waterparks and ski resorts.

How is the country able to defy the labyrinth of international and U.S. sanctions to pursue its “Byungjin line,” the policy of pursuing parallel progress in nuclear deterrence and economic development?

Most pundits point to China as the answer. If only the United States can persuade China to honor the international sanctions, they gripe, then it can rein in the belligerent North Korea. But their logic assumes that China holds all the strings to North Korea’s economy and overlooks the ingenuity and sacrifices of the North Korean people in their struggle to construct an economic system that can withstand the sanctions.

Kim Soobok’s research on science and technology in North Korea–based on multiple trips to North Korea between 2012 and 2015 and interviews with North Korean scholars and experts–gives us a glimpse of the country’s recent economic development and the preeminence placed on science and technology in that process. Kim’s findings also gives us a perspective on North Korea that is impossible to glean from the corporate media’s one-dimensional portrayal of the country as an international pariah.

Kim presents his research in this four-part series. Part one discusses the period of severe economic hardship in North Korea in the 1990’s and 2000’s, commonly referred to by North Koreans as the “Arduous March,” and the importance the country placed on science and technology to rebuild its economy. Part two discusses North Korea’s innovative solution to its energy crisis and its two-decade struggle to irrigate its farmlands with substantially less electrical output than in the previous era. Part three discusses the country’s advances in the production of fertilizer and its direct correlation to progress in achieving food self-sufficiency. And part four discusses advances in hydroponics and the use of solar and geothermal energy to build collective greenhouses to achieve food self-sufficiency in every unit of society.

But first, a word about the author. Kim Soobok is a New Jersey resident and a long-time proponent of peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula. His interest in North Korea’s science and technology began in 2009 when he was part of a study group on Korean history. He and several friends he met through the local chapter of the June 15 Committee for Peaceful Reunification got together at each others’ homes to get to know each other and re-learn Korean history. The first thing they read together was “Two Koreas, One Future,” a report published by the American Friends Service Committee in 1986 with chapters by historians Bruce Cumings and Jon Halliday. Kim remembers getting through the report, written in English–not their native language–as a laborious process as he and his friends looked up practically every other word in the English-Korean dictionary.

After a year of regular meetings, the group exhausted its reading list and couldn’t find new material to study. So they decided that each person should choose an area of interest and do his own research on the topic to present to the rest of the group. Kim knew what he wanted to study: North Korea’s food and energy crisis.

North Korea had just come out of the period known as the “Arduous March,” marked by mass food shortages, and many in the west had become familiar with images of starving North Koreans widely circulated on the internet. “At the time, videos of North Korean defectors’ testimonies were circulating on Youtube,” Kim explained. “They were talking about starving North Koreans eating human flesh and such. I didn’t believe these stories but didn’t know what was true.” So he decided to delve deeper and find out what North Korea was doing to feed its people and generate energy.

Kim scoured the internet and came to learn about the renowned North Korean chemist Ri Sung-gi, best known for inventing the synthetic fabric Vinalon.

North Korean Chemist Ri Sung-gi

During WWII, the U.S. conglomerate Dupont invented nylon, a synthetic fabric made from petrochemicals. The U.S. military, which had found cotton parachutes too heavy and burdensome, found nylon ideal for making lightweight and durable parachutes. In 1944, Japan wanted the same and turned to Ri Sung-gi, a chemist who was working on developing synthetic fiber at Kyoto University. The Japanese government pressured Ri to speed up his research, but Ri intentionally sabotaged his own work, as a victory for colonial Japan would mean continued occupation of Korea, his homeland. Ri unwittingly confessed his dilemma to a disguised government agent and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned.

After Japan’s surrender and Korea’s liberation in 1945, Ri was released from prison and returned to Seoul where he headed the Seoul University chemistry department. Without sufficient support or resources from the U.S. Army Military Government, which ruled the southern half of Korea post-1945, however, Ri and his team spent most days idle. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, then-North Korean leader Kim Il-sung appealed to scientists in the south to work for the nationalist cause. In the midst of U.S. aerial bombings, many scientists including Ri, who had disagreed with the policies of the U.S. military government, voluntarily went north.

North Korea, eighty percent of which is mountainous, lacks large tracts of flatland conducive to growing cotton. Kim Il-sung, familiar with Ri’s work on synthetic fiber, set up an office for him right next to his own and charged him with the task of clothing the people. Finally with sufficient resources to continue his research, Ri pulled up his sleeves. North Korea had no petrol to produce nylon, but its mountains were a vast wellspring of coal and other minerals. Ri used anthracite and limestone to create vinalon, a type of synthetic fiber that North Koreans commonly call “Juche textile,” referring to the North Korean philosophy of self-reliance. In 1960, North Korea established the February 8 Vinalon complex, a commercial scale plant in Hamhung dedicated to mass production of vinalon.

“Understanding Ri Sung-gi’s work on developing ‘Juche textile’ opened my eyes to North Korea’s philosophy of self-reliance,” said Kim Soobok. He wanted to learn more, and thus began his journey of studying science and technology in North Korea.

Kim visited North Korea multiple times from 2012 to 2015 and traveled many regions, including Nampo, Pyongsong, Anju, Namhung, Wonsan, Geumgangsan, Gaesong, and Saepo County north of the DMZ. There, he visited the Pyongyang Vegetable Science Institute, Chollima Steel Complex, Namhung Youth Chemical Complex, Chollima Tile Factory, Daedong River Orchard, Pyongyang Vegetable Science Institute, the biology department of the National Academy of Science, Satellite Scientists Street, and a large-scale animal husbandry center in Saepo County. Each time he went, he also visited the international trade fair held twice a year in Pyongyang and interviewed experts at the Grand People’s Study Hall and the National Academy of Science, as well as several universities to learn about North Korea’s food and energy sectors.

“You can find videos about these places on the internet, but I learned so much more by actually being there in person and talking directly with the people,” Kim said. “Each day was so interesting that time flew. There weren’t enough hours in the day to see and learn everything I wanted.”

Kim had never studied science, which he had always considered a specialized field reserved for experts. But in North Korea, he discovered, science is not something out of the reach of ordinary people, and he was surprised by how they applied simple scientific knowledge to improve their everyday lives.

“If scientists were to go to North Korea, they would have so much to learn and do there,” he said. “I want to share what I saw there with people here to expand our understanding of the country.”

Due to Trump’s travel ban, Kim is no longer able to travel to North Korea. Last year, he had planned to attend the Rason International Trade Fair and the Pyongyang International Trade Fair in the fall and had wanted to learn more about North Korea’s “natural flow waterways” (which he discusses in depth in part one of this series). He had also planned to spend Chuseok, the national holiday celebrating the fall harvest, with the repatriated long-term political prisoners (who had been imprisoned in South Korea during the Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan dictatorships, then freed and repatriated to the north around the historic Kim Dae-jung-Kim Jong-il summit on June 15, 2000).

The latest round of Trump’s sanctions on North Korea has impeded Kim’s ability to study the country in other ways. Youtube accounts of educational videos on North Korea have been shut down.

“Two years of video collection, gone overnight!” he said.

He bemoaned the fact that he hadn’t had the foresight to save the files on his hard drive.

The findings Kim presents in this series are part of a work that was in progress when Trump’s travel ban forced him to put it indefinitely on hold. Albeit incomplete, his research, he hopes, can contribute to a better understanding of North Korea and its people.

*

All images in this article are from Zoom in Korea.

Featured image: Polish President Andrzej Duda

Holocaust history has never been far away from political manipulation.  The deaths of millions tends to supply various causes: for those who survive, radicalisation can be imminent.  For those who participated in the killings, justification and denial can combine in cruel fashion.  Some, prompted by guilt, embrace the memories of those slain with a zeal akin to a civil religion; others would prefer to minimise its significance. 

Complicity behind the deaths of millions of Europe’s Jewry is one of those catastrophes of civilization that becomes abstract in certain states.  In the United States, it has assumed the form or a civil religion with its own brand of high priest memorialisers.  In Poland, the country where the Third Reich’s death camps reached previously unmatched forms of mechanistic slaughter, a sense of distancing has been taking place.  That it took place on Polish soil was bad enough.  But what of the role played by Polish citizens more broadly?  

This is a question that has been answered by the efforts of Polish President Andrzej Duda to outlaw accusations that Poland was complicit in the commission of Nazi crimes during its occupation.  The law in question, passed by the Polish Senate at the start of this month, effectively affords immunity against assertions of collaboration, while punishing those who say otherwise.

Duda’s remarks on this have resembled that of a public relations hireling keen on keeping the image of company and country pristine.  The law “protects Polish interests… our dignity, the historical truth… so that we are not slandered as a state and as a nation.” 

As nation states are essentially fictions, slandering them should be, in principle, difficult if not impossible.  But the chest beating, bayonet thrusting patriot sees it differently.  Truth must be rationed, controlled and sanitised.  All that is inconsistent is excised as part of a “template of denial” that employs legal tactics (penalising the questioners), political methods (pressuring other states to acknowledge the officially sanctioned version) and foisting, subtly or otherwise, blame upon the victims.

Duda has to take the step of sounding balanced on this, which is always a prelude to confirming a position of enthusiastic partisanship.  

The law, he claimed, “takes into account the sensitivity of those for whom the issue of historical truth, the memory of the Holocaust, is incredibly important.” 

He is not entirely off point on this, in so far as historical truth here entails an appreciation of Nazi German accountability. What matters here is that such an appreciation is exclusive, singular and separate, removing Polish reactionary complicity, one rich in anti-Semitic poison.  In other words, the law designates accountability for some (the Germans did it, which is handy for everyone else) and removing it from others (we were victims, and had nothing personally against the Jews, who we were powerless to defend).

The text leaves the reader in little doubt about how memory is being streamlined and managed, declaring that “whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich… shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years.”  Using the term “Polish death camp” would, by way of example, be outlawed.

Such words offer meagre protections for those – amongst them Holocaust survivors – to question Poland’s stained role, though there is a defence if the criticism forms “part of artistic or scientific activities”.  The issue there is less an accusation that runs contrary to facts as those that run contrary to a court or state institution’s understanding of those facts.  Power colours reason; politics can intervene to corrupt judicial opinion.

Duda will not necessarily have it all his way, though the pathway of the law’s application does not look particularly pebbled or potted.  The Constitutional Tribunal has been asked to review the bill to see whether it squares with various fundamental rights, notably free speech.  The catch here is that the law may well come into effect before the judges can get busy, lending a certain superficiality to the outcome.

Countries have been lining up in criticism.  Israel was unremarkably furious; France, having had its own tussle with Holocaust memory, expressed concern at this attempt to “rewrite history”.  US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered a lecturing finger, one typical of those in civil religion land.

“Enactment of this law adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry… We believe that open debate, scholarship, and education are the best means of countering misleading speech.” 

States will, whatever Tillerson says, make attempts to control the narrative of histories in which they participated.  Each country has its self-imposed injunctions on history, selective readings that anoint certain heroes while singling out certain villains.  In Turkey, to claim that there was an Armenian genocide pursued as part of an aggressive Turkification program remains punishable. 

In a similar way to the intended effect of the Polish Holocaust law, Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, enacted in June 2005, operates to protect the state against instances of denigration, be it of the Republic itself, its institutions, and the very idea of Turkishness.  A meek defence, which has had little effect, can also be found: “Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.” 

While US institutions are constrained by constitutional protections that enable various versions of history to slosh around with some impunity, certain narratives will always be hounded into exile and shrieked into oblivion.  One such instance of this is criticising the deployment of two atomic bombs against Japan during the Second World War. 

The Smithsonian found this out on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the Second World War’s ending.  Attempts to depict the cruelties behind the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 were harangued as unpatriotic drivel, committing the sin of moral equivalency.  The pilots could only ever be seen as heroes possessing a terrible responsibility.  The Japanese brute needed to be subjugated.

Poland’s new Holocaust law is an announcement that it refuses to take the hand of various Western European powers in determining historical sense and sensibility.  Again, central and eastern European powers are tapping their wells of resentment against the moralisers from the west.  Fittingly, if a touch tragically, the Holocaust has provided testy affirmation of this.

*

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

On the eve of the Winter Olympics Warmongering USA: Vice President Pence: “The United States of America will soon unveil the toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever — and we will continue to isolate North Korea until …” it does exactly what the USA tells it to do.

War and Menace: Donald Trump 2017: “Unless the regime of leader Kim Jong-un backs down we will have no choice than to totally destroy North Korea”. “They will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which the world has never seen before,”

Before our eyes we have clear growing evidence the Trump administration is gathering force to launch war against North Korea. And not just the visibility of carrier led battle fleets in Western Pacific seas offshore Korea, there are also other “world events” fitting into first strike preparation from the U.S. Either this or the most enormously dangerous threat driven brinkmanship.

First clear emphatic evidence is then North Korea select Foreign Ministers’ summit meeting in Vancouver Monday 15th Jan. This meeting notably not including The People’s Republic of China or the Russian Federation, let alone the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The summit with single minded interest in using U.N. sanctions to blockade North Korea into increasingly deep economic, financial, and political isolation. This then to North Korea a declaration of war. Notably the summit included most of the Western supporting nations in the 1950-53 Korean War. A war in which the U.S. air-force with overwhelming air power, including napalm carpet bombing (as in Vietnam), destroyed North Korea with some 1.5 million Korean civilian deaths.

There is then the Hawaii nuclear strike alert terrifying the population of Hawaii Saturday 13th January – notably two days before the Vancouver summit. On all the evidence the alarm being set off would seem to be a mistake on the part of one operator. There again it is a feasible possibility alarm activation was a set-up from high levels in U.S. government to get the message across to the U.S. public a North Korea nuclear attack is a real and present danger. That then building justification for a U.S. preemptive strike.

For further evidence there is then White House termination of consideration of Professor Victor Cha of Georgetown University for U.S. South Korea Ambassador. His candidature abruptly ended as he had spoken out against a first strike preemptive attack on DPRK. This in itself deeply worrying and all the more so taking note on Korean issues the Professor is a well known “hardliner”. Although he opposes a preemptive strike, citing DPRK. retaliation and huge loss of life, in strikingly U.S. centric analysis he promotes the strongest of confrontational policies : “up-gunning alliances with Japan”, increasing “strike capability”, blockading DPRK with a “maritime coalition around North Korea”. Hardly peacemaking policies with focus on dialogue, communication, rapprochement, meetings of cultures and minds.

This then goes to show how deeply uncompromising combative policies are embedded in the Trump administration. Supporting international blockading of DPRK., in itself hugely provocative and controversial, is not strong enough for the administration and this then adding more evidence the White House is looking for unqualified support for a preemptive strike on North Korea. Risks will be faced down.

And to this is to be added the growing preemptive strike justification emulating the very same rationale for attacking Iraq 2003. The justification for mass bombing and invasion 2003 Weapons of Mass Destruction, including country wide stockpiles of chemical weapons, none of which existed. Blatant lies from U.S. and U.K.government to justify the war. And now for DPRK it is nuclear missiles. But then the defining war or peace issue does the U.S. truly believe that DPRK is going to launch an attack on the U.S. or, vastly more credible, the North has developed nuclear strike missiles for one and one only abundantly clear reason its own deterrent protection from the U.S. The U.S. which has post WW2 repeatedly attacked other countries.

US nuclear fire power – Ohio class Trident multi-nuclear warhead strike capacity.

The cost of one “superpower” Ohio submarine would fund ten thousand U.S. Korea student exchanges. That can be the only way the world will move forward.

Further evidence again for preparation could not be more evident in the build up of U.S. battle fleets in Western Pacific seas offshore Korea. Three carrier fleets complete with cruise missiles and stealth attack aircraft, who knows how many Trident multi-warhead delivery submarines close to Korean waters, along with nuclear strike squadrons of B-2 and B-52 bombers on Guam.

USS Ohio being converted from an SSBN to an SSGN in March 2004 (Source: U.S. Navy photo by Wendy Hallmark)

Each Ohio class submarine armed with 24 Trident missiles each carrying eight nuclear strike warheads. That is then from one submarine, out of a fleet of 18 U.S. Ohio class submarines, 192 nuclear strikes. Enough power to annihilate DPRK cities, major towns, and missile sites. Armageddon weaponry. Within US fleets the boats known as Doomsday submarines.

Match then this power of destruction with President Trump’s address to the United Nations 19th September 2017. Referring to the “Depraved regime in North Korea” he told gathered world leaders if the U.S. or allies were “threatened” then “the U.S. would have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea”. And this following the self same threats of annihilation in a speech in August in New Jersey telling the world “Threats from North Korea will be met with fire and fury the world has never seen”.

Belligerence and threat on an unprecedented scale never before known in the world since the U.S. and U.S.S.R. became nuclear powers in the 1940s and clearly backed up with the annihilation power to carry out these threats. And of course if the U.S. does strike that will be an enormous distraction away from the problems of a president who must be aware, from the disruption and huge dissent he is sowing world-wide, along with the Mueller FBI investigation, his own time may well be running out.

Brinkmanship – the mindset of a combative President : Mutual Assured Destruction.

“Donald Trump the Draft Dodger five times deferring the US draft for Vietnam”. Can anyone doubt if Trump had served in Vietnam, facing the full horror and terror of war, he would now (like the film director Oliver Stone and so many more Nam veterans) have a vastly different attitude to banging child-like war drums.

Who then is to say given an ego surge of self-preservation this president will not, with like minded neo-nationalists in his government, take the gamble of attacking North Korea ? The evidence is all too clear in a lifetime wheeler-dealing whatever else Donald Trump is he is certainly a gambler. A man set on winning at all costs and in that all but blind to the consequences of actions on others. Serial summary dismissal of so many high ranking White House and government staff (80 ambassadors in one abrupt sweep January 2017) a highly notable example, along with ripping up long held and hard worked for international agreements such as the Paris Climate Agreements.

And to keep in mind U.S.A. has 7,800 nuclear warheads with delivery by Trident, ICBMs, cruise missiles, and air force B-2s and B-52s – DPRK. has at most ten nuclear missiles. You would think then there must surely be those in U.S. government who grasp if North Korea is not threatened then there can be no rational why the North would ever think of attacking the U.S.A. or South Korea facing as they must know annihilation. It then surely stands to reason the North sees their nuclear option as deterrent for their country located as the systems are within their country. Not taken to the offshore seas of other countries far away as the U.S. is doing in the case of Korea.

Even if from the U.S. side the build of nuclear attack weapons as a warning is assessed by U.S. military to be a strategic end in itself, pressing by display of force the U.S. demand for DPRK denuclearisation, this is enormously heightening risk of precipitating war by “fear and terror of war”. All the more so U.S. forces on the borders of North Korea on land, at sea, and in air space, with large scale annual war drills including stealth bombers within minutes strike range of Pyongyang. Either side losing nerve and in panic going for an all out obliterating first strike. This huge U.S. military build up needs then to be roundy condemned by I would hope every thinking human being on the planet. But as it is, from the West, to a very large extent, blinding mass ignorance amplified through Western mass media.

Korean people building bridges – making progress.

“One of the great things about the Olympics is the way it brings people of different nations together, channelling political tensions into the glory of competition.”

In then considerable contrast to U.S. policy to strike fear into North Korea, which results in the same threats back, the people of Korea left to their own politics are as we now see finding their way. High level positive meetings have taken place. North Korea will bring athletes to the Winter Olympics led by Kim Yong Nam president of DPRK Presidium (DPRK Parliament) and, in accord with the spirit of the Olympics, have announced North and South will march together at the opening ceremony under one Korean flag. This then a huge boost for the Korean peninsular and people, and for world peace. A time of optimism and for building trust.

And more than this DPRK will contribute national bands to the Olympics. This will be the Sanjiyon Orchestra including members of the hugely popular Moranbong all female band. Internationally acclaimed performances from Korean musicians and singers. The best of Korea that is iron curtain shut out by Western propaganda. Not by the Koreans – the most welcoming and friendly and courteous of people, to those that show respect for their country and customs.

And indeed look further into DPRK culture and we find so many gems. I have never in a lifetime seen in the West a more deeply moving operatic drama than DPRK’s The Flower Girl. A powerfully moving drama with wonderful actors and actresses (leads from two young girls : Yong Hui Hong and Ren Rim Kim) expressing the oppression and struggles faced by so many in our world, East and West.

On all counts taking a sweep of modern 20th century history North Korean people are some of the bravest in the world. Truly heroic. They took as much horror U.S. bombing and possibly more than even Vietnam and survived and to their huge credit, grounded in their founding philosophy Juche, self-reliance and independence, rebuilt their U.S. annihilated country. Beautiful clean modern working cities. A huge credit to any nation.

Why not nuclear armed DPRK – there are sound universal deterrent reasons as promoted by the U.S. for the U.S. and held by seven other nations.

“The Department of Defense’s enduring mission is to provide combat-credible military forces needed to deter war and protect the security of our nation.” The U.S. considers it has an unequivocal right to nuclear deterrent weapons but DPRK which the U.S. bombed flat 1950-53 does not.

Why then should DPRK not have nuclear defence to protect their country ? Look what the U.S. and West do to countries that have no nuclear defence : Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria – bombed to shreds, millions die, countries set back decades, when it suits the West. But the U.S. thinks twice and twice again when it’s the Russian Federation, or the People’s Republic of China, with nuclear deterrents.

The West needs to pay close and focussed attention and quickly before we have nuclear war on the planet led by an ultra nationalist Western leader who casts large sections of the rest of the world as “rogue states” or “axes of evil”. There are balancing reports from the White House that senior staff generals, foremost Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, warn against “catastrophic consequences” of a preemptive attack on North Korea. But then how many ardent nationalist in the Trump administration will be tempted to such a strike ? The fact is time and again post WW2 the U.S. has determined war is the solution : Vietnam, Afghanistan, “Mission Accomplished” Iraq. In each case hugely destructive wars with no benefit to any country including and specifically the U.S.

So do we now face yet another U.S. lead high technology bomb delivery war, on yet again another country far from the U.S.A. ? How many then in the U.S. military all ranks will be excited ? New generations immersed in violent attack gaming have forgotten Vietnam and the Korean War that was in any case disregarded long ago hence its epitaph “The Forgotten War”. No matter that one and a half million Korean civilians men women and children died in the war, in their own towns and homes. As I would say to anyone planning war, to grasp the enormity of destruction of human life in warfare, get a sledgehammer and high octane burner and go to work on your nearest and dearest, including your children.

That is the true horror of warfare all the more horrific when it is phosphorus high octane napalm bombing of civilian cities as in North Korea 1950-53. Many U.S. service men and women will know this universal warfare suffering and trauma well enough from more recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan. And not just trauma in and during war but whole lifetimes of mental trauma (PTSD) as is becoming more evident every generation. But no less lessons are not learnt – “the world well knows yet none knows well” – except they have been in warfare – and so it is new young generations are drawn into the adventurism of war.

In all consideration the deepest of deep tragedies for humanity the West cannot see how, in conflict, belligerents mirror each other’s behaviour. It is the U.S. that brings huge military armadas to the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea offshore North Korea. Wouldn’t any country be terrified with such enormous destructive fire power on their doorstep, from a U.S.A. that seven decades ago bombed their country flat ?

Give the Korean people the space to reconcile north and south.

“Our greatest enemy in the end our own deep ignorance – belligerence in  conflict  mirrored back time and time again. The U.S. and many in the West forever condemning socialism and communism without any effort to try and understand different political ideologies” 

In huge contrast what we see in the East is what has been lost from all sight in our mass consumption West and that is the Wisdom of the East. They have the wisdom to understand that small scale shared positive experience, as in engaging jointly in the Winter Olympics, is the way that people one to one begin to get to know one-another. And from that you quietly build. Not on world stages shouting one another down : from Donald Trump “Fire and Fury” with the even more juvenile “Mine’s bigger than yours”. No different to Bush’s “Shock and Awe” in 2003 prior to the U.S. led Iraq invasion which has then spawned wars and turmoil to this day throughout the Middle East.

All the Western propaganda from the 1950s that Communism was sweeping South Asia refused to recognise the fact that vast numbers in Asia did and still do hold to socialist and communist values. Not least for Korean people and many world wide sweeping away feudal landlord power systems. Now then seven decades later the U.S. needs to step back and leave the Korean people to assess their different political systems and work out how best to make this work for Korea. Parallel nations at peace, or integration of the best of systems both sides of the 38th parallel. If Western U.S. led market capitalism is so superior to centralised communism it will speak for itself. Not need enormous battle fleets and militarisation to enforce one political ideology on another.

That such massive forces are in play with potential planet destroying consequences with millions of lives destroyed only goes to show the huge lack of belief in dialogue and world peace on the part of U.S. leadership. It is Korea’s huge misfortune at the end of WW2 – following decades of brutal Japanese occupation – to end up on a world tectonic plate between Capitalism and Communism. We now have an absolute duty to help this country build safety and security into the 21st century. Korea in history has never invaded any of its neighbours. It is the Japanese, Europeans, and in the course of history post WW2 the U.S.A. that have time and again been the belligerents. Invading, colonising, exploiting, demanding subservience to Western capital markets.

Anyone with doubts on these issues might like to look at the latest U.S. National Defence Strategy from Defence Secretary retired Marine Corp General Mattis : The Pentagon’s Plan for Never Ending War. Secretary Mattis speaks of catastrophic consequences of a war with North Korea but then all the evidence is of huge military buildup. Which in the end goes to show the whole self-defeating logic of threat driven foreign policy. Threat turns to counter threat : high level brinkmanship when then at any time one small unpredictable event (one gun shot) and events run out of all control. We have seen this time and again in history : one assassination in Sarajevo 1914 and we have the 1st World War with Europe in ruin and 37 million dead.

Our greatest enemy in the end our own deep ignorance – belligerence in  conflict mirrored back time and time again. In this case The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea no more and no less emulating the example set by the U.S.A. Might is Right. All that President Eisenhower warned against after World War Two, the U.S. industrial military complex taking over USA government, as it has now done with eight generals in Donald Trump’s cabinet, apart from the power of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. National Defence budget $800 billion dwarfing all other U.S. domestic budgets. The royal road to rack and ruin.

This then can be compared with the world lead from China Roads for Peace and Prosperity : Xi Jinping 2018 China Focus “A Community with a Shared Future for all Mankind”.  The US promotes a world of weapons and warfare; China promotes a world of connectivity and peace.

*

Sources

The Korean War 1950-53 – Forgotten when we need to remember. Over 1.5 million Korean civilian deaths. Korean people do not forget : May 2017

Looming war – Is US preparing for first strike on DPRK : February 2018

Professor Victor Cha : speaking against a preemptive attack : “Force will be necessary to deal with North Korea if it attacks first, but not through a preventative strike that could start a nuclear war,” A preemptive military strike with North Korea retaliation “would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans.” The direst of warnings but then notably, with focus on U.S. citizens, a U.S. centric analysis (what about North Korea families men women and children and in the South ?). In any case Professor Cha not supporting a preemptive strike, for the soberest of sound rational reasons, ended it seems his candidature for Ambassador for South Korea.

US National Strategic “Defence” Policy – the Pentagon’s Plan for Never Ending War : “The Department of Defense’s enduring mission is to provide combat-credible military forces needed to deter war and protect the security of our nation”. “We are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding. As well, North Korea’s outlaw actions and reckless rhetoric continue …” And the Commander in Chief of the US is not daily broadcasting the most “reckless rhetoric” the world has ever heard. And this from a Commander with more nuclear destruction power than the rest of the world put together.

The rational to attack North Korea following the same script as attack on Iraq 2003 : “North Korea accused the United States of planning to launch a “bloody nose” military strike against the country while promoting the threat of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons – much like it did before invading Iraq.” If the U.S. does carry out a preemptive attack that will mean with absolute certainty war in the Far East with high probability involving China and Russia. If the U.S. does not carry out a preemptive strike then states will continue to coexist with the door open for negotiations. Peace always has risks of war but then War is absolute – once started chaos death and destruction follow.

Professor Bruce Cumings – distinguished US Historian : A Murderous History of Korea :  “This April [2017], Kim In-ryong, a North Korean diplomat at the UN, warned of ‘a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment’. A few days later, President Trump told Reuters that ‘we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea.’ American atmospheric scientists have shown that even a relatively contained nuclear war would throw up enough [radioactive] soot and debris to threaten the global population: How is it possible that we have come to this?” ….

“The [French] filmmaker Chris Marker visited the country in 1957, four years after US carpet-bombing ended, and wrote:‘Extermination passed over this land. Who could count what burned with the houses? … When a country is split in two by an artificial border and irreconcilable propaganda is exercised on each side, it’s naive to ask where the war comes from: the border is the war.”

There’s a long history of US aggression against the North which we forget at our peril : “January 2016, the North Koreans must be astonished to discover that US leaders never seem to grasp the import of their history-related provocations. Even more infuriating is Washington’s implacable refusal ever to investigate our 72-year history of conflict with the North; all of our media appear to live in an eternal present, with each new crisis treated as sui generis”.

“We never put ourselves in the shoes of the enemy and attempted to see the world as they did”.

“North Korea is the only country in the world to have been systematically blackmailed by US nuclear weapons going back to the 1950s, when hundreds of nukes were installed in South Korea.”

Americans once carpet-bombed North Korea. It’s time to remember that past : “The US air force subjected North Koreans to three years of ‘rain and ruin’. It was a living nightmare – one that still haunts the country to this day.” US Trump administration believes with supreme certainty in US superpower power. That is then brute military power, far from the power of leadership : world leadership – John Kennedy 1963 : “All men breathe the same air. All men are mortal”. The power of understanding as in understanding the common needs of difference people around the world. The cost of one “superpower” Ohio submarine would fund ten thousand US Korea student exchanges. That can be the only way the world will move forward.

The USS Pueblo Incident January 23rd 1968 : It is now (January 2018) 50 years since North Korea captured the USS Pueblo intelligence vessel in or close to North Korea offshore waters. The US claimed a “hydrographic survey vessel” in “international waters”, DPRK claiming a spy ship in DPRK national waters. The facts in history stand with DPRK, as accepted by the US a year later : the vessel was carrying encryption equipment and intelligence documents and, in any case, what would the US say if a DPRK “survey ship” popped up off-shore Los Angeles. As ever from the US vapid double standards.

Hawaii Missile Alert 13th January : This would seem to be a matter of a mix-up on the part of one operator not hearing the full incoming activation message. This may be the case. There again it is entirely feasible that it was a set-up from higher levels. The motive, to get the message across to the US public a North Korea attack is a real and present danger and in that justification for a US preemptive strike. Notably the alarm took place 2 days before the Vancouver North Korea ultimatum summit. For those in Washington supporting a first strike, even if the alert was no more than an accident, a most convenient coincidence.

Trump vows to “totally destroy North Korea” if it threatens USA : This in his address to the United Nations Tuesday 19th September 2017. Not off the cuff. The statement made as part of his speech. Juvenile personal insults from a world leader :

“Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.”

“Unless the regime of leader Kim Jong-un backs down we will have no choice than to totally destroy North Korea”. No choice ? There are of course always choices. It’s okay for the US to bring nuclear armageddon fleets into off-shore Korean seas but it’s not okay for DPRK to defend itself. And to keep in mind always the US 1950-53 mercilessly carpet bombed this small Asian country utterly destroying their land and towns and cities with some two million Koreans killed in the war. This US mass carpet-bombing of civilian populations repeated less than 15 years later (for eight years) in Vietnam.

“It is an outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime but would arm, supply and financially support a country that imperils the world with nuclear conflict.” – says President Trump with a world stockpile of 8,000 nuclear weapons many hundreds of which carried by battle carrier aircraft and in nuclear submarines all over the world. And that is USA the only country in the world that has released nuclear weapons – and on civilian cities : Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Trump : “If the righteous many don’t confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph,” Rooted in our Western Judeo-Christian culture are beliefs in Good and Evil. But then in a modern age we surely should not be thinking of these as supernatural forces. There is good and bad but then there is perspective, from one person or nation to another. It takes us nowhere if a world leader such as Donald Trump labels another nation “evil” if we make no effort to understand their point-of-view. Understanding is not “appeasement”.

A regime may be bloody and ruthless and there have been many in the world. But  communist North Korea has made huge progress in civil society for their people and if we want to look at “evil” – horrendous damage against others – what then does the U.S. have to say about 1950-53 carpet bombing a small country into near oblivion ?  And since installing hugely threatening nuclear weapons on North Korea’s doorstep.

Trump threatens North Korea will be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” – August 2017 New Jersey: The US can stockpile many hundreds of nuclear weapons with more attack fire-power than the rest of the world put together (11 nuclear strike carrier fleets – 42 multi-nuclear armed submarines) but a small country, that has been bombed flat by the USA in living memory, and is still daily threatened by US military forces on its borders, will be annihilated if it continues to develop its own nuclear defence system. This then is US world democracy (hypocrisy) 2017. No-one has a right to defend their country except the USA and select allies that conform to US market systems.

Pyongyang Times : DPRK English language news : North survey team visits South Korea : 22nd January : “Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un said in his New Year Address that a climate favourable for national reconciliation and reunification should be established. It is a firm will of the DPRK to ease the acute tension between the north and the south and achieve a breakthrough for improved relations and independent reunification this year.” Why would anyone want to disagree with that ? How could that more positively call for peacemaking. The beginning of work to end the ideological gulfs between North and South. Gulfs that can blow away in the wind as the troops in WW1 on the front line Christmas Day 1914 walked away from “ideological commands” finding friendship with their “enemy” in their common humanity.

Peacemaking – Korea was a united kingdom – until riven apart by outside intervention most powerfully from the USA. But no less western minds in government will be blind and deaf to Kim Jong Un’s call for reconciliation. Impossible for many in the West to understand that socialism, and communism, for many countries is their choice. Western thinking 2017 a universe away from that of President Kennedy 1963 :

“What sort of peace do we seek ? NOT PAX AMERICANA forced on the world by American weapons of war. If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

What an enormous degeneration 1963 to 2017 in US power. 1963 the power of world leadership : 2017 brute military power. But then notably President Kennedy’s 1963 call for world peace and unity is now 2017 half a century later being powerfully promoted by Chinese leadership : President Xi Jinping.

Arirang News – South Korea January 16th : Samjiyon Orchestra will be playing at the Winter Olympics. “The group, consisting of 140 members, is rather unknown compared to North Korea’s other musicians and performing groups, such as the Moranbong Band.” The item includes reference to “northern propaganda”. And the south is not saturated with its own propaganda ? And this all grounded in mutual fear. We can then follow the lead from President Kennedy in 1963 for world peace, the call from Kim Jong Un for Korean reconciliation, and the lead from world leader Xi Jinping calling for the world to build a “shared future for all mankind”. Or we get drawn further and further into destructive fear driven propaganda.

North Korea culture – bands music and much more : A rare glimpse informative and fascinating review of modern North Korea music, drama, and art performance. With focus on missiles and warfare so much that is never seen or heard in the West. “One of the great things about the Olympics is the way it brings people of different nations together, channelling political tensions into the glory of competition”.

Moranbong Band 2016 – Let’s go to Mount Pektu : the people of North Korea have their culture – bands, music, celebration – as the world over. In this case the hugely popular all female Moranbong band. The West fixating on missiles gives a distorting view of the country and people as would fixation on the current US president and US ballistic systems as if a country has no other dynamics at play. As if Korean families and children don’t enjoy and value their lives every bit as much as people from all nations world-wide.

Moranbong Band 2013 – a military performance : and why not ? The people are hugely proud of what they have achieved. This will appear incongruous to many in the West, musical performance to a backdrop of tanks and military field guns. But then look at equivalence from the USA and UK and all the more so with Trump announcing that the US will have annual grand military parades in Washington.

Trump’s vision for grand military parades : “President Trump wants to celebrate the troops with a big, beautiful military parade through Washington, DC. The Pentagon and White House officials are in discussions to hold a grand event this year featuring soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the streets of the nation’s capital to highlight America’s armed forces,” Time and again we are minded of President Eisenhower’s dire warnings of the US military-industrial complex taking over the US. And this now with an all powerful Caesar commander.

Spirit of America Concert 2011 : with bomb explosion and machine gunning in opening clip. Parading military demonstrating bayonet rifle drills to band music. Is this performing in principle so very different to DPRK performance ? All countries are proud of their military.

US celebrating military tanks and fighting vehicles : the 11th Army Cavalry Regiment parading through Torrance California. Part of the US military – annual budget $800 billion. President Eisenhower warned long ago against the dangers of an expansionist US industrial-military complex dominating US civil society. The difference to DPRK parading and honouring their military ? DPRK is defending their country from within their country; the US is expanding ever outwards to dominate the world. Classic hegemony – races and countries persuade themselves they are superior (White Supremacism) and it is then to the greater good they subordinate and govern all countries in their own image.

From UK Royal Albert Hall the Navy Gun Carriage Race : to the theme “Hearts of Oak” – the tournament having opened with “Rule Britannia – Britannia Rules the Waves”. How then should it be different that DPRK celebrates the same military prowess with an exciting all female band to a backdrop of military guns ? And Britannia Rules the Waves : “Britons never never will be slaves” – the very theme of oppression in DPRK The Flower Girl. But then the Koreans have had to stand against invading oppression and brutality for decades. In the case of the UK we have of course been one of the world’s great invading and colonising perpetrators : The Imperial British Empire including the world’s leading slave trading nation (North Atlantic slave trade) for over two centuries.

DPRK The Flower Girl : I’ve not seen in a lifetime a film so powerful and deeply moving. If more leaders in the West took note – the history of Korea – the West might take a very different view to why DPRK is so heavily armed. The country north to south suffered hugely under Japanese occupation 1910-1945. This is the backdrop to the film with lead from two young girls, Koppun and Choi Yong. The film is then about the many millions of Koppuns and Cho Yongs in our world to this day struggling with oppression and exploitation.

Japanese Occupation of Korea and China – 20th Century Japanese barbarism matched only by the German Waffen SS :

Nanking Massacre – the Rape of Nanking – December 1937 : “Nanjing (Nanking) then the capital of the Republic of China. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. During this period soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000 and perpetrated widespread rape and looting. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated in 1946 that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the incident.” And to be noted WW2 – world war against world fascism East and West – began in 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China. Not in 1939 with German occupation of Poland.

In Nanking December 1937 shear terror for the Chinese population. It is then, taking into account Japanese brutal occupation of Korea from 1910 with then US carpet bombing of North Korea 1950-53, impossible to understand how anyone in the West with any understanding of Korean history cannot understand why the people of North Korea are hugely militarised including nuclear deterrents. Just look at the US reaction to Pearl Harbour 1941, and the 9/11 attack on New York 2001. We are all mortified when another country does huge damage to our country and people. As John Kennedy said long ago : “We all breathe the same air”.

Nanking (2007 documentary film) : Enacted testimony from Westerners who were in Nanking December 1937. On all the evidence from all the sources over many decades War Crime barbarism and brutality from the Japanese Imperial Army. Mass murder and rape of defenceless civilians. Infants and babies bayoneted and this in the 20th century, not the Middle Ages. For China and Korea, North and South, this is still living memory. Imperial fascist Japan 1941 joined with fascist Germany, then attacking the USA and occupying large parts of Southeast Asia, yet staggering any sense of World Justice at the end of the war Japan is supported by the US in rebuilding whilst Korea, who attacked no other country, ends up with a severed nation the north demonised and walled off behind the 38th parallel.

Japanese WW2 occupation enforced prostitution : Known by the Japanese Imperial Army as “Comfort Women” : “comfort” for the Japanese troops : terror and horror for Korean, Chinese, and Filipino women. Estimate of the number of women enslaved would seem to be 200,000. Clearly the practice acceptable in the highest levels in the Japanese military and government. Young women in countries under occupation lured and abducted from their homes. Japanese brutality well known from WW2 treatment of UK and other prisoners of war yet to this day Japanese government cannot bring themselves to make, in the words of independent UN Human Rights experts, “An unequivocal official apology [for enforced prostitution] recognizing the full responsibility of the then Japanese Government and military …”

Again and again the evidence from modern history is overwhelming why DPRK has put huge national investment into military defence. I do not see how it could be more staggeringly obvious DPRK is defending itself from in living memory the horrors of Japanese occupation followed by the horrors of US carpet bombing. On any semblance of Nuremberg War Crimes Justice, on all the 20th century evidence, both Japan and the USA stand indicted for Crimes Against Humanity : brutal mass murder of Korean people men women and children in their own country.

The world needs to speak up and open dialogue and communication with the people’s government of DPRK and as a matter of highest urgency. We should remember it was US China “ping pong” (table tennis) detente in the early 1970s that after a 25 year freeze opened up US China relationships. And to keep in mind that was by then a nuclear armed China. And so too now the turn of North Korea to be brought into the international community. A world of trade and exchange the future of our species : ideas, understanding, values, beliefs, aspirations. Our common humanity – in different phases of development.

With the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a number of books have been published covering the topic in different ways. Bernard Regan’s The Balfour Declaration adds to this library, tending to be within an academic political presentation.  In his acknowledgements, Regan writes that his “academic undertaking” becomes a “hopefully more accessible publication.”  He succeeds with that, but as his sources are mainly British government documents of one form or another, it remains an academic read.  It is not an anecdotal history, nor one that reveals the personalities behind the players in the game, but one that records the imperial intentions of the British government (and others within their interactions with the British).

Regan recognized that “Zionism…became an important adjunct of British imperialist strategy in the Near East.”  Throughout the work resides the tension between the Wilsonian ideal of self-determination encountering and intertwining with the Orientalist/imperialist perspective. Consistently, and as is still obvious today, several themes course through the history.

These themes all converge on the British empire.  One of the main themes is that of transportation control for both commercial and military interests (as today, one relying on the other).  During this time Britain provided fifty per cent of global shipping, and was strongly interested in the newly discovered oil in Iraq.  This ties in with the concerns about controlling the Suez Canal and its access to India and other Asian colonies, worrying about French, Egyptian, Italian, and Russian interests at the same time.

Once the Balfour letter was adopted as official policy (it was not international law as interpreted by some) followed by the creation of the Palestinian mandate the central theme is the overriding bias of British imperialism using various laws and policies – both old Ottoman and newly created as convenient – that highly favoured Jewish settlement and Jewish strength in the Mandate.  At the center of that was land.

The “economic dislocation” of the Palestinians came through land sales laws, administrative rules that essentially removed what was essentially the Palestinian agricultural society from their land and created a low wage labour force.  The latter in turn was severely limited by British support of the Jewish labour council, the Histadrut.

In the final short chapter, “The Mandate in Context”, Regan writes a good summary essay examining the overall position of the letter, the mandate, and empire.  He argues correctly that empires were changing from “policy making decisions by governments” to “financial capital” empires.  This is true, but in Palestine the familiar “colonial-settler” empire (as with Canada, the U.S., Australia – all countries that have done their best to ethnically cleanse their indigenous populations) resides as the hand inside the financial glove.

Regan’s Balfour Declaration provides a good summary overview of British imperial actions and intentions within the period between WW I to just before WW II.  A more general background of historical knowledge would be helpful in accessing this work – while it tends to work chronologically, it also winds through themes across time lines.  It is another good addition to the library exploring the origins of our current Middle east problems.

The wars in the Middle East continue to rage unabated. Over the weekend a Russian war plane was struck down by an Al Qaeda affiliated group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and once again stoked fears of widening the struggle in Syria between US and Russian proxy forces. It is yet another reminder of the ongoing and seemingly endless wars being waged in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere around the globe.

Our transition into this never-ending war paradigm, fashioned out of the events of the post 9/11 era, seeks only to benefit and further cement the pre-existing alliance between the US military and the proliferating arms industries; collectively known as the military industrial complex. This partnership represents the systematic convergence of the capitalist system and the modern American military establishment that was formed after the world conflicts of the first half the 20th century.

Ironically enough – one of the greatest leaders to emerge out of the American military institution was also one of its greatest critics. That of the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during World War II and later President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

President Eisenhower’s farewell address in January 1961 first propagated the dire warning of the ills of the military industrial complex. In his address, Eisenhower indicated that due to the continuous nature of world conflicts and America’s participation therein, the US government had “been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry” resulting in more expenditure on “military security than the net income of all US corporations.” [1]
This notion of a permanent armaments industry was at the time new to the American experience. Eisenhower was in an unique position to not only witness its creation during the militarization period of World War II, but also to observe its everlasting foundation during the advent of the Cold War. Tensions between the US and the Soviet Union produced a decades long arms race unprecedented in the history of the world. During this time the convergence between the military establishment and the armaments industry changed the very facet of American society and imbued the nation in an insatiable fixation on war.

The collapse of the Soviet Union did very little to stem the tide of militarization as new wars in the 21st century reasserted the need to increase defense spending. Between 2002-2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, sales among the top 100 arms companies grew by 51%.[2] Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, the worlds top three arms manufacturers in respect to net worth, had a combined annual revenue of over $95 billion USD in 2014 alone.[3]

Eisenhower fretted over the “unwarranted influence” potentially garnered by the military industrial complex leading to a disastrous path of “misplaced power” in the councils of government. This is explicitly evident in the intimate business dealings between the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the largest arms manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. By far its principal customer, US government military expenditures account for 60% of the $45Bn USD revenue it receives in a year.[4] Lockheed Martin’s contracts and influence within the US government is certainly perpetuated by its extensive lobbying, amounting to $241,738,668 USD between 1998-2017; according to opensecrets.org.[5]

As Eisenhower no doubtfully realized, America’s relationship with war making allowed it to better pursue its political and military objectives abroad in tandem to realizing its economic agenda at home. He spoke of the “prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment” along with the influence of money “to be gravely regarded.”[6] With America’s ever expanding military role, it comes to no surprise that the DoD became one of the country’s largest employer with nearly two million personnel.[7] Lockheed Martin, according to their official site, has either core factories or one of its many subsidiary companies in all 50 US states while touting to employ 115,000 people.[8] The so called “revolving door” phenomena, where government and private employment mix is also a deeply ingrained ritual. An article released by the Huffington Post in 2012 stated that upwards to 70% of retired US generals enter into contracts with arms manufacturers or defense related consultancies.[9]

Advances in technology also play a pivotal role in the sweeping changes in America’s industrial-military posture. Recent developments in aerodynamics, chip processing speed, automation, AI and machine learning along with expansions in telecommunications and the internet are spurred by massive R&D investments by the military establishment. The defense advance research projects agency or DARPA is one of the leading research institutes in the world and comprises renowned academics, private and governmental partners. Its sole mission is to “make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.”[10] DARPA’s advances are often kept secret and its intentions are frequently debated by the public at large.

The incorporation of militarism into American society is staggering. From the onset of the post-war era, civilian life was forever transformed and molded to meet the growing demands of the military industrial complex. Its take over was systematic yet subtle, hidden behind the veil of democracy and American exceptionalism. Whether or not the state’s hijacking by the military establishment was deliberate or just a manifestation of empire building, the results become the same; a captive public policy by scientific-technological elites.

According to Eisenhower, “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”[11]

In a world fraught with uncertainty – a constant reminder is needed for a society in constant war.

*

Andre Bermont is the Editor-in-Chief for cuibononews.com, a news aggregation and content website. 

Notes

[1] Eisenhower, Dwight. Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, January 17^th 1961. Speech transcript. https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/farewell_address.pdf 

[2] Weigley, Samuel. 10 Companies Profiting Most from the War. USA Today. March 10^th 2013, updated March 10^th 2013 https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/10/10-companies-profiting-most-from-war/1970997/ 

[3] Pai, Priyanka. Top 10 Largest Weapons Manufacturing Companies in the World. Tharawat Magazine. July 14^th, 2015. https://www.tharawat-magazine.com/facts/top-10-largest-weapons-manufacturing-companies/#gs.Boff2MI 

[4] King, Nicholas. Lockheed Martin Corp. Corporate Philanthropy. April 29^th, 2014.http://www.corporatephilanthropyreport.com/m-article-detail/lockheed-martin-corp.aspx 

[5] Top Spenders. Open Secrets, Center for Responsive Politics. https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&indexType=s 

[6] Eisenhower, Dwight. Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, January 17^th 1961. Speech transcript. https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/farewell_address.pdf 

[7] United States Department of Defense (Official Website). Modified January 27^th,2017. https://www.defense.gov/About/ 

[8] Who We Are. Lockheed Martin Official Website. https://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/who-we-are.html 

[9] Johnson, Luke. Report: 70% of Retired Generals Took Jobs with Defense Contractors or Consultancies. Huffington Post. November 19^th, 2012. Last updated November 20^th, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/defense-contractors-generals_n_2160771 

[10] About DARPA. DARPA Official Webpage. https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/about-darpa 

[11] Eisenhower, Dwight. Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, January 17^th 1961. Speech transcript. https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/farewell_address.pdf 

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

For you non-sports minded Russia watchers, the ethically flawed antics of the IOC (International Olympic Committee), WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) and Western mass media at large, highlight a predominating anti-Russian bias that have a definite bigoted aspect. Having personally penned the title of this essay, let me say that the February 1 CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) decision favoring Russian athletes, is proof positive that not everyone in the West is motivated (subconsciously or otherwise) by anti-Russian sentiment.

The world is our enemy and we reserve the right to destroy part or all of it at our discretion. That is the essence of the United States Nuclear Policy Review that was recently released; a document of a criminal enterprise bent on world domination that describes how the use of new and “more flexible” nuclear weapons will achieve that domination.

The key to their intentions is contained in a statement on page 22 of the document where they state:

“To help preserve deterrence and the assurance of allies and partners, the United States has never adopted a “no first use” policy and, given the contemporary threat environment, such a policy is not justified today. It remains the policy of the United States to retain some ambiguity regarding the precise circumstances that might lead to a U.S. nuclear response.”

In other words, they are saying:

“we will keep you guessing as to when and against whom we will use them. We will maintain our role as the greatest state terrorist by keeping the nuclear Damocles sword over the heads of the people of the world constantly to ensure that the world acts in our interest.”

The American nuclear sword they are crafting will be sharpened with smaller, more battlefield usable nuclear weapons on land, sea and air. But whereas until now nuclear weapons were considered a separate category of weapons whose use means the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of people, considered both immoral and illegal under international law, they are now considered by the Americans as a type of conventional weapon, a part of their conventional weapons systems. This raises the risk that their use will increase from a possibility to a certainty for they threaten to use them against any situation that in their view requires it even if it is a conventional war scenario. So, if the Americans stage a Russian attack on the Baltic states and claims its forces are too weak to stop the attack then they will use nuclear weapons on their real targets for which the staged attack was the pretext. Millions will die.

The nuclear sword continues to hang most dangerously over the peoples of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, described by the fantasists in the Pentagon as “provoking” the US when it is the US that is provoking them. Nuclear war is threatened against all four nations simply because they have reacted to American aggression and threats and are trying to defend themselves.

The American view of their role in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as expressed in this new Policy at the very end of the document, in a short section thrown in to fool idiots that they search for peace, is as world cop allowed the use of nuclear weapons by some divine right while denying them to everyone else.

They repeat the lies that Russia has violated various nuclear arms treaties and committed acts of aggression and that North Korea is in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty when North Korea is no longer a party to it. China is accused of similar violations and aggression in the South China Sea while Iran is accused of being on the verge of violating their commitments not to build nuclear weapons. All those nations are described as “revisionists” “aggressors” “threats to the world order” or, when some honesty slips in, a threat to American interests, which means a threat to American tyranny over the world. But nation states are not the only possible triggers of their “ultimate solution.”

They even go so far as to state their intention to use nuclear weapons on any state that provides a nuclear weapon to a “terrorist” group. The document states on page 67,

“The United States will hold fully accountable any state, terrorist group, or other non-state actor that supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or employ nuclear devices. Although the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in countering nuclear terrorism is limited, for effective deterrence our adversaries must understand that a terrorist attack against the United States, or its allies and partners, would qualify as “extreme circumstances” under which the United States could consider the ‘ultimate form of retaliation.’”

Since we know that the United States has used false flag operations as pretexts for its aggression this is a very dangerous position for it means that the United States could simply accuse North Korea of providing nuclear weapons or parts of weapons to some group and use that as its pretext and justification to launch a nuclear attack on North Korea.

There is not one word of reality in the entire document, no admission that the world is arming against them because they have attacked or threatened just about every country in the world since they rose to power on the blood of millions of indigenous dead and their first wars of conquest. There is not one world of their nuclear attacks on Japan, their attack on Korea, on Vietnam, on Grenada, Latin and Central America, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Rwanda, Congo, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, China, Venezuela, the overthrow of the government in Ukraine, support of fascists everywhere and, well, I can go on and on to list their crimes against nations, peoples, societies and cultures the world over but I would risk tiring out both myself and the reader.

As Jan Oberg, head of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Sweden, pointed out the western media has remained criminally silent on this “most dangerous” of documents, unable to praise it, and afraid to criticise it, or ordered not to, thereby making themselves complicit in the criminal plans of the United States and its allies. Only the BBC had an article on the condemnations of the American threat by China, Russia and Iran, but, to reduce the effect, put their words inside quotation marks.

China stated that that it firmly opposes the Policy and rejected the American characterisation of China as a nuclear threat and made it clear the American Policy is a negation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Russia’s foreign ministry correctly stated that the US was warmongering and would take necessary measures to counter the threat. Iran also stated the Policy was a violation of international law. But perhaps the strongest statement came from the German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel who stated that:

“The US government’s new nuclear posture shows that the spiral of a new nuclear arms races is already underway. As in the days of the Cold War, this poses a serious threat to us in Europe. Instead of new weapon systems, we need new disarmament initiatives.”

But then the Germans, and the French and British, are increasingly fed up with the American policies. The German foreign minister has called for Germany to take up a more aggressive foreign policy of its own, and stated that Europe needs to project its own power (under German control), that the Americans are moving away from Europe and isolating themselves, are now seen as economic rivals instead of partners and, therefore, are no longer viewed as a reliable security partner, and instead, pose a danger to Europe caught between the USA and Russia.

President Trump said, as if oblivious to all this and with all the charm of Mac The Knife, that the American readiness to use new and smaller nuclear weapons would ensure no use of these weapons by others, in other words that American preparation for global war will bring us all the miracle of global peace, so long as, of course, the other nations of the world do exactly as they are told.

But, to quote John Galtung, the distinguished Professor of Peace Studies in Oslo:

 “A very important reason for forbidding nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction is that they increase the threshold for what is acceptable. A conventional war is often defended by saying it did not go nuclear. The international legal framework for warfare is already a victim of nuclear arms and can only regain its validity by forbidding that insult perpetrated on humanity.”

Already we are seeing that Dr. Galtung is correct for the reaction of the threatened nations is of course, not to kowtow but to resist and strengthen their own nuclear weapons systems and change their nuclear weapons use policies to match that of the Americans. The world stands on the precipice of the ultimate catastrophe.

As Albert Einstein said in 1950

“It is impossible to achieve peace as long as every single action is taken with a possible future conflict in view. Competitive armament is not a way to prevent war. Every step in this direction brings us nearer to catastrophe. The armaments race is the worst method to prevent open conflict. On the contrary, real peace cannot be reached without a systematic disarmament on a supranational scale. I repeat, armament is not protection against war but leads inevitably to war.”

But this was said when I was a child and we are in a worse predicament now than ever before. On January 25, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset its Doomsday Clock from two and half minutes to midnight to two minutes to midnight due to their concerns about the threat of nuclear war, climate change and technologies being used by governments against the citizenry. That was before the release of the American Nuclear Policy which places us even closer to midnight than that. And yet even they adopt the rhetoric and propaganda of the American government in their statement about Russian aggression and the alleged threat of North Korea. So where is the hope when the truth is suppressed and reality turned on its head even by those who warn us of our predicament.

It’s a terrible world we live in and it will not change unless we make it change. I last wrote about our Open Letter to the International Criminal Court asking the Prosecutor to open a file on the leadership of the United States and its allies for conspiring to commit genocide against the people of Korea. The release of this document can be considered evidence of a conspiracy to commit instant genocide against the entire world’s population. It’s the American gangster way of saying to all of us, “Do what we tell yah or you’ll get wacked.”

It’s long past time to get up, stand up, get on the streets, make our voice heard, not slink in the shadows, bemoaning our fate while there is a way to win the struggle for disarmament, for peace, for putting power under our control, we do all the work after all, why not? If we just move into the light, so we can see the reality of things, if we just move into action; because if we don’t, then to quote the words of Mack the Knife, by Bertolt Brecht, referred to earlier,

“There are some who are in darkness

And the others are in light

And you see the ones in brightness

Those in darkness drop from sight.”

*

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

Featured image is from the author.

Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War

Michel Chossudovsky

“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

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War“ is also available through the Amazon Kindle program.

Special Price: $10.25

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During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump won over many American voters by his promise to put “America First.” Though this catchphrase was thought – at the time — to imply a populist message of putting the American people first, Trump has largely failed to deliver on his promises to roll back the corporate welfare state and instead invest in everyday Americans — as evidenced by his tax reform bill, the only legislative “victory” of his young presidency.

However, Trump wasn’t lying when he campaigned on putting “America First;” he was just referring to America in a different context that has nothing to do with populism or improving the economic situation for the average U.S. citizen. As his actions as president have shown, “America First” — in practice – has meant preserving American hegemony abroad at all costs, resulting in a scorched-earth policy that seeks to keep American corporations and military empire on top.

Over the course of Trump’s first year, what was promised to be a presidency of the people quickly became a presidency of the Pentagon. After putting several military men in top positions, Trump, after fewer than three months in office, gave the Pentagon unprecedented war-making powers. He did this by “pre-delegating authority” once reserved for the executive branch, thereby giving the Pentagon “a freer hand” in launching missions – ranging from drone strikes to Navy SEAL ops.

What followed has been a massive increase in lethal drone strikes and explosive growth in secret military operations in nations with which the U.S. is not at war and where no legal authority for its military involvement exists, other than the notorious 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). In addition, America’s “forever wars” and its occupation of Syria have both continued and expanded.

In a telling display, Trump had not even been informed of the use of the U.S.’ largest non-nuclear bomb until after it was detonated in Afghanistan last year. Trump, in speaking about the incident soon after, was able to recall the details of the cake he was eating at the time of the strike, but not the country that had been bombed.

Only weeks later, it emerged that Iraq War architect and former Deputy Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz was guiding two of the three most powerful military figures in the Trump administration – James Mattis and H.R. McMaster – via private email correspondence. Wolfowitz later signaled that he knew Mattis was calling the shots on U.S. foreign policy when he said:

“I think in many ways it matters much more what Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson think it [Trump’s statement] means than what the president had in mind when he said it.”

Over time, “Trump’s generals” have shown themselves to be firmly in control. They vet “everything” that comes across the president’s desk — a protocol Politico reported as a system “designed to ensure that the president won’t see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports and even news articles that haven’t been vetted.” They are also said to keep “a tight leash” on who meets with the president, with all meetings subject to their approval.

While staunch Trump supporters may argue that the generals’ rise to power is a sign that Trump is being muzzled by “the deep state,”reports have indicated that Trump was more than happy to give the Pentagon so much freedom, as he wished “to operate more like the CEO he was in the private sector in such matters and delegate even more power to Mattis” and the Pentagon. Furthermore, Trump’s warmongering rhetoric against certain nations has been all his own, including his tweeting that taunted North Korea with promises of nuclear war.

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018

Most recently, Trump’s fondness for the militaristic tint of his presidency made headlines when he allegedly ordered a large military parade be staged in Washington, leading veterans groups and other activists to criticize Trump’s “authoritarian tendencies.”

With their control established, the Pentagon’s version of “America First” has taken hold. Last month, the Pentagon announced its new National Defense Strategy, thereby replacing the previous strategy published in 2008. The new strategy of the Pentagon sidelines the War on Terror in favor of targeting “inter-state strategic competition” — with special focus given to the dominant threats to American hegemony, Russia and China. As Mattis noted, it will seek to counter any “threat” to American influence by any means necessary, including the use of military force. Though some will note that this has long been the motivation behind much of U.S. military action in recent years, it is now out in the open and officially enshrined as the force guiding the Pentagon’s decisions.

This new strategy is the perverse embodiment of the Trump administration’s “America First” policy, putting American military and corporate empire above all else, even if it leads the country into financial ruin and a dangerous global war.

“Boeing First!”

Trump’s embrace of the Pentagon’s idea of “America First” has been demonstrated by his treatment of American corporations, particularly weapons manufacturers. For instance, Boeing – a company in dire straits prior to the Trump presidency – is now the top recipient of defense contracts, beating out Lockheed Martin and Raytheon by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Some have speculated that this surge in business is related to the fact that Boeing’s CEO has had numerous meetings with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and has even claimed to have “the president’s ear” on key issues. Boeing also received $1.1 billion as a result of the Trump tax cut legislation. The money Boeing has received from government contracts and the tax break totals to about $2.78 billion. Interestingly, that is roughly the same amount by which Boeing’s operating cash flow increased over the last year. Unsurprisingly, Boeing’s earnings forecast for this fiscal year have soared over the past year, along with its stock price.

However, Boeing’s record profits will do little to help everyday Americans, as the company produces most of its products through a supply chain spread all over the world with very little actually produced in the United States. Over the last five years, Boeing has invested heavily in automation and has cut around 34,000 jobs. Even though it is now set to have its first annual sales gain in three years, Boeing has stated it will not be adding to its workforce.

Despite this, Trump has made no attempts to “strong arm” Boeing into opening U.S. factories or offering more jobs by bringing them back from overseas. He seems to be content to have Boeing and its ilk instead receive lucrative government contracts and generous tax breaks.

“America First,” in practice, has shown itself to have little to do with the average American and everything to do with continuing the dominance of corporate America and its military empire. This policy is nothing new under Trump. It is exactly, if a bit more nakedly, what U.S. presidents have done for the vast majority of the nation’s history — the people be damned.

*

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.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

On Sunday, February 4, 2018, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami stated that the U.S. is transferring ISIS to Afghanistan to justify its presence in the Central Asian region.

Brigadier General Amir Hatami emphasized that U.S. had created ISIS to dominate Syria and Iraq, but after the ISIS’ defeat in those two countries, the United States tried to transfer the group to Afghanistan in order to justify their continuing presence in this country.

On Thursday, February 6, 2018, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri blamed the U.S. for relocating members of the ISIS terrorist group from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan.

According to him, since ISIS and other terror groups lost their territories in Iraq and Syria, the Americans have been relocating the terrorists to Afghanistan by various means.

Moreover, Mohammad Bagheri believes that Washington creates tension and conflict in Southwest Asia.

“The US has to gather up its troops and leave the regional countries to take care of their own security,” he added.

For his part, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said in late January that the goal behind Washington’s move to relocate ISIS terrorists to Afghanistan is to justify its military presence in the region and to provide security for the Zionist regime. He also called the Americans as the main source of instability in Afghanistan. At the same time, by words of Khamenei, the U.S. intends to promote its political and economic interests through the destabilization of Afghanistan.

It’s worth noting that several days ago the U.S. started pulling its forces from Iraq. However, the American servicemen don’t return to home soil. They are redeployed to Afghanistan, and it is not unlikely that they traveling with ISIS terrorists.

According to many experts, the number of ISIS militants in Afghanistan is estimated at 7,000 fighters. Apart from existing forces, the redeployment of reinforcement from Iraq and Syria will allow them to strengthen positions in the country that is a direct threat to the civilians.

*

Sophie Mangal is a special investigative correspondent from Inside Syria Media Center where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from the author.

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The healthcare system in the Gaza Strip is on the brink of “total collapse” and needs urgent action from the international community if it is to survive its current crises, medical charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) warned on Tuesday.

1. The US government threats of “preventive warfare” against DPRK are illegal and criminal. The Nuremberg Tribunal in their Judgment of 1946, which the US helped organize, condemned “preventive war” when the lawyers for the Nazis made the argument on their behalf. This is an illegal and criminal threat in violation of international law. According to the World Court in its Advisory Opinion (1996) on the Threat or  Use of Nuclear Weapons, the legality vel non of a threat stands or falls on the same legal grounds as if the threat were carried out.

2. The repeated US government threats to “destroy” or “annihilate” DPRK are an international crime under the 1948 Genocide Convention to which the United States is a party. These genocidal threats are also illegal and criminal under the rationale of the  1996 World Court Advisory Opinion mentioned above.

3. The United States has an absolute obligation under UN Charter article 2(3) and article 33 to open “negotiation” with DPRK in good faith in order to produce a peace resolution of this dispute. Instead, the US government has repeatedly rejected these obligations under the UN Charter.

4. The proposal by Russia and China for a “dual-freeze” is an excellent basis to produce good faith and direct negotiations between USA and DPRK as required by the UN Charter.

5. The United States is deliberately provoking DPRK, ratcheting up these provocations in the hope that they will provoke the DPRK to commit an act of aggression against the United States that the USA can then use as a pretext for war.  Pursuant to the terms of their mutual self-defense treaty, China has stated that if the US attacks first it will defend DPRK, but that if DPRK strikes first, China will remain out of any war. So the United States is trying to provoke DPRK into striking first.

6. It is an extremely dangerous situation. It is really up to the United States to take the first step down the Ladder of Escalation that it has constructed here. Instead it appears that the Trump administration is going to escalate up the Ladder of Escalation in the hope and expectation that DPRK will capitulate. This is what  International Political Scientists call a Game of Chicken– with cosmic consequences. Who will blink first? Anything can go wrong.

Thank you so much for being here today to prevent World War III.

Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois School of Law. Statement at a antiwar rally in Chicago.

This was originally published by Refuse Fascism on November 11, 2017.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Featured image: Detroit Livernois Rebellion in 1975

After the conclusion of the United States Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the question of the social status of Africans was a subject of sharp debate and political struggle.

Even though the Fourteenth Amendment was approved by a vote of Congress in 1866 it would take another two years for the legislation to be ratified by three-fourth of the states within the reconstituted Union.

The Thirteenth Amendment which was adopted by both Houses of Congress on December 6, 1865, some eight months after the fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond, ostensibly gave Africans citizenship within the U.S. Prior to this constitutional addition, President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 which went into effect on January 1, 1863. This however, Lincoln even knew at the time, would not end slavery in all states after the end of the war.

Dred Scott

These legislative and administrative acts appeared to contradict the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott Case (Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford), where it was ruled in March 1857, in a 7-2 decision that a formerly enslaved African (Dred Scott) who had lived in a non-slave owning state and territory was in any form covered under the constitutional rights guaranteed to whites. The case declared boldly that Africans are not and would never be citizens of the United States. It also reasoned that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had designated free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was a violation of the U.S. Constitutional. (Source)

Even though the character of such a horrendous ruling is reprehensible, the reality of the decision is that it embodies the reality of the ongoing national oppressive conditions under which Africans in the U.S. continue to live. A host of court rulings and legislative acts and amendments have been passed since the advent of the Civil War and Reconstruction period right through to the post World War II Civil Rights era, however, Africans in the U.S. remain the subjects of discriminatory treatment, social containment and super-exploitation.

As stated in the Thirteenth Amendment, which reads that:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

It later goes on to say in section two that Congress has the: “power to enforce” through the passage of “appropriate legislation.”

This notion which upholds that slavery is permissible if someone is convicted and sentenced for a crime is an important exception within section one since it is a social mechanism utilized in the 21st century to incarcerate large segments of the African American population. The disproportionate presence of the descendants of enslaved Africans within the correctional system is a clear manifestation of the failure of the U.S. Constitution to adequately address the guarantees of due process, citizenship along with privileges and immunities.

Nonetheless, even with the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of April 1866, the political and social rights of the former slaves and their offspring were by no means guaranteed. This bill with its ten sections grants full citizenship rights to the African people and authorizes the president, the courts and agents of the state to uphold the violation or attempts at denial of fundamental political rights to anyone inside the U.S. with the exception of Native Americans who are not taxed by the government.
(Source)

Despite this seemingly strong Act approved and signed by the Congress, it was still necessary to navigate the Fourteenth Amendment through the legislative branches at both the national and state levels. Nevertheless, the issues related to full equality and due process for African Americans remain unresolved.

In addition to the disparate representation of African Americans in the criminal justice corporate complex, there is the higher rates of joblessness, employment status, poverty and the far less accumulation of household wealth. Although institutional racism was outlawed again during a second historical round of legislation beginning with the Civil Rights Acts 1957, 1964 along with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Fair Housing Act of 1968, these measures have not brought about either full equality for African Americans or their inherent right to self-determination.

Fair Housing Demonstration in the 1960s

Historic Opposition to the Legal Assumptions of the Fourteenth Amendment

Just five years after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court decision in the Slaughter-House Cases of 1873 limited the application of the privileges and immunities clause of the legislation. The ruling in this constitutional case set the stage for the evisceration of the Civil Rights of African Americans well into the middle of the following 20th century.

A review of the challenges to the Fourteenth Amendment, by the Constitutional Center website cites the Slaughter-House Cases decision to be the first significant erosion of the legislation which grew directly out the efforts to grant citizenship rights to African people in the U.S. Paralleling this decision was the growth of white terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the widespread existence of lynching, state and local legislative actions providing pseudo-legal covers for segregation known as Jim Crow, among other measures.

The entry by the Constitutional Center says:

“The Court said that the Privileges and Immunities Clause only prevented the federal government from abridging privileges and immunities guaranteed in the 14th Amendment and that the clause did not apply to the states. The move gutted the Privilege and Immunities Clause of its effect and kept the door open for Jim Crow laws in the South. To this day the Privileges and Immunities Clause is seldom invoked.”

Following the Slaughter-House Cases was of course the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson Decision in May of 1896, which was a challenge to the segregation of public accommodations in the state of Louisiana involving train stations. The racist state legislation in Louisiana was passed as a by-product of the federal government’s withdrawal of troops from the South and its abandonment of enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The state courts and the Supreme Court ruled against African American Homer Adolph Plessy saying that as long as the facilities are equal racial segregation was not unconstitutional. This was the legal standard within the Supreme Court until Brown v. Topeka was decided in May 1954 reversing Plessy v. Ferguson, declaring the legal basis for separate but equal as being without a doubt unconstitutional.

This 1954 ruling was used to forge ahead with the Civil Rights Movement aimed at abolishing all forms of legalized segregation whether in the realm of public life, labor markets and education funded by tax revenues. The cluster of Civil Rights legislation and federal court decisions facilitated the breaking down of institutional racism within the U.S. state.

The Reversal and Reinforcement of Racism and National Oppression

Even amid these apparent advances, the continued divisions resulting from economic exploitation and national oppression continued in the U.S. By the 1960s, African Americans and their allies engaged in mass demonstrations, boycotts, urban rebellions and electoral campaigns with the objective of achieving both full equality and self-determination.

The advent of affirmative action and quota systems of admission and advancement provided guidelines in the desegregation trajectory. These developments did not go without vigorous resistance from the racists and their agents within the government. By 1978, some 110 years after the advent of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke resulted in the legal abrogation of any form of effective Affirmative Action on a national scale. A series of cases since then has weakened and even outlawed any form of guaranteeing the right of African Americans and other oppressed groups from participation in higher education and other sectors within the U.S. society.

Constitutional Center in its summary of the ruling notes of the Bakke Decision:

“The medical school set aside 16 spots for minority candidates in an attempt to address unfair minority exclusion from medical school. All 16 candidates from both years had test scores lower than Bakke’s but gained admission. Bakke contested that his exclusion from the Medical School was entirely the result of his race. The Supreme Court ruled in a severely fractured plurality that the university’s use of strict racial quotas was unconstitutional and ordered that the medical school admit Bakke, but it also said that race could be used as one of several factors in the admissions process. Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., cast the deciding vote ordering the medical school to admit Bakke. However, in his opinion, Powell said that the rigid use of racial quotas violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.”

Implications for the Way Forward in the 21st Century

Some forty years later this is the general atmosphere prevailing in the U.S. in regard to the legal and social status of African Americans. More than a decade ago beginning with the Great Recession of 2007-2010, over 50 percent of African American household wealth was stolen through the predatory lending and other aspects of the policies of finance capital. Much of this loss was a direct result of fraudulent mortgage lending (notwithstanding the Fair Housing Act of 1968), labor market restructuring and the denial of democratic rights through systems of emergency management.

Citing a report published by the National Association of Real Estate Brokers in 2013, the National Low Income Housing Coalition emphasizes:

“According to the report, African Americans have lost over half of their wealth since the beginning of the recession through falling homeownership rates and loss of jobs. Further, African American homeownership peaked in 2004, indicating that the housing crisis hit this community earlier than the nation as a whole. Since 2007, nearly 8 percent of African Americans and Latinos have lost their homes to foreclosure compared to 4.5 percent of non-Hispanic whites at similar income levels. The disparity ratio shows that African Americans are more than 70 percent more likely to have been foreclosed upon than non-Hispanic whites.”

Consequently, in order for any semblance of progress related to preserving and enhancing the household wealth, social equality, self-determination and independence of the African American people, there must be a struggle waged against finance capital. The radical redistribution of the overall wealth and economic power of the U.S. is a prerequisite for genuine social transformation and the elimination of national oppression and institutional racism.

*

All images in this article are from the author.

In 1992, acting virtually alone, an individual hedge fund operator used the international monetary system to bet against the Pound Sterling thereby forcing the United Kingdom government to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. That operator reputedly profited personally by more than £1 billion, without the necessity of getting out of bed. That same financier as well as certain other hedge fund operators, stand accused of meddling in the internal affairs of foreign states i.e. countries external to their own domicile. By their very nature they are, in essence, counter democratic in that they clearly operate to the disadvantage of the majority in order that a handful of gamblers can gain a vast monetary advantage.

So, what are hedge funds?

They are essentially highly sophisticated, computerised gambling syndicates that predominantly use borrowed money to bet on the movement of quoted stocks and shares in order to make a fast profit.

They are unregulated in the sense that they are not restricted by many of the rules on financial investment applicable to banks and financial institutions and can buy whatever they want and invest in whichever way they see fit, without restriction. To make their investments, they invariably use borrowed money.

Whereas stock markets were originally intended as vehicles to facilitate investment by the public in both industrial and commercial enterprises in order to increase working capital to buy both inventory and machinery, hedge funds use the stock market to make profits by selling ‘short’. A type of sophisticated casino operation.

There is normally no requirement for a hedge fund to return investors’ money by any specific date and there is usually no stipulation that requires transparency in their operation or dealings. They normally require no special licence to operate.

Such operations will often charge investors 2% of funds, as a management fee, plus 20% of all profits made.

The typical hedge fund is a financial entity that doesn’t actually make anything or offer any service to the community nor does it facilitate or improve commercial activity. It is, in fact, predominately parasitic in its endeavours and is thought by many to work against both national and international interests.

There is also a contention that such operations, particularly those that work internationally, should in future either be banned altogether or be closely regulated, licenced and taxed, in the public interest.

Featured image: Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

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US-led aggression was discussed in a same day article. CENTCOM’s pretext rang hollow.

Conflicting explanations were given. Syria’s Foreign Ministry called the incident “a new act of aggression that constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity, shows the direct US support for terrorists who and is aimed against sovereignty and integrity of Syria.”

State media blasted US “aggression…an attempt to support terrorism.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova raised disturbing questions, asking:

“(H)ow can a 500-strong unit attack a headquarters with the support of tanks and artillery and injure only one of the attackers?”

“How (were) the people inside the headquarters able to survive in these conditions for at least half an hour that is needed for aviation to arrive at the scene?”

“How could a decision to open a massive fire to defeat the Syrian militiamen be made in such a short period of time?”

Clearly the incident was premeditated, unrelated to false claims of Syrian and allied military elements threatening US-supported so-called Syrian Democratic Forces.

Washington’s version of events was a bald-faced lie, an attempt to justify aggression, calling it “self-defense.”

Syrian and allied forces were conducting a reconnaissance mission in the area when they were aggressively terror-bombed.

Russia’s Defense Ministry blasted the incident, saying

“once again (it) shows that the United States’ illegal military presence in Syria is actually aimed at taking control of the country’s economic assets and not fighting against the ISIL international terror group,” adding:

On February 7, “a pro-government militia unit was conducting surveillance and research activities near the al-Isba oil refinery (17 kilometers southeast of the Salhiyah settlement) to eliminate a militant group shelling the positions of government troops” when it was attacked by US-led forces.

Russia knows Washington launched naked aggression in 2011 for regime change, to replace Syrian sovereign independence with pro-Western puppet governance, to loot the nation’s resources, exploit its people, and isolate Iran ahead of targeting its government the same way.

It knows war will continue endlessly as long as Washington and its rogue allies continue pursuing these objectives unchallenged.

Russia wants things resolved, peace and stability restored to the country, confrontation with Washington avoided.

Its strategy failed. War escalated after Trump took office. The only language US administrations understand is force.

As long as Russia maintains the myth of partnership with Washington instead of giving it a taste of its own medicine perhaps by downing one or more of its warplanes to say enough is enough, conflict will likely continue escalating, not end.

America attacks countries it believes it can roll over – why it hesitates confronting Russia and China militarily, except perhaps one day by preemptive nuclear war it may foolishly believe it can win by striking hard and fast before they can react, what I call a doomsday scenario.

Since war in Southeast Asia, Washington never faced an adversary able to inflict large-scale casualties on US forces.

Russia and China surely can, North Korea and Iran to a lesser extent.

Bullies like America don’t like even matches, fearing they’ll lose, or get too bloodied if win. They like unfair fights against weak adversaries.

Russia for sure isn’t one of them. It’s about time someone boldly gave Washington a bloody nose, a taste of its own medicine.

Moscow would be heroic for rising to the challenge, America unlikely to escalate a fight it can’t win against an adversary able give as much as it takes.

Appeasing bullies is wrongheaded. If Hitler was confronted before things got out of hand, WW II would have been unlikely.

The best way to prevent another global war with nukes is by confronting Washington forcefully enough to show its bullying no longer will be tolerated.

Otherwise, peace in our time will be unattainable the way things were in the late 1930s. I deplore war, strongly against endless US wars of aggression.

I fear where things are heading if Washington isn’t challenged and stopped before unthinkable nuclear war erupts, dooming us all.

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

Newsmedia effectively ban reporting corruptness of newsmedia — even of media that stand on the opposite side of the political divide.

The ‘news’media in the U.S. and allied countries never report the corruption (including lying) perpetrated by any except the very few non-mainstream media that are authentically pro-democracy (or “anti-Establishment” or “anti-elitist” — which doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as “anti-elite”) in those countries — and these few pro-democracy sites are the least-corrupt newsmedia, the few ones that are careful to report only truths — no lies, no propaganda at all. They do it even if all the others call such news sites ‘fake news’ — because they are committed, above all, to conveying the truth, and nothing but the truth.

Each of the mainstream ‘news’media is funded by (and advertises) the corporations of billionaires and centi-millionaires (the people who control all of the large corporations and virtually all of the media). These people’s corporations advertise in, and donate to those media, and those mega-business-owners don’t want the public to know that all of the mainstream (and many even of the non-mainstream) ‘news’media are actually propaganda-agencies for what those super-rich want to happen (their governmental agendas). They not only advertise so that you will buy their products and services, but they also report — and exclude from reporting — so that you will vote for their politicians who will impose their governmental agenda in this ‘democracy’, and will vote against their opponents. This is the governmental control-system (which is proven and explained — and shown to function in the U.S.A., by that link to ‘democracy’).

A good example of this phenomenon is the way that the Nunes Memo (about ‘Russiagate’ & Trump), which was released on Friday February 3rd, has been covered in all of the ’news’media.

On the Democratic Party side, which is funded by billionaires who control the Democratic Party and who own Democratic Party ‘news’media, there have been efforts to discredit, or else to minimize the significance of, what the Memo said.

On the Republican Party side, which is funded by billionaires who control the Republican Party and who own Republican Party ‘news’media, there have been efforts to credit, and also to maximize the significance of, what the Memo said.

It’s a Republican memo, so that’s understandable on strictly partisan grounds. If either of those Parties represented the public instead of the billionaires who fund them, then there would be a possibility of overcoming the ugly reality that’s documented in that link about our ‘democracy’ — and actually having a democratic government instead of our existing dictatorship — but unfortunately, neither Party does represent the public (which is why what was reported in that link to ‘democracy’ happened to be the case).

However, when I emailed on February 2nd, to all major and many minor ’news’media in the U.S. and its allied countries, submitting to them a news-report exposing the corruptness of one particular major U.S. ’news’medium’s news-story on the significance of what the Memo said, no mainstream U.S.-and-allied ’news’medium published it, and only two non-mainstream ones did: washingtonsblog, and RINF.

Although I hadn’t seen this tweet from the head of Judicial Watch, I had just explained the basic reasoning that stood behind it — so, here’s the significance of the Nunes Memo, in a nutshell (and my article, which was published only by washingtonsblog and RINF, provides the actual case):

Memo: No FISA warrant without Dossier. Which means no Russia collusion story without Dossier. Which means no Mueller special counsel without Dossier paid for by Clinton/DNC. Shut it down.

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) February 2, 2018

This happens to be in line with the Republican PR campaign on the matter, but even Republican ‘news’-sites refused to publish the article I wrote, because it exposed the fraudulence of a certain Democratic news-site — and this is unfortunately a journalistic no-no.

In other words: Not only do ‘news’-sites not expose journalistic wrongdoing that’s on their own political side, but they also hide the journalistic wrongdoing that’s on the opposite side of the political divide. Both sides actually work together, to fool the public in ways that are acceptable to — or even required by — the billionaires. This is the phenomenon that’s documented, in that link to ‘democracy’ — documented actually to exist in the U.S., and to control the U.S. Government.

Unless the journalistic taboo, hiding from the public the lies (including all of the easily preventable false and misleading assertions) that are published by other ‘news’media — thereby leaving such lies to pile up in basically the way that please all billionaires (and centi-millionaires) of all political parties — ends, there is no hope for democracy. Not even a hope. There is just the extension of the present real nightmare, into the future. 

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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.

In an era of media distortion, Global Research’s emphasis has been on the “unspoken truth”.

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Amid the ongoing political crisis in the US, the collapse of financial markets, is the world slowly inching toward nuclear war?

How to reverse the tide of war? 

Let us fight media disinformation which upholds America’s nuclear Blitzkrieg.

Read our selection of articles below and circulate them to your friends and colleagues, post on social media platforms and repost on your blogs and websites.

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Political Insanity and the Nuclear Posture Review: Washington Threatens America and the World

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, February 08, 2018

During the long decades of the Cold War, no US government would have released a nuclear posture review that legitimized the first use of nuclear weapons against any opponent. The US did have some crazed generals, such as Lemnitzer and Curtis LeMay who were Dr. Strangelove figures, and there was a James Bond movie about an equally crazed, but fictional, Soviet general.

The Fear Driving US Nuclear Strategy

By Robert J. Burrowes, February 08, 2018

Evolution devised an extraordinarily powerful response to threats: it gave many organisms, including human beings, the emotion of fear to detect threats as well as other tools that can be used in conjunction with fear to respond powerfully to threats.

No Time for Complacency Over Korea War Threat

By Jonathan Marshall, February 08, 2018

Although the North Korea crisis has largely faded from the headlines, the chances of war breaking out are still unacceptably high – requiring greater attention from both the peace movement and Congress, notes Jonathan Marshall.

Outing the US Empire: Trump’s Military Parade

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, February 08, 2018

An orgiastic display of US military symbolism would be a direct, if discomforting change from the usual pattern.  States often tend to have military shows that are inversely proportionate to their economic and social success.  More guns do not necessarily imply more butter in the home.  The Soviet Union, and the current Russian incarnation, insisted on military parades as matters of pride, though such shows are as revealing as they are concealing.

Dangers for the Entire World: Last-Minute Modifications Improved Trump’s Nuclear Weapons Strategy

By Eric Zuesse, February 08, 2018

The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a key nuclear-strategy document that was issued on February 2nd by U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, seems to have benefited from last-minute changes that had been made to it. But it’s still extremely dangerous for the entire world, as will be fully explained here.

Pentagon to Allow Nuclear Response to Non-Nuclear Attacks

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, February 08, 2018

For the first time, the new NPR states that the United States could use nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks, including cyberattacks, in “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies and partners.” This new strategy opens the door to first-use of nuclear weapons, which is prohibited under international law.

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On Feb. 2, 2018, the US finally released its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the leaked draft of which we already analyzed last month.

As expected, compared with the previous “Obama” version, the new doctrine greatly elevates the role and significance of nuclear weapons in US military policy.  It’s a highly charged document – more aggressive and offensive – and will radically undermine the world’s strategic stability as a whole, while further complicating relations with Russia and China.  The usual accusations have been leveled against Pyongyang, decrying the expansion of its arsenal of nuclear missiles, and also against Tehran, as “Iran’s nuclear ambitions remain an unresolved concern.”

Among other issues, the new document also claims that the Russians have adopted a policy known as “limited nuclear escalation,” i.e., the use of a nuclear first strike in a local conflict or the threat to do so, although no such provision has ever existed in the nuclear doctrines of either the former Soviet Union or the Russian Federation, then or now.

Vague justifications for use

The revised nuclear doctrine focuses on the simultaneous resolution of two key issues: it has its sights set on radical, long-term updates to US strategic and tactical nuclear powers, while simultaneously lowering the bar for the use of nuclear weapons, specifically allowing for the possibility of detonating low-yield nuclear warheads as part of limited nuclear strikes.  For example, the B61-12 nuclear bomb, with its warheads of 50, 10, 1.5 or 0.3 kilotons, is viewed as an auspicious new development.  In addition, over the next two years there are plans to install lower-yield nuclear warheads on the SLBM Trident II (D5), and later on a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile – although the minimum yields of their warheads have yet to be revealed.

Little Boy nuclear bomb dropped by the US Air Forces on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT

The Japanese City of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the nuclear bombing by the US in 1945

The statements by US military officials alleging that the use of low-yield nuclear warheads would supposedly be more “humane” does not negate the fact that lowered “thresholds” for the use of nuclear force might lead to an escalation of nuclear war even situations that began as small armed conflicts.

This approved strategy includes the admission that the United States is ready to consider the possibility of using nuclear weapons “in the most extreme circumstances to protect our vital interests.”

The quintessence of the NPR lies in the premise that nuclear weapons could potentially be used to inflict a first strike against almost any country in the world, including states that might be using only their conventional armed forces against the US, while engaged in any sort of conflict, even a small one with minimal consequences.  The list of justifications for the use of nuclear weapons also includes attacks using conventional weapons against US or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.  This was also acknowledged by Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan at a press briefing dedicated to the release of the new nuclear posture review.

The preface to the Nuclear Policy Review signed by the head of the Pentagon, James Mattis, is worded in such a way as to make it clear that the US president must have the option to use nuclear weapons in the event of a “sudden changes in the geopolitical environment” or even “technological surprise.”

The vagueness of certain provisions, obviously implying the permissibility of a free hand when it comes to launching nuclear missiles, is testament to the US administration’s irresponsible attitude toward their use.

All these premises are evidence of the widening array of circumstances and justifications that could spur the US president to order a nuclear first strike.  In this context, it is worth remembering that last year the US Congress, for the first time in more than forty years, openly discussed the fact that the country’s president has the full prerogative to issue a unilateral and unappealable order to use nuclear weapons against any state in the world, without requiring authorization from the highest US legislative body and without a declaration of war against that state.  Donald Trump, who is still threatening to use nuclear force against North Korea, ignored this Congressional hearing and reiterated that if the head of state were to issue such an order, the country’s nuclear missiles would respond within 3-5 minutes.

Trump’s nuclear strategy reaffirms the policy of “extended nuclear deterrence,” which keeps the American “nuclear umbrella” unfurled over 32 nations: 28 US NATO allies, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Israel.  The Pentagon will also maintain its bilateral “nuclear sharing agreements” with a large group of its non-nuclear allies in the transatlantic alliance, as part of which they conduct training exercises that simulate the launch of nuclear weapons and nuclear bombing drills using aircraft belonging to non-nuclear states.  Those states also have input in the planning for the use of American nuclear weapons.

Thus, the nuclear doctrine released on Feb. 2 retains, on the whole, the policy of “unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence,” as previously proclaimed by past US presidents, but also lays the groundwork for not only radical updates to the country’s entire arsenal of nuclear missiles, but also legal safeguards for an agenda to create an entirely new strategic nuclear triad, which in the very near future will begin to replace the existing strategic nuclear triad, both in terms of new types of carriers that will be put into service for offensive strategic nuclear weapons and tactical nuclear weapons with new tactical and technical features, as well as in the form of new types of nuclear weapons that switch between high- and low-yield warheads.

At the same time, the entire command, control, and communications system for American nuclear missiles is going to be modernized.

As US military and political documents have often acknowledged, in order to strengthen its nuclear-missile component, over the coming decade the Pentagon will receive as much as $400 billion, and $1.2 trillion in the next 30 years.  The executive summary of the new nuclear doctrine concedes that in the coming years, expenditures on the program to replace and renew the country’s nuclear arsenal will equal 6.4 percent of the US defense budget, exceeding the current figure by three to four percentage points.

The prospects for a new nuclear triad

The nuclear strategy adopted in February specifies that the material and technical basis of the recreated strategic nuclear triad will consist of 400 single-warhead, ground-based ICBMs, presumably to be named the Minuteman IV, the first of which will materialize in 2029.  An increased number of launch facilities (450) will be built to field them, which will improve the survivability of this element of the strategic nuclear triad by dispersing this component of America’s strategic nuclear forces across several US states and creating up to 50 empty decoy launchers for such missiles.

This triad will also initially include up to 240 Trident II (D5) SLBMs installed on 12 COLUMBIA-class SSBNs with a larger displacement than the OHIO-class SSBNs: 21,000 tons vs. 19,000 tons, respectively.  Later these SSBNs will be replaced by new versions.  The first of this new class of nuclear submarines should be out on combat patrols by 2031.

The third element of the updated triad will consist of 60 heavy B-21 Raider bombers with air-launched nuclear cruise missiles and a flexible nuclear payload.  The construction of the first such bomber should be complete in 2025.  Later, these bombers will be equipped with a new long-range cruise missile with a nuclear warhead.

In addition, the new strategic nuclear triad will be bolstered by an unnamed number of medium-range dual capable bombers (able to drop bombs with either nuclear or conventional warheads).  The basis for the latter will be the new multi-role, F-35 fighter-bombers, which will be forward-deployed and capable of carrying out both ground attacks and well as air defense.  Those are already flying with the US Marines, which means that soon they’re going to show up on the airfields of many NATO and non-NATO US allies that sit adjacent to the borders of Russia and China.

To spite some American experts who advocated a transition to a strategic nuclear dyad, the commitment to maintaining all three elements of the current and future triad has been reiterated, which, in accordance with the final documents of the 2012 NATO summit, have in turn been combined into the “Chicago triad,” (a single force that incorporates both missile defense and conventional weapons), an area in which the United States has always and will always call all the shots.

Arms Control

In principle, Trump’s updated nuclear doctrine recognizes the prudence of furthering the goals of non-proliferation and ensuring control over nuclear missiles.  All that sounds quite promising.

But it’s certainly no secret that the United States is violating the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons by deploying nuclear weapons and the aircraft to deliver them inside the borders of five NATO member states.  The US Senate plans to refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (ratified by Russia back in 2000), and the US National Nuclear Security Administration has been directed to prepare for underground tests of explosive nuclear devices.

It’s also worth remembering that the US has violated the Treaty on Open Skies, derailed the ratification of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, refused to discuss the draft European Security Treaty, unilaterally dissolved the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and pulled the plug on talks regarding anti-satellite weapons.  Washington has blocked the adoption of an international Treaty for a WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East.  The Americans have blocked a total of more than 20 various international initiatives to prevent the deployment of weapons in outer space, including the draft of a relevant Russian-Chinese treaty.

The updated nuclear doctrine mentions the possibility of extending the New START Treaty, which will expire in 2021, for another five years, that is, until 2026.  And yet the US seems incapable of remembering that there is an organic relationship between strategic offensive and strategic defensive nuclear weapons, an example of the latter being the antimissile weapons that they have been stockpiling wildly and stationing around the globe, in addition to their forward-deployed arsenal, in the form of tactical nuclear and conventional weapons, which is positioned in the immediate vicinity of Russia’s borders.  Washington has sidestepped the implementation of the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives of 1991-1992, which were a series of political pledges to reduce tactical nuclear weapons and to withdraw the ones that had been deployed.

In accordance with the new nuclear doctrine, the US will not promise to refrain from a nuclear first strike or to reduce its level of combat readiness, but will preserve an agreement with Russia that neither side will train the sights of its strategic nuclear missiles on each other’s territory.

The Feb. 2 Nuclear Policy Review unfairly and without evidence claims that Russia has allegedly developed a new intermediate-range ground-launched cruise missile, code-named the SSC-8, claiming it was banned by the 1987 INF Treaty.  But no such missile exists in Russia.  In addition, this nuclear document never specifies where and when such a missile was tested or deployed.  The US had previously alleged that Moscow had “tested” three different ballistic missiles that supposedly fell under the definitions of the terminology in the 1987 treaty, but they later withdrew their “accusations,” because all of those had a completely different firing range that was not limited by the treaty.  In short, Washington clearly hasn’t been playing a pro game.

It is quite obvious that these cryptic, empty statements coming from the Pentagon and the State Department are designed to provide a smokescreen of words to disguise two simple facts about the implementation of the 1987 treaty.

First of all, the Americans are tossing out such allegations in order to camouflage their own readiness to create a new mobile, ground-based, nuclear-tipped, intermediate-range cruise missile, which, if added to their arsenal, would be a direct violation of the very INF Treaty that Washington is so loudly anxious to protect.

Second, such statements keep getting repeated in order to distract attention from the Americans’ real and numerous violations of this treaty.  The true problem lies in the fact that the Americans’ failed attempt on Jan. 31 of this year to intercept an intermediate-range ballistic missile using the new SM-3 Block IIA Interceptor near Hawaii was actually their 93rd violation of this treaty since 2001 – they have been using those banned intermediate- and shorter-range missiles as targets when testing the effectiveness of the interceptors of their ABM system.  The Pentagon isn’t going to stop doing this.

It’s also clear that the Russians aren’t going to stop insisting that the current administration fully comply with all provisions of the INF Treaty, and if the US is thinking about withdrawing from it, then Russia will immediately respond in kind, as President Vladimir Putin has already stated.

With the adoption of its new NPR, the Trump administration has obviously worsened the imbalance of the delicate mechanisms of control that exist in order to regulate a whole array of weapons that are clear threats to the world’s strategic stability.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War

Michel Chossudovsky

“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

Following the highly acclaimed 2012 release of the latest book by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, “Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War“, this title is now available for purchase through the Amazon Kindle program! Now you can take this bestselling title wherever you go and access it through your portable reader.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3

Year: 2012

Pages: 102

List Price: $15.95

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Click here to order.

The public denunciation by thousands of women and a few men that they had been victims of sexual abuse by their economic bosses raises fundamental issues about the social relations of American capitalism.

The moral offenses are in essence economic and social crimes. Sexual abuse is only one aspect of the social dynamics facilitating the increase in inequality and concentration of wealth, which define the practices and values of the American political and economic system.

Billionaires and mega-millionaires are themselves the products of intense exploitation of tens of millions of isolated and unorganized wage and salaried workers. Capitalist exploitation is based on a rigid hierarchy with its private prerogatives, which enables the oligarchs to demand their feudal privileges, their seigniorial sexual predations.

US capitalism thrives on and requires unlimited power and the capacity to have the public treasury pay for its untrammeled pillage of land, labor, transport systems and technological development. Capitalist power, in the United States , has no counterpart; there are few if any countervailing forces to provide any balance.

Today, 93% of US private sector workers have no organized representation. Moreover, many of the 7% who are in unions are controlled and exploited by their corrupt union officials – in league with the bosses.

This concentration of power produces the ever deepening inequalities between the world of the billionaires and the millions of low-wage workers.

The much-celebrated technological innovations have been subsidized by the state and its educational and research institutions. Although these are financed by the tax-payers, the citizen-workers are marginalized by the technological changes, like robotics, that they originally funded. High tech innovations flourish because they concentrate power, profits and private privilege.

The hierarchical matrix of power and exploitation has led to the polarization of mortality rates and moral codes. For the working poor, the absence of competent health care has led to the massive use and abuse of prescription opioids and other addictive drugs. For the upper class, it has led to the flagrant physical and psychological abuse of vulnerable employees, especially, but not exclusively young working women. The prestigious bourgeois media blur the class polarization by constant reference to what they term ‘our shared traditional democratic values.’

The pervasive and growing vulnerability of workers of both sexes coincides with the incorporation of the latest technological innovations in production, distribution and promotion. This includes electronic and digital advances, artificial intelligence, robotics and extensive surveillance on workers, which incorporate high profits for the investors and long hours of demeaning monotonous work for those who manufacture and transport the ‘products’.

The proliferation of new technology has grown in direct relation with the abject debasement of labor and the marginalization and trivialization of workers. Amazon and Walmart approach trillions of dollars in revenue from mass consumption, even as the Chaplinesque speed-up of robotized humans race to fill the overnight delivery orders. The entertainment industry amuses the population across class lines with increasingly vulgar and violent offerings, while the moguls of film entertain themselves with their young workers – who are depersonalized and even raped.

The more egregious immorality exposes itself one time too often and is condemned, while the victims are temporality lionized for their courage to protest. The worst predators apologize, resign to their yachts and mansions and are replaced by new avatars with the same power and structures in place which had facilitated the abuse. Politicians rush to embrace the victims in a kind of political and media ‘Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy’ when one considers their own role as enablers of this dehumanization.

The problem is not merely corrupt and perverted individual miscreants: It is the hierarchy of inequality which produces and reproduces an endless supply of vulnerable workers to exploit and abuse.

The most advanced forms of entertainment thrive in an environment of absolute impunity in which the occasional exposé of abuse or corruption is hidden behind a monetary settlement. The courage of an individual victim able to secure public attention is a step forward, but will have greater significance if it is organized and linked to a massive challenging of the power of the bourgeois entertainment industry and the system of high tech exploitation. Sexual abuse of an individual in the workplace is just part of a chain that begins with exploitation of workers in general and can only be stopped through collective worker organization.

Can anyone say with a straight face that the US remains a nation of free and autonomous citizens? Servitude and moral degradation are the outcome of an atomized, impotent laboring class who may change one boss for another or one vulgar president for a moralizing hypocrite. We hope that the exposés will start something but without class conscious organizations we don’t know what will arise.

On February 6,  I  (PCR) asked if the Plunge Protection Team had stepped in and prevented a stock market correction by purchasing equity index futures. Sure enough, the daily exchange volume chart shows an increase in futures activity on February 2 with sharp increases on Feb. 5th and 6th. Those are the days when the stock market averages were experiencing large point drops.  So, ask yourself, would you  purchase equity futures while experiencing cumulative stock market drops? One can understand shorting a dropping market, but not buying futures.

Unless this is what happened. Seeing the beginning of a correction, the Plunge Protection Team placed a futures bid just below the existing price. Traders saw the bid, recognized that the government was intervening to support the market, and the bid was front-run with the hedge fund algorithms automatically picking up the action.  

Who but the Federal Reserve with its unlimited ability to create money would take the risk of buying futures in the face of a falling market. Moreover, such an infusion of money into the market does not show up in the money supply figures.

The futures purchases prevented margin calls and stop/loss orders in a heavily leveraged equity market that would have collapsed the market.

What are the pros and cons of this kind of intervention (which might have occurred also in May 2010 and August 2015)? By stopping a correction, the intervention prevented a pension fund collapse, both private and state. However, by propping up over-valued equities that the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing created, the intervention rewarded over-leveraged speculative risk-taking and prevented price discovery. We still have an equity market whose values rest on record margin debt, stock buy-backs, and prices pumped up by money-printing. The problems waiting to come home continue to build.

The question is: can intervention prop-up over-valued, problem-ridden markets forever?

After today’s drop, we will see what happens tomorrow.

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This article was originally published by Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

The Global Economic Crisis

The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Global Research

Each of the authors in this timely collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people’s lives.

In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The meltdown of financial markets was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation.

The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the U.S. and its NATO allies.

click to order directly from Global Research

This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken.

“This important collection offers the reader a most comprehensive analysis of the various facets – especially the financial, social and military ramifications – from an outstanding list of world-class social thinkers.”
-Mario Seccareccia, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa

“In-depth investigations of the inner workings of the plutocracy in crisis, presented by some of our best politico-economic analysts. This book should help put to rest the hallucinations of ‘free market’ ideology.”
-Michael Parenti, author of God and His Demons and Contrary Notions

“Provides a very readable exposé of a global economic system, manipulated by a handful of extremely powerful economic actors for their own benefit, to enrich a few at the expense of an ever-growing majority.”
-David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor Revisited

Click to order directly from Global Research

First published by Global Research in September 2016

The following  text is a point by point thematic summary of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky‘s presentation at the Science for Peace Conference, Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur, 15-16 August 2016

Introduction

Historically, science has supported the development of the weapons industry and the war economy. “Science for Peace” indelibly requires reversing the logic whereby commissioned  scientific endeavors are directed towards supporting what President Eisenhower called “The Military Industrial Complex”.

What is consequently required is a massive redirection of science and technology towards the pursuit of broad societal objectives. In turn, this requires a major shift in what is euphemistically called “US Foreign Policy”, namely America’s global military agenda.

Military Affairs: The Current Global Context 

Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (U.S.-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy. We are not dealing with piecemeal military and intelligence operations. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Asia Pacific region.

The current situation is all the more critical inasmuch as a US-NATO war on Russia, China and Iran is part of the US presidential election debate. It is presented as a political and military option to Western public opinion.

The US-NATO military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states. America’s hegemonic project is to destabilize and destroy countries through acts of war, support of terrorist organizations, regime change and economic warfare.

U.S. and NATO forces have been deployed in Eastern Europe including Poland and Ukraine. In turn, military maneuvers are being conducted at Russia’s doorstep which could potentially lead to confrontation with the Russian Federation.

The U.S. and its allies are also threatening China under President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”.

The U.S. led airstrikes initiated in August 2014 directed against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State are part of a scenario of military escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia.

*         *        *

THE HISTORY OF NUCLEAR WAR AND “COLLATERAL DAMAGE”  

“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark…. This weapon is to be used against Japan … [We] will use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. …  The target will be a purely military one… It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.” (President Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945)

“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..” (President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).

[Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; the Second on Nagasaki, on August 9, on the same day as Truman’s radio speech to the Nation]

(Listen to Excerpt of his speech, Hiroshima audio video)

Hiroshima after the bomb

Is Truman’s notion of “collateral damage” in the case of nuclear war still relevant? Publicly available military documents confirm that nuclear war is still on the drawing board  of the Pentagon.

Compared to the 1950s, however, today’s nuclear weapons are far more advanced. The delivery system is more precise. In addition to China and Russia, Iran and North Korea are targets for a first strike pre-emptive nuclear attack.

US military documents claim that the new generation of tactical nuclear weapons are harmless to civilians.

Let us be under no illusions, the Pentagon’s plan to blow up the planet using advanced nuclear weapons is still on the books.

War is Good for Business:

Spearheaded by the “defense contractors” (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, British Aerospace  et al), the Obama administration has proposed a one trillion dollar plan over a 30 year period to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) largely directed at Russia and China.

War with Russia: From the Cold War to the New Cold War

Blowing up Russia, targeting Russian cities is still on the Pentagon’s drawing board.  In the words of Hillary Clinton, the nuclear option is on the table.  Preemptive nuclear war is part of her election campaign.

Source: National Security Archive

According to 1956 Plan, H-Bombs were to be Used Against Priority “Air Power” Targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe.

Major Cities in Soviet Bloc, Including East Berlin, Were High Priorities in “Systematic Destruction” for Atomic Bombings.  (William Burr, U.S. Cold War Nuclear Attack Target List of 1200 Soviet Bloc Cities “From East Germany to China”, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 538, December 2015

Excerpt of list of 1200 cities targeted for nuclear attack in alphabetical order. National Security Archive

GLOBAL WARFARE

The US has formulated a global war scenario, which is defined in military documents.

There are three major regional deployments of US-NATO which threaten Global Security:

1. Eastern Europe on Russia’s Western Frontier, with the deployment of US-NATO military hardware on Russia’s doorstep
2. “The Pivot to Asia” largely directed against China
3. The Middle East and North Africa, extending to Central Asia

In the above regions, the use of nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis is contemplated against both nuclear and non-nuclear states.

In other regions of the World including Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, non-conventional forms of warfare are envisaged including destabilization,  “regime change”,  covert support to terrorist organizations, economic warfare.

1.  THREATENING RUSSIA ON ITS WESTERN FRONTIER

Russia is threatened on its Western frontier with the US-NATO deployment of the so called missile defense system.

A pro-US regime has been installed in Kiev which integrates two prominent Neo-Nazi Parties.

Neo-Nazis are heavily integrated in Ukraine’s National Guard and military. The US government is channeling financial support, weapons and training to a Neo-Nazi entity –which is part of The Ukraine National Guard– The Azov Battalion (Батальйон Азов) is  under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the equivalent of America’s Homeland Security.

Kill the Russians: The New Cold War is no longer Cold

A former CIA Official is calling for the “Killing of Russians”.  The US media and the the State Department applaud:

CBS News, Charlie Rose

2. “PIVOT TO ASIA”:  SOUTH CHINA SEA

China is threatened by the US military in the South China Sea

WAR WITH CHINA IS CURRENTLY ON THE DRAWING BOARD OF THE PENTAGON AS OUTLINED IN A RAND REPORT COMMISSIONED BY THE US ARMY

Washington is actively involved in creating divisions between China and its neighbours.

The objective is to draw South East Asia and the Far East into a protracted military conflict by creating divisions between China and ASEAN countries, most of which are the victims of Western colonialism and military aggression: Extensive crimes against humanity have been committed against Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia. In a bitter irony, these countries are now military allies of the United States.

Bilateral economic relations with China are destabilized. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a US hegemonic project which seeks to control trade, investment, intellectual property, etc in the Asia Pacific region.

THAAD MISSILE DEPLOYMENT IN SOUTH KOREA DIRECTED AGAINST CHINA

THAAD missiles are deployed in South Korea, against China, Russia and North Korea.  Washington states that THAAD is solely intended as a Missile Shield against North Korea.

THAAD System

The Jeju island military base is also directed against China. 

Less than 500km from Shanghai

US-NATO WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (MENA)

Meanwhile, under the pretext of  waging a “war on terrorism”, US-NATO are intervening militarily in the broader Middle East Central Asian region extending from the Mediterranean to Central Asia: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, resulting in several million civilian deaths.

THe objective is to destabilize and destroy sovereign countries and to displace secular governments under regime change.

The next stage of the Middle East war is Iran.

The Global War on Terrorism is a Big Lie. Al Qaeda is a Creation of US Intelligence

From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 to the present, various Islamic fundamentalist paramilitary organizations became de facto instruments of US intelligence and more generally of the US-NATO-Israel military alliance.

The US has actively supported Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations since the onslaught of the Soviet Afghan War.  Washington has engineered the installation of Islamist regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has destroyed the fabric of secular societies.

Confirmed by Israeli intelligence media,  the Al Qaeda opposition fighters in Syria are recruited by US-NATO and the Turkish high command.

They are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, with special forces in their midst. The Al Qaeda affiliated “moderate” terrorist organizations in Syria are supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The counter-terrorism agenda is bogus. It’s a criminal undertaking. What is being bombed is the civilian infrastructure of a sovereign country.

The Historical Origins of al Qaeda

In this video-footage President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (1979) arrives in a helicopter and speaks to a translator in front of a seated crowd of Mujahedeen:

‘We know of their deep belief in god – that they’re confident that their struggle will succeed. – That land over-there is yours – and you’ll go back to it some day, because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes, your mosques, back again, because your cause is right, and god is on your side.’

The video-footage can be found in the documentary series “Cold War” (Episode #24, Soldiers of God, 1975-1988), Turner Original Productions (Time Warner), 1998. Speaker Kenneth Branagh.

Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official, Milt Bearden at a Mujahideen training camp in North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987. (source RAWA)

Referred to as “Freedom Fighters”, president Reagan meets Afghan Al Qaeda Mujahideen leaders at the White House 

The Central Intelligence Agency using Pakistan’s ISI as a go-between played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. The madrasahs were set up by Wahabi fundamentalists financed out of Saudi Arabia:

“[I]t was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools, from which the germs of the Taliban emerged.”(Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), “RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks in the U.S.”, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RAW109A.html , 16 September 2001)

Destroying National Sovereignty and Secular Societies, Installing an Islamic State (Made in America)

What has been the fate of Afghanistan.

A progressive secular state in the 1970s and early 1980s has become a US failed State integrated by US supported Al Qaeda terrorists. This is the model that US-NATO want to impose on Syria, Iraq, Libya: Destroy national sovereignty and replace it with an Islamic State which conforms to Washington’s demands.

Kabul University in the 1980′s

Unknown to the American public, the US spread the teachings of the Islamic jihad in textbooks “Made in America”, developed at the University of Nebraska:

… the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..

The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books “are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy.” Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.

… AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.

“It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction,” Stratos said. “But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.”

… Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska -Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $ 51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.” (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)

CONCLUDING REMARKS 

War is not an inevitable process. War can be prevented through mass action.

War criminals occupy positions of authority. The citizenry is galvanized into supporting the rulers, who are “committed to their safety and well-being”. Through media disinformation, war is given a humanitarian mandate.

The legitimacy of the war must be addressed. Antiwar sentiment alone does not disarm a military agenda.

The corporate backers and sponsors of war and war crimes must also be targeted including the oil companies, the defense contractors, the financial institutions and the corporate media, which has become an integral part of the war propaganda machine.

There is a sense of urgency. Today, the antiwar movement is virtually defunct.

What is the Truth

The real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance, yet realities in an inquisitorial environment are turned upside down: the warmongers are committed to peace, the victims of war are presented as the protagonists of war.

The homeland is threatened.

The media, intellectuals and the politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the unspoken truth, namely that the US-NATO led war destroys humanity.

When the lie becomes the truth there is no turning backwards.

When war is upheld as a humanitarian endeavor, Justice and the entire international legal system are turned upside down: pacifism and the antiwar movement are criminalized. Opposing the war becomes a criminal act. Meanwhile, the war criminals in high office have ordered a witch hunt against those who challenge their authority.

The Big Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.

It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.

It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.

It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.

It destroys both nationalism and internationalism.

Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.

ACTIONS

1. The role of media disinformation in sustaining the military agenda is crucial.

We will not succeed in our endeavours unless the propaganda apparatus is weakened and eventually dismantled. It is essential  to inform our fellow citizens on the causes and consequences of the US-led war, not to mention the extensive war crimes and atrocities which are routinely obfuscated by the media. This is no easy task.  It requires an  effective counter-propaganda program which refutes mainstream media assertions.

It is essential that the relevant information and analysis reaches the broader public.   The Western media is controlled by a handful of powerful business syndicates. The media conglomerates which control network TV and the printed press must be challenged through cohesive actions which reveal the lies and falsehoods.

2. There is opposition within the political establishment in the US as well as within the ranks of the Armed Forces.

While this opposition does not necessarily question the overall direction of US foreign policy, it is firmly opposed to military adventurism, including the use of nuclear weapons. These voices within the institutions of the State, the Military and the business establishment are important because they can be usefully channeled to discredit and ultimately dismantle the “war on terrorism” consensus.  The broadest possible alliance of political and social forces is, therefore, required to prevent a military adventure which in a very real sense threatens the future of humanity.

3. The structure of military alliances must be addressed. A timely shift in military alliances could potentially reverse the course of history.

Whereas France and Germany are broadly supportive of the US led war, there are strong voices in both countries as well as within the European Union, which firmly oppose the US led military agenda, both at the grassroots level as well within the political system itself.

The weakening of the system of alliances which commits Western Europe to supporting the Anglo-American military axis, could indeed contribute to reversing  the tide. Washington would hesitate to wage a war on Iran without the support of France and Germany.

4. The holding of large antiwar rallies is important and essential. But in will not in itself reverse the tide of war unless it is accompanied by the development of a cohesive antiwar network.

What is required is a grass roots antiwar network, a mass movement at national and international levels, which challenges the legitimacy of the main military and political actors, as well as their corporate sponsors, and which would ultimately be instrumental in unseating those who rule in our name. The construction of this type of network will take time to develop.

Initially, it should focus on developing an antiwar stance within existing citizens’ organizations (e.g. trade unions, community organizations, professional regroupings, student federations, municipal councils, etc.).

Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.

Bring home the troops.

Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.

The Globalization of War is undoubtedly one of the most important books on the contemporary global situation produced in recent years. 

In his latest masterpiece, Professor Michel Chossudovsky shows how the various conflicts we are witnessing today in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Palestine are in fact inter-linked and inter-locked through a single-minded agenda in pursuit of global hegemony helmed by the United States and buttressed by its allies in the West and in other regions of the world.   Dr Chandra Muzaffar, President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

The Book can be ordered directly from Global Research Publishers. 

Today the US stock market plummeted another 1,000 points. As this writer forewarned after last Monday’s 1175 pt. fall, the recovery would be a classic ‘dead cat bounce’. Well, the cat bounced the past two days–just not very high or for very long. And now it’s flopped again. The Question: will it roll over on its back, legs up? Or get up and run around a little more, before flopping again? Make no mistake, the cat is tired and can no longer jump. It may not even be able to get back up on its feet.

Investors’ psychology will now have changed. Now it’s clear, the financial markets’ last weekend collapse was not a ‘one off’ event. This realization will have a big effect going forward. It’s all a different level now. And all the talk by pundits this week trying to pump the market back up, i.e. go ‘buy on the dip’, now look quite stupid and self-serving. Should investors now ‘buy on every dip’ as each dip goes down further and further? It’s a 10% correction in less than a week, well on the way to 20% (and who knows how much more).

In the intervening days since last weekend, reports also began to emerge (somewhat) that the markets were responding to problems with the new derivatives–i.e. Exchange Traded Funds/Products (ETF-Ps)–that were being dumped automatically by what are called ‘quant sellers’ (aka professional investors) in big volumes. This automated selling was responsible for the big movements in price. But all this was quickly hushed up in the mainstream business media.

Last Monday’s collapse was also followed by China currency (Yuan) beginning to fall precipitously. Clearly, China investors are dumping Yuan, buying foreign currencies, and trying to get out in anticipation of more financial instability in China. Capital flight from China is ‘on again’. This could lead to competitive currency devaluations throughout Asia economies. (Shades of 1998’s Currency Crisis!).

And what about other Emerging Market economies? They are extremely fragile and capital flight will almost certain emerge there again, once the US Fed raises rates in March, as it has promised to do. (The Fed also promised to raise rates three more times this year. As I have predicted, however, if the stock markets keep falling, that will not happen, as it will almost certain result in a global credit crunch.) For eight years the Fed has propped up the stock markets with free money; it won’t abandon that fundamental policy at this point. It only backed off temporarily because of fiscal-tax cuts in the trillions taking up its (Fed’s) prior role of subsidizing capital incomes.

And what about Europe (and the even weaker UK) with its $2 trillion in non-performing bank loans? Watch out Italy.

And then there’s the junk bond markets in the US, where some estimates are that nearly a fifth of junk bond borrowing companies are ‘zombies’. They’ve been put on life support by borrowing to repay interest and principal on past debt, laying ever more debt on debt. At some point defaults will appear as the free money from the Fed lowers the liquidity level and the rocks appear in the junk bond market.

The downward momentum in US stock prices will also be fueled in the next stage by the massive buildup in margin buying of US stocks that has been occurring since 2014, and the even more rapid rise in margin buying since Trump took office. Debt balances on margin accounts has risen from an annual average of less than $10 billion a year from 2009 to 2013, to $200 to $300 billion a year the last four years. That’s the greatest margin buying bubble since 1980. Margin buyers will prove desperate stock sellers, driving stock prices even lower in coming weeks, entering yet another new phase.

Listen to my weekly radio show tomorrow, friday, February 9, 2pm eastern time, on the Progressive Radio Network in NY, when I’ll be discussing these events (and tomorrow’s) further. Go online here or listen to the podcast posted at the same location after).

*

This article was originally published by Jack Rasmus.

Dr. Jack Rasmus is author of the 2017 book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017, and Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy, Clarity Press, 2016

The Global Economic Crisis

The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Global Research

Each of the authors in this timely collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people’s lives.

In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The meltdown of financial markets was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation.

The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the U.S. and its NATO allies.

click to order directly from Global Research

This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken.

“This important collection offers the reader a most comprehensive analysis of the various facets – especially the financial, social and military ramifications – from an outstanding list of world-class social thinkers.”
-Mario Seccareccia, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa

“In-depth investigations of the inner workings of the plutocracy in crisis, presented by some of our best politico-economic analysts. This book should help put to rest the hallucinations of ‘free market’ ideology.”
-Michael Parenti, author of God and His Demons and Contrary Notions

“Provides a very readable exposé of a global economic system, manipulated by a handful of extremely powerful economic actors for their own benefit, to enrich a few at the expense of an ever-growing majority.”
-David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor Revisited

Click to order directly from Global Research

“Who would study and describe the living, starts /By driving the spirits out of the parts: /In the palm of his hand he holds all the sections, /Lacks nothing, except the spirit’s connections.” – Mephistopheles warning to the student in Goethe’s Faust

“And how far would you like to go in?” he asked and the three kings all looked at each other.  “Not too far but just far enough so’s we can say that we’ve been there.” – Liner notes to Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album

“The shadow is what I am but will not admit I am.  For the shadow of the psyche involves me in a deepening self-recognition which is more humiliating and emptying than the normal limits of endurance.  In the end, acknowledging the shadow means acknowledging a bottomless void within me.  The initial question of truth-force is: How deeply will I acknowledge my own emptiness?” – James W. Douglass, Lightning East to West: Jesus, Gandhi, and the Nuclear Age

We are haunted by a specter.  Strange as it may sound, I was reminded of this when I saw a photograph of the quarterback  of the Super Bowl winning Philadelphia Eagles, Nick Foles, looking and pointing up to the heavens.  Or to be more precise, the roof of the aptly named U.S. Bank Stadium, a fitting venue for a national celebration of violence and the warfare state.  But if we can assume Foles’ gesture was meant to penetrate the roof and travel up to heaven, then you too may find it a bit odd, if touching.  Most people, as the poet Czeslaw Milosz has said, are ashamed to ask themselves a question about the implication of such a gesture.

“They have experienced the collapse of hierarchical space,” he writes, “and when they fold their hands and lift up their eyes, ‘up’ no longer exists.  Let no one say that religion can manage without such primitive directions to orient people.”

Modern science has brought this about.  And together with its models of reality, it has given us its technological child: nuclear weapons.  So now we live haunted by the shadowy thought that human beings, having assumed God’s mantle, can bring this world to an end in a flash.  As William Butler Yeats said in another context:

“All changed; changed utterly.”

But while we live in these end-times, in a new symbolic universe, our sense of spiritual power to stop the nuclear madness has been sapped by our refusal to venture deep into the interior of this enigma and change our minds and spirits enough to change the world.  We seem stuck riding our bikes when we need to stop the world we think we know and experiment with truth at the deepest level.  We need a revolutionary spiritual transformation to give us faith and courage to counter the nihilists who wage endless wars for the American empire and threaten nuclear destruction at every turn.  Where can we find this inconceivable spiritual energy?

*

I was thinking of this not long ago when something very strange happened to me. Six days previously I had written an article subtitled, “In Light and Shadows.”  On this particular morning I was sitting at the kitchen table contemplating that piece of writing and whether or not readers had grasped what I was trying to say by linking three very short stories that undulated like the flow of consciousness in waves of light and darkness.  The phone rang, and as I answered I stood up and looked out the window at a flaming red bush, it being the height of fall’s display of colors.  I heard my wife sobbing on the other end.  “My mother’s dying,” she cried.  “Oh no,” I replied, as I had an immediate flashback to my own mother dying five years earlier, and an inexplicably dark foreboding feeling gripped me.  For some reason I looked at my watch; it was 10:58 on Thursday morning.  In that instant, as I raised my eyes back to the blazing bush, I saw a sliver of a crescent dark shadow creep into the inner corner of my right eye as I listened to my wife tell me through her tears how her mother, who shared the name Rita with my mother, had turned a corner toward her death.  When she was done, I told her something strange had happened to my eye.

I had suffered a detached retina.

While I was fortunate to have excellent doctors for whom I’m very grateful, they were not very interested in my story of when the detachment occurred.  Their job, as they rightly saw it, was to repair my eye and the rest was speculation since they operate within a materialistic paradigm.  But as I recuperated, lying face down with my eyes closed for a few weeks, I had a lot of time to speculate (Latin, specere, to look at, view; pursuit of the truth by means of thinking).

As I lay there hour after hour, day after day, eyes closed, I found that what began as thinking turned into contemplation.  I had come to a dark place.  I had been stopped in my tracks.  The world I took for granted, my routine, my habitual way of seeing, my known world was stopped, and while shocked, I realized that I was given the gift of a revelatory experience if only I would accept it.  With my eyes down and closed, I had entered the temple of contemplation where images rose to my inner eye, and if I paid enough attention, they would lead me to a place of insight.

*

As a sociologist, I teach my students that sociology is the study of our social habits of thought, speech, and action.  These habits or routines, which often become crystalized into myths and institutions, imprison us in ways we are loath to admit.  Our collective mental habits are so powerful because they lie far deeper than mere thought can reach, and therefore to break them is as difficult as learning how not to ride a bicycle after years of knowing how.  Where does one begin?

George Orwell once observed that

“we have sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

Today restating the obvious doesn’t seem to make much difference.  At the level of the habits of group think and political and cultural propaganda, many of us have been trying to do that to little avail as the lies and deceptions of the U.S. power elites seem to win the day, day after day.  It is blatantly obvious that these people lie endlessly in their pursuit of an empire built of sand saturated with the blood of innocent victims at home and abroad.  Yet despite the obvious, and despite it being pointed out again and again, vast numbers of otherwise intelligent people continue to imbibe the myth that the “other side” (now the Democrats) will change the nihilistic trajectory of an evil capitalistic system leading to nuclear annihilation.  The naiveté is frightening as these people calmly ride their bicycles down the primrose path of death denial.

*

As I lay contemplating the images that crossed my inner eye, I saw that we wear our social mental habits like shrouds that conceal the waking dead those habits have rendered us, sleepwalking prisoners marching toward oblivion.  But why?  Sure, the political propagandists are skilled at their work, having learned from and greatly superseded their mentor, Edward Bernays, in the tricks of the trade.  And the technology has made their job much easier, and the CIA and other intelligence services have their people throughout the mass media.  Yet something was missing in this explanation, a deeper explanation.  It was then I again realized that there are different paradigms or experiences of reality operating in the world.  The prevailing one today sees only a world of things, a material world that includes people and animals, a billiard ball world where surfaces without centers careen around in physical cause-and-effect determined movements.  In this world the story of how my retina became detached is perhaps somewhat weirdly interesting but “just coincidental.”  I suspected that my good doctors, if we met for a drink, would still hold firm to their habitual paradigms of physical cause and effect.  They would have a very difficult time trying not to ride their bikes.

*

Another way of seeing is provided by Owen Barfield, English philosopher and poet, one of the most neglected and original thinkers of the twentieth century, who countered the superficiality of our materialistic collective thinking with these words:

The real world, the whole world, does not consist only of the things of which we are conscious; it consists also of the consciousness and subconsciousness that are correlative to them.  They are the immaterial component of the world.  But today the only immaterial element our mental habit acknowledges is our own little spark of self-consciousness.  That is why we feel detached, isolated, cut off not only from the world as it really is, but also from those other little sparks of detached self-consciousness we acknowledge in our fellow human beings.

Imprisoned in our isolated minds and failing to grasp the interpenetration of mind and matter, thought and feeling, a sequence of forms and patterns changing into other forms, Barfield argues that we end up treating not only other people and ourselves as things, but all of nature, including animals, as inanimate objects to be used.  The world becomes a place for necrophiliacs, not the home of living interconnected spirits.  In such a world schizoid experience becomes commonplace.  In such a crazy world, “what the self of each of us feels isolated from, cut off from, by its encapsulation in the naked physical reality presented to it by contemporary culture, is precisely its own existential source.”  Such a physically encapsulated self is a false self without reality.  It is no wonder that the use of drugs of every kind has risen exponentially, the earth despoiled, wars waged constantly, and nuclear weapons prepared to blow the planet to smithereens.

*

I had been thrown off my bicycle and then my doctors got me up again.  Of course I was so thankful for their medical expertise, but I needed to try to not ride the same old bike.  How could I break the habit, and of what did the habit consist.  I didn’t want to say that I had gone not too far in but just far enough to say I’d been there.  In where?  During the days when I strictly, almost obsessively, followed my doctor’s advice and, despite the great discomfort, lay immobile, face down, eyes closed, I found myself deep in a prison that seemed to open out into a place of fear and freedom simultaneously.  Although I wasn’t looking around and needed help with simple things, which my wife so kindly provided me, I experienced a weird sense of concentrated power from within the terrible vulnerability I felt.  I am trying not to exaggerate, but this sense of power in vulnerability was very real.  I had no interest in listening to the two books on tape I had; Tolstoy and James Baldwin seemed like intruders.  They would distort the vision of what I was sensing.  I think at its heart was a core of emptiness and powerlessness, which in the oddest of ways made me feel very powerful, as though all my teaching and writing and efforts to help others and make the world a better place and give advice and try to change people were useless and arrogant, but that their uselessness was their usefulness, and in accepting that I was embracing an essential truth.

Earlier in my life I had numerous very profound experiences with synchronicity that had convinced me that our consensual reality conceals a level of truth rarely felt because of the power of habit.  But these experiences had been all positive and had left me feeling amazed but powerful.  One even involved the power of a look I gave another. The power of my eyes. This latest one was different since it frightened me and made me vulnerable.  Telling you all this makes me feel doubly vulnerable, but now I don’t care.  I now know why I have long wanted to make a word my own but never could.  The word is insouciant.  Somehow it has become me more since this latest experience.

*

We are ruled by people who think they have everything under their control, including the nuclear weapons that are the ultimate expression of the hubris emanating from Einstein’s equation of E = mc², the unimaginable amount of energy contained in a particle of matter.  Those who brandish nuclear weapons operate within a consensual reality that is a form of madness, and these madmen will incinerate us all unless they are opposed by a force equal to that they brandish.  How can we stop them?

In his extraordinary book, Lightning East to West, Jesus, Gandhi, and the Nuclear Age, James. W. Douglass suggests that there is such a force and a way to stop this holocaust.  It lies within you and me.  He says:

Is there a spiritual reality, inconceivable to us today, which corresponds in history to the physical reality which Einstein discovered and which led to the atomic bomb?  Einstein discovered a law of physical change : the way to convert a single particle of matter into enormous physical energy.  Might there not also be, as Gandhi suggested, an equally incredible and undiscovered law of spiritual change, whereby a single person or small community of persons could be converted into an enormous spiritual energy capable of transforming a society and a world?  I believe that there is , that there must be, a spiritual reality corresponding to E = mc² because, from the standpoint of creative harmony, the universe is incomplete without it, and because, from the standpoint of moral freedom, humankind is sentenced to extinction without it.

*

I believe it too.  It arises in the hearts and minds of those totally committed to the truth no matter where it leads, and the passion to suffer it, even when it makes them look foolish.

“A man needs a little madness, or else….he never dares cut the rope and be free,” Zorba tells the boss in Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek.

So let’s try learning not to ride our bicycles so we can save ourselves and the world.

*

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at MassachusettsCollege of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

Note: This article originally published in June 2015 brings to the forefront the issue of State sponsorship of terrorism. Who has in the course of the last three years contributed to financing the delivery of weapons to the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh)

*  *  *

Since ancient times an army required significant logistical support to carry out any kind of sustained military campaign. In ancient Rome, an extensive network of roads was constructed to facilitate not only trade, but to allow Roman legions to move quickly to where they were needed, and for the supplies needed to sustain military operations to follow them in turn.

In the late 1700’s French general, expert strategist, and leader Napoleon Bonaparte would note that, “an army marches on its stomach,” referring to the extensive logistical network required to keep an army fed, and therefore able to maintain its fighting capacity. For the French, their inability to maintain a steady supply train to its forces fighting in Russia, and the Russians’ decision to burn their own land and infrastructure to deny it from the invading forces, ultimately defeated the French.

Nazi Germany would suffer a similar fate when it too overextended its logical capabilities during its invasion of Russia amid Operation Barbarossa. Once again, invading armies became stranded without limited resources before being either cut off and annihilated or forced to retreat.

The other half of the war is logistics. Without a steady stream of supplies, armies no matter how strong or determined will be overwhelmed and defeated. What explains then ISIS’ fighting prowess and the immense logitical networks it would need to maintain it?

And in modern times during the Gulf War in the 1990’s an extended supply line trailing invading US forces coupled with an anticipated clash with the bulk of Saddam Hussein’s army halted what was otherwise a lighting advance many mistakenly believed could have reached Baghdad had there been the political will. The will to conquer was there, the logistics to implement it wasn’t.

The lessons of history however clear they may be, appear to be entirely lost on an either supremely ignorant or incredibly deceitful troupe of policymakers and news agencies across the West.

ISIS’ Supply Lines

The current conflict consuming the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria where the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) is operating and simultaneously fighting and defeating the forces of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, we are told, is built upon a logistical network based on black market oil and ransom payments.

The fighting capacity of ISIS is that of a nation-state. It controls vast swaths of territory straddling both Syria and Iraq and not only is able to militarily defend and expand from this territory, but possesses the resources to occupy it, including the resources to administer the populations subjugated within it.

For military analysts, especially former members of Western armed forces, as well as members of the Western media who remember the convoys of trucks required for the invasions of Iraq in the 1990s and again in 2003, they surely must wonder where ISIS’ trucks are today. After all, if the resources to maintain the fighting capacity exhibited by ISIS were available within Syrian and Iraqi territory alone, then certainly Syrian and Iraqi forces would also posses an equal or greater fighting capacity but they simply do not.

And were ISIS’ supply lines solely confined within Syrian and Iraqi territory, then surely both Syrian and Iraqi forces would utilize their one advantage – air power – to cut front line ISIS fighters from the source of their supplies. But this is not happening and there is a good reason why.

Recent maps showing ISIS’ territory show obvious supply lines leading from Jordan and Turkey. Should Syria and its allies manage to cut these supply lines, one wonders just how long ISIS’ so-far inexplicable winning streak would last.

ISIS’ supply lines run precisely where Syrian and Iraqi air power cannot go. To the north and into NATO-member Turkey, and to the southwest into US allies Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Beyond these borders exists a logistical network that spans a region including both Eastern Europe and North Africa.

Terrorists and weapons left over from NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011 were promptly sent to Turkey and then onto Syria – coordinated by US State Department officials and intelligence agencies in Benghazi – a terrorist hotbed for decades.

The London Telegraph would report in their 2013 article, “CIA ‘running arms smuggling team in Benghazi when consulate was attacked’,” that:

[CNN] said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels.

Weapons have also come from Eastern Europe, with the New York Times reporting in 2013 in their article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” that:

From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large procurement from Croatia, and have vetted rebel commanders and groups to determine who should receive the weapons as they arrive, according to American officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

And while Western media sources continuously refer to ISIS and other factions operating under the banner of Al Qaeda as “rebels” or “moderates,” it is clear that if billions of dollars in weapons were truly going to “moderates,” they, not ISIS would be dominating the battlefield.

Recent revelations have revealed that as early as 2012 the United States Department of Defense not only anticipated the creation of a “Salafist Principality” straddling Syria and Iraq precisely where ISIS now exists, it welcomed it eagerly and contributed to the circumstances required to bring it about.

Just How Extensive Are ISIS’ Supply Lines? 

While many across the West play willfully ignorant as to where ISIS truly gets their supplies from in order to maintain its impressive fighting capacity, some journalists have traveled to the region and have video taped and reported on the endless convoys of trucks supplying the terrorist army.

Were these trucks traveling to and from factories in seized ISIS territory deep within Syrian and Iraqi territory? No. They were traveling from deep within Turkey, crossing the Syrian border with absolute impunity, and headed on their way with the implicit protection of nearby Turkish military forces. Attempts by Syria to attack these convoys and the terrorists flowing in with them have been met by Turkish air defenses.

Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published the first video report from a major Western media outlet illustrating that ISIS is supplied not by “black market oil” or “hostage ransoms” but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey’s borders via hundreds of trucks a day.

German national broadcaster DW reported on convoys of hundreds of trucks per day crossing into Syria from NATO-member Turkey with impunity, enroute to ISIS terrorists, finally explaining the source of the terrorist army’s fighting capacity. The trucks were reported by DW to have originated from deep within Turkish territory – most likely NATO air bases and ports.

The report titled, “‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey,” confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 – that ISIS subsides on immense, multi-national state sponsorship, including, obviously, Turkey itself.

Looking at maps of ISIS-held territory and reading action reports of its offensive maneuvers throughout the region and even beyond, one might imagine hundreds of trucks a day would be required to maintain this level of fighting capacity. One could imagine similar convoys crossing into Iraq from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Similar convoys are likely passing into Syria from Jordan.

In all, considering the realities of logistics and their timeless importance to military campaigns throughout human history, there is no other plausible explanation to ISIS’s ability to wage war within Syria and Iraq besides immense resources being channeled to it from abroad.

If an army marches on its stomach, and ISIS’ stomachs are full of NATO and Persian Gulf State supplies, ISIS will continue to march long and hard. The key to breaking the back of ISIS, is breaking the back of its supply lines. To do that however, and precisely why the conflict has dragged on for so long, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and others would have to eventually secure the borders and force ISIS to fight within Turkish, Jordanian, and Saudi territory – a difficult scenario to implement as nations like Turkey have created defacto buffer zones within Syrian territory which would require a direct military confrontation with Turkey itself to eliminate.

With Iran joining the fray with an alleged deployment of thousands of troops to bolster Syrian military operations, overwhelming principles of deterrence may prevent Turkey enforcing its buffer zones.

What we are currently left with is NATO literally holding the region hostage with the prospect of a catastrophic regional war in a bid to defend and perpetuate the carnage perpetrated by ISIS within Syria, fully underwritten by an immense logistical network streaming out of NATO territory itself.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

The US-led coalition killed at least 100 Syrian government and allied fighters over Wednesday night in response to what it said was an “unprovoked attack” in eastern Syria, a US official said, in one of the deadliest incidents of its kind.

The flare-up lasted into the early hours of Thursday and was sparked by an attack on positions held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Deir Ezzor province, the Combined Joint Task Force said.

The clash came against a backdrop of escalating tensions between Washington and Damascus over an increase in the suspected use of chemical weapons by the government and allied militia.

Statements carried by Syrian television stations called the bombing a “new aggression” and “an attempt to support terrorism” with a reporter describing those killed as “local people fighting (Islamic State) and the SDF”.

The US Central Command said that the coalition “conducted strikes against attacking forces to repel the act of aggression”.

“We estimate more than 100 Syrian pro-government forces were killed while engaging SDF and coalition forces,” while one SDF member was wounded, a US military official said on condition of anonymity.

The SDF and the coalition targeted the attacking forces with air and artillery strikes after “20 to 30 artillery and tank rounds landed within 500 metres (yards) of the SDF headquarters location,” the official said.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which only confirmed 20 dead among government and allied forces, the initial attack took place near Khasham.

The town lies along the Euphrates river, southeast of the provincial capital of Deir Ezzor.

“Regime forces struck SDF positions in several villages and an oil field with artillery fire,” Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based monitoring group, said.

“The SDF responded with artillery fire on regime positions in the town of Khasham before the intervention of coalition forces,” he said.

Government and SDF fighters were involved in several skirmishes in the area last year, as they each conducted parallel operations against some of the Islamic State militant group’s last bastions.

As many as 750,000 children in Mosul and surrounding areas are struggling to access basic health services. While violence has subsided, less than 10 percent of health facilities in Ninewah governorate are functioning at full capacity. Those that are operational are stretched to breaking point.

Three years of intense violence have devastated health facilities in Iraq. Over 60 health facilities have repeatedly come under attack since the escalation of violence in 2014, severely disrupting access to basic health services for children and families.

“The state of Iraq’s healthcare system is alarming. For pregnant women, newborn babies, and children, preventable and treatable conditions can quickly escalate into a matter of life and death,” said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Representative in Iraq, who has just completed a visit to Al Khansa hospital in Mosul, the largest in the city. “Medical facilities are strained beyond capacity and there are critical shortages of life-saving medicines.”

UNICEF has stepped up its support to primary healthcare facilities to help the Government of Iraq provide critical health services so that children and families affected by violence and displacement can resume their lives.

In Mosul, UNICEF has rehabilitated the pediatric and nutritional wards of two hospital centres, provided refrigerators to store vaccines for up to 250,000 children, and supported vaccination campaigns to immunize all children under five years old. Most health centres in the governorate have also re-started vaccination services for children.

“As people start to return to their homes, it is essential that basic services like health, education, and specialized support for children impacted by violence are available,” said Hawkins.

The Reconstruction Conference for Iraq hosted by the State of Kuwait next week is a unique opportunity for the Government of Iraq and the international community to put children at the heart of reconstruction, including through increased budget allocations to services for children.

“What I saw in the hospitals in Mosul is both heartbreaking and inspiring. The ingenuity and dedication of health workers who are committed to giving newborn children the best possible start in life in the most challenging of circumstances is remarkable. They too deserve support so that they can continue to save lives,” added Hawkins.

UNICEF is appealing for US$17 million to support rebuilding health facilities for children in Iraq in 2018.

In the course of the Afghan war, some die of suicide blasts and armed attacks while others agonize over horror, grief and traumatophobia.

Every time explosives tear apart a pack of people and kill dozens, it hurts the entire 35 million citizens of Afghanistan that is from the severely grief-stricken closest ones of victims to totally unfamiliar Afghans that has been fed up with the culture of war. In this country, almost everyone, from elderly to children, has accustomed to watching the decapitated bodies of sufferers who has unluckily fallen victim to the malicious attacks.

A myriad of cases not covered by the media reveal that the relatives of war victims have suffered immediate or later heart stroke or developed malignant diseases as a result of heavy depression and anxiety.

Imagine such traumatic implications for the relatives of reportedly 100,000 dead between 2001 and 2014.

Fatima, a resident of Kabul, lost her husband and son in a suicide explosion eight years ago and fell ill until diagnosed with terminal cancer caused by her loneliness and depression, and died two years later. She represents tens of thousands, if not millions, of identical or worst stories that have gone past inexpressively.

Afghanistan’s traumatized population is not only living under the heavy weight of conflict, but an ocean of miseries taking roots from the strangling poverty, unemployment, physical illness, gender-based violence, drug use and judicial insecurity. The deep depression in Afghans is noticeable as they demonstrate reluctance to engage in secondary tasks or activities other than moving back and forth to work and home.

Afghans normally find it difficult to sleep at night after viewing the distressing spectacles of war and violence on the social media or mass media. Typically, a university student has to fight a ton of social and war-born disturbances before pointing the entire heed into studies. Many of countless father-orphaned children and teenagers bear the brunt of household costs and expose themselves to a variety of evils while earning a loaf of bread.

A best-selling neurologist’s clinic in Kabul is flooded with daily patients, most of which are described with depression and post-incident disorders. The residents of Kabul are embracing strange habits developed by the effects of war. In the wake of a spate of deadly bombings, the citizens grow warmer and take up warm-hearted attitudes to each other. Friends, unlike before, call for parties and joyful moments with a newly born mentality of “very imminent death”.

Many elderly people try to strike up a chat with fellows in public places about the why’s and how’s of the deadly attacks. The entire nation is begging for truths that why Afghanistan is burning in the hell fire in an era when the modern world is achieving the extraterrestrial discoveries. They need honest folks to inform them about the secrets of the conflict, the untold of media. It could at least pacify their nervousness.

In the broadly traumatic Afghanistan, the President Ashraf Ghani’s rhetoric speech to the people about its intents of defeating terrorism is widely dismissed as “ridiculous”. In his recent peace council address, he claimed that his government would track and hunt the militants even in their holes. In a separate televised response, an outspoken Afghan political expert, Ahmed Saeedi, hit back at the president’s comments and said that it is sufficient for him to prevent a suicide bomber from reaching out to the heart of Kabul.

In 2010, the Afghan ministry of public health and WHO released the results of a study that more than 60 percent of the citizens of Afghanistan are enduring mental health disorders that has been blamed on conflict, insecurity, poverty, unemployment and addiction to drug. That proportion might have mounted by half as the insurgency has seen dramatic tide ever since.

A fraction of the psychological problems come from the use of chemical weapons in any point of the time as of 2001. Earlier, reports had surfaced of the birth of deformed or dead babies in parts of Afghanistan where mothers had been exposed to the radiation of the chemical weapons. The weapons have also caused bleeding from the ears of victims. For instance, the Mother of All Bombs [MOAB] dropped on eastern Afghanistan on so-called ISIS strongholds has caused psychological disorders for the locals and has even killed the plants.

The war can also be held responsible for giving rise to injustices, illiteracy, and joblessness, underdeveloped or no psychosocial healthcare facilities at all that each individually has a hand in underpinning the epidemic of mental health problems.

In an Al-Jazeera report about the horrors in Kabul following the deadly ambulance suicide blast, many people are now keeping a piece of scribbling in their pockets or purses to tell about their family contact number, work address, blood group and other urgent details that might be required in case they sustain injury or even die in a terrorist attack.

Coupled with the psychological harms of the armed conflict is the debatable issue of migration. In the years before and after 2014, a great proportion of Afghan population poured out of the country. It might be incredible to believe that each bloody terrorist attack, notably in the capital Kabul, is prompting a wave of migration. The residents calmly deliberate about the possible avenues to flee the country’s violence. Reports have emerged that several of the Afghan refugees deported by Germany with a belief that Afghanistan enjoys fair security, have been killed or injured in separate bombings.

Afghanistan has already undergone the “brain drain”. The young people of the ongoing generation who previously refused to leave the country have twisted their mind especially with the latest events and now look into the foreign world as the only ray of hope for life.

More like Western mainstream media, Afghanistan’s media has failed to go critical on the US and NATO atrocities in the country. From TV channels to print media, all are blindly following in the footsteps of the Western media and the US trajectory. The Afghan media, wittingly or unwittingly, feeds false and gross news reports to its darkened audience that has added up to the misfortune of trauma and migration.

However, the Afghan media and the government in harmony with their Western allies have been striving cautiously to reverse or cut the effects of the tragedies by disguising the dim and grim future of Afghanistan as a promising and peaceful one. But thanks to social media now at the reach of a majority of Afghans, it is too late for the government and mass media to effectually restore public confidence into functioning governance and hopes for peaceful Afghanistan.

It is unfortunate that alongside the social media’s advantage of telling the people about untold news, the barrage of bad news being posted on Facebook on a daily basis is stirring up a new wave of fears.

Now the cornerstone question of the matter is whether the media of countries steeped into bloody wars should or shouldn’t broadcast the harrowing images of war and ruins in a fashion that spark public fury? Afghanistan’s government and media and some activists may agree with the latter “No”, only because it causes mental health disorders and fuels migration which is an utterly absurd answer.

Indeed, it is a bid and pretext to cover-up the war crimes. Despite these resulted downsides, the portrayal of true and real situation is helpful in provoking and setting the victim nation into motion for revolts, revolutions and critical movements that eventually end up to the benefit of the nation itself.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

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“More than 50 conditions can cause or mimic the symptoms of dementia.” but “Alzheimer’s (can only be) distinguished from other dementias at autopsy.” — from a Harvard University Health Publication entitled “What’s Causing Your Memory Loss? It Isn’t Necessarily Alzheimer’s”

“Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects. All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have statin medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others.” – Drs Neustadt and Pieczenik, authors of “Medication-induced Mitochondrial Damage and Disease”

“We are at the beginning of the biggest medical tragedy that mankind has ever witnessed. Never before in history has the medical establishment knowingly created a life-threatening nutrient deficiency in millions of otherwise healthy people, only to sit back with arrogance and horrific irresponsibility and watch to see what happens. I cannot help to view my once great profession with a mixture of sorrow and contempt.” — Peter Langsjoen, MD, Board-certified Cardiologist, discussing the adverse effects of statin drugs that commonly cause serious, difficult-to-detect statin-induced CoQ10 deficiencies in the mitochondria of heart muscle, the central nervous system, and other body tissues. Dr Langsjoen has said that he sees several cases of statin-induced congestive heart failure in his clinical practice each week.

“It is also noted that instances of pure forms of Alzheimer’s disease, in the absence of other coexistent brain disease processes, such as infarctions or Parkinson’s disease–related lesions, are relatively uncommon.” –– Daniel Perl, MD, Mt Sinai School of Medicine (2010)

“Establishing mitochondrial toxicity is not an FDA requirement for drug approval, so there is no real way of knowing which agents are truly toxic.” — Dr. Katherine Sims, Mass General Hospital – http://www.mitoaction.org

“Big Pharma is engaged in the deliberate seduction of the medical profession, country by country, worldwide. It is spending a fortune on influencing, hiring and purchasing academic judgment to a point where, in a few years’ time, if Big Pharma continues unchecked on its present happy path, unbought medical opinion will be hard to find.” – John LeClarre, author of The Constant Gardener, that focused on the corrupt nature of the pharmaceutical industry.

“Throughout the 20th century, the pharmaceutical industry has been constructed by investors, the goal being to replace effective but non-patentable natural remedies with mostly ineffective but patentable and highly profitable pharmaceutical drugs. The very nature of the pharmaceutical industry is to make money from ongoing diseases. Like other industries, the pharmaceutical industry tries to expand their market — that is to maintain ongoing diseases and to find new diseases for their drugs. Prevention and cure of diseases damages the pharmaceutical business and the eradication of common diseases threatens its very existence.’ — Dr. Matthias Rath – Journal of the American Medical Association, April 15, 1998

“Therefore, the pharmaceutical industry fights the eradication of any disease at all costs. The pharmaceutical industry itself is the main obstacle, why today’s most widespread diseases are further expanding including heart attacks, strokes, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, and many others. Pharmaceutical drugs are not intended to cure diseases. According to health insurers, over 24,000 pharmaceutical drugs are currently marketed and prescribed without any proven therapeutic value. According to medical doctors’ associations, the known dangerous side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs have become the fourth leading cause of death after heart attacks, cancer, and strokes.” — Dr Rath (1998)

“The medical industry research is highly fraudulent–yes, a lie. The CDC knows full well that vaccines cause autism but are in bed with the pharma industry. The Affordable Care Act was designed to force people to buy private industry insurance which forces people to use their discretionary income paying for the unaffordable premiums so they will not have the money to pay for holistic forms of healing.” — Blogger at GreenMed Info

“Medical journals have devolved into information-laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.” — Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet (March 2004)

‘At least 50% of the articles published in this ever so prestigious journal were not just bad, but downright fraudulent.” — Marcia Angel, MD, who co-edited the New England Journal of Medicine for about 20 years before she was forced out because she questioned the adverse influence of Big Pharma on the NEJM’s editorial policies.

“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 who wrote in the early 20th century

“No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable…for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death.” – President Ronald Reagan, as he signed The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, absolving drug companies from all medico-legal liability when children die or are disabled from vaccine injuries.

***

Over the past several decades there have been a number of well-financed campaigns, sometimes promoted by well-meaning laypersons, to raise public awareness to the plight of patients with physiological, age-related, short-term memory loss – which is not dementia. Suspiciously, most of these campaigns come from “patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) such as the Alzheimer’s Association that has been misleading the public into believing that every memory-loss patient or dementia patient has Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).

Not so curiously, it turns out that many – perhaps all – of these campaigns have been funded – usually secretly – by the very pharmaceutical companies that can be predicted to benefit financially by promoting the sale of so-called Alzheimer’s drugs (or even vaccinations!). Such corporate-generated public relations “educational campaigns” are increasingly standard procedure for Big Pharma’s drugs, even prior to FDA approval. In other words, many PAOs are primarily front groups for Big Pharma, although many volunteers is such groups are well-meaning and unaware participants. A lot of good can get done in pro-Big Pharma PAOs, if workers watch out for signs of ulterior pro-drug motives.

Big Pharma has found that the promotion, de-stigmatization and demand for drug therapies for so-called “mental illnesses” are great tools for marketing their drugs. which are touted as being “of unknown etiology” or “inherited” and therefore unpreventable, incurable but “manageable” with the life-long ingestion of cocktails of two or more drugs that have never even been tested in the rat lab, much less in clinical situations. (See this)

A year ago, Alzheimer’s support groups – particularly the Big Pharma-subsidized Alzheimer’s Association -aggressively sponsored a documentary that featured the dementia of country singer Glen Campbell. Campbell had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease despite the well-documented fact that Campbell was infamous for his chronic heavy use of brain-damaging, dementia-inducing, addictive, and very neurotoxic drugs like cocaine and alcohol. Therefore, in reality his dementia was most likely caused by his neurotoxic drug abuse which likely was worsened by the fact that he had also used a lot of brain-altering psychotropic prescription drugs simultaneously. Popular performers like Campbell, who are frequently on mentally- and physically-exhausting concert tours, are well-known to over-use chemical cocktails of illicit and legal drugs, which, when used simultaneously, have far worse than additive adverse effects on the body and brain.

The experience of the equally early dementia victim and legendary long-term user of illicit brain-altering drugs, Robin Williams, was similar to Campbell in that both used excessive amounts of psychotropic substances that had adverse effects on their brains, livers and psyches. Williams had recently been diagnosed as having Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy Body dementia (both of unknown etiology!). His desperate act of suicide came in the context of newly-prescribed psychiatric drugs that had been prescribed at Minnesota’s Hazelden facility. The prescription drugs were well-known to cause suicidal thinking.

Over the past several decades, there has been a dramatic increase in the over-prescribing of brain-altering drugs to both adults and children. During the same era there has also been a dramatic increase in the over-vaccinating of mainly infants and children, but also of adults.

And, not coincidentally, during the same era, there have been tens of millions of new dementia victims (“of unknown etiology”) and tens of millions of previously un-heard-of autoimmune disorders, autism spectrum disorders and other chronic illnesses among the over-prescribed and over-vaccinated populations of innocent children. Chronically ingesting brain-altering pills and simultaneously and regularly being injected with neurotoxic vaccines has dire consequences. Big Pharma’s claims of innocence in the face of these epidemics are bald-faced lies. And Big Medicine has been an accomplice in the whole sordid mess. Apologies are in order.

Iatrogenocide?

The blatant promotion of largely preventable, iatrogenic disorders does make a lot of money for Big Pharma and Big Medicine, especially if the once-un-conflicted Big Media (the supposed equalizing Fourth Estate) contributes to the mess by consciously preventing open dialogues with the whistle-blowing side of what should be an honest, open, democratic debate.

Tragically, the corporate-dominated media elites appear to have no interest in disturbing the tranquility of the status quo by actually inviting whistle-blowers on to their talk shows. What is going on? I suspect that there is probably too much glad-handing, elbow-rubbing and cross-investing (plus the acceptance of Big advertising that intimidates and silences) going on among the many corporate entities that have too much investment in keeping the status quo going strong.

How it Began: Thc Story of Alois Alzheimer

In 1910 a German psychiatrist, Alois Alzheimer, published a case history of a single demented and “mentally ill” female patient who had peculiar microscopic findings in her brain at autopsy. In the article he included drawings of what he had seen. The two findings of 1) neurofibrillary tangles and 2) “senile plaques” became the cardinal signs of the disorder that soon was named after him. The peculiar findings are microscopic and therefore only visible at autopsy. Thus the true diagnosis is not a diagnosis that can be accurately made while the patient is still alive. See the information from Harvard below about the differential diagnosis of AD. Alzheimer’s first and only demented patient that he autopsied also showed a loss of 1/3 of the neurons in her cerebral cortex.

Is the So-called Alzheimer’s Epidemic (of “Unknown Cause”) Actually an Iatrogenic, Drug-and Vaccine-Induced Epidemic That the Medical Profession and Big Pharma are Desperately Trying to Cover Up?

The likely answer to that question is yes, and you could say the same thing about the twin epidemics of autistic spectrum disorders and chronic autoimmune disorders among fully vaccinated children in the First World.

Synchronous with the fast-paced over-vaccination agendas over the past several decades that the Big Pharma-, Big Medicine- and Big Business-dominated “first world”, careful, un-blinded, non-conflicted observers are witnessing and documenting the following inconvenient realities:

1) There are huge increases in childhood and adult vaccinations that have intramuscularly-injected neurotoxic, blood-brain barrier-destroying ingredients such as aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, glutamate and live viruses;

2) There is the widespread and chronic use of cocktails of psychotropic drugs that are known to cause brain damage, destruction of the blood-brain barrier, mitochondrial toxicity and dementia;

3) There is the widespread use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs (which also lower the essential, energy-supplying, vitamin-like substance CoQ10) which are known to also cause memory loss, depression and mitochondrial toxicity;

4) There is the ingestion of the neurotoxic substances fluoride and lead that are contaminating many municipal drinking water supplies;

5) There is the wide-spread ingestion of a large variety of toxic and poorly-nourishing food additives that Big Food has put in our Standard American Diet (SAD), such as dyes, NutraSweet, Splenda, trans-fat-containing oils and margarines, MSG, etc, plus toxic contaminants such as Round-Up, genetically-modified substances, livestock antibiotics and other poisonous chemicals that are in virtually all non-organic food; and

6) ETC, ETC, ETC.

Not coincidentally, there has also been a large parallel increase in the following clusters of disorders: the alarming and increasing incidence of chronic diseases, autoimmune disorders of childhood and autistic spectrum disorders (see this); b) the alarming increase in the diagnoses of mental illnesses and dementias of supposedly “unknown origin”.

Both of those categories are conveniently – and falsely – being blamed on “genetics” by the various guilty parties that are actually at least partially responsible. And, it must be noted: there is no credible evidence for claiming any of the above have genetic causes.

Disease entities that have no confirmatory lab tests include such disorders as ASD, Asperger’s, Learning Disorders, ADHD, OCD, Bipolar Disorder, Gulf War Syndrome, “mental illnesses of unknown etiology”, etc, etc. These diagnoses, supposedly of “unknown etiology” are multifactorial realities which, via clever marketing efforts and the studied ignorance of what is actually known about their actual root causes, are being blindly treated with brain-altering chemicals that have no chance of curing anything – including the so-called Alzheimer’s Disease.

It is important to ask and then demand an honest answer to this important question: “Could there be any connection between our nation’s increasingly common over-prescribing of immunotoxic, neurotoxic, mitochondrial-toxic, blood-brain barrier-toxic, synthetic prescription drugs and the CDC and AAP-blessed over-vaccination agendas that are so commonly mandated for disorders that supposedly “have no known cause”? Any grade schooler would respond to that question by rolling their eyes and saying “well of course!”

Could the economically disabling (indeed bankrupting) American epidemic of supposedly “disorders of unknown origin” be found to have recognizable root causes and therefore be curable and, most importantly, preventable, rather than chronically “managed” with unaffordable, disease-inducing prescription drugs that will have to be monitored, changed, renewed or have their dosages adjusted at monthly office visits for the rest of their drug-sickened lives.

The above are extremely important questions, especially in the case of America’s chronic disease epidemics. There are many so-called patient advocacy organizations (PAO) that are heavily funded by major for-profit, corporations that are not donating money out of the goodness of their cold hearts. Such Big Pharma-supported PAOs go to great lengths to hide the financial support they get from their foundations, sugar daddies and assorted investors.

There are hundreds of PAOs that have ulterior motives, and there are many altruistic ones that are barely surviving on shoe string budgets that depend on small donations. The latter PAOs are trying to do the right thing and do not take money from big corporations that are in the game for the money. PAOs like the Alzheimer’s Association, NAMI, MakeItOK, and the American Parkinson Disease Association take a lot of money from Big Businesses and some pretty nefarious Big Money foundations. The leadership of that kind of PAO acts like they are totally unaware of (or willfully ignorant about) the fact that many prescription drugs, especially psychotropic drugs, ARE known to be both dependency-inducing AND a potential cause of irreversible brain damage.

Long-term use of such neurotoxic, psychoactive drugs would be easily expected to worsen any number of neurological (and therefore psychological) disorders because of the brain cell death that easily happens when enough brain cell mitochondria have been wounded or killed off. (Note: See the info on drugs and mitochondria farther below.)

One of the big problems in America’s corporate-controlled culture, media and medical industries is that the giant pharmaceutical corporations, who are in the business of developing, marketing and profiting from their known-to-be toxic drugs and vaccines have a special interest in pretending that there is no known preventable or curable causes for the disorders for which they have products to sell you.

We have all heard the following common and very dis-informational ruse – which is both unproven and simplistic: We are told – by those who want to sell us a drug or vaccine, that “the problem that you have is probably genetic”, implying that the disorder is neither-preventable nor curable. The implication is that the current epidemic of iatrogenic disorders such as the opioid epidemic (“iatrogenic”=”doctor-caused, treatment-caused or prescription drug-caused”) is not the responsibility of Big Pharma’s or Big Medicine’s toxic products or vaccines! And we lemmings, both the drug swallowers and the drug prescribers, to our great shame, all-too-often don’t question the obvious lie.

It should be a concern for everyone who knows or treats demented or Parkinsonian patients, that the most powerful and wealthy and well-staffed PAOs are known to be front groups for the giant pharmaceutical companies that profit handsomely from any number of virtually useless (and definitely not curative) drugs for dementia such as Pfizer’s Aricept, Novartis’s Exelon, Eli Lilly’s Namenda, and Janssen’s Razadyne.

Interestingly, Pfizer announced last month that they were abandoning their increasingly attempts to search for and test new drugs for Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease. They closed the research branches for both classes of disease. Pfizer saw that they were throwing good money after bad, having already wasted billions of dollars on what they now recognize as a futile search for new drugs. Such searches are still being pursued by many other pharma companies – for now. Pfizer’s stock dropped $4 a share on the announcement.

But both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are neurodegenerative disorders whose hallmarks involve permanent brain damage of certain brain areas. Knowing that both diseases are caused by permanent and irreversible brain damage, how any investor could have thought that a chemical or vaccine could have been effective as treatment or cure is beyond me.

However, knowing how cunning these Big Pharma corporations are, I suspect that Pfizer, in the case of their Aricept drug , still made a ton of money selling it. It should come as no surprise to anyone that we prescribing physicians are as bamboozled by the prevalent corporate pseudoscience and Big Pharma’s fraudulent advertising as are our patients, whether the commercials come at us from television, magazines, journals or attractive female drug detail reps who come bearing pens, pizzas and post-it notes.

The BBC reported a few days ago that there were over 100 clinical trials currently being done on Alzheimer’s drugs around the world, but that “more than 99% of trials for Alzheimer’s drugs have failed in the past 15 years.” So, if you are waiting for a cure, don’t hold your breath. Pfizer likely made a smart move. Expect other drug companies to follow suit soon.

Prescription Drug-Induced – and Vaccine-Induced – Mitochondrial Disorders

As opposed to the rare “primary” or congenital mitochondrial disorders like muscular dystrophy, “acquired” mitochondrial disorders are often caused by commonly prescribed drugs and/or vaccine. They are also generally poorly understood and therefore difficult to diagnose by busy health practitioners. Also – naturally – iatrogenic disorders are rarely made by the physician whose treatment caused the disorder.

When I went to med school, even my professors knew anything about the lethal effects that drugs and vaccines could do to mitochondria, – or even normal brain cells, for that matter. There weren’t that many toxic drugs or vaccines (albeit many of them contained mercury) that could be prescribed back in the good old days. I recall that the function, physiology-and microanatomy of mitochondria were poorly understood back in those years, although our professors did try to teach us med students something about the incomprehensible and soon-forgotten Kreb’s cycle.

Mitochondrial research, especially in the last few decades, has proven the cause and effect relationship between a variety of commonly prescribed medications and vaccines and mitochondrial disorders. That evidence seems to have been cunningly covered-up by the for-profit pharma groups (who control what gets taught in med schools, published in their medical journals or what gets presented at their continuing education courses. Big Pharma appears to even have control over what gets discussed in the mainstream media, especially what is offered to readers by the basically undiscerning “health and science” journalists who do not know much about basic medicine, neuroscience, neurochemistry or micronutrition.

Various other powers-that-be are involved educating most of us because of the serious economic consequences that might happen if any negative information (like what you are reading hers) was allowed in the popular press. The profit-seeking stake-holders in the pharmaceutical and medical industries, most of whom profit mightily from the routine and increasing use of neurotoxic drugs and vaccines would be very displeased if the preceding or following information got out. I submit that Big Pharma’s cover-up of the connections between their drugs and drug-induced disorders is totally unethical and, in the opinion of many whistleblowers, criminal.

An Honest Patient Guide for Dementia Patients (from Harvard!)

So I was pleasantly surprised to recently find a reasonably honest guide for dementia patients on a Harvard University website. These suggestion, contrary to the vast majority of Big Pharma’s products, are compatible with the Hippocratic Oath. (The entire guide can be accessed here.)

The information at the Harvard site stated that there were over 50 conditions that could cause or mimic the symptoms of dementia. In other words, there are over 50 conditions that could be mis-diagnosed as Alzheimer’ dementia. I hadn’t been taught anything about that reality when I went to med school, and I doubt that many of my physician colleagues had either. And besides, what medical practitioner in our over-busy, double-booked clinic environment, even if he or she was aware, has the time to thoroughly rule out the 50 conditions when confronted with a patient with memory loss? It’s simpler to just call every case of dementia Alzheimer’s! And nobody ever questions such an authoritative-sounding diagnosis, even though the only definitive way to confirm the diagnosis is at autopsy.

I have often said to my patients and folks who attend my seminars: “it takes only 2 minutes to write a prescription, but it takes 20 minutes to not write a prescription”. And in the current for-profit clinic culture, time is money and few physicians are given the “luxury” of spending adequate time with their patients. (In defense of the physicians that I know, they are not happy about that reality but don’t know what to do about it.)

It is so tempting to use the popularized, but rather squishy label of Alzheimer’s rather than to educate ourselves about the possibility of drug- or vaccine-induced dementia. But what is so important is that many of the 50+ conditions are preventable or reversible, which will be therapeutic only if the conditions are identified before more brain damage from drug-induced or environmental-poison-induced neurotoxicity occurs.

The Harvard guide actually said that

“medications are common culprits in mental decline. With aging, the liver becomes less efficient at metabolizing drugs, and the kidneys eliminate them from the body more slowly. As a result, drugs tend to accumulate in the body. Elderly people in poor health and those taking several different medications are especially vulnerable.”

The guide continued with a list of the possible classes of prescription drugs that number in the hundreds:

“The list of drugs that can cause dementia-like symptoms is long. It includes antidepressants, antihistamines, anti-Parkinson drugs, anti-anxiety medications, cardiovascular drugs, anticonvulsants, corticosteroids, narcotics, sedatives.”

The Harvard guide went on to emphasize that Alzheimer’s can only be accurately diagnosed on a post-mortem examination. The guide states that

“Alzheimer’s is distinguished from other dementias at autopsy by the presence of sticky beta-amyloid plaques outside brain cells (neurons) and fibrillary tangles within neurons (all indicative of cellular death). Although such lesions may be present in any aging brain, in people with Alzheimer’s these lesions tend to be more numerous and accumulate in areas of the brain involved in learning and memory.”

“The leading theory is that the damage to the brain results from inflammation and other biological changes that cause synaptic loss and malfunction, disrupting communication between brain cells. Eventually the brain cells die, causing tissue loss and cell carcasses or scars. In imaging scans, brain shrinkage is usually first noticeable in the hippocampus, which plays a central role in memory function.”

But even the Harvard guide inexplicably failed to mention known mitochondrial toxins such as statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Pfizer’s Lipitor), metformin, Depakote, general anesthetics, fluoroquinolone antibiotics, fluorinated psychotropic drugs (like many of the SSRIs and the so-called antipsychotics).

Big Food and Big Vaccine Corporations are Guilty of Causing Chemical Brain Trauma

And here is some more information about the mitochondrial toxins that have gone unrecognized in our environment: This information must be understood, because alone, there may not be huge risks, but in combination with other toxins, they will have additive, if not synergistic (multiplier) adverse effects.

For example, the artificial sweetener NutraSweet (aspartame) is in hundreds of food products and diet sodas that are sold in non-organic food stores. Every molecule of the artificial chemical, when it reaches 86 degrees F [body temp is 98.6 F], releases one molecule of the excitotoxin aspartic acid, one molecule of the adrenalin precursor phenylalanine and one molecule of the cellular toxin methanol [wood alcohol]. Methanol rapidly metabolizes into the known Class A carcinogen and mitochondrial poison formaldehyde [embalming fluid]). Another toxic metabolite of aspartame is diketopiperazine (DKP) which when “nitrosated” in the gut, produces a compound which is similar to N-Nitrosourea, a powerful brain tumor-causing chemical.

The tri-chlorinated sucrose molecule that is sold as another artificial sweetener is called Splenda (sucralose). The synthetic chemical has been marketed as an insecticide in China) and is in many food products. I killed an entire colony of ants in my garden overnight by sprinkling some Splenda on the soil. I then had no idea about how to decontaminate my ant-free garden from the Splenda poisoning.

The above are only a small number of the synthetic chemicals that are capable of causing mitochondrial damage in brain cells – damage that can cause memory loss, confusion and cognitive dysfunction, all early symptoms of dementia.

In summary, it must be regarded as tragic, but all–too-common, for reversible and preventable drug-induced dementias to be mis-diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease “of unknown etiology” and then quickly and reflexively mis-treated with costly, essentially worthless drugs, whose mitochondrial toxicities are ignored.

(The pharmaceutical industry, it should be noted, is not required by the FDA to test its drugs for mitochondrial toxicity, again exhibiting the total disdain for the Precautionary Principle by both industry and the regulatory agencies such as the FDA and the CDC.)

There is much more in the basic neuroscience literature that has been written by un-bought scientists who do not have conflicts of interest with Big Pharma and Big Medicine, that offer proof of the connections mentioned above. The authors of these research and clinical articles have raised the questions and have published the proof that concerned families of patients and their physicians desperately need to know. Sadly, these authors are often black-listed from the major medical or scientific journals that take advertising money from Big Pharma or whose peer reviewers have been co-opted by Big Pharma money or influence.

Don’t expect Big Pharma to respond or to offer apologies or admit to their unethical (or sometimes criminal) behaviors. Do expect denials, delays, dismissals, distractions, or the attempts to discredit the un-biased scientific evidence that exposes subterfuge in the name of maintaining large profits for Big Pharma’s or Big Medicine’s stakeholders.

Here are the abstracts from just two of the many peer-reviewed journal articles that have been published in any number of science journals that support the thesis of this column.

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Gary G. Kohls, MD is the author of the Duluth Reader’s Duty to Warn weekly columns and a down-winder, down-streamer from Duluth, MN

The above is an expanded  version of an article  originally published by Global Research in February 2015. 

Featured image: T-72 B3 tanks during field exercises (Source:Sergey Pivovarov / Sputnik)