Global Research

No it didn’t.

The mainstream media are totally irresponsible in their priorities. At the time of writing, five hours after the world’s most dangerous document was presented, no major Western media has featured it prominently. This means it won’t be. No chance it would go viral. The increasing risk of nuclear war isn’t important.

While people talk about fake, a much larger issue is omission:

What is hidden to you? What world order issues are deliberately down-graded?

What threats to humanity end up at the bottom of page 38 after 10 pages of sports, entertainment and celebrity stories.

Another technique is cover-up, talking about something else such as the ever convenient North Korean “threat” or Russia’s latest evil plot.

It’s not only ignorance. There are media and other power elites who know exactly what to hand out to you and how. And what to fake, omit and cover up instead of covering.

Time to wake up: The dominant Western media are rapidly becoming the largest single obstacles to understanding our world. One proof is this story.

The Transnational has already posted a few articles about this scary, absurd and anti-ethical document, the Nuclear Posture Review, NPR:

• Huffington Post’s first article based on a leak from January 14, 2018.
• Pentagon advocates nukes against a cyber attack, in the New York Times, January 16, 2018.
• Paul Rogers, Sliding towards nuclear war?
• And in a larger perspective, a world expert on it all – Daniel Ellsberg and his new book, The Doomsday Machine. Confessions of a Nuclear Planner.

And then tonight happened the Pentagon “rollout” of this formal document on which the U.S. is going to base its nuclear policies in the future.

Watch the whole event here on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist.

Watch and listen carefully to how the Pentagon experts explain and rationalize it all, from within their box: So natural as if talking about pleasant everyday affairs.

And take note of the lame, cliquish questions asked by what must be highly selective media people who, it seems, have never read a book about nuclear policies. Don’t challenge a single underlying assumption or point to dangers.

The central words are ‘the safety of the American people’, the capabilities and it’s all held within the weapons technological framework and blurred security environment and deterrence. Not a single, intellectually defensible argument given.

No questioning of the framework – legal, political, ethical, psychological, civilisational…

This is not only what the leading US psychiatrist of war, Nazi doctors and sect psychology, Robert Jay Lifton calls ‘psychic numbing’.

Or what Yale psychologist Irving Janis in his classical study called ‘groupthink’.

No, seldom has the Theatre of the Absurd of the MIMAC – the Military-industrial MEDIA-Academic Complex – been performed so well.

In a calm and rational manner, we learn how natural it is to perceive, to talk about – and never question – what is in reality directly and fundamentally related to the unthinkable omnicide – destruction of humanity and the world as we know it.

All in the name, of course, of maintaining the US-based, military-dominated post-1945 world order against America’s beloved enemies. What would it do without them? How would it develop new nukes at trillions of dollars if it did not invent enemies all around. Imagine it had a policy of co-operation with the world instead of dominating it?

It’s well known that one of the defining characteristics of terrorism is the targeting, wounding or killing of innocent people, of people who are in no way fighters or otherwise related to the conflict – like children on a school bus, patients at a hospital.

The Nuclear Poster Review is a plädoyer for mega-terrorism, dwarfing ISIS and everybody else.

It’s about the use of nuclear weapons – NUTs meaning Nuclear Use Theory – not for the deterrence business as usual, or MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction.

It is a document that argues in favour of nuclear weapons being use-able, for the theory that the US can start, fight and survive a nuclear exchange. In other words, for making the unthinkable not only thinkable but acceptable.

You can’t use nuclear weapons without killing and wounding millions and making life uninhabitable for billions. Every thought about nuclear use is based on a terror philsophy – and practised today only by the United States of America.

The NPR 2018 lowers the psychological threshold and increases the likelihood vastly that nuclear weapons will be used in the future.

This kind of thinking brings huge dangers to the world. There are lots of vested interests that don’t want you to know.

This document should be condemned – as it would have been throughout the homogenised Western mainstream media had it been Russia or China or some other nuclear weapons state that had presented a similarly perversely dangerous and exceptionalist nuclear-use policy.

There is a simple solution to this nuclear madness: Nuclear abolition. That’s what the world’s huge majority wants and has voted for at the UN.

And if you don’t believe that, let’s try a little experiment in democracy – after all that’s what the US is, isn’t it? Get all the nuclear weapons states to hold free and fair referendums asking their citizens whether they want their own countries defended by nuclear weapons.

For the first time in human history. Then we take the struggle for nuclear abolition from there.

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Featured image is from Antiwar.com.

The long-awaited House Intelligence Committee report made public today identifies current and former top officials of the FBI and the Department of Justice as guilty of the felony of misrepresenting evidence required to obtain a court warrant before surveilling American citizens. The target was candidate Donald Trump’s adviser Carter Page.

The main points of what is widely known as the “Nunes Memo,” after the House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have been nicely summarized by blogger Publius Tacitus, who noted that the following very senior officials are now liable for contempt-of-court charges; namely, the current and former members of the FBI and the Department of Justice who signed off on fraudulent applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: James Comey, Andy McCabe, Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rob Rosenstein. The following is Publius Tacitus’s summary of the main points:

• The dubious but celebrated Steele Dossier played a critical role in obtaining approval from the FISA court to carry out surveillance of Carter Page according to former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe.
• Christopher Steele was getting paid by the DNC and the FBI for the same information.
• No one at the FBI or the DOJ disclosed to the court that the Steele dossier was paid for by an opposition political campaign.
• The first FISA warrant was obtained on October 21, 2016 based on a story written by Michael Isikoff for Yahoo News based on information he received directly from Christopher Steele — the FBI did not disclose in the FISA application that Steele was the original source of the information.
• Christopher Steele was a long-standing FBI “source” but was terminated as a source after telling Mother Jones reporter David Corn that he had a relationship with the FBI.
• The FBI signers of the FISA applications/renewals were James Comey (three times) and Andrew McCabe.
• The DOJ signers of the FISA applications/renewals were Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein.
• Even after Steele was terminated by the FBI, he remained in contact with Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife worked for FUSION GPS, a contractor that was deeply involved with the Steele dossier.

From what Michael Isikoff reported in September 2016 it appears that the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence (as well as the FBI) are implicated in spreading the disinformation about Trump and Russia. Isikoff wrote:

“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president, according to multiple sources who have been briefed on the issue. […]

“But U.S. officials have since received intelligence reports that during that same three-day trip, Page met with Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate and former Russian deputy prime minister who is now the executive chairman of Rosneft, Russian’s leading oil company, a well-placed Western intelligence source tells Yahoo News.”

Who were the “intelligence officials” briefing the select members of the House and Senate? That will be one of the next shoes to drop. We are likely to learn in the coming days that John Brennan and Jim Clapper were also trying to help the FBI build a fallacious case against Trump, adds Tacitus.

Indeed, Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has already indicated that his disclosures in the Nunes Memo represent just “one piece of a probably much larger mosaic of what went on.”

The Media Will Determine What Comes Next

As for Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, it is now abundantly clear why he went to ridiculous lengths, as did the entire Democratic congressional leadership, to block or impugn the House Intelligence Committee report.

Until the mid-December revelations of the text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page turned Russia-gate into FBI/DOJ-gate, Schiff had been riding high, often hiding behind what he said “he could not tell” the rest of us.

With the media, including what used to be the progressive media, fully supporting the likes of Adam Schiff, and the FBI/CIA/NSA deep state likely to pull out all the stops, the die is now cast. We are in for a highly interesting time over the next months.

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Ray McGovern works with the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Turkey’s recent incursion into northern Syria is poised to finally establish the long-sought after “buffer zone” or “safe haven” called for by US policymakers since as early as 2012.

While the US and Turkey are currently feigning a diplomatic row over the incursion – with Turkey’s targeting and displacement of Kurds allegedly backed by the United States – it is clear that recent claims by the US regarding its expanding support of Kurdish militias it has been arming and backing in Syria was done as an intentional pretext for Turkey to justify an otherwise indefensible invasion of Syrian territory.

No Pretext 

Turkey cited  sensational statements made by the US regarding the creation of a supposedly 30,000 strong Kurdish-led “border defense force” in northern Syria as the pretext for its current operations. Yet at the time the statement was made by Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman US Army Colonel Ryan Dillion, fewer than 300 of the alleged force were reportedly trained – indicating that if the force existed at all, it would be years before being stood up at full strength, if ever.

By the time Turkey began its incursion, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denied altogether plans for such a force, according to Reuters in a report titled, “Tillerson says U.S. has no intention to build border force in Syria.”

Going in Anyway

Regardless, Turkey’s incursion – referred to as “Operation Olive Branch” – is creating precisely the zone of control described by US policymakers in 2012 with precisely the same US-armed and funded militant groups described in US policy papers meant to occupy the “safe haven.”

Having tried and failed to maneuver geopolitically to establish the “safe haven” over the past 6 years – including through the citing of “humanitarian crises” and false flag attacks on Turkish territory – the US and Turkey have finally created a sufficiently chaotic intersection of mission creep, proxy groups, and opposing interests to justify the invasion. Turkey had been incrementally invading and occupying Syrian territory while bolstering an army of militants drawn from designated terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda for years in preparation for this recent invasion.

While the Western media and Turkey itself maintains that Operation Olive Branch is aimed at the Kurds, the creation of Washington’s “safe haven” intentionally filled with extremist militants who have fought Syrian troops for years is aimed ultimately at Damascus.

Regardless of this fact, the Kurds will undoubtedly be either liquidated or displaced by Turkey, with the US and its European allies putting up only token resistance as the exploitation and betrayal of the Kurds finally runs its full course.

Northern “Safe Haven” Was US Policy Since 2012

In a March 2012 document published by corporate-financier funded Brookings Institution titled, “Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change ” (PDF) it is stated specifically that (emphasis added):

“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.”

In 2012, Brookings and other US policy circles repeatedly attempted to sell the creation of safe havens in Syria under a humanitarian pretext. This continued for several years until it became abundantly clear that most displaced Syrians lived within Syrian government-controlled territory. 

Brookings continued by describing how Turkey’s aligning of vast amounts of weapons and troops along its border with Syria in coordination with Israeli efforts in the south of Syria, could help effect violent regime change in Syria (emphasis added):

In addition, Israel’s intelligence services have a strong knowledge of Syria, as well as assets within the Syrian regime that could be used to subvert the regime’s power base and press for Asad’s removal. Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to preserve itself. Advocates argue this additional pressure could tip the balance against Asad inside Syria, if other forces were aligned properly. 

Again, the policy paper published in 2012 was continuously put into effect since, with Israel and Turkey continuously putting pressure on Syria up to and including today with Turkey’s incremental invasion in the north and Israel’s serial attacks around Damascus and the Golan Heights in the south.

While the manufactured pretext for creating the US-designed “safe haven” has changed, the goal is still the same – the overthrow of the Syrian government, and falling short of that, the permanent division and thus destruction of Syria as a unified nation state.

US Using Turks to Liquidate Uncooperative Kurds 

Brookings today provides insight into how this latest iteration of Washington’s “safe haven” plan is being sold to the public. In a January 26, 2018 article titled, “What’s next for Turkey, the US, and the YPG after the Afrin operation?,” Brookings visiting fellow Ranj Alaaldin claimed:

Turkey fears that an emboldened Syrian Kurdistan and the predominance of the YPG—the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has gone from strength to strength in recent years—would fuel its own restive Kurdish population and, therefore, strengthen the PKK’s insurgency. Ankara blames Washington’s relationship with the YPG and its policies in Syria for the current crisis, but it is in fact a story of missed opportunities and miscalculations on the parts of Turkey, the YPG, and the United States.

And while the piece and others like it circulating in the Western media attempt to frame the pretext for the recent operation as a growing diplomatic row between Turkey, the US, and Washington’s Kurdish allies, the article makes a revealing concession:

…the Arab opposition pushed the Kurdish opposition into tacit cooperation with the Assad regime to guarantee its own survival, despite the regime’s record for systematically repressing Syria’s Kurds.

Indeed, the Kurds west of the Euphrates River have avoided clashes with Syrian government forces for years and as the Syrian conflict draws to a close, would likely have cut deals with Damascus as territory they occupied was rolled back into a unified Syrian state – effectively and finally foiling US plans for Syria.

Turkey’s latest incursion aims to prevent this.

Replacing Kurds with More Cooperative Terrorists 

Not only will Kurds west of the Euphrates be either pushed out or eliminated, they will be replaced by extremists armed and backed by the US, NATO, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) who will undoubtedly and eagerly continue fighting Syrian government forces.

The Al-Monitor in an article titled, “Erdogan’s plans for Afrin might not sit well with Syria,” would report:

As casualties rise on both sides in Turkey’s offensive in Syria, Ankara is pursuing a plan that goes beyond putting an end to the domination of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). President Recep Tayyip Erdogan incessantly refers to a project to settle “the real owners of the area” in Afrin province. 

He has two groups in mind: the band of militias that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) employs in the field called the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and the crush of Syrian refugees in Turkey. 

The so-called “Free Syrian Army” is little more than a conglomeration of terrorist organizations fighting either directly under the banner of Al Qaeda or under one of its many affiliates.

It is also the primary proxy the United States and its regional allies including Turkey have been using to wage war against Syria and its Iranian, Lebanese, and Russian allies for years. They are the only group in Syria remaining with any will to continue fighting Syrian forces and their allies and their proximity to the Turkish border allows them to be easily replenished, and harbored within Turkish territory when necessary.

With a much larger and deeper “safe haven” established inside Syrian territory, occupied by Turkish forces and accompanying air defense capabilities, the front these terrorists are fighting on will move that much closer to Damascus.

Protecting New Safe Haven with Human Shields 

The idea of resettling refugees within a US-designed “safe haven” is not an original idea. It was the original pretext used to sell the idea of a US-NATO backed “safe haven” in northern Syria as early as 2012. It was also put forth during a 2015 US Senate hearing by retired US Army General John M. Keane who explained his reasons for doing so (emphasis added):

If we establish free zones – you know, for moderate opposition forces – but also sanctuaries for refugees, that gets world opinion support rather dramatically. If Putin is going to attack that, then world opinion is definitely against him. You take this issue right off the table in terms of why he’s in Syria and if you’re doing that [attacking free zones] and contributing to the migration that’s taking place by your aggressive military actions, then world opinion will have some rather – I think – significant impact on him.

In other words, Keane proposed sheltering Western-backed militant groups from attack by Syrian and Russian air power by using refugees as human shields.

Foreign Occupations Obstruct Syrian Peace 

The long-sought US “safe haven” in northern Syria will be used to continue the ongoing proxy war against Damascus. Already, it is only the US and Turkish presence in Syria that is obstructing the end of the conflict, occupying Syrian territory, preventing the reunification of the nation and the reconciliation within and reconstruction of Syria’s communities.

While Turkey has attempted to portray its role in Syria as constructive and conducive to peace with the very name of its most recent incursion designated “Operation Olive Branch,” militants holding out in northern Syria would be unable to do so if Turkey simply secured its borders and cut off supplies to militant groups fighting on inside Syria.

While some analysts have speculated that Turkey has made deals with Russia, Iran, and Syria regarding its latest incursion, Syria and its allies should still cultivate options to deal with the worst case scenario – not only the establishment of a “safe haven” in northern Syria, but attempts to use it to perpetuate the current deadly conflict.

Any backroom political deal is only as good as the leverage either side has to hold the other to its commitments. A danger exists of Turkey embedding itself deep within Syrian territory with Syria and its allies with little course of action to dislodge them short of full-scale war.

While the outcome of Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch is uncertain, as is the reactions of respective nations involved in the Syrian conflict, what is certain is that the US has once again demonstrated its willingness to use and then betray its allies – namely the Kurds.

Turkish operations against Kurds that had previously struck a de facto truce with Damascus may be asked to change tack and take up a decidedly anti-Damascus stance in exchange for a reprieve from the current onslaught. Just as Washington gifted Ankara with a pretext to further invade Syrian territory, Ankara will have gifted Washington with Kurds more motivated to serve US interests in Syria rather than their own.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

A U.S.-armed jihadist shot down, on February 3rd, in the Idlib area of Syria, a Russian Su-25 jet, and killed its pilot. 

In a leaked radio conversation, a “rebel” commander ordered his fighters to kill the pilot then burn his body.

At first, the “rebel” who did the shoot-down and killing was claimed to be from the Al-Qaeda-supported Jaysh al-Nasser group, but subsequently a different Al-Qaeda-supported group, Tahrir al-Sham, (formerly called “Jabhat al-Nusra”) officially confirmed that it had downed the warplane with a MANPAD (a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile). U.S. President Donald Trump had in October decided to supply MANPADs to the “rebels” in Syria. Those shipments started to be received by Jaysh al-Nasser on October 8th. In any case, this incident is the first time that Al Qaeda’s U.S.-backed affiliates in Syria have publicly claimed to have downed a Russian plane.

Later on February 3rd, Russia’s Tass news agency headlined “Russian weapons deliver strikes on area from which Su-25 was shot down”, and reported that:

Massive high-precision weapons strikes have been delivered at targets in the area, from which a missile from the man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS) was launched to bring down the Russian Su-25 fighter jet, 30 militants of the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group (banned in Russia) have been killed, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

“A series of high-precision weapons strikes has been delivered on the area controlled by the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group, from which a MANPADS missile was launched at the Russian Su-25 jet,” the ministry said adding that “according to radio intercepts, more than 30 Jabhat al-Nusra militants were killed.” 

So, now, Russia has officially announced that it has killed U.S.-armed “rebels” in Syria, and the U.S. will have to decide how to respond to that.

There is no legal basis for U.S. troops in Syria. These troops train and arm the “rebels” in Syria.

 The U.S. has an estimated 14 military bases in Syria. 

A major matter of speculation has been: when will Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad — who has repeatedly condemned the illegal military occupation of Syria by U.S. troops — simply order them to leave Syria. Such speculation doesn’t exist regarding Russia’s troops there, because Syria’s Government had requested Russia’s military assistance against the various jihadist groups that have infiltrated into Syria during the past six years.

The U.S. has been arming Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria ever since 2012, but the decision to arm them with MANPADS was made by U.S. President Trump, not by his predecessor, Obama. Trump has simply escalated America’s invasion and occupation of that country. He didn’t start it. He’s merely continuing Obama’s war. Perhaps Trump thinks he’s doing the job better than his predecessor did.

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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.

The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) captured the town of Bulbul as well as the villages of Ali Kar, Za’ra and al-Ham from Kurdish YPG forces in the area of Afrin.

According to pro-Turkish sources, over 24 YPG members were killed in the recent clashes. Pro-Kurdish sources claim that 20 members of Turkey-led forces were killed.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said that 800 so-called ‘terrorists’ had been killed since the start of Ankara’s Operation Olive Branch in the area on January 20.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies liberated the villages of Wasitah, Tal Jina, Seihah Swamp Um Karamil, Tal Aqarib, Tal Jina, Atshana Gharbi, Um Karamil and Tal Husein from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) in eastern Idlib and southern Aleppo.

Government forces are currently deployed within about 16 km from the strategic militant-held town of Saraqeb.

In northeastern Hama, the SAA liberated the village of Abu Khanadiq from ISIS.

In Eastern Ghouta, the SAA advanced on positions of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Faylaq al-Rahman in the Irbin district, but failed to achieve any notable progress.

Separately militants accused the SAA of using chemical weapons in the area. According to reports, at least 3 rockets with chlorine gas hit the city of Douma.

On February 1, several FSA groups operating in southern Syria announced that they had launched a military operation against the ISIS-affiliated Khalid ibn al-Walid Army in western Daraa. The operation is code-named “al-Fatihin Battle” and is supported by Israel.

Israeli forces reportedly conducted several military strikes on positions of the ISIS-affiliated group in the areas of Tell Jumu and Tasil. However, it’s unlikely that the FSA will be able to deliver a devastating blow to ISIS in the area even with the Israeli support.

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“I don’t have the evidence,” Mattis said. “What I am saying is that other groups on the ground – NGOs, fighters on the ground – have said that sarin has been used, so we are looking for evidence.”

This week the American public was once again bombarded by fresh headlines alleging the Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad gassed its own people. And in predictable fashion the usual threat of US military force soon followed.

Except of course rather than “alleging” a chemical incident, all the usual suspects from CNN pundits to State Department bureaucrats to Pentagon officials in typical fashion are opting for the simpler “Assad did it” narrative. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert stated Thursday,

“Russia is making the wrong choice by not exercising its unique influence. To allow the Syria regime to use chemical weapons against its own people is unconscionable. We will pursue accountability.”

The White Helmets published this photo on Thursday, claiming that its “volunteer was suffocated by the chlorine gas attack”. It appears that this is the “NGO” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis referenced on Friday to say “open sources” say Assad is using chemical weapons.

Nauert’s statement was a repeat of talking points from last week’s chemical attack claims, wherein both she and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ultimately blamed Russia. But like with other recent chemical attack allegations, the claims couldn’t be more vague or poorly sourced, yet was still enough for U.S. officials to issue more direct threats of US military action against Assad.

While addressing the prior East Ghouta incident during a talk on January 23rd, Tillerson let slip that he didn’t actually know much about the supposed earlier January attack at all while still putting blame squarely on Syria and Russia, saying at the time,

“Whoever conducted the attacks Russia ultimately bears responsibility for the victims in eastern Ghouta and countless other Syrians targeted with chemical weapons since Russia became involved in Syria.”

This week the “evidence” doesn’t appear to be any clearer or narrowed.

On Friday Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addressed the latest claims, confidently asserting the Syrian government had as a matter of routine used chlorine as a weapon against the remaining pockets of opposition areas of the country – specifically in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta, but it appears at this point that even Reuters has suddenly found its journalistic skepticism… Yes, actual knowledge on whether or not there was even a chemical attack to begin with is indeed thin enough for Reuters to headline its own report with “Mattis says has no evidence of sarin gas used in Syria, but concerned”.

Mattis, in line with the rest of the administration – especially the State Department – did his best to paint a scenario of the case being all but certain that the Syrian Army has been using chlorine gas to attack civilians, while also suggesting Sarin may have been deployed as well, which could serve as a “red line” triggering US military attack on the Syrian government.

But Mattis was also forced to admit the following, according to Reuters:

Mattis, speaking with reporters, said the Syrian government had repeatedly used chlorine as a weapon. He stressed that the United States did not have evidence of sarin gas use.

“We are even more concerned about the possibility of sarin use, (but) I don’t have the evidence,”Mattis said. “What I am saying is that other groups on the ground – NGOs, fighters on the ground – have said that sarin has been used, so we are looking for evidence.”

And according to CNN, Mattis is now merely going on “open source” information, which essentially means anything from media reports to YouTube to Twitter to mere “opposition sources say…”. CNN reports the following:

“You have all seen how we reacted to that [referencing the April 2017 US airstrike], so they’d be ill advised to go back to violating the chemical convention”… Mattis acknowledged that the US has not seen direct evidence of the use of Sarin gas but pointed to open source reports. “I don’t have the evidence… We are looking for evidence. I don’t have evidence credible or uncredible.”

Like with previous allegations, US government officials are issuing threats of military action based on NGO’s and fighters on the ground.

Mattis acknowledged that the U.S. HAS NOT SEEN DIRECT EVIDENCE of the use of Sarin gas but pointed to open source reports"
Open source? Seriously?

— EHSANI2 (@EHSANI22) February 2, 2018

In this case it once again appears to be the word of the White Helmets, which it seems just about every other week issue new and unverified claims of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government. As is now generally well-known the White Helmets are funded by US and UK governments to the tune of many tens of millions of dollars, and have further been frequently filmed and documented cooperating closely with al-Qaeda factions on the ground in Syria.

Indeed the group only operates in areas controlled by al-Qaeda (HTS) and other anti-government insurgents, especially in the locations of recent alleged attacks – Idlib and East Ghouta.

That General Mattis would admit opposition fighters (dominated by #Nusra #AlQaeda #HTS ) & NGO'S (since when do such organizations have such expertise) plus open source (self-proclaimed experts) is what Washington has based its policies/charges on is both regrettable & worrisome

— EHSANI2 (@EHSANI22) February 2, 2018

Now that unverified claims of chemical attack incidents in Syria (and their subsequent uncritical amplification by media and politicians) have become routine, the following somewhat obvious observations need to be recalled:

• The Assad government has long been winning the war, what incentive does it have to do the one thing (use CW) that would hasten its demise?
• The US is a party to the conflict, so its claims must be evaluated accordingly.
• The “NGOs and fighters on the ground” (in Mattis’ own words) are an even more direct party to the conflict.
• The only way anti-Assad fighters can survive at this point is by triggering massive US military intervention (by claiming “Assad is gassing his own people!”).
• The greater the momentum of Syria/Russia/Iran forces in defeating jihadists on Syrian territory, the more frequent the claims of chemical attacks  become – issued from those very jihadists suffering near certain defeat.
• In the midst of a grinding 7-year long “fog of war” conflict involving constant claims and counterclaims, mere “open source” information means nothing in terms of proof or hard evidence.
• Al-Qaeda administers the locations from which chemical attack allegations are being made.
• US officials stand ready to make use of “chemical attack” claims with or without “evidence credible or uncredible” (in Mattis’ words) anytime further pressure needs to be applied toward Russia or Syria.
• Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence (Iraq WMD anyone?).

Sitting at my desk in Boston I have absolutely no direct insight into who used what weapon in Syria, so I don’t pretend to know. What I will say is Assad has strong incentives not to use chemical weapons again whereas regime change supporters have every incentive to say he did.

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) February 2, 2018

For its part, Russia alongside the Syrian government and other regional allies have long accused the US of blindly trusting opposition sources inside Syria concerning claims of chemical weapons attacks, including the April 2017 incident in al-Qaeda controlled (HTS) Idlib, which resulted in the US attacking an airbase in central Syria.

Last October, the US State Department admitted that anti-Assad militant groups operating in Syria, especially in Idlib, possess and have used chemical weapons throughout the war – something which the US government previously said was impossible, as it consistently held the position that only the Assad government could be to blame.

It really is a shame, and it is tiring, but it is actually nothing new: there is now total disarray amongst those countless‘progressive’ and ‘semi-left’ Western intellectuals, publications, movements and political parties.

Cowardice, bloated egos, lack of discipline and intellectual pettiness are often to blame, but that is not all.

It is now absolutely clear that the Western left lost patently and shamelessly. It has almost no power, it has no courage to fight or to take risks, and it counts on no real political following in Europe, North America, Australia or New Zealand. ‘The masses’, those proverbial ‘oppressed masses’, have lately been electing and voting in various semi-fascist populists, unapologetic right-wing demagogues, and mainstream pro-business brutes.

Entire Marxist ‘theoretical certainties’ have been collapsing in front of our eyes. Or at least they have been in the West.

To a great extent, what is now happening is absolutely natural. The European left betrayed as early as in the 1980’s, by becoming too soft, too undisciplined, too cautious and too self-centered. It put pragmatism above the ideals. It rapidly adopted the lexicon of the liberal ideological establishment, complete with Western perceptions of human rights, democratic principles and political correctness.It ceased to be revolutionary; it essentially stopped all revolutionary activities, and it abandoned the core element of any true left-wing identity – internationalism.

Without at least some basic internationalist principles, the left is now essentially reduced to some sort of local trade union level: “Let us fight for better labor conditions and health care at home, and to hell with all that neo-colonialist plunder of the world which is expected to pay for almost all of our benefits. As long as we eat well and have long vacations, why should we rebel, why should we fight?”

The Western left has also failed to honestly address global history and especially the role which both Europe and North America have been playing in it. Many so-called ‘progressive’ Western thinkers have essentially adopted the imperialist rhetoric and revanchist interpretation of various key historic events,hence becoming ‘anti-Communist’ themselves.

After that, almost everything was lost, went down the drain.

Revolutionary flags were burned, at least metaphorically. Good old slogans were ditched. Then, instead of marches and violent demonstrations and clashes with the authorities representing the regime, increasingly comfortable couches in front of the latest high-definition television sets got quickly filled with millions of flabby over-indulgent bodies.

Now really ugly fights over the shrinking pie are raging. Theoretical Trotskyists and theoretical Maoists are at each other’s throats. There are, of course, Leninists, and others, many others.

Things went much further, still: these days, in the West, most ‘progressives’ go ‘by the issues’, refusing to commit to anything greater, full-heartedly. This position is increasingly in vogue, and it essentially shouts: ‘I have my own philosophy. I don’t need any ideology at all.’

No revolution has ever been won like this. But in the West, there is no desire for true revolution. Belonging to left is mainly just a pose, with a social media account and a selfie. It is not serious, and it is not intended to be.

There are, of course, Anarcho-syndicalists with their air of superiority and lofty theories that would be outrightly rejected and laughed at by the great majority of the truly oppressed people in places like Asia or Africa.

Lately, I don’t even know, anymore, who is who, in that small and petty world. I am not monitoring it, I hardly participate in theoretical discussions.

I write, using basically just two publications as my platform, from which my writing goes to the world, in various languages.

But that ‘small and petty world’ is obviously monitoring me. And what it sees, it does not like.

After launching with one of the mightiest publications in the West (I don’t really want to name the publication, but my readers, most likely know which one I’m talking about) some 300 essays in the last 7 or 8 years, I was literally dumped by it at the very end of 2017. I will never find out the real reason, but most likely it was due to my ‘too left wing’ convictions, and too anti-Western, too open rhetoric. And yes, there was actually some hint: The editors did not like it that I write for ‘Russian state-sponsored media’, which in turn has some links to allegedly radical left-wing sites in the U.S.

In the eyes of the anti-Communist, ‘we-go-by-the-issues’ Western media, any ‘state sponsored’ or ‘state controlled’ media is bad, extremely bad!

Even if it belongs to those countries that are heroically fighting against Western imperialism, trying to save our Planet. Or perhaps it is considered especially bad if it belongs to such countries. It obviously applies to the Chinese, Russian, Venezuelan, Cuban, or Iranian media outlets. In summary – it applies to all media worldwide that is fighting to prevent the Western monstrous imperialist endgame from taking place; to the media that is fighting with force and zeal, and with (lately) tremendous success.

Instead of obediently waiting for the Western right or Western left, to define the world, now the Chinese, Russians, Latin Americans and the Middle Easterners are suddenly daring to re-define events that are taking place on this Planet. They are interviewing Westerners themselves, while holding a mirror to those monsters that became both the European and North American societies.

And instead of letting only Westerners speak, there are suddenly African, Asian, Russian, Arab and Latin American people appearing in front of the cameras.

Instead of that ‘noble’ “look what we are doing to the world”, the true victims but also true revolutionaries are leading passionate debates.

Instead of some PhD professor in London debating whether China is truly Communist or not, it is now Chinese people speaking up, clarifying what their own country is and is not.

And the Western left does not like it. It is clear that it does not like such developments at all.

The Western left ‘does not like any state-sponsored media’. It does not like it when others are speaking. Well, it may be even deeper than that: it appears that it does not really like anyone who is really fighting and who is winning: it does not like the left that is actually holding power!

Because the Western left is much more part of the West than of the left.

Because deep down, it is comfortable, even obsessed with its exceptionalism.

Because despite those horrid centuries of colonialist and imperialist plunder of the world by Europe and North America, it does not truly believe that the crimes were committed because of Western culture and way of thinking.

Because, deep down, it really does not think that the non-Western nations and their media and thinkers are capable of defining and describing the world accurately, or even describing their own countries accurately. Non-Westerners simply cannot and should not be trusted. Only Western intellectuals have some sort of inherited right to make fully qualified decisions on such important topics as: whether China is Communist or not, whether Russia under President Putin is a progressive country or not, whether Iran is socialist or just a brutal religious state, whether Assad’s government is ‘legitimate’, whether the North Korean leadership is ‘insane’ or whether President Maduro of Venezuela ‘just went too far’.

As the world is finally preparing to defend itself against the inevitable Western aggressions, as the people of Asia, Russia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East are discovering their own voices silenced for centuries by colonialist barbarity, as it is while the governments of these countries are making such discussion platforms possible, the Western left is howling at the moon, beating its chest in self-righteous narcissist gestures, and essentially insulting those who are fighting, standing tall, building much better world and yes – governing!

In several countries of South America, the left has recently been defeated precisely because it was too influenced ‘ideologically’ (or more precisely, ‘anti-ideologically’) by those weak, obsolete and overcautious Western pseudo-revolutionaries. Latin Americans should not, and hopefully will not, make similar mistakes in the future.

No revolutionary country can aim at perfection, yet. Revolution is not a bed of roses, said Fidel. Defending one’s country against brutal foreign invasions is not always a pretty business: it is thoroughly messy and bloody stuff.

The weak and soft-skinned Western left can demand from non-Western revolutionary governments both ‘purity’ and a ‘silk-gloved-approach’, simply because it has no idea (or it doesn’t care) what it is like to govern in countries consisting of millions of men, women and children who have been forced to live in absolute shit, after being robbed of everything by European and North American slave drivers.One simple mistake which those governments make, one sign of weakness, and their countries will go up in smoke, end up in ruins, in oblivion: like Iraq, like Afghanistan, like Yeltsin’s Russia, or like China during the “century of humiliation”.

The ‘over-sensitivity’ of the Western left is actually only a façade, it is not real.

Just as an example, the editors of the above-mentioned magazine, which has so unceremoniously stopped publishing my work, never showed any interest in my well-being or safety. I think if I would have dropped dead in one of the war zones I have covered, they’d hardly notice. Articles and essays signed by me would simply stop coming. Everyone is, after all, replaceable. To offer any support would be below their dignity. But to ask, regularly, for the reader’s financial support, never has been.

The ‘State-sponsored’ media in the revolutionary countries does treat their people differently. At least some of it does.

And quarreling goes on. I lost interest in the details. It is all time consuming and irrelevant.

In the meantime, I feel more and more comfortable writing for those new and proud media outlets, worldwide, edited far away from the West. I like it when my comrades are getting strong, when they are winning. I want them to govern and to govern well. And I want their countries to survive.

Things are that simple!

It is a great honor to show my films on TeleSur and Al-Mayadeen, to write for the New Eastern Outlook, China Daily, Countercurrents, Global Research and Russia Today. I enjoy appearing life, regularly, on PressTV.

I feel that each word that I write and utter through those media outlets are intended for my friends, for my comrades, for our struggle and for a much better world.

And let me repeat: I want my friends and comrades to win, to succeed, and yes, to govern!

The Western left can keep quarreling, chewing itself: ‘Who said what? Who is real left and who is not? Who is pure Marxist and who is simply some social democrat?” 

Not all Western left media outlets are as described above. There are still some wonderful writers and editors in the West, too. But the overall situation in Europe and North America is deteriorating.

The governing and struggling revolutionary and internationalist left in the independent countries does not usually have time for lofty debates. We have Moscow, Beijing, Caracas, Havana, La Paz, Damascus and many other wonderful cities behind our backs – to defend. We will deal with the theory later, much later, after we win, after there is real peace, accompanied by justice, after all of us on this planet can proudly be what we really are – ourselves and defined by ourselves!

*

This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook.

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

The Democratic Party was thrown into disarray Friday after the publication of a classified memo exposing as a factionally-motivated witch hunt the investigation by leading intelligence agencies into the Trump administration’s alleged collusion with Russia.

The so-called Nunes memo, which Democratic lawmakers, US intelligence agencies and major newspapers had been seeking to block for days, alleges that the FBI under the Obama administration used discredited sources and withheld key information to initiate a wiretap of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The Democrats responded to the prospective release of the Nunes memo with undisguised hysteria, declaring that it threatened national security and was insufficiently deferential to the US intelligence agencies. Now that the memo has been released, the Democrats’ claim that it contains sensitive national security secrets has been exposed as lies.

The memo, written by staffers for Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, claims that the FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court authorization to wiretap Page in the fall of 2016 based on a memo compiled by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele.

The so-called Steele dossier, which was released to the public last year, made lurid allegations that Russian government officials had recordings of Trump engaging in “perverted sexual acts” with prostitutes “which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB [Russian intelligence service].” According to the Nunes memo, FBI director James Comey called the Steele Dossier “salacious and unverified” in congressional testimony in June 2017.

In perhaps its most explosive passage, the memo alleges that Andrew McCabe, a deputy FBI director who just stepped down this past week, testified before the House Intelligence Committee in December that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought… without the Steele dossier information.”

In addition, the FISA application “ignored or concealed [Steele’s] anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations,” i.e., the fact that his “research” had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The Republican memo does not specify what information was collected by the wiretap or whether it captured any conversations with Trump.

The contents of the memo are another demonstration of the manufactured and partisan character of the anti-Russia campaign and the Democrats’ allegations that Trump “colluded” with Russia. What is playing out is a partisan battle between two criminal and reactionary factions of the state apparatus, centering ultimately on differences over foreign policy.

The release of the memo once again underscores the fact that the US intelligence agencies have massively intervened in US politics. This is true not only with regard to the concocted narrative about Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election and “collusion” between Trump and Moscow, but equally so with James Comey’s public announcement about re-opening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the presidential vote, which Clinton claims may have cost her the election.

The memo has undermined the aura of professional impartiality that the Democrats and their allied news outlets, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have sought to cultivate around the so-called “intelligence community.”

The real fear of the Democrats is that the exposure of the anti-Russia campaign will undermine the credibility of the FBI.

“The selective release and politicization of classified information sets a terrible precedent and will do long-term damage to the intelligence community and our law enforcement agencies,” declared Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Friday.

Schiff added,

“If potential intelligence sources know that their identities might be compromised when political winds arise, those sources of vital information will simply dry up, at great cost to our national security.”

But all such arguments about “national security” have been rendered absurd by the release of the document, which contains no sensitive information besides the wrongdoing of the FBI and the Democrats—including Schiff himself.

In an editorial published Friday, ahead of the document’s publication, the New York Times accused congressional Republicans of “undermining the credibility of the law enforcement community” that they had “once defended so ardently.”

It was left to the satirical news website the Onion to point out the obvious absurdity of such arguments:

Stressing that such an action would be highly reckless, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday that releasing the “Nunes Memo” could potentially undermine faith in the massive, unaccountable government secret agencies of the United States. “Making this memo public will almost certainly impede our ability to conduct clandestine activities operating outside any legal or judicial system on an international scale,” said Wray, noting that it was essential that mutual trust exist between the American people and the vast, mysterious cabal given free rein to use any tactics necessary to conduct surveillance on US citizens or subvert religious and political groups.

Responding to the Democrats’ allegations that the publication of the document would threaten “national security,” journalist Glen Greenwald tweeted,

“What conceivable argument is there that any part of the Nunes Memo could jeopardize national security?”

The Times editorial effectively argues that no documents critical of the actions of the US intelligence apparatus should be published. To make this point, the Times quotes Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who argued against the release of the memo on the grounds that the public would “see this release as proof that selective classification is used more often to deceive them than to protect them.”

It is, of course, true that “selective classification” is used to deceive the American people. This was demonstrated by the publication in 1971 of the classified Pentagon Papers, which documented how flagrantly and extensively the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations lied to the American people about the Vietnam War.

As The Post, the recently-released film by Stephen Spielberg, effectively documents, the New York Times and Washington Post made the decision at the time to defy the Nixon administration and publish the Pentagon Papers, rejecting the spurious argument that their publication would harm “national security.”

The editorial published in the Times Friday reads like a cruder version of the arguments put forward by the Nixon White House to block the release of the Pentagon Papers. If one were to take the editorial at face value, one would conclude that if the Times had had the Nunes memo in its sole possession, it would never have published it.

The Times has become little more than a mouthpiece for the US intelligence agencies, whose aim is to prevent the dissemination of any information that they see as harmful to the interests of the American ruling class and the capitalist state.

“Our government has been saying, well, we want a more progressive NAFTA. We want to have labour rights and gender rights and all this. You can’t have a more progressive NAFTA because it’s all about allowing the U.S. corporations to come in and buy up our country. And that’s what we’re seeing happen.”

– David Orchard (from this week’s interview.)

“Canada leads the world, at least among Western developed countries, in our willingness to sacrifice our sovereignty in favour of these foreign investor protections…Once you add to that the CETA with Europe and now this new TPP, we will have virtually all foreign-owned parts of our economy governed by this, in my view, really, really offensive regime.”

– Professor Gus Van Harten (from this week’s interview.)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has boasted of his commitment to progressive economic, environmental and social policies. [1] At the same time, has been a passionate warrior in his pursuit and defence of so-called ‘free trade’ agreements.

Following the latest round of talks on renegotiating the 24 year old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Prime Minister made it clear that “NAFTA has been good for American jobs, it’s been good for Canadian jobs, it’s been good for our economy over the past twenty-five years…”[2] Prime Minister Trudeau maintains however he is prepared to withdraw from the agreement rather than submit to an inferior deal. [3]

Likewise, the Canadian Prime Minister is championing a revised version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement with ten other Pacific Rim countries (excluding the US). When he announced his support for the deal in front of world leaders, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month, he indicated that the refurbished agreement would be ‘progressive’ and achieve the goal of maintaining growth and prosperity while protecting Canadian workers:

“Trade helps strengthen the middle class, but for it to work we must ensure that the benefits are shared with all of our citizens, not just the few. The Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership is a new step on that path.” [4]

Media within Canada have been overwhelmingly uncritical of the assumption of NAFTA’s worth to Canadians. [5] In a recent reply to an accusation of media bias, the Ombudsman for Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC noted this point, but explained that the context of the coverage was the tri-lateral discussions with the U.S. and Mexico, not influential critics within Canada. She maintained that, according to official sources, there was in fact, broad support for the deal:

“There is consensus from the federal political parties that Canada should try to save the deal. While you question the contention that Canadians are in favour of NAFTA, the fact is that public opinion research reveals they do, including reputable institutions like the Pew Research Centre and the Environics Institute.” [6]

Of course, this argument fails to acknowledge the role of the media in shaping these opinions and attitudes in the first place.

The mission of this radio program, the Global Research News Hour, is to provide access to analysis of some of the major issues shaping our world today from quarters seldom exposed in major media. Consequently, this week’s broadcast tears some holes in the free trade propaganda curtain concealing the light of truth about what these trade deals have meant to the broader public outside the boardrooms.

Our first guest is David Orchard. Orchard has been a critic of the free trade orthodoxy for more than thirty years. He recently authored an article about how Canada is in the same position in 2017 as the Canadian colonies were in back in 1866, and now like then, pulling out of free trade with the U.S. would be to the advantage of those above the 49th parallel. He explains his point of view in the first half hour.

In the second half hour, we are joined once again by Professor Gus Van Harten. The international investment treaty expert has studied what is known about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and is not persuaded that this agreement will deliver benefits for the many as the Canadian government suggests. Professor Van Harten will speak to the investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanisms in TPP and other deals and how they ultimately undermine any supposed gains for the environment, Indigenous peoples, Labour and other elements of society.

David Orchard is a Borden, Saskatchewan-based organic farmer, political activist and two-time contender for leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He is also author of the 1993 best-seller The Fight for Canada: Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism (Stoddart, 1993; 2nd ed. Robert Davies, 1999). His website is davidorchard.com

Gus Van Harten is a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. Previously he was a faculty member in the Law Department of the London School of Economics. He specializes in international investment law and administrative law. In June 2016 he authored the paper Foreign investor protections in the Trans-Pacific Partnership for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His books include Sold Down the Yangtze: Canada’s Lopsided Investment Deal with China (Lorimer, 2015); Sovereign Choices and Sovereign Constraints: Judicial Restraint in Investment Treaty Arbitration (Oxford U Press, 2013); and Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law (Oxford U Press, 2007).

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in everyThursday at 6pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

      1. https://www.liberal.ca/canadians-can-choose-strong-progressive-change-with-justin-trudeau/

2. http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thehouse/the-house-sits-down-with-the-prime-minister-1.4512987

3. https://globalnews.ca/news/3997855/justin-trudeau-nafta-negotiations/

4. Charlie Smith (January 23, 2018), ‘Justin Trudeau announces in Davos that Canada has joined 10 other countries in new CPTPP trade deal’, The Georgia Straight; https://www.straight.com/news/1023156/justin-trudeau-announces-davos-canada-has-joined-10-other-countries-new-cptpp-trade

5. http://www.ombudsman.cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/complaint-reviews/2017/nafta-coverage/

6. ibid

It is true that every story about the Balkan Peninsula begins with the ancient Illyrians.[1] Historians believe that these Indo-European people were one of the largest European populations to inhabit the western portion of the Balkans from the coasts of the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea to the Alps about 1000 B.C. Their eastern neighbours were also Indo-European peoples – the Thracians. The demarcation line between their settlements and their cultural and political influence was the Morava river in present-day Serbia (in Latin Margus, located in the Roman province of Moesia Superior) and the Vardar river in present-day FYR of Macedonia.

On the north, on the shores of the Sava and the Danube rivers, their neighbours were the Celts, while on the south the Mt Pindus separated the Illyrians from the ancient Macedonians (who had nothing to do with today “Macedonians”) and the Greeks.[2] The Illyrians lived on the eastern littoral of the Adriatic Sea around 500 B.C. according to the Greek geographer Hecatei (Hecateus) from the city of Miletus in Asia Minor. According to the early Byzantine historian Pseudo-Scilac, who lived 150 years later, the Illyrian settlements in the Balkans in the south extended to the southern Albanian port of Valona (Vlorë).[3] Among the ancient and early medieval historians and geographers, the most reliable information on the geographic dispersion of the Illyrians and the demography of the Illyrian territory appears in the writings of Herodotus, Livy, Pliny, Ptolemy, Appianus, Strabo, Procopius of Caesarea, Synecdemos of Hierocles, Isidorus Hispaniensis, and Euagrius.

When the Celts came to the Balkans in the 3^rd century B.C. some of the Illyrian tribes mixed with them. In the same century, the Illyrian King Agron from the Ardaei tribe organised the first Illyrian state. At the time of greatest expansion, its borders extended to the Neretva river in Dalmatia, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Vjosë river in the Southern Albania and Lake Ohrid in Macedonia. Some of the 20^th-century Albanian historians and national workers claimed with a pure ethnopolitical purpose that a proclamation of an independent state of Albania on November 28^th, 1912 was based on the Albanian political-state inheritance which dated back to King Agron’s Illyrian Kingdom. Nevertheless, the Romans succeeded in defeating the Illyrians and abolishing their state organisation during the three Illyrian-Roman Wars between 229 and 168 B.C.

Second Illyrian War Map, 218 BC

The administratively-political concept of “Illyria”, or “Illyricum”, was used in subsequent centuries by the Romans who after the new conquests in the Balkans established first the Province of Illyricum, and in the 4^th century the Praefectura of Illyricum.[4] It stretched from the Istrian Peninsula in the north-west to Northern Albania on the south-east, and from the Adriatic littoral in the south to the Drava river in the north. However, the main portion of present-day Albania was not included in this “Illyrian” province and became part of the Roman Province of Macedonia. This was the result of the Roman conclusion that only the territory of Northern Albania had been settled by the Illyrian tribes, but not the Central and Southern Albania. The proponents of the Illyrian theory of the origins of the Albanians did not provide an answer to the question of why all of Albania was not absorbed into the Roman Province of Illyricum if it was entirely settled by the ancient Illyrians (who are wrongly but purposely claimed by the Albanians to be the Albanian progenitors)? The Romans finally brought under control all of the Illyrian tribes during a new war of 6−9 A.D.[5]

From that time the overwhelming and very successful process of Romanization of the whole Balkan Peninsula began.[6] Some protagonists of the Illyrian theory of the Albanian ethnic origin developed the hypothesis that the Roman Emperors Aurelian, Diocletian and Probus, who originated in the western part of the Balkans, which was settled by the Illyrian tribes, were the predecessors of the modern Albanian nation.[7]

During the reign of Diocletian (284–305), who was of the Illyrian origin, the whole Balkan Peninsula, except its eastern part, was administratively organised as the Praefectura Illyricum. Mainly due to such Roman administrative organisation of the Balkans the names Illyria and the Illyrians were preserved for a very long period of time as common names for the peoples who lived in the western and central parts of the Balkans, i.e. for the South Slavs[8] and the Albanians.[9] However, according to the 19^th−21^st-century official sciences of history, ethnology and philology (but not according to many relevant sources), the Illyrians and Slavs were not synonymous as the later came to the Balkans 1.500 years after the Illyrians.[10]

Europe in IX century

Clearly, the name Illyrians disappeared in the 7^th century at the time of the Slavic migrations to the Balkans. After the 6^th century, however, Byzantine texts do not record any accounts of Illyrians abandoning Balkan territories from the Dalmatian Alps to the Danube. The new Illyrian political and cultural centre became the region of Arbanum (in Greek, Αρβανον or Αλβανον, in Serbian, Рабан) in South Albania. The name “Albani” appeared in historical sources not earlier than the 9^th century. Byzantine historians employed the name “Albani” for the Slavic inhabitants living around the sea-port of Durazzo (ancient Dyrrhachium) in North Albania. However, from the second half of the 11^th century, the name “Albani” (in Latin, Arbanensis, or Albanenses, in Greek, Αλβανοι or Αρβανιται) was associated with all Albanian tribes who inhabited the Balkans in the 1040s.[11]

In the Middle Ages, the “Albanoi” lived in the area between the cities of Skadar (Scodra), Prizren, Ohrid and Valona. According to the champions of the Illyrian theory of the Albanian ethnogenesis, the Slavic raids and migrations to the Balkans in the early Middle Ages did not affect the native inhabitants of the territory of present-day Albania. They continued to live there, preserving their own culture, habits and social organisation. The southern Illyrian provinces retained their earlier ethnic composition. And of course, this ethnic composition was identified, although without supporting evidence in the sources, as the Albanian regardless of historical evidence and facts that the original homeland of modern Balkan Albanians is ancient Caucasian Albania wherefrom, via Sicily, Albanians arrived to the Balkans only in 1043 according to several independent historical sources, among whom the most reliable is Byzantine chronographer Michael Ataliota.[12] This historical fact is recognized even by objective Albanian historians, who are not under the political pressure by the ruling regime in Tirana, like Stefano Pollo and Arben Puto[13] but, regretablly, not by Albanian nationalists who are falsifying the history of the Balkans.[14]

*

Vladislav B. Satirovic is Founder & Director of the Private Research Centre “The Global Politics” (www.global-politics.eu), Ovsishte, Serbia. Personal web platform: www.global-politics.eu/sotirovic. Contact: [email protected]

Notes

This text is a critical contribution to the next updated and revised edition of the infamous book of pro-Albanian propaganda:

Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, New York: New York University Press, 1999.

[1] Stipčević A. Every Story About the Balkans Begins with the Illyrians. Priština, 1985; Buda A. “The Southern Illyrians as a Problem of Historiography”. Historical Writings. vol. 1. 13–15. During the last decades, many scholars have claimed that the Balkan Illyrians (and Thracians) were nothing else but ethnolinguistic Serbs [Бајић Ј. Блажени Јероним, Солинска црква и Србо-Далмати. Шабац, 2003; Деретић И. Ј., Антић П. Д., Јарчевић М. С. Измишљено досељавање Срба. Београд: Сардонија, 2009; Милановић М. Историјско порекло Срба. Београд: Admiral Books, 2011; Земљанички Б. Срби староседеоци Балкана и Паноније у војним и цивилним догађајима са Римљанима и Хеленима од I до X века. Београд: Стручна књига, 1999]. In other words, they claim, that the Serbs, but not the Albanians, are the only autochthonous people (nation) on the Balkan Peninsula, according to the historical sources of the time.

[2] Islami S., Anamali S., Korkuti M, Prendi F. Les Illyriens. Tirana, 1985. 5; Anamali S. “The Illyrians and the Albanians”. Prifti K., Nasi L., Omari L., Xhufi P., Pulaha S., Pollo S., Shtylla Z. (eds.). The Truth on Kosova. Tirana. 1993. 5; Cabanes P. Les Illyriens de Bardylis à Genthios, IV–II siècles avant J.C. Paris, 1988. 17. The borders of geographical distribution of the Illyrian population in Antique Balkans are primarily reconstructed according to the writings of the Greek historians Herodotus who lived in the 5^th century B.C. and wrote Historiae and Appianus who lived in the 2^ndcentury A.D. and wrote Illyrica.

[3] The most outstanding Illyrian tribes were: Iapudes, Dalmatae, Autariatae, Docletae and Taulantii.

[4] The Praefectura of Illyricum was subdivided into the following Provinces: Dacia Ripensis, Dacia Mediterranea, Moesia Superior Margensis, Dardania, Praevalis, Macedonia Prima, Macedonia Secunda, Epirus Nova, Epirus Vetus, Thessalia, Achaia and Creta.

[5] Ростовцев М. Историја старога света: Грчка и Рим. Нови Сад: Матица српска, 1990. 383−384.

[6] Regardless of the fact that the Latin language did not replace the Illyrian one in the territory of Albania during Roman rule, Latin did not become the language of the common people. The Illyrian language was Romanised to a certain degree and the Latin alphabet was later chosen by the Albanian national leaders as the national script of the Albanians (one of the reasons for such a decision was purely political). For sure, the Roman culture and Latin language participated in the process of the ethnogenesis of the Albanians. However, the proponents of the Illyrian theory of Albanian ethnogenesis refute this opinion emphasising that the number of Latin inscriptions found in Albania is small when compared with the number found in the other provinces of the Roman Empire. Their total number is 293. Half of these inscriptions are found in and around the Roman colony located in the ancient city of Dyrrhachium. Theodore Mommsen thought that people used exclusively the Illyrian language in the interior of Albania during the Roman occupation [Mommsen T. The Provinces of the Roman Empire. vol. 1, Chicago, MCMLXXIV. 202–203]. Dardania was one of the least Romanized Balkan regions and its native population preserved its ethnic individuality and consciousness. Subsequently, the Dardanians, who escaped Romanization and survived the South Slavic migrations to the Balkans, emerged in the Middle Ages with the name of the Albanians. Nevertheless, Latin terminology in modern Albanian and the place-names in Albania are evidence of the Illyrian-Albanian Romanization/Latinization.

[7] However, the proponents of the theory of Serbian Balkan origin claim that all Balkan-born Roman emperors (around 20) were ethnic Serbs. Diocletian and Constantine the Great are the most important among them.

[8] Among the South Slavs, and in part among the Poles and Russians, the Illyrian theory of Slavic origin was widespread from the early 16^th century to the early 19^thcentury. According to this theory, the South Slavs were the autochthonous population in the Balkans originating from the ancient Illyrians. Furthermore, all Slavs formerly lived in the Balkans and were known by the ancient authors as the Illyrians. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, they split into three groups: one group migrated to Central Europe (the Western Slavs), another group went to Eastern Europe (the Eastern Slavs) while the last group remained in the Balkans (the South Slavs). According to several medieval chronicles, the South Slavic ascendants were the ancient Illyrians, Thracians and Macedonians. Thus, Alexander the Great, Constantine the Great, Diocletian and St. Hieronymus were of South Slavic origin. In the time of Humanism, Renaissance, Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, a number of Dubrovnik (Ragusian) writers became the most prominent champions of this theory. They included Vinko Pribojević (On Origin and History of the Slavs, published in Venice in 1532), Mavro Orbini (De Regno Sclavorum, published in Pesaro in 1601) and Bartol Kašić (Institutiones Linguae Illyricae, published in 1604). Pribojević claimed that all Slavs spoke one common language, which originated in the Balkans. For him, the Russians spoke a Dalmatian dialect of the common Slavic language. This common Slavic language was named by Dubrovnik writers as “Our”, “Illyrian” or “Slavic” one. Subsequently, all Slavs who spoke “Our” language belonged to “Our” people. The influence of the Illyrian theory of (the South) Slavic origin can be seen in: 1) the work of Serbian noblemen from Transylvania, Count Đorđe Branković (1645–1711) who in 1688 wrote the first political program of the South Slavic unification into a free and independent state which he called the “Illyrian Kingdom”; in 2) the fact that Orbini’s De Regno Sclavorum was translated into Russian in 1722; and in 3) that the Croatian movement of national renewal from the time of the first half of the 19^th century was officially called as the “Illyrian Movement”.

[9] Miridita Z. Istorija Albanaca (“Iliri i etnogeneza Albanaca”). Beograd, 1969. 9−10; Qabej W. Hyrje në historinë e gjuhës shipe. Prishtinë, 1970. 29–32; Prifti K., Nasi L., Omari L., Xhufi P., Pulaha S., Pollo S., Shtylla Z. (eds.). The Truth on Kosova, Tirana, 1993. 5–73; Dobruna E. “On some ancient toponyms in Kosova”. Onomastika eKosoves. Prishtina, 1979; Anamali S. “The problem of the formation of the Albanian people in the light of archaeological information”. The National Conference on theformation of the Albanian people, their language and culture. Tirana, 1988; Çabej E. “The problem of the autochthony of Albanians in the light of place-names”. Buletini i Universitetit Shteteror te Tiranes. № 2. 1958. 54–62.  

[10] For instance, see [Ћоровић В. Историја Срба. Београд: БИГЗ, 1993. 3−66; Ферјанчић Б. Византија и Јужни Словени. Београд: Завод за издавање уџбеника Социјалистичке Републике Србије, 1966. 20−26; Kont F. Sloveni. Nastanak i razvoj slovenskih civilizacija u Evropi (VI−XIII vek). Beograd: Zavod za izdavačku delatnost „Filip Višnjić“, 1989. 14−43; Пипер П. Увод у славистику. 1. Београд: Завод за уџбенике и наставна средства Београд, 1998. 81−96].

[11] The name for the Albanians – “Арбанаси” is derived from the Latin name for the Albanians as the “Arbanenses”.

[12] Michael Ataliota. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantine. Bonn: Weber, 1853. 18.

[13] Stefano Pollo, Arben Puto. The History of Albania. London, Boston, Hebley: Routledge & Kegan, 1981. 37.

[14] Кавкаски Албанци – Лажни Илири, Проширени текстови реферата изложених 21. јуна 2007. године на мултидисциплинарном столу САНУ „Методолошки проблем истраживања порекла Албанаца“, Београд: Пешић и синови, 2007.

All images in this article are from the author.

Have you noticed that it’s no longer PC Dixon of Dock Green who mediates the relationship between the state and its citizens as he goes about his beat in your neighbourhood? Instead, it’s a Kevlar-armoured, video-monitored, taser-equipped, drone-surveilled, spit-masked supplied soldier, straight out of Star Wars, who now staggers along under the weight of an industrialized capitalism, visibly physically disconnected from the citizens they monitor by their bullet-proof uniforms, that more resemble a rack of tools in your local hardware store than the Bobby on the beat.

In fact every aspect of our lives today are mediated by an industrial capitalism that serves two purposes: firstly it disconnects the servants of the state from its citizens and secondly it makes that relationship an extremely profitable one for capitalism. There is now virtually no aspect of life that is not mediated by privatised industrial technology in some form or other and technology that has made that relationship one based on extracting profit through the act of controlling and monitoring our actions and our behaviour.

Our streets are monitored by the now ubiquitous CCTV, millions of them, or the drones hovering invisible, high above, smart phones track our movements, our buying habits and who we hang out with, or as we drive, by the ANPR systems, all the way to our health system, it too is now a relationship mediated by privatised technology whether it be the pills manufactured by industrial chemical plants or the machines that monitor and mend us. Our hospitals now resemble the production line of a factory rather than places that are hospitable to the patient’s recovery.

Our education system too, is now a supermarket for machines that monitor, miseducate and grade the students’ work and of course, continually monitor the students’ activity and behaviour, as well as extract valuable (to capitalism and the state) statistical data about the students’ performance as they are prepared for life as an obedient worker and consumer (assuming they have a job to go to).

Our workforce has for the most part been reduced to the role of a go-between by industrial machines, from the computer-controlled (and monitored) cash register, to the ubiquitous work station that I wrote about over thirty years ago. And all the while our activities are surveilled and assessed, in real time by the networked computers that manage the capitalist system for the shareholders and for the state. They talk of a Service Industry, when a Servants Industry would be a more accurate description.

The legal system too has undergone the same transformation, whether it be the prison or the courtroom. The indicted are now prosecuted by video, it’s so much more convenient and hence profitable, to cross-examine by video link rather than have the accused physically transported. And even when they are moved it’s now by giant private security corporations like G4S or SERCO who perform the function on behalf of a privatised state, which is itself now no more than a servant of capital.

Our social services, housing, the benefits system, indeed the entire system of social management and ‘care’ is now merely part of a supply chain for the extraction of surplus value from the citizen who is now enslaved by machines that monitor, grade and even punish the recalcitrant and the rebellious through the machine-monitored, ‘tick-box’ system of privatised assessment and punishment. The ‘public servant’ is now a servant to the system rather than to the citizen, reduced to being no more than a cog in a machine.

We see this at work in local and national government where civil servants no longer mediate the relationship between the state and its citizens. Instead the citizen is kept at arms length by the computer-mediated miscommunications system, all in the name of ‘efficiency’ of course. Service is now reduced to, ‘Press 1 for this’, ‘Press 2 for that’, ‘Press 3 for the other’, if your inquiry fits the needs of  a computer-controlled bureaucracy. If not, well hang up why don’t you! Spend more money phoning back once again, or do it online and be further monitored by the Panopticon called democracy.

What used to be called leisure, is now no more than an assembly line for the passive consumption of products. Video games, movies, ‘sport’, all are now part of the Entertainment Industry, no more than yet another means for extracting surplus value from us as we move from cradle to grave.

It’s clear that there is now not a single facet of our lives that is not in some way subservient to the privatised Digital Panopticon, whose sole objective is firstly, to monitor our activities 24/7 and secondly, to maximise profits for some invisible, transnational financial entity located not here in the UK but in some far-flung location, be it Hong Kong or the Australian Outback!

How did this happen?

I have to ask this question: Why did we allow this creeping enslavement to happen to our lives? Why has it been so easy for capitalism to entrap us in this way? It’s as if we sleep-walked into it, mesmerised in our automobiles on the way to the shopping mall, or whilst glued to the video game or football match or whatever diversion we have been taught to passively consume.

Undoubtedly it’s the neoliberal rollback initiated by Thatcher with the privatisation of the state’s role in our public services and the selloff of public assets, to the point that we have reached today, that made the creation of the corporate, security state all the more possible[1]. And undoubtedly, the demise of organised labour has been a major contributing factor in our inability to resist it, but that came pretty much at the end of a process that had been in the works for well over a century, back to the time when socialists and organised labour, rather than challenging capital, decided to become its partner and attempt to ‘reform’ it. A process that failed dramatically and worse, disempowered us, alienated us from each other, fragmenting and individualising our lives, that in turn gave the unholy alliance of the state and big capital total control over us.

1945 was the last gasp of some kind of alternative to the madness of  unrestrained capitalism, with the election of the postwar Labour government, a madness that now is no longer just localised but that threatens the future of all humanity.

Is it now too late to reverse this catastrophe?

Those of you who know my writing will also know that I have very little faith in Jeremy Corbyn and even less in the Labour Party to call a halt to this disaster and I have enumerated many times why I think this is so. That successive Labour governments have contributed directly to making the current situation possible in the first place. That successive Labour MPs and governments stretching all the way back to the early 20th century have backed war, have backed the Empire, have backed the impoverishment of millions of ordinary, working people. Why should it be any different this time?

Yet millions have put their faith in the possibility of a revitalised Labour Party, a Labour Party that could be forced to change direction a full 180 degrees! I’d really like to think that there is just the glimmer of a possibility that this time it’s different, that the situation is now so dire that Corbyn, with the support of the millions of people who voted for him (including me I might add), will turn things around before it’s too late. That he will have the cohones to challenge Big Capital, to challenge his own imperialist Labour bureaucracy and its self-serving members of an entrenched political class. Or is this just nothing more than wishful thinking on my part?

After all, my local Labour MP is Kate Hoey, who frankly, I regard as a complete nut case, what on Earth possessed me to vote for her? Nothing short of sheer desperation is what! But it just shows what a desperate situation we are in, when that’s all I could do. So instead of concentrating on the real issues that confront us as a class, as a nation, we find ourselves mired in the total, idiotic and pointless bullshit of Brexit! And if ever there was a diversion designed to do just that, it was the Brexit referendum!

What the Brexit vote reveals, more than anything else, is the total and utter lack of any semblance of democracy in this nation, when a handful of country squires who clearly inhabit some medieval, alternate universe, can dictate to the rest of us-whether we are for or against being in the EU!

So is it realistic to envisage realigning a Parliament that pretends that it’s been here since 14th century or even earlier, to one that actually exists in the 21st and use it to transform our economy and our political culture? And what an irony that at one and the same time we live in the most spied upon, the most surveilled, the most monitored and the most controlled nation on the planet!

The British ruling class are the oldest, the most cunning, the most experienced, at retaining power, on the planet. Yet it’s also a ruling class that is the most decrepit, the most backward, and the most reactionary, and the most entrenched. It has built institutions that have all the appearance of being forces of nature. Immovable objects firmly rooted in the earth. The very idea of challenging it is almost sacrilegious, yet this is what has to be done or all is lost. I ask you once more, is Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party fit to carry out this task?

*

This article was originally published by Investigating Imperialism.

The House Intelligence Committee’s report on the FBI/DOJ deception of the FISA court has now been released.  I have read the so-called “Nunes Memo.”  As far as I can tell, the report from the House Intelligence Committee says exactly what the previously released Memorandum Opinion and Order from the FISA court itself says.  I posted the court document here — and explanations of it here and here.

The FISA court document, declassified and released, contains confessions from both the FBI and DOJ that the agencies misled the court and falsely acquired surveillance permission. The FBI and DOJ mischaracterize their deception of the court as “mistakes.”  The agencies provide the court with improvements in their procedures so as not to make “mistakes” in the future.

Why did the FBI and DOJ rush to confess to the FISA court?  The reason is that NSA Director Adm. Rodgers discovered their illicit spying, investigated it, and let it be known that he was reporting the FBI and DOJ malfeasance to the FISA court.  Adm. Rodgers also informed President Trump.  

All of this is known.  Yet the House Intelligence Committee and the White House released the “Nunes Memo” without pointing out that it was already confirmed by the FISA court itself and by NSA Director Adm. Rogers.  Why?

One consequence of this continuing Republican incompetence is that it allows the MSM, who also know about the FISA court memorandum, to ignore that confessions validating the “Nunes Memo” are in the hands of the FISA court.  Consequently, the MSM including CNN, are  misrepresenting the documented facts in the House Intelligence Committee report as “Nunes’ allegations,” “Nunes’ assertions,” “a disputed GOP intelligence memo that alleges FBI abuses,” and so forth.  See this for example.

We know that there is not an ounce of integrity in the MSM and no respect whatsoever for truth.  CNN misrepresents the documented findings of the House Intelligence Committee, findings backed up by the released FISA court document, as a “highly controversial memo” that “is the most explicit Republican effort yet to discredit the FBI’s investigation into Trump and Russia, alleging that the investigation was infused with an anti-Trump bias under the Obama administration and supported with political opposition research.”

The FBI, that is, the organization that should be indicted for conspiracy against the United States, alleges falsely that “the memo omits key information that could impact its veracity.”  It does not.  You can find the same information in the FISA court document.  Moreover, Adm. Rogers can be put on the stand, and he can confirm that the FBI and DOJ misled the FISA court to obtain permission to spy for partisan political reasons.  

Why the Republicans, armed with enough information to smash the FBI, Obama DOJ, DNC, and presstitute conspiracy, can’t put their act together is a mystery.   

Compare the words of US attorney Joe DiGenova with those of the CNN presstitutes. 

*

This article was originally published by Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

The latest policy recommendations by the influential Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), one of the most well-respected and listened-to experts in Russia – to say nothing of the entire former Soviet space – is causing quite a stir by waxing nostalgically about the Obama years and even suggesting that Moscow should embrace the American “deep state”.

Mr. Kortunov’s Case For Russia’s “Deep State”-Democrat Partnership

Mr. Andrey Kortunov is one of the most brilliant minds in Russia and earned his place as the Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), and his words accordingly carry much weight for the fact that they set the tone for countless other analysts in the country and even an untold number of policymakers who look to him for guidance.

That’s why it caused quite a stir when he published his latest recommendation earlier this week at the famous Valdai Club titled “Russian Approaches to the United States: Algorithm Change Is Overdue”, in which he waxed nostalgically about the Obama years and even suggested that Moscow should embrace the American “deep state”.

So as not to put words in his mouth, the relevant passages are republished in their entirety below:

“First, it is better to avoid demonizing the Deep State, which is perceived by many in Moscow as the center of world evil and the stronghold of the pathological haters of Russia. Of course, most of the State Department or the CIA officials, the Congress staff, experts from the main think tanks are not Vladimir Putin’s fans. But these people, at least, have considerable experience of interaction with Moscow and can hardly be considered stubborn paranoids, exalted conspiracy theorists or genetic Russophobes. Deep State consists of rationally thinking professionals, who are always easier to deal with than romantic amateurs are. With all its shortcomings, it is the Deep State that limits Donald Trump’s most exotic and potentially most dangerous foreign policy oddities.

 Second, it’s time to change the attitude toward the Democratic Party leadership. For some reason (probably because of inertia) the Barack Obama administration is constantly remembered in Russia in the worst possible way, with the two latest presidents constantly juxtaposed. How is Obama bad, and Trump is good? The stubborn facts show otherwise. For example, Obama pursued a consistent policy of rapprochement with Iran, and Trump returned to the most severe pressure on Tehran. Obama followed the international consensus on the status of Jerusalem, and Trump destroyed this consensus. Obama did not resort to direct military action against Bashar Assad, and Trump did not hesitate to give an order to launch missiles against the Syrian Al- Shayrat airbase. Well, who after all created more problems for Russia — Democrats or Republicans?”

Mr. Kortunov did indeed talk about other aspects of US-Russian relations, including the need for a bottom-up approach to improving his country’s soft power in America, but none of those proposals are controversial, at least not when compared to what he wrote about above.

A diversity of respectful views in any discourse is symptomatic of a healthy democracy, and Russian society is no different in this respect, which is why the dialogue on this topic would be greatly enriched by presenting some counterpoints to Mr. Kortunov’s article.

Deciphering The “Deep State”

The first is that the US’ military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) are experienced and rational like Mr. Kortunov describes them as, but that they nevertheless bear primary responsibility for the deterioration in US-Russian relations under both the Obama and Trump Presidencies because the bulk of these professional bureaucrats always retain their jobs between leadership transitions in the country.

The President is supposed to determine the broad trajectory of their work in consultation with his closest advisors, some of whom are handpicked by him and approved by Congress to lead the relevant institutions of the “deep state” while others are more informal, but the rank-and-file members of the “deep state” are still largely more responsible for the execution of policy in practice than anyone else.

Unprecedentedly, many of them oppose President Trump’s stated desire to improve relations with Russia and have worked to unconstitutionally offset his plans, and the pressure that they’ve put on him to this end explains why he’s undertaken decisively anti-Russian policies during his first year in office despite his campaign pledge to do the opposite.

Seeing as how most of these “deep state” individuals naturally remained in the same positions that they had during the Obama Administration and would have probably still retained their jobs under Hillary’s Presidency, it’s inaccurate to attribute the deterioration of Russian-American ties to President Trump personally while overlooking the actions of the “deep state” that he’s still trying to reform to the best of his ability.

The “deep state” is rational – too rational, it can be argued – because it embraces a Neo-Realist paradigm of International Relations that sometimes correlates with Trump’s own views on certain topics but other times contradicts them like in the case of Russia, and the internal power struggle between Trump and the “deep state” is what’s really to blame for the worsening of bilateral relations, not the “amateur” President’s “romanticism” like Mr. Kortunov insists.

For these reasons, it can be argued that Mr. Kortunov’s belief that the “deep state” “can hardly be considered stubborn paranoids, exalted conspiracy theorists or genetic Russophobes” isn’t exactly accurate, since it’s indeed full of “stubborn paranoids” under the dual influence of the neoconservatives’ Neo-Realism and the Obama-Clinton worldview of “militant liberalism”.

That said, the “conspiracy theories” that he references are just a “deep state” infowar distraction to deceive the voting masses while the assertion that such a thing as a “genetic Russophobe” exists wrongly implies that an individual’s political views are irreversibly predetermined by their DNA.

To flip around Mr. Kortunov’s last comment on the matter, it’s more realistic to assert that “with all his shortcomings, it is Donald Trump that limits the Deep State’s most exotic and potentially most dangerous foreign policy oddities.”

Debunking The Dreams Of Democrat Rule

Relatedly, Mr. Kortunov’s views on the “deep state” clearly influence his attitude towards the Democrats and specifically the Obama Administration, which he thinks is unfairly “remembered in Russia in the worst possible way” because “the stubborn facts show otherwise” and apparently disprove the prevailing notion that “Obama (is) bad, and Trump is good.”

Mr. Kortunov thinks that Obama had pure intentions in signing the nuclear agreement with Iran, though it can cynically be argued that his “deep state” was in fact trying to co-opt the Islamic Republic’s “moderate/reformist” ruling elite in a bid to tip the scales to their favor in the country’s own “deep state” competition for influence with the “conservative/principalist” military-security faction, the failure of which would explain why Trump was tasked with “returning to the most severe pressure on Tehran.”

The enduring presence of most of the “deep state’s” personnel between presidential administrations doesn’t preclude the US from pivoting between policies but actually allows such moves to be more smoothly executed, as can be seen from the example of Nixon’s rapprochement with China in spite of Johnson’s antagonism towards it; Bush Sr. “betraying” Iraq even though Reagan aligned with it; Obama signing the nuclear deal against the former Bush Jr. Administration’s wishes; and Trump dismantling his predecessor’s plans.

Although the President might set the tone for the overall direction that each respective policy should go in and this sometimes reverses what the previous administration did, it’s ultimately the “deep state” that puts these ideas into practice and is able to maintain a degree of strategic continuity that advances America’s national interests regardless, though the case of Trump’s vision for US-Russia relations also shows that this same “deep state” can also conspire to obstruct the President’s will.

Image on the right is Director of the Russian International Affairs Council Andrey Kortunov.

Another “stubborn fact” at variance with Mr. Kortunov’s nostalgia for Democrat rule is the practical significance of Obama “following the international consensus on the status of Jerusalem” and Trump “destroying” it since it inaccurately hints that the former was somehow ‘pro-Palestinian’ and that the latter’s announcement tangibly changed something on the ground, neither of which are true because Obama was actually very pro-Israel and Trump’s decision only stands to affect foreign aid recipients who voted against the US and the UN.

Looking beyond Obama’s highly publicized personal rivalry with Netanyahu and his populist rhetoric on the Palestinian issue, nothing that he did during his two terms had any influence on Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem and unilateral claim to the entirety of the city being its capital; likewise, Trump’s words didn’t change any of this reality either and only resulted in word games being played at the UN and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, neither of which did anything other than attempt to comfort the Palestinians.

As for Mr. Kortunov’s juxtaposition of Obama’s refusal to “resort to direct military action against Bashar Assad” with Trump “not hesitating to give an order to launch missiles against the Syrian Al- Shayrat airbase”, he’s totally overlooking the 44^thPresident’s responsibility for the theater-wide “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions and the resultant Hybrid War of Terror on Syria which dealt incomparably more damage to Syria and its democratically elected President’s standing that Trump’s handful of one-off missiles.

In addition, Trump only ordered the attack because he was under intense “deep state” pressure to do so after having been caught in a Catch-22 trap where he was forced to “put his money where his mouth is” and respond to the false-flag chemical weapons attack that violated his “red line”, but truthfully speaking, what Mr. Kortunov might really resent is that it only took a few million dollars’ worth of missiles to call President Putin’s bluff in hinting at a military response to the exact same scenario in 2013 that got Obama to back down at the time.

To respond to Mr.Kortunov’s rhetorical question of “who after all created more problems for Russia — Democrats or Republicans?”, the reader should be reminded that the Obama Administration presided over or was outright responsible for the “Arab Spring” and its attendant regime changes, the War on Syria, the 2011-12 anti-government unrest in Moscow, EuroMaidan and the Ukrainian Civil War, the anti-Russian sanctions, and the fake news scheme of “Kremlin interference” in order to suppress Russia’s publicly funded international media outlets and harass their employees, among many other examples.

In comparison, Trump merely continued most of the policy trajectories that Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first initiated, and even then he’s tried to resist some of the “deep state’s” pressure when it comes to Russia, so as bad as he’s been for Moscow’s interests, one should wonder how much worse Hillary would have been she entered into the Presidency and allowed the “deep state” to do as it pleases.

Concluding Thoughts

Mr. Kortunov seems to have wanted to spark a serious conversation about how Russia’s “deep state” should respond to the disappointment that it experienced throughout Trump’s first year in office, and if that was his intention, then he remarkably succeeded by controversially reinterpreting the Obama years as something to apparently be nostalgic about and boldly suggesting that his government reconsider its negative attitude to Trump’s “deep state” foes.

In the spirit of dialogue that Mr. Kortunov implicitly encouraged by publishing such a provocative piece, it’s only fitting that a rebuttal be presented to challenge his premise that the Democrats and their “deep state” handlers are supposedly more preferable to Russia than Trump is, especially seeing as how he selectively pointed to a few decontextualized examples that were presumably cherry-picked in order to promote his argument.

With all due respect to this prestigious gentleman, his entire notion is flat-out wrong and shows that he doesn’t at all understand Trump’s “Kraken”-like leadership and his never-ending struggle to survive the “deep state’s” permanent Clintonian Counter-Revolution that’s being waged in trying to undermine the Second American Revolution that the President is trying to carry out in America’s domestic and foreign affairs.

Instead of ignoring the plethora of evidence proving the Obama Administration’s hostility to Russia and its international interests, Mr. Kortunov should have at least made a superficial reference to it because this glaring omission implies a deliberate partiality towards that political faction and the “deep state” in general, which is fine to have in principle but nevertheless casts doubt on how effective his proposals would be in the overall sense of things if they were ever put into practice.

Mr. Kortunov is evidently unaware that the same “deep state” that he finds attractive in contrast to Trump had a controlling influence in determining the Obama Administration’s anti-Russian policies that the 44^th President’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended up implementing with ruinous consequences for Moscow’s grand strategic interests, and that she would have given the “deep state” free rein to do whatever it wanted had she won unlike Trump’s willingness to challenge its most extreme tendencies (though with mixed results).

Having said that, pragmatic working relations between Russia and the US’ “deep states” are inevitable because there isn’t any alternative to interacting with any national counterpart’s collection of military, intelligence, and diplomatic figures no matter how much one may disagree with their policies unless ties between the two sides are formally suspended, which isn’t foreseeable but would in any case still allow for the existence of communication backchannels.

What Mr. Kortunov is lobbying for is something altogether different because he wants Russian decision makers to reconceptualize the American “deep state” as a ‘positive’, ‘moderating’, and ‘responsible’ force against what he characterizes as Trump’s ”romantic”, “amateurish”, “most exotic and potentially most dangerous foreign policy oddities”, which is ironically a very “romantic” and “exotic” view to have of the US’ most dangerous anti-Russian institutional forces.

In all actuality, however, the “deep state” and its Democrat allies are the real reason why Trump hasn’t been able to succeed in his pledge to improve Russian-American relations, and these two problems shouldn’t ever be confused as part of the solution that’s needed to reverse this downward spiral, nor should a tactical partnership with these two actors ever be considered if Moscow hopes to maintain the upper hand in the New Cold War.

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This article was originally published by Oriental Review.

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

The pressure is escalating against the development of China as a global factor. At the same time the Pentagon released its 2018 US National Security Strategy paper explicitly targeting Russia and China as prime USA strategic threat overshadowing that from international terrorism, India, a member of a new alliance fostered recently by Washington to target China, hosted the third international Raisina Dialogue conference. The primary theme was China as “disruptor” power in the world and what to do about that.

The true nature of the three-day meeting in New Delhi was obscured in press accounts but research revealed an extraordinary coming together of forces and interests opposed to China’s game-altering Belt, Road Initiative—the new Economic Silk Road Initiative. Most notable was the fact that Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi, keynote speaker at the Raisina Dialogue in 2017 this year gave the center stage to his “good friend” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was not to foster peaceful development across Asia.

The theme of the Raisina Dialogue, sponsored by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a leading Indian geopolitical think tank, was ‘Managing Disruptive Transitions.’ The number one “disruptive transition” they discussed was China and China’s Belt, Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes called the new Economic Silk Road.

Admiral Sunil Lanba, the Indian Navy’s chief of staff, warned the gathering of expanding China naval bases in Africa and in Sri Lanka. Speakers expressed the view that the China massive infrastructure project across Asia and Eurasia was “trampling on countries’ economies, institutions and security.”

Most notable is who was attending the major New Delhi talks. Among others in addition to Netanyahu was Carl Bildt, former Swedish Foreign Minister and adviser to Ukraine oligarch president Poroshenko who also sits on the board of George Soros’ European Council on Foreign Relations. Hamad Karzai, Washington’s choice as President of Afghanistan was present as was former Canada PM Stephen Harper, who has been called a Canadian neo-conservative, close to Netanyahu policies and openly Russia-phobic.

The Quad Takes Aim at China

NATO was there at a very high level with Admiral Harry Harris, Commander, US Pacific Command, and UK General Chris Deverell, the Joint Forces Commander. Indicating the underlying nature of the Raisina gathering, the navy chiefs from the four “Quad” countries – Japan, Australia, India and the US – the four countries that Washington is bringing together to counter China’s Belt, Road, were in full force. As well there was retired US general David Petraeus, the former CIA Director, and architect of the Iraq US military operations that gave rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq as well as the US military debacle in Afghanistan.

Alarming were the remarks of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu who called for an alliance of Israel, India and what he called an “alliance of democracies” (sic) to “strengthen our relationships as our way of life is being challenged by radical Islam.” The focus on “radical Islam” was code for the India concern that Islamic Pakistan is a cooperation partner with China in the China-India Economic Corridor of the BRI.

The real substance of the New Delhi gathering was to congeal a strategy of containment of China using a new coalition of four states—Japan, India, Australia and the United States. In November, 2017 during the visit of the US President in a Manila summit, the four agreed to closely coordinate measures to contain China. These four announced they had formed a coalition to patrol the disputed East and South China Seas where China is making territorial claims. The US has even changed the designation of the region from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific to focus on the role of India. The New Delhi talks were a direct consequence of the new Quad strategy as is the new Pentagon Defense Strategy 2018 which explicitly targets China along with Russia as guilty of disturbing Washington’s “rules based order” with what the Pentagon calls China’s “predatory economics” along its Belt, Road Initiative.

Admiral Harry Harris Jr, Commander of US Pacific Command, spoke during the Raisina talks in clear words about China:

“The reality is that China is a disruptive transitional force in the Indo-Pacific, they are the owner of the trust deficit in the region.”

Vice Admiral Tim Barrett, Chief of Navy, Australia called for concrete actions against the Chinese naval presence in the South China Sea while Admiral Sunil Lanba, India’s Chief of Naval Staff, said

“The Chinese already have a naval base in Djibouti and we’re aware of their base in Hambantota. So this is going to be the pattern for the near future in the Indian Ocean.”

Former US Ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan, neo-con ideologue Zalmay Khalilzad attacked China’s Belt, Road Initiative claiming that by connecting all of Eurasia it would “change the international order.” Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano, Chief of Staff of the Japan Joint Staff, said Beijing is changing the status quo in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, and it is important for countries in the area to close ranks against it, claiming that China’s Belt and Road initiative aims at military expansion.

As the New Delhi conference was ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan over China’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $50 billion infrastructure corridor of the China BRI, which passes through Pakistan’s section of Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan’s only land link to China, escalated. China is offering to meet with India to discuss differences, while India accuses Pakistan of illegal border violations along the un-demarcated Line of Control across the mountains of Jammu and Kashmir. Indian chief of Army, Bipin Rawat has announced that Indian troops have begun targeting Pakistani border posts, and refused Pakistani requests for negotiations over the escalation.

Washington can quietly stay in the background, encouraging escalation of tensions between its Quad allies and China’s Silk Road or BRI. The escalation of tensions in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Myanmar all beat the pawprints of Washington dirty tricks. The losers in such an escalation will be all of Asia, not merely China.

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

Featured image is from the author.

It’s WMD all over again.

Anonymous “US officials” are once again accusing a targeted “regime” of using “chemical weapons” and threatening that the U.S. military may have to “hold it accountable”. Once again, western media is broadcasting these accusations and threats without skepticism or investigation.

The Washington Post story is titled “Trump administration: Syria probably continuing to make, use chemical weapons”.  Jane’s Defence Weekly quotes a U.S. official saying “They clearly think they can get away with this ….”

Jerusalem Online says

“A US official says Syrian President Assad’s forces may be developing new types of chemical weapons, which which could reach as far as the US..”

The Reuters story in the New York Times says

“US officials have said the Syrian government may be developing new types of chemical weapons, and President Donald Trump is prepared to consider further military action…. President Bashar al Assad is believed to have secretly kept part of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile….”

The Washington Post article concludes with the threat,

“If the international community does not take action now . . . we will see more chemical weapons use, not just by Syria but by non-state actors such as ISIS and beyond,” the first official said. “And that use will spread to U.S. shores.”

Based on a review of facts from recent history, it is very likely the story is false and is being broadcast to deceive the public in preparation for new military aggression. Anyone who thinks that politicians don’t consider timing and marketing needs to only recall the statement of a GW Bush official that

“from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

The “product” was the PR campaign to get the American public to accept the invasion of Iraq.

When is there going to be some accountability for the US military industrial complex and their political and media enablers and promoters?

The invasion of Vietnam with over 500 thousand US soldiers was preceded by the phoney Gulf of Tonknin incident where a US ship was supposedly attacked by a North Vietnamese vessel. It was untrue and President Johnson knew it. The resolution was passed unanimously (416-0) in the House and only Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening had the integrity and insight to oppose it in the Senate. Was anyone ever held accountable for the lie that led to 55 thousand dead US soldiers and millions of dead Vietnamese? No.

The 1991 attack on Iraq and subsequent massacre of Iraqi soldiers and civilians was preceded by the fabricated testimony of the Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter pretending to be a nurse who had witnessed Iraqi soldiers stealing incubators and leaving Kuwaiti babies on the floor. Were the marketing officials Hill & Knowlton and politicians such as Tom Lantos who managed this deceit ever held accountable? No.

In 2003 the US launched the invasion of Iraq leading to the death of over a million Iraqis based on the false and fabricated evidence provided by the CIA and uncritically promoted by the mainstream media. For example,  Michael Gordon and Thomas Friedman promoted and lauded the invasion at the NY Times. Were they held to account?  No, they carry right on to today.

In 2011 the US led NATO attacks on Libya with the stated purpose to “protect civilians” from massacre. This was explained and encouraged by journalists and pundits such as Nicholas Kristof and Juan Cole. NATO officials bragged about their operation. After the brief western euphoria, it became clear that the campaign was based on lies and the real result was an explosion of extremism, massacres and and chaos which continues to today. Accountability? None. One rarely hears about Libya today. Out of sight, out of mind.

In August of 2013 we heard about a massive sarin gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus. Human Rights Watch and others promoting a western attack quickly accused the Syrian government. They asserted that Assad had crossed Obama’s “red line” and the US needed to intervene directly. Subsequent investigations revealed the gas attack was not carried out by the Syrian government. It was perpetrated by a Turkish supported terrorist faction with the goal of pressuring the Obama administration to directly attack Syria. Two Turkish parliamentarians presented evidence of Turkey’s involvement in the transfer of sarin. Some of the best and most time-proven US investigative journalists, including Robert Parry and Seymour Hersh, researched and discovered the evidence points to Turkish supported “rebels” not Syria. Despite the factual evidence exposing the “junk heap” of false claims, mainstream media and their followers continue to assert that Assad committed the crime.

In April 2017 it was the same thing: US and allies made accusations which were never proven and ultimately discredited. The UN / OPCW investigation team never visited the scene of the crime. They discovered the curious fact that dozens of victims in multiple locations showed up at hospitals with symptoms of chemical injuries before the attack happened. This is strong evidence of fraud but that investigation was not pursued. With or without awareness of the deceit, Trump ordered missile strikes on a Syrian air base which killed 13 people including four children. Accountability? None.

Recently it has become clear that dark forces in the US government ad military do not intend to stop their efforts to destroy Syria. Despite confusion  and contradictory claims in the US administration, a core fact is that the US is training and supplying a sectarian military militia inside northern Syria against the wishes of the Syrian government. The US said they were in Syria to get rid of ISIS but now that ISIS is largely gone, the US military says it is not leaving. On the contrary, the US military helped escort ISIS fighters from Raqqa to al Bukamal and the US is now training ISIS fighters to be reincarnated as yet another anti-Assad “rebel” force.

As always, US aggression needs some measure of political support. To gain that, they need a justification. Thus it’s WMD all over again. Once again. the “bad guys” are using chemical weapons on their own people. Supposedly the Syrian government is incredibly stupid …. they just keep on using chemical weapons and giving the US a justification to act as judge, jury and executioner.

Most of the American public is too busy, distracted or overwhelmed with problems to investigate U.S. government claims. Mainstream media, including some alternative media, are failing badly. They are supposed to be holding government to account, critically questioning the assertions, investigating the facts, exposing contradictions and falsehoods. Along with the politicians and government, they have some responsibility for the ongoing wars and aggression. They all should be accountable. When is that going to happen?

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Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be reached at [email protected]

At least six times — in 2006, twice in 2007, in 2008, in 2010, and most recently at the end of 2014 — the Congressional Research Service has reported to Congress the U.S. Government’s costs, thus far, for its invasions of Iraq and of Afghanistan. All times, medical costs for treatments of the surviving U.S. invaders, and disability-payments to them for their war-related disabilities, were excluded, because, according to CRS, that information is “not available from the VA.”

Wikileaks, the organization whose head Julian Assange the U.S. Government wants either to assassinate or else place permanently into a high-security prison and disable from communicating with the world outside, says that “Individual members of Congress will release specific CRS reports if they believe it to assist them politically, but CRS archives as a whole are firewalled from public access”; so, there are probably other, and more-recent, versions of this CRS document, but the most-recent one which has yet been made public is the 8 December 2014 version. In that version, the amount that the U.S. Government had spent — up till then — on these two invasions and military occupations, both of Iraq and Afghanistan, was $1.6 trillion total. No projection of what the total cost of either invasion-occupation will cost the U.S. Government has ever been publicly issued from the U.S. Government.

Furthermore, as regards those medical and disability costs, “not available from the VA,” Joseph Steiglitz and Linda Bilmes in 2008 published their estimate of what those costs would turn out to be, and based their estimates on both the raw VA numbers of veterans from those two wars who were receiving benefits from those two benefit-programs, and on the historical evidence from WW II and other U.S. wars, regarding how those expenses trend during the decades following a war. On 13 June 2011, Bilmes looked again at the VA data, and she headlined the revised results, as of that time, “Current and Projected Future Costs of Caring for Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars” and reported that she found that it was clear that she and Stiglitz had severely underestimated the numbers of troops who would be receiving benefits under those two programs. Far more troops were receiving these benefits than they had projected for 2011. She then revised there the earlier estimates, into line with the actual 2011 numbers. Her revised estimate was shown in “Table 2: Estimated PV of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Disability and Medical Costs” and the “moderate-realistic” projection was $934 billion; the “best-case” projection was $589 billion. In other words: these federal costs will probably be around $934 billion, but will almost certainly be above $589 billion. But, in either instance: the CRS is simply ignoring these costs — whatever they are.

Here, below, are highlights, key excerpts, from the latest publicly available information regarding this matter — the CRS report to Congress, on 8 December 2014:

“The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11”

Amy Belasco, Specialist in U.S. Defense Policy and Budget, December 8, 2014

Summary 

With enactment of the FY2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act on January 1, 2014 (H.R. 3547/P.L. 113-73), Congress has approved appropriations for the past 13 years of war that total $1.6 trillion for military operations, base support, weapons maintenance, training of Afghan and Iraq security forces, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the war operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks. Of this $1.6 trillion total, CRS estimates that the total is distributed as follows: 

$686 billion (43%) for Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) for Afghanistan and other counterterror operations received; 

$815 billion (51%) for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF)/Operation New Dawn (OND); 

$27 billion (2%) for Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at military bases; and 

$81 billion (5%) for war-designated funding not considered directly related to the Afghanistan or Iraq wars.

As would be expected, the majority of the FY2015 request is for the war in Afghanistan with 

$58.1 billion for Afghanistan/OEF; 

$5.0 billion for Iraq/OIF/OND; 

$100 million for enhanced security; and 

$10.4 billion for other war-designated costs that are not directly part of war operations or aid to Afghanistan or Iraq. 

By Agency 

Splitting the cumulative total of $1.6 trillion (excluding OIR) appropriated by agency: 

$1.5 trillion was appropriated to DOD; 

$92.7 billion to State/USAID, and 

$17.6 billion to the Veterans Administration (VA) for medical treatment15 (15 This figure does not include the cost of benefits for OEF/OIF/OND veterans, which is not available from the VA.) (Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) largely for the Afghan war; Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND) for Iraq.)

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Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, severely criticized, in his 26 June 2017 “U.S. Military Spending: The Cost of Wars”, the U.S. Government’s hiding of its war-costs; or, as he phrased this in the passive tense (so as to hide the blame for it), “the failure to deal with the cost of America’s wars.” And, naturally (further in order to keep his job), he said nothing about how America’s 100 biggest federal contractors, almost all of which are firms that, like Lockheed Martin, make weapons and sell them to governments that employ them to kill people in foreign lands, depend mostly (if not 100%) upon these invasions by the U.S. and its allies, in order to be able to stay in business. But he did point out “Critical Failures by Both the Executive Branch and Congress” (though not by the newsmedia that constantly propagandize for more and more invasions, such as of Iraq and of Syria — propagandize for being ’tough on defense’, as if invasions are for ‘defense’, instead of for aggression, as the world outside America knows to be the case). Cordesman notes that, “Reporting by the Executive Branch seems almost designed to obscure the real costs of conflict,” though he does not say anything about the ways in which the top-100 U.S. Government contractors — the firms that sell the most to the U.S. Government — control U.S. international relations, so as to benefit their stockholders, such as by selling more and more missiles. And he goes on to observe that

“The Congress has done no better. Ironically, members of Congress are fond of criticizing the Administration for lacking a strategy.”

But, he says nothing about the incentive-system that crucially explains this ugly state-of-affairs.

He then points out

“The Need for Far Better Accountability in Planning, Programming, and Budgeting U.S. Wars.”

Cordesman’s report then proceeds to summarize work by independent analysts who find that the U.S. Government is systematically under-reporting the costs of its invasions. Here is that passage:

Summary of Direct Costs of the Afghan War, Iraq War, and Total OCO in Budget Authority vs. Other Illustrative Estimates

The charts and tables in this section summarize the actual and projected cost of U.S. wars as reported for the OCO account — drawing heavily largely on earlier work by the Congressional Research Service.

• The Department of Defense’s OCO costs of the Afghan conflict since FY2001 will rise to $840.7 billion — if the President’s FY2018 budget request is met. They will be $770.5 billion for Iraq.

• The total costs for all OCO spending between FY2001 and FY2018 will be in excess of $1,909 billion. Given the costs omitted from the OCO budget, the real total cost will almost certainly be well over $2 trillion, even using OCO data as the only costs of the wars.

These latter estimates update a series of earlier CRS analyses, one of which noted that, “Other observers and analysts define war costs more broadly than congressional appropriations and include estimates of the life- time costs of caring for OEF/OIF/OND veterans, imputed interest costs on the deficit, or increases in DOD’s base budget deemed to be a consequence of support for the war…Such costs are difficult to compute, subject to extensive caveats, and often based on methodologies that may not be appropriate…”

Three alternative cost estimates are also summarized in this section.

• One by Lina J. Blimes [actually Linda J. Bilmes] puts the total cost at $4 to $6 trillion by end FY2016.

• A related estimate by the Watson Institute puts the cost at $4.8 trillion through FY2016.

• A third estimate, by Neta Crawford, puts costs at more than $4.8 trillion through FY2017, plus more than $7.9 trillion in cumulative interest on past appropriations, or more than $12.7 trillion.

It is important to note that separate work by Todd Harrison of CSIS in assessing the overall OCO account — Enduring Dilemma of Overseas Contingency Operations Funding, Transition45 Series, January 11, 2017 — states that both Congress and the Obama administration moved items from the base budget to the OCO budget as a way of circumventing the BCA budget caps. Roughly half of the OCO budget ($30 billion) is now being used for programs and activities that were previously funded in the base budget.  

In other words: the people that are being voted into public office at the federal level in the United States (including the President and the Congress) are skillfully hiding from the public the costs — to the American people, not to the lands we destroy by our invasions — of our invasions and military occupations of foreign countries that (like both Iraq and Afghanistan) never invaded, nor even threatened to invade, the United States.

Cordesman is touching very close to portraying a criminal U.S. Government, but he avoids discussing, at all, the private persons, billionaires, whose collective trillions of dollars of personal wealth have been derived largely from instituting and refining this system of massive international imposition of death, crippling, and destruction — most but not all of which is experienced abroad, rather than by Americans.

Then, Cordesman makes some rough estimates, to compare today’s American military-industrial complex, with earlier ones:

• The Afghan and Iraq/Syria wars are more than five times more expensive than World War I.
• They are more than five times more expensive than the Korean War.
• They are nearly 2.5 times more expensive than the Vietnam War.
• They are more than 18 times more expensive than the first Gulf War in 1991.
• Given the estimates that the real costs are already well over $4 trillion, these multipliers would be more than doubled if any of the alternative war costs cited earlier are correct.

Just excluding the interest-costs from these calculations — the “more than $7.9 trillion in cumulative interest on past appropriations” — makes clear at least one of the reasons why America’s children will be growing up to work hard just to pay the taxes to cover the federal debt that was incurred in order to keep soaring the wealth of today’s billionaires who benefit from this ‘democracy’. The public’s children will pay that public debt, and, by that time, they will perhaps be honoring, from their hovels, the children of the individuals who will have inherited control over the 100 largest U.S. Government contractors.

There are some other governments that choose not to function this way; they refuse to privatize their military industries, because those countries understand — which Americans are prevented from understanding — what “the military-industrial complex” actually consists of, and why its very existence is an unforgivable curse upon the world, which nations less corrupt than the United States is, will simply not allow. Profiting from war should be prohibited — or at least weapons-purchases from private entities should be prohibited. This should be discussed at the United Nations. The fur would then fly there; but, that’s far better than the flesh flying everywhere, as it now does. And now, with nuclear weapons, things could suddenly get extremely worse.

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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.

The ongoing political circus in the capital of the world’s most powerful empire opens almost daily  with a new act each day showcasing an even more bizarre and more revealing display of the internal rot of a culture and a political system in decline.

The day before Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, the Russia-gate drama took an unexpected and dangerous turn with the vote by the House Intelligence Committee to release a now classified memo that alleges that senior members of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) may have misled the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court) in order to secure a warrant to engage in what Republicans assert is a politically motivated effort that spied on the Trump campaign before he won the 2016 election and attempted to undermine his presidency.

Right-wing neoliberal Democrats who have engaged in a vigorous defense of the intelligence agencies of the U.S. state are concerned about the possible fallout with the public. They argue Republicans are deliberately undermining confidence in U.S. institutions by irresponsibly hurling allegations that support a growing public perception that the government and the individuals who populate governmental institutions are inherently corrupt.

Republicans now refer to this as “FBI-gate” and Democrats counter by appealing to the dubious belief that the FBI is some kind of neutral political force populated by people of unreproachable character—those who would never engage in the kind of crass partisanship being alleged by Republicans in Congress.

Even members of the Congressional Black Caucus — the one caucus that traditionally has always been wary of the FBI because of its history abuse against Black activists, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — joined in the effort to prop up this institution and its former director Robert Mueller.

This new narrative of FBI integrity and neutrality is predicated on the assumption that most of the public has forgotten or is unaware of the notorious history of the FBI and its founder, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was a racist anti-Semite and fascist sympathizer. He shared his obsessive anti-communism and anti-Semitism with Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s Gestapo chief, who Hoover corresponded with personally and kept on the FBI’s mailing list right up until the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.

As the nation’s political police, the FBI has been at the center of domestic repression and political manipulation for decades. From Hoover’s early career working as special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, when Hoover was given the responsibility to plan and execute the infamous “Palmer raids” in which thousands were arrested in twenty-three states for “subversive activities,” to his and the FBI’s role in the first McCarthy period of repression in the 1950s through to the COINTELPRO program against the anti-war, Black Liberation and Civil Rights movement. The intelligence gathering, counter-insurgent role of the FBI has been consistent.

When the history and role of the FBI is objectively understood as a central component of the repressive state apparatus, it is not farfetched to accept the meaning of the August 2016 message Peter Strzock, the director of the FBI’s counter-intelligence division, sent to Lisa Page, a high-level official with whom he was romantically involved. In that message, it is clear that Strzock thought it prudent to develop a strategy to undermine a Trump presidency, even when the chance of Trump getting elected seem impossible to many.

Strzock is quoted as texting to Page over a secure device:

I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die before you’re 40.

This quote reveals two things: (1) the thinking of individuals who hold institutional power and are well versed in the exercise of “extra-democratic” institutional power, or what some refer to as the power of the Deep State; and (2) the specific rationale for implementing what appears to have been a classic counter-intelligence project to influence, manipulate and control a political process, in this case the election for the presidency of the United States.

In response to the information coming out about the memo and the explosive allegations of governmental malfeasance, Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democratic member of House Intelligence Committee made the laughable statement that the vote to release the memo “politicize(s) intelligence process.” Perhaps Schiff hoped that the public had forgotten all of the instances of politicized intelligence from the manufactured data supporting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to the manufactured data about the existence of weapons of mass destruction that justified the disastrous attack on Iraq.

But what Schiff, as well as some Republicans, are concerned with is how the public will process and respond to the existence of a massive, coordinated effort to exercise unelected political power.

They are concerned the extent of the coordination between the state and elements of financial and corporate sectors exposes the hidden reality of how real power is exercised in Washington and the financial center in New York, the power behind the reach of the atrophied mechanisms of democratic accountability and control.

Beyond the Circus: Strengthening the Ideological and Political Mechanisms of Domination

It’s ironic, or perhaps just a reflection of the power of propaganda, that it is now just becoming apparent that while the attention of the people was mobilized and directed to fictitious external sources of electoral interference by the Russians, the real culprits working to undermine the limited democracy that does exist were always in the United States and in plain sight.

They are the ones who re-authorized extending FISA section 702 that allows the state to collect communications from U.S. citizens and even tap into communications databases of companies like Google to collect information without a warrant. They supported inserting provisions of the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” into the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as one of Obama’s last legislative acts. They were silent as the government prosecuted whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, which justified expanded National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance and called for the head of former federal contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden. They think it is a good idea for Facebook to establish “counter speech” controls and for Google to adjust its algorithms to bury alternative news sites and sources of “radical” analysis.

And while Trump has been a useful idiot for the Deep State, it is important to clearly identify the forces driving this process and giving it political legitimacy–liberal Democrats!

Despite the phony news of economic prosperity that came out of Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, the more insightful and “responsible” members of the ruling elite recognize the explosive potential of real opposition to the elite agenda and understand the crisis of confidence in and legitimacy of the system will continue to deepen.

The recognition of that has resulted in ruling-class elements being united in one very important area– “domestic national security.” That is to say not the threat of “terror attacks” or other physical threats, but the security that the ruling class is attempting to acquire for itself by strengthening the repressive state apparatus against the people. Using the gift of “Russia-gate” given to it by the Democrats, the state, in collaboration with the capitalist communication sector, has attempted to tighten its ideological grip on the public by limiting the range of information available to the public.

The neo-liberal right has always understood much better than many elements of the left what Cuba revolutionary Jose Marti meant when he said that “trenches of ideas are more powerful than weapons.”

So, while we are entertained by the theatrics of Trump and shudder with horror after his latest antic, the real forces of totalitarianism are working right under our noses, normalizing the capitalist dictatorship in the name of upholding freedom.

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This article was originally published by Dissident Voice.

Ajamu Baraka is a board member with Cooperation Jackson, the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He can be reached at www.AjamuBaraka.com Read other articles by Ajamu, or visit Ajamu’s website.

Featured image is from CounterPunch.

The government of the United States is clearly in demonic hands.  We are overflowing with proof.  Take today (2-2-18) for example.  A report from the House Intelligence Committee was released that is proof that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice (sic), and the Democratic National Committee are engaged in a conspiracy against American democracy and the President of the United States with the full support of the presstitute media.

As if that is not enough, also released today is the Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review.  A nuclear posture review specifies a country’s attitude toward nuclear weapons and their use. In past posture reviews, nuclear weapons were regarded as unusable except in retaliation for a nuclear attack.  The assumption was that no one would use them.  There was always the possibility that false warnings of incoming ICBMs would result in the nuclear button being pushed, thus setting off Armageddon.  There were many false warnings during the Cold War. President Ronald Reagan was very concerned about a false warning resulting in mass death and destruction. This is why his principal goal was to end the Cold War, which he succeeded in doing. 

The new US nuclear posture is a reckless, irresponsible, and destabilizing departure from the previous attitude toward nuclear weapons.  The use of even a small part of the existing arsenal of the United States would be sufficient to destroy life on earth.  Yet, the posture review calls for more weapons, speaks of nuclear weapons as “usable,” and justifies their use in First Strikes even against countries that do not have nuclear weapons.

This is an insane escalation.  It tells every country that the US government believes in the first use of nuclear weapons against any and every country.  Nuclear powers such as Russia and China must see this to be a massive increase in the threat level from the United States. Those responsible for this document should be committed to insane asylums, not left in policy positions where they can put it into action.

President Trump is being blamed for the aggressive US nuclear posture announced today.  However, the document is a neoconservative product.  Trump, perhaps, could have prevented the document’s release, but under pressure as he is by the accusation that he conspired with Putin to steal the US presidential election from Hillary, Trump cannot afford to antagonize the neoconized Pentagon.

The neoconservatives are a small group of conspirators.  Most are Zionist Jews allied with Israel.  Some are dual-citizens. They created an ideology of American world hegemony, specifying that the chief goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any other power that could serve as a constraint on US unilateralism.  As neoconservatives control US foreign policy, this explains US hostility toward Russia and China and also the neoconservatives’ use of the US military to remove governments in the Middle East regarded by Israel as obstacles to Israeli expansion. For two decades the US has been fighting wars for Israel in the Middle East.  This fact proves the power and influence of the insane neoconservatives.  It is certain that people as insane as the neoconservatives would launch a nuclear attack on Russia and China.  The Russian and Chinese governments seem to be completely unaware of the threat that the neoconservatives pose to them.  I have never experienced in my interviews with Russians and Chinese any awareness of the neoconservative ideology. Possibly, it is too insane for them to grasp.

Ideologues such as the neoconservatives are not fact-based.  They are chasing their dream of world hegemony.  Russia and China are in the way of this hegemony. Having learned the limits of US conventional military power, or lack thereof—after 16 years the US “superpower” has been unable to defeat a few thousand lightly armed Taliban in Afghanistan—the neoconservatives know that conventional invasions of Russia or China would lead to the total defeat of US forces.  Therefore, the neoconservatives have elevated nuclear weapons to a First Strike, usable, arsenal that in the neoconservative dream of world hegemony can be used to destroy Russia and China.  

Ideologues who divorce themselves from the facts create a virtual world for themselves.  Their belief in their ideology blinds them to the risks for themselves and others that they impose on the world.  

It is clear enough that without the utterly corrupt Obama Department of Justice (sic) and FBI, the utterly corrupt Clinton-controlled Democratic National Committee, and the utterly corrupt American and European presstitute media working to destroy Trump’s presidency by framing him up as “a Russian agent,” President Trump, understanding that the Pentagon’s posture review would worsen, not normalize, relations with Russia, would have deep-sixed the demonic document that threatens all life on earth.

Thanks to the American liberal/progressive/left, the entirely of the world is faced with a far more likely nuclear demise than ever threatened us during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.  

By its collaboration with the military/security complex and the corrupt Hillary DNC, the liberal/progressive/left has forever discredited itself.  It is now seen by every thinking person worldwide as an insane propaganda ministry for the neoconservatives’ plan to use nuclear weapons to eliminate constraints on US unilateralism.  The liberal/progressive/left has endorsed “hegemony or death.”  

They will get death.  For all of us.

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This article was originally published by Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Journalists would have seen it as a scoop, and insisted that no laws had been broken. Politicians might have considered it a calamity.  Whatever one terms Australia (parliamentary democracy; constitutional monarchy) secrecy remains the state’s watchword.  When it comes to bureaucratic provisions that supposedly safeguard the state against the prying eyes of the public, all justified in their name, Australia does rather well.

This is particularly so on the subject of Cabinet files, insulated from public view by that curious legal creature known as public interest immunity.  In its older variant, the term “Crown privilege” was used. Over history, the courts of Britain and Australia have shown a marked trust in the word of a minister.

As the House of Lords decision of Duncan v Cammell Laird & Co. (1942) asserted, the minister’s certification that the documents should not be produced as contrary to the public interest was essentially unimpeachable.  The public, effectively, had to be protected from the government’s own conduct.

Cabinet minutes, discussions and associated documents were deemed particularly sensitive, though Australian courts have, at stages, taken it upon themselves to determine whether their contents ought to be made known to the public. 

In the words of High Court Justice Harry Gibbs in Sankey v Whitlam (1978),

“It is however clear that the court should prevent the disclosure of a document whose production would be contrary to the public interest even if no claim is made by the Minister or other high official that its production should be withheld.”

How paternalistically grateful we must all be for that.

Cabinet is an enclave, where, supposedly, frontbenchers of government can hammer out in frankness and candour policy viewpoints in a pre-pasteurised way.  In such a state, the goo, the fat and the flavour remain, at least before it reaches the party room or parliamentary chamber.  By that point, sanitisation might have taken place and scandal avoided.

That this approach, and dare one say it, mentality, has not been challenged with more rigour by Australian electors and, in some cases, the elected, is a sure sign about how healthy the actual state of democracy is in the country. Nanny and nurse, in other words, retain their aura, a vestigial power over the political fabric.

All’s the more interesting, then, when this wall of secrecy finds itself breached.  This week, government faces turned crimson with what may well be one of the largest breaches of cabinet security in the country’s history.

It all happened because documents were found in two locked filing cabinets as part of an auction of ex-government furniture in Canberra. The files in question duly wound their way to the national broadcaster, precipitating discussion between the ABC and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

On late Thursday evening, officers from the domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, could be seen retrieving the papers in question in Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra from the premises of the ABC.

The return of the documents was discussed in a statement released by the ABC.

“The ABC and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have agreed on the securing of and the return of the documents which were the subject of the ABC’s Cabinet Files reporting to the Commonwealth.”

The statement continues, not without some cheekiness, that,

“This has been achieved without compromising the ABC’s priority of protecting the integrity of its source and its reporting, while acknowledging the Commonwealth’s national security interests.”

The documents – numbering thousands marked “top secret” and “AUSTEO” (for Australian Eyes Only) are illuminating on a several levels. For one, they enable Australians – and others, for that matter – to get a flavour of what exactly is busying those keen members of Cabinet

A series of reactionary nuggets come to the fore.  Former immigration minister, Scott Morrison, for one, is particularly charming.  When advised by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection that up to 700 asylum seekers had to be granted permanent protection under existing legislation, he demurred.  He duly sought “mitigation strategies” to prevent such a grant, including delaying ASIO’s security-checks.  Deadlines would duly pass, as would the problem

Another juicy instalment can be found in a proposal considered by the Abbott government ahead of the 2014 budget to ban anyone under 30 from accessing income support.  The expenditure review committee, comprising the dark Trinitarian force of former Prime Minister Abbott, former treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Matthias Cormann, requested then social services minister Kevin Andrews to consider methods of prohibiting “job snobs” from receiving welfare payments.

The response from parliamentarians to this breach do not centre on scolding government officials or members of cabinet for inappropriate views or policies.  Attitudes and opinions are less important than the management of information.  The breach, in other words, rather than the substance of it, is what matters.

Chris Bowen of the opposition Labor Party, for instance, fears for his country, which is another way of saying he fears what others might think of it.

 “This is embarrassing for the country, it is embarrassing to our allies who share intelligence with us and assume that we will be able to keep it.”

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have come to a solution on how best to cope with the breach: investigate itself.  The prospects of this generating into a Canberra farce, a bureaucratic comic interlude, are high.

One person not laughing (he rarely does in any case) is former intelligence analyst and current independent member of the Australian federal parliament, Andrew Wilkie.  

“We need an independent investigation to look at this systematically.” 

This is exactly what the government will do its best to avoid.

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

“Betrayal” implies that there must have been sincere trust in the relationship, which was never the case with any of the Kurds’ extra-regional Great Power partners, nor will there ever be because of pure Neo-Realist considerations that even they themselves should surely be aware of by now.  

Every so often one stumbles upon a statement by a Kurdish official alleging that one or another Great Power “betrayed” the Kurds, such as what Russia has recently been accused of after giving Turkey the green light for “Operation Olive Branch”, and these claims frequently pop up at a dizzying pace all across social media whenever a Neo-Marxist supporter of “Kurdistan” is trying to make a point and win sympathy for their “cause”. Never mind that there’s no such thing as “Kurdistan” in the first place and that it’s much more accurate to refer to this ultra-diverse sub-state region as the “Kurdish Cultural Space” (KCS) instead, but the idea being conveyed is that its people have repeatedly been let down by anyone who they’ve been made to believe ever gave them any hope at achieving their demagogues’ dreams of “independence”.

The First Western “Betrayal”

The origin of the “betrayal” concept stretches back a century to the end of World War I and Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” of geopolitically weaponized “democracy”, but ironically overlooks the fact that the Kurdish “bashi-bazouk” who contributed to the Ottomans’ wartime actions against the Armenians were essentially ‘rewarded’ with that group’s newly depopulated territory anyhow, thus making the concept of “Kurdistan” at the very dawn of its inception more like a “proto-Israel” than the “proto-Palestine” that it’s nowadays popularly and wrongly presented as. Anyhow, the Turkish War of Independence against the European colonial forces quashed any hope that the extra-regional powers would succeed in carving out this proxy state, and the Kurds didn’t give their “nation-building” mission a second shot until immediately after the end of World War II when they received Soviet military assistance in briefly proclaiming the “Republic of Mahabad” in northwestern Iran.

Soviet “Betrayal”

The USSR’s pragmatic decision to withdraw support for their envisioned communist puppet state was similarly condemned as a “betrayal” by the independence-seeking Kurds because they didn’t understand the larger geopolitics at play. The “Iran Crisis”, as it has since been referred to, has its roots in Imperial Russia’s desire to incorporate the northern part of the country into its sphere of influence and potentially even include it as part of the Empire itself just like they did with what is nowadays the independent Republic of Azerbaijan (itself the northern part of the transnational Azerbaijan region, of which the southern Iranian component is much more populous). The USSR invaded the northern half of Iran together with the British in 1941 under the pretext of safeguarding the transit of vital wartime materials from what was publicly presented to the world as a “fascist”-sympathizing Shah.

This was exploited by Stalin right after Hitler’s defeat in order to de-facto revive his country’s historical claims to a regional sphere of influence under the cover of a clandestinely supported “communist revolution” in the Kurdish-populated regions of Iran that Soviet troops had previously occupied. It ultimately failed because he decreed that the USSR should stop supporting the insurgency after coming under intense global pressure in what has in hindsight been regarded as one of the first real episodes of the Cold War, thus dooming the rebellious Kurds to suffer the Shah’s wrath even though some of them did indeed manage to escape to Iraq and the Soviet Union. Russia’s interest in the Kurds has always been geostrategic, just like every other Great Power that understood the powerful utility of playing the “Kurdish Card” in the quadri-national sub-state KCS,  though in keeping with “tradition” and the zeitgeist of “comradeship and solidarity”, this was never openly admitted, whether by Moscow or anyone else then or afterwards.

Psychological Predispositions And Neo-Realist Rationale

It’s because of the “convincing” soft power assertions by the Soviet Union and later on Western-based states and activists that the myth of “sincere external support for the Kurds” arose, both within the KCS and abroad, though nobody should have been fooled, not least of all the Kurds themselves. The entire world was duped for decades to a degree in speculating about the scenarios that could have arisen had Wilson’s geopolitical weaponization of “democracy” through the “Fourteen Points” been completely fulfilled in neo-colonially dividing and ruling the entire Eastern Hemisphere via a checkerboard of America’s identity-centric “states”, and this curiosity was driven of course by the natural human inclination to wonder “what if?” especially after the horrors of World War I and II.

Had anyone conducted a sober reading of enduring International Relations thought, however, then it would have been revealed that the Kurds have always been seen as Neo-Realist tools of whichever patron was courting them at the time.

There’s an innate tendency in every person to disillusion themselves with the more “comforting” idea that morals, ethics, and principles have a place in global politics, but the ‘inconvenient’ truth is that such arguments are almost always used as tools for cultivating support for Neo-Realist agendas such as the ones that were described above in reference to the extra-regional Great Powers of the US, Europe, and the USSR. The diverse and (sometimes violently) divided Kurdish people are more susceptible to being deceived than anyone else because the KCS’ demagogues abuse the concept of “Kurdistan” in order to rally the public’s support for their political and/or militant quest to become what de-facto amounts to local “warlords”, and emotional pitches playing to people’s fantasies are much more appealing than rational ones that temper or outright debunk them.

Backstabbing One’s Brothers

Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility – 10 March 1991. The Tuwaythah Nuclear Research Facility, Baghdad, Post-strike. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The only true partners that the Kurds ever had and could hope to have are the national governments of which they’re legally a part and those states’ constituent peoples that are technically their fellow compatriots, though the problem has continuously arisen where Kurdish demagogues are cajoled by the Great Powers (and sometimes even the neighboring states) with the promise of “independence” into launching insurgencies against the only forces realistically capable of genuinely allying with them and assisting with their development. This doesn’t justify the excessive and inhumane response by Saddam Hussein when he used Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) against them, but is intended to explain how and why the Kurds always “go wrong” and are repeatedly exploited as geopolitical instruments of others despite the drastically low odds that they’ll ever succeed in their campaign, let alone have their foreign patron of the moment fully honor their previous pledge to recognize their “independence” in the unlikely event that they do.

The American And Russian “Betrayals”

Over the past couple of years, much has been said about the US’ geostrategic plans for the Kurds in the New Cold War, which don’t differ whatsoever from what the USSR intended for them during the Old Cold War. Back then, Moscow wanted to utilize the Kurds and their transnational KCS as a powerful pivot for exerting influence in the four countries that they reside in, some of which had at times been American allies such as NATO-member Turkey. The communist-era “revolutionary” crusade to “break and then rebuild” has a certain ‘logic’ to it, but Russia and the US’ roles switched after 1991 when Washington realized that it could weaponize chaos theory to indefinitely prolong, geographically expand, and ultimately further entrench its global unipolar influence. This explains why it “poached” the USSR’s former Kurdish allies as well as its Baloch and Uighur ones too, as these sub-state groups are nowadays collectively much more useful in coordinating American-backed “Lead From Behind” Hybrid Wars against the New Silk Roads than they are in spreading the now-defunct ideology of Soviet communism.

At the same time and returning back to the Kurdish focus of this analysis, however, the US shrewdly understands that it doesn’t have to dogmatically cling to whatever words it promises this landlocked people if its grand strategic interests could be better served by reneging on its earlier implied or secretly agreed commitmentsin cutting deals with the four targeted national governments involved and/or dramatically downscaling the level of “sovereignty” that it supports for the Kurds in an effort to cynically implement a “strategy of tension” in the region that it can continuously manage to its advantage. Russia, which is also playing by the rules of the “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard”, does the same thing as the US but is less capricious and actually seems to have a “balanced” long-term vision of “decentralization” in mind that might present  the only realistic “solution” to countering the regional instability that Washington has masterminded.

Kurd Betrays Kurd (And This Time It’s A Real Betrayal)

Regardless of how their geopolitical future unfolds, it can be certain that the Kurds have already wised up to their ultra-strategic role in the world vis-à-vis the Great Powers and neighboring states, and it’s condescending to imply that their people and especially their demagogic decision makers have yet to recognize this enduring century-long mainstay of International Relations. It’s certainly the case that the Kurds’ leaders regularly mislead their people and abuse their “messianic” dream of “Kurdistan” within the highly diverse transnational KCS, but this also provides them with a backup “insurance plan” to rely on whenever it fails by “playing the victim” of a conspiratorial “betrayal” by a “trusted ally” for soft power purposes and to consequently prompt an outpouring of sympathy from their domestic and international supporters. It’s also an expedient means to deflect any responsibility for the disasters that they cause in pursuit of this goal, but nowadays that trend might be changing as the Kurdish people figure out that they’re being manipulated by their own leaders more than by any foreign power.

To the credit of the Kurds in Northern Iraq, they brought their chieftain Barzani to account and compelled him to finally step down after the trilateral blockade of their autonomous region following the “independence” referendum that they themselves took part in. Overcome by what they were misled into believing was ‘irreversible’ historic inertia, they were guided like sheep by their “president” into voting to secede from Iraq, only to immediately suffer the crushing economic consequences and the impending threat of a military one as well. The real “betrayal”, as they soon came to understand, was that of their top Kurdish demagogue against his own people when he deceived them into voting for an outcome that he never had any intention of implementing. The principled example set by the Iraqi Kurds in rebelling against their leadership might one day be replicated in “Rojava” if the Syrian Kurds realize that President Erdogan is punishing their warlords for implementing the Yinon Plan and dangerously trying to play Damascus like a fiddle to this end.

Only when the people of the KCS come to grips with the reality that the only betrayal that they’ve ever truly experienced is that of Kurd against Kurd can the never-ending cycle of their peoples’ instrumentalization by foreign powers come to an end and their transnational region begin to serve as the pivotal center of Mideast stability that it’s more than capable of being in the emerging Multipolar World Order.

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

During the height of the genocidal war waged by the United States against the people of Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s, African Americans were involved in a life and death campaign aimed at reclaiming their national identity, human rights and racial dignity.

January 30 represented the fiftieth anniversary of the Tet Offensive which shook the foundation of the U.S. war strategy in Vietnam. In a surprise move, the forces of the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the People Army of Vietnam (PAVN) attacked over 100 cities and towns across the country.

Although the anti-war movement during this period is often portrayed as an effort initiated and led by white university students with left wing political leaning and that African Americans were almost exclusively pre-occupied with Civil Rights and Black Power demands within a domestic framework, the reality of the period proves to be quite to the contrary of such false assertions. From the early 1960s, leading figures within the Civil Rights and Black Nationalists movements expressed their opposition to the American role in Vietnam.

Moreover, the most advanced elements offered concrete acts of solidarity with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North and the National Liberation Front (NLF) operating in the South which was occupied by the Pentagon. Both Vietnamese and the African American people were subjected to imperialism and national oppression by an enemy which sought to crush their respective entitlements to peace, social justice, self-determination and sovereignty.

In fact dating back to at least 1924, the man who became known as Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen Ai Quoc) had lived in upper Manhattan as an activist among the African American community during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. Reports indicate that Ho had worked with the organization led by Marcus Garvey known as the Universal Negro Improvement Association—African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), headquartered in New York City at its zenith in the early 1920s.

Reflecting on his observations conducted just six decades after the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War and the legal dissolution of chattel slavery in a period of extreme state repression, widespread institutional racism and arbitrary violence, Ho published a pamphlet in 1924 labeled ”On Lynching and the Ku Klux Klan.” The work documents various aspects of social conditions prevailing in African American communities throughout the country.

Ho noted in this important work that:

“It is well-known that the Black race is the most oppressed and the most exploited of the human family. It is well-known that the spread of capitalism and the discovery of the New World had as an immediate result the rebirth of slavery. What everyone does not perhaps know is that after sixty-five years of so-called emancipation, American Negroes still endure atrocious moral and material sufferings, of which the most cruel and horrible is the custom of lynching.”

This same publication goes on to chronicle the history of racial terror against African people from the end of the war between the states over the future of slavery to the burgeoning resistance of the people in the aftermath of World War I. During the war and afterward, African Americans migrated in the millions to Northern, Midwestern and Western municipalities, becoming a social force in the struggle for freedom and democratic rights whose impact extended beyond their own population.

This same pamphlet emphasized the significance of this transformation saying:

“The victory of the Federal Government had just freed the Negroes and made them citizens. The agriculture of the South – deprived of its Black labor, was short of hands. Former landlords were exposed to ruin. The Klansmen proclaimed the principle of the supremacy of the white race. Anti-Negro was their only policy. The agrarian and slaveholding bourgeoisie saw in the Klan a useful agent, almost a savior. They gave it all the help in their power. The Klan’s methods ranged from intimidation to murder…. The Klan is for many reasons doomed to disappear. The Negroes, having learned during the war that they are a force if united, are no longer allowing their kinsmen to be beaten or murdered with impunity. They are replying to each attempt at violence by the Klan. In July 1919, in Washington, they stood up to the Klan and a wild mob. The battle raged in the capital for four days. In August, they fought for five days against the Klan and the mob in Chicago. Seven regiments were mobilized to restore order. In September the government was obliged to send federal troops to Omaha to put down similar strife. In various other states the Negroes defend themselves no less energetically.”

The Vietnamese Revolution and the Challenge to Western Imperialism

Ho left the U.S. traveling to other parts of the world including Europe. In 1930, the Indochinese Communist Party was formed encompassing revolutionaries from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia who were battling French colonialism. Later Vietnam was occupied by both Paris and Japan.

Consequently, the struggle for national liberation and unity took on an international character. After the defeat of Japan, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed in September 1945 prompting another guerrilla war against French imperialism. By 1954, France had been humiliated at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Ho had become a hero within the international movement for independence and socialism.

Nonetheless, U.S. imperialism took over the war of domination from France and by the early 1960s President John F. Kennedy was deploying “advisors” in the form of military personnel in South Vietnam still under occupation. France and the U.S. refused to allow free elections and the war continued.

With specific reference to African American opposition to the Vietnam War and solidarity with the NLF and the government in Hanoi, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam had been against the involvement of the U.S. since the early 1960s. After leaving the NOI, Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) adopted a decisively revolutionary position related to world revolution speaking frequently in solidarity with the People’s Republic of China and the Vietnamese Revolution.

One of the earliest developments in the Civil Rights Movement in the South related to Vietnam was a campaign by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in the summer of 1965 when a flyer and petition was circulated calling for African Americans to refuse induction into the military to fight in Vietnam since they were not given equal rights in the U.S. Later leaders of the MFDP clarified their stance after much adverse press attention saying that these views were not the official position of the MFDP. They did reiterate the rationale behind African American opposition to the war based upon the continuing problems of racism. (Source)

During the same year, Detroit activist General Gordon Baker, Jr. wrote a letter to the draft board articulating why he would reject induction. Baker stated to the board that:

“when the call is made to free the black delta areas of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina; when the call is made to FREE 12Th STREET HERE IN DETROIT, when these calls are made, send for me, for these shall be Historical Struggles in which it shall be an honor to serve!”

By early January 1966, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) issued an official statement opposing the war and the draft. This intervention took place in the immediate aftermath of the racist murder of SNCC member Sammy Younge, Jr. for his defiance of segregation laws in Alabama.

The SNCC statement read in part:

“The murder of Samuel Younge in Tuskegee, Alabama, is no different than the murder of peasants in Vietnam. For both Younge and the Vietnamese sought and are seeking to secure the rights guaranteed them by law. In each case, the United States government bears a great part of the responsibility for these deaths. Samuel Younge was murdered because United States law is not being enforced. Vietnamese are murdered because the United States is pursuing an aggressive policy in violation of international law. The United States is no respecter of persons or law when such persons or laws run counter to its needs or desires.” (Source)

Julian Bond, a longtime SNCC organizer, had run successfully for the state legislature in late 1965. However, the authorities denied him the right to take his seat after he said publically that the SNCC position on Vietnam was his own as well.

Later in August 1966, the SNCC chapter in Atlanta embarked upon a campaign to expose the racist character of the Vietnam War both domestically and within Southeast Asia. Women and men organizers in and around SNCC set up picket lines outside the induction center located near the heart of the African American community.

These demonstrations soon prompted attacks by hostile mobs of whites along with police officers. Protesters were called racist slurs, had cigarettes dropped out of windows by military personnel onto the picket lines, there was water and other objects thrown as well combined with outright physical assaults. Demonstrators then attempted to occupy a space in the induction center to demand a halt to the racist attacks. (Source)

An ensuing struggle led to arrests and terms in prison. SNCC organizers Michael Simmons and Larry Fox wrote a report summing up their experiences. They discussed a tour after being released from jail which visited cities such as Detroit in an effort to build an alliance of draft resisters, lawyers and political activists working on other related issues. (Source)

1966 was the year that there was a radical change in the character of SNCC’s leadership with the takeover by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) as chairman who had direct organizing experience in Mississippi in 1964 and Alabama in 1965-66, where the Lowndes Country Freedom Organization (LCFO) was formed and became known as the Black Panther Party. There was an intensification of anti-war work and the linking of the African American liberation struggle with global developments in Vietnam, notwithstanding events in other regions of Asia along with Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Latin America.

SNCC activists such Diane Nash, a veteran of the Nashville Civil Rights Movement and the freedom rides of 1960-61, traveled to North Vietnam in 1966 to call for the end of U.S. aggression through addresses over Radio Hanoi. Gwen Patton, graduate of Tuskegee University, was instrumental as well in organizing efforts to build the antiwar movement among African Americans.

According to a report by Ashley Farmer on Patton’s contributions, the writer notes that:

“After leaving Tuskegee, she helped organize the National Black Antiwar Antidraft Union (NBAWADU), designed to develop a black-centered anti-war and anti-imperialist front. As the Executive Secretary of the group, Patton penned some of the black freedom movement’s foundational anti-war documents, including speeches on the ‘Role of Women in Revolution.’ She also developed a bevy of position papers that connected American imperialist atrocities abroad with the state’s treatment of black Americans at home. Patton constantly centered black women within her pro-black, anti-imperialist politics, making her a foundational figure in late 1960s black feminist theorizing. Living and working alongside SNCC organizers like Faye Bellamy and Ethel Minor foregrounded the importance of developing emancipatory projects that were gender-inclusive. Patton was largely responsible for creating the Black Women’s Liberation Committee (BWLC), a women’s collective within SNCC. This group engaged in central questions about the ideological underpinnings of women, gender roles, and revolution. The philosophical foundations that Patton developed in BWLC documents became the ideological scaffolding for the Third World Women’s Alliance, or TWWA, one of the first groups to formally organize around an intersectional platform. Patton also authored many articles addressing the complex gender politics embedded in Black Power organizing. She was one of the activists who contributed to Toni Cade Bambara’s now classic The Black Woman: An Anthology. Her article about the ‘Victorian Ethos’ was an early take on the pitfalls of respectability politics in political organizing.”

SNCC viewed the struggle for Black Liberation as part and parcel of the revolutionary movements sweeping Asia, Africa and other areas of the world. An International Section was created and directed by James Forman, the former executive secretary. By 1967, Forman would be presenting papers in national and international forums expressing solidarity with the Vietnamese and independence movements in Southern Africa, among other geo-political areas.

By early 1967, Dr. King was rapidly becoming outspoken about his opposition to the Vietnam War through a series of newspaper columns, speeches in California, an anti-war march in Chicago in late March and the famous Riverside Church address, dubbed Beyond Vietnam on April 4, just one year-to-date before his assassination in Memphis. On April 15, King spoke alongside Carmichael outside the United Nations in New York to thousands of opponents of the war.

Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion of the world, was one of the most widely known personalities internationally. Ali had changed his name from Cassius Clay to an Islamic one when he went public with his conversion to the NOI after winning the championship in early 1964. During this period in early 1964, Ali was close to Malcolm X who later left the NOI by late March causing an irreparable breech between the two men, with the heavyweight champion remaining with Elijah Muhammad.

However, after Malcolm X’s assassination on February 21, 1965 in New York, SNCC and other organizations moved more in the ideological direction of the former national spokesman for Elijah Muhammad. By 1966, Ali was being hounded by the draft board. He officially refused induction in early 1967 citing religious grounds. Ali also emphasized that he did not feel obligated to wage war against the Vietnamese people based upon the lack of freedom for the Black man in the U.S.

Both Dr. King and SNCC supported Ali in his decision. This opened the way for broader alliances in opposition to the Vietnam War.

By May 1967, Stokely Carmichael had completed one year as chair of SNCC turning over the reign of leadership to H. Rap Brown (later known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin). Carmichael visited England for a conference on the Dialectics of Liberation. He would later go to Cuba and address a summit of Latin American liberation organizations, attracting the attention through his speech of Premier Fidel Castro. During his time outside the U.S., Carmichael also visited Guinea, Egypt, Algeria, Tanzania and other states.

He also traveled to Hanoi and met with Ho Chi Minh. Carmichael subsequently reported that Ho encouraged him to focus more attention on the African Revolution. While in Hanoi, the former SNCC chairman requested a seminar on the building of a united front such as the NLF.

In recounting this event, Carmichael revealed that after the seminar started the U.S. began bombing Hanoi. The Vietnamese party leaders then moved Carmichael into a bunker in order to continue the course. One bomb struck near the location of the session causing some debris to fall on the notes of the instructor. Carmichael recounted how the dust was wiped away quickly and the class continued without interruption.

“When I saw this I knew that the Americans would be defeated“, he jovially said. (Lecture delivered at Wayne State University in Detroit, March 13, 1992)

Robert F. Williams had been the president of the NAACP chapter in Monroe, North Carolina when he advocated and practiced armed self-defense against the Ku Klux Klan. Williams’ refusal to categorically accept the nonviolent approach to civil rights later resulted in his expulsion from the NAACP in 1961. Eventually he was forced to leave North Carolina amid an attempt to frame him on false kidnapping charges of a white couple.

After being transported out of North Carolina by supporters, Williams eventually settled in Cuba and later the People’s Republic of China. He spent time as well in North Vietnam addressing radio broadcasts to African American GIs, exposing the racist and imperialist character of the war.

Perhaps the apex of solidarity between African Americans and the Vietnamese Revolution emerged when the Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale attended a conference in Montreal, Quebec in late 1968 where the NLF representatives recognized the party as the vanguard of the revolutionary movement in the U.S. The BPP in return pledged their full recognition of the NLF as the legitimate government of South Vietnam.

The following year saw efforts at deeper cooperation when the North Vietnamese government offered to release American POWs in exchange for the freedom of BPP leaders Chairman Bobby Seale and Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton. This offer was immediately rejected by the administration of then President Richard M. Nixon.

However, in August 1970, after the release of Huey P. Newton on appeal bond related to charges of murdering and wounding two white Oakland police officers, the BPP Minister of Defense pledged to send some of his members to join the armed wing of the Vietnamese Revolution as an act of solidarity. In 1971, Newton and Elaine Brown, Central Committee members of the BPP, visited China where they met with Premiere Chou En Lai.

Burgeoning opposition to the Vietnam War among African American liberation organizations inspired resistance within the armed forces. Groups such as the GIs United Against the War and the Malcolm X Society posed a challenge to the largely white officers’ corps which utilized discrimination as a means of intimating African Americans and controlling discord within the ranks.

Black Panther newspaper in solidarity with DPRK, China and North Vietnam

Black soldiers grew Afro hairstyles and beards as acts of protest and defiance. Many were radicalized through their experience in Vietnam swelling the ranks of groups such as the BPP and the Black Liberation Army (BLA) upon their discharge.

Although the U.S. announced its withdrawal of ground forces from Vietnam in late 1972 after a horrendous round of bombings that December, the war continued until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. After a decade of continuing defeats and Vietnamese advances, the U.S. Congress halted the funding of the war resulting in the collapse of the puppet regime in Saigon.

Contrastingly in the U.S., the political toll of state repression and cooptation from Washington and Wall Street severely derailed the revolutionary wing of the African American movement by the early 1970s. Robert F. Williams returned to the U.S. in late 1969. The BPP was wracked by an internal split in 1971 from which either faction was able to fully recover.

The onset of the restructuring of the world economy in 1975, coinciding with the defeat of imperialism in Southeast Asia, led to massive capital flight and disinvestment from American municipalities resulting in structural unemployment, deepening poverty among the working class reinforced by the rapid expansion of the prison-industrial-complex. A greater emphasis on electoral politics and business development could not fulfill the national aspirations of the African American people.

Some four decades or more since the end of the Vietnam War the African American people are still fighting against national oppression, class exploitation and government repression. The experience acquired during the successive administrations of the likes of Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Sr. through Bill Clinton, George Bush, Jr. to Barack Obama and now Donald Trump, necessitates a renewed effort to overcome the ruling class and its state apparatuses.

Lessons from the African American and Vietnamese Liberation Struggles

These events during the period of the 1950s through the mid-1970s are important to recount in light of the revisionist history surrounding the role of both white radicals and African Americans during the Vietnam War. Absent the persistent military and political fortitude of the Vietnamese people along with resistance from African Americans, both outside and inside the military, victory against imperialism would not have been possible without additional years of fighting.

The selective service system in the U.S. suffered a monumental setback when the draft was abolished in 1973. Later in 1980, registration was reinstituted while the draft has not been fully reinstated. However, there is an economic draft due to poverty and joblessness that has fueled the war machine through the wars launched by Washington in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and the present targeted attacks, deployment and commando operations prevalent in Somalia, Niger, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

In the first year of the administration of Trump, tensions have escalated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) whose nuclear program has served as a pointed warning to the Pentagon and other potential adversaries. People’s China has developed into the second largest economy in the world while its conventional military forces total more than three million well-trained and armed soldiers.

Expenditures by the taxpayers in the U.S. to the military and security apparatus totals at least $1trillion annually when the funding for both the Pentagon and intelligence services are taken into account. Washington’s defense budget is larger than all other states combined although it cannot create a sense of sustainable security for the ruling class.

Despite all of its rhetoric and sloganeering, the U.S. ruling class remains insecure. The advent of Trump is a manifestation of the paranoid atmosphere existing among the imperialists in the Western capitalist nations.

African Americans have no other choice than to reject the Pentagon war machine since it has only resulted in their underdevelopment, displacement and ongoing national oppression. The eventual demise of U.S. imperialism can only strengthen the struggle for liberation and social emancipation of the oppressed.

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All images in this article are from the author.

Whilst there are no golden ages, it is abundantly clear that the world today is in a very unhealthy state. From Eastern Europe to North Africa to the Middle East, countries, in recent years, have been severely destabilised, resulting in carnage and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives.

And at the heart of that destabilisation is American and British foreign policy.

But how have we arrived at this situation in the world today? And what are the roots of America and Britain’s ‘humanitarian intervention’?

A lot of people answer the above questions by citing the illegal American and British invasion of Iraq. Well, they are emphatically wrong.

What we are seeing today in, for example, Syria, has its origins in 1991. Because that year was a turning-point in geo-politics. It was the year that saw the dismemberment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Yugoslavia was the first step in a series of Western interventions in the world, including Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, and the West was able to successfully intervene in those countries because the Soviet Union is no more.

At the beginning of 1991, Yugoslavia found itself in a precarious and what proved to be a deadly situation for it. Yugoslavia was alone in Europe. The Yugoslav authorities were facing a US, UK, Germany and Austria which no longer needed Yugoslavia (as they had during the Cold War, when Yugoslavia pursued a policy of non-alignment), who did not want a socialist country in the new Europe, and who wanted to prevent Russian influence in the Balkans from potentially being established in the future. And owing to the Soviet Union being in its death throes, Moscow was unable to assist the Yugoslav government.

Yugoslavia was where the West/NATO’s policy of intervention was born, where international law would be completely sidelined and where alleged acts of genocide would provide NATO, under American leadership, with a pretext to intervene in, under the banner of humanitarianism. Western intervention in Yugoslavia would subsequently provide the catalyst for future western intervention elsewhere in the world in order for the US to strengthen its global hegemony. And it was in Yugoslavia where the American and British establishments would employ one of their most formidable weapons to justify their new interventionist policy: mainstream media. And US and UK mainstream media would subsequently take its new-found experiences and successes from Yugoslavia to new fronts – Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

Despite Yugoslavia having been a founding member of the United Nations, and despite its borders having been internationally recognised under international law, Germany and Austria encouraged secessionist movements in Slovenia and Croatia to declare independence from Yugoslavia, while America did the same in regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Those actions by Berlin, Vienna and Washington were a serious violation of international law, completely undermined the UN charter and destroyed the sanctity of internationally recognised borders. Furthermore, the illegal actions of those Western powers ignited the terrible wars which would follow in Croatia and Bosnia. As Lord Peter Carrington, the former chairman of the peace conference on Yugoslavia, argued: The actions of the American, German and certain other European governments “made it sure there was going to be a conflict” in the Balkans.

But breaking up Yugoslavia was not enough for the West; it wanted to ensure that the successor states would become its client states hence it began providing weapons to the illegally armed groups in Croatia and Bosnia to bring about their victories on the battlefield.

In Croatia, the West armed what was, essentially, a fascist movement which glorified the Ustase, a Croatian fascist organisation which had ruled the pro-Nazi Independent State of Croatia during World War Two and which had committed genocide against the Serbian people at that time, murdering approximately 700,000 Serbs, some of whom were murdered at Jasenovac concentration camp, known as the Yugoslav Auschwitz. Returning to the 1990s, the largest act of ethnic cleansing during the Yugoslav civil wars was carried out by the Croats, when they executed the US-planned Operation Storm, resulting in the expulsion of over 250,000 Krajina Serbs from their ancestral homes.

In Bosnia, the Americans not only armed the secessionist Muslim forces there but also facilitated the transportation of Mujahideen fighters from Afghanistan to Bosnia to fight alongside Bosnian Muslim forces. Those Mujahideen fighters, who had previously fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, not only committed some of the most sickening crimes of the Bosnian war but they also began to use their new-found presence in Europe to lay the foundation for the spread of Islamism and Islamism terrorism on the continent and beyond. Islamist fighters now enjoyed a forward-base in Europe. One of the Mujahideen fighters whom the Americans brought to Bosnia was Osama bin Laden, who was given a Bosnian passport by the Muslim authorities and, according to a Der Spiegel journalist, was seen at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Sarajevo in 1994.

The Serbs – who opposed the breakup of Yugoslavia and who did not want to be ruled by Croatian fascists and Muslim fundamentalists, terrified of their experiences during World War Two – were singled out by the West as the barrier to achieving its objectives in the Balkans. Enter Western mainstream media.

The Serbian people, who throughout their history have fought against foreign oppression (the Ottomans, the Austro-Hungarians, Imperial and then Nazi Germany), were depicted by Western media as mass murderers, mass rapists and perpetrators of genocide. Whilst those allegations were fabrications, they, nonetheless, paved the way for NATO to start bombing the Serbs in Bosnia, an act which had no basis under international law. As Major General Lewis MacKenzie, who was the United Nations Protection Force Chief of Staff and Commander of the Sarajevo Sector, said:

“Those of us who served as UN commanders in Bosnia realised the majority of the media reports were biased, to say the least. Whenever we tried to set the record straight we were – and continue to be – accused of being ‘Serbian agents’.”

So, NATO began bombing the Bosnian Serbs in 1994. However, the Americans and the British needed a far more intensive campaign not just to achieve their geo-strategic aims in Bosnia but to establish a precedent for future Western/NATO intervention in other regions of the world, and to also show off NATO’s prowess and thereby intimidate countries which followed an independent foreign policy. And the alleged genocide at Srebrenica, in July 1995, would provide Washington and London with what they were looking for. To this day, Srebrenica remains the foundation of the West’s ‘humanitarian intervention’, and it is what American and British politicians and journalists cite when they call for military intervention in a country, as they did in Libya and Syria.

But what happened at Srebrenica, in the summer of 1995, was not as clear-cut as Western politicians and journalists would have us believe. Let me quote you the words of Dr Efraim Zuroff, the Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem:

“As far as I know, what happened there [at Srebrenica] does not fit the description or definition of genocide. I think the decision to call it genocide was made for political reasons.”

Now, let me now quote you the words of General Major Carlos Martins Branco, of the Portuguese Armed Forces, and who served as a UN military observer in Bosnia in 1995:

“Srebrenica was portrayed – and continues to be – as a premeditated massacre of innocent Muslim civilians. As a genocide! But was it really so? A more careful and informed assessment of those events leads me to doubt it.”

The story of Srebrenica did not, in fact, begin in 1995; rather, it began in 1992, when Muslim forces, operating from Srebrenica, under the leadership of the infamous Naser Oric, started a three year orgy of massacres against Serb civilians in adjacent Serbs villages. In a period of three years, over 3,000 Serbs were murdered by Muslim forces in some of the most barbarous ways imaginable.

In the summer of 1995, the Bosnian Serb army was presented with an opportunity to conquer Srebrenica and end the massacring of Serbs villagers. But it was a trap set by Bill Clinton and the Bosnian Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic, who were both looking for “genocide” so that NATO would have the “justification” to extensively intervene in Bosnia.

Incidentally, allow me to quote part of an interview that Bernard Kouchner, a former French Foreign Minister, had with Izetbegovic, when the Muslim leader was on his deathbed. Kouchner said to Izetbegovic:

“They [the camps in Bosnia] were horrible places, but people were not systematically exterminated. Did you know that?”, asked Kouchner, to which Izetbegovic replied: “Yes. I thought that my revelations could precipitate bombings.The assertion was false. There were no extermination camps.”

What happened at Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 was, in my opinion, a war crime, not genocide. A war crime because some Serb soldiers, not acting under orders, took it upon themselves to exact revenge against Muslim soldiers. Perhaps around 800 Muslim soldiers were executed by those Serbs. A terrible act but one that was a war crime, not genocide.

Furthermore, thousands of Muslim soldiers were killed in combat with the Serbs, mainly during their retreat from Srebrenica through the forests to Tuzla.

Now, what is genocide? Genocide is the systematic extermination of an entire people based on their ethnicity.So, for example, the genocide committed against the Jews in World War Two, resulting in the deaths of six million Jewish people, and the genocide committed against the Armenians in World War One, resulting in the deaths of one million Armenian people.

But at Srebrenica, in the summer of 1995, the Serbs, according to a UN document, allowed 35,632 Muslim elderly, women, children and young boys to leave Srebrenica, most of whom went to Tuzla. Now, let me again quote Major General Lewis MacKenzie:

“It’s a distasteful point, but it has to be said that, if you’re committing genocide, you don’t let the women go since they are key to perpetuating the very group you are trying to eliminate.”

And that is why Dr Efraim Zuroff said that:

“I wish the Nazis moved aside Jewish women and children before their bloody rampage, instead of murdering them, but that, as we know, did not happen [at Srebrenica].”

The reason why the governments and mainstream media in the US and the UK will viciously denigrate any discussion questioning their official narrative of Srebrenica is because the very basis of the West’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ is built upon the alleged Srebrenica genocide.

Wall of names at the Potočari genocide memorial near Srebrenica. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

By the end of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, international law had been left reeling, while the US reigned supreme in the world. The path to future intervention in the region and elsewhere in the world was now open to the West.

But the US and the UK were not quite finished in the Balkans. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, and which emerged from the ashes of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was a socialist-run country, albeit with elements of a free market economy in it, and which had close relations with Russia (and China, to an extent). To complete their hold over the Balkans, the Americans were intent on destroying the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, imposing a pro-Western government in Belgrade and commencing with the colonisation of Serbia and Montenegro. But Washington needed a pretext. And in 1999, the Americans found it: Kosovo.

Kosovo and Metohija is the cradle of Serbian civilisation and the soul of the Serbian identity. This land is the Serbs’ Jerusalem. As a result of demographic changes, especially because of huge Serb fatalities in World War One and World War Two, Serbs are a minority in Kosovo and Metohija today, with the majority of the population being Albanian. In 1998, the Kosovo Liberation Army, an Albanian terrorist and organised crime group, with links to Islamist terrorism, began a murderous campaign in Kosovo and Metohija against Serb and Albanian civilians and police and military personnel, with the aim of making the province independent.

Washington, which had previously designated the KLA a terrorist organisation, began giving political and military assistance to the KLA. But, by the beginning of 1999, the Yugoslav military had all but destroyed the KLA. So the US realised that in order to achieve its goal in colonising Serbia and Montenegro, it had to directly intervene in Kosovo and Metohija, on the side of the KLA. However, the Americans needed a pretext. So US and UK journalists began alleging that the Serbs were carrying out genocide against the Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, citing numbers of 500,000 Albanians murdered.

Then, following a battle between Yugoslav soldiers and KLA terrorists at a place called Racak, the Americans and the British claimed that they had found a ‘smoking gun’ to justify NATO intervention, claiming that Albanian civilians had been murdered there, something that was subsequently proved to be false. After Belgrade refused an ultimatum from the US, NATO began a brutal 78 day air campaign against Yugoslavia, including striking civilian targets across the country and dropping depleted uranium shells on civilian areas, an act which, subsequently, caused a massive increase in cancer rates amongst the Serbian population.

NATO’s air campaign against a sovereign country and a member of the UN, without the permission of the United Nations Security Council, remains the most atrocious attack on international law to this day and has left the international rules-based system impaired ever since. What the Americans and the British did to Serbia set the precedent for the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya and American direct military intervention in Syria.

In 2008, Washington and London encouraged and recognised the unilateral declaration of independence by Albanians in Kosovo, a flagrant violation of international law and the internationally recognised borders of Serbia.

Regarding American and British allegations of genocide in Kosovo and Metohija, in 2000, a UN pathologist team, comprising of Spanish doctors, unearthed approximately 2,000 bodies in the Serbian province, both Serbs and Albanians, most of whom had died in combat. Like the West’s allegation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, its allegation of genocide in Kosovo and Metohija was a lie.

So the actions of the West in the former Yugoslavia set the precedent for what the West would later on do in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. The concept of independent, sovereign states, enshrined in international law, was destroyed by the West in the former Yugoslavia.

Now, I said, at the beginning of this piece, that 1991 was also a defining year for the international arena because this was the year in which the USSR ceased to exist.

From 1945 until 1991, the Soviet Union constituted a formidable counter-balance to the US on the international stage.

But with the weakening and dissolution of the Soviet colossus, this paved the way for the West to achieve global dominance and to bomb and/or invade sovereign countries, in geo-strategic parts of the world, to get its way.

The Russian Federation was incapable of preventing the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the bombing of Serbia, the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya and the fermenting of the conflict in Syria. It is a moot point but had the Soviet Union not been dissolved, then I believe that the aforementioned events would not have occurred, mainly because the US and its allies would not have tried it on in the first place because of the deterrence that was the USSR.

Because of the catastrophe that was Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the US and the UK were provided with a golden opportunity to do as they pleased in the world…and they gleefully took this opportunity.

Now, Russia, in 2018, under the strong leadership of Vladimir Putin, has regained a lot of its lost superpower status. But Russia is still in the shadow of the Soviet Union in terms of power. I believe that that situation will change in the future but it will take considerable time.

Vladimir Putin must sit in his office lamenting that had Mikhail Gorbachev been an effective leader, then he, Vladimir Vladimirovich, would today be the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in charge of a superpower. The year 1991 changed the course of history. The destruction of Yugoslavia and the death of the Soviet Union brought about the carnage which the world has witnessed ever since then. For the West, 1991 was a glorious year as it heralded the beginning of Western global mastery. But for countries in geo-strategic parts of the world which pursued independent foreign policies, 1991 would constitute a fatal year, both literally and metaphorically speaking.

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Dr Marcus Papadopoulos is a specialist on Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia.

“A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny. It is this factor which makes neo-colonialism such a serious threat to world peace.”^[1] – Kwame Nkrumah

On any indicator one wishes to use, mainstream or alternative, there is a development crisis in the Arab world.

We must understand this crisis as an outcome of the ways this region is woven into the global economy. The oil and war economies, the destruction and waste side of capital accumulation, are the main channels by which the region is articulated with the global market. Waste and militarism are principal elements in an accumulation regime that produces value by consuming not only the value of labor-power, but also the value inherent in human lives.  Accumulation by waste, realized through encroachment wars and environmental degradation, is constant under capitalism.

Capitalism as a historical stage is not solely about the production of trousers, laptops and chewing gum, things whose consumption satisfies social needs. It is also, in great part, about the production of waste and harmful things like bombs. Capitalism differs from past modes of production. It is a predominantly a market economy in which the production of waste itself is at the same time intrinsic to capital and alienated from social control. Waste, its war side, does not serve a function that resolves a problem facing society, it serves its own end and, more pertinently, it is itself a domain of accumulation. It is this negative dialectic that steadies the rate of capital accumulation, not only because it metabolizes socially necessary labor time at a higher rate, but also because it redresses real and ideological power balances at the level of the labor process and the state, which in turn ascertain the rule of capital.

This negative dialectic, the barbaric side of capital, begins the moment labor-power sells as a commodity – this point is said to be Marx’s greatest discovery. The reproduction of such commodity (labor-power), which is itself value, entails the consumption or the setting aside of the sources of such value. People are the sources of value stored/delivered in and through labor power. Humans are both subject and object of value: they produce commodities and are consumed by the things they produce: dying in wars is the extreme example. In this loop, the production of labor power, including its reproduction, is the first and last stage of realization in the cycle of value formation.

Just because value formation is an unending cyclical process, where one begins or ends to assess the accounts of surplus value becomes a choice that answers to ideological inclination. Measuring value in terms of Western devised dollar-productivity and dollar-price value forms is never innocent. Power, the colonialism of the past and the many US military bases of today, decides the value of the dollar. To measure value in terms of dollars, without quantifying the dimension of power and the commodities serving as inputs and/or produced by waste and militarism, shortchanges the third world.

It makes Arabs and Africans trivial in value terms to global accumulation because they do not possess the ‘right machines.’Apart from the difficulty of segregating absolute from relative surplus value, or in pinpointing whose class values the demarcation between productive/unproductive labor or absolute/relative surplus value serves, one must posit that value is first and a social and a historical relationship. The assessment of historical surplus value, as per Abdel Malik (1981), becomes identified with a production cycle that roughly begins in the long sixteenth century.

Whereas the globe has long been a single factory, limiting our understanding to what is abstract and concrete to developments in the western factory and its machines, omits war as a domain of accumulation, a sphere of production and simultaneously, as a manifestation of the class struggle. Value theory does not explain everything, and no theory does. However, what to include in it and what to leave out, must obey the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete in Marx.

How private labor, the abstract category transforms into social labor, the concrete category, is not an issue of ideas auto-negating in logical space, it is about the mediation of the very object of study, that is labor, as it proletarianizes by the class struggle. Such incident is global, and therefore the concrete category of value as value relationship is also global, as in the world becomes a single factory blighted by the production of waste.

Illustratively, as the sale of chewing gum in the metropolis of empire dwindles (civil-end use commodity realization), the tendency to bomb rises not only to realize the bomb itself, but also to realize the lives of humans. Capital regulates the production of labor-power by measures of depopulation. Formulaically, the more the civilian-end use commodity realization falters, the more one witnesses production by means of waste and imperialist wars;hence, the distinctive feature of the permanence of war under capitalism.

Just as in any production process, waste qua militarism realizes a commodity as an object and reconstitutes the subject. It consumes humans, the environment, and war materiel, and it shapes the ideas that promote its own expansion. Imperialist wars enhance the power of imperialism or tip the balance in the class struggle – history –in its favor. Just as it colonized and enslaved people in the past, imperialism in its neocolonial mode raises the intensity by which it rips apart states and commands their sovereignty.

To take away the will of peoples, their sovereignty, is to enslave them partially or totally. Exploitation assuming forms of slavery, that is commercial exploitation, generates high rates of surplus-value, which in turn undergird high profit rates. There is not an immediate interface between prices and values. Class power, of which imperialism is the cornerstone, mediates the unequal exchange wrought from value in the form of price.  A stronger imperialism accrues value for low or even negative price formation, the latter arising by the exercise of genocide across history.

The Arab region is subject to a dynamic of commercial exploitation by wars of encroachment that consistently break apart attempts by nations to undertake state-led development projects.

Although the strategic control of oil is cause for imperialist war, war for war’s sake is no less a factor in the propagation of regional violence. Wars that set back development efforts in a short time span represent more than just actuarial risk factors; they are complete historical uncertainties. Instead of hedging the shocks of future violence, the Arab macroeconomic setup has exaggerated the negative shocks attendant upon a business cycle largely determined by oil and wars. It has thus worsened an Arab development performance whose success may have been a partial antidote to war. In the following, I discuss how some key macroeconomic economic mechanisms have worked against development.

To begin with, the Arab countries are either in conflict – Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Libya, Iraq, Somalia and several Gulf states – or near-to-conflict either spatially or temporally. The constant prospect of war compounds the fragility of their developmental processes, even when they are not in conflict. From smaller oil exporters like Yemen or Syria, to say nothing of massive ones such as Iraq, these countries still depend on the export earnings from a primary product for economic growth. When oil prices fall, economic growth stumbles. An already poor development showing suffers yet another setback, thereby further denying Arab development.

Arab oil is definitively more bane than boon. It is the major flow tying most of the Arab countries into global commodity and financial spaces. It is mixed up with ongoing military interventions from outside the region, principally by U.S.-led imperialism. Meanwhile, minor oil exporters– for example, Tunisia and Yemen – have historically exported labor to the major oil-states, thereby making remittance flows and thus capital availability dependent on oil prices (remittances are part of geopolitical rents).

Thus, we might note that for the underachieving Arab countries, which is in fact the overwhelming majority of them, the crunch on their course of development is fourfold.

First, the determining undercurrent in their development is the fact that the decision-making circles often involve powerful external forces, who do not want another small country developing its productive capabilities in a world already drowning in overproduction. Furthermore, the leading global external forces, namely the ruling classes in the United States and the European Union, extract value and derive benefit from war and its social, political, and financial impact. The historical agency in this case is the capital class and not the European nation state in which class demarcations disappear. Refugees, militarism, value destruction, etc., are an immense source of surplus value to the globally interconnected capital class.

As I have extensively argued elsewhere, the rate of surplus-value undergirding higher profit rates in the West is not related to higher productivity.[1] Technological and war-technology progress are objective or independent of social control. Productivity, which necessarily arises from such technical progress,only presupposes accumulation; accumulation understood as the class or social process, otherwise the law of value, which dictates societal reproduction.

Moreover, surplus-value cannot be quantified by the prices that imperialist powers impose upon the developing world – such a reconciliation of price with value, or appearance with essence (the dialectical categories), is after all alien to historical materialism. The rate of surplus-value is determined by the degree to which imperialism consumes the living laborer and labor-power in a globally integrated production process. Therefore, quantification of value is not about the quantification of the commodity in terms of its dollar price, which is (the dollar that is) ex-post-facto the result of various imperialist suppression mechanisms.

Value is a relationship, and for that relationship to be quantified, it is best gauged in terms of the power that capital and, its more ferocious side, imperialism, exercise in order to expropriate the direct producers. Because war as production and a form of class struggle is a furnace of surplus-value creation, the imperialist historical bent is to envisage the sort of development that leads to more war. In the Arab world, there has been negative investment rates since the 1980s in long-term gestating agricultural or industrial capital, which are the sectors that impart living wage autonomy to the working class.

Second, the immediate damages of war or the prospects thereof impose a drag on economic, social, and institutional development. In many cases, imperialist war reinforces commercial exploitation and acts as a massive primitive accumulation measure. It disengages labor and other resources from productive linkages, necessarily but not exclusively, in sync with the depth of the overproduction crisis. Once uprooted due to war – for example in Lebanon and Iraq – most people and resources remain so. Post-war development is a chimera.

Third, although economic growth, rapid industrialization, and technological advancement are touted as indispensable conditions for development, they are pointless when governments constrain popular participation or the capabilities of people to achieve different valuable human functionings (as per the salient conventions on the right to development), or achieve meaningful participation in social life as producers. For development to occur, working people have to be represented in the state.^[2] Overwhelmingly, regional governments are not internally democratic.

They effectively exclude large portions of the population from participation in decision-making. Furthermore, because the share of de-industrializing or merchant-comprador capital rises more as it dips into the share of labor than by productivity, the consequence is for lower wages to prevail. The familiar specter of a bloated tertiary sector, poverty employment, and endemic and undercounted unemployment abounds.

Fourth, the Arab World is a region with acute income inequality.^[3] Without more evenly distributed income and wealth among different classes of society, the demand component that would drive the momentum for auto-generated and knowledge-infused growth slows down. There is a demand crisis. Demand-led growth is impossible in the current context, and without the social struggles that would expand the social power, and thus purchasing power, of the region’s poorer working layers.

Since the beginning of the neoliberal era, Arab economies have mostly grown from “without.” The incongruous forces of war prospects, commodity prices, and geopolitical rents, taking the form of aid infusions, are largely exogenous. Put differently, external forces have determined the region’s fate to an unusual degree.

Hollow growth has generated very low employment rates and a poor development experience over the past three decades. Despite that, Arab macroeconomic structures, insofar as the crucial mechanisms of resource allocation and income distribution favoring the private sector, remained unchanged. The historical agency, or social class, in charge of development – which is also the class manning the state – has repeatedly reproduced the same policies and meagre outcomes. Pattern reflects purpose.

A slow rise or even decrease in productivity indicates a near absence of “growth from within,” or growth based on the infusion of national research-and-development and knowhow in production.[4] Because of labor’s weakness vis-à-vis the imperialist class consortium, there are no rising living standards tailing productivity growth or virtuous circles of development. The productivity imbroglio is more severe in the Gulf states. Only around a decade ago, Gulf states formulated budgets based on around $20-30 per barrel oil price. In 2015, budgets required around $80-100 per barrel to be balanced.[5] Social welfare compacts adjusted for high oil prices, and oil dependency grew at very high rates. Vulnerability increased, and budgets slid into deficit once oil prices fell in 2014. State budgets are acutely vulnerable to oil price movements which are outside of local states’ control and are arguably under the stewardship of the imperial core.

In times of high oil prices, output per worker growth appears positive and unusually high. But when oil revenues are deducted from total income, output per worker growth is more often negative than positive. This is a pernicious result that pertains mostly to the Gulf states, and less so for others. It means that the productive capital stock per worker, or equipment of the modern technology type that grows from the need to capitalize both capital and labour to meet demand, is not rising.^[6] It also reasserts the failure of diversification policies. To re-emphasize: such an outcome is due to the institutional decisions of the regional ruling classes. As is the case with all social classes from subjugated social formations, these are by definition part of a global hierarchy in which the final strategic decision lies with American-led imperialism. As part-and-parcel of that decision apparatus, they (the regional classes) refuse to set in motion developmental processes involving improved agricultural and industrial output, which are foundational to an autonomous nationalist reproduction process. As a rule of thumb, a development that imparts relative security to the working class, also substantiates the anti-imperialist sovereignty.

It is true, but more so a truism, to assert that reviving these debilitated economies requires an end to conflicts and the creation of a politically stable environment conducive to both domestic and foreign investment – investment of the higher output to capital ratio type. Along with rising internal demand, this would entail job creation. This job creation is not on a one to one basis: more capital and hence more jobs. It occurs as a result of the reassignment of moneyed form of value to socially relevant jobs. Such outcomes would almost certainly and solely be the fruit of state planning decisions, or some form of dirigisme under value retaining trade and capital accounts. Yet as true as this assertion may seem, the regional security arrangement, heavily based on accumulation by means of war and U.S. support for Israel and only secondarily on Gulf arms purchases from the United States, is now anchored in a continuous war condition emerging from acute international divisions, especially the wars to contain the influence of China. This may further inhibit any serious investment over the long run, unless of course reconstruction plans proceed in times of conflict, tie development to war effort, and strengthen states.

It would be practical to develop macroeconomic policies that envisage development even while accounting for ambient risks, namely those which external violence has imposed at an increasing rate since the early 1990s. However, the current policy interface between external shocks-conflicts and the national economy under the state of tensions is based almost entirely on the non-existent assumption of an even-playing field, a risk-free environment, and a market that works best with little government intervention.

Demanding a limited role for the government in the economy would not necessarily be of efficacy anywhere. But to propose small government under war or war-like conditions, as have the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), is beyond the pale. When the cross-national agencies and institutions that could spur development processes overlook the elephant in the room, the wars or their reverberations and the lopsided institutional context, then it is no longer myopia that is causing the repetition of past errors. Instead, there is a rather marked lack of will to develop. It is at this juncture, one may add, where reverse development transforms the region into a cradle of militarism and commercial exploitation. It is exactly this ongoing regional destructiveness of lives, assets and states as a money-making business for global capital that many fail to see.

Because of declining industrialization and a deliberately low indigenous industrial supply capacity, that is the missing production that issues from a multi-layered and nationally-based supply chain, Arab countries have remained dependent on raw material exports. Their value chains are more extreme and lie elsewhere in militarism. For fast neoliberal reformers and slow reformers alike, the present condition of low oil price and steep deficits-cum-low output growth is telling of how past and present parochial policies failed or were uninterested in identifying the principal conduit of regional maldevelopment. To reiterate, that conduit has historically been overdetermination by their mode of integration with the global economy through the intertwined channels of oil and war, as opposed to civilian-end use commodity trade.

This is not to say that that there have been no exceptions to the rule of development failures. But in case there is an odd but mild achiever, such as Jordan, the explanation of developmental success ought to be chalked up to geopolitics, or a result of geopolitical rents, rather than on “indigenous economic performance” grounds. The regional cordon sanitaire is a primary explanatory variable of development. Certain countries are permitted to partially develop (to stabilize only) or to be spared the wrath of Islamist terror, at times indirectly sponsored by the U.S. state, due to their geopolitical alliances. But one thing is for sure, region-wide prosperity cannot occur under the prevailing institutional arrangements and externally-imposed wars ripping across the region.

The refrain that one often heard as of the early 1980s was that development required diversification away from primary products – essentially, oil. However, diversification requires infrastructures, legal, social and physical that expand markets with non-predatory and similarly developed regional partners. Regionalism and/or transforming countries into regional building-blocs to combine domestic markets or entice economies of scale requires, in turn, the promotion of investment in intraregional infrastructure. Given the low rate of regional integration –intra-regional trade and investment are quite low in global standards (UN 2011)[2]–and that the Arab cooperation treaties are meaningless non-binding accords, the region’s countries have not seriously pursued moving away from oil.^[8]

Once a merchant-comprador mode of accumulation takes hold, based on profiting through imports and extractive industries, as opposed to an industrial mode, exploitation shifts from value-added production and market expansion of civilian-end use commodities to variants or sub-components of commercial exploitation. The destitution of lowly paid Asian domestics and service sector employees in the Gulf and elsewhere is an example of the latter case.

However, the historical end of such merchant mode of accumulation is for the reigning comprador classes, whose assets are dollarized, to form subordinate inter-conflicting ruling classes and to partake with imperialism in warring against their own social formations.

Oil extraction requires little labor, and its productive linkages quickly lead to production chains or processes external to the producing country. Exchange-based trade of primary products alone creates little added value. Historically, rather than opting for a policy of increasing market size to increase the number of consumers, regional entrepreneurs became sort of economic introverts.

Their spoils arose from liquidating national assets and raising their shares of national income within their own fiefs at high turnover rates and, subsequently, storing their wealth in the more stable dollar form. The central banks subsidized the rich as it supported the dollar peg of the national currency with taxes drawn from the working class. The emergence of a Yemeni elite maneuvering amidst constant war, profiting from brokering grain commodity imports and hydrocarbon exports, is a crucial example.

When addressing the macro allocation frameworks in a class of war-risk-exposed countries, such as Iraq and Lebanon in the past and present, and now a suite of states sweeping clear across the Arab and African regions, we must pose questions differently. There is already the inherited weakness of being born a colonially-bred “late-developer,” in which every regional economy entered their post-colonial era with extremely small industrial bases and, often, internal markets stunted by colonial underdevelopment. Their development had been stunted and they thus came small and insecure into a world where size and security matter in the race for development. Meanwhile, it is not only the weight of colonialism that these countries have to grapple with.

The post-colonial imperialist assaults never ceased, whether militarily, as Israel either bulldozes through the region or creates an uneven power platform that drains resources, or in the imposition of terms of exchange and austerity policies that underprice labor and other resources. It is not solely in the Sykes-Picot demarcation lines that the causes of underdevelopment are to be sought – such lines are representation of power and can be changed. It is in the necessity of war as instrument of historical surplus-value and power creation that the causes of underdevelopment rest. Imperialist assaults cannot come to rest and the historical surplus-value of which I speak and was earlier defined by Abdel Malik (1981) is more than just the pile of commodities, it is also the pile of ideas corresponding to expanding capital, which for instance includes the acquiescence of Western feminism to the American bombing of Iraq, Syria, and Libya, states where women enjoyed relatively expansive rights.

Regarding the run of the mill drainage of resources, consider why when revenues from the export of primary commodities have risen regionally, the rate of retained savings dwindles afterwards, just as in the aid syndrome where imperialist aid targets poor investment or consumption, which later lowers the saving rate. As the composition of Arab consumption shifts to affluence and rises, steadily drawing on national savings and reserves, less and less savings are left for investment in productive activity when oil revenues fall.

Moreover, less oil-endowed countries, such as Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, do not secure enough foreign exchange reserves to smooth out the externally-determined fluctuations imposed by oil markets. With investment lodged in short term gestating capital and deficits in the current account frequently mounting, these countries experience prolonged economic contraction. In point of fact, Arab countries exhibit a one percent real GDP per capita growth on average between 1980 and 2010, (WDI, various years).[3] It is important to note that shifting away from the so-called white elephant investment projects of the post-independence period worsened economic performance. Nkrumah’s and the Arab socialist mega projects did not fail on their own. It is the implicit and explicit imperialist war and sanctions that shut them down.

Another crucial piece of evidence regarding imperialistically sponsored economic collapse is that the governing institutions had foreknowledge that they had to diversify and support national industry, and yet for nearly four decades there was no learning curve. They persistently failed to implement such a project. Such path dependence cannot be haphazard and must be relegated to the ideology of the dominant class, which is subordinately tied with imperialism.

The Arab world freed the environment to invest, but the results were repeatedly disastrous. Investment rates fell from over 30 percent in 1980 to less than 20 percent in 2010 (WDI various years). Without an investment guiding institution and an insurance framework underwriting war-like contingencies or force majeure attributed losses, small, risky, and fragmented markets cannot promote productive investment. As mentioned above, the merchant-comprador class channeled investment into short gestating capital, speculative or non-productive activity; however, it particularly decimated investment in the subsistence sectors, especially agriculture, the sector most required for national wealth to incubate. Of course, neoliberal or speculative type investment entailed low productivity service-sector jobs or informal sector poverty employment.

To boot, reducing the public sector’s job creation rate and spending did not better employment conditions. Alongside public-sector cuts under the region-wide dictate of the IFIs, from Egypt to Iraq, austerity and deindustrialization reduced the rate of decent job creation far below the rate of new entrants into the labor force.

One must keep in mind that population growth rates tapered down steadily as of 1960. Unemployment cannot be attributed to rising population levels. Resource usurpation and the neoliberal prescription reduced the rate of job supply to below to below the rate of decent job seekers. The emphasis on rates as opposed to levels is crucial in understanding the labor problematic. Macroeconomic rates must grow together to redress unemployment. The demographic argument for unemployment is only supply-sided. And at any rate, when everyone must work at poverty wages when wealth declines, the unemployment rate fallaciously appears small.

The macro policies adopted, since circa 1980, have lowered the growth rate, changed its input composition (more growth from the commerce side) and relied either on deskilling or disengaging national labor. Hence, rising unemployment and poverty were the necessary outcomes of unconditional liberalization policy.

It seems unlikely that the social forces that have captured the state across the region, including to a large extent the Arab republics, would have developed welfare policies in which private interests are entrusted with the fulfillment of public interests – the so-called trickle-down effect. In a situation in which extra-national, and subordinately national, decision-making class actors seek the immiseration of the region, Milton Friedman’s “bang for buck” proposition appears to hold, but in reverse. He argued for cuts in public spending because much of it is purportedly wasteful and generates no tangible returns. He wanted to halt the buildup of value that supports the agility and autonomy of labor as a political power. That is also why he did not object to direct or ephemeral cash handouts that regiment and under-valorize labor. Hence, his famous there is no bang for buck from social investment.

In the reality of the Arab world, the infusion of wars of depopulation and environmental decay, the waste side of accumulation that is so relevant to capital, turned out to be quite a shrewd imperialist investment which more than paid off the initial costs. There is more bang for buck from imperialist wars.

Over the long term – that is, the long-term planning horizon of the nationalist period, roughly the mid-to-late 1950s until the early 1980s, when state-directed economies reigned roughly from Algeria and Tunisia to Egypt and on to the Mashreq states of Syria and Iraq – there were higher developmental returns from social investment, so-called market rigidities and government intervention. Until today, all such spending has continued to impart a modicum of institutional integrity. Even in the ongoing neoliberal period, state-owned companies and bureaucracies have continued to contribute to planning and coordinate some economic growth. In that sense, they have more than paid back their initial costs. Yet, one is awfully aware of their increasingly diminishing size.

In implementation, macro issues are interrelated and inextricable from one another. Questions about their efficacies beg their own answers. For instance, to what extent is the problem of unemployment in some of these countries an outcome of monetary policy that targets low rates of inflation with no regard to unemployment? To what extent is the problem of stagflation in some countries an outcome of a policy-mix of increasing short-term interest rates along with national currency devaluations? To what extent has the adverse impact of a chronically high rate of unemployment aggravated the contraction triggered by an external shock (falling oil price) and thus created a debilitating path dependence?

The mechanisms behind these questions and the policy decisions that underlie them can be seen as various irrigation valves channeling resources between various nationally based strata and internationally based financial interests.

Put another way, they are about who – which class – has enough power to get a higher share of income, and how much. The decline of state intervention in the economy and the retooling of state monetary and fiscal policies have not been class-blind decisions. They have reflected an ascendant bourgeoisie pushing back against labor. A consequence is that labor share from total income fell to the lowest global ranks due to inflation and wage compression.

That meant in country after country, more of the locally-denominated wealth concentrated in fewer hands – for example in Egypt and Syria. In turn, the steadying of the national currency against the dollar – that is, currency pegs – meant more of the that locally-denominated wealth could then be converted into the reserve currency, the dollar, at the expense of the resources destined to the working population. The pegged exchange rate ceased to be a mechanism for preventing hot currency flows and turned into a means to channel wealth not only up within the same society, but also abroad.^[9]

Indeed, a country cannot peg to the dollar under an open capital account and still hold on to an effective monetary policy. However, it is not the effectiveness of monetary policy that matters first. It is the ownership of policy or policy autonomy emanating from the margin of state sovereignty. The sovereignty of Arab states has been less and less marked by developmental capabilities, human well-being, and proletarian participation. Put differently, sovereignty inevitably has a class component.

In times of war or war-like conditions, such as clearly prevail in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and thus in the Arab World more broadly, the ultimate sovereign may be allegorically drawn from the inscription on the side of Louis XIV’s cannon: ultima ratio regum (the final argument of kings). The military balance of forces, including Israel and America’s military bases, has become the broker of sovereignty; it has decided on what terms countries can be sovereign. The invasion of Iraq is a telling example. Along with the ideological avalanche of neoliberalism, external violence can explain much of the lost policy autonomy since 1980.

Regaining development means regaining policy autonomy, or the capacity for local states to act in the interests of the popular strata. The positive relationship between policy space and positive developmental outcome is a straightforward question. Many have stressed its significance.

UNCTAD, for instance, says

“the idea of policy space refers to the freedom and ability of governments to identify and pursue the most appropriate mix of economic and social policies to achieve equitable and sustainable development.”^[10]

Yet, in a patronizing tone, UNCTAD would also attribute the shrinkage of policy space to causes devoid of real forms of power – as if state sovereignty for the neediest countries is a by-product of a universally democratic international law. What purpose would it serve UNCTAD to attribute loss of policy space to “various legal obligations emerging from multilateral, regional and bilateral agreements,” other than to obscure the truth?^[11]

The higher rate of real value and resource dislocation resulting from violence, overwhelmingly caused or lubricated by foreign actors such as the United States and European Union, contravenes all the covenants of international law. There is in such half-truth an effort to conceal the hierarchically articulated social power structures, cutting across national boundaries, whose ideology targets a higher input metabolism of the developing social order (the consumption of humans and nature), often by ferocious means, as a necessary precursor to global economic growth.

We simply cannot drop the study of social relations, violent social restructuring, and their accumulated historical effect to decimate and reconstitute value in the developing world. History matters, and sidestepping the constitutive history of external violence is not social science. It is science fiction.

*

This article was originally published by Viewpoint Magazine.

Professor Ali Kadri  teaches at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He was previously a  visiting fellow at the Centre for Human Rights, London School of Economics. He is the author of The Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World, Palgrave, 2017.

Notes

[1] Ali Kadri, The Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

^[2] United Nations General Assembly, 97th plenary meeting, A/RES/41/128, December 4, 1986.

^[3] University of Texas Inequality Project, Estimated Household Income Inequality Data Set, 2008.

[4] Ali Kadri, “Productivity decline in the Arab world,” real-world economics review, no. 70 (February 2015): 140–60.

[5] Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA), TABLE (2): Annual Government Revenues and Expenditures.

^[6] Ali Kadri, “A pre Arab Spring Depressive Business Cycle,” in The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World, ed. Fawaz Gerges (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

^[7] John Everington and Shereen El Gazzar, “Consumers hit hard as Egypt subsidy cuts send fuel prices soaring 78%,” The National, July 5, 2014.

^[8] United Nations Survey of Economic and Social Developments in Western Asia, 2007–2008 (New York: United Nations, 2011).

^[9] Countries with balance of payment constraints are short leashed by institutional lenders who can wreak havoc on the nation-states by simply delaying disbursements to support the national currency (if national currency devalues, inflation rises).           

^[10] UNCTAD, Trade and Development Report, 2014.

^[11] Ibid.

Featured image: A missile launch facility in North Dakota

A very dangerous narrative is unfolding within US military and intelligence circles.

It pertains to the use of nuclear weapons on a first strike basis as a means of “self-defense” in the case of a cyberattack by an enemy nation.

Cyberattacks cause disruptions in communications systems, transport, government services, financial transactions. They do not result in mass killings of civilians as in the case of  an outright bombing campaign directed against an enemy nation. 

What is contemplated in the 2017 NPR is the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a first strike basis against both nuclear and non-nuclear states, allegedly as a means of “self defense”.

This is nothing new. The preemptive nuclear weapons doctrine was first contemplated in George W. Bush’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review in which a first strike pre-emptive use of tactical nuclear weapons was first formulated. B61 and the more recent B61-12 mini-nukes (bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads) with an explosive capacity (yield) of up to 12 times a Hiroshima bomb were described as “harmless to civilians because the explosion is underground”. 

Below are relevant excerpts of the Nuclear Industries article

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, February 2, 2018

***

According to the the Financial Times quoted by Nuclear Industries:

“The world has been living with the threat of a nuclear apocalypse since the 1950s. Over the past decade, intelligence experts have increasingly warned about the threat of a catastrophic cyber attack.

“Now the two fears appear to have merged, with the US on the point of revising its defence policy — to allow the use of nuclear weapons, in retaliation for a devastating cyber attack”.

According to Nuclear Industries commenting on Trump’s 2017 Nuclear Posture Review, 

The [NPR 2017] “proposes to change US policy to allow the first use of nuclear weapons, in response to “attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons”.

Developed nations are now reliant on  functioning computer systems. A concerted cyber attack, targeting critical infrastructure, could cause social turmoil and mass casualties.  Security experts worry about a range of scenarios, including: viruses that shut down transport infrastructure, such as air-traffic control; that disrupt the operations of banks, causing the financial system to seize up and interfere with power generation and distribution.

Intelligence agencies have already considered the possibilities for cyber-retaliation. (Nuclear Industries)

By lowering the bar to the first use of nuclear weapons, it makes nuclear war more thinkable.

Dave Mosher (Business Insider) points out that hundreds of US nuclear weapons are already primed to use at a moment’s notice. This dangerous Cold War-era policy means such weapons can be launched within a few minutes of detecting an adversary’s pre-emptive nuclear strike — or a false signal of one.

He stresses need for frank discussions — in our homes, at work, and with elected officials — about the reality of nuclear weapons, including their numbers, risks, cost, and imminent threat to the future of humanity, adding:

“Every weapon we dismantle is one step away from the worst kind of mishap imaginable”.

*

All images in this article are from Nuclear Industries.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday raised the prospect of a military coup against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and seemingly praised past military dictatorships as “agents of change.” 

“In the history of Venezuela and South American countries, it is often times that the military is the agent of change when things are so bad and the leadership can no longer serve the people,” Tillerson said during a speech at the University of Texas.

Speaking ahead of a five-nation Latin America tour, the U.S. diplomat insisted the Trump administration was not advocating “regime change,” but suggested the Venezuelan leader could flee to ally Cuba.

“I am sure that he’s got some friends over in Cuba that could give him a nice hacienda on the beach.”

While also insisting that the United States wanted peaceful “change” in the Andean country, he suggested that the sort of violence that ushered in bloody regimes like the one led by General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, was a possibility.

“Whether that will be the case here or not, I do not know,” Tillerson added.

Military regimes took hold of much of South America during the 1970’s and 80’s, often by toppling left-leaning governments with the backing of Washington.

These dictatorships, which usurped power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, led to some 60,000 deaths, thousands of disappearances and exiles, as well as the use of torture tactics. Victims included dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, students and teachers, intellectuals and suspected guerrillas.

Tillerson’s comments come as the Venezuelan government and opposition groups reached a ‘pre-agreement’ on a deal that could help resolve the issues facing the South American nation, including opposition participation in the 2018 presidential elections.

The two sides returned to the Dominican Republic to resume peace negotiations under the mediation of Dominican President Danilo Medina, former Spanish President Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and international delegates from Chile, Bolivia, Nicaragua and San Vicente and the Grenadines.

These round of talks followed two national elections where the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela swept most of the positions.

Despite the deal, which is slated to be signed on Monday, U.S. officials have stated they will not recognize the results of the Venezuelan elections which are scheduled to take place before the end of April.

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a notice outlining extraordinary plans by the social media company to monitor all the postings and messages of its users, censor independent journalism, and use artificial intelligence (AI) to report users to the police and intelligence agencies.

Zuckerberg began his post, released in conjunction with the company’s quarterly earnings report, by declaring that 2017 was a “hard year” for Facebook.

“The world feels anxious and divided—and that played out on Facebook. We’ve seen abuse on our platform, including interference from nation states, the spread of news that is false, sensational and polarizing, and debate about the utility of social media.”

Facebook, he writes, has the responsibility to “amplify the good and prevent harm. That is my personal challenge for 2018.”

In Facebook’s “newspeak,” this means that the company will act aggressively this year to suppress the spread of information online and censor content, under the guise of combatting “fake news” and “Russian meddling.”

The truly ominous implications of this project are outlined in Zuckerberg’s post. Among Facebook’s initiatives, he writes, is “new technology to detect suicidal posts that has helped first responders reach more than 100 people who needed help quickly, and we’ve built AI systems to flag suspicious behavior around elections in real time and remove terrorist content.”

In other words, Facebook has introduced AI systems to collect, monitor and interpret all the information posted on its social media platform. As always, the introduction of such a sweeping system of mass surveillance is justified with seemingly praiseworthy motivations. After all, who could object to measures aimed at stopping suicides or terrorist attacks? The actual purpose of the new systems, however, is very different.

Zuckerberg points to the sweeping scope of the company’s artificial intelligence plans later:

“Our goal with AI is to understand the meaning of all the content on Facebook.”

Every single post, photo, video, message, comment, reaction and share will be fed into the company’s increasingly powerful computer systems to be analyzed for “harmful” content, and reported to the police and intelligence agencies as deemed necessary.

The real—and sinister—aim of Facebook’s actions is also made clear by the other initiatives that the company is taking. Most significantly, Zuckerberg stressed the company’s determination to make sure that “the information you see on Facebook comes from broadly trusted and high-quality sources, in order to counter misinformation and polarization.”

What are these “broadly trusted” sources? “For example, take the Wall Street Journal or New York Times,” wrote the multibillionaire CEO. “Even if you don’t read them or don’t agree with everything they write, most people have confidence that they’re high quality journalism. On the flip side, there are blogs that have intense followings but are not widely trusted beyond their core audience. We will show those publications somewhat less.”

In other words, corporate media sources will be promoted, while other publications, even those that “have intense followings,” will be demoted. As for being “shown somewhat less,” what Zuckerberg means is that they will be blocked from reaching a broader audience. More simply, they will be censored.

In addition to censoring news from alternative sources, Zuckerberg states at the beginning of his post that Facebook is working to “show fewer viral videos” because such content is not “good for people’s well-being and for society.”

The viral videos Zuckerberg is referring to include footage of police violence, social exposures like reporting on last year’s Grenfell Tower inferno that exposed social inequality in London, and documentation of the war crimes carried out by the US military. Any such content will be “demoted,” which Zuckerberg later notes “reduces an article’s traffic by 80 percent.”

Zuckerberg’s central pretense—that Facebook will promote sources that “people have confidence” in—is a fraud. In fact, according to a Gallup poll published last year, Americans’ trust in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” reached its lowest level in poling history, with only 32 percent of participants saying they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust. At the same time, the use of social media to read news has been growing exponentially, reaching two-thirds of the US population according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

The growth in the popularity of Facebook and other social media networks was in large measure due to the fact that they allowed their users access to information and viewpoints unavailable through mainstream media outlets. Now, Facebook has reversed course and declared that its intention is to promote the official narrative and block independent news sources that question it.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and other giant social media companies—working closely with intelligence agencies and governments—are seeking to leverage their role as mechanisms of communication to become instruments of censorship and repression. In the process, they are turning one of the most important and liberating technological advances of the 21st century, the growth and expansion of artificial intelligence, into a mechanism for police control and dictatorship.

The fight against Internet censorship is an urgent task facing workers all over the world. The World Socialist Web Site is leading the fight against the greatest threat to free speech since the Second World War. On January 23, it published an open letter calling for an international coalition of socialist, antiwar, left-wing and progressive websites, organizations and activists to fight Internet censorship.

The principles for this coalition are:

• Safeguarding the Internet as a platform for political organization and the free exchange of information, culture and diverse viewpoints, guided by the principle that access to the Internet is a right and must be free and equally available for all.

• Uncompromising insistence on the complete independence of the Internet from control by governments and private corporations.

• Unconditional defense of net neutrality and free, unfettered and equal access to the Internet.

• The banning and illegalization of government and corporate manipulation of search algorithms and procedures, including the use of human evaluators, that restrict and block public visibility of websites.

• Irreconcilable opposition to the use of the Internet and artificial intelligence technologies to carry out surveillance of web users.

• Demanding the end to the persecution of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and the complete restoration of their personal freedom.

• Advocating the transformation of the corporate Internet monopolies into public utilities, under internationally coordinated democratic control, to provide the highest quality service, not private profit.

• The fight against Internet censorship and the defense of democratic rights cannot be conducted through appeals to capitalist governments and the parties and politicians who serve their interests, but only in uncompromising struggle against them. Moreover, this struggle is international in scope and totally opposed to every form and manifestation of national chauvinism, racism and imperialist militarism. Therefore, those who are truly committed to the defense of democratic rights must direct their efforts to the mobilization of the working class of all countries.

We urge all of those who agree with these principles to contact the World Socialist Web Site and take up the fight against Internet censorship.

The Russian government, media, and public don’t know what to make of the US Treasury’s “Kremlin list.”  The Treasury list contains the names of the top echelon of Russian government and business leadership. The Russians understand that the list is unfriendly and furthers Washington’s policy of worsening the relationship between the two major nuclear powers, but beyond that the list seems to be a mystery to them.

President Putin has joked that he is disappointed to have been left off the list. Putin was left off for a reason.  The list is directed at him. 

On January 30, I explained four of the main reasons for the list.   

Here are two more important reasons for the list:

1. The list is an implicit threat against the business interests of Russian oligarchs, and they understand that.  Reports are that many lobbied Washington to get off the list.  By suggesting that Washington could curtail the oligarchs’ travel to the West, seize their Western-based assets, and prevent Americans and Europeans from doing business with their companies, Washington is telling them to remove their support from President Putin.  Washington intends to use the Western-funded NGOs and media in Russia to interfere in the upcoming Russian elections. Washington does not want Putin to have the smashing victory that is expected. It is difficult to make a monster out of a person who has higher public support than any American president in history.
2. The list is an intended insult to Russia and to President Putin.  As a result of Putin’s low-key response to past provocations, Washington anticipated, correctly, no response from Putin to Washington’s insult to the entire political and economic leadership of Russia. The unanswered insult thus becomes Washington’s way of displaying its hegemony over Putin and Russia. 

The lack of a meaningful Russian response will encourage more insults and actual sanctions against Putin’s supporters, which will cause some of them to separate from Putin in order to protect their own economic and career interests.  In the past Washington has used sanctions in efforts to deprive leaders of public support.  With the Kremlin list, Washington has changed its tactics and is targeting the reputations and economic interests of the leadership class. The list is Washington’s attempt to deprive Putin of the support of the top echelon of government and business leaders.  The list is a bullet aimed at Putin’s heart.

Consider the audacity of US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, a person regarded by many as a devious financial gangster who did great harm to many Americans, issuing a list that suggests the US government is going to take some kind of punitive action against the Prime Minister of Russia, against the Foreign Minister of Russia, against the Defense Minister of Russia. 

Such a list is a way of telling Russia that Washington regards Russia as one of Trump’s “shithole countries.”  The list tells Russia that Washington is never going to take any consideration of any Russian interest and that Russia will continue to be punished until it submits to Washington’s hegemony, like the UK, Germany, France, Scandinavia, Japan, Canada, Australia, Italy, Spain, and the rest of the servile Western puppet states. As George W. Bush declared,

“You are with us or against us.” 

Being with us means you do as you are told.  Russia can either do as she is told or fight.  Russia has no other choice. 

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This article was originally published by Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Featured image is from Madhouse News.

An accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, was employed by a wealthy American investor, William Browder, and died in a Russian prison on 16 November 2006. How did it happen; who was to blame for it? The Russian Government was blamed for it, and this blame produced in 2012 the first set of economic sanctions to squeeze Vladimir Putin out of power.

Magnitsky’s death in prison thus provided the factual basis for the first of the economic-sanctions regimes that were imposed by The West against the Russian Government, the 2012 Magnitsky Act — sanctions that preceded the 2014 sanctions which were imposed on account of Russia’s response to America’s February 2014 coup in Ukraine. However, that account of the Magnitsky incident is full of lies, according to a 2016 documentary investigation into the matter. But publication of this video investigation — at youtube or anywhere — is effectively banned in The West. 

Here’s how Gilbert Doctorow, who is one of the extremely few people in The West who managed to see this totally-suppressed-in-The-West investigative news-documentary that was done (and which he said proved to him that the basis of the Magnitsky Act is lies) expressed his shock, at what he saw and learned from it:

Nekrasov [the investigator] largely allows William Browder to self-destruct under the weight of his own lies.

The case against Browder that Nekrasov unintentionally stumbled upon when making the film is clearly so persuasive and so massive that even some leading members of the anti-Putin coalition in Europe feel strongly that the truth must out, whatever the consequences. … [But] lynch law necessarily operates. Human rights watchers everywhere, beware! … Nekrasov has not been a friend, still less a “stooge” of the Putin regime. Indeed, as he explained at the start of his brief speech, before taking the assignment to do a film about Magnitsky. … Nekrasov had friendly relations with Bill Browder [the U.S. oligarch who was behind Magnitsky].

Furthermore, another investigator, Alex Krainer, had his book, which was published on the matter, withdrawn promptly without explanation; so, Krainer put his investigation online, and its findings were entirely consistent with Nekrasov’s findings. Here is an excellent interview of Krainer about what he said in his book:

Here is the producer’s transcript of that interview:

And here are my own transcriptions of highlights from the video: 

22:00 “The Magnitsky Act is essentially where the new cold war started” “in 2012, yes? And that’s right before Ukraine.”

25:00 “The bigger agenda is … Basically what happened during the 1990s when Russia went from communism to capitalism, there was a massive massive transfer of wealth from Russia to The West. So, Western financial institutions and government organizations like the United States Treasury and State Department and USAID, the IMF, the World Bank, and so forth, they arranged this massive transfer of ownership over Russian assets to the Western hand, some of it legally, some of it illegally, but they so completely infiltrated the Russian Government.”

26:00: “Between $200 billion and $600 billion, depending on whom you ask, of Russian assets were moved to Western ownership. And Bill Browder himself, I think, made maybe a hundred million dollars, maybe a few hundred million dollars, for himself. The reason why his ability to frustrate Russian investigations of his tax-fraud and of his theft of Russian assets that he was involved with [is that] at the same time [he] protect[s] all of the people and organizations like … HSBC, and Bank of New York, and who knows who else, it’s … legal immunity from prosecution, for all of them.” 

27:00 “So, it’s not just Browder’s few hundred million, but up to $600 billion of stolen assets, so that when Russia goes to Western courts, they are obstructed.”

29:40 “Bill Browder is in this network where, essentially, laws don’t apply to them.”

This is the Krainer book, which, finally in 2017, he placed free online.

And this is an excerpt from Krainer’s book.

p.75:

It is clear that shock “therapy” was little more than a relentless, cruel strangulation of Russia’s economy to facilitate looting of her vast industrial and resource wealth. Nonetheless, most Western-published analyses of this episode tended to treat it as [a] failure of good intentions. While lamenting the outcomes and certain questionable practices, most analysts essentially attribute the failure of [the] Russian transition to honest errors, Russia’s endemic corruption, and perhaps inexperience in many of the drama’s protagonists. In New York Review of Books, Robert Cotrell provides a typical example: “One cannot really fault the youthful democratic movements for this failure. They were amateurs and innocents with a hazy grasp at best of what they wanted to achieve and no grasp at all of how concretely to achieve it.” 84 Goldman Marshall [Nov. 2004 Foreign Affairs, Marshall I. Goldman [see this and this] of Harvard and the Council of Foreign Relations, wrote: “To be sure, there were unsettling reports of shady dealings during the takeovers, but most observers explained them away as inevitable side effects of such a far-reaching transformation.” Naturally, Marshall fails to detail how or where he polled these “most observers,” but his message to the readers is unmistakable: move along folks, there’s nothing to see here – especially pay no attention to the fact that many of those thousands of westerners who came to Russia “for the best of reasons,” including Bill Browder, Andrei Schleifer and Jonathan Hay,85 returned from Russia as multi-millionaires. Financial reporter Anne Willamson, who covered Russia for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, [and whose book on the subject has likewise been banned] rightly remarked in her Congressional testimony that, “Americans, who thought their money was helping a stricken land, have been dishonored; and the Russian people who trusted us are now in debt twice what they were in 1991 and rightly feel themselves betrayed.” 

Anne Williamson’s book on the subject, Contagion: The Betrayal of Liberty, Russia, and the United States in the 1990s, was to have been published by a major publisher in or around 1999. It too was completed, but never published; and she did not place hers online, because she’s still hoping for a publisher. But she has summarized her findings here.

In an interview, Williamson explained why no publisher has published her book on the subject.

More about Harvard’s involvement in “the rape of Russia” can be found here.

An excellent article about the ways in which today’s Russian Government is trying to extricate itself from the enormous harms that the rape of Russia perpetrated, can be found here.

The war between The West and Russia has been restored, on the basis of news-suppression, if not of outright lies. For some reason, anyone who independently investigates the ‘historical’ account of the origin of the Magnitsky Act is effectively blocked from making public their findings. And, for some reason, the findings, in the three independent investigations that have been done, seem to be essentially the same as each other, and they contradict, each in the same ways, the ‘history’ that has been published about the matter, in The West.

The other main basis for The West’s sanctions against Russia concerns Ukraine (the U.S. coup there in 2014), and that matter produced both the increased sanctions against Russia, and the massing of NATO weapons and troops on and near Russia’s borders — all likewise on the basis of lies.

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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.

Featured image is from YourNewsWire.

State-level reforms for universal health care are laudable; they are not single payer.

Two states with a long history of state-based healthcare reform efforts, California and New York, are hard at work organizing for state bills labeled as single payer healthcare plans. Other states are moving in that direction too. This raises questions by single payer advocates: Can states create single payer healthcare systems? Does state-level work help or hinder our goal of National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA)?

The movement for NIMA gained momentum throughout 2017, largely due to rising premiums under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Republican efforts to worsen the healthcare crisis. Supporters of NIMA mobilized to build support for single payer legislation in Congress, spoke out at Town Halls and pressured lawmakers. As a result, the House bill, HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, grew to 120 co-sponsors, the highest number in its 15-year history, and Senator Sanders was successfully pressured to introduce a bill in the Senate, S 1804: The Medicare for All Act.

As momentum grew, the expected push back materialized. In the spring, Democrats in Congress urged people to focus on fixing the ACA and uttered support for various forms of a public insurance, a ‘public option’ or Medicare buy-in. In August, well-known progressives, claiming to be ‘single payer supporters’, published articles arguing that single payer was too much to ask for and outlining ‘incremental approaches’. Members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, complained about Democratic voters making single payer a litmus test in the next elections. Pelosi said,

“So I say to people, if you want [single payer], do it in your States.  States are laboratories.”

The message was clear, there was too much pressure for NIMA and Democrats didn’t like it. Sending people to work at the state level would lower the heat on Congress

State Efforts for Universal Health Care

Canada is often pointed to as a model for achieving National Improved Medicare for All in the United States. A universal medical insurance was first created in the province of Saskatchewan in 1962, following decades of increasing socialization of medicine in several provinces and a national law that financed universal hospital coverage at the provincial level. By 1968, a universal publicly-financed Medicare program was adopted nationally. Could the same path occur in the US?

The twenty-first century healthcare system in the United States is much more complex than the Canadian system was in the 1960s. At that time, health care was left up to the provinces. Dr. Don McCanne writes,

“We cannot use the example of Saskatchewan and pretend that a state can set up a single payer system that could serve as an example for the nation – a model that could be expanded to all states. No. Saskatchewan began with a tabula rasa. They were able to create a de novo single payer system.”

Rather than socializing medicine, the US has experienced decades of increasing privatization. There are a multitude of payers in the US, which include private insurance through employers, unions and individually, public programs, and national programs for federal employees and the military. A state would have to succeed in obtaining multiple waivers from the federal government and changes to federal laws to enact a state-based program. One federal law, the Employee Retirement and Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which prohibits states from regulating employee benefits, is a major obstacle. States also face the hurdle of being required to balance their budgets, a barrier that doesn’t exist at the national level.

As outlined in Public Citizen’s “Roadmap to Single Payer,” a state can potentially make its healthcare system more efficient, but it cannot achieve a pure single payer system; thus, it can’t attain the bulk of savings that a single payer system would have. Within their budget constraints, states would be forced to raise the costs to individuals and businesses or lower coverage if they are not able to meet their needs for care. This has happened in every past attempt by states to achieve universal coverage, as Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein document in “State Health Reform Flatlines.”

If a state were able to pass a bill outlining a path toward a universal healthcare system and to be granted a federal waiver from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which are major feats, the state would still face significant barriers, some of which make it impossible to create a pure single payer program.

Barriers to state single payer

1. Federal health plans – There are numerous federal health plans, such as Medicare for seniors and those who qualify for disability, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), which includes over 200 plans, the Veterans Health Administration (VA), the Indian Health Service (IHS) and Tri-Care for members of the military; it is not possible to merge all these programs into a single state system.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not have the authority to give federal Medicare dollars to the state as a block grant. Single payer advocates have opposed passing a federal law that would allow this due to concern that it would dismantle the Medicare Program state-by-state and allow some states to use the law to further privatize Medicare through vouchers.

Some state advocates have considered applying for a new state healthcare plan to be considered a Medicare Advantage plan. These are private plans offered under Medicare. If such a waiver were granted, the state still could not force seniors to choose the state plan, so it would only capture some of the Medicare recipients in the state.

There is a similar situation with the health plans for federal employees. It would require a change in federal law to shift the FEHBP to the state. Perhaps a state could apply to be considered a choice for federal employees but even if it succeeded, it could not compel federal employees to choose their plan. Tri-Care is a program run by the Department of Defense that would also continue to operate outside the new state system. And the VA and IHS would operate independently as well.

It is possible, although this has not been tried yet, that a state could become an intermediary between providers in the state and the various federal programs such that claims would be submitted to the state and the state would collect the payment from the federal program to pay the provider. This would add more administrative complexity and cost to the state program, and providers would still have to interact with the individual plans for authorization of care.

2. Medicaid – Medicaid is a federal program for people with low incomes administered at the state level. A state would have to apply for a waiver to incorporate Medicaid into its new state program. There is greater flexibility for a state to do this than there is for Medicare. States would still have to track how many people qualify for Medicaid to be reimbursed for them by the federal government, another administrative task that adds cost, or would need to ask for a block grant. Single payer advocates have opposed turning Medicaid into a block grant program because that would limit funds during periods of recession when more people qualify for Medicaid. A block grant would not expand as the need expanded. Currently, all states except Connecticut use a mix of private insurance Managed Care Organizations (MCO’s) for Medicaid patients. To streamline its Medicaid system, a state would need to get rid of its multiple Medicaid MCO’s.

3. Employer Health Plans – Employee benefits are protected under a federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). While states have the authority to regulate health insurers that operate in their state, they do not have authority to regulate plans offered by businesses that self-insure, which is 60 percent of businesses that provide health benefits. Any interference in employee benefits can be challenged under ERISA and would result in a lengthy and expensive court battle.

California and New York are trying to circumvent ERISA by stating explicitly that their state program “does not create any employment benefit, nor does it require, prohibit, or limit the providing of any employment benefit.” However, a state system would be challenged under ERISA, and recent ERISA challenges have not been favorable. A case between the state of Vermont and Liberty Mutual, which operates as an ERISA plan, went to the US Supreme Court in 2016 and was decided against the state. The case involved a law requiring insurers to report claims data. Even though the Vermont law did not specifically target ERISA plans, it was determined to be preempted by ERISA because it had a “connection” to the ERISA plan. Another impermissible “connection” would occur if “economic effects of the state law force an ERISA plan to adopt a certain scheme of substantive coverage or effectively restrict its choice of insurers.” A state law requiring businesses to pay a payroll tax would likely be viewed as restricting choice.

States can strive for universal coverage, but calling plans single payer is incorrect

For many decades, states have introduced and passed laws aimed at achieving universal health care coverage. None has yet succeeded in being universal or sustainable, but these are admirable efforts that have increased access to care, at least temporarily. It is possible for a state, using the roadmap outlined by Public Citizen, to move towards universal coverage. It is not possible to achieve a pure single payer system at the state level and so states forego the significant savings of a single payer system.

In the drive towards universal health care, states might consider working to get rid of private Medicaid MCOs as Connecticut did so that more Medicaid dollars are available to cover more people and/or more care. Oklahoma had a similar program that was successful. Part of the success of these programs is providing case management for people with significant health needs to avoid preventable emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

Given that states are not able to achieve pure single payer systems, states take a risk when they label themselves single payer or Medicare for All. While it is understandable that these terms are popular and that most advocates for health reform support single payer, and so are inspired to work for it, it is misleading and could harm national efforts.

For example, Vermont passed a law in 2010 requiring the state to develop a plan for universal healthcare coverage. That law allowed the state to contract Dr. William Hsaio, who assisted in the design of the Taiwanese single payer healthcare system in the 1990s, to design their system. Vermont’s system was not a single payer system, yet it was consistently called single payer by the Governor, advocates and the media. It failed, and its failure was blamed on its high cost.

Similarly, Colorado attempted universal healthcare coverage in 2016 through the creation of a state-wide publicly-financed healthcare cooperative: “ColoradoCare would have replaced most private health insurance and taken over the state’s Medicaid program for the poor and people with disabilities, starting in 2019. The ballot initiative did not seek to replace Medicare benefits or current health coverage for veterans, military personnel and civilian defense employees.”

The Colorado plan was called single payer, even though it wasn’t, and its defeat was marked in the media as a second defeat for single payer health care. Prominent Democrats opposed ColoradoCare. Some progressive groups in Colorado also declined to support it, saying that single payer can only be done at the national level. It is hard to argue with them when they are correct. It undermines our legitimacy if single payer advocates are on the inaccurate side of that argument.

Do state efforts help or hinder national efforts?

Advocates for ‘single payer’ at the state level often say that state efforts will help national efforts. Some advocates work for reform at the state level because they believe the public will be more inspired to fight for change at the local than at the national level.

It is true that it is often easier to engage people around local or state efforts. They feel more winnable. But, what happens when the public is told they are working for state-based single payer and then they find out that they have been misled because the goal is not possible? It may be that public trust is lost or that people experience a deep disappointment because they worked hard for something that will never be realized.

And, what would happen if a state succeeded in passing a health law? First, it would take a tremendous effort focused on influencing state, not national, legislators to pass it. Second, that level of state-based pressure would have to be maintained to implement the law. And third, a state campaign would be so focused on these efforts that it would have little time or resources to advocate for change at the national level. Their national fight would be aimed at applying for waivers and winning changes to the Medicare law and ERISA.

Imagine if a highly-populated progressive state such as California or New York were to drop out of the national effort for NIMA to focus on their state. This would be a huge loss. Dr. Woolhandler reminds us,

“Living in New York or Massachusetts doesn’t lessen our sense of responsibility for millions in the Deep South and other ‘red state’ areas for whom national legislation is the only realistic option for health care progress.”

The only way we will achieve National Improved Medicare for All is if we develop a movement of movements and strategic campaigns focused on that goal. It is going to be a fight, but it is a winnable fight, especially now as the ACA becomes unsustainable and Congress threatens the minor safety net currently in existence. To win, we need to continue to build momentum in our states to pressure members of Congress. This election year is a perfect time to do that, particularly during the primaries when candidates are sensitive about their image.

We need to connect our fights to other struggles to protect public insurances such as Medicaid and Medicare. The solution to preserving our social health systems is to make them universal. Then we have the social solidarity, everybody in and nobody out, to protect and strengthen them.

A study of social movements shows us that we are close to winning NIMA. The power holders will predictably work to throw us off track by sending us down false paths of partial reforms and state-based efforts and lure us into working on elections. We must recognize and resist these distractions. We will win when we have built the popular power to shift the political culture so that no politician can be on the wrong side of this issue. We win when there is a loud and clear public demand for National Improved Medicare for All.

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Margaret Flowers is a pediatrician who directs Health Over Profit for Everyone, a campaign of Popular Resistance.

Featured image is from the author.

The chemical-intensive industrial model of agriculture has secured the status of ‘thick legitimacy’. This status stems from on an intricate web of processes successfully spun in the scientific, policy and political arenas. It status allows the model to persist and appear  normal and necessary. This perceived legitimacy derives from the lobbying, financial clout and political power of agribusiness conglomerates which, throughout the course of the last century (and continued today), set out to capture or shape government departments, public institutions, the agricultural research paradigm, international trade and the cultural narrative concerning food and agriculture.

Critics of this system are immediately attacked for being anti-science, for forwarding unrealistic alternatives, for endangering the lives of billions who would starve to death and for being driven by ideology and emotion. Strategically placed industry mouthpieces like Jon Entine, Owen Paterson and Henry Miller perpetuate such messages in the media and influential industry-backed bodies like the Science Media Centre feed journalists with agribusiness spin.

From Canada to the UK, governments work hand-in-glove with the industry to promote its technology over the heads of the public. A network of scientific bodies and regulatory agencies that supposedly serve the public interest have been subverted by the presence of key figures with industry links, while the powerful industry lobby hold sway over bureaucrats and politicians.

Monsanto played a key part in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies and the global food processing industry had a leading role in shaping the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (see this). From Codex, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring Indian agriculture to the proposed US-EU trade deal (TTIP), the powerful agribusiness lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers to ensure its preferred model of agriculture prevails.

In her numerous documents, Dr Rosemary Mason has highlighted high-level collusion and subterfuge that has served to keep glyphosate on the commercial market. Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham have described how an industry-backed campaign set out to smear science and scientists which were critical of proprietary technology. And Carol Van Strum and Evaggelos Vallianatos have indicated fraud and corruption involving the US Environmental Protection Agency that have resulted in industry interests prevailing at the expense of public health and the environment.

On a wider more geopolitical level, Michel Chossudovsky has examined how transnational agribusiness working with USAID effectively dismantled indigenous agriculture in Ethiopia. Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill.

Whether it involves the effects of NAFTA in Mexico or the ongoing struggle against the Monsanto across South America, traditional methods of farming are being supplanted by globalised supply chains dominated by transnational companies policies and the imposition of corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive (monocrop) agriculture.

The ultimate coup d’tat by the transnational agribusiness conglomerates is that government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that profit-driven Fortune 500 corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. These corporations have convinced so many that they have ultimate legitimacy to own and control what is essentially humanity’s common wealth. There is the premise that water, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

Tearing down the façade of legitimacy

In recent times, Dr Rosemary Mason has been campaigning against the effects of agrochemicals on human health and the environment. She has a nature reserve in South Wales and noticed that flora and fauna was becoming increasingly degraded to the point that the reserve now resembles little more than a dead zone in comparison to what it had once been.

In her dozens of carefully researched and fully-referenced letters to key officials in the UK, EU and US, Dr Mason has documented the effects agrochemicals on her nature reserve as well as on health and the environment not only in Wales but globally.

She has, moreover, gone to great lengths to describe the political links between industry and various government departments, regulatory agencies and key committees that have effectively ensured that ‘business as usual’ prevails.

Mason recently received a response from Public Health England (PHE) to this open letter she had sent to the four chief medical officers for England, Scotland Wales and Ireland. The PHE enquiries team which responded to Mason failed to answer any of her questions about the cosy relationship between the British government, the agrochemical corporations, the pharmaceutical industry and the corporate media.

The response did not even acknowledge the warning given by the UN Human Rights Council about the dangers of pesticides in food and water and how this especially undermines the development and rights of children.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the PHE reply is along the lines of thanks, now move along because officialdom has everything covered.

Clearly, given the concerns raised by Mason, things are not ‘covered’. In a new letter to the chief medical officer for England, she spells out the unsatisfactory nature of the response received from PHE and also attaches this 45-page document that sets out why the response is both inadequate and wholly flawed. The contents of Mason’s document are below. Readers are urged to read the document in full as well as her initial open letter to PHE.

Where have all our insects and birds gone?	1
Widespread global contamination with pesticides	3
Emerging pathogens wipe out wildlife species	8
British Government in the hands of the pesticides industry	10
Farming with chemicals	14
UK ‘watchdogs’ are controlled by corporations	15
The science behind GMOs is fraudulent	22
We are eating food poisoned with pesticides	23
UN warns about the dangers of pesticides	25
Chemical damage to the brains of our children	27
Other diseases associated with glyphosate	28
The International Monsanto Tribunal in The Hague	36
The Monsanto Papers	39
Monsanto’s activities in Wales	41
Conflicts of interest in the European Commission	41
Evidence that the health of British people is deteriorating	43
US Scientists sound the alarm over global mass poisoning	44

Whether it concerns PHE or any of the other bodies Mason has written to over the years, any response she has received is usually quite dismissive of her concerns.

But is this any surprise? The corporations which promote industrial agriculture and the agrochemicals Mason campaigns against have embedded themselves deeply within the policy-making machinery on both national and international levels. The US government has indeed promoted an exploitative ‘stuffed and starved‘ strategy that weds consumers and farmers across the world to the needs of transnational agribusiness and its proprietary inputs.

From the overall narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, global agribusiness has secured a perceived thick legitimacy within policy makers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse.

If you – as a key figure in a public body – believe that your institution and society’s main institutions and the influence of corporations on them are basically sound, then you are probably not going to challenge or question the overall status quo. Once you have indicated an allegiance to these institutions – as such figures do by the very fact they are part of them and often receive good salaries as employees – it is ‘irrational’ to oppose their policies, the very ones you are there to promote.

And it becomes quite ‘natural’ to oppose with dogmatic-like zeal any research findings, analyses or questions which question the system and by implication your role in it. Little surprise therefore that Rosemary Mason appears to run into a brick wall each time she raises issues with key figures.

But once you realise and acknowledge that the integrity of society’s institutions have been eroded by corporate money, funding and influence – and once you are in a position to offer a credible alternative to corporate agriculture and all it entails based on authentic values that are diametrically opposed to those of corporate conglomerates – you can ask some very pertinent questions that strip away perceived legitimacy.

The questions being asked by Rosemary Mason and others are part of the wider process of stripping away the fabricated reality and perceived legitimacy that the whole system of industrial agriculture rests on.

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Hitler’s Failed Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union. The “Battle of Moscow” and Stalingrad: Turning Point of World War II

By Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels, February 02, 2018

Historian Dr. Jacques Pauwels analyses the evolution of World War II,  focusing on the “Battle of Moscow” in December 1941 which preceded the defeat of German troops in Stalingrad in February 1943. According to Dr. Pauwels, the turning point was not Stalingrad but “the Battle of Moscow” and the Soviet counter-offensive launched in December 1941.

U.S. and Turkey Agreed on the Assassination of Kurdish Politicians and Field Commanders

By Firas Samuri, February 02, 2018

According to our sources in Afrin, Washington accepted the assassination of high-ranking and radical Kurdish field commanders and politicians with the help of the Turkish army in order to prevent further escalation of tension between NATO allies.

America’s Contradictory Foreign Policy, Towards a Shooting War with Turkey in Syria?

By Federico Pieraccini, February 02, 2018

The consequences of the contradictory choices of the United States in Syria are beginning to become apparent. The obsessive efforts to advance geopolitical goals with war, chaos, betrayals and shaky alliances has brought us to the recent events in Northern Syria on the border with Turkey in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin.

Supremacy of the Spectacle and Political Theater. Fomenting Engineered Perspectives

By Mark Taliano, February 01, 2018

How would a broad-based population react if they realized that our governments support al Qaeda and ISIS? Or that we support an illegal neo-Nazi infested regime in Kiev? How would domestic populations react if they realized that their perceptions are engineered, that the threats of terrorism, of Russia, or Syria and beyond are all engineered fabrications, bereft of evidence?

Saber-Rattling, Nuclear Threat – Or an Even More Devastating War?

By Peter Koenig, February 01, 2018

It is a war that is already in full swing; not a cold war – a hot war, a medium-to long-term execution of mankind. This strategy will work like an octopus with many tentacles operating simultaneously around the globe. If one tentacle fails, the others will do its job, until the damaged one has recovered. It’s a combat, where hardly anybody targeted can escape.

Under instructions from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the Greek government pushed through the most anti-union legislation in Europe on Monday 15 January.

The move was demanded, along with other draconian measures, as a condition of the latest tranche of what is called Greece’s bailout but which in reality is bailing out the European financial institutions which recklessly encouraged Greek borrowing.

The key concession required from the Syriza government was that industrial action would now require a yes vote from more than half of the total number of union members in a workplace, regardless of the actual turnout. This is even worse than the provisions in the Trade Union Act which came into law in the UK in March 2016.

Astonishingly – or perhaps not – there has been not one word about this from the TUC, which continues its scaremongering about the effect of Brexit on workers’ rights. While it prattles on, the European Union is turning the screw on the most fundamental of all workers’ rights, the right to strike, and using Greece as a test bed for policies it would like to see across all member states.

Without the right to take effective strike action, workers have no protection save the courts, and capitalist courts consistently favour the employers.

The European Court of Justice ruled (in the Laval case, 18 December 2007), that employers have the right to bring workers from a low-wage EU state to a higher-wage EU state on the wages payable in the cheaper country, regardless of any collective bargaining agreements in the higher-wage state. It has also ruled (in the Viking case, 11 December 2007) that effective industrial action to stop outsourcing to cheaper countries is illegal.

In the Alamo­–Herron case (18 July 2013), involving Unison members transferred out of local authority employment, it ruled that whatever their contracts said, benefits collectively negotiated for local authority workers could be ignored by their new employers.

“This case is an appalling attack on collective bargaining and is at least as serious as Viking and Laval,” wrote Britain’s leading employment barrister, John Hendy.

Hendy went on to say,

“The EU has become a disaster for the collective rights of workers and their unions.”

As we have consistently said, strong trade union organisation backed up by effective industrial action if need be is the only way to secure and defend advances in the workplace. The EU murmurs about “rights” while consistently attacking the basis of workplace organisation.

Not one line of the Trade Union Act introduced by the Cameron government, or the even worse White Paper that preceded it, was contrary to EU law. The sooner Britain leaves the EU, the better it will be for trade union members (though some so-called leaders will resent being kicked off the Brussels gravy train). At least then we will just have our own employers to deal with.

From Iraq (circa 2002-3), to Libya in 2011 and Syria today, influential liberal commentators including David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Paul Mason, Jonathan Freedland and many politicians have repeatedly pushed for Western military intervention.

“Something must be done,” they shout from their newspaper columns. “We must act now before it is too late,” they warn in the House of Commons.

One of the things that characterises these emotive and often simplistic calls for action is their narrow, laser-like focus on human rights abuses Western governments are publicly concerned about.

Those who advise caution, critical thinking and a wider lens of analysis are often labelled naive, or worse, apologists for the authoritarian leader in the West’s sights.

However, recent history shows this unwillingness to consider possible wider, long-term impacts of Western wars of choice has had grave consequences for Britain and the rest of the world.

Take Nato’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, sold by Tony Blair’s government to the British public as a humanitarian intervention urgently needed to stop ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbian government forces.

“The liberal press — notably the Guardian and the Independent — backed the war to the hilt (while questioning the tactics used to wage it) and lent critical weight to the government’s arguments,” British historian Mark Curtis notes in his 2003 book Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role In The World.

In addition “the anti-war movement failed to mobilise beyond the political margins,” explained international relations specialist Dr Aidan Hehir in a 2009 Irish Times op-ed.

Aaronovitch, then at the Independent, proclaimed he would fight if asked by the government, while Andrew Marr writing in the Observer put forward “the Macbeth option: which is that we’re so steeped in blood we should go further” and “put in ground troops.”

With Blair basking in the liberal media’s adoration after playing a leading role in the military campaign that pushed Serb forces out of Kosovo in June 1999, it is worth considering some of the longer-term ramifications of Nato’s intervention.

It is clear the war’s perceived success (rejected by Curtis and US dissident Noam Chomsky) emboldened Blair, likely increasing his messianic tendencies, which many believed played a crucial role in the invasion of Iraq four years later.

“It may well be he was actually drunk on his self-importance having had successes in Kosovo and Sierra Leone,” Colonel Tim Collins, a senior figure in the army in 2003, commented when the Chilcot Inquiry published its findings. “He genuinely believed he could do no wrong.”

Iain Duncan Smith came to a similar conclusion when he recounted a September 2002 meeting he had with Blair to Andrew Rawnsley for his 2010 book The End Of The Party.

“He’d decided this was a successful formula. He’d done Kosovo. He’d done Afghanistan. It was what he believed in,” said the Tory Party leader at the time of the Iraq invasion.

Writing in the Financial Times in 2007, Quentin Peel makes the obvious connection:

“Kosovo was… a crucial moment in the development of the international vision… that eventually led to [Blair’s] backing for the US-led invasion of Iraq” — an invasion, let’s not forget, that was not authorised by the United Nations, just as the Kosovo intervention was also not backed by the UN.

As the title of Dr Hehir’s Irish Times piece argued: Nato’s “Good War” In Kosovo Degraded International Law.

There are other important links to the race to war in 2003.

“It was during the [Kosovo] war… that Blair and Campbell honed their PR machine and Blair’s image as a humanitarian leader,” asserted former International Development Secretary Clare Short in her 2004 book An Honourable Deception?

Noting how the Foreign Office had been sidelined in 1999, writing in International Affairs journal, Dr Oliver Daddow argued Kosovo was the point when Blair confirmed “that he did not need to rely on Whitehall’s decision-making machinery for ideas or strategy.”

The 2011 Nato war in Libya has also had a number of influential effects on subsequent conflicts.

Backed by around 97 per cent of British MPs and much of the liberal commentariat, the British intervention was given legal cover by the passing of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which authorised “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya.

Though the resolution did not refer to regime change — illegal under international law — the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s examination of the intervention in 2016 concluded the “limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into a policy of regime change by military means.”

Soon after Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi was forced out of Tripoli, David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a triumphalist, political capital-boosting visit to the country in September 2011 (or so they thought). Russia, on the other hand, took an entirely different lesson from the war.

Quoting a senior Barack Obama administration official as saying Russian President Vladimir Putin is “obsessed” by the Nato-enabled overthrow and death of Gadaffi, Julia Ioffe recently argued in The Atlantic magazine that “regime change in Libya and Ukraine led to Russia propping up Bashar al-Assad in Syria.”

Ioffe goes on to quote former US secretary of state John Kerry’s chief of staff as characterising Putin’s approach to Syria as “not one more.”

A 2011 BBC article entitled Why China and Russia Rebuffed the West in Syria confirms this thesis. “Libya is perhaps the prime reason” behind Russia’s vetoes at the UN on Syria, Jonathan Marcus notes.

“Both the Chinese and Russian governments seem to think that the West took advantage of [UN] resolution [1973] to intervene militarily in a Libyan civil war” and carry out regime change, he notes. “They are determined not to allow any similar resolution to go forward [on Syria].”

Nato’s intervention in Libya also had an important influence on the Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow the Assad government. Writing about the UN’s mediation efforts in the Syrian crisis, the academics Raymond Hinnebusch and William Zartman refer to “the opposition’s unrealistic expectations” of the peace process in 2012: “During a visit to a Free Syrian Army unit, one UN official found that the Libyan precedent and anti-Assad Western rhetoric had convinced opposition fighters that Nato was going to intervene on their behalf.”

According to the UN official, this was “not conducive to… serious engagement.”

In his 2017 book The Battle For Syria: International Rivalry In The New Middle East, Chatham House’s Dr Christopher Phillips highlights a similar dynamic with the opposition’s regional supporters in 2012:

“Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were convinced both that Assad was close to falling and that eventually the US would intervene as it had in Libya, and so saw no need to compromise.”

The Libyan intervention, then, was one of the reasons behind Russia’s large, obstructive role in Syria, and the decision by some opposition groups to shun negotiations aiming to end the war — two of the many reasons why the horrific conflict continues today.

So it goes. The ongoing North Korean crisis is inexorably linked with these events in the Middle East.

“North Korea learned from Iraq that Saddam Hussein’s mistake was he did not possess the weapons of mass destruction he was falsely accused of having. Libya taught a similar lesson,” Professor John Delury, a North Korean expert at Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies, told the BBC in 2016.

According to a 2017 Guardian report, North Korean “state media frequently refers to their [Gadaffi’s and Saddam Hussein’s] demise as proof that the US wolves are now at North Korea’s door.”

What these three examples show is that beyond the immediate crisis, Western military interventions have — often predictable — serious and widespread knock-on impacts that have been disastrous for the British public and the wider world.

Not to say anything about how the interventions often undermine the British government’s own interests and policy goals — Russia’s response to the Libyan intervention worked against British policy goals in Syria, for example.

We desperately need more critical and long-term thinking when the government tries, as it inevitably will, to gain public support for its next foreign war. Rebuilding and maintaining a popular and powerful anti-war movement is an essential first step to achieving this.

*

You can follow Ian Sinclair on Twitter on @IanJSinclair.

Featured image is from the author.

The consequences of the contradictory choices of the United States in Syria are beginning to become apparent. The obsessive efforts to advance geopolitical goals with war, chaos, betrayals and shaky alliances has brought us to the recent events in Northern Syria on the border with Turkey in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin.

The overall picture of alliances and alignments, especially in Northern Syria, is not the simplest and needs some elaboration. The Kurds (PKK/YPG) in Syria are basically allies of the United States, using the territory under their control to train additional jihadists to spread chaos in the country. In particular, there are more than ten US military bases in Syria, violating all manner of international norms. According to the media, the Kurds are excellent fighters by virtue of their ability to fight Daesh. But looking at the situation more honestly, the collusion with Daesh by the US and allied countries in the region is evident, particular Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s involvement. The provision to Daesh of healthcare, weapons, logistics, intelligence, financial, and diplomatic support has never been lacking over the years. It seems evident that the Kurds (under the name of the SDF) often found easy accommodation with the Daesh terrorists, granting voluntary relocations to combatants in areas adjacent to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). American and Israeli politicians and Generals have openly stated that it is not convenient to fight Daesh if this ends up benefitting Assad.

The Kurdish area in Syria is divided between the areas east and west of the Euphrates. The canton of Afrin is under Russian protection, both on the ground (Russian military police were present in Afrin until a few days ago) as well as in the air. The Kurdish area to the east of the Euphrates, which connects to Iraq, openly seeks independence, is under American control, and obviously threatens Syria’s territorial integrity. This is the result of an American strategic Plan B devised by Brookings in 2009 that continues to give hope to the neocons in Washington. But as we shall see, it is a forlorn hope.

The Kurdish entity located in the Afrin enclave fought with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in Aleppo in the liberation of the city. It also resisted the Turkish and Free Syrian Army (FSA) attack on Syria when Erdogan decided to create a buffer zone between the Afrin canton and the Kurds to the east of the Euphrates when advancing towards Azaz. Following the liberation of Aleppo, the relations between Damascus and the Kurds of Afrin saw some initial progress, thanks to Russian diplomacy. The temporary compromise between Damascus and the Kurds saw Moscow deploy a symbolic number of Russian military police to Afrin, with the much more important air defense being guaranteed by the operational range of the Russian S-400 air-defence systems deployed in Syria.

Meanwhile, the progress of the diplomatic and negotiating agreement between Ankara, Moscow and Tehran is bearing fruit, diminishing the importance of the Geneva peace talks on Syria as well as the areas controlled by the Americans, Europeans, Saudis and Qataris.

The events over the last few days are the combined results of the nefarious actions of the United States, the incompetence of the Kurds, and the superb diplomatic and strategic actions of Damascus and Moscow.

The starting point for Iran, Russia, Syria and Turkey concerns the territorial unity of Syria. The opposing countries are clearly the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Kurds of Rojava claim their independence, and therefore easily see themselves as allies of the United States, openly supported by Israel (in the case of the independence referendum) and even by the Saudis. Afrin’s Kurds are in a different position, which is why Moscow found itself faced with a perfect situation, the result of months of diplomatic work, allowing it to pull off a strategic trifecta. Moscow first called the Kurdish bluff, who refused to allow the Syrian Arab Army entry into Afrin and accept the canton’s return to the borders that preceded the chaos that started in 2011 (when the Kurds had in fact their important autonomy even if under the banner of Damascus). Moscow had probably guaranteed Erdogan that if the Kurds in Afrin refused entry of Damascus’s troops into the town, then Ankara’s military operation would be justified. Perhaps Putin could have persuaded Erdogan to postpone Operation Olive Branch, but he did not, and the reason has to do with the strategic considerations at play.

The objective of Damascus, Moscow and Tehran is to remove the United States from Syria. Of course they currently fight America’s proxies in the region, but the seedlings of chaos that have been sown in the country will have to be uprooted in the long term. Erdogan’s military action in the Afrin Region puts the interests of Washington and Ankara on a direct collision course. Erdogan is aware of what Putin is doing, but he is more interested in what Trump is doing with the Kurds along his border than with the territorial unity of Syria and Iraq.

Washington has its back against the wall, forced to defend a Kurdish ally against a key member of NATO, in the forlorn hope of retaining some significance in the Syrian picture. The weakness of the American position will lead to them abandoning their Kurdish ally to its fate at the hands of Moscow and Damascus, who will have all the necessary leverage with the Kurds to get what they want for the good of Syria. There are already rumors of Syrian army troops entering the town of Afrin at the invitation of the Kurds. The Kurds are denying it, but we will see how long they can resist Erdogan, who finds the road before him clear to force Washington to break with its Kurdish ally if a shooting war among NATO allies is to be avoided.

We can only imagine the thoughts and impressions in the chancelleries in much of the world as they observe Moscow’s diplomatic adroitness, able to secure the territorial integrity of Syria at the expense of two NATO members opposed to Assad.

*

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

Featured image is from the author.

Dilapidated buildings, broken walls, smashed windows and destroyed doors. These are the legacy of the battles that have been waged across Iraq and, in particular, Mosul. With the immediate ISIS threat in the country at an end, many Iraqis are looking to the challenges of reconstruction that lie ahead.

The Iraqiya School in the Bab al-Jadida district of Mosul is one of the 638 schools in the city that have reopened since the city was liberated from ISIS militants. However, like much of the city, the school itself bears the scares of war. Many of the walls remain riddled with bullet holes, all windows have been broken and three classrooms have been destroyed, with debris covering much of the school grounds.

Furthermore, the school has no electricity and no health facilities. The school authorities here have attempted to alleviate some of these troubles. But they have limited resources and many of their solutions, such as putting plastic sheeting on the windows, are stop-gap solutions. The numbers speak for themselves: the school, once able to accommodate 700 students, can now only take 218.

The scars left in the wake of war are not just physical. Many of the children here are suffering psychologically as well. Many of them have witnessed ISIS atrocities, experienced siege conditions, displacement and were possibly caught in the crossfire of the militants and the Iraqi Security Forces. The teachers here say that a handful of students, in particular, are in a particularly bad state, suffering from fits and shakes at the smallest event. Although the teachers here do their best to help, many of them simply don’t have the training or the resources to take care of them all, and optimism is wearing thin.

Across Iraq, a number of education-centric reconstruction programmes are slowly rebuilding schools. Meanwhile, teachers in Mosul are being offered workshops to help deal with traumatised students. However, the spread of these programmes is uneven. With some three million children across Iraq having missed out on education, the challenges are nothing short of enormous.

Western politicians have lost all legitimacy as representatives of their electorates. Regardless of the political party that they claim to represent, pre-scripted agendas prevail in matters of importance. Core issues of war and peace are submerged beneath lies and disappeared.

Spectacles and political theater mask widespread poverty[1] and the looting of public coffers. The agenda of permanent warfare and predatory economic models is unspoken but continuous.

Perception managers engineer public support for the toxic (shadow government) agendas.  Unelected deep state actors seek to obliterate truth from the public sphere.  Presumably, an informed public would negate the toxic agendas, but those who profit from war and misery are aware of this.

North Korea[2] is not a threat to us.  The U.S led war on Syria was never about combatting terrorism.

See this clip.

Russia is not a threat to us either. In every instance of post 9/11 warfare, target nations have been falsely presented as being threats, and the resultant warfare has been catastrophic, a genuine holocaust.

Debbie Lusignan, host of Sane Progressive demonstrates in the following episode that beneath the political theater, both US parties share the same toxic shadow government agenda.  The Russia Gate threat, for example, is baseless. There is no evidence to prove Russia’s interference in U.S elections (see 10:14- 14:16 of the video). But this hasn’t stopped both U.S parties from presenting Russia as an enemy.  Both parties and their agencies, including the media, seek war with Russia, and demonization campaigns serve to prepare populations for what should be unthinkable. Not only should permanent wars of aggression be an affront to informed citizens, but the siphoning of the public treasury to support such wars,to the detriment of the health and welfare of domestic populations, should also be an affront to our sanity.

As with Canada, people are conditioned to believe that different political parties offer largely different agendas, but the rhetoric masks the real agenda.Would political theater and Trump’s escapades attract so much attention if people were aware of their countries’ own economic and moral impoverishment?

Matters of significance are increasingly being displaced by matters of relative insignificance.  The engineered “spectacle” obliterates reality and replaces it with illusions.

How would a broad-based population react if they realized that our governments support al Qaeda and ISIS? Or that we support an illegal neo-Nazi infested regime in Kiev[1]?How would domestic populations react if they realized that their perceptions are engineered, that the threats of terrorism, of Russia, or Syriaand beyond are all engineered fabrications, bereft of evidence?

The answers to these questions remain elusive, precisely because an increasingly globalized shadow government governs us and it is their deceptive messaging that remains ascendant.

Notes

[1] Simeon Ari, In the U.S. 49.7 Million Are Now Poor, and 80% of the Total Population Is Near Poverty. Political Blindspot. 6 November, 2013. (http://politicalblindspot.com/us-poor/) Accessed 31 January, 2018.

[2] Christopher Black,“The Genocide Conspiracy Against North Korea: An Open Letter to the International Criminal Court.” New Eastern Outlook. 26 January, 2018. (https://journal-neo.org/2018/01/26/the-genocide-conspiracy-against-north-korea-an-open-letter-to-the-international-criminal-court/) Accessed.31 January, 2018.

[3] RT. “Hundreds of far-right vigilantes sworn in to ‘enforce Ukrainian order’ on Kiev’s streets (VIDEO).” 31 January, 2018. (https://www.rt.com/news/417444-azov-patrol-national-brigades/) Accessed 31 January, 2018.

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Can an event of the past give us a warning about current events today? The answer is affirmative if we believe that history is a teacher. When we look at an important historical event we usually tend to remember the factual information surrounding the event – the actual facts that took place at the time. As we are fond of marking anniversaries, that is essential. But we must also be challenged to re-examine the event for new meaning and new insight on the relevance of the event.

In history books, facts are usually accurate; official documents will testify to them. However, the analysis of those facts that will be recorded in the history books will depend on the correct interpretation of the actions as they were intended to be when they were carried out. The accuracy of the evidence including a balanced reporting of the analysis must be preserved.

At this time we remember the anniversary of the attempted coup by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela on February 4, 1992. In a region where symbolism marks important events, that day was declared as “Venezuela’s National Dignity Day”. We have already referred in a previous article to what aspects of Simon Bolivar’s thinking may have inspired Chavez, [1] and we have a good idea of what was Chavez’s reason for the coup, but we also need to ask, what is the implication for Venezuela today, 26 years later?

Chávez believed that the “Bolivarian project”, as he called it, had not been completed, since Venezuela and the rest of Latin America had not achieved full independence – neither politically nor economically – and were still under a neo-colonial domination. He justified his actions in these words:

“the same system, in economics and politics, the same denial of human rights and the right of the people to determine their own destiny [was still in place]… Venezuela was suffering a terminal crisis, ruled by a dictatorship dressed up in democratic clothing.” [2]

The “democratic clothing” was a reference to the appearance of a multi-party system when in reality the two dominant parties had signed a pact to form a centre-right monopoly of power controlled by the interests of the Venezuelan oligarchy, to the exclusion of the people, which did not allow a challenge to the policy consensus. Chavez referred to this monopoly as “Puntofijismo” after the location where the Pact of Punto Fijo was signed in Caracas. [3]

The failure of the coup in 1992 turned into an unexpected success since it gave Chavez the opportunity to attain exposure and to instigate a population that was ready for a wake up call to the contradiction of a rich country with 80% of the people living in poverty. [4] A large majority of Venezuelans supported the rebellion.

But that failure did not stop Chavez from fulfilling his promise made ten years before in 1982:

“I swear for the gods of my parents; I swear for my country; I swear for my honour that I will not give peace to my soul nor rest to my arms until I see broken the chains that oppress my people under the will of the powerful.” 

The political reason he gave and his personal determination brought him to run for president and win the election in 1999 on a platform that promised to break the long stretch of Puntojismo that lasted from 1958 to 1999, and bring about a profound transformation of Venezuelan society. Chavez saw the social problems in Venezuela as a consequence – not as a coincidence – of the exploitation of its wealth by foreign corporations in complicity with the national oligarchy.

Chavez believed that Venezuela needed to gain total control of its oil industry so its revenues would benefit all Venezuelans equally and fairly in a process guided by the state through social programs. At the same time, and in order to do that, he would fulfill Simon Bolivar’s dream of true independence from all colonial powers not only for Venezuela but also for Latin America through fair trade integration of all countries into la Patria Grande – as he called it – the Great Homeland.

Chavez’s life was cut short by his premature death in 2013 but his legacy is captured in a single word, Chavismo. The intention that moved him to the action of February 4, 1992 is still alive and necessary today. The majority of Venezuelans have called on President Nicolas Maduro to bring forward the Bolivarian Revolution. The presidential elections to take place before April 30 of this year will again express the popular will of Venezuelans – freely, democratically and sovereign.

However, there has been a concerted effort to stop the Bolivarian project since its inception. Those who have inherited the political drive of Puntofijismo attempted a coup against Chavez in 2002 that was much too soon to be used as a declaration of failure of his project, and, as history must record, it was against the majority of the people who in fact restored him to power.

As we write, a dialogue is taking place in Dominican Republic between government and some opposition representatives in order to advance with the constitutional process. We can regret that it has come to this point, but we must celebrate the show of political will of the parties involved.

Unfortunately, powerful governments have tacitly signed another pact – akin to an international Puntofijismo whose headquarters are clearly and overtly located in Washington, not in Caracas. This is a new pact to form an international monopoly of power controlled by the interests of the international oligarchy that is ready to re-install the original holders of Puntofijismo in Venezuela, if not a more perverse version of it.

The tools of this pact have included the promotion of violence and terrorist actions, the string of relentless threats to Venezuela’s sovereignty, sanctions by the U.S., Canada and the EU, and the financial blockade imposed on Venezuela’s resource sector affecting essential imports.

If there is any useful reminder from Chavez’s coup of February 4, 1992, is that the Venezuelan monopoly of power has not ceased to exist, it just moved to Washington and other colonial capitals. And if there is any implication for Venezuela it is a warning that the new president will have to embrace more firmly Chavez’s legacy and embark in dismantling the Washington “Puntofijismo” by challenging its devastating international policy consensus.

Notes

[1] http://www.cubasolidarityincanada.ca/2017/02/05/que-aspectos-del-pensamiento-bolivariano-precisamente-inspiraron-a-chavez/

[2] Bart Jones. The Hugo Chavez Story – from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution. Random House 2008, p. 136.

[3] http://studylib.net/doc/8626867/puntofijismo-as-a-determinant-of-bolivarianism The Pact of Punto Fijo was named after the home of the COPEI founder Rafael Caldera. The two original parties signatories of the pact were Acción Democrática (AD, Democratic Action) and Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI, Political Electoral Independent Organization Committee). Other signatories were the Roman Catholic Church, the military, business and trade union reps.

[4] http://peoplesvoice.ca/2017/02/15/the-real-coup-of-hugo-chavez-on-february-4-1992/

The World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos has come and gone, and nothing has really changed. The wonderful people of the world struck again – blowing hot air to the four corners of the world. When in reality the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, wars and conflicts are on the rise – and humanity, at least in the western world, is ever more exposed to propaganda lies and mind manipulations, of which then WEF is just one tiny, miserable example.

For instance, was anybody still listening to the bombastic nonsense coming out of Trump’s and Macron’s throat? – It is a soft version of “Fire and Fury” — to confirm to the World of the Noble who is in charge, and to assure the elite that nothing, but nothing will change in the balance of power. That’s the neoliberal Davos Club of always. And they, this elite of beautiful people, would certainly not want a ‘hard core’ nuclear war to destroy their properties and luxury yachts, castles and comfort zone.

So, rest assured, sable-rattling about nuclear Armageddon is just a smoke screen, a deviation maneuver to hide a much worse atrocity. An atrocity, or rather a set of atrocities by which the WEF crowd will most likely never be touched. Trump, for the moment, is the best salesman and mouthpiece the Deep State could muster for their ploy. He is pompous, pretentiously egocentric, and an absurd bully. His America First and Make America Great again, repeated over and over – sounds so silly, but said often enough, it takes hold and becomes the truth in people’s minds.

In Davos Trump’s speech was so simple, it was even catchy: America will always be first; and each one of you, addressing the statesmen in the crowd, he said, should do the same for your country. Then we can work together. This sounds like a complete anti-globalist declaration. The world is now to believe that globalization – which most of the universe has woken up to understand is a disaster – is over, a thing of the past. Another smoke-screen to let the corporate machine push harder to globalize the last corner of Mother Earth – suck the last juice out of the poor, the dispensable “shithole” people.

From 2008 to 2016 Obama was the ideal liar with credibility – so much so that he got the Peace Nobel Prize even before he really started his Presidency. Hectoliters of tears of hope were shed during his inauguration on the Washington Mall. His smooth and charming smile convinced everybody, his eloquent and articulate speeches swayed the world into believing that change was coming, that after the horrible Bush years, the United States wanted only the good for the people of the world. With this false image, Obama managed to leave the Presidency with seven active wars (he inherited two) to his credit – and a record of drone killings – all approved by the Commander-in-chief, Obama, himself – unimaginable. Tens of thousands of innocent people were assassinated or maimed – all extrajudicial killings. That was the Peace Man at the time.

The Donald is, indeed, of a different breed, color and style. Precisely the style needed by his masters for the next at 4 years. Maybe 8; we don’t know yet. His controversial preposterous character, crying wolf along with nuclear saber-rattling over and over again, is to diverge the attention of the public at large – within the US, as well as around the globe, so that a much more sinister war can be developed, advanced and rapidly expanded.

The dark elite that pulls the strings, the would-be and wannabe hegemon, has, I honestly believe, no intention in destroying themselves, ‘their’ planet, along with their properties, their fiscal paradises, castles, yachts and casinos, yes casinos, like the western all dominating central banks. They are the casinos of the rich. They live too well to wanting to see their feudal lives destroyed by a nuclear apocalypse.

They, the new feudals, may think it is be alright to use precision nuclear weapons “light” – destined to take out specific targets, but they also know – those who direct the Red Nuclear Button (Trump’s ‘Bigger Button’) – that they don’t know what the reaction from the targeted enemies or their allies might be. Perhaps a total annihilation. Not unlikely. – The deep dark elitists may survive. But what is life in bunkers and contaminated air, water and soil, perhaps for decades or centuries? – “Fire and Fury” life and in real time are no good. Just screaming and yelling to scare people into submission. That’s always good.

These somber masters of the universe, they are smarter than nuclear war. They have another, a quieter war in mind, a gradual but steady destruction of the useless, expendable humanity, leaving infrastructure and their safe havens in place, increasing their living space of opulence.

It is a war that is already in full swing; not a cold war – a hot war, a medium-to long-term execution of mankind. This strategy will work like an octopus with many tentacles operating simultaneously around the globe. If one tentacle fails, the others will do its job, until the damaged one has recovered. It’s a combat, where hardly anybody targeted can escape.

Think of biological warfare, as one of the tentacles. There exist already more than 100 secret Pentagon – CIA controlled biological weapons labs around the world. Often, their store front is a “scientific research” lab, looking for cures of human and animal diseases or biological means to eradicate agricultural pests. They are coverups. In reality, these labs develop new biological strains, viruses and bacteria, even new generations of vaccines – to be tested on local populations, of course, without their knowledge or consent. Among such research centers is the Richard E. Lugar Centre in Tbilisi, Georgia, known to be a biological weapons lab. See this.

In addition to developing new bio weapons, the lab is investigating the links between DNA groups and bio weapons, targeting Russia and possibly other geographic and ethnic regions, i.e. the Middle East. Kamens, the author of the above article, quotes Russian Senator Klintsevich as saying,

“It is no secret that different ethnic groups react to biological weapons in different ways and that is why the West is meticulously collecting material all across Russia.” 

No doubt this or comparable labs around the globe will do similar research on the East Asian populations, with emphasis on China. Latin America, Washington’s backyard will not be spared.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa – 2014 to 2016 – covering Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, was very likely a “man-made” bio-trial. Ebola today can be contained. It registered officially close to 30,000 cases and killed according to official statistics more than 11,000 people. Unofficial figures put the death toll way above 20,000. It also reduced the economic output of these countries. Sierra Leone and Liberia suffered the most from the outbreak. It’s a perfect test for what to do to subjugate this kind of developing country. This is applicable, basically for most of resources rich Africa.

Another tentacle of the monster octopus is genetically modified organisms (GMO). Monsanto is known since the late sixties early seventies to be working with Henry Kissinger, the Mastermind of the Bilderberg Society, whose major objective it is to drastically reduce world population. Almost any bio-disease strain can be implanted into GMO seeds. Nobody will notice and know. In the 1990s Monsanto tested a GMO wheat in India that rendered women infertile. The test was carried out on poor women, the untouchables. The exercise blew open, created a short-lived scandal, but was soon muffled by the media. Imagine, GMOs targeting specific populations with genetic diseases? – The poor are the most vulnerable and defenseless – not only with infertility, but with any kind of deadly diseases or brain or neurological long-term insufficiencies. Some of these health failures develop only over time, so that nobody can trace them back to GMOs.

Climate warfare is another nefarious tentacle of the would be-wannabe emperor, or his handlers. Climate manipulation technology is already at least 50 years old. Environmental modification techniques – ENMOD – is the Pentagon’s ultimate weapon of mass destruction. It is a sophisticated electromagnetic weapon operated from the outer atmosphere.

The technology was developed in the 1990s by the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), based in Alaska, enabling selectively changing weather patterns, causing excessive precipitations, floods, droughts, hurricanes and other excessive weather phenomena, thereby destroying infrastructure, agricultural production, entire economies of a country or a region, without the deployment of bombs, troops and tanks. In 1977 the UN General Assembly banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’ In 2014 the HAARP center was officially closed. However, this secretive technology is alive and well – and ready to be applied anywhere Washington wants to coerce a ‘regime change’, including destroying or weakening a population to facilitate access to the country’s natural resources.

An early version of climate modification was used in the late sixties and early seventies in Vietnam. Cloud-seeding, Operation Popeye, allowed prolonging the monsoon season, thereby blocking or rendering the Vietcong’s supply routes on the Ho Chi Minh Trail more difficult. This was accompanied by the Napalm defoliant which was supposed to expose, maim and kill Vietcong insurgents and allied populations.

While no climate change theorists talk about this secretive technology, it is possible, though not proven, that climate modifications are already ongoing in Africa, for example in strategically situated Somalia and Ethiopia, causing extended droughts and famine, and in Afghanistan with extremely cold and wet winters, thereby weakening and possibly exterminating entire swaths of populations. Possibly, though also not proven, as an undesired result, by an ever equalizing Mother Nature, the West is also experiencing excessive weather patterns – the record cold in the eastern US, the drought-provoked forest fires followed by heavy rain and mudslides in California, as well as stronger and more frequent hurricanes in the Caribbean Gulf area.

Talking about man-made climate modification – Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth’s land surface; now they cover a mere 6%. According to The Guardian, every year an area of about 180,000 km2 of rainforest is lost, the equivalent of the size of England and Wales. At this rate, in 40 years 10 million km2 – the size of Europe, will have been razed. At current rates, linearly expanded, all of the rainforest may have gone in 100 years. The good news is that linearism does not apply to long-term projections; this horrendous trend of destruction can, thus, still be stopped by awakened people.

The Amazon rainforest encompassed in 1970 still 4.1 million km2 and in 2015 about 3.3 million km2, a reduction of 800,000 km2 in 45 years. The main reason is cattle farming, beef and leather trade, but also bio fuel and logging – to a large extent illegal logging. The impact of rainforest razing in the Amazon is already noticeable in the form of increased drought in Argentina’s Patagonia, damaging agriculture and Argentina’s beef industry. Deforestation as climate weapon? – Capitalism, when left free destroys everything, not just the environment, but mankind’s entire social fabric.

Privatization of water is another weapon of the monster. It is quietly and often clandestinely advancing, driven and coerced by the multilateral development banks, the IMF and often governments themselves. Privatization of water is already going on grand-scale, and I’m not referring in the first place to the abhorrent water bottling by Nestlé and Coca Cola and thousands of others, destroying the environment and often robbing the water, or making it inaccessible, of poor population. Case in point is Nestlé. Nestlé India with its bottled water brand “Pure Life” was eventually forced to quit India, because of multiple social conflicts with local populations, where Nestlé’s massive groundwater pumping lowered the water level so drastically that the local poor had no longer access to their traditional groundwater, but had to buy Nestlé’s expensive bottled “Pure Life” water.

Nestlé ran into similar problems in Africa and even in the US. In Flint, Michigan, where unpolluted drinking water is scarce, Nestlé paid an annual fee of a mere US$ 200 for pumping one of the few remaining sources for private rather than public water use. In drought-stricken California in 2015 and 2016, Nestlé in 2017, over-extracted water from the San Bernardino National Forest Park with some 40 million gallons and with an expired license of some US$ 500 per year, while water to farmers was rationed due to the drought. Regulators eventually forced Nestlé to stop pumping. See the multiply rewarded documentary film “Bottled Life”.

Nestlé’s ex-CEO, Peter Brabeck, said “Water has to be our chief priority”, to which Maude Barlow, former Senior Advisor on Water to the United Nations replied, “Nestlé is a predator, a water hunter”. Coca Cola, Pepsi and other water bottlers follow the same unethical ways of basically stealing groundwater from the common people, forcing them to buy their expensive bottled water.

But the real predators of water and those that are massively privatizing the last uncontaminated sources of water in, for example, Amazon’s huge aquifers and the Guarani fossil aquifer, arguably the world’s largest freshwater reserve, are the giant water corporations like the French Veolia, and Suez: followed by US ITT Corporation; United Utilities and Severn Trent, Thames Water, UK; American Water Works, US; – and an ever growing number of corporations that see the future in privatizing first the source, then the city water supply of mega-cities, where already today the poor and favela inhabitants are deprived of fresh water, because they can no longer afford privately supplied drinking water – which increases intestinal diseases and child mortality all over the globe. And worse is to come, as privatization of water is becoming a worldwide powerful weapon.

Numerous huge water giants install themselves through proxy companies or farmers on top of the Guarani aquifer which is almost entirely fossil water (non-renewable), and receive lifelong water licenses. The Guarani aquifer is said to have the capacity to supply the world population for the next 200 years with some 100 liters per capita per day.  The inhabitants of Frankfurt use some 120 l/c/d. Imagine, this huge non-renewable aquifer in the hands of private corporations which could turn on and off the spigot at will – or according to ‘maximizing profit’ principles. A powerful weapon. If remaining unchecked, it is clear who is losing and who is winning.

Today, RT reports that Greek President Tsipras has just launched a sales pitch to the Greek people, that it would be a good idea to privatize Greek water supply. Can you imagine? After all that this criminal despot leader has already done to Greece – now privatizing water.

Studies carried out by the very World Bank, the institution that pushes for water privatization like no one else, except for the IMF, found that in parallel with water privatization in South Africa – intestinal diseases and child mortality increased in townships. After Nelson Mandela was elected President of a free South Africa in 1994, the western international financial vultures, like WB, IMF, FED via Wall Street, descended on Pretoria to persuade him and his government to privatize most everything. “It was good for paying back the accumulated debt of South Africa.” Yes, of course. People had no choice. Poor people in townships could no longer afford drinking water supplied to their modest homes or yards – but had to resort to traditional sources, like polluted ponds and streams. – How will the Greek cope with privatized water?

France, home to the two largest water corporations, Viola and Suez, started in 2010 remunicipalization of water with the city of Paris, followed by all major cities in France. Authorities realized that the cost of water was way too high for the quality of service provided. Similar motives prompted Berlin to go the same way.

Water is life. And life does not just cave in. It will fight for survival. But the enemy, the privatization corporations, like mining companies that irreparably destroy nature and populations social fabric, are backed by entire armies – the US, UK, German and NATO armed forces – to defend the rights of corporations… and the loser is…. Or would be, if the population would not wake up in time to defend their right to water, their Human Right to Water.

Digitization of money and the economy is another tentacle of the evil octopus. Its advancing very fast with cryptocurrencies leading the way. Digitization of money is a means for the government or any oppressing force to control populations by holding on or confiscating their vital resources to sustain live, their income. Blockchain moneys like Bitcoins, ‘specialists’ say, are more secure than any banking system the world has known so far. That myth seems to have been broken. CNBC reported on 29 January that the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange had been hacked and about US$ 535 million equivalent of Bitcoins were stolen. This is the largest Bitcoin heist in Bitcoin’s relative short history of barely 9 years. So much for security.

As of January 2018, there are close to 1,400 different cryptocurrencies on the market and rising. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile and speculative and therefore preferred currencies for crooks and speculators. One of the major hubs for cryptocurrencies and their ‘marketization’ is – you guessed it – Switzerland, the banking center of everything and ‘smart’ banking. Blockchain currencies are so complex and complicated for the common citizen to understand that even an IT expert has a hard time weaving his way through the maze of cryptocurrency technologies. – Which is good. Because propaganda will assure that enough people who have no clue of what they are doing are duped into making a quick buck. They have seen how. The price of Bitcoins is listed on a daily basis along with the regular stock market fluctuations. Bitcoins have increased in value from zero in 2009 to more than US$ 20,000 at their peak in December 2017. In the meantime, Bitcoin’s value has slipped to about US$ 10,000 (30 January 2018), but could be way different tomorrow.

But digitization is not just about cryptocurrency. It is also a small octopus, advancing on several fronts, of which blockchain currencies are just one tentacle. There is at least one other more potentially harmful menace to the common citizen, like gradually eliminating cash and replacing it by digital currencies.

This is already happening, almost clandestinely – throughout Europe, starting with Scandinavian countries where certain department stores do no longer accept cash. Imagine – what it means when you can’t go anymore to your corner ATM to get cash to buy your groceries? You will be enslaved to the gnomes of banking, of digital banking, that is. It is another powerful weapon to subjugate people to do what they are told, lest sanctions in the form of blocked or outright confiscated accounts might be used as the “new sanctions”. These modes of punishment can induce famine, expropriation of properties and savings, poverty, eventually disease and reduction in life expectancy as a result of ever growing destitution – see Greece, which has been made poor by sticking to a fake and fiat currency, the euro, that is like digital money, stealing the countries assets through debt.

If we eventually were to live in a digital economy, it means that every value is electronic, the tangibility of hard work and physical output, the production of labor, is worth only what smart ‘digits’ will allow it to be. If the neoliberal system wants to save on labor costs – the value of labor output can be reduced to almost zero. So, every social value, social statistic, becomes a potential farce, is manipulatable which today is already the case with the figures of unemployment, inflation and ‘growth’ – economic growth. For example, in our linear western world destruction is growth. It requires production of weapons (growth) and eventually reconstruction – growth again. And everything in between, like the industry around war injuries and war deaths, is growth. All with a profit motive – and an overarching motive of subjugating populations to the hegemon of Washington.

This leads to yet another tentacle – Propaganda – all-embracing propaganda, controlled by six Zion-Anglo media giants that control some 90% of the news the west receives 24/7. The news sells you all evil about Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China – and whoever else does not want to submit to the empires rules. Propaganda in the west is nothing less than propaganda of deceit. It sells you the idea that war is good for peace – hence a never-ending war against terror. Propaganda invents terror and terrorists by making you believe that all those who disagree with a despotic system are terrorists and have to be fought. Propaganda sells you falls flags as reality.

Propaganda western style is one of the worst, most deadly weapons to hegemonize the world, as it makes the common citizen root for war, root against North Korea, a country whose only objective it is to defend itself, not to threaten the world, as western propaganda has you believe. Propaganda is also omission of facts – important facts, namely that the western powers, the US and its European puppets, the EU and NATO are the most dangerous rogue nations and organizations populating Mother Earth these days, and have been for at least the last 200 years. But despite the endless killing by these monsters, constituting the head of the evil octopus with its multiple tentacles, people do not realize who is their enemy – thanks to western deceit-propaganda.

Take the Olympics. After banning Russian athletes from participating in the Rio Games following the infamous McLaren Report on doping which has often been criticized of being manufactured, the same McLaren Report is behind prohibiting Russia from participating in South Korea’s winter games in Pyeongchang this month. This is sheer politics, Russia-denigrating propaganda. And now banning even the majority of the some 600 “clean Russian athletes” from participating under the most ludicrous arguments, is not only unjustly hurting individual athletes, who have never had anything to do with doping, it’s a repeat Russia bashing.

The President of the World Anti-Doping agency (WADA) said in a recent interview with RT, there was in fact not enough evidence to prove a state sponsored doping system in Russia. Nevertheless, he obviously went along – had to go along – with the Russia banning decision. We never know what would be at stake for these officials, if they were to follow their common-sense judgement and internal moral standards. The IOC (International Olympics Committee) is totally corrupt and bought by Washington. This is, by the way true for all International courts and UN organizations. They have all become a travesty.

Nothing prevents Russia from calling and organizing her own Olympic games, the Russian Olympics. It would be interesting to see how many western countries would dare to participate. I bet, many would wake up, because they would love to bond with Russia, if for nothing else but business, but are afraid to do so with Washington bully’s sword swinging above their necks. Sports is always a good reason for mending disagreements, which are actually only imposed ‘disagreements’. – How long will fear prevail over reason? – The light At the end of the tunnel is in sight.

Albeit, it is a shame and surprising that the world just looks on. People cannot be that dumb not to recognize that this is all a propaganda to portray Russia around the world as evil. This sort of propaganda, adding to the military threat that Russia is said to present to the world, when the real danger comes from the US and its NATO allies, is deadly propaganda, provoking war. President Putin plays it “Tao” – he is relatively quiet, non-aggressive – the non-aggressor will always win in the long run. 

The final blow, however, the ultimate tentacle, is conventional warfare, sowing conflicts and proxy wars – what we know too well – what has dominated the last two decades. When none of the other tentacles do their illegal job radically enough, then comes the traditional killing machine, enhanced Regime Change through Color Revolutions, through false flag assassinations, NATO or mercenary invasions, planted “civil wars” – i.e. Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan – and now even Iraq. Take the case of Fallujah, where massive weapons of depleted uranium were purposefully used by the US army, leaving the city and surroundings scarred for decades, for generations to come.

It is mass murder perpetrated by Washington and its dark invisible string-pulling handlers. These killings have genocide proportions. Yet, genocide is almost never mentioned when the most atrocious killings are carried out by the United States. I wonder why?

If we do not wake up, we will not escape. I few do, we may. It’s five to high-noon. It would be hell, not nuclear hell, but ‘octopus hell’, as we will be surrounded by different killing techniques or tentacles of the monster – and don’t know where to go and cry for help. Certainly not to our western leaders, not to those, which we believe we elected to do the best for Us, the People. No, these leaders are all corrupted, bought, they all have their little space reserved in paradise, for doing what they are doing helping the minuscule elite to dominate all – literally to reach Full Spector Dominance. – That’s what the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) openly declares as the hegemon’s ultimate goal. – At the end of the day, they – our lovely puppet leaders – may get a cold shower, when they have done their job as they were told – and find out that they too are dispensable like trash; like Us, The Common People. No scruples by the self-styled dark handlers of the western race. You only live once.

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

Many in the Alt-Media Community aren’t aware of the doublethink that pervades the Iranian-influenced discourse on Yemen, and a critical analysis of the three most prominent examples of this in practice could assist Tehran in avoiding unnecessary narrative shortcomings and ultimately optimizing its regional message.

The Alt-Media Community is a diverse network of multipolar-minded activists and analysts, but sometimes its prevailing narratives on certain topics are guided more by shortsighted state-directed cues than objective and comprehensive understandings of highly complex issues. One of the most relevant examples of this in practice has to do with the War on Yemen, which itself is a multisided civil-international conflict that is popularly framed – whether rightly or wrongly – as a proxy war between Iranian-aligned Shiite Houthi militants and the Saudi-backed international coalition fighting to re-impose the authority of the exiled Sunni President. As a result, a narrative bifurcation has set in whereby Houthi supporters look to Iranian media for guidance while their opponents seek out Saudi and other coalition sources, with both sides sometimes blindly adhering to whatever their “patron state” says or suggests on any given issue.

There has already been exemplary work done by many investigative journalists exposing the contradictions prevalent in the Saudi narrative on Yemen, but almost nothing has been said in the Alt-Media Community about its Iranian counterpart, partly because Tehran is openly aligned with Moscow and Beijing – the two most powerful engines of the Multipolar World Order – and it’s therefore seen as “politically incorrect” and even “taboo” to say anything that could even timidly raise questions about the Islamic Republic’s narrative shortcomings in the War on Yemen. That’s not at all to suggest that Iran’s reporting on Saudi war crimes is “fake news” or “propaganda”, but just to say that a critical analysis of the overall storyline is direly needed for outside observers who aspire to grasp a deeper understanding of the latest fast-moving developments that have occurred in this battlefield, particularly those in South Yemen.

The three most popular Alt-Media talking points will be debunked below in illustrating the inconsistent nature of Iran’s depiction of several interconnected regional themes related to Yemen. The purpose behind this analysis is to draw attention to the “forbidden knowledge” that’s usually hidden from the Alt-Media audience when discussing this topic due to it being “inconvenient” to the narrative at hand, which is ultimately to promote everything that has to do with the Houthis and their original plans to conquer all of Yemen while denigrating all those who stand opposed to them. Starting with the slaughter of the most “sacred cow” of all, here are the three most glaring examples of Alt-Media doublethink on Yemen:

Saudi Arabia Hates All Shiites…Despite Backing Them During The North Yemen Civil War

It’s popular nowadays for people to casually assert that Saudi Arabia hates all Shiites, and there’s indeed an overwhelming mountain of evidence proving that Riyadh suppresses its own confessional minority within its borders and has backed Takfiri death squads targeting its sectarian counterparts all throughout the world, but the fact of the matter is that this violent opposition to them isn’t “universal” and based on some dogmatic “principle”. The intent of the following isn’t to excuse Saudi Arabia’s actions but to explain them, and in advance response to triggered critics, this isn’t “apologia” either.

Saudi Arabia, contrary to everything that the average Alt-Media denizen has been conditioned to think, actually provided significant support to the Shiite-Zaidi King Muhammad Al-Badr of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom during what is popularly called the “North Yemen Civil War”. Without getting too deep into its specifics, a Republican coup inspired by Arab Nationalist leader Nasser overthrew the monarchy in 1962, and the resultant fighting between that faction and the monarchist one continued until 1970 and essentially became an Egyptian-Saudi proxy war.

To be sure, Saudi Arabia was supporting the King for monarchist political reasons, not sectarian religious ones, but this instance is proof that the Wahhabi Kingdom had indeed backed an openly Shiite cause to restore the historical Zaidi monarchy in Yemen. Ironically, the confessional descendants of these same forces would later rebel against Saudi-supported “Republican” Presidents Saleh and Hadi during the Houthi insurgency, the first of which was also a “fellow” Shiite-Zaidi.

To address the elephant in the room, it’s impossible to deny that Saudi Arabia has been suspicious of Shiites ever since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and oftentimes initiated violence against them out for no reason at all other than the paranoia that might one day behave as “fifth columnists” for spreading Iran’s new political system, though there’s an explanation – but certainly not ever any excuse – for why it does this.

Iran regularly rejected ceasefires with Iraq during their infamous war in the 1980s even after it had already pushed the invaders out of its territory because it wantedto overthrow Saddam Hussein and export the Islamic Revolution abroad, and while it was certainly Iran’s right to pursue the total defeat of its hated nemesis to the extent that the USSR earlier did against the Nazis, it nevertheless has to accept the regional consequences that this failed initiative had for its reputation in instilling an obsessive fear in its rivals.

To be clear, Iran’s efforts to completely eliminate the Western- (and to a certain extent, even Soviet-) backed threat that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed to the Islamic Revolution does not in any way whatsoever “justify” the targeted killing of Shiites by Saudi Arabia or its allied proxy forces, but it did spark the pathological paranoia that the Monarchy has since had towards this group in fearing that they might be “fifth columnists”. Having said that, Saudi Arabia doesn’t hate all Shiites since it supported them in the North Yemen Civil War and at various times enjoyed excellent relations with former President Saleh.

Syrian Socialism And Secularism Is Good, But Its South Yemeni Version Is Bad

Another prominent contradiction in the Iranian-affiliated Alt-Media narrative about the Mideast is the support of socialism and secularism in Syria while denying the South Yemenis these very same rights. President Assad’s Baath Party never practiced dogmatic socialist “puritanism”, but is still considered in general terms to have more closely embraced that socio-economic model than the neoliberal one.

This is celebrated by Alt-Media individuals who identify with the Iranian perspective on regional affairs, and it’s much more preferable for them to see a socialist-secular state in Syria than the dystopian Sunni dictatorship that President Assad’s opponents have brutally tried to create over the past 7 years. The explanation for this stance in spite of Iran’s own historic encouragement for Islamic Revolutions abroad is that they respect the Syrian people’s democratic will in this regard, which is admirable.

The problem, however, is that the democratic will of the South Yemeni people who are fighting to rebuild their formerly independent socialist and secular state is being ignored by these very same forces who would rather have the Houthis take over the entirety of the country even though the Southerners don’t want them there.

The situation in the South of the country is complex and it’s better for the reader to refer to the author’s latest work on the matter (and its hyperlinks) if they want to learn more about it, but the point is that there’s a visible double standard being expressed when it comes to support for Syria and South Yemen despite the two states fighting for the same thing – socialism and secularism. The Houthis aren’t openly in favor of an Islamic Republic and are allied to the late President Saleh’s secular General People’s Congress, but Southerners still fear that the more pious Northerners will try to impose their comparatively stricter socio-religious standards on them.

On the one hand, the Iranian-influenced Alt-Media Community stands in full support of the democratic will of the Syrian people who are fighting to protect their way of life, yet is against the exact same manifestation of these principles by the South Yemenis who apparently “don’t know what’s good for them”. The narrative on Yemen is therefore overly simplistic and fails to account for the immense historical and socio-cultural differences between the country’s constituent halves, to say nothing of being hypocritical when compared to what these same voices say about Syria.

Bahrainis Should Revolt, But The South Yemenis Shouldn’t Dare Try

Channeling the themes introduced in the above-mentioned point, Iran and its international Alt-Media supporters believe in the righteousness of the Bahraini Revolt but condemn the South Yemenis for doing the same. In both cases, a dissatisfied majority population is ruled over by an authoritarian minority, with the difference being that the Bahraini King is Sunni while the former authorities in South Yemen prior to the success of this week’s revolution were Northerners.

The narrative goes that the Bahraini people are fighting for freedom and will be truly independent if they overthrow their monarchy, while the South Yemenis are behaving as proxy agents of the UAE and simply trading one occupation for another. That, however, isn’t necessarily true and is actually quite misleading, since it would be natural for confessional-political reasons for a post-revolutionary Bahrain to ally itself with its much more powerful Iranian neighbor, the same as the South Yemenis would naturally reward their UAE allies for the assistance that they provided during their recent struggle.

It can’t be known for sure, but it might be the case that a sectarian double standard is being applied whereby Shiite revolutionary causes that are more in line with Iran’s interests and closer to its own borders are framed as progressive developments that could herald in an unprecedented era of independence for those involved, while Sunni ones further afield are dismissed as geopolitical ruses by its foes and subsequently discredited as smokescreens for swapping one oppressor with another.

This perspective is problematic not just for rhetorical reasons, but because it seems to contradict Article 154 of the Iranian Constitution, which says among other things that Iran “supports the struggles of the oppressed for their rights against the oppressors anywhere in the world”. The Shiite Bahraini majority views itself as being under the oppressive control of a dictatorial Sunni Monarchy heavily influenced by the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the same as the Shiite-Zaidi Houthis had serious concerns about Sunni President Hadi’s abuses against their community and his alliance with Riyadh.

At the same time, however, Iran ignores the South Yemenis’ democratic desire to break free of Northern occupation and rebuild their socialist-secular state, again drawing into question whether this is because Tehran doesn’t equate their cause as being as righteous as the other two’s or if it’s simply because of geopolitical-sectarian reasons that stand at variance with the inspirational principle outlined in its own constitution. Along the same vein, Iran has made similar mistakes before when it was on what the Alt-Media Community mostly believes to be the wrong side in Bosnia and Libya.

Concluding Thoughts

Information warfare is a complex art that is never perfectly practiced but always aspires to weave as comprehensively consistent of a narrative as a possible, thought this is becoming all the more difficult because of the target audience’s exposure to a multitude of related issues nowadays due to social media and the related revolution in information-communication technologies. The case of Yemen is a perfect example of these challenges when it comes to the interests of a state actor and its affiliated Alt-Media Community, since they’ve already invested so much time and effort in framing the Houthis’ cause in a certain way that it’s almost impossible for them to apply the same standards towards other issues such as those in Syria and Bahrain without appearing hypocritical.

That said, a refined infowar-activist approach could be developed that takes the time to address the narrative differences between the aforementioned topics of study, even if it does so superficially or embraces the Machiavellian mantra that “interests, not principles, are what matter most” and that these evolve depending on circumstances. Many people, though, prefer to live in an idealized bubble and refuse to accept the contemporary Neo-Realist paradigm of International Relations that the author earlier described as the “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard”. Iran, just like all other Great Powers, prioritizes its interactions with its similarly categorized peers at the perceived expense of smaller- and medium-sized states in order to promote its interests and maintain the Balance of Power or tip the scales to its favor, hence the discrepancy between its backing and condemnation of various regional causes.

Every significant actor in this geostrategic game plays by these same rules, though only Trump the “Kraken” openly says so, and even that’s a calculated move in pursuit of his country’s self-interests in deliberately upsetting the international order to what he and his team hope will ultimately be America’s benefit via the weaponization of chaos theory. Iran is no different than everyone else, but it was the focus of this analysis because of the growing global importance of the War on Yemen – especially after South Yemen’s Revolution – and the dominating influence that Tehran exerts on the Alt-Media narrative in this regard. As a concluding call to action, any triggered readers should conduct their own studies and examine the shortcomings of other multipolar Great Powers’ infowars-activism across the world so as to inspire them to improve their tactics and ultimately optimize their messaging.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

Stocks are red. Trey Gowdy is abruptly retiring from Congress. Everybody is laughing at what looks like drool dribbling from the edge of Joe Kennedy‘s mouth during his rebuttal to last night’s State of the Union.

And along comes Reuters, dropping a bombshell headline that, if accurate, could shift the narrative of the multiple investigations involving Russia and obstruction of justice.

Reuters quoted Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intel Committee, who believes the contents of the four-page memo about allegedly egregious FBI abuses of FISA set for public release in the next several days, could lead to the firing of Special Counsel Bob Mueller, or more likely Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein.

• TOP DEMOCRAT ON U.S. HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE SAYS REPUBLICAN MEMO SETS STAGE FOR POSSIBLE FIRING OF SPECIAL COUNSEL MUELLER OR MORE LIKELY DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROSENSTEIN

And:

• U.S. HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN NUNES SAYS “NO SURPRISE” TO SEE THE FBI AND JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ISSUE “SPURIOUS OBJECTIONS” TO REPUBLICAN MEMO -STATEMENT

Now the question of course is whether this is a statement of fact – in other words the FISA memo contains cause for termination – or a smoke screen to claim that Mueller’s firing is only made possible by the “political act” that is the imminent release of the FISA memo.

* * *

In an amusing coincidence, Gowdy’s remarks from a Tuesday morning appearance on Fox & Friends now seem eerily prophetic…

REP. TREY GOWDY (R-SC): My Democratic colleagues didn’t want us to find this information. They did everything they could to keep us from finding this information. I think it will be embarrassing to Adam Schiff once people realize the extent to which he went to keep them from learning any of this. That would be the embarrassment…

I mean, going to court to help Fusion GPS so we can’t find out they paid for the dossier, and that they were working for the DNC. That’s a pretty big step to go to court to try to keep the American people from learning something. So, if it were up to Adam Schiff, you wouldn’t know about Hillary Clinton’s email. You wouldn’t know about the server. You wouldn’t know about the dossier. I do find it ironic that he has his own memo right now because if it were up to him, we wouldn’t know any of it.

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In response to the FBI’s “rare public statement” claiming the contents of the memo distort the truth, House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes, Schiff’s Republican counterpart and primary antagonist on the committee, has responded with his own statement dismissing the FBI’s “spurious objections.”

Devin Nunes goes after the FBI and DOJ, dismisses what he calls their "spurious objections" to releasing his memo. pic.twitter.com/LerpOKf9sm

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 31, 2018

The question on everybody’s mind is whether the memo will prove that the FBI improperly relied on the Steele dossier to obtain FISA Court warrant on Carter Page. One Twitter user pointed out that Nunes’ statement comes close to confirming that this is indeed the truth.

Nunes throws down the gauntlet: he all but publicly declares the FBI used allegations in the #SteeleDossier to get a FISA court warrant to surveil Carter Page. While knowing the info was unverified & likely campaign opposition research. pic.twitter.com/xjs8AVYCNK

— Stealth Jeff (@drawandstrike) January 31, 2018

Developing story.

Featured image: Bulldozers are seen during excavation near Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish settlement, in Eastern Part of Jerusalem on 13 September 2017 [Mahmoud Ibrahem/Anadolu Agency]

The United Nations human rights office said today it had identified 206 companies so far doing business linked to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, where it said violations against Palestinians are “pervasive and devastating”.

“The majority of these companies are domiciled in Israel or the settlements (143), with the second largest group located in the United States (22). The remainder are domiciled in 19 other countries,” the UN human rights office said in a statement.

The report, which did not name the companies but said that 64 of them had been contacted to date, said that the work in producing the database “does not purport to constitute a judicial process of any kind”.

Its mandate was to identify businesses involved in the construction of settlements, surveillance, services including transport and banking and financial operations such as loans for housing that may raise human rights concerns.

Human rights violations associated with the settlements are “pervasive and devastating, reaching every facet of Palestinian life”, the report said. It cited restrictions on freedom of religion, movement and education as well as lack of access to land, water and livelihoods.

Israel assailed the Human Rights Council in March 2016 for launching the initiative at the request of countries led by Pakistan, calling the database a “blacklist” and accusing the 47-member state forum of behaving “obsessively” against Israel.

Israel’s mission in Geneva said today that it was preparing a statement responding to the UN report.

“We hope that our work in consolidating and communicating the information in the database will assist States and businesses in complying with their obligations and responsibilities under international law,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein.

The report is to be debated at the main annual session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva from 26 February to 23 March.

Featured image: People opposing the Dakota Access pipeline gather at Standing Rock in North Dakota, December 4, 2016. (Source: Joe Brusky, CC BY–NC 2.0)

The Iowa Senate has advanced a bill which critics say could lead to the criminalization of pipeline protests, which are being cast as “terrorist activities.” Dakota Access pipeline owner Energy Transfer Partners and other companies have lobbied for the bill, Senate Study Bill 3062, which opens up the possibility of prison time and a hefty fine for those who commit “sabotage” of critical infrastructure, such as oil and gas pipelines.

This bill, carrying a criminal punishment of up to 25 years in prison and $100,000 in fines, resembles the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, a “model” bill recently passed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). That ALEC bill, intended as a template for state and federal legislation, was based on Oklahoma’s HB 1123, which calls for citizens to receive a felony sentencing, $100,000 fine, and/or 10 years in prison if their actions “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, or tamper with equipment in a critical infrastructure facility.”

According to disclosure records, corporations lobbying for the Iowa bill include not only Energy Transfer Partners, but also Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, Valero Energy, Magellan Midstream, and others. The Iowa State Police Association has also come out in support of the bill, while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa is against it. The bill has passed out of subcommittee and next goes in front of the state Senate Judiciary Committee.

The bill’s introduction comes as President Donald Trump called for Congress to pass a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill in his State of the Union Address, which according to a leaked outline of his proposal published by The Washington Post, includes pipelines and would expedite the federal regulatory permitting process for them, largely by simply removing environmental requirements.

State Sen. Jack Shipley (R), one of the Judiciary Subcommittee “yes” votes, told the Des Moines Register that the bill was necessary “as evidenced by terrorist activities on pipelines, many many pipelines.”

Sen. Charles Schneider, who also voted to advance the bill out of subcommittee, is one of two Iowa ALEC state chairs. The other “yes” vote came from Sen. Rich Taylor, a Democrat.

ALEC is a corporate-funded group which brings together primarily Republican Party state legislators and lobbyists at annual meetings to vote on proposed “model” legislation, generally drafted by corporate lobbyists and attorneys. The Critical Infrastructure Protection Act passed through ALEC‘s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force at its States & Nation Policy Summit in December held in Nashville, Tennessee.

Energy Transfer Partners’ Iowa lobbyist, Jeff Boeyink, formerly served as chief of staff for Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who now serves as U.S. Ambassador to China. Branstad was one of ALEC‘s key founding members in the 1970s. Energy Transfer in the past has funded ALEC meetings, though it is not clear if they are a current donor, as ALEC does not list funders on its website, nor does it make public who sponsors its meetings.

Boeyink told the Des Moines Register that he believes Energy Transfer Partners is the “poster child” showing the bill’s necessity, alluding to the months-long protests which erupted against the Dakota Access pipeline in both North Dakota and Iowa. But one of the leading opponents of the bill, Bold Iowa, has come out against the legislation and sees it as overreach.

“This latest attempt by Big Oil to silence dissent is no surprise,” Ed Fallon, director of Bold Iowa, said in a press release about the bill. “This is legislative extremism at its worst. The bill’s backers want you to believe this is about cracking down on arson and vandalism. But the hundreds of pipeline protesters who were peaceful, nonviolent and didn’t engage in property destruction could be accused of interrupting service under this bill and subject to insane consequences.”

The director of ALEC‘s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force, Grant Kidwell, told DeSmog that he expects the model bill could be introduced in other states in the weeks ahead. He also pointed out that it is not only an ALEC model bill, but also one passed at the corporate-funded Council on State Governments (CSG).

Before coming to ALEC, Kidwell worked as a senior policy analyst for Americans for Prosperity, the lobbying, advocacy, and electioneering group funded and founded by money from the Koch Family Foundations and Koch Industries.

“States are recognizing the importance of critical infrastructure and the threats to it,” Kidwell told DeSmog. “Oklahoma enacted legislation in 2017 protecting critical infrastructure before ALEC began its consideration of model policy on the issue. Iowa is currently considering legislation to protect critical infrastructure and likely many more states will as well.”

Members of the Iowa-based lobbying teams for the bill, representing Koch Industries and Energy Transfer Partners, did not respond to a request for comment.

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This article was originally published by DeSmogBlog.

The Tax Justice Network produces a Financial Secrecy Index, ranking countries for the assistance their legal systems provide, to money-launderers, and to all people who seek to protect corruptly-obtained wealth. The higher the score, the more corrupt the government is. The last time this Index was published, in 2015, Switzerland was rated the world’s most-corrupt country, and Hong Kong was then #2.

But now, in its newly released global rankings, “Financial Secrecy Index — 2018 Results”, though Switzerland still holds its #1 (most-corrupt) spot, the U.S. has become #2, and Hong Kong has now fallen to #4, which is immediately below Cayman Islands (which is #3, and which had been #5 in 2015).

The detailed report-card for Switzerland says

“the Swiss will exchange information with rich countries if they have to, but will continue offering citizens of poorer countries the opportunity to evade their taxpaying responsibilities. These factors, along with ongoing aggressive pursuit of financial sector whistleblowers (resorting at times to what appear to be non-legal methods) are ongoing reminders of why Switzerland remains the most important secrecy jurisdiction in the world today.”

The detailed report-card for the United States notes America’s rising score, and resulting success in attracting corrupt wealth, as follows:

The rise of the US continues a long term trend, as the country was one of the few to increase their secrecy score in the 2015 index. The continues [intending the word “continued”] rise of the US in the 2018 index comes off the back of a significant change in the US share of the global market for offshore financial services. Between 2015 and 2018 the US increased its market share in offshore financial services by 14%. In total the US accounts for 22.3% of the global market in offshore financial services.

The U.S. report-card asserts that, “Financial secrecy provided by the U.S. has caused untold harm to the ordinary citizens of foreign countries, whose elites have used the United States as a bolt-hole for looted wealth.” Of course, this isn’t the largest such “bolt-hole” — it’s the second-largest. Furthermore, the report-card for Switzerland said:

According to the Swiss Bankers’ Association banks in Switzerland hold CHF 6.65 trillion ($6.5 trillion) in assets under management, of which 48 percent originated from abroad: this made Switzerland the world leader in global cross-border asset management, with a 25 percent share of that market.1 In terms of the narrower wealth management sector, Deloitte estimated that Switzerland was also the world leader with US$2.04 trillion in assets under management in 2014, compared to the $1.65 trillion and $1.43 trillion for the UK and US respectively.2  

The “Secretiveness” scores ranged from “100%” meaning total secrecy, to “Moderately secretive” meaning from 31% to 40% secretive; and, so, among the 112 ranked countries, none were unwelcoming of corruptly obtained wealth; all were at least “moderately” welcoming of it.

Furthermore, other factors than “Secretiveness” were also included in the rankings. The 242-page Methodology document says, for example, that “The secrecy score is cubed and the weighting is cube-rooted before being multiplied to produce a Financial Secrecy Index which ranks secrecy jurisdictions according to their degree of secrecy and the scale of their trade in international financial services.” So, countries such as Montserrat,  which ranked at the very bottom, #112, actually had a “Secrecy” score of 77.5% (higher even than Switzerland), but it had extraordinarily good “International Standards and Cooperation” such as with “Anti-Money Laundering” and a 0% score of non-cooperation with “Bilateral Treaties.” Above all: any country, in which only few wealthy foreigners want to park their money, was ranked among the least-corrupt, in Tax Justice Center’s methodology — and “FSI Share,” or the percentage of the global total wealth that’s stashed offshore within the given country, is by far the dominant factor, in their calculations of ‘Financial Secrecy Index’, so that their methodology is simply absurd. The Methodology document ‘justifies’ this deceptive practice by saying:

The ranking reflects not only information about which are the most secretive jurisdictions, but also the question of scale (i.e. the extent to which a jurisdiction’s secrecy is likely to have global impact). In this way, the Financial Secrecy Index offers an answer to the question: by providing offshore financial services in combination with a lack of transparency, how much damage is each secrecy jurisdiction actually responsible for?     

Obviously, any ranking-system that’s ranking countries more according to how big a percentage of the global offshore wealth it’s hosting, than according to how secretive the country is when other countries are seeking its assistance in tracking down assets that are held abroad, is no real ‘Financial Secrecy Index’ at all, and thus should be renamed, perhaps as “International Economic Harm Index” or something else that’s not nearly as misleading as the existing title for it (‘Financial Secrecy Index’) is.

Be that as it may: among the 112 nations that were ranked, 

China was #28 and was 60% secretive (60% “Secrecy Score”).

Russia ranked #29 and was 64% secretive.

Ukraine ranked #43, and was 69% secretive. 

By contrast, U.S. was ranked as 60% secretive; so, U.S. is actually in their league and is less corrupt than Ukraine, but is ranked as the 2nd-most-‘Secretive’ of all rated countries. Switzerland was ranked as 76% secretive, which places Switzerland among the 28 most-secretive countries on the list — but it has the highest ‘Financial Secrecy Index’ of any, even though more than two dozen countries received a higher “Secrecy Score.” 

The nine highest-scoring nations on their actual “Secrecy Score” were, from the top: (#1) Vanuatu 89%; (#2) Antigua-Barbuda 87%; (tied #s 3-5) UAE, Bahamas, and Brunei, 84%; (tied #s 6-9) Thailand, Kenya, Liberia, and Bolivia, 80%. 

So: Those were actually the 9 highest-scored “Secrecy Score” countries.

The 7 lowest-scored “Secrecy Score” ones were: 42% (tied) UK and Slovenia, 44% Belgium, 45% Sweden, 47% Lithuania, 49% Italy, 49% Brazil. 

But is Brazil really among the least-corrupt countries? Is it, even, really, among the financially most transparent countries?

Furthermore, the detailed report-card for the U.S. asserts:

A wealthy Ukrainian, say, sets up a Delaware shell company using a local company formation agent. That Delaware agent will provide nominee officers and directors (typically lawyers) to serve as fronts for the real owners, and their details and photocopies of their passports can be made public but that gets you no closer to who the genuine Ukrainian owner of that company is: if the nominees are lawyers they are bound by attorney-client privilege not to reveal the information (if they even have it: the owner of that shell company may be another secretive shell company or trust somewhere else). The company can run millions through its bank account but nobody – whether domestic or foreign law enforcement – can crack through that form of secrecy in any efficient or effective way. In the words of Dennis Lormel, the first chief of the FBI’s Terrorist Financing Operations Section and a retired 28-year Bureau veteran, “Terrorists, organized crime groups, and pariah states need access to the international banking system. Shell firms are how they get it.” …

Almost two million corporations and limited liability companies (LLCs) are formed in U.S. states each year, many by foreigners, without the states ever asking for the identity of the ultimate beneficial owners. Some serve legitimate purposes but many, in the words of Senator Carl Levin, “function as conduits for organised crime, money laundering, securities fraud, tax evasion, and other misconduct.”

Nonetheless, the U.S. is granted a modest “Secrecy Score” of only 60% — though the process that’s described there is providing 100% secrecy. Nothing is being said, not even in the Methodology document, about how a country which can provide 100% secrecy, deserves a mere 60% “Secrecy Score.”

The detailed report-card on Switzerland likewise includes considerable text describing a country that seems as corrupt as is indicated in the text describing America. Granting the U.S. a “Secrecy Score” of only 60%, while Switzerland receives a much higher 76% such score, is puzzling; and, again, the Methodology document provides no help to understand what the actual methodology that was used is — much less to justify the methodology.

Perhaps the worst score of all should go to the Tax Justice Network itself.

However, maybe the so-called “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” deserves an even worse score, because that organization headlined on January 30th, “US, Switzerland singled out for financial secrecy by new index” and reported favorably about this “new index,” which is actually in at least its second edition, since an earlier one was reported in 2015 — so, this isn’t even a ‘new index’ at all, but is at least a three-year-old index. Isn’t a bit of investigative journalism necessary from a purported professional organization of ‘Investigative Journalists’? Or does mere ‘journalistic’ stenography now qualify, even as ‘investigative’ journalism? Is ‘journalism’ now mere PR, propaganda, public relations? And is ‘investigative’ now mere reading and reciting from a source? What’s the difference between PR versus ‘investigative journalism’? 

And: what’s the difference between America’s 60% “Secrecy Score” and Switzerland’s 76% one? Based upon the detailed report-cards, how would it be possible to be ‘more corrupt’ than each of these countries is?

The United States Government routinely characterizes any Government that it seeks to overthrow as being ‘corrupt’. Perhaps that fact, more than any other, shows how corrupt the U.S. Government itself really is. Throwing stones from glass houses does no one any good. But it does prove — and not merely by some organization’s flawed methodology — that hypocrisy can sometimes signal a threat that could turn out to be even worse than “Financial Secrecy” or “Secrecy Score” or even than real corruption. When the United States Government called Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi, and Viktor Yanukovych, etc., by such terms as “corrupt,” the invasions and coups which were ‘justified’ by means of that U.S. name-calling, perpetrated vastly more harm than any corruption which was, or might have been, perpetrated by those individually blamed persons. Such “stones from glass houses,” as the U.S. casts, contain bombs; they’re actually warheads; they are weapons of mass destruction, such as extremely corrupt governments employ with the most hypocritical of ‘humanitarian’ ‘concerns’, for the mass-victims, which commonly result from their mass-weapons. Corruption that’s so heavily armed, is the worst sort of corruption there is — regardless of whether it’s associated with an exceptionally high “Financial Secrecy Index,” or any other type of extraordinary corruption. And, certainly, the U.S. far outdoes Switzerland, on this score. So: Trump is right — “America is Number One”, after all.

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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.

Somalia is facing yet another major crisis as the United States steps up its drone attack and combat operations in this Horn of Africa state.

Drone attacks are promoted by the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an effective means of targeting so-called “terrorists” without threatening the lives of innocent people and American soldiers. This of course is not always the situation on the ground.

The impact of drones on civilian populations has proven to be devastating. In most cases those killed, injured and dislocated are not the targeted individuals or groups. Civilians including women, children and the elderly tend to be the primary victims.

Nonetheless, news reports related to the worsening security situation around Mogadishu asserts that the aerial drone strikes are taking a toll on Al-Shabaab, the Islamist organization which is said to be the major impediment to the stabilization of the country. Al-Shabaab grew out of the interference of Washington in the internal affairs of Somalia after elements within the Union of Islamic Courts were recruited into the transitional federal regime nine years ago.

An alliance of contiguous and regional states under the rubric of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) was deployed to Somalia eleven years ago. At its height, AMISOM had 22,000 troops in Somalia along with several thousand para-military police units all backed, trained, funded and coordinated by the U.S., the European Union (EU) and their allies.

AMISOM has repeatedly said that Al-Shabaab is no longer a serious security threat in the capital of Mogadishu. However, periodic attacks are still occurring attributed to Al-Shabaab. A twin bomb attack during late 2017 was the most deadly since the deployment of AMISOM resulting in over 500 deaths, although it remains unclear whether Al-Shabaab was behind the operation.

Emphasis in recent weeks has been placed on praising the purported effectiveness of the drone bombings particularly coming from the AU special envoy to the country. Yet other issues which are surfacing are not being addressed along with the prospects of a withdrawal of AMISOM forces from the theater of battle.

AU representative Francisco Madeira said of the present situation that:

“These drone attacks, in particular, are wiping out the Al-Shabaab in large numbers. And it is a good thing to put an end to terrorism in this way.”

Well the problems of “terrorism” in Somalia and throughout other geo-political regions such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Niger, has not been resolved to the satisfaction of imperialism through drone strikes. The spreading of destruction and displacement does not represent any long term solution for the Pentagon and NATO-allied forces or the majority of the people who live in these areas.

Fostering this dangerous illusion, Madeira went on to say:

“The establishment of a comprehensive and effective Somali national army could take longer than expected.”

In making such a statement it implies that the U.S. policy of escalating the bombing is the only viable response to the current political and security impasse.

In fact the western media has frequently lost track of the historical trajectory of events in Somalia over the last twelve years. It was in 2006 that the Union of Islamic Courts which was developing some semblance of stability in Somalia came under attack by U.S. proxies leading to the military intervention of Ethiopia and the eventual concoction and deployment of AMISOM.

Such a false scenario was published by the French Press Agency (AFP) on January 27 when the agency said:

“Deployed in 2007 to support the very fragile central Somali government, the AMISOM is expected to leave the country by the end of 2020, after transferring all its security prerogatives to the Somali army. But Francisco Madeira did not rule out an extension of the mission’s mandate.”

The question is what “fragile central government” was in existence in 2007? There had not been the pretense of an effective state authority in Somalia since 1991 when the government of former military leader and President Mohamed Siad Barre collapsed amid internecine conflict sweeping the entire country.

Displacement Fostered by U.S.-backed Government in Mogadishu

Another report published by the Guardian newspaper based in London portrays a more realistic picture of the actual developments in Somalia. The drone attacks, the utilization of Special Forces from the Pentagon and the constant misrepresentation of events inside the country are causing great harm to the Somalian people.

According to the publication:

“Dozens of civilians have been killed and wounded in Somalia as U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamist militants increase to unprecedented levels, a Guardian investigation has found, raising fears that Washington’s actions could bolster support for extremists. The escalation in strikes is part of the Trump administration’s broader foreign policy strategy in Africa and the Middle East. There have been 34 U.S. airstrikes in Somalia in the last six months – at least twice the total for the whole of 2016. Regional allies active in the campaign against Islamic extremists in the east African country have conducted many missions too. These appear to be the most lethal for civilians.” (Jan. 23 article by Jason Burke)

The impact of the increased militarization by the administration of President Donald Trump is being compounded by the forced removals of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in the capital. Some 34,000 people have been cleared out of an IDP settlement in Mogadishu after the shelter was ordered torn down by the Washington-backed Somalia National Army (SNA).

Over a three week period from late December 2017 through mid-January 2018, some 3,000 shelters were destroyed. Such actions take on an added dimension of exacerbating the already dire humanitarian situation in Somalia. The U.S.-backed war has crippled the capacity of the people to address the horrendous food deficits caused in part by drought. The near-famine conditions will not be adequately resolved without the realization of peace. Enhanced militarization portends much for the future of the Somalian people who have endured four decades of war and occupation dating back to the late 1970s.

The Guardian notes in their report:

“The sudden increase in the use of air power in Somalia by the U.S. comes after the relaxation of guidelines intended to prevent civilian casualties and a decision by the Trump administration to give local military commanders greater authority in ordering attacks…. A Kenyan military spokesperson referred the Guardian to AMISOM when asked about Kenya’s operations in Somalia. Francisco Madeira, the head of AMISOM, said the force had ‘not been responsible for any airstrikes’ in … Somalia in 2017. A U.S. military spokesperson said its forces complied ‘with the law of armed conflict’ and took ‘all feasible precautions … to minimize civilian casualties and other collateral damage’.”

Another Large-scale Occupation May Be an Option

Perhaps the Trump administration is setting the stage for another failed large-scale military occupation which proved disastrous during 1992-1994. If the AMISOM project is being exhausted, the only other option is a U.S.-led intervention of greater magnitude.

There has been the reported death of a U.S. combatant last year in a mission which the administration says is strictly advisory. With Somalia being an oil-rich nation located in the strategic area close to vast energy resources throughout the East African coast and West Asia, the imperialists are not prepared to withdraw under a situation absent of a complete military defeat.

At any rate, the quagmire in Somalia cannot be settled without a regional political solution to the war between Al-Shabaab and the western-backed federal government in Mogadishu. The AU should focus its attention on a lasting solution rather than relying on the Trump administration which is only continuing the imperialist military options initiated by President George W. Bush, Jr. in 2006-2007 and its escalation under Barack Obama during his two terms from 2009-2016.

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All images in this article are from the author.

This is a different Cambridge. The gowns are gone, banished to a museum of what Britain was.  The traffic and pollution have moved in, angry, irritable, uncompromising.  Hopping off the train from Kings Cross,London doesn’t prepare you for the scene, one facing energetic fumes as disarmed citizens before a gas attack. 

Another thing is also striking.  The builders, constructors and developers have moved in, adding pudgy monsters of glass and cement, trendy forums for shopping and glitzy arenas for communing.  Coffee shops have become colonists, and we are being told that eating in Cambridge has improved.

There is a sense that history has, with its feelers and reminders, caught up.  The Scotsman manning a brightly lit bar from yet another new hotel down from the main station is friendly. He exudes a confidence that would make the academics in this city squirm.  He is, as it were, not one of them, town, not gown.

This is to the good, if to the good means attributing value to movement, change and momentum.  This has not always been the case – coming to this city of the Fens, a place of asylum and refuge from Oxford, is much like venturing to a living archaeological site, with humans still going about their business since time immemorial.  Construction and building might be taking place on the perimeter, but the aged interior remains stubbornly intact, a city, as Matthew Arnold described, of perspiring dreams.

To be at Cambridge is to swan, squirm and delight in a zoo, an autistic mash, a spectrum patterned delight with people of genius and the occasional charlatan who might, had the occasion arisen, been in prison or some other unfortunate institute at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.  Britain’s political and social genius is to have created an institutional framework for the deranged, the uncomfortable and the awkward, be it the House of Lords or the Oxbridge college system.

Less ingenious has been Britain’s now advanced reputation for having an insufferably poor train network, one that butchers time and drains pockets.  The culture of train delays, non-appearances and vanishings, is famous.  Ian Hislop of the deliciously vituperative Private Eye, redoubtable team captain on the quiz showHave I Got News For You symbolises the Brit in despair of his country, the sort who goes to a train station sceptical that he will find one.

To find a train in Britain, let alone one that appears and moves, would be tantamount, in Hislop’s lethal serve, to finding a thylacine or a dodo.  He is the bird watcher who can’t find his feathery friends, the gardener despairing at not finding the first, vital blooms of spring.

In 2017, British progressive columnist Owen Jones saw the British train system as a means to read the nation.

“If how the railways run is a guide to the state of a nation, then it tells you something that Britain is in the middle of its biggest railway strike since 1994.”

Jones embraces a traditional critique: it all went wrong with the privatisation of the national railway network in 1994 during the John Major government.  Since then, debates have raged over all arrangements touching on services from the provision of guards to appropriate standards of safety.  Such are the perils, asserts Jones, of “introducing market ideology into key public services”.

Even before Major was a certain Dr. Richard Beeching, considered something of a “Genghis Khan with a slide rule”.  In 1963, his report unleashed a ruthless savaging of the nation’s railway network, giving pride and place to the car.  A third of the lines and stations were closed.

These are extinct beasts, vanished and banished, and Britain, now exiting Europe in stumbling confusion, is better at producing, and reproducing the extinct, as few other cultures.  What is dead is bound to be revered; what is glorious is bound to be reconfigured and re-confected.

Even now, with such productions as Dunkirk and Darkest Hour, we are talking about episodes long past, with figures long dead, who still exert a more realistic pull on citizens than the feasibility of an efficient train network, and much else besides.  It remains a point of discomfort, but British writers, intellectuals and politicians waxed lyrically and obscenely about the efforts being made by totalitarian governments through the late 1920s and 1930s on facilitating train travel.  A directed economy, in other words, could work wonders.

Interestingly enough, there was no better time to travel by train in Britain than the decade after the conclusion of the First World War. The 1921 Railway Act outlined the objective of a “more efficient and economical working of the railway system of Great Britain”.

Train watchers chalk up data on which line is the greatest offender in the punctuality charts.  In 2015, the dubious honour went to the 07:29 Brighton to London Victoria as one of the country’s worst offenders. During the previous year, the train had failed to make its scheduled time on a single occasion.  Added to this the annual increases in fares, it is remarkable that commuters remain, in the main, composed if not resigned to the whole thing.

Little wonder, then, that nostalgia reigns with orb and sceptre over Her Britannic Majesty’s lands.  Provided the pageants and heraldry are in order, nothing else really matters.  There are markets to conquer, new fictional worlds to lay claim to.  Britain, whatever it decides to do with citizenry or fictions, will remain totally committed against a functioning, efficient not to mention affordable, train network.

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

It’s time I did a piece on this Fake News nonsense being put about by the Western propagandists, the originators of fake news and what better place to start than the BBC, the fountainhead of impartial and objective journalism, not.

The above quote is from the BBC News Website on 28 January 2018. It’s probably the single most disingenuous piece of journalism the BBC has ever published, for what it’s really telling its public is that the BBC no longer has a monopoly on deciding what is the truth. No wonder it thinks the ‘unity of our nation is at stake’.

The crackdown on dissent

The burning issue right now is the parlous state of our alleged democracy, or what’s left of it. If we can no longer engage in open debate on the important issues of our time, then the struggle is over before it’s begun. And therein lies the rationale behind the invention of the Fake News diversion.

Every day that passes sees a shrinking of our hard won democratic [sic] rights. The one positive aspect, the Internet and the rise of independent journalism is now directly under threat using the bogus ‘fake news’ as the excuse for a clampdown on freedom of expression. Algorithms that purportedly search out and quarantine ‘fake news’ are being used to directly censor any ideas, news and opinion that contravenes the dominant view being peddled by the corporate/state media under the heading of an attack on our democratic rights!

The BBC has even managed to penetrate the education system with its so-called ‘Fake News’ mentoring programme:

‘BBC to help students identify ‘fake news‘ – BBC News Website, 6 December 2017

Where we are told:

The BBC is launching a new scheme to help young people identify real news and filter out fake or false information.

The project is targeted at secondary schools and sixth forms across the UK.

From March, up to 1,000 schools will be offered mentoring in class and online to help them spot so-called fake news.

BBC journalists including Kamal Ahmed, Tina Daheley, Amol Rajan and Huw Edwards will also take part in events aimed at helping students. But reading further on the same page, we are told absolutely nothing about the nature of this so-called mentoring programme. Instead, under the heading, ‘Half Truths’, we read:

“I think that people are getting the news all over the place – there’s more information than ever before,” said Harding.

How awful! People now have a choice rather than having it spoonfed by the BBC. He continues:

“But, as we know, some of it is old news, some of it is half truths. Some of it is just downright lies. And it’s harder than ever when you look at those information feeds to discern what’s true and what’s not.”

Oh really? What, harder than reading a newspaper headline or a page on the BBC News Website? What makes it harder to read I wonder? It really comes down to just one thing; credibility. The BBC has created the illusion of impartiality and objectivity thus all it need do is present us with the ‘news’. It has no need to back up its version of fake news with things like multiple sources or references, just the tagline, BBC News. Job done.

This is analysis of so-called fake news? So what’s new here? The BBC is the past master at presenting us with its version of reality, it does it every day. What makes its version of reality more credible than any other? It really is a case of the kettle calling the pot, black.

I might add that I tried to sign up to their online ‘mentoring’ programme but as I’m not at school, I’m denied access to it, so I have no idea what it consists of as their description quoted above is nothing short of ludicrous. In fact there is nothing anywhere on the BBC Website that describes the nature of this mentoring on ‘Fake News’.

The BBC peddles the Fake News fake news

Elsewhere under the heading of ‘Fake News’ on the BBC’s website we are given alleged examples of ‘Fake News’ and not surprisingly, one of them is Donald Trump and his claim that the Arctic ice is not melting faster than ever. But surprisingly, given the massive exposure the BBC has given to ‘Fake News’ over the past year (345 stories, see below), the Russian example is conspicuous by its absence. I wonder why? Could it be that the BBC has no evidence whatsoever of Russian meddling in our affairs. In fact, it’s the BBC that’s been peddling fake news about alleged Russian fake news!

This is an extremely dangerous turn of events. It preludes a much more general crackdown on dissent of any kind. Thought crimes are already on the statute books in the form of ‘radicalisation’, used largely to target the Muslim community, but how long before such laws are used to target anyone who dissents?

Faking it

The BBC News Website carried approximately 345 stories that carried the tag ‘Fake News’  over the 2017-2018 period. 18 carried the word Russia alongside ‘Fake News’ but not all 18 were directly relevant, only 14. I decided to go through all 14 stories to see whether any of them contained any real evidence (as opposed to unfounded allegations and opinions) of Russian interference in either the US or British elections or the Brexit farce. There’s even a dense piece about alleged Russian interference in the Catalan independence vote (which as I show, quite conclusively, is based on Western fake news and manipulation of straightforward news stories!).

So here’s the rundown on the BBC’s stories on Russian fake news. Enjoy.

And in no particular chronological order, the first one, contained not whisper of any evidence on alleged Russian Meddling:

Trump-Russia inquiry: President denies trying to fire Robert Mueller, 26 January 2018;

In fact, there’s not even a reference to a story about Russian meddling!

The second, ditto, not a single shred of evidence of any kind, merely allegations made by Facebook.

Facebook to expose Russian fake news pages

, 17 December 2017;

Instead, we read:

The social network has previously said as many as 126 million Americans may have seen content uploaded by Russia-based agents over the past two years. [my emph. WB]

The third, is not available and in any case, again it’s merely assertions, this time by Theresa May of Russian meddling:

Elections and fake news, 14 November, 2017

The fourth, is also not available but its byline says it all:

It has become clear that both British and American governments have by word and deed decided to treat the United Nations Security Council with contempt as they both continue to openly arm and finance an Israeli administration that supports Binyamin Netanyahu’s odious and illegal settlement policy that has been condemned outright by UN Security Council Resolution 2334.

By so doing, Britain and America have given the green light to Netanyahu to continue with his illegal settlements that continue to obstruct any regional peace accord.

1. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 was adopted on 23 December 2016. It reaffirmed the Charter of the UN regarding the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force.

2. It reaffirms the obligation of Israel, the occupying power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War.

3. It condemns measures that altered the demographic composition and status of the Palestinian territory, occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli citizens, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international law.

4. Expresses grave concern that continuing illegal Israeli settlements are dangerously imperilling that viability of a two-State solution based on the 1967 lines and stresses that the status quo is not sustainable.

5. Reaffirms that the Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation under international law and are a major obstacle to peace.

6. Underlines that the UN will not recognise any unilateral changes to the 1967 lines including that of Jerusalem.

7. Calls upon all UN Member States to co-operate in implementing this Resolution passed by all 14 Members of the Security Council – including the UK – with only one abstention (the US).

The Likud government’s illegal settlement policy is the primary factor that demonstrably now drives the resurgence of dangerous antisemitic rhetoric and action in Britain, France, Germany, in Europe generally and also on the majority of university campuses throughout the United States. This tragically threatens Diaspora communities all over the world.

Therefore, America’s Donald Trump and Britain’s Theresa May must take specific responsibility for their current actions and also for any future catastrophe that may emanate from their support for the odious and unlawful conduct of the IDF which is the occupying force in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and is also the enforcer of the 10-year military blockade against essential goods and medicines urgently required by 1.8 million impoverished Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The antidote to increasing global antisemitism in the 21st century is compliance with UNSCR 2334 which requires that all illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories be dismantled; all Israeli citizens be returned to their homes in Israel and for the Holy City of Jerusalem to be designated an international city with free access to all faiths, in perpetuity. Failure to do so will inevitably increase international hostility towards all those who are seen as supporting Israel’s illegal settlement activity.

Leaders from the Shipibo community of Santa Clara de Uchunya, Peru, have reported a spike in violent threats and intimidation in the weeks following a court injunction against the palm oil company responsible for appropriating and deforesting more than 7,000 hectares of their ancestral territory.

Carlos Hoyos Soria, chief of Santa Clara de Uchunya, reported two separate incidents which occurred during January. On the night of 5 January 2018, two armed and hooded persons arrived at the home of a community elder, whose house lies on the periphery of the village closest to the expanding plantations. They went on to question his daughter-in-law, who was alone at the house, asking whether she was a community member. Concerned for her safety, she denied this. They then showed her a shotgun and told her they were looking for the community leaders and any community members, because “we are ready to kill”.

Subsequently, on the night of 20 January, several hooded figures made an attempted attack against the same household. Hoyos summed up the reality facing families in Santa Clara de Uchunya as “death threats, direct gunshots at point-blank range and constant harassment.”

These incidents come only weeks after land invaders, believed to be associated with the palm oil operations, fired gunshots at a community delegation gathering evidence of the destruction of community forests. As a result, a representative of local indigenous organisation FECONAU, Edinson Mahua, narrowly escaped serious injury.

Hoyos called for action from the local authorities, who continue to fail to ensure the security of the community, citing the fact that although community leaders reported the incident on 11 December to the district prosecutor in Campo Verde, they are still yet to notify the police in Nueva Requena.

Hoyos also denounced corruption in the Regional Government of Ucayali and the Municipal authorities in the District of Nueva Requena, which have been supportive of the expansion of oil palm plantations in the region, and particularly the Regional Department for Agriculture, which instead of titling the community’s ancestral lands, has continued to publicly undermine Santa Clara’s bid for legal recognition of their traditional lands and issue certificates of possession to individuals whom the community claim have installed themselves in the area under the guise of rice cultivation to engage in land trafficking.

Hoyos remarked in a recorded testimony,

“It pains me to see how with each passing day, the community continues to face death threats and other threatening behaviours from land-traffickers, on whose account we continue to suffer constant harassment, day and night, by hooded persons who cause alarm, fear and terror in the community. We are a peaceful people; we do not want to become victims of these people, who claim to be rice growers, but who are in fact land traffickers.”

Our one shared living biosphere is collapsing and dying. Continued being depends urgently upon reconnecting with nature through global embrace of an ecology ethic whose individual affirmative outcomes for natural ecosystems are sufficient in sum to sustain global nature. A primary ethical measure of a person is the degree to which their lifestyle positively or negatively impacts nature.

“Ecology is the meaning of life. Truth, justice, equity, and sustainability are the ideals whereby ecology is maintained.” – Dr. Glen Barry

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” – Aldo Leopod, The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.

“To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.” – Wendell Berry

“To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades.” – Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

***

Earth Meanders

Let’s start from the self-evident premise that Earth is a living organism. Like cells aggregating to tissues, and onward into organisms and populations; species and ecosystems are the lower level parts of the biosphere in sum. Old forests, natural waterways, oceans, soils, wetlands, and the atmosphere are the organs that together constitute a living Earth.

Big old trees in large, connected, and ecologically intact old-growth forests stabilize global climate and power the biosphere, making Earth habitable. Water is the elixir of life without which organic life is not possible. Soils take millennia to accumulate, providing the basis for plants, food growth, and ultimately wildlife and humanity. Wetlands and oceans, the atmosphere and climate, together constitute the environment needed by all life.

Such natural ecosystems – and the cyclic homeostasis of their interactions – provide the basis for all life and are thus godlike and worthy of veneration. Modern lifestyles have forsaken the ethical framework necessary to perpetuate 3.5 billion years of natural evolution.

Ancient flows of energy and nutrients between air, land, water and ocean ecosystems – that maintain our one shared biosphere – are ending. Earth is being killed by human industrial growth caused ecosystem loss, abrupt climate change, over-population, nationalistic perma-war, and inequity and injustice. Global biosphere collapse, the end of being, is upon us.

Ecologists have been warning of global ecosystem collapse and abrupt climate change for decades. So many of the “natural disasters” we see in the daily news are in fact symptoms of this decline. However, much nature remains, and lag times when natural loss inevitably collapses the whole are unknown. And Earth is amazingly tough and regenerative (but not infinitely so). There may be a brief window of opportunity to transition together to global ecological sustainability, otherwise together we face biosphere collapse and the end of being.

But it will require a revolutionary change in mindset – an “ecology ethic” which will be herein defined – to be nearly universally accepted. And fast.

A habitable global environment depends critically upon maintaining broadly distributed natural ecosystems as the context for human endeavors. Thus the foremost tenant of an ecology ethic is to maintain all the ecological parts in order that their sum – the biosphere which makes our and all life’s very existence possible – remains intact. This over-riding ecological necessity must guide all individual choices.

Together we must commit to the radical, science-based social change necessary to sustain Earth and all her life. This will certainly require a shared ecology ethic which universally values and enhances nature – the plants, wildlife, and ecological processes that make life possible – and that fosters individual-based community actions on behalf of natural ecosystems that are adequate to avoid biosphere collapse.

Humans are one species within a web of ecological relationships. The trees, animals, sky, and land you see is what there is to reality. We must stop killing other species, and ensure that all species have large expanses of habitats to meet their needs, as concurrently by securing the needs of all species, the well-being of the global whole is met by the presence of these large intact wildlife habitats.

Earth’s carrying capacity has been exceeded and we are in ecological overshoot. Merging climate, food, water, ocean, soil, justice, equity, and old-growth forest crises destroy ecosystems and threaten to pull down our one shared biosphere. All life not just humans have intrinsic worth. All are part of the web that together constitutes the living Earth. Human activities that threaten the whole by destroying the parts will need to be restrained.

Ecology is the meaning of life. Truth, justice, equity, and sustainability are the ideals whereby ecology is maintained. Universal embrace of an ecology ethic before the biosphere collapses is all that really matters.

Ecology Ethics

In general an ecology ethic requires a profound shift in global consciousness to re-embrace our oneness with nature. Recognition of global ecology ethics begins with deep reflection upon and acceptance of ecological and other truths. Ecological truth exists. We need clean water to survive, land can only support so many people, we are all one human species, and there are no invisible ghosts in the sky ruling over us – just the nature from which we have evolved.

All we have is each other, kindred species, ecosystems and the biosphere.

Humanity is one species – separated by religious, class and tribal myths – yet utterly dependent upon ecosystem habitats. Love of other peoples and species, and of nature, truth, justice, and equity, are the only lasting basis for global ecological sustainability.

The ethical measure of a person is the degree to which they serve these ecological truths in their daily actions. An ethical ecological life requires living within nature without destroying it, and given historical environmental decline, that one is actually contributing to the regeneration of nature. A global ecology ethic also critically includes a sense of enoughness. There are limits to personal consumption in order that all basic needs of humans and other species are met, and that the biosphere thus remains intact.

Many years ago I wrote: “God is truth. Truth is Earth. Thus Earth is God.” I was trying to communicate that sacredness aligns with truthfulness, and that the most truthful of all observations is that we need nature. Moving beyond belief in ghosts in the sky that judge us as our primary moral center, humanity would be well served by ethics that embraces the spirituality found within nature.

Aldo Leopold’s classic Land Ethic was foundational in reemergence in Western society of knowledge long known by indigenous peoples of how to avoid destroying your habitat. Yet it must be expanded to better serve the needs of the entire global ecological system through maintenance of all natural ecosystems in a manner that stresses freedom, fairness, and justice.

The ecology ethic is about individual actions that maintain and restore ecosystems. Each of us is best judged by the balance sheet of whether our cumulative actions serve or destroy nature. Whether the sum total of humanity’s ecological balance sheet remains within the bounds of the scientific requirements for maintaining the biosphere will determine whether together we avoid global ecosystem collapse (and much excruciating pain including the rise of authoritarian demagoguery and other widespread suffering).

An individual’s ecological ethicalness is determined by whether the impacts of their existence positively impact natural ecosystems or not. Whether your sum impact upon ecology is positive or negative determines whether you are part of the disease or the cure afflicting your home.

An act is right to the extent that it increases the well-being of nature. And it is wrong, even evil, if nature is diminished. It follows that a crucial measure of the ethicalness of each human being is whether in sum your actions increase the welfare of natural ecosystems or not.

Only widespread embrace of such an ecology ethic can now save Earth and humanity.

Ecology Ethics and Personal Action

What does this notion of embracing an ecology ethic personally mean in practice? It starts with the impacts of your lifestyle and daily decisions upon natural ecosystems. There are so many things that you can avoid or limit in order to reduce your environmental impact, and that you can do to protect and allow natural ecosystems to expand and heal. And it doesn’t require you to become a saint, just that you act to limit the totality of your impact upon Earth.

There are so many positive steps one can and must take if we are all to survive and thrive. Limit yourself to one child. Sell your car. Return to the land to produce food and restore ecosystems. Eat less or no meat, and local organic foods. Travel via air infrequently if at all. Protect and restore old forests, make love and share, revolt by embracing green liberty. And reject over-consumption as the meaning of life, instead valuing fairness, truth, and nature.

Bear witness to ecocide, highlight ecosystem collapse, propose and implement sufficient ecological science-based solutions. Favor deep experience, community, nature, and learning over more stuff. Consume only as much individually as is fairly available universally for all. Know how much is enough and how to share. Embrace the here and now of the living Earth, to which you – like all naturally evolved animals – are an integral part, and return to upon death.

Such an ecology ethic in action is the new categorical imperative if together we are to avoid abrupt climate change and global ecological collapse. We need to embrace this change personally as we vociferously persuade others, as if our lives depend upon it, to do so as well. It does.

Go back to the land, returning to nature to once again make her your home.

Society’s Way Back to Nature

Protection and restoration of large, enveloping natural ecosystems is the penultimate task of all remaining time. It is critical for human survival and well-being that our population centers remain surrounded by lush natural and semi-natural ecosystems. That is, humans can only live sustainably within a sea of nature. We are at risk of fragmenting and surrounding nature with our works.

Life is all about green liberty – maintaining our environment and all life’s well-being as we remain radically free. Centuries of advancement in human rights and welfare are at risk as climate and ecosystem collapse are met with authoritarianism.

Specific ecological policy actions required to remain free and ensure nature remains the context for humanity can only be based upon the individual ecology ethic of us all multiplied by billions as we come together to return to nature. There are multitudes of actions that society must take as a whole if Earth is to remain habitable.

The threats posed by global climate and ecosystem collapse are leading more than ever to the need to end our current state of perma-war and descent into authoritarianism. We must stop glorifying war murders and their perpetrators, and demobilize globally in order to address the far greater threat of abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse

Stopping the violence waged upon natural systems will require urgent measures to reduce human fertility. We have our incentives all wrong in terms of family size. There must be real advantages granted to individuals that have one child, and real incremental costs imposed for each additional birth, in order that families internalize the burden their growth places upon our shared habitat. Educating all children equally and free contraception are essential as well.

Greater fairness in wealth distribution (not equality, some who work hard and are smart will have more, but much reduced extremes) including a universal basic income to ensure all basic human needs are met is a must. The festering wound of abject poverty for billions as several individuals control half of Earth’s wealth will never allow for global ecological sustainability.

We will require substantial resources to control the run-away growth machine consuming natural being. The magnitude of financing required can only come from making peace and dismantling the war industry, and by greater equity in the sharing of Earth’s bounty. Massive diplomacy through re-invigorated international institutions is required to find and make the necessary compromises required to demobilize the war machine and to divert costs of war-making into nature, people, and community making.

Only through ending war and greater sharing can Earth’s salvation become reality.

With the proceeds from the ill-gotten Congressional-Military-Industrial complex, a massive sustained program of green peace can be waged. Massive employment programs to rebuild natural ecosystems and transition our agriculture to a sustainable basis can be launched. Science, art, and education that nurture our soil, wetlands, oceans, waters, forests, and air can be given the human and other resources they demand.

Abrupt climate change looms. Our shared atmosphere has been so polluted that burning will have to stop. All burning. Now. This will require substantial reduction in energy demand through efficiency, sharing, and living more simply. Failure to do so will destroy the biosphere and end being. Each of us are called upon to dramatically reduce our use of automobiles and airplanes, to grow and eat higher quality and more ethical food, and to live in smaller homes. And in so doing our personal ecological balance sheet will be much improved.

Commit Yourself to Ecological Truth

Workable solutions to climate change and broad-based environmental decline exist – including ending fossil fuels, protecting and restoring ecosystem, making love not war, reducing population and inequity, and establishing a steady state economy – but it is not going to be easy. There are no easy answers to avoid global ecosystem collapse. Yet the longer we wait, the more limited our options, and the increased possibility that it is too late and our end days are full of tremendous horrors of our own making.

Collectively taking the actions required to sustain the biosphere will require free thinking and commitment to the truth. Numerous societal forces such as organized religion, intersectionality, nationalism, and economic class enslave humanity and murder people, species and Earth for elite profit, absent gods, prejudice, and nanny nations. Resisting god pollution and other societal myths is a requirement for re-embracing all that is natural, decent, and good.

We need to quickly change our ways personally and societally to embrace an ecology ethic, which includes a nature based spiritually. We are all one human family, entirely dependent upon ecosystems, kindred species, and each other for life and well–being. The establishment of ritual to encapsulate spirituality found in the natural world is the natural and truthful way to experience and serve the divine.

Gaia – the Earth System – is god–like and the giver of all life, the mother’s womb from which all life flows, a loving but firm nurturer, that provides as long as her rules – and duties of her children – are recognized and respected. Gaia is spirituality that matters, because it is based upon truthful observation, not ancient and irrelevant god myths. Worshiping Earth and her life speaks to the challenges of ecocide, collapsing ecosystems, justice and equity, and truthfully sustaining global ecology, her peoples, and all life.

Truth, love, life, nature, and ecology are the only bases of a meaningful, knowledge based ethics and spirituality that liberate rather than control, that create not destroy.

Abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse are a global ecological emergency that threatens all lives very survival, thus resistance to such ecocide is self–defense. If we are to be sustained, Earth’s family will one day soon rise up all at once and end war, poverty, injustice, and abuse of children, women and Earth; to embrace a future of green liberty.

It is time for the whole world to come together in Earth Revolution based upon a shared ecology ethic to achieve sustained ecosystems, global human rights, lasting peace, and economic fairness. This is the very definition of justice.

As long as together we pull breath there is hope we can sustain Earth, but realistically the state of ecosystems and the biosphere is grim and worsening. We act courageously and resolutely based upon the requisite ecologically ethical conduct and our combined knowledge or we face final global ecological collapse.

The meaning of life is sustained ecology, radical freedom, free–thinking, truth and justice, and loving all life like kin. Everyone, the whole human family, will be green and free. And enjoy decent lives as we and all species live forever in global ecological grace.

This article was first published on EcoInternet

“Last week new reports surfaced that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid an opposition research firm for the controversial and salacious document.”

In the following Fox News Report, Judge Jeanine Ferris Pirro does not mince her words.

She reveals in minute detail the fraud of leading Democrats including Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the “Kremlin dossier”.

She confirms the criminality behind the Russia-Gate affair: it is time to  “lock up” Hillary Clinton, says Judge Jeanine.

She also calls for the firing of  Special Counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller” 

This report points to an about-turn in the Russia-Gate affair –following revelations that the DNC and Hillary Clinton–  had paid a research firm to mount fake accusations directed against the Kremlin for having allegedly intervened in the November 2016 presidential elections. 

It should be noted that these revelations confirm the numerous reports of the independent media (including Global Research) regarding the Russia-Gate affair. 

Lest we forget, those who revealed the mainstream media lies and fabrications pertaining to the alleged involvement of Russia’s government in the US election process, were casually tagged as agents of the Kremlin, spreading “fake news”.

That line of argument has now been fully discredited. It was the mainstream media –with some exceptions– which was involved in spreading fake news with a view to supporting and providing legitimacy to the Russia-Gate narrative, used by the “Deep State” (including competing political factions within the US government and the corporate media) to justify economic sanctions directed against Moscow not to mention outright US-NATO’s military threats against the Russian Federation.  

What next? 

Michel Chossudovsky GR Editor, January 31, 2018

***

Fox New TV Report

The tentative first beginnings of a long-awaited US-backed color revolution has begun in Thailand, with a small protest of under 100 protesters in the downtown district of Thailand’s capital Bangkok.

Despite the diminutive nature of the protest, the Western media and Western-funded organizations posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) transformed the event into headline news.

The protest leaders vowed to gather weekly until their demands were met. This is a thinly veiled threat, with the protests taking place precisely where previous protests organized by the same interests carried out gun battles with government troops, mass murder against counter-protesters, and committed widespread and devastating arson in the surrounding areas.

The protesters seek to overthrow Thailand’s independent institutions including its military and constitutional monarchy, and return US proxies to power, particularly billionaire and former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra and his Pheu Thai Party (PTP). Thaksin Shinawatra is a convicted criminal who fled Thailand to evade a two year jail sentence and a myriad of court cases still pending trial.

In essence, US-backed protesters seek to return a fugitive to power by proxy, a similar scenario to 2011 when Thaksin Shinawatra’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, openly ran as his proxy in elections his political party won. The 2011 campaign slogan, “Thaksin Thinks, Pheu Thai Does” openly flaunted the extralegal nature of PTP’s bid for office. After assuming power, senior PTP members would regularly leave Thailand to consort with Thaksin Shinawatra in person, further highlighting the fact a convicted criminal and fugitive was running Thailand’s government rather than his nepotist appointed sister – a fact either omitted by Western media reports, or excused.

By 2014, after over half a year of protests and the collapse of PTP’s rice subsidies it used in 2011 to lure voters, the military once again staged a coup and ousted Yingluck Shinawatra from office. Since the coup – Yingluck Shinawatra, like her brother – has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to 5 years in prison. She too has fled Thailand and joins her brother in exile as a fugitive.

Despite a political party run by convicted criminals and fugitives, Western diplomats and a collection of faux-activists they fund and organize in Bangkok demand expedient elections in which Thaksin Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party will still run in and will likely win. Elections have been repeatedly delayed precisely to prevent this scenario from happening, with each delay designed to give the government more time to diminish the power, wealth, and influence Shinawatra and his foreign backers still wield to grant themselves impunity from the rule of law.

While a party openly run by a fugitive contesting elections in the United States or Europe from abroad would be unthinkable, this is precisely the proposition US and European diplomats demand of Thailand to accept.

Who are the Protesters? 

The Western media has intentionally covered up the true nature of Thailand’s protesters, just as they have done throughout other US-organized regime change campaigns around the world from the so-called “Arab Spring” in which “pro-democracy activists” turned out to be members of extremist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood and even Al Qaeda, and in Ukraine where “Euromaiden” mobs were led by literal Neo-Nazi fronts, particularly Svoboda.

Admitting who Thailand’s supposedly “pro-democracy activists” are would immediately dash the nascent protest’s legitimacy against the rocks of international public opinion, which is precisely why the Western media is intentionally mischaracterizing the protests.

In 2014, the day after the military officially removed Yingluck Shinawatra from power, the US Embassy in Bangkok helped organize the creation of the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) front. Funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – appearing on NED’s Thailand 2014 list – the front is one of several components of Washington’s regime change machinery in Thailand.

TLHR itself specializes in advocating and defending other US-funded agitators seeking regime change. TLHR members themselves have been repeatedly arrested for serial acts of subversion. In answering the question of who defends those charged by the West to defend its agitators, the answer is foreign embassy staff themselves from the US, Canada, UK, and EU.

TLHR head Sirikan “June” Charoensiri has repeatedly posed in pictures with foreign embassy staff on her way to face questioning regarding her foreign-funded activity. In many instances, foreign embassy staff will actually accompany her – and other recipients of foreign funds – to police stations in a sign of open support for their ongoing sedition.

In one picture – which included Western diplomats from multiple nations – posted by UK embassy staffer Dan Fieller, the following caption would read:

Supporting [ Sirikan Charoensiri] from [TLHR] in Thailand as she faces criminal charges for doing her job as a [human rights] lawyer.

Fieller and others, including Charoensiri herself, have refused to respond to multiple questions concerning the conflict of interest of posing as human rights lawyers while receiving foreign funding and representing foreign interests unrelated, even opposed to real human rights advocacy. This is particularly so when considering those these “human rights lawyers” are defending and the fact that they are supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, his political party, and his street front, the so-called “red shirts” who have regularly resorted to intimidation, violence, mass murder, and systematic terrorism which included the bombing of a hospital just last year.

In addition to individual diplomats working at Western embassies in Bangkok, the UK Foreign Office itself has openly and repeatedly provided support for Charoensiri and others across its official social media accounts.

Like in Syria and Libya where crackdowns on overt terrorism were condemned by Western governments, Western media, and Western funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the West is hiding a violent movement and its supporters behind the thin veil of “democracy” and “human rights” advocacy.

Also funded by the US government via NED are media fronts like Prachatai, the Cross-Cultural Foundation (CrCF), and the Isaan Record. All three have repeatedly covered up their foreign funding, refusing to disclose it to their readers, at other times denying it, while still at other times attempting to dismiss any sort of conflict of interest regarding receiving foreign funds and representing foreign interests through their so-called “journalism.”

Despite denials and deflections regarding US funding, all three platforms are openly listed as NED recipients on NED’s Thailand 2011 and Thailand 2017 lists. In addition to Prachatai’s extensive NED funding, its “executive director” Chiranuch Premchaiporn is also officially an NED fellow.

And while the actual protest leaders themselves – including Sirawith Seritiwat and Jatupat “Pai Dao Din” Boonpattararaksa of the “New Democracy Movement” and Rangsiman Rome of the “Democracy Restoration Group” – have not disclosed financial support provided to them by foreign governments, they openly consort with, receive political support from, and eagerly represent the interests of foreign governments – particularly the US, Canada, the UK, and the EU.

Like June of TLHR – these protest leaders regularly pose for photographs with foreign diplomats, and regularly receive direct support from them when facing legal charges.

Sirawith Seritiwat, alongside fellow foreign-backed agitators Arnon Nampa, Than Rittiphan, Songtham Kaewpanpreuk, posed with Sandra De Waele, an EU diplomat. The official “European Union in Thailand” Facebook account published the following caption under the photo:

The head of the Political Section of the Delegation, Sandra De Waele, met with a group of students and activists, namely Songtham Kaewpanpreuk, Sirawith Seritiwat, Arnon Nampa and Than Rittiphan. Arnon and Sirawith were briefly detained on 14 February for peacefully expressing their political opinion. The European Union is strongly committed to the principle of freedom of expression and has consistently called upon the Thai authorities to respect that freedom.

The EU delegation regularly and very openly supports and collaborates with pro-Shinawatra supporters posing as “activists.” When Shinawatra’s supporters attacked anti-Shinawatra protesters in 2014 with assault rifles, hand grenades, and 40mm M-79 grenade launchers, Western diplomats were either entirely silent, or worse, attempted to defend the violence as mere expressions of “frustration.”

Jatupat Boonpattararaksa, now in prison for his role in spreading Western propaganda, regularly receives backing from foreign embassies in Bangkok demanding his release. Canadian diplomat Shawn Friele would meet and pose for pictures with Jutupat Boonpattararaksa’s parents he then posted across social media. The caption for the photo read:

Honoured to meet with parents of Pai Dao Din. Pai’s 200 plus days in detention shows challenges to rule of law and due process in Thailand. 

Rangsiman Rome, in addition to allegedly seeking “democracy,” in no coincidence attempted to pressure the current Thai government regarding rail project deals being struck with Beijing that the United States also wants delayed or entirely disrupted.

Before creating this latest collection of proxies, Western embassies including representatives from the US, openly provided support to Thaksin Shinawatra’s previous street front, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) better known as “red shirts.” The UDD has suffered a crisis of legitimacy after committing serial acts of mass murder and terrorism. Despite having “redressed” the UDD for this latest push for regime change, many protesters can still be seen wearing their red shirts to events.

While the thin pretext this collection of faux-activists and NGOs is “democracy” and “human rights,” it is clear that they serve as an extension of Western influence in Thailand. While they demand “elections,” it is clear that they merely demand elections they are confident will return Western political proxies like Shinawatra and his PTP to power. And in addition to demanding regime change, these proxies are also openly assisting the US in attempts to disrupt growing ties between Bangkok and Beijing, serving Washington’s interests, not Thailand’s.

Why Thailand? 

US designs aimed at Thailand are part of a much larger strategy of encircling and containing China either with US-controlled proxy states, or a ring of destabilized nations incapable of providing China constructive economic, military, and political ties.

The “activism” of supposedly “pro-democracy” groups funded and/or backed by Western governments in Thailand are already openly questioning, condemning, and actively seeking to disrupt these ties.

Thailand is a pivotal Southeast Asian state with a large population and a strong economy that has been incrementally building ties with Beijing at the expense of US regional hegemony.

Once considered a stalwart ally of the United States, since removing Thaksin Shinawatra from power in a 2006 military coup, the Thai establishment has begun a sweeping shift in foreign policy, replacing its aging arsenal of US military hardware with Chinese, Russian, and European equipment, including hundreds of Chinese tanks and armored personnel carries and even Chinese naval vessels including the nation’s first acquisition of submarines.

Bangkok has inked deals with China regarding metro rail systems as well as national rail networks including high speed rail systems that will connect not only Thai cities, but connect Thailand to its neighbors to the north and south, and to China’s Yunnan province.

Thailand has also begun conducting joint military exercises with China, balancing what had been for years Washington’s exclusive domain represented by its annual Cobra Gold exercises.

Under Thaksin Shinawatra between 2001-2006, Thailand pursued a decidedly pro-US foreign policy, which included sending Thai troops to participate in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the hosting of the US CIA’s rendition program, attempts at sealing a US-Thai free trade agreement without public or parliamentary support, and the selling off of Thailand’s nationalized natural resources to Western oil corporations.

It is clear that the United States would like to return to such an arrangement. After providing over a decade of support via Washington’s largest lobbying firms, allowing Shinawatra free travel across the US and Europe despite his criminal conviction and his status as not only a fugitive, but as a human rights violator, and the mobilization of the Western media in support of Shinawatra’s multiple bids to seize back power – it is clear that should Shinawatra or his proxies ever return to power, they have an immense debt to Wall Street, Washington, London, and Brussels to pay back.

Part of repaying the West – including for the current color revolution the US is attempting to organize in Bangkok – will be reversing growing ties with Beijing.

Future Scenarios 

It is unclear precisely how the current government will handle these protests. The government allowed the protests to go forward with the only stipulation being to avoid violence and disrupting the public.

One scenario is that elections are likely to be postponed until next year, and possibly even later than that.

The longer these protests continue, the more difficult it will be for the Western press, Western embassies, and their collection of faux-NGOs to cover up the nature of who is leading them and why. Over this period of time, the government and media can begin exposing and undermining the credibility of claims these protests are “pro-democracy” and not merely foreign funded mobs seeking to place a party run by Shinawatra – a fugitive hiding abroad – back into power.

It will also be difficult to sustain the protests without expending larger amounts of money and resources and thus exposing those financing them. While the alleged protest leaders pose as “students” and “independent activists,” it will become abundantly clear that large well-financed interests are really organizing and sponsoring them.

Ultimately, the protests can be perpetually ignored by the current government, unless protesters decide to disrupt local businesses, the public, and/or once again resort to violence as the UDD has done repeatedly throughout its existence. However, as in the past, the use of violence by supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra will simply deepen the crisis of legitimacy the opposition already suffers from and perhaps even provoke a much larger, publicly supported backlash against the protesters as was seen in 2013-2014.

In this scenario, the government may simply give the protest the time necessary to destroy itself while continuing to fulfill its pledge to delay elections as long as necessary to carry out reforms – in other words – make it impossible for Pheu Thai to win elections as long as Shinawatra – a fugitive hiding abroad – openly runs the party.

The second scenario is where elections are eventually held, and if Shinawatra’s proxies come back into power, Thailand’s institutions patiently wait for the government to once again misstep and provoke protests, and once again invite the military to intervene. With each intervention – while there carries a variety of risks – the military has successfully cut down Shinawatra’s political power and influence while exposing the role of Western interests meddling in Thailand’s internal political affairs.

In the case of either scenario, one factor remains constant – the rise of China and with it the rest of Asia. Each passing year marks a decline in US regional primacy and a more equitable balance of regional power driven by Asia’s interests, not Washington’s.

In either scenario, as long as Thailand’s independent institutions avoid a major misstep and patiently and carefully deal with Western-backed subversion, the shifting dynamics of geopolitical power in the region will eventually make Western-sponsored regime change altogether impossible.

However, with the prospect of regime change taken off the table as an effective tool of coercion used by the US, Thailand is likely to suffer greater incidents of terrorism, as seen in 2015 during the Erawan Shrine bombing carried out by Uyghur terrorists linked to NATO’s “Grey Wolves” militant organization. Western-funded faux-NGOs are already increasingly shifting their attention toward Thailand’s ongoing turmoil in its deep south, attempting to leverage the isolated conflict into a national crisis used to divide and destroy the nation just as Western interests are doing in neighboring Myanmar.

US color revolutions depend on widespread public ignorance, lightning fast chaos, and inexperienced governments unable to cope with the instability and eventually violence the US uses to pursue regime change. Thailand’s government has had plenty of time to contemplate its strategy with examples around the world of how to successfully defeat US-backed subversion, and how not to. Only time will tell how much Thailand has not just learned, but mastered in repelling this type of geopolitical attack.

*

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

All images in this article are from the author.

The Saudi-led coalition unleashed a barrage of air strikes on Yemen, slaughtering as many as 71 civilians (many of them children) within a period of 48 hours, reported the Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera on Christmas Eve. This massacre attained little attention and dissolved into history, forgotten. On the next day, December 26, the coalition targeted more sites, killing at least 68 men, women and children.

Those who are not annihilated by bombs risk dying from starvation. The Yemeni people are under blockade, enforced intentionally, with an aim to starve them into submission.

By definition a vicious war crime, it is not a newsworthy subject across the Western media sphere. Silence is particularly well kept at the U.S. news network MSNBC, found a study conducted by an investigative team of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). The leading liberal channel did not air a “single segment devoted specifically to Yemen in the second half of 2017.”

Unfortunately, there is a reason for this. Serving increasingly as a mere agent of power, the media implies silence when it protects and justifies the interests of our mighty “masters of mankind”, to borrow the words of Adam Smith. Therefore, the crimes committed by the forces we label as our ‘adversaries’, are there to be amplified and condemned. Atrocities committed by us and our allies are there to be overlooked, ignored. Consequently, this conventional practice divides victims into worthy and unworthy. If this phenomenon was to be rated, then Yemenis would perhaps represent the most unworthy victims.

The country falls into this model perfectly. To begin with, the bombs that destroy its infrastructure and kill its men, women and children are manufactured by the military-industrial corporations, which are headquartered in countries such as Great Britain and the United States. Furthermore, they are dropped on Yemen’s targets under intelligence support of the mentioned powers, by their regional allies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. These are the crimes of our empire and its client states, and therefore they would be forgiven and erased from the contemporary record.

However, after breaking conventional lies employed to justify the war, and after recovering the sources of what Vandana Shiva calls the “subjugated knowledge”, one will discover an inconceivable crime; perhaps the worst atrocity in decades being committed, precisely to propel the agenda of the most cynical forces controlling power.

It is past time to break the silence.

Our Ally in the Middle East

While the Saudi coalition has been bombing Yemen since 2015, not a word was uttered about its actions when American president Donald Trump visited Riyadh in May. It is forbidden to talk about human lives when a business that destroys them is booming. The Trump administration arrived in Riyadh to continue the legacy of its predecessors by signing a massive $109.7 billion arms contract with Washington’s corrupt and autocratic client state, promising high yields to the shareholders of America’s vast defense industry. Celebrating this contract, the business press published a piece with a headline stating: “Defense stocks at record highs on Trump-Saudi deal.”

It doesn’t matter that Saudi Arabia is a brutal theocratic and autocratic state, the single biggest sponsor of terrorism and a force waging an aggressive policy towards its neighbors in the Middle East.

In fact, Washington is well informed about it. An email released by WikiLeaks from the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, reveals it very instructively. While elaborating on the U.S’s fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, Clinton points out that “we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” A nearly identical conclusion was drawn in a cable dating back to 2009. It assesses that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” Though we leave this note for now, the subject of terrorism will appear again.

Material support Saudi Arabia receives from Washington also signals a green light to its conduct in Yemen. It is worth stressing that the American empire plays an important role within the Saudi-led coalition. Adel al-Jubeir, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia, spoke openly about the partnership with the co-anchor of CBS, Norah O’Donnell. Replying to her softly-pressed concern about the coalition’s use of indiscriminate bombing, he replied:

“We are very careful in picking targets, we have very precise weapons, we work with our allies, including the United States on these targets.”

Supporting its client state in his political goals, the United States helps the coalition to identify “targets” in Yemen. This is an important point. Since Washington is so deeply involved in the war, it too bears responsibility for war crimes. Investigating further, we will discover the extent to which the interests of these two powers bond in Yemen, both before and during the current war.

The myth about Iranian Proxies

The reason that Saudi Arabia, along with its coalition partners, is waging war in Yemen has been repeated ever since the conflict started. Riyadh is fighting Houthis, a former guerrilla movement from the country’s Shia-populated Northern Province of Sa’ada. The Saudi intervention came months after Houthi rebels advanced from their Northern stronghold into the Central and Southern Provinces of Yemen, captured major cities, including the capital Sana’a. Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, at that time Yemen’s serving President, fled the capital in 2014 to the Southern port city of Aden, where he stayed until fleeing to Saudi Arabia. The coalition started bombing Yemen immediately after his exile in March 2015.

Straightaway, the goal of the bombing was stated clearly: Riyadh sought to restore the government apparatus of President Hadi in Sana’a and crush the Houthi uprising. Justifying its actions, the Saudi coalition blamed Iran for supporting the rebel movement and thus destabilizing the entire region. Therefore, the coalition intervened in Yemen to stop the spread of Iranian influence on the Arabian Peninsula. Obediently, the Western news media amplified this message. A proxy war scenario was born. On 26 March 2015, the Guardian summarized events in Yemen in the following fashion: “The conflict, spreading outwards like a poison cloud from the key southern battleground around Aden, pits Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni Muslim power, plus what remains of Yemen’s government against northern-based Houthi rebels, who are covertly backed by Shia Muslim Iran.” Thus “the primary Saudi aim is to pacify Yemen, but its wider objective is to send a powerful message to Iran: stop meddling in Arab affairs.”

This narrative is still relevant today. Under a premise that Houthis are no more than proxies of Iran, it is possible to draw a conclusion that Riyadh responds reciprocally to Iran’s actions. Of course, such a narrative is grossly oversimplified, though it is repeated routinely in the corporate papers, and thus it has become a conventional wisdom. Before breaking down this myth, it is worth stressing that even if the conflict is portrayed as a regional fight between the two rivals – Riyadh and Tehran – the United States has numerously demonstrated its unilateral position on the issue.  Speaking at the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, President Trump made it clear that

“Iran funds, arms, and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction” across Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

In this context, Iran’s destabilizing “extremist groups” in Yemen are the Houthis. Such a statement will not be a surprise for those who listened to the earlier remarks of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, who described Iran as “the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.” As we already know, this is a lie.

The nucleus of the argument that Iran is fighting a proxy war in Yemen stresses that Houthis receive their weapons from Tehran. Indeed, in order to see how much support Iran provides to Houthis, it is worth examining the U.S. diplomatic cables. Classified by the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Stephen Seche, a cable from 9 December 2009 (when the rebels operated in Sa’ada Province) examines:

Contrary to ROYG claims that Iran is arming the Houthis, most local political analysts report that the Houthis obtain their weapons from the Yemeni black market and even from the ROYG military itself. According to a British diplomat, there are numerous credible reports that ROYG military commanders were selling weapons to the Houthis in the run-up to the Sixth War. An ICG report on the Sa’ada conflict from May 2009 quoted NSB director Ali Mohammed al-Ansi saying, “Iranians are not arming the Houthis. The weapons they use are Yemeni. Most actually come from fighters who fought against the socialists during the 1994 war and then sold them.” Mohammed Azzan, presidential advisor for Sa’ada affairs, told PolOff on August 16 that the Houthis easily obtain weapons inside Yemen, either from battlefield captures or by buying them from corrupt military commanders and soldiers. Azzan said that the military “covers up its failure” by saying the weapons come from Iran. According to Jamal Abdullah al-Shami of the Democracy School, there is little external oversight of the military’s large and increasing budget, so it is easy for members of the military to illegally sell weapons.

The cable also points out that Houthis are a “decentralized guerrilla army”, retaining support from Sa’ada residents “because of ROYG [Republic of Yemen Government] injustices, abuses by local sheikhs, and the brutality of the war.” Although the Houthi military wing can be classified as religiously motivated, its leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, is described as a “political-military leader rather than a religious one.”

Grievances of Sa’ada residents towards Sana’a are legitimate. Since the Houthi uprising started in 2004, the Yemeni government under President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been waging a violent campaign against the group. Back then, Saudi Arabia also sought to “pacify Yemen”, and supported Sana’a in its campaign by bombing the Northern Province. From what U.S. diplomatic cables reveal, Riyadh’s previous conduct in Yemen against Houthis is strikingly similar to the strategy applied since 2015.

A cable dating from 30 December 2009 explains that “the Saudi military has employed a massively disproportionate force in its effort to repel and clear the lightly armed Houthi guerillas from the border area.” Of course, the “disproportionate force” cannot be employed without assistance from Washington.

During the campaign, the Saudi military turned to the U.S. for emergency provision of munitions, imagery and intelligence to assist them to operate with greater precision. The U.S. military responded with alacrity to the extent possible, primarily by flying in stocks of ammunition for small weapons and artillery.

This conflict received practically no media coverage in the West, though it affected at least 150,000 civilians. The precise number of people killed in six wars between 2004 and 2010 is unknown.

As it was pointed out earlier, there is no direct arms link between Iran and the Houthis. Consequently, it did not matter to the Saudis, and therefore their intention to crush the rebels can be attributed to a different cause.

The Saudi Colony

What should be analyzed then is the sudden rise of the Houthi movement in 2014. Did something change between December 2009 and September 2014, when the rebels captured Sana’a? Is Iran the sponsor of their victories?

The answer perhaps lies in the political shifts the country experienced during the Arab Spring, and in the relationship of its establishment elite with the regional powers. One of the central figures of our assessment is, therefore, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the long-serving President who united the territories of North and South into one country that is Yemen in the 1990s. Holding power for over 3 decades, he was forced to resign amidst protests in 2011. Two years after handing the post to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, Saleh formed an alliance with the Houthis. Hence the start of the war; the armed forces loyal to the former President aided the rebels to fight against the ground militants of the Saudi-led coalition and exiled President Hadi.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Yemeni President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi address reporters before their bilateral meeting at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 2013. (State Department photo)

One would be correct, however, to label the alliance fragile. Looking into to the past record of Saleh, one perhaps should read a classified cable from 16 November 2009.  While assessing the Saudi military involvement in Northern Yemen, it presses that “President Saleh has long been encouraging Saudi Arabia to join the fight” against Houthis. Therefore, “In the short-term at least, it seems like President Saleh has gained the most from the Saudis’ entry into the conflict. His glee when the Saudis launched their airstrikes indicates he finally received what he has been pushing for— political, financial, and direct military support for the war from Yemen’s powerful neighbor and principal benefactor.” It is vital to keep in mind that the two sides – Saleh and Houthis –would in future be united against the Saudi coalition.

A secret cable from June 18, 2008, nonetheless indicates that in the overall process, Saleh and the Yemeni political establishment could perhaps be the “second class” beneficiaries. This particular cable is long and extremely informative. In it, Sana’a’s relationship with Riyadh is described as following:

Yemenis perceive the relationship as heavily balanced in favor of Saudi Arabia, which remains involved in Yemen, to the extent necessary, to counter the potential threat of Yemen’s unemployed masses, poor security, unrest, crime and the intentions of foreign countries (Libya and Iran) that might create a threat on Saudi Arabia’s southern border.

Striking deals with the country’s corrupt elite and providing “substantial development assistance”, Riyadh is indeed countering “the potential threat of Yemen’s unemployed masses.” In this context, the Houthis perhaps represent the biggest threat, as they attract support from people who are tired “of ROYG injustices” and “abuses by local sheikhs.”

Assessing the tribal factor that plays a significant role both in shaping the internal politics and external relationship between Yemen and its Northern neighbor, the cable outlines: “Yemen’s proximity to Saudi Arabia and their history means that many tribes in Yemen share ancestry with Saudi Arabia.” At the same time, it points out:

Yemenis are aware that other Arab nationalities, including Saudis, see them as backward uncivilized people. In ref B, Yemeni Colonel Handhal, commander of al-Badieh military airfield near the Saudi border, said that Saudis treat Yemenis as second class citizens. This second class designation may extend to the official level as well.

Pipeline Project

It is therefore logical that Riyadh is pursuing to use Yemen for its self-benefiting projects.

A British diplomat based in Yemen told PolOff that Saudi Arabia had an interest to build a pipeline, wholly owned, operated and protected by Saudi Arabia, through Hadramaut to a port on the Gulf of Aden, thereby bypassing the Arabian Gulf/Persian Gulf and the straits of Hormuz. Saleh has always opposed this. The diplomat contended that Saudi Arabia, through supporting Yemeni military leadership, paying for the loyalty of shaykhs and other means, was positioning itself to ensure it would, for the right price, obtain the rights for this pipeline from Saleh’s successor.

The construction of a pipeline which will connect the Eastern oil fields of Saudi Arabia with the Gulf of Aden is a strategic goal. If implemented, the Hadramaut project will have a geopolitical significance. “Bypassing the Arabian Gulf/Persian Gulf and the straits of Hormuz”, the pipeline could potentially reshape the map of oil shipment routes in the Middle East. The problem with an established order was indicated by Anthony H. Cordesman, the Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major foreign policy think tank based in Washington D.C. His article published on 26 March 2015, a day after Riyadh and its allies began bombing Yemen, indicates the current significance of the Strait of Hormuz as “the world’s most important oil chokepoint because of its daily oil flow of 17 million barrels per day in 2013. Flows through the Strait of Hormuz in 2013 were about 30% of all seaborne-traded oil.” Therefore, the problem lies in the lack of “functioning pipelines that provide alternative export routes.” While the issue of dependence of global oil exports on the Strait of Hormuz was not conveyed explicitly, it can logically be nothing other than Iran. A close proximity of the world’s most important oil route to the adversary of the American empire seems to cause a headache to Washington strategists. Thus the construction of the Saudi pipeline through Yemen represents an explicit step in the right direction.

As it maintains a cold war relationship with Tehran, the Saudi Kingdom foresees its dependence on the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic weakness, too. Redirecting the oil exports to the Gulf of Aden and hence to the Red Sea would be a win/win venture for both Riyadh and Washington; the Red Sea route is a vital oil shipping lane to Western countries, protected by the empire’s client states such as Djibouti, a country that is also a military base of East Africa, hosting as many as 5000 troops from Europe and the United States.

Returning to the cable, it was vividly stated there that President Saleh “has always been opposed” to the Hadramaut pipeline. His opposition was, of course, unacceptable to Riyadh, the same as any opposition that comes from the “backward” and “uncivilized” Yemen.  The bet was that “Saleh’s successor” and his establishment would implement this project for “the right price.” Thus, a campaign to remove Saleh from power was enabled. Though the Yemeni leader would step down in 2011, WikiLeaks reveals that the plan of action for his removal was crafted as far back as 2009. A classified cable from 31 August 2009 portrays an influential figure within the right-wing Salafist (an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam) Al-Islah party, Hamid al-Ahmar, threatening to organize mass demonstrations to oust Saleh.

Hamid al-Ahmar, Islah Party leader, prominent businessman, Member of Parliament, and de facto head of the Hashid tribal confederation, told EconOff on August 27 that he had given President Saleh until the end of 2009 to “guarantee” the fairness of the 2011 elections, form a unity government with the Southern Movement, and remove his relatives from military leadership positions. Absent this fundamental shift in Saleh’s governance of the country, Ahmar will begin organizing anti-regime demonstrations in “every single governorate,” modeled after the 1998 protests that helped topple Indonesian President Suharto.

“We cannot copy the Indonesians exactly, but the idea is controlled chaos.”

Mr. Ahmar nonetheless debunks his ultimatum and clarifies:

“There’s really no way to verify that Saleh is serious about free and fair elections, but I won’t wait until the 2011 elections to move forward.”

Implementing the “controlled chaos” to oust the long-serving President, whose family commands the country’s military apparatus, is rather a difficult task requiring external assistance.

Removing Saleh from power in a scenario that does not involve throwing the country into complete chaos will be impossible without the support of the (currently skeptical) Saudi leadership and elements of the Yemeni military, particularly MG Ali Muhsin, according to Ahmar.

“The Saudis will take a calculated risk if they can be convinced that we can make Saleh leave the scene peacefully.”

Saleh’s successor, Ahmar noted, should be close to Riyadh and come from the South.

Denying any personal ambition to lead the country, Ahmar said that Yemen needs a president from one of the southern governorates and that the Saudis would eventually come around to the idea.

“If the Saudis were going to put anyone in power instead of Saleh, it would be me — everyone knows I am close to them — but I told them the next president must be a southerner, for the sake of unity.”

United Decentralized Yemen

Large demonstrations against Saleh started on 27 January 2011, amidst the winds of the Arab Spring challenging dictators in Egypt and Tunisia. Marginalized by the country’s “sheikhs” and political establishment, Yemenis too wanted change to the status quo. Their demands, however, were exploited from the beginning. It is worth remembering that the uprising was to be “controlled.”

Organizing protests was the opposition comprised of different factions – all challenging the General People’s Congress, a party of President Saleh. Their symbiosis with the marchers, however, is quite interesting to look at. An article about the student protests in Sana’a, published on 13 February 2011 by the New York Times, points out the difference between the spontaneous popular demonstrations and organized marches.

Unlike the earlier protests in Yemen, which were highly organized and marked by color-coordinated clothing and signs, the spontaneity of the younger demonstrators appeared to have more in common with popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, where opposition groups watched from the sidelines as leaderless revolts grew into revolutions.

Hamid al-Ahmar is featured in the article. He articulates the conflict of interest between the protesters and their opposition organizers. A popular uprising against the establishment was indeed not on the agenda.

Sheik Hamid al-Ahmar, an opposition leader, said in an interview on Sunday that political leaders had tried to prevent the younger demonstrators from taking to the streets to demand immediate changes to the autocratic rule of Mr. Saleh. But, he said, “It’s not that they aren’t cooperating with the new protests,” only that opposition leaders would like to move more slowly.

Predictably, the government security forces responded viciously to the protests. Hundreds of people died in clashes. As planned, the Gulf countries got involved in the crisis. They crafted an agreement to ensure Saleh’s ‘peaceful’ resignation, which the Yemeni leader signed on November 23. The New York Times reported on the deal:

According to a Gulf-brokered agreement, which Mr. Saleh signed on Nov. 23, he and his family must give up their powers in exchange for immunity and allow for a peaceful, democratic transition from his 33-year rule. The military, which was divided during the protests and brought the country to the brink of civil war last summer, must also be restructured and integrated.

Another article, published on the same day as Saleh resigned, amplified the concern of protesters that the agreement “would preserve the status quo by keeping the country’s elite” in power.

Their concerns were nonetheless irrelevant. All parties representing power worked “to counter the potential threat of Yemen’s unemployed” and “uncivilized” masses. As diplomatic cables reveal, American empire supported Saleh as its close ally prior to the events in 2011. Simultaneously, it sought to use “Saudi Arabia to address development in Yemen.” Therefore, Washington supported the deal which ousted Saleh and attained similar alliance with his successor. Coming from the South and thus ensuring Yemen’s unity, while also playing to the interest of Riyadh, Mr. Hadi consolidated the objectives expressed in 2009 by Mr. Ahmar.

Moving forward, President Hadi enabled procedures to establish a suitable environment for the implementation of Saudi goals. On March 18, 2013, the National Dialogue Conference was kick-started in Sana’a— backed by the United Nations and hosted at the luxurious Movenpick Hotel. To the Western audience, the conference was portrayed as a reconciliation effort, aimed at resolving the existing differences between the Yemeni factions (political parties and secessionist movements). The real agenda was hidden behind closed doors. Observing the conference, an article published on the news blog of the Atlantic Council points out that a weakness of the National Dialogue is a lack of “communication with the Yemeni public.” The hotel where the conference was hosted has been “reportedly packed with foreign governance experts and consultants who are being handsomely compensated, but little is known regarding the affiliation of these experts, what technical assistance they are offering Yemenis, or whether their role is beneficial and effective.”

In a revealing analysis published in 2015 on her personal blog, which she later deleted, the Senior Advisor for Security/Rule of Law/Human Rights at the Netherlands Embassy in Yemen, Joke Buringa, summarizes the processes in the country as follows.

When the situation really became untenable the Gulf States, under the watchful eyes of the US and the EU, convinced Saleh to step down in exchange for immunity. His Vice-President Hadi would take over the presidency until the planned presidential elections. De facto, the existing system was kept intact. The subsequent National Dialogue led to the decision to form a federal state with six countries. The governorates of Hadramaut, Shabwa and al Mahra were to come together in a new state called Hadramaut. When asked last year, the current Yemeni minister of Information Mrs. Nadia Sakkaf (residing in Riyadh) could not explain how that decision was reached: one day it had simply been made. The new state of Hadramaut counts 4 of the 26 million inhabitants of Yemen, 50% of the land area, 80% of the oil exports and – contrary to large other parts of Yemen – a sufficient water supply. In addition, a gold reserve worth 4 billion US dollars has recently been discovered.

Not only will this plan turn Yemen into a decentralized colony of Riyadh, but it will also spearhead implementation of the Hadramaut pipeline, which will be accepted “for the right price” by tribal leaders and corrupt sheikhs. Bypassing the populated and resources-scarce Eastern Provinces through the autonomous and sparsely populated Hadramaut would also provide enough means for the Saudis “to counter the potential threat” of the Yemeni people. In accordance with the plan, Yemen will nonetheless remain a united country, at least on the map. Separating the Northern Provinces from the South was clearly not on the agenda; perhaps because controlling two sovereign countries would be more difficult.

In the article, Buringa also observes “the governorate of Hadramaut is one of the few areas where the Saudi-led coalition did not conduct any airstrikes.” Thus “the port and the international airport of Al Mukalla are in optimal shape and under the control of Al Qa’eda. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has been delivering arms to Al Qa’eda, who is expanding its sphere of influence.” Controlling vast swaths of a territory of what has proven to be a vital Province for the Saudi interest, Al Qa’eda was tolerated; its grip on Al Mukalla, the fifth largest city in Yemen, was broken in 2016, retaken by the coalition-backed militias. The city was recaptured almost immediately, just a day after the offensive was launched.

While details about the pipeline project have remained unspoken in the media sphere, the fragmentation of Yemen into semi-autonomous regions has gained some attention. Shortly after the end of negotiations, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported on 10 February 2014 that Yemen will “become a federation of six regions” – “two in the south – Aden and Hadramaut – and four in the north – Saba, Janad, Azal and Tahama.” The new decentralized government structure will be “enshrined in a new constitution.” The existing differences between the North and South was a conventional explanation for the decision to implement a decentralized system of governance.

An outcome of the conference was praised internationally. The State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf, welcomed the National Dialogue conference as “evidence of the will of the Yemeni people to work together constructively for the future of their country.” Canadian Minister of Foreign Affair, John Baird, congratulated “the people of Yemen” for having “spoken for a more open society that respects freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Voices from within Yemen did not necessarily share the optimism. The Houthis rejected an outcome, stressing that “it divides Yemen into poor and wealthy” regions.

The political reality outside of the Movenpick Hotel was a power vacuum. It is safe to say that Hadi’s transitional government was highly unpopular among the people, representing a status quo they fought to topple. The security apparatus was also divided, with a large faction of the military remaining loyal to the former President. Consequently, not Iran but a failure of the fractured army to foster a coordinated effort against the Houthis, provided them the necessary power vacuum to expand. It seems that the subsequent alliance between Saleh and Houthis was merely political – an attempt from his side to retake control of Sana’a. This political shift nonetheless had a significant impact on the planned implementation of a framework from the National Dialogue. Combined together, the two factions have formed a force neutral to sectarian differences and strong enough to challenge Hadi’s government and its international backers.

This is unforgivable.

Starving the Rebellion

Nothing can morally justify the coalition intervention in Yemen – especially the naval blockade it imposed on the country of 28 million people, the poorest in the Arab world. Examining its conduct closely brings a shocking revelation. It is pure barbarism, to say the least.

The blockade was enforced just days after the coalition began its air campaign. Food security for millions of Yemenis was already dire prior to the conflict. With less than 3 percent of the land being used for agriculture, Yemen struggled to meet the demands of its growing population. Domestic cereal production, for instance, covers less than 20 percent of the total internal demand, while at a minimum, 90 percent of all wheat is imported from abroad(this was not the case just a few decades ago). Severely restricting the importation of essential goods –machinery equipment, medicines and food – the blockade has created an environment for a humanitarian catastrophe. One of Yemen’s vital ports located in the city of Al Hudaydah –a Houthi controlled port supplying imports to country’s largest cities, including the capital Sana’a – was severely impacted, often staying idle for weeks as ships are stuck in the waters, prevented by the coalition from docking. Indeed, a goal of the blockade is vicious though explicit: use starvation as a weapon against the Houthis and Yemeni civilians in disregard of international law.

Returning from his visit to the country in 2015, Peter Maurer, the head of the International Red Cross Committee, observes “Yemen after five months [of war] … looks like Syria after five years.” A report released on 10 June 2015 overlooking the food security situation confirms Maurer’s assessment. Using the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale that divides the population into five categories – generally food secure (phase 1) to famine (phase 5) – it estimated 6,071,831 people were experiencing humanitarian emergency (phase 4), just a step away from famine. The United Nations warned of a potential famine, and the media conglomerates have periodically amplified its message.

It is a fact that the situation has deteriorated dramatically since then. In the following summer of 2016, the population under humanitarian emergency surpassed 7 million. Most recent data on the situation was reiterated by the humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick. Stressing that

“the continuing blockade of ports is limiting supplies of fuel, food and medicines; dramatically increasing the number of vulnerable people who need help,” McGoldrick warned “8.4 million Yemenis” are “a step away from famine.”

Indeed, the coalition has been implementing its starvation tactic quite methodically. Air campaigns have targeted infrastructure that is essential for maintenance of life, for example; bridges, airports, food warehouses and agricultural production. In fact, the precision with which the coalition planes strike these targets is shocking. Martha Mundy, the emeritus professor at the London School of Economics and author of a report about the war on Yemen and its agricultural sector, commented for this piece:

“the evidence from the total pattern of bombing and the blockading of ports is that disruption of production, processing distribution of food forms a central part of the Coalition strategy.”

The report itself confirms this instructively. Using conservative data from the ministry of agriculture and irrigation in Sana’a, it concludes between March 2015 and August 2016 the coalition targeted 257 farms/animal farms, 30 sites related to water infrastructure and dozens of food storage facilities and markets. The Sa’ada Province suffered particular damage; small rural areas were bombed and agricultural life systematically disrupted. Vividly, the bombing was intending to inflict starvation, a vicious war crime.

Agricultural production hence declined amidst the fact that Yemen has enjoyed satisfactory rainfall. The total cereal harvest in 2017 was predicted to be half of the five-year average (that includes time before the war). Simultaneously, the distribution of imported food into the rebel-controlled territories is difficult. Dr. Mundy writes the blockade is “encouraging traders to move food either through southern ports or across land borders,” thus “forcing prices up massively” in the markets. “There is good evidence,” she points, “of processed food flowing in from Saudi Arabia overland, the issues being of course the destruction of food processing plants in Yemen by air strikes and the price that the imported goods then cost.”

In the Houthi-controlled coastal areas, the coalition enforces its blockade by restricting boats from sailing into the sea. Small fishing vessels have repeatedly come under attack, with crew members – sometimes the only family breadwinners – killed or severely wounded. Thus starvation prevails in the communities.

Evidently, civilians are bombed indiscriminately; in fact, 3158 coalition air strikes hit civilian targets between March 2015 and August 2016, concluded the Guardian after reviewing records from an independent data collection project known as The Yemen Data Project. At that time, the project recorded 8617 strikes across Yemen. The number has since increased dramatically, topping 15489 by mid-December 2017. How many of them hit agricultural production, infrastructure and civilian areas?

Exacerbating the impact of the mentioned “forms of aggression,” stresses Dr. Mundy, is the “economic war that takes the form of moving the central bank to Aden [controlled by pro-coalition forces] and then failing to pay government employees throughout all the areas under Houthi/GCP [General People’s Congress] control.”

Apart from contributing to rising prices, the economic war struck a devastating blow to the assets of public use. 72 percent of Yemeni teachers, for instances, have not received salaries for months, leaving over 4.3 million students without education, concludes the latest report on humanitarian needs

Making an empirical assessment on the human toll of the coalition war is virtually impossible. The official death toll only accounts for fatalities from the combat zones and air strikes. By this measurement, around 10,000 people have died since 2015. This estimate was first revealed to the media by the UN humanitarian coordinator to Yemen in August 2016 and remained practically static ever since. There is no doubt that thousands more have died from the blockade.

It has already caused the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history, with over one million people infected and 2237 deaths; of course, that is if one believes the official fatalities record. Hunger is also taking countless lives. A UNICEF report dating from 12 December 2016 voiced alarm about increasing child mortality with its estimate of one child dying every ten minutes from acute malnutrition and diseases (no longer treatable under the blockade). Considering that conditions on the ground have not improved, it is plausible that over 55,000 more Yemeni children have died between 12 December 2016 and 1 January 2018. Another plausible estimate can be made with the data from the mentioned above IPC reports. By definition, between one and two deaths are occurring within the population of 10,000 per day under phase 4 humanitarian emergency. Placing into the equation 8.4 million people who live in conditions of humanitarian emergency, and using the nominal mortality rate of its definition, would mean as many as 840 deaths are occurring daily across the country. Amidst the repeated warnings, famine has not yet been officially acknowledged, and perhaps it will not be until the situation becomes too critical to ignore.

“It is not clear who would declare the famine,” Dr. Mundy says. “The statements of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Officer in Yemen are as close to authoritative for the international agencies as one can get.  For obvious reasons the Houthis have little to gain by declaring that there is a famine.”

An instructive warning was once echoed in the article on Time:

“The last time famine was formally declared, in Somalia in 2011, most of the 260,000 victims had already died.”

It is, unfortunately, valid to say that an overall death toll from the Saudi-led coalition war and blockade now ranges within borders of hundreds of thousands.

Making Excuses for the Genocide

There was a remarkable spectacle in Washington D.C recently. Inside a warehouse at the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling military installation was Nikki Haley, the United State ambassador to the United Nations, speaking before a group of reporters. On the background were the remnants of what we should believe is a missile – the “Iranian missile”, as she describes. The premise for Haley’s presentation was Yemen, where Houthis fired a missile directed towards King Khalid’s International Airport in Riyadh on November 4. Condemning rebels for targeting a “civilian airport”, the ambassador warned about Iran’s “destabilizing behavior” in the region. In Colin Powell’s fashion, Haley descended that “we must speak with one voice in exposing the regime for what it is: a threat to the peace and security of the entire world.”

Indeed, there is not a lot, really, that can justify the rebel launch of a missile towards Riyadh, although the motive was clearly retaliatory. While condemned, the attack killed no one; the missile was intercepted. By contrast, the Saudi-led coalition was not condemned when it bombed civilian airports in Yemen, including the complex in Sana’a. In her presentation, Haley mentioned nothing about the coalition air crimes, about its deliberate policy of starving Yemenis to death. This is not something the ‘world community” should be concerned about. Highly publicized, the presentation has, in fact, once again validated the coalition war and justified the naval blockade. Perhaps one would not be wrong for calling the speech ‘a formal excuse for genocide’.

Again, it is worth remembering that there is no explicit arms link between Iran and the Houthis. From the beginning, however, the coalition employed Iran’s material support for rebels to justify the naval blockade. It has become a conventional fact that Iranian weapons, transported on boats via what is one of the world’s most patrolled sea routes, is what keeps the rebel resistance going. The theory is ludicrous, to say the least.

It is therefore not a surprise that one aspect of the war in Yemen has gained less media attention than anything else – concrete evidence of the coalition’s success at stopping Iranian weapons from flowing into the rebel arsenals. Perhaps there are two reasons for that. First, there is nothing really to present before journalists. Second, the United States and some of its NATO allies are too heavily involved in the blockade enforcement. Reporting for the Consortium news on 31 October 2016, an investigative journalist, Gareth Porter, powers the two claims with evidence.

Secretary of State John Kerry introduced the new variant of the Obama administration’s familiar theme about Iran’s “nefarious activities” in the region two weeks after Saudi Arabia began its bombing in Yemen on March 26, 2015. Kerry told the PBS NewsHour, “There are obviously supplies that have been coming from Iran,” citing “a number of flights every single week that have been flying in.” Kerry vowed that the United States was “not going to stand by while the region is destabilized.”

Later, the administration began accusing Iran of using fishing boats to smuggle arms to the Houthis. The campaign unfolded in a series of four interceptions of small fishing boats or dhows in or near the Arabian Sea from September 2015 through March 2016. The four interceptions had two things in common: the boats did have illicit weapons alright, but the crews always said the ship was bound for Somalia – not Yemen and the Houthis.

But instead of acknowledging the obvious fact that the weapons were not related to the Iran-Houthi relationship, a U.S. military spokesman put out a statement in all four cases citing a U.S. “assessment” that the ultimate destination of the arms was Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen.

These boats were intercepted by the navy of countries participating in the Combined Maritime Forces, a 32-nation coalition patrolling waters near the East coast of Africa and in the Gulf of Aden. Protecting a strategic trading route, the coalition is commanded from the U.S. navy base in Bahrain.

Pressure on Riyadh and its allies to lift the blockade remains pitiful. So far, there was perhaps only one instance when this crime against humanity had attained sizable publicity: it happened after the coalition tightened its siege to the point where even basic humanitarian supplies were no longer allowed to enter Yemen.  A total blockade on air and sea was announced after the rebels fired a missile towards Riyadh’s airport, the event Nikki Haley exploited in her December theater of the absurd.

The twenty-day siege was later eased on November 26, 2017, amidst the mounting international pressure. However, with the first humanitarian cargo arriving in the rebel-held port of Al Hudaydah, the plight of Yemenis was once again forgotten. It did not matter that the siege remains tight, unjustified, supported by the world’s strongest power and violates international law.

“The situation in Yemen – today, right now, to the population of the country – looks like the apocalypse,” spoke to journalists the head of the UN office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock. “Unless the situation changes, we’re going to have the world’s worst humanitarian disaster for 50 years.” Silence from the Western media conglomerates makes clear Lowcock’s statement was not newsworthy enough.

The reluctance of the American empire to cease its involvement and press on its Gulf allies to stop the unsought in Yemen is hardly surprising. Back in the 1990s, the U.S. and Britain were backing and justifying a similar medieval siege of Iraq. Killing as many as 500,000 Iraqi children was “worth it”, declared the Secretary of State for President Clinton, Madeleine Albright.

The Pragmatist is Gone

While the Gulf countries have advocated for Saleh’s resignation in 2011 in favor of President Hadi, they still regarded him and the General People’s Congress as the mainstream political forces, capable of maintaining a status quo that serves the interests of both parties: the Yemeni elite and Riyadh. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign policy think tank based in Washington D.C, therefore observes that Saleh’s alliance with the rebels was an attempt to “use the Houthis” to “take revenge against his allies who defected from him in 2011.” Advancing from their Northern stronghold “Houthis saw in that an opportunity to grab power. Both, however, have been fierce enemies and fought six wars against each other between 2004 and 2010.”

As it was mentioned earlier, an alliance between the two was too fragile to stand. It collapsed by the end of November 2017, prompting a week of fighting in Sana’a between the loyalists of Saleh and Houthi rebels. Attempting to flee the capital on December 4, Saleh was caught and ambushed. Filming his corpse after execution, the fighters chanted “praise God, Sayyidi Hussein is avenged,” referring to Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, a leader of the rebel movement sentenced to death under the orders of President in 2004. Saleh’s death has gained wide publicity across the media spectrum. There seems to be no hope left; peace between the coalition and Houthis is now unthinkable, we are told.

The Washington foreign policy think tanks agree. “With the passing of Saleh, the ultimate pragmatist with longstanding political and diplomatic ties both locally and internationally, an opportunity has passed with him,” assesses the Atlantic Council. If Saleh was alive, the only way to solve the crisis was to follow the United Nations Security Council “resolution 2216, which called on Saleh to change his destabilizing action, facilitate disarmament of the Houthis, and return to the National Dialogue Conference’s outcomes.” Hence an outcome where the Houthis are not represented and where Yemen was to be fragmented into six autonomous regions, controlled by and serving for the ventures of Gulf powers, including the construction of the Hadhramaut oil pipeline. A vivid exclusion of the rebel movement is justified: “the Houthis, an irrational movement lacking in political experience, make for a highly emotional and unreliable party at the negotiating table.” Perhaps the same is applicable to the Yemeni people, the “backward” and “uncivilized”, posing a “threat” to the regional powers and their Western backers.

Establishing whether the Houthis are “an irrational movement” in the Yemeni theater, one needs to compare them with the forces backed by the coalition and therefore representing the officially recognized government. As Neil Partrickwrites for the Carnegie think tank, the coalition has embraced “often rival Yemeni fighters as long as they are willing to fight Houthi or Saleh forces.” They are tribal militias and elements from political factions, including the Salafist Al-Islah party. Enhancing the alliance of “rival Yemeni fighters” are thousands of paid mercenaries, recruited from as far as the South American Colombia and as close as the African Sudan. Their ground activities are supervised by a limited number of soldiers from the Gulf countries, more precisely the United Arab Emirates. The U.S special operations forces are also on the ground, assisting their Emirate partners in missions.

Divisions nonetheless exist not merely between the armed militias who fight Houthis; there is competition for control and thus instances of tension between the main Arab actors involved in Yemen – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Writing for the Carnegie think tank, Dr. Partrick puts the relationship between the two as following.

At times these differences have created competition for influence and even conflict. In February [2017], the Emiratis and their Yemeni allies fought Saudi-backed Yemeni fighters loyal to the nominal president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi for control of the Aden airport, a struggle that prevented an Emirati plan to move north to Taiz. The risk of such confrontations remains, although because the UAE eventually secured control over the airport, it will likely focus on consolidating its existing southern power bases. Lacking ground forces anywhere in Yemen, the Saudis worry that the UAE could be carving out strategic footholds for itself, undermining Saudi influence in the kingdom’s traditional backyard.

Existing cracks within the anti-Houthi alliance perhaps reveal why the forces have made such a marginal progress against the group since 2015. In fact, the failure is quite dramatic, considering an unprecedented campaign the coalition enabled to force the Houthi-controlled territories into submission. One can only wonder what will happen to these factions if the prime enemy in the war is defeated. One would also be right to conclude that the officially recognized Aden-based government of exiled President Hadi maintains little to no authority over the country. The real power rests in the hands of the militias and their commanders.

With Saleh now dead, there is an expectation that his military and party loyalists will unite with the Saudi coalition to defeat the rebels. His son, Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former head of the elite Republican Guard, has promised revenge:

“I will lead the battle until the last Houthi is thrown out of Yemen … the blood of my father will be hell ringing in the ears of Iran.”

It is impossible to establish whether his message had any ramifications on the ground. So far, little has changed to the status quo.

Receiving diplomatic protection and military support from Western powers, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is spearheading a purge of his royal princes at home and wages an increasingly aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East. It seems that he is prepared to go to great lengths to crush the rebels in Yemen, or at least to push them out of its major cities.

An opportunity for a more democratic Yemen was stolen from its people during the tumultuous months of the Arab Spring. The war and its culmination is what will determine the future of this ancient land. Managing to maintain resistance for almost three years against the superior military might of the Saudi-led coalition, Houthis remain perhaps the only established forces fighting for the country’s sovereignty. An alternative to their fight is the submission of Yemen to colonial powers.

Reading to this point, one would have to try hard in order to miss the sheer cynicism behind the war in the Arab world’s most marginalized and underdeveloped country. Conducted with weapons of the military-industrial corporations and made legitimate by the media apparatuses spinning deceptions as conventional facts, the perpetual policy of the world’s strongest powers towards Yemen has been a war; essentially, a war against its people, a strategy to counter their common interests, or a “threat”, as it is described. Internally, that means supporting the status quo of power being handled by a “pragmatist” and experienced elite, which understands the agendas of the mighty powers with its “longstanding political and diplomatic ties.”

Thus the lives of civilians are irrelevant – in Orwell’s lexicon, they are ‘unpeople’. It will be “worth it” if thousands of them perish in air strikes or die from hunger, so long as elitist goals are implemented, and the feasible status quo is maintained.

Nothing can justify this aggressive, this cynical war against defenseless people.

On 29 December 2017, Reuters published a rather exceptional report on the humanitarian impact of this continuing aggression. The author – SelamGebrekidan – writes about a new epidemic threatening thousands of people. On top of the ongoing cholera emergency, diphtheria is now spreading like wildfire. Reporting from a hospital in the coalition-controlled city of Aden, Selam conveys a story of an invisible crisis taking the lives of Yemen’s youngest and most vulnerable. Once with a chance of life on this Earth, they live no more.

Nahla Arishi, chief pediatrician at the al-Sadaqa hospital in this Yemeni port city, had not seen diphtheria in her 20-year career. Then, late last month, a three-year-old girl with high fever was rushed to Arishi’s ward. Her neck was swollen, and she gasped for air through a lump of tissue in her throat. Eight days later, she died.

Soon after, a 10-month-old boy with similar symptoms died less than 24 hours after arriving at the hospital.

Two five-year-old cousins were admitted; only one survived.

A 45-day-old boy, his neck swollen and bruised, lasted a few hours. His last breath was through an oxygen mask.

Thousands of miles to the West from Yemen is the government of the world’s mightiest empire, controlled by the interests of corporations and their shareholders on Wall Street. Indeed, the stock market has broken records in recent times, with defense stocks performing particularly well. From 17 January 2017 to the time this article is typed, the stock of Boeing has doubled in price; the shares of Raytheon rose 35 percent, Lockheed Martin whooped 30 percent and General Dynamics 17 percent, respectively. The war economy of an empire is experiencing exciting times. Ties between Washington and Riyadh remain strong and unhinged.

The coalition’s onslaught in Yemen continues.

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Maxim Nikolenko is founder and editor of Alternative Beacon where this article was originally published.

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US Decline is Ongoing, Yet America Remains the Undisputed “Military Master”

By Shane Quinn, January 31, 2018

The United States’ decline can be traced as far back as 1949, when the world’s dominant power unexpectedly suffered the “loss” of China. It was a monumental early blow to US strategic planners, who were carefully executing dreams of unchallenged global dominance.

Ireland to Discuss New Bill Criminalising Trade with Israeli Settlements

By Middle East Monitor, January 31, 2018

Ireland is set to discuss a new bill that seeks to prohibit the import and sale of goods originating in illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian Territory.

Doping-control in Sports and Athletics: Eyes Wide Shut

By Roy Harper, January 31, 2018

Today, the victories of athletes and the large-scale use of doping are inextricably linked in the modern world of elite sport. Although the 20th century was marked by the struggle for the spirit of fair play, then in the 21st century doping scandals are discussed more often than the outstanding records of prominent athletes. The use of prohibited substances and fight against doping turned into the main problem in the world of sports.

Turkish Troops Seen Wearing Patch of Terrorist Free Syrian Army

By Paul Antonopoulos, January 31, 2018

Turkish soldiers have been seen wearing a patch of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on their uniforms while operating in Syria’s northwest canton of Afrin where they leading a coalition of militants against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

U.S. ‘Plan B’ for the Middle East. The Occupation of One Third of Syria’s Territory

By Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli, January 31, 2018

The hope about a possible stop of US interference in Syria, based on Trump’s declarations while he was still a candidate, vanished when President Trump announced that he had delegated to the Pentagon and his Defense Minister Mattis, the tasks of profiling and give expression to U.S. military actions abroad.

Oliver Stone Leads Tributes to Robert Parry as Shady US Lobbyists PropOrNot Dance on His Grave

By Bryan Macdonald, January 31, 2018

The truth, as Parry often said, is that without an honest history of our country we are lost in an Alice-in-Wonderland void of poor and uninformed leadership. Obama, who should’ve known better, believed these false narratives about Reagan and ended up victimized by them. Parry also frequently repeated his reports, which may have driven his enemies crazy, but was crucial, I believe, to understanding their complexity.

“The President has committed, as a matter of strategy, that we will not leave Syria. We are not going to declare victory and go. And that is not my opinion; that’s the President’s strategic judgment. We’re going to stay for several reasons: stabilization and assistance in the vital north and northeast, protection of our allies the Syrian Democratic Forces, who have fought so valiantly against ISIS in the northeast, try to work to help transform the political structures in that area to a model for the rest of Syria, and capable of being credibly represented in a new Syrian state; but for other reasons as well, including countering Iran and its ability to enhance its presence in Syria, and serving as a weight or force helping us to achieve some of those broader objectives.”

That’s as spoken by David M. Satterfield, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 11 January 2018, addressing the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the topic of “U.S. Policy Toward Syria.” You can see it in this clip from C-Span.

His statement hasn’t been reported in U.S. newsmedia; so, it’s still news; and this means that it’s news to the American people, and to all others who, though this news wasn’t reported to them, trust U.S. media to report any important American news (such as this U.S. Government policy-statement to the U.S. Senate certainly is). 

Parts of this clip have been reported by the independent journalist Mutlu Civiroglu on twitter, and, from there to reddit, and also at Russia Defense Forum, and at the excellent general news site Signs Of The Times, where I came upon it, and whose reporter Joe Quinn contrasted this statement with a tweet from Donald Trump as a Presidential candidate on 5 Sep 2013:

“Again, to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria — if you do, many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”

The many people who had voted for Trump because of such anti-neoconservative (otherwise-called anti-imperialist) statements from him as that (and which thus also caused neocons to gang up against him in 2016 and publicly to support the overtly neocon Hillary Clinton instead), can reasonably raise the question as to whether a country in which people (such as Trump has done on this matter) routinely lie their way into elective offices, constitutes a democracy, or is instead actually a dictatorship of lies, by liars — and, if it’s the latter, then the inevitable questions are: 1: Whom are those liars actually serving; and, 2: Are the media also serving those same people and therefore hiding such crucial news as this U.S. Government policy-statement certainly is.

Furthermore, anyone to whom this official statement that was made to U.S. Senators on January 11th by the U.S. Government comes as news (and as news which still hasn’t yet been reported — much less debated — in America’s existing ‘news’ media) might reasonably cease subscribing to and paying and otherwise subsidizing those fake ‘news’ media, and instead start to seek out and subsidize honest ones such as the present site where you’re now reading this important news, so as not to be drowned by the propaganda and deceptions from whomever the people are who hide from the public the real news (such as this). Whereas the mainstream media, and even small media that serve the same owners, attack ‘fake news’, they’re actually reporting a lot of fake news themselves, and are hiding this fact from their subscribers. That fact presents a challenge to each person in their audience, as to whether to do whatever that individual can, to overcome this regime, and how to do it.

Just in case it might possibly be the case that U.S. and allied newsmedia have, ever since January 11th, failed to report this important news due only to their incompetence instead of in order to suppress it, the present news-report, including its links, and most especially the link here to the C-Span clip, is being submitted free of charge to all of them, so as to inform them all, of this important news; so that, going forward from now, all newsmedia that fail to report it are definitely suppressing it, and so that every reader who somehow does encounter it, can know with certainty, that the ‘news’media that don’t are actively and intentionally suppressing this news-item. All newsmedia are now being informed of, and linked to, that C-Span clip; so, all of them now know of its existence and can write about it. And, of course, everyone knows of its importance; so, there will be no excuse for not reporting on it, at least from the present time forward.

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This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

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

The United States’ decline can be traced as far back as 1949, when the world’s dominant power unexpectedly suffered the “loss” of China. It was a monumental early blow to US strategic planners, who were carefully executing dreams of unchallenged global dominance.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been “aiming at United States hegemony in the post-war world”, as the prominent British historian Geoffrey Warner outlined. Roosevelt was to die less than three weeks before Adolf Hitler shot himself in April 1945, yet such visions were carried forward with zeal.

In 1948 the well regarded US diplomat George Kennan said, 

“We have 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation our real job in the coming period… is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality… we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of the living standards and democratization” – and we must “deal in straight power concepts”, while not being “hampered by idealistic slogans” about “altruism and work-benefaction”.

Kennan was considered one of the moderate “doves” in US planning circles. This unheralded sphere of conquest was called the Grand Area. Unfortunately for Kennan and colleagues, by the following year [1949], China removed itself from US control in an outcome sorely felt to present.

It occurred when the resurgent Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, overran American-backed Nationalists (Kuomintang) in mainland China. It was an irreversible rout which saw many US sympathizers flee to Taiwan, an island about 700km east of Hong Kong.

The outcome prompted critics of the Harry Truman administration to describe it as “an avoidable catastrophe”. It was preventable in that they felt the US military should have been called upon.

For if a country has unscrupulous aspirations of global dominance, “losing China to Communism” is undoubtedly a catastrophe. It is a revealing term to “lose” a nation with a population at the time of 550 million people – and whose capital Beijing (then Peking) is more than 11,000km from Washington. It stands as a revealing insight into imperialist planning, with similar dogmas prevailing to the current day.

As a young man Truman himself had written about his disregard for the “Chinaman”. Consequently, China’s exit from the US sphere of control grated severely. The American leader later wrote, 

“As long as I am president, if I can prevent it, that cut-throat organisation will never be recognized by us as the government of China”.

By the end of World War II, the US had long been the world’s richest country. The second global conflict finished off lingering effects of the Great Depression, with American industry increasing almost four-fold.

Critically, rivals like Germany, the USSR, Britain, China and Japan were all devastated from invasion, bombing or loss of life.

Christopher Tassava, Associate Director at Carleton College in Minnesota writes, 

“American leaders determined to make the United States the center of the post-war world economy. American aid or ‘Marshall Plan’ furthered this goal by tying the economic reconstruction of West Germany, France, Great Britain and Japan to American import and export needs, among other factors”.

With their key rivals further tied down to American financial power, the proceeding Cold War was directed against the USSR. In the Western mainstream this was framed as two equals going toe-to-toe – with the US defending earth from Communism’s ravages.

In truth the US was always the much stronger state, enjoying unprecedented wealth, security and scope. It was a level of power that even Hitler, with his wild ambitions for the world, may not have envisaged.

Tanks in Red Square during the August Coup, four months before the USSR collapse, 1991. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Cold War comprised principally of efforts by both superpowers to implement and spread order in their realms of power. The US would control most of the world while the Soviets had to be content with eastern Europe. Things were to change before long, however.

In addition to “losing” China, by the 1950s south-east Asia was sliding from America’s grasp too. It eventually propagated the deadly conflicts in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina (1962-75).

Furthermore, there was the enormous bloodletting in the mid-1960s upon gaining control of “the greatest prize” that was Indonesia – as described by Richard Nixon. These Asian regions are still to recover fully from the effects of American-led aggression and influence.

By about 1975, the US share of global wealth had dropped to 25% – still huge – yet it stood at 50% a generation before. With Europe and Japanese-centric Asia gradually recovering and becoming less reliant on American influence, the industrial world was becoming “tripolar”.

In 1979, the US was dealt another hammer blow when Iranian nationalists overthrew the Western-backed dictatorship of the Shah. It is another “loss” that is continually felt, with Iran enduring almost unremitting American pressure ever sense. 

Later, the Soviet Union’s demise in the early 1990s witnessed much nonsensical triumphalism from Western elites. There was talk of “a noble phase” and a final victory for “Western values” over the scourge of Communism.

In the post-USSR era, the old American pretexts of global defense from “Soviet aggression” could no longer be used to dupe the public. Now, the ruse put forward when illegally attacking other nations was “promoting democracy” and to defend “human rights and civilized values”, as Tony Blair put it.

The true reasons such as controlling resources and destroying independent nationalism remained unmentioned. Little attention was paid to the words of those like Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington, who said in 1999 of the US, 

“In the eyes of many countries it is becoming the rogue superpower”, and “the single greatest threat to their societies”.

These views were confirmed by various international opinion polls this century, on the subject of “the greatest threat to world peace”.

With Western politicians publicly appraising themselves for the USSR’s downfall, it was not long after that the US was losing control of Latin America too. Subjected to brutal US-initiated conflicts and dictatorships for decades, the Latin American people were making serious efforts to rid themselves of outside control.

Some of this American decline has plainly been self-inflicted. Estimates suggest the disastrous George W. Bush-Barack Obama wars in the Middle East cost between $4 trillion to $6 trillion. Even to the planet’s richest nation, no laughing matter.

One of Osama bin Laden’s chief aims was to lure America into drawn-out conflicts, thereby inflicting financial ruin. Bin Laden continues to score victories from his watery grave. Now, current president Donald Trump is upping the ante in Afghanistan at a continued price. American troops are forecast to remain on Afghan soil for another decade.

It is worth remembering that the US still remains the unchallenged military master; no other country comes close to matching the might of its armed forces. The US military outlay will increase by over 10% to $700 billion (its 2016 expenditure was $611 billion). Also in 2016, China was second on the global arms list at $215 billion.

The incoming price is unlikely to affect the super wealthy, but tens of millions of Americans will again bear the brunt of a long-held plutocracy.

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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. 

The linguistic gymnastics needed to report on police violence without calling up images of police violence is a thing of semantic wonder. Officers don’t shoot, they are merely “involved” in shootings; victims are not victims, but “suspects” “fleeing”; human beings become pre-mortem cadavers as bullets “enter the torso” rather than the chest of a person; guns and bullets act on their own as they “discharge” or “enter the right femur,” rather than being fired by autonomous individuals with agency and purpose. Headlines become 14-word, jargon-heavy tangles where a simple five-word description would suffice.

Last week, the case of Ohio Deputy Richard Scarborough shooting and killing 16-year-old Joseph Haynes inside a courthouse checked off nearly all the pro-police propaganda tropes:

 1. The Classic ‘Officer-Involved Shooting’

The most overused of copspeak cliches, “officer-involved shooting”—or in this case, “deputy-involved”–appeared in headlines reporting Haynes’ killing:

• “Teen Defendant Dead After Deputy-Involved Shooting Inside Franklin County Courtroom” (WBNS-10TV, 1/17/18)
• “Mother of Teen Shot and Killed During Deputy-Involved Shooting Demanding Answers” (ABC6, 1/18/18)

The addition of “involved” to these headlines adds nothing, obscures much and takes longer to read. The first ought to say, “Deputy Shoots Teen to Death in Franklin County Courtroom” (9 vs. 11 words); the second could have been written, “Mother of Teen Shot, Killed by Deputy Demanding Answers” (9 vs. 12 words). These headlines would be more efficient with the added bonus of explaining what actually occurred.

The purpose of saying “officer-involved”—as others have noted before—is to obscure responsibility. A bizarre construction, it does not appear in other contexts. (Can one imagine the headline, “Man Dead After Gang Member–Involved Shooting”?) It’s a  thought-terminating cliche, a ready-made assemblage of words that does the thinking for the reader in service of a political end—in this case, protecting the police from bad PR.

2. Smearing the Victim

The 16-year-old Haynes was referred to as a “defendant” (the complete summation of his position in life), and his juvenile record was mysteriously leaked to the press in a matter of hours after his death. Here, a local news station, 10TV, spends 30 seconds of a two-minute broadcast rattling off the victim’s priors, despite their having zero to do with what occurred in the courtroom that day:

As FAIR has noted before (3/4/15, 3/22/17), any dirt on victims of police violence seems to be made readily available to the media (most often by the organization responsible for their death, the police), while, as in this case, the identity of the officer “involved” is initially kept private—an arrangement that protects state institutions while pathologizes their victims as malevolents who had it coming. (Only the tail end of coverage later revealed Scarborough’s name, at which point he was praised for his “good work record”—AP, 1/23/18.)

3. A Vague ‘Altercation’

Frequently when a police officer shoots and kills someone, a department spokesperson claims there was an “altercation” that preceded the killing. “Altercation” is a term broad enough to span two parties yelling at each other to deadly combat,  which is exactly the point. In this case, the police claimed Haynes’ killing  followed an “altercation” of unspecified severity and symmetry:

• “The victim’s hearing on a menacing with a gun charge was just wrapping up when family members and a deputy got into an altercation, [Chief Deputy Rick] Minerd said.”  (CNN, 1/17/18)
• “A 16-year-old boy was fatally shot by a deputy in an Ohio courtroom after an altercation involving the victim’s family, according to authorities.” (New York Post, 1/17/18)

But the use of “altercation” to launder police guilt is common. In the case of Walter Scott, for example, his summary execution at the hands of South Carolina police officer Michael T. Slager was originally described as an “altercation” by local press parroting police language (FAIR.org, 4/8/15), until a video of the shooting surfaced days later showing Scott being shot in the back while running away. Claims that Scott had “gained control of the taser to use it against the officer” were shown to be demonstrably false, something pulled of thin air by police PR and echoed by compliant local reporters. Slager was later found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

It was unclear even in later coverage what the “altercation” in the Haynes case entailed, but certainly when the news was fresh, when the bulk of reporting appeared, this single word did a lot of work to justify the killing of an unarmed 16-year-old to the public—with little or no skepticism by media.

4. The Organization That Did the Killing as Sole Source

Virtually all the initial reports of Haynes’ killing quoted only the police and had no word from his family. This CNN report (1/17/18) is nonstop quotes by the police, who drive the narrative entirely:

It likely would have been easier if CNN had just had the police department write up the story for them.

 5. Obscuring—or Omitting—Who Killed Whom

The same CNN piece goes four paragraphs before saying who actually died. (Nor does the headline, “One Killed During Ohio Courthouse Shooting,” provide any specifics.)

Even then, it’s unclear who did the killing. The teen, “part of an incident,” was “hit in the abdomen by one shot from the deputy’s gun,” apparently an autonomous entity.

A report by ABC13 (1/18/18) took it one step further, writing an entire article that never says, in any way, that a police officer shot and killed someone:

The closest we get to actually assigning responsibility is the sentence “during the dispute, officials say the deputy got knocked to the ground and one shot was fired.” Fired by whom? At whom? A news report logs 120 words about an incident and none of them, strung together, actually explain the purpose of the report’s existence.

Someone died, a deputy was in the area. How those two are related is never made clear. The most responsible party appears to be an inanimate gun.

Which brings us to our final element of copspeak:

6. Rogue Weapons

CNN reported:

The teen was also a part of the incident and was hit in the abdomen by the one shot fired from the deputy’s gun, he said.

Notice the teenager isn’t shot by the deputy, but by his gun. The passive, sterile language reads like a police report, because that’s exactly what they’re rewriting. Crime reporters for the most part mimic the dehumanizing language  of the police—up to the use of “hit in the abdomen” over “shot in the stomach.” Facing a story about a child whose life has just been instantly erased, beat reporters do their best impression of a jaded forensic medical examiner on Law and Order.

Taken to its absurd extreme, this guilt-diffusing rhetoric takes us to coverage like this  NBC Bay Area headline (1/17/18) about police killing a man with a taser:

Warren Ragudo, 34, wasn’t killed by the police, he simply “died after” they tased him (or, more bureaucratically, “deployed a taser on the individual”). Let’s not leap to the conclusion that 25,000 volts jammed into someone’s chest might be related to their death seconds later. The brute causality is linguistically massaged with passive language.

A human being becomes an “individual.” “During a struggle” washes away all questions of who started what, what the details were and whether such a “struggle” justified the use of deadly force are assumed to be non-issues.

Unless you’re reading, say, a meditation on Leibniz’s Monadology, complex and jargon-heavy writing is a red flag for deception. Why do these reporters and editors take simple, straightforward events such as one person shooting and killing another and turn it into rhetorical highwire act?

In stories of police killings, the police should first of all be the subject of scrutiny. Instead, more often than not, they serve as sole sources and often virtual co-reporters. That they should be afforded this special status because they represent state power—the very institution that a free press is supposedly intended to serve as a check on—makes this unearned and deeply conflicted position of privilege that much more perverse.

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Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org.

All images in this article are from the author.

Featured image: Illegal construction work of settlements in the West Bank on 22 February 2017 (Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency)

Ireland is set to discuss a new bill that seeks to prohibit the import and sale of goods originating in illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian Territory.

Independent Senator Frances Black, yesterday, launched the “Control of Economic Activities (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018”, which is scheduled for debate in Seanad Éireann on Wednesday 31 January 2018.

According to a press release announcing its launch the bill “seeks to prohibit the import and sale of goods, services and natural resources originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories”.

“Such settlements,” said the statement, “are illegal under both international humanitarian law and domestic Irish law, and result in human rights violations on the ground”.

Despite the illegality of the import and sale of goods from Israeli settlements, the statement points out that Ireland is still providing “continued economic support through trade in settlement goods”.

Drafters of the bill revealed that the legislation had been “prepared with the support of Trócaire, Christian-Aid and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), and applies to settlements in occupied territories where there is clear international legal consensus that they violate international law”. They insisted that the “clearest current example of these violations were the expansion of settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, which have been repeatedly condemned as illegal by the UN, EU, the International Court of Justice and the Irish Government”.

Speaking in advance of the bill’s introduction, Senator Black said:

“This is a chance for Ireland to stand up for the rights of vulnerable people – it is about respecting international law and refusing to support illegal activity and human suffering.”

Black said he is “passionate about the struggle of the Palestinian people”. He insisted that “trade in settlement goods sustains injustice” and explained that “in the occupied territories, people are forcibly kicked out of their homes, fertile farming land is seized, and the fruit and vegetables produced are then sold on Irish shelves to pay for it all”.

The bill is seeking more than mere denunciation of Israeli settlements and is trying to get governments around the world to treat settlements as illegal. Black pointed out that six years ago the Irish Government criticised the relentless progress of Israeli settlements, but they have failed to do anything about it since.

“In years since then it has only gone one way, with settlements expanding, more Palestinian homes being demolished and land being confiscated. It’s clear that empty promises have not worked but nothing has been done. Ireland needs to show leadership and act” Black protested.

The Occupied Territories Bill 2018 will be debated at Second Stage in Seanad Éireann on Wednesday and will be streamed live on Oireachtas TV. It has been co-signed by Seanad Civil Engagement Group Senators Alice-Mary Higgins, Lynn Ruane, Grace O’Sullivan, Colette Kelleher and John Dolan, as well as Senator David Norris.

When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico last September no one could anticipate that four months later the island would still be needing food and water aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but with a quarter of the island still without reliable access to electricity and with clean running water still unavailable in many rural areas, some island residents are still reliant on FEMA to stay alive.

Their lifeline will be disappearing shortly, however, as NPR reports that FEMA will be ceasing humanitarian aid in just two days at the end of January. FEMA has announced that it will “officially shut off” its mission after providing more than 30 million gallons of drinking water and nearly 60 million meals across the island since the disaster began. Any remaining food and water supplies will be given to the Puerto Rican government for distribution.

The agency reached its decision after its internal analyses concluded that only about one percent of Puerto Rican residents still need its help, but that still leaves about 34 thousand people in desperate circumstances primarily in isolated rural areas.

FEMA claims that between the island government-run Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency (PREMA) and non-profits such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army those people will still receive aid, but local residents place little trust in PREMA to deliver the aid as reliably and efficiently as the federal agency.

Another reason that FEMA has given for the cessation of humanitarian aid is the fact that people getting free food and water are not going to supermarkets to buy groceries, preventing the local economy from returning to normal. The agency will be continuing to provide financial assistance with the aim of boosting the troubled island’s economy.

The question remains, if this was Texas, Louisiana, or Florida rather than Puerto Rico, would FEMA be withdrawing food aid with so many people still affected? With a President who has repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for anyone but English speaking white people, it hard not to harbor suspicions that this is just another racist decision by Trump.

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Vinnie Longobardo is a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music and art.