Global Research

Chair: Leah Bolger

Local Welcoming Remarks: The Rev. C. D. Witherspoon; The Peoples Power Assembly, Baltimore

Opening Remarks: Alfred L. Marder, President, U.S. Peace Council

Keynote Speakers: Ajamu Baraka, President, Black Alliance for Peace; Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Colonel; CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace

International Speakers:

Rabindra Adhikari, National Organizer, Black Alliance for Peace; Miguel Figueroa, President, Canadian Peace Congress;

John Lannon, Member of the Executive of PANA (Peace and Neutrality Alliance); Founding Member of Shannonwatch, Ireland;

Elsa Rassbach, Member of Coordination Committee, Stop Air Base Ramstein

Fearing that peace might break out with the two Koreas talking to each other, Washington instructed South Korean President Moon Jae-in to keep the message about anything but peace. It is not just Trump. A former top official for the Obama administration warned Moon that South Korea was not going to get anywhere with the North Koreans unless they have the “US behind them”. Humiliating, that is like saying that Moon’s “button” is not as big as Kim’s. The metaphor is exactly how the Washington elite see South Korea: as Washington’s obedient proxy state. The official went on to say,

“If South Koreans are viewed as running off the leash, it will exacerbate tension within the alliance”.

Running off the leash! Now more humiliation, is South Korea a US poodle? Instead President Moon Jae-in is showing that he has teeth, and that South Koreans want their country back from US humiliating domination.

During the talks it was agreed for North Korea to participate in the Winter Olympics in February.  The two countries will even march together under a common flag, and future talks between the two are planned to reduce tension. Trump continues to bluster, while the two Koreas have “engaged in the most substantive direct talks in years”. Neocons such as John Bolton are outraged that North Korea has proven once again that it is willing to come to the negotiation table. Bolton says it is a dirty trick and that North Korea is “taking advantage of a weak South Korean government”, adding more insulting humiliation. To Washington, South Korea talking peace is weak, running off the leash and going it alone without its US master. The North using the peace option is seen as a provocation and propaganda that Washington will not tolerate.

In retaliation the US sent more nukes to Guam, and put the state of Hawaii on a full alert that a “ballistic missile was inbound“. The nukes outbound to Guam are real; the ones inbound to Hawaii were fake, just like the ability of the billion dollar THAADS to shoot them down. Too conveniently the Hawaii false alarm comes just as the US and its vassals are readying for what the US plots to be a show of solidarity and unity on killer sanctions against North Korea. The US wants its chorus to perform the tragedy of telling North Korea to obey or watch 500,000 of their children die. As Madeleine Albright said about Iraq’s 500,000 dead children from US sanctions, “the price is worth it“. The US does not think the price of diplomacy is worth it though.

The US continues to block efforts at diplomacy, and express its contempt for South Korea’s elected President Moon Jae-in. He was elected on a peace platform by the South Korean people. Moon’s predecessor Park Geun-hye sang from the US hymnbook until she got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. In 2017 the South Korean people went to the street and demanded the granddaughter of former dictator Park Chung Hee be impeached, and now she is in prison. Peace is not anything that Washington’s plutocrats want to hear, although the South Korean people like the sound of it, and elected Moon their president by a wide margin. The self-interests in Washington preferred the corrupt warmonger Park. She carried the US’s tune with perfect pitch, even (allegedly) conspired to assassinate the North’s Kim Jong-Un. The message of the humiliation from US apparatchiks is that if Moon does not change his tune the US will try to undermine South Korea’s democracy with a regime change project might be in his future. The US habitually meddles in other’s elections, and wants to keep tensions high on the Korean peninsula, keep the South Koreans in line, make North Korea a boogeyman, frighten the American people, station 30,000 US troops in South Korea with wartime operational control, buy more multi-billion dollar THAADS from Lockheed Martin, and divide the Korean people. Even at the risks of a nuclear war, which the US proposes making easier.

The establishment nearly went to war with North Korea in 1994 until Bill Clinton negotiated peace. The neocons in Washington and the mainstream media keep saying that North Korea refused to come to the negotiating table. Clinton’s decision to use diplomacy instead of threats proved the warmongers wrong again. It was the US all along that refused to talk, preferring belligerence and threats just as it does now. Once Clinton showed a willingness to bargain, then a nuclear deal was struck. The deal was called the Agreed Framework. What North Korea wanted then for it to suspend its nuclear program was for the US to halt the massive military exercises on North Korea’s border, a non-aggression guarantee, compensation for abandoning its needed electric producing nuclear reactors, and relations with the US. Now the situation with North Korea is back to where it was in 1994. George W. Bush reversed the path of peace when he came into the White House. In 2001 he tore up the Agreed Framework, put North Korea on the Axis of Evil list in 2002, invaded Iraq in 2003, and hanged Saddam Hussein in 2006. Very predictably North Korea resumed its nuclear program for self-defense against a paranoid and unpredictable USA that sees enemies to attack under every bed.

Bush scrapped the Agreed Framework, and told then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung that future talks with North Korea were dead. Kim Dae-jung had come to visit Bush shortly after winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his Sunshine Policies of peace with North Korea. Instead of welcoming President Kim and his peace efforts, Bush humiliated him by shockingly calling North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il a dwarf. North Korea predictably withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and resumed work on its nuclear program. A month later Bush called out North Korea to pay particular attention to Libya as an example of how a country is welcomed into the international community when it unilaterally gives up its nuclear defense program. North Korea paid attention and it was listening when Muammar Gaddafi said in a 2008 speech that “one of these days America may hang us like they did Saddam “. In 2011 Gaddafi met a brutal death at the hands of US proxies; he was anally raped with a bayonet and left to rot on public display in a meat locker. Before Gaddafi’s corpse was even cold a hysterically glowing Hillary Clinton cackled “we came, we saw, he died”, hahaha“. Now fast forward to 2018 and the US is threatening war against North Korea again.

The US has been abusing Korea since 1871 when it first invaded it with an expeditionary force of Marines to forcibly open trade. Korea just wanted to be left alone, but the US forced Korea to sign an exclusive trade treaty in 1882 at the point of a gun. In exchange for that unequal trade agreement the US promised Korea protection. In 1910 the US proved that its promise was worthless. Instead of protection, President Theodore Roosevelt stabbed Korea in the back by conspiring with Japan. Roosevelt had enthusiastically supported Japan in the Russo-Japanese War. Japan pre-emptively attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in a sneak attack. Teddy congratulated Japan for their brilliance…in 1941 his nephew Franklin would call a Japanese sneak attack “a day of infamy”. After Japan and Russia ground down to a bloody stalemate, Japan secretly appealed to Teddy to open negotiations. Roosevelt acted as a (dis)honest broker in negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Japan won the spoils of the war. Roosevelt had a secret deal that Japan could have Korea and the US would take the Philippines. In 1945 the US deceived Korea again. Instead of liberating Korea from the Japanese occupation, the US occupied Korea for 3 more years until 1948 and then blocked its independence. The US was largely responsible for the division of Korea and backing dictatorships in South Korea until 1993. Americans do not know the US treachery, but Koreans do. Why would they trust the USA now?

In order to understand North Korea, one must start with the “anticolonial and anti-imperial state growing out of a half-century of Japanese colonial rule and a half-century of continuous confrontation with a hegemonic United States”, as Bruce Cumings writes in his book North Korea: Another Country. In order to understand South Korea one should take a similar approach. The Japanese colonization of Korea in 1910 was greeted with cheers from the USA. Teddy Roosevelt encouraged Japan to have its own Japanese Monroe Doctrine for Northeast Asia. The Japanese were harsh rulers, and Koreans remember colonial times as a national humiliation. Under the Japanese the Korean economy grew rapidly, but Koreans will rightly argue that little of it helped the average Korean. Like the Korean “comfort women” sex slaves during World War Two, Koreans were forced to obey their Japanese masters. Some Koreans complied reluctantly, some willingly and some enthusiastically. Many, but not all of the enthusiastic collaborators came from the landed aristocratic class of Koreans known as the yangban. Other collaborators were traitors that saw advancing their economic and social status by collaborating. After the division of Korea in 1945 many of the yangban class and collaborators fled to the South where they felt safe with the US occupation army, and for good reasons. The North was redistributing the yangban’s vast landholdings. Many of the yangban and collaborators were safer in the US occupied south. Some went on to achieve leadership in business and government in South Korea. For instance, the future South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee (from 1963 until his assassination in 1979) had collaborated with the Japanese as a lieutenant in the Japanese army in Manchuria fighting against the Korean resistance fighters.

Korea has a long history of thousands of years. It united as one people in the 7^th century and remained so until after World War Two. The US had started planning for the occupation of Korea six months after Pearl Harbor, according to Bruce Cumings. The day after Japan surrendered a future Secretary of State Dean Rusk drew a line at the 38^th Parallel where the US proposed that Korea be divided, and the Russian allies agreed. Thousands of Koreans protested in the streets. They were told that a trusteeship was temporary until elections. Instead the US feared that the people would elect a communist government, and so they rigged a fraudulent election for a separate government in the South. The United Nations rubber stamped it. As in the South, the North then held separate elections for the Supreme People’s Assembly which then elected Kim Il Sung, a famous anti-Japanese guerrilla resistance leader since 1932. The US and South Korean propaganda portray that North Korea was a puppet and satellite project of the Soviet Union. This is probably the US projecting its own imperial intentions. Cummings says that no evidence exists that the Soviets had any long-term designs on Korea. They withdrew all of their military from North Korea in 1948.

General Douglas MacArthur, UN Command CiC (seated), observes the naval shelling of Incheon from USS Mount McKinley, 15 September 1950 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

North Korea has experience with US brutality. During the Korean War the US bombed Korea for 3 years, wiped out 20% of its population and destroyed every city, village and vital structure. President Truman threatened to bomb them with the atomic bomb, and General Douglas MacArthur planned to use 30 nuclear bombs which were shipped to a US base in Okinawa. Truman fired MacArthur not because MacArthur wanted to use nukes, but because Truman wanted someone more loyal he could trust with them. Truman pre-authorized MacArthur’s replacement General Matthew Ridgeway to use the nuclear bombs at his discretion. The US public is oblivious to US recklessness with nuclear bombs and is passive about what is done in their name. The Korean War (1950 to 1953) is called the Forgotten War because the US public has amnesia. Whatever propaganda they do remember is a flawed version of history put out by the US government. Oblivious, passive and amnesia are why all US wars of aggression are quickly forgotten as the US moves on to the next one.

After the US military occupation of South Korea from 1945 to 1948, South Korea was ruled by US backed repressive dictators until the first democratic election in 1993.  The first despot that the US installed was Syngman Rhee in 1948. Rhee was a practically unknown in Korea because he had lived in the USA from 1912 until 1945, when he was flown back to Korea by the US military. The US pumped billions of dollars into South Korea to make it a showplace of US-style capitalism during the Cold War, but South Korea did not develop under either democracy or a free market, according to Ha-Joon Chang, the author of Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.

For many decades North Korea outpaced South Korea in economic development and in their standard of living until the 1970’s. With the 1991 demise of its most important trading partner the Soviet Union, North Korea fell on very hard economic times. Then it suffered two floods and a drought in the 1990’s that resulted in famines. On top of that the US has imposed killer economic sanctions. So now US propaganda constantly reinforces the belief that North Korea is an economic failure that cannot even feed its own people. While the US touts that South Korea is an economic miracle of democracy, capitalism and free markets. Little is ever mentioned about the economic collapse of South Korea in 1997, which the US had to rescue with a financial bailout package that reached $90 Billion. The package included IMF loans that came with humiliating conditionalities of austerity. The minister of finance Lim Chang Yuel went on TV, humiliated and begging for the South Korean people’s forgiveness.

Despite all the propaganda otherwise, North Korea is not only willing to sit down at the table with the US, but it has long been proposing negotiations to a deaf USA ear. What North Korea says it wants today are the same things that were negotiated with Clinton in the Agreed Framework: security, compensation, and economic relations with the US. There is nothing unreasonable that North Korea is asking for, and that is probably why the US refuses to negotiate. It does not want peace for its own insane naked imperialism reasons. Instead the US wants continued hostilities; otherwise if it wanted peace it would welcome diplomacy.

It is the US that is unpredictable. One day Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says that the US is willing to hold unconditional talks with North Korea. Then he says the US won’t. Trump says that he will destroy North Korea with fire and fury, and then he says he would “absolutely talk to North Korea’s Kim on the phone”. It is the US that is paranoid and finding enemies everywhere: Cuba, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Iran, and Russia to name just a few. The US enemies list has nothing to do with democracy, freedom and human rights. If it did the US would not be friends, allies, and benefactors to brutal kingdoms, monarchies, dictators, fascists and human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Honduras, Haiti, and Ukraine, for example. US foreign policy is based on hegemony, empire, power, corporate interests, corruption and self-interests of the high and mighty, not democracy and human rights.

Who is paranoid? Compare how much of a threat the US is compared to North Korea. Since World War Two North Korea has not invaded anybody. The Korean War (1950 to 1953) was a civil war and authoritative historians such as I. F. Stone, Bruce Cumings, and David Halberstam agree that the South was responsible for instigating it too. Korea itself has not invaded anybody since the 16^th century.

The US has attacked at least 32 countries just since WW2. North Korea has a defense budget of only $7.5 billion, compared to the US $1 Trillion. North Korea has developed nuclear weapons because the US has been threatening it with nuclear destruction since 1950, introduced nuclear weapons into South Korea in 1957 in violation of the armistice agreement and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US keeps practicing regime change decapitation invasions and nuclear attacks against North Korea. North Korea has an estimated arsenal of 20 nuke bombs that are not a threat to the US’s 15,000 nuclear arsenal. Instead the US is an asymmetrical and existential threat to North Korea and every other non-compliant small country. North Korea has nuclear weapons because it does not want to humiliate itself by being a US poodle.  When are the American people going to wise up to the US propaganda and false cries that the evil wolf is at the door again?

*

David is a progressive columnist writing on economic, political and social issues. His articles have been published by OpEdNews, The Greanville Post, The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Global Research, and many other publications.   David is active in social issues relating to peace, race and religious relations, homelessness and equal justice. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, Saint Pete for Peace, CodePink, and International Solidarity Movement.

This article was first published by The Greanville Post, revised January 17, 2018.

Sources

North Korea: Another Country”, by Bruce Cumings.

“The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia,” by James Bradley.

“Korean Mind: Understanding Contemporary Korean Culture”, by Boye Lafayette De Mente

At 5 o’clock on the morning of November 13, more than 200 Haitian police officers raided the Grand Ravine area of Port-au-Prince. There was a series of loud explosions, followed by gunfire. For the next six hours, the commotion didn’t stop. The neighborhood was under siege.

What had started as an anti-gang operation in a poor and largely forgotten neighborhood — in a poor and largely forgotten country — ended in the summary execution of innocent civilians on a school campus.

The police officers were working with the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti. It was launched in October, a reboot of a previous mission that had begun in 2004, when thousands of U.N. troops were sent to Haiti following a coup d’etat, tasked in part with restoring stability and reinforcing national police capacities.

And though the U.N. mission issued a statement days after the raid calling for a prompt investigation by Haitian authorities, it did not publicly acknowledge its own role in the operation. But in late December, a U.N. spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept for the first time that the mission had helped plan the raid, though it distanced itself from the civilian deaths.

“The reported civilian death[s] were not part of the planned operation but of a unilateral action conducted by some [Haitian police] officers after the conclusion of the operation,” the spokesperson, Sophie Boutaud de la Combe, wrote in an email.

The raid of the school, according to the U.N. statement, was done without authorization, without alerting the police hierarchy, and outside of the operational plan.

Boutaud de la Combe said that, a day after the raid, the U.N. “conducted an internal enquiry with all the unit commanders who participated in the operation.” The U.N. inquiry, not previously reported, absolved the U.N., finding that U.N. police did not fire their weapons and only “secured the perimeter” of the school, she said.

“None of the [U.N. police] unit proceeded to the location at Maranatha College where the alleged killings took place,” the spokesperson wrote. “The planned portion of the operation went relatively well. The post-operation unilateral initiative of some HNP members to conduct a high risk search, proceeding outside of the operational cadre, without advising the hierarchy, without authorization and contravening the operation plan was not part of the planned operation.”

When I arrived at the Maranatha Evangelical College campus, traveling with a broadcast team from Al Jazeera four days after the raid, it was immediately obvious something heinous had transpired.

The blood that stained the concrete was still wet, unable to dry in the blanket of fog and mist that kept the capital unusually cool that particular week. Water pooled in the courtyard’s clogged drain had turned a dark red, partially obscuring an empty tear gas canister. The smell of the violence still hung in the heavy air.

Classrooms and offices had been ransacked, the contents of closets, drawers, and bookcases spilled across the floors and through the doorways. Light crept in through holes left by bullets that had pierced through the thick concrete. Sometime since the raid, someone had swept another five empty tear gas canisters and close to 100 heavy artillery shells into a pile.

The morning we arrived, faculty and students were meeting to mourn those who had been killed. The school was still closed. They gathered in one of the small classrooms, closed the door to us outsiders, and began to sing. The religious hymns — deep, soulful melodies — echoed throughout the courtyard where they mixed with cries of grieving victims and family members anxious to tell their stories.

“I must kill myself,” Monique Larosse, whose nephew was shot in this courtyard days earlier, told us. “Why did they kill him when they know he was not one of the bad men? He was someone who went to church, studied, and had principles.”

The stories Larosse, along with other survivors and family members, told me make clear something went horribly wrong on that mid-November day. While there’s a lot still unclear, one thing is for certain — the official narrative is at odds with what the people of Grand Ravine say they witnessed and experienced. And they are a far way off from finding justice.

Tear gas canisters and ammunition swept into a pile at Maranatha campus in Port-au-Prince, on Nov. 17, 2017. (Photo: Jake Johnston)

Located near the southern entrance to Haiti’s sprawling capital, Grand Ravine is built on a hillside with picturesque views of the Caribbean Sea. And yet, it’s a downtrodden neighborhood.

Haphazard construction with paltry regulation has left neighborhoods, including Grand Ravine, with little to no infrastructure or government services. Many areas are only accessible by foot.

Narrow, misshapen alleys ascend through the concrete homes secured with rusted sheet metal.

Amid all this is the Maranatha Evangelical College, which has operated here since the 1940s. Despite the name, it offers classes for neighborhood kids beginning in preschool. The campus is a mashup of school buildings, houses and a healthy number of full-size trees, a dissonant image in a city overwhelmed by concrete. A low wall marks it off from the surrounding area.

The only entrance to the elevated campus is a sloping, winding road that sits behind a large metal gate. The campus is a refuge, an oasis of calm in a section of Haiti rife with gang activity.

Grand Ravine is a “red zone,” the label international forces give to the country’s most violence-prone areas. In December 2016, Grand Ravine’s most powerful gang leader, Junior Decimus, was arrested at the airport when he attempted to travel abroad. Soon after, according to a report by local rights organization Justice and Peace, an armed conflict began as others sought to consolidate control of the neighborhood.

“Bursts of automatic weapons sang during the day, while police officers from the nearby station watched helplessly,” according to a hard copy of the organization’s report.

In October, the month before the police raid, groups of armed youth set up roadblocks, robbing cars in plain sight as they passed.

The same month, thousands of U.N. soldiers stationed in the country since the 2004 coup d’etat withdrew. Brought to Haiti to restore “stability,” the foreign troops have been involved in multiple deadly raids into neighborhoods similar to Grand Ravine. The international community has spent hundreds of millions training the Haitian police for the U.N.’s eventual departure.

The U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti ended its mandate in October, but the U.N. is by no means gone. In place of troops, the U.N. created a smaller successor mission composed of a few thousand police officers. In early November, together with the local police force responsible for the capital, that new U.N. mission helped plan the anti-gang raid into Grand Ravine.

The November 13 raid was one of the first major acts involving the new mission, and the response will define the future of the U.N.’s relationship with the people of Grand Ravine — and the success of the newly empowered local police force.

At 6:30 that mid-November morning, Armand Louis received a phone call from Maranatha College, the school he has directed for the last 30 years. Something was wrong. The police raid had spilled onto the school’s campus.

When he arrived nearly two hours later, tear gas was already being employed by police, according to an investigation by the National Network of Human Rights Defenders, a local human rights organization known by its French acronym, RNDDH, and confirmed in an interview with Louis. The following account is based on Intercept interviews with multiple witnesses, whose recollections mirror those included in RNDDH’s subsequent report on the massacre.

Police opened and searched classrooms, ransacking them in an apparent attempt to locate gang members hiding on campus. They didn’t find any.

There was a brief period of calm. People still on campus gave water to police. The burning in their eyes from the tear gas subsided.

An hour later, Louis said, the school’s guard, Julio Fongene, approached him and said that a number of gang members had threatened him and were hiding in a storage facility on campus. Louis informed the police.

When officers attempted to dislodge the hiding gang members, two police officers were shot. The gang members fled. It does not appear that any were apprehended, as the police have not made public any arrests of those responsible for shooting the officers.

U.N. units composed of police from Jordan and Senegal responded to reports of shots fired and arrived at the school. According to the U.N., they administered first aid to the injured police officers and secured the perimeter.

But on campus grounds, Haitian police proceeded to punish the bystanders caught up in the violence.

First, they shot and killed Fongene, the guard, witnesses said.

Police then accused Louis of setting them up. They dragged him into the central courtyard, where some faculty members and people who live on campus were present. The officers beat him with a chair, causing significant injuries to his head and torso. The Protestant Evangelical Baptist Mission of Haiti, affiliated with the school, included an account of the beating in its statement describing the events, and it was confirmed in an interview with Louis and in the RNDDH report.

Faculty tried to intervene. David Jean Baptiste, a professor, was beaten and then shot five times, including a bullet to the head. The courtyard grounds where he died remained bloodstained for days after.

Vanel Danger lives on the school’s campus and is responsible for the cafeteria. He told The Intercept that an officer put a gun to his head and threatened to pull out his teeth if he didn’t cooperate. Danger dropped to his knees and begged for his life. Danger told the officer he had given him water just an hour earlier, RNDDH reported. Danger was spared. But many more weren’t so lucky.

Louis told The Intercept he was handcuffed by an officer in a U.N. uniform and hauled off, bloody and beaten, to jail.

When the police finally left the campus, around 11 a.m., nine civilians lay dead in the courtyard — five of whom had been shot in the head. Not a single firearm was recovered, suggesting that the killings were “summary executions,” RNDDH reported.

The bodies were not removed until the next afternoon.

Ransacked school room at Maranatha campus in Port-au-Prince, on Nov. 17, 2017. (Photo: Jake Johnston)

Four days after  the raid, the alleys that weave around the campus and through the neighborhood’s hilly landscape were largely deserted. Groups of young kids watched us from rooftops. Darting eyes peering from behind small openings in concrete homes followed us throughout the neighborhood.

Very few of them wanted to speak.

“There are many more” victims of this and other shootings, a local resident and student at the school explained. “They are afraid,” added the student, whose name The Intercept is withholding out of concern for their safety.

Though the anti-gang raid ended with a schoolyard massacre, questions linger about what happened outside the campus, where the raid began. At first, the police acknowledged seven civilian deaths — all of which occurred at the school. Overall, the police made 32 arrests, but haven’t acknowledged any deaths outside of the school.

But in its investigation, RNDDH concluded that one of the people found dead on campus had been pulled out of his house in the surrounding neighborhood that morning and brought to the school only after his death.

The total death toll remains unknown.

Doresne Jean, director of the Saint Claire morgue in downtown Port-au-Prince, said that eight bodies had arrived from Grand Ravine on Tuesday, the day after the raid — more than the police originally acknowledged. But Jean said there were surely more.

“Maybe the police moved some bodies,” Jean said, “because we had five or six people come here to ask if we had their relatives.” They were not on the list of bodies already received.

Justice and Peace, the local human rights organization that has been monitoring violence in neighborhoods such as Grand Ravine, was one of the first to investigate the massacre. Rovelsond Apollon, an observer there, said his organization had confirmed 12 dead, but that the real total would likely never be known.

Not that many people, even in Haiti, are paying attention to what happens in Grand Ravine.

“A hundred or even 200 could die there and nobody would know,” Apollon said.

Four days after the raid, a single shoe sits in the middle of the soccer field behind Maranatha College in Port-au-Prince, on Nov. 17, 2017.

“I don’t know how I am going to live without my son,” Gina Napolean told us from the school’s courtyard, the grief visible on her face just four days after the massacre. Her only son, 22-year-old Kens Napoleon, had been the family’s breadwinner. He was killed by a shot to the head. She put the blame squarely on the government, who she accused of “sending the police to kill our children.”

It’s not just that politicians exert control over the police, Apollon said — they are involved with the gangs themselves. His organization has interviewed young people with heavy weaponry that is not easy to acquire, he explained, and they said the weapons had been provided by politicians.

“Politicians and authorities are not innocent in what happened, because they, too, play their part in the violence,” he said. The politicians, for their part, have not publicly addressed these accusations.

But since the raid, nearly every government official or institution has avoided taking responsibility.

Asked about the raid, the police chief simply said it was planned by the local captain and the new U.N. mission. Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant told the press that the specifics of field operations were outside his purview. Both blamed poor planning for the bloodshed.

The operation was compromised from the beginning. Police officers told local human rights investigators that confidential information about the operation was circulating even before it took place.

A former Haitian military official later told me that he found out about the raid when he heard it being discussed on an open radio channel on November 12, the day before it was launched. A gang leader later called in to a local radio show, alleging that a rival gang from a different neighborhood had participated with police in the raid itself. Others have suggested the raid was an attempt to recover a cache of guns that authorities had distributed in the neighborhood weeks earlier. And so the rumor mill in Haiti churns.

The U.N.’s statement — that its officers were stationed only at the perimeter of the school — contradicts the statements made by Louis, who told me he was handcuffed by a U.N. agent on campus. The U.N. insists that it was uninvolved because its officers were not in the courtyard, but the entrance where they say they were stationed is set just below the scene of the massacre.

The new U.N. mission is ostensibly focused on justice, but Apollon noted that Haiti has seen many international missions throughout its history. “They all failed,” he said, because they do not understand the Haitian reality.

In Haiti, he said, impunity reigns.

Near two months after the massacre, no one has been publicly held responsible. The police inspector general has completed an investigation and passed it on to a judge, who could order the arrest or dismissal of officers involved. One police officer accused of involvement is already missing, according to the inspector general. Families of nine victims, including those of the two police officers, received a one-time payment of about $1,500 for funeral expenses. But none of the intellectual authors of the botched raid appear to have been identified or questioned.

Instead, it was Louis, the school’s director, who was arrested for complicity in the death of the two police officers. After being publicly beaten with a chair at the school he had overseen for 30 years, Louis was held in a Port-au-Prince jail for more than a week.

Under pressure from religious organizations and the school’s faculty, Louis was eventually released for health reasons. But he still has not returned to the school.

“In a country like mine,” Louis wrote to me weeks later, “it is hard to take our leaders at their word.” That, he continued, was “why we need to know what the real motive [of the raid] was.” The public authorities have not yet interviewed him. Do “they really want everything to be investigated properly?” he said, “or was this all planned?”

Apollon said continued raids would do little to address the fundamental problems afflicting neighborhoods such as Grand Ravine. Rather, violence stems from the total absence of the state in such areas, and it will continue so long as the population’s needs are not met. What residents need, he said, “is education.”

After the raid, the school was closed for two weeks.

“We need school,” a student at Maranatha told me that day in the courtyard. “Without education, what hope do we have?”

“There are 50,000 troops still in Germany, still winning World War II three quarters of a century later.”

Late last year, a divided Congress approved a military spending bill of 700 billion dollars , more than either the President or the Pentagon had requested. Hundreds of billions will go to U.S. military bases and troops on foreign soil. The US is the largest, most lethal military power in human history with seven geographic commands spanning the globe, but that didn’t stop the new Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases from holding its first conference at the University of Baltimore from Friday to Sunday, January 12 to 14.

Here are just a few voices from the conference:

Leah Bolger, retired US military commander, full-time peace activist, and past President of Veterans For Peace:

“This conference is the first action, the first event, of a relatively new coalition, which is a coalition against US foreign military bases that has come together with 13 charter organizations. We are joined to address the issue of US foreign bases which are everywhere—somewhere between 800 and 1000. It’s ridiculous.”

David Swanson, co-founder of World Beyond War and author of the books “War is a Lie ” and “War is Never Just ”:

“Y’know, I watch a lot of basketball games because the University of Virginia is so darn good and I’m just disgusted because at every single game, they thank the troops for watching from 175—sometimes they even say more than 177— countries. They thank the “almost a million” men and women serving our country. They don’t explain what the service is, they don’t explain why they have to be in 177 countries. They don’t explain that there are only about 200 countries on earth, and that there are at least a dozen more countries they’re not telling us about. These are the ones they admit to.

“Anytime you have this nation attacking another nation, that is a crime that all of us can be united in opposing.”

“What are they doing there? What are they needed for? In some cases, it’s thousands; in some it’s ten thousands. There are 50,000 troops still in Germany, still winning World War II three quarters of a century later. It’s insanity and of course it costs hundreds of billions of dollars. People who think that we’re running low on money and we can’t afford things should understand that we could afford anything we wanted if we didn’t do things this stupid.”

Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report Editor, Founder of the National Black Alliance for Peace, and 2016 Green Party vice presidential candidate:

“We have a task before us this weekend. We have to struggle among ourselves to build a base line for unity because we know that all of us may not be there in terms of being prepared to take a clear class line, we may not be in full agreement about what national oppression and national liberation mean, we may not agree about the character of this state. But we can agree that anytime you have this state involved in direct intervention, anytime you have this nation attacking another nation, that is a crime that all of us can be united in opposing.”

The Real News Network, based there in Baltimore, livestreamed the event from gavel to gavel, and I produced a brief KPFA Radio-Berkeley News report while watching and downloading audio. However, I seemed to be the only other press beyond the websites of the conference participants themselves to take any interest. So on Monday I nominated the conference and its full spectrum arrogance video archive for a Project Censored Award . I recommend all eight sessions now on the YouTube :

1. Public Meeting/International Night,
2. The Environmental and Health Impact of U.S. Foreign Military Bases,
3. History and Economic Costs of U.S. Foreign Military Bases,
4. US Foreign Policy and the Strategic Role of Foreign Military Bases,
5. South America and Guantanamo,
6. The Middle East: US/NATO Plan,
7. AFRICOM and the Invasion of Africa,
8. Coalition’s Future Plan of Action

In the final session, reps from the 13 founding organizations met to hammer out their unity statement and plan the next conference. The location isn’t yet set, but it will take place on US-occupied foreign soil, so there’s a world of possibilities.

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Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at @AnnGarrison or [email protected] 

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Syrian Air Defense Ready to Destroy Turkish Warplanes If They Attack Afrin – Deputy FM

By South Front, January 18, 2018

Syria’s Air Defense Forces are ready to react to any Turkish hostile action in Afrin and the Damascus government will consider the Turkish military operation there as an act of aggression, deputy foreign minister Faisal Meqdad told reporters on January 18, according to the state-run news agency SANA.

Breaking – Tillerson Unveils ‘New’ US Syria Plan: ‘Assad Must Go!’

By Daniel McAdams, January 18, 2018

In a speech at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and introduced by President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Secretary Tillerson vowed that the United States military would continue to occupy Syrian territory until three conditions are met.

U.S. Creates Kurdish/Terrorist “Border Force” in Syria to Define Borders of Kurdistan

By Brandon Turbeville, January 18, 2018

For those that hoped Trump would bring a more sensible approach to the Western-induced Syrian crisis, it is almost for certain that those hopes have been officially dashed with the revelation of the Trump administration’s new policy regarding the SDF, Kurds, a new border force, and the logical partitioning plan that is obviously moving forward.

US to Set Up 30,000-strong “Border Force” in Syria

By Peter Symonds, January 18, 2018

In a provocative step that immediately fuelled tensions with Turkey and Russia, the US announced last weekend the establishment of a 30,000-strong Border Security Force (BSF) in enclaves of Syria under the control of the American proxies fighting to topple the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. The BSF will be dominated by fighters from Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), alongside elements from various Islamist militias.

Watch as ISIS and Al-Nusra Smuggle Money into Syria Using Vehicles with Red Cross Logos

By Paul Antonopoulos, January 18, 2018

A video has been uploaded of huge amounts of cash that was smuggled into Syria for ISIS and the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front using Red Cross logos on the boxes the money was stored in.

Syria’s Kurdish Led SDF: “Border Force” or “Terror Army”?

By Andrew Korybko, January 18, 2018

The US announced that it will train a 30,000-strong “border force” of the Kurdish-led SDF in Northern Syria in a controversial move that was immediately slammed by Turkey as the creation of a “terror army”. President Erdogan has long been opposed to the establishment of a de-facto Kurdish statelet along his country’s southern border, and the US strategy is playing right into his greatest fears.

Blockchain technology and the birth of the so-called cryptocurrencies finds deep roots in three contributing factors: the advance of technology: the manipulation of global economic and financial rules; and the persistent attempt to weaken the national economies of countries that geopolitically challenge the US power system. In this first article I address these issues from a financial point of view, in the next analysis I intend to dive into the geopolitical aspects and broader the perspective on how Russia, China and other nations are taking advantage of a decentralized financial system.

Many national economies seem to have begun the process of protecting themselves from what seems like an inevitable economic trend. De-dollarization — dumping dollars for other goods of value — has become popular not only with countries but also with ordinary individuals as a result of global technological growth and increasing access to the Internet. The financial markets are generally reflecting this same trend.

The US dollar is the world’s most dominant reserve currency. The planning and financial rules that accompany this situation are decided in the United States for the benefit of Washington and a few of her allies. This has been reflected in the creation of the petrodollar, the abolition of the gold standard, and the most recent financial crisis of 2008, with the senseless process of quantitative easing. All these economic decisions have been made with the precise aim of prolonging American domination of the global economy, artificially propping up an unsustainable financial system.

The practical consequences of this unsustainability have led over time to thoughts of a practical alternative, both to escape from the domination of the dollar and to re-anchor the economy to real value. The need to circumvent this situation has become especially urgent for countries with a large amount of dollar-denominated debt, or where they face the prospect of being excluded from the SWIFT international payment system.

It is therefore not accidental that countries like Iran and Venezuela, but also Russia and North Korea, have resorted to alternative methods to operate in the global economic space. Washington’s political decision in 2012 to remove Iranian banks from SWIFT immediately set off alarm bells for several countries. The need to escape from the possibility of being excluded from SWIFT became urgent for countries under the threat of Washington. An alternative payment system was thus born in 2015, christened the Cross-Border Interbank Payments System (CIPS), unsurprising founded by China. Basically a copy of the SWIFT system, it serves the role of being a backup system should the Americans seek to exclude from SWIFT recalcitrant countries. A more radical solution has been sought by Venezuela, with the country creating its own virtual currency. President Maduro has announced the creation of a crypto state currency based on the value of oil and supported by barrels of oil worth over five billion dollars. Venezuela has been forced to take this step because of a scarcity of US dollars in the country brought on by the economic warfare visited on the it by Washington, which has succeeded in driving the country into a deep crisis.

This search for fresh liquidity is a gamble for Maduro, who even hopes to be able to trade with allied countries in the new currency, thus circumventing international bans. Even North Korea is said to operate in bitcoin, thereby circumventing the international system of prohibitions and blockades.

The sanctions on Russia, and the influence that Washington exerts with the dollar on the global economic system, has led Moscow and Beijing to a de-dollarization agreement, establishing the yuan gold standard. Russia sells hydrocarbons to China, which pays for them in yuan, then Russia immediately converts the yuan into gold at the Shanghai Gold Exchange, in the process bypassing Washington’s sanctions.

This situation is being replicated in country after country. The United States increases financial and economic pressure on countries through such international bodies as the IMF and the World Bank, then these countries organize amongst themselves to push back against the interference. Technology has facilitated this strategy of decentralization against the center that is London and Washington, the financial heart and primary cause of manifold global problems. Firstly, the possibility of the unlimited printing of dollars has distorted global economies, inflating stock markets and causing national debts to grow out of control. Even the gold markets are manipulated by virtue of the abundance of easy money and such ponzi-scheme tools as derivatives and other forms of financial leverage. All too predictably, as seen in 2008, if it all comes crashing down, the central banks are going to bail out their partners through the mechanism of quantitative easing, guaranteeing unlimited cashflow and leaving taxpayers, along with the small players in the financial markets, to carry the burden.

It is probably too early for the common man to understand what is happening, but in fact the dollar is depreciating in relation to some more tangible assets. But gold continues to be corralled by parallel financial mechanisms and other financial instruments created for the sole purpose of manipulating the financial markets on which the common man depends in search of modest gains. As with others, the gold market suffers from the combine power of the US dollar, centralized financial institutions and market manipulation. Entities such as the FED (and their owners), criminally colluding and working with private banks, hedge funds, rating agencies and audit companies, have made immense wealth by driving the world into a debt scam that has stripped normal citizens of their future.

What is happening in the cryptocurrency markets in not only occurring in parallel with the spread of the Internet, smartphones and the increasing ability to operate in the digital world, but is also seen as a safe haven from centralized financial regulators and central banks; in other words, from the dollar and fiat currencies in general. Whether bitcoin will prove to be a wise long-term investment is yet to be seen, but the concept of cryptocurrencies is here to stay. The technology behind the idea, the blockchain, is a definitive model for decentralized economic transactions without any intermediary that can manipulate and distort the market at will. It is the antidote to the debt virus that is killing our society and spreading chaos around the world.

Washington is now left to deal with the consequences of its demented actions against its geopolitical adversaries. The decision to remove Iran from the SWIFT system, and the ongoing economic war against Russia and Venezuela, have pushed the People’s Republic of China to obviate any direct attacks on its financial system by creating an alternative economic system. The goal is to warn the United States and her allies that an economic alternative exists and is already operational, ready to be opposed to the Euro-American system if necessary. Washington does not seem to want to renounce the role of manipulator and ruler of world speculative finance, and the obvious result of this is the creation of a financial system that is slowly working against the current one. Lack of anonymity and the centrality of systems seem to be the two fundamental elements of the current financial system that orbits around London and Washington. An anonymous, decentralized and technologically reliable system could be exactly what Washington’s geopolitical adversaries have been looking for to end the US-Dollar hegemony.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

Featured image is from the author.

Yesterday (2017-01-16) Canada hosted a meeting of Foreign Ministers to discuss the situation concerning North Korea and nuclear weapons. What it amounted to was a bunch of U.S. sock puppets gathering to display subservience to the incredible double standards and lies promulgated by the U.S. It should be noted that the 20 invitees were the countries that had militarily supported the UN vote as the U.S. took advantage of a boycott by the USSR and the absence of China in order to start the international part of the war in the first place. Except of course, Russia and China, who also participated in the war, with the latter handing the U.S. one of its largest battlefield defeats in the process, were not invited.

As host of the event, Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland welcomed the participants, and in particular noted the presence of “Rex Tillerson, my friend.” She then laid out the clear parameters of U.S. foreign policy, saying

“No true progress can be made in addressing instability in the Korean peninsula until North Korea commits to changing course and verifiably and irreversibly abandoning all of its weapons of mass destruction.”

Umm, where to start? Perhaps we could start with Libya, who voluntarily gave up their nuclear program and ended up on the hit list of a U.S. created no fly zone. Well sure, they had oil, and Chinese investments, and a plan to create a gold based African currency, but really what we wanted was democracy and freedom – you know, the kind that the al-Qaeda group in eastern Libya were attempting to set up.

Or we could go back to Iraq, where there was no nuclear program, no weapons of mass destruction, no al-Qaeda, no Taliban, nothing to do with 9/11. There was only the lying and conniving of the U.S. as it sought to destroy another ‘regime’ – oh, and oil, and a bit of gold, and again the desire to sell oil not using the U.S. petrodollar.

But maybe one should simply look at the incredible double standard of the U.S. As the only country to ever have used nuclear weapons – unnecessarily as current historians indicate (it was about Russia – oh wait, it still is in the global picture – one of Freeland’s favorite bête noires) – a signatory to the NPT which states,

“Article VI – Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

The U.S. has abrogated that section and others on an ongoing basis, with actions against Iran and Russia, and for Israel, indicating as usual that their word is not worth the ink their names are signed with.

Later she commented,

“We in Canada understand…that it is vital that we come together…to confront aggression. Nowhere in the world do we see the proliferation of weapons and materials of mass destruction on the scale of North Korea’s programs.”

First off, “we” do not understand your perspective, other than as a shill for the U.S. empire. North Korea’s nuclear program is miniscule when compared to that of the U.S., Russia, Israel, Pakistan and India (the latter three are also outside the NPT). The U.S. in particular, under both Obama and Trump, have started a huge process of recalibrating their nuclear forces, the largest sector of the U.S. economy.

Freeland continues,

“We cannot stand by and let this threat persist. At stake are the safety and security of all the people of the world.”

Actually, that is true, but not for Freeland’s intentions. Yes, safety and security are at stake but mainly because of the U.S. known “first strike” nuclear planning, their known tendency to bomb the shit out of countries that don’t obey them (thus they become “shitholes”), and the general ignorance, hubris, arrogance, and lack of critical thought in all U.S. state agencies.

Sorry, I interrupted Ms Freeland,

“As a global community we have shown both by word and in deed that we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear threat to the world.”

Yes, in deed “we” certainly have. The U.S. signed on to the Iranian treaty that puts upon Iran the most stringent inspection terms of any IAEA actions in the world. At the same time Trump threatens to pull out of the treaty every six months which effectively kills any desire for other countries to invest in Iran, thus further limiting their economy. At the same time, old sanctions (an act of war in itself) are not removed, and new ones are imposed and threatened.

Did I mention Iraq and Libya? Yes I think I did.

It is the U.S. posturing, its arrogance, superciliousness, and above all its stated first strike nuclear policy that is the greatest threat to world peace today. The global community – in this case in Vancouver consisting of 20 countries, (admittedly a bit better than the 9 that supported the U.S. on the Jerusalem embassy vote) – has not shown anything by word and deed, but generally has been the victim by word and deed of many, many U.S. imperial actions against those that do not kowtow to their military/industrial/corporate/financial/political complex.

More from Freeland,

“Our message is clear. The pursuit of nuclearization will bring you neither security nor prosperity. Investing in nuclear weapons will lead only to more sanctions and to perpetual instability on the peninsula.”

Once again, all too true for the wrong intentions. That instability is brought about by U.S. interference in the region, aimed not so much at North Korea as at China and Russia. The history of South Korea indicates that prosperity is brought about by killing thousands of one’s own citizens who disagree with whichever U.S. supported dictator is in place at the time, supported by Japanese military functionaries, and then said dictators support the large Korean oligarchs – the chaebols – that control the largest businesses of all kinds in South Korea.

That would be North Korea’s fate if it gives up its nuclear weapons – an imposed dictatorship of some kind after another incredibly cruel and brutal U.S. attack . Having suffered complete devastation by the U.S. air force at the end of the Korean war, and now witnessing current actions against Iraq and Libya, the North Koreans would be well advised to keep their nuclear arsenal.

Canada and the U.S. always invoke the “international community” and “global community” aspects of their wishes and desires, wilfully oblivious to the information that indicates that these communities see the U.S. as the largest threat to world peace today. As the U.S. empire continues to slowly degrade itself to the level of a “shithole” country, Ms Freeland, on Canada’s behalf, is very willing to kiss her “friend’s” ass and take Canada down the hole with them.

Featured image: Sir David Attenborough (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Few documentaries have had quite this impact, so much so that it has ushered in the unfortunate combination of war and plastic, two terms that sit uneasily together, if at all.  Tears were recorded; anxiety levels were propelled as Sir David Attenborough tore and tugged at heart strings in his production Blue Planet II.  The oceans, warned the documentary maker, is becoming a toxic repository, and humans are to blame. 

More than eight million tons of plastic eventually finds an oceanic destination.  Decomposition will take centuries.  For Attenborough, one scene from the series stood out. 

“In it, as snowflakes settle on the ground, a baby albatross lies dead, its stomach pierced by a plastic toothpick fed to it by its own mother, having mistaken it for healthy food.  Nearby lies plastic litter that other hungry chicks have regurgitated.”   

For Attenborough, plastic supplies a certain demonology for the environmental movement, a vast and urgent target that requires mass mobilisation and action.

“There are fragments of nets so big they entangle the heads of fish, birds, turtles, and slowly strangle them.  Other pieces of plastic are so small that they are mistaken for food and eaten, accumulating in fishes’ stomachs, leaving them undernourished.”

To firstly declare war against something deemed valuable, even indispensable, to preservation, distribution and storage over a multitude of products, to name but a few purposes, is lofty.  To also identify the casus belli against the inanimate again finds haunting resonance with other failed conflicts: the war against drugs, for instance, or that against terrorism. Will this war go the same way?

Guilty consciences are powerful motivators, and fewer guiltier than the affluent, or mildly affluent.  Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May is one, a figure who has decided to embrace the environmental cause with vote grabbing enthusiasm.

“In the UK alone,” she intoned, “the amount of single-use plastic wasted every year would fill 1,000 Royal Albert Halls.”

May’s direction is far from surprising.  There is Attenborough propelling a movement, and there are the votes that went begging in 2017.  A Tory think-tank, Bright Blue, found that many who refused to vote for her party in the last general election considered environmental initiatives key.  Its polling “shows that climate change is the second highest issue younger people want senior politicians to discuss more, second only to health, and actually the top issue for 18- to 28-year-olds.”

In getting on the cart against plastic, May has attempted, unconvincingly, to reassure critics that moving Britain out of the EU would not result in a lowering of environmental standards.  Britannia will remain responsible.  Her government, she spoke with confidence at London Wetland Centre, would “leave the natural environment in a better state than we found it”. 

What Sir David says, goes, though May has suggested a slow approach that would eradicate all avoidable plastic waste in the UK by 2042.  (What, then, is unavoidable?  The question remains unanswered.)  “Plastic-free” aisles are to be encouraged; taxes and charges on takeaway containers are being proposed.  None of these, it should be noted, entails Parliamentary regulation, retaining the old British approach of gradualism in action. No revolutions, please.

Supermarket chains smell climbing profits, luring the ecologically minded to shelves and fridges like willing prey.  One such outlet is Iceland, a chain that wasted little time getting on the radio and airwaves to ride the green belt.  Targets have been advertised, and it promises to remove plastic packaging from all its own labelled products over the next five years.  Even better, goes the fine print, it will enable those with less heavily laden wallets to shop and stay green.

Companies such as Proctor & Gamble, makers of Head & Shoulders Shampoo, have collaborated to produce a recycled shampoo bottle using plastic found in beaches.  This, in turn, pads out it advertising campaigns.  Use our shampoo, and feel good about yourself.

The guilty consciences were whirling and emoting on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday as callers spoke of efforts to spend a week free of plastic, but ignobly failing before their friends, neighbours and fellow citizens, all of whom had managed to go one day further.  There were accounts about how French and German supermarkets ensure that fruits and vegetables are free, emancipated from the confines of plastic, and, it would seem, ready to salve the conscience of the green consumer.

In Britain, Attenborough’s environmental influence has become priestly for such individuals as Oswestry schoolteacher Mandy Price.  She has roped her daughter in as well in what has become a social media campaign featuring #doitfordavid, shared 125,000 times within a matter of hours.

“It has been shared on every continent apart from Antarctica,” praises Emily Davies of the Border Counties Advertiser.

This arms race of satisfying a bruised conscience has an undeniable merit in so far as it acknowledges some of the disastrous consequences of humanity’s addiction to the accessible and the easy.  Ambitious Mandy, for instance, speaks of her Facebook page “receiving photographs from lots of different people who are collecting plastic, even from holidaymakers in Cuba who have seen the posts and have recorded their own two-minute beach clean on the beautiful oceans there.”

But within such wars lie the seeds of, if not failure, then the coming of another problem.  In the British case, enduring snobbery is pointed to.  In Australia’s Northern Territory, environmental groups conceded in dismay that a ban single-use plastic bags less than 35 microns in thickness introduced in 2011 had not reduced plastic bag litter at all. On the contrary, the amount had increased.

This is a battle against human behaviour, against patterns of consumption and use in the human estate. It is, if nothing else, an attempt at behavioural adjustment and revolution.  Such a tall order, such a mission, but one that provides Mandy with rosy affirmation rather than dimming scepticism. 

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

The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday that Belize, Haiti and Samoa will no longer be eligible for temporary work visas. The announcement is scheduled to be published by the Federal Register on Thursday, exactly a week after U.S. President Donald Trump referred to African nations and Haiti as “shithole” countries during an Oval Office meeting on immigration reform.    

During the meeting where the president discussed the status of the roughly 800,000 immigrants who had benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, by shielding them from deportation, which was terminated by his administration, Trump had reportedly questioned why the U.S. needs to take in immigrants from “shithole” countries, rather than from countries like Norway sparking criticism by lawmakers and social and political actors who slammed Trump’s racism and overall immigration policies.

The H-2A and H-2B visas given to seasonal workers in agriculture and other industries are available to citizens of 80 countries. Haiti had been included in that list since 2012, after a successful lobbying campaign by humanitarian groups and both Republican and Democratic lawmakers to make Haiti eligible for short-term worker visas that could help Haitians recover from the catastrophic 2010 earthquake.

DHS’s official notice provides reasons for the elimination of each country. In the case of Belize the notice cites concerns over human trafficking and for Samoa it claims the Samoan government does not cooperate in accepting back their nationals once they’ve been ordered to leave the U.S..

For Haiti, the document claims the measure was taken due to a “high rate of overstaying the terms,” and to recipients’ “historically demonstrated high levels of fraud and abuse.”

DHS’s reason to ban Haitians from the visas does not hold up. According to Reuters, a 2016 DHS report claims that only 65 Haitians entered the United States on H-2A visas for agricultural work, and an amount “too low to report” entered on H-2B visas for non-agricultural seasonal work during the 2016 fiscal year.

This is not the first immigration measure taken by the Trump administration that affects Haitians. In November 2017, the DHS announced its decision to terminate the Temporary Protected Status granted to Haiti under the former President Barack Obama on Jan. 21, 2010 as an immediate response to the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The measure had allowed 59,000 Haitians to stay in the U.S. legally but it will expire this Monday, leaving many Haitian immigrants under threat of deportation.

Featured image is from GrafFiotech.

Confirming that the US military presence inside Syria had little to do with fighting ISIS, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson unveiled in detail today the real US strategy for Syria: overthrow of the Assad government. 

In a speech at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and introduced by President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Secretary Tillerson vowed that the United States military would continue to occupy Syrian territory until three conditions are met:

First: ISIS must be destroyed. 

This condition is made all the more problematic by the well-reported fact that it is the United States government that at every turn seems to pull ISIS chestnuts out of the fire. From handing them weapons to allowing them to escape when they are trapped in places like Raqqa, it almost seems like the US does not want to really see the end of ISIS.

Second: Assad must go. 

Tillerson’s admission that this is a sine qua non for any US military departure from Syria confirms that the Trump foreign policy is no different from that of Hillary Clinton or her former boss, President Obama. Recall that as part of his “thank you” tour, President-elect Trump reiterated promises made by candidate Trump to break with the past:

We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past. We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments. …In our dealings with other countries we will seek shared interests wherever possible…”

It is clear that he lied, as it is reported that he signed off on this new Syria strategy last month at a meeting of his National Security Council.

Secretary Tillerson said today that new elections should be held in Syria and that President Assad should lose:

The United States believes that free and transparent elections … will result in the permanent departure of Assad and his family from power… Assad’s regime is corrupt, and his methods of governance and economic development have increasingly excluded certain ethnic and religious groups… Such oppression cannot persist forever.

Tillerson’s speech reveals that the old myth about the Syrian people “rising up” to overthrow Assad is still very much viewed as Gospel truth in Washington:

…our expectation is that the desire for a return to normal life … will help rally the Syrian people and individuals within the regime to compel Assad to step down.

Translation: we are going to continue to make life miserable for you until you overthrow Assad. Then it will return to “normal.” Presumably the people of Syria understand what “normal” life after a US “liberation” looks like from examples like Libya, Iraq, and Ukraine.

Tillerson also made the bizarre assertion that US troops will remain in Syria to prevent the Syrian government from re-establishing control over the parts of Syria abandoned by a defeated ISIS. So the legitimate government of Syria will be prevented by an illegal United States military occupation from reclaiming its own territory? This is supposed to be a coherent policy?

Third: Refugees must be returned to Syria.

Secretary Tillerson said today at Stanford University:

America has an opportunity to help people who have suffered greatly. The safe and voluntary return of #Syrian refugees serves the security interests of the U.S. and our allies and partners. We must give Syrians a chance to return home and rebuild their lives.

But the one event that led to the biggest return of refugees back to Syria was violently opposed by the US government: the Syrian government’s liberation of east Aleppo from al-Qaeda control!

For additional consideration:

The US military is busy creating a 30,000-strong Kurdish militia to reportedly guard Syria’s borders with Turkey and Iraq. NATO-ally Turkey is violently opposing US moves to further arm Kurd groups that it considers terrorist.

The discredited “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) is back in Washington begging the Trump Administration to re-open the CIA weapons pipeline. The FSA is perhaps best known for immediately handing any weapons it gets from Washington directly to al-Qaeda in Syria. Will Trump’s neocon-filled ecosphere convince him to once again put some wind in al-Qaeda’s sails?

Will Congress awake from its slumber and finally dust off the part of the Constitution directing the Legislative Branch to decide on matters of war and peace? It’s probably an ill-advised bet, however there are a few whispers on Capitol Hill that a shift in US military focus from anti-ISIS to anti-Assad and anti-Iran might be slightly problematic.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has just unveiled a 100 percent neocon approved “new” US policy for Syria: No more pussyfooting around. We won’t abandon our project in Syria like Obama “abandoned” Libya (presumably, as the neocon myth goes, on the verge of becoming a new Switzerland after its “liberation” only to be thrust back into the mire by Obama’s premature withdrawal).

President Trump is set to out-neocon the neocons with this foolish and destructive policy. The showman is shown to be nothing but a fraud.

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Featured image is from the author.

Scattered over almost two centuries across the globe – in Germany, the US, Canada, Argentina and Australia – most members of the Croatian diaspora are still closely linked to their homeland.

The Croatian state responds in kind; it pledges to take “special care” of Croats living abroad, a pledge outlined in the country’s 1990 constitution. Subsequently, Croatia has set up the Central State Office for Croats Abroad, as well as a government body, the Council for Croats Abroad.

More controversially, some in the diaspora maintain close ties with the extreme right in Croatia, pushing a very sympathetic view of the Fascist Ustasa movement that ran the so-called Independent State of Croatia, NDH, under German-Italian patronage during World War II.

In late December, the appointment of Ante Juric, a prominent representative of the Croat community in Australia, to the government’s Council, attracted media attention.

Controversy arose after Juric told a Croat-language TV show on Australia’s SBS radio that the NDH was not a reviled Nazi satellite state but “a Croatian state, and I’m glad it was – while [its leader, Ante] Pavelic was for me one of the greatest Croats in history”.

Right-wingers in Germany rely on Church

People gathered in a Catholic mission in Frankfurt to watch Jasenovac – the Truth – projection organised by the Croatian right-wing party, In the Name of the Family – Project Homeland. Photo: In the Name of the Family – Project Homeland

Germany is home to the biggest Croat community in Europe, numbering some 440,000 people – equal to just over 10 per cent of Croatia’s total population.

Searching for better life, many Croats left what was then Yugoslavia for Germany back in the 1960s, and this trend has continued, increasing after Croatia joined the EU in 2013.

Danijel Majic, a German-Croat journalist who writes about right-wing extremism in Germany for the daily Frankfurter Rundschau, says the connections between parts of Croatian diaspora in Germany and the far right in Croatia are well established.

Croatia’s conservative Christian values NGO, “In the Name of the Family”, has a de facto branch in Germany. This was the NGO that pushed successfully for a referendum in Croatia in 2013 on marriage, defining it as an exclusively heterosexual union and effectively blocking the path to legalised gay marriage.

The NGO also helped file a successful plea for the legal rehabilitation of Filip Lukas, an intellectual close to the Ustasa regime. In July, the Zagreb County Court quashed the verdict passed decades ago by Yugoslav courts, rehabilitating him in full.

Majic says the Catholic Church provides important help for rightist movements among the émigrés.

“The only serious infrastructure among the Croat émigrés in Germany are the missions of the Catholic Church there … Since they the only ones that can offer venues for different political rallies or debates, almost exclusively for rightist politicians and NGOs,” he says.

While Majic says the German Catholic Church often “is not informed” about the activities organised within Croat Catholic missions, they are part-financed by the German Catholic Church, which is also financed partially from the German state budget.

Among those visiting these missions is Croatia’s far-right TV star Velimir Bujanec, host of the controversial TV show, Bujica, which is shown on the four biggest local TV stations in Croatia and aired abroad.

He has become increasingly influential thanks to the high-level guests appearing on his show, and his acquaintances, who include Croatia’s President, Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic.

Another controversial figure, Admiral Davor Domazet Loso, recently visited the German cities of Munich, Stuttgart and Offenbach on a mission organised by a Croatian priest.

In September, as tensions peaked between Croatia and Slovenia over the disputed waters in the Piran Gulf, Domazet Loso released an inflammatory statement declaring that the Croatian military “could be in Ljubljana in two days”.

Majic says events in the diaspora are organised also with the help of right-wing news sites, like Dnevno.hr and its weekly magazine 7 dnevno.

“It is a part of an obvious system, a political concept under which the Catholic Church, in a way, fosters far-right positions,” Majic adds.

Goal is to rewrite wartime history

One of the more controversial events organised for Croatian communities abroad was the screening of Jasenovac – the Truth, a documentary on the Ustase-run concentration camp made by Jakov Sedlar (image on the right).

The film that premiered in Zagreb in April 2016, was screened also in cities across Germany, such as Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Offenbach and Darmstadt.

Croatian right-wing party In the Name of the Family – Project Homeland, tied to the NGO, organised some of these screenings.

It has been fiercely criticised for seeming to downplay the crimes committed by the Ustasa in the camp, where over 83,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews and leftists were killed between 1941 and 1945.

Majic says the right-wing radicals in the diaspora constantly push a narrative that the Ustasa “weren’t as bad as the Communists”, and even that “the Ustasa weren’t villains at all”.

The recent verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, against six Bosnian Croat officials, and the suicide in court of one of those convicted, Slobodan Praljak, resonated strongly among Croatian communities in Germany, with the Church clearly taking the side of those who claimed Praljak was innocent and blamed the ICTY for his death.

After some Croat Catholic missions announced that Church services would be held in Germany for Praljak, the German Catholic Church distanced itself with a statement noting that “pastoral staff serving the dioceses should not question the verdict of The Hague Tribunal”.

Memories of the Croatian war of independence in the 1990s also loom large among the Croatian diaspora in Germany; back then, many members of the diaspora were actively involved in it.

Croatian communities collected money to buy arms for Croatia, which was under a UN-imposed embargo on arms reaching former Yugoslavia. They also assisted the Croat side in the three-way war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, between Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks.

“I remember that Croats in Frankfurt gathered money to buy a tank for the HVO [the Bosnian Croat armed force] in Kupres [in Bosnia] … I also remember how young men went to the war in Croatia as well. Some would go to fight during the vacation and then return to work in Germany,” Majic says.

Community in Latin America is in decline

Argentinian Croats protesting against former Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic statements on post-WWII crimes committed by anti-fascist Partisans. Photo: Facebook

Another sizeable Croat community is located in Argentina, which is home to around 250,000 of people of Croat decent.

However, many of these left what was then Austria-Hungary back in the 1900s, and have weaker ties to the country.

In Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, only around 5,000 of them have Croatian citizenship and can vote in the country’s elections.

The first wave of Croats reached Argentina in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Mostly came for economic reasons, after a vine disease devastated the vineyards on which many people depended in the coastal region of Dalmatia.

The second wave of arrivals that came after World War II, were mostly affiliated to the Ustasa regime, reaching Argentina from refugee camps in Italy and Austria, after the Communists took power in Yugoslavia in 1945.

Among them were some of the highest NDH officials, including Pavelic himself, as well as Eugen “Dido” Kvaternik who was in charge of the NDH concentration camps.

Along with them came Catholic clergy and intellectuals who opposed the new Communist regime.

While the role of the Latin American diaspora was strong during Yugoslav times, when it was seen as a dissident hub, its role has declined since the 1991-95 war in Croatia.

During the 1990s, however, members of the diaspora in Argentina gathered money to buy arms for Croatian forces in both Croatia and Bosnia. Arms were bought from Argentina and the deals involved some of top Argentinean officials, including the then President, Carlos Menem.

In 2013, an Argentinean court jailed Menem for seven years for taking part in an illegal shipment of arms to Croatia defying the UN embargo. The sentence was later commuted to house arrest.

Some Croats from Argentina went to Croatia to fight during the war as volunteers. One of them, Branko “Pilino” Pilsel, who was killed by the Yugoslav army in 1991 in Dalmatia, still has a special place in the memory of the community in Argentina.

Kazimir Katalinic, who was 18 when he left Yugoslavia in 1945, wrote a four-volume book, From Defeat to Victory, chronicling the Croatian diaspora from 1945 to 1990, which the far-right former Culture Minister of Croatia, Zlatko Hasanbegovic, helped to promote.

However, the influence of the radical diaspora in Argentina had faded, as former NDH officials or political dissidents slowly die away.

The turnout of Croat voters in Argentina in Croatia’s recent elections or referendums has been low.

Due to their lack of interest and because they can only cast votes in Buenos Aires, only 181 people voted in the second round of the Croatian presidential elections in 2015 and 130 in the parliamentary elections in 2016.

While now small in size, the diaspora in Argentina remains mostly oriented to the right. Its members voted against Croatia’s accession to the EU in 2012, and in favour of defining marriage as an exclusively heterosexual union in the 2013 referendum.

More radical elements among them also downplay the crimes committed in Jasenovac.

In 2017, at the Croat community centre in Buenos Aires and on their radio show Croacias Totales, members of a revisionist Croatian NGO, the Society for Research into the Threefold Jasenovac Camp, held lectures in which they insisted that Jasenovac had not been a concentration camp after all.

Despite much documentation and historical research to the contrary, the NGO claimed that Jasenovac was merely a labour camp under the Ustasa – and only became a death camp when the Communists took over.

Most members of the Croatian diaspora there follow the Croacias Totales radio show, which also has its website, as well as a Facebook page. These sites closely follow various events in Croatia, and replay controversial messages from Croatian clergy, among others.

Other radio shows such as Bar Croata and Croacia en mi corazon [Croatia in my heart], are all present on Facebook as well.

Some in the diaspora in Argentina keep up with the far right in Croatia by watching TV shows like Bujica and Markov trg, which was put under a temporary ban of local Z1 TV in 2016 after its host, Marko Juric, warned people in Zagreb to beware of so-called “Chetniks” lurking in the city’s Serbian Orthodox church.

Members of the diaspora in Argentina also criticised the recent verdict against six Bosnian Croat officials in the papers and radio shows.

*

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated.

A major new Gallup report that was issued on January 16th headlined “American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy” (it’s issued in conjunction with the Knight Foundation) and it finds that “Internet-only news websites” are the least-trusted of all newsmedia. 

54% trusted “Your local newspaper.”

52% trusted “National network news.”

51% trusted “Major national newspapers.” 

46% trusted “Cable news.”

38% trusted “News aggregators.”

36% trusted “Internet-only news websites.”

How did you learn that Saddam Hussein was “only six months from developing a [nuclear] weapon”? It was from the U.S. President, and from all of the stenographic ‘news’media, which was all of them, but especially the most-trusted ones: newspapers, TV, radio, and magazines. They enabled George W. Bush to invade and destroy Iraq, and more.

How did you learn that Libya should be invaded? It was from the same ones. They enabled Barack Obama to invade and destroy Libya, and Syria, and more.

How did you learn that dictatorship ended in Ukraine in February 2014’s “Maidan revolution,” instead of that that democracy ended in Ukraine then, and that it was instead a U.S.-engineered coup d’etat which happened there, no authentic ‘revolution’ at all. And this major-media lie thus ‘justified’ and led to the destruction of Ukraine, by U.S. President Obama.

The fake ‘news’ that affected history the most came from newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio. But the truth (such as you’ll see documented at those last links, the first of which is to a news-report which was produced by a lone individual from observers on the ground who had uploaded from their cellphones etc.) was available only at “internet-only news websites” — the type of sites that Americans respect the least.

Why do the public trust most the worst liars, the pumpers of the most viciously fake ‘news’? They do it because they’ve been taught to believe the most-successful newsmedia the most.

They’ve been taught that in order to be successful in newsmedia, the newsmedium needs to be reliably truthful, instead of to pump what the billionaires want you to think — to manipulate your mind and warp your view of reality the way they want.

All of those lies came from the owners and advertisers of the U.S. newsmedia and of the U.S. Government (which are the same owners and advertisers), the people who control the ‘best’ (i.e., worst) Government that big-money can buy — and does buy.

The only newsmedia that enable the reader to click onto a link and come directly (or at least indirectly) to allegations’ sources, are online news-sites that have the journalistic integrity to demand their writers to provide the links for all contentious allegations that are being made, so as to enable the reader to verify (or else invalidate — but the reader is doing this; no one is imposing such judgments upon the reader) what the allegation’s source is, and thus to evaluate it on his or her own. TV doesn’t do that. Radio doesn’t do that. Newspapers (even online ones) don’t do that. Magazines (even most of the online ones) don’t do that.

Why don’t they do that? TV, radio, and print media can’t. The bad online media don’t do it, because their owners don’t want to empower their audience; they want to persuade their audience to believe what the owners and the advertisers want them to believe. 

That’s the way to success in the news-business: to shape the ‘news’ in order to fool the public in the ways that the owners and advertisers want the public to be fooled. It’s salesmanship; it is PR; and, in America — where it’s often taught in some of the same academic departments, “Communications,” which teach both PR and ‘journalism’ — it is the management of the public’s perceptions, in the ways that the owners and advertisers want.

And the only way to get around it is to click onto links and find out what the real story is. Any merely passive access to ‘news’ is simply an invitation to being fooled, being manipulated by wealthy people’s ulterior motives, which are very private.

This is how America has come to be the way it now is — increasingly private, decreasingly public.

*

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.

Syria’s Air Defense Forces are ready to react to any Turkish hostile action in Afrin and the Damascus government will consider the Turkish military operation there as an act of aggression, deputy foreign minister Faisal Meqdad told reporters on January 18, according to the state-run news agency SANA.

“We warn the Turkish leadership that if they initiate combat operations in the Afrin area, that will be considered an act of aggression by the Turkish army,” the deputy foreign minister said adding that if a Turkish warplane attacks Syria it will become a legitimate target.

Meqdad continued emphasizing that Afrin and other northern areas of the country, currently not under control of Damascus, are still the territory of Syria.

The statement comes after Turkish top officials have once again announced that Turkish forces are ready to launch a military operation against Kurdish militias in northern Syria, particularly in the area of Afrin.

*

Featured image is from South Front.

Behind the backs of the US and world populations, social media companies have built up a massive censorship apparatus staffed by an army of “content reviewers” capable of seamlessly monitoring, tracking, and blocking millions of pieces of content.

The character of this apparatus was detailed in testimony Wednesday from representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by South Dakota Republican John Thune.

The hearing was called to review what technology companies are doing to shut down the communications of oppositional political organizations. It represented a significant escalation of the campaign, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, to establish unprecedented levels of censorship and control over the Internet.

Armed with increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems, these technology companies are free to remove and block the communications of their users at the behest of the government, in a seamless alliance between Silicon Valley and the major US spy agencies.

Monika Bickert, head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, told lawmakers that the social media giant now employs a security team of 10,000 people, 7,500 of whom “assess potentially violating content,” and that, “by the end of 2018 we will more than double” the security team.

This group includes “a dedicated counterterrorism team” of “former intelligence and law-enforcement officials and prosecutors who worked in the area of counterterrorism.” In other words, there is a revolving door between the technology giants and the state intelligence and police forces, with one increasingly indistinguishable from the other.

Bickert pointed to the growing use of artificial intelligence to flag content, saying Facebook does not “wait for these… bad actors to upload content to Facebook before placing it into our detection systems,” bragging that much of the “propaganda” removed from Facebook “is content that we identify ourselves before anybody” else has a chance to view it.

She added that Facebook has partnered with over a dozen other companies to maintain a blacklist of content, based on “unique digital fingerprints.” This means that if a piece of content, whether a video, image, or written statement, is flagged by any one of these companies, it will be banned from all social media. This database now includes some 50,000 pieces of content and is constantly growing, officials said.

In other words, the technology giants have created an all-pervasive system of censorship in which machines, trained to collaborate with the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies, are able to flag and block content even before it is posted.

Juniper Downs, global head of Public Policy and Government Relations at YouTube, likewise boasted that Google uses “a mix of technology and humans to remove content,” adding that YouTube relies on a “trusted flagger program” to provide “actionable flags” based on the flaggers’ experience with “issues like hate speech and terrorism,” words that imply that these “trusted flaggers” are connected to US intelligence agencies.

“Machine learning is now helping our human reviewers remove nearly five times as many videos as they were before,” Downs said, adding that Google’s censorship machine is virtually automated. She said that this year there will be “10,000 people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies.”

Downs declared that since June YouTube has “removed 160,000 videos and terminated 30,000 channels for violent extremism.” The company has “reviewed over two million videos” in its collaboration with “law enforcement, government,” and “NGOs.”

Downs stated that Google is actively engaged in promoting what she called “counter-speech,” that is, the promotion of propaganda narratives. She also pointed to Google’s Jigsaw program as deploying “targeted ads and YouTube videos to disrupt online radicalization,” and “redirecting” users to content that Google approves of.

The hearing also featured the testimony of Clint Watts, a former FBI official, former US Army officer, fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and a leading promoter of social media censorship.

Watts presented the hearing with an unhinged justification for what these massive powers might be used for, in a hypothetical scenario he dubbed “Anwar Awlaki meets PizzaGate.”

“The greatest concern moving forward,” he said, “might likely be a foreign intelligence service, posing as Americans on social media, infiltrating one or both political extremes in the US and then recruiting unwitting Americans to undertake violence against a target of the foreign power’s choosing.”

In this formulation, social opposition, what he calls the “political extremes,” including left-wing politics, is the product of foreign intervention and therefore treasonous. It is also defined as “terrorist” in content and therefore criminal.

Watts expressed extreme fear over the widespread growth of opposition to the policies of US imperialism. He arrogantly decried, “Lesser-educated populations around the world predominately arriving in cyberspace via mobile phones will be particularly vulnerable to social media manipulation.”

The content of Thursday’s testimony points the far-advanced preparations for the establishment of police state forms of rule.

The effort to control speech online is driven by a ruling elite that is immensely fearful of social opposition. Amid growing social inequality and the ever-mounting threat of world war, broad sections of the population, and in particular the working class, are increasingly disillusioned with the capitalist system. Having no social reform to offer, the ruling elites see censorship as the only means to prop up their rule.

Given the explosive content of the statements made at Thursday’s hearing, it is extraordinary that they received no significant coverage in either the print or broadcast media.

The hearing took place just one day after the World Socialist Web Site carried its live webinar, “Organizing Resistance to Internet Censorship,” featuring WSWS chairperson David North and journalist Chris Hedges.

Next week will see some 2,500 bankers, hedge fund managers, corporate CEOS, government officials and celebrities descend once again on the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Paying $55,000 a head as the price of admission, one could well assume that the representatives of the financial and corporate oligarchy drawn to the annual meeting, and the lavish parties that accompany it, have a lot to celebrate.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index published last month established that the fortunes of the world’s wealthiest 500 billionaires—many of whom will be in attendance—rose 23 percent over the past year, making them $1 trillion richer than at the end of 2016. And the obscene amounts of wealth keep rolling in, with the Dow closing at 26,000 Wednesday, recording its fastest ever 1,000-point rise.

Yet the principal report issued as the basis for the four days of meetings and closed-door discussions presents a picture of a global ruling elite living in mortal fear that growing economic and social crises, and, above all, the threat of world war and social revolution, may rob them of not only their fortunes, but their heads as well.

Titled “Fractures, Fears and Failures,” the WEF’s 2018 Global Risks Report includes subheads such as “Grim Reaping,” “The Death of Trade,” “Democracy Buckles,” “Precision Extinction”, “Into the Abyss”, “Fears of Ecological Armageddon” and “War without Rules.”

The report was drafted in conjunction with a survey conducted among nearly 1,000 banking and business executives, government officials and academics, which found that 93 percent of them feared a worsening of confrontations between the major powers in 2018. Fully 79 percent foresaw a heightened threat of a major “state-on-state” military conflict. The report cited both the confrontation between the US and North Korea, which has created the greatest threat of nuclear war since the height of the Cold War, and the increasingly complex inter-state conflicts produced by Washington’s military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

The fears of global war are well-founded. Last month, US President Donald Trump presented his new National Security Strategy, targeting Russia and China as “revisionist powers” standing in the way of the US assertion of global hegemony, and outlining an aggressive first-strike nuclear war policy, including against adversaries using conventional or cyber weapons.

This policy has been further fleshed out by a draft Nuclear Strategic Posture document to be unveiled by Trump later this month calling for the development of new smaller and more “usable” nuclear weapons for deployment on battlefields in Eastern Europe and Asia, making a full-scale global conflagration all the more likely.

This year’s gathering at Davos—sealed off and surrounded, as always, by thousands of troops and police—will be overshadowed by the attendance of Trump, the first US president to make an appearance since Bill Clinton 18 years ago. Aides indicate that Trump intends to deliver his standard “America First” tirade to the final session of the gathering.

While Trump’s speech may provide a particularly crude rebuff to the official slogan of this year’s forum— “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World” —it will constitute only one of the more noxious symptoms of the unraveling of the entire previous framework for international economy and politics under the impact of capitalism’s deepening contradictions and the incapacity of the various rival capitalist state to create a new “shared future” or mend the world’s fractures.

The contents of the WEF risk report point to the deep and insoluble character of the crisis gripping global capitalism.

The document states that while “headline economic indicators,” i.e., the soaring rise in share prices that have fattened the portfolios of the Davos attendees, are positive, this only “masks continuing underlying concerns.”

“This has been the weakest post-recession recovery on record,” the report states, adding, “Productivity growth remains puzzlingly weak.”

The world capitalist economy, it continues, is beset by “unsustainable asset prices, with the world now eight years into a bull run; elevated indebtedness … and continuing strains in the global financial system.”

In a section titled “Into the Abyss,” the document warns:

“Against a backdrop of domestic and international political strife—and with economic policy-makers already operating in uncharted territory—the eruption of another global financial crisis could overwhelm political and policy responses. A systemic collapse of the sort that was averted in 2007-2008 could push countries, regions or even the whole world over the edge and into a period of chaos.”

In addition to “rising military tensions,” “military buildups,” “proxy conflicts” and multiple “flashpoints” threatening war, the document points to the danger of rising social tensions within every capitalist country.

“In many countries the social and political fabric has been badly frayed by many years of stagnating real incomes,” it states, pointing to figures illustrating decelerating wages and rapidly rising social inequality.

“High levels of personal debt, coupled with inadequate savings and pension provisions, are one reason to expect that frustrations may deepen in the years ahead,” the report states.

It also recalls the 2014 WEF Global Risk Report’s warning that one of the world’s greatest threats was a level of youth unemployment so high that it threatened to create a “lost generation.” The report notes dryly that in the four years since, this level has remained “broadly static.” It warns that with so many millions of young people without work, “generational clashes over fiscal and labour-market policies” may erupt.

Concern over explosive social divisions is coupled with a worried section dealing with the Internet, headlined “Digital Wildfires”. It decries “the intentional use of social media to spread misinformation,” i.e., exposures of the real conditions confronting working people in every country, as a challenge to “global governance.” The report welcomes measures taken by Google and Facebook, as well as governments, to crack down on the “disruptiveness of online misinformation” through outright censorship.

The political conclusions drawn by the report are particularly stark:

“Democracy is already showing signs of strain in the face of economic, cultural and technological disruption. Much deeper damage is possible: social and political orders can break down. If an evenly divided country sees polarized positions harden into a winner-takes-all contest, the risk increases of political debate giving way to forms of secession or physical confrontation. In these circumstances, a tipping point could be reached. A spiral of violence could begin, particularly if public authorities lost control and then intervened on one side with disproportionate force. In some countries—with widespread ready access to weapons or a history of political violence—armed civil conflict could erupt. In others, the state might impose its will by force, risking long reverberating consequences: a state of emergency, the curtailment of civil liberties, even the cancellation of elections to protect public order.”

In other words, the world’s financial oligarchy is assembling in the exclusive and scenic Alpine resort of Davos to hold a frank discussion on the prospects for a new world war, the eruption of social contradictions into civil wars and the imposition of police state dictatorships.

What is described in the WEF report are conditions already emerging in the United States and every major capitalist country.

In 1938, on the eve of the Second World War, Leon Trotsky wrote of a capitalist ruling class that “toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe.” While the WEF risk report suggests that at least some elements of today’s ruling elite see the catastrophe on the horizon, they are as powerless as their forebears of 80 years ago to prevent it.

This places the greatest urgency upon the working class formulating its own independent strategic response to the global capitalist crisis, based on the perspective of uniting workers of every country in the fight to reorganize society on socialist foundations.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Sanctions don’t work. They’re counterproductive. They don’t change how nations operate. They’re illegal unless imposed by Security Council members.

They’re imposed as punishment against sovereign independent states, harming ordinary people in targeted nations, not ruling authorities.

On January 16, foreign ministers from 20 nations met in Vancouver on North Korea – hosted by Washington and Canada.

Participating nations were involved in America’s naked aggression on North Korea in the 1950s – Russia and China not invited because they favor diplomacy, not confrontation.

US and Canadian news releases followed Tuesday’s meeting. Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland announced “a $3.25 million commitment aimed at strengthening the global sanctions regime and countering North Korea’s sanctions evasion and proliferation networks,” explaining:

“The initiative will be implemented in partnership with the United States.”

Both countries want tougher sanctions on the DPRK, circumventing the Security Council’s exclusive authority to impose them.

Others unilaterally, bilaterally or in cahoots with multiple nations are unacceptable and illegal.

During Tuesday’s session, Freeland lied saying

“(t)he grave and growing threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs is a global challenge.”

Fact: North Korea threatens no one. It wants peace and stability on the peninsula, not confrontation or war.

It wants its sovereign independence respected, harsh sanctions removed, and a peace treaty, formally ending the 1950s war. An uneasy armistice is unacceptable, perpetuating tensions, instead of easing them.

It wants the threat of US aggression eliminated, why it continues developing its nuclear and ballistic missile deterrents – solely for defense, not offense.

Together with his Canadian, South Korean, Japanese and UK counterparts on Tuesday, Rex Tillerson called for “maximum pressure” on the DPRK, including tougher sanctions and interdicting North Korean vessels, high seas piracy if implemented, saying Washington “cannot and will not accept (North Korea) as a nuclear state.”

He rejected the Sino/Russian “freeze-for-freeze” approach, urging Washington halt its provocative military exercises with South Korea and Japan in return for Pyongyang freezing its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

It’s a common sense approach the Trump administration finds unacceptable, favoring bullying, brinkmanship and belligerence instead, risking nuclear war on the peninsula, catastrophic if launched, assuring millions of casualties and mass destruction.

Tillerson lied claiming Kim Jong-un “threaten(s) international peace and security through unlawful ballistic missile and nuclear tests.”

US imperial lawlessness threatens regional and world peace and stability. The problem on the peninsula lies in Washington, not Pyongyang.

Instead of favoring responsible diplomacy, US-led Vancouver participants “agree(d) to consider and take steps to impose unilateral sanctions and further…actions that go beyond those required by UN Security Council resolutions.”

Instead of agreeing on ways to ease tensions, they want them escalated.

Tuesday’s Vancouver meeting was a diplomatic disaster, perhaps prelude to US-launched aggression.

On Wednesday, a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said the following:

“The Russian-Chinese road map for the Korean settlement, announced in the Joint Statement of the Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministries of July 4, 2017, aims at a mutually acceptable solution of the entire set of problems exclusively by peaceful political and diplomatic means through a mutual reduction in military activity in the region, direct American-North Korean and inter-Korean negotiations and the discussion of security issues in Northeast Asia in a broad format.”

“No alternative is offered to this document. Nothing constructive was proposed by the participants in” Vancouver.

“Regrettably, we have to state that such events which are conducted hastily and which have a negative effect on functioning of proven multilateral formats, do not contribute to the normalization of the situation around the Korean Peninsula.”

“(O)n the contrary, (Vancouver) aggravated it. The ‘decision’ of the participants to consider introducing unilateral sanctions and other diplomatic measures (is) completely unacceptable and counterproductive.”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang slammed the Vancouver meeting, saying

“it divide(s) the international community and damage the chances of an appropriate settlement on the peninsula,” adding:

“Only through dialogue, equally addressing the reasonable concerns of all parties, can a way to an effective and peaceful resolution be found.”

Vancouver participants increased chances for war on the peninsula, instead of responsibly stepping back from the brink.

*

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

Israeli soldiers shot 14-year-old Palestinian Mohammad Tamimi point-blank in the face with a rubber-jacketed bullet on December 14, 2017, in Nabi Saleh, a small village in the occupied West Bank. The boy had to undergo six hours of surgery and was placed in a medically induced coma.

An hour later, Mohammad’s cousin, Ahed Tamimi, slapped and kicked at an armed Israeli soldier. Early the next week, after video of Ahed’s actions went viral, Israeli soldiers raided the Tamimi home at 3 a.m., arresting Ahed and confiscating the family’s phones, computers and laptops.

Ahed has been denied bail and could face years in prison. (Nour Tamimi, a 16-year-old cousin of Ahed’s who is also in the video, was also arrested and has been released on bail. Ahed’s mother Nariman was arrested later that day when she inquired about her daughter, and she remains in custody.)

Erasing the shooting

A January 1 Newsweek article described the incident as Ahed “assaulting Israeli soldiers,” “threatening two Israeli soldiers and then hitting them in the face,” “pushing the soldiers as well as kicking them, hitting them in the face and throwing stones at them.” The piece referred to Ahed’s actions as “assaults” and an “attack.” It failed to report that Israeli soldiers had just shot and severely injured her 14-year-old cousin.

Newsweek‘s depiction (1/1/18) of Palestinian prisoner Ahed Tamimi (left), “16-year-old who attacked Israeli soldiers.”

CNN (1/8/18) also ran a piece that left out the most serious act of violence that day, as did Reuters (12/28/17, 1/1/18). An Associated Press report (12/28/17) had the same deficiency, leaving the false impression that the soldier was attacked without provocation.

The Newsweek piece also failed to note that the Israeli soldiers are members of a military force that has been occupying the West Bank for 50 years. Nor does CBS’s December 21 account mention the occupation, which structures every interaction between Palestinians and Israelis. (The fact that occupied people have a legal right to resist occupation is left out of all of the articles discussed in this piece.)

A report in the New York Times (12/22/17) does not mention that Mohammad Tamimi was shot in the face with a rubber bullet until the 13th paragraph, as though this fact is of minimal importance. The Times describes Nabi Saleh as having “long-running disputes with a nearby Israeli settlement, Halamish, that Nabi Saleh residents say has stolen their land and water.” The Times does not note that, as a colony on occupied territory, Halamish is illegal under international law.

Normalizing military tribunals

The Newsweek piece says Tamimi “has now been indicted on five counts of assaulting security forces,” and that she is “charged with interfering with the soldiers’ duties by preventing them from returning to their post.” It notes that “in May, she was charged with interfering with soldiers who were trying to arrest a protester throwing stones,” and refers to her indictment two other times, including in the headline. At no point does the article mention that the proceedings are taking place in a military court. Similarly, an Associated Press(1/9/18) report refers to “Israel’s hard-charging prosecution” and “the charges” against Tamimi, without mentioning that she is being tried by the same occupying military that shot her cousin.

Omitting that information makes it sound like Tamimi will receive a fair legal process, but the evidence suggests the opposite. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are subjected to a military court system that “does not grant the right to due process and the rights derived from it,” whereas Israelis illegally colonizing the Occupied Territories have the rights and privileges of a civilian legal system.

In the military courts, the age of majority is 16, which means that Palestinian teenagers can be tried as adults, while 18 is the age of majority for Israelis. Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP), a group that has consultative status with the UN, reports that Israeli military court judges, who are either active duty or reserve officers in the Israeli military, “rarely exclude evidence obtained by coercion or torture, including confessions drafted in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children do not understand.” The Israeli military courts’ conviction rate of greater than 99 percent underscores how stacked they are against Palestinians.

Framing Resistance as PR Stunts

The New York Times’ framing of Tamimi’s story suggests that the case’s central issue is whether Palestinians or Israelis would have been better off if the soldier had reacted more violently to being slapped. The Times’ David Halbfinger says

that Israelis could not decide whether the soldiers were virtuous pillars of forbearance and strength . . . or an embarrassing advertisement of national paralysis and vulnerability.

Palestinians, meanwhile,

debated whether the video might have damaged their cause, by showing their oppressors behaving gently, or helped it, by showing that resistance can be effective even when one is unarmed.

The paper even implied that Palestinians may be happy that Tamimi was arrested, writing that “the scene of the young woman being hauled away may have given Palestinians the clear-cut propaganda coup they had been denied by the original confrontation.”

The New York Times (12/22/17) placed the same emphasis on life-threatening violence and social media tactics: “The latest incident, filmed in the family’s backyard, occurred within hours after a cousin of Ms. Tamimi’s was shot in the face with a rubber bullet, and it was streamed live on Facebook on December 15.”

CNN similarly trivialized Tamimi’s arrest, noting that Israelis call her “Shirley Temper” because of “her long ginger curls” and because they accuse her of “starring in carefully choreographed ‘Pallywood’ videos, a dismissive characterization of protests considered staged for the camera.”

While the Times and CNN provide a forum for speculation about whether Palestinians want their own children to suffer because it makes for good public relations, there is much this framing overlooks. For example, none of the above-mentioned articles mention the risk of Tamimi being seriously harmed in Israeli jails. Yet UNICEF charges Israel with subjecting Palestinian youth to “practices that amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture.” These include children “being aggressively awakened in the middle of the night by many armed soldiers and being forcibly brought to an interrogation center tied and blindfolded, sleep-deprived,” and “threatened with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault, against themselves or a family member.”

Israel’s well-documented mistreatment of Palestinian youth is ignored in these reports, which suggests it is not Palestinian parents but Western reporters who are interested in crafting a public relations spectacle.

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Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.

Featured image is from RT.

For those that hoped Trump would bring a more sensible approach to the Western-induced Syrian crisis, it is almost for certain that those hopes have been officially dashed with the revelation of the Trump administration’s new policy regarding the SDF, Kurds, a new border force, and the logical partitioning plan that is obviously moving forward.

The new plans announced by the United States involve the creation of a “border force” that is expected to contain around 30,000 personnel to be deployed at the borders controlled by the SDF (Syria Democratic Forces). The force will be trained by the United States and will contain members from the SDF and YPG and will see Kurdish members patrolling “Kurdish areas” while Arab members patrol “Arab areas.”

Naturally, the move has angered Turkey since it is opposed to Kurdish nationalism out of fears that it will inspire Kurdish extremists inside Turkey itself. Russia has also condemned the move claiming that it will lead to partitioning. Syria, for its part, has labeled the Trump administration’s plan as an insult to Syria’s national integrity and appears dedicated to Assad’s promise to liberate every inch of Syrian territory.

As Business Insider reports,

The U.S.-led coalition is working with its Syrian militia allies to set up a new border force of 30,000 personnel, the coalition said on Sunday, a move that has added to Turkish anger over U.S. support for Kurdish-dominated forces in Syria.

A senior Turkish official told Reuters the U.S. training of the new “Border Security Force” is the reason that the U.S. charge d’affaires was summoned in Ankara on Wednesday. The official did not elaborate.

The force, whose inaugural class is currently being trained, will be deployed at the borders of the area controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of militias in northern and eastern Syria dominated by the Kurdish YPG.

In an email to Reuters, the coalition’s Public Affairs Office confirmed details of the new force reported by The Defense Post. About half the force will be SDF veterans, and recruiting for the other half is underway, the coalition’s Public Affairs Office said.

The force will deploy along the border with Turkey to the north, the Iraqi border to the southeast, and along the Euphrates River Valley, which broadly acts as the dividing line separating the U.S.-backed SDF and Syrian government forces backed by Iran and Russia.

U.S. support for the SDF has put enormous strain on ties with NATO ally Turkey, which views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – a group that has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey.

Syria’s main Kurdish groups have emerged as one of the few winners of the Syrian war, and are working to entrench their autonomy over swathes of northern Syria.

Washington opposes those autonomy plans, even as it has backed the SDF, the main partner for the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria.

The coalition said the BSF would operate under SDF command and around 230 individuals were currently undergoing training in its inaugural class.

“Efforts are taken to ensure individuals serve in areas close to their homes. Therefore, the ethnic composition of the force will be relative to the areas in which they serve.

“More Kurds will serve in the areas in northern Syria. More Arabs will serve in areas along the Euphrates River Valley and along the border with Iraq to the south,” the coalition’s Public Affairs Office said.

“The base of the new force is essentially a realignment of approximately 15,000 members of the SDF to a new mission in the Border Security Force as their actions against ISIS draw to a close,” it said.

“They will be providing border security through professionally securing checkpoints and conducting counter-IED operations,” it said, adding that coalition and SDF forces were still engaging Islamic State pockets in Deir al-Zor province.

Source: Activist Post

The “coalition” has stated that the training was already underway. This has prompted a strong response by Turkey. As ABC Australia reports,

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the US was “playing with fire” by setting a force that would include Kurdish militia.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Washington “is taking worrying steps to legitimise this organisation [YPG] and make it lasting in the region”.

“It is absolutely not possible for this to be accepted,” he said, adding that Turkey “will continue its fight against any terrorist organisation regardless of its name and shape within and outside its borders”.

US support for the SDF has put enormous strain on ties with NATO ally Turkey, which views YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — a group that has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey and is considered a terrorist group by the European Union, Turkey and the United States.

Turkey has criticised the US for arming YPG and Arab fighters in the SDF, which drove Islamic State (IS) out of Raqqa and other parts of Syria.

“The US sent 4,900 trucks of weapons in Syria. We know this. This is not what allies do,” Mr Erdogan said.

“We know they sent 2,000 planes full of weapons.”

‘We will tear them down’

Mr Erdogan on Saturday said Turkish forces in Syria would “vanquish” Kurdish militia that control the neighbouring region of Afrin, putting Turkey at odds with US-backed forces.

“God willing, in the coming days, we will continue the operation to purge our southern border from terror,” he said in a speech in the eastern Turkish city of Elazig.

Turkish troops entered Idlib three months ago after an agreement with Russia and Iran for the three countries to try to reduce fighting between pro-Syrian government forces and rebel fighters in the largest remaining insurgent-held part of Syria.

But now they have turned their sights on the neighbouring Kurdish-controlled region of Afrin.

“If the terrorists in Afrin don’t surrender we will tear them down,” Mr Erdogan said.

Rojhat Roj, the YPG spokesman in Afrin, said Turkish forces stationed in Syria shelled several Kurdish villages in the Afrin region on Saturday, without causing casualties.

“From our side, there is no shelling at present,” he added.

Mr Erdogan has said the Kurdish YPG militia is trying to establish a “terror corridor” on Turkey’s southern border, linking Afrin with a large Kurdish-controlled area to the east.

In 2016 Turkey launched its Euphrates Shield military offensive in northern Syria to push back IS from the border and drive a wedge between the Kurdish-controlled regions.

“With the Euphrates Shield operation we cut the terror corridor right in the middle; we hit them one night suddenly,” Mr Erdogan said.

“With the Idlib operation, we are collapsing the western wing,” he said, in reference to Afrin.

The traditional borders of Kurdistan extend from Syria, through Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

Turkey fear Kurdish independence in Syria could spark a new push for independence among ethnic Kurds in Turkey.

Mr Erdogan said Turkey expected support and “strategic cooperation” from the US in their “legitimate efforts” in Syria.

“Despite it all, we believe we have common interests with America in the region and hope we can act in concert,” Mr Erdogan said.

“We expect our friends to display an attitude that befits them in this issue of survival that is so sensitive and so critical for our country.

“During the Afrin operation, I hope these powers will not give rise to error by appearing on the same side as the terror organisation.”

It is, of course, ironic that Erdogan would mention a “terror corridor” as reason for his military operations in Syria since it was initially Turkey who operated the “terror corridor” known as the “Jarablus corridor” that saw ISIS fighters trained in Jordan by the U.S. and NATO pouring into Syria along with foreign terrorists belonging to fighting units of various names (but all extremists, essentially ISIS fighters). Many writers such as myself stated early on that Erdogan was, at best, making a huge strategic mistake in encouraging the destruction of Syria since such a move was likely to stir up Kurdish nationalist sentiment both outside and inside Turkey. Now that Erdogan has risked the stability of his own country on pipe dreams of being the next Ottoman Empire, he is worried that the cards he played on his reckless gamble are not going to pay off. Make no mistake, Turkey is not interested in righting its wrongs but in expanding its territory, defending against the Kurds, and continuing to push an Islamist overthrow of the Syrian government. It’s closer partnership with Russia came only as Erdogan came to understand that the U.S. and its “coalition” had very little concern with the overall aspirations of Turkey.

Russia also condemned the plans. ABC, again, reports,

Chairman of the Defence Committee of Russia’s State Duma Vladimir Shamanov told local media Russia would undertake measures as a response to the US-led coalition’s decision to create the “so-called Border Security Force”.

He said the move “stands in direct confrontation” with Russian interests, and they would take measures to stabilise Syria.

The Syrian government stated that the new American-organized force “represents a blatant assault” on Syrian sovereignty and has referred to the US as an illegal occupying force. It also referred to members of the SDF and new American “border force” as “traitors.”

What is becoming more and more clear is that the United States, GCC, Israel, and NATO have determined that the feasibility of destroying the Syrian government in the same manner as in Libya is becoming less and less plausible by the day. Plan B, however, is the partitioning and the “Federalization” of Syria into several independent countries or one country with several “autonomous” zones headed by a weakened central government incapable of maintaining power and steering the ship of state.

The move to create a “border force” is nothing more than an attempt to solidify the borders of “Kurdistan” in Syria and a possible “Sunnistan” in the east. These plans are not reasonable solutions to a crisis, they are imperialism pure and simple and they have existed for decades. Not only Syria’s allies but the American people must oppose this plan as well.

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Brandon Turbeville writes for Activist Post – article archive here – He is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1000 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

When an intelligence agency arranges to disseminated fake news it is called “disinformation” and it is a subset of what is referred to as covert action, basically secret operations run in a foreign country to influence opinion or to disrupt the functioning of a government or group that is considered to be hostile.

During the Cold War, disinformation operations were run by many of the leading players in both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and in the opposition Warsaw Pact. Sometimes the activity and the sponsorship were clearly visible, as when Radio Free Europe and Radio Moscow would exchange barbs about just how bad daily life was in the opposition alliance. Sometimes, however, it took the form of clandestinely placing stories in the media that were clearly untrue but designed to shift public perceptions of what was taking place in the world. The Vietnam War provided a perfect proxy playing field, with stories emanating from the U.S. government and its supporters presenting a narrative of a fight for democracy against totalitarianism while the Communist bloc promoted a contrary tale of colonial and capitalist oppression of a people striving to be free.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) inherited the mantle of covert action operations as a legacy from its OSS predecessor, which had had considerable success in conducting disinformation operations during World War 2. But there was from the start considerable opposition to continuing such programs as they were both expensive and subject to devastating blowback when they were identified and exposed. In Western Europe, powerful domestic communist parties were quick to publicize U.S. intelligence missteps, but nevertheless the ability to manipulate the news and information media to place stories critical of the Soviets and their allies led to major programs that funded magazines and books while also seeking to acquire a cadre of journalists that would produce pieces on demand proved too tempting to ignore.

There has been considerable ex post facto examination of the CIA’s use of covert funding mechanisms including the Congress of Cultural Freedom to fund writers and magazines in Europe, the best known of which were The Paris Review and Encounter out of London. As there was a low intensity war going on against communism, a conflict which many patriotic writers supported, funding magazines and finding contributors to write appropriate material was relatively easy and hardly challenged. Some senior editors knew or strongly suspected where their funding was coming from while some did not, but most didn’t ask any questions because then as now patrons of literary magazines were in short supply. Many of the writers were in the dark about the funding, but wrote what they did because of their own personal political convictions. The CIA, seeking value for money, would urge certain editorial lines but was not always very aggressive in doing so as it sought to allow the process to play out without too much interference.

Opinion magazines were one thing, but penetrating the newspaper world was quite a different story. It was easy to find a low or mid-level journalist and pay him to write certain pieces, but the pathway to actual publication was and is more complicated than that, going as it does through several editorial levels before appearing in print. A recent book cites the belief that CIA had “an agent at a newspaper in every world capital at least since 1977” who could be directed to post or kill stories. While it is true that U.S. Embassies and intelligence services had considerable ability to place stories in capitals in Latin America and parts of Asia, the record in Europe, where I worked, was somewhat mixed. I knew of only one senior editor of a major European newspaper who was considered to be an Agency resource, and even he could not place fake news as he was answerable both to his editorial board and the conglomerate that owned the paper. He also refused to take a salary from CIA, which meant that his cooperation was voluntary and he could not be directed.

CIA did indeed have a considerable number of journalist “assets” in Europe but they were generally stringers or mid-level and had only limited capability to actually shape the news. They frequently wrote for publications that had little or no impact. Indeed, one might reasonably ask whether the support of literary magazines in the fifties and sixties which morphed into more direct operations seeking journalist agents had any significant impact at all in geopolitical terms or on the Cold War itself.

More insidious was so-called Operation Mockingbird, which began in the early 1950s and which more-or-less openly obtained the cooperation of major American publications and news outlets to help fight communist “subversion.” The activity was exposed by Seymour Hersh in 1975 and was further described by the Church Commission in 1976, after which point CIA operations to influence opinion in the United States became illegal and the use of American journalists as agents was also generally prohibited. It was also learned that the Agency had been working outside its founding charter to infiltrate student groups and antiwar organizations under Operation Chaos, run by the CIA’s controversial if not completely crazy counterintelligence Czar James Jesus Angleton.

As the wheel of government frequently ends up turning full circle, we appear to be back in the age of disinformation, where the national security agencies of the U.S. government, including CIA, are now suspected of peddling stories that are intended to influence opinion in the United States and produce a political response. The Steele Dossier on Donald Trump is a perfect example, a report that surfaced through a deliberate series of actions by then CIA Director John Brennan, and which was filled with unverifiable innuendo intended to destroy the president-elect’s reputation before he took office. It is undeniably a positive development for all Americans who care about good governance that Congress is now intending to investigate the dossier to determine who ordered it, paid for it, and what it was intended to achieve.

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Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests.

Featured image is from Salon.

In a provocative step that immediately fuelled tensions with Turkey and Russia, the US announced last weekend the establishment of a 30,000-strong Border Security Force (BSF) in enclaves of Syria under the control of the American proxies fighting to topple the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. The BSF will be dominated by fighters from Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), alongside elements from various Islamist militias.

Having proclaimed the defeat of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Washington has no intention of leaving Syria. It is determined to carve out a swathe of territory from which to prosecute its goal of ousting Assad. The latest move will not only intensify the civil war in Syria but bring the US into direct conflict with Russia and Iran, which back the Assad regime, and Turkey, which regards the YPG as a direct military threat.

Colonel Thomas Veale, a spokesman for the US-led coalition against ISIS, announced that the 15,000 troops of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) would form the core of the new army.

“Currently, there are approximately 230 individuals training in the BSF’s inaugural class, with the goal of a final force size of approximately 30,000,” he said.

Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Thursday, David Satterfield, acting US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, revealed that the Trump administration’s aims, beyond the continued suppression of ISIS, involve the consolidation of the SDF in the north and northeast of Syria, and the countering of Iranian influence.

The war against ISIS was only ever a pretext for advancing US plans for regime change in Damascus as the means for combatting Iranian and Russian influence in Syria. Far from destroying ISIS, the US, which maintains 2,000 troops in Syria, and its local proxies ensured the safety of thousands of armed ISIS fighters. According to Russia, these ISIS fighters are being trained and integrated into anti-Assad forces.

Under pressure to explain why US forces are being kept in Syria, Satterfield blurted out:

“We are deeply concerned with the activities of Iran, with the ability of Iran to enhance those activities through a greater ability to move matériel into Syria. And I would rather leave the discussion at that point.”

In other words, the Trump administration is preparing for a war in Syria to oust Tehran’s ally Assad that could easily spill over into a wider conflict with Iran, and potentially Russia.

At the same time, the US is facing possible Turkish military action that could destroy plans for a pro-American zone in Syria. Turkey, a NATO ally, is deeply concerned about linkages between the YPG and the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which it brands a terrorist group and has long sought to suppress. Three months ago, Turkish troops crossed the border into Syria near the YPG-controlled Idlib enclave in northern Syria.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused the US over the weekend of “taking worrying steps to legitimise this organisation [YPG] and make it lasting in the region.” He warned:

“It is absolutely not possible for this to be accepted.” Turkey would “continue its fight against any terrorist organisation regardless of its name and shape within and outside its borders.”

Erdogan condemned US support for the YPG, declaring on the weekend:

“The US sent 4,900 trucks of weapons in Syria. We know this. This is not what allies do.”

At a rally yesterday he reiterated his determination to “vanquish” the Kurdish militia.

“We have finished our preparations,” he said. “The operation can start any time.” Erdogan accused the US of “creating a terror army on our border,” adding: “What we have to do is nip this terror army in the bud.”

The Syrian government denounced the planned pro-US border force as a “blatant assault” on the country’s sovereignty. The state-run news agency, SANA, cited a foreign ministry spokesperson as insisting that the army was determined to thwart the US “conspiracy, end the presence of the US, its agents and tools in Syria, establish full control over the entire Syria territory and preserve the country’s sovereignty.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday accused the US of seeking to split up Syria, saying it “does not want to keep Syria as a state in its current borders.” Washington was helping “the Syrian Democratic Forces to set up some border security zones.”

Lavrov stated:

“What it would mean is that vast swathes of territory along the border of Turkey and Iraq would be isolated. It’s to the east of the Euphrates River. There are difficult relations between Kurds and Arabs there. There is a fear they are pursuing a policy to cut Syria into several pieces.”

Vladimir Shmanov, chairman of the Russian State Duma’s defence committee, warned that Russia would respond to the planned Syrian border force.

“[It] stands in direct confrontation [with Russia’s interests] and we and our colleagues will certainly undertake certain measures on stabilisation of the situation in Syria,” he said.

The US announcement that it will train and equip a 30,000-strong military force is a desperate attempt to shore up its position in Syria. Diplomatically, it is Moscow, not Washington, that appears to be dictating the terms of negotiations over Syria, with plans for a conference in Sochi later this month to discuss the country’s future.

Militarily, the US-backed anti-Assad militias have suffered one defeat after another, not only because of Russian and Iranian support for the Syrian army, but because of widespread popular hostility, particularly to the reactionary Al Qaeda-linked elements supported by Washington.

The last remaining major Syrian opposition enclave of Idlib has been the focus of a major government offensive since the beginning of year. Into this volatile mix, the US has declared that it intends to stake out a claim by funding, training and arming a large new proxy army, only compounding the danger of a wider war.

While much of the early reporting on the Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review has focused on acquiring smaller nukes and using them much more often, the details continue to slowly emerge, and show a scramble to establish more pretexts for nuclear first strikes.

This includes cyberattacks. In hyping up the threat of major cyberattacks that might conceivably put lives at risk, the Pentagon’s document proposes the use of nuclear first strikes against cyber foes, presenting that as the only “realistic” option to such threats.

The “massive cyber attack” narrative is built around the assumption that a particularly severe hack could conceivably knock out a good portion of the US electricity grid, a major cellphone network, or even some of the Internet’s backbone.

Obviously no such hacks have ever happened, but officials have been eager to play them up as a possibility, both as a way to justify more spending on cyberwarfare, and to hype threats posed by whatever enemy they choose to hype.

Which is another problem. US assignments of blame in cyberattacks are rarely grounded in evidence or reality, but rather they blame whoever is politically expedient at the time, whether it’s Russia, China, or North Korea. Such reckless blame is relatively consequence-free when the US just responds with angry threats, but nuclear strikes could quickly start massive, civilization ending nuclear warfare.

Making nuclear war more likely is the general theme of the Nuclear Posture Review anyhow though, and while it’s drawing a lot of criticism for that from former officials and private analysts, it’s not at all clear that within the current administration, this bellicose and irresponsible posture isn’t the whole point.

The Trump Administration has spent its entire time in power easing restrictions on the military, and giving commanders more and more leeway on their operations. It might not be such a surprise for that to spill over into nuclear weapon policy.

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Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image is from the author.

On January 16 in Vancouver, the Canadian and US governments hosted a summit meeting of foreign ministers of twenty Western countries which fought against the DPRK (North Korea) during the Korean War of 1950-53.

Although the meeting was billed as an opportunity to find a diplomatic solution to the standoff between the USA and the DPRK over North Korea’s nuclear program, the military option was never off the table. Donald Trump, president of one of the two countries sponsoring the summit, threatened the DPRK with “total destruction” and “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” It’s important to note that such threats are violations of international law. Article 2.4 of the United Nations Charter outlaws even the threat of force against any state.

North Korea was not invited to the meeting. Neither were China and Russia. The Chinese government termed the summit “destructive.”

 “It will only create divisions within the international community and harm joint efforts to appropriately resolve the Korean peninsula nuclear issue,” spokesperson Lu Kang said to reporters in Beijing.¹

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov termed the meeting “pernicious and detrimental” and questioned the wisdom of bringing together representatives of the countries which fought North Korea, Russia, and China during the Korean War.²

As the Chinese and Russian governments predicted, the summit turned into a bellicose gathering which decided to tighten the screws on the already all-pervasive economic sanctions against North Korea. The Canadian government pledged to donate $3.25 million to a US State Department program “that will help countries enforce sanctions against the North Korean regime.”³ And there was a concurrent threat from a US State Department representative of interdicting (that is, boarding) ships on the high seas bound for North Korean ports:

 “We continue to explore all options to enhance maritime security and the ability to interdict maritime traffic, those transporting goods to and from the [North] that support the nuclear and missile program,” said Brian Hook, director of policy planning at the State Department.⁴

Finally, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson praised countries which had broken off diplomatic relations with the DPRK and encouraged more to do so. Such bellicose talk and action leads easily to military confrontation. And some have pointed out that the participants at the summit could easily turn into the backbone of a new “coalition of the willing” to launch a pre-emptive, and possibly nuclear, military strike at North Korea’s nuclear facilities.⁵

North Korea Justly Worried

North Korea is nervous about the USA for several valid reasons. First, during the Korean War, US forces laid waste to the country, carpet-bombing its cities, killing 30% of its population. Secondly, the USA has steadfastly refused to sign a peace treaty to end that war. Instead, it maintains a permanent occupation force of 30000 troops just kilometres away in South Korea and conducts huge, regular, and deliberately provocative military exercises close to the Demilitarized Zone and along North Korea’s coasts, containing a “decapitation” component, specifically designed to assassinate the DPRK leadership. In the event of war, US Central Command automatically takes control of South Korea’s military. So, essentially, a hostile power resides along North Korea’s southern border.

Canada’s Unhelpful Role

So far, the Trudeau government has not contributed to a peaceful solution. Instead, Canada sponsored the most recent UN resolution in late 2017 levelling further economic sanctions against the DPRK. Such sanctions are often deadlier than bombs. A half-million Iraqi children died due to ten years of US sanctions.⁶ Three to four million Syrians were turned into refugees largely due to a Canadian-led economic sanctions regime.⁷ As in the case of Syria, the economic sanctions levelled against North Korea also deliberately target civilians and are designed to create a sufficient level of civilian unrest for regime change in North Korea to take place.

Danger of Nuclear War

Not finding a peaceful solution to the current crisis could be catastrophic. Since 2002, the USA has classed “tactical” nuclear weapons as conventional weapons to be used, at its discretion, in first-strike pre-emptive attacks. These bunker-busting bombs possess up to twelve times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Today, fingers on those “tactical” buttons belong to three-star US generals in the field. If war broke out in Korea, and nukes were used, the scenario of a radioactive nuclear winter covering the entire planet would be likely.

What Trudeau Should Do

The Trudeau government could have played a helpful role for peace at the January 16 summit meeting by pushing for a peace treaty finally to end the Korean War. All that exists now is an armistice. It could have helped mentor an agreement between the DPRK and USA to freeze North Korea’s nuclear program at existing levels in return for the USA removing its troops from South Korea and stopping provocative military exercises. The Trudeau government could have set an example in NATO by joining the Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons, which, unlike North Korea, it voted against at the UN. Indeed, a number of anti-war groups held several activities in Vancouver concurrent with the summit calling for all of the above points.

At the very minimum, the Government of Canada could stop perpetuating false stereotypes about North Korea.

One is that the “isolated Hermit Kingdom” is the most dangerous regime on the planet. Actually, North Korea hasn’t been involved in war for sixty-five years. During that time, the USA has intervened militarily in over fifty countries.⁸ Clearly, the USA is far more dangerous.

Another is that North Korea’s a rogue state. Actually, North Korea has committed few, if any, violations of international law. On the other hand, the USA wantonly disregards international consensus, for example, by unilaterally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and by attacking many states, in contravention of international law and its own constitution.

A third is that North Korea can’t be allowed to have nuclear ambitions. However, any sovereign state may possess nuclear weapons. The USA has thousands, ranging from “tactical” (one-to-twelve times the explosive power released at Hiroshima) to “strategic” (up to 1000 times Hiroshima). The USA is also the only country ever to use nuclear weapons in wartime, killing over two hundred thousand Japanese civilians in 1945, after the Japanese government offered unsuccessfully on several occasions to surrender. Today, even tiny countries, such as Belgium and Holland have about 50 nuclear weapons each. Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Israel also have nuclear weapons. Why not North Korea?

North Korea observed that, when Saddam and Gadaffi disposed of their weapons of mass destruction, their countries were targeted by the USA. As US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard noted, while the Vancouver summit was in progress,

“…we know that North Korea has these nuclear weapons because they see how the United States, in Libya for example, guaranteed Gaddafi, we’re not going to go after you; you should get rid of your nuclear weapons. He did, then we went and led an attack that toppled Gaddafi, launching Libya into chaos that we are still seeing the results of today. North Korea sees what we did in Iraq, with Saddam Hussein, with those false reports of weapons of mass destruction…”⁹

Vancouver summit (Source: RT)

The guiding principle at Vancouver should have been that states, which took part in the Korean War, shouldn’t repeat the same mistake. Instead, the hosts, Canada’s Global Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, excluded North Korea, China, and Russia, thus ratcheting up east-west tensions. The participants could have looked out of the venue windows and seen protesters’ banners reading, “Hands Off North Korea!” Instead, they chose to tighten economic sanctions which will cause hunger, privation, and unemployment among North Korea’s civilian population. As Graeme Macqueen and Chris Black wrote recently on this website,

“If we Canadians think a lasting peace with North Korea will be obtained by insulting and starving the population of that beleaguered country we are as foolish, and as heartless, as those who put their faith in bombs.”¹⁰

The likelihood is that we will soon see more ships stopped at sea. Just last month, South Korea seized two freighters, docked in South Korean ports, as part of what it called a continuing attempt to stop North Korea’s efforts to evade UN sanctions. The two ships, a Panamanian and a Hong Kong-based vessel, were suspected of transporting oil to North Korea. And according to the latest UN resolution on economic sanctions against North Korea, sponsored by Canada, countries may impound such ships in their own ports. But what happens when ships are boarded in international waters, as suggested by a US State Department official, and those ships are North Korean, Russian, or Chinese?

What happens when the interdicting ships are Canadian military vessels? The Canadian Chief of Defence Staff says Canada has the capability to do so.¹¹

Trudeau and Freeland let Canadians down. In Vancouver, they could have tried to stop the US juggernaut for war with North Korea or at least jumped off. They did neither. Canadians need to ponder that failure.

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Ken Stone is Treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War.

Notes

¹ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-scorn-north-korea-meeting-vancouver-1.4482387

² http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-defends-north-korea-meeting-after-russian-chinese-criticism-1.4488960

³ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/north-korea-summit-vancouver-freeland-tillerson-1.4489166

⁴ “U.S. State Department officials confirmed last week that they will discuss whether to intercept ships headed in and out of North Korea.” http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/north-korea-summit-vancouver-1.4488338

⁵https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-canada-can-lead-north-korean-peace-talks-at-vancouver-summit/5625069

⁶ Federation of American Scientists; Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State during the Clinton administration told Lesley Stahl on the May 12, 1996, edition of 60 Minutes that UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund)– Results of the 1999 Iraq Child and Maternal Mortality Surveys”“we think the price is worth it.”

⁷ In June of 2013, Canada hosted a meeting of the Economic Sanctions Subcommittee of the “Friends of Syria Group of Countries” in Ottawa, where a comprehensive economic sanctions regime was established against the Government of Syria. http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/06/24/friends-of-syrian-people-group-to-meet-in-ottawa-tuesday/

⁸ https://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list

⁹ https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/01/16/gabbard-north-korea-has-nukes-because-they-saw-what-the-us-did-to-libya/

¹⁰https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-canada-can-lead-north-korean-peace-talks-at-vancouver-summit/5625069

¹¹ General Jonathan Vance, Chief of the Defence Staff, told The Globe and Mail on Friday that he has “the military capability inside the Armed Forces” to participate in any effort to ensure compliance with UN sanctions.https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/china-russia-dismiss-vancouver-summit-as-counterproductive/article37610583/

A video has been uploaded of huge amounts of cash that was smuggled into Syria for ISIS and the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front using Red Cross logos on the boxes the money was stored in.

The money was smuggled in from Turkey with vehicles with the same famous Red Cross logo too.

.

#Syria ""This money was smuggled through Turkey to ISIS and Al-Nusra in Syria by Red Cross vehicles. Those with merciful hearts and white hands"" pic.twitter.com/Vhgp6xfL3e

— Ivan Sidorenko (@IvanSidorenko1) January 15, 2018

In response to the video, the official Twitter account of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated:

“We have nothing whatsoever to do with the transactions alleged in this video. A fake ICRC logo has been used for the purposes of transporting funds. Our emblems stand for neutral and impartial aid. Any misuse may have a serious impact on ability to reach those in need.”

We have nothing whatsoever to do with the transactions alleged in this video. A fake ICRC logo has been used for the purposes of transporting funds. Our emblems stand for neutral and impartial aid. Any misuse may have a serious impact on ability to reach those in need.

— ICRC (@ICRC) January 15, 2018

The ICRC has played a neutral role in the Syrian War providing aid all throughout Syria where they are able to operate. This is in stark contrast to the famous White Helmets who only operate in Al-Nusra controlled areas and claim impartiality despite many of their members found to be jihadist fighters.

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Featured image is from the author.

Outrage about “shitholes” is hypocritical.  As is argued at this website, elite “progressives” – Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali —  accept US power. It’s not just US power. It’s the ideological power of the rich North.

It tells us who thinks. For 24 years, teaching in a Canadian Philosophy Department, I saw three entire continents dismissed, routinely. It is as if they have no thinkers. You learn about Haiti and Nigeria in Sociology or Geography, but not in Philosophy.1

A student says, “I didn’t know Latin American philosophy exists”. She doesn’t know and she is in third year. It is not her fault. No one uses Trump’s colourful language in universities. It is polite, gentrified dismissal, more powerful than Trump’s inanities.

Consider mindfulness, enormously popular, even in medicine. The Buddha is the source but like Marx, he is not read. He is not taught as a philosopher. You might find him in Religious Studies, not in Philosophy.

He’s a scientist, emphasizing cause and effect. You can’t read him seriously without seeing cause and effect. It’s what Marx is about too. Relations, connections. Sensible, scientific ideas about the human condition are not taught. They are dismissed.

Cause and effect is hard, philosophically.  It means we must sometimes be acted upon – by the world, by others – in order to know. Marx said we create the world that creates us. We change the world and it changes us. And so we learn. But we must be able to be changed.

It takes humility – existential, not moral. There is loss, renunciation. Mindfulness is awareness of cause and effect – in body and mind. It is not supposed to be mindfulness of me.

Theravada Buddhist monk, Bikkhu Boddhi, says mindfulness is not taught properly in the West. He says it has been detached from its roots. 2 It may be that it is not understood properly.

He writes:

“The practise of mindfulness thus leads … to a new affirmation and appreciation of the world, so one can joyfully savour each fleeting event, each relationship, each undertaking in its wistful evanescence, unperturbed when it passes”.

In other words, it is about being happy, in the Western sense: experiencing pleasure.

A few hundred years ago, European philosophers drew a line between science and ethics. They distinguished facts about how the world is – science – from facts about how it ought to be – ethics. They said you cannot know how the world ought to be by considering how it is.

The Buddha thought differently: Precisely to the degree that we know the physical reality of the universe – cause and effect – we know how to live. It is because we know connections, dependence. We learn about change, decay, insecurity, and we face all that.

And how we live – ethically – matters to what we know: science. If I harbour ill will, my mind is agitated. Even a small amount of ill-will creates agitation. And when my mind is agitated, I don’t see reality as it is.

Instead, I impose myself upon it. And this is what we learn from liberal academic philosophers. It is reason itself: I reason best, roughly, when I act to realize my deep-seated desires, preferences and life-plans. Or so we’re told. It’s the model: instrumental rationality.

It needs to be rejected, thoroughly. The “shitholes” phenomenon is not just political. It is part of a world view that dismisses some of the world’s great thinkers.

It is a worldview that creates illusions, and we live in fear.

US-Haitian writer, Edwidge Danticat, is surprised that Haitians live well with much less protection from the reality of death. 3 Why is she surprised? Why doesn’t she investigate that reality, fully, and express it as non-surprising? It would be a relief for those debilitated by liberal illusions.

So, even a Haitian writer, proclaiming Haitian roots, dismisses Haiti as a source of ideas about who we are, as human beings, part of a universe we can’t control.

Mindfulness is about knowing reality, as it is. But mindfulness is hard to properly grasp in a landscape of self-centredness and self-absorption, where even higher education spins illusions about existence, and who is permitted to talk about it.

Ironically, we’d be further along, scientifically, if we taught religious philosophers. Thomas Merton, Jean Vanier, Ivan Illich. They are realists, recognizing that life includes death and suffering.

They know silence.  As academic, I’ve not encountered the concept of mental silence. Yet if we respect universal causation, we must also listen: to the world, to its people. We cannot know the world really if intellectual activity is ignorantly informed by fabrications of our own self-importance.

Jose Martí said that when the mind is quiet “intuition springs forth like a caged bird”. We know ourselves as human, he wrote, through nature, and only through nature.

It is a view incompatible with self-absorption. Mindfulness, properly understood, is about loss. As you gain understanding of cause and effect, self-absorption weakens, mercifully. Marx was about looking outward. So was Lenin. They said human freedom is realizing human potential, not doing what you want. The two don’t go together – because of our nature, and the nature of the world, interconnected.

José Ingenieros, brilliant Argentinean psychiatrist who turned his copious talents to anti-imperialism after WW1, led a movement for educational reform, across Latin America. He saw that the entire educational system had brought South America to the feet of the imperialists. 4

If we care about “shitholes”, we might follow his lead. It’d be more interesting, and useful, than targeting Trump.

Puerto Rican Ana Belén Montes helps show the way. She is still silenced in a US jail. 5  Please sign petition here.

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Susan Babbitt is author of Humanism and Embodiment (Bloomsbury 2014).

Notes

1. See https://www.africaresource.com/ for a counter view.

2. “The transformations of mindfulness” in Handbook of mindfulness Ronald E. Purser, David Forbes, Adam Burke eds. (Springer International Publishing,  2016)

3. Danticat, Edwidge (6 October 2013), Writers and Company with Eleanor Wachtel. (Podcast). http://www.cbc.ca/writersandcompany/episode/2013/10/06/edwidgedanticat-interview

4. In Raúl Roa, Bufa subversiva  (Havana: Ediciones la memoria, 2006) 35

5. http://www.prolibertad.org/ana-belen-montes. For more information, write to [email protected] or [email protected]

The United States cannot be a moral or ethical country until it faces up to the realities of US empire and the destruction it causes around the world. The US undermines governments (including democracies), kills millions of people, causes mass migrations of people fleeing their homes, communities and countries and produces vast environmental damage.

A new coalition, The Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases, held its inaugural event January 12-14, 2018 at the University of Baltimore in Maryland. The meeting was framed by a Unity Statement that brought together numerous peace and justice organizations. The basis for unity was:

“U.S. foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars of aggression and occupation, and that the closure of U.S. foreign military bases is one of the first necessary steps toward a just, peaceful and sustainable world.”

You can endorse the statement here.

US foreign military bases as of 2015. (Source BaseNation.us)

Responsibility to End Global Empire of Bases

Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace and the vice presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2016 opened the conference, describing the responsibility of the people of the United States (USians) to protect the world from US aggression. He argued:

“The only logical, principled and strategic response to this question is citizens of the empire must reject their imperial privileges and join in opposing ruling elites exploiting labor and plundering the Earth. To do that, however, requires breaking with the intoxicating allure of cross-class, bi-partisan ‘white identity politics.’”

This reality conflicts with one of the excuses the US uses to engage in war – so-called ‘humanitarian wars’, which are based on the dubious legal claim that the US has a “responsibility to protect.” The United States is viewed as “the greatest threat to peace in the world today” by people around the world.  Thus, USians need to organize to protect the world from the United States.

US empire is not only a threat to world peace and stability but also a threat to the United States. Chalmers Johnson, who wrote a series of books on empire, warned in his 2004 book, “The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic,” that there were four “sorrows” the United States would suffer. In the 14 years since they have all come true:

“If present trends continue, four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative impact guarantees that the United States will cease to bear any resemblance to the country once outlined in our Constitution. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a growing reliance on weapons of mass destruction among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second, there will be a loss of democracy and constitutional rights as the presidency fully eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from an ‘executive branch’ of government into something more like a Pentagonized presidency. Third, an already well-shredded principle of truthfulness will increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there will be bankruptcy, as we pour our economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchange the education, health, and safety of our fellow citizens.”

The footprint of US empire are what Chalmers Johnson called an “empire of bases.” David Vine, the author of  Base Nation, put US empire in context by describing 800 US bases in 80 countries and US military personnel in more than 170 countries. Bases range from so-called Lily Pad Bases of hundreds of troops to town-sized bases of tens of thousands of troops and their families. He noted many bases have schools and they do not need to worry about heating or air conditioning, unlike schools in Baltimore where parents bought space heaters to keep children warm and where schools were closed due to lack of heat.

The contrast between Baltimore schools and military base schools is one example of many of the heavy price USians pay for the military. Vine reported that $150 billion is spent annually to keep US troops on bases abroad and that even a Lily Pad base could cost $1 billion. More is spent on foreign military bases than on any agency of the federal government, other than the Pentagon and Veterans Administration.

The Pentagon is not transparent about the number of US foreign bases it manages or their cost. They usually publish a Base Structure Report but have not done so in several years. The Pentagon only reports 701 bases, but researchers have found many, even significant bases, not included in their list of bases.

According to the No Foreign Bases Coalition:

“95% of all foreign military bases in the world are US bases. In addition, [there are] 19 Naval air carriers (and 15 more planned), each as part of a Carrier Strike Group, composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft — each of which can be considered a floating military base.”

The military footprint of the United States shows it is the largest empire in world history. In our interview with historian Alfred McCoy, author of “In The Shadows of the American Century,” he describes how some of the key characteristics of US empire are secrecy and covert actions. This are some of the reasons why it is rare to ever hear US empire discussed in the corporate media or by politicians. McCoy told us this was true for some other empires too, and that it is often not until the empire begins to falter that their existence becomes part of the political dialogue.

Strategies for Closing US Foreign Military Bases

David Vine described an unprecedented opportunity to close bases abroad, to do so we need to build a bigger movement. We also need to elevate the national dialogue about US Empire and develop a national consensus to end it.

Vine pointed to Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric about pulling back from US involvement abroad and focusing on the necessities at home as indicative of the mood of the country. In fact, a recent survey found that “78 percent of Democrats, 64.5 percent of Republicans, and 68.8 percent of independents supported restraining military action overseas.”

McCoy argued that after the globalization of President Barack Obama, which included the Asian Pivot and  efforts to pass major trade agreements, in particular the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), created a backlash desire to focus on “America First.” Both trade agreements, the TPP and TTIP, failed as a result of a political shift in the country, in part created by grassroots movements.

McCoy describes Obama as one of three “Grandmasters of the Great Game” (the other two being Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, and Elihu Root, former Secretary of War and Secretary of State at the beginning of the 20th Century) who excelled in being strategic on behalf of US empire. In addition to trade agreements and the Asian Pivot, Obama built on the intelligence apparatus of the George W. Bush era. Even though Obama was a “grandmaster,” he did not slow the weakening of US empire. McCoy sees the inability to account for the unpredictable complexities of US and global political developments as a common weakness of empire strategists.

The conference was divided into regions of the world (with the exception of one session on the impact of  military bases on the environment and health). There will be reports and videos published on each section of the conference on the No Foreign Bases webpage. One common denominator around the world is opposition to US military bases. According to the Unity Statement of the coalition:

“Many individual national coalitions — for example, Okinawa, Italy, Jeju Island Korea, Diego Garcia, Cyprus, Greece, and Germany — are demanding closure of bases on their territory. The base that the U.S. has illegally occupied the longest, for over a century, is Guantánamo Bay, whose existence constitutes an imposition of the empire and a violation of International Law. Since 1959 the government and people of Cuba have demanded that the government of the U.S. return the Guantánamo territory to Cuba.”

One important strategy for success is for US activists to work in cooperation with people around the world who want US military bases to be closed and for the US military to leave their country. Attendees at the conference had traveled to South Korea, Okinawa and other places to protest in solidarity with US activists.

Another strategy that many in the conference urged was the need for education about US imperialism and to tie US militarism abroad with militarized police at home. Similarly, the reality of the US military focusing on black and brown countries abroad highlights a white supremacy philosophy that  infects foreign policy and domestic policy. Members of the No US Foreign Bases coalition also engage in domestic efforts for racial and environmental justice.

Further, the no bases coalition highlights the environmental and health damage caused by foreign and domestic military bases. As the Unity Statement notes, “military bases are the largest users of fossil fuel in the world, heavily contributing to environmental degradation.” Pat Elder and David Swanson described the degradation in and around the Potomac River, writing:

“The Pentagon’s impact on the river on whose bank it sits is not simply the diffuse impact of global warming and rising oceans contributed to by the U.S. military’s massive oil consumption. The U.S. military also directly poisons the Potomac River in more ways than almost anyone would imagine.”

People can find information about the environmental damage being done by the military in their community on the Bombs in Your Backward webpage. World Beyond War held a conference on War and the Environment in 2017. You can view video and summaries from the conference on their site.

Next Steps

The conference attendees decided on some next steps. A national day of action against foreign military bases is being planned for February 23, the anniversary of the US seizing Guantanamo Bay, Cuba through a “perpetual lease” that began in 1903. Activists are encouraged to plan local actions. If you plan an event, contact [email protected] and we’ll post it on the events page. The demands will include closing the base and prison in Guantanamo, returning the land to Cuba and ending the US blockade.

The conference also decided to hold a conference outside of the United States in one of the countries where the US has a foreign military base within the next year. People from some countries were not allowed to attend the inaugural conference this weekend.

And, the coordinating committee will reach out to other peace and justice groups to select a date and place for a national mass action against US wars. This will be organized as quickly as possible because the threat of more wars is high.

This is a key moment for the antiwar movement in the US to make itself more visible and to demand the closure of US foreign bases. In this report on living in a post-primacy world, even the Pentagon recognizes what many commentators are seeing – the US empire is fading. One great risk as the empire ends is more wars as the US tries to hang on to global hegemony. We must oppose war and work for the least damaging end of empire.

Indeed, if the US becomes a cooperative member of the global community, rather than being a dominator, it would be a positive transition. Imagine how much better it would be for everyone in the world if the US collaborated on addressing the climate crisis in a serious way, obeyed international law and invested in positive programs to solve the many crises we face at home and abroad.

During the Baltimore conference, World Beyond War sponsored a billboard  nearby that read, “3% of US military spending could end starvation on earth.” Imagine what a peace budget could look like. The US could invest in domestic necessities including rebuilding infrastructure, a cleaner and safer public transportation system, education, housing and health care. The US could provide aid to other countries to repair the damage it has caused. Members of the US military could transition into a civilian jobs program that applies their expertise to programs of social uplift.

It is imperative that as the US Empire falls, we organize for a smooth transition to a world that is better for everyone. The work of the new coalition to end US foreign military bases is a strong start.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

All images in this article are from the authors.

Last week, the Huffington Post published on its website a draft version of the Trump administration’s updated Nuclear Posture Review, which is to replace Barack Obama’s previous nuclear strategy document that was adopted in 2010.  Despite the fact that the draft is marked “pre-decisional” and can still be amended, knowledgeable American sources claim that this is the document that will officially be presented in February after the president’s traditional speech before Congress.

The American Arms Control Association and the British newspaper the Guardian have already described this paper as “hawkish,” in that it calls for “major changes” in the management of the country’s nuclear arsenal and authorizes the deployment of long-range nuclear cruise missiles, as well as the use of low-yield nuclear warheads.

It would be hard not to agree with these assessments.

The published document tries to make the case that the US is now confronted with an international security situation that is “more complex and demanding,” thus apparently requiring immediate updates to the nation’s nuclear forces.  It eloquently describes how the United States cut back on its strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, only to watch as its “strategic competitors” did not follow its lead.  But at the same time, provision has been made to update the Americans’ nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) system (hereinafter the corresponding numbered lines from the draft document are noted: 246-254).  The Pentagon is instructed to continue to deploy strategic and tactical nuclear arsenals in its “forward-operating bases.”

Although claiming that the US does not wish to regard either Russia or China as an adversary, everything in the report glibly suggests otherwise.  Despite the acknowledgment that Russia has significantly reduced its strategic nuclear arsenals, the unsupported allegation is made that Moscow is preparing to update its strategic nuclear forces and retains a large number of tactical nuclear weapons.  It remains unclear how such an odd conclusion has been reached about the latter type of weapon, since those numbers have never been released by either side, only the fact that the quantity of such arms has been decreased (to an unnamed level), as part of the process of implementing the “presidential initiatives” of 1991-1992.  Russia and the United States have never sat down at the negotiating table to try to limit or reduce tactical nuclear weapons.

Moscow is also accused, without evidence, of having made nuclear threats against US allies.  There is no proof that Russia has ever done such a thing, and the allegation is all the more galling given the fact that after the US military dropped atomic bombs on Japan, there were seven different times when the Pentagon drew up plans to use nuclear weapons in several regional confrontations and conflicts!

The NPR makes similar complaints about China, claiming that Beijing is modernizing and expanding its nuclear arsenal.

It also mentions the “nuclear ambitions” of North Korea and Iran.

To that end, the new Nuclear Policy Review proclaims the need for a flexible and tailored nuclear strategy (line 94) that will make it possible to adapt the US approach to “deterring one or more potential adversaries in different circumstances.”

Although the reader is assured that the president of the United States may only resort to nuclear weapons in the most extreme circumstances, it is also noted they may be used to protect either the US or its allies and partners from even from the limited use of nuclear weapons by an adversary (104), or from an enemy attack using conventional weapons (141), based on the strategy of extended nuclear deterrence that is provided to US allies in Europe, Asia, and the Asia-Pacific region (213-214 and 855).  The document implies that Washington will continue to abide by the nuclear sharing agreements it has already signed with America’s NATO allies (256-258).  This means that American nuclear weapons will remain stationed within the borders of those allied states, including in Europe.  NATO’s nuclear-sharing policy – in which three countries own nuclear weapons and another five agree to host US nuclear warheads (1219-1221) – will remain unchanged.

There is no doubt that this new policy document, like its predecessor from 2010, will indirectly reiterate the provision that permits a nuclear first strike against any potential enemy of the United States, its allies, or partners.  In order to improve its ability to deliver nuclear strikes, special emphasis is placed on the strengthening of space-based reconnaissance and communications resources.

The US will preserve its traditional strategic nuclear triad and nuclear delivery vehicles, including dual-capable aircraft.  The plans to create an essentially new strategic nuclear triad have been confirmed.  Eliminating any of its three legs has been ruled out (306-308).

The document insists that nuclear weapons must remain in the country for as long as required (121-122).  This likely explains why the US has staunchly refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (529).

This new nuclear strategy reaffirms Washington’s earlier statements about the feasibility of using low-yield nuclear warheads – initially mounted on ballistic missiles, and later on the cruise missiles of nuclear submarines, making it impossible to know in advance whether a nuclear or conventional weapon is on board.  Obvious this would greatly upset the global strategic balance.  Nor can strategic stability be attained through the ambitious plan to replace old nuclear warheads with their new versions (451-489).  The document announces that in 2020 the new B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb will be introduced, the accuracy of which is known to suffer from a high ratio of circular error probability (325-326).

The Russian stance in regard to the negotiations over the fate of the New START Treaty and tactical nuclear weapons has been distorted.

Without any proof whatsoever the Russians have been accused of breaching the 1987 INF Treaty, even though the United States has already violated it 92 times since 2001 by using intermediate- and shorter-range missiles as targets to test the effectiveness of its ABM system.  And Washington will violate it once again when it introduces a new American mobile, ground-based, nuclear-tipped cruise missile – which was banned by the 1987 treaty signed by Gorbachev and Reagan – and subsequently deploys that missile on the European continent.

Without offering any evidence, Moscow is also accused of noncompliance with the Treaty on Open Skies, which the Americans did not hesitate to violate first, by introducing unjustifiable restrictions on the zones approved for Russian surveillance flights over the US.  Although no NATO member state has ever ratified the CFE Treaty, Russia was cited as being in breach, although Moscow did ratify this important treaty and later proposed the adoption of the European Security Treaty, which was rejected out of hand by every member of this military alliance of “transatlantic solidarity.”

In short, the Trump administration’s updated Nuclear Posture Review is an extremely negative, aggressive, and explosive document.  Its approval will dramatically complicate the global strategic scenario, undermine international stability, and result in the suspension of a number of arms-control agreements.

This document, which launches a Cold War 2.0, might also trigger two whole new types of arms races (in addition to the existing nuclear-missile confrontation and proliferation of nuclear weapons): i.e., races to stockpile anti-missile and space weapons.

The new US nuclear strategy will further damage its relations with the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China – relationships that Washington has already thrown under the bus.

If the current US administration does eventually approve this document that entails such perilous consequences for the destiny of our world, then it will be taking risks that are unbefitting the enormous sense of responsibility that the great nuclear powers should feel, share, and retain in order to further peace on our planet and security in the interests of all countries.

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Vladimir Kozin, Ph.D. is an Expert Council member of the Russian Senate’ Foreign Relations Committee, Professor of the Academy of Military Science, former high-ranking diplomat, leading expert on disarmament and strategic stability issues.

All images in this article are from the author.

The US announced that it will train a 30,000-strong “border force” of the Kurdish-led SDF in Northern Syria in a controversial move that was immediately slammed by Turkey as the creation of a “terror army”. President Erdogan has long been opposed to the establishment of a de-facto Kurdish statelet along his country’s southern border, and the US strategy is playing right into his greatest fears. Speaking to his supporters earlier this week, he bellowed that “a country we call an ally is insisting on forming a terror army on our borders. What can that terror army target but Turkey? Our mission is to strangle it before it’s even born.”

Syrian Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister Fayssal Mikdad stated that the US-Kurdish move “is an attempt to divide Syria and prolong the crisis in the country”, and President Assad had previously claimed that Kurdish and other forces who cooperate with the Americans are “traitors”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters during a large press conference that “this causes serious questions, concerning the maintenance of Syria’s territorial integrity”, though reaffirming that the Kurds are still an integral part of the Syrian nation and will nevertheless be represented in some capacity or another at the upcoming Sochi Summit at the end of the month.

The US is coy about its true intentions in building up a massive force that’s expected to be almost 50% larger than its own Border Patrol at home and deployed along the much geographically smaller area of the Turkish border and the so-called “deconfliction line” with the Syrian Arab Army in the Euphrates River Valley, but some observers are seriously concerned that Washington is trying to transform this anti-terrorist militia into a competent anti-state conventional fighting force, pointing to the large amount of weapons and equipment that they’ve received over the past couple of years. Most alarmingly, however, and in a move that could confirm these suspicions, reports have recently piled in that the US secretly gave MANPAD anti-air missiles to the Kurds, which if true would prove that they’re indeed capable of becoming an anti-state threat, whether to the Syrians, the Turks, or possibly even the Russians.

The Kurdish issue thus risks becoming the first post-Daesh crisis in Syria for this very reason, made all the more urgently important because of Turkey’s threats to eliminate the problem before it matures, and all eyes are on President Erdogan to see if he’ll make a move on the northwestern region of Afrin in the two weeks prior to the upcoming Sochi Summit and inadvertently risk subverting it, which might be exactly what the Americans are trying to tempt him into doing.

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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.

Featured image is from the author.

As the new year began, social media and corporate-owned news organizations alike were giving the protests in Iran constant coverage, despite the fact that the protests were relatively small in size and motivated primarily by economics — not politics, as many popular news outlets had claimed. Not surprisingly, these same organizations failed to mention the role of sanctions backed by the West in fomenting the economic troubles facing Iranians.

Soon after — despite U.S. encouragement and financial backing, as well as the key role of the U.S.-trained, Iran-based terrorist group MEK, in fomenting the unrest — the protests in Iran fizzled. It was difficult to know this if one relied exclusively upon corporate media reports, which claimed that the protests were growing by the minute, in some cases using images of past protests from other countries, such as Bahrain and Argentina, and even scenes from movies to support a narrative completely divorced from reality.

Media reports also falsely claimed that the protests attracted thousands of participants while local media and actual video evidence from the protests show much smaller gatherings that — given Iran’s population of 80 million — were insignificant in many cases. The dissolution of the protests understandably left those eager for an excuse to meddle in Iranian affairs, namely the U.S. and Israel, utterly disappointed.

Iran vs. Tunisia protests: the tale of the tape

Protesters in Tunisia, January 2018 (Source: CGTN Africa)

Just as the protests in Iran began to sputter, new protests sprang to life last week — this time in Tunisia. Since Monday night, those protests have escalated significantly and have attracted thousands, despite a violent state response. Unlike those that took place in Iran, the turnout has been continuous, significant and concentrated despite the country’s relatively small size.

To compare, by the fifth day of the protests in Iran, there were demonstrations — many of them numbering less than a hundred — in 24 cities, while after five days the protests in Tunisia have appeared in at least 18 towns. To put these numbers in context, Iran is 10 times larger geographically with a population nearly eight times larger than that of Tunisia. Since the protests began in earnest, there have been six days of demonstrations, which have culminated in violent clashes with Tunisian security forces and hundreds of arrests.

Angered by the government’s austerity budget for the new year — which protesters say will only aggravate the rampant poverty, mass unemployment and inequality prevalent throughout the nation — protesters have failed to be intimidated by the government’s show of force that as of Friday, had resulted in over 770 arrests and the deaths of both protesters and police officers.

Human rights advocates have called the government’s crackdown both indiscriminate and inexplicably violent, as government forces have arrested many non-violent protesters while ignoring looters and vandals. Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, stated:

The Tunisian authorities are targeting people for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly. […] Unrest on Tunisia’s streets must not give the police a green light to retaliate with the unlawful or excessive use of force.”

By all accounts, the protests in Tunisia are everything that the U.S. political establishment had wished the protests in Iran would become. Yet, the media silence regarding the protests in Tunisia has been deafening, especially compared to the widespread coverage garnered by the protests in Iran.

Tunisia’s close relationship with the United States, as well as its key importance as a U.S. military base of operations in Africa, are likely to blame for the media’s lack of interest in the widespread demonstrations.

Tunisia’s role as U.S. regional ally

The U.S. military has long had a presence in Tunisia, particularly during the regime of the formerly U.S.-backed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was overthrown in 2011 during the Arab Spring. Since then, Tunisia has had no less than nine governments, most of which have continued many of Ben Ali’s policies, including cooperation with the U.S. military and the perpetuation of its police state.

However, increased U.S. military cooperation with Tunisia began in earnest in 2015, that April, the U.S. announced it would triple its military aid to Tunisia, which was followed by Barack Obama’s declaration of Tunisia as a major non-NATO ally a month later during a visit from Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi. Essebsi and Obama also signed a “memorandum of understanding” during that visit, which would lay the groundwork for Tunisia to become a key part of U.S. military operations in Africa.

In the latter part of 2015, then-Secretary of State John Kerry participated in dialogue sessions between the two countries, sessions which – according to documents leaked to Tunisian media – led the Tunisian government to agree to host an unknown number of U.S. troops within its borders. The content of the agreements made during this time has yet to be made public, leading some to assert that Essebsi’s government was hiding something. A year later, this proved to be true as, despite denying that he had allowed the U.S. access to Tunisian military bases, Essebsi later confirmed that this was the case — after The Washington Post reported that the U.S. had begun using a still unidentified Tunisian military base in June of last year as a base of operations for drones deployed to neighboring Libya.

As geopolitical analyst Martin Berger noted at the time, Tunisia was “gradually evolving into the most reliable partner in the North Africa region” for the United States. U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ visit to Tunisia last November suggested that this evolution was nearly complete, as he called for even greater defense cooperation between the two countries.

Thus, the current unrest could potentially jeopardize the U.S.’ “strategic interest” in Tunisia, especially if the current protests were to translate into regime change or major reforms enacted by the current government. Several reports from recent years have indicated that Tunisians overwhelmingly are opposed to the U.S. presence in their country and that the continued U.S. military presence could foment unrest against the current U.S.-friendly administration of Essebsi.

A free pass to crack down on protests

Another reason for the media’s silence on the protests in Tunisia is a result of the driving force behind the country’s latest austerity budget. The austerity measures or “reforms” are a result of the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union, which were responsible for lending the Tunisian government $2.9 billion in 2015, nearly all of which was used to pay off the country’s already massive debts to international banks.

The unsustainable practice of taking out predatory IMF loans and accruing more debt to pay off existing debt has played out across numerous countries — a prime example being Greece — in recent years, forcing countries to adopt neoliberal and often unpopular reforms in order to satisfy their lenders. As a result, Tunisia’s leadership is in the difficult position of choosing to maintain austerity measures, risking increased unrest, or to ax them and risk angering the country’s would-be masters in the West.

As is too often the case, if unrest takes place in a country allied with the United States, particularly militarily, the U.S. political establishment as well as the media, look the other way – no matter how brutal the crackdown.

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

Continuing from my OpEd of the 11th January entitled “Libya Update: Power Struggles Continue – Will the UN Get its Way?“, dramatic further evidence of my assessment came in the form of reports of intense fighting that started over the weekend and dramatically escalated this Monday, in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, leaving over twenty dead and over 60 wounded and the airport closed in flames.

However those reports by mainstream media still fail to mention the most significant casualty of all: The United Nations peace process, called the LPA.

For two years UN diplomats have struggled to make something of the government they created — the Government of National Accord (GNA) — a creature that was supposed to unite Libya and bring peace to a shattered nation.

Instead GNA officials spent Monday huddled in their Tripoli naval base, powerless while militias hammered each other in fighting around the city centre and specifically within Mitiga airport. There is a jail within that vicinity in the airport grounds run by a militia called RADA. They hold ISIS & al-Qaeda members amongst others. The people attacking are trying to get these extremists broken out of jail. That about sums it up.

Several civilian passenger aircraft reportedly received bullet holes to their fuselage whilst parked on the runway. Certainly Air Afriqiyah Airbuses were damaged. Afriqiyah Airways actually announced that all five of its planes were damaged including, their new cargo plane. Buraq Air said two of its newest planes are damaged, and Libyan Wings suspended flights till further notice due to their damaged planes.

Passengers are forced to try going south to an airport near Sabah – Temenhint Airport – or to take flights from Misrata or Djerba, getting there by road. All hours away by car from Tripoli.

Mitiga airport has been the only functioning airport in Tripoli since July 2014, when Tripoli International Airport was destroyed by rival militias fighting for control of the airport.

The GNA was “created” by the UN in December 2015, in Morocco in a place called Skirhat, when the so called LPA document was signed, and has been in Tripoli, as the internationally recognised government since March 2016.

That is enough time, one might think, to get a grip on at least the capital. And yet on Monday night social media was full of claims that GNA prime minister Fayez Sarraj had been spirited to safety by Italian forces, to another safe haven secured in Tripoli and even rumoured to have fled to Tunisia, because he is so unpopular. There is no Libyan security force he can count on.

Every few months Tripoli’s militias erupt in a spasm of violence in their battles to control prime real estate in the Libyan capital, heedless of pleading and visits from UN and other diplomats for peace.

The irony is that the one peaceful part of Libya is the east, which has its own government and a single army, commanded by Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar. The East of Libya also has the majority of the Country’s oil.

The UN choice of prime minister for its puppet government called the GNA, Fayez Serraj, has remained very quiet while paid militias attack the Airport. This is prime evidence of a total lack of leadership and complete impotency.

Perhaps that is why he was installed by the UN: to be a puppet for certain countries’ agenda.This farce and interference by the UN has to end before the country further tears itself apart. That time seems to be drawing closer than it was thought.

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This article was originally published by Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Featured image is from the author.

The “false alarm” delivered to a population of 1.5 million in the US Pacific island state of Hawaii on Saturday morning has laid bare the clear and present danger of a nuclear war.

Cell phones lit up with the text message “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Television and radio broadcasts were interrupted with the chilling announcement that “A missile may impact on sea or land within minutes. This is not a drill.”

For 38 minutes, residents of and visitors to Hawaii were confronted face to face with nuclear Armageddon. Parents frantically sought to find and protect their children, families said last goodbyes and people desperately sought largely nonexistent shelter in anticipation of a nuclear blast.

The fact that this event is so rapidly disappearing from the front pages of major newspapers and is being reduced to a secondary story by television news is itself a disturbing indication of how much more is involved in the Hawaii ballistic missile warning than the public is being told.

The corporate media, working in tight coordination with the US government, is in full containment mode. Monday night, all three US television networks broadcast virtually identical reports based on their admission to Hawaii’s Emergency Management System bunker to support the official story that the chaos was caused by the inadvertent error of a single employee.

The official reaction to what constitutes a social crime committed against an entire population is unfolding according to a well-established pattern. The event and its implications are being minimized. No one is going to conduct an investigation and present findings to the public. There will be no televised public hearings before the US Congress.

The explanation being put out by the state and federal authorities, and parroted by the media, fobs off the nuclear war alert as a mere accident triggered by a single careless worker at Hawaii’s Emergency Management System. The unnamed individual supposedly selected the wrong computer menu option, keying in “Missile Alert” instead of “Test Missile Alert.”

There is no reason that anyone should blindly accept this official story as true. Given the record of the US government in staging provocations and launching wars based upon lies, not only severe skepticism, but outright suspicion is called for.

How could such an accident happen? Once again, a major public event is shrouded in secrecy. Why has the individual allegedly responsible for the “accident” not been named? The claim that the person is being protected against retaliation by enraged citizens is not credible. At the very least, the single individual who is being blamed for the colossal error should have the right to tell his or her side of the story. And even if the incident was triggered by a single mistaken keypunch, that does not explain why it took a full, excruciating 38 minutes for the authorities to send out a follow-up message announcing that the warning had been a “false alarm.”

Even if one were to accept the authorities’ version of events as good coin, such an “accident” constitutes a devastating indictment of the criminal indifference of the US ruling establishment toward the lives and safety of the American people. The existence of such a ramshackle system, employing absurdly primitive software and technology as the supposed first line of defense, only makes clear that the ruling class accepts that nuclear war will mean the deaths of millions and has no serious plan to protect anyone. Just as with every other disaster, natural or otherwise, the incident in Hawaii has exposed the total absence of essential infrastructure and social planning.

That these events unfolded in Hawaii, the scene of the so-called “sneak attack” of December 7, 1941, the “date which will live in infamy” of American lore, make them all the more telling. The headquarters of the US Pacific Command, Hawaii boasts 11 separate military bases comprising units from every branch of the US military.

The significance of Saturday’s nuclear war alert becomes clear only within the context of the advanced state of preparations for a US war of aggression against nuclear-armed North Korea.

A glimpse into the scope of these preparations was provided Monday in a front-page article published by the New York Times. Absurdly, the piece begins, “Across the military, officers and troops are preparing for a war they hope will not come.” Yet the substance of the article makes clear that what is being prepared is not a defense against a North Korean attack, but rather the invasion and conquest of the East Asian country.

The article describes an exercise last month involving 48 Apache gunships and Chinook cargo helicopters practicing “moving troops and equipment under live artillery fire to assault targets.” Two days later, it reports, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division staged a jump in Nevada that “simulated a foreign invasion.”

Even more ominously, the Times reports that for the first time in years, more than 1,000 US Army reservists have been called up for active duty to man “mobilization centers” used for the rapid movement of troops overseas.

The preparations also include a plan to deploy large numbers of Special Operations troops to the Korean Peninsula under the cover of providing security for next month’s Winter Olympics.

More and more, these actions begin to resemble the run-up to the US war of aggression against Iraq in 2003, with the exception that this time around the American public is being given no warning of impending mass carnage, outside of the raving tweets of the US commander-in-chief.

That the Times article appeared at all—under the byline of Eric Schmitt, the Times’ chief “embedded” reporter and a faithful conduit for the Pentagon and CIA—makes it clear that the military preparations are of such a magnitude that they are becoming broadly known, requiring the “newspaper of record” to attempt to manage the news.

The article also points to divisions between the White House and the Pentagon and within the US military command itself over impending war with North Korea. Trump and his aides reportedly are toying with what has been termed a “bloody nose” attack targeting North Korean nuclear weapons, based on the assumption that Pyongyang would not retaliate.

Within this context, the “accidental” nuclear alert in Hawaii emerges as a necessary link in the chain of preparations for a catastrophic war. Was the “false alarm” itself one more military exercise? Were the people of Hawaii used as guinea pigs to test the public reaction should a US invasion of North Korea prompt the government of Kim Jong Un to fire off its missiles before they could be destroyed?

There is another possible explanation for the false alarm and the prolonged wait for it to be rescinded. The Times also published an article Monday referring to the 1983 KAL 007 incident as an example of how an unintended nuclear war could erupt. It fails to explain, however, that the Korean Airlines passenger jet was shot down by Soviet air defense fighters after it deliberately flew over Sakhalin, the site of numerous top secret Soviet military bases, as part of an operation coordinated with US intelligence agencies. A US spy plane was flying on a parallel course, shadowing the KAL flight, observing the responses of Soviet nuclear installations, radar stations and air bases.

There is no question that once the incoming missile alert was issued in Hawaii, the government and the military, not only in North Korea, but also in China and Russia, were compelled to make their own rapid estimates as to what it meant and how they should respond. The logical conclusion would be that Washington was staging a false pretext for all-out war.

No doubt, military units were placed on alert, weapons were readied or moved and other preparations for possible nuclear conflict were carried out, all under the watchful eyes of US spy satellites, providing intelligence that could prove vital for a planned US invasion of North Korea.

Whatever the cause of Saturday’s nuclear scare, one thing is certain. The missile alert staged in Hawaii constitutes a deadly serious warning. It has exposed before millions the very real threat of nuclear war.

The following text is the Abstract and Introduction of the authors’ study published by Sage Journals.

To access the complete study click here

Conspiracies play a significant role in world politics. States often engage in covert operations. They plot in secret, with and against each other. At the same time, conspiracies are often associated with irrational thinking and delusion. We address this puzzle and highlight the need to see conspiracies as more than just empirical phenomena.

We argue that claims about conspiracies should be seen as narratives that are intrinsically linked to power relations and the production of foreign policy knowledge. We illustrate the links between conspiracies, legitimacy and power by examining multiple conspiracies associated with 9/11 and the War on Terror. Two trends are visible. On the one hand, US officials identified a range of conspiracies and presented them as legitimate and rational, even though some, such as the alleged covert development of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, are now widely considered false. On the other hand, conspiracies circulating in the Arab-Muslim world were dismissed as irrational and pathological, even though some, like those concerned with the covert operation of US power in the Middle East, were based on credible concerns.

Introduction

Conspiracies are common in world politics. Terrorist plots unfold on a weekly basis. Intelligence agencies operate covert programmes of surveillance, sabotage and disinformation on a global scale. States scheme against each other in the national interest. At the same time, conspiracies are often associated with irrational thinking. Allegations about the secret operation of international political power are regularly thought of as paranoid. Of all the ways an idea can be discredited, labelling it a ‘conspiracy’ ranks amongst the most effective. A number of questions inevitably ensue: Which conspiracies are real and which are paranoid? Who decides?

The purpose of this article is to engage this puzzle and to examine the role that conspiracy plays in world politics. We focus on United States (US) foreign policy discourse during the War on Terror, paying particular attention to the way US officials and foreign policy commentators represented claims about conspiracies. Numerous conspiracies were at play after the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001. How did 9/11 happen? Who was responsible for planning and executing the attack? The answers to these questions inevitably lead to secret plots and conspiratorial politics. Here we find terrorist organizations, like Al-Qaeda, operating in secret, infiltrating countries and working on ever-new terrorist attacks. Then we have the subterranean world of CIA operations and all the secret links to legitimate and at times not-so-legitimate actors in the Middle East. Some even go as far as to claim that the CIA itself was secretly involved in the attacks of 9/11. All this is not surprising, for, as Guy Debord (2002) stresses, every major political event inevitably becomes associated with secrecy and competing attempts to explain the seemingly inexplicable. But how are we to make sense of the numerous parallel conspiracies that surround 9/11 and the War on Terror?

We argue that the links between conspiracy and foreign policy can best be understood if we move beyond the conventional understanding of conspiracy as a secret plan drawn up ‘by a group to do something unlawful or harmful’ (Oxford Dictionary Online, 2016). In addition to viewing conspiracy as an act, we should also see perceptions of conspiracies as narratives that are intrinsically linked to power relations and the production of foreign policy knowledge. To argue this is not to suggest that there is no place for approaches that aim to distinguish between claims about conspiracy that have substance and those that do not. However, as we show, there remain serious questions about the power dynamics involved in making such judgments, along with other issues around the relationship between evidence and interpretation.1

Understanding claims about conspiracies in terms of narrative allows us to situate them as part of power relations that legitimize and delegitimize. Indeed, we suggest that the legitimacy of a conspiracy narrative is most closely related to the political position of the actor advancing it.

Such an account is clearly linked to broader conceptions of security as a ‘speech act’ performed by powerful actors in specific political landscapes (Buzan et al., 1998; Balzacq, 2010; Hansen, 2011). Likewise, it resonates with accounts of security that focus on the production of identity and difference, as well as the intersubjective and relational dynamics of world politics (Der Derian and Shapiro, 1989; Campbell, 1992; Burke, 2005; Jackson, 2005, 2007; Jarvis, 2009; Holland, 2013; Duncombe, 2015). Both literatures emphasize the extent to which discourse and context shape the way threats emerge and are understood. In doing so, they also draw attention to the power relations implicated in the production of knowledge about world politics. We recast the perception of conspiracy on these grounds and situate it as an important, though under-theorized aspect of the contemporary security environment.

We suggest that studying the competing conspiracy narratives that spring up around issues of international political controversy like 9/11 is a particularly useful way of understanding how foreign policy knowledge is produced. This is important because such knowledge is often the basis for foreign policy decision-making, including on matters of war and peace.

We begin by outlining the historical pervasiveness of conspiracies in world politics. We then identify and assess three ways the perception of conspiracies has been understood: as the delusions of irrational individuals or groups; as phenomena that are much more central to societal dynamics than is usually held; and as narratives that are legitimized and delegitimized in particular political contexts. All three approaches are useful. The first two have been fairly widely applied, but the approach we highlight has not been well developed in the foreign policy literature.

We examine the issues at stake in the context of competing conspiracy narratives that were evident in the representations of US officials and foreign policy commentators after 9/11. We show that within this interpretive community some conspiracy narratives were taken for granted as normal political claims, while other conspiracy narratives were dismissed as irrational and paranoid.

On the one hand there are conventional narratives about 9/11 around which a foreign policy consensus was established. It was broadly accepted that the terrorist attack was the result of a secret plot by the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. Yet we show that this view also leaves out a series of equally compelling positions that implicate the USA in the politics that lead up to 9/11. It is now widely understood, for instance, that Al-Qaeda was established as part of the covert war against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1980s, which was organized and funded by the CIA and implemented by Pakistani Intelligence (Bergen and Reynolds, 2005).

We highlight how prominent views of 9/11 amongst US officials and foreign policy commentators isolated certain conspiracies and presented them as legitimate and rational. And we show that this was achieved even though some of the conspiracies identified, such as those about the covert production of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, were later found to be misleading (Chilcot, 2016).

On the other hand, we show how conspiracy narratives purportedly espoused in the Middle East were written off by US officials and foreign policy commentators. Several surveys conducted in the wake of 9/11 indicated that significant proportions of the population in Arab-Muslim countries did not believe that Al-Qaeda had carried out the attack. According to widespread US media reportage, numerous alternative explanations circulated, including some that saw the USA as secretly involved. Prominent US policy commentators associated these positions with anti-Americanism and an allegedly widespread tendency in the Middle East to hold paranoid conspiracy theories about the role of US foreign policy. The process of depicting the entire Middle East as riven with a paranoid mind-set has broad implications. Many positions identified with Arab-Muslims were dismissed as irrational and pathological, even though some of them, such as concerns about covert US actions or the geopolitical motives of US strategy in the Middle East, were based on credible concerns.

Before we proceed, a short note on definition is in order. We use the terms conspiracies and conspiracy theories throughout the essay. Conventionally the former refers to empirical phenomena, as outlined in the Oxford Dictionary (2016) conception above, whereas the latter is inevitably associated with far-fetched ideas about such phenomena. But we consciously avoid such a stark divide, in part because scholars have not been able to agree on definitions (see Keeley, 1999; and DeHaven-Smith, 2013: 36–41), in part because our main aim is not to settle these definitional disputes but to explore how narratives about conspiracies function politically.

Source

‘Conspiracy and Foreign Policy’ Roland Bleiker and Tim Aistrope, Security Dialogue (2018) 

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Tim Aistrope is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Recent publications include Conspiracy Theory and American Foreign Policy (Manchester University Press, 2016), ‘Social media and counterterrorism strategy’ in Australian Journal of International Affairs (70/2016), and ‘The Muslim paranoia narrative in counter-radicalisation policy’ in Critical Studies on Terrorism (9/2016). E-mail: [email protected]

Roland Bleiker is Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland, where he coordinates an interdisciplinary research programme on Visual Politics. Recent publications include Aesthetics and World Politics (Palgrave, 2009/2012) and, as co-editor with Emma Hutchison, a forum on ‘Emotions and world politics’ in International Theory (3/2014). His new book Visual Global Politics is forthcoming with Routledge. E-mail: [email protected]

Featured image is from Insider Monkey.

The social ills affecting Iran are not a complete invention of the West, which may surprise some. The protests which Iran’s old enemies had leaped upon are an indicator of civil unrest, particularly with regard her younger generations.

More than two thirds of Iran’s 80 million citizens are aged under 35. The demonstrations must have been of some concern to President Hassan Rouhani and his conservative cabinet. An eye-watering forty per cent of this generation are unemployed, and becoming increasingly disillusioned.

The protests, killing at least 21 and which comprised mainly youthful faces, are a result of various economic woes and societal problems plaguing Iran. There has recently been a sharp rise in fuel and food prices, along with reductions in government subsidies. Further, there has been anger over escalating corruption and widening inequality.

Such problems, hardly unique around the world, have drawn seemingly pious concern from the West. This despite the fact the numbers of those protesting were indeed limited – with the totals undergoing exaggeration and exploitation for political purposes.

The United States immediately evoked “human rights violations” in Iran, as expressed by its leader Donald Trump. The American president wrote about his nation’s sympathy for “the great Iranian people” who “have been repressed for many years”.

One could be forgiven for assuming President Trump desires a return to the days when the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ruled Iran (1953-1979). The Shah’s arrival was made possible by a US/UK intervention, with the murderous dictator being backed to the end by his foreign masters. He was finally overthrown by popular resistance almost four decades ago, a “loss” the US in particular have never forgotten.

During his reign, the Shah compiled “one of the worst human rights records in the world”. The suffering of “the great Iranian people” during 26 years of dictatorship was of little importance. The principal concern was that Iran’s monumental oil reserves remained out of reach of her citizens, and under Western control.

Trump himself, at age 71, is old enough to recall the Shah’s rule. However, it seems the US president is suffering from a case of historical amnesia, when expressing America’s new-found concern for the Iranian nation. He is hardly alone in that respect.

The current “repression” Iran’s people are enduring cannot begin to compare with the experiences of older generations. They are unlikely to have forgotten what true suppression involves.

It could be reasonably argued the US has almost unremittingly interfered in Iranian affairs from 1953 until the present day. This can be traced through either direct American intervention, support of Saddam Hussein in the bloody Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), sanctions, threats, and so on.

As a result of Iran’s tortured history, one could forgive President Rouhani for pinning much of the blame for the protests on his Western “enemies”.

Meanwhile the White House’s press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said the Trump administration would “not remain silent as the Iranian dictatorship represses the rights of it citizens”.

Not mentioned by Sanders is Trump’s huge backing of what may be more suitably labeled “the Saudi dictatorship” – located southwest of Iran across the Persian Gulf. Last summer, the new US government signed an arms deal worth tens of billions of dollars with Saudi Arabia.

This came in addition to predecessor Barack Obama offering the Saudis a staggering $115 billion in arms sales. It was the largest US-Saudi deal until then – with the agreement including the supply of outlawed cluster bombs.

The Saudis’ record with regard human rights makes Iran seem like a paradigm of democracy. A 2017 report by Human Rights Watch on Saudi Arabia detailed that,

“Mohammad Bin Salman [has] emerged as the most visible Saudi leader… the Saudi Arabia-led coalition continued an aerial campaign… that included numerous unlawful airstrikes that killed and injured thousands of civilians”.

The report further condemned the Saudi regime for “their arbitrary arrests, trials, and convictions of peaceful dissidents” – while highlighting that “dozens of human rights defenders and activists continued to serve long prison sentences”.

The Saudis’ murderous campaign in Yemen – largely made possible because of weapons deals with the US, along with Britain, France and Germany – has resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Yet Bin Salman himself has routinely avoided the “dictatorship” tag.

Indeed, the 32-year-old is widely regarded as “the Crown Prince”, despite his deepening complicity in the Yemeni catastrophe. This intervention is in fact harming the Saudis’ increasingly befuddled cause, while sinking its hitherto poor international reputation.

Last month the deputy UN director, Akshaya Kumar, reprimanded Bin Salman for “denying to hold any of his own forces accountable for their war crimes [in Yemen]”. Kumar insists that Bin Salman, and other coalition leaders, “should face international sanctions” – which have not been forthcoming. Nor are they likely to be.

Amnesty International’s analysis of Bin Salman’s rule is even more damning. They outlined in October 2017 that,

“The months since the Crown Prince’s appointment have seen no improvements, instead, its already dire rights record has continued to deteriorate”.

Amnesty stress that “

Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s worst abusers when it comes to human rights”.

Yet the tyranny has for decades remained a darling of the West, who elsewhere profess noble sentiments for human rights infrigements when assigned to official enemies – like Iran, North Korea or Cuba.

Not insignificantly, Saudi governments have long supported terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda – supplying the extremist groups with arms, financial support, propaganda tools, etc. At home, Saudi regimes have further spread their extreme Wahhabi doctrines in schools and workplaces.

Despite these abuses, which far outweigh charges leveled against Iran, the Trump administration remains silent. As do other Western powers. Following the Obama government, Trump’s cabinet is complicit in what is an overt famine war against Yemen.

The double standards can be seen elsewhere. In eastern Europe, Washington instigated the 2014 Ukraine coup that installed a notoriously corrupt regime, with ties to far right groups. Indeed, Obama admitted American involvement during an unguarded interview with CNN the following year.

It saw billionaire Petro Poroshenko take over from the illegally ousted and democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych. Over two years after Obama’s interview, and with thousands dead in the ensuing fighting, it was revealed Poroshenko has a 1 per cent approval rating in the Ukraine.

In September 2017 Kenneth Courtis, the former Goldman Sachs managing director and vice-chairman, visited Kiev. Courtis wrote after his trip that,

“The current Kiev regime is the most corrupt and the most incompetent the Ukraine has known since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The degree of popular trust has fallen virtually to zero.”

Instead, what is consistently recounted in the mainstream are examples of Russian “aggression” and “hostility” towards the pro-Western regime. Russia has inevitably involved itself by funding pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukrainian regions, such as Donetsk and Luhansk. Many of the citizens of these areas speak Russian, and have sympathetic feelings toward Moscow.

Amid the bluster, it can be forgotten that the Ukraine lies along Russia’s borders, and is a country with a long history of Western exploitation. It would be interesting to note the American reaction if Russia endeavored to implement a pro-Kremlin regime in Mexico or Canada. One would expect the US’s response to be rather more forcible in that instance.

Western elites have repeatedly condemned Russia for annexing the Crimea in early 2014. Crimea’s annexation was indeed illegal, yet came as a direct response to the American-led Ukrainian putsch. Seldom mentioned is that the Crimea was part of Russia from 1783-1917, and later under the Soviet Union’s domain until 1991.

Elsewhere, there are no reprimands to be heard of the US for its illegal control of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba’s major port, taken at the point of a gun. The assaults on human rights at the US-run Guantanamo prison are particularly egregious – and much more serious than anything attributed to Cuba itself.

It is also worth recalling the American annexation of half of Mexico’s territory during the mid-1840s, after an aggressive invasion whose results stand to the current day. 

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

Kurdish militias operating in Syria have allegedly received a batch of man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADs) from the US, according to rumors spread by pro-opposition sources on January 15.

Kurdish militias – YPG and YPJ – are a core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control large areas in northwestern and eastern Syria.

Opposition sources argue that the US had provided MANPADs to the part of the US-backed forces operating in the area of Afrin in northwestern Syria. However, they were not able to provide any evidence to confirm that the so-called “secret deal” between the sides really exists and the SDF had received the MANPADs.

Reports about the MANPADs supplies followed the escalation of tensions between Turkey/pro-Turkish militants and the SDF in northwestern Syria. Turkish forces repeatedly shelled positions of the SDF in the area of Afrin last weekend. The SDF, particularly Kurdish YPG units, responded with shelling positions of pro-Kurdish militants south and east of the Afrin area.

On January 14, the US-led coalition announced that it is working with the SDF to establish a 30,000-strong border security force that will control the Syrian border with Turkey and Iraq.

On the same day, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that Turkish forces may soon carry out an attack on the city of Afrin and reports appeared that Ankara is deploying additional forces south of it.

On January 15, the Turkish president vowed to “drown” the forming “terror army” [border force] before it’s complete.

“Our duty is to drown this terrorist force before it is born,” AP quoted Erdogan. The president also said that the US role in establishing this force is “unacceptable”.

“This is what we have to say to all our allies: don’t get between us and terrorist organizations, or we will not be responsible for the unwanted consequences,” Erdogan continued threatening that Turkish forces will battle “until not a single terrorist remains along our borders, let alone 30,000 of them.”

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Featured image is from South Front.

In response to reports that President Trump will continue waiving nuclear-related sanctions on Iran while also imposing new non-nuclear sanctions, Paul Kawika Martin, Senior Director for Policy and Political Affairs at Peace Action, released the following statement:

“Trump’s assertion that the Iran nuclear agreement is not in our national security interest is patently false. Thanks to the agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has implemented rigorous verification and monitoring systems that grant us the peace of mind that comes with knowing all of Iran’s potential pathways to a nuclear weapon remain blocked. After two years of verifiable success, the Iran agreement is a paragon of international diplomacy; a testament to the power of dialogue to resolve the most complex and contentious issues between nations. Unfortunately we have a president who’s hellbent on unraveling the achievements of his predecessor, and who’s idea of sound nuclear policy includes a tenfold increase in our nuclear stockpile and threatening other nuclear-armed nations with ‘fire and fury.’

“Thankfully, Trump has signaled that for now, he won’t violate the agreement by re-imposing nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, but the accord is still vulnerable to less direct forms of sabotage. For some time, Congress and the administration have been using non-nuclear sanctions to try to goad Iran into walking away from the deal so they can blame Iran for its collapse. With new sanctions coming down the pike again, and Congress reportedly considering legislation that would seek to unilaterally rewrite the terms of the agreement, these sideways attacks on the Iran accord are still a real threat.

“Walking away from the agreement, or pushing Iran to walk away, would be exceedingly reckless in its own right, risking an end to all inspections and constraints on Iran’s nuclear program and raising the prospect of war. But killing the deal has broader implications for the future of American diplomacy. Just as talks between North and South Korea begin and hopes for direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea abound, Trump is demonstrating that America’s international commitments can be as short-lived as our presidencies. That’s a dangerous signal to send when diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula may be the only way to avert a catastrophic war.”

In last week’s column I wrote that iatrogenic disorders (a doctor-, drug-, vaccine-, surgery- or other medical treatment-caused disorder) were the third leading cause of death in the US. That revelation may have ruffled the feathers of some readers, particularly if they were employed in the medical professions, so I am enlarging on that statement in this week’s column.

In 2000, a commentary article was written by Dr Barbara Stanfield, MD, MPH. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, July 26, 2000—Vol 284, No. 4).

The article was titled “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?” It has been posted here.

In the article, Stanfield included the following statistics from her research about iatrogenic deaths. (Note: these numbers do not include out-patient iatrogenic deaths):

• 12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery in hospitals
• 7,000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals
• 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals
• 80,000 deaths/year from nosocomial infections in hospitals
• 106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications in hospitals

Combining these five groups gives us a total of 225,000 in-patient deaths. The 225,000 number does not include out-patient deaths or disabilities. In any case, this number easily constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer (see the official list for 2015 below).

The CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Report for 2000, said that cancer caused 710,701 US deaths in 2000 and heart disease caused 553,080. For comparison purposes, the CDC’s report said that heart disease caused 606,401 deaths in 2017 and cancer caused 594,707.

Below are the US death statistics for 2015 (apparently the last year that the CDC has published the complete list).

Combining these five groups gives us a total of 225,000 in-patient deaths. The 225,000 number does not include out-patient deaths or disabilities. In any case, this number easily constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer (see the official list for 2015 below).

The CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Report for 2000, said that cancer caused 710,701 US deaths in 2000 and heart disease caused 553,080. For comparison purposes, the CDC’s report said that heart disease caused 606,401 deaths in 2017 and cancer caused 594,707.

Below are the US death statistics for 2015 (apparently the last year that the CDC has published the complete list).

1 Heart Disease – 633,842

2 Cancer – 595,930

3 Chronic lower respiratory diseases – 155,041

4 Unintentional injuries – 146,571

5 Cerebrovascular diseases – 140,323

6 Alzheimer’s disease – 110,561

7 Diabetes mellitus – 79,535

8 Influenza and pneumonia – 57,062

9 Nephrosis, nephrotic syndrome – 49,959

10 Suicide – 44,193

It is obvious that “Inpatient Iatrogenic Deaths” of 225,000 would easily come in 3rd, if the CDC would ever start collecting such data and publishing it as a separate category. Something fishy is going on, particularly in view of the fact that there have numerous requests that the CDC change its traditional data collection methods.

One also wonders – if more accurate figures were available – if combining in-patient and out-patient iatrogenic deaths together (a rational approach) would cause heart and cancer deaths to drop to # 2 and # 3.

One only has to consider tabulating psychiatric drug-induced suicides and homicides as iatrogenic; or logically regarding deaths from neuroleptic drug-induced diabetes and obesity to be classed as iatrogenic; or regarding the deaths from the aluminum-adjuvanted, vaccine-induced autoimmune diseases that cause so much morbidity and mortality as iatrogenic; or regarding a portion of the SIDS deaths at 2, 4 and 6 month of age, when infants are routinely injected with dangerous, untested-for-safety cocktails of mercury-containing, aluminum-adjuvanted and live virus-containing intramuscular vaccines as iatrogenic.

Or one could add in last year’s 50,000 opioid overdose deaths – most of which were prescribed by health caregivers but which were probably added to the “Accidental Death” category; or adding in the 50,000 heart attack deaths from Merck’s arthritis drug Vioxx (also iatrogenic deaths, but included in the “Heart Disease” category); or the premature chemotherapy drug-induced deaths that are invariably included in the “Cancer Death” category.

And the list of potential iatrogenic deaths goes on and on.

A decade after her article was published (in a December 2009 interview), Dr Stanfield re-affirmed the veracity of her earlier data by saying:

“106,000 people die (annually, in US hospitals) as a result of CORRECTLY prescribed medicines…Overuse of a drug or inappropriate use of a drug would not fall under the category of ‘correctly’ prescribed. Therefore, people who die after ‘overuse’ or ‘inappropriate use’ would be IN ADDITION TO the 106,000 (these numbers do not count out-patients killed by prescription drugs!) and would fall into another or other categories.”

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And then there is the research done by Dr Peter Goetzsche.

Dr Stanfield’s 2000 and 2009 statistics holds true for the UK and for Europe as well, according to the co-founder of The Cochrane Collaboration, Dr Peter Goetzsche. In his powerful 2013 book “Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare.”

Dr Goetzsche boldly states that iatrogenic deaths should be listed as # 3 in both Europe and the US. In his 2015 companion book, Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial, Goetzsche makes the same points about psychiatric drug-induced deaths. Below are some quotes from his 2013 book, where he points out the many similarities between Big Pharma and the mob:

“It is scary how many similarities there are between the drug industry and the mob. The mob makes obscene amounts of money…The side effects of organized crime are killings and deaths, and the side effects are the same in this industry. The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does this industry…

“Otherwise good citizens, when they are part of a corporate group, do things they otherwise wouldn’t do because the group…validate(s) what there’re doing as OK…

“The difference is that all these people in the drug industry look upon themselves as law-abiding citizens, not as citizens who would ever rob a bank. However, when they get together as a group and manage these corporations, something seems to happen. It’s almost like when soldiers commit war crime atrocities. When you’re in a group, it’s easy to do things you otherwise wouldn’t do.” – An unnamed whistle-blowing ex-vice president for Pfizer’s global marketing department.

“In contrast to the drug industry, doctors don’t harm their patients deliberately. And when they do cause harm, either accidentally, or because of the lack of knowledge, or by negligence, they harm only one patient at a time.”

“In the drug industry, bribery is routine and involves large amounts of money. Almost every type of person who can affect the interests of the industry has been bribed: doctors, hospital administrators, cabinet ministers, health inspectors, customs officers, tax assessors, drug registration officials, factory inspectors, pricing officials and political parties.”

“There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature citation too biased or too egoistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print.” – Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of JAMA.

“What makes Big Pharma unique in the US is that it outspends all others in laying down cold hard cash into its lobbying efforts (another word for bribing governments that includes not only US Congress but its US federal regulator, the bought and sold Food and Drug Administration).” – Joachim Hagopian

“(As a drug rep) “it’s my job to figure out what a physician’s price is. For some it’s dinner at the finest restaurants, for others it’s enough convincing data to let them prescribe confidently and for others it’s my attention and friendship…but at the most basic level, everything is for sale and everything is an exchange.” – Retired Drug Sales Rep Shahram Ahari

“Before the approval process, the (Big Pharma-connected) sponsor sets up the clinical trial – the drug selected, and the dose and route of administration of the comparison drug (or placebo). Since the trial is designed to have one outcome, is it surprising that the comparison drug may be hobbled – given in the wrong dose, by the wrong method?

“The sponsor pays those who collect the evidence, doctors, and nurses, so is it surprising that in a dozen ways they influence results? All the results flow in to the sponsor, who analyses the evidence, drops what is inconvenient, and keeps it all secret – even from the trial physicians. The manufacturer deals out to the FDA bits of evidence, and pays the FDA (the judge) to keep it secret. Panels (the jury), usually paid consultant fees by the sponsors, decide on FDA approval, often lobbied for by paid grass-roots patient organizations who pack the court (the trick is called ‘astro-turfing’).

“If the trial, under these conditions, shows the drug works, the sponsors pay sub-contractors to write up the research and impart whatever spin they may; they pay ‘distinguished’ academics to add their names as ‘authors’ to give the enterprise credibility, and often publish in journals dependent on the sponsors for their existence.

“If the drug seems no good or harmful, the trial is buried and everyone is reminded of their confidentiality agreements. Unless the trial is set up in this way, the sponsor will refuse to back the trial, but even if it is set up as they wish, those same sponsors may suddenly walk away from it, leaving patients and their physicians high and dry.”

“We have a system where defendant, developers of evidence, police, judge, jury, and even court reporters are all induced to arrive at one conclusion in favour of the new drug.”

“More than 80 million prescriptions for psychiatric drugs are written in the UK every year. Not only are these drugs often entirely unnecessary and ineffective, but they can also turn patients into addicts, cause crippling side-effects – and kill.”

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If any reader has any doubt about the veracity of the Stanfield and Goetzsche claims, below are a couple of other courageous researchers that have delved into the issue. In 2016, a group of Johns Hopkins medical school researchers, led by Dr Martin Makary, published supporting information in the British Medical Journal. (BMJ 2016; 353).

In the introduction of the publication, Makary and his co-authors wrote about how flawed is the CDC system of data collection and analysis:

“The annual list of the most common causes of death in the United States, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), informs public awareness and national research priorities each year. The list is created using death certificates filled out by physicians, funeral directors, medical examiners, and coroners.

“However, a major limitation of the death certificate is that it relies on assigning an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to the cause of death. As a result, causes of death not associated with an ICD code (including many iatrogenic disorders), such as human and system factors, are not captured.

“…communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors, poor judgment, and inadequate skill can directly result in patient harm and death. We analyzed the scientific literature on medical error to identify its contribution to US deaths in relation to causes listed by the CDC.

Death From Medical Care Itself

“Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome, the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning), or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient. Patient harm from medical error can occur at the individual or system level. The taxonomy of errors is expanding to better categorize preventable factors and events. We focus on preventable lethal events to highlight the scale of potential for improvement.”

Makary’s group published data that supports iatrogenic deaths as the # 3 cause of death.

In a 2016 open letter to the CDC, Makary’s group urged the agency to add medical errors to its annual list of common causes of death.

The letter said, in part:

“We are writing this letter to respectfully ask the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to change the way it collects our country’s national vital health statistics each year. The list of most common causes of death published is very important – it informs our country’s research and public health priorities each year. The current methodology used to generate the list has what we believe to be a serious limitation. As a result, the list has neglected to identify the third leading cause of death in the U.S. – medical error.”

As a partial defense of over-busy, over-booked, sometimes mentally and physically exhausted health caregivers in the US, another researcher, Dr John James, has published an article in the Journal of Patient Safety. Dr James makes similar claims urging the CDC to evaluate death statistics more logically.

The title of his 2013 article is “A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care”. (Journal of Patient Safety: September 2013 – Volume 9 – Issue 3 – p 122–128)

Below are excerpts from that article:

Objectives

Based on 1984 data developed from reviews of medical records of patients treated in New York hospitals, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimated that up to 98,000 Americans die each year from medical errors. The basis of this estimate is nearly 3 decades old; herein, an updated estimate is developed from modern studies published from 2008 to 2011.

Results

Using a weighted average of the 4 studies, a lower limit of 210,000 deaths per year was associated with preventable harm in hospitals…the true number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm to patients was estimated at more than 400,000 per year. Serious (but non-lethal) harm seems to be 10- to 20-fold more common than lethal harm.

Conclusions

The epidemic of patient harm in hospitals must be taken more seriously if it is to be curtailed. Fully engaging patients and their advocates during hospital care, systematically seeking the patients’ voice in identifying harms, transparent accountability for harm, and intentional correction of root causes of harm will be necessary to accomplish this goal.

“Medical care in the United States is technically complex at the individual provider level, at the system level, and at the national level. The amount of new knowledge generated each year by clinical research that applies directly to patient care can easily overwhelm the individual physician trying to optimize the care of his patients.”

“Because of increased production demands, providers may be expected to give care in suboptimal working conditions, with decreased staff, and a shortage of physicians, which leads to fatigue and burnout. It should be no surprise that preventable adverse events that harm patients are frighteningly common in this highly technical, rapidly changing, and poorly integrated industry. The picture is further complicated by a lack of transparency and limited accountability for errors that harm patients.“

“There are at least 3 time-based categories of preventable adverse events recognized in patients that are or have been hospitalized. The broadest definition encompasses all unexpected and harmful experience that a patient encounters as a result of being in the care of a medical professional or system because high quality, evidence-based medical care was not delivered during hospitalization. The harmful outcomes may be realized immediately, delayed for days or months, or even delayed many years.“

“There was much debate after the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report about the accuracy of its estimates. In a sense, it does not matter whether the deaths of 100,000, 200,000 or 400,000 Americans each year are associated with PAEs in hospitals….one must hope that the present, evidence-based estimate of 400,000+ deaths per year will foster an outcry for overdue changes and increased vigilance in medical care to address the problem of harm to patients who come to a hospital seeking only to be healed.”

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Dr. Kohls is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty-year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of Mind Freedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Many of Dr Kohls’ columns are archived at

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls; or

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

Just days after a false alert in Hawaii about an incoming missile, the Japanese public broadcaster NHK panicked the public yesterday with an incorrect warning about a missile being launched from North Korea. A message correcting the error was sent out five minutes later.

Authorities in both countries blamed individuals for making a mistake. However, the two false alarms about a missile attack are not purely coincidental. They are a product of the extreme tensions on the Korean Peninsula, for which the United States and its ally Japan are chiefly responsible.

NHK published an alert on its web site and sent out a warning to mobile phones and via Twitter on Tuesday that read: “North Korea appears to have launched a missile. The government urges people to take shelter inside buildings or underground.”

Five minutes later came a correction and an abject apology from the NKH on-line host. “This happened because equipment to send a news flash onto the Internet had been incorrectly operated,” the announcer said. We are deeply sorry.” No further details have been provided.

The very fact that two false alerts can take place in less than a week, after decades in which no such panics took place, highlights the advanced preparations for war with North Korea, and also with major nuclear-armed powers such as China and Russia. Surveillance and warning systems are being built, or revived from the Cold War and extended, as part of a rapid US-led military build-up in Asia.

In November, authorities in Hawaii, where the US military’s Pacific Command is based, announced monthly testing of the Cold War-era system that blares out an Attack Warning Tone through sirens. The Emergency Management Agency said it would update the population on its actions to “prepare our state for a nuclear threat.”

Under the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan also has ramped up its civil defence apparatus and instigated civilian drills to prepare for a missile attack. Abe has exploited the confrontation with North Korea to justify the remilitarisation of Japan and his push to eliminate legal and constitutional constraints on the use of the armed forces.

It cannot be completely ruled out that either or both of the false alarms were orchestrated deliberately to create a climate of fear and apprehension about the “North Korean threat.” Throughout the past year, a relentless propaganda campaign has been conducted in both countries to paint the small, impoverished country with its limited nuclear arsenal as the greatest international menace.

In fact, for all its bluster, the Pyongyang regime, which confronts the most world’s powerful military armed with thousands of nuclear warheads, has always insisted that it requires nuclear weapons as a means of defence. The Trump administration, however, has declared it will not permit North Korea to have a nuclear missile capable of hitting continental America and repeatedly warned it will use all means, including military attack, to prevent that.

Trump’s own bellicose threats to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea and “totally destroy” the country of 25 million people demonstrate that the US is prepared to use nuclear weapons to achieve its end. At the same time, the US is ratcheting up its efforts to apply “maximum pressure” on Pyongyang to capitulate to Washington’s demands to destroy its nuclear weapons, missiles and associated facilities, and submit to highly intrusive inspections of its military and industries.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson yesterday jointly convened with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland a gathering in Vancouver of 20 nations to discuss ways of intensifying the pressure on North Korea. Both China and Russia refused to attend, declaring the event to be unrepresentative and counterproductive.

In their opening remarks, foreign ministers noted recent talks between the two Koreas and the participation of North Korea in next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea. However, all of them insisted North Korea had to denuclearise and ruled out any easing of the sanctions that are crippling its economy.

Tillerson reiterated that the US “will not accept a nuclear-armed North Korea” and called for tougher measures. “We have to increase the costs of the regime’s behaviour to the point that North Korea must come to the table for credible negotiations,” he said. North Korea is already the most diplomatically and economically isolated country in the world, with bans on most of its exports and heavy restrictions on the import of oil and other goods.

Tillerson specifically called for nations to increase the maritime interdiction of ships conducting illicit trade with North Korea. The US may well be pushing for some form of naval blockade—a measure that goes well beyond last month’s UN Security Council resolution calling for the seizure of such vessels in port.

Canada’s top general Jonathan Vance hinted that the search and seizure of vessels on the high seas was being discussed. He declared that he has “the military capacity inside the Armed Forces” to participate in any efforts to enforce the sanctions against North Korea. A naval blockade would itself be a provocative act of war that could precipitate a wider conflict.

Alongside US demands for tougher measures, the US is accelerating preparations for a war of aggression, not defence, against North Korea in the months ahead. While the US has postponed major joint exercises with South Korea for the duration of the Winter Olympics, the Pentagon is stepping up military drills at home.

Congressman Mac Thornberry, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters yesterday: “The administration is very seriously looking at what would be involved with military options when it comes to North Korea.” He added that the training underway was “very serious.”

A lengthy New York Times article yesterday was entitled “US military quietly prepares for last resort: War with North Korea.” It reported that “the scope and timing of the exercises suggest a renewed focus on getting the country’s military prepared for what could be on the horizon with North Korea.

“At Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month, a mix of 48 Apache gunships and Chinook cargo helicopters took off in an exercise that practiced moving troops and equipment under live artillery fire to assault targets. Two days later, in the skies above Nevada, 119 soldiers from the Army’s Airborne Division parachuted out of C-17 military cargo planes under cover of darkness in an exercise that simulated a foreign invasion.

“Next month, at Army posts across the United States, more than 1,000 reserve soldiers will practice how to set up so-called mobilisation centres that move military forces overseas in a hurry.”

The article pointed out that the US was sending more Special Forces troops to South Korea during the Olympics, in what “some officials said ultimately could be the formation of a Korea-based task force similar to the types that are fighting in Iraq and Syria.”

The most ominous sign that the US is preparing for a catastrophic war with North Korea is the build-up of strategic bombers at its bases on Guam in the western Pacific. CNN reported yesterday that the US Air Force has deployed six more B-52 bombers to Guam’s Anderson Air Force Base to join three B-2 stealth bombers sent earlier this month to replace B-1 bombers. Unlike the B-1, the B-52 and B-2 bombers are equipped to carry nuclear weapons.

The false alarm on a ballistic missile attack on Hawaii last Saturday from North Korea did not help the Peace Talks which were essentially initiated by DPRK’s President, Kim Jong-un. They spread enormous fear of a nuclear annihilation of Honolulu, pulverization of homes and people – of Armageddon for the Hawaiian population. Was this a Trump attempt to boycott the talks? Or was it the war-mongering faction of the deep state wanting more threats of war, scaring the Hawaiian population into believing that this might become reality; pushing them with a false alarm into wanting the devastation once and for all the Korean Peninsula – because an attack on the North would not spare the South? Is the war industry desperate for more wars, more profit? They may be wheezing from exhaustion – as the world is turning towards peace.

Another sign that the empire, the rogue controllers of the universe, are running on empty, that they are in sheer fear of losing their grip on the world, is that Canada and the US had decided to hold an international meeting in Vancouver, Canada, on North Korea on 15 and 16 January 2018. The Conference was hosted by Canada, sponsored by the US. In addition to Canada and the US, there were 18 countries in the “Vancouver Group”, including Denmark, Greece, Norway, New Zealand and others – but not Russia, nor China — and most ridiculously of all – North Korea itself was absent. Russia and China were to be  briefed at the end of the meetings, in the evening of 16 January; that was the proposal. – Have these wannabe hegemons along with their breath also lost their marbles?

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the obvious: This is not acceptable. Adding with his always positive humor,

“With all due respect towards those who came up with such an initiative, I don’t expect anything productive. Hopefully, nothing counterproductive will happen. It’ll be a great result already, while it’s hardly believable.”

The Peace talks were initiated under the pretext of the North wanting to participate in the South’s winter Olympics in PyeongChang in February this year. A clever move. It reminds of the Ping-Pong diplomacy between Nixon’s America and China of the early 1970’s. Interestingly this was the thawing of relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which was being ‘sanctioned’ – alas! sanctions are not new! – because of Beijing’s ‘interference’ in the totally illegal, unjustified, criminal and devastating US-led Korean war which from 1950 – 1953 totally destroyed North Korea, with a death toll of at least 4 million people, almost half of the then North Korean population. The US bombs left not a brick untouched in the now DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). The goal of this inhuman atrocity was then, as are Washington’s 60 years-plus aggressions towards Pyongyang today, an attempt of further encroaching on China with the final goal of full domination.

Canada’s foreign minister Chrystia Freeland and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the Vancouver conference (Source: VICE News)

The US table tennis team was in Nagoya, Japan, in 1971 for the 31st World Table Tennis Championship, when in April 1971 the team received an invitation to visit Beijing. Hence started a diplomatic journey which later opened the (flood) gates for an immense, intense and at times controversial trade relationship between Washington and Beijing. For the PRC sports played an important diplomatic role, reflected in the slogan “Friendship First, Competition Second”.

Was Pyongyang inspired by this example of sports paving the way for a new and improved relationship between brothers? – Possibly. Yet. It is not clear, who really took the initiative, and who persuaded the Donald to be quiet and let it happen? – Will he indeed be quiet and let these historic peace talks take place undisturbed? What is happening behind the curtains in Trump’s camp – other than the Vancouver Group gathering – is anybody’s guess. That these Peace Talks are taking place is what the world should concentrate on – a step forward in a peace movement that cannot be undone. It is a master piece of two sovereign nations to cement their relationship which unites them, plus portions of China and today’s Russian Federation with a 5000-year history.

It is important to understand Korea’s history to comprehend that everything that comes out of the lie-infected mouthpieces of Washington is incoherent and does not fit reality, the thousands of years of a peaceful Korea, whose believes are still today largely influenced by Confucius. The history and image of thousands of years of peaceful Korea is a revelation. See box – below.

Returning to today’s reality – only a few weeks ago, all fifteen members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) have condemned the DPRK as an aggressor that has to be punished, piling insult after lies and more insults on President Kim Jon-un and on his nothing-else-but-defense strategy. Today, the same UNSC should get together again and unanimously praise DPRK for this tremendous feat of, against all odds, engaging in peace talks with its natural brother for millennia. Why will such praise for a peace-loving nation not happen? – Because the Donalds and Nikki Haleys of this world, the master aggressors of the universe, and all the President’s Men and Vassals, would have to bite their tongue.

However, we know this is not the end of it. Washington still has more than 28,000 servicemen and women stationed in South Korea and a deadly arsenal of warships, fighter planes and nuclear bombs to strike – pre-emptively, if the hegemon deems it necessary. Never mind that 80% of South Koreans want this murderous occupation to end. Similar with Japan’s Okinawa US base with more than 40,000 US servicemen and women – the vast majority of Japanese, and especially Island inhabitants, want them out. They bring crime, drugs, prostitution and even murder to the island. Rapes are on the rise.

May these Korean talks set in motion something bigger than just peace talks between two brothers. Could this first serious encounter in over sixty years (delegations of the two countries have met in 2014 for an exchange of family visits) become an eye-opener for the 15 UNSC members who thoughtlessly dished out murder sanctions to North Korea just a few weeks ago?

Could this be an eye-opener for the world, showing how fake the entire UN-operation has become, how subservient to the paymaster they have become? Could this be a signal for China and Russia that their non-veto, their submission to the bully, for whatever strategic reason they may have had – was a mistake? – Or would they simply claim credit for what is happening – that threats and sactions do work? Any thinking person who knows the history and Mission of Peace of Great and Ancient Korea, the Gojoseon Kingdom – and surely China and Russia ought to know it – will see either how ignorant the world is, or else, how blood- and greed thirsty humanity has become under the Kingdom of Capitalism.

The two Koreans may have seized the opportunity to fulfill their highest goal, to become one again, bringing their families together in a lasting way; initiating a movement of joy and harmony; a new era of unification that cannot be broken. This is fully in line with the Buddhist preachings of love, still deeply enshrined in the two Koreas.

President Kim Jong-un has always and repeatedly said that he is not seeking war, is not threatening anybody, but that the nuclear arms are a defensive weapon aiming only at the aggressors – the one and only aggressor, the United States, which for over 60 years has not let go, not allowed converting a shaky armistice agreement into a peace agreement. The people of the DPRK want nothing more than peace.

Wars over the last century and especially during the last 17 years – with the onset of the eternal “war on terror”, the one business terminology that drives the profit of the military-security industrial complex, has become so engrained in people’s minds, that a world of peace, harmony and love is almost unimaginable.

Under what type of regime would a united North-South Korea function? A hard-core socialism, DPRK style, a Seoul type capitalism, with a soft Moon Jae-in touch, or a Chinese type socialism with a capitalist coating, yet controlled by a centralized socialist party? – Difficult to predict at this point, but given Korea’s historic link to Manchuria, to both today’s China and Russia, it would likely be a political model of social sensitivity.

The regional pressure led by China to withdraw the US military base from the Korean Peninsula would grow – and in parallel the Japanese people would find an additional argument for the expulsion of US occupiers from the beautiful island of Okinawa. Would the US supported puppet leaders – leaders, not people – Japan, Guam, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Australia – cave in to peoples’ pressure and kick the war hounds out of their sovereign territories, as they should, if they want to deserve even a shred of the meaning of democracy?

Let me dream for a moment: If this tremendous endeavor – peace and unification – were to succeed, it might set an agenda in motion, the world at large has not thought of yet. China and Russia would come out stronger with their objective of a multi-polar world.

Mr. Putin, who supports the Moon-Kim Plan knows very well what political role the Olympics play – and how sports act in politics. He and Russia are living “sports as politics” almost on a daily basis. Russian athletes being banned from Olympics, and other sports events; Russian athletes constantly being singled out for doping, when the number of US athletes caught doping is much larger. US sports people found doping fill pages on internet, but nobody cares to look – and dares speaking up against injustice. The Olympic committee is a puppet of the same league as are the United Nations, the European Union and all the international courts. For what reasons? – I can only think of cowardice. That’s what globalized neoliberalism has made us – afraid of sanctions, afraid to stand up for justice and instead subservient to bullies. That’s greed above integrity.

President Putin, along with the Presidents Moon and Kim, cleverly turns sport around as a peace initiative – who could oppose DPRK athletes from participating in South Korea’s Olympics – and behind the scene is an actual peace initiative being mounted that could literally turn the world’s tectonic power plates around. Dynamics of such developments, coupled with a rapid shift towards more economic equilibrium, already taking place in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) growing strength, and with increased monetary independence from the west – such dynamics are unpredictable. But they could rapidly move our civilization from darkness into light.

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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 thanks to Bob Dylan‘s great song of the same name. What rankles me is how so many of my friends, neighbors and acquaintances seem to accept how far down the rabbit hole our Amerikan society has fallen. We live under the broken umbrella of an empire that cares not to protect the overwhelming majority of us. We live under the auspices of a regime that spends half or our hard earned tax dollars on phony wars, illegal foreign occupations and excessive militarism at home. Yet, most of the lemmings I cohabit with are only concerned about tripe news on sexual scandals and other base events that have nothing to do with their health or financial well being. For every person who can profit from this insane stock market run up, there are a thousand times more folks who are lucky to afford the bare necessities of life. Many of us, even we who earn more than the median income level, still walk around with missing teeth, knees and necks in need of operative repair and so on.

We Amerikans have become like those serfs on the feudal manors, working hard and still bowing and scraping when the lord of the manor passes. Why should the boss worry in most businesses, when but less than 10% of private sector workers are in a union? There are fewer and fewer protections for working stiffs in Amerika, and the empire knows it. When we who know better shout as loud as we can that the Fat Cat CEOs earn upwards of 300 times that of their workers, some serfs answer “Well, they worked hard for their success, and they deserve it!” Really? Well, in 1960 the top federal tax rate was at 90%, and the Fat Cats still did very well ( of course no one paid 90%- they all had accountants and plenty of write offs ). In 1985 that top rate was at 50%… now it is at less than 39%, and sinking lower as I write. So, do the math: A Fat Cat CEO who earns 300 times of his or her worker is most likely keeping double or triple what his counterparts of 32 or 57 years ago kept. Where is the disgust from most of my fellow working stiffs?

To keep one soldier in Afghanistan costs the same as hiring 25 new fireman, policeman or school teachers, each at a $ 40k a year salary. Hellfire Missiles ($ 70,000 each) shot from a Reaper Drone ($28 million dollars) many times not only kill innocents via Collateral damage, but that spending redirected can help keep our neighborhood libraries open longer and filled with tons of new books! The real crime is in the fact that our empire has NO business being in those countries… period! Monday, January 15th was Reverend King’s birthday, and this coming April will be the 50th anniversary of his assassination, for that matter. A year before he was murdered, Reverend King gave one of his most memorable speeches, at the Riverside Church in N. Y . C. For the first time he publically denounced our empire’s involvement in Indochina:

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love…. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Amerika is truly running out of band-aids!

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

For nearly twenty-five years I have been writing in this space about war: that is, the wars we have waged against other countries. I’ve heard every possible rationalization for these conflicts, from “weapons of mass destruction” to “he’s killing his own people” to babies being bayoneted in their incubators and on down the line.

Now that I’ve reached a milestone in my career as a chronicler of this kind of folly, and thought I’d seen it all, I’ve come upon something entirely new and that totally outdid my experience and expectations: civil war in America.

Oh, and you should hear the rationales! They make George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Richard Perle come off like paragons of honesty and rectitude.

According to a coalition of forces including the Democratic party, the FBI, the CIA, and most of the “news” media, the country has been taken over by Vladimir Putin and the Russian State: President Donald J. Trump is an instrument in their hands, and the independence of the United States has been fatally compromised: the President and his top aides are taking their orders from the Kremlin.

This wouldn’t even pass an elementary course in formulaic script-writing, not to mention that gigantic plagiarism problem such a project would pose: it’s been done to death. But a lack of originality isn’t something that would stop our spooks, as dogged as they are.

Our intelligence agencies are at war with the executive branch of government, and they have been ever since Trump triumphed in the Electoral College and decisively defeated Hillary Clinton. The FBI/CIA/Deep State have been trying mightily to reverse the election results since that moment, to no avail.

Not that they haven’t had an effect on how the government functions – or fails to do so: the essential defensive role played by the intelligence community in identifying and isolating potential terrorist cells is undoubtedly compromised. Their attention is elsewhere. And let’s get real here: why would the CIA identify an imminent terror threat if their main goal is to discredit a sitting president? Wouldn’t they just let it slide and then heap the blame on Trump? Of course they would. Forget the “war on terrorism” – our spooks are fighting a war on Trump and they mean to win it by hook or by crook.

This didn’t just happen overnight. The two antagonists in the Second American Civil War have been evolving into rival armies with antithetical interests since the 1990s.

Where are the richest counties in these here United States? The answer is those counties around the capital city of Washington, D.C., where practically all the nation’s wealth is squirreled away. The huge McMansions, the private schools, the expensive autos, the overeducated children, the impressive properties, the elite professionals in every field – it’s all inside a very few Northeastern counties centered around the Imperial City. While the rest of the nation suffers from the worst drug scourge in many years, crime invades areas (Califonia, Illinois) that had showed some signs of improvement, and peoples’ incomes cannot keep up with the cost of living.

You can tell the American empire is on its last legs because its ruling classes have already declared open warfare on their less fortunate subjects. The puffed-up arrogance and exhibitionistic wealth and behavior of these worthies is something that even a Bourbon would know enough to refrain from flaunting. But our elites are on a suicide mission.

For decades, the corporate and ideological tribes that have ruled this country have looted it within an inch of its life. The tremendous wealth created by what used to be the freest economy in the world has been monopolized by a tiny minority of crony capitalists at the top of the pyramid. Hi-tech oligarchs who look like tenth graders and have the mentality of high school hall monitors have seized control of the commanding heights of the culture and turned it into a nightmarish mix of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and Nineteen Eight-Four. Instead of adapting themselves to the views of the American people, our two political parties have adopted ideologies that have very little to do with the concerns of ordinary citizens. Instead, we are subjected to tirades from the Democrats about how the Russian government is in de facto everyday control of the White House and that the best thing we can hope for is a coup d’etat.

How do you conduct a foreign policy in the midst of a civil war? That’s just one of the fascinating questions we’ll be facing if not answering over the next three years. The coup plotters mean to paralyze the country: Trump’s idea that he could institute a foreign policy that puts America first is running into roadbloacks from the bureaucracy, and his own appointees, who are all too often in league with his worst enemies.

The ultimate goal of the NeverTrumpers is to get DJT out of office, somehow, anyhow, by legal means or extralegal shenanigans. If you think they’re ruled out assassination you’re being naïve.

But why? Why the extreme reaction?

Trump threatened to dismantle their precious “international order,” which had protected so many tyrants and subsidized so many oligarchs. The world according to the Davos crowd – a world of unearned privilege, ruthless arrogance, endless wars, and self-consciously extravagant wealth  – was about to give way to the world of Donald Trump: a world of nations, not of “interests,” of sovereign peoples not migratory predators, of wealth earned honestly rather than extorted from hapless passive “consumers.”

In short, the globalist gig was up. And the war goes on to this day. It is the same old eternal conflict, the war of Liberty against Power, the Little Guy against the Oligarchs, the peace party versus the war party – and, yes, God against the Devil Himself.

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Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000]. 

Perhaps few double standards in international relations could be so sharply exposed as the US-Canada hosted Conference in Vancouver today focused on the traded threats between the United States and North Korea.

The US possesses an estimated 9,600 nuclear missiles, enough to eliminate life on earth multiple times – were it not vapourised in a mere few nuclear strikes.

Donald Trump has threatened North Korea with “fire and fury”, suggesting that it may be necessary to “totally destroy” the small nation.

It has been widely reported that the US has a “decapitation programme” to eliminate the North Korean President and government and presumably with it the capitol city and more. Further, Trump apparently thinks the possible eradication of a nation and possibly near geographical neighbours can be encapsulated in his infantile taunt:

“ …I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” (Twitter, 4.49 pm, 2^nd January 2018.)

There are huge uncertainties as to the ability of North Korea to deliver a nuclear payload to the US or even a US appropriated island such as Guam. However there is no uncertainty that since the Trump Presidency the chilling threats of annihilation from Washington have spurred North Korea to accelerate what they regard as a defensive weapons system.

The Vancouver Conference could have been a perfect place, in a beautiful city to invite a delegation from North Korea and for dialogue, communication and walking in the shoes of others. “Hermit nation” sneers the West. No, ostracized, cut out, diplomatically dismissed and threatened with annihilation.

But North Korea, it’s largest trading partner, China and Russia who know more than a bit are not invited. And as usual the victim is excluded. No lessons from the horrors inflicted on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and indeed the former Yugoslavia previously, to name just a few other slaughtering arrogances

The way to stop N Korea “threatening” is to stop near 60 years of real genocidal threatening and include the country in all discussions, instead of accusing it of being “isolated” because West is isolating it.

Vancouver is surely another devastatingly missed opportunity where those threatening the entire planet have posh, multi course dinners and fine wines pat them selves on the back, whilst others live daily with the searing terror a false nuclear alarm in the US State of Hawaii suffered two days ago.

Let us hope that this assessment is wrong and that there are those who can embrace the chance to turn things around and persuade the war hawks that theirs is the path to insanity and even the – literally – world’s end.

As Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote:

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

Felicity Arbuthnot is a Veteran War Correspondent and Associate Editor of Global Research

Che cosa avverrebbe se caccia russi Sukhoi Su 35, schierati nell’aeroporto di Zurigo a una decina di minuti di volo da Milano, pattugliassero il confine con l’Italia con la motivazione di proteggere la Svizzera dall’aggressione italiana? A Roma l’intero parlamento insorgerebbe, chiedendo immediate contromisure diplomatiche e militari. Lo stesso parlamento, invece, sostanzialmente accetta e passa sotto silenzio la decisione Nato di schierare 8 caccia italiani Eurofighter Typhoon nella base di Amari in Estonia, a una decina di minuti di volo da San Pietroburgo, per pattugliare il confine con la Russia con la motivazione di proteggere i paesi baltici dalla «aggressione russa». La fake news con la quale la Nato sotto comando Usa giustifica la sempre più pericolosa escalation miitare contro la Russia in Europa.

Per dislocare in Estonia gli 8 cacciabombardieri, con un personale di 250 uomini, si spendono (con denaro proveniente dalle casse pubbliche italiane) 12,5 milioni di euro da gennaio a settembre, cui si aggiungono le spese operative: un’ora di volo di un Eurofighter costa 40 mila euro, l’equivalente del salario lordo annuo di un lavoratore.

Questa è solo una delle 33 missioni militari internazionali in cui l’Italia è impegnata in 22 paesi. A quelle condotte da tempo nei Balcani, in Libano e Afghanistan, si aggiungono le nuove missioni che – sottolinea la Deliberazione del governo – «si concentrano in un’area geografica, l’Africa, ritenuta di prioritario interesse strategico in relazione alle esigenze di sicurezza e difesa nazionali».

In Libia, gettata nel caos dalla guerra Nato del 2011 con la partecipazione dell’Italia, l’Italia oggi «sostiene le autorità nell’azione di pacificazione e stabilizzazione del Paese e nel rafforzamento del controllo e contrasto dell’immigrazione illegale». L’operazione, con l’impiego di 400 uomini e 130 veicoli, comporta una spesa annua di 50 milioni di euro, compresa una indennità media di missione di 5 mila euro mensili corrisposta (oltre la paga) a ciascun partecipante alla missione.

In Tunisia l’Italia partecipa alla Missione Nato di supporto alle «forze di sicurezza» governative, impegnate a reprimere le manifestazioni popolari contro il peggioramento delle condizioni di vita.

In Niger l’Italia inizia nel 2018 la missione di supporto alle «forze di sicurezza» governative, «nell’ambito di uno sforzo congiunto europeo e statunitense per la stabilizzazione dell’area», comprendente anche Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Mauritania, Ciad, Nigeria e Repubblica Centrafricana (dove l’Italia partecipa a una missione Ue di «supporto»). È una delle aree più ricche di materie prime strategiche – petrolio, gas naturale, uranio, coltan, oro, diamanti, manganese, fosfati e altre – sfruttate da multinazionali statunitensi ed europee, il cui oligopolio è però ora messo a rischio dalla crescente presenza economica cinese. Da qui la «stabilizzazione» militare dell’area, cui partecipa l’Italia inviando in Niger 470 uomini e 130 mezzi terrestri, con una spesa annua di 50 milioni di euro.

A tali impegni si aggiunge quello che l’Italia ha assunto il 10 gennaio: il comando della componente terrestre della Nato Response Force, rapidamente proiettabile in qualsiasi parte del mondo. Nel 2018 è agli ordini del Comando multinazionale di Solbiate Olona (Varese), di cui l’Italia è «la nazione guida». Ma – chiarisce il Ministero della difesa – tale comando è «alle dipendenze del Comandante Supremo delle Forze Alleate in Europa», sempre nominato dal presidente degli Stati uniti. L’Italia è quindi sì «nazione guida», ma sempre subordinata alla catena di comando del Pentagono.

Manlio Dinucci

God is on the Side of Us Americans. “He May Guide Us to Use It [Nuclear Weapons] In His Ways and for His Purposes”: Truman

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 27, 2017

“In a Nuclear War the Collateral Damage would be the Life of All Humanity”. Conversations with Fidel Castro: Hiroshima and the Dangers of a Nuclear War

By Fidel Castro Ruz and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 03, 2017

The Strategies of Global Warfare: War with China and Russia? Washington’s Military Design in the Asia-Pacific

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 07, 2017

Towards a World War III Scenario? The Role of Israel in Triggering an Attack on Iran?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 09, 2017

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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 27, 2017

America had first Contemplated Nuclear War against both China and North Korea in 1950

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 16, 2017

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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 12, 2017

North Korea versus the United States: Who are the Demons? North Korea Lost 30% of Its Population as a Result of US Bombings in the 1950s

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 25, 2017

Fukushima: Nuclear War without a War

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 16, 2017

Featured image: Prof. Asa Kasher (Source: Mondoweiss)

One month after she slapped a soldier in occupied Nabi Saleh, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi faces a final bail hearing today at court.

Tamimi has been imprisoned since December 19 for the December 15 incident. The Israeli prosecution is trying to make Ahed Tamimi a terrorist.

And now Israel’s greatest ethical authority (not by me though), Professor Asa Kasher, has come to join the chorus.

Yesterday, Kasher appeared as a commentator on Ahed’s case. In news coverage for the Dutch NOS Journaal, he is seen viewing a video of her slap (see link from 7:47).

Here’s the text of his short interview:

Kasher: “So she is permanently provocative. So I can understand the judge” [who has so far not released Ahed on bail, unlike her cousin Nour, ed].

Interviewer: “But she’s a minor. How can she be dangerous?”

Kasher: “Dangerous in the sense that she can slap the… slap another officer, and another… ‘Dangerous’ doesn’t need to mean jeopardizing life. It means breaking law and order. I mean, not acting properly, to the extent that disturbs the people from accomplishing their missions.”

Get it? Ahed has simply disturbed the soldiers from accomplishing their mission – which had included shooting her cousin Mohammed in the face earlier that day, and occupying their village as they do daily. That’s dangerous – because it’s a really important mission. And Ahed could slap again, and again. Who knows, one day she could come to slap the Chief of Staff, and then all hell would break loose.

But it is Asa Kasher who is far more dangerous than Ahed Tamimi. Because he is a kind of moral authority, and particularly where Israel’s military occupation is concerned, because he is the author of the Israel Defense Forces Ethics code (written in 1994). Kasher has recently also been commissioned by Education Minister Naftali Bennnett to write an ‘ethics code’ for Israeli universities, the main purpose of which was to stifle any discussion of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS ). The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as well as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) joined Israeli academics in condemning the document for its encroachment on academic freedom.

Kasher’s ethical sensibility can be downright shocking. In 2008, he was appointed an ‘objective expert’ (despite his work for the military) in a case involving military experimentation with nerve gas – on Israeli soldiers. Eighteen Israeli paratroopers had filed a petition against the army, asserting that their induction into the paratroops (back in early 1970’s) was conditioned on participating in the nerve gas experiment – with anthrax – an experiment that had failed at its first stage when it was conducted on animals. Kasher supported the principle of conducting such experiments.

“[T]he participation of soldiers in compulsory or reserve service in medical experiments in the military framework must be carried out in consideration of building the force or considerations of activating the force”, he said. He opined that this was balanced, because “It is permitted to endanger soldiers”, but only “on the condition that this is to save human lives”, he wrote.

Nonetheless, Kasher opined that there is no moral prohibition from hiding secret details about an experiment from soldiers.

“It could be that certain aspects of the medical experiment are secret, based on considerations of national security. It is better that the enemy will not be familiar with the army’s abilities and its points of weakness”, he wrote.

So, it could be better not to tell the soldiers, according to Kasher, in case they tell “the enemy”.

“Some details of an experiment may be hidden from soldiers who have to decide whether to participate in it,” he continued. “Secrecy does not harm the principle of free consent.” 

Wait, let me repeat that one:

“Secrecy does not harm the principle of free consent”.

Wow, what ethics. You let someone decide if they want to drink water or not, and you keep it secret that the water is actually poisoned. For Kasher, the water is still kosher. It’s still “free consent” – the person just didn’t know about the poison. Their problem.

Such a person, with such atavistic, corrupt, skewed morals and ethics, with such political bias, should not be taken seriously by anyone. It is a wonder he is a professor. But in Israel, Kasher is taken very seriously. And he’s giving a kosher stamp not only for Ahed Tamimi’s treatment until now, but for what is to come next. He is manufacturing consent for her further incarceration. The man who commissioned Kasher to write the mentioned ‘ethics code’ for universities, Education Minister Bennett, has also suggested that Ahed Tamimi, as well as her cousin Nour, spend “the rest of their days in prison”.  

Will Bennett now commission Kasher to write a new ‘ethics code’ specifically legitimizing the indefinite detention of young girls for slapping soldiers? I am sure Kasher would be up to the challenge.

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Jonathan Ofir is an Israeli musician, conductor and blogger / writer based in Denmark.

A CEO still on full pay whilst this company and hundreds of firms in the supply chain and their employees are thrown on the scrap heap with mortgages to pay, no compensation, cancelled or postponed wages and reduced pensions, if any.

We have today in the May Conservative government a cabinet clique of overpaid amateur politicians who should be in a special needs school, not in Parliament.

What happened to essential professionalism? Is it all in the Labour Party? If so, there better be a General Election ASAP before everything collapses in a heap: the railways, the NHS, public services, the road network, the rail network, the education system, student debt, housing, hospitals, schools, power companies and pensions. All either failing, in disarray, bankrupt or non-existent.

The failure of capitalism in the United Kingdom is clear as the ‘C’ suite team take their salaries, dividends and share options while thousands of workers are thrown on the dole, dependent on state handouts whilst their former directors cavort about on Mediterranean beaches, wining and dining on their bonuses for failure.

This obscene scenario is the unacceptable face of capitalism and ‘caring Conservatism’. The sick joke of the Theresa May government. Did I say ‘government’?

Britain needs a Prime Minister, a leader who can govern – not someone in a frock and FM shoes who is clearly only competent to check the petty cash.

After a nearly year-long marathon of daily, acrimonious accusations against Moscow for alleged, yet-to-be proven interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, Washington finds itself increasingly mired in its own hypocrisy – openly and eagerly pursing the very sort of interference abroad in multiple nations regarding elections and internal political affairs it has accused Russia of.

A particularly acute example of this is Cambodia where recently, the government has begun uprooting and expelling US State Department-funded fronts and media organizations as well as arresting members of the US-backed opposition party while disbanding the party itself – for interfering in preparations for upcoming elections.

The New York Times in its August article, “Cambodia Orders Expulsion of Foreign Staff Members With American Nonprofit,” would claim:

Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday ordered foreign staff members of an American nonprofit that gets support from the United States government to leave the country within a week, part of an apparent attempt to silence opposition voices before national elections next year.

The NYT would elaborate, reporting:

The nonprofit, the National Democratic Institute [a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)], is loosely affiliated with the Democratic Party in the United States, and has provided training to various Cambodian political parties, including those from the opposition. Local news media organizations with ties to Mr. Hun Sen’s party have accused the nonprofit of conspiring against him.

Unsurprisingly, the NYT attempts to portray Cambodia’s uprooting of US government-funded fronts, media, and opposition directly and openly manipulating its political affairs as undemocratic. Such a narrative concurrently takes shape in the NYT’s pages side-by-side an entire section titled, “Russian Hacking and Influence in the U.S. Election.”

While Western media like the NYT claims foreign interference in America’s affairs constitutes the destruction of American democracy, it simultaneously proposes that extensive US meddling in elections abroad – including in Cambodia – constitutes the promotion of democracy.

Unfortunately for many, the hypocrisy this glaring double standard represents goes unnoticed – due in part to the notion of American – and to a larger extend – Western exceptionalism.

Washington’s Khmer Marionettes 

The move by Phnom Penh is the culmination of years of US meddling in Cambodia’s internal political affairs and political processes including its elections.

The opposition party – the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) – is led by long-time US proxies Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha. Both have divided their time and activities between politicking in Cambodia and residing in Western capitals, including Washington D.C. openly conspiring with the US government to overthrow Cambodia’s current political order, and install themselves into power.

 

US State Department officials threaten Cambodia with sanctions for uprooting US-funded organizations openly engaged in political interference in Cambodia’s upcoming elections.  

Kem Sokha in particular has been seen on video and quoted by the Cambodian press on numerous occasions causally discussing his leading role in US-backed sedition.

And, the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can changed the dictator Slobodan Milosevic,” he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes.

“You know Milosevic had a huge numbers of tanks. But they changed things by using this strategy, and they take this experience for me to implement in Cambodia. But no one knew about this.”

Kem Sokha is referring to the openly admitted US-engineered regime change mechanism known as “color revolutions” and in particular the successful use of such “revolutions” in the overthrow of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

It is also mentioned in the article that Kem Sokha has traveled to the United States every year since 1993 to “learn about the democratization process.”

The video producer mentioned in the above article, the Australian-based “Cambodia Broadcasting Network” (CBN), had published a video of Kem Sokha with US Senator Ed Royce in Washington DC openly calling for the deposing of the Cambodian government.

This clear cut evidence was cited by the Cambodian government upon Kem Sokha’s arrest on charges of treason. It would be difficult to fathom Washington not likewise responding with swift and severe charges of treason in light of similar, explicit evidence of a US politician collaborating with a foreign power to overthrow the US government – especially considering the current fallout in the US over mere innuendo and outright fabrications. 

Yet Washington’s hypocrisy is once again highlighted by its counterstroke to Cambodia’s efforts to uproot foreign interference. 

Washington Strikes Back 

In the wake of Cambodia’s moves against US government-funded media, opposition fronts, and the nation’s main opposition party itself, a quickly escalating confrontation with Washington is unfolding.

The Phonom Post in its article, “US says more sanctions on table in response to political crackdown,” would report:

Visiting US State Department official W Patrick Murphy yesterday warned that further punitive action could be forthcoming in response to the government’s recent crackdown on the main opposition, while repeatedly pointing to the US’s warm relationship with the people of Cambodia – if not their leaders. 

In diplomatic but firm remarks made at a press roundtable yesterday, Deputy Assistant Secretary Murphy noted recent “negative developments with regards to democracy”, and implied that the US would be unable to recognise the legitimacy of an election that took place without the now-dissolved opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Kem Sokha’s daughter, Kem Monovithya, in Washington DC appealing for more US interference in Cambodia’s internal affairs as her father resides in jail for treason associated with seeking US interference in Cambodia’s internal affairs.

The article would also report (emphasis added):

…in Washington, a panel of “witnesses” convened by the House Foreign Affairs Committee – including Kem Sokha’s daughter, Kem Monovithya – called for additional action in response to the political crackdown. In a statement, Monovithya urged targeted financial sanctions against government officials responsible for undermining democracy. She also called on the US to suspend “any and all assistance for the central Cambodian Government”, while “continuing democracy assistance programs for civil society, particularly those engaged in election-related matters”. 

Monovithya also asked America to review “Cambodia’s eligibility for the Generalized System of Preferences”, a program which gives favourable trade treatment to Cambodia’s garment exports.

In other words, not only has Kem Sokha and the CNRP been accused of treason, but in its response, the Cambodian opposition has doubled down in its open collaboration with the United States to attack and undermine the Cambodian government while working its way – with continued US support – into power.

Realism Required to Break Free from the Illusion of “Democracy” 

One can only imagine the headlines in the NYT should a US politician passionately plead within the walls of the Kremlin for Russian intervention in American elections – for the enacting of sanctions to target incumbents in power and for additional and open financial support to contest those elections.

In reality, democracy is – at its core – a process of self-determination. Self-determination is untenable if any “democratic process” is subject to outside interference, particularly the full-spectrum institutional meddling the United States engages in.

And despite America’s immense hypocrisy, the geopolitical maxim of “might makes right” prevails, enabling the US to both accuse and attack other nations for alleged political meddling, while overseeing institutionalized political meddling and electioneering abroad on a global scale.

Cambodia has taken a risk in directly confronting Washington’s “democracy promotion” racket head-on. It risks not only sanctions and additional political subversion underwritten by the United States government, but also covert military aggression, proxy terrorism, and economic warfare – all ushered in under a US-sponsored color revolution. It was a color revolution that Kem Sokha sought US assistance in organizing in Cambodia.

To confront this, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has publicly warned about a color revolution by name and is making preparations to combat it.

The Phnom Penh Post in its article, “New spy school announced,” would report:

Prime Minister Hun Sen announced the creation of a school to train spies to combat “colour revolution” and terrorism in Cambodia yesterday, tapping his son and Ministry of Defence Intelligence Director Hun Manith to lead it. 

In front of an audience of hundreds of military and police officials, Manith said the facility will train soldiers and police in intelligence-gathering and maintaining “covert identities”.

The article would also cite Human Rights Watch – a US-European government and corporate-financier-funded front posing as a rights advocate – attempting to dismiss the threat of color revolutions as “non-existent.” Human Rights Watch would claim:

The government has excelled in manufacturing non-existent threats, like a colour revolution, to justify its crackdown on human rights and civil society. And now it’s going a couple steps further by creating permanent intelligence training facilities to combat these and other threats, like Islamic terrorism, which has also yet to appear in Cambodia.

And yet, there is nothing at all “non-existent” about the threat of color revolutions. Kem Sokha himself openly admitted he was conspiring with the US to organize one. The same Western media dismissing Cambodia’s concerns as a pretext for an otherwise unwarranted crackdown, has openly admitted that the US organized and executed color revolutions from Eastern Europe to North Africa and the Middle East.

The New York Times itself would admit regarding the so-called “Arab Spring” in an article titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” that:

In deliberate contempt of the United Nations and the international community, the Netanyahu government in Israel has advanced plans to attack Iranian cities and nuclear power centres by colluding with Trump to use American naval and air forces to deploy submarine-launched cruise missiles (SLCM) operating from the Gulf of Oman, plus the use of F35-delivered, devastating nuclear bombs to destroy the government of the sovereign state of Iran and install a puppet administration under US-Israeli control.

They apparently intend to attack the key nuclear research sites of Teheran, Bushehr, Arak, Bonab, Ramsar, Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan amongst others (Iran of course, has only a civil, nuclear power program unlike Israel that has an estimated military arsenal of up to 400 nuclear warheads), in a criminal attempt to effect regime change intended to cripple Iran and its economy in order to install Israel as hegemon of the Middle East.

Such an attack would be in gross violation of the Charter of the United Nations and would automatically designate the Trump administration as a perpetrator of war against a sovereign member state. Israel, of course, has already achieved pariah status having, in recent years, under the Likud government of Binyamin Netanyahu, perpetrated the assassination of various political opponents in Dubai, Teheran and the Middle East as well as on board the Turkish registered humanitarian aid vessel, the Mavi Marmara, on the high seas in international waters. Furthermore, the state of Israel is the only secret nuclear weapon state in the world and it sits outside of the IAEA and the internationally agreed treaties and conventions that keep world peace.

Tragically, in addition to support from Trump, the Netanyahu administration is also propped-up by the Conservative government of Theresa May who naively issues export licences to supply Israel with military equipment notwithstanding that the current Israeli Prime Minister is under investigation regarding multiple allegations of serious corruption. This allegedly corrupt politician desperately wants one last throw of the dice before he is removed from office, by attacking his sworn enemy, Iran, with American troops and planes. That is his goal regardless of the potentially massive loss of life that would invariably ensue.

The pro-Israel triumvirate of Trump, Netanyahu and May is an unfortunate political phenomena of our times – hopefully however, one with a truncated future as Europe and the world reacts to the unbridled aggression of the current Jabotinsky-style, Zionist policies reminiscent of 1947.

Aggression against Iran, or any other UN member state, without specific sanction by the Security Council, is a patent violation of international law and a very real threat to global peace and security. The national electorates of both the United States and the United Kingdom are fully cognizant of this fact and its inherent threat to their own survival in this nuclear age. The Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, of course, has no such concerns.

I have received a letter from Margaret Huang, Amnesty International’s executive director. She is fundraising on the basis of President Trump’s “chilling disregard for our cherished human rights” and his exploitation of “hatred, misogyny, racism and xenophobia,” by which he has “emboldened and empowered the most violent segments of our society.”

Considering the hostility of Identity Politics toward Trump, one can understand why Ms. Huang frames her fundraiser in this way, but are the Trump deplorables the most empowered and violent segments of our society or is it the security agencies, the police, the neoconservatives, the presstitute media, and the Republican and Democratic parties?

John Kiriakou, Ray McGovern, Philip Giraldi, Edward Snowden, and others inform us that it is their former employers, the security agencies, that are empowered by unaccountability and violent by intent. Certainly the security agencies are emboldened by everything they have gotten away with, including their conspiracy to destroy President Trump with their orchestration known as Russiagate.

The violence that the US government has committed against humanity since the Clinton regime attacked Serbia was not committed by Trump deplorables. The violence that has destroyed in whole or part eight countries, murdering, maiming, and displacing millions of peoples, was committed by the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes, their secretaries of state such as Hillary Clinton, their national security advisers, their military and security establishments, both parties in Congress. The murder of entire countries was endorsed by the presstitute media and the heads of state of Washington’s European, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese vassals. Trump and his deplorables have a long way to go to match this record of violence.

Whether she understands it or not, Ms. Huang with her letter is shifting the violence from where it belongs to where it does not. The consequence will be to increase violence and human rights violations.

The most dangerous source of violence that we face is nuclear Armageddon resulting from the neoconservative quest for US hegemony. Since the Clinton regime every US government has broken tension-easing agreements that previous administrations had achieved with Moscow. During the Obama regime the gratuitous aggressions and false accusations against Russia became extreme.

Why doesn’t Amnesty International address the reckless and irresponsible acts of the US government that are violating the rights of people in numerous countries and pushing the world into nuclear war? Instead, there have been times when Amnesty International aligns with Washington’s propaganda against Washington’s victims.

By jumping on the military/security complex’s get Trump movement, human rights and environmental organizations have increased the likelihood that rights and environment will be lost to war.

There can be no doubt that Trump is undoing past environmental protections and opening the environment and wildlife to more destruction. However, the worst destruction comes from war, especially nuclear war.

Would things be different if the liberal/progressive/left had rallied to Trump’s support in reducing tensions with Russia, in normalizing the hostile relations that Obama had established with Moscow? Would the support of the liberal/progressive/left have helped Trump resist the pressures from the neoconservative warmongers? In exchange for support for his principal goal, would Trump have mitigated industry’s attacks on the environment and vetoed the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that violates human rights?

We will never know, because the liberal/progressive/left could not see beyond the end ot its nose to comprehend what it means for the environment and for human rights for nuclear powers to be locked into mutual suspicion.

Thanks to the failure of the liberal/progressive/left and to the presstitute media to understand the stakes, the military/security complex has been successful in pushing Trump off his agenda. The damage that a mining company and offshore drilling can do to the environment is large, but it pales in comparison to the damage from nuclear weapons.

*

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

Great joy and relief came with the news this January 12th that French investigative judges issued an “order of final release” for Dr. Hassan Diab from a French maximum security prison. Dr. Diab, a sociology professor and Canadian citizen, was charged with bombing the Rue Copernic Synagogue in 1980.

His release follows eight previous orders for his conditional release by four French judges which were all reversed on appeal. But so far this ruling appears to be final and is hopefully a very belated vindication of Dr. Diab and for truth and justice. Since 2007 when France sought his extradition from Canada, credible and verifiable evidence testifying to his innocence was concealed or challenged by Canadian Crown and French anti-terrorism investigators. What followed was heartrending for Diab and for his family. His ten year ordeal warrants a study of the barriers to justice.

Early January also marks the anniversary of Zola’s J’Accuse, the eloquent denunciation of politicized racism a century ago in France when French-Jewish Alfred Dreyfus was framed for treason. Hassan Diab’s case in ways parallels the Dreyfus case. Jewish Dreyfus and Muslim Diab were arrested on the basis of flawed, fraudulent handwriting analysis at a time of politicized racism and nationalism.

Support for Diab

Diab has substantial public support in Canada, and there is absence of widespread public racism calling for ‘Death to Jews’ or ‘Death to Arabs’. Supporting Diab were his devoted wife and friends, excellent lawyers and journalists, the Canadian Association of University Teachers and several unions, Amnesty International and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, many prominent people, and progressive Jewish organizations in Canada and in France.

A careful review of Diab’s case suggests that perhaps even more relevant than Zola is Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” within the Canadian and French judicial process. During the entire investigation, the investigators seeking extradition and charges of terrorism opposed testimonies by experts and by Diab himself, concealed evidence, and made use of secret intelligence to falsify information. Among the factors that allowed for gross wrongdoing were Canada’s extradition laws, anti-terrorism measures in both countries, political opportunism that capitalized on fears of terrorism, and foreign interference.

There is also unclarity about who legitimately makes the enforceable decisions and this is where Arendt’s work is insightful. What stands out in Diab’s case is the interface between the personal and political, the individual and the institution. Arendt described the banality of evil in reporting the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, a man focused exclusively on his own competence within his bureaucracy, a man so incapable of human relatedness and of self-criticism that he could not absorb the fact that he facilitated millions of deaths. Evil does not necessarily have a monstrous face. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice also comes to mind in the excruciating exploration of legalistic cruelty and racism; in effect the accused Jew asks “can’t you see I’m a person?” whereas on a human level, it is the clever prosecutor who is pitiless and unjust.

Diab was never charged with a crime but lost ten years of his life. He spent six years under strict house arrest in Canada, lost his university job, and was in solitary confinement in France in a maximum security prison for just over three years. He was charged $30,000/year by the government for his monitoring device and had substantial legal fees. When he was finally extradited to France in November 2014, he was treated with gratuitous cruelty. Although the law allowed up to 45 days to carry out extradition, Diab was whisked away early the next day without being able to say goodbye to his pregnant wife and toddler daughter.

Between 2007 and 2014 Diab endured innumerable hearings in Canada that required constant challenges to Canadian extradition law and to the evidence presented by France and by an undisclosed foreign country. Robert J. Currie, an expert in extradition law at Dalhousie University, writes that Diab’s “deplorable situation” in France was a “direct, even logical, result of the current state of Canadian extradition law. Specifically, our law prevents individuals sought for extradition from making any meaningful challenge to a foreign state’s extradition request on the basis that the requesting state does not have sufficiently reliable evidence.” Canada automatically presumes that the requesting state has solid evidence and a sound judicial system. Problems with Canadian extradition law were presented on behalf of Diab by expert witnesses, but to little avail as the Supreme Court refused to hear his case and Diab was immediately extradited to France. Currie pointed out that Canadian extradition judges were in effect “rubber stamps” and that justice for defendants was “practically unattainable.”

Justice Robert Maranger, the Canadian investigative judge, maintained that he had to extradite Diab even though the evidence would not stand in a Canadian court and though the handwriting evidence was “illogical,” “very problematic” and that a fair trial in France was “unlikely.” The Canadian decision was questionably illegal because France had not even charged Dr. Diab; he was wanted for investigation which could lead to years in a French prison.

Cherry-Picked Evidence

In one extradition hearing, Diab’s lawyer Don Bayne pointed out that the assumption that foreign states could “omit, edit out, cherry-pick, or bury exonerating evidence.” For example, palm and finger prints connected with the synagogue bombing did not match those of Diab but this was not disclosed by the French for two years. There was already other questionable evidence: “The Crown prosecutors admitted that there was confusion about the colour of the suspect’s hair, which was variously described by witnesses as black, blond, brown, or dark with blond touches.” The prosecutor responded that the inconsistencies in the French case were “simple and innocent mistakes” as the French magistrate was a “busy man.”

Expert witnesses also pointed out the difference between evidence and intelligence. Intelligence is allowable in extradition and anti-terrorism cases and does not require verifiability. Intelligence can be obtained secretly and can plausibly be connected with torture. Government investigations found that Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati, and Muayyed Nureddin were imprisoned and tortured in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights. Canadian expert witness Wesley Wark stated that intelligence does not meet the legal standard of evidence and that “to deprive an individual of his liberty on the basis of such material would be manifestly unjust.” Stephane Bonifassi, a leading member of the Paris bar and an expert witness in French extradition cases, confirmed that intelligence is regularly used as a basis for conviction in terrorism cases in France.

“French law makes no distinction between evidence and intelligence, and it is particularly difficult for a defence lawyer to challenge such intelligence.”

Expert witness Kent Roach further stated that in Diab’s case, intelligence appears to come from an unidentified foreign government.

The detailed record of the case that is available on the Justice for Hassan website reports that the Canadian extradition judge refused Dr. Diab the opportunity to meaningfully challenge the evidence, claiming that he would have this opportunity in France. A Human Rights Watch report criticizes France for running unfair trials. The report states that there is a low standard of proof in terrorism cases and that French counterterrorism laws “undermine the right of those facing charges of terrorism to a fair trial.” Diab’s French lawyer stated that he “is detained because of the judges’ fear to be accused of laxity in the context of today’s fight against terrorism in France. Such a situation would be inconceivable in an ordinary law procedure.” Canadian Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson stated that he interpreted Canada’s Extradition Act in a “flexible manner” in surrendering Diab to France. Remarkably, the main evidence against Diab was finally withdrawn by France when it was proven that the handwriting samples were not even written by Diab. In the last year it was confirmed that Diab was in Lebanon writing university exams at the time of the bombing.

Though there were a number of allusions to foreign involvement, it was not until September 2017 that Israeli interference was identified. In Canada and in France, two Jewish organizations that are unquestioningly supportive of Israel and particularly vocal about Islamic terrorism have relentlessly accused Diab of terrorism. B’nai Brith and Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre publicly demanded Diab’s extradition and his firing from Carleton University. Both organizations have members who have close ties with political leaders. As reported in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Wiesenthal Centre CEO Avi Benlolo called Diab “an accused terrorist mass murderer.”

On his website, Benlolo lists his connections with G.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Shimon Peres, Tony Blair. He accompanied former Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Israel along with a member of the violent Jewish Defense League. In a startling passage from the 2017 book The End of Europe, published by Yale University press, the author James Kirchick appears to uncritically suggest that the Jewish Defense League was crucial in preventing a pogrom at a Parisian synagogue in 2014 which occurred during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Gaza.

Kirchick writes that a crowd of several hundred people, chanting “death to the Jews” and wielding iron bars and axes, tried to break into the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue in Paris. “Shimon Samuels, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, reported seeing Socialist Party politicians in the crowd” and that one eyewitness reported that, had it not been for members of the vigilante Jewish Defense League, ‘the synagogue would have been destroyed, with all the people trapped inside.’” Kirchick does not check the accuracy of this report. It was not widely reported, but other sources indicated that there were perhaps 100 protesters and they were not carrying iron bars and axes. Kirchick further implies that the red-green coalition in Europe endangers European civilization by minimizing the Islamic threat. It will be important to investigate the involvement of Israel and Zionist groups in Diab’s case.

The next few weeks will hopefully see Dr. Diab home with his family and with the large number of people who have worked for his release and full exoneration. Understanding his ordeal should motivate fundamental change to Canada’s extradition law and yield insights about the sociology and politics of injustice. Questions arise about how and why the banality of a small number of people can wreak havoc on the justice system and cause torment to many.

*

Judith Deutsch is a columnist for Canadian Dimension magazine, former president of Science for Peace, a psychoanalyst by profession and writes about a range of social justice issues. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: Abayomi Azikiwe chairing Detroit MLK Day Rally, Jan. 15, 2018

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 89 years old this year if he had not been gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee nearly a half century ago.

Today amid the openly racist character of the United States Government under President Donald Trump may have been partly responsible for the enhanced participation in activities commemorating the federally-recognized holiday of the martyred Civil Rights, social justice and antiwar leader who was only 39 when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Detroit has already been ranked as the top municipality for the commemoration of MLK Day in the country. This was reported in the Metro Times, a citywide weekly newspaper which provides not only the most comprehensive entertainment coverage notwithstanding in recent months where articles on the economic direction of Detroit have staked out an alternative viewpoint from the public relations narrative of the current administration and the corporate elite. (Jan. 12)

The Metro Times noted that:

“Treetopia is a website that ranks the best places to celebrate different holidays. Based on metrics from Google Trends and Analytics, data points, news articles, and online reviews, this will be the second year in a row Detroit was the number one city to celebrate MLK day. In 2016 Detroit scored a 100 in Treetopia’s scale, New Orleans came in second at 84, and Memphis third at 71.” ()

Detroit has been a center of the African American liberation struggle since the times of the Underground Railroad in the 19th century. During the 20th century the city was a center for Black migration from the South, the campaigns to win recognition for labor rights within the industrial companies, and the birthplace of significant organizations such as the Nation of Islam (NOI), Motown Records, the Republic of New Africa (RNA), the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, among others.

The first massive march for Civil Rights was held in the city on June 23, 1963 where hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated for an end to segregation and institutional racism both in Detroit and throughout the South. Dr. King delivered an earlier version of his “I Have a Dream” speech prior to the March on Washington some two months later.

This “Detroit Walk to Freedom” was led by Dr. King along with local luminaries who were the principal organizers such as Rev. C.L. Franklin, James Del Rio and Rev. Albert Cleage (later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman). Unions, churches, community organizations and civic groups provided tremendous material and political assistance to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1950s and 1960s.

King’s Legacy is a Living Force

For 15 consecutive years Detroit activists have held a rally and march in downtown Detroit in an explicit effort to honor the actual Civil Rights and peace legacy of Dr. King. The event is held at Central United Methodist Church (CUMC) and St. John’s Episcopal Church located on Woodward Avenue, two locations where the Civil Rights leader had spoken over the course of his life.

The rally took place at CUMC beginning at Noon where Rev. Dr. Bernard Lafayette was the honored guest and keynote speaker. Lafayette worked with the two leading Civil Rights organizations of the 1960s, SNCC and the SCLC.

King’s last effort was centered on building the Poor People’s Campaign where thousands of people were mobilized to occupy space in Washington, D.C. to demand that Congress take immediate legislative action to end racism, unemployment, poverty and inadequate housing. People of all races and nationalities were recruited including African Americans, Mexican Americans, Indigenous nations, Puerto Ricans and low-income whites. The Poor People’s Campaign demanded that there be full employment, a guaranteed annual income, national health insurance and the rebuilding of the urban and rural areas where the oppressed and marginalized workers resided.

Lafayette spoke on how he became involved in the Civil Rights Movement after growing up in Tampa, Florida in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1958 he was accepted to the Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville and as a freshman attended courses delivered by James Lawson of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, where the genesis of the mass campaigns to end Jim Crow was intellectually conceived.

He was a participant in the sit-ins and freedom rides in the early 1960s. Lafayette was involved when Dr. King and SCLC came to Chicago in 1966 to test out their model of nonviolent resistance in a northern city.

Detroit Activists and Artists Featured

Other speakers and artists presenting at the rally included: Frank Hammer of the ASOTRECOL Solidarity Network in support of injured General Motors workers in Colombia; Jonathan Roberts, an organizer for the Restaurant Opportunity Center of Michigan and the One Fair Wage campaign; two youth spokespersons for the Poor People’s Campaign of 2018, Crystal Bernard and Carlos Santa Cruz; Kimberly Simmons of the Juvenile Lifers Support Group; Cynthia Thornton, president of Pride at Work Michigan; Atty. Vanessa Fluker spoke on the rising rates of blood lead levels among children in Detroit; Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American writer and Adjunct Professor at University of Detroit Mercy Law School brought solidarity messages; Detroit Jazz artist Bill Meyer performed as well as Bobbi Thompson’s Deep River Choir, and soloist Shirley Jackson.

Medallion awards for participation in the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965 were awarded to Detroit activists George Giffin, Frank H. Joyce, Wilbert McClendon, Atty. Dean Robb, Selma native Terry Shaw and Rudy Simons. The People’s Spirit of Detroit Awards were given to Zonzie Whitlow, a Detroit proprietor and longtime friends of the late Rosa and Raymond Parks; Alfonzo Hunter, lifelong resident of the West Grand Blvd.-Clairmount neighborhood and board member of the Virginia Park Investment Associates; Katrina Brown, a teacher in the Detroit Public School Community District; and Jim Rehberg of the Wobbly Kitchen.

At 2:30 the march stepped off from CUMC weaving through downtown to demonstrate against ongoing foreclosures and evictions, water shut-offs, mass incarceration, the role of the banks in creating the economic crisis in the city and the subsidization of wealthy corporations at the expense of the majority African American and working class residents of Detroit. The day ended with a community meal prepared by the Wobbly Kitchen and a cultural program held at St. John’s Episcopal Church. A host of artists performed including Marilyn Lowen, Wardell Montgomery, Students from the Arts Academy in the Woods, Willie Williams, Shushanna Shakur, Joe Kidd and Sheila Burke and Jim Perkinson. The cultural performances were assembled and coordinated by Detroit writer and educator Aurora Harris.

Abayomi Azikiwe photographs for MLK Day, Jan. 15, 2018

The event was sponsored and endorsed by numerous organizations, businesses and individuals throughout Metropolitan Detroit such as the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI), U.S. Palestine Community Network, the Metro Detroit A. Phillip Randolph Institute, Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR), the ACLU of Michigan, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Buck Dinner, Detroit Active and Retired Employees Association (DAREA), Green Party of Michigan, Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, Retired Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Huntington Woods Peace, Citizenship & Education Project, Jewish Voice for Peace, Michigan Peoples Defense Network (MPDN), Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO), Workers World Party, On the Rise Bakery, People’s Water Board, David Smokler, Linda Szysko, Melvin Thompson as a former President of UAW 140, UAW Local 140 Civil and Human Rights Committee, UAW Local 160, Viola Liuzzo Park Association, Retired Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Charlevoix Village Association (CVA), Mothering Justice, The Spark, UAW Local 869 and Avalon Bakery, to name some of them.

The MLK Day Rally & March enjoyed wide press coverage from all of the Detroit television stations, WWJ News Radio and the Associated Press.

Featured image: U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster during September briefing on North Korea. (Source: White House)

Over the last year critics have warned of the returning neoconservative influence on the executive branch’s national security apparatus, each day a little less confident that President Donald Trump will keep to the seeming anti-interventionist impulses he demonstrated during the 2016 campaign.

News flash: We’re already there.

Of course the most garish of the pro-war set—Sebastian Gorka, K.T. McFarland, John Bolton—are easy to identify in or on the periphery of Trump’s orbit (in Gorka’s case, he was cast out of the White House, only to flak away in any media outlet that will pay attention). Meanwhile, elite neoconservative voices like Bill Kristol and Max Boot have become darlings of the “Never Trump” cadre, finding new life as conservative tokens on “Resistance” media like MSNBC.

What has been less obvious, but has become much clearer in these last few months, is these neocons are quietly filling the vacuum left by Obama’s cadre of liberal interventionists. Many of them had taken a pass on “Never Trumping” publicly, and are now popping up at the elbows of top cabinet officials.

Take Nadia Schadlow, for instance. Never heard of her? Unless you’ve been navigating the rice paddies of Washington’s post-9/11 national security enterprise for the last several years, there’s no reason you would have. But she has been at the National Security Council since last winter, and is set to replace Dina Powell as deputy national security advisor, at the right hand of NSC chief H.R. McMaster. She was also the lead on the White House National Security Strategy, released last month.

This was Schadlow’s first position in government. Her résumé includes doctoral degrees from Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) under the tutelage of vocal Never Trumper and Iraq war promoter Eliot Cohen, who runs the largely neoconservative Strategic Studies program there, and whose last book, The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power, argued that the U.S., backed by a more robust military, must be the “guardian of a stable world order.” In that vein, Schadlow published a book last year, War and the Art of Governance, that extols the virtues of long-term military intervention for “achieving sustainable political outcomes,” requiring “the consolidation of combat gains through the establishment of stable environments.” Schadlow has repeated this for years as a mantra for reordering military strategy in the wake of the disastrous wars she and her contemporaries helped sustain, in Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere. Call it nation-building by another name.

In a 2012 Weekly Standard commentary, she criticized the Obama administration for saying “the tide of war is receding,” and exclaimed “the line of thinking that now pervades the Pentagon avoids recognizing that combat and the restoration of political order go hand and hand.” While she gives a nod to “civil-military operational planning and execution,” she never utters the words “State Department.” No surprise there, either, since her neocon friends were responsible for the long slide of Foggy Bottom’s resources and influence in favor of military leadership, beginning with the “political reconciliation” and reconstruction of Iraq, and then Afghanistan.

What is significant about Schadlow’s role in the White House—she’s reportedly a “trusted confidant” of General McMaster, who was lionized in the New Yorker for his T.E. Lawrence approach to counterinsurgency in Tal Afar in 2006—is not her bibliography, but her vast connections to Washington’s foreign policy and national security clique, especially its neoconservative elite. If one were using the metaphor of chain migration, she would have plenty of friends on either side of the Potomac to tap for high-level placement, consulting, and advice.

Why? As recent senior program director for the expansive, multi-million dollar International Security and Foreign Policy Program under the Smith Richardson Foundation, she has helped to fund and facilitate countless authors, conferences, think tanks, and university programs since 9/11, most of which hew to the doctrine of sustained military intervention towards the goal of U.S. global power and influence. That includes preemptive war strategy, counterinsurgency, democracy promotion, and the continued push for bigger military budgets and solutions to regional conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. If there was a prominent player in the U.S. security community over the last 20 years, you can bet Schadlow and Smith Richardson were more often than not connected to him.

But it goes back so much further than that. The foundation has a rich history cleaved to neoconservative pioneers such as Irving Kristol, father of Bill, who in his own memoirs credits the philanthropic institution and its then-director Randall Richardson (heir to the Vicks fortune) with helping him jumpstart the Public Interest, known as the premier neoconservative organ, a label Irving fully embraced. The foundation also served as a key backer of Commentary magazine after Norman Podhoretz took the helm in 1960.

It is in international affairs that Smith Richardson has made some of its biggest impacts, during the anti-communist Reagan era and into the Middle East conflicts under Presidents Clinton, Bushes, Obama, and Trump. To say the foundation was involved at every level in the lobbying for and crafting of the so-called global war on terror after 9/11 would be an understatement. Example: Former Smith Richardson research director Devon Gaffney Cross became a director of the Project for a New American Century, the intellectual vehicle that drove the removal of Saddam Hussein and shaped George W. Bush’s foreign policy. In 2000, Cross was listed as one of the participants in PNAC’s seminal treatise, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” The rest of the contributors are a who’s who of Washington’s war theocracy, most of whom have benefitted from Smith Richardson support.

Meanwhile, since 1998, the foundation has given over $10 million to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI was built, literally, on Smith Richardson money), which fielded many of the Iraq war architects and promoters, including Frederick Kagan, John Bolton, former vice president Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Eliot Cohen, Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, David Frum, and Danielle Pletka.

Just as telling is Smith Richardson’s continued backing of the Institute for the Study of War, headed by Kimberly Kagan, wife of Frederick, with whom she was a “de facto advisor” to General Petraeus for a year as he set about his then-vaunted COIN strategy in Afghanistan. ISW, chaired by retired General Jack Keane, known as the “godfather of the surge,” was founded in part by the generosity of Smith Richardson in 2007. It not only promoted more troops, but an extended occupation in Afghanistan, regime change in Syria, and ongoing hostilities with Iran. No surprise, then, that ISW has numerous intertwining relationships with the military and the defense industry. It received $895,000 for program work from Smith Richardson between 2014 and 2016 alone.

According to Philip Rojc of Inside Philanthropy, other recipients of Smith Richardson grants since 1998 include the the Hudson Institute ($6,032,230), the Jamestown Institute ($5,779,475), the Hoover Institution ($3,645,314), and the Center for a New American Security ($1,595,000). Totals have been adjusted to include 2016 numbers.

The last one—CNAS—is more indicative of Smith Richardson’s broader strategy, in that it doesn’t only give to hardline neoconservative outfits like, say, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (which has received no less than $500,000 since 2014 and says it helped write Trump’s new Iran policy). On the contrary, Smith Richardson has been a major patron of the conventional establishment, too, even largely Democratic think tanks like CNAS, Brookings Institute, and the Carnegie Endowment—all of which invariably host scholars and programs that promote America’s military-driven global influence, counterinsurgency doctrine (CNAS was a virtual hothouse for COIN early in Obama’s presidency), and democracy promotion in places like Russia and Ukraine, a major yet failed project of humanitarian interventionists in the Obama administration.

No surprise, then, that the worldview of people like Nadia Schadlow is no different from the wider Washington policy orbit that has enjoyed a pipeline of patronage from her former employer. She is not only affiliated with the Foreign Policy Institute, but is a full member of the Council on Foreign Relations. When she was named to the NSC staff in March 2017, along with “Kremlinologist” and former Eurasian Foundation strategist Fiona Hill, national security establishment courtier Thomas Ricks called them both “well-educated, skeptical, and informed. In other words, the opposite of the president they serve.”

You know the “right” kind of operator has arrived in the White House when establishment commentariat like Ricks and Josh Rogin get all gushy about their calming, “soft power” influence over Trump, which sounds like a lot of bunk when you consider their well-documented points of view.

Simply put, after years of cross-pollination brought on by a slush fund of wealthy private donors like Smith Richardson and an even more eager defense industry, neoconservative views are no longer distinguishable from the sanctioned goals of the Washington policy establishment. They are all working, really, as proper stewards of the military-industrial complex, which is essential for advancing their (sometimes competing) visions of world power politics and American exceptionalism. There is little room for realism and restraint, as voiced by this magazine and other critics.

That is why there seemed to be such relief upon the recent release of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, with Washington scribblers lauding it as “well within the bipartisan mainstream of American foreign policy” and “a well crafted document that should reassure allies and partners.”

What it actually does is to reinforce Trump’s turn towards a harder line against Iran, as evidenced in McMaster’s recent speeches. Nikki Haley, ambassador to the UN, is threatening fellow members on the Security Council, and the Trump administration is seen as taking sides with Israel in the fragile Middle East peace process (or what’s left if it). Meanwhile, the White House has just given a green light to arming Ukraine against Russia.

Call it the new “adults in the room,” if you want, or peg it as the neoconservative influence that it is. Strikingly, Dan Drezner writes that the NSS is “Straussian” in that its “subtext matters at least as much as the text.” The preeminent scholar Leo Strauss is considered one of the key founders of the neoconservative movement, a fact the Washington Post columnist should be well aware of. Like most of the elites here in Washington, however, Drezner is trying to have it both ways—calling it neocon without have the guts to say it outright.

*

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is executive editor of The American Conservative. Follow her on Twitter @Vlahos_at_TAC.

A recent study by two students at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) suggests that at least 100,000 Canadians may be on a so-called “no-fly list” that is part of Ottawa’s controversial Passenger Protect Programme.

Although the federal government will not disclose exactly how many people are on the no-fly list due to security reasons, critics point to a flawed system that does not use unique identifiers such as birthdates or passport numbers. This results in many “false positives,” where anyone with a similar name to someone deemed a threat can be flagged.

Children detained as ‘security risks’

It also results in rather absurd situations where the likes of six-year-old Adam Ahmed, of Markham, Ontario, are flagged as “security risks” at airports around the world.

In fact, so many Canadian children face similar situations every time they fly that an ad hoc group called No Fly List Kids (NFLK), set up by concerned parents, has become a prominent advocacy group for victims of the seemingly arbitrary system. In March 2016, a spokesperson for Canada’s ministry of public safety told MEE that ministry officials have advised airlines that additional security screening validation is not required for passengers under the age of 18.

Both Yusuf Ahmed and his roommate Rayyan Kamal are the two students behind the study, as well as members of the NFLK group.

Kamal says that the US has had a system in place since 2014, whereby so-called “false positives” can seek redress.

Yet in spite of many promises by the incumbent Liberal government, Canada does not have a redress system in place. While Public Safety Canada did create the Passenger Protect Inquiries office in 2016, under mounting public pressure, none of the families in the NFLK have had their issues resolved to date, according to the NFLK website.

Kamal explains that he and Ahmed began their study by taking 50 names they knew were on the list that were accessed via public domain articles on line, and then matched them against the free 411.ca public directory.

“To be conservative and fair in our study, we only used direct matches,” says Kamal, “so David Smith, for instance, rather than D Smith.”

On average, he says,

“there were 50 hits per name, so 50 people on average shared the same name”.

Extrapolating from then minister of transportation Lawrence Canon’s 2007 statement that there were between 500 to 2,000 people on the list, they arrived at the most conservative number possible, explains Kamal.

By multiplying the number of average hits per name (50) by 2,000, the estimated number of 100,000 was reached.

“But it’s reasonable to believe,” notes Kamal, “that the list has grown significantly in the last decade.”

Detained and interrogated at age six

Yusuf Ahmed, who was born and raised in Canada, remembers the first time he was singled out for questioning while travelling with his family as they were returning from a trip to Salt Lake city in the US. At the time, he was six years old.

“We were coming back from vacation and we were pulled aside and questioned – me and my two brothers. I remember they asked me for the name of my local library. I was terrified because I didn’t know the answer. I had no idea what would happen or where they would take us if something went wrong.”

Ahmed also recalls travelling with his high school to sports events as a teenager and being told to go to the back of the airport security line to avoid delaying others.

“It’s a stigmatising experience,” says Ahmed. “It’s an awful feeling to have strangers staring at you wondering if you’re some kind of potential threat every time you travel.”

Ahmed, like many others, only learned he was flagged by the disclosure of sympathetic airline staff. According to Ahmed, he has endured endless hassles, delays and interrogations, but has to date not actually been prevented from boarding a plane.

He is also very concerned for his safety when he flies abroad.

“The no-fly list information is shared with other nations that might not have the same values as Canada – which means that I could face potential detainment, arrest, incarceration and torture.”

Ahmed points to cases like those of Canadian Maher Arar, who was flagged while on holiday in the US via false information supplied by the Canadian government, and then sent to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured.

There are also the cases of three other Canadian Muslim men: Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

“All of them are Canadian men detained and tortured by foreign governments based on flawed, inaccurate and false information [from Canadian officials],” Ahmed says.

Kamal, who is a Canadian born to Bangladeshi parents, says that there needs to be balance between “Canadian values” such as the charter of rights and freedoms and national security concerns.

“When the government has predominantly Arab and brown names on the no-fly list, that validates the racist stigma,” he contends.

No faith in the government

Shahid Mahmood, an internationally syndicated Pakistani-Canadian political cartoonist and architect whose name has been on the no-fly list since at least 2004, has little faith in the Canadian government, which he says has done nothing to help him during his 13-year ordeal.

Since Mahmood was first barred from boarding an Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Victoria in 2004, he recounts,

“I’ve been unable to get answers from the federal government as to why this happened.”

The 2004 incident marked the beginning of routine delays, interrogations and hassles while travelling domestically and internationally.

His hunch is that his work as a political cartoonist – drawing the likes of Uncle Sam giving birth to Osama Bin Laden – drew the attention of the US no-fly list in the aftermath of 9/11.

Mahmood says Canada has incorporated the US list into its own. In February 2016, CBC news reported that public safety minister Ralph Goodale said in a letter to the representatives of dozens of families whose children were delayed at airports that delays can occur for those who have the same name as a person on Canada’s list, or “another security-related list such as the US no-fly list”.

“It’s been very stressful,” Mahmood relates. “Every time I fly, I don’t know if I will be taken aside for additional questioning or not.”

As well as missing out on countless weddings, family gatherings and work opportunities, he says he also lost a job because of his no-fly list status.

“When my story was getting a lot of air time and media in 2005, I was pulled aside by my employers (an architecture firm in Toronto) at the time and told: ‘We can’t have f***ing Arabs like you talking on national television like this.’ I handed in my resignation that week,” he recounts.

Mahmood did get a settlement from Air Canada in 2010, putting a stop to a human rights tribunal probe he initiated that was to examine his claim that the airline racially profiled him.

Even after the settlement, the travails of Mahmood – whose experiences were documented in a short 2011 film called Listed – continued. In 2012, he was detained at Santiago international airport and questioned for 90 minutes by Interpol, which he says indicates that “I’m still on a US no-fly list”.

While he filed for redress from the US department of homeland security in October 2014 and only recently got a response, offering the option of travelling to the US in possession of a “redress number” that he says he is “reluctant to test,” Mahmood contends that “Canadian citizens cannot expect any help from their government”.

“The main issue is that Canada, if anything, has been more backward in dealing with issues related to security than the US. It was only in May 2014 that Steven Blaney (then Conservative minister of public safety) told me Canada could not help me and that my answers could only be sought in the US.”

According to Mahmood, while the redress system in the US remains complicated, noting that the number does not confirm or not if an individual is on the list, “the larger issue is why Canada can’t stand up for its citizens abroad”.

While Mahmood is supportive of NFLK, he finds the recent increased public attention somewhat disingenuous.

“Right now the torch is with young kids who are flagged, but it’s purely an optics issue. Our politicians fear children as they make better poster-kids for advocates. People like me are ignored as ‘Who cares about a brown, ethnic male between the age of 20 and 50?'”

Indeed Ahmed, who recently turned 19, and 20-year-old Rayaan Kamal, also share Mahmood’s concerns.

“As kids become adults their presumed innocence is less obvious,” says Kamal. “They don’t look quite as cute.”

Fixing the system

“The Canadian government can eliminate 99 percent of the ‘false positives’ by simply using birth dates,” says Ahmed. “They have the info available. Why don’t they use it?”

In June 2017, the government proposed Bill-C59, which includes amendments to legislation such as a redress mechanism for affected travellers. In November 2016, Goodale announced that a redress system modelled on the American system could be in place as early as spring 2018.

Yet Ahmed speculates that this could take up to five years to implement.

“Why can’t they just hire a third party to fix the system?” he adds.

According to a statement from Scott Bardsley – spokesman for public safety minister Ralph Goodale – that was sent to MEE, Goodale addressed the UWO study on 12 December 2017 saying:

“The research reports today are highly speculative, but the point is simply this. We are dealing with a flawed system that was implemented about 10 years ago by the previous government, and we are trying very hard to fix that system. It requires new legislation, new regulations, and a new computer system built from the ground up. The first step, the legal authority, is contained in Bill-C59, and I am sure that all members of parliament will want to vote for this legislation.”

Bardsley adds in the statement that false positives can usually delay a person’s travels “from 10-15 minutes”.

“The most common solution is for the individual to join an airline’s loyalty programme. This associates her or his name with additional identifiers within the airline’s systems which helps distinguish them from listed individuals with similar names,” he continues.

Kamal explains that they were told that funding was an issue as well.

“We talked to the finance committee of the House of Commons of Canada and our goal is to get the issue into the 2018 federal budget,” he says.

It’s not only Canadians that are affected by the Passenger Protect Programme. In March 2016, Paul-Emile Dupret, a Belgian human rights lawyer who works for the European Parliament and was conducting a campaign opposing the transfers of European travellers’ personal information to American authorities, was prohibited from flying from Paris to Montreal with an official delegation of the European Parliament that focuses on EU-Canada trade negotiations. Although the flight was not even crossing US airspace, the explanation given by the airline was that Mr Dupret’s name is on the US no-fly list.

‘Preposterous regime’

For Vancouver-based independent researcher Alnoor Gova, a scholar researching the nexus of hate crimes, Islamophobia and national security laws for over a decade in Canada, the whole idea of the no-fly list is absurd and troubling.

“The person is told by an airline official that they cannot get a boarding pass and that’s it. They can’t get on a plane. This supposed dangerous individual is now left at the airport with their luggage, no security is called, and no further investigation is pursued into the individual that I know of – ostensibly they are free to go,” says Gova, who helped create the website antiterror.ca with the goal of repealing the controversial Anti-terrorism Act of 2015.

“Why is it that they are deemed too dangerous to fly but not too dangerous to shop at a Canadian Tire or Tim Hortons?”

Fear of terrorism, as noted on Gova’s website, “enables the government to implement policies and legislation that allow for mass surveillance, violations of the Charter and basic human rights”.

The idea of maintaining a “secret list” seemingly arbitrarily applied, says Ahmed, is one that begs the question, “to what degree are we as Canadians willing to have our rights violated in the name of national security?”

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

In December 2016, President-elect Trump on nuclear weapons ominously tweeted:

“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

Early in his tenure, he said

“if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack.”

Instead of stepping back from the brink, he wants America’s nuclear arsenal greatly expanded. As long as these weapons exist, they’ll likely be used with devastating effects, risking doom.

The only way to prevent eventual nuclear war is by eliminating these weapons entirely. Nuclear roulette assures losers, not winners.

Einstein said splitting the atom “changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

Washington wants all sovereign independent governments replaced by pro-Western puppet regimes.

Most are non-nuclear states. US policymakers reserve the right to attack them with nuclear weapons, a possible armageddon scenario.

Trump’s reckless remarks show he has no understanding of the destructive power of today’s thermonuclear weapons, able to incinerate major cities like New York, along with surrounding areas, killing millions.

Reportedly, Trump wants America’s nuclear arsenal increased 10-fold. Last October, he called for “greatly strengthen(ing) and expand(ing) (the nation’s) nuclear capability” – at a time its only enemies are invented ones, no others.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, the Pentagon currently has around 4,000 nuclear warheads.

Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations’ Nuclear Posture Reviews asserted America’s preemptive right to unilaterally declare and wage future wars using first strike nuclear weapons.

Madness remains US policy under Trump. Its agenda poses an unparalleled nuclear threat – North Korea, Iran, Russia and China prime targets.

The risk of nuclear war on his watch is ominously high, life on earth threatened by this recklessness.

Days earlier, the Huffington Post released a draft of Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the final version due out in February.

It calls for hugely increasing America’s nuclear arsenal, including greater numbers of low-yield tactical nukes – as powerful as bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroying the cities gratuitously after war was won, killing or irradiating hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.

Does Trump intend waging nuclear war? He bragged about his “Nuclear Button,” saying it’s “much bigger and more powerful” than North Korea’s.

Commenting on the risk of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, Global Zero executive director Derek Johnson said the following in part on January 4:

“This latest flare-up between Trump and Kim puts us into very dangerous, very Freudian waters.”

“We have every reason to expect he will continue to brandish these nuclear threats – which means this crisis will only worsen.”

“(W)e are flirting with unacceptably high risks that carry catastrophic consequences for the country and the world.”

As president and commander-in-chief, Trump “can pick up the phone and order a nuclear strike. Once he makes the call, there are zero safeguards we can count on to prevent that order from being executed.”

“Every effort must be made to avoid that nightmare scenario.”

Given Trump’s rage for war, catastrophic nuclear war is ominously possible on his watch.

In office, Jack Kennedy transformed himself from a warrior to peace president. He abhorred nuclear weapons, wanted them eliminated because of the unacceptable risk they pose.

At odds with Pentagon commanders, the CIA, most congressional members, and nearly all his advisors, he favored general and complete disarmament.

He opposed Pax Americana enforced dominance. He signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty with Soviet Russia. In his first State of the Union address, he said the following:

“The deadly arms race, and the huge resources it absorbs, have too long overshadowed all else we must do.”

“We must prevent the arms race from spreading to new nations, to new nuclear powers and to the reaches of outer space.”

In July 1961, he said “(i)n the thermonuclear age, any misjudgment on either side about the intentions of the other could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of humanity,” adding:

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable.”

“Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

“(I)t is a practical matter of life or death The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race” – especially with nukes.

Nuclear powers have a choice. Either eliminate these weapons of mass destruction or risk humanity being eliminated by them.

*

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

“I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. — And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.” – U.S. Republican President George W. Bush (1946- ), in a conversion with a Palestinian delegation in July 2003, during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“They [the George W. Bush administration] lied… They said there were weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq]. There were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction… We spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives. … Obviously, it was a mistake. George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.” – U.S. Republican President Donald Trump (1946- ), statement made during a CBS News GOP presidential debate, on Saturday, February 13, 2016.

“I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”  – Benjamin Netanyahu (1949- ), current Israeli Prime Minister, in a video in 2001, addressing Israeli settlers.

[After 9/11 in 2001, I was shown] “a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” – General Wesley Clark (1944- ), in a video interview on Tues. Mar. 2, 2007 by journalist Amy Goodman.

Just as Republican George W. Bush invented the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction”, in 2003, to deceive Americans and the rest of the world and to justify a military invasion of Iraq, Donald Trump seems to follow on Bush’s footsteps in actively searching for a pretext for another military confrontation in the Middle East, this time against Iran. George W. Bush had even claimed, at the time, that religion was behind his military interventionism when he said, in the summer of 2003, in a bout of hubristic delusion, that “God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq.”

Now another American Republican president, Donald Trump, appears to see himself on a similar mission, i.e. to attack another country, in violation of international law. This time the target of his nasty attack du jour is the country of Iran, a country run by theocrats, which is facing deep domestic problems, both economic and political. Indeed, for some time now, Trump has been making inflammatory remarks against that country’s domestic affairs, in the hope of provoking a response and thus justifying a military aggression.

According to Donald Trump, “We Should Have Never Been in Iraq.”

Donald Trump’s attacks against Iran are all the more amazing and unreal because, on multiple occasions during the last U.S. presidential campaign, candidate Trump openly accused George W. Bush of lying to invade Iraq, adding during a CBS News GOP presidential debate, on Saturday, February 13, 2016,

“We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.”

Is Donald Trump suffering from amnesia, or is he simply incoherent in his thoughts?

As a matter of fact, and despite the neocon propaganda to the contrary, the Bush-Cheney administration did destabilize the Middle East, and these politicians caused the death of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, and they created millions of refugees, many of them ending up in Europe. But possibly worse, from a U.S. and Israel point of view, the 2003 American military invasion of Iraq has resulted in significantly increasing the geopolitical influence of Shiite Iran in the region, by removing from power the Sunni government of Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) and by installing a Shiite government in its place.

This is a question that I raised in my book about the Iraq war, The New American Empire. In it, I not only questioned the legality of such a military invasion of a sovereign country, in violation of the U.N. Charter, but also its wisdom, since Iran was undoubtedly going to profit immensely from a newly installed Shiite government in Baghdad… as it did.

What is doubly amazing is that both Republican American presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, received the same uncritical financial and political support from the very same super rich American Zionist donors and from American Evangelical Christians, although Bush’s support was more widespread than Trump’s, due to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. This time around, however, Donald Trump is not only an abnormal president; he is also a minority president, staunchly supported by only about one third of Americans.

Money is King in U.S. Foreign Policy, Especially Regarding the Middle East

Nowadays, in American politics, money talks and big money talks even louder. In 2010, the partisan U.S. Supreme Court made sure that this be the case when it imposed its anti-democratic doctrine of “Money Is Speech”, in a 5-4 decision. For instance, in 2016, because of huge campaign contributions from one-issue super rich donors (mega donors), nearly all GOP primary presidential contenders, Donald Trump in front, ended up promising to move the American embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem and to ring up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on their first day in the Oval Office, according to a Newsweek report.

So far, Donald Trump has already paid some of his political debt to his mega donors by announcing his willingness to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But even before his inauguration on January 20, 2017, Trump’s entourage was actively intervening on behalf of a foreign government, the Israeli government, at the United Nations.

Such subservience of American politicians to the wishes of big campaign contributors may partly explain why the United States has one of the lowest voter turnouts in its elections among modern world democracies. During the 2016 American Presidential election, for example, less than 56% of voting age citizens bothered to vote, a 20-year low. According to the Pew Research Center, among the 35 highly developed countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States ranks 28th in terms of turnout in recent national elections. For example, electoral turnouts in Belgium (87%), Sweden (83%) or Denmark (80%) were much higher.

Because of the overwhelming importance of money in U.S. politics and because rich pro-Israel lobbies are very active and prominent political donors, American policies in the Middle East have been increasingly skewed in the direction dictated by the Israeli government and its lobbies in the United States. There seems to exist a de facto US-Israel axis, which often includes Saudi Arabia, as far as the Middle East is concerned.

Source: OpenSecrets.org

Indeed, it’s impossible to understand what has been going on for decades in that part of the world, with its string of wars, destruction and deaths, without taking into consideration the overwhelming influence of that axis, which goes beyond partisan party lines in Washington D.C. [In a speech during the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, in April 2008, when she was a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton declared “If I’m President, we will attack Iran… We would be able to totally obliterate them!”]

A Joint U.S.-Israeli Operation Against Iran could now be in the Making

When the U.S. government wishes to undermine a foreign government and create the conditions for a regime change, one should be on the lookout for some false flag operations by well-funded so called “intelligence or covert organizations”, which are specialists in fomenting destabilization in a country, under the hypocritical cover of defending human rights.

As General Wesley Clark  (1944- ) revealed in 2007 (see quote above), Iran is the last country in a long list of countries, whose government the Pentagon had plans to overthrow. The fact that some superficial media fail to inform their readers and listeners about such well-known plans is nothing less than a journalistic scandal.

Such an overall plan would fit perfectly well with the recently announced American-Israeli “strategic plan” against Iran. It is a curious coincidence that the most important political protests in Iran since 2009 have come about just after a secret agreement was finalized between the U.S and Israel, (with the assistance of Saudi Arabia), to destabilize Iran. Indeed, in their relations with Iran, the United States and Israel seem to be acting as a single political entity.

This could also explain why President Donald Trump, against all logic, is so adamant in insisting that the Iranian government is not in compliance with the P5+1 nuclear deal, even though the U.N. and the five other nations in the deal (China, France, Russia, the U. K. and Germany) all agree that Iran is actually in compliance with the agreement. On January 12, Trump renewed his charges against the Iran Deal, without completely withdrawing his country from the deal, but by adding new conditions and economic sanctions against Iran, an act that is, in itself, a violation of the deal. The only government that is in violation of the Iran Deal is the Trump administration, not the Iranian government.

About Iran, it can be said that Donald Trump is dutifully following the long established neoconservative script, at the U.S. Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington D.C., to target this country for the same destabilization overall plan, which was implemented successfully against Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2013, without forgetting the coup in Ukraine in 2014.

It doesn’t matter much who sits in the White House or which political party controls the U.S. Congress, at a given time, the same political forces are dominant and the same neocon-inspired American foreign policy is implemented in the Middle East. The slight difference recently has been that Barack Obama was somewhat less enthusiastic in implementing the policy than George W. Bush or Donald Trump. The results, however, have been the same: governments have been overthrown and people have been killed.

Conclusion

In foreign affairs as in other matters, the Trump administration is going full speed ahead with improvised and dubious policies without fully considering all the consequences ahead. The crises will come later on.

*

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, and of “The New American Empire”.

This article was originally published by The New American Empire Blog.

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes 

(translation: Beware Greeks bearing gifts.)

– from the Aeneid by Virgil

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For more than half a century, the United States government, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, presented what could only be described as a campaign of terror against the population of Cuba.

The Cuban people, under the Revolutionary leadership of Fidel Castro Ruz, had overthrown the regime U.S. Proxy Battista. With popular support, the Castro-led government ushered in reforms that improved the conditions of the people, investing in health care, education, social security, and infrastructure.

The government survived the U.S. backed ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion as well as the ‘Mongoose operation‘ offensives. An embargo was placed on the country, crippling its ability to trade with the U.S. And its partners.

When the U.S.S.R collapsed in the early ’90s, Cuba’s economic development was severely compromised. Then, on December 17 2014, a remarkable announcement: the U.S. And Cuba would re-establish diplomatic relations and move toward normalizing that relationship. As part of this re-visioning of Cuba-U.S. Relations, President Obama agreed to release the remaining Cuban Five!

There seemed to be cause for celebration. Withstanding everything that the Empire had to throw at Cuba, the U.S. seemed to have waved the white flag, and embarked on a new path on the world stage.

Except that new path turns out to be merely a different route to the same destination. Or so believes Arnold August. The author and long-time Cuba scholar believes that Obama’s charm offensive from ’17D’ right up to the end of his presidency a year ago, was far from a declaration of surrender. It signalled a new assault, albeit with a different character.

In his most recent book, Cuba-US relations: Obama and Beyond, August holds that the U.S. under Obama has adopted a ‘Trojan Horse’ strategy. Essentially, by gaining diplomatic and economic access to the country, the U.S. President is hoping to identify, co-opt, and corrupt elements of the society, and use them as instruments to undermine the Revolution.

August elaborates on the U.S. Change of strategy in the first part of the program.

In the second half, Professor Michel Chossudovsky examines one specific element of Cuban Society: The Intelligentsia. Professor Chossudovsky identities the ways by which U.S. aligned Non-Governmental organizations and foundations are sponsoring a sophisticated insurgency on the minds of the Cuban leaders of tomorrow. He also opens up about a personal encounter he had with this diabolical scheme, when he responded to a conference invitation to Cuba in the fall of 2015.

Arnold August has an M.A. in political science from McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec. An accomplished author, he is the author of the recent book, Cuba-US Relations: Obama and Beyond.

Arnold August will speak in Winnipeg on January 18 7pm at McNally Robinson Booksellers at 1400 Grant Avenue.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Ottawa. A visiting professor to several institutions around the world, he has authored more than 800 scholarly articles and 11 books, including his most recent: The Globalization of War: Washington’s Long War on Humanity (2015). Professor Chossudovsky speaks in Winnipeg on Monday, January 15th and in Vancouver on January 16th on the question of North Korea and the Danger of Nuclear War.
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*     *     *

More Post-GOP Tax Cut Heist Mass Layoffs

By Stephen Lendman, January 15, 2018

Walmart is the latest offender, the world’s largest private employer with around 2.1 million workers and staff.

It’s also one of the most abusive, notorious for anti-worker practices, including low-pay, poor or no benefits, opposition to unions, racial and gender discrimination, and other mistreatment of its workforce and suppliers, along with disturbing environmental practices.

The Coming Year in Special Ops

By Nick Turse, January 15, 2018

In 2001, U.S. special operators were targeting just two enemy forces: al-Qaeda and the Taliban.  In 2010, his first full year in office, President Barack Obama informed Congress that U.S. forces were still “actively pursuing and engaging remaining al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.”  According to a recent Pentagon report to Congress, American troops are battling more than 10 times that number of militant groups, including the still-undefeated Taliban, the Haqqani network, an Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-Khorasan, and various “other insurgent networks.”

The Responsibility to Protect the World … from the United States

By Ajamu Baraka, January 15, 2018

This “responsibility to protect” (R2P) always had a dubious legal standing, but its moral justification also required a psychological and historical disengagement from the bloody reality of the 500-hundred-year history of U.S. and European colonialism, slavery, genocide and torture that created the “West.”

These Are the 10 Companies That Dominate the Global Arms Trade

By Zero Hedge, January 15, 2018

The world puts $1.69 trillion towards military expenditures per year, and about $375 billion of that goes towards buying arms specifically.

The End of the Road for Capitalism or for Us All?

By William Bowles, January 15, 2018

So nationalisation served two purposes; on the one hand it addressed/absorbed the peoples’ demand for progressive change but without actually abolishing capitalism and on the other, it got the population to bailout a bankrupt capitalist economy. Brilliant! A masterstroke. Well that’s how it appeared at the time.

Maybe we just have to admit that the day of violence is here, and maybe we just have to give up and let violence take its course.  The nation won’t listen to our voice – maybe it’ll heed the voice of violence. – Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968 (1)

In “Martin Luther King Jr. and the Cold War”, Thomas Noer describes how and why King’s outlook evolved during the 1960s.  Towards the beginning of the decade, King “tended to separate domestic issues from foreign affairs”.  He maintained a decidedly anti-Communist stance and refrained from expressing dissenting views on foreign policy, fearing that he would alienate supporters of desegregation.  But as he began visiting African countries, he started to see Civil Rights for African Americans as part of an anti-colonial struggle against white supremacy.  He praised Kwame Nkrumah as an inspiration and condemned the US for supporting the “tyranny” of South African apartheid.  He noted the US could use its surplus food to prevent people around the world from starving to death, but it lacked the desire to do so.  Whereas earlier he expressed that the US should win the Cold War, now he began praising Cold War neutralism.

By 1965, King had made selected and limited criticisms of aspects of US foreign policy, but with the violence of the war increasing, King began to feel a need to comment and intervene.  Advisors cautioned him against engaging the issue, as “polls showed that a majority of both black and white Americans supported the war”.  Nevertheless, King made a speech calling for negotiations between the US and North Vietnam, and called for a halt to US bombing.

King was stunned by the ferocity of the reaction to his speech.  He did not want to abandon his stance, but he did pause from speaking on the matter.  The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) joined King in his criticism of the war, but he was attacked by the New York Times, Lyndon Johnson, and many others.

A 1966 trip to Chicago was crucial in the continued evolution of King’s political analysis and his decision to continue to integrate foreign policy into his commentary.  He saw the extent of antiwar sentiment in urban ghettos and became aware that US aggression in Indochina was “not an aberration” but “an extension of deeply ingrained American values.”  He found that while middle class blacks supported the war, poor blacks “strongly opposed any US involvement” in Indochina.

King was shocked by the virulence of racism in the North.  He “claimed never to have experienced the racial hatred in Mississippi or Alabama that he encountered in Chicago”, and found that “many white supporters abandoned him” when he shifted his focus from Southern to Northern racism.  “Chicago taught him that racism was far more deeply ingrained and widespread.”  King now believed “most Americans are unconscious racists.”  He found in the North an “intractable opposition to racial equality.”

He also began to connect racism and economics, finding that Northern whites had an economic stake in maintaining black ghettos, which he said were, like poverty in India and Africa, examples of “white colonialis[t]” profiteering.  Ghettos were “domestic colon[ies]”.  Whereas his earlier criticism of US aggression in Vietnam was largely based on American violence, he now began placing the war “within a larger framework”: it was, he said, a colonialist venture driven by economics and racism.  He said the war was “not a tactical blunder or the product of a few malevolent individuals, but instead a symbol of America’s misguided values of materialism and racism that maintained the ghettos at home” and sought “white colonialism” abroad.

King gave major speech in April 1967 called “A Time to Break Silence”.  Whereas earlier he had called for negotiations between the US and North Vietnam, now he pointed out that South Vietnam did not want US intervention.  He “rejected” the claim that the US had “good intentions”, asserting its intentions were in reality dishonorable; that the US wanted to make Vietnam into a profitable “American colony”; that it considered profits “more important than people.”  He said this attitude generalized for US policy towards “Asia, Africa, and South America”, and US policy would not change until it abandoned “materialism and racism”, which would require a total restructuring of society.  He called on the US to “recognize the National Liberation Front [Vietcong] as a legitimate choice of the Vietnamese people”.

The reaction to the speech was “largely negative.”  Groups and leaders including the NAACP and Jackie Robinson “dissociated” from King.  WaPo and NYT condemned the speech.  Life used nationalist othering of King to manipulate readers emotionally, as did Johnson and Hoover.  Johnson requested that an African American former US government propaganda director write an op-ed attacking King.  The result, published in Reader’s Digest, expressed the idea that African Americans must demonstrate loyalty by supporting US aggression in Vietnam (and presumably elsewhere), and utilized nationalist othering to manipulate reader psychology.

King was discouraged but “did not retreat” as he had in 1965.  Instead, he invited black power movement and SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael to Sunday services in Atlanta.  In a sermon, King defended his position on Vietnam, noting that while his stance was neither expedient nor popular, he had to take it because his conscience told him it was right.  In his final speech, he said there was a global revolution occurring against white supremacy; that people from North to South Africa, from New York to Tennessee, were yearning to be free.  He was assassinated the next day, on April 4, 1968.

*

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

Note

(1) Quoted in Rhodes, Joel P. The Voice of Violence: Performative Violence as Protest in the Vietnam Era. Praeger. 2001. 1. Rhodes notes the nation did not listen to the “voice of violence”, but rather interpreted it however it wanted, regardless of the clarity of the messaging.  The virtually uniform interpretation was from an in-group/0ut-group nationalist mentality that imagined the violence was being perpetrated by “outsiders” with no real grievances who were simply trying to create chaos and possibly overthrow the country.

Britain is ill, and even as the opportunists and populists scramble before the hardened negotiators of the European Union over imminent exit, revising optimistic forecasts and notions of sovereign greatness has begun.  Within Theresa May’s decaying state comes yet another economic disaster, and one that has prompted a revival of government assistance before the vicissitudes of the market. This, from a Tory government extolling the divine nature of free market enterprise.

Carillion, the UK’s second biggest construction company, is in a mammoth pickle, one to the tune of £1.5 billion.  It has gone into liquidation after the weekend failure to reach agreement with lenders and the government, a fact that literally threatens up to 20,000 jobs within the country, not to mention pension funds to the value of £600m.

Things get even more interesting when one sees where these jobs are, located across a range of industries from defence, health, transport (the HS2 high-speed rail line comes to mind) and education (notable here is the provision of dinners and cleaning for hundreds of schools).  In short, the company was something of a poster boy in the outsourcing agenda of government, golden boy of the competitive, tendering process.

The situation for the company has been so notably stricken as to prompt an emergency Cobra meeting by May’s Cabinet lasting for up to two hours.  Cabinet Office minister David Lidington suggested with usual understatement in the face of imminent catastrophe that matters had gone “pretty well” given that “people were turning up to work” and no “reports of serious interruption to service delivery” had been received.

Lidington’s language is that of a session at your MP’s surgery: dull, medicated, non-committal. Most of all, there is no sense of alarm.  The meeting, he continues, provided an “opportunity for ministers to test what sort of concerns are being expressed and decide how we should best address them”. 

To date, the government has committed its first notable transgression against its self proclaimed free market ideology: covering the dues for small businesses and employees connected with Carillion’s public contracts.  The disastrous conduct of the golden boy must be somehow addressed.

Lidington’s point is to dress the assistance to those connected with the provision of public services in a different costume: avoid, for instance, any reference to a bailout, which reeks of the socialist hand and state-directed philosophy. “The action we have taken is designed to keep vital public services running rather than to provide a bailout on the failure of a commercial company.”

The consequences of such a patchy approach are already evident.  Given the web of contracts and commitments other companies have with Carillion, jobs are already being lost, the devastation starting to bite.  As a worker for the Midland Metropolitan Hospital Building told the BBC, “Everyone on the site told: ‘That’s it, go home.’  My company said, ‘You’ve been laid of.’”

Did anybody see this coming?  The situation last summer was already providing smoke signals of danger that all was not prudent on the financial side of Carillion.  The books were simply not tallying.  The company had issued profit warnings, largely triggered by overrunning costs regarding the Midland Metropolitan Hospitalin Sandwell, the Royal Liverpool Hospital, and the Aberdeen bypass.

Notwithstanding these concerns, ideology prevailed: the company still received £2bn worth of contracts.  It was too big not to, being the fundamental face of outsourcing.  An export guarantee issued on July 6 even went so far as to put £130m of taxpayer funds at risk.

Frank Field MP, chair of the Work and Pensions select committee, was unflattering:

“Carillion took on mega borrowings while its pension deficit ballooned. We called over a year ago [The Pensions Regulator] to have mandatory clearance powers for corporate activities like these that put pension schemes at risk, and powers to impose truly deterrent fines that would focus boardroom minds.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been, predictably, the first to take the hammer to government policies on privatisation, most notably what he terms the “out-source first dogma”.  “In the wake of the collapse of the contractor Carillion, it is time to put an end to the rip-off privatisation policies that have done serious damage to our public services and fleeced billions of pounds.” 

Showing that this was not merely a concern on the left of politics, the traditional gristle of progressive concern for market forces, Bernard Jenkin, Conservative chairman of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, made a rather damning admission.  Carillion’s collapse “really shakes public confidence in the ability of the private sector to deliver public services and infrastructure.”

This is the Thatcherite sin of Britain, government prostrate before the private provision of services, the state indifferent to accountability.  In May’s declining Britain, even receiving a half-credible, resourced public service from any sector, is a doomed challenge.

*

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

Donald Trump has once again displayed his KKK-style racism in hideous characterizations of Haiti and countries in Central America and Africa during a meeting with several U.S. senators on January 11 to discuss immigration reform. His appalling comments provoked a firestorm of outraged criticism from around the world.

That Trump has been a racist his entire adult life is an irrefutably documented fact. Shortly after he took over a rental housing empire from his Klan-affiliated father, Fred Trump, in 1971, the two were sued by the federal Justice Department for the flagrant exclusion of Black people from their 14,000 New York units.

In 1989, Trump spent $85,000 on newspaper ads advocating, “Bring Back the Death Penalty,” for the Central Park Five, four African American and one Latino youth framed up for the rape and beating of a woman jogger in New York City. Even after being cleared by DNA evidence after serving long years in prison, Trump insisted that the five were guilty.

Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 calling Mexicans “rapists” and “drug dealers,” and demanding a ban on Muslims entering the United States.  He re-Tweeted messages from en theite supremacists and neo-Nazis during his presidential campaign, and stated that many “very fine people” were among the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia torchlight marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and  the Hitlerian slogan, “Blood and Soil.”

While Trump rails against immigrants, his companies have never been shy about exploiting those they were deriding.

An article in the Cornell (University) l Daily Sun on August 22, 2017 reported that an Ithaca, New York-based recruitment firm, Petrina Group International, “works to hire foreign guest workers for the club (Mar-a-Lago).

“Last month, Mar-a-Lago asked the Labor Department for permission to hire 70 temporary workers from overseas and requested visas from the government . . .

“Since 2010, federal records show that nearly 300 American workers have applied to or been referred for jobs at Trump’s private club, but only 17 of those workers have been hired.

“Instead, the club has relied on employing foreigners largely from Romania and Haiti, pursuing more than 500 visas for foreign workers, according to the United States Department of Labor.”

In his white supremacist and xenophobic utterances, Trump is a throwback to an earlier time when most of the world was colonized. Openly racist language was the norm for U.S. leaders and those of other imperialist countries, and their international and domestic views mirrored each other in regards to oppressed peoples.

For example and not coincidentally, in 1915, KKK-backer President Woodrow Wilson sponsored a showing of the Klan-glorifying film, “Birth of a Nation” inside the White House, and the same year sent the Marines to occupy Haiti where they remained for nearly two decades. When the U.S. troops finally departed in 1934, they left behind Haitian puppets which, two decades later, spawned the brutal Duvalier dictatorship. With U.S. support, Papa and Baby Doc held power for 30 years.

From 1790 until 1965, U.S. immigration policy was explicitly based on racism and white supremacy, a policy that Trump would clearly like to return to.

Haiti, Trump and the Clintons

It was reportedly the mention of Haiti that triggered Trump’s vile outburst in the Jan. 11 meeting. Trump had recently revoked the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for 60,000 Haitian refugees living in the U.S. since a devastating earthquake struck their country in 2010, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and vast destruction. TPS was also recently revoked for hundreds of thousands of refugees from El Salvador and Nicaragua, countries that have also been victims of U.S. military intervention.

Along with the genuine anti-racist and progressive responses to Trump, were criticisms from many Democratic Party establishment figures who are seeking to channel the anti-Trump resistance into the 2018 and 2020 Democratic campaigns.

Former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Tweeted:

“The anniversary of the devastating earthquake 8 years ago is a day to remember the tragedy, honor the resilient people of Haiti, & affirm America’s commitment to helping our neighbors. Instead, we‘re subjected to Trump’s ignorant, racist views of anyone who doesn’t look like him.”

Clinton’s hypocrisy is on full display here as she attempts to portray herself as an opponent of racism and friend of the Haitian people. An examination of her actions in Haiti when she was Secretary of State from 2009-13 tells a very different story. Haiti had been under UN occupation since the U.S. coup ousted elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

U.S. Marines patrol the streets of Port-au-Prince on 9 March 2004 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In 2009, the Haitian parliament tried to raise the minimum wage from the equivalent of 24 cents/hour to 61 cents. Two years later, secret cables provided by the WikiLeaks organization revealed that when the employers – mainly foreign garment makers — opposed the new law they were backed up by the Clinton State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

A  May 2011 article in Haiti Liberte newspaper reported on the cables:

“To resolve the impasse between the factory owners and parliament, the State Department urged then Haitian President René Préval to intervene. ‘A more visible and active engagement by Préval may be critical to resolving the issue of the minimum wage and its protest ‘spin-off’ — or risk the political environment spiraling out of control,’ warned U.S. Ambassador Janet Sanderson, in a June 10, 2009 cable to Washington.

“Two months later, Préval negotiated a deal with Parliament to create a two-tiered minimum wage increase – one for the textile industry at $3.13 (125 gourdes) per day and one for all other industrial and commercial sectors at $5 (200 gourdes) per day.

“Still, the U.S. Embassy was not pleased. Deputy Chief of Mission David E. Lindwall said the $5 a day minimum ‘did not take economic reality into account’ but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to ‘the unemployed and underpaid masses.’

“Intense pressure from the employers and the U.S. forced the parliament and President Rene Préval to rescind the law and the minimum wage was raised to just 31 cents an hour at that time.”

At the rate, a worker receives $12.40 for a forty-hour week.

The Clintons and the “Republic of NGOs”

The Clinton Foundation has numerous projects in Haiti, along with about 10,000 other “non-governmental organizations” or NGOs, which raise billions of dollars annually by publicizing images of suffering Haitians. There are so many such organizations that Haiti has is often called the “Republic of NGOs.” Due to the 2010 earthquake, billions more were pledged or raised by NGOs. Much of it remains unaccounted for.

Source: Reclaim our Republic 

A major initiative of Çlinton’s State Department and Clinton Foundation was the Caracol industrial park, a $300 million, publicly funded, joint venture which opened in 2012. Ever the capitalist free-marketeer, Hillary wrote in her memoir, Hard Choices: “We were shifting our focus from aid to investment . . . so we can better harness market forces and make smart public-sector investments that could catalyze sustainable economic growth.”

Private corporations were brought in, mostly making t-shirts, underwear and other low-cost items for Wal-Mart, Target and Kohl’s. Contractors ran the factories, which produced clothing for brand names like Hanes, Nautica, Fruit of the Loom, Dockers and Levi Strauss, thus allowing the brands to disclaim responsibility for what was going in the plants.

The attraction for them was of course the 31 cents/hour minimum wage. Unemployment was very high, partly due to the destruction of much of Haiti’s agriculture at the hands of Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s, for which he later “confessed.” In her book, Hillary Clinton stated that the situation was so desperate that, “fifty applications came in for every job.”

Source: The Center for Economic and Policy Research

Hillary Clinton’s ludicrous claim that the Caracol workers “have one of the best workers’ rights and worker safety regimes in the world,” was completely demolished by a report the same year from the Workers Rights Consortium, which read in part:

“Factories in the Caracol industrial park – a showcase project of post-quake reconstruction and ‘U.S. State Department and Clinton Foundation pet project’ that has been highly controversial — are among those engaging in wage theft, according to the WRC:

“At Caracol, the WRC found that ‘On average, workers were paid 34% less than the law requires…’ Caracol’s anchor tenant, SAE-A, according to the WRC, ‘produces apparel for Walmart, as well as for other major U.S. retailers, such as Target, Old Navy and Kohl’s.’

“In a separate report focused on the Caracol park, based on interviews with community residents and factory workers (and also released last week), Gender Action concludes that the estimated 2,000 workers (as of July 2013) barely make ends meet, with unstable jobs in mediocre conditions, let alone invest in surrounding communities. Apparel assembly workers face tremendous pressure to produce more and more for minimal wages, with instances of verbal and, in one documented case, physical abuse. Donors predict that women would be empowered through [Caracol Industrial Park] PIC jobs; based on women workers’ testimony, PIC jobs are not empowering.“ (Center for Economic and Policy Research)

Manipulating Haiti’s 2010 election and Clinton’s liberal racism

In a blatant exercise in colonial domination, Clinton intervened to change the outcome of the November 2010 Haitian presidential election. In the opening round of the balloting, Mirlande Manigat of the Rally National Democratic Party finished first with 31.37 percent , Jude Célestin came second with 22.48 percent, and Michel Martelly was third with 21.84 percent. Martelly, a well-known entertainer, supporter of the paramilitary Tonton Macoutes forces from the old Duvalier regime, and infamous misogynist, who Clinton simply refers to as “a celebrated musician,” was the U.S. choice.

The “problem,” from Clinton’s perspective, was that the election law called for the first and second place finishers to meet in a run-off.

To “solve” this problem, Clinton both directly and through the Organization of American States (OAS) launched a campaign to get Célestin, the candidate of the Unity party headed by outgoing President René Préval, to withdraw before the date of the run-off. The OAS sent a mission to Haiti, which, without conducting any investigation whatsoever, concluded that the vote had been compromised, that Célestin had actually finished third and should quit the race. Under intense pressure, Célestin withdrew and Martelly was “elected” president.

Clinton’s account of what happened next is from her memoir:

“Many Haitians, who had already endured so much, were outraged that after all they had endured their votes might not be counted. The streets were soon full of loud and unruly protests.

“I decided to go to Haiti to meet with Préval and the candidates to see if there could be a peaceful resolution that would avoid a crisis when there was so much work till to be done in the aftermath of the earthquake. Préval’s preferred candidate [Célestin], who the OAS said had actually finished third, complained that the international community was pushing him out the race. I insisted that just wasn’t the case. After all, I explained, people tried to push me out of the race when I ran for President in 2008. Just as President Obama and I did, he and the other two candidates had to respect the voters’ preference. ‘Look, I’ve run in elections,’ I said. ‘I’ve won two and lost a big one. So I know how it feels. But what’s more important is that democracy be protected.’”

Clinton’s non-sequitor aside, Célestin had precisely been “pushed out of the race,” by the intervention of Washington. But she advises him to accept it in the name of protecting “democracy”!

Clinton then met alone with Préval, counseling him:

“I started talking about what it means to think not just for tomorrow but for the long term. I told him that this was his defining moment. He was either going to be remembered as a President no different from all the Haitian leaders in history who refused to listen to their people, or he was going to be remembered as the President who allowed democracy to take root. He had to choose. ‘I’m talking to you not only as your friend but as someone  who loves my country and had to do a lot of hard things, too,’ I said.  ‘Do the hard thing, because the hard thing is going to ultimately be in the best interests of your country and in your best interests, even though you won’t feel  that way until you’re able to step back and look back.’ He ended the meeting saying, ‘Well, you’ve given me a lot think about. I’ll see what I can do.’ Shortly afterward, Préval and all three candidates accepted the OAS results.”

Of course, as Préval well knew, behind such a condescending appeal couched in diplomatic language was an iron fist.

Donald Trump is a danger to the people of Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Korea and the entire world, including the majority of people inside the U.S. His despicable racist, misogynist, homophobic and xenophobic words and action must be resisted and defeated. At the same, we can put no faith in the other elements of the ruling class who may speak with a different rhetoric but are equally guilt of the crimes of capitalism and imperialism.