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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.

A 2005 documentary titled “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” scathed the company’s unethical practices, its use of undocumented workers for after-hours cleanup crews, paid well below minimum wage.

Its entry into communities devastates small retailers, unable to compete.

The advocacy group Making Change at Walmart, sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), calls for transforming the company into a responsible employer.

Like present and former workers, it accused Walmart of mistreating employees, paying them poverty wages, assigning them erratic schedules, and other disturbing practices.

It’s a corporate predator, exploiting workers, communities and suppliers for maximum profits.

According to ThinkProgress (TP), Walmart announced up to $1,000 employee bonuses on Thursday – the company and Trump claiming its proof that GOP tax cuts benefit workers.

TP explained the fine print, unmentioned in the public announcement, saying:

The bonus is only for workers employed at the company for at least 20 years, a tiny fraction of its employees.

Beneficiaries will be rewarded on an unexplained sliding scale. For its 2.1 million employees, the $400 million announced bonus amounts to an average of $190 per worker – the equivalent of less than a way below poverty $10,000 annual salary, not enough to feed a family and pay rent in substandard housing.

In FY 2017, Walmart had pre-tax profits of around $20.5 billion. The great GOP tax cut heist will save the company almost $2 billion annually, maybe more – over 10 years likely over $20 billion.

It’s end-of-2017 $400 million bonus is one-time. The company will benefit hugely from annual tax savings – almost nothing passed on to workers.

TP: “(I)t appears (Walmart’s) announcement was timed carefully to cover for thousands of unannounced layoffs.”

At least 68 stores are closing in America alone, including in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. In some cases, “employees were not informed of the closures prior to showing up to work on Thursday,” TP explained, adding:

They “learned that their store would be closing when they found the store’s doors locked and a notice announcing the closure.”

Growing evidence shows Trump’s “middle class miracle” is nightmarish for American workers – a jobs killer, not a boom, unrelated to economic growth.

In 2017, ahead of the expected tax cut, jobs growth was slowest in the country since 2010.

TP: Walmart was “praise(d) on national TV, while local news chronicled the devastation of mass layoffs” – mainstream media ignoring them.

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

“…we have the certainty that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and therefore, also, that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it”. —
Frederick Engels, from the introduction to ‘The Dialectics of Nature’, 1883.

In 1945, following the second ‘war to end all wars’, or something like that, the people of Britain put their faith, at least temporally, in an alleged socialist, Labour government. A government that vowed that there would be no return to the ‘bad old days’ of prewar Britain. So we got the National Health Service, public housing, a nationalised transport system, even the canal network was nationalised (telecommunications was already a state-owned monopoly, the capitalists weren’t prepared to risk their capital in its development).

It looked wonderful to (most) socialists didn’t it. This was how ‘socialism’ was presented to us. In reality, there were two factors at work here. On the one hand there was indeed tremendous pressure from below, from organised labour, the socialist movement and working people in general, that indeed there would be no return to the bad old days of pre-war Britain. The future was Socialism!

But on the other hand, the reality was a technically bankrupt capitalist Britain, in debt up to its eyeballs to the new kid on the block, the USA and pretty much every major sector of the economy was broke from manufacturing to infrastructure development. Rationing didn’t end until 1954. What better way to save capitalism from itself by getting the State to takeover the debt and get us to pay for it.

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.

All of this taking place with the backdrop of the hysteria and fear generated by anti-Communist propaganda, the Red Menace in the form of the Cold War and the desire by successive Labour/Tory governments to maintain what was left of our Empire, which in turn helped finance British ‘socialism’ would you believe. So we had ‘socialism’ at home and Imperialism abroad in the shape of our colonies and later, former colonies. And successive Labour governments were just as keen on it  as successive Conservative governments. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

In some respects it was a masterstroke by the political class and its servants, the permanent civil service, well for as long as it worked and it served the purposes for which it was created; the preservation of capitalism and imperialism.

Indeed, the programme worked, kind of until the first major, postwar crisis of capital at the beginning of the 1970s, the so-called energy crisis that upset the ‘socialist’ applecart.

In reality the ‘Energy Crisis’ reflected the rise of the anti-colonial struggles in the form of the oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran wresting back a measure of control over their natural resources, in turn, bailing out (again) the imperialist states with the petro-dollars that accumulated.

Coupled to this was yet another crisis of over-production that afflicts the ‘advanced’ capitalist economies with boring regularity, which in turn led to the attacks on organised labour, followed by the inexorable relocation of manufacturing to abundant sources of cheap labour in our former colonies as a means of maintaining the rate of profit for shareholders, culminating in the mid-1970s in what was effectively a return, not to pre-WWII conditions, but to pre-WWI conditions! The outrageously misnamed neoliberalism, the so-called free market agenda of the Reagan/Thatcher years, which lives on like a bad meal.

In the UK it was marked by the frontal assault and destruction of the biggest and most militant of trade unions, the National Union of Miners. Coal, the backbone of Industrial capitalism was now more readily and cheaply available overseas, assisted by the discovery of cheap North Sea oil, again for as long as it lasted.

Fast forward to the present (with a bunch of major economic crises, wars etc, along the way, each one bigger and badder than the last) and we are witnessing the disastrous end-product of capitalism. War, climate disaster, increasing impoverishment but now global in scope and what looks like the final nail in our planet-sized coffin, environmental disaster that’s even got the ruling elites shitting in their expensive Armani pants.

So is that how we are going to let it end? Our childrens’ teeth falling out before they’re two? Our oceans filling up with plastic junk? Emptying the seas of fish. Disrupting and poisoning the natural processes by introducing genetically modified organisms into nature’s life cycle? Destroying the health of our young (and old) by dumping 50,000-plus untested, novel chemicals into the food, air, water and the ground? Destroying forests in order to manufacture cardboard boxes for all the unwanted junk sitting in warehouses and shopping malls? Is this what it’s come to? Is this democracy? Is this the ‘free market’ in action?

The reality is that this is the end-product of expand or die capitalism, where the bottom line is trillions for the shareholders and fuck all else for the rest of us except a poisoned home, unfit for any habitation! A planet-sized poisoned slum.

I opened this essay with Engels’ prophetic quote, written 135 YEARS AGO would you believe! And unless we, the people call a halt to industrial capitalism now, and I mean right now, we are doomed as a species and we have also doomed our amazingly beautiful planet that took Nature billions of years to evolve in an intricate dance of physical, chemical and biological relationships.

My closest friend, and colleague, here in London, maintains that human intelligence is some kind of virus, an infection, citing the fact, and it is a fact, that the so-called lower animals don’t destroy their environments, they don’t kill each other and destroy their habitats with such abandon. And I can understand why he thinks the way he does when you look around you, although of course, I can’t agree with him. Every now and again, we argue our respective cases with passion. Human intelligence is the product of Natural Evolution, in response to the natural environment. Darwin’s natural selection. Nature doesn’t moralise. Nature is neither good nor bad, right or wrong, it just is. If you want to know why, please inquire elsewhere.

Capitalism on the other hand, is very much the product of our ruling classes, the class that owns and maintains private ownership of the major means of production for the benefit of the few. It’s only ‘natural’ insofar that it’s a product of human history, but it’s not inevitable, it’s not permanent, It’s not the ‘end of history’ as some apologist for the mess we’re in averred.

Amazingly, we have survived the most momentous century of our species short existence, the 20th, and by the skin of our teeth it would seem, but can we survive the 21st? Damn, can we survive the next 20 years let alone the next 80? I think the jury is out, at least until we arrest the miscreants and close their corrupt business down.

But what is absolutely clear, at least to me and to like-minded socialists, is that it’s vitally important to resurrect, to reignite, to reinvent the socialist dream of the 19th and 20th centuries before it’s too late. It’s also time for us socialists, especially in the imperialist world to get our act together and stop playing at being revolutionaries and get real.

Thus far, it’s the peoples’ of our former (and current) colonies who have been doing most of the fighting, and dying, and in reality they’re doing it for all of us! I don’t believe in any kind of god but the idea that Jesus died for all of us, sums it up.

My dream is that before I die, I see at least a glimmer of real change, a sign that finally we, the so-called privileged of this world get our act together and rid our world of the parasites who prey on us, the 1% that we talk so glibly about. But you know, that without us buying into their world, they have nothing, no power in spite of their wealth, their weapons, their propaganda. It’s only because we allow them, that they continue to rule.

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This article was originally published by Investigating Imperialism.

Introduction

If you want to know something about life in America these days, consider how New York Times columnist David Leonhardt began his first piece of the year, “7 Wishes for 2018”: “Well, at least it’s not 2017 anymore. I expect that future historians will look back on it as one of the darker non-war years in the country’s history…”

Think about that for a moment: 2017, a “non-war year”? Tell that to the Afghans, the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Yemenis, the Somalis, or for that matter the parents of the four American Green Berets who died in Niger last October. Still, let’s admit it, Leonhardt caught a deeper American reality of 2017, not to speak of the years before that, and undoubtedly this one, too.

Launched in October 2001, what was once called the Global War on Terror — it even gained the grotesque acronym, GWOT — has never ended.  Instead, it’s morphed and spread over large parts of the planet.  In all the intervening years, the United States has been in a state of permanent war that shows no sign of concluding in 2018.  Its planes continue to drop a staggering tonnage of munitions; its drones continue to Hellfire-missile country after country; and, in recent years, its elite Special Operations forces, now a military-within-the-U.S.-military of about 70,000 personnel, have been deployed, as Nick Turse has long reported at this website, to almost every imaginable country on the planet.  They train allied militaries and proxy forces, advise and sometimes fight with those forces in the field, conduct raids, and engage in what certainly looks like war.

The only catch in all this (and it’s surely what led Leonhardt to write those lines of his) is the American people. Long divorced from their all-volunteer military in a draft-less country, we have largely ignored the war on terror and gone about our business just as President George W. Bush urged us to do two weeks after the 9/11 attacks.  (“Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.”)  As those distant conflicts expanded and terror groups spread and multiplied, Washington helped the “non-war” atmosphere along by perfecting a new kind of warfare in which ever fewer Americans would die.  Half a century later, its quagmire qualities aside, the war on terror is largely the anti-Vietnam War: no body counts, few body bags, lots of proxy forces, armed robotic vehicles in the skies, and at the tip of the “spear” a vast, ever-more secretive military, those special ops guys.  As a result, if you weren’t in that all-volunteer military or a family member of someone who was, it wasn’t too hard to live as if the country’s “forever wars” had nothing to do with us.  It’s possible that never in our history, one filled with wars, have Americans been more deeply demobilized than in this era.  When it comes to the war on terror, there’s neither been a wave of support nor, since 2003, a wave of protest.

In a sense, then, David Leonhardt was right on the mark.  In so much of the world, 2017 was a grim year of war, displacement, and disaster.   Here, however, it was, in so many ways, just another “non-war year.”  In that context, let Nick Turse guide you into the next “non-war year” and the “non-war” force, America’s special operators, who are likely to be at its heart.

Special Ops at War

MC-130E Combat Talon dispensing flares (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

At around 11 o’clock that night, four Lockheed MC-130 Combat Talons, turboprop Special Operations aircraft, were flying through a moonless sky from Pakistani into Afghan airspace. On board were 199 Army Rangers with orders to seize an airstrip.  One hundred miles to the northeast, Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters cruised through the darkness toward Kandahar, carrying Army Delta Force operators and yet more Rangers, heading for a second site.  It was October 19, 2001.  The war in Afghanistan had just begun and U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) were the tip of the American spear.

Those Rangers parachuted into and then swarmed the airfield, engaging the enemy — a single armed fighter, as it turned out — and killing him.  At that second site, the residence of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, the special operators apparently encountered no resistance at all, even though several Americans were wounded due to friendly fire and a helicopter crash.

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.”

After more than 16 years of combat, U.S. Special Operations forces remain the tip of the spear in Afghanistan, where they continue to carry out counterterrorism missions.  In fact, from June 1st to November 24th last year, according to that Pentagon report, members of Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan conducted 2,175 ground operations “in which they enabled or advised” Afghan commandos.

“During the Obama administration the use of Special Operations forces increased dramatically, as if their use was a sort of magical, all-purpose solution for fighting terrorism,” William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, pointed out.  “The ensuing years have proven this assumption to be false.  There are many impressive, highly skilled personnel involved in special operations on behalf of the United States, but the problems they are being asked to solve often do not have military solutions.  Despite this fact, the Trump administration is doubling down on this approach in Afghanistan, even though the strategy has not prevented the spread of terrorist organizations and may in fact be counterproductive.”

Global Commandos

Since U.S. commandos went to war in 2001, the size of Special Operations Command has doubled from about 33,000 personnel to 70,000 today.  As their numbers have grown, so has their global reach.  As TomDispatch revealed last month, they were deployed to 149 nations in 2017, or about 75% of the countries on the planet, a record-setting year.  It topped 2016’s 138 nations under the Obama administration and dwarfed the numbers from the final years of the Bush administration.  As the scope of deployments has expanded, special operators also came to be spread ever more equally across the planet.

The C-130 transport aircraft provides a medium-airlift capability in support of personnel and
equipment transport, CASEVAC, and return of human remains. (Source: US Department of Defense)

In October 2001, Afghanistan was the sole focus of commando combat missions.  On March 19, 2003, special operators fired the first shots in the invasion of Iraq as their helicopter teams attacked Iraqi border posts near Jordan and Saudi Arabia.  By 2006, as the war in Afghanistan ground on and the conflict in Iraq continued to morph into a raging set of insurgencies, 85% of U.S. commandos were being deployed to the Greater Middle East.

As this decade dawned in 2010, the numbers hadn’t changed appreciably: 81% of all special operators abroad were still in that region.

Eight years later, however, the situation is markedly different, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command.  Despite claims that the Islamic State has been defeated, the U.S. remains embroiled in wars in Iraq and Syria, as well as in Afghanistan and Yemen, yet only 54% of special operators deployed overseas were sent to the Greater Middle East in 2017.  In fact, since 2006, deployments have been on the rise across the rest of the world.  In Latin America, the figure crept up from 3% to 4.39%.  In the Pacific region, from 7% to 7.99%.  But the striking increases have been in Europe and Africa.

In 2006, just 3% of all commandos deployed overseas were operating in Europe.  Last year, that number was just north of 16%.

“Outside of Russia and Belarus we train with virtually every country in Europe either bilaterally or through various multinational events,” Major Michael Weisman, a spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command Europe, told TomDispatch.  “The persistent presence of U.S. SOF alongside our allies sends a clear message of U.S. commitment to our allies and the defense of our NATO alliance.”

For the past two years, in fact, the U.S. has maintained a Special Operations contingent in almost every nation on Russia’s western border.  As Special Operations Command chief General Raymond Thomas put it last year,

“[W]e’ve had persistent presence in every country — every NATO country and others on the border with Russia doing phenomenal things with our allies, helping them prepare for their threats.”

Africa, however, has seen the most significant increase in special ops deployments.  In 2006, the figure for that continent was just 1%; as 2017 ended, it stood at 16.61%.  In other words, more commandos are operating there than in any region except the Middle East. As I recently reported at Vice News, Special Operations forces were active in at least 33 nations across that continent last year.

The situation in one of those nations, Somalia, in many ways mirrors in microcosm the 16-plus years of U.S. operations in Afghanistan.  Not long after the 9/11 attacks, a senior Pentagon official suggested that the Afghan invasion might drive militants out of that country and into African nations.

“Terrorists associated with al-Qaeda and indigenous terrorist groups have been and continue to be a presence in this region,” he said. “These terrorists will, of course, threaten U.S. personnel and facilities.”

When pressed about actual transnational dangers, that official pointed to Somali militants, only to eventually admit that even the most extreme Islamists there “really have not engaged in acts of terrorism outside Somalia.”  Similarly, when questioned about connections between Osama bin Laden’s core al-Qaeda group and African extremists, he offered only the most tenuous links, like bin Laden’s “salute” to Somali militants who killed U.S. troops during the infamous 1993 Black Hawk Down incident.

Source: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Nonetheless, U.S. commandos reportedly began operating in Somalia in 2001, air attacks by AC-130 gunships followed in 2007, and 2011 saw the beginning of U.S. drone strikes aimed at militants from al-Shabaab, a terror group that didn’t even exist until 2006.  According to figures compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the U.S. carried out between 32 and 36 drone strikes and at least 9 to 13 ground attacks in Somalia between 2001 and 2016.

Last spring, President Donald Trump loosened Obama-era restrictions on offensive operations in that country.  Allowing U.S. forces more discretion in conducting missions there, he opened up the possibility of more frequent airstrikes and commando raids.  The 2017 numbers reflect just that.  The U.S. carried out 34 drone strikes, at least equaling if not exceeding the cumulative number of attacks over the previous 15 years.  (And it took the United States only a day to resume such strikes this year.)

“President Trump’s decision to make parts of southern Somalia an ‘area of active hostilities’ gave [U.S. Africa Command or AFRICOM] the leeway to carry out strikes at an increased rate because it no longer had to run their proposed operations through the White House national security bureaucratic process,” said Jack Serle, an expert on U.S. counterterrorism operations in Somalia.

He was quick to point out that AFRICOM claims the uptick in operations is due to more targets presenting themselves, but he suspects that AFRICOM may be attempting to cripple al-Shabaab before an African Union peacekeeping force is withdrawn and Somalia’s untested military is left to fight the militants without thousands of additional African troops.

In addition to the 30-plus airstrikes in 2017, there were at least three U.S. ground attacks.  In one of the latter, described by AFRICOM as “an advise-and-assist operation alongside members of the Somali National Army,” Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken was killed and two U.S. personnel were injured during a firefight with al-Shabaab militants.  In another ground operation in August, according to an investigation by the Daily Beast, Special Operations forces took part in a massacre of 10 Somali civilians.  (The U.S. military is now investigating.)

As in Afghanistan, the U.S. has been militarily engaged in Somalia since 2001 and, as in Afghanistan, despite more than a decade and a half of operations, the number of militant groups being targeted has only increased.  U.S. commandos are now battling at least two terror groups — al-Shabaab and a local Islamic State affiliate — as drone strikes spiked in the last year and Somalia became an ever-hotter war zone.  Today, according to AFRICOM, militants operate “training camps” and possess “safe havens throughout Somalia [and] the region.”

“The under-reported, 16-year U.S. intervention in Somalia has followed a similar pattern to the larger U.S. war in Afghanistan: an influx of special forces and a steady increase in air strikes has not only failed to stop terrorism, but both al-Shabaab and a local affiliate of ISIS have grown during this time period,” said William Hartung of the Center for International Policy.  “It’s another case of failing to learn the lessons of the United States’ policy of endless war: that military action is as likely or more likely to spark terrorist action as to reduce or prevent it.”

Somalia is no anomaly.  Across the continent, despite escalating operations by commandos as well as conventional American forces and their local allies and proxies, Washington’s enemies continue to proliferate.  As Vice News reported, a 2012 Special Operations Command strategic planning document listed five prime terror groups on the continent. An October 2016 update counted seven by name — the Islamic State, Ansar al-Sharia, al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, al-Murabitun, Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and al-Shabaab — in addition to “other violent extremist organizations.”  The Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies now offers a tally of 21 “active militant Islamist groups” on the continent.  In fact, as reported at The Intercept, the full number of terrorist organizations and other “illicit groups” may already have been closer to 50 by 2015.

Saving SOF through Proxy War?

As wars and interventions have multiplied, as U.S. commandos have spread across the planet, and as terror groups have proliferated, the tempo of operations has jumped dramatically.  This, in turn, has raised fears among think-tank experts, special ops supporters, and members of Congress about the effects on those elite troops of such constant deployments and growing pressure for more of them.

“Most SOF units are employed to their sustainable limit,” General Thomas told members of Congress last spring. “Despite growing demand for SOF, we must prioritize the sourcing of these demands as we face a rapidly changing security environment.”

Yet the number of countries with special ops deployments hit a new record last year.

At a November 2017 conference on special operations held in Washington, influential members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees acknowledged growing strains on the force. For Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the solution is, as he put it, “to increase numbers and resources.”

While Republican Senator Joni Ernst did not foreclose the possibility of adding to already war-swollen levels of commandos, she much prefers to farm out some operations to other forces:

“A lot of the missions we see, especially if you… look at Afghanistan, where we have the train, advise, and assist missions, if we can move some of those into conventional forces and away from SOF, I think that’s what we need to do.”

Secretary of Defense James Mattis has already indicated that such moves are planned.  Leigh Claffey, Ernst’s press secretary, told TomDispatch that the senator also favors “turning over operations to capable indigenous forces.”

Ernst’s proxies approach has, in fact, already been applied across the planet, perhaps nowhere more explicitly than in Syria in 2017.  There, SOCOM’s Thomas noted, U.S. proxies, including both Syrian Arabs and Kurds, “a surrogate force of 50,000 people… are working for us and doing our bidding.” They were indeed the ones who carried out the bulk of the fighting and dying during the campaign against the Islamic State and the capture of its capital, Raqqa.

However, that campaign, which took back almost all the territory ISIS held in Syria, was exceptional.  U.S. proxies elsewhere have fared far worse in recent years.  That 50,000-strong Syrian surrogate army had to be raised, in fact, after the U.S.-trained Iraqi army, built during the 2003-2011 American occupation of that country, collapsed in the face of relatively small numbers of Islamic State militants in 2014.  In Mali, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Honduras, and elsewhere, U.S.-trained officers have carried out coups, overthrowing their respective governments.  Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, where special ops forces have been working with local allies for more than 15 years, even elite security forces are still largely incapable of operating on their own.  According to the Pentagon’s 2017 semi-annual report to Congress, Afghan commandos needed U.S. support for an overwhelming number of their missions, independently carrying out only 17% of their 2,628 operations between June 1, 2017, and November 24, 2017.

Indeed, with Special Operations forces acting, in the words of SOCOM’s Thomas, as “the main effort, or major supporting effort for U.S. [violent extremist organization]-focused operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, across the Sahel of Africa, the Philippines, and Central/South America,” it’s unlikely that foreign proxies or conventional American forces will shoulder enough of the load to relieve the strain on the commandos.

Bulking up Special Operations Command is not, however, a solution, according to the Center for International Policy’s Hartung.

“There is no persuasive security rationale for having U.S. Special Operations forces involved in an astonishing 149 countries, given that the results of these missions are just as likely to provoke greater conflict as they are to reduce it, in large part because a U.S. military presence is too often used as a recruiting tool by local terrorist organizations,” he told TomDispatch.  “The solution to the problem of the high operational tempo of U.S. Special Operations forces is not to recruit and train more Special Operations forces. It is to rethink why they are being used so intensively in the first place.”

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Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept. His website is NickTurse.com.

Featured image: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Daniel Ellsberg (Carol Leigh Scarlot Harlot / Flickr – CC by 2.0)

Steven Spielberg’s new film The Post, starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, opens today. While it is entertaining, it is hardly the full story of Daniel Ellsberg and the publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Ellsberg sought to make public those documents in 1971 to help bring about an end to the Vietnam war. But they were not the only files he had carried out of the Rand Corporation that he hoped to release later. Certain other papers he had taken could possibly have ended the Cold War, reduced the global threat of nuclear annihilation and stopped the development of what he saw as “The Doomsday Machine.”

For more on that, below is WhoWhatWhy’s podcast with Ellsberg, conducted just a few weeks ago.

Long before Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks, there was Daniel Ellsberg. Forty-six years after the release of the Pentagon Papers, he is once again front and center in the issues we are talking about. Ken Burns controversially chose not to include Ellsberg in his look back at Vietnam. Steven Spielberg has made the Pentagon Papers the ultimate macguffin of his new film The Post, with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.

But Ellsberg, when he left Rand Corporation in 1971, took with him more than the Pentagon Papers. He carried out a whole additional set of documents on America’s nuclear policy and its command and control in the 1950s and 1960s.

The papers were the result of Ellsberg’s work as a military analyst at Rand. At that famous defense think-tank, his work focused on how presidents could better understand when and how to launch nuclear weapons using disciplines like decision theory and the study of ambiguity.

After leaving Rand, Ellsberg held the papers back, planning to release them when the war in Vietnam ended. Unfortunately, in a remarkable side story, the papers were hidden so well by Ellsberg’s brother that they were never found. Nonetheless, while the original papers were forever lost, using his notes and memories Ellsberg has virtually reconstructed this history, which he reveals in his new book The Doomsday Machine.

That’s the subject of this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, in which Jeff Schechtman talks with Daniel Ellsberg.

As the North Korean crisis once again elevates nuclear war to the realm of conceivability, Ellsberg explains how his early work in economic decision-making was applied to ideas like “launch on warning” and “use them before you lose them.” He also discusses the cold calculations that measured the utility of a “first strike” against how many hundreds of millions of civilian deaths could be considered “acceptable.”

Ellsberg shatters the myth that only the president can launch nuclear weapons. He offers chilling insights, showing how President Dwight Eisenhower set the stage for the delegation and even the sub-delegation of the power to launch nuclear weapons. This policy continued for decades and probably still exists today.

For the title of his new book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner(Bloomsbury USA, December 2017), Ellsberg borrowed the phrase “The Doomsday Machine” from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

In a sobering look back at the dawn of the nuclear age, Ellsberg offers both a clarion call for change and a reminder that what is past is prologue.

Full Text Transcript:

As a service to our readers, we provide transcripts with our podcasts. We try to ensure that these transcripts do not include errors. However, due to resource constraints, we are not always able to proofread them as closely as we would like, and we hope that you will excuse any errors that slipped through.

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When it comes to covering protests in other countries, it seems any vague picture of brown people protesting can stand in for those actually on the streets expressing their grievances. Since the outbreak of protests across Iran three weeks ago, several major outlets have used pictures of demonstrations  in the United States, France, or United Kingdom—organized by a fringe, cult-like group, Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK)—in place of images of the entirely unaffiliated protesters, 6,000 miles away, who are the topic of discussion.

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Fox News, Scientific American, Vox, Salon, National Interest and Axios were among the outlets that used unidentified photos of protests not in Iran to illustrate stories about protests in Iran. 

These are all images of rallies by the MEK (sometimes known as the People’s Mujahedin, or its benign-sounding front-group name, National Council of Resistance) being presented as protesters in Iran. Several other outlets used their images, but noted they were simply “solidarity” marches in the US or Europe. While this is technically accurate, it’s still wildly misleading, given that it’s safe to assume most people won’t know that the organizers of these rallies are part of a US- and Israeli-aligned fringe group, and not allies of the workers and young people taking to the streets in Iran.

The Washington Post front page (1/4/18) featured a photo of an MEK demonstration in Paris, identified only as “demonstrators…in solidarity with those marching in Iran against the government.” (image: Shervin Malekzadeh)

Casually throwing around MEK images to represent unrest in Iran is the worst combination of insulting and sloppy. It would be like a Chinese outlet, in 2012, using images of a Westboro Baptist Church protest in a story about Occupy Wall Street, because both opposed the US government. The exact ideology of those protesting in Iran isn’t 100 percent clear—they seem to represent a mix of groups and grievances—but MEK has virtually zero support in Iran itself,  having been disowned by the Green Movement (the last major protest movement in Iran) in 2009, and is widely loathed for working with Israeli intelligence andfighting alongside the Iraqi army in Iran’s decade-long war against Saddam in the 1980s that killed a half-million Iranians. The MEK has carried out several bomb attacks in Iran, and was even officially listed by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization for 16 years, until it was removed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012, after a years-long lobbying effort by pro-regime change forces within the US.

The only major media faction that even pretends the MEK has any legitimacy within Iran is the Murdoch group, which routinely runs MEK’s blatant disinformation (Fox News, 1/1/18) and pro-regime change op-eds (Wall Street Journal, 1/8/18). Even consistent regime change partisans, such as Bloomberg’s Eli Lake (1/2/18), warn against promoting MEK:

People’s Mujahedin leader Maryam Rajavi, or supporters of the Pahlavi dynasty that fell in 1979, should not be treated as leaders or spokesmen for this organic uprising. They seek to impose an agenda on a movement they did not create. Don’t let them do it.

No intellectually honest person takes MEK seriously as a viable alternative to the current government in Iran. The idea that it is an actual “Iranian opposition” is a Western media fiction. But the group’s rallies outside Iranian embassies provide great visual fodder for indifferent or dishonest editors in need of high-quality “Iran protest” images—without the mess of actually paying Iranian photographers, or dissecting the on-the-ground political reality in Iran.

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Featured image is from the author.

The protests in Iran over 2017-2018 do have some similarities with those in Syria in early 2011, both in their internal dynamics and in the interventions of Iran’s external enemies. Yet there were also important differences.

Wide-scale protests in Iran were reported from 28 December 2017 onwards, beginning in Mashaad. However particular economic problems behind these protests had been building for some time. Tehran and Mashhad had seen protests in January and November 2017, over the failure of financial institutions in a scandal known as the ‘Caspian Affair’. Many small investors had lost their savings.

By the end of last year a range of other grievances had been added, including rising prices, job losses and unemployment. To that we might add disillusionment that the JCPOA agreement (which led to reduced sanctions and greater oil sales) had not yet translated into substantial economic benefits for ordinary people.

The spread of these protests into more than a dozen cities attracted small political groups, many of them foreign backed, to add their chorus of ‘regime change’. Those calls were amplified by their outside sponsors. The best organised in pushing these ‘regime change’ demands were the monarchists and the banned terrorist group the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which began as a national left movement but was then purchased by Saddam Hussein and most of Iran’s foreign enemies.

We have to recall that, in recent months, aggression against Iran has been openly and repeatedly pronounced by the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Israel and the USA. The June 2017 DAESH terrorist attacks on Tehran were preceded by direct threats, a few weeks before, from crown prince Mohammad bin Salman. He said

‘we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia’.

In the final weeks of 2017 Washington and Israel issued joint threats against Iran, saying they were working on ‘concrete goals’ against the independent nation. There can be little doubt that those three enemies would seize any opportunity to back internal ‘regime change’ agents. But they do not have any substantial internal partner.

In response to the politicisation of these protests, a number of large pro-government rallies were organised, dwarfing the size of the protest rallies. Many sections of the western state and corporate media ran video of pro-government rallies, saying they were the protest rallies. Even video of the large 2011 Bahrain protests were promoted as ‘Iran protests’. In most of these videos pictures of Iran’s leader, many clerics and anti-Israel and anti-Trump placards could be seen. The many media fabrications of the war on Syria seem to have ‘normalised’ such reckless misrepresentation.

Online commentator Sayed Mousavi (@SayedMousavi7), observing protest rally photos and video online, said that politicisation of the rallies had alienated many from joining in,

‘but it also inspired other dispersed yet more aggressive and opportunist interest groups to step in … [and] these marginal groups started organising.’

Mousavi estimated that, while there had been many protests of 500 to 1,000 people in a number of Iranian cities, there had been no rally larger than 300 in Tehran. Unlike the very large political rallies in 2009, he said, there was no clear dynamic, no unified demands, no leader and very little presence in the capital.

The protests started in Mashhad in a gathering by people who had lost their savings due to the closing & bankruptcy of some financial institutions, known as the “Caspian Affair”. (Source: Sayed Mousavi)

While much of the western state and corporate media promoted the ‘freedom’ and anti-government slogans, reactionary slogans were also widely reported. The son of the former Shah (a King imposed on Iran by Washington in the 1950s) was reported backing the ‘regime change’ and ‘death to the dictator’ demands. MEK leader Maryam Rajavi also backed ‘death to the dictator’ demands. Over two weeks at least 400 people were detained and 25 were killed, though the government says none of those were shot by security forces. Nevertheless, six were reported killed in Isfahan, as they tried to steal weapons from a police station. The online Telegram channel ‘AmadNews’ was blocked, for promoting violence.

The similarities with Syria in early 2011 are that in both cases the protests began with genuine concerns over domestic issues, but were infiltrated by small extremist groups, most of which had foreign backing. In Iran the focus of the protests grew into wider grievances, mostly over economic management. In Syria the rallies led with calls for constitutional reform of the Baathist system, following dissatisfaction with corruption and cronyism.

In both cases the western state and corporate media launched into a fairly systematic misreporting of events. In Syria, US-based groups such as Human Rights Watch claimed the violence was from security forces against ‘peaceful protestors’ for the first six months. In fact (and as I explain in Chapter Four of my book The Dirty War on Syria), sectarian jihadists were killing security forces from the first days, then blaming it on the government. Concerning Iran, the large pro-government rallies were repeatedly shown as ‘protest rallies’, in the western media.

It is important also to observe the differences. Iran is a large and resilient independent country, with significant internal political contest between two factions: liberals and principlists (called ‘hard-liners’ in the USA). Other opposition groups are very small.

In Syria the major potential ally Washington had for its ‘regime change’ aggression was the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, backed by international al Qaeda ‘jihadists’. Independent Turkish pollsters TESEV found that, after one year of the conflict in Syria, 5% supported violent attacks on the state. That seems small, but it represents over a million people (mostly Muslim Brotherhood supporters) who might sympathise with or assist jihadist fighters. Although sectarian jihadists in Syria, after the first year, became dependent on massive outside support and foreign fighters, they maintained a social base in several areas of the country.

Iran has no similar base for violent opposition. There is already a significant political dynamic within the country, including a dynamic for social reform. While there is a residue of monarchists and probably substantial anti-clerical sentiment, the main violent factions (like the MEK and DAESH) are small and dependent on external help. Similarly, the communities targeted by Saudi recruiters for DAESH are quite small.

The economic issues are very real, but the Saudi-Israeli-Washington dream of subversion lacks a strong internal partner. Perhaps that is why Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was unconcerned, saying just ‘what has happened in Iran is being successfully contained’.

One of the most ingenious propaganda weapons ever developed is that the powerful nations of the West—led by the United States—have a moral responsibility to use military force to protect the rights of people being repressed by their governments. 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.”

This violent, lawless Pan-European colonial/capitalist project continues today under the hegemony of the U.S. empire. This then begs the questions of who really needs the protection and who protects the peoples of the world from the United States and its allies? 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.”

Neocons like William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl were the driving forces in pushing for the war in Iraq. They understood if they wanted to sell war, “Americans” needed to believe the conflict was about values, not interests. The neocons dusted off and put a new face on that old rationalization for colonialism—the white man’s burden. Interventions were to bring democracy and freedom to those people who were struggling to be just like their more advanced models in the white West. Liberal interventionists further developed those ideas into “humanitarian interventionism” and the “responsibility to protect.”

The fact that the United States and Europe can wrap themselves in the flag of morality, practice savior politics and get away with it is a testament to the enduring psychopathology of white supremacist ideology.

The most extreme expressions of this cognitive dissonance occurred during the Obama administration, when the notion of U.S. exceptionalism was used to justify continuing the barbarism of the Bush administration’s so-called War on Terror. With this justification and the outrageous assertion that it was defending democracy, the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination committed crimes against humanity and war crimes that resulted in the deaths of millions, while millions more were displaced and ancient cities, nations and peoples were destroyed.

The result? International Gallup and Pew research polls have consistently shown the peoples of the world consider the United States the greatest threat to world peace on the planet.

National Security Strategy Under Trump: More of the Same

When the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy, Liberal pundits suggested it was a significantly different than any previous U.S. strategy. But beyond some specific references to putting “America” and its citizens first in relationship to the economy, and the reactionary stances of tightening border security and enforcing strict immigration policies, Trump’s strategy did not stray much from the post-Cold War strategy of the preceding years.

The difference that did exist was more in style than substance. The Trump administration completely dispensed with all pretexts used by previous administrations. Even domestic law, like the War Powers Act that was ignored by the Obama administration continues to be of no concern for the new Trump administration.  Now it is Trump’s “America first” with no concern for international law or accepted standards of behavior.

Unchecked by the countervailing power of the Soviet Union, the bi-partisan National Security Strategy produced in the 1990s that committed the U.S. state to pursue policies that would ensure continued U.S. economic, political and military hegemony through the 21^st century—the “new American century”—is still the overall strategic objective of this administration.

Even explicitly naming China and Russia as “competition” that threatens to harm the country’s security was not that much of a departure since the centerpiece of U.S policy has been checking any state that challenged U.S. power in any region. The Trump administration named threats to U.S. interests—North Korea in Asia, Russia in Eurasia, Iran in West Asia, with jihadist groups included in case the United States needed a War on Terror (WOT) justification for U.S. interventions anywhere in the world.

While Neocons and liberal interventionists in previous administrations sugarcoated U.S. geo-strategic objectives to mask hegemony, the Trump rhetoric is crude, direct and unambiguously aggressive. Protecting U.S. interests in the 21^st century means relying on military aggression, war and subversion.

Building the U.S. anti-war movement as the responsibility to protect from Empire

Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated the obvious: he United States was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. He also said the public allowing this violence would lead to a kind of national spiritual death that would continue to make the U.S. state a danger to the world.

That spiritual death has not quite happened completely. Yet accepting the “inevitability” of violence and the necessity for waging war is now more deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness of individuals in the United States than it was 50 years ago when King warned of the deep malady of U.S. society. For most of the 21^st century, the United States has been at war. Culturally, mass shootings, the wars on drugs and terror, violence and war as entertainment, livestreamed videos of horrendous police-executed murders as well as of a head of state being sodomized with a knife have resulted in what Henry Giroux refers to as a “culture of cruelty.

But the very fact that the authorities need to lie to the people with fairy tales of the responsibility to protect in order to give moral coverage for the waging of war is an acknowledgement that they understand that there is enough humanity left with the public that it would reject U.S. warmongering if it was only seen as advancing narrow national interests.

It is this remaining moral core—and the objective interests of the clear majority of the people to be in opposition to war—that provides the foundation for reviving the modern anti-war movement.

Baltimore was the site of the rebellion in response to Freddie Gray’s murder by the domestic military we refer to as “the police.” There, a couple of hundred activists will convene January 12 to kick off a new campaign to close all U.S. foreign bases. This gathering is the result of a new coalition of forces—both old and new—to revive the U.S. anti-war movement. This conference comes on the heels of another meeting that took place just a few months ago in Washington, D.C., where some of the same forces came together to kick-off a campaign to “divest from the war machine.”

Strategically these efforts are designed to be the first steps toward building the confidence, institutional strength and programmatic focus of a new, reinvigorated, broad-based, anti-war, pro-peace and anti-imperialist movement in the United States We are opposing the warmongering both corporate political parties have normalized.

The difficulties and challenges of this endeavor are not lost on the various organizations, networks and coalitions that are part of these efforts. We all recognize that there are no shortcuts to the delicate reconstructing of our existing forces and the challenge of expanding those forces by bringing in new formations. The ideological and political differences that have surfaced among left and progressive forces around issues of war and imperialism make it more challenging.

But the imperative of expressing solidarity with the victims of U.S. warmongering must take precedence over our differences and should serve as a basis for building political unity.

Solidarity, however, is not enough for those of us in the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP). We recognize its importance as a baseline principle for (re)-building a broad anti-war movement. Our common interests with other oppressed peoples, nations and states that find themselves in the cross-hairs of U.S. imperialism demands we offer more than solidarity—we must stand as allies.

Those of us building the Black Alliance for Peace understand we cannot afford the comforting myths of U.S. benevolence that attempts to conceal the naked deployment of U.S. state power in service of Western capitalist/colonialist interests. And so, we view with suspicion, if not treat with disdain, our comrades who support U.S. interventions, even when they frame that support with “leftist” justifications. For oppressed nations and peoples of the world, the U.S. white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy is and remains the principle contradiction. There must not be any nationalist sentimentality or equivocation on that position.

We saw how the anti-war opposition that emerged during the Bush years in opposition to lawless state-sanctioned violence, dissolved during the Obama administration. Liberals and major elements of the “left” objectively aligned themselves with the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination through their silence or outright support in the name of opposing authoritarian regimes.

The consequence of that class collaboration is the spectrum of war has today become a permanent feature of policy discourse. The obscene $80 billion increase in military spending that was supported by both parties and the corporate media reflects that collaboration and the corrosive impact of almost two decades of militarism on the politics and consciousness of the public.

So, for BAP, the historic task is clear.

The people must be separated from the capitalist oligarchy and the nature of the state must be exposed. Our politics must be clear and our rhetoric devoid of liberal ambiguities. We must expose the underlying capitalist-class interests that are masked by appeals to national interests and patriotism. The anti-war movement must advance a clear understanding of the economic and class interests that are at root of imperialist strategies and great power conflicts. We must assert without equivocation the position that we can’t get rid of the scourge of war without getting rid of racism and capitalism and that the people should reject all calls to protect the national interests promoted by the ruling elites.

We must say if the rulers want war, let them fight it themselves!

The anti-war and anti-imperialist position must be seen as the highest expression of internationalism and global solidarity. Activists in the United States must reject all efforts to pink-wash militarism and recognize their moral obligation—as citizens of empire—to oppose all U.S. military interventions. We must take the position that we will no longer allow chicken hawk politicians to send our sons and daughters off to other lands, where they become war criminals fighting other working-class and poor people who only want social justice, national sovereignty and self-determination for themselves.

The permanent war agenda of the capitalist dictatorship must be met with permanent opposition from the working class and all oppressed people. The people must understand the link between the racialized justifications for making war abroad with the intensification of the war being waged against Black and Brown communities in the United States

We say to progressives that you can’t pretend that you believe “Black Lives Matter” in the United States and not be opposed to the assault on the humanity of Palestinians, of Yemenis, of the millions lost in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, of the destruction of Libya and of coups in Honduras and destabilization in Venezuela.

Reject the racist 21^st century version of the white man’s burden with its absurd notion of humanitarian war and the responsibility to protect and understand that the real threat to world peace is the empire that we are all a part of.

Our task is clear: the anti-war position is not an add-on. It is a fundamental moral and political obligation for the citizens of empire. The world can no longer wait.

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Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch magazine. 

The statement, which will be formally announced at a press conference on Monday, is part of a chorus of condemnation emanating worldwide in protest at statements allegedly made by Donald Trump in regards to Haiti and El Salvador.

“We, the under-signed representatives of the sovereign people of the Caribbean, hereby declare that President Donald Trump of the United States of America is “Persona Non Grata” in our Caribbean region!

We further declare that as a “Persona Non Grata” President Donald Trump is NOT welcome in any territory of the Caribbean, and we hereby confirm that we – the Caribbean people – will petition our Governments, vehemently protest against any Trump visit, and engage in popular demonstrations designed to prevent President Donald Trump’s entry into any portion of the sovereign territory of our Caribbean region.

As sons and daughters of the Caribbean, we hereby affirm that the continent of Africa is the revered Motherland of a sizable majority of our people and that the Republic of Haiti — the seminal architect of the destruction of the system of chattel slavery that held our ancestors in bondage — is the foundational cornerstone of our Caribbean Civilization, and we, therefore, consider that any insult or attack that is directed at the African continent or at the Republic of Haiti is intrinsically an insult and attack that is directed at us as well.

We further affirm that we Caribbean people — in light of our history of experiencing, resisting, and surviving the most horrendous forms of enslavement and colonialism — consciously regard ourselves as champions and defenders of the dignity and fundamental human rights of all Black or African people, and that we are guided by an over-arching and non-negotiable principle of zero tolerance of any manifestation of anti-Black or anti-African racism or discrimination.

It is against this background that we, the sovereign people of the Caribbean, have determined that by describing the nations of Africa, the Republic of Haiti and the Central American nation of El Salvador as “shithole” countries, U S President Donald Trump has committed a despicable and unpardonable act of anti-Black, anti-African, anti-Brown racism that has served to further energize and fortify the vile White supremacy system that the said President Trump has self-consciously sought to champion and lead.

We — the sovereign people of the Caribbean– hereby declare to the entire world that we vehemently and unreservedly denounce President Donald Trump and the evil and inhuman White supremacy value system that he represents”

The governments of the Caribbean have been experimenting with several models of development in order to balance dual priorities of economic growth and human development. However, the discourse and practice of development continue to be centred around the “logic of the free market”. Although, varying degrees of liberal models of development have increased foreign direct investment, trade, entrepreneurial initiatives, internet penetration and possibilities for co-operation, they have failed to incorporate the importance of people’s lives.

Alternative models of development which emphasize the incorporation of respecting human rights and expanding privileges for all citizens are not widely accepted. This is due to the collapse of the welfare state model and the fact that development is constructed based on the ideological overtones of powerful global interests. Furthermore, our leaders lack political will-power and a transformational approach to governance and, hovering above all these contemporary challenges in Caribbean development is structural dependency.

The Dependency theory has a prevailing relevance in explaining the persistent poverty and underdevelopment of the Caribbean. While the theory fails to prescribe solutions and constantly stresses the exploitation of the South by the North, the theory’s excellent grasp of the historical experiences of developing countries of the South must be commended.

The peculiar experiences of slavery and colonialism play an influential role in the geo-political and economic praxis of the small island developing states. Development served the interests of the international financial elite by exporting raw materials and mono crops.  The domestic economies were and still continue to be vulnerable in the global political economy because they are reliant on agriculture and services sectors which lack diversification. This also makes them susceptible to fierce competition and external shocks such as economic crises and recessions which eventually have a ripple effect on the general populations.

Caribbean economist, Norman Girvan (2012) explained that Caribbean states entered the world as plantation economies… their development is characterized by growth without development, adjustment without transformation and export without diversification”.  Hence, Girvan’s profound statement unveils the deliberate marginal progress of Caribbean development because dependency is both structural and psychological.

In the structural context, examples such as St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Jamaica can be cited. While St. Vincent and the Grenadines has fully liberalized trade regime and is a member of the World Trade Organization and it has experienced a boost in foreign direct investment, the 2013 IMF Report categorizes it as a country with limited trade competitiveness and high debt ratio to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The 2017 Caribbean News Now also reports that it has a high food import bill of US $440 billion while the 2016 Caribbean Human Development Report shows where unemployment and poverty is over twenty per cent (20%). On the other hand, Jamaica has received US $2.3 billion in foreign direct investments and trade but the 2017 World Bank Overview validates its anemic growth and its unsustainable debt. This also undermines its human development indicators such as health, education and income where the 2014 Standard of Living Survey illustrates growing poverty levels due to increases in cost of living.

Thus, the structural context can be interpreted from several angles. One can argue that the structure of the international system is favourable to wealthy, industrialized nations who create regimes that fulfill their self-interests and therefore, Caribbean states will always be at a disadvantage. One can argue that Caribbean states have not effectively re-structured their productive sectors. One can argue that the development models of the Caribbean lack a critical understanding of the nexus between human development and economic growth and as a result, both priorities continue to be at great risk. One can also argue that, the internal politics of the Caribbean, whether as individual states or in the collective context of CARICOM, usually determine how development is conceptualized and implemented. Robert Buddan (2007) rightfully pointed out that the technocrats in various areas of public policy in government are limited to routine rather than creativity in their policy options. Consequently, this affects the potential of transformation in Caribbean development because small states have relegated themselves to an “average status” rather than offering extraordinary models of development to their citizens and the world.

From a psychological perspective, Caribbean states feel that they lack the resources and internal capabilities to obtain security. This state of mind is mirrored on the over reliance on international aid and partnerships with larger states and international organizations in order to finance development. This state of mind stems from colonialism in which prescriptions and constructs from external sources are more valued than domestic solutions to domestic challenges. Hence, Dr. Jennifer Mohammed (2007) sees

“dependency as a psychological condition in which the colonizer is seen as the legitimate sources of ideas”.

Legitimacy can only be approved through a hegemonic relationship whereby the dominant sub-ordinates the less dominant. The less dominant gives influence to the dominant through the act of submission. History us has allowed us to see the transition from one plantation experience to another. Caribbean states and their leaders refrain from owning their right to a model of development that links economic growth and human development using a bottom-up approach instead of a traditional elitist approach. Why must we subject ourselves to the position of ‘serving’? Why must we continue to embrace a model of development through submission to foreign constructs? Is it cowardice or is it a survival strategy? What are our mistakes and where do we go from here?

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Tina Renier lives in Jamaica and is currently a final year student at the University of the West Indies, Mona pursuing a Bachelor of Science in International Relations.

Featured image is from Atlanta Black Star.

Toronto City Council Must Start Building Shelters Now

Homeless people in Toronto are in crisis. In the first nine months of 2017, the city has recorded an average of 8 homeless deaths every month. Most of those who died were under the age of 50.¹ Emergency shelters, whether they serve women, men, youth, refugees, or families, are packed full every single night, winter and summer. Even the sub-standard backup winter warming centres, 24 hour drop-ins, and volunteer-run overnight programs are full, despite conditions within most of them being appalling.

City Council can’t claim ignorance. For years, homeless people, front-line workers and advocates have raised an alarm about the worsening situation. Beyond the innumerable deputations and press conferences that highlighted the problem, within the last two years the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has organized protests right outside the doorstep of the Mayor’s luxury downtown condominium on three separate occasions calling for action. Still, the Mayor pushed through a 2.6 per cent cut to the Shelter, Support and Housing Administration in the 2017 budget (though he was later forced to reverse some of them), effectively guaranteeing the situation would get worse. Instead of expanding emergency shelters to meet the desperate need, and prepare for the winter, the City chose to expand its reliance on the backup survival spaces, where notoriously, basic shelter standards don’t apply. Most of these spaces are only available during the winter, and some are run by faith groups on a voluntary basis.

As December approached, tireless work by homeless advocates resulted in two significant motions making their way to the Council floor – to add 1000 new beds to the city’s emergency shelter system, and two, to open up the two federal armouries as emergency homeless shelter to relieve pressure on the system in anticipation of the coming winter. Mayor John Tory, with assistance from the city’s “poverty reduction advocate” Councilor Joe Mihevc, however, worked to defeat both motions.

Moss Park Armoury Opened

As extreme cold gripped the City in late December, the city’s hopelessly overwhelmed shelters scrambled to meet the need, and as likelihood of freezing deaths became apparent, so did media outrage about Tory’s earlier decision to not open the armouries. Faced with increasing public condemnation, Tory back-peddled and opened the Moss Park armoury in January, but the underlying problem of the severe shortage of shelter beds remains unaddressed.

This means, come April 15, when the winter respite centres close down, over 650 people currently crammed into overcrowded warming centres, drop-ins, and volunteer-run overnight programs will simply be dumped back on to the streets. The current situation demands the addition of at least 1500 permanent new shelter beds to guarantee a spot for everyone in need. The City’s plan, at-best, might add about 400 beds over 2018; an expansion that will soon be undermined by the impending closure of Seaton House, the largest men’s shelter downtown. This means the crisis will persist, along with its lethal consequences.

City Council cannot be allowed to feign surprise about the predictable consequences of their actions, and we, in the left, cannot allow the City’s callous neglect to keep jeopardizing the lives and safety of homeless people. On January 24, as the Mayor meets with his executive committee to discuss the 2018 budget, OCAP is calling for a rally to challenge his hypocrisy on homelessness. Together, with our allies, we will be demanding that the City Council:

1. Add at least 650 permanent new beds to the shelter system by April 15 to create space for those currently forced to stay in the respite centres. These centres must not be closed until every single person staying there is guaranteed a shelter bed. Furthermore, conditions within the respite centres must afford basic human dignity to its occupants.
2. Add at least 1500 permanent new shelter beds this year, primarily within the downtown core, close to TTC and other services, and in facilities that accommodate the needs of homeless people, particularly women and non-binary people.
3. Stop the closure of the hundreds of social housing units that still remain on track to be boarded up.
4. Budget enough resources to accomplish the above within the 2018 city budget.
5. Stop racist and disablist scapegoating of shelter users.

A common refrain of Mayor John Tory and other politicians is to blame the shelter crisis on increasing numbers of refugees within the shelter system and on people living with mental health issues. Liberal Member of Parliament Adam Vaughan has gone so far as to say,

“Homelessness is a healthcare issue; it is not a poverty issue… If we address it as a healthcare issue, it becomes a much easier problem to understand and therefore a much easier problem to solve.”²

By that logic, the fact that the shelter crisis is unfolding in a city with the highest rate of poverty among major urban centres in Canada³ is a mere coincidence, the housing crisis hasn’t disproportionately impacted poor people, and city withholding nearly $14-million from its homelessness prevention fund⁴ over the past four years had no impact on people’s ability to keep a roof over their heads.

The absurdity of this position is plain to see and so is the transparent attempt at evading responsibility. Unless challenged, all three levels of government will continue to implement policies that will push ever more people into poverty, and from there, onto the streets. But the fact that the City was forced to open almost six respite centres this winter, including one of the armouries, is a testament to the power and necessity of fighting back. For this gain to translate into a real victory, however, we must now push harder than ever for all three levels of government to respond to the homelessness crisis, and to build not just shelter, but also housing that low-income people can afford. People’s lives depend on this struggle and we must win it. Join us.

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For 25 years, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has mobilized poor communities under attack.

Notes

1. City of Toronto, Monitoring Deaths of Homeless People

2. Toronto Star, Advocates call for better services in shelters, respite centres

3. Citizens for Public Justice, Poverty Trends 2017

4. NOW Magazine, City gives homeless budget the slip

Featured image is from Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.

Since coming to power, Macron has given the impression of forging ahead with new agendas and ideas crafted from a novel perspective.  This has been far from the case.  True, the man’s novelty has shone through in doing what seemed to be the impossible: establish a power base against traditional powerbrokers and carve out a good slice of the electoral pie, all the time claiming to pursue an agenda shaped on radical reform.  But Macro remains a creature cut from the cloth of establishment thinking.

So, when he paraded before the Chinese leadership at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping from January 8 to 10, officials must have mused over the French President’s boyish efforts to chart a specific European line regarding Beijing.  What they were no doubt waiting for was a statement of keen approval, and endorsement from a notable European voice on Chinese policy.  

Seemingly insoluble riddles and deep contradictions presented themselves.  Europe moves forward with open arms, stretched with a groper’s desperation (here, the distinctions within European blocs of power are conveniently ignored, for Macron has seized the mantle). 

Macron has certainly done his best to slide into the rider’s seat, though it is not a necessarily flattering one.  He catches the attention of such pundits as Phillipe le Corre of the Harvard Kennedy School, who sees Macron as “perhaps the leader of Europe at this very moment”. 

Press outlets ape the line, falling for the old trick that repetition and articulation imply substance.

“Macron, who has become the leading voice of the European Union,” went the AFP, “endorsed President Xi Jinping’s massive $1 trillion program to revive the Silk Road trading routes during his three-day trip.”  

The UK is mired in Brexit; Spain is fighting its own separatism battle over Catalonia; Italy is distracted, and Germany remains in search of a coalition.  Macron has, at least for the moment, stability on this side.

The French president, knowing the imbalance between China and France in terms of commerce and trade, has adopted a different slant regarding the Belt and Road Initiative.  Co-leadership has been suggested in terms of greening the enterprise, what will be termed Green Silk Roads.  Such terms remain irritatingly vague, though flexible. The point from Beijing’s perspective was to seek some form of approval, something that has not been forthcoming from the United States.

At the same time, there is suspicion, fear, and a sense that the Middle Kingdom has gained the upper hand, its machinery moving with relentless acquisitiveness across the global economic landscape, those behind it showing stealth and cunning.  History is on the march, with monetary incentives, and a sense that the Chinese know something others do not. 

A sense of battling pride is unmistakable in this slow burning rivalry.  Europe remains hub, birthplace, crib to its policy makers and legislators, considered of ideas supposedly inimical to elements of Beijing’s more authoritarian leadership.  More the point, despite its assertions towards a world of laws and liberties, a question of power is at stake. 

“At the end of the day, Europe is very open.  It’s more open than the Chinese market itself. Reciprocity is the key word, really,” claims le Corre. 

This is a contradiction that is being managed rather than overcome.  Beijing is gradually resuming the form of traditional yellow bogeyman, though the terminology has become far more subtle.  (Currency speculator and manipulator, for instance, seems far better than The Yellow Peril.) But that hasn’t stopped political elites engaging in the necessary kowtowing.

What the punditocracy is engaged in on the subject of China’s rise are a range of strategies.  There is accommodation.  There is adjustment.  There is mutually considered hypocrisy.  Avoid Tibet; can human rights; forge contracts. 

From time to time, there are instances of posturing. For Macron, it is a case of linking messianic missions, to twin the countries in what seems suspiciously like an effort of imposition. 

“Our relationship,” he explained in an interview with China.org.cn, “is anchored in time, and in my opinion, is based on civilization, in the sense that France and China are two countries with very different cultures but which both have a universal calling.”

Be wary of those civilizations with universal callings. 

The leadership in Beijing has been playing a tune French officials have been listening to. It has dropped a few hints that it will adjust to what are termed international norms.  But as an emerging and, in some cases boisterous hegemon, China will buck some of them should they prove intrusive.  The international comity can be a fickle concept. 

An example of this is propounded by Ramesh Thakur, ever keen to see in the international system some semblance of order.  Seek power, yes, even in an age of declining and ever flabby US influence, but only do so on acceptable terms.  Should China wish “to enjoy the benefits of regional or even global hegemony in the twenty-first century, it will have to prove itself ready to accept the responsibilities of leadership.”

He may well be overly optimistic on this. The Trump era is one of insistent irresponsibility and challenge.  As for Macron himself,

“We have access to markets which is unbalanced, unsatisfying.  If we don’t deal with this responsibly, the first, natural reaction, will be to close up both sides.  Let’s open both instead.”

The sense that Macron’s visit was more of a triumph for Chinese officials than French ones, will be a hard one to dispel.

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

Featured image is from Asia Times.

One would think that, now that the despised 14-year long United Nations Mission for the (de)stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been forced to shut down, Haiti would be on the road to some modest, sustained, recovery from the devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake. It is not. The Republic of Haiti has never been in greater danger than it is now.

From MINUSTAH to MINUJUSTH

The proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,” is actually West African. It should resonate with Haitians, who have lived with colonists long enough to know that they can tone down their rhetoric as they prepare to administer their coup de grace. Consider for example the US State Department’s press release on the inauguration of the UN Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) on October 16, 2017, one day after MINUSTAH’s departure. “The United States is a longstanding partner of Haiti,” the press release coos, but it goes on to prove that the old master has not become a partner, with another statement: “We commend MINUSTAH for the contributions toward advancing Haiti’s long-term security, democratic development, and economic growth.” This is not something anyone would say except a colonial master who is satisfied with his work. According to the UN’s own situation report in May 2017, Haiti, a country of about 10 million people, had more than 2.35 million people who were “severely food insecure,” 143,110 severely malnourished, 49,691 still internally displaced from the earthquake, 4,200 homeless since Hurricane Matthew, and 10,512 prisoners, 71 percent of whom had not been tried. A UN human rights report on Haiti cited the arbitrary arrests, abuses in detention, and complete lack of accountability.

Source: UN Development Program

The smaller MINUJUSTH mission is more insidious than MINUSTAH. The troops too have undergone a name change to police in “formed police units” (FPU). Nevertheless they are part of an occupying foreign army, with all the attendant implications. At 980, the FPU police far outnumber the 295 so-called individual police officers. This occupying force will merge with the Haitian National Police (HNP) and share the same facilities. Another 351 military experts go by the softer title of civilian staff; this body provides the UN a means to insert members of private military and security companies (PMSC) like DynCorp into Haiti. Regardless of the sheep’s clothing, MINUJUSTH operates under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows the use of military force and is illegally applied in a country not at war. MINUJUSTH has no set departure date because it is permanent. Its real jobs are to change the Haitian Constitution and continue to organize elections that undermine Haitian independence. According to the US State Department, MINUJUSTH will “focus on developing the Haitian National Police.” This is puzzling, given the 15,000-strong domestic force that the UN and DynCorp have already built, until one understands that the plan is to double the HNP leadership from 1,649 to 2,349 and create a permanent corps of corrupt Haitians who are subservient to the occupation. In keeping with the colonial mission, the new UN Special Envoy to Haiti, to replace Bill Clinton, is the Bush-Clinton approved globalist Josette Sheeran, who was Under Secretary of State for Condoleeza Rice in 2005-2007 and the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program from 2007-2012 when Clinton’s good friend Ban Ki-moon was UN Secretary General.

Source: UN Development Program

How many Haitians are there left?

To examine its handiwork, the international community, with support from the World Bank, will soon carry out its first census survey of Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. According to World Bank Country Director for Haiti, Anabela Abreu, this census is meant to illustrate “the importance of Haiti’s partnership between the government and its development partners.” Oh yes, the word partner again, instead of master. Haiti has seen more deaths in the last eight years than at any other time, starting with the estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Haitians who died from the earthquake. Subsequently more than 10,000 succumbed to UN-introduced cholera epidemics. Another 86,000 Haitians suffer from HIV infections. Some of them are actively studied by an outfit called Haitian Studies of Kaposi Syndrome and Opportunistic Infections (GHESKIO), which appears to do research on antiretroviral drug development. GHESKIO receives more USAID funding than any other organization in Haiti. To my knowledge, this research requires none of the usual oversights associated with medical studies on humans.

Source: UN Development Program

The international occupation has encouraged the emigration of more than 170,000 middle class Haitians and educated youths since the earthquake. Latin American countries, like Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico have joined the US, France, and Canada as destinations for Haitians. The incentive for the Haitian Vichy government is that its diaspora provides more than $2 billion a year in remittances, roughly 20 percent of its GDP, and a return of about $1,000 per exiled person per year. As a result, any threat to repatriate Haitian citizens, like US President Donald Trump’s racist removal of the temporary protected status (TPS) of almost 60,000 Haitians, represents tremendous arm-twisting of the international occupation’s Haitian surrogates. Simultaneously with the export of Haiti’s middle class, the Dominican Republic, with UN support, has shipped more than 192,685 people into Haiti since 2015, mostly unskilled workers, many of whom speak only Spanish. In effect, with each passing day, the Haitian population is being degraded and reduced to unskilled laborers, a military and police middle class, and a parasitic elite. The census numbers will tell none of this, of course. They will likely show a population with a slightly lower than expected growth.

Elections are for fools and crooks

Back in January 2015, the Republic of Haiti had been unraveled to such a degree that, of an original 1,500 elected officials, the only ones left were the fraudulently elected President, Michel Martelly, and 10 senators who could not function because they lacked a quorum. In retrospect, that scenario was more benign than the current situation. In 2015-2016, a series of fraudulent elections populated, not only the presidency, but also the parliament and local executive positions with a gallery of rogues. Haitians fought to make the elections free and fair, to no avail. In effect, a corrupt group of international observers, together with the UN, which handled the ballots, have forced a series of mostly corrupt officials, highly vulnerable to blackmail, into office throughout the entire Haitian territory. The current crew of officials are at best a parody of a government. They have allocated $8.5 million in 2018 for a new Haitian army that is expected to grow from 500 to 5,000 troops. These funds are supposed to come from Haitian coffers, but they are probably foreign. Mr. Jodel Lesage, a former colonel of the disbanded bloody 1995 army, heads the new army. As an insult to Haiti’s sovereignty, he marched a group of his camouflaged charges through Cap Haitian on the November 18, 2017 anniversary of the Bataille de Vertieres.

Source: UN Development Program

My palace, my palace!

President Rene Preval, who appeared to have lost his mind immediately after the earthquake and went around screaming “My palace, my palace!” became a national joke and an inspiration for one of my satirical plays. He went on to support a state of emergency that brought into existence Bill Clinton’s infamous Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (I-HRC). About $9.7 billion of international aid have disappeared into the I-HRC and are still unaccounted for. Mr. Preval died in 2017. Perhaps he will rest in peace. The obsession with palaces continues in the political class, which saw fit to break new ground for a new national palace today, on the 8th anniversary of the earthquake. According to Haiti’s recently installed President, Jovenel Moise, the new building represents a “link between history, culture, and the future.” Indeed it does. When Haiti was truly independent, its national palace was a modest gingerbread house. The monstrous white neoclassical palace was built in 1918, during the first US occupation of Haiti, which lasted from 1915-1934. Then too, a Vichy administration needed to hide behind a façade of power.’

Source: Kristina Just

The unending revolution

Two hundred and fourteen years after Haitian Independence, Haitians are still paying the price for having fought slavery and for having won that fight. The former colonists France and Spain have returned to make Haiti a free for all. The United States and Canada are there too. This is to be expected. Almost every former European colony has had to fight for its independence more than once. Cuba fought Spain, Vietnam fought France, and then they had to fight again. Independence is never won. In Haiti, this ongoing struggle is part of the fabric of our history. If we successfully did it when we were slaves, then we can do it again. We can never give up that fight. Haiti has been a beacon for human rights. When everybody was giving lip service to the rights of men, we are the ones who stepped up and said most persuasively that there was no place for slavery in the rights of men. Yet slavery persists. It was unacceptable back in the late 18th century, and it is unacceptable now. The colonists are returning as international gangs. People all over the world must also join to fight them.

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This article was originally published by News Junkie Post.

Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free.

Featured image is from UN Development Program.

The world puts $1.69 trillion towards military expenditures per year, and about $375 billion of that goes towards buying arms specifically.

Whether it is guns, tanks, jets, missiles, or ships that are on your shopping list, in the international arms community, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardin notes, there is a supplier for any weapon your country desires.

Source: Visual Capitalist

ARMS DEALERS, BY SALES

Today’s chart organizes the world’s top arms companies by sales, location, and arms as a percentage of sales:

Note: Airbus considers itself a European company. It’s registered in the Netherlands, and its main HQ is in France.

The above data comes courtesy of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which tracks arms deals and companies extensively.

USA, USA!

While it is common knowledge that the United States plays a big role in the global arms trade, the numbers are still quite astounding.

Of the top ten companies by sales, firms based in the U.S. make up seven of them. That includes the clear #1, Lockheed Martin, which had $40.8 billion in arms-related sales in 2016, as well as the remaining constituents of the top three: Boeing and Raytheon.

Further, on SIPRI’s wider top 100 list, a good proxy for total arms sales globally, U.S. defense companies accounted for a whopping 58% of total global arms sales. That adds up to $217.2 billion in 2016, a 4.0% rise over the previous year.

ROUNDING OUT THE TOP 10

Only three companies make the top 10 leader board from outside of the United States.

That group includes Airbus, the massive European commercial airline manufacturer that gets 17% of its sales from arms-related deals, as well as BAE Systems (U.K.) and Leonardo (Italy).

As a final caveat, it’s worth mentioning that SIPRI notes that some Chinese companies would likely make its Top 100 list as well – but for now, the list excludes Chinese companies as the available data is not comparable or accurate.

US President Donald Trump has publicly vowed to relaunch all-out economic warfare against Iran by no later than mid-May unless the European powers join Washington in unilaterally rewriting the civil nuclear agreement between Tehran and the world’s great powers.

Trump’s incendiary pledge was the centerpiece of a bellicose anti-Iran statement issued Friday.

In it, the US president announced he was waiving, for a further four months, sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports and freezing the country out of the world banking system. Washington suspended these measures as part of the nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

However, Trump insisted he will issue no further waivers unless the agreement is rewritten in accordance with his demands. He coupled this with an ultimatum to America’s ostensible European allies—Germany, France, and Britain.

“Today,” said Trump, “I am waiving the application of certain nuclear sanctions, but only in order to secure our European allies’ agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal. This is a last chance. In the absence of such an agreement, the United States will not again waive sanctions in order to stay in the Iran nuclear deal.”

He went on to warn the Europeans that if they did not quickly fall into line he could blow up the JCPOA even before the next waiver deadline of May 12. Trump declared,

“If at any time I judge” that a US-European agreement to “fix” the Iran nuclear deal “is not within reach, I will withdraw from the deal immediately.”

US repudiation of the JCPOA would set Washington on a fast-track for war with Iran—a country the Trump administration’s recent National Security Strategy placed on par with North Korea as a threat to US “national interests” that needs to be countered and vanquished.

Tehran has repeatedly said it will not be the first to break the terms of the deal it reached in 2015 with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany to dismantle much of its civil nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of punishing US and European Union economic sanctions. But it has warned that if the US abrogates the agreement and resumes its drive to destroy Iran economically, it will assert its full sovereign rights as it sees fit.

As it is, other more limited US sanctions and Washington’s repeated threats to scuttle the nuclear deal and roll back Iranian influence in the Middle East continue to roil the Iranian economy, with European businesses, in particular, wary of committing to substantial investments.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called Trump’s statement a “desperate” attempt “to undermine a solid multilateral agreement.”

European leaders avoided any immediate substantive comment, with Germany merely saying that it supports full implementation of the JCPOA and will consult Europe’s other major powers on a “common way forward.”

Zarif with EU‘s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, 16 April 2017 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

On Thursday, the German, French and British foreign ministers and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini all reiterated their support for the Iran deal at the conclusion of a meeting with Zarif.

In opposition to the Trump administration, the Europeans have insisted that differences with Tehran over non-nuclear issues, such as Iran’s role in Syria and its ballistic missile program, should not be tied to the JCPOA. They have further warned that Washington’s repudiation of the Iran deal would not only dangerously destabilize the Middle East, it would also send an incontrovertible signal to North Korea that there is no point in negotiating with Washington since it refuses to abide by international agreements.

In his statement, Trump demanded that the Europeans sign on to changes to the nuclear agreement that Iran would and could never accept. These include: allowing International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors immediate and unlimited access to any site, including military installations, anywhere in the country; eliminating the “sunset clauses” in the JCPOA so as make the time-limited restraints on parts of Iran’s civil nuclear program permanent; and severely limiting, if not outlawing, Iran’s ballistic missile program.

According to Trump officials, Washington has no plans for talks with Iran or for that matter with the non-European signatories to the Iran nuclear accord, Russia and China. Rather, Washington intends to “negotiate” with the Europeans about endorsing Trump’s demands, with a view to a subsequent joint US-EU ultimatum to Tehran to accept them or face the re-imposition of economic sanctions.

Such an ultimatum would be illegal under the JCPOA and tantamount to an act of war.

Trump is also insisting that the US Congress pass legislation that would enshrine his key demands for unilaterally rewriting the JCPOA into American law. It would outline “triggers,” including in respect to the development of Iran’s ballistic missile program, that would cause the US economic sanctions suspended under the JCPOA to immediately “snap back” into force.

Trump’s statement was provocative and belligerent from beginning to end. It denounced Iran as the “world’s leading state sponsor of terror” and, in a revealing admission, boasted that the US is “countering Iranian proxy wars in Yemen and Syria.”

Predictably, the billionaire despot and Islamophobe repeated his obscene claims to be a champion of the Iranian people and their rights, even as he set the US on course for a military confrontation with Iran.

His statement was accompanied by the announcement of sanctions against 14 individuals and entities, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s cyber division. Sanctions were also imposed on the administrative head of Iran’s judiciary, Sadeq Larijani, supposedly in retaliation for the Iranian regime’s repression of the recent protests by impoverished workers and youth against rising prices, mass joblessness, government austerity and rampant social inequality.

Trump also vowed yesterday that he will continue to refuse to certify that Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA, although the IAEA has repeatedly reported that Teheran is in full compliance, and even top Trump officials have conceded Iran is implementing it to the letter.

According to press reports, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had to bring considerable pressure to bear on Trump to persuade him not to blow up the Iran accord this week by refusing to sign the four-month sanction waiver.

There is strong support in both the Republican and Democratic Party leaderships for a more aggressive stance against Iran, beginning in Syria, where Tehran’s support for Syrian President Assad played a major role in the failure of US efforts to use Al Qaeda-aligned Islamist forces to install a pro-US regime. But there are grave concerns within the US military-security and political establishments about Trump’s haste to tear up the Iran nuclear accord and provoke an all-out confrontation with Iran.

These concerns are entirely of a tactical character, revolving around how best to achieve US global hegemony. Leading strategists for US imperialism argue Iran needs to be “contained” through a combination of military, economic and diplomatic pressure while the US concentrates on countering more formidable rivals, Russia and China. And there are deep concerns that Trump’s push for a confrontation with Iran will intensify the growing strategic rift with Europe.

Yesterday’s ultimatum to Europe over Iran, which Trump’s advisors prevailed on him to issue in preference to a unilateral US withdrawal from the nuclear accord, only underlines the divergence between NATO’s principal member states.

Apparently, Trump, or at least those egging him on to scuttle the Iran deal, are calculating that the Europeans will ultimately ally with the US against Iran for fear that they could themselves become targets if the US again seeks to use its domination of the world financial system to block trade with Iran.

The Europeans, for their part, have their own imperialist designs in the Middle East and beyond. With Germany in the lead, they are pursuing rearmament and seeking to develop EU military forces that can act independently of, and if need be, in opposition to America.

Since sanctions were lifted on Iran, European companies have announced billions in new investments, even if, as of yet, many of these haven’t been fulfilled due to fears of a renewal of US sanctions.

More broadly, the EU fears the incendiary consequences of a US-Iran war, which would quickly embroil the entire Mideast. Europe is both far more dependent on Mideast oil than the US and far more susceptible to the political and demographic shocks such a war would engender.

While hostile to the growth of Iranian influence in parts of the Middle East such as Syria and Iraq, the European imperialist powers are alarmed by Washington’s readiness to inflame sectarian tensions, whether by promoting a Saudi-led anti-Iran Sunni alliance or recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Stefan Kornelius, foreign editor of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, pointed to the strategic divergence between the US and the major EU powers when he wrote Friday,

“Iran is pursuing an expansive foreign policy course. Europe must find a different answer to that than the United States, which is causing damage with its clear siding with the Gulf monarchies.”

Featured image: African Union spokesperson Ebba Kalondo

Each week another controversy unfolds in the United States over the character of the administration of President Donald Trump.

At a White House meeting of Congresspersons on January 11, Trump reportedly described the nations of Africa, El Salvador and Haiti as “shithole countries.” He also said that more people from Norway should be immigrating to the U.S. and not from places where there are dark skinned people.

The meeting was centered on working out a legislative response to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program where millions of undocumented residents are facing deportations to the countries where they were born. Trump has built up his political base by appealing to reactionary and racist elements within U.S. society.

Later Trump claimed that he did not use those particular words. However, on January 14, he twitted that he wanted people coming into the U.S. which would make America great again, and presumably these individuals would be of European origin.

The African Union (AU), a continental organization which has representatives from 55 member-states, issued a statement condemning Trump’s utterances saying they were an insult to not only Africans on the continent notwithstanding those of African descent in the U.S. Officials in Haiti, a majority African state in the Caribbean, harshly criticized Trump as well.

AU spokeswoman Ebba Kalondo said of Trump’s remarks that:

“Given the historical reality of how many Africans arrived in the United States as slaves, this statement flies in the face of all accepted behavior and practice. This is particularly surprising as the United States of America remains a global example of how migration gave birth to a nation built on strong values of diversity and opportunity. We believe that a statement like this hurts our shared global values on diversity, human rights and reciprocal understanding”.

The Washington, D.C. offices of the AU said it was “shocked and dismayed” at the U.S. head-of-state’s remarks. Despite Trump’s denial, Illinois Democratic Senator Richard Durbin, who was present at the meeting, said publically that these were the words used and the president had repeatedly referred to Africans, Haitians, among others, in such derogatory terms.

This response from the AU noted the:

“remarks dishonor the celebrated American creed and respect for diversity and human dignity. While expressing our shock, dismay and outrage, the African Union strongly believes that there is a huge misunderstanding of the African continent and its people by the current Administration. There is a serious need for dialogue between the U.S. Administration and the African countries.”

A media advisory issued by the Republic of Botswana in Southern Africa asked for clarification as to whether its citizens fall into the category Trump described. Botswana, a diamond-rich nation with a history of post-colonial stability and a multi-party democratic political system, has cooperated with the U.S. for several decades. The country is a member of the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC), which includes 16 member-states.

The Botswana press release circulated on January 12 said:

“The Government of Botswana is wondering why President Trump must use this descriptor and derogatory word, when talking about countries with whom the U.S. has had cordial and mutually beneficial bilateral relations for so many years. Botswana has accepted U.S. citizens within her borders over the years and continues to host U.S. guests and senior government officials, including a Congressional delegation that will come to Botswana at the end of this month. That is why we view the utterances by the current American President as highly irresponsible, reprehensible and racist.”

The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party of the Republic of South Africa, which celebrated its 106th anniversary on January 8, came to power as all African states through a struggle against racism, colonialism and imperialist domination. The ANC condemned Trump’s racist remarks saying they were an insult to Africans throughout the world.

ANC Deputy Secretary General Jesse Duarte condemns Trump’s racist remarks

Jesse Duarte, the Deputy Secretary General of the ANC, in response to Trump’s language stressed:

“Ours is not a shithole country, neither is Haiti or any other country in distress. It’s not as if the United States doesn’t have problems. There is unemployment in the U.S. and there are people who don’t have healthcare services. We would not deign to make comments as derogatory as that about any country that has any kind of socioeconomic or other difficulties.”

South African President Jacob Zuma has summoned the U.S. ambassador to his country in order to provide clarification on the racist statements by Trump. The former apartheid system in South Africa was based on the same ideology of white supremacy which still permeates the U.S.

Africa Was Underdeveloped by Europe and the U.S. amid Racist Immigration Policy

The characterization by Trump of states in Africa, the Caribbean and Central America in such negative terms misleadingly ignores the centuries-long exploitation and oppression of these territories. Historians have documented that the enslavement, colonization and modern-day dominance of the world system by imperialism, which Washington and Wall Street controls, served to propel the West in economic development resulting in turn with the underdevelopment of oppressed nations.

Guyanese historian Dr. Walter Rodney wrote in his pioneering work entitled “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, published in 1972, noting that the:

“Mistaken interpretations of the causes of underdevelopment usually stem either from prejudiced thinking or from the error of believing that one can learn the answers by looking inside the underdeveloped economy. The true explanation lies in seeking out the relationship between Africa and certain developed countries and in recognizing that it is a relationship of exploitation.” (p. 22)

Haiti is a nation born in revolutionary struggle against slavery and colonialism. The country was the first in history to transform itself immediately from a slave state to a republic. Nonetheless, the declaration of independence in 1804 after a twelve year war against France was met by decades of sanctions from Paris and the lack of recognition by the U.S. until the Civil War. Even today, Haitian workers are exploited through low-wage labor and are subjected to national discrimination as immigrants in the U.S.

Haitians demonstrate against United States President Donald Trump’s racist remarks

The much anticipated aid from the U.S. in the wake of the earthquake of 2010 never materialized. Even the Democratic Party stalwart and former U.S. President Bill Clinton failed to account for the hundreds of millions of dollars which were collected for relief and development assistance which never took place.

Haiti has been occupied on numerous occasions by the U.S. where during 1915-1934 the country was a de facto colony of Washington subjected to segregation and lynching. Another two invasions were carried out by the U.S. in 1994 as well as 2004, coinciding with the bicentennial of their independence.

U.S. immigration policy has always been slanted in favor of persons from Europe in order to ensure the dominance of the majority white population. Nevertheless, rapidly shifting demographic changes will bring into existence a majority people of color nation by the middle of the 21st century. These social variables are fueling the racist state in its efforts to curb immigration from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, along with the reversal of bourgeois democratic rights for the oppressed nations and national minorities inside the U.S.

These actions by Trump although atrocious provide opportunities for solidarity among the impacted peoples. The combined efforts of the peoples of the U.S. and the world can defeat racism and capitalist exploitation paving the way for mutual cooperation and genuine equality in relations among nations throughout the planet.

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All images in this article are from the author.

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Trump’s Despicable Statement: Is There Such a Thing as a “Shithole Country”?

By Andrew Korybko, January 14, 2018

The question should be rephrased to whether there’s such a thing as a “shithole” period, and yes, there is, but the stereotypical “Third World” socio-economic and physical conditions that the word often embodies are also widely present in parts of the US.

Leaked Draft of Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review

By Global Zero, January 14, 2018

Last night, The Huffington Post released a pre-decisional draft of the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review. The document outlined a strategy that includes the development of new, so-called “low-yield” nuclear weapons — expanding the number of scenarios in which the first use of nuclear weapons would be considered, including in response to non-nuclear attack.

Trump’s Iran Statement: A View From Europe

By Peter Jenkins, January 14, 2018

The statement reveals a shocking attitude towards the European allies of the United States. For months these allies have been telling the Trump administration that the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is a satisfactory and useful nuclear non-proliferation instrument, and that they attach the highest importance to preserving it.

Draft of Trump’s Nuclear Review. He Wants a Lot More Nukes

By Ashley Feinberg, January 14, 2018

Now, eight years later, it’s the Trump administration’s turn to lay out its nuclear weapons policy. And according to a pre-decisional draft of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) obtained by HuffPost, Trump’s Department of Defense has gone a decidedly different route: new nukes, for no good reason.

Trump “Shitholes,” and White Supremacy: Building Resistance on 8th Anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake. My Family and I Survived.

By Jesse Hagopian, January 14, 2018

Neighbors carried neighbors who were missing limbs on top of doors for miles to get medical aid. People took shallow sips from plastic bottles so the water would nourish life for more people. Hundreds gathered in newly forged communities to sing songs, collectively raising the spirit of hope.

To these people President Donald Trump has a message: You are a “shithole.”

Featured image: Cinta in pink shirt

Her name is Cinta, which in Bahasa Indonesia means simply Love.

She lives in a tiny village near Sukadana town, in Indonesian West Kalimantan, otherwise known as Borneo – the biggest island in Asia, the second biggest in the world – now totally destroyed by unbridled logging, palm oil plantations and mining,perpetrated by countless,and due to corruption and savage capitalism, unregulated local and multi-national companies.

Nearby Sukadana there is a national park, Gunung Palung. It is vast and by Indonesian standards, well guarded, although even here, at its edges, several desperate local people are beginning to burn the ancient forest, while engaging in various other nature-destroying commercial activities.

I talked to them and soon I understood: they actually have no choice. Nothing is given to them by the state, and they have to live. They have to survive, somehow.

Cinta’s mother

I talked to Cinta’s mother. She has no money, and no mobile phone. She has been to the nearby city only once in her entire life, and it was when a relative of hers got seriously ill. After talking for several minutes, mother begins to cry; desperate, humiliated and helpless.

I asked her whether the family realizes that the political and economic system in her country is thoroughly rotten. She nodded.

I asked whether she knows that in many other countries things are very different. She has no idea.She stared at me, blankly. This remote village was her entire universe. She never heard anything about socialism or communism or even about stuff like social democracy. After the great massacres of the leftists and intellectuals after the Western-orchestrated 1965 coup, even the word ‘Communism’ became illegal, as a prominent Indonesian historian Asvi Marvan Adam told me. Banned also were words like ‘class’, just in case anyone would like to ignite ‘class struggle’.

Cinta’s family thinks, and they say that they know, that Western multi-party ‘democracy’ is a total farce. With dozens of competing political parties (all owned by Indonesian businessmen and right-wingers), local poor people (the great majority of Indonesia’s inhabitants) have absolutely no power, no say in the way their country is being governed.

It is not only in Indonesia, of course, although Indonesia is an extreme, almost grotesque case. I was told several years earlier by a Cambodian peasant near the border with Vietnam:

“Vietnamese have only one political party – Communist – but their people participate in governing their nation much more than we, Cambodians do, despite the fact that we have several political parties. When we get sick, we have to cross the border to Vietnam and we get help. When we get hungry, we do the same. You see; you cannot eat political parties, no matter how many of them there are…”

The peasant at the Cambodia-Vietnam border knows intimately two totally distinct political systems, because he lived just 500 meters from the borderline. But even in the capital, Phnom Penh, where anti-Communism is something resembling a new religion and has been already converted into the best ‘prerequisite’ for getting a well-paid job at an international NGO or at a foreign embassy, the situation is thoroughly different. There, conveniently, nobody knows anything. The only way is the Western way, with its clichés and pre-fabricated simplistic slogans.

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The West is manufacturing simplistic, uniformed and one-sided ‘pseudo reality’ for all of its colonies and client states. It is one-type-fits-all sort of ‘pseudo reality’, intended to sustain collaborators and their regimes and to make the voices of people who are tormented, completely irrelevant. In fact, those who are robbed of everything are not supposed to even realize that they are being bled.

Actually, the majority of people who live in the neo-colonies are fully aware of the fact that they are suffering, but do not understand why? They tend to blame themselves, or each other: for being too lazy, too irresponsible, for producing too many children, or simply for not knowing how to compete or to get ahead.

Moreover in some countries where the propaganda is too extreme (like in Indonesia), many do not even realize, anymore, into what deep shit they have been thrown.

A few years ago, when I was filming the documentary film “Surabaya – Eaten Alive By Capitalism” (for the Latin American network TeleSur), I literally stumbled over a woman who was living in a slum, washing her dishes just a few steps away downstream from a place where a child was naked and defecating into the same polluted waterway. She had no electricity, no clean water, and her ‘house’ was made from rusty metal sheets. I asked her how she felt about being so poor, while just few steps away rich people were burning money as if there was no tomorrow in a luxury mall. She looked at me for a few moments, then grabbed a broom and chased me down the gangway, screaming like possessed:

“How dare you insult me like that? You called me poor? I’m not poor!”

A few months later, in the enormous Mathare slum in Nairobi, Kenya, a gangster with the nickname Fire,literally cried in front of my camera:

“I’m 32 year old, but I feel so old… I had several friends but they are all dead; I’m the only one who is still alive.”

My friend gangster ‘Fire’, Matare, Nairobi, Kenya

Fire worked with me on a film, as my guide and a bodyguard. I liked him a lot. I trusted him. He was a good man who had made many mistakes in life, but then tried to correct them and find his way out of the terrible trap and vicious cycle of poverty and violence. He was aware of his condition and of the condition of his fellow slum-dwellers. However, living in Kenya, a country which became a neo-colony of the West, as well as some sort of a ‘service station’ for the US, UK, Israeli and other militaries and intelligence agencies, he was never told that there are different political, economic and social systems than the one in which he grew up – a savage capitalism and total subservience to the Empire.

He wanted to ‘make it’, to ‘help his slum’, to change his life and the lives of his neighbors. But he was not aware of the fact that some great and fundamental change could come from a revolution, from a radical change. All his life he was told that the only way forward was some sort of personal ‘improvement’, because the system in which he had been living was essentially right and just.

In that system, of course, the great majority of people are living in misery – they are terribly abused, exploited and unprotected. The violence, terribly low life expectancy and hopelessness are just logical by-products of a brutal neo-colonialist and turbo-capitalist system; they are not the results of shortcomings of a specific group of people or of some individuals.

Fire was very intelligent. I told him then, personally, what I’m writing here now. He understood. He understood well. But when we were parting, he said:

“I agree with you, but people here were never told any of these things. Almost nobody comprehends what is going on in our slums. We are only taught how to blame each other. Nobody here would ever blame the UK or the US. We were all told that our misery is fully our own fault.”

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In Northern Kenya, not that far from the border with war-torn Somalia, I once visited a neat wildlife preservation facility. There were cute orphaned rhinos being taken care of by well-trained staff, as well as other protected but endangered species. The facility was owned and administered by a British family, and there was very high fee charged at the gate.

After the visit, when I drove out, right outside the gate,which was manned by two robust dudes armed with submachine guns, I spotted two humble crosses. As I drove further down the dirt road, there were more and more crosses on both sides of my car. I stopped at a local deprived grocery store and asked about what I saw. A wrinkled woman explained to me in her broken English:

“There is a drought here… a famine… People die while they try to get away; they drop dead… Villagers have no strength to carry them back; they just bury them on the spot.”

Protecting animals is often very good business, an excellent commodity. Animals are cute, and they look (and often really are) defenseless. People who are starving are rough, unrefined, and scary-looking. Those who are dying from hunger or disease are far from enchanting. Saving their lives is often not such a good business.

I asked a food seller: “They feed, wash and shrink animals, but not people?”

She had no idea what ‘shrink’meant, but about the other things she was sure:

“We are worth nothing. We are poor.”

I asked her whether she was angry, whether she found this system insane, beastly, in short: absolutely repulsive?

Her big hands were rough, carved with deep wrinkles. The wrinkles looked like those dry rivers around Nairobi. Then I saw her eyes and I realized: she was most likely younger than me, perhaps in her early 30’s. She looked 60 or older. She looked like she will most likely not live much longer.

She looked back at me:

“Angry? Why? It is all in His hands”.

She looked up.

I looked down. ‘That’, I thought ‘is definitely not going help you’. Then I bought five cans of condensed milk that I didn’t need, and some crackers.

I drove away; angry like hell, going 100km/h on narrow dirt tracks, cloud a of dust behind me, rising towards the sky.

Later, my Ugandan friend, a leading left-wing politician Arthur Tewungwa, wrote to me:

“The animals roam on land that has fuck all to do with Kenyans per se. Madness! Lord Aberdare owns 300,000 acres, Cholmondely the same etc. Elephants, rhinos, hippos are pests to poor villagers and they can’t anyway afford to go and see them as they are shuffled across the border by “beaters” depending on which side tourists are. Comedy!”

But it is a comedy, which ruins tens of thousands of human lives, while nobody dares to protest.

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It is often simply unbelievable, how people who have been robbed of everything, are fooled into believing that in this wide world there are absolutely no alternatives and no better arrangements for society. Or they were taught not to think at all along these lines.

Religions help to keep poor and plundered people in submission, of course, and the West has historically both been implanting and then supporting the most radical forms of religion, in virtually all of its colonies. Not just one sort of religion, but all of them, the more extreme and fundamentalist, the better.

For three full years I lived in the South Pacific, where I wrote a book, I believe the only one of its kind, describing the terrible plight of Micronesia, Melanesia and Micronesia – a part of the world which is being literally liquidated by the various cruel geopolitical and military interests of the US, Australia, New Zealand, UK, France and Taiwan. The book is called Oceania.

There, some island nations including Tuvalu, Kiribati and Marshall Islands, are literally disappearing from the face of the Earth, or more precisely becoming uninhabitable because of climate change and the rising of ocean levels.

People are forced to evacuate their countries. But are they blaming imperialism, unbridled capitalism, and Western selfishness? Far from it! All the newspapers and media outlets are to some extent controlled by the foreigners, through ‘foreign aid’ or through the ‘educating and training’ of local journalists abroad. The education system is dependent on foreign funding as well. Consequently, capitalism is never questioned. Western imperialism is hardly ever mentioned.

The streets of Apia, the capital of Samoa, or of any other capital in Oceania, are no strangers to tall, blond young men wearing white shirts and black nametags that read Jesus Christ. They are ‘ambassadors’; they belong to all sorts of extremist religious movements and fundamentalist Christian sects based in the United States, from Jehovah Witnesses to Mormons.

Churches in Oceania are brutally exploiting most of the poor and helpless citizens. They are literally blackmailing parishioners into paying unreasonably high dues. There is constant fear of sexual abuse and rape on their premises, but there is also the tremendous pressure of local ‘cultures’ to force all islanders into religious straightjackets. There is also absolutely no criticism of these practices from the West. Why? The answer is simple: extremist religious practices keep people in total ignorance and full obedience towards religion itself, towards the feudal family structures, but also towards the economic and political regimes. And all the political regimes of Oceania are corrupted and upheld by the Western powers and lately by Taiwan.

And so, the West (US, UK and France) have been blowing up their nukes in this part of the world, essentially experimenting on people, but there is hardly any ideological challenge that Europe, US and Australia have to face here, perhaps with the certain exception of France in its colonies.

Marshall Islands – Ebeye – pollution from nearby US military base at Kwajalein, Marshall Islands

The US shoots long-range missiles from California to the center of the largest atoll in the world – Kwajalein on the Marshall Islands – but no one is taught that it is all an absolute insanity. ‘Kwaj’ proper is off limits to almost all people (it is fully controlled by the US military) who are only allowed to work on the base as manual workers, commuting by filthy ferry from the horrid and overpopulated nearby island of Ebeye. Around 90% of the people on Ebeye are suffering from diabetes, because they are literally forced to eat shit, as the country, like most of Oceania,has become (already some decades ago) a dumping ground for the most unhealthy food produced in the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Both the former Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, Tony deBrum, as well as the Paramount Chief Mike Kabua, once told me how outraged they were, but do common people realize what has been and is being done to them?

First the monstrous nuclear experiments and destruction of Bikini Atoll, and now, these bizarre star wars in the middle of the once pristine atolls. And on top of it, the nation is facing global warming and almost inevitable demise.The Compact of Free Association with the United States” (in reality, an agreement which allows the US to colonize, ‘legally’,a great part of Micronesia) is never challenged and very rarely even questioned.

As elsewhere in the colonized world – the rich are profiting, while the poor (great majority) are plundered and destitute. While being looted, the have-nots are smiling or even dancing. They never heard from their TV sets or at school (if they ever went to one) that they are actually the victims. Living in misery is their karma or fate, or punishment for something they committed, by something supernatural. It is a truly great arrangement for the religious leaders, and especially for the Empire. For Washington, London and Paris it is simply: mission accomplished!

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For hundreds of millions of girls like Cinta, it means: their lives will never change. It will be the same as the lives of their parents and grandparents, and it will consist of near slavery, of no security, of bad but unbreakable marriages, endless religious rituals and absolute ignorance about the fact that there are many alternatives and countless other ways how lives could be lived.

Not only that the Empire is spreading nihilism to all of its colonies; it is also censoring all people-oriented and revolutionary alternatives.

It is incredible how successful it is! It really is, so far. Only so far… It cannot continue like this, forever.

One day in the not so distant future, girls like Cinta may finally wake up; they will break their shackles and with newly discovered pride and hope, depart to the mountains to fight for their nation. Ciao Bella Ciao style!

How does one give them the impulse? How does one make them see, to realize their condition?

At night, in the city of Ketapang, I could not sleep. I was tossing and turning, thinking about the girl named Cinta. I had to go back before leaving Borneo. I had to talk to her and to her parents: to tell them it was all totally wrong, and that there is another life possible.

I went to a local shopping center. I bought her a green bear and few small gifts in a Japanese store. In the morning, instead of continuing my work in an area that had been destroyed by mining and palm oil plantations, I instructed my driver to go back to Cinta’s village.

But she was gone. Her entire family was gone. A neighbor informed me:

“They went to far away fields, to work on a durian plantation. They will not return for several weeks”.

I left the green bear in the village. I cursed imperialism and modern day slavery, and then I left.

Once again, the Empire had won. But we are not helpless either. Now my readers, on all continents, will learn about that little girl named Cinta. The stories of enslaved people are the same, all over the world. There are Cintas in Honduras, in Uganda, in Yemen, in Marshall Islands.

Imperialists should know: we are documenting, we are watching, day and night. We are connecting the stories of their victims, on all continents. We are connecting real people. And El Pueblo Unido, jamas sera vencido! ‘United, people will never be defeated!’

Alternative views can be censored, at least for some time. But the ability to dream, the capacity to hope, is eternal. And it is stuff consisting of dreams and hopes that is the most frightening enemy of the tyrants.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

US National Security Advisor McMaster claimed that Russia is meddling in the upcoming Mexican elections.

This explosive news was shared by Reuters, which in turn was reporting on a mid-December video of a speech that McMasters gave to the Jamestown Foundation and which was just posted on a Mexican journalist’s Twitter account over the weekend. In it, one of the US’ most influential security figures says in relation to the unsubstantiated claims of Russian interference in foreign elections that “you’ve seen, actually, initial signs of it in the Mexican presidential campaign already”, but to Reuters’ credit they added that he didn’t elaborate on this afterwards and even cited an expert who remarked that “so far, it’s just speculation”.

That said, Reuters attempted to propel the paranoia forward by remarking that the leftist populist-nationalist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, commonly known by his abbreviated initials as AMLO, is “seen by some analysts as the Kremlin’s favorite, given the positive coverage he has received from government-funded media outlets like Sputnik and Russia Today”, thus relying on the conspiracy theory that everything on Russia’s publicly funded international media outlets is apparently aired on direct orders of the Kremlin, which isn’t true at all. Nor, for that matter, is the inference in the report that Russia is backing AMLO because of its desire to sow problems between the US and Mexico.

There’s credence to the forecast that AMLO’s potential victory would complicate US-Mexican relations because of the contradictory visions of their two leaders in that case, but this, as well as Russian international media’s detailed coverage of the leftist populist-nationalist candidate, don’t in and of themselves “prove” anything about Moscow’s alleged meddling in the upcoming elections. Rather, McMaster’s hysterical claim seems to be part of a preemptive infowar designed to discredit AMLO’s potential victory just like the Clintons tried to do with Trump’s over the same issue of alleged “Russian interference”, thereby suggesting that the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (or “deep state”) assess his odds of winning to be much higher than is publicly being reported.

That would explain why one of the top decision makers in the Trump Administration is already rolling out the weaponized narrative that Russia is supposedly backing AMLO, since they also want to add ammunition to the right-wing’s arsenal of personalized attacks in order to scare the electorate away from voting for him. Thus, it’s actually the US that’s openly interfering in the Mexican elections, just as it always has to one extent or another, and not Russia, with McMaster’s clumsily blatant hypocrisy emphasizing just how high Washington believes the geostrategic stakes to its security to be if “the wrong guy” gets into power and how desperate the US is to stop that from happening.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Jan 12, 2018:

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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.

The question should be rephrased to whether there’s such a thing as a “shithole” period, and yes, there is, but the stereotypical “Third World” socio-economic and physical conditions that the word often embodies are also widely present in parts of the US.

Another day, another Trump controversy, and this time it’s the Mainstream  Media going bonkers because of the President supposedly referring to some countries as “shitholes” and questioning why the government has allowed so many of their people to immigrate to America. Knowing Trump’s personality and speaking style, it’s believable that he did in fact say this, though what’s less believable is the insincere virtue signaling that’s sprung up all over social media ever since.

Defining A “Shithole”

Some people are predictably slamming Trump as a “racist”, “fascist”, and “white supremacist”, outraged that he would dare use such language when referring to the “Third World” conditions of Haiti and most of Africa and convinced that he was actually exploiting that as an excuse in order to have the “plausibly deniable pretext” for implying that their majority dark-colored populations are “shit”. He wasn’t, but that’s not going to stop agenda-driven individuals and organizations from pretending that that’s what he meant.

What Trump really had in mind was the stereotypically (key word) underdeveloped economic and physical infrastructure in those places, as well as the unstated “backwardness” of their people that he thinks contributes to never-ending violence there. Using the first pair of criteria, the same “shithole” label is also very relevant in objectively describing parts of the US and the broader West as a whole, especially neglected inner-city areas with large minority populations.

The problem is that the idea of “backwardness” is relative, and for as much as Trump and some Americans might think that African-Americans, Haitians, and Africans fit that description, they and others might feel just as strongly that the US in general is a “backwards” place as well, though for totally different reasons. “Shitholes”, whether inside the US or elsewhere, are devastated communities whose problems aren’t easily attributable to one source and are commonly the result of many factors, some of which aren’t the fault of those who were born there into those deplorable conditions.

“Backwardness” Is In The Eye Of The Labeler

“Backwardness”, however, is an entirely subjective comparison made at the individual level and used to generalize other people as well as societies, regions, countries, continents, and even civilizations. Just as some Americans might feel that a different category of their compatriots are “backwards”, so too might non-Americans feel the same about Americans, and whether or not this is “racist” is up to each person to determine on their own. Take for example the US’ well-known racial tensions – some “whites” might think that the “gangasta rap” prevalent in “black” culture is a “backwards” display of social “values”; likewise, some “blacks” might think that flying the Confederate flag is “backwards” behavior stemming from the Civil War period when slavery was still legal.

There are of course uncontestably racist examples that can be mentioned in this vein, but such hatred deserves no place in a respectable analysis and therefore shouldn’t be the subject of any discussion.

As for the larger conception of “backwardness”, some Americans firmly believe that Islam is the epitome of this idea, but some of these very same Muslims think that it’s Americans themselves who live a “backwards” lifestyle due to many examples of their cultural behavior being contradictory to the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings. Americans might retort that the “tribal conditions” of Libya, “Syraq”, Yemen, and Afghanistan play a major role in perpetuating violence there (forgetting their own country’s role in this), but these people could just as easily point to the US’ “identity politics” being responsible for why no one has yet to stop the mostly black-on-black gangland killings in Chicago or other big American cities.

Moving From “Shithole” To “Shithole”

Accepting that the objective (economic and physical infrastructure) and subjective (“backwardness”) conditions of a “shithole” can be found anywhere in the world, including in the American heartland itself and especially its inner cities & the “Rust Belt”, it’s time to ponder why people move from “shithole” to “shithole”. This phenomenon is interestingly observable not just in relation to people from foreign “shitholes” immigrating to the US, but also in terms of Americans leaving for other “shitholes” inside their own country.

Foreign “Shitholes”:

Haitians and Africans, to use the examples that Trump was originally referring to, depart from their “shitholes” for America because they expect that their intended destination has higher living standards in the economic, physical, and/or social senses. It’s true that the average (keyword) all-around conditions in the US are oftentimes better than in most other places due to its more effectively functioning civil society, which includes its courts and police, though serious abuses still occur in these spheres. Most attractive of all and capable of getting many immigrants to overlook these very real problems is the country’s currency, the dollar.

The possibility of a “petroyuan” poses a latent threat to the dollar’s worldwide dominance, but for now at least the dollar is still king, and that’s why people from “shitholes” all across the world want to work in America. To put it bluntly, they’d rather be paid in dollars than whatever their national currency may be, and that explains why these migrants oftentimes support their families back home through remittances prior to abusing the immigration system to bring them to the US through legalized “chain migration” schemes. It doesn’t matter if their physical and working conditions are worse in America than back home in some cases, what’s seemingly most important to them is that they’re paid in dollars.

American “Shitholes”:

The same cynicism is what drives some Americans to move from one “shithole” to the next in search of what they naively believe could be a “better life” that would allow them to finally live the “American Dream”. People from the “Rust Belt” can’t easily move to the California coast without already having a job lined up because it’s too prohibitively expensive for them to do so, which is why they sometimes spend all of their meager savings and even borrow money from their families to make what they hope would be a life-changing trip for the “better”. Unfortunately, due to their limited means, they oftentimes find themselves trading one “shithole” for another because of their economic inability to climb out of the social gutter that they usually have to inhabit in order to barely make ends meet there.

“Chain migration” is the exception once again because having a family member or close friend in the destination state could help the internal migrant cut down on costs by splitting living expenses with their hosts, thus helping the whole household. Each person could then more quickly save up money and begin planning for their next step in life as they attempt to “climb the ladder of success”, provided of course that they’re willing to sacrifice on their social conditions for the time being in order to make it possible. This could entail living in very cramped conditions inside what are popularly described as “ghettos” (colloquially known as “the hood” in the US), which are usually characterized by the proliferation of drugs, violence, and naturally, the seemingly never-ending consequent cycle of poverty.

Dollar Delirium:

The common thread explaining why many people (whether foreigners or Americans) move around from “shithole” to “shithole” within the US is because they’re infected with “dollar delirium”, or the fallacy that a higher gross income automatically translates to a “better life”. For people coming from the “shitholes” of inner-city Cleveland or the rural villages of the Congo, simply earning more money is assumed to be the secret to “succeeding” in life, overlooking the fact that their desired destination also has higher living expenses that may in some cases leave them with a proportionately lower disposable income than if they just stayed home. This might not bother them so long as their basic needs are taken care of and they still have some money left over to spend on entertainment or save for later, but others might come to regret it if their social expectations aren’t adequately met.

The Social Solution To All “Shitholes”

Silk Roads:

Not everybody moves because they want to “get rich” or make a “quick buck”, since buying the newest iPhone isn’t as important to some people as having a stable and respectable livelihood for themselves and their families. “Shitholes” don’t typically provide this, or at least not in a way that satisfies most people, which is why they decide to move elsewhere in search of a “better life”. It would be wrong to imagine that immigrants, whether foreigners to the US or Americans within it, are all “greedy”, and the “safest assumption” is that they’re motivated by social push-and-pull factors more so than economic ones.

That said, an obvious solution to migration presents itself in the form of encouraging socio-economic development in migrant-originating areas, which is exactly what China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity and Trump’s infrastructure plan– both of which are conceptually compatible with one another – aspire to do. A comprehensive strategy involving local, state/provincial, and national governments alongside state-owned and private businesses is the only conceivable way forward, but it’ll still take a while to yield results even if the most masterful plan was flawlessly executed, which is in any case unlikely.

Belief System Compromises:

Because this solution will take a long time to implement, if ever, the next best thing is to discuss the details of the infrastructural and metastructural social reasons behind migration. Social infrastructure can be described as schools, healthcare, and welfare benefits, for example, while social metastructure is culture and its related intangibles. Most socially motivated migrants are willing to compromise on social metastructure in order to reap the benefits of its infrastructural counterpart, meaning that they’ll “grin and bear it” if they dislike their new cultural conditions so long as they receive their expected access to certain “hard benefits” such as what they believe to be a better education system and state subsidies.

Considering this, it makes sense why people who hate America’s cultural-political system still migrate there because they’re tacitly compromising on their (sometimes publicly proclaimed) beliefs in exchange for receiving expected economic and social infrastructure “rewards”, and the same goes for Americans migrating to other states or countries. To reference the example mentioned earlier in this analysis, some Muslims think that American culture is “backwards”, but they’re willing to deal with it if the pay and social infrastructural conditions are right.

As for Americans, an “enlightened” liberal might escape from California’s dysfunctional society to seek refuge in the rural “backwaters” of a “red state’s” much more stable one despite their new destination restricting abortion and therefore being “ideologically incompatible” with one of their core beliefs. Another domestic example could be a conservative from “Middle America” moving to the liberal dystopia of New York City in the hopes of finding a better job. As for external manifestations of this “social compromise” in action, elderly Americans who look down upon what they may believe to be the “backwards” people of Latin America might “suck it up” and retire in that region simply because it’s more affordable.

Sacrificing For The Next Generation:

The last “solution” to the world’s “shitholes” is the passive one that’s been employed since time immemorial, and that’s migrants sacrificing their living standards by knowingly accepting that they’ll likely spend the rest of their lives in suboptimal social conditions in order to give their descendants that are born there a “better chance” at “climbing the ladder’ and “succeeding” in ways that their parents weren’t ever able to. This is the quintessential story of most American immigrants throughout history and especially from the late-19^th century until the present day, and it also describes why many civilizationally dissimilar migrants are willing to put up with Europe’s different social metastructural standards in spite of this contradicting the strict requirements of their religion.

Another relevancy of this principle is when Americans migrate from their rural “shitholes” to urban ones, or from one “hood” to another in different cities, hoping that their children can seize the socio-economic opportunities there that their parents either weren’t able to or which didn’t exist in their hometowns.

Sacrificing for the next generation doesn’t “solve” the problem of “shitholes” – it ignores them – though sometimes there are “activists” who try to change things for the better in their own “shitholes” or the ones that they just moved into, but their freedom of action is severely constrained by the laws of their host society. Muslim migrants wanting to impose sharia in their new European neighborhoods or build mosques there are increasingly finding it more difficult to do so, but they still have it comparatively better than a Syrian Christian refugee that somehow ends up in a Gulf Kingdom and wants to hold public church services or build their own house of worship there.

In America, social and workplace activism is the most common form of struggle for people who have been born and raised in “shitholes” or internally migrated to them, and while they have a greater chance of succeeding with their cause inside the US than “shithole”-inhabiting people elsewhere in the world, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult by the year for them to do so.

The Myth Of “Equality”

Theoretically and in terms of “international law”, all countries and cultures are “equal” to one another as seen from the eyes of the UN and its related UNESCO body, though in reality many people have their own personal preferences and accordingly believe that some countries and cultures are “better” than others. Someone indoctrinated with “American Exceptionalism” might truly think that the US is the “best” place on earth by all measures, while some Muslims might think that their own societies are the “best” to live in for cultural-religious reasons. Each of these two might have nothing but disdain for the other, but that’s their personal right, in fact, whether one agrees with it or not. It’s up to each individual to judge on their own whether this or any of its manifestations constitute “racism”, though it must be noted that there are indeed some undeniable examples of racism that should always be condemned.

That said, screaming “racism”, “fascism”, and “supremacism” just because someone has an individual opinion – no matter how disrespectful and offensive, though given that it doesn’t objectively conform to any of those three aforementioned terrible terms – is hypocritical because one can be certain that the person casting the stones also has their own “hierarchical” views on something or another, even if they’re more “politely” expressed. The Haitians and Africans that Trump so derogatorily described as coming from “shitholes” might think that some parts of their home region are “better” than others, just as they apparently think the US is the “best” because they’ll willing to leave their homelands to migrate there. The same can be said for Americans who favor one place of living within their own country over another, for whatever given reason, whether it’s the “shithole” that they moved to or their new place of living after escaping from a “shithole”.

Mixed Motivations For Migration

It’s crucial to understand that those who migrate from one “shithole” to another don’t always believe that everything in their place of residence is the “best”, but might be willing to “compromise” on certain aspects of it either due to “dollar delirium” or because they intend to sacrifice for the next generation. For example, it’s entirely natural for immigrants to retain their native culture and values inside their homes while trying to publicly assimilate and integrate into their host societies at large, such as some Arabs do when migrating to the West or some Westerners do when moving outside of their civilizational sphere (or even within it, with Poles being a perfect example). The complexity of the millennia-long phenomenon of migration means that there’s no simple explanation for why people decide to move away from their place of birth, with each instance being unique and usually motivated by multiple factors.

Concluding Thoughts

At the end of the day, using the word “shithole” to describe somewhere is a crass way of making objective points about economic & physical infrastructure and socially subjective ones about “backwardness”, but nevertheless is the right of every individual to use according to their taste so long as they’re not promoting actual racism or any of its related toxic ideologies such as fascism or supremacism. It’s not just Trump and “whites” in America who use this term, but other people across the world employ it or whatever the local analogue is in their language when making similar types of comparisons, and even in the absence of actual words, internal value judgements about other countries and cultures are still being formulated. It’s natural for people to have their own personal hierarchy of national-cultural preferences no matter how “politically incorrect” it may be to openly admit in some societies, meaning that the concept of the “shithole” is here to stay whether one likes it or not.

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

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

From the very first days of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), at the beginning of the 1990s, we have found ourselves on the front lines of a war on the poor that has been of central importance to the implementation of broader neoliberal austerity. In Canada, the undermining of these income support systems, both at the federal and provincial level, has continued to be vigorously pursued and the poverty and insecurity that this has generated has created the vulnerability and desperation needed in order to weaken workers’ bargaining power, reduce the capacity of unions to resist and to facilitate a veritable explosion of low wage precarious work.

In light of this dogged pursuit of austerity based agenda over so many years, news that the Ontario government was likely to set up a Basic Income (BI) pilot, supposedly so as to put in place a measure that would decrease poverty and provide more adequate and secure income, struck us as a gift horse whose mouth we should carefully examine. While our particular concern was to look at what was unfolding in Ontario, a critical look at the whole BI concept was also in order.

As we began to explore the various versions of this social policy that are put forward, it became clear that the neoliberal right has its own sense of the possibilities of BI. This pamphlet explores the concept of BI and particularly its deployment as part of state welfare policies today, and the challenges being posed for the struggles of the anti-poverty movement in Canada.

Socialist Interventions Pamphlet No. 16 – December 2017.

For 25 years, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has mobilized poor communities under attack.

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Featured image is from Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.

In the second largest Ivorian city of Bouake, soldiers have defied orders and torched a military base in response to unresolved grievances.

This is yet an additional explosion of discontent among soldiers who have staged several rebellions since the French-backed government of President Alassane Ouattara was installed in power nearly six years ago.

The center of the unrest has been in Bouake where soldiers have complained over their treatment by superior units. Bouake has been a flashpoint for unrest within the military which is responsible for the national security of the West African state.

During 2017 there were various outbreaks in the army over the failure of the Ouattara government to pay bonuses owed from the merger of various conventional and rebel units which were empowered after the crises of 2010-11. The disturbances were settled on more than one occasion by promising to make good on the money supposedly owed to the soldiers.

In the aftermath of these mutinies, the government has rolled out a plan to downsize the military. Nonetheless, is not clear whether there is any viable plan for the reintegration of the soldiers into civilian life.

During December of 2017 the Ivorian government released 1000 soldiers and granted them $25,782 each as severance pay. There could be up to 4,000 troops retired in phases over the next four years.

The number of military personnel is said to be somewhere around 25,000 troops. Ouattara views this as being unwieldy and is seeking what they perceived to be more manageable force levels.

Eyewitness reports of the events in Bouake indicate that the fierce clashes originated over the presence of an elite unit known as the Coordination Center for Operational Decisions (CCDO). This elite division of the security forces encompasses soldiers, para-military gendarmes and regular police officers. The mutinous soldiers were demanding that the CCDO personnel leave the city.

Bouake resident Georges Kouame said of the situation on January 10 that he was:

“hearing intense shooting from machine guns. There are also explosions from heavy weapons.” (defenceweb.co.za)

The mutineers told Reuters press agency they believed the CCDO divisions were sent to the city to conduct surveillance on their activities. Tensions over these differences had been building up for several days. The shooting and arson attacks have resulted in one known death.

One soldier involved in the rebellion, who spoke on the condition of anonymity on January 10, emphasized:

“At the moment we are surrounding the CCDO camp and there is an exchange of gunfire. They must leave the city or we will force them to leave.”

Later one soldier involved in the mutiny said:

“We entered the CCDO camp around midnight and took all of their arms and amunitions.”

Another soldier stressed that:

“We burned the CCDO camp and destroyed everything inside. Even their service vehicles were burned. Their troops fled the camp but we are looking for them.” (Premium Times of Nigeria, Jan. 10)

Other sources reported that high level military officers had deployed 200 loyalist troops to Bouake in order to stabilize the situation. Nonetheless, it will remain to be seen whether there will be an amicable resolution to the conflict in the short term.

A Model for Neo-Colonial Governance in Alliance with Imperialism

Cocoa beans in a cacao pod showing the outer rind, the seeds, and inner pulp. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Ivory Coast is the world’s largest producer of cocoa. The country is also an emerging oil state where a workers’ strike took place during early 2016 in response to lay-offs within the petroleum industry.

Although the country has been the recipient of loans and other forms of assistance from international finance capital, obviously this reported prosperity has not been equitably dispersed among the majority of the people. The rank and file soldiers are a stark representation of the character of the social system inside the country.

There was an announcement recently by the Ministry of Tourism indicating that the government would invest some $5.5 billion in the industry. These funds will supposedly be used to carry out infrastructural improvements such as building and rehabilitating tourist sites, roads and hotels.

Nonetheless, for workers in these sectors of the economy where the rate of exploitation is typically high and the beneficiaries are generally a small group of “investors” who are either foreign business people or those who represent their interests on a local level. The neo-colonial dominated regime of Ouattara claims that such expenditures are aimed at some form of “diversification” of the economy.

However, the masses of workers, farmers and youth in most cases remain subservient to the multi-national corporate interests that reigns supreme in the service of European travelers and their economies. Land sales in exchange for foreign currencies is said to be a key component of this upgrade of infrastructure.

Inflation rates in Ivory Coast are reported to be in excess of 1 percent. Nevertheless, the means by which the rise in prices is calculated may not be representative of the actual impact of foreign direct investment on the majority of people who reside within a particular African state.

The Outstanding Issues on the Persecution of Former Leaders

French military intervention with the backing of the United States in April 2011 was critical in the ascendancy of the current regime. President Laurent Gbagbo, youth leader Charles Ble Goude and First Lady Simone were arrested by soldiers from Paris who were wholeheartedly supported by imperialist interests.

Ivorian supporters of Laurent Gbagbo and the PFI (Source: author)

At present Gbagbo is being held in The Netherlands by the controversial and ominous International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes although there is no potential for the previous head-of-state to receive a fair trial. His wife Simone, is imprisoned inside Ivory Coast for supposed violations against the people of the country. However, it is impossible for the First Lady to receive actual due process based upon the bias of the existing regime which is being propped-up by France.

It is incontrovertible that the U.S. and France favored the forces allied with Ouattara and strongly worked against the Ivorian Popular Front (PFI). The Gbagbo political leadership defied both Paris and Washington seeking to establish a neo-colonial framework for the future of not only Ivory Coast notwithstanding the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU).

Ivorian leaders on trial in the Netherlands (Source: author)

The ICC has been challenged ideologically and politically in Africa over the last several years. Nevertheless, the ongoing character of African relations with the western industrialized states places the AU member-states in a disadvantageous situation internationally mandated through custom, practice and pseudo legal rationales such as the Rome Statute. These nations are still dependent upon imperialism for global trade, loans from western-based financial institutions and coercive joint military operations along with Pentagon-NATO basing within the region.

Only one African state has been capable of breaking ties with the ICC, that government being that of President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi. Both South Africa and Gambia have been thwarted in their attempts to exit from under the putative authority of the hegemonic imperialist notions of “legal jurisdiction.”

In Gambia the government of President Yahya Jammeh was overthrown one year ago by neighboring Senegal, a key partner with the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The Gambian head-of-state was forced to leave the country of his birth.

The South African High Court required that a parliamentary process was required in order for President Jacob Zuma to exit the Rome Statute. The African National Congress (ANC) administration is still being pursued by so-called non-governmental organizations (NGO) whose legal premise is that an AU Summit being held in South Africa somehow must be subservient to the whims and caprices of the ICC.

Africa must withdraw from any and all “international” imperialist-coordinated entities which violate its sovereignty, national independence, foreign policy and political interests. Until Ivory Coast is placed under the direction of the people themselves, these periodic rebellions and false notion of economic vibrancy will continue to stifle the actual liberation of the majority of workers, youth and farmers in the country.

Last night, The Huffington Post released a pre-decisional draft of the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review. The document outlined a strategy that includes the development of new, so-called “low-yield” nuclear weapons — expanding the number of scenarios in which the first use of nuclear weapons would be considered, including in response to non-nuclear attack.

In reaction to the leaked document, Derek Johnson, executive director of Global Zero, the international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons, issued the following statement:

“This leaked draft of the NPR is a radical document and terrifying in almost every respect. Trump’s plan to develop so-called ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons and loosen restrictions on their use is a dramatic departure from long-standing U.S. policy that makes nuclear war more likely. The world is about to get a whole lot more dangerous.

“These policies align closely with Trump’s aggressive nuclear rhetoric and break sharply from decades of bipartisan efforts to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons worldwide, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s maxim that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.’

“Trump’s plan, which calls for the rapid development and production of new, more usable types of nuclear weapons, will increase, not decrease the risk of miscalculation and nuclear conflict. Expanding America’s bloated nuclear force will balloon the already bankrupting cost of replacing Cold War weapons systems, and accelerate a global nuclear arms competition that further erodes the norm against their use. There are no upsides.

“Let’s be clear: The options being developed for the first use of nuclear weapons are grounded in stunning naivete. Once we cross the nuclear threshold, all bets are off. If a nuclear weapon is used, nobody on the receiving end is going to stop to measure the mushroom cloud before retaliating. This plan paves a road to disaster.

“The top national security priority of the United States should be to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used. Trump’s plan fails on that score in almost every respect. Worse, it contains the seeds of self-fulfilling prophecy: by actively planning for conflicts in which our nuclear weapons are used first, we bring ourselves closer to that point of no return.

“This plan would be troubling under any Administration, but given this President’s consistent and unabashed displays of ignorance, bad judgment and dehumanizing world views, we should all be on red alert. In light of this plan, every effort should be directed to support legislation that reins in executive power to use these weapons, including the ‘Restricting the First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act’ and the No-First-Use bill currently before Congress.

“If there were ever a time to rally the American public and tie Trump’s hands, it’s now.”

Featured image: The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini (Source: LobeLog)

It is with some reluctance that I write about President Donald Trump’s latest statement on Iran, because the statement is so full of half-truths, untruths, and logical fallacies that it is bad for one’s blood pressure to have to dwell on it for any length of time.

I will try to limit damage to my constitution by focussing on just a few of the statement’s most disturbing features.

The statement reveals a shocking attitude towards the European allies of the United States. For months these allies have been telling the Trump administration that the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is a satisfactory and useful nuclear non-proliferation instrument, and that they attach the highest importance to preserving it.

President Trump’s statement does not just ignore what his European allies have been saying. It threatens these allies with the very outcome they want to avoid—the demise of the JCPOA—if they decline or fail to bend to the President’s will:

Today, I am waiving the application of certain nuclear sanctions, but only in order to secure our European allies’ agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal. This is a last chance. In the absence of such an agreement, the United States will not again waive sanctions in order to stay in the Iran nuclear deal. And if at any time I judge that such an agreement is not within reach, I will withdraw from the deal immediately.

This is an extraordinary way to treat long-standing allies. It amounts to putting a metaphorical gun to their heads. If the criminal underworld is paying attention, it will surely elect President Trump gangster-of-the-month. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was right: the time has come for Europe to wean itself from the United States.

Equally shocking, but less surprising because, alas, we have grown accustomed to this tendency, is a disregard for the sovereign rights of states and for the legally binding international treaties and UN resolutions that limit those rights.

Iran has a sovereign right to possess the means to enrich uranium. Currently that right is limited in two ways. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) binds Iran to using enrichment technology solely for peaceful purposes and in conformity with a nuclear safeguards agreement. UN Security Council resolution 2231 endorses tight limits on Iran’s enrichment capacity, and production of enriched uranium, until the start of 2031.

Iran also has a sovereign right to develop and possess missiles for the purpose of delivering conventional (non-nuclear) warheads. There are no international treaty restrictions on this right. UNSC resolution 2231 “calls upon” Iran not to develop missiles that would be capable of delivering nuclear pay-loads but does not legally bind Iran in this respect. (So, contrary to President Trump’s claim, Iran’s missile tests and related activities are not “illicit” or violations of any UN resolution.)

It follows that President Trump has no right to dictate limits or restrictions over and beyond those just described. Instead, if he and his advisers believe that the sunset clauses of the JCPOA (certain restrictions on Iran’s enrichment right lapse between 2026 and 2031) and Iranian missiles threaten international peace and security, they must convene the UN Security Council and submit for the Council’s consideration a resolution that would give legally binding effect to the restrictions and prohibitions they consider necessary.

That is how the Trump administration ought to proceed. The probability of it doing so is close to zero, however. Even this administration is capable of perceiving that the Council would decline to adopt any such resolution.

Why? In 2018 there is no evidence that an expansion of Iran’s enrichment capacity after 2030 (if it takes place) will threaten international peace and security—or that Iranian possession of short- and medium-range missiles poses any more of a threat than their possession by Saudi Arabia, Israel, Pakistan, India, South Korea, and Brazil, to name but a few. Only after the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded a root-and-branch investigation into the totality of Iran’s nuclear program, and produced findings, can the Council reasonably form a view on whether some kind of successor to the JCPOA (and/or missile restrictions) is needed to head off a threat to peace and security.

A third feature of the statement is the damage that it will do to the international standing of the United States.

Many states will be worried about the statement’s implications for the law-based international order to which they are attached. The last thing they want is a world in which the president of the United States feels entitled to form a posse and go after whomever he chooses.

They will also be worried that this statement suggests that President Trump is a man possessed by demons. One of those demons is his hatred of President Barack Obama. Trump’s desire to destroy one of Obama’s achievements is obvious from the statement.

Less obvious is President Trump’s faith in what he hears from those he has chosen to befriend. Anyone looking for a summary of the anti-Iranian propaganda churned out in recent years by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and associated Washington think-tanks need look no further than this statement. To the rest of the world this suggests that it is idle to look to the current White House for balanced, objective, rational analyses of international situations. That is disquieting.

The hope now must be that Europe, Russia, and China, with the backing of most of the world, can persuade Iran to scorn the US provocation that now seems inevitable: US withdrawal from the JCPOA and the re-introduction of US nuclear-related sanctions.

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Peter Jenkins was a British career diplomat for 33 years, following studies at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He served in Vienna (twice), Washington, Paris, Brasilia and Geneva. He specialized in global economic and security issues. His last assignment (2001-06) was that of UK Ambassador to the IAEA and UN (Vienna). 

Featured image is from the author.

In his first year in office, President Barack Obama gave a landmark address in Prague in which he famously affirmed “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” The commitment to total nuclear disarmament was a major departure from the George W. Bush administration — the first time, in fact, that the United States had declared a nuclear-free world a major policy goal.

Now, eight years later, it’s the Trump administration’s turn to lay out its nuclear weapons policy. And according to a pre-decisional draft of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) obtained by HuffPost, Trump’s Department of Defense has gone a decidedly different route: new nukes, for no good reason.

The final version of the NPR is scheduled to be released in February. You can read the draft in full at the bottom of this article. A Defense Department spokesperson declined to comment on the draft, saying that the agency “will not discuss pre-decisional drafts of the document.”

In October, NBC reported that President Trump had told a gathering of high-ranking national security leaders that “he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.” While the report doesn’t nearly go that far, it does call for the development of new, so-called low-yield nuclear weapons — warheads with a lower explosive force.

The logic of those pushing for the development of smaller nukes is that our current nuclear weapons are too big and too deadly to ever use; we are effectively self-deterred, and the world knows it. To make sure other countries believe that we’d actually use nuclear force, the thinking goes, we need more low-yield nukes.

But official language around nuclear weapons is slippery and euphemistic. “Low yield” suggests a softer sort of weaponry, diet nukes, until you realize that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were technically “low-yield” weapons.

Trump’s NPR draft euphemizes the euphemism, referring to low-yield weapons as “supplements” that will “enhance deterrence.” The document claims that Russia is threatening to use these smaller nuclear weapons; the U.S. needs to match and deter the Russians in kind.

2018 Nuclear Posture Review Draft

What goes unmentioned is that we already have over 1,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal with low-yield options, to say nothing of the fact that the more nuclear weapons you introduce into the world, the more likely it is that they’ll one day be used.

Eight years ago today, my family and I survived the earthquake in Haiti. I had been laid off from my teaching job that year in the wake of the great recession and so I had joined my wife, with our one-year-old son, on her work trip to Haiti where she was conducting trainings on HIV.

In the immediate aftermath of the quake, our hotel became a makeshift clinic. One of the hotel guests, an emergency medical technician, quickly assembled a triage and treatment area in the circular driveway. Over the course of the evening and into the night, we mobilized our meager resources to attend to hundreds of badly injured Haitians. My wife and I were deputized as orderlies in his makeshift emergency room, although we had no medical training. We stripped the sheets off hotel beds for bandages, we broke chairs to use for splints, and we transformed the poolside deck chairs into hospital beds.

In the ensuing days I worked on children who died in my arms and saw hundreds of dead bodies that lined the streets of Port-Au-Prince. Estimates of the death toll from the quake reach into the hundreds of thousands with as many injured. I witnessed this death on a mass scale. But I also witnessed the beauty and resilience of a people who had lost everything, but still found something to give to help save others.

Neighbors carried neighbors who were missing limbs on top of doors for miles to get medical aid. People took shallow sips from plastic bottles so the water would nourish life for more people. Hundreds gathered in newly forged communities to sing songs, collectively raising the spirit of hope.

To these people President Donald Trump has a message: You are a “shithole.”

According to the Washington Post, Trump referred to Haiti, Africa and El Salvador during an immigration meeting with lawmakers on Thursday, saying,

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

There can be no doubt that Haiti has many severe challenges, and there can also be no doubt that the cesspool of U.S. power, and other dominant nations, are at the root of them. This urge to dominate Haiti dates back to it’s very founding in a mass slave revolt. In fact, the U.S. refused to recognize Haiti as a nation, from it’s independence in 1804 until1862, because of the worry that Black republic, run by former slaves, would send the wrong message to its own slave population. Then from 1915-1934, the US enforced a violent and bloody military occupation on Haiti. As historian Mary Renda wrote,

“By official US estimates, more than 3,000 Haitians were killed during this period; a more thorough accounting reveals that the death toll may have reached 11,500.”

Since the 2010 earthquake, the U.S. and the international community’s record on Haiti reveals the same impulse to dominate rather than aid. As Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) Director Mark Weisbrot, said, in a January 2014 report,

“The lasting legacy of the earthquake is the international community’s profound failure to set aside its own interests and respond to the most pressing needs of the Haitian people.”

Not much has changed since then, as CEPR’s 2018 report reveals that foreign aid to Haiti is still primarily being used to enrich U.S. corporations: Overall, just $48.6 million has gone directly to Haitian organizations or firms ― just over 2 percent. Comparatively, more than $1.2 billion has gone to firms located in DC, Maryland, or Virginia ― more than 56 percent…The difference is even starker when looking just at contracts: 65 percent went to Beltway firms, compared to 1.9 percent for Haitian firms.

Even more unforgivably, UN troops introduced cholera to post earthquake Haiti by dumping the waste from their portable toilets into a river tributary near their base in Haiti. Instead of Haiti bringing a hot mess to other countries, as Trump would have you believe, it was literally a shithole from the world’s most powerful governments that was dumped on Haiti—and it has resulted in a cholera epidemic that has killed over 10,000 people and sickened another one million.

This is why Trump’s decision to end the Temporary Protected Status for the Haitian refuges in the U.S. who fled after the earthquake isn’t only mean—it will actually be a death sentence for many.

With his analogy between Black people and feces, Trump has once again shown the world his commitment to wickedness, vulgarity, and racism. The people of Haiti are resilient and beautiful.  It is trump who is a living obscenity.  To drive home his disgusting anti-blackness, Trump commented at the same meeting on immigration that he wasn’t against more immigrants coming to the U.S. but that,

“We should have people from places like Norway.”

Right, white people.

My family was in Haiti for five days after the earthquake before we were evacuated back home to Seattle. Recovering from the experience emotionally and mentally has been very challenging. I still experience stressful situations with much more intensity and the time around the anniversary always raises my anxiety. Yet this anniversary will be a particularly difficult to mark for me, and all survivors of the earthquake, because of trumps impossibly putrid statements.

A white supremacist is in the White House. We need nothing less than a new Haitian revolution that connects with the movement for Black lives in the U.S. and brings down structures of racism across the African diaspora.

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Jesse Hagopian teaches history and is the Black Student Union adviser at Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP standardized test.  Jesse is the editor and contributing author to, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing (Haymarket Books, 2014). Jesse is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding member of Social Equality Educators (SEE).

The Swiss newspaper Basler Zeitung revealed the fact that there exists a “secret alliance” between Saudi Arabia and Israel, intended “to restrain Iran’s expansion in the region, despite the absence of any official relations between the two countries.”

“For the time being, Riyadh rejects any official normalization of relationships with Israel as long as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not resolved and normalization has not been publically declared by Arab countries and thus there will be no exchange of ambassadors,” said Pierre Heumann, the newspaper’s correspondent in Israel in his report.

“There is an intensive secret cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel in order to achieve the main goal of curbing Iran’s expansion project and undermining its regional ambitions,” said the reporter. He added that “there exists indeed military cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Tel Aviv.”

The reporter quoted unidentified sources from Riyadh as saying

“the Kingdom is currently considering the possibility to purchase Israeli weapons and it has shown an interest in purchasing defence systems for the tanks and the iron dome, which Israel claims has proven to be effective in countering rocket attacks from Gaza Strip.”

According to the newspaper,

“Riyadh seeks to intercept missiles coming from Yemen. Observers from Tel Aviv and Riyadh are confirming that cooperation between the security services of Israel and Saudi Arabia is very advanced, although Saudi Arabia has been officially denying any sort of cooperation with Israel,” as the newspaper put it.

According to the newspaper

“the Saudi elite has abandoned its fears of overt contact with representatives of Israel long time ago.”

CIA Director Mike Pompeo announced in early December last year that Saudi Arabia is working directly with Israel and other Sunni countries in the field of fighting terrorism.

Earlier, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said in a radio interview that

“there were several contacts with Saudi Arabia, but they were kept secret at the request of Riyadh.”

The newspaper stressed that a number of Saudi prominent figures met up with Israeli officials in public. In October, the two former Intelligence chiefs in Israel and Saudi Arabia met to exchange views about the US policy in the region. The newspaper noted that former Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal held talks with former “Mossad” chief Efraim Halevy. Al-Faisal was even ready to participate with his Israeli counterpart at a symposium at the Jewish Community Centre in New York.

Rising tensions in the global relations and hot beds of old and new crisis call for unity and efforts of all peace forces for closing foreign military bases, particularly U.S. and NATO foreign military bases, around the globe. The peace forces are obligated to send clear message that U.S. and NATO foreign military bases represent the tools of hegemonism, aggression, occupation, and that as such must be closed.

Peace and inclusive development, elimination of hunger and misery require redistribution of spending for maintenance of military bases in favor of development needs, education and heath services. After the end of the Cold War the whole humanity expected stability, peace and justice in the world of equal states and nations. Such expectations, however, turned to be futile beliefs.

In the last two decades, instead of closing U.S. and NATO military bases in Europe, the continent has been surrounded by whole chain new U.S. military bases in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Baltic states. As a consequence there are today more U.S. military bases in Europe than at the peak of the Cold War. Peace and security have become more fragile and quality of life jeopardized.

This dangerous development was triggered in 1999 by NATO-US led aggression against Serbia (FR Yugoslavia). At the end of the aggression US established military base in the occupied part of the Serbian territory Kosovo and   called Bondsteel, which is one of the most expensive and the largest USA military bases, established after the Vietnam War. It was not only illegal, but also a brutal act of disrespect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia and other basic principles of international law. Now, there is a plan to expand the base Bondsteel transforming it into a permanent location of American troops and a hub of U.S. military presence in South East Europe for geostrategic purposes and confrontations.

We demand that the Bondsteel military base be closed as well as all other U.S. military bases in Europe and in the World. Preparations for furthering confrontation and new wars are a senseless waste of money, energy and development opportunities.

The Belgrade forum as an integral part of the world peace movement, stands firmly by the initiative to close all military bases in the world and redirect resources to rising development needs and people yearnings for better life.

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Featured image is from the author.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the heart of Black Africa. Millions of Congolese have been murdered, massacred, enslaved, robbed of their resources, and driven from their homes since the Berlin Conference gave the “Congo Free State” to Belgium’s King Leopold II as his personal property in 1885.

Patrice Lumumba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s independence hero and first Prime Minister, famously wrote to his wife Pauline from captivity in 1960, shortly before his assassination:

“We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and the free and liberated peoples in every corner of the globe will ever remain at the side of the millions of Congolese who will not abandon the struggle until the day when there will be no more colonizers and no more of their mercenaries in our country.”

I spoke to Jean-Claude Maswana about the latest waves of aggression under current Congolese President Joseph Kabila. Maswana is a Congolese native and economics professor at Tsukuba University, Japan.

Kabila in 2002, with Thabo Mbeki, George W. Bush, and Paul Kagame. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

*

Ann Garrison: Professor Maswana, the Congolese never seem to get a break. On the 7th of December, Tanzanian peacekeepers who were actually trying to keep the peace in Congo’s Béni Territory were attacked. Fifteen were killed, more than 50 wounded. Then, on Christmas Eve, the Ugandan Army started shelling Béni Territory from across the border and Ugandan attack aircraft crossed into Congolese air space and started dropping bombs. On New Year’s Eve, the Congolese army attacked a peaceful protest march led by the Catholic Church. Is anyone on the side of the Congolese now?

Jean-Claude Maswana: The answer is no. The Congolese people have never had anyone on their side. Time to time, there have been some international organizations or NGOs pretending to be on the Congolese people’s side but their support never lasts long. In the last 20 years, since Rwanda and Uganda invaded Congo, there have been no international institutions consistently on the Congolese people’s side. Again, my answer is a clear “no.”

AG: Not even the Catholic Church? Isn’t it the second most powerful institution in Congo, where more than half the population are Catholic?

JCM: Not even the Catholic Church even though it is Congo’s second most powerful institution and its most powerful non-state institution. In December 2016 when the Catholic Church played a key role in the so-called December 31st agreement between Kabila and the opposition, I didn’t feel the Catholic Church was on the side of the people. If they were, they wouldn’t have facilitated an agreement that was clearly against the country’s constitution and the people’s interests.

AG: OK, let’s step back and explain that. Kabila’s term was to have expired in December 2016, but he didn’t organize an election and he didn’t step down. Civil unrest broke out, and eventually this agreement mediated by the church was signed. What did the agreement say?

JCM: The agreement said that Kabila could stay in power so long as he organized the elections in December 2017. But back in December 2016 it was obvious that allowing Kabila to stay beyond his constitutional term limits was a huge mistake. There was abundant evidence that he would never hold those elections in December 2017. Those of us who opposed the agreement thought that was obvious, but the Catholic Church didn’t agree.

AG: But then the Catholic Church did lead this peaceful protest march on New Year’s Eve, in Kinshasa and other cities right?

JCM: That could be seen as siding with the Congolese people. Nevertheless, to be honest, I don’t personally think the Church was really siding with the people as it should have then. I don’t want to be seen as too critical of the Church as they have made some efforts, and some of them were beaten by soldiers on the front lines of the New Year’s Eve march, but the objective of that march was unclear. The Church should have taken a clear stance and refused to accept anything but Kabila’s departure from power. No more compromise should have been made after he once again failed to organize elections. The objective of the march was to pressure Kabila to implement the December 31, 2016 agreement, but he had already failed to do that.

AG: The Congolese army, the president’s republican guard, and the military police are heavily armed against the unarmed population, so what could the Catholic Church have done but organize a nonviolent march?

JCM: A peaceful march doesn’t change the situation on the ground. It doesn’t change the balance of political or military power. The Catholic Church could bring about such a change if it stopped recognizing Kabila’s illegal and unconstitutional presidency as legitimate. This would change the political balance of power and hopefully lead the way to the negotiated creation of a transitional government until free and fair elections could be organized in a reasonable time frame.

Unfortunately, the Church isn’t even close to refusing to recognize Kabila’s legitimacy. So it’s leaving the political balance of power untouched and Kabila is happy with this outcome.

AG: That’s very interesting because you’re saying that another kind of nonviolent protest is possible.

JCM: Yes, there are other forms of nonviolent protests that are not being implemented by the opposition or the Church.

AG: OK, at this point, it looks like the European Union, the US, all the NATO powers, and China are happy with the chaos and the mayhem. They’re not disturbed enough to do anything about it. Russia doesn’t seem to be very involved. And the UN Security Council has never been willing to acknowledge Rwanda or Uganda’s presence in the Congo, which is a violation of national sovereignty that the UN Charter would oblige them to stop if they did. So it’s really up to the Congolese people, right? There are no other significant players on the global chessboard who are willing to intervene on their behalf.

JCM: Yes, that’s an accurate description of the situation as I see it. The Congolese people are alone in their struggle against Kabila. Russia, China, and all the other powerful international players support Kabila because they have ongoing deals. There is an unspoken consensus of the powerful players for leaving the situation on the ground as it is. That’s the sad fact.

AG: So everyone’s getting the resources that they want, and the Congolese people continue to be murdered and massacred without any real intervention on their behalf. MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping operation, just seems to manage the conflict at a cost of more than $1 billion annually, most of which is paid by the West. On December 7, well-armed troops wearing Congolese uniforms actually attacked Tanzanian peacekeepers who were taking their mission seriously—trying to protect the population and stop the aggressors in Béni Territory—in a clear warning that real peacekeepers would not be tolerated.

JCM: Exactly. My reading is that the very same interests behind the murder of two UN experts earlier this year were behind the attacks on the Tanzanian peacekeepers. These attacks on UN experts and peacekeepers and Kabila’s unconstitutional grip on power are both part of the same movie by the same “producer.” The UN Security Council issues toothless, knee-jerk calls for justice and democracy in response to these crimes but nothing is done. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley went to see Kabila and told him he’s obliged to organize elections in December 2018—same time next year.

AG: Since you’ve told me several times now that there are no great powers willing to intervene on behalf of the Congolese, I looked back at the moment in Congo’s history when King Leopold’s enforcers were committing unspeakable atrocities to extract rubber and whatever other resources from the “Congo Free State,” which the Berlin Conference had given to him as his personal property in 1885. There was so much international outrage that Belgium finally took over, creating the Belgian Congo. That was no triumph over colonialism, but there was so much outrage about King Leopold’s brutality that the international community of the time finally reacted. Is anything like that conceivable now?

JCM: I don’t think so because the context is very different. Leopold II was more powerful than those who gave him the ownership of the “Congo Free State.”Unlike King Leopold the owner, Kabila has been given an assignment.International interests have decided to outsource Congolese resource extraction to him, and he is in turn allowed to grab his own share of the nation’s wealth. Kabila acts as the head of the local affiliate in a much larger multinational enterprise. So far as its executives are concerned, he and MONUSCO are both doing a great job, fulfilling their de facto mandate. Never mind what they say out loud in the UN Security Council, on UN Web TV, or through UN News. This multinational enterprise has been at Kabila’s side ever since he took power ten days after the assassination of his less compliant, adoptive father, Congolese President Laurent Désiré Kabila, in January 2017.

AG: So, basically, Leopold II really did own and control the Congo Free State as an individual, as a king, but Kabila’s just an apparatchik.

JCM: Yes, exactly.

AG: OK, so any real outrage would have to go beyond the apparatchik to the multinational enterprise, and that’s unlikely.

JCM: Yes, exactly.

AG: Early on you explained that the only real agency on behalf of the Congolese people is in the hands of the Congolese people, who would themselves have to stop recognizing Kabila as the rightful president. Is there anything that those of us in other parts of the world who are horrified by what continues to go on there can do to support them, even if we’re far from the centers of power?

JCM: Yes. First, just continue to do what you’ve been doing: spreading information and raising awareness among US citizens. The end goal could be to make the DRC tragedy an issue at some electoral level. Next, join and support the networks of those fighting the killing machine in DRC. Also, bring some international and different perspectives to the conflict to help us, the DRC people, expand our understanding of the tragedy. Most of the time, the most vulnerable and victimized in the DRC tragedy have a limited or incorrect understanding of who is really behind it, especially of who is behind it from outside the DRC.

AG: The information question reminded me of something. Just before the peaceful march on New Year’s Eve, Kabila had the Internet and SMS messaging switched off. Has that been restored?

JCM: Yes, the SMS and Internet are back, but even so, the control is in place. The monitoring system is in place; they have the technology, provided by some companies that I’m not going to name here. They have the technology in place and they’re monitoring everything and, from time to time, randomly checking people’s smart phones or other devices, or forcing people to open up their Facebook or Whatsapp accounts, for example.

AG: High tech surveillance in a nation where less than 10% of the population have electricity at home but as many as 23% may own cell phones.

JCM: Yes.

AG: To be continued?

JCM: Indeed.

*

Jean-Claude Maswana is a Congolese native who earned his doctorate in economics at Nagoya University, Japan. He focuses on macroeconomics and development economics and teaches at Tsukuba University, Japan.

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 [email protected].

MLK Day, January 15, 2018. Originally published by Washington’s Blog and Global Research in January 2013.

*      *      *

 Very few Americans are aware of this historical 1999 civil law suit of the King Family against the US Government. (Shelby County Court), Tennessee

Coretta Scott King: “We have done what we can to reveal the truth, and we now urge you as members of the media, and we call upon elected officials, and other persons of influence to do what they can to share the revelation of this case to the widest possible audience.” – King Family Press Conference, Dec. 9, 1999.

From the King Center on the family’s civil trial that found the US government guilty in Martin’s assassination:

After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. In a press statement held the following day in Atlanta, Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict, saying ,

“There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations. This verdict is not only a great victory for my family, but also a great victory for America. It is a great victory for truth itself. It is important to know that this was a SWIFT verdict, delivered after about an hour of jury deliberation.

The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame. I want to make it clear that my family has no interest in retribution. Instead, our sole concern has been that the full truth of the assassination has been revealed and adjudicated in a court of law… My husband once said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” To-day, almost 32 years after my husband and the father of my four children was assassinated, I feel that the jury’s verdict clearly affirms this principle. With this faith, we can begin the 21st century and the new millennium with a new spirit of hope and healing.”

TRANSCRIPTS

View Full Trial Transcript>

View Transcript of King Family Press Conference on the Verdict

KING FAMILY STATEMENT ON MEDIA REQUESTS REGARDING THE MEMPHIS VERDICT

The King family stands firmly behind the civil trial verdict reached by twelve jurors in the Memphis, Tennessee courtroom on December 8, 1999.

An excerpt from remarks made by Mr. Dexter Scott King, Chairman, President, and CEO of The King Center, during the December 9, 1999 press conference regarding the verdict that may be used in support of this family decision:

“We can say that because of the evidence and information obtained in Memphis we believe that this case is over. This is a period in the chapter. We constantly hear reports, which trouble me, that this verdict creates more questions than answers. That is totally false. Anyone who sat in on almost four weeks of testimony, with over seventy witnesses, credible witnesses I might add, from several judges to other very credible witnesses, would know that the truth is here.”

“The question now is, “What will you do with that?” We as a family have done our part. We have carried this mantle for as long as we can carry it. We know what happened. It is on public record. The transcripts will be available; we will make them available on the Web at some point. Any serious researcher who wants to know what happened can find out.”

The King family feels that the jury’s verdict, the transcripts of the conspiracy trial, and the transcripts of the King family’s press conference following the trial — all of which can be found on The King Center’s website — include everything that that family members have to say about the assassination.

Therefore, the King family shares the conviction that there is nothing more to add to their comments on record and will respectfully decline all further requests for comment.

Related Downloads

Assassination Trial – Family Press Conference.pdf

Assassination Trial – Full Transcript.pdf

Excerpt from Verdict  [Global Research Editor, emphasis added, for further details see full transcript]

(Verdict form passed to the Court.)

THE COURT: I have authorized
this gentleman here to take one picture of
you which I’m going to have developed and
make copies and send to you as I promised.
Okay. All right, ladies and
gentlemen. Let me ask you, do all of you
agree with this verdict?
THE JURY: Yes (In unison).
THE COURT: In answer to the
question did Loyd Jowers participate in a
conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther
King, your answer is yes. Do you also find
that others, including governmental agencies,
were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by
the defendant? Your answer to that one is
also yes. And the total amount of damages
you find for the plaintiffs entitled to is
one hundred dollars. Is that your verdict?
THE JURY: Yes (In unison).
THE COURT: All right. I want
to thank you ladies and gentlemen for your
participation. It lasted a lot longer than
we had originally predicted. In spite of
that, you hung in there and you took your
notes and you were alert all during the
trial. And we appreciate it. We want you to
note that our courts cannot function if we
don’t have jurors who accept their
responsibility such as you have.
I hope it has been a pleasant
experience for you and that when you go back
home you’ll tend tell your friends and
neighbors when they get that letter saying
they’ve been summoned for jury duty, don’t
try to think of up those little old lies,
just come on down and it is not so bad after
all.
I know how much you regret the fact
that you won’t be able to come back for the
next ten years. I don’t know, I may or may
not recognize you if I see you on the street
some day, but if you would see me and
recognize me, I sure would appreciate you
coming up and reminding me of your service
here.
To remind you of your service, we
have some certificates that we have prepared
for you. They look real good in a frame.
Not only will they remind you of your service
here, but they will remind you also of that
wonderful judge who presided over this. We
do thank you very much on behalf of everyone
who has participated in this trial.
You were directed not to discuss the
case when you were first sworn. Now that
your verdict has been reached, I’m going to
relieve you of that oath, meaning that you
may or may not discuss it. It is up to you.

No one can force you to. And if you discuss
it, it will only be because you decide that
you wanted to.
I guess that’s about all except that
I want to come around there and personally
shake your hand. You are what I would call
Trojans.
Having said that, as soon as I get
around there and get a chance to shake your
hands, you’ll be dismissed.
(Judge Swearengen left the bench
to shake the jurors hands.)
THE COURT: Those of you who
would like to retain your notes, you may do
so if you want to.
I guess that’s about it. So
consider yourselves dismissed and we thank
you again.
Ladies and gentlemen, Court is
adjourned.
(The proceedings were concluded
at 3:10 p.m. on December 8th, 1999.)

DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2287
COURT REPORTERS’ CERTIFICATE
STATE OF TENNESSEE:
COUNTY OF SHELBY:
We, BRIAN F. DOMINSKI, MARGIE
DAUSTER, SARA ROGAN, KRISTEN PETERSON and
SHERYL WEATHERFORD, Reporters and Notaries
Public, Shelby County, Tennessee, CERTIFY:
1. The foregoing proceedings were
taken before us at the time and place stated
in the foregoing styled cause with the
appearances as noted;
2. Being Court Reporters, we then
reported the proceedings in Stenotype to the
best of our skill and ability, and the
foregoing pages contain a full, true and
correct transcript of our said Stenotype
notes then and there taken;
3. We am not in the employ of and
are not related to any of the parties or
their counsel, and we have no interest in the
matter involved.
WITNESS OUR SIGNATURES, this, the
____ day of ___________, 2000.
___________________________
BRIAN F. DOMINSKI
Certificate of Merit
Holder; Registered
Professional Reporter,
Notary Public for
the State of Tennessee at
Large ***
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2288
___________________________
MARGIE ROUTHEAUX
Registered
Professional Reporter,
Notary Public for
the State of Tennessee at
Large ***
___________________________
SARA ROGAN
Registered

The Syrian Army is alleging that Israeli jets struck positions dozens of times within Syria early Tuesday morning in the al-Qutayfa area east of Damascus.

According to a statement by Syria’s General Command, the Syrian government’s air defenses not only intercepted all of the missiles Israel fired, but it even managed to counter strike one of the Israeli jets, the Jerusalem Post reports.

While the strike is unconfirmed on the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the recent assault during a lunch with NATO ambassadors in Jerusalem, according to the Post.

“We have a long-standing policy to prevent the transfer of game-changing weapons to Hezbollah from Syrian territory. This policy has not changed. We back it up as necessary with action,” he said.

Israel has hit Syrian territory over 100 times since the conflict began in 2011. It has also openly talked recently about bombing Lebanon. Each of these conflict theaters is aimed at containing Iran’s expanding influence.

All of this begs the question: Why haven’t Iran, Syria, and/or Hezbollah in Lebanon responded directly? Striking the territory of a sovereign nation is not only an act of war, it is completely illegal without authorization from the U.N. unless it has been done in self-defense.

Is it because Israel reportedly has well over 200 nukes all “pointed at Iran,” and there is little Iran and its allies can do to take on such a threat?

According to the Guardian, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly instructed both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah not to retaliate against Israeli strikes in Syria. The Guardian also notes that Israeli media has claimed Putin even proposed a deal that would prevent foreign powers from using Syria as a base for attacking a neighboring state, a blatant reference to Iran.

While much of Syria’s air defenses are Russian-supplied, the Jerusalem Post notes that the far more advanced Russian S-300 and S-400 have not been used against Israeli jets, but Syrian air defenses have. This includes an incident in March where three anti-aircraft missiles with a 200-kilogram warhead targeted several Israeli jets.

Clearly, Russia has no interest in getting involved in a spat between Israel and Iran. In fact, it can most likely use the impending conflict to further pursue its goals in the Middle East and successfully emerge as the major power broker, wedging the United States out of the area completely. Even now, Russia is continuing its support for the Syrian government to retake the remaining parts of Syria currently up for grabs, particularly in the Idlib province. Much of the media’s attention is focused elsewhere, like the protests in Iran.

Make no mistake, the looming conflict between Iran and Israel via its proxy states could easily break out unless something drastic is done to diffuse it.

On Tuesday, the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, warned of the proliferation of accurate Iranian missiles in the Middle East.

“The Iranians are coasting into the Middle East undisturbed and with very large forces, in a way that virtually creates an air and land corridor that pours fighters into the region in order to actualize the Iranian vision,”Cohen warned at a Finance Ministry event in Jerusalem on Tuesday, adding that “we hear the concerns from Sunni leaders about Iran are growing, just as they are in Israel. We are hearing it from everywhere.”

Speaking to Politico in December, Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer also warned:

“If Iran is not rolled back in Syria, then the chances of military confrontation are growing. I don’t want to tell you by the year or by the month. I’d say even by the week,” he said.

“Because the more they push, we have to enforce our redlines, and you always have the prospects of an escalation, even when parties don’t want an escalation. So in taking action to defend ourselves, you don’t know what could happen. But I think it’s higher than people think.”

In the meantime, it is unclear how much Russia might tolerate a blatant attack on Iran if it extends past the disputed border area with Israel. Regardless, Iran and Russia will remain key allies in the years to come until Washington’s influence and control over the Middle East has all but completely eroded.

Featured image: British prime minister David Cameron walks with Chinese president Xi Jinping outside his Chequers country residence in Buckinghamshire, England, October 22, 2015 (Source: The Prime Minister’s Office)

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government is establishing a $1 billion investment fund with China to back China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Her predecessor, David Cameron, will become vice-chairman of the fund, which is being set up by Cameron’s friend and Tory Peer, Lord Chadlington, on whose behalf Cameron lobbied Beijing. Douglas Flint, the former group chairman of HSBC bank, will become Britain’s envoy to the project.

The BRI, also known as One Belt One Road (OBOR), is a massive infrastructure investment project for high-speed rail, roads, Internet links and port facilities aimed at more closely integrating the Eurasian land mass.

As well as boosting economic growth, Beijing regards the project as a means of establishing closer ties with Europe and thus bypassing the US, which has opposed European participation as part of its broader effort to isolate China diplomatically, economically and militarily.

Chancellor Philip Hammond announced the fund along with a raft of new investment agreements finalised during his two-day visit to Beijing, as part of Britain’s efforts to boost its global trade and investment links before leaving the European Union in 2019. There will be export credit guarantees to support up to £25 billion in investments in BRI projects. There will also be a $50 million matching contribution with China to the $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to expand operations into less developed countries. The AIIB was set up in 2015 as China’s equivalent to the World Bank. Britain was the first Western country to pledge its participation.

Other measures include a direct channel for trading China’s renminbi on London’s foreign exchange markets via R5, a London-based fintech (financial technology) firm that will provide the trading platform for Chinese banks, and a Shanghai-London Stock Connect that will allow companies in each market to list depositary receipts in the other.

The former prime minister and his chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, made economic ties with China, centring on Chinese investment in the UK, a central axis of their economic policy. In March 2015, Cameron defied pressure from the United States and Britain’s own security agencies and joined the Chinese-sponsored AIIB, a decision that reflected the interests of the City of London in exploiting the opportunities that could open up.

Cameron’s new job testifies to the revolving door between high political office and a financial career. He follows Sir Danny Alexander, a Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury in Cameron’s Conservative/Liberal coalition, who became vice-president of the AIIB in Beijing after losing his parliamentary seat in 2015.

Cameron’s role was approved by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), which gave him special dispensation to circumvent the normal two-year ban on former British ministers taking jobs that capitalise on their insider knowledge of government.

The British economy has become ever more dependent on the speculative and parasitic activities of its major banks and finance houses, which view participation in the AIIB as an opportunity to profit from enhancing the global role of China’s renminbi as Beijing’s economic and financial power increases.

The announcement points to the divergence between Britain’s commercial interests and those of its foremost ally. For most of the post-World War II period, Britain has been able to “punch above its weight” because of its supposed “special relationship” with the United States. Now that relationship is coming under increased strain as President Donald Trump’s increasingly reckless policy in both the Middle East and East Asia cuts across Britain’s commercial interests.

While May was initially cautious about making overtures to China, ordering a review of the Hinkley nuclear power station in which China is involved before giving it the go-ahead, she has now given the nod to BRI and Britain’s involvement in it. A major factor in her calculations has been the importance of securing trade deals and attracting investment after leaving the EU, the world’s second-largest economy, in 2019.

This has become urgent, given that Trump’s promises of a favourable post-Brexit trade deal with the US are both vague and problematic, not only due to Trump’s “America First” policy, but also in the wake of high-profile rows over Trump’s re-tweeting of a fascist Britain Firster’s anti-Muslim videos and Britain’s refusal to join Washington in recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Washington’s intense opposition was made clear. An opinion piece in the Washington Examiner described Cameron’s appointment as “undercutting a US-led international order built on fair commercial law.”

This divergence of interests is echoed throughout Europe. When Cameron announced, with little if any consultation with the US, that Britain would become a founding member of the AIIB, other major European countries swiftly announced their intention of joining. Washington viewed the bank as a strategic rival to the US-dominated World Bank and the Japan-led Asia Development Bank and denounced the move by the European powers as part of “a trend towards constant accommodation” with China that was “not the best way to engage a rising power.”

Then-Chancellor Osborne could not afford to ignore the fact that China’s economy is expected to be twice that of the US economy by 2030, and that Chinese investment in Britain had grown by 85 percent annually since the Cameron-led coalition government took office. He went to Chengdu, China and urged firms there to bid for seven contracts worth £11.8 billion covering the first phase of a proposed high-speed rail service between London and Birmingham. He also invited bids for £24 billion in further Chinese investment in northern England under the government’s “Northern Powerhouse” project, designed to link deindustrialised northern cities so as to facilitate the exploitation of a 15-million-strong population by international corporations.

In October 2015, Cameron feted Chinese President Xi Jinping during his state visit to Britain, when trade and investment deals worth £40 billion were agreed.

China has become Britain’s seventh largest trading partner, making China the UK’s second-largest non-European trading partner. Bilateral trade rose to more than $80 billion last year, up 8.9 percent from 2015.

China’s investment in the UK has also risen, reaching $11.15 billion (£8.4 billion), double the amount in 2015, far more than in Germany, France and Italy combined. This includes the £19.6 billion project to build a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, in which China’s state-owned CGN has a one-third stake; Chinese developer ABP’s Royal Albert Dock re-development in east London; and the “Cheesegrater”—the tallest buildings in London’s “Square Mile” financial district—which was sold to Hong Kong-based CC Land for £1.15 billion this year.

Last April, the first UK-to-China freight train left its terminal in Essex to begin a 7,500-mile, two-and-a-half-week journey to Zhejiang province.

As far as the US is concerned, the advance of China’s economic influence in Asia and Europe expressed by the rail link and the enhancement of its military and strategic capacities are inseparably linked, and together represent a growing threat. This places Britain in a quandary: How far can it go in pursuing its own interests without jeopardising the strategic relationship with the US, the world’s dominant military power?

As Donald Trump might put it, major weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin cashed in “bigly” in his first year in office. They raked in tens of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts, while posting sharp stock price increases and healthy profits driven by the continuation and expansion of Washington’s post-9/11 wars. But last year’s bonanza is likely to be no more than a down payment on even better days to come for the military-industrial complex.

President Trump moved boldly in his first budget, seeking an additional $54 billion in Pentagon funding for fiscal year 2018. That figure, by the way, equals the entire military budgets of allies like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Then, in a bipartisan stampede, Congress egged on Trump to go even higher, putting forward a defense authorization bill that would raise the Pentagon’s budget by an astonishing $85 billion. (And don’t forget that, last spring, the president and Congress had already tacked an extra $15 billion onto the 2017 Pentagon budget.)  The authorization bill for 2018 is essentially just a suggestion, however — the final figure for this year will be determined later this month, if Congress can come to an agreement on how to boost the caps on domestic and defense spending imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011. The final number is likely to go far higher than the staggering figure Trump requested last spring.

And that’s only the beginning of the good news for the big weapons companies. Industry officials and Beltway defense analysts aren’t expectingthe real increase in Pentagon spending to come until the 2019 budget. It’s a subject sure to make it into the mid-term elections. Dangling potential infusions of Pentagon funds in swing states and swing districts is a tried and true way to influence voters in tight races and so will tempt candidates in both parties.

President Trump has long emphasized job creation above much else, but if he has an actual jobs program, it mainly seems to involve pumping more money into the Pentagon and increasing overseas arms sales. That such spending is one of the least effective ways to create new jobs evidently matters little.  It is, after all, an easy and popular way for a president to give himself the look of stimulating economic activity, especially in an era of steep tax cuts favoring the plutocratic class and attacks on domestic spending.

Trump’s much-touted $1 trillion infrastructure plan may never materialize, but the Pentagon is already on course to spend $6 trillion to $7 trillion of your taxes over the next decade. As it happens though, a surprising percentage of those dollars won’t even go into the military equivalent of infrastructure. Based on what we know of Pentagon expenditures in 2016, up to half of such funds are likely to go directly into the coffers of defense contractors rather than to the troops or to basic military tasks like training and maintenance.

While the full impact of Trump’s proposed Pentagon spending increases won’t be felt until later this year and in 2019, he did make a significant impact last year in his role as arms-dealer-in-chief. Early estimates for 2017 suggest that arms sales approvals in the first year of his administration exceeded the Obama administration’s record in its last year in office — no mean feat given that President Obama set a record for overseas arms deals during his eight-year tenure.

You undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that President Trump greatly exaggerated the size of his administration’s arms deals. Typically enough, he touted “$110 billion” in proposed sales to Saudi Arabia, a figure that included deals already struck under Obama and highly speculative offers that may never come to fruition.  While visiting Japan in November, he similarly took credit for sales of the staggeringly expensive, highly overrated F-35 combat aircraft, a deal that was actually concluded in 2012.  To add insult to injury, those F-35s that the U.S. is selling Japan will be assembled there, not in the good old U.S.A.  (So much for the jobs benefits of global weapons trading.)

Nonetheless, when you peel away the layers of Trumpian bombast and exaggeration, his administration still posted one of the highest arms sales figures of the last decade and there’s clearly much more to come. In all of this, the president may not have done major favors for America’s workers, but he’s been a genuine godsend for the country’s arms manufacturers. After all, such firms extract significantly greater profits on foreign deals than on sales to the Pentagon. When selling to other countries, they normally charge higher prices for weapons systems, while including costly follow-on agreements for maintenance, training, and things like additional bombs, missiles, or ammunition that can continue for decades.

In fact, Trump’s biggest challenge in accelerating U.S. arms exports may not be foreign competition, but the fact that the Obama administration made so many high-value arms deals. Some countries are still busy trying to integrate the weapons systems or other merchandise they’ve already purchased and may not be ready to conclude new arms agreements.

The Good News for Arms Makers: More War

There are, however, a number of reasons to think that the major weapons makers will do even better in the coming years than they did in the banner year of 2017.

Start with America’s wars. As defense expert Micah Zenko of Chatham House explained recently at Foreign Policy, President Trump has been doubling down on many of the wars he inherited from Obama. The moves of his administration (peopled, of course, by generals from those very wars) include the increasing use of Special Operations forces, a dramatic rise in air strikes, and an increase in troop levels in conflicts ranging from Afghanistan and Yemen to Syria and Somalia. It remains to be seen whether the president’s favorite Middle Eastern ally, Saudi Arabia, will be successful in goading his administration — replete with Iranophobes, including Secretary of Defense James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo — into taking military action against Tehran. Such calculations have been complicated by recent anti-government protests there, which the president and his inner circle hope will lead to regime change from within. (Trump’s crowing about unrest in Iran has, however, been decidedly unhelpful to genuine advocates of democracy in that country, given the low esteem in which he’s held throughout Iranian society.)

Such far-flung military operations will naturally cost money. Lots of it. Minimally, tens of billions of dollars; hundreds of billions if one or more of those wars escalates in an unexpected way — as happened in Afghanistan and Iraq in the Bush years. As a study by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute recently noted, our post-9/11 wars have already cost at least $5.6 trillion when one takes into account both direct budgetary commitments and long-term obligations, including lifetime care for the hundreds of thousands of American veterans who suffered severe physical and psychological damage in those conflicts.  It’s important to remember that such immense costs emerged from what was supposed to be a quick, triumphant war in Afghanistan and what top Bush administration officials were convinced would be a relatively inexpensive regime change operation in Iraq and the garrisoning of that country. (That invasion and occupation was then projected to cost just a cut-rate $50 billion to $200 billion.)

Don’t be surprised if the conflicts that Trump has inherited and is now escalating follow a similar pattern in which actual costs far outstrip initial estimates, even if not at the stratospheric levels of the Afghan and Iraq wars, which involved the commitment of hundreds of thousands of “boots on the ground.”  All of this spending will again be good financial news for the producers of combat aircraft, munitions, armored vehicles, drones, and attack helicopters, among other goods and services needed to sustain a policy of endless war across significant parts of the planet.

Beyond the hot wars that have involved U.S. troops and air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, there are scores of other places where this country’s Special Operations forces are on the ground training local militaries and in many cases accompanying them on missions that could quickly turn deadly, as happened to four Green Berets operating in Niger in October 2017. With Special Ops personnel engaged in a staggering 149 countries last year and a pledge to step up U.S. activities yet more in Africa — there are already 6,000 U.S. troops and scores of “train and equip” missions on that continent — spending is essentially guaranteed to go up, whatever the specifics of any given conflict. There are already calls by leading members of Congress to increase the size of U.S. Special Operations forces, which, as TomDispatch’s Nick Turse notes, already number nearly 70,000 personnel. 

Boondoggles, Inc.

Rest assured, however, that so far we’ve only taken a dip in the shallow end of the deep, deep pool of military spending.  Equally important to the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and their cohorts is the Trump administration’s commitment to continue funding weapons systems the Pentagon doesn’t need at prices we can’t afford.  Take the F-35 combat plane, a Rube Goldberg contraption once designed to carry out multiple missions and now capable of doing none of them well.

In fact, as the Project on Government Oversight has pointed out, it’s an aircraft that may never be fully ready for combat. To add insult to injury, billions more will be spent to fix defects in planes that were rushed through production before they had been fully tested.  The cost of this “too big to fail” program is currently projected at $1.5 trillion over the lifetimes of the 2,400-plus aircraft currently planned for.  This means it is likely to become the most expensive weapons program in the history of Pentagon procurement. 

Unfortunately, the F-35 is hardly the only boondoggle that will continue to pad the coffers of defense contractors while offering little in the way of defense (no less the usual offense). A recent estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, for example, suggests that a projected three-decade Pentagon plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines, initiated under President Obama and close to the heart of Donald Trump, will cost up to $1.7 trillion dollars.  This stunning figure includes spending on new nuclear warheads under development at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, one of many channels for military spending that are outside the Pentagon’s already bloated budget.  And given the history of such weapons systems and the cost overruns that regularly accompany them, keep in mind that $1.7 trillion will probably prove a gross underestimate.  The Government Accountability Office, for instance, has released a report suggesting that the program to build a new generation of ballistic missile submarines, now priced at $128 billion, is going to blow pastthat figure.

In recent years, hawks in Congress have been pressing for more funding for missile defense and Donald Trump (with the help of “Little Rocket Man”) is their guy.  David Willman of the Los Angeles Times reports that the Trump administration wants to spend more than $10 billion over the next five years beefing up a deeply flawed project for placing ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska and California.  This is just one of a number of missile defense initiatives under way.

In 2018, Lockheed, Boeing, and General Atomics are also scheduled to test drones that will reportedly use lasers to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles like those being developed by North Korea.  It’s a program that will undoubtedly garner tens of billions of dollars more in taxpayer funding in the years to come.  And Congress isn’t waiting until a final Pentagon budget for 2018 is wrapped up to lavish more money on missile defense contractors. A stopgap spending bill passed in late December 2017 kept most programs at current levels, but offered a special gift of nearly $5 billion extra for anti-missile initiatives.

In addition, a congressionally financed study of the best place to base an East Coast missile defense system — a favorite hobbyhorse of Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee that even the Pentagon has little interest in pursuing — is scheduled to be released later this year.   The Congressional Budget Office already suggests that the price tag for that proposed system would be at least $3.6 billion in its first five years of development.  Yet deploying it, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out, would have little or no value when it comes to protecting the United States from a missile attack.  If the project moves ahead, it won’t be the first time Congress has launched a costly, unnecessary spending program that the Pentagon didn’t even request.

Cybersecurity has been another expanding focus of concern — and funding — in recent years, as groups ranging from the Democratic National Committee to the National Security Agency have been hit by determined hackers. The concern may be justified, but the solution — throwing billions at the Pentagon and starting a new Cyber Command to press for yet more funding — is misguided at best. One of the biggest bottlenecks to crafting effective cyber defenses is the lack of personnel with useful and appropriate skills, a long-term problem that short-term infusions of cash will not resolve. In any case, some of the most vulnerable places — from the power grid to the banking system — will have to be dealt with by private firms that should be prodded by stricter government regulations, a concept to which Donald Trump seems to be allergic. As it happens, though, creating enforceable government standards turns out to be one of the most important ways of addressing cybersecurity challenges.

Despite the likely spending spree to come, don’t expect the Pentagon, the arms makers, their lobbyists, or their allies in Congress, to stop crying out for more. There’s always a new weapons scheme or a new threat to hype or another ill-conceived proposal for a military “solution” to a complicated security problem.  Trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives later, the primary lesson from the perpetual wars and profligate weapons spending of this century should be that throwing more money at the Pentagon isn’t making us any safer.  But translating that lesson into a change in Washington’s spending patterns would take major public pushback at a level that has yet to materialize.

Genuine opposition to runaway Pentagon spending may yet emerge, if, as expected, President Trump, Paul Ryan, and the Republican Congress follow up their trillion-dollar tax giveaway with an assault on Medicare and Social Security.  At that point, the devastating domestic costs of overspending on the Pentagon should become far more difficult to ignore.

This year will undoubtedly be a banner year for arms companies.  The only question is: Might it also mark the beginning of a future movement to roll back unconstrained weapons expenditures?

*

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri.

William Penn Jones Jr. was an American journalist, the editor of the Midlothian Mirror and author. He was also one of the earliest John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists. Jones attended the University of Texas at Austin and was a classmate of Henry Wade and John Connally. Wade later become the District Attorney in Dallas while Connolly would later become the 39th Governor of Texas. Both men were figures in the assassination of JFK.

In 1946, Jones purchased the Midlothian Mirror for $4,000; he eventually sold the newspaper in 1974. In 1963, Penn received the Elijah Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism.

Jones was also known for being an early critic of the Warren Commission‘s report on the assassination of JFK. In 1967, he self-published Forgive My Grief, a four-volume work on the assassination of President Kennedy. In the 1980s, Jones co-edited The Continuing Inquiry newsletter with Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

On January 25, 1998, Jones died of Alzheimer’s disease in a Alvarado, Texas nursing home at the age of 83.

In January 1983 Rebel Magazine published an article written by Jones, which is republished in full, with no editing below (except images). The JFK assassination was one of the biggest events to have ever hit America and Jones assumes that the reader of the time would have known quite a bit about it. This article makes for fascinating reading whether you believe the official state narrative or alternative theories. Last October, Statista concluded from surveys that 61 percent of Americans believe JFK was not killed by Oswald alone and that others were involved.

Over 100 murders, suicides, mysterious deaths – the strange fate of those who saw Kennedy shot.

By Penn Jones Jr.

Rebel Magazine, 1983

Shortly after dark on Sunday night November 24, 1963, after Ruby had killed Lee Harvey Oswald, a meeting took place in Jack Ruby’s apartment in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas, Texas. Five persons were present. George Senator and Attorney Tom Howard were present and having a drink in the apartment when two newsmen arrived. The newsmen were Bill Hunter of the Long Beach California Press Telegram, and Jim Koethe of the Dallas Times Herald. Attorney C.A. Droby of Dallas arranged the meeting for the two newsmen. Jim Martin, a close friend of George Senator’s, was also present at the apartment meeting.

This writer asked Martin if he thought it was unusual for Senator to forget the meeting while testifying in Washington on April 22, 1964, since Bill Hunter, who was a newsman present at the meeting, was shot to death that very night. Martin grinned and said: “Oh, you’re looking for a conspiracy.”
I nodded yes and he grinned and said, “You will never find it.”
I asked soberly, “Never find it, or not there?”
He added soberly, “Not there.”

Bill Hunter, a native of Dallas and an award winning newsman in Long Beach, was on duty and reading a book in the police station called “Public Safety Building.” Two policemen going off duty came into the press room, and one policeman shot Hunter through the heart at a range officially ruled to be “no more than three feet.” The policeman said he dropped his gun, and it fired as he picked it up, but the angle of the bullet caused him to change his story. He finally said he was playing a game of quick draw with his fellow officer. The other officer testified he had his back turned when the shooting took place.

Hunter, who covered the assassination for his paper, the Long Beach Press Telegram, had written:

“Within minutes of Ruby’s execution of Oswald, before the eyes of millions watching television, at least two Dallas attorneys appeared to talk with him.”

Hunter was quoting Tom Howard who died of a heart attack in Dallas a few months after Hunter’s own death. Lawyer Tom Howard was observed acting strangely to his friends two days before his death. Howard was taken to the hospital by a “friend” according to the newspapers. No autopsy was performed.

Dallas Times Herald reporter Jim Koethe was killed by a karate chop to the throat just as he emerged from a shower in his apartment on September 21, 1964. His murderer was not indicted.

What went on in that significant meeting in Ruby’s and Senator’s apartment?

Few are left to tell. There is no one in authority to ask the question, since the Warren Commission has made its final report, and The House Select Committee has closed its investigation.

Journalist Dorothy Kallagan’s mobster tell-all article may have got her killed – read the NY Post article HERE

Dorothy Kilgallen was another reporter who died strangely and suddenly after her involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Miss Kilgallen is the only journalist who was granted a private interview with Jack Ruby after he killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Judge Joe B. Brown granted the interview during the course of the Ruby trial in Dallas–to the intense anger of the hundreds of other newspeople present.

We will not divulge exactly what Miss Kilgallen did to obtain the interview with Ruby. But Judge Brown bragged about the price paid. Only that was not the real price Miss Kilgallen paid. She gave her life for the interview. Miss Kilgallen stated that she was “going to break this case wide open.”

She died on November 8, 1965. Her autopsy report took eight days. She was 52 years old. Two days later Mrs. Earl T. Smith, a close friend of Miss Kilgallen’s died of undetermined causes.

Tom Howard, who died of a heart attack, was a good friend of District Attorney Henry Wade, although they often opposed each other in court. Howard was close to Ruby and other fringes of the Dallas underworld.

Like Ruby, Howard’s life revolved around the police station, and it was not surprising when he and Ruby (toting his gun) showed up at the station on the evening of the assassination of President Kennedy. Nor was it unusual when Howard arrived at the jail shortly after Ruby shot Oswald, asking to see his old friend.

Howard was shown into a meeting room to see a bewildered Ruby who had not asked for a lawyer. For the next two days–until Ruby’s brother, Earl, soured on him, and had Howard relieved–he was Jack Ruby’s chief attorney and public spokesman.

Howard took to the publicity with alacrity, called a press conference, wheeled and dealed. He told newsmen the case was a “once-in-a-lifetime chance,” and that “speaking as a private citizen,” he thought Ruby deserved a Congressional medal. He told the Houston Post that Ruby had been in the police station Friday night (November 22, 1963) with a gun. Howard dickered with a national magazine for an Oswald murder story. He got hold of a picture showing the President’s brains flying out of the car, and tried to sell it to Life magazine. Ruby’s sister, Eva Grant, even accused Howard of leaking information to the DA. It was never quite clear whether Howard was working for Ruby or against him.

On March 27, 1965, Howard was taken to a hospital by an unidentified person and died there. He was 48. The doctor, without benefit of an autopsy, said he had suffered a heart attack. Some reporters and friends of Howard’s were not so certain. Some said he was “bumped off.”

Earlene Roberts was the plump widow who managed the rooming house where Lee Harvey Oswald was living under the name O. H. Lee. She testified before the Warren Commission that she saw Oswald come home around one o’clock, go to his room for three or four minutes and walk out zipping his light weight jacket. A few minutes later, a mile away, officer J. D. Tippit was shot dead.

Mrs. Roberts testified that while Oswald was in his room, two uniformed cops pulled up in front of the rooming house and honked twice–“Just tit tit,” she said.

The police department issued a report saying all patrol cars in the area, except Tippit’s, were accounted for. The Warren Commission let it go at that.

After testifying in Dallas in April 1964, Mrs. Roberts was subjected to intensive police harassment. They visited her at all hours of the day and night. Earlene complained of being “worried to death” by the police. She died on January 9, 1966 in Parkland Hospital (the hospital where President Kennedy was taken). Police said she suffered a heart attack in her home. No autopsy was performed.

Warren Reynolds being interviewed about the scene of a killing but was not sure about the FBI story he was given – to his cost

Warren Reynolds was minding his used car lot on East Jefferson Street in Oak Cliff in Dallas, when he heard shots two blocks away. He thought it was a marital quarrel. Then he saw a man having a great difficulty tucking “a pistol or an automatic” in his belt, and running at the same time. Reynolds gave chase for a short piece being careful to keep his distance, then lost the fleeing man. He didn’t know it then, but he had apparently witnessed the flight of the killer (or one of the killers) of patrolman Jefferson David Tippit. Feeling helpful, he gave his name to a passing policeman and offered his cooperation. Television cameras zeroed in on him, got his story, and made him well known. Warren Reynolds, the amiable used car man, was making history.

Reynolds was not questioned until two months after the event. The FBI finally talked to him in January 1964.

The FBI interview report said, ” . . . he was hesitant to definitely identify Oswald as the individual.” Then it added, “He advised he is of the opinion Oswald is the person.”

Two days after Reynolds talked to the FBI, he was shot in the head. He was closing up his used car lot for the night at the time. Nothing was stolen. Later after consulting retired General Edwin Walker (the man Oswald allegedly shot at before he assassinated President Kennedy), he told the Warren Commission Counsel that Oswald was definitely the man he saw fleeing the Tippit murder scene.

A young hood was arrested for the murder attempt. Darrell Wayne Garner had called a relative bragging that he shot Reynolds. But Garner had an alibi, Nancy Jane Mooney, alias Betty McDonald, who said Garner was in bed with her at the time he was supposed to have shot Reynolds. Nancy Jane had worked at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club. Garner was freed.

Nancy Jane was picked up a week later for fighting with a girlfriend. She was arrested for disturbing the peace. The girlfriend was not arrested. Within hours after her arrest, Nancy Jane was dead. Police reports said she hanged herself with her toreador pants.

Reynolds and his family were harassed and threatened. But upon giving the Warren Commission a firm identification of Oswald as being the Tippit murder fugitive, he said,

“I don’t think they are going to bother me any more.”

Hank Killam’s jugular vein was cut and bled to death attempting to get to hospital

Hank Killam was a house painter who lived at Mrs. A.C. Johnson’s rooming house at the same time Lee Harvey Oswald lived there. His wife, Wanda, once pushed cigarettes and drinks at Jack Ruby’s club.

Hank was a big man, over six feet and weighing over 200 pounds. After the assassination, federal agents visited him repeatedly causing him to lose one job after another.

Killam was absorbed by the assassination, even obsessed. Hours after the event, he came home, “white as a sheet.” Wanda said he stayed up all night watching the television accounts of the assassination. Later he bought all the papers and clipped the stories about Kennedy’s death.

Before Christmas, Killam left for Florida. Wanda confessed where he was. Federal agents hounded him in Tampa, Florida where he was working selling cars at his brother-in-law’s car lot. He lost his job.

Killam wrote Wanda that he would be sending for her soon. He received a phone call on St. Patrick’s day. He left the house immediately. He was found later on a sidewalk in front of a broken window. His jugular vein was cut. He bled to death en route to the hospital.

There is no mention of Killam by the Warren Commission. A number of FBI documents on Killam relating to the assassination were withheld, along with documents prepared by the CIA. What is clear is that SOMEBODY considered Hank Killam a very important guy.

William Whaley was known as the “Oswald Cabbie.” He was one of the few who had the opportunity to talk alone with the accused killer of President Kennedy. He testified that Oswald hailed him at the Dallas Greyhound bus station. Whaley said he drove Oswald to the intersection of Beckley and Neches–half a block from the rooming house–and collected a dollar. Later he identified Oswald as his fare in a questionable police line-up.

Whaley was killed in a head-on collision on a bridge over the Trinity River, December 18, 1965; his passenger was critically injured. The 83 year old driver of the other car was also killed. Whaley had been with the City Transportation Company since 1936 and had a perfect driving record. He was the first Dallas cabbie to be killed on duty since 1937. When I went to interview the manager of the cab company about Whaley’s death, he literally pushed me out of the office, “If you’re smart, you won’t be coming around here asking questions.”

Domingo Benavides, an auto mechanic, was witness to the murder of Officer Tippit. Benavides testified he got a “really good view of the slayer.”

Benavides said the killer resembled newspaper pictures of Oswald, but he described him differently, “I remember the back of his head seemed like his hairline went square instead of tapered off . . .”

Benavides reported he was repeatedly threatened by the police who advised him not to talk about what he saw.

In mid-February 1964, his brother Eddy, who resembled him, was fatally shot in the back of the head at a beer joint on Second Avenue in Dallas. The case was marked “unsolved.”

Benavides’s father-in-law J. W. Jackson was not impressed by the investigation. He began his own inquiry. Two weeks later, J.W. Jackson was shot at his home. As the gunman escaped, a police car came around the block. It made no attempt to follow the speeding car with the gunman.

The police advised that Jackson should “lay off this business.” “Don’t go around asking questions; that’s our job.” Jackson and Benavides are both convinced that Eddy’s murder was a case of mistaken identity and that Domingo Benavides, the Tippit witness was the intended victim.

Lee Bowers’s testimony is perhaps as explosive as any recorded by the Warren Commission. He was one of the 65 witnesses who saw the President’s assassination, and who thought shots were fired from the area of the Grassy Knoll. (The Knoll is west of the Texas School Book Depository Building.) But more than that, he was in a unique position to observe some pretty strange behavior in the Knoll area before and during the assassination.

Bowers, then a towerman for the Union Terminal Co., was stationed in his 14 foot tower directly behind the Grassy Knoll. He faced the scene of the assassination. He could see the railroad overpass to his right. Directly in front of him was a parking lot and a wooden stockade fence, and a row of trees running along the top of the Grassy Knoll. The Knoll sloped down to the spot on Elm Street where the President was killed. Police had “cut off” traffic into the parking lot, Bowers said, “so that anyone moving around could actually be observed.”

Bowers made two significant observations which he revealed to the Warren Commission. First, he saw three unfamiliar cars slowly cruising around the parking area in the 35 minutes before the assassination; the first two left after a few minutes. The driver of the second car appeared to be talking into a “mic or telephone”; “he was holding something up to his mouth with one hand and he was driving with the other.” A third car with out-of-state license plates and mud up to the windows, probed all around the parking area. Bowers last remembered seeing it about eight minutes before the shooting, pausing “just above the assassination site.”

Bowers also observed two unfamiliar men standing on the top of the Knoll at the edge of the parking lot, within 10 or 15 feet of each other. “One man, middle aged or slightly older, fairly heavy set, in a white shirt, fairly dark trousers. Another man, younger, about mid-twenties, in either a plaid shirt or plaid coat or jacket.” Both were facing toward Elm and Houston in anticipation of the motorcade. The two were the only strangers he remembered seeing. His description shows a remarkable similarity to Julia Ann Mercer’s description of two unidentified men climbing the Knoll.

When the shots rang out, Bowers’s attention was drawn to the area where he had seen the two men; he could still make out the one in the white shirt: “The darker dressed man was too hard to distinguish from the trees.”

Bowers observed “some commotion” at that spot . . .,” ” . . . something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around . . . which attracted my eye for some reason which I could not identify.” At that moment, a motorcycle policeman left the Presidential motorcade and roared up the Grassy Knoll, straight to where the two mysterious gentlemen were standing. Later, Bowers testified that the “commotion” that caught his eye may have been a “flash of light or smoke.”

On the morning of August 9, 1966, Lee Bowers, vice president of a construction firm, was driving south of Dallas on business. He was two miles south of Midlothian, Texas when his brand new company car veered from the road and hit a bridge abutment. A farmer who saw it, said the car was going about 50 miles an hour, a slow speed for that road.

Bowers died in a Dallas hospital. He was 41. There was no autopsy and he was cremated. A doctor from Midlothian who rode to Dallas in the ambulance with Bowers, noticed something peculiar about the victim. “He was in some strange sort of shock.” The doctor said, “A different kind of shock than an accident victim experiences. I can’t explain it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

When I questioned his widow, she insisted there was nothing suspicious, but then became flustered and said, “They told him not to talk.”

Harold Russell was with Warren Reynolds when the Tippit shooting took place. Both men saw the Tippit killer escape. Russel was interviewed in January 1964, and signed a statement that the fleeing man was Oswald.

A few months after the assassination, Russell went back to his home near David, Oklahoma. In July of 1965, Russell went to a party with a female friend. He seemingly went out of his mind at the party and started telling everyone he was going to be killed. He begged friends to hide him. Someone called the police. When the policemen arrived, one of them hit Russell on the head with his pistol. Russell was then taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead a few hours later: cause of death was listed as “heart failure.”

Among others who died strangely were James Worrell, who died in a motorcycle accident on November 9, 1966. He saw a strange man run from the back door of the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination.

Gary Underhill was shot. This death was ruled suicide on May 8, 1964. Underhill was a former CIA agent and claimed he knew who was responsible for killing President Kennedy.

Delilah Walle was a worker at Ruby’s club. She was married only 24 days when her new husband shot her. She had been working on a book of what she supposedly knew about the assassination.

William “Bill” Waters died May 20, 1967. Police said he died of a drug overdose (demerol). No autopsy was performed. His mother said Oswald and Killam came to her home before the assassination and her son tried to talk Oswald and Killam out of being involved. Waters called FBI agents after the assassination. The FBI told him he knew too much and to keep his mouth shut. He was arrested and kept in Memphis in a county jail for eight months on a misdemeanor charge.

Albert Guy Bogard, an automobile salesman who worked for Downtown Lincoln Mercury, showed a new Mercury to a man using the name “Lee Oswald.”

Shortly after Bogard gave his testimony to a Commission attorney in Dallas, he was badly beaten and had to be hospitalized. Upon his release, he was fearful for his safety. Bogard was from Hallsville, La. He was found dead in his car at the Hallsville Cemetery on St. Valentine’s day in 1966. A rubber hose was attached to the exhaust and the other end extending into the car. The ruling was suicide. He was just 41 years old.

Jack Ruby died of cancer. He was taken into the hospital with Pneumonia. Twenty eight days later, he was dead from cancer.

David Ferrie of New Orleans, before he could be brought to trial for his involvement in the Kennedy assassination, died of brain hemorrhage. Just what caused his brain hemorrhage has not been established. Ferrie was to testify in the famous Jim Garrison trial, but death prevented him.

Dr. Mary Stults Sherman, age 51, was found stabbed and burned in her apartment in New Orleans. Dr. Sherman had been working on a cancer experiment with Ferrie.

Another Ferrie associate, Eladio Cerefine de Valle, 43, died on the same day as Ferrie. His skull was split open; he was then shot. DeValle had used Ferrie as a pilot. DeValle had been identifying some men in a photo taken in New Orleans for Jim Garrison. One of the men in the photo was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Paul Dyer, of the New Orleans Police force died of cancer. He was the first police officer to interview Ferrie. Martin got sick on the job and died a month later of cancer. He had just interviewed David Ferrie.

News reporters were not exempt either. Two lady reporters died strangely. Lisa Howard supposedly committed suicide. She knew a great deal about the “understanding” which was in the making after the Bay of Pigs, between President Kennedy and the Cubans.

Marguerite Higgins bluntly accused the American authorities of the November 2nd, 1963 killing of Premier Diem and his brother Nhu. A few months after her accusation, she died in a landmine explosion in Vietnam.

On Saturday November 23, 1963, Jack Zangetty, the manager of a $150,000 modular motel complex near Lake Lugert, Oklahoma, remarked to some friends that “Three other men–not Oswald–killed the President.” He also stated that “A man named Ruby will kill Oswald tomorrow and in a few days a member of the Frank Sinatra family will be kidnapped just to take some of the attention away from the assassination.”

Two weeks later, Jack Zangetty was found floating in Lake Lugert with bullet holes in his chest. It appeared to witnesses he had been in the water one to two weeks.

Lou Staples, a radio announcer who was doing a good many of his radio shows on the Kennedy assassination, lost his life sometime on Friday night May 13, 1977. This was near Yukon, Oklahoma. He had been having radio shows on the assassination since 1973 and the response to his programs was overwhelming.

Lou’s death was termed suicide, but the bullet ending his life entered behind his right temple and Lou was left handed. He joined Gary Underhill, William Pitzer and Joe Cooper whose “suicides” were all done with the “wrong hand” shots to the head.

Lou had been stating that he wanted to purchase some property to build a home. He was lured out to a wheat field and his life ended there. I have been to the spot where Lou died.

Karyn Kupcinet, daughter of Irv Kupcinet, was trying to make a long distance call from Los Angeles. According to reports, the operator heard Miss Kupcinet scream into the phone that President Kennedy was going to be killed.

Two days after the assassination, she was found murdered in her apartment. The case is unsolved. She was 23.

Rose Cherami, 40, was an employee of Jack Ruby’s club. She was riding with two men on a return trip from Florida carrying a load of narcotics. She was thrown from the car when an argument began between her and one of the men. She was hospitalized for injuries and drug withdrawal. She told authorities that President Kennedy was going to be killed in Dallas. After her release from the hospital, she was a victim of a hit and run accident on September 4, 1965 near Big Sandy, Texas.

Robert L. Perrin was a gun runner for Jack Ruby. His wife, Nancy testified before the Warren Commission that Robert took a dose of arsenic in August 1962.

Guy Bannister was a private detective who was closely involved in the Jim Garrison trial. Guy and his partner, Hugh Ward, died within a 10 day period as the Warren Commission was closing its hearings. Guy supposedly died of a heart attack, but witnesses said he had a bullet hole in his body.

George deMohrenschildt was another man who was to give testimony but never made it. DeMohrenschildt, in his final days, became suspicious of everyone around him, even his wife, and was nearing a nervous breakdown some thought. He died of gun shot wounds. The verdict was suicide. But deMohrenschildt was a member of the White Russian society and very wealthy. He visited Lee Harvey Oswald and Marina Oswald when they lived on Neely Street. Marina visited the deMohrenschildts when she and Lee Harvey Oswald were having some of their disagreements.

Cliff Carter, LBJ’s aide who rode in the Vice President’s follow up car in the motorcade in Dealey Plaza where President Kennedy was gunned down, was LBJ’s top aide during his first administration. Carter died of mysterious circumstances. Carter died of pneumonia when no penicillin could be located in Washington, D.C. in September 1971. This was supposedly the cause of death.

Buddy Walthers, Deputy Sheriff, was at the kill sight of President Kennedy He picked up a bullet in a hunk of brain matter blown from the President’s head. Walthers never produced the bullet for evidence.

Walthers was also at the Texas Theater when Oswald was arrested. In a January 10th, 1969 shooting, Walthers was shot through the heart. In a shootout Walthers and his companion Deputy Alvin Maddox, were fired upon by Cherry, an escaped prisoner. Walthers and Maddox were trying to capture Cherry when Walthers was shot through the heart. Walthers’s widow received $10,000.00 for her husband dying in the line of duty.

Clay Shaw, age 60, died five years after he was charged by Jim Garrison for his involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Some reports have it that he had been ill for months after surgery for removing a blood clot. Other newspaper reports of his death stated he had cancer. It was revealed that Shaw was a paid contact for the CIA. A neighbor reported that an ambulance was seen pulling up to the Shaw home. Then a body was carried in and an empty stretcher brought out. A few hours later, Shaw was reportedly found dead in his home. Then he was given a quick embalming before a Coroner could be notified. It was then impossible to determine the cause of death.

Roger Dean Craig

On May 15, 1975, Roger Dean Craig died of a massive gun shot wound to the chest. Supposedly, it was his second try at suicide and a success. Craig was a witness to the slaughter of President Kennedy. Only Craig’s story was different from the one the police told.

Craig testified in the Jim Garrison trial. Before this, Craig had lost his job with the Dallas Police Dept. In 1961, he had been “Man of the Year.” Because he would not change his story of the assassination, he was harassed and threatened, stabbed, shot at, and his wife left him.

Craig wrote two manuscripts of what he witnessed. “When They Kill A President” and “The Patient Is Dying.”

Craig’s father was out mowing the lawn when Craig supposedly shot himself. Considering the hardships, Craig very well could have committed suicide. But no one will ever know.

John M. Crawford, 46, died in a mysterious plane crash near Huntsville, Texas on April 15, 1969. It appeared from witnesses that Crawford had left in a rush.

Crawford was a homosexual and a close friend of Jack Ruby’s. Ruby supposedly carried Crawford’s phone number in his pocket at all times. Crawford was also a friend of Buell Wesley Frazier’s, the neighbor who took Lee Harvey Oswald to work on that fatal morning of November 22, 1963.

Hale Boggs was the only member of the Warren Commission who disagreed with the conclusions. Hale Boggs did not follow Earl Warren and his disciples. He totally disagreed. Hale Boggs was in a plane crash lost over frozen Alaska.

Nicholas J. Chetta, M.D. age 50, Orleans Parish coroner since 1950, died at Mercy Hospital on May 25, 1968. Newspaper reports were sketchy. It was said he suffered a heart attack.

Dr. Chetta was the coroner who served at the death of David Ferrie.

Dr. Chetta was the key witness regarding Perry Russo against Clay Shaw. Shaw’s attorney went into federal court only after Dr. Chetta was dead.

Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered, then his assassin not captured until over a year later. Dr. King was the only hope this country had for bringing about equality.

The death of Robert Kennedy, only shortly after Dr. King’s death on June 5th, 1968, was a brazen act which gave notice to this entire nation. It became imperative, when Senator Kennedy became a threat as a Presidential candidate, that he had to be killed.

There is evidence that two persons, a man, and a woman were with the accused killer, but authorities have found no trace of them. Coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi told the Grand Jury the powder burns indicated the murder gun was fired not more than two to three inches from Kennedy’s right ear. Witnesses testified that Sirhan was never closer than four or five feet to the Senator.

I have not, by any means, listed “all” of the strange deaths. I have a complete list in my books. I have listed the most significant ones that occurred after the assassination. The strange deaths after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in my estimate, numbered over 100, but I am certain I know of only a fraction.

Many strange deaths occurred after the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. No one knows the exact number.

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All images in this article are from the authors.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Gazans are a forgotten people, suffocating under illegal Israeli blockade for over 10 years – solely for political reasons, not security as falsely claimed, the world community largely in cahoots with Washington and Tel Aviv, failing to responsibly end a high crime against humanity.

The international community has done pathetically little to end the suffering of two million beleaguered people – victims of Israeli slow-motion genocide, a high crime gone unpunished, including three preemptive wars of aggression, inflicting mass casualties and destruction.

Israeli soldiers shoot Gazan children for target practice, target farmers in their fields and fishermen at sea.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israeli soldiers lethally shot 16-year-old Amir Abed Abu Masa’ad on Thursday, seriously wounding two others, near the central Gaza border fence, another 16-year-old Palestinian murdered in the West Bank on the same day.

These type incidents repeat with disturbing regularity. In his new book, titled “Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom,” Norman Finkelstein said his work examined the plight of beleaguered Gazans “like a coroner’s inquest,” explaining facts about what’s gone objectively along with “moral indignation.”

His book is “a story of martyrdom” of an entrapped people, explaining their “human suffering,” his anger and moral outrage spilling out on the pages of what he recounted “about this godforsaken place.”

It’s no exaggeration calling Gaza an open-air prison, my characterization numerous times in previous writing about the Strip.

Israel didn’t disengage from Gaza as falsely claimed. It “redeployed” on the Strip’s periphery, relocating Israeli settlers to West Bank areas in preparation for brutalizing its Palestinian residents, no Jews in harm’s way during terror-bombings and cross-border incursions.

Gazans endure horrific occupation harshness, far worse than West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians. When Israel attacks the Strip, they have no place to hide, no havens safe from its aggression.

Finkelstein: “(V)irtually all the incidents between Israel and Gaza were initiated by Israel, and it’s well documented” – Gazans falsely blamed for its lawlessness.

Israel is the aggressor, Gazans and other Palestinians the victims. The peace process is a colossal hoax.

Israel won’t ever accept Palestinian statehood – except in name only on isolated bantustans surrounded by hostile, encroaching settlements.

Compromise is out of the question. Palestinians are to be exploited, brutalized like enemies, denied their fundamental rights, ethnically cleansed from their privately owned land.

Western governments and media largely turn a blind eye to what’s going on, Palestinian suffering of no consequence in Gaza or elsewhere in the Territories.

Negotiating with Washington and Israel is an exercise in futility. Regimes running both countries at all times don’t give a hoot about Palestinian rights.

They’ve suffered for over 100 years post-Balfour. Nothing in prospect suggests relief, committed resistance against a brutal occupier their only option.

There is no Plan B.

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

There are two general theories about the protests that are taking place in Iran. One, unfavorable to the Iranian government and establishment, is that the widespread discontent and rioting is over mismanagement of the economy that has particularly hurt poorer Iranians. The other is that we are seeing a contemporary replay of 1953 Iran and the downfall of Mohammad Mossadegh, which was orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI-6.

The Iranian public’s expectation that the nuclear deal would lead to improvements in their lives were wrecked by Donald Trump’s decertification of the agreement and expectations that the pact would be wrecked by America’s renewing sanctions on Iran later this month. All of Trump’s advisers are hostile to Iran and it has also been reported that tearing up the agreement derived from a personal pledge made by Trump to Israeli/American billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who also demanded that the US Embassy be moved to Jerusalem.

The vanishing nuclear deal and struggling economy bore fruit in the 2018 government budget that cut subsidies on food and government services while increasing fuel and commodity prices. Religious institutions controlled by the Supreme Religious Council and the business entities run by the Revolutionary Guards were reportedly spared the cuts, fueling popular anger.

If Donald Trump had really cared about the protesters or democracy, he would have said nothing about the protests. Instead, he appears intent on using the Iranian government suppression of the demonstrations to finally kill the nuclear deal by reinstating sanctions. He has tweeted five times, supporting the Iranian people who are seeking democracy but also giving the Tehran government a club to use against the demonstrators by claiming that they are tools of foreign governments, which is exactly what it is doing.

But given the history of foreign interventions in the Middle East, is the United States or Israel plausibly involved in the demonstrations? The answer to that is both yes and no. There is considerable evidence that the United States and possibly Israel, joined by Saudi Arabia, have set up several command centers in Iraq and Afghanistan to support the protests. They have been using social networking as well as radio broadcasts to encourage the people to get out and demonstrate. One such station called AmadNews, broadcasting from outside Iran, called on demonstrators to attack police stations and government buildings. It appears to be a US government front manned by Persian speaking Israelis. It’s actual ability to drive the demonstrations appears, however, to be questionable.

On the covert action front, neither the CIA or Mossad has the resources on the ground to infiltrate and direct crowds of people to act, so the Iranian government claim that there are outside agitators can largely be regarded as propaganda for its own domestic audience. The CIA’s infrastructure in Iran was devastated in the 1990s and was never effectively reconstituted. The Agency post-Director George Tenet also concentrated heavily on paramilitary activity and lost much of its ability to spot, assess, recruit, train and run agents. Developing a spy network in a country like Iran where the United States lacks any physical presence and does not even have an Embassy is a daunting task.

This is not to say that the US and Israel are not heavily focused on Iran. In a recent conference, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster claimed, completely inaccurately, that Iran is the source of sectarian violence and supports jihadist networks “across the Arab world.” Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the National Security Council’s former senior director for intelligence had previously commented that the White House intended to use American spies to “regime change” the Iranian government.

With that objective in mind, in June new CIA Director Mike Pompeo created a special Iran combined task force under Michael D’Andrea, nicknamed the Dark Prince or Mike Ayatollah, a controversial but highly regarded Middle East specialist who is himself a convert to Islam. D’Andrea has reportedly been very active, but reconstituting a network takes time and is, of necessity, work done carefully and methodically. Pompeo, in his desire to relearn old fashioned spying and covert action, has more recently announced that the Agency will be working to recover its “viciousness,” but it is presumably not there yet.

*

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

Featured image is from the author.

If there is such a thing as “Political Islam”, then, by the same logic there are many other “politicals”.  Some of these would include “Political Christianity”, “Political Humanitarianism”, and “Political Feminism”.

A constant thread running through all of these “politicals” is that they are fraudulent. They are concepts that subvert, displace, and weaponize that which they profess to represent.

“Political Islam” is anti-Islamic. “Political Christianity” is anti-Christian. “Political Humanitarianism” is anti-humanitarian, and “political feminism” is anti-feminism.

“Political Islam” as represented by Wahhabism is an anti-Islamic extremist ideology that is grown nurtured and sustained by US imperialism which imposes mass murder, destruction, chaos and sectarianism on prey nations such as Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and Syria.

“Political Islam” is a tool for its counterparts who, by the same logic, would be described as “Political Christians”. Everything the so-called Christians do is anti-Christian, and this includes its support for the aforementioned terror proxies and its anti-humanitarian bombing campaigns, all of which is deepening the overseas holocaust and erasing Christian populations from where they previously flourished.

Political Islam and its “Christian” counterparts are in fact trying to destroy everything in Syria that is  representative of religion correctly interpreted: religious tolerance, religious icons, religious pluralism, and civilized society.

All of these anti-religious regime change wars are also, necessarily anti-humanitarian and anti-feminist. In terrorist-occupied areas of Syria, for example, women and men do not have “human rights.” Those who oppose the occupation are tortured, imprisoned, murdered, or all of the above.

If NATO and its allies succeed in Syria, all Syrian women (and men) will be denied basic human rights. But this hasn’t stopped Hollywood star Angelina Jolie[1] from injecting her brand of “political feminism” in the mix by suggesting that NATO can be a leader in defending women’s rights.

NATO is in fact a leader in destroying women’s rights, and it always will be. When NATO imposes mass death and destruction on non-belligerent prey countries such as those mentioned above, it necessarily erases human rights – including the rights of multitudes of innocent men and women to live.

Screenshot The Guardian December 10, 2017

Strange times we live in when the military organization that weaponizes religion, and is most responsible for the current overseas holocaust, is tasked with being an agency to advance religious and  human rights.

*

Note

[1] Jens Stoltenberg and Angelina Jolie, “Why Nato must defend women’s rights.” the Guardian. 10 December, 2017.

(https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/10/why-nato-must-defend-womens-rights) Accessed 12 January, 2018.

Featured image is from El Pais.

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With the emergence of international organizations (IO) in international relations, the discourse on the sovereignty of states especially small states has become increasingly relevant. Globalization is a process that facilitates interdependence and co-operation among states and non-state actors through negotiations in order to achieve common interests. This is known as multilateralism or global governance.

Therefore, this means that governance of sovereign states in international relations is no longer limited to governments but now incorporates the powerful influence of international organizations in internal matters. Scholar Samuel J. Barkin (2006) accurately pointed out that power is transferred from governments to international organizations and this leaves the state with limited autonomy in its policy options. Barkin’s argument holds true for the Jamaican experience, as the government grapples with the critical decision of public sector wage negotiations while attempting to remain committed to the conditions of the IMF agreement.

The entrapment of the state, government and citizens in a complex web of finance and decision making must not only be attributed to the fiscal mismanagement of different government administrations and consistently high debts. The predicament can be also analysed using a system level of analysis whereby our foreign policy behaviour possesses typical small state characteristics. Jeanne Hey (2003) explains,

“small states rely on superpowers for protection, partnerships and resources and join multilateral institutions whenever possible”.

As a result of our small size and position in global affairs, Jamaica’s foreign policy is constructed on the principle of ‘survival’ but eventually a deadlock situation is created whereby the government is forced to meet the demands of both citizens and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). By extension, it is also no surprise that there is a growing level of resistance and public protests in the form of “sick outs” from police officers because the structural adjustment loan conditions of the IMF agreement which includes a public sector wage freeze, cutbacks in social spending and devaluation of the currency subvert indicators of robust human development. This is most evident in the 2013 United Conference on Trade and Development:  Trade Policy Framework on Jamaica which comments that real incomes of citizens have not increased significantly for decades while the 2016 UNDP Report on Jamaica demonstrates that 76,000 Jamaicans are poor based on indicators such as health, education and income using the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI).

Furthermore, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not concerned about human development problems and our peculiar economic experiences but rather meeting macro-economic targets. The government’s major challenge is to consolidate a model of development which balances vibrant productive sectors with expanding the real freedoms and privileges that citizens should enjoy. Nevertheless, public sector wage negotiations have complex dimensions to it. It is also very difficult because the policy options are restricted by the dictates of the IMF and making a narrow, impulsive decision can compound serious implications on our nation’s development.The current public sector wage negotiation forces us then, to reflect on the notion of global governance by critically asking, ‘whose interests does our development serve and who will we serve?’

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Tina Renier lives in Jamaica and is currently a final year student at the University of the West Indies, Mona pursuing a Bachelor of Science in International Relations.

“We need a political intervention to make this situation end. He (Assange) is the only political prisoner in Western Europe.” Juan Braco

The persecution of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is now seven years old. Ecuador has protected Assange for the past half decade from being turned over to Washington by the corrupt Swedish and British for torture and prosecution as a spy by giving Assange political asylum inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Ecuador has now given citizenship to Assange and attempted to provide his safe transit out of England by giving him diplomatic status, but the British government continued in its assigned role of jailer by rejecting Ecuador’s request for diplomatic status for Assange, just as the most servile of Washington’s puppet states rejected the order by the UN Committee on Arbitrary Detention to immediate release Assange from his arbitrary detention.

Assange got into trouble with Washington, because his news organization, Wikileaks, published files released by Bradley Manning. The files were a tremendous embarrassment to Washington, because they showed how Washington conspires against governments and betrays its allies, and the files contained an audio/video film of US military forces murdering innocent people walking down a street and then murdering a father and his two young children who stopped to give aid to the civilians the American soldiers had shot. The film revealed the heartlessness and criminal cruelty of the US troops, who were enjoying playing a real live video game with real people as their victims.

It was Manning who suffered, not the troops who committed murder. Manning was held for two years in conditions that experts said constituted torture while a case was framed against him. Some believe the harsh conditions affected his mind. Manning was convicted by a kangaroo court and sentenced to 35 years in prison, but Obama in an act of humanity unusual for Washington pardoned Manning.

Washington wanted Assange as well, and the chance came when two Swedish women who, attracted to Assange by his celebrity status, seduced him. The two women had not secured the cooperation they wanted from Assange in the use of condoms and, brainwashed by HIV fears, wanted Assange to join them in being tested.

Assange, misreading the extent of their fears, was too slow to comply, and the women went to the police to see if he could be required to be tested. According to the women, the police made up the charge of rape. The women themselves disavow the charge.

The charges were investigated, and the chief Swedish prosecutor Eva Finne dismissed the charges, saying

“there is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.”

Mysteriously, the case was reopened by another prosecutor, Marianne Ny, who many suspect was operating at the behest of Washington. On November 30, two days after Assange began publishing the Cablegate materials leaked by Bradley Manning, Ny issued an Interpol “red alert” arrest warrant for Assange. This was an unusual request as no charges were outstanding against Assange, and hitherto extradition from one country to another on an arrest warrant required actual charges, whereas Ny said she wanted Assange for questioning. Most everyone in the know understood that Washington had ordered Sweden to get its hands on Assange and to turn him over to Washington.

Assange challenged the legality of the arrest warrant in British courts, but the British court, many believe following Washington’s orders, ruled against the law and in favor of Washington. Assange assented to the arrest and presented himself to a British police station. He was placed in solitary confinement at Wandsworth prison. If memory serves, the daughter of Sir James Goldsmith paid his bond and he was placed under house arrest. When it became clear that the Swedish prosecutor wanted Assange for Washington, not for any charges against him in Sweden, Ecuador give him asylum, and he fled to the embassy in London.

Where he has been ever since.

Sweden has closed the case a second time, and Assange is no longer wanted for questioning in Sweden. Therefore, there is no longer any reason for the British to hold him for Sweden. But the British government never were holding Assange for Sweden. The British were holding him for Washington. And they still are. Even though Sweden has closed a case based on a false report by police and have no basis for any charges against Assange, the British government says it will grab him the minute he steps outside the embassy.

The British are so desperate to serve their Washington master that once they even declared that they were going to violate diplomatic immunity and invade the Ecuadorian Embassy and seize Assange.

The British excuse for a once proud government’s continuing servitude to Washington as Assange’s jailer is that by taking asylum in the embassy Assange jumped bail and therefore the British have to arrest him for not surrendering a second time to the police for an investigation that has been closed.

Stefania Maurizi, an Italian investigative journalist for La Repubblica, smelling the stench of fraud that covers the entire case, has been trying for two years to get her hands on the correspondence between the UK, US, and Swedish governments pertaining to the case in order to pull back the shroud of the Washington-orchestrated propaganda that colors the case. A British tribunal refused to release any documents on the grounds that it had to protect the British Prosecution Service’s relationship with foreign authorities.

That tells you all you need to know. Julian Assange has lost seven years of his life because stinking dirty Washington wanted revenge on Assange for exercising the US Constitution-protected right of a free press, and the stinking dirty governments of Sweden and Britain did Washington’s dirty work. What we know for certain is that Assange is totally innocent and that there is no honor and no integrity in the US, Swedish, and British governments. Law means nothing to the scum that misrule these countries.

In the US and probably throughout Europe, politicians and feminists, with the exception of Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff, used the presstitute media to paint Assange as a rapist and as a spy. The feminists cared nothing about any truth; they just wanted a man to demonize. Truth was the last thing on politicians’ minds. They just wanted to divert attention from Washington’s crimes and betrayals of allies by portraying Assange as a threat and traitor to America. They were unconcerned that Assange could not be a traitor to America as he is not an American citizen. In actual fact, there is no basis in law for any US claim against Assange. Yet because of Washington and its servile British puppet state, Assange remains interred in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. Clearly, honor and respect for law reside in Ecuador, not in the US, UK, or Sweden.

But facts, along with law and civil liberty, have ceased to mean anything in the Western world. The corrupt US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the arrest of Assange is a “priority.” The British police, mere lackeys of Washington, said that they would still arrest Assange, despite the case being dropped, if he left the embassy.

For the British, serving Washington is a higher calling than the honor of their country.

*

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

Featured image is from Snopes.

Featured image: A family eats ice cream in North Korea (Source: Eva Bartlett)

Lawyer Chris Black and Prof. Graeme MacQueen are helping build a revitalized peace movement. Part of that involves standing up to the barrage of propaganda on North Korea, and demanding that our government play a more positive role in defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. We discuss their recent op-ed article in the Toronto Star, the less-known reality of Korea, and the U.S. as a stopping block to peace.

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The discussion in France on where the French jihadists captured in Syria would be judged, is a clear example of a false debate. It is animated by a television presenter and journalist that hide their links to their listeners. The issue of where jihadists of French nationality will be tried is in fact intended to lay the groundwork for getting rid of those that can testify to France’s military role against Syria. Hoping that its allies accept it, France is preparing to recognize a pseudo State, under the name “Rojava”, following the model used in “Kosovo”.

On 5 January 2018, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, received his Turkish homologue Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the Elysee.

Ankara’s position: this meeting should allow Turkey to strengthen its links with the European Union. It will bypass its current practice of channelling its relations through its traditional partner, Germany, with which relations are now strained.

Key point: Ankara hoped to reach an agreement with Paris on its future plans. The United Kingdom had tasked Turkey with managing the presence of the jihadists, which are now funded by Qatar. President Erdoğan is aiming to fulfill two objectives of his foreign policy:

First: obtain the support of the Kemaist Nationalists by applying the national oath of Ottoman Parliament; the reason for which the Turkish army is illegally occupying North Cyprus, North Syria and Northern Iraq [1].

Concurrently: continue the wars through the jihadists, shifting the centre of fighting from Syria to the Horn of Africa and the Arab peninsula. This is why in the course of the past six months, Erdogan has discreetly led 1,500 soldiers to Somalia and 35,000 to Qatar. He is moving others to Sudan and is getting ready to do the same thing in Djibouti.

Paris’s position: to re-establish mutual commitments, secretly taken in 2011, by Juppé and Davutoğlu with London giving the go ahead. Above all, to establish a new State in the North of Syria to which Turkey would be able to expel its Kurds [2]. This agreement had been unilaterally set aside by President Holland after the battle of Aïn al-Arab (the Syrian city referred to as “Kobani” in keeping with Nato terminology), provoking a strong reaction from Turkey: the attacks perpetrated by Daesh, on 13 November 2015 [3]. This plan is not necessarily contradictory to the current options of the United Kingdom and Turkey.

Knowing full well how reluctant Parliament would be to embark on such a venture, President Macron has chosen to ensure that there is no other option. How? opening in advance a second file.

The Return of the Jihadists

On 4 January 2018, the Secretary of State and Spokesperson for the French Government, Benjamin Griveaux, was interviewed by Jean-Jacques Bourdin on RMC and BFM TV. Benjamin declared that the jihadists made prisoners in Syria by the international coalition against Daesh (that is, by the troops commanded by the Pentagon) will be able to stand trial in the North of Syria “if the judicial institutions can guarantee a fair process: where the “rights of the accused are respected”.

Benjamin Griveaux used to work with Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Now, he is very close to Emmanuel Macron and participated throughout the Macron electoral campaign. Ben’s wife, a lawyer, drafted the legal part of Macron’s programme when he was standing as a presidential candidate.

Not long after, the same journalist, Jean-Jacques Bourdin interviewed in Paris Khaled Issa, a representative of the “Rojava”. The latter confirmed that his “government” is ready to try jihadists who are French nationals. At the end of a sentence, he let the cat out of the bag, announcing that the final decision aut punire aut dedere, would be taken not by France but by a global court for all jihadists whatever their nationality.

The following day, on 5 January, the same Jean-Jacques Bourdin, interviewed the Minister of Justice, Nicole Belloubet. She declares:

“there is no state out there that we recognize, but there are some local authorities, and we can accept that they can proceed with judicial proceedings”.

During these three interviews, never, absolutely never, did Jean-Jacques Bourdin ask his guests if the decisions that could be announced in the “Rojava” would be recognized by the French Courts (Non bis in idem). Unless they were recognized, the defendants would have to be retried and could be sentenced for a second time for the same crime if they returned to France.

When Jean-Jacques Bourdin interviewed the Minister of Justice, he questioned her on other matters. He surprised the public by raising points on which the Chancellery had not for the time being communicated. He did not specify how he had access to this confidential information.

Jean-Jacques Bourdin is the husband of Anne Nivat, a war correspondent, no friend to Russia and notoriously close to the General Management of Foreign Intelligence (DGSE). BFM TV belongs to the businessmen Patrick Drahi and Bruno Ledoux. The latter had kindly provided premises for the “Rojava” to set up a base in Paris.

Benjamin Griveaux and Nicole Belloubet have taken care to avoid responding to journalist’s questions by using the words “Kurd”, “Kurdistan” and “Rojava”. They are only evoking the “authorities” (sic) of the North of Syria.

Towards a violation characterized by the Law

If “Rojava” were to decide to try the French, it would violate the following:

• the bilateral treaty between Syria and France which recognizes the jurisdiction of the Syrian Arab Republic as the only legitimate one on Syrian territory.
• the European Convention on Human Rights and Safeguarding Fundamental Liberties.
  • art 6 provides that in order for justice to be equitable, the first thing you need is a court established by the law and a decision that can be enforced. As the “Rojava” does not have prisons, the options would be a not-guilty verdict or a conviction sanctioned by the death penalty (which does not exist in the countries of the Council of Europe). Of course, nothing will prevent recourse to other punishments and to discreetly recycle the accused so that they are fighting within other theatres of operation.
  • its article 7 encapsulates the principle that you cannot convict someone of a crime (crimen), less still inflict a punishment (poenam) on them, unless there is a law (lex) which authorizes such action (Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege). As we write, there is no Kurdish Penal Code.
• Art 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, located in the preamble of the French Constitution, requires that those who request, expedite or enforce or have enforced arbitrary orders must be punished.
• the French Constitution:
  • Art 55 provides that bilateral treaties regularly applied by the other signatory parties continue to be in force in France. This is the case with the bilateral treaties between France and Syria.
• • Art 68 places criminal responsibility on the members of the government and the President of the Republic for any “failure to execute their duties which is clearly incompatible with the exercise of its mandate”.

Scrubbing out witnesses

Prior to committing themselves to a path that it knows to be flagrantly contrary to the Law, the French government has used the media to generate a phobia of “the return of the jihadists”. However, no other country affected by the same phenomenon has started a conversation on this theme. Nothing distinguishes these accused from other assassins that the ordinary courts have penal jurisdiction over and which normally sentence them.

Public opinion has been blinded; the government is trying to shirk off its own responsibility and its predecessors. Some of the detainees cannot but help bringing up during public hearings, their links with the DGSE and the role of the Minister of the Armies in this war.

The Phillippe Macron government is also following the footsteps of previous governments [4]. We remember for example how the Sarkozy-Fillon government managed to wash away the testimonies of French soldiers freed by Syria in the context of a peace accord with the Islamic Emirate of Baba Amr. Not a single French media has published this information, despite articles in the Arab media, in March 2012, when the French military soldiers captured by the Syrian troops were handed over to Admiral Edouard Guillaud at the Syrian Lebanese border.

Towards the automatic recognition of the “Rojava”

The principle of res judicata [translator’s note: a matter that has already been ruled upon] ensured that the Rojava was automatically recognized as a sovereign and independent state.

In this telegram of 5 January 1921, the French High Commission for the Colonization of Syria (mandate granted by the League of Nations) announces that it is recruiting, with the help of the Turkish, 900 men from the Kurdish tribe of the Millis to repress the Arab nationalist rebellion at Aleppo and Raqqa. These mercenaries will fight as French policemen under the flag that the current Syrian Free Army (Telegram of 5 January 1921) wave. (Source: Archives the French land forces)

Historically, the Kurds are a nomadic people. They are like the Gypsies in Europe, only a warlike version. They roam about in the valley of the Euphrates and can eventually cross the North of what currently is Syria [5]. At the end of the Ottoman Empire, some groups of Kurds were recruited to participate in exterminating the Christians in general and the Armenians specifically [6]. The reward for carrying out these crimes: they receive the lands of the Armenians that they had massacred and they settled themselves there. During the French colonization, the Kurds belonging to the tribe of the Millis had been recruited to wipe out Arab nationalism in Raqqa and Aleppo, then they left Syria when it became independent.

The “Rojava” had been created on Arab territory where the Kurds have only established a continuous presence since the repression where they were collectively victims during the Turkish civil war in the 1980s. The Christian and Muslim Arab populations had lived there and had been expelled from there during the war against Syria. Now the Kurds were preventing them from returning there as citizens.

The “Rojava” was then placed in the hands of the PYD. This was a Kurdish party that was formerly of pro-Soviet Marxist-Lenin ideology, but made a sudden turn and switched to being anarchist and pro-US [7]. Despite the claims of its communicators, it retains a highly structured hierarchy, a totalitarian cult of its founder and an iron will. The best one can say is that there is parity in the positions of responsibility. They are occupied simultaneously by a man and a woman. This new organization is applied also to the general staff whereas the women are rare in this militia; in any event, more rare than in the mixed armies of the region, Tsahal and the Syrian Arab Army.

Published by Robin Wright, nine months before the Daesh offensive in Iraq and Syria, this map presents the borders of the “Rojava” and the “Caliphate”. According to the Pentagon researcher, this map rectifies the map that Ralf Peters published in 2005 for remodelling the enlarged Middle East.

In 2013, the Pentagon had forecast supporting the French-Turkish plan in the context of remodelling the enlarged Middle East. It would have simultaneously organized the creation of a “Sunnistan” straddling Iraq and Syria (see Robin Wright’s map). However, it abandoned these two plans when President Trump decided to eliminate Daesh, no longer considering the Kurdish question as a justification for GI’s being in Syria. So, it will be necessary to also bring the United States back to the initial plan.

Furthermore, having taken into account Israel’s failure last year to create another Kurdish state, this time in the North of Iraq [8], Paris and Ankara must anticipate the opposition of Iran, Iraq and Syria and more generally, almost the entire Arab world.

In 2011 Ankara was proactively pursuing its desire to create pseudo Kurd state in the North of Syria. It is now opposed to it, if the new entity is sponsored by the United States (which has tried to assassinate President Erdogan three times and funded a Kurdish party to make him lose his majority in Parliament). During this joint press conference with President Macron, Recep Tayyip Erdogan had indicated its red line: to rule out any possibility for the PKK — that France is also qualifying as a “terrorist organization” — creating a corridor permitting it to import arms from the Mediterranean towards Anatolia in the South East. From there, the issues are limited to ensuring that the conflicts between the PKK and the “Rojava” provoke a clean break and that the new state does not have access to the Mediterranean as had been forecast in the initial plan.

Translation by Anoosha Boralessa

*

Thierry Meyssan is a political consultant, President-founder of the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network). Latest work in French – Sous nos Yeux. Du 11-Septembre à Donald Trump(Right Before our Eyes. From 9/11 to Donald Trump).

Notes

[1] “The Military Strategy of the New Turkey”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 14 October 2017.

[2] “The unavowable project for a pseudo-Kurdistan”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 7 December 2015.

[3] “The motive for the attacks in Paris and Brussels”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 28 March 2016.

[4] “Training French soldiers to supervise Daesh”, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 27 October 2016.

[5] On the Kurds, read the three part enquiry of Sarah Abed, Voltaire Network, September 2017.

[6] “Today’s Turkey continues the Armenian genocide”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 14 May 2015.

[7] “NATO’s Anarchist Brigades”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 12 September 2017.

[8] “Kurdistan – what the referendum is hiding”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Al-Watan (Syria) , Voltaire Network, 26 September 2017.

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

On the weekend before launching the Iraq War in 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush met with key war allies on Terceira, one of Portugal’s Azores islands in the North Atlantic. At their remote retreat, Bush, the UK’s Tony Blair and Spain’s José María Aznar put the finishing touches on their “Coalition of the Willing,” the multilateral figleaf assembled to cover the illegal American-led invasion.

Later this month, an aggressive U.S. administration is once again gathering its war allies together for planning and discussion. This time the meeting will take place in Vancouver on Jan. 15-16, and the subject will be Korea. The summit will be co-hosted by Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and Justin Trudeau’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland. More than a dozen other countries who deployed troops as part of the Korean War will reportedly also be in attendance, including: Belgium, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

During a visit to Ottawa last month, Tillerson explained the purpose of the “Vancouver Group” like this:

“to advance the pressure campaign against North Korea, and send a unified message from the international community: ‘We will not accept you as a nuclear weapons nation.’”

The CBC described the Vancouver meeting as part of “an aggressive diplomatic campaign designed to force the rogue regime to the negotiation table and avoid devastating military action.” Our public broadcaster is too imprecise. There’s more than one rogue regime in question, and it’s the rogue administration represented by the ex-CEO of Exxon Tillerson that poses the greatest danger of unleashing a devastating — if not unimaginably catastrophic — military exchange.

On Tuesday, in response to a New Year’s speech from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Trump tweeted,

“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

President Trump’s Twitter taunts in recent days underline the danger of the Canadian government’s offer to co-host a Korea summit at this perilous moment, and the remarkable irresponsibility of the Liberal government’s near-total refusal to differentiate itself from — let alone speak out against — U.S. foreign policy.

Although Freeland has said the Canadian government views a diplomatic solution to the Korea crisis as “essential and possible,” the U.S. approach, complicated by Trump’s oafish impulsiveness, is fundamentally dangerous and irresponsible.

Here we must pause to assert some basics that cut against the usual ahistorical portrayal of the madman in Pyongyang and his hermetic kingdom. As repressive and brutal as the Kim family dynasty is, there’s no evidence that they are suicidal. The regime’s obsession with military firepower didn’t emerge ex nihilo, and has its roots in reaction to the utter decimation of northern Korea by the U.S. and its allies during the 1950s war. As The Washington Post noted a couple of years ago:

The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.

Turning to more recent history, the DPRK’s dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities and its chest-beating after every successful missile test is a predictable outcome of 2003 regime change in Iraq. When neoconservative David Frum penned Bush’s “axis of evil” line, he was putting Iran and North Korea on notice. They responded logically: by accelerating their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction to give themselves bargaining power or a sufficient military deterrent to avoid a regime change invasion.

As Tillerson and Freeland prepare to meet in Vancouver, it’s clear we’re at a dangerous conjuncture. The U.S., led by a mentally and temperamentally unfit commander-in-chief under heat from the FBI’s Russia probe and prone to tweeting insulting threats of nuclear war, says that if North Korea continues its development of nuclear weapons it will be wiped off the face of the Earth; North Korea, meanwhile, believes that it must continue to build up its nuclear capacity lest it leave itself vulnerable to obliteration.

Contrary to the common “we’re all going to die” framing, the risks of a resumed Korean War are not equally distributed. If this game of chicken led by callow man-children goes wrong, hundreds of thousands or even millions of Koreans on both sides of the armistice line could die. There is no full-blown war scenario in which Kim and his generals could even contemplate surviving, let alone winning.

For Trump and U.S. generals, it’s a different story — and that’s the greatest danger of all. That’s why Tillerson’s “Vancouver Group” summit this month should be greeted with a call for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Vancouver would once have been an unthinkable location for such a summit. In the 1980s, Vancouver erected signs declaring the city a nuclear weapons free zone and organized massive annual peace walks. In 2003, the municipal government led by the Coalition of Progressive Electors declared its opposition to the Iraq invasion and their peace and justice committee supported protests of tens of thousands at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

The city’s nuclear-free signs are long gone (some were replaced with Olympics signs in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Games) and the peace and justice committee was disbanded. Maybe it’s time to bring them back, along with renewed anti-war activism.

Against the bluster of POTUS Ignoramus, Canadian civil society and political leaders should use the occasion of the Vancouver Korea summit to speak out against war.

*

Featured image is from the US Dept. of State.

In recent months the US President has reversed yet another campaign pledge to pull out of Afghanistan, America’s longest war, and instead has begun to deploy an added 3,000 troops there. At the same time he has lashed out at the government of Pakistan accusing it of aiding the Afghan Taliban and pledging to cut all US military aid to that country as reprisal. A deeper view into the situation suggests that both moves are linked and have to do with not the Taliban and the Afghan terrorists. It has very much to do with ongoing developments of peaceful construction of the Chinese-led Belt, Road Initiative and desperate attempts of Washington to try to stop those developments using other pretexts.

In June 2017 After intense discussions with his military Trump authorized an added up to 4,000 US soldiers ostensibly to further train an Afghan military in dealing with an increasingly successful Taliban force. By December the Pentagon was engaged in a massive air campaign it said was aimed at destroying the Taliban drug labs.

Arguing that the Pakistan ISI intelligence service was complicit in giving Taliban, the CIA-trained and al Qaeda-associated Haqqani and other terrorist groups sanctuary across the border, Trump then froze military aid to Pakistan. It is allegedly to force Pakistan’s military and intelligence to cut support for the Taliban and other Islamist groups. In one of his infamous tweets, the US President wrote,

“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools…They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

The Pakistan aid cut could involve two billion worth of equipment and coalition support funding. Administration sources stated that, “all options are on the table,” including stripping Pakistan of its status as a “major non-NATO ally” or calling in vital IMF loans.

As a direct result of the US pressure, the Pakistani government did not automatically renew for a full year refugee status for some 1.4 million Afghan refugees, instead ordering them to return to Afghanistan by end of January. This, to a country where US bombings have escalated threefold, creating a de facto new destabilization across all Afghanistan.

Another Hidden Agenda

In fact what Washington is doing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has little if anything to do with restoring a functioning government in Kabul or stabilizing Pakistan, once a close US ally during the 1980’s US-backed Al Qaeda war against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the CIA Operation Cyclone, using Mujahideen mercenaries it trained and armed in a costly ten year war.

The true aim is geopolitical and is directly aimed at the growing influence of China, in cooperation in part with Russia, in stabilizing Afghanistan and drawing the country, along with Pakistan, into the game-changing Belt, Road Initiative, China’s multi-nation multi-trillion dollar rail and deep water port infrastructure network. China is eager to draw Afghanistan into the China-Pakistan Corridor part of the BRI, for economic reasons as well as to control terrorist groups among China’s Uighur Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province being trained by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

China Invites Afghanistan to Belt, Road Initiative

In fact Washington has never been serious about building genuine democracy in Afghanistan. Rather its priority was building NATO bases deep inside Eurasia to potentially target China and Russia. Another benefit was allowing Taliban and others to grow the world’s largest opium crops, exporting the heroin via US military aircraft via Manas Airbase to create serious addiction problems inside Russia and Central Asia.

The renewed US interest in Afghanistan coincides with the growing efforts of especially China to stabilize Afghanistan following the 2014 US troop withdrawal and using economic development to reduce the breeding ground for radical Muslim terrorism near the border to China’s Muslim Xinjiang province.

In late December Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced that both China and Pakistan are looking to include Afghanistan in their estimated $57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a key rail, highway, port and pipeline corridor of the vast Belt, Road Initiative. He declared,

“China and Pakistan are willing to look at with Afghanistan, on the basis of win-win, mutually beneficial principles, using an appropriate means to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan.”

That would mark a major stabilization of the entire region where Pakistan and Afghanistan have often been at odds since the US invasion of Kabul in 2001. Such stability in the context of the Belt, Road Initiative would severely weaken US military influence across the entire region.

For its part, the current government in Kabul is very eager to discuss joining China’s Economic Silk Road project. In October, 2017 Kabul hosted a forum of mayors of cities along the historic silk road and discussed the prospects of joining the China project. Among the projects in discussion between China, Pakistan and Afghanistan a Peshawar-Kabul motorway, the Landi Kotal-Jalalabad Railway, the Chaman-Speen Boldak Railway, a hydropower dam on Kunar River, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan electricity transmission line, and the trans-Afghan highway to Central Asia from Peshawar, Pakistan. These projects, along with the Logar-Torkham Railway line, would be a part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Clearly this would create a far more stable dynamic than the present US strategy of endless fighting.

At the same time that US President Trump was tweeting aid cuts to Pakistan for allegedly harboring Taliban from Afghanistan, the central bank of Pakistan announced that it would permit trade settlement with China, its largest trade partner, in Chinese yuan, another blow to the domination of the dollar. For its part, the Pakistani government has reacted to the pressure from Washington by suspending all military and intelligence cooperation with the US according to the Pakistani Defense Minister.

Washington these days has little positive to offer to the nations of Afghanistan or Pakistan. Threats, more troops, cuts in aid are not what is gaining the interest of those countries. Economic development is, and there is no development more attractive than that of building infrastructure corridors linking Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and potentially Turkey to China, Russia, select EU economies to create entire new markets and industries. To try to stop this is the real background to Washington’s recent military reversal in Afghanistan and its pressure on Pakistan, not the Taliban.

*

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

Featured image is from the author.

On January 9, high-level officials from North and South Korea met to discuss the North’s participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea in February. The inter-Korean meeting was held in the village of Panmunjom at the border of the divided Korean Peninsula. On January 1, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed hope for reconciliation with South Korea in his New Year address. The next day, South Korean President Moon Jae-in proposed high-level talks with North Korea ahead of the Olympics.

Ri Son-gwon of North Korea and Cho Myong-gyon of South Korea — the lead representatives of their respective states’ reunification committees — led the talks. The two sides came to an agreement about North Korea’s delegation to the Pyeongchang Olympics. The delegation will consist of athletes, a cheering squad, artists, a taekwondo demonstration team, reporters, and representatives of North Korea’s National Olympic Committee. South Korea agreed to provide necessary accommodations for the delegation, and North Korea agreed to follow-up meetings with South Korea to work out the details of its delegation’s visit. There were also talks of North and South Koreans marching together during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics.

The North and South also agreed to work towards “relieving the military tensions and creating a peaceful environment” and planned to hold high-level military talks in the coming weeks. The two sides are expected to discuss South Korea’s decision to delay its joint military exercises with the United States, as well as North Korea’s moratorium on nuclear testing. South Korea and the U.S. agreed on January 5 to push back the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint exercises, which are normally held in March and April every year.

Lastly, the North and South committed to resolve any conflict or issue on the Korean peninsula through dialogue and negotiation. They agreed to use the communication channel reopened in Panmunjom last week to discuss the time and location of the next high-level meeting.

Officials from the North and South also acknowledged the importance of creating opportunities for divided families to reconnect. Although they discussed this issue at length, the two sides did not come up with concrete measures at this week’s meeting.

Uneasy Road Ahead

The South Korean representatives also pressed their North Korean counterparts about denuclearization, an issue the North Koreans had made clear as not part of the inter-Korean talks. North Korea’s Ri Son-gwon warned that South Korea’s false reports about denuclearization being part of these talks could derail their discussion:

“The South Korean press is currently spreading the absurd notion that the issue of denuclearization is being addressed during the high-level inter-Korean talks. This has a very bad effect. There are so many things that must be done after inter-Korean relations improve, and spreading misleading reports at the outset doesn’t look good and could wreck the progress we’ve made.”

How sustainable the progress made at this week’s high-level talks will be beyond the Olympics remains a question. Even as he expressed interest in meeting directly with Kim Jong-un, South Korean President Moon Jae-in attributed the success of the January 9 bilateral meeting to Trump’s strategy of “maximum pressure.” He also continued to threaten sanctions against North Korea should it test more nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, President Trump’s cabinet is divided on how to resolve the Korea crisis — with National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster urging the president consider limited strikes on facilities linked to North Korea’s nuclear program, while State Secretary Rex Tillerson recommends more peaceful measures.

*

Featured image is from Zoom in Korea.

Canadians want their government to be a factor for peace and justice in the world and make a positive contribution to diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. We have a duty to ourselves and the Korean people to ensure another Korean War does not break out and that the Canadian government does not contribute to preparing such a war in our name as is being done today.

More than 2,500 Canadians thus far have signed the Canadian Petition Against War and Aggression on the Korean Peninsula. The petition calls on the Canadian government to:

1. Exhort the U.S. government to take up the offer of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to sign a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War and normalize relations to immediately reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

2. Call on the U.S. government to immediately withdraw all U.S. troops and weapons from the Korean Peninsula.

3. Respect the right of the Korean people to sort out their own problems, including national reunification, peacefully and without outside interference.

4. Withdraw Canada’s participation in U.S.-ROK-Japan military exercises that threaten peace in the region.

5. Support peace on the Korean Peninsula by normalizing relations with the DPRK and developing diplomatic relations established with the DPRK in 2001 so that government, cultural, economic and civil society relations can be established to the benefit of the peoples of both countries.

In 2017, regular petitioning took place in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver by activists of CPC(M-L), Korean patriots and anti-war activists. We encourage everyone in 2018 to take the petition to their friends and colleagues, unions and labour councils and to share it on social media and argue out the stands it contains to assist in creating the public opinion across the country required to block attempts by the ruling circles in Canada to make Canada a zone for war against Korea and meddling in Asia.

By taking a stand to support peace on the Korean Peninsula Canadians can speak in their own name and empower themselves to make a contribution to world peace.

Join in!

For a copy of the petition to the House of Commons of the Parliament of Canada in Ottawa please click here.

For further information e-mail cankorpeace@gmail.com

UPCOMING ANTI-WAR EVENTS FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

Vancouver
Monday, January 15
Getting North Korea Right: Canadian Options and Roles
12:00-2:00 pm
Auditorium, Asian Centre
1871 West Mall, UBC
For information, click here.

Procession and Candlelight Vigil for Peace in Korea
Procession to Jack Poole Plaza — 6:30 pm
Gather at Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St.
Vigil — 7:00-8:00 pm
Jack Poole Plaza, 1055 Canada Place
adjacent to Vancouver Convention Centre West Building
Facebook

Tuesday, January 16
Witness for Peace Event — Flags and Banners for Diplomacy
Outside Foreign Ministers’ Summit
8:00-9:30 am
Vancouver Convention Centre

Picket and Signing of Canadian Petition
Against War and Aggression on the Korean Peninsula
12:00 noon
Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch
350 West Georgia St.

Public Meeting
“U.S. Hands Off North Korea! North Korea & the Threat of Nuclear War”
Keynote by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research
7:00 pm
Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch
350 West Georgia St.
Facebook

Winnipeg

North Korea & the Threat of Nuclear War”
Keynote by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research

Presentations at the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg 

January 15,  click above link for details

Edmonton

Picket and Petition Signing
Tuesday, January 16 — 3:00 pm
112 Street and 87 Avenue

Montreal
Picket and Petition Signing
Tuesday, January 16 — 5:15-6:15 pm
Cote-Vertu Metro, south side on Decarie

ONGOING PICKETS FOR PEACE AND PETITION SIGNINGS

BRITISH COLUMBIA
All events at 4:30 pm

Thursday, January 11
Main Street-Science World SkyTrain Station, Vancouver

Thursday, January 18
Richmond Brighouse Station, Richmond

Thursday, January 25
Surrey Central SkyTrain Station, Surrey

EDMONTON, ALBERTA

Saturday, January 13 — noon
Strathcona Farmers’ Market, 83 Avenue and 103 Street

MONTREAL, QUEBEC
All events at 5:15-6:15 pm

Wednesday, January 10
Cote-Vertu Metro, south side on Decarie

Thursday, January 11
Pie-IX Metro

Thursday, January 18
Joliette Metro

Wednesday, January 24
Cote-Vertu Metro, south side on Decarie

Thursday, January 25
Préfontaine Metro

Wednesday, January 31
Cote-Vertu Metro, south side on Decarie

TORONTO, ONTARIO
All events at 4:00-5:00 pm

Wednesday, January 10
Ryerson University,
Northeast Corner of Yonge and Gould Sts.

Wednesday, January 17
University of Toronto,
Northwest corner of Harbord and St. George Sts.

Wednesday, January 24
Christie Subway Station
Northeast corner of Christie and Bloor Sts.

Wednesday, January 31
Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s Constituency Office,
344 Bloor St. W.

For information: (647) 907-7915

Sources: MTL, 2018.

Global Research has supported the release of  Hassan Diab. He will shortly be returning to Canada. 

He has unequivocally stated that:

“my life has been turned upside down because of unfounded allegations and suspicions. I am innocent of the accusations against me. I have never engaged in terrorism. I have never participated in any terrorist attacks. I am not an anti-Semite.”.

Recall the circumstances of his arrest by the RCMP and the role played by B’nai Brith:

Screenshot Dr Dawg, May 2014

Today, Judges Jean-Marc Herbaut and Richard Foltzer (“Juges d’instruction anti-terroristes”) dismissed the allegations against Dr. Hassan Diab and ordered his immediate release from detention. An overwhelming body of evidence shows Dr. Diab cannot have been in France in 1980 when the attack was perpetrated, as many elements confirm he was in Beirut during that period of time. The decision also notably underlines the numerous contradictions and misstatements contained in the intelligence which cast serious doubts about their reliability, as well as the fact that Dr. Diab’s handwriting, fingerprints, palm prints, physical description, and age do not match those of the suspect identified in 1980.

After more than three years in solitary confinement in a French prison, Dr. Diab is set to be released from detention today.

Dr. Diab’s lawyers in France, William Bourdon, Apolline Cagnat, and Amélie Lefebvre, stated that

“This decision in such a serious terrorism case is exceptional. It must remind us that the acknowledgement of a suspect’s innocence in a terrorism case is always a long road but can be obtained with relentless work. The decision is founded on the demonstration of the impossibility to attribute to Hassan Diab any responsibility in the attack, as we have not ceased to claim. The respect owed to the victims and their legitimate need for justice must not be confused with the prosecutor’s obstinacy whose potential appeal would be completely contrary to the law and facts.”

Don Bayne, Dr. Diab’s lawyer in Canada, remarked,

“We’re elated, relieved and thankful. Thankful to the French judges for their wisdom and courage to buck political and social pressure to make a completely just decision, something that we believe the courts in Canada failed to do at every level. Thankful that Dr. Diab’s wife, Rania Tfaily, led the fight for justice with such dignity and perseverance. Thankful to Minister Freeland, Sam Moyer, Maria Lamani, and others at Global Affairs Canada for their genuine and impressive support to a Canadian who never should have been extradited. And thankful for the efforts of the wonderful Canadians who make up the Hassan Diab Support Committee. We would add this – now is the time for the Justice Minister, indeed the Prime Minister, to order a complete review of the Extradition Act and procedures that led to years of injustice for an innocent Canadian. How could Canada have extradited a Canadian to France when France never, never had a case against Dr. Diab fit to go to trial? How? Because of Canada’s Extradition Act, of the procedures it enables to strip Canadians of liberty unjustly. This Canadian was extradited on overwhelmingly unreliable evidence yet every Canadian court allowed this to happen. So while we are thankful and relieved that justice has been served, we must ensure the system is corrected so that no other Canadian experiences what Dr. Diab has.”

Background

Dr. Hassan Diab is a Canadian citizen and sociology professor who lived in Ottawa. He was extradited from Canada to France in November 2014 even though the Canadian extradition judge Robert Maranger described the evidence presented against Dr. Hassan Diab as “very problematic”, “convoluted”, “illogical”, and “suspect”. However, given the low threshold of evidence in Canada’s extradition law, the judge felt compelled to order Hassan Diab’s extradition in November 2014.

Four French judges have ordered Dr. Diab’s conditional release eight times in the last 20 months, most recently in November 2017. However, each time the Paris prosecutor appealed, and the French Court of Appeal overturned the release orders due to the political climate in France.

Dr. Diab has a lifelong record of opposition to bigotry and discrimination, as attested by family, long-time friends, and colleagues. He has always maintained his innocence and strongly condemned the 1980 crime. He has unequivocally stated that “my life has been turned upside down because of unfounded allegations and suspicions. I am innocent of the accusations against me. I have never engaged in terrorism. I have never participated in any terrorist attacks. I am not an anti-Semite.”

Dr. Diab has the support of thousands of individuals and organisations in Canada and around the world.

Featured image: A North Korean soldier looks in through the window of the T2 building as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates tour the Demilitarized Zone in Korea on July 21, 2010.(U.S. Department of Defense photo)

The radiation effects of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant triple meltdowns are felt worldwide, whether lodged in sea life or in humans, it cumulates over time. The impact is now slowly grinding away only to show its true colors at some unpredictable date in the future. That’s how radiation works, slow but assuredly destructive, which serves to identify its risks, meaning, one nuke meltdown has the impact, over decades, of 1,000 regular industrial accidents, maybe more.

It’s been six years since the triple 100% nuke meltdowns occurred at Fukushima Daiichi d/d March 11th, 2011, nowadays referred to as “311”. Over time, it’s easy for the world at large to lose track of the serious implications of the world’s largest-ever industrial disaster; out of sight out of mind works that way.

According to Japanese government and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) estimates, decommissioning is a decade-by-decade work-in-progress, most likely four decades at a cost of up to ¥21 trillion ($189B). However, that’s the simple part to understanding the Fukushima nuclear disaster story. The difficult painful part is largely hidden from pubic view via a highly restrictive harsh national secrecy law (Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, Act No. 108/2013), political pressure galore, and fear of exposing the truth about the inherent dangers of nuclear reactor meltdowns. Powerful vested interests want it concealed.

Following passage of the 2013 government secrecy act, which says that civil servants or others who “leak secrets” will face up to 10 years in prison, and those who “instigate leaks,” especially journalists, will be subject to a prison term of up to 5 years, Japan fell below Serbia and Botswana in the Reporters Without Borders 2014 World Press Freedom Index. The secrecy act, sharply criticized by the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations, is a shameless act of buttoned-up totalitarianism at the very moment when citizens need and in fact require transparency.

The current status, according to Mr. Okamura, a TEPCO manager, as of November 2017:

“We’re struggling with four problems: (1) reducing the radiation at the site (2) stopping the influx of groundwater (3) retrieving the spent fuel rods and (4) removing the molten nuclear fuel.” (Source: Martin Fritz, The Illusion of Normality at Fukushima, Deutsche Welle–Asia, Nov. 3, 2017)

In short, nothing much has changed in nearly seven years at the plant facilities, even though tens of thousands of workers have combed the Fukushima countryside, washing down structures, removing topsoil and storing it in large black plastic bags, which end-to-end would extend from Tokyo to Denver and back.

As it happens, sorrowfully, complete nuclear meltdowns are nearly impossible to fix because, in part, nobody knows what to do next. That’s why Chernobyl sealed off the greater area surrounding its meltdown of 1986. Along those same lines, according to Fukushima Daiichi plant manager Shunji Uchida:

”Robots and cameras have already provided us with valuable pictures. But it is still unclear what is really going on inside,” Ibid.

Seven years and they do not know what’s going on inside. Is it the China Syndrome dilemma of molten hot radioactive corium burrowing into Earth? Is it contaminating aquifers? Nobody knows, nobody can possibly know, which is one of the major risks of nuclear meltdowns, nobody knows what to do. There is no playbook for 100% meltdowns. Fukushima Daiichi proves the point.

“When a major radiological disaster happens and impacts vast tracts of land, it cannot be ‘cleaned up’ or ‘fixed’.” (Source: Hanis Maketab, Environmental Impacts of Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Will Last ‘decades to centuries’ – Greenpeace, Asia Correspondent, March 4, 2016)

Meanwhile, the world nuclear industry has ambitious growth plans, 50-60 reactors currently under construction, mostly in Asia, with up to 400 more on drawing boards. Nuke advocates claim Fukushima is well along in the cleanup phase so not to worry as the Olympics are coming in a couple of years, including events held smack dab in the heart of Fukushima, where the agricultural economy will provide fresh foodstuff.

IAEA Experts at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Unit 4, 2013 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Olympics are PM Abe’s major PR punch to prove to the world that all-is-well at the world’s most dangerous, and out of control, industrial accident site. And, yes it is still out of control. Nevertheless, the Abe government is not concerned. Be that as it may, the risks are multi-fold and likely not well understood. For example, what if another earthquake causes further damage to already-damaged nuclear facilities that are precariously held together with hopes and prayers, subject to massive radiation explosions? Then what? After all, Japan is earthquake country, which defines the boundaries of the country. Japan typically has 400-500 earthquakes in 365 days, or nearly 1.5 quakes per day.

According to Dr. Shuzo Takemoto, professor, Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University:

“The problem of Unit 2… If it should encounter a big earth tremor, it will be destroyed and scatter the remaining nuclear fuel and its debris, making the Tokyo metropolitan area uninhabitable. The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 will then be utterly out of the question,” (Shuzo Takemoto, Potential Global Catastrophe of the Reactor No. 2 at Fukushima Daiichi, February 11, 2017).

Since the Olympics will be held not far from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident site, it’s worthwhile knowing what to expect, i.e., repercussions hidden from public view. After all, it’s highly improbable that the Japan Olympic Committee will address the radiation-risk factors for upcoming athletes and spectators. Which prompts a question: What criteria did the International Olympic Committee (IOC) follow in selecting Japan for the 2020 Summer Olympics in the face of three 100% nuclear meltdowns totally out of control? On its face, it seems reckless.

This article, in part, is based upon an academic study that brings to light serious concerns about overall transparency, TEPCO workforce health & sudden deaths, as well as upcoming Olympians, bringing to mind the proposition: Is the decision to hold the Olympics in Japan in 2020 a foolish act of insanity and a crude attempt to help cover up the ravages of radiation?

Thus therefore, a preview of what’s happening behind, as well as within, the scenes researched by Adam Broinowski, PhD (author of 25 major academic publications and Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Australian National University): “Informal Labour, Local Citizens and the Tokyo Electric Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Crisis: Responses to Neoliberal Disaster Management,” Australian National University, 2017.

The title of Dr. Broinowski’s study provides a hint of the inherent conflict, as well as opportunism, that arises with neoliberal capitalism applied to “disaster management” principles. (Naomi Klein explored a similar concept in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Knopf Canada, 2007).

Dr. Broinowski’s research is detailed, thorough, and complex. His study begins by delving into the impact of neoliberal capitalism, bringing to the fore an equivalence of slave labor to the Japanese economy, especially in regards to what he references as “informal labour.” He preeminently describes the onslaught of supply side/neoliberal tendencies throughout the economy of Japan. The Fukushima nuke meltdowns simply bring to surface all of the warts and blemishes endemic to the neoliberal brand of capitalism.

According to Professor Broinowski:

“The ongoing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station (FDNPS), operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), since 11 March 2011 can be recognised as part of a global phenomenon that has been in development over some time. This disaster occurred within a social and political shift that began in the mid-1970s (ed. supply-side economics, which is strongly reflected in America’s current tax bill under consideration) and that became more acute in the early 1990s in Japan with the downturn of economic growth and greater deregulation and financialisation in the global economy. After 40 years of corporate fealty in return for lifetime contracts guaranteed by corporate unions, as tariff protections were lifted further and the workforce was increasingly casualised, those most acutely affected by a weakening welfare regime were irregular day labourers, or what we might call ‘informal labour.”

In short, the 45,000-60,000 workers recruited to deconstruct decontaminate Fukushima Daiichi and the surrounding prefecture mostly came off the streets, castoffs of neoliberalism’s impact on “… independent unions, rendered powerless, growing numbers of unemployed, unskilled and precarious youths (freeters) alongside older, vulnerable and homeless day labourers (these groups together comprising roughly 38 per cent of the workforce in 2015) found themselves not only (a) lacking insurance or (b) industrial protection but also in many cases (c) basic living needs. With increasing deindustrialisation and capital flight, regular public outbursts of frustration and anger from these groups have manifested since the Osaka riots of 1992.” (Broinowski)

The Osaka Riots of 25 years ago depict the breakdown of modern society’s working class, a problem that has spilled over into national political elections worldwide as populism/nationalism dictate winners/losers. In Osaka 1,500 rampaging laborers besieged a police station (somewhat similar to John Carpenter’s 1976 iconic film Assault on Precinct 13) over outrage of interconnecting links between police and Japan’s powerful “Yakuza” or gangsters that bribe police to turn a blind eye to gangster syndicates that get paid to recruit, often forcibly, workers for low-paying manual jobs for industry.

That’s how TEPCO gets workers to work in radiation-sensitive high risks jobs. Along the way, subcontractors rake off most of the money allocated for workers, resulting in a subhuman lifestyle for the riskiest most life-threatening jobs in Japan, maybe the riskiest most life-threatening in the world.

Japan has a long history of assembling and recruiting unskilled labor pools at cheap rates, which is typical of nearly all large-scale modern industrial projects. Labor is simply one more commodity to be used and discarded. Tokyo Electric Power Company (“TEPCO”) of Fukushima Daiichi fame adheres to those long-standing feudalistic employment practices. They hire workers via layers of subcontractors in order to avoid liabilities, i.e. accidents, health insurance, safety standards, by penetrating into the bottom social layers that have no voice in society.

As such, TEPCO is not legally obligated to report industrial accidents when workers are hired through complex webs or networks of subcontractors; there are approximately 733 subcontractors for TEPCO. Here’s the process: TEPCO employs a subcontractor “shita-uke,” which in turn employs another subcontractor “mago-uke” that relies upon labor brokers “tehaishilninpu-dashi.” At the end of the day, who’s responsible for the health and safety of workers? Who’s responsible for reporting cases of radiation sickness and/or death caused by radiation exposure?

Based upon anecdotal evidence from reliable sources in Japan, there is good reason to believe TEPCO, as well as the Japanese government, suppress public knowledge of worker radiation sickness and death, as well as the civilian population of Fukushima. Thereby, essentially hoodwinking worldwide public opinion, for example, pro-nuke enthusiasts/advocates point to the safety of nuclear power generation because of so few reported deaths in Japan. But, then again, who’s responsible for reporting worker deaths? Answer: Other than an occasional token death report by official sources, nobody!

Furthermore, TEPCO does not report worker deaths that occur outside of the workplace even though the death is a direct result of excessive radiation exposure at the workplace. For example, if a worker with radiation sickness becomes too ill to go to work, they’ll obviously die at home and therefore not be reported as a work-related death. As a result, pro-nuke advocates claim Fukushima proves how safe nuclear power is, even when it goes haywire, because there are so few, if any, deaths, as to be inconsequential. That’s a boldfaced lie that is discussed in the sequel: Fukushima Darkness – Part 2.

“As one labourer stated re Fukushima Daiichi: ‘TEPCO is God. The main contractors are kings, and we are slaves’. In short, Fukushima Daiichi clearly illustrates the social reproduction, exploitation and disposability of informal labour, in the state protection of capital, corporations and their assets.” (Broinowski)

Indeed, Japan is a totalitarian corporate state where corporate interests are protected from liability by layers of subcontractors and by vested interests of powerful political bodies and extremely harsh state secrecy laws. As such, it is believed that nuclear safety and health issues, including deaths, are underreported and likely not reported at all in most cases. Therefore, the worldview of nuclear power, as represented in Japan at Fukushima Daiichi, is horribly distorted in favor of nuclear power advocacy.

Fukushima’s Darkness – Part 2 sequel, to be published at a future date, discusses consequences.

The radiation effects of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant triple meltdowns are felt worldwide, whether lodged in sea life or in humans, it cumulates over time. The impact is now slowly grinding away only to show its true colors at some unpredictable date in the future. That’s how radiation works, slow but assuredly destructive, which serves to identify its risks, meaning, one nuke meltdown has the impact, over decades, of 1,000 regular industrial accidents, maybe more.

It’s been six years since the triple 100% nuke meltdowns occurred at Fukushima Daiichi d/d March 11th, 2011, nowadays referred to as “311”. Over time, it’s easy for the world at large to lose track of the serious implications of the world’s largest-ever industrial disaster; out of sight out of mind works that way.

According to Japanese government and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) estimates, decommissioning is a decade-by-decade work-in-progress, most likely four decades at a cost of up to ¥21 trillion ($189B). However, that’s the simple part to understanding the Fukushima nuclear disaster story. The difficult painful part is largely hidden from pubic view via a highly restrictive harsh national secrecy law (Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, Act No. 108/2013), political pressure galore, and fear of exposing the truth about the inherent dangers of nuclear reactor meltdowns. Powerful vested interests want it concealed.

Following passage of the 2013 government secrecy act, which says that civil servants or others who “leak secrets” will face up to 10 years in prison, and those who “instigate leaks,” especially journalists, will be subject to a prison term of up to 5 years, Japan fell below Serbia and Botswana in the Reporters Without Borders 2014 World Press Freedom Index. The secrecy act, sharply criticized by the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations, is a shameless act of buttoned-up totalitarianism at the very moment when citizens need and in fact require transparency.

The current status, according to Mr. Okamura, a TEPCO manager, as of November 2017:

“We’re struggling with four problems: (1) reducing the radiation at the site (2) stopping the influx of groundwater (3) retrieving the spent fuel rods and (4) removing the molten nuclear fuel.” (Source: Martin Fritz, The Illusion of Normality at Fukushima, Deutsche Welle–Asia, Nov. 3, 2017)

In short, nothing much has changed in nearly seven years at the plant facilities, even though tens of thousands of workers have combed the Fukushima countryside, washing down structures, removing topsoil and storing it in large black plastic bags, which end-to-end would extend from Tokyo to Denver and back.

As it happens, sorrowfully, complete nuclear meltdowns are nearly impossible to fix because, in part, nobody knows what to do next. That’s why Chernobyl sealed off the greater area surrounding its meltdown of 1986. Along those same lines, according to Fukushima Daiichi plant manager Shunji Uchida:

”Robots and cameras have already provided us with valuable pictures. But it is still unclear what is really going on inside,” Ibid.

Seven years and they do not know what’s going on inside. Is it the China Syndrome dilemma of molten hot radioactive corium burrowing into Earth? Is it contaminating aquifers? Nobody knows, nobody can possibly know, which is one of the major risks of nuclear meltdowns, nobody knows what to do. There is no playbook for 100% meltdowns. Fukushima Daiichi proves the point.

“When a major radiological disaster happens and impacts vast tracts of land, it cannot be ‘cleaned up’ or ‘fixed’.” (Source: Hanis Maketab, Environmental Impacts of Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Will Last ‘decades to centuries’ – Greenpeace, Asia Correspondent, March 4, 2016)

Meanwhile, the world nuclear industry has ambitious growth plans, 50-60 reactors currently under construction, mostly in Asia, with up to 400 more on drawing boards. Nuke advocates claim Fukushima is well along in the cleanup phase so not to worry as the Olympics are coming in a couple of years, including events held smack dab in the heart of Fukushima, where the agricultural economy will provide fresh foodstuff.

IAEA Experts at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Unit 4, 2013 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Olympics are PM Abe’s major PR punch to prove to the world that all-is-well at the world’s most dangerous, and out of control, industrial accident site. And, yes it is still out of control. Nevertheless, the Abe government is not concerned. Be that as it may, the risks are multi-fold and likely not well understood. For example, what if another earthquake causes further damage to already-damaged nuclear facilities that are precariously held together with hopes and prayers, subject to massive radiation explosions? Then what? After all, Japan is earthquake country, which defines the boundaries of the country. Japan typically has 400-500 earthquakes in 365 days, or nearly 1.5 quakes per day.

According to Dr. Shuzo Takemoto, professor, Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University:

“The problem of Unit 2… If it should encounter a big earth tremor, it will be destroyed and scatter the remaining nuclear fuel and its debris, making the Tokyo metropolitan area uninhabitable. The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 will then be utterly out of the question,” (Shuzo Takemoto, Potential Global Catastrophe of the Reactor No. 2 at Fukushima Daiichi, February 11, 2017).

Since the Olympics will be held not far from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident site, it’s worthwhile knowing what to expect, i.e., repercussions hidden from public view. After all, it’s highly improbable that the Japan Olympic Committee will address the radiation-risk factors for upcoming athletes and spectators. Which prompts a question: What criteria did the International Olympic Committee (IOC) follow in selecting Japan for the 2020 Summer Olympics in the face of three 100% nuclear meltdowns totally out of control? On its face, it seems reckless.

This article, in part, is based upon an academic study that brings to light serious concerns about overall transparency, TEPCO workforce health & sudden deaths, as well as upcoming Olympians, bringing to mind the proposition: Is the decision to hold the Olympics in Japan in 2020 a foolish act of insanity and a crude attempt to help cover up the ravages of radiation?

Thus therefore, a preview of what’s happening behind, as well as within, the scenes researched by Adam Broinowski, PhD (author of 25 major academic publications and Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Australian National University): “Informal Labour, Local Citizens and the Tokyo Electric Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Crisis: Responses to Neoliberal Disaster Management,” Australian National University, 2017.

The title of Dr. Broinowski’s study provides a hint of the inherent conflict, as well as opportunism, that arises with neoliberal capitalism applied to “disaster management” principles. (Naomi Klein explored a similar concept in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Knopf Canada, 2007).

Dr. Broinowski’s research is detailed, thorough, and complex. His study begins by delving into the impact of neoliberal capitalism, bringing to the fore an equivalence of slave labor to the Japanese economy, especially in regards to what he references as “informal labour.” He preeminently describes the onslaught of supply side/neoliberal tendencies throughout the economy of Japan. The Fukushima nuke meltdowns simply bring to surface all of the warts and blemishes endemic to the neoliberal brand of capitalism.

According to Professor Broinowski:

“The ongoing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station (FDNPS), operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), since 11 March 2011 can be recognised as part of a global phenomenon that has been in development over some time. This disaster occurred within a social and political shift that began in the mid-1970s (ed. supply-side economics, which is strongly reflected in America’s current tax bill under consideration) and that became more acute in the early 1990s in Japan with the downturn of economic growth and greater deregulation and financialisation in the global economy. After 40 years of corporate fealty in return for lifetime contracts guaranteed by corporate unions, as tariff protections were lifted further and the workforce was increasingly casualised, those most acutely affected by a weakening welfare regime were irregular day labourers, or what we might call ‘informal labour.”

In short, the 45,000-60,000 workers recruited to deconstruct decontaminate Fukushima Daiichi and the surrounding prefecture mostly came off the streets, castoffs of neoliberalism’s impact on “… independent unions, rendered powerless, growing numbers of unemployed, unskilled and precarious youths (freeters) alongside older, vulnerable and homeless day labourers (these groups together comprising roughly 38 per cent of the workforce in 2015) found themselves not only (a) lacking insurance or (b) industrial protection but also in many cases (c) basic living needs. With increasing deindustrialisation and capital flight, regular public outbursts of frustration and anger from these groups have manifested since the Osaka riots of 1992.” (Broinowski)

The Osaka Riots of 25 years ago depict the breakdown of modern society’s working class, a problem that has spilled over into national political elections worldwide as populism/nationalism dictate winners/losers. In Osaka 1,500 rampaging laborers besieged a police station (somewhat similar to John Carpenter’s 1976 iconic film Assault on Precinct 13) over outrage of interconnecting links between police and Japan’s powerful “Yakuza” or gangsters that bribe police to turn a blind eye to gangster syndicates that get paid to recruit, often forcibly, workers for low-paying manual jobs for industry.

That’s how TEPCO gets workers to work in radiation-sensitive high risks jobs. Along the way, subcontractors rake off most of the money allocated for workers, resulting in a subhuman lifestyle for the riskiest most life-threatening jobs in Japan, maybe the riskiest most life-threatening in the world.

Japan has a long history of assembling and recruiting unskilled labor pools at cheap rates, which is typical of nearly all large-scale modern industrial projects. Labor is simply one more commodity to be used and discarded. Tokyo Electric Power Company (“TEPCO”) of Fukushima Daiichi fame adheres to those long-standing feudalistic employment practices. They hire workers via layers of subcontractors in order to avoid liabilities, i.e. accidents, health insurance, safety standards, by penetrating into the bottom social layers that have no voice in society.

As such, TEPCO is not legally obligated to report industrial accidents when workers are hired through complex webs or networks of subcontractors; there are approximately 733 subcontractors for TEPCO. Here’s the process: TEPCO employs a subcontractor “shita-uke,” which in turn employs another subcontractor “mago-uke” that relies upon labor brokers “tehaishilninpu-dashi.” At the end of the day, who’s responsible for the health and safety of workers? Who’s responsible for reporting cases of radiation sickness and/or death caused by radiation exposure?

Based upon anecdotal evidence from reliable sources in Japan, there is good reason to believe TEPCO, as well as the Japanese government, suppress public knowledge of worker radiation sickness and death, as well as the civilian population of Fukushima. Thereby, essentially hoodwinking worldwide public opinion, for example, pro-nuke enthusiasts/advocates point to the safety of nuclear power generation because of so few reported deaths in Japan. But, then again, who’s responsible for reporting worker deaths? Answer: Other than an occasional token death report by official sources, nobody!

Furthermore, TEPCO does not report worker deaths that occur outside of the workplace even though the death is a direct result of excessive radiation exposure at the workplace. For example, if a worker with radiation sickness becomes too ill to go to work, they’ll obviously die at home and therefore not be reported as a work-related death. As a result, pro-nuke advocates claim Fukushima proves how safe nuclear power is, even when it goes haywire, because there are so few, if any, deaths, as to be inconsequential. That’s a boldfaced lie that is discussed in the sequel: Fukushima Darkness – Part 2.

“As one labourer stated re Fukushima Daiichi: ‘TEPCO is God. The main contractors are kings, and we are slaves’. In short, Fukushima Daiichi clearly illustrates the social reproduction, exploitation and disposability of informal labour, in the state protection of capital, corporations and their assets.” (Broinowski)

Indeed, Japan is a totalitarian corporate state where corporate interests are protected from liability by layers of subcontractors and by vested interests of powerful political bodies and extremely harsh state secrecy laws. As such, it is believed that nuclear safety and health issues, including deaths, are underreported and likely not reported at all in most cases. Therefore, the worldview of nuclear power, as represented in Japan at Fukushima Daiichi, is horribly distorted in favor of nuclear power advocacy.

Fukushima’s Darkness – Part 2 sequel, to be published at a future date, discusses consequences.

During the bilateral talks between North and South Korea this week, the US Air Force deployed three nuclear-capable B-2 Spirit bombers to Guam, along with some 200 airmen. The Guam base has long been seen as the likely staging area for US attacks against North Korea.

Adding context to this deployment, while the US never formally objected to the talks, there were reports at the time that the Trump Administration was debating carrying out a “limited” sneak attack against North Korea.

Though the reports on the attack suggested it was likely to be in the future, likely during the Winter Olympics, the deployment of the US warplanes has doubtless added to military tensions on the Korean Peninsula, even as the negotiations sought to ease them somewhat.

Putting nuclear-capable bombers in Guam on the eve on the Winter Olympics, and immediately after President Trump bragged about his nuclear button doubtless will further inflame concerns throughout the region, and serious fear of a war breaking out.

*

Featured image is from the author.

In 1957, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper described Iraq as “efficient, energetic, prosperous, complacent: a Levantine Switzerland”, a description that is now almost impossible to fathom given the later succession of atrocities beleaguering the country – sectarian violence, chemical warfare, a US-led invasion waged on spurious evidence, and Islamic State’s subsequent onslaught. With the photography of Latif Al Ani (b1932), to some extent, seeing is believing, in a series of images presenting scenes of what is often referred to as Iraq’s “golden age” of cosmopolitanism, enabled by the flourishing oil industry, a crucial factor in the country’s burgeoning prosperity.

Latif Al Ani. Al Aqida, High School, Baghdad, 1961. B+W digital print on Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art paper, 25 x 25 cm. © The artist and the Arab Image Foundation, Courtesy the Ruya Foundation.

Al Ani’s photographs recall Pathé’s earlier documentary Ageless Iraq, with its similarly halcyon images of horseracing, music, and boats languidly sailing along a canal in Basra. Al Ani’s early photographs were commissioned by the Iraq Petroleum Company and, like Pathé’s film, convey an apparently untroubled process of modernisation: shepherds strolling with their flocks alongside electricity pylons, dam-building, women with heads uncovered playing sports, studying and working. This was also a country of ethnic and religious accord, as attested to in images of Yazidis, Kurds and Mandeans. Architecturally, international modernism co-existed with remnants of Iraq’s past as a cradle of civilisation, the Arch of Ctesiphon incidentally having also been photographed aerially in 1940 by Roald Dahl while flying solo in a biplane.

Latif Al Ani. Building the Darbandikhan Dam, 1962. B+W digital print on Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art paper, 25 x 25 cm. © The artist and the Arab Image Foundation, Courtesy the Ruya Foundation.

To what extent “modernisation” was synonymous with “westernisation” in this context is debatable, as is the extent to which Al Ani’s images, like the Pathé documentary, can be considered propagandistic. He later established the photography department in Iraq’s Ministry of Information and Guidance, documenting social, industrial and agricultural aspects of a socialist Iraq. Less talked about are Al Ani’s more unusual “eastern” depictions of the west in his photographs of East Germany and the US, although he rejects the notion that these images are in any way different from his Iraqi ones.

Latif Al Ani. Al Malak, Baghdad, 1964. B+W digital print on Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art paper, 25 x 25 cm. © The artist and the Arab Image Foundation, Courtesy the Ruya Foundation.

Regardless of the formal nature of the Iraqi photographs, their very existence conjures a quasi-miraculous aura given the grievous unfolding of Iraq’s history, including the looting of the Ministry of Culture’s photographic archive in 2003. When Saddam Hussein’s regime made it impossible to photograph in public, Al Ani abandoned his work entirely, but scrupulously conserved his extensive archive, now a musée imaginaire of a lost country.

Angeria Rigamonti di Cutò: A crucial aspect of your photographs is their recording of a lost world, an especially poignant loss given the grim fate of Iraq. At the time, did you sense an urgency to document something that would be destroyed and, if you had a kind of premonition, how did itaffect your work?

Latif Al Ani: I didn’t have a premonition, I was documenting for the sake of archiving. I never thought Iraq would arrive at what it has today.

Latif Al Ani. Lady in the Eastern Desert, 1961. B+W digital print on Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art paper, 25 x 25 cm. © The artist and the Arab Image Foundation, Courtesy the Ruya Foundation.

ARC: Several of your images recording the modernisation of Iraq – whether architectural or socio-cultural – frame remarkable contrasts that recall Sergei Eisenstein’s “dramatic principle”, produced by the collision of contrasting visual elements. In your case, did the formal impact of the image take precedence over the documentary aspect?

LAA: It did as far as wanting to ensure that each image was beautiful, in addition to being documentary. I was always preoccupied with beauty.

Latif Al Ani. Yarmouk, Housing Project Offices, 1962. B+W digital print on Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art paper, 25 x 25 cm. © The artist and the Arab Image Foundation, Courtesy the Ruya Foundation.

ARC: At the same time, within these visual contrasts, there appears to be considerable harmony, in terms of architecture, gender, ethnicity, or even between past and present. The period you documented is often referred to as a “golden age”, but how selective were you in the framing of your images – were there situations that you excluded?

LAA: I was selective as far as wanting to show a scene that the viewer would enjoy; I always thought about the viewer. What I excluded were things that I considered ugly or backward.

ARC: You also experimented with aerial photography, and the formal impact of those images is quite different. For example, you shot the Arch of Ctesiphon from a bird’s eye view, but also in closeup with a shepherd and his flock, and again with a Rabab player and an urbane American couple, with all three photos creating different meanings. Did an aerial viewpoint affect your way of seeing apart from, obviously, the visual result?

LAA: It enhanced my sense of beauty, because everything looks more beautiful from above. You are far from the earth and cannot see as much ugliness.

Latif Al Ani. Tahrir Square, Baghdad, 1962. B+W digital print on Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art paper, 25 x 25 cm. © The artist and the Arab Image Foundation, Courtesy the Ruya Foundation.

ARC: As part of an Iraqi press team, you accompanied Saddam Hussein to Paris in 1972. What were your impressions of him? Did you have a sense of how bad things could become? 

LAA: He gave me the impression of being an able leader, and I never imagined that things could become as bad as they did.

ARC: In the 60s, you also photographed the German Democratic Republic and various North American cities. In formal terms, those images are similar to your Iraqi ones. How did you experience those places, and were your photographic priorities the same?

Latif Al Ani. Rashid Street, Haydarkhana, 1961. B+W digital print on Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art paper, 25 x 25 cm. © The artist and the Arab Image Foundation, Courtesy the Ruya Foundation.

LAA: They are always the same. I am a photographer and I cannot be two different people in different places. My priorities are the same.

ARC: You stopped photographing completely when taking pictures in public was no longer permitted under the regime. It must have been very difficult to end such an important part of your life, having produced such a remarkable body of work. Were you ever tempted to leave Iraq?

LAA: I was revulsed by the fact that holding a camera became a dangerous act, and I didn’t want to be a photographer any more. I left Iraq briefly, but came back because it is my home.

Latif Al Ani. Baghdad, 1961. B+W digital print on Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art paper, 25 x 25 cm. © The artist and the Arab Image Foundation, Courtesy the Ruya Foundation.

ARC: Your work has recently received considerable international attention following its showing at the Venice Biennale in 2015. What do you hope the impact of your photographs might be on viewers accustomed to images of devastation in Iraq?

LAA: I think viewers are surprised or shocked when they see them in contrast to what they see of Iraq today. I hope that they make people think and feel the pain we feel, and get inspired to help Iraq have another “golden age”. I’m happy that my work has had the interest it has had, this late in my life.

A selection of Latif Al Ani’s photographs was exhibited at the end of last year, for the first time in the UK, by the Rüya Foundation at Coningsby Gallery, London.

Over the holidays, I began watching a BBC series entitled The Last Post, which revolves around a contingent of British troops in the early 1960s stationed in Aden, a port city in Yemen, the Arabian country today that Saudi Arabia and the United States are bombing to smithereens.

The British troops were there as a remnant of the British Empire, which once controlled foreign lands all across the globe but which, mostly as a result of World War II, had been pretty much dismantled. The British troops in Aden were able to have their families living with them. One of their favorite pastimes was enjoying the amenities of a beautiful seaside resort in Aden.

But not was all hunky dory. Periodically British patrols were being ambushed and killed by Yemeni terrorists. The terrorists also kidnapped the 8-year-old son of a British officer and threatened to kill him if the British refused to release a Yemeni terrorist who had been arrested for killing British troops.

One British soldier innocently asked another, “Why do they want to kill us?” He really didn’t know. The soldier to whom he addressed the question responded, “I just don’t know.”

And they really didn’t seem to know. After all, the British were bringing highways, schools, manners, and culture to this backward land. Security too, in the form of British military police. Why would anyone want to kill people who were willing to travel so far away from their home country to make such big sacrifices for people in overseas lands?

As I was watching the program, I wondered what the average American would say when he heard the exchange between those two soldiers. Would he recognize why they wanted to kill those British troops? Or would he be as clueless as the British soldiers?

It was easy for me to see why they wanted to kill British troops, but of course I’m a libertarian. The Yemenis were saying to the British Empire: No matter how many benefits you might be bringing to this part of the world, our part of the world is none of your business. Get out of here. Go home. Leave Yemen to the Yeminis.

What was happening to the British Empire in Aden is essentially what is happening to the United States today, all over the world. Unfortunately, that is something that all too many Americans just do not want to see.

Of course, Americans don’t like to think of their own country as an empire. After all, the United States was born in rebellion against empire, the British Empire.

Nonetheless, what was happening to the British Empire in Aden is what is happening around the world to the United States. Foreigners are saying to the U.S. government: What is happening over here in this part of the world is none of your business.  Get out. Go home. Leave us alone.

One of the reasons that Americans are unable to draw the parallels between Great Britain and the United States is that the U.S. version of empire hasn’t followed the British model. Instead of converting foreign lands into colonies, the U.S. government has followed the Soviet Union’s model of empire that was established in Eastern Europe. It uses local proxies or “puppets” to serve as agents for the U.S. government, just as the Soviets did in Eastern European countries. This has enabled the United States to maintain the façade of supporting “independent” regimes in the countries it controls, which just happen to “invite” the United States to maintain military bases in their countries.

In fact, I wonder how many Americans know that the U.S. government maintains a giant military base in Yemen today. Indeed, I wonder how many Americans realize that the terrorist attack on the USS Cole, which preceded the 9/11 attacks, took place in Aden.

Today, the most popular mantra among the American people involves thanking U.S. troops for protecting our rights and freedoms or, in American churches, asking for God’s protection for those who are making the “ultimate sacrifice” in the defense of our rights and freedoms. That mindset is undoubtedly one of the most successful propaganda and indoctrination programs in history.

I can’t help but wonder if the British people ever believed that British troops in Aden were protecting their rights and freedoms. My hunch is that they didn’t. After all, the Yemenis never desired to attack and invade England and conquer the country, which is the way they would take away the rights and freedoms of the British people. All that the Yemenis wanted was to end the British Empire’s control over their part of their world. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, trying to win one’s independence from the British Empire is not the same as threatening the rights and freedoms of the British citizenry at home.

Of course, it’s no different with respect to the massive worldwide presence of U.S. troops and U.S. military bases. No foreigner and no foreign regime is threatening to invade the United States and take over the federal government, which is how someone would take away our rights and freedoms. Foreigners are killing American troops to resist the control, domination, and presence of the U.S. Empire in faraway lands, just as Yemenis were doing against the British in Aden in the early 1960s.

Indeed, that was also why the Vietnamese people were killing French troops in Vietnam in the 1950s. It was why Cubans and Filipinos were killing Spanish troops in Cuba and the Philippines in the late 1800s. No matter what benefits that Spanish, French, British, or American officials think they are bringing to foreign lands with their troops, whether with highways, schools, security, or other such things, people over there respond with: Our problems are none of your business. Go home.  Leave us alone.

Ironically, what inevitably ends up happening is that an overseas military empire ends up destroying one’s own country, specifically in two ways.

First, there is the massive, ever-growing spending and debt that is needed to sustain the troops, their bases, and their overseas projects. That means higher taxes and increasing debasement of the currency. The end of this road is governmental bankruptcy, which means lower standards of living for the citizenry.

Second, there is the ever-growing threat of terrorist retaliation, both abroad and here at home. That inevitably leads to ever-increasing measures to keep us safe here at home. As the empire clamps down on people overseas to overcome resistance, the threat of terrorist blowback increases, causing officials to expand their control at home, with measures like mass surveillance, assaults on financial privacy, and travel restrictions. Empire abroad means destruction of liberty and privacy at home.

Thus, the notion that the troops are defending our rights and freedoms with their activities abroad is totally wrong-headed. In actuality, it’s the exact opposite. What the troops are doing abroad is, indirectly, bringing about the destruction of the rights and freedoms (and economic well-being) of the American people at the hands of their own government.

The solution to all this is clear: End American’s experiment with empire. Bring all U.S. troops home (and discharge them). Leave people in foreign lands free to resolve their own problems. Restore America’s founding principles against empire and foreign interventionism. Restore a limited-government republic to our land. Unleash the private sector to interact with the people of the world. Build a model society of freedom here at home for the world to emulate.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Oprah Winfrey in her powerful speech at the 2018 Golden Globes awards said that ‘Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have’.

And the truth for America today is that our legislative assembly, the Congress of the United States of America and the US Presidency, have both been corrupted by the pro-Israel lobby to an extent that it impacts not only the life of every ordinary American citizen but also that of hundreds of thousands in states around the world.

The millions of dollars that are expended in ensuring that only those who profess allegiance to the Israel lobby will succeed in election to Congress is the defining practice that has corrupted American politics and successive White Houses ever since President Harry S Truman was persuaded by Bnai Brith to go against his natural instincts and to support a Zionist state in Palestine.

Now, however, it has reached a peak with millions of dollars from casino profits having been used to swing the last presidential election for Trump in exchange for a promise from him to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city, in defiance of the will of the United Nations which has declared the Holy City to be an international metropolis with free access to all faiths, in perpetuity.

A lot of water, guns, planes, bombs, missiles and American money has flowed under the bridge since then, totalling well over 100 billion dollars – enough to build and operate a new hospital for every city in every one of the fifty states of the Union!

Image on the right is Oprah Winfrey at the 2018 Golden Globes Awards 

The Israel lobby has a far-reaching influence on foreign policy concerning countries throughout the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas – notwithstanding that it is an unelected political pressure group that operates through agents in major capital cities worldwide, from London through Paris, Berlin, Nairobi, Lagos, Dubai and Toronto to Buenos Aires, Beijing, Delhi and Melbourne who infiltrate national governments in order to promote its own political agenda.

The impact on global affairs is enormous – but no one person is ever held to account. It is political corruption on an epidemic scale, perpetrated by powerful figures from the worlds of gambling, share dealing and international banking: all conducted without any official or public scrutiny or inquiry.

The first political act of any US President in recent times is not to appear before their electorate but to address a meeting of AIPAC,  a powerful, pro-Israel, unelected political pressure group. That one fact speaks volumes and says everything on how democracy in America has been subverted for the benefit of a single political entity acting for a foreign state.

When Theodor Herzl envisaged a Jewish Homeland to end centuries of antisemitism, it was an altruistic vision. Today’s reality of the Likud/US Zionist Movement is a sombre indictment of personal greed and ambition that has the reverse effect.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Russia intervened in Syria at the request of its government – to combat US-supported terrorists.

They continue pouring into the country cross-border, replacing others eliminated by Syrian and allied forces, greatly aided by Russian airpower, considerably reduced from its earlier strength.

Last October, Syria’s Defense Ministry reported seizure of large amounts of weapons and munitions made in America and US allied countries.

They included rockets, rifles, machine-guns, surface-to-air missiles, man-portable air-defense system MANPADS, TOW anti-tank missiles, tanks and other heavy weapons.

Washington and its allies continue supplying these and other weapons to ISIS and other anti-government terrorists.

The Trump administration intends indefinite occupation of northern and southern Syrian territory it controls illegally, operating from bases it constructed.

Moscow and Damascus demand US presence in the country ends, ignored by Washington, putting the Trump administration sharply at odds with Russia.

Sophisticated drones used in the thwarted terrorist attack on its Syrian bases almost certainly were supplied by the Pentagon or CIA.

Putin states that he knows when and where these UAVs were supplied to terrorists, indicating knowledge of the supplier.

Who gains by supporting ISIS and other terrorists wage war in Syria for regime change? Washington and Israel most of all. Along with their allies, they’re partnered against Assad.

Separately on Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry commented on humanitarian aid needed for the Rukban refugee camp in southern Syria – largely blocked by US occupying forces, the ministry saying:

“No Syrian army units or representatives of the legitimate authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic are allowed” in a US illegally occupied 55 km zone around At Tanf near the Iraq border.

The Pentagon uses this territory to train anti-government terrorists. Around 60,000 Syrian refugees face dire conditions, prevented from receiving vital food, medical supplies and other essentials to life and well-being.

“We regard as unacceptable attempts by Washington to justify the use of military force against the sovereignty and territorial inviolability of the Syrian Arab Republic,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said, adding:

“Assurances by the United States that its military are allegedly staying on Syrian soil for the purpose of fighting terrorists are unconvincing and open to criticism.”

“We demand that all restrictions on access for convoys of food and medicines be lifted and that humanitarian operations in the area be more transparent.”

Demands aren’t good enough. Nor is saying Washington must “respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Syria…”

The Trump administration ignores these comments, doing what it pleases, at war with Syria. It’s hostility toward Russia is unrelenting.

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

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Medicaid is a jointly administered federal/state program, providing medical care for poor and low-income people.

The Health Insurance Association of America calls Medicaid a “government insurance program for persons of all ages whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care.”

Around 75 million Americans qualify. States have broad leeway in determining who’s eligible. They may participate or opt out of the program. None chose to go this route so far.

Under Obamacare, all US citizens and permanent residents with incomes up to $133% of the poverty line qualify for Medicaid – defined as $24,250 for a family of four in the continental US, somewhat higher for Alaska and Hawaii.

Healthcare is a fundamental human right. Most nations have some form of universal care, America the only developed one without it.

The world’s richest country denies all its citizens a right millions can’t afford, most others way underinsured.

Medicaid is barebones healthcare at best, woefully inadequate in cases of serious diseases, illnesses or disability.

On Thursday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMMS) released new guidelines, letting states deny Medicaid to eligible able-bodied residents without jobs, participation in work-related activities or “community engagement” – including job training or enrollment in school.

This represents a major disturbing change in the program since begun in 1965 – the federal government providing matching funds to states for medical care to eligible residents.

CMMS administrator Seema Verma issued a statement, saying

“Medicaid needs to be more flexible so that states can best address the needs of this population.”

“Our fundamental goal is to make a positive and lasting difference in the health and wellness of our beneficiaries, and today’s announcement is a step in that direction.”

It’s a step in the wrong direction, assuring fewer needy people are covered, eroding a vital program, one of various steps to eventually eliminate it.

The federal government intends reneging on its responsibility to help pay for the great GOP tax cut heist – at the expense of social justice. Large cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs are planned.

Republicans never wanted these programs in the first place. With executive branch and congressional control, they intending taking full advantage – prioritizing militarism, warmaking, corporate handouts and tax cuts for the rich, at the expense of eroding the nation’s vital safety net for its poor and least advantaged.

Verma is a right-wing extremist, a longtime advocate of requiring Medicaid recipients to work, uncaring about millions of Americans struggling daily to get by, many having to choose between paying rent or medical expenses, unable to afford both.

Reasons why Medicaid recipients don’t work are as follows, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation:

— 36% are ill or disabled;

— 30% are taking care of their home or family, including single mothers;

— 15% are in school, 9% retired, 6% seeking work, and 3% for other reasons.

Many Medicaid recipients have physical or emotional health problems short of meeting federal disability criteria. Some can’t meet their state’s work verification requirements.

According to Kaiser’s Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured associate director MaryBeth Musumeci, “(e)ligible people could end up losing coverage because the right documentation does not get sent to the right place.”

Ten states (Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin) already intend imposing work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, others likely to follow, perhaps all or most eventually.

Responsible health policy experts regard Medicare and Medicaid as essential programs not to be based on compliance with rules unrelated to them.

CMMS deputy administrator/director Brian Neale, saying “(p)roductive work and community engagement may improve health outcomes” sounds disturbingly like the Nazi concentration camp slogan: “Arbeit macht frei” – Work sets you free.

In the camps, it was free from their lives. Maybe GOP extremists have something similar in mind for the nation’s poor and disadvantaged.

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

GR Editor’s Note

Mini-nukes (B61-11 bunker buster bombs with a nuclear warhead) have been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since the 1990s, for use in the conventional war theater was put forth in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review.

More advanced versions of the B61 tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-12 are now contemplated.

M.Ch. GR editor

***

The US military/security complex has taken another step toward Armageddon. The Pentagon is preparing a nuclear posture review (NPR) that gives the OK to development of smaller “usable” nuclear weapons and permits their use in response to a non-nuclear attack.

As Reagan and Gorbachev understood, but the warmongers who have taken over America do not, there are far too many nuclear weapons already. Some scientists have concluded that even the use of 10 percent of either the US or Russian arsenal would suffice to destroy life on earth.

It is reckless and irresponsible for Washington to make such a decision in the wake of years of aggressive actions taken against Russia. The Clinton criminal regime broke Washington’s promise that NATO would not move one each to the East. The George W. Bush criminal regime pulled out of the ABM Treaty and changed US war doctrine to elevate the use of nuclear weapons from retaliation to first strike. The Obama criminal regime launched a frontal propaganda attack on Russia with crazed Hillary’s denunciation of President Putin as “the new Hitler.” In an effort to evict Russia from its naval base in Crimea, the criminal Obama regime overthrew the Ukrainian government during the Sochi Olympics and installed a Washington puppet. US missile bases have been established on Russia’s border, and NATO conducts war games against Russia on Russian borders.

This is insanity. These and other gratuitous provocations have convinced the Russian military’s Operation Command that Washington is planning a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. The Russian government has replied to these provocations with the statement that Russia will never again fight a war on its own territory.

Those such as myself and Stephen Cohen, who point out that Washington’s reckless and irresponsible behavior has created an enemy out of a country that very much wanted to be friends, do not get much attention from the presstitute media. The US military/security complex needs an enemy sufficient to justify its vast budget and power, and the Western media has accommodated that selfish and dangerous need.

Russia today is far stronger and better armed than the Soviet Union ever was. Russia also has an alliance with China, an economic and military power. This alliance was created by Washington’s threats against both countries.

Europe and Japan need to understand that they have responsibility for the resurrection of the Cold War in a far more dangerous form than existed in the 20th century. Europe and Japan, whose political leaders are owned by Washington, have taken money from Washington and sold out their peoples along with the rest of humanity.

The entirety of the Western World is devoid of intelligent political leadership. This leaves countries such as Russia, China and Iran with the challenge of preserving life on earth as the Western World pushes humanity toward Armageddon.

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

On January 10th, Gallup listed their “Top Well-Being Findings of 2017”, and three findings pertained to the entire U.S. (the others pertained only to sub-populations):

Americans’ well-being declines in 2017

U.S. uninsured rate rises

Exchange purchasers rate their health coverage less positively

In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, there was “a reversal of the three-year upward trend” of Americans’ well-being. This time, it went down, instead of continued flat or else went up again.

Of course, nothing affects well-being or happiness as much as health does, and the U.S. is perhaps the sickest of all advanced industrialized countries. On 21 February 2017, the Washington Post had bannered “U.S. life expectancy will soon be on par with Mexico’s and the Czech Republic’s” and reported that

“Life expectancy at birth will continue to climb substantially for residents of industrialized nations — but not in the United States, where minimal gains will soon put life spans on par with those in Mexico and the Czech Republic, according to an extensive analysis. … ‘Notable among poor-performing countries is the USA,’ the researchers wrote, ‘whose life expectancy at birth is already lower than most other high-income countries, and is projected to fall further behind, such that its 2030 life expectancy at birth might be similar to the Czech Republic for men, and Croatia and Mexico for women.’ … It is the only one without universal health insurance coverage and has the ‘largest share of unmet health-care needs due to financial costs,’ the researchers wrote.”

The U.S. has by far the world’s highest-cost healthcare, both on an absolute basis and also as a percentage of GDP. It also has extremely unequal distribution of wealth. So: a great many Americans simply can’t afford the healthcare they need; they put up with their unattended or under-attended ailments and disabilities. This, in turn, decreases America’s productivity.

On 8 December 2016, that same newspaper had already headlined “U.S. life expectancy declines for the first time since 1993” and reported that

“For the first time in more than two decades, life expectancy for Americans declined last year — a troubling development linked to a panoply of worsening health problems in the United States. … Its findings show increases in ‘virtually every cause of death. It’s all ages. … This is unusual, and we don’t know what happened,’ said Jiaquan Xu, an epidemiologist and lead author of the study. ‘So many leading causes of death increased.’”

Age-adjusted death rates for the 10 leading causes of death. (Source: CDC/NCHS/HHS/NVSS)

So: one might consider Gallup’s latest findings — both of declining well-being, and of declining health-insurance coverage — to be in line with what’s to be reasonably expected in America.

The percentage of Americans without health insurance rose to 12.3% in 2017, from the prior year’s 10.9%. At the beginning of Obama’s Presidency, that figure had been 14.6% uninsured. While Obamacare was being drafted-and-debated in Congress; that figure rose to reach 18.0% uninsured by the time the exchanges opened in October 2013, because many Americans were not renewing their insurance policies; they were instead hoping for better deals to become available under Obamacare. Then, the uninsured percentage gradually declined down to the 10.9% who were uninsured by the time when Obama left office. 

Obama’s plan had increased the percentage of Americans with health insurance from 85.4% when he entered office, to 89.1% by the time he left office. He had promised “universal coverage” — everyone would have health insurance under his system (100%, just like in all other developed nations) — but never attained higher than 89.1% who were insured; and this figure was flatlining at that level by the time he left office. (He also had promised, during his campaign, that there would be a “public option” in his plan, but never even tried to include it, once he became elected to the Presidency; only private insurance companies were allowed into his exchanges; his plan was actually drawn-up by insurance company lobbyists and executives, with Obama’s choice of conservative U.S. Senator Max Baucus’s staff, who were working with Obama’s personal agent, Nancy-Ann DeParle, who herself was a former healthcare executive.) 

Now, since he has left office, the uninsured percentage has suddenly started rising again, this time from 10.9% to 12.3%, an increase of 12.3/10.9, or a rise of nearly 13%, since Obama left. Perhaps this indicates Trump’s success toward destroying Obamacare, but the rest of Trump’s destruction of it has already been included in his and the Republican Congress’s tax-overhaul law ending the requirement to purchase health insurance — the “insurance mandate” — because that termination will de-fund the federal subsidies that had enabled the insurance companies to make profits without having to soar their premiums even more than they did. The insurers won’t be receiving these federal government subsidies. Obama showed that he had believed in Government bailing-out and subsidizing Wall Street and insurance companies but not in Government bailing-out or subsidizing their victims; his policy-proposals showed that he believed more in “trickle-down” economics than in “percolate-up” economics. So, now, Obamacare is doomed — the insurers will increase premiums even more, and thus more and more people will refuse to buy insurance. Even the modest improvement that Obama and the Democrats had achieved in American health care is being reversed by the Republicans. 

The only consistent winner in all of this is America’s wealthiest, who — for example — own the insurance companies (which now will be funding especially heavily the Democratic Party’s nominees). America’s needy are being placed under even more pressures than they were under before. Instead of a neoliberal Democratic Government, America now has an even more neoliberal Republican Government. Neoliberalism is trickle-down economics, and Republicans are even more committed to it than are Democrats. (Neoconservatism is the foreign-policy complement to neoliberalism: in the old terminology, it was called “imperialism,” and its domestic-policy complement was called simply “capitalism”; but, now, we have instead “neoconservatism” and “neoliberalism” — and both parts of conservatism are more now than under Obama.)

This brings us to the last of the three major Gallup findings about Americans’ welfare during 2017: “Exchange purchasers rate their health coverage less positively.” It reports that satisfaction with health insurance was 74% for people who had purchased from an Obamacare exchange, and 81% for all others, and was especially high for the two main socialized portions of America’s health insurance: Veterans’ health care, and Medicare. It was, however, the lowest for Medicaid, the socialized system specifically for the poorest and sickest people — the neediest of all, who are treated as being the worst of all by America’s Government, even though almost all of them were born to poverty and/or genetic diseases, etc. 

Whereas India has its “Dalits”, America has its poor. Regardless whether they’re male, female, white, black, Hispanic, or whatever, they’re despised by America’s Government — and even more so by Trump’s than by Obama’s. In Indian terminology, America now has an even more anti-Dalit Government than it did previously. More clearly than ever, after the period of FDR’s progressivism ended with Ronald Reagan in 1980, the poor have now become America’s “untouchables.” 

Even politically active Blacks, feminists, homosexuals, and other oppressed categories, are more concerned to represent their own ethnicity or other oppressed group, than to represent all of the oppressed — the poor in every group, and the victims of all types of bigotry. 

Progressivism thus has no active constituency in the United States — not even at the grass roots; and it has only enemies at the well-funded organized political level. This is why both of the existing political Parties are conservative (neoliberal and neoconservative), and compete for support only amongst the wealthiest, who are the source of both neoliberalism and neoconservatism. 

Gallup’s latest report documents the direction that America’s Government currently is heading, which is simply conservative (neoconservative+neoliberal). Although only a minority of America’s voters are conservative, a vast majority of America’s wealth is owned by conservatives, if for no other reason than that they were generally born far richer than the poor were (or than any of the professional advocates for the poor are). (And, of course, any of the born-poor who became the exceptions who managed to rise into America’s aristocracy tend to be overwhelmingly conservative because they think they did it by being superior to the many who did not. Wealth produces conservatism. Furthermore, the wealthy are also less compassionate, more psychopathic, than the non-wealthy. Though they are actually among the worst, they think that they are among the best. And they’ve got the money to hire plenty of agents to promote their view.)

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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Truth in media is a powerful instrument. As long as we keep probing, asking questions, challenging media disinformation to find real understanding, then we are in a better position to participate in creating a better world in which truth and accountability trump greed and corruption.

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It’s Nato that’s Empire-building, not Putin

By Peter Hitchins and True Publica, January 11, 2018

Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

Trump Administration Prepares More Hawkish Position on Nuclear Arms. The Deployment of Mininukes

By Jason Ditz, January 11, 2018

With the US forever investing more into their nuclear arsenal, ensuring they have the world’s biggest collection of city destroying arms, the fact that none have been used in over 70 years is a silver lining to many, but within the administration, it may be a problem that needs correcting.

US Military Intelligence Has “Weaponized Democracy” Worldwide

By Andrew Korybko, January 11, 2018

It doesn’t matter whether it’s the US’ brand of “democracy” for export or the national-specific model of government that strengthens non-Western states, the theoretical concept behind this system has been weaponized by military intelligence agencies worldwide in a back-and-forth competition to change or retain the “deep state” status quo.

US Needs the Taliban to Justify Its Military Presence in Afghanistan

By Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan and Edu Montesanti, January 11, 2018

It has been forty years since the US started working on its Afghan project, and investing in Afghan youth to make them its cadres was cardinal to its long-term aims in Afghanistan. The CIA educated and trained its lackeys, politically and militarily, creating loyal lackeys who would go on to constitute its future puppet government after it was to take over Afghanistan, and help it achieve its goals comfortably.

China’s Pivot to World Markets, Washington’s Pivot to World Wars…

By Prof. James Petras, January 11, 2018

China and the United States are moving in polar opposite directions: Beijing is rapidly becoming the center of overseas investments in high tech industries, including robotics, nuclear energy and advanced machinery with collaboration from centers of technological excellence, like Germany.

In contrast, Washington is pursuing a predatory military pivot to the least productive regions with collaboration from its most barbaric allies, like Saudi Arabia.

Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS): War and More War…

By Christopher Black, January 10, 2018

So one would think that when the President of the United States sits down with his advisors and asks them about these problems and to come up with an American national strategy to resolve them that they would take that task seriously and get together all the best scientists, doctors, sociologists, psychologists, economists, philosophers, poets, and artists, writers and musicians, engineers, trades people, committees of locally chosen working people and, of course military men interested in maintaining a continuum of peace instead of war. But on reading the new Strategy document you find that all these people are missing.

Featured image: The candlelight movement in Seoul, South Korea, mobilized for change of government (Source: Women Cross DMZ)

Public demonstrations and opposition arising once again in Greece, as the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, IMF) demand still more austerity measures (pension cuts, privatizations, tax hikes) as part of the latest maneuvering by the Troika and its Syriza Greek government ally in anticipation of a renewal of yet another ‘debt deal’ later this year in 2018. The old deal–the third established in 2015–is scheduled to end this summer. The Troika-Syriza intend to ‘roll it over’. Thus the new demands for continuing and more austerity raised well before the expiration of the 2015 debt agreement.

Elections for Greece’s parliament, where Syriza has a narrow majority, would have to follow later in 2018, so the Troika-Syriza government seek to wrap up a new agreement on debt before the expiration and new elections.

This sad scenario has been going on since 2010, with no end in sight since there’s no way Greece’s economy can repay the interest and principal on hundreds of billions of dollars of debt imposed on it by pro-Eurozone Greek governments. It is perpetual interest payments for decades to come. 95% of the debt interest payments end up in German and other northern European banks, according to German university institute studies.

As I indicated in my September 2016 book, ‘Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges’, Clarity Press, it amounts to a new kind of imperialism based on financial payments for debt imposed by pan-European political institutions (Troika) on the smaller economies of the Eurozone periphery. (see book reviews and select chapters from the book on this blog’s book roll on the right side of this page. Orders at discount are available by clicking on the book icon–or on Amazon and elsewhere).

Unlike classic imperialism–e.g. 19th century British version–where factories and production were set up in the colonial country to produce goods sold at cost with low wages to British capitalist owners, who then shipped the goods back to the UK, and from there resold them at a higher price in the UK or Europe–the new 21st century financial imperialism exploits the entire economy by requiring debt interest payments to be paid by the colonial government to the banks and investors in the ‘host’ country. The payments are made by imposing fiscal austerity measures on the society being exploited. It’s a new form of ‘colonialism’ where the exploitation is ‘socialised’ and generalized, most of which is ‘paid for’ by pensioners retirement cuts, government workers’ layoffs and wage and benefit cuts, by colonial governments’ privatizing social services and public goods (sold to foreign investors to raise cash to pay the interest), and by tax hikes on households and small businesses to gain revenues with which to pay the interest on the debt.

Watch my most recent interview with Press TV on the latest demonstrations in Greece and popular resistance, which will intensify once again as the current Troika-Syriza government debt agreement expires in 2018.

To watch, go to Youtube at:

See my prior 2016 Youtube interviews on the 2015 prior Troika-Syriza debt deal at: