Global Research

For over a century, the British Empire exerted control over Asia-Pacific, outright colonising India, Burma, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia while influencing and encroaching upon greater China, Siam and beyond.

It exploited the people and natural resources of the region, fuelled conflict as it waged war with rival European powers seeking to carve out their own colonies in Asia and left an enduring impact on the region, including ethnic and territorial feuds still unfolding today, e.g. the Rohingya crisis in present-day Myanmar.

Rather than make restitution for its decades of war, conquest and exploitation, the United Kingdom today eagerly seeks to reassert itself in the region alongside the United States who has also spent over a century in the region pursuing what US policymakers openly admit is American “primacy.”

The Diplomat, a US-European geopolitical publication focused on Asia-Pacific, described this development in its article, “The British Are Coming (to Asia).”

The article featured a single image, that of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the UK’s newest warships and its largest. It is one of two “colossal warships” UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently pledged to send across the globe to aid Washington in its growing confrontation with Beijing.

The author, US Air Force Major John Wright currently serving as Japan Country Director, International Affairs, Headquarters Pacific Air Forces, Honolulu, Hawaii, attempts to construct a positive argument for the UK’s involvement thousands of miles from its own shores.

The article admits that the US has few capable allies in the region willing to “comply with mutual defence needs beyond their own territory.” It admits that the US has increasingly looked beyond Asia for partners. The UK then, is about as beyond Asia as any potential partner could be.

The article notes that the UK has already deployed warplanes to Japan in addition to the aforementioned future deployment of British warships to the region. It also suggests that:

…the U.K. could revive the old trick of acting as a “fleet in being;” its ability to steam where and when it pleased while possessing no major territory would throw off regional rivals’ military calculus and force them to commit precious reconnaissance assets to monitoring the United Kingdom.

In other words, a European military would be deployed in and harass “rivals” across Asia alongside US warships already engaged in regional meddling. This, the author concludes, “would be a great benefit to stabilising the security troubles of the region.”   

Yet, when considering what actually drives “security troubles of the region,” it is evident that the presence of US forces far beyond US territory, for example, stationed in South Korea and conducting military exercises along North Korea’s borders in a deliberate attempt to provoke Pyongyang is the problem, not the solution. The addition of British warships and aircraft in the region will only further multiply “security troubles” evident in the author’s own comments regarding the need for “regional rivals” to commit to tracking and keeping in check British warships.

Omitted from Major Wright’s nostalgic review of the UK’s historic role in Asia-Pacific was the concept of “gunboat diplomacy,” where the British Empire coerced Asian states into making lopsided concessions to London or face British naval firepower. Chunks of Siam were carved off under threat of British “gunboat diplomacy,” Hong Kong was outright seized by it and other nations likewise were forced by threat of military aggression to make concessions that benefited only the British.

US “primacy” in Asia-Pacific today closely resembles British “gunboat diplomacy.” While literal gunboats training cannons on the capitals of targeted states is no longer feasible, other means of coercion are. These include options categorised under “soft power” including US-European-funded opposition groups which may or may not include armed components. There is also economic warfare. When Thailand ousted US-proxy Thaksin Shinawatra and his political allies from power, the US pursued a campaign of economic sabotage aimed at Thailand’s seafood industry and tourism sector.

The US also employs terrorism as seen in the Philippines where Manila’s failure to heed US demands was swiftly followed by the appearance of militants from the Islamic State (IS) armed and funded by Washington’s allies in Riyadh. The militant group’s sudden appearance pressured Manila to continue accommodating the US military’s presence on its territory.

Of course, just as the British Empire hid naked imperialism behind the fig leaf of “spreading civilisation,” modern-day neo-imperialism hides behind the pretext of bringing “stability” as well as fostering “democracy” and “human rights” to the four corners of the globe. In reality, UK warships confronting “regional rivals” thousands of miles from London is a direct attempt to upend stability in Asia-Pacific. The British imposing their will upon Asia through the threat of military might undermines regional and national self-determination, the very opposite of fostering democracy.  And a nation imposing its will by threat of force is an obvious affront human rights.

Despite these obvious facts, we can expect publications like The Diplomat to continue promoting US-British meddling across Asia-Pacific. We can also expect the many aspects of US-European “soft power” across the region to likewise promote such meddling. However, it should be noted, that Washington’s need to find allies in Asia as far beyond Asia as northwest Europe illustrates America’s waning influence in Asia to begin with. British involvement in Asia-Pacific will only delay the inevitable removal of US influence from the region. The only question is, for how long and at what cost to both the British taxpayers and the people of Asia who must stave off attempts to disrupt, destabilise and destroy their hard-earned independence and achievements post-British Empire.

*

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

All images in this article are from the author.

For over a century, the British Empire exerted control over Asia-Pacific, outright colonising India, Burma, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia while influencing and encroaching upon greater China, Siam and beyond.

It exploited the people and natural resources of the region, fuelled conflict as it waged war with rival European powers seeking to carve out their own colonies in Asia and left an enduring impact on the region, including ethnic and territorial feuds still unfolding today, e.g. the Rohingya crisis in present-day Myanmar.

Rather than make restitution for its decades of war, conquest and exploitation, the United Kingdom today eagerly seeks to reassert itself in the region alongside the United States who has also spent over a century in the region pursuing what US policymakers openly admit is American “primacy.”

The Diplomat, a US-European geopolitical publication focused on Asia-Pacific, described this development in its article, “The British Are Coming (to Asia).”

The article featured a single image, that of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the UK’s newest warships and its largest. It is one of two “colossal warships” UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently pledged to send across the globe to aid Washington in its growing confrontation with Beijing.

The author, US Air Force Major John Wright currently serving as Japan Country Director, International Affairs, Headquarters Pacific Air Forces, Honolulu, Hawaii, attempts to construct a positive argument for the UK’s involvement thousands of miles from its own shores.

The article admits that the US has few capable allies in the region willing to “comply with mutual defence needs beyond their own territory.” It admits that the US has increasingly looked beyond Asia for partners. The UK then, is about as beyond Asia as any potential partner could be.

The article notes that the UK has already deployed warplanes to Japan in addition to the aforementioned future deployment of British warships to the region. It also suggests that:

…the U.K. could revive the old trick of acting as a “fleet in being;” its ability to steam where and when it pleased while possessing no major territory would throw off regional rivals’ military calculus and force them to commit precious reconnaissance assets to monitoring the United Kingdom.

In other words, a European military would be deployed in and harass “rivals” across Asia alongside US warships already engaged in regional meddling. This, the author concludes, “would be a great benefit to stabilising the security troubles of the region.”   

Yet, when considering what actually drives “security troubles of the region,” it is evident that the presence of US forces far beyond US territory, for example, stationed in South Korea and conducting military exercises along North Korea’s borders in a deliberate attempt to provoke Pyongyang is the problem, not the solution. The addition of British warships and aircraft in the region will only further multiply “security troubles” evident in the author’s own comments regarding the need for “regional rivals” to commit to tracking and keeping in check British warships.

Omitted from Major Wright’s nostalgic review of the UK’s historic role in Asia-Pacific was the concept of “gunboat diplomacy,” where the British Empire coerced Asian states into making lopsided concessions to London or face British naval firepower. Chunks of Siam were carved off under threat of British “gunboat diplomacy,” Hong Kong was outright seized by it and other nations likewise were forced by threat of military aggression to make concessions that benefited only the British.

US “primacy” in Asia-Pacific today closely resembles British “gunboat diplomacy.” While literal gunboats training cannons on the capitals of targeted states is no longer feasible, other means of coercion are. These include options categorised under “soft power” including US-European-funded opposition groups which may or may not include armed components. There is also economic warfare. When Thailand ousted US-proxy Thaksin Shinawatra and his political allies from power, the US pursued a campaign of economic sabotage aimed at Thailand’s seafood industry and tourism sector.

The US also employs terrorism as seen in the Philippines where Manila’s failure to heed US demands was swiftly followed by the appearance of militants from the Islamic State (IS) armed and funded by Washington’s allies in Riyadh. The militant group’s sudden appearance pressured Manila to continue accommodating the US military’s presence on its territory.

Of course, just as the British Empire hid naked imperialism behind the fig leaf of “spreading civilisation,” modern-day neo-imperialism hides behind the pretext of bringing “stability” as well as fostering “democracy” and “human rights” to the four corners of the globe. In reality, UK warships confronting “regional rivals” thousands of miles from London is a direct attempt to upend stability in Asia-Pacific. The British imposing their will upon Asia through the threat of military might undermines regional and national self-determination, the very opposite of fostering democracy.  And a nation imposing its will by threat of force is an obvious affront human rights.

Despite these obvious facts, we can expect publications like The Diplomat to continue promoting US-British meddling across Asia-Pacific. We can also expect the many aspects of US-European “soft power” across the region to likewise promote such meddling. However, it should be noted, that Washington’s need to find allies in Asia as far beyond Asia as northwest Europe illustrates America’s waning influence in Asia to begin with. British involvement in Asia-Pacific will only delay the inevitable removal of US influence from the region. The only question is, for how long and at what cost to both the British taxpayers and the people of Asia who must stave off attempts to disrupt, destabilise and destroy their hard-earned independence and achievements post-British Empire.

*

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

All images in this article are from the author.

The man, gristle and all, perched on his stick, a statue lost in a mess of dirt ridden clothes, his face obscured by the casting shadow of the sheltering building in the southern Serbian town of Bujanovac. An eye half-shut, the other suspiciously attentive, he was spotting a particularly agitated dog, udders swollen and heavy, with disdain.  The word was that he had hit that same animal the previous day. The memory stung; the dog, barking with helpless fury, wanted a revenge it could never have, a dish it could never savour.  

As the barking continued with increasing agitation, a set of strangled yelps were released, followed by a sequence of piercing howls. The man had deployed his stick once more, having gotten off his perch and metamorphosed into a mobile being.  No longer still statue, clothes animated and moving with the corporeal form, this mass was now directing his stick with committed viciousness.  The dog, beaten, fled again, its cries weaving through the pot-filled streets of Bujanovac like lengthy stretches of pain.

The scene of casual cruelties in the town of Bujanovac alight along the potted road to the village church in neighbouring Rakovac, a village of Serbs in an area also replete with Albanians and the sound of mosques in prayer.

A puppy blackish and brown, its pygmy presence barely a few weeks old has been abandoned, its doomed cries as it vainly struggles in the damp grass defrosted from the night, bruising to the heart.  Some pass by without a glance at this blur of colour, the animal struggling to find his bearings, legs giving way; others register a sorrowful regret at not being able to take the animal home.  There are priorities, and the dog as pet is less valued as the dog as guard, soldier and functional protector.  Animals shelters where these creatures can be saved are not thought of; the grim reaper shall have his feed tonight.

The air is thick with the smoke of busy wood stoves, smells moving across the countryside as a fog of purpose.  Plump chickens are active amongst houses that seem to vary between states of collapse, barely propped up, and shacks of wood and brick with a for sale sign.  There are incomplete floors, with tempting and lengthy garlands of peppers.  These structures supply a melancholic anatomy lesson in architecture.

The appearance, spectacular, disconcerting, and comforting to the patriot – for when there are no jobs, patriotism becomes one, its own justification, its own release – are the tractors laden with oak branches that will supply the ceremonial bandjak. A burning is anticipated this evening, and youths with shaved heads are already intoxicated with ample pivo, rakija and Chetnik songs, a historical stutter of Od Topole pa do Ravne Gore that would have sent Yugoslavian officials into a fit. (In Tito’s multiethnic state congealed by blood and iron fisted authority, firebrand nationalism was buried in shallow soil, never vanquished, each side storing memories and curing them like smoked meats in the attic, to be consumed later.)

The town squares and church yards are readying to feature these felled oaks, branches caught in their youth, which will be purified and dissipated in conflagration.  There will be mulled wine and rakija in vast cauldrons, and ring dancing.  Singles shall become couples; villagers will bustle.

The morning had been characterised by something of a pilgrimage: men, armed with a small axe, some with toothy saws, trudging, cycling, riding, beeping their way to a site just outside Rakovac to seek their sacred oak.  The trees there are set upon, most of them young and ideal for the ceremonies they will ultimately perish in.

Celebrations in this part of the world are not merely ones of communing occasion; they are to be boisterously, even vulgarly celebrated before those who do not.  It is the pork thrust in the face of the Muslim; the contrived defilement in a holy place.  In a region of Serbia where the Albanian presence is vigorous and strong, and, in some parts, dominant, the move is less than prudent.  Chess pieces are moving on this particularly chess board of Balkan concern, and the moves are not looking pretty.

There are the swarthy nomads whose relatives anticipate some turn to propertied status; there are Albanians who have invested prudently and built manors of kitsch and stone, with incongruously well kept lawns.  There are wise Serbs who have done the same in what is a race for survival, an existential plotting as to how best to cope with the next conflict.  Locals here ponder and speculate about each other – Gypsy, Albanian, Serb – and the sense of a nature that is not noble intrigues: the shape-changing nature of a feared adversary is permanent.

The skies begin to redden, with orange hues fading into deeper rich colours.  Brass bands are playing with an enthusiasm that always sounds like fury.  Fires are being started.  Songs are being sung. This is the eve of Orthodox Christmas, and the cries from the mosques compete, forming an eclectic if troubled mix: the blessings of Allah and the work of the Prophet, and the overarching presence of Christ.

*

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

Featured image is from Boise.

Featured image: Air Marshall Greg Bagwell (Source: Drone Wars UK)

Air Marshall Greg Bagwell is a recently retired senior Royal Air Force officer who served as Deputy Commander Operations at RAF Air Command.  While being a vocal supporter of the use of armed drones, in his role of President of the Air Power Association he has also argued for greater openness and engagement with the public on air power issues.  Following on from our interview with former RAF Reaper pilot ‘Justin Thompson’, we asked him if he would also be willing to be interviewed on some the wider operational and strategic issues raised by armed drones.  He happily agreed.

A full transcript of the interview is available here but it’s worth highlighting some of the key points discussed.

Like many other military officers, AM Bagwell has regularly argued that drones are no different from other military aircraft engaged in surveillance and strikes operations and during the interview he told us that he struggled to see why drones are singled out for attention. He understood, he said, why people would want to discuss some of the underlying issues, such as kill lists and targeted killing, but he did not understand the focus on “the tool” used.  At the same time, when pressed, he accepts, that the kind of operations that lead to most controversy were in fact made easier by the availability of armed drone technology.

Asked whether the UK could deploy its armed drones without US support, AM Bagwell said that while it was “theoretically possible”, in reality it would be “challenging”. Reading between the lines, it seems this is due to infrastructure issues (satellite communications etc.) and personnel numbers.

With regard to the impact of drone operations on the crew, he spoke about how fatigue from the burden of operations meant that he had resisted pressure from above to increase the number of Reaper missions over Iraq and Syria. Pressed on whether UK drone operations should now end as Iraq has declared victory of ISIS, he said he understood why the deployment could be on-going as it was “the nature of the beast.”  He went on

“It’s a surveillance capability that will always be in demand, will always be employed to the maximum.”

News to us was the fact that the RAF has trained non-pilots to fly UK Reapers on operations.  This, almost certainly, indicates that the UK is struggling with recruitment of RAF pilots to this role.  It will be very interesting to see if there are differences between traditional pilots and others operating RAF Reaper drones in Dr Peter Lee’s forthcoming book, Reaper Force, which focuses on crew issues.

A big point of disagreement came during discussion of the deployment of armed British drones into Syria in 2014, despite the fact that MPs had restricted RAF strikes against ISIS to Iraq. AM Bagwell insisted that the RAF had authorisation for the missions, and argued that restriction of operations against ISIS to Iraq alone, was like ‘trying to win the FA Cup despite only playing in one half’.

As is well known, ‘non-offensive’ operations in Syria became offensive with the use of drones to target and kill Cardiff-born Reyaad Khan.  AM Bagwell said he didn’t have any issue with Khan being called an enemy combatant.

“He had clearly engaged and would continue to, so to me that’s a target.”

But he also wondered aloud about whether such targeted killing operations were “the right thing to do politically or morally.”  He clearly also had questions on the grounds of effectiveness:

“We could have the argument about whether this encourages more people to join the enemy.  I don’t know whether some young person in the UK seeing another Brit killed in a UK military operation will be encouraged to join ISIS or discourage them.  If it discourages them, I’m all for it. If it encourages, then we got it wrong. That’s a very difficult thing to judge.”

Importantly, AM Bagwell strongly challenged the credibility of the MoD’s position that, without evidence to the contrary, there has been no civilian casualties from UK strikes in Iraq and Syria.  While insisting that the MoD has done its utmost to prevent civilian casualties he is clear that that “it’s just wrong to let people think that no-one has been killed.” He went on:

“There is a danger at the moment that we are conditioning ourselves to think in a certain way. That wars are bloodless and that we can carry out war in a ‘nice way’.  Thinking war is bloodless is a mistake because we need to be aware that war is nasty and opting for it, must be the last resort. Thinking it can be done cleanly etc. is a mistake.”

He also suggested that asymmetric war is connected to the rise in terrorism.  According to MoD figures, more than 3,000 ISIS fighters have been killed in UK air strikes since 2014.  In that same time there has not been a single UK military personnel killed in enemy action.

“When you have an asymmetric advantage, enemies seek to find a way around it, and that is what terrorism is.”

Overall the interview with AM Bagwell was something of a refreshing, grown up discussion of the issues raised by armed drones. We clearly did not agree on many of the important aspects of the debate. But a decade into the UK’s deployment of these systems, and at a time when more countries around the globe are armed drones, it’s right that there is much more serious debate about the technology, remote war, and where it is leading us.

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Featured image is from the author.

The US Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it is terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than a quarter-million immigrants from El Salvador. The immigrants, a large majority of them poorer workers, have 18 months, until September 9, 2019, to leave the US or be arrested and deported.

Including the roughly 190,000 children of the 262,000 Salvadoran TPS recipients, the total population immediately affected is larger than the population of a city the size of Toledo, Ohio or New Orleans, Louisiana. Rounding up the TPS recipients for deportation will require Gestapo-type operations in the Washington DC metropolitan area, where 50,000 Salvadoran TPS recipients live; Los Angeles, where 40,000 live; and Houston and New York City, where a combined 50,000 reside.

The Salvadorans are the largest single group covered by the TPS program, under which the DHS secretary may allow people fleeing natural disasters or civil wars to stay in the United States for more extended periods of time than under traditional refugee status.

The Salvadoran TPS recipients constitute a significant section of the working class in the US, where most have put down deep roots. The average Salvadoran covered by TPS has been living in the US for 21 years. Those now facing deportation are primarily of middle age and have lived here for most of their adult lives. By one estimate, removing these workers will slash the US gross domestic product by nearly $110 billion over the next 10 years.

Some 190,000 were admitted before 1994 and all 262,000 entered the country before 2001, when several major earthquakes devastated El Salvador. Tens of thousands escaped the civil war that ravaged the country from 1980 to 1992, during which US-backed death squads razed villages and massacred the population, including the estimated 1,200 peasants murdered in the village of El Mozote 37 years ago last month in what is known as El Salvador’s My Lai.

The move is a death sentence for hundreds or even thousands of those who will be sent back to a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world, dominated by criminal drug gangs that operate with impunity, protected by a corrupt military that rakes in money from both narcotics trafficking and US military aid. According to a 2015 report in the Guardian, dozens of deported Salvadorans were murdered after being deported by Obama in 2014-2015 alone.

The decision to terminate TPS for Salvadorans signals the Trump administration’s determination to put an end to the program entirely. Previously, DHS Acting Secretary Elaine Duke terminated TPS for 2,500 immigrants from Nicaragua, giving them until January 5, 2019 to leave the United States, and for 57,000 immigrants from Haiti, whose TPS status is set to expire July 22, 2019.

But equal responsibility for the move lies with the Democratic Party, which paved the way for Trump’s mass deportation program during the Obama administration. President Obama deported 2.7 million immigrants, including hundreds of thousands when the Democratic Party controlled Congress in the first years of his administration.

This makes the phony statements of support for immigrants by leading Democrats all the more cynical. Barack Obama jailed tens of thousands of Salvadoran children and their mothers who crossed into the US during a flare-up of Central American violence in 2014.

As for Trump’s request and for $15 billion more in funding for border “security,” the Democratic Party has long embraced the militarization of the border and has made clear it will back the allocation of additional billions to increase what is already a small army of border police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The Democrats’ opposition to Trump’s demand for $18 billion to build a physical wall along the US-Mexico border is a political maneuver to divert attention from their basic agreement on stepping up the war against undocumented workers.

When the precursor to Trump’s wall was first proposed in the 2006 Secure Fence Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush, top Senate Democrats backed it, including then-senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden, as well as Charles Schumer, now the Senate Democratic leader. As a result of this and other bipartisan border militarization measures, up to 27,000 immigrants have died crossing the desert in the last 20 years.

In 2013, the Democrats agreed to spend $40 billion on border security, doubling the number of Border Patrol agents to 40,000 and expanding the use of high-tech surveillance equipment, including sensors and drones. The Democrats also agreed to eliminate the visa lottery, exclude siblings of US citizens from family reunification visas, and expand visa offerings based on education levels and work expertise, along the lines demanded by US corporations seeking highly skilled labor. The bill was voted down by the Republicans.

Today, they are proposing to go above and beyond their previous anti-immigrant pledges. The move to deport TPS recipients comes as the Democratic Party and Trump are engaged in Kabuki theater negotiations over the fate of 800,000 young people brought to the US as children who are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program enacted during the Obama administration. Trump rescinded the DACA order, effective March 5, at which point mass roundups of former DACA recipients could begin, using the information they supplied to the government as part of their applications for DACA.

The White House is also demanding cuts in legal immigration as part of a “compromise” on DACA, including the elimination of the visa lottery program and so-called “chain migration,” which allows US citizens and legal residents to sponsor family relations for entry.

Last week, Senator Schumer made clear in advance of talks on DACA that he supported further measures to militarize the US-Mexican border. Senator Bernie Sanders reiterated his support for stepped-up attacks on undocumented workers in an appearance Sunday on the ABC program “This Week.” Sanders declared that while he opposed Trump’s border wall, “I don’t think there’s anybody who disagrees that we need strong border security. If the president wants to work with us to make sure we have strong border security, let’s do that.”

Sanders, in line with the trade union bureaucracy, echoes Trump’s economic nationalism and pseudo-populist attempts to pit American workers against their class brothers and sisters in other countries.

The vast majority of Americans disagree with the anti-immigrant nationalism of Trump, with nine in 10 believing the government should give citizenship to immigrants who have lived in the US for a number of years. Mass protests broke out at airports across the country in January and February 2017 after Trump announced his initial travel ban. Since then, the Democratic Party has worked systematically to divert and suppress popular opposition to Trump’s anti-immigrant, pro-corporate and pro-war program. It has instead promoted reactionary, anti-democratic campaigns.

These include the so-called “Me Too” movement, which rejects basic democratic principles such as the presumption of innocence and due process in order to promote the feminism of privileged layers of the middle class; the anti-Russia campaign, which seeks to shift American foreign policy to an even more aggressive military posture against Russia; and the campaign against “fake news,” which is being used to justify censorship of the Internet and social media.

In December, the Supreme Court allowed a revised version of Trump’s travel ban to take effect shortly after House Democrats voted two-to-one against a move by a Democratic congressman to introduce articles of impeachment citing Trump’s mass deportation program.

Socialists reject the entire reactionary framework of the so-called “debate” over immigration “reform.” The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) rejects the position of Democrats and Republicans alike that undocumented workers are guilty of a crime and must be made to “pay” in one fashion or another for their supposed misdeeds.

The SEP upholds the right of workers from every corner of the globe to live and work in whatever country they choose with full citizenship rights, including the right to return to their home countries without the threat of being barred from re-entry to the US and being separated from their families.

The total number of people who work in the same factories, construction sites and other industries alongside the 262,000 Salvadoran TPS recipients number in the millions or tens of millions. The attack on them is an attack on the entire working class.

Only the power of the working class—united across race and nationality—can block the drive to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran workers living in the US.

*

Featured image is from The Intercept.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Diplomacy is the only way to avoid catastrophic war on the Korean peninsula – something neither Pyongyang or Seoul wants.

Both countries acted responsibly by agreeing to talks today, their first ones in over two years. Last week, a hotline between both nations was reconnected.

Reportedly, Pyongyang agreed to participate in the February Winter Games in South Korea.

According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Jong-un “clearly stated that our country needs to stick to the policy, which will lead to the breakthrough of the all-sufficient unification,” adding:

“It is not worth stirring up the past and recalling the specifics of relations with Seoul. Instead of this, relations between the North and South must be improved.”

“It is not only about the normalization of the inter-Korean relations, but about the reconciliation of the nation and its free-will unification.”

Above all, it’s crucial to avoid war on the peninsula, catastrophic for both countries if occurs.

On Tuesday in Panmunjom along the DMZ, North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country chairman Ri Son-gwon said

“(t)oday, North and South Korea will engage in talks in a serious and sincere stance,” hoping for “precious” results.

South Korean Deputy Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung explained

“North Korea said that they are determined to make today’s talks fruitful, and make it a groundbreaking opportunity.”

It will send athletes and high-level officials to the Winter Games. Delegations from both countries may march together in the opening ceremony.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said

“(w)e will make efforts to make the PyeongChang Games and the Paralympics a ‘peace festival’ and help it serve as the first step toward an improvement in inter-Korean ties.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in hopes today’s talks, participation of the DPRK in the Winter Games, and follow-up dialogue will improve inter-Korean relations.

On Tuesday, senior advisor to Rex Tillerson on Asia policy Brian Hook explained the Trump administration intends maintaining pressure on Pyongyang “until we achieve our policy (imperial) goals.”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert irresponsibly accused Kim of trying “to drive a wedge” between Washington and Seoul.

Like its predecessors since the Truman era, the Trump administration rejects good faith dialogue with Pyongyang.

In 1994, US/North Korean talks were held. An Agreed Framework was signed.

Pyongyang agreed to freeze and replace its nuclear power plant program with a light water nuclear reactor, along with steps toward normalizing relations with Washington.

The Clinton administration agreed to build two light-water reactors by 2003. In the interim, it would supply Pyongyang with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel annually.

US sanctions would be lifted. The DPRK would be removed from the State Department’s state sponsors of terrorism list. Both countries agreed to provide “formal assurances” against threatened or actual use of nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang agreed to allow Washington to monitor its nuclear sites. The deal collapsed after GW Bush called North Korea part of an axis of evil in his first State of the Union address.

The DPRK upheld its part of the deal. Washington systematically breached it, reneging on its word. North Korea responded by resuming its plutonium enrichment program.

Its nuclear weapons deterrent was developed because Washington can’t be trusted. Its hostility toward the DPRK risks US aggression on the country.

North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are solely for defense, not offense. Responsibility for peninsula tensions lies in Washington, not Pyongyang.

Significantly improved inter-Korean relations remain unattainable as long as America exerts pressure on Seoul to prevent them.

US administrations treat the country like a colony, occupying it with military forces, refusing to consider a formal end to the 1950s Korean War.

Republicans and undemocratic Dems want North Korea used as a punching bag – China America’s main regional adversary.

Longstanding US plans call for replacing all sovereign independent countries with pro-Western puppet regimes – China and Russia Washington’s top two targeted nations.

*

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

On the international field, we’ve seen the rise of left wing movements such as Bernie Sanders (USA), Jeremy Corbyn (UK), Podemos (Spain). On Canadian home turf, there has also been the rise of Quebec Solidaire in Quebec. On the other hand, there has been right wing populism such as Donald Trump (USA) and the increased support for right wing nationalist groups in Europe (the Catalan nationalist movement being a notable exception). At the local level, in Canada, we’ve seen this year, the success (victory) of Valérie Plante and her party, Projet Montréal, in the mayoralty/Council elections in Montreal, plus the near victory of Jean Swanson in a Vancouver city council by-election. South of the border, on November 7, we saw another almost win from Ginger Jentzen, like Kshama Sawant, a member of Socialist Alternative. On the same day, there were significant wins for candidacies of Left Democrats running with the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Two years ago I wrote an article in The Bullet on this subject. The stimulus for the article came from my experience of spending a week in Seattle working on the campaign to reelect Socialist Alternative’s Kshama Sawant as a city councilor. Reflecting on the Sawant victory, I got to thinking about my adopted home town of Toronto and whether it would be possible to repeat the Sawant success here. The two years since the Sawant election and today have seen significant changes in the political situation – internationally, nationally and at municipal level.

The primary focus for this article is on Toronto/Ontario politics with the purpose of arguing the need for a left electoral challenge in Toronto in two possible arenas – the Ontario provincial election of June 2018 and/or the Toronto municipal elections, 5 months later. To get there, frankly, will be an uphill task but I think it’s worth raising the question for discussion.

Canadian Politics Today – the State of the Parties

The situation of Toronto/Ontario can’t be understood without taking an overview of the national political scene. What is happening to the three main parties can be summarized as follows:

1. Liberals under Justin Trudeau (4 years) – seem to have weathered the buffeting of events of being in government for two years and are still riding high in polls at around 39% (based on an average of three polls conducted in mid-November); Trudeau’s personal popularity seems to be slipping but the weakness of the other two Parties is keeping the Liberals well in front.
2. The Conservatives under Andrew Scheer (6 months) – With Scheer, we have a plodding, dull leader so far unable to take advantage of missteps by Liberals; the Tories have been running second in polls since Scheer was elected PC leader in May 2017. Currently the PCs lag behind Liberals by 8 per cent.
3. NDP under Jagmeet Singh (3 months). Despite Singh drawing a lot of media attention, not so much for being a challenger to the left of Trudeau, but more in the all-important category of looks and charisma, the NDP hasn’t made a breakthrough. Pre-Singh, NDP were around 15% in the polls; they now stand around 18%. However, there is no evidence of another “orange crush” taking place when the NDP, under the leadership of the late Jack Layton, in 2011 won 103 seats and, for the first time in its federal history, became the official opposition in Parliament.

The most popular politician in Canada is not even Canadian. It’s the American Bernie Sanders. Evidence of this came from the event held in Toronto, one Sunday in October, when Sanders came to speak on the question of healthcare. The 1,700 capacity venue was “sold out” in minutes (the tickets were, in fact, free) as 20,000 attempted to get tickets online. The line up (from ticket holders!) to get into the meeting place started at 8am for an 11am start. This, taken with the Swanson campaign, is an indication that Canada is fertile ground for socialist electoral seeds to be sown.

Ontario and Toronto – Electoral Support of the Three Main Parties

Ontario and Toronto polling, conducted on November 23 revealed that from among 843 Toronto voters, that if a provincial election were held that day,

• 33% would vote for the Liberals (unchanged from October: 33%).
• 31% would vote PC (a five-point drop since October: 36%)
• 25% would vote NDP (a two-point increase since October: 23%)

This poll was undertaken before the Ontario PCs’ convention (November 25-26) when leader, Patrick Brown, revealed for the first time, his party’s election programme – quite a savvy one, not especially right wing, which will undoubtedly draw votes from the Liberals and possibly the NDP too. However, one key right-wing element of the PCs’ programme, basing itself on an appeal to small business owners, is to delay the implementation of the Liberals’ Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, (Bill 148), scheduled to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour in January 2018.

Toronto and Precedents for Municipal Left Challenges

On the local Toronto political scene, I wrote this article four years ago, following the election of John Tory as Mayor. My update to this analysis would be that “Ford Nation” is still a factor in Toronto politics but it is much weaker than four years ago, partly explained by the current flag bearer for the Nation, Doug Ford, lacking the appeal of his late brother and partly by the “Trump effect” being minimal here.

Running as an independent left candidate in Toronto isn’t an entirely new concept. There has been a precedent of independent socialists running in city elections. Several Communists were elected to city council in the 1930s and 1940s, most notably J.B. Salsberg who was elected to city council in 1938 and then again in 1943. Communist Party leader Tim Buck won 44,000 votes in a city-wide election in 1937.

Even more interesting was Ross Dowson who ran as an open Trotskyist for mayor 9 times, with his best result being in 1949 when he won over 20% of the vote. In more recent times, the late Tooker Gomberg, more an environmental activist than a socialist (although he had a history in the NDP), ran for mayor in the 2000 municipal election, coming a distant second behind Mel Lastman with over 51,000 votes. “In the last days of the 2000 campaign, Lastman appeared with Canadian PM Jean Chrétien to promise nearly one billion dollars in social housing funding. After winning, one of Lastman’s first acts was to appoint Jane Jacobs to the City’s Charter Committee which was seeking additional powers for the City (taking them from the province of Ontario). Both moves were generally attributed to the need to respond to Gomberg’s insurgent campaign.”

Toronto Politics Now

If we were to look at the Toronto political scene, four years since the last municipal elections, I would argue that the prospects for an independent left challenge have never been better. And by an independent left challenge I’m not referring to an NDPer like Mike Layton throwing his hat in the mayoral ring to compete against Tory and Ford. The outcome of a two-way race (Tory vs Ford) and a “three way” (Ford, Tory, Layton) in 2018 are examined in this City News piece. Compared with the other two major Canadian cities, Vancouver and Montreal, Toronto starts off with a built-in disadvantage for the left in that there are no municipal political parties. Of course, political ideology is as rampant here as is elsewhere but its outward form is through individuals or non-party labels such as Ford Nation or Downtown Lefties.

It’s also an open secret that the Toronto party machines of Liberals, NDP and PC are in full operation at local election time (the colour of the candidate’s signs is a general indicator of Party affiliation) to promote individuals who are described in coded language such as ‘socially progressive’ or ‘fiscally conservative’. The fact that Toronto council is made up of 44 councilors (to become 47 in 2018) makes an independent left breakthrough even more of a challenge. Compare this to Vancouver which consists of a mayor and 10 councilors, all of them elected at-large, i.e. the whole city-wide electorate votes for all of them, not a sub-set defined through ward boundaries as is the case in Toronto.

The Fight for 15 and Fairness movement has brought together an amazing group of activists who have become accustomed to outreach activities such as tabling, petitioning, door knocking, using social media. All of these are important for conducting a successful electoral intervention. Less prominent but still significant are the transit focused group, TTC Riders, and anti-poverty, affordable housing activists in OCAP (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty). These groups alone could provide the backbone for running an independent campaign. They could, but would they be interested? Many of the left in these organizations either have a disdain for electoral politics in favour of “movements from below” or, if they are electorally inclined, favour the NDP. Many in the latter camp could be persuaded to get on board with an independent left campaign but they need to be convinced that such a campaign would be viable and not open to the accusation of splitting the progressive vote to allow a right winger to sneak in.

Another element that could cut across an independent left challenge is that of identity politics. With Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, it would not be surprising to see racialized and/or female candidates declaring but putting issues of race/gender to the forefront and downplaying issues like transit, inequality, housing, challenging corporate power etc. There are rumours that black activist Desmond Cole will run for Mayor (Draft Desmond on Facebook). Just before Christmas, prominent Muslim Asuma Malik, a TDSB Trustee and NDP member, announced her candidacy for a city council seat.

If the left decides to put its efforts into the election campaigns of “progressive” individuals who are more focused on identity issues rather than the broader ones of class, inequality and challenging corporate power, that would obviously signal the putting of an independent left initiative on the back burner for some time.

What About the Programme for the Election Campaign?

This is not a mere afterthought; it’s crucial for this to be thrashed out before you can begin to talk about a left electoral challenge. Drawing on the successful campaigns of independent leftists elsewhere (Seattle, Montreal, Vancouver, Minneapolis) and adding a Toronto twist, I would lay out these three broad areas: housing/homelessness, growing inequality and public transit.

Expanding on these, I would suggest a program that included, but not necessarily be restricted to, these demands – the order of them doesn’t denote a hierarchy. Some are provincial in reach, some are municipal and some overlap.

• Affordable Housing/Homeless situation/Rent Control. A mansion tax or “tax the rich to house the poor.” (Jean Swanson’s campaign in Vancouver), tax on developers (Ginger Jentzen in Minneapolis)
• Tax the rich – Toronto is home to one quarter of Canada’s millionaires. 1 in 4 Torontonians living in poverty
• Expand Public Transit – Reduce TTC fares, increase Government subsidy to transit. Dump the one stop subway. Expand the LRT.
• Expand bike lanes. Reduce congestion.
• Defend/extend public education – end the separate Catholic school system; for one publicly funded, secular education system
• Defend Bill 148 and its timescale implementation of the minimum wage. Add the pieces from 15 & Fairness campaign that didn’t get included in the legislation.
• Anti-racism; anti-Islamophobia – end police racial profiling, for community oversight of police; fund youth jobs programs, education, and services for communities of colour.
• LGBTQ, immigrant, native people rights – end discrimination and harassment
• Challenge Corporate Power – from the $15 and Fairness campaign, we learn that working people cannot limit themselves to what is deemed acceptable by the political establishment and big business. We need to organize independently with clear demands in order to get things done, and there is lots to get done in Toronto.

Distinguishing features about a left campaign and its candidate(s) – They will commit to:

• taking no corporate funds to finance the campaign
• taking, if victorious, no more than the average wage of a unionized worker in
  Toronto/Ontario and to donate the difference between that and the actual official salary to the funding of social movements.

Features of Recent Individual Campaigns in U.S. and Canada

Seattle and Kshama Sawant As I wrote in my Bullet article of two years ago, Sawant emerged as a prominent figure from the Occupy movement which was particularly strong in Seattle. As the activism from Occupy ebbed in Seattle, one of the left groups, Socialist Alternative (SA), proposed that it should test out the electoral arena by running candidates in the 2012 State elections.

“The suggestion did not find an echo so SA decided to run a candidate under its own banner. Even at that time, the Seattle branch of SA had a strong base with some 50 members. Sawant was the lucky one to run. It was against Frank Chopp, Democratic Speaker of the Washington State House and the second most powerful politician in the State. She didn’t win but got a creditable 29 per cent support.

“For the city Council elections of 2013, SA decided to run candidates in three cities – Seattle (Kshama Sawant); Minneapolis (Ty Moore) and Boston (Seamus Whelan). Sawant triumphed with 52% beating a 16 year incumbent, dubbed by The Stranger as “a greenwashing liberal fraud.” Moore got 49% – coming within 229 votes of winning the seat. Whelan’s campaign, while it had some local impact, was unable to break out of a crowded field. All three candidates ran as open Socialists and members of Socialist Alternative on an anti-austerity, anti-capitalist, pro-worker position. The latter included fighting for affordable housing, taxing the rich and support for a city wide enactment of $15 an hour minimum wage, a demand that had first taken off the year previously with strikes from fast food workers in New York.

“The demand for 15 really gained traction in Seattle and, over the next few months, it came to be identified with Sawant and SA. In the airport area of Seattle, Seatac, a movement for 15 ran concurrently with her campaign and the vote for that initiative, on the same day as Sawant’s Council victory, gained a narrow majority. In Seattle itself, Sawant was originally the only candidate calling for 15, making it her main campaign demand. At the same time the SEIU affiliate, Working Washington, was demonstrating and striking over it, so that by late September 2013, both candidates for Mayor had jumped on the bandwagon – but they didn’t do it until then, while Sawant and SA had been campaigning on it since April.”

Montreal and Valérie Plante Of the four left candidacies being examined here, that of Valérie Plante is probably the least radical and the one with more conventional social democratic elements attached to it. La Presse de Montréal said of her “spectacular victory” that it “enlivens Quebec Solidaire’s electoral hopes and energizes the NDP in Ottawa.” Both Montreal and Vancouver are rarities in Canada for having municipal political parties to which the mayor and city councilors belong. Plante’s party, Projet Montreal, (PM) has a history going back 13 years. Created by environmental activists in 2004, it was not specifically established to promote a mayoral candidacy. In the 2013 Montreal municipal election, PM doubled its number of seats within city council, going from 10 to 20. It became the official opposition against Denis Coderre‘s “Party” (Équipe Denis Coderre pour Montréal).

As well as Plante being victorious in the mayoralty race of 2017, PM also won a majority of seats on the city council. Yet, at time of her winning the leadership of the party, a year go, Plante was virtually unknown. Coderre was the incumbent and no incumbent from a first term had lost in Montreal in the previous 40 years. This switch of going from 2nd to 1st place happened in the very last month. Plante did not win the leadership of PM by a big margin. Her opponent inside the Party was a pro-business, bland politician. He would have been the “continuity” choice of having another bland “competent” leader for PM after it’s founder had deserted to join Coderre’s team in 2014. (CBC news)

As with a lot of environmental focused parties, its politics are not necessarily pro-worker or socialist. There are a few socialists, e.g. Craig Sauvé, who declared for $15 minimum wage 18 months before his party adopted it as its official position. Undoubtedly, many left forces saw the potential for Valérie Plante: union organizers, community based organizers, affordable housing committees. The party has grown from a thousand members in 2015 to some 6000 members today.

Plante placed a big emphasis on public transit – cheaper fares for low-income earners and committed to making public transit 40% cheaper for anyone in Montreal living under the poverty line. She called for expansion of the Metro – a new Pink Line otherwise known as “la ligne diagonale,” to cut through downtown up to Montreal’s north-east end. On housing, to ensure families have the space to live on the island of Montreal, she argued for the imposition of a new policy on developers, making 20% of units in new condo construction projects have at least 3 bedrooms, so parents and children both have space. She proposed building 12,000 new units of social and affordable housing but didn’t say how they’d be financed. She also appealed to small business by promising to foster commercial arteries.

There was nothing about taxing the rich. Despite the public transit additions and plans to expand social housing, Plante said that taxes wouldn’t be raised to pay for these initiatives. She claimed that Montrealers were already paying enough in taxes. Despite the relatively mild proposals, Plante and PM attracted and energized many activists from the NDP and QS. Her victory has to be considered a leftwing breakthrough, if not having the same weight for socialists as the campaigns of Sawant, Jentzen and Swanson. This article from La Presse gives some good background on Projet Montreal and the source of activists in the Plante campaign.

Vancouver and Jean Swanson Unlike Toronto, there’s a distinct political party tradition in Vancouver, where such entities as the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE), Vision Vancouver, and OneCity have, over the years, put up mayoral and council candidates for city-wide elections. From a left wing perspective, COPE is the most interesting. It was formed in 1968, “originally as the ‘Committee of Progressive Electors’, when a number of left wing community groups and social justice organizations joined with the city’s Labour Council to organize more effectively against the NPA – a centre-right political party which had dominated civic politics in Vancouver. Frank Kennedy of the Vancouver & District Labour Council and Harry Rankin, an outspoken lawyer and city councilor, were key figures in shaping the coalition, along with activists from the BC NDP and the BC Communist Party.”(Wikipedia). COPE has had its ups ( winning control of City Council in 2002) and its downs (formation of split off groups “Vision Vancouver” in 2005 and “OneCity” in 2014).

When it came to the 2017 by-election, contested by Swanson as an independent, the main parties in competing were:

• the centre-right NPA,
• Vision Vancouver (the ruling party in Vancouver for the last 9 years),
• OneCity (“a soft-left party established by the right wing of the NDP and union
  bureaucracy to take over when Vision inevitably faces defeat” Socialist Alternative article)
• the Greens.

Jean Swanson entered the contest with a record of being “a tireless anti-poverty and housing campaigner in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for decades.” (Rabble). She also had a political record, having ran for mayor of Vancouver in 1988. COPE didn’t field a candidate of its own and decided to endorse Swanson. She also had some other heavyweight political support – former MPP Libby Davies and Seattle’s Kshama Sawant who spoke at one of the major campaign events. When it came to election night, a low turn-out of 11% produced the following result:

• Hector Bremner, NPA: 27.8%
• Jean Swanson, Independent: 21.4%
• Pete Fry, Green Party: 20.3%
• Judy Graves, One City: 13.2%
• Diego Cardona, Vision: 11.3%

The demographic analysis of the vote showed that Swanson picked up support in the working class and poorer areas of the city “Swanson did well in the Downtown Eastside, Strathcona, and Grandview Woodlands, where she got over 40 per cent of the vote. She also picked up votes in Mount Pleasant and Hastings Sunrise, and got the most votes in the renter-heavy West End. The election results were an upset for Vision, Vancouver’s centre-left ruling civic party. Their candidate, Diego Cardona, came in fifth, and faced competition on the left from Swanson and Judy Graves (OneCity). Swanson and Graves’ combined vote totals surpassed Bremner’s.” (Vancouver Metro News)

Minneapolis and Ginger Jentzen Jentzen and Socialist Alternative had built a strong basis In Minneapolis going back to the struggle for the $15 minimum wage campaign. She had experience as as a restaurant worker and became the executive director of 15 Now Minnesota in 2015. That campaign led the struggle and was largely responsible for “gathering the thousands of signatures necessary to place a minimum-wage referendum on the city’s 2016 ballot. The move was so controversial that it set off a legal battle, with the city council turning to the courts to block the referendum. The battle went all the way to the state Supreme Court, which effectively killed the referendum.” Despite that, the 15 Now group “organized across the city, establishing committees in every ward to promote the policy. The group also sent activists to DFL (Democrats) caucuses, threatening to launch electoral challenges against conservative Democrats who refused to support the wage increase. In June, the city council approved a plan to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2024. ”Kip Hedges, who worked for decades at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, as a baggage handler and was fired when Delta Airlines discovered he had given an interview critical of the wage situation at the airport, argues that “Ginger was at the heart of all that. That was what she understood and pushed for. This is about not just 15, but about moving the needle, shifting the balance of power in favor of workers in Minneapolis,” (read more about this in Intercept article).

During her 2017 election campaign, hundreds of volunteers came out and $175,000 was raised (most of it in small donations). Minneapolis business interests mobilized against her. On election night, she obtained a majority of first preference votes, but with the distribution of second and third preference voted, under the ranked choice voting system she ended up in second place. For more, read this.

The Challenges in Toronto

The problems of launching a campaign in Toronto are many. Each of the cities mentioned above had their own unique features but there were some things in common.

• Prior tradition of “broad left” electoral work, especially with COPE in Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, with Projet Montréal;
• A strong socialist group providing a nucleus, especially SA in Seattle and Minneapolis
• strong local candidates with roots/respect in the community.
• ability to enthuse/mobilize volunteers
• ability to raise money and get some union endorsements

These clearly shows the challenges in mounting a viable campaign in Toronto, especially as electoralism is not even a twinkle in most Toronto lefties’ eyes.

In my Bullet article of two years ago, I stated “electoral politics is not an obvious comfort zone for many on the left. Meetings, demonstrations, selling papers, flitting from one hot issue to the next seem to be the more natural fit. Yet there is no logical or principled contradiction between issue based activism and electoral interventions.” The politics of the street and those of house to house door knocking are not in competition – they can and should complement each other. And for those leftists, who are indeed comfortable with door knocking during election time, they are confronted with some stark choices:

Option 1. Go along with the ABC (Anyone But Conservative) strategic voting approach which means, essentially, you are canvassing either for a Liberal or an NDP candidate;

Option 2. Try to maintain your independence by going for an “issue based” campaign (be it “$15 minimum wage with no delays” or “a people’s transit” or whatever), but not recommending a vote for either of the two non-PC parties.

Kshama Sawant and Jean Swanson (Source: The Bullet)

Option 3. Maintain your independence and organize for a vote for a new left party or candidate. In other words, you’d be following the Sawant/Jentzen/Swanson model (Plante is not recommended). You’d also be following the dictum of the great American socialist, Eugene Debs, “I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want and get it.” As for the justification of strategic voting – to stop reactionaries getting elected, Karl Marx himself dealt with this issue almost 170 years ago. Back in 1850, Marx and Engels, found themselves trying to breathe new life into the Communist League, an organization that they had helped to establish 3 years previously. Following the revolutionary events in Europe of 1848-49 which saw the consolidation of bourgeois democratic parties and the weakening of independent workers’ movements, Marx and Engels wrote to the Central Committee of the League:

“The speedy organization of at least provincial connections between the workers’ clubs is one of the prime requirements for the strengthening and development of the workers’ party; the immediate result of the overthrow of the existing governments will be the election of a national representative body. Here the proletariat must take care: 1) that by sharp practices local authorities and government commissioners do not, under any pretext whatsoever, exclude any section of workers; 2) that workers’ candidates are nominated everywhere in opposition to bourgeois-democratic candidates. As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.” (my emphasis, Tim H.)

There will be the greatest pressure from mainstream Labour to take the ABC route, Option 1. Route 2 looks attractive but it would be difficult to organize and maintain (do transit activists do their thing while 15 & Fairness folk do theirs?). Naturally, I favour option 3. So where does this lead in practice?

In the provincial area of politics, Toronto is dominated by Liberals and NDP. There is one PC hold out: Raymond Cho, carpetbagger MPP for Scarborough Rouge-River (at one time or another, he has been involved in all three mainstream Parties). Following the military maxim of “maximum strength at the point of attack,” I would argue that the limited forces of Toronto’s left wing activists should be concentrated there for the June provincial election. However, I am open to be persuaded that another area of the city could be more fruitful. Working in Scarborough would have the added attraction of countering the common notion that Toronto lefties are a bunch of privileged downtowners who look down their noses at the Ford Nation types in the suburbs. Scarborough could be the test run. Depending on how it goes, we can then make a decision as to where to concentrate our resources for the city elections in November. If enough people consider this a worthwhile initiative, the first couple of months of 2018 should be spent in bringing folks together to hammer out a programme and choose a candidate. That’s when the fun begins.

Conclusion

A left electoral challenge is crying out to happen in Toronto. The objective factors are there – the issues, a leftward mood, notwithstanding ABC pressure to channel that mood into supporting Liberals/NDP. Unfortunately the subjective ones are missing: no recent history of electoral interventions, no municipal political parties à la Vancouver or Montreal, no obvious candidate, no cohesive left. But we have to start somewhere and if not now, when?

A provincial intervention in Scarborough Rouge-River in June could be considered as a trial balloon. Getting a vote of 10% or more would constitute a success and could then be followed up municipally in November. But one should not get ahead of oneself. If something serious and worthwhile is to happen, respected figures and organizations on the Toronto left have to get on board and convene a meeting to explore the feasibility of doing something. And if the answer is ‘not now’, so be it.

In October last year, such a meeting was convened in the Bay area, California. The Facebook description of the event was as follows:

Is the Bay Area Ready for a Socialist City Councilor?

Hosted by Democratic Socialists of America: San Francisco and Socialist Alternative Bay Area

The Bay Area isn’t working for working people. With attacks from Trump threatening to displace us and local politicians giving free rein to developers to build luxury homes at our expense, we just can’t afford to live here anymore. Is the answer candidates for office who don’t take corporate & developer money? What about a candidate who will fight for socialist policies? Join us for a discussion on how we can make the Bay Area a place for working people, not just for the rich.

Speakers include:

• Erin Brightwell – National Committee Member of Socialist Alternative and founder of the Campaign for Renters Rights
• Jovanka Beckles – Corporate-free candidate for Assembly District 15 and Vice Mayor of Richmond
• Dan Siegel – Former Oakland School Board Member and Mayoral Candidate for Oakland in 2014
• Teresa Pratt – Member of the steering committee of the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America
• Jessica Hansen-Weaver – Social worker in San Francisco, Bay Area native and long-time member of the International Socialist Organization.

I’m inspired by both of the left candidates who didn’t win the first time round in 2017. From The Georgia Straight (equivalent of Toronto’s NOW) there’s this end of year prediction that Jean Swanson will be elected to city council in 2018:

“There’s a growing appetite among millennial voters for ecosocialist candidates, which was demonstrated south of the border by Bernie Sanders almost winning the Democratic presidential nomination. This puts Swanson in a good position to be elected in October. Socialism may be a dirty word for many older voters, but the alternative – runaway, greenhouse-gas-spewing capitalism that threatens the future of humanity on Earth – doesn’t look very appealing to those who are having trouble meeting the rent and worry about the state of the planet. Swanson’s focus on taking from the rich to house the poor clearly resonated with a significant number of voters in the 2017 by-election. She’s giving every indication that she’s going to run again in 2018 and when she’s elected, expect to see a motion on the council floor debating whether to ask the province for the right to charge progressive property taxes.”

Then, there’s this optimistic message that Ginger Jentzen sent out to her supporters, a couple of weeks after her election where she stated that “our movements must learn lessons from both victories and defeats.” Barring a miracle, it is safe to predict that there will be no independent left electoral victories in Toronto this year. That is not the point, “I am not here to tell you that defeat is a part of life: we all know that. I am here to tell you that there are people who have never been defeated. They are the ones who never fought.” (Brazilian writer, Paulo Coelho)

*

(Tim Heffernan ran for local office in 2014 as a candidate for Toronto District School Board Trustee in the ward of Scarborough South-West, coming in 5th out of 10 candidates with 5% of the vote. He now has no aspirations for political office of any kind.)

“In the heart of appeasement there’s the fear of rejection, and in acts of fear there are mirrors of oppression.” —Chris Jami

As the world hurtles ever closer to war in Asia, there is an Alice-in-Wonderland media narrative that has North Korea as the aggressor that must be controlled and punished at all costs. And in the face of that narrative, the deafening silence of intellectuals is starting to bear a remarkable resemblance to appeasement.

In 1938 one of the most heinous war criminals of the 20th century was planning to occupy Czechoslovakia, a country where about three million people of German origin lived. War seemed imminent as Hitler continued to make inflammatory speeches. The British prime minister Neville Chamberlain offered to go to Hitler’s retreat and discuss the situation personally. Chamberlain’s placatory efforts produced the Munich Agreement that he, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Édouard Daladier signed, handing over a large chunk of Czechoslovakia to Germany. People in Czechoslovakia felt betrayed, but Chamberlain was praised. He told the British public he had achieved “peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.” In later years the lesson drawn from the Munich Agreement was that expansionist totalitarian states must not be appeased.

Today it would seem the very same farce is being re-enacted in a contemporary version of appeasement that Chamberlain would have envied. History demands that we ask all the academics, intellectuals, media and the like who claim to represent the left-to-liberal spectrum, why they are so unconcernedly complicit with the United Nations in appeasing the blood-thirsty Trump administration. Some parrot the Alice-in-Wonderland narrative concerning North Korea; many others remain silent.

The Moon-Putin Plan: One Possible Path To Peace

One could be forgiven for not having heard of it since it disrupts the standard “North-Korea-Problem” narrative, but there is a realistic solution to the crisis that liberal and progressive appeasers are keeping silent about. This is the Moon-Putin Plan unveiled in September in Vladivostok. President Moon outlined it as nine “bridges” of cooperation linking South Korea to Russia via North Korea—“gas, railroads, ports, electricity, a northern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs, agriculture, and fisheries.” Siberian oil and gas pipelines would be extended to Korea, both North and South, as well as to Japan. Both Koreas would be linked up with the vast rail networks of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, including high-speed rail, and the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes the Trans-Siberian Railway. In the words of Gavan McCormack,

“North Korea would accept the security guarantee of the five (Japan included), refrain from any further nuclear or missile testing, shelve (‘freeze’) its existing programs and gain its longed for ‘normalization’ in the form of incorporation in regional groupings, the lifting of sanctions and normalized relations with its neighbour states, without surrender.”

This Moon-Putin Plan has the potential to satisfy all the states involved, possibly even the US. One would think, “Done deal. Problem solved.” Yet mainstream journalists in Japan and English-speaking countries have largely ignored it, and even very few non-mainstream journalists have covered it.

Why should this be so?

US and UN Atrocities

Let us review a few facts about crimes committed on the Korean Peninsula, not only those of the US but also those of the UN, the post-WWII institution that admittedly has often provided at least some kind of forum for states to settle their differences in a rational and just manner. On 12 December 1948 the UN General Assembly declared that the Republic of Korea (i.e., South Korea) was the only lawful government on the Peninsula. This was UN Resolution 195, and it was one of the UN’s worst moments, a gross injustice to the bulk of the population and a cause of the Korean War.

First, Resolution 195 was a violation of the UN’s own charter (most obviously Article 32) since North Korea was never invited to discuss the dispute over who was the legitimate government on the Peninsula.

Second, the position of the US State Department and the UN had originally been that the government of South Korea could only have jurisdiction over those areas where the UN Commission on Korea had observed elections, which was only in some parts of the South.

Third, during the elections, even at those polling places where the UN had been watching, there were rightist police and fascist, terrorist youth groups all around the polling places, just as under the Japanese colonizers.

And fourth, the new president Syngman Rhee (1875–1965) was a tyrant and his government was riddled with notorious collaborators who had served the Japanese colonizers. Koreans knew they were in for a repeat—same injustice, different masters. The UN had lent the government the legitimacy it needed.

Especially in places like Cheju Island, where people had built their own self-governing committees, the rigged elections on the mainland caused tremendous anger. The residents had had a taste of undemocratic policies of the American occupation, and the unfair elections were the last straw. Only after thousands of political murders and imprisonments could an election be held on Cheju Island, one year after the mainland elections. In May 1949 an American Embassy official reported that “the all-out guerrilla extermination campaign…came to a virtual end in April with order restored and most rebels and sympathizers killed, captured, or converted.”

In the Taejon (Daejeon) Massacre from the 2nd to the 6th of July 1950, American officials stood idly by and took photos while Korean police massacred 3,000 to 7,000 political prisoners—men, boys, and women. The UN Command was known at that time for hiding the truth, and unsurprisingly, the UN Commission on Korea did nothing to investigate.

Or consider that the US Air Force (USAF)’s horrific bombing campaign in the Korean War, under the aegis of the United Nations Command, constituted genocide. Neither the United Nation’s Genocide Convention approved in 1948 and going into effect in 1951, nor the Red Cross Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Wartime of 1948 had the “slightest impact on this air war” in the words of the American historian Bruce Cumings, who has covered the history thoroughly, from all sides of the War, including the various ways in which Americans abused Koreans, both North and South, as well as about the abundant lies in North Korean government propaganda.

The Problem of Class Inequality

There has long been extreme class inequality in Korea and it is no accident that President Syngman Rhee was on the side of the ruling class. For centuries Korea had not been a society where there was a fair distribution of wealth between the “unproductive class” and the class of “cultivators,” i.e., a society where “each class enjoys its proper share of the whole annual produce,” to borrow the language of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. But some of those from the old aristocratic elite had been in the process of finding ways to escape parasitism and modernize their country. Just when they were starting to make progress, “global depression, war, and ever-increasing Japanese repression in the 1930s destroyed much of this progress, turned many elite Koreans into collaborators, and left few options for patriots besides armed resistance.”

The Role of Collaborators

“Extreme rightist power” is how Governor Yu Hae-jin described to the US Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) the people who helped him suppress democracy on Cheju Island. The “leaders who would subsequently shape ROK politics” had mostly collaborated with the agents of the Empire of Japan. (ROK = Republic of Korea). Those leaders were selected by one Col. Cecil Nist, who viewed them as “conservatives.” To give this group of mostly treacherous, non-patriots some credibility, the US Office of Strategic Services selected Syngman Rhee to give this group a veneer of legitimacy. A fluent speaker of English and a Christian convert, he had received years of indoctrination in higher education in the US, and although he had made efforts on behalf of Korean independence in his younger years, he was Washington’s man.

In contrast to WWII, where American soldiers and soldiers of most of the other UN Command states had fought against fascists, the war in Korea saw the US and UN using “extreme rightist power,” to fight against democracy. The Korean campaign represented a bizarre “vision of bringing freedom and liberty to a sordid dictatorship run by servants of Japanese imperialism.”

While it is true that the US has dominated the UN since its inception, especially during the Korean War, and while the UN Command forces were actually under the command of US generals, the UN Command also shares some of the responsibility for the many atrocities committed against Koreans. Can anyone really argue they have no responsibility to speak the truth about their conduct during the War? Rhee once described to an American reporter what he planned to do:

“With bulldozers we will dig huge excavations and trenches, and fill them with Communists. Then cover them over.”

Ironically, the UN appears comfortable with performing a similar act on its own past.

The Crimes of the UN Today

Some experts are now saying that war has already been declared on North Korea, a country that has yet to attack anyone. The UN has authorized UN member states to “interdict and inspect North Korean vessels in international waters (which amounts to a declaration of war),” according to Pepe Escobar. McCormack concurs, explaining that there is only a very fine line between the sanctions and “outright war.”

Gregory Elich writes,

“U.S. officials are fanning out across the globe, seeking to cajole or threaten other nations to join the anti-DPRK crusade. Since most nations stand to lose far more by displeasing the U.S. than by ending a longstanding relationship with North Korea, the campaign is having an effect.”

And now Washington is talking about a “bloody nose” approach—hoping that we can just smash up their military equipment a little while they stand by and not attack Seoul.

According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, due to a drought that is worse than the one in 2001, the total harvest of staple crops such as rice, corn, potatoes, soybeans, wheat, and barley is far smaller than that of last year. Last month they reported,

“Most households are anticipated to continue to experience borderline or poor food consumption rates.”

This means that during the bitterest cold of the year in Korea in the midst of strong icy winds from Siberia bringing temperatures down to a daily average low of −13 °C and a high of −3 °C, 12 million innocents in North Korea will be suffering from hunger. The government food ration in North Korea is 300 grams of food, i.e., about two medium-size potatoes. So the sanctions are well-timed indeed for maximum suffering.

We are being told over and over that North Koreans are “secretive.” What are “our” governments, i.e., those of the UN Command, doing about that secretiveness? They are pressuring Beijing to shut down North Korean businesses. In other words, we are shutting down communication and all economic exchanges with them, establishing a pirate-like siege on their country. Does this make sense—that the best way to solve the problem is to cut off communications, cease doing business, and freeze/starve the civilian population to death? That is what the response of the UN means in diplomatic terms. As Winston Churchill once said,

“To jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war.”

Among the 17 member nations of the UN Command, the only state with roots in that part of the world at the time of the Korean War, who would have had to live with the consequences of a divided country and continued civil war, was South Korea. But South Korea’s blood-thirsty dictator President Rhee had on his side the US as well as the other 16 member states of the UN Command, so the chances of his winning the entire Peninsula were high. As for Japan, it was under US Occupation during most of the War, but it played the role of an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for USAF bombers, so in that sense it served the UN Command side. On the whole, the UN Command states stand to lose little and possibly even gain if it comes to war and the UN in general has a dark history with Korea, so one cannot expect fairness from them.

Conclusion

The Moon-Putin Plan not only has the potential to radically alter the current global system by setting up an alternative economic and cooperative Asian trading block where mutual aid takes precedence over old enmities but it is also one of the few options on the table that involves a pragmatic and peaceful alternative to Washington’s violent and greedy Open Door Policy. The Moon-Putin Plan must be worrisome for the Pentagon since it has the potential to end that long-standing ideology, the one that has driven humanity into this crisis.

The current crisis can be resolved by nuclear armageddon, or by a peaceful solution that brings about a new geopolitical order. There is no middle ground.  There is no room for appeasers of any kind, whether they be UN and government types or left-to-liberal intellectuals and activists. This is one of those moments in history when we must stand up and be counted. Must we repeat the words of Winston Churchill to Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain? “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

*

Joseph Essertier is an associate professor at the Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan. He can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

For more on the Moon-Putin Plan, see Gavan McCormack, “North Korea and a Rules-Based Order for the Indo-Pacific, East Asia, and the World,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (15 November 2017).  http://apjjf.org/2017/22/McCormack.html

On the history of the Korean War, see Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History, (Modern Library, 2011).

Many thanks to Stephen Brivati for comments, suggestions, and editing.

Featured image is from thierry ehrmann | CC BY 2.0.

The publication of Michael Wolff’s insider account of the early months of the Trump administration, Fire and Fury, has become the occasion for a media firestorm powered by allegations that Trump is mentally unfit to be president. Media pundits and Democratic politicians have cited the book’s portrayal of Trump to claim that the president should be declared incompetent. The result of such a maneuver, in the unlikely event it could be accomplished, would be a President Mike Pence.

In his usual fashion, Trump added fuel to the fire. First came his heavy-handed threats against the author and the publisher, seeking to suppress the book, and his imprecations against former campaign manager and White House counselor Stephen Bannon, now head of the fascistic Breitbart News, who served as the principal source for Wolff. This was followed by imbecilic tweets in which Trump celebrated his supposed intellect, describing himself a “stable genius.”

Wolff’s Fire and Fury is typical of the gossipy fare produced by this longtime chronicler of the foibles (and fables) of the Manhattan upper class. Nothing in his account of the Trump White House comes as a shock. That the real estate con man and television reality show host is an egomaniacal blowhard with a short attention span and an aversion to reading is neither surprising nor remarkable. It does not distinguish Trump from thousands of other American CEOs.

The furor over Wolff book is a continuation and extension of the efforts of the Democratic Party, backed by much of the media, to engineer Trump’s removal through the methods of Washington intrigue and scandal-mongering. The charges of mental “unfitness” supplement the ongoing campaign around the investigation headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 elections.

Given the political configuration in the House and Senate, Trump’s Democratic opponents think it unlikely they can impeach him. They have increasingly focused on an alternate pathway, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to remove a president deemed by them to be incapable of fulfilling his duties for reasons of health, including mental health.

In an appearance Sunday on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” Wolff made clear the political purpose of his book, claiming that the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was the stuff of daily discussions within the Trump White House, with top aides commenting on whether a particular statement or action by the president would put them in “25th Amendment territory.”

There is not the slightest progressive or democratic content to this campaign to remove Donald Trump from the presidency on the grounds of alleged mental incapacity. It is only the latest attempt by the ruling class opponents of Trump to hijack the growing popular opposition to the right-wing policies of his administration and divert it into safe channels.

The Democrats avoid raising issues that would have popular resonance and appeal in any way to the growth of opposition to war, domestic repression and social inequality. They would like to orchestrate Trump’s removal by the methods of a palace coup, without the intervention of American working people.

There is a fundamental class difference between opposition to Trump among working people and the opposition to Trump of Democratic politicians, sections of the corporate-controlled media and elements within the military-intelligence apparatus.

The ruling class opposition to Trump centers on issues of foreign policy, in particular, objections to any lessening of the ferocious anti-Russian stance adopted under Clinton and Obama. This is joined with a deeper concern that the president’s erratic and provocative conduct is undermining the world position of US imperialism and making it more difficult for him to rally public support in the event of war or a major social crisis at home.

Hence the character of the criticisms directed at Trump by the Democrats, from the anti-Russia campaign, to the allegations of sexual harassment, to the current furor over Trump’s alleged mental incapacity. All are aimed at undercutting Trump’s support within the state, the political establishment and Wall Street. None are aimed at winning support from working people.

The Democrats have made preparations to call demonstrations across the country in the event Trump fires Russia investigator Mueller. They made no such calls to mobilize against the passage of Trump’s massively unpopular tax bonanza for the corporations and the wealthy. Nor have they made any appeal to popular opposition to his travel ban against Muslims and refugees, his persecution of immigrants, his cozying up to the fascist alt-right or his threats of nuclear war in Korea.

While Trump is portrayed as an evil interloper, his policies of militarism, tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity for workers only continue and intensify the program of the American financial aristocracy, prosecuted by Democratic and Republican presidents over the past four decades.

The deepening political crisis in the United States—which has reached a level of intensity that dwarfs Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair and the Clinton impeachment—has an objective social character. It is the product not of Trump’s incapacity or the embittered feelings of the Democrats he defeated in the presidential election, but of the social contradictions within American capitalism.

Economic inequality has reached the point where three US billionaires own more wealth than the poorest 60 percent of the American population. The living standards of the great majority of working people have stagnated or declined for more than 40 years. American youth have grown up under conditions of endless imperialist wars abroad and deteriorating social conditions at home. There is mass disaffection with both capitalist parties, neither of which offers the slightest prospect of progressive change.

The frenzied character of the conflict within the ruling elite is only one of many signs of an impending social and political explosion in the United States. But the removal of Trump through the methods of scandal-mongering and conspiracy would contribute nothing to the political education and mobilization of the working class. On the contrary, the efforts of the Democrats and their media supporters are aimed at blocking any independent movement from below that would threaten not only the Trump administration, but the corporate-controlled two-party structure and the capitalist system as a whole.

At the outset of Trump’s second year in office, we bring to your attention a selection of articles pertaining to US foreign policy failures in the Middle East. 

P.S. Consider making a donation to Global Research. More than ever we need your support. 

Also, you can support Global Research by forwarding, crossposting, etc our articles, starting with this selection which challenges the tide of misinformation being used as a smokescreen for imperialism and war.

*     *     *

Will Trump Use “Human Rights” to Kill the Iran Nukes Deal?

By Mike Whitney, January 08, 2018

In a matter of days, Donald Trump will have the chance to scuttle the Iranian Nuclear agreement, a transaction that Trump has called “the worst deal ever.” The future of the so called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA depends largely on whether Trump opts to reimpose economic sanctions on Iran or not.

Free Syrian Army Commanders Visit Washington – Reports

By South Front, January 08, 2018

Syrian opposition outlets revealed on January 6 that several commanders of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are currently in the US capital, Washington, to meet with US officials. The visit was not officially announced by the US or any FSA group.

Afghan Refugees Feeling the Heat as US-Pakistan Geopolitical Tensions Rise

By Ali Mohsin, January 08, 2018

US President Donald Trump has recently adopted a hardline stance towards Islamabad, with Washington suspending military aid to Pakistan on January 4.  The increasingly belligerent approach of the US towards Pakistan, where anti-US sentiment remains high, has forced the country’s ruling establishment to adopt a defiant stance towards Washington.

Trump Preparing to Diplomatically Recognize Kurdish Control over Huge Swathe of Syria – Report

By Paul Antonopoulos, January 08, 2018

According to an unnamed senior Western official, US President Donald Trump is preparing to diplomatically recognize the areas of Syria that the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported.

Trump Would Do the Palestinians a Favour by Cutting Off Aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)

By Abdel Bari Atwan, January 08, 2018

US aid to the PA is aimed at pacifying the Palestinian people and bribing them to abandon all forms of resistance to the occupation by preoccupying them with seeking to improve their living conditions under the rubric of ‘economic peace’, while deluging their ruling elite in Ramallah with loans, mortgages, flashy cars and other trappings of luxury.

Russiagate originated in a conspiracy between the military/security complex, the Clinton-controlled Democratic National Committee, and the liberal/progressive/left. The goal of the military/security complex is to protect its out-sized budget and power by preventing President Trump from normalizing relations with Russia. Hillary and the DNC want to explain away their election loss by blaming a Trump/Putin conspiracy to steal the election. The liberal/progressive/left want Trump driven from office.

As the presstitutes are aligned with the military/security complex, Hillary and the DNC, and the liberal/progressive/left, the Russiagate orchestration is a powerful conspiracy against the president of the United States and the “deplorables” who elected him. Nevertheless, the Russiagate Conspiracy has fallen apart and has now been turned against its originators.

Despite the determination of the CIA and FBI to get Trump, these powerful and unaccountable police state agencies have been unable to present any evidence of the Trump/Putin conspiracy against Hillary. As William Binney, the former high level National Security Agency official who devised the spy program has stated, if there was any evidence of a Trump/Putin conspiracy to steal the US presidential election, the NSA would most certainly have it.

So where is the evidence? Why after one year and a half and a special prosecutor whose assignment is to get Trump has no evidence whatsoever been found of the Trump/Putin conspiracy? The obvious answer is that no such conspiracy ever existed. The only conspiracy is the one against Trump.

This has now become completely apparent. Russiagate originated in a fake “Trump dossier” invented by Christopher Steele, a former British MI6 intelligence officer. It is not yet clear whether it was the DNC, the CIA, or the FBI who paid Steele for the fake dossier. Perhaps he sold it to all three.

What we do know is that the FBI used what it knew to be a fake dossier to go to the FISA court for a warrant to spy on Trump.

As a consequence both Comey and the FBI, special prosecutor Mueller, and Christopher Steele are in hot water. The Chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Grassley, has instructed the US Attorney General to launch a criminal investigation of Steele for false statements to FBI counterintelligence officials. 

You can see where this leads as former FBI director Comey is a participant in the Russiagate attack on President Trump. To protect himself Steele will have to rat on who put him up to it. If President Trump had any sense, he would put Steele under protective custody, as his life is clearly in danger. If the CIA and the FBI don’t get him, the Clintons surely will.

Trump’s easy election shook the Republican Establishment as well as it upset the Democrats and the military/security complex. The Republican Establishment hates losing control. Initially the Republican Establishment aligned with Trump’s enemies, but now understands that Trump’s demise means their demise.

Consequently, all of a sudden in Washington facts count. Not all facts, just those relating to the Steele dossier. Be sure you listen closely and carefully to these two videos of US Representative Jim Jordan’s destruction of US Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein for sitting on his ass while a totally corrupt FBI attempted to destroy the elected president of the United States. Keep in mind that Rosenstein is a member of the Trump administration. Why does the President of the United States employ people out to destroy him?

Here are the videos:

Here are 18 questions asked by US Rep. Jim Jordan:

1) Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele, author of the dossier?

2) Was the dossier the basis for securing FISA warrants to spy on Americans? And why won’t the FBI show Congress the FISA application?

3) When did the FBI get the complete dossier and who gave it to them? Dossier author Christopher Steele? Fusion GPS? Clinton campaign/DNC? Sen. McCain’s staffer?

4) Did the FBI validate and corroborate the dossier?

5) Did Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, or Bruce Orr work on the FISA application?

6) Why and how often did DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr meet with dossier author Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign?

7) Why did DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr meet with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson after the election? To get their story straight after their candidate Clinton lost? Or to double down and plan how they were going to go after President-elect Trump?

8) When and how did the FBI learn that DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr’s wife, Nellie Orr, worked for Fusion GPS? And what exactly was Nellie Orr’s role in putting together the dossier?

9) Why did the FBI release text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page? Normally, ongoing investigation is reason not to make such information public.

10) And why did FBI release only 375/10,000+ texts? Were they the best? Worst? Or part of a broader strategy to focus attention away from something else? And when can Americans see the other 96% of texts

11) Why did Lisa Page leave Mueller probe two weeks before Peter Strzok? This was two weeks before FBI and Special Counsel even knew about the texts.

12) Why did the intelligence community wait two months after the election to brief President-elect Trump on the dossier (January 6, 2017)? Why was James Comey selected to do the briefing?

13) Was the briefing done to “legitimize” the dossier? And who leaked the fact that the briefing was about the dossier?

14) The New York Times reported last week that George Popadopoulos’ loose lips were a catalyst for launching the Russia investigation. Was President-elect Trump briefed on this?

15) Why did Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya before and after her meeting with Donald Trump Jr.?

16) Why was FBI General Counsel Jim Baker reassigned two weeks ago? Was he the source for the first story on the dossier by David Corn on October 31, 2016? Or was it someone else at the FBI?

17) Why won’t the FBI give Congress the documents it’s requesting?

18) And why would Senator Schumer, leader of the Democrat party, publicly warn President-elect Trump on Jan. 3, 2017 that when you mess with the “intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you?”

Insouciant trusting gullible Americans who “believe in our government” have no comprehension how totally corrupt “their” government is. It is the most corrupt in the world. The corruption in Washington is really unbelievable. You have to experience it to know it, and those who experience it are part of it and will not tell.

The orchestration “Russiagate” proves that the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI are so corrupt and unaccountable that they comprise the greatest threat to the American people in the entire history of America. The only solution is to break these agencies into a thousand splinters, as President John F. Kennedy intended, and rebuild them from scratch with total transparency. No more protecting their vast crimes under the cloak of “national security.” No classification of any so-called intelligence unless it can pass a unanimous vote of Congress and the ACLU.

The orchestration of Russiagate is proof that the alleged “national security agencies” are an anti-American force detrimental to our survival as a free people. The criminals in the FBI, CIA, and DNC must be investigated, indicted, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned or freedom in America is forever dead.

If President Trump fails in this task, he will have failed America. Everyone of us will be the victims.

One question with which we are left is why has the mainstream media failed in its investigating and reporting responsibilities and instead served as a cheerleader for the orchestration known as Russiagate? The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, and the rest are serving as public relations agents for Russiagate, leaving it to Rep. Jim Jordan to ask the questions that the media should be asking. What explains the convergence of media and FBI/CIA interests? Are hidden subsidies involved? As the mainstream media is behaving as it would be if it were owned and controlled by the security agencies, this is a natural question. Why is the media not disturbed by its close relationship to the FBI and CIA? When did it become the function of the media to help the CIA and FBI control explanations?

Introduction

Before I began this essay I read through some of my past forays that mentioned climate change and capitalism, the first I think, being in 2006 where I opined in a piece on the ‘War on Terror’:

Perhaps the impending climate catastrophe as well as the genocidal actions of the US will force us to finally start thinking and acting ‘outside of the box’ but without a clear idea of where we are heading or how to get there, currently the situation looks dire. — WOT is to be done?  2 November, 2006

In the intervening years, things have gotten even more dire on pretty much every front. It appears that the world’s political and business elite are even more entrenched inside their box. Except, we do know what has to be done, so why, in the face of the obvious, do we not act to forestall catastrophe?

Pessimism, Progress…

For the most part, us lefties are optimists. We believe in the future, in progress, that things will get better, eventually. That the ludicrous idea that capitalism is the ‘end of history’, that in spite of its relentless propaganda, and notwithstanding the defeat of the first socialist experiments, that there is a future beyond capitalism, conditional of course, that we come together to fight for it, as there’s nothing inevitable about it.

But as things stand, it may well be that the human race is not included in that future. Bacteria maybe, but not us.

Personally, I’ve always been an optimist, that in the future, eventually things would get better. Progress, revolution. Not in my lifetime perhaps but eventually we would move beyond capitalism to a sane society. One not driven by greed and short-term gain for the few. Until that is, the reality of climate change hit home, but more on this later.

And the Personal…

After my father died when I was 10, my mother got together with a family friend and he became not exactly a replacement for my father but let’s say, almost, for around 12 years (he died in 2016). Like most of my family and on both sides, he was also a lefty. A talented person. Royal College of Art, a designer, an actor, singer, song writer and lecturer, and a communist his entire life (he was 85 when he died). Like me, he was an optimist. He believed in a better future, better than this miserable present; until a year or so before his death that is (I think he starved himself to death because of his change of heart).

I surmise that what brought about this change was his belief that it was already too late, we had reached the proverbial ‘tipping point’ and there was no going back. He believed that the changes wrought on the biosphere by 200 years of industrial capitalism were now irreversible. We were on the slide toward catastrophe and there was nothing we could do about it given the stranglehold the 1% have on the world. Perhaps even worse, that no matter what we did now or in the future, it was already too late to halt, let alone reverse, catastrophic (to us) climate change.

Trashing the Planet, one plastic bottle at a time

When I was a child, in fact into my teens, containers came in only three types; glass/ceramic; paper/wood/cardboard and metal. All were recyclable and for most part, they were. Our milk was delivered to the front door in glass bottles, by our Coop milkman, Billy. There was no deposit on them, we left the (clean) empties for Billy to collect, returned to the bottling plant where they were washed and reused, at least three times before being recycled. And as a teenager I worked every Saturday on that Coop milk float, horse-drawn, would you believe. The horse knew the route better than we did. It knew at which house we stopped for tea and chocolate digestive biscuits and when to move on. Billy rarely touched the horse and I never did, I was frightened of it, it liked to bite.

And we bought our fruit and veg in paper bags from the local greengrocer, not a hundred meters from where we lived. Ditto the bread, from the bakery, fresh baked twice a day, one hundred meters past the greengrocers.

Nostalgia? Perhaps that’s a small part of it but the recent statistic that in a few years time there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish goes to the very heart of an economic system that can only see profit and worse, can’t see beyond today, beyond short-term gain, even if its actions threaten its own future as a class, as a system. Insane? You bet!

But as I’ve written many, many times before (here, here, here, here, and here to name a few), the 1% think they can survive the coming conflagration, that their money, power, technology and weapons will enable them to ride out the coming storm, sacrificing the defenceless of the planet in the name of profit.

The problem is that we are witnessing exponential, negative feedback, so what was predicted say 10 years ago as a ‘breathing space’ of 30 or 50 years in which to take steps to halt the slide is now predicted to be ‘only’ 10 years and no doubt soon it will be upon us. No years! How can one be positive in the face of these revelations without entering a state of denial or resignation?

Even more repulsive, the 1% have no problem sacrificing vast swathes of humanity to preserve their privilege and the rule of capital. The ‘other’ are after all, ‘surplus to requirement’. A vast army of surplus labour, global in scope, not needed by the privileged few. And the effects of climate change are happening now, never mind ten years time, in places like Bangladesh and Puerto Rico. Firstly, by doing nothing to change the economic system that’s caused it and secondly by doing nothing where climate change has already caused unimaginable disasters and suffering.

We can’t say we haven’t been warned

56 years ago, in 1962, Rachel Carson wrote ‘Silent Spring’, about the disastrous effects of synthetic pesticides on the environment and on us. For her trouble:

“Carson was violently assailed by threats of lawsuits and derision, including suggestions that this meticulous scientist was a “hysterical woman” unqualified to write such a book. A huge counterattack was organized and led by Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid — indeed, the whole chemical industry — duly supported by the [US] Agriculture Department as well as the more cautious in the media.” – Climate Change: World War III by another name? 4 December 2008, By William Bowles

Over 50 years later climate scientists have suffered comparable attacks, with the sociopath Trump, who far from being the exception to capitalist rule, actually personifies it in all its naked barbarity. The only differences is that Trump publicly avows that he doesn’t give a damn! What we witness with Trump’s irrational attacks is a system at the end of its tether so-to-speak. Enraged by its failure to achieve total hegemony over the planet, it lashes out like some wounded beast. Unless stopped, it threatens nuclear Armageddon to add to its list  of genocidal crimes against the planet and its peoples.

Is it too late?

But what are the chances of overthrowing capitalism before it’s too late to stop, let alone reverse the changes wrought by this insane system? Can organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and indeed, a whole slew of ‘green’ pressure groups, force the capitalists to reverse their suicidal trajectory?

Not until they stop avoiding the issue of confronting capitalism itself rather than the ‘morally uplifting’ but ineffectual route of the personal act e.g., not buying stuff in plastic bottles. Not that, as individuals, we shouldn’t stop buying stuff in plastic bottles but that real change can only come through collective actions, as a class that collectively opposes capitalism and furthermore advocates an alternative way of living. For myself, I don’t see any other alternative than to some form of socialism.

Thus the current drive against the production of plastic bottles once more puts the onus on us, or the current fad around plastic-lined paper coffee cups (all ten billion of them) again, it puts the onus on us. But there is no call to ban their production or ban the production of the endless stream of plastic cartons, wrappings and boxes that are filling up the oceans and our waste tips. Make us pay for it instead with a levy (tax) on their sale. A tax no doubt that will be used to wage ever more wars on the planet. And we have to face the fact that we can’t have our cake and eat it, when it’s the planet and its peoples that paying the price for our useless and unhappy lives, in spite of the gadgets and 4K TVs.

As ever, the public and the planet pay the price for capitalist, profit-driven production. But ultimately it is actually our responsibility but it’s of a different order than being obedient but ‘responsible’ consumers by recycling this and that. It’s by tackling the issue at its root, capitalism. This is a qualitatively different struggle that requires not individual actions (though they are important), but organised, collective action to transform the way we make our living; our economic mode of production.

Moreover, it will require sacrifice on our part. We will have to decide how want to live our lives. I fear however that by the time we decide that going into debt to buy all the crap that ends up sitting in cupboards unused across the nation (allegedly 30% of it), it will be too late for us to do anything about it.

What is to be Done?

So, is it hopeless? Everything in me cries out, no, it’s not hopeless! We can do something about it before it’s too late. But what exactly, are the somethings that we need to do?

I think some of the initial somethings are self-evident, well at least to me. For example, the existing environmental/green groups need to wake up and smell the coffee and join with what’s left of our left and in turn, what’s left of our left needs to wake and smell the coffee too and put a stop to its imperial thinking and stop telling the rest of the planet what to do and concentrate on the problem of how to deal with the contradiction of being privileged citizens of the Imperialist world and at the same time calling ourselves socialists. Furthermore, what’s left of our left needs to stop cannibalising itself by spending most of its time attacking the various left factions and focus instead on tackling the real enemy, capitalism.

There is another issue which I fear is probably even more difficult to deal with and that’s our understanding (or lack of it) of what happens outside the imperial ‘bubble’ we live in. A friend of mine pointed it out to me the other day, noting that I had the advantage of having lived on three continents, including Africa. I had, at least in theory, the advantage of knowing what it was like to experience the reality of a world shaped by imperialism, one that has enabled me to step outside that bubble of imperial privilege, that influences even the most allegedly radical lefty.

It comes down to the ability to empathise, or not, with another person’s reality. To be able to put one’s self in another person’s shoes. To see and experience their reality rather than impose our own onto theirs. Hence an alleged lefty, indeed a ‘professional’ lefty like Tariq Ali, who said in 2012:

“He [Assad] has to be pushed out” – Assad must go to save Syria from intervention, RT, 15 February 2012

By what right does Ali say this? The issue really is not about whether Assad should or shouldn’t go but about Ali’s almost divine right to lay down the law about another country from his privileged position as a citizen of Empire. The fact that he said it allegedly in the context that it would avert Western intervention if Assad stepped aside, totally misses the point, for if Assad was to go, it would mean that Imperialism had succeeded in its objective without the need for intervention! Duh! Ali attempted to rationalise his position by stating that:

“[Ali] believes that once Assad falls, the new government will keep good relations with Iran, because this will be in the interest of the new democratic government.” – Tariq Ali says Assad has to go: I’m depressed – no, I’m outraged, By William Bowles, 15 February 2012

I responded, ‘What new democratic government?’ Total wishful thinking on Ali’s part as it assumes that that’s what the West wants, a democratic government and should Assad step aside, that’s what Syria would get. Duh! Talk about self-delusion!

It exemplifies the contradiction of being an alleged socialist at home and enjoying the privilege of being part of the Empire’s intellectual elite and paid very well thank you very much, whilst dictating to Syria what it should and shouldn’t do. I fail to see the distinction between Ali’s arrogance and that of the West, that called for exactly the same thing! Assad has to go!

Furthermore, it reveals the gulf that has to be bridged between us and the proverbial ‘them’, the ‘other’. No mean stretch. It also illustrates the problem we face here, at home, in the belly of the beast of coming to terms with our responsibilities to the planet that we have raped for the past 500 years and continue to rape in order to preserve our (relative) privilege.

Perhaps this in part explains why collectively, we refuse to accept responsibility for the state of the planet. Yes, ultimately, it’s the economic system, capitalism that’s doing the damage but surely it’s time we also accept responsibility for our role in maintaining an unsustainable economic system, a system that in the short term we all benefit from.

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This article was originally published by Investigating Imperialism.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already fundamentally changing information technology and stands poised to permeate and transform technology both online and off ranging from manufacturing and transportation to medicine and military applications. The US, Russia and China have all noted that dominance in this field of technology will be an essential ingredient to holding global primacy in the near future.

What resembles a sort of arms race has emerged between prominent nations around the globe. Perhaps in an effort to provide the US with an edge, or perhaps in an effort to mitigate the impact of such an arms race, Google has opened an AI center in China.

CNN in its article, “Google is opening an artificial intelligence center in China,” would announce:

Despite many of its services being blocked in China, Google has chosen Beijing as the location for its first artificial intelligence research center in Asia.

The purpose of the center, according to CNN, citing China’s desire to become a global leader in AI technology, will be to:

…help China pursue its aim to become the global leader. The facility will employ a team of researchers who will be supported by engineers the company already has in China.

Considering Google’s services being banned, blocked and otherwise unwelcomed in China, the question remains as to why exactly Google would seek to aid China in becoming a leader in AI technology Google itself seeks to position itself as a leader in.

This question may have been at least partially answered in a recent AI summit which included Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.

Poaching Foreign Talent

The Washington DC-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS), as part of its Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative, held its Artificial intelligence and Global Security Summit (video) in early November 2017. During Schmidt’s question and answer session, he remarked that China would likely overcome America’s lead in AI technology by 2025.

While Schmidt offered suggestions on how the US could keep its lead over China, particularly through establishing its own national laboratories for researching and developing AI technology within an enumerated national strategy regarding AI, it would be his comments on US immigration policy that hinted at why Google might open an AI center in China as part of maintaining America’s lead.

Schmidt would remark (emphasis added):

Let’s talk about immigration. Shockingly, some of the very best people are in countries that we won’t let in to America. Would you rather have them building AI somewhere else or having them build it here? I’ll give you a specific example: Iran produces some of the smartest and top computer scientists in the world. I want them here! And to be clear I want them working for Alphabet and Google. I’m very, very clear on this. It’s crazy not to let these people in. So I could go on.

An alternative to having exceptional computer scientists brought into the United States would be poaching them at centers precisely like the one opened in China. The center not only allows Google, and by extension, the US access to Chinese computer scientists, it also creates a node within China’s own research and development network, providing immense insight and intelligence regarding China’s progress in this pivotal technological field.

Google’s own announcement regarding the center’s opening would offer additional insight, stating:

Focused on basic AI research, the Center will consist of a team of AI researchers in Beijing, supported by Google China’s strong engineering teams. We’ve already hired some top experts, and will be working to build the team in the months ahead (check our jobs site for open roles!). Along with Dr. Jia Li, Head of Research and Development at Google Cloud AI, I’ll be leading and coordinating the research. Besides publishing its own work, the Google AI China Center will also support the AI research community by funding and sponsoring AI conferences and workshops, and working closely with the vibrant Chinese AI research community.

In other words, Google’s center is to serve as a window into China’s AI research community, a window through which it can observe China’s progress, but also a window it can reach through via funding and sponsoring to directly influence.

The Center Serves as a Window, Looked Through From Both Sides 

But as with all forms of industrial, corporate and international espionage, the presence of Google’s center poses risks for itself and US technological primacy, as much as it may provide opportunities.

Google, far from merely a technology company, has a long and well-documented history of collusion with the United States government and the powerful special interests that determine its foreign and domestic policy. It is this relationship Google has with Washington and its role in leveraging technology to attack and undermine political stability around the globe (particularly during the Arab Spring) that has many of its services banned in China in the first place.

It is unlikely that Beijing has not noticed the implications and potential threats of Google’s AI center on its own soil.

Analysts will likely want to pay close attention to the projects and personalities attracted to this center in order to discern who the net benefactor will be of Google’s most recent move.

Mutual Mitigation of Risk

There also remains the possibility that AI technology may be transparently developed in such a way as to mitigate the most destructive aspects of a what analysts are calling a possible “3rd offset” sought by America’s military enabled by AI technology. This possibility could play a role in China’s decision to host the center.

China may also expect a certain degree of access to America’s AI research and development networks in return for hosting Google. This arrangement would be not unlike many of the Cold War deals struck between Washington and Moscow to prevent nuclear war and other possible conflicts owed solely on a lack of transparency or through misunderstandings.

Creating an equitable balance of power regarding the use of AI technology before any sort of disparity can emerge between nations resulting in a “Hiroshima-Nagasaki” style event would most certainly benefit either Washington or Beijing depending on who emerged at the winning and losing ends of such disparity. Since neither Washington nor Beijing can honestly say for sure who will end up on the winning and losing ends, they may both have calculated that preventing the scenario from ever unfolding in the first place may be the wisest course of action to take.

Ultimately, the old adage of keeping one’s friends close, and one’s enemies closer, may have contributed to both Google’s desire to establish the center, and Beijing’s acceptance to host it.

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Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

Featured image is from the author.

Like many other Palestinians, I pray and implore God that US President Donald Trump makes good on his threat to cut off the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s $300 million annual grant — and also that the European donors follow suit. For that would mean the collapse of the PA and the Oslo accords that brought it into being in exchange for ceding 80% of Palestine’s territory and recognizing the Israeli state.

Trump took a leaf out of the book of some of the Arab Gulf states on Tuesday night when he took to Twitter to accuse the Palestinians of ingratitude and insubordination.

“We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue,” he declared. “With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”

This is something of an inversion of Trump’s policy towards the Gulf states. From them, he has been demanding hundreds of billions of dollars in return for their military protection. From the Palestinians and the PA, he is demanding ‘concessions’ over Jerusalem and the West Bank in exchange for a paltry $300 million per year. A more shameless act of blackmail is hard to imagine.

Trump excels at this extortionist method of doing business and knows no other way of operating. It is all about deal-making and profit-taking with no regard to morality or values, international law, political considerations or the minimal rights of others.  Either submit to the dictates of Netanyahu – as conveyed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner – or else.

US aid to the PA is aimed at pacifying the Palestinian people and bribing them to abandon all forms of resistance to the occupation by preoccupying them with seeking to improve their living conditions under the rubric of ‘economic peace’, while deluging their ruling elite in Ramallah with loans, mortgages, flashy cars and other trappings of luxury.

Living conditions for the majority of Palestinians were much better before the advent of the PA and the signing of the Oslo Accords. They were not more prosperous in material terms, but they upheld the concept of ‘bread and dignity’, and launched a popular uprising that gained the respect of the entire world, laid bare the inhuman practices of the occupation and put into question the very ‘existence’ of an Israeli state. That is why Western neo-colonialist minds devised a lifeline for it in the form of the Oslo Acords.

PA spokespersons have said that they will not submit to blackmail and that Jerusalem is not for sale, for however many billions of dollars.  These are commendable words. But what really matters is the practical actions that the PA takes to counter these two stances: Israel’s, in passing legislation aimed at the ceding of any inch of Jerusalem or the West Bank settlements in any future peace deal; and Washington’s, in recognizing the conquest and annexation of the Holy City as the occupation state’s capital.

The one step the PA has taken is to invite the Palestine Central Council (PCC) to convene next week — in Ramallah, of all places, under the spears of the occupation – to devise a response to Netanyahu and Trump’s ‘blackmail’. Its spokesmen – such as chief negotiator Saeb Erekat – have also urged countries to move their PA-accredited embassies to East Jerusalem, as though they have a choice in the matter or would be free to do so. What kind of deficient thinking is this?

The PCC is supposed to be the intermediary body between the Palestine National Council – the Palestinian parliament-in-exile — and the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The latter’s mandate expired two decades ago, and the majority of its component factions – with the exception of Fateh and the Popular and Democratic Fronts (PFLP and DFLP) – long ago ceased to have any meaningful following among the Palestinian public. Around half of the  PCC’s membership has gone to meet its maker, and the other half are waiting their turn and are well past retirement age. Critical views are rarely aired, and are unwelcome on the occasions when they are, for no voice can be allowed to rise above that of the anointed leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Around a year ago, the PCC – meeting in the PA compound in Ramallah – took a headline-grabbing decision to halt security cooperation with Israel. The move was greeted with loud applause, as delegates congratulated each other on the PLO’s act of reassertion and on the resultant reversion to resistance to the occupation. But that decision remains a piece of paper in Abbas’ desk. Its practical impact was zero.

The Palestinian people long ago lost confidence in the PA and its institutions and leadership. They have been reduced to relying on Trump and his decisions to arouse them from the comatose condition that has afflicted them since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and to rid them of the PA that has been humiliating, subjugating and selling them illusions for the past 20 years.

Again, we reiterate that we fervently hope that Trump does not back down from his threats, and goes ahead and cuts off his poisoned chalice of aid to the PA.  That could deal a death blow to the US’ influence in the Middle East and perhaps the entire Islamic world, and signal the start of a new phase in which the Palestinians find their feet again and reunite around a platform of resistance and self-respect, under a different leadership capable of shouldering the historic responsibility.

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Featured image is from the author.

According to an unnamed senior Western official, US President Donald Trump is preparing to diplomatically recognize the areas of Syria that the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported.

“The 28,000 square km territory, controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a collection of predominantly Kurdish militias including the YPG People’s Protection Units, took its first step toward US recognition after US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis promised to send US diplomats to SDF-controlled areas to work alongside US troops operating in the region,” the report said.

The SDF control the parts of Syria seen in yellow.

“According to the official, US initiatives in the region include empowering local councils, backing reconstruction efforts, assisting in training of government agency workers, improving public services and infrastructure, protecting SDF areas and engaging in the upkeep of military bases, all of which will eventually lead to diplomatic recognition,” the report continued.

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All images in this article are from the author.

It used to be that the New York Times and the Washington Post competed against each other to be the chief propagandist for the hundred or so top firms who sell to the US federal government — the 100 top “federal contractors,” almost all of which are Pentagon contractors — mainly these are weapons-manufacturing firms, such as the biggest, Lockheed Martin. The federal government is a large part of these firms’ essential market; so, invasions by the US against other countries require lots of their goods and services; and, also, America’s foreign allies additionally buy these weapons; and, right now, US President Trump is demanding that they increase their ‘defense’ budgets to buy more of them.

Wars produce corporate profits if (like in the United States) the military suppliers are private corporations instead of government-owned (socialized). Selling wars is crucial to such firms’ bottom lines. And, since there is no law against owning a ‘defense’ contractor and owning or donating to newsmedia (especially newsmedia such as the Times and Post, which publish lots of international news and so can encourage lots of invasions), a sensible business strategy for investors in ‘defense’ stocks is to also own or donate to some international-‘news’ media, in order to generate additional business for the arms-maker or other ‘defense’ firm. Not only does this business-plan relate to such newspapers as the NYT and WP, but they’ll be the focus here, because they are the most important of America’s international-news media.

Serious periodicals, such as The New Republic, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, have also been steady propagandists for ‘defense’ companies, but magazines don’t reverberate through the rest of the mass-media to the extent that the serious national (NYC & DC) newspapers do. TV and radio pick up on, and transmit, their news (and even CNN and others rely upon them more than these newspapers rely upon the broadcast media); and, in America, a lion’s share of the national political news, and especially of international news, is originated in the New York Times and Washington Post. This megaphone-effect forms the public’s opinions about whether we should invade or not. The owners of those two powerful newspapers, via their boards of directors and appointed editorial boards, make the key decisions regarding hiring, firing, promotions, and demotions, which determine news-slants from their employees (both from the reporters and especially from the editors who select what stories to publish and whether on page-one or inside the paper), and this power that these owners have, reverberates immensely (especially in regards to international relations) and thus largely shapes the results in the national polls (sampling the public, who view the world through the newsmedia); and, thus, every US President and every member of Congress becomes heavily impacted by that ‘news’, that ‘world’ the voting public see. And this coloring of the ‘news’ especially concerns international-news reporting, and the opinions that Americans have of foreign countries — such as of Iran.

Back in 2002, when the US Government was lying through its teeth about what it knew for certain and didn’t know about “Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD),” the New York Times (NYT) was then the leading neoconservative (i.e., pro-imperialistic, pro-invasion, pro military-industrial-complex or “MIC”) propaganda-organ, stenographically transmitting to the public this Government’s provably false allegations, and the Washington Post (WP) was only #2 in this regard. But that order has now switched, and now the WP is even worse.

The latest MIC-promoted top story-line concerns the protests in Iran — a country the US long controlled via America’s agent, the brutal Shah, by and after a 1953 CIA coup there, and which country thus very reasonably loathes and fears the US Government. What caused these protests, and what they mean, are much in the news; and, the news-reporting and editorials and op-eds in the NYT have been significantly more honest and varied than in the WP. Here’s a sampling of that:

As of the time of this writing (January 5th), there has not yet been an editorial from the NYT regarding the protests in Iran. (Similarly, many other newspapers, such as Britain’s Guardian, haven’t yet ventured official editorial opinions regarding this matter.) However, one opinion-piece that has been published regarding it, has become an especially prominent target of attack by the more overtly pro-MIC propagandists: the NYT’s “How Can Trump Help Iran’s Protesters? Be Quiet.” It’s by “a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was an assistant secretary of state and White House coordinator for the Middle East during the Obama administration.” That writer closes by saying:

“If Mr. Trump blows up the [Iran nuclear] deal and reimposes sanctions, he will not be doing the opposition a favor but instead giving Iranians a reason to rally to — rather than work against — the government they might otherwise despise. The protests taking place in Iran today are perhaps a sign that, in the long run, the Iranian people want to be accepted as free, responsible members of the international community and that in time they might demand and achieve real change. The best way for Mr. Trump to help test that proposition and increase the chance of its success is to do nothing.”

That’s a rare example of an anti-MIC (military-sales-suppressing) opinion-piece in a major American ‘news’medium.

Less ‘controversial’ (more clearly mainstream) than that has been another NYT opinion-piece, “The Worst Thing for Iran’s Protesters? US Silence.” It’s by “a former Iranian-targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, … a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.” The FDD is an Israeli front US think-tank, funded by many MIC-invested billionaires in both countries. The author concludes:

“The Trump administration can do better [than did the Obama Administration]. The president’s tweets in support of the protesters were a good start. Washington should also let loose a tsunami of sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards, the linchpin of Iran’s dictatorship. Policy-wise, that would be a good place to start. Contrary to received wisdom, the absolute worst thing that the United States can do for the Iranian people is to stay silent and do nothing.”

Another NYT op-ed is “Why Iran Is Protesting” and it’s by “an Iranian novelist and journalist.” He concludes that in Iran,

“something has fundamentally changed: The unquestioning support of the rural people they relied on against the discontent of the metropolitan elite is no more. Now everyone seems unhappy.”

That too is mainstream — it implies that the people of Iran have a bad Government, which should be removed.

The closest thing yet to being a NYT editorial on the subject of these protests is a column by the Times’s Roger Cohen, “Trump Is Right, This Time, About Iran.” It closes by advising the Administration:

“It should not, whatever happens, impose new sanctions: They only benefit the Revolutionary Guards. And it should learn, finally, that Iran is not, as Steve Bannon told Joshua Green, ‘like the fifth century — completely primeval’ — but rather a sophisticated society of deep culture full of unrealized promise better served by engagement than estrangement.”

That is a remarkably sympathetic (to the Iranian people) statement, but it nonetheless argues the exact opposite: “Trump Is Right, This Time, About Iran.” Its conclusion is the opposite of its title, but the main part of the article’s text is irrelevant to both the title and the conclusion. People such as this become columnists at top ‘news’media.

Those are the relevant opinions selected by the owner of the NYT for publication. They’re pro-MIC, but not fanatically so.

The WP published on January 1st their editorial on the subject, “The Post’s View: The West should support the protesters in Iran.” It’s like Roger Cohen’s column in the NYT. It closes:

“Mr. Trump should avoid acts that would undercut the protests and empower the regime’s hard-liners. Foremost among these would be a renunciation of the 2015 nuclear accord. That would divide the United States from European governments when they should be coordinating their response to the uprising, and it would give the regime an external threat against which to rally. Reform of the nuclear accord can wait. Now is the time for Mr. Trump to focus on supporting the people of Iran.”

Both Roger Cohen and the WP favor “supporting the people of Iran” while opposing and hoping for an overthrow of the President who was chosen by those people in the 2017 Iranian Presidential election, which was at least as democratic as was America’s 2016 US Presidential election. The Iranian polls right before the 19 May 2017 Presidential election showed the top three candidates as being Rouhani 35%, Raisi 18%, and Ghalibaf 2%. (20% “Won’t say.”) Ghalibaf and some of the other and even smaller candidates withdrew just days before the election. The final election result was Rouhani 57.14%, Raisi 38.28%. Raisi campaigned on a platform emphasizing that “Preventing the mixing of men and women in the office environment means that men and women can serve the people better” and advocating “Islamization of universities, revision of the Internet and censorship of Western culture.” Probably many of the recent protesters had voted for him. Perhaps if Iran becomes ruled by a “regime” instead of by an at least marginally democratic Government, then they’ll get a President like Raisi, after the US coup — which would be America’s second one in Iran. But, instead, Iranians chose Rouhani — and the U.S Government and its media call it a “regime” and say that the US Government wants to “support the people of Iran” by overthrowing the Government that Iranians voted for and support — support more than Americans support ours. (But whereas America’s CIA stirs protest-groups to overthrow Iran’s leaders, Iran has no equivalent operating in America, to overthrow our aristocracy’s choice of our leader.)

On January 3rd, the WP issued an opinion-piece by US V.P. Mike Pence, whose views are much closer to Raisi’s than to Rouhani’s. It was titled, “This time, we will not be silent on Iran.”

Another opinion-piece from the WP was the far-right Israeli Natan Sharansky’s ”The West should stop dithering and show its support for the protesters in Iran”, which attacked the Times’s “How Can Trump Help Iran’s Protesters? Be Quiet.” Sharansky said:

“As an opinion piece in the New York Times recently put it, the best way for the US government to help the Iranian protesters is to ‘Keep quiet and do nothing.’ Fortunately, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have already shown themselves unwilling to follow this advice.”

Yet another opinion-piece that the WP’s editors selected for publication on this topic was “Europe’s best chance on Iran could soon evaporate.” It criticized the Iran nuclear deal, and urged the Trump Administration to work with the EU “to sculpt a bipartisan policy that can save us from the next crisis, which is quickly coming our way.” This string of clichés ignored the fact that the only two actual available options for the US are to commit to the deal or else to depart from the deal; because Iran won’t leave it unless the US does, but it might leave it if the US does. And then, everything would be worse than it was previously. For the US to leave it while some of its allies don’t, would turn those allies to opposing the US Government and supporting Iran’s Government. And for the US to ‘renegotiate’ it would be impossible. Any European Government that would join with the US in order to attempt to force Iran to renegotiate it, would become embarrassed amongst its EU colleagues, and amongst its public. And yet, still, Iran would promptly resume its prior nuclear program, not renegotiate. To force Iran isn’t going to be so easy as such commentators presume it will. The article didn’t say how anything that it proposed to be achieved, could be achieved. It was simply trash.

Another WP opinion-piece was “The protesters in Iran need real help from Washington” and it was written by a top official of a think thank, WINEP, about which, as one knowledgeable person has said,

“WINEP was to be AIPAC’s cutout. It was funded by AIPAC donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located one door away, down the hall, from AIPAC Headquarters (no more. It has its own digs). It would also hire all kinds of people not identified with Israel as a cover.”

None of this information was revealed by WP about the piece’s author. It can only be called blatant Israeli propaganda, surreptitiously fed to readers as if it weren’t.

The WP columnist David Ignatius bannered “Trump is right to tell Iran the world is watching.” He closed by saying, about the “surprise explosion” of these protests:

“Khamenei will want to crush it. The best gift the United States can give the Iranian people is a digital lifeline, so humanity can witness their brave struggle and encourage them to prevail.”

The US regime already gave the Iranian people its ‘best gift’ in 1953 when it destroyed their democracy and instituted a 26-year-long dictatorship — and, Iranians can see through the US propaganda-media’s hypocrisies, even if the US public have been too deceived by those media, for too long, to be able to see through those lies.

So, the WP has become even more neoconservative (i.e, more in favor of invading countries that haven’t invaded us) now than it was back in 2002 when it cheered on George W. Bush’s lies about Iraq, after 9/11. How did this change happen?

In 2013, Jeff Bezos and Donald Graham met at the Bilderberg conference, and two months later, Bezos agreed to buy the Washington Post from Graham. Less than a year after that, Bezos’s Amazon won the CIA-NSA cloud computing contract, vital to the US military. Bezos’s most profitable operation has been that military contract — it is allegedly responsible for changing Amazon from a money-losing to a profit-making corporation. The money-losing Washington Post already had been, under Graham and before, a longstanding supporter of US armed invasions, which now require lots of cloud computing (and not only of the types of weaponry that Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, etc., supply). For example: the WP was gung-ho for regime-change in Iraq in 2002, as well as, more recently, for bombing Libya, Syria, and the bombing in Ukraine’s civil war after the coup. The main topic at the next year’s, 2014, meeting of the Bilderberg group was the war in Ukraine, but other wars were also on the agenda, such as Syria, and so were President Obama’s ’trade’ treaties: TPP, TTIP, and TISA. Luminaries present at that year’s secret discussions were Timothy Geithner, Eric Schmidt, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Charles Murray, etc., and Europeans such as Christine Lagarde and Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Perhaps some sales were made there, too.

Meanwhile, the NYT became the most-frequently-cited mis-reporter of such things as “Saddam’s WMD” during the years after the 2003 invasion on the basis of lies; and its publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., was forced quietly to fire his close friend and star White House stenographer (oops, ‘reporter’ — and she was even a Pulitzer-winning one!), Judith Miller, on account of the fraud-based Iraq War that she had so prominently and exceptionally helped to promote in her ‘news’-stories. Probably, Sulzberger’s successor, Arthur G. Sulzberger, is happy that when on 14 December 2017 his father handed the corporation’s controls over to him (effective on January 1st), the NYT’s position as the nation’s #1 PR-agent for US invasions has now been taken over by Jeff Bezos’s WP.

But, of course, Sulzberger’s profits don’t depend nearly as much on America’s MIC as Bezos’s do. The WP’s business plan is even more dependent upon war-promotion than the rest of America’s major ‘news’media’s are. However, if, say, a firm such as General Dynamics were to buy out the Sulzbergers, then perhaps the NYT would become #1 in the neoconservative league, once again. But, even when a major ‘news’medium, such as Mother Jones, isn’t owned (like the WP now is) by someone who also largely owns (via Amazon) a major military contractor, it still promotes invasions, and has deep connections to America’s Deep State. You can count on the fingers of a fingerless hand the number of major American newsmedia — online, print, or broadcast — that are not neoconservative. There are none — right, left, or center. Today’s ‘respectable’ American purveyors of alleged news have some ideological diversity, but all exist within the framework of being neoliberal and neoconservative.

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Eric Zuesse is an American writer and investigative historian.

Featured image is from the author.

Last week, the Pakistani government callously doubled down on its strategy of using Afghan refugees as pawns in its ongoing political dispute with Afghanistan when it refused to grant a long-term extension of their stay in Pakistan. Islamabad’s move will anger Kabul, which has struggled to absorb and reintegrate the massive influx of Afghans returning from Pakistan in recent years.

On December 31, the Proof of Registration (PoR) cards of 1.4 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan expired after the federal government refused to provide an extension on time.  The PoR cards allow the refugees to live in Pakistan “legally” and avoid harassment by the state. On January 3, the long-suffering refugees learned they would only be given a 30-day extension, rather than the 1-year extension the government had been considering under a trilateral agreement with Afghanistan and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  The decision to limit the extension to 30 days was made during a meeting of the federal Cabinet in Islamabad which was chaired by Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

There are currently 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented refugees also living in the country.  The first wave of refugees began came over from Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War, with many more arriving during the bloody civil war of the 1990s.  In 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan, beginning the longest war in American history. The 16-year neo-colonial occupation has devastated the lives of the Afghan people and created a new generation of refugees.

Many of the refugees have lived in Pakistan for decades and have had children in the country. There are indeed children among the 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees. A large number of refugees have established firm roots in the country and have lost all ties to Afghanistan. Kabul has struggled mightily to reintegrate the refugees into Afghan society, repeatedly insisting that Afghanistan does not have the resources to deal with massive numbers of returnees from across the border. Many refugees are also terrified at the prospect of returning to war-torn Afghanistan.  Civilian casualties due to the war reached a 16-year high during the first six months of 2017, according to the UN.

Pakistani politicians often scapegoat the refugees as “terrorists” and charge them with being a burden on the state.  Indeed, while Islamabad has agreed not to forcibly return refugees to Afghanistan, in recent years, it has resorted to a policy of intimidation and harassment of the refugees, so as to bring about their “voluntary” repatriation to the country.  In mid-2016, Pakistan launched what Gerry Simpson, a refugee expert at Human Rights Watch, described at the time as the “world’s largest recent anti-refugee crackdown.”  Afghan refugees have told human rights organizations about the cruel methods used by Pakistani authorities to coerce them into leaving for Afghanistan, including deportation during the winter and police abuses like arbitrary detention, extortion and nocturnal police raids. In fact, during the recent three day period during which 1.4 million refugees lost their documented status, the refugees were reportedly harassed by security personnel, leading them to confine themselves in their homes until the 30-day extension was granted.

In seeking to build domestic support for the forced repatriation of refugees to Afghanistan, Pakistani officials have described the refugee camps where the Afghans live as “safe havens” for terrorists. There is no doubt, however, that Islamabad hopes to use the refugee crisis to punish Afghanistan for shifting ever closer towards it arch-rival, New Delhi.

The deepening alliance between Afghanistan and India is viewed by Pakistan’s ruling elites as a vital security threat due to their fear of “strategic encirclement” by India, but Washington has turned a blind eye to Islamabad’s concerns and has encouraged the two countries to further enhance bilateral relations.  Moreover, US President Donald Trump has recently adopted a hardline stance towards Islamabad, with Washington suspending military aid to Pakistan on January 4.  The increasingly belligerent approach of the US towards Pakistan, where anti-US sentiment remains high, has forced the country’s ruling establishment to adopt a defiant stance towards Washington. Pakistan’s working-class majority remains steadfastly opposed to America’s imperialist war in Afghanistan, and to their government’s role in supporting and facilitating the ongoing occupation. With few options available to hit back at the US and Afghanistan, there is a danger that the Pakistani government may decide to throw the Afghan refugees to the wolves.

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Ali Mohsin is an independent writer. He has a Master’s degree in Political Science and a special interest in issues affecting workers in the US, Pakistan and globally.  He can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image is from UNHCR.

Since the run-up to the election of 2016, the ruling elite in America who control the two wings of the single Corporate Party of America (CPA)—the Republican and Democratic Parties—have been battling it out with ‘right populist’ challengers over who will define US policy in the decade ahead. Thus far in 2017 the elite have been clearly winning.

The likely sacking this coming week of Breitbart News’s CEO, Steve Bannon—which follows his banishment from the White House earlier in 2017—is but the latest example of the elite’s post-election objective of bringing their right populist challengers to heel, and in the process herding Trump himself back under their policy umbrella. (see my prior prediction, ‘Taming Trump’, this blog November 30, 2016)

The history of the traditional elite vs. right populist challengers goes back at least to the emergence of the so-called ‘Contract with America’ in 1994 followed soon thereafter by their effort to impeach then president, Bill Clinton. Clinton’s hard shift to the right after 1994 on economic, social and foreign policy deflated the challengers’ offensive, albeit temporarily. Then there was the so-called ‘Tea Party’ faction after 2001 that ran primary candidates and disrupted the elite Republican wing’s electoral strategy. With the assistance of the Business Council and US Chamber of Commerce, the Teaparty version of ‘right populist’ challengers were purged in 2014 from Republican primary races and candidacies.  The challengers were not defeated, however.  With the financial and organizational aid of the power behind the so-called ‘populist right’—i.e. the Koch brothers, the Mercers, Adelsons, Paul Singers and other radical right big financial supporters backing them—they returned with a vengeance in the 2016 election backing Trump, who opportunistically welcomed their organizational, media and ideological support as the traditional elite consistently rejected him. They bet their Trump Card and gained the White House.  The contest did not stop there, however.

In 2017 the contest with the Republican wing of the elite continued.  The ‘right populist’ mouthpiece within Congress, the US House ‘Freedom Caucus’, was able to prevail over other Republican colleagues and launch a full frontal assault on repealing Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. They recklessly rolled the dice on their first toss…and lost. Check one for the traditional elite right out of the box in early 2017.

Another subsequent 2017 ‘win’ by the Republican wing of the elite was to get Trump to go slow on reversing NAFTA and other free trade agreements. Another was the driving of Steve Bannon and his allies from their perch as White House advisers. Yet another elite 2017 success was to convince Trump to back off from campaign promises to reorganize NATO and reset relations with Russia, and instead to continue providing strategic weapons to east Europe and, most recently, the Ukraine. That policy shift is now in acceleration mode. Then there was the defeat of Moore for Senator in Alabama, who Trump and the right populists both endorsed. The Republican wing of the traditional elite—both in and out of Congress—abandoned Moore and joined with the Democrat wing to ensure Moore’s defeat.  To have supported Moore would have signaled that the Republican elite’s strategy since 2014, a strategy denying right radicals from formal Republican (and Chamber of Commerce) support, was no longer in effect.  A Moore victory would have brought even more radicals from the right demanding to run on Republican electoral tickets. The Chamber could not permit that again.

But the very latest event in the internal battle was last week’s public rift between former right populist Trump election strategist and White House adviser, Steve Bannon, and Trump himself. A rift that, this writer predicts, will almost certainly lead to Bannon’s sacking as CEO of the influential right populist media organ, Breitbart News, this coming week or soon thereafter.

The Bannon sacking will clearly reveal that Bannon is not the driving force behind Breitbart. Nor is the radical ‘right populist’ movement itself an independent force.  Bannon and Breitbart are but a mouthpiece. For what? For the real force behind the Breitbart media outlet, Bannon, and similar media organizations and talking heads pushing far right political alternatives and economic policies—i.e. the billionaire money interests that fund them and make the strategic decisions for them behind the scenes. It is the billionaires who sit on the Breitbart board, and other boards of similar right populist organizations who fund the Breitbarts, the Bannons, and those like them that came before and will come after.

It is those billionaires in particular who have become super-wealthy since the 1990s by speculating in commercial property and trusts and shadow banking; the billionaires over-represented from the ranks of private equity firms, real estate REITs, hedge fund capitalists, asset management companies, etc. On the level of individual capitalists, it is the Adelsons, Paul Singers, the Mercers, the Mays, and others—all billionaires—who have been bankrolling the ‘right populists’ from the very beginning, giving them a public soapbox with which to promote their views, ideology, and mobilize public opinion. More traditional economic sector billionaires, like the Kochs, are also among their ranks, of course. But they are especially over-populated with speculators and financial manipulators (much like Trump himself) who want a more deregulated, winner-take-all kind of capitalism they see as necessary to compete with challengers globally in the coming decades.

These billionaires are the election campaign financiers that all the major candidates for national office trek to every election cycle, genuflect before, hold out their hats to for donations. And with their money comes a ‘Faustian’ bargain: they are allowed to define policies once their candidates get elected.  They are the silent sources that Trump regularly calls in the early morning hours from the White House to ask their advice and input.

Late last week, the billionaire Mercer family, that bankrolls and finances Breitbart News let it be known it was breaking relations with Bannon. Bannon quickly and contritely offered a public statement supporting Trump and calling him a ‘great man’, which Trump just as quickly retweeted. The Bannon retreat followed a reported statement he made to author Michael Wolf, who in his new book out last week quoted Bannon as saying Trump was psychologically unbalanced and “had lost it”.  Calls for Breitbart News to fire Bannon as its CEO quickly followed, and the Mercers statement was made public in turn.

So Bannon’s days are numbered and perhaps in hours not days. He will be gone, relegated to the speech circuit for right wing demagogues, joining the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and others that occasionally over-estimate their influence with the capitalist ruling elite and their usefulness to them. And then find themselves on the outside looking in.

What the Bannon sacking will represent is that the ‘right populist’ movement will now ebb, albeit temporarily once more.  It will be resurrected when needed, with another figure(talking)head replacing Bannon. The Becks, the Limbaughs, the Hannitys and the Bannons are all expendable, and replaceable with another cookie-cutter ideologue whenever the elite consider it necessary.

The Bannon development more importantly signals that more traditional Republican elite policies and legislation will now ever further supplant the right populist initiatives in Congress. The Trump tax cuts just passed benefit clearly the wealthiest 1% and their corporations, and not the middle class, the embittered blue collar workers of the Midwest and Great Lakes, or any other voting constituency in America.

The demise of Bannon also signals that Donald Trump, if he wishes to continue as president will agree to continue his shift toward policies adopted by the Republican wing of the elite.  He has been in synch totally with the recent passage of the Trump Tax Cut act—the elite’s #1 policy objective which is now achieved.  Trump will now continue to back off of radical restructuring of free trade, especially NAFTA. He will fall in line with NATO and policies toward east Europe and Russia. He’ll provide more advanced weaponry to eastern Europe and the Ukraine. He will be satisfied with a token Wall and back off from disrupting immigration relations. And he will continue to soft-pedal his tweeting with regard to North Korea and support trade deals with China the elite want him to deliver.

This does not mean Trump’s troubles with the traditional elite are over, however. The events of the past year, culminating in the Bannon purge, only reflect Trump coming to terms with the Republican wing of the elite, as he tactically moves under their political protective umbrella.  The Democrat wing of the elite will continue trying to build a case against him.

The Democratic wing of the elite will continue to exert pressure on Trump through its powerful media organs and its deep connections with and influence within the State bureaucracy (FBI, NSA, State and Justice departments, DEA, military intelligence arms, etc.). This second front against Trump and his former right populist allies is reflected in the on-going investigation into a Russia-Trump connection during the 2016 election cycle—which that wing of the elite hopes will lead, if not to outright collusion, then to evidence of some form of obstruction of justice by Trump; or perhaps uncover in the process past criminal activity by the Trump business organization with regard to tax evasion or foreign bribes for contracts with Russian oligarchs and mafia. This second front has recorded some success over the past year, as former FBI director, Mueller, has been able to extract evidence from suspected principals, Michael Flynn, Paul Monafort, and Papadopoulos.

The second major development of the past week was the publication of the Michael Wolf book on Trump. With the publication a new issue has been thrown into the political hotpot:  Now it is not just whether Trump has colluded with the Russians, or obstructed Justice to stop the Mueller investigation, or engaged in illegal bribes and deals with Russian oligarchs.  Now the new mantra is Trump is psychologically unbalanced—as evidenced in his own Tweets and in the constant flow of leaked statements by his own administration about his basic ‘child-like character’(Senator Corker), his ability to function at a level of ‘an idiot’ (Secretary of State Tillerson), or that he “has lost it” (Bannon).

In the months ahead the Republican wing—for whom Trump has nicely delivered in the form of tax cuts in the trillions of dollars and with whom Trump is now playing ball with regard to free trade—will circle the wagons on behalf of Trump.  The Republican party wing of the elite don’t want to drive Trump from the White House. They want him tamed and continuing to deliver to policy agenda. So they have already begun to circle the wagons on Trump’s behalf—and to launch a counteroffensive in his defense.  The past week’s reopening of the investigation of Clinton’s foundation and demands to indict the author of the ‘Trump dossier’ are but two examples of the counteroffensive.

And watch what happens after Trump eventually fires FBI investigator, Mueller.  They’ll block the appointment of an independent prosecutor once Mueller is gone. And that means there won’t be any impeachment in 2018.  All that could change, however, should Trump’s historic low approvals slip still further and result in the Republican loss of either the House or Senate in November 2018. Then watch the two wings of the elite unite in efforts to push Trump out.

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Dr. Rasmus is the author of the August 2017 book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

Featured image is from Boing Boing.

An estimated 170 Colombian social leaders were killed in 2017, up from 117 in 2016, according to the Institute of Studies for Peace Development, Indepaz, a Colombian non-governmental organization.

“The rise in homicides is over two main conflicts: (access to) land and (natural) resources. This latter refers to the rentiership in illegal mining and cultivation of illicit crops,” said Indepaz director Camilo Gonzalez Posso.

The report indicated that the murders are highly localized to four regional departments: Nariño (28), Antioquia (23), Valle (14) and Choco (12). There were 32 assassinations alone in the community of San Jose de Apartado Cauca located in Antioquia.

Posso added that the community leader killings in Cauca, Nariño and Choco are related to land conflicts, while those in Bajo Cauca are related to illegal mining.

“The majority of the killings are committed by armed men in areas where previously the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) used to rule.”

Leonardo Gonzalez, also of Indepaz, said that as the FARC left these territories, killings have increased.

The FARC began as a Marxist guerrilla movement in 1960s that advocated for peasant access to farmland. It gained the support of peasants and activists in rural areas over the past several decades. The administration of President Juan Manuel Santos eventually reached an accord with the FARC in November 2016, which included the group’s disarmament. Since the FARC’s leaving, violent right-wing paramilitaries have taken over.

“Where the (FARC) left, other paramilitaries … have arrived to take over the territories, by force”, Gonzalez said.

Maribel Perafan, the country’s Secretary of Government, said that the government is prioritizing the investigation into the 170 deaths. She said it’s necessary to “institutionalize” the protection of the human rights and social leaders.

Yet, social rights defenders in these areas have no guarantees, contended Modesto Serna from the Choco government. He said that the FARC’s leaving has left a vacuum, which hasn’t been replaced by the state, but “criminal gangs.” “We can’t fool ourselves,” he said of those who deny this is the scenario in Colombia.

The government created the National Protection Unity, UNP, after the historic agreement was reached to protect against potential threats and killings of social rights leaders in Colombia. However, according to Edgar Insandara of the Nariño government, when leaders report threats to the UNP,

“we find that there’s no effective state response. It’s very difficult to say that people are protected.”

Meanwhile, Luis Carlos Villegas of Colombia’s Department of Defense said the killings are unrelated and “personal” and therefore, are not “systematic” to the political situation within the country. He does say though that they are “absolutely unacceptable.

The government did announce last week that in order to protect social leaders, it’s sending out 63,000 of its own military soldiers to patrol 67 municipalities and 595 hamlets of the most affected areas, under Plan Uris.

Gonzalez, a principal author of the Indepaz report, concludes,

“we’re living in a transition from a war, which lasted many years, to a moment of peace. Now is the most important time to ensure that we don’t enter a new war. We have to strengthen (our) democracy.”

Starting Jan. 9, the Santos administration will sit down with mediators and members of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, in Quito to reaffirm disarmament talks. This is a follow up to their September meeting in the Andean capital city.

This is following the president’s discussions last week with former FARC leaders to review their peace agreement advancements and challenges one year after it was signed.

This article was first published May 1, 2013. 

Terrorism Is a Real Threat … But the Threat to the U.S. from Muslim Terrorists Has Been Exaggerated

Syrian opposition outlets revealed on January 6 that several commanders of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are currently in the US capital, Washington, to meet with US officials. The visit was not officially announced by the US or any FSA group.

Head of the Political Office of the Mu’tasim Brigade, Mustapha Sejeri, told the Syrian pro-oppositions news outlet ANA Press that the visit is aimed at strengthening the cooperation between the FSA and the US.

Sejeri also revealed that fighting “the Iranian influence in Syria” was the main topic during the meeting between the two sides. The Mu’tasim Brigade official also stressed that the FSA is ready to fight Iran in Syria with support from the USA.

Moreover, Sejeri said that other points were discussed with the American side including foiling the upcoming National Syrian National Dialogue Conference that will be held in the Russian city of Sochi on January 29. The two sides also discussed the outcomes of Geneva Talks, according to Sejeri.

Via Twitter, Sejeri revealed more details and claimed that the FSA and the US also discussed countering the influence of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in eastern Syria. Sejeri’s statement was a shock to many Kurdish activists as the Kurdish dominated force is the main ally of the US in Syria.

“God willing, our presence in Washington will not only be a reason to end the control of your terrorist militias [SDF] on our regions, but will also be the beginning of the end of the Iranian presence on our soil, and the failure of the treachery conference in Sochi,” Sejeri tweeted in response to a Kurdish activist who criticized the FSA commanders’ visit to Washington.

The FSA visit to the US was criticized by many Syrian Kurdish activists, with some even accusing Washington of betraying the Kurds because the US never invited any SDF officials to Washington.

Meanwhile, Syrian pro-government activists viewed the visit as another attempt by Washington to destabilize the situation in Syria and reignite the war that slowed down after the de-facto defeat of ISIS.

The visit was the first since the war broke out in Syria in 2011. However, many US official including Senator John McCain and former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford had met with FSA commanders inside Syria on several occasions.

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Featured image is from South Front.

The Trump Administration continues to plant more seeds for the coming era of transformation that we have written about in recent newsletters, Preparing for the Coming Age of Transformation and Ensuring Justice in the Coming Age of Transformation. It continues to put policies in place that go against national consensus on critical issues and is conducting a foreign policy that isolates the United States from the rest of the world.

With each of these actions, the spring that will create the boomerang of transformation gets compressed further. This week, we focus on three areas: allowing federal prosecution of marijuana offenses where states have made marijuana legal, allowing off shore oil exploration throughout US coastal areas, and escalating regime change efforts in Iran. Each of these actions creates the potential for a larger boomerang in favor of economic, racial and environmental justice and peace if we organize around them.

Is Going Backward on Marijuana Leading to a Sprint Forward?

The United States was beginning to put in place laws and policies for marijuana in the post-prohibition era. The unraveling of the war on marijuana began in 1996 with passage of Proposition 215 in California, which allows medical use of marijuana. Since then, states have been putting in place both medical marijuana laws and legal systems for adult use.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ reversal of federal marijuana enforcement policy and giving federal prosecutors a green light to prosecute people in states where marijuana is legal will slow or stop these developments and, at their worst, will fuel the wasteful and destructive war on marijuana.

Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories of Guam and Puerto Rico have enacted laws that allow the medical use of marijuana. Marijuana is legal and regulated for adults in eight states, and adult possession and limited home cultivation are legal in the District of Columbia. Sessions’ action comes just three days after California implemented legal marijuana, while Maryland was implementing its medical marijuana law, when Ohio approved 12 large marijuana cultivation sites and Massachusetts is putting in place their legal marijuana system. On the same day as Sessions’ reversal, the Vermont House voted to make marijuana legal for adults. The bill is likely to pass the senate and be signed by the governor.

Sessions’ action is out-of-step with the US public where 64 percent now support legal marijuana, including a majority of Republicans. On medical marijuana, over 80 percent support legalizing it for medical use. This national consensus on marijuana law reform is likely to grow in response to Sessions’ actions.

The Cole Memo, issued by the Department of Justice during the Obama presidency, allowed these state laws to take effect. The federal government not prosecuting in legal states resulted in the development of a thriving marijuana industry that includes farmers and retailers, creating thousands of jobs. This $7 billion a year industry was expected to grow significantly with California’s law taking effect in 2018, along with other states, e.g. Massachusetts, Maryland, Ohio. The marijuana sector of the economy will grow to more than $20 billion in coming years if the federal government does not block the will of voters.

The reaction will be swift as this decision is bad politics and bad economics. The backlash began immediately in Congress. Likely 2020 Democratic presidential contenders rushed to beat one another in criticizing the Trump administration’s backward action on marijuana. Not a single legislator put out a statement in support of Sessions’ steps on marijuana law reform. He is already isolated on the issue.

Advocates for legal marijuana are beginning to recognize that Sessions’ retrograde marijuana policy is an opportunity for advancement of legalization on the federal level. Tom Angell of Marijuana Majority wrote,

“The development generated immediate and intense pushback from federal and state officials, from both sides of the aisle. And it wasn’t just the usual suspects of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus chiming in. Democratic and Republican House and Senate members who almost never talk about marijuana, except when asked about it, proactively released statements pushing back against Sessions.”

He points to Republican Rod Blum of Iowa, a state that has not reformed its laws, co-sponsoring a federal reform bill.

Because of @jeffsessions actions, I’m joining the “Respect State Marijuana Laws” bill. I believe in States' Rights & I’ve seen how cannabis derived medicines can stop seizures in a child, help a veteran cope with pain, or provide relief to a senior with glaucoma. #IA01

— Congressman Rod Blum (@RepRodBlum) January 5, 2018

It will be up to the marijuana reform movement to educate and organize the public so that support for backward steps on marijuana becomes career ending political poison. The movement needs to create an environment where legislators and those who run for office will be on the side of developing a sensible marijuana policy in the post-prohibition era.

The immediate impact of Sessions’ recinding of the Cole Memo was to create confusion, as now it is up to each US Attorney to develop a policy on enforcing federal law in states where marijuana is legal. This may lead to prosecution of some high profile marijuana businesses to send a message to others in the industry that they are at risk. The announcement has already had a negative impact on investment in the marijuana industry and made banks more reluctant to work with these businesses.

Given the evidence that legal marijuana has solved problems, rather than created them, has been good for the economy and state budgets and is highly popular with super majorities of voters, the movement for sensible legal marijuana policies is well-positioned for positive changes in law in response to Sessions’ attempt to go backward to an all-out war on marijuana.

Off-shore Drilling Puts Oceans at Risk, Builds Movement to Protect the Environment

EcoWatch wrote,

“In a move that would put every American coastal community at risk, Trump proposed Thursday to hand over vast reaches of waters currently protected from drilling—in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans—to the oil and gas industry.”

Oceans are already at great risk and have been degraded. This new proposal threatens the oceans surrounding the United States further. Offshore oil drilling is risky, as experienced in the BP Gulf Oil disaster and the Exxon Valdez disaster, and is very expensive. It makes no sense to pursue these extreme extraction approaches, not only because of the risk to US coastal areas, fishing, marine breeding and more, but also because science tells us that we should not be investing in carbon infrastructure due to climate change.

This announcement follows an executive order by Trump and new rules from his administration repealing rules that were developed by a national commissionafter the BP oil leak. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster was the worst oil accident in U.S. history – eleven workers died, the oil rig sunk, and more than 4 million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico. After months of investigation, the commission concluded systemic regulatory failures were the cause of the accident and developed rules to prevent similar disasters in the future. The Trump administration refuses to learn from those mistakes; and therefore, we are likely doomed to repeat them.

The Trump administration builds on this mistake by opening virtually all US ocean waters to off-shore drilling. The Interior Department will hold 47 lease sales in every region of the outer continental shelf but one between 2019 and 2024. This includes the Pacific Ocean, eastern Gulf of Mexico as well as more than 100 million acres in the Arctic and along much of the Eastern Seaboard. People have until August 17 to express their opinion to Interior officials.

Scientific American reports,

“While the oil and gas industry cheered, analysts and even some industry representatives cautioned that the plan’s signal may not immediately boost offshore development.”

Off-shore oil, which will involve billions of dollars in infrastructure, is likely to face multiple lawsuits from states and widespread public opposition. Shareholders, who have been pushing for oil and gas companies to disclose the damage they are doing to the climate, will also be a hurdle to exploration. This exploration could take 15 to 20 years to perform during a period when the impacts of climate change are increasing and investors will be concerned with the potential for stranded investments in expensive infrastructure and liability.

Opposition is widespread. Scientific American reports,

“Opponents include the governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Oregon and Washington; more than 150 coastal municipalities; and an alliance of more than 41,000 businesses and 500,000 fishing families.”

Opening up coastal drilling is deeply and universally unpopular in coastal areas, as previous accidents have devastated fisheries and tourism and left hundreds of miles of coastlines drenched in crude oil. Coastal communities are already dealing with increased storms, rising waters, compromised water quality and degraded fisheries.

Once again, the Trump administration is going against the views of super majorities of people in the United States who oppose off-shore drilling by 59 percent, with 65 percent supporting “keeping as much of our current supplies of oil, gas, and coal in the ground as possible to avoid making climate change worse” and 60 percent prefer investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources over “traditional” energy sources. The movement for climate justice, environmental protection and putting protection of the planet ahead of profits will see their support grow as this proposal moves forward.

US Loses Leadership in the World with Aggressive Regime Change Policy in Iran

The United States undermined its leadership in the world with its response to recent protests in Iran. While the protests were greatly exaggerated in the corporate media, they involved relatively small numbers of people and have been dwarfed by days of pro-government protests.

The United States made a foreign policy blunder in bringing the protests to the UN Security Council this week. The administration hoped to undermine Iran’s government and the renewal of the nuclear agreement, but their action had the reverse effect. Other countries reprimanded the United States for misusing its status as a permanent member of the Security Council by bringing these internal issues that had no impact on international peace and security to the Council. Members said that for the US’ action to be consistent, the Security Council should have also considered mass protests in the United States, such as have occurred after police killings and with the Occupy encampments.

Members of the Council saw the action as an attempt by the US to justify more sanctions on Iran and urged all parties, including the United States, to live up to the nuclear agreement, which is an important tool for world peace and stability of the Middle East. This support for the nuclear agreement shows that if President Trump takes actions in the coming weeks to continue US sanctions or undermine the agreement, the US will be isolated in the world and US leadership will be weakened.

The opposition to the actions by the United States in the Security Council was not only from countries like China, Russia and Iran, but also came from US allies, including the United Kingdom and France.

The US’ calls for regime change in Iran during the protests also resulted in Iran and other countries claiming that foreign governments were involved in creating and manipulating the protests for their regime change goals. Popular Resistance did a special report on Iran that included a review of US efforts at regime change that have been ongoing since the 1979 revolution in Iran. The United States has spent tens of millions of dollars annually to build opposition to the Iranian government through the Office of Iranian Affairs, the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the Democracy Fund and the US Agency for International Development.

US’ Acts Against People and Planet Make the Era of Transformation More Likely

These are three examples from the last week of the United States continuing to work against the interests of people and protection of the planet. They are actions that are out-of-step with the views of people in the United States, views held by super-majorities of USians.

The foreign policy actions continue what has become a consistent decline in the influence of the United States on the world stage. The US is becoming increasingly isolated because of its military actions, efforts at regime change, use of economic power to bully other countries and withdrawal from agreements like the climate agreement. The US is losing power, a symptom of the coming end of US empire.

We urge people who seek economic, racial and environmental justice and peace to organize around these issues in order to make the boomerang against the years of big business-dominated government a strong one that ensures that many of the progressive, transformational policies we have all been working on for years become the reality.

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

All images in this article are from the authors.

In a matter of days, Donald Trump will have the chance to scuttle the Iranian Nuclear agreement, a transaction that Trump has called “the worst deal ever.” The future of the so called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA depends largely on whether Trump opts to reimpose economic sanctions on Iran or not. If the president does in fact reimpose sanctions, (sometime after January 13) the United States will be in “material noncompliance” with the terms of the nuclear agreement and all bets will be off.  That means there are two questions that readers should be asking themselves:

1. Will Trump reimpose sanctions and kill the Obama-era nukes deal?

2. Are the protests in Iran instigated by Washington to provide cover to Trump for scrapping the JCPOA?

Take a look at this brief summary from an article at Politico:

President Donald Trump allowed the Iran nuclear deal to survive through 2017, but the new year will offer him another chance to blow up the agreement — and critics and supporters alike believe he may take it.

By mid-January, the president will face new legal deadlines to choose whether to slap U.S. sanctions back on Tehran. Senior lawmakers and some of Trump’s top national security officials are trying to preserve the agreement. But the deal’s backers fear Trump has grown more willing to reject the counsel of his foreign policy team, as he did with his recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital….

When Trump last publicly addressed the status of the Iran agreement, in mid-October, he indicated his patience had worn thin with what he has called “the worst deal ever,” and demanded that Congress and European countries take action to address what he considers the deal’s weakness.

“[I]n the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” Trump said in an Oct. 13 speech.” (“How Trump could kill the Iran nuclear deal in January”, Politico)

So there it is. We do not yet know whether Trump is planning to “blow up the deal” or not. Nor do we have a clear idea of how responsible US NGOs or US agents might be in fomenting the demonstrations on the ground. What we do know, however, is that scuttling the agreement — which took years of deliberation, collaboration and compromise– will be very costly for the United States. Former US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew explained what the US can expect if it does walk away from JCPOA. Here’s an excerpt from an editorial that appeared in the New York Times in 2014.

Lew meeting with President Barack Obama and the Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

…the United States does have tremendous economic influence. But it was not this influence alone that persuaded countries across Europe and Asia to join the current sanction policy, one that required them to make costly sacrifices, curtail their purchases of Iran’s oil, and put Iran’s foreign reserves in escrow. They joined us because we made the case that Iran’s nuclear program was an uncontained threat to global stability and, most important, because we offered a concrete path to address it diplomatically — which we did….Foreign governments will not continue to make costly sacrifices at our demand….

Indeed, they would more likely blame us for walking away from a credible solution to one of the world’s greatest security threats, and would continue to re-engage with Iran. Instead of toughening the sanctions, a decision by Congress to unilaterally reject the deal would end a decade of isolation of Iran and put the United States at odds with the rest of the world…

The major importers of Iranian oil — China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey … will not agree to indefinite economic sacrifices in the name of an illusory better deal. We should think very seriously before threatening to cripple the largest banks and companies in these countries….

We must remember recent history. In 1996, in the absence of any other international support for imposing sanctions on Iran, Congress tried to force the hands of foreign companies, creating secondary sanctions that threatened to penalize them for investing in Iran’s energy sector. The idea was to force international oil companies to choose between doing business with Iran or the United States, with the expectation that all would choose us.

This outraged our foreign partners, particularly the European Union, which threatened retaliatory action and referral to the World Trade Organization and passed its own law prohibiting companies from complying. The largest oil companies of Europe and Asia stayed in Iran until, more than a decade later, we built a global consensus around the threat posed by Iran and put forward a realistic diplomatic means of addressing it.

(“The High Price of Rejecting the Iran Deal”, New York Times)

The Obama administration did not sign the Iranian nukes agreement because it wanted to, it signed it because it had to. Iranian negotiators made a number of crucial concessions that not only intensified the ongoing inspections regime, but also agreed that Iran would be treated more harshly (and unfairly) than any other nation that had ever signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

“The agreement subjects Iran to greater restrictions and more intrusive monitoring than any state with nuclear programs.”

Simply put, the US insisted that Iran accept a number of special protocols which in effect treat Iran like a second-class citizen. Iran accepted these terms so the US would stop its relentless economic strangulation which has persisted almost-continuously since 1979.

It is worth noting, that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program nor is there any evidence that they were trying to develop one. Like Saddam’s fictitious Weapons of Mass Destruction, “Iran’s nukes” are largely a myth created to justify nonstop US-Israeli aggression. Check it out:

It is essential to recognize that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, nor does it possess a nuclear weapon. On February 26, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Ayatollah Khomenei, the supreme leader of Iran, ended his country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 and “as far as we know, he’s not made the decision to go for a nuclear weapon.”

This repeats the “high-confidence” judgement of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) that was first made in November 2007.

(Micah Zenko, “Putting Iran’s Nuclear Program in Context”, Council on Foreign Relations)

Iran has no nukes, no nuclear weapons program, and no sinister nuclear project aimed at blowing up Israel or the United States. It’s all 100 percent bunkum conjured up by the same propagandists in the establishment media who concocted the mobile weapons labs, the yellowcake uranium, the aluminum tubes, curveball and the myriad other cockamamie fabrications that preceded the invasion of Iraq.

It’s also worth noting that “Forty-five US military bases encircle Iran, with over 125,000 troops in close proximity” and that both Republican and Democratic presidents have repeatedly expressed their support for regime change in Tehran. Moreover, the vast majority of Senators and Congressmen have frequently expressed their contempt for Iran while supporting covert activities to destabilize the government or punish the people. Ideally, Trump and his lieutenants would like to replace the Islamic clerics who currently rule Iran, with a puppet like the Shah who privatized oil production, ruled the country with an iron fist, and faithfully followed Washington’s diktats to the letter. The Shah’s reign of terror lasted a full 40 years during which time his CIA-trained secret police, the SAVAK, rounded up and tortured millions of innocent Iranians who were then systematically subjected to  “whipping and beating, electric shocks, extraction of teeth and nails, boiling water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to a white heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape.” This is how the United States brought freedom and democracy to the people of Iran under the Shah.

Is it any wonder why the Iranians are skeptical of Trump’s so called “supportive” tweets (such as):

“The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime…..The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food and freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!”  Donald Trump

Trump’s outspoken support for the protestors has many critics believing that Washington might be orchestrating events on the ground, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. In an excellent article at the World Socialist Web Site, Keith Jones, explains that the massive demonstrations are reaction to neoliberal policies that have exacerbated inequality while fueling social tensions. “Liberal reforms” and austerity have negatively impacted living standards in Iran just as they have everywhere else they’ve been implemented. In other words, the social explosion we are seeing unfold in Iran is not a Washington-engineered color revolution, but a the emerging signs of a class war. Here’s an excerpt from the WSWS article:

Since Dec. 28, tens of thousands have defied the Islamic Republic’s repressive apparatus and taken to the streets in cities and towns across the county. They have done so to voice their anger over food price rises, mass unemployment, gaping social inequality, years of sweeping social spending cuts and a pseudo-democratic political system that is rigged on behalf of the ruling elite and utterly impervious to the needs of working people.

The scope and intensity of this movement and its rapid embrace of slogans challenging the government and the entire autocratic political system have stunned Iranian authorities and western observers alike. Yet, it was preceded by months of worker protests against job cuts and plant closures and unpaid wages and benefits…..

The trigger for this explosion of popular discontent was the government’s latest austerity budget. It will further slash income support for ordinary Iranians, raise gas prices by as much as 50 percent, and curtail development spending, while increasing the already huge sums under the control of the Shia clergy…

The claim that the current protests are akin to those mounted by the Green Movement in 2009 is a base slander meant to justify a bigger crime. The Green challenge to the results of the 2009 Iranian presidential election was a long-prepared political operation that followed the script of similar US-orchestrated “color revolutions” in the Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon and elsewhere. It was aimed at bringing to power those elements of the Iranian elite most eager to reach a quick rapprochement with US and European imperialism. It drew its popular support almost exclusively from the most privileged layers of the upper middle class, who were mobilized on the basis of neoliberal denunciations of the populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for “squandering” money on the poor….

The current challenge to the Iranian regime is of an entirely different character. It is rooted in the working class, including in smaller industrial cities and district towns; draws its greatest support from young people who face an unemployment rate of 40 percent or more; and is driven by opposition to social inequality and capitalist austerity….The period in which the class struggle could be suppressed is coming to an end.

(“Working class opposition erupts in Iran: A harbinger for the world in 2018″”, World Socialist Web Site)

Iran’s protests are not the result of US meddling (although the US does undoubtedly have agents on the ground) Nor is there any real chance of regime change, in fact, from Trump’s point of view, that’s not even the main objective. In our opinion, the Trump administration is looking for a way to terminate the nuclear agreement without abrogating the deal itself.  My guess is that the administration plans to use Iran’s crackdown on protestors as a justification for rescinding the nukes deal, thus, providing cover for the allies to join Washington without fear of incurring the attendant penalties.

Trump’s recent tweets, all of which emphasize human rights, suggest the plan is already underway.

“Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!”  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017

Iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the Obama Administration. The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food & for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!   Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018

The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their “pockets.” The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017

Trump’s sudden interest in human rights is suspicious, but is it really a sign of a plan to kill the nukes deal?

We’ll see.

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Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Ben Wikler | CC BY 2.0.

On January 4, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Tiger Forces, backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, captured the villages of Rsm al-Abid, al-Fhail, Rubaida, Msheirfeh, al-Qasr al-Abyad, Rabeeah Musa, Haqiyah and Umm Rjaim Hill in southeastern Idlib.

According to pro-government sources, at least 7 militants were killed and a vehicle was destroyed during the SAA advance.

On the same day, the Sham Legion reportedly destroyed a SAA battle tank with an anti-tank guided missile near the town of Atshan in northern Hama.

Now, government troops are developing their advance on the town of Sinjar.

In Eastern Ghouta, the SAA started an operation to lift a siege imposed by Ahrar al-Sham on the Armoured Vehicles Base.

The SAA reportedly captured dozens of buildings in Harasta and killed many Ahrar al-Sham members in the district. Meanwhile, the Syrian Air Force destroyed a militant HQ in the same area.

Jaish al-Islam repelled an SAA attack on Ayn Zuriqa and restored the control over the village. 3 SAA soldiers were reportedly killed there.

On January 4, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces started storming the ISIS-held town of Hajin in the Euphrates Valley. Clashes are ongoing there.

The pro-opposition media outlet Hammurabi’s Justice News reported that the SAA and Russia had rejected a US-led coalition request for an assistance in securing the 55km zone around the US military base at At-Tanf in southeastern Syria.

If this is true, the report confirms that the US-led coalition and its proxies had done almost nothing to combat ISIS in the area controlled by them near At-Tanf and are still not able to do this without an additional assistance.

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Featured image is from South Front.

Listen to the state-‘guided’ US media this past week and you’d believe a series of spontaneous anti-government protests broke out across Iran.  The protests, according to President Donald Trump and his Israeli allies, were caused by `anger over Iran’s spending billions on wars in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and helping the Palestinian movement Hamas.’ Trump tweeted that Iranians were finally rising up against what he called their hated, brutal regime.  

Talk about manufactured news.  Most Iranians were elated and proud of their nation’s role in thwarting US plans to occupy much of Syria and overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad.  By contrast, the other side in this long proxy war – the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Britain – was smarting with defeat and seeking ways to exact revenge on the hateful trio, Syria, Iran and Russia.

Interestingly, the so-called news of protests over Iran’s military spending did not apparently originate in Iran but rather in Washington which spread it far and wide to our state-guided media.  This was clumsy, but the US and Israel were so eager to get this piece of made-up good news out that they forget the basics of propaganda management: wait for the event before you proclaim it.

What in fact was going on in Iran where more than 21 demonstrators have died violent deaths?  As a very long-time Iran watcher allow me to explain.

Restive minority groups in Iran’s Kurdish, Azeri and Sunni Arab regions, most far from the big cities, have been demonstrating and protesting severe economic problems.  Iran is a big, resource-rich nation of 80 million people that should be booming.  But it has been under economic siege warfare by the US and its allies ever since a popular uprising in 1979 overthrew the US-British backed monarchy that was raping the nation and keeping it a vassal of the western powers.

Iran’s new Islamic Republic was deemed a dire threat to Western and Israeli strategic and military interests (think Saudi Arabia).  The very idea that the Islamic Republic would follow the tenets of Islam and share oil wealth with the needy was anathema to London and Washington.  Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, ran Iran’s dreaded, brutal secret police, Savak. The crooked royal family looted the nation and stored their swag in California.

The West’s first act was to induce Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to invade Iran, in Sept 1980.  The West (including the Gulf Arabs) armed, financed and supplied Iraq.  As I discovered in Baghdad, Britain and the US supplied Iraq with poison gas and germ warfare toxins. After eight years, 250,000 Iraqis were killed and nearly one million Iranians died.

Ever since the Islamic Revolution, the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs have been trying to overthrow the Tehran government and mount a counter-revolution.   CIA and Britain’s MI6 has ample practice: in 1953, the CIA and MI6 mounted an elaborate operation to overthrow Iran’s democratically-elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh who sought to nationalize Iran’s British-owned oil company.  Mobs of specially trained anti-Mossadegh plotters poured into Tehran’s streets. Bombs went off. Army commanders were suborned, lavish bribes handed out.

The 1953 coup went perfectly. Mossadegh was ousted with backing from the Army and Savak.  Iran’s oil remained safe in western hands.  The successful Iran uprising became the template for future ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Russia, Poland, and Romania.

But in 2009 a US-engineered ‘color revolution’ in Iran went badly wrong even though it used all the latest arts of social media to whip up protestors and deploy them in the streets.  Something similar happened in Iran this past weekend where mobs of 20-somethings, agitated by US and British covert social media, poured into the streets of dingy provincial towns.

As of now, this medium-sized uprising in Iran looks to be over, though it could re-ignite at any time. Young Iranians, at least 40% of the population, suffer due to 50% unemployment.   Iran’s $1 trillion economy is extremely fragile and in some cases barely functioning after decades of US-engineered economic warfare and boycotts.  High unemployment is a result of US economic warfare and bullying other nations not to do business with Iran, producing 13% overall unemployment and a 40% inflation rate. The latter and wide-scale corruption were the spark that ignited the latest riots.

In two more weeks, President Trump, who makes no secret of his hatred and contempt for Muslims, must decide whether to reaffirm the multilateral nuclear energy deal with Iran or heed Israel’s demands and refuse to certify it.  His cutoff this week of US military aid to Muslim Pakistan bodes ill for Iran.

Many Iranians observing the current US-North Korea nuclear standoff will wonder if their nation was not better off continuing its nuclear program and holding the Saudi oil fields at risk to deter a US attack.  Trump’s wild, inconsistent and often infantile responses on this issue are making matters murkier…and ever more dangerous.

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Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook.

A few gestures of mutual respect between North Korea and South Korea during the first week of January are a long way from a stable, enduring peace on the Korean peninsula, but these gestures are the best signs of sanity there in decades. On January 1, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for immediate dialogue with South Korea ahead of next month’s Winter Olympics there. On January 2, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in proposed that talks begin next week in Panmunjom (a border village where intermittent talks to end the Korean War have continued since 1953). On January 3, the two Koreas reopened a communications hotline that has been dysfunctional for almost two years (requiring South Korea to use a megaphone across the border in order to repatriate several North Korean fishermen). Talks on January 9 are expected to include North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics that begin February 9 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Kim Jong-un’s call for dialogue may or may not have surprised US officials, but reactions from the White House press secretary, the UN Ambassador, and the State Department were uniformly hostile and negative. The most civil was Heather Nauert at State, who said, with little nuance:

“Right now, if the two countries decide that they want to have talks, that would certainly be their choice.”

She might as well have added “bless their little hearts.” Patronize is what the US does when it’s being polite. More typical bullying came from UN Ambassador Nikki Haley:

“We won’t take any of the talks seriously if they don’t do something to ban all nuclear weapons in North Korea.”

US policy is hopelessly tone-deaf if it believes that bell can be un-rung. But that’s the way the US has behaved for decades, tone-deaf and unilaterally demanding, insisting that the US and the US alone has the right to determine what at least some sovereign nations can and cannot do. In December, anticipating a North Korean satellite launch (not a missile test), Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the United Nations with straight-faced moral arrogance:

The North Korean regime’s continuing unlawful missile launches and testing activities signal its contempt for the United States, its neighbors in Asia, and all members of the United Nations. In the face of such a threat, inaction is unacceptable for any nation.

Well, no, that’s only true if you believe you rule the world. It’s not true in any context where parties have equal rights. And the US secretary’s covert urging of others to take aggressive action tiptoes toward a war crime, as does the implied US threat of aggressive war.

The obtuse inflexibility of US policy revealed itself yet again in the initial groupthink response to a different part of Kim Jong-un’s January 1 speech where he indicated that he had a “nuclear button” on his desk and would not hesitate to use it if anyone attacked North Korea. Under constant threat from the US and its allies since 1953, North Korea has made the rational choice to become a nuclear power, to have a nuclear deterrent, to have some semblance of national security. The US, irrationally, has refused to accept this with North Korea even while supporting Israel’s nuclear deterrent. Kim Jong-un’s button reference elicited a reflexive US reiteration of failed policy in florid Trumpian form when the president tweeted on January 2:

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!

This twitter feed from the Great Disruptor got the twittering classes much atwitter over nothing more important than sexual innuendo, while fleeing from yet another presidential threat of nuclear destruction. And then came the firestorm of “Fire and Fury,” and almost all thought of Korea was driven from public discourse, even though what happens in Korea is orders of magnitude more important than what Michael Wolff says Steve Bannon said about Trumpian treason.

But the facts on the ground in Korea have changed materially in the past year despite US bullying and interference. First, North Korea has become a nuclear power, no matter how puny, and it will continue to become more capable of defending itself unless the US thinks it would be better to do the unthinkable (what are the odds?). The second, more important change in Korea is that South Korea shed itself of a corrupt president beholden to US interests and, in May, inaugurated Moon Jae-in, who has actively sought reconciliation with the North for years before his election.

US policy has failed for more than six decades to achieve any resolution of the conflict, not even a formal end to the Korean War. The conventional wisdom, as posed by The New York Times, is a dead end:

“The United States, the South’s key ally, views the overture with deep suspicion.”

In a rational world, the US would have good reason to support its ally, the president of South Korea, in re-thinking a stalemate. Even President Trump seems to think so, in a hilariously narcissistic tweet of January 4:

With all of the failed “experts” weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasn’t firm, strong and willing to commit our total “might” against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing!

Talks are a good thing. One of North Korea’s chronic complaints, as well as a clearly legitimate grievance, has been the endless US/South Korean military exercises aimed at North Korea several times a year. In his January 1 speech, Kim Jong-un again called for South Korea to end joint military exercises with the US. On January 4, the Pentagon delayed the latest version of that clear provocation – scheduled to overlap with the Olympics. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis denied that the delay was a political gesture, saying its purpose was to provide logistical support to the Olympics (whatever that means). Whatever Mattis says, the gesture is a positive gesture and reinforces the drift toward peace, however slightly. Can it be possible that reality and sanity are getting traction? Who knows what’s really going on here? And who are the “fools” Trump refers to?

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William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Featured image is from Yonhap News Agency.

One of the myths perpetuated by the pro-GMO (genetically modified organisms) lobby is that critics of GMOs in agriculture are denying choice to farmers and have an ideological agenda. The narrative is that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies, including GM crops. 

Before addressing this issue, we should remind ourselves that GMOs have been illegitimately placed on the commercial market due to the bypassing of regulations. Steven Druker’s book Altered Genes, Twisted Truths (2015) indicates that the commercialisation of GM food in the US was based on a massive fraud. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 but only because the FDA covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers, lied about the facts and then violated federal food safety law by permitting GM food to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

If the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their conventional counterparts, Druker says that the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere.

It is highly convenient for the pro-GMO lobby to talk about choice while ignoring such a massive subversion of democratic procedures and processes which could (and arguably is) changing the genetic core of the world’s food.

The denial of choice is a very important accusation. But just what is it that critics are said to be denying farmers? The pro-GMO lobby say that GM crops can increase yields, reduce the use of agrochemicals and are required if we are to feed the world. To date, however, the track record of GMOs is unimpressive.

If we turn to India, we can now see that Bt cotton has largely been a failure. GM cotton has hardly been a success elsewhere either. Although critics are blamed for Golden Rice not being on the market, again the reality is that after two decades problems remain with the technology.

A largely non-GMO Europe tends to outperform the US, which largely relies on GM crops. In general, “GM crops have not consistently increased yields or farmer incomes, or reduced pesticide use in North America or in the Global South (Benbrook, 2012; Gurian-Sherman, 2009)” (from the report ‘Persistent narratives, persistent failure’).

GM agriculture is not ‘feeding the world’, nor has it been designed to do so. The choice for farmers between a technology based on broken promises (as further outlined in this NYT piece) and conventional non-GMO agriculture is no choice at all.

“Currently available GM crops would not lead to major yield gains in Europe,” says Matin Qaim, a researcher at Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Germany.

He adds that as far as herbicide-resistant crops in general are concerned:

“I don’t consider this to be the miracle type of technology that we couldn’t live without” (quoted in another New York Times article, Doubts about the promised bounty of GM crops.)

A choice between proven non-GMO agriculture and a failing or less effective GMO model (with all the serious health, environmental and social impacts) is nothing but a false choice.

And if the GMO agritech industry wishes to perpetuate the idea that one of its main motives is to promote ‘choice’ and help farmers (and thus consumers) then why does it work to ultimately deny choice? Once the genetic genie is out of the bottle, there may be no way of going back.  

Roger Levett, specialist in sustainable development, argues (‘Choice: Less can be more, in Food Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 2008):

“If some people are allowed to choose to grow, sell and consume GMO foods, soon nobody will be able to choose food, or a biosphere, free of GMOs. It’s a one-way choice, like the introduction of rabbits or cane toads to Australia; once it’s made, it can’t be reversed.”

There is sufficient evidence showing that GM and non-GM crops cannot co-exist. Indeed, contamination seems to be part of a cynical industry strategy. For instance, with GM food crops already illegally growing in India, what future India agriculture? What future farmers’ choices?

It is convenient to paint critics of GMOs as being authoritarian and possessing an ideological agenda. Whether it is Bayer, Monsanto or one of the other major agritech/agribusiness concerns, the real agenda is clear: elite commercial interests and the maximisation of profit for shareholders are the driving forces behind GM agriculture.

Critics of GMOs and transnational corporations did not have a leading role in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies. Monsanto did. Critics did not write the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. The global food processing industry had a leading role in that (see this). Whether it involves Codex, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring Indian agriculture or the proposed US-EU trade deal (TTIP), the powerful agribusiness/food lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers.

From the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ to the Gates Foundation’s role in opening up African agriculture to the global food and agribusiness oligopolies, democratic procedures at sovereign state levels have been bypassed to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by powerful corporations.

From the destruction of indigenous agriculture in Ethiopia to the ongoing dismantling of Indian agriculture at the behest of transnational agribusiness, where is the ‘choice’?

Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill. And Bayer’s hand is likely behind the ongoing strategy behind GM mustard in India. Whether through secretive trade deals, strings-attached loans or outright duplicity, the global food and agribusiness conglomerates have scant regard for choice or for democracy.

Localisation and traditional methods of food production have given way to globalised supply chains dominated by transnational companies policies and actions which have resulted in the destruction of habitat and livelihoods and the imposition of corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive (monocrop) agriculture that weds farmers and regions to a wholly exploitative system of neoliberal globalization.

Whether it involves the undermining or destruction of what were once largely self-sufficient agrarian economies in Africa or the devastating impacts of soy cultivation in Argentina or palm oil production in Indonesia, the role of transnational agribusiness has been devastating.

What choice do we as consumers have over the tens of thousands of synthetic agrochemicals contaminating our soil, oceans and food. How did they get on the market in the first place? Again, largely as a result of fraud.

What choice do consumers have over GM food when food conglomerates and Bayer have spent large sums of money to prevent labelling?

What choice does the public have when governments become de facto mouthpieces of the industry as they collude behind closed doors with powerful corporations?

What choice did Mexican farmers and consumers have over their right to healthy food when NAFTA (driven by the powerful food/agribusiness lobby in the US) drove farmers out of business and consumers towards bad food and poor health?

What right have corporations like Monsanto and Bayer to damage (see this too) health as well as natural resources that belong to humanity collectively? These entities with histories of criminality have convinced governments and the public that they have a right to own humanity’s collective resources.

And with that in mind, how will a Monsanto-Bayer merger and increasing consolidation of the seed and agrochemical sector increase choice? It won’t. It hints at of a dark future of corporate monopolies.

In their rush to readily promote neoliberal dogma and corporate-inspired PR, many government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. There is the premise that water, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful and wholly corrupt transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

These natural assets (‘the commons’) belong to everyone and any stewardship should be carried out in the common interest by local people assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf, not by private transnational corporations driven by self-interest and the maximization of profit by any means possible.

And that’s the real agenda. That’s the bottom line where choice is concerned.

We have been living in the shadow of global agribusiness and its impacts for too long.

When pro-GMO/pro-big agribusiness lobbyists take aim at critics, alleging they are denying choice and have an ideological/authoritarian agenda, they should look a little closer to home.

But to quote the writer Upton Sinclair:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

First published by GR on December 14, 2018

It is clear the US is pushing the battle line to our door … We can completely regard the US arrest of Meng Wanzhou as a declaration of war against China.”

So read an editorial in the Global Times of China days after Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese company Huawei, was taken hostage by the Canadian and American governments on December 1 when she was arbitrarily arrested and detained by Canadian police in Vancouver in transit between planes on the basis of a US extradition request.

The arrest has shocked and angered China, Canadians, the world community, and caused reverberations in world stock markets. China has threatened severe consequences to Canada if Ms. Meng is not released.  Already, there are reports of the arrest in China of Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat, working for the CIA front, International Crisis Group, and Michael Spavor, a man who has managed to insert himself into the inner circle of the government of the DPRK by arranging trips to the DPRK, often a cover for western espionage, both accused of endangering Chinese national security.  No direct connection has been made to Meng’s arrest, but the timing is significant.

Kovrig served as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing and Hong Kong until 2016, but is on a leave of absence from the Canadian Foreign Service and seconded to The International Crisis Group, which underlines the close connections that organization has to western governments and intelligence agencies.

The Chinese news agencies report that Kovrig was questioned by agents of the Beijing National Security Bureau on Tuesday and that he was suspected of engaging in activities that endanger China’s national security, in other words gathering intelligence, which would make sense since even the International Crisis Group said that, Kovrig was “regularly interviewing Chinese officials to accurately reflect their views in our work.” In other words he was fishing for information. So he and the ICG are an interesting choice of target-he Canadian, his employer connected to the US intelligence services.

Public opinion in China regarding Canada, which was generally favourable until this incident, has turned rapidly and boycotts of Canadian products have begun to develop hitting the share price of Canadian companies, such as the one that makes the Canada Goose jackets.  The Chinese government has issued a travel advisory to Chinese nationals warning that their safety cannot be assured when travelling to Canada. A trade mission of the government of British Columbia to Beijing has been cancelled and we can expect all such missions and will be suspended and Chinese investment in Canada at risk so long as Ms. Meng remains a hostage.

The background to the arrest is simple.  Huawei has become a global competitor in the global phone market and their 5G phones are cutting edge technology, and apparently can not be hacked into by the western intelligence and security services and so not welcomed by them and by competing phone companies in US, Japan, south Korea, France, and Sweden, who are so afraid of the competition that they and their governments have spread stories that the phones are loaded with spyware and are “a danger to national security.”  The company has even been threatened by the US and allied governments with criminal charges in America’s increasingly hostile economic war against China alongside its increasing military pressure, provocations and insults.  It’s one way to control the market.

But this arrest is also a message to other nations, companies and business people doing business with Iran. The Americans are attempting to destroy the Iranian economy as a collective punishment of the Iranian people thereby hoping to cause unrest and overthrow of the Iranian government.  Meng Wanzhou’s arrest is a clear message. We can arrest her. We can arrest you. European companies are now warned.

The Americans, in their overwhelming arrogance and contempt for the rest of the world, claim that everyone in the world is subject to their laws, as if the United States government is a world government, which of course is how far their imperialism has progressed into world tyranny.  But American laws, like any other nation’s laws can only apply to it citizens for crimes committed within its borders.

But what laws is Ms. Meng accused of violating? None in reality since the US edicts to the world, dressed up as “laws” that trading with Iran is an offence are invalid as they are violations of the UN Charter, of international law and have no force and effect. Only the Security Council can impose sanctions on a nation.  Trade embargoes imposed by a nation unilaterally are prohibited and no nation is obliged to recognize them.

The Canadian prime minister claims he had no hand in this arrest yet admits he knew about it days before hand.  The police that arrested her and the prosecutors handling the file are federal officials and so he must have been involved. John Bolton in the US also admitted that he knew that this was going to happen several days in advance so there must have been communication between the Canadian authorities and the American authorities at a high level to set this up. In fact to add insult to injury the arrest took place as President Trump was sitting with President Xi who was trying to seek an accommodation with the Americans to ease the economic war being waged against China by the Americans. So as Trump sat with Xi,  smiling like a lizard in the sun, he knew that Meng Wanzhou was being arrested, and continued to act like the lizard he is, while Xi acted in good faith unaware of what was happening further north in Canada.

Trudeau’s statement that this arbitrary arrest was not politically motivated and that he was not involved in giving orders for Canadian police to detain her once she landed in Vancouver is preposterous since the Extradition Treaty between Canada and the United States requires that the United States inform the Canadian foreign ministry of its request and send them the documents supporting the request.

Further President Trump stated in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday that he would intervene in U.S. efforts to extradite Meng if it helped him win a trade deal with China. In other words, he confirmed her status as a hostage to pressure China on trade negotiations, and proved the absurdity of the claims of some American commentators that Trump had been sabotaged and knew nothing about it.

Trump’s statement seriously damaged the credibility of the Canadian government whose foreign minister was forced to admit on Wednesday, at a press conference that,

“It will be up to Ms. Meng’s lawyers whether they choose to raise comments in the U.S. as part of their defense of Ms. Meng, and it will then be up to the Canadian judicial process, to Canadian judges, how to weigh the significance.”

But Ms. Freeland is playing loose with the law and her government’s obligations.

Article 2 of the Extradition Treaty requires that Canada can only act on an extradition request if, and only if, the offence alleged is also an offence by the laws of both contracting parties. But the unilaterally imposed and illegal sanctions placed against Iran by the USA, are not punishable acts in Canada and even in the USA the “sanctions” are illegal as they are in violation of the UN Charter. They are attempting to disguise this fact by charging her with fraud, but the essence of the charge is the politically motivated one of not obeying American edicts or “sanctions” against Iran.

Importantly, Article 4 (1) of the Treaty states:

“Extradition shall not be granted in any of the following circumstances:

(iii) When the offense in respect of which extradition is requested is of a political character, or the person whose extradition is requested proves that the extradition request has been made for the purpose of trying to punish him (or her) for an offense of the above-mentioned character. If any question arises as to whether a case comes within the provisions of this subparagraph, the authorities of the Government on which the requisition is made shall decide.”

So, neither Ms. Freeland, nor Prime Minister Trudeau can evade responsibility for this hostage taking, this arbitrary arrest and detention since the Canadian government had to consider the US request and consider whether it was politically motivated. Therefore the matter had to be considered at the highest level by him. Since he has clearly ignored all the circumstances including the fact, firstly that the offence alleged is not an offence in Canada, and cannot exist under international law and secondly, that the US request is clearly politically motivated and has the objective of damaging both Iran and China, he made a political decision to order his security forces to arrest and detain her. It was a political arrest. The rule of law in Canada has been suspended, at least in her case, and so can be in any case. Their repeated statement that the matter is now before the courts is simply an evasion of their responsibilities. In fact, their responsibility was to China. Canada should have warned the Chinese government that the US had sent the request and were pressuring them to arrest one of their citizens on false charges.  Instead they acted as thugs ordered around by the head gangster of the world.

The gangsterism continues as Ms. Meng was finally granted bail in Vancouver but on very harsh terms for someone who faces no valid charges, who has no criminal record and is by President Trump’s own admission being held as a hostage.

Seizure of her passport would have been sufficient to keep her in the country pending the extradition hearing as there is no way she could leave the country without one unless they are suggesting she would be picked up off the coast by a Chinese submarine. But the viciousness of the Canadian state knows no bounds and they insisted that she be confined to virtual house arrest, flanked by security men she is required to pay for, and forced to accept the humiliation of wearing an electronic ankle monitor on top of millions of dollars in security that friends had to put up. I can’t think of a murder case where bail is an option and the conditions have been so harsh.

But can we be surprised that the rule of law has ceased to exist in Canada when we remember that in 1999 Canada took part in the aggression against Yugoslavia, when it took part in the aggression against Iraq, when in 2004 its special forces assisted US marines to put a gun to the head of President Aristide of Haiti, kidnap him and exile him to Africa, when it took part in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, of Libya, of Syria, when this year it took in white helmet elements of the terrorist proxy forces attacking Syria, when it has been involved in plots to overthrow the Venezuelan government, and the Ukrainian government where it supports the fascists who have taken power in Kiev, when it supports the illegal “sanctions” that is, economic warfare against Russia and supplies arms and armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia for its war in Yemen?

Canadians should be angry about their nation being led by people whose loyalty is to Washington instead of the Canadian people, whose interest they seem to care nothing about. They should be angry about slapping the face of the great Chinese people for whom Norman Bethune, the celebrated Canadian physician and communist died while helping the Peoples Liberation Army during the Long March and resistance to Japanese aggression in the 1930’s. Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (image on the left), who was one of the first western leaders to open up dialogue with China, long before Nixon went there, must be rolling over in his grave at the actions of his son.

Canadians should be angry that these traitors are isolating Canada from China, from Russia, from Iran and their great cultures, and condemning Canada to be nothing more than an outpost of the American empire. For traitors they are as they betray the Canadian people by serving the interests of the Americans and their war machine.

Free Meng Wanzhou, for so long as she is held hostage, we all are.

*

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

Featured image is from Asia Times

Today’s Ukraine is painfully reminiscent of Germany in the 1920s: poor governance on the heels of a lost war, which – added to the sense of betrayed hopes and the sharp decline in average incomes coupled with rising prices – is all driving a critical mass of the Ukrainian population toward an overwhelming feeling of desperation. A demand from the public for a “strong hand” – a new, authoritarian ruler – is rapidly coalescing, due to their dissatisfaction with President Poroshenko and all the other jokers they’ve been dealt from that shabby deck of political cards.

And a man like that already exists in this destitute and disintegrating country. Andriy Biletsky, (feature image left) the commander of the Azov Battalion who is known to his comrades-in-arms as the “White Führer,” is making an ever-bigger name for himself in the Ukrainian parliament.

He makes no secret of his views – in his 2014 program declaration “Ukrainian racial social nationalism is the core of ideology of ‘Patriot of Ukraine’ organization” he expressed himself quite bluntly: “Our nation’s historical mission at this critical juncture is to lead the global White Race in its final crusade for its survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

He was drawn to Nazi ideology while still a university student. In the early 2000s, while studying in the history department of the National University of Kharkov, he wrote a paper on the activities of the collaborationist Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II.

Later, as this student of history and amateur boxer put it, “preference was given to the creation, rather than the study of history, and to fighting in the streets instead of in boxing rings.” In the 1990’s and 2000’s, as he moved toward the formation of his own nationalist organizations, such as Patriot of Ukraine (founded jointly with the current chairman of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy) and later the Azov Battalion, Biletsky managed to have a hand in almost every far-right group in Ukraine: the Stepan Bandera Tryzub, the Social-National Party of Ukraine, and Svoboda (Freedom) party. Now he also leads the Social-National Assembly, an umbrella group for a number of racist and neo-Nazi Ukrainian organizations. He himself has claimed to have had first-hand involvement in what are known as direct actions, i.e., military and terrorist operations.

In 2001 he participated in the riots in Kiev during the “Ukraine without Kuchma” protest campaign. In 2008 he was involved in clashes with the police during a march to honor the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Between 2008 and 2009 activists from the Patriot of Ukraine organization that was under his direction repeatedly attacked individuals of non-Slavic appearance.

Wounded anti-fascist journalist Sergey Kolesnik, a snapshot of Ukrainian TV report about the incident. (Source: Oriental Review)

In 2011, Biletsky, along with two other members of Patriot of Ukraine, was arrested and charged with armed assault: on Aug. 23 of that year there was an altercation in that organization’s office with journalist Sergei Kolesnik who was doing a story on their activities.

As a result, the reporter ended up in the emergency room with a head injury and lacerations to his chest. The organization claimed the charges had been trumped up and that the detained activists had been the victims of a political witch hunt. They were released in February 2014 after the victory of the Revolution of Dignity, when the Verkhovna Rada adopted resolution No. 4202, On the Release of Political Prisoners. There were 23 people on the list of detainees to be freed, primarily members of Patriot of Ukraine. The author of the bill was the head of the Radical Party, Deputy Oleh Lyashko, who later worked closely with the Azov Battalion.

Immediately after his release, Biletsky was put in charge of the “special operations” of the neo-Nazi organization Right Sector and proceeded with reprisals against “undesirables” – the Ukrainians who objected to the illegal seizure of power in their country. In March 2014 he was responsible for an explosion that blew up a monument and then some attacks on local residents in Kharkov, resulting in the deaths of two people and serious injuries to a law-enforcement officer. In May 2014 he and some of his underlings were involved in the execution of policemen in Mariupol who had refused to use their weapons against civilians.

At that time Biletsky created the Azov Battalion, an armed, retaliatory unit of activists from racist and neo-Nazi organizations. Its ideology is based on neo-Nazism, aggressive militarism, and flagrant racism. The group employs the Nazi Wolfsangel and Black Sun symbols (“die Schwarze Sonne” – a type of swastika with multiple rays).

In the article “Language and Race: The Primacy of the Question,” found on pg. 28 of his book The Words of the White Führer (in Ukrainian), Biletsky insists on requirements for the racial purity of the “Ukrainian nation” and on the impropriety of “accepting a person of a different bloodline, mentality, or culture into one’s family and nation and allowing one’s own genes to mix with those of a different, inferior breed of people.” “Ukrainian social-nationalism considers the Ukrainian nation to be a society based on a common bloodline and race.” “Race is paramount for the genesis of a nation,” the leader of the organization asserts. “People are naturally born with different abilities and opportunities, and therefore a person’s happiness comes from finding his place in the national hierarchy and in conscientiously carrying out the task that life has assigned him.”

Shortly before the 2014 Verkhovna Rada (parliamentary) elections, when asked whether his views had changed, Biletsky replied:

“We remain true to ourselves. Azov’s very soul consists of the right-wing ideology it received as its legacy from Patriot of Ukraine.”

Refusing to have his name listed on the ticket of the People’s Front party (led by Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk) during the 2014 parliamentary elections, Biletsky strengthened his position as the leader of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis and won a seat in parliament as an independent candidate from one of Kiev’s single-seat districts. In the Verkhovna Rada he is the deputy head of the Committee on National Security and Defense and is ironically a member of a group on inter-parliamentary relations with Georgia, Great Britain, Israel, the US, Poland, and Lithuania.

His alliance with the new government in Kiev has made it possible for the White Führer to “legitimize” his militants and get the state to pay for their upkeep. The Azov Battalion was incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine, which is under the control of the minister of internal affairs and former governor of the Kharkov region, Arsen Avakov. Back in November 2014, Avakov posted the following on his Facebook page:

“The work has begun to bring this regiment up to the combat standards of the National Guard brigades. That also means in terms of weapons and technology. Currently dozens of kids from the Azov Battalion are already being trained at an artillery school, getting the hang of new armored vehicles on the practice ranges, and learning how to coordinate operations with the tank squadron assigned to their regiment.”

Andriy Biletsky (C) and Arsen Avakov (R in front) announcing incorporation of Azov battalion into the National Guard of Ukraine, Oct 2014 (Source: Oriental Review)

That was approximately the same time that Azov introduced its youth squad – the Biletsky Youth, also sometimes called Youth of Great Ukraine. It draws teenagers aged 14-18. Members are required to develop themselves physically and mentally, to study the foundations of social-nationalism, and to recognize Andriy Biletsky as their  Führer…

Despite the fact that in June 2015 the US House of Representatives blocked the transfer of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, known as MANPADS, to Ukraine for fear that they might fall into the hands of neo-Nazis from Azov, some European politicians certainly don’t seem to consider him a political “untouchable” – soon after the US bill was approved, Czech MEP Jaromír Štětina invited Biletskiy to visit the European Parliament and share his views (the invitation apparently wasn’t accepted).

In October 2016 Biletsky created his own political party, the National Corps, and announced his readiness to assume responsibility for what was happening in the country. On Feb. 22, 2017, this party, along with Svoboda and Right Sector, held a March of National Dignity in Kiev, which resulted in an ultimatum being issued to the government, as part of which, the nationalists announced the coordination of efforts “to resist the country’s surrender to armed invaders from the East and financial bloodsuckers from the West.” On March 16, these forces, in addition to the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,and the neo-Nazi group C14, signed their National Manifesto. Once you take away the clauses of social-populist demagoguery, that statement mostly boils down to the following:

– looking not to the West nor to the East, but to the formation of a kind of “new European alliance – a Baltic-Black Sea Union

– unleashing an economic, propaganda, and guerrilla war against Russian Crimea

– returning Ukraine to the status of a nuclear power “due to the violation of the Budapest Memorandum”

– nationalizing mineral resources and industry, a total ban on the free sale of agricultural land, and a prohibition on pulling capital out of the country to stash offshore

In this manner, far-right forces in Ukraine have now consolidated and are ready to take action. For the past three years, Biletsky has carefully avoided making any racist statements and has been busy trying to burnish a positive image of himself for his Ukrainian and international audiences. He and his patrons expect the deepening crisis of power in Ukraine and the imminent fall of the Poroshenko regime to provide them with a unique window of opportunity for seizing power.

His maniacal hatred of Russia and desire to escalate the armed conflict in the eastern part of the country will likely win him the “benevolent neutrality” of the major Western powers, just as Hitler enjoyed on the eve of his attack on the USSR. And to any impartial observer it is clear that “Weimar Republics” always eventually metamorphose into Reichs.

“The new Ukraine is not a republic or a dictatorship, but a republic AND a dictatorship. Not socialism and nationalism, but national socialism. Not an empire and not democracy, but an empire AND democracy.” (Biletsky, The Words of the White Führer, pg. 20)

On December 22, 2017, the United Nations Security Council passed another round of brutal sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Although the United States government was the main proponent of Resolution 2397 (2017), it passed with the unanimous vote of all 15 member-states of the Security Council.

These genocidal sanctions are the third to be passed in the UN Security Council this year, amounting to a 90% reduction in the amount of oil that North Korea can import as compared to 2016, while also imposing ruthless restrictions on the import and export of food, as well as agricultural, industrial and manufactured goods. Effectively, they amount to an economic and financial blockade of the country. As well, these new regulations introduce targeted sanctions against 15 North Korean officials, and call for the re-patriation of North Koreans working in other countries within the next 24 months, which will cut off a vital source of income for many families.

The U.S. government and their imperialist allies claim that these sanctions are the only way to put an end to North Korea’s nuclear program. In reality, whether imposed by the United States or the United National Security Council, sanctions are a weapon of killing people. These ruthless sanctions escalate tensions between the United States and the DPRK. They also further punish the people and government of North Korea for taking a stand as an independent country and refusing to follow the orders of the United States government.

The U.S. government will stop at nothing, at no amount of human suffering, to destroy independent governments in order to gain imperialist hegemony over every part of the globe. Iraq is an example of how little human lives matter to the imperialist policy of sanctions and war. Prior to the 2003 invasion, over 1.5 million people in Iraq died as a direct result of 13 years of vicious sanctions by the U.S. and UN Security Council, including more than 500,000 children. Then, the U.S. government and their allies invaded, killing millions more and tearing the country apart at the seams. Other independent countries are also strangled under the mass punishment of sanctions. For nearly 60 years the people of Cuba have been under an cruel and inhuman U.S. blockade that continues to deny Cubans access to life-saving medicines and costs the Cuban economy more than $4.3 billion each year. Although the Cuban government continues to provide nutrition, healthcare, education and housing to all its people, there is still needless suffering imposed by the criminal blockade.

Venezuela, Iran, and Syria all continue to face brutal sanctions that deny their people food, medicines and basic goods. The result is sickness and starvation imposed on millions of people around the world. History, and current reality today have shown that people and governments cannot be starved into submission. So, since when was such pitiless disregard for human life an acceptable reality? In the face of their own inhuman sanctions regime, the U.S. government and their imperialist allies continue to do everything they can to demonize North Korea, and paint the government of North Korea as the aggressor. Disgustingly, they dare to declare that DPRK is the “biggest threat to humankind.” Yet, it is U.S. President Trump that has pushed forward genocidal sanctions and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, and its 25 million people, with “fire and fury like world has never seen.”

And these are not just the words of President Trump, following the test-launch of a ballistic missile by North Korea on November 29, it was the United States’ UN Ambassador Nikki Haley who, at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, reminded the international community once again “make no mistake the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.”

Then, on December 15, 2017, at a meeting of the UN Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was again threatening North Korea, stating

“We have been clear that all options remain on the table in the defence of our nation [the United States].”

On top of threats and sanctions, the U.S. government and South Korea have also continued and even escalated their dangerous and provocative war games just off the shores of North Korea. Just days after a “emergency meeting” of the UN Security Council called by the United States in response to North Korea’s November 29th ballistic missile-test, South Korea and the U.S. launched into military exercises involving over 230 warplanes, and at least 12,000 U.S. troops, and practice air-strikes on North Korea.

On top of this, at any given time there are at least 35,000 U.S. troops in South Korea and 40,000 more in neighbouring Japan ready to take military action against North Korea. As well, the U.S. government’s largest naval fleet, the 7th Fleet of the U.S. Navy, is stationed in Japan; with a further 20,000 soldiers, more than 50 warships, and 12 nuclear-powered submarines, as well as the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft supercarrier.

In fact, the U.S. government has imposed a constant policy of aggression against North Korea for over 60 years, coupled with U.S. and UN sanctions. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the U.S. government and their allies, including Canada, were responsible for the deaths of nearly 3 million people on the Korean Peninsula, deployed 32,557 tons of the chemical weapon Napalm, and destroyed 75% of the Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea.

With all of this focus on the nuclear weapons program in the DRPK, it is also important to note that the first nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula were not in North Korea. The U.S. government deployed nuclear weapons to South Korea in 1958, where they remained until 1991. The hypocrisy of the US government’s demand that North Korea end all nuclear weapons development goes even deeper – it is the United States that maintains a nuclear arsenal of at least 4,600 nuclear warheads and bombs. On top of this, the United States also remains the only country in the world to have ever deployed nuclear weapons; when they dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. So, how is it again that the DRPK poses such a grave threat to the world?

Then, there is the question of United States support for a nuclear-free zone on the Korean Peninsula. How can the U.S. government claim to be in support of nuclear-free zones when, to protect nuclear armed Israel, they blocked a United Nations conference on establishing a nuclear free zone in the Middle East?

As a sovereign and independent country, the DPRK has the right to develop science, technology, and its military capabilities without interference from the U.S. government and their allies. If the UN Security Council were truly concerned with peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, they would call for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and military installations from the region, and an end to U.S. military exercises, aggression and sanctions against North Korea.

Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO) condemns all U.S. and UN Security Council sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a genocidal act of war against an independent and sovereign country. It is the threats, inhuman sanctions and military actions, of the U.S. government and their allies against the DRPK that are the biggest threat to peace and stability in the region.

Vancouver is Ready, Let’s Unite, We Must Protest

On January 16, 2018 the U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson and the Foreign Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland have announced that they will be co-hosting a meeting, referred to as the “Vancouver Group,” including other un-announced foreign ministers, to “demonstrate solidarity in opposition to North Korea’s dangerous and illegal actions and to work together to strengthen diplomatic efforts toward a secure, prosperous and denuclearized Korean peninsula.”

It is clear that this meeting will not put any discussion of U.S.-led aggression, threats, and sanctions against North Korea on the table. Rather, this meeting has been called to further attempt to isolate and demonize the DPRK, to bolster U.S. and imperialist interests in the region.

As peace-loving people in Vancouver we must unite against these war-mongers and call for an end to the inhuman sanctions imposed on 25 million people in North Korea! Mobilization Against War and Occupation calls on all people who stand with the right of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea to self-determination and an end to imperialist threat, sanctions and military actions against the DPRK to unite. On January 16, 2018 we must join together to let the so-called “Vancouver Group” know that they are not welcome here!

No to Sanctions and Threats on North Korea!
End Imperialist Aggression Against North Korea!
US/Canada Hands Off North Korea!

Global Research Editor’s note

The following article initially published in 2008 represents an alternative view and analysis of global climate change, which challenges the dominant Global Warming Consensus.

Global Research does not necessarily endorse the proposition of “Global Cooling” presented by Prof. Easterbrook, nor does it accept at face value the Consensus on Global Warming put forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC). Our purpose is to encourage a more balanced debate on the topic of global climate change. 

[Article originally published by Global Research in November 2008]

INTRODUCTION

Despite no global warming in 10 years and recording setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century. IPCC computer models have predicted global warming of 1° F per decade and 5-6° C (10-11° F) by 2100 (Fig. 1), which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy and water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly.

 

Figure 1. A. IPCC prediction of global warming early in the 21st century. B. IPCC prediction of global warming to 2100. (Sources: IPCC website)

However, records of past climate changes suggest an altogether different scenario for the 21st century. Rather than drastic global warming at a rate of 0.5 ° C (1° F) per decade, historic records of past natural cycles suggest global cooling for the first several decades of the 21st century to about 2030, followed by global warming from about 2030 to about 2060, and renewed global cooling from 2060 to 2090 (Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, 2006a, b, 2007, 2008a, b); Easterbrook and Kovanen, 2000, 2001). Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling, on a general rising trend from the Little Ice Age.

PREDICTIONS BASED ON PAST CLIMATE PATTERNS

Global climate changes have been far more intense (12 to 20 times as intense in some cases) than the global warming of the past century, and they took place in as little as 20–100 years. Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998.

Figure 2. Climate changes in the past 17,000 years from the GISP2 Greenland ice core. Red = warming, blue = cooling. (Modified from Cuffy and Clow, 1997)

Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling (Figure 3) on a generally rising trend from the Little Ice Age about 500 years ago.

Figure 3. Alternating warm and cool cycles since 1470 AD. Blue = cool, red = warm. Based on oxygen isotope ratios from the GISP2 Greenland ice core.

Relationships between glacial fluctuations, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and global climate change.

After several decades of studying alpine glacier fluctuations in the North Cascade Range, my research showed a distinct pattern of glacial advances and retreats (the Glacial Decadal Oscillation, GDO) that correlated well with climate records. In 1992, Mantua published the Pacific Decadal Oscillation curve showing warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean that correlated remarkably well with glacial fluctuations. Both the GDA and the PDO matched global temperature records and were obviously related (Fig. 4). All but the latest 30 years of changes occurred prior to significant CO2 emissions so they were clearly unrelated to atmospheric CO2.

Figure 4. Correspondence of the GDO, PDO, and global temperature variations.

The significance of the correlation between the GDO, PDO, and global temperature is that once this connection has been made, climatic changes during the past century can be understood, and the pattern of glacial and climatic fluctuations over the past millennia can be reconstructed. These patterns can then be used to project climatic changes in the future. Using the pattern established for the past several hundred years, in 1998 I projected the temperature curve for the past century into the next century and came up with curve ‘A’ in Figure 5 as an approximation of what might be in store for the world if the pattern of past climate changes continued. Ironically, that prediction was made in the warmest year of the past three decades and at the acme of the 1977-1998 warm period. At that time, the projected curved indicated global cooling beginning about 2005 ± 3-5 years until about 2030, then renewed warming from about 2030 to about 2060 (unrelated to CO2—just continuation of the natural cycle), then another cool period from about 2060 to about 2090. This was admittedly an approximation, but it was radically different from the 1° F per decade warming called for by the IPCC. Because the prediction was so different from the IPCC prediction, time would obviously show which projection was ultimately correct.

Now a decade later, the global climate has not warmed 1° F as forecast by the IPCC but has cooled slightly until 2007-08 when global temperatures turned sharply downward. In 2008, NASA satellite imagery (Figure 6) confirmed that the Pacific Ocean had switched from the warm mode it had been in since 1977 to its cool mode, similar to that of the 1945-1977 global cooling period. The shift strongly suggests that the next several decades will be cooler, not warmer as predicted by the IPCC. 

Figure 5.Global temperature projection for the coming century, based on warming/cooling cycles of the past several centuries. ‘A’ projection based on assuming next cool phase will be similar to the 1945-1977 cool phase. ‘B’ projection based on assuming next cool phase will be similar to the 1880-1915 cool phase. The predicted warm cycle from 2030 to 2060 is based on projection of the 1977 to 1998 warm phase and the cooling phase from 2060 to 2090 is based on projection of the 1945 to 1977 cool cycle.

Implications of PDO, NAO, GDO, and sun spot cycles for global climate in coming decades

The IPCC prediction of global temperatures, 1° F warmer by 2011 and 2° F by 2038 (Fig. 1), stand little chance of being correct. NASA’s imagery showing that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase. It also means that the IPCC predictions of catastrophic global warming this century were highly inaccurate.

The switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this had happened in the past century, global temperature has followed. The upper map shows cool ocean temperatures in blue (note the North American west coast). The lower diagram shows how the PDO has switched back and forth from warm to cool modes in the past century, each time causing global temperature to follow. Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections.

The Pacific Ocean has a warm temperature mode and a cool temperature mode, and in the past century, has switched back forth between these two modes every 25-30 years (known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO). In 1977 the Pacific abruptly shifted from its cool mode (where it had been since about 1945) into its warm mode, and this initiated global warming from 1977 to 1998. The correlation between the PDO and global climate is well established. The announcement by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) had shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase.

 

Figure 6. Switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this has happened in the past century, global temperature has followed. The upper map shows cool ocean temperatures in blue (note the North American west coast). The lower diagram shows how the PDO has switched back and forth from warm to cool modes in the past century, each time causing global temperature to follow. Projection of the past pattern (right end of graph) assures 30 yrs of global cooling

Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections. As shown by the historic pattern of GDOs and PDOs over the past century and by corresponding global warming and cooling, the pattern is part of ongoing warm/cool cycles that last 25-30 years. The global cooling phase from 1880 to 1910, characterized by advance of glaciers worldwide, was followed by a shift to the warm-phase PDO for 30 years, global warming and rapid glacier recession. The cool-phase PDO returned in ~1945 accompanied by global cooling and glacial advance for 30 years. Shift to the warm-phase PDO in 1977 initiated global warming and recession of glaciers that persisted until 1998. Recent establishment of the PDO cool phase appeared right on target and assuming that its effect will be similar to past history, global climates can be expected to cool over the next 25-30 years. The global warming of this century is exactly in phase with the normal climatic pattern of cyclic warming and cooling and we have now switched from a warm phase to a cool phase right at the predicted time (Fig. 5)

The ramifications of the global cooling cycle for the next 30 years are far reaching―e.g., failure of crops in critical agricultural areas (it’s already happening this year), increasing energy demands, transportation difficulties, and habitat change. All this during which global population will increase from six billion to about nine billion. The real danger in spending trillions of dollars trying to reduce atmospheric CO2 is that little will be left to deal with the very real problems engendered by global cooling.

CONCLUSIONS

Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming—it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years.

The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977. Just how much cooler the global climate will be during this cool cycle is uncertain. Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely.

Don J. Easterbrook is Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University. Bellingham, WA. He has published extensively on issues pertaining to global climate change. For further details see his list of publications

Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat and a senior analyst at Princeton University has weighed in on seven factors that show anti-Iran tendencies have increased more than ever in the White House.

Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential 2016 candidate, has been targeted by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee “to undermine and smear any third party” challenges to Democrats in 2018 and 2020, said her vice presidential running mate, Ajamu Baraka. The issue is not Stein’s appearances on RT, the Russian news channel, said Baraka, but “using RT as an entry point to reduce the range of information and analysis that’s available, not only to the public in the U.S., but to the global public.”

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Unstable Geopolitics, Pakistan’s Alliance with China: Trump’s Backlash against Pakistan Reveals the Dawn of a Disputed 2018 Year

By Masud Wadan, January 06, 2018

Before Trump’s presidency, each US warning to Pakistan seemed symbolic and intended to pacify the outrage and resentment of global critics for not fighting terrorism seriously. Even in Afghanistan, the people would cheer the US’s crackdown on Pakistan over its hypocrisy to annihilate terrorism within its soil.

Birth of an Insurgency: The US-Israeli “Secret Deal” to Manipulate Protests in Iran

By Whitney Webb, January 06, 2018

Using the recent protests as cover, the governments of the United States and Israel are advancing a much larger plan for covert regime change against the Iranian government, one born out of the “secret deal” negotiated and signed between the two countries right before the widely covered but relatively small protests in Iran began in late December.

Pakistan’s Asymmetrical Response to Trump Is a Clever Way to Flip the Tables on Afghanistan

By Andrew Korybko, January 06, 2018

Pakistan’s announcement that it will seek the expulsion of over 1.5 million Afghan refugees in the next 30 days is being tacitly justified by Trump’s tweet and channels his zero-tolerance stance towards immigration from “terrorist”-prone states, but it also represents the employment of reverse-“Weapons of Mass Migration” in pushing Kabul closer towards the edge of collapse and consequently filling the Taliban’s rank of supporters.

How the Mainstream Media Whitewashed Al-Qaeda and the White Helmets in Syria

By Eva Bartlett, January 06, 2018

There was not a single occasion in which I ever heard the medics (in Sunni Gaza) shout takbeeror Allahu Akbar upon rescuing civilians, much less intentionally stood on dead bodies, posed in staged videos, or any of the other revolting acts that the White Helmets have been filmed doing in Syria. They were too damn busy rescuing or evacuating the areas before another Israeli strike, and usually maintained a focused silence as they worked, communicating only the necessities.

Iran in 2018

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, January 06, 2018

Ever since the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Washington-installed dictator in1979, Washington has been trying to regain control of Iran. In 2009 Washington financed the “Green Revolution,” which was an attempt to overthrow the Ahmadinejad government.

How Canada Can Lead North Korean Peace Talks at Vancouver Summit

By Christopher Black and Prof. Graeme McQueen, January 06, 2018

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

Featured image: Dima Wawi, the youngest Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails, being comforted by her parents. She was released in April 24, 2016 after 75 days on charges of allegedly trying to stab an IDF soldier while on her way to school. (Source: Rima Najjar)

Zionism [see this] is an insidious ideology. Its ideologues often gain traction by well-placed and oft repeated constructs – in films and TV series, in posts and comments on social media, and even in academia. So, it is no wonder that people end up having ideas about certain things, like the nature of Israel, the Zionist Jewish state, or the nature of Palestinian Arab culture and identity, or the nature of Jewish culture and identity, as if by osmosis.

One of these “memes” in the air, if you will, is the oft repeated comment by hasbara agents on social media that says Palestinian children teach their children to hate Jews. This notion can also be found in numerous attacks on the Palestinian Authority curriculum with the same accusation of “teaching children to hate Jews”, when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda [see NuritPeled-Elhanan’s Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education (Library of Modern Middle East Studies)].

An experience that caused me to be suspended from posting on Facebook for three days illustrates the above.

The comment cited in the Facebook warning (image on the right) is clearly out of context – the fourth word (bolded in what follows) indicates a continuity with something that came before it:

“It’s true, though, Palestinians teach their children to hate the Jewish state, as So they must.”

Zionist hasbara about Jewish identity is so ingrained that Facebook takes an attack on the Zionist Jewish state to be synonymous with attacking “people based on their religion, etc. …”

The censured comment was in response to an assertion during discussion that Palestinians teach their children to hate. I objected to that, making the distinction between hating Jews and hating Israel, the Jewish state that continues to dispossess and oppress Palestinians, to “exist” on stolen Palestinian land and property, keeping Palestinians languishing in refugee camps for close to 70 years now [See Palestine refugees | UNRWA], its politicians stating shamelessly that Palestinian children are a “demographic threat”. [See To understand the history of Palestinian dispossession look to the words of Zionist and Israeli leaders]

Put another way, as Rafeef Ziadeh, the Canadian-Palestinian spoken word artist and activist, put it in a powerful poem, we teach our children life, we teach them to survive.

Sari Nusseibeh, professor of philosophy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem and president of the University for seventeen years, wrote an article titled Why Israel can’t be a ‘Jewish State’. He cites several implications for why not, the most important of which is the following:

In short, recognition of Israel as a “Jewish State” in Israel is not the same as, say, recognition of Greece today as a “Christian State”. It entails, in the Old Testament itself, a Covenant between God and a Chosen People regarding a Promised Land that should be taken by force at the expense of the other inhabitants of the land and of non-Jews. This idea is not present as such in other religions that we know of. Moreover, even secular and progressive voices in Israel, such as former president of the Supreme Court of Israel, Aharon Barak, understand the concept of a “Jewish State” as follows:

“[The] Jewish State is the state of the Jewish people … it is a state in which every Jew has the right to return … a Jewish state derives its values from its religious heritage, the Bible is the basic of its books and Israel’s prophets are the basis of its morality … a Jewish state is a state in which the values of Israel, Torah, Jewish heritage and the values of the Jewish halacha [religious law] are the bases of its values.” (‘A State in Emergency’, Ha’aretz, 19 June, 2005.)

Palestinian parents do not teach their children to hate Jews; they teach their children to hate the Jewish state – for their own survival [See Are Palestinian children less worthy? and Palestinian children’s rights focus of new US bill].

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

Global Research Note 

This article initially published by Counterpunch suggests that the Iran government responding to both internal and external pressures has adopted “strong economic medicine” including hikes in the prices of basic food staples and fuel, which have served to impoverish the population. Needless to say these neoliberal macro-economic reforms create social conditions which trigger protest movements.

The author raises the issue that several recent articles on Iran (published by the independent media including Global Research) have unduly focussed on the role of foreign interference while failing to recognize that the protests are directed against a government (dominated by a “mercantile-cleric alliance”) which has applied its own neoliberal economic policy agenda (under advice from the “Washington Consensus”). 

In this regard, it should be understood that “foreign intervention” invariably feeds on a pre-existing economic and social context, often created by neoliberal economic policy measures as well as economic sanctions, the objective of which is ultimately to topple the government (i.e. “regime change”). 

In the case of Iran, the elimination of subsidies on essential food commodities and fuel (recommended by the World Bank) also constitutes a form of foreign interference which in many countries (e.g Brazil, Argentina) precedes the so-called “regime change”.

As the author Reza Fiyuzat points out:” International finance is clearly only too happy to see Iranian government impoverish its own population, to the benefit of international financiers.”  

We should however caution that the protests directed against the Iranian government’s economic reforms are not in any way comparable to the so-called “uprising” in Syria which from the outset in March 2011 was the result of  an armed terrorist insurgency integrated by Al Qaeda affiliated entities supported covertly by the US and its allies including Israel.

The protests in Iran are by no means spontaneous. They have been carefully organized. And there are clear indications of foreign involvement. 

M. Ch. GR Editor

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Starting on Thursday, December 28, spontaneous demonstrations broke out in different towns and cities across Iran. The protests broke out over economic issues such as high inflation and high youth unemployment, with the trigger being the sudden hike in the price of eggs and chicken. The protesters, however, soon took up more politically oriented slogans, attacking the leaders of the regime with slogans such as, “People are begging and Mullahs rule like they’re gods!”

Regardless of how long these protests last and what the outcomes may be, these protests have proven once again that the Iranian regime is fundamentally incapable of addressing people’s most basic social and economic needs, and that is why for forty years it has depended on brute force to control the population. But, rule by brute force alone cannot last forever.

Deep-structure poverty has once again pushed the population over the edge. This uprising did not just happen out of the blue, though; it is the culmination of many smaller and more localized protests over a variety of social issues that have sent people to the streets in the past year.

But, first let’s see what has pushed people in Iran to take to the street once again, on a mass scale, across the country, in big cities just as in small towns; towns that most western readers have never heard of, nor will ever remember.

Here is a revealing fact from a World Bank study for 2016:

“The Iranian government has implemented a major reform of its subsidy program on key staples such as petroleum products, water, electricity and bread, which has resulted in a moderate improvement in the efficiency of expenditures and economic activities.”

In plain English, “efficiency of expenditures” means the Iranian government is cutting down on how much its social welfare programs actually provide social welfare.

The report continues,

“The overall indirect subsidies, which were estimated to be equivalent to 27 percent of GDP in 2007/2008 (approximately US$77.2 billion), have been replaced by a direct cash transfer program to Iranian households. The second phase of the subsidy reform plan began in Spring 2014 which involves a more gradual fuel price adjustment than previously envisaged and the greater targeting of cash transfers to low-income households. Around 3 million high-income households have already been removed from the cash transfer recipient list. As a result, the expenditures of the Targeted Subsidies Organization (TSO) is estimated to have declined to 3.4 percent of GDP in 2016 from 4.2 percent in 2014.” (1)

International finance is clearly only too happy to see Iranian government impoverish its own population, to the benefit of international financiers. An A-plus for Iranian government’s efforts to cut the helping hand it gives to the neediest Iranians, reducing such help from 27% of GDP in 2008 all the way down to 3% by 2016.

In other words, Iran follows an extreme neoliberal, shock-and-awe kind of capitalism.

Official figures for poverty in Iran are not reliable, but occasionally some reports are produced that can shed some light on the extreme levels of poverty suffered by the people. One report puts the figures for urban poverty at between 44% and 55%. The report “was published at a conference organized by Tehran University and the United Nations Population Fund and made public by the Islamic Students News Agency shortly thereafter,” according to Borgen magazine (2).

Things are so bleak that even regime’s top figures occasionally let slip the depth of the problem. In September of 2017, the head of Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, Parviz Fattah, said (3) (link in Persian) that between 10 to 12 million Iranians live in absolute poverty. That is just the figure for abject poverty. The total number of those who live around or under the poverty level is obviously a lot higher, reaching 40% of households according to some reports.

A telling figure is the following: Iranian government’s own estimate for a minimum necessary income is about $1,000 per month for a family of three to four. Despite this figure, the government’s announced minimum monthly wage for workers has been set at about a third of that figure!

Coupled with increases in austerity measures are high unemployment levels as well as inflation figures in double digits (at least 15% inflation on average, according to most conservative figures, and in some months or years, or in product-specific markets by as much as 30-40%). Youth unemployment is also at high levels, with some reports estimating that in 2017 youth unemployment reached just above 30% (4). With such high unemployment rates and high inflation, and in view of the fact that for the past ten years government assistance to the needy has steadily dropped, it is not shocking that the initial trigger for the protests in Mashhad were over a 40% rise in the price (in just a few days) of eggs and chicken. That was on top of an inflation and poverty trend that has been ceaseless for the past four decades. “Enough is enough!” people are saying.

The reader must understand that most of the non-state part of the economy in Iran is based in the bazaar, the merchant class. Not industrial-productive capital, but merchant capital has been dominating the non-state and non-oil sector since the onset of the rule of theocracy. When the merchant class is the hegemonic economic bloc, that means most capital accumulation occurs through buying and selling, not through producing commodities. As a result of this, more and more products are imported (under full state monopoly) for as cheaply as possible and sold at profits that can come faster than if the production process were to take place internally with all its related costs and complications; including, most importantly, labor conflicts and class struggle at the point of production that such capitalist ventures would have to deal with.

The reader must also consider the population growth in Iran. In 1979, at the time of the revolution, Iran’s population was about 35 million. Today’s population is nearly 80 million. Simultaneously, the proportion of rural-to-urban population has reversed. In 1979, almost two-thirds of the population lived in rural areas, whereas now three-quarters of the population lives in urban areas. This huge mass movement to the cities is partly responsible for the urban poverty levels. Other factors include the mercantile nature of the dominant capitalist class, which is incapable of creating enough employment; state policies that prioritize spending on security forces and military expenditures abroad; and corruption.

In a country with such a highly oppressive state formation as in Iran, class struggle is too intense to render dependence on industrial production the main source of capital accumulation. Hence, the international capital’s reluctance to invest in industrial production in Iran, even after the lifting of the sanctions in the wake of the nuclear deal reached between Iran and the western powers. So, not only are the local capitalists unwilling to invest in productive capacities in any meaningful magnitude, Rouhani government’s nuclear deal with the western powers has not succeeded in attracting any direct foreign investments either.

A basic feature of a rentier state, such as the one in Iran, is that, depending on the character of the state, different layers and echelons of the economically powerful attach themselves to the state. During the Pahlavi dynasty, the state attracted the industrial capitalists, at the expense of the mercantile classes, who were more attached to the clerical classes. The founding father of the Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah, is known in Iranian history as being particularly harsh on the religious establishment. (His most egregious sin against the religious establishment was the forceful banning of hijab for women.)

So, the fact that here and there we have heard slogans in support of Reza Shah does not shock me. People go by what they know from their own history. If people see that the ruling mullahs are the most corrupt, the most thuggish, the most brutal, the most miserly when it comes to helping the neediest, and the most lascivious when it comes to sexual matters while prescribing piousness to others — in short, when you are ruled by the most oppressive and violently corrupt bunch of people, and you know from your history that back a hundred years ago, Reza Shah was showing the clerical classes the door, well, you can’t be blamed for thinking that that guy, Reza Shah, had figured out something about the mullahs that Iranians should have paid more attention to.

All these historical and economic conditions are framed by a state formation that allows for no dissent, no independent labor unions, no criticism from the people of anybody in the officialdom, a state formation that considers women as half worth men, a state formation that insists it is indeed ruling on behalf of an absent Imam, the Twelfth Imam of a particular Shiite sect, Imam Mehdi the Absent, and by virtue of that, this regime claims to be ruling over Iran on behalf of God. Any criticism of the religious leaders is an affront to God, and is an actual crime in our country’s criminal code: any protest against the government can be labeled, “Mohaarebeh baa Khoda”, literally meaning, battling against God.

So, if the system is so oppressive that it does not allow for any legal way of petitioning the state for grievances, what are you supposed to do? Commit suicide so as not to inconvenience the state? Would any western reader do that? Then why does it seem so outrageous that the people in Iran would take to the streets?

All the varied social pressures listed above have produced almost constant social unrest and protests throughout the past year alone. In 2017, we saw the mass hunger strike of political prisoners (5), protests over extreme environmental pollution (6), intensified labor protests (7), and Kurdish protests over the killing of border porters who carry goods across the border on their back (8).

As has been its folly, the “anti-imperialists” of the western left wasted no time siding with the theocracy; once again. Global Research, for example, has cast doubt on the integrity of the uprising by labeling it another “Color Revolution”. Moon of Alabama, likewise lost no time disparaging the demonstrations, sounding almost like Iranian regime propagandists. For these so-called leftists, the Iranian people are a bunch of mindless robots remote-controlled from Langley.

Of course, those who didn’t understand how the Syrian uprising started are not going to understand why people in Iran are so outraged either.

Some have pointed to particular slogans raised by the people to tarnish the Iranian people’s intentions.

One slogan they single out is: “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon; I give my life for Iran!” The “anti-imperialists” point to this slogan as proof of Iranian people’s lack of “internationalism”. In their haste to reach already-cooked up conclusions, they miss deeper insights packed in that slogan. This slogan is a negation and a street critique of the regime’s rhetoric about its supposed support for the Palestinian and the Lebanese masses, whereas in reality all the Iranian regime has ever done is to use the miserable social conditions in Palestine and Lebanon to advance its own expansionist designs in the region.

In that slogan people are saying to the regime: “We see through your deceit and we are not fooled! You want us to go fight your foreign wars, but we will bring the fight to you here at home.” This is similar to what anti-war activists in the U.S. would say back during the U.S. invasion of Vietnam for example. So, in fact, this slogan is a shout of solidarity with Palestinian and Lebanese masses.

People in Iran are sending a message to the Palestinian and Lebanese masses that they, the Iranian people, are working to remove one layer of oppression from the backs of Palestinian and Lebanese people, who are being used by the opportunistic and expansionist designs of the Iranian regime: a regime that has done nothing for the Arab masses other than to slaughter their Sunni brothers and sisters en masse, in tens of thousands at a time, using its sectarian Shiite militia forces, which the Iranian regime has unleashed on the peoples of Iraq and Syria.

Source: VOA News

It is incredible how quick and easy it is for some in the western left, as soon as a movement arises in some forsaken third world country, to display the knee-jerk reaction of playing judge and jury, or worse, playing self-assigned professors grading freshman essays, with the red pen at the ready to mark the slightest instance of a comma splice, word choice error or any slips in the use of transitions; all the while, completely ignoring the communicative content of the paper.

The communicative content of the uprising of the Iranian people is very simple: People want basic rights, and they want the state to stop incinerating national riches to mass slaughter people in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere; instead, Iranians want their national resources to be spent on providing for the people in Iran who live in abject poverty. Is that not something people in the U.S. would also protest for?

People in Iran are taking matters into their own hands. Can western leftists criticizing our people do the same for their societies, instead of giving pass/fail grades on how Iranian people determine their history? Can these western false socialists even organize a few hundred people to clear the trash from empty neighborhood lots to start community gardens, so that the communities that are struggling would have food security so that they are better able to put up a struggle? Can they organize a soup kitchen in a needy neighborhood in their town?

But, when people in Iran take to the streets, knowing that the consequences of their protest actions could include arrest, torture and death, these same so-called socialists, instead of expressing solidarity, look for any and all manner of shortcomings exhibited by the newly born movement, just so they can relieve themselves of any responsibility of performing any action in support of people rising up. Shame! Shame! Shame!

The Iranian youth who have risen up to say “Enough is enough!” are the children of a revolution that was hanged, drawn and quartered by a most violent yet well-organized counterrevolution. This younger generation is seeing their lives and prospects for a decent future and their integrity stolen, and they are standing up to this historical theft by the most parasitic layer of our society: the mullahs. The clergy is the most unproductive leeches of our society, yet their sons, in upper-class neighborhoods of Tehran and other big cities, own more Bugatti’s and Lamborghini’s per capita than you’d see in the streets Monaco. Where did all that wealth come from? It was all stolen from our national coffers, and the youth of our country have risen up to stop the thievery.

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Reza Fiyouzat may be contacted at: [email protected]

Notes

1) http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/iran/overview

2) http://www.borgenmagazine.com/poverty-iran-rise/

3) https://www.isna.ir/news/96062614418/رییس-کمیته-امداد-امام-ره-10تا-12-میلیون-ایرانی-در-فقر-مطلق

4) https://tradingeconomics.com/iran/youth-unemployment-rate

5) https://www.amnesty.ie/iran-mass-hunger-strike-political-prisoners-protest-inhumane-conditions/

6) http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/protests-irans-khuzestan-province-worries-political-establishment-1372971047

7) https://en.radiozamaneh.com/articles/spike-in-labor-protests-in-iran-is-changing-the-political-milieu/

8) http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iran/07092017

Featured image is from Utah Public Radio.

The most fundamental human right is the right to life. While legitimately criticized for the one party state, the death penalty, censorship, urban air pollution and harsh treatment of dissidents, China has been hugely successful in radically reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality in Tibet and in China as a whole.

In stark contrast, the war criminal US Alliance occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan continues to be associated with an under-1 infant mortality and maternal mortality incidence that is 7 times higher and 4-12 times higher, respectively, than that in Tibet – evidence of gross violation of the Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention by the US Alliance.

Tibet became part of China in the 13th century under the Yuan dynasty [1], this happening at about the same time that the English were establishing control over the Celtic regions of Britain (Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Ireland) and 6 centuries before the American Empire achieved its fullest “official” extent in the late 19th century with incorporation of elements of the Spanish Empire (Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and part of Cuba) [2].

Now human mortality (human death) is the bottom line in any consideration of the moral justification or humanitarian legitimacy of political systems, including empires. Key indicators are maternal mortality (the mortality rate of women during pregnancy, at or after delivery, and measured as maternal deaths per 100,000 live births), and infant mortality (measured as under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births).

A further key indicator is avoidable mortality (avoidable deaths, excess mortality, excess death, premature death, untimely death or deaths that should not have happened) that is measured as annual avoidable deaths from deprivation per 100 of population (avoidable deaths as a percentage of population per year). Avoidable deaths can be computed as the difference between the actual mortality in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics (birth rate, age distribution). On a global comparative basis a “good”, baseline mortality rate for poor, high birth rate countries is about 4 deaths per 1,000 of population per year [2].

In 2003 the avoidable death rate (as a percentage of population per year) was about 0.97% (non-Arab Africa), 0.39% (Pacific), 0.38% (South Asia), 0.31% (Eastern Europe), 0.26% (Central Asia, Iran and Turkey), 0.26% (South East Asia), 0.25% (Arab North Africa and Middle East), 0.05% (Western Europe), 0.03% (Latin America and Caribbean), 0.01% (East Asia), 0.0% (Overseas Europe i.e. US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Apartheid Israel), and notably 0.0% for China, Cuba, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan [2]. In contrast, annual avoidable deaths from deprivation as a percentage of population in US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan was a shocking 1.75% and indicative of gross violation of the Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention by the US Alliance. [2].

The UN Population Division provides detailed demographic data for all countries (e.g. population, births, deaths, and infant deaths but not avoidable deaths from deprivation) [3] and a useful finding for quickly estimating avoidable deaths from deprivation is that for impoverished, high birth rate countries, annual avoidable deaths are about 1.4 times the annual under-5 year old infant deaths [2].

With this background established we can now turn to infant mortality, maternal mortality and avoidable mortality in Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region and compare this with that in China, US Alliance countries and in Tibet’s neighbour, US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan.

(1). China’s health success in the Tibet Autonomous Region versus a genocidal health disaster in US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan .

The China Daily reports (2017):

“Maternal mortality rate [in China ] declined to 199 per 1 million population [19.9 per 100,000 live births] last year, despite a rising number of births brought by the universal second-child policy, the country’s top health authority said on Friday. The figure for 2015 was 201 per 1 million [20.1 per 100,000 live births], according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Meanwhile, mortality rates for children under 5 decreased to 10.2 per thousand [live births] last year” [4].

These reports are consonant with CIA Factbook estimates of presently 12 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births and 27 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in China [5, 6]. By way of comparison, the CIA Factbook estimates a shocking circa 10-fold greater 110.6 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births and 396 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan that borders upon the Tibet Autonomous region [5, 6].

According to China and UK health experts (2009):

“China represents one of the few success stories in maternal health. The maternal mortality ratio (MMR), estimated at 1500 deaths per 100 000 live births in the 1950s, decreased to an estimated 88 deaths per 100 000 live births in 1990”.

Source: The Economist

However the MMR was much higher in Tibet than in other regions of China (the Eastern being the best, the Central the next best, the Western region being worse and Tibet the worst) [7].

However the MMR has subsequently fallen further in Tibet according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua (2016):

“Southwest China ‘s Tibet Autonomous Region saw record low maternity and infant death rates in 2015 thanks to improved healthcare conditions, according to the regional health and family planning commission. The mortality rate of Tibetan women during pregnancy, at or after delivery was halved from about 23 per 10,000 people [230 per 100,000 live births] in 2009 to 10 per 10,000 [100 per 100,000 live births] last year [2015], statistics released by the commission showed. In addition, the mortality rate of infants in Tibet was reduced to 16 per thousand [live births] in 2015 from 21 per thousand [live births] in 2009. During the period, the proportion of Tibetan women who gave birth in the hospital increased from about 51 percent to 90 percent. When the plateau region was liberated in 1951, its maternal and infant death rates stood at 5,000 per 100,000 people [live births] and 430 per thousand [live births] respectively” [8].

According to a joint report by the WHO (the World Health Organization), UNICEF (the United Nations Childrens’ Fund), UNFPA (The United Nations Population Fund, formerly the United Nations Fund for Population Activities), the World Bank Group and the UN Population Division, in the period 1990-2015 the MMR (Maternal Mortality Ratio, maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) fell from 97 to 27 in China as compared to a fall from 1,340 to 396 in Afghanistan [9].

However a recent report in the UK Guardian suggests an even greater Maternal Mortality and health disaster in Occupied Afghanistan:

“In one unpublished study, the Afghan government found an average level of maternal deaths between 800 and 1,200 for every 100,000 live births, according to aid workers in Kabul who have seen the research. If accurate, this would mean that women in Afghanistan – despite more than 15 years of international aid aimed at improving maternal mortality figures – may be dying from maternal complications at rates similar to those found in Somalia and Chad , and only surpassed by South Sudan . In another review, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) found as many as 1,800 maternal deaths a year in the remote Afghan province of Ghor . Nine out of 11 provinces had higher death rates than the number normally used by donors. Both the UNFPA mortality numbers and the government’s own survey have yet to be released. A spokesman for the ministry of public health said the survey was not ready to be publicised yet, and declined to discuss findings…In addition, a 2013 study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington reported 885 annual maternal deaths in Afghanistan. According to the researchers, that was an increase of 24% on a decade earlier. In Afghanistan , reality often conflicts with official statistics. The UK government, for instance, claims that 85% of Afghans are now covered by basic health services. Yet, in a 2014 Médecins Sans Frontières report, four out of five Afghans said they did not use their closest public clinic because they believed the quality of services and availability of staff was so poor. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 9 million Afghans [population 35 million] are without access to basic health services” [10].

In summary, infant mortality (under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) is 12 ( China ), 16 ( Tibet ), 6 ( USA ) and 111 (US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan ). The Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) (maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) is 20- 27 ( China ), 100 ( Tibet ), 14 ( USA ) and 400-1,200 (US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan ).

As explained below, this constitutes evidence of horrendous US Alliance war crimes in Occupied Afghanistan in gross violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War [11] and thence of the UN Genocide Convention [12].

(2). Mass infant mortality and mass maternal mortality in US Alliance Occupied Afghanistan is a war crime violating the Geneva and Genocide Conventions.

Killing in war occurs not just through violence (active killing) but also through avoidable death from imposed deprivation (passive mass murder) [2]. Mass mortality in a Subject population occurs in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that unequivocally states that the Occupier must supply its Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical services “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [11].

Genocide is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention that states:

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [11].

The UN Population Division informs that the annual number of births in Occupied Afghanistan is 1,155,458 (2015). The infant mortality (under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) of 111 for US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan means that 111 x 1,155.5 = 128,261 under-1 year old infants die each year in Occupied Afghanistan. If the US provided life-sustaining food and medical services to its conquered Afghan subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” (i.e. to yield an under-1 infant mortality of 6 deaths per 1,000 live births as in the US ) then Occupied Afghanistan under-1 infant deaths would only total 6 x 1,155.5 = 6,933. Failure of the US Alliance to observe the unequivocal demands of the Geneva Convention results in the avoidable death of under-1 Afghan infants totalling 128,261 – 6,933 = 121,328 each year or 40 times the carnage in the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity (3,000 killed). Over the 16 years of the Afghan War this US Alliance mass murder of infants amounts to the death of 16 years x 121,328 per year = 1.9 million under-1 year old Afghan infants.

Similarly, the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) (maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) of 400-1,200 for US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan means that (400-1,200) x 11.55 = 4,620- 13,860 Afghan women suffer maternal mortality each year as compared to 14 x 11.55 = 162 if the US Alliance observed the Geneva Convention. Thus the failure of the US Alliance to observed the Geneva Convention kills 4,458- 13,698 Afghan women each year. The Afghan maternal mortality due to US Alliance war crimes over the 16 years of the Afghan War is accordingly 71,000-219,000.

Now the racist moral degenerates who dominate the West ( US imperialists, US lackeys, genocidal racist Zionists) may well argue that Afghanistan is a poor and remote country and that the noble, US-led Coalition that has “liberated” Afghanistan cannot be expected to work medical miracles overnight. However China with an annual per capita GDP of merely $8,126 (as compared to America ’s $56,054) [13] has indeed obtained remarkable health outcomes in remote, rural and poor Tibet that borders on Occupied Afghanistan. The infant mortality rate in the Tibet Autonomous Region is 7 times lower than in Occupied Afghanistan and the Maternal Mortality Ratio in Tibet is 4-12 times lower than that in US-occupied Afghanistan . We can now consider the relative wealth and health outcomes of the individual member countries of the US Alliance that has been devastating Occupied Afghanistan in gross violation of the Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention .

(3). The war criminal European US Alliance invaders have very high per capita income, very low infant mortality and very low maternal mortality.

In order to quantitatively compare the abilities of the US Alliance members to meet their Subject life-sustaining obligations as Occupiers under the Geneva Convention, one can compare the very high annual per capita incomes of the US Alliance nations with the correspondingly very low infant mortality and maternal mortality achieved in these countries.

Below are listed US Alliance participants in the Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide in order of (a) numbers of military deaths in Occupied Afghanistan (2015) as a measure of degree of participation [14], with (b) under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births [5, 15], (c) perinatal maternal deaths expressed as deaths per 100,000 live births [6], and (d) GDP nominal per capita in US dollars per person [13]:

United States (a) 2,271 military deaths, (b) 5.8 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births , (c) 14 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, (d) $56,054 per person GDP nominal per capita;

United Kingdom (a) 453, (b) 4.3, (c) 9, (d) $44,162; Canada (a) 178, (b) 4.5, (c) 7, (d) $43,206 ; France (a) 88, (b) 3.2, (c) 8, (d) $36,304; Germany (a) 57, (b) 3.4, (c) 6, (d) $41,686; Italy (a) 53, (b) 3.3, (c) 4, (d) $30,462;

Poland (a) 44, (b) 4.4, (c) 3, (d) $12,355; Denmark (a) 43, (b) 4.0, (c) 6, (d) $53,149; Australia (a) 41, (b) 4.3, (c) 6, (d) $51,352; Spain (a) 35, (b) 3.3, (c) 5, (d) $25,865 ; Georgia (a) 32, (b) 15.2, (c) 36, (d) $3,491;

Netherlands (a) 25, (b) 3.6, (c) 7, (d) $44,332; Romania (a) 28, (b) 9.4, (c) 31, (d) $9,121; Turkey (a) 15, (b) 17.6, (c) 16, (d) $9,126; Czech Republic (a) 10, (b) 7.9, (c) 4, (d) $17,562; New Zealand (a) 10, (b) 4.4, (c) 11, (d) $38,294;

Norway (a) 10, (b) 2.5, (c) 5, (d) $74,186; Estonia (a) 9, (b) 3.8, (c) 9, (d) $17,122; Hungary (a) 7, (b) 4.9, (c) 17, (d) $12,351; Sweden (a) 5, (b) 2.6, (c) 4, (d) $50,687; Latvia (a) 4, (b) 5.2, (c) 18, (d) $13,704; Slovakia (a) 3, (b) 5.1, (c) 6, (d) $16,082;

Finland (a) 2, (b) 2.5, (c) 3, (d) $42,148; Jordan (a) 2, (b) 14.2, (c) 58, (d) $4,940; Portugal (a) 2, (b) 4.3, (c) 10, (d) $19,239; South Korea (a) 2, (b) 3.0, (c) 11, (d) $27,397; Albania (a) 1, (b) 11.9, (c) 29, (d) $3,984;

Belgium (a) 1, (b) 3.4, (c) 7, (d) $40,278; Lithuania (a) 1, (b) 3.8, (c) 10, (d) $14,384; Montenegro (a) 1, (b) 5.8 [Serbia figure], (c) 7, (d) $6,424; Croatia (a) 0, (b) 9.3, (c) 8, (d) $11,479; Greece (a) 0, (b) 4.6, (c) 3, (d) $17,788;

Iceland (a) 0, (b) 2.1, (c) 3, (d) $50,936; Japan (a) 0, (b) 2.0, (c) 5, (d) $34,629; Macedonia (a) 0, (b) 7.4, (c) 8, (d) $4,836; Slovenia (a) 0, (b) 3.9, (c) 9, (d) $20,690.

These data for the Occupiers are in stark contrast to the corresponding horrendous data for Occupied Afghanistan: (a) 5.6 million deaths from violence, 1.4 million (as determined from comparisons with the Iraq War for which expert survey data is available [16, 17]), or from imposed deprivation, 4.2 million [2, 16-18]), (b) 110.6 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births , (c) 400-1,200 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, (d) $623 per person GDP nominal per capita [13].

Indeed, as noted above in section (2), China with an annual per capita GDP of merely $8,126 (as compared to America’s $56,054) [13] has obtained an infant mortality in the Tibet Autonomous Region that is 7 times lower than that in Occupied Afghanistan and a Maternal Mortality in Tibet that is 4-12 times lower than that in US-occupied Afghanistan.

The Occupiers are overwhelmingly extremely prosperous European states which can evidently each afford to provide Occupied Afghanistan with greatly increased life-sustaining food and medical services if provided “to the fullest extent of the means available” and which would guarantee correspondingly very low infant mortality and maternal deaths – but clearly fail to do so as evidenced by the shocking infant mortality and maternal mortality in Occupied Afghanistan. . Even the poorest of the Occupiers (Georgia, Jordan, Albania and Macedonia ) have per capita incomes an order of magnitude greater than that of Occupied Afghanistan and infant mortality and maternal mortality that are an order of magnitude lower than that in Occupied Afghanistan.

The US Alliance Occupiers are in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that both demand that an Occupier must proved the conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical services “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [11].

An analogy from civil society is germane – a kidnapper will be prosecuted for depriving his victims of their liberty but if any of his victims die from deprivation in his custody he will also be charged with murder. Indeed highly abusive parents will be charged with murder if deliberate deprivation of their children results in death.

Wartime analogies from WW2 are also germane. Thus the WW2 Jewish Holocaust was associated with 5-6 million deaths from (a) violence or (b) imposed deprivation but the precise relative extents of (a) active killing (by shooting, gassing and other violent means) versus (b) passive killing (through deprivation of life-sustaining food and medical services) is not clear [19-22]. However whether a person is killed by violence or through imposed deprivation, the death is just as final and the crime just as abhorrent. Western Mainstream treatment of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust focuses on violent deaths and largely ignores the WW2 European Holocaust of which it was a part (30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies killed by violence or deprivation) [2]. Of course, ignoring past or present genocide or holocaust atrocities is far, far worse than repugnant genocidal denial or holocaust denial because the latter at least admits the possibilities of refutation and public discussion.

Also largely ignored by racist Western Mainstream journalists, politicians and academics is the WW2 Chinese Holocaust and Chinese Genocide (35 million Chinese deaths from violence or imposed deprivation, 1937-1945) [23] and the WW2 Indian Holocaust and Indian Genocide (Bengali Holocaust, Bengali Genocide, 1942-1945 Bengal Famine) in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons (Australia withholding food from starving Indian from its huge wartime grain stores) [2, 24-30]. Indeed the Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine) was the first WW2 atrocity to be described as a “holocaust (by N.G. Jog in a 1944 book entitled “Churchill’s Blind-Spot: India ” [30]) . However these massive WW2 holocausts are largely ignored and the term “the Holocaust” is taken in the Zionist-subverted, Zionist-perverted and racist West to exclusively mean only the WW2 Jewish Holocaust atrocity.

Present day genocides that are also resolutely ignored by Western Mainstream media include (deaths from violence plus war-imposed deprivation in brackets) the Palestinian Genocide (2 million, WW1-present) [31], the Iraqi Genocide (4.6 million, 1990-2011; 9 million, WW1-2011) [17, 18], Somali Genocide (2.2 million, 1992-present) [2, 18], and the Afghan Genocide (5.6 million, 2001-present) [2, 16, 18]. The ongoing Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide (aka the US War on Terra or the US War on Muslims) has so far involved 32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, or deprivation, 27 million, since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that may also have involved Apartheid Israel and Saudi Arabia [32, 33].

Although the Awful Truth about horrendous infant mortality and maternal mortality in Occupied Afghanistan and other targets of US imperialism is readily available from Mainstream sources such as the UN Population Division [3] and the CIA Factbook [5, 6] , Western Mainstream journalist, politician, commentariat and academic presstitutes resolutely look the other way. Even anti-war activists fail to report the horrendous numbers, either because they prefer rhetoric to arithmetic or because they don’t want to frighten the horses. Many activists are insufficiently activist or activism lite by being climate lite, socialism lite, anti-Apartheid lite, and anti-war lite. The sad reality is that activists who have public visibility in the Mainstream media would be quickly rendered invisible if their messaging was too strong. At the heart of this problem of soft, weak, deficient and compromised activist messaging is immense and increasing wealth inequality that subverts democracy and cripples effective free speech [34-36]. Of course, no messaging is too strong when it comes to mass murder of women and children such as that being perpetrated by the war criminal US Alliance in Occupied Afghanistan.

Final comments

Some journalists have spoken out about this ongoing passive mass murder of the innocent. Thus on May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright (US UN Ambassador and later US Secretary of State, 1997-2001) defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a “60 Minutes” segment in which anti-racist Jewish American journalist Lesley Stahl asked her

“We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Madeleine Albright notoriously replied

“We think the price is worth it” [37].

In 2005, an anti-racist Jewish Australian writer (myself) made a nation-wide broadcast on Australia’s ABC (the Australian equivalent the UK BBC) in which I exposed Australian complicity in Iraqi mass mortality due to war-imposed deprivation [38, 39]. I have endlessly argued the case for the millions of such innocent victims of passive mass murder by the serial war criminal US Alliance [40]. The Silence has been Deafening but we cannot give up. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity.

The present article identifies the overwhelmingly rich, European countries involved in the ongoing passive mass murder of Afghan women and children by the serial war criminal US Alliance. The war casualties of these nations provides a measure of complicity in the ongoing Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide. Mass murder of children and women is utterly abhorred by all civilized people, who will be compelled to act by

(a) informing everyone they can, and

(b) urging Boycotts Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those countries, corporations, parties and politicians involved in this continuing horrendous crime against Humanity.

*

Notes

[1]. “Tiber”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, including an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web :http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ 

[3]. UN Population Division, “World Population Prospects 2017”: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/

[4]. Wang Xiaodong, “Maternal mortality declines and births increase”, China Daily, 20 January 2017: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-01/20/content_28011989.htm

[5]. CIA, The World Factbook, “Infant mortality”, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2091.html

[6]. CIA, The World Factbook, “Maternal mortality”: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html

[7]. Gao Yanqiu, Carine Ronsmans and  An Lin, “Time trends and regional differences in maternal mortality in China from 2000 to 2005”, Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2009;87:913-920: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/12/08-060426/en/

[8]. Xinhua, “ Tibet slashes maternity, infant mortality rates”, New China, 18 January 2016: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-01/18/c_135020798.htm

[9]. WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and the UN Population Division, “Trends in Maternal Mortality, 1990-2015”: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/194254/1/9789241565141_eng.pdf?ua=1

[10]. Sune Engel Rasmussen, “Maternal death rates in Afghanistan may be worse than previously thought”, Guardian, 31 January 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jan/30/maternal-death-rates-in-afghanistan-may-be-worse-than-previously-thought

[11]. “Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War: https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/Geneva%20Convention%20IV.pdf

[12]. “Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention”: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html

[13]. “List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

[14]. “Coalition casualties in Afghanistan ”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan

[15]. “List of countries by infant mortality rate”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

[16]. “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/

[17]. “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/

[18]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/

[19]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas” (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969)

[20]. Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”(Michael Joseph, London, 1982)

[21]. Gideon Polya, “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust ”, Countercurrents, 19 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm

[22]. Eric Silver, “An interview with David Irving, Confronting Hitler’s defender”, Action Report, 4 June 2000: http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/00/05/Silver.html

[23]. “Backgrounder: China ’s WWII contributions in figures”, New China, 3 September 2015: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/03/c_134582291.htm

[24]. Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm

[25]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, now available  for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/2008/09/jane-austen-and-black-hole-of-british.html

[26]. Madhusree Muckerjee, “Churchill’s Secret War. The British Empire and the ravaging of India during World War II” (Basic Books, New York , 2010)

[27]. Colin Mason, “A Short History of Asia . Stone Age to 2000AD” (Macmillan, 2000)

[28]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya:  https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust

[29]. Gideon Polya (2013), “Review: “The Cambridge History Of Australia” Ignores  Australian Involvement In 30 Genocides”,  Countercurrents, 14 October, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya141013.htm

[30]. N.G. Jog, “Churchill’s Blind-Spot: India ”, New Book Company, Bombay , 1944

[31]. “Palestinian Genocide”:  http://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/

[32]. Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable  Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11 ”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115A.htm

[33]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/

[34]. Gideon Polya, “Planetary salvation compromised by activism-lite, climate-lite, anti-Apartheid-lite & anti-war-lite nweakness”, Countercurrents, 15 November 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/15/planetary-salvation-compromised-by-activism-lite-climate-lite-anti-apartheid-lite-anti-war-lite-weakness/

[35]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home

[36]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/

[37]. Lesley Stahl and Madeleine Albright quoted in “Madeleine Albright”, Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright

[38]. Gideon Polya, “Australian complicity in Iraqi mass mortality”, ABC Radio National, Ockham’s Razor, 28 August 2005: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

[39]. Gideon Polya, “Australian complicity in Iraqi mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007

[40]. Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home

The most fundamental human right is the right to life. While legitimately criticized for the one party state, the death penalty, censorship, urban air pollution and harsh treatment of dissidents, China has been hugely successful in radically reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality in Tibet and in China as a whole.

In stark contrast, the war criminal US Alliance occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan continues to be associated with an under-1 infant mortality and maternal mortality incidence that is 7 times higher and 4-12 times higher, respectively, than that in Tibet – evidence of gross violation of the Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention by the US Alliance.

Tibet became part of China in the 13th century under the Yuan dynasty [1], this happening at about the same time that the English were establishing control over the Celtic regions of Britain (Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Ireland) and 6 centuries before the American Empire achieved its fullest “official” extent in the late 19th century with incorporation of elements of the Spanish Empire (Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and part of Cuba) [2].

Now human mortality (human death) is the bottom line in any consideration of the moral justification or humanitarian legitimacy of political systems, including empires. Key indicators are maternal mortality (the mortality rate of women during pregnancy, at or after delivery, and measured as maternal deaths per 100,000 live births), and infant mortality (measured as under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births).

A further key indicator is avoidable mortality (avoidable deaths, excess mortality, excess death, premature death, untimely death or deaths that should not have happened) that is measured as annual avoidable deaths from deprivation per 100 of population (avoidable deaths as a percentage of population per year). Avoidable deaths can be computed as the difference between the actual mortality in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics (birth rate, age distribution). On a global comparative basis a “good”, baseline mortality rate for poor, high birth rate countries is about 4 deaths per 1,000 of population per year [2].

In 2003 the avoidable death rate (as a percentage of population per year) was about 0.97% (non-Arab Africa), 0.39% (Pacific), 0.38% (South Asia), 0.31% (Eastern Europe), 0.26% (Central Asia, Iran and Turkey), 0.26% (South East Asia), 0.25% (Arab North Africa and Middle East), 0.05% (Western Europe), 0.03% (Latin America and Caribbean), 0.01% (East Asia), 0.0% (Overseas Europe i.e. US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Apartheid Israel), and notably 0.0% for China, Cuba, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan [2]. In contrast, annual avoidable deaths from deprivation as a percentage of population in US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan was a shocking 1.75% and indicative of gross violation of the Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention by the US Alliance. [2].

The UN Population Division provides detailed demographic data for all countries (e.g. population, births, deaths, and infant deaths but not avoidable deaths from deprivation) [3] and a useful finding for quickly estimating avoidable deaths from deprivation is that for impoverished, high birth rate countries, annual avoidable deaths are about 1.4 times the annual under-5 year old infant deaths [2].

With this background established we can now turn to infant mortality, maternal mortality and avoidable mortality in Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region and compare this with that in China, US Alliance countries and in Tibet’s neighbour, US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan.

(1). China’s health success in the Tibet Autonomous Region versus a genocidal health disaster in US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan .

The China Daily reports (2017):

“Maternal mortality rate [in China ] declined to 199 per 1 million population [19.9 per 100,000 live births] last year, despite a rising number of births brought by the universal second-child policy, the country’s top health authority said on Friday. The figure for 2015 was 201 per 1 million [20.1 per 100,000 live births], according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Meanwhile, mortality rates for children under 5 decreased to 10.2 per thousand [live births] last year” [4].

These reports are consonant with CIA Factbook estimates of presently 12 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births and 27 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in China [5, 6]. By way of comparison, the CIA Factbook estimates a shocking circa 10-fold greater 110.6 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births and 396 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan that borders upon the Tibet Autonomous region [5, 6].

According to China and UK health experts (2009):

“China represents one of the few success stories in maternal health. The maternal mortality ratio (MMR), estimated at 1500 deaths per 100 000 live births in the 1950s, decreased to an estimated 88 deaths per 100 000 live births in 1990”.

Source: The Economist

However the MMR was much higher in Tibet than in other regions of China (the Eastern being the best, the Central the next best, the Western region being worse and Tibet the worst) [7].

However the MMR has subsequently fallen further in Tibet according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua (2016):

“Southwest China ‘s Tibet Autonomous Region saw record low maternity and infant death rates in 2015 thanks to improved healthcare conditions, according to the regional health and family planning commission. The mortality rate of Tibetan women during pregnancy, at or after delivery was halved from about 23 per 10,000 people [230 per 100,000 live births] in 2009 to 10 per 10,000 [100 per 100,000 live births] last year [2015], statistics released by the commission showed. In addition, the mortality rate of infants in Tibet was reduced to 16 per thousand [live births] in 2015 from 21 per thousand [live births] in 2009. During the period, the proportion of Tibetan women who gave birth in the hospital increased from about 51 percent to 90 percent. When the plateau region was liberated in 1951, its maternal and infant death rates stood at 5,000 per 100,000 people [live births] and 430 per thousand [live births] respectively” [8].

According to a joint report by the WHO (the World Health Organization), UNICEF (the United Nations Childrens’ Fund), UNFPA (The United Nations Population Fund, formerly the United Nations Fund for Population Activities), the World Bank Group and the UN Population Division, in the period 1990-2015 the MMR (Maternal Mortality Ratio, maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) fell from 97 to 27 in China as compared to a fall from 1,340 to 396 in Afghanistan [9].

However a recent report in the UK Guardian suggests an even greater Maternal Mortality and health disaster in Occupied Afghanistan:

“In one unpublished study, the Afghan government found an average level of maternal deaths between 800 and 1,200 for every 100,000 live births, according to aid workers in Kabul who have seen the research. If accurate, this would mean that women in Afghanistan – despite more than 15 years of international aid aimed at improving maternal mortality figures – may be dying from maternal complications at rates similar to those found in Somalia and Chad , and only surpassed by South Sudan . In another review, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) found as many as 1,800 maternal deaths a year in the remote Afghan province of Ghor . Nine out of 11 provinces had higher death rates than the number normally used by donors. Both the UNFPA mortality numbers and the government’s own survey have yet to be released. A spokesman for the ministry of public health said the survey was not ready to be publicised yet, and declined to discuss findings…In addition, a 2013 study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington reported 885 annual maternal deaths in Afghanistan. According to the researchers, that was an increase of 24% on a decade earlier. In Afghanistan , reality often conflicts with official statistics. The UK government, for instance, claims that 85% of Afghans are now covered by basic health services. Yet, in a 2014 Médecins Sans Frontières report, four out of five Afghans said they did not use their closest public clinic because they believed the quality of services and availability of staff was so poor. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 9 million Afghans [population 35 million] are without access to basic health services” [10].

In summary, infant mortality (under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) is 12 ( China ), 16 ( Tibet ), 6 ( USA ) and 111 (US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan ). The Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) (maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) is 20- 27 ( China ), 100 ( Tibet ), 14 ( USA ) and 400-1,200 (US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan ).

As explained below, this constitutes evidence of horrendous US Alliance war crimes in Occupied Afghanistan in gross violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War [11] and thence of the UN Genocide Convention [12].

(2). Mass infant mortality and mass maternal mortality in US Alliance Occupied Afghanistan is a war crime violating the Geneva and Genocide Conventions.

Killing in war occurs not just through violence (active killing) but also through avoidable death from imposed deprivation (passive mass murder) [2]. Mass mortality in a Subject population occurs in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that unequivocally states that the Occupier must supply its Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical services “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [11].

Genocide is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention that states:

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [11].

The UN Population Division informs that the annual number of births in Occupied Afghanistan is 1,155,458 (2015). The infant mortality (under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) of 111 for US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan means that 111 x 1,155.5 = 128,261 under-1 year old infants die each year in Occupied Afghanistan. If the US provided life-sustaining food and medical services to its conquered Afghan subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” (i.e. to yield an under-1 infant mortality of 6 deaths per 1,000 live births as in the US ) then Occupied Afghanistan under-1 infant deaths would only total 6 x 1,155.5 = 6,933. Failure of the US Alliance to observe the unequivocal demands of the Geneva Convention results in the avoidable death of under-1 Afghan infants totalling 128,261 – 6,933 = 121,328 each year or 40 times the carnage in the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity (3,000 killed). Over the 16 years of the Afghan War this US Alliance mass murder of infants amounts to the death of 16 years x 121,328 per year = 1.9 million under-1 year old Afghan infants.

Similarly, the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) (maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) of 400-1,200 for US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan means that (400-1,200) x 11.55 = 4,620- 13,860 Afghan women suffer maternal mortality each year as compared to 14 x 11.55 = 162 if the US Alliance observed the Geneva Convention. Thus the failure of the US Alliance to observed the Geneva Convention kills 4,458- 13,698 Afghan women each year. The Afghan maternal mortality due to US Alliance war crimes over the 16 years of the Afghan War is accordingly 71,000-219,000.

Now the racist moral degenerates who dominate the West ( US imperialists, US lackeys, genocidal racist Zionists) may well argue that Afghanistan is a poor and remote country and that the noble, US-led Coalition that has “liberated” Afghanistan cannot be expected to work medical miracles overnight. However China with an annual per capita GDP of merely $8,126 (as compared to America ’s $56,054) [13] has indeed obtained remarkable health outcomes in remote, rural and poor Tibet that borders on Occupied Afghanistan. The infant mortality rate in the Tibet Autonomous Region is 7 times lower than in Occupied Afghanistan and the Maternal Mortality Ratio in Tibet is 4-12 times lower than that in US-occupied Afghanistan . We can now consider the relative wealth and health outcomes of the individual member countries of the US Alliance that has been devastating Occupied Afghanistan in gross violation of the Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention .

(3). The war criminal European US Alliance invaders have very high per capita income, very low infant mortality and very low maternal mortality.

In order to quantitatively compare the abilities of the US Alliance members to meet their Subject life-sustaining obligations as Occupiers under the Geneva Convention, one can compare the very high annual per capita incomes of the US Alliance nations with the correspondingly very low infant mortality and maternal mortality achieved in these countries.

Below are listed US Alliance participants in the Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide in order of (a) numbers of military deaths in Occupied Afghanistan (2015) as a measure of degree of participation [14], with (b) under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births [5, 15], (c) perinatal maternal deaths expressed as deaths per 100,000 live births [6], and (d) GDP nominal per capita in US dollars per person [13]:

United States (a) 2,271 military deaths, (b) 5.8 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births , (c) 14 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, (d) $56,054 per person GDP nominal per capita;

United Kingdom (a) 453, (b) 4.3, (c) 9, (d) $44,162; Canada (a) 178, (b) 4.5, (c) 7, (d) $43,206 ; France (a) 88, (b) 3.2, (c) 8, (d) $36,304; Germany (a) 57, (b) 3.4, (c) 6, (d) $41,686; Italy (a) 53, (b) 3.3, (c) 4, (d) $30,462;

Poland (a) 44, (b) 4.4, (c) 3, (d) $12,355; Denmark (a) 43, (b) 4.0, (c) 6, (d) $53,149; Australia (a) 41, (b) 4.3, (c) 6, (d) $51,352; Spain (a) 35, (b) 3.3, (c) 5, (d) $25,865 ; Georgia (a) 32, (b) 15.2, (c) 36, (d) $3,491;

Netherlands (a) 25, (b) 3.6, (c) 7, (d) $44,332; Romania (a) 28, (b) 9.4, (c) 31, (d) $9,121; Turkey (a) 15, (b) 17.6, (c) 16, (d) $9,126; Czech Republic (a) 10, (b) 7.9, (c) 4, (d) $17,562; New Zealand (a) 10, (b) 4.4, (c) 11, (d) $38,294;

Norway (a) 10, (b) 2.5, (c) 5, (d) $74,186; Estonia (a) 9, (b) 3.8, (c) 9, (d) $17,122; Hungary (a) 7, (b) 4.9, (c) 17, (d) $12,351; Sweden (a) 5, (b) 2.6, (c) 4, (d) $50,687; Latvia (a) 4, (b) 5.2, (c) 18, (d) $13,704; Slovakia (a) 3, (b) 5.1, (c) 6, (d) $16,082;

Finland (a) 2, (b) 2.5, (c) 3, (d) $42,148; Jordan (a) 2, (b) 14.2, (c) 58, (d) $4,940; Portugal (a) 2, (b) 4.3, (c) 10, (d) $19,239; South Korea (a) 2, (b) 3.0, (c) 11, (d) $27,397; Albania (a) 1, (b) 11.9, (c) 29, (d) $3,984;

Belgium (a) 1, (b) 3.4, (c) 7, (d) $40,278; Lithuania (a) 1, (b) 3.8, (c) 10, (d) $14,384; Montenegro (a) 1, (b) 5.8 [Serbia figure], (c) 7, (d) $6,424; Croatia (a) 0, (b) 9.3, (c) 8, (d) $11,479; Greece (a) 0, (b) 4.6, (c) 3, (d) $17,788;

Iceland (a) 0, (b) 2.1, (c) 3, (d) $50,936; Japan (a) 0, (b) 2.0, (c) 5, (d) $34,629; Macedonia (a) 0, (b) 7.4, (c) 8, (d) $4,836; Slovenia (a) 0, (b) 3.9, (c) 9, (d) $20,690.

These data for the Occupiers are in stark contrast to the corresponding horrendous data for Occupied Afghanistan: (a) 5.6 million deaths from violence, 1.4 million (as determined from comparisons with the Iraq War for which expert survey data is available [16, 17]), or from imposed deprivation, 4.2 million [2, 16-18]), (b) 110.6 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births , (c) 400-1,200 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, (d) $623 per person GDP nominal per capita [13].

Indeed, as noted above in section (2), China with an annual per capita GDP of merely $8,126 (as compared to America’s $56,054) [13] has obtained an infant mortality in the Tibet Autonomous Region that is 7 times lower than that in Occupied Afghanistan and a Maternal Mortality in Tibet that is 4-12 times lower than that in US-occupied Afghanistan.

The Occupiers are overwhelmingly extremely prosperous European states which can evidently each afford to provide Occupied Afghanistan with greatly increased life-sustaining food and medical services if provided “to the fullest extent of the means available” and which would guarantee correspondingly very low infant mortality and maternal deaths – but clearly fail to do so as evidenced by the shocking infant mortality and maternal mortality in Occupied Afghanistan. . Even the poorest of the Occupiers (Georgia, Jordan, Albania and Macedonia ) have per capita incomes an order of magnitude greater than that of Occupied Afghanistan and infant mortality and maternal mortality that are an order of magnitude lower than that in Occupied Afghanistan.

The US Alliance Occupiers are in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that both demand that an Occupier must proved the conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical services “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [11].

An analogy from civil society is germane – a kidnapper will be prosecuted for depriving his victims of their liberty but if any of his victims die from deprivation in his custody he will also be charged with murder. Indeed highly abusive parents will be charged with murder if deliberate deprivation of their children results in death.

Wartime analogies from WW2 are also germane. Thus the WW2 Jewish Holocaust was associated with 5-6 million deaths from (a) violence or (b) imposed deprivation but the precise relative extents of (a) active killing (by shooting, gassing and other violent means) versus (b) passive killing (through deprivation of life-sustaining food and medical services) is not clear [19-22]. However whether a person is killed by violence or through imposed deprivation, the death is just as final and the crime just as abhorrent. Western Mainstream treatment of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust focuses on violent deaths and largely ignores the WW2 European Holocaust of which it was a part (30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies killed by violence or deprivation) [2]. Of course, ignoring past or present genocide or holocaust atrocities is far, far worse than repugnant genocidal denial or holocaust denial because the latter at least admits the possibilities of refutation and public discussion.

Also largely ignored by racist Western Mainstream journalists, politicians and academics is the WW2 Chinese Holocaust and Chinese Genocide (35 million Chinese deaths from violence or imposed deprivation, 1937-1945) [23] and the WW2 Indian Holocaust and Indian Genocide (Bengali Holocaust, Bengali Genocide, 1942-1945 Bengal Famine) in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons (Australia withholding food from starving Indian from its huge wartime grain stores) [2, 24-30]. Indeed the Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine) was the first WW2 atrocity to be described as a “holocaust (by N.G. Jog in a 1944 book entitled “Churchill’s Blind-Spot: India ” [30]) . However these massive WW2 holocausts are largely ignored and the term “the Holocaust” is taken in the Zionist-subverted, Zionist-perverted and racist West to exclusively mean only the WW2 Jewish Holocaust atrocity.

Present day genocides that are also resolutely ignored by Western Mainstream media include (deaths from violence plus war-imposed deprivation in brackets) the Palestinian Genocide (2 million, WW1-present) [31], the Iraqi Genocide (4.6 million, 1990-2011; 9 million, WW1-2011) [17, 18], Somali Genocide (2.2 million, 1992-present) [2, 18], and the Afghan Genocide (5.6 million, 2001-present) [2, 16, 18]. The ongoing Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide (aka the US War on Terra or the US War on Muslims) has so far involved 32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, or deprivation, 27 million, since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that may also have involved Apartheid Israel and Saudi Arabia [32, 33].

Although the Awful Truth about horrendous infant mortality and maternal mortality in Occupied Afghanistan and other targets of US imperialism is readily available from Mainstream sources such as the UN Population Division [3] and the CIA Factbook [5, 6] , Western Mainstream journalist, politician, commentariat and academic presstitutes resolutely look the other way. Even anti-war activists fail to report the horrendous numbers, either because they prefer rhetoric to arithmetic or because they don’t want to frighten the horses. Many activists are insufficiently activist or activism lite by being climate lite, socialism lite, anti-Apartheid lite, and anti-war lite. The sad reality is that activists who have public visibility in the Mainstream media would be quickly rendered invisible if their messaging was too strong. At the heart of this problem of soft, weak, deficient and compromised activist messaging is immense and increasing wealth inequality that subverts democracy and cripples effective free speech [34-36]. Of course, no messaging is too strong when it comes to mass murder of women and children such as that being perpetrated by the war criminal US Alliance in Occupied Afghanistan.

Final comments

Some journalists have spoken out about this ongoing passive mass murder of the innocent. Thus on May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright (US UN Ambassador and later US Secretary of State, 1997-2001) defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a “60 Minutes” segment in which anti-racist Jewish American journalist Lesley Stahl asked her

“We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Madeleine Albright notoriously replied

“We think the price is worth it” [37].

In 2005, an anti-racist Jewish Australian writer (myself) made a nation-wide broadcast on Australia’s ABC (the Australian equivalent the UK BBC) in which I exposed Australian complicity in Iraqi mass mortality due to war-imposed deprivation [38, 39]. I have endlessly argued the case for the millions of such innocent victims of passive mass murder by the serial war criminal US Alliance [40]. The Silence has been Deafening but we cannot give up. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity.

The present article identifies the overwhelmingly rich, European countries involved in the ongoing passive mass murder of Afghan women and children by the serial war criminal US Alliance. The war casualties of these nations provides a measure of complicity in the ongoing Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide. Mass murder of children and women is utterly abhorred by all civilized people, who will be compelled to act by

(a) informing everyone they can, and

(b) urging Boycotts Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those countries, corporations, parties and politicians involved in this continuing horrendous crime against Humanity.

*

Notes

[1]. “Tiber”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, including an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web :http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ 

[3]. UN Population Division, “World Population Prospects 2017”: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/

[4]. Wang Xiaodong, “Maternal mortality declines and births increase”, China Daily, 20 January 2017: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-01/20/content_28011989.htm

[5]. CIA, The World Factbook, “Infant mortality”, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2091.html

[6]. CIA, The World Factbook, “Maternal mortality”: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html

[7]. Gao Yanqiu, Carine Ronsmans and  An Lin, “Time trends and regional differences in maternal mortality in China from 2000 to 2005”, Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2009;87:913-920: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/12/08-060426/en/

[8]. Xinhua, “ Tibet slashes maternity, infant mortality rates”, New China, 18 January 2016: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-01/18/c_135020798.htm

[9]. WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and the UN Population Division, “Trends in Maternal Mortality, 1990-2015”: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/194254/1/9789241565141_eng.pdf?ua=1

[10]. Sune Engel Rasmussen, “Maternal death rates in Afghanistan may be worse than previously thought”, Guardian, 31 January 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jan/30/maternal-death-rates-in-afghanistan-may-be-worse-than-previously-thought

[11]. “Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War: https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/Geneva%20Convention%20IV.pdf

[12]. “Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention”: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html

[13]. “List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

[14]. “Coalition casualties in Afghanistan ”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan

[15]. “List of countries by infant mortality rate”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

[16]. “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/

[17]. “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/

[18]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/

[19]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas” (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969)

[20]. Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”(Michael Joseph, London, 1982)

[21]. Gideon Polya, “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust ”, Countercurrents, 19 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm

[22]. Eric Silver, “An interview with David Irving, Confronting Hitler’s defender”, Action Report, 4 June 2000: http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/00/05/Silver.html

[23]. “Backgrounder: China ’s WWII contributions in figures”, New China, 3 September 2015: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/03/c_134582291.htm

[24]. Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm

[25]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, now available  for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/2008/09/jane-austen-and-black-hole-of-british.html

[26]. Madhusree Muckerjee, “Churchill’s Secret War. The British Empire and the ravaging of India during World War II” (Basic Books, New York , 2010)

[27]. Colin Mason, “A Short History of Asia . Stone Age to 2000AD” (Macmillan, 2000)

[28]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya:  https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust

[29]. Gideon Polya (2013), “Review: “The Cambridge History Of Australia” Ignores  Australian Involvement In 30 Genocides”,  Countercurrents, 14 October, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya141013.htm

[30]. N.G. Jog, “Churchill’s Blind-Spot: India ”, New Book Company, Bombay , 1944

[31]. “Palestinian Genocide”:  http://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/

[32]. Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable  Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11 ”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115A.htm

[33]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/

[34]. Gideon Polya, “Planetary salvation compromised by activism-lite, climate-lite, anti-Apartheid-lite & anti-war-lite nweakness”, Countercurrents, 15 November 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/11/15/planetary-salvation-compromised-by-activism-lite-climate-lite-anti-apartheid-lite-anti-war-lite-weakness/

[35]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home

[36]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/

[37]. Lesley Stahl and Madeleine Albright quoted in “Madeleine Albright”, Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright

[38]. Gideon Polya, “Australian complicity in Iraqi mass mortality”, ABC Radio National, Ockham’s Razor, 28 August 2005: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

[39]. Gideon Polya, “Australian complicity in Iraqi mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007

[40]. Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home

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Our guides through the most censored and under-reported stories of 2017 are Andy Lee Roth, John Schertow, and Patricia Elliott.

Andy Lee Roth, is the Associate Director of Project Censored, a media research program which fosters student development of media literacy and critical thinking skills as applied to news media censorship in the United States. Every year, PC releases its picks of the most censored news stories of the previous year. Roth provides an overview of the Top 25 most censored stories of 2017 in our first half hour.

We next hear from John Schertow, founder and lead editor of Intercontinental Cry, an on-line media source of news of world-wide Indigenous struggle and resistance. Schertow shares his picks for the most under-reported stories involving Indigenous peoples. This 100% reader-supported endeavour can be supported through donations at this site:

 https://intercontinentalcry.org/support-indigenous-journalism-intercontinental-cry/

We finish the broadcast with a review of under-reported Canadian stories, brought to us by Patricia Elliott, Assistant Professor at the University of Regina’s School of Journalism, and faculty evaluator for Project Censored.

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Before Trump’s presidency, each US warning to Pakistan seemed symbolic and intended to pacify the outrage and resentment of global critics for not fighting terrorism seriously. Even in Afghanistan, the people would cheer the US’s crackdown on Pakistan over its hypocrisy to annihilate terrorism within its soil.

Following President Trump’s UN General Assembly address where he lambasted at Pakistan over harboring of terrorism that killed the US soldiers in Afghanistan and the solemn practical anti-Pakistan moves by the US, it came to surface that something is wrong.

The US- Pakistan relationship dates back to the 1950s. Pakistan was supportive of US’s interests in the region and left no stone unturned in its effort to expel Russia from Afghanistan, acting on behalf of the US.

Pakistan help secured the US’s ambitious grand plans in Afghanistan and the region and it really hate to receive infamous warnings from the same power in the face of world.

It is true that the alliance with the US cost Pakistan countless lives and tarnished its image in the eyes of the world, but it did get US$ 33 billion in return since 2001, according to official US figures. Now the blocking of US$ 225 million in aid is not a big deal for Pakistan as it has been inundated with multifold offers by the all-weather ally, China. The ties have heated so much that China overlooked Pakistan’s long history of support of terrorism and took position in its favor following Trump’s attack in the UNGA.

China-Pakistan’s Economic Corridor Project is quite adequate to beef up Pakistan’s economy as much as to drive it far from the embrace of the US. As the strategic interests have no permanent borders, the once rival Russia has also edged towards establishing firm relations with Pakistan.

Trump’s war of words with Pakistan is triggered solely over its nearness to China.

As a stiff-necked rival of Pakistan and China, India has been the most ideal choice for the US to approach at this crucial time. The US has even considered the stationing of Indian forces in Afghanistan which could be the worst music for the ears of Pakistan. Pakistan is hasty to react at the US officials’ offensive remarks in any form possible as it doesn’t seem as much contingent on the US assistance as it used to be. In an unseen move, Pakistan summoned the US ambassador and lodged its complaint in the wake of Trump’s tweet that reverberated throughout the world.

Amid its strained relations with Pakistan, the US blocked a Turkey-Pakistan agreement over training of Turkish pilots by Pakistan; it froze the assets of a large Pakistani Bank in New York and unofficially authorized the Afghan Government to take identical actions against Pakistan’s bans and embargoes on Afghanistan.

In early January, Pakistan’s military warned the US against the possibility of taking unilateral action against armed groups on its soil.

The issue sounds to be serious as the US Vice President Mike Pence in its surprise visit to the largest US base in Afghanistan in December uttered that “Trump has put Pakistan on notice”. His visit of Afghanistan could, in most part, be for warning Pakistan over its proximity to China.

US VP Mike Pence in Afghanistan on December 21, 2017. (Source: Stars and Stripes)

It has to be noted that Pakistan’s defiance of US demands could cost it a lot in many respects, but if it victoriously resisted the US wishes especially “retreating from alliance with China”, this could result in a historical shift, which would force the US to give up its  plans of regional hegemony, to the benefit of China, Russia and Iran.

In its host country [Afghanistan], the US is planning to strip ex-Jihadist commanders of power whom it armed and supported against the Soviet Forces in early 90s. The time is ripe for the US to force the strongmen out of Afghanistan’s political base and the Government. It ousted the former warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum who lives in exile in Turkey. Now, it has hurtled towards the powerful provincial governor of northern Afghan province of Balkh, Atta Mohammad Noor, who clung on to governorship for the past fifteen years. Other heavyweight Jihadist commanders who influenced the public minds have been ditched in one way or another since 2001.

The ground reason behind this purging effort is that they might side with Russia or Iran and could build a barrier to US influence.  The US is now shifting its role into a new stage in Afghanistan and much of the miseries and new shocking stories witnessed in this country trace back to it.

In the next 30 to 50 years, rising sea levels caused by global warming will subsume low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean. Inhabitants will have to relocate, but there are few choices. Among nations (with the exception of Fiji and New Zealand) there is little preparation for the inevitable migration of Pacific Islanders. Which nations should commit to the processes of equitable relocation?

The following article will address this question through historical context and colonial occupation; current legal debates surrounding climate change and maritime migration; and the potential rights of “deterritorialized” states, such as retention of exclusive economic zones. Historical context includes an examination of U.S. insular territories in the Pacific and the continued exercise of presidential authority over island possessions.

There are strong arguments to be made that the United States has ethical obligations to assist Pacific Islanders as sea levels continue to rise, with assistance taking many forms. The U.S. is obligated namely because it is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the largest carbon emitter historically; it has extensively tested atomic and hydrogen bombs and biochemical agents in the Pacific Ocean (Marshall Islands, Christmas Island, Johnston Atoll); has commercially profited from the Pacific ecosystem since the early days of whaling; and in addition to American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, possesses eight insular territories referred to as “United States Minor Outlying Islands.”¹

The U.S. Minor Outlying Islands are Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island. (A ninth minor outlying island, Navassa Island, is located in the Caribbean Ocean, near Haiti.) Around these insular territories is an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines the EEZ as “the zone where the U.S. and other coastal nations have jurisdiction over natural resources,” such as fisheries, energy, and other mineral resources.

When the zones of the eight minor outlying islands are combined with those of American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii and the Northern Mariana Islands, it forms a U.S. EEZ in the Pacific Ocean of 2.2 million square miles.² The United States, seen in this light, is not a distant observer to the Pacific Islanders’ plight but an invested neighbor with shared history; a history defined in large part by commercial exploitation and continuing military entanglements.

Over-wash event, Ejit Island, Marshall Islands. (Photo courtesy of Alson Kelen)

American Polynesia

The U.S. Minor Outlying Islands in the Pacific are small, low-lying formations of more biological use to birds and sea turtles than humans, but they have considerable strategic value. The islands are often referred to militarily as “picket fence” outposts. Most have airstrips, three have seaports, and two have lagoons that can accommodate seaplanes.³ Seven of the eight territories, however, didn’t begin as military acquisitions; American citizens claimed them under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856.⁴ In the beginning, what could be found on the surface of “guano islands” had economic value. In the 21st century, economic value is in the control of their territorial waters and exclusive economic zones.

The Guano Islands Act “legalized” the taking of islands by American merchants in search of seabird guano, a powerful fertilizer used to enrich depleted agricultural land in the United States.⁵ The best guano (huano) came from Peru’s Chincha Islands, but American entrepreneurs grew impatient with what they perceived as an unfair monopoly. The 1856 act supplied the means to bypass the Peruvian marketplace by allowing U.S. citizens, such as Alfred G. Benson and James W. Jennett, to create their own guano empires in the remote reaches of the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. And it gave the U.S. President authority “to employ the land and naval forces of the United States to protect the rights of the discoverer or of his widow, heir, executor, administrator, or assigns.”

Sixty-four noncontiguous island territories in the Pacific were claimed under the act, which provided an opportunity to reinvent plantation culture abroad as disagreements over slavery were reaching a boiling point in the continental United States.⁶ Guano extraction on isolated islands was disproportionately performed by Pacific Islanders, and overseen by white supervisors. As Jimmy M. Skaggs writes in The Great Guano Rush, there was no 19th-century job “as difficult, dangerous, or demeaning as shoveling either feces or phosphates on guano islands.” Whether laborers were contracted, coerced or outright kidnapped, there was no means for escape once sequestered on remote islands. And while most “American guano mining operations were unquestionably more humane” than those on Peru’s Chinchas Islands, “none were pleasant.”⁷

Once divested of guano, some islands were planted with coconut palms for the production of copra, which went beyond the original intent of the act (i.e., allegedly to facilitate a supply of affordable guano for the benefit of American farmers). Over time these small insular possessions became stepping-stones for larger ambitions. According to Gregory T. Cushman in Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World,

“U.S. claims under the 1856 Guano Islands Act represent an important landmark not only in the history of U.S. imperialism but also for the place of remote islands in global geopolitical history… In later years, these islands took on new geopolitical importance as coaling stations, relay points for undersea telegraph cables, and eventually as air bases.”

The United States is an Ocean Nation. The U.S. EEZ [shown in dark blue] is the largest in the world, spanning over 13,000 miles of coastline and containing 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean—larger than the combined land area of all fifty states. (Caption and map by NOAA)

“By the end of World War I,” writes Cushman, “nearly every insular territory in the Pacific Basin except on the southern rim was theoretically subject to some distant government.”⁸ The U.S. territorial realm, in this Pacific mosaic of foreign powers, is known as “American Polynesia.”⁹

In 1859, German geographer E. Behm named the U.S. territorial realm in the Pacific, “American Polynesia.” The term appeared in his article on guano island claims, published in Petermanns Mitteilungen.Two maps accompanying the article. The one above illustrates each foreign country’s possessions lassoed in a distinct color.(Permission to reprint courtesy Gotha Research Library of the University of Erfurt, SPA 4° 000100 005)

Detail of Behm’s map.

Guano to Nuclear Testing

The early annexation of guano islands by commercial interests explains why access to Christmas Island (Kiritimati) for testing nuclear weapons, first by the U.K., then the U.S., was easily facilitated. How economic rivalry in the 19th century turned to military alliance in the 20th century involves a more complex telling.

Americans and the British both mined islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act, though not simultaneously.¹⁰ If American interests didn’t continuously work or occupy islands they claimed title to, the British seized the territory for the Crown. American claimants would object, mainly from afar, while other objections were registered by a visit to the island from the U.S. Navy (none resulted in military confrontation of any real consequence).¹¹ Ownership disputes over guano islands turned to partnership, however, in the late 1950s when the British government sought to conduct full-scale H-bomb tests in the Pacific Ocean.

In a post-Lucky Dragon world, there were few willing partners.¹² Australia and New Zealand, both Commonwealth states, declined Britain’s request to use adjacent waters. Australia had a 50-kiloton limit on tests and an embargo on thermonuclear weapons. New Zealand rejected Britain’s use of the nearby Kermadec Islands because Prime Minister Sidney Holland feared it would be “a political H-bomb.”¹³

That left territories in the central Pacific: Christmas and Malden Islands. A.G. Benson’s U.S. Guano Company had claimed both islands in 1858. A few years later, the British took possession, leasing Christmas Island to Lever’s Pacific Plantations in 1902. Plantation workers, described by various sources as Tahitians (1937) and Gilbertese (1956), lived in two principal settlements on the island, named London and Paris, as well as “small camps scattered among the coconut groves.”¹⁴

On the basis of sovereignty disputes, the U.K. informed the United States in 1955 of its plans to use both islands to test megaton thermonuclear weapons, with Christmas Island serving as the main base. The U.S. had no objections. Likewise, the British wouldn’t object when the U.S. launched Operation Dominic in 1962, which included atmospheric testing at Christmas Island using U.K.-built infrastructure.¹⁵

Those not consulted were the Islanders themselves. During the British operation, codenamed Grapple, work in the coconut groves ceased and their labor subverted to jobs in support of military operations, in order “to allow more British military personnel to undertake tasks directly related to the nuclear weapons program.”¹⁶

Sovereignty disputes came to a partial resolution in 1979. That year, the Republic of Kiribati declared its independence from the U.K. and the U.S. signed the Treaty of Tarawa. The treaty relinquishes U.S. ownership of Christmas Island, now called Kiritimati, and 13 other islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act. While the treaty recognizes Kiribati’s territorial sovereignty of the islands, it comes with a caveat: “any military use by third parties of the islands…shall be subject to [U.S.] consultation.”

The treaty also leaves open the future construction of U.S. facilities on three of the surrendered islands: Canton, Enderbury, and Hull.¹⁷

Kiritimati Island (formerly Christmas Island) was discovered by Captain James Cook in 1777. The majority of the island’s inhabitants work on coconut plantations and in copra production. The island’s major airbase is on the northeast side of the island. Nuclear tests were conducted on Kiritimati Island by the British in 1957 and 1958 and by the United States in 1962. (Caption by CIA/Image by NASA)

Guano, Nuclear Testing, Chemical Weapons

Another guano claim converted for U.S. military use is Johnston Atoll (Kamala), located about 800 miles southwest of Honolulu. The atoll, claimed by the Pacific Guano Company in 1857, consists of four islands on a coral reef platform, all of which have been artificially expanded by blasting, dredging, and reconstruction programs. According to NOAA, the U.S. Navy began preparing the atoll for military operations in 1939 by enlarging the main island (also named Johnston). Construction lasted until 1942, followed by a second phase in 1963. That year, Johnston and Sand Islands were further enlarged and two artificial islands created, called Akau and Hikina. Johnston, by far the largest of the four, is 16 times its original size and resembles an aircraft carrier.¹⁸

One phase of expansion on Johnston Island involved construction of a launch pad for high-altitude missile tests for Operation Dominic in the 1960s. Two of the tests were aborted, with radioactive contamination falling on the runway. Forty years later, in 2002, the Air Force “finished burying thousands of cubic meters of plutonium-contaminated waste in a 25-acre landfill on the atoll.”¹⁹

Other uses of the atoll include open-air biochemical testing; chemical weapons storage; and destruction of nerve agents VX and Sarin, sulfur mustard gas, and Agent Orange. Stockpiles of chemical weaponry were transported from Okinawa, Germany, and the Solomon Islands and incinerated on site using the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS).²⁰

Military operations on Johnston Atoll officially ceased in 2005. The atoll is now a designated wildlife refuge and national monument, with jurisdiction split three ways. The emergent lands of the atoll—that is, the four visible islands—are still under the administrative authority of the Air Force, while waters from 0 to 12 nautical miles (nm) seaward are protected as units of the National Wildlife Refuge System administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. From 12 nm to 200 nm seaward, NOAA manages fishery-related activities. At this writing, commercial fishing is not allowed.

The prohibition on fishing is due to President Barack Obama’s expansion of Johnston Atoll’s monument boundary in 2014. The new boundary includes “the waters and submerged lands to the extent of the seaward limit of the Unites States Exclusive Economic Zone up to 200 nautical miles.” That means the EEZ is essentially a conservation area where commercial fishing is off-limits. For this reason, the expansion of monuments in the Pacific Ocean is a contentious issue with the current U.S. president.²¹

Satellite photo of Johnston Atoll, about 1,390 km (860 mi) west of Hawaii. Four islands compose the total landmass of 2.6 sq km. Johnson and Sand islands are both enlarged natural features, while Akau and Hikina are two artificial islands formed by coral dredging. Johnston Island, by far the largest, contains an airstrip. (Caption by CIA/Image by NASA)

Guano, Nuclear Testing, Chemical Weapons, Monuments

Since the beginning of U.S. territorial expansion in the Pacific, the status of the guano islands has been a reflection of presidential priorities and world events involving commerce and war. The true value of these small islands and atolls is their malleability and adaptive uses, which includes utilization of the exclusive maritime zones that surround them and the airspace above them. The fluid conversion of insular possessions has historically been achieved through the singular authority of presidents. It remains true today.

As one example, Johnston Atoll became a designated U.S. Wildlife Refuge once it had been divested of guano and seabirds (Pres. Calvin Coolidge, 1926); placed under control of the Navy (Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1934); declared a naval defense sea area (Pres. Roosevelt, 1941); designated a national monument with a boundary of 50 nm (Pres. George W. Bush, 2009); monument boundary was increased to 200 nm (Pres. Barack Obama, 2014); and by executive order, was placed under review as a monument created since 1996 under the Antiquities Act (Pres. Donald Trump, 2017).

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, established by President Bush in 2009, includes Johnston Atoll and six other U.S. Minor Outlying Islands: Wake, Baker, Howland, Jarvis, Kingman Reef, and Palmyra Atoll. The eighth minor outlying island, Midway, is included in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii. All of these islands, with the exception of Wake, were initially claimed under the Guano Islands Act.²²

Several national monuments in the Pacific are currently under presidential review, along with stateside monuments of 100,000 acres or more created by presidential proclamation since 1996.But unlike those in the continental U.S., President Trump’s preoccupation with insular territories has little to do with land area, and everything to do with control of the surrounding waters, in particular, the 200 nm boundary designated as the EEZ. In a final report to the president, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommends revising the boundary of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to allow for commercial fishing. That is, trimming back Obama-era monument boundaries that currently serve as conservation areas.²³

It’s worth noting that the establishment of an exclusive economic zone extending 200 nm from shore is an international standard set forth in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. The U.S. had a major hand in crafting the treaty, also known as the “constitution for the oceans,” and continues to benefit from its provisions. The U.S., however, has yet to ratified it.²⁴

Marine National Monuments: Marianas Trench (blue), Pacific Remote Islands (green), Rose Atoll (red), and Papahānaumokuākea (purple). See this map for competing perspectives on marine monuments. (Map by Robert O’Conner, NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office)

Guano Islands and Decolonization

It remains to be seen if Trump’s boundary revisions of monuments created and/or enlarged by other presidents will withstand legal challenge. Of course, the larger legal question in the Pacific is how these island possessions, now national monuments, have remained steadfastly in the hands of the U.S. at all. The process by which the bulk of islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act have been relinquished is instructive. There’s little evidence that the U.S. government has been self-compelled to return them, even when the language of the law makes it clear that the U.S. is in contravention of its own statute.

First, there is an abandonment clause in the Guano Islands Act (found in Title 48 of the United States Code). Chapter 8, section 1419 states there is nothing “obliging the United States to retain possession of the islands, rocks, or keys, after the guano shall have been removed from the same.” According to legal historian C.D. Burnett, “The aim of the Guano Islands Act was simple…[to] supply Americans with affordable guano, nothing more.” ²⁵ Second, as outlined in section 1411, a U.S. citizen can take an island, rock, or key if it is “not occupied by the citizens of any other government.” In 1859, A.G. Benson claimed seven islands known to be inhabited by native populations: Penrhyn, Rierson, Humphrey’s, Danger, Duke of Clarence, Duke of York, and Swains.²⁶

Benson’s claims didn’t meet the legal threshold for possession, but all seven were bonded, certified, and appeared on lists published by the U.S. Treasury Department.²⁷ These claims remained on the books until eventually running aground of international efforts to decolonize the Pacific after World War II. Neither the claimant nor his heirs ever mined those islands, though British workers did.²⁸ Six of the seven were incorporated into British colonies, and one made a part ofAmerican Samoa in 1925.

After World War II, the UN led efforts to create trusteeships that ideally would afford colonized peoples some measure of self-determination and independence.²⁹As a result, U.S.-U.K. claims and counterclaims to guano islands loosened, with some formally surrendered by treaty. Between 1979 and 1980, the U.S. relinquished a total of 21 insular territories claimed under the Guano Islands Act. Fourteen islands were handed over to the independent Republic of Kiribati; three islands to the small island nation of Tokelau, a non-self-governing territory of New Zealand; and four atolls to the Cook Islands, a self-governing nation in free association with New Zealand. The islands and atolls are as follows:

Treaty of Tarawa, Republic of Kiribati (signed 1979, ratified 1983)

• Canton (Kanton)
• Enderbury
• Hull (Orona)
• Birnie
• Gardner (Nikumaroro)
• Phoenix (Rawaki)
• Sydney (Manra)
• McKean
• Christmas (Kiritimati)
• Caroline
• Starbuck
• Malden
• Flint
• Vostok

Cook Islands-United States Maritime Boundary Treaty (signed 1980, ratified 1983)

• Penrhyn (Tongareva)
• Rierson (Rakahanga)
• Humphrey’s (Manihiki)
• Danger (Pukapuka)

Treaty of Tokehega, New Zealand (signed 1980, ratified 1983)

• Duke of Clarence (Nukunonu)
• Duke of York (Atafu)
• Bowditch (Fakaofo)

Islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act that have not been surrendered are often identified on maps as “U.S.A. territory.” But that’s not the nomenclature the U.S. government uses. The United States Code defines “Guano Islands” as “possessions,” not territories.³⁰ It’s an ambiguous term for an ambiguous future. As sea-level rise threatens to overtake low-lying islands and atolls, the international community will be watching to see what measures the U.S. may take in retaining control over its insular possessions and attendant 200 nm exclusive economic zones in the central Pacific Ocean.

Nationhood and EEZs

While the U.S. has flexibility in transforming the EEZ of its island possessions into proving grounds, strategic no-go zones, conservation areas and national monuments, island nations do not. The economies of most island nations are dependent on selling offshore fishing rights within their EEZ.

In the central and western Pacific Ocean, the tuna catch alone is worth $5.8 billion a year. In 2016, island nations and territories merged their estimated 6 million square miles of EEZs to form “the world’s largest tuna fishery bloc,” which helped negotiate the U.S. Tuna Treaty on favorable terms to Pacific nations. Sixteen Island parties signed the treaty, which allows U.S. vessels to fish their waters. By collectively negotiating fees and terms, territories disadvantaged by size, like Tokelau, can be assured yearly payments. Size is one element in the calculus of managing resources. Other considerations include how rich in tuna a given area might be, and what kinds of anchorage and facilities are located nearby. Tokelau has an abundance of tuna but no ports. Neighboring Samoa has ports and a processing plant. By pooling strengths and weaknesses, signatories to the treaty are bolstering one another’s economies.³¹

According to journalist Latif Nasser, the EEZ represents a valuable set of assets less visible than those attached to land. While the loss of land to sea-level rise is troubling, so too is the loss of surrounding waters. It’s a concern that has prompted Nasser and others to ask: “What will become of these gigantic ocean possessions [EEZs] when the tiny patches of land that anchor them disappear or become unlivable? The prospect is an unprecedented puzzle for the international community.”³²

One piece of the puzzle is the legality of artificially modifying an island for the purpose of retaining an EEZ. It may seem complex in light of the vigorous debate over China’s island-building program in the South China Sea, but it’s not. The South China Sea dispute falls within the purview of general international law, not maritime law, because it’s first and foremost a sovereignty dispute (Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all have competing claims to islands located there). A.H.A Soons, a scholar and practitioner of international law, provides a straightforward answer for small island nations who want to modify their emergent land: “Any coastal State (including small island nations) are allowed to artificially maintain/enlarge their islands.”³³

Rate of Rising Seas

Pacific island nations and territories are at different stages of addressing the pressing issues of sea-level rise. Discussions involving retention of EEZs—and the rights and financial security maritime zones confer—represent the long game, and enters into a conceptual realm of “What is nationhood, if a nation no longer exists?” Legitimate answers to questions of this magnitude would require changes in international law, a notoriously slow process. As scientific data on climate change feedbacks demonstrate, island nations and territories need answers now.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts the oceans will rise by between 11 and 38 inches by the end of the century, with the potential to submerge low-lying islands. A report from 2016, written by former NASA scientist James Hansen and 16 co-authors, predicts that without serious mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, global sea level is likely to increase “several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years.”³⁴ If less than one meter of sea-level rise has the potential to cause an island to disappear by 2100, then Hansen’s numbers portend something more urgent. The question, then, is not when will islands be submerged, but when will sea-level rise make life on low-lying islands impossible.

The answer to that question is close at hand for a number of Pacific islands. Sea-level rise increases both the frequency and magnitude of flooding caused by high tides and storms; saltwater intrusion destroys freshwater sources and the prospect of productive agriculture. Writer and filmmaker Jack Niedenthal, who lives in the Marshall Islands, says that on the island of Kili, “there have been huge changes since about 2011.” That was the first year the island was heavily flooded, and he says it’s happened every year since. Kili, which averages an elevation of 6 feet, is home to many displaced families originally from Bikini Atoll.³⁵

The population there, he says, is trying to raise awareness of climate change with the rest of the world, but it’s challenging. “I find it stunning that there are still so many climate change deniers out there. In the Marshall Islands, we are building numerous seawalls, some very large, others are just building them with old tires and broken down cars.”

Future Proofing Islands

One concern discussed in the international community is the importance of delimiting islands before they physically disappear. Under the Law of the Sea Convention, or UNCLOS, the exclusive economic zone is measured seaward from the baseline. The baseline is measured along the coast of emergent land at the low-water mark. Consequently, if sea-level rise alters coastlines or overtakes emergent land permanently, what happens to the baseline? What happens to the corresponding EEZ? And to what extent will island nations retain control over their EEZs if an island is gone and its inhabitants dispersed?

Rosemary Rayfuse, a professor of international law at the University of New South Wales, specializing in maritime law and climate change, recommends island nations “future proof” their EEZs by establishing baselines now. On that front, she says there has been some movement, with “Australia helping some of the South Pacific Island States to rewrite their baselines legislation and delimit their maritime boundaries.”³⁶

A.H.A. Soons has proposed rights for a “disappearing” state, and his paper from 1990 offers ways in which an emigrating population could retain its EEZ, and even use it to advantage in negotiating land on a neighboring island.³⁷ The idea of legal status for disappearing or “deterritorialized” states, says Rayfuse, “is a controversial one that will undoubtedly take many years to gain any traction—if ever.”

If EEZs and other maritime zones disappear along with emergent land, there’s the real possibility those areas could become “high seas.” According to the Law of the Sea Convention, high seas is defined as “the seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction” and considered “the common heritage of mankind.” In other words, it means areas of the ocean where both living and nonliving resources are fair game.³⁸

Freedom and Fear in the High Seas

At a climate change symposium in 2015, Fiji’s Foreign Affairs secretary Esala Nayasi explained the dilemma of Islanders succinctly: “These are people who are on the verge of losing their land that they call home, losing their critical basic necessities and infrastructure, culture, identity and traditional knowledge. This is no longer a news story, it is happening now.”

Nayasi’s sense of urgency is reflected in policy. Among nations, the Republic of Fiji is in the vanguard of relocation efforts. In 2014, the government’s climate change program assisted the village of Vunidogolo in moving to higher ground and provided the means for economic transition. The new village includes “30 houses, fish ponds and copra drier, farms and other projects.” There are 34 more villages slated for relocation within in its territory.³⁹ Because Fiji is a combination of high and low islands, it’s geographically advantaged (though not immune to climate disruption). For other nations such as Tuvalu, comprised of nine coral atolls with a mean elevation of 2 meters, all choices look the same.

The Republic of Fiji has both high and low islands. None of Fiji’s islands are impervious to the effects of climate change, such as increasingly destructive storms, higher rates of disease, and saltwater intrusion of farmland. (Image by NASA/Aqua-MODIS)

Options for relocation are limited in other ways, such as the exclusion of “climate change refugees” from the 1951 Refugee Convention. Under the convention, there are five grounds to qualify for refugee status and fleeing the catastrophic conditions caused by climate change is not one of them. It hasn’t stopped legal challenge in several recent cases in New Zealand. Asylum-seeker Ioane Teitiota from Kiribati lost his case, and was deported in 2015. Sigeo Alesana from Tuvalu had his asylum application declined, but he won his immigration case based partially on the “vulnerability of the couple’s children to illnesses as a result of poor water quality.” According to Radio New Zealand, it’s the first time climate change has been successfully used in an immigration case.⁴⁰

Perhaps the biggest legal stride in New Zealand is Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s recent announcement of plans for a special refugee visa for Pacific Islanders, starting with 100 places annually. “We are anchored in the Pacific,” Ardern told reporters. “Surrounding us are a number of nations, not least ourselves, who will be dramatically impacted by the effects of climate change. I see it as a personal and national responsibility to do our part.”⁴¹

Conclusions

Large nations with continental landmass are not immune to what worries small island nations and territories. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “As the planet heats up, seas are now rising at an accelerating rate—especially along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico.” Investing in million-dollar seawalls—here or there—will not be enough; an even larger investment is needed. An investment that requires industrialized nations to do what is scientifically, technically and financially possible to mitigate the causes of sea-level rise, while also assisting in building a legal framework that provides peace of mind for Pacific Islanders. Currently the onus to adapt is on island nations. It is a suggestion disproportionally unjust. It is unjust not only since the “Pacific islands region as a whole accounts for 0.03% of the global emissions of CO₂ despite having approximately 0.12% of the world’s population,”⁴² but because a significant part of the problem is that global warming is precipitated by the rich and powerful countries and the islands are among the poorest and least equipped places in the world to cope with the challenges of rising waters.

The U.S. Minor Outlying Islands—Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island—will suffer the same fate as neighboring islands with similar elevations. The loss of U.S. islands, however, will not be as traumatic. Four are uninhabited and three have a fluctuating population of 40 or less, made up of U.S. Fish and Wildlife staff and scientists. Wake Island, the most populous, has 100 U.S. military service members and contractors on premises. Under U.S. stewardship, none of these insular possessions, or other guano islands, has ever had an enduring human legacy tied with place beyond transient plantation or military culture.⁴³

Data provided by U.S. Air Force and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2017)

The U.S. government, with the exception of the Pentagon, is in official denial concerning a major cause of climate disruption: the unabated burning of fossil fuels.⁴⁴ The current administration has no interest in reducing CO₂ emissions or admitting the country’s hand in environmental catastrophe. What will be of interest to U.S. policymakers when the low-lying islands and atolls in the Pacific Ocean begin to disappear is likely to center on the retention of EEZs and other maritime entitlements associated with U.S. insular possessions. If there is to be any U.S. involvement in “adaptation” in this part of the world, preserving these zones is high on the list; Pacific island nations and territories should be included in those efforts. Subsequent to resource depletion, war, nuclear testing and contamination, engagement with the Pacific Ocean ultimately means taking care of the people who live there.

*

Laray Polk is an American writer and artist. In 2013, she co-authored a book with Noam Chomsky, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe (Seven Stories Press). The title has been translated into Spanish, French, Turkish, and Japanese. She can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

¹“United States Minor Outlying Islands” is the international designation (ISO 3166). The United States Code (48 U.S.C. sec. 1411) defines the islands as insular possessions “appertaining to the United States.”

²Calculations based on data from Marine Regions.

³CIA World Factbook.

⁴The act is at 48 U.S.C. sec. 1411-19.

⁵For a discussion of guano’s importance to 19th-century agriculture, see Richard A. Wines, Fertilizer in America: From Waste Recycling to Resource Exploitation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985).

⁶The actual number of islands resolves to 36 when duplicate claims and nonexistent islands are factored in. See “Places Claimed and/or Acquired under the U.S. Guano Islands Act,” in Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Oversees Expansion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 230-236.

⁷Ibid., 159. For a firsthand perspective of a guano laborer, see the letters of J.M. Kailiopio in Gregory Rosenthal, “Life and Labor in a Seabird Colony: Hawaiian Guano Workers, 1857-70,” Environmental History 17 (October 2012): 744-782.

⁸Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 82.

⁹E. Behm, “Das Amerikanische Polynesien und die politischen Verhältnisse in den übrigen Theilen des Grossen Oceans im J. 1859,” Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 5 (1859): 173-194.

¹⁰Two islands claimed by both countries, Canton and Enderbury, were shared from 1939 to 1979 under an agreement called the Anglo & American Consortium. Both islands were relinquished when Kiribati declared independence from the U.K. and the U.S. signed the Treaty of Tarawa.

¹¹See U.S.S. Narragansett visit to Christmas Island in Edwin H. Bryan, American Polynesia and the Hawaiian Chain, rev. and enl. ed. (Honolulu: Tongg Pub. Co., 1942), 139. Cf. to Benson ‘s Lobos Islands incident in Great Guano Rush, 21-32.

¹²Laray Polk, “Lucky Dragon,” CounterPunch, April 5, 2007.

¹³Nic Maclellan, Grappling with the Bomb: Britain’s Pacific H-Bomb Tests (Canberra: ANU Press, 2017), 36.

¹⁴American Polynesia, 140.

¹⁵For a complete history of this alliance see “The President—John F. Kennedy,” Grappling with the Bomb, 267-279.

¹⁶Ibid., 242.

¹⁷For residual problems with a similar treaty, the Treaty of Tokehega, see Gilbert Wong, “Swains Island Paradise Lost?” New Zealand Herald, November 10, 1990.

¹⁸Calculation based on the 1923 Tanager Expedition survey (41.32 acres), reproduced in American Polynesia, and median measurements from 2017 satellite imagery (662.59 acres).

¹⁹Katharine Q. Seelye, “Radioactive Dump on Pacific Wildlife Refuge Raises Liability Concerns,” New York Times, January 27, 2003.

²⁰Jan TenBruggencate, “Army Completes Chemical Weapons Mission at Johnston,” The Honolulu Advertiser, April 11 2001; Jon Mitchell, “25,000 barrels of Agent Orange Kept on Okinawa, U.S. Army Document Says,” The Japan Times, August 7, 2012.

²¹For further complexity of the issue, see Fili Sagapolutele, “Gov. Lolo’s Letter to DOI Cites Trump’s ‘America First’ Policy as Hope for Our Tuna Industry,” Samoa News, July 17, 2017.

²²According to some sources Midway Islands (Middlebrook Islands and Shoal) weren’t claimed under the Guano Islands Act. A summary of an expedition by Capt. Brooks, printed in the Polynesian, August 13, 1859, presents evidence to the contrary: “As an extensive deposit of guano was found on one of the islands, possession was taken of the group and notices left to that effect.” The Navy took formal possession of Midway on August 28, 1867.

²³Juliet Eilperin, “Zinke Backs Shrinking More National Monuments and Shifting Management of 10,” Washington Post, December 5, 2017. See also Christopher Pala, “Loss of Federal Protections May Imperil Pacific Reefs, Scientists Warn,” New York Times, October 30, 2017.

²⁴For obstacles to ratification, see Roncevert Almond, “U.S. Accession to the Law of the Sea Convention? A Challengefor America’s Global Leadership,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 15, vol.13, no.2 (July 2017): 1-11.

²⁵C.D. Burnett, “The Edges of Empire and the Limits of Sovereignty: American Guano Islands.” American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2005): 780.

²⁶In 1862, chemist J.D. Hague recorded six of the seven as inhabited by native populations in his article, “On Phosphatic Islands of the Pacific Ocean,” Am. Journ. Sci., 2nd ser., vol. 34, no.101 (September 1862): 224-243.

²⁷U.S. State Department, Office of the Legal Advisor, “The Sovereignty of Guano Islands in Pacific Ocean,” vol. 3, ed. E.S. Rogers and Frederic A. Fisher (Washington, D.C., 1933): 570-976. Available online from the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library.

²⁸The British didn’t have a legal prohibition on mining inhabited islands, much to the detriment of Nauru and Ocean(Banaba) Islands. See Great Guano Rush, 137.

²⁹The South Pacific Commission, now the Pacific Community, may have been more influential in post-war planning because it brought together Islanders “who accelerated regionalism’s emergence.” See Steven R. Fischer, The History of the Pacific Islands, 2nd rev. ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2013), 221.

³⁰Other territories defined as U.S. possessions include the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. See 10 U.S.C. sec.101 and 37 U.S.C. sec. 101.

³¹Lealaiauloto Aigaletaulealea Tauafiafi, “Pacific Celebrate U.S. Tuna Treaty Renewal: Why, How Much, and Who are the Winners?” Pacific Guardians, June 12, 2016; “Tokelau’s Tuna Success—Testament to Pacific Solidarity’s Multimillion Dollar Effect,” Pacific Guardians, August 12, 2016.

³²Latif Nasser, “When Island Nations Drown, Who Owns Their Seas?” Boston Globe, October 19, 2014.

³³Soons, email comm., December 28, 2017. For discussion of what constitutes an island or a rock under UNCLOS, see T.Y. Wang, “Japan is Building Tiny Islands in the Philippine Sea,” Washington Post, May 20, 2016.

³⁴James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Paul Hearty, Reto Ruedy, Maxwell Kelley, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, et al., “Ice Melt, Sea-Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that 2 °C Global Warming Could be Dangerous,” Atmos. Chem. Phys. 16, (March 2016): 3762. 

³⁵For more on the plight of Bikini Islanders, listen to Jack Niedenthal’s interview with Koro Vaka’uta, Radio New Zealand, March 26, 2015; and his interview with Jenny Meyer, Radio New Zealand, August 7, 2015.

³⁶Rayfuse, email comm., May 7, 2017.

³⁷ A.H.A. Soons, “The Effects of a Rising Sea Level on Maritime Limits and Boundaries,” Netherlands Intl. Law Review 37 (1990): 230.

³⁸Law of the Sea Convention, Part VII, Sec. 1, Art. 87.

³⁹Fiji presided over the UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) held in Bonn, Germany in 2017. Serafina Silaitoga, “Villagers to Move into New Homes,” The Fiji Times, January 15, 2014.

⁴⁰“Climate Change Part of Refuge Ruling,”Radio New Zealand, August 4, 2014. To read more about Alesana and his family, see Anke Richter, “Hell and High Water: When Climate Change Comes Lapping at Your Door,” North & South, June 2017 (posted online here).

⁴¹Jonathan Perlman, “NZ Plans Special Visa for Climate Refugees,” The Straits Times, December 11, 2017.

⁴²Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation And Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. J. J. McCarthy, O. F. Canziani, N. A. Leary, D. J. Dokken, and K. S. White (UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 867.

⁴³Archaeological evidence suggests these islands were of significant cultural use by Polynesian long-distance voyagers. Bryan’s American Polynesia describes ruins and objects associated with individual islands: Howland (paths, pits); Washington (ruins, stone work, canoe); Fanning (ruins, adzes, fishhook); Christmas (ruins); Malden (platforms, grave, house sites); Caroline (graves, adzes, temple platform, marae); Nassua (shell adzes, pearl-shell breast ornaments); Hull (ruins); Phoenix (ruins); and Sydney (ruins).

⁴⁴Christian Parenti, “Military Soothsayers,” Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), 13-20.

In the next 30 to 50 years, rising sea levels caused by global warming will subsume low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean. Inhabitants will have to relocate, but there are few choices. Among nations (with the exception of Fiji and New Zealand) there is little preparation for the inevitable migration of Pacific Islanders. Which nations should commit to the processes of equitable relocation?

The following article will address this question through historical context and colonial occupation; current legal debates surrounding climate change and maritime migration; and the potential rights of “deterritorialized” states, such as retention of exclusive economic zones. Historical context includes an examination of U.S. insular territories in the Pacific and the continued exercise of presidential authority over island possessions.

There are strong arguments to be made that the United States has ethical obligations to assist Pacific Islanders as sea levels continue to rise, with assistance taking many forms. The U.S. is obligated namely because it is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the largest carbon emitter historically; it has extensively tested atomic and hydrogen bombs and biochemical agents in the Pacific Ocean (Marshall Islands, Christmas Island, Johnston Atoll); has commercially profited from the Pacific ecosystem since the early days of whaling; and in addition to American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, possesses eight insular territories referred to as “United States Minor Outlying Islands.”¹

The U.S. Minor Outlying Islands are Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island. (A ninth minor outlying island, Navassa Island, is located in the Caribbean Ocean, near Haiti.) Around these insular territories is an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines the EEZ as “the zone where the U.S. and other coastal nations have jurisdiction over natural resources,” such as fisheries, energy, and other mineral resources.

When the zones of the eight minor outlying islands are combined with those of American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii and the Northern Mariana Islands, it forms a U.S. EEZ in the Pacific Ocean of 2.2 million square miles.² The United States, seen in this light, is not a distant observer to the Pacific Islanders’ plight but an invested neighbor with shared history; a history defined in large part by commercial exploitation and continuing military entanglements.

Over-wash event, Ejit Island, Marshall Islands. (Photo courtesy of Alson Kelen)

American Polynesia

The U.S. Minor Outlying Islands in the Pacific are small, low-lying formations of more biological use to birds and sea turtles than humans, but they have considerable strategic value. The islands are often referred to militarily as “picket fence” outposts. Most have airstrips, three have seaports, and two have lagoons that can accommodate seaplanes.³ Seven of the eight territories, however, didn’t begin as military acquisitions; American citizens claimed them under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856.⁴ In the beginning, what could be found on the surface of “guano islands” had economic value. In the 21st century, economic value is in the control of their territorial waters and exclusive economic zones.

The Guano Islands Act “legalized” the taking of islands by American merchants in search of seabird guano, a powerful fertilizer used to enrich depleted agricultural land in the United States.⁵ The best guano (huano) came from Peru’s Chincha Islands, but American entrepreneurs grew impatient with what they perceived as an unfair monopoly. The 1856 act supplied the means to bypass the Peruvian marketplace by allowing U.S. citizens, such as Alfred G. Benson and James W. Jennett, to create their own guano empires in the remote reaches of the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. And it gave the U.S. President authority “to employ the land and naval forces of the United States to protect the rights of the discoverer or of his widow, heir, executor, administrator, or assigns.”

Sixty-four noncontiguous island territories in the Pacific were claimed under the act, which provided an opportunity to reinvent plantation culture abroad as disagreements over slavery were reaching a boiling point in the continental United States.⁶ Guano extraction on isolated islands was disproportionately performed by Pacific Islanders, and overseen by white supervisors. As Jimmy M. Skaggs writes in The Great Guano Rush, there was no 19th-century job “as difficult, dangerous, or demeaning as shoveling either feces or phosphates on guano islands.” Whether laborers were contracted, coerced or outright kidnapped, there was no means for escape once sequestered on remote islands. And while most “American guano mining operations were unquestionably more humane” than those on Peru’s Chinchas Islands, “none were pleasant.”⁷

Once divested of guano, some islands were planted with coconut palms for the production of copra, which went beyond the original intent of the act (i.e., allegedly to facilitate a supply of affordable guano for the benefit of American farmers). Over time these small insular possessions became stepping-stones for larger ambitions. According to Gregory T. Cushman in Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World,

“U.S. claims under the 1856 Guano Islands Act represent an important landmark not only in the history of U.S. imperialism but also for the place of remote islands in global geopolitical history… In later years, these islands took on new geopolitical importance as coaling stations, relay points for undersea telegraph cables, and eventually as air bases.”

The United States is an Ocean Nation. The U.S. EEZ [shown in dark blue] is the largest in the world, spanning over 13,000 miles of coastline and containing 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean—larger than the combined land area of all fifty states. (Caption and map by NOAA)

“By the end of World War I,” writes Cushman, “nearly every insular territory in the Pacific Basin except on the southern rim was theoretically subject to some distant government.”⁸ The U.S. territorial realm, in this Pacific mosaic of foreign powers, is known as “American Polynesia.”⁹

In 1859, German geographer E. Behm named the U.S. territorial realm in the Pacific, “American Polynesia.” The term appeared in his article on guano island claims, published in Petermanns Mitteilungen.Two maps accompanying the article. The one above illustrates each foreign country’s possessions lassoed in a distinct color.(Permission to reprint courtesy Gotha Research Library of the University of Erfurt, SPA 4° 000100 005)

Detail of Behm’s map.

Guano to Nuclear Testing

The early annexation of guano islands by commercial interests explains why access to Christmas Island (Kiritimati) for testing nuclear weapons, first by the U.K., then the U.S., was easily facilitated. How economic rivalry in the 19th century turned to military alliance in the 20th century involves a more complex telling.

Americans and the British both mined islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act, though not simultaneously.¹⁰ If American interests didn’t continuously work or occupy islands they claimed title to, the British seized the territory for the Crown. American claimants would object, mainly from afar, while other objections were registered by a visit to the island from the U.S. Navy (none resulted in military confrontation of any real consequence).¹¹ Ownership disputes over guano islands turned to partnership, however, in the late 1950s when the British government sought to conduct full-scale H-bomb tests in the Pacific Ocean.

In a post-Lucky Dragon world, there were few willing partners.¹² Australia and New Zealand, both Commonwealth states, declined Britain’s request to use adjacent waters. Australia had a 50-kiloton limit on tests and an embargo on thermonuclear weapons. New Zealand rejected Britain’s use of the nearby Kermadec Islands because Prime Minister Sidney Holland feared it would be “a political H-bomb.”¹³

That left territories in the central Pacific: Christmas and Malden Islands. A.G. Benson’s U.S. Guano Company had claimed both islands in 1858. A few years later, the British took possession, leasing Christmas Island to Lever’s Pacific Plantations in 1902. Plantation workers, described by various sources as Tahitians (1937) and Gilbertese (1956), lived in two principal settlements on the island, named London and Paris, as well as “small camps scattered among the coconut groves.”¹⁴

On the basis of sovereignty disputes, the U.K. informed the United States in 1955 of its plans to use both islands to test megaton thermonuclear weapons, with Christmas Island serving as the main base. The U.S. had no objections. Likewise, the British wouldn’t object when the U.S. launched Operation Dominic in 1962, which included atmospheric testing at Christmas Island using U.K.-built infrastructure.¹⁵

Those not consulted were the Islanders themselves. During the British operation, codenamed Grapple, work in the coconut groves ceased and their labor subverted to jobs in support of military operations, in order “to allow more British military personnel to undertake tasks directly related to the nuclear weapons program.”¹⁶

Sovereignty disputes came to a partial resolution in 1979. That year, the Republic of Kiribati declared its independence from the U.K. and the U.S. signed the Treaty of Tarawa. The treaty relinquishes U.S. ownership of Christmas Island, now called Kiritimati, and 13 other islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act. While the treaty recognizes Kiribati’s territorial sovereignty of the islands, it comes with a caveat: “any military use by third parties of the islands…shall be subject to [U.S.] consultation.”

The treaty also leaves open the future construction of U.S. facilities on three of the surrendered islands: Canton, Enderbury, and Hull.¹⁷

Kiritimati Island (formerly Christmas Island) was discovered by Captain James Cook in 1777. The majority of the island’s inhabitants work on coconut plantations and in copra production. The island’s major airbase is on the northeast side of the island. Nuclear tests were conducted on Kiritimati Island by the British in 1957 and 1958 and by the United States in 1962. (Caption by CIA/Image by NASA)

Guano, Nuclear Testing, Chemical Weapons

Another guano claim converted for U.S. military use is Johnston Atoll (Kamala), located about 800 miles southwest of Honolulu. The atoll, claimed by the Pacific Guano Company in 1857, consists of four islands on a coral reef platform, all of which have been artificially expanded by blasting, dredging, and reconstruction programs. According to NOAA, the U.S. Navy began preparing the atoll for military operations in 1939 by enlarging the main island (also named Johnston). Construction lasted until 1942, followed by a second phase in 1963. That year, Johnston and Sand Islands were further enlarged and two artificial islands created, called Akau and Hikina. Johnston, by far the largest of the four, is 16 times its original size and resembles an aircraft carrier.¹⁸

One phase of expansion on Johnston Island involved construction of a launch pad for high-altitude missile tests for Operation Dominic in the 1960s. Two of the tests were aborted, with radioactive contamination falling on the runway. Forty years later, in 2002, the Air Force “finished burying thousands of cubic meters of plutonium-contaminated waste in a 25-acre landfill on the atoll.”¹⁹

Other uses of the atoll include open-air biochemical testing; chemical weapons storage; and destruction of nerve agents VX and Sarin, sulfur mustard gas, and Agent Orange. Stockpiles of chemical weaponry were transported from Okinawa, Germany, and the Solomon Islands and incinerated on site using the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS).²⁰

Military operations on Johnston Atoll officially ceased in 2005. The atoll is now a designated wildlife refuge and national monument, with jurisdiction split three ways. The emergent lands of the atoll—that is, the four visible islands—are still under the administrative authority of the Air Force, while waters from 0 to 12 nautical miles (nm) seaward are protected as units of the National Wildlife Refuge System administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. From 12 nm to 200 nm seaward, NOAA manages fishery-related activities. At this writing, commercial fishing is not allowed.

The prohibition on fishing is due to President Barack Obama’s expansion of Johnston Atoll’s monument boundary in 2014. The new boundary includes “the waters and submerged lands to the extent of the seaward limit of the Unites States Exclusive Economic Zone up to 200 nautical miles.” That means the EEZ is essentially a conservation area where commercial fishing is off-limits. For this reason, the expansion of monuments in the Pacific Ocean is a contentious issue with the current U.S. president.²¹

Satellite photo of Johnston Atoll, about 1,390 km (860 mi) west of Hawaii. Four islands compose the total landmass of 2.6 sq km. Johnson and Sand islands are both enlarged natural features, while Akau and Hikina are two artificial islands formed by coral dredging. Johnston Island, by far the largest, contains an airstrip. (Caption by CIA/Image by NASA)

Guano, Nuclear Testing, Chemical Weapons, Monuments

Since the beginning of U.S. territorial expansion in the Pacific, the status of the guano islands has been a reflection of presidential priorities and world events involving commerce and war. The true value of these small islands and atolls is their malleability and adaptive uses, which includes utilization of the exclusive maritime zones that surround them and the airspace above them. The fluid conversion of insular possessions has historically been achieved through the singular authority of presidents. It remains true today.

As one example, Johnston Atoll became a designated U.S. Wildlife Refuge once it had been divested of guano and seabirds (Pres. Calvin Coolidge, 1926); placed under control of the Navy (Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1934); declared a naval defense sea area (Pres. Roosevelt, 1941); designated a national monument with a boundary of 50 nm (Pres. George W. Bush, 2009); monument boundary was increased to 200 nm (Pres. Barack Obama, 2014); and by executive order, was placed under review as a monument created since 1996 under the Antiquities Act (Pres. Donald Trump, 2017).

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, established by President Bush in 2009, includes Johnston Atoll and six other U.S. Minor Outlying Islands: Wake, Baker, Howland, Jarvis, Kingman Reef, and Palmyra Atoll. The eighth minor outlying island, Midway, is included in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii. All of these islands, with the exception of Wake, were initially claimed under the Guano Islands Act.²²

Several national monuments in the Pacific are currently under presidential review, along with stateside monuments of 100,000 acres or more created by presidential proclamation since 1996.But unlike those in the continental U.S., President Trump’s preoccupation with insular territories has little to do with land area, and everything to do with control of the surrounding waters, in particular, the 200 nm boundary designated as the EEZ. In a final report to the president, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommends revising the boundary of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to allow for commercial fishing. That is, trimming back Obama-era monument boundaries that currently serve as conservation areas.²³

It’s worth noting that the establishment of an exclusive economic zone extending 200 nm from shore is an international standard set forth in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. The U.S. had a major hand in crafting the treaty, also known as the “constitution for the oceans,” and continues to benefit from its provisions. The U.S., however, has yet to ratified it.²⁴

Marine National Monuments: Marianas Trench (blue), Pacific Remote Islands (green), Rose Atoll (red), and Papahānaumokuākea (purple). See this map for competing perspectives on marine monuments. (Map by Robert O’Conner, NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office)

Guano Islands and Decolonization

It remains to be seen if Trump’s boundary revisions of monuments created and/or enlarged by other presidents will withstand legal challenge. Of course, the larger legal question in the Pacific is how these island possessions, now national monuments, have remained steadfastly in the hands of the U.S. at all. The process by which the bulk of islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act have been relinquished is instructive. There’s little evidence that the U.S. government has been self-compelled to return them, even when the language of the law makes it clear that the U.S. is in contravention of its own statute.

First, there is an abandonment clause in the Guano Islands Act (found in Title 48 of the United States Code). Chapter 8, section 1419 states there is nothing “obliging the United States to retain possession of the islands, rocks, or keys, after the guano shall have been removed from the same.” According to legal historian C.D. Burnett, “The aim of the Guano Islands Act was simple…[to] supply Americans with affordable guano, nothing more.” ²⁵ Second, as outlined in section 1411, a U.S. citizen can take an island, rock, or key if it is “not occupied by the citizens of any other government.” In 1859, A.G. Benson claimed seven islands known to be inhabited by native populations: Penrhyn, Rierson, Humphrey’s, Danger, Duke of Clarence, Duke of York, and Swains.²⁶

Benson’s claims didn’t meet the legal threshold for possession, but all seven were bonded, certified, and appeared on lists published by the U.S. Treasury Department.²⁷ These claims remained on the books until eventually running aground of international efforts to decolonize the Pacific after World War II. Neither the claimant nor his heirs ever mined those islands, though British workers did.²⁸ Six of the seven were incorporated into British colonies, and one made a part ofAmerican Samoa in 1925.

After World War II, the UN led efforts to create trusteeships that ideally would afford colonized peoples some measure of self-determination and independence.²⁹As a result, U.S.-U.K. claims and counterclaims to guano islands loosened, with some formally surrendered by treaty. Between 1979 and 1980, the U.S. relinquished a total of 21 insular territories claimed under the Guano Islands Act. Fourteen islands were handed over to the independent Republic of Kiribati; three islands to the small island nation of Tokelau, a non-self-governing territory of New Zealand; and four atolls to the Cook Islands, a self-governing nation in free association with New Zealand. The islands and atolls are as follows:

Treaty of Tarawa, Republic of Kiribati (signed 1979, ratified 1983)

• Canton (Kanton)
• Enderbury
• Hull (Orona)
• Birnie
• Gardner (Nikumaroro)
• Phoenix (Rawaki)
• Sydney (Manra)
• McKean
• Christmas (Kiritimati)
• Caroline
• Starbuck
• Malden
• Flint
• Vostok

Cook Islands-United States Maritime Boundary Treaty (signed 1980, ratified 1983)

• Penrhyn (Tongareva)
• Rierson (Rakahanga)
• Humphrey’s (Manihiki)
• Danger (Pukapuka)

Treaty of Tokehega, New Zealand (signed 1980, ratified 1983)

• Duke of Clarence (Nukunonu)
• Duke of York (Atafu)
• Bowditch (Fakaofo)

Islands claimed under the Guano Islands Act that have not been surrendered are often identified on maps as “U.S.A. territory.” But that’s not the nomenclature the U.S. government uses. The United States Code defines “Guano Islands” as “possessions,” not territories.³⁰ It’s an ambiguous term for an ambiguous future. As sea-level rise threatens to overtake low-lying islands and atolls, the international community will be watching to see what measures the U.S. may take in retaining control over its insular possessions and attendant 200 nm exclusive economic zones in the central Pacific Ocean.

Nationhood and EEZs

While the U.S. has flexibility in transforming the EEZ of its island possessions into proving grounds, strategic no-go zones, conservation areas and national monuments, island nations do not. The economies of most island nations are dependent on selling offshore fishing rights within their EEZ.

In the central and western Pacific Ocean, the tuna catch alone is worth $5.8 billion a year. In 2016, island nations and territories merged their estimated 6 million square miles of EEZs to form “the world’s largest tuna fishery bloc,” which helped negotiate the U.S. Tuna Treaty on favorable terms to Pacific nations. Sixteen Island parties signed the treaty, which allows U.S. vessels to fish their waters. By collectively negotiating fees and terms, territories disadvantaged by size, like Tokelau, can be assured yearly payments. Size is one element in the calculus of managing resources. Other considerations include how rich in tuna a given area might be, and what kinds of anchorage and facilities are located nearby. Tokelau has an abundance of tuna but no ports. Neighboring Samoa has ports and a processing plant. By pooling strengths and weaknesses, signatories to the treaty are bolstering one another’s economies.³¹

According to journalist Latif Nasser, the EEZ represents a valuable set of assets less visible than those attached to land. While the loss of land to sea-level rise is troubling, so too is the loss of surrounding waters. It’s a concern that has prompted Nasser and others to ask: “What will become of these gigantic ocean possessions [EEZs] when the tiny patches of land that anchor them disappear or become unlivable? The prospect is an unprecedented puzzle for the international community.”³²

One piece of the puzzle is the legality of artificially modifying an island for the purpose of retaining an EEZ. It may seem complex in light of the vigorous debate over China’s island-building program in the South China Sea, but it’s not. The South China Sea dispute falls within the purview of general international law, not maritime law, because it’s first and foremost a sovereignty dispute (Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all have competing claims to islands located there). A.H.A Soons, a scholar and practitioner of international law, provides a straightforward answer for small island nations who want to modify their emergent land: “Any coastal State (including small island nations) are allowed to artificially maintain/enlarge their islands.”³³

Rate of Rising Seas

Pacific island nations and territories are at different stages of addressing the pressing issues of sea-level rise. Discussions involving retention of EEZs—and the rights and financial security maritime zones confer—represent the long game, and enters into a conceptual realm of “What is nationhood, if a nation no longer exists?” Legitimate answers to questions of this magnitude would require changes in international law, a notoriously slow process. As scientific data on climate change feedbacks demonstrate, island nations and territories need answers now.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts the oceans will rise by between 11 and 38 inches by the end of the century, with the potential to submerge low-lying islands. A report from 2016, written by former NASA scientist James Hansen and 16 co-authors, predicts that without serious mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, global sea level is likely to increase “several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years.”³⁴ If less than one meter of sea-level rise has the potential to cause an island to disappear by 2100, then Hansen’s numbers portend something more urgent. The question, then, is not when will islands be submerged, but when will sea-level rise make life on low-lying islands impossible.

The answer to that question is close at hand for a number of Pacific islands. Sea-level rise increases both the frequency and magnitude of flooding caused by high tides and storms; saltwater intrusion destroys freshwater sources and the prospect of productive agriculture. Writer and filmmaker Jack Niedenthal, who lives in the Marshall Islands, says that on the island of Kili, “there have been huge changes since about 2011.” That was the first year the island was heavily flooded, and he says it’s happened every year since. Kili, which averages an elevation of 6 feet, is home to many displaced families originally from Bikini Atoll.³⁵

The population there, he says, is trying to raise awareness of climate change with the rest of the world, but it’s challenging. “I find it stunning that there are still so many climate change deniers out there. In the Marshall Islands, we are building numerous seawalls, some very large, others are just building them with old tires and broken down cars.”

Future Proofing Islands

One concern discussed in the international community is the importance of delimiting islands before they physically disappear. Under the Law of the Sea Convention, or UNCLOS, the exclusive economic zone is measured seaward from the baseline. The baseline is measured along the coast of emergent land at the low-water mark. Consequently, if sea-level rise alters coastlines or overtakes emergent land permanently, what happens to the baseline? What happens to the corresponding EEZ? And to what extent will island nations retain control over their EEZs if an island is gone and its inhabitants dispersed?

Rosemary Rayfuse, a professor of international law at the University of New South Wales, specializing in maritime law and climate change, recommends island nations “future proof” their EEZs by establishing baselines now. On that front, she says there has been some movement, with “Australia helping some of the South Pacific Island States to rewrite their baselines legislation and delimit their maritime boundaries.”³⁶

A.H.A. Soons has proposed rights for a “disappearing” state, and his paper from 1990 offers ways in which an emigrating population could retain its EEZ, and even use it to advantage in negotiating land on a neighboring island.³⁷ The idea of legal status for disappearing or “deterritorialized” states, says Rayfuse, “is a controversial one that will undoubtedly take many years to gain any traction—if ever.”

If EEZs and other maritime zones disappear along with emergent land, there’s the real possibility those areas could become “high seas.” According to the Law of the Sea Convention, high seas is defined as “the seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction” and considered “the common heritage of mankind.” In other words, it means areas of the ocean where both living and nonliving resources are fair game.³⁸

Freedom and Fear in the High Seas

At a climate change symposium in 2015, Fiji’s Foreign Affairs secretary Esala Nayasi explained the dilemma of Islanders succinctly: “These are people who are on the verge of losing their land that they call home, losing their critical basic necessities and infrastructure, culture, identity and traditional knowledge. This is no longer a news story, it is happening now.”

Nayasi’s sense of urgency is reflected in policy. Among nations, the Republic of Fiji is in the vanguard of relocation efforts. In 2014, the government’s climate change program assisted the village of Vunidogolo in moving to higher ground and provided the means for economic transition. The new village includes “30 houses, fish ponds and copra drier, farms and other projects.” There are 34 more villages slated for relocation within in its territory.³⁹ Because Fiji is a combination of high and low islands, it’s geographically advantaged (though not immune to climate disruption). For other nations such as Tuvalu, comprised of nine coral atolls with a mean elevation of 2 meters, all choices look the same.

The Republic of Fiji has both high and low islands. None of Fiji’s islands are impervious to the effects of climate change, such as increasingly destructive storms, higher rates of disease, and saltwater intrusion of farmland. (Image by NASA/Aqua-MODIS)

Options for relocation are limited in other ways, such as the exclusion of “climate change refugees” from the 1951 Refugee Convention. Under the convention, there are five grounds to qualify for refugee status and fleeing the catastrophic conditions caused by climate change is not one of them. It hasn’t stopped legal challenge in several recent cases in New Zealand. Asylum-seeker Ioane Teitiota from Kiribati lost his case, and was deported in 2015. Sigeo Alesana from Tuvalu had his asylum application declined, but he won his immigration case based partially on the “vulnerability of the couple’s children to illnesses as a result of poor water quality.” According to Radio New Zealand, it’s the first time climate change has been successfully used in an immigration case.⁴⁰

Perhaps the biggest legal stride in New Zealand is Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s recent announcement of plans for a special refugee visa for Pacific Islanders, starting with 100 places annually. “We are anchored in the Pacific,” Ardern told reporters. “Surrounding us are a number of nations, not least ourselves, who will be dramatically impacted by the effects of climate change. I see it as a personal and national responsibility to do our part.”⁴¹

Conclusions

Large nations with continental landmass are not immune to what worries small island nations and territories. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “As the planet heats up, seas are now rising at an accelerating rate—especially along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico.” Investing in million-dollar seawalls—here or there—will not be enough; an even larger investment is needed. An investment that requires industrialized nations to do what is scientifically, technically and financially possible to mitigate the causes of sea-level rise, while also assisting in building a legal framework that provides peace of mind for Pacific Islanders. Currently the onus to adapt is on island nations. It is a suggestion disproportionally unjust. It is unjust not only since the “Pacific islands region as a whole accounts for 0.03% of the global emissions of CO₂ despite having approximately 0.12% of the world’s population,”⁴² but because a significant part of the problem is that global warming is precipitated by the rich and powerful countries and the islands are among the poorest and least equipped places in the world to cope with the challenges of rising waters.

The U.S. Minor Outlying Islands—Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island—will suffer the same fate as neighboring islands with similar elevations. The loss of U.S. islands, however, will not be as traumatic. Four are uninhabited and three have a fluctuating population of 40 or less, made up of U.S. Fish and Wildlife staff and scientists. Wake Island, the most populous, has 100 U.S. military service members and contractors on premises. Under U.S. stewardship, none of these insular possessions, or other guano islands, has ever had an enduring human legacy tied with place beyond transient plantation or military culture.⁴³

Data provided by U.S. Air Force and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2017)

The U.S. government, with the exception of the Pentagon, is in official denial concerning a major cause of climate disruption: the unabated burning of fossil fuels.⁴⁴ The current administration has no interest in reducing CO₂ emissions or admitting the country’s hand in environmental catastrophe. What will be of interest to U.S. policymakers when the low-lying islands and atolls in the Pacific Ocean begin to disappear is likely to center on the retention of EEZs and other maritime entitlements associated with U.S. insular possessions. If there is to be any U.S. involvement in “adaptation” in this part of the world, preserving these zones is high on the list; Pacific island nations and territories should be included in those efforts. Subsequent to resource depletion, war, nuclear testing and contamination, engagement with the Pacific Ocean ultimately means taking care of the people who live there.

*

Laray Polk is an American writer and artist. In 2013, she co-authored a book with Noam Chomsky, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe (Seven Stories Press). The title has been translated into Spanish, French, Turkish, and Japanese. She can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

¹“United States Minor Outlying Islands” is the international designation (ISO 3166). The United States Code (48 U.S.C. sec. 1411) defines the islands as insular possessions “appertaining to the United States.”

²Calculations based on data from Marine Regions.

³CIA World Factbook.

⁴The act is at 48 U.S.C. sec. 1411-19.

⁵For a discussion of guano’s importance to 19th-century agriculture, see Richard A. Wines, Fertilizer in America: From Waste Recycling to Resource Exploitation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985).

⁶The actual number of islands resolves to 36 when duplicate claims and nonexistent islands are factored in. See “Places Claimed and/or Acquired under the U.S. Guano Islands Act,” in Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Oversees Expansion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 230-236.

⁷Ibid., 159. For a firsthand perspective of a guano laborer, see the letters of J.M. Kailiopio in Gregory Rosenthal, “Life and Labor in a Seabird Colony: Hawaiian Guano Workers, 1857-70,” Environmental History 17 (October 2012): 744-782.

⁸Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 82.

⁹E. Behm, “Das Amerikanische Polynesien und die politischen Verhältnisse in den übrigen Theilen des Grossen Oceans im J. 1859,” Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 5 (1859): 173-194.

¹⁰Two islands claimed by both countries, Canton and Enderbury, were shared from 1939 to 1979 under an agreement called the Anglo & American Consortium. Both islands were relinquished when Kiribati declared independence from the U.K. and the U.S. signed the Treaty of Tarawa.

¹¹See U.S.S. Narragansett visit to Christmas Island in Edwin H. Bryan, American Polynesia and the Hawaiian Chain, rev. and enl. ed. (Honolulu: Tongg Pub. Co., 1942), 139. Cf. to Benson ‘s Lobos Islands incident in Great Guano Rush, 21-32.

¹²Laray Polk, “Lucky Dragon,” CounterPunch, April 5, 2007.

¹³Nic Maclellan, Grappling with the Bomb: Britain’s Pacific H-Bomb Tests (Canberra: ANU Press, 2017), 36.

¹⁴American Polynesia, 140.

¹⁵For a complete history of this alliance see “The President—John F. Kennedy,” Grappling with the Bomb, 267-279.

¹⁶Ibid., 242.

¹⁷For residual problems with a similar treaty, the Treaty of Tokehega, see Gilbert Wong, “Swains Island Paradise Lost?” New Zealand Herald, November 10, 1990.

¹⁸Calculation based on the 1923 Tanager Expedition survey (41.32 acres), reproduced in American Polynesia, and median measurements from 2017 satellite imagery (662.59 acres).

¹⁹Katharine Q. Seelye, “Radioactive Dump on Pacific Wildlife Refuge Raises Liability Concerns,” New York Times, January 27, 2003.

²⁰Jan TenBruggencate, “Army Completes Chemical Weapons Mission at Johnston,” The Honolulu Advertiser, April 11 2001; Jon Mitchell, “25,000 barrels of Agent Orange Kept on Okinawa, U.S. Army Document Says,” The Japan Times, August 7, 2012.

²¹For further complexity of the issue, see Fili Sagapolutele, “Gov. Lolo’s Letter to DOI Cites Trump’s ‘America First’ Policy as Hope for Our Tuna Industry,” Samoa News, July 17, 2017.

²²According to some sources Midway Islands (Middlebrook Islands and Shoal) weren’t claimed under the Guano Islands Act. A summary of an expedition by Capt. Brooks, printed in the Polynesian, August 13, 1859, presents evidence to the contrary: “As an extensive deposit of guano was found on one of the islands, possession was taken of the group and notices left to that effect.” The Navy took formal possession of Midway on August 28, 1867.

²³Juliet Eilperin, “Zinke Backs Shrinking More National Monuments and Shifting Management of 10,” Washington Post, December 5, 2017. See also Christopher Pala, “Loss of Federal Protections May Imperil Pacific Reefs, Scientists Warn,” New York Times, October 30, 2017.

²⁴For obstacles to ratification, see Roncevert Almond, “U.S. Accession to the Law of the Sea Convention? A Challengefor America’s Global Leadership,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 15, vol.13, no.2 (July 2017): 1-11.

²⁵C.D. Burnett, “The Edges of Empire and the Limits of Sovereignty: American Guano Islands.” American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2005): 780.

²⁶In 1862, chemist J.D. Hague recorded six of the seven as inhabited by native populations in his article, “On Phosphatic Islands of the Pacific Ocean,” Am. Journ. Sci., 2nd ser., vol. 34, no.101 (September 1862): 224-243.

²⁷U.S. State Department, Office of the Legal Advisor, “The Sovereignty of Guano Islands in Pacific Ocean,” vol. 3, ed. E.S. Rogers and Frederic A. Fisher (Washington, D.C., 1933): 570-976. Available online from the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library.

²⁸The British didn’t have a legal prohibition on mining inhabited islands, much to the detriment of Nauru and Ocean(Banaba) Islands. See Great Guano Rush, 137.

²⁹The South Pacific Commission, now the Pacific Community, may have been more influential in post-war planning because it brought together Islanders “who accelerated regionalism’s emergence.” See Steven R. Fischer, The History of the Pacific Islands, 2nd rev. ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2013), 221.

³⁰Other territories defined as U.S. possessions include the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. See 10 U.S.C. sec.101 and 37 U.S.C. sec. 101.

³¹Lealaiauloto Aigaletaulealea Tauafiafi, “Pacific Celebrate U.S. Tuna Treaty Renewal: Why, How Much, and Who are the Winners?” Pacific Guardians, June 12, 2016; “Tokelau’s Tuna Success—Testament to Pacific Solidarity’s Multimillion Dollar Effect,” Pacific Guardians, August 12, 2016.

³²Latif Nasser, “When Island Nations Drown, Who Owns Their Seas?” Boston Globe, October 19, 2014.

³³Soons, email comm., December 28, 2017. For discussion of what constitutes an island or a rock under UNCLOS, see T.Y. Wang, “Japan is Building Tiny Islands in the Philippine Sea,” Washington Post, May 20, 2016.

³⁴James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Paul Hearty, Reto Ruedy, Maxwell Kelley, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, et al., “Ice Melt, Sea-Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that 2 °C Global Warming Could be Dangerous,” Atmos. Chem. Phys. 16, (March 2016): 3762. 

³⁵For more on the plight of Bikini Islanders, listen to Jack Niedenthal’s interview with Koro Vaka’uta, Radio New Zealand, March 26, 2015; and his interview with Jenny Meyer, Radio New Zealand, August 7, 2015.

³⁶Rayfuse, email comm., May 7, 2017.

³⁷ A.H.A. Soons, “The Effects of a Rising Sea Level on Maritime Limits and Boundaries,” Netherlands Intl. Law Review 37 (1990): 230.

³⁸Law of the Sea Convention, Part VII, Sec. 1, Art. 87.

³⁹Fiji presided over the UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) held in Bonn, Germany in 2017. Serafina Silaitoga, “Villagers to Move into New Homes,” The Fiji Times, January 15, 2014.

⁴⁰“Climate Change Part of Refuge Ruling,”Radio New Zealand, August 4, 2014. To read more about Alesana and his family, see Anke Richter, “Hell and High Water: When Climate Change Comes Lapping at Your Door,” North & South, June 2017 (posted online here).

⁴¹Jonathan Perlman, “NZ Plans Special Visa for Climate Refugees,” The Straits Times, December 11, 2017.

⁴²Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation And Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. J. J. McCarthy, O. F. Canziani, N. A. Leary, D. J. Dokken, and K. S. White (UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 867.

⁴³Archaeological evidence suggests these islands were of significant cultural use by Polynesian long-distance voyagers. Bryan’s American Polynesia describes ruins and objects associated with individual islands: Howland (paths, pits); Washington (ruins, stone work, canoe); Fanning (ruins, adzes, fishhook); Christmas (ruins); Malden (platforms, grave, house sites); Caroline (graves, adzes, temple platform, marae); Nassua (shell adzes, pearl-shell breast ornaments); Hull (ruins); Phoenix (ruins); and Sydney (ruins).

⁴⁴Christian Parenti, “Military Soothsayers,” Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), 13-20.

Featured image: President Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York on Sept. 18, 2017. (Screenshot from Whitehouse.gov)

With the Trump and Netanyahu administrations now working in lockstep, U.S.-Israeli hostility towards Iran has now ripened into a plan to repeat what befell Syria over six years ago – the hijacking of minor protests and their transformation into the cover for a foreign-funded insurgency intent on toppling Iran’s elected government.

*

Using the recent protests as cover, the governments of the United States and Israel are advancing a much larger plan for covert regime change against the Iranian government, one born out of the “secret deal” negotiated and signed between the two countries right before the widely covered but relatively small protests in Iran began in late December.

That deal, negotiated between National Security Adviser and neocon darling H.R. McMaster and his Israeli counterpart Meir Ben-Shabbat, secured the full cooperation of the Trump and Netanyahu administrations in targeting Iran’s “threatening activities” through a series of “memorandums of understanding.” As the Times of Israel reported, such cooperation is ultimately expected to translate into “steps on the ground” — a vague way of implying that aggressive actions will soon target Iran, including potential military action.

Yet, since the agreement was announced in the press, the evidence seems to point to the development of a more covert operation that is set to begin with the assassination of a top Iranian general.

Reviving a once-thwarted assassination plan

In this Sept. 18, 2016 file photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, center, attends a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Revolutionary Guard commanders in Tehran, Iran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is warning Islamic State militants that missile attacks launched into eastern Syria the previous day can be repeated if the extremists take action against Iran’s security. (Source: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader)

On Monday, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that an “American-Israeli agreement” had been forged that determined that Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force active in fighting the Wahhabist insurgency in Syria, is a “threat to the two countries’ interests in the region.” This understanding subsequently resulted in the U.S. government giving Israel the “green light” to assassinate Soleimani, a plan Israel had unsuccessfully attempted to carry out three years earlier. The Obama administration had thwarted that operation, when Israel was allegedly “on the verge” of killing Soleimani near Damascus, by warning the Iranian government of the plan.

However, the U.S.’ failure to enact regime change in Syria – a close ally of Iran – and the Trump administration’s close relationship with Israel have apparently led the U.S. government to openly voice its support for Israel to assassinate a top general of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a move that would likely embroil Iran and Israel – and perhaps the rest of the Middle East – in war.

Make no mistake: This. Will. Start. A. War.

-and sadly, that's exactly what both, Trump and Netanyahu are aiming at. #IranProtestshttps://t.co/63C5ukzFLB

— Amir (@AmirAminiMD) January 2, 2018

Indeed, Soleimani’s force in Syria has been instrumental in aiding the Syrian government in eliminating the largely foreign-funded Wahhabist insurgency that was intended to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power, a key strategic goal of both the U.S. and Israel in the region.

Furthermore — with the disintegration of Daesh (ISIS) in Syria and, along with it, the disintegration of the U.S.-led coalition’s excuse for its illegal presence in Syria — Soleimani delivered a forceful message to the U.S. forces stationed in Northwest Syria. In that message, delivered to the U.S. via the Russian military, Soleimani warned the U.S. military command in Syria that it best remove all U.S. forces currently present in Syria “or the doors of hell will open up,” adding that “I advise you leave by your own will or you will be forced to.”

Russia later echoed Soleimani, albeit less forcefully, by advising that U.S. forces vacate Syria, as the terrorist threat has been largely eliminated and the U.S.’ continued presence in the country would be in violation of the Syrian government’s sovereignty.

However, the U.S. has made it clear that it has no plans to leave Syria anytime soon. Last Friday, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis insisted that the “war is not over” in Syria or Iraq, as much works remain to be done to prevent a potential resurgence of Daesh. Mattis’ words came just days after reports surfaced alleging that U.S. forces in Northwestern Syria are retraining Daesh fighters from areas “liberated” by U.S. proxy forces.

The endgame of this U.S. operation is likely the exportation of insurgents from Northwestern Syria through Iraqi Kurdistan, where U.S. forces are still present, and into eastern Iran where the fomentation of an armed insurgency will be used to destabilize and hijack the protests currently taking place in Iran. Most of the recent growth in reported unrest has been concentrated in eastern Iran.

In order for such a program to achieve its goal, the U.S. must be able to continue illegally occupying northwestern Syria. With Soleimani out of the picture and the Quds Force in Syria thus weakened, that occupation would be significantly easier to prolong.

Building blocks of regime-change insurgency: sanctions, protests, “peaceful” uprising

While a U.S.-Israeli plan to create a terrorist pipeline from Syria to Iran has yet to be definitively established, regime-change plans specifically targeting Iran have included such strategies for toppling the Iranian government. For instance, the Brookings Institution — a prominent, hawkish U.S. think tank — published a manual in 2009 titled “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran.” The manual, divided into four parts, includes an entire section devoted to enacting regime change. This section includes three chapters, the first two of which focus on “supporting a popular uprising” and “inspiring an insurgency” by “supporting Iranian minority and opposition groups.”

When the protests against the neoliberal economic policies of the Rouhani-led government began just days ago, the U.S. and Israeli political establishments — and their supporters — quickly took advantage of the situation. Though the protests have been small in size, intentional misreporting from the corporate media and on social media has sought to combine these protests with regime-change aspirations while also exaggerating their size.

Both neocons and their liberal counterparts have posted publicly their support for the protests, claiming to support the Iranian people despite their past support for the sanctions that damaged Iran’s economy – the very factor that allegedly inspired the protests in the first place.

In the first 24 Hours of #IranianProtests ,
72,200 tweeted w/ this hashtag " #تظاهرات_سراسرى "
that invited Iranian to protest ,
-74% of them were from out of #Iran
-35% of them were in Arabic Language
-Saudis tweets 27% were more than Iranians 25%
-UK in 3rd place at 7% pic.twitter.com/NZtMn7n9qN

— Goudarz Eghtedari (@goudarz) December 31, 2017

The Iranian people, especially the young, are protesting for the freedom and future they deserve. I hope their government responds peacefully and supports their hopes.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 31, 2017

Though the plan to support a popular uprising depended on the organic emergence of some unrest, however minimal, within Iran, the plan to inspire an insurgency requires more careful preparation. Given the establishment of a new CIA “mission center” focused on “turning up the heat” in Iran last June — which has sought to make Iran “a higher priority target for American spies” — along with the U.S. operation in Syria, the groundwork for such an insurgency has now been laid.

Of particular concern is the fact that the CIA officer in charge of the center is Michael D’Andrea, a Wahhabist who has overseen the agency’s drone bombing program and was a key player in the CIA’s torture program. According to Moon of Alabama, he is believed to be the mastermind behind U.S. cooperation with extreme Wahhabi groups in Libya, Iraq and Syria.

In addition, Israel has openly worked with terrorist groups active in Iran in the past, namely the Jundallah terrorist group that Israeli Mossad hired to kill nuclear experts in Iran and for other tasks in its covert war against the Islamic Republic.

Arming the uprising

As the protests in Iran have unfolded, the increase in violent incidents suggests that U.S.-Israeli support for both a popular uprising and their support for a budding insurgency have merged and are taking place simultaneously. For instance, there has been a precipitous rise in the number of “armed protesters” since the ostensibly “peaceful” protests began, including a group of armed individuals that attempted to overtake government buildings and military bases.

Others have killed police and participated in the wanton destruction of property. Others still have shot innocent bystanders, who were then threatened into saying that the police had been the shooters. Eyewitness reports have claimed that many of the more violent protesters are “non-native” (i.e., foreign).

#Iran This is how they did it in #Daraa, #Syria, attacking police. See my video on it. https://t.co/nwDWwRTGU4 https://t.co/drL9kSyEZC

— Kurt Nimmo (@kurt_nimmo) January 2, 2018

#IranianProtest #IranProtests #IranianProtests #IranProtests2017 #Iranprotesters
Iran #AryanSpringhttps://t.co/dUOxPz3hqg

— Nardeep Pujji (@AWAKEALERT) January 2, 2018

However, the most telling evidence has been the emergence of terrorist activity in eastern Iran. As the protests were beginning, a Sunni jihadist group known as Ansar al-Furqan exploded an Iranian oil pipeline in the Khuzestan province. The group — which, according to the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium, has ties to al-Nusra Front in Syria — claimed that it carried out the attack in order to “inflict losses on the economy of the criminal Iranian regime.”

Both the U.S. and Israel have close ties to al-Nusra Front in Syria. The U.S., for its part, funneled weapons to al-Nusra by continuing weapons shipments to Syrian opposition groups in Idlib even as they declared allegiance to al-Nusra en masse, and even took al-Nusra Front off the terror watch list after it changed its name. An al-Nusra Front commander also infamously claimed in 2016 that “the Americans are on our side.” Meanwhile, Israel’s long-standing commitment to aiding and funding the terrorist group, while also treating their wounded, has been an open secret for years.

In addition, the terrorist group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, popularly known as MEK in the West, has been active in the current protests as well. Despite its record of killing innocent civilians, Western media has cited MEK spokespeople and members in its reporting on the protests as “proof” that the Iranian people are calling for regime change, while ignoring the massive pro-government rallies that have coincided with the protests. Little mention has been made of the fact the MEK fighters have been trained by the U.S. military in the past and share connections with Israeli Mossad.

Conclusion: with Syria plan in tatters, U.S. and Israel roll it out again for Iran

The hostility of the U.S. and Israel towards Iran is well known. Yet, with the Trump and Netanyahu administrations now working in lockstep, that hostility has now ripened into a plan to repeat what befell Syria over six years ago – the hijacking of minor protests and their transformation into the cover for a foreign-funded insurgency intent on toppling the elected government of Iran.

Whether or not such an effort will be successful is yet to be seen. However, it’s unlikely that either Israel or the United States will be willing to accept another failure like their venture in Syria, lest they be forced to give up on their regional ambitions entirely.

This is the second in a two-part article on the debt burden America’s students face. Read Part 1 here.

The lending business is heavily stacked against student borrowers. Bigger players can borrow for almost nothing, and if their investments don’t work out, they can put their corporate shells through bankruptcy and walk away. Not so with students. Their loan rates are high and if they cannot pay, their debts are not normally dischargeable in bankruptcy. Rather, the debts compound and can dog them for life, compromising not only their own futures but the economy itself.

“Students should not be asked to pay more on their debt than they can afford,” said Donald Trump on the presidential campaign trail in October 2016. “And the debt should not be an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives.”

But as Matt Taibbi points out in a December 15 article, a number of proposed federal changes will make it harder, not easier, for students to escape their debts, including wiping out some existing income-based repayment plans, harsher terms for graduate student loans, ending a program to cancel the debt of students defrauded by ripoff diploma mills, and strengthening “loan rehabilitation” – the recycling of defaulted loans into new, much larger loans on which the borrower usually winds up paying only interest and never touching the principal. The agents arranging these loans can get fat commissions of up to 16 percent, an example of the perverse incentives created in the lucrative student loan market. Servicers often profit more when borrowers default than when they pay smaller amounts over a longer time, so they have an incentive to encourage delinquencies, pushing students into default rather than rescheduling their loans. It has been estimated that the government spends $38 for every $1 it recovers from defaulted debt. The other $37 goes to the debt collectors.

The securitization of student debt has compounded these problems. Like mortgages, student loans have been pooled and packaged into new financial products that are sold as student loan asset-backed securities (SLABS). Although a 2010 bill largely eliminated private banks and lenders from the federal student loan business, the “student loan industrial complex” has created a $200 billion market that allows banks to cash in on student loans without issuing them. About 80 percent of SLABS are government-guaranteed. Banks can sell, trade or bet on these securities, just as they did with mortgage-backed securities; and they create the same sort of twisted incentives for loan servicing that occurred with mortgages.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), virtually all borrowers with federal student loans are currently eligible to make monthly payments indexed to their earnings. That means there should be no defaults among student borrowers. Yet one in four borrowers is now in default or struggling to stay current. Why? Student borrowers are reporting widespread mishandling of accounts, unexplained exorbitant fees, and outright deception as they are bullied into default, tactics similar to those that homeowners faced in the foreclosure crisis. The reports reveal a repeat of the abuses of the foreclosure fraud era: many borrowers are unable to obtain basic information about their accounts, are frequently misled, are surprised with unexpected late fees, and often are pushed into default. Servicers lose paperwork or misapply payments. When errors arise, borrowers find it difficult to have them corrected.

Abuses and fraud in handling student loans have brought the Education Department’s loan contractors under fire. In January 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Navient, one of the largest contractors, alleging that the company “systematically and illegally [failed] borrowers at every stage of [student loan] repayment.”

Getting a Fair Deal

The federal government could relieve these debt burdens, given the political will. A stated goal of the changes being proposed by the Trump Administration is to simplify the rules. The simplest solution to the student debt crisis is to make tuition free for qualified applicants at public colleges and universities, as it is in many European countries and was in some US states until the 1970s. If the federal government has the money to lend to students, it has the money to spend on their tuition (capped to curb tuition hikes). It would not only save on defaults and collections but could turn a profit on the investment, as demonstrated by the seven-fold return from the G.I. Bill. (See Part 1 of this article.)

Alternatively, the government could fund tuition costs and debtor relief with a form of “QE for the people.” Instead of buying mortgage-backed securities, as in QE1, the Fed could buy SLABS and return the interest to students, making the loans effectively interest-free (as were the $16+ trillion in loans made to the largest banks after the 2008 crisis). QE that targeted the real economy could address many other budget issues as well, including the infrastructure crisis and the federal debt crisis; and this could be done without triggering hyperinflation. See my earlier articles here, here and here.

Needless to say, however, the government is not moving in that direction. While waiting for the government to act, there are things students can do; but first they need to learn their rights. According to a new survey reported in November 2017, students are often in the dark about key details of their student loan debt and the repayment options available to them. To get started, see here and here.

Under the Borrower’s Defense to Repayment program, you can get your loans completely discharged if you can prove they were based on deception or fraud. That is one of the alternatives the Administration wants to take away, so haste is advised; but even if it is taken away, fraud remains legal grounds for contract rescission. A class action for treble damages against offending institutions could provide significant financial relief.

Students also have greater bankruptcy options than they know. While current bankruptcy law exempts education loans and obligations from eligibility for discharge, an exception is made for “undue hardship.” The test normally used is that paying the loan will prevent the borrower from sustaining a minimum standard of living, his financial situation is unlikely to change in the future, and he has made a good faith effort to pay his loans. According to a 2011 study, at least 40 percent of borrowers who included their student loans in their bankruptcy filings got some or all of their student debt discharged. But because they think there is no chance, they rarely try. Only about 0.1 percent of consumers with student loans attempted to include them in their bankruptcy proceedings. (Getting a knowledgeable attorney is advised.)

For relief as a class, students need to get the attention of legislators, which means getting organized. Along with degree mill fraud and contract fraud, a cause of action ripe for a class action is the student exclusion from bankruptcy protection, a blatant violation of the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If enough students filed for bankruptcy under the “undue hardship” exception, just the administrative burden might motivate legislators to change the law.

States to the Rescue?

If the federal government won’t act and individual action seems too daunting, however, there is a third possibility for relief – state-owned banks that cut out private middlemen and recycle local money for local purposes at substantially reduced rates. The country’s sole model at the moment is the Bank of North Dakota, but other states now have strong public banking movements that could mimic it. A November 2014 article in the Wall Street Journal reported that the BND was more profitable even than J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The profits are used to improve education and public services.

According to its 2016 annual report, the BND’s second largest loan category after business loans is for education, with nearly a third of its portfolio going to student loans. As of December 2017, the BND’s student loan rates were 2.82% variable and 4.78% fixed, or about 2% below the federal rate (which ranged from 4.45% to 7% depending on the type of loan), and about 5% below the private rate (currently averaging 9.66% fixed and 7.81% variable interest). The BND also acts as the servicer of these loans, bypassing the third-party servicers abusing the system in other states.

In 2014, the BND launched its DEAL One Loan program, which offered North Dakota residents a unique option to refinance all student loans, including federal, into one loan with a lower interest rate and without fees. DEAL loans are fully guaranteed by the North Dakota Guaranteed Student Loan Program, which is administered by the BND.

The BND also makes 20-year school construction loans available at a very modest 2% interest. Compare that to the Capital Appreciation Bonds through which many California schools have been forced to borrow to build needed infrastructure, on which they have wound up owing as much as 15 times principal.

The BND’s loan programs have helped keep North Dakota’s student default rates and overall student indebtedness low. As of January 2017, the state had the second lowest student default rate in the country and was near the bottom of the list in student indebtedness, ranking 44^th. Compare that to its sister state South Dakota, which ranked number one in student indebtedness.

The public banking movement is now gaining ground in cities and states across the country. A number of cities have passed resolutions to pull their money out of Wall Street banks that practice fraud as a business model. In New Jersey, Governor-elect Phil Murphy has made a state-owned bank the funding basis of his platform, with student loans one of three sectors he intends to focus on. If that succeeds, other states can be expected to follow suit.

We need to free our students from the system of debt slavery that has financialized education, turning it from an investment in human capital into a tool for exploiting the young for the benefit of private investors. State-owned banks can make the loan process fair, equitable and affordable; but their creation will be fought by big bank lobbyists. An organized student movement could be an effective counter-lobby. Historically, debt and austerity have been used as control mechanisms for subduing the people. It is time for the people to unite and take back their power.

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Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including Web of Debt and The Public Bank Solution. A thirteenth book titled The Coming Revolution in Banking is due out soon. Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

An earlier version of this article was first published on Truthdig.org.

Featured image is from Joe Brusky / CC BY-NC 2.0.

Pakistan’s announcement that it will seek the expulsion of over 1.5 million Afghan refugees in the next 30 days is being tacitly justified by Trump’s tweet and channels his zero-tolerance stance towards immigration from “terrorist”-prone states, but it also represents the employment of reverse-“Weapons of Mass Migration” in pushing Kabul closer towards the edge of collapse and consequently filling the Taliban’s rank of supporters.

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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!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018

Trump is going to soon regret what he tweeted about Pakistan on New Year’s Day in accusing it of “giving safe haven to terrorists”, since Islamabad is poised to hit Washington with an asymmetrical counterpunch that it surely won’t forget.

The Pakistani government just announced that over 1.5 million Afghan refugees must leave the country within the next 30 days, a plan that it’s been working on for a while but which just received a fresh impetus and internationally-acceptable justification with Trump’s tweet.

Had it not been for the American President’s zero-tolerance towards immigration from what his administration labels as “terrorist”-prone countries, which crucially includes Afghanistan for substantial and not political reasons (as the latter relates to Iran’s inclusion and Saudi Arabia’s exclusion), then Pakistan would have risked drawing heavy pressure from the State Department on exaggerated claims that it’s “violating the human rights” of the refugees.

Trump, however, said that Pakistan was “giving safe haven to terrorists”, and since the US formally regards Afghan refugees as being too much of a potential security hazard to allow into its own country, it’s forced to accept Pakistan’s expulsion of 1.5 million of them on the implicit basis that they also constitute a serious terrorist threat to the state such as the one that the President just tweeted about.

This isn’t at all what Trump meant when he issued his tweet, nor the reaction that he was expecting, but by cleverly exploiting the President’s own policies at home and the suggestion he was making towards Pakistan abroad, Islamabad found a creative way to asymmetrically strike back at Washington.

Not only could Pakistan soon rid itself of actual terrorist sleeper cells and societal malcontents who have long overstayed their welcome in the neighboring country, it will also be catalyzing a series of cascading crises for Kabul through the employment of what can be described as reverse-“Weapons of Mass Migration”.

To briefly explain, Ivy League researcher Kelly M. Greenhill introduced the concept of “Weapons of Mass Migration” in 2010 to describe the ways through which large-scale population movements — whether “naturally occurring”, engineered, or exploited — impact on their origin, transit, and destination societies, theorizing that this phenomenon can have a strategic use in some instances.

Of relevance, the influx of millions of Afghan “Weapons of Mass Migration” into Pakistan since 1979 had the effect of destabilizing the host country’s border communities and eventually contributing to the spree of terrorist attacks that have since claimed over 60,000 lives in the past 15 years, but now the large-scale and rapid return of these “weapons” to their country of origin will also inevitably destabilize Afghanistan.

The landlocked and war-torn country is utterly unable to accommodate for what amounts to a roughly 3% increase in its total population in the next 30 days, especially seeing as how the Kabul government exerts little influence beyond the capital and has no sway in the approximate half of the country that’s under the control of the Taliban.

The US-backed Afghan government is already failing its citizens as it is and that’s why so many of them have either joined the Taliban or sympathize with it in the first place, so the odds of the returned refugees successfully reintegrating into their homeland’s socio-economic fabric and becoming “model citizens” is close to nil, meaning that it should be expected that the vast majority of these 1,5 million people will more than likely come to side with the Taliban than Kabul and consequently make the country much more difficult for the US to control.

In essence, what Pakistan has done is throw Trump’s tweet right back at him by using it as the internationally plausible pretext for initiating this long-planned move that was originally predicated on solely apolitical security-centric domestic interests but has now pertinently come to embody geostrategic contours by powerfully turning the tables against the US in Afghanistan through the employment of reverse-“Weapons of Mass Migration”.

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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.

On December 18, 2017, The Guardian issued a shoddily-penned hatchet piece against British journalist Vanessa Beeley, Patrick Henningsen and his independent website 21^st Century Wire, Australian professor and author Tim Anderson, and myself.

Judging by the scathing comments on The Guardian’s Facebook post, the general public didn’t buy it either. The Guardian, like Channel 4 News and Snopes, whitewashes terrorism in Syria, employs non-sequitur arguments, promotes war propaganda, and simply gets the facts wrong: 

As the purported theme of The Guardian‘s story was the issue of rescuers in Syria, I’ll begin by talking about actual rescuers I know and worked with, in hellish circumstances in Gaza.

In 2008/9, I volunteered with Palestinian medics under 22 days of relentless, indiscriminate, Israeli war plane and Apache helicopter bombings, shelling from the sea and tanks, and drone strikes. The loss of life and casualties were immense, with over 1,400 Palestinians murdered, and thousands more maimed, the vast majority civilians. Using run-down, bare-bones equipment (as actual rescuers in Syria do), Palestinian medics worked tirelessly day and night to rescue civilians.

There was not a single occasion in which I ever heard the medics (in Sunni Gaza) shout takbeeror Allahu Akbar upon rescuing civilians, much less intentionally stood on dead bodies, posed in staged videos, or any of the other revolting acts that the White Helmets have been filmed doing in Syria. They were too damn busy rescuing or evacuating the areas before another Israeli strike, and usually maintained a focused silence as they worked, communicating only the necessities. The only occasion I recall of screaming while with the medics, were the screams of civilians we collected and in particular the anguished shrieks of a husband helping to put the body parts of his dismembered wife onto a stretcher to be taken to the morgue. The medics I knew in Gaza were true heroes. The White Helmets, not a chance. They are gross caricatures of rescuers.

A White Helmets member. “Unnarmed and neutral”?

Reply to The Guardian 

In October, a San Francisco-based tech (and sometimes fashion) Guardian writer named Olivia Solon (visibly with no understanding of Middle East geopolitics) emailed myself and Beeley with nearly identical questions filled with implicit assumptions for a Guardian “story” we were to be imminently featured in. My own correspondence with The Guardian’s Olivia Solon is as follows:

In brief, I’ll address Solon’s emails, including some of her most loaded questions:

-Who is the “we”, Solon mentions? Her mention of “we” indicates this story isn’t her own bright idea, nor independently researched and penned. Parts of the article—including the title and elements I’ll outline later in my article—seem to be lifted from others’ previous articles, but that’s copy-paste journalism for you.

-It isn’t just that I believe the mainstream media narrative about the White Helmets is wrong; this narrative has been redundantly-exposed over the years. In September 2014, Canadian independent journalist Cory Morningstar investigated hidden hands behind flashy PR around the White Helmets. In April 2015, American independent journalist Rick Sterling revealed that the White Helmets had been founded by Western powers and managed by a British ex-soldier, and noted the “rescuers” role in calling for Western intervention—a No Fly Zone on Syria. (more on these articles below). This was months before Russian media began to write about the White Helmets.

Since then, Vanessa Beeley has done the vast amount of research in greater detail, doing on-the-ground investigations in Syria, including: taking the testimonies of Syrian civilians who had (often brutal) experiences with the White Helmets; establishing that the Syrian Civil Defense exists and has existed since 1953, but are not the White Helmets—which has misappropriated this name; establishing that the international body, the International Civil Defence organisation in Geneva, does not recognize the White Helmets as the Syrian Civil Defence; establishing that men now White Helmets members looted vehicles and equipment from the Syrian Civil Defence in Aleppo—and belongings from civilians; and establishing that White Helmets shared a building in Bab Al Nairab, eastern Aleppo with al-Qaeda and were present as al-Qaeda tortured civilians, among other points.

It is hard to believe that in the span of the two months between her contacting Beeley and myself that Solon, in her certainly deep investigations, has not seen this video, clearly showing uniformed White Helmets members with supporters of Saudi terrorist, Abdullah Muhaysini. Not quite “neutral” rescuers. But then, perhaps she did. She was willing to write off the presence of White Helmets members at execution scenes, standing on dead Syrian soldiers, and holding weapons, as a few bad apples sort of thing.

-As to The Guardian’s interest in my “relationship” to the Syrian government: No, I have not received payment, gifts or other from any government. To the contrary, I’ve poured my own money into going to Syria (and have fund-raised, and also routinely received Paypal donations or support on Patreon by individuals who appreciate my work). See my article on this matter.

As to how my visits to Syria and North Korea came about, this is another transparent attempt to imply that I am on the payroll of/receive other benefits from one or more of the governments in question.

One of The Guardian’s questions in the emails was regarding my following: “That you attract a large online audience, amplified by high-profile right-wing personalities and appearances on Russian state TV.” (emphasis added)

What following I do have began exactly one year ago, after I requested to speak in a panel at the United Nations, as the US Peace Council had done in August 2016. It is as a result of a short interaction between myself and a Norwegian journalist, which went viral, that my online audience grew. In fact, I deeply regret that what went viral was not the important content of the three other panelists and my own over twenty minutes report on conditions in Aleppo which was then still under daily bombardments and snipings by what the West deems “moderates”.

However, given that so many people responded positively regarding the interaction—which dealt with lies of the corporate media and lack of sources—it seems that the public already had a sense that something was not right with corporate media’s renditions on Syria.

The first person to cut and share the video clip in question (on December 10, one day following the panel) was Twitter profile @Walid970721. As I have since met him personally, I can attest he is neither Russian nor funded by the Kremlin, nor any government, and that he shared that clip out of his own belief that it was of interest. Otherwise, on December 10, before any major Russian media had, HispanTV also shared my words. Further, India-based internet media Scoop Whoop’s December 15 share garnered the most views (nearly 10.5 million by now). That Russian media later shared the clip and reported on the incident is neither my doing: thank you Russian media for doing what Western corporate media always fail to do.

-Regarding The Guardian Solon’s question: “That you think that Assad is being demonized by the US as a means to drive regime change.” Of course I do, as do most analysts and writers not blinded by or obliged to the NATO narrative. As Rick Sterling wrote in September 2016:

“This disinformation and propaganda on Syria takes three distinct forms. The first is the demonization of the Syrian leadership. The second is the romanticization of the opposition. The third form involves attacking anyone questioning the preceding characterizations.”

Boston Globe contributor, award-winning foreign correspondent and author, Stephen Kinzer wrote in February 2016:

“Astonishingly brave correspondents in the war zone, including Americans, seek to counteract Washington-based reporting. At great risk to their own safety, these reporters are pushing to find the truth about the Syrian war. Their reporting often illuminates the darkness of groupthink. Yet for many consumers of news, their voices are lost in the cacophony. Reporting from the ground is often overwhelmed by the Washington consensus.”

Countering corporate media’s demonization campaigns, I’ve written on many occasions—notably including the words of Syrians within Syria—about the vast amount of support the Syrian president enjoys inside of Syria and outside.

In my March 7, 2016 article, I cited meeting with internal, unarmed, opposition members, including Kurdish representative, Berwine Brahim, who stated,

“We want you to convey that conspiracy, terrorism and interference from Western countries has united supporters of the government and the opposition, to support President Bashar al-Assad.”

In that same article, I wrote:

“Wherever I’ve gone in Syria (as well as many months in various parts of Lebanon, where I’ve met Syrians from all over Syria) I’ve seen wide evidence of broad support for President al-Assad. The pride I’ve seen in a majority of Syrians in their President surfaces in the posters in homes and shops, in patriotic songs and Syrian flags at celebrations and in discussions with average Syrians of all faiths. Most Syrians request that I tell exactly what I have seen and to transmit the message that it is for Syrians to decide their future,that they support their president and army and that the only way to stop the bloodshed is for Western and Gulf nations to stop sending terrorists to Syria, for Turkey to stop warring on Syria, for the West to stop their nonsense talk about ‘freedom‘ and ‘democracy’ and leave Syrians to decide their own future.”

In my May 2014 article from Lebanon, having independently observed the first of two days of Syrians streaming to their embassy to vote in presidential elections, I cited some of the many Syrians there with whom I spoke (in Arabic):

“’We love him. I’m Sunni, not Alawi,’ Walid, from Raqqa, noted. ‘They’re afraid our voices will be heard,’ he said….’ I’m from Deir Ezzor,’ said a voter. ‘ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is in our area. We want Bashar al-Assad. The guy walks straight,’ he said, with a gesture of his hand.”

No one escorted me in a Syrian government vehicle to that embassy, by the way. I took a bus, and then walked the remaining many kilometres (the road was so clogged with vehicles going to the embassy) with Syrians en route to vote.

In June 2014, a week after the elections within Syria, I traveled by public bus to Homs (once dubbed the “capital of the revolution”), where I saw Syrians celebrating the results of the election, one week after the fact, and spoke with Syrians beginning to clean up and patch up homes damaged from the terrorist occupation of their district.

When I returned to Homs in December 2015, shops and restaurants had re-opened where a year and a half prior they were destroyed. People were preparing to celebrate Christmas as they could not do when terrorists ruled. In Damascus, attending a choral concert I overheard people asking one another excitedly whether “he” was here. The day prior, President Assad and the First Lady had dropped in on the practising choir, to their surprise and delight. And although the church was within hitting distance of mortars fired by the west’s “moderates” (and indeed that area had been repeatedly hit by mortars), the people faced that prospect in hopes of a re-visit by the President.

These are just some of many examples of the support Syria’s president sees and the attempts to vilify him and other Syrian leadership. Even Fox News acknowledged his support, referring to the 2014 elections:

“…it underscored the considerable support that President Bashar Assad still enjoys from the population, including many in the majority Sunni Muslim community. …Without Sunni support, however, Assad’s rule would have collapsed long ago.”

Regarding war crimes, Syria is fighting a war against terrorism, but corporate media continues fabricating claims, and repeating those fabricated, uninvestigated, accusations. For example, the repeated claim of the Syrian government starving civilians. In my on the ground investigations, I’ve revealed the truth behind starvation (and hospitals destroyed, and “last doctors”) in Aleppo, in Madaya, in al-Waer, in Old Homs (2014). In all instances, starvation and lack of medical care was solely due to terrorists—including al-Qaeda—hoarding food (and medical supplies). Vanessa Beeley has in greater depth exposed those lies regarding eastern Aleppo.

Regarding chemical weapons accusations, those have long been negated by the investigations of Seymour Hersh (on Ghouta 2013; on Khan Sheikhoun 2017) and the UN’s own Carla Del Ponte who said:

“…there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated. This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”

 

Regarding convoys allegedly bombed, see my own article on one such claim.

Regarding whether the White Helmets have done any good work rescuing civilians: they are working solely in areas occupied by al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists, so no one can prove whether they have actually done any rescue work of civilians. However, we have numerous on the ground witness testimonies to the contrary, that the White Helmets denied medical care to civilians not affiliated with terrorist groups.

In September 2017, Murad Gazdiev (instrumental in his honest reporting from Aleppo during much of 2016) documented how the White Helmets headquarters in Bustan al-Qasr, Aleppo, was filled with Hell Canons (used to fire gas canister bombs on Aleppo’s civilians and infrastructure) and remnants of a bomb-making factory. The headquarters was in a school.

Gazdiev’s reporting on the headquarters was preceded by French citizen Pierre Le Corf, living in Aleppo for over the past year, who visited the White Helmets headquarters in March 2017 (and again in April), documenting the al-Qaeda and ISIS linked flags, logos, and paraphernalia found inside the White Helmets headquarters, and that the White Helmets’ headquarters was next to a central al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra) headquarters. Le Corf also wrote about his encounters with civilians from Aleppo’s east, and their take on the White Helmets:

“…the last two families I met told me that they helped the injured terrorists first and sometimes left the civilians in the rubble. When the camera was spinning everyone was agitated, as soon as the camera extinguished, the lives of the people under rubble took less importance…. all the videos you’ve seen in the media come from one or the other. Civilians couldn’t afford cameras or 3G internet package when it was already difficult to buy bread, only armed and partisan groups.”

Vanessa Beeley took testimonies from civilians from eastern, al-Qaeda-occupied Aleppo, in December 2016 when the city was liberated. Beeley later wrote:

“When I asked them if they knew of the “civil defence”, they all nodded furiously and said,“yes, yes – Nusra Front civil defence”. Most of them elaborated and told me that the Nusra Front civil defence never helped civilians, they only worked for the armed groups.”

Beeley also wrote of the White Helmets’ complicity in the massacre of civilians (including 116 children) from Foua and Kafraya in April 2017.

Credentials, Please: What Is Journalism?

Regarding The Guardian’s question on my competency as a journalist, I note the following.

I began reporting from on the ground in Palestine in 2007, first blogging and later publishing in various online media. 

In 2007, I spent 8 months in the occupied West Bank in occupied Palestine, in some of the most dangerous areas where Palestinians are routinely abused, attacked, abducted and killed by both the Israeli army and the illegal Jewish colonists. There, I began blogging, documenting the crimes in print with witness testimonies, first person interviews, my own eye-witness experiences, photos and videos.

After being deported from Palestine by the Israeli authorities in December 2007, in 2008 I sailed to Gaza from Cyprus and documented not only the daily Israeli assaults on unarmed male, female, elderly and child farmers and fishers, but also the effects of the brutal Israeli full siege on Gaza, Israel’s sporadic bombings and land invasions, and of course two major massacres (Dec 2008/Jan 2009 and Nov 2012).

In the 2008/2009 war against Palestinian civilians, I was on the ground in northern Gaza with rescuers—actual rescuers, no acting, no staging—under the bombings, and under heavy sniper fire. I was also on an upper floor of a media building in Gaza City that was bombed while I was in it. And otherwise, I remained in Gaza after the slaughter had ended, taking horrific testimonies, documenting Israel’s war crimes, including Israel’s: assassinations of children, widespread use of White Phosphorous on civilians; holding civilians as human shields; andtargeting (and killing) of medics.

See this link for a more detailed description of this documentation, with many examples, and my further documentation during the November 2012 Israeli massacre of Palestinians, as well as detailed accounts of my reporting from seven trips, on the ground, around Syria.

While questioning my credentials as an investigative reporter in the Middle East, The Guardian casually assigned the story to a San Fransisco based writer specializing in fluff pieces, fashion and Russophobic analysis, who visibly has little to no understanding of what is happening on the ground in Syria.

Addressing “the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism,”award-winning journalist and film maker, John Pilger, said (emphasis added):

“Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It’s a history few journalists talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising.

As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called ‘professional journalism’ was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appearrespectable, pillars of the establishment, objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalists. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media.

…The whole thing was entirely bogus. For what the public didn’t know, was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources. And that hasn’t changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories, domestic and foreign, and you’ll find that they’re dominated by governments and other establishment interests. That’s the essence of professional journalism.”

On a publicly-shared Facebook post, journalist Stephen Kinzer wrote:

“I happen to agree with Eva’s take on Syria, but from a journalist’s perspective, the true importance of what she does goes beyond reporting from any single country. She challenges the accepted narrative–and that is the essence of journalism. Everything else is stenography. Budding foreign correspondents take note!!”

In The Guardian’s smear piece, Solon employed a tactic used to denigrate the credibility of an investigative journalist by dubbing he/she merely a “blogger”. In her story, Solon used “blogger” four times, three times in reference to Vanessa Beeley (who contributes in depth articles to a variety of online media).

In the latter case, she quoted executive director of the Purpose Inc-operated “Syria Campaign” PR project, James Sadri saying:

“A blogger for a 9/11 truther website who only visited Syria for the first time last year should not be taken seriously as an impartial expert on the conflict.”

Remind me when either Sadri or Solon was last there? Seems to be 2008 for Sadri, and never for Solon. But they are “credible” and someone like Beeley who has since her first 2016 visit to Syria had returned numerous occasions, in the country at pivotal times—like during the liberation of Aleppo, speaking with Syrian civilians from eastern areas formerly occupied by al-Qaeda and co-extremists—is not?

As for bloggers, there are many insightful writers and researchers self-publishing on blogs (for example,  this blog). However, that aside, it is amusing to note that Solon on her LinkedIn profile list her first skill as blogging. Is she a mere blogger?

Regarding Solon’s use of the “truthers” theme, did she recycle this from an article on Wired peddled eight months ago? Her use of “truthers” is clearly to paint anyone who investigates the White Helmets as Alex Jones-esque.

Is she capable of originality?

Nov 4, 2016: Less than 100 metres away, the second of two mortars fired by terrorist factions less than 1 km from Castello Road on Nov. 4. The road and humanitarian corridor were targeted at least seven times that day by terrorist factions. Many of those in corporate media had retired to the bus, and donned helmets and flak jackets. I was on the road without such luxuries. Read about it here.

Guardian Uses CIA “Conspiracy Theory” Tactic

In addition to using denigrating terms, The Guardian threw in the loaded CIA term “conspiracy theorists”.

As Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Studies and author, noted in a June 2017 panel (emphasis added):

“Conspiracy theory was not much used by journalist for the decades prior to 1967, when suddenly it’s used all the time, and increasingly ever since.

And the reason for this is that the CIA at that time sent a memo to its station chiefs world wide, urging them to use their propaganda assets and friends in the media, to discredit the work of Mark Lane… books attacking the Warren Commission Report. Mark Lane’s was a best seller, so the CIA’s response was to send out this memo urging a counter-attack, so that hacks responsive to the agency would write reviews attacking these authors as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and using one or more of five specific arguments listed in the memo.”

Guess Solon got the memo.

Professor James Tracy elaborated:

Conspiracy theory” is a term that at once strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States raising legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs.”

Researcher and writer Kevin Ryan noted (emphasis added):

““In the 45 years before the CIA memo came out, the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times only 50 times, or about once per year. In the 45 years after the CIA memo, the phrase appeared 2,630 times, or about once per week.

“…Of course, in these uses the phrase is always delivered in a context in which ‘conspiracy theorists’ were made to seem less intelligent and less rationale than people who uncritically accept official explanations for major events. President George W. Bush and his colleagues often used the phrase conspiracy theory in attempts to deter questioning about their activities.”

In her piece for the Guardian, Solon threw in the Russia is behind everything clause.

Scott Lucas (whom Solon quotes in her own article) in August 2017 wrote (emphasis added):

“Russian State outlets have pursued a campaign — especially since Moscow’s military intervention in September 2015.”

Solon’s article? (emphasis added):

“The campaign to discredit the White Helmets started at the same time as Russia staged a military intervention in Syria in September 2015…”

But I’m sure this is a mere coincidence.

Initial Investigations Into The White Helmets Precede Russia’s 

As mentioned earlier in this article, in 2014 and early 2015, long before any Russian media took notice, Cory Morningstar and Rick Sterling were already countering the official story of the White Helmets.

Morningstar on September 17, 2014, wrote:

“The New York public relations firm Purpose has created at least four anti-Assad NGOs/campaigns: The White Helmets, Free Syrian Voices [3], The Syria Campaign [4] and March Campaign #withSyria. …The message is clear. Purpose wants the green light for military intervention in Syria, well-cloaked under the guise of humanitarianism – an oxymoron if there ever was one.”

This is where the White Helmets step in.

Rick Sterling’s April 9, 2015, article looked at the White Helmets as a PR project for western intervention in Syria. He wrote (emphasis added):

“White Helmets is the newly minted name for “Syrian Civil Defence”. Despite the name, Syria Civil Defence was not created by Syrians nor does it serve Syria. Rather it was created by the UK and USA in 2013. Civilians from rebel controlled territory were paid to go to Turkey to receive some training in rescue operations. The program was managed by James Le Mesurier, a former British soldier and private contractor whose company is based in Dubai.”

Since her initial scrutiny into the White Helmets in September 2015, by October revealing their ties to executioners in Syria, Vanessa Beeley has relentlessly pursued the organization, and the lies and propaganda around it, their funding of at least over $150 million, far more than needed for medical supplies and high-tech camera equipment.

As 21^st Century Wire pointed out (emphasis added):

“Note that The Guardian and Olivia Solon also claim that the White Helmets are only “volunteers” – a foundational misrepresentation designed to generate sympathy for their employees. One could call this a gross lie when you consider the fact the White Helmets are paid a regular salary (which the Guardian deceptively call a ‘stipend’) which is in fact much higher than the national average salary in Syria – a fact conveniently left out in the Guardian’s apparent foreign office-led propaganda piece:

…Guardian informationists like Solon would never dare mention that the White Helmet’s ‘monthly stipend’ is far in excess of the standard salary for a Syrian Army soldier who is lucky to take home $60 -$70 per month.”

The Guardian Whitewashes the White Helmets

What are some things The Guardian could have investigated, had Solon’s story not been predetermined and had she approached with an honest intent to investigate the White Helmets?

-Solon very misguidedly chose to highlight the White Helmets’ “mannequin challenge” video, writing that the video was “stripped of its context”. What was the context? That the White Helmets, supposedly frantically, full-time rescuing civilians under the bombs, took time to make a video simulating a heroic rescue scene? The video reveals the patently obvious point that the White Helmets can clearly stage a very convincing “rescue” video. But Solon ignores this point, it doesn’t fit her factless, Russophobic story. Further, I cannot imagine any of the Palestinian rescuers I worked with wasting a moment of precious time for such an absurd video.

-That in spite of the White Helmets’ professed motto, “To save a life is to save all of humanity” they willingly participated in executions of civilians. But Solon wrote those extremist-affiliated White Helmets who hold weapons or stand on dead bodies or chant with al-Qaeda off as “isolated” and “rogue” actors, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Best part? It wasn’t Russia which photographed them, it was from their own social media accounts, where they proudly displayed their allegiance to terrorists.

In her attempt to defend the “rogue” assertion, Solon brings in White Helmets leader, Raed Saleh, who she doesn’t mention was denied entry to the US in April 2016, and deemed by the State Department’s Mark Toner to have ties to extremists.

Here’s one poignant example of a rogue actor who was dealt with by White Helmets’ leadership:

“Muawiya Hassan Agha was present at Rashideen, and he later became infamous for his involvement in the execution of two prisoners of war in Aleppo. For this rogue bad appleness he was supposedly fired from the White Helmets, although he was later photographed still with them. He has also been photographed celebrating ‘victory’ with Nusra Front in Idlib.”

-The soldiers which The Guardian calls “pro-Assad fighters” are actually members of Syria’s national army. Lexicon is important, and by denigrating members of the national army, The Guardian is playing a very old, and once again lacking in originality, lexicon card worthy of some UN member states who violate UN protocol and in the UN call the Syrian government a “regime” (as Solon also does…) instead of government.

-That it is not the entire UNSC which believes that Syria has committed the crimes Solon repeats, it is some members with an admitted vested interest in toppling the Syrian government.

The Chemical Card

In an attempt to validate the White Helmets, and delegitimize those who question them, The Guardian article presented as fact claims that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its people in Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017, that the White Helmets provided valuable documentation to the fact, and stated that Beeley and myself were some of the “most vocal sceptics” of the official narrative.

 

Amusingly, according to the article on the Qatari-owned channel, Al Jazeera, which The Guardian provided to back up their assertion of the Syrian government’s culpability (instead of providing the September 2017 UN report, itself questionable, and a much longer read for Solon), (emphasis added):

“All evidence available leads the Commission to conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe Syrian forces dropped an aerial bomb dispersing sarin in Khan Sheikhoun.”

Reasonable grounds to believe is not exactly a confirmation of evidence, it’s just a belief.

The same article noted the investigators had not been to Syria and “based their findings on photographs of bomb remnants, satellite imagery and witness testimony.”

Witness testimony from an al-Qaeda-dominated area? Very credible. The White Helmet leader in Khan Sheikhoun, Mustafa al-Haj Yussef, is an extremist showing allegiance to the actions of al-Qaeda. As Vanessa Beeley wrote:

“Yussef has called for the shelling of civilians, the execution of anyone not fasting during Ramadan, the murder of anyone considered a Shabiha, the killing of the SAA and the looting of their property. …He clearly supports both Nusra Front, an internationally recognised terrorist group, and Ahrar Al Sham…Yussef is far from being neutral, impartial or humanitarian.”

The initial analysis (of an April 2017 White House statement on Khan Sheikhoun) by Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Theodore Postol, found (emphasis added):

“I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.

Postol’s analysis concludes that the alleged evidence

“points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4,” and notes that “the report contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft.”

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh also looked at the official accusations, noting that claims made by MSF contradicted the official accusation of the Syrian government bombing the area with sarin. Hersh wrote (emphasis added):

“A team from Médecins Sans Frontières, treating victims from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to the north, reported that ‘eight patients showed symptoms – including constricted pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – which are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds.’ MSF also visited other hospitals that had received victims and found that patients there ‘smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.’ In other words, evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.”

The second article to which Solon linked was a NY Times article which called the report a “politically independent investigation”. This should make readers pause to guffaw, as the investigating mechanism includes the questionably-funded OPCW, and among those which the investigators interviewed were al-Qaeda’s rescuers.

Regarding the report, Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli (founder and chairman of Swedish Professors and Doctors for Human Rights) in November 2017, refuted it as “inaccurate” and “politically biased”. Points he made included (emphasis added):

-“The same JIM authors acknowledge that rebels in Khan Shaykhun have however destroyed evidence by filling the purported impact “crater” with concrete. Why the “rebels” have done that – and what consequences that sabotage would have for the investigation of facts is not even considered by the panel.”

-“By acknowledging that Khan Shaykhun was then under control of al-Nusra, the JIM report exhibits yet another methodological contradiction: That would mean that al-Nusra and its jihadists allies, by having control of the area, they were also in control of the ‘official’ information delivered from Khan Shaykhun on the alleged incident. This would imperatively call for a questioning of the reliability/credibility (bias) of main sources that the panel used for its allegations.”

Twitter user @Syricide picked up on one of the JIM’s most alarming professed irregularity, tweeting:

Even the Nation in April 2017 ran a piece stressing the need for actual investigation into the chemical weapons claims, citing the research of Postol, as well noting the following (emphasis added):

“Philip Giraldi, a former CIA case officer and Army intelligence officer, told radio host Scott Horton on April 6 that he was “hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available, who are saying the essential narrative we are hearing about the Syrians and Russians using chemical weapons is a sham.”

Giraldi also noted that ‘people both the agency [CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented’ what had taken place in Khan Sheikhun. Giraldi reports that his sources in the military and the intelligence community “are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the US media.”

The same article included the words of the former UK ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, who noted:

“It defies belief that he would bring this all on his head for no military advantage.” Ford said he believes the accusations against Syria are “simply not plausible.”

So, in fact, no, some of the most vocal and informed sceptics were neither Beeley nor myself, but MIT Professor Emeritus Theodore Postol, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, former UK ambassador Peter Ford, and former CIA and Army intelligence officer Philip Giraldi, not exactly “fringe” voices.

Investigative journalist Robert Parry in April 2017 wrote of a NY Times deflection tactic (one which Solon employed), emphasis added:

“Rather than deal with the difficulty of assessing what happened in Khan Sheikhoun, which is controlled by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and where information therefore should be regarded as highly suspect, Rutenberg simply assessed that the conventional wisdom in the West must be correct.

To discredit any doubters, Rutenberg associated them with one of the wackier conspiracy theories of radio personality Alex Jones, another version of the Times’ recent troubling reliance on McCarthyistic logical fallacies, not only applying guilt by association but refuting reasonable skepticism by tying it to someone who in an entirely different context expressed unreasonable skepticism.”

That sounds familiar. Solon wrote:

“Beeley frequently criticises the White Helmets in her role as editor of the website 21st Century Wire, set up by Patrick Henningsen, who is also an editor at Infowars.com.”

Infowars is Alex Jones’ site, and Henningsen is for many years no longer affiliated.

Solon followed this with another non sequitur argument about Beeley and the US Peace Council meeting with the Syrian president in 2016, a point irrelevant either to the issue of the White Helmets or the alleged chemical attacks. But irrelevance is what corporate media do best these days.

The Guardian story-writer has done literally zero investigative research into the fallacies she presents as fact in her article.

Integrity-Devoid Sources Solon Cited

In addition to those I’ve already mentioned, it is quite interesting to note some of the other sources Solon quoted to fluff her story:

–Scott Lucas, whose allegiance to Imperialists is evident from his twitter feed, a textbook Russophobe, Iranophobe. Lucas relied on the words of terrorist-supporter, Mustafa al-Haj Youssef, for his August article on the White Helmets (the one Solon seemingly plagiarized from). Solon relied on Lucas’ smears to dismiss the work and detract from the integrity of those Solon attacked. That, and being a token professor to include in attempt at legitimacy, was Lucas’ sole function in the Guardian story.

-Amnesty International, the so-called human rights group which as Tony Cartalucci outlined in August 2012, is “US State Department Propaganda”, and does indeed receive money from governments and corporate-financier interests, including “convicted financial criminal” George Soros’ Open Society.

It’s not just “conspiracy theorists” like Cartalucci who have written on Amnesty’s dark side. Ann Wright, a 29-year U.S. Army/Army Reserve Colonel and a 16-year U.S. Diplomat serving in numerous countries, including Afghanistan, who “resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war,” and “returned to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2010 on fact-finding missions,” has as well. Her co-author was Coleen Rowley, “a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003, and a whistleblower “on some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures.” Together, in June 2012, they wrote about “Amnesty’s Shilling for US Wars”.

Professor of international law, Francis Boyle, who himself was a member of the US board of Amnesty, wrote of the group’s role in shilling for war. In October 2012, he wrote of Amnesty’s war mongering regarding Iraq—endorsing the dead incubator babies story told by the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter—and his own attempts to inform Amnesty “that this report should not be published because it was inaccurate.” He noted:

“That genocidal war waged by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, inter alia, during the months of January and February 1991, killed at a minimum 200,000 Iraqis, half of whom were civilians. Amnesty International shall always have the blood of the Iraqi People on its hands!”

Boyle’s parting words included:

“…based upon my over sixteen years of experience having dealt with AI/London and AIUSA at the highest levels, it is clear to me that both organizations manifest a consistent pattern and practice of following the lines of the foreign policies of the United States, Britain, and Israel. …Effectively, Amnesty International and AIUSA function as tools for the imperialist, colonial and genocidal policies of the United States, Britain, and Israel.”

-Eliot Higgins, of whom award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter wrote:

“Eliot Higgins is a non-resident fellow of the militantly anti-Russian, State Department-funded Atlantic Council, and has no technical expertise on munitions.”

British journalist Graham Phillips wrote in February 2016 on Eliot Higgins. Answering his question on who is Eliot Higgins, Phillips wrote:

“He never finished college, dropping out of the Southampton Institute of Higher Education. When asked…what he studied at university, his answer was, ‘Media…I think.’ …Higgins has always been completely open about his lack of expertise.”

The Guardian’s Russia Obsession

 

By now it should be clear that the intent of Solon’s December 18^th story was not to address the manifold questions (facts) about the White Helmets’ ties to (inclusion of) terrorists in Syria, nor to question the heroic volunteers’ obscene amount of funding from Western sources very keen to see Syria destabilized and its government replaced.

Rather, the intent was to whitewash this rescue group, and to demonize those of us highlighted, and especially to insert more Russophobia (although Russia’s military intervention in Syria is legal, unlike that of the US-led coalition, of which Solon’s UK is a part).

Since our last early October communication until the long-awaited publishing of her slander-filled piece, Solon produced (or co-produced) 24 stories for the Guardian, nine of which were blame-Russia! sort of stories, including such lexicon as “Russian operatives”, “Russian interference”, “Russian trolls”, “Russian propagandists”, and “Russian bots.

Is Baroness Cox, of the UK House of Lords, who recently spoke in support of Russia’s (invited) intervention in Syria, a “conspiracy theorist”, a Russian operative” or Kremlin-funded? She said (emphasis added):

“And the fourth point that I would like to make particularly to you is the very real appreciation that is expressed by everyone in Syria of the support by Russia to help get rid of ISIS [Daesh] and get rid of all the other Islamist religious groups.”

Cox, who went to Syria, is probably not a Kremlin or Assad agent. She probably just listened to the voices of Syrians in Syria, like the rest of us Russian propagandists who have bothered to go (repeatedly) to Syria and speak with Syrian civilians.

This is the first part of a longer article. Part II is forthcoming.

Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. Her writings can be found on her blog, In Gaza.

Featured image: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov (Source: Fort Russ)

In 1953 Washington and Britain overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed a dictator to rule Iran for the benefit of Washington and the British. In declassified documents, the CIA has admitted its role in overthrowing the Iranian government. The overthrow pattern is always the same. Washington hires protesters, then introduces violence, controls the explanation, and unseats the government.

Ever since the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Washington-installed dictator in1979, Washington has been trying to regain control of Iran. In 2009 Washington financed the “Green Revolution,” which was an attempt to overthrow the Ahmadinejad government.

Today Washington is again at work against the Iranian people. It is difficult to believe that any Iranian, after watching what Washington-organized protests have done to Hondurus, Libya, Ukraine, and Syria, have attempted to do to Iran in 2009, and is attempting to do today to Venezuela, could possibly in good faith go out into the streets against their own government. Are these Iranian protesters utterly stupid or are they hired to commit treason against their country.

Why does Iran, like Venezuela, Ukraine, and Russia herself, permit foreign-funded operatives to attempt to destabilize the government? Are these governments so brainwashed by the West that they think that democracy means permitting foreign agents to attempt to overthrow the government?

Are governments so intimidated by the Western presstitutes that they find it challenging to defend themselves against foreign-paid provocateurs?

Having succeeded in causing violent protests in Iran, Washington now intends to use an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Iran in order to set the stage for more intervention against Iran. The Washington-incited violence has been turned into a “human rights issue” against Iran. Will Washington get away with it?

Iran’s fate is up to Russia and China. If Washington succeeds in destabilizing Iran, Russia and China are next. Russia seems to understand this. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said yesterday:

“We warn the US against attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Just as the Russian government comprehended that Russia could not permit Washington’s destabilization of Syria, Russia understands she cannot permit the destabilization of Iran.

The leader of Turkey has aligned with Russia, declaring “obviously some people from abroad are provoking the situation.”

That is obvious to everyone but Americans, who are constantly lied to by “their” government and by the presstitute lie factories such as CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC.

Trump and Haley are the type of loudmouths who are likely to break Washington’s power and influence over the world. They “take names,” admit that they bribe foreign leaders, and issue insane threats. If this doesn’t wake up the rest of the world, nothing will.

On January 16, 2018, the World Socialist Web Site will video livestream a discussion on Internet censorship, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairperson David North. WSWS reporter Andre Damon will moderate the discussion.

The webinar will explore the political context of the efforts to censor the Internet and abolish net neutrality, examine the pretexts used to justify the suppression of free speech (i.e., “fake news”), and discuss political strategies to defend democratic rights. Hedges and North will also field questions from on-line listeners.

The webinar will be streamed live by the WSWS on YouTube and Facebook on Tuesday, January 16 at 7:00 pm EST (midnight in London, 1:00am in Berlin, 3:00am in Moscow and 11:00 am January 17 in Sydney. Full Time Zone Conversions).

Click on this link to register.

Whenever trouble breaks out in Iran, adrenaline rushes through Washington. Hearts pound excitedly at the Pentagon, the CIA, the White House, and Congress. In recent weeks, reports of street protests in several Iranian cities have triggered this Pavlovian response. Once again, however, Americans who have spent decades hoping for an explosion in Iran are disappointed. “Regime change” is not imminent. More important, we should not wish for it. A sudden collapse of Iran’s governing system would be bad for us. It would set another Middle Eastern country aflame and feed the instability that breeds terror.

Iran-haters — meaning most of official Washington — cackled in delight at news of the protests. President Trump said they showed that Iranians were “finally getting wise.” His ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, exulted that “the long-repressed Iranian people are now finding their voice.” Senator John McCain praised “the brave protesters who yearn for freedom.” None of these figures has been much of a defender of oppressed Middle Easterners. Concern for human rights is not what leads them to encourage upheaval in Iran. Their goal is to weaken America’s Middle East nemesis.

Leading figures in the Trump administration harbor extreme enmity for Iran. In a theatrical press conference last month, Haley stood in front of the body of a missile and a “kamikaze drone” that she said prove Iran is launching “direct military attacks” on pro-American forces. All three of the generals who are President Trump’s closest advisers served in the Middle East, where American and Iranian interests clash regularly. Defense Secretary James Mattis has famously listed America’s three greatest security threats in that region as “Iran, Iran, Iran.”

Anyone who believes this, and who sits at a pinnacle of power, might logically want to promote instability in Iran. That would be a mistake. If the United States is sending covert aid to the latest group of Iranian protesters, or considering doing so, it should stop.

Few peoples are as sensitive to foreign interference as the Iranians. In the 19th century Iran lost vast territories to Russia. Later the British brazenly looted Iran’s oil wealth. In 1953 US officials promoted a coup in which the country’s parliamentary democracy was overthrown. This history has left a residue of fierce independence. Iranians instinctively reject political movements that they see as tools of foreign power.

Few peoples are as sensitive to foreign interference as the Iranians. In the 19th century Iran lost vast territories to Russia. Later the British brazenly looted Iran’s oil wealth. In 1953 US officials promoted a coup in which the country’s parliamentary democracy was overthrown. This history has left a residue of fierce independence. Iranians instinctively reject political movements that they see as tools of foreign power.

Aid from the United States to any Iranian group would likely be uncovered. That would disqualify the recipient from further participation in Iranian public life. It would also highlight the hypocrisy of American outrage over Russian intervention in our own politics. American officials should not use this burst of protest in Iran as an excuse to intensify covert action there.

Contrary to our wishful delusions, Iran is a fully functioning state. It is not careening toward the abyss of instability. Street protests there draw our attention precisely because they are rare. The grievances behind them are genuine, but they have no central leadership and offer no coherent alternative to the religious regime.

In any case, Iranians have watched American intervention devastate several Middle Eastern countries, including their own. They have demonstrated no desire for the kind of “regime change” that Washington begins imagining every time a rock is thrown in Tehran.

Iran is the strongest counterweight to American power in the Middle East. It limits our ability to impose our will. From Washington’s perspective, that makes it an enemy. In fact, however, no vital interest requires the United States to help shape Iran’s future.

History decrees that any Iranian government must be strongly nationalist and a vigilant defender of Shiite Muslims everywhere, so the idea that “regime change” would produce a more pro-American Iran is a fantasy. The security of the United States will not be seriously affected by the course of Iran’s domestic politics.

Nor, despite what Mattis and others have said, will our security be affected by the results of Iran’s jostling with other powers in its neighborhood. The role Iran ultimately plays in Syria, the nature of its ties to Lebanon, the scope of its influence in Yemen — these disputes will drag on interminably. There is no need for the United States to take sides in any of them. Doing so is a guarantee of perpetual engagement.

In 1980 President Carter proclaimed that any challenge to American dominance of the Persian Gulf would be considered “an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.” He was driven by the global imperatives of his era. Much of America’s oil came through the Persian Gulf, and the West could not risk losing it to Soviet power.

Today there is no Soviet Union, and we no longer rely on Middle East oil. Yet although the basis for our policy has evaporated, the policy itself remains unchanged, a relic from a bygone age. We still insist on dominating the Persian Gulf. It is time to let go. Resisting the temptation to meddle in Iran after this month’s protests would be a good way to start.

*

Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Follow him on Twitter @stephenkinzer.

Featured image: Khawaja Muhammad Asif (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

US geopolitics is unacceptably hostile.  On Thursday, the State Department “placed Pakistan on a Special Watch List for severe violations of religious freedom.”

A nation at war with Islam at home and abroad outrageously accused the country of religious violations – instead of taking steps to clean up its own vile agenda.

Separately on Thursday, the State Department said Washington is suspending at least $900 million in US military aid to Pakistan, accusing its government of failing to address sanctuaries in the country, allegedly used to attack Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s Dawn broadsheet said Washington suspended all aid to the country, calling US policy a “condition and issue-based approach,” adding:

Aid will only be sent for specific strategic purposes, State Department spokeswoman Heather Hauert, saying the suspension remains in force until Islamabad “takes decisive action” against elements “destabilizing the region and targeting US personnel.”

The only destabilizing element is America’s presence, its endless war of aggression on Afghanistan, its enormous cross-border harm to Pakistan, its ruthlessness jeopardizing world security.

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif blasted Washington, saying “history teaches us not to blindly trust the US,” adding:

The Pentagon “carried out 57,800 attacks on Afghanistan from our bases. Your forces were supplied arms and explosives through our soil. Thousands of our civilians and soldiers became victims of the war initiated by you.”

The cost of his country’s alliance with America’s “war on terror” has been devastating for the country.

Asif hinted at a foreign policy shift toward China and Russia, saying

“China lives next to us and we have a common wall. Russia can also be our good friend.”

Islamabad must correct and improve its geopolitical relations, he stressed. His country suffers enormously from US aggression in Afghanistan.

“There is no end in sight,” Asif said. “We are looking for peace and harmonization in the region” – unattainable with America’s hostile presence.

Days earlier, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang defended Pakistan, saying:

The country “has made great efforts and sacrifices for combating terrorism and made prominent contributions to the cause of international counterterrorism, and the international community should fully recognize this,” adding:

“We welcome Pakistan and other countries’ cooperation on counter-terrorism and in other fields on the basis of mutual respect and their joint commitment to the security and stability of the region and the world.”

“China and Pakistan have maintained the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership. China stands ready to further deepen cooperation with Pakistan in various fields to bring greater benefits to the two peoples.”

Islamabad appears willing and eager to strengthen bilateral ties. On January 2, the State Bank of Pakistan said it adopted the Chinese yuan as a currency for trade and investment, the bank saying:

“Both public and private sector enterprises (in Pakistan) are free to choose (the yuan) for bilateral trade & investment activities,” adding:

“Considering the recent local and global economic developments, particularly with the growing size of trade and investment with China under CPEC (the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor), yuan denominated trade with China will increase significantly, going forward; and will yield long term benefits for both the countries.”

Both countries agreed to multi-billion dollar deals under Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative.

Trump administration hostility toward Pakistan pushes the country closer to China and Russia.

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

The year 2018 has opened with an international campaign to censor the Internet. Throughout the world, technology giants are responding to the political demands of governments by cracking down on freedom of speech, which is inscribed in the US Bill of Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and countless international agreements.

Bloomberg, the financial news service, published a blog post titled “Welcome to 2018, the Year of Censored Social Media,” which began with the observation, “This year, don’t count on the social networks to provide its core service: an uncensored platform for every imaginable view. The censorship has already begun, and it’ll only get heavier.”

Developments over the past week include:

• On January 1, the German government began implementation of its “Network Enforcement Law,” which threatens social media companies with fines of up to €50 million if they do not immediately remove content deemed objectionable. Both German trade groups and the United Nations have warned that the law will incentivize technology companies to ban protected speech.
• On January 3, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to introduce a ban during election cycles on what he called “fake news” in a further crackdown on free speech on top of the draconian measures implemented under the state of emergency. The moves by France and Germany have led to renewed calls for a censorship law applying to the entire European Union.
• On December 28, the New York Times reported that Facebook had deleted the account of Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, nominally because he had been added to a US sanctions list. As the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out, this creates a precedent for giving the US government essentially free rein to block freedom of expression all over the world simply by putting individuals on an economic sanctions list.
• This week, Iranian authorities blocked social media networks, including Instagram, which were being used to organize demonstrations against inequality and unemployment.
• Facebook has continued its crackdown on Palestinian Facebook accounts, removing over 100 accounts at the request of Israeli officials.

These moves come in the wake of the decision by the Trump administration to abolish net neutrality, giving technology companies license to censor and block access to websites and services.

In August, the World Socialist Web Site first reported that Google was censoring left-wing, anti-war, and progressive websites. When it implemented changes to its search algorithms, Google claimed they were politically neutral, aimed only at elevating “more authoritative content” and demoting “blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information.”

Now, no one can claim that the major technology giants are not carrying out a widespread and systematic campaign of online censorship, in close and active coordination with powerful states and intelligence agencies.

In the five months since the WSWS released its findings, Google’s censorship of left-wing, anti-war, and progressive web sites has only intensified.

Even though the World Socialist Web Site‘s readership from direct entries and other websites has increased, Google’s effort to isolate the WSWS through the systematic removal of its articles from search results has continued to depress its search traffic. Search traffic to the WSWS, which fell more than any other left-wing site, has continued to trend down, with a total reduction of 75 percent, compared to a 67 percent decline in August.

Alternet.org’s search traffic is now down 71 percent, compared to 63 percent in August. Consortium News’s search traffic is down 72 percent, compared to 47 percent in August. Other sites, including Global Research and Truthdig, continue to see significantly depressed levels of search traffic.

In its statement to commemorate the beginning of the new year, the World Socialist Web Site noted, “The year 2018—the bicentenary of Marx’s birth—will be characterized, above all, by an immense intensification of… class conflict around the world.” This prediction has been confirmed in the form of mass demonstrations in Iran, the wildcat strike by auto workers in Romania and growing labour militancy throughout Europe and the Middle East.

The ruling elites all over the world are meeting this resurgence of class struggle with an attempt to stifle and suppress freedom of expression on the Internet, under the false pretence of fighting “fake news” and “foreign propaganda.”

The effort to muzzle social opposition by the working class must be resisted.

On January 16, 2018, the World Socialist Web Site will host a live video discussion on Internet censorship, featuring journalist and Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairperson David North.

The discussion will explore the political context of the efforts to censor the Internet and abolish net neutrality, examine the pretexts used to justify the suppression of free speech (i.e., “fake news”), and discuss political strategies to defend democratic rights. Hedges and North will also field questions from on-line listeners.

We urge all of our readers to register to participate in this immensely important discussion, and to help publicize it to friends and co-workers.

The webinar will be streamed live by the WSWS on YouTube and Facebook on Tuesday, January 16 at 7:00 pm ( EST). For more information, time zone conversions and to register, click here.

We thank readers who have contributed to Global Research. If you have the means to make a small or large donation in support of our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture will be much appreciated.

Consider Making a Donation to Global Research

We likewise encourage you to re-post this selection of articles. Share through social media and discuss with your colleagues and friends.

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Parallel Worlds: Trump, Nuclear Buttons and Korean Diplomacy

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 05, 2018

It all began, as it tends to do, with a goading remark from North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.  Evidently relishing an opportunity to give President Donald J. Trump a good new year’s poke, that man in Pyongyang informed the world that had had his nuclear button within easy reach on the table.

Trump Threatens North Korea with Nuclear War. My Nuclear Button is Bigger and it Works

By Peter Symonds, January 04, 2018

The Trump administration has begun the year with an open and reckless threat of nuclear war against North Korea—a conflict that would inevitably drag in other nuclear-armed powers, with catastrophic consequences for the world.

Trump Nuking North Korea Would “Make America Great Again”? Trump is a Modern-day Machiavelli Who doesn’t Care about Morals and Ethics

By Andrew Korybko, January 04, 2018

If Trump is willing to accept the enormous loss of American life — which are the only people that he cares about as the US President — then turning the Korean Peninsula into Asia’s nuclear panhandle would indeed “Make America Great Again” by permanently handicapping its Russian & Chinese geostrategic competitors as well as its Japanese & South Korean economic ones.

As North and South Korea Reciprocate Offers of Talks, Trump Responds: “I Too Have a Nuclear Button”

By Telesur, January 03, 2018

South Korea has responded to North Korean leader Kim Jong- un‘s diplomatic overture with an offer Tuesday to hold high-level talks between the countries on the border next week.

North Korea: A Threat or A Victim? Some Facts.

By Felicity Arbuthnot, December 26, 2017

If anyone is still wondering why North Korea was being “provocative” in missile tests and repeatedly declaring what would seem to be a daunting arsenal (although there is still no irrefutable, concrete proof of deliverable, long range nuclear weapons capability) here is just a small taste of what it’s southern neighbor, in cahoots with Godfather America, has planned.

The Real Reason Washington Is Worried About North Korea’s ICBM Test. An Effective Self-Defense?

By Stephen Gowans, July 05, 2017

With its ICBM test signaling its capability to retaliate against US aggression, North Korea has made clear that the United States’ seven decades long effort to topple its government may never come to fruition—a blow against US despotism, and an advance for peace, and for democracy on a world scale.

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Featured image is from Huffington Post.

He left Air Force Two behind and, unannounced, “shrouded in secrecy,” flew on an unmarked C-17 transport plane into Bagram Air Base, the largest American garrison in Afghanistan. All news of his visit was embargoed until an hour before he was to depart the country.

More than 16 years after an American invasion “liberated” Afghanistan, he was there to offer some good news to a U.S. troop contingent once again on the rise. Before a 40-foot American flag, addressing 500 American troops, Vice President Mike Pence praised them as “the world’s greatest force for good,” boasted that American air strikes had recently been “dramatically increased,” swore that their country was “here to stay,” and insisted that “victory is closer than ever before.” As an observer noted, however, the response of his audience was “subdued.”  (“Several troops stood with their arms crossed or their hands folded behind their backs and listened, but did not applaud.”)

Think of this as but the latest episode in an upside down geopolitical fairy tale, a grim, rather than Grimm, story for our age that might begin: Once upon a time — in October 2001, to be exact — Washington launched its war on terror.  There was then just one country targeted, the very one where, a little more than a decade earlier, the U.S. had ended a long proxy war against the Soviet Union during which it had financed, armed, or backed an extreme set of Islamic fundamentalist groups, including a rich young Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden.

By 2001, in the wake of that war, which helped send the Soviet Union down the path to implosion, Afghanistan was largely (but not completely) ruled by the Taliban.  Osama bin Laden was there, too, with a relatively modest crew of cohorts.  By early 2002, he had fled to Pakistan, leaving many of his companions dead and his organization, al-Qaeda, in a state of disarray.  The Taliban, defeated, were pleading to be allowed to put down their arms and go back to their villages, an abortive process that Anand Gopal vividly described in his book, No Good Men Among the Living.

It was, it seemed, all over but the cheering and, of course, the planning for yet greater exploits across the region.  The top officials in the administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were geopolitical dreamers of the first order who couldn’t have had more expansive ideas about how to extend such success to — as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld indicated only days after the 9/11 attacks — terror or insurgent groups in more than 60 countries.  It was a point President Bush would reemphasize nine months later in a triumphalist graduation speech at West Point.  At that moment, the struggle they had quickly, if immodestly, dubbed the Global War on Terror was still a one-country affair.  They were, however, already deep into preparations to extend it in ways more radical and devastating than they could ever have imagined with the invasion and occupation of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the domination of the oil heartlands of the planet that they were sure would follow.  (In a comment that caught the moment exactly, Newsweek quoted a British official “close to the Bush team” as saying, “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”)

So many years later, perhaps it won’t surprise you — as it probably wouldn’t have surprised the hundreds of thousands of protesters who turned out in the streets of American cities and towns in early 2003 to oppose the invasion of Iraq — that this was one of those stories to which the adage “be careful what you wish for” applies.

Seeing War

And it’s a tale that’s not over yet.  Not by a long shot.  As a start, in the Trump era, the longest war in American history, the one in Afghanistan, is only getting longer.  There are those U.S. troop levels on the rise; those air strikes ramping up; the Taliban in control of significant sections of the country; an Islamic State-branded terror group spreading ever more successfully in its eastern regions; and, according to the latest report from the Pentagon, “more than 20 terrorist or insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Think about that: 20 groups.  In other words, so many years later, the war on terror should be seen as an endless exercise in the use of multiplication tables — and not just in Afghanistan either.  More than a decade and a half after an American president spoke of 60 or more countries as potential targets, thanks to the invaluable work of a single dedicated group, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, we finally have a visual representation of the true extent of the war on terror.  That we’ve had to wait so long should tell us something about the nature of this era of permanent war.

America’s war on terror across the globe (from the Costs of War Project). Click on the map to see a larger version.

The Costs of War Project has produced not just a map of the war on terror, 2015-2017 (released at TomDispatch with this article), but the first map of its kind ever.  It offers an astounding vision of Washington’s counterterror wars across the globe: their spread, the deployment of U.S. forces, the expanding missions to train foreign counterterror forces, the American bases that make them possible, the drone and other air strikes that are essential to them, and the U.S. combat troops helping to fight them.  (Terror groups have, of course, morphed and expanded riotously as part and parcel of the same process.)

Marawi siege, Philippines (Source: Tony Cartalucci)

A glance at the map tells you that the war on terror, an increasingly complex set of intertwined conflicts, is now a remarkably global phenomenon.  It stretches from the Philippines (with its own ISIS-branded group that just fought an almost five-month-long campaign that devastated Marawi, a city of 300,000) through South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and deep into West Africa where, only recently, four Green Berets died in an ambush in Niger.

No less stunning are the number of countries Washington’s war on terror has touched in some fashion.  Once, of course, there was only one (or, if you want to include the United States, two).  Now, the Costs of War Project identifies no less than 76 countries, 39% of those on the planet, as involved in that global conflict.  That means places like Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya where U.S. drone or other air strikes are the norm and U.S. ground troops (often Special Operations forces) have been either directly or indirectly engaged in combat.  It also means countries where U.S. advisers are training local militaries or even militias in counterterror tactics and those with bases crucial to this expanding set of conflicts.  As the map makes clear, these categories often overlap.

Who could be surprised that such a “war” has been eating American taxpayer dollars at a rate that should stagger the imagination in a country whose infrastructure is now visibly crumbling?  In a separate study, released in November, the Costs of War Project estimated that the price tag on the war on terror (with some future expenses included) had already reached an astronomical $5.6 trillion.  Only recently, however, President Trump, now escalating those conflicts, tweeted an even more staggering figure: “After having foolishly spent $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is time to start rebuilding our country!” (This figure, too, seems to have come in some fashion from the Costs of War estimate that “future interest payments on borrowing for the wars will likely add more than $7.9 trillion to the national debt” by mid-century.)

It couldn’t have been a rarer comment from an American politician, as in these years assessments of both the monetary and human costs of war have largely been left to small groups of scholars and activists.  The war on terror has, in fact, spread in the fashion today’s map lays out with almost no serious debate in this country about its costs or results.  If the document produced by the Costs of War project is, in fact, a map from hell, it is also, I believe, the first full-scale map of this war ever produced.

Think about that for a moment.  For the last 16 years, we, the American people, funding this complex set of conflicts to the tune of trillions of dollars, have lacked a single map of the war Washington has been fighting.  Not one. Yes, parts of that morphing, spreading set of conflicts have been somewhere in the news regularly, though seldom (except when there were “lone wolf” terror attacks in the United States or Western Europe) in the headlines.  In all those years, however, no American could see an image of this strange, perpetual conflict whose end is nowhere in sight.

Part of this can be explained by the nature of that “war.”  There are no fronts, no armies advancing on Berlin, no armadas bearing down on the Japanese homeland.  There hasn’t been, as in Korea in the early 1950s, even a parallel to cross or fight your way back to.  In this war, there have been no obvious retreats and, after the triumphal entry into Baghdad in 2003, few advances either.

It was hard even to map its component parts and when you did — as in an August New York Times map of territories controlled by the Taliban in Afghanistan — the imagery was complex and of limited impact.  Generally, however, we, the people, have been demobilized in almost every imaginable way in these years, even when it comes to simply following the endless set of wars and conflicts that go under the rubric of the war on terror.

Mapping 2018 and Beyond

Let me repeat this mantra: once, almost seventeen years ago, there was one; now, the count is 76 and rising.  Meanwhile, great cities have been turned into rubble; tens of millions of human beings have been displaced from their homes; refugees by the millions continue to cross borders, unsettling ever more lands; terror groups have become brand names across significant parts of the planet; and our American world continues to be militarized.

This should be thought of as an entirely new kind of perpetual global war.  So take one more look at that map.  Click on it and then enlarge it to consider the map in full-screen mode.  It’s important to try to imagine what’s been happening visually, since we’re facing a new kind of disaster, a planetary militarization of a sort we’ve never truly seen before.  No matter the “successes” in Washington’s war, ranging from that invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to the taking of Baghdad in 2003 to the recent destruction of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq (or most of it anyway, since at this moment American planes are still dropping bombs and firing missiles in parts of Syria), the conflicts only seem to morph and tumble on.

We are now in an era in which the U.S. military is the leading edge — often the only edge — of what used to be called American “foreign policy” and the State Department is being radically downsized.  American Special Operations forces were deployed to 149 countries in 2017 alone and the U.S. has so many troops on so many bases in so many places on Earth that the Pentagon can’t even account for the whereabouts of 44,000 of them. There may, in fact, be no way to truly map all of this, though the Costs of War Project’s illustration is a triumph of what can be seen.

Looking into the future, let’s pray for one thing: that the folks at that project have plenty of stamina, since it’s a given that, in the Trump years (and possibly well beyond), the costs of war will only rise.  The first Pentagon budget of the Trump era, passed with bipartisan unanimity by Congress and signed by the president, is a staggering $700 billion.  Meanwhile, America’s leading military men and the president, while escalating the country’s conflicts from Niger to Yemen, Somalia to Afghanistan, seem eternally in search of yet more wars to launch.

Pointing to Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, for instance, Marine Corps Commandant General Robert Neller recently told U.S. troops in Norway to expect a “bigass fight” in the future, adding, “I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a war coming.”  In December, National Security Adviser Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster similarly suggested that the possibility of a war (conceivably nuclear in nature) with Kim Jong-un’s North Korea was “increasing every day.”  Meanwhile, in an administration packed with Iranophobes, President Trump seems to be preparing to tear up the Iran nuclear deal, possibly as early as this month.

In other words, in 2018 and beyond, maps of many creative kinds may be needed simply to begin to take in the latest in America’s wars.  Consider, for instance, a recent report in the New York Times that about 2,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security are already “deployed to more than 70 countries around the world,” largely to prevent terror attacks.  And so it goes in the twenty-first century.

So welcome to 2018, another year of unending war, and while we’re on the subject, a small warning to our leaders: given the last 16 years, be careful what you wish for.

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Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.  The map in this piece was produced by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

The stick insect with pale lips, a jaunty manner, and the sense of still being attached to mummy gave a definitive statement of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.  “The plane cannot be located.”  It had a name; it had an identity. It was even registered on the screens of Zurich airport.  But everything else was, quite literally, up in the air.  In this day and age, a multi-million dollar commercial aircraft doing its rounds is bound to turn up on some scene, to urge itself into commercial and tangible existence.  Not so for Herr Stick Insect, who seemed determined to excite and concern his inquirers with dedication. 

And what of this ephemeral, invisible flight?  Instant fears are fired in the imagination: did the plane vanish into a legend, forever trapped in the gurgling fantasies of a deluded culture?  Did it suffer a terrible demise at the end of a faulty missile strike?

Humble flight JU 373 of Air Serbia was not going to disappear into the annals of flight martyrdom or conspiratorial mayhem.  There was nothing of the jitteriness of Malaysia Airlines here, the tragic doom, the murderous calamity.  No rocket was aimed; no mythological creature had made its presence felt. It was simply being incorrigible.

There were, however, initial reasons of concern.  It had rerouted to Stuttgart in a manner that seemed erratic, and had not, as it were, told the personnel at Zurich why.  This is the Serbian magic; remaining very much an enthusiast of Europe, it sings the tune from another, eclectic scoresheet.  We are happy to play with you, but in our way.

Passengers going to Belgrade from London on this flight were left perplexed.  Those waiting for JU 373 were huddled, oblivious and even, to some extent, obedient.  This was Switzerland, and back home, they knew that queues were as common as smoked grills and rakija. 

Queuing in the Serbian psyche has a near military quality to it, far more developed and essential than that of the English. The Englishman, as George Mikes claimed, could form a queue of one.  But for the Serbian sense of existence, the queue is the truest of collective affirmations, be it against injustice, infirmity, and plain incompetence.  They have seen it all, and they are promised to see more.  

Even in these circumstances of technical challenges and weather disruptions, the challenged machines that require tuning in the face of an indignant mother nature, cultural assumptions on the part of the Swiss gate keepers seem to dominate.  The Serbs, like bovine subjects awaiting their fate, sit there at a gate that has no flight, and promises none.  “We seriously lost them,” comes the stick insect about JU 373.  He doesn’t seem particularly concerned, and holds the Zurich airport line with stern officialdom.  “You simply have to wait.” 

To get to Belgrade today is proving to be quite a challenge.  Having ventured from London via the hub that is Zurich, gnomes and all, the weather has been furious and unrelenting.  The Piccadilly line from Hammersmith station was already taking a generous soaking, and the train was filled with glares and perfumed stares.  Bulky men sported suitcases a tenth their size.  Women, in distinction, had enormous expanses of luggage.  No one seemed particularly enticed by the prospect of having to venture through the monster that is Heathrow’s Terminal 2, named after the imperishable monarch that is Elizabeth II.   

In Zurich, the alternative options on offer for reaching Belgrade do little to inspire.  Each suggests terminal boredom, lounge torture, purgatorial torment.  Serbia remains an exotic territory, a vantage point of curiosity.  But more broadly speaking, if one is stranded, Frankfurt figures.  This offers a dreaded and draining option, the sort that you would happily scuttle and convey back to your less impressive acquaintances and enemies.  

The devil’s option of flying via bustling Frankfurt and losing several hours of your life before the next destination has a certain ominous power to it.  The cogs of European travel need oiling, the machines refuelling.  When there is a glitch, airport apparatchiks seem to speak in automated statements: “You shall go via Frankfurt.”  The central nature of the city in the European infrastructure is indispensable in that sense. 

It is very much a statement about air traffic on continental Europe and the bumbling confidence Frankfurt is exerting, all dominating and confident.  With the issue of Brexit pounding the British government into paltry dust; with companies relocating and readjusting assets, management staff and portfolios; with decisions being made for the new year, this is a city that is being bathed in mercantilist glory.  German financiers and planners are planning their raids and relocations, their next triumphant decisions that will lure the funds that have been seen to be the sacred preserve of Britannia.

JU 373 eventually materialises, if only several hours after time.  The stewardess, sharp neat uniform, a dream of geometry with a professionalised cut cap and a blue dotted scarf, large lips that seem to dance off her words as they escape to reach their target, and a voice that as smoked as the country’s cured meats, tells you to know the instructions well. You are in the exit row, and responsibility is heavy.  There is no other option:  you are not merely a guest of nature, but a guest of Air Serbia, so behave.

Her countrymen are also there to keep her busy.  The Serbian tendency to pounce mid flight, to leap to the storage areas and cabins with a growl and a cheer, and throw off the seat belts with the disdain of a liberated patient from a sanatorium speaks volumes.  Signs are there to be avoided; signals exist to be scorned.  “Please remain seated with fastened seatbelts!”  The bark is greeted with quiet refrain.  Everyone is tired.  The captain is unintelligible, his words an inscrutable slur.  But for those on this flight, the oak tree calls, its ancient message vast and deep; the solemnity of the Orthodox occasion signals and holds its followers.  They simply want to go home, and clap with furious delight on touching down.

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

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons.

The year 2017 was a record-breaking year for extreme weather and environmental catastrophes since records started to be kept in the 19th century.  The Arctic experienced temperatures up to 70 degree F above normal.  Many countries were baked in unusual heatwaves killing thousands.  Incidents of droughts, extreme typhoons in the Pacific and hurricanes in the Atlantic, flash floods, and wildfires erupted daily in international news headlines. As recent as 2014, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), following an analysis of NASA satellite footage of carbon dioxide movement around the planet, concluded that our warming planet has entered “unchartered territory at frightening speed.”  But 2017 was also the year when the statistical figures came in for 2016. 

The WMO reported that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere rose at record speed. Currently it is at its highest level in 800,000 years.  If anyone held any doubt that climate change is unreal, a fiction or fantasy, 2017 should have been wake up call to the most obstinate denialist.  Scientists have warned about our current days of climate for several decades. For those who jumped on the bandwagon years ago when atmospheric and geological scientists voiced serious concerns about global warming and its dire consequences, it was a year with no huge surprises, except for the rapid acceleration of warming trends.

It is time that people, and more crucially our entire species, to accept the fact that climate change is the single most important threat to humanity’s survival.  Certainly, a nuclear confrontation with North Korea or Russia is a horrifying scenario that could eliminate tens or even hundreds of millions of people.  However, it is within humanity’s means to avoid nuclear war.

On the other hand it is highly improbable whether we can do much to deter climate change.  Natural forces are far beyond our technological know-how and methods to control powerful planetary forces regardless of how many efforts to advance geoengineering or a dramatic shift to renewable energies are made.  Perhaps it will slow the pace of global warming a little, but it too has its own destructive blowback. The Earth’s history is a long story of numerous species birthing, evolving and eventually going extinct.  There is no manifest destiny for our species. There is no divine promise that humanity may not in the future follow in the footsteps of the dinosaurs.  Our lives are not transcendent to Nature nor the multitude of other natural forces, animals, plants, microbes and other life forms and molecules upon which our existence depends.  This is a simple truth we must learn. And it must be learned quickly and without further delay.

In a July issue of New York Magazine, journalist David Wallace-Wells published a worst case, doomsday scenario of climate change’s impact upon human society and the environment before the end of this century.  His essay, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” was based upon many private interviews with unnamed scientists who were willing to voice their deeper concerns about catastrophic events and eroding conditions humanity will face unless a concerted global response to reduce greenhouse gases is not launched immediately.  Aside from several of Wallace-Wells’ factual errors, this was the first featured article to appear in a mainstream publication that focused on climate change’s darker side.  It became the most read article in New York Magazine‘s history.  However, earlier in 2003, Cambridge University astrophysicist and philosopher Martin Rees released his influential Our Final Hour warning that the pace of humanity’s destructive activities presents a 50:50 chance for our civilization to survive past the end of the 21st century. Carcinogenic and unhealthy foods and high levels of deadly toxic chemicals in common everyday products are only minor risks compared to many other postmodern technologies impacting our lives. Climate change, combined with the genetic engineering of new viruses, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and rape of the planet for its last remaining natural resources, according to Rees, is a recipe for certain disaster and will likely end in the extinction of our species.  While many scientists and most of the general public who acknowledge the facts about anthropogenic climate change continue to hold enormous blind faith on human ingenuity and modern technology to prevent global warming’s “end game,” Rees and a distinguished, multi-disciplinary consortium of scientists at the Cambridge Center for the Study of Existential Risks acknowledge a darker side behind our over-reliance upon technological solutions–nuclear power, geoengineering, genetic manipulation of nature, etc.

Rees’s 50:50 survival prediction was largely ignored after its publication over a decade ago. Nobody wants to accept that our survival is predicated upon a flip of a coin. Today, his predictions are being reevaluated and his supporters are increasing. And this is why Wallace-Wells’ New York Magazine‘s article is so important.  There are more than ample reasons to fear the consequences of climate change on our health, food security, our livelihoods, well-being, and the survival of future generations, including our children. Extinction is forever, whether it be in a hundred, as the more pessimistic scientists suggest, or a thousand years or more. It is only a matter of time before killer heat waves become the norm, chemical-based industrial agriculture collapses, national economies are devastated, new plagues and health epidemics emerge, and climate and resource conflicts and wars increase.

All of these have been previously predicted over the years, and each is already starting to cast its shadow over the planet. Fear combined with hope is a powerful motivating factor to embrace change in personal habits and lifestyle. Therefore, it is critical today for humanity to become afraid, to become intensely afraid without becoming paralyzed. We condemn ourselves only by our failure to wake up while clinging to faux optimism, and by refusing to take upon ourselves the appropriate actions when confronted with an immediate emergency.

Climate change science poses certain obstacles difficult for the average person to accept.  Perhaps most evident is that the science and predictions appear too abstract. They can seem too foreign and impersonal. The calving of an enormous ice sheet in Antarctica or rapid Himalayan glacier melt do not set off alarm bells that threaten our cozy lives in American and European cities and suburbs. The events are too distant.  We know that sea levels are rising. Everyone in Miami is aware of this fact because flooded areas in the city are now commonplace. The citizens of the Maldives and Solomon Islands certainly know this because their nations are already sinking under rising sea levels. But to imagine one’s home or condominium along the coast being partially submerged permanently in the Atlantic Ocean is a time too far off to think about. Consequently, real estate developers continue their frenzy to build more residences up and down the Florida coast, and people continue to flock to the Sunshine State to purchase a sunny place to retire. It is almost obscene to imagine that four of the top ten cities witnessing the largest influx of migrants within the United States are also the most compromised by more immediate climate change and extreme weather conditions: Houston (No. 1), Miami (No. 2), Phoenix (No. 7) and Orlando (No. 10).  In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey submerged over 100,000 homes throughout the greater Houston metropolitan area. While the storm itself cannot be attributed to humanity’s contribution to global warming, the hurricane’s intensity and power is certainly related. Rising sea levels and warmer sea surface off the Texas coast — 7.2 degrees F above average making it the hottest spot of ocean surface in the world — are the two major factors that made Harvey so catastrophic and deadly.  And similar extreme tropic storms are only going to increase as the Earth gets warmer. As the planet’s surface heats further and sea levels rise, climatic events become increasingly more extreme. Consequently our lives become more stressed, miserable, insecure and uncertain.

The British philosopher poet G.K. Chesterton wrote,

“It isn’t that they cannot find the solution. It is that they cannot see the problem.”

Individually, nobody can initiate the kind of grand massive change in collective humanity’s relationship to the environment being demanded today. However, each of us can make determined and immediate changes in our personal lives and repair our personal rapport with the earth, nature, the ecology around our homes, neighborhoods and towns. No honor is gained by sitting and waiting for government to take concerted action to lessen greenhouse gas emissions and overhaul the federal regulatory system to hold private industries and polluters accountable. The corruption of Washington is beyond reform because government has itself become a private enterprise.  Likewise, Americans are waking up to the realization that their votes are useless. Those who need to change the most–elected officials and legislators, corporate CEOs and Chairmen, professional institutions– will not find the solutions until it is too late. In the meantime, they refuse to see the problem. And this is clearly evident by the fact that the fossil fuel industry is expanding rather than receding.

This chapter will lay out the fundamental problem humanity faces as climate change and global warming accelerate. Although a popular awareness of climate change is growing rapidly, most people still have difficulty connecting the dots between dramatic climate-related crises and calamities happening in far off regions of the planet and the impact these very same events have upon their personal lives.  Therefore, I will be presenting the climate science in simple lay language, providing crucial examples, in order to make global warming a more personal affair. Unless the threats the Earth faces are understood and perceived as a threat to our personal well-being and that of our immediate families, loved ones and friends, the constructive, necessary change so direly needed will not unfold. Nevertheless, we must begin with ourselves because each of us possesses in her or his power the capacity to live in harmony with life and the greater whole of Nature.  And then we must serve as an example of a conscientious, ecological lifestyle to those we meet.

In August 2017, the 900-plus foot tanker Christophe de Margerie set sail from Russia’s North Sea to South Korea. The cruise’s novelty was that for the first time in recorded history a sailing vessel crossed the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route without the need for icebreakers. The ship traveled freely, unencumbered across the broken, melting ice fields. This small incident regarding a tanker carrying natural gas half way around the world may seem incidental and insignificant, barely newsworthy. But for climatologists and Arctic ecologists it was an unexpected and disturbing event. It was another indication that the planet is racing faster towards an ice free Arctic. It was also a warning that global warming is accelerating beyond expectations. Back in 2013, the University of California was predicting that ships would be incapable of traveling freely across the North Pole before 2050. However, the Christophe’s passage over the Arctic’s southern frontier in under seven days holds a record. And this voyage would have never been possible without the acceleration of anthropogenic climate change.

As the Russian vessel made its way across the crown of the planet, at the opposite pole another surprising event occurred. On July 12, 2017, an iceberg, approximately 2,200 square miles or roughly the size of the state of Delaware, broke free from the Larsen C icesheet in Western Antarctica. This was the third gigantic Antarctic icesheet to collapse since 1995, and the largest to date. Glaciologists were startled because the speed of the sheet’s disintegration was miscalculated. Although the break, commonly known as “calving,” had been predicted several years prior, it was the suddenness that was disturbing.  A week later, glaciologists’ predictions were proven wrong a second time. It had not been a clean split as calculated earlier. Instead, like a stone hitting an auto’s windshield, the break triggered a network of fissures indicating that the entire icesheet was quickly fragmenting and more sheets would be calving in the near future. Antarctica is often viewed as the last place on Earth that will be touched by global warming due to human activity. However, 2016 observed a record low of sea ice, according to the University of Washington, and 2020 is now targeted as the turnaround point when the degradation of the southern polar icesheets will be directly the result of human activity. Already, atmospheric temperatures in the Antarctic have been rising annually by 4-6 C.  As warming seasons lengthen, ice sheets melt and calf faster and eventually the shelves thin further and disappear.

For the twenty-first century, these two geological events, and many others, are indicative of the greatest threat to humanity: global warming and climate change. For the first time in human history, our species has entered an era of extraordinary and anxious uncertainty. Many are bewildered when they hear about the loss of an Antarctic ice sheet, prolonged droughts, temperatures reaching above 50 degree Celsius, flash floods, and uncontrollable wildfires. What does it mean when we hear that 2016 was the third year in a row to set a new record for average global temperatures?  Is this simply a fluke? An aberration in the usual climate patterns we have become accustomed to? Will it continue or end?

The international scientific community is nearly unanimous in confirming that global warming is accelerating and human activity is its primary driving force. There is also near unanimous certainty the course we are following to reach catastrophic benchmarks is inevitable and completely outside our civilization’s control. Those scientists who resist the international consensus are far and few between. The majority of dissenters lack a professional background in the Earth and Space sciences, climatology, glaciology and other disciplines directly associated with measuring and observing changes in the atmosphere and the Earth’s geology. For several decades, scientists the world over have been running simulated climate models repeatedly to determine whether increased warming is anthropogenic or caused by human activity. And repeatedly whenever human-generated greenhouse gases–CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor, dust, etc.– are removed from their equations, they are unable to account for the sudden rise in the Earth’s temperature as the result of natural phenomena alone. Already the Earth is warmer than it has been for the last 120,000 years. However, when these same models introduce greenhouse gases into their equations, they accurately correlate with the actual temperature trends being witnessed. Long-term, 90% of planetary warming is linked to the actions of our species. The remaining 10%, according to Konrad Steffen, director of the Swiss Polar Institute, is “unexplained.

It is not uncommon for climatologists to underestimate the swiftness of climate-related events. The statistical and computational models to portend timelines for certain climate tipping points, although highly sophisticated, are unable to account for all variables and trends, particularly unforeseeable catastrophes such as mammoth biomass emissions from wildfires and other natural and human calamities.  For example, researchers would not predictable calculate the explosion of BP’s Deep Horizon facility that discharged up to 520,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere, the equivalent of burning upwards to 3.1 million barrels of crude oil. Consequently dire findings are either found wanting or too sober as new observations upgrade earlier forecasts. Very soon the Arctic region will be ice free throughout the year.  Conservatively the Arctic will lose all its ice during the warmest months before 2030. We still don’t know precisely many of the long-term consequences to the polar region and the planet’s biosystems once this tipping point is reached. However, there are approximately four million people living along the Arctic Circle, including hundreds of thousands of indigenous people. Very likely, most of the coastal communities will be forced to migrate in the near future as shorelines dependent upon ice, freezing temperatures and colder seasons start to crumble and disappear.  Acceleration is also exasperated by the thawing permafrost and tundra, and the massive release of methane and nitrous oxide, in the Arctic North. In point of fact, the polar North is collapsing.

The loss of the Arctic’s albedo, the white world of ice that reflects the Sun’s radiation back into space, has already passed its tipping point.  For as long as humans have been on the third planet from the Sun, we will never return to a time when polar bears and seals thrived on frozen ocean surfaces. We can no longer prevent the Western Antarctic icesheets, including the Larsen and Ross sheets, from slipping away into the dark oceanic waters. The rush of fresh water from melting glaciers in Greenland are beyond our technological means to prevent the disruption in the Atlantic Ocean’s conveyor belt.  Based upon satellite data feeds, the Greenland sheets, according to David Barber at the University of Manitoba, are now melting six hundred times faster than the current modeling trends suggest.

Similarly, due to many complex and unknown factors, it is exceedingly difficult to ascertain exactly how high the oceans will rise if all Antarctic ice melts. For example, one of the largest Antarctic icesheets rests on solid ground below sea level. On the one hand, this makes the sheet far more unstable and geologists continue to try to determine its global impact following its last breath.  Nevertheless the loss of the Ross icesheet in West Antarctica alone could raise sea levels 10-13 feet (3-4 meters).  In 2014, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the University of California at Irvine determined that the loss of the West Antarctic sheet is unstoppable. The circulation of the ocean’s warmer waters beneath the ice continues to thin and melt the shelf. No technology nor even a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can prevent it. As if a warhead missile had already been launched, we can only sit and wait to experience the consequences befalling us upon impact.

For many years, scientists were not terribly concerned about a rapid melt of Antarctic icesheets.  The southern pole has always been thought to be the last place on earth to experience global warming. For the past 40 years, winter ice has actually increased–until recently. In 2016, University of Washington researchers noted a perfect storm of conditions that, if repeated annually, will increase Antarctic ice melts and possibly trend towards declining ice buildup during the winter months. One of the causes the university scientists identified was a change in El Nino patterns that are now reaching the Antarctic.

In May 2014, Climate Central provided a probable scenario of American land lost due to a 10 foot increase in sea levels.  Approximately 28,800 square miles of land mass would disappear with rising waters and force the dislocation of over 12 million people, primarily along the US eastern seaboard. Twenty-seven cities in Florida would be the most seriously affected. The report determined that the cost of lost property would be upwards to $950 billion–a very conservative figure. The majority of the loss would be in the southern states but also a third in New York and New Jersey.

The complete loss of 5 million cubic miles of ice now blanketing the Earth, including large mountain glaciers, could raise sea levels by 216 feet.  San Francisco Bay Area would be a cluster of small islands. Along with Los Angeles and San Diego, the American East Coast would vanish.  Bye bye London, Venice, Netherlands and most of Denmark. From Bangladesh across Southeast Asia to the Cardamom Mountains in Cambodia, only small islets would remain. Mt Fuji would remain as a standing volcano bulging monolithically out of the Pacific. Four out of five Australians would be displaced and vast regions of Africa would be uninhabitable. Scientists are hopeful that a complete ice free planet is over a thousand years down the stretch.  But without doubt humanity has entered uncharted territory on the geological map. Our technological tools and modeling systems, albeit highly sophisticated, are still incapable of the daunting task to establish precise timelines.  Unpredictable events and catastrophes affecting feedback loops, such as wildfires, volcanic eruptions, oil fires or industrial plant explosions—such as the Arkema chemical plant explosion near Houston after Hurricane Harvey—and  the numerical increase in extreme weather events cannot be accurately calculated into greenhouse gas simulations. Harvey’s rainfall is estimated to have been the worst in US history and the most devastating storm to hit Houston. Nineteen trillion gallons of water. For five days, the “capitol” of America’s fossil fuel industry was flooded with torrential rains and wave surges, shutting down and damaging oil refineries and chemical plants along Texas’ eastern coast. Over one million pounds of toxic pollutants and greenhouse gases were released. Such events fall outside the realm of computerized simulations and cannot be accurately included in predictive climate models.  For this reason, scientific conclusions are often far more conservative than the actual state of the planet. Therefore we must start to realize that there is no precedent on the Earth’s 4.6 billion year geological timeline to serve as a reliable baseline to accurately calculate climate-related events in the Anthropocene Age.

The prospect of nuclear war with North Korea sits near the top of the list of unthinkably bad things about Donald Trump’s presidency. We all worry that a personal slight from Kim Jung Un could prompt Trump to do something horrific.

But the conflict with North Korea didn’t begin with Trump. It stretches back to World War II, and it includes all sort of US actions that are rarely discussed — from laying waste to North Korea during the Korean War to supporting military despotism in South Korea.

In the following interview — which first aired last month on Daniel Denvir’s Jacobin Radio podcast The Dig — veteran journalist Tim Shorrock details this often overlooked history and explains how it shapes the present standoff.

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Daniel Denvir: Donald Trump’s presidency has intensified many bad realities — many of which were expected. But during the campaign, a heated-up conflict with North Korea was not a major topic of discussion. Why has 2017 become the year that we suddenly feel we are so uncomfortably close to the prospect of catastrophic nuclear war?

Tim Shorrock: The current situation is directly related to the year 2006, which is when, during the Bush administration, North Korea exploded its first atomic weapon after agreeing to shut down their nuclear program under the Clinton administration. The agreement broke down under the Bush administration. North Korea threw out the inspectors who had been there and started to build a plutonium bomb.

Bush did try to negotiate with the six-party talks [a series of meetings with six participating states — North Korea, South Korea, Japan, the United States, China, and Russia — aiming to find a negotiated solution with North Korea]. The situation kept escalating partly because conservative governments in South Korea had taken power in 2007 and 2008. The situation continued to intensify during the latter years of Bush.

Obama’s policy was to hope that North Korea would collapse. It was called strategic patience. There were no negotiations with North Korea at that time. It just kept escalating. So Trump did inherit a very tense situation, but President Trump made it far worse by doing these open threats; by saying he was going to change the policy, but also threatening them with annihilation, feeding into the North Korean justification for having nuclear weapons and advanced missile capabilities, which is that the United States was going to attack them at any time.

DD: What do you see as the main forces within the Trump administration pushing such a confrontational line in North Korea and to what extent should we see this as being more pushed by Trump himself?

TS: The key person in Trump’s policy is H.R. McMaster, who is the national security adviser. He has been pushing this idea of what he calls “preventive war” which would basically involve preemptive strikes by the US military.

During the summer, information began to emerge in the media of Pentagon battle plans. There was one report on NBC that said that the Pentagon had plans, if ordered to, to destroy two dozen missile sites and nuclear sites in North Korea led by B1B bombers stationed in Guam that would lead air attacks in these sites. They would be flying in international skies which means that they could do a unilateral strike in North Korea without South Korea being involved at all.

Talk of a war — maybe they would call it a limited war — but talk about war really began to accelerate in Washington. Any forum you would go to people would say that we are at a 50 percent chance of a war. From all these think tanks to people in Congress, the talk was about what it will take to destroy these sites; there is very little talk of negotiation or the roots of the crisis or anything.

I think Trump sees himself as MacArthur or something like that and he wants to show the world American might can destroy a terrible enemy. He thinks he can build himself up that way.

DD: A combination of MacArthur and Pershing?

TS: He loves Pershing and the counterinsurgency. This is the militant imperialism that he represents. They’ve rejected “strategic patience.” The press backs them up on this. They say that North Korea just breaks every agreement. But agreements have been held for quite some time — particularly the agreement that was signed during the Clinton administration.

DD: Can we talk about this idea that the North Korean regime is unlike other regimes that are operating within the interstate global system?

TS: There is certainly nothing irrational about a country that wants to defend itself from an outside power that has threatened to destroy them. They are even quite predictable actually.

At the beginning of this year, Kim Jong Un said he wanted to complete his nuclear weapon development in a New Year’s address. That means nuclear development, completing their missile program, and building missiles. These would be ICBMs that can launch weapons to the United States or any other foreign target. They said they were going to do that and they proceeded to test and work on that program.

For a state trying to defend itself from an outside power, there is nothing irrational about that. They saw what happened. I mean the pretense of WMDs in Iraq is what led the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq. So, he sees nuclear weapons capable of being fired by an ICBM as his protection or deterrent from that attack from outside by the United States.

DD: The lesson for any rational actor, as twisted and dangerous as this is for the whole world, is that not having weapons of mass destruction means that the United States and its allies might try to overthrow your government.

TS: The Libya example is very pertinent. A couple of weeks ago, the highest level defector from North Korean government since 1979, Thae Yong Ho, the deputy ambassador to London for North Korea, gave a speech here at the Center for Strategic International Studies in which he talked about the impact of the US NATO intervention in Libya on Kim Jong Un.

He said, here was a country that agreed to stop building nuclear weapons that was essentially disarmed in that way, and then a few years later was overthrown by a coalition and US bombing campaign. Later, several groups in Libya overthrew him and he was murdered by these groups. Giving up nuclear weapons is not a very good idea in that context.

They also see, there’s this line under Kim Jong Un that has developed. It is the Byungjin line. This is the overriding philosophy behind what they are doing militarily. Nuclear development, nuclear weapons, missile technology, and long-range and short-range missiles development go together with the development of the economy. These high-tech missiles help the economy grow as well.

DD: In the most hawkish corners of US foreign policy establishment at present, preventive war is being touted as a solution to the North Korea nuclear weapons program. What you’ve laid out is a very clear track record of US preventative unilateral offensive war actually becoming a major driver of nuclear proliferation, so quite the opposite of what it purports to be a solution to.

TS: Yes, besides the fact that the United States has had nuclear weapons aimed at North Korea for sixty years.

North Korea began thinking about building its own nuclear weapons capability in the 1980s when the United States still had thousands of tactile nuclear weapons in South Korea. Those weapons were withdrawn in a unilateral move by President George H. W. Bush as part of a move to withdraw such weapons from countries around the world. But the United States has a vast armada of Navy ships that are based in Japan that carry nuclear weapons, and it also has B-52s that can carry them.

So the weapons have always been pointed there at North Korea, so they have felt under threat because of that. One of the drivers behind North Korean policy is these massive US–South Korean military exercises that take place twice a year. They run through training exercises of invading North Korea in what they call “decapitation strikes” to take out the North Korean leadership, including Kim Jong Un.

DD: Dress rehearsals for invasion. Not remotely provocative.

TS: They say this over and over in their statements: that is a key concern. The other day there was a statement put out by the North Korean government which said — of course, the first line was captured in the press, which is “they will not negotiate on nuclear weapons” — the second part is “until the United States and South Korea stop these provocative military exercises.” I think that’s where the grounds for some kind of negotiation and solution lie.

DD: I want to ask you now about South Korean politics because I think they are so often rendered invisible in the United States amid the conflict with North Korea. I think it’s important to highlight the historical context here before we get into Moon Jae-in and the present in South Korea. Can you sketch out the important contours of that history and how that led to the current moment?

TS: Well, in the 1950s right before and after the Korean War, South Korea was ruled by Syngman Rhee, an autocrat who was much hated for his repressive policies and was even despised by the United States because he talked about conquering North Korea and unifying Korea under his rule. After the Korean War, the United States did not want to have any part of that.

That’s when I was a kid and when Rhee was still president. Something I’ll always remember is that when I was in Korea in 1960, people were on the streets for days and people were shot by the police, but he was overthrown. There was this big push to get him out from all ages, from all classes really. This was at a time, 1960, when Korea’s fortune was not clear. A lot of people in the North and South wanted unification. They had been divided. There had been this terrible war. People wanted reconciliation and unification. There was talk of a united Korea being neutral between the Soviet Union and United States during the Cold War.

In that period from 1960 to 1961, there was a relatively liberal-left government in South Korea. There was a lot of turmoil politically. Actually, young students were going to the border and meeting with North Koreans. There was a big change afoot in South Korea and with its relationship with the United States.

This all ended in 1961, when this general, Park Chung-hee, took over in a military coup. He had been trained by the Japanese Imperial Army. He had actually served in Manchuria during World War II fighting Korean Communists who were fighting the Japanese.

DD: Who were led by Kim Il Sung?

TS: They were led by Kim Il Sung and others. So there is this dichotomy that defines Korean history right there. The Syngman Rhee government and the United States saw any move toward unification as a communist move.

Cold War thinking really descended on South Korea in the late forties, therefore any movement to unify the country was stifled by the South, and violently so. There were a lot of uprisings in South Korea in the 1940s that were brutally suppressed by the Korean military with the support of the United States. The United States and the South ruled through a military government, and the Soviet Union occupied the North.

The agreement by the United States and Soviet Union basically concluded that Korea by itself was incapable of ruling itself. It was incapable of self-rule or taking itself out of colonialism. So they thought they could occupy it for a while and then oversee the unification depending on what Koreans wanted.

But the Cold War thinking deepened division and of course led in the 1950s to all-out war. When North Korea decided it was time to liberate South Korea, Rhee came into South Korea to cut off North Korean forces and push them north. President Truman made a critical decision to keep it going. They called it rollback at the time. They invaded North Korea to try to make one Korea under Syngman Rhee, but that’s when the Chinese military came in with millions of soldiers to push the United States back with a tremendous loss.

DD: People forget that United States and Chinese forces actually traded fire with one another on the battlefield.

TS: Many people do. The Chinese haven’t forgotten that. Mao Zedong’s son lost his life in Korea. It’s also important for the US Marines. Generals like James Mattis, though he wasn’t there, certainly remembers this. It was a tremendous loss for the Marines. The US Marines led the push into North Korea. There were several divisions that went way up to the North. The idea was to get to the Yalu River in China. That is when the Chinese army surrounded them.

They had to withdraw in terrible conditions. Thousands died and froze to death. It was an unbelievable situation for the Marines. When they were negotiating a truce, during the last two years of the Korean War, the United States completely controlled the skies and just obliterated North Korea, there was nothing left.

DD: It was one of the most brutal bombing campaigns in world history.

TS: One of the worst because there was nothing left. I grew up in Japan during the 1950s, I can still remember seeing destruction from the bombing of Tokyo. The firebombing of Tokyo in April 1945 obliterated large parts of the city, just burned it down to cinders with napalm.

In North Korea, every single city and every single village was burnt down to the ground.

Of course, North Koreans never forgot that, and they don’t let their people forget it. From when you are a baby to when you are an adult, you are imbued in the terrible history of that war. You see Americans as people out to kill you. Part of the ruling ideology is this fear of another war. It’s really important for people to understand this very complex history. The Japanese collaboration part of it actually lasted for a long time in South Korea. South Korea became more democratic, but I wouldn’t call it fully democratic due to the national security law [established in 1948].

This national security law is still on the books and was never changed. The protests in the eighties were sparked by a young student being tortured to death. People had just had enough of this police state. Park Chung-Hee, the military dictator, was assassinated in 1979 in the midst of very widespread protests led by labor and by workers and by students. Then another general assumed control of the military and the government declared martial law.

DD: He was far more brutal than Park even.

TS: He was very brutal. There was an uprising in the city of Gwangju where they sent special forces who massacred people just standing up for democracy. People fought back with guns. The United States at that time decided to back the South Korean army to try to put down this uprising. This angered South Koreans and a lot of South Koreans have never forgotten that.

So Chun, the second general who was in power when people protested, forced a major change. They got the right to elect their own president as opposed to a parliament where one third of the members were picked by the dictators. There were popular elections.

In the late nineties, under Kim Dae-Jung, a longtime opposition leader who had almost been executed by the Chun government, South Korea opened up and started the so-called Sunshine Policy. They opened up to North Korea and Kim led this push to defuse tensions and build up trust through economic and political exchanges that lasted for quite a while.

DD: Could you explain a little bit about what the Sunshine Policy was?

TS: The policy came after President Clinton had negotiated an “agreed framework” with North Korea under which they decided to suspend their nuclear bomb program in 1994. There was an atmosphere already for defusing the crisis and ending the military standoff between the United States, North Korea, and South Korea.

Kim Dae-Jung expanded citizen exchanges, investment in North Korea by South Korean companies, sports teams, family visits by people who had not seen each other for decades. Also, ordinary citizens, people who are involved in academia, culture, music, and so on began to meet each other.

That was important for breaking down the idea of North Korea as an enemy. Getting back and meeting people, seeing North Koreans as ordinary human beings like you. It broke down a lot of animosity.

One of the lasting monuments to that period of time was this Kaesong Industrial Zone, built just north of the DMZ in North Korea where South Korean companies set up factories and North Korean workers made products for the world market. This was seen as helping North Korea with its technological development and employment. It was that kind of program that they thought would lay the seeds for a larger peace.

It must be said that at this time Kim Dae-Jung was often seen by US intelligence as a leftist and out of sync with long-range US policy. He was rumored to be a communist.

DD: Too conciliatory towards North Korea at the end of the day?

TS: Too conciliatory, and his roots were in the Left. His successor, Roh Moo-Hyun, was the same way. He was a human rights activist and had been very involved in the anti-dictatorship movement. He continued a lot of these policies, but they did come under tremendous pressure.

Kim Dae-Jung made a state visit to George W. Bush in 2001. He came here to get an official stamp of approval toward his Sunshine Policy and negotiating with North Korea. Bush completely turned his back on him and embarrassed Kim Dae-Jung, this courageous dissident leader. He came to Washington and Bush said, “We don’t trust North Korea, and we’re not going to negotiate with them and that’s that.”

DD: That’s a remarkable thing to say to a South Korean president given that it’s South Koreans who are sitting within range of a surreal amount of conventional weaponry that could destroy Seoul in a day.

TS: It’s their country, right? They have the right to talk to the North however they want. If they want to unify, it’s their country. The United States sees it as a protectorate that the United States controls. They expect South Korea to go along with whatever the US strategic policy is.

DD: Did the United States ultimately undermine the effectiveness of the Sunshine Policy?

TS: Actually, it worked to the Unites States’ advantage. The United States was able to negotiate with Kim Jong Il after the agreement was signed with Clinton. The United States and North Korea came very close to signing an agreement which would have ended North Korea’s missile production. They were very close in 2000, but the negotiations were never completed and the agreement was never signed.

Bush took over with the neocons and they were against the “agreed framework” from the beginning. They didn’t go along with Kim Dae-Jung’s sunshine policies. They accused North Korea of violating the agreement by trying to build a uranium route to the bomb. The North Koreans denied it; the North Koreans said they would be happy to negotiate because they thought they would have a right to such a uranium bomb, but they did not have a bomb at that time.

The Bush people that were sent there, sort of low-level diplomats of the State Department, had no authority to negotiate so they just delivered an ultimatum to North Korea saying you’re doing this, you’re violating this, and we’re ripping up the agreement. As I said at the beginning of this interview, that’s when this nuclear crisis really began.

DD: 2002 is when Bush labels North Korea part of the “axis of evil” as well.

TS: Exactly. As part of the nineties agreement, North Korea and the United States were pledged publicly to move as soon as possible to full political and economic normalization. In other words, recognizing each other, having embassies in each other’s capital, and so on. Starting a normal relationship.

When the agreement came under fire in Congress, North Koreans started seeing that the United States was pulling away from the agreement. A lot of analysts and people who were in the government at that time think that North Korea started this program as a hedge in case the United States did violate it.

At any rate, the agreement fell apart in 2002–3. In the latter part of the Bush administration, he started negotiating with North Korea again in the six-party talks — amazingly he opened negotiations with North Korea three weeks after they exploded their first nuclear bomb.

DD: Six-party talks included the United States, South Korea, Japan, China —

TS: And Russia. They made some progress there. That was when North Korea’s designation as a supporter of terrorism was dropped by the Bush administration. It was just renewed the other day by Trump. There were talks that were going on.

Roh Moo-hyun and Kwon Yang-sook at the 2006 APEC gala dinner with President Vladimir Putin of Russia (centre) and George W. Bush and his wife Laura Bush (right) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

At the time, Roh Moo-Hyun, the progressive in South Korea who was in favor of the Sunshine Policy and was still carrying it out, was president. That set the stage for negotiations with the North and these six-party talks because South Korea and North Korea were still talking and engaging in these measures both political and economic.

But in 2008, a right-winger was elected president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak. That’s when the policy really changed. He ran, sort of like Bush did and the Republicans did, with a policy against the agreed framework and normalization of ties with North Korea. He did not like the Sunshine Policy.

DD: What popular conservative sentiment was he tapping into at the time that was hostile to these negotiations?

TS: There is a very strong conservative, anti-communist streak in South Korea. It’s older people, and there were economic issues that played into it as well. As they often do, the more progressive liberal candidates split.

Lee Myung-bak was against the negotiations with North Korea and the Sunshine Policy. He started making demands as part of the six-party talks that North Korea rejected. Those talks floundered as a result.

Under Park Guen-hye, negotiations got worse. When military tensions peaked a few years ago, the last remnant of the Sunshine Policy, the Kaesong Industrial Zone — which I used to call the canary in the Korean coal mine — was shut down. As long as that was open, I thought things would be okay. South Korean businesspeople were crossing the border to go to this industrial zone. A lot of people in South Korea also believed that it was holding up something with North Korea, some semblance of normalcy.

Obama’s policies really made things a lot worse. North Korea under Obama tested three more nuclear weapons. Obama’s advisers were pretty hardline on North Korea. I think it’s accurate to say that Trump inherited a tense situation that’s not of its own making, but as I said he’s making it much worse.

DD: To what extent did a collapse of the South Korean right allow Moon to win? And to what degree did his victory reflect growing popular support for both a more left-of-center domestic and economic program and growing support for renewed dialogue with North Korea?

TS: When he ran for president, his main focus was economic. In South Korea, there is a huge problem of youth employment. There is a serious problem of Walmart-like jobs where people don’t have full benefits and full pay. You work under contract from year to year and sometimes month to month.

DD: Highly flexible, casual workers?

TS: Casual workers. It’s a terrible situation for many Korean workers. That’s how many Korean conglomerates survive. They have this core of full-time workers and then they just employ at will when they need contract workers. It’s about 50 percent of the total Korean workforce.

That, combined with unemployment and people’s unhappiness with the previous Park Geun-hye government, is how Moon won. When I interviewed him two days before the election, when it was pretty much assured that he was going to win, he said that was basically the result of the “Candlelight Revolution” [the mass protests that forced Park Geun-hye’s impeachment].

He put the Candlelight Revolution in the long line of protest movements that led the way for democracy. Starting with the 1960 uprising against Syngman Rhee and the 1979 assassination of Park Chung-hee, which took place during a huge uprising in his own city of Pusan. Then the June uprising in 1987, the democratic uprising, and then the Candlelight Revolution. The way he sees it is the way a lot of South Koreans see it as well.

DD: What chance does Moon have to pursue a negotiation-based relationship, with Trump’s provocations on one side and Kim Jong Un’s provocations on the other?

TS: It’s made it very difficult obviously. He reached out immediately after becoming president, saying he wanted to have military-to-military and Red Cross talks with North Korea. North Koreans basically ignored him. They consider him and the South Korean government as tools of the United States. They don’t think that he has real independence.

They can point to some things that are true. For example, the South Korean and US military are joined in this Joint Military Command. It is now headed by a South Korean general, but during wartime the commander is a US general. If there is a war in Korea and the South Korean military is mobilized, it goes under a US general who is their commander. That is the only country in the world where a foreign general is in charge of their army during the war. How can South Korea really be a sovereign country in that situation?

DD: They are technically not.

TS: They are technically not.

DD: And so it’s rational for North Korea to say that if I have this belligerent enemy in the United States that is ultimately in charge of South Korea, then why am I going to talk to Moon when he, at the end of the day, cannot be the guarantor of anything?

TS: Exactly. His overtures have been largely rejected. Moon Jae-In on security and military issues didn’t really run as a conservative; he didn’t really run as a liberal. He has taken steps that the Korean left and the liberal middle support, like putting dialogue first with North Korea. He agreed to the deployment of THAAD, the theater anti-missile system installed by the United States that was agreed to by Park Geun-hye.

He has praised some of Trump’s hardline policies and statements. The day after Trump said that the United States will totally destroy North Korea if they continue to threaten the United States, Moon Jae-In complimented him on his speech in a meeting with Trump. They follow this very hardline sanctions-first policy of trying to isolate North Korea economically to force them into talks.

But he’s taken some very important steps independent of the United States. My latest in the Nation focuses on when Trump was in South Korea recently. Just before that Moon Jae-In took steps that were independent of what the United States wants. For example, they reached an agreement with China that normalized relations and put the issue of THAAD behind them. That was to get China to support negotiations.

He also flatly rejected the American push for a trilateral military alliance between the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Moon said that South Korea will take part with certain kinds of cooperation with the Japanese military, but they do not want to form an alliance. The next day, his foreign minister said that they are not going to join this US-Japan anti-missile defense system that has been set up in north East Asia.

He’s trying to play this in a way to be able to operate independently. He always stresses that we cannot have a war in South Korea. It is unthinkable. They went out of their way to show Trump when he was there that when he says to totally destroy North Korea what that could mean for South Korea. Trump flew over Seoul; he saw how close Seoul was to the DMZ. I’m sure he’s got plenty of intelligence that tells him where the artillery was and how much damage could occur in the next few hours and days if that happened. North Korea has massive amounts of conventional weapons on the border that could strike not only Seoul, and US bases in South Korea, but also bases in Japan and Okinawa as well, Guam even.

DD: Trump has massive amounts of intelligence, but not massive amounts of “intelligence.” That’s the problem. What does China want out of this?

TS: China does not want a unified Korea under South Korean–US control. They don’t want US troops on their borders. They don’t want a war and all the chaos that would result from a war. They are playing a pretty important role.

Both Russia and China have voted for these increased sanctions at the UN Security Council. They are trying to defuse the situation by trying to increase pressure on the DPRK and Kim Jong Un. During the UN debates, they push for negotiation. They pushed this proposal where North Korea would freeze their nuclear program and the United States and South Korea would freeze or scale back their military exercises. A lot of people think that’s the only way for there to be negotiations.

Moon Jae-In is trying to thread that needle. He continues to say that war is unthinkable. I think that was part of the reason for his visit to China. He has also had similar discussions with Russia and Putin’s government.

Trump’s hard line about trying to put them back on the terrorist list is only going to complicate things. North Korea is already very angry about that, and South Korea officially approved it. If you read between the lines in the Korean media, there is a lot of criticism of that too. How in the world do they expect to get negotiations going if they don’t give North Korea any type of off-ramp to exit this tense situation?

DD: What is the current state of the North Korean regime and how Kim Jong Un fits into his dynastic predecessors?

TS: North Korea has an incredibly repressive apparatus where even former ambassadors are recalled and put into prison for going against the political line of the day. It rules through a pervasive police state. This makes it very difficult for people to differ publicly with any kind of regime policy. They have an intranet in North Korea but it’s cut off from the world. The only information they get comes from electronic devices smuggled into South Korea. There is a lot of that going on.

On the other hand, it is not a backward country economically. Despite the controls and sanctions, you can see the results of it. A backward country cannot develop nuclear weapons and missile technology. You have ICBMs that could hit the United States. They have developed this pretty much on their own, with borrowed scientists from Russia, Pakistan, and possibly Iran. I think the idea is to build a deterrent against the United States and then negotiate from a position of strength. Then they want to focus on economic development.

Kim Jong Un is trying to use his nuclear prowess as a wedge to get the United States to negotiate; his father was negotiating out of a position of weakness. His father was trying to trade his nuclear and military program for a better relationship with the United States and countries in the region. Kim Jong Un is trying to project this idea of a very powerful North Korea able to hold the United States to a draw momentarily — which is foolish because he knows damn well that the United States could destroy North Korea, as Trump says.

There are all these predictions in the United States that the North Korean regime is coming apart, and they point to defectors like this high-level guy at the London embassy and others. They point to the alleged assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother in the Malaysian airport as a sign that they are trying to destroy any dissidents within the North Korean regime. I don’t see any signs of mass revolt or anything. I don’t think there are grounds to say that it’s going to collapse in the next year. You can read fifty years of reporting that North Korea is going to collapse in the next two years.

It has strong internal cohesion partially due to the nature of its repressive police state apparatus. There is enough belief in the regime and economic developments. When there was famine and starvation in the 1990s, they came back from that. They’ve maintained this independence from China and Russia, these great powers. You can even see this in interviews with North Korean defectors. There is a certain respect for that ability to maintain that independence. People are unhappy about other things there. Deservedly so. It’s not going to collapse. The only way to have a solution is to negotiate with them and talk directly to them.

DD: Has the external pressure and bellicosity towards North Korea strengthened internal cohesion and could negotiations actually play a role in opening up North Korean society and in the long run potentially transforming it into something better?

TS: I think it could but it needs to be open-ended. After Otto Warmbier died [the American student who was imprisoned in North Korea], the US Congress passed a law outlawing travel to North Korea. They are trying to get all countries to cut off their ties. In South America, Central America, Asia, there are countries that are ending diplomatic relations with North Korea. They are further isolating them.

If you want North Korea to change, it has to talk to people from outside. If you completely cut them off, then things will not change. The United States does not have the right to change the regime because we don’t like it. I think change could come gradually if the United States would lessen its military involvement.

North and South Korea are totally capable of negotiating and working things out by themselves. It could happen. They’ve made progress in the past. I think it requires a major change in US policy and the region.

Ultimately, engagement is the way to change minds on both sides. When Dennis Rodman went over there, a lot of people made fun of him, but, for young North Koreans, who have been taught that Americans are devils and trying to kill them, to see NBA players laughing it up and hamming it up with Kim Jong Un changes their views of Americans. We need to have reciprocity with North Koreans. Ordinary North Koreans if possible.

I think engagement is the way to go. I just hope there can be a negotiated solution to this. I really do not think at this point that the United States is going to war. Trump is quite unpredictable. South Koreans are more worried about what Trump will do than what Kim Jong Un will do.

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Tim Shorrock is a Washington-based journalist who grew up in Tokyo and Seoul. He has been writing about Korea, North and South, since the late 1970s. His reporting appears regularly in the Nation and Newstapa / The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism.

Daniel Denvir is a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project and the host of the Dig on Jacobin Radio.